Christmas Stories

by

Charles Dickens

Index of Stories

A Christmas Tree

What Christmas Is As We Grow Older

The Poor Relation's Story

The Child's Story

The Schoolboy's Story

Nobody's Story

The Seven Poor Travellers

The Holly-Tree

The Wreck of the Golden Mary

The Perils of Certain English Prisoners

A House to Let

The Haunted House

A Message From the Sea

Tom Tiddler's Ground

Somebody's Luggage

Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings

Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy

Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions

Mugby Junction

No Thoroughfare

A CHRISTMAS TREE

1850

I have been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of children assembled round that pretty German toy, a Christmas Tree. The tree was planted in the middle of a great round table, and towered high above their heads. It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of little tapers; and everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright objects. There were rosy-cheeked dolls, hiding behind the green leaves; and there were real watches (with movable hands, at least, and an endless capacity of being wound up) dangling from innumerable twigs; there were French-polished tables, chairs, bedsteads, wardrobes, eight-day clocks, and various other articles of domestic furniture (wonderfully made, in tin, at Wolverhampton), perched among the boughs, as if in preparation for some fairy housekeeping; there were jolly, broad-faced little men, much more agreeable in appearance than many real men—and no wonder, for their heads took off, and showed them to be full of sugar-plums; there were fiddles and drums; there were tambourines, books, work-boxes, paint-boxes, sweetmeat-boxes, peep-show boxes, and all kinds of boxes; there were trinkets for the elder girls, far brighter than any grown-up gold and jewels; there were baskets and pincushions in all devices; there were guns, swords, and banners; there were witches standing in enchanted rings of pasteboard, to tell fortunes; there were teetotums, humming-tops, needle-cases, pen-wipers, smelling-bottles, conversation-cards, bouquet-holders; real fruit, made artificially dazzling with gold leaf; imitation apples, pears, and walnuts, crammed with surprises; in short, as a pretty child, before me, delightedly whispered to another pretty child, her bosom friend, "There was everything, and more." This motley collection of odd objects, clustering on the tree like magic fruit, and flashing back the bright looks directed towards it from every side—some of the diamond-eyes admiring it were hardly on a level with the table, and a few were languishing in timid wonder on the bosoms of pretty mothers, aunts, and nurses—made a lively realisation of the fancies of childhood; and set me thinking how all the trees that grow and all the things that come into existence on the earth, have their wild adornments at that well-remembered time.

Being now at home again, and alone, the only person in the house awake, my thoughts are drawn back, by a fascination which I do not care to resist, to my own childhood. I begin to consider, what do we all remember best upon the branches of the Christmas Tree of our own young Christmas days, by which we climbed to real life.

Straight, in the middle of the room, cramped in the freedom of its growth by no encircling walls or soon-reached ceiling, a shadowy tree arises; and, looking up into the dreamy brightness of its top—for I observe in this tree the singular property that it appears to grow downward towards the earth—I look into my youngest Christmas recollections!

All toys at first, I find. Up yonder, among the green holly and red berries, is the Tumbler with his hands in his pockets, who wouldn't lie down, but whenever he was put upon the floor, persisted in rolling his fat body about, until he rolled himself still, and brought those lobster eyes of his to bear upon me—when I affected to laugh very much, but in my heart of hearts was extremely doubtful of him. Close beside him is that infernal snuff-box, out of which there sprang a demoniacal Counsellor in a black gown, with an obnoxious head of hair, and a red cloth mouth, wide open, who was not to be endured on any terms, but could not be put away either; for he used suddenly, in a highly magnified state, to fly out of Mammoth Snuff-boxes in dreams, when least expected. Nor is the frog with cobbler's wax on his tail, far off; for there was no knowing where he wouldn't jump; and when he flew over the candle, and came upon one's hand with that spotted back—red on a green ground—he was horrible. The cardboard lady in a blue-silk skirt, who was stood up against the candlestick to dance, and whom I see on the same branch, was milder, and was beautiful; but I can't say as much for the larger cardboard man, who used to be hung against the wall and pulled by a string; there was a sinister expression in that nose of his; and when he got his legs round his neck (which he very often did), he was ghastly, and not a creature to be alone with.

When did that dreadful Mask first look at me? Who put it on, and why was I so frightened that the sight of it is an era in my life? It is not a hideous visage in itself; it is even meant to be droll; why then were its stolid features so intolerable? Surely not because it hid the wearer's face. An apron would have done as much; and though I should have preferred even the apron away, it would not have been absolutely insupportable, like the mask. Was it the immovability of the mask? The doll's face was immovable, but I was not afraid of her. Perhaps that fixed and set change coming over a real face, infused into my quickened heart some remote suggestion and dread of the universal change that is to come on every face, and make it still? Nothing reconciled me to it. No drummers, from whom proceeded a melancholy chirping on the turning of a handle; no regiment of soldiers, with a mute band, taken out of a box, and fitted, one by one, upon a stiff and lazy little set of lazy-tongs; no old woman, made of wires and a brown-paper composition, cutting up a pie for two small children; could give me a permanent comfort, for a long time. Nor was it any satisfaction to be shown the Mask, and see that it was made of paper, or to have it locked up and be assured that no one wore it. The mere recollection of that fixed face, the mere knowledge of its existence anywhere, was sufficient to awake me in the night all perspiration and horror, with, "O I know it's coming! O the mask!"

I never wondered what the dear old donkey with the panniers—there he is! was made of, then! His hide was real to the touch, I recollect. And the great black horse with the round red spots all over him—the horse that I could even get upon—I never wondered what had brought him to that strange condition, or thought that such a horse was not commonly seen at Newmarket. The four horses of no colour, next to him, that went into the waggon of cheeses, and could be taken out and stabled under the piano, appear to have bits of fur-tippet for their tails, and other bits for their manes, and to stand on pegs instead of legs, but it was not so when they were brought home for a Christmas present. They were all right, then; neither was their harness unceremoniously nailed into their chests, as appears to be the case now. The tinkling works of the music-cart, I did find out, to be made of quill tooth-picks and wire; and I always thought that little tumbler in his shirt sleeves, perpetually swarming up one side of a wooden frame, and coming down, head foremost, on the other, rather a weak-minded person—though good-natured; but the Jacob's Ladder, next him, made of little squares of red wood, that went flapping and clattering over one another, each developing a different picture, and the whole enlivened by small bells, was a mighty marvel and a great delight.

Ah! The Doll's house!—of which I was not proprietor, but where I visited. I don't admire the Houses of Parliament half so much as that stone-fronted mansion with real glass windows, and door-steps, and a real balcony—greener than I ever see now, except at watering places; and even they afford but a poor imitation. And though it did open all at once, the entire house-front (which was a blow, I admit, as cancelling the fiction of a staircase), it was but to shut it up again, and I could believe. Even open, there were three distinct rooms in it: a sitting-room and bed-room, elegantly furnished, and best of all, a kitchen, with uncommonly soft fire-irons, a plentiful assortment of diminutive utensils—oh, the warming-pan!—and a tin man-cook in profile, who was always going to fry two fish. What Barmecide justice have I done to the noble feasts wherein the set of wooden platters figured, each with its own peculiar delicacy, as a ham or turkey, glued tight on to it, and garnished with something green, which I recollect as moss! Could all the Temperance Societies of these later days, united, give me such a tea-drinking as I have had through the means of yonder little set of blue crockery, which really would hold liquid (it ran out of the small wooden cask, I recollect, and tasted of matches), and which made tea, nectar. And if the two legs of the ineffectual little sugar-tongs did tumble over one another, and want purpose, like Punch's hands, what does it matter? And if I did once shriek out, as a poisoned child, and strike the fashionable company with consternation, by reason of having drunk a little teaspoon, inadvertently dissolved in too hot tea, I was never the worse for it, except by a powder!

Upon the next branches of the tree, lower down, hard by the green roller and miniature gardening-tools, how thick the books begin to hang. Thin books, in themselves, at first, but many of them, and with deliciously smooth covers of bright red or green. What fat black letters to begin with! "A was an archer, and shot at a frog." Of course he was. He was an apple-pie also, and there he is! He was a good many things in his time, was A, and so were most of his friends, except X, who had so little versatility, that I never knew him to get beyond Xerxes or Xantippe—like Y, who was always confined to a Yacht or a Yew Tree; and Z condemned for ever to be a Zebra or a Zany. But, now, the very tree itself changes, and becomes a bean-stalk—the marvellous bean-stalk up which Jack climbed to the Giant's house! And now, those dreadfully interesting, double-headed giants, with their clubs over their shoulders, begin to stride along the boughs in a perfect throng, dragging knights and ladies home for dinner by the hair of their heads. And Jack—how noble, with his sword of sharpness, and his shoes of swiftness! Again those old meditations come upon me as I gaze up at him; and I debate within myself whether there was more than one Jack (which I am loth to believe possible), or only one genuine original admirable Jack, who achieved all the recorded exploits.

Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy colour of the cloak, in which—the tree making a forest of itself for her to trip through, with her basket—Little Red Riding-Hood comes to me one Christmas Eve to give me information of the cruelty and treachery of that dissembling Wolf who ate her grandmother, without making any impression on his appetite, and then ate her, after making that ferocious joke about his teeth. She was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding-Hood, I should have known perfect bliss. But, it was not to be; and there was nothing for it but to look out the Wolf in the Noah's Ark there, and put him late in the procession on the table, as a monster who was to be degraded. O the wonderful Noah's Ark! It was not found seaworthy when put in a washing-tub, and the animals were crammed in at the roof, and needed to have their legs well shaken down before they could be got in, even there—and then, ten to one but they began to tumble out at the door, which was but imperfectly fastened with a wire latch—but what was that against it! Consider the noble fly, a size or two smaller than the elephant: the lady-bird, the butterfly—all triumphs of art! Consider the goose, whose feet were so small, and whose balance was so indifferent, that he usually tumbled forward, and knocked down all the animal creation. Consider Noah and his family, like idiotic tobacco-stoppers; and how the leopard stuck to warm little fingers; and how the tails of the larger animals used gradually to resolve themselves into frayed bits of string!

Hush! Again a forest, and somebody up in a tree—not Robin Hood, not Valentine, not the Yellow Dwarf (I have passed him and all Mother Bunch's wonders, without mention), but an Eastern King with a glittering scimitar and turban. By Allah! two Eastern Kings, for I see another, looking over his shoulder! Down upon the grass, at the tree's foot, lies the full length of a coal-black Giant, stretched asleep, with his head in a lady's lap; and near them is a glass box, fastened with four locks of shining steel, in which he keeps the lady prisoner when he is awake. I see the four keys at his girdle now. The lady makes signs to the two kings in the tree, who softly descend. It is the setting-in of the bright Arabian Nights.

Oh, now all common things become uncommon and enchanted to me. All lamps are wonderful; all rings are talismans. Common flower-pots are full of treasure, with a little earth scattered on the top; trees are for Ali Baba to hide in; beef-steaks are to throw down into the Valley of Diamonds, that the precious stones may stick to them, and be carried by the eagles to their nests, whence the traders, with loud cries, will scare them. Tarts are made, according to the recipe of the Vizier's son of Bussorah, who turned pastrycook after he was set down in his drawers at the gate of Damascus; cobblers are all Mustaphas, and in the habit of sewing up people cut into four pieces, to whom they are taken blind-fold.

Any iron ring let into stone is the entrance to a cave which only waits for the magician, and the little fire, and the necromancy, that will make the earth shake. All the dates imported come from the same tree as that unlucky date, with whose shell the merchant knocked out the eye of the genie's invisible son. All olives are of the stock of that fresh fruit, concerning which the Commander of the Faithful overheard the boy conduct the fictitious trial of the fraudulent olive merchant; all apples are akin to the apple purchased (with two others) from the Sultan's gardener for three sequins, and which the tall black slave stole from the child. All dogs are associated with the dog, really a transformed man, who jumped upon the baker's counter, and put his paw on the piece of bad money. All rice recalls the rice which the awful lady, who was a ghoule, could only peck by grains, because of her nightly feasts in the burial-place. My very rocking-horse,—there he is, with his nostrils turned completely inside-out, indicative of Blood!—should have a peg in his neck, by virtue thereof to fly away with me, as the wooden horse did with the Prince of Persia, in the sight of all his father's Court.

Yes, on every object that I recognise among those upper branches of my Christmas Tree, I see this fairy light! When I wake in bed, at daybreak, on the cold, dark, winter mornings, the white snow dimly beheld, outside, through the frost on the window-pane, I hear Dinarzade. "Sister, sister, if you are yet awake, I pray you finish the history of the Young King of the Black Islands." Scheherazade replies, "If my lord the Sultan will suffer me to live another day, sister, I will not only finish that, but tell you a more wonderful story yet." Then, the gracious Sultan goes out, giving no orders for the execution, and we all three breathe again.

At this height of my tree I begin to see, cowering among the leaves—it may be born of turkey, or of pudding, or mince pie, or of these many fancies, jumbled with Robinson Crusoe on his desert island, Philip Quarll among the monkeys, Sandford and Merton with Mr. Barlow, Mother Bunch, and the Mask—or it may be the result of indigestion, assisted by imagination and over-doctoring—a prodigious nightmare. It is so exceedingly indistinct, that I don't know why it's frightful—but I know it is. I can only make out that it is an immense array of shapeless things, which appear to be planted on a vast exaggeration of the lazy-tongs that used to bear the toy soldiers, and to be slowly coming close to my eyes, and receding to an immeasurable distance. When it comes closest, it is worse. In connection with it I descry remembrances of winter nights incredibly long; of being sent early to bed, as a punishment for some small offence, and waking in two hours, with a sensation of having been asleep two nights; of the laden hopelessness of morning ever dawning; and the oppression of a weight of remorse.

And now, I see a wonderful row of little lights rise smoothly out of the ground, before a vast green curtain. Now, a bell rings—a magic bell, which still sounds in my ears unlike all other bells—and music plays, amidst a buzz of voices, and a fragrant smell of orange-peel and oil. Anon, the magic bell commands the music to cease, and the great green curtain rolls itself up majestically, and The Play begins! The devoted dog of Montargis avenges the death of his master, foully murdered in the Forest of Bondy; and a humorous Peasant with a red nose and a very little hat, whom I take from this hour forth to my bosom as a friend (I think he was a Waiter or an Hostler at a village Inn, but many years have passed since he and I have met), remarks that the sassigassity of that dog is indeed surprising; and evermore this jocular conceit will live in my remembrance fresh and unfading, overtopping all possible jokes, unto the end of time. Or now, I learn with bitter tears how poor Jane Shore, dressed all in white, and with her brown hair hanging down, went starving through the streets; or how George Barnwell killed the worthiest uncle that ever man had, and was afterwards so sorry for it that he ought to have been let off. Comes swift to comfort me, the Pantomime—stupendous Phenomenon!—when clowns are shot from loaded mortars into the great chandelier, bright constellation that it is; when Harlequins, covered all over with scales of pure gold, twist and sparkle, like amazing fish; when Pantaloon (whom I deem it no irreverence to compare in my own mind to my grandfather) puts red-hot pokers in his pocket, and cries "Here's somebody coming!" or taxes the Clown with petty larceny, by saying, "Now, I sawed you do it!" when Everything is capable, with the greatest ease, of being changed into Anything; and "Nothing is, but thinking makes it so." Now, too, I perceive my first experience of the dreary sensation—often to return in after-life—of being unable, next day, to get back to the dull, settled world; of wanting to live for ever in the bright atmosphere I have quitted; of doting on the little Fairy, with the wand like a celestial Barber's Pole, and pining for a Fairy immortality along with her. Ah, she comes back, in many shapes, as my eye wanders down the branches of my Christmas Tree, and goes as often, and has never yet stayed by me!

Out of this delight springs the toy-theatre,—there it is, with its familiar proscenium, and ladies in feathers, in the boxes!—and all its attendant occupation with paste and glue, and gum, and water colours, in the getting-up of The Miller and his Men, and Elizabeth, or the Exile of Siberia. In spite of a few besetting accidents and failures (particularly an unreasonable disposition in the respectable Kelmar, and some others, to become faint in the legs, and double up, at exciting points of the drama), a teeming world of fancies so suggestive and all-embracing, that, far below it on my Christmas Tree, I see dark, dirty, real Theatres in the day-time, adorned with these associations as with the freshest garlands of the rarest flowers, and charming me yet.

But hark! The Waits are playing, and they break my childish sleep! What images do I associate with the Christmas music as I see them set forth on the Christmas Tree? Known before all the others, keeping far apart from all the others, they gather round my little bed. An angel, speaking to a group of shepherds in a field; some travellers, with eyes uplifted, following a star; a baby in a manger; a child in a spacious temple, talking with grave men; a solemn figure, with a mild and beautiful face, raising a dead girl by the hand; again, near a city gate, calling back the son of a widow, on his bier, to life; a crowd of people looking through the opened roof of a chamber where he sits, and letting down a sick person on a bed, with ropes; the same, in a tempest, walking on the water to a ship; again, on a sea-shore, teaching a great multitude; again, with a child upon his knee, and other children round; again, restoring sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame, knowledge to the ignorant; again, dying upon a Cross, watched by armed soldiers, a thick darkness coming on, the earth beginning to shake, and only one voice heard, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Still, on the lower and maturer branches of the Tree, Christmas associations cluster thick. School-books shut up; Ovid and Virgil silenced; the Rule of Three, with its cool impertinent inquiries, long disposed of; Terence and Plautus acted no more, in an arena of huddled desks and forms, all chipped, and notched, and inked; cricket-bats, stumps, and balls, left higher up, with the smell of trodden grass and the softened noise of shouts in the evening air; the tree is still fresh, still gay. If I no more come home at Christmas-time, there will be boys and girls (thank Heaven!) while the World lasts; and they do! Yonder they dance and play upon the branches of my Tree, God bless them, merrily, and my heart dances and plays too!

And I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all should. We all come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday—the longer, the better—from the great boarding-school, where we are for ever working at our arithmetical slates, to take, and give a rest. As to going a visiting, where can we not go, if we will; where have we not been, when we would; starting our fancy from our Christmas Tree!

Away into the winter prospect. There are many such upon the tree! On, by low-lying, misty grounds, through fens and fogs, up long hills, winding dark as caverns between thick plantations, almost shutting out the sparkling stars; so, out on broad heights, until we stop at last, with sudden silence, at an avenue. The gate-bell has a deep, half-awful sound in the frosty air; the gate swings open on its hinges; and, as we drive up to a great house, the glancing lights grow larger in the windows, and the opposing rows of trees seem to fall solemnly back on either side, to give us place. At intervals, all day, a frightened hare has shot across this whitened turf; or the distant clatter of a herd of deer trampling the hard frost, has, for the minute, crushed the silence too. Their watchful eyes beneath the fern may be shining now, if we could see them, like the icy dewdrops on the leaves; but they are still, and all is still. And so, the lights growing larger, and the trees falling back before us, and closing up again behind us, as if to forbid retreat, we come to the house.

There is probably a smell of roasted chestnuts and other good comfortable things all the time, for we are telling Winter Stories—Ghost Stories, or more shame for us—round the Christmas fire; and we have never stirred, except to draw a little nearer to it. But, no matter for that. We came to the house, and it is an old house, full of great chimneys where wood is burnt on ancient dogs upon the hearth, and grim portraits (some of them with grim legends, too) lower distrustfully from the oaken panels of the walls. We are a middle-aged nobleman, and we make a generous supper with our host and hostess and their guests—it being Christmas-time, and the old house full of company—and then we go to bed. Our room is a very old room. It is hung with tapestry. We don't like the portrait of a cavalier in green, over the fireplace. There are great black beams in the ceiling, and there is a great black bedstead, supported at the foot by two great black figures, who seem to have come off a couple of tombs in the old baronial church in the park, for our particular accommodation. But, we are not a superstitious nobleman, and we don't mind. Well! we dismiss our servant, lock the door, and sit before the fire in our dressing-gown, musing about a great many things. At length we go to bed. Well! we can't sleep. We toss and tumble, and can't sleep. The embers on the hearth burn fitfully and make the room look ghostly. We can't help peeping out over the counterpane, at the two black figures and the cavalier—that wicked-looking cavalier—in green. In the flickering light they seem to advance and retire: which, though we are not by any means a superstitious nobleman, is not agreeable. Well! we get nervous—more and more nervous. We say "This is very foolish, but we can't stand this; we'll pretend to be ill, and knock up somebody." Well! we are just going to do it, when the locked door opens, and there comes in a young woman, deadly pale, and with long fair hair, who glides to the fire, and sits down in the chair we have left there, wringing her hands. Then, we notice that her clothes are wet. Our tongue cleaves to the roof of our mouth, and we can't speak; but, we observe her accurately. Her clothes are wet; her long hair is dabbled with moist mud; she is dressed in the fashion of two hundred years ago; and she has at her girdle a bunch of rusty keys. Well! there she sits, and we can't even faint, we are in such a state about it. Presently she gets up, and tries all the locks in the room with the rusty keys, which won't fit one of them; then, she fixes her eyes on the portrait of the cavalier in green, and says, in a low, terrible voice, "The stags know it!" After that, she wrings her hands again, passes the bedside, and goes out at the door. We hurry on our dressing-gown, seize our pistols (we always travel with pistols), and are following, when we find the door locked. We turn the key, look out into the dark gallery; no one there. We wander away, and try to find our servant. Can't be done. We pace the gallery till daybreak; then return to our deserted room, fall asleep, and are awakened by our servant (nothing ever haunts him) and the shining sun. Well! we make a wretched breakfast, and all the company say we look queer. After breakfast, we go over the house with our host, and then we take him to the portrait of the cavalier in green, and then it all comes out. He was false to a young housekeeper once attached to that family, and famous for her beauty, who drowned herself in a pond, and whose body was discovered, after a long time, because the stags refused to drink of the water. Since which, it has been whispered that she traverses the house at midnight (but goes especially to that room where the cavalier in green was wont to sleep), trying the old locks with the rusty keys. Well! we tell our host of what we have seen, and a shade comes over his features, and he begs it may be hushed up; and so it is. But, it's all true; and we said so, before we died (we are dead now) to many responsible people.

There is no end to the old houses, with resounding galleries, and dismal state-bedchambers, and haunted wings shut up for many years, through which we may ramble, with an agreeable creeping up our back, and encounter any number of ghosts, but (it is worthy of remark perhaps) reducible to a very few general types and classes; for, ghosts have little originality, and "walk" in a beaten track. Thus, it comes to pass, that a certain room in a certain old hall, where a certain bad lord, baronet, knight, or gentleman, shot himself, has certain planks in the floor from which the blood will not be taken out. You may scrape and scrape, as the present owner has done, or plane and plane, as his father did, or scrub and scrub, as his grandfather did, or burn and burn with strong acids, as his great-grandfather did, but, there the blood will still be—no redder and no paler—no more and no less—always just the same. Thus, in such another house there is a haunted door, that never will keep open; or another door that never will keep shut, or a haunted sound of a spinning-wheel, or a hammer, or a footstep, or a cry, or a sigh, or a horse's tramp, or the rattling of a chain. Or else, there is a turret-clock, which, at the midnight hour, strikes thirteen when the head of the family is going to die; or a shadowy, immovable black carriage which at such a time is always seen by somebody, waiting near the great gates in the stable-yard. Or thus, it came to pass how Lady Mary went to pay a visit at a large wild house in the Scottish Highlands, and, being fatigued with her long journey, retired to bed early, and innocently said, next morning, at the breakfast-table, "How odd, to have so late a party last night, in this remote place, and not to tell me of it, before I went to bed!" Then, every one asked Lady Mary what she meant? Then, Lady Mary replied, "Why, all night long, the carriages were driving round and round the terrace, underneath my window!" Then, the owner of the house turned pale, and so did his Lady, and Charles Macdoodle of Macdoodle signed to Lady Mary to say no more, and every one was silent. After breakfast, Charles Macdoodle told Lady Mary that it was a tradition in the family that those rumbling carriages on the terrace betokened death. And so it proved, for, two months afterwards, the Lady of the mansion died. And Lady Mary, who was a Maid of Honour at Court, often told this story to the old Queen Charlotte; by this token that the old King always said, "Eh, eh? What, what? Ghosts, ghosts? No such thing, no such thing!" And never left off saying so, until he went to bed.

Or, a friend of somebody's whom most of us know, when he was a young man at college, had a particular friend, with whom he made the compact that, if it were possible for the Spirit to return to this earth after its separation from the body, he of the twain who first died, should reappear to the other. In course of time, this compact was forgotten by our friend; the two young men having progressed in life, and taken diverging paths that were wide asunder. But, one night, many years afterwards, our friend being in the North of England, and staying for the night in an inn, on the Yorkshire Moors, happened to look out of bed; and there, in the moonlight, leaning on a bureau near the window, steadfastly regarding him, saw his old college friend! The appearance being solemnly addressed, replied, in a kind of whisper, but very audibly, "Do not come near me. I am dead. I am here to redeem my promise. I come from another world, but may not disclose its secrets!" Then, the whole form becoming paler, melted, as it were, into the moonlight, and faded away.

Or, there was the daughter of the first occupier of the picturesque Elizabethan house, so famous in our neighbourhood. You have heard about her? No! Why, she went out one summer evening at twilight, when she was a beautiful girl, just seventeen years of age, to gather flowers in the garden; and presently came running, terrified, into the hall to her father, saying, "Oh, dear father, I have met myself!" He took her in his arms, and told her it was fancy, but she said, "Oh no! I met myself in the broad walk, and I was pale and gathering withered flowers, and I turned my head, and held them up!" And, that night, she died; and a picture of her story was begun, though never finished, and they say it is somewhere in the house to this day, with its face to the wall.

Or, the uncle of my brother's wife was riding home on horseback, one mellow evening at sunset, when, in a green lane close to his own house, he saw a man standing before him, in the very centre of a narrow way. "Why does that man in the cloak stand there!" he thought. "Does he want me to ride over him?" But the figure never moved. He felt a strange sensation at seeing it so still, but slackened his trot and rode forward. When he was so close to it, as almost to touch it with his stirrup, his horse shied, and the figure glided up the bank, in a curious, unearthly manner—backward, and without seeming to use its feet—and was gone. The uncle of my brother's wife, exclaiming, "Good Heaven! It's my cousin Harry, from Bombay!" put spurs to his horse, which was suddenly in a profuse sweat, and, wondering at such strange behaviour, dashed round to the front of his house. There, he saw the same figure, just passing in at the long French window of the drawing-room, opening on the ground. He threw his bridle to a servant, and hastened in after it. His sister was sitting there, alone. "Alice, where's my cousin Harry?" "Your cousin Harry, John?" "Yes. From Bombay. I met him in the lane just now, and saw him enter here, this instant." Not a creature had been seen by any one; and in that hour and minute, as it afterwards appeared, this cousin died in India.

Or, it was a certain sensible old maiden lady, who died at ninety-nine, and retained her faculties to the last, who really did see the Orphan Boy; a story which has often been incorrectly told, but, of which the real truth is this—because it is, in fact, a story belonging to our family—and she was a connexion of our family. When she was about forty years of age, and still an uncommonly fine woman (her lover died young, which was the reason why she never married, though she had many offers), she went to stay at a place in Kent, which her brother, an Indian-Merchant, had newly bought. There was a story that this place had once been held in trust by the guardian of a young boy; who was himself the next heir, and who killed the young boy by harsh and cruel treatment. She knew nothing of that. It has been said that there was a Cage in her bedroom in which the guardian used to put the boy. There was no such thing. There was only a closet. She went to bed, made no alarm whatever in the night, and in the morning said composedly to her maid when she came in, "Who is the pretty forlorn-looking child who has been peeping out of that closet all night?" The maid replied by giving a loud scream, and instantly decamping. She was surprised; but she was a woman of remarkable strength of mind, and she dressed herself and went down-stairs, and closeted herself with her brother. "Now, Walter," she said, "I have been disturbed all night by a pretty, forlorn-looking boy, who has been constantly peeping out of that closet in my room, which I can't open. This is some trick." "I am afraid not, Charlotte," said he, "for it is the legend of the house. It is the Orphan Boy. What did he do?" "He opened the door softly," said she, "and peeped out. Sometimes, he came a step or two into the room. Then, I called to him, to encourage him, and he shrunk, and shuddered, and crept in again, and shut the door." "The closet has no communication, Charlotte," said her brother, "with any other part of the house, and it's nailed up." This was undeniably true, and it took two carpenters a whole forenoon to get it open, for examination. Then, she was satisfied that she had seen the Orphan Boy. But, the wild and terrible part of the story is, that he was also seen by three of her brother's sons, in succession, who all died young. On the occasion of each child being taken ill, he came home in a heat, twelve hours before, and said, Oh, Mamma, he had been playing under a particular oak-tree, in a certain meadow, with a strange boy—a pretty, forlorn-looking boy, who was very timid, and made signs! From fatal experience, the parents came to know that this was the Orphan Boy, and that the course of that child whom he chose for his little playmate was surely run.

Legion is the name of the German castles, where we sit up alone to wait for the Spectre—where we are shown into a room, made comparatively cheerful for our reception—where we glance round at the shadows, thrown on the blank walls by the crackling fire—where we feel very lonely when the village innkeeper and his pretty daughter have retired, after laying down a fresh store of wood upon the hearth, and setting forth on the small table such supper-cheer as a cold roast capon, bread, grapes, and a flask of old Rhine wine—where the reverberating doors close on their retreat, one after another, like so many peals of sullen thunder—and where, about the small hours of the night, we come into the knowledge of divers supernatural mysteries. Legion is the name of the haunted German students, in whose society we draw yet nearer to the fire, while the schoolboy in the corner opens his eyes wide and round, and flies off the footstool he has chosen for his seat, when the door accidentally blows open. Vast is the crop of such fruit, shining on our Christmas Tree; in blossom, almost at the very top; ripening all down the boughs!

Among the later toys and fancies hanging there—as idle often and less pure—be the images once associated with the sweet old Waits, the softened music in the night, ever unalterable! Encircled by the social thoughts of Christmas-time, still let the benignant figure of my childhood stand unchanged! In every cheerful image and suggestion that the season brings, may the bright star that rested above the poor roof, be the star of all the Christian World! A moment's pause, O vanishing tree, of which the lower boughs are dark to me as yet, and let me look once more! I know there are blank spaces on thy branches, where eyes that I have loved have shone and smiled; from which they are departed. But, far above, I see the raiser of the dead girl, and the Widow's Son; and God is good! If Age be hiding for me in the unseen portion of thy downward growth, O may I, with a grey head, turn a child's heart to that figure yet, and a child's trustfulness and confidence!

Now, the tree is decorated with bright merriment, and song, and dance, and cheerfulness. And they are welcome. Innocent and welcome be they ever held, beneath the branches of the Christmas Tree, which cast no gloomy shadow! But, as it sinks into the ground, I hear a whisper going through the leaves. "This, in commemoration of the law of love and kindness, mercy and compassion. This, in remembrance of Me!"

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS AS WE GROW OLDER

1851

Time was, with most of us, when Christmas Day encircling all our limited world like a magic ring, left nothing out for us to miss or seek; bound together all our home enjoyments, affections, and hopes; grouped everything and every one around the Christmas fire; and made the little picture shining in our bright young eyes, complete.

Time came, perhaps, all so soon, when our thoughts over-leaped that narrow boundary; when there was some one (very dear, we thought then, very beautiful, and absolutely perfect) wanting to the fulness of our happiness; when we were wanting too (or we thought so, which did just as well) at the Christmas hearth by which that some one sat; and when we intertwined with every wreath and garland of our life that some one's name.

That was the time for the bright visionary Christmases which have long arisen from us to show faintly, after summer rain, in the palest edges of the rainbow! That was the time for the beatified enjoyment of the things that were to be, and never were, and yet the things that were so real in our resolute hope that it would be hard to say, now, what realities achieved since, have been stronger!

What! Did that Christmas never really come when we and the priceless pearl who was our young choice were received, after the happiest of totally impossible marriages, by the two united families previously at daggers-drawn on our account? When brothers and sisters-in-law who had always been rather cool to us before our relationship was effected, perfectly doted on us, and when fathers and mothers overwhelmed us with unlimited incomes? Was that Christmas dinner never really eaten, after which we arose, and generously and eloquently rendered honour to our late rival, present in the company, then and there exchanging friendship and forgiveness, and founding an attachment, not to be surpassed in Greek or Roman story, which subsisted until death? Has that same rival long ceased to care for that same priceless pearl, and married for money, and become usurious? Above all, do we really know, now, that we should probably have been miserable if we had won and worn the pearl, and that we are better without her?

That Christmas when we had recently achieved so much fame; when we had been carried in triumph somewhere, for doing something great and good; when we had won an honoured and ennobled name, and arrived and were received at home in a shower of tears of joy; is it possible that that Christmas has not come yet?

And is our life here, at the best, so constituted that, pausing as we advance at such a noticeable mile-stone in the track as this great birthday, we look back on the things that never were, as naturally and full as gravely as on the things that have been and are gone, or have been and still are? If it be so, and so it seems to be, must we come to the conclusion that life is little better than a dream, and little worth the loves and strivings that we crowd into it?

No! Far be such miscalled philosophy from us, dear Reader, on Christmas Day! Nearer and closer to our hearts be the Christmas spirit, which is the spirit of active usefulness, perseverance, cheerful discharge of duty, kindness and forbearance! It is in the last virtues especially, that we are, or should be, strengthened by the unaccomplished visions of our youth; for, who shall say that they are not our teachers to deal gently even with the impalpable nothings of the earth!

Therefore, as we grow older, let us be more thankful that the circle of our Christmas associations and of the lessons that they bring, expands! Let us welcome every one of them, and summon them to take their places by the Christmas hearth.

Welcome, old aspirations, glittering creatures of an ardent fancy, to your shelter underneath the holly! We know you, and have not outlived you yet. Welcome, old projects and old loves, however fleeting, to your nooks among the steadier lights that burn around us. Welcome, all that was ever real to our hearts; and for the earnestness that made you real, thanks to Heaven! Do we build no Christmas castles in the clouds now? Let our thoughts, fluttering like butterflies among these flowers of children, bear witness! Before this boy, there stretches out a Future, brighter than we ever looked on in our old romantic time, but bright with honour and with truth. Around this little head on which the sunny curls lie heaped, the graces sport, as prettily, as airily, as when there was no scythe within the reach of Time to shear away the curls of our first-love. Upon another girl's face near it—placider but smiling bright—a quiet and contented little face, we see Home fairly written. Shining from the word, as rays shine from a star, we see how, when our graves are old, other hopes than ours are young, other hearts than ours are moved; how other ways are smoothed; how other happiness blooms, ripens, and decays—no, not decays, for other homes and other bands of children, not yet in being nor for ages yet to be, arise, and bloom and ripen to the end of all!

Welcome, everything! Welcome, alike what has been, and what never was, and what we hope may be, to your shelter underneath the holly, to your places round the Christmas fire, where what is sits open-hearted! In yonder shadow, do we see obtruding furtively upon the blaze, an enemy's face? By Christmas Day we do forgive him! If the injury he has done us may admit of such companionship, let him come here and take his place. If otherwise, unhappily, let him go hence, assured that we will never injure nor accuse him.

On this day we shut out Nothing!

"Pause," says a low voice. "Nothing? Think!"

"On Christmas Day, we will shut out from our fireside, Nothing."

"Not the shadow of a vast City where the withered leaves are lying deep?" the voice replies. "Not the shadow that darkens the whole globe? Not the shadow of the City of the Dead?"

Not even that. Of all days in the year, we will turn our faces towards that City upon Christmas Day, and from its silent hosts bring those we loved, among us. City of the Dead, in the blessed name wherein we are gathered together at this time, and in the Presence that is here among us according to the promise, we will receive, and not dismiss, thy people who are dear to us!

Yes. We can look upon these children angels that alight, so solemnly, so beautifully among the living children by the fire, and can bear to think how they departed from us. Entertaining angels unawares, as the Patriarchs did, the playful children are unconscious of their guests; but we can see them—can see a radiant arm around one favourite neck, as if there were a tempting of that child away. Among the celestial figures there is one, a poor mis-shapen boy on earth, of a glorious beauty now, of whom his dying mother said it grieved her much to leave him here, alone, for so many years as it was likely would elapse before he came to her—being such a little child. But he went quickly, and was laid upon her breast, and in her hand she leads him.

There was a gallant boy, who fell, far away, upon a burning sand beneath a burning sun, and said, "Tell them at home, with my last love, how much I could have wished to kiss them once, but that I died contented and had done my duty!" Or there was another, over whom they read the words, "Therefore we commit his body to the deep," and so consigned him to the lonely ocean and sailed on. Or there was another, who lay down to his rest in the dark shadow of great forests, and, on earth, awoke no more. O shall they not, from sand and sea and forest, be brought home at such a time!

There was a dear girl—almost a woman—never to be one—who made a mourning Christmas in a house of joy, and went her trackless way to the silent City. Do we recollect her, worn out, faintly whispering what could not be heard, and falling into that last sleep for weariness? O look upon her now! O look upon her beauty, her serenity, her changeless youth, her happiness! The daughter of Jairus was recalled to life, to die; but she, more blest, has heard the same voice, saying unto her, "Arise for ever!"

We had a friend who was our friend from early days, with whom we often pictured the changes that were to come upon our lives, and merrily imagined how we would speak, and walk, and think, and talk, when we came to be old. His destined habitation in the City of the Dead received him in his prime. Shall he be shut out from our Christmas remembrance? Would his love have so excluded us? Lost friend, lost child, lost parent, sister, brother, husband, wife, we will not so discard you! You shall hold your cherished places in our Christmas hearts, and by our Christmas fires; and in the season of immortal hope, and on the birthday of immortal mercy, we will shut out Nothing!

The winter sun goes down over town and village; on the sea it makes a rosy path, as if the Sacred tread were fresh upon the water. A few more moments, and it sinks, and night comes on, and lights begin to sparkle in the prospect. On the hill-side beyond the shapelessly-diffused town, and in the quiet keeping of the trees that gird the village-steeple, remembrances are cut in stone, planted in common flowers, growing in grass, entwined with lowly brambles around many a mound of earth. In town and village, there are doors and windows closed against the weather, there are flaming logs heaped high, there are joyful faces, there is healthy music of voices. Be all ungentleness and harm excluded from the temples of the Household Gods, but be those remembrances admitted with tender encouragement! They are of the time and all its comforting and peaceful reassurances; and of the history that re-united even upon earth the living and the dead; and of the broad beneficence and goodness that too many men have tried to tear to narrow shreds.

THE POOR RELATION'S STORY

1852

He was very reluctant to take precedence of so many respected members of the family, by beginning the round of stories they were to relate as they sat in a goodly circle by the Christmas fire; and he modestly suggested that it would be more correct if "John our esteemed host" (whose health he begged to drink) would have the kindness to begin. For as to himself, he said, he was so little used to lead the way that really—— But as they all cried out here, that he must begin, and agreed with one voice that he might, could, would, and should begin, he left off rubbing his hands, and took his legs out from under his armchair, and did begin.

I have no doubt (said the poor relation) that I shall surprise the assembled members of our family, and particularly John our esteemed host to whom we are so much indebted for the great hospitality with which he has this day entertained us, by the confession I am going to make. But, if you do me the honour to be surprised at anything that falls from a person so unimportant in the family as I am, I can only say that I shall be scrupulously accurate in all I relate.

I am not what I am supposed to be. I am quite another thing. Perhaps before I go further, I had better glance at what I am supposed to be.

It is supposed, unless I mistake—the assembled members of our family will correct me if I do, which is very likely (here the poor relation looked mildly about him for contradiction); that I am nobody's enemy but my own. That I never met with any particular success in anything. That I failed in business because I was unbusiness-like and credulous—in not being prepared for the interested designs of my partner. That I failed in love, because I was ridiculously trustful—in thinking it impossible that Christiana could deceive me. That I failed in my expectations from my uncle Chill, on account of not being as sharp as he could have wished in worldly matters. That, through life, I have been rather put upon and disappointed in a general way. That I am at present a bachelor of between fifty-nine and sixty years of age, living on a limited income in the form of a quarterly allowance, to which I see that John our esteemed host wishes me to make no further allusion.

The supposition as to my present pursuits and habits is to the following effect.

I live in a lodging in the Clapham Road—a very clean back room, in a very respectable house—where I am expected not to be at home in the day-time, unless poorly; and which I usually leave in the morning at nine o'clock, on pretence of going to business. I take my breakfast—my roll and butter, and my half-pint of coffee—at the old-established coffee-shop near Westminster Bridge; and then I go into the City—I don't know why—and sit in Garraway's Coffee House, and on 'Change, and walk about, and look into a few offices and counting-houses where some of my relations or acquaintance are so good as to tolerate me, and where I stand by the fire if the weather happens to be cold. I get through the day in this way until five o'clock, and then I dine: at a cost, on the average, of one and threepence. Having still a little money to spend on my evening's entertainment, I look into the old-established coffee-shop as I go home, and take my cup of tea, and perhaps my bit of toast. So, as the large hand of the clock makes its way round to the morning hour again, I make my way round to the Clapham Road again, and go to bed when I get to my lodging—fire being expensive, and being objected to by the family on account of its giving trouble and making a dirt.

Sometimes, one of my relations or acquaintances is so obliging as to ask me to dinner. Those are holiday occasions, and then I generally walk in the Park. I am a solitary man, and seldom walk with anybody. Not that I am avoided because I am shabby; for I am not at all shabby, having always a very good suit of black on (or rather Oxford mixture, which has the appearance of black and wears much better); but I have got into a habit of speaking low, and being rather silent, and my spirits are not high, and I am sensible that I am not an attractive companion.

The only exception to this general rule is the child of my first cousin, Little Frank. I have a particular affection for that child, and he takes very kindly to me. He is a diffident boy by nature; and in a crowd he is soon run over, as I may say, and forgotten. He and I, however, get on exceedingly well. I have a fancy that the poor child will in time succeed to my peculiar position in the family. We talk but little; still, we understand each other. We walk about, hand in hand; and without much speaking he knows what I mean, and I know what he means. When he was very little indeed, I used to take him to the windows of the toy-shops, and show him the toys inside. It is surprising how soon he found out that I would have made him a great many presents if I had been in circumstances to do it.

Little Frank and I go and look at the outside of the Monument—he is very fond of the Monument—and at the Bridges, and at all the sights that are free. On two of my birthdays, we have dined on à-la-mode beef, and gone at half-price to the play, and been deeply interested. I was once walking with him in Lombard Street, which we often visit on account of my having mentioned to him that there are great riches there—he is very fond of Lombard Street—when a gentleman said to me as he passed by, "Sir, your little son has dropped his glove." I assure you, if you will excuse my remarking on so trivial a circumstance, this accidental mention of the child as mine, quite touched my heart and brought the foolish tears into my eyes.

When Little Frank is sent to school in the country, I shall be very much at a loss what to do with myself, but I have the intention of walking down there once a month and seeing him on a half holiday. I am told he will then be at play upon the Heath; and if my visits should be objected to, as unsettling the child, I can see him from a distance without his seeing me, and walk back again. His mother comes of a highly genteel family, and rather disapproves, I am aware, of our being too much together. I know that I am not calculated to improve his retiring disposition; but I think he would miss me beyond the feeling of the moment if we were wholly separated.

When I die in the Clapham Road, I shall not leave much more in this world than I shall take out of it; but, I happen to have a miniature of a bright-faced boy, with a curling head, and an open shirt-frill waving down his bosom (my mother had it taken for me, but I can't believe that it was ever like), which will be worth nothing to sell, and which I shall beg may he given to Frank. I have written my dear boy a little letter with it, in which I have told him that I felt very sorry to part from him, though bound to confess that I knew no reason why I should remain here. I have given him some short advice, the best in my power, to take warning of the consequences of being nobody's enemy but his own; and I have endeavoured to comfort him for what I fear he will consider a bereavement, by pointing out to him, that I was only a superfluous something to every one but him; and that having by some means failed to find a place in this great assembly, I am better out of it.

Such (said the poor relation, clearing his throat and beginning to speak a little louder) is the general impression about me. Now, it is a remarkable circumstance which forms the aim and purpose of my story, that this is all wrong. This is not my life, and these are not my habits. I do not even live in the Clapham Road. Comparatively speaking, I am very seldom there. I reside, mostly, in a—I am almost ashamed to say the word, it sounds so full of pretension—in a Castle. I do not mean that it is an old baronial habitation, but still it is a building always known to every one by the name of a Castle. In it, I preserve the particulars of my history; they run thus:

It was when I first took John Spatter (who had been my clerk) into partnership, and when I was still a young man of not more than fiveand-twenty, residing in the house of my uncle Chill, from whom I had considerable expectations, that I ventured to propose to Christiana. I had loved Christiana a long time. She was very beautiful, and very winning in all respects. I rather mistrusted her widowed mother, who I feared was of a plotting and mercenary turn of mind; but, I thought as well of her as I could, for Christiana's sake. I never had loved any one but Christiana, and she had been all the world, and O far more than all the world, to me, from our childhood!

Christiana accepted me with her mother's consent, and I was rendered very happy indeed. My life at my uncle Chill's was of a spare dull kind, and my garret chamber was as dull, and bare, and cold, as an upper prison room in some stern northern fortress. But, having Christiana's love, I wanted nothing upon earth. I would not have changed my lot with any human being.

Avarice was, unhappily, my uncle Chill's master-vice. Though he was rich, he pinched, and scraped, and clutched, and lived miserably. As Christiana had no fortune, I was for some time a little fearful of confessing our engagement to him; but, at length I wrote him a letter, saying how it all truly was. I put it into his hand one night, on going to bed.

As I came down-stairs next morning, shivering in the cold December air; colder in my uncle's unwarmed house than in the street, where the winter sun did sometimes shine, and which was at all events enlivened by cheerful faces and voices passing along; I carried a heavy heart towards the long, low breakfast-room in which my uncle sat. It was a large room with a small fire, and there was a great bay window in it which the rain had marked in the night as if with the tears of houseless people. It stared upon a raw yard, with a cracked stone pavement, and some rusted iron railings half uprooted, whence an ugly out-building that had once been a dissecting-room (in the time of the great surgeon who had mortgaged the house to my uncle), stared at it.

We rose so early always, that at that time of the year we breakfasted by candle-light. When I went into the room, my uncle was so contracted by the cold, and so huddled together in his chair behind the one dim candle, that I did not see him until I was close to the table.

As I held out my hand to him, he caught up his stick (being infirm, he always walked about the house with a stick), and made a blow at me, and said, "You fool!"

"Uncle," I returned, "I didn't expect you to be so angry as this." Nor had I expected it, though he was a hard and angry old man.

"You didn't expect!" said he; "when did you ever expect? When did you ever calculate, or look forward, you contemptible dog?"

"These are hard words, uncle!"

"Hard words? Feathers, to pelt such an idiot as you with," said he. "Here! Betsy Snap! Look at him!"

Betsy Snap was a withered, hard-favoured, yellow old woman—our only domestic—always employed, at this time of the morning, in rubbing my uncle's legs. As my uncle adjured her to look at me, he put his lean grip on the crown of her head, she kneeling beside him, and turned her face towards me. An involuntary thought connecting them both with the Dissecting Room, as it must often have been in the surgeon's time, passed across my mind in the midst of my anxiety.

"Look at the snivelling milksop!" said my uncle. "Look at the baby! This is the gentleman who, people say, is nobody's enemy but his own. This is the gentleman who can't say no. This is the gentleman who was making such large profits in his business that he must needs take a partner, t'other day. This is the gentleman who is going to marry a wife without a penny, and who falls into the hands of Jezabels who are speculating on my death!"

I knew, now, how great my uncle's rage was; for nothing short of his being almost beside himself would have induced him to utter that concluding word, which he held in such repugnance that it was never spoken or hinted at before him on any account.

"On my death," he repeated, as if he were defying me by defying his own abhorrence of the word. "On my death—death—Death! But I'll spoil the speculation. Eat your last under this roof, you feeble wretch, and may it choke you!"

You may suppose that I had not much appetite for the breakfast to which I was bidden in these terms; but, I took my accustomed seat. I saw that I was repudiated henceforth by my uncle; still I could bear that very well, possessing Christiana's heart.

He emptied his basin of bread and milk as usual, only that he took it on his knees with his chair turned away from the table where I sat. When he had done, he carefully snuffed out the candle; and the cold, slate-coloured, miserable day looked in upon us.

"Now, Mr. Michael," said he, "before we part, I should like to have a word with these ladies in your presence."

"As you will, sir," I returned; "but you deceive yourself, and wrong us, cruelly, if you suppose that there is any feeling at stake in this contract but pure, disinterested, faithful love."

To this, he only replied, "You lie!" and not one other word.

We went, through half-thawed snow and half-frozen rain, to the house where Christiana and her mother lived. My uncle knew them very well. They were sitting at their breakfast, and were surprised to see us at that hour.

"Your servant, ma'am," said my uncle to the mother. "You divine the purpose of my visit, I dare say, ma'am. I understand there is a world of pure, disinterested, faithful love cooped up here. I am happy to bring it all it wants, to make it complete. I bring you your son-in-law, ma'am—and you, your husband, miss. The gentleman is a perfect stranger to me, but I wish him joy of his wise bargain."

He snarled at me as he went out, and I never saw him again.

It is altogether a mistake (continued the poor relation) to suppose that my dear Christiana, over-persuaded and influenced by her mother, married a rich man, the dirt from whose carriage wheels is often, in these changed times, thrown upon me as she rides by. No, no. She married me.

The way we came to be married rather sooner than we intended, was this. I took a frugal lodging and was saving and planning for her sake, when, one day, she spoke to me with great earnestness, and said:

"My dear Michael, I have given you my heart. I have said that I loved you, and I have pledged myself to be your wife. I am as much yours through all changes of good and evil as if we had been married on the day when such words passed between us. I know you well, and know that if we should be separated and our union broken off, your whole life would be shadowed, and all that might, even now, be stronger in your character for the conflict with the world would then be weakened to the shadow of what it is!"

"God help me, Christiana!" said I. "You speak the truth."

"Michael!" said she, putting her hand in mine, in all maidenly devotion, "let us keep apart no longer. It is but for me to say that I can live contented upon such means as you have, and I well know you are happy. I say so from my heart. Strive no more alone; let us strive together. My dear Michael, it is not right that I should keep secret from you what you do not suspect, but what distresses my whole life. My mother: without considering that what you have lost, you have lost for me, and on the assurance of my faith: sets her heart on riches, and urges another suit upon me, to my misery. I cannot bear this, for to bear it is to be untrue to you. I would rather share your struggles than look on. I want no better home than you can give me. I know that you will aspire and labour with a higher courage if I am wholly yours, and let it be so when you will!"

I was blest indeed, that day, and a new world opened to me. We were married in a very little while, and I took my wife to our happy home. That was the beginning of the residence I have spoken of; the Castle we have ever since inhabited together, dates from that time. All our children have been born in it. Our first child—now married—was a little girl, whom we called Christiana. Her son is so like Little Frank, that I hardly know which is which.

The current impression as to my partner's dealings with me is also quite erroneous. He did not begin to treat me coldly, as a poor simpleton, when my uncle and I so fatally quarrelled; nor did he afterwards gradually possess himself of our business and edge me out. On the contrary, he behaved to me with the utmost good faith and honour.

Matters between us took this turn:—On the day of my separation from my uncle, and even before the arrival at our counting-house of my trunks (which he sent after me, not carriage paid), I went down to our room of business, on our little wharf, overlooking the river; and there I told John Spatter what had happened. John did not say, in reply, that rich old relatives were palpable facts, and that love and sentiment were moonshine and fiction. He addressed me thus:

"Michael," said John, "we were at school together, and I generally had the knack of getting on better than you, and making a higher reputation."

"You had, John," I returned.

"Although" said John, "I borrowed your books and lost them; borrowed your pocket-money, and never repaid it; got you to buy my damaged knives at a higher price than I had given for them new; and to own to the windows that I had broken."

"All not worth mentioning, John Spatter," said I, "but certainly true."

"When you were first established in this infant business, which promises to thrive so well," pursued John, "I came to you, in my search for almost any employment, and you made me your clerk."

"Still not worth mentioning, my dear John Spatter," said I; "still, equally true."

"And finding that I had a good head for business, and that I was really useful to the business, you did not like to retain me in that capacity, and thought it an act of justice soon to make me your partner."

"Still less worth mentioning than any of those other little circumstances you have recalled, John Spatter," said I; "for I was, and am, sensible of your merits and my deficiencies."

"Now, my good friend," said John, drawing my arm through his, as he had had a habit of doing at school; while two vessels outside the windows of our counting-house—which were shaped like the stern windows of a ship—went lightly down the river with the tide, as John and I might then be sailing away in company, and in trust and confidence, on our voyage of life; "let there, under these friendly circumstances, be a right understanding between us. You are too easy, Michael. You are nobody's enemy but your own. If I were to give you that damaging character among our connexion, with a shrug, and a shake of the head, and a sigh; and if I were further to abuse the trust you place in me——"

"But you never will abuse it at all, John," I observed.

"Never!" said he; "but I am putting a case—I say, and if I were further to abuse that trust by keeping this piece of our common affairs in the dark, and this other piece in the light, and again this other piece in the twilight, and so on, I should strengthen my strength, and weaken your weakness, day by day, until at last I found myself on the high road to fortune, and you left behind on some bare common, a hopeless number of miles out of the way."

"Exactly so," said I.

"To prevent this, Michael," said John Spatter, "or the remotest chance of this, there must be perfect openness between us. Nothing must be concealed, and we must have but one interest."

"My dear John Spatter," I assured him, "that is precisely what I mean."

"And when you are too easy," pursued John, his face glowing with friendship, "you must allow me to prevent that imperfection in your nature from being taken advantage of, by any one; you must not expect me to humour it——"

"My dear John Spatter," I interrupted, "I don't expect you to humour it. I want to correct it."

"And I, too," said John.

"Exactly so!" cried I. "We both have the same end in view; and, honourably seeking it, and fully trusting one another, and having but one interest, ours will be a prosperous and happy partnership."

"I am sure of it!" returned John Spatter. And we shook hands most affectionately.

I took John home to my Castle, and we had a very happy day. Our partnership throve well. My friend and partner supplied what I wanted, as I had foreseen that he would, and by improving both the business and myself, amply acknowledged any little rise in life to which I had helped him.

I am not (said the poor relation, looking at the fire as he slowly rubbed his hands) very rich, for I never cared to be that; but I have enough, and am above all moderate wants and anxieties. My Castle is not a splendid place, but it is very comfortable, and it has a warm and cheerful air, and is quite a picture of Home.

Our eldest girl, who is very like her mother, married John Spatter's eldest son. Our two families are closely united in other ties of attachment. It is very pleasant of an evening, when we are all assembled together—which frequently happens—and when John and I talk over old times, and the one interest there has always been between us.

I really do not know, in my Castle, what loneliness is. Some of our children or grandchildren are always about it, and the young voices of my descendants are delightful—O, how delightful!—to me to hear. My dearest and most devoted wife, ever faithful, ever loving, ever helpful and sustaining and consoling, is the priceless blessing of my house; from whom all its other blessings spring. We are rather a musical family, and when Christiana sees me, at any time, a little weary or depressed, she steals to the piano and sings a gentle air she used to sing when we were first betrothed. So weak a man am I, that I cannot bear to hear it from any other source. They played it once, at the Theatre, when I was there with Little Frank; and the child said wondering, "Cousin Michael, whose hot tears are these that have fallen on my hand!"

Such is my Castle, and such are the real particulars of my life therein preserved. I often take Little Frank home there. He is very welcome to my grandchildren, and they play together. At this time of the year—the Christmas and New Year time—I am seldom out of my Castle. For, the associations of the season seem to hold me there, and the precepts of the season seem to teach me that it is well to be there.

"And the Castle is——" observed a grave, kind voice among the company.

"Yes. My Castle," said the poor relation, shaking his head as he still looked at the fire, "is in the Air. John our esteemed host suggests its situation accurately. My Castle is in the Air! I have done. Will you be so good as to pass the story?"

THE CHILD'S STORY

1852

Once upon a time, a good many years ago, there was a traveller, and he set out upon a journey. It was a magic journey, and was to seem very long when he began it, and very short when he got half way through.

He travelled along a rather dark path for some little time, without meeting anything, until at last he came to a beautiful child. So he said to the child, "What do you do here?" And the child said, "I am always at play. Come and play with me!"

So, he played with that child, the whole day long, and they were very merry. The sky was so blue, the sun was so bright, the water was so sparkling, the leaves were so green, the flowers were so lovely, and they heard such singing-birds and saw so many butteries, that everything was beautiful. This was in fine weather. When it rained, they loved to watch the falling drops, and to smell the fresh scents. When it blew, it was delightful to listen to the wind, and fancy what it said, as it came rushing from its home—where was that, they wondered!—whistling and howling, driving the clouds before it, bending the trees, rumbling in the chimneys, shaking the house, and making the sea roar in fury. But, when it snowed, that was best of all; for, they liked nothing so well as to look up at the white flakes falling fast and thick, like down from the breasts of millions of white birds; and to see how smooth and deep the drift was; and to listen to the hush upon the paths and roads.

They had plenty of the finest toys in the world, and the most astonishing picture-books: all about scimitars and slippers and turbans, and dwarfs and giants and genii and fairies, and blue-beards and bean-stalks and riches and caverns and forests and Valentines and Orsons: and all new and all true.

But, one day, of a sudden, the traveller lost the child. He called to him over and over again, but got no answer. So, he went upon his road, and went on for a little while without meeting anything, until at last he came to a handsome boy. So, he said to the boy, "What do you do here?" And the boy said, "I am always learning. Come and learn with me."

So he learned with that boy about Jupiter and Juno, and the Greeks and the Romans, and I don't know what, and learned more than I could tell—or he either, for he soon forgot a great deal of it. But, they were not always learning; they had the merriest games that ever were played. They rowed upon the river in summer, and skated on the ice in winter; they were active afoot, and active on horseback; at cricket, and all games at ball; at prisoners' base, hare and hounds, follow my leader, and more sports than I can think of; nobody could beat them. They had holidays too, and Twelfth cakes, and parties where they danced till midnight, and real Theatres where they saw palaces of real gold and silver rise out of the real earth, and saw all the wonders of the world at once. As to friends, they had such dear friends and so many of them, that I want the time to reckon them up. They were all young, like the handsome boy, and were never to be strange to one another all their lives through.

Still, one day, in the midst of all these pleasures, the traveller lost the boy as he had lost the child, and, after calling to him in vain, went on upon his journey. So he went on for a little while without seeing anything, until at last he came to a young man. So, he said to the young man, "What do you do here?" And the young man said, "I am always in love. Come and love with me."

So, he went away with that young man, and presently they came to one of the prettiest girls that ever was seen—just like Fanny in the corner there—and she had eyes like Fanny, and hair like Fanny, and dimples like Fanny's, and she laughed and coloured just as Fanny does while I am talking about her. So, the young man fell in love directly—just as Somebody I won't mention, the first time he came here, did with Fanny. Well! he was teased sometimes—just as Somebody used to be by Fanny; and they quarrelled sometimes—just as Somebody and Fanny used to quarrel; and they made it up, and sat in the dark, and wrote letters every day, and never were happy asunder, and were always looking out for one another and pretending not to, and were engaged at Christmas-time, and sat close to one another by the fire, and were going to be married very soon—all exactly like Somebody I won't mention, and Fanny!

But, the traveller lost them one day, as he had lost the rest of his friends, and, after calling to them to come back, which they never did, went on upon his journey. So, he went on for a little while without seeing anything, until at last he came to a middle-aged gentleman. So, he said to the gentleman, "What are you doing here?" And his answer was, "I am always busy. Come and be busy with me!"

So, he began to be very busy with that gentleman, and they went on through the wood together. The whole journey was through a wood, only it had been open and green at first, like a wood in spring; and now began to be thick and dark, like a wood in summer; some of the little trees that had come out earliest, were even turning brown. The gentleman was not alone, but had a lady of about the same age with him, who was his Wife; and they had children, who were with them too. So, they all went on together through the wood, cutting down the trees, and making a path through the branches and the fallen leaves, and carrying burdens, and working hard.

Sometimes, they came to a long green avenue that opened into deeper woods. Then they would hear a very little, distant voice crying, "Father, father, I am another child! Stop for me!" And presently they would see a very little figure, growing larger as it came along, running to join them. When it came up, they all crowded round it, and kissed and welcomed it; and then they all went on together.

Sometimes, they came to several avenues at once, and then they all stood still, and one of the children said, "Father, I am going to sea," and another said, "Father, I am going to India," and another, "Father, I am going to seek my fortune where I can," and another, "Father, I am going to Heaven!" So, with many tears at parting, they went, solitary, down those avenues, each child upon its way; and the child who went to Heaven, rose into the golden air and vanished.

Whenever these partings happened, the traveller looked at the gentleman, and saw him glance up at the sky above the trees, where the day was beginning to decline, and the sunset to come on. He saw, too, that his hair was turning grey. But, they never could rest long, for they had their journey to perform, and it was necessary for them to be always busy.

At last, there had been so many partings that there were no children left, and only the traveller, the gentleman, and the lady, went upon their way in company. And now the wood was yellow; and now brown; and the leaves, even of the forest trees, began to fall.

So, they came to an avenue that was darker than the rest, and were pressing forward on their journey without looking down it when the lady stopped.

"My husband," said the lady. "I am called."

They listened, and they heard a voice a long way down the avenue, say, "Mother, mother!"

It was the voice of the first child who had said, "I am going to Heaven!" and the father said, "I pray not yet. The sunset is very near. I pray not yet!"

But, the voice cried, "Mother, mother!" without minding him, though his hair was now quite white, and tears were on his face.

Then, the mother, who was already drawn into the shade of the dark avenue and moving away with her arms still round his neck, kissed him, and said, "My dearest, I am summoned, and I go!" And she was gone. And the traveller and he were left alone together.

And they went on and on together, until they came to very near the end of the wood: so near, that they could see the sunset shining red before them through the trees.

Yet, once more, while he broke his way among the branches, the traveller lost his friend. He called and called, but there was no reply, and when he passed out of the wood, and saw the peaceful sun going down upon a wide purple prospect, he came to an old man sitting on a fallen tree. So, he said to the old man, "What do you do here?" And the old man said with a calm smile, "I am always remembering. Come and remember with me!"

So the traveller sat down by the side of that old man, face to face with the serene sunset; and all his friends came softly back and stood around him. The beautiful child, the handsome boy, the young man in love, the father, mother, and children: every one of them was there, and he had lost nothing. So, he loved them all, and was kind and forbearing with them all, and was always pleased to watch them all, and they all honoured and loved him. And I think the traveller must be yourself, dear Grandfather, because this what you do to us, and what we do to you.

THE SCHOOLBOY'S STORY

1853

Being rather young at present—I am getting on in years, but still I am rather young—I have no particular adventures of my own to fall back upon. It wouldn't much interest anybody here, I suppose, to know what a screw the Reverend is, or what a griffin she is, or how they do stick it into parents—particularly hair-cutting, and medical attendance. One of our fellows was charged in his half's account twelve and sixpence for two pills—tolerably profitable at six and threepence a-piece, I should think—and he never took them either, but put them up the sleeve of his jacket.

As to the beef, it's shameful. It's not beef. Regular beef isn't veins. You can chew regular beef. Besides which, there's gravy to regular beef, and you never see a drop to ours. Another of our fellows went home ill, and heard the family doctor tell his father that he couldn't account for his complaint unless it was the beer. Of course it was the beer, and well it might be!

However, beef and Old Cheeseman are two different things. So is beer. It was Old Cheeseman I meant to tell about; not the manner in which our fellows get their constitutions destroyed for the sake of profit.

Why, look at the pie-crust alone. There's no flakiness in it. It's solid—like damp lead. Then our fellows get nightmares, and are bolstered for calling out and waking other fellows. Who can wonder!

Old Cheeseman one night walked in his sleep, put his hat on over his night-cap, got hold of a fishing-rod and a cricket-bat, and went down into the parlour, where they naturally thought from his appearance he was a Ghost. Why, he never would have done that if his meals had been wholesome. When we all begin to walk in our sleeps, I suppose they'll be sorry for it.

Old Cheeseman wasn't second Latin Master then; he was a fellow himself. He was first brought there, very small, in a post-chaise, by a woman who was always taking snuff and shaking him—and that was the most he remembered about it. He never went home for the holidays. His accounts (he never learnt any extras) were sent to a Bank, and the Bank paid them; and he had a brown suit twice a-year, and went into boots at twelve. They were always too big for him, too.

In the Midsummer holidays, some of our fellows who lived within walking distance, used to come back and climb the trees outside the playground wall, on purpose to look at Old Cheeseman reading there by himself. He was always as mild as the tea—and that's pretty mild, I should hope!—so when they whistled to him, he looked up and nodded; and when they said, "Halloa, Old Cheeseman, what have you had for dinner?" he said, "Boiled mutton;" and when they said, "An't it solitary, Old Cheeseman?" he said, "It is a little dull sometimes:" and then they said, "Well good-bye, Old Cheeseman!" and climbed down again. Of course it was imposing on Old Cheeseman to give him nothing but boiled mutton through a whole Vacation, but that was just like the system. When they didn't give him boiled mutton, they gave him rice pudding, pretending it was a treat. And saved the butcher.

So Old Cheeseman went on. The holidays brought him into other trouble besides the loneliness; because when the fellows began to come back, not wanting to, he was always glad to see them; which was aggravating when they were not at all glad to see him, and so he got his head knocked against walls, and that was the way his nose bled. But he was a favourite in general. Once a subscription was raised for him; and, to keep up his spirits, he was presented before the holidays with two white mice, a rabbit, a pigeon, and a beautiful puppy. Old Cheeseman cried about it—especially soon afterwards, when they all ate one another.

Of course Old Cheeseman used to be called by the names of all sorts of cheeses—Double Glo'sterman, Family Cheshireman, Dutchman, North Wiltshireman, and all that. But he never minded it. And I don't mean to say he was old in point of years—because he wasn't—only he was called from the first, Old Cheeseman.

At last, Old Cheeseman was made second Latin Master. He was brought in one morning at the beginning of a new half, and presented to the school in that capacity as "Mr. Cheeseman." Then our fellows all agreed that Old Cheeseman was a spy, and a deserter, who had gone over to the enemy's camp, and sold himself for gold. It was no excuse for him that he had sold himself for very little gold—two pound ten a quarter and his washing, as was reported. It was decided by a Parliament which sat about it, that Old Cheeseman's mercenary motives could alone be taken into account, and that he had "coined our blood for drachmas." The Parliament took the expression out of the quarrel scene between Brutus and Cassius.

When it was settled in this strong way that Old Cheeseman was a tremendous traitor, who had wormed himself into our fellows' secrets on purpose to get himself into favour by giving up everything he knew, all courageous fellows were invited to come forward and enrol themselves in a Society for making a set against him. The President of the Society was First boy, named Bob Tarter. His father was in the West Indies, and he owned, himself, that his father was worth Millions. He had great power among our fellows, and he wrote a parody, beginning—

"Who made believe to be so meek

That we could hardly hear him speak,

Yet turned out an Informing Sneak?

Old Cheeseman."

— and on in that way through more than a dozen verses, which he used to go and sing, every morning, close by the new master's desk. He trained one of the low boys, too, a rosy-cheeked little Brass who didn't care what he did, to go up to him with his Latin Grammar one morning, and say it so: Nominativus pronominum—Old Cheeseman, raro exprimitur—was never suspected, nisi distinctionis—of being an informer, aut emphasis gratiâ—until he proved one. Ut—for instance, Vos damnastis—when he sold the boys. Quasi—as though, dicat—he should say, Pretaerea nemo—I'm a Judas! All this produced a great effect on Old Cheeseman. He had never had much hair; but what he had, began to get thinner and thinner every day. He grew paler and more worn; and sometimes of an evening he was seen sitting at his desk with a precious long snuff to his candle, and his hands before his face, crying. But no member of the Society could pity him, even if he felt inclined, because the President said it was Old Cheeseman's conscience.

So Old Cheeseman went on, and didn't he lead a miserable life! Of course the Reverend turned up his nose at him, and of course she did—because both of them always do that at all the masters—but he suffered from the fellows most, and he suffered from them constantly. He never told about it, that the Society could find out; but he got no credit for that, because the President said it was Old Cheeseman's cowardice.

He had only one friend in the world, and that one was almost as powerless as he was, for it was only Jane. Jane was a sort of wardrobe woman to our fellows, and took care of the boxes. She had come at first, I believe, as a kind of apprentice—some of our fellows say from a Charity, but I don't know—and after her time was out, had stopped at so much a year. So little a year, perhaps I ought to say, for it is far more likely. However, she had put some pounds in the Savings' Bank, and she was a very nice young woman. She was not quite pretty; but she had a very frank, honest, bright face, and all our fellows were fond of her. She was uncommonly neat and cheerful, and uncommonly comfortable and kind. And if anything was the matter with a fellow's mother, he always went and showed the letter to Jane.

Jane was Old Cheeseman's friend. The more the Society went against him, the more Jane stood by him. She used to give him a good-humoured look out of her still-room window, sometimes, that seemed to set him up for the day. She used to pass out of the orchard and the kitchen garden (always kept locked, I believe you!) through the playground, when she might have gone the other way, only to give a turn of her head, as much as to say "Keep up your spirits!" to Old Cheeseman. His slip of a room was so fresh and orderly that it was well known who looked after it while he was at his desk; and when our fellows saw a smoking hot dumpling on his plate at dinner, they knew with indignation who had sent it up.

Under these circumstances, the Society resolved, after a quantity of meeting and debating, that Jane should be requested to cut Old Cheeseman dead; and that if she refused, she must be sent to Coventry herself. So a deputation, headed by the President, was appointed to wait on Jane, and inform her of the vote the Society had been under the painful necessity of passing. She was very much respected for all her good qualities, and there was a story about her having once waylaid the Reverend in his own study, and got a fellow off from severe punishment, of her own kind comfortable heart. So the deputation didn't much like the job. However, they went up, and the President told Jane all about it. Upon which Jane turned very red, burst into tears, informed the President and the deputation, in a way not at all like her usual way, that they were a parcel of malicious young savages, and turned the whole respected body out of the room. Consequently it was entered in the Society's book (kept in astronomical cypher for fear of detection), that all communication with Jane was interdicted: and the President addressed the members on this convincing instance of Old Cheeseman's undermining.

But Jane was as true to Old Cheeseman as Old Cheeseman was false to our fellows—in their opinion, at all events—and steadily continued to be his only friend. It was a great exasperation to the Society, because Jane was as much a loss to them as she was a gain to him; and being more inveterate against him than ever, they treated him worse than ever. At last, one morning, his desk stood empty, his room was peeped into, and found to be vacant, and a whisper went about among the pale faces of our fellows that Old Cheeseman, unable to bear it any longer, had got up early and drowned himself.

The mysterious looks of the other masters after breakfast, and the evident fact that old Cheeseman was not expected, confirmed the Society in this opinion. Some began to discuss whether the President was liable to hanging or only transportation for life, and the President's face showed a great anxiety to know which. However, he said that a jury of his country should find him game; and that in his address he should put it to them to lay their hands upon their hearts and say whether they as Britons approved of informers, and how they thought they would like it themselves. Some of the Society considered that he had better run away until he found a forest where he might change clothes with a wood-cutter, and stain his face with blackberries; but the majority believed that if he stood his ground, his father—belonging as he did to the West Indies, and being worth millions—could buy him off.

All our fellows' hearts beat fast when the Reverend came in, and made a sort of a Roman, or a Field Marshal, of himself with the ruler; as he always did before delivering an address. But their fears were nothing to their astonishment when he came out with the story that Old Cheeseman, "so long our respected friend and fellow-pilgrim in the pleasant plains of knowledge," he called him—O yes! I dare say! Much of that!—was the orphan child of a disinherited young lady who had married against her father's wish, and whose young husband had died, and who had died of sorrow herself, and whose unfortunate baby (Old Cheeseman) had been brought up at the cost of a grandfather who would never consent to see it, baby, boy, or man: which grandfather was now dead, and serve him right—that's my putting in—and which grandfather's large property, there being no will, was now, and all of a sudden and for ever, Old Cheeseman's! Our so long respected friend and fellow-pilgrim in the pleasant plains of knowledge, the Reverend wound up a lot of bothering quotations by saying, would "come among us once more" that day fortnight, when he desired to take leave of us himself, in a more particular manner. With these words, he stared severely round at our fellows, and went solemnly out.

There was precious consternation among the members of the Society, now. Lots of them wanted to resign, and lots more began to try to make out that they had never belonged to it. However, the President stuck up, and said that they must stand or fall together, and that if a breach was made it should be over his body—which was meant to encourage the Society: but it didn't. The President further said, he would consider the position in which they stood, and would give them his best opinion and advice in a few days. This was eagerly looked for, as he knew a good deal of the world on account of his father's being in the West Indies.

After days and days of hard thinking, and drawing armies all over his slate, the President called our fellows together, and made the matter clear. He said it was plain that when Old Cheeseman came on the appointed day, his first revenge would be to impeach the Society, and have it flogged all round. After witnessing with joy the torture of his enemies, and gloating over the cries which agony would extort from them, the probability was that he would invite the Reverend, on pretence of conversation, into a private room—say the parlour into which Parents were shown, where the two great globes were which were never used—and would there reproach him with the various frauds and oppressions he had endured at his hands. At the close of his observations he would make a signal to a Prizefighter concealed in the passage, who would then appear and pitch into the Reverend, till he was left insensible. Old Cheeseman would then make Jane a present of from five to ten pounds, and would leave the establishment in fiendish triumph.

The President explained that against the parlour part, or the Jane part, of these arrangements he had nothing to say; but, on the part of the Society, he counselled deadly resistance. With this view he recommended that all available desks should be filled with stones, and that the first word of the complaint should be the signal to every fellow to let fly at Old Cheeseman. The bold advice put the Society in better spirits, and was unanimously taken. A post about Old Cheeseman's size was put up in the playground, and all our fellows practised at it till it was dinted all over.

When the day came, and Places were called, every fellow sat down in a tremble. There had been much discussing and disputing as to how Old Cheeseman would come; but it was the general opinion that he would appear in a sort of triumphal car drawn by four horses, with two livery servants in front, and the Prizefighter in disguise up behind. So, all our fellows sat listening for the sound of wheels. But no wheels were heard, for Old Cheeseman walked after all, and came into the school without any preparation. Pretty much as he used to be, only dressed in black.

"Gentlemen," said the Reverend, presenting him, "our so long respected friend and fellow-pilgrim in the pleasant plains of knowledge, is desirous to offer a word or two. Attention, gentlemen, one and all!"

Every fellow stole his hand into his desk and looked at the President. The President was all ready, and taking aim at old Cheeseman with his eyes.

What did Old Cheeseman then, but walk up to his old desk, look round him with a queer smile as if there was a tear in his eye, and begin in a quavering, mild voice, "My dear companions and old friends!"

Every fellow's hand came out of his desk, and the President suddenly began to cry.

"My dear companions and old friends," said Old Cheeseman, "you have heard of my good fortune. I have passed so many years under this roof—my entire life so far, I may say—that I hope you have been glad to hear of it for my sake. I could never enjoy it without exchanging congratulations with you. If we have ever misunderstood one another at all, pray, my dear boys, let us forgive and forget. I have a great tenderness for you, and I am sure you return it. I want in the fulness of a grateful heart to shake hands with you every one. I have come back to do it, if you please, my dear boys."

Since the President had begun to cry, several other fellows had broken out here and there: but now, when Old Cheeseman began with him as first boy, laid his left hand affectionately on his shoulder and gave him his right; and when the President said "Indeed, I don't deserve it, sir; upon my honour I don't;" there was sobbing and crying all over the school. Every other fellow said he didn't deserve it, much in the same way; but Old Cheeseman, not minding that a bit, went cheerfully round to every boy, and wound up with every master—finishing off the Reverend last.

Then a snivelling little chap in a corner, who was always under some punishment or other, set up a shrill cry of "Success to Old Cheeseman! Hooray!" The Reverend glared upon him, and said, "Mr. Cheeseman, sir." But, Old Cheeseman protesting that he liked his old name a great deal better than his new one, all our fellows took up the cry; and, for I don't know how many minutes, there was such a thundering of feet and hands, and such a roaring of Old Cheeseman, as never was heard.

After that, there was a spread in the dining-room of the most magnificent kind. Fowls, tongues, preserves, fruits, confectionaries, jellies, neguses, barley-sugar temples, trifles, crackers—eat all you can and pocket what you like—all at Old Cheeseman's expense. After that, speeches, whole holiday, double and treble sets of all manners of things for all manners of games, donkeys, pony-chaises and drive yourself, dinner for all the masters at the Seven Bells (twenty pounds a-head our fellows estimated it at), an annual holiday and feast fixed for that day every year, and another on Old Cheeseman's birthday—Reverend bound down before the fellows to allow it, so that he could never back out—all at Old Cheeseman's expense.

And didn't our fellows go down in a body and cheer outside the Seven Bells? O no!

But there's something else besides. Don't look at the next storyteller, for there's more yet. Next day, it was resolved that the Society should make it up with Jane, and then be dissolved. What do you think of Jane being gone, though! "What? Gone for ever?" said our fellows, with long faces. "Yes, to be sure," was all the answer they could get. None of the people about the house would say anything more. At length, the first boy took upon himself to ask the Reverend whether our old friend Jane was really gone? The Reverend (he has got a daughter at home—turn-up nose, and red) replied severely, "Yes, sir, Miss Pitt is gone." The idea of calling Jane, Miss Pitt! Some said she had been sent away in disgrace for taking money from Old Cheeseman; others said she had gone into Old Cheeseman's service at a rise of ten pounds a year. All that our fellows knew, was, she was gone.

It was two or three months afterwards, when, one afternoon, an open carriage stopped at the cricket field, just outside bounds, with a lady and gentleman in it, who looked at the game a long time and stood up to see it played. Nobody thought much about them, until the same little snivelling chap came in, against all rules, from the post where he was Scout, and said, "It's Jane!" Both Elevens forgot the game directly, and ran crowding round the carriage. It was Jane! In such a bonnet! And if you'll believe me, Jane was married to Old Cheeseman.

It soon became quite a regular thing when our fellows were hard at it in the playground, to see a carriage at the low part of the wall where it joins the high part, and a lady and gentleman standing up in it, looking over. The gentleman was always Old Cheeseman, and the lady was always Jane.

The first time I ever saw them, I saw them in that way. There had been a good many changes among our fellows then, and it had turned out that Bob Tarter's father wasn't worth Millions! He wasn't worth anything. Bob had gone for a soldier, and Old Cheeseman had purchased his discharge. But that's not the carriage. The carriage stopped, and all our fellows stopped as soon as it was seen.

"So you have never sent me to Coventry after all!" said the lady, laughing, as our fellows swarmed up the wall to shake hands with her. "Are you never going to do it?"

"Never! never! never!" on all sides.

I didn't understand what she meant then, but of course I do now. I was very much pleased with her face though, and with her good way, and I couldn't help looking at her—and at him too—with all our fellows clustering so joyfully about them.

They soon took notice of me as a new boy, so I thought I might as well swarm up the wall myself, and shake hands with them as the rest did. I was quite as glad to see them as the rest were, and was quite as familiar with them in a moment.

"Only a fortnight now," said Old Cheeseman, "to the holidays. Who stops? Anybody?"

A good many fingers pointed at me, and a good many voices cried "He does!" For it was the year when you were all away; and rather low I was about it, I can tell you.

"Oh!" said Old Cheeseman. "But it's solitary here in the holiday time. He had better come to us."

So I went to their delightful house, and was as happy as I could possibly be. They understand how to conduct themselves towards boys, they do. When they take a boy to the play, for instance, they do take him. They don't go in after it's begun, or come out before it's over. They know how to bring a boy up, too. Look at their own! Though he is very little as yet, what a capital boy he is! Why, my next favourite to Mrs. Cheeseman and Old Cheeseman, is young Cheeseman.

So, now I have told you all I know about Old Cheeseman. And it's not much after all, I am afraid. Is it?

NOBODY'S STORY

He lived on the bank of a mighty river, broad and deep, which was always silently rolling on to a vast undiscovered ocean. It had rolled on, ever since the world began. It had changed its course sometimes, and turned into new channels, leaving its old ways dry and barren; but it had ever been upon the flow, and ever was to flow until Time should be no more. Against its strong, unfathomable stream, nothing made head. No living creature, no flower, no leaf, no particle of animate or inanimate existence, ever strayed back from the undiscovered ocean. The tide of the river set resistlessly towards it; and the tide never stopped, any more than the earth stops in its circling round the sun.

He lived in a busy place, and he worked very hard to live. He had no hope of ever being rich enough to live a month without hard work, but he was quite content, GOD knows, to labour with a cheerful will. He was one of an immense family, all of whose sons and daughters gained their daily bread by daily work, prolonged from their rising up betimes until their lying down at night. Beyond this destiny he had no prospect, and he sought none.

There was over-much drumming, trumpeting, and speech-making, in the neighbourhood where he dwelt; but he had nothing to do with that. Such clash and uproar came from the Bigwig family, at the unaccountable proceedings of which race, he marvelled much. They set up the strangest statues, in iron, marble, bronze, and brass, before his door; and darkened his house with the legs and tails of uncouth images of horses. He wondered what it all meant, smiled in a rough good-humoured way he had, and kept at his hard work.

The Bigwig family (composed of all the stateliest people thereabouts, and all the noisiest) had undertaken to save him the trouble of thinking for himself, and to manage him and his affairs. "Why truly," said he, "I have little time upon my hands; and if you will be so good as to take care of me, in return for the money I pay over"—for the Bigwig family were not above his money—"I shall be relieved and much obliged, considering that you know best." Hence the drumming, trumpeting, and speech-making, and the ugly images of horses which he was expected to fall down and worship.

"I don't understand all this," said he, rubbing his furrowed brow confusedly. "But it has a meaning, maybe, if I could find it out."

"It means," returned the Bigwig family, suspecting something of what he said, "honour and glory in the highest, to the highest merit."

"Oh!" said he. And he was glad to hear that.

But, when he looked among the images in iron, marble, bronze, and brass, he failed to find a rather meritorious countryman of his, once the son of a Warwickshire wool-dealer, or any single countryman whomsoever of that kind. He could find none of the men whose knowledge had rescued him and his children from terrific and disfiguring disease, whose boldness had raised his forefathers from the condition of serfs, whose wise fancy had opened a new and high existence to the humblest, whose skill had filled the working man's world with accumulated wonders. Whereas, he did find others whom he knew no good of, and even others whom he knew much ill of.

"Humph!" said he. "I don't quite understand it."

So, he went home, and sat down by his fireside to get it out of his mind.

Now, his fireside was a bare one, all hemmed in by blackened streets; but it was a precious place to him. The hands of his wife were hardened with toil, and she was old before her time; but she was dear to him. His children, stunted in their growth, bore traces of unwholesome nurture; but they had beauty in his sight. Above all other things, it was an earnest desire of this man's soul that his children should be taught. "If I am sometimes misled," said he, "for want of knowledge, at least let them know better, and avoid my mistakes. If it is hard to me to reap the harvest of pleasure and instruction that is stored in books, let it be easier to them."

But, the Bigwig family broke out into violent family quarrels concerning what it was lawful to teach to this man's children. Some of the family insisted on such a thing being primary and indispensable above all other things; and others of the family insisted on such another thing being primary and indispensable above all other things; and the Bigwig family, rent into factions, wrote pamphlets, held convocations, delivered charges, orations, and all varieties of discourses; impounded one another in courts Lay and courts Ecclesiastical; threw dirt, exchanged pummelings, and fell together by the ears in unintelligible animosity. Meanwhile, this man, in his short evening snatches at his fireside, saw the demon Ignorance arise there, and take his children to itself. He saw his daughter perverted into a heavy, slatternly drudge; he saw his son go moping down the ways of low sensuality, to brutality and crime; he saw the dawning light of intelligence in the eyes of his babies so changing into cunning and suspicion, that he could have rather wished them idiots.

"I don't understand this any the better," said he; "but I think it cannot be right. Nay, by the clouded Heaven above me, I protest against this as my wrong!"

Becoming peaceable again (for his passion was usually short-lived, and his nature kind), he looked about him on his Sundays and holidays, and he saw how much monotony and weariness there was, and thence how drunkenness arose with all its train of ruin. Then he appealed to the Bigwig family, and said, "We are a labouring people, and I have a glimmering suspicion in me that labouring people of whatever condition were made—by a higher intelligence than yours, as I poorly understand it—to be in need of mental refreshment and recreation. See what we fall into, when we rest without it. Come! Amuse me harmlessly, show me something, give me an escape!"

But, here the Bigwig family fell into a state of uproar absolutely deafening. When some few voices were faintly heard, proposing to show him the wonders of the world, the greatness of creation, the mighty changes of time, the workings of nature and the beauties of art—to show him these things, that is to say, at any period of his life when he could look upon them—there arose among the Bigwigs such roaring and raving, such pulpiting and petitioning, such maundering and memorialising, such name-calling and dirt-throwing, such a shrill wind of parliamentary questioning and feeble replying—where "I dare not" waited on "I would"—that the poor fellow stood aghast, staring wildly around.

"Have I provoked all this," said he, with his hands to his affrighted ears, "by what was meant to be an innocent request, plainly arising out of my familiar experience, and the common knowledge of all men who choose to open their eyes? I don't understand, and I am not understood. What is to come of such a state of things!"

He was bending over his work, often asking himself the question, when the news began to spread that a pestilence had appeared among the labourers, and was slaying them by thousands. Going forth to look about him, he soon found this to be true. The dying and the dead were mingled in the close and tainted houses among which his life was passed. New poison was distilled into the always murky, always sickening air. The robust and the weak, old age and infancy, the father and the mother, all were stricken down alike.

What means of flight had he? He remained there, where he was, and saw those who were dearest to him die. A kind preacher came to him, and would have said some prayers to soften his heart in his gloom, but he replied:

"O what avails it, missionary, to come to me, a man condemned to residence in this foetid place, where every sense bestowed upon me for my delight becomes a torment, and where every minute of my numbered days is new mire added to the heap under which I lie oppressed! But, give me my first glimpse of Heaven, through a little of its light and air; give me pure water; help me to be clean; lighten this heavy atmosphere and heavy life, in which our spirits sink, and we become the indifferent and callous creatures you too often see us; gently and kindly take the bodies of those who die among us, out of the small room where we grow to be so familiar with the awful change that even ITS sanctity is lost to us; and, Teacher, then I will hear—none know better than you, how willingly—of Him whose thoughts were so much with the poor, and who had compassion for all human sorrow!"

He was at work again, solitary and sad, when his Master came and stood near to him dressed in black. He, also, had suffered heavily. His young wife, his beautiful and good young wife, was dead; so, too, his only child.

"Master, 'tis hard to bear—I know it—but be comforted. I would give you comfort, if I could."

The Master thanked him from his heart, but, said he, "O you labouring men! The calamity began among you. If you had but lived more healthily and decently, I should not be the widowed and bereft mourner that I am this day."

"Master," returned the other, shaking his head, "I have begun to understand a little that most calamities will come from us, as this one did, and that none will stop at our poor doors, until we are united with that great squabbling family yonder, to do the things that are right. We cannot live healthily and decently, unless they who undertook to manage us provide the means. We cannot be instructed unless they will teach us; we cannot be rationally amused, unless they will amuse us; we cannot but have some false gods of our own, while they set up so many of theirs in all the public places. The evil consequences of imperfect instruction, the evil consequences of pernicious neglect, the evil consequences of unnatural restraint and the denial of humanising enjoyments, will all come from us, and none of them will stop with us. They will spread far and wide. They always do; they always have done—just like the pestilence. I understand so much, I think, at last."

But the Master said again, "O you labouring men! How seldom do we ever hear of you, except in connection with some trouble!"

"Master," he replied, "I am Nobody, and little likely to be heard of (nor yet much wanted to be heard of, perhaps), except when there is some trouble. But it never begins with me, and it never can end with me. As sure as Death, it comes down to me, and it goes up from me."

There was so much reason in what he said, that the Bigwig family, getting wind of it, and being horribly frightened by the late desolation, resolved to unite with him to do the things that were right—at all events, so far as the said things were associated with the direct prevention, humanly speaking, of another pestilence. But, as their fear wore off, which it soon began to do, they resumed their falling out among themselves, and did nothing. Consequently the scourge appeared again—low down as before—and spread avengingly upward as before, and carried off vast numbers of the brawlers. But not a man among them ever admitted, if in the least degree he ever perceived, that he had anything to do with it.

So Nobody lived and died in the old, old, old way; and this, in the main, is the whole of Nobody's story.

Had he no name, you ask? Perhaps it was Legion. It matters little what his name was. Let us call him Legion.

If you were ever in the Belgian villages near the field of Waterloo, you will have seen, in some quiet little church, a monument erected by faithful companions in arms to the memory of Colonel A, Major B, Captains C, D and E, Lieutenants F and G, Ensigns H, I and J, seven non-commissioned officers, and one hundred and thirty rank and file, who fell in the discharge of their duty on the memorable day. The story of Nobody is the story of the rank and file of the earth. They bear their share of the battle; they have their part in the victory; they fall; they leave no name but in the mass. The march of the proudest of us, leads to the dusty way by which they go. O! Let us think of them this year at the Christmas fire, and not forget them when it is burnt out.

THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS

1854

CHAPTER I

IN THE OLD CITY OF ROCHESTER

Strictly speaking, there were only six Poor Travellers; but, being a Traveller myself, though an idle one, and being withal as poor as I hope to be, I brought the number up to seven. This word of explanation is due at once, for what says the inscription over the quaint old door?

RICHARD WATTS, Esq.

by his Will, dated 22 Aug. 1579,

founded this Charity

for Six poor Travellers,

who not being ROGUES, or PROCTORS,

May receive gratis for one Night,

Lodging, Entertainment,

and Fourpence each.

It was in the ancient little city of Rochester in Kent, of all the good days in the year upon a Christmas-eve, that I stood reading this inscription over the quaint old door in question. I had been wandering about the neighbouring Cathedral, and had seen the tomb of Richard Watts, with the effigy of worthy Master Richard starting out of it like a ship’s figure-head; and I had felt that I could do no less, as I gave the Verger his fee, than inquire the way to Watts’s Charity. The way being very short and very plain, I had come prosperously to the inscription and the quaint old door.

“Now,” said I to myself, as I looked at the knocker, “I know I am not a Proctor; I wonder whether I am a Rogue!”

Upon the whole, though Conscience reproduced two or three pretty faces which might have had smaller attraction for a moral Goliath than they had had for me, who am but a Tom Thumb in that way, I came to the conclusion that I was not a Rogue. So, beginning to regard the establishment as in some sort my property, bequeathed to me and divers co-legatees, share and share alike, by the Worshipful Master Richard Watts, I stepped backward into the road to survey my inheritance.

I found it to be a clean white house, of a staid and venerable air, with the quaint old door already three times mentioned (an arched door), choice, little, long low lattice-windows, and a roof of three gables. The silent High-street of Rochester is full of gables, with old beams and timbers carved into strange faces. It is oddly garnished with a queer old clock that projects over the pavement out of a grave red-brick building, as if Time carried on business there, and hung out his sign. Sooth to say, he did an active stroke of work in Rochester, in the old days of the Romans, and the Saxons, and the Normans; and down to the times of King John, when the rugged castle—I will not undertake to say how many hundreds of years old then—was abandoned to the centuries of weather which have so defaced the dark apertures in its walls, that the ruin looks as if the rooks and daws had pecked its eyes out.

I was very well pleased, both with my property and its situation. While I was yet surveying it with growing content, I espied, at one of the upper lattices which stood open, a decent body, of a wholesome matronly appearance, whose eyes I caught inquiringly addressed to mine. They said so plainly, “Do you wish to see the house?” that I answered aloud, “Yes, if you please.” And within a minute the old door opened, and I bent my head, and went down two steps into the entry.

“This,” said the matronly presence, ushering me into a low room on the right, “is where the Travellers sit by the fire, and cook what bits of suppers they buy with their fourpences.”

“O! Then they have no Entertainment?” said I. For the inscription over the outer door was still running in my head, and I was mentally repeating, in a kind of tune, “Lodging, entertainment, and fourpence each.”

“They have a fire provided for ’em,” returned the matron—a mighty civil person, not, as I could make out, overpaid; “and these cooking utensils. And this what’s painted on a board is the rules for their behaviour. They have their fourpences when they get their tickets from the steward over the way,—for I don’t admit ’em myself, they must get their tickets first,—and sometimes one buys a rasher of bacon, and another a herring, and another a pound of potatoes, or what not. Sometimes two or three of ’em will club their fourpences together, and make a supper that way. But not much of anything is to be got for fourpence, at present, when provisions is so dear.”

“True indeed,” I remarked. I had been looking about the room, admiring its snug fireside at the upper end, its glimpse of the street through the low mullioned window, and its beams overhead. “It is very comfortable,” said I.

“Ill-conwenient,” observed the matronly presence.

I liked to hear her say so; for it showed a commendable anxiety to execute in no niggardly spirit the intentions of Master Richard Watts. But the room was really so well adapted to its purpose that I protested, quite enthusiastically, against her disparagement.

“Nay, ma’am,” said I, “I am sure it is warm in winter and cool in summer. It has a look of homely welcome and soothing rest. It has a remarkably cosey fireside, the very blink of which, gleaming out into the street upon a winter night, is enough to warm all Rochester’s heart. And as to the convenience of the six Poor Travellers——”

“I don’t mean them,” returned the presence. “I speak of its being an ill-conwenience to myself and my daughter, having no other room to sit in of a night.”

This was true enough, but there was another quaint room of corresponding dimensions on the opposite side of the entry: so I stepped across to it, through the open doors of both rooms, and asked what this chamber was for.

“This,” returned the presence, “is the Board Room. Where the gentlemen meet when they come here.”

Let me see. I had counted from the street six upper windows besides these on the ground-story. Making a perplexed calculation in my mind, I rejoined, “Then the six Poor Travellers sleep up-stairs?”

My new friend shook her head. “They sleep,” she answered, “in two little outer galleries at the back, where their beds has always been, ever since the Charity was founded. It being so very ill-conwenient to me as things is at present, the gentlemen are going to take off a bit of the back-yard, and make a slip of a room for ’em there, to sit in before they go to bed.”

“And then the six Poor Travellers,” said I, “will be entirely out of the house?”

“Entirely out of the house,” assented the presence, comfortably smoothing her hands. “Which is considered much better for all parties, and much more conwenient.”

I had been a little startled, in the Cathedral, by the emphasis with which the effigy of Master Richard Watts was bursting out of his tomb; but I began to think, now, that it might be expected to come across the High-street some stormy night, and make a disturbance here.

Howbeit, I kept my thoughts to myself, and accompanied the presence to the little galleries at the back. I found them on a tiny scale, like the galleries in old inn-yards; and they were very clean. While I was looking at them, the matron gave me to understand that the prescribed number of Poor Travellers were forthcoming every night from year’s end to year’s end; and that the beds were always occupied. My questions upon this, and her replies, brought us back to the Board Room so essential to the dignity of “the gentlemen,” where she showed me the printed accounts of the Charity hanging up by the window. From them I gathered that the greater part of the property bequeathed by the Worshipful Master Richard Watts for the maintenance of this foundation was, at the period of his death, mere marsh-land; but that, in course of time, it had been reclaimed and built upon, and was very considerably increased in value. I found, too, that about a thirtieth part of the annual revenue was now expended on the purposes commemorated in the inscription over the door; the rest being handsomely laid out in Chancery, law expenses, collectorship, receivership, poundage, and other appendages of management, highly complimentary to the importance of the six Poor Travellers. In short, I made the not entirely new discovery that it may be said of an establishment like this, in dear old England, as of the fat oyster in the American story, that it takes a good many men to swallow it whole.

“And pray, ma’am,” said I, sensible that the blankness of my face began to brighten as the thought occurred to me, “could one see these Travellers?”

“Well!” she returned dubiously, “no!”

“Not to-night, for instance!” said I.

“Well!” she returned more positively, “no. Nobody ever asked to see them, and nobody ever did see them.”

As I am not easily balked in a design when I am set upon it, I urged to the good lady that this was Christmas-eve; that Christmas comes but once a year,—which is unhappily too true, for when it begins to stay with us the whole year round we shall make this earth a very different place; that I was possessed by the desire to treat the Travellers to a supper and a temperate glass of hot Wassail; that the voice of Fame had been heard in that land, declaring my ability to make hot Wassail; that if I were permitted to hold the feast, I should be found conformable to reason, sobriety, and good hours; in a word, that I could be merry and wise myself, and had been even known at a pinch to keep others so, although I was decorated with no badge or medal, and was not a Brother, Orator, Apostle, Saint, or Prophet of any denomination whatever. In the end I prevailed, to my great joy. It was settled that at nine o’clock that night a Turkey and a piece of Roast Beef should smoke upon the board; and that I, faint and unworthy minister for once of Master Richard Watts, should preside as the Christmas-supper host of the six Poor Travellers.

I went back to my inn to give the necessary directions for the Turkey and Roast Beef, and, during the remainder of the day, could settle to nothing for thinking of the Poor Travellers. When the wind blew hard against the windows,—it was a cold day, with dark gusts of sleet alternating with periods of wild brightness, as if the year were dying fitfully,—I pictured them advancing towards their resting-place along various cold roads, and felt delighted to think how little they foresaw the supper that awaited them. I painted their portraits in my mind, and indulged in little heightening touches. I made them footsore; I made them weary; I made them carry packs and bundles; I made them stop by finger-posts and milestones, leaning on their bent sticks, and looking wistfully at what was written there; I made them lose their way; and filled their five wits with apprehensions of lying out all night, and being frozen to death. I took up my hat, and went out, climbed to the top of the Old Castle, and looked over the windy hills that slope down to the Medway, almost believing that I could descry some of my Travellers in the distance. After it fell dark, and the Cathedral bell was heard in the invisible steeple—quite a bower of frosty rime when I had last seen it—striking five, six, seven, I became so full of my Travellers that I could eat no dinner, and felt constrained to watch them still in the red coals of my fire. They were all arrived by this time, I thought, had got their tickets, and were gone in.—There my pleasure was dashed by the reflection that probably some Travellers had come too late and were shut out.

After the Cathedral bell had struck eight, I could smell a delicious savour of Turkey and Roast Beef rising to the window of my adjoining bedroom, which looked down into the inn-yard just where the lights of the kitchen reddened a massive fragment of the Castle Wall. It was high time to make the Wassail now; therefore I had up the materials (which, together with their proportions and combinations, I must decline to impart, as the only secret of my own I was ever known to keep), and made a glorious jorum. Not in a bowl; for a bowl anywhere but on a shelf is a low superstition, fraught with cooling and slopping; but in a brown earthenware pitcher, tenderly suffocated, when full, with a coarse cloth. It being now upon the stroke of nine, I set out for Watts’s Charity, carrying my brown beauty in my arms. I would trust Ben, the waiter, with untold gold; but there are strings in the human heart which must never be sounded by another, and drinks that I make myself are those strings in mine.

The Travellers were all assembled, the cloth was laid, and Ben had brought a great billet of wood, and had laid it artfully on the top of the fire, so that a touch or two of the poker after supper should make a roaring blaze. Having deposited my brown beauty in a red nook of the hearth, inside the fender, where she soon began to sing like an ethereal cricket, diffusing at the same time odours as of ripe vineyards, spice forests, and orange groves,—I say, having stationed my beauty in a place of security and improvement, I introduced myself to my guests by shaking hands all round, and giving them a hearty welcome.

I found the party to be thus composed. Firstly, myself. Secondly, a very decent man indeed, with his right arm in a sling, who had a certain clean agreeable smell of wood about him, from which I judged him to have something to do with shipbuilding. Thirdly, a little sailor-boy, a mere child, with a profusion of rich dark brown hair, and deep womanly-looking eyes. Fourthly, a shabby-genteel personage in a threadbare black suit, and apparently in very bad circumstances, with a dry suspicious look; the absent buttons on his waistcoat eked out with red tape; and a bundle of extraordinarily tattered papers sticking out of an inner breast-pocket. Fifthly, a foreigner by birth, but an Englishman in speech, who carried his pipe in the band of his hat, and lost no time in telling me, in an easy, simple, engaging way, that he was a watchmaker from Geneva, and travelled all about the Continent, mostly on foot, working as a journeyman, and seeing new countries,—possibly (I thought) also smuggling a watch or so, now and then. Sixthly, a little widow, who had been very pretty and was still very young, but whose beauty had been wrecked in some great misfortune, and whose manner was remarkably timid, scared, and solitary. Seventhly and lastly, a Traveller of a kind familiar to my boyhood, but now almost obsolete,—a Book-Pedler, who had a quantity of Pamphlets and Numbers with him, and who presently boasted that he could repeat more verses in an evening than he could sell in a twelvemonth.

The Seven Poor Travellers

All these I have mentioned in the order in which they sat at table. I presided, and the matronly presence faced me. We were not long in taking our places, for the supper had arrived with me, in the following procession:

Myself with the pitcher.

Ben with Beer.

Inattentive Boy with hot plates. Inattentive Boy with hot plates.

THE TURKEY.

Female carrying sauces to be heated on the spot.

THE BEEF.

Man with Tray on his head, containing Vegetables and Sundries.

Volunteer Hostler from Hotel, grinning,

And rendering no assistance.

As we passed along the High-street, comet-like, we left a long tail of fragrance behind us which caused the public to stop, sniffing in wonder. We had previously left at the corner of the inn-yard a wall-eyed young man connected with the Fly department, and well accustomed to the sound of a railway whistle which Ben always carries in his pocket, whose instructions were, so soon as he should hear the whistle blown, to dash into the kitchen, seize the hot plum-pudding and mince-pies, and speed with them to Watts’s Charity, where they would be received (he was further instructed) by the sauce-female, who would be provided with brandy in a blue state of combustion.

All these arrangements were executed in the most exact and punctual manner. I never saw a finer turkey, finer beef, or greater prodigality of sauce and gravy;—and my Travellers did wonderful justice to everything set before them. It made my heart rejoice to observe how their wind and frost hardened faces softened in the clatter of plates and knives and forks, and mellowed in the fire and supper heat. While their hats and caps and wrappers, hanging up, a few small bundles on the ground in a corner, and in another corner three or four old walking-sticks, worn down at the end to mere fringe, linked this snug interior with the bleak outside in a golden chain.

When supper was done, and my brown beauty had been elevated on the table, there was a general requisition to me to “take the corner;” which suggested to me comfortably enough how much my friends here made of a fire,—for when had I ever thought so highly of the corner, since the days when I connected it with Jack Horner? However, as I declined, Ben, whose touch on all convivial instruments is perfect, drew the table apart, and instructing my Travellers to open right and left on either side of me, and form round the fire, closed up the centre with myself and my chair, and preserved the order we had kept at table. He had already, in a tranquil manner, boxed the ears of the inattentive boys until they had been by imperceptible degrees boxed out of the room; and he now rapidly skirmished the sauce-female into the High-street, disappeared, and softly closed the door.

This was the time for bringing the poker to bear on the billet of wood. I tapped it three times, like an enchanted talisman, and a brilliant host of merry-makers burst out of it, and sported off by the chimney,—rushing up the middle in a fiery country dance, and never coming down again. Meanwhile, by their sparkling light, which threw our lamp into the shade, I filled the glasses, and gave my Travellers, CHRISTMAS!—CHRISTMAS-EVE, my friends, when the shepherds, who were Poor Travellers, too, in their way, heard the Angels sing, “On earth, peace. Good-will towards men!”

I don’t know who was the first among us to think that we ought to take hands as we sat, in deference to the toast, or whether any one of us anticipated the others, but at any rate we all did it. We then drank to the memory of the good Master Richard Watts. And I wish his Ghost may never have had worse usage under that roof than it had from us.

It was the witching time for Story-telling. “Our whole life, Travellers,” said I, “is a story more or less intelligible,—generally less; but we shall read it by a clearer light when it is ended. I, for one, am so divided this night between fact and fiction, that I scarce know which is which. Shall I beguile the time by telling you a story as we sit here?”

They all answered, yes. I had little to tell them, but I was bound by my own proposal. Therefore, after looking for awhile at the spiral column of smoke wreathing up from my brown beauty, through which I could have almost sworn I saw the effigy of Master Richard Watts less startled than usual, I fired away.

CHAPTER II

THE STORY OF RICHARD DOUBLEDICK

In the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine, a relative of mine came limping down, on foot, to this town of Chatham. I call it this town, because if anybody present knows to a nicety where Rochester ends and Chatham begins, it is more than I do. He was a poor traveller, with not a farthing in his pocket. He sat by the fire in this very room, and he slept one night in a bed that will be occupied to-night by some one here.

My relative came down to Chatham to enlist in a cavalry regiment, if a cavalry regiment would have him; if not, to take King George’s shilling from any corporal or sergeant who would put a bunch of ribbons in his hat. His object was to get shot; but he thought he might as well ride to death as be at the trouble of walking.

My relative’s Christian name was Richard, but he was better known as Dick. He dropped his own surname on the road down, and took up that of Doubledick. He was passed as Richard Doubledick; age, twenty-two; height, five foot ten; native place, Exmouth, which he had never been near in his life. There was no cavalry in Chatham when he limped over the bridge here with half a shoe to his dusty feet, so he enlisted into a regiment of the line, and was glad to get drunk and forget all about it.

You are to know that this relative of mine had gone wrong, and run wild. His heart was in the right place, but it was sealed up. He had been betrothed to a good and beautiful girl, whom he had loved better than she—or perhaps even he—believed; but in an evil hour he had given her cause to say to him solemnly, “Richard, I will never marry another man. I will live single for your sake, but Mary Marshall’s lips”—her name was Mary Marshall—“never address another word to you on earth. Go, Richard! Heaven forgive you!” This finished him. This brought him down to Chatham. This made him Private Richard Doubledick, with a determination to be shot.

There was not a more dissipated and reckless soldier in Chatham barracks, in the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine, than Private Richard Doubledick. He associated with the dregs of every regiment; he was as seldom sober as he could be, and was constantly under punishment. It became clear to the whole barracks that Private Richard Doubledick would very soon be flogged.

Now the Captain of Richard Doubledick’s company was a young gentleman not above five years his senior, whose eyes had an expression in them which affected Private Richard Doubledick in a very remarkable way. They were bright, handsome, dark eyes,—what are called laughing eyes generally, and, when serious, rather steady than severe,—but they were the only eyes now left in his narrowed world that Private Richard Doubledick could not stand. Unabashed by evil report and punishment, defiant of everything else and everybody else, he had but to know that those eyes looked at him for a moment, and he felt ashamed. He could not so much as salute Captain Taunton in the street like any other officer. He was reproached and confused,—troubled by the mere possibility of the captain’s looking at him. In his worst moments, he would rather turn back, and go any distance out of his way, than encounter those two handsome, dark, bright eyes.

One day, when Private Richard Doubledick came out of the Black hole, where he had been passing the last eight-and-forty hours, and in which retreat he spent a good deal of his time, he was ordered to betake himself to Captain Taunton’s quarters. In the stale and squalid state of a man just out of the Black hole, he had less fancy than ever for being seen by the captain; but he was not so mad yet as to disobey orders, and consequently went up to the terrace overlooking the parade-ground, where the officers’ quarters were; twisting and breaking in his hands, as he went along, a bit of the straw that had formed the decorative furniture of the Black hole.

“Come in!” cried the Captain, when he had knocked with his knuckles at the door. Private Richard Doubledick pulled off his cap, took a stride forward, and felt very conscious that he stood in the light of the dark, bright eyes.

There was a silent pause. Private Richard Doubledick had put the straw in his mouth, and was gradually doubling it up into his windpipe and choking himself.

“Doubledick,” said the Captain, “do you know where you are going to?”

“To the Devil, sir?” faltered Doubledick.

“Yes,” returned the Captain. “And very fast.”

Private Richard Doubledick turned the straw of the Black hole in his month, and made a miserable salute of acquiescence.

“Doubledick,” said the Captain, “since I entered his Majesty’s service, a boy of seventeen, I have been pained to see many men of promise going that road; but I have never been so pained to see a man make the shameful journey as I have been, ever since you joined the regiment, to see you.”

Private Richard Doubledick began to find a film stealing over the floor at which he looked; also to find the legs of the Captain’s breakfast-table turning crooked, as if he saw them through water.

“I am only a common soldier, sir,” said he. “It signifies very little what such a poor brute comes to.”

“You are a man,” returned the Captain, with grave indignation, “of education and superior advantages; and if you say that, meaning what you say, you have sunk lower than I had believed. How low that must be, I leave you to consider, knowing what I know of your disgrace, and seeing what I see.”

“I hope to get shot soon, sir,” said Private Richard Doubledick; “and then the regiment and the world together will be rid of me.”

The legs of the table were becoming very crooked. Doubledick, looking up to steady his vision, met the eyes that had so strong an influence over him. He put his hand before his own eyes, and the breast of his disgrace-jacket swelled as if it would fly asunder.

“I would rather,” said the young Captain, “see this in you, Doubledick, than I would see five thousand guineas counted out upon this table for a gift to my good mother. Have you a mother?”

“I am thankful to say she is dead, sir.”

“If your praises,” returned the Captain, “were sounded from mouth to mouth through the whole regiment, through the whole army, through the whole country, you would wish she had lived to say, with pride and joy, ‘He is my son!’”

“Spare me, sir,” said Doubledick. “She would never have heard any good of me. She would never have had any pride and joy in owning herself my mother. Love and compassion she might have had, and would have always had, I know but not—Spare me, sir! I am a broken wretch, quite at your mercy!” And he turned his face to the wall, and stretched out his imploring hand.

“My friend——” began the Captain.

“God bless you, sir!” sobbed Private Richard Doubledick.

“You are at the crisis of your fate. Hold your course unchanged a little longer, and you know what must happen. I know even better than you can imagine, that, after that has happened, you are lost. No man who could shed those tears could bear those marks.”

“I fully believe it, sir,” in a low, shivering voice said Private Richard Doubledick.

“But a man in any station can do his duty,” said the young Captain, “and, in doing it, can earn his own respect, even if his case should be so very unfortunate and so very rare that he can earn no other man’s. A common soldier, poor brute though you called him just now, has this advantage in the stormy times we live in, that he always does his duty before a host of sympathising witnesses. Do you doubt that he may so do it as to be extolled through a whole regiment, through a whole army, through a whole country? Turn while you may yet retrieve the past, and try.”

“I will! I ask for only one witness, sir,” cried Richard, with a bursting heart.

“I understand you. I will be a watchful and a faithful one.”

I have heard from Private Richard Doubledick’s own lips, that he dropped down upon his knee, kissed that officer’s hand, arose, and went out of the light of the dark, bright eyes, an altered man.

In that year, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine, the French were in Egypt, in Italy, in Germany, where not? Napoleon Bonaparte had likewise begun to stir against us in India, and most men could read the signs of the great troubles that were coming on. In the very next year, when we formed an alliance with Austria against him, Captain Taunton’s regiment was on service in India. And there was not a finer non-commissioned officer in it,—no, nor in the whole line—than Corporal Richard Doubledick.

In eighteen hundred and one, the Indian army were on the coast of Egypt. Next year was the year of the proclamation of the short peace, and they were recalled. It had then become well known to thousands of men, that wherever Captain Taunton, with the dark, bright eyes, led, there, close to him, ever at his side, firm as a rock, true as the sun, and brave as Mars, would be certain to be found, while life beat in their hearts, that famous soldier, Sergeant Richard Doubledick.

Eighteen hundred and five, besides being the great year of Trafalgar, was a year of hard fighting in India. That year saw such wonders done by a Sergeant-Major, who cut his way single-handed through a solid mass of men, recovered the colours of his regiment, which had been seized from the hand of a poor boy shot through the heart, and rescued his wounded Captain, who was down, and in a very jungle of horses’ hoofs and sabres,—saw such wonders done, I say, by this brave Sergeant-Major, that he was specially made the bearer of the colours he had won; and Ensign Richard Doubledick had risen from the ranks.

Sorely cut up in every battle, but always reinforced by the bravest of men,—for the fame of following the old colours, shot through and through, which Ensign Richard Doubledick had saved, inspired all breasts,—this regiment fought its way through the Peninsular war, up to the investment of Badajos in eighteen hundred and twelve. Again and again it had been cheered through the British ranks until the tears had sprung into men’s eyes at the mere hearing of the mighty British voice, so exultant in their valour; and there was not a drummer-boy but knew the legend, that wherever the two friends, Major Taunton, with the dark, bright eyes, and Ensign Richard Doubledick, who was devoted to him, were seen to go, there the boldest spirits in the English army became wild to follow.

One day, at Badajos,—not in the great storming, but in repelling a hot sally of the besieged upon our men at work in the trenches, who had given way,—the two officers found themselves hurrying forward, face to face, against a party of French infantry, who made a stand. There was an officer at their head, encouraging his men,—a courageous, handsome, gallant officer of five-and-thirty, whom Doubledick saw hurriedly, almost momentarily, but saw well. He particularly noticed this officer waving his sword, and rallying his men with an eager and excited cry, when they fired in obedience to his gesture, and Major Taunton dropped.

It was over in ten minutes more, and Doubledick returned to the spot where he had laid the best friend man ever had on a coat spread upon the wet clay. Major Taunton’s uniform was opened at the breast, and on his shirt were three little spots of blood.

“Dear Doubledick,” said he, “I am dying.”

“For the love of Heaven, no!” exclaimed the other, kneeling down beside him, and passing his arm round his neck to raise his head. “Taunton! My preserver, my guardian angel, my witness! Dearest, truest, kindest of human beings! Taunton! For God’s sake!”

The bright, dark eyes—so very, very dark now, in the pale face—smiled upon him; and the hand he had kissed thirteen years ago laid itself fondly on his breast.

“Write to my mother. You will see Home again. Tell her how we became friends. It will comfort her, as it comforts me.”

He spoke no more, but faintly signed for a moment towards his hair as it fluttered in the wind. The Ensign understood him. He smiled again when he saw that, and, gently turning his face over on the supporting arm as if for rest, died, with his hand upon the breast in which he had revived a soul.

No dry eye looked on Ensign Richard Doubledick that melancholy day. He buried his friend on the field, and became a lone, bereaved man. Beyond his duty he appeared to have but two remaining cares in life,—one, to preserve the little packet of hair he was to give to Taunton’s mother; the other, to encounter that French officer who had rallied the men under whose fire Taunton fell. A new legend now began to circulate among our troops; and it was, that when he and the French officer came face to face once more, there would be weeping in France.

The war went on—and through it went the exact picture of the French officer on the one side, and the bodily reality upon the other—until the Battle of Toulouse was fought. In the returns sent home appeared these words: “Severely wounded, but not dangerously, Lieutenant Richard Doubledick.”

At Midsummer-time, in the year eighteen hundred and fourteen, Lieutenant Richard Doubledick, now a browned soldier, seven-and-thirty years of age, came home to England invalided. He brought the hair with him, near his heart. Many a French officer had he seen since that day; many a dreadful night, in searching with men and lanterns for his wounded, had he relieved French officers lying disabled; but the mental picture and the reality had never come together.

Though he was weak and suffered pain, he lost not an hour in getting down to Frome in Somersetshire, where Taunton’s mother lived. In the sweet, compassionate words that naturally present themselves to the mind to-night, “he was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.”

It was a Sunday evening, and the lady sat at her quiet garden-window, reading the Bible; reading to herself, in a trembling voice, that very passage in it, as I have heard him tell. He heard the words: “Young man, I say unto thee, arise!”

He had to pass the window; and the bright, dark eyes of his debased time seemed to look at him. Her heart told her who he was; she came to the door quickly, and fell upon his neck.

“He saved me from ruin, made me a human creature, won me from infamy and shame. O, God for ever bless him! As He will, He will!”

“He will!” the lady answered. “I know he is in Heaven!” Then she piteously cried, “But O, my darling boy, my darling boy!”

Never from the hour when Private Richard Doubledick enlisted at Chatham had the Private, Corporal, Sergeant, Sergeant-Major, Ensign, or Lieutenant breathed his right name, or the name of Mary Marshall, or a word of the story of his life, into any ear except his reclaimer’s. That previous scene in his existence was closed. He had firmly resolved that his expiation should be to live unknown; to disturb no more the peace that had long grown over his old offences; to let it be revealed, when he was dead, that he had striven and suffered, and had never forgotten; and then, if they could forgive him and believe him—well, it would be time enough—time enough!

But that night, remembering the words he had cherished for two years, “Tell her how we became friends. It will comfort her, as it comforts me,” he related everything. It gradually seemed to him as if in his maturity he had recovered a mother; it gradually seemed to her as if in her bereavement she had found a son. During his stay in England, the quiet garden into which he had slowly and painfully crept, a stranger, became the boundary of his home; when he was able to rejoin his regiment in the spring, he left the garden, thinking was this indeed the first time he had ever turned his face towards the old colours with a woman’s blessing!

He followed them—so ragged, so scarred and pierced now, that they would scarcely hold together—to Quatre Bras and Ligny. He stood beside them, in an awful stillness of many men, shadowy through the mist and drizzle of a wet June forenoon, on the field of Waterloo. And down to that hour the picture in his mind of the French officer had never been compared with the reality.

The famous regiment was in action early in the battle, and received its first check in many an eventful year, when he was seen to fall. But it swept on to avenge him, and left behind it no such creature in the world of consciousness as Lieutenant Richard Doubledick.

Through pits of mire, and pools of rain; along deep ditches, once roads, that were pounded and ploughed to pieces by artillery, heavy waggons, tramp of men and horses, and the struggle of every wheeled thing that could carry wounded soldiers; jolted among the dying and the dead, so disfigured by blood and mud as to be hardly recognisable for humanity; undisturbed by the moaning of men and the shrieking of horses, which, newly taken from the peaceful pursuits of life, could not endure the sight of the stragglers lying by the wayside, never to resume their toilsome journey; dead, as to any sentient life that was in it, and yet alive,—the form that had been Lieutenant Richard Doubledick, with whose praises England rang, was conveyed to Brussels. There it was tenderly laid down in hospital; and there it lay, week after week, through the long bright summer days, until the harvest, spared by war, had ripened and was gathered in.

Over and over again the sun rose and set upon the crowded city; over and over again the moonlight nights were quiet on the plains of Waterloo: and all that time was a blank to what had been Lieutenant Richard Doubledick. Rejoicing troops marched into Brussels, and marched out; brothers and fathers, sisters, mothers, and wives, came thronging thither, drew their lots of joy or agony, and departed; so many times a day the bells rang; so many times the shadows of the great buildings changed; so many lights sprang up at dusk; so many feet passed here and there upon the pavements; so many hours of sleep and cooler air of night succeeded: indifferent to all, a marble face lay on a bed, like the face of a recumbent statue on the tomb of Lieutenant Richard Doubledick.

Slowly labouring, at last, through a long heavy dream of confused time and place, presenting faint glimpses of army surgeons whom he knew, and of faces that had been familiar to his youth,—dearest and kindest among them, Mary Marshall’s, with a solicitude upon it more like reality than anything he could discern,—Lieutenant Richard Doubledick came back to life. To the beautiful life of a calm autumn evening sunset, to the peaceful life of a fresh quiet room with a large window standing open; a balcony beyond, in which were moving leaves and sweet-smelling flowers; beyond, again, the clear sky, with the sun full in his sight, pouring its golden radiance on his bed.

It was so tranquil and so lovely that he thought he had passed into another world. And he said in a faint voice, “Taunton, are you near me?”

A face bent over him. Not his, his mother’s.

“I came to nurse you. We have nursed you many weeks. You were moved here long ago. Do you remember nothing?”

“Nothing.”

The lady kissed his cheek, and held his hand, soothing him.

“Where is the regiment? What has happened? Let me call you mother. What has happened, mother?”

“A great victory, dear. The war is over, and the regiment was the bravest in the field.”

His eyes kindled, his lips trembled, he sobbed, and the tears ran down his face. He was very weak, too weak to move his hand.

“Was it dark just now?” he asked presently.

“No.”

“It was only dark to me? Something passed away, like a black shadow. But as it went, and the sun—O the blessed sun, how beautiful it is!—touched my face, I thought I saw a light white cloud pass out at the door. Was there nothing that went out?”

She shook her head, and in a little while he fell asleep, she still holding his hand, and soothing him.

From that time, he recovered. Slowly, for he had been desperately wounded in the head, and had been shot in the body, but making some little advance every day. When he had gained sufficient strength to converse as he lay in bed, he soon began to remark that Mrs. Taunton always brought him back to his own history. Then he recalled his preserver’s dying words, and thought, “It comforts her.”

One day he awoke out of a sleep, refreshed, and asked her to read to him. But the curtain of the bed, softening the light, which she always drew back when he awoke, that she might see him from her table at the bedside where she sat at work, was held undrawn; and a woman’s voice spoke, which was not hers.

“Can you bear to see a stranger?” it said softly. “Will you like to see a stranger?”

“Stranger!” he repeated. The voice awoke old memories, before the days of Private Richard Doubledick.

“A stranger now, but not a stranger once,” it said in tones that thrilled him. “Richard, dear Richard, lost through so many years, my name——”

He cried out her name, “Mary,” and she held him in her arms, and his head lay on her bosom.

“I am not breaking a rash vow, Richard. These are not Mary Marshall’s lips that speak. I have another name.”

She was married.

“I have another name, Richard. Did you ever hear it?”

“Never!”

He looked into her face, so pensively beautiful, and wondered at the smile upon it through her tears.

“Think again, Richard. Are you sure you never heard my altered name?”

“Never!”

“Don’t move your head to look at me, dear Richard. Let it lie here, while I tell my story. I loved a generous, noble man; loved him with my whole heart; loved him for years and years; loved him faithfully, devotedly; loved him without hope of return; loved him, knowing nothing of his highest qualities—not even knowing that he was alive. He was a brave soldier. He was honoured and beloved by thousands of thousands, when the mother of his dear friend found me, and showed me that in all his triumphs he had never forgotten me. He was wounded in a great battle. He was brought, dying, here, into Brussels. I came to watch and tend him, as I would have joyfully gone, with such a purpose, to the dreariest ends of the earth. When he knew no one else, he knew me. When he suffered most, he bore his sufferings barely murmuring, content to rest his head where your rests now. When he lay at the point of death, he married me, that he might call me Wife before he died. And the name, my dear love, that I took on that forgotten night——”

“I know it now!” he sobbed. “The shadowy remembrance strengthens. It is come back. I thank Heaven that my mind is quite restored! My Mary, kiss me; lull this weary head to rest, or I shall die of gratitude. His parting words were fulfilled. I see Home again!”

Well! They were happy. It was a long recovery, but they were happy through it all. The snow had melted on the ground, and the birds were singing in the leafless thickets of the early spring, when those three were first able to ride out together, and when people flocked about the open carriage to cheer and congratulate Captain Richard Doubledick.

But even then it became necessary for the Captain, instead of returning to England, to complete his recovery in the climate of Southern France. They found a spot upon the Rhône, within a ride of the old town of Avignon, and within view of its broken bridge, which was all they could desire; they lived there, together, six months; then returned to England. Mrs. Taunton, growing old after three years—though not so old as that her bright, dark eyes were dimmed—and remembering that her strength had been benefited by the change resolved to go back for a year to those parts. So she went with a faithful servant, who had often carried her son in his arms; and she was to be rejoined and escorted home, at the year’s end, by Captain Richard Doubledick.

She wrote regularly to her children (as she called them now), and they to her. She went to the neighbourhood of Aix; and there, in their own château near the farmer’s house she rented, she grew into intimacy with a family belonging to that part of France. The intimacy began in her often meeting among the vineyards a pretty child, a girl with a most compassionate heart, who was never tired of listening to the solitary English lady’s stories of her poor son and the cruel wars. The family were as gentle as the child, and at length she came to know them so well that she accepted their invitation to pass the last month of her residence abroad under their roof. All this intelligence she wrote home, piecemeal as it came about, from time to time; and at last enclosed a polite note, from the head of the château, soliciting, on the occasion of his approaching mission to that neighbourhood, the honour of the company of cet homme si justement célèbre, Monsieur le Capitaine Richard Doubledick.

Captain Doubledick, now a hardy, handsome man in the full vigour of life, broader across the chest and shoulders than he had ever been before, dispatched a courteous reply, and followed it in person. Travelling through all that extent of country after three years of Peace, he blessed the better days on which the world had fallen. The corn was golden, not drenched in unnatural red; was bound in sheaves for food, not trodden underfoot by men in mortal fight. The smoke rose up from peaceful hearths, not blazing ruins. The carts were laden with the fair fruits of the earth, not with wounds and death. To him who had so often seen the terrible reverse, these things were beautiful indeed; and they brought him in a softened spirit to the old château near Aix upon a deep blue evening.

It was a large château of the genuine old ghostly kind, with round towers, and extinguishers, and a high leaden roof, and more windows than Aladdin’s Palace. The lattice blinds were all thrown open after the heat of the day, and there were glimpses of rambling walls and corridors within. Then there were immense out-buildings fallen into partial decay, masses of dark trees, terrace-gardens, balustrades; tanks of water, too weak to play and too dirty to work; statues, weeds, and thickets of iron railing that seemed to have overgrown themselves like the shrubberies, and to have branched out in all manner of wild shapes. The entrance doors stood open, as doors often do in that country when the heat of the day is past; and the Captain saw no bell or knocker, and walked in.

He walked into a lofty stone hall, refreshingly cool and gloomy after the glare of a Southern day’s travel. Extending along the four sides of this hall was a gallery, leading to suites of rooms; and it was lighted from the top. Still no bell was to be seen.

“Faith,” said the Captain halting, ashamed of the clanking of his boots, “this is a ghostly beginning!”

He started back, and felt his face turn white. In the gallery, looking down at him, stood the French officer—the officer whose picture he had carried in his mind so long and so far. Compared with the original, at last—in every lineament how like it was!

He moved, and disappeared, and Captain Richard Doubledick heard his steps coming quickly down own into the hall. He entered through an archway. There was a bright, sudden look upon his face, much such a look as it had worn in that fatal moment.

Monsieur le Capitaine Richard Doubledick? Enchanted to receive him! A thousand apologies! The servants were all out in the air. There was a little fête among them in the garden. In effect, it was the fête day of my daughter, the little cherished and protected of Madame Taunton.

He was so gracious and so frank that Monsieur le Capitaine Richard Doubledick could not withhold his hand. “It is the hand of a brave Englishman,” said the French officer, retaining it while he spoke. “I could respect a brave Englishman, even as my foe, how much more as my friend! I also am a soldier.”

“He has not remembered me, as I have remembered him; he did not take such note of my face, that day, as I took of his,” thought Captain Richard Doubledick. “How shall I tell him?”

The French officer conducted his guest into a garden and presented him to his wife, an engaging and beautiful woman, sitting with Mrs. Taunton in a whimsical old-fashioned pavilion. His daughter, her fair young face beaming with joy, came running to embrace him; and there was a boy-baby to tumble down among the orange trees on the broad steps, in making for his father’s legs. A multitude of children visitors were dancing to sprightly music; and all the servants and peasants about the château were dancing too. It was a scene of innocent happiness that might have been invented for the climax of the scenes of peace which had soothed the Captain’s journey.

He looked on, greatly troubled in his mind, until a resounding bell rang, and the French officer begged to show him his rooms. They went up-stairs into the gallery from which the officer had looked down; and Monsieur le Capitaine Richard Doubledick was cordially welcomed to a grand outer chamber, and a smaller one within, all clocks and draperies, and hearths, and brazen dogs, and tiles, and cool devices, and elegance, and vastness.

“You were at Waterloo,” said the French officer.

“I was,” said Captain Richard Doubledick. “And at Badajos.”

Left alone with the sound of his own stern voice in his ears, he sat down to consider, What shall I do, and how shall I tell him? At that time, unhappily, many deplorable duels had been fought between English and French officers, arising out of the recent war; and these duels, and how to avoid this officer’s hospitality, were the uppermost thought in Captain Richard Doubledick’s mind.

He was thinking, and letting the time run out in which he should have dressed for dinner, when Mrs. Taunton spoke to him outside the door, asking if he could give her the letter he had brought from Mary. “His mother, above all,” the Captain thought. “How shall I tell her?”

“You will form a friendship with your host, I hope,” said Mrs. Taunton, whom he hurriedly admitted, “that will last for life. He is so true-hearted and so generous, Richard, that you can hardly fail to esteem one another. If He had been spared,” she kissed (not without tears) the locket in which she wore his hair, “he would have appreciated him with his own magnanimity, and would have been truly happy that the evil days were past which made such a man his enemy.”

She left the room; and the Captain walked, first to one window, whence he could see the dancing in the garden, then to another window, whence he could see the smiling prospect and the peaceful vineyards.

“Spirit of my departed friend,” said he, “is it through thee these better thoughts are rising in my mind? Is it thou who hast shown me, all the way I have been drawn to meet this man, the blessings of the altered time? Is it thou who hast sent thy stricken mother to me, to stay my angry hand? Is it from thee the whisper comes, that this man did his duty as thou didst,—and as I did, through thy guidance, which has wholly saved me here on earth,—and that he did no more?”

He sat down, with his head buried in his hands, and, when he rose up, made the second strong resolution of his life,—that neither to the French officer, nor to the mother of his departed friend, nor to any soul, while either of the two was living, would he breathe what only he knew. And when he touched that French officer’s glass with his own, that day at dinner, he secretly forgave him in the name of the Divine Forgiver of injuries.

* * * * *

Here I ended my story as the first Poor Traveller. But, if I had told it now, I could have added that the time has since come when the son of Major Richard Doubledick, and the son of that French officer, friends as their fathers were before them, fought side by side in one cause, with their respective nations, like long-divided brothers whom the better times have brought together, fast united.

CHAPTER III

THE ROAD

My story being finished, and the Wassail too, we broke up as the Cathedral bell struck Twelve. I did not take leave of my travellers that night; for it had come into my head to reappear, in conjunction with some hot coffee, at seven in the morning.

As I passed along the High-street, I heard the Waits at a distance, and struck off to find them. They were playing near one of the old gates of the City, at the corner of a wonderfully quaint row of red-brick tenements, which the clarionet obligingly informed me were inhabited by the Minor-Canons. They had odd little porches over the doors, like sounding-boards over old pulpits; and I thought I should like to see one of the Minor-Canons come out upon his top stop, and favour us with a little Christmas discourse about the poor scholars of Rochester; taking for his text the words of his Master relative to the devouring of Widows’ houses.

The clarionet was so communicative, and my inclinations were (as they generally are) of so vagabond a tendency, that I accompanied the Waits across an open green called the Vines, and assisted—in the French sense—at the performance of two waltzes, two polkas, and three Irish melodies, before I thought of my inn any more. However, I returned to it then, and found a fiddle in the kitchen, and Ben, the wall-eyed young man, and two chambermaids, circling round the great deal table with the utmost animation.

I had a very bad night. It cannot have been owing to the turkey or the beef,—and the Wassail is out of the question—but in every endeavour that I made to get to sleep I failed most dismally. I was never asleep; and in whatsoever unreasonable direction my mind rambled, the effigy of Master Richard Watts perpetually embarrassed it.

In a word, I only got out of the Worshipful Master Richard Watts’s way by getting out of bed in the dark at six o’clock, and tumbling, as my custom is, into all the cold water that could be accumulated for the purpose. The outer air was dull and cold enough in the street, when I came down there; and the one candle in our supper-room at Watts’s Charity looked as pale in the burning as if it had had a bad night too. But my Travellers had all slept soundly, and they took to the hot coffee, and the piles of bread-and-butter, which Ben had arranged like deals in a timber-yard, as kindly as I could desire.

While it was yet scarcely daylight, we all came out into the street together, and there shook hands. The widow took the little sailor towards Chatham, where he was to find a steamboat for Sheerness; the lawyer, with an extremely knowing look, went his own way, without committing himself by announcing his intentions; two more struck off by the cathedral and old castle for Maidstone; and the book-pedler accompanied me over the bridge. As for me, I was going to walk by Cobham Woods, as far upon my way to London as I fancied.

When I came to the stile and footpath by which I was to diverge from the main road, I bade farewell to my last remaining Poor Traveller, and pursued my way alone. And now the mists began to rise in the most beautiful manner, and the sun to shine; and as I went on through the bracing air, seeing the hoar-frost sparkle everywhere, I felt as if all Nature shared in the joy of the great Birthday.

Going through the woods, the softness of my tread upon the mossy ground and among the brown leaves enhanced the Christmas sacredness by which I felt surrounded. As the whitened stems environed me, I thought how the Founder of the time had never raised his benignant hand, save to bless and heal, except in the case of one unconscious tree. By Cobham Hall, I came to the village, and the churchyard where the dead had been quietly buried, “in the sure and certain hope” which Christmas-time inspired. What children could I see at play, and not be loving of, recalling who had loved them! No garden that I passed was out of unison with the day, for I remembered that the tomb was in a garden, and that “she, supposing him to be the gardener,” had said, “Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.” In time, the distant river with the ships came full in view, and with it pictures of the poor fishermen, mending their nets, who arose and followed him,—of the teaching of the people from a ship pushed off a little way from shore, by reason of the multitude,—of a majestic figure walking on the water, in the loneliness of night. My very shadow on the ground was eloquent of Christmas; for did not the people lay their sick where the more shadows of the men who had heard and seen him might fall as they passed along?

Thus Christmas begirt me, far and near, until I had come to Blackheath, and had walked down the long vista of gnarled old trees in Greenwich Park, and was being steam-rattled through the mists now closing in once more, towards the lights of London. Brightly they shone, but not so brightly as my own fire, and the brighter faces around it, when we came together to celebrate the day. And there I told of worthy Master Richard Watts, and of my supper with the Six Poor Travellers who were neither Rogues nor Proctors, and from that hour to this I have never seen one of them again.

THE HOLLY-TREE

1855

FIRST BRANCH

MYSELF

I have kept one secret in the course of my life. I am a bashful man. Nobody would suppose it, nobody ever does suppose it, nobody ever did suppose it, but I am naturally a bashful man. This is the secret which I have never breathed until now.

I might greatly move the reader by some account of the innumerable places I have not been to, the innumerable people I have not called upon or received, the innumerable social evasions I have been guilty of, solely because I am by original constitution and character a bashful man. But I will leave the reader unmoved, and proceed with the object before me.

That object is to give a plain account of my travels and discoveries in the Holly-Tree Inn; in which place of good entertainment for man and beast I was once snowed up.

It happened in the memorable year when I parted for ever from Angela Leath, whom I was shortly to have married, on making the discovery that she preferred my bosom friend. From our school-days I had freely admitted Edwin, in my own mind, to be far superior to myself; and, though I was grievously wounded at heart, I felt the preference to be natural, and tried to forgive them both. It was under these circumstances that I resolved to go to America—on my way to the Devil.

Communicating my discovery neither to Angela nor to Edwin, but resolving to write each of them an affecting letter conveying my blessing and forgiveness, which the steam-tender for shore should carry to the post when I myself should be bound for the New World, far beyond recall,—I say, locking up my grief in my own breast, and consoling myself as I could with the prospect of being generous, I quietly left all I held dear, and started on the desolate journey I have mentioned.

The dead winter-time was in full dreariness when I left my chambers for ever, at five o’clock in the morning. I had shaved by candle-light, of course, and was miserably cold, and experienced that general all-pervading sensation of getting up to be hanged which I have usually found inseparable from untimely rising under such circumstances.

How well I remember the forlorn aspect of Fleet-street when I came out of the Temple! The street-lamps flickering in the gusty north-east wind, as if the very gas were contorted with cold; the white-topped houses; the bleak, star-lighted sky; the market people and other early stragglers, trotting to circulate their almost frozen blood; the hospitable light and warmth of the few coffee-shops and public-houses that were open for such customers; the hard, dry, frosty rime with which the air was charged (the wind had already beaten it into every crevice), and which lashed my face like a steel whip.

It wanted nine days to the end of the month, and end of the year. The Post-office packet for the United States was to depart from Liverpool, weather permitting, on the first of the ensuing month, and I had the intervening time on my hands. I had taken this into consideration, and had resolved to make a visit to a certain spot (which I need not name) on the farther borders of Yorkshire. It was endeared to me by my having first seen Angela at a farmhouse in that place, and my melancholy was gratified by the idea of taking a wintry leave of it before my expatriation. I ought to explain, that, to avoid being sought out before my resolution should have been rendered irrevocable by being carried into full effect, I had written to Angela overnight, in my usual manner, lamenting that urgent business, of which she should know all particulars by-and-by—took me unexpectedly away from her for a week or ten days.

There was no Northern Railway at that time, and in its place there were stage-coaches; which I occasionally find myself, in common with some other people, affecting to lament now, but which everybody dreaded as a very serious penance then. I had secured the box-seat on the fastest of these, and my business in Fleet-street was to get into a cab with my portmanteau, so to make the best of my way to the Peacock at Islington, where I was to join this coach. But when one of our Temple watchmen, who carried my portmanteau into Fleet-street for me, told me about the huge blocks of ice that had for some days past been floating in the river, having closed up in the night, and made a walk from the Temple Gardens over to the Surrey shore, I began to ask myself the question, whether the box-seat would not be likely to put a sudden and a frosty end to my unhappiness. I was heart-broken, it is true, and yet I was not quite so far gone as to wish to be frozen to death.

When I got up to the Peacock,—where I found everybody drinking hot purl, in self-preservation,—I asked if there were an inside seat to spare. I then discovered that, inside or out, I was the only passenger. This gave me a still livelier idea of the great inclemency of the weather, since that coach always loaded particularly well. However, I took a little purl (which I found uncommonly good), and got into the coach. When I was seated, they built me up with straw to the waist, and, conscious of making a rather ridiculous appearance, I began my journey.

It was still dark when we left the Peacock. For a little while, pale, uncertain ghosts of houses and trees appeared and vanished, and then it was hard, black, frozen day. People were lighting their fires; smoke was mounting straight up high into the rarified air; and we were rattling for Highgate Archway over the hardest ground I have ever heard the ring of iron shoes on. As we got into the country, everything seemed to have grown old and gray. The roads, the trees, thatched roofs of cottages and homesteads, the ricks in farmers’ yards. Out-door work was abandoned, horse-troughs at roadside inns were frozen hard, no stragglers lounged about, doors were close shut, little turnpike houses had blazing fires inside, and children (even turnpike people have children, and seem to like them) rubbed the frost from the little panes of glass with their chubby arms, that their bright eyes might catch a glimpse of the solitary coach going by. I don’t know when the snow begin to set in; but I know that we were changing horses somewhere when I heard the guard remark, “That the old lady up in the sky was picking her geese pretty hard to-day.” Then, indeed, I found the white down falling fast and thick.

The lonely day wore on, and I dozed it out, as a lonely traveller does. I was warm and valiant after eating and drinking,—particularly after dinner; cold and depressed at all other times. I was always bewildered as to time and place, and always more or less out of my senses. The coach and horses seemed to execute in chorus Auld Lang Syne, without a moment’s intermission. They kept the time and tune with the greatest regularity, and rose into the swell at the beginning of the Refrain, with a precision that worried me to death. While we changed horses, the guard and coachman went stumping up and down the road, printing off their shoes in the snow, and poured so much liquid consolation into themselves without being any the worse for it, that I began to confound them, as it darkened again, with two great white casks standing on end. Our horses tumbled down in solitary places, and we got them up,—which was the pleasantest variety I had, for it warmed me. And it snowed and snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off snowing. All night long we went on in this manner. Thus we came round the clock, upon the Great North Road, to the performance of Auld Lang Syne by day again. And it snowed and snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off snowing.

I forget now where we were at noon on the second day, and where we ought to have been; but I know that we were scores of miles behindhand, and that our case was growing worse every hour. The drift was becoming prodigiously deep; landmarks were getting snowed out; the road and the fields were all one; instead of having fences and hedge-rows to guide us, we went crunching on over an unbroken surface of ghastly white that might sink beneath us at any moment and drop us down a whole hillside. Still the coachman and guard—who kept together on the box, always in council, and looking well about them—made out the track with astonishing sagacity.

When we came in sight of a town, it looked, to my fancy, like a large drawing on a slate, with abundance of slate-pencil expended on the churches and houses where the snow lay thickest. When we came within a town, and found the church clocks all stopped, the dial-faces choked with snow, and the inn-signs blotted out, it seemed as if the whole place were overgrown with white moss. As to the coach, it was a mere snowball; similarly, the men and boys who ran along beside us to the town’s end, turning our clogged wheels and encouraging our horses, were men and boys of snow; and the bleak wild solitude to which they at last dismissed us was a snowy Sahara. One would have thought this enough: notwithstanding which, I pledge my word that it snowed and snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off snowing.

We performed Auld Lang Syne the whole day; seeing nothing, out of towns and villages, but the track of stoats, hares, and foxes, and sometimes of birds. At nine o’clock at night, on a Yorkshire moor, a cheerful burst from our horn, and a welcome sound of talking, with a glimmering and moving about of lanterns, roused me from my drowsy state. I found that we were going to change.

They helped me out, and I said to a waiter, whose bare head became as white as King Lear’s in a single minute, “What Inn is this?”

“The Holly-Tree, sir,” said he.

“Upon my word, I believe,” said I, apologetically, to the guard and coachman, “that I must stop here.”

Now the landlord, and the landlady, and the ostler, and the post-boy, and all the stable authorities, had already asked the coachman, to the wide-eyed interest of all the rest of the establishment, if he meant to go on. The coachman had already replied, “Yes, he’d take her through it,”—meaning by Her the coach,—“if so be as George would stand by him.” George was the guard, and he had already sworn that he would stand by him. So the helpers were already getting the horses out.

My declaring myself beaten, after this parley, was not an announcement without preparation. Indeed, but for the way to the announcement being smoothed by the parley, I more than doubt whether, as an innately bashful man, I should have had the confidence to make it. As it was, it received the approval even of the guard and coachman. Therefore, with many confirmations of my inclining, and many remarks from one bystander to another, that the gentleman could go for’ard by the mail to-morrow, whereas to-night he would only be froze, and where was the good of a gentleman being froze—ah, let alone buried alive (which latter clause was added by a humorous helper as a joke at my expense, and was extremely well received), I saw my portmanteau got out stiff, like a frozen body; did the handsome thing by the guard and coachman; wished them good-night and a prosperous journey; and, a little ashamed of myself, after all, for leaving them to fight it out alone, followed the landlord, landlady, and waiter of the Holly-Tree up-stairs.

I thought I had never seen such a large room as that into which they showed me. It had five windows, with dark red curtains that would have absorbed the light of a general illumination; and there were complications of drapery at the top of the curtains, that went wandering about the wall in a most extraordinary manner. I asked for a smaller room, and they told me there was no smaller room. They could screen me in, however, the landlord said. They brought a great old japanned screen, with natives (Japanese, I suppose) engaged in a variety of idiotic pursuits all over it; and left me roasting whole before an immense fire.

My bedroom was some quarter of a mile off, up a great staircase at the end of a long gallery; and nobody knows what a misery this is to a bashful man who would rather not meet people on the stairs. It was the grimmest room I have ever had the nightmare in; and all the furniture, from the four posts of the bed to the two old silver candle-sticks, was tall, high-shouldered, and spindle-waisted. Below, in my sitting-room, if I looked round my screen, the wind rushed at me like a mad bull; if I stuck to my arm-chair, the fire scorched me to the colour of a new brick. The chimney-piece was very high, and there was a bad glass—what I may call a wavy glass—above it, which, when I stood up, just showed me my anterior phrenological developments,—and these never look well, in any subject, cut short off at the eyebrow. If I stood with my back to the fire, a gloomy vault of darkness above and beyond the screen insisted on being looked at; and, in its dim remoteness, the drapery of the ten curtains of the five windows went twisting and creeping about, like a nest of gigantic worms.

I suppose that what I observe in myself must be observed by some other men of similar character in themselves; therefore I am emboldened to mention, that, when I travel, I never arrive at a place but I immediately want to go away from it. Before I had finished my supper of broiled fowl and mulled port, I had impressed upon the waiter in detail my arrangements for departure in the morning. Breakfast and bill at eight. Fly at nine. Two horses, or, if needful, even four.

Tired though I was, the night appeared about a week long. In cases of nightmare, I thought of Angela, and felt more depressed than ever by the reflection that I was on the shortest road to Gretna Green. What had I to do with Gretna Green? I was not going that way to the Devil, but by the American route, I remarked in my bitterness.

In the morning I found that it was snowing still, that it had snowed all night, and that I was snowed up. Nothing could get out of that spot on the moor, or could come at it, until the road had been cut out by labourers from the market-town. When they might cut their way to the Holly-Tree nobody could tell me.

It was now Christmas-eve. I should have had a dismal Christmas-time of it anywhere, and consequently that did not so much matter; still, being snowed up was like dying of frost, a thing I had not bargained for. I felt very lonely. Yet I could no more have proposed to the landlord and landlady to admit me to their society (though I should have liked it—very much) than I could have asked them to present me with a piece of plate. Here my great secret, the real bashfulness of my character, is to be observed. Like most bashful men, I judge of other people as if they were bashful too. Besides being far too shamefaced to make the proposal myself, I really had a delicate misgiving that it would be in the last degree disconcerting to them.

Trying to settle down, therefore, in my solitude, I first of all asked what books there were in the house. The waiter brought me a Book of Roads, two or three old Newspapers, a little Song-Book, terminating in a collection of Toasts and Sentiments, a little Jest-Book, an odd volume of Peregrine Pickle, and the Sentimental Journey. I knew every word of the two last already, but I read them through again, then tried to hum all the songs (Auld Lang Syne was among them); went entirely through the jokes,—in which I found a fund of melancholy adapted to my state of mind; proposed all the toasts, enunciated all the sentiments, and mastered the papers. The latter had nothing in them but stock advertisements, a meeting about a county rate, and a highway robbery. As I am a greedy reader, I could not make this supply hold out until night; it was exhausted by tea-time. Being then entirely cast upon my own resources, I got through an hour in considering what to do next. Ultimately, it came into my head (from which I was anxious by any means to exclude Angela and Edwin), that I would endeavour to recall my experience of Inns, and would try how long it lasted me. I stirred the fire, moved my chair a little to one side of the screen,—not daring to go far, for I knew the wind was waiting to make a rush at me, I could hear it growling,—and began.

My first impressions of an Inn dated from the Nursery; consequently I went back to the Nursery for a starting-point, and found myself at the knee of a sallow woman with a fishy eye, an aquiline nose, and a green gown, whose specially was a dismal narrative of a landlord by the roadside, whose visitors unaccountably disappeared for many years, until it was discovered that the pursuit of his life had been to convert them into pies. For the better devotion of himself to this branch of industry, he had constructed a secret door behind the head of the bed; and when the visitor (oppressed with pie) had fallen asleep, this wicked landlord would look softly in with a lamp in one hand and a knife in the other, would cut his throat, and would make him into pies; for which purpose he had coppers, underneath a trap-door, always boiling; and rolled out his pastry in the dead of the night. Yet even he was not insensible to the stings of conscience, for he never went to sleep without being heard to mutter, “Too much pepper!” which was eventually the cause of his being brought to justice. I had no sooner disposed of this criminal than there started up another of the same period, whose profession was originally house-breaking; in the pursuit of which art he had had his right ear chopped off one night, as he was burglariously getting in at a window, by a brave and lovely servant-maid (whom the aquiline-nosed woman, though not at all answering the description, always mysteriously implied to be herself). After several years, this brave and lovely servant-maid was married to the landlord of a country Inn; which landlord had this remarkable characteristic, that he always wore a silk nightcap, and never would on any consideration take it off. At last, one night, when he was fast asleep, the brave and lovely woman lifted up his silk nightcap on the right side, and found that he had no ear there; upon which she sagaciously perceived that he was the clipped housebreaker, who had married her with the intention of putting her to death. She immediately heated the poker and terminated his career, for which she was taken to King George upon his throne, and received the compliments of royalty on her great discretion and valour. This same narrator, who had a Ghoulish pleasure, I have long been persuaded, in terrifying me to the utmost confines of my reason, had another authentic anecdote within her own experience, founded, I now believe, upon Raymond and Agnes, or the Bleeding Nun. She said it happened to her brother-in-law, who was immensely rich,—which my father was not; and immensely tall,—which my father was not. It was always a point with this Ghoul to present my clearest relations and friends to my youthful mind under circumstances of disparaging contrast. The brother-in-law was riding once through a forest on a magnificent horse (we had no magnificent horse at our house), attended by a favourite and valuable Newfoundland dog (we had no dog), when he found himself benighted, and came to an Inn. A dark woman opened the door, and he asked her if he could have a bed there. She answered yes, and put his horse in the stable, and took him into a room where there were two dark men. While he was at supper, a parrot in the room began to talk, saying, “Blood, blood! Wipe up the blood!” Upon which one of the dark men wrung the parrot’s neck, and said he was fond of roasted parrots, and he meant to have this one for breakfast in the morning. After eating and drinking heartily, the immensely rich, tall brother-in-law went up to bed; but he was rather vexed, because they had shut his dog in the stable, saying that they never allowed dogs in the house. He sat very quiet for more than an hour, thinking and thinking, when, just as his candle was burning out, he heard a scratch at the door. He opened the door, and there was the Newfoundland dog! The dog came softly in, smelt about him, went straight to some straw in the corner which the dark men had said covered apples, tore the straw away, and disclosed two sheets steeped in blood. Just at that moment the candle went out, and the brother-in-law, looking through a chink in the door, saw the two dark men stealing up-stairs; one armed with a dagger that long (about five feet); the other carrying a chopper, a sack, and a spade. Having no remembrance of the close of this adventure, I suppose my faculties to have been always so frozen with terror at this stage of it, that the power of listening stagnated within me for some quarter of an hour.

These barbarous stories carried me, sitting there on the Holly-Tree hearth, to the Roadside Inn, renowned in my time in a sixpenny book with a folding plate, representing in a central compartment of oval form the portrait of Jonathan Bradford, and in four corner compartments four incidents of the tragedy with which the name is associated,—coloured with a hand at once so free and economical, that the bloom of Jonathan’s complexion passed without any pause into the breeches of the ostler, and, smearing itself off into the next division, became rum in a bottle. Then I remembered how the landlord was found at the murdered traveller’s bedside, with his own knife at his feet, and blood upon his hand; how he was hanged for the murder, notwithstanding his protestation that he had indeed come there to kill the traveller for his saddle-bags, but had been stricken motionless on finding him already slain; and how the ostler, years afterwards, owned the deed. By this time I had made myself quite uncomfortable. I stirred the fire, and stood with my back to it as long as I could bear the heat, looking up at the darkness beyond the screen, and at the wormy curtains creeping in and creeping out, like the worms in the ballad of Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene.

There was an Inn in the cathedral town where I went to school, which had pleasanter recollections about it than any of these. I took it next. It was the Inn where friends used to put up, and where we used to go to see parents, and to have salmon and fowls, and be tipped. It had an ecclesiastical sign,—the Mitre,—and a bar that seemed to be the next best thing to a bishopric, it was so snug. I loved the landlord’s youngest daughter to distraction,—but let that pass. It was in this Inn that I was cried over by my rosy little sister, because I had acquired a black eye in a fight. And though she had been, that Holly-Tree night, for many a long year where all tears are dried, the Mitre softened me yet.

“To be continued to-morrow,” said I, when I took my candle to go to bed. But my bed took it upon itself to continue the train of thought that night. It carried me away, like the enchanted carpet, to a distant place (though still in England), and there, alighting from a stage-coach at another Inn in the snow, as I had actually done some years before, I repeated in my sleep a curious experience I had really had there. More than a year before I made the journey in the course of which I put up at that Inn, I had lost a very near and dear friend by death. Every night since, at home or away from home, I had dreamed of that friend; sometimes as still living; sometimes as returning from the world of shadows to comfort me; always as being beautiful, placid, and happy, never in association with any approach to fear or distress. It was at a lonely Inn in a wide moorland place, that I halted to pass the night. When I had looked from my bedroom window over the waste of snow on which the moon was shining, I sat down by my fire to write a letter. I had always, until that hour, kept it within my own breast that I dreamed every night of the dear lost one. But in the letter that I wrote I recorded the circumstance, and added that I felt much interested in proving whether the subject of my dream would still be faithful to me, travel-tired, and in that remote place. No. I lost the beloved figure of my vision in parting with the secret. My sleep has never looked upon it since, in sixteen years, but once. I was in Italy, and awoke (or seemed to awake), the well-remembered voice distinctly in my ears, conversing with it. I entreated it, as it rose above my bed and soared up to the vaulted roof of the old room, to answer me a question I had asked touching the Future Life. My hands were still outstretched towards it as it vanished, when I heard a bell ringing by the garden wall, and a voice in the deep stillness of the night calling on all good Christians to pray for the souls of the dead; it being All Souls’ Eve.

To return to the Holly-Tree. When I awoke next day, it was freezing hard, and the lowering sky threatened more snow. My breakfast cleared away, I drew my chair into its former place, and, with the fire getting so much the better of the landscape that I sat in twilight, resumed my Inn remembrances.

That was a good Inn down in Wiltshire where I put up once, in the days of the hard Wiltshire ale, and before all beer was bitterness. It was on the skirts of Salisbury Plain, and the midnight wind that rattled my lattice window came moaning at me from Stonehenge. There was a hanger-on at that establishment (a supernaturally preserved Druid I believe him to have been, and to be still), with long white hair, and a flinty blue eye always looking afar off; who claimed to have been a shepherd, and who seemed to be ever watching for the reappearance, on the verge of the horizon, of some ghostly flock of sheep that had been mutton for many ages. He was a man with a weird belief in him that no one could count the stones of Stonehenge twice, and make the same number of them; likewise, that any one who counted them three times nine times, and then stood in the centre and said, “I dare!” would behold a tremendous apparition, and be stricken dead. He pretended to have seen a bustard (I suspect him to have been familiar with the dodo), in manner following: He was out upon the plain at the close of a late autumn day, when he dimly discerned, going on before him at a curious fitfully bounding pace, what he at first supposed to be a gig-umbrella that had been blown from some conveyance, but what he presently believed to be a lean dwarf man upon a little pony. Having followed this object for some distance without gaining on it, and having called to it many times without receiving any answer, he pursued it for miles and miles, when, at length coming up with it, he discovered it to be the last bustard in Great Britain, degenerated into a wingless state, and running along the ground. Resolved to capture him or perish in the attempt, he closed with the bustard; but the bustard, who had formed a counter-resolution that he should do neither, threw him, stunned him, and was last seen making off due west. This weird man, at that stage of metempsychosis, may have been a sleep-walker or an enthusiast or a robber; but I awoke one night to find him in the dark at my bedside, repeating the Athanasian Creed in a terrific voice. I paid my bill next day, and retired from the county with all possible precipitation.

That was not a commonplace story which worked itself out at a little Inn in Switzerland, while I was staying there. It was a very homely place, in a village of one narrow zigzag street, among mountains, and you went in at the main door through the cow-house, and among the mules and the dogs and the fowls, before ascending a great bare staircase to the rooms; which were all of unpainted wood, without plastering or papering,—like rough packing-cases. Outside there was nothing but the straggling street, a little toy church with a copper-coloured steeple, a pine forest, a torrent, mists, and mountain-sides. A young man belonging to this Inn had disappeared eight weeks before (it was winter-time), and was supposed to have had some undiscovered love affair, and to have gone for a soldier. He had got up in the night, and dropped into the village street from the loft in which he slept with another man; and he had done it so quietly, that his companion and fellow-labourer had heard no movement when he was awakened in the morning, and they said, “Louis, where is Henri?” They looked for him high and low, in vain, and gave him up. Now, outside this Inn, there stood, as there stood outside every dwelling in the village, a stack of firewood; but the stack belonging to the Inn was higher than any of the rest, because the Inn was the richest house, and burnt the most fuel. It began to be noticed, while they were looking high and low, that a Bantam cock, part of the live stock of the Inn, put himself wonderfully out of his way to get to the top of this wood-stack; and that he would stay there for hours and hours, crowing, until he appeared in danger of splitting himself. Five weeks went on,—six weeks,—and still this terrible Bantam, neglecting his domestic affairs, was always on the top of the wood-stack, crowing the very eyes out of his head. By this time it was perceived that Louis had become inspired with a violent animosity towards the terrible Bantam, and one morning he was seen by a woman, who sat nursing her goître at a little window in a gleam of sun, to catch up a rough billet of wood, with a great oath, hurl it at the terrible Bantam crowing on the wood-stack, and bring him down dead. Hereupon the woman, with a sudden light in her mind, stole round to the back of the wood-stack, and, being a good climber, as all those women are, climbed up, and soon was seen upon the summit, screaming, looking down the hollow within, and crying, “Seize Louis, the murderer! Ring the church bell! Here is the body!” I saw the murderer that day, and I saw him as I sat by my fire at the Holly-Tree Inn, and I see him now, lying shackled with cords on the stable litter, among the mild eyes and the smoking breath of the cows, waiting to be taken away by the police, and stared at by the fearful village. A heavy animal,—the dullest animal in the stables,—with a stupid head, and a lumpish face devoid of any trace of insensibility, who had been, within the knowledge of the murdered youth, an embezzler of certain small moneys belonging to his master, and who had taken this hopeful mode of putting a possible accuser out of his way. All of which he confessed next day, like a sulky wretch who couldn’t be troubled any more, now that they had got hold of him, and meant to make an end of him. I saw him once again, on the day of my departure from the Inn. In that Canton the headsman still does his office with a sword; and I came upon this murderer sitting bound, to a chair, with his eyes bandaged, on a scaffold in a little market-place. In that instant, a great sword (loaded with quicksilver in the thick part of the blade) swept round him like a gust of wind or fire, and there was no such creature in the world. My wonder was, not that he was so suddenly dispatched, but that any head was left unreaped, within a radius of fifty yards of that tremendous sickle.

That was a good Inn, too, with the kind, cheerful landlady and the honest landlord, where I lived in the shadow of Mont Blanc, and where one of the apartments has a zoological papering on the walls, not so accurately joined but that the elephant occasionally rejoices in a tiger’s hind legs and tail, while the lion puts on a trunk and tusks, and the bear, moulting as it were, appears as to portions of himself like a leopard. I made several American friends at that Inn, who all called Mont Blanc Mount Blank,—except one good-humoured gentleman, of a very sociable nature, who became on such intimate terms with it that he spoke of it familiarly as “Blank;” observing, at breakfast, “Blank looks pretty tall this morning;” or considerably doubting in the courtyard in the evening, whether there warn’t some go-ahead naters in our country, sir, that would make out the top of Blank in a couple of hours from first start—now!

Once I passed a fortnight at an Inn in the North of England, where I was haunted by the ghost of a tremendous pie. It was a Yorkshire pie, like a fort,—an abandoned fort with nothing in it; but the waiter had a fixed idea that it was a point of ceremony at every meal to put the pie on the table. After some days I tried to hint, in several delicate ways, that I considered the pie done with; as, for example, by emptying fag-ends of glasses of wine into it; putting cheese-plates and spoons into it, as into a basket; putting wine-bottles into it, as into a cooler; but always in vain, the pie being invariably cleaned out again and brought up as before. At last, beginning to be doubtful whether I was not the victim of a spectral illusion, and whether my health and spirits might not sink under the horrors of an imaginary pie, I cut a triangle out of it, fully as large as the musical instrument of that name in a powerful orchestra. Human provision could not have foreseen the result—but the waiter mended the pie. With some effectual species of cement, he adroitly fitted the triangle in again, and I paid my reckoning and fled.

The Holly-Tree was getting rather dismal. I made an overland expedition beyond the screen, and penetrated as far as the fourth window. Here I was driven back by stress of weather. Arrived at my winter-quarters once more, I made up the fire, and took another Inn.

It was in the remotest part of Cornwall. A great annual Miners’ Feast was being holden at the Inn, when I and my travelling companions presented ourselves at night among the wild crowd that were dancing before it by torchlight. We had had a break-down in the dark, on a stony morass some miles away; and I had the honour of leading one of the unharnessed post-horses. If any lady or gentleman, on perusal of the present lines, will take any very tall post-horse with his traces hanging about his legs, and will conduct him by the bearing-rein into the heart of a country dance of a hundred and fifty couples, that lady or gentleman will then, and only then, form an adequate idea of the extent to which that post-horse will tread on his conductor’s toes. Over and above which, the post-horse, finding three hundred people whirling about him, will probably rear, and also lash out with his hind legs, in a manner incompatible with dignity or self-respect on his conductor’s part. With such little drawbacks on my usually impressive aspect, I appeared at this Cornish Inn, to the unutterable wonder of the Cornish Miners. It was full, and twenty times full, and nobody could be received but the post-horse,—though to get rid of that noble animal was something. While my fellow-travellers and I were discussing how to pass the night and so much of the next day as must intervene before the jovial blacksmith and the jovial wheelwright would be in a condition to go out on the morass and mend the coach, an honest man stepped forth from the crowd and proposed his unlet floor of two rooms, with supper of eggs and bacon, ale and punch. We joyfully accompanied him home to the strangest of clean houses, where we were well entertained to the satisfaction of all parties. But the novel feature of the entertainment was, that our host was a chair-maker, and that the chairs assigned to us were mere frames, altogether without bottoms of any sort; so that we passed the evening on perches. Nor was this the absurdest consequence; for when we unbent at supper, and any one of us gave way to laughter, he forgot the peculiarity of his position, and instantly disappeared. I myself, doubled up into an attitude from which self-extrication was impossible, was taken out of my frame, like a clown in a comic pantomime who has tumbled into a tub, five times by the taper’s light during the eggs and bacon.

The Holly-Tree was fast reviving within me a sense of loneliness. I began to feel conscious that my subject would never carry on until I was dug out. I might be a week here,—weeks!

There was a story with a singular idea in it, connected with an Inn I once passed a night at in a picturesque old town on the Welsh border. In a large double-bedded room of this Inn there had been a suicide committed by poison, in one bed, while a tired traveller slept unconscious in the other. After that time, the suicide bed was never used, but the other constantly was; the disused bedstead remaining in the room empty, though as to all other respects in its old state. The story ran, that whosoever slept in this room, though never so entire a stranger, from never so far off, was invariably observed to come down in the morning with an impression that he smelt Laudanum, and that his mind always turned upon the subject of suicide; to which, whatever kind of man he might be, he was certain to make some reference if he conversed with any one. This went on for years, until it at length induced the landlord to take the disused bedstead down, and bodily burn it,—bed, hangings, and all. The strange influence (this was the story) now changed to a fainter one, but never changed afterwards. The occupant of that room, with occasional but very rare exceptions, would come down in the morning, trying to recall a forgotten dream he had had in the night. The landlord, on his mentioning his perplexity, would suggest various commonplace subjects, not one of which, as he very well knew, was the true subject. But the moment the landlord suggested “Poison,” the traveller started, and cried, “Yes!” He never failed to accept that suggestion, and he never recalled any more of the dream.

This reminiscence brought the Welsh Inns in general before me; with the women in their round hats, and the harpers with their white beards (venerable, but humbugs, I am afraid), playing outside the door while I took my dinner. The transition was natural to the Highland Inns, with the oatmeal bannocks, the honey, the venison steaks, the trout from the loch, the whisky, and perhaps (having the materials so temptingly at hand) the Athol brose. Once was I coming south from the Scottish Highlands in hot haste, hoping to change quickly at the station at the bottom of a certain wild historical glen, when these eyes did with mortification see the landlord come out with a telescope and sweep the whole prospect for the horses; which horses were away picking up their own living, and did not heave in sight under four hours. Having thought of the loch-trout, I was taken by quick association to the Anglers’ Inns of England (I have assisted at innumerable feats of angling by lying in the bottom of the boat, whole summer days, doing nothing with the greatest perseverance; which I have generally found to be as effectual towards the taking of fish as the finest tackle and the utmost science), and to the pleasant white, clean, flower-pot-decorated bedrooms of those inns, overlooking the river, and the ferry, and the green ait, and the church-spire, and the country bridge; and to the pearless Emma with the bright eyes and the pretty smile, who waited, bless her! with a natural grace that would have converted Blue-Beard. Casting my eyes upon my Holly-Tree fire, I next discerned among the glowing coals the pictures of a score or more of those wonderful English posting-inns which we are all so sorry to have lost, which were so large and so comfortable, and which were such monuments of British submission to rapacity and extortion. He who would see these houses pining away, let him walk from Basingstoke, or even Windsor, to London, by way of Hounslow, and moralise on their perishing remains; the stables crumbling to dust; unsettled labourers and wanderers bivouacking in the outhouses; grass growing in the yards; the rooms, where erst so many hundred beds of down were made up, let off to Irish lodgers at eighteenpence a week; a little ill-looking beer-shop shrinking in the tap of former days, burning coach-house gates for firewood, having one of its two windows bunged up, as if it had received punishment in a fight with the Railroad; a low, bandy-legged, brick-making bulldog standing in the doorway. What could I next see in my fire so naturally as the new railway-house of these times near the dismal country station; with nothing particular on draught but cold air and damp, nothing worth mentioning in the larder but new mortar, and no business doing beyond a conceited affectation of luggage in the hall? Then I came to the Inns of Paris, with the pretty apartment of four pieces up one hundred and seventy-five waxed stairs, the privilege of ringing the bell all day long without influencing anybody’s mind or body but your own, and the not-too-much-for-dinner, considering the price. Next to the provincial Inns of France, with the great church-tower rising above the courtyard, the horse-bells jingling merrily up and down the street beyond, and the clocks of all descriptions in all the rooms, which are never right, unless taken at the precise minute when, by getting exactly twelve hours too fast or too slow, they unintentionally become so. Away I went, next, to the lesser roadside Inns of Italy; where all the dirty clothes in the house (not in wear) are always lying in your anteroom; where the mosquitoes make a raisin pudding of your face in summer, and the cold bites it blue in winter; where you get what you can, and forget what you can’t: where I should again like to be boiling my tea in a pocket-handkerchief dumpling, for want of a teapot. So to the old palace Inns and old monastery Inns, in towns and cities of the same bright country; with their massive quadrangular staircases, whence you may look from among clustering pillars high into the blue vault of heaven; with their stately banqueting-rooms, and vast refectories; with their labyrinths of ghostly bedchambers, and their glimpses into gorgeous streets that have no appearance of reality or possibility. So to the close little Inns of the Malaria districts, with their pale attendants, and their peculiar smell of never letting in the air. So to the immense fantastic Inns of Venice, with the cry of the gondolier below, as he skims the corner; the grip of the watery odours on one particular little bit of the bridge of your nose (which is never released while you stay there); and the great bell of St. Mark’s Cathedral tolling midnight. Next I put up for a minute at the restless Inns upon the Rhine, where your going to bed, no matter at what hour, appears to be the tocsin for everybody else’s getting up; and where, in the table-d’hôte room at the end of the long table (with several Towers of Babel on it at the other end, all made of white plates), one knot of stoutish men, entirely dressed in jewels and dirt, and having nothing else upon them, will remain all night, clinking glasses, and singing about the river that flows, and the grape that grows, and Rhine wine that beguiles, and Rhine woman that smiles and hi drink drink my friend and ho drink drink my brother, and all the rest of it. I departed thence, as a matter of course, to other German Inns, where all the eatables are soddened down to the same flavour, and where the mind is disturbed by the apparition of hot puddings, and boiled cherries, sweet and slab, at awfully unexpected periods of the repast. After a draught of sparkling beer from a foaming glass jug, and a glance of recognition through the windows of the student beer-houses at Heidelberg and elsewhere, I put out to sea for the Inns of America, with their four hundred beds apiece, and their eight or nine hundred ladies and gentlemen at dinner every day. Again I stood in the bar-rooms thereof, taking my evening cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail. Again I listened to my friend the General,—whom I had known for five minutes, in the course of which period he had made me intimate for life with two Majors, who again had made me intimate for life with three Colonels, who again had made me brother to twenty-two civilians,—again, I say, I listened to my friend the General, leisurely expounding the resources of the establishment, as to gentlemen’s morning-room, sir; ladies’ morning-room, sir; gentlemen’s evening-room, sir; ladies’ evening-room, sir; ladies’ and gentlemen’s evening reuniting-room, sir; music-room, sir; reading-room, sir; over four hundred sleeping-rooms, sir; and the entire planned and finited within twelve calendar months from the first clearing off of the old encumbrances on the plot, at a cost of five hundred thousand dollars, sir. Again I found, as to my individual way of thinking, that the greater, the more gorgeous, and the more dollarous the establishment was, the less desirable it was. Nevertheless, again I drank my cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail, in all good-will, to my friend the General, and my friends the Majors, Colonels, and civilians all; full well knowing that, whatever little motes my beamy eyes may have descried in theirs, they belong to a kind, generous, large-hearted, and great people.

I had been going on lately at a quick pace to keep my solitude out of my mind; but here I broke down for good, and gave up the subject. What was I to do? What was to become of me? Into what extremity was I submissively to sink? Supposing that, like Baron Trenck, I looked out for a mouse or spider, and found one, and beguiled my imprisonment by training it? Even that might be dangerous with a view to the future. I might be so far gone when the road did come to be cut through the snow, that, on my way forth, I might burst into tears, and beseech, like the prisoner who was released in his old age from the Bastille, to be taken back again to the five windows, the ten curtains, and the sinuous drapery.

A desperate idea came into my head. Under any other circumstances I should have rejected it; but, in the strait at which I was, I held it fast. Could I so far overcome the inherent bashfulness which withheld me from the landlord’s table and the company I might find there, as to call up the Boots, and ask him to take a chair,—and something in a liquid form,—and talk to me? I could, I would, I did.

SECOND BRANCH

THE BOOTS

Where had he been in his time? he repeated, when I asked him the question. Lord, he had been everywhere! And what had he been? Bless you, he had been everything you could mention a’most!

Seen a good deal? Why, of course he had. I should say so, he could assure me, if I only knew about a twentieth part of what had come in his way. Why, it would be easier for him, he expected, to tell what he hadn’t seen than what he had. Ah! A deal, it would.

What was the curiousest thing he had seen? Well! He didn’t know. He couldn’t momently name what was the curiousest thing he had seen—unless it was a Unicorn, and he see him once at a Fair. But supposing a young gentleman not eight year old was to run away with a fine young woman of seven, might I think that a queer start? Certainly. Then that was a start as he himself had had his blessed eyes on, and he had cleaned the shoes they run away in—and they was so little that he couldn’t get his hand into ’em.

Master Harry Walmers’ father, you see, he lived at the Elmses, down away by Shooter’s Hill there, six or seven miles from Lunnon. He was a gentleman of spirit, and good-looking, and held his head up when he walked, and had what you may call Fire about him. He wrote poetry, and he rode, and he ran, and he cricketed, and he danced, and he acted, and he done it all equally beautiful. He was uncommon proud of Master Harry as was his only child; but he didn’t spoil him neither. He was a gentleman that had a will of his own and a eye of his own, and that would be minded. Consequently, though he made quite a companion of the fine bright boy, and was delighted to see him so fond of reading his fairy books, and was never tired of hearing him say my name is Norval, or hearing him sing his songs about Young May Moons is beaming love, and When he as adores thee has left but the name, and that; still he kept the command over the child, and the child was a child, and it’s to be wished more of ’em was!

How did Boots happen to know all this? Why, through being under-gardener. Of course he couldn’t be under-gardener, and be always about, in the summer-time, near the windows on the lawn, a mowing, and sweeping, and weeding, and pruning, and this and that, without getting acquainted with the ways of the family. Even supposing Master Harry hadn’t come to him one morning early, and said, “Cobbs, how should you spell Norah, if you was asked?” and then began cutting it in print all over the fence.

He couldn’t say he had taken particular notice of children before that; but really it was pretty to see them two mites a going about the place together, deep in love. And the courage of the boy! Bless your soul, he’d have throwed off his little hat, and tucked up his little sleeves, and gone in at a Lion, he would, if they had happened to meet one, and she had been frightened of him. One day he stops, along with her, where Boots was hoeing weeds in the gravel, and says, speaking up, “Cobbs,” he says, “I like you.” “Do you, sir? I’m proud to hear it.” “Yes, I do, Cobbs. Why do I like you, do you think, Cobbs?” “Don’t know, Master Harry, I am sure.” “Because Norah likes you, Cobbs.” “Indeed, sir? That’s very gratifying.” “Gratifying, Cobbs? It’s better than millions of the brightest diamonds to be liked by Norah.” “Certainly, sir.” “You’re going away, ain’t you, Cobbs?” “Yes, sir.” “Would you like another situation, Cobbs?” “Well, sir, I shouldn’t object, if it was a good Inn.” “Then, Cobbs,” says he, “you shall be our Head Gardener when we are married.” And he tucks her, in her little sky-blue mantle, under his arm, and walks away.

Boots could assure me that it was better than a picter, and equal to a play, to see them babies, with their long, bright, curling hair, their sparkling eyes, and their beautiful light tread, a rambling about the garden, deep in love. Boots was of opinion that the birds believed they was birds, and kept up with ’em, singing to please ’em. Sometimes they would creep under the Tulip-tree, and would sit there with their arms round one another’s necks, and their soft cheeks touching, a reading about the Prince and the Dragon, and the good and bad enchanters, and the king’s fair daughter. Sometimes he would hear them planning about having a house in a forest, keeping bees and a cow, and living entirely on milk and honey. Once he came upon them by the pond, and heard Master Harry say, “Adorable Norah, kiss me, and say you love me to distraction, or I’ll jump in head-foremost.” And Boots made no question he would have done it if she hadn’t complied. On the whole, Boots said it had a tendency to make him feel as if he was in love himself—only he didn’t exactly know who with.

“Cobbs,” said Master Harry, one evening, when Cobbs was watering the flowers, “I am going on a visit, this present Midsummer, to my grandmamma’s at York.”

“Are you indeed, sir? I hope you’ll have a pleasant time. I am going into Yorkshire, myself, when I leave here.”

“Are you going to your grandmamma’s, Cobbs?”

“No, sir. I haven’t got such a thing.”

“Not as a grandmamma, Cobbs?”

“No, sir.”

The boy looked on at the watering of the flowers for a little while, and then said, “I shall be very glad indeed to go, Cobbs,—Norah’s going.”

“You’ll be all right then, sir,” says Cobbs, “with your beautiful sweetheart by your side.”

“Cobbs,” returned the boy, flushing, “I never let anybody joke about it, when I can prevent them.”

“It wasn’t a joke, sir,” says Cobbs, with humility,—“wasn’t so meant.”

“I am glad of that, Cobbs, because I like you, you know, and you’re going to live with us.—Cobbs!”

“Sir.”

“What do you think my grandmamma gives me when I go down there?”

“I couldn’t so much as make a guess, sir.”

“A Bank of England five-pound note, Cobbs.”

“Whew!” says Cobbs, “that’s a spanking sum of money, Master Harry.”

“A person could do a good deal with such a sum of money as that,—couldn’t a person, Cobbs?”

“I believe you, sir!”

“Cobbs,” said the boy, “I’ll tell you a secret. At Norah’s house, they have been joking her about me, and pretending to laugh at our being engaged,—pretending to make game of it, Cobbs!”

“Such, sir,” says Cobbs, “is the depravity of human natur.”

The boy, looking exactly like his father, stood for a few minutes with his glowing face towards the sunset, and then departed with, “Good-night, Cobbs. I’m going in.”

If I was to ask Boots how it happened that he was a-going to leave that place just at that present time, well, he couldn’t rightly answer me. He did suppose he might have stayed there till now if he had been anyways inclined. But, you see, he was younger then, and he wanted change. That’s what he wanted,—change. Mr. Walmers, he said to him when he gave him notice of his intentions to leave, “Cobbs,” he says, “have you anythink to complain of? I make the inquiry because if I find that any of my people really has anythink to complain of, I wish to make it right if I can.” “No, sir,” says Cobbs; “thanking you, sir, I find myself as well sitiwated here as I could hope to be anywheres. The truth is, sir, that I’m a-going to seek my fortun’.” “O, indeed, Cobbs!” he says; “I hope you may find it.” And Boots could assure me—which he did, touching his hair with his bootjack, as a salute in the way of his present calling—that he hadn’t found it yet.

Well, sir! Boots left the Elmses when his time was up, and Master Harry, he went down to the old lady’s at York, which old lady would have given that child the teeth out of her head (if she had had any), she was so wrapped up in him. What does that Infant do,—for Infant you may call him and be within the mark,—but cut away from that old lady’s with his Norah, on a expedition to go to Gretna Green and be married!

Sir, Boots was at this identical Holly-Tree Inn (having left it several times since to better himself, but always come back through one thing or another), when, one summer afternoon, the coach drives up, and out of the coach gets them two children. The Guard says to our Governor, “I don’t quite make out these little passengers, but the young gentleman’s words was, that they was to be brought here.” The young gentleman gets out; hands his lady out; gives the Guard something for himself; says to our Governor, “We’re to stop here to-night, please. Sitting-room and two bedrooms will be required. Chops and cherry-pudding for two!” and tucks her, in her sky-blue mantle, under his arm, and walks into the house much bolder than Brass.

Boots leaves me to judge what the amazement of that establishment was, when these two tiny creatures all alone by themselves was marched into the Angel,—much more so, when he, who had seen them without their seeing him, give the Governor his views of the expedition they was upon. “Cobbs,” says the Governor, “if this is so, I must set off myself to York, and quiet their friends’ minds. In which case you must keep your eye upon ’em, and humour ’em, till I come back. But before I take these measures, Cobbs, I should wish you to find from themselves whether your opinion is correct.” “Sir, to you,” says Cobbs, “that shall be done directly.”

So Boots goes up-stairs to the Angel, and there he finds Master Harry on a e-normous sofa,—immense at any time, but looking like the Great Bed of Ware, compared with him,—a drying the eyes of Miss Norah with his pocket-hankecher. Their little legs was entirely off the ground, of course, and it really is not possible for Boots to express to me how small them children looked.

“It’s Cobbs! It’s Cobbs!” cries Master Harry, and comes running to him, and catching hold of his hand. Miss Norah comes running to him on t’other side and catching hold of his t’other hand, and they both jump for joy.

“I see you a getting out, sir,” says Cobbs. “I thought it was you. I thought I couldn’t be mistaken in your height and figure. What’s the object of your journey, sir?—Matrimonial?”

“We are going to be married, Cobbs, at Gretna Green,” returned the boy. “We have run away on purpose. Norah has been in rather low spirits, Cobbs; but she’ll be happy, now we have found you to be our friend.”

“Thank you, sir, and thank you, miss,” says Cobbs, “for your good opinion. Did you bring any luggage with you, sir?”

If I will believe Boots when he gives me his word and honour upon it, the lady had got a parasol, a smelling-bottle, a round and a half of cold buttered toast, eight peppermint drops, and a hair-brush,—seemingly a doll’s. The gentleman had got about half a dozen yards of string, a knife, three or four sheets of writing-paper folded up surprising small, a orange, and a Chaney mug with his name upon it.

“What may be the exact natur of your plans, sir?” says Cobbs.

“To go on,” replied the boy,—which the courage of that boy was something wonderful!—“in the morning, and be married to-morrow.”

“Just so, sir,” says Cobbs. “Would it meet your views, sir, if I was to accompany you?”

When Cobbs said this, they both jumped for joy again, and cried out, “Oh, yes, yes, Cobbs! Yes!”

“Well, sir,” says Cobbs. “If you will excuse my having the freedom to give an opinion, what I should recommend would be this. I’m acquainted with a pony, sir, which, put in a pheayton that I could borrow, would take you and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, (myself driving, if you approved,) to the end of your journey in a very short space of time. I am not altogether sure, sir, that this pony will be at liberty to-morrow, but even if you had to wait over to-morrow for him, it might be worth your while. As to the small account here, sir, in case you was to find yourself running at all short, that don’t signify; because I’m a part proprietor of this inn, and it could stand over.”

Boots assures me that when they clapped their hands, and jumped for joy again, and called him “Good Cobbs!” and “Dear Cobbs!” and bent across him to kiss one another in the delight of their confiding hearts, he felt himself the meanest rascal for deceiving ’em that ever was born.

“Is there anything you want just at present, sir?” says Cobbs, mortally ashamed of himself.

“We should like some cakes after dinner,” answered Master Harry, folding his arms, putting out one leg, and looking straight at him, “and two apples,—and jam. With dinner we should like to have toast-and-water. But Norah has always been accustomed to half a glass of currant wine at dessert. And so have I.”

“It shall be ordered at the bar, sir,” says Cobbs; and away he went.

Boots has the feeling as fresh upon him at this minute of speaking as he had then, that he would far rather have had it out in half-a-dozen rounds with the Governor than have combined with him; and that he wished with all his heart there was any impossible place where those two babies could make an impossible marriage, and live impossibly happy ever afterwards. However, as it couldn’t be, he went into the Governor’s plans, and the Governor set off for York in half an hour.

The way in which the women of that house—without exception—every one of ’em—married and single—took to that boy when they heard the story, Boots considers surprising. It was as much as he could do to keep ’em from dashing into the room and kissing him. They climbed up all sorts of places, at the risk of their lives, to look at him through a pane of glass. They was seven deep at the keyhole. They was out of their minds about him and his bold spirit.

In the evening, Boots went into the room to see how the runaway couple was getting on. The gentleman was on the window-seat, supporting the lady in his arms. She had tears upon her face, and was lying, very tired and half asleep, with her head upon his shoulder.

“Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, fatigued, sir?” says Cobbs.

“Yes, she is tired, Cobbs; but she is not used to be away from home, and she has been in low spirits again. Cobbs, do you think you could bring a biffin, please?”

“I ask your pardon, sir,” says Cobbs. “What was it you——?”

“I think a Norfolk biffin would rouse her, Cobbs. She is very fond of them.”

Boots withdrew in search of the required restorative, and when he brought it in, the gentleman handed it to the lady, and fed her with a spoon, and took a little himself; the lady being heavy with sleep, and rather cross. “What should you think, sir,” says Cobbs, “of a chamber candlestick?” The gentleman approved; the chambermaid went first, up the great staircase; the lady, in her sky-blue mantle, followed, gallantly escorted by the gentleman; the gentleman embraced her at her door, and retired to his own apartment, where Boots softly locked him up.

Boots couldn’t but feel with increased acuteness what a base deceiver he was, when they consulted him at breakfast (they had ordered sweet milk-and-water, and toast and currant jelly, overnight) about the pony. It really was as much as he could do, he don’t mind confessing to me, to look them two young things in the face, and think what a wicked old father of lies he had grown up to be. Howsomever, he went on a lying like a Trojan about the pony. He told ’em that it did so unfortunately happen that the pony was half clipped, you see, and that he couldn’t be taken out in that state, for fear it should strike to his inside. But that he’d be finished clipping in the course of the day, and that to-morrow morning at eight o’clock the pheayton would be ready. Boots’s view of the whole case, looking back on it in my room, is, that Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, was beginning to give in. She hadn’t had her hair curled when she went to bed, and she didn’t seem quite up to brushing it herself, and its getting in her eyes put her out. But nothing put out Master Harry. He sat behind his breakfast-cup, a tearing away at the jelly, as if he had been his own father.

After breakfast, Boots is inclined to consider that they drawed soldiers,—at least, he knows that many such was found in the fire-place, all on horseback. In the course of the morning, Master Harry rang the bell,—it was surprising how that there boy did carry on,—and said, in a sprightly way, “Cobbs, is there any good walks in this neighbourhood?”

“Yes, sir,” says Cobbs. “There’s Love-lane.”

“Get out with you, Cobbs!”—that was that there boy’s expression,—“you’re joking.”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” says Cobbs, “there really is Love-lane. And a pleasant walk it is, and proud shall I be to show it to yourself and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior.”

“Norah, dear,” said Master Harry, “this is curious. We really ought to see Love-lane. Put on your bonnet, my sweetest darling, and we will go there with Cobbs.”

Boots leaves me to judge what a Beast he felt himself to be, when that young pair told him, as they all three jogged along together, that they had made up their minds to give him two thousand guineas a year as head-gardener, on accounts of his being so true a friend to ’em. Boots could have wished at the moment that the earth would have opened and swallowed him up, he felt so mean, with their beaming eyes a looking at him, and believing him. Well, sir, he turned the conversation as well as he could, and he took ’em down Love-lane to the water-meadows, and there Master Harry would have drowned himself in half a moment more, a getting out a water-lily for her,—but nothing daunted that boy. Well, sir, they was tired out. All being so new and strange to ’em, they was tired as tired could be. And they laid down on a bank of daisies, like the children in the wood, leastways meadows, and fell asleep.

Boots don’t know—perhaps I do,—but never mind, it don’t signify either way—why it made a man fit to make a fool of himself to see them two pretty babies a lying there in the clear still sunny day, not dreaming half so hard when they was asleep as they done when they was awake. But, Lord! when you come to think of yourself, you know, and what a game you have been up to ever since you was in your own cradle, and what a poor sort of a chap you are, and how it’s always either Yesterday with you, or else To-morrow, and never To-day, that’s where it is!

Well, sir, they woke up at last, and then one thing was getting pretty clear to Boots, namely, that Mrs. Harry Walmerses, Junior’s, temper was on the move. When Master Harry took her round the waist, she said he “teased her so;” and when he says, “Norah, my young May Moon, your Harry tease you?” she tells him, “Yes; and I want to go home!”

A biled fowl, and baked bread-and-butter pudding, brought Mrs. Walmers up a little; but Boots could have wished, he must privately own to me, to have seen her more sensible of the woice of love, and less abandoning of herself to currants. However, Master Harry, he kept up, and his noble heart was as fond as ever. Mrs. Walmers turned very sleepy about dusk, and began to cry. Therefore, Mrs. Walmers went off to bed as per yesterday; and Master Harry ditto repeated.

About eleven or twelve at night comes back the Governor in a chaise, along with Mr. Walmers and a elderly lady. Mr. Walmers looks amused and very serious, both at once, and says to our missis, “We are much indebted to you, ma’am, for your kind care of our little children, which we can never sufficiently acknowledge. Pray, ma’am, where is my boy?” Our missis says, “Cobbs has the dear child in charge, sir. Cobbs, show Forty!” Then he says to Cobbs, “Ah, Cobbs, I am glad to see you! I understood you was here!” And Cobbs says, “Yes, sir. Your most obedient, sir.”

I may be surprised to hear Boots say it, perhaps; but Boots assures me that his heart beat like a hammer, going up-stairs. “I beg your pardon, sir,” says he, while unlocking the door; “I hope you are not angry with Master Harry. For Master Harry is a fine boy, sir, and will do you credit and honour.” And Boots signifies to me, that, if the fine boy’s father had contradicted him in the daring state of mind in which he then was, he thinks he should have “fetched him a crack,” and taken the consequences.

But Mr. Walmers only says, “No, Cobbs. No, my good fellow. Thank you!” And, the door being opened, goes in.

Boots goes in too, holding the light, and he sees Mr. Walmers go up to the bedside, bend gently down, and kiss the little sleeping face. Then he stands looking at it for a minute, looking wonderfully like it (they do say he ran away with Mrs. Walmers); and then he gently shakes the little shoulder.

“Harry, my dear boy! Harry!”

Master Harry starts up and looks at him. Looks at Cobbs too. Such is the honour of that mite, that he looks at Cobbs, to see whether he has brought him into trouble.

“I am not angry, my child. I only want you to dress yourself and come home.”

“Yes, pa.”

Master Harry dresses himself quickly. His breast begins to swell when he has nearly finished, and it swells more and more as he stands, at last, a looking at his father: his father standing a looking at him, the quiet image of him.

“Please may I”—the spirit of that little creatur, and the way he kept his rising tears down!—“please, dear pa—may I—kiss Norah before I go?”

“You may, my child.”

So he takes Master Harry in his hand, and Boots leads the way with the candle, and they come to that other bedroom, where the elderly lady is seated by the bed, and poor little Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, is fast asleep. There the father lifts the child up to the pillow, and he lays his little face down for an instant by the little warm face of poor unconscious little Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, and gently draws it to him,—a sight so touching to the chambermaids who are peeping through the door, that one of them calls out, “It’s a shame to part ’em!” But this chambermaid was always, as Boots informs me, a soft-hearted one. Not that there was any harm in that girl. Far from it.

Finally, Boots says, that’s all about it. Mr. Walmers drove away in the chaise, having hold of Master Harry’s hand. The elderly lady and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, that was never to be (she married a Captain long afterwards, and died in India), went off next day. In conclusion, Boots put it to me whether I hold with him in two opinions: firstly, that there are not many couples on their way to be married who are half as innocent of guile as those two children; secondly, that it would be a jolly good thing for a great many couples on their way to be married, if they could only be stopped in time, and brought back separately.

THIRD BRANCH

THE BILL

I had been snowed up a whole week. The time had hung so lightly on my hands, that I should have been in great doubt of the fact but for a piece of documentary evidence that lay upon my table.

The road had been dug out of the snow on the previous day, and the document in question was my bill. It testified emphatically to my having eaten and drunk, and warmed myself, and slept among the sheltering branches of the Holly-Tree, seven days and nights.

I had yesterday allowed the road twenty-four hours to improve itself, finding that I required that additional margin of time for the completion of my task. I had ordered my Bill to be upon the table, and a chaise to be at the door, “at eight o’clock to-morrow evening.” It was eight o’clock to-morrow evening when I buckled up my travelling writing-desk in its leather case, paid my Bill, and got on my warm coats and wrappers. Of course, no time now remained for my travelling on to add a frozen tear to the icicles which were doubtless hanging plentifully about the farmhouse where I had first seen Angela. What I had to do was to get across to Liverpool by the shortest open road, there to meet my heavy baggage and embark. It was quite enough to do, and I had not an hour too much time to do it in.

I had taken leave of all my Holly-Tree friends—almost, for the time being, of my bashfulness too—and was standing for half a minute at the Inn door watching the ostler as he took another turn at the cord which tied my portmanteau on the chaise, when I saw lamps coming down towards the Holly-Tree. The road was so padded with snow that no wheels were audible; but all of us who were standing at the Inn door saw lamps coming on, and at a lively rate too, between the walls of snow that had been heaped up on either side of the track. The chambermaid instantly divined how the case stood, and called to the ostler, “Tom, this is a Gretna job!” The ostler, knowing that her sex instinctively scented a marriage, or anything in that direction, rushed up the yard bawling, “Next four out!” and in a moment the whole establishment was thrown into commotion.

I had a melancholy interest in seeing the happy man who loved and was beloved; and therefore, instead of driving off at once, I remained at the Inn door when the fugitives drove up. A bright-eyed fellow, muffled in a mantle, jumped out so briskly that he almost overthrew me. He turned to apologise, and, by heaven, it was Edwin!

“Charley!” said he, recoiling. “Gracious powers, what do you do here?”

“Edwin,” said I, recoiling, “gracious powers, what do you do here?” I struck my forehead as I said it, and an insupportable blaze of light seemed to shoot before my eyes.

He hurried me into the little parlour (always kept with a slow fire in it and no poker), where posting company waited while their horses were putting to, and, shutting the door, said:

“Charley, forgive me!”

“Edwin!” I returned. “Was this well? When I loved her so dearly! When I had garnered up my heart so long!” I could say no more.

He was shocked when he saw how moved I was, and made the cruel observation, that he had not thought I should have taken it so much to heart.

I looked at him. I reproached him no more. But I looked at him.

“My dear, dear Charley,” said he, “don’t think ill of me, I beseech you! I know you have a right to my utmost confidence, and, believe me, you have ever had it until now. I abhor secrecy. Its meanness is intolerable to me. But I and my dear girl have observed it for your sake.”

He and his dear girl! It steeled me.

“You have observed it for my sake, sir?” said I, wondering how his frank face could face it out so.

“Yes!—and Angela’s,” said he.

I found the room reeling round in an uncertain way, like a labouring, humming-top. “Explain yourself,” said I, holding on by one hand to an arm-chair.

“Dear old darling Charley!” returned Edwin, in his cordial manner, “consider! When you were going on so happily with Angela, why should I compromise you with the old gentleman by making you a party to our engagement, and (after he had declined my proposals) to our secret intention? Surely it was better that you should be able honourably to say, ‘He never took counsel with me, never told me, never breathed a word of it.’ If Angela suspected it, and showed me all the favour and support she could—God bless her for a precious creature and a priceless wife!—I couldn’t help that. Neither I nor Emmeline ever told her, any more than we told you. And for the same good reason, Charley; trust me, for the same good reason, and no other upon earth!”

Emmeline was Angela’s cousin. Lived with her. Had been brought up with her. Was her father’s ward. Had property.

“Emmeline is in the chaise, my dear Edwin!” said I, embracing him with the greatest affection.

“My good fellow!” said he, “do you suppose I should be going to Gretna Green without her?”

I ran out with Edwin, I opened the chaise door, I took Emmeline in my arms, I folded her to my heart. She was wrapped in soft white fur, like the snowy landscape: but was warm, and young, and lovely. I put their leaders to with my own hands, I gave the boys a five-pound note apiece, I cheered them as they drove away, I drove the other way myself as hard as I could pelt.

I never went to Liverpool, I never went to America, I went straight back to London, and I married Angela. I have never until this time, even to her, disclosed the secret of my character, and the mistrust and the mistaken journey into which it led me. When she, and they, and our eight children and their seven—I mean Edwin and Emmeline’s, whose oldest girl is old enough now to wear white for herself, and to look very like her mother in it—come to read these pages, as of course they will, I shall hardly fail to be found out at last. Never mind! I can bear it. I began at the Holly-Tree, by idle accident, to associate the Christmas-time of year with human interest, and with some inquiry into, and some care for, the lives of those by whom I find myself surrounded. I hope that I am none the worse for it, and that no one near me or afar off is the worse for it. And I say, May the green Holly-Tree flourish, striking its roots deep into our English ground, and having its germinating qualities carried by the birds of Heaven all over the world!

THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY

1856

I was apprenticed to the Sea when I was twelve years old, and I have encountered a great deal of rough weather, both literal and metaphorical. It has always been my opinion since I first possessed such a thing as an opinion, that the man who knows only one subject is next tiresome to the man who knows no subject. Therefore, in the course of my life I have taught myself whatever I could, and although I am not an educated man, I am able, I am thankful to say, to have an intelligent interest in most things.

A person might suppose, from reading the above, that I am in the habit of holding forth about number one. That is not the case. Just as if I was to come into a room among strangers, and must either be introduced or introduce myself, so I have taken the liberty of passing these few remarks, simply and plainly that it may be known who and what I am. I will add no more of the sort than that my name is William George Ravender, that I was born at Penrith half a year after my own father was drowned, and that I am on the second day of this present blessed Christmas week of one thousand eight hundred and fifty-six, fifty-six years of age.

When the rumour first went flying up and down that there was gold in California—which, as most people know, was before it was discovered in the British colony of Australia—I was in the West Indies, trading among the Islands. Being in command and likewise part-owner of a smart schooner, I had my work cut out for me, and I was doing it. Consequently, gold in California was no business of mine.

But, by the time when I came home to England again, the thing was as clear as your hand held up before you at noon-day. There was Californian gold in the museums and in the goldsmiths’ shops, and the very first time I went upon ’Change, I met a friend of mine (a seafaring man like myself), with a Californian nugget hanging to his watch-chain. I handled it. It was as like a peeled walnut with bits unevenly broken off here and there, and then electrotyped all over, as ever I saw anything in my life.

I am a single man (she was too good for this world and for me, and she died six weeks before our marriage-day), so when I am ashore, I live in my house at Poplar. My house at Poplar is taken care of and kept ship-shape by an old lady who was my mother’s maid before I was born. She is as handsome and as upright as any old lady in the world. She is as fond of me as if she had ever had an only son, and I was he. Well do I know wherever I sail that she never lays down her head at night without having said, “Merciful Lord! bless and preserve William George Ravender, and send him safe home, through Christ our Saviour!” I have thought of it in many a dangerous moment, when it has done me no harm, I am sure.

In my house at Poplar, along with this old lady, I lived quiet for best part of a year: having had a long spell of it among the Islands, and having (which was very uncommon in me) taken the fever rather badly. At last, being strong and hearty, and having read every book I could lay hold of, right out, I was walking down Leadenhall-street in the City of London, thinking of turning-to again, when I met what I call Smithick and Watersby of Liverpool. I chanced to lift up my eyes from looking in at a ship’s chronometer in a window, and I saw him bearing down upon me, head on.

It is, personally, neither Smithick, nor Watersby, that I here mention, nor was I ever acquainted with any man of either of those names, nor do I think that there has been any one of either of those names in that Liverpool House for years back. But, it is in reality the House itself that I refer to; and a wiser merchant or a truer gentleman never stepped.

“My dear Captain Ravender,” says he. “Of all the men on earth, I wanted to see you most. I was on my way to you.”

“Well!” says I. “That looks as if you were to see me, don’t it?” With that I put my arm in his, and we walked on towards the Royal Exchange, and when we got there, walked up and down at the back of it where the Clock-Tower is. We walked an hour and more, for he had much to say to me. He had a scheme for chartering a new ship of their own to take out cargo to the diggers and emigrants in California, and to buy and bring back gold. Into the particulars of that scheme I will not enter, and I have no right to enter. All I say of it is, that it was a very original one, a very fine one, a very sound one, and a very lucrative one beyond doubt.

He imparted it to me as freely as if I had been a part of himself. After doing so, he made me the handsomest sharing offer that ever was made to me, boy or man—or I believe to any other captain in the Merchant Navy—and he took this round turn to finish with:

“Ravender, you are well aware that the lawlessness of that coast and country at present, is as special as the circumstances in which it is placed. Crews of vessels outward-bound, desert as soon as they make the land; crews of vessels homeward-bound, ship at enormous wages, with the express intention of murdering the captain and seizing the gold freight; no man can trust another, and the devil seems let loose. Now,” says he, “you know my opinion of you, and you know I am only expressing it, and with no singularity, when I tell you that you are almost the only man on whose integrity, discretion, and energy—” &c., &c. For, I don’t want to repeat what he said, though I was and am sensible of it.

Notwithstanding my being, as I have mentioned, quite ready for a voyage, still I had some doubts of this voyage. Of course I knew, without being told, that there were peculiar difficulties and dangers in it, a long way over and above those which attend all voyages. It must not be supposed that I was afraid to face them; but, in my opinion a man has no manly motive or sustainment in his own breast for facing dangers, unless he has well considered what they are, and is able quietly to say to himself, “None of these perils can now take me by surprise; I shall know what to do for the best in any of them; all the rest lies in the higher and greater hands to which I humbly commit myself.” On this principle I have so attentively considered (regarding it as my duty) all the hazards I have ever been able to think of, in the ordinary way of storm, shipwreck, and fire at sea, that I hope I should be prepared to do, in any of those cases, whatever could be done, to save the lives intrusted to my charge.

As I was thoughtful, my good friend proposed that he should leave me to walk there as long as I liked, and that I should dine with him by-and-by at his club in Pall Mall. I accepted the invitation and I walked up and down there, quarter-deck fashion, a matter of a couple of hours; now and then looking up at the weathercock as I might have looked up aloft; and now and then taking a look into Cornhill, as I might have taken a look over the side.

All dinner-time, and all after dinner-time, we talked it over again. I gave him my views of his plan, and he very much approved of the same. I told him I had nearly decided, but not quite. “Well, well,” says he, “come down to Liverpool to-morrow with me, and see the Golden Mary.” I liked the name (her name was Mary, and she was golden, if golden stands for good), so I began to feel that it was almost done when I said I would go to Liverpool. On the next morning but one we were on board the Golden Mary. I might have known, from his asking me to come down and see her, what she was. I declare her to have been the completest and most exquisite Beauty that ever I set my eyes upon.

We had inspected every timber in her, and had come back to the gangway to go ashore from the dock-basin, when I put out my hand to my friend. “Touch upon it,” says I, “and touch heartily. I take command of this ship, and I am hers and yours, if I can get John Steadiman for my chief mate.”

John Steadiman had sailed with me four voyages. The first voyage John was third mate out to China, and came home second. The other three voyages he was my first officer. At this time of chartering the Golden Mary, he was aged thirty-two. A brisk, bright, blue-eyed fellow, a very neat figure and rather under the middle size, never out of the way and never in it, a face that pleased everybody and that all children took to, a habit of going about singing as cheerily as a blackbird, and a perfect sailor.

We were in one of those Liverpool hackney-coaches in less than a minute, and we cruised about in her upwards of three hours, looking for John. John had come home from Van Diemen’s Land barely a month before, and I had heard of him as taking a frisk in Liverpool. We asked after him, among many other places, at the two boarding-houses he was fondest of, and we found he had had a week’s spell at each of them; but, he had gone here and gone there, and had set off “to lay out on the main-to’-gallant-yard of the highest Welsh mountain” (so he had told the people of the house), and where he might be then, or when he might come back, nobody could tell us. But it was surprising, to be sure, to see how every face brightened the moment there was mention made of the name of Mr. Steadiman.

We were taken aback at meeting with no better luck, and we had wore ship and put her head for my friends, when as we were jogging through the streets, I clap my eyes on John himself coming out of a toyshop! He was carrying a little boy, and conducting two uncommon pretty women to their coach, and he told me afterwards that he had never in his life seen one of the three before, but that he was so taken with them on looking in at the toyshop while they were buying the child a cranky Noah’s Ark, very much down by the head, that he had gone in and asked the ladies’ permission to treat him to a tolerably correct Cutter there was in the window, in order that such a handsome boy might not grow up with a lubberly idea of naval architecture.

We stood off and on until the ladies’ coachman began to give way, and then we hailed John. On his coming aboard of us, I told him, very gravely, what I had said to my friend. It struck him, as he said himself, amidships. He was quite shaken by it. “Captain Ravender,” were John Steadiman’s words, “such an opinion from you is true commendation, and I’ll sail round the world with you for twenty years if you hoist the signal, and stand by you for ever!” And now indeed I felt that it was done, and that the Golden Mary was afloat.

Grass never grew yet under the feet of Smithick and Watersby. The riggers were out of that ship in a fortnight’s time, and we had begun taking in cargo. John was always aboard, seeing everything stowed with his own eyes; and whenever I went aboard myself early or late, whether he was below in the hold, or on deck at the hatchway, or overhauling his cabin, nailing up pictures in it of the Blush Roses of England, the Blue Belles of Scotland, and the female Shamrock of Ireland: of a certainty I heard John singing like a blackbird.

We had room for twenty passengers. Our sailing advertisement was no sooner out, than we might have taken these twenty times over. In entering our men, I and John (both together) picked them, and we entered none but good hands—as good as were to be found in that port. And so, in a good ship of the best build, well owned, well arranged, well officered, well manned, well found in all respects, we parted with our pilot at a quarter past four o’clock in the afternoon of the seventh of March, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-one, and stood with a fair wind out to sea.

It may be easily believed that up to that time I had had no leisure to be intimate with my passengers. The most of them were then in their berths sea-sick; however, in going among them, telling them what was good for them, persuading them not to be there, but to come up on deck and feel the breeze, and in rousing them with a joke, or a comfortable word, I made acquaintance with them, perhaps, in a more friendly and confidential way from the first, than I might have done at the cabin table.

Of my passengers, I need only particularise, just at present, a bright-eyed blooming young wife who was going out to join her husband in California, taking with her their only child, a little girl of three years old, whom he had never seen; a sedate young woman in black, some five years older (about thirty as I should say), who was going out to join a brother; and an old gentleman, a good deal like a hawk if his eyes had been better and not so red, who was always talking, morning, noon, and night, about the gold discovery. But, whether he was making the voyage, thinking his old arms could dig for gold, or whether his speculation was to buy it, or to barter for it, or to cheat for it, or to snatch it anyhow from other people, was his secret. He kept his secret.

These three and the child were the soonest well. The child was a most engaging child, to be sure, and very fond of me: though I am bound to admit that John Steadiman and I were borne on her pretty little books in reverse order, and that he was captain there, and I was mate. It was beautiful to watch her with John, and it was beautiful to watch John with her. Few would have thought it possible, to see John playing at bo-peep round the mast, that he was the man who had caught up an iron bar and struck a Malay and a Maltese dead, as they were gliding with their knives down the cabin stair aboard the barque Old England, when the captain lay ill in his cot, off Saugar Point. But he was; and give him his back against a bulwark, he would have done the same by half a dozen of them. The name of the young mother was Mrs. Atherfield, the name of the young lady in black was Miss Coleshaw, and the name of the old gentleman was Mr. Rarx.

As the child had a quantity of shining fair hair, clustering in curls all about her face, and as her name was Lucy, Steadiman gave her the name of the Golden Lucy. So, we had the Golden Lucy and the Golden Mary; and John kept up the idea to that extent as he and the child went playing about the decks, that I believe she used to think the ship was alive somehow—a sister or companion, going to the same place as herself. She liked to be by the wheel, and in fine weather, I have often stood by the man whose trick it was at the wheel, only to hear her, sitting near my feet, talking to the ship. Never had a child such a doll before, I suppose; but she made a doll of the Golden Mary, and used to dress her up by tying ribbons and little bits of finery to the belaying-pins; and nobody ever moved them, unless it was to save them from being blown away.

Of course I took charge of the two young women, and I called them “my dear,” and they never minded, knowing that whatever I said was said in a fatherly and protecting spirit. I gave them their places on each side of me at dinner, Mrs. Atherfield on my right and Miss Coleshaw on my left; and I directed the unmarried lady to serve out the breakfast, and the married lady to serve out the tea. Likewise I said to my black steward in their presence, “Tom Snow, these two ladies are equally the mistresses of this house, and do you obey their orders equally;” at which Tom laughed, and they all laughed.

Old Mr. Rarx was not a pleasant man to look at, nor yet to talk to, or to be with, for no one could help seeing that he was a sordid and selfish character, and that he had warped further and further out of the straight with time. Not but what he was on his best behaviour with us, as everybody was; for we had no bickering among us, for’ard or aft. I only mean to say, he was not the man one would have chosen for a messmate. If choice there had been, one might even have gone a few points out of one’s course, to say, “No! Not him!” But, there was one curious inconsistency in Mr. Rarx. That was, that he took an astonishing interest in the child. He looked, and I may add, he was, one of the last of men to care at all for a child, or to care much for any human creature. Still, he went so far as to be habitually uneasy, if the child was long on deck, out of his sight. He was always afraid of her falling overboard, or falling down a hatchway, or of a block or what not coming down upon her from the rigging in the working of the ship, or of her getting some hurt or other. He used to look at her and touch her, as if she was something precious to him. He was always solicitous about her not injuring her health, and constantly entreated her mother to be careful of it. This was so much the more curious, because the child did not like him, but used to shrink away from him, and would not even put out her hand to him without coaxing from others. I believe that every soul on board frequently noticed this, and not one of us understood it. However, it was such a plain fact, that John Steadiman said more than once when old Mr. Rarx was not within earshot, that if the Golden Mary felt a tenderness for the dear old gentleman she carried in her lap, she must be bitterly jealous of the Golden Lucy.

Before I go any further with this narrative, I will state that our ship was a barque of three hundred tons, carrying a crew of eighteen men, a second mate in addition to John, a carpenter, an armourer or smith, and two apprentices (one a Scotch boy, poor little fellow). We had three boats; the Long-boat, capable of carrying twenty-five men; the Cutter, capable of carrying fifteen; and the Surf-boat, capable of carrying ten. I put down the capacity of these boats according to the numbers they were really meant to hold.

We had tastes of bad weather and head-winds, of course; but, on the whole we had as fine a run as any reasonable man could expect, for sixty days. I then began to enter two remarks in the ship’s Log and in my Journal; first, that there was an unusual and amazing quantity of ice; second, that the nights were most wonderfully dark, in spite of the ice.

For five days and a half, it seemed quite useless and hopeless to alter the ship’s course so as to stand out of the way of this ice. I made what southing I could; but, all that time, we were beset by it. Mrs. Atherfield after standing by me on deck once, looking for some time in an awed manner at the great bergs that surrounded us, said in a whisper, “O! Captain Ravender, it looks as if the whole solid earth had changed into ice, and broken up!” I said to her, laughing, “I don’t wonder that it does, to your inexperienced eyes, my dear.” But I had never seen a twentieth part of the quantity, and, in reality, I was pretty much of her opinion.

However, at two p.m. on the afternoon of the sixth day, that is to say, when we were sixty-six days out, John Steadiman who had gone aloft, sang out from the top, that the sea was clear ahead. Before four p.m. a strong breeze springing up right astern, we were in open water at sunset. The breeze then freshening into half a gale of wind, and the Golden Mary being a very fast sailer, we went before the wind merrily, all night.

I had thought it impossible that it could be darker than it had been, until the sun, moon, and stars should fall out of the Heavens, and Time should be destroyed; but, it had been next to light, in comparison with what it was now. The darkness was so profound, that looking into it was painful and oppressive—like looking, without a ray of light, into a dense black bandage put as close before the eyes as it could be, without touching them. I doubled the look-out, and John and I stood in the bow side-by-side, never leaving it all night. Yet I should no more have known that he was near me when he was silent, without putting out my arm and touching him, than I should if he had turned in and been fast asleep below. We were not so much looking out, all of us, as listening to the utmost, both with our eyes and ears.

Next day, I found that the mercury in the barometer, which had risen steadily since we cleared the ice, remained steady. I had had very good observations, with now and then the interruption of a day or so, since our departure. I got the sun at noon, and found that we were in Lat. 58° S., Long. 60° W., off New South Shetland; in the neighbourhood of Cape Horn. We were sixty-seven days out, that day. The ship’s reckoning was accurately worked and made up. The ship did her duty admirably, all on board were well, and all hands were as smart, efficient, and contented, as it was possible to be.

When the night came on again as dark as before, it was the eighth night I had been on deck. Nor had I taken more than a very little sleep in the day-time, my station being always near the helm, and often at it, while we were among the ice. Few but those who have tried it can imagine the difficulty and pain of only keeping the eyes open—physically open—under such circumstances, in such darkness. They get struck by the darkness, and blinded by the darkness. They make patterns in it, and they flash in it, as if they had gone out of your head to look at you. On the turn of midnight, John Steadiman, who was alert and fresh (for I had always made him turn in by day), said to me, “Captain Ravender, I entreat of you to go below. I am sure you can hardly stand, and your voice is getting weak, sir. Go below, and take a little rest. I’ll call you if a block chafes.” I said to John in answer, “Well, well, John! Let us wait till the turn of one o’clock, before we talk about that.” I had just had one of the ship’s lanterns held up, that I might see how the night went by my watch, and it was then twenty minutes after twelve.

At five minutes before one, John sang out to the boy to bring the lantern again, and when I told him once more what the time was, entreated and prayed of me to go below. “Captain Ravender,” says he, “all’s well; we can’t afford to have you laid up for a single hour; and I respectfully and earnestly beg of you to go below.” The end of it was, that I agreed to do so, on the understanding that if I failed to come up of my own accord within three hours, I was to be punctually called. Having settled that, I left John in charge. But I called him to me once afterwards, to ask him a question. I had been to look at the barometer, and had seen the mercury still perfectly steady, and had come up the companion again to take a last look about me—if I can use such a word in reference to such darkness—when I thought that the waves, as the Golden Mary parted them and shook them off, had a hollow sound in them; something that I fancied was a rather unusual reverberation. I was standing by the quarter-deck rail on the starboard side, when I called John aft to me, and bade him listen. He did so with the greatest attention. Turning to me he then said, “Rely upon it, Captain Ravender, you have been without rest too long, and the novelty is only in the state of your sense of hearing.” I thought so too by that time, and I think so now, though I can never know for absolute certain in this world, whether it was or not.

When I left John Steadiman in charge, the ship was still going at a great rate through the water. The wind still blew right astern. Though she was making great way, she was under shortened sail, and had no more than she could easily carry. All was snug, and nothing complained. There was a pretty sea running, but not a very high sea neither, nor at all a confused one.

I turned in, as we seamen say, all standing. The meaning of that is, I did not pull my clothes off—no, not even so much as my coat: though I did my shoes, for my feet were badly swelled with the deck. There was a little swing-lamp alight in my cabin. I thought, as I looked at it before shutting my eyes, that I was so tired of darkness, and troubled by darkness, that I could have gone to sleep best in the midst of a million of flaming gas-lights. That was the last thought I had before I went off, except the prevailing thought that I should not be able to get to sleep at all.

I dreamed that I was back at Penrith again, and was trying to get round the church, which had altered its shape very much since I last saw it, and was cloven all down the middle of the steeple in a most singular manner. Why I wanted to get round the church I don’t know; but I was as anxious to do it as if my life depended on it. Indeed, I believe it did in the dream. For all that, I could not get round the church. I was still trying, when I came against it with a violent shock, and was flung out of my cot against the ship’s side. Shrieks and a terrific outcry struck me far harder than the bruising timbers, and amidst sounds of grinding and crashing, and a heavy rushing and breaking of water—sounds I understood too well—I made my way on deck. It was not an easy thing to do, for the ship heeled over frightfully, and was beating in a furious manner.

I could not see the men as I went forward, but I could hear that they were hauling in sail, in disorder. I had my trumpet in my hand, and, after directing and encouraging them in this till it was done, I hailed first John Steadiman, and then my second mate, Mr. William Rames. Both answered clearly and steadily. Now, I had practised them and all my crew, as I have ever made it a custom to practise all who sail with me, to take certain stations and wait my orders, in case of any unexpected crisis. When my voice was heard hailing, and their voices were heard answering, I was aware, through all the noises of the ship and sea, and all the crying of the passengers below, that there was a pause. “Are you ready, Rames?”—“Ay, ay, sir!”—“Then light up, for God’s sake!” In a moment he and another were burning blue-lights, and the ship and all on board seemed to be enclosed in a mist of light, under a great black dome.

The light shone up so high that I could see the huge Iceberg upon which we had struck, cloven at the top and down the middle, exactly like Penrith Church in my dream. At the same moment I could see the watch last relieved, crowding up and down on deck; I could see Mrs. Atherfield and Miss Coleshaw thrown about on the top of the companion as they struggled to bring the child up from below; I could see that the masts were going with the shock and the beating of the ship; I could see the frightful breach stove in on the starboard side, half the length of the vessel, and the sheathing and timbers spirting up; I could see that the Cutter was disabled, in a wreck of broken fragments; and I could see every eye turned upon me. It is my belief that if there had been ten thousand eyes there, I should have seen them all, with their different looks. And all this in a moment. But you must consider what a moment.

The Wreck of the Golden Mary

I saw the men, as they looked at me, fall towards their appointed stations, like good men and true. If she had not righted, they could have done very little there or anywhere but die—not that it is little for a man to die at his post—I mean they could have done nothing to save the passengers and themselves. Happily, however, the violence of the shock with which we had so determinedly borne down direct on that fatal Iceberg, as if it had been our destination instead of our destruction, had so smashed and pounded the ship that she got off in this same instant and righted. I did not want the carpenter to tell me she was filling and going down; I could see and hear that. I gave Rames the word to lower the Long-boat and the Surf-boat, and I myself told off the men for each duty. Not one hung back, or came before the other. I now whispered to John Steadiman, “John, I stand at the gangway here, to see every soul on board safe over the side. You shall have the next post of honour, and shall be the last but one to leave the ship. Bring up the passengers, and range them behind me; and put what provision and water you can got at, in the boats. Cast your eye for’ard, John, and you’ll see you have not a moment to lose.”

My noble fellows got the boats over the side as orderly as I ever saw boats lowered with any sea running, and, when they were launched, two or three of the nearest men in them as they held on, rising and falling with the swell, called out, looking up at me, “Captain Ravender, if anything goes wrong with us, and you are saved, remember we stood by you!”—“We’ll all stand by one another ashore, yet, please God, my lads!” says I. “Hold on bravely, and be tender with the women.”

The women were an example to us. They trembled very much, but they were quiet and perfectly collected. “Kiss me, Captain Ravender,” says Mrs. Atherfield, “and God in heaven bless you, you good man!” “My dear,” says I, “those words are better for me than a life-boat.” I held her child in my arms till she was in the boat, and then kissed the child and handed her safe down. I now said to the people in her, “You have got your freight, my lads, all but me, and I am not coming yet awhile. Pull away from the ship, and keep off!”

That was the Long-boat. Old Mr. Rarx was one of her complement, and he was the only passenger who had greatly misbehaved since the ship struck. Others had been a little wild, which was not to be wondered at, and not very blamable; but, he had made a lamentation and uproar which it was dangerous for the people to hear, as there is always contagion in weakness and selfishness. His incessant cry had been that he must not be separated from the child, that he couldn’t see the child, and that he and the child must go together. He had even tried to wrest the child out of my arms, that he might keep her in his. “Mr. Rarx,” said I to him when it came to that, “I have a loaded pistol in my pocket; and if you don’t stand out of the gangway, and keep perfectly quiet, I shall shoot you through the heart, if you have got one.” Says he, “You won’t do murder, Captain Ravender!” “No, sir,” says I, “I won’t murder forty-four people to humour you, but I’ll shoot you to save them.” After that he was quiet, and stood shivering a little way off, until I named him to go over the side.

The Long-boat being cast off, the Surf-boat was soon filled. There only remained aboard the Golden Mary, John Mullion the man who had kept on burning the blue-lights (and who had lighted every new one at every old one before it went out, as quietly as if he had been at an illumination); John Steadiman; and myself. I hurried those two into the Surf-boat, called to them to keep off, and waited with a grateful and relieved heart for the Long-boat to come and take me in, if she could. I looked at my watch, and it showed me, by the blue-light, ten minutes past two. They lost no time. As soon as she was near enough, I swung myself into her, and called to the men, “With a will, lads! She’s reeling!” We were not an inch too far out of the inner vortex of her going down, when, by the blue-light which John Mullion still burnt in the bow of the Surf-boat, we saw her lurch, and plunge to the bottom head-foremost. The child cried, weeping wildly, “O the dear Golden Mary! O look at her! Save her! Save the poor Golden Mary!” And then the light burnt out, and the black dome seemed to come down upon us.

I suppose if we had all stood a-top of a mountain, and seen the whole remainder of the world sink away from under us, we could hardly have felt more shocked and solitary than we did when we knew we were alone on the wide ocean, and that the beautiful ship in which most of us had been securely asleep within half an hour was gone for ever. There was an awful silence in our boat, and such a kind of palsy on the rowers and the man at the rudder, that I felt they were scarcely keeping her before the sea. I spoke out then, and said, “Let every one here thank the Lord for our preservation!” All the voices answered (even the child’s), “We thank the Lord!” I then said the Lord’s Prayer, and all hands said it after me with a solemn murmuring. Then I gave the word “Cheerily, O men, Cheerily!” and I felt that they were handling the boat again as a boat ought to be handled.

The Surf-boat now burnt another blue-light to show us where they were, and we made for her, and laid ourselves as nearly alongside of her as we dared. I had always kept my boats with a coil or two of good stout stuff in each of them, so both boats had a rope at hand. We made a shift, with much labour and trouble, to got near enough to one another to divide the blue-lights (they were no use after that night, for the sea-water soon got at them), and to get a tow-rope out between us. All night long we kept together, sometimes obliged to cast off the rope, and sometimes getting it out again, and all of us wearying for the morning—which appeared so long in coming that old Mr. Rarx screamed out, in spite of his fears of me, “The world is drawing to an end, and the sun will never rise any more!”

When the day broke, I found that we were all huddled together in a miserable manner. We were deep in the water; being, as I found on mustering, thirty-one in number, or at least six too many. In the Surf-boat they were fourteen in number, being at least four too many. The first thing I did, was to get myself passed to the rudder—which I took from that time—and to get Mrs. Atherfield, her child, and Miss Coleshaw, passed on to sit next me. As to old Mr. Rarx, I put him in the bow, as far from us as I could. And I put some of the best men near us in order that if I should drop there might be a skilful hand ready to take the helm.

The sea moderating as the sun came up, though the sky was cloudy and wild, we spoke the other boat, to know what stores they had, and to overhaul what we had. I had a compass in my pocket, a small telescope, a double-barrelled pistol, a knife, and a fire-box and matches. Most of my men had knives, and some had a little tobacco: some, a pipe as well. We had a mug among us, and an iron spoon. As to provisions, there were in my boat two bags of biscuit, one piece of raw beef, one piece of raw pork, a bag of coffee, roasted but not ground (thrown in, I imagine, by mistake, for something else), two small casks of water, and about half-a-gallon of rum in a keg. The Surf-boat, having rather more rum than we, and fewer to drink it, gave us, as I estimated, another quart into our keg. In return, we gave them three double handfuls of coffee, tied up in a piece of a handkerchief; they reported that they had aboard besides, a bag of biscuit, a piece of beef, a small cask of water, a small box of lemons, and a Dutch cheese. It took a long time to make these exchanges, and they were not made without risk to both parties; the sea running quite high enough to make our approaching near to one another very hazardous. In the bundle with the coffee, I conveyed to John Steadiman (who had a ship’s compass with him), a paper written in pencil, and torn from my pocket-book, containing the course I meant to steer, in the hope of making land, or being picked up by some vessel—I say in the hope, though I had little hope of either deliverance. I then sang out to him, so as all might hear, that if we two boats could live or die together, we would; but, that if we should be parted by the weather, and join company no more, they should have our prayers and blessings, and we asked for theirs. We then gave them three cheers, which they returned, and I saw the men’s heads droop in both boats as they fell to their oars again.

These arrangements had occupied the general attention advantageously for all, though (as I expressed in the last sentence) they ended in a sorrowful feeling. I now said a few words to my fellow-voyagers on the subject of the small stock of food on which our lives depended if they were preserved from the great deep, and on the rigid necessity of our eking it out in the most frugal manner. One and all replied that whatever allowance I thought best to lay down should be strictly kept to. We made a pair of scales out of a thin scrap of iron-plating and some twine, and I got together for weights such of the heaviest buttons among us as I calculated made up some fraction over two ounces. This was the allowance of solid food served out once a-day to each, from that time to the end; with the addition of a coffee-berry, or sometimes half a one, when the weather was very fair, for breakfast. We had nothing else whatever, but half a pint of water each per day, and sometimes, when we were coldest and weakest, a teaspoonful of rum each, served out as a dram. I know how learnedly it can be shown that rum is poison, but I also know that in this case, as in all similar cases I have ever read of—which are numerous—no words can express the comfort and support derived from it. Nor have I the least doubt that it saved the lives of far more than half our number. Having mentioned half a pint of water as our daily allowance, I ought to observe that sometimes we had less, and sometimes we had more; for much rain fell, and we caught it in a canvas stretched for the purpose.

Thus, at that tempestuous time of the year, and in that tempestuous part of the world, we shipwrecked people rose and fell with the waves. It is not my intention to relate (if I can avoid it) such circumstances appertaining to our doleful condition as have been better told in many other narratives of the kind than I can be expected to tell them. I will only note, in so many passing words, that day after day and night after night, we received the sea upon our backs to prevent it from swamping the boat; that one party was always kept baling, and that every hat and cap among us soon got worn out, though patched up fifty times, as the only vessels we had for that service; that another party lay down in the bottom of the boat, while a third rowed; and that we were soon all in boils and blisters and rags.

The other boat was a source of such anxious interest to all of us that I used to wonder whether, if we were saved, the time could ever come when the survivors in this boat of ours could be at all indifferent to the fortunes of the survivors in that. We got out a tow-rope whenever the weather permitted, but that did not often happen, and how we two parties kept within the same horizon, as we did, He, who mercifully permitted it to be so for our consolation, only knows. I never shall forget the looks with which, when the morning light came, we used to gaze about us over the stormy waters, for the other boat. We once parted company for seventy-two hours, and we believed them to have gone down, as they did us. The joy on both sides when we came within view of one another again, had something in a manner Divine in it; each was so forgetful of individual suffering, in tears of delight and sympathy for the people in the other boat.

I have been wanting to get round to the individual or personal part of my subject, as I call it, and the foregoing incident puts me in the right way. The patience and good disposition aboard of us, was wonderful. I was not surprised by it in the women; for all men born of women know what great qualities they will show when men will fail; but, I own I was a little surprised by it in some of the men. Among one-and-thirty people assembled at the best of times, there will usually, I should say, be two or three uncertain tempers. I knew that I had more than one rough temper with me among my own people, for I had chosen those for the Long-boat that I might have them under my eye. But, they softened under their misery, and were as considerate of the ladies, and as compassionate of the child, as the best among us, or among men—they could not have been more so. I heard scarcely any complaining. The party lying down would moan a good deal in their sleep, and I would often notice a man—not always the same man, it is to be understood, but nearly all of them at one time or other—sitting moaning at his oar, or in his place, as he looked mistily over the sea. When it happened to be long before I could catch his eye, he would go on moaning all the time in the dismallest manner; but, when our looks met, he would brighten and leave off. I almost always got the impression that he did not know what sound he had been making, but that he thought he had been humming a tune.

Our sufferings from cold and wet were far greater than our sufferings from hunger. We managed to keep the child warm; but, I doubt if any one else among us ever was warm for five minutes together; and the shivering, and the chattering of teeth, were sad to hear. The child cried a little at first for her lost playfellow, the Golden Mary; but hardly ever whimpered afterwards; and when the state of the weather made it possible, she used now and then to be held up in the arms of some of us, to look over the sea for John Steadiman’s boat. I see the golden hair and the innocent face now, between me and the driving clouds, like an angel going to fly away.

It had happened on the second day, towards night, that Mrs. Atherfield, in getting Little Lucy to sleep, sang her a song. She had a soft, melodious voice, and, when she had finished it, our people up and begged for another. She sang them another, and after it had fallen dark ended with the Evening Hymn. From that time, whenever anything could be heard above the sea and wind, and while she had any voice left, nothing would serve the people but that she should sing at sunset. She always did, and always ended with the Evening Hymn. We mostly took up the last line, and shed tears when it was done, but not miserably. We had a prayer night and morning, also, when the weather allowed of it.

Twelve nights and eleven days we had been driving in the boat, when old Mr. Rarx began to be delirious, and to cry out to me to throw the gold overboard or it would sink us, and we should all be lost. For days past the child had been declining, and that was the great cause of his wildness. He had been over and over again shrieking out to me to give her all the remaining meat, to give her all the remaining rum, to save her at any cost, or we should all be ruined. At this time, she lay in her mother’s arms at my feet. One of her little hands was almost always creeping about her mother’s neck or chin. I had watched the wasting of the little hand, and I knew it was nearly over.

The old man’s cries were so discordant with the mother’s love and submission, that I called out to him in an angry voice, unless he held his peace on the instant, I would order him to be knocked on the head and thrown overboard. He was mute then, until the child died, very peacefully, an hour afterwards: which was known to all in the boat by the mother’s breaking out into lamentations for the first time since the wreck—for, she had great fortitude and constancy, though she was a little gentle woman. Old Mr. Rarx then became quite ungovernable, tearing what rags he had on him, raging in imprecations, and calling to me that if I had thrown the gold overboard (always the gold with him!) I might have saved the child. “And now,” says he, in a terrible voice, “we shall founder, and all go to the Devil, for our sins will sink us, when we have no innocent child to bear us up!” We so discovered with amazement, that this old wretch had only cared for the life of the pretty little creature dear to all of us, because of the influence he superstitiously hoped she might have in preserving him! Altogether it was too much for the smith or armourer, who was sitting next the old man, to bear. He took him by the throat and rolled him under the thwarts, where he lay still enough for hours afterwards.

All that thirteenth night, Miss Coleshaw, lying across my knees as I kept the helm, comforted and supported the poor mother. Her child, covered with a pea-jacket of mine, lay in her lap. It troubled me all night to think that there was no Prayer-Book among us, and that I could remember but very few of the exact words of the burial service. When I stood up at broad day, all knew what was going to be done, and I noticed that my poor fellows made the motion of uncovering their heads, though their heads had been stark bare to the sky and sea for many a weary hour. There was a long heavy swell on, but otherwise it was a fair morning, and there were broad fields of sunlight on the waves in the east. I said no more than this: “I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord. He raised the daughter of Jairus the ruler, and said she was not dead but slept. He raised the widow’s son. He arose Himself, and was seen of many. He loved little children, saying, Suffer them to come unto Me and rebuke them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. In His name, my friends, and committed to His merciful goodness!” With those words I laid my rough face softly on the placid little forehead, and buried the Golden Lucy in the grave of the Golden Mary.

Having had it on my mind to relate the end of this dear little child, I have omitted something from its exact place, which I will supply here. It will come quite as well here as anywhere else.

Foreseeing that if the boat lived through the stormy weather, the time must come, and soon come, when we should have absolutely no morsel to eat, I had one momentous point often in my thoughts. Although I had, years before that, fully satisfied myself that the instances in which human beings in the last distress have fed upon each other, are exceedingly few, and have very seldom indeed (if ever) occurred when the people in distress, however dreadful their extremity, have been accustomed to moderate forbearance and restraint; I say, though I had long before quite satisfied my mind on this topic, I felt doubtful whether there might not have been in former cases some harm and danger from keeping it out of sight and pretending not to think of it. I felt doubtful whether some minds, growing weak with fasting and exposure and having such a terrific idea to dwell upon in secret, might not magnify it until it got to have an awful attraction about it. This was not a new thought of mine, for it had grown out of my reading. However, it came over me stronger than it had ever done before—as it had reason for doing—in the boat, and on the fourth day I decided that I would bring out into the light that unformed fear which must have been more or less darkly in every brain among us. Therefore, as a means of beguiling the time and inspiring hope, I gave them the best summary in my power of Bligh’s voyage of more than three thousand miles, in an open boat, after the Mutiny of the Bounty, and of the wonderful preservation of that boat’s crew. They listened throughout with great interest, and I concluded by telling them, that, in my opinion, the happiest circumstance in the whole narrative was, that Bligh, who was no delicate man either, had solemnly placed it on record therein that he was sure and certain that under no conceivable circumstances whatever would that emaciated party, who had gone through all the pains of famine, have preyed on one another. I cannot describe the visible relief which this spread through the boat, and how the tears stood in every eye. From that time I was as well convinced as Bligh himself that there was no danger, and that this phantom, at any rate, did not haunt us.

Now, it was a part of Bligh’s experience that when the people in his boat were most cast down, nothing did them so much good as hearing a story told by one of their number. When I mentioned that, I saw that it struck the general attention as much as it did my own, for I had not thought of it until I came to it in my summary. This was on the day after Mrs. Atherfield first sang to us. I proposed that, whenever the weather would permit, we should have a story two hours after dinner (I always issued the allowance I have mentioned at one o’clock, and called it by that name), as well as our song at sunset. The proposal was received with a cheerful satisfaction that warmed my heart within me; and I do not say too much when I say that those two periods in the four-and-twenty hours were expected with positive pleasure, and were really enjoyed by all hands. Spectres as we soon were in our bodily wasting, our imaginations did not perish like the gross flesh upon our bones. Music and Adventure, two of the great gifts of Providence to mankind, could charm us long after that was lost.

The wind was almost always against us after the second day; and for many days together we could not nearly hold our own. We had all varieties of bad weather. We had rain, hail, snow, wind, mist, thunder and lightning. Still the boats lived through the heavy seas, and still we perishing people rose and fell with the great waves.

Sixteen nights and fifteen days, twenty nights and nineteen days, twenty-four nights and twenty-three days. So the time went on. Disheartening as I knew that our progress, or want of progress, must be, I never deceived them as to my calculations of it. In the first place, I felt that we were all too near eternity for deceit; in the second place, I knew that if I failed, or died, the man who followed me must have a knowledge of the true state of things to begin upon. When I told them at noon, what I reckoned we had made or lost, they generally received what I said in a tranquil and resigned manner, and always gratefully towards me. It was not unusual at any time of the day for some one to burst out weeping loudly without any new cause; and, when the burst was over, to calm down a little better than before. I had seen exactly the same thing in a house of mourning.

During the whole of this time, old Mr. Rarx had had his fits of calling out to me to throw the gold (always the gold!) overboard, and of heaping violent reproaches upon me for not having saved the child; but now, the food being all gone, and I having nothing left to serve out but a bit of coffee-berry now and then, he began to be too weak to do this, and consequently fell silent. Mrs. Atherfield and Miss Coleshaw generally lay, each with an arm across one of my knees, and her head upon it. They never complained at all. Up to the time of her child’s death, Mrs. Atherfield had bound up her own beautiful hair every day; and I took particular notice that this was always before she sang her song at night, when everyone looked at her. But she never did it after the loss of her darling; and it would have been now all tangled with dirt and wet, but that Miss Coleshaw was careful of it long after she was herself, and would sometimes smooth it down with her weak thin hands.

We were past mustering a story now; but one day, at about this period, I reverted to the superstition of old Mr. Rarx, concerning the Golden Lucy, and told them that nothing vanished from the eye of God, though much might pass away from the eyes of men. “We were all of us,” says I, “children once; and our baby feet have strolled in green woods ashore; and our baby hands have gathered flowers in gardens, where the birds were singing. The children that we were, are not lost to the great knowledge of our Creator. Those innocent creatures will appear with us before Him, and plead for us. What we were in the best time of our generous youth will arise and go with us too. The purest part of our lives will not desert us at the pass to which all of us here present are gliding. What we were then, will be as much in existence before Him, as what we are now.” They were no less comforted by this consideration, than I was myself; and Miss Coleshaw, drawing my ear nearer to her lips, said, “Captain Ravender, I was on my way to marry a disgraced and broken man, whom I dearly loved when he was honourable and good. Your words seem to have come out of my own poor heart.” She pressed my hand upon it, smiling.

Twenty-seven nights and twenty-six days. We were in no want of rain-water, but we had nothing else. And yet, even now, I never turned my eyes upon a waking face but it tried to brighten before mine. O, what a thing it is, in a time of danger and in the presence of death, the shining of a face upon a face! I have heard it broached that orders should be given in great new ships by electric telegraph. I admire machinery as much is any man, and am as thankful to it as any man can be for what it does for us. But it will never be a substitute for the face of a man, with his soul in it, encouraging another man to be brave and true. Never try it for that. It will break down like a straw.

I now began to remark certain changes in myself which I did not like. They caused me much disquiet. I often saw the Golden Lucy in the air above the boat. I often saw her I have spoken of before, sitting beside me. I saw the Golden Mary go down, as she really had gone down, twenty times in a day. And yet the sea was mostly, to my thinking, not sea neither, but moving country and extraordinary mountainous regions, the like of which have never been beheld. I felt it time to leave my last words regarding John Steadiman, in case any lips should last out to repeat them to any living ears. I said that John had told me (as he had on deck) that he had sung out “Breakers ahead!” the instant they were audible, and had tried to wear ship, but she struck before it could be done. (His cry, I dare say, had made my dream.) I said that the circumstances were altogether without warning, and out of any course that could have been guarded against; that the same loss would have happened if I had been in charge; and that John was not to blame, but from first to last had done his duty nobly, like the man he was. I tried to write it down in my pocket-book, but could make no words, though I knew what the words were that I wanted to make. When it had come to that, her hands—though she was dead so long—laid me down gently in the bottom of the boat, and she and the Golden Lucy swung me to sleep.

JOHN STEADIMAN'S ACCOUNT

All that follows, was written by John Steadiman, Chief Mate:

[1] On the twenty-sixth day after the foundering of the Golden Mary at sea, I, John Steadiman, was sitting in my place in the stern-sheets of the Surf-boat, with just sense enough left in me to steer—that is to say, with my eyes strained, wide-awake, over the bows of the boat, and my brains fast asleep and dreaming—when I was roused upon a sudden by our second mate, Mr. William Rames.

“Let me take a spell in your place,” says he. “And look you out for the Long-boat astern. The last time she rose on the crest of a wave, I thought I made out a signal flying aboard her.”

We shifted our places, clumsily and slowly enough, for we were both of us weak and dazed with wet, cold, and hunger. I waited some time, watching the heavy rollers astern, before the Long-boat rose a-top of one of them at the same time with us. At last, she was heaved up for a moment well in view, and there, sure enough, was the signal flying aboard of her—a strip of rag of some sort, rigged to an oar, and hoisted in her bows.

“What does it mean?” says Rames to me in a quavering, trembling sort of voice. “Do they signal a sail in sight?”

“Hush, for God’s sake!” says I, clapping my hand over his mouth. “Don’t let the people hear you. They’ll all go mad together if we mislead them about that signal. Wait a bit, till I have another look at it.”

I held on by him, for he had set me all of a tremble with his notion of a sail in sight, and watched for the Long-boat again. Up she rose on the top of another roller. I made out the signal clearly, that second time, and saw that it was rigged half-mast high.

“Rames,” says I, “it’s a signal of distress. Pass the word forward to keep her before the sea, and no more. We must get the Long-boat within hailing distance of us, as soon as possible.”

I dropped down into my old place at the tiller without another word—for the thought went through me like a knife that something had happened to Captain Ravender. I should consider myself unworthy to write another line of this statement, if I had not made up my mind to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—and I must, therefore, confess plainly that now, for the first time, my heart sank within me. This weakness on my part was produced in some degree, as I take it, by the exhausting effects of previous anxiety and grief.

Our provisions—if I may give that name to what we had left—were reduced to the rind of one lemon and about a couple of handsfull of coffee-berries. Besides these great distresses, caused by the death, the danger, and the suffering among my crew and passengers, I had had a little distress of my own to shake me still more, in the death of the child whom I had got to be very fond of on the voyage out—so fond that I was secretly a little jealous of her being taken in the Long-boat instead of mine when the ship foundered. It used to be a great comfort to me, and I think to those with me also, after we had seen the last of the Golden Mary, to see the Golden Lucy, held up by the men in the Long-boat, when the weather allowed it, as the best and brightest sight they had to show. She looked, at the distance we saw her from, almost like a little white bird in the air. To miss her for the first time, when the weather lulled a little again, and we all looked out for our white bird and looked in vain, was a sore disappointment. To see the men’s heads bowed down and the captain’s hand pointing into the sea when we hailed the Long-boat, a few days after, gave me as heavy a shock and as sharp a pang of heartache to bear as ever I remember suffering in all my life. I only mention these things to show that if I did give way a little at first, under the dread that our captain was lost to us, it was not without having been a good deal shaken beforehand by more trials of one sort or another than often fall to one man’s share.

I had got over the choking in my throat with the help of a drop of water, and had steadied my mind again so as to be prepared against the worst, when I heard the hail (Lord help the poor fellows, how weak it sounded!)—

“Surf-boat, ahoy!”

I looked up, and there were our companions in misfortune tossing abreast of us; not so near that we could make out the features of any of them, but near enough, with some exertion for people in our condition, to make their voices heard in the intervals when the wind was weakest.

I answered the hail, and waited a bit, and heard nothing, and then sung out the captain’s name. The voice that replied did not sound like his; the words that reached us were:

“Chief-mate wanted on board!”

Every man of my crew knew what that meant as well as I did. As second officer in command, there could be but one reason for wanting me on board the Long-boat. A groan went all round us, and my men looked darkly in each other’s faces, and whispered under their breaths:

“The captain is dead!”

I commanded them to be silent, and not to make too sure of bad news, at such a pass as things had now come to with us. Then, hailing the Long-boat, I signified that I was ready to go on board when the weather would let me—stopped a bit to draw a good long breath—and then called out as loud as I could the dreadful question:

“Is the captain dead?”

The black figures of three or four men in the after-part of the Long-boat all stooped down together as my voice reached them. They were lost to view for about a minute; then appeared again—one man among them was held up on his feet by the rest, and he hailed back the blessed words (a very faint hope went a very long way with people in our desperate situation): “Not yet!”

The relief felt by me, and by all with me, when we knew that our captain, though unfitted for duty, was not lost to us, it is not in words—at least, not in such words as a man like me can command—to express. I did my best to cheer the men by telling them what a good sign it was that we were not as badly off yet as we had feared; and then communicated what instructions I had to give, to William Rames, who was to be left in command in my place when I took charge of the Long-boat. After that, there was nothing to be done, but to wait for the chance of the wind dropping at sunset, and the sea going down afterwards, so as to enable our weak crews to lay the two boats alongside of each other, without undue risk—or, to put it plainer, without saddling ourselves with the necessity for any extraordinary exertion of strength or skill. Both the one and the other had now been starved out of us for days and days together.

At sunset the wind suddenly dropped, but the sea, which had been running high for so long a time past, took hours after that before it showed any signs of getting to rest. The moon was shining, the sky was wonderfully clear, and it could not have been, according to my calculations, far off midnight, when the long, slow, regular swell of the calming ocean fairly set in, and I took the responsibility of lessening the distance between the Long-boat and ourselves.

It was, I dare say, a delusion of mine; but I thought I had never seen the moon shine so white and ghastly anywhere, either on sea or on land, as she shone that night while we were approaching our companions in misery. When there was not much more than a boat’s length between us, and the white light streamed cold and clear over all our faces, both crews rested on their oars with one great shudder, and stared over the gunwale of either boat, panic-stricken at the first sight of each other.

“Any lives lost among you?” I asked, in the midst of that frightful silence.

The men in the Long-bout huddled together like sheep at the sound of my voice.

“None yet, but the child, thanks be to God!” answered one among them.

And at the sound of his voice, all my men shrank together like the men in the Long-boat. I was afraid to let the horror produced by our first meeting at close quarters after the dreadful changes that wet, cold, and famine had produced, last one moment longer than could be helped; so, without giving time for any more questions and answers, I commanded the men to lay the two boats close alongside of each other. When I rose up and committed the tiller to the hands of Rames, all my poor follows raised their white faces imploringly to mine. “Don’t leave us, sir,” they said, “don’t leave us.” “I leave you,” says I, “under the command and the guidance of Mr. William Rames, as good a sailor as I am, and as trusty and kind a man as ever stepped. Do your duty by him, as you have done it by me; and remember to the last, that while there is life there is hope. God bless and help you all!” With those words I collected what strength I had left, and caught at two arms that were held out to me, and so got from the stern-sheets of one boat into the stern-sheets of the other.

“Mind where you step, sir,” whispered one of the men who had helped me into the Long-boat. I looked down as he spoke. Three figures were huddled up below me, with the moonshine falling on them in ragged streaks through the gaps between the men standing or sitting above them. The first face I made out was the face of Miss Coleshaw, her eyes were wide open and fixed on me. She seemed still to keep her senses, and, by the alternate parting and closing of her lips, to be trying to speak, but I could not hear that she uttered a single word. On her shoulder rested the head of Mrs. Atherfield. The mother of our poor little Golden Lucy must, I think, have been dreaming of the child she had lost; for there was a faint smile just ruffling the white stillness of her face, when I first saw it turned upward, with peaceful closed eyes towards the heavens. From her, I looked down a little, and there, with his head on her lap, and with one of her hands resting tenderly on his cheek—there lay the Captain, to whose help and guidance, up to this miserable time, we had never looked in vain,—there, worn out at last in our service, and for our sakes, lay the best and bravest man of all our company. I stole my hand in gently through his clothes and laid it on his heart, and felt a little feeble warmth over it, though my cold dulled touch could not detect even the faintest beating. The two men in the stern-sheets with me, noticing what I was doing—knowing I loved him like a brother—and seeing, I suppose, more distress in my face than I myself was conscious of its showing, lost command over themselves altogether, and burst into a piteous moaning, sobbing lamentation over him. One of the two drew aside a jacket from his feet, and showed me that they were bare, except where a wet, ragged strip of stocking still clung to one of them. When the ship struck the Iceberg, he had run on deck leaving his shoes in his cabin. All through the voyage in the boat his feet had been unprotected; and not a soul had discovered it until he dropped! As long as he could keep his eyes open, the very look of them had cheered the men, and comforted and upheld the women. Not one living creature in the boat, with any sense about him, but had felt the good influence of that brave man in one way or another. Not one but had heard him, over and over again, give the credit to others which was due only to himself; praising this man for patience, and thanking that man for help, when the patience and the help had really and truly, as to the best part of both, come only from him. All this, and much more, I heard pouring confusedly from the men’s lips while they crouched down, sobbing and crying over their commander, and wrapping the jacket as warmly and tenderly as they could over is cold feet. It went to my heart to check them; but I knew that if this lamenting spirit spread any further, all chance of keeping alight any last sparks of hope and resolution among the boat’s company would be lost for ever. Accordingly I sent them to their places, spoke a few encouraging words to the men forward, promising to serve out, when the morning came, as much as I dared, of any eatable thing left in the lockers; called to Rames, in my old boat, to keep as near us as he safely could; drew the garments and coverings of the two poor suffering women more closely about them; and, with a secret prayer to be directed for the best in bearing the awful responsibility now laid on my shoulders, took my Captain’s vacant place at the helm of the Long-boat.

This, as well as I can tell it, is the full and true account of how I came to be placed in charge of the lost passengers and crew of the Golden Mary, on the morning of the twenty-seventh day after the ship struck the Iceberg, and foundered at sea.

THE DELIVERANCE

When the sun rose on the twenty-seventh day of our calamity, the first question that I secretly asked myself was, How many more mornings will the stoutest of us live to see? I had kept count, ever since we took to the boats, of the days of the week; and I knew that we had now arrived at another Thursday. Judging by my own sensations (and I believe I had as much strength left as the best man among us), I came to the conclusion that, unless the mercy of Providence interposed to effect our deliverance, not one of our company could hope to see another morning after the morning of Sunday.

Two discoveries that I made—after redeeming my promise overnight, to serve out with the morning whatever eatable thing I could find—helped to confirm me in my gloomy view of our future prospects. In the first place, when the few coffee-berries left, together with a small allowance of water, had been shared all round, I found on examining the lockers that not one grain of provision remained, fore or aft, in any part of the boat, and that our stock of fresh water was reduced to not much more than would fill a wine-bottle. In the second place, after the berries had been shared, and the water equally divided, I noticed that the sustenance thus administered produced no effect whatever, even of the most momentary kind, in raising the spirits of the passengers (excepting in one case) or in rallying the strength of the crew. The exception was Mr. Rarx. This tough and greedy old sinner seemed to wake up from the trance he had lain in so long, when the smell of the berries and water was under his nose. He swallowed his share with a gulp that many a younger and better man in the boat might have envied; and went maundering on to himself afterwards, as if he had got a new lease of life. He fancied now that he was digging a gold mine, all by himself, and going down bodily straight through the earth at the rate of thirty or forty miles an hour. "Leave me alone," says he, "leave me alone. The lower I go, the richer I get. Down I go!—down, down, down, down, till I burst out at the other end of the world in a shower of gold!" So he went on, kicking feebly with his heels from time to time against the bottom of the boat.

But, as for all the rest, it was a pitiful and dreadful sight to see of how little use their last shadow of a meal was to them. I myself attended, before anybody else was served, to the two poor women. Miss Coleshaw shook her head faintly, and pointed to her throat, when I offered her the few berries that fell to her share. I made a shift to crush them up fine and mix them with a little water, and got her to swallow that miserable drop of drink with the greatest difficulty. When it was down there came no change for the better over her face. Nor did she recover, for so much as a moment, the capacity to speak, even in a whisper. I next tried Mrs. Atherfield. It was hard to wake her out of the half-swooning, half-sleeping condition in which she lay,—and harder still to get her to open her lips when I put the tin cup to them. When I had at last prevailed on her to swallow her allowance, she shut her eyes again, and fell back into her old position. I saw her lips moving; and, putting my ear close to them, caught some of the words she was murmuring to herself. She was still dreaming of the Golden Lucy. She and the child were walking somewhere by the banks of a lake, at the time when the buttercups are out. The Golden Lucy was gathering the buttercups, and making herself a watch-chain out of them, in imitation of the chain that her mother wore. They were carrying a little basket with them, and were going to dine together in a great hollow tree growing on the banks of the lake. To get this pretty picture painted on one's mind as I got it while listening to the poor mother's broken words, and then to look up at the haggard faces of the men in the boat, and at the wild ocean rolling all round us, was such a change from fancy to reality as it has fallen, I hope, to few men's lots to experience.

My next thought, when I had done my best for the women, was for the captain. I was free to risk losing my own share of water, if I pleased, so I tried, before tasting it myself, to get a little between his lips; but his teeth were fast clenched, and I had neither strength nor skill to open them. The faint warmth still remained, thank God, over his heart—but, in all other respects he lay beneath us like a dead man. In covering him up again as comfortably as I could, I found a bit of paper crunched in one of his hands, and took it out. There was some writing on it, but not a word was readable. I supposed, poor fellow, that he had been trying to write some last instructions for me, just before he dropped at his post. If they had been ever so easy to read, they would have been of no use now. To follow instructions we must have had some power to shape the boat's course in a given direction—and this, which we had been gradually losing for some days past, we had now lost altogether.

I had hoped that the serving out of the refreshment would have put a little modicum of strength into the arms of the men at the oars; but, as I have hinted, this hope turned out to be perfectly fruitless. Our last mockery of a meal, which had done nothing for the passengers, did nothing either for the crew—except to aggravate the pangs of hunger in the men who were still strong enough to feel them. While the weather held moderate, it was not of much consequence if one or two of the rowers kept dropping, in turn, into a kind of faint sleep over their oars. But if it came on to blow again (and we could expect nothing else in those seas and at that time of the year), how was I to steer, when the blades of the oars were out of the water ten times as often as they were in? The lives which we had undergone such suffering to preserve would have been lost in an instant by the swamping of the boat, if the wind had risen on the morning of Thursday, and had caught us trying to row any longer.

Feeling this, I resolved, while the weather held moderately fine, to hoist the best substitute for a sail that we could produce, and to drive before the wind, on the chance (the last we had to hope for) of a ship picking us up. We had only continued to use the oars up to this time, in order to keep the course which the captain had pointed out as likeliest to bring us near the land. Sailing had been out of the question from the first, the masts and suits of sails belonging to each boat having been out of them at the time of the wreck, and having gone down with the ship. This was an accident which there was no need to deplore, for we were too crowded from the first to admit of handling the boats properly, under their regular press of sail, in anything like rough weather.

Having made up my mind on what it was necessary to do, I addressed the men, and told them that any notion of holding longer on our course with the oars was manifestly out of the question, and dangerous to all on board, as their own common sense might tell them, in the state to which the stoutest arms among us were now reduced. They looked round on each other as I said that, each man seeming to think his neighbour weaker than himself. I went on, and told them that we must take advantage of our present glimpse of moderate weather, and hoist the best sail we could set up, and drive before the wind, in the hope that it might please God to direct us in the way of some ship before it was too late. "Our only chance, my men," I said, in conclusion, "is the chance of being picked up; and in these desolate seas one point of the compass is just as likely a point for our necessities as another. Half of you keep the boat before the sea, the other half bring out your knives, and do as I tell you." The prospect of being relieved from the oars struck the wandering attention of the men directly; and they said, "Ay, ay, sir!" with something like a faint reflection of their former readiness, when the good ship was under their feet, and the mess-cans were filled with plenty of wholesome food.

Thanks to Captain Ravender's forethought in providing both boats with a coil of rope, we had our lashings, and the means of making what rigging was wanted, ready to hand. One of the oars was made fast to the thwart, and well stayed fore and aft, for a mast. A large pilot coat that I wore was spread; enough of sail for us. The only difficulty that puzzled me was occasioned by the necessity of making a yard. The men tried to tear up one of the thwarts, but were not strong enough. My own knife had been broken in the attempt to split a bit of plank for them; and I was almost at my wit's end, when I luckily thought of searching the captain's pockets for his knife. I found it—a fine large knife of Sheffield manufacture, with plenty of blades, and a small saw among them. With this we made a shift to saw off about a third of another oar; and then the difficulty was conquered; and we got my pilot-coat hoisted on our jury-mast, and rigged it as nigh as we could to the fashion of a lug-sail.

I had looked anxiously towards the Surf-boat, while we were rigging our mast, and observed, with a feeling of great relief, that the men in her—as soon as they discovered what we were about—were wise enough to follow our example. They got on faster than we did; being less put to it for room to turn round in. We set our sails as nearly as possible about the same time; and it was well for both boats that we finished our work when we did. At noon the wind began to rise again to a stiff breeze, which soon knocked up a heavy, tumbling sea. We drove before it in a direction North and by East, keeping wonderfully dry, considering all things. The mast stood well; and the sail, small as it was, did good service in steadying the boat and lifting her easily over the seas. I felt the cold after the loss of my coat, but not so badly as I had feared; for the two men who were with me in the stern sheets, sat as close as they could on either side of me, and helped with the warmth of their own bodies to keep the warmth in mine. Forward, I told off half a dozen of the most trustworthy of the men who could still muster strength enough to keep their eyes open, to set a watch, turn and turn about, on our frail rigging. The wind was steadily increasing, and if any accident happened to our mast, the chances were that the boat would broach-to, and that every one of us would go to the bottom.

So we drove on—all through that day—sometimes catching sight of the Surf-boat a little ahead of us—sometimes losing her altogether in the scud. How little and frail, how very different to the kind of boat that I had expected to see, she looked to my eyes now that I was out of her, and saw what she showed like on the waters for the first time! But to return to the Long-boat. The watch on the rigging was relieved every two hours, and at the same regular periods all the brightest eyes left amongst us looked out for the smallest vestige of a sail in view, and looked in vain. Among the passengers, nothing happened in the way of a change—except that Miss Coleshaw seemed to grow fainter, and that Mrs. Atherfield got restless, as if she were waking out of her long dream about the Golden Lucy.

It got on towards sunset. The wind was rising to half a gale. The clouds which had been heavy all over the firmament since noon, were lifting to the westward, and leaving there, over the horizon line of the ocean, a long strip of clear pale greenish sky, overhung by a cloud-bank, whose ragged edges were tipped with burning crimson by the sun. I did not like the look of the night, and, keeping where I was, in the forward part of the boat, I helped the men to ease the strain off our mast, by lowering the yard a little and taking a pull on the sheet, so as to present to the wind a smaller surface even of our small sail. Noting the wild look of the weather, and the precautions we were taking against the chance of a gale rising in the night—and being, furthermore, as I believe, staggered in their minds by the death that had taken place among them—three of the passengers struggled up in the bottom of the boat, clasped their arms round me as if they were drowning men already, and hoarsely clamoured for a last drink of water, before the storm rose and sent us all to the bottom.

"Water you shall have," I said, "when I think the time has come to serve it out. The time has not come yet."

"Water, pray!" they all three groaned together. Two more passengers who were asleep, woke up, and joined the cry.

"Silence!" I said. "There are not two spoonsful of fresh water left for each man in the boat. I shall wait three hours more for the chance of rain before I serve that out. Silence, and drop back to your places!"

They let go of me, but clamoured weakly for water still; and, this time, the voices of some of the crew joined them. At this moment, to my great alarm (for I thought they were going mad and turning violent against me), I was seized round the neck by one of the men, who had been standing up, holding on by the mast, and looking out steadily to the westward.

I raised my right hand to free myself; but before I touched him, the sight of the man's face close to mine made me drop my arm again. There was a speechless, breathless, frantic joy in it, that made all the blood in my veins stand still in a moment.

"Out with it!" I said. "Man alive, out with it, for God's sake!"

His breath beat on my cheek in hot, quick, heavy gasps; but he could not utter a word. For a moment he let go of the mast (tightening his hold on me with the other arm) and pointed out westward—then slid heavily down on to the thwart behind us.

I looked westward, and saw that one of the two trustworthy men whom I had left at the helm was on his feet looking out westward, too. As the boat rose, I fixed my eyes on the strip of clear greenish sky in the west, and on the bright line of the sea just under it. The boat dipped again before I could see anything. I squeezed my eyelids together to get the water out of them, and when we rose again looked straight into the middle of the bright sea-line. My heart bounded as if it would choke me—my tongue felt like a cinder in my mouth—my knees gave way under me—I dropped down on to the thwart, and sobbed out, with a great effort, as if I had been dumb for weeks before, and had only that instant found my speech:

"A sail! a sail!"

The words were instantly echoed by the man in the stern sheets.

"Sail, ho!" he screeches out, turning round on us, and swinging his arms about his head like a madman.

This made three of our company who had seen the ship already, and that one fact was sufficient to remove all dread lest our eyes might have been deceiving us. The great fear now was, not that we were deluded, but that we might come to some serious harm through the excess of joy among the people; that is to say, among such of the people as still had the sense to feel and the strength to express what they felt. I must record in my own justification, after confessing that I lost command over myself altogether on the discovery of the sail, that I was the first who set the example of self-control. I was in a manner forced to this by the crew frantically entreating me to lay to until we could make out what course the ship was steering—a proceeding which, with the sea then running, with the heavy lading of the boat, and with such feeble substitutes for mast and sail as we possessed, must have been attended with total destruction to us all. I tried to remind the men of this, but they were in such a transport—hugging each other round the neck, and crying and laughing all in a breath—that they were not fit to listen to reason. Accordingly, I myself went to the helm again, and chose the steadiest of my two men in the after part of the boat, as a guard over the sheet, with instructions to use force, if necessary, towards any one who stretched out so much as a finger to it. The wind was rising every minute, and we had nothing for it but to scud, and be thankful to God's mercy that we had sea-room to do it in.

"It will be dark in an hour's time, sir," says the man left along with me when I took the helm again. "We have no light to show. The ship will pass us in the night. Lay to, sir! For the love of Heaven, give us all a chance, and lay to!" says he, and goes down on his knees before me, wringing his hands.

"Lay to!" says I. "Lay to, under a coat! Lay to, in a boat like this, with the wind getting up to a gale! A seaman like you talk in that way! Who have I got along here with me? Sailors who know their craft, or a pack of long-shore lubbers, who ought to be turned adrift in a ferry-boat on a pond?" My heart was heavy enough, God knows, but I spoke out as loud as I could, in that light way, to try and shame the men back to their proper senses. I succeeded at least in restoring silence; and that was something in such a condition as ours.

My next anxiety was to know if the men in the Surf-boat had sighted the sail to the westward. She was still driving ahead of us, and the first time I saw her rise on the waves, I made out a signal on board—a strip of cloth fastened to a boat-hook. I ordered the man by my side to return it with his jacket tied on to the end of an oar, being anxious to see whether his agitation had calmed down and left him fit for his duty again. He followed my directions steadily, and when he had got his jacket on again, asked me to pardon him for losing his self-command in a quiet, altered voice.

I shook hands with him, and gave him the helm, in proof that my confidence was restored; then stood up and turned my face to the westward once again. I looked long into the belt of clear sky, which was narrowing already as the cloud-bank above sank over it. I looked with all my heart and soul and strength. It was only when my eyes could stand the strain on them no longer, that I gave in, and sat down again by the tiller. If I had not been supported by a firm trust in the mercy of Providence, which had preserved us thus far, I am afraid I should have abandoned myself at that trying time to downright hopeless, speechless despair.

It would not express much to any but seafaring readers if I mentioned the number of leagues off that I considered the ship to be. I shall give a better idea of the terrible distance there was between us, when I say that no landsman's eye could have made her out at all, and that none of us sailors could have seen her but for the bright opening in the sky, which made even a speck on the waters visible to a mariner's experienced sight all that weary way off. When I have said this, I have said enough to render it plain to every man's understanding that it was a sheer impossibility to make out what course the ship was steering, seeing that we had no chance of keeping her in view at that closing time of day for more than another half-hour, at most. There she was, astern to leeward of us; and here were we, driving for our lives before the wind, with any means of kindling a light that we might have possessed on leaving our ship wetted through long ago—with no guns to fire as signals of distress in the darkness—and with no choice, if the wind shifted, but still to scud in any direction in which it might please to drive us. Supposing, even at the best, that the ship was steering on our course, and would overhaul us in the night, what chance had we of making our position known to her in the darkness? Truly, look at it anyhow we might from our poor mortal point of view, our prospect of deliverance seemed to be of the most utterly hopeless kind that it is possible to conceive.

The men felt this bitterly, as the cloud-bank dropped to the verge of the waters, and the sun set redly behind it. The moaning and lamenting among them was miserable to hear, when the last speck and phantom of the ship had vanished from view. Some few still swore they saw her when there was hardly a flicker of light left in the west, and only gave up looking out, and dropped down in the boat, at my express orders. I charged them all solemnly to set an example of courage to the passengers, and to trust the rest to the infinite wisdom and mercy of the Creator of us all. Some murmured, some fell to repeating scraps out of the Bible and Prayer-Book, some wandered again in their minds. This went on till the darkness gathered—then a great hush of silence fell drearily over passengers and crew; and the waves and the wind hissed and howled about us, as if we were tossing in the midst of them, a boat-load of corpses already!

Twice in the forepart of the night the clouds overhead parted for a little, and let the blessed moonlight down upon us. On the first of those occasions, I myself served out the last drops of fresh water we had left. The two women—poor suffering creatures!—were past drinking. Miss Coleshaw shivered a little when I moistened her lips with the water; and Mrs. Atherfield, when I did the same for her, drew her breath with a faint, fluttering sigh, which was just enough to show that she was not dead yet. The captain still lay as he had lain ever since I got on board the boat. The others, both passengers and crew, managed for the most part to swallow their share of the water—the men being just sufficiently roused by it to get up on their knees, while the moonlight lasted, and look about wildly over the ocean for a chance of seeing the ship again. When the clouds gathered once more; they crouched back in their places with a long groan of despair. Hearing that, and dreading the effect of the pitchy darkness (to say nothing of the fierce wind and sea) on their sinking spirits, I resolved to combat their despondency, if it were still possible to contend against it, by giving them something to do. First telling them that no man could say at what time of the night the ship (in case she was steering our course) might forge-ahead of us, or how near she might be when she passed, I recommended that all who had the strength should join their voices at regular intervals, and shout their loudest when the boat rose highest in the waves, on the chance of that cry of distress being borne by the wind within hearing of the watch on board the ship. It is unnecessary to say that I knew well how near it was to an absolute impossibility that this last feeble exertion on our parts could lead to any result. I only proposed it because I was driven to the end of my resources to keep up the faintest flicker of spirit among the men. They received my proposal with more warmth and readiness than I had ventured in their hopeless state, to expect from them. Up to the turn of midnight they resolutely raised their voices with me, at intervals of from five to ten minutes, whenever the boat was tossed highest on the waves. The wind seemed to whirl our weak cries savagely out of our mouths almost before we could utter them. I, sitting astern in the boat, only heard them, as it seemed, for something like an instant of time. But even that was enough to make me creep all over—the cry was so forlorn and fearful. Of all the dreadful sounds I had heard since the first striking of the ship, that shrill wail of despair—rising on the wave-tops, one moment; whirled away, the next, into the black night—was the most frightful that entered my ears. There are times, even now, when it seems to be ringing in them still.

Whether our first gleam of moonshine fell upon old Mr. Rarx, while he was sleeping, and helped to upset his weak brains altogether, is more than I can say. But, for some reason or other, before the clouds parted and let the light down on us for the second time, and while we were driving along awfully through the blackest of the night, he stirred in his place, and began rambling and raving again more vehemently than ever. To hear him now—that is to say, as well as I could hear him for the wind—he was still down in his gold-mine; but was laden so heavy with his precious metal that he could not get out, and was in mortal peril of being drowned by the water rising in the bottom of the shaft. So far, his maundering attracted my attention disagreeably, and did no more. But when he began—if I may say so—to take the name of the dear little dead child in vain, and to mix her up with himself and his miserly greed of gain, I got angry, and called to the men forward to give him a shake and make him hold his tongue. Whether any of them obeyed or not, I don't know—Mr. Rarx went on raving louder than ever. The shrill wind was now hardly more shrill than he. He swore he saw the white frock of our poor little lost pet fluttering in the daylight, at the top of the mine, and he screamed out to her in a great fright that the gold was heavy, and the water rising fast, and that she must come down quick as lightning if she meant to be in time to help him. I called again angrily to the men to silence him; and just as I did so, the clouds began to part for the second time, and the white tip of the moon grew visible.

"There she is!" screeches Mr. Rarx; and I saw him by the faint light, scramble on his knees in the bottom of the boat, and wave a ragged old handkerchief up at the moon.

"Pull him down!" I called out. "Down with him; and tie his arms and legs!"

Of the men who could still move about, not one paid any attention to me. They were all upon their knees again, looking out in the strengthening moonlight for a sight of the ship.

"Quick, Golden Lucy!" screams Mr. Rarx, and creeps under the thwarts right forward into the bows of the boat. "Quick! my darling, my beauty, quick! The gold is heavy, and the water rises fast! Come down and save me, Golden Lucy! Let all the rest of the world drown, and save me! Me! me! me! me!"

He shouted these last words out at the top of his cracked, croaking voice, and got on his feet, as I conjectured (for the coat we had spread for a sail now hid him from me) in the bows of the boat. Not one of the crew so much as looked round at him, so eagerly were their eyes seeking for the ship. The man sitting by me was sunk in a deep sleep. If I had left the helm for a moment in that wind and sea, it would have been the death of every soul of us. I shouted desperately to the raving wretch to sit down. A screech that seemed to cut the very wind in two answered me. A huge wave tossed the boat's head up wildly at the same moment. I looked aside to leeward as the wash of the great roller swept by us, gleaming of a lurid, bluish white in the moonbeams; I looked and saw, in one second of time, the face of Mr. Rarx rush past on the wave, with the foam seething in his hair and the moon shining in his eyes. Before I could draw my breath he was a hundred yards astern of us, and the night and the sea had swallowed him up and had hid his secret, which he had kept all the voyage, from our mortal curiosity, for ever.

"He's gone! he's drowned!" I shouted to the men forward.

None of them took any notice; none of them left off looking out over the ocean for a sight of the ship. Nothing that I could say on the subject of our situation at that fearful time can, in my opinion, give such an idea of the extremity and the frightfulness of it, as the relation of this one fact. I leave it to speak by itself the sad and shocking truth, and pass on gladly to the telling of what happened next, at a later hour of the night. After the clouds had shut out the moon again, the wind dropped a little and shifted a point or two, so as to shape our course nearer to the eastward. How the hours passed after that, till the dawn came, is more than I can tell. The nearer the time of daylight approached the more completely everything seemed to drop out of my mind, except the one thought of where the ship we had seen in the evening might be, when we looked for her with the morning light.

It came at last—that grey, quiet light which was to end all our uncertainty; which was to show us if we were saved, or to warn us if we were to prepare for death. With the first streak in the east, every one of the boat's company, except the sleeping and the senseless, roused up and looked out in breathless silence upon the sea. Slowly and slowly the daylight strengthened, and the darkness rolled off farther and farther before it over the face of the waters. The first pale flush of the sun flew trembling along the paths of light broken through the grey wastes of the eastern clouds. We could look clearly—we could see far; and there, ahead of us—O! merciful, bountiful providence of God!—there was the ship!

I have honestly owned the truth, and confessed to the human infirmity under suffering of myself, my passengers, and my crew. I have earned, therefore, as I would fain hope, the right to record it to the credit of all, that the men, the moment they set eyes on the ship, poured out their whole hearts in humble thanksgiving to the Divine Mercy which had saved them from the very jaws of death. They did not wait for me to bid them do this; they did it of their own accord, in their own language, fervently, earnestly, with one will and one heart.

We had hardly made the ship out—a fine brigantine, hoisting English colours—before we observed that her crew suddenly hove her up in the wind. At first we were at a loss to understand this; but as we drew nearer, we discovered that she was getting the Surf-boat (which had kept ahead of us all through the night) alongside of her, under the lee bow. My men tried to cheer when they saw their companions in safety, but their weak cries died away in tears and sobbing.

In another half-hour we, too, were alongside of the brigantine.

From this point, I recollect nothing very distinctly. I remember faintly many loud voices and eager faces;—I remember fresh strong willing fellows, with a colour in their cheeks,, and a smartness in their movements that seemed quite preternatural to me at that time, hanging over us in the rigging of the brigantine, and dropping down from her sides into our boat;—I remember trying with my feeble hands to help them in the difficult and perilous task of getting the two poor women and the captain on board;—I remember one dark hairy giant of a man swearing that it was enough to break his heart, and catching me in his arms like a child—and from that moment I remember nothing more with the slightest certainty for over a week of time.

When I came to my own senses again, in my cot on board the brigantine, my first inquiries were naturally for my fellow-sufferers. Two—a passenger in the Long-boat, and one of the crew of the Surf-boat—had sunk in spite of all the care that could be taken of them. The rest were likely, with time and attention, to recover. Of those who have been particularly mentioned in this narrative, Mrs. Atherfield had shown signs of rallying the soonest; Miss Coleshaw, who had held out longer against exhaustion, was now the slower to recover. Captain Ravender, though slowly mending, was still not able to speak or to move in his cot without help. The sacrifices for us all which this good man had so nobly undergone, not only in the boat, but before that, when he had deprived himself of his natural rest on the dark nights that preceded the wreck of the Golden Mary, had sadly undermined his natural strength of constitution. He, the heartiest of all, when we sailed from England, was now, through his unwearying devotion to his duty and to us, the last to recover, the longest to linger between life and death.

My next questions (when they helped me on deck to get my first blessed breath of fresh air) related to the vessel that had saved us. She was bound to the Columbia river—a long way to the northward of the port for which we had sailed in the Golden Mary. Most providentially for us, shortly after we had lost sight of the brigantine in the shades of the evening, she had been caught in a squall, and had sprung her foretopmast badly. This accident had obliged them to lay to for some hours, while they did their best to secure the spar, and had warned them, when they continued on their course, to keep the ship under easy sail through the night. But for this circumstance we must, in all human probability, have been too far astern when the morning dawned, to have had the slightest chance of being discovered.

Excepting always some of the stoutest of our men, the next of the Long-boat's company who was helped on deck was Mrs. Atherfield. Poor soul! when she and I first looked at each other, I could see that her heart went back to the early days of our voyage, when the Golden Lucy and I used to have our game of hide-and-seek round the mast. She squeezed my hand as hard as she could with her wasted trembling fingers, and looked up piteously in my face, as if she would like to speak to little Lucy's playfellow, but dared not trust herself—then turned away quickly and laid her head against the bulwark, and looked out upon the desolate sea that was nothing to her now but her darling's grave. I was better pleased when I saw her later in the day, sitting by Captain Ravender's cot; for she seemed to take comfort in nursing him. Miss Coleshaw soon afterwards got strong enough to relieve her at this duty; and, between them, they did the captain such a world of good, both in body and spirit, that he also got strong enough before long to come on deck, and to thank me, in his old generous self-forgetful way, for having done my duty—the duty which I had learnt how to do by his example.

Hearing what our destination had been when we sailed from England, the captain of the brigantine (who had treated us with the most unremitting attention and kindness, and had been warmly seconded in his efforts for our good by all the people under his command) volunteered to go sufficiently out of his course to enable us to speak the first Californian coasting vessel sailing in the direction of San Francisco. We were lucky in meeting with one of these sooner than we expected. Three days after parting from the kind captain of the brigantine, we, the surviving passengers and crew of the Golden Mary, touched the firm ground once more, on the shores of California.

We were hardly collected here before we were obliged to separate again. Captain Ravender, though he was hardly yet in good travelling trim, accompanied Mrs. Atherfield inland, to see her safe under her husband's protection. Miss Coleshaw went with them, to stay with Mrs. Atherfield for a little while before she attempted to proceed with any matters of her own which had brought her to this part of the world. The rest of us, who were left behind with nothing particular to do until the captain's return, followed the passengers to the gold diggings. Some few of us had enough of the life there in a very short time. The rest seemed bitten by old Mr. Rarx's mania for gold, and insisted on stopping behind when Rames and I proposed going back to the port. We two, and five of our steadiest seamen, were all the officers and crew left to meet the captain on his return from the inland country.

He reported that he had left Mrs. Atherfield and Miss Coleshaw safe and comfortable under Mr. Atherfield's care. They sent affectionate messages to all of us, and especially (I am proud to say) to me. After hearing this good news, there seemed nothing better to do than to ship on board the first vessel bound for England. There were plenty in port, ready to sail, and only waiting for the men belonging to them who had deserted to the gold diggings. We were all snapped up eagerly, and offered any rate we chose to set on our services, the moment we made known our readiness to ship for England—all, I ought to have said, except Captain Ravender, who went along with us in the capacity of passenger only.

Nothing of any moment occurred on the voyage back. The captain and I got ashore at Gravesend safe and hearty, and went up to London as fast as the train could carry us, to report the calamity that had occurred to the owners of the Golden Mary. When that duty had been performed, Captain Ravender went back to his own house at Poplar, and I travelled to the West of England to report myself, to my old father and mother.

Here I might well end all these pages of writing; but I cannot refrain from adding a few more sentences, to tell the reader what I am sure he will be glad to hear. In the summer-time of this present year eighteen hundred and fifty-six, I happened to be at New York, and having spare time on my hands, and spare cash in my pocket, I walked into one of the biggest and grandest of their Ordinaries there, to have my dinner. I had hardly sat down at table, before who should I see opposite but Mrs. Atherfield, as bright-eyed and pretty as ever, with a gentleman on her right hand, and on her left—another Golden Lucy! Her hair was a shade or two darker than the hair of my poor little pet of past sad times; but in all other respects the living child reminded me so strongly of the dead, that I quite started at the first sight of her. I could not tell, if I was to try, how happy we were after dinner, or how much we had to say to each other. I was introduced to Mrs. Atherfield's husband, and heard from him, among other things, that Miss Coleshaw was married to her old sweetheart, who had fallen into misfortunes and errors, and whom she was determined to set right by giving him the great chance in life of getting a good wife. They were settled in America, like Mr. and Mrs. Atherfield—these last and the child being on their way, when I met them, to visit a friend living in the northernmost part of the States.

With the relation of this circumstance, and with my personal testimony to the good health and spirits of Captain Ravender the last time I saw him, ends all that I have to say in connection with the subject of the Wreck, of the Golden Mary, and the Great Deliverance of her People at Sea.

Footnotes

[1] The remainder of this story was written by Wilkie Collins.

THE PERILS OF CERTAIN ENGLISH PRISONERS

1857

CHAPTER I

THE ISLAND OF SILVER-STORE

It was in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and forty-four, that I, Gill Davis to command, His Mark, having then the honour to be a private in the Royal Marines, stood a-leaning over the bulwarks of the armed sloop Christopher Columbus, in the South American waters off the Mosquito shore.

My lady remarks to me, before I go any further, that there is no such christian-name as Gill, and that her confident opinion is, that the name given to me in the baptism wherein I was made, &c., was Gilbert. She is certain to be right, but I never heard of it. I was a foundling child, picked up somewhere or another, and I always understood my christian-name to be Gill. It is true that I was called Gills when employed at Snorridge Bottom betwixt Chatham and Maidstone to frighten birds; but that had nothing to do with the Baptism wherein I was made, &c., and wherein a number of things were promised for me by somebody, who let me alone ever afterwards as to performing any of them, and who, I consider, must have been the Beadle. Such name of Gills was entirely owing to my cheeks, or gills, which at that time of my life were of a raspy description.

My lady stops me again, before I go any further, by laughing exactly in her old way and waving the feather of her pen at me. That action on her part, calls to my mind as I look at her hand with the rings on it—Well! I won’t! To be sure it will come in, in its own place. But it’s always strange to me, noticing the quiet hand, and noticing it (as I have done, you know, so many times) a-fondling children and grandchildren asleep, to think that when blood and honour were up—there! I won’t! not at present!—Scratch it out.

She won’t scratch it out, and quite honourable; because we have made an understanding that everything is to be taken down, and that nothing that is once taken down shall be scratched out. I have the great misfortune not to be able to read and write, and I am speaking my true and faithful account of those Adventures, and my lady is writing it, word for word.

I say, there I was, a-leaning over the bulwarks of the sloop Christopher Columbus in the South American waters off the Mosquito shore: a subject of his Gracious Majesty King George of England, and a private in the Royal Marines.

In those climates, you don’t want to do much. I was doing nothing. I was thinking of the shepherd (my father, I wonder?) on the hillsides by Snorridge Bottom, with a long staff, and with a rough white coat in all weathers all the year round, who used to let me lie in a corner of his hut by night, and who used to let me go about with him and his sheep by day when I could get nothing else to do, and who used to give me so little of his victuals and so much of his staff, that I ran away from him—which was what he wanted all along, I expect—to be knocked about the world in preference to Snorridge Bottom. I had been knocked about the world for nine-and-twenty years in all, when I stood looking along those bright blue South American Waters. Looking after the shepherd, I may say. Watching him in a half-waking dream, with my eyes half-shut, as he, and his flock of sheep, and his two dogs, seemed to move away from the ship’s side, far away over the blue water, and go right down into the sky.

“It’s rising out of the water, steady,” a voice said close to me. I had been thinking on so, that it like woke me with a start, though it was no stranger voice than the voice of Harry Charker, my own comrade.

“What’s rising out of the water, steady?” I asked my comrade.

“What?” says he. “The Island.”

“O! The Island!” says I, turning my eyes towards it. “True. I forgot the Island.”

“Forgot the port you’re going to? That’s odd, ain’t it?”

“It is odd,” says I.

“And odd,” he said, slowly considering with himself, “ain’t even. Is it, Gill?”

He had always a remark just like that to make, and seldom another. As soon as he had brought a thing round to what it was not, he was satisfied. He was one of the best of men, and, in a certain sort of a way, one with the least to say for himself. I qualify it, because, besides being able to read and write like a Quarter-master, he had always one most excellent idea in his mind. That was, Duty. Upon my soul, I don’t believe, though I admire learning beyond everything, that he could have got a better idea out of all the books in the world, if he had learnt them every word, and been the cleverest of scholars.

My comrade and I had been quartered in Jamaica, and from there we had been drafted off to the British settlement of Belize, lying away West and North of the Mosquito coast. At Belize there had been great alarm of one cruel gang of pirates (there were always more pirates than enough in those Caribbean Seas), and as they got the better of our English cruisers by running into out-of-the-way creeks and shallows, and taking the land when they were hotly pressed, the governor of Belize had received orders from home to keep a sharp look-out for them along shore. Now, there was an armed sloop came once a-year from Port Royal, Jamaica, to the Island, laden with all manner of necessaries, to eat, and to drink, and to wear, and to use in various ways; and it was aboard of that sloop which had touched at Belize, that I was a-standing, leaning over the bulwarks.

The Island was occupied by a very small English colony. It had been given the name of Silver-Store. The reason of its being so called, was, that the English colony owned and worked a silver-mine over on the mainland, in Honduras, and used this Island as a safe and convenient place to store their silver in, until it was annually fetched away by the sloop. It was brought down from the mine to the coast on the backs of mules, attended by friendly Indians and guarded by white men; from thence it was conveyed over to Silver-Store, when the weather was fair, in the canoes of that country; from Silver-Store, it was carried to Jamaica by the armed sloop once a-year, as I have already mentioned; from Jamaica, it went, of course, all over the world.

How I came to be aboard the armed sloop, is easily told. Four-and-twenty marines under command of a lieutenant—that officer’s name was Linderwood—had been told off at Belize, to proceed to Silver-Store, in aid of boats and seamen stationed there for the chase of the Pirates. The Island was considered a good post of observation against the pirates, both by land and sea; neither the pirate ship nor yet her boats had been seen by any of us, but they had been so much heard of, that the reinforcement was sent. Of that party, I was one. It included a corporal and a sergeant. Charker was corporal, and the sergeant’s name was Drooce. He was the most tyrannical non-commissioned officer in His Majesty’s service.

The night came on, soon after I had had the foregoing words with Charker. All the wonderful bright colours went out of the sea and sky in a few minutes, and all the stars in the Heavens seemed to shine out together, and to look down at themselves in the sea, over one another’s shoulders, millions deep. Next morning, we cast anchor off the Island. There was a snug harbour within a little reef; there was a sandy beach; there were cocoa-nut trees with high straight stems, quite bare, and foliage at the top like plumes of magnificent green feathers; there were all the objects that are usually seen in those parts, and I am not going to describe them, having something else to tell about.

Great rejoicings, to be sure, were made on our arrival. All the flags in the place were hoisted, all the guns in the place were fired, and all the people in the place came down to look at us. One of those Sambo fellows—they call those natives Sambos, when they are half-negro and half-Indian—had come off outside the reef, to pilot us in, and remained on board after we had let go our anchor. He was called Christian George King, and was fonder of all hands than anybody else was. Now, I confess, for myself, that on that first day, if I had been captain of the Christopher Columbus, instead of private in the Royal Marines, I should have kicked Christian George King—who was no more a Christian than he was a King or a George—over the side, without exactly knowing why, except that it was the right thing to do.

But, I must likewise confess, that I was not in a particularly pleasant humour, when I stood under arms that morning, aboard the Christopher Columbus in the harbour of the Island of Silver-Store. I had had a hard life, and the life of the English on the Island seemed too easy and too gay to please me. “Here you are,” I thought to myself, “good scholars and good livers; able to read what you like, able to write what you like, able to eat and drink what you like, and spend what you like, and do what you like; and much you care for a poor, ignorant Private in the Royal Marines! Yet it’s hard, too, I think, that you should have all the half-pence, and I all the kicks; you all the smooth, and I all the rough; you all the oil, and I all the vinegar.” It was as envious a thing to think as might be, let alone its being nonsensical; but, I thought it. I took it so much amiss, that, when a very beautiful young English lady came aboard, I grunted to myself, “Ah! you have got a lover, I’ll be bound!” As if there was any new offence to me in that, if she had!

She was sister to the captain of our sloop, who had been in a poor way for some time, and who was so ill then that he was obliged to be carried ashore. She was the child of a military officer, and had come out there with her sister, who was married to one of the owners of the silver-mine, and who had three children with her. It was easy to see that she was the light and spirit of the Island. After I had got a good look at her, I grunted to myself again, in an even worse state of mind than before, “I’ll be damned, if I don’t hate him, whoever he is!”

My officer, Lieutenant Linderwood, was as ill as the captain of the sloop, and was carried ashore, too. They were both young men of about my age, who had been delicate in the West India climate. I even took that in bad part. I thought I was much fitter for the work than they were, and that if all of us had our deserts, I should be both of them rolled into one. (It may be imagined what sort of an officer of marines I should have made, without the power of reading a written order. And as to any knowledge how to command the sloop—Lord! I should have sunk her in a quarter of an hour!)

However, such were my reflections; and when we men were ashore and dismissed, I strolled about the place along with Charker, making my observations in a similar spirit.

It was a pretty place: in all its arrangements partly South American and partly English, and very agreeable to look at on that account, being like a bit of home that had got chipped off and had floated away to that spot, accommodating itself to circumstances as it drifted along. The huts of the Sambos, to the number of five-and-twenty, perhaps, were down by the beach to the left of the anchorage. On the right was a sort of barrack, with a South American Flag and the Union Jack, flying from the same staff, where the little English colony could all come together, if they saw occasion. It was a walled square of building, with a sort of pleasure-ground inside, and inside that again a sunken block like a powder magazine, with a little square trench round it, and steps down to the door. Charker and I were looking in at the gate, which was not guarded; and I had said to Charker, in reference to the bit like a powder magazine, “That’s where they keep the silver you see;” and Charker had said to me, after thinking it over, “And silver ain’t gold. Is it, Gill?” when the beautiful young English lady I had been so bilious about, looked out of a door, or a window—at all events looked out, from under a bright awning. She no sooner saw us two in uniform, than she came out so quickly that she was still putting on her broad Mexican hat of plaited straw when we saluted.

“Would you like to come in,” she said, “and see the place? It is rather a curious place.”

We thanked the young lady, and said we didn’t wish to be troublesome; but, she said it could be no trouble to an English soldier’s daughter, to show English soldiers how their countrymen and countrywomen fared, so far away from England; and consequently we saluted again, and went in. Then, as we stood in the shade, she showed us (being as affable as beautiful), how the different families lived in their separate houses, and how there was a general house for stores, and a general reading-room, and a general room for music and dancing, and a room for Church; and how there were other houses on the rising ground called the Signal Hill, where they lived in the hotter weather.

“Your officer has been carried up there,” she said, “and my brother, too, for the better air. At present, our few residents are dispersed over both spots: deducting, that is to say, such of our number as are always going to, or coming from, or staying at, the Mine.”

(“He is among one of those parties,” I thought, “and I wish somebody would knock his head off.”)

“Some of our married ladies live here,” she said, “during at least half the year, as lonely as widows, with their children.”

“Many children here, ma’am?”

“Seventeen. There are thirteen married ladies, and there are eight like me.”

There were not eight like her—there was not one like her—in the world. She meant single.

“Which, with about thirty Englishmen of various degrees,” said the young lady, “form the little colony now on the Island. I don’t count the sailors, for they don’t belong to us. Nor the soldiers,” she gave us a gracious smile when she spoke of the soldiers, “for the same reason.”

“Nor the Sambos, ma’am,” said I.

“No.”

“Under your favour, and with your leave, ma’am,” said I, “are they trustworthy?”

“Perfectly! We are all very kind to them, and they are very grateful to us.”

“Indeed, ma’am? Now—Christian George King——?”

“Very much attached to us all. Would die for us.”

She was, as in my uneducated way I have observed, very beautiful women almost always to be, so composed, that her composure gave great weight to what she said, and I believed it.

Then, she pointed out to us the building like a powder magazine, and explained to us in what manner the silver was brought from the mine, and was brought over from the mainland, and was stored here. The Christopher Columbus would have a rich lading, she said, for there had been a great yield that year, a much richer yield than usual, and there was a chest of jewels besides the silver.

When we had looked about us, and were getting sheepish, through fearing we were troublesome, she turned us over to a young woman, English born but West India bred, who served her as her maid. This young woman was the widow of a non-commissioned officer in a regiment of the line. She had got married and widowed at St. Vincent, with only a few months between the two events. She was a little saucy woman, with a bright pair of eyes, rather a neat little foot and figure, and rather a neat little turned-up nose. The sort of young woman, I considered at the time, who appeared to invite you to give her a kiss, and who would have slapped your face if you accepted the invitation.

I couldn’t make out her name at first; for, when she gave it in answer to my inquiry, it sounded like Beltot, which didn’t sound right. But, when we became better acquainted—which was while Charker and I were drinking sugar-cane sangaree, which she made in a most excellent manner—I found that her Christian name was Isabella, which they shortened into Bell, and that the name of the deceased non-commissioned officer was Tott. Being the kind of neat little woman it was natural to make a toy of—I never saw a woman so like a toy in my life—she had got the plaything name of Belltott. In short, she had no other name on the island. Even Mr. Commissioner Pordage (and he was a grave one!) formally addressed her as Mrs. Belltott, but, I shall come to Mr. Commissioner Pordage presently.

The name of the captain of the sloop was Captain Maryon, and therefore it was no news to hear from Mrs. Belltott, that his sister, the beautiful unmarried young English lady, was Miss Maryon. The novelty was, that her christian-name was Marion too. Marion Maryon. Many a time I have run off those two names in my thoughts, like a bit of verse. Oh many, and many, and many a time!

We saw out all the drink that was produced, like good men and true, and then took our leaves, and went down to the beach. The weather was beautiful; the wind steady, low, and gentle; the island, a picture; the sea, a picture; the sky, a picture. In that country there are two rainy seasons in the year. One sets in at about our English Midsummer; the other, about a fortnight after our English Michaelmas. It was the beginning of August at that time; the first of these rainy seasons was well over; and everything was in its most beautiful growth, and had its loveliest look upon it.

“They enjoy themselves here,” I says to Charker, turning surly again. “This is better than private-soldiering.”

We had come down to the beach, to be friendly with the boat’s-crew who were camped and hutted there; and we were approaching towards their quarters over the sand, when Christian George King comes up from the landing-place at a wolf’s-trot, crying, “Yup, So-Jeer!”—which was that Sambo Pilot’s barbarous way of saying, Hallo, Soldier! I have stated myself to be a man of no learning, and, if I entertain prejudices, I hope allowance may be made. I will now confess to one. It may be a right one or it may be a wrong one; but, I never did like Natives, except in the form of oysters.

So, when Christian George King, who was individually unpleasant to me besides, comes a trotting along the sand, clucking, “Yup, So-Jeer!” I had a thundering good mind to let fly at him with my right. I certainly should have done it, but that it would have exposed me to reprimand.

“Yup, So-Jeer!” says he. “Bad job.”

“What do you mean?” says I.

“Yup, So-Jeer!” says he, “Ship Leakee.”

“Ship leaky?” says I.

“Iss,” says he, with a nod that looked as if it was jerked out of him by a most violent hiccup—which is the way with those savages.

I cast my eyes at Charker, and we both heard the pumps going aboard the sloop, and saw the signal run up, “Come on board; hands wanted from the shore.” In no time some of the sloop’s liberty-men were already running down to the water’s edge, and the party of seamen, under orders against the Pirates, were putting off to the Columbus in two boats.

“O Christian George King sar berry sorry!” says that Sambo vagabond, then. “Christian George King cry, English fashion!” His English fashion of crying was to screw his black knuckles into his eyes, howl like a dog, and roll himself on his back on the sand. It was trying not to kick him, but I gave Charker the word, “Double-quick, Harry!” and we got down to the water’s edge, and got on board the sloop.

By some means or other, she had sprung such a leak, that no pumping would keep her free; and what between the two fears that she would go down in the harbour, and that, even if she did not, all the supplies she had brought for the little colony would be destroyed by the sea-water as it rose in her, there was great confusion. In the midst of it, Captain Maryon was heard hailing from the beach. He had been carried down in his hammock, and looked very bad; but he insisted on being stood there on his feet; and I saw him, myself, come off in the boat, sitting upright in the stern-sheets, as if nothing was wrong with him.

A quick sort of council was held, and Captain Maryon soon resolved that we must all fall to work to get the cargo out, and that when that was done, the guns and heavy matters must be got out, and that the sloop must be hauled ashore, and careened, and the leak stopped. We were all mustered (the Pirate-Chace party volunteering), and told off into parties, with so many hours of spell and so many hours of relief, and we all went at it with a will. Christian George King was entered one of the party in which I worked, at his own request, and he went at it with as good a will as any of the rest. He went at it with so much heartiness, to say the truth, that he rose in my good opinion almost as fast as the water rose in the ship. Which was fast enough, and faster.

Mr. Commissioner Pordage kept in a red-and-black japanned box, like a family lump-sugar box, some document or other, which some Sambo chief or other had got drunk and spilt some ink over (as well as I could understand the matter), and by that means had given up lawful possession of the Island. Through having hold of this box, Mr. Pordage got his title of Commissioner. He was styled Consul too, and spoke of himself as “Government.”

He was a stiff-jointed, high-nosed old gentleman, without an ounce of fat on him, of a very angry temper and a very yellow complexion. Mrs. Commissioner Pordage, making allowance for difference of sex, was much the same. Mr. Kitten, a small, youngish, bald, botanical and mineralogical gentleman, also connected with the mine—but everybody there was that, more or less—was sometimes called by Mr. Commissioner Pordage, his Vice-commissioner, and sometimes his Deputy-consul. Or sometimes he spoke of Mr. Kitten, merely as being “under Government.”

The beach was beginning to be a lively scene with the preparations for careening the sloop, and with cargo, and spars, and rigging, and water-casks, dotted about it, and with temporary quarters for the men rising up there out of such sails and odds and ends as could be best set on one side to make them, when Mr. Commissioner Pordage comes down in a high fluster, and asks for Captain Maryon. The Captain, ill as he was, was slung in his hammock betwixt two trees, that he might direct; and he raised his head, and answered for himself.

“Captain Maryon,” cries Mr. Commissioner Pordage, “this is not official. This is not regular.”

“Sir,” says the Captain, “it hath been arranged with the clerk and supercargo, that you should be communicated with, and requested to render any little assistance that may lie in your power. I am quite certain that hath been duly done.”

“Captain Maryon,” replied Mr. Commissioner Pordage, “there hath been no written correspondence. No documents have passed, no memoranda have been made, no minutes have been made, no entries and counter-entries appear in the official muniments. This is indecent. I call upon you, sir, to desist, until all is regular, or Government will take this up.”

“Sir,” says Captain Maryon, chafing a little, as he looked out of his hammock; “between the chances of Government taking this up, and my ship taking herself down, I much prefer to trust myself to the former.”

“You do, sir?” cries Mr. Commissioner Pordage.

“I do, sir,” says Captain Maryon, lying down again.

“Then, Mr. Kitten,” says the Commissioner, “send up instantly for my Diplomatic coat.”

He was dressed in a linen suit at that moment; but, Mr. Kitten started off himself and brought down the Diplomatic coat, which was a blue cloth one, gold-laced, and with a crown on the button.

“Now, Mr. Kitten,” says Pordage, “I instruct you, as Vice-commissioner, and Deputy-consul of this place, to demand of Captain Maryon, of the sloop Christopher Columbus, whether he drives me to the act of putting this coat on?”

“Mr. Pordage,” says Captain Maryon, looking out of his hammock again, “as I can hear what you say, I can answer it without troubling the gentleman. I should be sorry that you should be at the pains of putting on too hot a coat on my account; but, otherwise, you may put it on hind-side before, or inside-out, or with your legs in the sleeves, or your head in the skirts, for any objection that I have to offer to your thoroughly pleasing yourself.”

“Very good, Captain Maryon,” says Pordage, in a tremendous passion. “Very good, sir. Be the consequences on your own head! Mr. Kitten, as it has come to this, help me on with it.”

When he had given that order, he walked off in the coat, and all our names were taken, and I was afterwards told that Mr. Kitten wrote from his dictation more than a bushel of large paper on the subject, which cost more before it was done with, than ever could be calculated, and which only got done with after all, by being lost.

Our work went on merrily, nevertheless, and the Christopher Columbus, hauled up, lay helpless on her side like a great fish out of water. While she was in that state, there was a feast, or a ball, or an entertainment, or more properly all three together, given us in honour of the ship, and the ship’s company, and the other visitors. At that assembly, I believe, I saw all the inhabitants then upon the Island, without any exception. I took no particular notice of more than a few, but I found it very agreeable in that little corner of the world to see the children, who were of all ages, and mostly very pretty—as they mostly are. There was one handsome elderly lady, with very dark eyes and gray hair, that I inquired about. I was told that her name was Mrs. Venning; and her married daughter, a fair slight thing, was pointed out to me by the name of Fanny Fisher. Quite a child she looked, with a little copy of herself holding to her dress; and her husband, just come back from the mine, exceeding proud of her. They were a good-looking set of people on the whole, but I didn’t like them. I was out of sorts; in conversation with Charker, I found fault with all of them. I said of Mrs. Venning, she was proud; of Mrs. Fisher, she was a delicate little baby-fool. What did I think of this one? Why, he was a fine gentleman. What did I say to that one? Why, she was a fine lady. What could you expect them to be (I asked Charker), nursed in that climate, with the tropical night shining for them, musical instruments playing to them, great trees bending over them, soft lamps lighting them, fire-flies sparkling in among them, bright flowers and birds brought into existence to please their eyes, delicious drinks to be had for the pouring out, delicious fruits to be got for the picking, and every one dancing and murmuring happily in the scented air, with the sea breaking low on the reef for a pleasant chorus.

“Fine gentlemen and fine ladies, Harry?” I says to Charker. “Yes, I think so! Dolls! Dolls! Not the sort of stuff for wear, that comes of poor private soldiering in the Royal Marines!”

However, I could not gainsay that they were very hospitable people, and that they treated us uncommonly well. Every man of us was at the entertainment, and Mrs. Belltott had more partners than she could dance with: though she danced all night, too. As to Jack (whether of the Christopher Columbus, or of the Pirate pursuit party, it made no difference), he danced with his brother Jack, danced with himself, danced with the moon, the stars, the trees, the prospect, anything. I didn’t greatly take to the chief-officer of that party, with his bright eyes, brown face, and easy figure. I didn’t much like his way when he first happened to come where we were, with Miss Maryon on his arm. “O, Captain Carton,” she says, “here are two friends of mine!” He says, “Indeed? These two Marines?”—meaning Charker and self. “Yes,” says she, “I showed these two friends of mine when they first came, all the wonders of Silver-Store.” He gave us a laughing look, and says he, “You are in luck, men. I would be disrated and go before the mast to-morrow, to be shown the way upward again by such a guide. You are in luck, men.” When we had saluted, and he and the lady had waltzed away, I said, “You are a pretty follow, too, to talk of luck. You may go to the Devil!”

Mr. Commissioner Pordage and Mrs. Commissioner, showed among the company on that occasion like the King and Queen of a much Greater Britain than Great Britain. Only two other circumstances in that jovial night made much separate impression on me. One was this. A man in our draft of marines, named Tom Packer, a wild unsteady young fellow, but the son of a respectable shipwright in Portsmouth Yard, and a good scholar who had been well brought up, comes to me after a spell of dancing, and takes me aside by the elbow, and says, swearing angrily:

“Gill Davis, I hope I may not be the death of Sergeant Drooce one day!”

Now, I knew Drooce had always borne particularly hard on this man, and I knew this man to be of a very hot temper: so, I said:

“Tut, nonsense! don’t talk so to me! If there’s a man in the corps who scorns the name of an assassin, that man and Tom Packer are one.”

Tom wipes his head, being in a mortal sweat, and says he:

“I hope so, but I can’t answer for myself when he lords it over me, as he has just now done, before a woman. I tell you what, Gill! Mark my words! It will go hard with Sergeant Drooce, if ever we are in an engagement together, and he has to look to me to save him. Let him say a prayer then, if he knows one, for it’s all over with him, and he is on his Death-bed. Mark my words!”

I did mark his words, and very soon afterwards, too, as will shortly be taken down.

The other circumstance that I noticed at that ball, was, the gaiety and attachment of Christian George King. The innocent spirits that Sambo Pilot was in, and the impossibility he found himself under of showing all the little colony, but especially the ladies and children, how fond he was of them, how devoted to them, and how faithful to them for life and death, for present, future, and everlasting, made a great impression on me. If ever a man, Sambo or no Sambo, was trustful and trusted, to what may be called quite an infantine and sweetly beautiful extent, surely, I thought that morning when I did at last lie down to rest, it was that Sambo Pilot, Christian George King.

This may account for my dreaming of him. He stuck in my sleep, cornerwise, and I couldn’t get him out. He was always flitting about me, dancing round me, and peeping in over my hammock, though I woke and dozed off again fifty times. At last, when I opened my eyes, there he really was, looking in at the open side of the little dark hut; which was made of leaves, and had Charker’s hammock slung in it as well as mine.

“So-Jeer!” says he, in a sort of a low croak. “Yup!”

“Hallo!” says I, starting up. “What? You are there, are you?”

“Iss,” says he. “Christian George King got news.”

“What news has he got?”

“Pirates out!”

I was on my feet in a second. So was Charker. We were both aware that Captain Carton, in command of the boats, constantly watched the mainland for a secret signal, though, of course, it was not known to such as us what the signal was.

Christian George King had vanished before we touched the ground. But, the word was already passing from hut to hut to turn out quietly, and we knew that the nimble barbarian had got hold of the truth, or something near it.

In a space among the trees behind the encampment of us visitors, naval and military, was a snugly-screened spot, where we kept the stores that were in use, and did our cookery. The word was passed to assemble here. It was very quickly given, and was given (so far as we were concerned) by Sergeant Drooce, who was as good in a soldier point of view, as he was bad in a tyrannical one. We were ordered to drop into this space, quietly, behind the trees, one by one. As we assembled here, the seamen assembled too. Within ten minutes, as I should estimate, we were all here, except the usual guard upon the beach. The beach (we could see it through the wood) looked as it always had done in the hottest time of the day. The guard were in the shadow of the sloop’s hull, and nothing was moving but the sea,—and that moved very faintly. Work had always been knocked off at that hour, until the sun grew less fierce, and the sea-breeze rose; so that its being holiday with us, made no difference, just then, in the look of the place. But I may mention that it was a holiday, and the first we had had since our hard work began. Last night’s ball had been given, on the leak’s being repaired, and the careening done. The worst of the work was over, and to-morrow we were to begin to get the sloop afloat again.

We marines were now drawn up here under arms. The chase-party were drawn up separate. The men of the Columbus were drawn up separate. The officers stepped out into the midst of the three parties, and spoke so as all might hear. Captain Carton was the officer in command, and he had a spy-glass in his hand. His coxswain stood by him with another spy-glass, and with a slate on which he seemed to have been taking down signals.

“Now, men!” says Captain Carton; “I have to let you know, for your satisfaction: Firstly, that there are ten pirate-boats, strongly manned and armed, lying hidden up a creek yonder on the coast, under the overhanging branches of the dense trees. Secondly, that they will certainly come out this night when the moon rises, on a pillaging and murdering expedition, of which some part of the mainland is the object. Thirdly—don’t cheer, men!—that we will give chace, and, if we can get at them, rid the world of them, please God!”

Nobody spoke, that I heard, and nobody moved, that I saw. Yet there was a kind of ring, as if every man answered and approved with the best blood that was inside of him.

“Sir,” says Captain Maryon, “I beg to volunteer on this service, with my boats. My people volunteer, to the ship’s boys.”

“In His Majesty’s name and service,” the other answers, touching his hat, “I accept your aid with pleasure. Lieutenant Linderwood, how will you divide your men?”

I was ashamed—I give it out to be written down as large and plain as possible—I was heart and soul ashamed of my thoughts of those two sick officers, Captain Maryon and Lieutenant Linderwood, when I saw them, then and there. The spirit in those two gentlemen beat down their illness (and very ill I knew them to be) like Saint George beating down the Dragon. Pain and weakness, want of ease and want of rest, had no more place in their minds than fear itself. Meaning now to express for my lady to write down, exactly what I felt then and there, I felt this: “You two brave fellows that I had been so grudgeful of, I know that if you were dying you would put it off to get up and do your best, and then you would be so modest that in lying down again to die, you would hardly say, ‘I did it!’”

It did me good. It really did me good.

But, to go back to where I broke off. Says Captain Carton to Lieutenant Linderwood, “Sir, how will you divide your men? There is not room for all; and a few men should, in any case, be left here.”

There was some debate about it. At last, it was resolved to leave eight Marines and four seamen on the Island, besides the sloop’s two boys. And because it was considered that the friendly Sambos would only want to be commanded in case of any danger (though none at all was apprehended there), the officers were in favour of leaving the two non-commissioned officers, Drooce and Charker. It was a heavy disappointment to them, just as my being one of the left was a heavy disappointment to me—then, but not soon afterwards. We men drew lots for it, and I drew “Island.” So did Tom Packer. So of course, did four more of our rank and file.

When this was settled, verbal instructions were given to all hands to keep the intended expedition secret, in order that the women and children might not be alarmed, or the expedition put in a difficulty by more volunteers. The assembly was to be on that same spot at sunset. Every man was to keep up an appearance, meanwhile, of occupying himself in his usual way. That is to say, every man excepting four old trusty seamen, who were appointed, with an officer, to see to the arms and ammunition, and to muffle the rullocks of the boats, and to make everything as trim and swift and silent as it could be made.

The Sambo Pilot had been present all the while, in case of his being wanted, and had said to the officer in command, five hundred times over if he had said it once, that Christian George King would stay with the So-Jeers, and take care of the booffer ladies and the booffer childs—booffer being that native’s expression for beautiful. He was now asked a few questions concerning the putting off of the boats, and in particular whether there was any way of embarking at the back of the Island: which Captain Carton would have half liked to do, and then have dropped round in its shadow and slanted across to the main. But, “No,” says Christian George King. “No, no, no! Told you so, ten time. No, no, no! All reef, all rock, all swim, all drown!” Striking out as he said it, like a swimmer gone mad, and turning over on his back on dry land, and spluttering himself to death, in a manner that made him quite an exhibition.

The sun went down, after appearing to be a long time about it, and the assembly was called. Every man answered to his name, of course, and was at his post. It was not yet black dark, and the roll was only just gone through, when up comes Mr. Commissioner Pordage with his Diplomatic coat on.

“Captain Carton,” says he, “Sir, what is this?”

“This, Mr. Commissioner” (he was very short with him), “is an expedition against the Pirates. It is a secret expedition, so please to keep it a secret.”

“Sir,” says Commissioner Pordage, “I trust there is going to be no unnecessary cruelty committed?”

“Sir,” returns the officer, “I trust not.”

“That is not enough, sir,” cries Commissioner Pordage, getting wroth. “Captain Carton, I give you notice. Government requires you to treat the enemy with great delicacy, consideration, clemency, and forbearance.”

“Sir,” says Captain Carton, “I am an English officer, commanding English Men, and I hope I am not likely to disappoint the Government’s just expectations. But, I presume you know that these villains under their black flag have despoiled our countrymen of their property, burnt their homes, barbarously murdered them and their little children, and worse than murdered their wives and daughters?”

“Perhaps I do, Captain Carton,” answers Pordage, waving his hand, with dignity; “perhaps I do not. It is not customary, sir, for Government to commit itself.”

“It matters very little, Mr. Pordage, whether or no. Believing that I hold my commission by the allowance of God, and not that I have received it direct from the Devil, I shall certainly use it, with all avoidance of unnecessary suffering and with all merciful swiftness of execution, to exterminate these people from the face of the earth. Let me recommend you to go home, sir, and to keep out of the night-air.”

Never another syllable did that officer say to the Commissioner, but turned away to his men. The Commissioner buttoned his Diplomatic coat to the chin, said, “Mr. Kitten, attend me!” gasped, half choked himself, and took himself off.

It now fell very dark, indeed. I have seldom, if ever, seen it darker, nor yet so dark. The moon was not due until one in the morning, and it was but a little after nine when our men lay down where they were mustered. It was pretended that they were to take a nap, but everybody knew that no nap was to be got under the circumstances. Though all were very quiet, there was a restlessness among the people; much what I have seen among the people on a race-course, when the bell has rung for the saddling for a great race with large stakes on it.

At ten, they put off; only one boat putting off at a time; another following in five minutes; both then lying on their oars until another followed. Ahead of all, paddling his own outlandish little canoe without a sound, went the Sambo pilot, to take them safely outside the reef. No light was shown but once, and that was in the commanding officer’s own hand. I lighted the dark lantern for him, and he took it from me when he embarked. They had blue lights and such like with them, but kept themselves as dark as Murder.

The expedition got away with wonderful quietness, and Christian George King soon came back dancing with joy.

“Yup, So-Jeer,” says he to myself in a very objectionable kind of convulsions, “Christian George King sar berry glad. Pirates all be blown a-pieces. Yup! Yup!”

My reply to that cannibal was, “However glad you may be, hold your noise, and don’t dance jigs and slap your knees about it, for I can’t abear to see you do it.”

I was on duty then; we twelve who were left being divided into four watches of three each, three hours’ spell. I was relieved at twelve. A little before that time, I had challenged, and Miss Maryon and Mrs. Belltott had come in.

“Good Davis,” says Miss Maryon, “what is the matter? Where is my brother?”

I told her what was the matter, and where her brother was.

“O Heaven help him!” says she, clasping her hands and looking up—she was close in front of me, and she looked most lovely to be sure; “he is not sufficiently recovered, not strong enough for such strife!”

“If you had seen him, miss,” I told her, “as I saw him when he volunteered, you would have known that his spirit is strong enough for any strife. It will bear his body, miss, to wherever duty calls him. It will always bear him to an honourable life, or a brave death.”

“Heaven bless you!” says she, touching my arm. “I know it. Heaven bless you!”

Mrs. Belltott surprised me by trembling and saying nothing. They were still standing looking towards the sea and listening, after the relief had come round. It continuing very dark, I asked to be allowed to take them back. Miss Maryon thanked me, and she put her arm in mine, and I did take them back. I have now got to make a confession that will appear singular. After I had left them, I laid myself down on my face on the beach, and cried for the first time since I had frightened birds as a boy at Snorridge Bottom, to think what a poor, ignorant, low-placed, private soldier I was.

It was only for half a minute or so. A man can’t at all times be quite master of himself, and it was only for half a minute or so. Then I up and went to my hut, and turned into my hammock, and fell asleep with wet eyelashes, and a sore, sore heart. Just as I had often done when I was a child, and had been worse used than usual.

I slept (as a child under those circumstances might) very sound, and yet very sore at heart all through my sleep. I was awoke by the words, “He is a determined man.” I had sprung out of my hammock, and had seized my firelock, and was standing on the ground, saying the words myself. “He is a determined man.” But, the curiosity of my state was, that I seemed to be repeating them after somebody, and to have been wonderfully startled by hearing them.

As soon as I came to myself, I went out of the hut, and away to where the guard was. Charker challenged:

“Who goes there?”

“A friend.”

“Not Gill?” says he, as he shouldered his piece.

“Gill,” says I.

“Why, what the deuce do you do out of your hammock?” says he.

“Too hot for sleep,” says I; “is all right?”

“Right!” says Charker, “yes, yes; all’s right enough here; what should be wrong here? It’s the boats that we want to know of. Except for fire-flies twinkling about, and the lonesome splashes of great creatures as they drop into the water, there’s nothing going on here to ease a man’s mind from the boats.”

The moon was above the sea, and had risen, I should say, some half-an-hour. As Charker spoke, with his face towards the sea, I, looking landward, suddenly laid my right hand on his breast, and said, “Don’t move. Don’t turn. Don’t raise your voice! You never saw a Maltese face here?”

“No. What do you mean?” he asks, staring at me.

“Nor yet, an English face, with one eye and a patch across the nose?”

“No. What ails you? What do you mean?”

I had seen both, looking at us round the stem of a cocoa-nut tree, where the moon struck them. I had seen that Sambo Pilot, with one hand laid on the stem of the tree, drawing them back into the heavy shadow. I had seen their naked cutlasses twinkle and shine, like bits of the moonshine in the water that had got blown ashore among the trees by the light wind. I had seen it all, in a moment. And I saw in a moment (as any man would), that the signalled move of the pirates on the mainland was a plot and a feint; that the leak had been made to disable the sloop; that the boats had been tempted away, to leave the Island unprotected; that the pirates had landed by some secreted way at the back; and that Christian George King was a double-dyed traitor, and a most infernal villain.

I considered, still all in one and the same moment, that Charker was a brave man, but not quick with his head; and that Sergeant Drooce, with a much better head, was close by. All I said to Charker was, “I am afraid we are betrayed. Turn your back full to the moonlight on the sea, and cover the stem of the cocoa-nut tree which will then be right before you, at the height of a man’s heart. Are you right?”

“I am right,” says Charker, turning instantly, and falling into the position with a nerve of iron; “and right ain’t left. Is it, Gill?”

A few seconds brought me to Sergeant Drooce’s hut. He was fast asleep, and being a heavy sleeper, I had to lay my hand upon him to rouse him. The instant I touched him he came rolling out of his hammock, and upon me like a tiger. And a tiger he was, except that he knew what he was up to, in his utmost heat, as well as any man.

I had to struggle with him pretty hard to bring him to his senses, panting all the while (for he gave me a breather), “Sergeant, I am Gill Davis! Treachery! Pirates on the Island!”

The last words brought him round, and he took his hands off. “I have seen two of them within this minute,” said I. And so I told him what I had told Harry Charker.

His soldierly, though tyrannical, head was clear in an instant. He didn’t waste one word, even of surprise. “Order the guard,” says he, “to draw off quietly into the Fort.” (They called the enclosure I have before mentioned, the Fort, though it was not much of that.) “Then get you to the Fort as quick as you can, rouse up every soul there, and fasten the gate. I will bring in all those who are at the Signal Hill. If we are surrounded before we can join you, you must make a sally and cut us out if you can. The word among our men is, ‘Women and children!’”

He burst away, like fire going before the wind over dry reeds. He roused up the seven men who were off duty, and had them bursting away with him, before they know they were not asleep. I reported orders to Charker, and ran to the Fort, as I have never run at any other time in all my life: no, not even in a dream.

The gate was not fast, and had no good fastening: only a double wooden bar, a poor chain, and a bad lock. Those, I secured as well as they could be secured in a few seconds by one pair of hands, and so ran to that part of the building where Miss Maryon lived. I called to her loudly by her name until she answered. I then called loudly all the names I knew—Mrs. Macey (Miss Maryon’s married sister), Mr. Macey, Mrs. Venning, Mr. and Mrs. Fisher, even Mr. and Mrs. Pordage. Then I called out, “All you gentlemen here, get up and defend the place! We are caught in a trap. Pirates have landed. We are attacked!”

At the terrible word “Pirates!”—for, those villains had done such deeds in those seas as never can be told in writing, and can scarcely be so much as thought of—cries and screams rose up from every part of the place. Quickly lights moved about from window to window, and the cries moved about with them, and men, women, and children came flying down into the square. I remarked to myself, even then, what a number of things I seemed to see at once. I noticed Mrs. Macey coming towards me, carrying all her three children together. I noticed Mr. Pordage in the greatest terror, in vain trying to get on his Diplomatic coat; and Mr. Kitten respectfully tying his pocket-handkerchief over Mrs. Pordage’s nightcap. I noticed Mrs. Belltott run out screaming, and shrink upon the ground near me, and cover her face in her hands, and lie all of a bundle, shivering. But, what I noticed with the greatest pleasure was, the determined eyes with which those men of the Mine that I had thought fine gentlemen, came round me with what arms they had: to the full as cool and resolute as I could be, for my life—ay, and for my soul, too, into the bargain!

The chief person being Mr. Macey, I told him how the three men of the guard would be at the gate directly, if they were not already there, and how Sergeant Drooce and the other seven were gone to bring in the outlying part of the people of Silver-Store. I next urged him, for the love of all who were dear to him, to trust no Sambo, and, above all, if he could got any good chance at Christian George King, not to lose it, but to put him out of the world.

“I will follow your advice to the letter, Davis,” says he; “what next?”

My answer was, “I think, sir, I would recommend you next, to order down such heavy furniture and lumber as can be moved, and make a barricade within the gate.”

“That’s good again,” says he: “will you see it done?”

“I’ll willingly help to do it,” says I, “unless or until my superior, Sergeant Drooce, gives me other orders.”

He shook me by the hand, and having told off some of his companions to help me, bestirred himself to look to the arms and ammunition. A proper quick, brave, steady, ready gentleman!

One of their three little children was deaf and dumb, Miss Maryon had been from the first with all the children, soothing them, and dressing them (poor little things, they had been brought out of their beds), and making them believe that it was a game of play, so that some of them were now even laughing. I had been working hard with the others at the barricade, and had got up a pretty good breastwork within the gate. Drooce and the seven men had come back, bringing in the people from the Signal Hill, and had worked along with us: but, I had not so much as spoken a word to Drooce, nor had Drooce so much as spoken a word to me, for we were both too busy. The breastwork was now finished, and I found Miss Maryon at my side, with a child in her arms. Her dark hair was fastened round her head with a band. She had a quantity of it, and it looked even richer and more precious, put up hastily out of her way, than I had seen it look when it was carefully arranged. She was very pale, but extraordinarily quiet and still.

“Dear good Davis,” said she, “I have been waiting to speak one word to you.”

I turned to her directly. If I had received a musket-ball in the heart, and she had stood there, I almost believe I should have turned to her before I dropped.

“This pretty little creature,” said she, kissing the child in her arms, who was playing with her hair and trying to pull it down, “cannot hear what we say—can hear nothing. I trust you so much, and have such great confidence in you, that I want you to make me a promise.”

“What is it, Miss?”

“That if we are defeated, and you are absolutely sure of my being taken, you will kill me.”

“I shall not be alive to do it, Miss. I shall have died in your defence before it comes to that. They must step across my body to lay a hand on you.”

“But, if you are alive, you brave soldier.” How she looked at me! “And if you cannot save me from the Pirates, living, you will save me, dead. Tell me so.”

Well! I told her I would do that at the last, if all else failed. She took my hand—my rough, coarse hand—and put it to her lips. She put it to the child’s lips, and the child kissed it. I believe I had the strength of half a dozen men in me, from that moment, until the fight was over.

All this time, Mr. Commissioner Pordage had been wanting to make a Proclamation to the Pirates to lay down their arms and go away; and everybody had been hustling him about and tumbling over him, while he was calling for pen and ink to write it with. Mrs. Pordage, too, had some curious ideas about the British respectability of her nightcap (which had as many frills to it, growing in layers one inside another, as if it was a white vegetable of the artichoke sort), and she wouldn’t take the nightcap off, and would be angry when it got crushed by the other ladies who were handing things about, and, in short, she gave as much trouble as her husband did. But, as we were now forming for the defence of the place, they were both poked out of the way with no ceremony. The children and ladies were got into the little trench which surrounded the silver-house (we were afraid of leaving them in any of the light buildings, lest they should be set on fire), and we made the best disposition we could. There was a pretty good store, in point of amount, of tolerable swords and cutlasses. Those were issued. There were, also, perhaps a score or so of spare muskets. Those were brought out. To my astonishment, little Mrs. Fisher that I had taken for a doll and a baby, was not only very active in that service, but volunteered to load the spare arms.

“For, I understand it well,” says she, cheerfully, without a shake in her voice.

“I am a soldier’s daughter and a sailor’s sister, and I understand it too,” says Miss Maryon, just in the same way.

Steady and busy behind where I stood, those two beautiful and delicate young women fell to handling the guns, hammering the flints, looking to the locks, and quietly directing others to pass up powder and bullets from hand to hand, as unflinching as the best of tried soldiers.

Sergeant Drooce had brought in word that the pirates were very strong in numbers—over a hundred was his estimate—and that they were not, even then, all landed; for, he had seen them in a very good position on the further side of the Signal Hill, evidently waiting for the rest of their men to come up. In the present pause, the first we had had since the alarm, he was telling this over again to Mr. Macey, when Mr. Macey suddenly cried our: “The signal! Nobody has thought of the signal!”

We knew of no signal, so we could not have thought of it.

“What signal may you mean, sir?” says Sergeant Drooce, looking sharp at him.

“There is a pile of wood upon the Signal Hill. If it could be lighted—which never has been done yet—it would be a signal of distress to the mainland.”

Charker cries, directly: “Sergeant Drooce, dispatch me on that duty. Give me the two men who were on guard with me to-night, and I’ll light the fire, if it can be done.”

“And if it can’t, Corporal——” Mr. Macey strikes in.

“Look at these ladies and children, sir!” says Charker. “I’d sooner light myself, than not try any chance to save them.”

We gave him a Hurrah!—it burst from us, come of it what might—and he got his two men, and was let out at the gate, and crept away. I had no sooner come back to my place from being one of the party to handle the gate, than Miss Maryon said in a low voice behind me:

“Davis, will you look at this powder? This is not right.”

I turned my head. Christian George King again, and treachery again! Sea-water had been conveyed into the magazine, and every grain of powder was spoiled!

“Stay a moment,” said Sergeant Drooce, when I had told him, without causing a movement in a muscle of his face: “look to your pouch, my lad. You Tom Packer, look to your pouch, confound you! Look to your pouches, all you Marines.”

The same artful savage had got at them, somehow or another, and the cartridges were all unserviceable. “Hum!” says the Sergeant. “Look to your loading, men. You are right so far?”

Yes; we were right so far.

“Well, my lads, and gentlemen all,” says the Sergeant, “this will be a hand-to-hand affair, and so much the better.”

He treated himself to a pinch of snuff, and stood up, square-shouldered and broad-chested, in the light of the moon—which was now very bright—as cool as if he was waiting for a play to begin. He stood quiet, and we all stood quiet, for a matter of something like half-an-hour. I took notice from such whispered talk as there was, how little we that the silver did not belong to, thought about it, and how much the people that it did belong to, thought about it. At the end of the half-hour, it was reported from the gate that Charker and the two were falling back on us, pursued by about a dozen.

“Sally! Gate-party, under Gill Davis,” says the Sergeant, “and bring ’em in! Like men, now!”

We were not long about it, and we brought them in. “Don’t take me,” says Charker, holding me round the neck, and stumbling down at my feet when the gate was fast, “don’t take me near the ladies or the children, Gill. They had better not see Death, till it can’t be helped. They’ll see it soon enough.”

“Harry!” I answered, holding up his head. “Comrade!”

He was cut to pieces. The signal had been secured by the first pirate party that landed; his hair was all singed off, and his face was blackened with the running pitch from a torch.

He made no complaint of pain, or of anything. “Good-bye, old chap,” was all he said, with a smile. “I’ve got my death. And Death ain’t life. Is it, Gill?”

Having helped to lay his poor body on one side, I went back to my post. Sergeant Drooce looked at me, with his eyebrows a little lifted. I nodded. “Close up here men, and gentlemen all!” said the Sergeant. “A place too many, in the line.”

The Pirates were so close upon us at this time, that the foremost of them were already before the gate. More and more came up with a great noise, and shouting loudly. When we believed from the sound that they were all there, we gave three English cheers. The poor little children joined, and were so fully convinced of our being at play, that they enjoyed the noise, and were heard clapping their hands in the silence that followed.

Our disposition was this, beginning with the rear. Mrs. Venning, holding her daughter’s child in her arms, sat on the steps of the little square trench surrounding the silver-house, encouraging and directing those women and children as she might have done in the happiest and easiest time of her life. Then, there was an armed line, under Mr. Macey, across the width of the enclosure, facing that way and having their backs towards the gate, in order that they might watch the walls and prevent our being taken by surprise. Then there was a space of eight or ten feet deep, in which the spare arms were, and in which Miss Maryon and Mrs. Fisher, their hands and dresses blackened with the spoilt gunpowder, worked on their knees, tying such things as knives, old bayonets, and spear-heads, to the muzzles of the useless muskets. Then, there was a second armed line, under Sergeant Drooce, also across the width of the enclosure, but facing to the gate. Then came the breastwork we had made, with a zigzag way through it for me and my little party to hold good in retreating, as long as we could, when we were driven from the gate. We all knew that it was impossible to hold the place long, and that our only hope was in the timely discovery of the plot by the boats, and in their coming back.

I and my men were now thrown forward to the gate. From a spy-hole, I could see the whole crowd of Pirates. There were Malays among them, Dutch, Maltese, Greeks, Sambos, Negroes, and Convict Englishmen from the West India Islands; among the last, him with the one eye and the patch across the nose. There were some Portuguese, too, and a few Spaniards. The captain was a Portuguese; a little man with very large ear-rings under a very broad hat, and a great bright shawl twisted about his shoulders. They were all strongly armed, but like a boarding party, with pikes, swords, cutlasses, and axes. I noticed a good many pistols, but not a gun of any kind among them. This gave me to understand that they had considered that a continued roll of musketry might perhaps have been heard on the mainland; also, that for the reason that fire would be seen from the mainland they would not set the Fort in flames and roast us alive; which was one of their favourite ways of carrying on. I looked about for Christian George King, and if I had seen him I am much mistaken if he would not have received my one round of ball-cartridge in his head. But, no Christian George King was visible.

A sort of a wild Portuguese demon, who seemed either fierce-mad or fierce-drunk—but, they all seemed one or the other—came forward with the black flag, and gave it a wave or two. After that, the Portuguese captain called out in shrill English, “I say you! English fools! Open the gate! Surrender!”

As we kept close and quiet, he said something to his men which I didn’t understand, and when he had said it, the one-eyed English rascal with the patch (who had stepped out when he began), said it again in English. It was only this. “Boys of the black flag, this is to be quickly done. Take all the prisoners you can. If they don’t yield, kill the children to make them. Forward!” Then, they all came on at the gate, and in another half-minute were smashing and splitting it in.

We struck at them through the gaps and shivers, and we dropped many of them, too; but, their very weight would have carried such a gate, if they had been unarmed. I soon found Sergeant Drooce at my side, forming us six remaining marines in line—Tom Packer next to me—and ordering us to fall back three paces, and, as they broke in, to give them our one little volley at short distance. “Then,” says he, “receive them behind your breastwork on the bayonet, and at least let every man of you pin one of the cursed cockchafers through the body.”

We checked them by our fire, slight as it was, and we checked them at the breastwork. However, they broke over it like swarms of devils—they were, really and truly, more devils than men—and then it was hand to hand, indeed.

We clubbed our muskets and laid about us; even then, those two ladies—always behind me—were steady and ready with the arms. I had a lot of Maltese and Malays upon me, and, but for a broadsword that Miss Maryon’s own hand put in mine, should have got my end from them. But, was that all? No. I saw a heap of banded dark hair and a white dress come thrice between me and them, under my own raised right arm, which each time might have destroyed the wearer of the white dress; and each time one of the lot went down, struck dead.

Drooce was armed with a broadsword, too, and did such things with it, that there was a cry, in half-a-dozen languages, of “Kill that sergeant!” as I knew, by the cry being raised in English, and taken up in other tongues. I had received a severe cut across the left arm a few moments before, and should have known nothing of it, except supposing that somebody had struck me a smart blow, if I had not felt weak, and seen myself covered with spouting blood, and, at the same instant of time, seen Miss Maryon tearing her dress and binding it with Mrs. Fisher’s help round the wound. They called to Tom Packer, who was scouring by, to stop and guard me for one minute, while I was bound, or I should bleed to death in trying to defend myself. Tom stopped directly, with a good sabre in his hand.

In that same moment—all things seem to happen in that same moment, at such a time—half-a-dozen had rushed howling at Sergeant Drooce. The Sergeant, stepping back against the wall, stopped one howl for ever with such a terrible blow, and waited for the rest to come on, with such a wonderfully unmoved face, that they stopped and looked at him.

“See him now!” cried Tom Packer. “Now, when I could cut him out! Gill! Did I tell you to mark my words?”

I implored Tom Packer in the Lord’s name, as well as I could in my faintness, to go to the Sergeant’s aid.

“I hate and detest him,” says Tom, moodily wavering. “Still, he is a brave man.” Then he calls out, “Sergeant Drooce, Sergeant Drooce! Tell me you have driven me too hard, and are sorry for it.”

The Sergeant, without turning his eyes from his assailants, which would have been instant death to him, answers.

“No. I won’t.”

“Sergeant Drooce!” cries Tom, in a kind of an agony. “I have passed my word that I would never save you from Death, if I could, but would leave you to die. Tell me you have driven me too hard and are sorry for it, and that shall go for nothing.”

One of the group laid the Sergeant’s bald bare head open. The Sergeant laid him dead.

“I tell you,” says the Sergeant, breathing a little short, and waiting for the next attack, “no. I won’t. If you are not man enough to strike for a fellow-soldier because he wants help, and because of nothing else, I’ll go into the other world and look for a better man.”

Tom swept upon them, and cut him out. Tom and he fought their way through another knot of them, and sent them flying, and came over to where I was beginning again to feel, with inexpressible joy, that I had got a sword in my hand.

They had hardly come to us, when I heard, above all the other noises, a tremendous cry of women’s voices. I also saw Miss Maryon, with quite a new face, suddenly clap her two hands over Mrs. Fisher’s eyes. I looked towards the silver-house, and saw Mrs. Venning—standing upright on the top of the steps of the trench, with her gray hair and her dark eyes—hide her daughter’s child behind her, among the folds of her dress, strike a pirate with her other hand, and fall, shot by his pistol.

The cry arose again, and there was a terrible and confusing rush of the women into the midst of the struggle. In another moment, something came tumbling down upon me that I thought was the wall. It was a heap of Sambos who had come over the wall; and of four men who clung to my legs like serpents, one who clung to my right leg was Christian George King.

“Yup, So-Jeer,” says he, “Christian George King sar berry glad So-Jeer a prisoner. Christian George King been waiting for So-Jeer sech long time. Yup, yup!”

What could I do, with five-and-twenty of them on me, but be tied hand and foot? So, I was tied hand and foot. It was all over now—boats not come back—all lost! When I was fast bound and was put up against the wall, the one-eyed English convict came up with the Portuguese Captain, to have a look at me.

“See!” says he. “Here’s the determined man! If you had slept sounder, last night, you’d have slept your soundest last night, my determined man.”

The Portuguese Captain laughed in a cool way, and with the flat of his cutlass, hit me crosswise, as if I was the bough of a tree that he played with: first on the face, and then across the chest and the wounded arm. I looked him steady in the face without tumbling while he looked at me, I am happy to say; but, when they went away, I fell, and lay there.

The sun was up, when I was roused and told to come down to the beach and be embarked. I was full of aches and pains, and could not at first remember; but, I remembered quite soon enough. The killed were lying about all over the place, and the Pirates were burying their dead, and taking away their wounded on hastily-made litters, to the back of the Island. As for us prisoners, some of their boats had come round to the usual harbour, to carry us off. We looked a wretched few, I thought, when I got down there; still, it was another sign that we had fought well, and made the enemy suffer.

The Portuguese Captain had all the women already embarked in the boat he himself commanded, which was just putting off when I got down. Miss Maryon sat on one side of him, and gave me a moment’s look, as full of quiet courage, and pity, and confidence, as if it had been an hour long. On the other side of him was poor little Mrs. Fisher, weeping for her child and her mother. I was shoved into the same boat with Drooce and Packer, and the remainder of our party of marines: of whom we had lost two privates, besides Charker, my poor, brave comrade. We all made a melancholy passage, under the hot sun over to the mainland. There, we landed in a solitary place, and were mustered on the sea sand. Mr. and Mrs. Macey and their children were amongst us, Mr. and Mrs. Pordage, Mr. Kitten, Mr. Fisher, and Mrs. Belltott. We mustered only fourteen men, fifteen women, and seven children. Those were all that remained of the English who had lain down to sleep last night, unsuspecting and happy, on the Island of Silver-Store.

CHAPTER II

THE PRISON IN THE WOODS

[1] There we all stood, huddled up on the beach under the burning sun, with the pirates closing us in on every side—as forlorn a company of helpless men, women, and children as ever was gathered together out of any nation in the world. I kept my thoughts to myself; but I did not in my heart believe that any one of our lives was worth five minutes' purchase.

The man on whose will our safety or our destruction depended was the Pirate Captain. All our eyes, by a kind of instinct, fixed themselves on him—excepting in the case of the poor children, who, too frightened to cry, stood hiding their faces against their mothers' gowns. The ruler who held all the ruffians about us in subjection, was, judging by appearances, the very last man I should have picked out as likely to fill a place of power among any body of men, good or bad, under heaven. By nation, he was a Portuguese; and, by name, he was generally spoken of among his men as The Don. He was a little, active, weazen, monkey-faced man, dressed in the brightest colours and the finest-made clothes I ever saw. His three-cornered hat was smartly cocked on one side. His coat-skirts were stiffened and stuck out, like the skirts of the dandies in the Mall in London. When the dance was given at the Island, I saw no such lace on any lady's dress there as I saw on his cravat and ruffles. Round his neck he wore a thick gold chain, with a diamond cross hanging from it. His lean, wiry, brown fingers were covered with rings. Over his shoulders, and falling down in front to below his waist, he wore a sort of sling of broad scarlet cloth, embroidered with beads and little feathers, and holding, at the lower part, four loaded pistols, two on a side, lying ready to either hand. His face was mere skin and bone, and one of his wrinkled cheeks had a blue scar running all across it, which drew up that part of his face, and showed his white shining teeth on that side of his mouth. An uglier, meaner, weaker, man-monkey to look at, I never saw; and yet there was not one of his crew, from his mate to his cabin-boy, who did not obey him as if he had been the greatest monarch in the world. As for the Sambos, including especially that evil-minded scoundrel, Christian George King, they never went near him without seeming to want to roll before him on the ground, for the sake of winning the honour of having one of his little dancing-master's feet set on their black bullock bodies.

There this fellow stood, while we were looking at him, with his hands in his pockets, smoking a cigar. His mate (the one-eyed Englishman), stood by him; a big, hulking fellow he was, who might have eaten the Captain up, pistols and all, and looked about for more afterwards. The Don himself seemed, to an ignorant man like me, to have a gift of speaking in any tongue he liked. I can testify that his English rattled out of his crooked lips as fast as if it was natural to them; making allowance, of course, for his foreign way of clipping his words.

"Now, Captain," says the big mate, running his eye over us as if we were a herd of cattle, "here they are. What's to be done with them?"

"Are they all off the Island?" says the Pirate Captain.

"All of them that are alive," says the mate.

"Good, and very good," says the captain. "Now, Giant-Georgy, some paper, a pen, and a horn of ink."

Those things were brought immediately.

"Something to write on," says the Pirate Captain. "What? Ha! why not a broad nigger back?"

He pointed with the end of his cigar to one of the Sambos. The man was pulled forward, and set down on his knees with his shoulders rounded. The Pirate Captain laid the paper on them, and took a dip of ink—then suddenly turned up his snub-nose with a look of disgust, and, removing the paper again, took from his pocket a fine cambric handkerchief edged with lace, smelt at the scent on it, and afterwards laid it delicately over the Sambo's shoulders.

"A table of black man's back, with the sun on it, close under my nose—ah, Giant-Georgy, pah! pah!" says the Pirate Captain, putting the paper on the handkerchief, with another grimace expressive of great disgust.

He began to write immediately, waiting from time to time to consider a little with himself; and once stopping, apparently, to count our numbers as we stood before him. To think of that villain knowing how to write, and of my not being able to make so much as a decent pothook, if it had been to save my life! When he had done, he signed to one of his men to take the scented handkerchief off the Sambo's back, and told the sailor he might keep it for his trouble. Then, holding the written paper open in his hand, he came forward a step or two closer to us, and said, with a grin, and a mock bow, which made my fingers itch with wanting to be at him:

"I have the honour of addressing myself to the ladies. According to my reckoning they are fifteen ladies in all. Does any one of them belong to the chief officer of the sloop?"

There was a momentary silence.

"You don't answer me," says the Pirate Captain. "Now, I mean to be answered. Look here, women." He drew one of his four pistols out of his gay scarlet sling, and walked up to Tom Packer, who happened to be standing nearest to him of the men prisoners. "This is a pistol, and it is loaded. I put the barrel to the head of this man with my right hand, and I take out my watch with my left. I wait five minutes for an answer. If I don't get it in five minutes, I blow this man's brains out. I wait five minutes again, and if I don't get an answer, I blow the next man's brains out. And so I go on, if you are obstinate, and your nerves are strong, till not one of your soldiers or your sailors is left. On my word of honour, as a gentleman-buccanier, I promise you that. Ask my men if I ever broke my word."

He rested the barrel of the pistol against Tom Packer's head, and looked at his watch, as perfectly composed, in his cat-like cruelty, as if he was waiting for the boiling of an egg.

"If you think it best not to answer him, ladies," says Tom, "never mind me. It's my trade to risk my life; and I shall lose it in a good cause."

"A brave man," said the Pirate Captain, lightly. "Well, ladies, are you going to sacrifice the brave man?"

"We are going to save him," said Miss Maryon, "as he has striven to save us. I belong to the captain of the sloop. I am his sister." She stopped, and whispered anxiously to Mrs. Macey, who was standing with her. "Don't acknowledge yourself, as I have done—you have children."

"Good!" said the Pirate Captain. "The answer is given, and the brains may stop in the brave man's head." He put his watch and pistol back, and took two or three quick puffs at his cigar to keep it alight—then handed the paper he had written on, and his penfull of ink, to Miss Maryon.

"Read that over," he said, "and sign it for yourself, and the women and children with you."

Saying those words, he turned round briskly on his heel, and began talking, in a whisper to Giant-Georgy, the big English mate. What he was talking about, of course, I could not hear; but I noticed that he motioned several times straight into the interior of the country.

"Davis," said Miss Maryon, "look at this."

She crossed before her sister, as she spoke, and held the paper which the Pirate Captain had given to her, under my eyes—my bound arms not allowing me to take it myself. Never to my dying day shall I forget the shame I felt, when I was obliged to acknowledge to Miss Maryon that I could not read a word of it!

"There are better men than me, ma'am," I said, with a sinking heart, "who can read it, and advise you for the best."

"None better," she answered, quietly. "None, whose advice I would so willingly take. I have seen enough, to feel sure of that. Listen, Davis, while I read."

Her pale face turned paler still, as she fixed her eyes on the paper. Lowering her voice to a whisper, so that the women and children near might not hear, she read me these lines:

"To the Captains of English men-of-war, and to the commanders of vessels of other nations, cruising in the Caribbean Seas.

"The precious metal and the jewels laid up in the English Island of Silver-Store, are in the possession of the Buccaniers, at sea.

"The women and children of the Island of Silver-Store, to the number of Twenty-Two, are in the possession of the Buccaniers, on land.

"They will be taken up the country, with fourteen men prisoners (whose lives the Buccaniers have private reasons of their own for preserving), to a place of confinement, which is unapproachable by strangers. They will be kept there until a certain day, previously agreed on between the Buccaniers at sea, and the Buccaniers on land.

"If, by that time, no news from the party at sea, reaches the party on land, it will be taken for granted that the expedition which conveys away the silver and jewels has been met, engaged, and conquered by superior force; that the Treasure has been taken from its present owners; and that the Buccaniers guarding it, have been made prisoners, to be dealt with according to the law.

"The absence of the expected news at the appointed time, being interpreted in this way, it will be the next object of the Buccaniers on land to take reprisals for the loss and the injury inflicted on their companions at sea. The lives of the women and children of the Island of Silver-Store are absolutely at their mercy; and those lives will pay the forfeit, if the Treasure is taken away, and if the men in possession of it come to harm.

"This paper will be nailed to the lid of the largest chest taken from the Island. Any officer whom the chances of war may bring within reading distance of it, is warned to pause and consider, before his conduct signs the death-warrant of the women and children of an English colony.

"Signed, under the Black Flag,

"PEDRO MENDEZ,

"Commander of the Buccaniers, and Chief of the Guard over the English Prisoners."

"The statement above written, in so far as it regards the situation we are now placed in, may be depended on as the truth.

"Signed on behalf of the imprisoned women and children of the Island of Silver-Store."

"Beneath this last line," said Miss Maryon, pointing to it, "is a blank space, in which I am expected to sign my name."

"And in five minutes' time," added the Pirate Captain, who had stolen close up to us, "or the same consequences will follow which I had the pleasure of explaining to you a few minutes ago."

He again drew out his watch and pistol; but, this time, it was my head that he touched with the barrel.

"When Tom Packer spoke for himself, miss, a little while ago," I said, "please to consider that he spoke for me."

"Another brave man!" said the Pirate Captain, with his ape's grin. "Am I to fire my pistol this time, or am I to put it back again as I did before?"

Miss Maryon did not seem to hear him. Her kind eyes rested for a moment on my face, and then looked up to the bright Heaven above us.

"Whether I sign, or whether I do not sign," she said, "we are still in the hands of God, and the future which His wisdom has appointed will not the less surely come."

With those words she placed the paper on my breast, signed it, and handed it back to the Pirate Captain.

"This is our secret, Davis," she whispered. "Let us keep the dreadful knowledge of it to ourselves as long as we can."

I have another singular confession to make—I hardly expect anybody to believe me when I mention the circumstance—but it is not the less the plain truth that, even in the midst of that frightful situation, I felt, for a few moments, a sensation of happiness while Miss Maryon's hand was holding the paper on my breast, and while her lips were telling me that there was a secret between us which we were to keep together.

The Pirate Captain carried the signed paper at once to his mate.

"Go back to the Island," he says, "and nail that with your own hands on the lid of the largest chest. There is no occasion to hurry the business of shipping the Treasure, because there is nobody on the Island to make signals that may draw attention to it from the sea. I have provided for that; and I have provided for the chance of your being outmanoeuvred afterwards, by English, or other cruisers. Here are your sailing orders" (he took them from his pocket while he spoke), "your directions for the disposal of the Treasure, and your appointment of the day and the place for communicating again with me and my prisoners. I have done my part—go you, now, and do yours."

Hearing the clearness with which he gave his orders; knowing what the devilish scheme was that he had invented for preventing the recovery of the Treasure, even if our ships happened to meet and capture the pirates at sea; remembering what the look and the speech of him had been, when he put his pistol to my head and Tom Packer's; I began to understand how it was that this little, weak, weazen, wicked spider had got the first place and kept it among the villains about him.

The mate moved off, with his orders, towards the sea. Before he got there, the Pirate Captain beckoned another of the crew to come to him; and spoke a few words in his own, or in some other foreign language. I guessed what they meant, when I saw thirty of the pirates told off together, and set in a circle all round us. The rest were marched away after the mate. In the same manner the Sambos were divided next. Ten, including Christian George King, were left with us; and the others were sent down to the canoes. When this had been done, the Pirate Captain looked at his watch; pointed to some trees, about a mile off, which fringed the land as it rose from the beach; said to an American among the pirates round us, who seemed to hold the place of second mate, "In two hours from this time;" and then walked away briskly, with one of his men after him, to some baggage piled up below us on the beach.

We were marched off at once to the shady place under the trees, and allowed to sit down there, in the cool, with our guard in a ring round us. Feeling certain from what I saw, and from what I knew to be contained in the written paper signed by Miss Maryon, that we were on the point of undertaking a long journey up the country, I anxiously examined my fellow prisoners to see how fit they looked for encountering bodily hardship and fatigue: to say nothing of mental suspense and terror, over and above.

With all possible respect for an official gentleman, I must admit that Mr. Commissioner Pordage struck me as being, beyond any comparison, the most helpless individual in our unfortunate company. What with the fright he had suffered, the danger he had gone through, and the bewilderment of finding himself torn clean away from his safe Government moorings, his poor unfortunate brains seemed to be as completely discomposed as his Diplomatic coat. He was perfectly harmless and quiet, but also perfectly light-headed—as anybody could discover who looked at his dazed eyes or listened to his maundering talk. I tried him with a word or two about our miserable situation; thinking that, if any subject would get a trifle of sense out of him, it must surely be that.

"You will observe," said Mr. Pordage, looking at the torn cuffs of his Diplomatic coat instead of at me, "that I cannot take cognisance of our situation. No memorandum of it has been drawn up; no report in connexion with it has been presented to me. I cannot possibly recognise it until the necessary minutes and memorandums and reports have reached me through the proper channels. When our miserable situation presents itself to me, on paper, I shall bring it under the notice of Government; and Government, after a proper interval, will bring it back again under my notice; and then I shall have something to say about it. Not a minute before,—no, my man, not a minute before!"

Speaking of Mr. Pordage's wanderings of mind, reminds me that it is necessary to say a word next, about the much more serious case of Serjeant Drooce. The cut on his head, acted on by the heat of the climate, had driven him, to all appearance, stark mad. Besides the danger to himself, if he broke out before the Pirates, there was the danger to the women and children, of trusting him among them—a misfortune which, in our captive condition, it was impossible to avoid. Most providentially, however (as I found on inquiry), Tom Packer, who had saved his life, had a power of controlling him, which none of the rest of us possessed. Some shattered recollection of the manner in which he had been preserved from death, seemed to be still left in a corner of his memory. Whenever he showed symptoms of breaking out, Tom looked at him, and repeated with his hand and arm the action of cutting out right and left which had been the means of his saving the serjeant. On seeing that, Drooce always huddled himself up close to Tom, and fell silent. We,—that is, Packer and I—arranged it together that he was always to keep near Drooce, whatever happened, and however far we might be marched before we reached the place of our imprisonment.

The rest of us men—meaning Mr. Macey, Mr. Fisher, two of my comrades of the Marines, and five of the sloop's crew—were, making allowance for a little smarting in our wounds, in tolerable health, and not half so much broken in spirit by troubles, past, present, and to come, as some persons might be apt to imagine. As for the seamen, especially, no stranger who looked at their jolly brown faces would ever have imagined that they were prisoners, and in peril of their lives. They sat together, chewing their quids, and looking out good-humouredly at the sea, like a gang of liberty-men resting themselves on shore. "Take it easy, soldier," says one of the six, seeing me looking at him. "And, if you can't do that, take it as easy as you can." I thought, at the time, that many a wiser man might have given me less sensible advice than this, though it was only offered, by a boatswain's mate.

A movement among the Pirates attracted my notice to the beach below us, and I saw their Captain approaching our halting-place, having changed his fine clothes for garments that were fit to travel in.

His coming back to us had the effect of producing unmistakable signs of preparation for a long journey. Shortly after he appeared, three Indians came up, leading three loaded mules; and these were followed, in a few minutes, by two of the Sambos, carrying between them a copper full of smoking meat and broth. After having been shared among the Pirates, this mess was set down before us, with some wooden bowls floating about in it, to dip out the food with. Seeing that we hesitated before touching it, the Pirate Captain recommended us not to be too mealy-mouthed, as that was meat from our own stores on the Island, and the last we were likely to taste for a long time to come. The sailors, without any more ado about it, professed their readiness to follow this advice, muttering among themselves that good meat was a good thing, though the devil himself had cooked it. The Pirate Captain then, observing that we were all ready to accept the food, ordered the bonds that confined the hands of us men to be loosened and cast off, so that we might help ourselves. After we had served the women and children, we fell to. It was a good meal—though I can't say that I myself had much appetite for it. Jack, to use his own phrase, stowed away a double allowance. The jolly faces of the seamen lengthened a good deal, however, when they found there was nothing to drink afterwards but plain water. One of them, a fat man, named Short, went so far as to say that, in the turn things seemed to have taken, he should like to make his will before we started, as the stoppage of his grog and the stoppage of his life were two events that would occur uncommonly close together.

When we had done, we were all ordered to stand up. The Pirates approached me and the other men, to bind our arms again; but, the Captain stopped them.

"No," says he. "I want them to get on at a good pace; and they will do that best with their arms free. Now, prisoners," he continued, addressing us, "I don't mean to have any lagging on the road. I have fed you up with good meat, and you have no excuse for not stepping out briskly—women, children, and all. You men are without weapons and without food, and you know nothing of the country you are going to travel through. If you are mad enough, in this helpless condition, to attempt escaping on the march, you will be shot, as sure as you all stand there,—and if the bullet misses, you will starve to death in forests that have no path and no end."

Having addressed us in those words, he turned again to his men. I wondered then, as I had wondered once or twice already, what those private reasons might be, which he had mentioned in his written paper, for sparing the lives of us male prisoners. I hoped he would refer to them now—but I was disappointed.

"While the country allows it," he went on, addressing his crew, "march in a square, and keep the prisoners inside. Whether it is man, woman, or child, shoot any one of them who tries to escape, on peril of being shot yourselves if you miss. Put the Indians and mules in front, and the Sambos next to them. Draw up the prisoners all together. Tell off seven men to march before them, and seven more for each side; and leave the other nine for the rear-guard. A fourth mule for me, when I get tired, and another Indian to carry my guitar."

His guitar! To think of the murderous thief having a turn for strumming tunes, and wanting to cultivate it on such an expedition as ours! I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw the guitar brought forward in a neat green case, with the piratical skull and cross-bones and the Pirate Captain's initials painted on it in white.

"I can stand a good deal," whispers Tom Packer to me, looking hard at the guitar; "but con-found me, Davis, if it's not a trifle too much, to be taken prisoner by such a fellow as that!"

The Pirate Captain lights another cigar.

"March!" says he, with a screech like a cat, and a flourish with his sword, of the sort that a stage-player would give at the head of a mock army.

We all moved off, leaving the clump of trees to the right, going, we knew not whither, to unknown sufferings and an unknown fate. The land that lay before us was wild and open, without fences or habitations. Here and there, cattle wandered about over it, and a few stray Indians. Beyond, in the distance, as far as we could see, rose a prospect of mountains and forests. Above us, was the pitiless sun, in a sky that was too brightly blue to look at. Behind us, was the calm murmuring ocean, with the dear island home which the women and children had lost, rising in the distance like a little green garden on the bosom of the sea. After half-an-hour's walking, we began to descend into the plain, and the last glimpse of the Island of Silver-Store disappeared from our view.

The order of march which we prisoners now maintained among ourselves, being the order which, with certain occasional variations, we observed for the next three days, I may as well give some description of it in this place, before I get occupied with other things, and forget it.

I myself, and the sailor I have mentioned under the name of Short, led the march. After us came Miss Maryon, and Mr. and Mrs. Macey. They were followed by two of my comrades of the Marines, with Mrs. Pordage, Mrs. Belltott, and two of the strongest of the ladies to look after them. Mr. Fisher, the ship's boy, and the three remaining men of the sloop's crew, with the rest of the women and children came next; Tom Packer, taking care of Serjeant Drooce, brought up the rear. So long as we got on quickly enough, the pirate showed no disposition to interfere with our order of march; but, if there were any signs of lagging—and God knows it was hard enough work for a man to walk under that burning sun!—the villains threatened the weakest of our company with the points of their swords. The younger among the children gave out, as might have been expected, poor things, very early on the march. Short and I set the example of taking two of them up, pick-a-back, which was followed directly by the rest of the men. Two of Mrs. Macey's three children fell to our share; the eldest, travelling behind us on his father's back. Short hoisted the next in age, a girl, on his broad shoulders. I see him now as if it was yesterday, with the perspiration pouring down his fat face and bushy whiskers, rolling along as if he was on the deck of a ship, and making a sling of his neck-handkerchief, with his clever sailor's fingers, to support the little girl on his back. "I expect you'll marry me, my darling, when you grow up," says he, in his oily, joking voice. And the poor child, in her innocence, laid her weary head down on his shoulder, and gravely and faithfully promised that she would.

A lighter weight fell to my share. I had the youngest of the children, the pretty little boy, already mentioned, who had been deaf and dumb from his birth. His mother's voice trembled sadly, as she thanked me for taking him up, and tenderly put his little dress right while she walked behind me. "He is very little and light of his age," says the poor lady, trying hard to speak steady. "He won't give you much trouble, Davis—he has always been a very patient child from the first." The boy's little frail arms clasped themselves round my neck while she was speaking; and something or other seemed to stop in my throat the cheerful answer that I wanted to make. I walked on with what must have looked, I am afraid, like a gruff silence; the poor child humming softly on my back, in his unchanging, dumb way, till he hummed himself to sleep. Often and often, since that time, in dreams, I have felt those small arms round my neck again, and have heard that dumb murmuring song in my ear, dying away fainter and fainter, till nothing was left but the light breath rising and falling regularly on my cheek, telling me that my little fellow-prisoner had forgotten his troubles in sleep.

We marched, as well as I could guess, somewhere about seven miles that day—a short spell enough, judging by distance, but a terrible long one judging by heat. Our halting place was by the banks of a stream, across which, at a little distance, some wild pigs were swimming as we came up. Beyond us, was the same view of forests and mountains that I have already mentioned; and all round us, was a perfect wilderness of flowers. The shrubs, the bushes, the ground, all blazed again with magnificent colours, under the evening sun. When we were ordered to halt, wherever we set a child down, there that child had laps and laps full of flowers growing within reach of its hand. We sat on flowers, eat on flowers, slept at night on flowers—any chance handful of which would have been worth a golden guinea among the gentlefolks in England. It was a sight not easily described, to see niggers, savages, and Pirates, hideous, filthy, and ferocious in the last degree to look at, squatting about grimly upon a natural carpet of beauty, of the sort that is painted in pictures with pretty fairies dancing on it.

The mules were unloaded, and left to roll among the flowers to their hearts' content. A neat tent was set up for the Pirate Captain, at the door of which, after eating a good meal, he laid himself down in a languishing attitude, with a nosegay in the bosom of his waistcoat, and his guitar on his knees, and jingled away at the strings, singing foreign songs, with a shrill voice and with his nose conceitedly turned up in the air. I was obliged to caution Short and the sailors—or they would, to a dead certainty, have put all our lives in peril by openly laughing at him.

We had but a poor supper that night. The Pirates now kept the provisions they had brought from the Island, for their own use; and we had to share the miserable starvation diet of the country, with the Indians and the Sambos. This consisted of black beans fried, and of things they call Tortillas, meaning, in plain English, flat cakes made of crushed Indian corn, and baked on a clay griddle. Not only was this food insipid, but the dirty manner in which the Indians prepared it, was disgusting. However, complaint was useless: for we could see for ourselves that no other provision had been brought for the prisoners. I heard some grumbling among our men, and some little fretfulness among the children, which their mothers soon quieted. I myself was indifferent enough to the quality of the food; for I had noticed a circumstance, just before it was brought to us, which occupied my mind with more serious considerations. One of the mules was unloaded near us, and I observed among the baggage a large bundle of new axes, doubtless taken from some ship. After puzzling my brains for some time to know what they could be wanted for, I came to the conclusion that they were to be employed in cutting our way through, when we came to the forests. To think of the kind of travelling which these preparations promised—if the view I took of them was the right one—and then to look at the women and children, exhausted by the first day's march, was sufficient to make any man uneasy. It weighed heavily enough on my mind, I know, when I woke up among the flowers, from time to time, that night.

Our sleeping arrangements, though we had not a single civilised comfort, were, thanks to the flowers, simple and easy enough. For the first time in their lives, the women and children laid down together, with the sky for a roof, and the kind earth for a bed. We men shook ourselves down, as well as we could, all round them; and the Pirates, relieving guard regularly, ranged themselves outside of all. In that tropical climate, and at that hot time, the night was only pleasantly cool. The bubbling of the stream, and, now and then, the course of the breeze through the flowers, was all we heard. During the hours of darkness, it occurred to me—and I have no doubt the same idea struck my comrades—that a body of determined men, making a dash for it, might now have stood a fair chance of escaping. We were still near enough to the sea-shore to be certain of not losing our way; and the plain was almost as smooth, for a good long run, as a natural race-course. However, the mere act of dwelling on such a notion, was waste of time and thought, situated as we were with regard to the women and children. They were, so to speak, the hostages who insured our submission to captivity, or to any other hardship that might be inflicted on us; a result which I have no doubt the Pirate Captain had foreseen, when he made us all prisoners together on taking possession of the Island.

We were roused up at four in the morning, to travel on before the heat set in; our march under yesterday's broiling sun having been only undertaken for the purpose of getting us away from the sea-shore, and from possible help in that quarter, without loss of time. We forded the stream, wading through it waist-deep: except the children, who crossed on our shoulders. An hour before noon, we halted under two immense wild cotton-trees, about half a mile from a little brook, which probably ran into the stream we had passed in the morning. Late in the afternoon we were on foot again, and encamped for the night at three deserted huts, built of mud and poles. There were the remains of an enclosure here, intended, as I thought, for cattle; and there was an old well, from which our supply of water was got. The greater part of the women were very tired and sorrowful that night; but Miss Maryon did wonders in cheering them up.

On the third morning, we began to skirt the edge of a mountain, carrying our store of water with us from the well. We men prisoners had our full share of the burden. What with that, what with the way being all up-hill, and what with the necessity of helping on the weaker members of our company, that day's march was the hardest I remember to have ever got through. Towards evening, after resting again in the middle of the day, we stopped for the night on the verge of the forest. A dim, lowering, awful sight it was, to look up at the mighty wall of trees, stretching in front, and on either side of us without a limit and without a break. Through the night, though there was no wind blowing over our encampment, we heard deep, moaning, rushing sounds rolling about, at intervals, in the great inner wilderness of leaves; and, now and then, those among us who slept, were startled up by distant crashes in the depths of the forest—the death-knells of falling trees. We kept fires alight, in case of wild animals stealing out on us in the darkness; and the flaring red light, and the thick, winding smoke, alternately showed and hid the forest-prospect in a strangely treacherous and ghostly way. The children shuddered with fear; even the Pirate Captain forgot, for the first time, to jingle his eternal guitar.

When we were mustered in the morning for the march, I fully expected to see the axes unpacked. To my surprise, they were not disturbed. The Indians drew their long chopping-knives (called machetes in the language of that country); made for a place among the trees where I could see no signs of a path; and began cutting at the bushes and shrubs, and at the wild vines and creepers, twirling down together in all sorts of fantastic forms from the lofty branches. After clearing a few dozen yards inwards they came out to us again, whooping and showing their wicked teeth, as they laid hold of the mules' halters to lead them on. The Pirate Captain, before we moved after, took out a pocket compass, set it, pondered over it for some time, shrugged his shoulders, and screeched out "March," as usual. We entered the forest, leaving behind us the last chance of escape, and the last hope of ever getting back to the regions of humanity and civilisation. By this time, we had walked inland, as nearly as I could estimate, about thirty miles.

The order of our march was now, of necessity, somewhat changed. We all followed each other in a long line, shut in, however, as before, in front and in rear, by the Indians, the Sambos, and the pirates. Though none of us could see a vestige of any path, it was clear that our guides knew where they were going; for, we were never stopped by any obstacles, except the shrubs and wild-vines which they could cut through with their chopping-knives. Sometimes, we marched under great branches which met like arches high over our heads. Sometimes, the boughs were so low that we had to stoop to pass under them. Sometimes, we wound in and out among mighty trunks of trees, with their gnarled roots twisting up far above the ground, and with creepers in full flower twining down in hundreds from their lofty branches. The size of the leaves and the countless multitude of the trees, shut out the sun, and made a solemn dimness which it was awful and without hope to walk through. Hours would pass without our hearing a sound but the dreary rustle of our own feet over the leafy ground. At other times, whole troops of parrots, with feathers of all the colours of the rainbow, chattered and shrieked at us; and processions of monkeys, fifty or sixty at a time, followed our progress in the boughs overhead: passing through the thick leaves with a sound like the rush of a steady wind. Every now and then, the children were startled by lizard-like creatures, three feet long, running up the trunks of the trees as we passed by them; more than once, swarms of locusts tormented us, startled out of their hiding-places by the monkeys in the boughs. For five days we marched incessantly through this dismal forest-region, only catching a clear glimpse of the sky above us, on three occasions in all that time. The distance we walked each day seemed to be regulated by the positions of springs and streams in the forest, which the Indians knew of. Sometimes those springs and streams lay near together; and our day's work was short. Sometimes they were far apart; and the march was long and weary. On all occasions, two of the Indians, followed by two of the Sambos, disappeared as soon as we encamped for the night; and returned, in a longer or shorter time, bringing water with them. Towards the latter part of the journey, weariness had so completely mastered the weakest among our company, that they ceased to take notice of anything. They walked without looking to the right or to the left, and they eat their wretched food and lay down to sleep with a silent despair that was shocking. Mr. Pordage left off maundering now, and Serjeant Drooce was so quiet and biddable, that Tom Packer had an easy time of it with him at last. Those among us who still talked, began to get a habit of dropping our voices to a whisper. Short's jokes languished and dwindled; Miss Maryon's voice, still kind and tender as ever, began to lose its clearness; and the poor children, when they got weary and cried, shed tears silently, like old people. It seemed as if the darkness and the hush of the endless forest had cast its shadow on our spirits, and had stolen drearily into our inmost hearts.

On the sixth day, we saw the blessed sunshine on the ground before us, once more. Prisoners as we were, there was a feeling of freedom on stepping into the light again, and on looking up, without interruption, into the clear blue Heaven, from which no human creature can keep any other human creature, when the time comes for rising to it. A turn in the path brought us out suddenly at an Indian village—a wretched place, made up of two rows of huts built with poles, the crevices between them stopped with mud, and the roofs thatched in the coarsest manner with palm-leaves. The savages squatted about, jumped to their feet in terror as we came in view; but, seeing the Indians at the head of our party, took heart, and began chattering and screeching, just like the parrots we had left in the forest. Our guides answered in their gibberish; some lean, half-wild dogs yelped and howled incessantly; and the Pirates discharged their muskets and loaded them again, to make sure that their powder had not got damp on the march. No want of muskets among them now! The noise and the light and the confusion, after the silence, darkness, and discipline that we had been used to for the last five days, so bewildered us all, that it was quite a relief to sit down on the ground and let the guard about us shut out our view on every side.

"Davis! Are we at the end of the march?" says Miss Maryon, touching my arm.

The other women looked anxiously at me, as she put the question. I got on my feet, and saw the Pirate Captain communicating with the Indians of the village. His hands were making signs in the fussy foreign way, all the time he was speaking. Sometimes, they pointed away to where the forest began again beyond us; and sometimes they went up both together to his mouth, as if he was wishful of getting a fresh supply of the necessaries of life.

My eyes next turned towards the mules. Nobody was employed in unpacking the baggage; nobody went near that bundle of axes which had weighed on my mind so much already, and the mystery of which, still tormented me in secret. I came to the conclusion that we were not yet at the end of our journey; I communicated my opinion to Miss Maryon. She got up herself, with my help, and looked about her, and made the remark, very justly, that all the huts in the village would not suffice to hold us. At the same time, I pointed out to her that the mule which the Pirate Captain had ridden had been relieved of his saddle, and was being led away, at that moment, to a patch of grass behind one of the huts.

"That looks as if we were not going much farther on," says I.

"Thank Heaven if it be so, for the sake of the poor children!" says Miss Maryon. "Davis, suppose something happened which gave us a chance of escaping? Do you think we could ever find our way back to the sea?"

"Not a hope of getting back, miss. If the Pirates were to let us go this very instant, those pathless forests would keep us in prison for ever."

"Too true! Too true!" she said, and said no more.

In another half-hour we were roused up, and marched away from the village (as I had thought we should be) into the forest again. This time, though there was by no means so much cutting through the underwood needed as in our previous experience, we were accompanied by at least a dozen Indians, who seemed to me to be following us out of sheer idleness and curiosity. We had walked, as well as I could calculate, more than an hour, and I was trudging along with the little deaf-and-dumb boy on my back, as usual, thinking, not very hopefully, of our future prospects, when I was startled by a moan in my ear from the child. One of his arms was trembling round my neck, and the other pointed away towards my right hand. I looked in that direction—and there, as if it had started up out of the ground to dispute our passage through the forest, was a hideous monster carved in stone, twice my height at least. The thing loomed out of a ghostly white, against the dark curtain of trees all round it. Spots of rank moss stuck about over its great glaring stone-face; its stumpy hands were tucked up into its breast; its legs and feet were four times the size of any human limbs; its body and the flat space of spare stone which rose above its head, were all covered with mysterious devices—little grinning men's faces, heads of crocodiles and apes, twisting knots and twirling knobs, strangely shaped leaves, winding lattice-work; legs, arms, fingers, toes, skulls, bones, and such like. The monstrous statue leaned over on one side, and was only kept from falling to the ground by the roots of a great tree which had wound themselves all round the lower half of it Altogether, it was as horrible and ghastly an object to come upon suddenly, in the unknown depths of a great forest, as the mind (or, at all events, my mind) can conceive. When I say that the first meeting with the statue struck me speechless, nobody can wonder that the children actually screamed with terror at the sight of it.

"It's only a great big doll, my darling," says Short, at his wit's end how to quiet the little girl on his back. "We'll get a nice soft bit of wood soon, and show these nasty savages how to make a better one."

While he was speaking, Miss Maryon was close behind me, soothing the deaf-and-dumb boy by signs which I could not understand.

"I have heard of these things, Davis," she says. "They are idols, made by a lost race of people, who lived, no one can say how many hundred or how many thousand years ago. That hideous thing was carved and worshipped while the great tree that now supports it was yet a seed in the ground. We must get the children used to these stone monsters. I believe we are coming to many more of them. I believe we are close to the remains of one of those mysterious ruined cities which have long been supposed to exist in this part of the world."

Before I could answer, the word of command from the rear drove us on again. In passing the idol, some of the Pirates fired their muskets at it. The echoes from the reports rang back on us with a sharp rattling sound. We pushed on a few paces, when the Indians a-head suddenly stopped, flourished their chopping-knives, and all screamed out together "El Palacio!" The Englishmen among the Pirates took up the cry, and, running forward through the trees on either side of us, roared out, "The Palace!" Other voices joined theirs in other tongues; and, for a minute or two, there was a general confusion of everybody,—the first that had occurred since we were marched away, prisoners, from the sea-shore.

I tightened my hold of the child on my back; took Miss Maryon closer to me, to save her from being roughly jostled by the men about us; and marched up as near to the front as the press and the trees would let me. Looking over the heads of the Indians, and between the trunks, I beheld a sight which I shall never forget: no, not to my dying day.

A wilderness of ruins spread out before me, overrun by a forest of trees. In every direction, look where I would, a frightful confusion of idols, pillars, blocks of stone, heavy walls, and flights of steps, met my eye; some, whole and upright; others, broken and scattered on the ground; and all, whatever their condition, overgrown and clasped about by roots, branches, and curling vines, that writhed round them like so many great snakes. Every here and there, strange buildings stood up, with walls on the tops of which three men might have marched abreast—buildings with their roofs burst off or tumbled in, and with the trees springing up from inside, and waving their restless shadows mournfully over the ruins. High in the midst of this desolation, towered a broad platform of rocky earth, scraped away on three sides, so as to make it unapproachable except by scaling ladders. On the fourth side, the flat of the platform was reached by a flight of stone steps, of such mighty size and strength that they might have been made for the use of a race of giants. They led to a huge building girded all round with a row of thick pillars, long enough and broad enough to cover the whole flat space of ground; solid enough, as to the walls, to stand for ever; but broken in, at most places, as to the roof; and overshadowed by the trees that sprang up from inside, like the smaller houses already mentioned, below it. This was the dismal ruin which was called the Palace; and this was the Prison in the Woods which was to be the place of our captivity.

The screeching voice of the Pirate Captain restored order in our ranks, and sent the Indians forward with their chopping-knives to the steps of the Palace. We were directed to follow them across the ruins, and in and out among the trees. Out of every ugly crevice and crack in the great stairs, there sprouted up flowers, long grasses, and beautiful large-leaved plants and bushes. When we had toiled to the top of the flight, we could look back from the height over the dark waving top of the forest behind us. More than a glimpse of the magnificent sight, however, was not allowed: we were ordered still to follow the Indians. They had already disappeared in the inside of the Palace; and we went in after them.

We found ourselves, first, under a square portico, supported upon immense flat slabs of stone, which were carved all over, at top and bottom, with death's-heads set in the midst of circles of sculptured flowers. I guessed the length of the portico to be, at the very least, three hundred feet. In the inside wall of it, appeared four high gaping doorways; three of them were entirely choked up by fallen stones: so jammed together, and so girt about by roots and climbing plants, that no force short of a blast of gunpowder, could possibly have dislodged them. The fourth entrance had, at some former time, been kept just clear enough to allow of the passing of one man at once through the gap that had been made in the fallen stones. Through this, the only passage left into the Palace, or out of it, we followed the Indians into a great hall, nearly one half of which was still covered by the remains of the roof. In the unsheltered half: surrounded by broken stones and with a carved human head, five times the size of life, leaning against it rose the straight, naked trunk of a beautiful tree, that shot up high above the ruins, and dropped its enormous branches from the very top of it, bending down towards us, in curves like plumes of immense green feathers. In this hall, which was big enough to hold double our number, we were ordered to make a halt, while the Pirate Captain, accompanied by three of his crew, followed the Indians through a doorway, leading off to the left hand, as we stood with our backs to the portico. In front of us, towards the right, was another doorway, through which we could see some of the Indians, cutting away with their knives, right and left, at the overspreading underwood. Even the noise of the hacking, and the hum and murmur of the people outside, who were unloading the mules, seemed to be sounds too faint and trifling to break the awful stillness of the ruins. To my ears, at least, the unearthly silence was deepened rather than broken by the few feeble sounds which tried to disturb it. The wailings of the poor children were stifled within them. The whispers of the women, and the heavy breathing of the overlaboured men, sank and sank gradually till they were heard no more. Looking back now, at the whole course of our troubles, I think I can safely say that nothing—not even the first discovery of the treachery on the Island—tried our courage and endurance like that interval of speechless waiting in the Palace, with the hush of the ruined city, and the dimness of the endless forest, all about us.

When we next saw the Pirate Captain, he appeared at the doorway to the right, just as the Pirates began to crowd in from the portico, with the baggage they had taken from the mules.

"There is the way for the Buccaniers," squeaks the Pirate Captain, addressing the American mate, and pointing to the doorway on the left. "Three big rooms, that will hold you all, and that have more of the roof left on them than any of the others. The prisoners," he continues, turning to us, and pointing to the doorway behind him, "will file in, that way, and will find two rooms for them, with the ceilings on the floor, and the trees in their places. I myself, because my soul is big, shall live alone in this grand hall. My bed shall be there in the sheltered corner; and I shall eat, and drink, and smoke, and sing, and enjoy myself, with one eye always on my prisoners, and the other eye always on my guard outside."

Having delivered this piece of eloquence, he pointed with his sword to the prisoners' doorway. We all passed through it quickly, glad to be out of the sight and hearing of him.

The two rooms set apart for us, communicated with each other. The inner one of the two had a second doorway, leading, as I supposed, further into the building, but so choked up by rubbish, as to be impassable, except by climbing, and that must have been skilful climbing too. Seeing that this accident cut off all easy means of approach to the room from the Pirates' side, we determined, supposing nobody meddled with us, to establish the women and children here; and to take the room nearest to the Pirate Captain and his guard for ourselves.

The first thing to be done was to clear away the rubbish in the women's room. The ceiling was, indeed, as the Pirate Captain had told us, all on the floor and the growth of trees, shrubs, weeds, and flowers, springing up everywhere among the fragments of stone, was so prodigious in this part of the Palace, that, but for the walls with their barbarous sculptures all round, we should certainly have believed ourselves to be encamped in the forest, without a building near us. All the lighter parts of the rubbish in the women's room we disposed of, cleverly, by piling it in the doorway on the Pirates' side, so as to make any approach from that direction all but impossible, even by climbing. The heavy blocks of stone—and it took two men to lift some of them that were not the heaviest—we piled up in the middle of the floor. Having by this means cleared away plenty of space round the walls, we gathered up all the litter of young branches, bushes, and leaves which the Indians had chopped away; added to them as much as was required of the underwood still standing; and laid the whole smooth and even, to make beds. I noticed, while we were at this work, that the ship's boy—whose name was Robert—was particularly helpful and considerate with the children, when it became necessary to quiet them and to get them to lie down. He was a rough boy to look at, and not very sharp; but, he managed better, and was more naturally tender-hearted with the little ones than any of the rest of us. This may seem a small thing to mention; but Robert's attentive ways with the children, attached them to him; and that attachment, as will be hereafter shown, turned out to be of great benefit to us, at a very dangerous and very important time.

Our next piece of work was to clear our own room. It was close at the side of the Palace; and a break in the outward wall looked down over the sheer precipice on which the building stood. We stopped this up, breast high, in case of accidents, with the rubbish on the floor; we then made our beds, just as we had made the women's beds already.

A little later, we heard the Pirate Captain in the hall, which he kept to himself for his big soul and his little body, giving orders to the American mate about the guard. On mustering the Pirates, it turned out that two of them, who had been wounded in the fight on the Island, were unfit for duty. Twenty-eight, therefore, remained. These, the Pirate Captain divided into companies of seven, who were to mount guard, in turn, for a spell of six hours each company; the relief coming round, as a matter of course, four times in the twenty-four hours. Of the guard of seven, two were stationed under the portico; one was placed as a look-out, on the top landing of the great flight of steps; and two were appointed to patrol the ground below, in front of the Palace. This left only two men to watch the three remaining sides of the building. So far as any risks of attack were concerned, the precipices at the back and sides of the Palace were a sufficient defence for it, if a good watch was kept on the weak side. But what the Pirate Captain dreaded was the chance of our escaping; and he would not trust the precipices to keep us, knowing we had sailors in our company, and suspecting that they might hit on some substitute for ropes, and lower themselves and their fellow-prisoners down from the back or the sides of the Palace, in the dark. Accordingly, the Pirate Captain settled it that two men out of each company should do double duty, after nightfall: the choice of them to be decided by casting dice. This gave four men to patrol round the sides and the back of the building: a sufficient number to keep a bright look-out. The Pirates murmured a little at the prospect of double duty; but, there was no remedy for it. The Indians, having a superstitious horror of remaining in the ruined city after dark, had bargained to be allowed to go back to their village, every afternoon. And, as for the Sambos, the Pirate Captain knew them better than the English had known them at Silver-Store, and would have nothing to do with them in any matter of importance.

The setting of the watch was completed without much delay. If any of us had felt the slightest hope of escaping, up to this time, the position of our prison and the number of sentinels appointed to guard it, would have been more than enough to extinguish that hope for ever.

An hour before sunset, the Indians—whose only business at the Palace was to supply us with food from the village, and to prepare the food for eating—made their last batch of Tortillas, and then left the ruins in a body, at the usual trot of those savages when they are travelling in a hurry.

When the sun had set, the darkness came down upon us, I might almost say, with a rush. Bats whizzed about, and the low warning hum of mosquitos sounded close to our ears. Flying beetles, with, lights in their heads, each light as bright as the light of a dozen glowworms, sparkled through the darkness, in a wonderful manner, all night long. When one of them settled on the walls, he lighted up the hideous sculptures for a yard all round him, at the very least. Outside, in the forest, the dreadful stillness seemed to be drawing its breath, from time to time, when the night-wind swept lightly through the million-million leaves. Sometimes, the surge of monkeys travelling through the boughs, burst out with a sound like waves on a sandy shore; sometimes, the noise of falling branches and trunks rang out suddenly with a crash, as if the great ruins about us were splitting into pieces; sometimes, when the silence was at its deepest—when even the tread of the watch outside had ceased—the quick rustle of a lizard or a snake, sounded treacherously close at our ears. It was long before the children in the women's room were all quieted and hushed to sleep—longer still before we, their elders, could compose our spirits for the night. After all sounds died away among us, and when I thought that I was the only one still awake, I heard Miss Maryon's voice saying, softly, "God help and deliver us!" A man in our room, moving on his bed of leaves, repeated the words after her; and the ship's boy, Robert, half-asleep, half-awake, whispered to himself sleepily, "Amen!" After that, the silence returned upon us, and was broken no more. So the night passed—the first night in our Prison in the Woods.

With the morning, came the discovery of a new project of the Pirate Captain's, for which none of us had been prepared.

Soon after sunrise, the Pirate Captain looked into our room, and ordered all the men in it out into the large hall, where he lived with his big soul and his little body. After eyeing us narrowly, he directed three of the sailors, myself, and two of my comrades, to step apart from the rest. When we had obeyed, the bundle of axes which had troubled my mind so much, was brought into the hall; and four men of the guard, then on duty, armed with muskets and pistols, were marched in afterwards. Six of the axes were chosen and put into our hands, the Pirate Captain pointing warningly, as we took them, to the men with fire-arms in the front of us. He and his mate, both armed to the teeth, then led the way out to the steps; we followed; the other four Pirates came after us. We were formed, down the steps, in single line; the Pirate Captain at the head; I myself next to him; a Pirate next to me; and so on to the end, in such order as to keep a man with a loaded musket between each one or two of us prisoners. I looked behind me as we started, and saw two of the Sambos—that Christian George King was one of them—following us. We marched round the back of the Palace, and over the ruins beyond it, till we came to a track through the forest, the first I had seen. After a quarter of an hour's walking, I saw the sunlight, bright beyond the trees in front of us. In another minute or two, we stood under the clear sky, and beheld at our feet a broad river, running with a swift silent current, and overshadowed by the forest, rising as thick as ever on the bank that was opposite to us.

On the bank where we stood, the trees were young; some great tempest of past years having made havoc in this part of the forest, and torn away the old growth to make room for the new. The young trees grew up, mostly, straight and slender,—that is to say, slender for South America, the slightest of them being, certainly, as thick as my leg. After peeping and peering about at the timber, with the look of a man who owned it all, the Pirate Captain sat himself down cross-legged on the grass, and did us the honour to address us.

"Aha! you English, what do you think I have kept you alive for?" says he. "Because I am fond of you? Bah! Because I don't like to kill you? Bah! What for, then? Because I want the use of your arms to work for me. See those trees!" He waved his hand backwards and forwards, over the whole prospect. "Cut them all down—lop off the branches—smooth them into poles—shape them into beams—chop them into planks. Camarado!" he went on, turning to the mate, "I mean to roof in the Palace again, and to lay new floors over the rubbish of stones. I will make the big house good and dry to live in, in the rainy weather—I will barricade the steps of it for defence against an army,—I will make it my strong castle of retreat for me and my men, and our treasure, and our prisoners, and all that we have, when the English cruisers of the devil get too many for us along the coast. To work, you six! Look at those four men of mine,—their muskets are loaded. Look at these two Sambos who will stop here to fetch help if they want it. Remember the women and children you have left at the Palace—and at your peril and at their peril, turn those axes in your hands from their proper work! You understand? You English fools?"

With those words he jumped to his feet, and ordered the niggers to remain and place themselves at the orders of our guard. Having given these last directions, and having taken his mate's opinion as to whether three of the Buccaniers would not be enough to watch the Palace in the day, when the six stoutest men of the prisoners were away from it, the Pirate Captain offered his little weazen arm to the American, and strutted back to his castle, on better terms with himself than ever.

As soon as he and the mate were gone, Christian George King tumbled himself down on the grass, and kicked up his ugly heels in convulsions of delight.

"Oh, golly, golly, golly!" says he. "You dam English do work, and Christian George King look on. Yup, Sojeer! whack at them tree!"

I paid no attention to the brute, being better occupied in noticing my next comrade, Short. I had remarked that all the while the Pirate Captain was speaking, he was looking hard at the river, as if the sight of a large sheet of water did his sailorly eyes good. When we began to use the axes, greatly to my astonishment, he buckled to at his work like a man who had his whole heart in it: chuckling to himself at every chop, and wagging his head as if he was in the forecastle again telling his best yarns.

"You seem to be in spirits, Short?" I says, setting to on a tree close by him.

"The river's put a notion in my head," says he. "Chop away, Gill, as hard as you can, or they may hear us talking."

"What notion has the river put in your head?" I asked that man, following his directions.

"You don't know where that river runs to, I suppose?" says Short. "No more don't I. But, did it say anything particular to you, Gill, when you first set eyes on it? It said to me, as plain as words could speak, 'I'm the road out of this. Come and try me!'—Steady! Don't stop to look at the water. Chop away, man, chop away."

"The road out of this?" says I. "A road without any coaches, Short. I don't see so much as the ruins of one old canoe lying about anywhere."

Short chuckles again, and buries his axe in his tree.

"What are we cutting down these here trees for?" says he.

"Roofs and floors for the Pirate Captain's castle," says I.

"Rafts for ourselves!" says he, with another tremendous chop at the tree, which brought it to the ground—the first that had fallen.

His words struck through me as if I had been shot. For the first time since our imprisonment I now saw, clear as daylight, a chance of escape. Only a chance, to be sure; but, still a chance.

Although the guard stood several paces away from us, and could by no possibility hear a word that we said, through the noise of the axes, Short was too cautious to talk any more.

"Wait till night," he said, lopping the branches off the tree. "Pass the word on in a whisper to the nearest of our men to work with a will; and say, with a wink of your eye, there's a good reason for it."

After we had been allowed to knock off for that day, the Pirates had no cause to complain of the work we had done; and they reported us to the Pirate Captain as obedient and industrious, so far. When we lay down at night, I took the next place on the leaves to Short. We waited till the rest were asleep, and till we heard the Pirate Captain snoring in the great hall, before we began to talk again about the river and the rafts. This is the amount of what Short whispered in my ear on that occasion:

He told me he had calculated that it would take two large rafts to bear all our company, and that timber enough to make such two rafts might be cut down by six men in ten days, or, at most, in a fortnight. As for the means of fastening the rafts—the lashings, he called them—the stout vines and creepers supplied them abundantly; and the timbers of both rafts might be connected together, in this way, firmly enough for river navigation, in about five hours. That was the very shortest time the job would take, done by the willing hands of men who knew that they were working for their lives, said Short.

These were the means of escape. How to turn them to account was the next question. Short could not answer it; and though I tried all that night, neither could I.

The difficulty was one which, I think, might have puzzled wiser heads than ours. How were six-and-thirty living souls (being the number of us prisoners, including the children) to be got out of the Palace safely, in the face of the guard that watched it? And, even if that was accomplished, when could we count on gaining five hours all to ourselves for the business of making the rafts? The compassing of either of these two designs, absolutely necessary as they both were to our escape, seemed to be nothing more or less than a rank impossibility. Towards morning, I got a wild notion into my head about letting ourselves down from the back of the Palace, in the dark, and taking our chance of being able to seize the sentinels at that part of the building, unawares, and gag them before they could give the alarm to the Pirates in front. But, Short, when I mentioned my plan to him, would not hear of it. He said that men by themselves—provided they had not got a madman, like Drooce, and a maundering old gentleman, like Mr. Pordage, among them—might, perhaps, run some such desperate risk as I proposed; but, that letting women and children, to say nothing of Drooce and Pordage, down a precipice in the dark, with make-shift ropes which might give way at a moment's notice, was out of the question. It was impossible, on further reflection, not to see that Short's view of the matter was the right one. I acknowledged as much, and then I put it to Short whether our wisest course would not be to let one or two of the sharpest of our fellow-prisoners into our secret, and see what they said. Short asked me which two I had in my mind when I made that proposal?

"Mr. Macey," says I, "because he is naturally quick, and has improved his gifts by learning, and Miss Maryon——"

"How can a woman help us?" says Short, breaking in on me.

"A woman with a clear head and a high courage and a patient resolution—all of which Miss Maryon has got, above all the world—may do more to help us, in our present strait, than any man of our company," says I.

"Well," says Short, "I dare say you're right. Speak to anybody you please, Gill; but, whatever you do, man, stick to it at the trees. Let's get the timber down—that's the first thing to be done, anyhow."

Before we were mustered for work, I look an opportunity of privately mentioning to Miss Maryon and Mr. Macey what had passed between Short and me. They were both thunderstruck at the notion of the rafts. Miss Maryon, as I had expected, made lighter of the terrible difficulties in the way of carrying out our scheme than Mr. Macey did.

"We are left here to watch and think, all day," she whispered—and I could almost hear the quick beating of her heart. "While you are making the best of your time among the trees, we will make the best of ours in the Palace. I can say no more, now—I can hardly speak at all for thinking of what you have told me. Bless you, bless you, for making me hope once more! Go now—we must not risk the consequences of being seen talking together. When you come back at night, look at me. If I close my eyes, it is a sign that nothing has been thought of yet. If I keep them open, take the first safe opportunity of speaking secretly to me or to Mr. Macey."

She turned away; and I went back to my comrades. Half an hour afterwards, we were off for our second day's work among the trees.

When we came back, I looked at Miss Maryon. She closed her eyes. So, nothing had been thought of, yet.

Six more days we worked at cutting down the trees, always meriting the same good character for industry from our Pirate-guard. Six more evenings I looked at Miss Maryon; and six times her closed eyes gave me the same disheartening answer. On the ninth day of our work, Short whispered to me, that if we plied our axes for three days longer, he considered we should have more than timber enough down, to make the rafts. He had thought of nothing, I had thought of nothing, Miss Maryon and Mr. Macey had thought of nothing. I was beginning to get low in spirits; but, Short was just as cool and easy as ever. "Chop away, Davis," was all he said. "The river won't run dry yet awhile. Chop away!"

We knocked off, earlier than usual that day, the Pirates having a feast in prospect, off a wild hog. It was still broad daylight (out of the forest) when we came back, and when I looked once more in Miss Maryon's face.

I saw a flush in her cheeks; and her eyes met mine brightly. My heart beat quicker at the glance of them; for I saw that the time had come, and that the difficulty was conquered.

We waited till the light was fading, and the Pirates were in the midst of their feast. Then, she beckoned me into the inner room, and I sat down by her in the dimmest corner of it.

"You have thought of something, at last, Miss?"

"I have. But the merit of the thought is not all mine. Chance—no! Providence—suggested the design; and the instrument with which its merciful Wisdom has worked, is—a child."

She stopped, and looked all round her anxiously, before she went on.

"This afternoon," she says, "I was sitting against the trunk of that tree, thinking of what has been the subject of my thoughts ever since you spoke to me. My sister's little girl was whiling away the tedious time, by asking Mr. Kitten to tell her the names of the different plants which are still left growing about the room. You know he is a learned man in such matters?"

I knew that; and have, I believe, formerly given that out, for my Lady to take in writing.

"I was too much occupied," she went on, "to pay attention to them, till they came close to the tree against which I was sitting. Under it and about it, there grew a plant with very elegantly-shaped leaves, and with a kind of berry on it. The child showed it to Mr. Kitten; and saying, 'Those berries look good to eat,' stretched out her hand towards them. Mr. Kitten stopped her. 'You must never touch that,' he said. 'Why not?' the child asked. 'Because if you eat much of it, it would poison you.' 'And if I only eat a little?' said the child, laughing. 'If you only eat a little,' said Mr. Kitten, 'it would throw you into a deep sleep—a sleep that none of us could wake you from, when it was time for breakfast—a sleep that would make your mama think you were dead.' Those words were hardly spoken, when the thought that I have now to tell you of, flashed across my mind. But, before I say anything more, answer me one question. Am I right in supposing that our attempt at escape must be made in the night?"

"At night, certainly," says I, "because we can be most sure, then, that the Pirates off guard are all in this building, and not likely to leave it."

"I understand. Now, Davis, hear what I have observed of the habits of the men who keep us imprisoned in this place. The first change of guard at night, is at nine o'clock. At that time, seven men come in from watching, and nine men (the extra night-guard) go out to replace them; each party being on duty, as you know, for six hours. I have observed, at the nine o'clock change of guard, that the seven men who come off duty, and the nine who go on, have a supply of baked cakes of Indian corn, reserved expressly for their use. They divide the food between them; the Pirate Captain (who is always astir at the change of guard) generally taking a cake for himself, when the rest of the men take theirs. This makes altogether, seventeen men who partake of food especially reserved for them, at nine o'clock. So far you understand me?"

"Clearly, Miss."

"The next thing I have noticed, is the manner in which that food is prepared. About two hours before sunset, the Pirate Captain walks out to smoke, after he has eaten the meal which he calls his dinner. In his absence from the hall, the Indians light their fire on the unsheltered side of it, and prepare the last batch of food before they leave us for the night. They knead up two separate masses of dough. The largest is the first which is separated into cakes and baked. That is taken for the use of us prisoners and of the men who are off duty all the night. The second and smaller piece of dough is then prepared for the nine o'clock change of guard. On that food—come nearer, Davis, I must say it in a whisper—on that food all our chances of escape now turn. If we can drug it unobserved, the Pirates who go off duty, the Pirates who go on duty, and the Captain, who is more to be feared than all the rest, will be as absolutely insensible to our leaving the Palace, as if they were every one of them dead men."

I was unable to speak—I was unable even to fetch my breath at those words.

"I have taken Mr. Kitten, as a matter of necessity, into our confidence," she said. "I have learnt from him a simple way of obtaining the juice of that plant which he forbade the child to eat. I have also made myself acquainted with the quantity which it is necessary to use for our purpose; and I have resolved that no hands but mine shall be charged with the work of kneading it into the dough."

"Not you, Miss,—not you. Let one of us—let me—run that risk."

"You have work enough and risk enough already," said Miss Maryon. "It is time that the women, for whom you have suffered and ventured so much, should take their share. Besides, the risk is not great, where the Indians only are concerned. They are idle and curious. I have seen, with my own eyes, that they are as easily tempted away from their occupation by any chance sight or chance noise as if they were children; and I have already arranged with Mr. Macey that he is to excite their curiosity by suddenly pulling down one of the loose stones in that doorway, when the right time comes. The Indians are certain to run in here to find out what is the matter. Mr. Macey will tell them that he has seen a snake,—they will hunt for the creature (as I have seen them hunt, over and over again, in this ruined place)—and while they are so engaged, the opportunity that I want, the two minutes to myself, which are all that I require, will be mine. Dread the Pirate Captain, Davis, for the slightest caprice of his may ruin all our hopes,—but never dread the Indians, and never doubt me."

Nobody, who had looked in her face at that moment—or at any moment that ever I knew of—could have doubted her.

"There is one thing more," she went on. "When is the attempt to be made?"

"In three days' time," I answered; "there will be timber enough down to make the rafts."

"In three days' time, then, let us decide the question of our freedom or our death." She spoke those words with a firmness that amazed me. "Rest now," she said. "Rest and hope."

The third day was the hottest we had yet experienced; we were kept longer at work than usual; and when we had done, we left on the bank enough, and more than enough, of timber and poles, to make both the rafts.

The Indians had gone when we got back to the Palace, and the Pirate Captain was still smoking on the flight of steps. As we crossed the hall, I looked on one side and saw the Tortillas set up in a pile, waiting for the men who came in and went out at nine o'clock.

At the door which opened between our room and the women's room, Miss Maryon was waiting for us.

"Is it done?" I asked in a whisper.

"It is done," she answered.

It was, then, by Mr. Macey's watch (which he had kept hidden about him throughout our imprisonment), seven o'clock. We had two hours to wait: hours of suspense, but hours of rest also for the overworked men who had been cutting the wood. Before I lay down, I looked into the inner room. The women were all sitting together; and I saw by the looks they cast on me that Miss Maryon had told them of what was coming with the night. The children, were much as usual, playing quiet games among themselves. In the men's room, I noticed that Mr. Macey had posted himself along with Tom Packer, close to Serjeant Drooce, and that Mr. Fisher seemed to be taking great pains to make himself agreeable to Mr. Pordage. I was glad to see that the two gentlemen of the company, who were quickwitted and experienced in most things, were already taking in hand the two unreasonable men.

The evening brought no coolness with it. The heat was so oppressive that we all panted under it. The stillness of the forest was awful. We could almost hear the falling of the leaves.

Half-past seven, eight, half-past eight, a quarter to nine—Nine. The tramp of feet came up the steps on one side, and the tramp of feet came into the hall, on the other. There was a confusion of voices,—then, the voice of the Pirate Captain, speaking in his own language,—then, the voice of the American mate, ordering out the guard,—then silence.

I crawled to the door of our room, and laid myself down behind it, where I could see a strip of the hall, being that part of it in which the way out was situated. Here, also, the Pirate-Captain's tent had been set up, about twelve or fourteen feet from the door. Two torches were burning before it. By their light, I saw the guard on duty file out, each man munching his Tortilla, and each man grumbling over it. At the same time, in the part of the hall which I could not see, I heard the men off duty grumbling also. The Pirate Captain, who had entered his tent the minute before, came out of it, and calling to the American mate, at the far end of the hall, asked sharply in English, what that murmuring meant.

"The men complain of the Tortillas," the mate tells him. "They say, they are nastier than ever to-night."

"Bring me one, and let me taste it," said the Captain. I had often before heard people talk of their hearts being in their mouths, but I never really knew what the sensation was, till I heard that order given.

The Tortilla was brought to him. He nibbled a bit off it, spat the morsel out with disgust, and threw the rest of the cake away.

"Those Indian beasts have burnt the Tortillas," he said, "and their dirty hides shall suffer for it to-morrow morning."' With those words, he whisked round on his heel, and went back into his tent.

Some of the men had crept up behind me, and, looking over my head, had seen what I saw. They passed the account of it in whispers to those who could not see; and they, in their turn, repeated it to the women. In five minutes everybody in the two rooms knew that the scheme had failed with the very man whose sleep it was most important to secure. I heard no stifled crying among the women or stifled cursing among the men. The despair of that time was too deep for tears, and too deep for words.

I myself could not take my eyes off the tent. In a little while he came out of it again, puffing and panting with the beat. He lighted a cigar at one of the torches, and laid himself down on his cloak just inside the doorway leading into the portico, so that all the air from outside might blow over him. Little as he was, he was big enough to lie right across the narrow way out.

He smoked and he smoked, slowly and more slowly, for, what seemed to me to be, hours, but for what, by the watch, was little more than ten minutes after all. Then, the cigar dropped out of his mouth—his hand sought for it, and sank lazily by his side—his head turned over a little towards the door—and he fell off: not into the drugged sleep that there was safety in, but into his light, natural sleep, which a touch on his body might have disturbed.

"Now's the time to gag him," says Short, creeping up close to me, and taking off his jacket and shoes.

"Steady," says I. "Don't let's try that till we can try nothing else. There are men asleep near us who have not eaten the drugged cakes—the Pirate Captain is light and active and if the gag slips on his mouth, we are all done for. I'll go to his head, Short, with my jacket ready in my hands. When I'm there, do you lead the way with your mates, and step gently into the portico, over his body. Every minute of your time is precious on account of making the rafts. Leave the rest of the men to get the women and children over; and leave me to gag him if he stirs while we are getting out."

"Shake hands on it, Davis," says Short, getting to his feet. "A team of horses wouldn't have dragged me out first, if you hadn't said that about the rafts."

"Wait a bit," says I, "till I speak to Mr. Kitten."

I crawled back into the room, taking care to keep out of the way of the stones in the middle of it, and asked Mr. Kitten how long it would be before the drugged cakes acted on the men outside who had eaten them? He said we ought to wait another quarter of an hour, to make quite sure. At the same time, Mr. Macey whispered in my ear to let him pass over the Pirate Captain's body, alone with the dangerous man of our company—Serjeant Drooce. "I know how to deal with mad people," says he. "I have persuaded the Serjeant that if he is quiet, and if he steps carefully, I can help him to escape from Tom Packer, whom he is beginning to look on as his keeper. He has been as stealthy and quiet as a cat ever since—and I will answer for him till we get to the river side."

What a relief it was to hear that! I was turning round to get back to Short, when a hand touched me lightly.

"I have heard you talking," whispered Miss Maryon; "and I will prepare all in my room for the risk we must now run. Robert, the ship's boy, whom the children are so fond of, shall help us to persuade them, once more, that we are going to play a game. If you can get one of the torches from the tent, and pass it in here, it may prevent some of us from stumbling. Don't be afraid of the women and children, Davis. They shall not endanger the brave men who are saving them."

I left her at once to get the torch. The Pirate Captain was still fast asleep as I stole on tiptoe, into the hall, and took it from the tent. When I returned, and gave it to Miss Maryon, her sister's little deaf and dumb boy saw me, and, slipping between us, caught tight hold of one of my hands. Having been used to riding on my shoulders for so many days, he had taken a fancy to me; and, when I tried to put him away, he only clung the tighter, and began to murmur in his helpless dumb way. Slight as the noise was which the poor little fellow could make, we all dreaded it. His mother wrung her hands in despair when she heard him; and Mr. Fisher whispered to me for Heaven's sake to quiet the child, and humour him at any cost. I immediately took him up in my arms, and went back to Short.

"Sling him on my back," says I, "as you slung the little girl on your own the first day of the march. I want both my hands, and the child won't be quiet away from me."

Short did as I asked him in two minutes. As soon as he had finished, Mr. Macey passed the word on to me, that the quarter of an hour was up; that it was time to try the experiment with Drooce; and that it was necessary for us all to humour him by feigning sleep. We obeyed. Looking out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mr. Macey take the mad Serjeant's arm, point round to us all, and then lead him out. Holding tight by Mr. Macey, Drooce stepped as lightly as a woman, with as bright and wicked a look of cunning as ever I saw in any human eyes. They crossed the hall—Mr. Macey pointed to the Pirate Captain, and whispered, "Hush!"—the Serjeant imitated the action and repeated the word—then the two stepped over his body (Drooce cautiously raising his feet the highest), and disappeared through the portico. We waited to hear if there was any noise or confusion. Not a sound.

I got up, and Short handed me his jacket for the gag. The child, having been startled from his sleep by the light of the torch, when I brought it in, had fallen off again, already, on my shoulder. "Now for it," says I, and stole out into the hall.

I stopped at the tent, went in, and took the first knife I could find there. With the weapon between my teeth, with the little innocent asleep on my shoulder, with the jacket held ready in both hands, I kneeled down on one knee at the Pirate Captain's head, and fixed my eyes steadily on his ugly sleeping face.

The sailors came out first, with their shoes in their hands. No sound of footsteps from any one of them. No movement in the ugly face as they passed over it.

The women and children were ready next. Robert, the ship's boy, lifted the children over: most of them holding their little hands over their mouths to keep from laughing—so well had Robert persuaded them that we were only playing a game. The women passed next, all as light as air; after them, in obedience to a sign from me, my comrades of the Marines, holding their shoes in their hands, as the sailors had done before them. So far, not a word had been spoken, not a mistake had been made—so far, not a change of any sort had passed over the Pirate Captain's face.

There were left now in the hall, besides myself and the child on my back, only Mr. Fisher and Mr. Pordage. Mr. Pordage! Up to that moment, in the risk and excitement of the time, I had not once thought of him.

I was forced to think of him now, though; and with anything but a friendly feeling.

At the sight of the Pirate Captain, asleep across the way out, the unfortunate, mischievous old simpleton tossed up his head, and folded his arms, and was on the point of breaking out loud into a spoken document of some kind, when Mr. Fisher wisely and quickly clapped a hand over his mouth.

"Government despatches outside," whispers Mr. Fisher, in an agony. "Secret service. Forty-nine reports from headquarters, all waiting for you half a mile off. I'll show you the way, sir. Don't wake that man there, who is asleep: he must know nothing about it—he represents the Public."

Mr. Pordage suddenly looked very knowing and hugely satisfied with himself. He followed Mr. Fisher to within a foot of the Pirate Captain's body—then stopped short.

"How many reports?" he asked, very anxiously.

"Forty-nine," said Mr. Fisher. "Come along, sir,—and step clean over the Public, whatever you do."

Mr. Pordage instantly stepped over, as jauntily as if he was going to dance. At the moment of his crossing, a hanging rag of his cursed, useless, unfortunate, limp Diplomatic coat touched the Pirate Captain's forehead, and woke him.

I drew back softly, with the child still asleep on my shoulder, into the black shadow of the wall behind me. At the instant when the Pirate Captain awoke, I had been looking at Mr. Pordage, and had consequently lost the chance of applying the gag to his mouth suddenly, at the right time.

On rousing up, he turned his face inwards, towards the prisoners' room. If he had turned it outwards, he must to a dead certainty have seen the tail of Mr. Pordage's coat, disappearing in the portico.

Though he was awake enough to move, he was not awake enough to have the full possession of his sharp senses. The drowsiness of his sleep still hung about him. He, yawned, stretched himself, spat wearily, sat up, spat again, got on his legs, and stood up, within three feet of the shadow in which I was hiding behind him.

I forgot the knife in my teeth,—I declare solemnly, in the frightful suspense of that moment, I forgot it—and doubled my fist as if I was an unarmed man, with the purpose of stunning him by a blow on the head if he came any nearer. I suppose I waited, with my fist clenched, nearly a minute, while he waited, yawning and spitting. At the end of that time, he made for his tent, and I heard him (with what thankfulness no words can tell!) roll himself down, with another yawn, on his bed inside.

I waited—in the interest of us all—to make quite sure, before I left, that he was asleep again. In what I reckoned as about five minutes' time, I heard him snoring, and felt free to take myself and my little sleeping comrade out of the prison, at last.

The drugged guards in the portico were sitting together, dead asleep, with their backs against the wall. The third man was lying flat, on the landing of the steps. Their arms and ammunition were gone: wisely taken by our men—to defend us, if we were meddled with before we escaped, and to kill food for us when we committed ourselves to the river.

At the bottom of the steps I was startled by seeing two women standing together. They were Mrs. Macey and Miss Maryon: the first, waiting to see her child safe; the second (God bless her for it!) waiting to see me safe.

In a quarter of an hour we were by the river-side, and saw the work bravely begun; the sailors and the marines under their orders, labouring at the rafts in the shallow water by the bank; Mr. Macey and Mr. Fisher rolling down fresh timber as it was wanted; the women cutting the vines, creepers, and withies for the lashings. We brought with us three more pair of hands to help; and all worked with such a will, that, in four hours and twenty minutes, by Mr. Macey's watch, the rafts, though not finished as they ought to have been, were still strong enough to float us away.

Short, another seaman, and the ship's boy, got aboard the first raft, carrying with them poles and spare timber. Miss Maryon, Mrs. Fisher and her husband, Mrs. Macey and her husband and three children, Mr. and Mrs. Pordage, Mr. Kitten, myself, and women and children besides, to make up eighteen, were the passengers on the leading raft. The second raft, under the guidance of the two other sailors, held Serjeant Drooce (gagged, for he now threatened to be noisy again), Tom Packer, the two marines, Mrs. Belltott, and the rest of the women and children. We all got on board silently and quickly, with a fine moonlight over our heads, and without accidents or delays of any kind.

It was a good half-hour before the time would come for the change of guard at the prison, when the lashings which tied us to the bank were cast off, and we floated away, a company of free people, on the current of an unknown river.

CHAPTER III

THE RAFTS ON THE RIVER

We contrived to keep afloat all that night, and, the stream running strong with us, to glide a long way down the river. But, we found the night to be a dangerous time for such navigation, on account of the eddies and rapids, and it was therefore settled next day that in future we would bring-to at sunset, and encamp on the shore. As we knew of no boats that the Pirates possessed, up at the Prison in the Woods, we settled always to encamp on the opposite side of the stream, so as to have the breadth of the river between our sleep and them. Our opinion was, that if they were acquainted with any near way by land to the mouth of this river, they would come up it in force, and retake us or kill us, according as they could; but that if that was not the case, and if the river ran by none of their secret stations, we might escape.

When I say we settled this or that, I do not mean that we planned anything with any confidence as to what might happen an hour hence. So much had happened in one night, and such great changes had been violently and suddenly made in the fortunes of many among us, that we had got better used to uncertainty, in a little while, than I dare say most people do in the course of their lives.

The difficulties we soon got into, through the off-settings and point-currents of the stream, made the likelihood of our being drowned, alone,—to say nothing of our being retaken—as broad and plain as the sun at noonday to all of us. But, we all worked hard at managing the rafts, under the direction of the seamen (of our own skill, I think we never could have prevented them from oversetting), and we also worked hard at making good the defects in their first hasty construction—which the water soon found out. While we humbly resigned ourselves to going down, if it was the will of Our Father that was in Heaven, we humbly made up our minds, that we would all do the best that was in us.

And so we held on, gliding with the stream. It drove us to this bank, and it drove us to that bank, and it turned us, and whirled us; but yet it carried us on. Sometimes much too slowly; sometimes much too fast, but yet it carried us on.

My little deaf and dumb boy slumbered a good deal now, and that was the case with all the children. They caused very little trouble to any one. They seemed, in my eyes, to get more like one another, not only in quiet manner, but in the face, too. The motion of the raft was usually so much the same, the scene was usually so much the same, the sound of the soft wash and ripple of the water was usually so much the same, that they were made drowsy, as they might have been by the constant playing of one tune. Even on the grown people, who worked hard and felt anxiety, the same things produced something of the same effect. Every day was so like the other, that I soon lost count of the days, myself, and had to ask Miss Maryon, for instance, whether this was the third or fourth? Miss Maryon had a pocket-book and pencil, and she kept the log; that is to say, she entered up a clear little journal of the time, and of the distances our seamen thought we had made, each night.

So, as I say, we kept afloat and glided on. All day long, and every day, the water, and the woods, and sky; all day long, and every day, the constant watching of both sides of the river, and far ahead at every bold turn and sweep it made, for any signs of Pirate-boats, or Pirate-dwellings. So, as I say, we kept afloat and glided on. The days melting themselves together to that degree, that I could hardly believe my ears when I asked “How many now, Miss?” and she answered “Seven.”

To be sure, poor Mr. Pordage had, by about now, got his Diplomatic coat into such a state as never was seen. What with the mud of the river, what with the water of the river, what with the sun, and the dews, and the tearing boughs, and the thickets, it hung about him in discoloured shreds like a mop. The sun had touched him a bit. He had taken to always polishing one particular button, which just held on to his left wrist, and to always calling for stationery. I suppose that man called for pens, ink, and paper, tape, and scaling-wax, upwards of one thousand times in four-and-twenty hours. He had an idea that we should never get out of that river unless we were written out of it in a formal Memorandum; and the more we laboured at navigating the rafts, the more he ordered us not to touch them at our peril, and the more he sat and roared for stationery.

Mrs. Pordage, similarly, persisted in wearing her nightcap. I doubt if any one but ourselves who had seen the progress of that article of dress, could by this time have told what it was meant for. It had got so limp and ragged that she couldn’t see out of her eyes for it. It was so dirty, that whether it was vegetable matter out of a swamp, or weeds out of the river, or an old porter’s-knot from England, I don’t think any new spectator could have said. Yet, this unfortunate old woman had a notion that it was not only vastly genteel, but that it was the correct thing as to propriety. And she really did carry herself over the other ladies who had no nightcaps, and who were forced to tie up their hair how they could, in a superior manner that was perfectly amazing.

I don’t know what she looked like, sitting in that blessed nightcap, on a log of wood, outside the hut or cabin upon our raft. She would have rather resembled a fortune-teller in one of the picture-books that used to be in the shop windows in my boyhood, except for her stateliness. But, Lord bless my heart, the dignity with which she sat and moped, with her head in that bundle of tatters, was like nothing else in the world! She was not on speaking terms with more than three of the ladies. Some of them had, what she called, “taken precedence” of her—in getting into, or out of, that miserable little shelter!—and others had not called to pay their respects, or something of that kind. So, there she sat, in her own state and ceremony, while her husband sat on the same log of wood, ordering us one and all to let the raft go to the bottom, and to bring him stationery.

What with this noise on the part of Mr. Commissioner Pordage, and what with the cries of Sergeant Drooce on the raft astern (which were sometimes more than Tom Packer could silence), we often made our slow way down the river, anything but quietly. Yet, that it was of great importance that no ears should be able to hear us from the woods on the banks, could not be doubted. We were looked for, to a certainty, and we might be retaken at any moment. It was an anxious time; it was, indeed, indeed, an anxious time.

On the seventh night of our voyage on the rafts, we made fast, as usual, on the opposite side of the river to that from which we had started, in as dark a place as we could pick out. Our little encampment was soon made, and supper was eaten, and the children fell asleep. The watch was set, and everything made orderly for the night. Such a starlight night, with such blue in the sky, and such black in the places of heavy shade on the banks of the great stream!

Those two ladies, Miss Maryon and Mrs. Fisher, had always kept near me since the night of the attack. Mr. Fisher, who was untiring in the work of our raft, had said to me:

“My dear little childless wife has grown so attached to you, Davis, and you are such a gentle fellow, as well as such a determined one;” our party had adopted that last expression from the one-eyed English pirate, and I repeat what Mr. Fisher said, only because he said it; “that it takes a load off my mind to leave her in your charge.”

I said to him: “Your lady is in far better charge than mine, Sir, having Miss Maryon to take care of her; but, you may rely upon it, that I will guard them both—faithful and true.”

Says he: “I do rely upon it, Davis, and I heartily wish all the silver on our old Island was yours.”

That seventh starlight night, as I have said, we made our camp, and got our supper, and set our watch, and the children fell asleep. It was solemn and beautiful in those wild and solitary parts, to see them, every night before they lay down, kneeling under the bright sky, saying their little prayers at women’s laps. At that time we men all uncovered, and mostly kept at a distance. When the innocent creatures rose up, we murmured “Amen!” all together. For, though we had not heard what they said, we know it must be good for us.

At that time, too, as was only natural, those poor mothers in our company, whose children had been killed, shed many tears. I thought the sight seemed to console them while it made them cry; but, whether I was right or wrong in that, they wept very much. On this seventh night, Mrs. Fisher had cried for her lost darling until she cried herself asleep. She was lying on a little couch of leaves and such-like (I made the best little couch I could for them every night), and Miss Maryon had covered her, and sat by her, holding her hand. The stars looked down upon them. As for me, I guarded them.

“Davis!” says Miss Maryon. (I am not going to say what a voice she had. I couldn’t if I tried.)

“I am here, Miss.”

“The river sounds as if it were swollen to-night.”

“We all think, Miss, that we are coming near the sea.”

“Do you believe now, we shall escape?”

“I do now, Miss, really believe it.” I had always said I did; but, I had in my own mind been doubtful.

“How glad you will be, my good Davis, to see England again!”

I have another confession to make that will appear singular. When she said these words, something rose in my throat; and the stars I looked away at, seemed to break into sparkles that fell down my face and burnt it.

“England is not much to me, Miss, except as a name.”

“O, so true an Englishman should not say that!—Are you not well to-night, Davis?” Very kindly, and with a quick change.

“Quite well, Miss.”

“Are you sure? Your voice sounds altered in my hearing.”

“No, Miss, I am a stronger man than ever. But, England is nothing to me.”

Miss Maryon sat silent for so long a while, that I believed she had done speaking to me for one time. However, she had not; for by-and-by she said in a distinct clear tone:

“No, good friend; you must not say that England is nothing to you. It is to be much to you, yet—everything to you. You have to take back to England the good name you have earned here, and the gratitude and attachment and respect you have won here: and you have to make some good English girl very happy and proud, by marrying her; and I shall one day see her, I hope, and make her happier and prouder still, by telling her what noble services her husband’s were in South America, and what a noble friend he was to me there.”

Though she spoke these kind words in a cheering manner, she spoke them compassionately. I said nothing. It will appear to be another strange confession, that I paced to and fro, within call, all that night, a most unhappy man, reproaching myself all the night long. “You are as ignorant as any man alive; you are as obscure as any man alive; you are as poor as any man alive; you are no better than the mud under your foot.” That was the way in which I went on against myself until the morning.

With the day, came the day’s labour. What I should have done—without the labour, I don’t know. We were afloat again at the usual hour, and were again making our way down the river. It was broader, and clearer of obstructions than it had been, and it seemed to flow faster. This was one of Drooce’s quiet days; Mr. Pordage, besides being sulky, had almost lost his voice; and we made good way, and with little noise.

There was always a seaman forward on the raft, keeping a bright look-out. Suddenly, in the full heat of the day, when the children were slumbering, and the very trees and reeds appeared to be slumbering, this man—it was Short—holds up his hand, and cries with great caution: “Avast! Voices ahead!”

We held on against the stream as soon as we could bring her up, and the other raft followed suit. At first, Mr. Macey, Mr. Fisher, and myself, could hear nothing; though both the seamen aboard of us agreed that they could hear voices and oars. After a little pause, however, we united in thinking that we could hear the sound of voices, and the dip of oars. But, you can hear a long way in those countries, and there was a bend of the river before us, and nothing was to be seen except such waters and such banks as we were now in the eighth day (and might, for the matter of our feelings, have been in the eightieth), of having seen with anxious eyes.

It was soon decided to put a man ashore, who should creep through the wood, see what was coming, and warn the rafts. The rafts in the meantime to keep the middle of the stream. The man to be put ashore, and not to swim ashore, as the first thing could be more quickly done than the second. The raft conveying him, to get back into mid-stream, and to hold on along with the other, as well is it could, until signalled by the man. In case of danger, the man to shift for himself until it should be safe to take him on board again. I volunteered to be the man.

We knew that the voices and oars must come up slowly against the stream; and our seamen knew, by the set of the stream, under which bank they would come. I was put ashore accordingly. The raft got off well, and I broke into the wood.

Steaming hot it was, and a tearing place to get through. So much the better for me, since it was something to contend against and do. I cut off the bend of the river, at a great saving of space, came to the water’s edge again, and hid myself, and waited. I could now hear the dip of the oars very distinctly; the voices had ceased.

The sound came on in a regular tune, and as I lay hidden, I fancied the tune so played to be, “Chris’en—George—King! Chris’en—George—King! Chris’en—George—King!” over and over again, always the same, with the pauses always at the same places. I had likewise time to make up my mind that if these were the Pirates, I could and would (barring my being shot) swim off to my raft, in spite of my wound, the moment I had given the alarm, and hold my old post by Miss Maryon.

“Chris’en—George—King! Chris’en—George—King! Chris’en—George—King!” coming up, now, very near.

I took a look at the branches about me, to see where a shower of bullets would be most likely to do me least hurt; and I took a look back at the track I had made in forcing my way in; and now I was wholly prepared and fully ready for them.

“Chris’en—George—King! Chris’en—George—King! Chris’en—George—King!” Here they are!

Who were they? The barbarous Pirates, scum of all nations, headed by such men as the hideous little Portuguese monkey, and the one-eyed English convict with the gash across his face, that ought to have gashed his wicked head off? The worst men in the world picked out from the worst, to do the cruellest and most atrocious deeds that ever stained it? The howling, murdering, black-flag waving, mad, and drunken crowd of devils that had overcome us by numbers and by treachery? No. These were English men in English boats—good blue-jackets and red-coats—marines that I knew myself, and sailors that knew our seamen! At the helm of the first boat, Captain Carton, eager and steady. At the helm of the second boat, Captain Maryon, brave and bold. At the helm of the third boat, an old seaman, with determination carved into his watchful face, like the figure-head of a ship. Every man doubly and trebly armed from head to foot. Every man lying-to at his work, with a will that had all his heart and soul in it. Every man looking out for any trace of friend or enemy, and burning to be the first to do good or avenge evil. Every man with his face on fire when he saw me, his countryman who had been taken prisoner, and hailed me with a cheer, as Captain Carton’s boat ran in and took me on board.

I reported, “All escaped, sir! All well, all safe, all here!”

God bless me—and God bless them—what a cheer! It turned me weak, as I was passed on from hand to hand to the stern of the boat: every hand patting me or grasping me in some way or other, in the moment of my going by.

“Hold up, my brave fellow,” says Captain Carton, clapping me on the shoulder like a friend, and giving me a flask. “Put your lips to that, and they’ll be red again. Now, boys, give way!”

The banks flew by us as if the mightiest stream that ever ran was with us; and so it was, I am sure, meaning the stream to those men’s ardour and spirit. The banks flew by us, and we came in sight of the rafts—the banks flew by us, and we came alongside of the rafts—the banks stopped; and there was a tumult of laughing and crying, and kissing and shaking of hands, and catching up of children and setting of them down again, and a wild hurry of thankfulness and joy that melted every one and softened all hearts.

I had taken notice, in Captain Carton’s boat, that there was a curious and quite new sort of fitting on board. It was a kind of a little bower made of flowers, and it was set up behind the captain, and betwixt him and the rudder. Not only was this arbour, so to call it, neatly made of flowers, but it was ornamented in a singular way. Some of the men had taken the ribbons and buckles off their hats, and hung them among the flowers; others had made festoons and streamers of their handkerchiefs, and hung them there; others had intermixed such trifles as bits of glass and shining fragments of lockets and tobacco-boxes with the flowers; so that altogether it was a very bright and lively object in the sunshine. But why there, or what for, I did not understand.

Now, as soon as the first bewilderment was over, Captain Carton gave the order to land for the present. But this boat of his, with two hands left in her, immediately put off again when the men were out of her, and kept off, some yards from the shore. As she floated there, with the two hands gently backing water to keep her from going down the stream, this pretty little arbour attracted many eyes. None of the boat’s crew, however, had anything to say about it, except that it was the captain’s fancy.

The captain—with the women and children clustering round him, and the men of all ranks grouped outside them, and all listening—stood telling how the Expedition, deceived by its bad intelligence, had chased the light Pirate boats all that fatal night, and had still followed in their wake next day, and had never suspected until many hours too late that the great Pirate body had drawn off in the darkness when the chase began, and shot over to the Island. He stood telling how the Expedition, supposing the whole array of armed boats to be ahead of it, got tempted into shallows and went aground; but not without having its revenge upon the two decoy-boats, both of which it had come up with, overhand, and sent to the bottom with all on board. He stood telling how the Expedition, fearing then that the case stood as it did, got afloat again, by great exertion, after the loss of four more tides, and returned to the Island, where they found the sloop scuttled and the treasure gone. He stood telling how my officer, Lieutenant Linderwood, was left upon the Island, with as strong a force as could be got together hurriedly from the mainland, and how the three boats we saw before us were manned and armed and had come away, exploring the coast and inlets, in search of any tidings of us. He stood telling all this, with his face to the river; and, as he stood telling it, the little arbour of flowers floated in the sunshine before all the faces there.

Leaning on Captain Carton’s shoulder, between him and Miss Maryon, was Mrs. Fisher, her head drooping on her arm. She asked him, without raising it, when he had told so much, whether he had found her mother?

“Be comforted! She lies,” said the Captain gently, “under the cocoa-nut trees on the beach.”

“And my child, Captain Carton, did you find my child, too? Does my darling rest with my mother?”

“No. Your pretty child sleeps,” said the Captain, “under a shade of flowers.”

His voice shook; but there was something in it that struck all the hearers. At that moment there sprung from the arbour in his boat a little creature, clapping her hands and stretching out her arms, and crying, “Dear papa! Dear mamma! I am not killed. I am saved. I am coming to kiss you. Take me to them, take me to them, good, kind sailors!”

Nobody who saw that scene has ever forgotten it, I am sure, or ever will forget it. The child had kept quite still, where her brave grandmamma had put her (first whispering in her ear, “Whatever happens to me, do not stir, my dear!”), and had remained quiet until the fort was deserted; she had then crept out of the trench, and gone into her mother’s house; and there, alone on the solitary Island, in her mother’s room, and asleep on her mother’s bed, the Captain had found her. Nothing could induce her to be parted from him after he took her up in his arms, and he had brought her away with him, and the men had made the bower for her. To see those men now, was a sight. The joy of the women was beautiful; the joy of those women who had lost their own children, was quite sacred and divine; but, the ecstasies of Captain Carton’s boat’s crew, when their pet was restored to her parents, were wonderful for the tenderness they showed in the midst of roughness. As the Captain stood with the child in his arms, and the child’s own little arms now clinging round his neck, now round her father’s, now round her mother’s, now round some one who pressed up to kiss her, the boat’s crew shook hands with one another, waved their hats over their heads, laughed, sang, cried, danced—and all among themselves, without wanting to interfere with anybody—in a manner never to be represented. At last, I saw the coxswain and another, two very hard-faced men, with grizzled heads, who had been the heartiest of the hearty all along, close with one another, get each of them the other’s head under his arm, and pommel away at it with his fist as hard as he could, in his excess of joy.

When we had well rested and refreshed ourselves—and very glad we were to have some of the heartening things to eat and drink that had come up in the boats—we recommenced our voyage down the river: rafts, and boats, and all. I said to myself, it was a very different kind of voyage now, from what it had been; and I fell into my proper place and station among my fellow-soldiers.

But, when we halted for the night, I found that Miss Maryon had spoken to Captain Carton concerning me. For, the Captain came straight up to me, and says he, “My brave fellow, you have been Miss Maryon’s body-guard all along, and you shall remain so. Nobody shall supersede you in the distinction and pleasure of protecting that young lady.” I thanked his honour in the fittest words I could find, and that night I was placed on my old post of watching the place where she slept. More than once in the night, I saw Captain Carton come out into the air, and stroll about there, to see that all was well. I have now this other singular confession to make, that I saw him with a heavy heart. Yes; I saw him with a heavy, heavy heart.

In the day-time, I had the like post in Captain Carton’s boat. I had a special station of my own, behind Miss Maryon, and no hands but hers ever touched my wound. (It has been healed these many long years; but, no other hands have ever touched it.) Mr. Pordage was kept tolerably quiet now, with pen and ink, and began to pick up his senses a little. Seated in the second boat, he made documents with Mr. Kitten, pretty well all day; and he generally handed in a Protest about something whenever we stopped. The Captain, however, made so very light of these papers, that it grew into a saying among the men, when one of them wanted a match for his pipe, “Hand us over a Protest, Jack!” As to Mrs. Pordage, she still wore the nightcap, and she now had cut all the ladies on account of her not having been formally and separately rescued by Captain Carton before anybody else. The end of Mr. Pordage, to bring to an end all I know about him, was, that he got great compliments at home for his conduct on these trying occasions, and that he died of yellow jaundice, a Governor and a K.C.B.

Sergeant Drooce had fallen from a high fever into a low one. Tom Packer—the only man who could have pulled the Sergeant through it—kept hospital aboard the old raft, and Mrs. Belltott, as brisk as ever again (but the spirit of that little woman, when things tried it, was not equal to appearances), was head-nurse under his directions. Before we got down to the Mosquito coast, the joke had been made by one of our men, that we should see her gazetted Mrs. Tom Packer, vice Belltott exchanged.

When we reached the coast, we got native boats as substitutes for the rafts; and we rowed along under the land; and in that beautiful climate, and upon that beautiful water, the blooming days were like enchantment. Ah! They were running away, faster than any sea or river, and there was no tide to bring them back. We were coming very near the settlement where the people of Silver-Store were to be left, and from which we Marines were under orders to return to Belize.

Captain Carton had, in the boat by him, a curious long-barrelled Spanish gun, and he had said to Miss Maryon one day that it was the best of guns, and had turned his head to me, and said:

“Gill Davis, load her fresh with a couple of slugs, against a chance of showing how good she is.”

So, I had discharged the gun over the sea, and had loaded her, according to orders, and there it had lain at the Captain’s feet, convenient to the Captain’s hand.

The last day but one of our journey was an uncommonly hot day. We started very early; but, there was no cool air on the sea as the day got on, and by noon the heat was really hard to bear, considering that there were women and children to bear it. Now, we happened to open, just at that time, a very pleasant little cove or bay, where there was a deep shade from a great growth of trees. Now, the Captain, therefore, made the signal to the other boats to follow him in and lie by a while.

The men who were off duty went ashore, and lay down, but were ordered, for caution’s sake, not to stray, and to keep within view. The others rested on their oars, and dozed. Awnings had been made of one thing and another, in all the boats, and the passengers found it cooler to be under them in the shade, when there was room enough, than to be in the thick woods. So, the passengers were all afloat, and mostly sleeping. I kept my post behind Miss Maryon, and she was on Captain Carton’s right in the boat, and Mrs. Fisher sat on her right again. The Captain had Mrs. Fisher’s daughter on his knee. He and the two ladies were talking about the Pirates, and were talking softly; partly, because people do talk softly under such indolent circumstances, and partly because the little girl had gone off asleep.

I think I have before given it out for my Lady to write down, that Captain Carton had a fine bright eye of his own. All at once, he darted me a side look, as much as to say, “Steady—don’t take on—I see something!”—and gave the child into her mother’s arms. That eye of his was so easy to understand, that I obeyed it by not so much as looking either to the right or to the left out of a corner of my own, or changing my attitude the least trifle. The Captain went on talking in the same mild and easy way; but began—with his arms resting across his knees, and his head a little hanging forward, as if the heat were rather too much for him—began to play with the Spanish gun.

“They had laid their plans, you see,” says the Captain, taking up the Spanish gun across his knees, and looking, lazily, at the inlaying on the stock, “with a great deal of art; and the corrupt or blundering local authorities were so easily deceived;” he ran his left hand idly along the barrel, but I saw, with my breath held, that he covered the action of cocking the gun with his right—“so easily deceived, that they summoned us out to come into the trap. But my intention as to future operations—” In a flash the Spanish gun was at his bright eye, and he fired.

All started up; innumerable echoes repeated the sound of the discharge; a cloud of bright-coloured birds flew out of the woods screaming; a handful of leaves were scattered in the place where the shot had struck; a crackling of branches was heard; and some lithe but heavy creature sprang into the air, and fell forward, head down, over the muddy bank.

“What is it?” cries Captain Maryon from his boat. All silent then, but the echoes rolling away.

“It is a Traitor and a Spy,” said Captain Carton, handing me the gun to load again. “And I think the other name of the animal is Christian George King!”

Shot through the heart. Some of the people ran round to the spot, and drew him out, with the slime and wet trickling down his face; but his face itself would never stir any more to the end of time.

“Leave him hanging to that tree,” cried Captain Carton; his boat’s crew giving way, and he leaping ashore. “But first into this wood, every man in his place. And boats! Out of gunshot!”

It was a quick change, well meant and well made, though it ended in disappointment. No Pirates were there; no one but the Spy was found. It was supposed that the Pirates, unable to retake us, and expecting a great attack upon them to be the consequence of our escape, had made from the ruins in the Forest, taken to their ship along with the Treasure, and left the Spy to pick up what intelligence he could. In the evening we went away, and he was left hanging to the tree, all alone, with the red sun making a kind of a dead sunset on his black face.

Next day, we gained the settlement on the Mosquito coast for which we were bound. Having stayed there to refresh seven days, and having been much commended, and highly spoken of, and finely entertained, we Marines stood under orders to march from the Town-Gate (it was neither much of a town nor much of a gate), at five in the morning.

My officer had joined us before then. When we turned out at the gate, all the people were there; in the front of them all those who had been our fellow-prisoners, and all the seamen.

“Davis,” says Lieutenant Linderwood. “Stand out, my friend!”

I stood out from the ranks, and Miss Maryon and Captain Carton came up to me.

“Dear Davis,” says Miss Maryon, while the tears fell fast down her face, “your grateful friends, in most unwillingly taking leave of you, ask the favour that, while you bear away with you their affectionate remembrance, which nothing can ever impair, you will also take this purse of money—far more valuable to you, we all know, for the deep attachment and thankfulness with which it is offered, than for its own contents, though we hope those may prove useful to you, too, in after life.”

I got out, in answer, that I thankfully accepted the attachment and affection, but not the money. Captain Carton looked at me very attentively, and stepped back, and moved away. I made him my bow as he stepped back, to thank him for being so delicate.

“No, miss,” said I, “I think it would break my heart to accept of money. But, if you could condescend to give to a man so ignorant and common as myself, any little thing you have worn—such as a bit of ribbon——”

She took a ring from her finger, and put it in my hand. And she rested her hand in mine, while she said these words:

“The brave gentlemen of old—but not one of them was braver, or had a nobler nature than you—took such gifts from ladies, and did all their good actions for the givers’ sakes. If you will do yours for mine, I shall think with pride that I continue to have some share in the life of a gallant and generous man.”

For the second time in my life she kissed my hand. I made so bold, for the first time, as to kiss hers; and I tied the ring at my breast, and I fell back to my place.

Then, the horse-litter went out at the gate with Sergeant Drooce in it; and the horse-litter went out at the gate with Mrs. Belltott in it; and Lieutenant Linderwood gave the word of command, “Quick march!” and, cheered and cried for, we went out of the gate too, marching along the level plain towards the serene blue sky, as if we were marching straight to Heaven.

When I have added here that the Pirate scheme was blown to shivers, by the Pirate-ship which had the Treasure on board being so vigorously attacked by one of His Majesty’s cruisers, among the West India Keys, and being so swiftly boarded and carried, that nobody suspected anything about the scheme until three-fourths of the Pirates were killed, and the other fourth were in irons, and the Treasure was recovered; I come to the last singular confession I have got to make.

It is this. I well knew what an immense and hopeless distance there was between me and Miss Maryon; I well knew that I was no fitter company for her than I was for the angels; I well knew, that she was as high above my reach as the sky over my head; and yet I loved her. What put it in my low heart to be so daring, or whether such a thing ever happened before or since, as that a man so uninstructed and obscure as myself got his unhappy thoughts lifted up to such a height, while knowing very well how presumptuous and impossible to be realised they were, I am unable to say; still, the suffering to me was just as great as if I had been a gentleman. I suffered agony—agony. I suffered hard, and I suffered long. I thought of her last words to me, however, and I never disgraced them. If it had not been for those dear words, I think I should have lost myself in despair and recklessness.

The ring will be found lying on my heart, of course, and will be laid with me wherever I am laid. I am getting on in years now, though I am able and hearty. I was recommended for promotion, and everything was done to reward me that could be done; but my total want of all learning stood in my way, and I found myself so completely out of the road to it that I could not conquer any learning, though I tried. I was long in the service, and I respected it, and was respected in it, and the service is dear to me at this present hour.

At this present hour, when I give this out to my Lady to be written down, all my old pain has softened away, and I am as happy as a man can be, at this present fine old country-house of Admiral Sir George Carton, Baronet. It was my Lady Carton who herself sought me out, over a great many miles of the wide world, and found me in Hospital wounded, and brought me here. It is my Lady Carton who writes down my words. My Lady was Miss Maryon. And now, that I conclude what I had to tell, I see my Lady’s honoured gray hair droop over her face, as she leans a little lower at her desk; and I fervently thank her for being so tender as I see she is, towards the past pain and trouble of her poor, old, faithful, humble soldier.

Footnotes

[1] This second chapter was written by Wilkie Collins. The third, and concluding, chapter, was again written by Charles Dickens.

A HOUSE TO LET

1858

CONTENTS

Over the Way

The Manchester Marriage

Going Into Society

Three Evenings in the House

Trottle's Report

Let at Last

OVER THE WAY

Wilkie Collins

I had been living at Tunbridge Wells and nowhere else, going on for ten years, when my medical man—very clever in his profession, and the prettiest player I ever saw in my life of a hand at Long Whist, which was a noble and a princely game before Short was heard of—said to me, one day, as he sat feeling my pulse on the actual sofa which my poor dear sister Jane worked before her spine came on, and laid her on a board for fifteen months at a stretch—the most upright woman that ever lived—said to me, "What we want, ma'am, is a fillip."

"Good gracious, goodness gracious, Doctor Towers!" says I, quite startled at the man, for he was so christened himself: "don't talk as if you were alluding to people's names; but say what you mean."

"I mean, my dear ma'am, that we want a little change of air and scene."

"Bless the man!" said I; "does he mean we or me!"

"I mean you, ma'am."

"Then Lard forgive you, Doctor Towers," I said; "why don't you get into a habit of expressing yourself in a straightforward manner, like a loyal subject of our gracious Queen Victoria, and a member of the Church of England?"

Towers laughed, as he generally does when he has fidgetted me into any of my impatient ways—one of my states, as I call them—and then he began,—

"Tone, ma'am, Tone, is all you require!" He appealed to Trottle, who just then came in with the coal-scuttle, looking, in his nice black suit, like an amiable man putting on coals from motives of benevolence.

Trottle (whom I always call my right hand) has been in my service two-and-thirty years. He entered my service, far away from England. He is the best of creatures, and the most respectable of men; but, opinionated.

"What you want, ma'am," says Trottle, making up the fire in his quiet and skilful way, "is Tone."

"Lard forgive you both!" says I, bursting out a-laughing; "I see you are in a conspiracy against me, so I suppose you must do what you like with me, and take me to London for a change."

For some weeks Towers had hinted at London, and consequently I was prepared for him. When we had got to this point, we got on so expeditiously, that Trottle was packed off to London next day but one, to find some sort of place for me to lay my troublesome old head in.

Trottle came back to me at the Wells after two days' absence, with accounts of a charming place that could be taken for six months certain, with liberty to renew on the same terms for another six, and which really did afford every accommodation that I wanted.

"Could you really find no fault at all in the rooms, Trottle?" I asked him.

"Not a single one, ma'am. They are exactly suitable to you. There is not a fault in them. There is but one fault outside of them."

"And what's that?"

"They are opposite a House to Let."

"O!" I said, considering of it. "But is that such a very great objection?"

"I think it my duty to mention it, ma'am. It is a dull object to look at. Otherwise, I was so greatly pleased with the lodging that I should have closed with the terms at once, as I had your authority to do."

Trottle thinking so highly of the place, in my interest, I wished not to disappoint him. Consequently I said:

"The empty House may let, perhaps."

"O, dear no, ma'am," said Trottle, shaking his head with decision; "it won't let. It never does let, ma'am."

"Mercy me! Why not?"

"Nobody knows, ma'am. All I have to mention is, ma'am, that the House won't let!"

"How long has this unfortunate House been to let, in the name of Fortune?" said I.

"Ever so long," said Trottle. "Years."

"Is it in ruins?"

"It's a good deal out of repair, ma'am, but it's not in ruins."

The long and the short of this business was, that next day I had a pair of post-horses put to my chariot—for, I never travel by railway: not that I have anything to say against railways, except that they came in when I was too old to take to them; and that they made ducks and drakes of a few turnpike-bonds I had—and so I went up myself, with Trottle in the rumble, to look at the inside of this same lodging, and at the outside of this same House.

As I say, I went and saw for myself. The lodging was perfect. That, I was sure it would be; because Trottle is the best judge of comfort I know. The empty house was an eyesore; and that I was sure it would be too, for the same reason. However, setting the one thing against the other, the good against the bad, the lodging very soon got the victory over the House. My lawyer, Mr. Squares, of Crown Office Row; Temple, drew up an agreement; which his young man jabbered over so dreadfully when he read it to me, that I didn't understand one word of it except my own name; and hardly that, and I signed it, and the other party signed it, and, in three weeks' time, I moved my old bones, bag and baggage, up to London.

For the first month or so, I arranged to leave Trottle at the Wells. I made this arrangement, not only because there was a good deal to take care of in the way of my school-children and pensioners, and also of a new stove in the hall to air the house in my absence, which appeared to me calculated to blow up and burst; but, likewise because I suspect Trottle (though the steadiest of men, and a widower between sixty and seventy) to be what I call rather a Philanderer. I mean, that when any friend comes down to see me and brings a maid, Trottle is always remarkably ready to show that maid the Wells of an evening; and that I have more than once noticed the shadow of his arm, outside the room door nearly opposite my chair, encircling that maid's waist on the landing, like a table-cloth brush.

Therefore, I thought it just as well, before any London Philandering took place, that I should have a little time to look round me, and to see what girls were in and about the place. So, nobody stayed with me in my new lodging at first after Trottle had established me there safe and sound, but Peggy Flobbins, my maid; a most affectionate and attached woman, who never was an object of Philandering since I have known her, and is not likely to begin to become so after nine-and-twenty years next March.

It was the fifth of November when I first breakfasted in my new rooms. The Guys were going about in the brown fog, like magnified monsters of insects in table-beer, and there was a Guy resting on the door-steps of the House to Let. I put on my glasses, partly to see how the boys were pleased with what I sent them out by Peggy, and partly to make sure that she didn't approach too near the ridiculous object, which of course was full of sky-rockets, and might go off into bangs at any moment. In this way it happened that the first time I ever looked at the House to Let, after I became its opposite neighbour, I had my glasses on. And this might not have happened once in fifty times, for my sight is uncommonly good for my time of life; and I wear glasses as little as I can, for fear of spoiling it.

I knew already that it was a ten-roomed house, very dirty, and much dilapidated; that the area-rails were rusty and peeling away, and that two or three of them were wanting, or half-wanting; that there were broken panes of glass in the windows, and blotches of mud on other panes, which the boys had thrown at them; that there was quite a collection of stones in the area, also proceeding from those Young Mischiefs; that there were games chalked on the pavement before the house, and likenesses of ghosts chalked on the street-door; that the windows were all darkened by rotting old blinds, or shutters, or both; that the bills "To Let," had curled up, as if the damp air of the place had given them cramps; or had dropped down into corners, as if they were no more. I had seen all this on my first visit, and I had remarked to Trottle, that the lower part of the black board about terms was split away; that the rest had become illegible, and that the very stone of the door-steps was broken across. Notwithstanding, I sat at my breakfast table on that Please to Remember the fifth of November morning, staring at the House through my glasses, as if I had never looked at it before.

All at once—in the first-floor window on my right—down in a low corner, at a hole in a blind or a shutter—I found that I was looking at a secret Eye. The reflection of my fire may have touched it and made it shine; but, I saw it shine and vanish.

The eye might have seen me, or it might not have seen me, sitting there in the glow of my fire—you can take which probability you prefer, without offence—but something struck through my frame, as if the sparkle of this eye had been electric, and had flashed straight at me. It had such an effect upon me, that I could not remain by myself, and I rang for Flobbins, and invented some little jobs for her, to keep her in the room. After my breakfast was cleared away, I sat in the same place with my glasses on, moving my head, now so, and now so, trying whether, with the shining of my fire and the flaws in the window-glass, I could reproduce any sparkle seeming to be up there, that was like the sparkle of an eye. But no; I could make nothing like it. I could make ripples and crooked lines in the front of the House to Let, and I could even twist one window up and loop it into another; but, I could make no eye, nor anything like an eye. So I convinced myself that I really had seen an eye.

Well, to be sure I could not get rid of the impression of this eye, and it troubled me and troubled me, until it was almost a torment. I don't think I was previously inclined to concern my head much about the opposite House; but, after this eye, my head was full of the house; and I thought of little else than the house, and I watched the house, and I talked about the house, and I dreamed of the house. In all this, I fully believe now, there was a good Providence. But, you will judge for yourself about that, bye-and-bye.

My landlord was a butler, who had married a cook, and set up housekeeping. They had not kept house longer than a couple of years, and they knew no more about the House to Let than I did. Neither could I find out anything concerning it among the trades-people or otherwise; further than what Trottle had told me at first. It had been empty, some said six years, some said eight, some said ten. It never did let, they all agreed, and it never would let.

I soon felt convinced that I should work myself into one of my states about the House; and I soon did. I lived for a whole month in a flurry, that was always getting worse. Towers's prescriptions, which I had brought to London with me, were of no more use than nothing. In the cold winter sunlight, in the thick winter fog, in the black winter rain, in the white winter snow, the House was equally on my mind. I have heard, as everybody else has, of a spirit's haunting a house; but I have had my own personal experience of a house's haunting a spirit; for that House haunted mine.

In all that month's time, I never saw anyone go into the House nor come out of the House. I supposed that such a thing must take place sometimes, in the dead of the night, or the glimmer of the morning; but, I never saw it done. I got no relief from having my curtains drawn when it came on dark, and shutting out the House. The Eye then began to shine in my fire.

I am a single old woman. I should say at once, without being at all afraid of the name, I am an old maid; only that I am older than the phrase would express. The time was when I had my love-trouble, but, it is long and long ago. He was killed at sea (Dear Heaven rest his blessed head!) when I was twenty-five. I have all my life, since ever I can remember, been deeply fond of children. I have always felt such a love for them, that I have had my sorrowful and sinful times when I have fancied something must have gone wrong in my life—something must have been turned aside from its original intention I mean—or I should have been the proud and happy mother of many children, and a fond old grandmother this day. I have soon known better in the cheerfulness and contentment that God has blessed me with and given me abundant reason for; and yet I have had to dry my eyes even then, when I have thought of my dear, brave, hopeful, handsome, bright-eyed Charley, and the trust meant to cheer me with. Charley was my youngest brother, and he went to India. He married there, and sent his gentle little wife home to me to be confined, and she was to go back to him, and the baby was to be left with me, and I was to bring it up. It never belonged to this life. It took its silent place among the other incidents in my story that might have been, but never were. I had hardly time to whisper to her "Dead my own!" or she to answer, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust! O lay it on my breast and comfort Charley!" when she had gone to seek her baby at Our Saviour's feet. I went to Charley, and I told him there was nothing left but me, poor me; and I lived with Charley, out there, several years. He was a man of fifty, when he fell asleep in my arms. His face had changed to be almost old and a little stern; but, it softened, and softened when I laid it down that I might cry and pray beside it; and, when I looked at it for the last time, it was my dear, untroubled, handsome, youthful Charley of long ago.

—I was going on to tell that the loneliness of the House to Let brought back all these recollections, and that they had quite pierced my heart one evening, when Flobbins, opening the door, and looking very much as if she wanted to laugh but thought better of it, said:

"Mr. Jabez Jarber, ma'am!"

Upon which Mr. Jarber ambled in, in his usual absurd way, saying:

"Sophonisba!"

Which I am obliged to confess is my name. A pretty one and proper one enough when it was given to me: but, a good many years out of date now, and always sounding particularly high-flown and comical from his lips. So I said, sharply:

"Though it is Sophonisba, Jarber, you are not obliged to mention it, that I see."

In reply to this observation, the ridiculous man put the tips of my five right-hand fingers to his lips, and said again, with an aggravating accent on the third syllable:

"Sophonisba!"

I don't burn lamps, because I can't abide the smell of oil, and wax candles belonged to my day. I hope the convenient situation of one of my tall old candlesticks on the table at my elbow will be my excuse for saying, that if he did that again, I would chop his toes with it. (I am sorry to add that when I told him so, I knew his toes to be tender.) But, really, at my time of life and at Jarber's, it is too much of a good thing. There is an orchestra still standing in the open air at the Wells, before which, in the presence of a throng of fine company, I have walked a minuet with Jarber. But, there is a house still standing, in which I have worn a pinafore, and had a tooth drawn by fastening a thread to the tooth and the door-handle, and toddling away from the door. And how should I look now, at my years, in a pinafore, or having a door for my dentist?

Besides, Jarber always was more or less an absurd man. He was sweetly dressed, and beautifully perfumed, and many girls of my day would have given their ears for him; though I am bound to add that he never cared a fig for them, or their advances either, and that he was very constant to me. For, he not only proposed to me before my love-happiness ended in sorrow, but afterwards too: not once, nor yet twice: nor will we say how many times. However many they were, or however few they were, the last time he paid me that compliment was immediately after he had presented me with a digestive dinner-pill stuck on the point of a pin. And I said on that occasion, laughing heartily, "Now, Jarber, if you don't know that two people whose united ages would make about a hundred and fifty, have got to be old, I do; and I beg to swallow this nonsense in the form of this pill" (which I took on the spot), "and I request to, hear no more of it."

After that, he conducted himself pretty well. He was always a little squeezed man, was Jarber, in little sprigged waistcoats; and he had always little legs and a little smile, and a little voice, and little round-about ways. As long as I can remember him he was always going little errands for people, and carrying little gossip. At this present time when he called me "Sophonisba!" he had a little old-fashioned lodging in that new neighbourhood of mine. I had not seen him for two or three years, but I had heard that he still went out with a little perspective-glass and stood on door-steps in Saint James's Street, to see the nobility go to Court; and went in his little cloak and goloshes outside Willis's rooms to see them go to Almack's; and caught the frightfullest colds, and got himself trodden upon by coachmen and linkmen, until he went home to his landlady a mass of bruises, and had to be nursed for a month.

Jarber took off his little fur-collared cloak, and sat down opposite me, with his little cane and hat in his hand.

"Let us have no more Sophonisbaing, if you please, Jarber," I said. "Call me Sarah. How do you do? I hope you are pretty well."

"Thank you. And you?" said Jarber.

"I am as well as an old woman can expect to be."

Jarber was beginning:

"Say, not old, Sophon—" but I looked at the candlestick, and he left off; pretending not to have said anything.

"I am infirm, of course," I said, "and so are you. Let us both be thankful it's no worse."

"Is it possible that you look worried?" said Jarber.

"It is very possible. I have no doubt it is the fact."

"And what has worried my Soph—, soft-hearted friend," said Jarber.

"Something not easy, I suppose, to comprehend. I am worried to death by a House to Let, over the way."

Jarber went with his little tip-toe step to the window-curtains, peeped out, and looked round at me.

"Yes," said I, in answer: "that house."

After peeping out again, Jarber came back to his chair with a tender air, and asked: "How does it worry you, S-arah?"

"It is a mystery to me," said I. "Of course every house is a mystery, more or less; but, something that I don't care to mention" (for truly the Eye was so slight a thing to mention that I was more than half ashamed of it), "has made that House so mysterious to me, and has so fixed it in my mind, that I have had no peace for a month. I foresee that I shall have no peace, either, until Trottle comes to me, next Monday."

I might have mentioned before, that there is a lone-standing jealousy between Trottle and Jarber; and that there is never any love lost between those two.

"Trottle," petulantly repeated Jarber, with a little flourish of his cane; "how is Trottle to restore the lost peace of Sarah?"

"He will exert himself to find out something about the House. I have fallen into that state about it, that I really must discover by some means or other, good or bad, fair or foul, how and why it is that that House remains To Let."

"And why Trottle? Why not," putting his little hat to his heart; "why not, Jarber?

"To tell you the truth, I have never thought of Jarber in the matter. And now I do think of Jarber, through your having the kindness to suggest him—for which I am really and truly obliged to you—I don't think he could do it."

"Sarah!"

"I think it would be too much for you, Jarber."

"Sarah!"

"There would be coming and going, and fetching and carrying, Jarber, and you might catch cold."

"Sarah! What can be done by Trottle, can be done by me. I am on terms of acquaintance with every person of responsibility in this parish. I am intimate at the Circulating Library. I converse daily with the Assessed Taxes. I lodge with the Water Rate. I know the Medical Man. I lounge habitually at the House Agent's. I dine with the Churchwardens. I move to the Guardians. Trottle! A person in the sphere of a domestic, and totally unknown to society!"

"Don't be warm, Jarber. In mentioning Trottle, I have naturally relied on my Right-Hand, who would take any trouble to gratify even a whim of his old mistress's. But, if you can find out anything to help to unravel the mystery of this House to Let, I shall be fully as much obliged to you as if there was never a Trottle in the land."

Jarber rose and put on his little cloak. A couple of fierce brass lions held it tight round his little throat; but a couple of the mildest Hares might have done that, I am sure. "Sarah," he said, "I go. Expect me on Monday evening, the Sixth, when perhaps you will give me a cup of tea;—may I ask for no Green? Adieu!"

This was on a Thursday, the second of December. When I reflected that Trottle would come back on Monday, too, I had my misgivings as to the difficulty of keeping the two powers from open warfare, and indeed I was more uneasy than I quite like to confess. However, the empty House swallowed up that thought next morning, as it swallowed up most other thoughts now, and the House quite preyed upon me all that day, and all the Saturday.

It was a very wet Sunday: raining and blowing from morning to night. When the bells rang for afternoon church, they seemed to ring in the commotion of the puddles as well as in the wind, and they sounded very loud and dismal indeed, and the street looked very dismal indeed, and the House looked dismallest of all.

I was reading my prayers near the light, and my fire was growing in the darkening window-glass, when, looking up, as I prayed for the fatherless children and widows and all who were desolate and oppressed,—I saw the Eye again. It passed in a moment, as it had done before; but, this time, I was inwardly more convinced that I had seen it.

Well to be sure, I had a night that night! Whenever I closed my own eyes, it was to see eyes. Next morning, at an unreasonably, and I should have said (but for that railroad) an impossibly early hour, comes Trottle. As soon as he had told me all about the Wells, I told him all about the House. He listened with as great interest and attention as I could possibly wish, until I came to Jabez Jarber, when he cooled in an instant, and became opinionated.

"Now, Trottle," I said, pretending not to notice, "when Mr. Jarber comes back this evening, we must all lay our heads together."

"I should hardly think that would be wanted, ma'am; Mr. Jarber's head is surely equal to anything."

Being determined not to notice, I said again, that we must all lay our heads together.

"Whatever you order, ma'am, shall be obeyed. Still, it cannot be doubted, I should think, that Mr. Jarber's head is equal, if not superior, to any pressure that can be brought to bear upon it."

This was provoking; and his way, when he came in and out all through the day, of pretending not to see the House to Let, was more provoking still. However, being quite resolved not to notice, I gave no sign whatever that I did notice. But, when evening came, and he showed in Jarber, and, when Jarber wouldn't be helped off with his cloak, and poked his cane into cane chair-backs and china ornaments and his own eye, in trying to unclasp his brazen lions of himself (which he couldn't do, after all), I could have shaken them both.

As it was, I only shook the tea-pot, and made the tea. Jarber had brought from under his cloak, a roll of paper, with which he had triumphantly pointed over the way, like the Ghost of Hamlet's Father appearing to the late Mr. Kemble, and which he had laid on the table.

"A discovery?" said I, pointing to it, when he was seated, and had got his tea-cup.—"Don't go, Trottle."

"The first of a series of discoveries," answered Jarber. "Account of a former tenant, compiled from the Water Rate, and Medical Man."

"Don't go, Trottle," I repeated. For, I saw him making imperceptibly to the door.

"Begging your pardon, ma'am, I might be in Mr. Jarber's way?"

Jarber looked that he decidedly thought he might be. I relieved myself with a good angry croak, and said—always determined not to notice:

"Have the goodness to sit down, if you please, Trottle. I wish you to hear this."

Trottle bowed in the stiffest manner, and took the remotest chair he could find. Even that, he moved close to the draught from the keyhole of the door.

"Firstly," Jarber began, after sipping his tea, "would my Sophon—"

"Begin again, Jarber," said I.

"Would you be much surprised, if this House to Let should turn out to be the property of a relation of your own?"

"I should indeed be very much surprised."

"Then it belongs to your first cousin (I learn, by the way, that he is ill at this time) George Forley."

"Then that is a bad beginning. I cannot deny that George Forley stands in the relation of first cousin to me; but I hold no communication with him. George Forley has been a hard, bitter, stony father to a child now dead. George Forley was most implacable and unrelenting to one of his two daughters who made a poor marriage. George Forley brought all the weight of his hand to bear as heavily against that crushed thing, as he brought it to bear lightly, favouringly, and advantageously upon her sister, who made a rich marriage. I hope that, with the measure George Forley meted, it may not be measured out to him again. I will give George Forley no worse wish."

I was strong upon the subject, and I could not keep the tears out of my eyes; for, that young girl's was a cruel story, and I had dropped many a tear over it before.

"The house being George Forley's," said I, "is almost enough to account for there being a Fate upon it, if Fate there is. Is there anything about George Forley in those sheets of paper?"

"Not a word."

"I am glad to hear it. Please to read on. Trottle, why don't you come nearer? Why do you sit mortifying yourself in those arctic regions? Come nearer."

"Thank you, ma'am; I am quite near enough to Mr. Jarber."

Jarber rounded his chair, to get his back full to my opinionated friend and servant, and, beginning to read, tossed the words at him over his (Jabez Jarber's) own ear and shoulder.

He read what follows:

THE MANCHESTER MARRIAGE

Elizabeth Gaskell

Mr. and Mrs. Openshaw came from Manchester to London and took the House To Let. He had been, what is called in Lancashire, a Salesman for a large manufacturing firm, who were extending their business, and opening a warehouse in London; where Mr. Openshaw was now to superintend the business. He rather enjoyed the change of residence; having a kind of curiosity about London, which he had never yet been able to gratify in his brief visits to the metropolis. At the same time he had an odd, shrewd, contempt for the inhabitants; whom he had always pictured to himself as fine, lazy people; caring nothing but for fashion and aristocracy, and lounging away their days in Bond Street, and such places; ruining good English, and ready in their turn to despise him as a provincial. The hours that the men of business kept in the city scandalised him too; accustomed as he was to the early dinners of Manchester folk, and the consequently far longer evenings. Still, he was pleased to go to London; though he would not for the world have confessed it, even to himself, and always spoke of the step to his friends as one demanded of him by the interests of his employers, and sweetened to him by a considerable increase of salary. His salary indeed was so liberal that he might have been justified in taking a much larger House than this one, had he not thought himself bound to set an example to Londoners of how little a Manchester man of business cared for show. Inside, however, he furnished the House with an unusual degree of comfort, and, in the winter time, he insisted on keeping up as large fires as the grates would allow, in every room where the temperature was in the least chilly. Moreover, his northern sense of hospitality was such, that, if he were at home, he could hardly suffer a visitor to leave the house without forcing meat and drink upon him. Every servant in the house was well warmed, well fed, and kindly treated; for their master scorned all petty saving in aught that conduced to comfort; while he amused himself by following out all his accustomed habits and individual ways in defiance of what any of his new neighbours might think.

His wife was a pretty, gentle woman, of suitable age and character. He was forty-two, she thirty-five. He was loud and decided; she soft and yielding. They had two children or rather, I should say, she had two; for the elder, a girl of eleven, was Mrs. Openshaw's child by Frank Wilson her first husband. The younger was a little boy, Edwin, who could just prattle, and to whom his father delighted to speak in the broadest and most unintelligible Lancashire dialect, in order to keep up what he called the true Saxon accent.

Mrs. Openshaw's Christian-name was Alice, and her first husband had been her own cousin. She was the orphan niece of a sea-captain in Liverpool: a quiet, grave little creature, of great personal attraction when she was fifteen or sixteen, with regular features and a blooming complexion. But she was very shy, and believed herself to be very stupid and awkward; and was frequently scolded by her aunt, her own uncle's second wife. So when her cousin, Frank Wilson, came home from a long absence at sea, and first was kind and protective to her; secondly, attentive and thirdly, desperately in love with her, she hardly knew how to be grateful enough to him. It is true she would have preferred his remaining in the first or second stages of behaviour; for his violent love puzzled and frightened her. Her uncle neither helped nor hindered the love affair though it was going on under his own eyes. Frank's step-mother had such a variable temper, that there was no knowing whether what she liked one day she would like the next, or not. At length she went to such extremes of crossness, that Alice was only too glad to shut her eyes and rush blindly at the chance of escape from domestic tyranny offered her by a marriage with her cousin; and, liking him better than any one in the world except her uncle (who was at this time at sea) she went off one morning and was married to him; her only bridesmaid being the housemaid at her aunt's. The consequence was, that Frank and his wife went into lodgings, and Mrs. Wilson refused to see them, and turned away Norah, the warm-hearted housemaid; whom they accordingly took into their service. When Captain Wilson returned from his voyage, he was very cordial with the young couple, and spent many an evening at their lodgings; smoking his pipe, and sipping his grog; but he told them that, for quietness' sake, he could not ask them to his own house; for his wife was bitter against them. They were not very unhappy about this.

The seed of future unhappiness lay rather in Frank's vehement, passionate disposition; which led him to resent his wife's shyness and want of demonstration as failures in conjugal duty. He was already tormenting himself, and her too, in a slighter degree, by apprehensions and imaginations of what might befall her during his approaching absence at sea. At last he went to his father and urged him to insist upon Alice's being once more received under his roof; the more especially as there was now a prospect of her confinement while her husband was away on his voyage. Captain Wilson was, as he himself expressed it, "breaking up," and unwilling to undergo the excitement of a scene; yet he felt that what his son said was true. So he went to his wife. And before Frank went to sea, he had the comfort of seeing his wife installed in her old little garret in his father's house. To have placed her in the one best spare room was a step beyond Mrs. Wilson's powers of submission or generosity. The worst part about it, however, was that the faithful Norah had to be dismissed. Her place as housemaid had been filled up; and, even had it not, she had forfeited Mrs. Wilson's good opinion for ever. She comforted her young master and mistress by pleasant prophecies of the time when they would have a household of their own; of which, in whatever service she might be in the meantime, she should be sure to form part. Almost the last action Frank Wilson did, before setting sail, was going with Alice to see Norah once more at her mother's house. And then he went away.

Alice's father-in-law grew more and more feeble as winter advanced. She was of great use to her step-mother in nursing and amusing him; and, although there was anxiety enough in the household, there was perhaps more of peace than there had been for years; for Mrs. Wilson had not a bad heart, and was softened by the visible approach of death to one whom she loved, and touched by the lonely condition of the young creature, expecting her first confinement in her husband's absence. To this relenting mood Norah owed the permission to come and nurse Alice when her baby was born, and to remain to attend on Captain Wilson.

Before one letter had been received from Frank (who had sailed for the East Indies and China), his father died. Alice was always glad to remember that he had held her baby in his arms, and kissed and blessed it before his death. After that, and the consequent examination into the state of his affairs, it was found that he had left far less property than people had been led by his style of living to imagine; and, what money there was, was all settled upon his wife, and at her disposal after her death. This did not signify much to Alice, as Frank was now first mate of his ship, and, in another voyage or two, would be captain. Meanwhile he had left her some hundreds (all his savings) in the bank.

It became time for Alice to hear from her husband. One letter from the Cape she had already received. The next was to announce his arrival in India. As week after week passed over, and no intelligence of the ship's arrival reached the office of the owners, and the Captain's wife was in the same state of ignorant suspense as Alice herself, her fears grew most oppressive. At length the day came when, in reply to her inquiry at the Shipping Office, they told her that the owners had given up Hope of ever hearing more of the Betsy-Jane, and had sent in their claim upon the underwriters. Now that he was gone for ever, she first felt a yearning, longing love for the kind cousin, the dear friend, the sympathising protector, whom she should never see again,—first felt a passionate desire to show him his child, whom she had hitherto rather craved to have all to herself—her own sole possession. Her grief was, however, noiseless, and quiet—rather to the scandal of Mrs. Wilson; who bewailed her step-son as if he and she had always lived together in perfect harmony, and who evidently thought it her duty to burst into fresh tears at every strange face she saw; dwelling on his poor young widow's desolate state, and the helplessness of the fatherless child, with an unction, as if she liked the excitement of the sorrowful story.

So passed away the first days of Alice's widowhood. Bye-and-bye things subsided into their natural and tranquil course. But, as if this young creature was always to be in some heavy trouble, her ewe-lamb began to be ailing, pining and sickly. The child's mysterious illness turned out to be some affection of the spine likely to affect health; but not to shorten life—at least so the doctors said. But the long dreary suffering of one whom a mother loves as Alice loved her only child, is hard to look forward to. Only Norah guessed what Alice suffered; no one but God knew.

And so it fell out, that when Mrs. Wilson, the elder, came to her one day in violent distress, occasioned by a very material diminution in the value of the property that her husband had left her,—a diminution which made her income barely enough to support herself, much less Alice—the latter could hardly understand how anything which did not touch health or life could cause such grief; and she received the intelligence with irritating composure. But when, that afternoon, the little sick child was brought in, and the grandmother—who after all loved it well—began a fresh moan over her losses to its unconscious ears—saying how she had planned to consult this or that doctor, and to give it this or that comfort or luxury in after years, but that now all chance of this had passed away—Alice's heart was touched, and she drew near to Mrs. Wilson with unwonted caresses, and, in a spirit not unlike to that of, Ruth, entreated, that come what would, they might remain together. After much discussion in succeeding days, it was arranged that Mrs. Wilson should take a house in Manchester, furnishing it partly with what furniture she had, and providing the rest with Alice's remaining two hundred pounds. Mrs. Wilson was herself a Manchester woman, and naturally longed to return to her native town. Some connections of her own at that time required lodgings, for which they were willing to pay pretty handsomely. Alice undertook the active superintendence and superior work of the household. Norah, willing faithful Norah, offered to cook, scour, do anything in short, so that, she might but remain with them.

The plan succeeded. For some years their first lodgers remained with them, and all went smoothly,—with the one sad exception of the little girl's increasing deformity. How that mother loved that child, is not for words to tell!

Then came a break of misfortune. Their lodgers left, and no one succeeded to them. After some months they had to remove to a smaller house; and Alice's tender conscience was torn by the idea that she ought not to be a burden to her mother-in-law, but ought to go out and seek her own maintenance. And leave her child! The thought came like the sweeping boom of a funeral bell over her heart.

Bye-and-bye, Mr. Openshaw came to lodge with them. He had started in life as the errand-boy and sweeper-out of a warehouse; had struggled up through all the grades of employment in the place, fighting his way through the hard striving Manchester life with strong pushing energy of character. Every spare moment of time had been sternly given up to self-teaching. He was a capital accountant, a good French and German scholar, a keen, far-seeing tradesman; understanding markets, and the bearing of events, both near and distant, on trade: and yet, with such vivid attention to present details, that I do not think he ever saw a group of flowers in the fields without thinking whether their colours would, or would not, form harmonious contrasts in the coming spring muslins and prints. He went to debating societies, and threw himself with all his heart and soul into politics; esteeming, it must be owned, every man a fool or a knave who differed from him, and overthrowing his opponents rather by the loud strength of his language than the calm strength if his logic. There was something of the Yankee in all this. Indeed his theory ran parallel to the famous Yankee motto—"England flogs creation, and Manchester flogs England." Such a man, as may be fancied, had had no time for falling in love, or any such nonsense. At the age when most young men go through their courting and matrimony, he had not the means of keeping a wife, and was far too practical to think of having one. And now that he was in easy circumstances, a rising man, he considered women almost as incumbrances to the world, with whom a man had better have as little to do as possible. His first impression of Alice was indistinct, and he did not care enough about her to make it distinct. "A pretty yea-nay kind of woman," would have been his description of her, if he had been pushed into a corner. He was rather afraid, in the beginning, that her quiet ways arose from a listlessness and laziness of character which would have been exceedingly discordant to his active energetic nature. But, when he found out the punctuality with which his wishes were attended to, and her work was done; when he was called in the morning at the very stroke of the clock, his shaving-water scalding hot, his fire bright, his coffee made exactly as his peculiar fancy dictated, (for he was a man who had his theory about everything, based upon what he knew of science, and often perfectly original)—then he began to think: not that Alice had any peculiar merit; but that he had got into remarkably good lodgings: his restlessness wore away, and he began to consider himself as almost settled for life in them.

Mr. Openshaw had been too busy, all his life, to be introspective. He did not know that he had any tenderness in his nature; and if he had become conscious of its abstract existence, he would have considered it as a manifestation of disease in some part of his nature. But he was decoyed into pity unawares; and pity led on to tenderness. That little helpless child—always carried about by one of the three busy women of the house, or else patiently threading coloured beads in the chair from which, by no effort of its own, could it ever move; the great grave blue eyes, full of serious, not uncheerful, expression, giving to the small delicate face a look beyond its years; the soft plaintive voice dropping out but few words, so unlike the continual prattle of a child—caught Mr. Openshaw's attention in spite of himself. One day—he half scorned himself for doing so—he cut short his dinner-hour to go in search of some toy which should take the place of those eternal beads. I forget what he bought; but, when he gave the present (which he took care to do in a short abrupt manner, and when no one was by to see him) he was almost thrilled by the flash of delight that came over that child's face, and could not help all through that afternoon going over and over again the picture left on his memory, by the bright effect of unexpected joy on the little girl's face. When he returned home, he found his slippers placed by his sitting-room fire; and even more careful attention paid to his fancies than was habitual in those model lodgings. When Alice had taken the last of his tea-things away—she had been silent as usual till then—she stood for an instant with the door in her hand. Mr. Openshaw looked as if he were deep in his book, though in fact he did not see a line; but was heartily wishing the woman would be gone, and not make any palaver of gratitude. But she only said:

"I am very much obliged to you, sir. Thank you very much," and was gone, even before he could send her away with a "There, my good woman, that's enough!"

For some time longer he took no apparent notice of the child. He even hardened his heart into disregarding her sudden flush of colour, and little timid smile of recognition, when he saw her by chance. But, after all, this could not last for ever; and, having a second time given way to tenderness, there was no relapse. The insidious enemy having thus entered his heart, in the guise of compassion to the child, soon assumed the more dangerous form of interest in the mother. He was aware of this change of feeling, despised himself for it, struggled with it nay, internally yielded to it and cherished it, long before he suffered the slightest expression of it, by word, action, or look, to escape him. He watched Alice's docile obedient ways to her stepmother; the love which she had inspired in the rough Norah (roughened by the wear and tear of sorrow and years); but above all, he saw the wild, deep, passionate affection existing between her and her child. They spoke little to any one else, or when any one else was by; but, when alone together, they talked, and murmured, and cooed, and chattered so continually, that Mr. Openshaw first wondered what they could find to say to each other, and next became irritated because they were always so grave and silent with him. All this time, he was perpetually devising small new pleasures for the child. His thoughts ran, in a pertinacious way, upon the desolate life before her; and often he came back from his day's work loaded with the very thing Alice had been longing for, but had not been able to procure. One time it was a little chair for drawing the little sufferer along the streets, and many an evening that ensuing summer Mr. Openshaw drew her along himself, regardless of the remarks of his acquaintances. One day in autumn he put down his newspaper, as Alice came in with the breakfast, and said, in as indifferent a voice as he could assume:

"Mrs. Frank, is there any reason why we two should not put up our horses together?"

Alice stood still in perplexed wonder. What did he mean? He had resumed the reading of his newspaper, as if he did not expect any answer; so she found silence her safest course, and went on quietly arranging his breakfast without another word passing between them. Just as he was leaving the house, to go to the warehouse as usual, he turned back and put his head into the bright, neat, tidy kitchen, where all the women breakfasted in the morning:

"You'll think of what I said, Mrs. Frank" (this was her name with the lodgers), "and let me have your opinion upon it to-night."

Alice was thankful that her mother and Norah were too busy talking together to attend much to this speech. She determined not to think about it at all through the day; and, of course, the effort not to think made her think all the more. At night she sent up Norah with his tea. But Mr. Openshaw almost knocked Norah down as she was going out at the door, by pushing past her and calling out "Mrs. Frank!" in an impatient voice, at the top of the stairs.

Alice went up, rather than seem to have affixed too much meaning to his words.

"Well, Mrs. Frank," he said, "what answer? Don't make it too long; for I have lots of office-work to get through to-night."

"I hardly know what you meant, sir," said truthful Alice.

"Well! I should have thought you might have guessed. You're not new at this sort of work, and I am. However, I'll make it plain this time. Will you have me to be thy wedded husband, and serve me, and love me, and honour me, and all that sort of thing? Because if you will, I will do as much by you, and be a father to your child—and that's more than is put in the prayer-book. Now, I'm a man of my word; and what I say, I feel; and what I promise, I'll do. Now, for your answer!"

Alice was silent. He began to make the tea, as if her reply was a matter of perfect indifference to him; but, as soon as that was done, he became impatient.

"Well?" said he.

"How long, sir, may I have to think over it?"

"Three minutes!" (looking at his watch). "You've had two already—that makes five. Be a sensible woman, say Yes, and sit down to tea with me, and we'll talk it over together; for, after tea, I shall be busy; say No" (he hesitated a moment to try and keep his voice in the same tone), "and I shan't say another word about it, but pay up a year's rent for my rooms to-morrow, and be off. Time's up! Yes or no?"

"If you please, sir,—you have been so good to little Ailsie—"

"There, sit down comfortably by me on the sofa, and let us have our tea together. I am glad to find you are as good and sensible as I took for."

And this was Alice Wilson's second wooing.

Mr. Openshaw's will was too strong, and his circumstances too good, for him not to carry all before him. He settled Mrs. Wilson in a comfortable house of her own, and made her quite independent of lodgers. The little that Alice said with regard to future plans was in Norah's behalf.

"No," said Mr. Openshaw. "Norah shall take care of the old lady as long as she lives; and, after that, she shall either come and live with us, or, if she likes it better, she shall have a provision for life—for your sake, missus. No one who has been good to you or the child shall go unrewarded. But even the little one will be better for some fresh stuff about her. Get her a bright, sensible girl as a nurse: one who won't go rubbing her with calf's-foot jelly as Norah does; wasting good stuff outside that ought to go in, but will follow doctors' directions; which, as you must see pretty clearly by this time, Norah won't; because they give the poor little wench pain. Now, I'm not above being nesh for other folks myself. I can stand a good blow, and never change colour; but, set me in the operating-room in the infirmary, and I turn as sick as a girl. Yet, if need were, I would hold the little wench on my knees while she screeched with pain, if it were to do her poor back good. Nay, nay, wench! keep your white looks for the time when it comes—I don't say it ever will. But this I know, Norah will spare the child and cheat the doctor if she can. Now, I say, give the bairn a year or two's chance, and then, when the pack of doctors have done their best—and, maybe, the old lady has gone—we'll have Norah back, or do better for her."

The pack of doctors could do no good to little Ailsie. She was beyond their power. But her father (for so he insisted on being called, and also on Alice's no longer retaining the appellation of Mama, but becoming henceforward Mother), by his healthy cheerfulness of manner, his clear decision of purpose, his odd turns and quirks of humour, added to his real strong love for the helpless little girl, infused a new element of brightness and confidence into her life; and, though her back remained the same, her general health was strengthened, and Alice—never going beyond a smile herself—had the pleasure of seeing her child taught to laugh.

As for Alice's own life, it was happier than it had ever been. Mr. Openshaw required no demonstration, no expressions of affection from her. Indeed, these would rather have disgusted him. Alice could love deeply, but could not talk about it. The perpetual requirement of loving words, looks, and caresses, and misconstruing their absence into absence of love, had been the great trial of her former married life. Now, all went on clear and straight, under the guidance of her husband's strong sense, warm heart, and powerful will. Year by year their worldly prosperity increased. At Mrs. Wilson's death, Norah came back to them, as nurse to the newly-born little Edwin; into which post she was not installed without a pretty strong oration on the part of the proud and happy father; who declared that if he found out that Norah ever tried to screen the boy by a falsehood, or to make him nesh either in body or mind, she should go that very day. Norah and Mr. Openshaw were not on the most thoroughly cordial terms; neither of them fully recognising or appreciating the other's best qualities.

This was the previous history of the Lancashire family who had now removed to London, and had come to occupy the House.

They had been there about a year, when Mr. Openshaw suddenly informed his wife that he had determined to heal long-standing feuds, and had asked his uncle and aunt Chadwick to come and pay them a visit and see London. Mrs. Openshaw had never seen this uncle and aunt of her husband's. Years before she had married him, there had been a quarrel. All she knew was, that Mr. Chadwick was a small manufacturer in a country town in South Lancashire. She was extremely pleased that the breach was to be healed, and began making preparations to render their visit pleasant.

They arrived at last. Going to see London was such an event to them, that Mrs. Chadwick had made all new linen fresh for the occasion-from night-caps downwards; and, as for gowns, ribbons, and collars, she might have been going into the wilds of Canada where never a shop is, so large was her stock. A fortnight before the day of her departure for London, she had formally called to take leave of all her acquaintance; saying she should need all the intermediate time for packing up. It was like a second wedding in her imagination; and, to complete the resemblance which an entirely new wardrobe made between the two events, her husband brought her back from Manchester, on the last market-day before they set off, a gorgeous pearl and amethyst brooch, saying, "Lunnon should see that Lancashire folks knew a handsome thing when they saw it."

For some time after Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick arrived at the Openshaws', there was no opportunity for wearing this brooch; but at length they obtained an order to see Buckingham Palace, and the spirit of loyalty demanded that Mrs. Chadwick should wear her best clothes in visiting the abode of her sovereign. On her return, she hastily changed her dress; for Mr. Openshaw had planned that they should go to Richmond, drink tea and return by moonlight. Accordingly, about five o'clock, Mr. and Mrs. Openshaw and Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick set off.

The housemaid and cook sat below, Norah hardly knew where. She was always engrossed in the nursery, in tending her two children, and in sitting by the restless, excitable Ailsie till she fell asleep. Bye-and-bye, the housemaid Bessy tapped gently at the door. Norah went to her, and they spoke in whispers.

"Nurse! there's some one down-stairs wants you."

"Wants me! Who is it?"

"A gentleman—"

"A gentleman? Nonsense!"

"Well! a man, then, and he asks for you, and he rung at the front door bell, and has walked into the dining-room."

"You should never have let him," exclaimed Norah, "master and missus out—"

"I did not want him to come in; but when he heard you lived here, he walked past me, and sat down on the first chair, and said, 'Tell her to come and speak to me.' There is no gas lighted in the room, and supper is all set out."

"He'll be off with the spoons!" exclaimed Norah, putting the housemaid's fear into words, and preparing to leave the room, first, however, giving a look to Ailsie, sleeping soundly and calmly.

Down-stairs she went, uneasy fears stirring in her bosom. Before she entered the dining-room she provided herself with a candle, and, with it in her hand, she went in, looking round her in the darkness for her visitor.

He was standing up, holding by the table. Norah and he looked at each other; gradual recognition coming into their eyes.

"Norah?" at length he asked.

"Who are you?" asked Norah, with the sharp tones of alarm and incredulity. "I don't know you:" trying, by futile words of disbelief, to do away with the terrible fact before her.

"Am I so changed?" he said, pathetically. "I daresay I am. But, Norah, tell me!" he breathed hard, "where is my wife? Is she—is she alive?"

He came nearer to Norah, and would have taken her hand; but she backed away from him; looking at him all the time with staring eyes, as if he were some horrible object. Yet he was a handsome, bronzed, good-looking fellow, with beard and moustache, giving him a foreign-looking aspect; but his eyes! there was no mistaking those eager, beautiful eyes—the very same that Norah had watched not half-an-hour ago, till sleep stole softly over them.

"Tell me, Norah—I can bear it—I have feared it so often. Is she dead?" Norah still kept silence. "She is dead!" He hung on Norah's words and looks, as if for confirmation or contradiction.

"What shall I do?" groaned Norah. "O, sir! why did you come? how did you find me out? where have you been? We thought you dead, we did, indeed!" She poured out words and questions to gain time, as if time would help her.

"Norah! answer me this question, straight, by yes or no—Is my wife dead?"

"No, she is not!" said Norah, slowly and heavily.

"O what a relief! Did she receive my letters? But perhaps you don't know. Why did you leave her? Where is she? O Norah, tell me all quickly!"

"Mr. Frank!" said Norah at last, almost driven to bay by her terror lest her mistress should return at any moment, and find him there—unable to consider what was best to be done or said—rushing at something decisive, because she could not endure her present state: "Mr. Frank! we never heard a line from you, and the shipowners said you had gone down, you and every one else. We thought you were dead, if ever man was, and poor Miss Alice and her little sick, helpless child! O, sir, you must guess it," cried the poor creature at last, bursting out into a passionate fit of crying, "for indeed I cannot tell it. But it was no one's fault. God help us all this night!"

Norah had sat down. She trembled too much to stand. He took her hands in his. He squeezed them hard, as if by physical pressure, the truth could be wrung out.

"Norah!" This time his tone was calm, stagnant as despair. "She has married again!"

Norah shook her head sadly. The grasp slowly relaxed. The man had fainted.

There was brandy in the room. Norah forced some drops into Mr. Frank's mouth, chafed his hands, and—when mere animal life returned, before the mind poured in its flood of memories and thoughts—she lifted him up, and rested his head against her knees. Then she put a few crumbs of bread taken from the supper-table, soaked in brandy into his mouth. Suddenly he sprang to his feet.

"Where is she? Tell me this instant." He looked so wild, so mad, so desperate, that Norah felt herself to be in bodily danger; but her time of dread had gone by. She had been afraid to tell him the truth, and then she had been a coward. Now, her wits were sharpened by the sense of his desperate state. He must leave the house. She would pity him afterwards; but now she must rather command and upbraid; for he must leave the house before her mistress came home. That one necessity stood clear before her.

"She is not here; that is enough for you to know. Nor can I say exactly where she is" (which was true to the letter if not to the spirit). "Go away, and tell me where to find you to-morrow, and I will tell you all. My master and mistress may come back at any minute, and then what would become of me with a strange man in the house?"

Such an argument was too petty to touch his excited mind.

"I don't care for your master and mistress. If your master is a man, he must feel for me poor shipwrecked sailor that I am—kept for years a prisoner amongst savages, always, always, always thinking of my wife and my home—dreaming of her by night, talking to her, though she could not hear, by day. I loved her more than all heaven and earth put together. Tell me where she is, this instant, you wretched woman, who salved over her wickedness to her, as you do to me."

The clock struck ten. Desperate positions require desperate measures.

"If you will leave the house now, I will come to you to-morrow and tell you all. What is more, you shall see your child now. She lies sleeping up-stairs. O, sir, you have a child, you do not know that as yet—a little weakly girl—with just a heart and soul beyond her years. We have reared her up with such care: We watched her, for we thought for many a year she might die any day, and we tended her, and no hard thing has come near her, and no rough word has ever been said to her. And now you, come and will take her life into your hand, and will crush it. Strangers to her have been kind to her; but her own father—Mr. Frank, I am her nurse, and I love her, and I tend her, and I would do anything for her that I could. Her mother's heart beats as hers beats; and, if she suffers a pain, her mother trembles all over. If she is happy, it is her mother that smiles and is glad. If she is growing stronger, her mother is healthy: if she dwindles, her mother languishes. If she dies—well, I don't know: it is not every one can lie down and die when they wish it. Come up-stairs, Mr. Frank, and see your child. Seeing her will do good to your poor heart. Then go away, in God's name, just this one night-to-morrow, if need be, you can do anything—kill us all if you will, or show yourself—a great grand man, whom God will bless for ever and ever. Come, Mr. Frank, the look of a sleeping child is sure to give peace."

She led him up-stairs; at first almost helping his steps, till they came near the nursery door. She had almost forgotten the existence of little Edwin. It struck upon her with affright as the shaded light fell upon the other cot; but she skilfully threw that corner of the room into darkness, and let the light fall on the sleeping Ailsie. The child had thrown down the coverings, and her deformity, as she lay with her back to them, was plainly visible through her slight night-gown. Her little face, deprived of the lustre of her eyes, looked wan and pinched, and had a pathetic expression in it, even as she slept. The poor father looked and looked with hungry, wistful eyes, into which the big tears came swelling up slowly, and dropped heavily down, as he stood trembling and shaking all over. Norah was angry with herself for growing impatient of the length of time that long lingering gaze lasted. She thought that she waited for full half-an-hour before Frank stirred. And then—instead of going away—he sank down on his knees by the bedside, and buried his face in the clothes. Little Ailsie stirred uneasily. Norah pulled him up in terror. She could afford no more time even for prayer in her extremity of fear; for surely the next moment would bring her mistress home. She took him forcibly by the arm; but, as he was going, his eye lighted on the other bed: he stopped. Intelligence came back into his face. His hands clenched.

"His child?" he asked.

"Her child," replied Norah. "God watches over him," said she instinctively; for Frank's looks excited her fears, and she needed to remind herself of the Protector of the helpless.

"God has not watched over me," he said, in despair; his thoughts apparently recoiling on his own desolate, deserted state. But Norah had no time for pity. To-morrow she would be as compassionate as her heart prompted. At length she guided him down-stairs and shut the outer door and bolted it—as if by bolts to keep out facts.

Then she went back into the dining-room and effaced all traces of his presence as far as she could. She went up-stairs to the nursery and sat there, her head on her hand, thinking what was to come of all this misery. It seemed to her very long before they did return; yet it was hardly eleven o'clock. She so heard the loud, hearty Lancashire voices on the stairs; and, for the first time, she understood the contrast of the desolation of the poor man who had so lately gone forth in lonely despair.

It almost put her out of patience to see Mrs. Openshaw come in, calmly smiling, handsomely dressed, happy, easy, to inquire after her children.

"Did Ailsie go to sleep comfortably?" she whispered to Norah.

"Yes."

Her mother bent over her, looking at her slumbers with the soft eyes of love. How little she dreamed who had looked on her last! Then she went to Edwin, with perhaps less wistful anxiety in her countenance, but more of pride. She took off her things, to go down to supper. Norah saw her no more that night.

Beside the door into the passage, the sleeping-nursery opened out of Mr. and Mrs. Openshaw's room, in order that they might have the children more immediately under their own eyes. Early the next summer morning Mrs. Openshaw was awakened by Ailsie's startled call of "Mother! mother!" She sprang up, put on her dressing-gown, and went to her child. Ailsie was only half awake, and in a not uncommon state of terror.

"Who was he, mother? Tell me!"

"Who, my darling? No one is here. You have been dreaming love. Waken up quite. See, it is broad daylight."

"Yes," said Ailsie, looking round her; then clinging to her mother, said, "but a man was here in the night, mother."

"Nonsense, little goose. No man has ever come near you!"

"Yes, he did. He stood there. Just by Norah. A man with hair and a beard. And he knelt down and said his prayers. Norah knows he was here, mother" (half angrily, as Mrs. Openshaw shook her head in smiling incredulity).

"Well! we will ask Norah when she comes," said Mrs. Openshaw, soothingly. "But we won't talk any more about him now. It is not five o'clock; it is too early for you to get up. Shall I fetch you a book and read to you?"

"Don't leave me, mother," said the child, clinging to her. So Mrs. Openshaw sat on the bedside talking to Ailsie, and telling her of what they had done at Richmond the evening before, until the little girl's eyes slowly closed and she once more fell asleep.

"What was the matter?" asked Mr. Openshaw, as his wife returned to bed. "Ailsie wakened up in a fright, with some story of a man having been in the room to say his prayers,—a dream, I suppose." And no more was said at the time.

Mrs. Openshaw had almost forgotten the whole affair when she got up about seven o'clock. But, bye-and-bye, she heard a sharp altercation going on in the nursery. Norah speaking angrily to Ailsie, a most unusual thing. Both Mr. and Mrs. Openshaw listened in astonishment.

"Hold your tongue, Ailsie I let me hear none of your dreams; never let me hear you tell that story again!" Ailsie began to cry.

Mr. Openshaw opened the door of communication before his wife could say a word.

"Norah, come here!"

The nurse stood at the door, defiant. She perceived she had been heard, but she was desperate.

"Don't let me hear you speak in that manner to Ailsie again," he said sternly, and shut the door.

Norah was infinitely relieved; for she had dreaded some questioning; and a little blame for sharp speaking was what she could well bear, if cross-examination was let alone.

Down-stairs they went, Mr. Openshaw carrying Ailsie; the sturdy Edwin coming step by step, right foot foremost, always holding his mother's hand. Each child was placed in a chair by the breakfast-table, and then Mr. and Mrs. Openshaw stood together at the window, awaiting their visitors' appearance and making plans for the day. There was a pause. Suddenly Mr. Openshaw turned to Ailsie, and said:

"What a little goosy somebody is with her dreams, waking up poor, tired mother in the middle of the night with a story of a man being in the room."

"Father! I'm sure I saw him," said Ailsie, half crying. "I don't want to make Norah angry; but I was not asleep, for all she says I was. I had been asleep,—and I awakened up quite wide awake though I was so frightened. I kept my eyes nearly shut, and I saw the man quite plain. A great brown man with a beard. He said his prayers. And then he looked at Edwin. And then Norah took him by the arm and led him away, after they had whispered a bit together."

"Now, my little woman must be reasonable," said Mr. Openshaw, who was always patient with Ailsie. "There was no man in the house last night at all. No man comes into the house as you know, if you think; much less goes up into the nursery. But sometimes we dream something has happened, and the dream is so like reality, that you are not the first person, little woman, who has stood out that the thing has really happened."

"But, indeed it was not a dream!" said Ailsie, beginning to cry.

Just then Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick came down, looking grave and discomposed. All during breakfast time they were silent and uncomfortable. As soon as the breakfast things were taken away, and the children had been carried up-stairs, Mr. Chadwick began in an evidently preconcerted manner to inquire if his nephew was certain that all his servants were honest; for, that Mrs. Chadwick had that morning missed a very valuable brooch, which she had worn the day before. She remembered taking it off when she came home from Buckingham Palace. Mr. Openshaw's face contracted into hard lines: grew like what it was before he had known his wife and her child. He rang the bell even before his uncle had done speaking. It was answered by the housemaid.

"Mary, was any one here last night while we were away?"

"A man, sir, came to speak to Norah."

"To speak to Norah! Who was he? How long did he stay?"

"I'm sure I can't tell, sir. He came—perhaps about nine. I went up to tell Norah in the nursery, and she came down to speak to him. She let him out, sir. She will know who he was, and how long he stayed."

She waited a moment to be asked any more questions, but she was not, so she went away.

A minute afterwards Openshaw made as though he were going out of the room; but his wife laid her hand on his arm:

"Do not speak to her before the children," she said, in her low, quiet voice. "I will go up and question her."

"No! I must speak to her. You must know," said he, turning to his uncle and aunt, "my missus has an old servant, as faithful as ever woman was, I do believe, as far as love goes,—but, at the same time, who does not always speak truth, as even the missus must allow. Now, my notion is, that this Norah of ours has been come over by some good-for-nothin chap (for she's at the time o' life when they say women pray for husbands—'any, good Lord, any,') and has let him into our house, and the chap has made off with your brooch, and m'appen many another thing beside. It's only saying that Norah is soft-hearted, and does not stick at a white lie—that's all, missus."

It was curious to notice how his tone, his eyes, his whole face changed as he spoke to his wife; but he was the resolute man through all. She knew better than to oppose him; so she went up-stairs, and told Norah her master wanted to speak to her, and that she would take care of the children in the meanwhile.

Norah rose to go without a word. Her thoughts were these:

"If they tear me to pieces they shall never know through me. He may come,—and then just Lord have mercy upon us all: for some of us are dead folk to a certainty. But he shall do it; not me."

You may fancy, now, her look of determination as she faced her master alone in the dining-room; Mr. and Mrs. Chadwick having left the affair in their nephew's hands, seeing that he took it up with such vehemence.

"Norah! Who was that man that came to my house last night?"

"Man, sir!" As if infinitely; surprised but it was only to gain time.

"Yes; the man whom Mary let in; whom she went up-stairs to the nursery to tell you about; whom you came down to speak to; the same chap, I make no doubt, whom you took into the nursery to have your talk out with; whom Ailsie saw, and afterwards dreamed about; thinking, poor wench! she saw him say his prayers, when nothing, I'll be bound, was farther from his thoughts; who took Mrs. Chadwick's brooch, value ten pounds. Now, Norah! Don't go off! I am as sure as that my name's Thomas Openshaw, that you knew nothing of this robbery. But I do think you've been imposed on, and that's the truth. Some good-for-nothing chap has been making up to you, and you've been just like all other women, and have turned a soft place in your heart to him; and he came last night a-lovyering, and you had him up in the nursery, and he made use of his opportunities, and made off with a few things on his way down! Come, now, Norah: it's no blame to you, only you must not be such a fool again. Tell us," he continued, "what name he gave you, Norah? I'll be bound it was not the right one; but it will be a clue for the police."

Norah drew herself up. "You may ask that question, and taunt me with my being single, and with my credulity, as you will, Master Openshaw. You'll get no answer from me. As for the brooch, and the story of theft and burglary; if any friend ever came to see me (which I defy you to prove, and deny), he'd be just as much above doing such a thing as you yourself, Mr. Openshaw, and more so, too; for I'm not at all sure as everything you have is rightly come by, or would be yours long, if every man had his own." She meant, of course, his wife; but he understood her to refer to his property in goods and chattels.

"Now, my good woman," said he, "I'll just tell you truly, I never trusted you out and out; but my wife liked you, and I thought you had many a good point about you. If you once begin to sauce me, I'll have the police to you, and get out the truth in a court of justice, if you'll not tell it me quietly and civilly here. Now the best thing you can do is quietly to tell me who the fellow is. Look here! a man comes to my house; asks for you; you take him up-stairs, a valuable brooch is missing next day; we know that you, and Mary, and cook, are honest; but you refuse to tell us who the man is. Indeed you've told one lie already about him, saying no one was here last night. Now I just put it to you, what do you think a policeman would say to this, or a magistrate? A magistrate would soon make you tell the truth, my good woman."

"There's never the creature born that should get it out of me," said Norah. "Not unless I choose to tell."

"I've a great mind to see," said Mr. Openshaw, growing angry at the defiance. Then, checking himself, he thought before he spoke again:

"Norah, for your missus's sake I don't want to go to extremities. Be a sensible woman, if you can. It's no great disgrace, after all, to have been taken in. I ask you once more—as a friend—who was this man whom you let into my house last night?"

No answer. He repeated the question in an impatient tone. Still no answer. Norah's lips were set in determination not to speak.

"Then there is but one thing to be done. I shall send for a policeman."

"You will not," said Norah, starting forwards. "You shall not, sir! No policeman shall touch me. I know nothing of the brooch, but I know this: ever since I was four-and-twenty I have thought more of your wife than of myself: ever since I saw her, a poor motherless girl put upon in her uncle's house, I have thought more of serving her than of serving myself! I have cared for her and her child, as nobody ever cared for me. I don't cast blame on you, sir, but I say it's ill giving up one's life to any one; for, at the end, they will turn round upon you, and forsake you. Why does not my missus come herself to suspect me? Maybe she is gone for the police? But I don't stay here, either for police, or magistrate, or master. You're an unlucky lot. I believe there's a curse on you. I'll leave you this very day. Yes! I leave that poor Ailsie, too. I will! No good will ever come to you!"

Mr. Openshaw was utterly astonished at this speech; most of which was completely unintelligible to him, as may easily be supposed. Before he could make up his mind what to say, or what to do, Norah had left the room. I do not think he had ever really intended to send for the police to this old servant of his wife's; for he had never for a moment doubted her perfect honesty. But he had intended to compel her to tell him who the man was, and in this he was baffled. He was, consequently, much irritated. He returned to his uncle and aunt in a state of great annoyance and perplexity, and told them he could get nothing out of the woman; that some man had been in the house the night before; but that she refused to tell who he was. At this moment his wife came in, greatly agitated, and asked what had happened to Norah; for that she had put on her things in passionate haste, and had left the house.

"This looks suspicious," said Mr. Chadwick. "It is not the way in which an honest person would have acted."

Mr. Openshaw kept silence. He was sorely perplexed. But Mrs. Openshaw turned round on Mr. Chadwick with a sudden fierceness no one ever saw in her before.

"You don't know Norah, uncle! She is gone because she is deeply hurt at being suspected. O, I wish I had seen her—that I had spoken to her myself. She would have told me anything." Alice wrung her hands.

"I must confess," continued Mr. Chadwick to his nephew, in a lower voice, "I can't make you out. You used to be a word and a blow, and oftenest the blow first; and now, when there is every cause for suspicion, you just do nought. Your missus is a very good woman, I grant; but she may have been put upon as well as other folk, I suppose. If you don't send for the police, I shall."

"Very well," replied Mr. Openshaw, surlily. "I can't clear Norah. She won't clear herself, as I believe she might if she would. Only I wash my hands of it; for I am sure the woman herself is honest, and she's lived a long time with my wife, and I don't like her to come to shame."

"But she will then be forced to clear herself. That, at any rate, will be a good thing."

"Very well, very well! I am heart-sick of the whole business. Come, Alice, come up to the babies; they'll be in a sore way. I tell you, uncle!" he said, turning round once more to Mr. Chadwick, suddenly and sharply, after his eye had fallen on Alice's wan, tearful, anxious face; "I'll have none sending for the police after all. I'll buy my aunt twice as handsome a brooch this very day; but I'll not have Norah suspected, and my missus plagued. There's for you."

He and his wife left the room. Mr. Chadwick quietly waited till he was out of hearing, and then aid to his wife; "For all Tom's heroics, I'm just quietly going for a detective, wench. Thou need'st know nought about it."

He went to the police-station, and made a statement of the case. He was gratified by the impression which the evidence against Norah seemed to make. The men all agreed in his opinion, and steps were to be immediately taken to find out where she was. Most probably, as they suggested, she had gone at once to the man, who, to all appearance, was her lover. When Mr. Chadwick asked how they would find her out? they smiled, shook their heads, and spoke of mysterious but infallible ways and means. He returned to his nephew's house with a very comfortable opinion of his own sagacity. He was met by his wife with a penitent face:

"O master, I've found my brooch! It was just sticking by its pin in the flounce of my brown silk, that I wore yesterday. I took it off in a hurry, and it must have caught in it; and I hung up my gown in the closet. Just now, when I was going to fold it up, there was the brooch! I'm very vexed, but I never dreamt but what it was lost!"

Her husband muttering something very like "Confound thee and thy brooch too! I wish I'd never given it thee," snatched up his hat, and rushed back to the station; hoping to be in time to stop the police from searching for Norah. But a detective was already gone off on the errand.

Where was Norah? Half mad with the strain of the fearful secret, she had hardly slept through the night for thinking what must be done. Upon this terrible state of mind had come Ailsie's questions, showing that she had seen the Man, as the unconscious child called her father. Lastly came the suspicion of her honesty. She was little less than crazy as she ran up-stairs and dashed on her bonnet and shawl; leaving all else, even her purse, behind her. In that house she would not stay. That was all she knew or was clear about. She would not even see the children again, for fear it should weaken her. She feared above everything Mr. Frank's return to claim his wife. She could not tell what remedy there was for a sorrow so tremendous, for her to stay to witness. The desire of escaping from the coming event was a stronger motive for her departure than her soreness about the suspicions directed against her; although this last had been the final goad to the course she took. She walked away almost at headlong speed; sobbing as she went, as she had not dared to do during the past night for fear of exciting wonder in those who might hear her. Then she stopped. An idea came into her mind that she would leave London altogether, and betake herself to her native town of Liverpool. She felt in her pocket for her purse, as she drew near the Euston Square station with this intention. She had left it at home. Her poor head aching, her eyes swollen with crying, she had to stand still, and think, as well as she could, where next she should bend her steps. Suddenly the thought flashed into her mind that she would go and find out poor Mr. Frank. She had been hardly kind to him the night before, though her heart had bled for him ever since. She remembered his telling her as she inquired for his address, almost as she had pushed him out of the door, of some hotel in a street not far distant from Euston Square. Thither she went: with what intention she hardly knew, but to assuage her conscience by telling him how much she pitied him. In her present state she felt herself unfit to counsel, or restrain, or assist, or do ought else but sympathise and weep. The people of the inn said such a person had been there; had arrived only the day before; had gone out soon after his arrival, leaving his luggage in their care; but had never come back. Norah asked for leave to sit down, and await the gentleman's return. The landlady—pretty secure in the deposit of luggage against any probable injury—showed her into a room, and quietly locked the door on the outside. Norah was utterly worn out, and fell asleep—a shivering, starting, uneasy slumber, which lasted for hours.

The detective, meanwhile, had come up with her some time before she entered the hotel, into which he followed her. Asking the landlady to detain her for an hour or so, without giving any reason beyond showing his authority (which made the landlady applaud herself a good deal for having locked her in), he went back to the police-station to report his proceedings. He could have taken her directly; but his object was, if possible, to trace out the man who was supposed to have committed the robbery. Then he heard of the discovery of the brooch; and consequently did not care to return.

Norah slept till even the summer evening began to close in. Then up. Some one was at the door. It would be Mr. Frank; and she dizzily pushed back her ruffled grey hair, which had fallen over her eyes, and stood looking to see him. Instead, there came in Mr. Openshaw and a policeman.

"This is Norah Kennedy," said Mr. Openshaw.

"O, sir," said Norah, "I did not touch the brooch; indeed I did not. O, sir, I cannot live to be thought so badly of;" and very sick and faint, she suddenly sank down on the ground. To her surprise, Mr. Openshaw raised her up very tenderly. Even the policeman helped to lay her on the sofa; and, at Mr. Openshaw's desire, he went for some wine and sandwiches; for the poor gaunt woman lay there almost as if dead with weariness and exhaustion.

"Norah!" said Mr. Openshaw, in his kindest voice, "the brooch is found. It was hanging to Mrs. Chadwick's gown. I beg your pardon. Most truly I beg your pardon, for having troubled you about it. My wife is almost broken-hearted. Eat, Norah,—or, stay, first drink this glass of wine," said he, lifting her head, pouring a little down her throat.

As she drank, she remembered where she was, and who she was waiting for. She suddenly pushed Mr. Openshaw away, saying, "O, sir, you must go. You must not stop a minute. If he comes back he will kill you."

"Alas, Norah! I do not know who 'he' is. But some one is gone away who will never come back: someone who knew you, and whom I am afraid you cared for."

"I don't understand you, sir," said Norah, her master's kind and sorrowful manner bewildering her yet more than his words. The policeman had left the room at Mr. Openshaw's desire, and they two were alone.

"You know what I mean, when I say some one is gone who will never come back. I mean that he is dead!"

"Who?" said Norah, trembling all over.

"A poor man has been found in the Thames this morning, drowned."

"Did he drown himself?" asked Norah, solemnly.

"God only knows," replied Mr. Openshaw, in the same tone. "Your name and address at our house, were found in his pocket: that, and his purse, were the only things, that were found upon him. I am sorry to say it, my poor Norah; but you are required to go and identify him."

"To what?" asked Norah.

"To say who it is. It is always done, in order that some reason may be discovered for the suicide—if suicide it was. I make no doubt he was the man who came to see you at our house last night. It is very sad, I know." He made pauses between each little clause, in order to try and bring back her senses; which he feared were wandering—so wild and sad was her look.

"Master Openshaw," said she, at last, "I've a dreadful secret to tell you—only you must never breathe it to any one, and you and I must hide it away for ever. I thought to have done it all by myself, but I see I cannot. Yon poor man—yes! the dead, drowned creature is, I fear, Mr. Frank, my mistress's first husband!"

Mr. Openshaw sat down, as if shot. He did not speak; but, after a while, he signed to Norah to go on.

"He came to me the other night—when—God be thanked—you were all away at Richmond. He asked me if his wife was dead or alive. I was a brute, and thought more of your all coming home than of his sore trial: spoke out sharp, and said she was married again, and very content and happy: I all but turned him away: and now he lies dead and cold!"

"God forgive me!" said Mr. Openshaw.

"God forgive us all!" said Norah. "Yon poor man needs forgiveness perhaps less than any one among us. He had been among the savages—shipwrecked—I know not what—and he had written letters which had never reached my poor missus."

"He saw his child!"

"He saw her—yes! I took him up, to give his thoughts another start; for I believed he was going mad on my hands. I came to seek him here, as I more than half promised. My mind misgave me when I heard he had never come in. O, sir I it must be him!"

Mr. Openshaw rang the bell. Norah was almost too much stunned to wonder at what he did. He asked for writing materials, wrote a letter, and then said to Norah:

"I am writing to Alice, to say I shall be unavoidably absent for a few days; that I have found you; that you are well, and send her your love, and will come home to-morrow. You must go with me to the Police Court; you must identify the body: I will pay high to keep name; and details out of the papers.

"But where are you going, sir?"

He did not answer her directly. Then he said:

"Norah! I must go with you, and look on the face of the man whom I have so injured,—unwittingly, it is true; but it seems to me as if I had killed him. I will lay his head in the grave, as if he were my only brother: and how he must have hated me! I cannot go home to my wife till all that I can do for him is done. Then I go with a dreadful secret on my mind. I shall never speak of it again, after these days are over. I know you will not, either." He shook hands with her: and they never named the subject again, the one to the other.

Norah went home to Alice the next day. Not a word was said on the cause of her abrupt departure a day or two before. Alice had been charged by her husband in his letter not to allude to the supposed theft of the brooch; so she, implicitly obedient to those whom she loved both by nature and habit, was entirely silent on the subject, only treated Norah with the most tender respect, as if to make up for unjust suspicion.

Nor did Alice inquire into the reason why Mr. Openshaw had been absent during his uncle and aunt's visit, after he had once said that it was unavoidable. He came back, grave and quiet; and, from that time forth, was curiously changed. More thoughtful, and perhaps less active; quite as decided in conduct, but with new and different rules for the guidance of that conduct. Towards Alice he could hardly be more kind than he had always been; but he now seemed to look upon her as some one sacred and to be treated with reverence, as well as tenderness. He throve in business, and made a large fortune, one half of which was settled upon her.

Long years after these events,—a few months after her mother died, Ailsie and her "father" (as she always called Mr. Openshaw) drove to a cemetery a little way out of town, and she was carried to a certain mound by her maid, who was then sent back to the carriage. There was a head-stone, with F. W. and a date. That was all. Sitting by the grave, Mr. Openshaw told her the story; and for the sad fate of that poor father whom she had never seen, he shed the only tears she ever saw fall from his eyes.

* * * * *

"A most interesting story, all through," I said, as Jarber folded up the first of his series of discoveries in triumph. "A story that goes straight to the heart—especially at the end. But"—I stopped, and looked at Trottle.

Trottle entered his protest directly in the shape of a cough.

"Well!" I said, beginning to lose my patience. "Don't you see that I want you to speak, and that I don't want you to cough?"

"Quite so, ma'am," said Trottle, in a state of respectful obstinacy which would have upset the temper of a saint. "Relative, I presume, to this story, ma'am?"

"Yes, Yes!" said Jarber. "By all means let us hear what this good man has to say."

"Well, sir," answered Trottle, "I want to know why the House over the way doesn't let, and I don't exactly see how your story answers the question. That's all I have to say, sir."

I should have liked to contradict my opinionated servant, at that moment. But, excellent as the story was in itself, I felt that he had hit on the weak point, so far as Jarber's particular purpose in reading it was concerned.

"And that is what you have to say, is it?" repeated Jarber. "I enter this room announcing that I have a series of discoveries, and you jump instantly to the conclusion that the first of the series exhausts my resources. Have I your permission, dear lady, to enlighten this obtuse person, if possible, by reading Number Two?"

"My work is behindhand, ma'am," said Trottle, moving to the door, the moment I gave Jarber leave to go on.

"Stop where you are," I said, in my most peremptory manner, "and give Mr. Jarber his fair opportunity of answering your objection now you have made it.

Trottle sat down with the look of a martyr, and Jarber began to read with his back turned on the enemy more decidedly than ever.

GOING INTO SOCIETY

Charles Dickens

At one period of its reverses, the House fell into the occupation of a Showman. He was found registered as its occupier, on the parish books of the time when he rented the House, and there was therefore no need of any clue to his name. But, he himself was less easy to be found; for, he had led a wandering life, and settled people had lost sight of him, and people who plumed themselves on being respectable were shy of admitting that they had ever known anything of him. At last, among the marsh lands near the river’s level, that lie about Deptford and the neighbouring market-gardens, a Grizzled Personage in velveteen, with a face so cut up by varieties of weather that he looked as if he had been tattooed, was found smoking a pipe at the door of a wooden house on wheels. The wooden house was laid up in ordinary for the winter, near the mouth of a muddy creek; and everything near it, the foggy river, the misty marshes, and the steaming market-gardens, smoked in company with the grizzled man. In the midst of this smoking party, the funnel-chimney of the wooden house on wheels was not remiss, but took its pipe with the rest in a companionable manner.

On being asked if it were he who had once rented the House to Let, Grizzled Velveteen looked surprised, and said yes. Then his name was Magsman? That was it, Toby Magsman—which lawfully christened Robert; but called in the line, from a infant, Toby. There was nothing agin Toby Magsman, he believed? If there was suspicion of such—mention it!

There was no suspicion of such, he might rest assured. But, some inquiries were making about that House, and would he object to say why he left it?

Not at all; why should he? He left it, along of a Dwarf.

Along of a Dwarf?

Mr. Magsman repeated, deliberately and emphatically, Along of a Dwarf.

Might it be compatible with Mr. Magsman’s inclination and convenience to enter, as a favour, into a few particulars?

Mr. Magsman entered into the following particulars.

It was a long time ago, to begin with;—afore lotteries and a deal more was done away with. Mr. Magsman was looking about for a good pitch, and he see that house, and he says to himself, “I’ll have you, if you’re to be had. If money’ll get you, I’ll have you.”

The neighbours cut up rough, and made complaints; but Mr. Magsman don’t know what they would have had. It was a lovely thing. First of all, there was the canvass, representin the picter of the Giant, in Spanish trunks and a ruff, who was himself half the heighth of the house, and was run up with a line and pulley to a pole on the roof, so that his Ed was coeval with the parapet. Then, there was the canvass, representin the picter of the Albina lady, showing her white air to the Army and Navy in correct uniform. Then, there was the canvass, representin the picter of the Wild Indian a scalpin a member of some foreign nation. Then, there was the canvass, representin the picter of a child of a British Planter, seized by two Boa Constrictors—not that we never had no child, nor no Constrictors neither. Similarly, there was the canvass, representin the picter of the Wild Ass of the Prairies—not that we never had no wild asses, nor wouldn’t have had ’em at a gift. Last, there was the canvass, representin the picter of the Dwarf, and like him too (considerin), with George the Fourth in such a state of astonishment at him as His Majesty couldn’t with his utmost politeness and stoutness express. The front of the House was so covered with canvasses, that there wasn’t a spark of daylight ever visible on that side. “MAGSMAN’S AMUSEMENTS,” fifteen foot long by two foot high, ran over the front door and parlour winders. The passage was a Arbour of green baize and gardenstuff. A barrel-organ performed there unceasing. And as to respectability,—if threepence ain’t respectable, what is?

But, the Dwarf is the principal article at present, and he was worth the money. He was wrote up as MAJOR TPSCHOFFKI, OF THE IMPERIAL BULGRADERIAN BRIGADE. Nobody couldn’t pronounce the name, and it never was intended anybody should. The public always turned it, as a regular rule, into Chopski. In the line he was called Chops; partly on that account, and partly because his real name, if he ever had any real name (which was very dubious), was Stakes.

He was a un-common small man, he really was. Certainly not so small as he was made out to be, but where is your Dwarf as is? He was a most uncommon small man, with a most uncommon large Ed; and what he had inside that Ed, nobody ever knowed but himself: even supposin himself to have ever took stock of it, which it would have been a stiff job for even him to do.

The kindest little man as never growed! Spirited, but not proud. When he travelled with the Spotted Baby—though he knowed himself to be a nat’ral Dwarf, and knowed the Baby’s spots to be put upon him artificial, he nursed that Baby like a mother. You never heerd him give a ill-name to a Giant. He did allow himself to break out into strong language respectin the Fat Lady from Norfolk; but that was an affair of the ’art; and when a man’s ’art has been trifled with by a lady, and the preference giv to a Indian, he ain’t master of his actions.

He was always in love, of course; every human nat’ral phenomenon is. And he was always in love with a large woman; I never knowed the Dwarf as could be got to love a small one. Which helps to keep ’em the Curiosities they are.

One sing’ler idea he had in that Ed of his, which must have meant something, or it wouldn’t have been there. It was always his opinion that he was entitled to property. He never would put his name to anything. He had been taught to write, by the young man without arms, who got his living with his toes (quite a writing master he was, and taught scores in the line), but Chops would have starved to death, afore he’d have gained a bit of bread by putting his hand to a paper. This is the more curious to bear in mind, because HE had no property, nor hope of property, except his house and a sarser. When I say his house, I mean the box, painted and got up outside like a reg’lar six-roomer, that he used to creep into, with a diamond ring (or quite as good to look at) on his forefinger, and ring a little bell out of what the Public believed to be the Drawing-room winder. And when I say a sarser, I mean a Chaney sarser in which he made a collection for himself at the end of every Entertainment. His cue for that, he took from me: “Ladies and gentlemen, the little man will now walk three times round the Cairawan, and retire behind the curtain.” When he said anything important, in private life, he mostly wound it up with this form of words, and they was generally the last thing he said to me at night afore he went to bed.

He had what I consider a fine mind—a poetic mind. His ideas respectin his property never come upon him so strong as when he sat upon a barrel-organ and had the handle turned. Arter the wibration had run through him a little time, he would screech out, “Toby, I feel my property coming—grind away! I’m counting my guineas by thousands, Toby—grind away! Toby, I shall be a man of fortun! I feel the Mint a jingling in me, Toby, and I’m swelling out into the Bank of England!” Such is the influence of music on a poetic mind. Not that he was partial to any other music but a barrel-organ; on the contrary, hated it.

He had a kind of a everlasting grudge agin the Public: which is a thing you may notice in many phenomenons that get their living out of it. What riled him most in the nater of his occupation was, that it kep him out of Society. He was continiwally saying, “Toby, my ambition is, to go into Society. The curse of my position towards the Public is, that it keeps me hout of Society. This don’t signify to a low beast of a Indian; he an’t formed for Society. This don’t signify to a Spotted Baby; he an’t formed for Society.—I am.”

Nobody never could make out what Chops done with his money. He had a good salary, down on the drum every Saturday as the day came round, besides having the run of his teeth—and he was a Woodpecker to eat—but all Dwarfs are. The sarser was a little income, bringing him in so many halfpence that he’d carry ’em for a week together, tied up in a pocket-handkercher. And yet he never had money. And it couldn’t be the Fat Lady from Norfolk, as was once supposed; because it stands to reason that when you have a animosity towards a Indian, which makes you grind your teeth at him to his face, and which can hardly hold you from Goosing him audible when he’s going through his War-Dance—it stands to reason you wouldn’t under them circumstances deprive yourself, to support that Indian in the lap of luxury.

Most unexpected, the mystery come out one day at Egham Races. The Public was shy of bein pulled in, and Chops was ringin his little bell out of his drawing-room winder, and was snarlin to me over his shoulder as he kneeled down with his legs out at the back-door—for he couldn’t be shoved into his house without kneeling down, and the premises wouldn’t accommodate his legs—was snarlin, “Here’s a precious Public for you; why the Devil don’t they tumble up?” when a man in the crowd holds up a carrier-pigeon, and cries out, “If there’s any person here as has got a ticket, the Lottery’s just drawed, and the number as has come up for the great prize is three, seven, forty-two! Three, seven, forty-two!” I was givin the man to the Furies myself, for calling off the Public’s attention—for the Public will turn away, at any time, to look at anything in preference to the thing showed ’em; and if you doubt it, get ’em together for any indiwidual purpose on the face of the earth, and send only two people in late, and see if the whole company an’t far more interested in takin particular notice of them two than of you—I say, I wasn’t best pleased with the man for callin out, and wasn’t blessin him in my own mind, when I see Chops’s little bell fly out of winder at a old lady, and he gets up and kicks his box over, exposin the whole secret, and he catches hold of the calves of my legs and he says to me, “Carry me into the wan, Toby, and throw a pail of water over me or I’m a dead man, for I’ve come into my property!”

Twelve thousand odd hundred pound, was Chops’s winnins. He had bought a half-ticket for the twenty-five thousand prize, and it had come up. The first use he made of his property, was, to offer to fight the Wild Indian for five hundred pound a side, him with a poisoned darnin-needle and the Indian with a club; but the Indian being in want of backers to that amount, it went no further.

Arter he had been mad for a week—in a state of mind, in short, in which, if I had let him sit on the organ for only two minutes, I believe he would have bust—but we kep the organ from him—Mr. Chops come round, and behaved liberal and beautiful to all. He then sent for a young man he knowed, as had a wery genteel appearance and was a Bonnet at a gaming-booth (most respectable brought up, father havin been imminent in the livery stable line but unfort’nate in a commercial crisis, through paintin a old gray, ginger-bay, and sellin him with a Pedigree), and Mr. Chops said to this Bonnet, who said his name was Normandy, which it wasn’t:

“Normandy, I’m a goin into Society. Will you go with me?”

Says Normandy: “Do I understand you, Mr. Chops, to hintimate that the ’ole of the expenses of that move will be borne by yourself?”

“Correct,” says Mr. Chops. “And you shall have a Princely allowance too.”

The Bonnet lifted Mr. Chops upon a chair, to shake hands with him, and replied in poetry, with his eyes seemingly full of tears:

“My boat is on the shore,

And my bark is on the sea,

And I do not ask for more,

But I’ll Go:—along with thee.”

They went into Society, in a chay and four grays with silk jackets. They took lodgings in Pall Mall, London, and they blazed away.

In consequence of a note that was brought to Bartlemy Fair in the autumn of next year by a servant, most wonderful got up in milk-white cords and tops, I cleaned myself and went to Pall Mall, one evening appinted. The gentlemen was at their wine arter dinner, and Mr. Chops’s eyes was more fixed in that Ed of his than I thought good for him. There was three of ’em (in company, I mean), and I knowed the third well. When last met, he had on a white Roman shirt, and a bishop’s mitre covered with leopard-skin, and played the clarionet all wrong, in a band at a Wild Beast Show.

This gent took on not to know me, and Mr. Chops said: “Gentlemen, this is a old friend of former days:” and Normandy looked at me through a eye-glass, and said, “Magsman, glad to see you!”—which I’ll take my oath he wasn’t. Mr. Chops, to git him convenient to the table, had his chair on a throne (much of the form of George the Fourth’s in the canvass), but he hardly appeared to me to be King there in any other pint of view, for his two gentlemen ordered about like Emperors. They was all dressed like May-Day—gorgeous!—And as to Wine, they swam in all sorts.

I made the round of the bottles, first separate (to say I had done it), and then mixed ’em all together (to say I had done it), and then tried two of ’em as half-and-half, and then t’other two. Altogether, I passed a pleasin evenin, but with a tendency to feel muddled, until I considered it good manners to get up and say, “Mr. Chops, the best of friends must part, I thank you for the wariety of foreign drains you have stood so ’ansome, I looks towards you in red wine, and I takes my leave.” Mr. Chops replied, “If you’ll just hitch me out of this over your right arm, Magsman, and carry me down-stairs, I’ll see you out.” I said I couldn’t think of such a thing, but he would have it, so I lifted him off his throne. He smelt strong of Maideary, and I couldn’t help thinking as I carried him down that it was like carrying a large bottle full of wine, with a rayther ugly stopper, a good deal out of proportion.

When I set him on the door-mat in the hall, he kep me close to him by holding on to my coat-collar, and he whispers:

“I ain’t ’appy, Magsman.”

“What’s on your mind, Mr. Chops?”

“They don’t use me well. They an’t grateful to me. They puts me on the mantel-piece when I won’t have in more Champagne-wine, and they locks me in the sideboard when I won’t give up my property.”

“Get rid of ’em, Mr. Chops.”

“I can’t. We’re in Society together, and what would Society say?”

“Come out of Society!” says I.

“I can’t. You don’t know what you’re talking about. When you have once gone into Society, you mustn’t come out of it.”

“Then if you’ll excuse the freedom, Mr. Chops,” were my remark, shaking my head grave, “I think it’s a pity you ever went in.”

Mr. Chops shook that deep Ed of his, to a surprisin extent, and slapped it half a dozen times with his hand, and with more Wice than I thought were in him. Then, he says, “You’re a good fellow, but you don’t understand. Good-night, go along. Magsman, the little man will now walk three times round the Cairawan, and retire behind the curtain.” The last I see of him on that occasion was his tryin, on the extremest werge of insensibility, to climb up the stairs, one by one, with his hands and knees. They’d have been much too steep for him, if he had been sober; but he wouldn’t be helped.

It warn’t long after that, that I read in the newspaper of Mr. Chops’s being presented at court. It was printed, “It will be recollected”—and I’ve noticed in my life, that it is sure to be printed that it will be recollected, whenever it won’t—“that Mr. Chops is the individual of small stature, whose brilliant success in the last State Lottery attracted so much attention.” Well, I says to myself, Such is Life! He has been and done it in earnest at last. He has astonished George the Fourth!

(On account of which, I had that canvass new-painted, him with a bag of money in his hand, a presentin it to George the Fourth, and a lady in Ostrich Feathers fallin in love with him in a bag-wig, sword, and buckles correct.)

I took the House as is the subject of present inquiries—though not the honour of bein acquainted—and I run Magsman’s Amusements in it thirteen months—sometimes one thing, sometimes another, sometimes nothin particular, but always all the canvasses outside. One night, when we had played the last company out, which was a shy company, through its raining Heavens hard, I was takin a pipe in the one pair back along with the young man with the toes, which I had taken on for a month (though he never drawed—except on paper), and I heard a kickin at the street door. “Halloa!” I says to the young man, “what’s up!” He rubs his eyebrows with his toes, and he says, “I can’t imagine, Mr. Magsman”—which he never could imagine nothin, and was monotonous company.

The noise not leavin off, I laid down my pipe, and I took up a candle, and I went down and opened the door. I looked out into the street; but nothin could I see, and nothin was I aware of, until I turned round quick, because some creetur run between my legs into the passage. There was Mr. Chops!

“Magsman,” he says, “take me, on the old terms, and you’ve got me; if it’s done, say done!”

I was all of a maze, but I said, “Done, sir.”

“Done to your done, and double done!” says he. “Have you got a bit of supper in the house?”

Bearin in mind them sparklin warieties of foreign drains as we’d guzzled away at in Pall Mall, I was ashamed to offer him cold sassages and gin-and-water; but he took ’em both and took ’em free; havin a chair for his table, and sittin down at it on a stool, like hold times. I, all of a maze all the while.

It was arter he had made a clean sweep of the sassages (beef, and to the best of my calculations two pound and a quarter), that the wisdom as was in that little man began to come out of him like prespiration.

“Magsman,” he says, “look upon me! You see afore you, One as has both gone into Society and come out.”

“O! You are out of it, Mr. Chops? How did you get out, sir?”

“SOLD OUT!” says he. You never saw the like of the wisdom as his Ed expressed, when he made use of them two words.

“My friend Magsman, I’ll impart to you a discovery I’ve made. It’s wallable; it’s cost twelve thousand five hundred pound; it may do you good in life—The secret of this matter is, that it ain’t so much that a person goes into Society, as that Society goes into a person.”

Not exactly keepin up with his meanin, I shook my head, put on a deep look, and said, “You’re right there, Mr. Chops.”

“Magsman,” he says, twitchin me by the leg, “Society has gone into me, to the tune of every penny of my property.”

I felt that I went pale, and though nat’rally a bold speaker, I couldn’t hardly say, “Where’s Normandy?”

“Bolted. With the plate,” said Mr. Chops.

“And t’other one?” meaning him as formerly wore the bishop’s mitre.

“Bolted. With the jewels,” said Mr. Chops.

I sat down and looked at him, and he stood up and looked at me.

“Magsman,” he says, and he seemed to myself to get wiser as he got hoarser; “Society, taken in the lump, is all dwarfs. At the court of St. James’s, they was all a doing my old business—all a goin three times round the Cairawan, in the hold court-suits and properties. Elsewheres, they was most of ’em ringin their little bells out of make-believes. Everywheres, the sarser was a goin round. Magsman, the sarser is the uniwersal Institution!”

I perceived, you understand, that he was soured by his misfortunes, and I felt for Mr. Chops.

“As to Fat Ladies,” he says, giving his head a tremendious one agin the wall, “there’s lots of them in Society, and worse than the original. Hers was a outrage upon Taste—simply a outrage upon Taste—awakenin contempt—carryin its own punishment in the form of a Indian.” Here he giv himself another tremendious one. “But theirs, Magsman, theirs is mercenary outrages. Lay in Cashmeer shawls, buy bracelets, strew ’em and a lot of ’andsome fans and things about your rooms, let it be known that you give away like water to all as come to admire, and the Fat Ladies that don’t exhibit for so much down upon the drum, will come from all the pints of the compass to flock about you, whatever you are. They’ll drill holes in your ’art, Magsman, like a Cullender. And when you’ve no more left to give, they’ll laugh at you to your face, and leave you to have your bones picked dry by Wulturs, like the dead Wild Ass of the Prairies that you deserve to be!” Here he giv himself the most tremendious one of all, and dropped.

I thought he was gone. His Ed was so heavy, and he knocked it so hard, and he fell so stoney, and the sassagerial disturbance in him must have been so immense, that I thought he was gone. But, he soon come round with care, and he sat up on the floor, and he said to me, with wisdom comin out of his eyes, if ever it come:

“Magsman! The most material difference between the two states of existence through which your unhappy friend has passed;” he reached out his poor little hand, and his tears dropped down on the moustachio which it was a credit to him to have done his best to grow, but it is not in mortals to command success,—“the difference is this. When I was out of Society, I was paid light for being seen. When I went into Society, I paid heavy for being seen. I prefer the former, even if I wasn’t forced upon it. Give me out through the trumpet, in the hold way, to-morrow.”

Arter that, he slid into the line again as easy as if he had been iled all over. But the organ was kep from him, and no allusions was ever made, when a company was in, to his property. He got wiser every day; his views of Society and the Public was luminous, bewilderin, awful; and his Ed got bigger and bigger as his Wisdom expanded it.

He took well, and pulled ’em in most excellent for nine weeks. At the expiration of that period, when his Ed was a sight, he expressed one evenin, the last Company havin been turned out, and the door shut, a wish to have a little music.

“Mr. Chops,” I said (I never dropped the “Mr.” with him; the world might do it, but not me); “Mr. Chops, are you sure as you are in a state of mind and body to sit upon the organ?”

His answer was this: “Toby, when next met with on the tramp, I forgive her and the Indian. And I am.”

It was with fear and trembling that I began to turn the handle; but he sat like a lamb. I will be my belief to my dying day, that I see his Ed expand as he sat; you may therefore judge how great his thoughts was. He sat out all the changes, and then he come off.

“Toby,” he says, with a quiet smile, “the little man will now walk three times round the Cairawan, and retire behind the curtain.”

When we called him in the morning, we found him gone into a much better Society than mine or Pall Mall’s. I giv Mr. Chops as comfortable a funeral as lay in my power, followed myself as Chief, and had the George the Fourth canvass carried first, in the form of a banner. But, the House was so dismal arterwards, that I giv it up, and took to the Wan again.

* * * * *

“I don’t triumph,” said Jarber, folding up the second manuscript, and looking hard at Trottle. “I don’t triumph over this worthy creature. I merely ask him if he is satisfied now?”

“How can he be anything else?” I said, answering for Trottle, who sat obstinately silent. “This time, Jarber, you have not only read us a delightfully amusing story, but you have also answered the question about the House. Of course it stands empty now. Who would think of taking it after it had been turned into a caravan?” I looked at Trottle, as I said those last words, and Jarber waved his hand indulgently in the same direction.

“Let this excellent person speak,” said Jarber. “You were about to say, my good man——?”

“I only wished to ask, sir,” said Trottle doggedly, “if you could kindly oblige me with a date or two in connection with that last story?”

“A date!” repeated Jarber. “What does the man want with dates!”

“I should be glad to know, with great respect,” persisted Trottle, “if the person named Magsman was the last tenant who lived in the House. It’s my opinion—if I may be excused for giving it—that he most decidedly was not.”

With those words, Trottle made a low bow, and quietly left the room.

There is no denying that Jarber, when we were left together, looked sadly discomposed. He had evidently forgotten to inquire about dates; and, in spite of his magnificent talk about his series of discoveries, it was quite as plain that the two stories he had just read, had really and truly exhausted his present stock. I thought myself bound, in common gratitude, to help him out of his embarrassment by a timely suggestion. So I proposed that he should come to tea again, on the next Monday evening, the thirteenth, and should make such inquiries in the meantime, as might enable him to dispose triumphantly of Trottle’s objection.

He gallantly kissed my hand, made a neat little speech of acknowledgment, and took his leave. For the rest of the week I would not encourage Trottle by allowing him to refer to the House at all. I suspected he was making his own inquiries about dates, but I put no questions to him.

On Monday evening, the thirteenth, that dear unfortunate Jarber came, punctual to the appointed time. He looked so terribly harassed, that he was really quite a spectacle of feebleness and fatigue. I saw, at a glance, that the question of dates had gone against him, that Mr. Magsman had not been the last tenant of the House, and that the reason of its emptiness was still to seek.

“What I have gone through,” said Jarber, “words are not eloquent enough to tell. O Sophonisba, I have begun another series of discoveries! Accept the last two as stories laid on your shrine; and wait to blame me for leaving your curiosity unappeased, until you have heard Number Three.”

Number Three looked like a very short manuscript, and I said as much. Jarber explained to me that we were to have some poetry this time. In the course of his investigations he had stepped into the Circulating Library, to seek for information on the one important subject. All the Library-people knew about the House was, that a female relative of the last tenant, as they believed, had, just after that tenant left, sent a little manuscript poem to them which she described as referring to events that had actually passed in the House; and which she wanted the proprietor of the Library to publish. She had written no address on her letter; and the proprietor had kept the manuscript ready to be given back to her (the publishing of poems not being in his line) when she might call for it. She had never called for it; and the poem had been lent to Jarber, at his express request, to read to me.

Before he began, I rang the bell for Trottle; being determined to have him present at the new reading, as a wholesome check on his obstinacy. To my surprise Peggy answered the bell, and told me, that Trottle had stepped out without saying where. I instantly felt the strongest possible conviction that he was at his old tricks: and that his stepping out in the evening, without leave, meant—Philandering.

Controlling myself on my visitor’s account, I dismissed Peggy, stifled my indignation, and prepared, as politely as might be, to listen to Jarber.

THREE EVENINGS IN THE HOUSE

Adelaide Anne Proctor

NUMBER ONE.

I.

Yes, it look'd dark and dreary

That long and narrow street:

Only the sound of the rain,

And the tramp of passing feet,

The duller glow of the fire,

And gathering mists of night

To mark how slow and weary

The long day's cheerless flight!

II.

Watching the sullen fire,

Hearing the dreary rain,

Drop after drop, run down

On the darkening window-pane;

Chill was the heart of Bertha,

Chill as that winter day,—

For the star of her life had risen

Only to fade away.

III.

The voice that had been so strong

To bid the snare depart,

The true and earnest will,

And the calm and steadfast heart,

Were now weigh'd down by sorrow,

Were quivering now with pain;

The clear path now seem'd clouded,

And all her grief in vain.

IV.

Duty, Right, Truth, who promised

To help and save their own,

Seem'd spreading wide their pinions

To leave her there alone.

So, turning from the Present

To well-known days of yore,

She call'd on them to strengthen

And guard her soul once more.

V.

She thought how in her girlhood

Her life was given away,

The solemn promise spoken

She kept so well to-day;

How to her brother Herbert

She had been help and guide,

And how his artist-nature

On her calm strength relied.

VI.

How through life's fret and turmoil

The passion and fire of art

In him was soothed and quicken'd

By her true sister heart;

How future hopes had always

Been for his sake alone;

And now, what strange new feeling

Possess'd her as its own?

VII.

Her home; each flower that breathed there;

The wind's sigh, soft and low;

Each trembling spray of ivy;

The river's murmuring flow;

The shadow of the forest;

Sunset, or twilight dim;

Dear as they were, were dearer

By leaving them for him.

VIII.

And each year as it found her

In the dull, feverish town,

Saw self still more forgotten,

And selfish care kept down

By the calm joy of evening

That brought him to her side,

To warn him with wise counsel,

Or praise with tender pride.

IX.

Her heart, her life, her future,

Her genius, only meant

Another thing to give him,

And be therewith content.

To-day, what words had stirr'd her,

Her soul could not forget?

What dream had fill'd her spirit

With strange and wild regret?

X.

To leave him for another:

Could it indeed be so?

Could it have cost such anguish

To bid this vision go?

Was this her faith? Was Herbert

The second in her heart?

Did it need all this struggle

To bid a dream depart?

XI.

And yet, within her spirit

A far-off land was seen;

A home, which might have held her;

A love, which might have been;

And Life: not the mere being

Of daily ebb and flow,

But Life itself had claim'd her,

And she had let it go!

XII.

Within her heart there echo'd

Again the well-known tune

That promised this bright future,

And ask'd her for its own:

Then words of sorrow, broken

By half-reproachful pain;

And then a farewell, spoken

In words of cold disdain.

XIII.

Where now was the stern purpose

That nerved her soul so long?

Whence came the words she utter'd,

So hard, so cold, so strong?

What right had she to banish

A hope that God had given?

Why must she choose earth's portion,

And turn aside from Heaven?

XIV.

To-day! Was it this morning?

If this long, fearful strife

Was but the work of hours,

What would be years of life?

Why did a cruel Heaven

For such great suffering call?

And why—O, still more cruel!—

Must her own words do all?

XV.

Did she repent? O Sorrow!

Why do we linger still

To take thy loving message,

And do thy gentle will?

See, her tears fall more slowly;

The passionate murmurs cease,

And back upon her spirit

Flow strength, and love, and peace.

XVI.

The fire burns more brightly,

The rain has passed away,

Herbert will see no shadow

Upon his home to-day;

Only that Bertha greets him

With doubly tender care,

Kissing a fonder blessing

Down on his golden hair.

NUMBER TWO.

I.

The studio is deserted,

Palette and brush laid by,

The sketch rests on the easel,

The paint is scarcely dry;

And Silence—who seems always

Within her depths to bear

The next sound that will utter—

Now holds a dumb despair.

II.

So Bertha feels it: listening

With breathless, stony fear,

Waiting the dreadful summons

Each minute brings more near:

When the young life, now ebbing,

Shall fail, and pass away

Into that mighty shadow

Who shrouds the house to-day.

III.

But why—when the sick chamber

Is on the upper floor—

Why dares not Bertha enter

Within the close-shut door?

If he—her all—her Brother,

Lies dying in that gloom,

What strange mysterious power

Has sent her from the room?

IV.

It is not one week's anguish

That can have changed her so;

Joy has not died here lately,

Struck down by one quick blow;

But cruel months have needed

Their long relentless chain,

To teach that shrinking manner

Of helpless, hopeless pain.

V.

The struggle was scarce over

Last Christmas Eve had brought:

The fibres still were quivering

Of the one wounded thought,

When Herbert—who, unconscious,

Had guessed no inward strife—

Bade her, in pride and pleasure,

Welcome his fair young wife.

VI.

Bade her rejoice, and smiling,

Although his eyes were dim,

Thank'd God he thus could pay her

The care she gave to him.

This fresh bright life would bring her

A new and joyous fate—

O Bertha, check the murmur

That cries, Too late! too late!

VII.

Too late! Could she have known it

A few short weeks before,

That his life was completed,

And needing hers no more,

She might—O sad repining!

What "might have been," forget;

"It was not," should suffice us

To stifle vain regret.

VIII.

He needed her no longer,

Each day it grew more plain;

First with a startled wonder,

Then with a wondering pain.

Love: why, his wife best gave it;

Comfort: durst Bertha speak?

Counsel: when quick resentment

Flush'd on the young wife's cheek.

IX.

No more long talks by firelight

Of childish times long past,

And dreams of future greatness

Which he must reach at last;

Dreams, where her purer instinct

With truth unerring told

Where was the worthless gilding,

And where refined gold.

X.

Slowly, but surely ever,

Dora's poor jealous pride,

Which she call'd love for Herbert,

Drove Bertha from his side;

And, spite of nervous effort

To share their alter'd life,

She felt a check to Herbert,

A burden to his wife.

XI.

This was the least; for Bertha

Fear'd, dreaded, KNEW at length,

How much his nature owed her

Of truth, and power, and strength;

And watch'd the daily failing

Of all his nobler part:

Low aims, weak purpose, telling

In lower, weaker art.

XII.

And now, when he is dying,

The last words she could hear

Must not be hers, but given

The bride of one short year.

The last care is another's;

The last prayer must not be

The one they learnt together

Beside their mother's knee.

XIII.

Summon'd at last: she kisses

The clay-cold stiffening hand;

And, reading pleading efforts

To make her understand,

Answers, with solemn promise,

In clear but trembling tone,

To Dora's life henceforward

She will devote her own.

XIV.

Now all is over. Bertha

Dares not remain to weep,

But soothes the frightened Dora

Into a sobbing sleep.

The poor weak child will need her:

O, who can dare complain,

When God sends a new Duty

To comfort each new Pain!

NUMBER THREE.

I.

The House is all deserted

In the dim evening gloom,

Only one figure passes

Slowly from room to room;

And, pausing at each doorway,

Seems gathering up again

Within her heart the relics

Of bygone joy and pain.

II.

There is an earnest longing

In those who onward gaze,

Looking with weary patience

Towards the coming days.

There is a deeper longing,

More sad, more strong, more keen:

Those know it who look backward,

And yearn for what has been.

III.

At every hearth she pauses,

Touches each well-known chair;

Gazes from every window,

Lingers on every stair.

What have these months brought Bertha

Now one more year is past?

This Christmas Eve shall tell us,

The third one and the last.

IV.

The wilful, wayward Dora,

In those first weeks of grief,

Could seek and find in Bertha

Strength, soothing, and relief.

And Bertha—last sad comfort

True woman-heart can take—

Had something still to suffer

And do for Herbert's sake.

V.

Spring, with her western breezes,

From Indian islands bore

To Bertha news that Leonard

Would seek his home once more.

What was it—joy, or sorrow?

What were they—hopes, or fears?

That flush'd her cheeks with crimson,

And fill'd her eyes with tears?

VI.

He came. And who so kindly

Could ask and hear her tell

Herbert's last hours; for Leonard

Had known and loved him well.

Daily he came; and Bertha,

Poor wear heart, at length,

Weigh'd down by other's weakness,

Could rest upon his strength.

VII.

Yet not the voice of Leonard

Could her true care beguile,

That turn'd to watch, rejoicing,

Dora's reviving smile.

So, from that little household

The worst gloom pass'd away,

The one bright hour of evening

Lit up the livelong day.

VIII.

Days passed. The golden summer

In sudden heat bore down

Its blue, bright, glowing sweetness

Upon the scorching town.

And sights and sounds of country

Came in the warm soft tune

Sung by the honey'd breezes

Borne on the wings of June.

IX.

One twilight hour, but earlier

Than usual, Bertha thought

She knew the fresh sweet fragrance

Of flowers that Leonard brought;

Through open'd doors and windows

It stole up through the gloom,

And with appealing sweetness

Drew Bertha from her room.

X.

Yes, he was there; and pausing

Just near the open'd door,

To check her heart's quick beating,

She heard—and paused still more—

His low voice Dora's answers—

His pleading—Yes, she knew

The tone—the words—the accents:

She once had heard them too.

XI.

"Would Bertha blame her?" Leonard's

Low, tender answer came:

"Bertha was far too noble

To think or dream of blame."

"And was he sure he loved her?"

"Yes, with the one love given

Once in a lifetime only,

With one soul and one heaven!"

XII.

Then came a plaintive murmur,—

"Dora had once been told

That he and Bertha—" "Dearest,

Bertha is far too cold

To love; and I, my Dora,

If once I fancied so,

It was a brief delusion,

And over,—long ago."

XIII.

Between the Past and Present,

On that bleak moment's height,

She stood. As some lost traveller

By a quick flash of light

Seeing a gulf before him,

With dizzy, sick despair,

Reels to clutch backward, but to find

A deeper chasm there.

XIV.

The twilight grew still darker,

The fragrant flowers more sweet,

The stars shone out in heaven,

The lamps gleam'd down the street;

And hours pass'd in dreaming

Over their new-found fate,

Ere they could think of wondering

Why Bertha was so late.

XV.

She came, and calmly listen'd;

In vain they strove to trace

If Herbert's memory shadow'd

In grief upon her face.

No blame, no wonder show'd there,

No feeling could be told;

Her voice was not less steady,

Her manner not more cold.

XVI.

They could not hear the anguish

That broke in words of pain

Through that calm summer midnight,—

"My Herbert—mine again!"

Yes, they have once been parted,

But this day shall restore

The long lost one: she claims him:

"My Herbert—mine once more!"

XVII.

Now Christmas Eve returning,

Saw Bertha stand beside

The altar, greeting Dora,

Again a smiling bride;

And now the gloomy evening

Sees Bertha pale and worn,

Leaving the house for ever,

To wander out forlorn.

XVIII.

Forlorn—nay, not so. Anguish

Shall do its work at length;

Her soul, pass'd through the fire,

Shall gain still purer strength.

Somewhere there waits for Bertha

An earnest noble part;

And, meanwhile, God is with her,—

God, and her own true heart!

I could warmly and sincerely praise the little poem, when Jarber had done reading it; but I could not say that it tended in any degree towards clearing up the mystery of the empty House.

Whether it was the absence of the irritating influence of Trottle, or whether it was simply fatigue, I cannot say, but Jarber did not strike me, that evening, as being in his usual spirits. And though he declared that he was not in the least daunted by his want of success thus far, and that he was resolutely determined to make more discoveries, he spoke in a languid absent manner, and shortly afterwards took his leave at rather an early hour.

When Trottle came back, and when I indignantly taxed him with Philandering, he not only denied the imputation, but asserted that he had been employed on my service, and, in consideration of that, boldly asked for leave of absence for two days, and for a morning to himself afterwards, to complete the business, in which he solemnly declared that I was interested. In remembrance of his long and faithful service to me, I did violence to myself, and granted his request. And he, on his side, engaged to explain himself to my satisfaction, in a week's time, on Monday evening the twentieth.

A day or two before, I sent to Jarber's lodgings to ask him to drop in to tea. His landlady sent back an apology for him that made my hair stand on end. His feet were in hot water; his head was in a flannel petticoat; a green shade was over his eyes; the rheumatism was in his legs; and a mustard-poultice was on his chest. He was also a little feverish, and rather distracted in his mind about Manchester Marriages, a Dwarf, and Three Evenings, or Evening Parties—his landlady was not sure which—in an empty House, with the Water Rate unpaid.

Under these distressing circumstances, I was necessarily left alone with Trottle. His promised explanation began, like Jarber's discoveries, with the reading of a written paper. The only difference was that Trottle introduced his manuscript under the name of a Report.

TROTTLE'S REPORT

Wilkie Collins

The curious events related in these pages would, many of them, most likely never have happened, if a person named Trottle had not presumed, contrary to his usual custom, to think for himself.

The subject on which the person in question had ventured, for the first time in his life, to form an opinion purely and entirely his own, was one which had already excited the interest of his respected mistress in a very extraordinary degree. Or, to put it in plainer terms still, the subject was no other than the mystery of the empty House.

Feeling no sort of objection to set a success of his own, if possible, side by side with a failure of Mr. Jarber's, Trottle made up his mind, one Monday evening, to try what he could do, on his own account, towards clearing up the mystery of the empty House. Carefully dismissing from his mind all nonsensical notions of former tenants and their histories, and keeping the one point in view steadily before him, he started to reach it in the shortest way, by walking straight up to the House, and bringing himself face to face with the first person in it who opened the door to him.

It was getting towards dark, on Monday evening, the thirteenth of the month, when Trottle first set foot on the steps of the House. When he knocked at the door, he knew nothing of the matter which he was about to investigate, except that the landlord was an elderly widower of good fortune, and that his name was Forley. A small beginning enough for a man to start from, certainly!

On dropping the knocker, his first proceeding was to look down cautiously out of the corner of his right eye, for any results which might show themselves at the kitchen-window. There appeared at it immediately the figure of a woman, who looked up inquisitively at the stranger on the steps, left the window in a hurry, and came back to it with an open letter in her hand, which she held up to the fading light. After looking over the letter hastily for a moment or so, the woman disappeared once more.

Trottle next heard footsteps shuffling and scraping along the bare hall of the house. On a sudden they ceased, and the sound of two voices—a shrill persuading voice and a gruff resisting voice—confusedly reached his ears. After a while, the voices left off speaking—a chain was undone, a bolt drawn back—the door opened—and Trottle stood face to face with two persons, a woman in advance, and a man behind her, leaning back flat against the wall.

"Wish you good evening, sir," says the woman, in such a sudden way, and in such a cracked voice, that it was quite startling to hear her. "Chilly weather, ain't it, sir? Please to walk in. You come from good Mr. Forley, don't you, sir?"

"Don't you, sir?" chimes in the man hoarsely, making a sort of gruff echo of himself, and chuckling after it, as if he thought he had made a joke.

If Trottle had said, "No," the door would have been probably closed in his face. Therefore, he took circumstances as he found them, and boldly ran all the risk, whatever it might be, of saying, "Yes."

"Quite right sir," says the woman. "Good Mr. Forley's letter told us his particular friend would be here to represent him, at dusk, on Monday the thirteenth—or, if not on Monday the thirteenth, then on Monday the twentieth, at the same time, without fail. And here you are on Monday the thirteenth, ain't you, sir? Mr. Forley's particular friend, and dressed all in black—quite right, sir! Please to step into the dining-room—it's always kep scoured and clean against Mr. Forley comes here—and I'll fetch a candle in half a minute. It gets so dark in the evenings, now, you hardly know where you are, do you, sir? And how is good Mr. Forley in his health? We trust he is better, Benjamin, don't we? We are so sorry not to see him as usual, Benjamin, ain't we? In half a minute, sir, if you don't mind waiting, I'll be back with the candle. Come along, Benjamin."

"Come along, Benjamin," chimes in the echo, and chuckles again as if he thought he had made another joke.

Left alone in the empty front-parlour, Trottle wondered what was coming next, as he heard the shuffling, scraping footsteps go slowly down the kitchen-stairs. The front-door had been carefully chained up and bolted behind him on his entrance; and there was not the least chance of his being able to open it to effect his escape, without betraying himself by making a noise.

Not being of the Jarber sort, luckily for himself, he took his situation quietly, as he found it, and turned his time, while alone, to account, by summing up in his own mind the few particulars which he had discovered thus far. He had found out, first, that Mr. Forley was in the habit of visiting the house regularly. Second, that Mr. Forley being prevented by illness from seeing the people put in charge as usual, had appointed a friend to represent him; and had written to say so. Third, that the friend had a choice of two Mondays, at a particular time in the evening, for doing his errand; and that Trottle had accidentally hit on this time, and on the first of the Mondays, for beginning his own investigations. Fourth, that the similarity between Trottle's black dress, as servant out of livery, and the dress of the messenger (whoever he might be), had helped the error by which Trottle was profiting. So far, so good. But what was the messenger's errand? and what chance was there that he might not come up and knock at the door himself, from minute to minute, on that very evening?

While Trottle was turning over this last consideration in his mind, he heard the shuffling footsteps come up the stairs again, with a flash of candle-light going before them. He waited for the woman's coming in with some little anxiety; for the twilight had been too dim on his getting into the house to allow him to see either her face or the man's face at all clearly.

The woman came in first, with the man she called Benjamin at her heels, and set the candle on the mantel-piece. Trottle takes leave to describe her as an offensively-cheerful old woman, awfully lean and wiry, and sharp all over, at eyes, nose, and chin—devilishly brisk, smiling, and restless, with a dirty false front and a dirty black cap, and short fidgetty arms, and long hooked finger-nails—an unnaturally lusty old woman, who walked with a spring in her wicked old feet, and spoke with a smirk on her wicked old face—the sort of old woman (as Trottle thinks) who ought to have lived in the dark ages, and been ducked in a horse-pond, instead of flourishing in the nineteenth century, and taking charge of a Christian house.

"You'll please to excuse my son, Benjamin, won't you, sir?" says this witch without a broomstick, pointing to the man behind her, propped against the bare wall of the dining-room, exactly as he had been propped against the bare wall of the passage. "He's got his inside dreadful bad again, has my son Benjamin. And he won't go to bed, and he will follow me about the house, up-stairs and down-stairs, and in my lady's chamber, as the song says, you know. It's his indisgestion, poor dear, that sours his temper and makes him so agravating—and indisgestion is a wearing thing to the best of us, ain't it, sir?"

"Ain't it, sir?" chimes in agravating Benjamin, winking at the candle-light like an owl at the sunshine.

Trottle examined the man curiously, while his horrid old mother was speaking of him. He found "My son Benjamin" to be little and lean, and buttoned-up slovenly in a frowsy old great-coat that fell down to his ragged carpet-slippers. His eyes were very watery, his cheeks very pale, and his lips very red. His breathing was so uncommonly loud, that it sounded almost like a snore. His head rolled helplessly in the monstrous big collar of his great-coat; and his limp, lazy hands pottered about the wall on either side of him, as if they were groping for a imaginary bottle. In plain English, the complaint of "My son Benjamin" was drunkenness, of the stupid, pig-headed, sottish kind. Drawing this conclusion easily enough, after a moment's observation of the man, Trottle found himself, nevertheless, keeping his eyes fixed much longer than was necessary on the ugly drunken face rolling about in the monstrous big coat collar, and looking at it with a curiosity that he could hardly account for at first. Was there something familiar to him in the man's features? He turned away from them for an instant, and then turned back to him again. After that second look, the notion forced itself into his mind, that he had certainly seen a face somewhere, of which that sot's face appeared like a kind of slovenly copy. "Where?" thinks he to himself, "where did I last see the man whom this agravating Benjamin, here, so very strongly reminds me of?"

It was no time, just then—with the cheerful old woman's eye searching him all over, and the cheerful old woman's tongue talking at him, nineteen to the dozen—for Trottle to be ransacking his memory for small matters that had got into wrong corners of it. He put by in his mind that very curious circumstance respecting Benjamin's face, to be taken up again when a fit opportunity offered itself; and kept his wits about him in prime order for present necessities.

"You wouldn't like to go down into the kitchen, would you?" says the witch without the broomstick, as familiar as if she had been Trottle's mother, instead of Benjamin's. "There's a bit of fire in the grate, and the sink in the back kitchen don't smell to matter much to-day, and it's uncommon chilly up here when a person's flesh don't hardly cover a person's bones. But you don't look cold, sir, do you? And then, why, Lord bless my soul, our little bit of business is so very, very little, it's hardly worth while to go down-stairs about it, after all. Quite a game at business, ain't it, sir? Give-and-take that's what I call it—give-and-take!"

With that, her wicked old eyes settled hungrily on the region round about Trottle's waistcoat-pocket, and she began to chuckle like her son, holding out one of her skinny hands, and tapping cheerfully in the palm with the knuckles of the other. Agravating Benjamin, seeing what she was about, roused up a little, chuckled and tapped in imitation of her, got an idea of his own into his muddled head all of a sudden, and bolted it out charitably for the benefit of Trottle.

"I say!" says Benjamin, settling himself against the wall and nodding his head viciously at his cheerful old mother. "I say! Look out. She'll skin you!"

Assisted by these signs and warnings, Trottle found no difficulty in understanding that the business referred to was the giving and taking of money, and that he was expected to be the giver. It was at this stage of the proceedings that he first felt decidedly uncomfortable, and more than half inclined to wish he was on the street-side of the house-door again.

He was still cudgelling his brains for an excuse to save his pocket, when the silence was suddenly interrupted by a sound in the upper part of the house.

It was not at all loud—it was a quiet, still, scraping sound—so faint that it could hardly have reached the quickest ears, except in an empty house.

"Do you hear that, Benjamin?" says the old woman. "He's at it again, even in the dark, ain't he? P'raps you'd like to see him, sir!" says she, turning on Trottle, and poking her grinning face close to him. "Only name it; only say if you'd like to see him before we do our little bit of business—and I'll show good Forley's friend up-stairs, just as if he was good Mr. Forley himself. My legs are all right, whatever Benjamin's may be. I get younger and younger, and stronger and stronger, and jollier and jollier, every day—that's what I do! Don't mind the stairs on my account, sir, if you'd like to see him."

"Him?" Trottle wondered whether "him" meant a man, or a boy, or a domestic animal of the male species. Whatever it meant, here was a chance of putting off that uncomfortable give-and-take-business, and, better still, a chance perhaps of finding out one of the secrets of the mysterious House. Trottle's spirits began to rise again and he said "Yes," directly, with the confidence of a man who knew all about it.

Benjamin's mother took the candle at once, and lighted Trottle briskly to the stairs; and Benjamin himself tried to follow as usual. But getting up several flights of stairs, even helped by the bannisters, was more, with his particular complaint, than he seemed to feel himself inclined to venture on. He sat down obstinately on the lowest step, with his head against the wall, and the tails of his big great-coat spreading out magnificently on the stairs behind him and above him, like a dirty imitation of a court lady's train.

"Don't sit there, dear," says his affectionate mother, stopping to snuff the candle on the first landing.

"I shall sit here," says Benjamin, agravating to the last, "till the milk comes in the morning."

The cheerful old woman went on nimbly up the stairs to the first floor, and Trottle followed, with his eyes and ears wide open. He had seen nothing out of the common in the front-parlour, or up the staircase, so far. The House was dirty and dreary and close-smelling—but there was nothing about it to excite the least curiosity, except the faint scraping sound, which was now beginning to get a little clearer—though still not at all loud—as Trottle followed his leader up the stairs to the second floor.

Nothing on the second-floor landing, but cobwebs above and bits of broken plaster below, cracked off from the ceiling. Benjamin's mother was not a bit out of breath, and looked all ready to go to the top of the monument if necessary. The faint scraping sound had got a little clearer still; but Trottle was no nearer to guessing what it might be, than when he first heard it in the parlour down-stairs.

On the third, and last, floor, there were two doors; one, which was shut, leading into the front garret; and one, which was ajar, leading into the back garret. There was a loft in the ceiling above the landing; but the cobwebs all over it vouched sufficiently for its not having been opened for some little time. The scraping noise, plainer than ever here, sounded on the other side of the back garret door; and, to Trottle's great relief, that was precisely the door which the cheerful old woman now pushed open.

Trottle followed her in; and, for once in his life, at any rate, was struck dumb with amazement, at the sight which the inside of the room revealed to him.

The garret was absolutely empty of everything in the shape of furniture. It must have been used at one time or other, by somebody engaged in a profession or a trade which required for the practice of it a great deal of light; for the one window in the room, which looked out on a wide open space at the back of the house, was three or four times as large, every way, as a garret-window usually is. Close under this window, kneeling on the bare boards with his face to the door, there appeared, of all the creatures in the world to see alone at such a place and at such a time, a mere mite of a child—a little, lonely, wizen, strangely-clad boy, who could not at the most, have been more than five years old. He had a greasy old blue shawl crossed over his breast, and rolled up, to keep the ends from the ground, into a great big lump on his back. A strip of something which looked like the remains of a woman's flannel petticoat, showed itself under the shawl, and, below that again, a pair of rusty black stockings, worlds too large for him, covered his legs and his shoeless feet. A pair of old clumsy muffetees, which had worked themselves up on his little frail red arms to the elbows, and a big cotton nightcap that had dropped down to his very eyebrows, finished off the strange dress which the poor little man seemed not half big enough to fill out, and not near strong enough to walk about in.

But there was something to see even more extraordinary than the clothes the child was swaddled up in, and that was the game which he was playing at, all by himself; and which, moreover, explained in the most unexpected manner the faint scraping noise that had found its way down-stairs, through the half-opened door, in the silence of the empty house.

It has been mentioned that the child was on his knees in the garret, when Trottle first saw him. He was not saying his prayers, and not crouching down in terror at being alone in the dark. He was, odd and unaccountable as it may appear, doing nothing more or less than playing at a charwoman's or housemaid's business of scouring the floor. Both his little hands had tight hold of a mangy old blacking-brush, with hardly any bristles left in it, which he was rubbing backwards and forwards on the boards, as gravely and steadily as if he had been at scouring-work for years, and had got a large family to keep by it. The coming-in of Trottle and the old woman did not startle or disturb him in the least. He just looked up for a minute at the candle, with a pair of very bright, sharp eyes, and then went on with his work again, as if nothing had happened. On one side of him was a battered pint saucepan without a handle, which was his make-believe pail; and on the other a morsel of slate-coloured cotton rag, which stood for his flannel to wipe up with. After scrubbing bravely for a minute or two, he took the bit of rag, and mopped up, and then squeezed make-believe water out into his make-believe pail, as grave as any judge that ever sat on a Bench. By the time he thought he had got the floor pretty dry, he raised himself upright on his knees, and blew out a good long breath, and set his little red arms akimbo, and nodded at Trottle.

"There!" says the child, knitting his little downy eyebrows into a frown. "Drat the dirt! I've cleaned up. Where's my beer?"

Benjamin's mother chuckled till Trottle thought she would have choked herself.

"Lord ha' mercy on us!" says she, "just hear the imp. You would never think he was only five years old, would you, sir? Please to tell good Mr. Forley you saw him going on as nicely as ever, playing at being me scouring the parlour floor, and calling for my beer afterwards. That's his regular game, morning, noon, and night—he's never tired of it. Only look how snug we've been and dressed him. That's my shawl a keepin his precious little body warm, and Benjamin's nightcap a keepin his precious little head warm, and Benjamin's stockings, drawed over his trowsers, a keepin his precious little legs warm. He's snug and happy if ever a imp was yet. 'Where's my beer!'—say it again, little dear, say it again!"

If Trottle had seen the boy, with a light and a fire in the room, clothed like other children, and playing naturally with a top, or a box of soldiers, or a bouncing big India-rubber ball, he might have been as cheerful under the circumstances as Benjamin's mother herself. But seeing the child reduced (as he could not help suspecting) for want of proper toys and proper child's company, to take up with the mocking of an old woman at her scouring-work, for something to stand in the place of a game, Trottle, though not a family man, nevertheless felt the sight before him to be, in its way, one of the saddest and the most pitiable that he had ever witnessed.

"Why, my man," says he, "you're the boldest little chap in all England. You don't seem a bit afraid of being up here all by yourself in the dark."

"The big winder," says the child, pointing up to it, "sees in the dark; and I see with the big winder." He stops a bit, and gets up on his legs, and looks hard at Benjamin's mother. "I'm a good 'un," says he, "ain't I? I save candle."

Trottle wondered what else the forlorn little creature had been brought up to do without, besides candle-light; and risked putting a question as to whether he ever got a run in the open air to cheer him up a bit. O, yes, he had a run now and then, out of doors (to say nothing of his runs about the house), the lively little cricket—a run according to good Mr. Forley's instructions, which were followed out carefully, as good Mr. Forley's friend would be glad to hear, to the very letter.

As Trottle could only have made one reply to this, namely, that good Mr. Forley's instructions were, in his opinion, the instructions of an infernal scamp; and as he felt that such an answer would naturally prove the death-blow to all further discoveries on his part, he gulped down his feelings before they got too many for him, and held his tongue, and looked round towards the window again to see what the forlorn little boy was going to amuse himself with next.

The child had gathered up his blacking-brush and bit of rag, and had put them into the old tin saucepan; and was now working his way, as well as his clothes would let him, with his make-believe pail hugged up in his arms, towards a door of communication which led from the back to the front garret.

"I say," says he, looking round sharply over his shoulder, "what are you two stopping here for? I'm going to bed now—and so I tell you!"

With that, he opened the door, and walked into the front room. Seeing Trottle take a step or two to follow him, Benjamin's mother opened her wicked old eyes in a state of great astonishment.

"Mercy on us!" says she, "haven't you seen enough of him yet?"

"No," says Trottle. "I should like to see him go to bed."

Benjamin's mother burst into such a fit of chuckling that the loose extinguisher in the candlestick clattered again with the shaking of her hand. To think of good Mr. Forley's friend taking ten times more trouble about the imp than good Mr. Forley himself! Such a joke as that, Benjamin's mother had not often met with in the course of her life, and she begged to be excused if she took the liberty of having a laugh at it.

Leaving her to laugh as much as she pleased, and coming to a pretty positive conclusion, after what he had just heard, that Mr. Forley's interest in the child was not of the fondest possible kind, Trottle walked into the front room, and Benjamin's mother, enjoying herself immensely, followed with the candle.

There were two pieces of furniture in the front garret. One, an old stool of the sort that is used to stand a cask of beer on; and the other a great big ricketty straddling old truckle bedstead. In the middle of this bedstead, surrounded by a dim brown waste of sacking, was a kind of little island of poor bedding—an old bolster, with nearly all the feathers out of it, doubled in three for a pillow; a mere shred of patchwork counter-pane, and a blanket; and under that, and peeping out a little on either side beyond the loose clothes, two faded chair cushions of horsehair, laid along together for a sort of makeshift mattress. When Trottle got into the room, the lonely little boy had scrambled up on the bedstead with the help of the beer-stool, and was kneeling on the outer rim of sacking with the shred of counterpane in his hands, just making ready to tuck it in for himself under the chair cushions.

"I'll tuck you up, my man," says Trottle. "Jump into bed, and let me try."

"I mean to tuck myself up," says the poor forlorn child, "and I don't mean to jump. I mean to crawl, I do—and so I tell you!"

With that, he set to work, tucking in the clothes tight all down the sides of the cushions, but leaving them open at the foot. Then, getting up on his knees, and looking hard at Trottle as much as to say, "What do you mean by offering to help such a handy little chap as me?" he began to untie the big shawl for himself, and did it, too, in less than half a minute. Then, doubling the shawl up loose over the foot of the bed, he says, "I say, look here," and ducks under the clothes, head first, worming his way up and up softly, under the blanket and counterpane, till Trottle saw the top of the large nightcap slowly peep out on the bolster. This over-sized head-gear of the child's had so shoved itself down in the course of his journey to the pillow, under the clothes, that when he got his face fairly out on the bolster, he was all nightcap down to his mouth. He soon freed himself, however, from this slight encumbrance by turning the ends of the cap up gravely to their old place over his eyebrows—looked at Trottle—said, "Snug, ain't it? Good-bye!"—popped his face under the clothes again—and left nothing to be seen of him but the empty peak of the big nightcap standing up sturdily on end in the middle of the bolster.

"What a young limb it is, ain't it?" says Benjamin's mother, giving Trottle a cheerful dig with her elbow. "Come on! you won't see no more of him to-night!"

"And so I tell you!" sings out a shrill, little voice under the bedclothes, chiming in with a playful finish to the old woman's last words.

If Trottle had not been, by this time, positively resolved to follow the wicked secret which accident had mixed him up with, through all its turnings and windings, right on to the end, he would have probably snatched the boy up then and there, and carried him off from his garret prison, bed-clothes and all. As it was, he put a strong check on himself, kept his eye on future possibilities, and allowed Benjamin's mother to lead him down-stairs again.

"Mind them top bannisters," says she, as Trottle laid his hand on them. "They are as rotten as medlars every one of 'em."

"When people come to see the premises," says Trottle, trying to feel his way a little farther into the mystery of the House, "you don't bring many of them up here, do you?"

"Bless your heart alive!" says she, "nobody ever comes now. The outside of the house is quite enough to warn them off. Mores the pity, as I say. It used to keep me in spirits, staggering 'em all, one after another, with the frightful high rent—specially the women, drat 'em. 'What's the rent of this house?'—'Hundred and twenty pound a-year!'—'Hundred and twenty? why, there ain't a house in the street as lets for more than eighty!'—Likely enough, ma'am; other landlords may lower their rents if they please; but this here landlord sticks to his rights, and means to have as much for his house as his father had before him!'—'But the neighbourhood's gone off since then!'—'Hundred and twenty pound, ma'am.'—'The landlord must be mad!'—'Hundred and twenty pound, ma'am.'—'Open the door you impertinent woman!' Lord! what a happiness it was to see 'em bounce out, with that awful rent a-ringing in their ears all down the street!"

She stopped on the second-floor landing to treat herself to another chuckle, while Trottle privately posted up in his memory what he had just heard. "Two points made out," he thought to himself: "the house is kept empty on purpose, and the way it's done is to ask a rent that nobody will pay."

"Ah, deary me!" says Benjamin's mother, changing the subject on a sudden, and twisting back with a horrid, greedy quickness to those awkward money-matters which she had broached down in the parlour. "What we've done, one way and another for Mr. Forley, it isn't in words to tell! That nice little bit of business of ours ought to be a bigger bit of business, considering the trouble we take, Benjamin and me, to make the imp up-stairs as happy as the day is long. If good Mr. Forley would only please to think a little more of what a deal he owes to Benjamin and me—"

"That's just it," says Trottle, catching her up short in desperation, and seeing his way, by the help of those last words of hers, to slipping cleverly through her fingers. "What should you say, if I told you that Mr. Forley was nothing like so far from thinking about that little matter as you fancy? You would be disappointed, now, if I told you that I had come to-day without the money?"—(her lank old jaw fell, and her villainous old eyes glared, in a perfect state of panic, at that!)—"But what should you say, if I told you that Mr. Forley was only waiting for my report, to send me here next Monday, at dusk, with a bigger bit of business for us two to do together than ever you think for? What should you say to that?"

The old wretch came so near to Trottle, before she answered, and jammed him up confidentially so close into the corner of the landing, that his throat, in a manner, rose at her.

"Can you count it off, do you think, on more than that?" says she, holding up her four skinny fingers and her long crooked thumb, all of a tremble, right before his face.

"What do you say to two hands, instead of one?" says he, pushing past her, and getting down-stairs as fast as he could.

What she said Trottle thinks it best not to report, seeing that the old hypocrite, getting next door to light-headed at the golden prospect before her, took such liberties with unearthly names and persons which ought never to have approached her lips, and rained down such an awful shower of blessings on Trottle's head, that his hair almost stood on end to hear her. He went on down-stairs as fast as his feet would carry him, till he was brought up all standing, as the sailors say, on the last flight, by agravating Benjamin, lying right across the stair, and fallen off, as might have been expected, into a heavy drunken sleep.

The sight of him instantly reminded Trottle of the curious half likeness which he had already detected between the face of Benjamin and the face of another man, whom he had seen at a past time in very different circumstances. He determined, before leaving the House, to have one more look at the wretched muddled creature; and accordingly shook him up smartly, and propped him against the staircase wall, before his mother could interfere.

"Leave him to me; I'll freshen him up," says Trottle to the old woman, looking hard in Benjamin's face, while he spoke.

The fright and surprise of being suddenly woke up, seemed, for about a quarter of a minute, to sober the creature. When he first opened his eyes, there was a new look in them for a moment, which struck home to Trottle's memory as quick and as clear as a flash of light. The old maudlin sleepy expression came back again in another instant, and blurred out all further signs and tokens of the past. But Trottle had seen enough in the moment before it came; and he troubled Benjamin's face with no more inquiries.

"Next Monday, at dusk," says he, cutting short some more of the old woman's palaver about Benjamin's indisgestion. "I've got no more time to spare, ma'am, to-night: please to let me out."

With a few last blessings, a few last dutiful messages to good Mr. Forley, and a few last friendly hints not to forget next Monday at dusk, Trottle contrived to struggle through the sickening business of leave-taking; to get the door opened; and to find himself, to his own indescribable relief, once more on the outer side of the House To Let.

LET AT LAST

Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens

"There, ma'am!" said Trottle, folding up the manuscript from which he had been reading, and setting it down with a smart tap of triumph on the table. "May I venture to ask what you think of that plain statement, as a guess on my part (and not on Mr. Jarber's) at the riddle of the empty House?"

For a minute or two I was unable to say a word. When I recovered a little, my first question referred to the poor forlorn little boy.

"To-day is Monday the twentieth," I said. "Surely you have not let a whole week go by without trying to find out something more?"

"Except at bed-time, and meals, ma'am," answered Trottle, "I have not let an hour go by. Please to understand that I have only come to an end of what I have written, and not to an end of what I have done. I wrote down those first particulars, ma'am, because they are of great importance, and also because I was determined to come forward with my written documents, seeing that Mr. Jarber chose to come forward, in the first instance, with his. I am now ready to go on with the second part of my story as shortly and plainly as possible, by word of mouth. The first thing I must clear up, if you please, is the matter of Mr. Forley's family affairs. I have heard you speak of them, ma'am, at various times; and I have understood that Mr. Forley had two children only by his deceased wife, both daughters. The eldest daughter married, to her father's entire satisfaction, one Mr. Bayne, a rich man, holding a high government situation in Canada. She is now living there with her husband, and her only child, a little girl of eight or nine years old. Right so far, I think, ma'am?"

"Quite right," I said.

"The second daughter," Trottle went on, "and Mr. Forley's favourite, set her father's wishes and the opinions of the world at flat defiance, by running away with a man of low origin—a mate of a merchant-vessel, named Kirkland. Mr. Forley not only never forgave that marriage, but vowed that he would visit the scandal of it heavily in the future on husband and wife. Both escaped his vengeance, whatever he meant it to be. The husband was drowned on his first voyage after his marriage, and the wife died in child-bed. Right again, I believe, ma'am?"

"Again quite right."

"Having got the family matter all right, we will now go back, ma'am, to me and my doings. Last Monday, I asked you for leave of absence for two days; I employed the time in clearing up the matter of Benjamin's face. Last Saturday I was out of the way when you wanted me. I played truant, ma'am, on that occasion, in company with a friend of mine, who is managing clerk in a lawyer's office; and we both spent the morning at Doctors' Commons, over the last will and testament of Mr. Forley's father. Leaving the will-business for a moment, please to follow me first, if you have no objection, into the ugly subject of Benjamin's face. About six or seven years ago (thanks to your kindness) I had a week's holiday with some friends of mine who live in the town of Pendlebury. One of those friends (the only one now left in the place) kept a chemist's shop, and in that shop I was made acquainted with one of the two doctors in the town, named Barsham. This Barsham was a first-rate surgeon, and might have got to the top of his profession, if he had not been a first-rate blackguard. As it was, he both drank and gambled; nobody would have anything to do with him in Pendlebury; and, at the time when I was made known to him in the chemist's shop, the other doctor, Mr. Dix, who was not to be compared with him for surgical skill, but who was a respectable man, had got all the practice; and Barsham and his old mother were living together in such a condition of utter poverty, that it was a marvel to everybody how they kept out of the parish workhouse."

"Benjamin and Benjamin's mother!"

"Exactly, ma'am. Last Thursday morning (thanks to your kindness, again) I went to Pendlebury to my friend the chemist, to ask a few questions about Barsham and his mother. I was told that they had both left the town about five years since. When I inquired into the circumstances, some strange particulars came out in the course of the chemist's answer. You know I have no doubt, ma'am, that poor Mrs. Kirkland was confined while her husband was at sea, in lodgings at a village called Flatfield, and that she died and was buried there. But what you may not know is, that Flatfield is only three miles from Pendlebury; that the doctor who attended on Mrs. Kirkland was Barsham; that the nurse who took care of her was Barsham's mother; and that the person who called them both in, was Mr. Forley. Whether his daughter wrote to him, or whether he heard of it in some other way, I don't know; but he was with her (though he had sworn never to see her again when she married) a month or more before her confinement, and was backwards and forwards a good deal between Flatfield and Pendlebury. How he managed matters with the Barshams cannot at present be discovered; but it is a fact that he contrived to keep the drunken doctor sober, to everybody's amazement. It is a fact that Barsham went to the poor woman with all his wits about him. It is a fact that he and his mother came back from Flatfield after Mrs. Kirkland's death, packed up what few things they had, and left the town mysteriously by night. And, lastly, it is also a fact that the other doctor, Mr. Dix, was not called in to help, till a week after the birth and burial of the child, when the mother was sinking from exhaustion—exhaustion (to give the vagabond, Barsham, his due) not produced, in Mr. Dix's opinion, by improper medical treatment, but by the bodily weakness of the poor woman herself—"

"Burial of the child?" I interrupted, trembling all over. "Trottle! you spoke that word 'burial' in a very strange way—you are fixing your eyes on me now with a very strange look—"

Trottle leaned over close to me, and pointed through the window to the empty house.

"The child's death is registered, at Pendlebury," he said, "on Barsham's certificate, under the head of Male Infant, Still-Born. The child's coffin lies in the mother's grave, in Flatfield churchyard. The child himself—as surely as I live and breathe, is living and breathing now—a castaway and a prisoner in that villainous house!"

I sank back in my chair.

"It's guess-work, so far, but it is borne in on my mind, for all that, as truth. Rouse yourself, ma'am, and think a little. The last I hear of Barsham, he is attending Mr. Forley's disobedient daughter. The next I see of Barsham, he is in Mr. Forley's house, trusted with a secret. He and his mother leave Pendlebury suddenly and suspiciously five years back; and he and his mother have got a child of five years old, hidden away in the house. Wait! please to wait—I have not done yet. The will left by Mr. Forley's father, strengthens the suspicion. The friend I took with me to Doctors' Commons, made himself master of the contents of that will; and when he had done so, I put these two questions to him. 'Can Mr. Forley leave his money at his own discretion to anybody he pleases?' 'No,' my friend says, 'his father has left him with only a life interest in it.' 'Suppose one of Mr. Forley's married daughters has a girl, and the other a boy, how would the money go?' 'It would all go,' my friend says, 'to the boy, and it would be charged with the payment of a certain annual income to his female cousin. After her death, it would go back to the male descendant, and to his heirs.' Consider that, ma'am! The child of the daughter whom Mr. Forley hates, whose husband has been snatched away from his vengeance by death, takes his whole property in defiance of him; and the child of the daughter whom he loves, is left a pensioner on her low-born boy-cousin for life! There was good—too good reason—why that child of Mrs. Kirkland's should be registered stillborn. And if, as I believe, the register is founded on a false certificate, there is better, still better reason, why the existence of the child should be hidden, and all trace of his parentage blotted out, in the garret of that empty house."

He stopped, and pointed for the second time to the dim, dust-covered garret-windows opposite. As he did so, I was startled—a very slight matter sufficed to frighten me now—by a knock at the door of the room in which we were sitting.

My maid came in, with a letter in her hand. I took it from her. The mourning card, which was all the envelope enclosed, dropped from my hands.

George Forley was no more. He had departed this life three days since, on the evening of Friday.

"Did our last chance of discovering the truth," I asked, "rest with him? Has it died with his death?"

"Courage, ma'am! I think not. Our chance rests on our power to make Barsham and his mother confess; and Mr. Forley's death, by leaving them helpless, seems to put that power into our hands. With your permission, I will not wait till dusk to-day, as I at first intended, but will make sure of those two people at once. With a policeman in plain clothes to watch the house, in case they try to leave it; with this card to vouch for the fact of Mr. Forley's death; and with a bold acknowledgment on my part of having got possession of their secret, and of being ready to use it against them in case of need, I think there is little doubt of bringing Barsham and his mother to terms. In case I find it impossible to get back here before dusk, please to sit near the window, ma'am, and watch the house, a little before they light the street-lamps. If you see the front-door open and close again, will you be good enough to put on your bonnet, and come across to me immediately? Mr. Forley's death may, or may not, prevent his messenger from coming as arranged. But, if the person does come, it is of importance that you, as a relative of Mr. Forley's should be present to see him, and to have that proper influence over him which I cannot pretend to exercise."

The only words I could say to Trottle as he opened the door and left me, were words charging him to take care that no harm happened to the poor forlorn little boy.

Left alone, I drew my chair to the window; and looked out with a beating heart at the guilty house. I waited and waited through what appeared to me to be an endless time, until I heard the wheels of a cab stop at the end of the street. I looked in that direction, and saw Trottle get out of the cab alone, walk up to the house, and knock at the door. He was let in by Barsham's mother. A minute or two later, a decently-dressed man sauntered past the house, looked up at it for a moment, and sauntered on to the corner of the street close by. Here he leant against the post, and lighted a cigar, and stopped there smoking in an idle way, but keeping his face always turned in the direction of the house-door.

I waited and waited still. I waited and waited, with my eyes riveted to the door of the house. At last I thought I saw it open in the dusk, and then felt sure I heard it shut again softly. Though I tried hard to compose myself, I trembled so that I was obliged to call for Peggy to help me on with my bonnet and cloak, and was forced to take her arm to lean on, in crossing the street.

Trottle opened the door to us, before we could knock. Peggy went back, and I went in. He had a lighted candle in his hand.

"It has happened, ma'am, as I thought it would," he whispered, leading me into the bare, comfortless, empty parlour. "Barsham and his mother have consulted their own interests, and have come to terms. My guess-work is guess-work no longer. It is now what I felt it was—Truth!"

Something strange to me—something which women who are mothers must often know—trembled suddenly in my heart, and brought the warm tears of my youthful days thronging back into my eyes. I took my faithful old servant by the hand, and asked him to let me see Mrs. Kirkland's child, for his mother's sake.

"If you desire it, ma'am," said Trottle, with a gentleness of manner that I had never noticed in him before. "But pray don't think me wanting in duty and right feeling, if I beg you to try and wait a little. You are agitated already, and a first meeting with the child will not help to make you so calm, as you would wish to be, if Mr. Forley's messenger comes. The little boy is safe up-stairs. Pray think first of trying to compose yourself for a meeting with a stranger; and believe me you shall not leave the house afterwards without the child."

I felt that Trottle was right, and sat down as patiently as I could in a chair he had thoughtfully placed ready for me. I was so horrified at the discovery of my own relation's wickedness that when Trottle proposed to make me acquainted with the confession wrung from Barsham and his mother, I begged him to spare me all details, and only to tell me what was necessary about George Forley.

"All that can be said for Mr. Forley, ma'am, is, that he was just scrupulous enough to hide the child's existence and blot out its parentage here, instead of consenting, at the first, to its death, or afterwards, when the boy grew up, to turning him adrift, absolutely helpless in the world. The fraud has been managed, ma'am, with the cunning of Satan himself. Mr. Forley had the hold over the Barshams, that they had helped him in his villany, and that they were dependent on him for the bread they eat. He brought them up to London to keep them securely under his own eye. He put them into this empty house (taking it out of the agent's hands previously, on pretence that he meant to manage the letting of it himself); and by keeping the house empty, made it the surest of all hiding places for the child. Here, Mr. Forley could come, whenever he pleased, to see that the poor lonely child was not absolutely starved; sure that his visits would only appear like looking after his own property. Here the child was to have been trained to believe himself Barsham's child, till he should be old enough to be provided for in some situation, as low and as poor as Mr. Forley's uneasy conscience would let him pick out. He may have thought of atonement on his death-bed; but not before—I am only too certain of it—not before!"

A low, double knock startled us.

"The messenger!" said Trottle, under his breath. He went out instantly to answer the knock; and returned, leading in a respectable-looking elderly man, dressed like Trottle, all in black, with a white cravat, but otherwise not at all resembling him.

"I am afraid I have made some mistake," said the stranger.

Trottle, considerately taking the office of explanation into his own hands, assured the gentleman that there was no mistake; mentioned to him who I was; and asked him if he had not come on business connected with the late Mr. Forley. Looking greatly astonished, the gentleman answered, "Yes." There was an awkward moment of silence, after that. The stranger seemed to be not only startled and amazed, but rather distrustful and fearful of committing himself as well. Noticing this, I thought it best to request Trottle to put an end to further embarrassment, by stating all particulars truthfully, as he had stated them to me; and I begged the gentleman to listen patiently for the late Mr. Forley's sake. He bowed to me very respectfully, and said he was prepared to listen with the greatest interest.

It was evident to me—and, I could see, to Trottle also—that we were not dealing, to say the least, with a dishonest man.

"Before I offer any opinion on what I have heard," he said, earnestly and anxiously, after Trottle had done, "I must be allowed, in justice to myself, to explain my own apparent connection with this very strange and very shocking business. I was the confidential legal adviser of the late Mr. Forley, and I am left his executor. Rather more than a fortnight back, when Mr. Forley was confined to his room by illness, he sent for me, and charged me to call and pay a certain sum of money here, to a man and woman whom I should find taking charge of the house. He said he had reasons for wishing the affair to be kept a secret. He begged me so to arrange my engagements that I could call at this place either on Monday last, or to-day, at dusk; and he mentioned that he would write to warn the people of my coming, without mentioning my name (Dalcott is my name), as he did not wish to expose me to any future importunities on the part of the man and woman. I need hardly tell you that this commission struck me as being a strange one; but, in my position with Mr. Forley, I had no resource but to accept it without asking questions, or to break off my long and friendly connection with my client. I chose the first alternative. Business prevented me from doing my errand on Monday last—and if I am here to-day, notwithstanding Mr. Forley's unexpected death, it is emphatically because I understood nothing of the matter, on knocking at this door; and therefore felt myself bound, as executor, to clear it up. That, on my word of honour, is the whole truth, so far as I am personally concerned."

"I feel quite sure of it, sir," I answered.

"You mentioned Mr. Forley's death, just now, as unexpected. May I inquire if you were present, and if he has left any last instructions?"

"Three hours before Mr. Forley's death," said Mr. Dalcott, "his medical attendant left him apparently in a fair way of recovery. The change for the worse took place so suddenly, and was accompanied by such severe suffering, to prevent him from communicating his last wishes to any one. When I reached his house, he was insensible. I have since examined his papers. Not one of them refers to the present time or to the serious matter which now occupies us. In the absence of instructions I must act cautiously on what you have told me; but I will be rigidly fair and just at the same time. The first thing to be done," he continued, addressing himself to Trottle, "is to hear what the man and woman, down-stairs, have to say. If you can supply me with writing-materials, I will take their declarations separately on the spot, in your presence, and in the presence of the policeman who is watching the house. To-morrow I will send copies of those declarations, accompanied by a full statement of the case, to Mr. and Mrs. Bayne in Canada (both of whom know me well as the late Mr. Forley's legal adviser); and I will suspend all proceedings, on my part, until I hear from them, or from their solicitor in London. In the present posture of affairs this is all I can safely do."

We could do no less than agree with him, and thank him for his frank and honest manner of meeting us. It was arranged that I should send over the writing-materials from my lodgings; and, to my unutterable joy and relief, it was also readily acknowledged that the poor little orphan boy could find no fitter refuge than my old arms were longing to offer him, and no safer protection for the night than my roof could give. Trottle hastened away up-stairs, as actively as if he had been a young man, to fetch the child down.

And he brought him down to me without another moment of delay, and I went on my knees before the poor little Mite, and embraced him, and asked him if he would go with me to where I lived? He held me away for a moment, and his wan, shrewd little eyes looked sharp at me. Then he clung close to me all at once, and said:

"I'm a-going along with you, I am—and so I tell you!"

For inspiring the poor neglected child with this trust in my old self, I thanked Heaven, then, with all my heart and soul, and I thank it now!

I bundled the poor darling up in my own cloak, and I carried him in my own arms across the road. Peggy was lost in speechless amazement to behold me trudging out of breath up-stairs, with a strange pair of poor little legs under my arm; but, she began to cry over the child the moment she saw him, like a sensible woman as she always was, and she still cried her eyes out over him in a comfortable manner, when he at last lay fast asleep, tucked up by my hands in Trottle's bed.

"And Trottle, bless you, my dear man," said I, kissing his hand, as he looked on: "the forlorn baby came to this refuge through you, and he will help you on your way to Heaven."

Trottle answered that I was his dear mistress, and immediately went and put his head out at an open window on the landing, and looked into the back street for a quarter of an hour.

That very night, as I sat thinking of the poor child, and of another poor child who is never to be thought about enough at Christmas-time, the idea came into my mind which I have lived to execute, and in the realisation of which I am the happiest of women this day.

"The executor will sell that House, Trottle?" said I.

"Not a doubt of it, ma'am, if he can find a purchaser."

"I'll buy it."

I have often seen Trottle pleased; but, I never saw him so perfectly enchanted as he was when I confided to him, which I did, then and there, the purpose that I had in view.

To make short of a long story—and what story would not be long, coming from the lips of an old woman like me, unless it was made short by main force!—I bought the House. Mrs. Bayne had her father's blood in her; she evaded the opportunity of forgiving and generous reparation that was offered her, and disowned the child; but, I was prepared for that, and loved him all the more for having no one in the world to look to, but me.

I am getting into a flurry by being over-pleased, and I dare say I am as incoherent as need be. I bought the House, and I altered it from the basement to the roof, and I turned it into a Hospital for Sick Children.

Never mind by what degrees my little adopted boy came to the knowledge of all the sights and sounds in the streets, so familiar to other children and so strange to him; never mind by what degrees he came to be pretty, and childish, and winning, and companionable, and to have pictures and toys about him, and suitable playmates. As I write, I look across the road to my Hospital, and there is the darling (who has gone over to play) nodding at me out of one of the once lonely windows, with his dear chubby face backed up by Trottle's waistcoat as he lifts my pet for "Grandma" to see.

Many an Eye I see in that House now, but it is never in solitude, never in neglect. Many an Eye I see in that House now, that is more and more radiant every day with the light of returning health. As my precious darling has changed beyond description for the brighter and the better, so do the not less precious darlings of poor women change in that House every day in the year. For which I humbly thank that Gracious Being whom the restorer of the Widow's son and of the Ruler's daughter, instructed all mankind to call their Father.

THE HAUNTED HOUSE

1859

CONTENTS

The Mortals in the House

The Ghost in the Clock Room

The Ghost in the Double Room

The Ghost in the Picture Room

The Ghost in the Cupboard Room

The Ghost in Master B.'s Room

The Ghost in the Garden Room

The Ghost in the Corner Room

THE MORTALS IN THE HOUSE

Charles Dickens

Under none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by none of the conventional ghostly surroundings, did I first make acquaintance with the house which is the subject of this Christmas piece. I saw it in the daylight, with the sun upon it. There was no wind, no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no awful or unwonted circumstance, of any kind, to heighten its effect. More than that: I had come to it direct from a railway station: it was not more than a mile distant from the railway station; and, as I stood outside the house, looking back upon the way I had come, I could see the goods train running smoothly along the embankment in the valley. I will not say that everything was utterly commonplace, because I doubt if anything can be that, except to utterly commonplace people—and there my vanity steps in; but, I will take it on myself to say that anybody might see the house as I saw it, any fine autumn morning.

The manner of my lighting on it was this.

I was travelling towards London out of the North, intending to stop by the way, to look at the house. My health required a temporary residence in the country; and a friend of mine who knew that, and who had happened to drive past the house, had written to me to suggest it as a likely place. I had got into the train at midnight, and had fallen asleep, and had woke up and had sat looking out of window at the brilliant Northern Lights in the sky, and had fallen asleep again, and had woke up again to find the night gone, with the usual discontented conviction on me that I hadn’t been to sleep at all;—upon which question, in the first imbecility of that condition, I am ashamed to believe that I would have done wager by battle with the man who sat opposite me. That opposite man had had, through the night—as that opposite man always has—several legs too many, and all of them too long. In addition to this unreasonable conduct (which was only to be expected of him), he had had a pencil and a pocket-book, and had been perpetually listening and taking notes. It had appeared to me that these aggravating notes related to the jolts and bumps of the carriage, and I should have resigned myself to his taking them, under a general supposition that he was in the civil-engineering way of life, if he had not sat staring straight over my head whenever he listened. He was a goggle-eyed gentleman of a perplexed aspect, and his demeanour became unbearable.

It was a cold, dead morning (the sun not being up yet), and when I had out-watched the paling light of the fires of the iron country, and the curtain of heavy smoke that hung at once between me and the stars and between me and the day, I turned to my fellow-traveller and said:

“I beg your pardon, sir, but do you observe anything particular in me?” For, really, he appeared to be taking down, either my travelling-cap or my hair, with a minuteness that was a liberty.

The goggle-eyed gentleman withdrew his eyes from behind me, as if the back of the carriage were a hundred miles off, and said, with a lofty look of compassion for my insignificance:

“In you, sir?—B.”

“B, sir?” said I, growing warm.

“I have nothing to do with you, sir,” returned the gentleman; “pray let me listen—O.”

He enunciated this vowel after a pause, and noted it down.

At first I was alarmed, for an Express lunatic and no communication with the guard, is a serious position. The thought came to my relief that the gentleman might be what is popularly called a Rapper: one of a sect for (some of) whom I have the highest respect, but whom I don’t believe in. I was going to ask him the question, when he took the bread out of my mouth.

“You will excuse me,” said the gentleman contemptuously, “if I am too much in advance of common humanity to trouble myself at all about it. I have passed the night—as indeed I pass the whole of my time now—in spiritual intercourse.”

“O!” said I, somewhat snappishly.

“The conferences of the night began,” continued the gentleman, turning several leaves of his note-book, “with this message: ‘Evil communications corrupt good manners.’ ”

“Sound,” said I; “but, absolutely new?”

“New from spirits,” returned the gentleman.

I could only repeat my rather snappish “O!” and ask if I might be favoured with the last communication.

“‘A bird in the hand,’ ” said the gentleman, reading his last entry with great solemnity, “‘is worth two in the Bosh.’ ”

“Truly I am of the same opinion,” said I; “but shouldn’t it be Bush?”

“It came to me, Bosh,” returned the gentleman.

The gentleman then informed me that the spirit of Socrates had delivered this special revelation in the course of the night. “My friend, I hope you are pretty well. There are two in this railway carriage. How do you do? There are seventeen thousand four hundred and seventy-nine spirits here, but you cannot see them. Pythagoras is here. He is not at liberty to mention it, but hopes you like travelling.” Galileo likewise had dropped in, with this scientific intelligence. “I am glad to see you, amico. Come sta? Water will freeze when it is cold enough. Addio!” In the course of the night, also, the following phenomena had occurred. Bishop Butler had insisted on spelling his name, “Bubler,” for which offence against orthography and good manners he had been dismissed as out of temper. John Milton (suspected of wilful mystification) had repudiated the authorship of Paradise Lost, and had introduced, as joint authors of that poem, two Unknown gentlemen, respectively named Grungers and Scadgingtone. And Prince Arthur, nephew of King John of England, had described himself as tolerably comfortable in the seventh circle, where he was learning to paint on velvet, under the direction of Mrs. Trimmer and Mary Queen of Scots.

If this should meet the eye of the gentleman who favoured me with these disclosures, I trust he will excuse my confessing that the sight of the rising sun, and the contemplation of the magnificent Order of the vast Universe, made me impatient of them. In a word, I was so impatient of them, that I was mightily glad to get out at the next station, and to exchange these clouds and vapours for the free air of Heaven.

By that time it was a beautiful morning. As I walked away among such leaves as had already fallen from the golden, brown, and russet trees; and as I looked around me on the wonders of Creation, and thought of the steady, unchanging, and harmonious laws by which they are sustained; the gentleman’s spiritual intercourse seemed to me as poor a piece of journey-work as ever this world saw. In which heathen state of mind, I came within view of the house, and stopped to examine it attentively.

It was a solitary house, standing in a sadly neglected garden: a pretty even square of some two acres. It was a house of about the time of George the Second; as stiff, as cold, as formal, and in as bad taste, as could possibly be desired by the most loyal admirer of the whole quartet of Georges. It was uninhabited, but had, within a year or two, been cheaply repaired to render it habitable; I say cheaply, because the work had been done in a surface manner, and was already decaying as to the paint and plaster, though the colours were fresh. A lop-sided board drooped over the garden wall, announcing that it was “to let on very reasonable terms, well furnished.” It was much too closely and heavily shadowed by trees, and, in particular, there were six tall poplars before the front windows, which were excessively melancholy, and the site of which had been extremely ill chosen.

It was easy to see that it was an avoided house—a house that was shunned by the village, to which my eye was guided by a church spire some half a mile off—a house that nobody would take. And the natural inference was, that it had the reputation of being a haunted house.

No period within the four-and-twenty hours of day and night is so solemn to me, as the early morning. In the summer time, I often rise very early, and repair to my room to do a day’s work before breakfast, and I am always on those occasions deeply impressed by the stillness and solitude around me. Besides that there is something awful in the being surrounded by familiar faces asleep—in the knowledge that those who are dearest to us and to whom we are dearest, are profoundly unconscious of us, in an impassive state, anticipative of that mysterious condition to which we are all tending—the stopped life, the broken threads of yesterday, the deserted seat, the closed book, the unfinished but abandoned occupation, all are images of Death. The tranquillity of the hour is the tranquillity of Death. The colour and the chill have the same association. Even a certain air that familiar household objects take upon them when they first emerge from the shadows of the night into the morning, of being newer, and as they used to be long ago, has its counterpart in the subsidence of the worn face of maturity or age, in death, into the old youthful look. Moreover, I once saw the apparition of my father, at this hour. He was alive and well, and nothing ever came of it, but I saw him in the daylight, sitting with his back towards me, on a seat that stood beside my bed. His head was resting on his hand, and whether he was slumbering or grieving, I could not discern. Amazed to see him there, I sat up, moved my position, leaned out of bed, and watched him. As he did not move, I spoke to him more than once. As he did not move then, I became alarmed and laid my hand upon his shoulder, as I thought—and there was no such thing.

For all these reasons, and for others less easily and briefly statable, I find the early morning to be my most ghostly time. Any house would be more or less haunted, to me, in the early morning; and a haunted house could scarcely address me to greater advantage than then.

I walked on into the village, with the desertion of this house upon my mind, and I found the landlord of the little inn, sanding his door-step. I bespoke breakfast, and broached the subject of the house.

“Is it haunted?” I asked.

The landlord looked at me, shook his head, and answered, “I say nothing.”

“Then it is haunted?”

“Well!” cried the landlord, in an outburst of frankness that had the appearance of desperation—“I wouldn’t sleep in it.”

“Why not?”

“If I wanted to have all the bells in a house ring, with nobody to ring ’em; and all the doors in a house bang, with nobody to bang ’em; and all sorts of feet treading about, with no feet there; why, then,” said the landlord, “I’d sleep in that house.”

“Is anything seen there?”

The landlord looked at me again, and then, with his former appearance of desperation, called down his stable-yard for “Ikey!”

The call produced a high-shouldered young fellow, with a round red face, a short crop of sandy hair, a very broad humorous mouth, a turned-up nose, and a great sleeved waistcoat of purple bars, with mother-of-pearl buttons, that seemed to be growing upon him, and to be in a fair way—if it were not pruned—of covering his head and overunning his boots.

“This gentleman wants to know,” said the landlord, “if anything’s seen at the Poplars.”

“’Ooded woman with a howl,” said Ikey, in a state of great freshness.

“Do you mean a cry?”

“I mean a bird, sir.”

“A hooded woman with an owl. Dear me! Did you ever see her?”

“I seen the howl.”

“Never the woman?”

“Not so plain as the howl, but they always keeps together.”

“Has anybody ever seen the woman as plainly as the owl?”

“Lord bless you, sir! Lots.”

“Who?”

“Lord bless you, sir! Lots.”

“The general-dealer opposite, for instance, who is opening his shop?”

“Perkins? Bless you, Perkins wouldn’t go a-nigh the place. No!” observed the young man, with considerable feeling; “he an’t overwise, an’t Perkins, but he an’t such a fool as that.”

(Here, the landlord murmured his confidence in Perkins’s knowing better.)

“Who is—or who was—the hooded woman with the owl? Do you know?”

“Well!” said Ikey, holding up his cap with one hand while he scratched his head with the other, “they say, in general, that she was murdered, and the howl he ’ooted the while.”

This very concise summary of the facts was all I could learn, except that a young man, as hearty and likely a young man as ever I see, had been took with fits and held down in ’em, after seeing the hooded woman. Also, that a personage, dimly described as “a hold chap, a sort of one-eyed tramp, answering to the name of Joby, unless you challenged him as Greenwood, and then he said, ‘Why not? and even if so, mind your own business,’ ” had encountered the hooded woman, a matter of five or six times. But, I was not materially assisted by these witnesses: inasmuch as the first was in California, and the last was, as Ikey said (and he was confirmed by the landlord), Anywheres.

Now, although I regard with a hushed and solemn fear, the mysteries, between which and this state of existence is interposed the barrier of the great trial and change that fall on all the things that live; and although I have not the audacity to pretend that I know anything of them; I can no more reconcile the mere banging of doors, ringing of bells, creaking of boards, and such-like insignificances, with the majestic beauty and pervading analogy of all the Divine rules that I am permitted to understand, than I had been able, a little while before, to yoke the spiritual intercourse of my fellow-traveller to the chariot of the rising sun. Moreover, I had lived in two haunted houses—both abroad. In one of these, an old Italian palace, which bore the reputation of being very badly haunted indeed, and which had recently been twice abandoned on that account, I lived eight months, most tranquilly and pleasantly: notwithstanding that the house had a score of mysterious bedrooms, which were never used, and possessed, in one large room in which I sat reading, times out of number at all hours, and next to which I slept, a haunted chamber of the first pretensions. I gently hinted these considerations to the landlord. And as to this particular house having a bad name, I reasoned with him, Why, how many things had bad names undeservedly, and how easy it was to give bad names, and did he not think that if he and I were persistently to whisper in the village that any weird-looking, old drunken tinker of the neighbourhood had sold himself to the Devil, he would come in time to be suspected of that commercial venture! All this wise talk was perfectly ineffective with the landlord, I am bound to confess, and was as dead a failure as ever I made in my life.

To cut this part of the story short, I was piqued about the haunted house, and was already half resolved to take it. So, after breakfast, I got the keys from Perkins’s brother-in-law (a whip and harness maker, who keeps the Post Office, and is under submission to a most rigorous wife of the Doubly Seceding Little Emmanuel persuasion), and went up to the house, attended by my landlord and by Ikey.

Within, I found it, as I had expected, transcendently dismal. The slowly changing shadows waved on it from the heavy trees, were doleful in the last degree; the house was ill-placed, ill-built, ill-planned, and ill-fitted. It was damp, it was not free from dry rot, there was a flavour of rats in it, and it was the gloomy victim of that indescribable decay which settles on all the work of man’s hands whenever it’s not turned to man’s account. The kitchens and offices were too large, and too remote from each other. Above stairs and below, waste tracts of passage intervened between patches of fertility represented by rooms; and there was a mouldy old well with a green growth upon it, hiding like a murderous trap, near the bottom of the back-stairs, under the double row of bells. One of these bells was labelled, on a black ground in faded white letters, MASTER B. This, they told me, was the bell that rang the most.

“Who was Master B.?” I asked. “Is it known what he did while the owl hooted?”

“Rang the bell,” said Ikey.

I was rather struck by the prompt dexterity with which this young man pitched his fur cap at the bell, and rang it himself. It was a loud, unpleasant bell, and made a very disagreeable sound. The other bells were inscribed according to the names of the rooms to which their wires were conducted: as “Picture Room,” “Double Room,” “Clock Room,” and the like. Following Master B.’s bell to its source I found that young gentleman to have had but indifferent third-class accommodation in a triangular cabin under the cock-loft, with a corner fireplace which Master B. must have been exceedingly small if he were ever able to warm himself at, and a corner chimney-piece like a pyramidal staircase to the ceiling for Tom Thumb. The papering of one side of the room had dropped down bodily, with fragments of plaster adhering to it, and almost blocked up the door. It appeared that Master B., in his spiritual condition, always made a point of pulling the paper down. Neither the landlord nor Ikey could suggest why he made such a fool of himself.

Except that the house had an immensely large rambling loft at top, I made no other discoveries. It was moderately well furnished, but sparely. Some of the furniture—say, a third—was as old as the house; the rest was of various periods within the last half century. I was referred to a corn-chandler in the market-place of the county town to treat for the house. I went that day, and I took it for six months.

It was just the middle of October when I moved in with my maiden sister (I venture to call her eight-and-thirty, she is so very handsome, sensible, and engaging). We took with us, a deaf stable-man, my bloodhound Turk, two women servants, and a young person called an Odd Girl. I have reason to record of the attendant last enumerated, who was one of the Saint Lawrence’s Union Female Orphans, that she was a fatal mistake and a disastrous engagement.

The year was dying early, the leaves were falling fast, it was a raw cold day when we took possession, and the gloom of the house was most depressing. The cook (an amiable woman, but of a weak turn of intellect) burst into tears on beholding the kitchen, and requested that her silver watch might be delivered over to her sister (2 Tuppintock’s Gardens, Liggs’s Walk, Clapham Rise), in the event of anything happening to her from the damp. Streaker, the housemaid, feigned cheerfulness, but was the greater martyr. The Odd Girl, who had never been in the country, alone was pleased, and made arrangements for sowing an acorn in the garden outside the scullery window, and rearing an oak.

We went, before dark, through all the natural—as opposed to supernatural—miseries incidental to our state. Dispiriting reports ascended (like the smoke) from the basement in volumes, and descended from the upper rooms. There was no rolling-pin, there was no salamander (which failed to surprise me, for I don’t know what it is), there was nothing in the house, what there was, was broken, the last people must have lived like pigs, what could the meaning of the landlord be? Through these distresses, the Odd Girl was cheerful and exemplary. But within four hours after dark we had got into a supernatural groove, and the Odd Girl had seen “Eyes,” and was in hysterics.

My sister and I had agreed to keep the haunting strictly to ourselves, and my impression was, and still is, that I had not left Ikey, when he helped to unload the cart, alone with the women, or any one of them, for one minute. Nevertheless, as I say, the Odd Girl had “seen Eyes” (no other explanation could ever be drawn from her), before nine, and by ten o’clock had had as much vinegar applied to her as would pickle a handsome salmon.

I leave a discerning public to judge of my feelings, when, under these untoward circumstances, at about half-past ten o’clock Master B.’s bell began to ring in a most infuriated manner, and Turk howled until the house resounded with his lamentations!

I hope I may never again be in a state of mind so unchristian as the mental frame in which I lived for some weeks, respecting the memory of Master B. Whether his bell was rung by rats, or mice, or bats, or wind, or what other accidental vibration, or sometimes by one cause, sometimes another, and sometimes by collusion, I don’t know; but, certain it is, that it did ring two nights out of three, until I conceived the happy idea of twisting Master B.’s neck—in other words, breaking his bell short off—and silencing that young gentleman, as to my experience and belief, for ever.

But, by that time, the Odd Girl had developed such improving powers of catalepsy, that she had become a shining example of that very inconvenient disorder. She would stiffen, like a Guy Fawkes endowed with unreason, on the most irrelevant occasions. I would address the servants in a lucid manner, pointing out to them that I had painted Master B.’s room and balked the paper, and taken Master B.’s bell away and balked the ringing, and if they could suppose that that confounded boy had lived and died, to clothe himself with no better behaviour than would most unquestionably have brought him and the sharpest particles of a birch-broom into close acquaintance in the present imperfect state of existence, could they also suppose a mere poor human being, such as I was, capable by those contemptible means of counteracting and limiting the powers of the disembodied spirits of the dead, or of any spirits?—I say I would become emphatic and cogent, not to say rather complacent, in such an address, when it would all go for nothing by reason of the Odd Girl’s suddenly stiffening from the toes upward, and glaring among us like a parochial petrifaction.

Streaker, the housemaid, too, had an attribute of a most discomfiting nature. I am unable to say whether she was of an unusually lymphatic temperament, or what else was the matter with her, but this young woman became a mere Distillery for the production of the largest and most transparent tears I ever met with. Combined with these characteristics, was a peculiar tenacity of hold in those specimens, so that they didn’t fall, but hung upon her face and nose. In this condition, and mildly and deplorably shaking her head, her silence would throw me more heavily than the Admirable Crichton could have done in a verbal disputation for a purse of money. Cook, likewise, always covered me with confusion as with a garment, by neatly winding up the session with the protest that the Ouse was wearing her out, and by meekly repeating her last wishes regarding her silver watch.

As to our nightly life, the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us, and there is no such contagion under the sky. Hooded woman? According to the accounts, we were in a perfect Convent of hooded women. Noises? With that contagion down-stairs, I myself have sat in the dismal parlour, listening, until I have heard so many and such strange noises, that they would have chilled my blood if I had not warmed it by dashing out to make discoveries. Try this in bed, in the dead of the night: try this at your own comfortable fire-side, in the life of the night. You can fill any house with noises, if you will, until you have a noise for every nerve in your nervous system.

I repeat; the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us, and there is no such contagion under the sky. The women (their noses in a chronic state of excoriation from smelling-salts) were always primed and loaded for a swoon, and ready to go off with hair-triggers. The two elder detached the Odd Girl on all expeditions that were considered doubly hazardous, and she always established the reputation of such adventures by coming back cataleptic. If Cook or Streaker went overhead after dark, we knew we should presently hear a bump on the ceiling; and this took place so constantly, that it was as if a fighting man were engaged to go about the house, administering a touch of his art which I believe is called The Auctioneer, to every domestic he met with.

It was in vain to do anything. It was in vain to be frightened, for the moment in one’s own person, by a real owl, and then to show the owl. It was in vain to discover, by striking an accidental discord on the piano, that Turk always howled at particular notes and combinations. It was in vain to be a Rhadamanthus with the bells, and if an unfortunate bell rang without leave, to have it down inexorably and silence it. It was in vain to fire up chimneys, let torches down the well, charge furiously into suspected rooms and recesses. We changed servants, and it was no better. The new set ran away, and a third set came, and it was no better. At last, our comfortable housekeeping got to be so disorganised and wretched, that I one night dejectedly said to my sister: “Patty, I begin to despair of our getting people to go on with us here, and I think we must give this up.”

My sister, who is a woman of immense spirit, replied, “No, John, don’t give it up. Don’t be beaten, John. There is another way.”

“And what is that?” said I.

“John,” returned my sister, “if we are not to be driven out of this house, and that for no reason whatever that is apparent to you or me, we must help ourselves and take the house wholly and solely into our own hands.”

“But, the servants,” said I.

“Have no servants,” said my sister, boldly.

Like most people in my grade of life, I had never thought of the possibility of going on without those faithful obstructions. The notion was so new to me when suggested, that I looked very doubtful.

“We know they come here to be frightened and infect one another, and we know they are frightened and do infect one another,” said my sister.

“With the exception of Bottles,” I observed, in a meditative tone.

(The deaf stable-man. I kept him in my service, and still keep him, as a phenomenon of moroseness not to be matched in England.)

“To be sure, John,” assented my sister; “except Bottles. And what does that go to prove? Bottles talks to nobody, and hears nobody unless he is absolutely roared at, and what alarm has Bottles ever given, or taken! None.”

This was perfectly true; the individual in question having retired, every night at ten o’clock, to his bed over the coach-house, with no other company than a pitchfork and a pail of water. That the pail of water would have been over me, and the pitchfork through me, if I had put myself without announcement in Bottles’s way after that minute, I had deposited in my own mind as a fact worth remembering. Neither had Bottles ever taken the least notice of any of our many uproars. An imperturbable and speechless man, he had sat at his supper, with Streaker present in a swoon, and the Odd Girl marble, and had only put another potato in his cheek, or profited by the general misery to help himself to beefsteak pie.

“And so,” continued my sister, “I exempt Bottles. And considering, John, that the house is too large, and perhaps too lonely, to be kept well in hand by Bottles, you, and me, I propose that we cast about among our friends for a certain selected number of the most reliable and willing—form a Society here for three months—wait upon ourselves and one another—live cheerfully and socially—and see what happens.”

I was so charmed with my sister, that I embraced her on the spot, and went into her plan with the greatest ardour.

We were then in the third week of November; but, we took our measures so vigorously, and were so well seconded by the friends in whom we confided, that there was still a week of the month unexpired, when our party all came down together merrily, and mustered in the haunted house.

I will mention, in this place, two small changes that I made while my sister and I were yet alone. It occurring to me as not improbable that Turk howled in the house at night, partly because he wanted to get out of it, I stationed him in his kennel outside, but unchained; and I seriously warned the village that any man who came in his way must not expect to leave him without a rip in his own throat. I then casually asked Ikey if he were a judge of a gun? On his saying, “Yes, sir, I knows a good gun when I sees her,” I begged the favour of his stepping up to the house and looking at mine.

“She’s a true one, sir,” said Ikey, after inspecting a double-barrelled rifle that I bought in New York a few years ago. “No mistake about her, sir.”

“Ikey,” said I, “don’t mention it; I have seen something in this house.”

“No, sir?” he whispered, greedily opening his eyes. “’Ooded lady, sir?”

“Don’t be frightened,” said I. “It was a figure rather like you.”

“Lord, sir?”

“Ikey!” said I, shaking hands with him warmly: I may say affectionately; “if there is any truth in these ghost-stories, the greatest service I can do you, is, to fire at that figure. And I promise you, by Heaven and earth, I will do it with this gun if I see it again!”

The young man thanked me, and took his leave with some little precipitation, after declining a glass of liquor. I imparted my secret to him, because I had never quite forgotten his throwing his cap at the bell; because I had, on another occasion, noticed something very like a fur cap, lying not far from the bell, one night when it had burst out ringing; and because I had remarked that we were at our ghostliest whenever he came up in the evening to comfort the servants. Let me do Ikey no injustice. He was afraid of the house, and believed in its being haunted; and yet he would play false on the haunting side, so surely as he got an opportunity. The Odd Girl’s case was exactly similar. She went about the house in a state of real terror, and yet lied monstrously and wilfully, and invented many of the alarms she spread, and made many of the sounds we heard. I had had my eye on the two, and I know it. It is not necessary for me, here, to account for this preposterous state of mind; I content myself with remarking that it is familiarly known to every intelligent man who has had fair medical, legal, or other watchful experience; that it is as well established and as common a state of mind as any with which observers are acquainted; and that it is one of the first elements, above all others, rationally to be suspected in, and strictly looked for, and separated from, any question of this kind.

To return to our party. The first thing we did when we were all assembled, was, to draw lots for bedrooms. That done, and every bedroom, and, indeed, the whole house, having been minutely examined by the whole body, we allotted the various household duties, as if we had been on a gipsy party, or a yachting party, or a hunting party, or were shipwrecked. I then recounted the floating rumours concerning the hooded lady, the owl, and Master B.: with others, still more filmy, which had floated about during our occupation, relative to some ridiculous old ghost of the female gender who went up and down, carrying the ghost of a round table; and also to an impalpable Jackass, whom nobody was ever able to catch. Some of these ideas I really believe our people below had communicated to one another in some diseased way, without conveying them in words. We then gravely called one another to witness, that we were not there to be deceived, or to deceive—which we considered pretty much the same thing—and that, with a serious sense of responsibility, we would be strictly true to one another, and would strictly follow out the truth. The understanding was established, that any one who heard unusual noises in the night, and who wished to trace them, should knock at my door; lastly, that on Twelfth Night, the last night of holy Christmas, all our individual experiences since that then present hour of our coming together in the haunted house, should be brought to light for the good of all; and that we would hold our peace on the subject till then, unless on some remarkable provocation to break silence.

We were, in number and in character, as follows:

First—to get my sister and myself out of the way—there were we two. In the drawing of lots, my sister drew her own room, and I drew Master B.’s. Next, there was our first cousin John Herschel, so called after the great astronomer: than whom I suppose a better man at a telescope does not breathe. With him, was his wife: a charming creature to whom he had been married in the previous spring. I thought it (under the circumstances) rather imprudent to bring her, because there is no knowing what even a false alarm may do at such a time; but I suppose he knew his own business best, and I must say that if she had been my wife, I never could have left her endearing and bright face behind. They drew the Clock Room. Alfred Starling, an uncommonly agreeable young fellow of eight-and-twenty for whom I have the greatest liking, was in the Double Room; mine, usually, and designated by that name from having a dressing-room within it, with two large and cumbersome windows, which no wedges I was ever able to make, would keep from shaking, in any weather, wind or no wind. Alfred is a young fellow who pretends to be “fast” (another word for loose, as I understand the term), but who is much too good and sensible for that nonsense, and who would have distinguished himself before now, if his father had not unfortunately left him a small independence of two hundred a year, on the strength of which his only occupation in life has been to spend six. I am in hopes, however, that his Banker may break, or that he may enter into some speculation guaranteed to pay twenty per cent.; for, I am convinced that if he could only be ruined, his fortune is made. Belinda Bates, bosom friend of my sister, and a most intellectual, amiable, and delightful girl, got the Picture Room. She has a fine genius for poetry, combined with real business earnestness, and “goes in”—to use an expression of Alfred’s—for Woman’s mission, Woman’s rights, Woman’s wrongs, and everything that is woman’s with a capital W, or is not and ought to be, or is and ought not to be. “Most praiseworthy, my dear, and Heaven prosper you!” I whispered to her on the first night of my taking leave of her at the Picture-Room door, “but don’t overdo it. And in respect of the great necessity there is, my darling, for more employments being within the reach of Woman than our civilisation has as yet assigned to her, don’t fly at the unfortunate men, even those men who are at first sight in your way, as if they were the natural oppressors of your sex; for, trust me, Belinda, they do sometimes spend their wages among wives and daughters, sisters, mothers, aunts, and grandmothers; and the play is, really, not all Wolf and Red Riding-Hood, but has other parts in it.” However, I digress.

Belinda, as I have mentioned, occupied the Picture Room. We had but three other chambers: the Corner Room, the Cupboard Room, and the Garden Room. My old friend, Jack Governor, “slung his hammock,” as he called it, in the Corner Room. I have always regarded Jack as the finest-looking sailor that ever sailed. He is gray now, but as handsome as he was a quarter of a century ago—nay, handsomer. A portly, cheery, well-built figure of a broad-shouldered man, with a frank smile, a brilliant dark eye, and a rich dark eyebrow. I remember those under darker hair, and they look all the better for their silver setting. He has been wherever his Union namesake flies, has Jack, and I have met old shipmates of his, away in the Mediterranean and on the other side of the Atlantic, who have beamed and brightened at the casual mention of his name, and have cried, “You know Jack Governor? Then you know a prince of men!” That he is! And so unmistakably a naval officer, that if you were to meet him coming out of an Esquimaux snow-hut in seal’s skin, you would be vaguely persuaded he was in full naval uniform.

Jack once had that bright clear eye of his on my sister; but, it fell out that he married another lady and took her to South America, where she died. This was a dozen years ago or more. He brought down with him to our haunted house a little cask of salt beef; for, he is always convinced that all salt beef not of his own pickling, is mere carrion, and invariably, when he goes to London, packs a piece in his portmanteau. He had also volunteered to bring with him one “Nat Beaver,” an old comrade of his, captain of a merchantman. Mr. Beaver, with a thick-set wooden face and figure, and apparently as hard as a block all over, proved to be an intelligent man, with a world of watery experiences in him, and great practical knowledge. At times, there was a curious nervousness about him, apparently the lingering result of some old illness; but, it seldom lasted many minutes. He got the Cupboard Room, and lay there next to Mr. Undery, my friend and solicitor: who came down, in an amateur capacity, “to go through with it,” as he said, and who plays whist better than the whole Law List, from the red cover at the beginning to the red cover at the end.

I never was happier in my life, and I believe it was the universal feeling among us. Jack Governor, always a man of wonderful resources, was Chief Cook, and made some of the best dishes I ever ate, including unapproachable curries. My sister was pastrycook and confectioner. Starling and I were Cook’s Mate, turn and turn about, and on special occasions the chief cook “pressed” Mr. Beaver. We had a great deal of out-door sport and exercise, but nothing was neglected within, and there was no ill-humour or misunderstanding among us, and our evenings were so delightful that we had at least one good reason for being reluctant to go to bed.

We had a few night alarms in the beginning. On the first night, I was knocked up by Jack with a most wonderful ship’s lantern in his hand, like the gills of some monster of the deep, who informed me that he “was going aloft to the main truck,” to have the weathercock down. It was a stormy night and I remonstrated; but Jack called my attention to its making a sound like a cry of despair, and said somebody would be “hailing a ghost” presently, if it wasn’t done. So, up to the top of the house, where I could hardly stand for the wind, we went, accompanied by Mr. Beaver; and there Jack, lantern and all, with Mr. Beaver after him, swarmed up to the top of a cupola, some two dozen feet above the chimneys, and stood upon nothing particular, coolly knocking the weathercock off, until they both got into such good spirits with the wind and the height, that I thought they would never come down. Another night, they turned out again, and had a chimney-cowl off. Another night, they cut a sobbing and gulping water-pipe away. Another night, they found out something else. On several occasions, they both, in the coolest manner, simultaneously dropped out of their respective bedroom windows, hand over hand by their counterpanes, to “overhaul” something mysterious in the garden.

The engagement among us was faithfully kept, and nobody revealed anything. All we knew was, if any one’s room were haunted, no one looked the worse for it.

THE GHOST IN THE CLOCK ROOM

Hesba Stretton

My cousin, John Herschel, turned rather red, and turned rather white, and said he could not deny that his room had been haunted. The Spirit of a woman had pervaded it. On being asked by several voices whether the Spirit had taken any terrible or ugly shape, my cousin drew his wife’s arm through his own, and said decidedly, “No.” To the question, had his wife been aware of the Spirit? he answered, “Yes.” Had it spoken? “Oh dear, yes!” As to the question, “What did it say?” he replied apologetically, that he could have wished his wife would have undertaken the answer, for she would have executed it much better than he. However, she had made him promise to be the mouthpiece of the Spirit, and was very anxious that he should withhold nothing; so, he would do his best, subject to her correction. “Suppose the Spirit,” added my cousin, as he finally prepared himself for beginning, “to be my wife here, sitting among us:”

I was an orphan from my infancy, with six elder half-sisters. A long and persistent course of training imposed upon me the yoke of a second and diverse nature, and I grew up as much the child of my eldest sister, Barbara, as I was the daughter of my deceased parents.

Barbara, in all her private plans, as in all her domestic decrees, inexorably decided that her sisters must be married; and, so powerful had been her single but inflexible will, that each of them had been advantageously settled, excepting myself, upon whom she built her highest hopes.

Most people know a character such as I had grown—a mindless, flirting girl, whose acknowledged vocation was the hunting and catching of an eligible match; rather pretty, lively, and just sentimental enough to make me a very pleasant companion for an idle hour or two, as I exacted and enjoyed the slight attentions an unemployed man is pleased to offer. There was scarcely a young man in the neighbourhood with whom I had not coquetted. I had served my seven years’ apprenticeship to my profession, and had passed my twenty-fifth birthday without having achieved my purpose, when Barbara’s patience was wearied, and she spoke to me with a decision and explicitness we had always avoided; for, on some subjects, it is better to have a silent understanding than an expressed opinion.

“Stella,” she said, solemnly, “you are now five-and-twenty, and every one of your sisters were in homes of their own before they were your age; yet none of them had your advantages or your talents. But I must tell you frankly your chances are on the wane, and, unless you exert yourself, our plans must fail. I have observed an error into which you have fallen, and which I have not mentioned before. Besides your very open and indiscriminate flirtations which young men regard only as an amusing pastime you have a way with you of rallying and laughing at any one who begins to look really serious. Now your opportunity rests upon the moment when they begin to be earnest in their manner. Then you should seem confused and silenced; you ought to lose your vivacity, and half avoid them; seeming almost frightened and quite bewildered by the change. A little melancholy goes a deal further than the utmost cheerfulness; for, if a man believes you can live without him, he will not give you a second thought. I could name half a dozen most eligible settlements you have lost by laughing at the wrong minute. Mortify a man’s self-love, Stella, and you can never heal the wound.”

I paused for a minute or two before I answered; for the original suppressed nature that I had inherited from my unknown mother, was stirring unwonted feeling in my heart.

“Barbara,” I answered, with timidity, “among all the people I have known, I never saw one whom I could reverence and look up to; nor, I am half ashamed to use the word, whom I could love.”

“I do not wonder you are ashamed,” said Barbara, severely. “At your age, you cannot expect to fall in love like a girl of seventeen. But I tell you, definitely and distinctly, it is necessary that you should marry; and we had better work in concert now. So, if you will decide upon any one, I will give you every assistance in my power, and, if you will only concentrate your wishes and abilities, you cannot fail. Propinquity is all you require, if you once make up your mind.”

“I do not like any one I know,” I replied, moodily; “and I have no chance with those who have known me; so I decide upon besieging Martin Fraser.”

Barbara received this announcement with a snort of derisive anger.

The neighbourhood in which we lived was a populous iron district, where, though there were few families of ancient birth or high standing, there were many of our own station, forming a pleasant, hospitable, social class. Our residences were commodious modern houses, built at convenient distances from each other. Some of these, including our own, were the property of an infirm old man, who dwelt in his family mansion, the last of the many gabled, half-timbered, Elizabethan houses which had stood upon the undiscovered iron and coal fields. The last relics of the rural aristocracy of the district, Mr. Fraser and his son led a strictly recluse life, avoiding all communication with their neighbours, whose gaiety and hospitality they could not reciprocate. No one intruded upon their privacy, excepting for the most necessary business transactions. The elder man was almost bedridden, and the younger was said to be entirely absorbed in scientific pursuits. No wonder that Barbara laughed; but her ridicule only excited and confirmed my determination; and the very difficulty of the enterprise gave it the interest that all my other efforts had lacked. I argued obstinately with Barbara till I won her consent.

“You must write to old Mr. Fraser,” I said. “Do not mention the young one, and say your youngest sister is studying astronomy, and, as he possesses the only telescope in the country, you will be greatly indebted to him if he would let her see it.”

“There is one thing in your favour,” Barbara remarked, as she sat down to write; “the old gentleman was once engaged to your mother.”

Oh! I am humbled to think how shrewdly we managed our business, and extorted a kind invitation from Mr. Fraser to the “daughter of his old friend, Maria Horley.”

It was an evening in February when, accompanied only by an old servant—for Barbara was not included in the invitation—I first crossed the threshold of Martin Fraser’s home.

An air of profound peace pervaded the dwelling. I entered it with a vague, uneasy consciousness of unfitness and treachery. My attendant remained in the entrance hall, and, as I was conducted to the library, a feeling of shyness stole over me, which was prompting me to retreat; but, with the recollection that I was becomingly dressed, I regained my confidence, and advanced smilingly into the room. It was a low, oaken-panelled room, sombre, with massive antique furniture that threw deep and curious shadows around, in the flickering light of a fire, by which stood, instead of the recluse, Martin Fraser whom I expected to meet, a quaint, little child, dressed in the garb of a woman, and with a woman’s self-possession and ease of manner.

“I am very glad to see you. You are welcome,” she said, advancing to meet me, and extending her hand to lead me to a seat. She clasped my hand with a firm and peculiar grasp; a clasp of guidance and assistance, quite unlike the ordinary timidity or inertness of a child’s manner, and, placing me in a chair before the fire, she seated herself nearly opposite me.

I made a few embarrassed remarks, to which she replied, and then I noticed her furtively and in silence. A huge black retriever lay motionless at her feet, which rested upon him, covered with the folds of the long robe-like dress she wore. There was an expression of placidity, slightly pensive, upon her tiny features, heightened by a peculiar habit of closing the eyes, which is rarely seen in children, and always gives them a statuesque appearance. It seemed as though she had withdrawn herself into a solitary self-communing, of which there could be no expression either by words or looks. I grew afraid of the silent, weird-like creature, sitting without apparent breath or motion in the dancing fire-light, and I was glad when the door opened, and the object of my pursuit entered. I looked at him inquisitively, for I had recovered from my sense of treachery, and it amused me to think how unconscious he was of our definite plans concerning him. Hitherto the young men I had met had a fear of being caught, greater than my desire to catch them, so our contest had been an open and equal one; but Martin Fraser knew nothing of the wiles of woman. I remembered, that my brown hair fell in curls round my face, and that my dark blue eyes were considered expressive, when I looked up to meet his gaze; but when he accosted me with an air of grave preoccupation and of courteous indifference that would not permit him to notice my personal charms, I trembled to think that all I knew of astronomy was what I had learned at school in Mangnall’s Questions.

The grave, austere man said at once:

“My father, Mr. Fraser, is altogether confined to his own rooms, but he desires the favour of a visit from you. Upon me devolves the honour of showing you what you require to view through the telescope, and, while I adjust it, will you oblige him by conversing with him for a few minutes? Lucy Fraser will accompany you.”

The child rose, and, taking my hand again in her firm hold, led me to the old man’s sitting-room.

“You are like your mother, child,” he said, after looking at me long; “you have her face and eyes; not a whit like your sister Barbara. How did you come by your out-of-the-way name, Stella?”

“My father named me after a favourite racer,” I answered, for the first time giving the simple derivation of my name.

“Just like him,” laughed the old man; “I remember the horse well. I knew your father as well as I do my son Martin. You have seen my son, young lady? Yes, I thought so; and this is my granddaughter, Lucy Fraser, the last chip of the old block; for my son is not a marrying man, and we have adopted her as our heir, and she is always to keep her name, and be the founder of another line of Frasers.

The child stood with pensive, downcast eyes, as though already bowed down by her weight of cares and responsibilities; the old man chatted on, till the deep tones of an organ resounded through the house.

“My uncle is ready for us,” she said to me.

We paused at the library door, for I laid my hand restrainingly on Lucy Fraser’s shoulder, and stood listening to the wonderful music the organ poured forth. It was such as I had never heard before; roaring and swelling like the ceaseless surging of the sea; and, here and there, a single wailing note which seemed to pierce me with an inexpressible pain. When it had ended, I stood before Martin Fraser silent and subdued.

The telescope had been carried out to the end of the terrace, where the house could not intercept our view; and thither Lucy Fraser and I followed the astronomer. We stood upon the highest point of an imperceptibly rising table-land, the horizon of which was from twenty to forty miles distant. An infinite dome of sky was expanded above us, an ocean of firmament of which the dwellers among houses and mountains can have but little conception. The troops of glittering stars, the dark, shrouding night, the unaccustomed voices of my companions, deepened the awe that oppressed me, and, as I stood between them, I became as earnest and occupied as themselves. I forgot everything but the incomprehensible grandeur of the universe revealed to me, and the majestic sweep of the planets across the field of the telescope. What a freshness of awe and delight came over me! What floods of thought came, wave upon wave, across my mind! And how insignificant I felt before this wilderness of worlds!

I asked, with the humility of a child—for all affectation had been charmed away—if I might come again soon?

Martin Fraser met my uplifted eyes with a keen and penetrating look. I did not quail under it, for I was thinking only of the stars. As he looked, his mouth relaxed into a pleased and genial smile.

“We shall always be glad to see you,” he replied.

Barbara was sitting up for me when I returned, and was about to address me with some worldly speculative remark, when I interrupted her quickly. “Not one word, Barbara, not one question, or I never go near The Holmes again.”

I cannot dwell upon details. I went often to the house. Into the dull routine of Mr. Fraser’s and Lucy’s life, I came (I suppose) like a streak of sunshine, lighting up the cloud that had been creeping over them. To both, I brought wholesome excitement and merriment, and so I became dear and necessary to them. But over myself, there came a great and an almost incredible change. I had been frivolous, self-seeking, soul-less; but the solemn study I had begun with other studies that came in its train, awoke me from my inanity, to a life of mental activity. I absolutely forgot my purpose; for I had at once perceived that Martin Fraser was as distant and as self-poised as the Polar Star. So I became to him merely a diligent and insatiable pupil, and he was to me only a grave and exacting master, to be propitiated by my most profound reverence. Each time I crossed the threshold of his quiet home, all the worldliness and coquetry of my nature fell from my soul like an unfit garment, and I entered as into a temple, simple, real, and worshipping.

The happy summer passed away, the autumn crept on, and for eight months I had visited the Frasers constantly, and had never, by word, or look, or tone, intentionally deceived them.

Lucy Fraser and I had long looked forward to an eclipse of the moon, which was visible early in October. I left my home alone in the twilight of that evening, my thoughts dwelling upon the coming pleasure, when, just as I drew near The Holmes, there overtook me one of the young men with whom I had flirted in former times.

“Good evening, Stella,” he exclaimed familiarly, “I have not seen you for a long time. Ah! you are pursuing other game I suppose; but are you not aiming rather too high this time? Well, you are in luck just now, for if Martin Fraser does not come forward, there is George Yorke, just come home from Australia with an immense fortune, and he is longing to remind you of some tender passages between you before he went out. He was showing us a lock of your hair after dinner at the Crown yesterday.”

I listened to this speech with no outward demonstration; but the reality and mortification of my degradation was gnawing me; and, hastening onward to my sanctuary, I sought the presence of my little Lucy Fraser.

“I have done wrong today,” she said. “I have been deceitful. I think I ought to tell you, that you may not think too well of me; but I want you to love me as much as ever. I have not told a story, but I have acted one.”

Lucy Fraser leaned her tiny brow upon her tiny fingers, and her eyes closed in silent self-reading.

“My uncle says,” she continued, looking up for a moment, and blushing like a woman, “that women are, perhaps, less truthful than men. Because they cannot do things by strength, they do them by cunning. They live falsely. They deceive their own selves. Sometimes women deceive for amusement. He has taught me some words which I shall understand better some day:

To thine own self be true,

And it will follow as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

I stood before the child abashed and speechless, listening with burning cheeks.

“Grandpapa showed me a verse in the Bible which is awful to me. Listen. ‘I find more bitter than death, the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands: whoso pleaseth God shall escape from her, but the sinner shall be taken by her.’”

I hid my face in my hands though no eye was on me; for Lucy Fraser had veiled hers with their tremulous lids; and, as I stood confounded and self-accused, a hand was laid upon my arm, and Martin Fraser’s voice said,

“The eclipse, Stella!”

I started at this first utterance of my name, which he had never spoken before. I was completely unnerved, when I found that Lucy Fraser was not to accompany us on the terrace. As Martin Fraser stooped to see if the telescope were rightly adjusted for my use, I shrank from him.

“What is the meaning of this, Stella?” he exclaimed, as I burst into tears. “Shall I speak to you now, Stella?” he said, “while there is yet time, before you leave us. Does your heart cling to us as our hearts cling to you, till we dare not think of the void there will be in our home when you are gone? We did not live before we knew you. You are our health and our life. I have noted you as I never watched a woman before, and I find no fault in you, my pearl, my jewel, my star. Hitherto, woman and deceit have been inseparably conjoined in my mind; but your innocent heart is the home of truth. I know you have had no thought of this, and my vehemence alarms you; but tell me plainly if you can love me?”

He had taken me in his arms, and my head rested against his strongly throbbing heart. His sternness and austerity were gone, and he offered me the undiminished wealth of a love that had not been wasted in fickle likings. My success was perfect, and how gladly would I have remained there till my silence had grown eloquent! But Barbara rose to my memory, and Lucy Fraser’s words still tingled in my ears. The black shadow eating away the heart of the moon seemed to pause in its measured motion. All heaven looked down upon us through the solemn stars. The rustling leaves were hushed, and the scented autumn breeze ceased for a minute; a cloud of truth-compelling witnesses echoed the cry of my awakened conscience. I withdrew myself, sad and shame-stricken.

“Martin Fraser,” I said, “your words constrain me to be true. I am the falsest woman you ever met. I came here with the sole and definite intention of attracting you; and if you had ever gone out into our circle, you would have heard of me only as a flirt, a heartless coquette. I dare not bring falsehood to your fireside, and the bitterness of death to your heart. Do not speak to me now; have patience, and I will write to you!”

He would have detained me, but I sprang away, and, running swiftly clown the avenue, I passed out of my Eden, with the sentence of perpetual banishment in my heart. The eclipse was at the full, and a horror of darkness and dismay engulfed me, as I stood shivering and sobbing under the restless poplars.

Barbara met me as I hastened to hide myself in my own room, and, with her cold glittering eyes fixed inquiringly on me, said,

“Well, what is the matter with you?”

“Nothing,” I answered, “only I am tired of astronomy, and I shall not go to The Holmes again. It is of no use.”

“I always said so,” she replied. “However, to bring matters to a crisis, I gave Mr. Fraser notice we should leave at Christmas. Then you are satisfied that it would be a waste of time to continue going there?”

“Quite,” I said, and passed on to my room, to learn, through the weary hours of that night, what desolation and hopelessness meant.

The next day I wrote to Martin Fraser, in every word sacred truth, excepting that, self-deceived, and with a false pride even in my utter humiliation, I told him I had not loved, and did not love him.

The first object upon which my eyes rested every joyless morning, were the tall poplar trees, waving round his house, and beckoning maddeningly to me. The last thing I saw at night was the steady light in his library, shining like a star among the laurels. But, him I could never see; for my letter had been too explicit to suggest a hope; and I could not, for shame, attempt to meet him in his walks. All that remained, for me was to return to my former life, if I could by any means feed my hungering and fainting soul with the husks that had once satisfied me.

George Yorke renewed his addresses to me, offering me wealth beyond our expectations. It was a sore temptation; for before me lay a monotonous and fretted life with Barbara, and a solitary, uncared for old age. Why could not I live as thousands of other women, who were not unhappy wives? But I remembered a passage I had read in one of Martin’s books: “It is not always our duty to marry; but it is always our duty to abide by right; not to purchase happiness by loss of honour; not to avoid unweddedness by untruthfulness;” and, setting my face steadily to meet the bleakness and bareness of my lot, I rejected the proposal.

Barbara was terribly exasperated; and very miserable we both were, until she accepted an invitation to spend the Christmas with one of her sisters, while I was left, with my old nurse, to superintend the moving of the furniture. I wished to linger in our old home till the last moment; and I was glad to be alone on Christmas day in the deserted house, that, in solitude, I might make my mental record of all its associations and remembrances, before the place knew me no more. So, on Christmas eve, I wandered through the empty rooms, not more empty than my heart, which was being dismantled of its old memories and newer but deeper tendernesses, until I paused mechanically before the window, whence I had often looked across to The Holmes.

The air had been dense and murky all day, with thickly falling snow; but the storm was over, and the moonless sky bright with stars: while the glistening snow reflected light enough to show me where stood, like a dark mass against the sky, the house of Martin Fraser. His room was dark, as it had been for many nights before; but old Mr. Fraser’s window, which was nearer to our house, emitted a brilliant light across the white lawn. I was exhausted with over-work and over-excitement, and leaning there, pressing my heated cheeks against the frosty panes, I rehearsed to myself all the incidents of my intercourse with them; and there followed through my mind picture after picture, dream within dream, visions of the happiness that might have been mine.

As I stood thus, with tears stealing through the clasped hands that covered my eyes, my nurse came in to close the shutters. She started nervously when she saw me.

“I thought you were your mother,” she exclaimed. “I have seen her stand just so, hundreds of times.”

“Susan, how was it that my mother did not marry Mr. Fraser?”

“They were like other people didn’t understand one another, much as they were in love,” she answered. “Mr. Fraser’s first marriage had been for money, and was not a happy one, so he had grown something stern. They quarrelled, and your mother was provoked to marry Mr. Gretton, your father. Well! Mr. Fraser became an old man all at once, and scarcely ever left his own house; so that she never saw him again, near as he lived: though I have often seen her, when your father was off to balls or races or public meetings, standing here just as you stood now. Only the last time you were in her arms, she was leaning against this window when I brought you in to say good night, and she whispered softly, looking up to Heaven, “I have tried to do my duty to my husband and to my little child!”

“Nurse.” I said, “leave me; do not shut the window yet.” It was no longer a selfish emotion that possessed me. I had been murmuring that there was no sorrow like my sorrow; but my mother’s error had been graver, and her trials deeper than mine. The burden she had borne had weighed her down into an early grave; but it had not passed away from earth with her. It rested now, heavily augmented by her death, upon the heart of the aged man, who, doubtless, in the contemplative time, was reviewing the events of his past life, and this, chiefly, because it was the saddest of them all. I longed to see him once again to see him who had mourned my mother’s death more bitterly and lastingly than any other being, and I determined to steal secretly across the fields, and up the avenue, and, if his window were uncurtained as its brightness suggested, to look upon him once more in remembrance of my mother.

I hesitated upon our door-step, as though my mother and myself were both concerned in some doubtful enterprise; but, with the hardihood of my nature, I drove away the scruple, and passed on into the frosty night.

Yes, the window was uncurtained. I could tell that at the avenue gate; and I should see him, whom my mother loved, lying alone and uncheered upon his couch, as he would lie now all his weary years through, till Lucy Fraser was old enough to be a daughter to him. And then I remembered a rumour that the old man’s grandchild was dying, which Susan had told me sorrowfully an hour or two ago; and, growing bewildered, I ran on swiftly until I stood before the window.

It was no longer an invalid’s room; the couch was gone and the sheltering screen, and Lucy’s little chair within it. Neither were there any appliances of modern luxury or wealth; no softness, nor colouring, nor gorgeousness: it was simply the library and workroom of a busy student, who was forgetful and negligent of comfort. Yet, such as it was, my heart recognised it as home. There Martin sat, deep, as was his wont, in complicated calculations, and frequent reference to the books that were strewn about.

Could it be possible that yonder absorbed man had once spoken passionately to me of love, and now he sat in light, and warmth, and indifference, almost within reach of my hand, while I, like an outcast, stood in cold, and darkness, and despair? Was there, then, no echo of my footstep lingering about the threshold, and no shadowy memory of my face coming between him and his studies? I had forfeited the right to sit beside him, reading the observations his pencil noted down, and chasing away the gloom that was deepening on his nature; and I had not the hope, which would have been really a hope and a consolation to me, that some other woman, more true and more worthy, would by-and-by own my forfeited right.

I heard a bell tinkle, and Martin rose and left the room. I wondered if I should have time to creep in, and steal but one scrap of paper which had been thrown aside carelessly; but, as I tremblingly held the handle of the glass door, he returned, bearing in his arms the emaciated form of little Lucy Fraser. He had wrapped her carefully in a large cloak, and now, as he wheeled a chair to the fire and placed her in it, every rigid lineament of his countenance was softened into tenderness. I stretched out my arms towards him with an intense yearning to be gathered again to his noble heart, and have this chill and darkness dissipated; I turned away, with this last tender image of him graven on my memory, to retrace my steps to my desolate home.

There was a sudden twittering in the ivy over-head, and a little bird, pushed out of its nest into the cold night air, came fluttering down, and flew against the lighted panes. In an instant, his dog, which had been uneasy at my vicinity before, stood baying at the window, and I had only time to escape and hide myself among the shrubs, when he opened it, and stepped out upon the terrace. The dog tracked down the path by which I had come, barking joyfully as he careered along the open fields; and, as Martin looked round, I cowered more closely into the deepest shadows. I knew he must find me; for my footmarks were plain upon the newly-fallen snow, and an extravagant sensation of shame and gladness overpowered me. I saw him lose the footprints once or twice, but at last he was upon the right trace, and, lifting the boughs beneath which I had hidden, he found me among the laurels. I was crouching, and he stooped down curiously.

“It is Stella,” I said, faintly.

“Stella?” he echoed.

He lifted me from the ground like a truant child, whom he had expected home every hour, carried me across the terrace into the library, and set me clown in the light and warmth of his own hearth. One little kiss to the child, whose eyes beamed with a strange light upon us; and then, taking both my hands in his, he bent down and read my face. I met his gaze unshrinkingly, eye to eye. We sounded the depths of each other’s heart in that long, unwavering look. Never more could there be doubt or mistrust; never again deception or misconstruction, between us.

Our star had arisen, and full orbed, rounded into perfection, shed a soft and brilliant light upon the years to come. Chime after chime, like the marriage peal of our souls, came the sound of distant bells across tho snow, and roused us from our reverie.

“I thought I had lost you altogether,” said Martin to me. “I believed you would come back to me, somehow, at some time; but this evening I heard that you were gone, and I was telling Lucy Fraser so, not long since. She has been pining to see you.”

Now, he suffered me to take the child upon my lap, and she nestled closely to me, with a weary sigh, resting her head upon my bosom. Just then, we heard the carol singers coming up the avenue, and Martin drew the curtains over the window, before which they stationed themselves to sing the legend of the miraculous star in the East.

When the singers ended and raised their cry of “We wish you a merry Christmas, and a happy New Year!” he went out into the porch to speak to them, and I hid my face in the child’s curls, and thanked God who had so changed me.

“But what is this, Martin?” I cried in terror, as I raised my head, on his return.

The child’s downcast eyes were closely sealed, and her little firm hand had grown lax and nerveless. Insensible and breathless, she lay in my arms like a withering flower.

“It is only fainting,” said Martin; “she has been drooping ever since you left us, Stella; and my only hope of her recovery rests in your loving care.”

All that night, I sat with the little child resting on my bosom; revived from her death-like swoon, and sleeping calmly in my arms because she was already beginning to share in the life and joy and brightness of my heart. There was perfect silence and tranquillity enclosing us in a blissful oasis, interrupted only once by the entrance of my nurse, who had been found by Martin in a state of the utmost perplexity and alarm.

The happy Christmas morning dawned. I asked my nurse to arrange my hair in the style in which my mother used to wear hers. And when, after a long conversation with Susan, Mr. Fraser received me as his daughter with great emotion and affection, and oftener called me Maria than Stella, I was satisfied to be identified with my mother. Then, in the evening, sitting amongst them, a passion of trembling and weeping seized me, which could only be soothed by their fondest assurances. After which I sang them some old songs, with nothing in them but their simple melody; and Mr. Fraser talked freely of former years and of the times to come; and Lucy’s eyes almost laughed.

Then Martin took me home along the familiar path, which I had so often traversed alone and fearless; but the excess of gladness made me timid, and at every unusual sound I crept closer to him, with a sweet sense of being protected.

One sunny day in spring, with blithe Lucy and triumphant dictatress Barbara for my brides-maids, I accepted, humbly and joyfully, the blessed lot of being Martin Fraser’s wife. And even in the scenes of the empty-headed folly of my girlhood, I thenceforth tried to be better, and to do my duty in love, gratitude, and devotion. Only, at first, Martin pretended not to believe that on that night I stole out to have a last glimpse, not of him, but of his father: I knowing nothing of the change that had transformed Mr. Fraser’s sitting-room into his own study.

THE GHOST IN THE DOUBLE ROOM

George Augustus Sala

Was the next Ghost on my list. I had noted the rooms down in the order in which they were drawn, and this was the order we were to follow. I invoked the Spectre of the Double Room, with the least possible delay, because we all observed John Herschel’s wife to be much aifected, and we all refrained, as if by common consent, from glancing at one another. Alfred Starling, with the tact and good feeling which are never wanting in him, briskly responded to my call, and declared the Double Room to be haunted by the Ghost of the Ague.

“What is the Ghost of the Ague like?” asked every one, when there had been a laugh.

“Like?” said Alfred. “Like the Ague.”

“What is the Ague like?” asked somebody. .

“Don’t you know?” said Alfred. “I’ll tell you.”

We had both, Tilly by which affectionate diminutive I mean my adored Matilda and your humble servant, agreed that it was not only inexpedient, but in the highest degree contrary to the duty we owed to the community at large, to wait any longer. I had a hundred arguments to bring forward against the baleful effects of long engagements; and Tilly began to quote poetry of a morbid tendency. Our parents and guardians entertained different opinions. My uncle Bonsor wanted us to wait till the shares in the Caerlyon-upon-Usk Something or Other Company, in which undertaking I was vicariously interested, were at a premium—they have been at a hopeless discount for years. Tilly’s papa and mamma called Tilly a girl and self a boy, when we were nothing whatsoever of the kind, and only the most ardent and faithful pair of young lovers that had existed since the time of Abelard and Heloise, or Florio and Biancafiore. As, however, our parents and guardians were not made of adamant or Roman cement, we were not permitted to add another couple to the catalogue of historically unfortunate lovers. Uncle Bonsor and Mr. and Mrs. Captain Standfast (my Tilly’s papa and mamma) at last relented. Much was effected towards this desirable consummation by my arguments against celibacy, contained in eight pages foolscap, and of which I made copies in triplicate for the benefit of our hard-hearted relatives. More was done by Tilly threatening to poison herself. Most, however, was accomplished by our both making up our minds to tell a piece thereof to our parents and guardians, and telling them that if they did not acquiesce in our views we would run away and get married at the very first opportunity. There was no just cause or impediment. We were young, healthy, and had plenty of money between us. Loads of money—as we thought then. As to personal appearance, Tilly was simply Lovely, and my whiskers had not been ill spoken of in the best society in Dover. So it was all arranged, and on the twenty-seventh of December, eighteen fifty dash, being the morrow of Boxing day, Alfred Starling, gent., was to be united in the holy bonds of matrimony to Matilda, only daughter of Captain Rockleigh Standfast, R.N., of Snargatestone Villa, Dover.

I had been left an orphan at a very early age, and the guardian of my moderate property (including the shares in the Caerlyon-upon-Usk Something or Other concern), and guardian of my person, was my uncle Bonsor. He sent me to Merchant Taylors’, and afterwards for a couple of years to college at Bonn, on the Rhine. He afterwards—to keep me out of mischief, I believe—paid a handsome premium for my entrance into the counting-house of Messrs. Baum, Bromm, and Boompjees, German merchants, of Finsbury Circus, under whose tutelage I did as little as I liked in the corresponding department, and was much envied by my brother salaried clerks. My uncle Bonsor resided chiefly at Dover, where he was making large sums of money by government contracts, whose objects apparently consisted in boring holes in the chalk and then filling them up again. My uncle was, perhaps, the most respectable man in Europe, and was well known in the city of London as “Responsible Bonsor.” He was one of those men who are confidently said to be “good for any amount.” He had a waistcoat—worn winter and summer—a waistcoat that wavered in hue between a sunny buff and a stony drab, which looked so ineffably respectable that I am certain if it had been presented at the pay-counter of any bank in Lombard street the clerks would have cashed it at once for any amount of notes or gold demanded. My uncle Bonsor entrenched himself behind this astonishing garment as behind a fortification, and fired guns of respectability at you. That waistcoat had carried resolutions, assuaged the ire of indignant shareholders, given stability to wavering schemes, and brought in thumping subscriptions for burnt-out Caffres and destitute Fee-jees. It was a safe waistcoat, and Bonsor was a safe man. He was mixed up with a good many companies; but whenever a projector or promoter came to him with a plan, my responsible uncle would confer with his waistcoat, and within five minutes would either tell the projector or promoter to walk out of his counting-house, or put his name down for a thousand pounds. And the scheme was made that Responsible Bonsor put his name down for.

It was arranged that I was to go down to Dover on Christmas-eve, staying at my uncle’s, and that we were to dine all together at Captain Standfast’s on Christmas day. Boxing day was to be devoted to bonnets on the part of my beloved, and to the signing and sealing of certain releases, deeds, covenants, and other documents connected with law and money, on the part of self, my uncle, and my prospective papa in-law, and on the twenty-seventh we were to be Married.

Of course my connexion with Messrs. Baum, Bromm, and Boompjees was brought to an amicable termination. I gave the clerks a grand treat at a hostelry in Newgate street, and had the pleasure of receiving, at a somewhat late hour, and at least eighty-seven times, a unanimous choral assurance, not unaccompanied by hiccups, that I was a “jolly good fellow.” I was unwillingly compelled to defer my departure for Dover till the 8.30 P.M. express mail on Christmas eve, being engaged to a farewell dinner at four, at the mansion of our Mr. Max Boompjees, junior and dinner-giving partner in the firm, in Finsbury Circus. A capital dinner it was, and very merry. I left the gentlemen over their wine, and had just time to pop into a cab and catch the mail train at London Bridge.

You know how quickly time passes on a railway journey, when one has dined comfortably before starting. I seemed to have been telegraphed down to Dover, so rapidly were the eighty odd miles skimmed over. But it now becomes my duty to impart to you the knowledge of my Terrible Misfortune. In my youth, a little boy at a preparatory school near Ashford, I had experienced a touch of the dreadful disease of the Kentish marshes. How long this malady had lain concealed in my frame, and by what accident of time or temperature it became again evolved, I had no means of judging, but by the time the train arrived at Dover I was in the throes of acute Ague.

It was a horrible, persistent, regular shivering and shaking, a racking palsy, a violent tremor, accompanied, I am sure, by fever, for my temples throbbed, and I experienced an almost deafening, jarring, rattling noise in the head. My blood seemed all in revolt, and surging backwards and forwards in my veins, and my unhappy body swayed from side to side with the distempered current. On the platform I staggered to and fro; and the porter, of whose arm I caught hold to steady myself, seemed, lantern and all, by mere communicated violence, to be shaken and buffeted about as I was. I had always been an abstemious young man, and had not exceeded in the consumption of the hospitable junior partner’s rare old hock; besides, for all the noise in my head, I could think and talk—albeit my teeth chattered, and my tongue wagged in my mouth with aguish convulsions. I had never known before that railway porters were a hardhearted race, but one tall man in velveteen grinned most impertinently as I was helped into a fly, and I am certain that his companion, a short, fat fellow, with a leer in his eye, thrust his tongue into his cheek as he heaped, at my desire, great-coats and rugs over me, and bade the flyman drive to the Marine Parade, where my uncle resided. I had told every one at the station about my attack of ague.

“He’s got his load,” I heard the tall porter exclaim, as we drove off. Of course he meant that the flyman had got all my luggage.

It was a dreadful five minutes’ ride to my uncle’s. The fit was so strong on me that my head and limbs kept bumping against opposite sides of the fly, and once came in contact with the window-glass. And the noise in my head never ceased. I stumbled out, somehow, when the vehicle stopped, and, clinging to the knocker of the avuncular door, struck such a quivering peal of blows—I had previously scattered the cabman’s fare on the pavement in the attempt to place the money in his hand—that Jakes, my uncle’s confidential man, who opened the door, stared with astonishment.

“I’m very ill, Jakes,” I stammered, when I had staggered into the hall. “I’m down with that dreadful Ague again.”

“Yes, sir,” answered Jakes, with something like a grin on his countenance too. “Compts of the season, sir. Hadn’t you better go to bed, sir?”

Now the house was all lighted up, for there was to be a snapdragon party, and I knew that my Tilly and all the Standfasts were up-stairs with my uncle and his waistcoat, and that they were to wait for my arrival before lighting the bowl. And, ill as I was, I burned to see my darling.

“No, Jakes,” I said, “I’ll try and bear up. You had better bring me a little cognac, and some very hot water, into the dining-room. It will do me good, and the fit may leave me.” What would you believe was the reply of this pampered domestic?

“Better not, sir,” he had the hardihood to observe. “Christmas time, sir. Plenty more like you. Better go to bed, sir. Think of your head in the morning, sir.”

“Fellow,” I began to retort, still violently trembling, when I saw my uncle Bonsor appear at the head of the staircase. There was a group of ladies and gentlemen in the background, and as well as I could see for shaking, there were the clear golden curls of my Tilly. But her face looked so scared and terrified.

“Alfred,” said my uncle, sternly, from behind his waistcoat, “you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Go to bed directly, sir!”

“Uncle!” I cried, with a desperate attempt to keep myself steady, “do you think I’m——”

Here I made an effort to ascend the staircase, but my foot caught either in the carpet or over one of the confounded brass rods, and, upon my word, I tumbled heels over heels into the hall. And yet, even as I lay recumbent, I shook worse than ever. I heard my uncle’s responsible voice ordering the servants to carry me to bed. And I was carried too; Jakes and a long-legged foot-page conveying my shaking body to my bedroom.

The night was brief and terrible as in an access of fever, and I lay shaking and chattering in the burning bed. In the morning, my uncle sent word to say that my ague was all nonsense, and that I was to come down to breakfast,

I went down, determined on remonstrance, but holding on by the banisters and quivering in every limb. O! for the tribulations of that wretched Christmas day. I was received with sneers, and advised to take very strong tea with a little cognac; yet soon afterwards my uncle shook hands with me, and said that it was only once a year, and that he supposed boys would be boys. Everybody wished me a merry Christmas; but I could only return the compliments of the season in a spasmodic stutter. I took a walk on the pier immediately after breakfast, but I nearly tumbled into the sea, and bumped against so many posts, that I had to be led home by a mariner in a yellow sou’-wester hat, who insisted that I should give him five shillings to drink my health. Then came a more appalling ordeal. I was to call at Snargatestone Villa to accompany my Tilly and the family to church. To my great relief, though I was shaking in every joint of my fingers and toes, nobody took any notice of my alarming complaint. I began to hope that it might be intermittent, and would pass off, but it wouldn’t, and rather increased in violence. My darling girl patted me on the head, and hoped that I was “a good boy, now;” but when I began, shiveringly, to explain my attack of ague, she only laughed. We went to church, and then my ague soon brought me into disgrace again. First I created terrible scandal by knocking up against the old pauper women in the free seats and nearly upsetting the beadle. Then I knocked the church services and hymn-books off the ledge of the pew. Then I kicked a hassock from beneath the very knees of my future mamma-in-law. Then I trod—accidentally I declare—on the toes of Mary Seaton, my Tilly’s pretty cousin; whereupon she gave a little scream, and my beloved looked daggers at me; and as a climax, in the agony of that extraordinary horizontal shaking fit of mine, I burst the pew door open, and tumbled once more against the beadle, who in stern tones, and in the name of the churchwardens, desired me either to behave myself or to leave the church. I saw that it was no good contending against my complaint, so I did leave; but as I lurched out of the edifice I seemed to see the clergyman shaking in the reading-desk, and the clerk wagging to and fro beneath him; while the hatchments and tablets shook on the walls; and the organ in the gallery kept bumping now against the charity boys, now against the charity girls.

It wasn’t vertigo: the head swims round under that circumstance. It was clearly ague, and of the very worst description; the body shaking from right to left, and the blood surging in the ears with fever.

At dinner-time—my agonies had never ceased, but had not attracted notice—I began literally to put my foot into it again. First, handing Mrs. Van Plank of Sandwich down to the dining-room—my uncle Bonsor escorted Tilly—I entangled myself in the bugle ornaments which that wealthy but obese woman persisted in wearing; and we came down together with alarming results. I was undermost, shaking miserably, with Mrs. Van Plank’s large person pressing on my shirt-studs. When we were assisted to rise she would not be appeased. She would not join us at dinner. She ordered her fly and returned to Sandwich, and as the carriage drove away, Captain Standfast, R.N., looking at me as savagely as though he would have liked to have me up at the gangway and give me six dozen on the instant, said,

“There goes poor Tilly’s diamond bracelet. The old screw won’t give it her now. I saw the case on the cushion of the fly.”

Was it my fault! could I help my lamentable ague?

At dinner I went from bad to worse. Item: I spilt two ladlefuls of mock turtle soup over a new damask tablecloth. Item: I upset a glass of Madeira over Mary Seaton’s blue moire dress. Item: in a convulsive fit of shaking, I nearly stabbed Lieutenant Lamb, of the Fifty-fourth Regiment, stationed on the Heights, with a silver fork; and, finally, in a maniacal attempt to carve a turkey, I sent the entire body ot that Christinas bird, with a garland of sausages clinging to it, full butt into the responsible waist-coat of my uncle Bonsor.

The peace was made somehow; I’m sure I don’t know in what manner, but half an hour afterwards we were all very pleasant and talkative over our dessert. When I say all, I of course except my unhappy self. There had been no solution of continuity in my shaking. Somebody, I think, proposed my health. In returning thanks, I hit the proposer a tremendous blow under the left eye with my elbow. Endeavouring to regain my equilibrium, I sent a full glass of claret into the embroidered cambric bosom of that unhappy Lieutenant Lamb. In desperation I caught hold of the tablecloth with both hands. I saw how it would be; the perfidious polished mahogany slid away from my grasp. I turned my foot frantically round the leg of the table nearest me, and with a great crash over went dining-table, cut-glass decanters, and dessert. Lieutenant Lamb was badly hit across the bridge of the nose with a pair of silver nut-crackers, and my uncle Bonsor’s head was crowned, in quite a classic manner, with filberts and hot-house grapes.

The bleak December sun rose next morning upon ruin and catastrophe. As well as I can collect my scattered reminiscences of that dismal time, my offences against decorum were once more condoned: not in consequence of my complaint (in which my relatives and friends persisted in disbelieving), but on the ground that it was “only once a year.” Lawyers came backwards and forwards to Snargatestone Villa during the forenoon. There was a great production of tin boxes, red tape, blue seals, foolscap paper, and parchment; and my uncle Bonsor was more responsible than ever. They brought me a paper to sign at last, whispering much among themselves as they did so; and I protest that I could see nothing but a large pool of white, jogging about in a field of green tablecloth, while on the paper an infinity of crabbed characters seemed racing up and down in a crazed and furious manner. I endeavoured to nerve myself to the task of signing, I bit my lips, I clenched my left hand, I tried to screw my wagging head on to my neck, I cramped my toes up in my boots, I held my breath; but was it my fault, when I clutched the pen and tried to write my name, that the abominable goosequill began to dance, and skate, and leap, and plunge, and dig its nibs into the paper; that when, in despair, I seized the inkstand, to hold it nearer to the pen, I shook its sable contents, in horrid, horned, tasseled blots, all over a grave legal document? I finished my achievement by inflicting a large splash on my uncle’s sacred waistcoat, and hitting Captain Standfast under the third rib with the pen.

“That will do,” my papa-in-law cried, collaring me. “Leave the house, scoundrel!”

But I broke from his grasp, and fled to the drawing-room, knowing that my Tilly would be there with her bridesmaids and her bonnets.

“Tilly—my adored Matilda!” I cried.

“No further explanation is needed, sir,” broke in my beloved, in an inexorable tone. “I have seen and heard quite enough. Alfred Starling, I would sooner wed the meanest hind that gathers samphire on yon cliff than become the bride of a profligate and drunkard. Go, sir; repent if you can; be ashamed if you can. Henceforth we are strangers. Slave of self-indulgence, adieu for ever!” And she swept out of the room, and I could hear her sobbing her pretty heart out in the boudoir beyond.

I was discarded and expelled for ever from Snargatestone Villa; my uncle Bonsor repudiated me, and disinherited me from any share in his waistcoat; I hurled myself into the next train at the station, and shook all the way back to town. At about dusk on that dreadful Boxing day, I found myself wandering and jolting about the purlieus of Soho.

From Soho square—the south-west side, I think—branches a shabby, dingy little court, called Bateman’s buildings. I was standing shivering at the corner of this ill-favoured place, when I stumbled against a gentleman, who looked about seven-eighths soldier and one-eighth civilian.

He was a little, dapper, clean-limbed, young-looking old man, with a yellow face, and grey hair and whiskers. Soldiers, save in the cavalry, didn’t wear moustaches then. He wore a blue uniform coat, rather white at the seams, and a silver medal with a faded ribbon on his breast. He had a bunch of parti-coloured streamers in his undress cap; he carried a bamboo cane under his arm; on each sleeve he wore golden stripes, much tarnished; on his scarlet collar was embroidered a golden lion; and on his shoulders he had a pair of little, light, golden epaulettes, that very much resembled two sets of teeth from a dentist’s glass-case, covered with bullion.

“And how are you, my hearty?” said the military gentleman, cheerily.

I answered that I was the most miserable wretch in the world; upon which the military gentleman, slapping me on the back and calling me his gallant comrade, asked me to have a pint of beer, warmed with a little spice, and a dash, of Old Tom in it, for the sake of Christmas.

“You’re a roving buck,” observed my new friend. “I’m a roving buck. You never happened to have a twin brother named Siph, did you?”

“No,” I answered, moodily.

“He was as like you as two peas,” continued the military gentleman, who had by this time taken my arm, and was leading me all shaking and clattering towards a mouldy little tavern, on whose door-jambs were displayed a couple of coloured cartoons, framed and glazed and much fly-blown, and displaying, the one, the presentment of an officer in sky-blue uniform much belaced with silver, and the other a bombadier with an enormous shako ramming the charge into a cannon: the whole surmounted by a placard setting forth that smart young men were required for the Honourable East India Company’s infantry, cavalry, and artillery, and earnestly exhorting all smart young men, as aforesaid, to apply forthwith to Sergeant-Major Chutnee, who was always to be heard of at the bar of the “Highland Laddie,” or at the office in Bateman’s buildings.

“The last time I saw him,” went on the man with the yellow face and the grey whiskers, when he had tilted me into the “Highland Laddie,” pinned me, shaking, against the bar-counter, and ordered a pint of sophisticated beer, “he had left our service, and was a field-marshal in the army of the King of Oude. Many’s the time I’ve seen him with his cocked-hat and di’mond epulets riding on a white elephant, with five-and-twenty black fellows running after him to brush the flies away and draw the soda-water corks. Such brandy he’d have with it, and all through meeting me promiscuous in this very public.”

It is useless to prolong the narrative of my conversation with the military gentleman; suffice it to say, that within an hour I had taken the fatal shilling, and enlisted in the service of the Honourable East India Company. I was not a beggar. I possessed property, over which my uncle Bonsor had no control. I had not committed any crime; but I felt lost, ruined, and desperate, and I enlisted. For a wonder, when I was brought before a magistrate to be attested, and before a surgeon to be examined respecting my sanitary fitness for the service, my ague seemed entirely to have left me. I stood firm and upright in the witness-box, and under the measuring standard, and was only deterred by shame and anguish at the misconstruction put upon my conduct at Dover from negotiating for my discharge.

I had scarcely reached the East India recruiting depot at Brentwood, however, before the attacks of ague returned with redoubled severity. At first, on my stating that I had an ear for music, they began to train me for a bandsman, but I could not keep a wind instrument in my hands, and struck those that were played by my comrades from their grasp. Then, I was put into the awkward squad among the recruits, and the sergeants caned me; but I could never get beyond the preliminary drill of the goose-step, and I kept my own time, and not the squad’s, even then. The depot surgeons wouldn’t place the slightest credence in my ague, and the sergeant-major of my company reported that I was a skulking, “malingering” impostor. Among my comrades who despised, without pitying me, I got the nickname of “Young Shivery-Shakery.” And the most wonderful thing is, that, although I could have procured remittances at any time, the thought of purchasing my discharge never entered my poor, shaking, jarring head.

How they came to send such a trembling, infirm creature as a soldier to India, I can’t make out; but sent I was, by long sea, in a troop-ship, with seven or eight hundred more recruits. My military career in the East came to a very speedy and inglorious termination. We had scarcely arrived at Bombay when the battalion of the European regiment into which I was draughted was sent up-country to the banks of the Sutlej, where the Sikh war was then raging. It was the campaign of Aliwal and Sobraon, but it was very little that I saw of that glorious epoch in our military annals. In contemptuous reference to my nervous disorder, I was only permitted to form part of the baggage-guard, and one night, after perhaps ten days’ march, throughout which I had shaken most awfully, an attack was made on our rear for mere purposes of plunder by a few rascally budmashes or thieves. Nothing was easier than to put these paltry scoundrels to the rout. I had been brave enough as a lad and as a young man. I declare that on the present occasion I didn’t run away; but my unhappy disease got the mastery of me. I shook my musket out of my hands, my shako off my head, and my knapsack off my back, and my wretched legs shook and jolted me, as it seemed, over miles of arid country. There was some talk of shooting me afterwards, and some of flogging me; but corporal punishment did not exist in the Company’s army. They sent ine to a vile place of incarceration called a “congee house,” where I was fed principally on rice-water, and at last I was conveyed to Bombay, tried by court-martial, sentenced, and publicly drummed out of my regiment as a coward. Yes, I, the son of a gentleman, and the possessor of a genteel private property, had the facings cut off my uniform, and, to the sound of the “Rogues’ March,” was dismissed from the service of the Honourable East India Company with ignominy and disgrace.

I can scarcely tell how I reached England again; whether a berth was given me, whether I paid for it, or whether I worked my passage home. I can only remember that the ship in which I was a passenger broke her back in Algoa Bay, close to the Cape, and became a total wreck. There was not the slightest danger; we were surrounded by large and small craft, and every soul on board was saved; but I shook so terribly and incessantly while the boats were leaving the vessel, that the whole ship’s company hooted and groaned at me when I was shoved over the side, and I was not allowed to go in the long-boat, but was towed alone and aft in the dingy to shore.

I took passage in another ship, which did nothing but shake all the way from the Cape to Plymouth, and at last I reached England. I wrote innumerable letters to my friends and relatives, to Tilly and to my uncle Bonsor; but the only answer I received was a few formal lines from my uncle’s lawyer, telling me that my illegible scrawls had come to the hands of the persons for whom they were designed; but that no further notice could be taken of my communications. I was put into the possession of my property to the last penny, but it seems to me that I must have shaken it away either at dice or bagatelle, or ninepins or billiards. And I remember that I never made a stroke at the latter game without hitting my adversary with the cue in the chest, knocking down the marker, sending the balls scudding through the windows, disarranging the scores, and cutting holes in the cloth, for which I had to pay innumerable guineas to the proprietor of the rooms.

I remember one day going into a jeweller’s shop in Regent street to purchase a watch-key. I had only a silver one now, my gold repeater had been shaken away in some unaccountable manner. It was winter-time, and I wore an overcoat with long loose sleeves. While the shopkeeper was adjusting a key to my watch, my ague fit came upon me with demoniacal ferocity, and, to my horror and dismay, in catching hold of the counter to save myself, I tilted a trayful of diamond rings over. Some fell on the floor; but some, horror and anguish! fell into the sleeves of my overcoat. I shook so that I seemed to have shaken diamond rings into my hands, my pockets, my very boots. By some uncontrollable impulse I attempted flight, but was seized at the very shop door, and carried, shaking, to the police station.

I was taken before a magistrate, and committed, still shaking, in a van, to gaol. I shook for some time in a whitewashed cell, when I was brought up, shaking, to the Central Criminal Court, and placed, shaking, on my trial for an attempted robbery of fifteen hundred pounds’ worth of property. The evidence was clear against me. My counsel tried to plead something about “kleptomania,” but in vain. My uncle Bonsor, who had come expressly up from Dover, spoke strongly against my character. I was found guilty; yes, I, the most innocent and unfortunate young man breathing, and sentenced to seven years’ transportation! I can recal the awful scene vividly to memory now. The jury in a body were shaking their heads at me. So was the judge, so was my uncle Bonsor, so were the spectators in the gallery; and I was holding on by the spikes on the ledge of the dock, shaking from right to left like ten thousand million aspen-leaves. My skull was splitting, my brain was bursting, when——

I woke.

I was lying in a very uncomfortable position in a first-class carriage of the Dover mail train; everything in the carriage was shaking; the oil was surging to and fro in the lamp;” my companions were swaying to and fro, and the sticks and umbrellas were rattling in the network above. The train was “at speed,” and my frightful dream was simply due to the violent and unusual oscillation of the train. Then, sitting up, and rubbing my eyes, immensely relieved, but holding on by the compartments near me (so violently did the carriages shake from side to side), I began to remember what I had dreamed or heard of others’ dreams before; while at sea, or while somebody was knocking loudly at the door; and of the odd connexions between unusual sound and motion on the thoughts of our innermost souls. And again with odd distinctness I remember that at one period of my distempered vision, namely, when I was attested and examined as a recruit, I had remained perfectly still and steady. This temporary freedom from ague I was fain to ascribe to the customary two or three minutes’ stoppage of the train at Tunbridge Wells. But, thank Heaven, all this was but a dream!

“Enough to shake one’s head off!” exclaimed the testy old lady opposite, alluding to the oscillation of the train, as the guard appeared at the window with a shout of “Do-vor,!”

“Well, mum, it have bin a shaking most unusual all the way down,” replied that functionary. “Thought we should have bin off the line, more than once. Screws will be looked to tomorrow morning. ‘Night, sir!” this was to me: I knew the man well. “Merry Christmas and a happy new year! You’ll be wanting a fly to Snargatestone Villa, won’t you, sir? Now, por-ter!”

I did want that fly, and I had it. I paid the driver liberally, and did not scatter his money over the pavement. Mr. Jakes insisted upon my having something hot in the dining-room the moment I arrived. The weather was so “woundy cold’ he said. I joined the merry party up-stairs, and was received by my Tilly with open arms, and by my uncle Bonsor with an open waistcoat. I partook in cheerful moderation of the snapdragon festivities of Christmas-eve. We all dined together on Christmas day, and I helped the soup and carved a turkey, beautifully; and on the morrow, Boxing day, was complimented by my uncle’s lawyer on my remarkably neat calligraphy, as displayed in the signatures to the necessary legal documents. On the twenty-seventh of December, eighteen forty-six, I was married to my darling Tilly, and was going to live happy ever afterwards, when——

I woke again

—really did wake in bed in this Haunted House—and found that I had been very much shaken on the railway coming down, and that there was no marriage, no Tilly, no Mary Seaton, no Van Plank, no anything but myself and the Ghost of the Ague, and the two inner windows of the Double Room rattling like the ghosts of two departed watchmen who wanted spiritual assistance to carry me to the dead and gone old Watch-house.

THE GHOST IN THE PICTURE ROOM

Adelaide Anne Proctor

Belinda, with a modest self-possession quite her own, promptly answered for this Spectre in a low, clear voice:

The lights extinguished; by the hearth I leant,

Half weary with a listless discontent.

The flickering giant shadows, gathering near.

Closed round me with a dim and silent fear;

All dull, all dark; save when the leaping flame,

Glancing, lit up The Picture’s ancient frame.

Above the hearth it hung. Perhaps the night,

My foolish tremors, or the gleaming light,

Lent Power to that Portrait dark and quaint—

A Portrait such as Rembrandt loved to paint—

The likeness of a Nun. I seemed to trace

A world of sorrow in the patient face,

In the thin hands folded across her breast—

Its own and the room’s shadow hid the rest.

I gazed and dreamed, and the dull embers stirred,

Till an old legend that I once had heard

Came back to me; linked to the mystic gloom

Of the dark Picture in the ghostly room.

In the far South, where clustering vines are hung;

Where first the old chivalric lays were sung;

Where earliest smiled that gracious child of France,

Angel and Knight and Fairy, called Romance,

I stood one day. The warm blue June was spread

Upon the earth; blue summer overhead,

Without a cloud to fleck its radiant glare,

Without a breath to stir its sultry air.

All still, all silent, save the sobbing rush

Of rippling waves, that lapsed in silver hush

Upon the beach; where, glittering towards the strand,

The purple Mediterranean kissed the land.

All still, all peaceful; when a convent chime

Broke on the midday silence for a time,

Then trembling into quiet, seemed to cease,

In deeper silence and more utter peace.

So as I turned to gaze, where gleaming white,

Half hid by shadowy trees from passers’ sight,

The convent lay, one who had dwelt for long

In that fair home of ancient tale and song,

Who knew the story of each cave and hill,

And every haunting fancy lingering still

Within the land, spake thus to me, and told

The convent’s treasured legend, quaint and old:

Long years ago, a dense and flowering wood,

Still more concealed where the white convent stood,

Borne on its perfumed wings the title came:

“Our Lady of the Hawthorns” is its name.

Then did that bell, which still rings out today

Bid all the country rise, or eat, or pray.

Before that convent shrine, the haughty knight

Passed the lone vigil of his perilous fight;

For humbler cottage strife, or village brawl,

The abbess listened, prayed, and settled all.

Young hearts that came, weighed down by love or wrong,

Left her kind presence comforted and strong.

Each passing pilgrim, and each beggar’s right

Was food, and rest, and shelter for the night.

But, more than this, the nuns could well impart

The deepest mysteries of the healing art;

Their store of herbs and simples was renowned,

And held in wondering faith for miles around.

Thus strife, love, sorrow, good and evil fate,

Found help and blessing at the convent gate.

Of all the nuns, no heart was half so light,

No eyelids veiling glances half as bright,

No step that glided with such noiseless feet,

No face that looked so tender or so sweet,

No voice that rose in choir so pure, so clear,

No heart to all the others half so dear

(So surely touched by others’ pain or woe,

Guessing the grief her young life could not know),

No soul in childlike faith so undefiled,

As Sister Angela’s, the “Convent Child.”

For thus they loved to call her. She had known

No home, no love, no kindred, save their own—

An orphan, to their tender nursing given,

Child, plaything, pupil, now the bride of Heaven.

And she it was who trimmed the lamp’s red light

That swung before the altar, day and night.

Her hands it was, whose patient skill could trace

The finest broidery, weave the costliest lace;

But most of all, her first and dearest care,

The office she would never miss or share,

Was every day to weave fresh garlands sweet,

To place before the shrine at Mary’s feet.

Nature is bounteous in that region fair,

For even winter has her blossoms there.

Thus Angela loved to count each feast the best,

By telling with what flowers the shrine was dressed.

In pomp supreme the countless Roses passed,

Battalion on battalion thronging fast,

Each with a different banner, flaming bright,

Damask, or striped, or crimson, pink, or white,

Until they bowed before the new-born queen,

And the pure virgin lily rose serene.

Though Angela always thought the Mother blest,

Must love the time of her own hawthorns best

Each evening through the year, with equal care,

She placed her flowers; then kneeling down in prayer,

As their faint perfume rose before the shrine,

So rose her thoughts, as pure and as divine.

She knelt until the shades grew dim without,

Till one by one the altar lights shone out,

Till one by one the nuns, like shadows dim,

Gathered around to chant their vesper hymn:

Her voice then led the music’s winged flight,

And “Ave, Maris Stella” filled the night.

But wherefore linger on those days of peace?

When storms draw near, then quiet hours must cease.

War, cruel war, defaced the land, and came

So near the convent with its breath of flame,

That, seeking shelter, frightened peasants fled,

Sobbing out tales of coming fear and dread.

Till after a fierce skirmish, down the road,

One night came straggling soldiers, with their load

Of wounded, dying comrades; and the band,

Half pleading, yet as if they could command,

Summoned the trembling sisters, craved their care,

Then rode away, and left the wounded there.

But soon compassion bade all fear depart,

And bidding every sister do her part,

Some prepare simples, healing salves, or bands,

The abbess chose the more experienced hands,

To dress the wounds needing most skilful care;

Yet even the youngest novice took her share,

And thus to Angela, whose ready will

And pity could not cover lack of skill,

The charge of a young wounded knight must fall,

A case which seemed least dangerous of them all.

Day after day she watched beside his bed,

And first in utter quiet the hours fled:

His feverish moans alone the silence stirred,

Or her soft voice, uttering some pious word.

At last the fever left him; day by day

The hours, no longer silent, passed away.

What could she speak of? First, to still his plaint,

She told him legends of the martyr’d saints;

Described the pangs, which, through God’s plenteous grace,

Had gained their souls so high and bright a place.

This pious artifice soon found success

Or so she fancied for he murmured less.

And so she told the pomp and grand array

In which the chapel shone on Easter Day,

Described the vestments, gold, and colours bright,

Counted how many tapers gave their light;

Then, in minute detail went on to say,

How the high altar looked on Christmas day:

The kings and shepherds, all in green and white,

And a large star of jewels gleaming bright.

Then told the sign by which they all had seen,

How even nature loved to greet her Queen,

For, when Our Lady’s last procession went

Down the long garden, every head was bent,

And rosary in hand each sister prayed;

As the long floating banners were displayed,

They struck the hawthorn boughs, and showers and showers

Of buds and blossoms strewed her way with flowers.

The knight unwearied listened; till at last,

He too described the glories of his past;

Tourney, and joust, and pageant bright and fair,

And all the lovely ladies who were there.

But half incredulous she heard. Could this—

This be the world? this place of love and bliss!

Where, then, was hid that strange and hideous charm,

That never failed to bring the gazer harm?

She crossed herself, yet asked, and listened still,

And still the knight described with all his skill,

The glorious world of joy, all joys above,

Transfigured in the golden mist of love.

Spread, spread your wings, ye angel guardians bright,

And shield these dazzling phantoms from her sight!

But no; days passed, matins and vespers rang,

And still the quiet nuns toiled, prayed, and sang,

And never guessed the fatal, coiling net

That every day drew near, and nearer yet.

Around their darling; for she went and came

About her duties, outwardly the same.

The same? ah, no! even when she knelt to pray,

Some charmed dream kept all her heart away.

So days went on, until the convent gate

Opened one night. Who durst go forth so late?

Across the moonlit grass, with stealthy tread,

Two silent, shrouded figures passed and fled.

And all was silent, save the moaning seas,

That sobbed and pleaded, and a wailing breeze

That sighed among the perfumed hawthorn trees.

What need to tell that dream so bright and brief,

Of joy unchequered by a dread of grief?

What need to tell how all such dreams must fade,

Before the slow foreboding, dreaded shade,

That floated nearer, until pomp and pride,

Pleasure and wealth, were summoned to her side,

To bid, at least, the noisy hours forget,

And clamour down the whispers of regret.

Still Angela strove to dream, and strove in vain;

Awakened once, she could not sleep again.

She saw, each day and hour, more worthless grown

The heart for which she cast away her own;

And her soul learnt, through bitterest inward strife,

The slight, frail love for which she wrecked her life;

The phantom for which all her hope was given,

The cold bleak earth for which she bartered heaven!

But all in vain; what chance remained? what heart

Would stoop to take so poor an outcast’s part?

Years fled, and she grew reckless more and more,

Until the humblest peasant closed his door,

And where she passed, fair dames, in scorn and pride,

Shuddered, and drew their rustling robes aside.

At last a yearning seemed to fill her soul,

A longing that was stronger than control:

Once more, just once again, to see the place

That knew her young and innocent; to retrace

The long and weary southern path; to gaze

Upon the haven of her childish days;

Once more beneath the convent roof to lie;

Once more to look upon her home—and die!

Weary and worn—her comrades, chill remorse

And black despair, yet a strange silent force

Within her heart, that drew her more and more—

Onward she crawled, and begged from door to door.

Weighed down with weary days, her failing strength

Grew less each hour, till one day’s dawn at length,

As its first rays flooded the world with light,

Showed the broad waters, glittering blue and bright,

And where, amid the leafy hawthorn wood,

Just as of old the low white convent stood.

Would any know her? Nay, no fear. Her face

Had lost all trace of youth, of joy, of grace,

Of the pure happy soul they used to know—

The novice Angela—so long ago.

She rang the convent bell. The well-known sound

Smote on her heart, and bowed her to the ground.

And she, who had not wept for long dry years,

Felt the strange rush of unaccustomed tears;

Terror and anguish seemed to check her breath,

And stop her heart—O God! could this be death?

Crouching against the iron gate, she laid

Her weary head against the bars, and prayed:

But nearer footsteps drew, then seemed to wait;

And then she heard the opening of the grate,

And saw the withered face, on which awoke

Pity and sorrow, as the portress spoke,

And asked the stranger’s bidding: “Take me in,”

She faltered, “Sister Monica, from sin,

And sorrow, and despair, that will not cease;

Oh take me in, and let me die in peace!”

With soothing words the sister bade her wait,

Until she brought the key to unbar the gate.

The beggar tried to thank her as she lay,

And heard the echoing footsteps die away.

But what soft voice was that which sounded near,

And stirred strange trouble in her heart to hear?

She raised her head; she saw—she seemed to know

A face, that came from long, long years ago:

Herself; yet not as when she fled away,

The young and blooming Novice, fair and gay,

But a grave woman, gentle and serene:

The outcast knew it—what she might have been.

But as she gazed and gazed, a radiance bright

Filled all the place with strange and sudden light;

The nun was there no longer, but instead,

A figure with a circle round its head,

A ring of glory; and a face, so meek,

So soft, so tender. . . . Angela strove to speak,

And stretched her hands out, crying, “Mary mild,

Mother of mercy, help me!—help your child!”

And Mary answered, “From thy bitter past,

Welcome, my child! oh, welcome home at last!

I filled thy place. Thy flight is known to none,

For all thy daily duties I have done;

Gathered thy flowers, and prayed, and sang, and slept;

Didst thou not know, poor child, thy place was kept?

Kind hearts are here; yet would the tenderest one

Have limits to its mercy: God has none.

And man’s forgiveness may be true and sweet,

But yet he stoops to give it. More complete

Is love that lays forgiveness at thy feet,

And pleads with thee to raise it. Only Heaven

Means crowned, not vanquished, when it says ‘Forgiven!’ ”

Back hurried Sister Monica; but where

Was the poor beggar she left lying there?

Gone; and she searched in vain, and sought the place

For that wan woman, with the piteous face:

But only Angela at the gateway stood,

Laden with hawthorn blossoms from the wood.

And never did a day pass by again,

But the old portress, with a sigh of pain,

Would sorrow for her loitering: with a prayer

That the poor beggar, in her wild despair,

Might not have come to any ill; and when

She ended, “God forgive her!” humbly then

Did Angela bow her head, and say “Amen!”

How pitiful her heart was! all could trace

Something that dimmed the brightness of her face

After that day, which none had seen before;

Not trouble—but a shadow—nothing more.

Years passed away. Then, one dark day of dread,

Saw all the sisters kneeling round a bed,

Where Angela lay dying; every breath

Struggling beneath the heavy hand of death.

But suddenly a flush lit up her cheek,

She raised her wan right hand, and strove to speak.

In sorrowing love they listened; not a sound

Or sigh disturbed the utter silence round;

The very taper’s flames were scarcely stirred,

In such hushed awe the sisters knelt and heard.

And thro’ that silence Angela told her life:

Her sin, her flight; the sorrow and the strife,

And the return; and then, clear, low, and calm,

“Praise God for me, my sisters;” and the psalm

Rang up to heaven, far, and clear, and wide,

Again and yet again, then sank and died;

While her white face had such a smile of peace,

They saw she never heard the music cease;

And weeping sisters laid her in her tomb,

Crowned with a wreath of perfumed hawthorn bloom.

And thus the legend ended. It may be

Something is hidden in the mystery,

Besides the lesson of God’s pardon, shown

Never enough believed, or asked, or known.

Have we not all, amid life’s petty strife,

Some pure ideal of a noble life

That once seemed possible? Did we not hear

The flutter of its wings, and feel it near,

And just within our reach? It was. And yet

We lost it in this daily jar and fret,

And now live idle in a vague regret;

But still our place is kept, and it will wait,

Ready for us to fill it, soon or late.

No star is ever lost we once have seen,

We always may be what we might have been.

Since good, tho’ only thought, has life and breath,

God’s life can always be redeemed from death;

And evil, in its nature, is decay,

And any hour can blot it all away;

The hopes that, lost, in some far distance seem.

May be the truer life, and this the dream.

THE GHOST IN THE CUPBOARD ROOM

Wilkie Collins

Mr. Beaver, on being “spoke” (as his friend and ally, Jack Governor, called it), turned out of an imaginary hammock with the greatest promptitude, and went straight on duty. “As it’s Nat Beaver’s watch,” said he, “there shall be no skulking.” Jack looked at me, with an expectant and admiring turn of his eye on Mr. Beaver, full of complimentary implication. I noticed, by the way, that Jack, in a naval absence of mind with which he is greatly troubled at times, had his arm round my sister’s waist. Perhaps this complaint originates in an old nautical requirement of having something to hold on by.

These were the terms of Mr. Beaver’s revelation to us:

What I have got to put forward, will not take very long; and I shall beg leave to begin by going back to last night—just about the time when we all parted from one another to go to bed.

The members of this good company did a very necessary and customary thing, last night—they each took a bedroom candlestick, and lit the candle before they went up-stairs. I wonder whether any one of them noticed that I left my candlestick untouched, and my candle unlighted; and went to bed, in a Haunted House, of all the places in the world, in the dark? I don’t think any one of them did.

That is, perhaps, rather curious to begin with. It is likewise curious, and just as true, that the bare sight of those candlesticks in the hands of this good company set me in a tremble, and made last night, a night’s bad dream instead of a night’s good sleep. The fact of the matter is—and I give you leave, ladies and gentlemen, to laugh at it as much as you please—that the ghost which haunted me last night, which has haunted me off and on for many years past, and which will go on haunting me till I am a ghost myself (and consequently spirit-proof in all respects), is, nothing more or less than—a bedroom candlestick.

Yes, a bedroom candlestick and candle, or a flat candlestick and candle—put it which way you like—that is what haunts me. I wish it was something pleasanter and more out of the common way; a beautiful lady, or a mine of gold and silver, or a cellar of wine and a coach and horses, and such-like. But, being what it is, I must take it for what it is, and make the best of it—and I shall thank you all kindly if you will help me out by doing the same.

I am not a scholar myself; but I make bold to believe that the haunting of any man, with anything under the sun, begins with the frightening of him. At any rate, the haunting of me with a bedroom candlestick and candle began with the frightening of me with a bedroom candlestick and candle—the frightening of me half out of my life, ladies and gentlemen; and, for the time being, the frightening of me altogether out of my wits. That is not a very pleasant thing to confess to you all, before stating the particulars; but perhaps you will be the readier to believe that I am not a downright coward, because you find me bold enough to make a clean breast of it already, to my own great disadvantage, so far.

These are the particulars, as well as I can put them.

I was apprenticed to the sea when I was about as tall as my own walking-stick; and I made good enough use of my time to be fit for a mate’s berth at the age of twenty-five years.

It was in the year eighteen hundred and eighteen, or nineteen, I am not quite certain which, that I reached the before-mentioned age of twenty-five. You will please to excuse my memory not being very good for dates, names, numbers, places, and such-like. No fear, though, about the particulars I have undertaken to tell you of; I have got them all ship-shape in my recollection; I can see them, at this moment, as clear as noonday in my own mind. But there is a mist over what went before, and, for the matter of that, a mist likewise over much that came after—and it’s not very likely to lift, at my time of life, is it?

Well, in eighteen hundred and eighteen, or nineteen, when there was peace in our part of the world—and not before it was wanted, you will say—there was fighting, of a certain scampering, scrambling kind, going on in that old fighting ground, which we seafaring men know by the name of the Spanish Main. The possessions that belonged to the Spaniards in South America had broken into open mutiny and declared for themselves years before. There was plenty of bloodshed between the new Government and the old; but the new had got the best of it, for the most part, under one General Bolivar—a famous man in his time, though he seems to have dropped out of people’s memories now. Englishmen and Irishmen with a turn for fighting, and nothing particular to do at home, joined the general as volunteers; and some of our merchants here found it a good venture to send supplies across the ocean to the popular side. There was risk enough, of course, in doing this; but where one speculation of the kind succeeded, it made up for two, at the least, that failed. And that’s the true principle of trade, wherever I have met with it, all the world over.

Among the Englishmen who were concerned in this Spanish-American business, I, your humble servant, happened, in a small way, to be one. I was then mate of a brig belonging to a certain firm in the City, which drove a sort of general trade, mostly in queer out-of-the-way places, as far from home as possible; and which freighted the brig, in the year I am speaking of, with a cargo of gunpowder for General Bolivar and his volunteers. Nobody knew anything about our instructions, when we sailed, except the captain; and he didn’t half seem to like them. I can’t rightly say how many barrels of powder we had on board, or how much each barrel held—I only know we had no other cargo. The name of the brig was The Good Intent—a queer name enough, you will tell me, for a vessel laden with gunpowder, and sent to help a revolution. And as far as this particular voyage was concerned, so it was. I meant that for a joke, ladies and gentlemen, and I’m sorry to find you don’t laugh at it.

The Good Intent was the craziest old tub of a vessel I ever went to sea in, and the worst found in all respects. She was two hundred and thirty, or two hundred and eighty tons burden, I forget which; and she had a crew of eight, all told—nothing like as many as we ought by rights to have had to work the brig. However, we were well and honestly paid our wages; and we had to set that against the chance of foundering at sea, and, on this occasion, likewise, the chance of being blown up into the bargain. In consideration of the nature of our cargo, we were harassed with new regulations which we didn’t at all like, relative to smoking our pipes and lighting our lanterns; and, as usual in such cases, the captain who made the regulations preached what he didn’t practise. Not a man of us was allowed to have a bit of lighted candle in his hand when he went below—except the skipper; and he used his light, when he turned in, or when he looked over his charts on the cabin table, just as usual. This light was a common kitchen candle or “dip,” of the sort that goes eight or ten to the pound; and it stood in an old battered flat candlestick, with all the japan worn and melted off, and all the tin showing through. It would have been more seamanlike and suitable in every respect if he had had a lamp or a lantern; but he stuck to his old candlestick; and that same old candlestick, ladies and gentlemen, has ever afterwards stuck to me. That’s another joke, if you please; and I’m much obliged to Miss Belinda in the corner for being good enough to laugh at it.

Well (I said “well” before, but it’s a word that helps a man on like), we sailed in the brig, and shaped our course, first, for the Virgin Islands, in the West Indies; and, after sighting them, we made for the Leeward Islands next; and then stood on due south, till the look-out at the mast-head hailed the deck, and said he saw land. That land was the coast of South America. We had had a wonderful voyage so far. We had lost none of our spars or sails, and not a man of us had been harassed to death at the pumps. It wasn’t often The Good Intent made such a voyage as that, I can tell you.

I was sent aloft to make sure about the land, and I did make sure of it. When I reported the same to the skipper, he went below, and had a look at his letter of instructions and the chart. When he came on deck again, he altered our course a trifle to the eastward—I forget the point on the compass, but that don’t matter. What I do remember is, that it was dark before we closed in with the land. We kept the lead going, and hove the brig to in from four to five fathoms water, or it might be six—I can’t say for certain. I kept a sharp eye to the drift of the vessel, none of us knowing how the currents ran on that coast. We all wondered why the skipper didn’t anchor; but he said, No, he must first show a light at the foretop-mast-head, and wait for an answering light on shore. We did wait, and nothing of the sort appeared. It was starlight and calm. What little wind there was came in puffs off the land. I suppose we waited, drifting a little to the westward, as I made it out, best part of an hour before anything happened—and then, instead of seeing the light on shore, we saw a boat coming towards us, rowed by two men only.

We hailed them, and they answered, “Friends!” and hailed us by our name. They came on board. One of them was an Irishman, and the other was a coffee-coloured native pilot, who jabbered a little English. The Irishman handed a note to our skipper, who showed it to me. It informed us that the part of the coast we were off then, was not oversafe for discharging our cargo, seeing that spies of the enemy (that is to say, of the old Government) had been taken and shot in the neighbourhood the day before. We might trust the brig to the native pilot; and he had his instructions to take us to another part of the coast. The note was signed by the proper parties; so we let the Irishman go back alone in the boat, and allowed the pilot to exercise his lawful authority over the brig. He kept us stretching off from the land till noon the next day—his instructions, seemingly, ordering him to keep us well out of sight of the shore. We only altered our course, in the afternoon, so as to close in with the land again a little before midnight.

This same pilot was about as ill-looking a vagabond as ever I saw; a skinny, cowardly, quarrelsome mongrel, who swore at the men, in the vilest broken English, till they were every one of them ready to pitch him overboard. The skipper kept them quiet, and I kept them quiet, for the pilot being given us by our instructions, we were bound to make the best of him. Near nightfall, however, with the best will in the world to avoid it, I was unlucky enough to quarrel with him. He wanted to go below with his pipe, and I stopped him, of course, because it was contrary to orders. Upon that, he tried to hustle by me, and I put him away with my hand. I never meant to push him down; but, somehow, I did. He picked himself up as quick as lightning, and pulled out his knife. I snatched it out of his hand, slapped his murderous face for him, and threw his weapon overboard. He gave me one ugly look, and walked aft. I didn’t think much of the look then; but I remembered it a little too well afterwards.

We were close in with the land again, just as the wind failed us, between eleven and twelve that night; and dropped our anchor by the pilot’s directions. It was pitch dark, and a dead, airless calm. The skipper was on deck with two of our best men for watch. The rest were below, except the pilot, who coiled himself up, more like a snake than a man, on the forecastle. It was not my watch till four in the morning. But I didn’t like the look of the night, or the pilot, or the state of things generally, and I shook myself down on deck to get my nap there, and be ready for anything at a moment’s notice. The last I remember was the skipper whispering to me that he didn’t like the look of things either, and that he would go below and consult his instructions again. That is the last I remember, before the slow, heavy, regular roll of the old brig on the ground swell rocked me off to sleep.

I was woke, ladies and gentlemen, by a scuffle on the forecastle, and a gag in my mouth. There was a man on my breast and a man on my legs; and I was bound hand and foot in half a minute.

The brig was in the hands of the Spaniards. They were swarming all over her. I heard six heavy splashes in the water, one after another—I saw the captain stabbed to the heart as he came running up the companion—and I heard a seventh splash in the water. Except myself, every soul of us on board had been murdered and thrown into the sea. Why I was left, I couldn’t think, till I saw the pilot stoop over me with a lantern, and look, to make sure of who I was. There was a devilish grin on his face, and he nodded his head at me, as much as to say, You were the man who hustled me down and slapped my face, and I mean to play the game of cat and mouse with you in return for it!

I could neither move nor speak; but I could see the Spaniards take off the main hatch and rig the purchases for getting up the cargo. A quarter of an hour afterwards, I heard the sweeps of a schooner, or other small vessel, in the water. The strange craft was laid alongside of us; and the Spaniards set to work to discharge our cargo into her. They all worked hard except the pilot; and he came, from time to time, with his lantern, to have another look at me, and to grin and nod always in the same devilish way. I am old enough now not to be ashamed of confessing the truth; and I don’t mind acknowledging that the pilot frightened me.

The fright, and the bonds, and the gag, and the not being able to stir hand or foot, had pretty nigh worn me out, by the time the Spaniards gave over work. This was just as the dawn broke. They had shifted good part of our cargo on board their vessel, but nothing like all of it; and they were sharp enough to be off with what they had got, before daylight. I need hardly say that I had made up my mind, by this time, to the worst I could think of. The pilot, it was clear enough, was one of the spies of the enemy, who had wormed himself into the confidence of our consignees without being suspected. He, or more likely his employers, had got knowledge enough of us to suspect what our cargo was; we had been anchored for the night in the safest berth for them to surprise us in; and we had paid the penalty of having a small crew, and consequently an insufficient watch. All this was clear enough—but what did the pilot mean to do with me?

On the word of a man, it makes my flesh creep, now, only to tell you what he did with me.

After all the rest of them were out of the brig, except the pilot and two Spanish seamen, these last took me up, bound and gagged as I was, lowered me into the hold of the vessel, and laid me along on the floor; lashing me to it with ropes’ ends, so that I could just turn from one side to the other, but could not roll myself fairly over, so as to change my place. They then left me. Both of them were the worse for liquor; but the devil of a pilot was sober—mind that!—as sober as I am at the present moment.

I lay in the dark for a little while, with my heart thumping as if it was going to jump out of me. I lay about five minutes so, when the pilot came down into the hold, alone. He had the captain’s cursed flat candlestick and a carpenter’s awl in one hand, and a long thin twist of cotton yarn, well oiled, in the other. He put the candlestick, with a new “dip” lighted in it, down on the floor, about two feet from my face, and close against the side of the vessel. The light was feeble enough; but it was sufficient to show a dozen barrels of gunpowder or more, left all round me in the hold of the brig. I began to suspect what he was after, the moment I noticed the barrels. The horrors laid hold of me from head to foot; and the sweat poured off my face like water.

I saw him go, next, to one of the barrels of powder standing against the side of the vessel, in a line with the candle, and about three feet, or rather better, away from it. He bored a hole in the side of the barrel with his awl; and the horrid powder came trickling out, as black as hell, and dripped into the hollow of his hand, which he held to catch it. When he had got a good handful, he stopped up the hole by jamming one end of his oiled twist of cotton-yarn fast into it; and he then rubbed the powder into the whole length of the yarn, till he had blackened every hairsbreadth of it. The next thing he did—as true as I sit here, as true as the heaven above us all—the next thing he did was to carry the free end of his long, lean, black, frightful slow-match to the lighted candle alongside my face, and to tie it, in several folds, round the tallow dip, about a third of the distance down, measuring from the flame of the wick to the lip of the candlestick. He did that; he looked to see that my lashings were all safe; and then he put his face down close to mine; and whispered in my ear, “Blow up with the brig!”

He was on deck again the moment after; and he and the two others shoved the hatch on over me. At the farthest end from where I lay, they had not fitted it down quite true, and I saw a blink of daylight glimmering in when I looked in that direction. I heard the sweeps of the schooner fall into the water—splash! splash! fainter and fainter, as they swept the vessel out in the dead calm, to be ready for the wind in the offing. Fainter and fainter, splash! splash! for a quarter of an hour or more.

While those sounds were in my ears, my eyes were fixed on the candle. It had been freshly lit—if left to itself it would burn for between six and seven hours—the slow-match was twisted round it about a third of the way down—and therefore the flame would be about two hours reaching it. There I lay, gagged, bound, lashed to the floor; seeing my own life burning down with the candle by my side—there I lay, alone on the sea, doomed to be blown to atoms, and to see that doom drawing on, nearer and nearer with every fresh second of time, through nigh on two hours to come; powerless to help myself and speechless to call for help to others. The wonder to me is that I didn’t cheat the flame, the slow-match, and the powder, and die of the horror of my situation before my first half-hour was out in the hold of the brig.

I can’t exactly say how long I kept the command of my senses after I had ceased to hear the splash of the schooner’s sweeps in the water. I can trace back everything I did and everything I thought, up to a certain point; but, once past that, I get all abroad, and lose myself in my memory now, much as I lost myself in my own feelings at the time.

The moment the hatch was covered over me, I began, as every other man would have begun in my place, with a frantic effort to free my hands. In the mad panic I was in, I cut my flesh with the lashings as if they had been knife-blades; but I never stirred them. There was less chance still of freeing my legs, or of tearing myself from the fastenings that held me to the floor. I gave in, when I was all but suffocated for want of breath. The gag, you will please to remember, was a terrible enemy to me; I could only breathe freely through my nose—and that is but a poor vent when a man is straining his strength as far as ever it will go.

I gave in, and lay quiet, and got my breath again; my eyes glaring and straining at the candle all the time. While I was staring at it, the notion struck me of trying to blow out the flame by pumping a long breath at it suddenly through my nostrils. It was too high above me, and too far away from me, to be reached in that fashion. I tried, and tried, and tried—and then I gave in again and lay quiet again; always with my eyes glaring at the candle and the candle glaring at me. The splash of the schooner’s sweeps was very faint by this time. I could only just hear them in the morning stillness. Splash! splash!—fainter and fainter—splash! splash!

Without exactly feeling my mind going, I began to feel it getting queer, as early as this. The snuff of the candle was growing taller and taller, and the length of tallow between the flame and the slow-match, which was the length of my life, was getting shorter and shorter. I calculated that I had rather less than an hour and a half to live. An hour and a half! Was there a chance, in that time, of a boat pulling off to the brig from shore? Whether the land near which the vessel was anchored was in possession of our side, or in possession of the enemy’s side, I made it out that they must, sooner or later, send to hail the brig, merely because she was a stranger in those parts. The question for me was, how soon? The sun had not risen yet, as I could tell by looking through the chink in the hatch. There was no coast village near us, as we all knew, before the brig was seized, by seeing no lights on shore. There was no wind, as I could tell by listening, to bring any strange vessel near. If I had had six hours to live, there might have been a chance for me, reckoning from sunrise to noon. But with an hour and a half, which had dwindled to an hour and a quarter by this time—or, in other words, with the earliness of the morning, the uninhabited coast, and the dead calm all against me—there was not the ghost of a chance. As I felt that, I had another struggle—the last—with my bonds; and only cut myself the deeper for my pains.

I gave in once more, and lay quiet, and listened for the splash of the sweeps. Gone! Not a sound could I hear but the blowing of a fish, now and then, on the surface of the sea, and the creak of the brig’s crazy old spars, as she rolled gently from side to side with the little swell there was on the quiet water.

An hour and a quarter. The wick grew terribly, as the quarter slipped away; and the charred top of it began to thicken and spread out mushroom-shape. It would fall off soon. Would it fall off red-hot, and would the swing of the brig cant it over the side of the candle and let it down on the slow-match? If it would, I had about ten minutes to live instead of an hour. This discovery set my mind for a minute on a new tack altogether. I began to ponder with myself what sort of a death blowing-up might be. Painful? Well, it would be, surely, too sudden for that. Perhaps just one crash, inside me, or outside me, or both, and nothing more? Perhaps not even a crash; that and death and the scattering of this living body of mine into millions of fiery sparks, might all happen in the same instant? I couldn’t make it out; I couldn’t settle how it would be. The minute of calmness in my mind left it, before I had half done thinking; and I got all abroad again.

When I came back to my thoughts, or when they came back to me (I can’t say which), the wick was awfully tall, the flame was burning with a smoke above it, the charred top was broad and red, and heavily spreading out to its fall. My despair and horror at seeing it, took me in a new way, which was good and right, at any rate, for my poor soul. I tried to pray; in my own heart, you will understand, for the gag put all lip-praying out of my power. I tried, but the candle seemed to burn it up in me. I struggled hard to force my eyes from the slow, murdering flame, and to look up through the chink in the hatch at the blessed daylight. I tried once, tried twice; and gave it up. I tried next only to shut my eyes, and keep them shut—once—twice—and the second time I did it. “God bless old mother, and sister Lizzie; God keep them both, and forgive me.” That was all I had time to say, in my own heart, before my eyes opened again, in spite of me, and the flame of the candle flew into them, flew all over me, and burnt up the rest of my thoughts in an instant.

I couldn’t hear the fish blowing now; I couldn’t hear the creak of the spars; I couldn’t think; I couldn’t feel the sweat of my own death agony on my face—I could only look at the heavy, charred top of the wick. It swelled, tottered, bent over to one side, dropped—red-hot at the moment of its fall—black and harmless, even before the swing of the brig had canted it over into the bottom of the candlestick.

I caught myself laughing. Yes! laughing at the safe fall of the bit of wick. But for the gag, I should have screamed with laughing. As it was, I shook with it inside me—shook till the blood was in my head, and I was all but suffocated for want of breath. I had just sense enough left to feel that my own horrid laughter, at that awful moment, was a sign of my brain going at last. I had just sense enough left to make another struggle before my mind broke loose like a frightened horse, and ran away with me.

One comforting look at the blink of daylight through the hatch was what I tried for once more. The fight to force my eyes from the candle and to get that one look at the daylight, was the hardest I had had yet; and I lost the fight. The flame had hold of my eyes as fast as the lashings had hold of my hands. I couldn’t look away from it. I couldn’t even shut my eyes, when I tried that next, for the second time. There was the wick, growing tall once more. There was the space of unburnt candle between the light and the slow match shortened to an inch or less. How much life did that inch leave me? Three-quarters of an hour? Half an hour? Fifty minutes? Twenty minutes? Steady! an inch of tallow candle would burn longer than twenty minutes. An inch of tallow! the notion of a man’s body and soul being kept together by an inch of tallow! Wonderful! Why, the greatest king that sits on a throne can’t keep a man’s body and soul together; and here’s an inch of tallow that can do what the king can’t! There’s something to tell mother, when I get home, which will surprise her more than all the rest of my voyages put together. I laughed inwardly, again, at the thought of that; and shook and swelled and suffocated myself, till the light of the candle leaped in through my eyes, and licked up the laughter, and burnt it out of me, and made me all empty, and cold, and quiet once more.

Mother and Lizzie. I don’t know when they came back; but they did come back—not, as it seemed to me, into my mind this time; but right down bodily before me, in the hold of the brig.

Yes: sure enough, there was Lizzie, just as light-hearted as usual, laughing at me. Laughing! Well why not? Who is to blame Lizzie for thinking I’m lying on my back, drunk in the cellar, with the beer barrels all round me? Steady! she’s crying now—spinning round and round in a fiery mist, wringing her hands, screeching out for help—fainter and fainter, like the splash of the schooner’s sweeps. Gone!—burnt up in the fiery mist. Mist? fire? no: neither one nor the other. It’s mother makes the light—mother knitting, with ten flaming points at the ends of her fingers and thumbs, and slow-matches hanging in bunches all round her face instead of her own gray hair. Mother in her old arm-chair, and the pilot’s long skinny hands hanging over the back of the chair, dripping with gunpowder. No! no gunpowder, no chair, no mother—nothing but the pilot’s face, shining red hot, like a sun, in the fiery mist; turning upside down in the fiery mist; running backward and forward along the slow-match, in the fiery mist; spinning millions of miles in a minute, in the fiery mist—spinning itself smaller and smaller into one tiny point, and that point darting on a sudden straight into my head—and then, all fire and all mist—no hearing, no seeing, no thinking, no feeling—the brig, the sea, my own self, the whole world, all gone together!

After what I’ve just told you, I know nothing and remember nothing, till I woke up, as it seemed to me in a comfortable bed, with two rough and ready men like myself sitting on each side of my pillow, and a gentleman standing watching me at the foot of the bed. It was about seven in the morning. My sleep (or what seemed like my sleep to me) had lasted better than eight months—I was among my own countrymen in the island of Trinidad—the men at each side of my pillow were my keepers, turn and turn about—and the gentleman standing at the foot of the bed was the doctor. What I said and did in those eight months, I never have known and never shall. I woke out of it, as if it had been one long sleep—that’s all I know.

It was another two months or more before the doctor thought it safe to answer the questions I asked him.

The brig had been anchored, just as I had supposed, off a part of the coast which was lonely enough to make the Spaniards pretty sure of no interruption, so long as they managed their murderous work quietly under cover of night. My life had not been saved from the shore, but from the sea. An American vessel, becalmed in the offing, had made out the brig as the sun rose; and the captain, having his time on his hands in consequence of the calm, and seeing a vessel anchored where no vessel had any reason to be, had manned one of his boats and sent his mate with it, to look a little closer into the matter, and bring back a report of what he saw. What he saw, when he and his men found the brig deserted and boarded her, was a gleam of candlelight through the chink in the hatchway. The flame was within about a thread’s breadth of the slow-match, when he lowered himself into the hold; and if he had not had the sense and coolness to cut the match in two with his knife, before he touched the candle, he and his men might have been blown up along with the brig, as well as me. The match caught and turned into sputtering red fire, in the very act of putting the candle out; and if the communication with the powder barrel had not been cut off, the Lord only knows what might have happened.

What became of the Spanish schooner and the pilot I have never heard from that day to this. As for the brig, the Yankees took her, as they took me, to Trinidad, and claimed their salvage, and got it, I hope, for their own sakes. I was landed just in the same state as when they rescued me from the brig, that is to say, clean out of my senses. But, please to remember it was a long time ago; and, take my word for it, I was discharged cured, as I have told you. Bless your hearts, I’m all right now, as you may see. I’m a little shaken by telling the story, ladies and gentlemen—a little shaken, that’s all.

THE GHOST IN MASTER B.'S ROOM

Charles Dickens

When I established myself in the triangular garret which had gained so distinguished a reputation, my thoughts naturally turned to Master B. My speculations about him were uneasy and manifold. Whether his Christian name was Benjamin, Bissextile (from his having been born in Leap Year), Bartholomew, or Bill. Whether the initial letter belonged to his family name, and that was Baxter, Black, Brown, Barker, Buggins, Baker, or Bird. Whether he was a foundling, and had been baptized B. Whether he was a lion-hearted boy, and B. was short for Briton, or for Bull. Whether he could possibly have been kith and kin to an illustrious lady who brightened my own childhood, and had come of the blood of the brilliant Mother Bunch?

With these profitless meditations I tormented myself much. I also carried the mysterious letter into the appearance and pursuits of the deceased; wondering whether he dressed in Blue, wore Boots (he couldn’t have been Bald), was a boy of Brains, liked Books, was good at Bowling, had any skill as a Boxer, even in his Buoyant Boyhood Bathed from a Bathing-machine at Bognor, Bangor, Bournemouth, Brighton, or Broadstairs, like a Bounding Billiard Ball?

So, from the first, I was haunted by the letter B.

It was not long before I remarked that I never by any hazard had a dream of Master B., or of anything belonging to him. But, the instant I awoke from sleep, at whatever hour of the night, my thoughts took him up, and roamed away, trying to attach his initial letter to something that would fit it and keep it quiet.

For six nights, I had been worried thus in Master B.’s room, when I began to perceive that things were going wrong.

The first appearance that presented itself was early in the morning when it was but just daylight and no more. I was standing shaving at my glass, when I suddenly discovered, to my consternation and amazement, that I was shaving—not myself—I am fifty—but a boy. Apparently Master B.!

I trembled and looked over my shoulder; nothing there. I looked again in the glass, and distinctly saw the features and expression of a boy, who was shaving, not to get rid of a beard, but to get one. Extremely troubled in my mind, I took a few turns in the room, and went back to the looking-glass, resolved to steady my hand and complete the operation in which I had been disturbed. Opening my eyes, which I had shut while recovering my firmness, I now met in the glass, looking straight at me, the eyes of a young man of four or five and twenty. Terrified by this new ghost, I closed my eyes, and made a strong effort to recover myself. Opening them again, I saw, shaving his cheek in the glass, my father, who has long been dead. Nay, I even saw my grandfather too, whom I never did see in my life.

Although naturally much affected by these remarkable visitations, I determined to keep my secret, until the time agreed upon for the present general disclosure. Agitated by a multitude of curious thoughts, I retired to my room, that night, prepared to encounter some new experience of a spectral character. Nor was my preparation needless, for, waking from an uneasy sleep at exactly two o’clock in the morning, what were my feelings to find that I was sharing my bed with the skeleton of Master B.!

I sprang up, and the skeleton sprang up also. I then heard a plaintive voice saying, “Where am I? What is become of me?” and, looking hard in that direction, perceived the ghost of Master B.

The young spectre was dressed in an obsolete fashion: or rather, was not so much dressed as put into a case of inferior pepper-and-salt cloth, made horrible by means of shining buttons. I observed that these buttons went, in a double row, over each shoulder of the young ghost, and appeared to descend his back. He wore a frill round his neck. His right hand (which I distinctly noticed to be inky) was laid upon his stomach; connecting this action with some feeble pimples on his countenance, and his general air of nausea, I concluded this ghost to be the ghost of a boy who had habitually taken a great deal too much medicine.

“Where am I?” said the little spectre, in a pathetic voice. “And why was I born in the Calomel days, and why did I have all that Calomel given me?”

I replied, with sincere earnestness, that upon my soul I couldn’t tell him.

“Where is my little sister,” said the ghost, “and where my angelic little wife, and where is the boy I went to school with?”

I entreated the phantom to be comforted, and above all things to take heart respecting the loss of the boy he went to school with. I represented to him that probably that boy never did, within human experience, come out well, when discovered. I urged that I myself had, in later life, turned up several boys whom I went to school with, and none of them had at all answered. I expressed my humble belief that that boy never did answer. I represented that he was a mythic character, a delusion, and a snare. I recounted how, the last time I found him, I found him at a dinner party behind a wall of white cravat, with an inconclusive opinion on every possible subject, and a power of silent boredom absolutely Titanic. I related how, on the strength of our having been together at “Old Doylance’s,” he had asked himself to breakfast with me (a social offence of the largest magnitude); how, fanning my weak embers of belief in Doylance’s boys, I had let him in; and how, he had proved to be a fearful wanderer about the earth, pursuing the race of Adam with inexplicable notions concerning the currency, and with a proposition that the Bank of England should, on pain of being abolished, instantly strike off and circulate, God knows how many thousand millions of ten-and-sixpenny notes.

The ghost heard me in silence, and with a fixed stare. “Barber!” it apostrophised me when I had finished.

“Barber?” I repeated—for I am not of that profession.

“Condemned,” said the ghost, “to shave a constant change of customers—now, me—now, a young man—now, thyself as thou art—now, thy father—now, thy grandfather; condemned, too, to lie down with a skeleton every night, and to rise with it every morning——”

(I shuddered on hearing this dismal announcement.)

“Barber! Pursue me!”

I had felt, even before the words were uttered, that I was under a spell to pursue the phantom. I immediately did so, and was in Master B.’s room no longer.

Most people know what long and fatiguing night journeys had been forced upon the witches who used to confess, and who, no doubt, told the exact truth—particularly as they were always assisted with leading questions, and the Torture was always ready. I asseverate that, during my occupation of Master B.’s room, I was taken by the ghost that haunted it, on expeditions fully as long and wild as any of those. Assuredly, I was presented to no shabby old man with a goat’s horns and tail (something between Pan and an old clothesman), holding conventional receptions, as stupid as those of real life and less decent; but, I came upon other things which appeared to me to have more meaning.

Confident that I speak the truth and shall be believed, I declare without hesitation that I followed the ghost, in the first instance on a broom-stick, and afterwards on a rocking-horse. The very smell of the animal’s paint—especially when I brought it out, by making him warm—I am ready to swear to. I followed the ghost, afterwards, in a hackney coach; an institution with the peculiar smell of which, the present generation is unacquainted, but to which I am again ready to swear as a combination of stable, dog with the mange, and very old bellows. (In this, I appeal to previous generations to confirm or refute me.) I pursued the phantom, on a headless donkey: at least, upon a donkey who was so interested in the state of his stomach that his head was always down there, investigating it; on ponies, expressly born to kick up behind; on roundabouts and swings, from fairs; in the first cab—another forgotten institution where the fare regularly got into bed, and was tucked up with the driver.

Not to trouble you with a detailed account of all my travels in pursuit of the ghost of Master B., which were longer and more wonderful than those of Sinbad the Sailor, I will confine myself to one experience from which you may judge of many.

I was marvellously changed. I was myself, yet not myself. I was conscious of something within me, which has been the same all through my life, and which I have always recognised under all its phases and varieties as never altering, and yet I was not the I who had gone to bed in Master B.’s room. I had the smoothest of faces and the shortest of legs, and I had taken another creature like myself, also with the smoothest of faces and the shortest of legs, behind a door, and was confiding to him a proposition of the most astounding nature.

This proposition was, that we should have a Seraglio.

The other creature assented warmly. He had no notion of respectability, neither had I. It was the custom of the East, it was the way of the good Caliph Haroun Alraschid (let me have the corrupted name again for once, it is so scented with sweet memories!), the usage was highly laudable, and most worthy of imitation. “O, yes! Let us,” said the other creature with a jump, “have a Seraglio.”

It was not because we entertained the faintest doubts of the meritorious character of the Oriental establishment we proposed to import, that we perceived it must be kept a secret from Miss Griffin. It was because we knew Miss Griffin to be bereft of human sympathies, and incapable of appreciating the greatness of the great Haroun. Mystery impenetrably shrouded from Miss Griffin then, let us entrust it to Miss Bule.

We were ten in Miss Griffin’s establishment by Hampstead Ponds; eight ladies and two gentlemen. Miss Bule, whom I judge to have attained the ripe age of eight or nine, took the lead in society. I opened the subject to her in the course of the day, and proposed that she should become the Favourite.

Miss Bule, after struggling with the diffidence so natural to, and charming in, her adorable sex, expressed herself as flattered by the idea, but wished to know how it was proposed to provide for Miss Pipson? Miss Bule—who was understood to have vowed towards that young lady, a friendship, halves, and no secrets, until death, on the Church Service and Lessons complete in two volumes with case and lock—Miss Bule said she could not, as the friend of Pipson, disguise from herself, or me, that Pipson was not one of the common.

Now, Miss Pipson, having curly hair and blue eyes (which was my idea of anything mortal and feminine that was called Fair), I promptly replied that I regarded Miss Pipson in the light of a Fair Circassian.

“And what then?” Miss Bule pensively asked.

I replied that she must be inveigled by a Merchant, brought to me veiled, and purchased as a slave.

[The other creature had already fallen into the second male place in the State, and was set apart for Grand Vizier. He afterwards resisted this disposal of events, but had his hair pulled until he yielded.]

“Shall I not be jealous?” Miss Bule inquired, casting down her eyes.

“Zobeide, no,” I replied; “you will ever be the favourite Sultana; the first place in my heart, and on my throne, will be ever yours.”

Miss Bule, upon that assurance, consented to propound the idea to her seven beautiful companions. It occurring to me, in the course of the same day, that we knew we could trust a grinning and good-natured soul called Tabby, who was the serving drudge of the house, and had no more figure than one of the beds, and upon whose face there was always more or less black-lead, I slipped into Miss Bule’s hand after supper, a little note to that effect; dwelling on the black-lead as being in a manner deposited by the finger of Providence, pointing Tabby out for Mesrour, the celebrated chief of the Blacks of the Hareem.

There were difficulties in the formation of the desired institution, as there are in all combinations. The other creature showed himself of a low character, and, when defeated in aspiring to the throne, pretended to have conscientious scruples about prostrating himself before the Caliph; wouldn’t call him Commander of the Faithful; spoke of him slightingly and inconsistently as a mere “chap;” said he, the other creature, “wouldn’t play”—Play!—and was otherwise coarse and offensive. This meanness of disposition was, however, put down by the general indignation of an united Seraglio, and I became blessed in the smiles of eight of the fairest of the daughters of men.

The smiles could only be bestowed when Miss Griffin was looking another way, and only then in a very wary manner, for there was a legend among the followers of the Prophet that she saw with a little round ornament in the middle of the pattern on the back of her shawl. But every day after dinner, for an hour, we were all together, and then the Favourite and the rest of the Royal Hareem competed who should most beguile the leisure of the Serene Haroun reposing from the cares of State—which were generally, as in most affairs of State, of an arithmetical character, the Commander of the Faithful being a fearful boggler at a sum.

On these occasions, the devoted Mesrour, chief of the Blacks of the Hareem, was always in attendance (Miss Griffin usually ringing for that officer, at the same time, with great vehemence), but never acquitted himself in a manner worthy of his historical reputation. In the first place, his bringing a broom into the Divan of the Caliph, even when Haroun wore on his shoulders the red robe of anger (Miss Pipson’s pelisse), though it might be got over for the moment, was never to be quite satisfactorily accounted for. In the second place, his breaking out into grinning exclamations of “Lork you pretties!” was neither Eastern nor respectful. In the third place, when specially instructed to say “Bismillah!” he always said “Hallelujah!” This officer, unlike his class, was too good-humoured altogether, kept his mouth open far too wide, expressed approbation to an incongruous extent, and even once—it was on the occasion of the purchase of the Fair Circassian for five hundred thousand purses of gold, and cheap, too—embraced the Slave, the Favourite, and the Caliph, all round. (Parenthetically let me say God bless Mesrour, and may there have been sons and daughters on that tender bosom, softening many a hard day since!)

Miss Griffin was a model of propriety, and I am at a loss to imagine what the feelings of the virtuous woman would have been, if she had known, when she paraded us down the Hampstead Road two and two, that she was walking with a stately step at the head of Polygamy and Mahomedanism. I believe that a mysterious and terrible joy with which the contemplation of Miss Griffin, in this unconscious state, inspired us, and a grim sense prevalent among us that there was a dreadful power in our knowledge of what Miss Griffin (who knew all things that could be learnt out of book) didn’t know, were the main-spring of the preservation of our secret. It was wonderfully kept, but was once upon the verge of self-betrayal. The danger and escape occurred upon a Sunday. We were all ten ranged in a conspicuous part of the gallery at church, with Miss Griffin at our head—as we were every Sunday—advertising the establishment in an unsecular sort of way—when the description of Solomon in his domestic glory happened to be read. The moment that monarch was thus referred to, conscience whispered me, “Thou, too, Haroun!” The officiating minister had a cast in his eye, and it assisted conscience by giving him the appearance of reading personally at me. A crimson blush, attended by a fearful perspiration, suffused my features. The Grand Vizier became more dead than alive, and the whole Seraglio reddened as if the sunset of Bagdad shone direct upon their lovely faces. At this portentous time the awful Griffin rose, and balefully surveyed the children of Islam. My own impression was, that Church and State had entered into a conspiracy with Miss Griffin to expose us, and that we should all be put into white sheets, and exhibited in the centre aisle. But, so Westerly—if I may be allowed the expression as opposite to Eastern associations—was Miss Griffin’s sense of rectitude, that she merely suspected Apples, and we were saved.

I have called the Seraglio, united. Upon the question, solely, whether the Commander of the Faithful durst exercise a right of kissing in that sanctuary of the palace, were its peerless inmates divided. Zobeide asserted a counter-right in the Favourite to scratch, and the fair Circassian put her face, for refuge, into a green baize bag, originally designed for books. On the other hand, a young antelope of transcendent beauty from the fruitful plains of Camden Town (whence she had been brought, by traders, in the half-yearly caravan that crossed the intermediate desert after the holidays), held more liberal opinions, but stipulated for limiting the benefit of them to that dog, and son of a dog, the Grand Vizier—who had no rights, and was not in question. At length, the difficulty was compromised by the installation of a very youthful slave as Deputy. She, raised upon a stool, officially received upon her cheeks the salutes intended by the gracious Haroun for other Sultanas, and was privately rewarded from the coffers of the Ladies of the Hareem.

And now it was, at the full height of enjoyment of my bliss, that I became heavily troubled. I began to think of my mother, and what she would say to my taking home at Midsummer eight of the most beautiful of the daughters of men, but all unexpected. I thought of the number of beds we made up at our house, of my father’s income, and of the baker, and my despondency redoubled. The Seraglio and malicious Vizier, divining the cause of their Lord’s unhappiness, did their utmost to augment it. They professed unbounded fidelity, and declared that they would live and die with him. Reduced to the utmost wretchedness by these protestations of attachment, I lay awake, for hours at a time, ruminating on my frightful lot. In my despair, I think I might have taken an early opportunity of falling on my knees before Miss Griffin, avowing my resemblance to Solomon, and praying to be dealt with according to the outraged laws of my country, if an unthought-of means of escape had not opened before me.

One day, we were out walking, two and two—on which occasion the Vizier had his usual instructions to take note of the boy at the turnpike, and if he profanely gazed (which he always did) at the beauties of the Hareem, to have him bowstrung in the course of the night—and it happened that our hearts were veiled in gloom. An unaccountable action on the part of the antelope had plunged the State into disgrace. That charmer, on the representation that the previous day was her birthday, and that vast treasures had been sent in a hamper for its celebration (both baseless assertions), had secretly but most pressingly invited thirty-five neighbouring princes and princesses to a ball and supper: with a special stipulation that they were “not to be fetched till twelve.” This wandering of the antelope’s fancy, led to the surprising arrival at Miss Griffin’s door, in divers equipages and under various escorts, of a great company in full dress, who were deposited on the top step in a flush of high expectancy, and who were dismissed in tears. At the beginning of the double knocks attendant on these ceremonies, the antelope had retired to a back attic, and bolted herself in; and at every new arrival, Miss Griffin had gone so much more and more distracted, that at last she had been seen to tear her front. Ultimate capitulation on the part of the offender, had been followed by solitude in the linen-closet, bread and water and a lecture to all, of vindictive length, in which Miss Griffin had used expressions: Firstly, “I believe you all of you knew of it;” Secondly, “Every one of you is as wicked as another;” Thirdly, “A pack of little wretches.”

Under these circumstances, we were walking drearily along; and I especially, with my Moosulmaun responsibilities heavy on me, was in a very low state of mind; when a strange man accosted Miss Griffin, and, after walking on at her side for a little while and talking with her, looked at me. Supposing him to be a minion of the law, and that my hour was come, I instantly ran away, with the general purpose of making for Egypt.

The whole Seraglio cried out, when they saw me making off as fast as my legs would carry me (I had an impression that the first turning on the left, and round by the public-house, would be the shortest way to the Pyramids), Miss Griffin screamed after me, the faithless Vizier ran after me, and the boy at the turnpike dodged me into a corner, like a sheep, and cut me off. Nobody scolded me when I was taken and brought back; Miss Griffin only said, with a stunning gentleness, This was very curious! Why had I run away when the gentleman looked at me?

If I had had any breath to answer with, I dare say I should have made no answer; having no breath, I certainly made none. Miss Griffin and the strange man took me between them, and walked me back to the palace in a sort of state; but not at all (as I couldn’t help feeling, with astonishment) in culprit state.

When we got there, we went into a room by ourselves, and Miss Griffin called in to her assistance, Mesrour, chief of the dusky guards of the Hareem. Mesrour, on being whispered to, began to shed tears.

“Bless you, my precious!” said that officer, turning to me; “your Pa’s took bitter bad!”

I asked, with a fluttered heart, “Is he very ill?”

“Lord temper the wind to you, my lamb!” said the good Mesrour, kneeling down, that I might have a comforting shoulder for my head to rest on, “your Pa’s dead!”

Haroun Alraschid took to flight at the words; the Seraglio vanished; from that moment, I never again saw one of the eight of the fairest of the daughters of men.

I was taken home, and there was Debt at home as well as Death, and we had a sale there. My own little bed was so superciliously looked upon by a Power unknown to me, hazily called “The Trade,” that a brass coal-scuttle, a roasting-jack, and a birdcage, were obliged to be put into it to make a Lot of it, and then it went for a song. So I heard mentioned, and I wondered what song, and thought what a dismal song it must have been to sing!

Then, I was sent to a great, cold, bare, school of big boys; where everything to eat and wear was thick and clumpy, without being enough; where everybody, large and small, was cruel; where the boys knew all about the sale, before I got there, and asked me what I had fetched, and who had bought me, and hooted at me, “Going, going, gone!” I never whispered in that wretched place that I had been Haroun, or had had a Seraglio: for, I knew that if I mentioned my reverses, I should be so worried, that I should have to drown myself in the muddy pond near the playground, which looked like the beer.

Ah me, ah me! No other ghost has haunted the boy’s room, my friends, since I have occupied it, than the ghost of my own childhood, the ghost of my own innocence, the ghost of my own airy belief. Many a time have I pursued the phantom: never with this man’s stride of mine to come up with it, never with these man’s hands of mine to touch it, never more to this man’s heart of mine to hold it in its purity. And here you see me working out, as cheerfully and thankfully as I may, my doom of shaving in the glass a constant change of customers, and of lying down and rising up with the skeleton allotted to me for my mortal companion.

THE GHOST IN THE GARDEN ROOM

Elizabeth Gaskell

My friend and solicitor rubbed his bald forehead—which is quite Shakespearian—with his hand, after a manner he has when I consult him professionally, and took a very large pinch of snuff. “My bedroom,” said he, “has been haunted by the Ghost of a Judge.”

“Of a Judge?” said all the company.

“Of a Judge. In his wig and robes as he sits upon the Bench, at Assize-time. As I have lingered in the great white chair at the side of my fire, when we have all retired for the night to our respective rooms, I have seen and heard him. I never shall forget the description he gave me, and I never have forgotten it since I first heard it.”

“Then you have seen and heard him before, Mr. Undery?” said my sister.

“Often.”

“Consequently, he is not peculiar to this house?”

“By no means. He returns to me in many intervals of quiet leisure, and his story haunts me.”

We one and all called for the story, that it might haunt us likewise.

“It fell within the range of his judicial experience,” said my friend and solicitor, “and this was the Judge’s manner of summing it up.”

Those words did not apply, of course, to the great pinch of snuff that followed them, but to the words that followed the great pinch of snuff. They were these:

Not many years after the beginning of this century, a worthy couple of the name of Huntroyd occupied a small farm in the North Riding of Yorkshire. They had married late in life, although they were very young when they first began to “keep company” with each other. Nathan Huntroyd had been farm servant to Hester Rose’s father, and had made up to her at a time when her parents thought she might do better; and so, without much consultation of her feelings, they had dismissed Nathan in somewhat cavalier fashion. He had drifted far away from his former connexions, when an uncle of his died, leaving Nathan by this time upwards of forty years of age enough money to stock a small farm, and yet to have something over to put in the bank against bad times. One of the consequences of this bequest was that Nathan was looking out for a wife and house-keeper in a kind of discreet and leisurely way, when, one day, he heard that his old love, Hester, was not married and nourishing, as he had always supposed her to be but a poor maid-of-all-work, in the town of Ripon. For her father had had a succession of misfortunes, which had brought him in his old age to the workhouse; her mother was dead; her only brother struggling to bring up a large family; and Hester herself, a hard-working, homely-looking (at thirty-seven) servant. Nathan had a kind of growling satisfaction (which only lasted for minute or two, however) in hearing of these turns of Fortune’s wheel. He did not make many intelligible remarks to his informant, and to no one else did he say a word. But, a few days afterwards, he presented himself, dressed in his Sunday best, at Mrs. Thompson’s back door in Ripon.

Hester stood there in answer to the good sound knock his good sound oak stick made; she with the light full upon her, he in shadow. For a moment there was silence. He was scanning the face and figure of his old love, for twenty years unseen. The comely beauty of youth had faded away entirely; she was, as I have said, homely looking, plain featured, but with a clean skin, and pleasant, frank eyes. Her figure was no longer round, but tidily draped in a blue and white bedgown, tied round her waist by her white apron-strings, and her short red linsey petticoat showed her tidy feet and ankles. Her former lover fell into no ecstasies. He simply said to himself, “She’ll do;” and forthwith began upon his business.

“Hester, thou dost not mind me. I am Nathan, as thy father turned off at a minute’s notice, for thinking of thee for a wife, twenty year come Michaelmas next. I have not thought much upon matrimony since. But Uncle Ben has died, leaving me a small matter in the bank; and I have taken Nab-end Farm, and put in a bit of stock, and shall want a missus to see after it. Wilt like to come? I’ll not mislead thee. It’s dairy, and it might have been arable. But arable takes more horses than it suited me to buy, and I’d the offer of a tidy lot of kine. That’s all. If thou’lt have me, I’ll come for thee as soon as the hay is gotten in.”

Hester only said, “Come in, and sit thee down.”

He came in, and sat down. For a time she took no more notice of him than of his stick, bustling about to get dinner ready for the family whom she served. He meanwhile watched her brisk, sharp movements, and repeated to himself, “She’ll do!” After about twenty minutes of silence thus employed, he got up, saying:

“Well, Hester, I’m going. When shall I come back again?”

“Please thysel’, and thou’lt please me,” said Hester, in a tone that she tried to make light and indifferent; but he saw that her colour came and went, and that she trembled while she moved about. In another moment Hester was soundly kissed; but when she looked round to scold the middle-aged farmer, he appeared so entirely composed that she hesitated. He said:

“I have pleased myself, and thee too, I hope. Is it a month’s wage, and a month’s warning? Today is the eighth. July eighth is our wedding day. I have no time to spend a-wooing before then, and wedding must na take long. Two days is enough to throw away at our time o’ life.”

It was like a dream; but Hester resolved not to think more about it till her work was done. And when all was cleaned up for the evening, she went and gave her mistress warning, telling her all the history of her life in a very few words. That day month she was married from Mrs. Thompson’s house.

The issue of the marriage was one boy, Benjamin. A few years after his birth, Hester’s brother died at Leeds, leaving ten or twelve children. Hester sorrowed bitterly over this loss; and Nathan showed her much quiet sympathy, although he could not but remember that Jack Rose had added insult to the bitterness of his youth. He helped his wife to make ready to go by the waggon to Leeds. He made light of the household difficulties which came thronging into her mind after all was fixed for her departure. He filled her purse, that she might have wherewithal to alleviate the immediate wants of her brother’s family. And as she was leaving, he ran after the waggon. “Stop, stop!” he cried. “Hetty, if thou wilt if it wunnot be too much for thee bring back one of Jack’s wenches for company, like. We’ve enough and to spare; and a lass will make the house winsome, as a man may say.”

The waggon moved on, while Hester had such a silent swelling of gratitude in her heart, as was both thanks to her husband, and thanks-giving to God.

And that was the way that little Bessy Rose came to be an inmate of the Nab’s-end Farm.

Virtue met with its own reward in this instance, and in a clear and tangible shape, too, which need not delude people in general into thinking that such is the usual nature of virtue’s rewards. Bessy grew up a bright, affectionate, active girl; a daily comfort to her uncle and aunt. She was so much a darling in the household that they even thought her worthy of their only son Benjamin, who was perfection in their eyes. It is not often the case that two plain, homely people have a child of uncommon beauty; but it is sometimes, and Benjamin Huntroyd was one of these exceptional cases. The hard-working, labour and care-marked farmer, and the mother, who could never have been more than tolerably comely in her best days, produced a son who might have been an earl’s son for grace and beauty. Even the hunting squires of the neighbourhood reined up their horses to admire him, as he opened the gates for them. He had no shyness, he was so accustomed to admiration from strangers, and adoration from his parents from his earliest years. As for Bessy Rose, he ruled imperiously over her heart from the time she first set eyes on him. And as she grew older, she grew on in loving, persuading herself that what her uncle and aunt loved so dearly it was her duty to love dearest of all. At every unconscious symptom of the young girl’s love for her cousin, his parents smiled and winked: all was going on as they wished, no need to go far afield for Benjamin’s wife. The household could go on as it was now; Nathan and Hester sinking into the rest of years, and relinquishing care and authority to those dear ones, who, in process of time, might bring other dear ones to share their love. But Benjamin took it all very coolly. He had been sent to a day-school in the neighbouring town—a grammar-school, in the high state of neglect in which the majority of such schools were thirty years ago. Neither his father nor his mother knew much of learning. All that they knew (and that directed their choice of a school) was, that they could not, by any possibility, part with their darling to a boarding-school; that some schooling he must have, and that Squire Pollard’s son went to Highminster Grammar School. Squire Pollard’s son, and many another son destined to make his parents’ hearts ache, went to this school. If it had not been so utterly bad a place of education, the simple farmer and his wife might have found it out sooner. But not only did the pupils there learn vice, they also learnt deceit. Benjamin was naturally too clever to remain a dunce, or else, if he had chosen so to be, there was nothing in Highminster Grammar School to hinder his being a dunce of the first water. But to all appearance he grew clever and gentlemanlike. His father and mother were even proud of his airs and graces when he came home for the holidays; taking them for proofs of his refinement, although the practical effect of such refinement was to make him express his contempt for his parents’ homely ways and simple ignorance. By the time he was eighteen—an articled clerk in an attorney’s office at Highminster, for he had quite declined becoming a “mere clod-hopper,” that is to say a hard-working, honest farmer like his father—Bessy Rose was the only person who was dissatisfied with him. The little girl of fourteen instinctively felt there was something wrong about him. Alas! two years more, and the girl of sixteen worshipped his very shadow, and would not see that aught could be wrong with one so soft-spoken, so handsome, so kind as Cousin Benjamin. For Benjamin had found out that the way to cajole his parents out of money for every indulgence he fancied, was to pretend to forward their innocent scheme, and make love to his pretty cousin Bessy Rose. He cared just enough for her to make this work of necessity not disagreeable at the time he was performing it. But he found it tiresome to remember her little claims upon him when she was no longer present. The letters he had promised her during his weekly absences at Highminster, the trifling commissions she had asked him to do for her, were all considered in the light of troubles; and even when he was with her he resented the inquiries she made as to his mode of passing his time, or what female acquaintances he had in Highminster.

When his apprenticeship was ended, nothing would serve him but that he must go up to London for a year or two. Poor Farmer Huntroyd was beginning to repent of his ambition of making his son Benjamin a gentleman. But it was too late to repine now. Both father and mother felt this, and, however sorrowful they might be, they were silent, neither demurring nor assenting to Benjamin’s proposition when first he made it. But Bessy, through her tears, noticed that both her uncle and aunt seemed unusually tired that night, and sat hand-in-hand on the fireside settle, idly gazing into the firelight flames as if they saw in it pictures of what they had once hoped their lives would have been. Bessy rattled about among the supper things as she put them away after Benjamin’s departure, making more noise than usual as if noise and bustle was what she needed to keep her from bursting out crying and, having at one keen glance taken in the position and looks of Nathan and Hester, she avoided looking in that direction again, for fear the sight of their wistful faces should make her own tears overflow.

“Sit thee down lass sit thee down. Bring the creepie-stool to the fire side, and let’s have a bit of talk over the lad’s plans,” said Nathan at last, rousing himself to speak. Bessy came and sat down in front of the fire, and threw her apron over her face, as she rested her head on both hands. Nathan felt as if it was a chance which of the two women burst out crying first. So he thought he would speak, in hopes of keeping off the infection of tears.

“Didst ever hear of this mad plan afore. Bessy?”

“No, never!” Her voice came muffled, and changed from under her apron. Hester felt as if the tone, both of question and answer, implied blame, and this she could not bear.

“We should ha’ looked to it when we bound him, for of necessity it would ha’ come to this. There’s examins, and catechizes, and I dunno what all for him to be put through in London. It’s not his fault.”

“Which on us said it were?” asked Nathan, rather put out. “Tho’, for that matter, a few weeks would carry him over the mire, and make him as good a lawyer as any judge among ’em. Oud Lawson the attorney told me that, in a talk I had wi’ him a bit sin. Na, na! it’s the lad’s own hankering after London that makes him want for to stay there for a year, let alone two.”

Nathan shook his head.

“And if it be his own hankering,” said Bessy, putting down her apron, her face all aflame, and her eyes swollen up, “I dunnot see harm in it. Lads aren’t like lasses, to be tied to their own fireside like th’ crook yonder. It’s fitting for a young man to go abroad, and see the world afore he settles down.”

Hester’s hand sought Bessy’s, and the two women sat in sympathetic defiance of any blame that should be thrown on the beloved absent. Nathan only said:

“Nay, wench, dunna wax up so; whatten’s done, ’s done; and worse, it’s my doing. I mun needs make my bairn a gentleman; and we mun pay for it.”

“Dear uncle! he wunna spend much, I’ll answer for it; and I’ll scrimp and save i’ th’ house to make it good.”

“Wench!” said Nathan, solemnly, “it were not paying in cash I were speaking on: it were paying in heart’s care, and heaviness of soul. Lunnon is a place where the devil keeps court as well as King George; and my poor chap has more nor once welly fallen into his clutches here. I dunno what he’ll do when he gets close within sniff of him.”

“Don’t let him go, father!” said Hester, for the first time taking this view. Hitherto she had only thought of her own grief at parting with him. “Father, if you think so, keep him here, safe under our own eye.”

“Nay!” said Nathan, “he’s past time o’ life for that, Why, there’s not one on us knows where he is at this present time, and he not gone out of our sight an hour. He’s too big to be put back i’ th’ go-cart, mother, or kept within doors with the chair turned bottom upwards.”

“I wish he were a wee bairn lying in my arms again. It were a sore day when I weaned him; and I think life’s been getten sorer and sorer at every turn he’s ta’en towards manhood.”

“Coom, lass, that’s noan the way to be talking. Be thankful to Marcy that thou’st getten a man for the son as stands five foot eleven in’s stockings, and ne’er a sick piece about him. We wunnot grudge him his fling, will we, Bess, my wench. He’ll be coming back in a year, or mebby a bit more; and be a’ for settling in a quiet town like, wi’ a wife that’s noan so fur fra’ me at this very minute. An’ we oud folk, as we get into years, must gi’ up farm, and tak a bit on a house near Lawyer Benjamin.”

And so the good Nathan, his own heart heavy enough, tried to soothe his womenkind. But, of the three, his eyes were longest in closing; his apprehensions the deepest founded.

“I misdoubt me I hanna done well by th’ lad. I misdoubt me sore,” was the thought that kept him awake till day began to dawn. “Summet’s wrong about him, or folk would na look at me wi’ such piteous-like een when they speak on him. I can see th’ meaning of it, thof I’m too proud to let on. And Lawson, too, he holds his tongue more nor he should do, when I ax him how my lad’s getting on, and whatten sort of a lawyer he’ll mak. God be marciful to Hester an’ me, if th’ lad’s gone away! God be marciful! But mebby it’s this lying waking n’ the night through, that maks me so fearfu’. Why, when I were his age, I daur be bound I should ha’ spent money fast enoof, i’ I could ha’ come by it. But I had to arn it; that maks a great differ’. Well! It were hard to thwart th’ child of our old age, and we waiten so long for to have ’un!”

Next morning Nathan rode Moggy the cart horse into Highminster to see Mr. Lawson. Anybody who saw him ride out of his own yard would have been struck with the change in him which, when he returned; a change, more than a day’s unusual exercise should have made in a man of his years. He scarcely held the reins at all. One jerk of Moggy’s head would have plucked them out of his hands. His head was bent forward, his eyes looking on some unseen thing, with long unwinking gaze. But as he drew near home on his return, he made an effort to recover himself.

“No need fretting them,” he said; “lads will be lads. But I didna think he had it in him to be so thowtless; young as he is. Well, well! he’ll mebby get more wisdom i’ Lunnon. Anyways it’s best to cut him off fra such evil lads as Will Hawker, and such-like. It’s they as have led my boy astray. He were a good chap till he knowed them.”

But he put all his cares in the background when he came into the houseplace, where both Bessy and his wife met him at the door, and both would fain lend a hand to take off his great-coat.

“Theer, wenches, theer! ye might let a man alone for to get out on’s clothes! Why, I might ha’ struck thee, lass.” And he went on talking, trying to keep them off for a time from the subject that all had at heart. But there was no putting them off for ever; and, by dint of repeated questioning on his wife’s part, more was got out than he had ever meant to tell, enough to grieve both his hearers sorely; and yet the brave old man still kept the worst in his own breast.

The next day Benjamin came home for a week or two before making his great start to London. His father kept him at a distance, and was solemn and quiet in his manner to the young man. Bessy, who had shown anger enough at first, and had uttered many a sharp speech, began to relent, and then to feel hurt and displeased that her uncle should persevere so long in his cold, reserved manner, and Benjamin just going to leave them. Her aunt went, tremblingly busy, about the clothes-presses and drawers, as if afraid of letting herself think either of the past or the future; only once or twice, coming behind her son, she suddenly stooped over his sitting figure, and kissed his cheek, and stroked his hair. Bessy remembered afterwards—long years afterwards—how he had tossed his head away with nervous irritability on one of these occasions, and had muttered—her aunt did not hear it, but Bessy did—

“Can’t you leave a man alone?”

Towards Bessy herself he was pretty gracious. No other words express his manner: it was not warm, nor tender, nor cousinly, but there was an assumption of underbred politeness towards her as a young, pretty woman; which politeness was neglected in his authoritative or rumbling manner towards his mother, or his sullen silence before his father. He once or twice ventured on a compliment to Bessy on her personal appearance. She stood still, and looked at him with astonishment.

“How’s my eyes changed sin last thou sawst them,” she asked, “that thou must be telling me about ’em i’ that fashion? I’d rayther by a deal see thee helping the mother when she’s dropped her knitting-needle and canua see i’ th’ dusk for to pick it up.”

But Bessy thought of his pretty speech about her eyes long after he had forgotten making it, and would have been puzzled to tell the colour of them. Many a day, after he was gone, did she look earnestly in the little oblong looking-glass, which hung up against the wall of her little sleeping-chamber, but which she used to take down in order to examine the eyes he had praised, murmuring to herself, “Pretty soft grey eyes! Pretty soft grey eyes!” until she would hang up the glass again with a sudden laugh and a rosy blush.

In the days, when he had gone away to the vague distance and vaguer place the city called London, Bessy tried to forget all that had gone against her feeling of the affection and duty that a son owed to his parents; and she had many things to forget of this kind that would keep surging up into her mind. For instance, she wished that he had not objected to the home-spun, home-made shirts which his mother and she had had such pleasure in getting ready for him. He might not know, it was true and so her love urged how carefully and evenly the thread had been spun: how, content with bleaching the yarn in the sunniest meadow, the linen, on its return from the weaver’s, had been spread out afresh on the sweet summer grass, and watered carefully night after night when there was no dew to perform the kindly office. He did not know—for no one but Bessy herself did—how many false or large stitches, made large and false by her aunt’s failing eyes (who yet liked to do the choicest part of the stitching all by herself), Bessy had unpicked at night in her own room, and with dainty fingers had restitched; sewing eagerly in the dead of night. All this he did not know; or he could never have complained of the coarse texture; the old-fashioned make of these shirts; and urged on his mother to give him part of her little store of egg and butter money in order to buy newer-fashioned linen in Highminster.

When once that little precious store of his mother’s was discovered, it was well for Bessy’s peace of mind that she did not know how loosely her aunt counted up the coins, mistaking guineas for shillings, or just the other way, so that the amount was seldom the same in the old black spoutless teapot. Yet this son, this hope, this love, had yet a strange power of fascination over the household. The evening before he left, he sat between his parents, a hand in theirs on either side, and Bessy on the old creepie-stool, her head lying on her aunt’s knee, and looking up at him from time to time, as if to learn his face off by heart; till his glances meeting hers, made her drop her eyes, and only sigh.

He stopped up late that night with his father, long after the women had gone to bed. But not to sleep; for I will answer for it the grey-haired mother never slept a wink till the late dawn of the autumn day, and Bessy heard her uncle come up-stairs with heavy, deliberate foot-steps, and go to the old stocking which served him for bank; and count out golden guineas—once he stopped, but again he went on afresh, as if resolved to crown his gift with liberality. Another long pause in which she could but indistinctly hear continued words, it might have been advice, it might be a prayer, for it was in her uncle’s voice; and then father and son came up to bed. Bessy’s room was but parted from her cousin’s by a thin wooden partition, and the last sound she distinctly heard, before her eyes, tired out with crying, closed themselves in sleep, was the guineas clinking down upon each other at regular intervals, as if Benjamin were playing at pitch and toss with his father’s present.

After he was gone, Bessy wished he had asked her to walk part of the way with him into Highminster. She was all ready, her things laid out on the bed, but she could not accompany him without invitation.

The little household tried to close over the gap as best they might. They seemed to set themselves to their daily work with unusual vigour; but somehow when evening came, there had been little done. Heavy hearts never make light work, and there was no telling how much care and anxiety each had had to bear in secret in the field, at the wheel, or in the dairy. Formerly he was looked for every Saturday; looked for, though he might not come, or if he came, there were things to be spoken about, that made his visit anything but a pleasure: still he might come, and all things might go right, and then what sunshine, what gladness to those simple people. But now he was away, and dreary winter was come on; old folks’ sight fails, and the evenings were long, and sad, in spite of all Bessy could do or say. And he did not write so often as he might so every one thought; though every one would have been ready to defend him from either of the others who had expressed such a thought aloud. “Surely!” said Bessy to herself, when the first primroses peeped out in a sheltered and sunny hedge hank, and she gathered them as she passed home from afternoon church “surely there never will be such a dreary, miserable winter again as this has been.” There had been a great change in Nathan and Bessy Huntroyd during this last year. The spring before, when Benjamin was yet the subject of more hopes than fears, his father and mother looked what I may call an elderly middle-aged couple: people who had a good deal of hearty work in them yet. Now it was not his absence alone that caused the change—they looked frail and old, as if each day’s natural trouble was a burden more than they could bear. For Nathan had heard sad reports about his only child, and had told them solemnly to his wife, as things too bad to be believed, and yet, “God help us if indeed he is such a lad as this!” Their eyes were become too dry and hollow for many tears; they sat together, hand-in-hand; and shivered, and sighed, and did not speak many words, or dare to look at each other: and then Hester had said,

“We mauna tell th’ lass. Young folks’ hearts break wi’ a little, and she’d be apt to fancy it were true.” Here the old woman’s voice broke into a kind of piping cry, but she struggled, and her next words were all right. “We mauna tell her, he’s bound to be fond on her, and mebby, if she thinks well on him, and loves him, it will bring him straight.”

“God grant it!” said Nathan.

“God shall grant it,” said Hester, passionately moaning out her words; and then repeating them, alas! with a vain repetition.

“It’s a bad place for lying, is Highminster,” said she, at length, as if impatient of the silence. “I never knowed such a place for getting up stories. But Bessy knows nought on, and nother you nor me belie’es un; that’s one blessing.”

But if they did not in their hearts believe them, how came they to look so sad, and worn, beyond what mere age could do?

Then came round another year, another winter, yet more miserable than the last. This year, with the primroses, came Benjamin; a bad, hard, flipppant young man, with yet enough of specious manners and handsome countenance to make his appearance striking at first to those to whom the aspect of a London fast young man of the lowest order is strange and new. Just at first, as he sauntered in with a swagger and an air of indifference, which was partly assumed, partly real, his old parents felt a simple kind of awe of him, as if he were not their son, but a real gentleman; but they had too much fine instinct in their homely natures not to know, after a very few minutes had passed, that this was not a true prince.

“Whatten ever does he mean,” said Hester to her niece, as soon as they were alone, “by a’ them maks and wearlocks? And he minces his words as if his tongue were clipped short, or split like a magpie’s. Hech! London is as bad as a hot day i’ August for spoiling good flesh; for he were a good-looking lad when he went up; and now, look at him, with his skin gone into lines and flourishes, just like first page on a copy-book!”

“I think he looks a deal better, aunt, for them new-fashioned whiskers!” said Bessy, blushing still at the remembrance of the kiss he had given her on first seeing her—a pledge, she thought, poor girl, that, in spite of his long silence in letter writing, he still looked upon her as his troth-plight wife. There were things about him which none of them liked, although they never spoke about them, yet there was also something to gratify them all in the way in which he remained quiet at Nab-end, instead of seeking variety, as he had formerly done, by constantly stealing off to the neighbouring town. His father had paid all the debts that he knew of, soon after Benjamin had gone up to London; so there were no duns that his parents knew of to alarm him, and keep him at home. And he went out in the morning with the old man, his father, and lounged by his side, as Nathan went round his fields, with busy yet infirm gait, having heart, as he would have expressed it, in all that was going on, because at length his son seemed to take an interest in all the farming affairs, and stood patiently by his side, while he compared his own small galloways with the great short-horns looming over his neighbour’s hedge.

“It’s a slovenly way, thou seest, that of selling th’ milk; folk don’t care whether it’s good or not, so that they get their pint-measure full o’ stuff that’s watered afore it leaves th’ beast, instead o’ honest cheating by the help o’ th’ pump. But look at Bessy’s butter, what skill it shows! part her own manner of making, and part good choice o’ cattle. It’s a pleasure to see her basket, a’ packed ready for to go to market; and it’s noan o’ a pleasure for to see the buckets fu’ of their blue starch-water as yon beasts give. I’m thinking they crossed th’ breed wi’ a pump, not long sin’. Hech! but our Bessy’s a cleaver canny wench! I sometimes think thou’lt be for gi’ng up th’ law, and taking to th’ oud trade, when thou wedst wi’ her!” This was intended to be a skilful way of ascertaining whether there was any ground for the old farmer’s wish and prayer that Benjamin might give up the law, and return to the primitive occupation of his father. Nathan dared to hope it now, since his son had never made much by his profession, owing, as he had said, to his want of a connexion: and the farm, and the stock, and the clean wife, too, were ready to his hand; and Nathan could safely rely on himself never in his most unguarded moments, to reproach his son with the hardly-earned hundreds that had been spent on his education. So the old man listened with painful interest to the answer which his son was evidently struggling to make; coughing a little and blowing his nose before he spoke.

“Well! you see, father, law is a precarious livelihood; a man, as I may express myself, has no chance in the profession unless he is known known to the judges, and tiptop barristers, and that sort of thing. Now you see my mother and you have no acquaintance that you may call exactly in that line. But luckily I have met with a man, a friend as I may say, who is really a first-rate fellow, knowing everybody, from the Lord Chancellor downwards; and he has offered me a share in his business—a partnership in short.” He hesitated a little.

“I’m sure that’s uncommon kind of the gentleman, said Nathan. “I should like for to thank him mysen; for it’s not many as would pick up a young chap out o’ th’ dirt as it were, and say, Here’s hauf my good fortune for you, sir, and your very good health. Most on ’em, when they’re gettin’ a bit o’ luck, run off wi’ it to keep it a’ to themselves, and gobble it down in a corner. What may be his name, for I should like for to know it?”

“You don’t quite apprehend me, father. A great deal of what you’ve said is true to the letter. People don’t like to share their good luck, as you say.”

“The more credit to them as does,” broke in Nathan.

“Ay, but you see even such a fine fellow as my friend Cavendish does not like to give away half his good practice for nothing. He expects an equivalent.”

“An equivalent,” said Nathan: his voice had dropped down an octave. “And what may that be? There’s always some meaning in grand words, I take it, though I’m not book-larned enough to find it out.”

“Why, in this case the equivalent he demands for taking me into partnership, and afterwards relinquishing the whole business to me, is three hundred pounds down.”

Benjamin looked sideways from under his eyes to see how his father took the proposition. His father struck his stick deep down in the ground, and leaning one hand upon it, faced round at him.

“Then thy fine friend may go and be hanged. Three hunder pound! I’ll be darned an’ danged too, if I know where to get ’em, e’en if I’d be making a fool o’ thee an’ mysen too.”

He was out of breath by this time. His son took his father’s first words in dogged silence; it was but the burst of surprise he had led himself to expect, and did not daunt him for long.

“I should think, sir—”

“‘Sir’—whatten for dost thou ‘sir’ me? Is them’s your manners? I’m plain Nathan Huntroyd; who never took on to be a gentleman; but I have paid my way up to this time, which I shannot do much longer, if I’m to have a son coming an’ asking me for threehunder pounds, just as if I were a cow, and had nothing to do but let down my milk to the first person as strokes me.”

“Well, father,” said Benjamin, with an affectation of frankness, “then there’s nothing for me but to do as I have often planned before; go and emigrate.”

“And what?” said his father, looking sharply and steadily at him.

“Emigrate. Go to America, or India, or some colony where there would be an opening for a young man of spirit.”

Benjamin had reserved this proposition for his trump card, expecting by means of it to carry all before him. But to his surprise his father plucked his stick out of the hole he had made when he so vehemently thrust it into the ground, and walked on four or five steps in advance; there he stood still again, and there was a dead silence for a few minutes.

“It ‘ud, mebby, be th’ best thing thou couldst do,” the father began. Benjamin set his teeth hard to keep in curses. It was well for poor Nathan he did not look round then, and see the look his son gave him. “But it would come hard like upon us, upon Hester and me, for, whether thou’rt a good ’un or not, thou’rt our flesh and blood, our only bairn, and if thou’rt not all as a man could wish it’s mebby been the fault on our pride i’ thee. It ‘ud kill the missus if he went off to Amerikay, and: too, the lass as thinks so much on him.” The speech originally addressed to his son, had wandered off into a monologue as keenly listened to by Benjamin, however, as if it had all been spoken to him. After a pause of consideration his father turned round. “Yon man—I wunnot call him a friend o’ yourn, to think of asking you for such a mint o’ money is not th’ only one, I’ll be bound, as could give ye a start i’ th’ law? Other folks ‘ud, mebby, do it for less?”

“Not one of ’em; to give me equal advantages,” said Benjamin, thinking he perceived signs of relenting.

“Well, then, thou mayst tell him that it’s neither he nor thee as ’ll see th’ sight o’ three hunder pound o’ my money. I’ll not deny as I’ve a bit laid up again a rainy day; it’s not so much as thatten though, and a part on it is for Bessy, as has been like a daughter to us.”

“But Bessy is to be your real daughter some day, when I’ve a home to take her to,” said Benjamin; for he played very fast and loose, even in his own mind, with his engagement with Bessy. Present with her, when she was looking her brightest and best, he behaved to her as if they were engaged lovers: absent from her, he looked upon her rather as a good wedge, to be driven into his parent’s favour on his behalf. Now, however, he was not exactly untrue in speaking as if he meant to make her his wife; for the thought was in his mind, though he made use of it to work upon his father.

“It will be a dree day for us, then,” said the old man. “But God ’ll have us in his keeping, and ’ll mebby be taking more care on us i’ heaven by that time than Bess, good lass as she is, has had on us at Nab-end. Her heart is set on thee, too. But, lad, I hanna gotten the three hunder; I keeps my cash i’ th’ stocking, thou knowst, till it reaches fifty pound, and then I takes it to Ripon Bank. Now the last scratch they’re gi’en me, made it just two hunder, and I hanna but on to fifteen pound yet i’ the stockin’, and I meant one hunder an’ the red cow’s calf to be for Bess, she’s ta’en such pleasure like i’ rearing it.”

Benjamin gave a sharp glance at his father to see if he was telling the truth; and, that a suspicion of the old man, his father, had entered into the son’s head, tells enough of his own character.

“I canna do it—I canna do it, for sure although I shall like to think as I had helped on the wedding. There’s the black heifer to be sold yet, and she’ll fetch a matter of ten pound; but a deal on’t will be needed for seed-corn, for the arable did but bad last year, and I thought I would try—I’ll tell thee what, lad! I’ll make it as though Bess lent thee her hunder, only thou must give her a writ of hand for it, and thou shalt have a’ the money i’ Ripon Bank, and see if the lawyer wunnot let thee have a share of what he offered thee for three hunder, for two. I dunnot mean for to wrong him, but thou must get a fair share for the money. At times I think thou’rt done by folk; now, I wadna have you cheat a bairn of a brass farthing: same time I wadna have thee so soft as to be cheated.”

To explain this, it should be told that some of the bills which Benjamin had received money from his father to pay, had been altered so as to include other and less creditable expenses which the young man had incurred; and the simple old farmer, who had still much faith left in him for his boy, was acute enough to perceive that he had paid above the usual price for the articles he had purchased.

After some hesitation, Benjamin agreed to receive this two hundred, and promised to employ it to the best advantage in setting himself up in business. He had, nevertheless, a strange hankering after the additional fifteen pounds that was left to accumulate in the stocking. It was his, he thought, as heir to his father, and he soon lost some of his usual complaisance for Bessy that evening, as he dwelt on the idea that there was money being laid by for her, and grudged it to her even in imagination. He thought more of this fifteen pound that he was not to have, than of all the hardly-earned and humbly-saved two hundred that he was to come into possession of. Meanwhile Nathan was in unusual spirits that evening. He was so generous and affectionate at heart that he had an unconscious satisfaction in having helped two people on the road to happiness by the sacrifice of the greater part of his property. The very fact of having trusted his son so largely, seemed to make Benjamin more worthy of trust in his father’s estimation. The sole idea he tried to banish was, that, if all came to pass as he hoped, both Benjamin and Bessy would be settled far away from Nab-end; but then he had a child-like reliance that “God would take care of him and his missus, somehow or anodder. It wur o’ no use looking too far ahead.”

Bessy had to hear many unintelligible jokes from her uncle that night; for he made no doubt that Benjamin had told her all that had passed, whereas the truth was, his son had said never a word to his cousin on the subject.

When the old couple were in bed, Nathan told his wife of the promise he had made to his son, and the plan in life which the advance of the two hundred was to promote. Poor Hester was a little startled at the sudden change in the destination of the sum, which she had long thought of with secret pride as “money i’ th’ bank.” But she was willing enough to part with it, if necessary, for Benjamin. Only, how such a sum could be necessary, was the puzzle. But even this perplexity was jostled out of her mind by the overwhelming idea, not only of “our Ben” settling in London, but of Bessy going there too as his wife. This great trouble swallowed up all care about money, and Hester shivered and sighed all the night through with distress. In the morning, as Bessy was kneading the bread, her aunt, who had been sitting by the fire in an unusual manner for one of her active habits, said:

“I reckon we mun go to th’ shop for our bread, an’ that’s a thing I never thought to come to so long as I lived.”

Bessy looked up from her kneading, surprised.

“I’m sure I’m noan going to eat their nasty stuff. What for do ye want to get baker’s bread, aunt? This dough will rise as high as a kite in a south wind.”

“I’m not up to kneading as I could do once; it welly breaks my back; and when thou’rt off in London, I reckon we mun buy our bread, first time in my life.”

“I’m not a-going to London, said Bessy, kneading away with fresh resolution, and growing very red, either with the idea or the exertion.

‘“But our Ben is going partner wi’ a great London lawyer, and thou know’st he’ll not tarry long but what he’ll fetch thee.”

“Now, aunt,” said Bessy, stripping her arms of the dough, but still not looking up, “if that’s all, don’t fret yourself. Ben will have twenty minds in his head afore he settles, eyther in business or in wedlock. I sometimes wonder,” she said, with increasing vehemence, “why I go on thinking on him; for I dunnot think he thinks on me when I’m out o’ sight. I’ve a month’s mind to try and forget him this time when he leaves us that I have!”

“For shame, wench! and he to be planning and purposing all for thy sake.. It wur only yesterday as he wur talking to thy uncle, and mapping it out so clever; only thou seest, wench, it’ll be dree work for us when both thee and him is gone.”

The old woman began to cry the kind of tearless cry of the aged. Bessy hastened to comfort her; and the two talked, and grieved, and hoped, and planned for the days that now were to be, till they ended, the one in being consoled, the other in being secretly happy.

Nathan and his son came back from Highminster that evening, with their business transacted in the round-about way, which was most satisfactory to the old man. If he had thought it necessary to take half as much pains in ascertaining the truth of the plausible details by which his son bore out the story of the offered partnership, as he did in trying to get his money conveyed to London in the most secure manner, it would have been well for him. But he knew nothing of all this, and acted in the way which satisfied his anxiety best. He came home tired, but content; not in such high spirits as on the night before, but as easy in his mind as he could be on the eve of his son’s departure. Bessy, pleasantly agitated by her aunt’s tale of the morning of her cousin’s true love for her—what ardently we wish we long believe—and the plan which was to end in their marriage—end to her, the woman, at least—Bessy looked almost pretty in her bright, blushing comeliness, and more than once, as she moved about from kitchen to dairy, Benjamin pulled her towards him, and gave her a kiss. To all such proceedings the old couple were wilfully blind; and, as night drew on, every one became sadder and quieter, thinking of the parting that was to be on the morrow. As the hours drew on, Bessy, too, became subdued; and, by-and-by, her simple cunning was exerted to get Benjamin to sit down next his mother, whose very heart was yearning after him, as Bessy saw. When once her child was placed by her side, and she had got possession of his hand, the old woman kept stroking it, and murmuring long unused words of endearment, such as she had spoken to him while he was yet a little child. But all this was wearisome to him. As long as he might play with, and plague, and caress Bessy, he had not been sleepy; but now he yawned loudly. Bessy could have boxed his ears for not curbing this gaping; at any rate, he needed not to have done it so openly, so almost ostentatiously. His mother was more pitiful.

“Thou’rt tired, my lad!” said she, putting her hand fondly on his shoulder; but it fell off, as he stood up suddenly, and said:

“Yes, deuced tired! I’m off to bed.” And with a rough careless kiss ail round, even to Bessy, as if he was “deuced tired” of playing the lover, he was gone; leaving the three to gather up their thoughts slowly, and follow him up-stairs.

He seemed almost impatient at them for rising betimes to see him off the next morning, and made no more of a good-by than some such speech as this: “Well, good folk, when next I see you, I hope you’ll have merrier faces than you have today. Why, you might be going to a funeral; it’s enough to scare a man from the place; you look quite ugly to what you did last night, Bess.”

He was gone; and they turned into the house, and settled to the long day’s work without many words about their loss. They had no time for unnecessary talking, indeed, for much had been left undone during his short visit that ought to have been done; and they had now to work double tides. Hard work was their comfort for many a long day.

For some time, Benjamin’s letters, if not frequent, were full of exultant accounts of his well-doing. It is true that the details of his prosperity were somewhat vague; but the fact was broadly and unmistakably stated. Then came longer pauses; shorter letters, altered in tone. About a year after he had left them, Nathan received a letter, which bewildered and irritated him exceedingly. Something had gone wrong—what, Benjamin did not say—but the letter ended with a request that was almost a demand, for the remainder of his father’s savings, whether in the stocking or the bank. Now the year had not been prosperous with Nathan; there had been an epidemic among cattle, and he had suffered along with his neighbours; and, moreover, the price of cows, when he had bought some to repair his wasted stock, was higher than he had ever remembered it before. The fifteen pounds in the stocking, which Benjamim left, had diminished to little more than three; and to have that required of him in so peremptory a manner! Before Nathan imparted the contents of this letter to any one (Bessy and her aunt had gone to market on a neighbour’s cart that day), he got pen and ink and paper, and wrote back an ill-spelt, but very implicit and stern negative. Benjamin had had his portion; and if he could not make it do, so much the worse for him; his father had no more to give him. That was the substance of the letter.

The letter was written, directed, and sealed, and given to the country postman, returning to Highminster after his day’s distribution and collection of letters, before Hester and Bessy returned from market. It had been a pleasant day of neighbourly meeting and sociable gossip: prices had been high, and they were in good spirits, only agreeably tired, and full of small pieces of news. It was some time before they found out how flatly all their talk fell on the ears of the stay-at-home listener. But, when they saw that his depression was caused by something beyond their powers of accounting for by any little every day cause, they urged him to tell them what was the matter. His anger had not gone off. It had rather increased by dwelling upon it, and he spoke it out in good resolute terms; and, long ere he had ended, the two women were as sad, if not as angry, as himself. Indeed, it was many days before either feeling wore away in the minds of those who entertained them. Bessy was the soonest comforted, because she found a vent for her sorrow in action; an action that was half as a kind of compensation for many a sharp word that she had spoken when her cousin had done anything to displease her on his last visit, and half because she believed that he never could have written such a letter to his father unless his want of money had been very pressing and real; though how he could ever have wanted money so soon, after such a heap of it had been given to him, was more than she could justly say. Bessy got out all her savings of little presents of sixpences and shillings, ever since she had been a child, of all the money she had gained for the eggs of two hens, called her own, she put all together, and it was above two pound—two pound five and seven-pence, to speak accurately—and, leaving out the penny as a nest egg for her future savings, she put up the rest in a little parcel, and sent it, with a note, to Benjamin’s address in London:

“From a well-wisher.

“Dear Benjamin, Unkle has lost 2 cows and a vast of monney. He is a good deal Angored, but more Troubled. So no more at present. Hopeing this will finding you well As it leaves us. Tho’ lost to Site, To Memory Dear. Repayment not kneeded.

“Your effectonet cousin,

“Elizabeth Rose.”

When this packet was once fairly sent off, Bessy began to sing again over her work. She never expected the mere form of acknowledgment; indeed, she had such faith in the carrier (who took parcels to York, whence they were forwarded to London by coach), that she felt sure that he would go on purpose to London to deliver anything entrusted to him, if he had not full confidence in the person, persons, coach and horses, to whom he committed it. Therefore she was not anxious that she did not hear of its arrival. “Giving a thing to a man as one knows,” said she to herself, “is a vast different to poking a thing through a hole into a box, th’ inside of which one has never clapped eyes on; and yet letters get safe some ways or another.” (This belief in the infallibility of the post was destined a shock before long.) But she had a secret yearning for Benjamin’s thanks, and some of the old words of love that she had been without so long. Nay, she even thought when, day after day, week after week, passed by without a line that he might be winding up his affairs in that weary, wasteful London, and coming back to Nab-end to thank her in person.

One day—her aunt was up-stairs, inspecting the summer’s make of cheeses, her uncle out in the fields—the postman brought a letter into the kitchen to Bessy. A country postman, even now, is not much pressed for time, and in those days there were but few letters to distribute, and they were only sent out from Highminster once a week into the district in which Nab-end was situated; and on those occasions the letter-carrier usually paid morning calls on the various people for whom he had letters. So, half standing by the dresser, half sitting on it, he began to rummage out his bag. “It’s a queer-like thing I’ve got for Nathan this time. I am afraid it will bear ill news in it, for there’s ‘Dead Letter Office’ stamped on the top of it.”

“Lord save us!” said Bessy, and sat down on the nearest chair, as white as a sheet. In an instant, however, she was up, and, snatching the ominous letter out of the man’s hands, she pushed him before her out of the house, and said, “Be off wi’ thee, afore aunt comes down;” and ran past him as hard as she could till she reached the field where she expected to find her uncle.

“Uncle,” said she, breathless, “what is it? Oh, uncle, speak! Is he dead?”

Nathan’s hands trembled, and his eyes dazzled, “Take it,” he said, “and tell me what it is.”

“It’s a letter—it’s from you to Benjamin, it is and there’s words printed with it, ‘Not known at the address given;’ so they’ve sent it back to the writer that’s you, uncle. Oh, it gave me such a start, with them nasty words printed outside!”

Nathan had taken the letter back into his own hands, and was turning it over, while he strove to understand what the quick-witted Bessy had picked up at a glance. But he arrived at a different conclusion.

“He’s dead?” said he. “The lad is dead, and he never knowed how as I were sorry I wrote to ’un so sharp. My lad! my lad!” Nathan sat down on the ground where he stood, and covered his face with his old, withered hands. The letter returned to him was one which he had written with infinite pains and at various times, to tell his child, in kinder words and at greater length than he had done before, the reasons why he could not send him the money demanded. And now Benjamin was dead; nay, the old man immediately jumped to the conclusion that his child had been starved to death, without money, in a wild, wide, strange place. All he could say at first was:

“My heart, Bess my heart is broken!” And he put his hand to his side, still keeping his shut eyes covered with the other, as though he never wished to see the light of day again. Bessy was down by his side in an instant, holding him in her arms, chafing and kissing him.

“It’s noan so bad, uncle; he’s not dead; the letter does not say that, dunnot think it. He’s flitted from that lodging, and the lazy tyke dunna know where to find him; and so, they just send y’ back th’ letter, instead of taring fra’ house” to house, as Mark Benson would. I’ve always heerd tell on south country folk for laziness. He’s noan dead, uncle; he’s just flitted, and he’ll let us know afore long where he’s getten to. Mebby it’s a cheaper place, for that lawyer has cheated him, ye recklet, and he’ll be trying to live for as little as can, that’s all, uncle. Dunnot take on so, for it doesna say he’s dead.” By this time, Bessy was crying with agitation, although she firmly believed in her own view of the case, and had felt the opening of the ill-favoured letter as a great relief. Presently she began to urge both with word and action upon her uncle, that he should sit no longer on the damp grass. She pulled him up, for he was very stiff, and, as he said, “all shaken to dithers.” She made him walk about, repeating over and over again her solution of the case, always in the same words, beginning again and again, “He’s noan dead; it’s just been a flitting,” and so on. Nathan shook his head, and tried to be convinced; but it was a steady belief in his own heart for all that. He looked so deathly ill on his return home with Bessy (for she would not let him go on with his day’s work), that his wife made sure he had taken cold, and he, weary and indifferent to life, was glad to subside into bed and the rest from exertion which his real bodily illness gave him. Neither Bessy nor he spoke of the letter again, even to each other, for many days; and Bessy found means to stop Mark Benson’s tongue, and satisfy his kindly curiosity by giving him the rosy side of her own view of the case.

Nathan got up again an older man in looks and constitution by ten years for that week of bed. His wife gave him many a scolding on his imprudence for sitting down in the wet field, if ever so tired. But now she, too, was beginning to be uneasy at Benjamin’s long-continued silence. She could not write herself, but she urged her husband many a time to send a letter to ask for news of her lad. He said nothing in reply for some time; at length he told her he would write next Sunday afternoon. Sunday was his general time for writing, and this Sunday he meant to go to church for the first time since his illness. On Saturday he was very persistent against his wife’s wishes (backed by Bessy as hard as she could), in resolving to go into Highminster to market. The change would do him good, he said. But he came home tired, and a little mysterious in his ways. When he went to the shippon the last thing at night, he asked Bessy to go with him, and hold the lantern, while he looked at an ailing cow; and, when they were fairly out of the earshot of the house, he pulled out a little shop-parcel, and said to her,

“Thou’lt put that on ma Sunday hat, wilt ‘ou lass? It’ll be a bit on a comfort to me; for I know my lad’s dead and gone, though I dunna speak on it for fear o’ grieving th’ old woman and ye.”

“I’ll put it on, uncle, if but he’s noan dead.” (Bessy was sobbing.)

“I know I know, lass. I dunnot wish other folk to hold my opinion; but I’d like to wear a bit o’ crape, out o’ respect to my boy. It ’ud have done me good for to have ordered a black coat, but she’d see if I had na’ on my wedding-coat, Sundays, for a’ she’s losing her eyesight, poor old wench! But she’ll ne’er take notice o’ a bit o’ crape. Thou’ll put it on all canny and tidy.”

So Nathan went to church with a strip of crape as narrow as Bessy durst venture to make it round his hat. Such is the contradictoriness of human nature, that, though he was most anxious his wife should not hear of his conviction that their son was dead, he was half hurt that none of the neighbours noticed his sign of mourning so far as to ask him for whom he wore it.

But after a while, when they never heard a word from or about Benjamin, the household wonder as to what had become of him grew so painful and strong, that Nathan no longer kept his idea to himself. Poor Hester, however, rejected it with her whole will, heart, and soul. She could not and would not believe nothing should make her believe that her only child Benjamin had died without some sign of love or farewell to her. No arguments could shake her in this. She believed that if all natural means of communication between her and him had been cut off at the last supreme moment if death had come upon him in an instant, sudden and unexpected her intense love would, she believed, have been supernaturally made conscious of the blank. Nathan at times tried to feel glad that she could still hope to see the lad again; but at other moments he wanted her sympathy in his grief, his self-reproach, his weary wonder as to how and what they had done wrong in the treatment of their son, that he had been such a care and sorrow to his parents. Bessy was convinced, first by her aunt, and then by her uncle—honestly convinced on both sides of the argument; and so, for the time, able to sympathise with each. But she lost her youth in a very few months; she looked set and middle aged long before she ought to have done; and rarely smiled and never sang again.

All sorts of new arrangements were required by the blow which told so miserably upon the energies of all the household at Nab-end. Nathan could no longer go about and direct his two men, taking a good turn of work himself at busy times. Hester lost her interest in her dairy; for which indeed her increasing loss of sight unfitted her. Bessy would either do field work, or attend to the cows, the shippon, or chum, or make cheese; she did all well, no longer merrily, but with something of stern cleverness. But she was not sorry when her uncle one evening told her aunt and her that a neighbouring farmer, Job Kirkby, had made him an offer to take so much of his land off his hands as would leave him only pasture enough for two cows, and no arable to attend to; while Farmer Kirkby did not wish to interfere with anything in the house, only would be glad to use some of the outbuildings for his fattening cattle.

“We can do wi’ Hawky amd Daisy; it’ll leave us eight or ten pound o’ butter to take to market i’ summer time, and keep us fra’ thinking too much, which is what I’m dreading on as I get into years.”

“Ay,” said his wife. Thou’ll not have to go so far afield, if it’s only the Aster-Toft as is on thy hands. And Bess will have to gi’ up her pride i’ cheese, and tak’ to making cream-butter. I’d allays a fancy for trying at cream-butter, but th’ whey had to be used; else, where I come fra, they’d never ha’ looked near whey-butter.”

When Hester was left alone with Bessy, she said, in allusion to this change of plan,

“I’m thankful to the Lord as it is as it is: for I were allays feared Nathan would have to gie up the house and farm altogether, and then the lad would na’ know where to find us when he came back fra Merikay. He’s gone there for to make his fortune, I’ll be bound. Keep up thy heart, lass, he’ll be home some day; and have sown his wild oats. Eh! but thatten’s a pretty story i’ the Gospels about the Prodigal who’d to eat the pigs’ vittle at one time, but ended i’ clover in his father’s house. And I’m sure our Nathan ’ll be ready to forgive him, and love him, and make much of him, mebby a deal more nor me, who never gave in to’s death. It ’ll be liken to a resurrection to our Nathan.”

Farmer Kirkby then, took by far the greater part of the land belonging to Nab-end Farm; and the work about the rest, and about the two remaining cows was easily done by three pairs of willing hands with a little occasional assistance. The Kirkby family were pleasant enough to have to deal with. There was a son, a stiff, grave bachelor, who was very particular and methodical about his work, and rarely spoke to any one. But Nathan took it into his head that John Kirkby was looking after Bessy, and was a good deal troubled in his mind in consequence; for it was the first time he had to face the effects of his belief in his son’s death; and he discovered to his own surprise that he had not that implicit faith which would make it easy for him to look upon Bessy as the wife of another man than the one to whom she had been betrothed in her youth. As, however, John Kirkby seemed in no hurry to make his intentions (if indeed he had any) clear to Bessy, it was only at times that this jealousy on behalf of his lost son seized upon Nathan.

But people, old, and in deep hopeless sorrow, grow irritable at times, however they may repent and struggle against their irritability.

There were days when Bessy had to bear a good deal from her uncle; but she loved him so dearly and respected him so much, that high as her temper was to all other people she never returned him a rough or impatient word. And she had a reward in the conviction of his deep, true affection for her, and in her aunt’s entire and most sweet dependence upon her.

One day, however—it was near the end of November—Bessy had had a good deal to bear that seemed more than usually unreasonable on behalf of her uncle. The truth was, that one of Kirkby’s cows was ill, and John Kirkby was a good deal about in the farm-yard; Bessy was interested about the animal, and had helped in preparing a mash over their own fire, that had to be given warm to the sick creature. If John had been out of the way, there would have been no one more anxious about the affair than Nathan; both because he was naturally kind-hearted and neighbourly, and also because he was rather proud of his reputation for knowledge in the diseases of cattle. But because John was about, and Bessy helping a little in what had to be done, Nathan would do nothing, and chose to assume that “nothing to think on ailed th’ beast, but lads and lasses were allays fain to be feared on something.” Now John was upwards of forty, and Bessy nearly eight-and-twenty, so the terms lads and lasses did not exactly apply to their case.

When Bessy brought the milk in from their own cows towards half-past five o’clock, Nathan bade her make the doors, and not be running out i’ the dark and cold about other folk’s business; and, though Bessy was a little surprised and a good deal annoyed at his tone, she sat down to her supper without making a remonstrance. It had long been Nathan’s custom to look out the last thing at night to see “what mak’ o’ weather it wur;” and, when towards half-past eight he got his stick and went out two or three steps from ths door which opened into the houseplace where they were sitting Hester put her hand on her niece’s shoulder and said:

“He’s gotten a touch o’ the rheumatics, as twinges him and makes him speak so sharp. I didna like to ask thee afore him, but how’s yon poor beast?”

“Very ailing, belike. John Kirkby wur off for th’ cow-doctor when I cam in. I’ll reckon they’ll have to stop up wi’t a’ night.”

Since their sorrows, her uncle had taken to reading a chapter in the Bible aloud, the last thing at night. He could not read fluently, and often hesitated long over a word, which he miscalled at length; but the very fact of opening the book seemed to soothe those old bereaved parents; for it made them feel quiet and safe in the presence of God, and took them out of the cares and troubles of this world into that futurity which, however dim and vague, was to their faithful hearts as a sure and certain rest. This little quiet time—Nathan sitting with his horn spectacles on; the fallow candle between him and his Bible, and throwing a strong light on his reverent, earnest face; Hester sitting on the other side of the fire, her head bowed in attentive listening, now and then shaking it, and moaning a little, but when a promise came, or any good tidings of great joy, saying “Amen” with fervour; Bessy or her aunt, perhaps her mind a little wandering to some household cares, or it might be on thoughts of those who were absent—this little quiet pause, I say, was grateful and soothing to this household, as a lullaby to a tired child. But this night, Bessy sitting opposite to the long low window, only shaded by a few geraniums that grew in the sill, and the door alongside that window, through which her uncle had passed not a quarter of an hour before saw the wooden latch of the door gently and almost noiselessly lifted up, as if some one were trying it from the outside.

She was startled; and watched again, intently; but it was perfectly still now. She thought it must have been that it had not fallen into its proper place when her uncle had come in and locked the door. It was just enough to make her uncomfortable, no more; and she almost persuaded herself it must have been fancy. Before she went up-stairs, however, she went to the window to look out into the darkness; but all was still. Nothing to be seen; nothing to be heard. So the three went quietly up-stairs to bed.

The house was little better than a cottage. The front door opened on a houseplace, over which was the old couple’s bedroom. To the left, as you entered this pleasant houseplace and at close right angles with the entrance, was a door that led into the small parlour, which was Hester and Bessy’s pride, although not half as comfortable as the houseplace, and never on any occasion used as a sitting-room. There were shells and bundles of honesty in the fireplace; the best chest of drawers, and a company-set of gaudy-coloured china, and a bright common carpet on the floor; but all failed to give it the aspect of the homely comfort and delicate cleanliness of the houseplace. Over this parlour was the bedroom which Benjamin had slept in when a boy when at home. It was kept still in a kind of readiness for him. The bed was still there, in which none had slept since he, eight or nine years ago; and every now and then the warming-pan was taken quietly and silently up by his old mother, and the bed thoroughly aired. But this she did in her husband’s absence, and without saying a word to any one; nor did Bessy offer to help her, though her eyes often filled with tears, as she saw her aunt still going through the hopeless service. But the room had become a receptacle for all unused things; and there was always a corner of it appropriated to the winter’s store of apples. To the left of the houseplace, as you stood facing the fire, on the side opposite to the window and outer door, were two other doors; the one on the right opened into a kind of back kitchen, and had a lean-to roof, and a door opening on to the farm-yard and back premises; the left-hand door gave on the stairs, underneath which was a closet, in which various household treasures were kept, and beyond that the dairy, over which Bessy slept; her little chamber window opening just above the sloping roof of the back kitchen. There were neither blinds nor shutters to any of the windows, either up-stairs or down; the house was built of stone, and there was heavy framework of the same material round the little casement windows, and the long, low window of the houseplace was divided by what, in grander dwellings would be called mullions.

By nine o’clock this night of which I am speaking, all had gone up-stairs to bed: it was even later than usual, for the burning of candles was regarded so much in the light of extravagance, that the household kept early hours even for country-folk. But somehow this evening, Bessy could not sleep, although in general she was in deep slumber five minutes after her head touched the pillow. Her thoughts ran on the chances for John Kirby’s cow, and a little fear lest the disorder might be epidemic, and spread to their own cattle. Across all these homely cares came a vivid, uncomfortable recollection of the way in which the door latch went up and down without any sufficient agency to account for it. She felt more sure now, than she had done down-stairs, that it was a real movement and no effect of her imagination. She wished that it had not happened just when her uncle was reading, that she might at once have gone quick to the door, and convinced herself of the cause. As it was, her thoughts ran uneasily on the supernatural; and thence to Benjamin, her dear cousin and playfellow, her early lover. She had long given him up as lost for ever to her, if not actually dead; but this very giving him up for ever involved a free, full forgivenes of all his wrongs to her. She thought tenderly of him, as of one who might have been led astray in his later years, but who existed rather in her recollection as the innocent child, the spirited lad, the handsome, dashing young man. If John Kirkby’s quiet attentions had ever betrayed his wishes to Bessy—if indeed he ever had any wishes on the subject—her first feeling would have been to compare his weather-beaten, middle-aged face and figure with the face and figure she remembered well, but never more expected to see in this life. So thinking, she became very restless, and weary of bed, and, after long tossing and turning, ending in a belief that she should never get to sleep at all that night, she went off soundly and suddenly.

As suddenly was she wide awake, sitting up in bed, listening to some noise that must have awakened her, but which was not repeated for some time. Surely it was in her uncle’s room her uncle was up; but for a minute or two there was no further sound. Then she heard him open his door, and go down-stairs, with hurried, stumbling steps. She now thought that her aunt must be ill, and hastily sprang out of bed, and was putting on her petticoat with hurried, trembling, hands, and had just opened her chamber door, when she heard the front door undone, and a scuffle, as of the feet of several people, and many rude, passionate words, spoken hoarsely below the breath. Quick as thought she understood it all—the house was lonely, her uncle had the reputation of being well-to-do, they had pretended to be belated, they had asked their way or something. “What a blessing that John Kirkby‘s cow was sick, for there were several men watching with him. She went back, opened her window, squeezed herself out, slid down the lean-to roof, and ran, barefoot and breathless, to the shippon.

“John, John, for the love of God come quick; there’s robbers in the house, and uncle and aunt ’ll be murdered!” she whispered, in terrified accents, through the closed and barred shippon door. In a moment it was undone, and John and the cow-doctor stood there, ready to act, if they but understood her rightly. Again she repeated her words, with broken, half-unintelligible explanations of what she as yet did not rightly understand.

“Front door is open, say’st thou?” said John, arming himself with a pitchfork, while the cow-doctor took some other implement. “Then I reckon we’d best make for that way o’ getting into th’ house, and catch ’em all in a trap.”

“Run! run!” was all Bessy could say, taking hold of John Kirkby’s arm, and pulling him along with her. Swiftly did the three run to the house, round the corner, and in at the open front door. The men carried the horn lantern they had been using in the shippon, and, by the sudden oblong light that it threw upon objects, Bessy saw the principal one of her anxiety, her uncle, lying stunned and helpless on the kitchen floor. Her first thought was for him; for she had no idea that her aunt was in any immediate danger, although she heard the noise of feet, and fierce subdued voices up-stairs,

“Make th’ door behind us, lass. We’ll not let them escape!” said brave John Kirkby, dauntless in a good cause, though he knew not how many there might be above. The cow-doctor fastened and locked the door, saying, “There!” in a defiant tone, as he put the key in his pocket. It was to be a struggle for life or for death, or, at any rate, for effectual capture or desperate escape. Bessy kneeled down by her uncle, who did not speak nor give any sign of consciousness. Bessy raised his head by drawing a pillow off the settle and putting it under him; she longed to go for water into the back kitchen, but the sound of a violent struggle, and of heavy blows, and of low, hard curses spoken through closed teeth, and muttered passion, as though breath were too much needed for action to be wasted in speech, kept her still and quiet by her uncle’s side in the kitchen, where the darkness might almost be felt, so thick and deep was it. Once in a pause of her own heart’s beating a sudden terror came over her; she perceived, in that strange way in which the presence of a living creature forces itself on our consciousness in the darkest room, that some one was near her, keeping as still as she. It was not the poor old man’s breathing that she heard, nor the radiation of his presence that she felt; some one else was in the kitchen; another robber, perhaps, left to guard the old man with murderous intent if his consciousness returned. Now, Bessy was fully aware that, self-preservation would keep her terrible companion quiet, as there was no motive for his betraying himself stronger than the desire of escape; any effort for which he, the unseen witness, must know would be rendered abortive by the fact of the door being locked. Yet the knowledge that he was there, close to her, still, silent as the grave, with fearful, it might be deadly, unspoken thoughts in his heart, possibly even with keener and stronger sight than hers, as longer accustomed to the darkness, able to discern her figure and posture, and glaring at her like some wild beast, Bessy could not fail to shrink from the vision that her fancy presented. And still the struggle went on up-stairs; feet slipping, blows sounding, and the wrench of intentioned aims, the strong gasps for breath, as the wrestlers paused for an instant. In one of these pauses Bessy felt conscious of a creeping movement close to her, which ceased when the noise of the strife above died away, and was resumed when it again began. She was aware of it by some subtle vibration of the air rather than by touch or sound. She was sure that he who had been close to her one minute as she knelt, was, the next, passing stealthily towards the inner door which led to the staircase. She thought he was going to join and strengthen his accomplices, and, with a great cry, she sprang after him; but, just as she came to the doorway, through which some dim portion of light from the upper chambers came, she saw one man thrown down-stairs with such violence that he fell almost at her very feet, while the dark, creeping figure glided suddenly away to the left, and as suddenly entered the closet beneath the stairs. Bessy had no time to wonder as to his purpose in so doing, whether he had at first designed to aid his accomplices in their desperate fight. He was an enemy, a robber, that was all she knew, and she sprang to the door of the closet, and in a trice had locked it on the outside. And then she stood frightened, panting in that dark corner, sick with terror lest the man who lay before her was either John Kirkby or the cow-doctor. If it were either of those friendly two, what would become of the other of her uncle, her aunt, herself? But, in a very few minutes, this wonder was ended; her two defenders came slowly and heavily down the stairs, dragging with them a man, fierce, sullen, despairing—disabled with terrible blows, which had made his face one bloody, swollen mass. As for that, neither John nor the cow-doctor were much more presentable. One of them bore the lantern in his teeth, for all their strength was taken up by the weight of the fellow they were bearing.

“Take care,” said Bessy, from her corner; “there’s a chap just beneath your feet. I dunno if he’s dead or alive, and uncle lies on the floor just beyond.” They stood still on the stairs for a moment. Just then the robber they had thrown down-stairs stirred and moaned.

“Bessy,” said John, “run off to th’ stable and fetch ropes and gearing for to bind ’em, and we’ll rid the house on ’em, and thou can’st go see after th’ oud folks, who need it sadly.”

Bessy was back in a very few minutes. When she came in, there was more light in the house-place, for some one had stirred up the raked fire.

“That felly makes as though his leg were broken,” said John, nodding towards the man still lying on the ground. Bessy felt almost sorry for him as they handled him not over gently and bound him, only half-conscious, as hardly and tightly as they had done his fierce, surly companion. She even felt so sorry for his evident agony, as they turned him over and over, that she ran to get him a cup of water to moisten his lips,

“I’m loth to leave yo’ with him alone,” said John, “though I’m thinking his leg is broken for sartain, and he can’t stir, even if he comes to hissel, to do yo’ any harm. But we’ll just take off this chap, and make sure of him, and then one on us ’ll come back to yo’, and we can, mebby, find a gate or so for yo’ to get shut on him out o’ th’ house. This felly’s made safe enough, I’ll be bound,” said he, looking at the burglar, who stood, bloody and black, with fell hatred on his sullen face. His eye caught Bessy’s as hers fell on him with dread so evident that it made him smile, and the look and the smile prevented the words from being spoken which were on Bessy’s lips. She dared not tell, before him, that an able-bodied accomplice still remained in the house, lest, somehow, the door which kept him a prisoner should be broken open, and the fight renewed. So she only said to John, as he was leaving the house:

“Thou’lt not be long away, for I’m afeard of being left wi’ this man.”

“He’ll noan do thee harm,” said John.

“No! but I’m feared lest he should die. And there’s uncle and aunt. Come back soon, John!”

“Ay, ay!” said he, half-pleased; I’ll be back, never fear me.”

So Bessy shut the door after them, but did not lock it for fear of mischances in the house, and went once more to her uncle, whose breathing, by this time, was easier than when she had first returned into the houseplace with John and the doctor. By the light of the fire, too, she could now see that he had received a blow on the head which was probably the occasion of his stupor. Round this wound, which was now bleeding pretty freely, Bessy put cloths dipped in cold water, and then, leaving him for a time, she lighted a candle, and was about to go up-stairs to her aunt, when, just as she was passing the bound and disabled robber, she heard her name softly, urgently called.

“Bessy, Bessy!” At first the voice sounded so close that she thought it must be the unconscious wretch at her feet. But once again that voice thrilled through her:

“Bessy, Bessy! for God’s sake, let me out!”

She went to the stair-closet door, and tried to speak, but could not, her heart beat so terribly. Again, close to her ear:

“Bessy, Bessy! they’ll be back directly; let me out, I say! For God’s sake, let me out!” And he began to kick violently against the panels.

“Hush, hush!” she said, sick with a terrible dread, yet with a will strongly resisting her conviction. “Who are you?” But she knew knew quite well.

“Benjamin.” An oath. “Let me out, I say, and I’ll be off, and out of England by tomorrow night never to come back, and you’ll have all my father’s money.”

“D’ye think I care for that,” said Bessy, vehemently, feeling with trembling hands for the lock; “I wish there was noan such a thing as money i’ the world, afore yo’d come to this. There, yo’re free, and I charge yo’ never to let me see your face again. I’d ne’er ha let yo’ loose but for fear o’ breaking their hearts, if yo’ hanna killed them already.” But, before she had ended her speech, he was gone off into the black darkness, leaving the door open wide. With a new terror in her mind Bessy shut it afresh shut it and bolted it this time. Then she sat down on the first chair, and relieved her soul by giving a great and exceeding bitter cry. But she knew it was no time for giving way, and, lifting herself up with as much effort as if each of her limbs was a heavy weight, she went into the back-kitchen, and took a drink of cold water. To her surprise she heard her uncle’s voice, saying feebly:

“Carry me up, and lay me by her.”

But Bessy could not carry him; she could only help his faint exertions to walk up-stairs; and, by the time he was there sitting panting on the first chair she could find, John Kirkby and Atkinson returned. John came up now to her aid. Her aunt lay across the bed in a fainting fit, and her uncle sat in so utterly broken-down a state that Bessy feared immediate death for both. But John cheered her up, and lifted the old man into his bed again, and, while Bessy tried to compose poor Hester’s limbs into a position of rest, John went down to hunt about for the little store of gin which was always kept in a corner cupboard against emergencies.

“They’ve had a sore fright,” said he, shaking his head, as he poured a little gin and hot water into their mouths with a teaspoon, while Bessy chafed their cold feet; “and it and the cold have been welly too much for ’em, poor old folk!”

He looked tenderly at them, and Bessy blessed him in her heart—blessed him unaware,—for that look.

“I mun be off. I sent Atkinson up to th’ farm for to bring down Bob, and Jack came wi’ him back to th’ shippon for to look after other man. He began “blackguarding us all round, so Bob and Jack were gagging him wi’ bridles when I left.”

“Ne’er give heed to what he says,” cried poor Bessy,” a new panic besetting her. “Folks o’ his sort are allays for dragging other folks into their mischief. I’m right glad he were well gagged.”

“Well! but what I were saying were this. Atkinson and me will take t’other chap, who seems quiet enough, to th’ shippon, and it ’ll be one piece o’ work for to mind them, and the cow; and I’ll saddle old bay mare, and ride for constables and doctor fra Highminster. I’ll bring Doctor Preston up to see Nathan and Hester first, and then I reckon th’ broken-legged chap down below must have his turn, for all as he’s met wi’ his misfortunes in a wrong line o’ life.”

“Ay!” said Bessy. “We mun ha’ the doctor sure enough, for look at them how they lie! like two stone statues on a church monument, so sad and solemn.”

“There’s a look o’ sense come back into their faces, though, sin’ they supped that gin-and-water. I’d keep on a-bathing his head and giving them a sup on’t fra time to time, if I was you.”

Bessy followed him down-stairs, and lighted the men out of the house. She dared not light them carrying their burden even, until they passed round the corner of the house; so strong was her fearful conviction that Benjamin was lurking near, seeking again to enter. She rushed back into the kitchen, bolted and barred the door, and pushed the end of the dresser against it, shutting her eyes as she passed the uncurtained window, for fear of catching a glimpse of a white face pressed against the glass, and gazing at her. The poor old couple lay quiet and speechless, although Hester’s position had slightly altered: she had turned a little on her side towards her husband, and had laid one shrivelled arm around his neck. But he was just as Bessy had left him, with the wet clothes around his head, his eyes not, wanting in a certain intelligence, but solemn, and unconscious to all that was passing around as the eyes of death.

His wife spoke a little—from time to time said a word of thanks, perhaps, or so; but he, never. All the rest of that terrible night Bessy tended the poor old couple with constant care, her own heart so stunned and bruised in its feelings that she went about her pious duties almost like one in a dream. The November morning was long in coming; nor did she perceive any change either for the worse or the better before the doctor came, about eight o’clock. John Kirkby brought him; and was full of the capture of the two burglars.

As far as Bessy could make out, the participation of that unnatural Third was unknown; it was a relief, almost sickening in the revulsion it gave her from her terrible fear, which now she felt had haunted and held possession of her all night long, and had in fact paralysed her from thinking. Now she felt and thought with acute and feverish vividness, owing no doubt in part to the sleepless night she had passed. She felt almost sure that her uncle (possibly her aunt too) had recognised Benjamin; but there was a faint chance that they had not done so, and wild horses should never tear the secret from her, nor should any inadvertent word betray the fact that there had been a third person concerned. As to Nathan, he had never uttered a word. It was her aunt’s silence that made Bessy fear lest Hester knew, somehow, that her son was concerned.

The doctor examined them both closely; looked hard at the wound on Nathan’s head; asked questions which Hester answered shortly and unwillingly, and Nathan not at all: shutting his eyes as if even the sight of a stranger was pain to him. Bessy replied in their stead to all that she could answer respecting their state, and followed the doctor down-stairs with a beating heart. When they came into the house-place, they found John had opened the outer door to let in some fresh air, had brushed the hearth and made up the fire, and put the chairs and table in their right places. He reddened a little as Bessy’s eye fell upon his swollen and battered face, but tried to smile it off in a dry kind of way.

“Yo’ see I’m an ould bachelor, and I just thought as I’d redd up things a bit. How dun yo’ find ’em, doctor?”

“Well, the poor old couple have had a terrible shock. I shall send them some soothing medicine to bring down the pulse, and a lotion for the old man’s head. It is very well it bled so much; there might have been a good deal of inflammation.” And so he went on, giving directions to Bessy for keeping them quietly in bed through the day. From these directions she gathered that they were not, as she had feared all night long, near to death. The doctor expected them to recover, though they would require care. She almost wished it had been otherwise, and that they, and she too, might have just lain down to their rest in the churchyard so cruel did life seem to her; so dreadful the recollection of that subdued voice of the hidden robber, smiting her with recognition.

All this time John was getting things ready for breakfast, with something of the handiness of a woman. Bessy half resented his officiousness in pressing Dr. Preston to have a cup of tea, she did so want him to begone and leave her alone with her thoughts. She did not know that all was done for love of her; that the hard-featured, short-spoken John was thinking all the time how ill and miserable she looked, and trying with tender artifices to make it incumbent upon her sense of hospitality to share Dr. Preston’s meal.

“I’ve seen as the cows is milked,” said he, “yourn and all; and Atkinson’s brought ours round fine. Whatten a marcy it were as she were sick just very night! Yon two chaps ’ud ha’ made short work on’t if yo’ hadna fetched us in; and as it were we had a sore tussle. One on ’em ’ll bear the marks on’t to his dying day, wunnot he, doctor?”

“He’ll barely have his leg well enough to stand his trial at York Assizes; they’re coming off in a fortnight from now.”

“Ay, and that reminds me, Bessy, yo’ll have to go witness before Justice Royds. Constables bade me tell yo’, and gie yo’ this summons. Dunnot be feared; it will not be a long job, though I’m not saying as it ’ll be a pleasant one. Yo’ll have to answer questions as to how, and all about it; and Jane” (his sister) “will come and stop wi’ th’ oud folks; and I’ll drive yo’ in the shandry.”

No one knew why Bessy’s colour blenched, and her eye clouded. No one knew how she apprehended lest she should have to say that Benjamin had been of the gang, if, indeed, in some way the law had not followed on his heels quick enough to catch him.

But that trial was spared her; she was warned by John to answer questions, and say no more than was necessary, for fear of making her story less clear; and as she was known, by character, at least to Justice Royds and his clerk, they made the examination as little formidable as possible.

When all was over, and John was driving her back again, he expressed his rejoicing that there would be evidence enough to convict the men without summoning Nathan and Hester to identify them. Bessy was so tired that she hardly understood what an escape it was; how far greater than even her companion understood.

Jane Kirkby stayed with her for a week or more, and was an unspeakable comfort. Otherwise she sometimes thought she should have gone mad, with the face of her uncle always reminding her in its stony expression of agony, of that fearful night. Her aunt was softer in her sorrow, as became one of her faithful and pious nature; but it was easy to see how her heart bled inwardly. She recovered her strength sooner than her husband; but as she recovered, the doctor perceived the rapid approach of total blindness. Every day, nay, every hour of the day, that Bessy dared, without fear of exciting their suspicions of her knowledge, she told them, as she had anxiously told them at first, that only two men, and those perfect strangers, had been discovered as being concerned in the burglary. Her uncle would never have asked a question about it, even if she had with-held all information about the affair; but she noticed the quick, watching, waiting glance of his eye whenever she returned from any person or place where she might have been supposed to gain intelligence if Benjamin were suspected or caught; and she hastened to relieve the old man’s anxiety, by always telling all that she had heard; thankful that as the days passed on the danger she sickened to think of grew less and less.

Day by day Bessy had ground for thinking that her aunt knew more than she had apprehended at first. There was something so very humble and touching in Hester’s blind way of feeling about for her husband—stern, woe-begone Nathan—and mutely, striving to console him in the deep agony of which Bessy learnt from this loving, piteous manner, that her aunt was conscious. Her aunt’s face looked blankly up into his, tears slowly running down from her sightless eyes, while from time to time, when she thought herself unheard by any save him, she would repeat such texts as she had heard at church in happier days, and which she thought, in her true, simple piety, might tend to console him. Yet day by day her aunt grew more and more sad.

Three or four days before assize-time, two summonses to attend the trial at York were sent to the old people. Neither Bessy, nor John, nor Jane, could understand this; for their own notices had come long before, and they had been told that their evidence would be enough to convict.

But alas! the fact was that the lawyer employed to defend the prisoners had heard from them that there was a third person engaged, and had heard who that third person was; and it was this advocate’s business to diminish if possible the guilt of his clients, by proving that they were but tools in the hands of one who had, from his superior knowledge of the premises and the daily customs of the inhabitants, been the originator and planner of the whole affair. To do this it was necessary to have the evidence of the parents, who, as the prisoners had said, must have recognised the voice of the young man, their son. For no one knew that Bessy, too, could have borne witness to his having been present, and, as it was supposed that Benjamin had escaped out of England, there was no exact betrayal of him on the part of his accomplices.

Wondering, bewildered, and weary, the old couple reached York, in company with John and Bessy, on the eve of the day of trial. Nathan was still so self-contained, that Bessy could never guess what had been passing in his mind. He was almost passive under his old wife’s trembling caresses; he seemed hardly conscious of them, so rigid was his demeanour.

She, Bessy feared at times, was becoming childish; for she had evidently so great and anxious a love for her husband, that her memory seemed going in her endeavours to melt the stoniness of his aspect and manners; she appeared occasionally to have forgotten why he was so changed, in her piteous little attempts to bring him back to his former self.

“They’ll for sure never torture them when they see what old folks they are!” cried Bessy, on the morning of the trial, a dim fear looming over her mind. “They’ll never be so cruel, for sure!”

But “for sure” it was so. The barrister looked up at the judge, almost apologetically, as he saw how hoary headed and woeful an old man was put into the witness-box when the defence came on, and Nathan Huntroyd was called on for his evidence.

“It is necessary, on behalf of my clients, my lord, that I should pursue a course which, for all other reasons, I deplore.”

“Go on!” said the judge. “What is right and legal must be done.” But, an old man himself, he covered his quivering mouth with his hand as Nathan, with grey, unmoved face, and solemn, hollow eyes, placing his two hands on each side of the witness-box, prepared to give his answers to questions, the nature of which he was beginning to foresee, but would not shrink from replying to truthfully; “the very stones” (as he said to himself, with a kind of dulled sense of the Eternal Justice), “rise up against such a sinner.”

“Your name is Nathan Huntroyd, I believe?”

“It is.”

“You live at Nab-end Farm?”

“I do.”

“Do you remember the night of November the twelfth?”

“Yes.”

“You were awakened that night by some noise, I believe. What was it?”

The old man’s eyes fixed themselves upon his questioner with a look of a creature brought to bay. That look the barrister never forgets. It will haunt him till his dying day.

“It was a throwing up of stones against our window.”

“Did you hear it at first?”

“No.”

“What awakened you, then?”

“She did.”

“And then you both heard the stones. Did you hear nothing else?”

A long pause. Then a low, clear “Yes.”

“What?”

“Our Benjamin asking us for to let him in. She said as it were him, leastways.”

“And you thought it was him, did you not?”

“I told her” (this time in a louder voice) “for to get to sleep, and not to be thinking that every drunken chap as passed by were our Benjamin, for that he were dead and gone.”

“And she?”

“She said as though she’d heerd our Benjamin afore she were welly awake, axing for to be let in. But I bade her ne’er heed her dreams, but turn on her other side, and get to sleep again.”

“And did she?”

A long pause—judge, jury, bar, audience, all held their breath. At length Nathan said,

“No!”

“What did you do then? (My lord I am compelled to ask these painful questions.)”

“I saw she wadna be quiet; she had allays thought he would come back to us, like the Prodigal i’ th’ Gospels.” (His voice choked a little, but he tried to make it steady, succeeded, and went on.) “She said if I wadna get up she would; and just then I heerd a voice. I’m not quite mysel, gentlemen I’ve been ill and i’ bed, an’ it makes me trembling-like. Some one said, ‘Father, mother, I’m here, starving i’ the cold wunnot yo’ get up and let me in?’”

“And that voice was?”

“It were like our Benjamin’s. I see whatten yo’re driving at, sir, and I’ll tell yo’ truth, though it kills me to speak it. I dunnot say it were our Benjamin as spoke, mind yo’ I only say it were like.”

“That’s all I want, my good fellow. And on the strength of that entreaty, spoken in your son’s voice, you went down and opened the door to these two prisoners at the bar, and to a third man?”

Nathan nodded assent, and even that counsel was too merciful to force him to put more into words.

“Call Hester Huntroyd.”

An old woman, with a face of which the eyes were evidently blind, with a sweet, gentle, care-worn face, came into the witness-box, and meekly curtseyed to the presence of those whom she had been taught to respect—a presence she could not see.

There was something in her humble, blind aspect as she stood waiting to have something done to her—what, her poor troubled mind hardly knew—that touched all who saw her inexpressibly. Again the counsel apologised, but the judge could not reply in words; his face was quivering all over, and the jury looked uneasily at the prisoners’ counsel. That gentleman saw that he might go too far, and send their sympathies off on the other side; but one or two questions he must ask. So, hastily recapitulating much that he had learned from Nathan, he said, “You believed it was your son’s voice asking to be let in?”

“Ay! Our Benjamin came home, I’m sure; choose where he is gone.”

She turned her head about, as if listening for the voice of her child, in the hushed silence of the court.

“Yes; he came home that night and your husband went down to let him in?”

“Well! I believe he did. There was a great noise of folk down stair.”

“And you heard your son Benjamin’s voice among the others?”

“Is it to do him harm, sir?” asked she, her face growing more intelligent and intent on the business in hand.

“That is not my object in questioning you. I believe he has left England, so nothing you can say will do him any harm. You heard your son’s voice, I say?”

“Yes, sir. For sure, I did.”

“And some men came up-stairs into your room? What did they say?”

“They axed where Nathan kept his stocking.”

“And you did you tell them?”

“No, sir, for I knew Nathan would not like me to.”

“What did you do then?”

A shade of reluctance came over her face, as if she began to perceive causes and consequences.

“I just screamed on Bessy—that’s my niece, sir.”

“And you heard some one shout out from the bottom of the stairs?”

She looked piteously at him, but did not answer.

“Gentlemen of the jury, I wish to call your particular attention to this fact: she acknowledges she heard some one shout—some third person, you observe—shout out to the two above. What did he say? That is the last question I shall trouble you with. What did the third person, left behind down-stairs, say?”

Her face worked her mouth opened two or three times as if to speak she stretched out her arms imploringly; but no word came, and she fell back into the arms of those nearest to her. Nathan forced himself forward into the witness-box:

“My Lord Judge, a woman bore ye, as I reckon; it’s a cruel shame to serve a mother so. It wur my son, my only child, as called out for us t’ open door, and who shouted out for to hold th’ oud woman’s throat if she did na stop her noise, when hoo’d fain ha’ cried for her niece to help. And now yo’ve truth, and a’ Hi’ truth, and I’ll leave yo’ to th’ Judgment o’ God for th’ way yo’ve getten at it.”

Before night the mother was stricken with paralysis, and lay on her death-bed. But the broken-hearted go Home, to be comforted of God.

THE GHOST IN THE CORNER ROOM

Charles Dickens

I had observed Mr. Governor growing fidgety as his turn his “spell,” he called it approached, and he now surprised us all, by rising with a serious countenance, and requesting permission to “come aft” and have speech with me, before he spun his yarn. His great popularity led to a gracious concession of this indulgence, and we went out together into the hall.

“Old shipmate,” said Mr. Governor to me; “ever since I have been aboard of this old hulk, I have been haunted, day and night.”

“By what, Jack?”

Mr. Governor, clapping his hand on my shoulder and keeping it there, said:

“By something in the likeness of a Woman.”

“All! Your old affliction. You’ll never get over that, Jack, if you live to be a hundred.”

“No, don’t talk so, because I am very serious. All night long, I have been haunted by one figure. All day, the same figure has so bewildered me in the kitchen, that I wonder I haven’t poisoned the whole ship’s company. Now, there’s no fancy here. Would you like to see the figure?”

“I should like to see it very much.”

“Then here it is!” said Jack. Thereupon, he presented my sister, who had stolen out quietly, after us.

“Oh, indeed?” said I. “Then, I suppose, Patty, my dear, I have no occasion to ask whether you have been haunted?”

“Constantly, Joe,” she replied.

The effect of our going back again, all three together, and of my presenting my sister as the Ghost from the Corner Room, and Jack as the Ghost from my Sister’s Room, was triumphant—the crowning hit of the night. Mr. Beaver was so particularly delighted, that he by-and-by declared “a very little would make him dance a hornpipe.” Mr. Governor immediately supplied the very little, by offering to make it a double hornpipe; and there ensued such toe-and-heeling, and buckle-covering, and double-shuffling, and heel-sliding, and execution of all sorts of slippery manoeuvres with vibratory legs, as none of us ever saw before, or will ever see again. When we had all laughed and applauded till we were faint, Starling, not to be outdone, favoured us with a more modern saltatory entertainment in the Lancashire clog manner—to the best of my belief, the longest dance ever performed: in which the sound of his feet became a Locomotive going through cuttings, tunnels, and open country, and became a vast number of other things we should never have suspected, unless he had kindly told us what they were.

It was resolved before we separated that night, that our three mouths’ period in the Haunted House should be wound up with the marriage of my sister and Mr. Governor. Belinda was nominated bridesmaid, and Stirling was engaged for bridegroom’s man.

In a word, we lived our term out, most happily, and were never for a moment haunted by anything more disagreeable than our own imaginations and remembrances. My cousin’s wife, in her great love for her husband and in her gratitude to him for the change her love had wrought in her, had told us, through his lips, her own story; and I am sure there was not one of us who did not like her the better for it, and respect her the more.

So, at last, before the shortest month in the year was quite out, we all walked forth one morning to the church with the spire, as if nothing uncommon were going to happen; and there Jack and my sister were married, as sensibly as could be. It occurs to me to mention that I observed Belinda and Alfred Starling to be rather sentimental and low, on the occasion, and that they are since engaged to be married in the same church. I regard it as an excellent thing for both, and a kind of union very wholesome for the times in which we live. He wants a little poetry, and she wants a little prose, and the marriage of the two things is the happiest marriage I know for all mankind.

Finally, I derived this Christmas Greeting from the Haunted House, which I affectionately address with all my heart to all my readers: Let us use the great virtue, Faith, but not abuse it; and let us put it to its best use, by having faith in the great Christmas book of the New Testament, and in one another.

A MESSAGE FROM THE SEA

1860

CONTENTS

I. The Village

II. The Money

III. The Club-Night

IV. The Seafaring Man

V. The Restitution

CHAPTER I

THE VILLAGE

Charles Dickens

“And a mighty sing’lar and pretty place it is, as ever I saw in all the days of my life!” said Captain Jorgan, looking up at it.

Captain Jorgan had to look high to look at it, for the village was built sheer up the face of a steep and lofty cliff. There was no road in it, there was no wheeled vehicle in it, there was not a level yard in it. From the sea-beach to the cliff-top two irregular rows of white houses, placed opposite to one another, and twisting here and there, and there and here, rose, like the sides of a long succession of stages of crooked ladders, and you climbed up the village or climbed down the village by the staves between, some six feet wide or so, and made of sharp irregular stones. The old pack-saddle, long laid aside in most parts of England as one of the appendages of its infancy, flourished here intact. Strings of pack-horses and pack-donkeys toiled slowly up the staves of the ladders, bearing fish, and coal, and such other cargo as was unshipping at the pier from the dancing fleet of village boats, and from two or three little coasting traders. As the beasts of burden ascended laden, or descended light, they got so lost at intervals in the floating clouds of village smoke, that they seemed to dive down some of the village chimneys, and come to the surface again far off, high above others. No two houses in the village were alike, in chimney, size, shape, door, window, gable, roof-tree, anything. The sides of the ladders were musical with water, running clear and bright. The staves were musical with the clattering feet of the pack-horses and pack-donkeys, and the voices of the fishermen urging them up, mingled with the voices of the fishermen’s wives and their many children. The pier was musical with the wash of the sea, the creaking of capstans and windlasses, and the airy fluttering of little vanes and sails. The rough, sea-bleached boulders of which the pier was made, and the whiter boulders of the shore, were brown with drying nets. The red-brown cliffs, richly wooded to their extremest verge, had their softened and beautiful forms reflected in the bluest water, under the clear North Devonshire sky of a November day without a cloud. The village itself was so steeped in autumnal foliage, from the houses lying on the pier to the topmost round of the topmost ladder, that one might have fancied it was out a bird’s-nesting, and was (as indeed it was) a wonderful climber. And mentioning birds, the place was not without some music from them too; for the rook was very busy on the higher levels, and the gull with his flapping wings was fishing in the bay, and the lusty little robin was hopping among the great stone blocks and iron rings of the breakwater, fearless in the faith of his ancestors, and the Children in the Wood.

Thus it came to pass that Captain Jorgan, sitting balancing himself on the pier-wall, struck his leg with his open hand, as some men do when they are pleased—and as he always did when he was pleased—and said,—

“A mighty sing’lar and pretty place it is, as ever I saw in all the days of my life!”

Captain Jorgan had not been through the village, but had come down to the pier by a winding side-road, to have a preliminary look at it from the level of his own natural element. He had seen many things and places, and had stowed them all away in a shrewd intellect and a vigorous memory. He was an American born, was Captain Jorgan,—a New-Englander,—but he was a citizen of the world, and a combination of most of the best qualities of most of its best countries.

For Captain Jorgan to sit anywhere in his long-skirted blue coat and blue trousers, without holding converse with everybody within speaking distance, was a sheer impossibility. So the captain fell to talking with the fishermen, and to asking them knowing questions about the fishery, and the tides, and the currents, and the race of water off that point yonder, and what you kept in your eye, and got into a line with what else when you ran into the little harbour; and other nautical profundities. Among the men who exchanged ideas with the captain was a young fellow, who exactly hit his fancy,—a young fisherman of two or three and twenty, in the rough sea-dress of his craft, with a brown face, dark curling hair, and bright, modest eyes under his Sou’wester hat, and with a frank, but simple and retiring manner, which the captain found uncommonly taking. “I’d bet a thousand dollars,” said the captain to himself, “that your father was an honest man!”

“Might you be married now?” asked the captain, when he had had some talk with this new acquaintance.

“Not yet.”

“Going to be?” said the captain.

“I hope so.”

The captain’s keen glance followed the slightest possible turn of the dark eye, and the slightest possible tilt of the Sou’wester hat. The captain then slapped both his legs, and said to himself,—

“Never knew such a good thing in all my life! There’s his sweetheart looking over the wall!”

There was a very pretty girl looking over the wall, from a little platform of cottage, vine, and fuchsia; and she certainly did not look as if the presence of this young fisherman in the landscape made it any the less sunny and hopeful for her.

Captain Jorgan, having doubled himself up to laugh with that hearty good-nature which is quite exultant in the innocent happiness of other people, had undoubted himself, and was going to start a new subject, when there appeared coming down the lower ladders of stones, a man whom he hailed as “Tom Pettifer, Ho!” Tom Pettifer, Ho, responded with alacrity, and in speedy course descended on the pier.

“Afraid of a sun-stroke in England in November, Tom, that you wear your tropical hat, strongly paid outside and paper-lined inside, here?” said the captain, eyeing it.

“It’s as well to be on the safe side, sir,” replied Tom.

“Safe side!” repeated the captain, laughing. “You’d guard against a sun-stroke, with that old hat, in an Ice Pack. Wa’al! What have you made out at the Post-office?”

“It is the Post-office, sir.”

“What’s the Post-office?” said the captain.

“The name, sir. The name keeps the Post-office.”

“A coincidence!” said the captain. “A lucky bit! Show me where it is. Good-bye, shipmates, for the present! I shall come and have another look at you, afore I leave, this afternoon.”

This was addressed to all there, but especially the young fisherman; so all there acknowledged it, but especially the young fisherman. “He’s a sailor!” said one to another, as they looked after the captain moving away. That he was; and so outspeaking was the sailor in him, that although his dress had nothing nautical about it, with the single exception of its colour, but was a suit of a shore-going shape and form, too long in the sleeves and too short in the legs, and too unaccommodating everywhere, terminating earthward in a pair of Wellington boots, and surmounted by a tall, stiff hat, which no mortal could have worn at sea in any wind under heaven; nevertheless, a glimpse of his sagacious, weather-beaten face, or his strong, brown hand, would have established the captain’s calling. Whereas Mr. Pettifer—a man of a certain plump neatness, with a curly whisker, and elaborately nautical in a jacket, and shoes, and all things correspondent—looked no more like a seaman, beside Captain Jorgan, than he looked like a sea-serpent.

The two climbed high up the village,—which had the most arbitrary turns and twists in it, so that the cobbler’s house came dead across the ladder, and to have held a reasonable course, you must have gone through his house, and through him too, as he sat at his work between two little windows,—with one eye microscopically on the geological formation of that part of Devonshire, and the other telescopically on the open sea,—the two climbed high up the village, and stopped before a quaint little house, on which was painted, “MRS. RAYBROCK, DRAPER;” and also “POST-OFFICE.” Before it, ran a rill of murmuring water, and access to it was gained by a little plank-bridge.

“Here’s the name,” said Captain Jorgan, “sure enough. You can come in if you like, Tom.”

The captain opened the door, and passed into an odd little shop, about six feet high, with a great variety of beams and bumps in the ceiling, and, besides the principal window giving on the ladder of stones, a purblind little window of a single pane of glass, peeping out of an abutting corner at the sun-lighted ocean, and winking at its brightness.

“How do you do, ma’am?” said the captain. “I am very glad to see you. I have come a long way to see you.”

“Have you, sir? Then I am sure I am very glad to see you, though I don’t know you from Adam.”

Thus a comely elderly woman, short of stature, plump of form, sparkling and dark of eye, who, perfectly clean and neat herself, stood in the midst of her perfectly clean and neat arrangements, and surveyed Captain Jorgan with smiling curiosity. “Ah! but you are a sailor, sir,” she added, almost immediately, and with a slight movement of her hands, that was not very unlike wringing them; “then you are heartily welcome.”

“Thank’ee, ma’am,” said the captain, “I don’t know what it is, I am sure; that brings out the salt in me, but everybody seems to see it on the crown of my hat and the collar of my coat. Yes, ma’am, I am in that way of life.”

“And the other gentleman, too,” said Mrs. Raybrock.

“Well now, ma’am,” said the captain, glancing shrewdly at the other gentleman, “you are that nigh right, that he goes to sea,—if that makes him a sailor. This is my steward, ma’am, Tom Pettifer; he’s been a’most all trades you could name, in the course of his life,—would have bought all your chairs and tables once, if you had wished to sell ’em,—but now he’s my steward. My name’s Jorgan, and I’m a ship-owner, and I sail my own and my partners’ ships, and have done so this five-and-twenty year. According to custom I am called Captain Jorgan, but I am no more a captain, bless your heart, than you are.”

“Perhaps you’ll come into my parlour, sir, and take a chair?” said Mrs. Raybrock.

“Ex-actly what I was going to propose myself, ma’am. After you.”

Thus replying, and enjoining Tom to give an eye to the shop, Captain Jorgan followed Mrs. Raybrock into the little, low back-room,—decorated with divers plants in pots, tea-trays, old china teapots, and punch-bowls,—which was at once the private sitting-room of the Raybrock family and the inner cabinet of the post-office of the village of Steepways.

“Now, ma’am,” said the captain, “it don’t signify a cent to you where I was born, except——” But here the shadow of some one entering fell upon the captain’s figure, and he broke off to double himself up, slap both his legs, and ejaculate, “Never knew such a thing in all my life! Here he is again! How are you?”

These words referred to the young fellow who had so taken Captain Jorgan’s fancy down at the pier. To make it all quite complete he came in accompanied by the sweetheart whom the captain had detected looking over the wall. A prettier sweetheart the sun could not have shone upon that shining day. As she stood before the captain, with her rosy lips just parted in surprise, her brown eyes a little wider open than was usual from the same cause, and her breathing a little quickened by the ascent (and possibly by some mysterious hurry and flurry at the parlour door, in which the captain had observed her face to be for a moment totally eclipsed by the Sou’wester hat), she looked so charming, that the captain felt himself under a moral obligation to slap both his legs again. She was very simply dressed, with no other ornament than an autumnal flower in her bosom. She wore neither hat nor bonnet, but merely a scarf or kerchief, folded squarely back over the head, to keep the sun off,—according to a fashion that may be sometimes seen in the more genial parts of England as well as of Italy, and which is probably the first fashion of head-dress that came into the world when grasses and leaves went out.

“In my country,” said the captain, rising to give her his chair, and dexterously sliding it close to another chair on which the young fisherman must necessarily establish himself,—“in my country we should call Devonshire beauty first-rate!”

Whenever a frank manner is offensive, it is because it is strained or feigned; for there may be quite as much intolerable affectation in plainness as in mincing nicety. All that the captain said and did was honestly according to his nature; and his nature was open nature and good nature; therefore, when he paid this little compliment, and expressed with a sparkle or two of his knowing eye, “I see how it is, and nothing could be better,” he had established a delicate confidence on that subject with the family.

“I was saying to your worthy mother,” said the captain to the young man, after again introducing himself by name and occupation,—“I was saying to your mother (and you’re very like her) that it didn’t signify where I was born, except that I was raised on question-asking ground, where the babies as soon as ever they come into the world, inquire of their mothers, ‘Neow, how old may you be, and wa’at air you a goin’ to name me?’—which is a fact.” Here he slapped his leg. “Such being the case, I may be excused for asking you if your name’s Alfred?”

“Yes, sir, my name is Alfred,” returned the young man.

“I am not a conjurer,” pursued the captain, “and don’t think me so, or I shall right soon undeceive you. Likewise don’t think, if you please, though I do come from that country of the babies, that I am asking questions for question-asking’s sake, for I am not. Somebody belonging to you went to sea?”

“My elder brother, Hugh,” returned the young man. He said it in an altered and lower voice, and glanced at his mother, who raised her hands hurriedly, and put them together across her black gown, and looked eagerly at the visitor.

“No! For God’s sake, don’t think that!” said the captain, in a solemn way; “I bring no good tidings of him.”

There was a silence, and the mother turned her face to the fire and put her hand between it and her eyes. The young fisherman slightly motioned toward the window, and the captain, looking in that direction, saw a young widow, sitting at a neighbouring window across a little garden, engaged in needlework, with a young child sleeping on her bosom. The silence continued until the captain asked of Alfred,—

“How long is it since it happened?”

“He shipped for his last voyage better than three years ago.”

“Ship struck upon some reef or rock, as I take it,” said the captain, “and all hands lost?”

“Yes.”

“Wa’al!” said the captain, after a shorter silence, “Here I sit who may come to the same end, like enough. He holds the seas in the hollow of His hand. We must all strike somewhere and go down. Our comfort, then, for ourselves and one another is to have done our duty. I’d wager your brother did his!”

“He did!” answered the young fisherman. “If ever man strove faithfully on all occasions to do his duty, my brother did. My brother was not a quick man (anything but that), but he was a faithful, true, and just man. We were the sons of only a small tradesman in this county, sir; yet our father was as watchful of his good name as if he had been a king.”

“A precious sight more so, I hope—bearing in mind the general run of that class of crittur,” said the captain. “But I interrupt.”

“My brother considered that our father left the good name to us, to keep clear and true.”

“Your brother considered right,” said the captain; “and you couldn’t take care of a better legacy. But again I interrupt.”

“No; for I have nothing more to say. We know that Hugh lived well for the good name, and we feel certain that he died well for the good name. And now it has come into my keeping. And that’s all.”

“Well spoken!” cried the captain. “Well spoken, young man! Concerning the manner of your brother’s death,”—by this time the captain had released the hand he had shaken, and sat with his own broad, brown hands spread out on his knees, and spoke aside,—“concerning the manner of your brother’s death, it may be that I have some information to give you; though it may not be, for I am far from sure. Can we have a little talk alone?”

The young man rose; but not before the captain’s quick eye had noticed that, on the pretty sweetheart’s turning to the window to greet the young widow with a nod and a wave of the hand, the young widow had held up to her the needlework on which she was engaged, with a patient and pleasant smile. So the captain said, being on his legs,—

“What might she be making now?”

“What is Margaret making, Kitty?” asked the young fisherman,—with one of his arms apparently mislaid somewhere.

As Kitty only blushed in reply, the captain doubled himself up as far as he could, standing, and said, with a slap of his leg,—

“In my country we should call it wedding-clothes. Fact! We should, I do assure you.”

But it seemed to strike the captain in another light too; for his laugh was not a long one, and he added, in quite a gentle tone,—

“And it’s very pretty, my dear, to see her—poor young thing, with her fatherless child upon her bosom—giving up her thoughts to your home and your happiness. It’s very pretty, my dear, and it’s very good. May your marriage be more prosperous than hers, and be a comfort to her too. May the blessed sun see you all happy together, in possession of the good name, long after I have done ploughing the great salt field that is never sown!”

Kitty answered very earnestly, “O! Thank you, sir, with all my heart!” And, in her loving little way, kissed her hand to him, and possibly by implication to the young fisherman, too, as the latter held the parlour-door open for the captain to pass out.

CHAPTER II

THE MONEY

Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins

“The stairs are very narrow, sir,” said Alfred Raybrock to Captain Jorgan.

“Like my cabin-stairs,” returned the captain, “on many a voyage.”

“And they are rather inconvenient for the head.”

“If my head can’t take care of itself by this time, after all the knocking about the world it has had,” replied the captain, as unconcernedly as if he had no connection with it, “it’s not worth looking after.”

Thus they came into the young fisherman’s bedroom, which was as perfectly neat and clean as the shop and parlour below; though it was but a little place, with a sliding window, and a phrenological ceiling expressive of all the peculiarities of the house-roof. Here the captain sat down on the foot of the bed, and glancing at a dreadful libel on Kitty which ornamented the wall,—the production of some wandering limner, whom the captain secretly admired as having studied portraiture from the figure-heads of ships,—motioned to the young man to take the rush-chair on the other side of the small round table. That done, the captain put his hand in the deep breast-pocket of his long-skirted blue coat, and took out of it a strong square case-bottle,—not a large bottle, but such as may be seen in any ordinary ship’s medicine-chest. Setting this bottle on the table without removing his hand from it, Captain Jorgan then spake as follows:—

“In my last voyage homeward-bound,” said the captain, “and that’s the voyage off of which I now come straight, I encountered such weather off the Horn as is not very often met with, even there. I have rounded that stormy Cape pretty often, and I believe I first beat about there in the identical storms that blew the Devil’s horns and tail off, and led to the horns being worked up into tooth-picks for the plantation overseers in my country, who may be seen (if you travel down South, or away West, fur enough) picking their teeth with ’em, while the whips, made of the tail, flog hard. In this last voyage, homeward-bound for Liverpool from South America, I say to you, my young friend, it blew. Whole measures! No half measures, nor making believe to blow; it blew! Now I warn’t blown clean out of the water into the sky,—though I expected to be even that,—but I was blown clean out of my course; and when at last it fell calm, it fell dead calm, and a strong current set one way, day and night, night and day, and I drifted—drifted—drifted—out of all the ordinary tracks and courses of ships, and drifted yet, and yet drifted. It behooves a man who takes charge of fellow-critturs’ lives, never to rest from making himself master of his calling. I never did rest, and consequently I knew pretty well (’specially looking over the side in the dead calm of that strong current) what dangers to expect, and what precautions to take against ’em. In short, we were driving head on to an island. There was no island in the chart, and, therefore, you may say it was ill-manners in the island to be there; I don’t dispute its bad breeding, but there it was. Thanks be to Heaven, I was as ready for the island as the island was ready for me. I made it out myself from the masthead, and I got enough way upon her in good time to keep her off. I ordered a boat to be lowered and manned, and went in that boat myself to explore the island. There was a reef outside it, and, floating in a corner of the smooth water within the reef, was a heap of sea-weed, and entangled in that sea-weed was this bottle.”

Here the captain took his hand from the bottle for a moment, that the young fisherman might direct a wondering glance at it; and then replaced his hand and went on:—

“If ever you come—or even if ever you don’t come—to a desert place, use you your eyes and your spy-glass well; for the smallest thing you see may prove of use to you; and may have some information or some warning in it. That’s the principle on which I came to see this bottle. I picked up the bottle and ran the boat alongside the island, and made fast and went ashore armed, with a part of my boat’s crew. We found that every scrap of vegetation on the island (I give it you as my opinion, but scant and scrubby at the best of times) had been consumed by fire. As we were making our way, cautiously and toilsomely, over the pulverised embers, one of my people sank into the earth breast-high. He turned pale, and ‘Haul me out smart, shipmates,’ says he, ‘for my feet are among bones.’ We soon got him on his legs again, and then we dug up the spot, and we found that the man was right, and that his feet had been among bones. More than that, they were human bones; though whether the remains of one man, or of two or three men, what with calcination and ashes, and what with a poor practical knowledge of anatomy, I can’t undertake to say. We examined the whole island and made out nothing else, save and except that, from its opposite side, I sighted a considerable tract of land, which land I was able to identify, and according to the bearings of which (not to trouble you with my log) I took a fresh departure. When I got aboard again I opened the bottle, which was oilskin-covered as you see, and glass-stoppered as you see. Inside of it,” pursued the captain, suiting his action to his words, “I found this little crumpled, folded paper, just as you see. Outside of it was written, as you see, these words: ‘Whoever finds this, is solemnly entreated by the dead to convey it unread to Alfred Raybrock, Steepways, North Devon, England.’ A sacred charge,” said the captain, concluding his narrative, “and, Alfred Raybrock, there it is!”

“This is my poor brother’s writing!”

“I suppose so,” said Captain Jorgan. “I’ll take a look out of this little window while you read it.”

“Pray no, sir! I should be hurt. My brother couldn’t know it would fall into such hands as yours.”

The captain sat down again on the foot of the bed, and the young man opened the folded paper with a trembling hand, and spread it on the table. The ragged paper, evidently creased and torn both before and after being written on, was much blotted and stained, and the ink had faded and run, and many words were wanting. What the captain and the young fisherman made out together, after much re-reading and much humouring of the folds of the paper, is given on the next page.

The young fisherman had become more and more agitated, as the writing had become clearer to him. He now left it lying before the captain, over whose shoulder he had been reading it, and dropping into his former seat, leaned forward on the table and laid his face in his hands.

“What, man,” urged the captain, “don’t give in! Be up and doing like a man!”

“It is selfish, I know,—but doing what, doing what?” cried the young fisherman, in complete despair, and stamping his sea-boot on the ground.

“Doing what?” returned the captain. “Something! I’d go down to the little breakwater below yonder, and take a wrench at one of the salt-rusted iron rings there, and either wrench it up by the roots or wrench my teeth out of my head, sooner than I’d do nothing. Nothing!” ejaculated the captain. “Any fool or fainting heart can do that, and nothing can come of nothing,—which was pretended to be found out, I believe, by one of them Latin critters,” said the captain with the deepest disdain; “as if Adam hadn’t found it out, afore ever he so much as named the beasts!”

Yet the captain saw, in spite of his bold words, that there was some greater reason than he yet understood for the young man’s distress. And he eyed him with a sympathising curiosity.

“Come, come!” continued the captain, “Speak out. What is it, boy!”

“You have seen how beautiful she is, sir,” said the young man, looking up for the moment, with a flushed face and rumpled hair.

“Did any man ever say she warn’t beautiful?” retorted the captain. “If so, go and lick him.”

The young man laughed fretfully in spite of himself, and said—

“It’s not that, it’s not that.”

“Wa’al, then, what is it?” said the captain in a more soothing tone.

The young fisherman mournfully composed himself to tell the captain what it was, and began: “We were to have been married next Monday week——”

“Were to have been!” interrupted Captain Jorgan. “And are to be? Hey?”

Young Raybrock shook his head, and traced out with his forefinger the words, “poor father’s five hundred pounds,” in the written paper.

“Go along,” said the captain. “Five hundred pounds? Yes?”

“That sum of money,” pursued the young fisherman, entering with the greatest earnestness on his demonstration, while the captain eyed him with equal earnestness, “was all my late father possessed. When he died, he owed no man more than he left means to pay, but he had been able to lay by only five hundred pounds.”

“Five hundred pounds,” repeated the captain. “Yes?”

“In his lifetime, years before, he had expressly laid the money aside to leave to my mother,—like to settle upon her, if I make myself understood.”

“Yes?”

“He had risked it once—my father put down in writing at that time, respecting the money—and was resolved never to risk it again.”

“Not a spec'lator,” said the captain. “My country wouldn’t have suited him. Yes?”

“My mother has never touched the money till now. And now it was to have been laid out, this very next week, in buying me a handsome share in our neighbouring fishery here, to settle me in life with Kitty.”

The captain’s face fell, and he passed and repassed his sun-browned right hand over his thin hair, in a discomfited manner.

“Kitty’s father has no more than enough to live on, even in the sparing way in which we live about here. He is a kind of bailiff or steward of manor rights here, and they are not much, and it is but a poor little office. He was better off once, and Kitty must never marry to mere drudgery and hard living.”

The captain still sat stroking his thin hair, and looking at the young fisherman.

“I am as certain that my father had no knowledge that any one was wronged as to this money, or that any restitution ought to be made, as I am certain that the sun now shines. But, after this solemn warning from my brother’s grave in the sea, that the money is Stolen Money,” said Young Raybrock, forcing himself to the utterance of the words, “can I doubt it? Can I touch it?”

“About not doubting, I ain’t so sure,” observed the captain; “but about not touching—no—I don’t think you can.”

“See then,” said Young Raybrock, “why I am so grieved. Think of Kitty. Think what I have got to tell her!”

His heart quite failed him again when he had come round to that, and he once more beat his sea-boot softly on the floor. But not for long; he soon began again, in a quietly resolute tone.

“However! Enough of that! You spoke some brave words to me just now, Captain Jorgan, and they shall not be spoken in vain. I have got to do something. What I have got to do, before all other things, is to trace out the meaning of this paper, for the sake of the Good Name that has no one else to put it right. And still for the sake of the Good Name, and my father’s memory, not a word of this writing must be breathed to my mother, or to Kitty, or to any human creature. You agree in this?”

“I don’t know what they’ll think of us below,” said the captain, “but for certain I can’t oppose it. Now, as to tracing. How will you do?”

They both, as by consent, bent over the paper again, and again carefully puzzled out the whole of the writing.

“I make out that this would stand, if all the writing was here, ‘Inquire among the old men living there, for’—some one. Most like, you’ll go to this village named here?” said the captain, musing, with his finger on the name.

“Yes! And Mr. Tregarthen is a Cornishman, and—to be sure!—comes from Lanrean.”

“Does he?” said the captain quietly. “As I ain’t acquainted with him, who may he be?”

“Mr. Tregarthen is Kitty’s father.”

“Ay, ay!” cried the captain. “Now you speak! Tregarthen knows this village of Lanrean, then?”

“Beyond all doubt he does. I have often heard him mention it, as being his native place. He knows it well.”

“Stop half a moment,” said the captain. “We want a name here. You could ask Tregarthen (or if you couldn’t I could) what names of old men he remembers in his time in those diggings? Hey?”

“I can go straight to his cottage, and ask him now.”

“Take me with you,” said the captain, rising in a solid way that had a most comfortable reliability in it, “and just a word more first. I have knocked about harder than you, and have got along further than you. I have had, all my sea-going life long, to keep my wits polished bright with acid and friction, like the brass cases of the ship’s instruments. I’ll keep you company on this expedition. Now you don’t live by talking any more than I do. Clench that hand of yours in this hand of mine, and that’s a speech on both sides.”

Captain Jorgan took command of the expedition with that hearty shake. He at once refolded the paper exactly as before, replaced it in the bottle, put the stopper in, put the oilskin over the stopper, confided the whole to Young Raybrock’s keeping, and led the way down-stairs.

But it was harder navigation below-stairs than above. The instant they set foot in the parlour the quick, womanly eye detected that there was something wrong. Kitty exclaimed, frightened, as she ran to her lover’s side, “Alfred! What’s the matter?” Mrs. Raybrock cried out to the captain, “Gracious! what have you done to my son to change him like this all in a minute?” And the young widow—who was there with her work upon her arm—was at first so agitated that she frightened the little girl she held in her hand, who hid her face in her mother’s skirts and screamed. The captain, conscious of being held responsible for this domestic change, contemplated it with quite a guilty expression of countenance, and looked to the young fisherman to come to his rescue.

“Kitty, darling,” said Young Raybrock, “Kitty, dearest love, I must go away to Lanrean, and I don’t know where else or how much further, this very day. Worse than that—our marriage, Kitty, must be put off, and I don’t know for how long.”

Kitty stared at him, in doubt and wonder and in anger, and pushed him from her with her hand.

“Put off?” cried Mrs. Raybrock. “The marriage put off? And you going to Lanrean! Why, in the name of the dear Lord?”

“Mother dear, I can’t say why; I must not say why. It would be dishonourable and undutiful to say why.”

“Dishonourable and undutiful?” returned the dame. “And is there nothing dishonourable or undutiful in the boy’s breaking the heart of his own plighted love, and his mother’s heart too, for the sake of the dark secrets and counsels of a wicked stranger? Why did you ever come here?” she apostrophised the innocent captain. “Who wanted you? Where did you come from? Why couldn’t you rest in your own bad place, wherever it is, instead of disturbing the peace of quiet unoffending folk like us?”

“And what,” sobbed the poor little Kitty, “have I ever done to you, you hard and cruel captain, that you should come and serve me so?”

And then they both began to weep most pitifully, while the captain could only look from the one to the other, and lay hold of himself by the coat collar.

“Margaret,” said the poor young fisherman, on his knees at Kitty’s feet, while Kitty kept both her hands before her tearful face, to shut out the traitor from her view,—but kept her fingers wide asunder and looked at him all the time,—“Margaret, you have suffered so much, so uncomplainingly, and are always so careful and considerate! Do take my part, for poor Hugh’s sake!”

The quiet Margaret was not appealed to in vain. “I will, Alfred,” she returned, “and I do. I wish this gentleman had never come near us;” whereupon the captain laid hold of himself the tighter; “but I take your part for all that. I am sure you have some strong reason and some sufficient reason for what you do, strange as it is, and even for not saying why you do it, strange as that is. And, Kitty darling, you are bound to think so more than any one, for true love believes everything, and bears everything, and trusts everything. And, mother dear, you are bound to think so too, for you know you have been blest with good sons, whose word was always as good as their oath, and who were brought up in as true a sense of honour as any gentleman in this land. And I am sure you have no more call, mother, to doubt your living son than to doubt your dead son; and for the sake of the dear dead, I stand up for the dear living.”

“Wa’al now,” the captain struck in, with enthusiasm, “this I say, That whether your opinions flatter me or not, you are a young woman of sense, and spirit, and feeling; and I’d sooner have you by my side in the hour of danger, than a good half of the men I’ve ever fallen in with—or fallen out with, ayther.”

Margaret did not return the captain’s compliment, or appear fully to reciprocate his good opinion, but she applied herself to the consolation of Kitty, and of Kitty’s mother-in-law that was to have been next Monday week, and soon restored the parlour to a quiet condition.

“Kitty, my darling,” said the young fisherman, “I must go to your father to entreat him still to trust me in spite of this wretched change and mystery, and to ask him for some directions concerning Lanrean. Will you come home? Will you come with me, Kitty?”

Kitty answered not a word, but rose sobbing, with the end of her simple head-dress at her eyes. Captain Jorgan followed the lovers out, quite sheepishly, pausing in the shop to give an instruction to Mr. Pettifer.

“Here, Tom!” said the captain, in a low voice. “Here’s something in your line. Here’s an old lady poorly and low in her spirits. Cheer her up a bit, Tom. Cheer ’em all up.”

Mr. Pettifer, with a brisk nod of intelligence, immediately assumed his steward face, and went with his quiet, helpful, steward step into the parlour, where the captain had the great satisfaction of seeing him, through the glass door, take the child in his arms (who offered no objection), and bend over Mrs. Raybrock, administering soft words of consolation.

“Though what he finds to say, unless he’s telling her that ’t’ll soon be over, or that most people is so at first, or that it’ll do her good afterward, I cannot imaginate!” was the captain’s reflection as he followed the lovers.

He had not far to follow them, since it was but a short descent down the stony ways to the cottage of Kitty’s father. But short as the distance was, it was long enough to enable the captain to observe that he was fast becoming the village Ogre; for there was not a woman standing working at her door, or a fisherman coming up or going down, who saw Young Raybrock unhappy and little Kitty in tears, but he or she instantly darted a suspicious and indignant glance at the captain, as the foreigner who must somehow be responsible for this unusual spectacle. Consequently, when they came into Tregarthen’s little garden,—which formed the platform from which the captain had seen Kitty peeping over the wall,—the captain brought to, and stood off and on at the gate, while Kitty hurried to hide her tears in her own room, and Alfred spoke with her father, who was working in the garden. He was a rather infirm man, but could scarcely be called old yet, with an agreeable face and a promising air of making the best of things. The conversation began on his side with great cheerfulness and good humour, but soon became distrustful, and soon angry. That was the captain’s cue for striking both into the conversation and the garden.

“Morning, sir!” said Captain Jorgan. “How do you do?”

“The gentleman I am going away with,” said the young fisherman to Tregarthen.

“O!” returned Kitty’s father, surveying the unfortunate captain with a look of extreme disfavour. “I confess that I can’t say I am glad to see you.”

“No,” said the captain, “and, to admit the truth, that seems to be the general opinion in these parts. But don’t be hasty; you may think better of me by-and-by.”

“I hope so,” observed Tregarthen.

“Wa’al, I hope so,” observed the captain, quite at his ease; “more than that, I believe so,—though you don’t. Now, Mr. Tregarthen, you don’t want to exchange words of mistrust with me; and if you did, you couldn’t, because I wouldn’t. You and I are old enough to know better than to judge against experience from surfaces and appearances; and if you haven’t lived to find out the evil and injustice of such judgments, you are a lucky man.”

The other seemed to shrink under this remark, and replied, “Sir, I have lived to feel it deeply.”

“Wa’al,” said the captain, mollified, “then I’ve made a good cast without knowing it. Now, Tregarthen, there stands the lover of your only child, and here stand I who know his secret. I warrant it a righteous secret, and none of his making, though bound to be of his keeping. I want to help him out with it, and tewwards that end we ask you to favour us with the names of two or three old residents in the village of Lanrean. As I am taking out my pocket-book and pencil to put the names down, I may as well observe to you that this, wrote atop of the first page here, is my name and address: ‘Silas Jonas Jorgan, Salem, Massachusetts, United States.’ If ever you take it in your head to run over any morning, I shall be glad to welcome you. Now, what may be the spelling of these said names?”

“There was an elderly man,” said Tregarthen, “named David Polreath. He may be dead.”

“Wa’al,” said the captain, cheerfully, “if Polreath’s dead and buried, and can be made of any service to us, Polreath won’t object to our digging of him up. Polreath’s down, anyhow.”

“There was another named Penrewen. I don’t know his Christian name.”

“Never mind his Chris’en name,” said the captain; “Penrewen, for short.”

“There was another named John Tredgear.”

“And a pleasant-sounding name, too,” said the captain; “John Tredgear’s booked.”

“I can recall no other except old Parvis.”

“One of old Parvis’s fam’ly I reckon,” said the captain, “kept a dry-goods store in New York city, and realised a handsome competency by burning his house to ashes. Same name, anyhow. David Polreath, Unchris’en Penrewen, John Tredgear, and old Arson Parvis.”

“I cannot recall any others at the moment.”

“Thank’ee,” said the captain. “And so, Tregarthen, hoping for your good opinion yet, and likewise for the fair Devonshire Flower’s, your daughter’s, I give you my hand, sir, and wish you good day.”

Young Raybrock accompanied him disconsolately; for there was no Kitty at the window when he looked up, no Kitty in the garden when he shut the gate, no Kitty gazing after them along the stony ways when they begin to climb back.

“Now I tell you what,” said the captain. “Not being at present calc'lated to promote harmony in your family, I won’t come in. You go and get your dinner at home, and I’ll get mine at the little hotel. Let our hour of meeting be two o’clock, and you’ll find me smoking a cigar in the sun afore the hotel door. Tell Tom Pettifer, my steward, to consider himself on duty, and to look after your people till we come back; you’ll find he’ll have made himself useful to ’em already, and will be quite acceptable.”

All was done as Captain Jorgan directed. Punctually at two o’clock the young fisherman appeared with his knapsack at his back; and punctually at two o’clock the captain jerked away the last feather-end of his cigar.

“Let me carry your baggage, Captain Jorgan; I can easily take it with mine.”

“Thank’ee,” said the captain. “I’ll carry it myself. It’s only a comb.”

They climbed out of the village, and paused among the trees and fern on the summit of the hill above, to take breath, and to look down at the beautiful sea. Suddenly the captain gave his leg a resounding slap, and cried, “Never knew such a right thing in all my life!”—and ran away.

The cause of this abrupt retirement on the part of the captain was little Kitty among the trees. The captain went out of sight and waited, and kept out of sight and waited, until it occurred to him to beguile the time with another cigar. He lighted it, and smoked it out, and still he was out of sight and waiting. He stole within sight at last, and saw the lovers, with their arms entwined and their bent heads touching, moving slowly among the trees. It was the golden time of the afternoon then, and the captain said to himself, “Golden sun, golden sea, golden sails, golden leaves, golden love, golden youth,—a golden state of things altogether!”

Nevertheless the captain found it necessary to hail his young companion before going out of sight again. In a few moments more he came up and they began their journey.

“That still young woman with the fatherless child,” said Captain Jorgan, as they fell into step, “didn’t throw her words away; but good honest words are never thrown away. And now that I am conveying you off from that tender little thing that loves, and relies, and hopes, I feel just as if I was the snarling crittur in the picters, with the tight legs, the long nose, and the feather in his cap, the tips of whose moustaches get up nearer to his eyes the wickeder he gets.”

The young fisherman knew nothing of Mephistopheles; but he smiled when the captain stopped to double himself up and slap his leg, and they went along in right good-fellowship.

CHAPTER III

THE CLUB-NIGHT

Charles Dickens. Charles Collins, Harriett Parr, H.F. Chorley, and Amelia B. Edwards

A Cornish Moor, when the east wind drives over it, is as cold and rugged a scene as a traveller is likely to find in a year's travel. A Cornish Moor in the dark, is as black a solitude as the traveller is likely to wish himself well out of, in the course of a life's wanderings. A Cornish Moor in a night fog, is a wilderness where the traveller needs to know his way well, or the chances are very strong that his life and his wanderings will soon perplex, him, no more.

Captain Jorgan and the young fisherman had faced the east and the south-east winds, from the first rising of the sun after their departure from the village of Steepways. Thrice, had the sun risen, and still all day long had the sharp wind blown at them like some malevolent spirit bent on forcing them back. But, Captain Jorgan was too familiar with all the winds that blow, and too much accustomed to circumvent their slightest weaknesses and get the better of them in the long run, to be beaten by any member of the airy family. Taking the year round, it was his opinion that it mattered little what wind blew, or how hard it blew; so, he was as indifferent to the wind on this occasion as a man could be who frequently observed "that it freshened him up," and who regarded it in the light of an old acquaintance. One might have supposed from his way, that there was even a kind of fraternal understanding between Captain Jorgan and the wind, as between two professed fighters often opposed to one another. The young fisherman, for his part, was accustomed within his narrower limits to hold hard weather cheap, and had his anxious object before him; so, the wind went by him too, little heeded, and went upon its way to kiss Kitty.

Their varied course had lain by the side of the sea where the brown rocks cleft it into fountains of spray, and inland where once barren moors were reclaimed and cultivated, and by lonely villages of poor-enough cabins with mud walls, and by a town or two with an old church and a market-place. But, always travelling through a sparely inhabited country and over a broad expanse, they had come at last upon the true Cornish Moor within reach of Lanrean. None but gaunt spectres of miners passed them here, with metallic masks of faces, ghastly with dust of copper and tin; anon, solitary works on remote hill-tops, and bare machinery of torturing wheels and cogs and chains, writhing up hill-sides, were the few scattered hints of human presence in the landscape; during long intervals, the bitter wind, howling and tearing at them like a fierce wild monster, had them all to itself.

"A sing'lar thing it is," said the captain, looking round at the brown desert of rank grass and poor grass, "how like this airth is, to the men that live upon it! Here's a spot of country rich with hidden metals, and it puts on the worst rags of clothes possible, and crouches and shivers and makes believe to be so poor that it can't so much as afford a feed for a beast. Just like a human miser, ain't it?"

"But they find the miser out," returned the young fisherman, pointing to where the earth by the watercourses and along the valleys was turned up, for miles, in trying for metal.

"Ay, they find him out," said the captain; "but he makes a struggle of it even then, and holds back all he can. He's a 'cute 'un."

The gloom of evening was already gathering on the dreary scene, and they were, at the shortest and best, a dozen miles from their destination. But, the captain, in his long-skirted blue coat and his boots and his hat and his square shirt-collar, and without any extra defence against the weather, walked coolly along with his hands in his pockets: as if he lived underground somewhere hard by, and had just come up to show his friend the road.

"I'd have liked to have had a look at this place, too," said the captain, "when there was a monstrous sweep of water rolling over it, dragging the powerful great stones along and piling 'em atop of one another, and depositing the foundations for all manner of superstitions. Bless you! the old priests, smart mechanical critturs as they were, never piled up many of these stones. Water's the lever that moved 'em. When you see 'em thick and blunt tewwards one point of the compass, and fined away thin tewwards the opposite point, you may be as good as moral sure that the name of the ancient Druid that fixed 'em was Water."

The captain referred to some great blocks of stone presenting this characteristic, which were wonderfully balanced and heaped on one another, on a desolate hill. Looking back at these, as they stood out against the lurid glare of the west, just then expiring, they were not unlike enormous antediluvian birds, that had perched there on crags and peaks, and had been petrified there.

"But it's an interesting country," said the captain, "—fact! It's old in the annals of that said old Arch Druid, Water, and it's old in the annals of the said old parson-critturs too. It's a mighty interesting thing to set your boot (as I did this day) on a rough honeycombed old stone, with just nothing you can name but weather visible upon it: which the scholars that go about with hammers, chipping pieces off the universal airth, find to be an inscription, entreating prayers for the soul of some for-ages-bust-up crittur of a governor that over-taxed a people never heard of." Here the captain stopped to slap his leg. "It's a mighty interesting thing to come upon a score or two of stones set up on end in a desert, some short, some tall, some leaning here, some leaning there, and to know that they were pop'larly supposed—and may be still—to be a group of Cornish men that got changed into that geological formation for playing a game upon a Sunday. They wouldn't have it in my country, I reckon, even if they could get it—but it's very interesting."

In this, the captain, though it amused him, was quite sincere. Quite as sincere as when he added, after looking well about him: "That fog-bank coming up as the sun goes down, will spread, and we shall have to feel our way into Lanrean full as much as see it."

All the way along, the young fisherman had spoken at times to the captain, of his interrupted hopes, and of the family good name, and of the restitution that must be made, and of the cherished plans of his heart so near attainment, which must be set aside for it. In his simple faith and honour, he seemed incapable of entertaining the idea that it was within the bounds of possibility to evade the doing of what their inquiries should establish to be right. This was very agreeable to Captain Jorgan, and won his genuine admiration. Wherefore, he now turned the discourse back into that channel, and encouraged his companion to talk of Kitty, and to calculate how many years it would take, without a share in the fishery, to establish a home for her, and to relieve his honest heart by dwelling on its anxieties.

Meanwhile, it fell very dark, and the fog became dense, though the wind howled at them and bit them as savagely as ever. The captain had carefully taken the bearings of Lanrean from the map, and carried his pocket compass with him; the young fisherman, too, possessed that kind of cultivated instinct for shaping a course, which is often found among men of such pursuits. But, although they held a true course in the main, and corrected it when they lost the road by the aid of the compass and a light obtained with great difficulty in the roomy depths of the captain's hat, they could not help losing the road often. On such occasions they would become involved in the difficult ground of the spongy moor, and, after making a laborious loop, would emerge upon the road at some point they had passed before they left it, and thus would have a good deal of work to do twice over. But the young fisherman was not easily lost, and the captain (and his comb) would probably have turned up, with perfect coolness and self-possession, at any appointed spot on the surface of this globe. Consequently, they were no more than retarded in their progress to Lanrean, and arrived in that small place at nine o'clock. By that time, the captain's hat had fallen back over his ears and rested on the nape of his neck; but he still had his hands in his pockets, and showed no other sign of dilapidation.

They had almost run against a low stone house with red-curtained windows, before they knew they had hit upon the little hotel, the King Arthur's Arms. They could just descry through the mist, on the opposite side of the narrow road, other low stone buildings which were its outhouses and stables; and somewhere overhead, its invisible sign was being wrathfully swung by the wind.

"Now, wait a bit," said the captain. "They might be full here, or they might offer us cold quarters. Consequently, the policy is to take an observation, and, when we've found the warmest room, walk right slap into it."

The warmest room was evidently that from which fire and candle streamed reddest and brightest, and from which the sound of voices engaged in some discussion came out into the night. Captain Jorgan having established the bearings of this room, merely said to his young friend, "Follow me!" and was in it, before King Arthur's Arms had any notion that they enfolded a stranger.

"Order, order, order!" cried several voices, as the captain with his hat under his arm, stood within the door he had opened.

"Gentlemen," said the captain, advancing, "I am much beholden to you for the opportunity you give me of addressing you; but will not detain you with any lengthened observations. I have the honour to be a cousin of yours on the Uncle Sam side; this young friend of mine is a nearer relation of yours on the Devonshire side; we are both pretty nigh used up, and much in want of supper. I thank you for your welcome, and I am proud to take you by the hand, sir, and I hope I see you well."

These last words were addressed to a jolly looking chairman with a wooden hammer near him: which, but for the captain's friendly grasp, he would have taken up, and hammered the table with.

"How do you do, sir?" said the captain, shaking this chairman's hand with the greatest heartiness, while his new friend ineffectually eyed his hammer of office; "when you come to my country, I shall be proud to return your welcome, sir, and that of this good company."

The captain now took his seat near the fire, and invited his companion to do the like—whom he congratulated aloud, on their having "fallen on their feet."

The company, who might be about a dozen in number, were at a loss what to make of, or do with, the captain. But, one little old man in long flapping shirt collars: who, with only his face and them visible through a cloud of tobacco smoke, looked like a superannuated Cherubim: said sharply,

"This is a Club."

"This is a Club," the captain repeated to his young friend. "Wa'al now, that's curious! Didn't I say, coming along, if we could only light upon a Club?"

The captain's doubling himself up and slapping his leg, finished the chairman. He had been softening towards the captain from the first, and he melted. "Gentlemen King Arthurs," said he, rising, "though it is not the custom to admit strangers, still, as we have broken the rule once to-night, I will exert my authority and break it again. And while the supper of these travellers is cooking;" here his eye fell on the landlord, who discreetly took the hint and withdrew to see about it; "I will recall you to the subject of the seafaring man."

"D'ye hear!" said the captain, aside to the young fisherman; "that's in our way. Who's the seafaring man, I wonder?"

"I see several old men here," returned the young fisherman, eagerly, for his thoughts were always on his object. "Perhaps one or more of the old men whose names you wrote down in your book, may be here."

"Perhaps," said the captain; "I've got my eye on 'em. But don't force it. Try if it won't come nat'ral."

Thus the two, behind their hands, while they sat warming them at the fire. Simultaneously, the Club beginning to be at its ease again, and resuming the discussion of the seafaring man, the captain winked to his fellow-traveller to let him attend to it.

As it was a kind of conversation not altogether unprecedented in such assemblages, where most of those who spoke at all, spoke all at once, and where half of those could put no beginning to what they had to say, and the other half could put no end, the tendency of the debate was discursive, and not very intelligible. All the captain had made out, down to the time when the separate little table, laid for two, was covered with a smoking broiled fowl and rashers of bacon, reduced itself to these heads. That, a seafaring man had arrived at The King Arthur's Arms, benighted, an hour or so earlier in the evening. That, the Gentlemen King Arthurs had admitted him, though all unknown, into the sanctuary of their Club. That, they had invited him to make his footing good by telling a story. That, he had, after some pressing, begun a story of adventure and ship-wreck: at an interesting point of which he suddenly broke off, and positively refused to finish. That, he had thereupon taken up a candlestick, and gone to bed, and was now the sole occupant of a double-bedded room up-stairs. The question raised on these premises, appeared to be, whether the seafaring man was not in a state of contumacy and contempt, and ought not to be formally voted and declared in that condition. This deliberation involved the difficulty (suggested by the more jocose and irreverent of the Gentlemen King Arthurs) that it might make no sort of difference to the seafaring man whether he was so voted and declared, or not.

Captain Jorgan and the young fisherman ate their supper and drank their beer, and their knives and forks had ceased to rattle and their glasses had ceased to clink, and still the discussion showed no symptoms of coming to any conclusion. But, when they had left their little supper-table and had returned to their seats by the fire, the Chairman hammered himself into attention, and thus outspake.

"Gentlemen King Arthurs; when the night is so bad without, harmony should prevail within. When the moor is so windy, cold, and bleak, this room should be cheerful, convivial, and entertaining. Gentlemen, at present it is neither the one, nor yet the other, nor yet the other. Gentlemen King Arthurs, I recall you to yourselves. Gentlemen King Arthurs, what are you? You are inhabitants—old inhabitants—of the noble village of Lanrean. You are in council assembled. You are a monthly Club through all the winter months, and they are many. It is your perroud perrivilege, on a new member's entrance, or on a member's birthday, to call upon that member to make good his footing by relating to you some transaction or adventure in his life, or in the life of a relation, or in the life of a friend, and then to depute me as your representative to spin a teetotum to pass it round. Gentlemen King Arthurs, your perroud perrivileges shall not suffer in my keeping. N—no! Therefore, as the member whose birthday the present occasion has the honour to be, has gratified you; and as the seafaring man overiiead has not gratified you; I start you fresh, by spinning the teetotum attached to my office, and calling on the gentleman it falls to, to speak up when his name is declared."

The captain and his young friend looked hard at the teetotum as it whirled rapidly, and harder still when it gradually became intoxicated and began to stagger about the table in an ill-conducted and disorderly manner. Finally, it came into collision with a candlestick and leaped against the pipe of the old gentleman with the flapping shirt collars. Thereupon, the chairman struck the table once with his hammer and said:

"Mr. Parvis!"

"D'ye hear that?" whispered the captain, greatly excited, to the young fisherman. "I'd have laid you a thousand dollars a good half-hour ago, that that old cherubim in the clouds was Arson Parvis!"

The respectable personage in question, after turning up one eye to assist his memory—at which time, he bore a very striking resemblance indeed to the conventional representations of his race as executed in oil by various ancient masters—commenced a narrative, of which the interest centred in a waistcoat. It appeared that the waistcoat was a yellow waistcoat with a green stripe, white sleeves, and a plain brass button. It also appeared that the waistcoat was made to order, by Nicholas Pendold of Penzance, who was thrown off the top of a four-horse coach coming down the hill on the Plymouth road, and, pitching on his head where he was not sensitive, lived two-and-thirty years afterwards, and considered himself the better for the accident—roused up, as it might be. It further appeared that the waistcoat belonged to Mr. Parvis's father, and had once attended him, in company with a pair of gaiters, to the annual feast of miners at St. Just: where the extraordinary circumstance which ever afterwards rendered it a waistcoat famous in story had occurred. But, the celebrity of the waistcoat was not thoroughly accounted for by Mr. Parvis, and had to be to some extent taken on trust by the company, in consequence of that gentleman's entirely forgetting all about the extraordinary circumstance that had handed it down to fame. Indeed, he was even unable, on a gentle cross-examination instituted for the assistance of his memory, to inform the Gentlemen King Arthurs whether it was a circumstance of a natural or supernatural character. Having thus responded to the teetotum, Mr. Parvis, after looking out from his clouds as if he would like to see the man who would beat that, subsided into himself.

The fraternity were plunged into a blank condition by Mr. Parvis's success, and the chairman was about to try another spin, when young Raybrock—whom Captain Jorgan had with difficulty restrained,—rose, and said might he ask Mr. Parvis a question.

The Gentlemen King Arthurs holding, with loud cries of "Order!" that he might not, he asked the question as soon as he could possibly make himself heard.

Did the forgotten circumstance relate in any way to money? To a sum of money, such as five hundred pounds? To money supposed by its possessor to be honestly come by, but in reality ill-gotten and stolen?

A general surprise seized upon the club when this remarkable inquiry was preferred; which would have become resentment but for the captain's interposition.

"Strange as it sounds," said he, "and suspicious as it sounds, I pledge myself, gentlemen, that my young friend here has a manly stand-up Cornish reason for his words. Also, I pledge myself that they are inoffensive words. He and I are searching for information on a subject which those words generally describe. Such information we may get from the honestest and best of men—may get, or not get, here or anywhere about here. I hope the Honourable Mr. Arson—I ask his pardon—Parvis—will not object to quiet my young friend's mind by saying Yes or No."

After some time, the obtuse Mr. Parvis was with great trouble and difficulty induced to roar out "No!" For which concession the captain rose and thanked him.

"Now, listen to the next," whispered the captain to the young fisherman. "There may be more in him than in the other crittur. Don't interrupt him. Hear him out."

The chairman with all due formality spun the teetotum, and it reeled into the brandy-and-water of a strong brown man of sixty or so: John Tredgear: the manager of a neighbouring mine. He immediately began as follows, with a plain business-like air that gradually warmed as he proceeded.

It happened that at one period of my life the path of my destiny (not a tin path then) lay along the highways and byways of France, and that I had occasion to make frequent stoppages at common French roadside cabarets—that kind of tavern which has a very bad name in French books and French plays. I had engaged myself in an undertaking which rendered such journeys necessary. A very old friend of mine had recently established himself at Paris in a wholesale commercial enterprise, into the nature of which it is not necessary for our present purpose to enter. He had proposed to me a certain share in the undertaking, and one of the duties of my post was to involve occasional journeys among the smaller towns and villages of France, with the view of establishing agencies and opening connexions. My friend had applied to me to undertake this function, rather than to a native, feeling that he could trust me better than a stranger. He knew also that, in consequence of my having been half my life at school in France, my knowledge of the language would be sufficient for every purpose that could be required.

I accepted my friend's proposal, and entered with such energy as I could command upon my new mode of life. Sometimes, my journeyings from place to place were accomplished by means of the railroad, or other public conveyance; but there were other occasions, and these last I liked the best, when it was necessary I should go to out-of-the-way places, and by such cross-roads as rendered it more convenient for me to travel with a carriage and horse of my own. My carriage was a kind of phaeton without a coach-box, with a leather hood that would put up and down; and there was plenty of room at the back, for such specimens or samples of goods as it was necessary that I should carry with me. For my horse—it was absolutely indispensable that it should be an animal of some value, as no horse but a very good one would be capable of performing the long courses day after day which my mode of travelling rendered necessary. He cost me two thousand francs, and was anything but dear at the price.

Many were the journeys we performed together over the broad acres of beautiful France. Many were the hotels, many the auberges, many the bad dinners, many the damp beds, and many the fleas which I encountered en route. Many were the dull old fortified towns over whose drawbridges I rolled; many the still more dull old towns without fortifications and without drawbridges, at which my avocations made it necessary for me to halt.

I don't know how it was that on the morning when I was to start from the town of Doulaise, with the intention of sleeping at Francy-le-Grand, I was an hour later in commencing my journey than I ought to have been. I have said I don't know how it was, but this is scarcely true. I do know how it was. It was because on that morning, to use a popular expression, everything went wrong. So, it was an hour later than it ought to have been, gentlemen, when I drew up the sheepskin lining of my carriage apron over my legs, and establishing my little dog comfortably on the seat beside me, set off on my journey. In all my expeditions I was accompanied by a favourite terrier of mine, which I had brought with me from England. I never travelled without her, and found her a companion.

It was a miserable day in the month of October. A perfectly grey sky, with white gleams about the horizon, gave unmistakable evidence that the small drizzle which was falling would continue for four-and-twenty hours at least. It was cold and cheerless weather, and on the deserted road I was pursuing, there was scarcely a human being (unless it was an occasional cantonnier, or road-mender) to break the solitude. A deserted way indeed, with poplars on each side of it, which had turned yellow in the autumn, and had shed their leaves in abundance all across the road, so that my mare's footsteps had quite a muffled sound as she trampled them under her hoofs. Widely-extending flats spread out on either side, till the view was lost in an inconceivably melancholy scene, and the road itself was so perfectly straight, that you could see something like ten miles of it diminishing to a point in front of you, while a similar view was visible through the little window at the back of the carriage.

In the hurry of the morning's departure I had omitted to inquire, as I generally did in travelling an unknown road, at what village it would be best for me to stop, about noon, to bait, and what was the name of the most respectable house of public entertainment in my way; so that when I arrived between twelve and one o'clock at a certain place where four roads met; and when at one of the corners formed by their union I saw a great bare-looking inn, with the sign of the Tête Noire swinging in front; I had nothing for it but to put up there, without knowing anything of the character of the house.

The look of the place did not please me. It was a great bare uninhabited-looking house, which seemed much larger than was necessary, and presented a black and dirty appearance, which, considering the distance from any town, it was difficult to account for. All the doors and all the windows were shut; there was no sign of any living creature about the place; and niched into the wall above the principal entrance was a grim and ghastly-looking life-size figure of a Saint. For a moment I hesitated whether I should turn into the open gates of the stable-yard, or go further in search of some more attractive halting-place. But my mare was tired, I was more than half way on my road, and this would be the best division of the journey. Besides, Gentlemen; why not put up here? If I was only going to stop at such places of entertainment as completely satisfied me, externally as well as internally, I had better give up travelling altogether.

There were no more signs of life in the interior of the yard, than were presented by the external aspect of the house, as it fronted the road. Everything seemed shut up. All the stables and outhouses were characterised by closed doors, without so much as a straw clinging to their thresholds to indicate that these buildings were sometimes put to a practical use. I saw no manure strewed about the place, and no living creature: no pigs, no ducks, no fowls. It was perfectly still and quiet, and, as it was one of those days when a fine small rain descends quite straight, without a breath of air to drive it one way or other, the silence was complete and distressing. I gave a loud shout, and began undoing the harness while my summons was taking effect.

The first person whom the sound of my voice appeared to have reached, was a small but precocious boy: who opened a door in the back of the house, and, descending the flight of steps which led to it, approached to aid me in my task. I was just undoing the final buckle on my side of the harness, when, happening to turn round, I discovered, standing close behind me, a personage who had approached so quietly that it would have been a confusing thing to find him so near even if there had been nothing in his appearance which was calculated to startle one. He was the most ill-looking man, Gentlemen, that it was ever my fortune to behold. Nearer fifty than any other age I could give him, his dry spare nature had kept him as light and active as a restless boy. An absence of flesh, however, was not the only want I felt to exist in the personal appearance of the landlord of the Tête Noire. There was a much more serious defect in him than this. A want of any hint of mercy, or conscience, or any accessible approach to the better side (if there was a better side) of the man's nature. When first I looked at his eyes, as he stood behind me in the open court, and as they rapidly glanced over the comely points of my horse, and thence to the packages inside my carriage and the portmanteau strapped on in front of it—at that time, the colour of his eyes appeared to me to be of an almost orange tinge; but when, a minute afterwards, we stoocl together in the dark stable, I noted that a kind of blue phosphorescence gleamed upon their surface, veiling their real hue, and imparting to them a tigerish lustre. The moment when I remarked this, by-the-by, was when the organs I have been describing were fixed upon the very large gold ring which I had not ceased to wear when adopted my adventurous life, and which you may see upon my finger now. There were two other things about this man that struck me. These were, a bald red projecting lump of flesh at the back of his head, and a deep scar, which a scrap of frouzy whisker on his cheek wholly declined to conceal.

"A nasty day for a journey of pleasure," said the landlord, looking at me with a satirical smile.

"Perhaps it is not a journey of pleasure," I answered, dryly.

"We have few such travellers on the road now," said the evil-faced man. "The railroads make the country a desert, and the roads are as wild as they were three hundred years ago."

"They are well enough," I answered, carelessly, "'for those who are obliged to travel by them. Nobody else, I should think, would be likely to make use of them."

"Will you come into the house?" said the landlord, abruptly, looking me full in the face.

I never felt a stronger repugnance than I entertained towards the idea of entering this man's doors. Yet what other course was open to me. My mare was already half through the first instalment of her oats, so there was no more excuse for remaining in the stable. To take a walk in the drenching rain was out of the question, and to remain sitting in my calèche would have been a worse indication of suspicion and mistrust. Besides, I had had nothing since the morning's coffee, and I wanted something to eat and drink. There was nothing to be done, then, but to accept my ill-looking friend's offer. He led the way up the flight of steps which gave access to the interior of the building.

The room in which I found myself on passing through the door at the top of these steps, was one of those rooms which an excess of light not only fails to enliven, but seems even to invest with an additional degree of gloom. There is sometimes this character about light, and I have seen before now, a workhouse ward, and a barren schoolroom, which have owed a good share of their melancholy to an immoderate amount of cold grey daylight. This room, then, into which I was shown, was one of those which, on a wet day, seemed several degrees lighter than the open air. Of course it could not be really lighter than the thing that lit it, but it seemed so. It also appeared larger than the whole out-door world; and this, certainly, could not be either, but seemed so. Vast as it was, there appeared through two glass-doors in one of the walls another apartment of similar dimensions. It was not a square room, nor an oblong room, but was smaller at one end than at the other: a phenomenon which, as you have very likely observed, Gentlemen, has always an unpleasant effect. The billiard-table, which stood in the middle of the apartment, though really of the usual size, looked quite a trifling piece of furniture; and as to the other tables, which were planted sparingly here and there for purposes of refreshment, they were quite lost in the immensity of space about them. A cupboard, a rack of billiard cues, a marking-board, and a print of the murder of the Archbishop of Paris in a black frame, alone broke the uniformity of wall. The ceiling, as far as one could judge of anything at that altitude, appeared to be traversed by an enormous beam with rings fastened into it adapted for suicidal purposes, and splashed with the whitewash with which the ceiling itself and the walls had just been decorated. Even my little terrier, whom I had been obliged to take up in my arms on account of the disposition she had manifested to fly at the shins of our detested landlord, looked round the room with a gaze of horror as I set her down, and trembled and shivered as if she would come out of her skin.

"And so you don't like him, Nelly, and your little beads of eyes, that look up at me from under that hairy penthouse, with nothing but love in them, are all a-blaze with fury when they are turned upon his sinister face? And how did he get that scar, Nelly? Did he get it when he slaughtered his last traveller? And what do you think of his eyes, Nelly? And what do you think of the back of his head, my dog? What do you think he's about now, eh? What mischief do you think he's hatching? Don't you wish you were sitting by my side in the calèche, and that we were out on the free road again?"

To all these questions and remarks, my little companion responded very intelligibly by faint thumpings of the ground with her tail, and by certain flutterings of her ears, which, from long habits of intercourse, I understood very well to mean that whatever my opinion might be, she coincided in it.

I had ordered an omelette and some wine when I first entered the house, and, as I now sat waiting for it, I observed that my landlord would every now and then leave what he was about in the other room—where I concluded that he was engaged preparing my meal—and would come and peer at me furtively through the glass-doors which connected the room I was in, with that in which he was. Once, too, I heard him go out, and I felt sure that he had retired to the stables, to examine more minutely the value of my horse and carriage.

I took it into my head that my landlord was a desperate rogue; that his business was not sufficient to support him; that he had remarked that I was in possession of a very valuable horse, a carriage which would fetch something, and a quantity of luggage in which there were probably articles of price. I had other things of worth about my person, including a sum of money, without which I could not be travelling about, as he saw me, from place to place.

While my mind was amusing itself with these cheerful reflections, a little girl, of about twelve years old, entered the room through the glass-doors, and, after honouring me with a long stare, went to the cupboard at the other end of the apartment, and, opening it with a bunch of keys which she brought with her in her hand, took out a small white paper packet, about four inches square, and retired with it by the way by which she had entered; still staring at me so diligently that, from want of proper attention to where she was going, she got (I am happy to state) a severe bump against the door as she passed through it. She was a horrid little girl this, with eyes that in shirking the necessity of looking straight at anybody or anything, had got at last to look only at her nose—finding it, probably, as bad a nose as could be met with, and therefore a congenial companion. She had, moreover, frizzy and fluey hair, was excessively dirty, and had a slow crab-like way of going along without looking at what she was about, which was very noisome and detestable.

It was not long before this young lady reappeared, bearing in her hand a plate containing the omelette, which she placed upon the table without going through the previous form of laying a cloth. She next cut an immense piece of bread from a loaf shaped like a ring, and, having clapped this also down upon the dirtiest part of the table, and having further favoured me with a wiped knife and fork, disappeared once more. She disappeared to fetch the wine. When this had been brought, and some water, the preparations for my feast were considered complete, and I was left to enjoy it alone.

I must not omit to mention that the horrid waiting-maid appeared to excite as strong an antipathy in the breast of my little dog as that which my landlord himself had stirred up; and, I am happy to say, that as the child left the room, I was obliged to interfere, to prevent Nelly from harassing her retreating calves.

Gentlemen, an experienced traveller soon learns that he must eat to support nature: closing his eyes, nose, and ears to all suggestions. I set to work, then, at the omelette with energy, and at the tough sour bread with good will, and had swallowed half a tumbler of wine and water, when a thought suddenly occurred to me which caused me to set the glass down upon the table. I had no sooner done this, than I raised it again to my lips, took a fresh sip, rolled the liquid about in my mouth two or three times, and spat it out upon the floor. But I uttered, as I did so, in an audible tone, the monosyllable "Pooh!"

"Pooh! Nelly," I said, looking down at my dog, who was watching me intensely with her head on one side—"pooh! Nelly," I repeated, "what frantic and inconceivable nonsense!"

And what was it that I thus stigmatised? What was it that had given me pause in the middle of my draught? What thought was it that caused me to set down my glass with half its contents remaining in it? It was a suspicion, driven straight and swift as an arrow into the innermost recesses of my soul, that the wine I had just been drinking, and which, contrary to my custom, I had mingled with water, was drugged!

There are some thoughts which, like noxious insects, come buzzing back into one's mind as often as we repulse them. We confute them in argument, prove them illogical, leave them not a leg to stand upon, and yet there they are the next moment as brisk as bees, and stronger on their pins than ever. It was just such a thought as this with which I had now to deal. It was well to say "Pooh!" it was well to remind myself that this was the nineteenth century, that I was not acting a part in a French melodrama, that such things as I was thinking of were only known in romances; it was well to argue that to set a respectable man down as a murderer, because he had peculiar coloured eyes and a scar upon his cheek; were ridiculous things to do. There seemed to be two separate parties within me: one possessed of great powers of argument and a cool judgment: the other, an irrational or opposition party, whose chief force consisted in a system of dogged assertion, which all the arguments of the rational party were insufficient to put down.

It was not long before an additional force was imparted to the tactics of the irrational party, by certain symptoms which began to develop themselves in my internal organisation, and which seemed favourable to the view of the case I was so anxious to refute. In spite of all my efforts to the contrary, I could not help feeling that some very remarkable sensations were slowly and gradually stealing over me. First of all, I began to find that I was a little at fault in my system of calculating distances: so that when I took up any object and attempted to replace it on the table, I either brought it into contact with that article of furniture with a crash, in consequence of conceiving it to be lower than it was; or else, imagining that the table was several inches nearer to the ceiling than was the case, I abandoned whatever I held in my hand sooner than I should, and found that I was confiding it to space. Then, again, my head felt light upon my shoulders, there was a slight tingling in my hands, and a sense that they, as well as my feet (which were very cold), were swelling to gigantic size, and were also surrounded with numerous rapidly revolving wheels of a light structure, like Catherine-wheels previous to ignition. It also appeared to me that when I spoke to my dog, my voice had a curious sound, and my words were very imperfectly articulated.

It would happen, too, that when I looked towards the glass-doors, my landlord was there, peering at me through the muslin curtains: or the horrid little girl would enter, with no obvious intention, and having loitered for a little time about the room, would leave it again. At length the landlord himself came in, and coolly walking up to the table at which I was seated, glanced at the hardly tasted wine before me.

"It would appear that the wine of the country is not to your taste," he said.

"It is good enough," I answered, as carelessly as I could; the words sounding to me as if they were uttered inside the cupola of St. Paul's, and were conveyed by iron tubes to the place I occupied.

I was in a strange state—perfectly conscious, but imperfectly able to control my thoughts, my words, my actions. I believe my landlord stood staring down at me, as I sat staring up at him, and watching the Catherine-wheels as they revolved round his eyes and nose and chin—Gentlemen, they seemed absolutely to fizz when they got to the scar on his cheek.

At this time a noisy party entered the main room of the auberge, which I have described as being visible through the glass-doors, and the landlord had to leave me for a time, to go and attend to them. I think I must have fallen into a slight and strongly-resisted doze, and that when I started out of it, it was in consequence of the violent barking of my terrier. The landlord was in the room; he was just unlocking the cupboard from which the little girl had taken the paper parcel. He took out just such another paper parcel, and returned again through the doors. As he did so, I remember stupidly wondering what had become of the little girl. Presently his evil face appeared again at the door.

"I am going to prepare the coffee," said the landlord; "perhaps monsieur will like it better than the wine."

As the man disappeared, I started suddenly and violently upon my feet. I could deceive myself no longer. My thoughts were like lightning. "The wine having been taken in so small a quantity and so profusely mixed with water, has done its work (as this man can see) but imperfectly. The coffee will finish that work. He is now preparing it. The cupboard, the little parcel—there can be no doubt. I will leave this place while I yet can. Now or never; if those men whose voices I hear in the other room leave the house it will be too late. With so many witnesses, no attempt can be made to prevent my departure. I will not sleep—I will act—I will force my muscles to their work, and get away from this place."

Gentlemen; in compensation for a set of nerves of distressing sensitiveness, I have received from nature a remarkable power of controlling my nerves for a time. I staggered to the door, closing it after me more violently than i had intended, and descended—the fresh air making me feel very giddy—into the yard.

As I went down the steps, I saw the trucuent little girl of whom I have already spoken, entering the yard, followed by a blackmith, carrying a hammer and some other implements of his trade. Catching sight of me, the little girl spoke quickly to the blacksmith, and in an instant they both changed their course, which was directed towards the stable, and entered an outhouse on the other side of the yard. The thought entered my head that this man had been sent for to drive a nail into my horse's foot, so that in the event of the drugged wine failing I might still be unable to proceed. This horrible idea added new force to my exertions. I seized the shafts of my carriage and commenced dragging it out of the yard and round to the front of the house: feeling that if it was once in the highway, there would be less possibility of offering any impediment to my starting. I am conscious of having fallen twice to the ground, in my struggles to get the carriage out of the yard. Next, I hastened to the stable. My mare was still harnessed, with the exception of the head-stall. I managed to get the bit into her mouth, and dragged her to the place where I had left the carriage. After I know not how many efforts to place the docile beast in the shafts—for I was as incapable of calculating distances as a drunken man—I recollect, but how I know not, securing the assistance of the boy I had seen. I was making a final effort to fasten the trace to its little pin, when a voice behind me said:

"Are you going away without drinking your coffee?"

I turned round and saw my landlord standing close beside me. He was watching my bungling efforts to secure the harness, but he made no movement to assist me.

"I do not want any coffee," I answered.

"No coffee, and no wine! It would appear that the gentleman is not a great drinker. You have not given your horse much of a rest," he added, presently.

"I am in haste. What have I to pay?"

"You will take something else," said the landlord; "a glass of brandy before starting in the wet?"

"No, nothing more. What have I to pay?"

"You will at least come in for an instant, and warm your feet at the stove."

"No. Tell me at once how much I am to pay."

Baffled in all his efforts to get me again into the house, my detested landlord had nothing for it but to answer my demand.

"Four litres of oats," he muttered, "a half-truss of hay, breakfast, wine, coffee"—he emphasised the last two words with a malignant grin—"seven francs fifty centimes."

My mare was by this time somehow or other buckled into the shafts, and now I had to get out my purse to pay this demand. My hands were cold, my head was giddy, my sight was dim, and, as I brought out my purse (which was a porte-monnaie, opening with a hinge), I managed while paying the bill to turn the purse over and to drop some gold pieces.

"Gold!" cried the boy who had been helping me to harness the horse: speaking as if by an irresistible impulse.

The landlord made a sudden dart at it, but instantly checked himself.

"People want plenty of gold," he said, "when they make a journey of pleasure."

I felt myself getting worse. I could not pick up the gold pieces as they lay on the ground. I fell on my knees, and my head bowed forward. I could not hit the place where a coin lay; I could see it but I could not guide my fingers to it. Still I did not yield. I got some of the money up, and the stable-boy, who was very officious in assisting me, gave me one or two pieces—to this day, I don't know how many he kept. I cast a hasty glance around, and, seeing no more gold on the ground, raised myself by a desperate effort and scrambled to my place in the carriage. I shook the reins instinctively, and the mare began to move.

The well-trained beast was beginning to trot away as cleverly as usual, when a thought suddenly flashed into my brain, as will sometimes happen when we are just going to sleep—a thought which woke me up like a pistol-shot, and caused me to spring forward and gather up the reins so violently as almost to bring the mare back upon her haunches.

"My dog, my dear little Nelly!" I had left her behind!

To abandon my little favourite was a thing that never entered my head. "No, I must return. I must go back to the horrible place I have just escaped from. He has seen my gold, too, now," I said to myself, as I turned my horse's head with many clumsy efforts; "the men who were drinking in the auberge are gone; and, what is worse than all, I feel more under the influence of the drugs I have swallowed."

As I approached the auberge once more, I remember noticing that its walls looked blacker than ever, that the rain was falling more heavily, that the landlord and the stable-boy were on the steps of the inn, evidently on the look-out for me. One thing more I noticed;—on the road a small speck, as of some vehicle nearing the place.

"I have come back for my dog," said I.

"I know nothing of your dog."

"It is false! I left her shut up in the inner room."

"Go there and find her, then," retorted the man, throwing off all disguise.

"I will," was my answer.

I knew it was a trap to get me into the house; I knew I was lost if I entered it; but I did not care. I descended from the carriage, I clambered up the steps with the aid of the banisters, I heard the barking of my little Nelly as I passed through the outer room and approached the glass-doors, steadying myself as I went by the articles of furniture in the room. I burst the doors open, and my favourite bounded into my arms.

And now I felt that it was too late. As I approached the door that opened to the road, I saw my carriage being led round to the back of the house, and the form of the landlord appeared in the doorway, blocking up the passage. I made an effort to push past him, but it was useless. My little Nelly fell out of my arms on the steps outside; the landlord slammed the door heavily; and I fell, without sense or knowledge, at his feet.

* * * * *

It was dark, Gentlemen,—dark and very cold. The little patch of sky I was looking up at, had in it a marvellous number of stars, which would have looked bright but for a blazing planet which seemed to eclipse, in the absence of the moon, all the other luminaries round about it. To lie thus, was in spite of the cold, quite a luxurious sensation. As I turned my head to ease it a little (for it seemed to have been in this position some time), I felt stiff and weak. At this moment, too, I feel a stirring close beside me, and first a cold nose touching my hand, and then a hot tongue licking it. As to my other sensations, I was aware of a gentle rumbling sound, and I could feel that I was being carried slowly along, and that every now and then there was a slight jolt: one of which, perhaps, more marked than the rest, might be the cause of my being awake at all.

Presently, other matters began to dawn upon my mind through the medium of my senses. I could see the regular movement of a horse's ears walking in front of me; surely I saw, too, part ot the figure of a man—a pair of sturdy shoulders, the hood of a coat, and a head with a wide-awake hat upon it. I could hear the occasional sounds of encouragement which seemed to emanate from this figure, and which were addressed to the horse. I could hear the tinkling of bells upon the animal's neck. Surely, too, I heard a rumbling sound behind us, and the tread of a horse's feet—just as if there were another vehicle following close upon us. Was there anything more? Yes, in the distance I was able to detect the twinkling of a light or two, as if a town were not far off.

Now, Gentlemen, as I lay and observed all these things, there was such a languor shed over my spirits, such a sense of utter but not unpleasant weakness, that I hardly cared to ask myself what it all meant, or to inquire where I was, or how I came there. A conviction that all was well with me, lay like an anodyne upon my heart, and it was only slowly and gradually that any curiosity as to how I came to be so, developed itself in my brain. I dare say we had been jogging along for a quarter of an hour during which I had been perfectly conscious, before I struggled up into a sitting posture, and recognised the hooded back of the man at the horse's head.

"Dufay?"

The man with the hooded coat who was walking by the side of the horse, suddenly cried out "Wo!" in a sturdy voice; then ran to the back of the carriage and cried out "Wo!" again; and then we came to a stand-still. In another moment he had mounted on the step of the carriage and had taken me cordially by the hand.

"What," he said, "awake at last? Thank Heaven! I had almost begun to despair of you."

"My dear friend, what does all this mean? Where am I? Where did you come from? This is not my calèche, that is not my horse."

"Both are safe behind," said Dufay, heartily; "and having told you so much, I will not utter another word till you are safe and warm at the Lion d'Or. See! There are the lights of the town. Now, not another word." And pulling the horsecloth under which I was lying, more closely over me, my friend dismounted from the step; started the vehicle with the customary cry of "Allons done!" and a crack of the whip; and we were soon once more in motion.

Castaing Dufay was a man into whose company circumstances had thrown me very often, and with whom I had become intimate from choice. Of the numerous class to which he belonged, those men whose sturdy vehicles and sturdier horses are to be seen standing in the yards and stables of all the inns in provincial France—the class of the commis-voyageurs, or French commercial travellers—Castaing Dufay was more than a favourable specimen. I was very fond of him. In the course of our intimacy, I had been fortunate enough to have the opportunity of being useful to him in matters of some importance. I think, Gentlemen, we like those we have served, quite as well as they like us.

The town lights were, indeed, close by, and it was not long before we turned into the yard of the Lion d'Or and found ourselves in the midst of warmth and brightness, and surrounded by faces which, after the dangers I had passed through, looked perfectly angelic.

I had no idea, till I attempted to move, how weak and dazed I was. I was too far gone for dinner. A bed and a fire were the only things I coveted, and I was soon in possession of both.

I was no sooner snugly ensconced with my head on the pillow, watching the crackling logs as they sparkled—my little Nelly lying outside the counterpane—than my friend seated himself beside me and volunteered to relieve my curiosity as to the circumstances of my escape from the Tête Noire. It was now my turn to refuse to listen; as it had been his before, to refuse to speak.

"Not one word," I said, "till you have had a good dinner, after which you will come up and sit beside me, and tell me all I am longing to know. And stay—you will do one thing more for me, I know; when you come up you will bring a plateful of bones for Nelly; she will not leave me to-night, I swear, to save herself from starving."

"She deserves some dinner," said Dufay, as he left the room, "for I think it is through her instrumentality that you are alive at this moment."

The bliss in which I lay after Dufay had left the room, is known only to those who have passed through some great danger, or who, at least, are newly relieved from some condition of severe and protracted suffering. It was a state of perfect repose and happiness.

When my friend came back, he brought: not only a plate of fowl-bones for Nelly, but a basin of soup for me. When I had finished lapping it up, and while Nelly was still crunching the bones, Dufay spoke as follows:

"I said just now that it was to your little dog you owe the preservation of your life, and I must now tell you how it was. You remember that you left Doulaise this morning——"

"It seems a week ago," I interrupted.

—"This morning," continued Dufay. " Well! You were hardly out of the inn-yard before I drove into it, having made a small stage before breakfast. I heard where you were gone, and, as I was going that way too, I determined to give my horse a rest of a couple of hours, while I breakfasted and transacted some business in the town, and then to set off after you. 'Have you any idea,' I said, as I left the inn at Doulaise, 'whether monsieur meant to stop en route, and if so, where?' The garçon did not know. 'Let me see,' I said, 'the Tête Noire at Mauconseil would be a likely place, wouldn't it?' 'No,' said the boy; 'the house does not enjoy a good character, and no one from here ever stops there.' 'Well,' said I, thinking no more of what he said, 'I shall be sure to find him. I will inquire after him as I go along.'

"The afternoon was getting on, when I came within sight of the inn of the Tête Noire. As you know, I am a little near-sighted, but I saw, as I drew near the auberge, that a conveyance of some kind was being taken round to the yard at the back of the house. This circumstance, however, I should have paid no attention to, had not my attention been suddenly caught by the violent barking of a dog, which seemed to be trying to gain admittance at the closed door of the inn. At a second glance I knew the dog to be yours. Pulling up my horse, I got down and ascended the steps of the auberge. One sniff at my shins was enough to convince Nelly that a friend was at hand, and her excitement as I approached the door was frantic.

"On my entering the house, I did not at first see you, but on looking in the direction towards which your dog had hastened as soon as the door was opened, I saw a dark wooden staircase, which led out of one corner of the apartment I was standing in. I saw also, that you, my friend, were being dragged up the stairs in the arms of a very ill-looking man, assisted by (if possible) a still more ill-looking little girl, who had charge of your legs. At sight of me, the man deposited you upon the stairs, and advanced to meet me.

" ' What are you doing with that gentleman?' I asked.

" ' He is unwell,' replied the ill-looking man, 'and I am helping him up-stairs to bed.'

" ' That gentleman is a friend of mine. What is the meaning of his being in this state?'

" 'How should I know?' was the answer; 'I am not the guardian of the gentleman's health.'

" 'Well, then, I am,' said I, approaching the place where you were lying; 'and I prescribe, to begin with, that he shall leave this place at once.'

"I must own," continued Dufay, "that you were looking horribly ill, and, as I bent over, and felt your hardly fluttering pulse, I felt for a moment doubtful whether it was safe to move you. However, I determined to risk it.

" ' Will you help me,' I said, ' to move this gentleman to his carriage?'

" ' No,' replied the ruffian, 'he is not fit to travel. Besides, what right have you over him?'

" 'The right of being his friend.'

" 'How do I know that?'

" 'Because I tell you so. See, his dog knows me.'

" 'And suppose I decline to accept that as evidence, and refuse to let this gentleman leave my house in his present state of health?'

" 'You dare not do it.'

" 'Why?'

" 'Because,' I answered, slowly, 'I should go to the Gendarmerie in the village, and mention under what suspicious circumstances I found my friend here, and because your house has not the best of characters.'

" The man was silent for a moment, as if a little baffled. He seemed, however, determined to try once more.

" 'And suppose I close my doors, and decline to let either of you go; what is to prevent me?'

" 'In the first place,' I answered, 'I will effectually prevent your detaining me single-handed. If you have assistance near, I am expected to-night at Francy, and if I do not arrive there, I shall soon be sought out. It was known that I left Doulaise this morning, and most people are aware that there is an auberge on the road which does not bear the best of reputations, and that its name is La Tête Noire. Now, will you help me?'

" 'No,' replied the savage. 'I will have nothing to do with the affair.'

"It was not an easy task to drag you without assistance from the place where you were lying, out into the open air, down the steps, and to put you into my conveyance which was standing outside; but I managed to do it. The next thing I had to accomplish, was the feat of driving two carriages and two horses single-handed. I could see only one way of managing this. I led my own horse round to the gate of the stable-yard, where I could keep my eye upon him, while I went in search of your horse and carriage, which I had to get right without assistance. It was done at last. I fastened your horse's head by a halter, to the back of my carriage, and then leading my own beast by the bridle, I managed to start the procession. And so (though only at a foot pace) we turned our backs upon the Tête Noire. And now you know everything."

"I feel, Castaing, as if I should never be able to think of this adventure, or to speak of it again. It wears, somehow or other, such a ghastly aspect, that I sicken at the mere memory of it."

"Not a bit of it," said Dufay, cheerily; "you will live to tell it as a stirring tale some winter night, take my word for it."

Gentlemen, the prediction is verified. May the teetotum fall next time with more judgment!

"Wa'al, now!" said Captain Jorgan, rising, with his hand upon the sleeve of his fellow-traveller to keep him down; "I congratulate you, sir, upon that adventer; unpleasant at the time, but pleasant to look back upon; as many adventers in many lives are. Mr. Tredgear, you had a feeling for your money on that occasion, and it went hard on being Stolen Money. It was not a sum of five hundred pound, perhaps?"

"I wish it had been half as much," was the reply.

"Thank you, sir. Might I ask the question of you that has been already put? About this place of Lanrean, did you ever hear of any circumstances whatever, that might seem to have a bearing—any how—on that question?"

"Never."

"Thank you again for a straightfor'ard answer," said the captain, apologetically. "You see, we have been referred to Lanrean to make inquiries, and happening in among the inhabitants present, we use the opportunity. In my country, we always do use opportunities."

"And you turn them to good account, I believe, and prosper?"

"It's a fact, sir," said the captain, "that we get along. Yes, we get along, sir.—But I stop the teetotum."

It was twirled again, and fell to David Polreath; an iron-grey man; "as old as the hills," the captain whispered to young Raybrock, "and as hard as nails.—And I admire," added the captain, glancing about, "whether Unchrisen Penrewen is here, and which is he!"

David Polreath stroked down the long iron-grey hair that fell massively upon the shoulders of his large-buttoned coat, and spake thus:

The question was, Did he throw himself over the cliff of set purpose, or did he lose his way in the dusk and fall over accidentally, or was he pushed over by some person or persons unknown?

His body was found nearly fifty yards below the fall, caught in the low branches of the trees that overhang the water at the foot of the track down the cliff. It was shockingly bruised and disfigured, so much so as to be hardly recognisable; but for his clothing, and the name on his linen, I doubt whether anybody could have identified him except myself. There was, however, no suspicion of foul play; the signs of rough usage might all have been caused by the body having been driven about amongst the stones that encumber the bed of the river a long way below the fall.

When I speak of the fall, I speak of the Ashenfall, by Ashendell village, within an hour's drive of this house. This, Gentlemen, is for the information of strangers.

He had been seen by many persons about the village during the day; I myself had seen him go up the hill past the parsonage towards the church: which I rather wondered at, considering who was buried there, and how, and why. I will even confess that I watched him; and he went—as I expected he would, since he had the heart to go near the place at all—round to the back of the church where Honor Livingston's grave is; and there he stayed, sitting by himself on the low wall, for an hour or more. Sometimes, he turned to look across the valley—many a time and oft I had seen him there before, with Honor beside him, watching, while he sketched the beautiful landscape—and sometimes he had his back to it, and his head down, as if he were watching her grave. Not that there is anything pleasant or comforting to read there, as on the graves of good Christian people who have died in their beds; for, being a suicide, when they buried her on the north side of the church it was at dusk, and without any service, and, of course, no stone was allowed to be put up over it. Our clergyman has talked of having the mound levelled and turfed over, and I wish he would; it always hurts me when I go up to Sunday service, to see that ragged grave lying in the shadow of the wall, for I remember the pretty little lass ever since she could run alone; and though she was passionate, her heart was as good as gold. She had been religiously brought up, and I am quite sure in my own mind, let the coroner's inquest have said what it would, that she was out of herself, and Bedlam-mad when she did it.

The verdict on him was "accidental death," and he had a regular funeral—priest, bell, clerk, and sexton, complete; and there he lies, only a stone's throw from Honor, with a ton or two of granite over him, and an inscription, setting forth what a great man he was in his day, and what mighty engineering works he did at home and abroad, and how he sleeps now in the hope of a joyful resurrection with the just made perfect. These present strangers can read it for themselves; many strangers go up to look at it. His grave is as famous as the Ashenfall itself, and I have known folks come away with tears in their eyes after reading the flourishing inscription: believing it all like gospel, and saying how sad that so distinguished a man should have been cut off in the prime of his days. But I don't believe it. He was never any more than plain James Lawrence to me—a young fellow who, as a lad, had paddled bare-legged over the stones of the river as a guide across for visitors; who had been taken a fancy to by one of them, and decently educated; who had made the most of his luck, and done a clever thing or two in engineering; who had come back amongst us in all his glory, to dazzle most people's eyes, and break little Honor Livingston's heart. The one good thing I know of him was, that he pensioned his poor old mother; but he did not often come near her, and never after Honor Livingston was dead—no, not even in her last illness. It was a marvel to everybody what brought him over here, when we saw him the day before he was found dead; but it was his fate, and he couldn't keep away. That is my view of it. About his death, and the manner of it, all Lanrean had its speculation, and said its say; but I held my peace. I had my opinion, however, and I keep it. I have never seen reason to change it; but, on the contrary, I can show you evidence to establish it. I do not believe he either threw himself over the cliff, or fell over, or was pushed over; no, I believe he was drawn over—drawn over by something below. When you have heard the notes he made in a little book that was found amongst his things after he was dead, you will know what I mean. His cousin gave that book to me, knowing I arn curious after odd stories of the neighbourhood; and what I am going to read, is written in his hand. I know his hand well, and certify to it.

PASSAGES FROM: JAMES LAWRENCE'S JOURNAL.

London, August 11, 1829.

Honor Livingston has kept her word with me. I saw her last night as plainly as I now see this pen I am writing with, and the ink-bottle I have just dipped it into. I saw her standing betwixt the two lights, looking at me, exactly as she looked the last time I saw her alive. I was neither asleep, nor dreaming-awake. I had only drunk a couple of glasses of wine at dinner, and was as much my own man as ever I was in my life. It is all nonsense to talk about fancy and optical delusions, in this case; I saw her with my eyes as distinctly as I ever saw her alive in the body. The hall clock had just struck eight, and it was growing dusk: exactly the time of evening, as I well remember, when she came creeping round by the cottage wall, and saw me through the open window, gathering up my books and making ready to go away from Ashendell. She was the last thought to have come into my mind at that moment, for I was just on the point of lighting my cigar and going out for a stroll, before turning in at the Daltons to chat with Anne. All at once, there she was, Honor herself! I could have sworn it, had I not seen them put her underground just a twelvemonth ago. I could not take my eyes off her; and there she stood, as nearly as I can tell, a minute—but it may have been an hour—and then the place she had filled was empty. I was so much bewildered, and out of myself as it were, that for a while I could neither think of anything, nor hear anything, but the mad heavy throbbing of my own pulses. I cannot say that I was scared exactly; for the time I was completely rapt away; the first actual sensation I had was of my own heart thumping in my breast like a sledge-hammer.

But I can call her up now and analyse her—a wan, vague, misty outline, with Honor's own eyes full upon me. I can almost fancy I hear her asking again, "Is it true you're going, James? You're not really going, James?"

Now, I am not the man to be frightened by a shadow, though that shadow be Honor Livingston, whom they say I as good as murdered. I always had a turn for investigating riddles, spiritual, physiological, and otherwise; and I shall follow this mystery up, and note whether she comes back to me year by year, as she promised. I hare never kept a diary of personal matters before, not being one who cares to see spectres of himself, at remote periods of his life, talking to him again of his adventures and misadventures out of yellow old pages that had better never have been written; but this is a marked event worth commemorating, and a well-authenticated ghost-story, to me who never believed in ghosts before.

It was a rather spiteful threat of Honor—"I'll haunt you till you come to the Ashenfall, where I'm going now!" I might have stopped her, but it never entered my mind what she meant, until it was done. I did not expect she would make a tragedy of a little love story; she did not look like that sort of thing. She was no ghost, bless her! in the flesh, but as round, rosy, dimpled a little creature as one would wish to see; and what could possess her to throw herself over the fall, Heaven only knows.—Bah! Yes, I know; I need tell no lies here, I need not do any false swearing to myself—the poor little creature loved me, and I wanted her to love me, and I petted and plagued her into loving me, because I was idle, and I had the opportunity; and then I had nothing better to tell her than that I was only in jest—I could not marry her, for I was engaged to another woman. She would not believe it. That sounded, to her, more like jest than the other. And she did not believe it until she saw me making ready to go; and then, all in a moment, I suppose, madness seized her, and she neither knew where she went, nor what she did.

I fancy I can see her now, coming tripping down the fields, leading her little brother by the hand, and I fancy I can see the saucy laugh she gave me over her shoulder, as I asked her if she had any ripe cherries to sell. She looked the very mischief with those pretty eyes, and I was taken rather aback when she said, "I know you, Jemmy Lawrence." That was the beginning of it. Little Honor and her mother lived next door to mine, and she had not forgotten me though I had been full seven years away. I did not know her, the gipsy, but I must needs go in and see her that evening; and so we went on until I asked her if she remembered when we went to dame-school together and when she promised to be my little wife? If she remembered! Of course she did, every word of it, and more; and she was so pretty, and the lanes in the summer were so pleasant, that sometimes my fancy did play Anne Dalton false, and I believed I should like Honor better; and I said more than I meant, and she took it all in the grand serious manner.

I was not much to blame. I would not have injured her for the world; she was as good a little soul as ever lived. Love and jealousy, as passions, seem to find their strongholds under thatch. If Phillis, the milkmaid, is disappointed, she drowns herself in the mill-pool; if Lady Clara gets a cross of the heart, she indites a lachrymose sonnet, and marries a gouty peer. If Colin's sweetheart smiles on Lubin, Colin loads his gun and shoots them both; if Sir Harry's fair flouts him, he whistles her down the wind, and goes a-wooing elsewhere. Had little Honor been a fine lady, she would be living still. Oh, the pretty demure lips, and the shy glances and rosy blushes! When I saw Anne Dalton to-day I could not help comparing her frigid gentility with poor Honor. Anne loves herself better than she will ever love any man alive. But then I know she is the kind of wife to help a man up in the world, and that is the kind of wife for me.

Honor Livingston lying on her little bed, and her blind mother feeling her cold dead face! I wish I had never seen it. I would have given the world to keep away, but something compelled me to go in and look at her; and I did feel then, as it I had killed her. Last night she was a shadowy essence of this drowned Ophelia and of her living self. She was like, yet unlike; but I knew it was Honor; and I suppose, if she has her will, wherever her restless spirit may be condemned to bide between whiles—on the tenth of August she will always come back to me, and haunt me until I go to her.

Hastings, August 11, 1830.

Again! I had forgotten the day—forgotten everything about that wretched business of poor Honor Livingston, when last night I saw her.

Anne and I were sitting together out in the verandah, talking of all sorts of common-place things—our neighbours' affairs, money, this, that, and the other—the sea was looking beautiful, and I was on the point of proposing a row by moonlight, when Anne said, "How lovely the evenings are, James, in this place. Look at the sky over the down, how clear it is!" Turning my head, I saw Honor standing on the grass only a few paces off, her shadowy shape quite distinct against the reds and purples of the clouds.

Anne clutched my hand with a sudden cry, for she was looking at my face all the time, and asked me, passionately, what I saw. With that, Honor was gone, and, passing my hand over my eyes, I put my wife off with an excuse about a spasm at my heart. And, indeed, it was no lie to say so, for this visitation gave me a terrible shock.

Anne insisted on my seeing the doctor. "It must be something dreadful, if not dangerous, that could make you look in that way; you had an awful face, James, for a moment."

I begged her not to talk about it, assured her that it was a thing of very rare recurrence with me, and that there was no cure for it. But this did not pacify her, and this morning no peace could be had until Dr. Hutchinson was sent for and she had given the old gentleman her own account of me. He said he would talk to me by-and-by. And when he got me by myself, I cannot tell how it was, but he absolutely contrived to worm the facts out of me, and I was fool enough to let him do it. He looked at me very oddly, with a tort of suspicious scrutiny in his eye; but I understood him, and said, laughing, "No, doctor, no, there is nothing wrong here," tapping my forehead as I spoke.

"I should say not, except this fancy for seeing ghosts," replied he, dryly. But I perceived, all the time he was with me, that I was the object of a furtive and carefully dissembled observation, which was excessively trying. I could with difficulty keep my temper under it, and I believe he saw the struggle.

I fancy he wanted to have some talk with Anne by herself; but I prevented that, by never losing sight of him until he was safely off the premises. If he proposed a private interview while I was out alone, I prevented that, too, by immediately ordering Anne to pack up our traps, and coming back to town that very day. I have not been well since. I feel out of spirits, bored, worried, sick of everything. If the feeling does not leave me, in spite of all Anne may say, I shall take that offer to go to South America, and start by the next packet. I should like to see Dr. Hutchinson's face when he calls at our lodgings to visit his patient, and finds the bird flown.

London, August 20, 1830.

This wretched state of things does not cease. One day I feel in full, firm, clear possession of my soul; and the next, perhaps, I am hurried to and fro with the most tormenting fancies. I see shadows of Honor wherever I turn, and she is no longer motionless as before, but beckons me with her hand, until I tremble in every limb. My heart is sick almost to death. For three days now, I have had no rest. I cannot sleep at nights for hideous dreams; and Anne watches me stealthily, I see, and never remains alone with me longer than she can help. I can perceive that she is afraid of me, and that she suspects something, without exactly knowing what. To-day she must needs suggest my seeing a doctor here, and when I replied that I was going to South America, she told me I was not fit for it, in such a contemptuous tone of provocation that I lifted my hand and struck her. Then she quailed, and while shrinking under my eyes, she said, "James, your conduct is that of a madman!" Since then, I know she sits with me in silent terror, longing to escape and find some one to listen to her grievances. But I shall keep strict ward that she does nothing of the kind. I will not have my foes of my own household, and no spying relatives shall come between us to put asunder those whom God has joined together.

Acapulco, March 17, 1831.

It is six months since I wrote the above. In the interval I have been miserably ill, grievously tormented both in mind and body; but now. that I have got safely away from them all, with the Atlantic between myself and my wicked wife, whose conduct towards me I will never forgive, I can collect my powers of mind, and bend them again to my work. Burton came out in the same ship with me to engage in the same enterprise. After a few days' rest we intend setting out on our journey to the mining districts, where we are to act. My head feels perfectly light and clear, all my impressions are distinct and vivid again, and I can I get through a hard day's close study without inconvenience. There was nothing but my miserable liver to blame, and when that was set right, all my imaginary phantoms disappeared. Umpleby said it had been coming on gradually for months, and that there was nothing at all extraordinary in my delusions; my diseased state was one always so attended more or less. And Anne, in her cowardly malignity, would have consigned me for life to a lunatic asylum! It was Umpleby who saved me, and I have put his name down in my will for a handsome remembrance. As for Anne, she has chosen to return to her family, and they may keep her; she will never see my face again, of my free will, as long as I live.

The picturesqueness of this place is not noteworthy in any high degree. The harbour is enclosed by a chain of mountains, and has two entrances formed by the island of Roquetta; the castle of St. Diego commands the town and the bay, standing on a spur of the hills. Burton has been to and fro on his rambles ever since we landed; but I find the heat too great for much exertion, and when we begin our journey into the interior I shall have need of all my forces; therefore, better husband them now.

Mexico, April 24, 1831.

We are better off here than we anticipated. Burton has found an old fellow-pupil engaged as engineering tutor in the School of Mines, and there are civilised amusements which we neither of us had any hope of finding. The city is full of ancient relics, and Burton is on foot exploring, day by day. I prefer the living interests of this strange place, and sometimes early in the morning I betake myself to the market-place, and watch the Indians dress their stalls. No matter what they sell, they decorate their shops with fresh herbs and flowers until they are sheltered under a bower of verdure. They display their fruit in open basket-work, laying the pears and raisins below, and covering them above with odorous flowers. An artist might make a pretty picture here, when the Indians arrive at sunrise in their boats loaded with the produce of their floating gardens. Next week, Burton, his friend, and I, are to set out for the mines of Moran and Real del Monte. I should have preferred to delay our journey a while longer for reasons of my own, but Burton presses, and feels we have already delayed longer than enough.

Moran, July 4, 1831.

I am sick of this place, but our business here is now on the verge of completion, and in a few days we start on our expedition to the mines of Guanamato. The director, Burton, and myself, are all of opinion that immense advantages are to be gained by improving the working of the mines, which is, at present, in a very defective condition. There is great mortality amongst the Indians, who are the beasts of burden of the mines; they carry on their backs, loads of metal of from two hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty pounds at a time, ascending and descending thousands of steps, in files which contain old men of seventy, and mere children. I have not been very well here, having had some return of old symptoms, but under proper treatment they dispersed; however, I shall be thankful to be on the move again.

Pascuaro, August 11, 1831.

Can any man evade his thoughts, impalpable curses sitting on his heart, mocking like fiends? I cannot evade mine. All yesterday I was haunted by a terrible anxiety and dread. At every turn, at every moment, I expected to see Honor Livingston appear before me, but I did not see her. The day and the night passed, and I was freed from that great horror—how great I had not realised until its hour had gone and left no trace. This morning I am myself again; my spirits revive; I have escaped my enemy, and have proved that it was, indeed, but a subtle emanation of my own diseased body and mind. But these thoughts, these troublesome persistent thoughts, how combat them? Burton, very observant of me at all times, was yesterday watchful as an inquisitor; he said he hoped I was not going to have the frightful fever which is prevailing here, but I know he meant something else. I have not a doubt now, that Anne and all that confederacy warned him before we set sail, to beware of me, for I had been mad; that is the cursed lie they set abroad. Mad! All the world's mad, or on the way to it!

But if Honor had come back to me yesterday, we might have gone and have looked down together into hell, through the ovens of Jorulla. The missionaries cursed this frightful place, generations since; and it is accursed, if ever land was. Nothing more awful than this desolate burning waste, which the seas could not quench. When I remember it, and all I underwent yesterday, the confusion and horror return upon me again, and my brain swerves like the brain of a drunken man. I will write no more—sufficient to record that the appointed time came and went, and Honor Livingston did not keep her word with me.

New Orleans, February, 1832.

I left Burton still in Mexico, and came here alone. His care and considerateness were more than I could put up with, and after two or three ineffectual remonstrances, we came to a violent rupture, and I determined to throw up my engagement, rather than carry it out in conjunction with such a man. There was no avoiding the quarrel. Was I to be tutored day by day, and the wine-bottle removed out of my reach? He dared to tell me that when I was cool, clear—myself, in short—there was no man my master in our profession; but that when I had drunk freely I was unmanageable as a lunatic! A lie, of course; but unscrupulous persecutors are difficult to circumvent. Anne's malice pursues me even here. When I was out yesterday, my footsteps were dogged pertinaciously wherever I went, and perhaps an account of my doings will precede me home; but if they do, I defy them all to do their worst.

Ashendell, August 9, 1839.

This old book turned up to-day, amongst some traps that have lain by in London all the years that I have spent, first in Spain and afterwards in Russia. What fool's-talk it is; but I suppose it was true at the time. I know I was in a wretched condition while I was in Mexico and in the States, but I have been sane enough and sound enough ever since the illness I had at Baltimore. To prove how little hold on me my ancient horrors have retained, I find myself at Ashendell in the very season of the year when Honor Livingston destroyed herself—to-morrow is the anniversary of her death. So I take my enemy by the throat, and crush him! These fantastical maladies will not stand against a determined will. At Moscow, at Cherson, at Archangel, the tenth of August has come and gone, unmarked. Honor failed of her threat everywhere except at Lisbon. I saw her there twice, just before we sailed. I saw her, when we were off that coast where we so nearly escaped wreck, rising and falling upon the waves. I saw her in London, that day I appointed to see Anne. But I know what it means: it means that I must put myself in Umpleby's hands for a few weeks, and that the shadows will forthwith vanish. Shadows they are, out of my own brain, and they take the shape of Honor because I have let her become a fixed idea in my mind. Yet it is very strange that the last time she appeared to me, I heard her speak. I fancied she said that it was Almost time; and then louder, "I'll haunt you, James, until you come to the Ashenfall, where I am going now!" And with that she vanished. Fancy plays strange tricks with us, and makes cowards of us almost as cleverly as conscience.

August 10.

I have had a very unpleasant impression on me all day. I wish I had resisted Linchley's persuasions more steadily. I ought never to have come down here again. The excitement of its miserable recollections is too much for me. The man at the inn called me by my name this morning, and said he recollected me—looking up towards the church as he spoke. Damn him! All day I seem to have been acting against my will. What should possess me to go there, this afternoon? Round about among the graves, until I came to the grassy hillock on the north side of the church, where they buried Honor that night, without a prayer. I sat down en the low wall, and looked across to the hills beyond the river, listening to the monotonous sing-song of the fall. I would give all I possess to-day, to be able to tread back or to untread a score of the years of my life. It seems such a blank; of all I planned and schemed, how little have I accomplished! Watching by Honor's grave, I fell to thinking of her. What had either of us done that we should be so wretched? Is it part and parcel of the great injustice of life, that some must suffer so signally while others escape? The coarse grass is never cut at the north side of the church, nettles and brambles grow about the grave. Honor was mad, poor soul; they might have given her a prayer for rest, if they were forbidden to believe she died in hope. I prayed for her to-day—more need, perhaps, to pray for myself—and then there came a crazed whirl in my brain, and I set off to find Linchley. As I came down near the water, the fall sounded very tumultuous; it was sultry hot, and I should have liked to turn down by the river, but I said, " No, it is the tenth of August! If I am to meet Honor Livingston to-day, I'll not meet her by Ashenfall!" So I came home to our lodgings, to find that Linchley had gone over to Warfe, and had left a message that he should not return until to-morrow. I have the night before me alone; it is not like an English night at all; it is like the nights I remember at Cadiz, which always heralded a tremendous storm. And I think we shall have a storm here, too, before the morning.

* * * * *

Those were the last words James Lawrence ever wrote, Gentlemen. Further than this, no man can speak of his death; it is plain to me that one of his mad fits was coming on before he left Lisbon; that it grew and increased until he came here; and that here it reached its climax and urged him to his death. I believe in the ghosts James Lawrence saw, as I believe in the haunting power of any great misdeed that has driven a fellow-creature into deadly sin.

When David Polreath had finished, the chairman gave the teetotum such a swift and sudden twirl, to be beforehand with any interruption, that it twirled among all the glasses and into all corners of the table, and finally, flew off the table and lodged in Captain Jorgan's waistcoat.

"A kind of a judgment!" said the captain, taking it out. "What's to be done now? I know no story, except Down Easters, and they didn't happen to myself, or any one of my quaintance, and you couldn't enjoy 'em without going out of your minds first. And perhaps the company ain't prepared to do that?"

The chairman interposed by rising and declaring it to be his perroud perrivilege to stop preliminary observations.

"Wa'al," said the captain, "I defer to the President—which an't at all what they do in my country, where they lay into him, head, limbs, and body." Here he slapped his leg. "But I beg to ask a preliminary question. Colonel Polreath has read from a diary. Might I read from a pipe-light?"

The chairman requested explanation.

"The history of the pipe-light," said the captain, " is just this:—that it's verses, and was made on the voyage home by a passenger I brought over. And he was a quiet crittur of a middle-aged man with a pleasant countenance. And he wrote it on the head of a cask. And he was a most etarnal time about it tew. And he blotted it as if he had wrote it in a continual squall of ink. And then he took an indigestion, and I physicked him for want of a better doctor. And then to show his liking for me he copied it out fair, and gave it to me for a pipe-light. And it ain't been lighted yet, and that's a fact."

"Let it be read," said the chairman.

"With thanks to Colonel Polreath for setting the example," pursued the captain, "and with apologies to the Honourable A. Parvis and the whole of the present company for this passenger's having expressed his mind in verses—which he may have done along of bein' sea-sick, and he was very—the pipe-light, unrolled, comes to this:

We sit by the fire so wide and red,

With the dance of the young within,

Who have yet small learning of cold and dread,

And of sorrow no more than of sin;

Nor dream of a night on a sleepless bed

Of waves, with their terrible wrecks o'erspread.

We sit round the hearth as red as gold,

And the legends beloved we tell,

How battles were won by the nobles bold,

Where hamlets of villains fell:

And we praise our God, while we cut the bread,

And share the wine round, for our heroes dead.

And we talk of the Kings, those strong proud men,

Who ravaged, confessed, and died;

And of churls who rabbled them oft and again,

Perchance with a kindred pride—

Though the Kings built churches to pierce the sky,

And the rabbling churls in the cross-road lie.

Yet 'twixt the despot and slave half-free,

Old Truth may have message clear;

Since the hard black yew, and the lithe young tree,

Belong to an age—and a year,

And though distant in might and in leaf they be,

In right of the woods, they are near.

And old Truth's message, perchance, may be:

"Believe in thy kind, whate'er the degree,

Be it King on his throne, or serf on his knee,

While Our Lord showers light, in his bounty free,

On the rock and the vale—on the sand and the sea."

They are singing within, with their voices dear,

To the tunes which are dear as well;

And we sit and dream while the words we hear,

Having tale of our own to tell—

Of a far midnight on the terrible sea,

Which comes back on the tune of their blithe old glee.

As old as the hills, and as old as the sky,—

As the King on his throne,—as the serf on his knee,

A song wherein rich can with poor agree,

With its chorus to make them laugh or cry—

Which the young are singing, with no thought nigh,

Of a night on a terrible sea:

"I care for nobody; no, not I,

Since nobody cares for me."

* * * * *

The storm had its will. There was wreck—there was flight,

O'er an ocean of Alps, through the pitch-black night,

When a good ship sank, and a few got free,

To cope in their boat with the terrible sea.

And when the day broke, there was blood on the sea,

From the wild hot eye of the sun outshed,

For the heaven was a-flame as with fire from Hell,

And a scorching calm on the waters fell,

As if Ruin had won, and with fiendish glee,

Sailed forth in his galley to number the dead.

And they rowed their boat o'er the terrible sea,

As mute as a crew made of ghosts might be:

For the best in his heart had not manhood to say,

That the land was five hundred miles away.

A day—and a week—There was bread for one man;

The water was dry. And on this, the few

Who were rowing their boat o'er the terrible sea,

To murmur, to curse, and to crave began.

And how 'twas agreed on, no one knew,

But the feeble and famished and scorched by the sun,

With his pitiless eye, drew lots to agree,

What their hideous morrow of meat must be.

O then were the faces frightful to read,

Of ravening hope, and of cowardly pride,

That lies to the last, its sharp terror to hide;

And a stillness as though 'twere some game of the Dead,

While they waited the number their lot to decide—

There were nine in that boat on the terrible sea,

And he who drew NINE, was the victim to be.

You may think what a ghastly shiver there ran,

From mate to his mate, as the doom began.

SIX—had a wife with a wild rose cheek;

TWO—a brave boy, not a year yet old;

EIGHT—his last sister, lame and weak,

Who quivered with palsy more than with cold.

You may think what a breath the respited drew,

And how wildly still, sat the rest of the crew;

How the voice as it called spoke hoarser and slower;

The number it next dared to speak was—FOUR.

'Twas the rude black man, who had handled an oar,

The best on that terrible sea of the few.

And ugly and grim in the sunshine glare

Were his thick parched lips, and his dull small eyes,

And the tangled fleece of his rusty hair—

'Ere the next of the breathless the death-lot drew,

His shout like a sword pierced the silence through.

"Let the play end, with your Number Four.

What need to draw? Live along, you few

Who have hopes to save and have wives to cry

O'er the cradles of children free!

What matter if folk without home should die,

And be eaten by land or sea?

I care for nobody; no, not I,

Since nobody cares for me!"

And with that, a knife—and a heart struck through—

And the warm red blood, and the cold black clay,

And the famine withdrawn from among the few,

By their horrible meal for another day!

* * * * *

So the eight, thus fed, came at last to land,

And the tale of their shipmate told,

As of water found in the burning sand,

Which braves not the thirsty, cold.

But the love of the listener, safe and free,

Goes forth to that slave on that terrible sea.

For, fancies from hearth and from home will stray,

Though within are the dance and the song;

And a grave tale told, if the tune be gay,

Says little to scare the young.

While they sing, with their voices clear as can be,

Having called, once more, for the blithe old glee—

"I care for nobody, no, not I,

Since nobody cares for me."

But the careless tune, it saith to the old,

Who sit by the hearth as red as gold,

When they think of their tale of the terrible sea:

"Believe in thy kind, whate'er the degree,

Be it King on his throne, or serf on his knee,

While Our Lord showers good from his bounty free,

Over storm, over calm, over land, over sea."

Mr. Parvis had so greatly disquieted the minds of the Gentlemen King Arthurs for some minutes, by snoring with strong symptoms of apoplexy—which, in a mild form, was his normal state of health—that it was now deemed expedient to wake him and entreat him to allow himself to be escorted home. Mr. Parvis's reply to this friendly suggestion could not be placed on record without the aid of several dashes, and is therefore omitted. It was conceived in a spirit of the profoundest irritation, and executed with vehemence, contempt, scorn, and disgust. There was nothing for it, but to let the excellent gentleman alone, and he fell without loss of time into a defiant slumber.

The teetotum being twirled again, so buzzed and bowed in the direction of the young fisherman, that Captain Jorgan advised him to be bright and prepare for the worst. But, it started off at a tangent, late in its career, and fell before a well-looking bearded man (one who made working drawings for machinery, the captain was informed by his next neighbour), who promptly took it up like a challenger's glove.

"Oswald Penrewen!" said the chairman.

"Here's Unchris'en at last!" the captain whispered Alfred Raybrock. "Unchris'en goes ahead, right smart; don't he?"

He did, without one introductory word.

Mine is my brother's Ghost Story. It happened to my brother about thirty years ago, while he was wandering, sketch-book in hand, among the High Alps, picking up subjects for an illustrated work on Switzerland. Having entered the Oberland by the Brunig Pass, and filled his portfolio with what he used to call "bits" from the neighbourhood of Meyringen, he went over the Great Scheideck to Grindlewald, where he arrived one dusky September evening, about three-quarters of an hour after sunset. There had been a fair that day, and the place was crowded. In the best inn there was not an inch of space to spare;—there were only two inns at Grindlewald, thirty years ago—so my brother went to one at the end of the covered bridge next the church, and there, with some difficulty, obtained the promise of a pile of rugs and a mattress, in a room which was already occupied by three other travellers.

The Adler was a primitive hostelry, half farm, half inn, with great rambling galleries outside, and a huge general room, like a barn. At the upper end of this room stood long stoves, like metal counters, laden with steaming-pans, and glowing underneath like furnaces. At the lower end, smoking, supping, and chatting, were congregated some thirty or forty guests, chiefly mountaineers, char drivers, and guides. Among these my brother took his seat, and was served, like the rest, with a bowl of soup, a platter of beef, a flagon of country wine, and a loaf made of Indian corn. Presently, a huge St. Bernard dog came and laid his nose upon my brother's arm. In the mean time he fell into conversation with two Italian youths, bronzed and dark-eyed, near whom he happened to be seated. They were Florentines. Their names, they told him, were Stefano and Battisto. They had been travelling for some months on commission, selling cameos, mosaics, sulphur casts, and the like pretty Italian trifles, and were now on their way to Interlaken and Geneva. Weary of the cold North, they longed, like children, for the moment which should take them back to their own blue hills and grey-green olives; to their workshop on the Ponte Vecchio, and their home down by the Arno.

It was quite a relief to my brother, on going up to bed, to find that these youths were to be two of his fellow-lodgers. The third was already there, and sound asleep, with his face to the wall. They scarcely looked at this third. They were all tired, and all anxious to rise at daybreak, having agreed to walk together over the Wengern Alp as far as Lauterbrunnen. So, my brother and the two youths exchanged a brief good night, and, before many minutes, were all as far away in the land of dreams as their unknown companion.

My brother slept profoundly—so profoundly that, being roused in the morning by a clamour of merry voices, he sat up dreamily in his rugs, and wondered where he was.

"Good day, signor," cried Battisto. "Here is a fellow-traveller going the same way as ourselves."

"Christien Baumann, native of Kandersteg, musical-box maker by trade, stands five feet eleven in his shoes, and is at monsieur's service to command," said the sleeper of the night before.

He was as fine a young fellow as one would wish to see. Light, and strong, and well proportioned, with curling brown hair, and bright, lonest eyes that seemed to dance at every word he uttered.

"Good morning," said my brother. "You were asleep last night when we came up."

"Asleep! I should think so, after being all day in the fair, and walking from Meyringen the evening before. What a capital fair it was!"

"Capital, indeed," said Battisto. "We sold cameos and mosaics yesterday, for nearly fifty francs."

"Oh, you sell cameos and mosaics, you two! Show me your cameos, and I will show you my musical boxes. I have such pretty ones, with coloured views of Geneva and Chillon on the lids, playing two, four, six, and even eight tunes. Bah! I will give you a concert!"

And with this he unstrapped his pack, displayed his little boxes on the table, and wound them up, one after the other, to the delight of the Italians.

"I helped to make them myself, every one." said he, proudly. "Is it not pretty music? I sometimes set one of them when I go to bed at night, and fall asleep listening to it. I am sure, then, to have pleasant dreams! But let us see your cameos. Perhaps I may buy one for Marie, if they are not too dear. Marie is my sweetheart, and we are to be married next week."

"Next week!" exclaimed Stefano. "That is very soon. Battisto has a sweetheart also, up at Impruneta; but they will have to wait a long time before they can buy the ring."

Battisto blushed like a girl.

"Hush, brother!" said he. "Show the cameos to Christien, and give your tongue a holiday!"

But Christien was not so to be put off.

"What is her name?" said he. "Tush! Battisto, you must tell me her name! Is she pretty? Is she dark, or fair? Do you often see her when you are at home? Is she very fond of you? Is she as fond of you as Marie is of me?"

"Nay, how should I know that?" asked the soberer Battisto. "She loves me, and I love her—that is all."

"And her name?"

" Margherita."

"A charming name! And she is herself as pretty as her name, I'll engage. Did you say she was fair?"

"I said nothing about it one way or the other," said Battisto, unlocking a green box clamped with iron, and taking out tray after tray of his pretty wares. "There! Those pictures all inlaid in little bits are Roman mosaics—these flowers on a black ground are Florentine. The ground is of hard dark stone, and the flowers are made of thin slices of jasper, onyx, cornelian, and so forth. Those forget-me-nots, for instance, are bits of turquoise , and that poppy is cut from a piece of coral."

" I like the Roman ones best," said Christieu. " What place is this, with all the arches?"

"This is the Coliseum, and the one next to it is St . Peter's. But we Florentines care little for the Roman work. It is not half so fine or so valuable as ours. The Romans make their mosaics of composition."

"Composition or no, I like the little landscapes best," said Christian. "There is a lovely one, with a pointed building, and a tree, and mountains at the back. How I should like that one for Marie!"

"You may have it for eight francs," replied Battisto; " we sold two of them yesterday for ten each. It represents the tomb of Caius Cestius, near Rome."

"A tomb!" echoed Christien, considerably dismayed. "Diable! That would be a dismal present to one's bride."

"She would never guess that it was a tomb, if you did not tell her," suggested Stefano.

Christien shook his head. " That would be next door to deceiving her," said he.

"Nay," interposed my brother, "the owner of that tomb has been dead these eighteen or nineteen hundred years. One almost forgets that he was ever buried in it."

"Eighteen or nineteen hundred years? Then he was a heathen?"

"Undoubtedly, if by that you mean that he lived before Christ."

Christien's face lighted up immediately.

"Oh, that settles the question," said he, pulling out his little canvas purse, and paying his money down at once. "A heathen's tomb is as good as no tomb at all. I'll have it made into a brooch for her, at Interlaken. Tell me, Battisto, what shall you take home to Italy for your Margherita?"

Battisto, laughed, and chinked his eight francs. "That depends on trade," said he; "if we make good profits between this and Christmas, I may take her a Swiss muslin from Berne; but we have already been away seven months, and we have hardly made a hundred francs over and above our expenses."

And with this, the talk turned upon general matters, the Florentines locked away their treasures, Christien restrapped his pack, and my brother and all went down together, and breakfasted in the open air outside the inn.

It was a magnificent morning: cloudless and sunny, with a cool breeze that rustled in the vine upon the porch, and flecked the table with shifting shadows of green leaves. All around and about them stood the great mountains, with their blue-white glaciers bristling down to the verge of the pastures, and the pine-woods creeping darkly up their sides. To the left, the Wetterhorn; to the right, the Eigher; straight before them, dazzling and imperishable, like an obelisk of frosted silver, the Schreckhorn, or Peak of Terror. Breakfast over, they bade farewell to their hostess, and, mountain-staff in hand, took the path to the Wengern Alp. Half in light, half in shadow, lay the quiet valley, dotted over with farms, and traversed by a torrent that rushed, milk-white, from its prison in ihe glacier. The three lads walked briskly in advance, their voices chiming together every now and then in chorus of laughter. Somehow my brother felt sad. He lingered behind, and, plucking a little red flower from the bank, watched it hurry away with the torrent, like a life on the stream of time. Why was his heart so heavy, and why were their hearts so light?

As the day went on, my brother's melancholy, and the mirth of the young men, seemed to increase. Full of youth and hope, they talked of the joyous future, and built up pleasant castles in the air. Battisto, grown more communicative, admitted that to marry Margherita, and become a master mosaicist, would fulfil the dearest dream of his life. Stefano, not being in love, preferred to travel. Christien, who seemed to be the most prosperous, declared that it was his darling ambition to rent a farm in his native Kander Valley, and lead the patriarchal life of his fathers. As for the musical-box trade, he said, one should live in Geneva to make it answer; and, for his part, he loved the pine-forests and the snow-peaks, better than all the towns in Europe. Marie, too, had been born among the mountains, and it would break her heart, if she thought she were to live in Geneva all her life, and never see the Kander Thal again. Chatting thus, the morning wore on to noon, and the party rested awhile in the shade of a clump of gigantic firs festooned with trailing banners of grey-green moss.

Here they ate their lunch, to the silvery music of one of Christien's little boxes, and by-and-by heard the sullen echo of an avalanche far away on the shoulder of the Jungfrau.

Then they went on again in the burning afternoon, to heights where the Alp-rose fails from the sterile steep, and the brown lichen grows more and more scantily among the stones. Here, only the bleached and barren skeletons of a forest of dead pines varied the desolate monotony; and high on the summit of the pass, stood a little solitary inn, between them and the sky.

At this inn they rested again, and drank to the health of Christien and his bride, in a jug of country wine. He was in uncontrollable spirits, and shook hands with them all, over and over again.

"By nightfall to-morrow," said he, " I shall hold her once more in my arms! It is now nearly two years since I came home to see her, at the end of my apprenticeship. Now I am foreman, with a salary of thirty francs a week, and well able to marry."

"Thirty francs a week!" echoed Battisto. "Corpo di Bacco! that is a little fortune."

Christien's face beamed. "Yes," said he, "we shall be very happy; and, by-and-by—who knows?—we may end our days in the Kander Thal, and bring up our children to succeed us. Ah! If Marie knew that I should be there to-morrow night, how delighted she would be!"

"How so, Christien?" said my brother. " Does she not expect you?"

" Not a bit of it. She has no idea that I can be there till the day after to-morrow—nor could I, if I took the road all round by Unterseen and Frütigen. I mean to sleep to-night at Lauterbrunnen, and to-morrow morning shall strike across the Tschlingel glacier to Kandersteg. If I rise a little before daybreak, I shall be at home by sunset."

At this moment the path took a sudden turn, and began to descend in sight of an immense perspective of very distant valleys. Christien flung his cap into the air, and uttered a great shout.

"Look!" said he, stretching out his arms as if to embrace all the dear familiar scene: "O! Look! There are the hills and woods of Interlaken, and here, below the precipices on which we stand, lies Lauterbrunnen! God be praised, who has made our native land so beautiful!"

The Italians smiled at each other, thinking their own Arno valley far more fair; but my brother's heart warmed to the boy, and echoed his thanksgiving in that spirit which accepts all beauty as a birthright and an inheritance. And now their course lay across an immense plateau, all rich with corn-fields and meadows, and studded with substantial homesteads built of old brown wood, with huge sheltering eaves, and strings of Indian corn hanging like golden ingots along the carven balconies. Blue whortleberries grew beside the footway, and now and then they came upon a wild gentian, or a star-shaped immortelle. Then the path became a mere zigzag on the face of the precipice, and in less than half an hour they reached the lowest level of the valley. The glowing afternoon had not yet faded from the uppermost pines, when they were all dining together in the parlour of a little inn looking to the Jungfrau. In the evening my brother wrote letters, while the three lads strolled about the village. At nine o'clock they bade each other good night, and went to their several rooms.

Weary as he was, my brother found it impossible to sleep. The same unaccountable melancholy still possessed him, and when at last he dropped into an uneasy slumber, it was but to start over and over again from frightful dreams, faint with a nameless terror. Towards morning, he fell into a profound sleep, and never woke until the day was fast advancing towards noon. He then found, to his regret, that Christien had long since gone. He had risen before daybreak, breakfasted by candlelight, and started off in the grey dawn—"as merry," said the host, "as a fiddler at a fair."

Stefano and Battisto were still waiting to see my brother, being charged by Christien with a friendly farewell message to him, and an invitation to the wedding. They, too, were asked, and meant to go; so, my brother agreed to meet them at Interlaken on the following Tuesday, whence they might walk to Kandersteg by easy stages, reaching their destination on the Thursday morning, in time to go to church with the bridal party. My brother then bought some of the little Florentine cameos, wished the two boys every good fortune, and watched them down the road till he could see them no longer.

Left now to himself, he wandered out with his sketch-book, and spent the day in the upper valley; at sunset, he dined alone in his chamber, by the light of a single lamp. This meal despatched, he drew nearer to the fire, took out a pocket edition of Goethe's Essays on Art, and promised himself some hours of pleasant reading. (Ah, how well I know that very book, in its faded cover, and how often I have heard him describe that lonely evening!) The night had by this time set in cold and wet. The damp logs spluttered on the hearth, and a wailing wind swept down the valley, bearing the rain in sudden gusts against the panes. My brother soon found that to read was impossible. His attention wandered incessantly. He read the same sentence over and over again, unconscious of its meaning, and fell into long trains of thought leading far into the dim past.

Thus the hours went by, and at eleven o'clock he heard the doors closing below, and the household retiring to rest. He determined to yield no longer to this dreaming apathy. He threw on fresh logs, trimmed the lamp, and took several turns about the room. Then he opened the casement, and suffered the rain to beat against his face, and the wind to ruffle his hair, as it ruffled the acacia leaves in the garden below. Some minutes passed thus, and when, at length, he closed the window and came back into the room, his face and hair and all the front of his shirt were thoroughly saturated. To unstrap his knapsack and take out a dry shirt was, of course, his first impulse—to drop the garment, listen eagerly, and start to his feet, breathless and bewildered, was the next.

For, borne fitfully upon the outer breeze, now sweeping past the window, now dying in the distance, he heard a well-remembered strain of melody, subtle and silvery as the "sweet airs" of Prospero's isle, and proceeding unmistakably, from the musical-box which had, the day before, accompanied the lunch under the fir-trees of the Wengern Alp!

Had Christien come back, and was it thus that he announced his return? If so, where was he? Under the window? Outside in the corridor? Sheltering in the porch, and waiting for admittance? My brother threw open the casement again, and called him by his name.

"Christien! Is that you?"

All without was intensely silent. He could hear the last gust of wind and rain moaning farther and farther away upon its wild course down the valley, and the pine trees shivering, like living things.

" Christien!" he said again, and his own voice seemed to echo strangely on his car. "Speak! Is it you?"

Still no one answered. He leaned out into the dark night; but could see nothing—not even the outline of the porch below. He began to think that his imagination had deceived him, when suddenly the strain burst forth again;—this time, apparently in his own chamber.

As he turned, expecting to find Christien at his elbow, the sounds broke off abruptly, and a sensation of intensest cold seized him in every limb—not the mere chill of nervous terror, not the mere physical result of exposure to wind and rain, but a deadly freezing of every vein, a paralysis of every nerve, an appalling consciousness that in a few moments more the lungs must cease to play, and the heart to beat! Powerless to speak or stir, he closed his eyes, and believed that he was dying.

This strange faintness lasted but a few seconds. Gradually the vital warmth returned, and, with it, strength to close the window, and stagger to a chair. As he did so, he found the breast of his shirt all stiff and frozen, and the rain clinging in solid icicles upon his hair.

He looked at his watch. It had stopped at twenty minutes before twelve. He took his thermometer from the chimney-piece, and found the mercury at sixty-eight. Heavenly powers! How were these things possible in a temperature of sixty-eight degrees, and with a large fire blazing on the hearth?

He poured out half a tumbler of cognac, and drank it at a draught. Going to bed was out of the question. He felt that he dared not sleep—that he scarcely dared to think. All he could do, was, to change his linen, pile on more logs, wrap himself in his blankets, and sit all night in an easy-chair before the fire.

My brother had not long sat thus, however, before the warmth, and probably the nervous reaction, drew him off to sleep. In the morning he found himself lying on the bed, without being able to remember in the least how or when he reached it.

It was again a glorious day. The rain and wind were gone, and the Silverhorn at the end of the valley lifted its head into an unclouded sky. Looking out upon the sunshine, he almost doubted the events of the night, and, but for the evidence of his watch, which still pointed to twenty minutes before twelve, would have been disposed to treat the whole matter as a dream. As it was, he attributed more than half his terrors to the prompting of an over-active and over-wearied brain. For all this, he still felt depressed and uneasy, and so very unwilling to pass another night at Lauterbrunnen, that he made up his mind to proceed that morning to Interlaken. While he was yet loitering over his breakfast, and considering whether he should walk the seven miles of road, or hire a vehicle, a char came rapidly up to the inn door, and a young man jumped out.

"Why, Battislo!" exclaimed my brother, in astonishment, as he came into the room; "what brings you here to-day? Where is Stefano?"

"I have left him at Interlaken, signor," replied the Italian.

Something there was in his voice, something in his face, both strange and startling.

"What is the matter?" asked my brother, breathlessly. "He is not ill? No accident has happened?"

Battisto shook his head, glanced furtively up and down the passage, and closed the door.

"Stefano is well, signor; but—but a circumstance has occurred—a circumstance so strange!——Signor, do you believe in spirits?"

"In spirits, Battisto?"

"Ay, signor; for if ever the spirit of any man, dead or living, appealed to human ears, the spirit of Christien came to me last night, at twenty minutes before twelve o'clock."

"At twenty minutes before twelve o'clock!" repeated my brother.

"I was in bed, signor, and Stefano was sleeping in the same room. I had gone up quite warm, and had fallen asleep, full of pleasant thoughts. By-and-by, although I had plenty of bed-clothes, and a rug over me as well, I woke, frozen with cold and scarcely able to breathe. I tried to call to Stefano; but I had no power to utter the slightest sound. I thought my last moment was come. All at once, I heard a sound under the window—a sound which I knew to be Christien's musical box; and it played as it played when we lunched under the fir-trees, except that it was more wild and strange and melancholy and most solemn to hear—awful to hear! Then, signor, it grew fainter and fainter and then it seemed to float past upon the wind, and die away. When it ceased, my frozen blood grew warm again, and I cried out to Stefano. When I told him what had happened, he declared I had been only dreaming. I made him strike a light, that I might look at my watch. It pointed to twenty minutes before twelve, and had stopped there; and—stranger still—Stefano's watch had done the very same. Now tell me, signor, do you believe that there is any meaning in this, or do you think, as Stefano persists in thinking, that it was all a dream?"

"What is your own conclusion, Battisto?"

"My conclusion, signor, is that some harm has happened to poor Christien on the glacier, and that his spirit came to me last night."

"Battisto, he shall have help if living, or rescue for his poor corpse if dead; for I, too, believe that all is not well."

And with this, my brother told him briefly what had occurred to himself in the night; despatched messangers for the three best guides in Lauterbrunnen; and prepared ropes, ice-hatchets, alpenstocks, and all such matters necessary for a glacier expedition. Hasten as he would, however, it was nearly mid-day before the party started.

Arriving in about half an hour at a place called Stechelberg, they left the char, in which they had travelled so far, at a châlet, and ascended a steep path in full view of the Breithorn glacier, which rose up to the left, like a battlemented wall of solid ice. The way now lay for some time among pastures and pine-forests. Then they came to a little colony of châlets, called Steinberg, where they filled their water-bottles, got their ropes in readiness, and prepared for the Tschlingel glacier. A few minutes more, and they were on the ice.

At this point, the guides called a halt, and consulted together. One was for striking across the lower glacier towards the left, and reaching the upper glacier by the rocks which bound it on the south. The other two preferred the north, or right side; and this my brother finally took. The sun was now pouring down with almost tropical intensity, and the surface of the ice, which was broken into long treacherous fissures, smooth as glass and blue as the summer sky, was both difficult and dangerous. Silently and cautiously, they went, tied together at intervals of about three yards each: with two guides in front, and the third bringing up the rear. Turning presently to the right, they found themselves at the foot of a steep rock, some forty feet in height, up which they must climb to reach the upper glacier. The only way in which Battisto or my brother could hope to do this, was by the help of a rope steadied from below and above. Two of the guides accordingly clambered up the face of the crag by notches in the surface, and one remained below. The rope was then let down, and my brother prepared to go first. As he planted his foot in the first notch, a smothered cry from Battisto arrested him.

"Santa Maria! Signor! Look yonder!"

My brother looked, and there (he ever afterwards declared), as surely as there is a heaven above us all, he saw Christien Baumann standing in the full sunlight, not a hundred yards distant! Almost in the same moment that my brother recognised him, he was gone. He neither faded, nor sank down, nor moved away; but was simply gone, as if he had never been. Pale as death, Battisto fell upon his knees, and covered his face with his hands. My brother, awe-stricken and speechless, leaned against the rock, and felt that the object of his journey was but too fatally accomplished. As for the guides, they could not conceive what had happened.

"Did you see nothing?" asked my brother and Battisto, both together.

But the men had seen nothing, and the one who had remained below, said, "What should I see but the ice and the sun?"

To this my brother made no other reply than by announcing his intention to have a certain crevasse, from which he had not once removed his eyes since he saw the figure standing on the brink, thoroughly explored before he went a step farther; whereupon the two men came down from the top of the crag, resumed the ropes, and followed my brother, incredulously. At the narrow end of the fissure, he paused, and drove his alpenstock firmly into the ice. It was an unusually long crevasse—at first a mere crack, but widening gradually as it went, and reaching down to unknown depths of dark deep blue, fringed with long pendent icicles, like diamond stalactites. Before they had followed the course of this crevasse for more than ten minutes, the youngest of the guides uttered a hasty exclamation.

"I see something!" cried he. "Something dark, wedged in the teeth of the crevasse, a great way down!"

They all saw it: a mere indistinguishable mass, almost closed over by the ice-walls at their feet. My brother offered a hundred francs to the man who would go down and bring it up. They all hesitated.

"We don't know what it is," said one.

"Perhaps it is only a dead chamois," suggested another.

Their apathy enraged him. "'

"It is no chamois," he said, angrily. "It is the body of Christien Baumann, native of Kandersteg. And, by Heaven, if you are all too cowardly to make the attempt, I will go down myself!"

The youngest guide threw off his hat and coat, tied a rope about his waist, and took a hatchet in his hand.

"I will go, monsieur," said he; and without another word, suffered himself to be lowered in. My brother turned away. A sickening anxiety came upon him, and presently he heard the dull echo of the hatchet far down in the ice. Then there was a call for another rope, and then—the men all drew aside in silence, and my brother saw the youngest guide standing once more beside the chasm, flushed and trembling, with the body of Christien lying at his feet.

Poor Christien! They made a rough bier with their ropes and alpenstocks, and carried him, with great difficulty, back to Steinberg. There, they got additional help as far as Stechelberg, where they laid him in the char, and so brought him on to Lauterbrunnen. The next day, my brother made it his sad business to precede the body to Kandersteg, and prepare his friends for its arrival. To this day, though all these things happened thirty years ago, he cannot bear to recai Marie's despair, or all the mourning that he innocently brought upon that peaceful valley. Poor Marie has been dead this many a year; and when my brother last passed through the Kander Thal on his way to the Ghemmi, he saw her grave, beside the grave of Christien Baumanu, in the village burial-ground.

This is my brother's Ghost Story.

The chairman now announced that the clock declared the teetotum spun out, and that the meeting was dissolved. Yet even then, the young fisherman could not refrain from once more asking his question. This occasioned the Gentlemen King Arthurs, as they got on their hats and great coats, evidently to regard him as a young fisherman who was touched in his head, and some of them even cherished the idea that the captain was his keeper.

As no man dared to awake the mighty Parvis, it was resolved that a heavy member of the society should fall against him as it were by accident, and immediately withdraw to a safe distance. The experiment was so happily accomplished, that Mr. Parvis started to his feet on the best terms with himself, as a light sleeper whose wits never left him, and who could always be broad awake on occasion. Quite an airy jocundity sat upon this respectable man in consequence. And he rallied the briskest member of the fraternity on being "a sleepy-head," with an amount of humour previously supposed to be quite incompatible with his responsible circumstances in life.

Gradually, the society departed into the cold night, and the captain and his young companion were left alone. The captain had so refreshed himself by shaking hands with everybody to an amazing extent, that he was in no hurry to go to bed.

"To-morrow morning," said the captain, " we must find out the lawyer and the clergyman here; they are the people to consult on our business. And I'll be up and out early, and asking questions of everybody I see; thereby propagating at least one of the Institutions of my native country."

As the captain was slapping his leg, the landlord appeared with two small candlesticks.

"Your room," said he, " is at the top of the house. An excellent bed, but you'll hear the wind."

"I've heerd it afore," replied the captain. "Come and make a passage with me, and you shall hear it."

"It's considered to blow, here," said the landlord.

"Weather gets its young strength here," replied the captain; "goes into training for the Atlantic Ocean. Yours are little winds just beginning to feel their way and crawl. Make a voyage with me, and I'll show you a grown-up one out on business. But you haven't told my friend where he lies."

"It's the room at the head of the stairs, before you take the second staircase through the wall," returned the landlord. "You can't mistake it. It's a double-bedded room, because there's no other."

"The room where the seafaring man is?" said the captain.

"The room where the seafaring man is."

"I hope he mayn't finish telling his story in his sleep," remarked the captain. " Shall I turn into the room where the seafaring man is, Alfred?"

"No, Captain Jorgan, why should you? There would be little fear of his waking me, even if he told his whole story out."

"He's in the bed nearest the door," said the landlord. " I've been in to look at him, once, and he's sound enough. Good night, gentlemen."

The captain immediately shook hands with the landlord in quite an enthusiastic manner, and having performed that national ceremony, as if he had had no opportunity of performing it for a long time, accompanied his young friend up-stairs.

"Something tells me," said the captain as they went, " that Miss Kitty Tregarthen's marriage ain't put off for long, and that we shall light on what we want."

"I hope so. When, do you think?"

"Wa'al, I couldn't just say when, but soon. Here's your room," said the captain, softly opening the door and looking in; "and here's the berth of the seafaring man. I wonder what like he is. He breathes deep; don't he?"

"Sleeping like a child, to judge from the sound," said the young fisherman.

"Dreaming of home, maybe," returned the captain. "Can't see him. Sleeps a deal more wholesomely than Arson Parvis, but a'most as sound; don't he? Good night, fellow-traveller."

"Good night, Captain Jorgan, and many, many thanks!"

"I'll wait till I 'arn 'em, boy, afore I take 'em," returned the captain, clapping him cheerfully on the back. "Pleasant dreams of—you know who!"

When the young fisherman had closed the door, the captain waited a moment or two, listening for any stir on the part of the unknown seafaring man. But, none being audible, the captain pursued the way to his own chamber.

CHAPTER IV

THE SEAFARING MAN

Wilkie Collins

Who was the Seafaring Man? And what might he have to say for himself? He answers those questions in his own words:

I begin by mentioning what happened on my journey, northwards, from Falmouth in Cornwall, to Steepways in Devonshire. I have no occasion to say (being here) that it brought me last night to Lanrean. I had business in hand which was part very serious, and part (as I hoped) very joyful—and this business, you will please to remember, was the cause of my journey.

After landing at Falmouth, I travelled on foot; because of the expense of riding, and because I had anxieties heavy on my mind, and walking was the best way I knew of to lighten them. The first two days of my journey the weather was fine and soft, the wind being mostly light airs from south, and south and by west. On the third day, I took a wrong turning, and had to fetch a long circuit to get right again. Towards evening, while I was still on the road, the wind shifted; and a sea-fog came rolling in on the land. I went on through, what I ask leave to call, the white darkness; keeping the sound of the sea on my left hand for a guide, and feeling those anxieties of mine before mentioned, pulling heavier and heavier at my mind, as the fog thickened and the wet trickled down my face.

It was still early in the evening, when I heard a dog bark, away in the distance, on the right-hand side of me. Following the sound as well as I could, and shouting to the dog, from time to time, to set him barking again, I stumbled up at last against the back of a house; and, hearing voices inside, groped my way round to the door, and knocked on it smartly with the flat of my hand.

The door was opened by a slip-slop young hussey in a torn gown; and the first inquiries I made of her discovered to me that the house was an inn.

Before I could ask more questions, the landlord opened the parlour door of the inn and came out. A clamour of voices, and a fine comforting smell of fire and grog and tobacco, came out, also, along with him.

"The taproom fire's out," says the landlord. "You don't think you would dry more comfortable, like, if you went to bed?" says he, looking hard at me.

"No," says I, looking hard at him; "I don't."

Before more words were spoken, a jolly voice hailed us from inside the parlour.

"What's the matter, landlord?" says the jolly voice. "Who is it?"

"A seafaring man, by the looks of him," says the landlord, turning round from me, and speaking into the parlour.

"Let's have the seafaring man in," says the voice. "Let's vote him free of the Club, for this night only."

A lot of other voices thereupon said, "Hear! hear!" in a solemn manner, as if it was church service. After which there was a hammering, as if it was a trunk-maker's shop. After which the landlord took me by the arm; gave me a push into the parlour; and there I was, free of the Club.

The change from the fog outside to the warm room and the shining candles so completely dazed me, that I stood blinking at the company more like an owl than a man. Upon which the company again said, "Hear! hear!" Upon which I returned for answer, "Hear! Hear!"—considering those words to mean, in the Club's language, something similar to "How-d'ye-do." The landlord then took me to a round table by the fire, where I got my supper, together with the information that my bedroom, when I wanted it, was number four, up-stairs.

I noticed before I fell to with my knife and fork that the room was full, and that the chairman at the top of the table was the man with the jolly voice, and was seemingly amusing the company by telling them a story. I paid more attention to my supper than to what he was saying; and all I can now report of it is, that his story-telling and my eating and drinking both came to an end together.

"Now," says the chairman, "I have told my story to start you all. Who comes next?" He took up a teetotum, and gave it a spin on the table. When it toppled over, it fell opposite me; upon which the chairman said, "It's your turn next. Order! order! I call on the seafaring man to tell the second story!" He finished the words off with a knock of his hammer; and the Club (having nothing else to say, as I suppose) tried back, and once again sang out altogether, "Hear! hear!"

"I hope you will please to let me off," I said to the chairman, "for the reason that I have got no story to tell."

"No story to tell!" says he. "A sailor without a story! Who ever heard of such a thing? Nobody!"

"Nobody," says the Club, bursting out altogether at last with a new word, by way of a change.

I can't say I quite relished the chairman's talking of me as if I was before the mast. A man likes his true quality to be known, when he is publicly spoken to among a party of strangers. I made my true quality known to the chairman and company, in these words:

"All men who follow the sea, gentlemen, are sailors," I said. "But there's degrees aboard ship as well as ashore. My rating, if you please, is the rating of a second mate."

"Ay, ay, surely?" says the chairman. "Where did you leave your ship?"

"At the bottom of the sea," I made answer—which was, I am sorry to say, only too true.

"What! you've been wrecked?" says he. "Tell us all about it. A shipwreck-story is just the sort of story we like. Silence there all down the table!—silence for the second mate!"

The Club, upon this, instead of keeping silence, broke out vehemently with another new word, and said, "Chair!" After which every man suddenly held his peace, and looked at me.

I did a very foolish thing. Without stopping to take counsel with myself, I started off at score, and did just what the chairman had bidden me. If they had waited the whole night long for it, I should never have told them the story they wanted from me at first, having all my life been a wretched bad hand at such matters—for the reason, as I take it, that a story is bound to be something which is not true. But when I found the company willing, on a sudden, to put up with nothing better than the account of my shipwreck (which is not a story at all), the unexpected luck of being let off with only telling the truth about myself, was too much of a temptation for me—so I up and told it.

I got on well enough with the storm, and the striking of the vessel, and the strange chance, afterwards, which proved to be the saving of my life—the assembly all listening (to my great surprise) as if they had never heard anything of the sort before. But, when the necessity came next for going further than this, and for telling them what had happened to me after the saving of my life—or, to put it plainer, for telling them what place I was cast away on, and what company I was cast away in—the words died straight off on my lips. For this reason—namely—that those particulars of my statement made up just that part of it which I couldn't and durstn't, let out to strangers—no, not if every man among them had offered me a hundred pounds apiece, on the spot, to do it!

"Go on!" says the chairman. "What happened next? How did you get on shore?"

Feeling what a fool I had been to run myself headlong into a scrape, for want of thinking before I spoke, I now cast about discreetly in my mind for the best means of finishing off-hand without letting out a word to the company concerning those particulars before mentioned. I was some little time before seeing my way to this; keeping the chairman and company, all the while, waiting for an answer. The Club, losing patience in consequence, got from staring hard at me to drumming with their feet and then to calling out lustily, "Go on! go on! Chair! Order!"—and such like. In the midst of this childish hubbub, I saw my way to what I considered to be rather a neat finish—and got on my legs to ease them all off with it handsomely.

"Hear! hear!" says the Club. "He's going on again at last."

"Gentlemen!" I made answer; "with your permission I will now conclude by wishing you all good night." Saying which words, I gave them a friendly nod, to make things pleasant—and walked straight to the door. It's hardly to be believed—though nevertheless quite true—that these curious men all howled and groaned at me directly, as if I had done them some grievous injury. Thinking I would try to pacify them with their own favourite catch-word, I said, "Hear! hear!" as civilly as might be, whereupon, they all returned for answer, "Oh! oh!" I never belonged to a club of any kind, myself; and, after what I saw of that Club, I don't care if I never do.

My bedroom, when I found my way up to it, was large and airy enough, but not over-clean. There were two beds in it, not over-clean either. Both being empty, I had my choice. One was near the window, and one near the door. I thought the bed near the door looked a trifle the sweetest of the two; and took it.

After falling asleep, it was the grey of the morning before I woke. When I had fairly opened my eyes and shook up my memory into telling me where I was, I made two discoveries. First, that the room was a deal colder in the new morning, than it had been over-night. Second, that the other bed near the window had got some one sleeping in it. Not that I could see the man from where I lay; but I heard his breathing, plain enough. He must have come up into the room, of course, after I had fallen asleep—and he had tumbled himself quietly into bed without disturbing me. There was nothing wonderful in that; and nothing wonderful in the landlord letting the empty bed if he could find a customer for it. I turned, and tried to go to sleep again; but I was out of sorts—out of sorts so badly, that even the breathing of the man in the other bed fretted and worried me. After tumbling and tossing for a quarter of an hour or more, I got up for a change; and walked softly in my stockings, to the window, to look at the morning.

The heavens were brightening into daylight, and the mists were blowing off, past the window, like puffs of smoke. When I got even with the second bed, I stopped to look at the man in it. He lay, sound asleep, turned towards the window; and the end of the counterpane was drawn up over the lower half of his face. Something struck me, on a sudden, in his hair, and his forehead; and, though not an inquisitive man by nature, I stretched out my hand to the end of the counterpane, in spite of myself.

I uncovered his face softly; and there, in the morning light, I saw my brother, Alfred Raybrock.

What I ought to have done, or what other men might have done in my place, I don't know. What I really did, was to drop back a step—to steady myself, with my hand, on the sill of the window—and to stand so, looking at him. Three years ago, I had said good-by to my wife, to my little child, to my old mother, and to brother Alfred here, asleep under my eyes. For all those three years, no news from me had reached them—and the underwriters, as I knew, must have long since reported that the ship I sailed in was lost, and that all hands on board had perished. My heart was heavy when I thought of my kindred at home, and of the weary time they must have waited and sorrowed before they gave me up for dead. Twice I reached out my hand, to wake Alfred, and to ask him about my wife and my child; and twice I drew it back again, in fear of what might happen if he saw me, standing by his bed-head in the grey morning, like Hugh Raybrock risen up from the grave.

I drew my hand back the second time, and waited a minute. In that minute he woke. I had not moved, or spoken a word, or touched him—I had only looked at him longingly. If such things could be, I should say it was my looking that woke him. His eyes, when they opened under mine, passed on a sudden from fast asleep to broad awake. They first settled on my face with a startled look—which passed directly. He lifted himself on his elbow, and opened his lips to speak, but never said a word. His eyes strained and strained into mine; and his face turned all over of a ghastly white. "Alfred!" I said, "don't you know me?" There seemed to be a deadly terror pent up in him, and I thought my voice might set it free. I took fast hold of him by the hands, and spoke again. "Alfred!" I said——

Oh, sirs! where can a man like me find words to tell all that was said and all that was thought between us two brothers? Please to pardon my not saying more of it than I say here. We sat down together, side by side. The poor lad burst out crying—and got vent that way. I kept my hold of his hands, and waited a bit before I spoke to him again. I think I was worst off, now, of the two—no tears came to help me—I haven't got my brother's quickness, any way; and my troubles have roughened and hardened me, outside. But, God knows, I felt it keenly; all the more keenly, maybe, because I was slow to show it.

After a little, I put the questions to him which I had been longing to ask, from the time when I first saw his face on the pillow. Had they all given me up at home, for dead (I asked)? Yes; after long, long hoping, one by one they had given me up—my wife (God bless her!) last of all. I meant to ask next if my wife was alive and well; but, try as I might, I could only say "Margaret?"—and look hard in my brother's face. He knew what I meant. Yes (he said), she was living; she was at home; she was in her widow's weeds—poor soul! her widow's weeds! I got on better with my next question about the child. Was it born alive? Yes. Boy or girl? Girl. And living now; and much grown? Living, surely, and grown—poor little thing, what a question to ask!—grown of course, in three years! And mother? Well, mother was a trifle fallen away, and more silent within herself than she used to be—fretting at times; fretting (like my wife) on nights when the sea rose, and the windows shook and shivered in the wind. Thereupon, my brother and I waited a bit again—I with my questions, and he with his answers—and while we waited, I thanked God, inwardly, with all my heart and soul, for bringing me back, living, to wife and kindred, while wife and kindred were living too.

My brother dried the tears off his face; and looked at me a little. Then he turned aside suddenly, as if he remembered something; and stole his hand in a hurry, under the pillow of his bed. Nothing came out from below the pillow but his black neck-handkerchief, which he now unfolded slowly, looking at me, all the while, with something strange in his face that I couldn't make out.

"What are you doing?" I asked him. "What are you looking at me like that for?"

Instead of making answer, he took a crumpled morsel of paper out of his neck-handkerchief, opened it carefully, and held it to the light to let me see what it was. Lord in Heaven!—my own writing—the morsel of paper I had committed, long, long since, to the mercy of the deep. Thousands and thousands of miles away, I had trusted that Message to the waters—and here it was now, in my brother's hands! A chilly fear came over me at the seeing it again. Scrap of paper as it was, it looked to my eyes like the ghost of my own past self, gone home before me invisibly over the great wastes of the sea.

My brother pointed down solemnly to the writing.

"Hugh," he said, "were you in your right mind when you wrote those words?"

"Tell me first," I made answer, "how and when the Message came to you. I can't quiet myself fit to talk till I know that."

He told me how the paper had come to hand—also, how his good friend, the captain, having promised to help him, was then under the same roof with our two selves. But there he stopped. It was not till later in the day that I heard of what had happened (through this dreadful doubt about the money) in the matter of his sweetheart and his marriage.

The knowledge that the Message had reached him by mortal means—on the word of a seaman, I half doubted it when I first set eyes on the paper!—eased me in my mind; and I now did my best to quiet Alfred, in my turn. I told him that I was in my right senses, though sorely troubled, when my hand had written those words. Also, that where the writing was rubbed out, I could tell him for his necessary guidance and mine, what once stood in the empty places. Also, that I knew no more what the real truth might be than he did, till inquiry was made, and the slander on father's good name was dragged boldly into daylight to show itself for what it was worth. Lastly, that all the voyage home, there was one hope and one determination uppermost in my mind—the hope, that I might get safe to England, and find my wife and kindred alive to take me back among them again—the determination, that I would put the doubt about father's five hundred pounds to the proof, if ever my feet touched English land once more.

"Come out with me now, Alfred," I said, after winding up as above; "and let me tell you in the quiet of the morning how that Message came to be written and committed to the sea."

We went down-stairs softly, and let ourselves out without disturbing any one. The sun was just rising when we left the village and took our way slowly over the cliffs. As soon as the sea began to open on us, I returned to that true story of mine which I had left but half told, the night before—and, this time, I went through with it to the end.

I shipped, as you may remember (were my first words to Alfred), in a second mate's berth, on board the Peruvian, nine hundred tons' burden. We carried an assorted cargo, and we were bound, round the Horn to Truxillo and Guayaquil, on the western coast of South America. From this last port—namely, Guayaquil—we were to go back to Truxillo, and there to take in another cargo for the return voyage. Those were all the instructions communicated to me when I signed articles with the owners, in London city, three years ago.

After we had been, I think, a week at sea, I heard from the first mate—who had himself heard it from the captain—that the supercargo we were taking with us, on the outward voyage, was to be left at Truxillo, and that another supercargo (also connected with our firm, and latterly employed by them as their foreign agent) was to ship with us at that port, for the voyage home. His name on the captain's instructions was, Mr. Lawrence Clissold. None of us had ever set eyes on him to our knowledge, and none of us knew more about him than what I have told you here.

We had a wonderful voyage out—especially round the Horn. I never before saw such fair weather in that infernal latitude, and I never expect to see the like again. We followed our instructions to the letter; discharging our cargo in fine condition, and returning to Truxillo to load again as directed. At this place, I was so unfortunate as to be seized with the fever of the country, which laid me on my back, while we were in harbour; and which only let me return to my duty after we had been ten days at sea, on the voyage home again. For this reason, the first morning when I was able to get on deck, was also the first time of my setting eyes on our new supercargo, Mr. Lawrence Clissold.

I found him to be a long, lean, wiry man, with some complaint in his eyes which forced him to wear spectacles of blue glass. His age appeared to be fifty-six, or thereabouts; but he might well have been more. There was not above a handful of grey hair, altogether, on his bald head—and, as for the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and the sides of his mouth, if he could have had a pound apiece in his pocket for every one of them, he might have retired from business from that time forth. Judging by certain signs in his face, and by a suspicious morning tremble in his hands, I set him down, in my own mind (right enough, as it afterwards turned out), for a drinker. In one word, I didn't like the looks of the new supercargo—and, oh the first day when I got on deck, I found that he had reasons of his own for paying me back in my own coin, and not liking my looks, either.

"I've been asking the captain about you," were his first words to me in return for my civilly wishing him good morning. "Your name's Raybrock, I hear. Are you any relation to the late Hugh Raybrock, of Barnstaple, Devonshire?"

"Rather a near relation," I made answer. "I am the late Hugh Raybrock's eldest son."

There was no telling how his eyes looked, because they were hidden by his blue spectacles—but I saw him wince at the mouth, when I gave him that reply.

"Your father ended by failing in business, didn't he?" was the next question the supercargo put to me.

"Who told you he failed?" I asked, sharply enough.

"Oh! I heard it," says Mr. Lawrence Clissold, both looking and speaking as if he was glad to have heard it, and he hoped it was true.

"Whoever told you my father failed in business, told you a lie," I said. "His business fell off towards the last years of his life—I don't deny it. But every creditor he had was honestly paid at his death, without so much as touching the provision left for his widow and children. Please to mention that, next time you hear it reported that my father failed in business."

Mr. Clissold grinned to himself—and I lost my temper.

"I'll tell you what," I said to him, "I don't like your laughing to yourself, when I ask you to do justice to my father's memory—and, what is more, I didn't like the way you mentioned that report of his failing in business, just now. You looked as if you hoped it was true."

"Perhaps I did," says Mr. Clissold, coolly. "Shall I tell you why? When I was a young man, I was unlucky enough to owe your father some money. He was a merciless creditor; and he threatened me with a prison if the debt remained unpaid on the day when it was due. I have never forgotten that circumstance; and I should certainly not have been sorry if your father's creditors had given him a lesson in forbearance, by treating him as harshly as he once treated me."

"My father had a right to ask for his own," I broke out. "If you owed him the money and didn't pay it——"

"I never told you I didn't pay it," says Mr. Clissold, as coolly as ever.

"Well, if you did pay it," I put in, "then you didn't go to prison—and you have no cause of complaint now. My father wronged nobody; and I won't believe he ever wronged you. He was a just man in all his dealings; and whoever tells me to the contrary——!"

"That will do," says Mr. Clissold, backing away to the cabin stairs. "You seem to have not quite got over your fever yet. I'll leave you to air yourself in the sea-breezes, Mr. Second Mate; and I'll receive your excuses when you are cool enough to make them."

"It is a son's business to defend his father's character," I answered; "and, cool or hot, I'll leave the ship sooner than ask your pardon for doing my duty!"

"You will leave the ship," says the supercargo, quietly going down into the cabin. "You will leave at the next port, if I have any interest with the captain."

That was how Mr. Clissold and I scraped acquaintance on the first day when we met together! And as we began, so we went on to the end. But, though he persecuted me in almost every other way, he did not anger me again about father's affairs: he seemed to have dropped talking of them at once and for ever. On my side I nevertheless bore in mind what he had said to me, and determined, if I got home safe, to go to the lawyer at Barnstaple who keeps father's old books and letters for us, and see what information they might give on the subject of Mr. Lawrence Clissold. I, myself, had never heard his name mentioned at home—father (as you know, Alfred) being always close about business-matters, and mother never troubling him with idle questions about his affairs. But it was likely enough that he and Mr. Clissold might have been concerned in money-matters, in past years, and that Mr. Clissold might have tried to cheat him, and failed. I rather hoped it might prove to be so—for the truth is, the supercargo provoked me past all endurance; and I hated him as heartily as he hated me.

All this while the ship was making such a speedy voyage down the coast, that we began to think we were carrying back with us the fine weather we had brought out. But, on nearing Cape Horn, the signs and tokens appeared which told us that our run of luck was at an end. Down went the barometer, lower and lower; and up got the wind, in the northerly quarter, higher and higher. This happened towards nightfall—and at daybreak next day, we found ourselves forced to lay-to. It blew all that day and all that night; towards noon the next day, it lulled a little, and we made sail again. But at sunset, the heavens grew blacker than ever; and the wind returned upon us with double and treble fury. The Peruvian was a fine stout roomy ship, but the unhandiest vessel at laying-to I ever sailed in. After taking tons of water on board and losing our best boat, we had nothing left for it but to turn tail, and scud for our lives. For the next three days and nights we ran before the wind. The gale moderated more than once in that time; but there was such a sea on, that we durstn't heave the ship to. From the beginning of the gale none of us officers had a chance of taking any observations. We only knew that the wind was driving us as hard as we could go in a southerly direction, and that we were by this time hundreds of miles out of the ordinary course of ships in doubling the Cape.

On the third night—or rather, I should say, early on the fourth morning—I went below, dead beat, to get a little rest, leaving the vessel in charge of the captain and the first mate. The night was then pitch-black—it was raining, hailing, and sleeting, all at once—and the Peruvian was wallowing in the frightful seas, as if she meant to roll the masts out of her. I tumbled into bed the instant my wet oilskins were off my back, and slept as only a man can who lays himself down dead beat.

I was woke—how long afterwards I don't know—by being pitched clean out of my berth on to the cabin floor; and, at the same moment, I heard the crash of the ship's timbers, forward, which told me it was all over with us.

Though bruised and shaken by my fall, I was on deck directly. Before I had taken two steps forward, the Peruvian forged ahead on the send of the sea, swung round a little, and struck heavily at the bows for the second time. The shrouds of the foremast cracked one after another, like pistol-shots; and the mast went overboard. I next felt our people go tearing past me, in the black darkness, to the lee-side of the vessel; and I knew that, in their last extremity, they were taking to the boats. I say I felt them go past me, because the roaring of the sea and the howling of the wind deafened me, on deck, as completely as the darkness blinded me. I myself no more believed the boats would live in the sea, than I believed the ship would hold together on the reef—but, as the rest were running the risk, I made up my mind to run it with them.

But before I followed the crew to leeward, I went below again for a minute—not to save money or clothes, for, with death staring me in the face, neither were of any account, now—but to get my little writing-case which mother had given me at parting. A curl of Margaret's hair was in the pocket inside it, with all the letters she had sent me when I had been away on other voyages. If I saved anything I was resolved to save this—and if I died, I would die with it about me.

My locker was jammed with the wrenching of the ship, and had to be broken open. I was, maybe, longer over this job than I myself supposed. At any rate, when I got on deck again with my case in my breast, it was useless calling, and useless groping about. The largest of the two boats, when I felt for it, was gone; and every soul on board was beyond a doubt gone with her.

Before I had time to think, I was thrown off my feet, by another sea coming on board, and a great heave of the vessel, which drove her farther over the reef, and canted the after-part of her up like the roof of a house. In that position the stern stuck, wedged fast into the rocks beneath, while the fore-part of the ship was all to pieces and down under water. If the after-part kept the place it was now jammed in, till daylight, there might be a chance—but if the sea wrenched it out from between the rocks, there was an end of me. After straining my eyes to discover if there was land beyond the reef, and seeing nothing but the flash of the breakers, like white fire in the darkness, I crawled below again to the shelter of the cabin stairs, and waited for death or daylight.

As the morning hours wore on, the weather moderated again; and the after-part of the vessel, though shaken often, was not shaken out of its place. A little before dawn, the winds and the waves, though fierce enough still, allowed me, at last, to hear something besides themselves. What did I hear, crouched up in my dark corner, was a heavy thumping and grinding, every now and then, against the side of the ship to windward. Day broke soon afterwards; and, when I climbed to the deck, I clawed my way up to windward first, to see what the noise was caused by.

My first look over the bulwark showed me that it was caused by the boat which my unfortunate brother-officers and the crew had launched and gone away in when the ship struck. The boat was bottom upwards, thumping against the ship's side on the lift of the sea. I wanted no second look at it to tell me that every mother's son of them was drowned.

The main and mizen masts still stood. I got into the mizen rigging, to look out next to leeward—and there, in the blessed daylight, I saw a low, green, rocky little island, lying away beyond the reef, barely a mile distant from the ship! My life began to look of some small value to me again, when I saw land. I got higher up in the rigging to note how the current set, and where there might be a passage through the reef. The ship had driven over the rocks through the worst of the surf, and the sea between myself and the island, though angry and broken in places, was not too high for a lost man like me to venture on—provided I could launch the last, and smallest, boat still left in the vessel. I noted carefully the likeliest-looking channel for trying the experiment, and then got down on deck again to see what I could do, first of all, with the boat.

At the moment when my feet touched the deck, I heard a dull knocking and banging just under them, in the region of the cabin. When the sound first reached my ears, I got such a shock of surprise that I could neither move nor speak. It had never yet crossed my mind that a single soul was left in the vessel beside myself—but now, there was something in the knocking noise which started the hope in me that I was not alone. I shook myself up, and got down below directly.

The noise came from inside one of the sleeping berths, on the far side of the main cabin; the door of which was jammed, no doubt, just as my locker had been jammed, by the wrenching of the ship. 'Who's there?' I called out. A faint, muffled kind of voice answered something through the air-grating in the upper part of the door. I got up on the overthrown cabin furniture; and, looking in through the trelliswork of the grating, found myself face to face with the blue spectacles of Mr. Lawrence Clissold, looking out!

God forgive me for thinking it—but there was not a man in the vessel I wouldn't sooner have found alive in her than Mr. Clissold! Of all that ship's company, we two, who were least friendly together, were the only two saved.

I had a better chance of breaking out the jammed door from the main cabin, than he had from the berth inside; and in less than five minutes he was set free. I had smelt spirits already through the air-grating—and now, when he and I stood face to face, I saw what the smell meant. There was an open case of spirits by the bedside—two of the bottles out of it were lying broken on the floor—and Mr. Clissold was drunk.

"What's the matter with the ship?" says he, looking fierce, and speaking thick.

"You shall see for yourself," says I. With which words I took hold of him, and pulled him after me up the cabin stairs. I reckoned on the sight that would meet him, when he first looked over the deck, to sober his drunken brains—and I reckoned right: he fell on his knees, stockstill and speechless as if he was turned to stone.

I lashed him up safe to the cabin rail, and left it to the air to bring him round. He had, likely enough, been drinking in the sleeping berth for days together—for none of us, as I now remembered, had seen him since the gale set in—and even if he had had sense enough to try to get out, or to call for help, when the ship struck, he would not have made himself heard in the noise and confusion of that awful time. But for the lull in the weather, I should not have heard him myself, when he attempted to get free in the morning. Enemy of mine as he was, he had a pair of arms—and he was worth untold gold, in my situation, for that reason. With the help I could make him give me, there was no doubt now about launching the boat. In half an hour I had the means ready for trying the experiment; and Mr. Clissold was sober enough to see that his life depended on his doing what I told him.

The sky looked angry still—there was no opening anywhere—and the clouds were slowly banking up again to windward. The supercargo knew what I meant when I pointed that way, and worked with a will when I gave him the word. I had previously stowed away in the boat such stores of meat, biscuit, and fresh water as I could readily lay hands on; together with a compass, a lantern, a few candles, and some boxes of matches in my pocket, to kindle light and fire with. At the last moment, I thought of a gun and some powder and shot. The powder and shot I found, and an old flint pocket-pistol in the captain's cabin—with which, for fear of wasting precious time, I was forced to be content. The pistol lay on the top of the medicine-chest—and I took that also, finding it handy, and not knowing but what it might be of use. Having made these preparations, we launched the boat, over down the steep of the deck, into the water over the forward part of the ship which was sunk. I took the oars ordering Mr. Clissold to sit still in the stern-sheets—and pulled for the island.

It was neck or nothing with us more than once, before we were two hundred yards from the ship. Luckily, the supercargo was used to boats; and muddled as he still was, he had sense enough to sit quiet. We found our way into the smooth channel which I had noted from the mizen rigging—after which, it was easy enough to get ashore.

We landed on a little sandy creek. From the time of our leaving the ship, the supercargo had not spoken a word to me, nor I to him. I now told him to lend a hand in getting the stores out of the boat, and in helping me to carry them to the first sheltered place we could find in shore on the island. He shook himself up with a sulky look at me, and did as I had bidden him. We found a little dip or dell in the ground, after getting up the low sides of the island, which was sheltered to windward—and here I left him to stow away the stores, while I walked farther on, to survey the place.

According to the hasty judgment I formed at the time, the island was not a mile across, and not much more than three miles round. I noted nothing in the way of food but a few wild roots and vegetables, growing in ragged patches amidst the thick scrub which covered the place. There was not a tree on it anywhere; nor any living creatures; nor any signs of fresh water that I could see. Standing on the highest ground, I looked about anxiously for other islands that might be inhabited; there were none visible—at least none in the hazy state of the heavens that morning. When I fairly discovered what a desert the place was; when I remembered how far it lay out of the track of ships; and when I thought of the small store of provisions which we had brought with us, the doubt lest we might only have changed the chance of death by drowning for the chance of death by starvation was so strong in me, that I determined to go back to the boat, with the desperate notion of making another trip to the vessel for water and food. I say desperate, because the clouds to windward were banking up blacker and higher every minute, the wind was freshening already, and there was every sign of the storm coming on again wilder and fiercer than ever.

Mr. Clissold, when I passed him on my way back to the beach, had got the stores pretty tidy, covered with the tarpaulin which I had thrown over them in the bottom of the boat. Just as I looked down at him in the hollow I saw him take a bottle of spirits out of the pocket of his pilot-coat. He must have stowed the bottle away there, as I suppose, while I was breaking open the door of his berth. "You'll be drowned, and I shall have double allowance to live upon here," was all he said to me, when he heard I was going back to the ship. "Yes! and die, in your turn, when you've got through it," says I, going away to the boat. It's shocking to think of now—but we couldn't be civil to each other, even on the first day when we were wrecked together!

Having previously stripped to my trousers, in case of accident, I now pulled out. On getting from the channel into the broken water again, I looked over my shoulder to windward, and saw that I was too late. It was coming!—the ship was hidden already in the horrible haze of it. I got the boat's head round to pull back—and I did pull back, just inside the opening in the reef which made the mouth of the channel—when the storm came down on me like death and judgment. The boat filled in an instant; and I was tossed head over heels into the water. The sea, which burst into raging surf upon the rocks on either side, rushed in one great roller up the deep channel between them, and took me with it. If the undertow, afterwards, had lasted for half a minute, I should have been carried into the white water, and lost. But a second roller followed the first, almost on the instant, and swept me right up on the beach. I had just strength enough to dig my arms and legs well into the wet sand; and though I was taken back with the backward shift of it, I was not taken into deep water again. Before the third roller came, I was out of its reach, and was down in a sort of swoon, on the dry sand.

When I got back to the hollow, in shore, where I had left my clothes under shelter with the stores, I found Mr. Clissold snugly crouched up, in the driest place, with the tarpaulin to cover him. "Oh!" says he, in a state of great surprise, "you're not drowned?" "No," says I; "you won't get your double allowance, after all." "How much shall I get?" says he, rousing up and looking anxious. "Your fair half share of what is here," I answered him. "And how long will that last me?" says he. "The food, if you have sense enough to eke it out with what you may find in this miserable place, barely three weeks," says I; "and the water (if you ever drink any) about a fortnight." At hearing that, he took the bottle out of his pocket again, and put it to his lips. "I'm cold to the bones," says I, frowning at him for a drop. "And I'm warm to the marrow," says he, chuckling, and handing me the bottle empty. I pitched it away at once—or the temptation to break it over his head might have been too much for me—I pitched it away, and looked into the medicine-chest, to see if there was a drop of peppermint, or anything comforting of that sort, inside. Only three physic bottles were left in it, all three being neatly tied over with oilskin. One of them held a strong white liquor, smelling like hartshorn. The other two were filled with stuff in powder, having the names in printed gibberish, pasted outside. On looking a little closer, I found, under some broken divisions of the chest, a small flask covered with wicker-work. 'Ginger-Brandy' was written with pen and ink on the wicker-work, and the flask was full! I think that blessed discovery saved me from shivering myself to pieces. After a pull at the flask, which made a new man of me, I put it away in my inside breast-pocket; Mr. Clissold watching me with greedy eyes, but saying nothing.

All this while, the rain was rushing, the wind roaring, and the sea crashing, as if Noah's Flood had come again. I sat close against the supercargo, because he was in the driest place; and pulled my fair share of the tarpaulin away from him, whether he liked it or not. He by no means liked it; being in that sort of half-drunken, half-sober state (after finishing his bottle), in which a man's temper is most easily upset by trifles. The upset of his temper showed itself in the way of small aggravations—of which I took no notice, till he suddenly bethought himself of angering me by going back again to that dispute about father, which had bred ill-blood between us, on the day when we first saw each other. If he had been a younger man, I am afraid I should have stopped him by a punch on his head. As it was, considering his age and the shame of this quarrelling betwixt us when we were both cast away together, I only warned him that I might punch his head, if he went on. It did just as well—and I'm glad now to think that it did.

We were huddled so close together, that when he coiled himself up to sleep (with a growl), and when he did go to sleep (with a grunt), he growled and grunted into my ear. His rest, like the rest of all the regular drunkards I have ever met with, was broken. He ground his teeth, and talked in his sleep. Among the words he mumbled to himself, I heard as plain as could be father's name. This vexed, but did not surprise me, seeing that he had been talking of father before he dropped off. But when I made out next among his mutterings and mumblings, the words "five hundred pound," spoken over and over again, with father's name, now before, now after, now mixed in along with them, I got curious, and listened for more. My listening (and serve me right, you will say) came to nothing: he certainly talked on, but I couldn't make out a word more that he said.

When he woke up, I told him plainly he had been talking in his sleep—and mightily taken aback he looked when he first heard it. "What about?" says he. I made answer, "My father, and five hundred pound; and how do you come to couple them together, I should like to know?"

"I couldn't have coupled them," says he, in a great hurry— "what do I know about it? I don't believe a man like your father ever had such a sum of money as that, in all his life." "Don't you?" says I, feeling the aggravation of him, in spite of myself; "I can just tell you my father had such a sum when he was no older a man than I am—and saved it—and left it for a provision, in his will, to my mother, who has got it now—and, I say again, how came a stranger like you to be talking of it in your sleep?" At hearing this, he went about on the other tack directly. "Was that all your father left, after his debts were paid?" says he. "Are you very curious to know?" says I. He took no notice—he only persisted with his question. "Was it just five hundred pound, no more and no less?" says he. "Suppose it was," says I; "what then?" "Oh, nothing?" says he, and turns sharp round from me, and chuckles to himself. "You're drunk!" says I. "Yes," says he; "that's it—stick to that—I'm drunk"—and he chuckles again. Try as I might, and threaten as I might, not another word on the matter of the five hundred pound could I get from him. I bore it well in mind, though, for all that—it being one of my slow ways, not easily to forget anything that has once surprised me, and not to give up returning to it over and over again, as time and occasion may serve for the purpose.

The hours wore on, and the storm raged on. We had our half rations of food, when hunger took us (I being much the hungrier of the two); and slept, and grumbled, and quarrelled the weary time out somehow. Towards dusk the wind lessened; and, when I got up, out of the hollow to look out, there was a faint watery break in the western heavens. At times, through the watches of the long night, the stars showed in patches for a little while, through the rents that opened and closed by fits in the black sky. When I fell asleep towards the dawning, the wind had fallen to a moan, though the sea, slower to go down, sounded as loud as ever. From what I could make of the weather, the storm had, by that time, as good as blown itself out.

I had been wise enough (knowing who was near me) to lay myself down, whenever I slept, on the side of me which was next to the flask of ginger-brandy, stowed away in my breastpocket. When I woke at sunrise, it was the supercargo's hand that roused me up, trying to steal my flask while I was asleep. I rolled him over headlong among the stores—out of which I had the humanity to pull him again, with my own hands.

"I'll tell you what," says I, "if us two keep company any longer, we shan't get on smoothly together. You're the oldest man—and you stop here, where we know there is shelter. We will divide the stores fairly, and I'll go and shift for myself at the other end of the island. Do you agree to that?"

"Yes," says he; "and the sooner the better."

I left him for a minute, and went away to look out on the reef that had wrecked us. The splinters of the Peruvian, scattered broadcast over the beach, or tossing up and down darkly, far out in the white surf, were all that remained to tell of the ship. I don't deny that my heart sank, when I looked at the place where she struck, and saw nothing before me but sea and sky.

But what was the use of standing and looking? It was a deal better to rouse myself by doing something. I returned to Mr. Clissold—and then and there divided the stores into two equal parts, including everything down to the matches in my pocket. Of these parts I gave him first choice. I also left him the whole of the tarpaulin to himself—keeping in my own possession the medicine-chest, and the pistol; which last I loaded with powder and shot, in case any sea-birds might fly within reach. When the division was made, and when I had moved my part out of his way and out of his sight, I thought it uncivil to bear malice any longer, now that we had agreed to separate. We were cast away on a desert island, and we had death, as well as I could see, within about three weeks' hail of us—but that was no reason for not making things reasonably pleasant as long as we could. I was some time (in consequence of my natural slowness where matters of seafaring duty don't happen to be concerned) before I came to this conclusion. When I did come to it, I acted on it.

"Shake hands, before parting," I said, suiting the action to the word.

"No!" says he; "I don't like you."

"Please yourself," says I—and so we parted.

Turning my back on the west, which was his territory according to agreement, I walked away towards the south-east, where the sides of the island rose highest. Here I found a sort of half rift, half cavern, in the rocky banks, which looked as likely a place as any other—and to this refuge I moved my share of the stores. I thatched it over as well as I could with scrub, and heaped up some loose stones at the mouth of it. At home in England, I should have been ashamed to put my dog in such a place—but when a man believes his days to be numbered, he is not over-particular about his lodgings, and I was not over-particular about mine.

When my work was done, the heavens were fair, the sun was shining, and it was long past noon. I went up again to the high ground, to see what I could make out in the new clearness of the air. North, east, and west there was nothing but sea and sky—but, south, I now saw land. It was high, and looked to be a matter of seven or eight miles off. Island, or not, it must have been of a good size for me to see it as I did. Known or not known to mariners, it was certainly big enough to have living creatures on it—animals or men, or both. If I had not lost the boat in my second attempt to reach the vessel, we might have easily got to it. But situated as we were now, with no wood to make a boat of but the scattered splinters from the ship, and with no tools to use even that much, there might just as well have been no land in sight at all, so far as we were concerned. The poor hope of a ship coming our road, was still the only hope left. To give us all the little chance we might get that way, I now looked about on the beach for the longest morsel of a wrecked spar that I could find; planted it on the high ground; and rigged up to it the one shirt I had on my back for a signal. While coming and going on this job, I noted with great joy that rain water enough lay in the hollows of the rocks above the sea line, to save our small store of fresh water for a week at least. Thinking it only fair to the supercargo to let him know what I had found out, I went to his territories, after setting up the morsel of a spar, and discreetly shouted my news down to him without showing myself. "Keep to your own side!" was all the thanks I got for this piece of civility. I went back to my own side immediately, and crawled into my little cavern, quite content to be alone. On that first night, strange as it seems now, I once or twice nearly caught myself feeling happy at the thought of being rid of Mr. Lawrence Clissold.

According to my calculations—which were made by tying a fresh knot every morning in a piece of marline—we two men were just a week, each on his own side of the island, without seeing or communicating, anyhow, with one another. The first half of the week, I had enough to do with cudgelling my brains for a means of helping ourselves, to keep my mind steady.

I thought first of picking up all the longest bits of spars that had been cast ashore, lashing them together with ropes twisted out of the long grass on the island, and trusting to raft-navigation to get to that high land away in the south. But when I looked among the spars, there were not half a dozen of them left whole enough for the purpose. And even if there had been more, the short allowance of food would not have given me time sufficient, or strength sufficient, to gather the grass, to twist it into ropes, and to lash a raft together big enough and strong enough for us two men. There was nothing to be done, but to give up this notion—and I gave it up. The next chance I thought of was to keep a fire burning on the shore every night, with the wood of the wreck, in case vessels at sea might notice it, on one side—or the people of the high land in the south (if the distance was not too great) might notice it, on the other. There was sense in this notion, and it could be turned to account the moment the wood was dry enough to burn. The wood got dry enough before the week was out. Whether it was the end of the stormy season in those latitudes, or whether it was only the shifting of the wind to the west, I don't know—but now, day after day, the heavens were clear and the sun shone scorching hot. The scrub on the island (which was of no great account) dried up—but the fresh water in the hollows of the rocks (which was, on the other hand, a serious business) dried up too. Troubles seldom come alone; and on the day when I made this discovery, I also found out that I had calculated wrong about the food. Eke it out as I might with scurvy grass and roots, there would not be above eight days more of it left when the first week was past—and, as for the fresh water, half a pint a day, unless more rain fell, would leave me at the end of my store, as nearly as I could guess, about the same time.

This was a bad look-out—but I don't think the prospect of it upset me in my mind, so much as the having nothing to do. Except for the gathering of the wood, and the lighting of the signal-fire, every night, I had no work at all, towards the end of the week, to keep me steady. I checked myself in thinking much about home, for fear of losing heart, and not holding out to the last, as became a man. For the same reasons I likewise kept my mind from raising hopes of help in me which were not likely to come true. What else was there to think about? Nothing but the man on the other side of the island—and be hanged to him!

I thought about those words I heard him say in his sleep; I thought about how he was getting on by himself; how he liked nothing but water to drink, and little enough of that; how he was eking out his food; whether he slept much or not; whether he saw the smoke from my fire at night, or not; whether he held up better or worse than I did; whether he would be glad to see me, if I went to him to make it up; whether he or I would die first; whether if it was me, he would do for me, what I would have done for him—namely, bury him, with the last strength I had left. All these things, and lots more, kept coming and going in my mind, till I could stand it no longer. On the morning of the eighth day, I roused up to go to his territories, feeling it would do me good to see him and hear him, even if we quarrelled again the instant we set eyes on each other.

I climbed up to the grassy ground—and, when I got there, what should I see but the supercargo himself, coming to my territories, and wandering up and down in the scrub through not knowing where to find them!

It almost knocked me over, when we met, the man was changed so. He looked eighty years old; the little flesh he had on his miserable face hung baggy; his blue spectacles had dropped down on his nose, and his eyes showed over them wild and red-rimmed; his lips were black, his legs staggered under him. He came up to me with his eyes all of a glare, and put both his hands on my breast, just over the pocket in which I kept that flask of ginger-brandy which he had tried to steal from me.

"Have you got any of it left?" says he, in a whisper.

"About two mouthfuls," says I.

"Give us one of them, for God's sake," says he.

Giving him one of those mouthfuls was just about equal to giving him a day of my life. In the case of a man I liked, I would not have thought twice about giving it. In the case of Mr. Clissold, I did think twice. I would have been a better Christian, if I could—but just then, I couldn't.

He thought I was going to say, No. His eyes got cunning directly. He reached his hands to my shoulders, and whispered these words in my ear:

'I'll tell you what I know about the five hundred pound, if you'll give me a drop."

I determined to give it to him, and pulled out the flask. I took his hand, and poured the drop into the hollow of it, and held it for a moment.

"Tell me first," I said, "and drink afterwards."

He looked all round him, as if he thought there were people on the island to hear us. "Hush!" he said; "let's whisper about it." The next question and answer that passed between us, was louder than before on my side, and softer than ever on his. This was the question:

"What do you know about the five hundred pound?"

And this was the answer:

"It's Stolen Money!"

My hand dropped away from his, as if he had shot me. He instantly fastened on the drop of liquor in the hollow of his hand, like a hungry wild beast on a bone, and then looked up for more. Something in my face (God knows what) seemed suddenly to frighten him out of his life. Before I could stir a step, or get a word out, down he dropped on his knees, whining and whimpering in the high grass at my feet.

"Don't kill me!" says he; "I'm dying—I'll think of my poor soul. I'll repent while there's time——"

Beginning in that way, he maundered awfully, grovelling down in the grass; asking me every other minute for "a drop more, and a drop more;" and talking as if he thought we were both in England. Out of his wanderings, his beseechings for another drop, and his miserable beggar's-petitions for his "poor soul," I gathered together these words—the same which I wrote down on the morsel of paper, and of which nine parts out of ten are now rubbed off!

The first I made out—though not the first he said—was that some one, whom he spoke of as "the old man," was alive; and "Lanrean" was the place he lived in. I was to go there, and ask, among the old men, for "Tregarthen——"

(At the mention by me of the name of Tregarthen, my brother, to my great surprise, stopped me with a start; made me say the name over more than once; and then, for the first time, told me of the trouble about his sweetheart and his marriage. We waited a little to talk that matter over; after which, I went on again with my story, in these words:)

Well, as I made out from Clissold's wanderings, I was to go to Lanrean, to ask among the old men for Tregarthen, and to say to Tregarthen, "Clissold was the man. Clissold bore no malice: Clissold repented like a Christian, for the sake of his poor soul." No! I was to say something else to Tregarthen. I was to say, "Look among the books; look at the leaf you know of, and see for yourself it's not the right leaf to be there." No! I was to say, "The right leaf is hidden, not burnt. Clissold had time for everything else, but no time to burn that leaf. Tregarthen came in when he had got the candle lit to burn it. There was just time to let it drop from under his hand into the great crack in the desk, and then he was ordered abroad by the House, and there was no chance of doing more." No! I was to say none of these things to Tregarthen. Only this, instead:—"Look in Clissold's Desk—and, if you blame anybody, blame miser Raybrock for driving him to it." And, oh, another drop—for the Lord's sake, give him another drop!

So he went on, over and over again, till I found voice enough to speak, and stop him.

"Get up, and go!" I said to the miserable wretch. "Get back to your own side of the island, or I may do you a mischief, in spite of my own self."

"Give me the other drop, and I will"—was all the answer I could get from him.

I threw him the flask. He pounced upon it with a howl. I turned my back—for I could look at him no longer—and climbed down again to my cavern on the beach.

I sat down alone on the sand, and tried to quiet myself fit to think about what I had heard. That father could ever have wilfully done anything unbecoming his character as an honest man, was what I wouldn't believe, in the first place. And that the wretched brute I had just parted from was in his right senses, was what I wouldn't believe, in the second place. What I had myself seen of drinkers, at sea and ashore, helped me to understand the condition into which he had fallen. I knew that when a man who has been a drunkard for years, is suddenly cut off his drink, he drops to pieces like, body and mind, for the want of it. I had also heard ship-doctors talk, by some name of their own, of a drink-madness, which we ignorant men call the Horrors. And I made it out, easy enough, that I had seen the supercargo in the first of these conditions; and that if we both lived long enough without help coming to us, I might soon see him in the second. But when I tried to get farther, and settle how much of what I had heard was wanderings and how much truth, and what it meant if any of it was truth, my slowness got in my way again; and where a quicker man might have made up his mind in an hour or two, I was all day, in sore distress, making up mine. The upshot of what I settled with myself was, in two words, this:—Having mother's writing-case handy about me, I determined first to set down for my own self's reminder, all that I had heard. Second, to clear the matter up if ever I got back to England alive; and, if wrong had been done to that old man, or to anybody else, in father's name (without father's knowledge), to make restoration for his sake.

All that day I neither saw nor heard more of the supercargo. I passed a miserable night of it, after writing my memorandum, fighting with my loneliness and my own thoughts. The remembrance of those words in father's will, saying that the five hundred pound was money which he had once run a risk with, kept putting into my mind suspicions I was ashamed of. When daylight came, I almost felt as if I was going to have the Horrors too, and got up to walk them off, if possible, in the morning air.

I kept on the northern side of the island, walking backwards and forwards for an hour or more. Then I returned to my cavern; and the first thing I saw, on getting near it, was other footsteps than mine marked on the sand. I suspected at once that the supercargo had been lurking about watching me, instead of going back to his own side; and that, in my absence, he had been at his thieving tricks again.

The stores were what I looked at first. The food he had not touched; but the water he had either drunk or wasted—there was not half a pint of it left. The medicine-chest was open, and the bottle with the hartshorn was gone. When I looked next for the pistol, which I had loaded with powder and shot for the chance of bird-shooting that never came, the pistol was gone too. After making this last discovery, there was but one thing to be done—namely—to find out where he was, and to take the pistol away from him.

I set off to search first on the western side. It was a beautiful clear, calm, sunshiny morning; and as I crossed the island, looking out on my left hand and my right, I stopped on a sudden, with my heart in my mouth, as the saying is. Something caught my eye, far out at sea, in the north-west. I looked again—and there, as true as the heavens above me, I saw a ship, with the sunlight on her topsails, hull down, on the water-line in the offing!

All thought of the errand I was bent on, went out of my mind in an instant. I ran as fast as my weak legs would carry me to the northern beach: gathered up the broken wood which was still lying there plentifully, and, with the help of the dry scrub, lit the largest fire I had made yet. This was the only signal it was in my power to make that there were men on the island. The fire, in the bright daylight, would never be visible to the ship; but the smoke curling up from it, in the clear sky, might be seen, if they had a look-out at the mast-head.

While I was still feeding the fire, and so wrapped up in doing it, that I had neither eyes nor ears for anything else, I heard the supercargo's voice on a sudden at my back. He had stolen on me along the sand. When I faced him, he was swinging his arms about in the air, and saying to himself over and over again, "I see the ship! I see the ship!"

After a little, he came close up to me. By the look of him, he had been drinking the hartshorn, and it had strung him up a bit, body and mind, for the time. He kept his right hand behind him, as if he was hiding something. I suspected that "something" to be the pistol I was in search of.

"Will the ship come here?" says he.

"Yes, if they see the smoke," says I, keeping my eye on him.

He waited a bit, frowning suspiciously, and looking hard at me all the time.

"What did I say to you yesterday?" he asked.

"What I have got written down here," I made answer, smacking my hand over the writing-case in my breast-pocket; "and what I mean to put to the proof, if the ship sees us and we get back to England."

He whipped his right hand round from behind him, like lightning; and snapped the pistol at me. It missed fire. I wrenched it from him in a moment, and was just within one hair's breadth of knocking him on the head with the butt-end, afterwards. I lifted my hand—then thought better, and dropped it again.

"No," says I, fixing my eyes on him steadily; "I'll wait till the ship finds us."

He slunk away from me; and, as he slunk, looked hard into the fire. He stopped a minute so, thinking to himself—then he looked back at me again, with some mad mischief in him, that twinkled through his blue spectacles, and grinned on his dry black lips.

"The ship shall never find you," he said. With which words, he turned himself about towards his own side of the island, and left me.

He only meant that saying to be a threat—but, bird of ill-omen that he was, it turned out as good as a prophecy! All my hard work with the fire proved work in vain; all hope was quenched in me, long before the embers I had set light to were burnt out. Whether the smoke was seen or not from the vessel, is more than I can tell. I only know that she filled away on the other tack, not ten minutes after the supercargo left me. In less than an hour's time the last glimpse of the bright topsails had vanished out of view.

I went back to my cavern—which was now likelier than ever to be my grave as well. In that hot climate, with all the moisture on the island dried up, with not quite so much as a tumbler-full of fresh water left, with my strength wasted by living on half rations of food—two days more at most would see me out. It was hard enough for a man at my age, with all that I had left at home to make life precious, to die such a death as was now before me. It was harder still to have the sting of death sharpened—as I felt it, then—by what had just happened between the supercargo and myself. There was no hope, now, that his wanderings, the day before, had more falsehood than truth in them. The secret he had let out was plainly true enough and serious enough to have scared him into attempting my life, rather than let me keep possession of it, when there was a chance of the ship rescuing us. That secret had father's good name mixed up with it—and here was I, instead of clearing the villanous darkness from off of it, carrying it with me, black as ever, into my grave.

It was out of the horror I felt at doing that, and out of the yearning of my heart towards you, Alfred, when I thought of it, that the notion came to comfort me of writing the Message at the top of the paper, and of committing it in the bottle to the sea. Drowning men, they say, catch at straws—and the straw of comfort I caught at was the one chance in ten thousand that the Message might float till it was picked up, and that it might reach you. My mind might, or might not, have been failing me, by this time—but it is true, either way, that I did feel comforted when I had emptied one of the two bottles left in the medicine-chest, had put the paper inside, had tied the stopper carefully over with the oilskin, and had laid the whole by in my pocket, ready, when I felt my time coming, to drop into the sea. I was rid of the secret, I thought to myself; and, if it pleased God, I was rid of it, Alfred, to you.

The day waned; and the sun set, all cloudless and golden, in a dead calm. There was not a ripple anywhere on the long-oily heaving of the sea. Before night came I strengthened myself with a better meal than usual, as to food—for where was the use of keeping meat and biscuit when I had not water enough to last along with them? When the stars came out and the moon rose, I gathered the wood together and lit the signal-fire, according to custom, on the beach outside my cavern. I had no hope from it—but the fire was company to me: the looking into it quieted my thoughts, and the crackling of it was a relief in the silence. I don't know why it was, but the breathless stillness of that night had something awful in it, and went near to frightening me.

The moon got high in the heavens, and the light of her lay all in a flood on the sand before me, on the rocks that jutted out from it, and on the calm sea beyond. I was thinking of Margaret—wondering if the moon was shining on our little bay at Steepways, and if she was looking at it too—when I saw a man's shadow steal over the white of the sand. He was lurking near me again! In a minute, he came into view. The moonshine glinted on his blue spectacles, and glimmered on his bald head. He stopped as he passed by the rocks and looked about for a loose stone: he found a large one, and came straight with it on tiptoe, up to the fire. I showed myself to him on a sudden, in the red of the flame, with the pistol in my hand. He dropped the stone, and shrank back, at the sight of it. When he was close to the sea, he stopped, and screamed out at me, "The ship's coming! The ship's coming! The ship shall never find you!" That notion of the ship, and that other notion of killing me before help came to us, seemed never to have left him. When he turned, and went back by the way he had come, he was still shouting out those same words. For a quarter of an hour or more, I heard him, till the silence swallowed up his ravings, and led me back again to my thoughts of home.

Those thoughts kept with me, till the moon was on the wane. It was darker now, and stiller than ever. I had not fed the signal-fire for half an hour or more, and had roused myself up, at the mouth of the cavern, to do it, when I saw the dying gleams of moonshine over the sea on either side of me change colour, and turn red. Black shadows, as from low-flying clouds, swept after each other over the deepening redness. The air grew hot—a sound came nearer and nearer, from above me and behind me, like the rush of wind and the roar of water, both together, and both far off. I ran out on to the sand and looked back. The island was on fire!

On fire at the point of it opposite to me—on fire in one great sheet of flame that stretched right across the island, and bore down on me steadily before the light westerly wind which was blowing at the time. Only one hand could have kindled that terrible flame—the hand of the lost wretch who had left me, with the mad threat on his lips and the murderous notion of burning me out of my refuge, working in his crazy brain. On his side of the island (where the fire had begun), the dry grass and scrub grew all round the little hollow in the earth which I had left to him for his place of refuge. If he had had a thousand lives to lose, he would have lost that thousand already!

Having nothing to feed on but the dry scrub, the flame swept forward with such a frightful swiftness, that I had barely time, after mastering my own scattered senses, to turn back into the cavern to get my last drink of water and my last mouthful of food, before I heard the fiery scorch crackling over the thatched-roof which my own hands had raised. I ran across the beach to the spur of rock which jutted out into the sea, and there crouched down on the farthest edge I could reach to. There was nothing for the fire to lay hold of between me and the top of the island-bank. I was far enough away to be out of the lick of the flames, and low enough down to get air under the sweep of the smoke. You may well wonder why, with death by starvation threatening me close at hand, I should have schemed and struggled as I did, to save myself from a quicker death by suffocation in the smoke. I can only answer to that, that I wonder too—but so it was.

The flames eat their way to the edge of the bank, and lapped over it as if they longed to lick me up. The heat scorched nearer than I had thought, and the smoke poured lower and thicker. I lay down sick and weak on the rock, with my face close over the calm cool water. When I ventured to lift myself up again, the top of the island was of a ruby red, the smoke rose slowly in little streams, and the air above was quivering with the heat. While I looked at it, I felt a kind of surging and singing in my head, and a deadly faintness and coldness crept all over me. I took the bottle that held the Message from my pocket, and dropped it into the sea—then crawled a little way back over the rocks, and fell forward on them before I could get as far as the sand. The last I remember was trying to say my prayers—losing the words—losing my sight—losing the sense of where I was—losing everything.

The day was breaking again, when I was roused up by feeling rough hands on me. Naked savages—some on the rocks, some in the water, some in two long canoes—were clamouring and crowding about on all sides. They bound me, and took me off at once to one of the canoes. The other kept company—and both were paddled back to that high land which I had seen in the south. Death had passed me by once more—and Captivity had come in its place.

The story of my life among the savages, having no concern with the matter now in hand, may be passed by here in few words. They had seen the fire on the island; and paddling over to reconnoitre, had found me. Not one of them had ever set eyes on a white man before. I was taken away to be shown about among them for a curiosity. When they were tired of showing me, they spared my life, finding my knowledge and general handiness as a civilised man useful to them in various ways. I lost all count of time in my captivity—and can only guess now that it lasted more than one year and less than two. I made two attempts to escape, each time in a canoe, and was balked in both. Nobody at home in England would ever, as I believe, have seen me again, if an outward-bound vessel had not touched at the little desert island for fresh water. Finding none there, she came on to the territory of the savages (which was an island too). When they took me on board, I looked little better than a savage myself, and I could hardly talk my own language. By the help of the kindness shown to me, I was right again by the time we spoke the first ship homeward-bound. To that vessel I was transferred; and, in her, I worked my passage back to Falmouth.

CHAPTER V

THE RESTITUTION

Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins

Captain Jorgan, up and out betimes, had put the whole village of Lanrean under an amicable cross-examination, and was returning to the King Arthur’s Arms to breakfast, none the wiser for his trouble, when he beheld the young fisherman advancing to meet him, accompanied by a stranger. A glance at this stranger assured the captain that he could be no other than the Seafaring Man; and the captain was about to hail him as a fellow-craftsman, when the two stood still and silent before the captain, and the captain stood still, silent, and wondering before them.

“Why, what’s this?” cried the captain, when at last he broke the silence. “You two are alike. You two are much alike. What’s this?”

Not a word was answered on the other side, until after the seafaring brother had got hold of the captain’s right hand, and the fisherman brother had got hold of the captain’s left hand; and if ever the captain had had his fill of hand-shaking, from his birth to that hour, he had it then. And presently up and spoke the two brothers, one at a time, two at a time, two dozen at a time for the bewilderment into which they plunged the captain, until he gradually had Hugh Raybrock’s deliverance made clear to him, and also unravelled the fact that the person referred to in the half-obliterated paper was Tregarthen himself.

“Formerly, dear Captain Jorgan,” said Alfred, “of Lanrean, you recollect? Kitty and her father came to live at Steepways after Hugh shipped on his last voyage.”

“Ay, ay!” cried the captain, fetching a breath. “Now you have me in tow. Then your brother here don’t know his sister-in-law that is to be so much as by name?”

“Never saw her; never heard of her!”

“Ay, ay, ay!” cried the captain. “Why then we every one go back together—paper, writer, and all—and take Tregarthen into the secret we kept from him?”

“Surely,” said Alfred, “we can’t help it now. We must go through with our duty.”

“Not a doubt,” returned the captain. “Give me an arm apiece, and let us set this ship-shape.”

So walking up and down in the shrill wind on the wild moor, while the neglected breakfast cooled within, the captain and the brothers settled their course of action.

It was that they should all proceed by the quickest means they could secure to Barnstaple, and there look over the father’s books and papers in the lawyer’s keeping; as Hugh had proposed to himself to do if ever he reached home. That, enlightened or unenlightened, they should then return to Steepways and go straight to Mr. Tregarthen, and tell him all they knew, and see what came of it, and act accordingly. Lastly, that when they got there they should enter the village with all precautions against Hugh’s being recognised by any chance; and that to the captain should be consigned the task of preparing his wife and mother for his restoration to this life.

“For you see,” quoth Captain Jorgan, touching the last head, “it requires caution any way, great joys being as dangerous as great griefs, if not more dangerous, as being more uncommon (and therefore less provided against) in this round world of ours. And besides, I should like to free my name with the ladies, and take you home again at your brightest and luckiest; so don’t let’s throw away a chance of success.”

The captain was highly lauded by the brothers for his kind interest and foresight.

“And now stop!” said the captain, coming to a standstill, and looking from one brother to the other, with quite a new rigging of wrinkles about each eye; “you are of opinion,” to the elder, “that you are ra’ather slow?”

“I assure you I am very slow,” said the honest Hugh.

“Wa’al,” replied the captain, “I assure you that to the best of my belief I am ra’ather smart. Now a slow man ain’t good at quick business, is he?”

That was clear to both.

“You,” said the captain, turning to the younger brother, “are a little in love; ain’t you?”

“Not a little, Captain Jorgan.”

“Much or little, you’re sort preoccupied; ain’t you?”

It was impossible to be denied.

“And a sort preoccupied man ain’t good at quick business, is he?” said the captain.

Equally clear on all sides.

“Now,” said the captain, “I ain’t in love myself, and I’ve made many a smart run across the ocean, and I should like to carry on and go ahead with this affair of yours, and make a run slick through it. Shall I try? Will you hand it over to me?”

They were both delighted to do so, and thanked him heartily.

“Good,” said the captain, taking out his watch. “This is half-past eight A.M., Friday morning. I’ll jot that down, and we’ll compute how many hours we’ve been out when we run into your mother’s post-office. There! The entry’s made, and now we go ahead.”

They went ahead so well that before the Barnstaple lawyer’s office was open next morning, the captain was sitting whistling on the step of the door, waiting for the clerk to come down the street with his key and open it. But instead of the clerk there came the master, with whom the captain fraternised on the spot to an extent that utterly confounded him.

As he personally knew both Hugh and Alfred, there was no difficulty in obtaining immediate access to such of the father’s papers as were in his keeping. These were chiefly old letters and cash accounts; from which the captain, with a shrewdness and despatch that left the lawyer far behind, established with perfect clearness, by noon, the following particulars:—

That one Lawrence Clissold had borrowed of the deceased, at a time when he was a thriving young tradesman in the town of Barnstaple, the sum of five hundred pounds. That he had borrowed it on the written statement that it was to be laid out in furtherance of a speculation which he expected would raise him to independence; he being, at the time of writing that letter, no more than a clerk in the house of Dringworth Brothers, America-square, London. That the money was borrowed for a stipulated period; but that, when the term was out, the aforesaid speculation failed, and Clissold was without means of repayment. That, hereupon, he had written to his creditor, in no very persuasive terms, vaguely requesting further time. That the creditor had refused this concession, declaring that he could not afford delay. That Clissold then paid the debt, accompanying the remittance of the money with an angry letter describing it as having been advanced by a relative to save him from ruin. That, in acknowlodging the receipt, Raybrock had cautioned Clissold to seek to borrow money of him no more, as he would never so risk money again.

Before the lawyer the captain said never a word in reference to these discoveries. But when the papers had been put back in their box, and he and his two companions were well out of the office, his right leg suffered for it, and he said,—

“So far this run’s begun with a fair wind and a prosperous; for don’t you see that all this agrees with that dutiful trust in his father maintained by the slow member of the Raybrock family?”

Whether the brothers had seen it before or no, they saw it now. Not that the captain gave them much time to contemplate the state of things at their ease, for he instantly whipped them into a chaise again, and bore them off to Steepways. Although the afternoon was but just beginning to decline when they reached it, and it was broad day-light, still they had no difficulty, by dint of muffing the returned sailor up, and ascending the village rather than descending it, in reaching Tregarthen’s cottage unobserved. Kitty was not visible, and they surprised Tregarthen sitting writing in the small bay-window of his little room.

“Sir,” said the captain, instantly shaking hands with him, pen and all, “I’m glad to see you, sir. How do you do, sir? I told you you’d think better of me by-and-by, and I congratulate you on going to do it.”

Here the captain’s eye fell on Tom Pettifer Ho, engaged in preparing some cookery at the fire.

“That critter,” said the captain, smiting his leg, “is a born steward, and never ought to have been in any other way of life. Stop where you are, Tom, and make yourself useful. Now, Tregarthen, I’m going to try a chair.”

Accordingly the captain drew one close to him, and went on:—

“This loving member of the Raybrock family you know, sir. This slow member of the same family you don’t know, sir. Wa’al, these two are brothers,—fact! Hugh’s come to life again, and here he stands. Now see here, my friend! You don’t want to be told that he was cast away, but you do want to be told (for there’s a purpose in it) that he was cast away with another man. That man by name was Lawrence Clissold.”

At the mention of this name Tregarthen started and changed colour. “What’s the matter?” said the captain.

“He was a fellow-clerk of mine thirty—five-and-thirty—years ago.”

“True,” said the captain, immediately catching at the clew: “Dringworth Brothers, America-square, London City.”

The other started again, nodded, and said, “That was the house.”

“Now,” pursued the captain, “between those two men cast away there arose a mystery concerning the round sum of five hundred pound.”

Again Tregarthen started, changing colour. Again the captain said, “What’s the matter?”

As Tregarthen only answered, “Please to go on,” the captain recounted, very tersely and plainly, the nature of Clissold’s wanderings on the barren island, as he had condensed them in his mind from the seafaring man. Tregarthen became greatly agitated during this recital, and at length exclaimed,—

“Clissold was the man who ruined me! I have suspected it for many a long year, and now I know it.”

“And how,” said the captain, drawing his chair still closer to Tregarthen, and clapping his hand upon his shoulder,—“how may you know it?”

“When we were fellow-clerks,” replied Tregarthen, “in that London house, it was one of my duties to enter daily in a certain book an account of the sums received that day by the firm, and afterward paid into the bankers’. One memorable day,—a Wednesday, the black day of my life,—among the sums I so entered was one of five hundred pounds.”

“I begin to make it out,” said the captain. “Yes?”

“It was one of Clissold’s duties to copy from this entry a memorandum of the sums which the clerk employed to go to the bankers’ paid in there. It was my duty to hand the money to Clissold; it was Clissold’s to hand it to the clerk, with that memorandum of his writing. On that Wednesday I entered a sum of five hundred pounds received. I handed that sum, as I handed the other sums in the day’s entry, to Clissold. I was absolutely certain of it at the time; I have been absolutely certain of it ever since. A sum of five hundred pounds was afterward found by the house to have been that day wanting from the bag, from Clissold’s memorandum, and from the entries in my book. Clissold, being questioned, stood upon his perfect clearness in the matter, and emphatically declared that he asked no better than to be tested by ‘Tregarthen’s book.’ My book was examined, and the entry of five hundred pounds was not there.”

“How not there,” said the captain, “when you made it yourself?”

Tregarthen continued:—

“I was then questioned. Had I made the entry? Certainly I had. The house produced my book, and it was not there. I could not deny my book; I could not deny my writing. I knew there must be forgery by some one; but the writing was wonderfully like mine, and I could impeach no one if the house could not. I was required to pay the money back. I did so; and I left the house, almost broken-hearted, rather than remain there,—even if I could have done so,—with a dark shadow of suspicion always on me. I returned to my native place, Lanrean, and remained there, clerk to a mine, until I was appointed to my little post here.”

“I well remember,” said the captain, “that I told you that if you had no experience of ill judgments on deceiving appearances, you were a lucky man. You went hurt at that, and I see why. I’m sorry.”

“Thus it is,” said Tregarthen. “Of my own innocence I have of course been sure; it has been at once my comfort and my trial. Of Clissold I have always had suspicions almost amounting to certainty; but they have never been confirmed until now. For my daughter’s sake and for my own I have carried this subject in my own heart, as the only secret of my life, and have long believed that it would die with me.”

“Wa’al, my good sir,” said the captain cordially, “the present question is, and will be long, I hope, concerning living, and not dying. Now, here are our two honest friends, the loving Raybrock and the slow. Here they stand, agreed on one point, on which I’d back ’em round the world, and right across it from north to south, and then again from east to west, and through it, from your deepest Cornish mine to China. It is, that they will never use this same so-often-mentioned sum of money, and that restitution of it must be made to you. These two, the loving member and the slow, for the sake of the right and of their father’s memory, will have it ready for you to-morrow. Take it, and ease their minds and mine, and end a most unfortunate transaction.”

Tregarthen took the captain by the hand, and gave his hand to each of the young men, but positively and finally answered No. He said, they trusted to his word, and he was glad of it, and at rest in his mind; but there was no proof, and the money must remain as it was. All were very earnest over this; and earnestness in men, when they are right and true, is so impressive, that Mr. Pettifer deserted his cookery and looked on quite moved.

“And so,” said the captain, “so we come—as that lawyer-crittur over yonder where we were this morning might—to mere proof; do we? We must have it; must we? How? From this Clissold’s wanderings, and from what you say, it ain’t hard to make out that there was a neat forgery of your writing committed by the too smart rowdy that was grease and ashes when I made his acquaintance, and a substitution of a forged leaf in your book for a real and torn leaf torn out. Now was that real and true leaf then and there destroyed? No,—for says he, in his drunken way, he slipped it into a crack in his own desk, because you came into the office before there was time to burn it, and could never get back to it arterwards. Wait a bit. Where is that desk now? Do you consider it likely to be in America-square, London City?”

Tregarthen shook his head.

“The house has not, for years, transacted business in that place. I have heard of it, and read of it, as removed, enlarged, every way altered. Things alter so fast in these times.”

“You think so,” returned the captain, with compassion; “but you should come over and see me afore you talk about that. Wa’al, now. This desk, this paper,—this paper, this desk,” said the captain, ruminating and walking about, and looking, in his uneasy abstraction, into Mr. Pettifer’s hat on a table, among other things. “This desk, this paper,—this paper, this desk,” the captain continued, musing and roaming about the room, “I’d give——”

However, he gave nothing, but took up his steward’s hat instead, and stood looking into it, as if he had just come into church. After that he roamed again, and again said, “This desk, belonging to this house of Dringworth Brothers, America-square, London City——”

Mr. Pettifer, still strangely moved, and now more moved than before, cut the captain off as he backed across the room, and bespake him thus:—

“Captain Jorgan, I have been wishful to engage your attention, but I couldn’t do it. I am unwilling to interrupt Captain Jorgan, but I must do it. I knew something about that house.”

The captain stood stock-still and looked at him,—with his (Mr. Pettifer’s) hat under his arm.

“You’re aware,” pursued his steward, “that I was once in the broking business, Captain Jorgan?”

“I was aware,” said the captain, “that you had failed in that calling, and in half the businesses going, Tom.”

“Not quite so, Captain Jorgan; but I failed in the broking business. I was partners with my brother, sir. There was a sale of old office furniture at Dringworth Brothers’ when the house was moved from America-square, and me and my brother made what we call in the trade a Deal there, sir. And I’ll make bold to say, sir, that the only thing I ever had from my brother, or from any relation,—for my relations have mostly taken property from me instead of giving me any,—was an old desk we bought at that same sale, with a crack in it. My brother wouldn’t have given me even that, when we broke partnership, if it had been worth anything.”

“Where is that desk now?” said the captain.

“Well, Captain Jorgan,” replied the steward, “I couldn’t say for certain where it is now; but when I saw it last,—which was last time we were outward bound,—it was at a very nice lady’s at Wapping, along with a little chest of mine which was detained for a small matter of a bill owing.”

The captain, instead of paying that rapt attention to his steward which was rendered by the other three persons present, went to Church again, in respect of the steward’s hat. And a most especially agitated and memorable face the captain produced from it, after a short pause.

“Now, Tom,” said the captain, “I spoke to you, when we first came here, respecting your constitutional weakness on the subject of sun-stroke.”

“You did, sir.”

“Will my slow friend,” said the captain, “lend me his arm, or I shall sink right back’ards into this blessed steward’s cookery? Now, Tom,” pursued the captain, when the required assistance was given, “on your oath as a steward, didn’t you take that desk to pieces to make a better one of it, and put it together fresh,—or something of the kind?”

“On my oath I did, sir,” replied the steward.

“And by the blessing of Heaven, my friends, one and all,” cried the captain, radiant with joy,—“of the Heaven that put it into this Tom Pettifer’s head to take so much care of his head against the bright sun,—he lined his hat with the original leaf in Tregarthen’s writing,—and here it is!”

With that the captain, to the utter destruction of Mr. Pettifer’s favourite hat, produced the book-leaf, very much worn, but still legible, and gave both his legs such tremendous slaps that they were heard far off in the bay, and never accounted for.

“A quarter past five P.M.,” said the captain, pulling out his watch, “and that’s thirty-three hours and a quarter in all, and a pritty run!”

How they were all overpowered with delight and triumph; how the money was restored, then and there, to Tregarthen; how Tregarthen, then and there, gave it all to his daughter; how the captain undertook to go to Dringworth Brothers and re-establish the reputation of their forgotten old clerk; how Kitty came in, and was nearly torn to pieces, and the marriage was reappointed, needs not to be told. Nor how she and the young fisherman went home to the post-office to prepare the way for the captain’s coming, by declaring him to be the mightiest of men, who had made all their fortunes,—and then dutifully withdrew together, in order that he might have the domestic coast entirely to himself. How he availed himself of it is all that remains to tell.

Deeply delighted with his trust, and putting his heart into it, he raised the latch of the post-office parlour where Mrs. Raybrock and the young widow sat, and said,—

“May I come in?”

“Sure you may, Captain Jorgan!” replied the old lady. “And good reason you have to be free of the house, though you have not been too well used in it by some who ought to have known better. I ask your pardon.”

“No you don’t, ma’am,” said the captain, “for I won’t let you. Wa’al, to be sure!”

By this time he had taken a chair on the hearth between them.

“Never felt such an evil spirit in the whole course of my life! There! I tell you! I could a’most have cut my own connection. Like the dealer in my country, away West, who when he had let himself be outdone in a bargain, said to himself, ‘Now I tell you what! I’ll never speak to you again.’ And he never did, but joined a settlement of oysters, and translated the multiplication table into their language,—which is a fact that can be proved. If you doubt it, mention it to any oyster you come across, and see if he’ll have the face to contradict it.”

He took the child from her mother’s lap and set it on his knee.

“Not a bit afraid of me now, you see. Knows I am fond of small people. I have a child, and she’s a girl, and I sing to her sometimes.”

“What do you sing?” asked Margaret.

“Not a long song, my dear.

Silas Jorgan

Played the organ.

That’s about all. And sometimes I tell her stories,—stories of sailors supposed to be lost, and recovered after all hope was abandoned.” Here the captain musingly went back to his song,—

Silas Jorgan

Played the organ;

repeating it with his eyes on the fire, as he softly danced the child on his knee. For he felt that Margaret had stopped working.

“Yes,” said the captain, still looking at the fire, “I make up stories and tell ’em to that child. Stories of shipwreck on desert islands, and long delay in getting back to civilised lauds. It is to stories the like of that, mostly, that

Silas Jorgan

Plays the organ.”

There was no light in the room but the light of the fire; for the shades of night were on the village, and the stars had begun to peep out of the sky one by one, as the houses of the village peeped out from among the foliage when the night departed. The captain felt that Margaret’s eyes were upon him, and thought it discreetest to keep his own eyes on the fire.

“Yes; I make ’em up,” said the captain. “I make up stories of brothers brought together by the good providence of GOD,—of sons brought back to mothers, husbands brought back to wives, fathers raised from the deep, for little children like herself.”

Margaret’s touch was on his arm, and he could not choose but look round now. Next moment her hand moved imploringly to his breast, and she was on her knees before him,—supporting the mother, who was also kneeling.

“What’s the matter?” said the captain. “What’s the matter?

Silas Jorgan

Played the——”

Their looks and tears were too much for him, and he could not finish the song, short as it was.

“Mistress Margaret, you have borne ill fortune well. Could you bear good fortune equally well, if it was to come?”

“I hope so. I thankfully and humbly and earnestly hope so!”

“Wa’al, my dear,” said the captain, “p’rhaps it has come. He’s—don’t be frightened—shall I say the word——”

“Alive?”

“Yes!”

The thanks they fervently addressed to Heaven were again too much for the captain, who openly took out his handkerchief and dried his eyes.

“He’s no further off,” resumed the captain, “than my country. Indeed, he’s no further off than his own native country. To tell you the truth, he’s no further off than Falmouth. Indeed, I doubt if he’s quite so fur. Indeed, if you was sure you could bear it nicely, and I was to do no more than whistle for him——”

The captain’s trust was discharged. A rush came, and they were all together again.

This was a fine opportunity for Tom Pettifer to appear with a tumbler of cold water, and he presently appeared with it, and administered it to the ladies; at the same time soothing them, and composing their dresses, exactly as if they had been passengers crossing the Channel. The extent to which the captain slapped his legs, when Mr. Pettifer acquitted himself of this act of stewardship, could have been thoroughly appreciated by no one but himself; inasmuch as he must have slapped them black and blue, and they must have smarted tremendously.

He couldn’t stay for the wedding, having a few appointments to keep at the irreconcilable distance of about four thousand miles. So next morning all the village cheered him up to the level ground above, and there he shook hands with a complete Census of its population, and invited the whole, without exception, to come and stay several months with him at Salem, Mass., U.S. And there as he stood on the spot where he had seen that little golden picture of love and parting, and from which he could that morning contemplate another golden picture with a vista of golden years in it, little Kitty put her arms around his neck, and kissed him on both his bronzed cheeks, and laid her pretty face upon his storm-beaten breast, in sight of all,—ashamed to have called such a noble captain names. And there the captain waved his hat over his head three final times; and there he was last seen, going away accompanied by Tom Pettifer Ho, and carrying his hands in his pockets. And there, before that ground was softened with the fallen leaves of three more summers, a rosy little boy took his first unsteady run to a fair young mother’s breast, and the name of that infant fisherman was Jorgan Raybrock.

TOM TIDDLER'S GROUND

1861

CONTENTS

I. Picking Up Soot and Cinders

II. Picking Up Evening Shadows

III. Picking Up Terrible Company

IV. Picking Up Waifs at Sea

V. Picking Up a Pocket-Book

VI. Picking Up Miss Kimmeens

VII. Picking Up the Tinker

CHAPTER I

PICKING UP SOOT AND CINDERS

Charles Dickens

“And why Tom Tiddler’s ground?” said the Traveller.

“Because he scatters halfpence to Tramps and such-like,” returned the Landlord, “and of course they pick ’em up. And this being done on his own land (which it is his own land, you observe, and were his family’s before him), why it is but regarding the halfpence as gold and silver, and turning the ownership of the property a bit round your finger, and there you have the name of the children’s game complete. And it’s appropriate too,” said the Landlord, with his favourite action of stooping a little, to look across the table out of window at vacancy, under the window-blind which was half drawn down. “Leastwise it has been so considered by many gentlemen which have partook of chops and tea in the present humble parlour.”

The Traveller was partaking of chops and tea in the present humble parlour, and the Landlord’s shot was fired obliquely at him.

“And you call him a Hermit?” said the Traveller.

“They call him such,” returned the Landlord, evading personal responsibility; “he is in general so considered.”

“What is a Hermit?” asked the Traveller.

“What is it?” repeated the Landlord, drawing his hand across his chin.

“Yes, what is it?”

The Landlord stooped again, to get a more comprehensive view of vacancy under the window-blind, and—with an asphyxiated appearance on him as one unaccustomed to definition—made no answer.

“I’ll tell you what I suppose it to be,” said the Traveller. “An abominably dirty thing.”

“Mr. Mopes is dirty, it cannot be denied,” said the Landlord.

“Intolerably conceited.”

“Mr. Mopes is vain of the life he leads, some do say,” replied the Landlord, as another concession.

“A slothful, unsavoury, nasty reversal of the laws of human nature,” said the Traveller; “and for the sake of GOD’S working world and its wholesomeness, both moral and physical, I would put the thing on the treadmill (if I had my way) wherever I found it; whether on a pillar, or in a hole; whether on Tom Tiddler’s ground, or the Pope of Rome’s ground, or a Hindoo fakeer’s ground, or any other ground.”

“I don’t know about putting Mr. Mopes on the treadmill,” said the Landlord, shaking his head very seriously. “There ain’t a doubt but what he has got landed property.”

“How far may it be to this said Tom Tiddler’s ground?” asked the Traveller.

“Put it at five mile,” returned the Landlord.

“Well! When I have done my breakfast,” said the Traveller, “I’ll go there. I came over here this morning, to find it out and see it.”

“Many does,” observed the Landlord.

The conversation passed, in the Midsummer weather of no remote year of grace, down among the pleasant dales and trout-streams of a green English county. No matter what county. Enough that you may hunt there, shoot there, fish there, traverse long grass-grown Roman roads there, open ancient barrows there, see many a square mile of richly cultivated land there, and hold Arcadian talk with a bold peasantry, their country’s pride, who will tell you (if you want to know) how pastoral housekeeping is done on nine shillings a week.

Mr. Traveller sat at his breakfast in the little sanded parlour of the Peal of Bells village alehouse, with the dew and dust of an early walk upon his shoes—an early walk by road and meadow and coppice, that had sprinkled him bountifully with little blades of grass, and scraps of new hay, and with leaves both young and old, and with other such fragrant tokens of the freshness and wealth of summer. The window through which the landlord had concentrated his gaze upon vacancy was shaded, because the morning sun was hot and bright on the village street. The village street was like most other village streets: wide for its height, silent for its size, and drowsy in the dullest degree. The quietest little dwellings with the largest of window-shutters (to shut up Nothing as carefully as if it were the Mint, or the Bank of England) had called in the Doctor’s house so suddenly, that his brass door-plate and three stories stood among them as conspicuous and different as the doctor himself in his broadcloth, among the smock-frocks of his patients. The village residences seemed to have gone to law with a similar absence of consideration, for a score of weak little lath-and-plaster cabins clung in confusion about the Attorney’s red-brick house, which, with glaring door-steps and a most terrific scraper, seemed to serve all manner of ejectments upon them. They were as various as labourers—high-shouldered, wry-necked, one-eyed, goggle-eyed, squinting, bow-legged, knock-knee’d, rheumatic, crazy. Some of the small tradesmen’s houses, such as the crockery-shop and the harness-maker, had a Cyclops window in the middle of the gable, within an inch or two of its apex, suggesting that some forlorn rural Prentice must wriggle himself into that apartment horizontally, when he retired to rest, after the manner of the worm. So bountiful in its abundance was the surrounding country, and so lean and scant the village, that one might have thought the village had sown and planted everything it once possessed, to convert the same into crops. This would account for the bareness of the little shops, the bareness of the few boards and trestles designed for market purposes in a corner of the street, the bareness of the obsolete Inn and Inn Yard, with the ominous inscription “Excise Office” not yet faded out from the gateway, as indicating the very last thing that poverty could get rid of. This would also account for the determined abandonment of the village by one stray dog, fast lessening in the perspective where the white posts and the pond were, and would explain his conduct on the hypothesis that he was going (through the act of suicide) to convert himself into manure, and become a part proprietor in turnips or mangold-wurzel.

Mr. Traveller having finished his breakfast and paid his moderate score, walked out to the threshold of the Peal of Bells, and, thence directed by the pointing finger of his host, betook himself towards the ruined hermitage of Mr. Mopes the hermit.

For, Mr. Mopes, by suffering everything about him to go to ruin, and by dressing himself in a blanket and skewer, and by steeping himself in soot and grease and other nastiness, had acquired great renown in all that country-side—far greater renown than he could ever have won for himself, if his career had been that of any ordinary Christian, or decent Hottentot. He had even blanketed and skewered and sooted and greased himself, into the London papers. And it was curious to find, as Mr. Traveller found by stopping for a new direction at this farm-house or at that cottage as he went along, with how much accuracy the morbid Mopes had counted on the weakness of his neighbours to embellish him. A mist of home-brewed marvel and romance surrounded Mopes, in which (as in all fogs) the real proportions of the real object were extravagantly heightened. He had murdered his beautiful beloved in a fit of jealousy and was doing penance; he had made a vow under the influence of grief; he had made a vow under the influence of a fatal accident; he had made a vow under the influence of religion; he had made a vow under the influence of drink; he had made a vow under the influence of disappointment; he had never made any vow, but “had got led into it” by the possession of a mighty and most awful secret; he was enormously rich, he was stupendously charitable, he was profoundly learned, he saw spectres, he knew and could do all kinds of wonders. Some said he went out every night, and was met by terrified wayfarers stalking along dark roads, others said he never went out, some knew his penance to be nearly expired, others had positive information that his seclusion was not a penance at all, and would never expire but with himself. Even, as to the easy facts of how old he was, or how long he had held verminous occupation of his blanket and skewer, no consistent information was to be got, from those who must know if they would. He was represented as being all the ages between five-and-twenty and sixty, and as having been a hermit seven years, twelve, twenty, thirty,—though twenty, on the whole, appeared the favourite term.

“Well, well!” said Mr. Traveller. “At any rate, let us see what a real live Hermit looks like.”

So, Mr. Traveller went on, and on, and on, until he came to Tom Tiddler’s Ground.

It was a nook in a rustic by-road, which the genius of Mopes had laid waste as completely, as if he had been born an Emperor and a Conqueror. Its centre object was a dwelling-house, sufficiently substantial, all the window-glass of which had been long ago abolished by the surprising genius of Mopes, and all the windows of which were barred across with rough-split logs of trees nailed over them on the outside. A rickyard, hip-high in vegetable rankness and ruin, contained outbuildings from which the thatch had lightly fluttered away, on all the winds of all the seasons of the year, and from which the planks and beams had heavily dropped and rotted. The frosts and damps of winter, and the heats of summer, had warped what wreck remained, so that not a post or a board retained the position it was meant to hold, but everything was twisted from its purpose, like its owner, and degraded and debased. In this homestead of the sluggard, behind the ruined hedge, and sinking away among the ruined grass and the nettles, were the last perishing fragments of certain ricks: which had gradually mildewed and collapsed, until they looked like mounds of rotten honeycomb, or dirty sponge. Tom Tiddler’s ground could even show its ruined water; for, there was a slimy pond into which a tree or two had fallen—one soppy trunk and branches lay across it then—which in its accumulation of stagnant weed, and in its black decomposition, and in all its foulness and filth, was almost comforting, regarded as the only water that could have reflected the shameful place without seeming polluted by that low office.

Mr. Traveller looked all around him on Tom Tiddler’s ground, and his glance at last encountered a dusky Tinker lying among the weeds and rank grass, in the shade of the dwelling-house. A rough walking-staff lay on the ground by his side, and his head rested on a small wallet. He met Mr. Traveller’s eye without lifting up his head, merely depressing his chin a little (for he was lying on his back) to get a better view of him.

“Good day!” said Mr. Traveller.

“Same to you, if you like it,” returned the Tinker.

“Don’t you like it? It’s a very fine day.”

“I ain’t partickler in weather,” returned the Tinker, with a yawn.

Mr. Traveller had walked up to where he lay, and was looking down at him. “This is a curious place,” said Mr. Traveller.

“Ay, I suppose so!” returned the Tinker. “Tom Tiddler’s ground, they call this.”

“Are you well acquainted with it?”

“Never saw it afore to-day,” said the Tinker, with another yawn, “and don’t care if I never see it again. There was a man here just now, told me what it was called. If you want to see Tom himself, you must go in at that gate.” He faintly indicated with his chin a little mean ruin of a wooden gate at the side of the house.

“Have you seen Tom?”

“No, and I ain’t partickler to see him. I can see a dirty man anywhere.”

“He does not live in the house, then?” said Mr. Traveller, casting his eyes upon the house anew.

“The man said,” returned the Tinker, rather irritably,—“him as was here just now, ‘this what you’re a laying on, mate, is Tom Tiddler’s ground. And if you want to see Tom,’ he says, ‘you must go in at that gate.’ The man come out at that gate himself, and he ought to know.”

“Certainly,” said Mr. Traveller.

“Though, perhaps,” exclaimed the Tinker, so struck by the brightness of his own idea, that it had the electric effect upon him of causing him to lift up his head an inch or so, “perhaps he was a liar! He told some rum’uns—him as was here just now, did about this place of Tom’s. He says—him as was here just now—‘When Tom shut up the house, mate, to go to rack, the beds was left, all made, like as if somebody was a-going to sleep in every bed. And if you was to walk through the bedrooms now, you’d see the ragged mouldy bedclothes a heaving and a heaving like seas. And a heaving and a heaving with what?’ he says. ‘Why, with the rats under ’em.’”

“I wish I had seen that man,” Mr. Traveller remarked.

“You’d have been welcome to see him instead of me seeing him,” growled the Tinker; “for he was a long-winded one.”

Not without a sense of injury in the remembrance, the Tinker gloomily closed his eyes. Mr. Traveller, deeming the Tinker a short-winded one, from whom no further breath of information was to be derived, betook himself to the gate.

Swung upon its rusty hinges, it admitted him into a yard in which there was nothing to be seen but an outhouse attached to the ruined building, with a barred window in it. As there were traces of many recent footsteps under this window, and as it was a low window, and unglazed, Mr. Traveller made bold to peep within the bars. And there to be sure he had a real live Hermit before him, and could judge how the real dead Hermits used to look.

He was lying on a bank of soot and cinders, on the floor, in front of a rusty fireplace. There was nothing else in the dark little kitchen, or scullery, or whatever his den had been originally used as, but a table with a litter of old bottles on it. A rat made a clatter among these bottles, jumped down, and ran over the real live Hermit on his way to his hole, or the man in his hole would not have been so easily discernible. Tickled in the face by the rat’s tail, the owner of Tom Tiddler’s ground opened his eyes, saw Mr. Traveller, started up, and sprang to the window.

“Humph!” thought Mr. Traveller, retiring a pace or two from the bars. “A compound of Newgate, Bedlam, a Debtors’ Prison in the worst time, a chimney-sweep, a mudlark, and the Noble Savage! A nice old family, the Hermit family. Hah!”

Mr. Traveller thought this, as he silently confronted the sooty object in the blanket and skewer (in sober truth it wore nothing else), with the matted hair and the staring eyes. Further, Mr. Traveller thought, as the eye surveyed him with a very obvious curiosity in ascertaining the effect they produced, “Vanity, vanity, vanity! Verily, all is vanity!”

“What is your name, sir, and where do you come from?” asked Mr. Mopes the Hermit—with an air of authority, but in the ordinary human speech of one who has been to school.

Mr. Traveller answered the inquiries.

“Did you come here, sir, to see me?”

“I did. I heard of you, and I came to see you.—I know you like to be seen.” Mr. Traveller coolly threw the last words in, as a matter of course, to forestall an affectation of resentment or objection that he saw rising beneath the grease and grime of the face. They had their effect.

“So,” said the Hermit, after a momentary silence, unclasping the bars by which he had previously held, and seating himself behind them on the ledge of the window, with his bare legs and feet crouched up, “you know I like to be seen?”

Mr. Traveller looked about him for something to sit on, and, observing a billet of wood in a corner, brought it near the window. Deliberately seating himself upon it, he answered, “Just so.”

Each looked at the other, and each appeared to take some pains to get the measure of the other.

“Then you have come to ask me why I lead this life,” said the Hermit, frowning in a stormy manner. “I never tell that to any human being. I will not be asked that.”

“Certainly you will not be asked that by me,” said Mr. Traveller, “for I have not the slightest desire to know.”

“You are an uncouth man,” said Mr. Mopes the Hermit.

“You are another,” said Mr. Traveller.

The Hermit, who was plainly in the habit of overawing his visitors with the novelty of his filth and his blanket and skewer, glared at his present visitor in some discomfiture and surprise: as if he had taken aim at him with a sure gun, and his piece had missed fire.

“Why do you come here at all?” he asked, after a pause.

“Upon my life,” said Mr. Traveller, “I was made to ask myself that very question only a few minutes ago—by a Tinker too.”

As he glanced towards the gate in saying it, the Hermit glanced in that direction likewise.

“Yes. He is lying on his back in the sunlight outside,” said Mr, Traveller, as if he had been asked concerning the man, “and he won’t come in; for he says—and really very reasonably—‘What should I come in for? I can see a dirty man anywhere.’”

“You are an insolent person. Go away from my premises. Go!” said the Hermit, in an imperious and angry tone.

“Come, come!” returned Mr. Traveller, quite undisturbed. “This is a little too much. You are not going to call yourself clean? Look at your legs. And as to these being your premises:—they are in far too disgraceful a condition to claim any privilege of ownership, or anything else.”

The Hermit bounced down from his window-ledge, and cast himself on his bed of soot and cinders.

“I am not going,” said Mr. Traveller, glancing in after him; “you won’t get rid of me in that way. You had better come and talk.”

“I won’t talk,” said the Hermit, flouncing round to get his back towards the window.

“Then I will,” said Mr. Traveller. “Why should you take it ill that I have no curiosity to know why you live this highly absurd and highly indecent life? When I contemplate a man in a state of disease, surely there is no moral obligation on me to be anxious to know how he took it.”

After a short silence, the Hermit bounced up again, and came back to the barred window.

“What? You are not gone?” he said, affecting to have supposed that he was.

“Nor going,” Mr. Traveller replied: “I design to pass this summer day here.”

“How dare you come, sir, upon my promises——” the Hermit was returning, when his visitor interrupted him.

“Really, you know, you must not talk about your premises. I cannot allow such a place as this to be dignified with the name of premises.”

“How dare you,” said the Hermit, shaking his bars, “come in at my gate, to taunt me with being in a diseased state?”

“Why, Lord bless my soul,” returned the other, very composedly, “you have not the face to say that you are in a wholesome state? Do allow me again to call your attention to your legs. Scrape yourself anywhere—with anything—and then tell me you are in a wholesome state. The fact is, Mr. Mopes, that you are not only a Nuisance——”

“A Nuisance?” repeated the Hermit, fiercely.

“What is a place in this obscene state of dilapidation but a Nuisance? What is a man in your obscene state of dilapidation but a Nuisance? Then, as you very well know, you cannot do without an audience, and your audience is a Nuisance. You attract all the disreputable vagabonds and prowlers within ten miles around, by exhibiting yourself to them in that objectionable blanket, and by throwing copper money among them, and giving them drink out of those very dirty jars and bottles that I see in there (their stomachs need be strong!); and in short,” said Mr. Traveller, summing up in a quietly and comfortably settled manner, “you are a Nuisance, and this kennel is a Nuisance, and the audience that you cannot possibly dispense with is a Nuisance, and the Nuisance is not merely a local Nuisance, because it is a general Nuisance to know that there can be such a Nuisance left in civilisation so very long after its time.”

“Will you go away? I have a gun in here,” said the Hermit.

“Pooh!”

“I have!”

“Now, I put it to you. Did I say you had not? And as to going away, didn’t I say I am not going away? You have made me forget where I was. I now remember that I was remarking on your conduct being a Nuisance. Moreover, it is in the last and lowest degree inconsequent foolishness and weakness.”

“Weakness?” echoed the Hermit.

“Weakness,” said Mr. Traveller, with his former comfortably settled final air.

“I weak, you fool?” cried the Hermit, “I, who have held to my purpose, and my diet, and my only bed there, all these years?”

“The more the years, the weaker you,” returned Mr. Traveller. “Though the years are not so many as folks say, and as you willingly take credit for. The crust upon your face is thick and dark, Mr. Mopes, but I can see enough of you through it, to see that you are still a young man.”

“Inconsequent foolishness is lunacy, I suppose?” said the Hermit.

“I suppose it is very like it,” answered Mr. Traveller.

“Do I converse like a lunatic?”

“One of us two must have a strong presumption against him of being one, whether or no. Either the clean and decorously clad man, or the dirty and indecorously clad man. I don’t say which.”

“Why, you self-sufficient bear,” said the Hermit, “not a day passes but I am justified in my purpose by the conversations I hold here; not a day passes but I am shown, by everything I hear and see here, how right and strong I am in holding my purpose.”

Mr. Traveller, lounging easily on his billet of wood, took out a pocket pipe and began to fill it. “Now, that a man,” he said, appealing to the summer sky as he did so, “that a man—even behind bars, in a blanket and skewer—should tell me that he can see, from day to day, any orders or conditions of men, women, or children, who can by any possibility teach him that it is anything but the miserablest drivelling for a human creature to quarrel with his social nature—not to go so far as to say, to renounce his common human decency, for that is an extreme case; or who can teach him that he can in any wise separate himself from his kind and the habits of his kind, without becoming a deteriorated spectacle calculated to give the Devil (and perhaps the monkeys) pleasure,—is something wonderful! I repeat,” said Mr. Traveller, beginning to smoke, “the unreasoning hardihood of it is something wonderful—even in a man with the dirt upon him an inch or two thick—behind bars—in a blanket and skewer!”

The Hermit looked at him irresolutely, and retired to his soot and cinders and lay down, and got up again and came to the bars, and again looked at him irresolutely, and finally said with sharpness: “I don’t like tobacco.”

“I don’t like dirt,” rejoined Mr. Traveller; “tobacco is an excellent disinfectant. We shall both be the better for my pipe. It is my intention to sit here through this summer day, until that blessed summer sun sinks low in the west, and to show you what a poor creature you are, through the lips of every chance wayfarer who may come in at your gate.”

“What do you mean?” inquired the Hermit, with a furious air.

“I mean that yonder is your gate, and there are you, and here am I; I mean that I know it to be a moral impossibility that any person can stray in at that gate from any point of the compass, with any sort of experience, gained at first hand, or derived from another, that can confute me and justify you.”

“You are an arrogant and boastful hero,” said the Hermit. “You think yourself profoundly wise.”

“Bah!” returned Mr. Traveller, quietly smoking. “There is little wisdom in knowing that every man must be up and doing, and that all mankind are made dependent on one another.”

“You have companions outside,” said the Hermit. “I am not to be imposed upon by your assumed confidence in the people who may enter.”

“A depraved distrust,” returned the visitor, compassionately raising his eyebrows, “of course belongs to your state, I can’t help that.”

“Do you mean to tell me you have no confederates?”

“I mean to tell you nothing but what I have told you. What I have told you is, that it is a moral impossibility that any son or daughter of Adam can stand on this ground that I put my foot on, or on any ground that mortal treads, and gainsay the healthy tenure on which we hold our existence.”

“Which is,” sneered the Hermit, “according to you——”

“Which is,” returned the other, “according to Eternal Providence, that we must arise and wash our faces and do our gregarious work and act and re-act on one another, leaving only the idiot and the palsied to sit blinking in the corner. Come!” apostrophising the gate. “Open Sesame! Show his eyes and grieve his heart! I don’t care who comes, for I know what must come of it!”

With that, he faced round a little on his billet of wood towards the gate; and Mr. Mopes, the Hermit, after two or three ridiculous bounces of indecision at his bed and back again, submitted to what he could not help himself against, and coiled himself on his window-ledge, holding to his bars and looking out rather anxiously.

CHAPTER II

PICKING UP EVENING SHADOWS

Charles Allston Collins

The first person to appear at the gate, was a gentleman who looked in accidentally, and who carried a sketch-book under his arm. From the amazement and alarm expressed in his look and manner, it was plain that the Hermit's fame had not reached him. As soon as he could speak, he mentioned apologetically that he had been struck, as a stranger in that part of the country, by the picturesquely-ruinous appearance of the yard and outhouses, and that he had looked in at the gate, with the idea of finding nothing more remarkable than the materials for a sketch of still-life.

After revealing the mystery of the Hermit to this bewildered stranger, Mr. Traveller explained that any narrative-contributions towards the enlivening of Mr. Mopes and the morning, drawn from the personal experience of visitors at the gate, would be highly appreciated in that mouldy locality. At first, the visitor thus addressed hesitated; not so much, as it afterwards appeared, from want of means to answer the call made upon him, as from want of resources in his own memory to use on the spur of the moment. Pondering on Mr. Traveller's request, he entered rather absently into conversation with the Hermit.

"I never knew any good to come yet," said this gentleman, "of a man shutting himself up in the way you're doing. I know the temptation to it myself, have experienced it myself, and yielded to it myself; but I never knew any good—stop, though," he added, correcting himself as a scrupulous man does, who will not accept the help of the smallest false statement to aid his dearest theory—"I do remember one good thing which came, in some degree, of a man's leading a solitary life."

The Hermit hugged his bars in triumph. Mr. Traveller, nothing discouraged, requested the stranger to mention the circumstance.

"You shall hear it," was the answer. "But, before I begin, I must tell you that the period of my tale dates some years back into the past, that at the time of which I shall speak I had newly experienced a considerable reverse of fortune, and that, fancying my friends would make me feel the loss if I remained among them, I had determined to shut myself up away from them, and lead an entirely solitary life till I could in some degree retrieve my losses."

It is a tale, this that I am about to tell, of good deeds revealed, of good instincts roused, of a good work done, and a good result attained, and all through Evening Shadows.

I have often thought what tell-tell things shadows are. I mean the shadows that one who stands outside sees in the windows of a lighted-up room or building; the shadows thrown on a blind by figures interposing between it and the lamp-light. I have noticed these in churches during divine service, when I, wandering about outside, have looked up at the windows and seen the shades of a pair of lovers reading out of the same hymn-book; of children evidently chattering and grinning together; and sometimes a shadow which bobbing forward from time to time in a jerking fashion, then catching itself, still with a jerk, then remaining preternaturally erect and still, and then beginning to bob again, has suggested to me that the fourth head of a sermon in eight compartments was being developed, and that the shadow before me was that of one who was taking refuge from oratory in sleep.

Among the number of the shadows which my memory retains, there are some that lie upon it with no dark and shuddering chill; some that were cast by objects in themselves so pure and noble that the shade itself seemed only a subdued brightness, and the light that cast it—a glory.

My story begins at the time, some years ago, when, as a single man, I was living in a narrow and rather crowded street in one of the old parts of London—one of those streets where very decent houses are mixed with much poorer ones—and in one of the best and cleanest of which I occupied two rooms; a bedroom and a sitting-room. Having at that time, as I have now, a great dread of noise while at work, I made use of the back room as my studio, sleeping in the front of the house, which was quiet at night but not in the day-time, by reason of the day traffic. My painting-room, then, was on the second floor, and at the back of the house, and as there was a street running at an acute angle to that in which I lived, and joining it only a few yards higher up, it will easily be understood that the backs of the houses in this slanting thoroughfare, which was called appropriately enough, Cross-street, were in tolerably close proximity to my painting-room window. I have been thus exact in describing the topography of my place of abode, because then you will be better able to understand how it happened that my attention was directed to the circumstances which I am about to detail.

You will be able to understand how it was that, sitting, especially during the short days, as the dusk was beginning to fall, looking meditatively out of window and thinking of my work, my attention would often be drawn, almost without my knowledge, to some of the windows in the slanting street which I have described, and how I found myself not unfrequently speculating about some of the inhabitants of the rooms which were separated from that in which I was sitting, by so small a space.

There was one window more than all the rest which, for some reason or other, used especially to occupy my thoughts. It was a window exactly level with my own, and exactly opposite to it. During the daytime, though the blind was always drawn up as high as it could be, I could see but little of the room, but what I could make out only showed me that it was a very poor place indeed. Long habits of a speculative use of my eyes, if I may so express myself, have perhaps given me a tendency to attach much importance to the external aspects of things as indicative of what goes on within. Be that as it may, I possess that tendency, and possess it very strongly on the subject of windows. I think that the windows of a house give one a great idea of the dispositions, the habits, and the tempers of the occupants. Who has not felt, in passing by a house whose well-cleaned windows are filled with flowers, where the solid white and green of the Arum, and the delicate shades of colour in the rows of blossoming hyacinths, stand out in pleasant freshness against the dark background formed by the interior of the room—who has not felt that the inhabitants of a house whose windows are thus decorated, are in a calmer and happier condition than their next-door neighbours, where the yellow blind hangs crookedly across the dirty window, and the wire screen beneath has got a bulging ragged hole in it?

Holding, then, the theory which I have ventured thus to put forward, it will be readily believed that I augured the better of the occupants of the room opposite, from the fact that I could see through the lower panes of the window the leaves and branches of a great big fuchsia spread out fan-wise on a wooden frame. Other little contrivances and adornments there were about this poor casement, which, though of the cheapest and most twopenny order of decorative art, showed yet some love of the gentler side of things, and a wish to put a good face on poverty.

But it is, as I have already said, towards dusk and in the evening that my attention has been oftenest fixed on the window which I have been describing. It is then that, the room being lighted up, the shadows of things and persons within it are thrown upon the blind with a clearness and distinctness which those who have never observed such matters would hardly credit. The shadows tell me, then, that the room is tenanted by a husband and wife both young, I am certain. The man, as I gather from his position, and what I take to be the shadow of a tissue-paper screen behind which he stoops over his labour, is a poor drudging engraver for whom the days are not long enough, sitting cramped up at his patient toil through many hours of the night. As I watch him, he will rise and stretch back his head to relieve the muscles of his neck, and then I see that the shadow thrown on the blind is that of a young figure, spare but well made. The light shows me also that he wears a beard; it is a very strong light indeed, and this makes me more sure than ever that he is an engraver. The shadow of his wife is there beside him—almost always. How she watches over and tends him, how she hangs over his chair, or kneels beside him! I had never, at the time I speak of, seen her, but I could not help fancying that she was pretty and good enough to light up a darker room than that in which she lives, and to make her husband's life of toil—if he can keep it up— not only bearable but delightful.

If he can keep it up—but can he? His shadow is all that I have seen of him, but it looks like the shadow of one in delicate health. I never miss him from his place at night, and I can see the edge of his blind by which he works, at his window all day. " If he sits drudging there," thought I, " he will surely, as is the case in all excess, defeat his own object and end in being disabled altogether."

It was not long before I began to fear that what I had apprehended had taken place. There came a day when the blind was not drawn up to let in the light on the engraver's work, but remained drawn down the whole day. It would be difficult to express how anxiously I longed for the evening, and the shadows which should tell me more.

That evening the light was burning in the room as usual, but the straight-edge of the engraver's blind was not seen cutting against it. There was the shadow of but one person, it was that of a woman, and as the figure which cast it moved so quietly about, I could make out that she was pouring out drugs and mixing the different compounds wanted in a sick-room by the light of the lamp. Sometimes she would pause in these occupations and look towards one end of the room, where I concluded the bed was placed; and sometimes I could even imagine, but this must have been pure fancy, that, looking still in the same direction, her lips would move at times, and that she was speaking. I could even see her tasting the food she was mixing, with her head a little on one side; altering and tasting it often before she carried it across the room to where, I felt sure, the sick man lay. So much will shadows tell.

From my front window I can see a long way up and down the street, even to that corner where the early breakfast depôt is found every morning—a poor stall enough, and driving a poor business, I should have thought; a business, however, in which I am so deeply interested that my first morning act is to go to the window and see if the poor old proprietor has got a customer—nay, once I put on a pilot-coat and a wideawake hat to appear in character, and purchased a cup of his coffee, which was a sound coffee enough, though a little gritty, and perhaps a thought weak. Enough of that. I can see to the coffee-stall one way, and nearly as far the other, and at the back I command a bit of a court, two mewses and a half, and, by great dislocation of neck, a little scrap of Brewer-street, Golden-square. Now in all these regions which are continually under my eye, I have noticed one constantly pervading presence, one figure which comes upon the scene without fail every day in the year and at all conceivable hours. It is the figure of a tallish gentleman of about five-and-thirty, who stoops a little, has a very round back, wears spectacles, is always dressed in a buttoned black frock-coat, is always in a hurry, always expected anxiously at the houses he visits, and always followed to the door, on coming out again, by some who question him eagerly as he leaves them, and who seem to seek for comfort in his most inscrutable face. Of course I have not watched this gentleman's proceedings long, without coming to the conclusion that it is Mr. Cordial, the parish doctor, whose surgery in Great Pulteney-street I am so often in the habit of passing.

If there had been any previous doubt on my mind as to the state of things in the house opposite, it would at once have been put to flight when, on the day succeeding that evening on which I had watched the engraver's wife in her capacity of nurse, I caught a dark glimpse of this gentleman's head (rather a bald head for so young a man) at the window of the room opposite, which he had come to, to prepare some mixture or other.

"Now here," I thought to myself, " is a pretty business. This is just what I feared. Here is this poor fellow laid up, unable to work, and probably not only ill in body, but harassed in mind by the consciousness that as long as he is ill, there can be no money coming in to supply the daily expenses which, however poorly they live, he and his wife must of necessity incur."

I thought over this matter, and turned it all sorts of ways, as people who are unlucky enough, or unwise enough, to live alone do turn and twist things, and was so haunted by the thought of what was going on in the room opposite, that in the course of the afternoon I was obliged to go out and take a long walk, in order to fill up the time that must necessarily intervene before the lamp would be lit, and the shadows thrown upon the blind. When I got back from that walk I was in such hot haste for such silent news as I might reasonably hope to gain, that I did not even stay to light my candle, but felt my way as well as I could across the room, and stationed myself at the window.

At first I thought that there were no shadows at all on the white glaring blind, except those of the poor bits of curtain and of the spread-out fuchsia before mentioned, but by-and-by, noticing a small and continually moving shadow mixed up with that of the curtain, and observing that it rose and fell regularly and quickly, I presently connected it with another mass of shade a little above it, and arrived at the conclusion that this last was thrown by a woman's head, and by the moving shadow by her hand, as it rose and fell in the action of working with the needle. It was not long before I found out that my hypothesis was well grounded; for the little while the shadow of the hand was still and that of the head was raised, as if the person whose silhouette lay thus upon the blind was in the act of listening—and then it rose, and I saw the well-known figure of the engraver's wife pass the light, and knew that she had moved towards that quarter of the room in which I had made up my mind that the bed with the sick man in it was placed.

During the greater part of that evening, as I watched, and my occupations were frequently interrupted that I might do so, I made out no shadow but that which I have just mentioned. But, at about nine o'clock, I saw another shadow pass before the blind, and as it was that of a man, I had for a moment the hope that it was cast by the invalid. It was only for a moment, another glance showed me that this person wore no beard, and that there was greater bulk of figure than would have been cast by the poor engraver. I soon concluded that it was the doctor; and if I had any doubt on this subject it was removed when I presently observed the workman-like angle of elbow made by the shadow as it stood before the light, pouring something into what I suppose, from its size, must have been a teacup.

Twice a day, then. He was ill enough for the doctor to come to him twice a day.

My determination was taken as I made that reflection. I had got wrought up to a great state of interest and suspense about this case which I could hardly explain to myself. I felt a strange longing to know more of it, and I came to the resolution—it was like what might have been expected of a man half-cracked with living alone—that I would go out then and there, waylay the doctor as he came away from his patient, and ask him all about it.

I had lost some time in reflection, and when I looked hastily across before leaving my room I did not see any shadows on the blind, yet it was reasonable to suppose that I might still catch the doctor in the street; so out I rushed. Sure enough there was the doctor just coming out of No. 4, Cross-street. How lucky I was to be in time!

I found the parish medical authority not very communicative or prone to take a very romantic view of sickness and suffering. He was a good sort of man enough, no doubt, but dry and matter-of-fact. He had seen so much of sickness and misery that he was used to it. He answered all my questions, however, politely, though seeming a good deal surprised at them.

"He had just been visiting a sick man in that house, had he not?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied, "he had. Bad case of low fever."

"Second floor—a married couple?" was my next inquiry.

Again an answer in the affirmative.

"Was it a case of great distress?"

"Yes, of very great distress."

"They have nothing to live upon but what the husband makes by his labour?" I asked.

"Nothing," was the answer.

"And he is laid up and unable to work."

"That is the state of the case," replied the doctor.

"Ah! I thought so," said I. "Would you be kind enough, Doctor Cordial," I continued, "to take charge of this small sum " (it was a very small one) "for the benefit of these poor people—on no account mentioning how you came by it."

The doctor promised that he would, and I was just going to leave him, when I thought I would ask the poor fellow's name.

"His name is Adams," said the doctor, and so we parted.

I now felt quite a sense of proprietorship in looking at my poor shadows opposite, and watched them more eagerly than ever. There was one action of the shadow, now unfortunately the only action to watch, which used to puzzle me not a little. The sick man's wife used at times to stand before the light, and, as it appeared to me, used to hold some article of clothing, or other piece of drapery, and examine it closely; sometimes I fancied that I could make the object out to be a shirt, or a coat, at another time a pair of trousers. After this she would disappear, and I always noticed that the lamp would then be turned down till its light was very low, and would remain so for a considerable period. I could not understand this at the time, though I did afterwards. She was testing the condition of different articles of clothing before taking them to the pawnbroker's.

And now I began to discover one of the bad results of my solitary life. Though I had given Doctor Cordial a small sum to go towards helping these poor people it was quite impossible, in my straitened circumstances, that I could spare more. If I had resolutely kept my friends about me, there would have been somebody or other to whom I could apply in, behalf of my poor shadows, while now it was impossible to do so. Even when the idea entered my mind of trying to revive some former friendships with this view, the fear that any one so applied to might imagine I wanted the help for myself, at once deterred me.

Whilst I was engaged in turning all these things over in my mind, there came across it the memory of one individual to whom I really felt as if I should not mind applying in this difficulty.

This was a certain Mr. Pycroft, a copper-plate printer, with whom I had formerly had dealings. He was an old man, and it so happened that at one time in my life I had been in a position to do him a service, and had done it. There was something about his age, his position, and our former relations, which made me feel less shy of approaching him than I should have felt with any one else. He was a fat, jolly-looking old boy, and was, as far as I had had opportunities of judging, as good natured as he looked.

There was, however, one circumstance connected with his history which seemed to show him in a less amiable light, and the remembrance of which made me for a time hesitate about applying to him. I remembered to have heard that some short time ago he had acted with great severity towards his eldest son, who, having contracted a marriage against his father's wishes, had been deprived of his share in the business, which he had formerly enjoyed, and left to make a living as well as he could by his own exertions. The fact is, that the old man had had a darling project of marrying his eldest son to a young girl whose father was a business connexion of his own. The old copper-plate printer was not only thwarted in this, but was further outraged by his son's choice having fallen in a direction particularly distasteful to him for private reasons. I suspected also from what I had heard, that the conduct of the eldest son, which had been represented to his father as being violent and rebellious in no ordinary degree, had been made the worst of by the younger brother, who not only stepped into the lion's share of the business on his brother's removal, but himself contracted the marriage which his brother had declined. I could not help thinking when I heard the circumstances of the case that this younger son had had a great deal to do in poisoning the old man's mind with regard to his elder brother's conduct.

At all events, old Mr. Pycroft was the only person I could think of just now as likely to help my unfortunate shadows, and to him I determined to apply, but in a roundabout way. It occurred to me that if I could enlist his sympathy in the fate of these poor people, just as my own had been awakened, by means of the shadows, it would be a far better plan than any other.

It so happened that I had often promised my old acquaintance to show him a collection which I had of Rembrandt etchings, and it occurred to me that now was the time when these might come into play with great effect. So, making an excuse in relation to the matter of business which had formerly brought us together, I called on my old acquaintance, and, in the course of conversation, invited him, naming an evening, to come to my lodgings, and examine these curiosities, intimating that we would moisten that pleasing labour with a glass of brandy-and-water. Punctual to the time named Mr. Pycroft arrived, and we got through the first hour very comfortably, though I could not help feeling rather anxious about the success of my scheme.

After examining the etchings, Mr. Pycroft, over the second glass, began to rally me about living in such a labyrinth of streets, asking me if I did not find it dreadfully confined at the back.

"By-the-by," I said—and here I must own that I was guilty of some small amount of deception, for I spoke as if the matter in hand were of no sort of importance—"by-the-by, Mr. Pycroft, you wouldn't imagine how much recreation I derive from observing my neighbours in that very cross street which you find comes too near my windows."

"If you was to come out of this kind of solitary life," replied Mr. P., "you would have other things to amuse yourself with besides the goings on of a parcel of people whom you know nothing about."

"Now here, for instance," I went on, unmindful of the interruption, as I drew aside my own curtain and pointed out the window of the room occupied by my poor young couple —" here is a window which has revealed to me all sorts of interesting matter—enough to make a story out of almost, I can tell you."

"What, this window opposite? But do you mean to say, Mr. B., that you think it right to look into people's rooms like that?"

"I have scrupulously abstained from doing so," was my answer, "and have made all my observations with the blind down, as you see it now."

"With the blind down? But how could you make any observations with the blind down?"

"By means of the shadows of the occupants of the apartment," was my answer.

"Shadows?" cried Mr. Pycroft, obviously incredulous. " You don't mean to tell me that you could make out what was going on in that room by means of the shadows on the blind?"

"Something of what goes on," I replied, "at any rate. Enough to interest me in the fortunes of those to whom the room belongs."

"Well, really Mr. B.! If I had it on any other testimony than your own I should have thought it simply impossible."

"Would you like to look for yourself?" I said. "I dare say something will take place behind the blind before long, which will give you an opportunity of testing the accuracy of what I have said."

"Well, without doubting that at all," replied my guest, "I really think I should."

Mr. Pycroft was sitting near the window, but my reading-lamp upon the table made the room rather too light for our observations. So I pushed the table away to the other end of the room, turned down the wick of the lamp, and lowered the shade over it as well.

"Well," said Mr. Pycroft, " I see nothing at present but a white blind with a light behind it."

The shadow of the little wife's head was there in the corner by the curtain, and the shadow of the hand rose and fell as usual; but Mr. Pycroft had not such a practised eye as I had for detecting such matters. I pointed these out to my friend.

" I do see something bobbing up and down," he said, " now you mention it. But I should never have found it out without your help. Stop! there's a shadow now covering nearly the whole blind. What's that?"

" I suspect that it is the shadow of the same person," was my answer. " She will probably go nearer the window and farther from the light presently, and then you will see."

In a minute or two the shadow appeared again, and this time not so large.

"I can make it out now," said my friend, "quite easily; it is the shadow of a woman. I can see the line of the waist and the skirts of the dress."

"Can you make out the face at all?" I asked.

"Oh yes," answered Mr. P. "It is turned sideways, looking to the left there. She's gone now," he added in a moment.

In a few minutes her shadow was thrown again upon the blind.

" What's she about now?" asked Mr. Pycroft.

"Nay, you shall tell me," I answered.

"Well, she seems to have some small object in her hand which she is shaking."

"And now?" I asked again.

"I can't make out, her elbow seems raised —both hands are raised. No, I can't make out at all."

"I think she is pouring something out," said I.

"So she is, no doubt," answered my guest, who was evidently becoming much interested. "Stay," he continued, after a moment's pause,, and looking at me quite anxiously as he spoke —"shaking, pouring—'to be well shaken before taken'—why, it must be medicine."

"I suspect it is medicine," was my answer.

"Is there some one ill, then?" asked Mr. Pycroft.

"Yes," I replied, " her husband."

"And did the shadow tell you that, too?"

"Yes, the shadow of her husband used to appear on the blind as often as hers, now I never see it. Exactly coincident with the disappearance of the husband's shadow has been the arrival of another shadow, which has been that of the parish doctor."

"And pray," asked Mr. Pycroft with the air of one whose credulity had been really too much tasked at last, "may I ask how you knew it to be the doctor's shadow?"

"Doctor Cordial has the roundest back you ever saw in your life," was my answer.

"Well, this is really very curious," ejaculated the old copper-plate printer, who was now evidently powerfully interested.

As we continued to look, the light was suddenly removed, and the room was left in darkness.

"What do you suppose has happened now?" inquired my companion.

"I suppose," was my answer, " that she has left the room for a short time. We shall see more presently, no doubt;" and almost as I spoke the light reappeared, and another shadow was in the room besides that of the little wife.

"The doctor?" asked Mr. Pycroft.

"There," I cried, triumphantly, "you see how much may be discovered by shadows. You are expert already."

"He has a round back, certainly," said the old copper-plate printer.

The round-backed shadow now faded off softly in the direction towards which the profile of the little wife was turned so often. The white blind remained for some minutes shadowless.

"I suppose he is examining his patient now," said Mr. Pycroft; "here he is again," he added in another minute. The doctor, however, stood so near the light this time and so completely with his back towards us, that we were unable to determine what he was doing. This was, naturally, often the case with the shadows. Much as one was able to make out, there was, of course, infinitely more, an explanation of which it was impossible even to guess at.

In a short time the round-backed shadow was joined by that of the sick man's wife, and then the two stood for some time in conversation; at least it was reasonable to suppose so.

"Giving her directions, I shouldn't wonder," said the copper-plate printer.

" Most likely," I answered.

"I wonder if he's very bad," said my companion. After this there was a pause. The two shadows continued standing by the table. At last, we both thought that the doctor's shadow appeared to give something to the shade of the engraver's wife, and immediately after, the light was removed as it had been before: it had been probably taken out on to the landing in order that the doctor might see his way down stairs.

"And so they're very poor," said Mr. Pycroft, as if talking to himself.

"They had nothing but what the husband could earn," I answered, "and he is wholly incapable of working, and will remain so probably for weeks to come."

The light had now reappeared in the room. The shadow of the little wife seemed to linger by the table after setting it down. Her figure was motionless for a considerable time, and then we noted that the head fell forward, and that the face was buried in the hands as if in an agony of silent grief.

We neither of us spoke, and at the same moment I dropped the curtain of my own window which had before been fastened back, for I felt that this was sorrow with which a spectator had no right to intermeddle.

Soon afterwards my old friend rose to go, and we spoke not another word on the matter. Just before I retired to rest, however, I looked out once more. The shadow of the little wife's head was in its usual place, and the shadow of her hand rose and fell as usual. She was at work again.

The next day, by an early post, I received a letter from Mr. Pycroft. He had been thinking a great deal, he said, of what he had seen the night before, and enclosed a little money, which he asked me to see applied to the benefit of the young couple in whose fortunes I had interested myself. He also begged me from time to time to let him have tidings of what " the shadows " were about.

I handed the money over to Dr. Cordial, asking him to apply it as might seem best to his judgment, but making no mention of who it came from. I asked him also to let me have news as frequently as possible of the condition of his patient. These I transmitted pretty nearly as often as I received them to the old copper-plate printer.

For some days there was not much to report, nor did the shadows tell me anything different from what they had before revealed. The poor engraver's shadow was still wanting, and that of his little wife was either stationary in the corner, when she did what she could to earn a little money with her needle, or else was seen flitting about the room in attendance on her sick husband. At length there came a time when the fever reached its crisis, and when it was clear, according to the doctor's report, that the sufferer must sink under it or recover. To make my story as short as possible, I will not dwell on the details of this period of suspense. The one quality of youth, possessed by the patient, enabled his constitution to rally, and after this crisis in his disorder he began to mend.

And now a long convalescence followed, and a time arrived when one evening the shadow of a wasted figure moved slowly past the light, and I could guess as I watched it, and observed that it was accompanied by the well-known shadow of the little wife, that the sick man was moving from his bed to a chair by the fire.

Of course I made this advance known to my friend, the copper-plate printer, and kept him well acquainted with all the particulars of the gradual improvement in our invalid's health, even to the period when it was so far re-established that he was able at last to sit up for a certain number of hours every day at his engraving table, and work once more for his wife's support.

"They are very grateful," I said, when I made this announcement to my old acquaintance, "to the unknown friend who has assisted them from time to time throughout their trouble."

"Oh no, nonsense, nonsense; it's nothing, nothing at all—nothing at all," ejaculated the old fellow, trying to get away from the subject.

"And they are very anxious," I continued, resolutely, "to thank him personally, if he would but reveal himself and give them the opportunity."

"No, no, not for the world," was the answer; " oh dear no, impossible. Here, here's a little trifle extra just to set them going you know, because he mustn't work too much at first."

"And you won't let them see you?" I asked again.

"No, no, no, on no account," said the old boy. "I'll tell you what, though," he continued in a moment, " I should like to see them—see them as I did before—the shadows you know," he added. " I'll come and have a glass of brandy-and-water with you some evening, and have a look at the shadows again."

I was obliged to be satisfied with this, and making an engagement with my old friend for an early day, I left him, and went home.

The evening came, and with it an unusual amount of stir and bustle in the quiet room opposite. The figure of the little wife was continually flitting backwards and forwards in front of the light, as if she were engaged in smartening up the poor apartment. Hanging in the very middle of the window, and so close to the thin white blind that I could see it distinctly, there was a birdcage with a bird in it; and it was owing to the presence of this object that I had been chiefly able to form some idea of what my two friends opposite were like. When either of them approached the birdcage, as would sometimes happen, to give a chirp of encouragement to its occupant, I could see the profile of the person who did so, as distinctly as one used to trace the silhouettes of the old black portraits which itinerant artists were wont to cut out at fairs. Except at such times as this, when the engraver or his wife stood thus near the window and far from the light, I could distinguish little but a shapeless mass; and when either of them approached the candle nearly, their shadows became so gigantic that the whole space of the window—an unusually large one—was completely darkened, even by one figure. I must repeat what I have said before, that the opportunities were very rare when I could make out what the shadows were about, and that in all cases in which I could detect such processes of mixing drinks, pouring out of medicines, and the like, it was owing to the fact that some necessary object connected with the proceeding was placed on some article of furniture which stood in or near the window.

Punctual to the appointed time, my old friend, the copper-plate printer, made his appearance, and his first question after the usual greeting had been exchanged was:

"Well—how are the shadows?"

I placed his chair in the old position, and we both sat down.

The bustle and movement to which I have adverted as going on in the room opposite, were still noticeable, and I had little doubt that the apartment was being "cleaned up;" an impression to which additional force was soon given by the dawning on the scene of a thin, straight shadow, which I took to be a broomstick, and which was now brought into active service.

I must not omit to mention, that at the moment of a certain pause in the career of the broom, the figure of the poor engraver was thrown with great distinctness on the blind. He had come to the window to stick some object, probably a piece of groundsel, between the wires of the birdcage.

When this happened, I noticed a great change come over the countenance of my guest. He raised himself in his chair, and looking eagerly forward, said, in quite a strange tone of voice:

"What did you say was the name of these people?"

"Adams," was my answer.

"Adams—you are quite sure?"

"Quite," I replied. By this time the shadow had vanished again, but I remarked that for a considerable time Mr. Pycroft seemed absent and uncomfortable, and we had talked of many matters foreign to the subject I had at heart, before he again returned to the shadows.

"They seem quiet enough now," said Mr. Pycroft at last.

"I dare say," I answered, "that the cleaning of the room is over, and that they have sat down to a bit of supper."

"Do you think so?" asked the old copper-plate printer.

"I dare say they have some little luxury, furnished by your liberality."

"Do you really think so?" said the old boy, who had a great idea of comfort. "What do you think they've got? I wish the shadows would show us that!"

I darted at once at the opening which I saw here.

"The shadows will not show it," I said; " but why not go across and see it in substance? It would make their supper all the sweeter to them, I am sure."

The old gentleman had just finished a tumbler of hot grog. He was in high good humour, and as I finished speaking his eyes began to twinkle, and a latent smile developed itself about the corners of his mouth.

"It wouldn't be bad fun, would it?" he said.

I wanted nothing more, and in another minute I had him on his legs, and we were on our way to No. 4.

A little girl was on the door-step with a pot of beer in her hand, and we had no sooner stopped before the house than she made known a want incidental to the lives of maidens who stand only three feet two inches in their stockings:

"Please, sir, will you ring the second bell from the top?"

"Second floor?" I said, as I complied; "that's where Mr. and Mrs. Adams live, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir, and he's my father," said the young lady, who evidently looked upon the couple alluded to as one flesh. I thought it odd I had never seen this child's shadow on the blind.

"Well, I want to see him, then," I replied, "and so does this gentleman."

"Oh, but you can't, though," said the little girl, who, by the way, appeared to be a precocious shrew—"for father's at supper, and there's a fowl, and father's been ill, and you can't disturb him just as he's a little better— so that you can't."

"You just hold your tongue, miss, will you?" said a voice at this juncture, "and let me talk to the gentleman."

I looked up and saw that the door had been opened by a tall gaunt-looking woman, with a. large nose.

"Who did you please to want, sir?" she asked in a whining tone, which I disliked very much.

I told her briefly who we were, and the object of our visit.

"Oh, what a joyful surprise!" said the gaunt woman, whining as before in a manner infinitely offensive to me. "Get along up-stairs, Lizzy," she continued, addressing the child, "and tell your father that the kind gentleman as assisted him in his illness is coming to see him; I'm his wife, kind gentlemen "—(this the shadow that I had interested myself in!)— "I'm his poor wife that nussed him through his illness, and—take care of the stairs, kind gentlemen—and this is the room, gentlemen; and here's a joyful surprise, James; the gentlemen that's been so kind all the time you've been ill; and be pleased to take a seat, gentlemen, and honour our poor room by sitting down in it."

I was thunderstruck. A little common-looking man was sitting at the table on which a smoking fowl, a bit of bacon, and some potatoes had been placed. He bore the evident marks of recent illness, and rose with some effort at our entry. He resumed his seat, however, as I and my companion sat down. I took a chair, as I should have taken anything that was offered me in sheer surprise and bewilderment. I looked once more at the man's wife. What, was that the substance of the neat little shadow which I knew so well—that great gaunt sloping creature? Were shadows so deceptive as this? Would anybody tell me that my opposite neighbour could have had such a nose as I now saw, and that it would not have stood out in bold relief and left its mark upon my memory every time she approached the window?

The husband, too. That was not my poor engraver. He was an inoffensive man enough, as he sat there full of clumsy expressions of gratitude to my companion for the assistance accorded to him during his recent attack of fever. He was a harmless little man, no doubt. Not quite such a heavy blow as his wife; but still, he was not my engraver.

All this time, even while her husband was speaking, the gaunt woman kept up an undercurrent of gratitude of the slimiest description, to which the old gentleman answered not a word, for he seemed as little prepared for the real Mr. and Mrs. Adams by what he had seen of their shadows as I was. In short, beyond a few words of inquiry as to the state of the invalid's health, which I had managed to utter on first coming into the room, we had neither of us spoken a word.

Suddenly the tremendous idea entered my mind that there must be some mistake. I had been staring some time at the little girl whom we originally met on the door-step, and who, to do her justice, returned the compliment with interest, when it struck me that her head came considerably above the window-sill, and that consequently, it was a most extraordinary thing that its shadow had never caught my attention. My eyes having in the course of this comparison of the young lady with the window-sill been directed towards this last part of the room, I next observed that there was no birdcage hanging in the window.

"Halloa!" I ejaculated, "you've taken down the birdcage."

"Birdcage, sir?" whined the gaunt woman, deferentially.

"We ain't got no birdcage," burst out the small child of the door-step, "nor never haven't had none—nor yet no bird neither."

"Will you hold your tongue, miss?" interposed her mother.

There was an awkward pause. I looked again about the room, I looked at the woman, I looked at her husband—he had no beard, I now observed. I had, however, presence ot mind enough not to ask after that missing .appendage as I had done after the birdcage. I determined to make assurance doubly sure, and walking towards the window and pulling aside the blind, observed, as an excuse for looking out:

" I am afraid you must be a good deal choked up at the back with houses. Isn't that rather unwholesome?"

A voluble answer on the subject of confined lodgings, their advantages and disadvantages, followed, but I did not hear it. I was looking for my own window in the house opposite. I had left the lamp alight and the blind half drawn up. The window before me, exactly in front of that which I was looking from, was fastened up and secured with shutters. Stretching my neck, and glancing in a slanting direction towards the next of the opposite houses, I saw that the second-floor window was illuminated, and that the blind was half lowered.

"Your supper is getting cold," I said, coming back to the table, and exchanging a glance of meaning with my companion; "my friend and I only wished to come in and see how you were enjoying yourselves, and so now we will leave you to do better justice to the fowl than you could if we remained here."

So saying, and resisting all entreaties to stay and take a share of the good things, I made for the door, and was soon on the staircase, followed closely by Mr. Pycroft, who, speechless as long as we remained in the room, did nothing now but repeat, "Wrong people, eh? —been feeding the wrong people, haven't we?" in a loud and perfectly audible whisper. The gaunt woman was, however, too loquacious herself to hear what was said, and during the time that she lighted us down the stairs, never ceased whining out her gratitude for a single moment.

When we got into the street I turned round and looked my companion in the face.

"It is some comfort, at any rate," I said, "to think that you have been assisting people who were really in need of help, but it is evident that every penny of your bounty has gone to the family we have just left."

"And how do you account for the mistake?" asked my old friend.

"I can only conclude," was my answer, "that by a curious coincidence there have been two second-floor lodgers ill in two houses next door to each other; that after my seeing Dr. Cordial at the window opposite to mine, he had gone from the one house to the other; that he had had time to pay a short visit to the invalid we have just left; and that then I had met him coming away, as I thought, from attending on our poor shadows, but in reality from the deserving personage whose supper has been supplied by your benevolence."

"And the shadows?" gasped Mr. Pycroft, utterly aghast.

"Have, through my unfortunate mistake, not received a single shilling," was my answer.

Mr. Pycroft stared at me for some time in petrified amazement.

"We can never leave the thing like this," he said, at last. "Do you think you could be sure of the house this time?"

"I can understand your feeling some mistrust about it," I said, "but I own that I feel none myself. This is the house beyond a doubt." I looked up as I spoke at No. 5.

" Then let's bring the matter to a conclusion at once," said the old copper-plate printer, stoutly; and with that we actually rang at the second bell handle on the left hand doorpost.

After the proper amount of delay the door was opened by a slatternly woman.

"Second-floor back?" said I, in a mellifluous voice.

" Front," replied the slatternly woman, in rather an injured tone; "you should have rung the bell on the right door-post."

I begged pardon with all humility, and the slatternly woman relented a little.

"The two-pair-back's at home, I know," she said, "and if you're coming up I may as well light you."

We availed ourselves of this offer, and, in a few seconds, we were on the second-floor landing. The slatternly woman pointed out the door at which we were to knock, and opening her own, and letting out in so doing a blast of onions that almost made my eyes water, she disappeared into the refreshing vapour, and shut herself in with it.

My curiosity was now powerfully piqued, and I felt as if some great stake hinged upon the opening of the door at which we stood and knocked.

A clear, cheerful voice called to us to enter, and in another moment we stood inside the room.

Two people, a man and a woman, occupied the apartment. One of them, the man, was at first hidden from view, but in the other, as she rose upon our entrance, I recognised at once the shadow with which I was so familiar.

The room was a great contrast to that which we had just left, which was tolerably well provided with furniture. This room was utterly bare, looking as if all available objects had been removed, as probably they had, to be turned into money. A mattress and some bedding were on the floor at one end of the room. The table, and a couple of old chairs, were the only articles of furniture I could see. The engraver's lamp was on the table, and the materials for a very poor meal which the two had evidently just been cooking—a very little scrap of bacon and some boiled rice. The birdcage was hanging in the window, if I had wanted any confirmation of my conviction that I had found my shadows at last.

Of course, all these things were taken in by me at a single glance, it being necessary that I should at once account for my visit and that of my friend. I had begun to do so in a few hurried words, when my attention was suddenly arrested by an exclamation from Mr. Pycroft, who had followed me. The second occupant of the room, whom we had at first seen but imperfectly, had now risen to his feet, and stood with the light full upon him, straining his eyes into the shade where my companion stood behind me. I turned hastily round, and met the stern gaze of my old friend.

"If this is a trick, Mr. Broadhead," he said, speaking very thick, and with choking utterance, "I can tell you that it does you little credit."

"What do you mean?" I asked, in utter bewilderment.

"I mean that if this has all been a planned thing to bring about a reconciliation between me and my son——"

"Your son?" I gasped.

"I can only say," continued Mr. Pycroft, "that it shall meet with the success it deserves."

He turned as he spoke and made for the door, but I was beforehand with him.

"Stay, Mr. Pycroft!" I cried. "If you choose to retain this feeling of animosity, which so ill becomes you, you must, but you shall not go away with a false impression of this matter as far as I am concerned in it. I swear to you that your suspicions of me are false, that when we came to this room I had no more idea of who were its occupants than you had, and that I never knew your son was living in this abject misery; though, if I had, I would certainly have done my best to rouse you to a feeling of what, under such circumstances, you owe to one who bears your name."

Mr. Pycroft had glanced once searchingly towards me when I denied his imputation of having been concerned in a plot to trick him into a reconciliation, and now his eyes were directed towards the place where his son stood before him.

He was a fine manly-looking fellow, and as he stood there holding his wife's hand in his, and with the refining influence of recent illness showing on his worn but handsome face, I could not help feeling that surely this picture must complete the work which the shadows had so well begun.

"Look at them! " I said—"look at this room—look at that meal! Can you see such wretchedness and not be moved? If your son has displeased you, has he not suffered? If he has disobeyed, he has paid the penalty."

I looked in my companion's face, and I thought that I saw some shadow of compunction working there.

"Do not," I said, "let the sympathy which you bestowed upon the shadows be wanting for the realities which cast them."

The little wife at this moment left her husband's side, and, advancing to where we stood, laid her hand timidly on that of my old friend. I looked at him once more, and then, beckoning the poor engraver to his father's side, I passed quietly from the room, where I felt that my presence was no longer needed.

* * * * *

About an hour afterwards I was sitting disconsolately in my room, reflecting on the loneliness of my own position, and rather envying my opposite neighbours, when I heard my own name shouted in a cheery voice from without.

I looked in the old direction, and saw my friend Mr. Pycroft standing at his son's open window.

"We want you to come over," said the old gentleman, "and spend what is left of the evening with us."

I assented gladly, and was just drawing in my head, when I heard myself called once more by name.

"And I say," said Mr. Pycroft, in a stage whisper, "as we are rather short of liquor here, perhaps you wouldn't mind bringing a bottle of brandy in your pocket; and if you happen to have such a thing as a lemon——"

In a few minutes I was sitting one of a comfortable party in the room opposite.

"Do you know what is one of the first things we intend to do now?" said the little wife, smiling as she looked at me.

"I have not the least idea," was my answer.

"Why, we are going to nail up the thickest curtain we can get, in order to prevent our opposite neighbour from seeing what we are about whenever our lamp happens to be alight."

"You need not be afraid," I said; "and you may save yourself the trouble of putting up the curtain, for the opposite neighbour hopes henceforth to see so much of his new friends in their Substance, that he is not likely to trouble himself much more about—their Shadows."

CHAPTER III

PICKING UP TERRIBLE COMPANY

Amelia B. Edwards

While the artist was still engaged in telling his story, another visitor had come in at the gate, and had politely remained in the background, so as not to interrupt the proceedings. When the story was over, he came forward, and presented himself (in excellent English) as a Frenchman on a visit to this country. In the course of an eventful life, opportunities had occurred to him of learning our language, on the Continent, and necessity had obliged him to turn them to good account. Many years had passed, since that time, and had allowed him no earlier chance of visiting England than the chance of which he had now availed himself. He was staying with some friends in the neighbourhood—the Hermit had been mentioned to him—and here he was, on the ground of Thomas Tiddler, to deposit his homage at the feet of that illustrious landed proprietor.

Was the French visitor surprised? Not the least in the world. His face showed deep marks of former care and trouble—perhaps he was past feeling surprised at anything? By no means. If he had seen Mr. Mopes on French ground, he would have been petrified on the spot. But Mr. Mopes on English ground was only a new development of the dismal national character. Given British spleen, as the cause—followed British suicide, as the effect. Quick suicide (of which the works of his literary countrymen had already informed him) by throwing yourself into the water. Slow suicide (of which his own eyes now informed him) by burying yourself among soot and cinders, in a barred kitchen. Curious either way—but nothing to surprise a well-read Frenchman.

Leaving our national character to assert itself to better advantage, when time had given this gentleman better opportunities of studying it, Mr. Traveller politely requested him to follow the relation of the artist's experience with an experience of his own. After a moment's grave consideration, the Frenchman said that his early life had been marked by perils and sufferings of no ordinary kind. He had no objection to relate one of his adventures—but he warned his audience beforehand that they must expect to be a little startled; and he begged that they would suspend their opinions of himself and his conduct, until they had heard him to the end.

After those prefatory words, he begun as follows:

I am a Frenchman by birth, and my name is François Thierry. I need not weary you with my early history. Enough, that I committed a political offence—that I was sent to the galleys for it—that I am an exile for it to this day. The brand was not abolished in my time. If I chose, I could show you the fiery letters on my shoulder.

I was arrested, tried, and sentenced, in Paris. I went out of the court with my condemnation ringing in my ears. The rumbling wheels of the prison-van repeated it all the way from Paris to Bicêtre that evening, and all the next day, and the next, and the next, along the weary road from Bicêtre to Toulon. When I look back upon that time, I think I must have been stupified by the unexpected severity of my sentence; for I remember nothing of the journey, nor of the places where we stopped—nothing but the eternal repetition of "travaux forcés—travaux forcés—travaux forcés à perpétuité," over and over, and over again. Late in the afternoon of the third day, the van stopped, the door was thrown open, and I was conducted across a stone yard, through a stone corridor, into a huge stone hall, dimly lighted from above. Here I was interrogated by a military superintendent, and entered by name in a ponderous ledger bound and clasped with iron, like a book in fetters.

"Number Two Hundred and Seven," said the superintendent. "Green."

They took me into an adjoining room, searched, stripped, and plunged me into a cold bath. When I came out of the bath, I put on the livery of the galleys—a coarse canvas shirt, trousers of tawny serge, a red serge blouse, and heavy shoes clamped with iron. Last of all, a green woollen cap. On each leg of the trousers, and on the breast and back of the blouse, were printed the fatal letters "T. F." On a brass label in the front of the cap, were engraved the figures "207." From that moment I lost my individuality. I was no longer François Thierry. I was Number Two Hundred and Seven. The superintendent stood by and looked on.

"Come, be quick," said he, twirling his long moustache between his thumb and forefinger. "It grows late, and you must be married before supper."

"Married! " I repeated.

The superintendent laughed, and lighted a cigar, and his laugh was echoed by the guards and jailers.

Down another stone corridor, across another yard, into another gloomy hall, the very counterpart of the last, but filled with squalid figures, noisy with the clank of fetters, and pierced at each end with a circular opening, through which a cannon's mouth showed grimly.

"Bring Number Two Hundred and Six," said the superintendent, "and call the priest."

Number Two Hundred and Six came from a farther corner of the hall, dragging a heavy chain, and along with him a blacksmith, bare-armed and leather-aproned.

"Lie down," said the blacksmith, with an insulting spurn of the foot.

I lay down. A heavy iron ring attached to a chain of eighteen links was then fitted to my ankle, and riveted with a single stroke of the hammer. A second ring next received the disengaged ends of my companion's chain and mine, and was secured in the same manner. The echo of each blow resounded through the vaulted roof like a hollow laugh.

"Good," said the superintendent, drawing a small red book from his pocket. "Number Two Hundred and Seven, attend to the prison code. If you attempt to escape without succeeding, you will be bastinadoed. If you succeed in getting beyond the port, and are then taken, you will receive three years of double-chaining. As soon as you are missed, three cannon shots will be fired, and alarm flags will be hoisted on every bastion. Signals will be telegraphed to the maritime guards, and to the police of the ten neighbouring districts. A price will be set upon your head. Placards will be posted upon the gates of Toulon, and sent to every town throughout the empire. It will be lawful to fire upon you, if you cannot be captured alive."

Having read this with grim complacency, the superintendent resumed his cigar, replaced the book in his pocket, and walked away.

All was over now—all the incredulous wonder, the dreamy dulness, the smouldering hope, of the past three days. I was a felon, and (slavery in slavery!) chained to a fellow-felon. I looked up, and found his eyes upon me. He was a swart heavy-browed sullen-jawed man of about forty; not much taller than myself, but of immensely powerful build.

"So," said he, "you're for life, are you? So am I."

"How do you know I am for life?" I asked, wearily.

"By that." And he touched my cap roughly with the back of his hand. "Green, for life. Red, for a term of years. What are you in for?"

"I conspired against the government."

He shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.

"Devil's mass! Then you're a gentleman-convict, I suppose! Pity you've not a berth to yourselves—we poor forcats hate such fine company."

"Are there many political prisoners?" I asked, after a moment's pause.

"None, in this department."

Then, as if detecting my unspoken thought, "I am no innocent," he added with an oath. "This is the fourth time I have been here. Did you ever hear of Gasparo?"

"Gasparo the forger?"

He nodded.

"Who escaped three or four months since, and——"

"And flung the sentinel over the ramparts, just as he was going to give the alarm. I'm the man."

I had heard of him, as a man who, early in his career, had been sentenced to a long solitary imprisonment in a gloomy cell, and who had come forth from his solitude hardened into an absolute wild beast. I shuddered, and, as I shuddered, found his evil eye taking vindictive note of me. From that moment he hated me. From that moment I loathed him.

A bell rang, and a detachment of convicts came in from labour. They were immediately searched by the guard, and chained up, two and two, to a sloping wooden platform that reached all down the centre of the hall. Our afternoon meal was then served out, consisting of a mess of beans, an allowance of bread and ship-biscuit, and a measure of thin wine. I drank the wine; but I could eat nothing. Gasparo took what he chose from my untouched allowance, and those who were nearest, scrambled for the rest. The supper over, a shrill whistle echoed down the hall, each man took his narrow mattress from under the platform which made our common bedstead, rolled himself in a piece of seaweed matting, and lay down for the night. In less than five minutes, all was profoundly silent. Now and then I heard the blacksmith going round with his hammer, testing the gratings, and trying the locks, in all the corridors. Now and then, the guard stalked past with his musket on his shoulder. Sometimes, a convict moaned, or shook his fetters in his sleep. Thus the weary hours went by. My companion slept heavily, and even I lost consciousness at last.

I was sentenced to hard labour. At Toulon the hard labour is of various kinds: such as quarrying, mining, pumping in the docks, lading and unlading vessels, transporting ammunition, and so forth. Gasparo and I were employed with about two hundred other convicts in a quarry a little beyond the port. Day after day, week after week, from seven in the morning until seven at night, the rocks echoed with our blows. At every blow, our chains rang and rebounded on the stony soil. In that fierce climate, terrible tempests and tropical droughts succeed each other throughout the summer and autumn. Often and often, after toiling for hours under a burning sky, have I gone back to prison and to my pallet, drenched to the skin. Thus the last days of the dreary spring ebbed slowly past; and then the more dreary summer, and then the autumn-time, came round.

My fellow-convict was a Piedmontese. He had been a burglar, a forger, an incendiary. In his last escape, he had committed manslaughter. Heaven alone knows how my sufferings were multiplied by that abhorred companionship—how I shrank from the touch of his hand—how I sickened, if his breath came over me as we lay side by side at night. I strove to disguise my loathing; but in vain. He knew it as well as I knew it, and he revenged himself upon me by every means that a vindictive nature could devise. That he should tyrannise over me was not wonderful; for his physical strength was gigantic, and he was looked upon as an authorised despot throughout the port; but simple tyranny was the least part of what I had to endure. I had been fastidiously nurtured; he purposely and continually offended my sense of delicacy. I was unaccustomed to bodily labour; he imposed on me the largest share of our daily work. When I needed rest, he would insist on walking. When my limbs were cramped, he would lie down obstinately, and refuse to stir. He delighted to sing blasphemous songs, and relate hideous stories of what he had thought and resolved on in his solitude. He would even twist the chain in such wise that it should gall me at every step. I was at that time just twenty-two years of age, and had been sickly from boyhood. To retaliate, or to defend myself, would have been alike impossible. To complain to the superintendent, would only have been to provoke my tyrant to greater cruelty.

There came a day, at length, when his hatred seemed to abate. He allowed me to rest when our hour of repose came round. He abstained from singing the songs I abhorred, and fell into long fits of abstraction. The next morning, shortly after we had begun work, he drew near enough to speak to me in a whisper.

"François, have you a mind to escape?"

I felt the blood rush to my face. I clasped my hands. I could not speak.

"Can you keep a secret?"

"To the death."

" Listen, then. To-morrow, a renowned marshal will visit the port. He will inspect the docks, the prisons, the quarries. There will be plenty of cannonading from the forts and the shipping, and if two convicts escape, a volley more or less will attract no attention round about Toulon. Do you understand?"

"You mean that no one will recognise the signals?"

"Not even the sentries at the town-gates—not even the guards in the next quarry. Devil's mass! What can be easier than to strike off each other's fetters with the pickaxe when the superintendent is not looking, and the salutes are firing? Will you venture?"

"With my life! "

"A bargain. Shake hands on it."

I had never touched his hand in fellowship before, and I felt as if my own were bloodstained by the contact. I knew by the sullen fire in his glance, that he interpreted my faltering touch aright.

We were roused an hour earlier than usual the following morning, and went through a general inspection in the prison-yard. Before going to work, we were served with a double allowance of wine. At one o'clock, we heard the first far-off salutes from the ships of war in the harbour. The sound ran through me like a galvanic shock. One by one, the forts took up the signal. It was repeated by the gunboats closer in shore. Discharge followed discharge, all along the batteries on both sides of the port, and the air grew thick with smoke.

"As the first shot is fired yonder," whispered Gasparo, pointing to the barracks behind the prison, "strike at the first link of my chain, close to the ankle."

A rapid suspicion flashed across me.

"If I do, how can I be sure that you will free me afterwards? No, Gasparo; you must deal the first blow."

"As you please," he replied, with a laugh and an imprecation.

At the same instant, came a flash from the battlements of the barrack close by, and then a thunderous reverberation, multiplied again and again by the rocks around. As the roar burst over our heads, I saw him strike, and felt the fetters fall. Scarcely had the echo of the first gun died away, when the second was fired. It was now Gasparo's turn to be free. I struck; but less skilfully, and had twice to repeat the blow before breaking the stubborn link. We then went on, apparently, with our work, standing somewhat close together, with the chain huddled up between us. No one had observed us, and no one, at first sight, could have detected what we had done. At the third shot, a party of officers and gentlemen made their appearance at the bend of the road leading up to the quarry. In an instant, every head was turned in their direction; every felon paused in his work; every guard presented arms. At that moment we flung away our caps and pickaxes, scaled the rugged bit of cliff on which we had been toiling, dropped into the ravine below, and made for the mountain passes that lead into the valley. Encumbered still with the iron anklets to which our chains had been fastened, we could not run very swiftly. To add to our difficulties, the road was uneven, strewn with flints and blocks of fallen granite, and tortuous as the windings of a snake. Suddenly, on turning a sharp angle of projecting cliff, we came upon a little guard-house and a couple of sentries. To retreat was impossible. The soldiers were within a few yards of us. They presented their pieces, and called to us to surrender. Gasparo turned upon me like a wolf at bay.

"Curse you!" said he, dealing me a tremendous blow, "stay and be taken! I have always hated you!"

I fell, as if struck down by a sledge hammer, and, as I fell, saw him dash one soldier to the ground, dart past the other, heard a shot, and then ... all became dark, and I know no more.

When I next opened my eyes, I found myself lying on the floor of a small unfurnished room, dimly lighted by a tiny window close against the ceiling. It seemed as if weeks had gone by, since I lost consciousness. I had scarcely strength to rise, and, having risen, kept my feet with difficulty. Where my head had lain, the floor was wet with blood. Giddy and perplexed, I leaned against the wall, and tried to think.

In the first place, where was I? Evidently in no part of the prison from which I had escaped. There, all was solid stone and iron grating; here, was only whitewashed lath and plaster. I must be in a chamber of the little guard-house: probably in an upper chamber. Where, then, were the soldiers? Where was Gasparo? Had I strength to clamber up to that window, and if so, in what direction did that window look out? I stole to the door, and found it locked. I listened, breathlessly, but could hear no sound either below or above. Creeping back again, I saw that the little window was at least four feet above my head. The smooth plaster offered no projections by which I could raise myself, and there was not even a fireplace in the room from which I could have wrenched a bar to dig out holes in the wall for my feet and hands. Stay! There was my leathern belt, and on the belt, the iron hook which used to sustain my chain when I was not at work. I tore off the hook, picked away the lath and plaster in three or four places, climbed up, opened the window, and gazed out eagerly. Before me, at a distance of not more than thirty-five or forty feet, rose the rugged cliff under whose shelter the guardhouse was built; at my feet, lay a little kitchen-garden, divided from the base of the rock by a muddy ditch which seemed to run through the ravine; to the right and left, as well as I could judge, lay the rocky path along which our course had been directed. My decision was taken at once. To stay was certain capture; to venture, at all hazards, would make matters no worse. Again I listened, and again all was quiet. I drew myself through the little casement, dropped as gently as I could upon the moist earth, and, crouching against the wall, asked myself what I should do next. To climb the cliff would be to offer myself as a target to the first soldier who saw me. To venture along the ravine would be, perhaps, to encounter Gasparo and his captors face to face. Besides, it was getting dusk, and, under cover of the night, if I could only conceal myself till then, I might yet escape. But where was that concealment to be found? Heaven be thanked for the thought! There was the ditch.

Only two windows looked out upon the garden from the back of the guard-house. From one of those windows I had just now let myself down, and the other was partly shuttered up. I did not dare, however, openly to cross the garden. I dropped upon my face, and crawled in the furrows between the rows of vegetables, until I came to the ditch. Here, the water rose nearly to my waist, but the banks on either side were considerably higher, and, by stooping, I found that I could walk without bringing my head to the level of the road. I thus followed the course of the ditch for some two or three hundred yards in the direction of Toulon, thinking that my pursuers would be less likely to suspect me of doubling back towards prison, than of pushing forward towards the country. Half lying, half crouching under the rank grasses that fringed the bank above, I then watched the gathering shadows. By-and-by I heard the evening gun, and a moment after, something like a distant sound of voices. Hark! was that a shout? Unable to endure the agony of suspense, I lifted my head, and peeped cautiously out. There were lights moving in the windows of the guard-house—there were dark figures in the garden—there were hasty tramplings of feet upon the road above! Presently a light flashed over the water only a few yards from my hiding-place! I slid gently down at full length, and suffered the foul ooze to close noiselessly over me. Lying thus, I held my breath till the very beatings of my heart seemed to suffocate me, and the veins in my temples were almost bursting. I could bear it no longer—I rose to the surface—I breathed again—I looked—I listened. All was darkness and silence. My pursuers were gone by!

I suffered an hour to go by, too, before I ventured to move again. By that time it was intensely dark, and had begun to rain heavily. The water in the ditch became a brawling torrent, through which I waded, unheard, past the very windows of the guard-house.

After toiling through the water for a mile or more, I ventured out upon the road again; and so, with the rain and wind beating in my face, and the scattered boulders tripping me up continually, I made my way through the whole length of the winding pass, and came out upon the more open country about midnight. With no other guide than the wind, which was blowing from the north-east, and without even a star to help me, I then struck off to the right, following what seemed to be a rough by-road, lying through a valley. By-and-by the rain abated, and I discerned the dark outlines of a chain of hills extending all along to the left of the road. These, I concluded, must be the Maures. All was well, so far. I had taken the right direction, and was on the way to Italy.

Excepting to sit down now and then for a few minutes by the wayside, I never paused in my flight the whole night through. Fatigue and want of food prevented me, it is true, from walking very fast; but the love of liberty was strong within me, and, by keeping steadily on, I succeeded in placing about eighteen miles between myself and Toulon. At five o'clock, just as the day began to dawn, I heard a peal of chimes, and found that I was approaching a large town. In order to avoid this town, I was forced to turn back for some distance, and take to the heights. The sun had now risen, and I dared go no farther; so, having pulled some turnips in a field as I went along, I took refuge in a little lonely copse in a hollow among the hills, and there lay all day in safety. When night again closed in, I resumed my journey, keeping always among the mountains, and coming now and then on grand glimpses of moonlit bays, and tranquil islands lying off the shore; now and then, on pastoral hamlets nestled up among the palmy heights; or on promontories overgrown with the cactus and the aloe. I rested all the second day in a ruined shed at the bottom of a deserted sand-pit, and, in the evening, feeling that I could no longer sustain life without some fitting nourishment, made my way down towards a tiny fishing village on the coast below. It was quite dark, by the time I reached the level ground. I walked boldly past the cottages of the fishermen, meeting only an old woman and a little child on the way, and knocked at the curb's door. He opened it himself. I told my story in half a dozen words. The good man believed and pitied me. He gave me food and wine, an old handkerchief to wrap about my head, an old coat to replace my convict's jacket, and two or three francs to help me on my way. I parted from him with tears.

I walked all that night again, and all the next, keeping somewhat close upon the coast, and hiding among the cliffs during the daytime. On the fifth morning, having left Antibes behind me during the night's march, I came to the banks of the Var; crossed the torrent about half a mile below the wooden bridge; plunged into the pine-woods on the Sardinian side of the frontier; and lay down to rest on Italian ground at last!

How, though comparatively safe, I still pursued my journey by the least frequented ways—how I bought a file at the first hamlet to which I came, and freed myself from the iron anklet—how, having lurked about Nice till my hair and beard had grown, I begged my way on to Genoa—how, at Genoa, I hung about the port, earning a scanty livelihood by any chance work that I could get, and so struggled, somehow, through the inclement winter—how, towards the early spring, I worked my passage on board a small trader from Genoa to Fiumicino, touching at all the ports along the coast—and how, coming slowly up the Tiber in a barge laden with oil and wine, I landed one evening in March on the Ripetta quay, in Rome;—how all these things happened, and what physical hardships I endured in the mean while, I have no time here to relate in detail. My object had been to get to Rome, and that object was at last attained. In so large a city, and at so great a distance from the scene of my imprisonment, I was personally safe. I might hope to turn my talents and education to account. I might even find friends among the strangers who would flock thither to the Easter festivals. Full of hope, therefore, I sought a humble lodging in the neighbourhood of the quay, gave up a day or two to the enjoyment of my liberty and of the sights of Rome, and then set myself to find some regular employment.

Regular employment, or, indeed, employment of any kind, was not, however, so easily to be obtained. It was a season of distress. The previous harvest had been a failure, and the winter unusually severe. There had also been disturbances in Naples, and the travellers this spring were fewer by some thousands than the ordinary average. So dull a carnival had not been known for years. The artists had sold no paintings, and the sculptors no statues. The cameo-cutters and mosaicists were starving. The tradesmen, the hotel-keepers, the professional ciceroni, were all complaining bitterly. Day by day, my hopes faded and my prospects darkened. Day by day, the few scudi I had scraped together on the passage melted away. I had thought to obtain a clerkship, or a secretaryship, or a situation in some public library. Before three weeks were over, I would gladly have swept a studio. At length there came a day when I saw nothing before me but starvation; when my last bajocco was expended; when my padrone (or landlord) shut the door in my face, and I knew not where to turn for a meal or a shelter. All that afternoon, I wandered hopelessly about the streets. It was Good Friday, of all days in the year. The churches were hung with black; the bells were tolling; the thoroughfares were crowded with people in mourning. I went into the little church of Santa Martina. They were chanting a miserere, probably with no great skill, but with a pathos that seemed to open up all the sources of my despair.

Outcast that I was, I slept that night under a dark arch near the theatre of Marcellus. The morning dawned upon a glorious day, and I crept out, shivering, into the sunshine. Lying crouched against a bit of warm wall, I caught myself wondering more than once how long it would be worth while to endure the agonies of hunger, and whether the brown waters of the Tiber were deep enough to drown a man. It seemed hard to die so young. My future might have been so pleasant, so honourable. The rough life that I had been leading of late, too, had strengthened me in every way, physically and mentally. I had grown taller. My muscles were more developed. I was twice as active, as energetic, as resolute, as I had been a year before. And of what use were these things to me? I must die, and they could only serve to make me die the harder.

I got up and wandered about the streets, as I had wandered the day before. Once I asked for alms, and was repulsed. I followed mechanically in the stream of carriages and foot passengers, and found myself, by-and-by, in the midst of the crowd that ebbs and flows continually about Saint Peter's during Easter week. Stupified and weary, I turned aside into the vestibule of the Sagrestia, and cowered down in the shelter of a doorway. Two gentlemen were reading a printed paper wafered against a pillar close by.

"Good Heavens!" said one to the other, "that a man should risk his neck for a few pauls!"

"Ay, and with the knowledge that out of eighty workmen, six or eight are dashed to pieces every time," added his companion.

"Shocking! Why, that is an average of ten per cent.!"

"No less. It is a desperate service."

"But a fine sight," said the first speaker, philosophically; and with this they walked away.

I sprang to my feet, and read the placard with avidity. It was headed "Illumination of Saint Peter's," and announced that, eighty workmen being required for the lighting of the dome and cupola, and three hundred for the cornices, pillars, colonnade, and so forth, the amministratore was empowered, &c. &c. In conclusion, it stated that every workman employed on the dome and cupola should receive in payment, a dinner and twenty-four pauls, the wages of the rest being less than a third of that sum.

A desperate service, it was true; but I was a desperate man. After all, I could but die, and I might as well die after a good dinner as from starvation. I went at once to the amministratore, was entered in his list, received a couple of pauls as earnest of the contract, and engaged to present myself punctually at eleven o'clock on the following morning. That evening I supped at a street stall, and, for a few bajocchi, obtained leave to sleep on some straw, in a loft over a stable at the back of the Via del Arco.

At eleven o'clock on the morning of Easter Sunday, April the sixteenth, I found myself, accordingly, in the midst of a crowd of poor fellows, most of whom, I dare say, were as wretched as myself, waiting at the door of the administrator's office. The piazza in front of the cathedral was like a moving mosaic of life and colour. The sun was shining, the fountains were playing, the flags were flying over Saint Angelo. It was a glorious sight; but I saw it for only a few moments. As the clocks struck the hour, the folding-doors were thrown open, and we passed, in a crowd, into a hall, where two long tables were laid for our accommodation. A couple of sentinels stood at the door; an usher marshalled us, standing, round the tables; and a priest read grace.

As he began to read, a strange sensation came upon me. I felt impelled to look across to the opposite table, and there . . . yes, by Heaven! there I saw Gasparo.

He was looking full at me, but his eyes dropped on meeting mine. I saw him turn lividly white. The recollection of all he had made me suffer, and of the dastardly blow that he had dealt me on the day of our flight, overpowered for the moment even my surprise at seeing him in this place. Oh that I might live to meet him yet, under the free sky, where no priest was praying, and no guards were by!

The grace over, we sat down, and fell to. Not even anger had power to blunt the edge of my appetite just then. I ate like a famishing wolf, and so did most of the others. We were allowed no wine, and the doors were locked upon us, that we might not procure any elsewhere. It was a wise regulation, considering the task we had to perform; but it made us none the less noisy. Under certain circumstances, danger intoxicates like wine; and on this Easter Sunday, we eighty sanpietrini, any one of whom might have his brains dashed about the leads before supper-time, ate, talked, jested, and laughed, with a wild gaiety that had in it something appalling.

The dinner lasted long, and when no one seemed disposed to eat more, the tables were cleared. Most of the men threw themselves on the floor and benches, and went to sleep; Gasparo among the number. Seeing this, I could refrain no longer. I went over, and stirred him roughly with my foot.

"Gasparo! You know me?"

He looked up, sullenly.

"Devil's mass! I thought you were at Toulon."

"It is not your fault that I am not at Toulon! Listen to me. If you and I survive this night, you shall answer to me for your treachery!"

He glared at me from under his deep brows, and, without replying, turned over on his face again, as if to sleep.

" Ecco un maladetto!" (There's an accursed fellow!), said one of the others, with a significant shrug, as I came away.

"Do you know anything of him?" I asked, eagerly.

"Cospetto! I know nothing of him; but that solitude is said to have made him a Wolf."

I could learn no more, so I also stretched myself upon the floor, as far as possible from my enemy, and fell profoundly asleep.

At seven, the guards roused those who still slept, and served each man with a small mug of thin wine. We were then formed into a double file, marched round by the back of the cathedral, and conducted up an inclined plane to the roof below the dome. From this point, a long series of staircases and winding passages carried us up between the double walls of the dome; and, at different stages in the ascent, a certain number of us were detached and posted ready for work. I was detached about half way up, and I saw Gasparo going higher still. When we were all posted, the superintendents came round and gave us our instructions. At a given signal, every man was to pass out through the loophole or window before which he was placed, and seat himself astride upon a narrow shelf of wood hanging to a strong rope just below. This rope came through the window, was wound round a roller, and secured from within. At the next signal, a lighted torch would be put into his right hand, and he was to grasp the rope firmly with his left. At the third signal, the rope was to be unwound from within by an assistant placed there for the purpose, he was to be allowed to slide rapidly down, over the curve of the dome, and, while thus sliding, was to apply his torch to every lamp he passed in his downward progress.

Having received these instructions, we waited, each man at his window, until the first signal should be given.

It was fast getting dark, and the silver illumination had been lighted since seven. All the great ribs of the dome, as far as I could see; all the cornices and friezes of the façade below; all the columns and parapets of the great colonnade surrounding the piazza, four hundred feet below, were traced out in lines of paper lanterns, the light from which, subdued by the paper, gleamed with a silvery fire which had a magical and wondrous look. Between and among these lanternoni, were placed, at different intervals all over the cathedral on the side facing the piazza, iron cups called padelle, ready filled with tallow and turpentine. To light those on the dome and cupola, was the perilous task of the sanpietrini; when they were all lighted, the golden illumination would be effected.

A few moments of intense suspense elapsed. At every second the evening grew darker, the lanternoni burned brighter, the surging hum of thousands in the piazza, and streets below, rose louder to our ears. I felt the quickening breath of the assistant at my shoulder—I could almost hear the beating of my heart. Suddenly, like the passing of an electric current, the first signal flew from lip to lip. I got out, and crossed my legs firmly round the board—with the second signal, I seized the blazing torch—with the third, I felt myself launched, and, lighting every cup as I glided past, saw all the mountainous dome above and below me spring into lines of leaping flame. The clock was now striking eight, and when the last stroke sounded, the whole cathedral was glowing in outlines of fire. A roar, like the roar of a great ocean, rose up from the multitude below, and seemed to shake the very dome against which I was clinging. I could even see the light upon the gazing faces, the crowd upon the bridge of St. Angelo, and the boats swarming along the Tiber.

Having dropped safely to the full length of my rope, and lighted my allotted share of lamps, I was now sitting in secure enjoyment of this amazing scene. All at once, I felt the rope vibrate. I looked up, saw a man clinging by one hand to the iron rod supporting the padelle, and with the other .... Merciful Heaven! It was the Piedmontese firing the rope above me with his torch!

I had no time for thought—I acted upon instinct. It was done in one fearful moment. I clambered up like a cat, dashed my torch full in the solitary felon's face, and grasped the rope an inch or two above the spot where it was burning! Blinded and baffled, he uttered a terrible cry, and dropped like a stone. Through all the roar of the living ocean below, I could hear the dull crash with which he came down upon the leaded roof—resounding through all the years that have gone by since that night, I hear it now!

I had scarcely drawn breath, when I found myself being hauled up. The assistance came not a moment too soon, for I was sick and giddy with horror, and fainted as soon as I was safe in the corridor. The next day I waited on the amministratore, and told him all that had happened. My statement was corroborated by the vacant rope from which Gasparo had descended, and the burnt fragment by which I had been drawn up. The amministratore repeated my story to a prelate high in office; and while none, even of the sanpietrini, suspected that my enemy had come by his death in any unusual manner, the truth was whispered from palace to palace until it reached the Vatican. I received much sympathy, and such pecuniary assistance as enabled me to confront the future without fear. Since that time my fortunes have been various, and I have lived in many countries.

CHAPTER IV

PICKING UP WAIFS AT SEA

Wilkie Collins

Some little time elapsed, after the French gentleman's narrative was over, before any more visitors made their appearance. At last, there sauntered in slowly a light-haired melancholy man; very tall, very stout; miserably dressed in cast-off garments; carrying a carpenter's basket, and looking as if he never expected any such windfall of luck as a chance of using the tools inside it. Surveying Mr. Traveller with watery light-blue eyes, this dismal individual explained (in better language than might have been expected from his personal appearance) that he was in search of work; and that, finding none, he had come in to stare at Mr. Mopes for want of anything better to do. His name was Heavysides; his present address was the Peal of Bells down in the village; if Mr. Traveller had the means of putting a job in his hands, he would be thankful for the same; if not, he would ask leave to sit down and rest himself agreeably by looking at Mr. Mopes.

Leave being granted, he sat down, and stared to his heart's content. He was not astonished, as the artist had been: he was not complacently impenetrable to surprise, like the Frenchman—he was simply curious to know why the Hermit had shut himself up. "When he first skewered that blanket round him, what had he got to complain of?" asked Heavysides. "Whatever his grievance is, I could match it, I think."

"Could you?" said Mr. Traveller. " By all means let us hear it."

There has never yet been discovered a man with a grievance who objected to mention it. The carpenter was no exception to this general human rule. He entered on his grievance, without a moment's hesitation, in these words:

I shall consider it in the light of a personal favour, at starting, if you will compose your spirits to hear a pathetic story, and if you will kindly picture me in your own mind as a baby five minutes old.

Do I understand you to say that I am too big and too heavy to be pictured in anybody's mind as a baby? Perhaps I may be—but don't mention my weight again, if you please. My weight has been the grand misfortune of my life. It spoiled all my prospects (as you will presently hear) before I was two days old.

My story begins thirty-one years ago, at eleven o'clock in the forenoon; and starts with the great mistake of my first appearance in this world, at sea, on board the merchant ship Adventure, Captain Gillop, five hundred tons burden, coppered, and carrying an experienced surgeon.

In presenting myself to you (which I am now about to do) at that eventful period of my life when I was from five to ten minutes old; and in withdrawing myself again from your notice (so as not to trouble you with more than a short story), before the time when I cut my first tooth, I need not hesitate to admit that I speak on hearsay knowledge only. It is knowledge, however, that may be relied on, for all that. My information comes from Captain Gillop, commander of the Adventure (who sent it to me in the form of a letter); from Mr. Jolly, experienced surgeon of the Adventure (who wrote it for me—most unfeelingly, as I think—in the shape of a humorous narrative); and from Mrs. Drabble, stewardess of the Adventure (who told it me by word of mouth). Those three persons were, in various degrees, spectators—I may say astonished spectators—of the events which I have now to relate.

The Adventure, at the time I speak of, was bound out from London to Australia. I suppose you know without my telling you that thirty years ago was long before the time of the gold-finding and the famous clipper ships. Building in the new colony and sheep-farming far up inland were the two main employments of those days; and the passengers on board our vessel were consequently builders or sheep-farmers, almost to a man.

A ship of five hundred tons, well loaded with cargo, doesn't offer first-rate accommodation to a large number of passengers. Not that the gentlefolk in the cabin had any great reason to complain. There, the passage-money, which was a good round sum, kept them what you call select. One or two berths in this part of the ship were even empty and going a-begging, in consequence of there being only four cabin passengers. These are their names and descriptions:

Mr. Sims, a middle-aged man, going out on a building speculation. Mr. Purling, a weakly young gentleman, sent on a long sea-voyage, for the benefit of his health. Mr. and Mrs. Smallchild, a young married couple, with a little independence, which Mr. Smallchild proposed to make a large one by sheep-farming. This gentleman was reported to the captain as being very good company when on shore. But the sea altered him to a certain extent. When Mr. Smallchild was not sick, he was eating and drinking; and when he was not eating and drinking, he was fast asleep. He was perfectly patient and good-humored, and wonderfully nimble at running into his cabin when the qualms took him on a sudden—but, as for his being good company, nobody heard him say ten words together all through the voyage. And no wonder. A man can't talk in the qualms; a man can't talk while he is eating and drinking; and a man can't talk when he is asleep. And that was Mr. Smallchild's life. As for Mrs. Smallchild, she kept her cabin from first to last. But you will hear more of her presently.

These four cabin passengers, as I have already remarked, were well enough off for their accommodation. But the miserable people in the steerage—a poor place at the best of times on board the Adventure—were all huddled together, men and women and children, higgledy-piggledy, like sheep in a pen, except that they hadn't got the same quantity of fine fresh air to blow over them. They were artisans and farm-laborers, who couldn't make it out in the old country. I have no information either of their exact numbers or of their names. It doesn't matter; there was only one family among them which need be mentioned particularly—namely, the family of the Heavysides. To wit, Simon Heavysides, intelligent, and well-educated, a carpenter by trade; Martha Heavysides, his wife; and seven little Heavysides, their unfortunate offspring.—My father and mother and brothers and sisters, did I understand you to say? Don't be in a hurry! I recommend you to wait a little before you make quite sure of that circumstance.

Though I myself had not, perhaps—strictly speaking—come on board when the vessel left London, my ill luck, as I firmly believe, had shipped in the Adventure to wait for me—and decided the nature of the voyage accordingly. Never was such a miserable time known. Stormy weather came down on us from all points of the compass, with intervals of light, baffling winds or dead calms. By the time the Adventure had been three months out, Captain Gillop's naturally sweet temper began to get soured. I leave you to say whether it was likely to be much improved by a piece of news which reached him from the region of the cabin on the morning of the ninety-first day. It had fallen to a dead calm again; and the ship was rolling about helpless, with her head all round the compass, when Mr. Jolly (from whose unfeeling narrative I repeat all conversations, exactly as they passed) came on deck to the captain, and addressed him in these words:

"I've got some news that will rather surprise you," said Mr. Jolly, smiling and rubbing his hands. (Although the experienced surgeon has not shown much sympathy for my troubles, I won't deny that his disposition was as good as his name. To this day no amount of bad weather or hard work can upset Mr. Jolly's temper.)

"If it's news of a fair wind coming," grumbled the captain, "that would surprise me, on board this ship, I can promise you!"

"It's not exactly a wind coming," said Mr. Jolly. "It's another cabin passenger."

The captain looked round at the empty sea, with the land thousands of miles away, and with not a ship in sight—turned sharply on the experienced surgeon—eyed him hard—changed color suddenly—and asked what he meant.

"I mean there's a fifth cabin passenger coming on board," persisted Mr. Jolly, grinning from ear to ear—"introduced by Mrs. Smallchild—likely to join us, I should say, toward evening—size, nothing to speak of—sex, not known at present—manners and customs, probably squally."

"Do you really mean it?" asked the captain, backing away, and turning paler and paler.

"Yes, I do," answered Mr. Jolly, nodding hard at him.

"Then I'll tell you what," cried Captain Gillop, suddenly flying into a violent passion, "I won't have it! The infernal weather has worried me out of my life and soul already—and I won't have it! Put it off, Jolly—tell her there isn't room enough for that sort of thing on board my vessel. What does she mean by taking us all in in this way? Shameful! Shameful!"

"No! no!" remonstrated Mr. Jolly. "Don't look at it in that light. It's her first child, poor thing. How should she know? Give her a little more experience, and I dare say——"

"Where's her husband?" broke in the captain, with a threatening look. "I'll speak my mind to her husband, at any rate."

Mr. Jolly consulted his watch before he answered.

"Half-past eleven," he said. "Let me consider a little. It's Mr. Smallchild's regular time just now for squaring accounts with the sea. He'll have done in a quarter of an hour. In five minutes more he'll be fast asleep. At one o'clock he'll eat a hearty lunch, and go to sleep again. At half-past two he'll square accounts as before—and so on till night. You'll make nothing out of Mr. Smallchild, captain. Extraordinary man—wastes tissue, and repairs it again perpetually, in the most astonishing manner. If we are another month at sea, I believe we shall bring him into port totally comatose.—Hallo! What do you want?"

The steward's mate had approached the quarter-deck while the doctor was speaking. Was it a curious coincidence? This man also was grinning from ear to ear, exactly like Mr. Jolly.

"You're wanted in the steerage, sir," said the steward's mate to the doctor. "A woman taken bad, name of Heavysides."

"Nonsense!" cried Mr. Jolly "Ha, ha, ha! You don't mean——Eh?"

"That's it, sir, sure enough," said the steward's mate, in the most positive manner.

Captain Gillop looked all around him in silent desperation; lost his sea-legs for the first time these twenty years; staggered back till he was brought up all standing by the side of his own vessel; dashed his fist on the bulwark, and found language to express himself in, at the same moment.

"This ship is bewitched," said the captain, wildly. "Stop!" he called out, recovering himself a little as the doctor bustled away to the steerage. "Stop! If it's true, Jolly, send her husband here aft to me. Damme, I'll have it out with one of the husbands!" said the captain, shaking his fist viciously at the empty air.

Ten minutes passed; and then there came staggering toward the captain, tottering this way and that with the rolling of the becalmed vessel, a long, lean, melancholy, light-haired man, with a Roman nose, a watery blue eye, and a complexion profusely spotted with large brown freckles. This was Simon Heavysides, the intelligent carpenter, with the wife and the family of seven small children on board.

"Oh! you're the man, are you?" said the captain.

The ship lurched heavily; and Simon Heavysides staggered away with a run to the opposite side of the deck, as if he preferred going straight overboard into the sea to answering the captain's question.

"You're the man—are you?" repeated the captain, following him, seizing him by the collar, and pinning him up fiercely against the bulwark. "It's your wife—is it? You infernal rascal! what do you mean by turning my ship into a Lying-In Hospital? You have committed an act of mutiny; or, if it isn't mutiny, it's next door to it. I've put a man in irons for less! I've more than half a mind to put you in irons! Hold up, you slippery lubber! What do you mean by bringing passengers I don't bargain for on board my vessel? What have you got to say for yourself, before I clap the irons on you?"

"Nothing, sir," answered Simon Heavysides, accepting the captain's strong language without a word of protest. "As for the punishment you mentioned just now, sir," continued Simon, "I wish to say—having seven children more than I know how to provide for, and an eighth coming to make things worse—I respectfully wish to say, sir, that my mind is in irons already; and I don't know as it will make much difference if you put my body in irons along with it."

The captain mechanically let go of the carpenter's collar; the mild despair of the man melted him in spite of himself.

"Why did you come to sea? Why didn't you wait ashore till it was all over?" asked the captain, as sternly as he could.

"It's no use waiting, sir," remarked Simon. "In our line of life, as soon as it's over it begins again. There's no end to it that I can see," said the miserable carpenter, after a moment's meek consideration—"except the grave."

"Who's talking about the grave?" cried Mr. Jolly, coming up at that moment. "It's births we've got to do with on board this vessel—not burials. Captain Gillop, this woman, Martha Heavysides, can't be left in your crowded steerage in her present condition. She must be moved off into one of the empty berths—and the sooner the better, I can tell you!"

The captain began to look savage again. A steerage passenger in one of his "state-rooms" was a nautical anomaly subversive of all discipline. He eyed the carpenter once more, as if he was mentally measuring him for a set of irons.

"I'm very sorry, sir," Simon remarked, politely—"very sorry that any inadvertence of mine or Mrs. Heavysides——"

"Take your long carcass and your long tongue forward!" thundered the captain. "When talking will mend matters, I'll send for you again. Give your own orders, Jolly," he went on, resignedly, as Simon staggered off. "Turn the ship into a nursery as soon as you like!"

Five minutes later—so expeditious was Mr. Jolly—Martha Heavysides appeared horizontally on deck, shrouded in blankets and supported by three men. When this interesting procession passed the captain, he shrank aside from it with as vivid an appearance of horror as if a wild bull was being carried by him instead of a British matron. The sleeping-berths below opened on either side out of the main cabin. On the left-hand side (looking toward the ship's bowsprit) was Mrs. Smallchild. On the right-hand side, opposite to her, the doctor established Mrs. Heavysides. A partition of canvas was next run up, entirely across the main cabin. The smaller of the two temporary rooms thus made lay nearest the stairs leading on deck, and was left free to the public. The larger was kept sacred to the doctor and his mysteries. When an old clothes-basket, emptied, cleaned, and comfortably lined with blankets (to serve for a makeshift cradle), had been in due course of time carried into the inner cabin, and had been placed midway between the two sleeping-berths, so as to be easily producible when wanted, the outward and visible preparations of Mr. Jolly were complete; the male passengers had all taken refuge on deck; and the doctor and the stewardess were left in undisturbed possession of the lower regions.

While it was still early in the afternoon the weather changed for the better. For once in a way, the wind came from a fair quarter, and the Adventure bowled along pleasantly before it almost on an even keel. Captain Gillop mixed with the little group of male passengers on the quarter-deck, restored to his sweetest temper; and set them his customary example, after dinner, of smoking a cigar.

"If this fine weather lasts, gentlemen," he said, "we shall make out very well with our meals up here, and we shall have our two small extra cabin passengers christened on dry land in a week's time, if their mothers approve of it. How do you feel in your mind, sir, about your good lady?"

Mr. Smallchild (to whom the inquiry was addressed) had his points of external personal resemblance to Simon Heavysides. He was neither so tall nor so lean, certainly—but he, too, had a Roman nose, and light hair, and watery blue eyes. With careful reference to his peculiar habits at sea, he had been placed conveniently close to the bulwark, and had been raised on a heap of old sails and cushions, so that he could easily get his head over the ship's side when occasion required. The food and drink which assisted in "restoring his tissue," when he was not asleep and not "squaring accounts with the sea," lay close to his hand. It was then a little after three o'clock; and the snore with which Mr. Smallchild answered the captain's inquiry showed that he had got round again, with the regularity of clock-work, to the period of the day when he recruited himself with sleep.

"What an insensible blockhead that man is!" said Mr. Sims, the middle-aged passenger, looking across the deck contemptuously at Mr. Smallchild.

"If the sea had the same effect on you that it has on him," retorted the invalid passenger, Mr. Purling, "you would just be as insensible yourself."

Mr. Purling (who was a man of sentiment) disagreed with Mr. Sims (who was a man of business) on every conceivable subject, all through the voyage. Before, however, they could continue the dispute about Mr. Smallchild, the doctor surprised them by appearing from the cabin.

"Any news from below, Jolly?" asked the captain, anxiously.

"None whatever," answered the doctor. "I've come to idle the afternoon away up here, along with the rest of you."

As events turned out, Mr. Jolly idled away an hour and a half exactly. At the end of that time Mrs. Drabble, the stewardess, appeared with a face of mystery, and whispered, nervously, to the doctor,

"Please to step below directly, sir."

"Which of them is it?" asked Mr. Jolly.

"Both of them," answered Mrs. Drabble, emphatically.

The doctor looked grave; the stewardess looked frightened. The two immediately disappeared together.

"I suppose, gentlemen," said Captain Gillop, addressing Mr. Purling, Mr. Sims, and the first mate, who had just joined the party—"I suppose it's only fit and proper, in the turn things have taken, to shake up Mr. Smallchild? And I don't doubt but what we ought to have the other husband handy, as a sort of polite attention under the circumstances. Pass the word forward there, for Simon Heavysides. Mr. Smallchild, sir! rouse up! Here's your good lady——Hang me, gentlemen, if I know exactly how to put it to him."

"Yes. Thank you," said Mr. Smallchild, opening his eyes drowsily. "Biscuit and cold bacon, as usual—when I'm ready. I'm not ready yet. Thank you. Good-afternoon." Mr. Smallchild closed his eyes again, and became, in the doctor's phrase, "totally comatose."

Before Captain Gillop could hit on any new plan for rousing this imperturbable passenger, Simon Heavysides once more approached the quarter-deck.

"I spoke a little sharp to you, just now, my man," said the captain, "being worried in my mind by what's going on on board this vessel. But I'll make it up to you, never fear. Here's your wife in, what they call, an interesting situation. It's only right you should be within easy hail of her. I look upon you, Heavysides, as a steerage passenger in difficulties; and I freely give you leave to stop here along with us till it's all over."

"You are very good, sir," said Simon, "and I am indeed thankful to you and to these gentlemen. But please to remember, I have seven children already in the steerage—and there's nobody left to mind 'em but me. My wife has got over it uncommonly well, sir, on seven previous occasions—and I don't doubt but what she'll conduct herself in a similar manner on the eighth. It will be a satisfaction to her mind, Captain Gillop and gentlemen, if she knows I'm out of the way, and minding the children. For which reason, I respectfully take my leave." With those words Simon made his bow, and returned to his family.

"Well, gentlemen, these two husbands take it easy enough, at any rate!" said the captain. "One of them is used to it, to be sure; and the other is——"

Here a banging of cabin doors below, and a hurrying of footsteps, startled the speaker and his audience into momentary silence and attention.

"Ease her with the helm, Williamson!" said Captain Gillop, addressing the man who was steering the vessel. "In my opinion, gentlemen, the less the ship pitches the better, in the turn things are taking now."

The afternoon wore on into evening, and evening into night. Mr. Smallchild performed the daily ceremonies of his nautical existence as punctually as usual. He was aroused to a sense of Mrs. Smallchild's situation when he took his biscuit and bacon; lost the sense again when the time came round for "squaring his accounts;" recovered it in the interval which ensued before he went to sleep; lost it again, as a matter of course, when his eyes closed once more—and so on through the evening and early night. Simon Heavysides received messages occasionally (through the captain's care), telling him to keep his mind easy; returned messages mentioning that his mind was easy, and that the children were pretty quiet, but never approached the deck in his own person. Mr. Jolly now and then showed himself; said "All right,—no news," took a little light refreshment, and disappeared again, as cheerful as ever. The fair breeze still held; the captain's temper remained unruffled; the man at the helm eased the vessel, from time to time, with the most anxious consideration. Ten o'clock came; the moon rose and shone superbly; the nightly grog made its appearance on the quarter-deck; the captain gave the passengers the benefit of his company; and still nothing happened. Twenty minutes more of suspense slowly succeeded each other—and then, at last, Mr. Jolly was seen suddenly to ascend the cabin stairs.

To the amazement of the little group on the quarter-deck, the doctor held Mrs. Drabble, the stewardess, fast by the arm, and, without taking the slightest notice of the captain or the passengers, placed her on the nearest seat he could find. As he did this his face became visible in the moonlight, and displayed to the startled spectators an expression of blank consternation.

"Compose yourself, Mrs. Drabble," said the doctor, in tones of unmistakable alarm. "Keep quiet, and let the air blow over you. Collect yourself, ma'am—for Heaven's sake, collect yourself!"

Mrs. Drabble made no answer. She beat her hands vacantly on her knees, and stared straight before her, like a woman panic-stricken.

"What's wrong?" asked the captain, setting down his glass of grog in dismay. "Anything amiss with those two unfortunate women?"

"Nothing," said the doctor. "Both doing admirably well."

"Anything queer with their babies?" continued the captain. "Are there more than you bargained for, Jolly? Twins, for instance?"

"No! no!" replied Mr. Jolly, impatiently. "A baby apiece—both boys—both in first-rate condition. Judge for yourselves," added the doctor, as the two new cabin passengers tried their lungs below for the first time, and found that they answered their purpose in the most satisfactory manner.

"What the devil's amiss, then, with you and Mrs. Drabble?" persisted the captain, beginning to lose his temper again.

"Mrs. Drabble and I are two innocent people, and we have got into the most dreadful scrape that ever you heard of!" was Mr. Jolly's startling answer.

The captain, followed by Mr. Purling and Mr. Sims, approached the doctor with looks of horror. Even the man at the wheel stretched himself over it as far as he could to hear what was coming next. The only uninterested person present was Mr. Smallchild. His time had come round for going to sleep again, and he was snoring peacefully, with his biscuit and bacon close beside him.

"Let's hear the worst of it at once, Jolly," said the captain, a little impatiently.

The doctor paid no heed to his request. His whole attention was absorbed by Mrs. Drabble. "Are you better now, ma'am?" he asked, anxiously.

"No better in my mind," answered Mrs. Drabble, beginning to beat her knees again. "Worse, if anything."

"Listen to me," said Mr. Jolly, coaxingly. "I'll put the whole case over again to you, in a few plain questions. You'll find it all come back to your memory, if you only follow me attentively, and if you take time to think and collect yourself before you attempt to answer."

Mrs. Drabble bowed her head in speechless submission—and listened. Everybody else on the quarter-deck listened, except the impenetrable Mr. Smallchild.

"Now, ma'am!" said the doctor. "Our troubles began in Mrs. Heavysides's cabin, which is situated on the starboard side of the ship?"

"They did, sir," replied Mrs. Drabble.

"Good! We went backward and forward, an infinite number of times, between Mrs. Heavysides (starboard) and Mrs. Smallchild (larboard)—but we found that Mrs. Heavysides, having got the start, kept it—and when I called out, 'Mrs. Drabble! here's a chopping boy for you; come and take him!'—I called out starboard, didn't I?"

"Starboard, sir—I'll take my oath of it," said Mrs. Drabble.

"Good again! 'Here's a chopping boy,' I said. 'Take him, ma'am, and make him comfortable in the cradle.' And you took him, and made him comfortable in the cradle, accordingly? Now where was the cradle?"

"In the main cabin, sir," replied Mrs. Drabble.

"Just so! In the main cabin, because we hadn't got room for it in either of the sleeping cabins. You put the starboard baby (otherwise Heavysides) in the clothes-basket cradle in the main cabin. Good once more. How was the cradle placed?"

"Crosswise to the ship, sir," said Mrs. Drabble.

"Crosswise to the ship? That is to say, with one side longwise toward the stern of the vessel, and one side longwise toward the bows. Bear that in mind—and now follow me a little further. No! no! don't say you can't, and your head's in a whirl. My next question will steady it. Carry your mind on half an hour, Mrs. Drabble. At the end of half an hour you heard my voice again; and my voice called out, 'Mrs. Drabble! here's another chopping boy for you; come and take him!'—and you came and took him larboard, didn't you?"

"Larboard, sir, I don't deny it," answered Mrs. Drabble.

"Better and better! 'Here is another chopping boy,' I said. 'Take him, ma'am, and make him comfortable in the cradle, along with number one.' And you took the larboard baby (otherwise Smallchild), and made him comfortable in the cradle along with the starboard baby (otherwise Heavysides), accordingly! Now what happened after that?"

"Don't ask me, sir!" exclaimed Mrs.. Drabble, losing her self-control, and wringing her hands desperately.

"Steady, ma'am! I'll put it to you as plain as print. Steady! and listen to me. Just as you had made the larboard baby comfortable I had occasion to send you into the starboard (or Heavysides) cabin to fetch something which I wanted in the larboard (or Smallchild) cabin; I kept you there a little while along with me; I left you and went into the Heavysides cabin, and called to you to bring me something I wanted out of the Smallchild cabin, but before you got half-way across the main cabin I said, 'No; stop where you are, and I'll come to you;' immediately after which Mrs. Smallchild alarmed you, and you came across to me of your own accord; and thereupon I stopped you in the main cabin, and said, 'Mrs. Drabble, your mind's getting confused; sit down and collect your scattered intellects;' and you sat down and tried to collect them——"

("And couldn't, sir," interposed Mrs. Drabble, parenthetically. "Oh, my head! my head!")

—"And tried to collect your scattered intellects, and couldn't?" continued the doctor. "And the consequence was, when I came out from the Smallchild cabin to see how you were getting on, I found you with the clothes-basket cradle hoisted up on the cabin table, staring down at the babies inside, with your mouth dropped open, and both your hands twisted in your hair? And when I said, 'Anything wrong with either of those two fine boys, Mrs. Drabble?' you caught me by the coat-collar, and whispered in my right ear these words, 'Lord save us and help us, Mr. Jolly, I've confused the two babies in my mind, and I don't know which is which!'"

"And I don't know now!" cried Mrs. Drabble, hysterically. "Oh, my head! my head! I don't know now!"

"Captain Gillop and gentlemen," said Mr. Jolly, wheeling round and addressing his audience with the composure of sheer despair, "that is the Scrape—and, if you ever heard of a worse one, I'll trouble you to compose this miserable woman by mentioning it immediately."

Captain Gillop looked at Mr. Purling and Mr. Sims. Mr. Purling and Mr. Sims looked at Captain Gillop. They were all three thunderstruck—and no wonder.

"Can't you throw any light on it, Jolly?" inquired the captain, who was the first to recover himself.

"If you knew what I have had to do below you wouldn't ask me such a question as that," replied the doctor. "Remember that I have had the lives of two women and two children to answer for—remember that I have been cramped up in two small sleeping-cabins, with hardly room to turn round in, and just light enough from two miserable little lamps to see my hand before me; remember the professional difficulties of the situation, the ship rolling about under me all the while, and the stewardess to compose into the bargain; bear all that in mind, will you, and then tell me how much spare time I had on my hands for comparing two boys together inch by inch—two boys born at night, within half an hour of each other, on board a ship at sea. Ha, ha! I only wonder the mothers and the boys and the doctor are all five of them alive to tell the story!"

"No marks on one or other of them, that happened to catch your eye?" asked Mr. Sims.

"They must have been strongish marks to catch my eye in the light I had to work by, and in the professional difficulties I had to grapple with," said the doctor. "I saw they were both straight, well formed children—and that's all I saw."

"Are their infant features sufficiently developed to indicate a family likeness?" inquired Mr. Purling. "Should you say they took after their fathers or their mothers?"

"Both of them have light eyes, and light hair—such as it is," replied Mr. Jolly, doggedly. "Judge for yourself."

"Mr. Smallchild has light eyes and light hair," remarked Mr. Sims.

"And Simon Heavysides has light eyes and light hair," rejoined Mr. Purling.

"I should recommend waking Mr. Smallchild, and sending for Heavysides, and letting the two fathers toss up for it," suggested Mr. Sims.

"The parental feeling is not to be trifled with in that heartless manner," retorted Mr. Purling. "I should recommend trying the Voice of Nature."

"What may that be, sir?" inquired Captain Gillop, with great curiosity.

"The maternal instinct," replied Mr. Purling. "The mother's intuitive knowledge of her own child."

"Ay, ay!" said the captain. "Well thought of. What do you say, Jolly, to the Voice of Nature?"

The doctor held up his hand impatiently. He was engaged in resuming the effort to rouse Mrs. Drabble's memory by a system of amateur cross-examination, with the unsatisfactory result of confusing her more helplessly than ever. Could she put the cradle back, in her own mind, into its original position? No. Could she remember whether she laid the starboard baby (otherwise Heavysides) on the side of the cradle nearest the stern of the ship, or nearest the bows? No. Could she remember any better about the larboard baby (otherwise Smallchild)? No. Why did she move the cradle on to the cabin table, and so bewilder herself additionally, when she was puzzled already? Because it came over her, on a sudden, that she had forgotten, in the dreadful confusion of the time, which was which; and of course she wanted to look closer at them, and see; and she couldn't see; and to her dying day she should never forgive herself; and let them throw her overboard, for a miserable wretch, if they liked—and so on, till the persevering doctor was wearied out at last, and gave up Mrs. Drabble, and gave up, with her, the whole case.

"I see nothing for it but the Voice of Nature," said the captain, holding fast to Mr. Purling's idea. "Try it, Jolly—you can but try it."

"Something must be done," said the doctor. "I can't leave the women alone any longer, and the moment I get below they will both ask for their babies. Wait here till you're fit to be seen, Mrs. Drabble, and then follow me. Voice of Nature!" added Mr. Jolly, contemptuously, as he descended the cabin stairs. "Oh yes, I'll try it—much good the Voice of Nature will do us, gentlemen. You shall judge for yourselves."

Favoured by the night, Mr. Jolly cunningly turned down the dim lamps in the sleeping-cabins to a mere glimmer, on the pretext that the light was bad for his patients' eyes. He then took up the first of the two unlucky babies that came to hand, marked the clothes in which it was wrapped with a blot of ink, and carried it in to Mrs. Smallchild, choosing her cabin merely because he happened to be nearest to it. The second baby (distinguished by having no mark) was taken by Mrs. Drabble to Mrs. Heavysides. For a certain time the two mothers and the two babies were left together. They were then separated again by medical order; and were afterward re-united, with the difference that the marked baby went on this occasion to Mrs. Heavysides, and the unmarked baby to Mrs. Smallchild—the result, in the obscurity of the sleeping-cabins, proving to be that one baby did just as well as the other, and that the Voice of Nature was (as Mr. Jolly had predicted) totally incompetent to settle the existing difficulty.

"While night serves us, Captain Gillop, we shall do very well," said the doctor, after he had duly reported the failure of Mr. Purling's suggested experiment. "But when morning comes, and daylight shows the difference between the children, we must be prepared with a course of some kind. If the two mothers below get the slightest suspicion of the case as it stands, the nervous shock of the discovery may do dreadful mischief. They must be kept deceived, in the interests of their own health. We must choose a baby for each of them when to-morrow comes, and then hold to the choice, till the mothers are well and up again. The question is, who's to take the responsibility? I don't usually stick at trifles—but I candidly admit that I'm afraid of it."

"I decline meddling in the matter, on the ground that I am a perfect stranger," said Mr. Sims.

"And I object to interfere, from precisely similar motives," added Mr. Purling; agreeing for the first time with a proposition that emanated from his natural enemy all through the voyage.

"Wait a minute, gentlemen," said Captain Gillop. "I've got this difficult matter, as I think, in its right bearings. We must make a clean breast of it to the husbands, and let them take the responsibility."

"I believe they won't accept it," observed Mr. Sims.

"And I believe they will," asserted Mr. Purling, relapsing into his old habits.

"If they won't," said the captain, firmly, "I'm master on board this ship—and, as sure as my name is Thomas Gillop, I'll take the responsibility!"

This courageous declaration settled all difficulties for the time being; and a council was held to decide on future proceedings. It was resolved to remain passive until the next morning, on the last faint chance that a few hours' sleep might compose Mrs. Drabble's bewildered memory. The babies were to be moved into the main cabin before the daylight grew bright—or, in other words, before Mrs. Smallchild or Mrs. Heavysides could identify the infant who had passed the night with her. The doctor and the captain were to be assisted by Mr. Purling, Mr. Sims, and the first mate, in the capacity of witnesses; and the assembly so constituted was to meet, in consideration of the emergency of the case, at six o'clock in the morning, punctually.

At six o'clock, accordingly, with the weather fine, and the wind still fair, the proceedings began. For the last time Mr. Jolly cross-examined Mrs. Drabble, assisted by the captain, and supervised by the witnesses. Nothing whatever was elicited from the unfortunate stewardess. The doctor pronounced her confusion to be chronic, and the captain and the witnesses unanimously agreed with him.

The next experiment tried was the revelation of the true state of the case to the husbands. Mr. Smallchild happened, on this occasion, to be "squaring his accounts" for the morning; and the first articulate words which escaped him in reply to the disclosure, were, "Deviled biscuit and anchovy paste." Further perseverance merely elicited an impatient request that they would "pitch him overboard at once, and the two babies along with him." Serious remonstrance was tried next, with no better effect. "Settle it how you like," said Mr. Smallchild, faintly. "Do you leave it to me, sir, as commander of this vessel?" asked Captain Gillop. (No answer.) "Nod your head, sir, if you can't speak." Mr. Smallchild nodded his head roundwise on his pillow—and fell asleep. "Does that count for leave to me to act?" asked Captain Gillop of the witnesses. And the witnesses answered, decidedly, Yes.

The ceremony was then repeated with Simon Heavysides, who responded, as became so intelligent a man, with a proposal of his own for solving the difficulty.

"Captain Gillop and gentlemen," said the carpenter, with fluent and melancholy politeness, "I should wish to consider Mr. Smallchild before myself in this matter. I am quite willing to part with my baby (whichever he is); and I respectfully propose that Mr. Smallchild should take both the children, and so make quite sure that he has really got possession of his own son."

The only immediate objection to this ingenious proposition was started by the doctor; who sarcastically inquired of Simon, "what he thought Mrs. Heavysides would say to it?" The carpenter confessed that this consideration had escaped him; and that Mrs. Heavysides was only too likely to be an irremovable obstacle in the way of the proposed arrangement. The witnesses all thought so too; and Heavysides and his idea were dismissed together, after Simon had first gratefully expressed his entire readiness to leave it all to the captain.

"Very well, gentlemen," said Captain Gillop. "As commander on board, I reckon next after the husbands in the matter of responsibility—I've considered this difficulty in all its bearings—and I'm prepared to deal with it. The Voice of Nature (which you proposed, Mr. Purling) has been found to fail. The tossing up for it (which you proposed, Mr. Sims) doesn't square altogether with my notions of what's right in a very serious business. No, sir! I've got my own plan; and I'm now about to try it. Follow me below, gentlemen, to the steward's pantry."

The witnesses looked round on one another in the profoundest astonishment—and followed.

"Saunders," said the captain, addressing the steward, "bring out the scales."

The scales were of the ordinary kitchen sort, with a tin tray on one side to hold the commodity to be weighed, and a stout iron slab on the other to support the weights. Saunders placed these scales upon a neat little pantry table, fitted on the ball-and-socket principle, so as to save the breaking of crockery by swinging with the motion of the ship.

"Put a clean duster in the tray," said the captain. "Doctor," he continued, when this had been done, "shut the doors of the sleeping-berths (for fear of the women hearing anything), and oblige me by bringing those two babies in here."

"Oh, sir!" exclaimed Mrs. Drabble, who had been peeping guiltily into the pantry—"oh, don't hurt the little dears! If anybody suffers, let it be me!"

"Hold your tongue, if you please, ma'am," said the captain. "And keep the secret of these proceedings, if you wish to keep your place. If the ladies ask for their children, say they will have them in ten minutes' time."

The doctor came in, and set down the clothes-basket cradle on the pantry floor. Captain Gillop immediately put on his spectacles, and closely examined the two unconscious innocents who lay beneath him.

"Six of one and half a dozen of the other," said the captain. "I don't see any difference between them. Wait a bit, though! Yes, I do. One's a bald baby. Very good. We'll begin with that one. Doctor, strip the bald baby, and put him in the scales."

The bald baby protested—in his own language—but in vain. In two minutes he was flat on his back in the tin tray, with the clean duster under him to take the chill off.

"Weigh him accurately, Saunders," continued the captain. "Weigh him, if necessary, to an eighth of an ounce. Gentlemen! watch this proceeding closely; it's a very important one."

While the steward was weighing and the witnesses were watching, Captain Gillop asked his first mate for the log-book of the ship, and for pen and ink.

"How much, Saunders?" asked the captain, opening the book.

"Seven pounds, one ounce, and a quarter," answered the steward.

"Right, gentlemen?" pursued the captain.

"Quite right," said the witnesses.

"Bald child—distinguished as Number One—weight seven pounds, one ounce, and a quarter (avoirdupois)," repeated the captain, writing down the entry in the log-book. "Very good. We'll put the bald baby back now, doctor, and try the hairy one next."

The hairy one protested—also in his own language—and also in vain.

"How much, Saunders?" asked the captain.

"Six pounds, fourteen ounces, and three-quarters," replied the steward.

"Right, gentlemen?" inquired the captain.

"Quite right," answered the witnesses.

"Hairy child—distinguished as Number Two—weight six pounds, fourteen ounces, and three-quarters (avoirdupois)," repeated and wrote the captain. "Much obliged to you, Jolly—that will do. When you have got the other baby back in the cradle, tell Mrs. Drabble neither of them must be taken out of it, till further orders; and then be so good as to join me and these gentlemen on deck. If anything of a discussion rises up among us, we won't run the risk of being heard in the sleeping-berths." With these words Captain Gillop led the way on deck, and the first mate followed with the log-book and the pen and ink.

"Now, gentlemen," began the captain, when the doctor had joined the assembly, "my first mate will open these proceedings by reading from the log a statement which I have written myself, respecting this business, from beginning to end. If you find it all equally correct with the statement of what the two children weigh, I'll trouble you to sign it, in your quality of witnesses, on the spot."

The first mate read the narrative, and the witnesses signed it, as perfectly correct. Captain Gillop then cleared his throat, and addressed his expectant audience in these words:

"You'll all agree with me, gentlemen, that justice is justice, and that like must to like. Here's my ship of five hundred tons, fitted with her spars accordingly. Say she's a schooner of a hundred and fifty tons, the veriest landsman among you, in that case, wouldn't put such masts as these into her. Say, on the other hand, she's an Indiaman of a thousand tons, would our spars (excellent good sticks as they are, gentlemen) be suitable for a vessel of that capacity? Certainly not. A schooner's spars to a schooner, and a ship's spars to a ship, in fit and fair proportion. In this serious difficulty, I take my stand on that principle. And my decision is: give the heaviest of the two babies to the heaviest of the two women; and let the lightest then fall, as a matter of course, to the other. In a week's time, if this weather holds, we shall all (please God) be in port; and if there's a better way out of this mess than my way, the parsons and lawyers ashore may find it, and welcome."

With those words the captain closed his oration; and the assembled council immediately sanctioned the proposal submitted to them with all the unanimity of men who had no idea of their own to set up in opposition. Mr. Jolly was next requested (as the only available authority) to settle the question of weight between Mrs. Smallchild and Mrs. Heavysides, and decided it, without a moment's hesitation, in favour of the carpenter's wife, on the indisputable ground that she was the tallest and stoutest woman of the two. Thereupon, the bald baby, "distinguished as Number One," was taken into Mrs. Heavysides' cabin; and the hairy baby, "distinguished as Number Two," was accorded to Mrs. Smallchild; the Voice of Nature, neither in the one case nor in the other, raising the slightest objection to the captain's principle of distribution. Before seven o'clock Mr. Jolly reported that the mothers and sons, larboard and starboard, were as happy and comfortable as any four people on board ship could possibly wish to be; and the captain thereupon dismissed the council with these parting remarks:

"We'll get the studding-sails on the ship now, gentlemen, and make the best of our way to port. Breakfast, Saunders, in half an hour, and plenty of it! I doubt if that unfortunate Mrs. Drabble has heard the last of this business yet. We must all lend a hand, gentlemen, and pull her through if we can. In other respects the job's over, so far as we are concerned; and the parsons and lawyers must settle it ashore."

The parsons and the lawyers did nothing of the sort, for the plain reason that nothing was to be done. In ten days the ship was in port, and the news was broken to the two mothers. Each one of the two adored her baby, after ten day's experience of it—and each one of the two was in Mrs. Drabble's condition of not knowing which was which. Every test was tried. First, the test by the doctor, who only repeated what he had told the captain. Secondly, the test by personal resemblance; which failed in consequence of the light hair, blue eyes, and Roman noses shared in common by the fathers, and the light hair, blue eyes, and no noses worth mentioning shared in common by the children. Thirdly, the test of Mrs. Drabble, which began and ended in fierce talking on one side and floods of tears on the other. Fourthly, the test by legal decision, which broke down through the total absence of any instructions for the law to act on. Fifthly, and lastly, the test by appeal to the husbands, which fell to the ground in consequence of the husbands knowing nothing about the matter in hand. The captain's barbarous test by weight remained the test still—and here am I, a man of the lower order, without a penny to bless myself with, in consequence.

Yes! I was the bald baby of that memorable period. My excess in weight settled my destiny in life. The fathers and mothers on either side kept the babies according to the captain's principle of distribution, in despair of knowing what else to do. Mr. Smallchild—who was sharp enough when not sea-sick—made his fortune. Simon Heavysides persisted in increasing his family, and died in the work-house. Judge for yourself (as Mr. Jolly might say) how the two boys born at sea fared in after-life. I, the bald baby, have seen nothing of the hairy baby for years past. He may be short, like Mr. Smallchild—but I happen to know that he is wonderfully like Heavysides, deceased, in the face. I may be tall, like the carpenter—but I have the Smallchild eyes, hair, and expression, notwithstanding. Make what you can of that! You will find it come, in the end, to the same thing. Smallchild, junior, prospers in the world, because he weighed six pounds, fourteen ounces and three-quarters. Heavysides, junior, fails in the world, because he weighed seven pounds one ounce and a quarter. There is the end of it, anyhow; and, if Mr. Hermit's outer crust will only let him, I recommend him to blush for his own grievance, whatever it is. As for Mr. Traveller, if he happens to have any loose silver about him, I'm not above taking it—and so I leave you, gentlemen, to settle the argument between you.

CHAPTER V

PICKING UP A POCKET-BOOK

John Harwood

Several people came in at the gate, not only when the last speaker had withdrawn, but at various times throughout the day, from whom nothing could be extracted by the utmost ingenuity of Mr. Traveller, save what their calling was (when they had any), whence they came, and whither they were going. But, as those who had nothing to tell, clearly could tell nothing in justification of Mr. Mopes the Hermit, Mr. Traveller was almost as well satisfied with them as with any of the rest. Some of the many visitors came of a set purpose, attracted by curiosity; some, by chance, looking in to explore so desolate a place; many had often been there before, and came for drink and halfpence. These regular clients were all of the professed vagrant order; "and, as I observed to you," Mr. Traveller invariably remarked with coolness when they were gone, "are part of the Nuisance."

When any one approached, either purposely or accidentally, to whom the figure in the blanket was new, Mr. Traveller, acting as a self-constituted showman, did the honours of the place: referring to the Hermit as "our friend in there," and asking the visitor, without further explanation—lest his own impartiality should be called in question—if he could favour our friend in there with any little experience of the living and moving world? It was in answer to this inquiry, that a sunburnt gentleman of middle age, with fine bright eyes, and a remarkable air of determination and self-possession (he had come over from the assize-town, he said, to see the sight in the soot and cinders), spake thus:

Office-hours were over, and we were all taking down our straw-hats from the pegs on which they dangled; ledgers were clasped, papers put away, desks locked, and the work of the day was at an end, when the white-haired cashier came sidling towards me. "Mr. Walford, sir, would you stay a moment? Would you step this way? The firm wish to speak to you."

Good old Job Wiginton always described his employers, collectively, as "the firm." They were sacred beings in his eyes, were Spalding and Hausermann, and he had served them for a quarter of a century, with exemplary fidelity and respect. Job Wiginton, like myself, and like the senior partner in that great mercantile house, was an Englishman born and bred. He had kept the books of Spalding and Hausermann for twenty years at Philadelphia, and had cheerfully followed them to California, when they decided on settling in San Francisco City, five years before. The younger clerks, French or American for the most part, were rather disposed to make a butt of the simple honest old cashier; but he and I had been very good friends during the four years of my employment, and I always entertained a sincere respect for the old man's sterling good qualities. Now, however, for a reason I will presently explain, I was considerably taken aback by the communication which Mr. Wiginton made in his own formal way.

"The firm wish to see me?" I stammered, with a tell-tale colour rising in my face. Old Job nodded assent, coughed, and carefully wiped his gold-rimmed spectacles. I had noticed, in spite of my own confusion, that the cashier was dejected and nervous; his voice was husky, his hand trembled as he rubbed the dim glasses, and there was an unwonted moisture in his round blue eyes. As I followed Job into the inner parlour, where the merchants usually sat during business hours, I marvelled much what this wholly unexpected summons might portend. I had formerly been on terms of great and cordial intimacy with my employers; but for the last three months, my intercourse, with the senior partner in especial, had been strictly confined to business matters and dry routine. It was not that I had done anything to forfeit the good opinion of the firm. My employers had still the same confidence in me, the same regard for me, as heretofore; but there was an end, if not of friendship, at least of cordiality. This partial estrangement dated from the day when, with Emma Spalding smiling through tears and blushes at my side, I had ventured to tell the rich merchant that I loved his only daughter, and that my love was returned. It is an old, old story. We were two young persons of the same country and creed, alike in tastes and education, and in other respects, wealth excepted, not so ill matched; and we were together on a foreign shore, among strange people. We had been suffered to associate familiarly together, to read poetry, sing duets, and so forth; for Emma had no mother to watch against the approach of poverty-stricken suitors, and Mr. Spalding was a proud man, and not given to suspicion. Hence we glided—as millions of couples have done before, and will again—down the smooth rose-strewn path that leads from friendship to love. I am sure of one thing: it was not my employer's wealth, or the idea of Emma's probable expectations from her father—who had but two children, a son and a daughter, between whom to divide the accumulations of a life spent in honourable toil—which allured me. But the time came when soft words and fond looks had to give place to an avowal of attachment. I spoke out to Emma, without premeditation; and, once across the Rubicon, other considerations undreamed of as yet, came to beset me, mockingly. What would Mr. Spalding think of me? Surely, he could form but one judgment of the poor clerk, with no property beyond his pitiful savings, who had dared to entangle the affections of his master's daughter? My course was clear. I must tell him the truth, at whatever cost to myself.

I did so. The disclosure was hurried on by some slight unforeseen circumstance, as my proposal had been, but I was at least candid in my avowals. To do Mr. Spalding justice, he rejected my suit in as gentle and courteous a fashion as the harsh operation would admit of. But, cut to the heart, I withdrew from his presence, very very wretched, and had for many days afterwards, serious thoughts of excluding myself from observation, becoming a solitary man, and leading a gloomy and moody life. Better thoughts, however, lying deeper within me, admonished me of the utter worthlessness of a purposeless existence, and of the utter contemptibility of the soul that can sink into it. And thus it fell out that I ceased to visit my employer as a private friend, and yet remained in his employ.

Was I mean-spirited for staying on thus? I cannot pretend to decide so nice a point, but I know that it was a great stimulant to me to have obtained a moral victory over myself, and some relief to the disappointment of my dearest hopes that I was still allowed to breathe the same air as Emma Spalding, to catch a glimpse of her sweet saddened face, were it but on the way to church, though for three weary months we never interchanged a word.

So I was not a little surprised when Job Wiginton summoned me to the presence of "the firm." My heart beat quickly as the old cashier turned the handle of the door. What could Mr. Spalding want of me? I had kept the promise he had wrung from me; I had abstained from any intrusion, any unlicensed correspondence. Surely, surely he could not send for me merely to say that a rejected suitor was ineligible even as a servant, and that our connexion must cease? In the larger of the two adjacent rooms, a room hung in Spanish fashion with stamped and gilded leather, and heavily furnished with dark mahogany from Honduras, I found the firm. Mr. Spalding, a tall thin grey-headed gentleman, was pacing up and down the apartment in great agitation. Mr. Hausermann, a German, as his name implies, sat before a table covered with papers, ejaculating guttural exclamations of wonder from time to time, and with a look of hopeless perplexity in his fat pink face. The cashier entered along with me, and closed the door.

"Ach, mein Himmel!" muttered the junior partner: a hale, portly man, but of a flabby nature, morally and physically, compared with the energetic chief of the house: "ach! we were petter to have never peen porn, than live to see this!"

Job Wiginton gave a groan of sincere sympathy. I quickly perceived that something had gone wrong, and as quickly did I see that this mysterious something had no direct reference to my audacity in winning the heart of Emma Spalding. What was amiss? There is one grisly ghost that always haunts the imagination of the more intelligent subordinates of a commercial firm—Bankruptcy. But the house had been such a prudent house, so steady and well ballasted, had glided so demurely along in the safe old-world groove, that it was rather ridiculed in consequence by the mushroom firms that daily arose or collapsed around us. But I had little time to think, for Mr. Spalding stopped in his walk, came abruptly up to me, and took me by both hands. "George Walford," said the old merchant, with more emotion in his voice and features than he had ever shown before, " I have not been kind to you lately. You were a good friend to me—before—before——" and here he reddened somewhat, and ceased speaking.

I glanced towards Mr. Hausermann, but he looked so fat and helpless as he sat in his arm-chair, murmuring phrases in his native tongue, that I saw no explanation was to be looked for in that quarter. So I told Mr. Spalding, in as firm a tone as possible, that our mutual esteem had, I hoped, survived our intimacy, and that I still felt myself a faithful friend to him and his, and would gladly prove myself one.

"I thought so—I thought so," said the merchant, looking pleased for a moment; "you are a good lad, George, and that's why I come to you for help in my sore need, hard and harsh as you may have thought me the other day—when——Never mind!"

"I was first to say it," exclaimed Mr. Hausermann. " 'Let us call Shorge Walford,' say I. 'He has got ver goot prains; ver goot young man.' "

A quarter of a century spent among Anglo-Saxons had never taught Mr. Hausermann the English language in its purity. Indeed, his life, out of office hours, was spent entirely with Teutons like himself, who swarm all over America, and with whom he could enjoy German conversation, Rhine wine, and the black coffee of the fatherland. I should never get to the end of the interview if I described it verbatim, chronicling the broken sentences and vague talk of the junior partner, and the comments of Job Wiginton. The confidential cashier sympathised with the distress of his employers as a faithful dog might have done, and was about as likely to suggest a practical remedy. Mr. Wiginton was worthy of all trust; he was as close as wax and as honest as the day, but he was a mere machine for the casting up of sums, the balancing of books, and locking of safes. Mr. Hausermann was not much cleverer than the cashier; he was an admirable arithmetician, could detect an error of a halfpenny in a problem involving billions, and his penmanship was magnificent. But, with these attainments, he owed his present position in commerce, not to his abilities, but to the florins he had inherited, and to the talent and keenness of his English partner. It was from the chief of the house himself that I heard the following tale:—Mr. Spalding, as I have said, had but two children, Emma, and her brother Adolphus; his wife had died on the voyage from Philadelphia, and his affection centred in his boy and girl. Unluckily, Adolphus did not turn out well, was wild and extravagant, and squandered his liberal allowance among horse jockeys and gamblers. Mr. Spalding, strict with all the world besides, was rather lax and indulgent where his son was concerned. The young man was very good-looking and of pleasing address; he had been the darling of his dead mother; and the father was very patient and forbearing with him, for her sake. The youth went from bad to worse, got deeper into debt and evil company, seldom came home, and seriously impaired his health by a long course of excesses. All this I knew, for Adolphus was a clerk in the house, nominally at least, though he hardly ever occupied his stool in the office. But what I did not know was, that Adolphus Spalding, in his eagerness to settle a number of so-called debts of honour, had been led to rob his father. He had forged the signatures of Spalding and Hausermann to a cheque for thirty thousand dollars, payable at sight, and purporting to he drawn by the merchants on their bankers in New York. More than this: he had abstracted from his father's desk a Russia-leather pocket-book, containing bills and securities to a great amount, and this he had placed in the hands of the same vile associate who had undertaken to present the cheque at the counter of the New York bank.

"The scoundrel is gone northward already. He started last Tuesday, by the way of Panama, along with the mail," said Mr. Spalding. " You know the man, I dare say, for he was very notorious in the town—Joram Heckler."

"Dr. Joram Heckler!" I exclaimed, as I recalled to mind the dark clever face of the young man alluded to: a plausible, well- mannered person, who had been sub-editor of a San Francisco newspaper.

"Yes, Doctor, or Colonel, Heckler," responded Mr. Spalding, with a bitter smile," for it appears that he has assumed a military title on the journey back to the north. He possessed great influence over the mind of my misguided son; he was the tempter in this accursed robbery; and I doubt not that he intends to appropriate the entire spoil to himself."

I now asked Mr. Spalding, as delicately as I could, how he had obtained his information.

It appeared that Adolphus, whose feeble frame, exhausted by hard living, was ill fitted to sustain the fierce excitement of the felonious act he had committed, had sickened of a fever, immediately after the departure of his accomplice.

"The wretched boy lies on his bed upstairs, quivering betwixt life and death," said the father, with a faltering voice, "and in his delirium he has betrayed his guilt. His sister, who has watched at his bedside like an angel as she is, dear girl, she was frightened at his ravings of self-accusation. She called me, and with my own ears I heard the son I was so proud of—my petted boy—tell how he had cheated and plundered me."

The old merchant staggered to a chair, and I saw the tears trickle between the fingers with which he tried to hide the workings of his wrinkled face.

After a time he grew more calm. Then he developed his plan, in which broke out his habitual decision and force of character. Before all things, the honour of the house must be saved. The value of the money at stake (though a large sum) was trifling, compared to the disgrace, the loss of credit, the blot upon the name of Spalding. Yes, at any cost, the young man's shameful act must be hidden in darkness. The cheque must not be presented, the bills must not be negotiated. But how to prevent the tempter from realising the benefits of his ill-gotten booty? He was off—he was speeding towards New York by the quick Panama route; in a few weeks he would be there. No pursuit seemed possible. The delay till the start of the next mail would be fatal. I remembered the Pony Express, the swift overland mail whereby we Californian residents can most rapidly communicate with the civilised world, and I suggested this resource.

Mr. Spalding shook his head. "No, that would never do; I might send a despatch, no doubt, to stop the payment of the cheque. I might perhaps procure Heckler's arrest on his arrival in New York, but thence would spring inquiry, doubt, suspicion, and the whole black affair would creep into the journals before a week was out. No. I have but one hope, one chance: I must send a trustworthy person—I am too old to go myself—a trustworthy person to hasten to New York by the perilous route across the Rocky Mountains, and he must arrive before Heckler, and must get the papers from him by violence or stratagem. George Walford, you are the man I have selected."

"I, sir?"

I was stupified. Before my fancy rose, like a panorama, the long route, then but lately explored, that traversed the enormous continent from sea to sea: a route teeming with dangers. All I had ever heard or read of prairie travel, of famine, fire, the assaults of wild beasts, and of human foes more pitiless still, crowded on my memory at once. I thought of the vast distance, of the almost herculean fatigues to be undergone, of the icy barrier which the Rocky Mountains stretched across the track, as if to bar the progress of presumptuous man; and though I am no fainter of heart than my neighbours, I dare say my countenance expressed dismay and repugnance. Indeed, I am sure it did, for Mr. Hausermann groaned, and said, "Donner! what shall we to now?"

"Walford," said Mr. Spalding, "I don't wish to dissemble with you. I am asking you to incur the certainty of very great fatigue, hardship, and danger. I am asking you to risk life itself to save the honour of the house and that of my own family. I do not make such a request without proposing a proportionate reward.—There, hear me out! I don't offer you money for such a service. Come back successful, and you shall be a partner in the house of Spalding and Hausermann; and if you and Emma are still of the same mind three months hence——"

I trembled with joy as I interrupted my employer. "I'll go, sir, gladly and most willingly."

"That's a prave poy. I knew he would!" ejaculated the German; and the cashier rubbed his hands joyfully.

"When can you be ready to start?" asked Mr. Spalding.

"Directly. In half an hour, if you please."

"An hour will do," said Mr. Spalding, with a smile at my eagerness. "Bodesson shall be at the door by that time, with his carriage and his best horses. You must save your strength as much as you can for the prairie. You have a six-shooter, I know. Get ready what requisites for the journey will go into small compass. You shall have an ample supply of money—spend it freely, lavishly, and don't spare horseflesh or gold upon the way. I would give half my fortune to place you speedily on the pavement of New York. You are an ambassador with full powers, George, and your own wit and courage must carry you through. Now, you had better prepare for the road."

I lingered.

"Anything more to say?" asked the merchant, good-humouredly.

"If I could speak for a moment—just an instant—to Miss Spalding?"

"She is at her brother's bedside," replied the old man, hurriedly. " But—yes, you are right. You shall see her before you start."

I seemed to make but one step to the house where I lodged. I spent ten minutes in hastily arranging my belongings—and it is wonderful how much a man can condense into ten minutes when he is under the influence of strong excitement—charged my revolver, packed a few things in a small bag, and ran back like a greyhound. Mr. Spalding gave me some fuller instructions, and handed to me a heavy parcel of gold and silver, as well as a bundle of bank-notes. I was to keep the bank-paper until I reached the civilised world; in the desert, my only hope would be to bribe in specie the half-tamed wanderers of the west. Mr. Spalding was still talking when Bodesson, one of the principal liverymen of San Francisco, drove his spanking pair of Spanish horses up to the door. Then the merchant went up-stairs, and returned with his daughter. Dear Emma! she was pale, and thinner than of old, but her eyes were bright and loving, and her words, full of hope and constancy, gave me fresh courage, and a resolve to do or die. Our parting was very brief. A few hurried whispers—a hasty renewal of the old vows and troth-plight—and for a moment I caught her in my arms and kissed her cheek, and in the next I was gone. I sat by Bodesson's side; the whip cracked; off flew the foaming horses along the street; and I looked back and waved a farewell in answer to Mr. Spalding's waving hand and Emma's handkerchief. Then we turned the corner, and darted along the road.

Bodesson was well paid, and he kept the mettled horses at their work over many a mile of ground. I seemed to start cheerfully, and under good auspices. My heart was full of hope. The gay French Creole by my side was a merry companion; he sang Canadian songs, whistled, chirruped to the bounding bays, and chattered incessantly.

"Monsieur was going to the prairies! Ah, tres bien! The prairies were ver intéressantes, ver moch so. But monsieur must take care when he got there—must not stir from the protection of ze dragoons, or les sauvages, ze ferocious Indians, would carry off monsieur's cheveux—what you call scalp!"

So the Frenchman prattled on. He believed I was going to Salt Lake City on business, and never doubted that I should voyage with a caravan under escort of the States dragoons. What would he have said had he known that I was to traverse that land of danger and hunger alone?

My journey to the eastern border of California was not remarkable enough to justify me in dwelling here on its details. Spending money freely, I was able to proceed almost entirely in wheeled carriages more or less rude, and I contrived to push along over sorry roads at a respectable pace. I slept in the vehicles during the dark hours, snatching a broken slumber as best I could, in the midst of jolting and swaying. Sometimes even a bribe could not induce my Mexican or American drivers to risk the perils of a stony road at night, and then I recruited my strength by rest, but was always ready to start at cock-crow. I knew well what was before me, and that all the fatigue I endured was child's play to what was in store. I had been on the prairies before—those, at least, which lie east of the Rocky Mountains. Mr. Spalding was well aware that I was a good horseman, expert in the use of fire-arms, and of a robust constitution. These are not the common attributes of a clerk, but I had not been bred to the desk. My father had been esteemed rich, till at his death, in embarrassed circumstances, I had been left to battle with poverty as I might; I had kept hunters at Oxford, and had been passionately fond of field sports. I had kept up the habit of taking brisk exercise, and now I was about to find the benefit of trained muscles and robust health. I did not disguise from myself that I was embarking on an enterprise full of risks. I might starve in the desert, whitened as it was by the bones of many an emigrant. I might perish miserably in one of those fires that rush like flaming serpents through the boundless sea of grass. And if my scalp did not blacken in the smoke of some Indian wigwam, fever or sheer fatigue might make an end of my life and hopes at once. Or, I might reach New York too late. It was gall and wormwood to me to think that Joram Heckler was pressing on towards the north with all the speed of a fast steamer. The very thought made me bound and stamp my foot on the floor of the rude mail-cart, as if I could quicken my progress by such a gesture. How I prayed that contrary winds might delay the packet on its passage from Aspinwall to the Empire City!

I reached Carson City, on the border of the desert, and there I made a brief halt that I might prepare for the coming effort. I was perfectly well aware that the most dangerous and difficult part of the road was that lying between California and the Mormon settlements. Once beyond the Utah territory, I might well hope to escape the arrows and tomahawk of the savage. I found Carson full of returning emigrants, diggers going back with their pelf to the Atlantic states, Mormon converts, and traders who had emptied their waggons in Californian markets. These good folks were all waiting for the regular escort of national dragoons, under whose guard they were to travel. It was impossible for me to move so slowly, and I accordingly bought a bag of sun-dried beef, another of parched corn, some blankets, and such matters, and a powerful horse handsomely accoutred with a bridle and saddle of Mexican make. I bought the latter from an American dealer, who was mightily tickled at the idea of my making my way alone over the prairies. "I give you credit for your grit, sartainly, mister," said he: "it is good, and no mistake; but I guess you'd better sleep upon the idea a few times more. Them Indian scalpers will lift your ha'r, sure as hogs yield bacon. Won't you believe me? Come along, then, and ax another man's opinion! " And he dragged me towards a sort of tavern, the porch of which was crowded by men and women, French, Spanish, German, Yankee, and mulatto, all of whom were gathered round a lathy dark-haired young fellow in a trim half-military dress, that would have passed for that of a policeman but for the red flannel shirt and Mexican sombrero he wore. This man had keen mobile features, and was hardened by constant work and weather into little more than muscle and bone; he wore spurred boots and thick "savers," and was cracking a whip as he gaily chatted with the crowd, who laughed at his wit in a way that proved him a prime favourite. He was, in fact, one of the salaried riders of the "Pony Express," ready to start with the bag of despatches, the instant the courier from San Francisco should arrive with it.

"Yes, colonel; yes, gals," I heard him say; "I'm downright sorry to leave, but duty is duty, ain't it? If the Indians don't rub me out——"

"Rub you out, Shem? Catch a racoon asleep!" cried one of the rider's admiring friends.

"Waal!" said Shem, with a modest voice, but a boastful twinkle in his restless eye, "the varmints have tried a time or two, but they've found Shem Grindrod rather a tough nut to crack, they have. When a chap's Kentucky bred, real right down hard hickory, 'tain't so easy to lift his ha'r as——Service to ye, stranger!"

For his eye had lighted on me.

"Shem," cried the horse-dealer, "here's a gentleman wants to cross the parara, all alone, on hossback, Broadway fashion. What do you say to that?"

There was a general laugh. Shern took off his hat with mock respect.

"Whoop!" he cried. "If that ain't clear grit in the down-easter dandy! You'll see snakes, mister, I reckon. There's no accommodation for gen-teel persons, and you'll jest get your hoss stole, or chawed up by the wolves, and you'll lose yourself and die for want of a dinner, if you don't fall in with the Injuns—and if you do, Jehoshaphat!"

All this would have been provoking to some men, but I knew the American character too well to be out of temper. Shem evidently took me for a presumptuous townsman, plunging wantonly into the lion's mouth, and was good naturedly discouraging my rashness. With some trouble, I drew him apart, and commenced a private conversation. I told him that I was bound for the eastern states, that my business was imperative, but that if he could help me I would pay him most liberally for the aid rendered. For I had formed a crude idea that if I could procure the privilege of using the relays of spare horses kept at the different stations on the route, for the use of the mail-bag riders, I might accomplish the most awkward part of the journey with great rapidity. Shem, however, though not ill natured, dashed my hopes to the ground. Such a concession would be "agin all rule." The servants of the Express Company "darn't do it." It was not to be thought of. I must wait for the caravan.

I did not wait for the caravan, but set forth that very day. The people gave me a half ironical cheer as I rode out of the straggling street of Carson, but I saw the Yankee dealer shake his head and screw up the corners of his mouth, as if he considered me little better than a suicide.

There was no use in letting the grass grow under my feet, so I pushed briskly ahead. I was riding a powerful horse, one of those bred in Kentucky or Tennessee, and which will sell for a high price on the western border of prairieland. To find the way in broad daylight was easy. There was a broad track made by the passage of countless waggons and beasts of burden. I had a compass, but I really did not need it. I covered many a weary league of ground in the course of that day's ride. Here and there, among the forked streamlets which were feeders of the Carson, I came to farms where I easily procured corn for my horse and food for myself. I had come to two resolutions: one, to economise my little store of jerked beef as much as possible; the other, to refuse all hospitable proffers of whisky, being convinced that on water only could such trying work as that before me be accomplished. I kept on, with brief pauses, through the day, and held to the track as long as the moonlight served me, urging on my flagging steed to the very limits of his strength. Then, in the dark, I dismounted, took off saddle and bridle, hobbled my horse, and tethered him so that he had ample space to graze. Then, I lay down, wrapped in my blankets, pillowed my head upon my saddle, and fell asleep with my weapons by my side.

I awoke with a start, in the pitch dark night, and could not well remember where I was. My horse was uneasy, and his abrupt motions had disturbed me. I heard a rustling in the long grass, a scratching, a pawing of light feet amongst the herbage, and a whining sound as of hungry dogs whimpering for food. Dogs? There were no dogs there. Wolves! And my horse, on whose security my life might depend, was trembling and bathed in perspiration. I had kindled no fire, apprehensive lest the light should attract some band of prowling savages; and now the coyotés were gathering around us like flies about honey. For myself, I felt no fear: the wolf of America is very different from the "grey beast" of German forests or Pyrenean snows. But my poor nag was in danger, and his very tremors were adding perilously to the exhaustion of the long and hurried ride. I rose, and began groping about for brushwood. Luckily I was still in a well-watered region, where shrubs and undergrowth abounded, and where the gigantic cotton-wood trees reared their majestic forms beside the streamlets. I soon came upon a clump of brush, and cutting with my sharp and heavy knife as much as I could carry in both arms, I returned with it, and cleared a little space of the grass, which was long enough to be dangerous in the event of its catching fire. I then took out my tin box of lucifers, struck a light, and kindled a fire: though not very easily, for the heavy dew stood in great glistening beads on grass and shrub, and the moistened wood emitted many a cloud of pungent and dark smoke, before I could coax the sullen embers to burst forth in the required blaze. All this time, I had to give an occasional halloo, rattling a tin cup against the barrel of my revolver, for the purpose of intimidating the wolves; while it was necessary to pat and soothe by voice and hand the poor horse itself, which was tugging at the tethering-rope in a way that threatened to break it every instant. At last, to my great joy, the fire leaped up, red and cheery, its bright beams illumined a little radiant patch of prairie, and, hovering in the shadows on the edge of this illuminated spot, I saw the slinking coyotés, the smallest and most timid, but also the most cunning, variety of the wolf of America. Presently I flung a firebrand among the pack, and they vanished into the darkness, but for half an hour I could hear their howls of disappointment, growing fainter and fainter, as the distance increased. My horse was quieter after the disappearance of the wolves, and in about an hour I ventured to return to my blankets and my repose, after piling a fresh heap of brush on the steadily glowing fire. Not very long afterwards, a feeling of intense cold awoke me by slow degrees. I opened my eyes. The fire was low; its embers glowed crimson, fading gradually into blackness. Overhead was the dim sky, the vast host of stars having the peculiar pale and sickly hue which heralds the dawn. It was very cold. There was a rushing sound in the air, and the grass of the prairie was tossed to and fro in wild confusion; a strong wind was blowing—the norther. This was the first blast of the chilly north wind that annually sets in at the close of the unhealthy season in the south. It had a piercing and glacial effect, coming, as it did, from the Polar ice-fields, and across the Rocky Mountain range; but I gladly hailed it, for I remembered that it would be dead against the mail steamer that was breasting the waters of the Mexican Gulf with Joram Heckler and his plunder on board. I might beat him yet!

But the wind increased in force; it was blowing like a hurricane, and I shivered in spite of my warm poncho and blankets. My horse had lain down, and was trembling with cold. I was obliged to spare him a blanket; he was a "States" horse, swifter, but not so hardy and useful for prairie travel as the mustangs of the plains. The wind did not diminish as the sun rose, red and angry, and a new cause of alarm began to haunt me. I had heard of travellers utterly weatherbound for days among the prairies, on account of the fury of the resistless wind. And time was so valuable to me! I felt sick at heart as the chilly hours of early morning crept on, and almost despaired of success. I was benumbed and stiff; the dew had been turned to icicles by the sudden cold; and now every waving blade of grass seemed crested with a diamond, glittering and flashing in the level sunshine. By nine o'clock the wind began to abate; it slackened very gradually, and at half-past ten I considered that I might resume my journey. My breakfast was not a luxurious one; a mouthful of beef and parched maize, swallowed in the intervals of saddling my horse and rolling up my blankets. Then, I drew up the iron peg to which the halter was attached, rolled up the halter, lasso fashion, at my saddle bow, and mounted. I was less awkward in the everyday routine of prairie life than might be supposed. Years ago, before I entered Spalding and Hausermann's employ, I had spent some weeks in a frontier fort, as the guest of the officers of a United States Ranger regiment. I had accompanied my hosts on several hunts and scouting expeditions against hostile Indians, and had found some amusement in picketing my steed, lighting camp fires, and so forth: little dreaming that my whole earthly happiness would ever depend on my proficiency in such arts. As the sun rose in the pale blue sky, nature assumed a more cheerful appearance; the icicles and hoar-frost melted, and the air became merely bracing and agreeable, as the bitter cold passed away. On we went, following the plain trail of the waggon trains, up and down the gently rolling slopes of the undulating prairie, I noticed with some dismay that my horse was no longer the mettled creature that had pranced so gaily out of Carson the day before. At first he certainly answered my voice and the pressure of my knee, by stepping out gallantly; but after a while he began to flag, bore heavily on the bit, and required a frequent touch of the spur. It was clear I had taxed his powers too severely on the previous day. He was going weakly under me, in a spiritless way that spoke volumes. What was I to do? I had plenty of money, but money cannot prove a talisman in the wilderness. There was not a farm between the place where I stood and the Great Salt Lake itself. My only chance in procuring a remount, lay in meeting some one who would sell me a steed, and this was far from a certainty. I was chewing the cud of bitter reflections when I heard the light tramp of a galloping horse behind me. Quickly I turned my head, and saw a booted rider dashing gaily along over the swells of the prairie; his trim coat, half opened, showed a red flannel shirt; and his Mexican sombrero was bound with a cord of tarnished gold. He had a revolving carbine pistol at his saddle-bow, and at his side hung from his shoulder-belt his leathern despatch-bag. It was my acquaintance of yesterday—Shem Grindrod.

"Mornin', stranger!" he called out, cheerily; "I didn't skear you, yesterday, it seems, by my yarns about Injuns. 'Twas Gospel truth, for all that. Camped out, I reckon? Your hoss does look a little the wuss for wear, mister, though. You've pushed him a goodish stretch, you have."

We rode on for some distance side by side. My poor horse was inspired to do his best by the presence of the other horse, and together we sped over the country: my steed trotting, Shem's mustang galloping, for Spanish- American horses have but one pace when urged beyond a walk. Shem was much more kind and even polite in his manner than on the previous day. He told me, bluntly, that he respected a fellow that proved himself a man, but that what he hated worse than copperhead snakes was a Broadway dandy giving himself adventurous airs. My horsemanship had won Shem's esteem, and he sympathised heartily with me when he saw that I was really bent on crossing the desert at any risk.

"Your hoss is a good bit of stuff, mister," said he, "but I'm afraid he's pretty nigh used up for one while. Now you listen to me. The best thing you can do, is to buy a mustang fust chance you get. There'll be hunters passing south, and p'raps they'll trade. When you get right out among the plains, you stick to the trail well, and if a grass fire blinds it, you take your compass and bear up for east by north. Keep that pistol of yourn ready, and if you do see Injuns, keep cool. Don't waste a shot. Every round bit of lead is worth a life on the parara. Good-by, wish you luck."

Shem headed his horse for one of the Express stations, a little lonely block-house, with a stockaded yard, which was garrisoned by a few of his comrades, and where a relay of fresh horses was kept. I looked wistfully at the block-house and the well-stocked corral, and then turned away with my tired steed to resume my weary travel. I knew that early in the afternoon I should reach another station of the same kind, and there I meant to apply for refreshment and shelter, in case my horse should knock up altogether. Before I had gone a mile, I saw my friend Shem, on a fresh steed, scouring the plain. He waved his hand, and gave me a cheer of recognition, and I looked after him enviously as he flew like an arrow up the slope, and vanished in the distance. By good luck, however, I almost instantly encountered a party of white men, the first travellers I had seen. These turned out to be three trappers returning from Oregon, with a fair stock of peltry loaded on two mules. They were all well mounted on "Indian ponies," and one of them led by a lariat a powerful and shapely mustang, whose bright eye and wide nostrils matched well with his wiry limbs. He had been captured on the plains, not two months before, one of a wild herd; but he was sufficiently broken in to be useful in prairie fashion. I struck a bargain with the trapper, by which my exhausted but more valuable quadruped was bartered for the half-wild mustang; the trapper also receiving four gold eagles. The arrangement was mutually satisfactory, and as the tall Kentuckian helped me to shift my saddle and bridle to the spotted nag I had just acquired, I saw his eyes twinkle with self-congratulation.

"One word of advice, colonel," said the trapper, as I placed the gold in his hard brown hand; "keep your eyes skinned as you go along, and don't let the cussed Redskins double upon you. There's Indian sign about, there is. I saw the print of a moccasin, down yonder by the spring, where the Indians never come for any good, mister. You mind—Utahs ain't to be trusted, and Shoshonies are worse. As for Rapshoes, Heaven help you, colonel, if they ketch you alone! There's Indians about. I smell 'em."

"I wish you'd got a good rifle on your shoulder, mister," said another, as I mounted; "six-shooters is very handy tools, but nothing sickens the Indians like a good five-foot bit of holler iron, that air true."

I took leave of these good fellows, who wished me a safe journey in the heartiest way, though evidently disbelieving in the likelihood that a "greenhorn" could carry his property and scalp safe across the desert. The mustang was fresh, and darted along at that untiring though not very speedy gallop which animals of that hardy race can maintain for a very considerable time. We made capital progress: the country grew drier, and the grass shorter, and the swampy bottoms and trickling brooks were fewer. I met with no adventure, except that my new purchase put his foot into an outlying burrow, as we skirted a "village" of prairie dogs, and gave us both a roll on the turf; but we were unhurt, and I had luckily kept my grasp of the bridle, or I should have lost my horse. Once I thought I saw something hovering on the edge of the horizon, but whether savages, buffaloes, or wild horses, I could not determine. After riding several miles I came to a place where the trail dipped suddenly into a low tract of alluvial earth, intersected by a stream of some magnitude, and shaded by a belt of lofty cotton-wood trees. I traced here the fresh footprints of a horse which must just have passed, for the bruised grass had but partially risen around the edges. "Crack, bang!" went the sharp report of firearms ringing from the thicket below, and with the reports mingled the horrid war-whoop of the savage. Grasping my pistol, I dashed in among the trees, and beheld poor Shem Grindrod, bleeding, reeling in his saddle, and beset by a party of six or seven Indians, mounted, and in their hideous panoply of war. Shem had been pierced by three arrows: he was fainting with loss of blood; but he fronted the savages boldly, and one Indian lay at his feet, rolling in the agonies of death. My arrival changed the current of the fight; two rounds from my revolver, the second of which laid low a muscular barbarian, smeared with yellow ochre, who was pressing on Shem with an uplifted tomahawk, sufficed for their discomfiture. Probably they took me for the advanced guard of a party of whites. At any rate, they fled at speed across the plain.

I was just in time to break Shem's fall, as the poor fellow dropped from his saddle, feebly murmuring, "Thank ye, mister. You've saved my scalp, any way, if 'twas just too late to save——" His voice was hushed here, and he fainted in my arms.

There was a metal flask of whisky dangling at the mail-bag rider's saddle-bow, along with his blanket and haversack; I hastily unscrewed the stopper, and contrived to force a few drops into the mouth of the wounded man. Then, I tore my cravat into strips, and with it and my handkerchief tried to bind up the hurts Shem had received, after vainly attempting to withdraw the barbed arrows. Two of the injuries were mere flesh wounds, more painful than dangerous; but the third was of a serious character: the shaft was imbedded in Shem's side, though the hemorrhage was trifling in appearance when compared with the abundant flow of blood from the other injuries. In about a couple of minutes Shem revived sufficiently to look up. I was touched by the gratitude his eyes expressed. Probably, poor lad, he had received but a scanty share of kindness in his scrambling life.

"Do you suffer much pain from the arrow wounds?" I asked. "Take a drop more of the whisky; it will give you strength, and if I can once help you to proceed as far as the block-house——"

"'Tain't no manner of use, stranger, my duty to ye, all the same," replied the rider, after swallowing a small quantity of spirits. " I've got my finish at last. A chap that's fit in the border fights ever since he could squint along a gun, don't need no doctor to tell him when he's got goss, he don't."

I could not disguise from myself that Shem was right. His face showed a ghastly change; it was ashen white, pinched, and thin; while the lips twitched, and the eyes had acquired that peculiar eager glance, and restless craving brightness, which we never notice except in those over whom death hovers. But I tried to cheer the poor fellow; succeeded in stanching the blood that flowed from his arm, transpierced by two of the iron-tipped reeds; and begged him to keep up his hope and courage.

"'Tain't worth wasting words upon, mister," gasped Shem; "I knowed I'd my call; onst I felt the cold and the rankling pain that follered the smart of that cussed arrow in my ribs. I'm jest bleeding to death, inwardly, I am, and all the surgeon chaps in the States couldn't help me, no, nor yet the cleverest bonesetter in the pararas. But you cheated the curs out of my scalp, stranger. They had a hanker to get this child's ha'r, they had, to dance round in their darned village, them Shoshonies. My! How the squaws will jeer and mock 'em when they go back empty-fisted, and leavin' two of the pack behind 'em, too!" And Shem, with death in his face and at his heart, actually laughed. He had to catch painfully at his breath before he spoke again. "Stranger, it's an ill wind blows nobody any good. You hark to me. What I couldn't give you, nouther for dollars nor axin', you'll get now. Go on to the station; take this here mail-bag along; give it 'em, and tell 'em the rights of what's chanced. They'll turn out fast enough, I'll warrant, and they'll put me under the turf afore the wolves pick my bones. And another rider must go on with the bag. And tell 'em 'twere my dyin' wish, they'd give you a fresh hoss at each block, and so let you go with the rider, and push ahead. The Co. won't be riled at the breach of rules—seein' you saved the bag, let alone my scalp, and——"

He broke down here. I was quite melted at the unselfish thoughtfulness of this poor dying creature, this untaught, half-wild frontiersman, who could care for my speedy journey while his own vital breath was trembling on his livid lips. I gave him a third sup of whisky, begging him to let me know if I could communicate his last wishes to any distant friend or relation?

"There's a gal that lives to Hampton Town," said Shem, almost in a whisper, "the darter of a dealer that trades in mules, she be; and Ruth and I——Oh, 'tis a pity the wedding day were put off, cause the Co. gives pensions to wives, but none to sweethearts, and Ruth's father met with misfortins in trade, and she'd ha' been glad of a few dollars a year, poor thing!"

I asked his sweetheart's name, for, as I assured him, I felt certain that the house of Spalding and Hausermann would befriend her for his sake, if through the service I had rendered Shem I were really enabled to do my errand with a success otherwise unattainable.

"Ruth Moss," said Shem, in his weak voice; "that's her surname and given name. She's a good girl, pretty and good, is Ruth, and only too tender a flower for a rough borderman like me; goes to chapel reg'lar,and writes like a print book."

He then begged that I would send to Ruth a certain knot of ribbon which he had received from her as a keepsake, or merely snatched in a lover's whim, I do not know which; at any rate, I found it carefully wrapped in deerskin, in the bosom of his dress, but ah! with a deep dark stain of blood marring the gay blue of the silk. The arrow had passed nearly through that humble love-token. Shem further prayed me, that as I passed by the Round Pond Station, between Fort Bridge and Red Creek, I would tell his old father, Amos Grindrod, that he, Shem, had "died like a man."

"The old man'll be cut up, I'm afraid," murmured Shem, whose eyes were getting dim; "but he'll be glad to know my ha'r warn't lifted. Tell him I were wiped out by the band of Mad Buffalo, the Shoshonie. 'Twar Mad Buffalo hisself that sent the arrow through me, just as I kivered him with the carbine. The shunk! Many a noggin of drink I've given him when he come tradin' to the fort. But there war a grudge atween him and me, and he's ped it; but let him mind how he ever comes within range of old Amos Grindrod's rifle!"

Shem was anxious to know whether the Indian I had shot was quite dead, and what painted device his half-naked body bore. His own glazing eyes could not distinguish; but when I described the yellow ochre barred with white, he said it must be the "Little Owl," one of Mad Buffalo's best warriors. The other Indian was of slighter make, and daubed with black and vermilion. Both were stone dead. Shem asked me, half timidly, if I would be so good as repeat "a bit of Scripture." He had not been much of a chapel-goer, but Ruth had "got religion," and his mother, too, had been "a Christian woman," as he quaintly observed. I knelt beside him and held up his head as I uttered aloud the words of a brief and simple prayer, such as little children are taught to lisp with their innocent lips; and once or twice I heard the husky tones of the dying man repeat the words. But there was a strong shiver through his frame, and poor Shem Grindrod was dead before the prayer was prayed out.

About an hour later, I rode up to the station, mounted on my own horse, and leading Shem's by the bridle.

"Halloa! pull up, pull up, or I'll plug ye, sure as my name's Bradshaw!" shouted a stern voice through a loophole of the lonely block-house. And I saw the long clouded barrel of a frontier rifle pointing in my direction. I halted, of course.

"That's one of our hosses," cried a second voice; "the critter's stole it, I reckon. What is he?"

"I am a friend," I called out; "a traveller from California. Let me come in, and I will explain all."

The garrison held a short but animated debate. One man avowed his belief in the truth of my story, another broadly hinted that I might turn out a "renegade" or "white Indian," that I merely wanted to open the doors of the fortress to my ferocious allies, ambushed somewhere hard by, and that it would be as well to shoot me, as a provisional act of prudence. But the majority carries the day in America; and, luckily for me, the majority decreed my admission. Loud was the surprise, and sincere the sorrow, with which the little garrison received the news of their comrade's murder. Three of the men caught up such rude tools as they possessed, and, slinging their rifles, prepared to take the "back trail" to the spot where the unfortunate young man's body lay, and where his remains would be hastily laid in earth, after the custom of the frontiers. Another hurried, with all the instinct of discipline, to saddle a horse for the purpose of carrying forward the mail-bag which poor Shem had resigned only with his life. This rider was the most affected of the group, by the melancholy tidings I had brought. He would have preferred to be one of those who were to lay his old associate beneath the prairie turf, but this could not be. He was "next for duty," he said, simply, with tears standing in his hardy eyes. So, he hurried to equip himself and steed for the perilous road. I now ventured, rather timidly and awkwardly, to prefer my request for the accommodation of fresh relays of horses along the rest of the route, speaking as modestly as I could of my own preservation of the despatches. The men looked puzzled as they scrutinised me and weighed my demand. One of them, he who had taken me for a renegade white in the Indian interest, gave me a piercing glance, and gruffly said, "How do we know he ain't been bamfoozling us with a pack of lies? He may have murdered Shem, ye see, jest to get a remount, and——"

"You jest shut up!" thundered, in tones of deep indignation, the rider who was to carry on the mails. "You oughter be ashamed of that tongue o' yourn, Jethro Summers. Here's a gentleman, and what's more, an honest chap, has fit by poor Shem's side, has saved his scalp from them Shoshonies, and brought on the bag for us, and you're to insult him with your mean talk. See! his hoss is fresh, and he's brought in Shem's hoss; and you to go telling him he'd murder a white Christian to get a lift. It's a burnin' shame, Jeth Summers! "

"'Tis, 'tis!" exclaimed the other two men. " Did ye ever know a darned renegade look a chap in the face, bold and honest, like the colonel, there? He's a good chap, is mister; and if ever he wants a friend in a rough-and-tumble fight, we're his men, sure as minks can swim."

The trio shook hands with me with genuine warmth. Now, when the iron was hot, was the time to strike. I therefore made an energetic appeal to them to supply me with horses, assuring them that my whole prospects and happiness, as well as those of others, depended on my speed. They listened with interest; but when I concluded with the words, "Shem Grindrod wished it; he bade me ask it of you, as he lay dying," the game was won. To be sure, the one ill-conditioned member of the community grumbled out something about "soft sawder, breach of rules, cunning Yankees, and dismissal." But the tall rider cut him short, by affirming with an oath, that "if the Co. chose to ride nasty on such a point, after the stranger's services, why the Co. was a mean scamp, and he wouldn't serve 'em, for one." I did not at first exactly comprehend this frequently-recurring phrase of the " Co.," and was disposed to regard it as the name of some overlooker, or superintendent, but afterwards discovered that this monosyllabic impersonation meant the Express Company.

"Look sharp, mister. You shall have a mount, but there's time lost a'ready, and we shall have to ride whip and spur. Come and pick a nag out of the corral. There's a brindled mustang your saddle will fit like his skin. The roan's best, but his back's rubbed raw. Ask Jonas to give you some beef and biscuit: we shan't pass many hot-els, that air positive. Charge that revolver o' yourn, colonel; I see two bullets a-missing. Have a horn of whisky—old Monongahela? No! Do be spry with the saddle, you Jeth—a man should help in a case like this. Easy, mister, with the bridle—the mustang bites—so! We'll take care of your nag, and you'll find him as sleek as a slug, if you come back our way. Good-by, boys! "

So saying, the impatient rider finished his preparations, sprang to his saddle, waved his repeating carbine over his head, and set off at furious speed. I followed as rapidly as I could, shouting a farewell to those left behind, who were on the point of starting for the place where poor Shem was lying beside the corpses of his copper-hued foes, stiff and stark.

The brindled mustang was fat and lazy, compared with the nimble cream-coloured pony on which my guide was mounted. It took all my exertions to overtake 'Demus Blake, whose name was probably Aristodemus, though thus curtailed by usage. We rode at a tremendous pace.

"Larrup your beast, colonel," cried the rider, "we're woful behind. Don't be stingy with the spur-iron, for that brindle does allays shirk when he can. Mind—'ware the sappy ground, where you see them clubby mosses! Jordan! they'd take a hoss up to the girths, and there you'd stop, like a tree'd coon. Push on, sir. Rattle him across them riv'lets: not that a parara hoss can jump like the critters from the U-nited States."

It struck me that 'Demus Blake was bawling and flogging in this excited way, for no other purpose than to quiet his own nerves, and drown care. I was confirmed in this view by the fact that, after six or seven miles had been swallowed up by the rapid career of our foamflecked steeds, the rider reined his horse into a steady hand-gallop.

"There, mister," said he, "we'll go quiet now. I feels kiender easier under my left ribs. Tell'ee, colonel, little as you think it, to look at such as me, I was as near making the biggest baby of myself—there, I was! Poor boy Shem! I knowed him, sir, oncommon well, and oncommon long. We played about together, when we were as high as a ramrod, in Pequottie village, nigh to Utica, in old Kentuck. And when old Amos and my daddy, Jonathan Blake, calculated to move west, they chose the same location. Sad news for old Amos—a white-haired old chap now, but pretty tough, too. He's at Brown's Hole—no, at Round Pond—trading for peltry. I wouldn't care to have the tellin' on him."

The rider was silent for a good while after this. He did not speak again till I paid a merited tribute to Shem's courage. I had found him, I said, fronting seven Indians like a stag at bay. The frontiersman's eye glittered proudly:

"A brave boy, sir. I was with him, first fight—that is, Shem's first, cause I'm two year an older man. 'Twarn't hereaway. South of Fremont's Pass it wur, and bloody Blackfoot Indians war the inimy, three to one, on'y they'd no fire-arms. 'Twarn't child's play that day, mister!" The backwoodsman expanded his broad chest, while his nostrils dilated, and his lips tightened, as he recalled the arduous struggle long past.

He was a much stronger man than Shem, of a spirit less gay and lightsome, but not without a certain amount of rude practical poetry in his disposition. He knew Shem's sweetheart: a very nice-looking girl, of rather a quiet, subdued, and pious nature. "Not too common on the border, nouther, where even gals mostly has a spice of the wild-cat, but, mebbe, that pleased Shem."

Of the distress in store for old Amos Grindrod: a hunter, once renowned for his prowess and skill, whether in warfare or the chase: Blake spoke feelingly and with deep conviction.

"'Twill shorten the old man's days, sir, but it's lucky the old woman's not alive to hear it: she was that tender of Shem, if his finger ached she'd flutter like a robbed hen. Good old soul she was, Mrs. Grindrod, and nursed my old mother when she took the fever in that murderin' swamp."

Honest 'Demus had too much innate good-breeding to be inquisitive as to the purport of my unusual journey. In this respect, as in some others, he far surpassed in tact and politeness many an accomplished citizen in varnished boots and satin vest. But he offered me some well-meant advice.

"Take it coolly," said he, "and don't flurry yourself, colonel. You've got more colour in your cheeks than need be, and your hand was as hot, when I shook it, as a bit of deer-meat toastin' over the fire. I don't know as you ain't right, shirking the whisky, though 'tis food and comfort to such as me. But a smart touch of fever would tie you by the leg, stranger, so don't fret overly, and sleep all you can. As for Injuns, they'll hardly trouble two white men, when there's nouthin' to be got but a kipple of nags that can be bought for a cast of the lasso, or larist. The emigrant trains is different, for the Red devils scent plunder in the waggons, and only the dragoons skear 'em. 'Twar spite med the Mad Buffalo fall on Shem Grindrod. Shem give him a coat o' tar and turkey feathers one night, at Bridger's Fort, when the Injun got so drunk with whisky some rascal sold him, he lay like a hog on the ground. They never forgive, them Injuns. Shoshonies have no pity, compared to the savages east of the Rocky Mountains. Keep a look out for outlying war parties, mister, when you get to the mountain parks. Crows will take hoss and clothes; Blackfeet allays hanker arter ha'r!"

I took my guide's well-meant advice, and endeavoured to get through the journey as phlegmatically as might be. I snatched every opportunity of repose, if only for a few minutes, while the reeking saddles were being shifted to the backs of fresh horses; and it is wonderful how much refreshment I at times derived from a nap so brief as not much to exceed the traditional "forty winks." More than once, my companion said to me, "Colonel, you're about dropping with sleep. Shut your eyes, if you like, and give me your reins. I'll guide both hosses, and you can't hardly roll out of that cradle o' yourn." And, indeed, the deep Mexican saddle of demipique cut, which I had luckily provided on starting, was admirably adapted, with its lofty pommel and cantel, to the use of a dozing equestrian. Curious spells of slumber those were, when my head would nod like that of a porcelain mandarin, and my eyelids droop as if weighted with lead, and when, after a few minutes, I would start up, broad awake, as my mustang stumbled over broken ground. Once—it was while 'Demus Blake was still with me—I had a long and most delicious period of slumber, uninterrupted by jerks or concussions; and when I awoke, quite a new man, and revived to an extent at which I now wonder, I found myself supported by the strong patient arm of my conductor, who had been galloping by my side for miles, managing both bridles with his disengaged hand. "I thought it would fresh you up, colonel!" said the brave fellow.

Not all my mentors throughout that phantom ride across prairieland were as frank as Blake, nor as merry as Shem. But the mail-bag riders turned out good fellows in all main points, and I can safely say that I found but two or three surly or ill-natured persons among all those who garrisoned the block-houses: while fortunately it fell to my lot on no occasion to be accompanied by one of these. In the prairie, as in the world at large, I found good-feeling the rule, cynicism or malice the exception, though I am bound to say that the ill-conditioned individuals made twice as much noise and stir as their more amiable mates. The first start had been difficult, but at each succeeding station I received my remount without much delay or parley. The "privilege of the post" was conceded to me, while I was always welcome to a share of the rations n each little community. On the whole, I found the men cheerful in their strange isolation. They were liberally paid and not ill-fed, and they looked forward to a pension in the event of becoming crippled by some Indian hatchet-stroke or arrow-shot. Planted in the wilderness, with the prospect of being presently encompassed by deep drifts of snow, over whose frozen surface the wolves would come to howl and scratch at their doors, like dogs seeking admittance, they were in fair spirits and undismayed. Their habitual talk was of the wild adventures that formed the everyday life of that frontier of Christendom; of Indian stratagems and cruelty, of panthers and "grizzlies," pronghorns and buffaloes. Several of them had consorted familiarly with the painted tribes of the desert, and spoke sundry Indian dialects as fluently as their mother tongue. I found these hardy men kind hosts enough; they would hush their talk, not to disturb me as I lay down on a heap of skins and blankets, to sleep, while the guide saddled the horses; and they soon ceased to ridicule my apparently capricious refusal of whisky. "Mebbe the colonel's right!" (Colonel is the Western title of courtesy), they would say in their blunt politeness. Once I found the inmates of a station, built on swampy ground, quite helpless and prostrate with fever. The fever had abated when the healthy norther began to blow, but the poor fellows were cramped with pains, and very feeble, and only one of the party could crawl about to cook and feed the fire. I had need to fix my mind on the reward of success, on the distant goal glittering far ahead, for it was no light task that I had undertaken. The thought of Emma nerved me, and I felt an Englishman's dogged resolve to win, to fight on, and to break sooner than bend. But the fatigues of that journey surpassed all my conceptions. By day and night, under a glaring sun or through the frost and cutting northerly winds, on we pressed, fording streams, threading the way through marshes, stumbling among the burrows of prairie dogs, or dashing across boundless plains. I almost learned to hate the long terraces of turf, the illimitable sweeps of dark green surface, the blue horizons, the swells of gently sloping earth, smooth enough for the passage of wheeled carriages. On we went, till the long grass, mixed with flowers and wild tufts of the flax-cotton, gave place to a shorter and crisper herbage, the true "buffalo grass" that the bisons love; or till water became scarce, and the sage plant replaced the blossomed shrubs of the west, and the springs were brackish, and here and there our horses' hoofs went cranching over a white stretch of desert, strewn with crystals of salt that glittered in the sun. We saw little of Indians, and of game still less. The latter, my guides told me, had been chiefly scared away, by the constant passage of emigrants. As for the savages, we sometimes saw the plumed heads, the tapering lances, and the fluttering robes, of a troop of wild horsemen, against the crimson sky of evening; but they offered us no molestation, and the riders said they were Utahs on the look-out for "buffler droves" returning from the south. Of the fatigue of that interminable ride, the aching joints, the stiffened sinews, the pains that racked my overstrained muscles, I can give no just idea. Still less can I convey any sense of the continual strain upon the intellect and the perceptive faculties, or how my brain grew as weary as my limbs.

I shall never forget the evening of my arrival in Salt Lake City, the capital of Utah territory, and New Jerusalem of the Mormons. I had been encouraged by the guides, to look upon this town in the deserts as a turning-point in the journey, beyond which I should be in less peril from Indians, and after which a comparatively short ride would carry me to more civilised regions. But, to my surprise, I found the inmates of the station at Salt Lake City quite as lonely as, and more suspicious and moody than, in the far-off posts among the prairies. They were Gentiles in the midst of a fanatic population, wholly swayed by the hierarchy of that strange creed whose standard had been set up in the lawless wastes of the west. Nor was it long before I heard the cause of their dark looks and low spirits.

"Where's Josh Hudson?" asked the rider who had come with me, when the first greetings had been exchanged.

"Who knows?" answered the man addressed; "I don't. Seth said he went to the town, while I were in the corral with the hosses. If so, all I can say is, he never come back."

"When was that, Seth?" asked the newly-arrived rider.

"Two days agone," answered Seth, as he scraped the surface of a half-exhausted quid of tobacco with his long sharp bowie-knife, "jest afore sundown."

"He's not desarted. Josh was too honourable to make tracks, that way," said the rider, confidently.

"Desarted! Not he. But that's what'll have to be put in the report—leastways, mis- sin'," said Seth.

The rider looked Seth in the face, and drew his forefinger, with a meaning look, slowly across his own throat. Seth nodded.

"Least said, safest," said Seth, looking dubiously at me.

"Colonel's safe. You may speak afore him, same as myself, boys!" cried the mail-bag rider, who had come with me; "do ye mean them bloodthirsty Mormons——?"

"Whist, Jem! Whew! You'll get all our throats cut," cried the oldest man, starting up in great alarm; "there may be one of the brutes within earshot." He looked through the window, and opened the door, to satisfy himself that no eavesdroppers were near.

"I forgot," apologised Jem; "but about Josh Hudson?"

"I'm afeard," answered Seth, in a voice dropped almost to a whisper, "that he's gone for good. Josh was troubled about his sister, Nell Hudson, that jined the Mormons last winter, up in Illinoy, and was coaxed off, and is here, somewhere."

"Ah," said the listener, "I heerd as much."

"It's my belief," continued Seth, "that Josh got on this station a purpose to seek the gal out, and get her to go home to the old folks and the Church she were bred in. Mormons won't stand that."

"Ah!" said the guide Jem again.

"So, in short, Seth and me some think, we do," said the oldest of the group, "that Josh has been at his scoutin' onst too often, and met 'shanpip.' "

"Shanpip!" I repeated; "what is that?"

The man eyed me curiously. "Never heerd of 'Shanpip brethren,' then, harn't ye, mister? So much the best for you. P'raps you've heerd tell of Danites?"

I had heard, vaguely and obscurely, of that spiritual police of Mormondom, of those fierce zealots who obey their Prophet blindly.

"Then you have reason to fear that your comrade is——"

"Is lyin' under the salt mud of one o' them briny pools nigh to hand," interrupted the man, "and not alone, nouther. Theer's been a many missin', that never went back to settlements nor on to Californey. And theer they'll lie hid, I reckon, till the Day of Judgment, when Great Salt Lake shall give up its dead, like the rest of the airth and waters."

I asked if an appeal could not be made to the Mormon elders themselves?

"'Twouldn't answer, colonel. Suppose I goes to-morrow to Brigham's own house, or Kimball's, or any of their big men—elders, or angels, or high priests, or what not—and asks after Josh Hudson. Brigham's very mealy-mouthed, afraid the man's run away; what could be expected from a benighted Gentile, and that; gives his own account of it in preachment next Sabbath. P'raps one of 'em gives me a glass of wine or a julep, and mebbe it disagrees with me, and I die of it. You may stare, but didn't the States treasurer die that way, arter takin' refreshment at Angel Badger's house? And a pretty angel he be. P'raps I don't drink under a Mormon roof, and then, mebbe, I walk home late, and lose my way, or some other accident happens me—true as death, mister, on'y last week, as I passed Big Lick, I saw a dead woman's face looking up at me, all white and still, at bottom of the salt pool."

Thus far the elder man had spoken, but now Seth, who had evinced great uneasiness, jumped up with an oath, and cautiously opened the door. No one was listening.

"Tell'ee what," said Seth, "we'd best keep this discoorse close, till we're outside the territory. They're that sharp, Mormons, blessed if I don't think they're all ear. And if they get's a notion what we're sayin', the colonel won't never see New York, and I shan't never happen home to Montgomery agin. Indian Walker and his pesky Utahs mostly got a knack of tomahawking them as Mormons don't much like. And mebbe we'd meet other Indians, with blankets and red paint on their faces, jest like the real Utahs, and pretty sharp knives in their belts."

"Seth's right," said my former guide; "we don't want to set up any chaps to paint Injun on our account, as Angel Brown and Young Harris and the Danites did, when Martha Styles and Rachel Willis chose to go home to Illinoy—so, colonel, you get a snooze, and Seth, you needn't hurry about saddlin'—we've rode awful quick."

I was not sorry when day-dawn found me, after a hard gallop by moonlight, approaching the confines of the Mormon territory. The rest of the journey was unmarked by adventure. Hardships there were, but no great perils. We traversed a route on whjch the bleached bones of many horses and mules lay white and ghastly, and on which many a low turfen mound marked the last resting-place of an emigrant, or his wife or child, never to reach the Promised Land of Hope.

But provisions were more plentiful now, and water more regularly stored and easy of access, than when the expelled Mormons made their famous march across the desert, marking the untrodden route with graves. We narrowly escaped being smothered in the snow, in passing the outlet in the Rocky Mountains, and this was our last semblance of peril.

Previous to this, it had been my sad duty to tell old Amos Grindrod, whom I found at the Round Pond Station, of his son's death, and to commit to his care the bit of ensanguined ribbon that was to be returned to poor Shem's sweetheart. The old man tried to bear the tidings with the stoicism of those Indians among whom he had passed much of his life, and expressed great pleasure at hearing that Shem had "died like a Kentucky man, clear grit," and that I had come up in time to save his scalp. But in a few minutes, nature conquered. The old man's bronzed features worked and twitched, and tears trickled from his aged eyes, as he sobbed out, "Shem! dear boy Shem! 'twas I that oughter be dead, not he."

At last the weary ride was over: we had passed outlying farms guarded by a strong stockade, then the farms grew thicker and the stockades were dispensed with, and at last the roofs of a village, called by courtesy a town, came in view. Gladly did I dismount, gladly did I shake the hard hand of the last rider of the Express Company! Leaving that honest fellow puzzling over the cabalistic flourishes of a ten-dollar note I presented to him, I hired a pair-horse waggon of light build, and set off at once. The waggon bore me on until I exchanged it for a coach, the coach did me the same good office until I heard the snort of the steam-horse, and took my ticket by railway. How delicious, how snug and luxurious was such a mode of travel, after so much hard saddle-work! Corduroy roads seemed smooth, and American railroads not in the least addicted to cause the trains to jerk or rock. The gliding motion was charming, and I made amends for lost time, by sleeping in a manner which provoked more than one fellow-traveller, eager to know my business and station in life.

I had already telegraphed to New York briefly thus:

"Has the Californian mail, viâ Panama, arrived?"

Briefer still was the answer:

"No."

That was right, so far. My toil was not yet purposeless. I might hope to be in New ork before Dr., or Colonel, Joram Heckler. The victory, to be sure, was not yet won. The valuable papers remained in the scoundrel's keeping. But my presence in New York would be unsuspected by him, and any overt act on my part would have the effect of a surprise. I was too exhausted, to devote myself to spinning air-drawn schemes for outwitting the intriguer. I should have need of all my faculties when the tug of war began, and I must sleep now. Sleep I did, over miles and miles, over leagues and leagues, of the iron way: resting obstinately, and being as passive as possible.

"Massa get out? Dis New York, sare."

Some one was shaking me by the arm: some one else held a lantern to my face. A black man and a white. The conductor, and a negro porter.

"I'm going to the Metropolitan Hotel. I want a hack: no luggage. Has the Californian mail arrived?"

"Yes, it has," said a newsvendor, who stood by, with a heap of journals under his arm; "got all the news here. Herald, Tribune, Times. Which will you have?"

I bought one of the papers, and glanced at the list of arrivals viâ Panama. So much gold dust, so much bullion, distinguished European traveller, postmaster-general, Signora Cantatini, Colonels Thorn, Heckler, &c. The driver of the hack-carriage was an Irishman, as usual, and, luckily, not a new arrival. He readily conducted me (at that late hour all other stores and shops were closed) to the emporium of a Jew dealer in ready-made clothes, who was willing to turn a cent even at irregular time. I purchased a new suit, linen, a portmanteau, and so forth, and shaved off my stubbly beard with razors supplied by the Jew, and before the Jew's private looking-glass. My driver drove quite a trim, ordinary-looking gentleman to the Metropolitan Hotel, instead of the shaggy flannel-shirted Californian who had first engaged him.

Before I engaged a room, I civilly asked the bookkeeper to let me look at the addresses of guests: I was expecting my brother, I said, from Albany. I took good care to say nothing of Heckler or California, and the bookkeeper had no suspicion that my voyages had commenced at any more remote spot than Philadelphia or Baltimore. Yes—Heckler's name was down.

I had guessed he would put up at the Metropolitan, for I had heard him mention the house approvingly in conversation. I hung about the bar and the staircases until I happened to hear that he had gone to bed. Then, I withdrew to think over my own plan of operations. I own I was puzzled. I tossed and tumbled uneasily on my pillow. While hurrying onward it had appeared as if I had but to arrive in time, and the difficulty was at an end; but now, what was I to do? The battle had yet to be fought. What should I do? In the morning, no doubt, Heckler would repair to the bank, to present the forged cheque, if not to get the bills discounted. I must stop him. But how? Should I go to the police, and return with the police myrmidons? Not to be thought of! Scandal, exposure, must follow such a step; nay, in the eyes of the law, Heckler might seem an innocent man, and I a false accuser. I next thought of confronting him boldly, and forcing from him, with a pistol at his head, if need be, the property of the firm. But this was too Quixotic a proceeding to be adopted in a first-rate hotel in New York. I was at my wits' end.

Heavens! What a smell of burning, and how stifling and thick the air! Smoke! The house is on fire. Up I sprang, and flung on my clothes in hot haste. "It's an ill wind that blows no one any good." I thought of Joram Heckler as I rang my bell to alarm the people.

"Fire! fire!" The awful cry broke upon the ears of the sleepers, like the trump of doom. Dark clouds of volleying smoke poured along the corridors, flecked here and there by thin ribbons of flame that licked the walls and floors like the tongues of fiery serpents. Shrieks were heard; doors were burst open; men, women, children, rushed out, half-dressed and screaming. There was panic terror and wild confusion. The fire gained ground, the smoke was blindingly thick, and all fled before it—all but myself. I steadily groped my way towards Joram Heckler's room. I knew the number, and where to find it. I knew that I risked my life, but the stake was worth winning at such a risk. I was very nearly suffocated as I pushed on, holding by the wall, into the thickest of the smoke. Some man, half-dressed, and winged by fear, came rushing by with extended arms, and nearly overturned me. He uttered a savage oath; the red glare of the fire fell on his face; it was Joram Heckler.

He did not recognise me, but dashed on, only mindful of his danger. Had he the papers with him? I thought not. I hoped not. That was his room then, the door of which was ajar, and into which the smoke was rolling. Not the smoke alone; I saw a thin red tongue of fire creeping in over the floor, beside the wainscot. I dashed in. My eyes smarted with the smoke, and I gasped for breath, but smoke and fire could not turn me now. Heckler's clothes and dressing-case were as he had laid them; the latter was open: no papers! His valise, too, lay open: no papers! I struck my forehead despairingly. He had them about him then! I was risking life idly. Emma was lost to me! The smoke choked me: the intolerably hot fire had gained the bed: valance and curtains were flaring high in a tall yellow pillar of flame. The subtle tongues of flame almost touched my feet. I must fly, if I would not perish. Outside, I heard the noise of the engines and the cheers of the mob, and then the dash of water, as prodigious efforts were made to extinguish the fire.

I was staggering away, when I saw, peeping from under the bolster of the bed, a Russia-leather pocket-book. The rascal had forgotten it in his blind terror. The blazing curtains fell in fragments upon me, and my hands were a good deal scorched, but I rescued the precious prize. I tore it open. Yes, cheque and bills, all were there! Thrusting it into my breast-pocket, I left the room, and struggled as I best could down the passage. Dash after dash of water, flung from hand-buckets, had partially subdued the flames, and the firemen were gaining the victory. Half smothered, singed, blackened, but with a proudly beating heart, I forced my way down the heated and crowded staircase—reached the outer air, and fainted.

I have little more to tell. I am a partner in the firm: Emma is my wife; her brother recovered from his illness, and is now, in another land, an altered and penitent man. The house of Spalding, Hausermann, and Co. (I am Co.) have granted a pension to the poor girl who was to have been the bride of the luckless Shem Grindrod. Of Heckler we heard no more.

CHAPTER VI

PICKING UP MISS KIMMEENS

Charles Dickens

The day was by this time waning, when the gate again opened, and, with the brilliant golden light that streamed from the declining sun and touched the very bars of the sooty creature’s den, there passed in a little child; a little girl with beautiful bright hair. She wore a plain straw hat, had a door-key in her hand, and tripped towards Mr. Traveller as if she were pleased to see him and were going to repose some childish confidence in him, when she caught sight of the figure behind the bars, and started back in terror.

“Don’t be alarmed, darling!” said Mr. Traveller, taking her by the hand.

“Oh, but I don’t like it!” urged the shrinking child; “it’s dreadful.”

“Well! I don’t like it either,” said Mr. Traveller.

“Who has put it there?” asked the little girl. “Does it bite?”

“No,—only barks. But can’t you make up your mind to see it, my dear?” For she was covering her eyes.

“O no, no, no!” returned the child. “I cannot bear to look at it!”

Mr. Traveller turned his head towards his friend in there, as much as to ask him how he liked that instance of his success, and then took the child out at the still open gate, and stood talking to her for some half an hour in the mellow sunlight. At length he returned, encouraging her as she held his arm with both her hands; and laying his protecting hand upon her head and smoothing her pretty hair, he addressed his friend behind the bars as follows:

Miss Pupford’s establishment for six young ladies of tender years, is an establishment of a compact nature, an establishment in miniature, quite a pocket establishment. Miss Pupford, Miss Pupford’s assistant with the Parisian accent, Miss Pupford’s cook, and Miss Pupford’s housemaid, complete what Miss Pupford calls the educational and domestic staff of her Lilliputian College.

Miss Pupford is one of the most amiable of her sex; it necessarily follows that she possesses a sweet temper, and would own to the possession of a great deal of sentiment if she considered it quite reconcilable with her duty to parents. Deeming it not in the bond, Miss Pupford keeps it as far out of sight as she can—which (God bless her!) is not very far.

Miss Pupford’s assistant with the Parisian accent, may be regarded as in some sort an inspired lady, for she never conversed with a Parisian, and was never out of England—except once in the pleasure-boat Lively, in the foreign waters that ebb and flow two miles off Margate at high water. Even under those geographically favourable circumstances for the acquisition of the French language in its utmost politeness and purity, Miss Pupford’s assistant did not fully profit by the opportunity; for the pleasure-boat, Lively, so strongly asserted its title to its name on that occasion, that she was reduced to the condition of lying in the bottom of the boat pickling in brine—as if she were being salted down for the use of the Navy—undergoing at the same time great mental alarm, corporeal distress, and clear-starching derangement.

When Miss Pupford and her assistant first foregathered, is not known to men, or pupils. But, it was long ago. A belief would have established itself among pupils that the two once went to school together, were it not for the difficulty and audacity of imagining Miss Pupford born without mittens, and without a front, and without a bit of gold wire among her front teeth, and without little dabs of powder on her neat little face and nose. Indeed, whenever Miss Pupford gives a little lecture on the mythology of the misguided heathens (always carefully excluding Cupid from recognition), and tells how Minerva sprang, perfectly equipped, from the brain of Jupiter, she is half supposed to hint, “So I myself came into the world, completely up in Pinnock, Mangnall, Tables, and the use of the Globes.”

Howbeit, Miss Pupford and Miss Pupford’s assistant are old old friends. And it is thought by pupils that, after pupils are gone to bed, they even call one another by their christian names in the quiet little parlour. For, once upon a time on a thunderous afternoon, when Miss Pupford fainted away without notice, Miss Pupford’s assistant (never heard, before or since, to address her otherwise than as Miss Pupford) ran to her, crying out, “My dearest Euphemia!” And Euphemia is Miss Pupford’s christian name on the sampler (date picked out) hanging up in the College-hall, where the two peacocks, terrified to death by some German text that is waddling down-hill after them out of a cottage, are scuttling away to hide their profiles in two immense bean-stalks growing out of flower-pots.

Also, there is a notion latent among pupils, that Miss Pupford was once in love, and that the beloved object still moves upon this ball. Also, that he is a public character, and a personage of vast consequence. Also, that Miss Pupford’s assistant knows all about it. For, sometimes of an afternoon when Miss Pupford has been reading the paper through her little gold eye-glass (it is necessary to read it on the spot, as the boy calls for it, with ill-conditioned punctuality, in an hour), she has become agitated, and has said to her assistant “G!” Then Miss Pupford’s assistant has gone to Miss Pupford, and Miss Pupford has pointed out, with her eye-glass, G in the paper, and then Miss Pupford’s assistant has read about G, and has shown sympathy. So stimulated has the pupil-mind been in its time to curiosity on the subject of G, that once, under temporary circumstances favourable to the bold sally, one fearless pupil did actually obtain possession of the paper, and range all over it in search of G, who had been discovered therein by Miss Pupford not ten minutes before. But no G could be identified, except one capital offender who had been executed in a state of great hardihood, and it was not to be supposed that Miss Pupford could ever have loved him. Besides, he couldn’t be always being executed. Besides, he got into the paper again, alive, within a month.

On the whole, it is suspected by the pupil-mind that G is a short chubby old gentleman, with little black sealing-wax boots up to his knees, whom a sharply observant pupil, Miss Linx, when she once went to Tunbridge Wells with Miss Pupford for the holidays, reported on her return (privately and confidentially) to have seen come capering up to Miss Pupford on the Promenade, and to have detected in the act of squeezing Miss Pupford’s hand, and to have heard pronounce the words, “Cruel Euphemia, ever thine!”—or something like that. Miss Linx hazarded a guess that he might be House of Commons, or Money Market, or Court Circular, or Fashionable Movements; which would account for his getting into the paper so often. But, it was fatally objected by the pupil-mind, that none of those notabilities could possibly be spelt with a G.

There are other occasions, closely watched and perfectly comprehended by the pupil-mind, when Miss Pupford imparts with mystery to her assistant that there is special excitement in the morning paper. These occasions are, when Miss Pupford finds an old pupil coming out under the head of Births, or Marriages. Affectionate tears are invariably seen in Miss Pupford’s meek little eyes when this is the case; and the pupil-mind, perceiving that its order has distinguished itself—though the fact is never mentioned by Miss Pupford—becomes elevated, and feels that it likewise is reserved for greatness.

Miss Pupford’s assistant with the Parisian accent has a little more bone than Miss Pupford, but is of the same trim orderly, diminutive cast, and, from long contemplation, admiration, and imitation of Miss Pupford, has grown like her. Being entirely devoted to Miss Pupford, and having a pretty talent for pencil-drawing, she once made a portrait of that lady: which was so instantly identified and hailed by the pupils, that it was done on stone at five shillings. Surely the softest and milkiest stone that ever was quarried, received that likeness of Miss Pupford! The lines of her placid little nose are so undecided in it that strangers to the work of art are observed to be exceedingly perplexed as to where the nose goes to, and involuntarily feel their own noses in a disconcerted manner. Miss Pupford being represented in a state of dejection at an open window, ruminating over a bowl of gold fish, the pupil-mind has settled that the bowl was presented by G, and that he wreathed the bowl with flowers of soul, and that Miss Pupford is depicted as waiting for him on a memorable occasion when he was behind his time.

The approach of the last Midsummer holidays had a particular interest for the pupil-mind, by reason of its knowing that Miss Pupford was bidden, on the second day of those holidays, to the nuptials of a former pupil. As it was impossible to conceal the fact—so extensive were the dress-making preparations—Miss Pupford openly announced it. But, she held it due to parents to make the announcement with an air of gentle melancholy, as if marriage were (as indeed it exceptionally has been) rather a calamity. With an air of softened resignation and pity, therefore, Miss Pupford went on with her preparations: and meanwhile no pupil ever went up-stairs, or came down, without peeping in at the door of Miss Pupford’s bedroom (when Miss Pupford wasn’t there), and bringing back some surprising intelligence concerning the bonnet.

The extensive preparations being completed on the day before the holidays, an unanimous entreaty was preferred to Miss Pupford by the pupil-mind—finding expression through Miss Pupford’s assistant—that she would deign to appear in all her splendour. Miss Pupford consenting, presented a lovely spectacle. And although the oldest pupil was barely thirteen, every one of the six became in two minutes perfect in the shape, cut, colour, price, and quality, of every article Miss Pupford wore.

Thus delightfully ushered in, the holidays began. Five of the six pupils kissed little Kitty Kimmeens twenty times over (round total, one hundred times, for she was very popular), and so went home. Miss Kitty Kimmeens remained behind, for her relations and friends were all in India, far away. A self-helpful steady little child is Miss Kitty Kimmeens: a dimpled child too, and a loving.

So, the great marriage-day came, and Miss Pupford, quite as much fluttered as any bride could be (G! thought Miss Kitty Kimmeens), went away, splendid to behold, in the carriage that was sent for her. But not Miss Pupford only went away; for Miss Pupford’s assistant went away with her, on a dutiful visit to an aged uncle—though surely the venerable gentleman couldn’t live in the gallery of the church where the marriage was to be, thought Miss Kitty Kimmeens—and yet Miss Pupford’s assistant had let out that she was going there. Where the cook was going, didn’t appear, but she generally conveyed to Miss Kimmeens that she was bound, rather against her will, on a pilgrimage to perform some pious office that rendered new ribbons necessary to her best bonnet, and also sandals to her shoes.

“So you see,” said the housemaid, when they were all gone, “there’s nobody left in the house but you and me, Miss Kimmeens.”

“Nobody else,” said Miss Kitty Kimmeens, shaking her curls a little sadly. “Nobody!”

“And you wouldn’t like your Bella to go too; would you, Miss Kimmeens?” said the housemaid. (She being Bella.)

“N—no,” answered little Miss Kimmeens.

“Your poor Bella is forced to stay with you, whether she likes it or not; ain’t she, Miss Kimmeens?”

“Don’t you like it?” inquired Kitty.

“Why, you’re such a darling, Miss, that it would be unkind of your Bella to make objections. Yet my brother-in-law has been took unexpected bad by this morning’s post. And your poor Bella is much attached to him, letting alone her favourite sister, Miss Kimmeens.”

“Is he very ill?” asked little Kitty.

“Your poor Bella has her fears so, Miss Kimmeens,” returned the housemaid, with her apron at her eyes. “It was but his inside, it is true, but it might mount, and the doctor said that if it mounted he wouldn’t answer.” Here the housemaid was so overcome that Kitty administered the only comfort she had ready: which was a kiss.

“If it hadn’t been for disappointing Cook, dear Miss Kimmeens,” said the housemaid, “your Bella would have asked her to stay with you. For Cook is sweet company, Miss Kimmeens, much more so than your own poor Bella.”

“But you are very nice, Bella.”

“Your Bella could wish to be so, Miss Kimmeens,” returned the housemaid, “but she knows full well that it do not lay in her power this day.”

With which despondent conviction, the housemaid drew a heavy sigh, and shook her head, and dropped it on one side.

“If it had been anyways right to disappoint Cook,” she pursued, in a contemplative and abstracted manner, “it might have been so easy done! I could have got to my brother-in-law’s, and had the best part of the day there, and got back, long before our ladies come home at night, and neither the one nor the other of them need never have known it. Not that Miss Pupford would at all object, but that it might put her out, being tender-hearted. Hows’ever, your own poor Bella, Miss Kimmeens,” said the housemaid, rousing herself, “is forced to stay with you, and you’re a precious love, if not a liberty.”

“Bella,” said little Kitty, after a short silence.

“Call your own poor Bella, your Bella, dear,” the housemaid besought her.

“My Bella, then.”

“Bless your considerate heart!” said the housemaid.

“If you would not mind leaving me, I should not mind being left. I am not afraid to stay in the house alone. And you need not be uneasy on my account, for I would be very careful to do no harm.”

“O! As to harm, you more than sweetest, if not a liberty,” exclaimed the housemaid, in a rapture, “your Bella could trust you anywhere, being so steady, and so answerable. The oldest head in this house (me and Cook says), but for its bright hair, is Miss Kimmeens. But no, I will not leave you; for you would think your Bella unkind.”

“But if you are my Bella, you must go,” returned the child.

“Must I?” said the housemaid, rising, on the whole with alacrity. “What must be, must be, Miss Kimmeens. Your own poor Bella acts according, though unwilling. But go or stay, your own poor Bella loves you, Miss Kimmeens.”

It was certainly go, and not stay, for within five minutes Miss Kimmeens’s own poor Bella—so much improved in point of spirits as to have grown almost sanguine on the subject of her brother-in-law—went her way, in apparel that seemed to have been expressly prepared for some festive occasion. Such are the changes of this fleeting world, and so short-sighted are we poor mortals!

When the house door closed with a bang and a shake, it seemed to Miss Kimmeens to be a very heavy house door, shutting her up in a wilderness of a house. But, Miss Kimmeens being, as before stated, of a self-reliant and methodical character, presently began to parcel out the long summer-day before her.

And first she thought she would go all over the house, to make quite sure that nobody with a great-coat on and a carving-knife in it, had got under one of the beds or into one of the cupboards. Not that she had ever before been troubled by the image of anybody armed with a great-coat and a carving-knife, but that it seemed to have been shaken into existence by the shake and the bang of the great street-door, reverberating through the solitary house. So, little Miss Kimmeens looked under the five empty beds of the five departed pupils, and looked, under her own bed, and looked under Miss Pupford’s bed, and looked under Miss Pupford’s assistant's bed. And when she had done this, and was making the tour of the cupboards, the disagreeable thought came into her young head, What a very alarming thing it would be to find somebody with a mask on, like Guy Fawkes, hiding bolt upright in a corner and pretending not to be alive! However, Miss Kimmeens having finished her inspection without making any such uncomfortable discovery, sat down in her tidy little manner to needlework, and began stitching away at a great rate.

The silence all about her soon grew very oppressive, and the more so because of the odd inconsistency that the more silent it was, the more noises there were. The noise of her own needle and thread as she stitched, was infinitely louder in her ears than the stitching of all the six pupils, and of Miss Pupford, and of Miss Pupford’s assistant, all stitching away at once on a highly emulative afternoon. Then, the schoolroom clock conducted itself in a way in which it had never conducted itself before—fell lame, somehow, and yet persisted in running on as hard and as loud as it could: the consequence of which behaviour was, that it staggered among the minutes in a state of the greatest confusion, and knocked them about in all directions without appearing to get on with its regular work. Perhaps this alarmed the stairs; but be that as it might, they began to creak in a most unusual manner, and then the furniture began to crack, and then poor little Miss Kimmeens, not liking the furtive aspect of things in general, began to sing as she stitched. But, it was not her own voice that she heard—it was somebody else making believe to be Kitty, and singing excessively flat, without any heart—so as that would never mend matters, she left off again.

By-and-by the stitching became so palpable a failure that Miss Kitty Kimmeens folded her work neatly, and put it away in its box, and gave it up. Then the question arose about reading. But no; the book that was so delightful when there was somebody she loved for her eyes to fall on when they rose from the page, had not more heart in it than her own singing now. The book went to its shelf as the needlework had gone to its box, and, since something must be done—thought the child, “I’ll go put my room to rights.”

She shared her room with her dearest little friend among the other five pupils, and why then should she now conceive a lurking dread of the little friend’s bedstead? But she did. There was a stealthy air about its innocent white curtains, and there were even dark hints of a dead girl lying under the coverlet. The great want of human company, the great need of a human face, began now to express itself in the facility with which the furniture put on strange exaggerated resemblances to human looks. A chair with a menacing frown was horribly out of temper in a corner; a most vicious chest of drawers snarled at her from between the windows. It was no relief to escape from those monsters to the looking-glass, for the reflection said, “What? Is that you all alone there? How you stare!” And the background was all a great void stare as well.

The day dragged on, dragging Kitty with it very slowly by the hair of her head, until it was time to eat. There were good provisions in the pantry, but their right flavour and relish had evaporated with the five pupils, and Miss Pupford, and Miss Pupford’s assistant, and the cook and housemaid. Where was the use of laying the cloth symmetrically for one small guest, who had gone on ever since the morning growing smaller and smaller, while the empty house had gone on swelling larger and larger? The very Grace came out wrong, for who were “we” who were going to receive and be thankful? So, Miss Kimmeens was not thankful, and found herself taking her dinner in very slovenly style—gobbling it up, in short, rather after the manner of the lower animals, not to particularise the pigs.

But, this was by no means the worst of the change wrought out in the naturally loving and cheery little creature as the solitary day wore on. She began to brood and be suspicious. She discovered that she was full of wrongs and injuries. All the people she knew, got tainted by her lonely thoughts and turned bad.

It was all very well for Papa, a widower in India, to send her home to be educated, and to pay a handsome round sum every year for her to Miss Pupford, and to write charming letters to his darling little daughter; but what did he care for her being left by herself, when he was (as no doubt he always was) enjoying himself in company from morning till night? Perhaps he only sent her here, after all, to get her out of the way. It looked like it—looked like it to-day, that is, for she had never dreamed of such a thing before.

And this old pupil who was being married. It was unsupportably conceited and selfish in the old pupil to be married. She was very vain, and very glad to show off; but it was highly probable that she wasn’t pretty; and even if she were pretty (which Miss Kimmeens now totally denied), she had no business to be married; and, even if marriage were conceded, she had no business to ask Miss Pupford to her wedding. As to Miss Pupford, she was too old to go to any wedding. She ought to know that. She had much better attend to her business. She had thought she looked nice in the morning, but she didn’t look nice. She was a stupid old thing. G was another stupid old thing. Miss Pupford’s assistant was another. They were all stupid old things together.

More than that: it began to be obvious that this was a plot. They had said to one another, “Never mind Kitty; you get off, and I’ll get off; and we’ll leave Kitty to look after herself. Who cares for her?” To be sure they were right in that question; for who did care for her, a poor little lonely thing against whom they all planned and plotted? Nobody, nobody! Here Kitty sobbed.

At all other times she was the pet of the whole house, and loved her five companions in return with a child’s tenderest and most ingenuous attachment; but now, the five companions put on ugly colours, and appeared for the first time under a sullen cloud. There they were, all at their homes that day, being made much of, being taken out, being spoilt and made disagreeable, and caring nothing for her. It was like their artful selfishness always to tell her when they came back, under pretence of confidence and friendship, all those details about where they had been, and what they had done and seen, and how often they had said, “O! If we had only darling little Kitty here!” Here indeed! I dare say! When they came back after the holidays, they were used to being received by Kitty, and to saying that coming to Kitty was like coming to another home. Very well then, why did they go away? If the meant it, why did they go away? Let them answer that. But they didn’t mean it, and couldn’t answer that, and they didn’t tell the truth, and people who didn’t tell the truth were hateful. When they came back next time, they should be received in a new manner; they should be avoided and shunned.

And there, the while she sat all alone revolving how ill she was used, and how much better she was than the people who were not alone, the wedding breakfast was going on: no question of it! With a nasty great bride-cake, and with those ridiculous orange-flowers, and with that conceited bride, and that hideous bridegroom, and those heartless bridesmaids, and Miss Pupford stuck up at the table! They thought they were enjoying themselves, but it would come home to them one day to have thought so. They would all be dead in a few years, let them enjoy themselves ever so much. It was a religious comfort to know that.

It was such a comfort to know it, that little Miss Kitty Kimmeens suddenly sprang from the chair in which she had been musing in a corner, and cried out, “O those envious thoughts are not mine, O this wicked creature isn’t me! Help me, somebody! I go wrong, alone by my weak self! Help me, anybody!”

“—Miss Kimmeens is not a professed philosopher, sir,” said Mr. Traveller, presenting her at the barred window, and smoothing her shining hair, “but I apprehend there was some tincture of philosophy in her words, and in the prompt action with which she followed them. That action was, to emerge from her unnatural solitude, and look abroad for wholesome sympathy, to bestow and to receive. Her footsteps strayed to this gate, bringing her here by chance, as an apposite contrast to you. The child came out, sir. If you have the wisdom to learn from a child (but I doubt it, for that requires more wisdom than one in your condition would seem to possess), you cannot do better than imitate the child, and come out too—from that very demoralising hutch of yours.”

CHAPTER VII

PICKING UP THE TINKER

Charles Dickens

It was now sunset. The Hermit had betaken himself to his bed of cinders half an hour ago, and lying on it in his blanket and skewer with his back to the window, took not the smallest heed of the appeal addressed to him.

All that had been said for the last two hours, had been said to a tinkling accompaniment performed by the Tinker, who had got to work upon some villager’s pot or kettle, and was working briskly outside. This music still continuing, seemed to put it into Mr. Traveller’s mind to have another word or two with the Tinker. So, holding Miss Kimmeens (with whom he was now on the most friendly terms) by the hand, he went out at the gate to where the Tinker was seated at his work on the patch of grass on the opposite side of the road, with his wallet of tools open before him, and his little fire smoking.

“I am glad to see you employed,” said Mr. Traveller.

“I am glad to be employed,” returned the Tinker, looking up as he put the finishing touches to his job. “But why are you glad?”

“I thought you were a lazy fellow when I saw you this morning.”

“I was only disgusted,” said the Tinker.

“Do you mean with the fine weather?”

“With the fine weather?” repeated the Tinker, staring.

“You told me you were not particular as to weather, and I thought——”

“Ha, ha! How should such as me get on, if we was particular as to weather? We must take it as it comes, and make the best of it. There’s something good in all weathers. If it don’t happen to be good for my work to-day, it’s good for some other man’s to-day, and will come round to me to-morrow. We must all live.”

“Pray shake hands,” said Mr. Traveller.

“Take care, sir,” was the Tinker’s caution, as he reached up his hand in surprise; “the black comes off.”

“I am glad of it,” said Mr. Traveller. “I have been for several hours among other black that does not come off.”

“You are speaking of Tom in there?”

“Yes.”

“Well now,” said the Tinker, blowing the dust off his job: which was finished. “Ain’t it enough to disgust a pig, if he could give his mind to it?”

“If he could give his mind to it,” returned the other, smiling, “the probability is that he wouldn’t be a pig.”

“There you clench the nail,” returned the Tinker. “Then what’s to be said for Tom?”

“Truly, very little.”

“Truly nothing you mean, sir,” said the Tinker, as he put away his tools.

“A better answer, and (I freely acknowledge) my meaning. I infer that he was the cause of your disgust?”

Tom Tiddler's Ground

“Why, look’ee here, sir,” said the Tinker, rising to his feet, and wiping his face on the corner of his black apron energetically; “I leave you to judge!—I ask you!—Last night I has a job that needs to be done in the night, and I works all night. Well, there’s nothing in that. But this morning I comes along this road here, looking for a sunny and soft spot to sleep in, and I sees this desolation and ruination. I’ve lived myself in desolation and ruination; I knows many a fellow-creetur that’s forced to live life long in desolation and ruination; and I sits me down and takes pity on it, as I casts my eyes about. Then comes up the long-winded one as I told you of, from that gate, and spins himself out like a silkworm concerning the Donkey (if my Donkey at home will excuse me) as has made it all—made it of his own choice! And tells me, if you please, of his likewise choosing to go ragged and naked, and grimy—maskerading, mountebanking, in what is the real hard lot of thousands and thousands! Why, then I say it’s a unbearable and nonsensical piece of inconsistency, and I’m disgusted. I’m ashamed and disgusted!”

“I wish you would come and look at him,” said Mr. Traveller, clapping the Tinker on the shoulder.

“Not I, sir,” he rejoined. “I ain’t a going to flatter him up by looking at him!”

“But he is asleep.”

“Are you sure he is asleep?” asked the Tinker, with an unwilling air, as he shouldered his wallet.

“Sure.”

“Then I’ll look at him for a quarter of a minute,” said the Tinker, “since you so much wish it; but not a moment longer.”

They all three went back across the road; and, through the barred window, by the dying glow of the sunset coming in at the gate—which the child held open for its admission—he could be pretty clearly discerned lying on his bed.

“You see him?” asked Mr. Traveller.

“Yes,” returned the Tinker, “and he’s worse than I thought him.”

Mr. Traveller then whispered in few words what he had done since morning; and asked the Tinker what he thought of that?

“I think,” returned the Tinker, as he turned from the window, “that you’ve wasted a day on him.”

“I think so too; though not, I hope, upon myself. Do you happen to be going anywhere near the Peal of Bells?”

“That’s my direct way, sir,” said the Tinker.

“I invite you to supper there. And as I learn from this young lady that she goes some three-quarters of a mile in the same direction, we will drop her on the road, and we will spare time to keep her company at her garden gate until her own Bella comes home.”

So, Mr. Traveller, and the child, and the Tinker, went along very amicably in the sweet-scented evening; and the moral with which the Tinker dismissed the subject was, that he said in his trade that metal that rotted for want of use, had better be left to rot, and couldn’t rot too soon, considering how much true metal rotted from over-use and hard service.

SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE

1862

CONTENTS

I. His Leaving It Till Called For

II. His Boots

III. His Umbrella

IV. His Black Bag

V. His Writing-Desk

VI. His Dressing-Case

VII. His Brown-Paper Parcel

VIII. His Portmanteau

IX. His Hat-Box

X. His Wonderful End

CHAPTER I

HIS LEAVING IT TILL CALLED FOR

Charles Dickens

The writer of these humble lines being a Waiter, and having come of a family of Waiters, and owning at the present time five brothers who are all Waiters, and likewise an only sister who is a Waitress, would wish to offer a few words respecting his calling; first having the pleasure of hereby in a friendly manner offering the Dedication of the same unto JOSEPH, much respected Head Waiter at the Slamjam Coffee-house, London, E.C., than which a individual more eminently deserving of the name of man, or a more amenable honour to his own head and heart, whether considered in the light of a Waiter or regarded as a human being, do not exist.

In case confusion should arise in the public mind (which it is open to confusion on many subjects) respecting what is meant or implied by the term Waiter, the present humble lines would wish to offer an explanation. It may not be generally known that the person as goes out to wait is not a Waiter. It may not be generally known that the hand as is called in extra, at the Freemasons’ Tavern, or the London, or the Albion, or otherwise, is not a Waiter. Such hands may be took on for Public Dinners by the bushel (and you may know them by their breathing with difficulty when in attendance, and taking away the bottle ere yet it is half out); but such are not Waiters. For you cannot lay down the tailoring, or the shoemaking, or the brokering, or the green-grocering, or the pictorial-periodicalling, or the second-hand wardrobe, or the small fancy businesses,—you cannot lay down those lines of life at your will and pleasure by the half-day or evening, and take up Waitering. You may suppose you can, but you cannot; or you may go so far as to say you do, but you do not. Nor yet can you lay down the gentleman’s-service when stimulated by prolonged incompatibility on the part of Cooks (and here it may be remarked that Cooking and Incompatibility will be mostly found united), and take up Waitering. It has been ascertained that what a gentleman will sit meek under, at home, he will not bear out of doors, at the Slamjam or any similar establishment. Then, what is the inference to be drawn respecting true Waitering? You must be bred to it. You must be born to it.

Would you know how born to it, Fair Reader,—if of the adorable female sex? Then learn from the biographical experience of one that is a Waiter in the sixty-first year of his age.

You were conveyed,—ere yet your dawning powers were otherwise developed than to harbour vacancy in your inside,—you were conveyed, by surreptitious means, into a pantry adjoining the Admiral Nelson, Civic and General Dining-Rooms, there to receive by stealth that healthful sustenance which is the pride and boast of the British female constitution. Your mother was married to your father (himself a distant Waiter) in the profoundest secrecy; for a Waitress known to be married would ruin the best of businesses,—it is the same as on the stage. Hence your being smuggled into the pantry, and that—to add to the infliction—by an unwilling grandmother. Under the combined influence of the smells of roast and boiled, and soup, and gas, and malt liquors, you partook of your earliest nourishment; your unwilling grandmother sitting prepared to catch you when your mother was called and dropped you; your grandmother’s shawl ever ready to stifle your natural complainings; your innocent mind surrounded by uncongenial cruets, dirty plates, dish-covers, and cold gravy; your mother calling down the pipe for veals and porks, instead of soothing you with nursery rhymes. Under these untoward circumstances you were early weaned. Your unwilling grandmother, ever growing more unwilling as your food assimilated less, then contracted habits of shaking you till your system curdled, and your food would not assimilate at all. At length she was no longer spared, and could have been thankfully spared much sooner. When your brothers began to appear in succession, your mother retired, left off her smart dressing (she had previously been a smart dresser), and her dark ringlets (which had previously been flowing), and haunted your father late of nights, lying in wait for him, through all weathers, up the shabby court which led to the back door of the Royal Old Dust-Bin (said to have been so named by George the Fourth), where your father was Head. But the Dust-Bin was going down then, and your father took but little,—excepting from a liquid point of view. Your mother’s object in those visits was of a house-keeping character, and you was set on to whistle your father out. Sometimes he came out, but generally not. Come or not come, however, all that part of his existence which was unconnected with open Waitering was kept a close secret, and was acknowledged by your mother to be a close secret, and you and your mother flitted about the court, close secrets both of you, and would scarcely have confessed under torture that you know your father, or that your father had any name than Dick (which wasn’t his name, though he was never known by any other), or that he had kith or kin or chick or child. Perhaps the attraction of this mystery, combined with your father’s having a damp compartment, to himself, behind a leaky cistern, at the Dust-Bin,—a sort of a cellar compartment, with a sink in it, and a smell, and a plate-rack, and a bottle-rack, and three windows that didn’t match each other or anything else, and no daylight,—caused your young mind to feel convinced that you must grow up to be a Waiter too; but you did feel convinced of it, and so did all your brothers, down to your sister. Every one of you felt convinced that you was born to the Waitering. At this stage of your career, what was your feelings one day when your father came home to your mother in open broad daylight,—of itself an act of Madness on the part of a Waiter,—and took to his bed (leastwise, your mother and family’s bed), with the statement that his eyes were devilled kidneys. Physicians being in vain, your father expired, after repeating at intervals for a day and a night, when gleams of reason and old business fitfully illuminated his being, “Two and two is five. And three is sixpence.” Interred in the parochial department of the neighbouring churchyard, and accompanied to the grave by as many Waiters of long standing as could spare the morning time from their soiled glasses (namely, one), your bereaved form was attired in a white neckankecher, and you was took on from motives of benevolence at The George and Gridiron, theatrical and supper. Here, supporting nature on what you found in the plates (which was as it happened, and but too often thoughtlessly, immersed in mustard), and on what you found in the glasses (which rarely went beyond driblets and lemon), by night you dropped asleep standing, till you was cuffed awake, and by day was set to polishing every individual article in the coffee-room. Your couch being sawdust; your counterpane being ashes of cigars. Here, frequently hiding a heavy heart under the smart tie of your white neckankecher (or correctly speaking lower down and more to the left), you picked up the rudiments of knowledge from an extra, by the name of Bishops, and by calling plate-washer, and gradually elevating your mind with chalk on the back of the corner-box partition, until such time as you used the inkstand when it was out of hand, attained to manhood, and to be the Waiter that you find yourself.

I could wish here to offer a few respectful words on behalf of the calling so long the calling of myself and family, and the public interest in which is but too often very limited. We are not generally understood. No, we are not. Allowance enough is not made for us. For, say that we ever show a little drooping listlessness of spirits, or what might be termed indifference or apathy. Put it to yourself what would your own state of mind be, if you was one of an enormous family every member of which except you was always greedy, and in a hurry. Put it to yourself that you was regularly replete with animal food at the slack hours of one in the day and again at nine P.M., and that the repleter you was, the more voracious all your fellow-creatures came in. Put it to yourself that it was your business, when your digestion was well on, to take a personal interest and sympathy in a hundred gentlemen fresh and fresh (say, for the sake of argument, only a hundred), whose imaginations was given up to grease and fat and gravy and melted butter, and abandoned to questioning you about cuts of this, and dishes of that,—each of ’em going on as if him and you and the bill of fare was alone in the world. Then look what you are expected to know. You are never out, but they seem to think you regularly attend everywhere. “What’s this, Christopher, that I hear about the smashed Excursion Train? How are they doing at the Italian Opera, Christopher?” “Christopher, what are the real particulars of this business at the Yorkshire Bank?” Similarly a ministry gives me more trouble than it gives the Queen. As to Lord Palmerston, the constant and wearing connection into which I have been brought with his lordship during the last few years is deserving of a pension. Then look at the Hypocrites we are made, and the lies (white, I hope) that are forced upon us! Why must a sedentary-pursuited Waiter be considered to be a judge of horseflesh, and to have a most tremendous interest in horse-training and racing? Yet it would be half our little incomes out of our pockets if we didn’t take on to have those sporting tastes. It is the same (inconceivable why!) with Farming. Shooting, equally so. I am sure that so regular as the months of August, September, and October come round, I am ashamed of myself in my own private bosom for the way in which I make believe to care whether or not the grouse is strong on the wing (much their wings, or drumsticks either, signifies to me, uncooked!), and whether the partridges is plentiful among the turnips, and whether the pheasants is shy or bold, or anything else you please to mention. Yet you may see me, or any other Waiter of my standing, holding on by the back of the box, and leaning over a gentleman with his purse out and his bill before him, discussing these points in a confidential tone of voice, as if my happiness in life entirely depended on ’em.

I have mentioned our little incomes. Look at the most unreasonable point of all, and the point on which the greatest injustice is done us! Whether it is owing to our always carrying so much change in our right-hand trousers-pocket, and so many halfpence in our coat-tails, or whether it is human nature (which I were loth to believe), what is meant by the everlasting fable that Head Waiters is rich? How did that fable get into circulation? Who first put it about, and what are the facts to establish the unblushing statement? Come forth, thou slanderer, and refer the public to the Waiter’s will in Doctors’ Commons supporting thy malignant hiss! Yet this is so commonly dwelt upon—especially by the screws who give Waiters the least—that denial is vain; and we are obliged, for our credit’s sake, to carry our heads as if we were going into a business, when of the two we are much more likely to go into a union. There was formerly a screw as frequented the Slamjam ere yet the present writer had quitted that establishment on a question of tea-ing his assistant staff out of his own pocket, which screw carried the taunt to its bitterest height. Never soaring above threepence, and as often as not grovelling on the earth a penny lower, he yet represented the present writer as a large holder of Consols, a lender of money on mortgage, a Capitalist. He has been overheard to dilate to other customers on the allegation that the present writer put out thousands of pounds at interest in Distilleries and Breweries. “Well, Christopher,” he would say (having grovelled his lowest on the earth, half a moment before), “looking out for a House to open, eh? Can’t find a business to be disposed of on a scale as is up to your resources, humph?” To such a dizzy precipice of falsehood has this misrepresentation taken wing, that the well-known and highly-respected OLD CHARLES, long eminent at the West Country Hotel, and by some considered the Father of the Waitering, found himself under the obligation to fall into it through so many years that his own wife (for he had an unbeknown old lady in that capacity towards himself) believed it! And what was the consequence? When he was borne to his grave on the shoulders of six picked Waiters, with six more for change, six more acting as pall-bearers, all keeping step in a pouring shower without a dry eye visible, and a concourse only inferior to Royalty, his pantry and lodgings was equally ransacked high and low for property, and none was found! How could it be found, when, beyond his last monthly collection of walking-sticks, umbrellas, and pocket-handkerchiefs (which happened to have been not yet disposed of, though he had ever been through life punctual in clearing off his collections by the month), there was no property existing? Such, however, is the force of this universal libel, that the widow of Old Charles, at the present hour an inmate of the Almshouses of the Cork-Cutters’ Company, in Blue Anchor Road (identified sitting at the door of one of ’em, in a clean cap and a Windsor arm-chair, only last Monday), expects John’s hoarded wealth to be found hourly! Nay, ere yet he had succumbed to the grisly dart, and when his portrait was painted in oils life-size, by subscription of the frequenters of the West Country, to hang over the coffee-room chimney-piece, there were not wanting those who contended that what is termed the accessories of such a portrait ought to be the Bank of England out of window, and a strong-box on the table. And but for better-regulated minds contending for a bottle and screw and the attitude of drawing,—and carrying their point,—it would have been so handed down to posterity.

I am now brought to the title of the present remarks. Having, I hope without offence to any quarter, offered such observations as I felt it my duty to offer, in a free country which has ever dominated the seas, on the general subject, I will now proceed to wait on the particular question.

At a momentous period of my life, when I was off, so far as concerned notice given, with a House that shall be nameless,—for the question on which I took my departing stand was a fixed charge for waiters, and no House as commits itself to that eminently Un-English act of more than foolishness and baseness shall be advertised by me,—I repeat, at a momentous crisis, when I was off with a House too mean for mention, and not yet on with that to which I have ever since had the honour of being attached in the capacity of Head, [1] I was casting about what to do next. Then it were that proposals were made to me on behalf of my present establishment. Stipulations were necessary on my part, emendations were necessary on my part: in the end, ratifications ensued on both sides, and I entered on a new career.

We are a bed business, and a coffee-room business. We are not a general dining business, nor do we wish it. In consequence, when diners drop in, we know what to give ’em as will keep ’em away another time. We are a Private Room or Family business also; but Coffee-room principal. Me and the Directory and the Writing Materials and cetrer occupy a place to ourselves—a place fended off up a step or two at the end of the Coffee-room, in what I call the good old-fashioned style. The good old-fashioned style is, that whatever you want, down to a wafer, you must be olely and solely dependent on the Head Waiter for. You must put yourself a new-born Child into his hands. There is no other way in which a business untinged with Continental Vice can be conducted. (It were bootless to add, that if languages is required to be jabbered and English is not good enough, both families and gentlemen had better go somewhere else.)

When I began to settle down in this right-principled and well-conducted House, I noticed, under the bed in No. 24 B (which it is up a angle off the staircase, and usually put off upon the lowly-minded), a heap of things in a corner. I asked our Head Chambermaid in the course of the day,

“What are them things in 24 B?”

To which she answered with a careless air,

“Somebody’s Luggage.”

Regarding her with a eye not free from severity, I says,

“Whose Luggage?”

Evading my eye, she replied,

“Lor! How should I know!”

—Being, it may be right to mention, a female of some pertness, though acquainted with her business.

A Head Waiter must be either Head or Tail. He must be at one extremity or the other of the social scale. He cannot be at the waist of it, or anywhere else but the extremities. It is for him to decide which of the extremities.

On the eventful occasion under consideration, I give Mrs. Pratchett so distinctly to understand my decision, that I broke her spirit as towards myself, then and there, and for good. Let not inconsistency be suspected on account of my mentioning Mrs. Pratchett as “Mrs.,” and having formerly remarked that a waitress must not be married. Readers are respectfully requested to notice that Mrs. Pratchett was not a waitress, but a chambermaid. Now a chambermaid may be married; if Head, generally is married,—or says so. It comes to the same thing as expressing what is customary. (N.B. Mr. Pratchett is in Australia, and his address there is “the Bush.”)

Having took Mrs. Pratchett down as many pegs as was essential to the future happiness of all parties, I requested her to explain herself.

“For instance,” I says, to give her a little encouragement, “who is Somebody?”

“I give you my sacred honour, Mr. Christopher,” answers Pratchett, “that I haven’t the faintest notion.”

But for the manner in which she settled her cap-strings, I should have doubted this; but in respect of positiveness it was hardly to be discriminated from an affidavit.

“Then you never saw him?” I followed her up with.

“Nor yet,” said Mrs. Pratchett, shutting her eyes and making as if she had just took a pill of unusual circumference,—which gave a remarkable force to her denial,—“nor yet any servant in this house. All have been changed, Mr. Christopher, within five year, and Somebody left his Luggage here before then.”

Inquiry of Miss Martin yielded (in the language of the Bard of A.1.) “confirmation strong.” So it had really and truly happened. Miss Martin is the young lady at the bar as makes out our bills; and though higher than I could wish considering her station, is perfectly well-behaved.

Farther investigations led to the disclosure that there was a bill against this Luggage to the amount of two sixteen six. The Luggage had been lying under the bedstead of 24 B over six year. The bedstead is a four-poster, with a deal of old hanging and valance, and is, as I once said, probably connected with more than 24 Bs,—which I remember my hearers was pleased to laugh at, at the time.

I don’t know why,—when DO we know why?—but this Luggage laid heavy on my mind. I fell a wondering about Somebody, and what he had got and been up to. I couldn’t satisfy my thoughts why he should leave so much Luggage against so small a bill. For I had the Luggage out within a day or two and turned it over, and the following were the items:—A black portmanteau, a black bag, a desk, a dressing-case, a brown-paper parcel, a hat-box, and an umbrella strapped to a walking-stick. It was all very dusty and fluey. I had our porter up to get under the bed and fetch it out; and though he habitually wallows in dust,—swims in it from morning to night, and wears a close-fitting waistcoat with black calimanco sleeves for the purpose,—it made him sneeze again, and his throat was that hot with it that it was obliged to be cooled with a drink of Allsopp’s draft.

The Luggage so got the better of me, that instead of having it put back when it was well dusted and washed with a wet cloth,—previous to which it was so covered with feathers that you might have thought it was turning into poultry, and would by-and-by begin to Lay,—I say, instead of having it put back, I had it carried into one of my places down-stairs. There from time to time I stared at it and stared at it, till it seemed to grow big and grow little, and come forward at me and retreat again, and go through all manner of performances resembling intoxication. When this had lasted weeks,—I may say months, and not be far out,—I one day thought of asking Miss Martin for the particulars of the Two sixteen six total. She was so obliging as to extract it from the books,—it dating before her time,—and here follows a true copy:

Mem.: January 1st, 1857. He went out after dinner, directing luggage to be ready when he called for it. Never called.

So far from throwing a light upon the subject, this bill appeared to me, if I may so express my doubts, to involve it in a yet more lurid halo. Speculating it over with the Mistress, she informed me that the luggage had been advertised in the Master’s time as being to be sold after such and such a day to pay expenses, but no farther steps had been taken. (I may here remark, that the Mistress is a widow in her fourth year. The Master was possessed of one of those unfortunate constitutions in which Spirits turns to Water, and rises in the ill-starred Victim.)

My speculating it over, not then only, but repeatedly, sometimes with the Mistress, sometimes with one, sometimes with another, led up to the Mistress’s saying to me,—whether at first in joke or in earnest, or half joke and half earnest, it matters not:

“Christopher, I am going to make you a handsome offer.”

(If this should meet her eye,—a lovely blue,—may she not take it ill my mentioning that if I had been eight or ten year younger, I would have done as much by her! That is, I would have made her a offer. It is for others than me to denominate it a handsome one.)

“Christopher, I am going to make you a handsome offer.”

“Put a name to it, ma’am.”

“Look here, Christopher. Run over the articles of Somebody’s Luggage. You’ve got it all by heart, I know.”

“A black portmanteau, ma’am, a black bag, a desk, a dressing-case, a brown-paper parcel, a hat-box, and an umbrella strapped to a walking-stick.”

“All just as they were left. Nothing opened, nothing tampered with.”

“You are right, ma’am. All locked but the brown-paper parcel, and that sealed.”

The Mistress was leaning on Miss Martin’s desk at the bar-window, and she taps the open book that lays upon the desk,—she has a pretty-made hand to be sure,—and bobs her head over it and laughs.

“Come,” says she, “Christopher. Pay me Somebody’s bill, and you shall have Somebody’s Luggage.”

I rather took to the idea from the first moment; but,

“It mayn’t be worth the money,” I objected, seeming to hold back.

“That’s a Lottery,” says the Mistress, folding her arms upon the book,—it ain’t her hands alone that’s pretty made, the observation extends right up her arms. “Won’t you venture two pound sixteen shillings and sixpence in the Lottery? Why, there’s no blanks!” says the Mistress; laughing and bobbing her head again, “you must win. If you lose, you must win! All prizes in this Lottery! Draw a blank, and remember, Gentlemen-Sportsmen, you’ll still be entitled to a black portmanteau, a black bag, a desk, a dressing-case, a sheet of brown paper, a hat-box, and an umbrella strapped to a walking-stick!”

To make short of it, Miss Martin come round me, and Mrs. Pratchett come round me, and the Mistress she was completely round me already, and all the women in the house come round me, and if it had been Sixteen two instead of Two sixteen, I should have thought myself well out of it. For what can you do when they do come round you?

Somebody's Luggage

So I paid the money—down—and such a laughing as there was among ’em! But I turned the tables on ’em regularly, when I said:

“My family-name is Blue-Beard. I’m going to open Somebody’s Luggage all alone in the Secret Chamber, and not a female eye catches sight of the contents!”

Whether I thought proper to have the firmness to keep to this, don’t signify, or whether any female eye, and if any, how many, was really present when the opening of the Luggage came off. Somebody’s Luggage is the question at present: Nobody’s eyes, nor yet noses.

What I still look at most, in connection with that Luggage, is the extraordinary quantity of writing-paper, and all written on! And not our paper neither,—not the paper charged in the bill, for we know our paper,—so he must have been always at it. And he had crumpled up this writing of his, everywhere, in every part and parcel of his luggage. There was writing in his dressing-case, writing in his boots, writing among his shaving-tackle, writing in his hat-box, writing folded away down among the very whalebones of his umbrella.

His clothes wasn’t bad, what there was of ’em. His dressing-case was poor,—not a particle of silver stopper,—bottle apertures with nothing in ’em, like empty little dog-kennels,—and a most searching description of tooth-powder diffusing itself around, as under a deluded mistake that all the chinks in the fittings was divisions in teeth. His clothes I parted with, well enough, to a second-hand dealer not far from St. Clement’s Danes, in the Strand,—him as the officers in the Army mostly dispose of their uniforms to, when hard pressed with debts of honour, if I may judge from their coats and epaulets diversifying the window with their backs towards the public. The same party bought in one lot the portmanteau, the bag, the desk, the dressing-case, the hat-box, the umbrella, strap, and walking-stick. On my remarking that I should have thought those articles not quite in his line, he said: “No more ith a man’th grandmother, Mithter Chrithtopher; but if any man will bring hith grandmother here, and offer her at a fair trifle below what the’ll feth with good luck when the’th thcoured and turned—I’ll buy her!”

These transactions brought me home, and, indeed, more than home, for they left a goodish profit on the original investment. And now there remained the writings; and the writings I particular wish to bring under the candid attention of the reader.

I wish to do so without postponement, for this reason. That is to say, namely, viz. i.e., as follows, thus:—Before I proceed to recount the mental sufferings of which I became the prey in consequence of the writings, and before following up that harrowing tale with a statement of the wonderful and impressive catastrophe, as thrilling in its nature as unlooked for in any other capacity, which crowned the ole and filled the cup of unexpectedness to overflowing, the writings themselves ought to stand forth to view. Therefore it is that they now come next. One word to introduce them, and I lay down my pen (I hope, my unassuming pen) until I take it up to trace the gloomy sequel of a mind with something on it.

He was a smeary writer, and wrote a dreadful bad hand. Utterly regardless of ink, he lavished it on every undeserving object—on his clothes, his desk, his hat, the handle of his tooth-brush, his umbrella. Ink was found freely on the coffee-room carpet by No. 4 table, and two blots was on his restless couch. A reference to the document I have given entire will show that on the morning of the third of February, eighteen fifty-six, he procured his no less than fifth pen and paper. To whatever deplorable act of ungovernable composition he immolated those materials obtained from the bar, there is no doubt that the fatal deed was committed in bed, and that it left its evidences but too plainly, long afterwards, upon the pillow-case.

He had put no Heading to any of his writings. Alas! Was he likely to have a Heading without a Head, and where was his Head when he took such things into it? In some cases, such as his Boots, he would appear to have hid the writings; thereby involving his style in greater obscurity. But his Boots was at least pairs,—and no two of his writings can put in any claim to be so regarded. Here follows (not to give more specimens) what was found in—

CHAPTER II

HIS BOOTS

Charles Dickens

“Eh! well then, Monsieur Mutuel! What do I know, what can I say? I assure you that he calls himself Monsieur The Englishman.”

“Pardon. But I think it is impossible,” said Monsieur Mutuel,—a spectacled, snuffy, stooping old gentleman in carpet shoes and a cloth cap with a peaked shade, a loose blue frock-coat reaching to his heels, a large limp white shirt-frill, and cravat to correspond,—that is to say, white was the natural colour of his linen on Sundays, but it toned down with the week.

“It is,” repeated Monsieur Mutuel, his amiable old walnut-shell countenance very walnut-shelly indeed as he smiled and blinked in the bright morning sunlight,—“it is, my cherished Madame Bouclet, I think, impossible!”

“Hey!” (with a little vexed cry and a great many tosses of her head.) “But it is not impossible that you are a Pig!” retorted Madame Bouclet, a compact little woman of thirty-five or so. “See then,—look there,—read! ‘On the second floor Monsieur L’Anglais.’ Is it not so?”

“It is so,” said Monsieur Mutuel.

“Good. Continue your morning walk. Get out!” Madame Bouclet dismissed him with a lively snap of her fingers.

The morning walk of Monsieur Mutuel was in the brightest patch that the sun made in the Grande Place of a dull old fortified French town. The manner of his morning walk was with his hands crossed behind him; an umbrella, in figure the express image of himself, always in one hand; a snuff-box in the other. Thus, with the shuffling gait of the Elephant (who really does deal with the very worst trousers-maker employed by the Zoological world, and who appeared to have recommended him to Monsieur Mutuel), the old gentleman sunned himself daily when sun was to be had—of course, at the same time sunning a red ribbon at his button-hole; for was he not an ancient Frenchman?

Being told by one of the angelic sex to continue his morning walk and get out, Monsieur Mutuel laughed a walnut-shell laugh, pulled off his cap at arm’s length with the hand that contained his snuff-box, kept it off for a considerable period after he had parted from Madame Bouclet, and continued his morning walk and got out, like a man of gallantry as he was.

The documentary evidence to which Madame Bouclet had referred Monsieur Mutuel was the list of her lodgers, sweetly written forth by her own Nephew and Bookkeeper, who held the pen of an Angel, and posted up at the side of her gateway, for the information of the Police: “Au second, M. L’Anglais, Propriétaire.” On the second floor, Mr. The Englishman, man of property. So it stood; nothing could be plainer.

Madame Bouclet now traced the line with her forefinger, as it were to confirm and settle herself in her parting snap at Monsieur Mutuel, and so placing her right hand on her hip with a defiant air, as if nothing should ever tempt her to unsnap that snap, strolled out into the Place to glance up at the windows of Mr. The Englishman. That worthy happening to be looking out of window at the moment, Madame Bouclet gave him a graceful salutation with her head, looked to the right and looked to the left to account to him for her being there, considered for a moment, like one who accounted to herself for somebody she had expected not being there, and reëntered her own gateway. Madame Bouclet let all her house giving on the Place in furnished flats or floors, and lived up the yard behind in company with Monsieur Bouclet her husband (great at billiards), an inherited brewing business, several fowls, two carts, a nephew, a little dog in a big kennel, a grape-vine, a counting-house, four horses, a married sister (with a share in the brewing business), the husband and two children of the married sister, a parrot, a drum (performed on by the little boy of the married sister), two billeted soldiers, a quantity of pigeons, a fife (played by the nephew in a ravishing manner), several domestics and supernumeraries, a perpetual flavour of coffee and soup, a terrific range of artificial rocks and wooden precipices at least four feet high, a small fountain, and half-a-dozen large sunflowers.

Now the Englishman, in taking his Appartement,—or, as one might say on our side of the Channel, his set of chambers,—had given his name, correct to the letter, LANGLEY. But as he had a British way of not opening his mouth very wide on foreign soil, except at meals, the Brewery had been able to make nothing of it but L’Anglais. So Mr. The Englishman he had become and he remained.

“Never saw such a people!” muttered Mr. The Englishman, as he now looked out of window. “Never did, in my life!”

This was true enough, for he had never before been out of his own country,—a right little island, a tight little island, a bright little island, a show-fight little island, and full of merit of all sorts; but not the whole round world.

“These chaps,” said Mr. The Englishman to himself, as his eye rolled over the Place, sprinkled with military here and there, “are no more like soldiers—” Nothing being sufficiently strong for the end of his sentence, he left it unended.

This again (from the point of view of his experience) was strictly correct; for though there was a great agglomeration of soldiers in the town and neighbouring country, you might have held a grand Review and Field-day of them every one, and looked in vain among them all for a soldier choking behind his foolish stock, or a soldier lamed by his ill-fitting shoes, or a soldier deprived of the use of his limbs by straps and buttons, or a soldier elaborately forced to be self-helpless in all the small affairs of life. A swarm of brisk, bright, active, bustling, handy, odd, skirmishing fellows, able to turn cleverly at anything, from a siege to soup, from great guns to needles and thread, from the broadsword exercise to slicing an onion, from making war to making omelets, was all you would have found.

What a swarm! From the Great Place under the eye of Mr. The Englishman, where a few awkward squads from the last conscription were doing the goose-step—some members of those squads still as to their bodies, in the chrysalis peasant-state of Blouse, and only military butterflies as to their regimentally-clothed legs—from the Great Place, away outside the fortifications, and away for miles along the dusty roads, soldiers swarmed. All day long, upon the grass-grown ramparts of the town, practising soldiers trumpeted and bugled; all day long, down in angles of dry trenches, practising soldiers drummed and drummed. Every forenoon, soldiers burst out of the great barracks into the sandy gymnasium-ground hard by, and flew over the wooden horse, and hung on to flying ropes, and dangled upside-down between parallel bars, and shot themselves off wooden platforms,—splashes, sparks, coruscations, showers of soldiers. At every corner of the town-wall, every guard-house, every gateway, every sentry-box, every drawbridge, every reedy ditch, and rushy dike, soldiers, soldiers, soldiers. And the town being pretty well all wall, guard-house, gateway, sentry-box, drawbridge, reedy ditch, and rushy dike, the town was pretty well all soldiers.

What would the sleepy old town have been without the soldiers, seeing that even with them it had so overslept itself as to have slept its echoes hoarse, its defensive bars and locks and bolts and chains all rusty, and its ditches stagnant! From the days when VAUBAN engineered it to that perplexing extent that to look at it was like being knocked on the head with it, the stranger becoming stunned and stertorous under the shock of its incomprehensibility,—from the days when VAUBAN made it the express incorporation of every substantive and adjective in the art of military engineering, and not only twisted you into it and twisted you out of it, to the right, to the left, opposite, under here, over there, in the dark, in the dirt, by the gateway, archway, covered way, dry way, wet way, fosse, portcullis, drawbridge, sluice, squat tower, pierced wall, and heavy battery, but likewise took a fortifying dive under the neighbouring country, and came to the surface three or four miles off, blowing out incomprehensible mounds and batteries among the quiet crops of chicory and beet-root,—from those days to these the town had been asleep, and dust and rust and must had settled on its drowsy Arsenals and Magazines, and grass had grown up in its silent streets.

On market-days alone, its Great Place suddenly leaped out of bed. On market-days, some friendly enchanter struck his staff upon the stones of the Great Place, and instantly arose the liveliest booths and stalls, and sittings and standings, and a pleasant hum of chaffering and huckstering from many hundreds of tongues, and a pleasant, though peculiar, blending of colours,—white caps, blue blouses, and green vegetables,—and at last the Knight destined for the adventure seemed to have come in earnest, and all the Vaubanois sprang up awake. And now, by long, low-lying avenues of trees, jolting in white-hooded donkey-cart, and on donkey-back, and in tumbril and wagon, and cart and cabriolet, and afoot with barrow and burden,—and along the dikes and ditches and canals, in little peak-prowed country boats,—came peasant-men and women in flocks and crowds, bringing articles for sale. And here you had boots and shoes, and sweetmeats and stuffs to wear, and here (in the cool shade of the Town-hall) you had milk and cream and butter and cheese, and here you had fruits and onions and carrots, and all things needful for your soup, and here you had poultry and flowers and protesting pigs, and here new shovels, axes, spades, and bill-hooks for your farming work, and here huge mounds of bread, and here your unground grain in sacks, and here your children’s dolls, and here the cake-seller, announcing his wares by beat and roll of drum. And hark! fanfaronade of trumpets, and here into the Great Place, resplendent in an open carriage, with four gorgeously-attired servitors up behind, playing horns, drums, and cymbals, rolled “the Daughter of a Physician” in massive golden chains and ear-rings, and blue-feathered hat, shaded from the admiring sun by two immense umbrellas of artificial roses, to dispense (from motives of philanthropy) that small and pleasant dose which had cured so many thousands! Toothache, earache, headache, heartache, stomach-ache, debility, nervousness, fits, fainting, fever, ague, all equally cured by the small and pleasant dose of the great Physician’s great daughter! The process was this,—she, the Daughter of a Physician, proprietress of the superb equipage you now admired with its confirmatory blasts of trumpet, drum, and cymbal, told you so: On the first day after taking the small and pleasant dose, you would feel no particular influence beyond a most harmonious sensation of indescribable and irresistible joy; on the second day you would be so astonishingly better that you would think yourself changed into somebody else; on the third day you would be entirely free from disorder, whatever its nature and however long you had had it, and would seek out the Physician’s Daughter to throw yourself at her feet, kiss the hem of her garment, and buy as many more of the small and pleasant doses as by the sale of all your few effects you could obtain; but she would be inaccessible,—gone for herbs to the Pyramids of Egypt,—and you would be (though cured) reduced to despair! Thus would the Physician’s Daughter drive her trade (and briskly too), and thus would the buying and selling and mingling of tongues and colours continue, until the changing sunlight, leaving the Physician’s Daughter in the shadow of high roofs, admonished her to jolt out westward, with a departing effect of gleam and glitter on the splendid equipage and brazen blast. And now the enchanter struck his staff upon the stones of the Great Place once more, and down went the booths, the sittings and standings, and vanished the merchandise, and with it the barrows, donkeys, donkey-carts, and tumbrils, and all other things on wheels and feet, except the slow scavengers with unwieldy carts and meagre horses clearing up the rubbish, assisted by the sleek town pigeons, better plumped out than on non-market days. While there was yet an hour or two to wane before the autumn sunset, the loiterer outside town-gate and drawbridge, and postern and double-ditch, would see the last white-hooded cart lessening in the avenue of lengthening shadows of trees, or the last country boat, paddled by the last market-woman on her way home, showing black upon the reddening, long, low, narrow dike between him and the mill; and as the paddle-parted scum and weed closed over the boat’s track, he might be comfortably sure that its sluggish rest would be troubled no more until next market-day.

As it was not one of the Great Place’s days for getting out of bed, when Mr. The Englishman looked down at the young soldiers practising the goose-step there, his mind was left at liberty to take a military turn.

“These fellows are billeted everywhere about,” said he; “and to see them lighting the people’s fires, boiling the people’s pots, minding the people’s babies, rocking the people’s cradles, washing the people’s greens, and making themselves generally useful, in every sort of unmilitary way, is most ridiculous! Never saw such a set of fellows,—never did in my life!”

All perfectly true again. Was there not Private Valentine in that very house, acting as sole housemaid, valet, cook, steward, and nurse, in the family of his captain, Monsieur le Capitaine de la Cour,—cleaning the floors, making the beds, doing the marketing, dressing the captain, dressing the dinners, dressing the salads, and dressing the baby, all with equal readiness? Or, to put him aside, he being in loyal attendance on his Chief, was there not Private Hyppolite, billeted at the Perfumer’s two hundred yards off, who, when not on duty, volunteered to keep shop while the fair Perfumeress stepped out to speak to a neighbour or so, and laughingly sold soap with his war-sword girded on him? Was there not Emile, billeted at the Clock-maker’s, perpetually turning to of an evening, with his coat off, winding up the stock? Was there not Eugène, billeted at the Tinman’s, cultivating, pipe in mouth, a garden four feet square, for the Tinman, in the little court, behind the shop, and extorting the fruits of the earth from the same, on his knees, with the sweat of his brow? Not to multiply examples, was there not Baptiste, billeted on the poor Water-carrier, at that very instant sitting on the pavement in the sunlight, with his martial legs asunder, and one of the Water-carrier’s spare pails between them, which (to the delight and glory of the heart of the Water-carrier coming across the Place from the fountain, yoked and burdened) he was painting bright-green outside and bright-red within? Or, to go no farther than the Barber’s at the very next door, was there not Corporal Théophile——

“No,” said Mr. The Englishman, glancing down at the Barber’s, “he is not there at present. There’s the child, though.”

A mere mite of a girl stood on the steps of the Barber’s shop, looking across the Place. A mere baby, one might call her, dressed in the close white linen cap which small French country children wear (like the children in Dutch pictures), and in a frock of homespun blue, that had no shape except where it was tied round her little fat throat. So that, being naturally short and round all over, she looked, behind, as if she had been cut off at her natural waist, and had had her head neatly fitted on it.

“There’s the child, though.”

To judge from the way in which the dimpled hand was rubbing the eyes, the eyes had been closed in a nap, and were newly opened. But they seemed to be looking so intently across the Place, that the Englishman looked in the same direction.

“O!” said he presently. “I thought as much. The Corporal’s there.”

The Corporal, a smart figure of a man of thirty, perhaps a thought under the middle size, but very neatly made,—a sunburnt Corporal with a brown peaked beard,—faced about at the moment, addressing voluble words of instruction to the squad in hand. Nothing was amiss or awry about the Corporal. A lithe and nimble Corporal, quite complete, from the sparkling dark eyes under his knowing uniform cap to his sparkling white gaiters. The very image and presentment of a Corporal of his country’s army, in the line of his shoulders, the line of his waist, the broadest line of his Bloomer trousers, and their narrowest line at the calf of his leg.

Mr. The Englishman looked on, and the child looked on, and the Corporal looked on (but the last-named at his men), until the drill ended a few minutes afterwards, and the military sprinkling dried up directly, and was gone. Then said Mr. The Englishman to himself, “Look here! By George!” And the Corporal, dancing towards the Barber’s with his arms wide open, caught up the child, held her over his head in a flying attitude, caught her down again, kissed her, and made off with her into the Barber’s house.

Now Mr. The Englishman had had a quarrel with his erring and disobedient and disowned daughter, and there was a child in that case too. Had not his daughter been a child, and had she not taken angel-flights above his head as this child had flown above the Corporal’s?

“He’s a”—National Participled—“fool!” said the Englishman, and shut his window.

But the windows of the house of Memory, and the windows of the house of Mercy, are not so easily closed as windows of glass and wood. They fly open unexpectedly; they rattle in the night; they must be nailed up. Mr. The Englishman had tried nailing them, but had not driven the nails quite home. So he passed but a disturbed evening and a worse night.

By nature a good-tempered man? No; very little gentleness, confounding the quality with weakness. Fierce and wrathful when crossed? Very, and stupendously unreasonable. Moody? Exceedingly so. Vindictive? Well; he had had scowling thoughts that he would formally curse his daughter, as he had seen it done on the stage. But remembering that the real Heaven is some paces removed from the mock one in the great chandelier of the Theatre, he had given that up.

And he had come abroad to be rid of his repudiated daughter for the rest of his life. And here he was.

At bottom, it was for this reason, more than for any other, that Mr. The Englishman took it extremely ill that Corporal Théophile should be so devoted to little Bebelle, the child at the Barber’s shop. In an unlucky moment he had chanced to say to himself, “Why, confound the fellow, he is not her father!” There was a sharp sting in the speech which ran into him suddenly, and put him in a worse mood. So he had National Participled the unconscious Corporal with most hearty emphasis, and had made up his mind to think no more about such a mountebank.

But it came to pass that the Corporal was not to be dismissed. If he had known the most delicate fibres of the Englishman’s mind, instead of knowing nothing on earth about him, and if he had been the most obstinate Corporal in the Grand Army of France, instead of being the most obliging, he could not have planted himself with more determined immovability plump in the midst of all the Englishman’s thoughts. Not only so, but he seemed to be always in his view. Mr. The Englishman had but to look out of window, to look upon the Corporal with little Bebelle. He had but to go for a walk, and there was the Corporal walking with Bebelle. He had but to come home again, disgusted, and the Corporal and Bebelle were at home before him. If he looked out at his back windows early in the morning, the Corporal was in the Barber’s back yard, washing and dressing and brushing Bebelle. If he took refuge at his front windows, the Corporal brought his breakfast out into the Place, and shared it there with Bebelle. Always Corporal and always Bebelle. Never Corporal without Bebelle. Never Bebelle without Corporal.

Mr. The Englishman was not particularly strong in the French language as a means of oral communication, though he read it very well. It is with languages as with people,—when you only know them by sight, you are apt to mistake them; you must be on speaking terms before you can be said to have established an acquaintance.

For this reason, Mr. The Englishman had to gird up his loins considerably before he could bring himself to the point of exchanging ideas with Madame Bouclet on the subject of this Corporal and this Bebelle. But Madame Bouclet looking in apologetically one morning to remark, that, O Heaven! she was in a state of desolation because the lamp-maker had not sent home that lamp confided to him to repair, but that truly he was a lamp-maker against whom the whole world shrieked out, Mr. The Englishman seized the occasion.

“Madame, that baby——”

“Pardon, monsieur. That lamp.”

“No, no, that little girl.”

“But, pardon!” said Madame Bonclet, angling for a clew, “one cannot light a little girl, or send her to be repaired?”

“The little girl—at the house of the barber.”

“Ah-h-h!” cried Madame Bouclet, suddenly catching the idea with her delicate little line and rod. “Little Bebelle? Yes, yes, yes! And her friend the Corporal? Yes, yes, yes, yes! So genteel of him,—is it not?”

“He is not——?”

“Not at all; not at all! He is not one of her relations. Not at all!”

“Why, then, he——”

“Perfectly!” cried Madame Bouclet, “you are right, monsieur. It is so genteel of him. The less relation, the more genteel. As you say.”

“Is she——?”

“The child of the barber?” Madame Bouclet whisked up her skilful little line and rod again. “Not at all, not at all! She is the child of—in a word, of no one.”

“The wife of the barber, then——?”

“Indubitably. As you say. The wife of the barber receives a small stipend to take care of her. So much by the month. Eh, then! It is without doubt very little, for we are all poor here.”

“You are not poor, madame.”

“As to my lodgers,” replied Madame Bouclet, with a smiling and a gracious bend of her head, “no. As to all things else, so-so.”

“You flatter me, madame.”

“Monsieur, it is you who flatter me in living here.”

Certain fishy gasps on Mr. The Englishman’s part, denoting that he was about to resume his subject under difficulties, Madame Bouclet observed him closely, and whisked up her delicate line and rod again with triumphant success.

“O no, monsieur, certainly not. The wife of the barber is not cruel to the poor child, but she is careless. Her health is delicate, and she sits all day, looking out at window. Consequently, when the Corporal first came, the poor little Bebelle was much neglected.”

“It is a curious——” began Mr. The Englishman.

“Name? That Bebelle? Again you are right, monsieur. But it is a playful name for Gabrielle.”

“And so the child is a mere fancy of the Corporal’s?” said Mr. The Englishman, in a gruffly disparaging tone of voice.

“Eh, well!” returned Madame Bouclet, with a pleading shrug: “one must love something. Human nature is weak.”

(“Devilish weak,” muttered the Englishman, in his own language.)

“And the Corporal,” pursued Madame Bouclet, “being billeted at the barber’s,—where he will probably remain a long time, for he is attached to the General,—and finding the poor unowned child in need of being loved, and finding himself in need of loving,—why, there you have it all, you see!”

Mr. The Englishman accepted this interpretation of the matter with an indifferent grace, and observed to himself, in an injured manner, when he was again alone: “I shouldn’t mind it so much, if these people were not such a”—National Participled—“sentimental people!”

There was a Cemetery outside the town, and it happened ill for the reputation of the Vaubanois, in this sentimental connection, that he took a walk there that same afternoon. To be sure there were some wonderful things in it (from the Englishman’s point of view), and of a certainty in all Britain you would have found nothing like it. Not to mention the fanciful flourishes of hearts and crosses in wood and iron, that were planted all over the place, making it look very like a Firework-ground, where a most splendid pyrotechnic display might be expected after dark, there were so many wreaths upon the graves, embroidered, as it might be, “To my mother,” “To my daughter,” “To my father,” “To my brother,” “To my sister,” “To my friend,” and those many wreaths were in so many stages of elaboration and decay, from the wreath of yesterday, all fresh colour and bright beads, to the wreath of last year, a poor mouldering wisp of straw! There were so many little gardens and grottoes made upon graves, in so many tastes, with plants and shells and plaster figures and porcelain pitchers, and so many odds and ends! There were so many tributes of remembrance hanging up, not to be discriminated by the closest inspection from little round waiters, whereon were depicted in glowing lines either a lady or a gentleman with a white pocket-handkerchief out of all proportion, leaning, in a state of the most faultless mourning and most profound affliction, on the most architectural and gorgeous urn! There were so many surviving wives who had put their names on the tombs of their deceased husbands, with a blank for the date of their own departure from this weary world; and there were so many surviving husbands who had rendered the same homage to their deceased wives; and out of the number there must have been so many who had long ago married again! In fine, there was so much in the place that would have seemed more frippery to a stranger, save for the consideration that the lightest paper flower that lay upon the poorest heap of earth was never touched by a rude hand, but perished there, a sacred thing!

“Nothing of the solemnity of Death here,” Mr. The Englishman had been going to say, when this last consideration touched him with a mild appeal, and on the whole he walked out without saying it. “But these people are,” he insisted, by way of compensation, when he was well outside the gate, “they are so”—Participled—“sentimental!”

His way back lay by the military gymnasium-ground. And there he passed the Corporal glibly instructing young soldiers how to swing themselves over rapid and deep watercourses on their way to Glory, by means of a rope, and himself deftly plunging off a platform, and flying a hundred feet or two, as an encouragement to them to begin. And there he also passed, perched on a crowning eminence (probably the Corporal’s careful hands), the small Bebelle, with her round eyes wide open, surveying the proceeding like a wondering sort of blue and white bird.

“If that child was to die,” this was his reflection as he turned his back and went his way,—“and it would almost serve the fellow right for making such a fool of himself,—I suppose we should have him sticking up a wreath and a waiter in that fantastic burying-ground.”

Nevertheless, after another early morning or two of looking out of window, he strolled down into the Place, when the Corporal and Bebelle were walking there, and touching his hat to the Corporal (an immense achievement), wished him Good-day.

“Good-day, monsieur.”

“This is a rather pretty child you have here,” said Mr. The Englishman, taking her chin in his hand, and looking down into her astonished blue eyes.

“Monsieur, she is a very pretty child,” returned the Corporal, with a stress on his polite correction of the phrase.

“And good?” said the Englishman.

“And very good. Poor little thing!”

“Hah!” The Englishman stooped down and patted her cheek, not without awkwardness, as if he were going too far in his conciliation. “And what is this medal round your neck, my little one?”

Bebelle having no other reply on her lips than her chubby right fist, the Corporal offered his services as interpreter.

“Monsieur demands, what is this, Bebelle?”

“It is the Holy Virgin,” said Bebelle.

“And who gave it you?” asked the Englishman.

“Théophile.”

“And who is Théophile?”

Bebelle broke into a laugh, laughed merrily and heartily, clapped her chubby hands, and beat her little feet on the stone pavement of the Place.

“He doesn’t know Théophile! Why, he doesn’t know any one! He doesn’t know anything!” Then, sensible of a small solecism in her manners, Bebelle twisted her right hand in a leg of the Corporal’s Bloomer trousers, and, laying her cheek against the place, kissed it.

“Monsieur Théophile, I believe?” said the Englishman to the Corporal.

“It is I, monsieur.”

“Permit me.” Mr. The Englishman shook him heartily by the hand and turned away. But he took it mighty ill that old Monsieur Mutuel in his patch of sunlight, upon whom he came as he turned, should pull off his cap to him with a look of pleased approval. And he muttered, in his own tongue, as he returned the salutation, “Well, walnut-shell! And what business is it of yours?”

Mr. The Englishman went on for many weeks passing but disturbed evenings and worse nights, and constantly experiencing that those aforesaid windows in the houses of Memory and Mercy rattled after dark, and that he had very imperfectly nailed them up. Likewise, he went on for many weeks daily improving the acquaintance of the Corporal and Bebelle. That is to say, he took Bebelle by the chin, and the Corporal by the hand, and offered Bebelle sous and the Corporal cigars, and even got the length of changing pipes with the Corporal and kissing Bebelle. But he did it all in a shamefaced way, and always took it extremely ill that Monsieur Mutuel in his patch of sunlight should note what he did. Whenever that seemed to be the case, he always growled in his own tongue, “There you are again, walnut-shell! What business is it of yours?”

In a word, it had become the occupation of Mr. The Englishman’s life to look after the Corporal and little Bebelle, and to resent old Monsieur Mutuel’s looking after him. An occupation only varied by a fire in the town one windy night, and much passing of water-buckets from hand to hand (in which the Englishman rendered good service), and much beating of drums,—when all of a sudden the Corporal disappeared.

Next, all of a sudden, Bebelle disappeared.

She had been visible a few days later than the Corporal,—sadly deteriorated as to washing and brushing,—but she had not spoken when addressed by Mr. The Englishman, and had looked scared and had run away. And now it would seem that she had run away for good. And there lay the Great Place under the windows, bare and barren.

In his shamefaced and constrained way, Mr. The Englishman asked no question of any one, but watched from his front windows and watched from his back windows, and lingered about the Place, and peeped in at the Barber’s shop, and did all this and much more with a whistling and tune-humming pretence of not missing anything, until one afternoon when Monsieur Mutuel’s patch of sunlight was in shadow, and when, according to all rule and precedent, he had no right whatever to bring his red ribbon out of doors, behold here he was, advancing with his cap already in his hand twelve paces off!

Mr. The Englishman had got as far into his usual objurgation as, “What bu—si—” when he checked himself.

“Ah, it is sad, it is sad! Hélas, it is unhappy, it is sad!” Thus old Monsieur Mutuel, shaking his gray head.

“What busin—at least, I would say, what do you mean, Monsieur Mutuel?”

“Our Corporal. Hélas, our dear Corporal!”

“What has happened to him?”

“You have not heard?”

“No.”

“At the fire. But he was so brave, so ready. Ah, too brave, too ready!”

“May the Devil carry you away!” the Englishman broke in impatiently; “I beg your pardon,—I mean me,—I am not accustomed to speak French,—go on, will you?”

“And a falling beam——”

“Good God!” exclaimed the Englishman. “It was a private soldier who was killed?”

“No. A Corporal, the same Corporal, our dear Corporal. Beloved by all his comrades. The funeral ceremony was touching,—penetrating. Monsieur The Englishman, your eyes fill with tears.”

“What bu—si——”

“Monsieur The Englishman, I honour those emotions. I salute you with profound respect. I will not obtrude myself upon your noble heart.”

Monsieur Mutuel,—a gentleman in every thread of his cloudy linen, under whose wrinkled hand every grain in the quarter of an ounce of poor snuff in his poor little tin box became a gentleman’s property,—Monsieur Mutuel passed on, with his cap in his hand.

“I little thought,” said the Englishman, after walking for several minutes, and more than once blowing his nose, “when I was looking round that cemetery—I’ll go there!”

Straight he went there, and when he came within the gate he paused, considering whether he should ask at the lodge for some direction to the grave. But he was less than ever in a mood for asking questions, and he thought, “I shall see something on it to know it by.”

In search of the Corporal’s grave he went softly on, up this walk and down that, peering in, among the crosses and hearts and columns and obelisks and tombstones, for a recently disturbed spot. It troubled him now to think how many dead there were in the cemetery,—he had not thought them a tenth part so numerous before,—and after he had walked and sought for some time, he said to himself, as he struck down a new vista of tombs, “I might suppose that every one was dead but I.”

Not every one. A live child was lying on the ground asleep. Truly he had found something on the Corporal’s grave to know it by, and the something was Bebelle.

With such a loving will had the dead soldier’s comrades worked at his resting-place, that it was already a neat garden. On the green turf of the garden Bebelle lay sleeping, with her cheek touching it. A plain, unpainted little wooden Cross was planted in the turf, and her short arm embraced this little Cross, as it had many a time embraced the Corporal’s neck. They had put a tiny flag (the flag of France) at his head, and a laurel garland.

Mr. The Englishman took off his hat, and stood for a while silent. Then, covering his head again, he bent down on one knee, and softly roused the child.

“Bebelle! My little one!”

Opening her eyes, on which the tears were still wet, Bebelle was at first frightened; but seeing who it was, she suffered him to take her in his arms, looking steadfastly at him.

“You must not lie here, my little one. You must come with me.”

“No, no. I can’t leave Théophile. I want the good dear Théophile.”

“We will go and seek him, Bebelle. We will go and look for him in England. We will go and look for him at my daughter’s, Bebelle.”

“Shall we find him there?”

“We shall find the best part of him there. Come with me, poor forlorn little one. Heaven is my witness,” said the Englishman, in a low voice, as, before he rose, he touched the turf above the gentle Corporal’s breast, “that I thankfully accept this trust!”

It was a long way for the child to have come unaided. She was soon asleep again, with her embrace transferred to the Englishman’s neck. He looked at her worn shoes, and her galled feet, and her tired face, and believed that she had come there every day.

He was leaving the grave with the slumbering Bebelle in his arms, when he stopped, looked wistfully down at it, and looked wistfully at the other graves around. “It is the innocent custom of the people,” said Mr. The Englishman, with hesitation. “I think I should like to do it. No one sees.”

Careful not to wake Bebelle as he went, he repaired to the lodge where such little tokens of remembrance were sold, and bought two wreaths. One, blue and white and glistening silver, “To my friend;” one of a soberer red and black and yellow, “To my friend.” With these he went back to the grave, and so down on one knee again. Touching the child’s lips with the brighter wreath, he guided her hand to hang it on the Cross; then hung his own wreath there. After all, the wreaths were not far out of keeping with the little garden. To my friend. To my friend.

Mr. The Englishman took it very ill when he looked round a street corner into the Great Place, carrying Bebelle in his arms, that old Mutuel should be there airing his red ribbon. He took a world of pains to dodge the worthy Mutuel, and devoted a surprising amount of time and trouble to skulking into his own lodging like a man pursued by Justice. Safely arrived there at last, he made Bebelle’s toilet with as accurate a remembrance as he could bring to bear upon that work of the way in which he had often seen the poor Corporal make it, and having given her to eat and drink, laid her down on his own bed. Then he slipped out into the barber’s shop, and after a brief interview with the barber’s wife, and a brief recourse to his purse and card-case, came back again with the whole of Bebelle’s personal property in such a very little bundle that it was quite lost under his arm.

As it was irreconcilable with his whole course and character that he should carry Bebelle off in state, or receive any compliments or congratulations on that feat, he devoted the next day to getting his two portmanteaus out of the house by artfulness and stealth, and to comporting himself in every particular as if he were going to run away,—except, indeed, that he paid his few debts in the town, and prepared a letter to leave for Madame Bouclet, enclosing a sufficient sum of money in lieu of notice. A railway train would come through at midnight, and by that train he would take away Bebelle to look for Théophile in England and at his forgiven daughter’s.

At midnight, on a moonlight night, Mr. The Englishman came creeping forth like a harmless assassin, with Bebelle on his breast instead of a dagger. Quiet the Great Place, and quiet the never-stirring streets; closed the cafés; huddled together motionless their billiard-balls; drowsy the guard or sentinel on duty here and there; lulled for the time, by sleep, even the insatiate appetite of the Office of Town-dues.

Mr. The Englishman left the Place behind, and left the streets behind, and left the civilian-inhabited town behind, and descended down among the military works of Vauban, hemming all in. As the shadow of the first heavy arch and postern fell upon him and was left behind, as the shadow of the second heavy arch and postern fell upon him and was left behind, as his hollow tramp over the first drawbridge was succeeded by a gentler sound, as his hollow tramp over the second drawbridge was succeeded by a gentler sound, as he overcame the stagnant ditches one by one, and passed out where the flowing waters were and where the moonlight, so the dark shades and the hollow sounds and the unwholesomely locked currents of his soul were vanquished and set free. See to it, Vaubans of your own hearts, who gird them in with triple walls and ditches, and with bolt and chain and bar and lifted bridge,—raze those fortifications, and lay them level with the all-absorbing dust, before the night cometh when no hand can work!

All went prosperously, and he got into an empty carriage in the train, where he could lay Bebelle on the seat over against him, as on a couch, and cover her from head to foot with his mantle. He had just drawn himself up from perfecting this arrangement, and had just leaned back in his own seat contemplating it with great satisfaction, when he became aware of a curious appearance at the open carriage window,—a ghostly little tin box floating up in the moonlight, and hovering there.

He leaned forward, and put out his head. Down among the rails and wheels and ashes, Monsieur Mutuel, red ribbon and all!

“Excuse me, Monsieur The Englishman,” said Monsieur Mutuel, holding up his box at arm’s length, the carriage being so high and he so low; “but I shall reverence the little box for ever, if your so generous hand will take a pinch from it at parting.”

Mr. The Englishman reached out of the window before complying, and—without asking the old fellow what business it was of his—shook hands and said, “Adieu! God bless you!”

“And, Mr. The Englishman, God bless you!” cried Madame Bouclet, who was also there among the rails and wheels and ashes. “And God will bless you in the happiness of the protected child now with you. And God will bless you in your own child at home. And God will bless you in your own remembrances. And this from me!”

He had barely time to catch a bouquet from her hand, when the train was flying through the night. Round the paper that enfolded it was bravely written (doubtless by the nephew who held the pen of an Angel), “Homage to the friend of the friendless.”

“Not bad people, Bebelle!” said Mr. The Englishman, softly drawing the mantle a little from her sleeping face, that he might kiss it, “though they are so——”

Too “sentimental” himself at the moment to be able to get out that word, he added nothing but a sob, and travelled for some miles, through the moonlight, with his hand before his eyes.

CHAPTER III

HIS UMBRELLA

John Oxenford

It was not in the spirit of officious gallantry that I put my best foot forward, in order to overtake the lady who was walking a few yards before me, across the large field which adjoins the pretty village of Ivyton. About the attractive qualities of her face and figure I did not care a straw, but she carried one potent charm about her which had for me a fascination wholly irresistible—she carried an umbrella. That the potency of this charm may be fully appreciated, I ought to state that the rain was falling in torrents, and that, although it was early in the year, I was not only without an umbrella, but was also destitute of an overcoat: having carelessly left one of those useful habiliments in the railway carriage. The shades of evening were just deepening into night, and I need not explain that the sensation of being drenched through by a rain which one can scarcely see, is infinitely more disagreeable than the attack of a shower in broad daylight. To the eye the appearance of rapidly falling rain is rather lively than otherwise, and to some extent counteracts the annoyance of a wetting. But in being made aware of the presence of moisture by the sense of feeling alone there is something incalculably dismal and desolate.

There was hope in that umbrella (a gingham umbrella). Surely, under the circumstances, I could solicit a share in it without being deemed extremely rude and impertinent. I slushed my way through the interminable field, and gained upon the figure. Its outline I could plainly distinguish. It was certainly a female, the dress was of a light colour, and—most important particular—the wearer of the dress carried, as I have said, a very large umbrella—a gingham umbrella. More I could not ascertain, save that the object of my pursuit was endowed with a less amount of curiosity than is usually ascribed to the fair sex. As my feet often glided from the slippery path, and splashed into the small puddles by which in many places it was burdened, the noise I made must have been considerable; and most people are anxious to know what sort of a person is walking behind them, when they are in a field about nightfall. Such, however, was not the case with the lady before me. Armed with her umbrella against the inclemencies of the weather, she seemed regardless of everything else.

As I have said, I gained upon the lady; but even when I was at her side, with my head under her umbrella (I believe I have already described it as a gingham umbrella), she made no effort to see me or to avoid me. Apparently looking straight before her, she went on as at first; and it is worthy of remark, that whereas I made a little splash at almost every step, she seemed to pick her way without difficulty. The few courteous words I uttered, did not seem to reach her ear. Perhaps she was deaf? On this supposition, I gently took the gingham umbrella by the handle, politely intending to carry it in such a way as to confer upon her the largest share of its benefits. She made no resistance, but let it go at once, and, what was very strange, no sooner was it safely in my grasp, than I found myself alone! Yes, no one was beside me; there I stood, whole and sole master of a gingham umbrella. Dressed as she was in light raiment, the lady, however rapidly she might have run away, ought to have been visible in some direction; but she was not visible in any direction.

How wrong it is to form hasty judgments. Five minutes before, I had settled in my own mind that the umbrella was the engrossing object of the lady's thoughts. Now, I could clearly see that she did not value it to the extent of a single clutch. If she had merely wanted to be freed from me, she might have gone with the umbrella in her hand, for I did not hold it so very tight. Perhaps the umbrella was more objectionable than myself, and she was glad to get rid of it? The rain that rattled on the silk seemed anxious to demonstrate the utter fallacy of this hypothesis.

I felt comfortable enough in the parlour of the Jolly Navigators, sipping my glass of hot brandy-and-water as a preventive against the ill effects of the wetting, smoking my cigar, and idly watching my—let me rather say the—umbrella, as it lay open before the fire. The inn was close to the station, and I by no means regretted that at least half an hour would elapse before the arrival of the train that was to convey me back to town. Literally doing nothing, I was ready to take an interest in anything, and was not displeased when I could hear through the open door the few remarks made by the landlord and the customers at the bar.

"Well, this is leap-year," said a gruff voice.

"Yes, and more than that," said another voice, exceedingly shrill, and evidently belonging to an old woman, "this is the 29th of February. I wonder if she was in the field this evening?"

"Gammon," said the landlord.

"Oh yes, it's all very fine for you men," urged the shrill voice, "you'll believe nothing but what you can eat and drink and put into your pockets; but I tell you she's sure to be in the field about nightfall, on the 29th of February."

"Go along," said the gruff voice. "Why, I've been through Swampy Field over and over again, and I never seed nothing."

"Of course not," assented the landlord.

"Ay, ay," pursued the shrill voice; "but did you ever go through the field at nightfall, on the 29th of February? Were you there this evening?"

"Well, no; I can't say I was," replied the gruff voice.

"No; exactly," persisted the shrill old dame. "And are you quite sure you were there at nightfall this day four year—or the day four year before that?"

"Well, I don't want to say what ain't right and straight," replied the gruff voice, in a somewhat discomfited tone.

"And that's the wisest thing you've said yet," replied the shrill voice, reproachfully. "Better people than you or I have seen ghosts and been ghosts before this, to say nothing of poor Miss Crackenbridge."

Now my moral position, as I listened to the above conversation, with my eyes fixed on the umbrella, was far from elevated. I felt at once that the "she" of whom the old woman spoke could be no other than the mysterious female from whom I had received the gingham article that lay open before me, steaming away its moisture. I therefore knew that the sneers of the gruff gentleman and of the landlord were unjust, and yet I dared not openly enlist myself on the side of truth. My evidence was all that the old woman required to save her from derision, and I was base enough not to give it. The more I think of my conduct on that occasion, the more does my self-respect diminish. If I had been in some primitive hamlet, where the existence of ghosts is admitted as a matter of course, there is no doubt I should have come out boldly with my narrative, and should have done my best to browbeat any unlucky sceptic. My conduct, I am convinced, would have been analogous had I been at a party of fashionable spiritualists. But here I was in a village, too closely in connexion with London to admit of a primitive credulity, save among the oldest inhabitants, while the social status of the speakers was not high enough to render them pervious to aristocratic spiritualism. For fear of incurring the sneer of a vulgar landlord and his more vulgar customer, I allowed truth to be assailed without uttering a word in its defence, though I could scarcely help fancying that the umbrella was conscious of my pusillanimity, and was observing me with silent contempt.

What a great man must a martyr be, who will undergo popular execration, death, and torture, rather than keep his lips close, when they can be opened for the assertion of a truth! What an immeasurable difference there must be between my constitution and that of—say St. Lawrence.

But while my moral courage was at the lowest ebb, it was high-water with my curiosity. Such was my utter depravity, that the circumstances which depressed the nobler quality allowed the lower one to flourish with full vigour. I sneaked out of the parlour to the bar, endeavoured to ingratiate myself by asking for something cheap which I did not want (a biscuit, I think it was), and then with the grossest affectation of vagueness, propounded the following question:

"Excuse the liberty, but did not I overhear—unintentionally, of course—something about some person who walked in some field in some remarkable manner?"

"That's right, master," replied a man in a shaggy great-coat.

"Oh yes, quite correct," said the landlord, "but for further particulars you had better address yourself to this good lady here. You know there's some sort of knowledge that thrives best in the heads of elderly ladies," he added with a wink.

I am overwhelmed with shame and confusion when I write down the humiliating fact that I actually—winked in return. If I were a member of parliament, I wonder whether I should ever, by the remotest chance, find myself voting with the minority!

"Oh, the gentleman is quite welcome to hear the story if he likes," said the old lady: a most respectable inoffensive-looking person. "I don't care for a laugh or two."

How unworthy was I to walk on the same soil with that heroic old woman!

I shall not repeat the words of her narrative, for it was somewhat prolix, and abounded in details that did not bear directly on the main subject. It will be sufficient to state that according to the excellent lady's belief, one Miss Catherine Crackenbridge had, on the 29th of February, many years before, gone out to meet a clandestine lover, and had been seen to cross Swampy Field. Since that time, nothing had been heard of her. Some supposed that she was entrapped and murdered by a designing villain; some, that she met with a fatal accident; some, that she committed suicide. This much was certain: that every 29th of February her figure might be seen—in fact, must be seen—to cross Swampy Field about nightfall, by any person who happened to be on the spot.

After exchanging a look of bland superiority with the landlord—despicable being that I was!—I asked if the ghost were in the habit of carrying an umbrella.

"Ho-ho-ho! " roared the landlord. "Why, of course it would, if it went out on a wet evening like this. Well, that's a good 'un. The gentleman has given it her there, and no mistake; hasn't he, Jim?"

The man in the shaggy great-coat grunted his assent, with a low chuckle. And there was I—wretch that I was—allowing myself to be applauded for inflicting a stupid sarcasm on a defenceless female, when I firmly believed every word of her statement, and was merely endeavouring to satisfy my curiosity with reference to my strangely acquired treasure. I even joined in the laugh, and allowed them all, the old woman included, to believe that I regarded myself as an exceedingly witty and facetious person. The old woman merely observed that she knew nothing about umbrellas, and left the house in a state of irascibility that was not only justifiable, but highly laudable. As for me, I swaggered back into the parlour with the air of a conqueror by whom a worthy adversary has been valiantly demolished.

My surprise was not small when I perceived that the umbrella had changed its position during the conversation at the bar. I had left it with the convex side towards the fire, and consequently the handle in the opposite direction. Now, the handle was towards the fire, and the convex surface of gingham towards the door. As no one had entered the room, this movement was perfectly astounding, yet I did not utter a single ejaculation. I snatched up the umbrella, boldly tucked it under my arm, and stalked through the bar, bidding a hasty farewell to the landlord, and making the utterly frivolous remark that I did not think I should miss the train. If all the ghosts of all the Hamlets had stood in visible shape before me, I would rather have walked through them, than have committed myself to a word, look, or gesture, that could have compromised me in the eyes of the landlord and his gruff acquaintance. As it was, the initial letters C. C. carved on the handle, confirmed my belief that the umbrella had been the property of the ill-starred Catherine Crackenbridge.

The umbrella, I may observe—though of gingham—was of no common order. Its ivory handle was extremely massive, and richly adorned with that elaborate tracery, which seems to betoken an Oriental origin. The initial letters to which I have referred had not been scratched on with the first sharp instrument that came to hand, but had been elegantly carved.

Hence it was no wonder, that when I called on my old friend Jack Slingsby, to whose residence I proceeded as soon as I quitted the train, he exclaimed, in his usual elegant style:

"Why, old boy, that's a stunning gingham you've got there. Well, that is an out-and-outer!"

"Yes, it is rather a good one," I answered, with despicable indifference; and I put it in the corner near the door, and hung my hat upon it, in conformity with an old habit of mine. Being of a careless disposition, I lost many an umbrella in early youth. To prevent the recurrence of such accidents, I now adopt the expedient of using my umbrella as a hat-peg, whenever I make a visit. I cannot easily forget my hat, nor can I take my hat without handling my umbrella.

"Well, but you don't mean to tell me," pursued Jack, " that you bought that article with your own money? A purchase of that kind is not like my old friend Yorick Zachary Yorke."

"No; I did not purchase it—it—it came from India," I replied, devoutly hoping, with the little conscience that was left me, that I had not told an absolute falsehood; for, indeed, it might have come from India in the first instance for anything I knew to the contrary.

The intelligence I had to communicate was of a pleasant kind, and Jack proved its exhilarating effect by ordering oysters for two, and a liberal supply of stout. When this supper, with the addition of a tumbler or so of grog, had been disposed of, I rose to depart.

"Why, old fellow," said the hospitable Jack, "where have you put your hat and your umbrella? Bless my soul, here they are! Well, now, I would have sworn in any witness-box that you put the umbrella in the corner near the door, and then clapped your hat on the handle, and now—lo and behold!—here's the hat on the floor in the corner next the fireplace, and the umbrella, with the point inside the hat, and the handle against the wall! "

The little incident in the parlour of the Jolly Navigators had too well prepared me for such freaks on the part of my umbrella, to allow me to be taken aback. " It is just as I put it, Jack," I said, with heedless effrontery. " You put a little too much brandy in your tumbler, and that, coming directly after the stout——"

Jack was fully as sober as I was, and as for the brandy-and-water, it had been offensively weak.

"I suppose you are right, old fellow," interrupted Jack, with a sceptical expression of countenance. "As the umbrella is a little damp, it was kind of you to save my carpet, by using your hat as a basin."

Simpering out some inanity about a friend's interests being as dear to me as my own, I got out of the house as well as I could. That I had not succeeded in obliterating from Jack's mind the remembrance of the change of corners, was afterwards made evident enough. Though he never saw the umbrella again, he never met me without some question as to its whereabout, or some reference to the odd occurrence of that evening.

I had been so much occupied hitherto in wearing a mask before other persons, that I really had not had time enough to feel all the supernatural horror which the possession of the umbrella should have inspired. Here was an article placed in my hand, by a mysterious female figure, that had vanished like a ghost, and that figure exactly corresponded to the description of a ghost current in the immediate neighbourhood! These circumstances began to impress themselves more forcibly on my mind, when, on reaching home, I found myself alone in my bachelor sitting-room. The umbrella, which rested against my chair, appeared to me in the light of an unpleasant acquaintance, whom one cannot conveniently bow out, and whom one will not press to stop. What should I do with the umbrella? I did not wish to sit up with it all night, still less was I inclined to take it into my bedroom. I looked reflectively at the umbrella until I almost fancied it looked at me in return.

At last I bethought me of a little room on the floor over my bed-chamber, which was occasionally used for the deposit of lumber. Thither would I at once take my umbrella, and then re-descend to the sleeping apartment. How cautiously I carried it! I felt morbidly afraid of waking the servants, who slept in the chamber adjoining the lumber-room. I opened the door with a minimum of noise, that only a burglar ought to attain. I could almost fancy I was breaking into my own house.

Lumber, insignificant by day, is ghastly at night, when illuminated by a single candle, and seen by a single spectator. The common household articles, cast aside as unavailable for immediate use, and huddled together in a fashion totally at variance with their original purpose, have a corpse-like appearance, and the shadows they cast are portentous. A cobweb floating about in their vicinity is an uncomfortable phenomenon, and the lonely spectator shrinks instinctively from anything like contact with that almost intangible substance, which seems to be compounded of feathers, gossamer, and nothing, and goes by the name of "fluff."

I delicately placed the umbrella against a hamper, richly embroidered with cobwebs, and crept down to my bedroom: not without overhearing the whispering voices of the servants, who had no doubt remarked the unwonted sound of footsteps.

My dreams were disagreeable enough. The umbrella seemed to stand before me as a huge many-armed bat, the gingham forming the texture of the wings, and a little claw being visible at each of the corners. Then the bat would assume the shape of a human skeleton, still many-armed, like some hideous Indian deity: with this difference, that the arms were not in a vertical circle, but were ranged around the neck, like the spokes of a horizontal wheel. And by a strange movement the knob had quitted its place, and stationed itself on the point, where it became a skull, and hattered its jaws, as if in unseemly mirth.

I was far from gratified next morning, when the servant, besides coffee and toast, brought in the umbrella, with the words, "I think you left this in the lumber-room?" I dryly answered "Yes," but I felt that my answer gave no satisfaction. Though the girl talked of "leaving the umbrella," she must have known very well that I put it in the lumber-room on purpose.

"You found the umbrella leaning against the hamper?" I asked.

"No, it was against the large trunk on the opposite side," replied the girl.

"Of course," I said. And never did that very common expression seem less fitted to the context of a dialogue.

An umbrella which has been lent by a ghost, which will be dreamed about under the most unpleasant aspect, and which, without the aid of human hands, will shift from one corner of a room to another, is not a desirable possession. Many were my efforts to get rid of my gingham treasure, but they were all in vain. I left it at the house of friend after friend, and frequently took away with me a silk umbrella in its stead, but it was invariably sent back. I have gone into some of the lowest streets in London, have made some trifling purchase of a marine store-seller who was obviously a receiver of stolen goods—I have placed the umbrella against his counter, and have hurried away at my quickest pace; but the light of honesty has flashed at once into the abode of roguery and crime. A ragged boy or girl has run frantically after me, with my umbrella. I have gone to umbrella-makers, and have offered to sell or exchange the remarkable specimen of their art, which I carried in my hand. But never was the master of the shop at home when I called, and never had he left any person authorised to effect an exchange or a purchase. I could always find some one in charge, with full authority to sell any number of umbrellas; but I could never find anybody entrusted with power to buy one, or take one in exchange.

It struck me at last, that I would take it to the nearest pawnbroker, and offer it as a pledge for a sum too small to be refused. I had never until then visited an establishment of the sort, and I felt nervous as I approached the door—more nervous when a friend, who seemed almost to rise out of the pavement, suddenly shook me by the hand, and asked me where I was going? When I had quitted him, he stopped and looked after me, so that I was not able to dash boldly into the shop, but lingered at neighbouring windows, contemplatingobjects wholly devoid of interest. How long I looked at some pigs' pettitoes in one shop, and at some blacking-bottles in another, I cannot conjecture. At last, assuming that I was wholly unobserved, I entered the temple of interested benevolence.

"Well, sir," said the young man at the counter, with an air more patronising than is assumed by the generality of tradesmen towards their customers; "what can we do for you?"

" I merely come to——" thus I began, when I perceived that my umbrella was not under my arm. I rushed out of the shop leaving my sentence unfinished, and met my friend returning from his expedition. Though he merely made some common-place remark, I could see by his manner that he had distinctly perceived my egress, and, chancing to look back towards the shop, I could see the young man's face protruding from the doorway, watching me with evident suspicion. My situation was miserable. Before me stood an old friend of the family, a warm opulent dreadfully respectable man, eyeing me with diminished respect; behind me was an utter stranger, conjecturing that I was a thief.

When I got home my umbrella was in the stand in the passage. Perhaps I had left it there. I cannot positively say whether I did or not, but something told me that it would be useless to make any other attempt to deposit it as a pledge.

As the end of another February approached, a happy thought occurred to me. Why should I not, on the anniversary of the day that had enriched me with the umbrella, take a turn in Swampy Field and restore it to the rightful owner? Though the umbrella had been placed in my hand on the 29th of February, a day which occurs only once in four years, I could regard the 1st of March as a very fair anniversary. There is this in common between the 29th of February in leap-year and the 1st of March in other years,—that they both follow the 28th of February. And there was no reason to suppose that a spirit, habituated to regard the essence of things, would regard a chronological arrangement merely made to adapt the calendar to mortal purposes.

I left London by railway, and on the evening of the 1st of March I was in Swampy Field with my umbrella up. There was not a cloud in the sky, and so bright was the moon that the country could be seen as by daylight. Nevertheless, I walked up and down the field with my umbrella, at full spread. No object appeared, save a group of boys, who took advantage of the bright moonlight to extend their hours of play, and who noticed me as a ridiculous figure. An umbrella held up at noon under a broiling sun, answers the purpose of a parasol, and brings no contempt on him who holds it; but a man who walks up and down a field by moonlight beneath a perfectly cloudless sky, with an outspread umbrella in his hand, is guilty of an absurdity that no one is bound to tolerate. The derision of the boys I endured with the fortitude of one who knows that he is in the wrong, and who justly merits whatever befals him. When their verbal sallies were followed by missiles of mud and stone I retreated, without the slightest feeling of anger against my small persecutors. Had I been in their place, I should have thrown missiles also.

Months and months passed away. Every night I had dreamed of the skeleton and the bat, and the dreams had lost their terror. I believe that if I had lain from night till morning, without a visit from the familiar spectre, I should have felt my rest incomplete. As for the umbrella, I had so often put it in one corner and found it in another, that I looked at its locomotion as a matter of course; and if I had chanced to find it in the place where I had left it, my sensations would have been like those of a man whose watch has unaccountably stopped.

One evening, as my eye glanced at the advertising columns of the newspaper, it stopped at the following mysterious announcement. I beg to state, before quoting it, that on the previous day the umbrella had come back to me in a very remarkable manner. I had left it at a shop to have it newly covered with silk in the place of gingham. It had come home (as it appeared to me of its own accord), and had brought a man with it who waited in the passage to be paid the price of this alteration, and who declined to quit the premises without receiving such price. On being offered the umbrella instead, he replied, " Blow the umbrella; I've umbrellas enough that I cant get rid of, I wants my money." (From the words I have italicised, might it not almost seem as if this uncultivated person had also encountered the spectre? I merely throw out the suggestion, without insisting on it.)

"On the 29th of February, C. C. will call on Y. Z. Y., and claim the deposit."

This was the advertisement on which my eye fell.

Now, it is not every one that can own a property in the initials Y. Z. Y. Indeed, I am inclined to believe that I, Yorick Zachary Yorke, am their sole legitimate owner.

How great is the power of habit! Three years before, my mind had been so occupied with the extra day of the bissextile, that I had even tried to make a 29th of February of my own, by giving a new figure to the 1st of March. Now, on the contrary, I was slow in recalling to mind the connexion between the umbrella and the date of its acquisition; and I believe a quarter of an hour elapsed before I recognised in C. C., the initials of the ill-starred Miss Catherine Crackenbridge.

The whole horror of four years ago was forced back upon me. My agony reached its crisis, when, looking at the date of the paper, I shrieked aloud—"The 29th of February is today!" Frantically I rushed into the passage, took the umbrella from its stand, and placed it on the table before me. My eyes were fixed upon it so firmly that every other object faded, and my arms were not only folded, but firmly pressed together, that I might be fully aware of the strength of my own resolution.

How long I sat in this state I know not, but after a while I began to feel that I was not alone, though I could not perceive a companion. And there was a strange inconsistency in the appearance of the room. The looking-glass was over the chimney-piece, and the various articles of furniture were in their places, but the carpet seemed made of wet grass, and the walls were transparent, affording a view of a flat country, in the last light of evening. I could hear the sound of rain, and could feel the drops. In defiance of all the laws of possibility, I was in two places at once—in my room in London, and on Swampy Field. A heavy weight rested on my arm, a cold breath was on my cheek, and close beside me was a pale face that moved its lips, as if speaking with the greatest earnestness; but it gave no sound.

When the face had melted away, and the weight was removed from my arm, and the carpet was free from wet grass, and the walls had ceased to be transparent, the umbrella was gone!

I am not aware whether any so-called philosophical explanation of these astonishing experiences may be attempted. I believe I have related them (on the whole) with great accuracy. If I have at all enlarged on any trifling detail, or if any deduction should be claimed by the determined sceptic, on the score of harmless stout, or of brandy-and-water which I have myself described as (I quote the exact words) "offensively weak," or on the score of a rather confused memory, or a slight habit of absence of mind, or an indigestive disposition (inherited on the father's side) to doze after dinner, there will still remain this extraordinary circumstance to be accounted for by ordinary laws—that I never could get rid of the umbrella (gingham) during the whole interval between bissextile and bissextile, and that I unaccountably and inexplicably lost the umbrella (silk) on the 29th of February, the very day when it came home from being newly covered, and brought with it the extraordinary man I have described.

CHAPTER IV

HIS BLACK BAG

Charles Allston Collins

I

Creel was a ducal house—a palace almost—in the north of Scotland, and I don't believe that anywhere in the north or the south, the east or the west, a pleasanter place could be found to stay at, or a pleasanter host and hostess than the Duke and Duchess of Greta. I had known the duchess long before her marriage, and as to her husband, we got on well from the very first day of my stay at Creel, when I had the good fortune to land a salmon in a style the duke highly approved of; an achievement which I followed up by tying a fly with which he himself killed first and last five large salmon, and a dozen grilse, before it came to pieces. Every year I went to stay at Creel, making one of a great society, the castle being big enough to hold a small world within its walls.

The first day of my arrival at Creel on the occasion of which I am writing, I found myself seated between old Lady Salteith, who is very deaf, and an uncommonly stupid master of fox-hounds, whose voice nobody would ever care to hear unless when it was raised in a melodious tally-ho or uttering words of encouragement to a despondent hound. Exactly opposite to where I sat was the beautiful Miss Crawcour. Of this young lady I had heard a great deal, though I had never before found myself in her company. She was placed next to the man of all others for whom I have, I think, the least liking. This was Lord Sneyd, the best match, pecuniarily, and the worst, I should imagine, in every other way, that England had to show. At a glance, I saw what was going on. Miss Crawcour was a near relation of the duchess, and the duchess was one of the most inveterate match-makers that ever lived. She was at this time about five or six and thirty, good-looking, and good-natured to an excess, but she had this quality of match-making developed in her nature to an extent that was almost inconceivable, and certainly premature.

But the duchess did not stand alone in keeping a watchful eye over this affair. My fox-hunting friend, from whom I learnt who the young lady opposite really was, had even his stupid old eye fixed upon Miss Crawcour. Lady Salteith, deaf, as I have said, and so shut out from conversation, watched her with might and main, and so, indeed, more or less, did most of the guests assembled round that great table. I ought, perhaps, to except the duke, who, I think, was insensible to all such matters, being a sportsman and nothing else in the world. The curiosity of the rest of the company was excusable. One of the special beauties of the day, and one of the great matches of the year, were there side by side, and of course everybody wanted to know what would come of it.

The beauty of Mary Crawcour was of no ordinary kind, and there was in it a wonderful sense of health and vitality. It was scarcely possible to look at her without feeling inclined to envy her the extraordinary resources and the prosperous future which an organism so complete seemed to promise. What a pity, one could not help thinking—what a pity it would be if anything should occur to mar such a career. And then as you looked from her to her neighbour the thought immediately followed, "How mar a career more utterly than by such an alliance as that?"

Philip, Earl of Sneyd, was not what some people would call bad-looking, though to me I must own that his appearance was most disagreeable. I suppose at the time I am speaking of he was two or three and forty, but he was one of those light-complexioned men who look less than their age. His features, too, were small and regular. What much uglier men I have seen whom it was pleasanter to look at than this same Lord Sneyd. There was something so utterly unmanly and weak about him. He was so much too soigné in his "get up." His hair was curled and crimped, and so were his whiskers. He affected jewellery, and I have frequently seen him with rings outside his gloves. He always wore, too, such tightly-strapped trousers and such thin lacquered boots. I don't believe he had such a thing as a shooting-jacket or a pair of highlows in his possession. When the other men of the party of which he made one, were out of doors, he was to be found in the drawing-room playing on the piano, or, still better, getting some lady to accompany him while he sang; for I must do him the justice to say that he had a good tenor voice, and performed upon it in tune and with considerable taste.

I looked on then at this game, and I saw, or thought I saw—what? A used-up man who had never had anything but a pippin for a heart—this said pippin having once, however, had some juice and softness in it, but now resembling those of Normandy, which one sees in the grocers' shops—dry, hard, and sadly contracted and pinched about the core. I saw that this man had settled with himself that the young lady beside him was personally and otherwise suitable to the position of Countess of Sneyd, and that to be the proprietor of such a piece of humanity would be generally agreeable to his inclination, and creditable to his discernment into the bargain. I saw, too, a young girl, at the very commencement of what might be a bright and glorious existence, about to sacrifice all her happiness, deliberately selling it for money and a coronet, and I thought I saw that this was not done willingly as some girls do such acts, but because she was forced into it.

Sitting there opposite, and having little to do in the way of conversation myself, I heard many scraps of dialogue between Miss Crawcour and her neighbour. The young lady was attentive to what Lord Sneyd said, certainly, but always with a grave attention. She never smiled, or relaxed.

A great dinner! What a wondrous jumble of sound, what a queer mixture of words and thoughts, of observations made aloud and observations made in secret. What scraps overheard. What nonsense. If sound and thought and action could be photographed—caught in some camera obscura, and retained, what would be the result of the process? In the case with which we have now to do—something of this sort. Quick! The instrument is set, the slide withdrawn, and the sensitive, and prepared, plate exposed.

LADY SALTEITH (to me). Did they have the same house last season?—MYSELF (bawling). No. They didn't come to town at all.—BUTLER (over right shoulder). Champagne, sir, or sparkling 'ock?—MYSELF (to myself). Feverish last night; (to Butler) Neither.—LADY SALTEITH (to me). Well, they couldn't have taken a nicer house.—MYSELF (to myself). It's no use putting her right; (to Lady S., bawling louder) No.—LORD SNEYD (to Miss Crawcour). I dislike travelling. One has to rough it so. I have an aversion to roughing it.—MISS CRAWCOUR (to Lord Sneyd, coldly). But surely that is the great fun of travelling.—MYSELF (to myself). Effeminate beast that Sneyd is; (to servant, silently protruding stewed pigeons over left shoulder) No, thanks.—LORD SNEYD (to Miss Crawcour). Don't see any fun in having greasy hot water instead of soup, and beds so damp that you may take a bath in them. These sort of things disturb me, put me out, make me—not angry exactly, I'm never angry—are you?—MISS CRAWCOUR. Yes, often.—LORD SNEYD. Really, now, Miss Crawcour.—BUTLER (over right shoulder). Sherry, sir?—MYSELF. Yes.—LADY SALTEITH (to neighbour on the other side). Mumbles so, everybody does, now-a-days. Why can't they speak out?—LORD SNEYD (to Miss Crawcour). How does it feel being angry?—MISS CRAWCOUR. Oh, not very dreadful. I never go beyond wishing that the person I am angry with was at the other end of the world.—LORD SNEYD (calmly). Is that all? Oh, I often go as far as that myself. I should like at least half of my friends to be at the other end of the world.—MYSELF (to myself). How she hates him; (to servant, protruding curry over left shoulder) No.—GENERAL ACCOMPANIMENT. Muffled clash, respectful clatter, buzzing, and subdued laughter.—MASTER OF FOXHOUNDS (to me). Shall you be in England for the hunting season.—MYSELF. Don't intend to hunt next season.—M. F. H. What's become of that chestnut of yours?—MYSELF. Sold her.—LADY SALTEITH (to me). Miss Crawcour is not so pretty as she was last year.—MYSELF (observing Miss Crawcour to be listening). I can't agree with you there, Lady Salteith; (to myself) I've never seen her before, by-the-by; (to servant, protruding mutton over left shoulder) Yes.—BUTLER (over right shoulder). Champagne or sparkling 'ock, sir?—MYSELF. Neither.—LORD SNEYD (to Miss Crawcour). Did you hear Lady Salteith just now (his lordship was devouring curry when Lady Salteith spoke, and is only now ready to talk)?—MISS CRAWCOUR. Yes.—Lord Sneyd. Does that make you angry?—MISS CRAWCOUR. No. Lady Salteith is quite right.—GENERAL ACCOMPANIMENT. Muffled clash, respectful clatter, and subdued laughter.—M. F. H. I know a man who would have given you anything for that chestnut.—MYSELF. Yes? Well, it's too late now. I sold him very well.—BUTLER (over right shoulder). Sherry, sir?—MYSELF. Thanks.—LADY SALTEITH (to me). Not a good complexion, has she?—MYSELF (shouting). I can't agree with you, Lady Salteith.—LADY SALTEITH. Yes, as you say, wants colour.—MYSELF (to myself). It's no use; (to servant, protruding grouse over left shoulder) If you please.—LORD SNEYD (to Miss Crawcour). What are you going to do to-morrow morning, Miss Crawcour? Will you try that air from the Prophète with me again?—MISS CRAWCOUR. In the morning I am going out riding, Lord Sneyd.—LORD SNEYD. Dear me. You are always riding. I hate riding, it shakes one so. Well, in the afternoon, then, after luncheon?—MISS CRAWCOUR (icily). After luncheon I shall be quite ready.—MYSELF (to myself, being inclined for meditation). That girl speaks with the air of a martyr. If I had been Lord Sneyd—(to servant, protruding Charlotte-Russe over left shoulder) No—(to myself) I would have made an effort to accompany myself in that air from the Prophète, or have sought a more willing coadjutor; (to servant, protruding jelly over left shoulder) No, thank you.—GENERAL ACCOMPANIMENT. Muffled clash, respectful clatter, buzzing, and subdued laughter.—M. F. H. (to a neighbour). We've begun the cub-hunting now regularly. My huntsman tells me there are a good many foxes this year.—NEIGHBOUR (another fox-hunter, indistinctly reported by the instrument). Glad—hear it —good f. country—plenty—cover.—LADY SALTEITH (to me). Do you ever see my nephew now?—MYSELF. What, Harry Rushout? Oh yes, sometimes.—LADY SALTEITH (to her neighbour on the other side). My nephew is the wildest young man about town. The other day he got brought up before the magistrate and——LORD SNEYD (to Miss Crawcour). Lady Salteith is not always so fortunate as she might be in the subjects she chooses for conversation.—MISS CRAWCOUR. Poor thing. She belongs to a different time. But she's very good, really.—LORD SNEYD. I wonder she comes out, so deaf as she is. She ought to stop at home.—MISS CRAWCOUR. I like Lady Salteith exceedingly, and am always glad to be staying in the house with her.—MYSELF. That's right.—GENERAL ACCOMPANIMENT. Clash—clatter.

Enough! Down goes the slide. The instrument is shut up. There is the result of the operation.

When that long "banquet scene" was at an end, and the ladies left the room, I found myself, by the retirement of old Lady Salteith, next my hearty straightforward manly friend Jack Fortescue, with whom I had already exchanged a nod behind the old lady's back. I was very glad to see him. We talked about all sorts of things; and presently got upon the subject which had been occupying me so much during dinner. I was rather anxious, I must own, to lead to it, having heard a rumour somewhere or other, that my friend Jack himself was smitten with Miss Crawcour. I don't know when I had heard it, or where. Those things seem in some societies to circulate in the air.

To my surprise, I found Fortescue very uncommunicative about this matter, and still more, to my wonder, I observed a tendency in him rather favourable to this match. He even sought to defend Lord Sneyd against my attacks.

"Oh, he's not such a bad fellow," he said, "when you come to know him. He's affected, you know, and pretends to be wonderfully refined, and to be a petit-maître, and all that, but he has his good points. We fellows who are always shooting, or fishing, or riding over stone dykes, are apt to undervalue a man of quieter tastes, and more sedentary pursuits. Sneyd goes in, you know, for being a sort of artist. By-the-by—talking of artists—did you see that portrait of the duchess in the Academy this year—wasn't it good?"

I saw that my friend wanted to get away from the subject, so of course I did not attempt to pursue it. I was not enlightened by anything that occurred in the drawing-room after dinner. Miss Crawcour and Fortescue hardly exchanged a dozen words, and Lord Sneyd was in attendance upon the young lady throughout the evening. In the smoking-room afterwards, Lord Sneyd refused cigars, and smoked some infernal perfumed composition out of a hookah. Heaven knows what it was. Opium, perhaps? Nothing wholesome, I'll warrant.

II

It was on the day succeeding that of my arrival at Creel, that I sought the billiard-room, the usual refuge of the unemployed. I had remained at home that morning, having some letters to write and other things to do in my own room. These finished, I had still half an hour or more on my hands before luncheon, so I thought I would wend my way to the billiard-room. If I found any one to play with, so much the better. If not, I would practise difficult cannons for half an hour or so, and in that way get through the time.

Two people were in the room. A gentleman and a lady. Jack Fortescue and Miss Crawcour. They were standing together at the further end of the table. Both had cues in their hands, and the balls were on the board, but at the moment of my entrance they were certainly not playing. Miss Crawcour's back was to the light, but a glance showed me beyond a shadow of doubt that she had been crying—was crying, even, when I entered the room.

What was I to do? Fortescue was my friend. The room was public to everybody in the castle. If I retired, it would be a marked act, showing that I felt I had interrupted some scene which did not require witnesses.

"Are you having a game, or only practising?" I said to Fortescue, merely to break the awkward silence.

"Oh, it's a game," he answered, making a great effort, but not speaking then in his proper voice. "And it's my stroke. Look," he said to me quickly, "is that cannon possible?" and he made it almost as he spoke. Two or three more followed. Then a hazard. At last a bad shot, and it was time for Miss Crawcour.

She came to her place at the table, and made a violent effort to collect herself. I did not look at her, but pretended to be absorbed in marking Fortescue's score. I heard her cue strike the ball in an uncertain way. There was no subsequent sound indicating the contact of her ball with one of the others. It was a miss. The moment she had made it, she placed her cue against the wall, and saying something indistinctly about not being able to play, and about my finishing the game instead of her, left the billiard-room, closing the door after her.

As soon as she was gone, Fortescue came up to where I stood.

"After what you've seen," he said, "it's no use my attempting to make a secret of what has been going on between Miss Crawcour and myself."

"My dear Fortescue, I have no wish to force myself on your confidence. What I have seen, can be for ever as if I had not seen it, if you wish it. You know that."

"No, no, I don't wish it," he answered quickly. "But come outside with me for half a minute. We can't talk here."

Out in the open air, the rooks cawing about the tree-tops as their nests waved to and fro in the wind, he spoke again, as we lay on the grass.

"I dare say you have heard my name and Miss Crawcour's spoken of together?—You have. I don't know what right any one has had to talk about either of us. However, that can't be helped." He paused, and did not seem able to go on.

"I hate speaking of things of this sort," he continued, after a moment, and in an impatient tone, "one's words sound like words in a valentine or a trashy novel. Well—it can't be helped. I love this girl, Mary Crawcour. I would do anything for her."

"And yet you could speak yesterday about her marrying that man Sneyd."

"You were not then in my confidence. To the world I must seem to favour that marriage. I am pledged to do so."

"Pledged? To whom?"

"To the duchess."

"My dear Fortescue, how, in Heaven's name, could you enter into so rash an engagement?"

"How? How could I do otherwise, you mean? You know my position. I have two hundred a year and my pay. Can I marry that girl, accustomed to the life she is accustomed to, on that? Have I a right to fetter her with a long engagement, on the remote possibility of my becoming possessed of property between which and myself there are half a dozen lives? Have I a right to stand in the way of such a marriage as that with Sneyd? What could I say when the duchess put these questions to me?"

"Do you believe that Miss Crawcour would be happy in such a marriage?"

"I don't know," answered Fortescue, almost desperately. "I have seen such misery come from poverty in married life."

"Depend on it," I answered, "it is not the worst evil, by many, many degrees. Fortescue," I continued, after a moment's pause, "does Miss Crawcour love you?"

"I think so," he said, speaking in a low voice.

"Then depend on it you are doing wrong. You are acting as you think rightly, and with a great and noble self-denial. But you are mistaken, cruelly, terribly mistaken, if you have pledged yourself to favour this match with Sneyd and to give up your own hold on that young lady's love."

"I am pledged," Fortescue answered.

"To what?"

"To do nothing that is calculated to hinder the marriage with Sneyd, and not to press my own suit by word or deed for a period of five years—by which time, of course, all chance will be over."

"And this was what you were telling Miss Crawcour just now?"

"Something of it. She followed me to the billiard-room. She seems desperate, reckless. She swears she will not have him. I entreated her to leave me—you saw the rest."

I said, after a moment's pause, "The conduct of the duchess surprises me in this thing, I own. She has such good points, I know. She is kind-hearted—hospitable——"

"Yes, she is all that," said Fortescue, interrupting me, "but she is touched by the world like everybody else. Why, you don't know what the notions of these people are. The things that are necessaries of life to them—real necessaries of life—require a fortune to provide them. To a woman like the duchess, the existence which such means as mine imply, seems what the workhouse or absolute starvation appears to you. When the duchess puts the case so to me, I tell you, I am speechless."

"Fortescue," I said, after a long silence. "These things being so, and this most rash and miserable pledge being given—what do you do here?"

"I go to-morrow."

"Have you told Miss Crawcour that?"

"No, I have told no one. I mean to tell no one. When the party goes out riding tomorrow morning, I shall excuse myself, and—and leave this place, most likely for ever. There is a row in India I hear—perhaps I shall get rid of my life there. It's at anybody's service."

Again there was a pause. I knew what that careless tone meant, and for a time I could not speak.

"Fortescue," I said at last, "I have one more thing to ask. Has Sneyd spoken yet?"

"No," answered my friend, rising to lead the way to the house; "but he is certain to do so to-day—or to-morrow."

III

That afternoon, a party, of which Fortescue and I formed two, went out cover-shooting in the neighbourhood. I never saw my friend shoot so ill. Indeed, the poor fellow seemed entirely bewildered, and unfit for anything. I think he only joined the party to get away from the house.

Miss Crawcour did not appear at dinner. She was suffering from a headache, the duchess said, and preferred remaining in her room. Lord Sneyd professed as much interest as would comport with his languid manner. I could see in Fortescue's face, carefully as he had drilled it, how much he suffered additionally at not spending this, his last evening, in Miss Crawcour's society.

The next day came, and I was again prevented, by certain literary labours to which I was obliged to devote myself, from going out in the early part of the day. I spent the morning in my room, which was situated in one of the round towers which flanked the entrance of the castle, one on each side.

About half-past eleven I heard the voices of some of the men who were staying in the castle, as they lounged about the door, gossiping and talking. Soon after, I heard the clatter of horses' hoofs in the distance, and soon the same sound accompanied by the scattering of gravel, and the "Wo, mare!" and "Steady, horse!" of the grooms.

I looked out from behind my curtains; I am always very easily diverted from my work. The riding party was all assembled. Three or four men; among them, for a wonder, Lord Sneyd. He had his own horse, a nasty long-tailed white brute, that cost, I dare say, a mint of money, and that no man worth twopence would get across. The duchess and Miss Crawcour were the ladies of the party. The duke came to the door to see them off. He was not going with them, having all sorts of things to arrange with that important minister the gamekeeper.

"Where's Fortescue?" said some one.

"Oh, he's not going this morning," the duke answered. "He is writing letters." He was helping Miss Crawcour into the saddle as he spoke. It may have been the exertion of mounting, or it may not, but I could see that she blushed deeply.

I did not like the look of the animal on which Miss Crawcour was mounted. As far as beauty went, certainly there was nothing to complain of. A handsomer mare I never saw. But the movements of the ears were too incessant and violent, and there was more white to the eye shown than I like to see in connexion with a riding-habit. The mare had been difficult to hold while Miss Crawcour was being lifted on, and, now that the young lady was fairly on the brute's back, it became exceedingly restive, almost unmanageable.

"Are you afraid of her at all, Mary?" the duke asked, as he stood at the door; "she seems unusually frisky this morning."

"No, not in the least. She's always like this at starting."

This was Miss Crawcour's answer, but I thought she looked pale. Perhaps it was the reaction after that blush I had noticed. The duke spoke again. This time to the head groom:

"Has that mare been exercised this morning, Roberts?"

The man hesitated just half a moment, and looked at the mare.

"Yes, your grace," he said, touching his hat.

"You're sure, Mary," the duchess said, "that you're not afraid? Do let them take her back and bring you another mount."

"Yes, yes, much better," added the duke. "Roberts, send that mare back, and saddle Robin Hood for Miss Crawcour."

"Beg your pardon, your grace, but the horse is in physic; he's not been very well for a day or two."

"Well, then, the brown mare, or Bullfinch, or——"

"No, no, no, no," Miss Crawcour called from the saddle. "I like this mare best of all. Let her go," she said to the groom who was holding the cursed brute's head. And off she cantered, the mare plunging and kicking.

"Really," said Lord Sneyd, with his foot in the stirrup, "Miss Crawcour ought not to be allowed to ride that ferocious animal. Can nobody stop her?"

"You ride after her, Sneyd," said the duke, smiling, "and try if you can't bring her back." Lord Sneyd was in the saddle by this time, and cantered off at a regular rocking-horse pace. His groom behind him on a thorough-bred.

That was the last I saw of the cavalcade. The duke retired immediately to the gun-room; and I went back to my writing-table, but I could not help feeling a certain sense of uneasiness, the look of that mare not being at all to my liking, and the manner of the groom having left an impression on my mind that the animal had not really been out before, that morning.

All the events of that day are very fresh in my memory. The next room to mine was a boudoir. There was a piano in it, and some one of the ladies of the party was playing on it. I don't know what she was playing, though I should recognise the air now in a moment if I heard it. It was what is called a "piece," and had a wonderful plaintive beauty about it. As the performer played it many times over, I suppose she was learning it.

I went on writing, and what I wrote seemed in a sort of way to be mixed up with this tune. Presently I heard the sound of wheels, and some light vehicle drove up to the door. I went again to the window. It was a dog-cart, driven by one of the duke's grooms, and it drew up before the door. Some servants brought out a portmanteau, some gun-cases, and other luggage, and placed them in the vehicle. Almost at the same moment my door opened, and Fortescue entered the room. I never saw anything more dreadful than the suppressed agony in his face.

"Good-by, old fellow," he said, with a miserable ghastly smile. "I'm off, you see. Will you take charge of this note for the duchess? I've explained to Greta that I find my letters this morning require my presence in London. Good-by! I've only just time to catch the train."

"Stay," I said; "where can I write to you?"

"London, to-morrow. After that, Chatham. Good-by again, dear old fellow, good-by!"

He was gone. In a minute more I saw the duke come with him to the door, and after shaking him warmly by the hand and pressing him to return whenever he possibly could, they parted, and the dog-cart disappeared rapidly, behind that angle of the castle round which I had seen Miss Crawcour pass so short a time before.

Poor fellow! what a departure. What an episode in the gay story of the life at Creel.

I went back to my desk. And still from the next room came that same plaintive air, and still it seemed to belong to what I wrote, and to be an inseparable part of the day and its events.

Once more I was disturbed, and by the clatter of hoofs. It was a single horse this time, and going evidently at a tremendous pace. I looked out and saw young Balham, who had been one of the party of equestrians, dashing along the road at full gallop. He turned off in the direction of the stables, and I saw no more of him. I remained where I was, but with a dim foreboding that something had gone wrong, and by-and-by a low open carriage, empty, was driven out of the stable-yard at a great pace. Lord Balham rode rapidly on in front of it, both he and the carriage going back by the way he had come.

I still kept where I was, and in a few moments the door of the house was opened, and some of the servants came out. They looked out in the direction by which the carriage had disappeared. One or two ladies'-maids stood on the steps, one of them the duchess's, and there was another who was crying, but quite quietly, the servants in such houses being drilled into the greatest un-demonstrativeness. I heard one of the men-servants say to another, "Roberts is gone off to Inverkeed, for Dr. Maclntyre, and James has gone into Creel for Mr. Cameron. They'll both be here quickly." "Is his grace in the house?" "No. He's up at the plantations. But he's been sent for."

The conversation among the men stopped suddenly. The carriage, driving now very slowly, had come in sight. It was followed by some horsemen. Presently I made out that two grooms behind were leading each a lady's horse; then I saw that the duchess was sitting in the carriage bending over and supporting; something—somebody—lying at length on the cushions. A gentleman, one of those on horseback, detached himself from the group, and rode swiftly up to the door.

"Is Miss Crawcour's maid here?" he asked.

The girl came forward, sobbing. The duchess's woman, older, with more head, more self-controlled, and more useful now, came out too.

Not a word more was spoken. The carriage drew up to the door, and I saw at a glance that it was Miss Crawcour over whom the duchess was bending; that the poor girl's habit was all torn and dirty; and that a handkerchief, deeply stained, was laid over her face.

There was no word spoken still. The duchess, in tears, descended from the carriage and went into the house to see that all was ready, while the gentlemen of the party lifted the poor maimed form of Miss Crawcour from the cushions. I noticed that Lord Sneyd did not assist in this, but hovered about the group in a helpless way. Nobody seemed to want him, or to notice him.

I remained still where I was. I knew I could be of no use, should only be in the way below. I could not help looking. I wish I had not. As they lifted Miss Crawcour from the carriage, the handkerchief that was over her face became displaced, and I saw——

One whole side of her face seemed to have been crushed and beaten in. That beautiful face!

It was covered again, in a moment, but I had seen it—and so had some one else. When Lord Sneyd looked upon that mutilated face, he turned even paler than he had been before, and went into the house.

The door closed over the sad group, with Mary Crawcour's helpless figure carried in the midst of it, the carriage drove away to the stables, and all was quiet again.

"And he did it, think of that," said Balham. "It was that disgusting white brute of his to whom this terrible mishap is owing."

"What do you mean?" I asked, as we were talking some time afterwards about what has been partly described above. "How did the thing happen? You saw it all."

"It is told in two words," said Balham. "You know that mare that poor Miss Crawcour used to ride. Well, she was always an unsafe, ill-conditioned mare, in my opinion, but on this occasion she was particularly bad. All the time we were out she was fidgeting and starting at everything, and more than one of us wanted Miss Crawcour to let the groom put her saddle on one of the other horses, and let some man with a stronger hand ride the mare. However, it was no use, and so at last—I never saw a worse thing—the mare took fright at some barrow, or something by the side of the hedge, and bolted straight across the road at a bound. Miss Crawcour was thrown, but fell clean, luckily without becoming entangled with the stirrup, and might have escaped serious mischief, when up comes that intolerable ass Sneyd, on his infernal ambling Astley's-looking beast, and rides clean over her, the brute of a horse—ssh—I can't bear to think of it—sending one of his hoofs straight into her face as he passed."

"And her arm is broken, too, is it not?"

"Yes, I believe so. That may, however, have happened when she fell; but the other thing, that fearful mutilation of the poor young lady's face, was done by a kick from that horse of Sneyd's, and by nothing else in the world. I saw it with my own eyes."

CHAPTER V

HIS WRITING-DESK

Charles Allston Collins

THE REST OF THIS MANUSCRIPT HE HAD PUT INTO

HIS WRITING-DESK

Some years after these things had happened, I stood on the summit of one of those mighty mountains which form a boundary line, such as few countries can boast of, between Switzerland and Italy.

It was evening, and I was gazing with all my eyes into that strange receptacle for the dead, which the monks of St. Bernard have placed at the door of their convent, and where the bodies of those unfortunates who have perished in the snow are preserved. They are embalmed by the highly rarefied air of that height, and do not decay. The Egyptian mummies are not more perfectly kept.

I was so absorbed in these strange figures, that I scarcely noticed there was any one standing beside me, until I suddenly heard my own name pronounced by a voice familiar to me. I turned and found myself face to face with Jack Fortescue.

"Well," he said, almost before we had exchanged greetings, "this is the most extraordinary thing, the most marvellous combination of coincidences, that ever took place since the creation of the world! Who do you think is in there?" pointing to the convent.

"Who?" I asked. "In Heaven's name, who?"

"In the strangers' parlour, there, you will find, at this moment, your old acquaintance Lord Sneyd—and, what is more, a new acquaintance, if you choose to make it, in the shape of that nobleman's illustrious consort."

"What, the Irish-Italian singer, who, as I saw by Galignani, had managed to become Lady Sneyd?"

" The same."

"And your wife—where is she?"

"Mary is with me. Is it not extraordinary, incredible almost, that we should all be under the same roof again? Do you remember the last time?"

"Remember it? Shall I ever forget it! "

"Of course," Fortescue went on, "I can't let her come in contact with those people, so she keeps her room, or rather her cell. It is awfully cold, but anything is better than such a meeting."

"But you will let me see her?"

"You. Why, of course," Fortescue answered. " How can you ask?"

"I will ask something else, then," I continued. "I will ask you to tell me some of the particulars of what took place after I left Creel, and went abroad. My letters from England and the papers told me, to my great delight, of your marriage with Miss Crawcour, and also of Lord Sneyd's wonderful match. But I want to know more than these bare facts."

"There is really not much to tell," said Fortescue. " When I got your letter telling me of that terrible disaster at Creel, I was at Chatham, and was, in fact, just negotiating for an exchange into a regiment that was going abroad at once. Your letter altered all my plans. Do what I would, the thought of that poor maimed figure haunted me, the love which I resisted when she was in the full pride and glory of her beauty, became now that pity was mixed up with it, now that this fearful trouble had come upon her, a thing that I could no longer hold out against. I felt that I must go back to Creel. And I went.

"When I got there, I found that that infernal brute and scoundrel, Sneyd, had left the place. Very soon after the accident—you know that he had never actually spoken to the duke about Mary, or said anything definite to her—well, very soon after the accident, he discovered that it was actually necessary that he should pay a visit to some estates of his in Ireland. He left the castle, to come back there no more. He went first of all to Ireland, and then was absent on the Continent for a considerable length of time. There was an end of him. At Naples, he became entangled in the snares of a regular designing adventuress, and out of those snares he has never escaped. I wish him joy.

"Well, I stayed on and on at Creel. It was a quiet delightful time. After the accident everybody left, but Greta—he and I, you know, were always great friends—the duke pressed me to stay that he might have somebody to shoot with, and I stayed on, and on.

"At that time, too, I saw more of the duchess than I had ever done before, and one day we began talking about the accident and about Sneyd's behaviour, and I ventured to say that I thought that if Mary had broken every bone in her skin, she would still have had reason to congratulate herself on being thereby delivered from a marriage with the wretched creature that he had proved himself to be. The duchess did not differ from me, and somehow from that day a strange kind of hope and happiness seemed to take possession of me, a curious indefinite delight such as I had never felt before.

"At length a day came when I was allowed to see her. And when I went into the room"—at this point Fortescue's voice faltered a little—"when I saw her poor arm bound up, and half her sweet face covered with bandages—I knelt down by the side of the sofa, and, in short, I made a fool of myself. The duchess was present, but she was fairly beat, and——Well, very soon I was discussing ways and means with the duke.

"There never was anything like that man's kindness. Besides making Mary a very handsome present indeed, which he declared he had always intended to do, he set himself to work to get me such an appointment as should make it possible for me to marry. Between him and the duchess (whose interest is not small) this has been effected, so I waited till I got my company—I am Captain Fortescue now, if you please—and then sold my commission, and with my own small means, and my place in the Shot and Shell Department, we manage to get on in a very inexplicable but delightful way."

"And the privations which were to make your wife so wretched?" I asked, as I shook him warmly by the hand.

"Looked much worse at a distance than they do close," said my friend. "I do think, sincerely," he continued, " that an imprudent marriage ought to be made every now and then, if it is only to bring out the immense amount of real kindness that there is in the world. I am perfectly sure that if two married people, however poor they may be, will only put a good face upon it, and neither sink down into gloomy despair on the one hand, nor shut themselves up in a haughty reserve on the other—I am perfectly sure, I say, that there is so much real goodness in the world, that they need never know that they are poorer than other people, or suffer any of those humiliations, the dread of which has kept many true and loving hearts asunder. But come," said Fortescue, "I am getting poetical. Let us go inside, and see how Lord and Lady Sneyd are getting on. He'll take no notice of either of us, you'll see."

Fortescue left me for a time to go and see after his wife, and I went up into the strangers' room. There was a good large company assembled, waiting for the supper hour, English tourists, German students, and some French officers—among them, sure enough, sitting next to a very showy and over-dressed lady with jewellery all over her, with a very strong soupçon of paint upon her countenance, with a long curl brought over her left shoulder—there was Lord Sneyd.

A changed man already. Feeble and effeminate he was still, but he had ceased to be the insolent languid petit-maître and coxcomb he was when I had last seen him. He was lowered in tone. His whole faculties seemed to be entirely absorbed in attention on his better-half, off whom he never took his eyes.

"I hear," said Fortescue to me, as he took his place by my side at the supper-table, "that he is intensely jealous of her, and leads, in consequence, the most miserable life imaginable. Look how he is watching, now that that French officer is speaking to her. The man is only offering her some potatoes, but Sneyd looks as if he would like—if he had courage enough—to put his knife into him."

It was true. A more pitiable and contemptible sight I never witnessed than this man's jealousy. It extended itself to the French officers opposite, to the young English undergraduate who sat next to the lady, and even to the good-looking young monk who—a perfect man of the world, and a very agreeable fellow—took the head of the supper-table. I must say that Lady Sneyd's appearance was not calculated to quiet her lord and master's discomfort. A more liberal use of a pair of fine rolling black eyes I never saw made. Not long after supper this worthy pair retired, not the slightest attempt at recognition of either Fortescue or myself being made on the part of this distinguished nobleman. Perhaps he was of opinion that our fascinations would be dangerous with his amiable consort. Perhaps he felt a little ashamed of himself.

As soon as those two were gone, or at least after a reasonable interval, Fortescue addressed himself to the young monk who played the part of host, and remarked that he would go up stairs, and, if his wife were somewhat recovered from her fatigues, would persuade her to come down and get thoroughly warmed at the fire before retiring for the night.

Our host, with that interest in other people's affairs which foreigners either feel to so delightful an extent, or assume so admirably, expressed his earnest hope that "Madame would be able to descend," and Fortescue left the apartment.

I own that at this moment I felt somewhat nervous.

In a short time the door opened, and Fortescue appeared with his wife on his arm. She came up to me at once, and we shook hands cordially, while I spoke such words of congratulation as I had ready, which were, in truth, not very many. At one glance I saw that at all events the expression of her face was safe, A great matter that, at any rate.

The injury which she had sustained being from a kick, and not from a fall or dragging along on theground,was confined entirely to one portion (the left side) of her face. That that injury had been a terrible one it was impossible not to see even now. The brow immediately over the eye was scarred, and the eye-brow something interrupted in its even sweep; the cheek was scarred and indented, and there was a slight scar on the nostril, all on this same left side; but the eye, sheltered in its somewhat sunken recess, had escaped; the mouth was unhurt, and, above all, there was the expression, the general look, of which the attractiveness had been so great. That fearful injury which I had looked down on from the turret-window at Creel had left much less damage behind than one could even have hoped.

We talked pleasantly, all three together—the rest of the company having retired, and our host too—for nearly an hour. We talked of our travels, of the places to which they were bound and from which I was returning, and of a hundred other things, until the hour admonished us that it was time to part for the night.

As we rose to say "Good night"—my friend and his wife standing up together—I thought I had never seen a happier or a better-matched couple. Suddenly a thought seemed to strike her. She touched her wounded cheek slightly with her hand.

"Would you have known me?" she asked, smiling.

"No one can tell," said Fortescue, interrupting my ready answer, "how I love that precious scar"—he leaned down and touched it with his lips. "But for that, we might not be together now. But for that, your life, Mary, might have been one of misery unutterable, and mine—if not sacrificed on the plains of India—might have been as utter a blank as that of any one of those unknown men who have entertained us here to-night."

CHAPTER VI

HIS DRESSING-CASE

Arthur Locker

The passengers on board the good ship Golden Dream, homeward bound from Melbourne, were beginning to get rather weary and tired of their trip. We were only in the fourth week of the voyage; but the month was July, the days were short, gloomy, and stormy; and the sea was covered with those mountainous waves which are to be seen in perfection off Cape Horn. The stout ship went struggling along within six points of a fierce north-easterly gale, quivering like a living creature, as the remorseless waves struck her blow after blow. On the log being hove, we found that we were making barely two knots an hour; and to add to our perplexity, a sudden chill in the air, and a peculiar white glare in the horizon, informed us that we were surrounded with icebergs. Before nightfall the violence of the gale had somewhat abated, and the passengers hurried on deck to look at the first iceberg, which was within half a mile of us. It was a sight worth seeing. We beheld an enormous mass of rock-like ice, with a perpendicular wall facing us, fully three hundred feet high, against the steep sides of which the waves dashed incessantly. The colour of the iceberg was a brilliant pellucid white, except in the deep fissures and interstices where the hue was changed to cobalt, or on the summits of the precipices, which glowed in the rays of the setting sun with all the prismatic tints of the rainbow.

"Eh! man!" exclaimed an enthusiastic Scotchman. "'Tis joost Edinburgh Castle to the life! "

"What a fortune a fellow could make among the Melbourne confectioners, if he could only tow it into Port Phillip during the hot weather," remarked a prosaic colonist.

"Well, it's a pretty sight," said an old lady, "a very pretty sight! But I wish they'd all sink to the bottom at night, and come up again in the morning."

"It would be very convenient, indeed, ma'am," answered the third mate. "It would save our eyes to-night considerably, for we shall have to keep a bright look-out."

We passed a very gloomy evening. The wind had almost fallen to a calm, while the sea continued to run extremely high, causing the ship to roll terribly. Everything that was not securely fixed, was flying about the cabin, the destruction of crockery was appalling, and the steward passed the interval between supper and bedtime in a state of despair, chasing cups, saucers, and bottles. Even the four passengers who clung to whist every evening with a devotion befitting the renowned Sarah Battle, were forced to give up their game. Even chess, though played on a board provided with spring fastenings, was found impracticable. The chess-board sprang up bodily, pieces and all, made a somersault in the air, darted into the cabin of a married couple who were putting their baby to bed, extinguished their candle-lamp, and frightened their cockatoo into hysterics.

For myself, I went on deck, and there, sheltered by the penthouse which overhung the main-deck at the extremity of the poop, endeavoured to solace myself with a pipe. I was very glad to hear a voice out of the pitchy darkness saying,

"Nasty thick night, sir."

It was Tom White, an able seaman, and one of the greatest growlers on board.

"What do you think of the weather, Tom?" I asked him.

"'Bout as bad as it can be. If it had kept on to blow, it might have took us through all this here ice; but now it's fallen calm, the bergs will gather round the ship, just as the bits of stick in a pond get round a dead cat. Ah! Once let me set foot ashore, and you'll never catch me round the Horn again."

Poor Tom! I dare say he had uttered this declaration five hundred times before, and had always forgotten it when signing articles at the shipping-office.

"I hope they're keeping a bright look-out forward, Tom?"

"A bright look-out! How can they? Why, the night's as thick as a tub of Dutch butter. Then it ain't these big lumps as I'm afeard of. If the look-outs ain't asleep, or yarning, they might chance to see them. What I funk, is the nasty little sneaking bits of ground-ice, about the size of a ship's longboat."

"Surely they would not injure a stout ship like this, Tom?"

"Stout ship? Ha, ha! Why, this is a soft-wood ship—a regular New Brunswicker. She'd have no more chance again the ice, than a chancy cup again a soup-and-bully tin; and then, with all this here copper ore in her inside, down she'd go—and you along with her."

"And you too, Tom."

"Well, I don't know about that. Sailors ain't like passengers. There's the boats to cut adrift. Besides, I'm on deck, and you'd be below, smothered like a rat in his hole."

With a series of parting growls Tom White disappeared in the darkness, leaving me in a very uncomfortable frame of mind. I was half inclined at first to stay on deck all night, but eventually determined to go below, and seek oblivion from danger in sleep.

I envied my cabin companion, the fat German, Schlafenwohl. He lay in profound slumber, while his nose trumpeted defiance to the creaking of the timbers and the dashing of the waves. Taking advantage of a favourable lurch, I clambered up to my berth, which was over the German's head. I tried to think of everything I could recal to my memory, unconnected with ship-life, but the horrible snoring of my companion and the lurches of the ship, destroyed all prospect of repose. I repeated verses from the most soporific poets I could remember. I counted numbers, and got up as far as six hundred and fifty-four, when suddenly the ship rolled more frightfully than she had done yet. I felt that she was heeling completely over, and that the main-yard must be dipping in the waves. A fearful crashing of plates and dishes was succeeded by the still more terrible sound of rushing water. I opened my eyes, which I had until now kept obstinately closed. To my horror I discovered that the port-hole, instead of being at my side, was directly above my head. I unscrewed the port and thrust my head out. I was appalled by what I beheld. The ship was on her beam-ends, and her masts were disappearing beneath the angry sea. There was no time to be lost. Fortunately I had turned in in my day clothes, boots excepted, so I climbed through the port-hole, which barely permitted the passage of my body, and lay clinging to the wet slippery side of the vessel. A thought struck me. Shall I waken Schlafenwohl? No; I might lose my own life in endeavouring to save his. His ample figure could never pass the narrow port-hole. It is astonishing how selfish men are apt to become at such times. I murmured, "Requiescat in pace," and gazed around me once more.

The vessel was sinking rapidly. Her masts were now entirely under water, and only a few feet of her weather yardarm were visible. I heard a horrible grinding noise. Peering through the darkness, I beheld an immense iceberg crashing against the ship's side. I summoned all my energies, took a tremendous leap, and fell into a small cavity filled with freshly-fallen snow. As soon as I recovered my feet I looked once more around. The Golden Dream had disappeared, and nothing was visible save a few dark objects floating on the surface of the water.

I determined to secure one of these objects. "Possibly," I thought, "the harness-casks on deck have broken adrift. They are filled with beef and pork, and the contents of one of them would support life for months." I descended cautiously through the thick darkness, to a ledge which abutted directly on the water. The spray of the breakers was dashing in my face, and I trembled lest the frail piece of ice on which I stood, should give way beneath my feet and precipitate me into the briny abyss. I stretched out my hand—it was instantly grasped by another hand! I drew back in horror, and the force of my retrograde movement was such that I pulled the person who had clutched my hand completely out of the water.

As soon as I had deposited the unknown individual in a place of comparative safety, I demanded his name. The figure drew a long breath, and replied, "Julius Schlafenwohl."

I staggered back in astonishment, and exclaimed, "Why, good Heaven, how came you here?"

" Very easily, my friend. You see I am a good diver and schvimmer, and I took my time about it."

"Why, you've got a long rope tied round your body!"

"Pull hart upon it, and see vat you will bring op."

I hauled as he bade me, and presently landed on the iceberg, a large case.

"You see," continued the German, " I am never in a hurry. Ven de sheep turned over, I turned out of my bairt myself, and den I tink to myself, Julius, you vill vant etwas essen, so I filled dis box with prog, and schvam qvietly up the cabin stairs."

"My dear Schlafenwohl!" I exclaimed, embracing him, "how delighted I am to have been the means of saving your life!"

"Vell, I don't know about dat," responded the stolid German, dryly; "I could have saved myself. You see, my friend, the prog is just enough for vun—no more."

"My noble fellow! " I replied, "do not harbour such selfish thoughts. Remember, we are brothers in adversity, and should help each other."

"Vot can you help me to?" asked Schlafenwohl, with a touch of sarcasm.

I stammered, "I—I've nothing, but—yes! I have a pound of tobacco! I bought it of the steward to-day, and here it is, safe in the pocket where I put it."

" Ju—vivallera! " shouted the German, enthusiastically, "dat is just vot I have not got. Yes, my friend, we will swear brothership, and share our goods together."

"Agreed," I replied.

Schlafenwohl laid himself down with a pillow of snow for his head, and was presently snoring as tranquilly as if in his own beloved fatherland, with a federbett of the finest down to cover him. The peril of my position prevented me from sleeping. I sat down on a corner of icy rock, and took the liberty of resting my semi-frozen feet on Schlafenwohl's expansive body. I soon began to feel more comfortable. I lighted a pipe (my matches were fortunately in a waterproof case), and anxiously awaited the coming of daylight.

As I sat thus, I began to reflect on my hardness of heart. I had not bestowed a thought on the rest of the passengers, or on the crew, and yet they had probably all perished. But they had met with a sudden and speedy death, whereas I was doomed to a slow and lingering torture. Even supposing that we had a sufficiency of provisions, what prospect of rescue would remain when the last fragment of the iceberg should crumble away under the ceaseless action of the waves? Another and far greater probability was still more appalling. The durability of the iceberg would probably, far outlast our store of food. I strove to realise the dreadful situation. Two human beings floating at the caprice of the wind and waves, on a frail deceptive mass of crystallised water, glaring at one another with famine-stricken eyes. At length it would become necessary to cast lots, and decide which should slay the other. Horrible thought! I withdrew my feet hastily from the German's body, and sat, with my head bowed upon my knees, brooding. Exhausted nature yielded, and I fell asleep.

When I awoke, it was broad daylight. At first, I gazed around me with astonishment, as one usually does after sleeping in a strange place, and then proceeded to examine the iceberg. We had been reposing in a small valley, surrounded on every side but the one from which I had entered, by steep rocks of slippery ice, from sixty to eighty feet in height. We were thus completely sheltered from the piercing wind, while even the dash of the breakers was barely distinguishable. I advanced a few paces along the path of ingress, for the purpose of viewing the ocean, and there found Schlafenwohl ensconced in a corner, industriously combing out his flaxen beard, by the aid of a pocket mirror stuck in a crevice of the icy rocks. He was singing Kennst du das Land, and saluted me with cheerful calmness.

We breakfasted on a couple of sardines and half a biscuit, slaking our thirst at one of the numerous rills which trickled down the slowly melting rocks. There was something alarming in the idea of thus making a beverage of the house we lived in. Every gallon of water that welled away, represented some six cubic inches of our fragile habitation. .If this liquefaction took place in those high southern latitudes, with the temperature scarcely over forty degrees, how rapidly would our floating ark dissolve as we approached the line! If, on the other hand, we drifted antarctically, we ran the risk of being hopelessly frozen up, in regions far beyond the haunts of any human creature. These terrible reflections passed through my mind while I was manufacturing, with the assistance of a pocket-knife and the lid of a deal box, a pair of sandals to protect my feet from the chilling surface of the ice. This task completed, I proposed to Schlafenwohl that we should ascend the rocks for the purpose of further ascertaining the extent of the iceberg. He assented, and, after two hours' hard work, principally spent in cutting steps for our feet with our knives, we gained the summit.

The panorama was grand in the extreme. We were full three hundred feet above the surface of the sea, which extended in every direction around us, studded at intervals with icebergs of every imaginable shape and size. Our own island was about a mile in circumference, and presented a series of ridges and valleys, at irregular distances. We stood, as it were, in the centre of a gigantic star-fish, whose seven rays were represented by seven rocky backbones, between each of which lay a deep and sheltered valley. The wind blew with great violence at the exposed point where we stood, and, as I have not a remarkably steady head, I did not care to venture too near the edge of any one of the seven abysses below. But the German insisted on it.

"Mr. Monkhouse," said he "I vish you vould look over into our valley."

"Why?"

"I tink somebody, in our absence, may be plondering our prog-box."

" Nonsense!" I answered. " You talk as if you were on the top of the Righi."

"Vell, my friend, you vill oblige me by doing it. I am too stout to venture."

I crawled on my hands and knees until my face hung immediately over a perpendicular descent of three hundred feet. To my astonishment, I beheld two human figures actively engaged in examining the contents of our invaluable chest.

I reported progress to Schlafenwohl, who became frightfully agitated. He gave vent to sundry Teutonic imprecations, and descended the face of the cliff in the most reckless manner, reaching the bottom some seconds before myself.

When I arrived, I heard voices engaged in loud altercation.

"Vy, you Tom Vite, you are no better dan a tief. Dat is my box."

"That ain't your private bread," replied Tom, holding up a biscuit. "That's ship bread. Ain't it, Bill Atkins?"

"Aye," said Atkins. "Besides, you'd never go for to keep all this tucker to your own cheek. Why, there's a parcel of women and children in the next hollow to this, as has had no breakfast yet."

"What! More people saved?" I exclaimed.

"Of course there is," said Tom; "when the iceberg drifted alongside, me and Bill here stood on the bulwarks as the ship heeled over, and passed the passengers in as nicely as if we was off Blackwall Pier. There may be a lot more, for aught I know, in the t'other walleys. I've been busy navigating the ship."

"Navigating de sheep!" cried Schlafenwohl, "vot do you mean?"

"Why, I've got a pocket-compass here, and I've been heaving the log," said Tom. "We're steering nor'-east-and-by-north, and going thirteen knots. If this breeze lasts four-and-twenty hours, we shall go smack into the Falkland Islands."

"What has become of the skipper, Tom," I asked, "and of the other officers?"

"I don't know," answered Tom; "they may be aboard the berg, and they mayn't. Anyway, I'm the only able seaman in her that I know of, so I've took the command."

The adventures of the last few hours had altered Tom White considerably for the better. From a grumbling sulking discontented fellow, he had been transformed into a smart active energetic commander. I verily believe he looked upon the iceberg as an actual ship, and so—barring masts, sails, and rudder—she was.

"Now, Mr. Monkhouse," continued Tom, "you'll please take your orders from me. I can see you're a sharp chap, by the way you've made them ice-shoes and cut them steps in the rock-face. Go up to the mast-head, and see what you can make of the other valleys. The next one to this, I know all about; that's my head-quarters."

"Ay, ay, sir," I replied, in true nautical style, and once more clambered the rocks. I invited Schlafenwohl to accompany me, but he declined. On reaching "the mast-head," as Tom styled it, I selected a valley to which the descent was sloping and easy, the sides being deeply covered with snow. Down the surface of this, I glided quite comfortably, and in a few seconds reached the bottom.

At first no human being was visible, but on turning an angle of the cliff, I beheld a singular sight.

Mrs. Robinson, the old lady, who on the previous evening had wished that the icebergs would all sink to the bottom in the night-time, and only come up by daylight, was seated crouching on the ground in a state of the utmost terror, holding a large green umbrella over her head. Close beside her, reposed an enormous walrus, at least twelve feet long, blinking sleepily at the frightened dame, and looking as little inclined for mischief as a domestic cat on a hearth-rug. Laying my finger on my lips to enjoin silence, I fastened a rope (which I had brought with me) round Mrs. Robinson's waist, and then proceeded to toil up the slope. I should never have reached the top with her dead weight behind me, but for the umbrella, which I used as an alpenstock. On gaining the summit, Mrs. Robinson vowed that she could never go down "them slippery steps," so, aided by Bill Atkins, to whom I made signals for assistance, we lowered her safely by a long cable into the women and children's valley.

"Mr. Monkhouse," said Bill, "we must have that walrus. Even if we can't eat his flesh, we can make a roaring bonfire of his blubber, and the poor women and children are perishing with cold."

"Ay, ay, sir."

So, up three or four of us climbed again, armed with knives and cask-staves. We reached the summit and descended into the valley safely. The walrus was seated as placidly as before. He seemed to be making a journey northward to visit some of his Falkland Island acquaintance, and to look upon the iceberg as an admirable species of public conveyance—cheap, swift, and comfortable. He was, however, apparently fonder of the society of ladies than of gentlemen. As soon as he saw us approach, flourishing our weapons, he turned over on his side and quietly rolled into the sea. Our party, chagrined at the cool manner in which he had given us the slip, returned slowly and disconsolately, communicating the result of our proceedings to Tom White.

"Never mind the walrus, boys," said that energetic commander, who was in high spirits. "She's going fifteen knots, if she's going an inch. Mr. Monkhouse," he continued, in a whisper, "you ain't seen the skipper?"

"No, there are no signs of him."

"Well, if he was aboard, I'd guarantee to bring him in safe. And he couldn't do better nor what I'm doing now."

What Tom White was doing to assist our progress, it would be hard to say; though he himself firmly believed that everything depended on his exertions.

Evening was coming on. "Mr. Monkhouse," said Tom, "you're the best hand I've got aboard the ship. How do you feel about the legs?"

"Rather stiff."

"Bill Atkins," said Tom, "serve out a tot of grog to Mr. Monkhouse. It's very precious liquor, for we've only one bottle aboard; but he deserves a drop."

I swallowed the proffered refreshment, when Tom said:

"Now, I want you to go aloft again, to look out for land."

"Ay, ay, sir," I replied, cheerfully, and clambered up like a chamois.

"Land ho!" I called. My distance from Tom was upwards of three hundred feet; but ice must be an excellent conductor of sound, for I could hear Tom's answer quite distinctly, above the whistling of the wind, and the roaring of the waves.

"Where away?"

"On the weather bow, sir."

"All right. Stop aloft, and say what it looks like as we get nearer."

A furious gale was now blowing from sou'-sou'-west, and I was obliged to crouch on my hands and knees, to avoid being hurled into one of the chasms beneath. Our gallant iceberg churned through the dark water at railroad speed, leaving a long white track of foam, miles astern. My fear now was, that, at the rate we were going—which could be little short of twenty miles an hour—we should be dashed on the rocks. To my great joy, as we neared the land, I perceived an extensive opening in the cliffs. I described it as accurately as I could, to the watchful commander below. He presently came aloft, and stood at my side.

"Port Stephen's!" he exclaimed, "by all that's merciful! It lies in the sou'-west corner of the main island. Now comes the ticklish time. If we touch the rocks on either side, we shall be knocked to splinters."

The excitement on board the iceberg was intense. I will not attempt to describe it. Just as night fell, we entered the harbour. Had our gallant craft been steered by the most skilful helmsman in the British Navy she could not have kept a better course. Tom White rubbed his hands with delight, and appropriated all the honour and glory to himself. As soon as we were fairly inside the harbour, and under the shelter of the cliffs, the force of the wind abated. Fortunately, too, there was a strong current setting out of the harbour, right in the teeth of the wind. We hove the log, and found she was going five knots; we hove it again, a few minutes later, and she was barely making two knots; in a quarter of an hour from that time, a low grinding noise was heard, and we grounded on an extensive sand-bank in the centre of the harbour. We were obliged to remain there patiently during the night, as we had no means of communicating, by signal or otherwise, with the shore. We had matches, but the whole of our available fuel amounted to a deal board or two, and so small a fire would, probably, have attracted no observation. We passed a nervous miserable night, and the poor women and children especially. As the iceberg grated backwards and forwards on the top of the bank, we feared she was going to pieces: but her timbers (to speak metaphorically) were well put together, and she held out bravely until morning.

Never in my life did I feel so glad to see the day dawn. We were unspeakably delighted at about sunrise to observe several boats putting out from the settlement. The people in them had put off (it seemed when they came alongside) from motives of curiosity to visit the iceberg, but were perfectly astonished at finding her freighted with passengers.

The official in charge of the boats said, " We must observe some discipline in getting the people on board, or we shall have the boats swamped. Where is the captain?"

"I am the captain," quoth Tom White, boldly.

"Then, sir, perhaps you will have the kindness to arrange your people in detachments."

Tom bustled about with great pomp, looking fully two inches taller after having been called "Sir," and having been addressed so politely by the government officer.

By this time more boats had arrived from shore, and the scanty population of the port were to be seen running to and fro like ants whose nest had been disturbed.

"Are these all your crew and passengers, captain?" asked the governor of the island, as he stepped aboard the iceberg.

"Hall, your worship," answered Tom, apparently with some indistinct impressions of veneration, derived from the Thames Police Court; "the others," he continued solemnly, " has met a watery grave."

"Beg your pardon, sir," said a boatman, touching his cap to Tom White, "but there's a lot more people, t'other side the berg."

A rush of boats immediately gave way with a will to the spot indicated, and presently returned, bringing off the captain, chief mate, second mate, third mate, boatswain, doctor, steersman, and midshipmen. Being in the after-part of the ship when the catastrophe occurred, they had all leapt on board the iceberg together. And it seemed that we had searched six valleys, but had omitted to examine the seventh.

Poor Tom White! I believe he was a kind-hearted fellow, and well pleased to find that not a single life-had been sacrificed on board the Golden Dream; and yet I am sure he was sorry to see the captain again. He spoke not a word on his way to the shore, but hung down his head, and looked much depressed. In the evening, however, under the influence of a liberal libation of grog from His Excellency the Governor, he recovered his spirits, and described his manner of navigating the iceberg into port, in terms which I think no Falkland Islander will ever forget. As for the iceberg, I understand that she remained for many months grounded on the sand-bank; at length, under the influence of numerous storms of rain, the ceaseless dashing of the waters, and the warmth of the chilly southern summer, she crumbled to pieces, and disappeared.

We were all placed on board a Calfornian trader bound for New York. Here, I parted from Schlafenwohl, who had determined to settle in the United States. There was some slight coolness between us. I had positively declined to share the same cabin with him, on account of his snoring, and the worthy German was offended. Consequently, I proceeded to Liverpool by the Cunard steamer from Boston, alone. On reaching London, I at once forwarded a written statement of our extraordinary escape to the Committee at Lloyd's. It was authenticated by Tom White's mark; as he, like many other great men, was unable to read or write. A few days afterwards, I received a requisition to attend before the Committee of Lloyd's, which I at once obeyed, when the following conversation ensued between myself and the Chairman:

"Pray, Mr. Monkhouse, is your family of German origin?"

"No, sir; we have been settled for centuries in East Kent."

"Oh, I beg your pardon; I thought the name of Monkhouse might have been a corruption of the name of a certain Baron, whose extraordinary adventures have long been known to the public."

CHAPTER VII

HIS BROWN-PAPER PARCEL

Charles Dickens

My works are well known. I am a young man in the Art line. You have seen my works many a time, though it’s fifty thousand to one if you have seen me. You say you don’t want to see me? You say your interest is in my works, and not in me? Don’t be too sure about that. Stop a bit.

Let us have it down in black and white at the first go off, so that there may be no unpleasantness or wrangling afterwards. And this is looked over by a friend of mine, a ticket writer, that is up to literature. I am a young man in the Art line—in the Fine-Art line. You have seen my works over and over again, and you have been curious about me, and you think you have seen me. Now, as a safe rule, you never have seen me, and you never do see me, and you never will see me. I think that’s plainly put—and it’s what knocks me over.

If there’s a blighted public character going, I am the party.

It has been remarked by a certain (or an uncertain,) philosopher, that the world knows nothing of its greatest men. He might have put it plainer if he had thrown his eye in my direction. He might have put it, that while the world knows something of them that apparently go in and win, it knows nothing of them that really go in and don’t win. There it is again in another form—and that’s what knocks me over.

Not that it’s only myself that suffers from injustice, but that I am more alive to my own injuries than to any other man’s. Being, as I have mentioned, in the Fine-Art line, and not the Philanthropic line, I openly admit it. As to company in injury, I have company enough. Who are you passing every day at your Competitive Excruciations? The fortunate candidates whose heads and livers you have turned upside down for life? Not you. You are really passing the Crammers and Coaches. If your principle is right, why don’t you turn out to-morrow morning with the keys of your cities on velvet cushions, your musicians playing, and your flags flying, and read addresses to the Crammers and Coaches on your bended knees, beseeching them to come out and govern you? Then, again, as to your public business of all sorts, your Financial statements and your Budgets; the Public knows much, truly, about the real doers of all that! Your Nobles and Right Honourables are first-rate men? Yes, and so is a goose a first-rate bird. But I’ll tell you this about the goose;—you’ll find his natural flavour disappointing, without stuffing.

Perhaps I am soured by not being popular? But suppose I AM popular. Suppose my works never fail to attract. Suppose that, whether they are exhibited by natural light or by artificial, they invariably draw the public. Then no doubt they are preserved in some Collection? No, they are not; they are not preserved in any Collection. Copyright? No, nor yet copyright. Anyhow they must be somewhere? Wrong again, for they are often nowhere.

Says you, “At all events, you are in a moody state of mind, my friend.” My answer is, I have described myself as a public character with a blight upon him—which fully accounts for the curdling of the milk in that cocoa-nut.

Those that are acquainted with London are aware of a locality on the Surrey side of the river Thames, called the Obelisk, or, more generally, the Obstacle. Those that are not acquainted with London will also be aware of it, now that I have named it. My lodging is not far from that locality. I am a young man of that easy disposition, that I lie abed till it’s absolutely necessary to get up and earn something, and then I lie abed again till I have spent it.

It was on an occasion when I had had to turn to with a view to victuals, that I found myself walking along the Waterloo Road, one evening after dark, accompanied by an acquaintance and fellow-lodger in the gas-fitting way of life. He is very good company, having worked at the theatres, and, indeed, he has a theatrical turn himself, and wishes to be brought out in the character of Othello; but whether on account of his regular work always blacking his face and hands more or less, I cannot say.

“Tom,” he says, “what a mystery hangs over you!”

“Yes, Mr. Click”—the rest of the house generally give him his name, as being first, front, carpeted all over, his own furniture, and if not mahogany, an out-and-out imitation—“yes, Mr. Click, a mystery does hang over me.”

“Makes you low, you see, don’t it?” says he, eyeing me sideways.

“Why, yes, Mr. Click, there are circumstances connected with it that have,” I yielded to a sigh, “a lowering effect.”

“Gives you a touch of the misanthrope too, don’t it?” says he. “Well, I’ll tell you what. If I was you, I’d shake it of.”

“If I was you, I would, Mr. Click; but, if you was me, you wouldn’t.”

“Ah!” says he, “there’s something in that.”

When we had walked a little further, he took it up again by touching me on the chest.

“You see, Tom, it seems to me as if, in the words of the poet who wrote the domestic drama of The Stranger, you had a silent sorrow there.”

“I have, Mr. Click.”

“I hope, Tom,” lowering his voice in a friendly way, “it isn’t coining, or smashing?”

“No, Mr. Click. Don’t be uneasy.”

“Nor yet forg—” Mr. Click checked himself, and added, “counterfeiting anything, for instance?”

“No, Mr. Click. I am lawfully in the Art line—Fine-Art line—but I can say no more.”

“Ah! Under a species of star? A kind of malignant spell? A sort of a gloomy destiny? A cankerworm pegging away at your vitals in secret, as well as I make it out?” said Mr. Click, eyeing me with some admiration.

I told Mr. Click that was about it, if we came to particulars; and I thought he appeared rather proud of me.

Our conversation had brought us to a crowd of people, the greater part struggling for a front place from which to see something on the pavement, which proved to be various designs executed in coloured chalks on the pavement stones, lighted by two candles stuck in mud sconces. The subjects consisted of a fine fresh salmon’s head and shoulders, supposed to have been recently sent home from the fishmonger’s; a moonlight night at sea (in a circle); dead game; scroll-work; the head of a hoary hermit engaged in devout contemplation; the head of a pointer smoking a pipe; and a cherubim, his flesh creased as in infancy, going on a horizontal errand against the wind. All these subjects appeared to me to be exquisitely done.

On his knees on one side of this gallery, a shabby person of modest appearance who shivered dreadfully (though it wasn’t at all cold), was engaged in blowing the chalk-dust off the moon, toning the outline of the back of the hermit’s head with a bit of leather, and fattening the down-stroke of a letter or two in the writing. I have forgotten to mention that writing formed a part of the composition, and that it also—as it appeared to me—was exquisitely done. It ran as follows, in fine round characters: “An honest man is the noblest work of God. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0. £ s. d. Employment in an office is humbly requested. Honour the Queen. Hunger is a 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 sharp thorn. Chip chop, cherry chop, fol de rol de ri do. Astronomy and mathematics. I do this to support my family.”

Murmurs of admiration at the exceeding beauty of this performance went about among the crowd. The artist, having finished his touching (and having spoilt those places), took his seat on the pavement, with his knees crouched up very nigh his chin; and halfpence began to rattle in.

“A pity to see a man of that talent brought so low; ain’t it?” said one of the crowd to me.

“What he might have done in the coach-painting, or house-decorating!” said another man, who took up the first speaker because I did not.

“Why, he writes—alone—like the Lord Chancellor!” said another man.

“Better,” said another. “I know his writing. He couldn’t support his family this way.”

Then, a woman noticed the natural fluffiness of the hermit’s hair, and another woman, her friend, mentioned of the salmon’s gills that you could almost see him gasp. Then, an elderly country gentleman stepped forward and asked the modest man how he executed his work? And the modest man took some scraps of brown paper with colours in ’em out of his pockets, and showed them. Then a fair-complexioned donkey, with sandy hair and spectacles, asked if the hermit was a portrait? To which the modest man, casting a sorrowful glance upon it, replied that it was, to a certain extent, a recollection of his father. This caused a boy to yelp out, “Is the Pinter a smoking the pipe your mother?” who was immediately shoved out of view by a sympathetic carpenter with his basket of tools at his back.

At every fresh question or remark the crowd leaned forward more eagerly, and dropped the halfpence more freely, and the modest man gathered them up more meekly. At last, another elderly gentleman came to the front, and gave the artist his card, to come to his office to-morrow, and get some copying to do. The card was accompanied by sixpence, and the artist was profoundly grateful, and, before he put the card in his hat, read it several times by the light of his candles to fix the address well in his mind, in case he should lose it. The crowd was deeply interested by this last incident, and a man in the second row with a gruff voice growled to the artist, “You’ve got a chance in life now, ain’t you?” The artist answered (sniffing in a very low-spirited way, however), “I’m thankful to hope so.” Upon which there was a general chorus of “You are all right,” and the halfpence slackened very decidedly.

I felt myself pulled away by the arm, and Mr. Click and I stood alone at the corner of the next crossing.

“Why, Tom,” said Mr. Click, “what a horrid expression of face you’ve got!”

“Have I?” says I.

“Have you?” says Mr. Click. “Why, you looked as if you would have his blood.”

“Whose blood?”

“The artist’s.”

“The artist’s?” I repeated. And I laughed, frantically, wildly, gloomily, incoherently, disagreeably. I am sensible that I did. I know I did.

Mr. Click stared at me in a scared sort of a way, but said nothing until we had walked a street’s length. He then stopped short, and said, with excitement on the part of his forefinger:

“Thomas, I find it necessary to be plain with you. I don’t like the envious man. I have identified the cankerworm that’s pegging away at your vitals, and it’s envy, Thomas.”

“Is it?” says I.

“Yes, it is,” says be. “Thomas, beware of envy. It is the green-eyed monster which never did and never will improve each shining hour, but quite the reverse. I dread the envious man, Thomas. I confess that I am afraid of the envious man, when he is so envious as you are. Whilst you contemplated the works of a gifted rival, and whilst you heard that rival’s praises, and especially whilst you met his humble glance as he put that card away, your countenance was so malevolent as to be terrific. Thomas, I have heard of the envy of them that follows the Fine-Art line, but I never believed it could be what yours is. I wish you well, but I take my leave of you. And if you should ever got into trouble through knifeing—or say, garotting—a brother artist, as I believe you will, don’t call me to character, Thomas, or I shall be forced to injure your case.”

Mr. Click parted from me with those words, and we broke off our acquaintance.

I became enamoured. Her name was Henrietta. Contending with my easy disposition, I frequently got up to go after her. She also dwelt in the neighbourhood of the Obstacle, and I did fondly hope that no other would interpose in the way of our union.

To say that Henrietta was volatile is but to say that she was woman. To say that she was in the bonnet-trimming is feebly to express the taste which reigned predominant in her own.

She consented to walk with me. Let me do her the justice to say that she did so upon trial. “I am not,” said Henrietta, “as yet prepared to regard you, Thomas, in any other light than as a friend; but as a friend I am willing to walk with you, on the understanding that softer sentiments may flow.”

We walked.

Under the influence of Henrietta’s beguilements, I now got out of bed daily. I pursued my calling with an industry before unknown, and it cannot fail to have been observed at that period, by those most familiar with the streets of London, that there was a larger supply. But hold! The time is not yet come!

One evening in October I was walking with Henrietta, enjoying the cool breezes wafted over Vauxhall Bridge. After several slow turns, Henrietta gaped frequently (so inseparable from woman is the love of excitement), and said, “Let’s go home by Grosvenor Place, Piccadilly, and Waterloo”—localities, I may state for the information of the stranger and the foreigner, well known in London, and the last a Bridge.

“No. Not by Piccadilly, Henrietta,” said I.

“And why not Piccadilly, for goodness’ sake?” said Henrietta.

Could I tell her? Could I confess to the gloomy presentiment that overshadowed me? Could I make myself intelligible to her? No.

“I don’t like Piccadilly, Henrietta.”

“But I do,” said she. “It’s dark now, and the long rows of lamps in Piccadilly after dark are beautiful. I will go to Piccadilly!”

Of course we went. It was a pleasant night, and there were numbers of people in the streets. It was a brisk night, but not too cold, and not damp. Let me darkly observe, it was the best of all nights—FOR THE PURPOSE.

As we passed the garden wall of the Royal Palace, going up Grosvenor Place, Henrietta murmured:

“I wish I was a Queen!”

“Why so, Henrietta?”

“I would make you Something,” said she, and crossed her two hands on my arm, and turned away her head.

Judging from this that the softer sentiments alluded to above had begun to flow, I adapted my conduct to that belief. Thus happily we passed on into the detested thoroughfare of Piccadilly. On the right of that thoroughfare is a row of trees, the railing of the Green Park, and a fine broad eligible piece of pavement.

“Oh my!” cried Henrietta presently. “There’s been an accident!”

I looked to the left, and said, “Where, Henrietta?”

“Not there, stupid!” said she. “Over by the Park railings. Where the crowd is. Oh no, it’s not an accident, it’s something else to look at! What’s them lights?”

She referred to two lights twinkling low amongst the legs of the assemblage: two candles on the pavement.

“Oh, do come along!” cried Henrietta, skipping across the road with me. I hung back, but in vain. “Do let’s look!”

Again, designs upon the pavement. Centre compartment, Mount Vesuvius going it (in a circle), supported by four oval compartments, severally representing a ship in heavy weather, a shoulder of mutton attended by two cucumbers, a golden harvest with distant cottage of proprietor, and a knife and fork after nature; above the centre compartment a bunch of grapes, and over the whole a rainbow. The whole, as it appeared to me, exquisitely done.

The person in attendance on these works of art was in all respects, shabbiness excepted, unlike the former personage. His whole appearance and manner denoted briskness. Though threadbare, he expressed to the crowd that poverty had not subdued his spirit, or tinged with any sense of shame this honest effort to turn his talents to some account. The writing which formed a part of his composition was conceived in a similarly cheerful tone. It breathed the following sentiments: “The writer is poor, but not despondent. To a British 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 Public he £ s. d. appeals. Honour to our brave Army! And also 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 to our gallant Navy. BRITONS STRIKE the A B C D E F G writer in common chalks would be grateful for any suitable employment HOME! HURRAH!” The whole of this writing appeared to me to be exquisitely done.

But this man, in one respect like the last, though seemingly hard at it with a great show of brown paper and rubbers, was only really fattening the down-stroke of a letter here and there, or blowing the loose chalk off the rainbow, or toning the outside edge of the shoulder of mutton. Though he did this with the greatest confidence, he did it (as it struck me) in so ignorant a manner, and so spoilt everything he touched, that when he began upon the purple smoke from the chimney of the distant cottage of the proprietor of the golden harvest (which smoke was beautifully soft), I found myself saying aloud, without considering of it:

“Let that alone, will you?”

“Halloa!” said the man next me in the crowd, jerking me roughly from him with his elbow, “why didn’t you send a telegram? If we had known you was coming, we’d have provided something better for you. You understand the man’s work better than he does himself, don’t you? Have you made your will? You’re too clever to live long.”

“Don’t be hard upon the gentleman, sir,” said the person in attendance on the works of art, with a twinkle in his eye as he looked at me; “he may chance to be an artist himself. If so, sir, he will have a fellow-feeling with me, sir, when I”—he adapted his action to his words as he went on, and gave a smart slap of his hands between each touch, working himself all the time about and about the composition—“when I lighten the bloom of my grapes—shade off the orange in my rainbow—dot the i of my Britons—throw a yellow light into my cow-cum-ber—insinuate another morsel of fat into my shoulder of mutton—dart another zigzag flash of lightning at my ship in distress!”

He seemed to do this so neatly, and was so nimble about it, that the halfpence came flying in.

“Thanks, generous public, thanks!” said the professor. “You will stimulate me to further exertions. My name will be found in the list of British Painters yet. I shall do better than this, with encouragement. I shall indeed.”

“You never can do better than that bunch of grapes,” said Henrietta. “Oh, Thomas, them grapes!”

“Not better than that, lady? I hope for the time when I shall paint anything but your own bright eyes and lips equal to life.”

“(Thomas, did you ever?) But it must take a long time, sir,” said Henrietta, blushing, “to paint equal to that.”

“I was prenticed to it, miss,” said the young man, smartly touching up the composition—“prenticed to it in the caves of Spain and Portingale, ever so long and two year over.”

There was a laugh from the crowd; and a new man who had worked himself in next me, said, “He’s a smart chap, too; ain’t he?”

“And what a eye!” exclaimed Henrietta softly.

“Ah! He need have a eye,” said the man.

“Ah! He just need,” was murmured among the crowd.

“He couldn’t come that ’ere burning mountain without a eye,” said the man. He had got himself accepted as an authority, somehow, and everybody looked at his finger as it pointed out Vesuvius. “To come that effect in a general illumination would require a eye; but to come it with two dips—why, it’s enough to blind him!”

That impostor, pretending not to have heard what was said, now winked to any extent with both eyes at once, as if the strain upon his sight was too much, and threw back his long hair—it was very long—as if to cool his fevered brow. I was watching him doing it, when Henrietta suddenly whispered, “Oh, Thomas, how horrid you look!” and pulled me out by the arm.

Remembering Mr. Click’s words, I was confused when I retorted, “What do you mean by horrid?”

“Oh gracious! Why, you looked,” said Henrietta, “as if you would have his blood.”

I was going to answer, “So I would, for twopence—from his nose,” when I checked myself and remained silent.

We returned home in silence. Every step of the way, the softer sentiments that had flowed, ebbed twenty mile an hour. Adapting my conduct to the ebbing, as I had done to the flowing, I let my arm drop limp, so as she could scarcely keep hold of it, and I wished her such a cold good-night at parting, that I keep within the bounds of truth when I characterise it as a Rasper.

In the course of the next day I received the following document:

“Henrietta informs Thomas that my eyes are open to you. I must ever wish you well, but walking and us is separated by an unfarmable abyss. One so malignant to superiority—Oh that look at him!—can never never conduct

HENRIETTA

P.S.—To the altar.”

Yielding to the easiness of my disposition, I went to bed for a week, after receiving this letter. During the whole of such time, London was bereft of the usual fruits of my labour. When I resumed it, I found that Henrietta was married to the artist of Piccadilly.

Did I say to the artist? What fell words were those, expressive of what a galling hollowness, of what a bitter mockery! I—I—I—am the artist. I was the real artist of Piccadilly, I was the real artist of the Waterloo Road, I am the only artist of all those pavement-subjects which daily and nightly arouse your admiration. I do ’em, and I let ’em out. The man you behold with the papers of chalks and the rubbers, touching up the down-strokes of the writing and shading off the salmon, the man you give the credit to, the man you give the money to, hires—yes! and I live to tell it!—hires those works of art of me, and brings nothing to ’em but the candles.

Such is genius in a commercial country. I am not up to the shivering, I am not up to the liveliness, I am not up to the wanting-employment-in-an-office move; I am only up to originating and executing the work. In consequence of which you never see me; you think you see me when you see somebody else, and that somebody else is a mere Commercial character. The one seen by self and Mr. Click in the Waterloo Road can only write a single word, and that I taught him, and it’s MULTIPLICATION—which you may see him execute upside down, because he can’t do it the natural way. The one seen by self and Henrietta by the Green Park railings can just smear into existence the two ends of a rainbow, with his cuff and a rubber—if very hard put upon making a show—but he could no more come the arch of the rainbow, to save his life, than he could come the moonlight, fish, volcano, shipwreck, mutton, hermit, or any of my most celebrated effects.

To conclude as I began: if there’s a blighted public character going, I am the party. And often as you have seen, do see, and will see, my Works, it’s fifty thousand to one if you’ll ever see me, unless, when the candles are burnt down and the Commercial character is gone, you should happen to notice a neglected young man perseveringly rubbing out the last traces of the pictures, so that nobody can renew the same. That’s me.

CHAPTER VIII

HIS PORTMANTEAU

By the Authoress of "The Valley of a Hundred Fires"

I

Mr. Blorage walked up and down his dining-room, on the 31st of December, 1851, with the air and step of a man at peace with the world, and pleased with himself. As he turned to and fro, there was a little swing of exultation in his gait, which no friend (had there been any friend present to witness it) would have recognised as a trait peculiar to Mr. Blorage. On the contrary, he passed among his neighbours and acquaintance as a man of a modest and sedate temperament, and of an extreme good nature: so that those same friends and neighbours, full of the impudence of the world, often laughed at the former, and let no opportunity slip of taking advantage of the latter. But he was accustomed to be imposed upon. In fact, it was his business, his vocation, to which he had been apprenticed from his earliest childhood.

It is recorded by his nurse and mother, that so amiable, so complacent a baby never was born. A faint whimper was the only complaint he made, after lying for hours in his cradle wide awake, with nothing but a damaged tassel to amuse him, as it swung to and fro from the hood of the cradle in the draught—which draught reddened his baby nose, and brought the water into his little weak eyes. As he grew up, it became an established fact, that Master Dick was to be washed first or last, taken out or left behind, given sugarplums or forgotten, as it happened to suit the peculiar fancy of every other person rather than Master Dick himself, because he was so sweet tempered. Thus he weathered babyhood, encountered childhood, and rushed up into boyhood, in a pleasing and satisfactory manner to all parties, himself included. He never worried his mother by catching infectious diseases at wrong times; he went through the necessary ailments of childhood—such as measles, whooping-cough, and scarlatina—with the least possible degree of trouble to all parties concerned; and caused no anxiety by having relapses, or taking colds. If he cut his finger to the bone, no one knew of it, unless any one chanced to notice the scar. If he fell into the river, he scrambled out, and dried his own clothes, by the convenient process of airing them on his own body. If he fell off a tree, down a well, over a wall, he picked himself up and bore his burden of bruises with silent composure. In addition to these accomplishments, he bore any amount of other people's work, and seemed rather to enjoy being "put upon." He was glad to be obliging, and "gave up" with quite as much zest as other natures about him delighted to "take all." Once, and once only, did a slight attack of ill temper and discontent assail him. His father, without any previous notice, without the shadow of a consultation as to any faint bias on Dick's part, but just because "he was Dick, and would be sure to do it, whether he liked it or not," placed him, at the age of sixteen years, as the junior of all the junior clerks, in a Bank.

Now, Dick was a country boy, born and brought up in truly rural fashion. His father having a small estate, farmed the greater part of it himself, and, being a practical man, did nothing by halves. His children participated in all that he did, as much for their own benefit as for his. The boys were active young farmers from the time they were breeched; and the girls reared chickens, and understood the immaculate cleanliness of a dairy, before they could spell their own names. So Dick's habits, and what little idiosyncrasy he had of his own, belonged wholly to the country.

He was up with the lark, roaming over his father's premises, and lighting upon all sorts of charitable things to do. A brood of young ducks, always erratic, obstinate, and greedy, had squeezed their mucilaginous little bodies through nothing, and were out on the loose, their vigilant foster-mother, "in a fine frenzy," clacking within the shut-up poultry-house. It was Dick's business to open the door and give her lost ones to her cherishing wings; and all the acknowledgment he got was an unmistakable indication on the part of the irritated mother that he alone had been the cause of the separation. He delighted to stagger under a load of fodder, taking, as high and invaluable wages, the glad neigh of the expectant horse, or the gentle soft low of the cow. He rushed into the matitutinal quarrel of the bantam-cock and the great bubbley-jock; he coaxed with crumbs of bread the shy little pullets, and covertly threw handfuls of grain to the ostracised cockerels, who dared not so much as look upon a crumb within sight of the proud monarch of the poultry-yard.

Having meddled and messed in everything that was going on, to the high delight of himself, if of nothing else, Dick would return to the house, brush and clean himself with scrupulous exactness, and place himself ready to receive his mother's morning kiss on his cool rosy soap-shining cheeks. After that, he began the real business of the day; he nursed the baby, made the tea, cut the bread-and-butter, administered it, adjusted quarrels, ran the messages, and took what breakfast he could between whiles. 'When he had a few moments he could call his own, he roamed about, saving young birds from remorseless kidnappers, rescuing puppies and kittens from untimely fates, helping little maidens over high stiles, and assisting old women to carry fagots of sticks, assuredly stolen from his father's hedge-rows.

Dick possessed one harmless propensity—never to see a hill without paying it the compliment of running to the top of it in so many minutes, and speeding down to the bottom again in so many minutes less. He considered it a duty he owed to society at large, to be able to say in how short a time society could approach so much nearer to heaven.

For these reasons, and a thousand more such, Dick's dismay may be comprehended when he was suddenly required to exchange breezy hill-tops and flowery plains, for the high stool, matching the higher desk, in a dusty cloudy cobwebby back Bank-office, in a close dull unsavoury street.

Dick began a remonstrance. For the first time in his life, there rose to his lips the murmur of a complaint. The person upon whose ear the unwonted sound fell, was his younger brother: called William by his godfathers and godmothers, Bill by those who had no particular regard for him, or he for them, and Billy by the fortunate possessors of what affections he had. Generally obtuse to everything that did not concern himself, he was visibly startled by the unwonted moan, and kindly said, under the shock of surprise:

"Come, come, old fellow! None of that."

"But I don't like the Bank, Billy. I am unhappy; I think I am dreadfully unhappy; the smell of the place makes me sick; I get the cramp in my legs from sitting on that high stool; I am as nervous——"

"Hold hard, Dick; I won't have you say another word. How dare you talk like that to me?"

"My dear Billy——"

"Don't dear Billy me. When you know as well as I do, that if you don't stay at the Bank I shall have to go there!"

"Oh dear!" ejaculated Dick.

"Oh dear!" mimicked the fast younger brother. "I wonder you have the heart to hint an objection, Dick—especially knowing, as you do, how you hate the Bank. Endangering your own brother! And you setting up for being a good-natured fellow, too!"

Dick said no more, but manfully bore up against smells, cramps, nerves, and headaches, with the mental comfort and consolation, "How lucky poor dear Billy is saved all this!"

Time worked its own cure, and he experienced in his own person the truth of that well-established maxim, "Habit becomes second nature." He exercised his peculiar vocation by doing a great deal of other people's work besides his own; by cherishing solitary and forlorn-looking spiders; assisting flies out of a persistent search into ink-bottles; and being generally kind-hearted to everything and everybody.

He was universally liked, though vastly imposed upon; still, upon his gradual elevation, in course of time, from junior of the juniors to head of all, there was no voice but his own that hazarded a doubt on the fitness of the election. He was a little uncomfortable himself lest he should have taken a place one of the others might have coveted or better deserved.

At last assured that his abilities and position warranted the choice, Dick resigned himself to being entirely happy, and—as a fall essential to a state of bliss—fell in love.

That his choice should light on one profoundly unlike himself, was perfectly natural; a young lady of much beauty and many wants being exactly the being to appear angelic in Dick's eyes. Had she been possessed of brains, or of sufficient capacity to see into the depths of Dick's most honest heart, she might have ruled there, queen and wife, and her domestic kingdom would have ennobled her in all eyes; but, like a playful kitten, incipient cruelty lurked in her prettiest ways. Her character may be inferred from the answer she gave Dick when he tendered her his all.

"Indeed, Mr. Richard, you are very good! How you have surprised me! And do you really think so well of me? I never thought you really cared a bit for me. I laughed and chatted with you, because, as we all said, Mr. Richard Blorage was so good-natured."

"Good-natured to you, Ellen! Oh, Heaven, could you read nothing more in my devotion? Not the deepest, strongest, most enduring love?"

"You quite amaze me, Mr. Richard! Where have you kept these feelings so long?"

"Oh, Ellen? Do not trifle with me!"

"No! Not for worlds, Mr. Blorage! I am no flirt. I am a frank creature, and always will be."

"I thought—I hoped—oh, Ellen! I would not have dared to speak thus, and lay bare my heart before you, had you not encouraged——"

"Now, Mr. Richard, don't say that, I beg! I am sure I am above that. Besides, mamma wishes me to marry rather high. She wishes me to set my younger sisters a good example; and indeed papa has said to me more than once, that he would never suffer me to marry a banker's clerk."

"I am to be a partner in two years."

"Two years! I may be married long before that. Come, Mr. Richard, don't be cast down. We can always be the best of friends."

"And my wife, Ellen?"

"Oh dear no! I really wonder you could ever think of such a thing—so good-natured, as you are. Pray don't tease me any more."

Poor Dick's tender heart swelled and throbbed with many tender emotions; but he really was too good-natured to let any angry or bitter thoughts divide it. He rallied his fluttering and bewildered senses, looked round for his hat (an article that always seems of great comfort to Englishmen in difficulties), looked into it, and not finding a single word in it to help him out, went away speechless with a single bow. It was a bow worthy of Sir Charles Grandison, and it was a far more natural bow than Sir Charles Grandison ever made. There was a quiet dignity in it, expressive of so much integrity and worth, that it even smote the little silly substitute for a heart which had so mocked him, with a stab of misgiving.

Time, that never-failing plaster which heals so many wounds, came to Dick's aid. He derived a melancholy satisfaction from working twice as hard as he had ever done before. He was at that once odious office before the doors were opened, and sat on his high stool for hours at a stretch, regardless of cramp. From always being a compassionate and good-natured fellow, he became morbidly so: appearing to regard the whole of his acquaintance as victims to unrequited love, upon whom it was essential he should expend a vigilant care of the most forbearing and affectionate nature.

Not even the fast, worldly-wise opinion of William, Bill, or Billy, could make him think he was an ill-used man.

"She's a flirt, and no mistake. I saw through her long ago, Dick. I always said she would jilt you."

"You wrong her, William—you deeply wrong her. She was right in her decision. She deserved a better fate than to be the wife of a banker's clerk."

"Pooh, pooh! Ha, ha! Why, you have a share in the firm already, and may call yourself banker at once, and I hope to the Lord you will soon get rich. It will be devilish comfortable, Dick, always to be able to turn to you when one wants five or ten pounds."

"Do you want a little money now, Billy? I have no occasion to hoard money."

"The very thing I do want, my dear fellow. I never was so hard up. I say! It's a great comfort to me, Dick, that you didn't marry that simpleton of a girl."

"Hush, Bill."

"Well, it's a very good thing for yourself, then. I'll swear she was a screw."

"Forbear, Bill."

"Well, it was an uncommon good thing for her, then."

"That is my only consolation," sighed the good Dick, as he handed his brother a bundle of notes, which, true to business habits, he carefully counted over twice.

"Twenty-five pounds; thank ye, Dick."

II

Bless us! Mr. Blorage has been a long time walking up and down that dining-room of his.

Had the volatile Ellen at last relented, that he walked up and down with that elastic step? No, no. She had married within six months of blighting Dick—had married an Honourable by name, if not by nature; but the title being of much more consequence than the fact, there is no need to inquire further. If Dick's prayers could make her happy, she was supremely blest.

No. Mr. Blorage was excited, because he was dining in his own new, substantially built, elegantly furnished, luxuriously ornamented, house—a house that had been pronounced perfect—a gem of a house—a house that only wanted one more thing, to be absolute perfection. He was dining in it, for the first time, and he had (though naturally a sober man), under the pressure of such an extreme circumstance, drank success to it, and health to himself, just about once too often. Hence, thought was running riot in his brain, like an express engine gone mad. Here was he, at the good and pleasant age of thirty-five, an independent gentleman, with fifteen hundred a year, honestly made, and safely deposited in the only bank that never breaks—her Majesty's Consols. Besides, he still held a lucrative and independent position in the very Bank once so disagreeable to him. He was not a responsible partner, he was only the trusted confidential manager. "For, as to partnerships," thought Dick, "it would never do for me to lose my money through the speculations of others. I could not help Billy, or send little Maude to that first-rate London school. As to my dear mother, Old Grobus's legacy (I wonder why he left it to me?) just fell in, in time to make her comfortable."

Dick had grown rich, nobody quite knew how. As he was always helping every one, perhaps he realised the promise, "Cast thy bread upon the waters, and it shall return unto thee a hundred-fold." He had made one or two fortunate speculations. He had been left a legacy by old Grobus, a morose brother clerk, who had never given him a civil word when alive, but had bequeathed him all he died worth, remarking in his will that "Richard Blorage, his heir, would be sure to spend it better than he could." And Richard Blorage, first ascertaining that there were no real heirs, had forthwith purchased one or two waste bits of land, because the owners wanted to sell them, and because no one but a good-natured fool would buy them. No sooner, however, did they become Dick's, than they were discovered to be invaluable. The railway ran straight through them; the land was the very thing for building purposes; and, what was pleasanter than all, no one envied Dick. Every one said, "Serve Dick Blorage right; he's a good fellow, and it's his due."

And when he decided to build himself a new house on this improved and flourishing estate, every one, far and near, entered into the scheme. The plans were shown about, as if the plans were for a building of public property. The architect was received everywhere as a friend, the workmen were looked upon as part of the community. The house grew, stone by stone, under the eyes and minute inspection of all the neighbours. The laying of the foundation-stone was a popular jubilee; the roofing-in was nearly followed by a roofing-out, so deafening were the cheers from the assembled multitude. The final completion of the structure was so rapturously hailed by all Dick's friends, that it might have been supposed Mr. Blorage had privately intimated to the whole of them, individually and separately, that he intended to make each a present of the achieved piece of architecture.

Of course there was to be a house-warming—a dinner and a dance; and it was thinking of this identical fête, to come off the very next day, that had set Mr. Blorage's thoughts off at express pace. Not because his dinner was to be so well appointed, not because his wines (he knew that a little too well this evening!) were unexceptionable, not because the music provided was the best that money could hire, not because his rooms were beautifully decorated, his chintzes of the sweetest patterns, his carpets Axminster and Brussels; but because two out of the sixty invitations he had issued had been accepted. Why two? And what two? In the present excited state of Mr. Blorage's brain, he could only have answered, "Upon those two hangs my fate—the fate of my house."

He threw himself into one of those delightful spring-seated, sloping-backed softly-cushioned arm-chairs, in which our unlucky ancestors never had the good fortune to repose. He took another glass of wine, oblivious of having drank success to his house already rather often.

"So, they both come! Lovely creatures! Bill doesn't like Fanny; he says she is like Ellen. Ah, poor Ellen. I don't know which is the prettier of those two cousins. Billy seems rather full of Florence. I must find that out; I must observe him; it would never do to ruin poor Bill's happiness; I know what unrequited love is. I am not in love with either of the cousins at present. I was madly in love with Ellen, but, you see, I got over it." (Who was there to see, Mr. Blorage? Ah, that last glass!) "It certainly is time I married. But I shouldn't like to be served that way again—as Ellen served me, I mean. Bill will have it she's unhappy; I hope not. Bill says I am a great fool if I ever—if I submit—if, in short, I am taken in again. Did Ellen take me in? I don't know. I don't understand women at all. I believe every word they say; I adore their sweet smiles and winning ways, and I would not—nay, I could not—think ill of them for the world. I suppose I am a fool, as Bill says I am. What a thing it would be for me if some kind-hearted honest genius, or fairy, would bestow upon the walls of my house the gift of making people appear just as they are, speak just what they think, and be altogether as God and Nature made them! When I was young, surely I read of a palace of truth belonging to some fellow—king, I beg his pardon—called Phanor. To be sure, they got into a world of difficulties, and were all more or less miserable. But they were French people; whereas a good honest Briton likes the truth, and WILL speak it whether he's miserable or not."

Mr. Blorage spoke the last sentence aloud, with great emphasis on the auxiliary verb; moreover, giving force to his words by an energetic thump on the arm of his chair.

"My dear sir, take care! " said a voice in his ear. The sound was like the tinkle of a little silver bell, clear as a note of music.

Looking towards the sound, the good Dick perceived, perched on the arm of the chair, a little lady: who steadied herself, after his hard thump on the cushion, by holding valiantly on to an elaborately-crocheted anti-macassar.

"I—I beg your pardon," stammered Mr. Blorage.

"Granted," said the lady. " Now, open your hand, and hold it steady."

Always ready to oblige, Mr. Blorage did as he was asked, and was wonderfully surprised that he was not surprised when she took a flying leap into the middle of his palm.

"Thank you, Dick," said she, arranging her little crinoline, and putting on an air. "So you want your house to be gifted with the power of making people speak the truth, eh?"

"I should like it," he answered, in some confusion.

The little lady shook her head.

"You won't like it. You will find it very annoying. Neither your servants, nor your friends, nor your relations, will seem the better for it, Dick."

"I should like to try it for a little while—just for one day," he stammered, in answer to the wise forebodings of the little lady.

"I understand. Merely to enable you to select a wife? You fear to be made a fool of again, Dick."

"Yes, yes," he answered, eagerly. "Marriage is such an awful thing. One does not mind being made a fool of for a short time—but for life! " Dick shuddered, and the little lady was nearly upset by the shock.

In the endeavour to save herself from falling, she unfolded a pair of beautiful wings, whose transparent lustre of prismatic colours, formed a sort of Glory round her head.

"How pretty you are," said Dick.

"I only show my beauty to those who appreciate me. My name is Verita."

"God bless the name," said Dick. "I don't care about the enchantment of my house, if you will always be at hand to advise me."

"I mean to live with you, Dick; but as for advice, why did God give you an intelligence to guide you through every difficulty? Why ask a little odd spirit for advice, when you have but to knock at the door of your conscience for unerring guidance?"

"True," murmured Dick; "but still——"

"I see you hold to your own way, Dick, and as I wish you to have a good wife, I will grant your request. But inasmuch as enchanting the whole house would be extremely inconvenient to you in more ways than one, I will confine the spell to this chair. But there are conditions to be observed—two conditions—before I enchant the chair."

"Name them."

"The first is, that no one but yourself is to be apprised of the power the chair possesses."

"Dear me," exclaimed Mr. Blorage, dubiously, "would that be quite fair?"

"Simpleton! Who could you get to sit in your chair if its power were known, Dick?"

"Wouldn't people like it? I shouldn't mind."

"I dare say you would not. But assent to the condition, or the chair is not enchanted."

"I consent. You said, dear madam, there was another condition?"

"The second condition is, that whoever enters within your doors must sit in the chair, and must answer three questions before leaving the chair."

"But suppose people will do neither the one nor the other?"

"Compliance with the first condition I will take upon myself to ensure; the second depends on you, as it is you who must put the three questions."

"What sort of questions?"

"Pooh, pooh, Dick, don't give me more than my share of work. If you don't know the sort of questions to put, in order to obtain the good for which you have required me to enchant the chair, you are undeserving of the favour."

Dick would have protested, but he was so fearful of disturbing the equilibrium of the delicate little creature by over-earnest utterance, that he only opened and shut his mouth.

"Don't blow me away! I must be gone, though. The night is rather chilly, I think." She took out of an almost invisible pocket, a shadowing sort of cobwebby thing, meant, he presumed, for her handkerchief. Gracefully throwing it over her head, and tying it under her little atom of a chin, she continued: "Good night, Dick. And good fortune to this house! And may it soon possess the only charm it wants—a pretty wife for you, and a good mistress for itself!"

Before Mr. Blorage had time to answer, the palm of his hand was empty, and the fair little creature had disappeared.

III

Mr. Richard Blorage was never quite clear during how long a time after the spirit's disappearance, he sat thinking or dozing. But the dining-room door having opened and shut several times during this period of intense thought or doze, he at length became conscious that it was not likely to have opened and shut of its own accord, and that it had probably done so under the hand of Penge, his butler, his new butler, the most respectful and obsequious of butlers, who had come into his service with a character so very unexceptionable, that he had almost felt inclined to thank the spotless Penge for being so good as to take him for a master.

Mr. Blorage rose hastily and rang the bell. Penge answered it so immediately as to justify the supposition that when it rang, he had once again had his hand on the door-handle.

Mr. Blorage was about to speak to the excellent Penge, when he was arrested by seeing that modest butler seat himself with much humility in the chair his master had just vacated —the enchanted chair. He was no sooner seated than his appearance instantly changed. His countenance assumed an air of much self-complacency; he drew out from the depths of a mysterious pocket, a snuff-box; and he took a large pinch of snuff in a calm and deliberate manner.

"It is my only vice, sir," he remarked; "I trust it is not disagreeable? Will you take a pinch? No ceremony."

Villains, ruffians, rogues, and fast men, are above being surprised; or, if they do feel any slight attack of that weakness, they take care not to show it. But plain honest natural creatures are constantly surprised, and as constantly show it. Mr. Blorage gazed at his butler, open-mouthed and open-eyed, and in the greatest surprise, until he was suddenly recalled to a perception of the case, by seeing the face of the little spirit peeping out behind the chair.

The Lady Verita had performed her part of the contract, and had seated the butler in it by some marvellous power. Mr. Blorage must now perform his part of the contract.

As he rubbed his eyes, ran his fingers through his hair, and blew his nose, perfectly unable to decide what questions he should put to Penge, the confident air of the man, shining through an obsequious mock humility, moved Mr. Blorage to a hearty and irresistible fit of laughter. Though he was sorry for Penge, though he felt that he alone was to blame for Penge's peculiar situation, restrain himself from laughter he could not.

"Vell, Blorage," says Penge, with great self-possession, "you 'ave a right to amuse yourself at your pleasure; but you're drunk!"

"Penge?"

"Blorage! I ain't to be put out of the truth by you. You're drunk."

"Drunk or sober, I think I am a gentleman, Penge?"

"You may think so," returned the model butler, with great contempt; "but I don't. My ideas of a real gent, ain't by no manner o' means the same as yours, Blorage."

" And what are your ideas?" asked Dick, in a hurry, glad to catch hold of so safe a question.

"My ideas," replied the model butler, rising with the occasion, "are racers—out-and-outers—sport—life. Them's my ideas of a real gentleman, not your slow games. Blorage! you're a muff."

Dick blushed a little, in mortification; but it was clearly his duty to get this, his first victim, out of the chair of truth as speedily as possible.

"At all events, I hope you are comfortable, Penge? I hope that at least you like my service?"

"No, I don't, Blorage. I am formed for enjyment; and how can I know enjyment under a mean-spirited screw that keeps the keys of his own cellar?"

"But you agreed with me, Penge, when I engaged you, that it was the most satisfactory arrangement for all parties. Penge, you said you preferred it."

"Blorage, I considered as it looked well so to say; and having heerd as you was soft and easy, what I said to myself was, 'Penge! you stick that into him, and you'll have the key before your first year is out.' Which is what I expect, Blorage, or you and me parts."

Burning to release the prisoner, Mr. Blorage was racking his brain for the last question, when a furious peal of the door-bell suggested a very safe one.

"Who can that be, Penge?"

"That awful young scamp your brother! "

Then, instantly rising, Mr. Penge said, in his most unexceptionable manner, "I ask your pardon, sir. I felt so very giddy just now, sir, that if I had not took the liberty to take a seat, I must have fainted."

"Never mind. Make no excuses, Penge."

"Thank you, sir. I believe that is Mr. William's ring, sir. He is such a cheerful young gentleman, sir, that I know the liveliness of his ring." And Penge disappeared with alacrity.

The good Dick rushed to the chair, intending to occupy it himself during his brother's visit. But his brother was too quick for him.

"Halloa, Dick! What do you want with the best chair in the room? It is very unlike such a good-natured chap as you to appropriate the most comfortable seat."

He was in the chair! Dick sat down on the edge of another chair, and wiped his forehead.

William, Billy, or Bill, safely ensconced in the magic chair, assumed a very rakish used-up indifferent sort of appearance; and the brothers were silent. Probably William was uncomfortable in his strange and novel position. Dick was racking his brain for three questions—three simple harmless questions, that should not commit the sitter. The weather? Nothing better. Bill could never compromise himself about the weather.

"Is it a fine night, Billy?"

"Rather too fine for me. I want to skulk off to Barnes's without being seen, and I came here on my way, partly to blind mother, and partly to twist a fi'-pun' note out of you." (Barnes's was a disreputable gaming-place.)

"How is our mother?" interrupted Dick, in a violent hurry.

"Precious cross. Bothering as much about my goings on, as if I was cutting my teeth."

"Are—are—are you in love, Bill?"

" Yes; with myself. What's the good of loving anything else? I don't find any one so deuced fond of me as to forget himself or herself."

"I thought Florence——" interrupted Dick, hastily.

"Florence be hanged! Do you suppose I don't see that you are spooney upon Florence? But lookee here, Dick; you want to marry; now, I don't intend to let you marry. I'm not going to stand your being thrown away upon any other than your own relations."

"Come out of that chair, Bill! "

" I won't. It's a comfortable chair. I'm bent on telling you my mind. My mind has been full of you, Dick, ever since you began to build this house. That's a suspicious gallery, shut off by a green baize door. I said when I saw it, that means mischief. He means that part of the house for a Nur——"

"Come out of that chair, Bill! "

"I tell you I won't. As to your getting married, I'm not afraid of Fanny; her temper will never stand a month's courtship. She'll show her teeth in a fortnight. When I turned this matter over in my mind, I said to myself, 'Dick is safe from her. But Florence,' I said, ' may be dangerous; therefore I'll pretend to be a little affected that way myself.' "

"Here, Bill! Take five pounds—take ten pounds—but come out of that chair!"

"I would have done it for less than that, Dick, but as you are so flush and free of money, I'll take the ten. Good evening, Dick; I promised mother to be back to tea."

With this sudden change, Mr. William took himself out of the chair, and took his leave. Mr. Richard—too well pleased to have got him out of the chair, to care for anything more, and knowing that his nerves were incapable of bearing further strain—rushed up stairs and dived into bed. And, as if fearing that the chair would pursue him even there, and entice people to commit themselves, he pulled the bedclothes over his head, and was fortunate in being unconscious during the rest of the night.

CHAPTER IX

HIS HAT-BOX

By the Authoress of "The Valley of a Hundred Fires"

THE REST OF THIS MANUSCRIPT HE HAD PUT IN

HIS HAT-BOX

IV

When Mr. Blorage awoke in the morning, he was reminded by a slight headache, that something unusual had occurred; but he came out of his cold bath as lively and fresh and full of spirits as if he were the combined essence of two or three dozen Mr. Blorages. He pranced down stairs—his own newly-built and Brussels carpeted stairs—like a young colt philandering in a clover meadow.

This was the great day of the house-warming, to be followed by events that were perfectly bewildering from the ecstasy of their anticipation. He was brought back to a state of common human bliss by a strong smell of burnt wood or varnish, and found that in making the tea (he had lost himself in thinking how soon some fair hand might be making tea for him) he was endeavouring to stuff his little hot kettle (which phizzed and sputtered a remonstrance) into his new tea-poy, while the caddy appertaining thereto was catching fire on the hob.

Remedying these mistakes with the utmost expedition, in turning round he suddenly encountered the chair, and suddenly remembered its fatal property.

What was he to do? How get rid of the chair? Should he send it away? Should he lock it up? Should he destroy it? burn it? annihilate it? bury it?

As he seized hold of it, with the intention of performing one or other of these acts, he was conscious of a shock; his arms fell powerless to his sides; and a little fluttering noise made him look up. There, on the head of a chair, was the Lady Verita, her wings expanded, her tiny foot just poised on the carved shining top of the chair.

"It is of no use, Dick," she said, her little voice tinkling like silver music. "This chair was not enchanted merely for your whim. Sit down, and listen to me."

Dick obeyed, and held out his palm. His heart leaped with joy as the little lady sprang lightly on to it.

"Lend me your watch, Dick, to sit upon."

Dick complied, and placed his watch with infinite care and gentleness for her use.

She seated herself gracefully, having folded her wings. Once more drawing out her fleecy atom of a handkerchief, she used it after the manner of mortals: though Dick hardly supposed that anything so infinitely delicate as her nose could stand the test.

"Now, Dick, how naughty you are! You do not use my gift as you ought. Why were you thinking of burning my chair? Simply because it had done its duty in enabling you to see people as they really are, and know their thoughts?"

"But I do not wish to know them."

"My dear Dick, infinite wisdom has given you susceptibility, intelligence, and reason. You only use the first. You are commanded to love your neighbour, but your susceptibility should not lead you into confounding all moral distinctions among your neighbours. Reason should step in, and enable you to make a practical use of susceptibility and intelligence. Do I make myself understood? I have had to read up for it."

"Lovely and beloved little creature, I know I am a fool, but let me reap the fruits of my want of wisdom. I would rather be foolish for life than entrap others into sitting in this chair."

"Dick, you require a lesson. Use it well, be patient, be submissive, and all will end well, both for you and for me. I hear your doorbell ringing. Adieu, Dick. Be wise and prudent."

The radiant wings expanded, the little handkerchief was tied under the tiny chin, and, as Penge opened the door to usher in a visitor, the little lady vanished.

"Be wise and prudent." The words kept tinkling a little silver sound in the ears of Mr. Blorage, as he rose and welcomed the visitor shown in by Penge. His first essay at being wise and prudent, made him hand her (for it was a female) at once into the post of honour—the Chair of Truth.

He was glad to perceive that his visitor was a pleasant little mild girl, whom he had met once or twice at Dr. Evans's, the medical man of the neighbourhood. He had a general idea that she was the daughter of an invalid widow, and that she was the eldest of a flock of brown healthy-looking children, to whom she acted as foster-mother, owing to the inability of their real mother to do anything but lie on her sofa, and sigh for ease from pain and poverty.

He had so far noticed little Gatty Bland (who, by-the-by, was twenty-three years old, perhaps more) as to admire her eyes, soft and brown, the exact colour of her hair. As she now sat in the enchanted chair, he was surprised at himself for never having noticed that she was really pretty. Her sweet innocent face had a bewitching air about it that peculiarly pleased him. And really, her tiny hands and her graceful movements strongly reminded him of the ways of the little Lady Verita.

"Mamma has sent me here this morning, Mr. Blorage, to beg your acceptance of the loan of a beautiful china bowl. There is not another like it in England, and she fancied it would be just the thing to hold a Trifle to-night."

"I thank her very much; but how did she know that I was going to have a Trifle tonight?"

"Oh, we know it very well. You give a ball to-night, and from our house we can see the lights, and faintly hear the music. Jenny and Albert are to sit up to-night a little longer than usual that they may watch the carriages."

"Then if I accept the loan of the beautiful china bowl, I must ask a favour in return."

"I will promise to perform it, Mr. Blorage, for I feel sure you will not ask anything that I may not promise to perform."

"I am proud of being so trusted. I should wish to beg the favour of your company tonight, to see how well the Trifle looks in the beautiful china bowl."

"Ah, how I wish we could come! But we are very poor, and mamma is too great an invalid to take us out. We shall find much pleasure, though, in watching your gaiety from our window, and we shall be delighted to think that our china bowl has helped to ornament your supper-table. Mamma was sure you would not consider the offer of it an impertinence."

No, indeed! Dick was an adept in the happy art of accepting a kindness in the spirit in which it was offered.

"Mamma has had great pleasure in watching the building of your house, Mr. Blorage. She said, a good man is going to inhabit it, and a good man always benefits a neighbourhood."

"Your mamma is very kind," murmured Dick, a little confused, and beginning to blush. He was admiring Gatty Bland so much, that he had forgotten she was a prisoner, and unconscious of the frankness of her words.

"Mamma is very good, Mr. Blorage, as we, her children, know. And I ought to return to her. I promised not to be absent more than half an hour, and it must be that now."

But though she looked distressed and anxious, poor Gatty could no more move until Mr. Blorage released her, than the house could move.

He wiped his brow, ran his fingers through his hair, and prepared for action.

"And so your mamma is glad to have a near neighbour?"

"She is glad that you are our neighbour. When it pleases Heaven to release her from trouble and pain, and to begin our lonelier life of struggle, she thinks that the sunshine of a good man's heart may sometimes fall on her poor children in the shade."

"So it shall, my dear, please God! But, Gatty, you must marry.—Would you like to marry?"

"I don't know, Mr. Blorage; but I fear few will care to marry a little plain girl, with a turn-up nose, and a heart full of her own people, and who wants a nomination for——"

"Have you ever seen any one you would like to marry?" interrupted Dick, pleased with his wealth of questions.

"Only one, and that is you, Mr. Blorage! Good-by. I must run all the way home."

Finding herself released, Gatty sprang up, and ran out of the room: leaving Mr. Blorage turning from his natural colour to white, from white to pink, from pink to crimson, from crimson to purple.

"Poor little dear thing, that I could have been so base and dishonourable as to ask her such a delicate question, when I had so many safe questions to ask—her age, her brothers' and sisters' names and ages, her godfathers and godmothers—if she liked new milk, cheese, eggs. Gracious Heaven! that I should have dared to put so preposterous a question, and receive such a—such a—such a——" Dick could not bring himself to name the quality of the answer. "But it's very pleasant to be so undeservedly appreciated—to be liked and loved for one's own sake. She is a nice little thing; she is a pretty little thing. Her nose certainly turns up; but I believe there never was a silly person known with a turned-up nose. She is very graceful. She flitted out of the room like a bird out of a rose-bush. I wonder what nomination she wanted! "

For the first time since it was enchanted, Mr. Blorage looked complacently at the chair; but his meditations were interrupted by a respectful intimation from Penge that his master would oblige everybody by getting out of the way, because the .market-gardener had arrived with his flowers and decorations, the carpenter was waiting with his nails and ruler, and the Mr. Gunter of those parts was frantic to begin setting up his lights. So, Mr. Blorage got out of the way for the rest of the day, and reappeared at dinner-time in due course, and afterwards became the observed of all observers, as he led out the (in those parts) highly renowned and celebrated Lady Fitzcluck to open his ball with an old-fashioned country-dance.

Everything had gone off well, up to the proud moment when Mr. Blorage drew on his new kid gloves for the (in those parts) eminently aristocratic Lady Fitzcluck. She was bulky, but she was light in hand, and she and Mr. Blorage danced with a spirit worthy of the occasion. Half way down thirty couples, Mr. Blorage became conscious of a circumstance. A stately old dowager was seated, in the centre of a circle of chairs, in the Chair of Truth. Howsoever it had got there, by whatsoever mysterious agency it had been brought there, there it was, with the dowager in it. She was encircled by a crowd, to whom she was holding forth, and evidently in no complimentary strain. Mr. Blorage rushed out of the country-dance at the instant when he ought to have paraded the (in those parts) highly fashionable Lady Fitzcluck down the middle; he rushed back again, and danced vehemently; he grasped the hand confidingly held across to him in the execution of the figure hands across, as if it were the throat of a burglar; in all the hurry, worry, and confusion he must think (and could not think) of three appropriate and respectful questions to put to that terrible and otherwise immovable old dowager. With his responsibility staring him in the face, he had hurled Lady Fitzcluck through a narrow gorge of dancers, when an unfortunate button of his coat entangled itself in the lace of a lady's dress, and in the peturbation of his feelings he went down the middle and up again, carrying a long and tattered shred, that lengthened as he went. Fanny's was the dress—Fanny was the sufferer. But she looked up into his face so forgivingly, and her soft blue eyes so smilingly met his, and her rosy lips spoke his pardon in such sweet tones, that he mentally said, "Dear, lovely Fanny, what an angel! What bliss to be loved by Fanny!" But when Florence stepped forward from among the dancers, with eager concern, her bright cheek flushed, her dark eyes sparkling, and her voice attuned to the gentlest tones of commiseration for the damage done to "dear Fanny's dear love of a pretty dress"— when she gracefully begged her partner to excuse her, "that she might pin up the dear love's tatters"—then, Mr. Blorage felt very much inclined to repeat the above sentence over again, substituting the name of Florence for Fanny. Meantime, all eyes were attracted to the horrible dowager in the Chair of Truth. Had any Painter been present, he would have gone on his knees to beseech that dowager to sit to him for the personification of a Gorgon. Mr. Blorage felt, after all, that he could no more dare to ask her a question than if she had been his Black Majesty from below, arrayed in gorgeous female attire. There she must sit, until kind Fate stepped in with three questions and released her. As he looked hopelessly towards the door, he saw the little piquante nose of Gatty Bland showing itself in good relief against a black coat near her. She had a little laced handkerchief tied under her chin; she went towards the dowager, changing the little laced kerchief into her hand; in her plain white dress she conveyed the dowager, all purple and gold, down the room, out at the door, and into the tea-room. He blessed Gatty Bland mentally, and finished his dance with high credit to himself, and perfect satisfaction to the (in those parts) rather-difficult-to-please Lady Fitzcluck. As soon as he was free, he flew to seek a partner, either in Fanny the Fair or Florence the Beautiful.

They were together, and almost alone. They were together—horror!—in the Chair of Truth, Fanny on the cushioned seat; Florence on the stuffed arm. Florence was still employed in pinning up the tatters of the torn dress of Fanny.

"What a beautiful picture; what a lovely contrast!" thought Dick, as he approached.

"There, Dear!" said Florence, with a remarkably emphatic stress upon the last word; "I have pinned you up, and done the best I could for you, Dear. But I am glad to see, notwithstanding, that you are a monstrous figure, and not fit to look at, Dear."

"Thank you, Florence, Dear!"

"Ah, you false thing! I see through your meekness and your affectation, as if you did not care about your dress. It's a pity Mr. Blorage can't see you at home."

"It's a pity Mr. Blorage can't see you at home. Aunt longs for the day when she can rid herself of you: indolent, selfish, and useless creature that you are."

"But Aunt comforts herself with the reflection that she has not such a firebrand in her house as you are. Aunt can well afford to put up with a little indolence where there is so much good temper."

"It is better to be a little passionate than sulky, Love."

"Is it, Love? Mr. Blorage is the best judge of that. We have all our tempers, and you don't expect a perfect wife, do you, Mr. Blorage?"

"I am very imperfect myself," murmured the unfortunate Dick.

"Oh no, Mr. Blorage," cried Fanny and Florence together; "You are everything that is nice and good tempered. And this is such a love of a house, that no one could be unhappy here."

Here the duet ceased, and solos began.

"You would always be cross and fractious, Fanny," said Florence.

"And you would always be rude and boisterous, Florence," said Fanny.

"For you are a virago, and you know you are," said Florence.

"For you are a hoyden, and you know you are," said Fanny.

"I am ashamed of you, my darling," said Florence.

"I am disgusted with you, my precious," said Fanny.

"Ladies, ladies! " expostulated Dick.

"She has the vilest temper, Mr. Blorage! " cries Florence.

"She can't speak a word of truth, Mr. Blorage," cries Fanny.

As Mr. Blorage turned hurriedly and appealingly from the one to the other, each now exclaiming, "Throw your handkerchief to me, Mr. Blorage!" he lost his balance, rolled over, and rolled the chair over. Picking himself up with all possible despatch, and turning to apologise, he found that Florence, Fanny, music, lights, flowers, dancers, Lady Fitzcluck, and dowager, had all disappeared. There was nothing near him but the chair—overturned— and an empty wine-bottle.

V

"Thank Heaven! " were the first spoken words of Mr. Blorage. His first act was to look for his handkerchief, which he hoped he had not thrown to either of the ladies. It was safe in his pocket. "It must have been a dream," he next remarked, eyeing the chair dubiously. "Yes, of course a dream," as he gathered courage from its motionless state. "But a very bad dream," as he felt encouraged to touch it, raise it, and examine it. As harmless a chair as ever upholsterer stuffed, or gentleman bought! Gently he restored it to its proper place.

A knock at the door. Immediately followed by the appearance of the model Penge. It seemed an agreeable and satisfactory circumstance to the respectful Penge that his master was on his legs and awake.

"Shall I remove the things, sir? It's close upon nine."

"Do so, Penge. And I think I will have a cup of coffee—rather strong, Penge."

"Yes, sir."

What a relief it was, not to see Penge sit down in the chair!

"It's a delicious cup of coffee, Penge," said Mr. Blorage, when it was brought, " and it so perfectly agrees with me that I think I'll take a run over to Dr. Evans's and play a game of chess with him."

The sharp night air smote him with a sudden giddiness, and every twinkling star appeared to be closely embracing a twin star that twinkled with still greater vigour; but he soon got over these delusions, and before he reached Dr. Evans's door was quite himself. On the way, however, he took himself seriously to task:

"How good of the night to be so fresh and fine, how kind of the pure stars to beam down on me so brightly, when I am a man full of evil and weak thoughts. I harboured a design against my fellow-creatures of the basest sort; and, to add to my crime, it was directed against one whom I meant for a wife! True, I know nothing of Miss Fanny or Miss Florence, but the beauty of those two cousins, and a general sort of amiability that seems to belong to all girls. I'll make it my business to see more of both, and I'll try to be guided to a right choice at last."

Mr. Blorage was warmly welcomed by Dr. Evans, who opened the door to him.

"Now this is friendly. I have had a very anxious case, which has caused me much worry these three days. It is happily past the crisis now, and I was just saying to my wife, how I should enjoy your stepping in."

"I am heartily glad I came."

"Of course you are. You are always kind and seasonable. When were you ever otherwise?"

The good Dick followed the doctor (who was a voluble and hearty doctor) up the stairs into the presence of Mrs. Doctor. But Dick was unable to acknowledge Mrs. Doctor's cordial greeting by so much as a single word; for there, before his eyes, seated on a little chair by Mrs. Evans's side, was Miss Gatty Bland: her innocent little face peeping out of a handkerchief tied over her head and under her chin.

"You know dear little Gatty, of course?" remarked the Doctor. "She is waiting for her mother's medicine.—I hope you have given Gatty a cup of tea, my dear?"

Mrs. Doctor's face expressed a profound contempt for Mr. Doctor's unnecessary reminder.

Meantime, Dick sat down. He awaited with the calm composure of a victim of Fate, for Miss Bland to offer him the use of her mother's beautiful china bowl.

She did nothing of the sort. In the ensuing half-hour she made no allusion whatever either to china or to bowls, though the conversation turned upon no other subject than his approaching house-warming.

Dick was half sorry. He felt as if it would be so agreeable to thank such a charming little girl. If her mother had lent him her china bowl (he felt sure she possessed a china bowl), he must have called to thank her; and he felt a desire to become intimate with the family. He might, perhaps, be of service to them; was there anything—or nothing—in that nomination he so nearly heard about? He invited Gatty to the house-warming, and anticipated her request for Jenny and Albert; he was not at all surprised to find that she had a sister Jenny and a brother Albert. But it did surprise him to see how pretty she became when joy flushed her cheeks and brightened her eyes, while several little dimples in the nicest corners of her face discovered themselves, as she smiled her thanks.

"The very thing! " said Mrs. Evans; "a little gaiety does more good than all my doctor's physic. Mr. Blorage, my dear, very thoughtful. You'll expect all four, I dare say—three girls and a boy."

" Only four! I expect eight at least."

"But, Mrs. Evans," whispered Gatty, "one of us must stay with mamma; that will be I, you know."

"My dear, I will see to that. I will step down in the morning, Gatty, and settle it all with mamma."

"And tell mamma from me," said the doctor, "that I shall spend a couple of hours with her to-morrow evening. I want to study her case, and I shall like a little rest between your dances, Blorage."

"That is," said Gatty, smiling delightedly, "that you two are most kindly going to represent me for that time."

"Just so, my dear. What! Are you off, Gatty?—Stay. We'll send our man, Mike, with you; the railway has brought a lot of ill-looking people about."

"Let me take you home, Miss Bland," said Dick.

"Oh! Thank you very much, Mr. Blorage. I own some of the people frighten me, though I think they mean no harm."

"We will have a game of chess when you come back, Blorage," says the doctor.

What passed between little Gatty and her escort, and whether anything passed on the subject of china bowls, nobody knows. The walk did not last longer than ten minutes. My private opinion is, that Dick treated Gatty all the way with the respect and deference due to a young princess accidentally committed to his care. When he returned to his game of chess, what with the remaining fumes of that bottle of wine, the extraordinary dream, and this odd approach to an interpretation of it, it is certain that he was in a romantic mood. He willingly listened to a long history of the Elands, during which Mr. and Mrs. Doctor maintained a laudatory duet very different indeed from the imaginary duet between Fanny and Florence.

"I only wish," cried the doctor, at last, "that I had a son of thirty, or thirty-five, with a good house, a good income, and a good heart. I would recommend him Gatty Bland for a wife with all my heart and soul, and he would thank me every year of his life ever afterwards, even though he had to marry her whole family along with her!"

"Miss Bland," said Mr. Blorage, "spoke of a nomination—no, by-the-by, she didn't—it was a china bowl—dear me, what do I mean—I think I hardly know what I do mean!"

"You look rather wild, Dick; of course I can't help you out. I don't know what you discoursed upon in your walk; but there appears to me no affinity between a nomination for the Blue-coat School and a china bowl."

"Oh! that's what she wants, is it? Blue-coat School! God bless my soul! Really a nomination, eh? Blue coat! Ah!—Check to your queen!"

Notwithstanding that check, Dick lost the game. But he went home in a felicitous state of mind, that made him feel as if he had won the game. He continued to repeat the word "Blue" to himself, as if he were under an obligation never to forget it; he went up to his bedroom, chuckling, "Blue!" he undressed, chuckling "Blue;" he sat up in bed, after lying down, with a vehement "Blue;" and his last recollection was a struggle to say " Bluenomicoatation."

VI

Mr. Blorage arose in a contented and happy frame of mind. The great day was the greatest of successes; nothing marred the triumph of the dinner, nothing marred the beauty of the ball. The hard-faced dowager sat in the chair, but she was just as forcible and disagreeable as usual: no more and no less. Mr. Blorage danced with Lady Fitzcluck, and bespoke Fanny, and Florence, and Gatty. For Gatty was there, demurely happy. Trust Mr. and Mrs. Doctor for Gatty's being there!

Florence looked most beautiful. She was charmingly dressed, in white tarlatan—three skirts—pinked—each skirt looped up with a mixture of white roses and pomegranate blossoms. A wreath of the same for her hair. Fanny was dressed in floating robes of blue—less blue than her eyes. Her fair curls were twined with silver leaves: she looked like a nymph; Florence like a queen. Not the greatest gossip in the room could say which was the favourite. Neither could the greatest, or the least, gossip in the room decide at what particular moment the star of both descended below Mr. Blorage's horizon.

But he has confided to somebody, who confided it to me, who now confide it to you, that Miss Florence ceased to be beautiful in his eyes when she sneered at the plainness of the Miss Blands' muslin dresses. "And it is real ivy in their hair, Mr. Blorage, so they can't have gone to any great expense to do honour to your ball." And Miss Florence glanced down at her own dress.

"I like them all the better for it," stoutly answered Dick.

As to Miss Fanny, she was so astonished at the impertinence of such people as the Blands thrusting themselves into society so much above them! And her star descended, at the instant when she was thus overcome.

Mr. Blorage accomplished his dances with Fanny and with Florence, but did not accomplish his dance with Gatty Bland. For on the instant that he claimed her hand, Dr. Evans (sent off by his wife presently after dinner) returned from taking care of Mrs. Bland.

"Oh! Mr. Blorage, I must go—thank you so much for the happiest evening I ever spent, and the prettiest sight I ever saw!"

"No no no, you must not go; a quadrille takes only twenty minutes to dance."

"But mamma is alone now, and I should be quite unhappy all that twenty minutes, even though dancing with you. But there is Jenny, she dances so well, and she loves it so much, and—don't think me conceited, Mr. Blorage—she is so pretty."

"She is the prettiest girl in the room—but one," says Mr. Blorage in a whisper. And as he assists Gatty to put on her cloak, he sees her, with unspeakable admiration, tie her little laced handkerchief over her head and under her chin, and look so indescribably like the dear darling little creature of his vision, that he longs—infamous as is (of course) the thought—to clasp her, then and there, to his heart! But instead of doing so, he flies back to the ball-room, and engages Jenny out of hand. Thus Gatty, when she went home, was able to tell her mother that she took a last peep at the beautiful scene, and saw kind Mr. Blorage asking Jenny to dance, and Jenny looking as pretty as even those two lovely cousins Florence and Fanny. "They say Mr. Blorage is to marry one of them, mamma, but I hope not."

"Oh, my Gatty!"

"Well, mamma, you know I see a good deal of them, here and there, and I am sure they are only pretty girls. They do not appreciate his great noble generous heart. But now, mamma, to bed you must go. No more excitement for you to-night."

Happily, the excitement in the little family lasted a good many days, and afforded food for conversation, morning, noon, and night. Indeed, it was yet as fresh as ever, when, one morning, the post brought a piece of news that fairly surpassed the house-warming—a nomination to the Blue-coat School, in favour of no less a personage than Master Albert Bland. The commotion in that cottage——Well! It's a blessed thing to want something, for then you can duly appreciate the favour of having it. And it is a blessed thing to be rich, and liberal withal, for then you can bestow the favour so appreciated. Meantime, Mr. Blorage divided his time pretty equally between his little office at the Bank, Dr. Evans's, the house belonging to the father of Florence, and the abode within which dwelt the lovely Fanny's aunt. And all these visits, combined with the still existing effects of his dream, ended in consequences.

The first consequence occurred to the self-satisfied William. His slow brother Dick acquired the ridiculous habit of demanding what Bill did with those sums of money he was for ever borrowing? And—unkindest thing of all—Mr. Richard insinuated, nay, he more than insinuated, he plainly told—Mr. William Blorage that he expected such sums to be repaid in future. And to show that this was no idle threat, he produced a ledger, wherein a debtor and creditor account was drawn up between Mr. Richard Blorage and Mr. William Blorage: which account displayed a state of things so alarming to Mr. William, that he reformed rather. Imagine Mr. Dick's pleasure when William, Billy, or Bill, applied in sober seriousness for that post of junior of all the junior clerks, whilom so despised by him!

Second important consequence. Mr. Richard Blorage committed a piece of extravagance. He caused to be executed for himself, a statuette in white marble. Any orderers of statues, or other things to be made after a fashion of their own, may calculate what an enormous sum Mr. Blorage paid for his statue. It must be ethereal-looking (he said), it must have extended wings, it must be lightly poised on one foot; but above all, it must have a slightly turned-up nose, and a little lace handkerchief tied under the chin!

* * * * *

These consequences came to pass ten years ago. On the night of the thirty-first of December, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, let us take a peep into Mr. Blorage's house. Let us take a peep at Mr. Blorage in his dining-room. Dinner is over, wine and dessert are on table. The Chair is at the upper end of the room; above the chair, is a lovely statuette on a carved oaken bracket.

Dick is reading the paper; so, at the same time, is some one else. Dick holds the paper in his right hand; his left hand clasps a little tiny hand of the said some one else: while the matcher to that small hand of the same some one else turns the leaves of the paper, so that Dick feels he has no want of another hand. If the owner of the small hand gets to the bottom of the page first—which she invariably does, being a woman—she lays her head confidingly on Dick's shoulder, and seems very well content to let it stay there as long as Dick chooses.

But, hark! There is a noise overhead; a baize door closes with a muffled sound; there is a pattering of little feet, and there is a joyful chorus of little voices. Dick puts down the paper; his companion, flying to the door, opens it; in rush half a dozen small rosy boys and girls. (Most of these little children have noses of a slightly astronomical turn.)

Mamma prepares their dessert. There is a chair wanting at the table. In default of the missing chair, mamma wheels forward the Chair, and sits down in it.

"Papa, papa! Mamma is in the Chair of Truth," cries a child.

Clearly Mr. Blorage must have told his dream in the family circle.

"Then let us question her," says papa. "Mamma, are you happy?"

"Happy, as angels are said to be."

"Do you love us?"

"As (under God) my chief good, my life."

"Have you ever repented marrying Dick Blorage?"

This time the question is only answered by the surcharged eyes; expressive and loving eyes are often more ready to overflow from perfect happiness, than from distress or pain.

CHAPTER X

HIS WONDERFUL END

It will have been, ere now, perceived that I sold the foregoing writings. From the fact of their being printed in these pages, the inference will, ere now, have been drawn by the reader (may I add, the gentle reader?) that I sold them to One who never yet—[2]

Having parted with the writings on most satisfactory terms,—for, in opening negotiations with the present Journal, was I not placing myself in the hands of One of whom it may be said, in the words of Another, [2]—resumed my usual functions. But I too soon discovered that peace of mind had fled from a brow which, up to that time, Time had merely took the hair off, leaving an unruffled expanse within.

It were superfluous to veil it,—the brow to which I allude is my own.

Yes, over that brow uneasiness gathered like the sable wing of the fabled bird, as—as no doubt will be easily identified by all right-minded individuals. If not, I am unable, on the spur of the moment, to enter into particulars of him. The reflection that the writings must now inevitably get into print, and that He might yet live and meet with them, sat like the Hag of Night upon my jaded form. The elasticity of my spirits departed. Fruitless was the Bottle, whether Wine or Medicine. I had recourse to both, and the effect of both upon my system was witheringly lowering.

In this state of depression, into which I subsided when I first began to revolve what could I ever say if He—the unknown—was to appear in the Coffee-room and demand reparation, I one forenoon in this last November received a turn that appeared to be given me by the finger of Fate and Conscience, hand in hand. I was alone in the Coffee-room, and had just poked the fire into a blaze, and was standing with my back to it, trying whether heat would penetrate with soothing influence to the Voice within, when a young man in a cap, of an intelligent countenance, though requiring his hair cut, stood before me.

“Mr. Christopher, the Head Waiter?”

“The same.”

The young man shook his hair out of his vision,—which it impeded,—to a packet from his breast, and handing it over to me, said, with his eye (or did I dream?) fixed with a lambent meaning on me, “THE PROOFS.”

Although I smelt my coat-tails singeing at the fire, I had not the power to withdraw them. The young man put the packet in my faltering grasp, and repeated,—let me do him the justice to add, with civility:

“THE PROOFS. A. Y. R.”

With those words he departed.

A. Y. R.? And You Remember. Was that his meaning? At Your Risk. Were the letters short for that reminder? Anticipate Your Retribution. Did they stand for that warning? Out-dacious Youth Repent? But no; for that, a O was happily wanting, and the vowel here was a A.

I opened the packet, and found that its contents were the foregoing writings printed just as the reader (may I add the discerning reader?) peruses them. In vain was the reassuring whisper,—A.Y.R., All the Year Round,—it could not cancel the Proofs. Too appropriate name. The Proofs of my having sold the Writings.

My wretchedness daily increased. I had not thought of the risk I ran, and the defying publicity I put my head into, until all was done, and all was in print. Give up the money to be off the bargain and prevent the publication, I could not. My family was down in the world, Christmas was coming on, a brother in the hospital and a sister in the rheumatics could not be entirely neglected. And it was not only ins in the family that had told on the resources of one unaided Waitering; outs were not wanting. A brother out of a situation, and another brother out of money to meet an acceptance, and another brother out of his mind, and another brother out at New York (not the same, though it might appear so), had really and truly brought me to a stand till I could turn myself round. I got worse and worse in my meditations, constantly reflecting “The Proofs,” and reflecting that when Christmas drew nearer, and the Proofs were published, there could be no safety from hour to hour but that He might confront me in the Coffee-room, and in the face of day and his country demand his rights.

The impressive and unlooked-for catastrophe towards which I dimly pointed the reader (shall I add, the highly intellectual reader?) in my first remarks now rapidly approaches.

It was November still, but the last echoes of the Guy Foxes had long ceased to reverberate. We was slack,—several joints under our average mark, and wine, of course, proportionate. So slack had we become at last, that Beds Nos. 26, 27, 28, and 31, having took their six o’clock dinners, and dozed over their respective pints, had drove away in their respective Hansoms for their respective Night Mail-trains and left us empty.

I had took the evening paper to No. 6 table,—which is warm and most to be preferred,—and, lost in the all-absorbing topics of the day, had dropped into a slumber. I was recalled to consciousness by the well-known intimation, “Waiter!” and replying, “Sir!” found a gentleman standing at No. 4 table. The reader (shall I add, the observant reader?) will please to notice the locality of the gentleman,—at No. 4 table.

He had one of the newfangled uncollapsable bags in his hand (which I am against, for I don’t see why you shouldn’t collapse, while you are about it, as your fathers collapsed before you), and he said:

“I want to dine, waiter. I shall sleep here to-night.”

“Very good, sir. What will you take for dinner, sir?”

“Soup, bit of codfish, oyster sauce, and the joint.”

“Thank you, sir.”

I rang the chambermaid’s bell; and Mrs. Pratchett marched in, according to custom, demurely carrying a lighted flat candle before her, as if she was one of a long public procession, all the other members of which was invisible.

In the meanwhile the gentleman had gone up to the mantelpiece, right in front of the fire, and had laid his forehead against the mantelpiece (which it is a low one, and brought him into the attitude of leap-frog), and had heaved a tremenjous sigh. His hair was long and lightish; and when he laid his forehead against the mantelpiece, his hair all fell in a dusty fluff together over his eyes; and when he now turned round and lifted up his head again, it all fell in a dusty fluff together over his ears. This give him a wild appearance, similar to a blasted heath.

“O! The chambermaid. Ah!” He was turning something in his mind. “To be sure. Yes. I won’t go up-stairs now, if you will take my bag. It will be enough for the present to know my number.—Can you give me 24 B?”

(O Conscience, what a Adder art thou!)

Mrs. Pratchett allotted him the room, and took his bag to it. He then went back before the fire, and fell a biting his nails.

“Waiter!” biting between the words, “give me,” bite, “pen and paper; and in five minutes,” bite, “let me have, if you please,” bite, “a”, bite, “Messenger.”

Unmindful of his waning soup, he wrote and sent off six notes before he touched his dinner. Three were City; three West-End. The City letters were to Cornhill, Ludgate-hill, and Farringdon-street. The West-End letters were to Great Marlborough Street, New Burlington Street, and Piccadilly. Everybody was systematically denied at every one of the six places, and there was not a vestige of any answer. Our light porter whispered to me, when he came back with that report, “All Booksellers.”

But before then he had cleared off his dinner, and his bottle of wine. He now—mark the concurrence with the document formerly given in full!—knocked a plate of biscuits off the table with his agitated elber (but without breakage), and demanded boiling brandy-and-water.

Now fully convinced that it was Himself, I perspired with the utmost freedom. When he became flushed with the heated stimulant referred to, he again demanded pen and paper, and passed the succeeding two hours in producing a manuscript which he put in the fire when completed. He then went up to bed, attended by Mrs. Pratchett. Mrs. Pratchett (who was aware of my emotions) told me, on coming down, that she had noticed his eye rolling into every corner of the passages and staircase, as if in search of his Luggage, and that, looking back as she shut the door of 24 B, she perceived him with his coat already thrown off immersing himself bodily under the bedstead, like a chimley-sweep before the application of machinery.

The next day—I forbear the horrors of that night—was a very foggy day in our part of London, insomuch that it was necessary to light the Coffee-room gas. We was still alone, and no feverish words of mine can do justice to the fitfulness of his appearance as he sat at No. 4 table, increased by there being something wrong with the meter.

Having again ordered his dinner, he went out, and was out for the best part of two hours. Inquiring on his return whether any of the answers had arrived, and receiving an unqualified negative, his instant call was for mulligatawny, the cayenne pepper, and orange brandy.

Feeling that the mortal struggle was now at hand, I also felt that I must be equal to him, and with that view resolved that whatever he took I would take. Behind my partition, but keeping my eye on him over the curtain, I therefore operated on Mulligatawny, Cayenne Pepper, and Orange Brandy. And at a later period of the day, when he again said, “Orange Brandy,” I said so too, in a lower tone, to George, my Second Lieutenant (my First was absent on leave), who acts between me and the bar.

Throughout that awful day he walked about the Coffee-room continually. Often he came close up to my partition, and then his eye rolled within, too evidently in search of any signs of his Luggage. Half-past six came, and I laid his cloth. He ordered a bottle of old Brown. I likewise ordered a bottle of old Brown. He drank his. I drank mine (as nearly as my duties would permit) glass for glass against his. He topped with coffee and a small glass. I topped with coffee and a small glass. He dozed. I dozed. At last, “Waiter!”—and he ordered his bill. The moment was now at hand when we two must be locked in the deadly grapple.

Swift as the arrow from the bow, I had formed my resolution; in other words, I had hammered it out between nine and nine. It was, that I would be the first to open up the subject with a full acknowledgment, and would offer any gradual settlement within my power. He paid his bill (doing what was right by attendance) with his eye rolling about him to the last for any tokens of his Luggage. One only time our gaze then met, with the lustrous fixedness (I believe I am correct in imputing that character to it?) of the well-known Basilisk. The decisive moment had arrived.

With a tolerable steady hand, though with humility, I laid The Proofs before him.

“Gracious Heavens!” he cries out, leaping up, and catching hold of his hair. “What’s this? Print!”

“Sir,” I replied, in a calming voice, and bending forward, “I humbly acknowledge to being the unfortunate cause of it. But I hope, sir, that when you have heard the circumstances explained, and the innocence of my intentions—”

To my amazement, I was stopped short by his catching me in both his arms, and pressing me to his breast-bone; where I must confess to my face (and particular, nose) having undergone some temporary vexation from his wearing his coat buttoned high up, and his buttons being uncommon hard.

“Ha, ha, ha!” he cries, releasing me with a wild laugh, and grasping my hand. “What is your name, my Benefactor?”

“My name, sir” (I was crumpled, and puzzled to make him out), “is Christopher; and I hope, sir, that, as such, when you’ve heard my ex—”

“In print!” he exclaims again, dashing the proofs over and over as if he was bathing in them.—“In print!! O Christopher! Philanthropist! Nothing can recompense you,—but what sum of money would be acceptable to you?”

I had drawn a step back from him, or I should have suffered from his buttons again.

“Sir, I assure you, I have been already well paid, and—”

“No, no, Christopher! Don’t talk like that! What sum of money would be acceptable to you, Christopher? Would you find twenty pounds acceptable, Christopher?”

However great my surprise, I naturally found words to say, “Sir, I am not aware that the man was ever yet born without more than the average amount of water on the brain as would not find twenty pounds acceptable. But—extremely obliged to you, sir, I’m sure;” for he had tumbled it out of his purse and crammed it in my hand in two bank-notes; “but I could wish to know, sir, if not intruding, how I have merited this liberality?”

“Know then, my Christopher,” he says, “that from boyhood’s hour I have unremittingly and unavailingly endeavoured to get into print. Know, Christopher, that all the Booksellers alive—and several dead—have refused to put me into print. Know, Christopher, that I have written unprinted Reams. But they shall be read to you, my friend and brother. You sometimes have a holiday?”

Seeing the great danger I was in, I had the presence of mind to answer, “Never!” To make it more final, I added, “Never! Not from the cradle to the grave.”

“Well,” says he, thinking no more about that, and chuckling at his proofs again. “But I am in print! The first flight of ambition emanating from my father’s lowly cot is realised at length! The golden bow”—he was getting on,—“struck by the magic hand, has emitted a complete and perfect sound! When did this happen, my Christopher?”

“Which happen, sir?”

“This,” he held it out at arms length to admire it,—“this Per-rint.”

When I had given him my detailed account of it, he grasped me by the hand again, and said:

“Dear Christopher, it should be gratifying to you to know that you are an instrument in the hands of Destiny. Because you are.”

A passing Something of a melancholy cast put it into my head to shake it, and to say, “Perhaps we all are.”

“I don’t mean that,” he answered; “I don’t take that wide range; I confine myself to the special case. Observe me well, my Christopher! Hopeless of getting rid, through any effort of my own, of any of the manuscripts among my Luggage,—all of which, send them where I would, were always coming back to me,—it is now some seven years since I left that Luggage here, on the desperate chance, either that the too, too faithful manuscripts would come back to me no more, or that some one less accursed than I might give them to the world. You follow me, my Christopher?”

“Pretty well, sir.” I followed him so far as to judge that he had a weak head, and that the Orange, the Boiling, and Old Brown combined was beginning to tell. (The Old Brown, being heady, is best adapted to seasoned cases.)

“Years elapsed, and those compositions slumbered in dust. At length, Destiny, choosing her agent from all mankind, sent You here, Christopher, and lo! the Casket was burst asunder, and the Giant was free!”

He made hay of his hair after he said this, and he stood a-tiptoe.

“But,” he reminded himself in a state of excitement, “we must sit up all night, my Christopher. I must correct these Proofs for the press. Fill all the inkstands, and bring me several new pens.”

He smeared himself and he smeared the Proofs, the night through, to that degree that when Sol gave him warning to depart (in a four-wheeler), few could have said which was them, and which was him, and which was blots. His last instructions was, that I should instantly run and take his corrections to the office of the present Journal. I did so. They most likely will not appear in print, for I noticed a message being brought round from Beauford Printing House, while I was a throwing this concluding statement on paper, that the ole resources of that establishment was unable to make out what they meant. Upon which a certain gentleman in company, as I will not more particularly name,—but of whom it will be sufficient to remark, standing on the broad basis of a wave-girt isle, that whether we regard him in the light of,—[3] laughed, and put the corrections in the fire.

Footnotes

[1] Its name and address at length, with other full particulars, all editorially struck out.

[2] The remainder of this complimentary sentence editorially struck out.

[3] The remainder of this complimentary parenthesis editorially struck out.

MRS. LIRRIPER'S LODGINGS

1863

CONTENTS

I. How Mrs. Lirriper Carried on the Business

II. How the First Floor Went to Crowley Castle

III. How the Side-Room Was Attended by a Doctor

IV. How the Second Floor Kept a Dog

V. How the Third Floor Knew the Potteries

VI. How the Best Attic Was Under a Cloud

VII. How the Parlours Added a Few Words

CHAPTER I

HOW MRS. LIRRIPER CARRIED ON THE BUSINESS

Charles Dickens

Whoever would begin to be worried with letting Lodgings that wasn’t a lone woman with a living to get is a thing inconceivable to me, my dear; excuse the familiarity, but it comes natural to me in my own little room, when wishing to open my mind to those that I can trust, and I should be truly thankful if they were all mankind, but such is not so, for have but a Furnished bill in the window and your watch on the mantelpiece, and farewell to it if you turn your back for but a second, however gentlemanly the manners; nor is being of your own sex any safeguard, as I have reason, in the form of sugar-tongs to know, for that lady (and a fine woman she was) got me to run for a glass of water, on the plea of going to be confined, which certainly turned out true, but it was in the Station-house.

Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street, Strand—situated midway between the City and St. James’s, and within five minutes’ walk of the principal places of public amusement—is my address. I have rented this house many years, as the parish rate-books will testify; and I could wish my landlord was as alive to the fact as I am myself; but no, bless you, not a half a pound of paint to save his life, nor so much, my dear, as a tile upon the roof, though on your bended knees.

My dear, you never have found Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand advertised in Bradshaw’s Railway Guide, and with the blessing of Heaven you never will or shall so find it. Some there are who do not think it lowering themselves to make their names that cheap, and even going the lengths of a portrait of the house not like it with a blot in every window and a coach and four at the door, but what will suit Wozenham’s lower down on the other side of the way will not suit me, Miss Wozenham having her opinions and me having mine, though when it comes to systematic underbidding capable of being proved on oath in a court of justice and taking the form of “If Mrs. Lirriper names eighteen shillings a week, I name fifteen and six,” it then comes to a settlement between yourself and your conscience, supposing for the sake of argument your name to be Wozenham, which I am well aware it is not or my opinion of you would be greatly lowered, and as to airy bedrooms and a night-porter in constant attendance the less said the better, the bedrooms being stuffy and the porter stuff.

It is forty years ago since me and my poor Lirriper got married at St. Clement’s Danes, where I now have a sitting in a very pleasant pew with genteel company and my own hassock, and being partial to evening service not too crowded. My poor Lirriper was a handsome figure of a man, with a beaming eye and a voice as mellow as a musical instrument made of honey and steel, but he had ever been a free liver being in the commercial travelling line and travelling what he called a limekiln road—“a dry road, Emma my dear,” my poor Lirriper says to me, “where I have to lay the dust with one drink or another all day long and half the night, and it wears me Emma”—and this led to his running through a good deal and might have run through the turnpike too when that dreadful horse that never would stand still for a single instant set off, but for its being night and the gate shut and consequently took his wheel, my poor Lirriper and the gig smashed to atoms and never spoke afterwards. He was a handsome figure of a man, and a man with a jovial heart and a sweet temper; but if they had come up then they never could have given you the mellowness of his voice, and indeed I consider photographs wanting in mellowness as a general rule and making you look like a new-ploughed field.

My poor Lirriper being behindhand with the world and being buried at Hatfield church in Hertfordshire, not that it was his native place but that he had a liking for the Salisbury Arms where we went upon our wedding-day and passed as happy a fortnight as ever happy was, I went round to the creditors and I says “Gentlemen I am acquainted with the fact that I am not answerable for my late husband’s debts but I wish to pay them for I am his lawful wife and his good name is dear to me. I am going into the Lodgings gentlemen as a business and if I prosper every farthing that my late husband owed shall be paid for the sake of the love I bore him, by this right hand.” It took a long time to do but it was done, and the silver cream-jug which is between ourselves and the bed and the mattress in my room up-stairs (or it would have found legs so sure as ever the Furnished bill was up) being presented by the gentlemen engraved “To Mrs. Lirriper a mark of grateful respect for her honourable conduct” gave me a turn which was too much for my feelings, till Mr. Betley which at that time had the parlours and loved his joke says “Cheer up Mrs. Lirriper, you should feel as if it was only your christening and they were your godfathers and godmothers which did promise for you.” And it brought me round, and I don’t mind confessing to you my dear that I then put a sandwich and a drop of sherry in a little basket and went down to Hatfield church-yard outside the coach and kissed my hand and laid it with a kind of proud and swelling love on my husband’s grave, though bless you it had taken me so long to clear his name that my wedding-ring was worn quite fine and smooth when I laid it on the green green waving grass.

I am an old woman now and my good looks are gone but that’s me my dear over the plate-warmer and considered like in the times when you used to pay two guineas on ivory and took your chance pretty much how you came out, which made you very careful how you left it about afterwards because people were turned so red and uncomfortable by mostly guessing it was somebody else quite different, and there was once a certain person that had put his money in a hop business that came in one morning to pay his rent and his respects being the second floor that would have taken it down from its hook and put it in his breast-pocket—you understand my dear—for the L, he says of the original—only there was no mellowness in his voice and I wouldn’t let him, but his opinion of it you may gather from his saying to it “Speak to me Emma!” which was far from a rational observation no doubt but still a tribute to its being a likeness, and I think myself it was like me when I was young and wore that sort of stays.

But it was about the Lodgings that I was intending to hold forth and certainly I ought to know something of the business having been in it so long, for it was early in the second year of my married life that I lost my poor Lirriper and I set up at Islington directly afterwards and afterwards came here, being two houses and eight-and-thirty years and some losses and a deal of experience.

Girls are your first trial after fixtures and they try you even worse than what I call the Wandering Christians, though why they should roam the earth looking for bills and then coming in and viewing the apartments and stickling about terms and never at all wanting them or dreaming of taking them being already provided, is a mystery I should be thankful to have explained if by any miracle it could be. It’s wonderful they live so long and thrive so on it but I suppose the exercise makes it healthy, knocking so much and going from house to house and up and down-stairs all day, and then their pretending to be so particular and punctual is a most astonishing thing, looking at their watches and saying “Could you give me the refusal of the rooms till twenty minutes past eleven the day after to-morrow in the forenoon, and supposing it to be considered essential by my friend from the country could there be a small iron bedstead put in the little room upon the stairs?” Why when I was new to it my dear I used to consider before I promised and to make my mind anxious with calculations and to get quite wearied out with disappointments, but now I says “Certainly by all means” well knowing it’s a Wandering Christian and I shall hear no more about it, indeed by this time I know most of the Wandering Christians by sight as well as they know me, it being the habit of each individual revolving round London in that capacity to come back about twice a year, and it’s very remarkable that it runs in families and the children grow up to it, but even were it otherwise I should no sooner hear of the friend from the country which is a certain sign than I should nod and say to myself You’re a Wandering Christian, though whether they are (as I have heard) persons of small property with a taste for regular employment and frequent change of scene I cannot undertake to tell you.

Girls as I was beginning to remark are one of your first and your lasting troubles, being like your teeth which begin with convulsions and never cease tormenting you from the time you cut them till they cut you, and then you don’t want to part with them which seems hard but we must all succumb or buy artificial, and even where you get a will nine times out of ten you’ll get a dirty face with it and naturally lodgers do not like good society to be shown in with a smear of black across the nose or a smudgy eyebrow. Where they pick the black up is a mystery I cannot solve, as in the case of the willingest girl that ever came into a house half-starved poor thing, a girl so willing that I called her Willing Sophy down upon her knees scrubbing early and late and ever cheerful but always smiling with a black face. And I says to Sophy, “Now Sophy my good girl have a regular day for your stoves and keep the width of the Airy between yourself and the blacking and do not brush your hair with the bottoms of the saucepans and do not meddle with the snuffs of the candles and it stands to reason that it can no longer be” yet there it was and always on her nose, which turning up and being broad at the end seemed to boast of it and caused warning from a steady gentleman and excellent lodger with breakfast by the week but a little irritable and use of a sitting-room when required, his words being “Mrs. Lirriper I have arrived at the point of admitting that the Black is a man and a brother, but only in a natural form and when it can’t be got off.” Well consequently I put poor Sophy on to other work and forbid her answering the door or answering a bell on any account but she was so unfortunately willing that nothing would stop her flying up the kitchen-stairs whenever a bell was heard to tingle. I put it to her “O Sophy Sophy for goodness’ goodness’ sake where does it come from?” To which that poor unlucky willing mortal—bursting out crying to see me so vexed replied “I took a deal of black into me ma’am when I was a small child being much neglected and I think it must be, that it works out,” so it continuing to work out of that poor thing and not having another fault to find with her I says “Sophy what do you seriously think of my helping you away to New South Wales where it might not be noticed?” Nor did I ever repent the money which was well spent, for she married the ship’s cook on the voyage (himself a Mulotter) and did well and lived happy, and so far as ever I heard it was not noticed in a new state of society to her dying day.

In what way Miss Wozenham lower down on the other side of the way reconciled it to her feelings as a lady (which she is not) to entice Mary Anne Perkinsop from my service is best known to herself, I do not know and I do not wish to know how opinions are formed at Wozenham’s on any point. But Mary Anne Perkinsop although I behaved handsomely to her and she behaved unhandsomely to me was worth her weight in gold as overawing lodgers without driving them away, for lodgers would be far more sparing of their bells with Mary Anne than I ever knew them to be with Maid or Mistress, which is a great triumph especially when accompanied with a cast in the eye and a bag of bones, but it was the steadiness of her way with them through her father’s having failed in Pork. It was Mary Anne’s looking so respectable in her person and being so strict in her spirits that conquered the tea-and-sugarest gentleman (for he weighed them both in a pair of scales every morning) that I have ever had to deal with and no lamb grew meeker, still it afterwards came round to me that Miss Wozenham happening to pass and seeing Mary Anne take in the milk of a milkman that made free in a rosy-faced way (I think no worse of him) with every girl in the street but was quite frozen up like the statue at Charing-cross by her, saw Mary Anne’s value in the lodging business and went as high as one pound per quarter more, consequently Mary Anne with not a word betwixt us says “If you will provide yourself Mrs. Lirriper in a month from this day I have already done the same,” which hurt me and I said so, and she then hurt me more by insinuating that her father having failed in Pork had laid her open to it.

My dear I do assure you it’s a harassing thing to know what kind of girls to give the preference to, for if they are lively they get bell’d off their legs and if they are sluggish you suffer from it yourself in complaints and if they are sparkling-eyed they get made love to, and if they are smart in their persons they try on your Lodgers’ bonnets and if they are musical I defy you to keep them away from bands and organs, and allowing for any difference you like in their heads their heads will be always out of window just the same. And then what the gentlemen like in girls the ladies don’t, which is fruitful hot water for all parties, and then there’s temper though such a temper as Caroline Maxey’s I hope not often. A good-looking black-eyed girl was Caroline and a comely-made girl to your cost when she did break out and laid about her, as took place first and last through a new-married couple come to see London in the first floor and the lady very high and it was supposed not liking the good looks of Caroline having none of her own to spare, but anyhow she did try Caroline though that was no excuse. So one afternoon Caroline comes down into the kitchen flushed and flashing, and she says to me “Mrs. Lirriper that woman in the first has aggravated me past bearing,” I says “Caroline keep your temper,” Caroline says with a curdling laugh “Keep my temper? You’re right Mrs. Lirriper, so I will. Capital D her!” bursts out Caroline (you might have struck me into the centre of the earth with a feather when she said it) “I’ll give her a touch of the temper that I keep!” Caroline downs with her hair my dear, screeches and rushes up-stairs, I following as fast as my trembling legs could bear me, but before I got into the room the dinner-cloth and pink-and-white service all dragged off upon the floor with a crash and the new-married couple on their backs in the firegrate, him with the shovel and tongs and a dish of cucumber across him and a mercy it was summer-time. “Caroline” I says “be calm,” but she catches off my cap and tears it in her teeth as she passes me, then pounces on the new-married lady makes her a bundle of ribbons takes her by the two ears and knocks the back of her head upon the carpet Murder screaming all the time Policemen running down the street and Wozenham’s windows (judge of my feelings when I came to know it) thrown up and Miss Wozenham calling out from the balcony with crocodile’s tears “It’s Mrs. Lirriper been overcharging somebody to madness—she’ll be murdered—I always thought so—Pleeseman save her!” My dear four of them and Caroline behind the chiffoniere attacking with the poker and when disarmed prize-fighting with her double fists, and down and up and up and down and dreadful! But I couldn’t bear to see the poor young creature roughly handled and her hair torn when they got the better of her, and I says “Gentlemen Policemen pray remember that her sex is the sex of your mothers and sisters and your sweethearts, and God bless them and you!” And there she was sitting down on the ground handcuffed, taking breath against the skirting-board and them cool with their coats in strips, and all she says was “Mrs. Lirriper I’m sorry as ever I touched you, for you’re a kind motherly old thing,” and it made me think that I had often wished I had been a mother indeed and how would my heart have felt if I had been the mother of that girl! Well you know it turned out at the Police-office that she had done it before, and she had her clothes away and was sent to prison, and when she was to come out I trotted off to the gate in the evening with just a morsel of jelly in that little basket of mine to give her a mite of strength to face the world again, and there I met with a very decent mother waiting for her son through bad company and a stubborn one he was with his half-boots not laced. So out came Caroline and I says “Caroline come along with me and sit down under the wall where it’s retired and eat a little trifle that I have brought with me to do you good,” and she throws her arms round my neck and says sobbing “O why were you never a mother when there are such mothers as there are!” she says, and in half a minute more she begins to laugh and says “Did I really tear your cap to shreds?” and when I told her “You certainly did so Caroline” she laughed again and said while she patted my face “Then why do you wear such queer old caps you dear old thing? if you hadn’t worn such queer old caps I don’t think I should have done it even then.” Fancy the girl! Nothing could get out of her what she was going to do except O she would do well enough, and we parted she being very thankful and kissing my hands, and I nevermore saw or heard of that girl, except that I shall always believe that a very genteel cap which was brought anonymous to me one Saturday night in an oilskin basket by a most impertinent young sparrow of a monkey whistling with dirty shoes on the clean steps and playing the harp on the Airy railings with a hoop-stick came from Caroline.

What you lay yourself open to my dear in the way of being the object of uncharitable suspicions when you go into the Lodging business I have not the words to tell you, but never was I so dishonourable as to have two keys nor would I willingly think it even of Miss Wozenham lower down on the other side of the way sincerely hoping that it may not be, though doubtless at the same time money cannot come from nowhere and it is not reason to suppose that Bradshaws put it in for love be it blotty as it may. It is a hardship hurting to the feelings that Lodgers open their minds so wide to the idea that you are trying to get the better of them and shut their minds so close to the idea that they are trying to get the better of you, but as Major Jackman says to me, “I know the ways of this circular world Mrs. Lirriper, and that’s one of ’em all round it” and many is the little ruffle in my mind that the Major has smoothed, for he is a clever man who has seen much. Dear dear, thirteen years have passed though it seems but yesterday since I was sitting with my glasses on at the open front parlour window one evening in August (the parlours being then vacant) reading yesterday’s paper my eyes for print being poor though still I am thankful to say a long sight at a distance, when I hear a gentleman come posting across the road and up the street in a dreadful rage talking to himself in a fury and d’ing and c’ing somebody. “By George!” says he out loud and clutching his walking-stick, “I’ll go to Mrs. Lirriper’s. Which is Mrs. Lirriper’s?” Then looking round and seeing me he flourishes his hat right off his head as if I had been the queen and he says, “Excuse the intrusion Madam, but pray Madam can you tell me at what number in this street there resides a well-known and much-respected lady by the name of Lirriper?” A little flustered though I must say gratified I took off my glasses and courtesied and said “Sir, Mrs. Lirriper is your humble servant.” “Astonishing!” says he. “A million pardons! Madam, may I ask you to have the kindness to direct one of your domestics to open the door to a gentleman in search of apartments, by the name of Jackman?” I had never heard the name but a politer gentleman I never hope to see, for says he, “Madam I am shocked at your opening the door yourself to no worthier a fellow than Jemmy Jackman. After you Madam. I never precede a lady.” Then he comes into the parlours and he sniffs, and he says “Hah! These are parlours! Not musty cupboards” he says “but parlours, and no smell of coal-sacks.” Now my dear it having been remarked by some inimical to the whole neighbourhood that it always smells of coal-sacks which might prove a drawback to Lodgers if encouraged, I says to the Major gently though firmly that I think he is referring to Arundel or Surrey or Howard but not Norfolk. “Madam” says he “I refer to Wozenham’s lower down over the way—Madam you can form no notion what Wozenham’s is—Madam it is a vast coal-sack, and Miss Wozenham has the principles and manners of a female heaver—Madam from the manner in which I have heard her mention you I know she has no appreciation of a lady, and from the manner in which she has conducted herself towards me I know she has no appreciation of a gentleman—Madam my name is Jackman—should you require any other reference than what I have already said, I name the Bank of England—perhaps you know it!” Such was the beginning of the Major’s occupying the parlours and from that hour to this the same and a most obliging Lodger and punctual in all respects except one irregular which I need not particularly specify, but made up for by his being a protection and at all times ready to fill in the papers of the Assessed Taxes and Juries and that, and once collared a young man with the drawing-room clock under his coat, and once on the parapets with his own hands and blankets put out the kitchen chimney and afterwards attending the summons made a most eloquent speech against the Parish before the magistrates and saved the engine, and ever quite the gentleman though passionate. And certainly Miss Wozenham’s detaining the trunks and umbrella was not in a liberal spirit though it may have been according to her rights in law or an act I would myself have stooped to, the Major being so much the gentleman that though he is far from tall he seems almost so when he has his shirt-frill out and his frock-coat on and his hat with the curly brims, and in what service he was I cannot truly tell you my dear whether Militia or Foreign, for I never heard him even name himself as Major but always simple “Jemmy Jackman” and once soon after he came when I felt it my duty to let him know that Miss Wozenham had put it about that he was no Major and I took the liberty of adding “which you are sir” his words were “Madam at any rate I am not a Minor, and sufficient for the day is the evil thereof” which cannot be denied to be the sacred truth, nor yet his military ways of having his boots with only the dirt brushed off taken to him in the front parlour every morning on a clean plate and varnishing them himself with a little sponge and a saucer and a whistle in a whisper so sure as ever his breakfast is ended, and so neat his ways that it never soils his linen which is scrupulous though more in quality than quantity, neither that nor his mustachios which to the best of my belief are done at the same time and which are as black and shining as his boots, his head of hair being a lovely white.

It was the third year nearly up of the Major’s being in the parlours that early one morning in the month of February when Parliament was coming on and you may therefore suppose a number of impostors were about ready to take hold of anything they could get, a gentleman and a lady from the country came in to view the Second, and I well remember that I had been looking out of window and had watched them and the heavy sleet driving down the street together looking for bills. I did not quite take to the face of the gentleman though he was good-looking too but the lady was a very pretty young thing and delicate, and it seemed too rough for her to be out at all though she had only come from the Adelphi Hotel which would not have been much above a quarter of a mile if the weather had been less severe. Now it did so happen my dear that I had been forced to put five shillings weekly additional on the second in consequence of a loss from running away full dressed as if going out to a dinner-party, which was very artful and had made me rather suspicious taking it along with Parliament, so when the gentleman proposed three months certain and the money in advance and leave then reserved to renew on the same terms for six months more, I says I was not quite certain but that I might have engaged myself to another party but would step down-stairs and look into it if they would take a seat. They took a seat and I went down to the handle of the Major’s door that I had already began to consult finding it a great blessing, and I knew by his whistling in a whisper that he was varnishing his boots which was generally considered private, however he kindly calls out “If it’s you, Madam, come in,” and I went in and told him.

“Well, Madam,” says the Major rubbing his nose—as I did fear at the moment with the black sponge but it was only his knuckle, he being always neat and dexterous with his fingers—“well, Madam, I suppose you would be glad of the money?”

I was delicate of saying “Yes” too out, for a little extra colour rose into the Major’s cheeks and there was irregularity which I will not particularly specify in a quarter which I will not name.

“I am of opinion, Madam,” says the Major, “that when money is ready for you—when it is ready for you, Mrs. Lirriper—you ought to take it. What is there against it, Madam, in this case up-stairs?”

“I really cannot say there is anything against it, sir, still I thought I would consult you.”

“You said a newly-married couple, I think, Madam?” says the Major.

I says “Ye-es. Evidently. And indeed the young lady mentioned to me in a casual way that she had not been married many months.”

The Major rubbed his nose again and stirred the varnish round and round in its little saucer with his piece of sponge and took to his whistling in a whisper for a few moments. Then he says “You would call it a Good Let, Madam?”

“O certainly a Good Let sir.”

“Say they renew for the additional six months. Would it put you about very much Madam if—if the worst was to come to the worst?” said the Major.

“Well I hardly know,” I says to the Major. “It depends upon circumstances. Would you object Sir for instance?”

“I?” says the Major. “Object? Jemmy Jackman? Mrs. Lirriper close with the proposal.”

So I went up-stairs and accepted, and they came in next day which was Saturday and the Major was so good as to draw up a Memorandum of an agreement in a beautiful round hand and expressions that sounded to me equally legal and military, and Mr. Edson signed it on the Monday morning and the Major called upon Mr. Edson on the Tuesday and Mr. Edson called upon the Major on the Wednesday and the Second and the parlours were as friendly as could be wished.

The three months paid for had run out and we had got without any fresh overtures as to payment into May my dear, when there came an obligation upon Mr. Edson to go a business expedition right across the Isle of Man, which fell quite unexpected upon that pretty little thing and is not a place that according to my views is particularly in the way to anywhere at any time but that may be a matter of opinion. So short a notice was it that he was to go next day, and dreadfully she cried poor pretty, and I am sure I cried too when I saw her on the cold pavement in the sharp east wind—it being a very backward spring that year—taking a last leave of him with her pretty bright hair blowing this way and that and her arms clinging round his neck and him saying “There there there. Now let me go Peggy.” And by that time it was plain that what the Major had been so accommodating as to say he would not object to happening in the house, would happen in it, and I told her as much when he was gone while I comforted her with my arm up the staircase, for I says “You will soon have others to keep up for my pretty and you must think of that.”

His letter never came when it ought to have come and what she went through morning after morning when the postman brought none for her the very postman himself compassionated when she ran down to the door, and yet we cannot wonder at its being calculated to blunt the feelings to have all the trouble of other people’s letters and none of the pleasure and doing it oftener in the mud and mizzle than not and at a rate of wages more resembling Little Britain than Great. But at last one morning when she was too poorly to come running down-stairs he says to me with a pleased look in his face that made me next to love the man in his uniform coat though he was dripping wet “I have taken you first in the street this morning Mrs. Lirriper, for here’s the one for Mrs. Edson.” I went up to her bedroom with it as fast as ever I could go, and she sat up in bed when she saw it and kissed it and tore it open and then a blank stare came upon her. “It’s very short!” she says lifting her large eyes to my face. “O Mrs. Lirriper it’s very short!” I says “My dear Mrs. Edson no doubt that’s because your husband hadn’t time to write more just at that time.” “No doubt, no doubt,” says she, and puts her two hands on her face and turns round in her bed.

I shut her softly in and I crept down-stairs and I tapped at the Major’s door, and when the Major having his thin slices of bacon in his own Dutch oven saw me he came out of his chair and put me down on the sofa. “Hush!” says he, “I see something’s the matter. Don’t speak—take time.” I says “O Major I’m afraid there’s cruel work up-stairs.” “Yes yes” says he “I had begun to be afraid of it—take time.” And then in opposition to his own words he rages out frightfully, and says “I shall never forgive myself Madam, that I, Jemmy Jackman, didn’t see it all that morning—didn’t go straight up-stairs when my boot-sponge was in my hand—didn’t force it down his throat—and choke him dead with it on the spot!”

The Major and me agreed when we came to ourselves that just at present we could do no more than take on to suspect nothing and use our best endeavours to keep that poor young creature quiet, and what I ever should have done without the Major when it got about among the organ-men that quiet was our object is unknown, for he made lion and tiger war upon them to that degree that without seeing it I could not have believed it was in any gentleman to have such a power of bursting out with fire-irons walking-sticks water-jugs coals potatoes off his table the very hat off his head, and at the same time so furious in foreign languages that they would stand with their handles half-turned fixed like the Sleeping Ugly—for I cannot say Beauty.

Ever to see the postman come near the house now gave me such I fear that it was a reprieve when he went by, but in about another ten days or a fortnight he says again, “Here’s one for Mrs. Edson.—Is she pretty well?” “She is pretty well postman, but not well enough to rise so early as she used” which was so far gospel-truth.

I carried the letter in to the Major at his breakfast and I says tottering “Major I have not the courage to take it up to her.”

“It’s an ill-looking villain of a letter,” says the Major.

“I have not the courage Major” I says again in a tremble “to take it up to her.”

After seeming lost in consideration for some moments the Major says, raising his head as if something new and useful had occurred to his mind “Mrs. Lirriper, I shall never forgive myself that I, Jemmy Jackman, didn’t go straight up-stairs that morning when my boot-sponge was in my hand—and force it down his throat—and choke him dead with it.”

“Major” I says a little hasty “you didn’t do it which is a blessing, for it would have done no good and I think your sponge was better employed on your own honourable boots.”

So we got to be rational, and planned that I should tap at her bedroom door and lay the letter on the mat outside and wait on the upper landing for what might happen, and never was gunpowder cannon-balls or shells or rockets more dreaded than that dreadful letter was by me as I took it to the second floor.

A terrible loud scream sounded through the house the minute after she had opened it, and I found her on the floor lying as if her life was gone. My dear I never looked at the face of the letter which was lying, open by her, for there was no occasion.

Everything I needed to bring her round the Major brought up with his own hands, besides running out to the chemist’s for what was not in the house and likewise having the fiercest of all his many skirmishes with a musical instrument representing a ball-room I do not know in what particular country and company waltzing in and out at folding-doors with rolling eyes. When after a long time I saw her coming to, I slipped on the landing till I heard her cry, and then I went in and says cheerily “Mrs. Edson you’re not well my dear and it’s not to be wondered at,” as if I had not been in before. Whether she believed or disbelieved I cannot say and it would signify nothing if I could, but I stayed by her for hours and then she God ever blesses me! and says she will try to rest for her head is bad.

“Major,” I whispers, looking in at the parlours, “I beg and pray of you don’t go out.”

The Major whispers, “Madam, trust me I will do no such a thing. How is she?”

I says “Major the good Lord above us only knows what burns and rages in her poor mind. I left her sitting at her window. I am going to sit at mine.”

It came on afternoon and it came on evening. Norfolk is a delightful street to lodge in—provided you don’t go lower down—but of a summer evening when the dust and waste paper lie in it and stray children play in it and a kind of a gritty calm and bake settles on it and a peal of church-bells is practising in the neighbourhood it is a trifle dull, and never have I seen it since at such a time and never shall I see it evermore at such a time without seeing the dull June evening when that forlorn young creature sat at her open corner window on the second and me at my open corner window (the other corner) on the third. Something merciful, something wiser and better far than my own self, had moved me while it was yet light to sit in my bonnet and shawl, and as the shadows fell and the tide rose I could sometimes—when I put out my head and looked at her window below—see that she leaned out a little looking down the street. It was just settling dark when I saw her in the street.

So fearful of losing sight of her that it almost stops my breath while I tell it, I went down-stairs faster than I ever moved in all my life and only tapped with my hand at the Major’s door in passing it and slipping out. She was gone already. I made the same speed down the street and when I came to the corner of Howard-street I saw that she had turned it and was there plain before me going towards the west. O with what a thankful heart I saw her going along!

She was quite unacquainted with London and had very seldom been out for more than an airing in our own street where she knew two or three little children belonging to neighbours and had sometimes stood among them at the street looking at the water. She must be going at hazard I knew, still she kept the bye-streets quite correctly as long as they would serve her, and then turned up into the Strand. But at every corner I could see her head turned one way, and that way was always the river way.

It may have been only the darkness and quiet of the Adelphi that caused her to strike into it but she struck into it much as readily as if she had set out to go there, which perhaps was the case. She went straight down to the Terrace and along it and looked over the iron rail, and I often woke afterwards in my own bed with the horror of seeing her do it. The desertion of the wharf below and the flowing of the high water there seemed to settle her purpose. She looked about as if to make out the way down, and she struck out the right way or the wrong way—I don’t know which, for I don’t know the place before or since—and I followed her the way she went.

It was noticeable that all this time she never once looked back. But there was now a great change in the manner of her going, and instead of going at a steady quick walk with her arms folded before her,—among the dark dismal arches she went in a wild way with her arms opened wide, as if they were wings and she was flying to her death.

We were on the wharf and she stopped. I stopped. I saw her hands at her bonnet-strings, and I rushed between her and the brink and took her round the waist with both my arms. She might have drowned me, I felt then, but she could never have got quit of me.

Down to that moment my mind had been all in a maze and not half an idea had I had in it what I should say to her, but the instant I touched her it came to me like magic and I had my natural voice and my senses and even almost my breath.

“Mrs. Edson!” I says “My dear! Take care. How ever did you lose your way and stumble on a dangerous place like this? Why you must have come here by the most perplexing streets in all London. No wonder you are lost, I’m sure. And this place too! Why I thought nobody ever got here, except me to order my coals and the Major in the parlours to smoke his cigar!”—for I saw that blessed man close by, pretending to it.

“Hah—Hah—Hum!” coughs the Major.

“And good gracious me” I says, “why here he is!”

“Halloa! who goes there?” says the Major in a military manner.

“Well!” I says, “if this don’t beat everything! Don’t you know us Major Jackman?”

“Halloa!” says the Major. “Who calls on Jemmy Jackman?” (and more out of breath he was, and did it less like life than I should have expected.)

“Why here’s Mrs. Edson Major” I says, “strolling out to cool her poor head which has been very bad, has missed her way and got lost, and Goodness knows where she might have got to but for me coming here to drop an order into my coal merchant’s letter-box and you coming here to smoke your cigar!—And you really are not well enough my dear” I says to her “to be half so far from home without me. And your arm will be very acceptable I am sure Major” I says to him “and I know she may lean upon it as heavy as she likes.” And now we had both got her—thanks be Above!—one on each side.

She was all in a cold shiver and she so continued till I laid her on her own bed, and up to the early morning she held me by the hand and moaned and moaned “O wicked, wicked, wicked!” But when at last I made believe to droop my head and be overpowered with a dead sleep, I heard that poor young creature give such touching and such humble thanks for being preserved from taking her own life in her madness that I thought I should have cried my eyes out on the counterpane and I knew she was safe.

Being well enough to do and able to afford it, me and the Major laid our little plans next day while she was asleep worn out, and so I says to her as soon as I could do it nicely:

“Mrs. Edson my dear, when Mr. Edson paid me the rent for these farther six months——”

She gave a start and I felt her large eyes look at me, but I went on with it and with my needlework.

“—I can’t say that I am quite sure I dated the receipt right. Could you let me look at it?”

She laid her frozen cold hand upon mine and she looked through me when I was forced to look up from my needlework, but I had taken the precaution of having on my spectacles.

“I have no receipt” says she.

“Ah! Then he has got it” I says in a careless way. “It’s of no great consequence. A receipt’s a receipt.”

From that time she always had hold of my hand when I could spare it which was generally only when I read to her, for of course she and me had our bits of needlework to plod at and neither of us was very handy at those little things, though I am still rather proud of my share in them too considering. And though she took to all I read to her, I used to fancy that next to what was taught upon the Mount she took most of all to His gentle compassion for us poor women and to His young life and to how His mother was proud of Him and treasured His sayings in her heart. She had a grateful look in her eyes that never never never will be out of mine until they are closed in my last sleep, and when I chanced to look at her without thinking of it I would always meet that look, and she would often offer me her trembling lip to kiss, much more like a little affectionate half broken-hearted child than ever I can imagine any grown person.

One time the trembling of this poor lip was so strong and her tears ran down so fast that I thought she was going to tell me all her woe, so I takes her two hands in mine and I says:

“No my dear not now, you had best not try to do it now. Wait for better times when you have got over this and are strong, and then you shall tell me whatever you will. Shall it be agreed?”

With our hands still joined she nodded her head many times, and she lifted my hands and put them to her lips and to her bosom. “Only one word now my dear” I says. “Is there any one?”

She looked inquiringly “Any one?”

“That I can go to?”

She shook her head.

“No one that I can bring?”

She shook her head.

“No one is wanted by me my dear. Now that may be considered past and gone.”

Not much more than a week afterwards—for this was far on in the time of our being so together—I was bending over at her bedside with my ear down to her lips, by turns listening for her breath and looking for a sign of life in her face. At last it came in a solemn way—not in a flash but like a kind of pale faint light brought very slow to the face.

She said something to me that had no sound in it, but I saw she asked me:

“Is this death?”

And I says:

“Poor dear poor dear, I think it is.”

Knowing somehow that she wanted me to move her weak right hand, I took it and laid it on her breast and then folded her other hand upon it, and she prayed a good good prayer and I joined in it poor me though there were no words spoke. Then I brought the baby in its wrappers from where it lay, and I says:

“My dear this is sent to a childless old woman. This is for me to take care of.”

The trembling lip was put up towards my face for the last time, and I dearly kissed it.

“Yes my dear,” I says. “Please God! Me and the Major.”

I don’t know how to tell it right, but I saw her soul brighten and leap up, and get free and fly away in the grateful look.

So this is the why and wherefore of its coming to pass my dear that we called him Jemmy, being after the Major his own godfather with Lirriper for a surname being after myself, and never was a dear child such a brightening thing in a Lodgings or such a playmate to his grandmother as Jemmy to this house and me, and always good and minding what he was told (upon the whole) and soothing for the temper and making everything pleasanter except when he grew old enough to drop his cap down Wozenham’s Airy and they wouldn’t hand it up to him, and being worked into a state I put on my best bonnet and gloves and parasol with the child in my hand and I says “Miss Wozenham I little thought ever to have entered your house but unless my grandson’s cap is instantly restored, the laws of this country regulating the property of the Subject shall at length decide betwixt yourself and me, cost what it may.” With a sneer upon her face which did strike me I must say as being expressive of two keys but it may have been a mistake and if there is any doubt let Miss Wozenham have the full benefit of it as is but right, she rang the bell and she says “Jane, is there a street-child’s old cap down our Airy?” I says “Miss Wozenham before your housemaid answers that question you must allow me to inform you to your face that my grandson is not a street-child and is not in the habit of wearing old caps. In fact” I says “Miss Wozenham I am far from sure that my grandson’s cap may not be newer than your own” which was perfectly savage in me, her lace being the commonest machine-make washed and torn besides, but I had been put into a state to begin with fomented by impertinence. Miss Wozenham says red in the face “Jane you heard my question, is there any child’s cap down our Airy?” “Yes Ma’am” says Jane, “I think I did see some such rubbish a-lying there.” “Then” says Miss Wozenham “let these visitors out, and then throw up that worthless article out of my premises.” But here the child who had been staring at Miss Wozenham with all his eyes and more, frowns down his little eyebrows purses up his little mouth puts his chubby legs far apart turns his little dimpled fists round and round slowly over one another like a little coffee-mill, and says to her “Oo impdent to mi Gran, me tut oor hi!” “O!” says Miss Wozenham looking down scornfully at the Mite “this is not a street-child is it not! Really!” I bursts out laughing and I says “Miss Wozenham if this ain’t a pretty sight to you I don’t envy your feelings and I wish you good-day. Jemmy come along with Gran.” And I was still in the best of humours though his cap came flying up into the street as if it had been just turned on out of the water-plug, and I went home laughing all the way, all owing to that dear boy.

The miles and miles that me and the Major have travelled with Jemmy in the dusk between the lights are not to be calculated, Jemmy driving on the coach-box which is the Major’s brass-bound writing desk on the table, me inside in the easy-chair and the Major Guard up behind with a brown-paper horn doing it really wonderful. I do assure you my dear that sometimes when I have taken a few winks in my place inside the coach and have come half awake by the flashing light of the fire and have heard that precious pet driving and the Major blowing up behind to have the change of horses ready when we got to the Inn, I have half believed we were on the old North Road that my poor Lirriper knew so well. Then to see that child and the Major both wrapped up getting down to warm their feet and going stamping about and having glasses of ale out of the paper matchboxes on the chimney-piece is to see the Major enjoying it fully as much as the child I am very sure, and it’s equal to any play when Coachee opens the coach-door to look in at me inside and say “Wery ’past that ’tage.—’Prightened old lady?”

But what my inexpressible feelings were when we lost that child can only be compared to the Major’s which were not a shade better, through his straying out at five years old and eleven o’clock in the forenoon and never heard of by word or sign or deed till half-past nine at night, when the Major had gone to the Editor of the Times newspaper to put in an advertisement, which came out next day four-and-twenty hours after he was found, and which I mean always carefully to keep in my lavender drawer as the first printed account of him. The more the day got on, the more I got distracted and the Major too and both of us made worse by the composed ways of the police though very civil and obliging and what I must call their obstinacy in not entertaining the idea that he was stolen. “We mostly find Mum” says the sergeant who came round to comfort me, which he didn’t at all and he had been one of the private constables in Caroline’s time to which he referred in his opening words when he said “Don’t give way to uneasiness in your mind Mum, it’ll all come as right as my nose did when I got the same barked by that young woman in your second floor”—says this sergeant “we mostly find Mum as people ain’t over-anxious to have what I may call second-hand children. You’ll get him back Mum.” “O but my dear good sir” I says clasping my hands and wringing them and clasping them again “he is such an uncommon child!” “Yes Mum” says the sergeant, “we mostly find that too Mum. The question is what his clothes were worth.” “His clothes” I says “were not worth much sir for he had only got his playing-dress on, but the dear child!—” “All right Mum” says the sergeant. “You’ll get him back Mum. And even if he’d had his best clothes on, it wouldn’t come to worse than his being found wrapped up in a cabbage-leaf, a shivering in a lane.” His words pierced my heart like daggers and daggers, and me and the Major ran in and out like wild things all day long till the Major returning from his interview with the Editor of the Times at night rushes into my little room hysterical and squeezes my hand and wipes his eyes and says “Joy joy—officer in plain clothes came up on the steps as I was letting myself in—compose your feelings—Jemmy’s found.” Consequently I fainted away and when I came to, embraced the legs of the officer in plain clothes who seemed to be taking a kind of a quiet inventory in his mind of the property in my little room with brown whiskers, and I says “Blessings on you sir where is the Darling!” and he says “In Kennington Station House.” I was dropping at his feet Stone at the image of that Innocence in cells with murderers when he adds “He followed the Monkey.” I says deeming it slang language “O sir explain for a loving grandmother what Monkey!” He says “Him in the spangled cap with the strap under the chin, as won’t keep on—him as sweeps the crossings on a round table and don’t want to draw his sabre more than he can help.” Then I understood it all and most thankfully thanked him, and me and the Major and him drove over to Kennington and there we found our boy lying quite comfortable before a blazing fire having sweetly played himself to sleep upon a small accordion nothing like so big as a flat-iron which they had been so kind as to lend him for the purpose and which it appeared had been stopped upon a very young person.

My dear the system upon which the Major commenced and as I may say perfected Jemmy’s learning when he was so small that if the dear was on the other side of the table you had to look under it instead of over it to see him with his mother’s own bright hair in beautiful curls, is a thing that ought to be known to the Throne and Lords and Commons and then might obtain some promotion for the Major which he well deserves and would be none the worse for (speaking between friends) L. S. D.-ically. When the Major first undertook his learning he says to me:

“I’m going Madam,” he says “to make our child a Calculating Boy.

“Major,” I says, “you terrify me and may do the pet a permanent injury you would never forgive yourself.”

“Madam,” says the Major, “next to my regret that when I had my boot-sponge in my hand, I didn’t choke that scoundrel with it—on the spot——”

“There! For Gracious’ sake,” I interrupts, “let his conscience find him without sponges.”

“—I say next to that regret, Madam,” says the Major “would be the regret with which my breast,” which he tapped, “would be surcharged if this fine mind was not early cultivated. But mark me Madam,” says the Major holding up his forefinger “cultivated on a principle that will make it a delight.”

“Major” I says “I will be candid with you and tell you openly that if ever I find the dear child fall off in his appetite I shall know it is his calculations and shall put a stop to them at two minutes’ notice. Or if I find them mounting to his head” I says, “or striking anyways cold to his stomach or leading to anything approaching flabbiness in his legs, the result will be the same, but Major you are a clever man and have seen much and you love the child and are his own godfather, and if you feel a confidence in trying try.”

“Spoken Madam” says the Major “like Emma Lirriper. All I have to ask, Madam, is that you will leave my godson and myself to make a week or two’s preparations for surprising you, and that you will give me leave to have up and down any small articles not actually in use that I may require from the kitchen.”

“From the kitchen Major?” I says half feeling as if he had a mind to cook the child.

“From the kitchen” says the Major, and smiles and swells, and at the same time looks taller.

So I passed my word and the Major and the dear boy were shut up together for half an hour at a time through a certain while, and never could I hear anything going on betwixt them but talking and laughing and Jemmy clapping his hands and screaming out numbers, so I says to myself “it has not harmed him yet” nor could I on examining the dear find any signs of it anywhere about him which was likewise a great relief. At last one day Jemmy brings me a card in joke in the Major’s neat writing “The Messrs. Jemmy Jackman” for we had given him the Major’s other name too “request the honour of Mrs. Lirriper’s company at the Jackman Institution in the front parlour this evening at five, military time, to witness a few slight feats of elementary arithmetic.” And if you’ll believe me there in the front parlour at five punctual to the moment was the Major behind the Pembroke table with both leaves up and a lot of things from the kitchen tidily set out on old newspapers spread atop of it, and there was the Mite stood upon a chair with his rosy cheeks flushing and his eyes sparkling clusters of diamonds.

“Now Gran” says he, “oo tit down and don’t oo touch ler poople”—for he saw with every one of those diamonds of his that I was going to give him a squeeze.

“Very well sir” I says “I am obedient in this good company I am sure.” And I sits down in the easy-chair that was put for me, shaking my sides.

But picture my admiration when the Major going on almost as quick as if he was conjuring sets out all the articles he names, and says “Three saucepans, an Italian iron, a hand-bell, a toasting-fork, a nutmeg-grater, four potlids, a spice-box, two egg-cups, and a chopping-board—how many?” and when that Mite instantly cries “Tifteen, tut down tive and carry ler ’toppin-board” and then claps his hands draws up his legs and dances on his chair.

My dear with the same astonishing ease and correctness him and the Major added up the tables chairs and sofy, the picters fenders and fire-irons their own selves me and the cat and the eyes in Miss Wozenham’s head, and whenever the sum was done Young Roses and Diamonds claps his hands and draws up his legs and dances on his chair.

The pride of the Major! (“Here’s a mind Ma’am!” he says to me behind his hand.)

Then he says aloud, “We now come to the next elementary rule,—which is called——”

“Umtraction!” cries Jemmy.

“Right,” says the Major. “We have here a toasting-fork, a potato in its natural state, two potlids, one egg-cup, a wooden spoon, and two skewers, from which it is necessary for commercial purposes to subtract a sprat-gridiron, a small pickle-jar, two lemons, one pepper-castor, a blackbeetle-trap, and a knob of the dresser-drawer—what remains?”

“Toatin-fork!” cries Jemmy.

“In numbers how many?” says the Major.

“One!” cries Jemmy.

(“Here’s a boy, Ma’am!” says the Major to me behind his hand.)

Then the Major goes on:

“We now approach the next elementary rule,—which is entitled——”

“Tickleication” cries Jemmy.

“Correct” says the Major.

But my dear to relate to you in detail the way in which they multiplied fourteen sticks of firewood by two bits of ginger and a larding needle, or divided pretty well everything else there was on the table by the heater of the Italian iron and a chamber candlestick, and got a lemon over, would make my head spin round and round and round as it did at the time. So I says “if you’ll excuse my addressing the chair Professor Jackman I think the period of the lecture has now arrived when it becomes necessary that I should take a good hug of this young scholar.” Upon which Jemmy calls out from his station on the chair, “Gran oo open oor arms and me’ll make a ’pring into ’em.” So I opened my arms to him as I had opened my sorrowful heart when his poor young mother lay a dying, and he had his jump and we had a good long hug together and the Major prouder than any peacock says to me behind his hand, “You need not let him know it Madam” (which I certainly need not for the Major was quite audible) “but he IS a boy!”

In this way Jemmy grew and grew and went to day-school and continued under the Major too, and in summer we were as happy as the days were long, and in winter we were as happy as the days were short and there seemed to rest a Blessing on the Lodgings for they as good as Let themselves and would have done it if there had been twice the accommodation, when sore and hard against my will I one day says to the Major.

“Major you know what I am going to break to you. Our boy must go to boarding-school.”

It was a sad sight to see the Major’s countenance drop, and I pitied the good soul with all my heart.

“Yes Major” I says, “though he is as popular with the Lodgers as you are yourself and though he is to you and me what only you and me know, still it is in the course of things and Life is made of partings and we must part with our Pet.”

Bold as I spoke, I saw two Majors and half-a-dozen fireplaces, and when the poor Major put one of his neat bright-varnished boots upon the fender and his elbow on his knee and his head upon his hand and rocked himself a little to and fro, I was dreadfully cut up.

“But” says I clearing my throat “you have so well prepared him Major—he has had such a Tutor in you—that he will have none of the first drudgery to go through. And he is so clever besides that he’ll soon make his way to the front rank.”

“He is a boy” says the Major—having sniffed—“that has not his like on the face of the earth.”

“True as you say Major, and it is not for us merely for our own sakes to do anything to keep him back from being a credit and an ornament wherever he goes and perhaps even rising to be a great man, is it Major? He will have all my little savings when my work is done (being all the world to me) and we must try to make him a wise man and a good man, mustn’t we Major?”

“Madam” says the Major rising “Jemmy Jackman is becoming an older file than I was aware of, and you put him to shame. You are thoroughly right Madam. You are simply and undeniably right.—And if you’ll excuse me, I’ll take a walk.”

So the Major being gone out and Jemmy being at home, I got the child into my little room here and I stood him by my chair and I took his mother’s own curls in my hand and I spoke to him loving and serious. And when I had reminded the darling how that he was now in his tenth year and when I had said to him about his getting on in life pretty much what I had said to the Major I broke to him how that we must have this same parting, and there I was forced to stop for there I saw of a sudden the well-remembered lip with its tremble, and it so brought back that time! But with the spirit that was in him he controlled it soon and he says gravely nodding through his tears, “I understand Gran—I know it must be, Gran—go on Gran, don’t be afraid of me.” And when I had said all that ever I could think of, he turned his bright steady face to mine and he says just a little broken here and there “You shall see Gran that I can be a man and that I can do anything that is grateful and loving to you—and if I don’t grow up to be what you would like to have me—I hope it will be—because I shall die.” And with that he sat down by me and I went on to tell him of the school of which I had excellent recommendations and where it was and how many scholars and what games they played as I had heard and what length of holidays, to all of which he listened bright and clear. And so it came that at last he says “And now dear Gran let me kneel down here where I have been used to say my prayers and let me fold my face for just a minute in your gown and let me cry, for you have been more than father—more than mother—more than brothers sisters friends—to me!” And so he did cry and I too and we were both much the better for it.

From that time forth he was true to his word and ever blithe and ready, and even when me and the Major took him down into Lincolnshire he was far the gayest of the party though for sure and certain he might easily have been that, but he really was and put life into us only when it came to the last Good-bye, he says with a wistful look, “You wouldn’t have me not really sorry would you Gran?” and when I says “No dear, Lord forbid!” he says “I am glad of that!” and ran in out of sight.

But now that the child was gone out of the Lodgings the Major fell into a regularly moping state. It was taken notice of by all the Lodgers that the Major moped. He hadn’t even the same air of being rather tall than he used to have, and if he varnished his boots with a single gleam of interest it was as much as he did.

One evening the Major came into my little room to take a cup of tea and a morsel of buttered toast and to read Jemmy’s newest letter which had arrived that afternoon (by the very same postman more than middle-aged upon the Beat now), and the letter raising him up a little I says to the Major:

“Major you mustn’t get into a moping way.”

The Major shook his head. “Jemmy Jackman Madam,” he says with a deep sigh, “is an older file than I thought him.”

“Moping is not the way to grow younger Major.”

“My dear Madam,” says the Major, “is there any way of growing younger?”

Feeling that the Major was getting rather the best of that point I made a diversion to another.

“Thirteen years! Thir-teen years! Many Lodgers have come and gone, in the thirteen years that you have lived in the parlours Major.”

“Hah!” says the Major warming. “Many Madam, many.”

“And I should say you have been familiar with them all?”

“As a rule (with its exceptions like all rules) my dear Madam” says the Major, “they have honoured me with their acquaintance, and not unfrequently with their confidence.”

Watching the Major as he drooped his white head and stroked his black mustachios and moped again, a thought which I think must have been going about looking for an owner somewhere dropped into my old noddle if you will excuse the expression.

“The walls of my Lodgings” I says in a casual way—for my dear it is of no use going straight at a man who mopes—“might have something to tell if they could tell it.”

The Major neither moved nor said anything but I saw he was attending with his shoulders my dear—attending with his shoulders to what I said. In fact I saw that his shoulders were struck by it.

“The dear boy was always fond of story-books” I went on, like as if I was talking to myself. “I am sure this house—his own home—might write a story or two for his reading one day or another.”

The Major’s shoulders gave a dip and a curve and his head came up in his shirt-collar. The Major’s head came up in his shirt-collar as I hadn’t seen it come up since Jemmy went to school.

“It is unquestionable that in intervals of cribbage and a friendly rubber, my dear Madam,” says the Major, “and also over what used to be called in my young times—in the salad days of Jemmy Jackman—the social glass, I have exchanged many a reminiscence with your Lodgers.”

My remark was—I confess I made it with the deepest and artfullest of intentions—“I wish our dear boy had heard them!”

“Are you serious Madam?” asked the Major starting and turning full round.

“Why not Major?”

“Madam” says the Major, turning up one of his cuffs, “they shall be written for him.”

“Ah! Now you speak” I says giving my hands a pleased clap. “Now you are in a way out of moping Major!”

“Between this and my holidays—I mean the dear boy’s” says the Major turning up his other cuff, “a good deal may be done towards it.”

“Major you are a clever man and you have seen much and not a doubt of it.”

“I’ll begin,” says the Major looking as tall as ever he did, “to-morrow.”

My dear the Major was another man in three days and he was himself again in a week and he wrote and wrote and wrote with his pen scratching like rats behind the wainscot, and whether he had many grounds to go upon or whether he did at all romance I cannot tell you, but what he has written is in the left-hand glass closet of the little bookcase close behind you, and if you'll put your hand in you'll find it come out heavy in lumps sewn together and being beautifully plain and unknown Greek and Hebrew to myself and me quite wakeful, I shall take it as a favour if you'll read out loud and read on.

CHAPTER II

HOW THE FIRST FLOOR WENT TO CROWLEY CASTLE

Elizabeth Gaskell

I have come back to London, Major, possessed by a family-story that I have picked up in the country. While I was out of town, I visited the ruins of the great old Norman castle of Sir Mark Crowley, the last baronet of his name, who has been dea nearly a hundred years. I stayed in the village near the castle, and thence I bring back some of the particulars of the tale I am going to tell you, derived from old inhabitants who heard them from their fathers;—no longer ago.

We drove from our little sea-bathing place, in Sussex, to see the massive ruins of Crowley Castle, which is the show-excursion of Merton. We had to alight at a field gate: the road further on being too bad for the slightly-built carriage, or the poor tired Merton horse: and we walked for about a quarter of a mile through uneven ground, which had once been an Italian garden; and then we came to a bridge over a dry moat, and went over the groove of a portcullis that had once closed the massive entrance, into an empty space surrounded by thick walls, draperied with ivy, unroofed, and open to the sky. We could judge of the beautiful tracery that had been in the windows, by the remains of the stonework here and there; and an old man —"ever so old," he called himself when we inquired his exact age—who scrambled and stumbled out of some lair in the least devastated part of the ruins at our approach, and who established himself as our guide, showed us a scrap of glass yet lingering in what was the window of the great drawing-room not above seventy years ago. After he had done his duty, he hobbled with us to the neighbouring church, where the knightly Crowleys lie buried: some commemorated by ancient brasses, some by altar-tombs, some by fine Latin epitaphs, bestowing upon them every virtue under the sun. He had to take the church-key back to the adjoining parsonage at the entrance of the long straggling street which forms the village of Crowley. The castle and the church were on the summit of a hill, from which we could see the distant line of sea beyond the misty marshes. The village fell away from the church and parsonage, down the hill. The aspect of the place was little, if at all, changed, from its aspect in the year 1772.

But I must begin a little earlier. From one of the Latin epitaphs I learnt that Amelia Lady Crowley died in 1756, deeply regretted by her loving husband, Sir Mark. He never married again, though his wife had left him no heir to his name or his estate—only a little tiny girl—Theresa Crowley. This child would inherit her mothers fortune, and all that Sir Mark was free to leave; but this little was not much; the castle and all the lands going to his sister's son, Marmaduke, or as he was usually called Duke, Brownlow. Duke's parents were dead, and his uncle was his guardian, and his guardian's house was his home. The lad was some seven or eight years older than his cousin; and probably Sir Mark thought it not unlikely that his daughter and his heir might make a match. Theresa's mother had had some foreign blood in her, and had been brought up in France—not so far away but that its shores might be seen by any one who chose to take an easy day's ride from Crowley Castle for the purpose.

Lady Crowley had been a delicate elegant creature, but no great beauty, judging from all accounts; Sir Mark's family were famous for their good looks; Theresa, an unusually lucky child, inherited the outward graces of both her parents. A portrait which I saw of her, degraded to a station over the parlour chimney-piece in the village inn, showed me black hair, soft yet arch grey eyes with brows and lashes of the same tint as her hair, a full pretty pouting passionate mouth, and a round slender throat. She was a wilful little creature, and her father's indulgence made her more wayward. She had a nurse, too, a French bonne, whose mother had been about my lady from her youth, who had followed my lady to England, and who had died there. Victorine had been in attendance on the young Theresa from her earliest infancy, and almost took the place of a parent in power and affection—in power, as to ordering and arranging almost what she liked, concerning the child's management—in love, because they speak to this day of the black year when virulent smallpox was rife in Crowley, and when, Sir Mark being far away on some diplomatic mission—in Vienna, I fancy—Victorine shut herself up with Miss Theresa when the child was taken ill with the disease, and nursed her night and day. She only succumbed to the dreadful illness when all danger to the child was over. Theresa came out of it with unblemished beauty; Victorine barely escaped with life, and was disfigured for life.

This disfigurement put a stop to much unfounded scandal which had been afloat respecting the Ereuch servant's great influence over Sir Mark. He was, in fact, an easy and indolent man, rarely excited to any vehemence of emotion, and who felt it to be a point of honour to carry out his dead wife's wish that Victorine should never leave Theresa, and that the management of the child should be confided to her. Only once had there been a struggle for power between Sir Mark and the bonne, and then she had won the victory. And no wonder, if the old butler's account were true; for he had gone into the room unawares, and had found Sir Mark and Victorine at high words; and he said that Victorine was white with rage, that her eyes were blazing with passionate lire, that her voice was low, and her words were few, but that, although she spoke in French, and he the butler only knew his native English, he would rather have been sworn at by a drunken grenadier with a sword in his hand, than have had those words of Victorine's addressed to him.

Even the choice of Theresa's masters was left to Victorine. A little reference was occasionally made to Madam Hawtrey, the parson's wife and a distant relation of Sir Mark's, but, seeing that, if Victorine chose so to order it, Madam Hawtrey's own little daughter Bessy would have been deprived of the advantages resulting from gratuitous companionship in all Theresa's lessons, she was careful how she opposed or made an enemy of Mademoiselle Victorine. Bessy was a gentle quiet child, and grew up to be a sensible sweet-tempered girl, with a very fair share of English beauty; fresh-complexion, brown-eyed round-faced, with a stiff though well-made figure, as different as possible from Theresa's slight lithe graceful form. Duke was a young man to these two maidens, while they to him were little more than children. Of course he admired his cousin Theresa the most—who would not?—but he was establishing his first principles of morality for himself, and her conduct towards Bessy sometimes jarred against his ideas of right. One day, after she had been tyrannising over the self-contained and patient Bessy so as to make the latter cry—and both the amount of the tyranny and the crying were unusual circumstances, for Theresa was of a generous nature when not put out of the way—Duke spoke to his cousin:

"Theresa! You had no right to blame Bessy as you did. It was as much your fault as hers. You were as much bound to remember Mr. Dawson's directions about the sums you were to do for him, as she was."

The girl opened her great grey eyes in surprise. She to blame!

"What does Bessy come to the castle for, I wonder? They pay nothing—we pay all. The least she can do, is to remember for me what we are told. I shan't trouble myself with attending to Mr. Dawson's directions; and if Bessy does not like to do so, she can stay away. She already knows enough to earn her bread as a maid: which I suppose is what she'll have to come to."

The moment Theresa had said this, she could bave bitten her tongue out for the meanness and rancour of the speech. She saw pain and disappointment clearly expressed on Duke's face; and, in another moment, her impulses would have carried her to the opposite extreme, and she would have spoken out her self-reproach. But Duke thought it his duty to remonstrate with her, and to read her a homily, which, however true and just, weakened the effect of the look of distress on his face. Her wits were called into play to refute his arguments; her head rather han her heart took the prominent part in the controversy; and it ended unsatisfactorily to both; he, going away with dismal though unspoken prognostics touching what she would become as a woman if she were so supercilious and unfeeling as a girl; she, the moment his back was turned, throwing herself on the floor and sobbing as if her heart would break. Victorine heard her darling's passionate sobs, and came in.

"What hast thou, my angel! Who has been vexing thee,—tell me, my cherished?"

She tried to raise the girl, but Theresa would not be raised; neither would she speak till she chose, in spite of Victorine's entreaties. When she chose, she lifted herself up, still sitting on the floor, and putting her tangled hair off her flushed tear-stained face, said:

"Never mind, it was only something Duke said; I don't care for it now." And refusing Victorine's aid, she got up, and stood thoughtfully looking out of window.

"That Duke!" exclaimed Victorine. "What business has that Mr. Duke to go vex my darling? He is not your husband yet, that he should scold you, or that you should mind what he says."

Theresa listened and gained a new idea; but she gave no outward sign of attention, or of her now hearing for the first time how that she was supposed to be intended for her cousin's wife. She made no reply to Victorine's caresses and speeches; one might almost say she shook her off. As soon as she was left to herself, she took her hat, and going out alone, as she was wont, in the pleasure-grounds, she went down the terrace steps, crossed the bowling-green, and opened a little wicket-gate which led into the garden of the parsonage. There, were Bessy and her mother, gathering fruit. It was Bessy whom Theresa sought; for there was something in Madam Hawtrey's silky manner that was always rather repugnant to her. However, she was not going to shrink from her resolution because Madam Hawtrey was there. So she went up to the startled Bessy, and said to her, as if she were reciting a prepared speech: "Bessy, I behaved very crossly to you; I had no business to have spoken to you as I did."—"Will you forgive me?" was the pre-determined end of this confession; but somehow, when it came to that, she could not say it with Madam Hawtrey standing by, ready to smile and to curtsey as soon as she could catch Theresa's eye. There was no need to ask forgiveness though; for Bessy had put down her half filled basket, and came softly up to Theresa, stealing her brown soil-stained little hand into the young lady's soft white one, and looking up at her with loving brown eyes.

"I am so sorry, but I think it was the sums on page 108. I have been looking and looking, and I am almost sure."

Her exculpatory tone caught her mother's ear, although her words did not.

"I am sure, Miss Theresa, Bessy is so grateful for the privileges of learning with you! It is such an advantage to her! I often tell her, 'Take pattern by Miss Theresa, and do as she does, a»nd try and speak as she does, and there'll not be a parson's daughter in all Sussex to compare with you.' Don't I, Bessy?"

Theresa shrugged her shoulders—a trick she had caught from Victorine—and, turning to Bessy, asked her what she was going to do with those gooseberries she was gathering? And as Theresa spoke, she lazily picked the ripest out of the basket, and ate them.

"They are for a pudding," said Bessy. "As soon as we have gathered enough, I am going in to make it."

"I'll come and help you," said Theresa, eagerly. "I should so like to make a pudding. Our Monsieur Antoine never makes gooseberry puddings."

Duke came past the parsonage an hour or so afterwards: and, looking in by chance through the open casement windows of the kitchen, saw Theresa pinned up in a bib and apron, her arms all over flour, flourishing a rolling-pin, and laughing and chattering with Bessy similarly attired. Duke had spent his morning ostensibly in fishing; but in reality in weighing in his own mind what he could do or say to soften the obdurate heart of his cousin. And here it was, all inexplicably right, as if by some enchanter's wand!

The only conclusion Duke could come to was the same that many a wise (and foolish) man had come to before his day:

"Well! Women are past my comprehension, that's all!"

When all this took place, Theresa was about fifteen; Bessy was perhaps six months older; Duke was just leaving Oxford. His uncle, Sir Mark, was excessively fond of him; yes! and proud, too, for he had distinguished himself at college, and every one spoke well of him. And he, for his part, loved Sir Mark, and, unspoiled by the fame and reputation he had gained at Christ Church, paid respectful deference to Sir Mark's opinions.

As Theresa grew older, her father supposed that he played his cards well in singing Duke's praises on every possible occasion. She tossed her head, and said nothing. Thanks to Victorine's revelations, she understood the tendency of her father's speeches. She intended to make her own choice of a husband when the time came; and it might be Duke, or it might be some one else. When Duke did not lecture or prose, but was sitting his horse so splendidly at the meet, before the huntsman gave the blast, "Found;" when Duke was holding his own in discourse with other men; when Duke gave her a short sharp word of command on any occasion; then she decided that she would marry him, and no one else. But when he found fault, or stumbled about awkwardly in a minuet, or talked moralities against duelling, then she was sure that Duke should never be her husband. She wondered if he knew about it; if any one had told him, as Victorine had told her; if her father had revealed his thoughts and wishes to his nephew, as plainly as he had done to his daughter? This last query made her cheeks burn; and, on days when the suspicion had been brought by any chance prominently before her mind, she was especially rude and disagreeable to Duke.

He was to go abroad on the grand tour of Europe, to which young men of fortune usually devoted three years. He was to have a tutor, because all young men of his rank had tutors; else he was quite wise enough, and steady enough, to have done without one, and probably knew a good deal more about what was best to be observed in the countries they were going to visit, than Mr. Roberts, his appointed bear-leader. He was to come back full of historical and political knowledge, speaking French and Italian like a native, and having a smattering of barbarous German, and he was to enter the House as a county member, if possible—as a borough member at the worst; and was to make a great success; and then, as every one understood, he was to marry his cousin Theresa.

He spoke to her father about it, before starting on his travels. It was after dinner in Crowley Castle. Sir Mark and Duke sat alone, each pensive at the thought of the coming parting.

"Theresa is but young," said Duke, breaking into speech after a long silence, "but if you have no objection, uncle, I should like to speak to her before I leave England, about my—my hopes."

Sir Mark played with his glass, poured out some more wine, drank it off at a draught, and then replied:

"No, Duke, no. Leave her in peace with me. I have looked forward to having her for my companion through these three years; they'll soon pass away" (to age, but not to youth), "and I should like to have her undivided heart till you come back. No, Duke! Three years will soon pass away, and then we'll have a royal wedding."

Duke sighed, but said no more. The next day was the last. He wanted Theresa to go with him to take leave of the Hawtreys at the Parsonage, and of the villagers; but she was wilful, and would not. He remembered, years afterwards, how Bessy's gentle peaceful manner had struck him as contrasted with Theresa's, on that last day. Both girls regretted his departure. He had been so uniformly gentle and thoughtful in his behaviour to Bessy, that, without any idea of love, she felt him to be her pattern of noble chivalrous manhood; the only person, except her father, who was steadily kind to her. She admired his sentiments, she esteemed his principles, she considered his long evolvement of his ideas as the truest eloquence. He had lent her books, he had directed her studies; all the advice and information which Theresa had rejected had fallen to Bessy's lot, and she had received it thankfully.

Theresa burst into a passion of tears as soon as Duke and his suite were out of sight. She had refused the farewell kiss her father had told her to give him, but had waved her white handkerchief out of the great drawing-room window (that very window in which the old guide showed me the small piece of glass still lingering). But Duke had ridden away with slack rein and downcast head, without looking back.

His absence was a great blank in Sir Mark's life. He had never sought London much as a place of residence; in former days he had been suspected of favouring the Stuarts; but nothing could be proved against him, and he had subsided into a very tolerably faithful subject of King George the Third. Still, a cold shoulder having been turned to him by the court party at one time, he had become prepossessed against the English capital. On the contrary, his wife's predilections and his own tendencies had always made Paris a very agreeable place of residence to him. To Paris he at length resorted again, when the blank in his life oppressed him; and from Paris, about two years after Duke's departure, he returned after a short absence from home, and suddenly announced to his daughter and the household that he had taken an apartment in the Rue Louis le Grand for the coming winter, to which there was to be an immediate removal of his daughter, Victorine, and certain other personal attendants and servants.

Nothing could exceed Theresa's mad joy at this unexpected news. She sprang upon her father's neck, and kissed him till she was tired—whatever he was. She ran to Victorine, and told her to guess what "heavenly bliss" was going to befal them, dancing round the middle-aged woman until she, in her spoilt impatience, was becoming angry, when, kissing her, she told her, and ran off to the Parsonage, and thence to the church, bursting in upon morning prayers—for it was All Saints' Day, although she had forgotten it—and filliping a scrap of paper on which she had hastily written, "We are going to Paris for the winter—all of us," rolled into a ball, from the castle pew to that of the parson. She saw Bessy redden as she caught it, put it into her pocket unread, and, after an apologetic glance at the curtained seat in which Theresa was, go on with her meek responses. Theresa went out by the private door in a momentary fit of passion. "Stupid cold-blooded creature!" she said to herself. But that afternoon Bessy came to the castle, so sorry—and so losing her own sorrow in sympathy with her friend's gladness, that Theresa took her into favour again. The girls parted with promises of correspondence, and with some regret: the greatest on Bessy's side. Some grand promises of Paris fashion, and presents of dress, Theresa made in her patronising way; but Bessy did not seem to care much for them—which was fortunate, for they were never fulfilled.

Sir Mark had an idea in his head of perfecting Theresa's accomplishments and manners by Parisian masters and Parisian society. English residents in Venice, Florence, Rome, wrote to their friends at home about Duke. They spoke of him as of what we should, at the present day, call a "rising young man." His praises ran so high, that Sir Mark began to fear lest his handsome nephew, fêted by princes, courted by ambassadors, made love to by lovely Italian ladies, might find Theresa too country-bred for his taste.

Thus had come about, the engaging of the splendid apartment in the Rue Louis le Grand. The street itself is narrow, and now-a-days we are apt to think the situation close; but in those days it was the height of fashion; for, the great arbiter of fashion, the Duc de Richelieu, lived there, and, to inhabit an apartment in that street, was in itself a mark of bon ton. Victorine seemed almost crazy with delight when they took possession of their new abode. "This dear Paris! This lovely France! And now I see my young lady, my darling, my angel, in a room suited to her beauty and her rank: such as my lady her mother would have planned for her, if she had lived." Any allusion to her dead mother always touched Theresa to the quick. She was in her bed, under the blue silk curtains of an alcove, when Victorine said this,—being too much fatigued after her journey to respond to Victorine's rhapsodies; but now she put out her little hand and gave Victorine's a pressure of gratitude and pleasure. Next day she wandered about the rooms and admired their splendour almost to Victorine's content. Her father, Sir Mark, found a handsome carriage and horses for his darling's use; and also found that not less necessary article—a married lady of rank who would take his girl under her wing. When all these preliminary arrangements were made, who so wildly happy as Theresa! Her carriage was of the newest fashion, fit to vie with any on the Cours de la Reine, the then fashionable drive. The box. at the Grand Opéra, and at the Français, which she shared with Madame la Duchesse de G., was the centre of observation; Victorine was in her best humour, Theresa's credit at her dressmaker's was unlimited, her indulgent father was charmed with all she did and said. She had masters, it is true; but, to a rich and beautiful young lady, masters were wonderfully complaisant, and with them as with all the world, she did what she pleased. Of Parisian society, she had enough and more than enough. The duchess went everywhere, and Theresa went too. So did a certain Count de la Grange: some relation or connexion of the duchess: handsome, with a south of France handsomeness: with delicate features, marred by an over-softness of expression, from which (so men said) the tiger was occasionally seen to peep forth. But, for elegance of dress and demeanour he had not his fellow in Paris—which of course meant, not in the world.

Sir Mark heard rumours of this man's conduct, which were not pleasing to him; but when he accompanied his daughter into society, the count was only as deferential as it became a gentleman to be to so much beauty and grace. When Theresa was taken out by the duchess to the opera, to balls, to petits soupers, without her father, then the count was more than deferential; he was adoring. It was a little intoxicating for a girl brought up in the solitude of an English village, to have so many worshippers at her feet all at once, in the great gay city; and the inbred coquetry of her nature came out, adding to her outward grace, if taking away from the purity and dignity of her character. It was Victorine's delight to send her darling out arrayed for conquest; her hair delicately powdered, and scented with maréchale; her little "mouches" put on with skill; the tiny half-moon patch, to lengthen the already almond-shaped eye; the minute star to give the effect of a dimple at the corner of lier scarlet lips; the silver gauze looped up over the petticoat of blue brocade, distended over a hoop, much as gowns are worn in our days; the coral ornaments of her silver dress, matching with the tint of the high heels to her shoes. And, at night, Victorine was never tired of listening and questioning; of triumphing in Theresa's triumphs; of invariably reminding her that she was bound to marry the absent cousin, and return to the half-feudal state of the old castle in Sussex.

Still, even now, if Duke had returned from Italy, all might have gone well; but when Sir Mark, alarmed by the various proposals he received for Theresa's hand from needy French noblemen, and by the admiration she was exciting everywhere, wrote to Duke, and urged him to join them in Paris on his return from his travels, Duke answered that three months were yet unexpired of the time allotted for the grand tour; and that he was anxious to avail himself of that interval to see something of Spain. Sir Mark read this letter aloud to Theresa, with many expressions of annoyance as he read. Theresa merely said, "Of course, Duke does what he likes," and turned away to see some new lace brought for her inspection. She heard her father sigh over a re-perusal of Duke's letter, and she set her teeth in the anger she would not show in acts or words. That day the Count de Grange met with gentler treatment from her than he had done for many days—than he had done since her father's letter to Duke had been sent off to Genoa. As ill fortune would have it, Sir Mark had occasion to return to England at this time, and he, guileless himself, consigned Theresa and her maid Victorine, and her man Felix, to the care of the duchess for three weeks. They were to reside at the Hôtel de G. during this time. The duchess welcomed them in her most caressing manner, and showed Theresa the suite of rooms, with the little private staircase, appropriated to her use.

The Count de Grange was an habitual visitor at the house of his cousin the duchess, who was a gay Parisian, absorbed in her life of giddy dissipation. The count found means of influencing Victorine in his favour; not by money; so coarse a bribe would have had no power over her; but by many presents, accompanied with sentimental letters, breathing devotion to her charge, and extremest appreciation of the faithful friend whom Theresa looked upon as a mother, and whom for this reason he, the count, revered and loved. Intermixed, were wily allusions to his great possessions in Provence, and to his ancient lineage:—the one mortgaged, the other disgraced. Victorine, whose right hand had forgotten its cunning in the length of her dreary vegetation at Crowley Castle, was deceived, and became a vehement advocate of the dissolute Adonis of the Paris saloons, in his suit to her darling. When Sir Mark came back, he was dismayed and shocked beyond measure by finding the count and Theresa at his feet, entreating him to forgive their stolen marriage—a marriage which, though incomplete as to its legal forms, was yet too complete to be otherwise than sanctioned by Theresa's nearest friends. The duchess accused her cousin of perfidy and treason. Sir Mark said nothing. But his health failed from that time, and he sank into an old querulous grey-haired man.

There was some ado, I know not what, between Sir Mark and the count regarding the control and disposition of the fortune which Theresa inherited from her mother. The count gained the victory, owing to the different nature of the French laws from the English; and this made Sir Mark abjure the country and the city he had loved so long. Henceforward, he swore, his foot should never touch French soil; if Theresa liked to come and see him at Crowley Castle, she should be as welcome as a daughter of the house ought to be, and ever should be; but her husband should never enter the gates of the house in Sir Mark's lifetime.

For some months he was out of humour with Duke, because of his tardy return from his tour and his delay in joining them in Paris: through which, so Sir Mark fancied, Theresa's marriage had been brought about. But—when Duke came home, depressed in spirits and submissive to his uncle, even under unjust blame—Sir Mark restored him to favour in the course of a summer's day, and henceforth added another injury to the debtor side of the count's reckoning.

Duke never told his uncle of the woful ill-report he had heard of the count in Paris, where he had found all the better part of the French nobility pitying the lovely English heiress who had been entrapped into a marriage with one of the most disreputable of their order, a gambler and a reprobate. He could not leave Paris without seeing Theresa, whom he believed to be as yet unacquainted with his arrival in the city, so he went to call upon her one evening. She was sitting alone, splendidly dressed, ravishingly beautiful; she made a step forward to meet him, hardly heeding the announcement of his name; for she had recognised a man's tread, and fancied it was her husband, coming to accompany her to some grand reception. Duke saw the quick change from hope to disappointment on her mobile face, and she spoke out at once her reason. "Adolphe promised to come and fetch me; the princess receives to-night. I hardly expected a visit from you, cousin Duke," recovering herself into a pretty proud reserve. "It is a fortnight, I think, since I heard you were in Paris. I had given up all expectation of the honour of a visit from you!"

Duke felt that, as she had heard of his being there, it would be awkward to make excuses which both she and he must know to be false, or explanations the very truth of which would be offensive to the loving, trusting, deceived wife. So, he turned the conversation to his travels, his heart aching for her all the time, as he noticed her wandering attention when she heard any passing sound. Ten, eleven, twelve o'clock; he would not leave her. He thought his presence was a comfort and a pleasure to her. But when one o'clock struck, she said some unexpected business must have detained her husband, and she was glad of it, as she had all along felt too much tired to go out: and besides, the happy consequence of her husband's detention had been that long talk with Duke.

He did not see her again after this polite dismissal, nor did he see her husband at all. Whether through ill chance, or carefully disguised purpose, it did so happen that he called several times, he wrote several notes requesting an appointment when he might come with the certainty of finding the count and countess at home, in order to wish them farewell before setting out for England. All in vain. But he said nothing to Sir Mark of all this. He only tried to fill up the blank in the old man's life. He went between Sir Mark and the tenants to whom he was unwilling to show himself unaccompanied by the beautiful daughter, who had so often been his companion in his walks and rides, before that ill-omened winter in Paris. He was thankful to have the power of returning the long kindness his uncle had shown him in childhood; thankful to be of use to him in his desertion; thankful to atone in some measure for his neglect of his uncle's wish that he should have made a hasty return to Paris.

But it was a little dull after the long excitement of travel, after associating with all that was most cultivated and seeing all that was most famous, in Europe, to be shut up in that vast magnificent dreary old castle, with Sir Mark for a perpetual companion—Sir Mark, and no other. The parsonage was near at hand, and occasionally Mr. Hawtrey came in to visit his parishioner in his trouble. But Sir Mark kept the clergyman at bay; he knew that his brother in age, his brother in circumstances (for had not Mr. Hawtrey an only child and she a daughter?), was sympathising with him in his sorrow, and he was too proud to bear it; indeed, sometimes he was so rude to his old neighbour, that Duke would go next morning to the Parsonage, to soothe the smart.

And so—and so—gradually, imperceptibly, at last his heart was drawn to Bessy. Her mother angled and angled skilfully; at first scarcely daring to hope; then remembering her own descent from the same stock as Duke, she drew herself up, and set to work with fresh skill and vigour. To be sure, it was a dangerous game for a mother to play; for her daughter's happiness was staked on her success. How could simple country-bred Bessy help being attracted to the courtly handsome man, travelled and accomplished, good and gentle, whom she saw every day, and who treated her with the kind familiarity of a brother; while he was not a brother, but in some measure a disappointed man, as everybody knew? Bessy was a daisy of an English maiden; pure good to the heart's core and most hidden thought; sensible in all her accustomed daily ways, yet not so much without imagination as not to desire something beyond the narrow range of knowledge and experience in which her days had hitherto been passed. Add to this her pretty figure, a bright healthy complexion, lovely teeth, and quite enough of beauty in her other features to have rendered her the belle of a country town, if her lot had been cast in such a place; and it is not to be wondered at, that, after she had been secretly in love with Duke with all her heart for nearly a year, almost worshipping him, he should discover that, of all the women he had ever known—except perhaps the lost Theresa—Bessy Hawtrey had it in her power to make him the happiest of men.

Sir Mark grumbled a little; but now-a-days he grumbled at everything, poor disappointed, all but childless, old man! As to the vicar he stood astonished and almost dismayed. "Have you thought enough about it, Mr. Duke?" the parson asked. "Young men are apt to do things in a hurry, that they repent at leisure. Bessy is a good girl, a good girl, God bless her: but she has not been brought up as your wife should have been: at least as folks will say your wife should have been. Though I may say for her she has a very pretty sprinkling of mathematics. I taught her myself, Mr. Duke."

"May I go and ask her myself? I only want your permission," urged Duke.

"Ay, go! But perhaps you'd better ask Madam first. She will like to be told everything as soon as me."

But Duke did not care for Madam. He rushed through the open door of the Parsonage, into the homely sitting-rooms, and softly called for Bessy. When she came, he took her by the hand and led her forth into the field-path at the back of the orchard, and there he won his bride to the full content of both their hearts.

All this time the inhabitants of Crowley Castle and the quiet people of the neighbouring village of Crowley, heard but little of "The Countess," as it was their fashion to call her. Sir Mark had his letters from her, it is true, and he read them over and over again, and moaned over them, and sighed, and put them carefully away in a bundle. But they were like arrows of pain to him. None knew their contents; none, even knowing them, would have dreamed, any more than he did, for all his moans and sighs, of the utter wretchedness of the writer. Love had long since vanished from the habitation of that pair; a habitation, not a home, even in its brightest days. Love had gone out of the window, long before poverty had come in at the door: yet that grim visitant who never tarries in tracking a disreputable gambler, had now arrived. The count lost the last remnants of his character as a man who played honourably, and thenceforth—that being pretty nearly the only sin which banished men from good society in those days—he had to play where and how he could. Theresa's money went as her poor angry father had foretold. By-and-by, and without her consent, her jewel-box was rifled; the diamonds round the locket holding her mother's picture were wrenched and picked out by no careful hand. Victorine found Theresa crying over the poor relics;—crying at last, without disguise, as if her heart would break.

"Oh, mamma! mamma! mamma!" she sobbed out, holding up the smashed and disfigured miniature as an explanation of her grief. She was sitting on the floor, on which she had thrown herself in the first discovery of the theft. Victorine sat down by her, taking her head upon her breast, and soothing her. She did not ask who had done it; she asked Theresa no question which the latter would have shrunk from answering; she knew all in that hour, without the count's name having passed the lips of either of tliem. And from that time she watched him as a tiger watches his prey.

When the letters came from England, the three letters from Sir Mark and the affianced bride and bridegroom, announcing the approaching marriage of Duke and Bessy, Theresa took them straight to Victorine. Theresa's lips were tightened, her pale cheeks were paler. She waited for Victorine to speak. Not a word did the Frenchwoman utter; but she smoothed the letters one over the other, and tore them in two, throwing the pieces on the ground, and stamping on them.

"Oh, Victorine!" cried Theresa, dismayed at passion that went so far beyond her own, "I never expected it—I never thought of it—but, perhaps, it was but natural."

"It was not natural; it was infamous! To have loved you once, and not to wait for chances, but to take up with that mean poor girl at the Parsonage. Pah! and her letter! Sir Mark is of my mind though, I can see. I am sorry I tore up his letter. He feels, he knows, that Mr. Duke Brownlow ought to have waited, waited, waited. Some one waited fourteen years, did he not? The count will not live for ever."

Theresa did not see the face of wicked meaning as those last words were spoken.

Another year rolled heavily on its course of wretchedness to Theresa. That same revolution of time brought increase of peace and joy to the English couple, striving humbly, striving well, to do their duty as children to the unhappy and deserted Sir Mark. They had their reward in the birth of a little girl. Yet, close on the heels of this birth, followed a great sorrow. The good parson died, after a short sudden illness. Then came the customary trouble after the death of a clergyman. The widow had to leave the Parsonage, the home of a lifetime, and seek a new resting-place for her declining years.

Fortunately for all parties, the new vicar was a bachelor; no other than the tutor who had accompanied Duke on his grand tour; and it was made a condition that he should allow the widow of his predecessor to remain at the Parsonage as his housekeeper. Bessy would fain have had her mother at the castle, and this course would have been infinitely preferred by Madam Hawtrey, who, indeed, suggested the wish to her daughter. But Sir Mark was obstinately against it; nor did he spare his caustic remarks on Madam Hawtrey, even before her own daughter. He had never quite forgiven Duke's marriage, although he was personally exceedingly fond of Bessy. He referred this marriage, in some part, and perhaps to no greater extent than was true, to madam's good management in throwing the young people together; and he was explicit in the expression of his opinion.

Poor Theresa! Every day she more and more bitterly rued her ill-starred marriage. Often and often she cried to herself, when she was alone in the dead of the night, "I cannot bear it—I cannot bear it!" But again in the daylight her pride would help her to keep her woe to herself. She could not bear the gaze of pitying eyes; she could not bear even Victorine's fierce sympathy. She might have gone home like a poor prodigal to her father, if Duke and Bessy had not, as she imagined, reigned triumphant in her place, both in her father's heart and in her father's home. And all this while, that father almost hated the tender attentions which were rendered to him by those who were not his Theresa, his only child, for whose presence he yearned and longed in silent misery. Then again (to return to Theresa), her husband had his fits of kindness towards her. If he had been very fortunate in play, if he had heard other men admire her, he would come back for a few moments to his loyalty, and would lure back the poor tortured heart, only to crush it afresh. One day—after a short time of easy temper, caresses, and levity—she found out something, I know not what, in his life, which stung her to the quick. Her sharp wits and sharper tongue spoke out most cutting insults; at first he smiled, as if rather amused to see how she was ransacking her brain to find stabbing speeches; but at length she touched some sore; he scarcely lost the mocking smile upon his face, but his eyes flashed lurid lire, and his heavy closed hand fell on her white shoulder with a terrible blow!

She stood up, facing him, tearless, deadly white. "The poor old man at home!" was all she said, trembling, shivering all over, but with her eyes fixed on his coward face. He shrank from her look, laughed aloud to hide whatever feeling might be hidden in his bosom, and left the room. She only said again, "The poor old man—the poor old deserted, desolate man!" and felt about blindly for a chair.

She had not sat down a minute though, before she started up and rang her bell. It was Victorine's office to answer it; but Theresa looked almost surprised to see her. "You!—I wanted the others—I want them all! They shall all see how their master treats his wife! Look here!" she pushed the gauze neckerchief from her shoulder—the mark was there red and swollen. "Bid them all come here—Victorine, Amadée, Jean, Adèle, all—I will be justified by their testimony, whatever I do!" Then she fell to shaking and crying.

Victorine said nothing, but went to a certain cupboard where she kept medicines and drugs of which she alone knew the properties, and there she mixed a draught, which she made her mistress take. Whatever its nature was, it was soothing. Theresa leaned back in her chair, still sobbing heavily from time to time, until at last she dropped into a kind of doze. Then Victorine softly lifted the neckerchief, which had fallen into its place, and looked at the mark. She did not speak; but her whole face was a fearful threat. After she had looked her fill, she smiled a deadly smile. And then she touched the soft bruised flesh with her lips, much as though Theresa were the child she had been twenty years ago. Soft as the touch was Theresa shivered, and started and half awoke. "Are they come?" she murmured; "Amadée, Jean, Adèle?" but without waiting for an answer she fell asleep again.

Victorine went quietly back to the cupboard where she kept her drugs, and stayed there, mixing something noiselessly. When she had done what she wanted, she returned to her mistress's bedroom, and looked at her, still sleeping. Then she began to arrange the room. No blue silk curtains and silver mirrors, now, as in the Rue Louis le Grand. A washed-out faded Indian chintz, and an old battered toilette service of Japan-ware; the disorderly signs of the count's late presence; an emptied flask of liqueur.

All the time Victorine arranged this room she kept saying to herself, "At last! At last!" Theresa slept through the daylight, slept late into the evening, leaning back where she had fallen in her chair. She was so motionless that Victorine appeared alarmed. Once or twice she felt her pulse, and gazed earnestly into the tear-stained face. Once, she very carefully lifted one of the eyelids, and holding a lighted taper near, peered into the eye. Apparently satisfied, she went out and ordered a basin of broth to be ready when she asked for it. Again she sat in deep silence; nothing stirred in the closed chamber; but in the street the carriages began to roll, and the footmen and torch-bearers to cry aloud their masters' names and titles, to show what carriage in that narrow street below, was entitled to precedence. A carriage stopped at the hotel of which they occupied the third floor. Then the bell of their apartment rang loudly—rang violently. Victorine went out to see what it was that might disturb her darling—as she called Theresa to herself—her sleeping lady as she spoke of her to her servants.

She met those servants bringing in their master, the count, dead. Dead with a sword-wound received in some infamous struggle. Victorine stood and looked at him. "Better so," she muttered. "Better so. But, monseigneur, you shall take this with you, whithersoever your wicked soul is fleeing." And she struck him a stroke on his shoulder, just where Theresa's bruise was. It was as light a stroke as well could be; but this irreverence to the dead called forth indignation even from the hardened bearers of the body. Little recked Victorine. She turned her back on the corpse, went to her cupboard, took out the mixture she had made with so much care, poured it out upon the bare wooden floor, and smeared it about with her foot.

A fortnight later, when no news had come from Theresa for many weeks, a poor chaise was seen from the castle windows lumbering slowly up the carriage road to the gate. No one thought much of it; perhaps it was some friend of the housekeeper's; perhaps it was some humble relation of Mrs. Duke's (for many such had found out their cousin since her marriage). No one noticed the shabby carriage much, until the hall-porter was startled by the sound of the great bell pealing, and, on opening wide the hall-doors, saw standing before him the Mademoiselle Victorine of old days—thinner, sallower, in mourning. In the carriage sat Theresa, in the deep widow's weeds of those days. She looked out of the carriage-window wistfully, in beyond Joseph, the hall-porter.

"My father!" she cried eagerly, before Victorine could speak. "Is Sir Mark—well?" ("alive" was her first thought, but she dared not give the word utterance.)

"Call Mr. Duke!" said Joseph, speaking to some one unseen. Then he came forward. "God bless you, Miss! God bless you! And this day of all days! Sir Mark is well—leastways he's sadly changed. Where's Mr. Duke? Call him! My young lady's fainting!"

And this was Theresa's return home. None ever knew how much she had suffered since she had left home. If any one had known, Victorine would never have stood there dressed in that mourning. She put it on, sorely against her will, for the purpose of upholding the lying fiction of Theresa's having been a happy prosperous marriage. She was always indignant if any of the old servants fell back into the once familiar appellation of Miss Theresa. "The countess," she would say, in lofty rebuke.

What passed between Theresa and her father at that first interview no one ever knew. Whether she told him anything of her married life, or whether she only soothed the tears he shed on seeing her again, by sweet repetition of tender words and caresses—such as are the sugared pabulum of age as well as of infancy—no one ever knew. Neither Duke nor his wife ever heard her allude to the time she had passed in Paris, except in the most cursory and superficial manner. Sir Mark was anxious to show her that all was forgiven, and would fain have displaced Bessy from her place as lady of the castle, and made Theresa take the headship of the house, and sit at table where the mistress ought to be. And Bessy would have given up her onerous dignities without a word; for Duke was always more jealous for his wife's position than she herself was, but Theresa declined to assume any such place in the household, saying, in the languid way which now seemed habitual to her, that English housekeeping, and all the domestic arrangements of an English country house were cumbrous and wearisome to her; that if Bessy would continue to act as she had done hitherto, and would so forestal what must be her natural duties at some future period, she, Theresa, should be infinitely obliged.

Bessy consented, and in everything tried to remember what Theresa liked, and how affairs were ordered in the old Theresa days. She wished the servants to feel that "the countess" had equal rights with herself in the management of the house. But she, to whom the housekeeper takes her accounts—she in whose hands the power of conferring favours and privileges remains de facto—will always be held by servants as the mistress; and Theresa's claims soon sank into the background. At first, she was too broken-spirited, too languid, to care for anything but quiet rest in her father's companionship. They sat sometimes for hours hand in hand; or they sauntered out on the terraces, hardly speaking, but happy; because they were once more together, and once more on loving terms. Theresa grew strong during this time of gentle brooding peace. The pinched pale face of anxiety lined with traces of suffering, relaxed into the soft oval; the light came into the eyes, the colour came into the cheeks.

But, in the autumn after Theresa's return, Sir Mark died; it had been a gradual decline of strength, and his last moments were passed in her arms. Her new misfortune threw her back into the wan worn creature she had been when she first came home, a widow, to Crowley Castle; she shut herself up in her rooms, and allowed no one to come near her but Victorine. Neither Duke nor Bessy was admitted into the darkened rooms, which she had hung with black cloth in solemn funereal state.

Victorine's life since her return to the castle had been anything but peaceable. New powers had arisen in the housekeeper's room. Madam Brownlow had her maid, far more exacting than Madam Brownlow herself; and a new housekeeper reigned in the place of her who was formerly but an echo of Victorine's opinions. Victorine's own temper, too, was not improved by her four years abroad, and there was a general disposition among the servants to resist all her assumption of authority. She felt her powerlessneas after a struggle or two, but treasured up her vengeance. If she had lost power over the household, however, there was no diminution of her influence over her mistress. It was her device at last that lured the countess out of her gloomy seclusion.

Almost the only creature Victorine cared for, besides Theresa, was the little Mary Brownlow. What there was of softness in her woman's nature, seemed to come out towards children; though, if the child had been a boy instead of a girl, it is probable that Victorine might not have taken it into her good graces. As it was, the French nurse and the English child were capital friends; and when Victorine sent Mary into the countess's room, and bade her not be afraid, but ask the lady in her infantine babble to come out and see Mary's snow-man, she knew that the little one, for her sake, would put her small hand into Theresa's, and thus plead with more success, because with less purpose, than any one else had been able to plead. Out came Theresa, colourless and sad, holding Mary by the hand. They went, unobserved as they thought, to the great gallery-window, and looked out into the court-yard; then Theresa returned to her rooms. But the ice was broken, and before the winter was over, Theresa fell into her old ways, and sometimes smiled, and sometimes even laughed, until chance visitors again spoke of her rare beauty and her courtly grace.

It was noticeable that Theresa revived first out of her lassitude to an interest in all Duke's pursuits. She grew weary of Bessy's small cares and domestic talk—now about the servants, now about her mother and the Parsonage, now about the parish. She questioned Duke about his travels, and could enter into his appreciation and judgment of foreign nations; she perceived the latent powers of his mind; she became impatient of their remaining dormant in country seclusion. She had spoken of leaving Crowley Castle, and of finding some other home, soon after her father's death; but both Duke and Bessy had urged her to stay with them, Bessy saying, in the pure innocence of her heart, how glad she was that, in the probably increasing cares of her nursery, Duke would have a companion so much to his rnind.

About a year after Sir Mark's death, the member for Sussex died, and Theresa set herself to stir up Duke to assume his place. With some difficulty (for Bessy was passive: perhaps even opposed to the scheme in her quiet way), Theresa succeeded, and Duke was elected. She was vexed at Bessy's torpor, as she called it, in the whole affair; vexed as she now often was with Bessy's sluggish interest in all things beyond her immediate ken. Once, when Theresa tried to make Bessy perceive how Duke might shine and rise in his new sphere, Bessy burst into tears, and said, "You speak as if his presence here were nothing, and his fame in London everything. I cannot help fearing that he will leave off caring for all the quiet ways in which we have been so happy ever since we were married."

"But when he is here," replied Theresa, "and when he wants to talk to you of politics, of foreign news, of great public interests, you drag him down to your level of woman's cares."

"Do I?" said Bessy. "Do I drag him down? I wish I was cleverer; but you know, Theresa, I was never clever in anything but housewifery."

Theresa was touched for a moment by this humility.

"Yet, Bessy, you have a great deal of judgment, if you will but exercise it. Try and take an interest in all he cares for, as well as making him try and take an interest in home affairs."

But, somehow, this kind of conversation too often ended in dissatisfaction on both sides; and the servants gathered, from induction rather than from words, that the two ladies were not on the most cordial terms; however friendly they might wish to be, and might strive to appear. Madam Hawtrey, too, allowed her jealousy of Theresa to deepen into dislike. She was jealous because, in some unreasonable way, she had taken it into her head that Theresa's presence at the castle was the reason why she was not urged to take up her abode there on Sir Mark's death: as if there were not rooms and suites of rooms enough to lodge a wilderness of dowagers in the building, if the owner so wished. But Duke had certain ideas pretty strongly fixed in his mind; and one was a repugnance to his mother-in-law's constant company. But he greatly increased her income as soon as he had it in his power, and left it entirely to herself how she should spend it.

Having now the means of travelling about, Madam Hawtrey betook herself pretty frequently to such watering-places as were in vogue at that day, or went to pay visits at the houses of.those friends who occasionally came lumbering up in shabby vehicles to visit their cousin Bessy at the castle. Theresa cared little for Madam Hawtrey's coldness; perhaps, indeed, never perceived it. She gave up striving with Bessy, too; it was hopeless to try to make her an intellectual ambitious companion to her husband. He had spoken in the House; he had written a pamphlet that made much noise; the minister of the day had sought him out, and was trying to attach him to the government. Theresa, with her Parisian experience of the way in which women influenced politics, would have given anything for the Brownlows to have taken a house in London. She longed to see the great politicians, to find herself in the thick of the struggle for place and power, the brilliant centre of all that was worth hearing and seeing in the kingdom. There had been some talk of this same London house; but Bessy had pleaded against it earnestly while Theresa sat by in indignant silence, until she could bear the discussion no longer; going off to her own sitting-room, where Victorine was at work. Here her pent-up words found vent—not addressed to her servant, but not restrained before her:

"I cannot bear it—to see him cramped in by her narrow mind, to hear her weak selfish arguments, urged because she feels she would be out of place beside him. And Duke is hampered with this woman: he whose powers are unknown even to himself, or he would put her feeble nature on one side, and seek his higher atmosphere. How he would shine! How he does shine! Good Heaven! To think——"

And here she sank into silence, watched by Victorine's furtive eyes.

Duke had excelled all he had previously done by some great burst of eloquence, and the country rang with his words. He was to come down to Crowley Castle for a parliamentary recess, which occurred almost immediately after this. Theresa calculated the hours of each part of the complicated journey, and could have told to five minutes when he might be expected; but the baby was ill and absorbed all Bessy's attention. She was in the nursery by the cradle in which the child slept, when her husband came riding up to the castle gate. But Theresa was at the gate; her hair all out of powder, and blowing away into dishevelled curls, as the hood of her cloak fell back; her lips parted with a breathless welcome; her eyes shining out love and pride. Duke was but mortal. All London chanted his rising fame; and here in his home Theresa seemed to be the only person who appreciated him.

The servants clustered in the great hall; for it was now some length of time since he had been at home. Victorine was there, with some headgear for her lady; and when, in reply to his inquiry for his wife, the grave butler asserted that she was with young master, who was, they feared, very seriously ill, Victorine said, with the familiarity of an old servant, and as if to assuage Duke's anxiety: "Madam fancies the child is ill, because she can think of nothing but him, and perpetual watching has made her nervous." The child, however, was really ill; and after a brief greeting to her husband, Bessy returned to her nursery, leaving Theresa to question, to hear, to sympathise. That night she gave way to another burst of disparaging remarks on poor motherly homely Bessy, and that night Victorine thought she read a deeper secret in Theresa's heart.

The child was scarcely ever out of its mother's arms; but the illness became worse, and it was nigh unto death. Some cream had been set aside for the little wailing creature, and Victorine had unwittingly used it for the making of a cosmetic for her mistress. When the servant in charge of it reproved her, a quarrel began as to their respective mistress's right to give orders in the household. Before the dispute ended, pretty strong things had been said on both sides.

The child died. The heir was lifeless; the servants were in whispering dismay, and bustling discussion of their mourning; Duke felt the vanity of fame, as compared to a baby's life. Theresa was full of sympathy, but dared not express it to him; so tender was her heart becoming. Victorine regretted the death in her own way. Bessy lay speechless, and tearless; not caring for loving voices, nor for gentle touches; taking neither food nor drink; neither sleeping nor weeping. "Send for her mother," the doctor said; for Madam Hawtrey was away on her visits, and the letters telling her of her grandchild's illness had not reached her in the slow-delaying cross-country posts of those days. So she was sent for; by a man riding express, as a quicker and surer means than the post.

Meanwhile, the nurses, exhausted by their watching, found the care of little Mary by day, quite enough. Madam's maid sat up with Bessy for a night or two; Duke striding in from time to time through the dark hours to look at the white motionless face, which would have seemed like the face of one dead, but for the long-quivering sighs that came up from the overladen heart. The doctor tried his drugs, in vain, and then he tried again. This night, Victorine at her own earnest request, sat up instead of the maid. As usual, towards midnight, Duke came stealing in with shaded light. "Hush!" said Victorine, her finger on her lips. "She sleeps at last." Morning dawned faint and pale, and still she slept. The doctor came, and stole in on tip-toe, rejoicing in the effect of his drugs. They all stood round the bed; Duke, Theresa, Victorine. Suddenly the doctor—a strange change upon him, a strange fear in his face—felt the patient's pulse, put his ear to her open lips, called for a glass—a feather. The mirror was not dimmed, the delicate fibres stirred not. Bessy was dead.

I pass rapidly over many months. Theresa was again overwhelmed with grief, or rather, I should say, remorse; for now that Bessy was gone, and buried out of sight, all her innocent virtues, all her feminine homeliness, came vividly into Theresa's mind—not as wearisome, but as admirable, qualities of which she had been too blind to perceive the value. Bessy had been her own old companion too, in the happy days of childhood, and of innocence. Theresa rather shunned than sought Duke's company now. She remained at the castle, it is true, and Madam Hawtrey, as Theresa's only condition of continuing where she was, came to live under the same roof. Duke felt his wife's death deeply, but reasonably, as became his character. He was perplexed by Theresa's bursts of grief, knowing, as he dimly did, that she and Be›sy had not lived together in perfect harmony. But he was much in London now; a rising statesman; and when, in autumn, he spent some time at the castle, he was full of admiration for the strangely patient way in which Theresa behaved towards the old lady. It seemed to Duke that in his absence Madam Hawtrey had assumed absolute power in his household, and that the high-spirited Theresa submitted to her fantasies with even more docility than her own daughter would have done. Towards Mary, Theresa was always kind and indulgent.

Another autumn came; and before it went, old ties were renewed, and Theresa was pledged to become her cousin's wife.

There were two people strongly affected by this news when it was promulgated; one—and this was natural under the circumstances—was Madam Hawtrey; who chose to resent the marriage as a deep personal offence to herself as well as to her daughter's memory, and who sternly rejecting all Theresa's entreaties, and Duke's invitation to continue her residence at the castle, went off into lodgings in the village. The other person strongly affected by the news, was Victorine.

From being a dry active energetic middle-aged woman, she now, at the time of Theresa's engagement, sank into the passive languor of advanced life. It seemed as if she felt no more need of effort, or strain, or exertion. She sought solitude; liked nothing better than to sit in her room adjoining Theresa's dressing-room, sometimes sunk in a reverie, sometimes employed on an intricate piece of knitting with almost spasmodic activity. But wherever Theresa went, thither would Victorine go. Theresa had imagined that her old nurse would prefer being left at the castle, in the soothing tranquillity of the country, to accompanying her and her husband to the house in Grosvenor-square, which they had taken for the parliamentary season. But the mere offer of a choice seemed to irritate Victorine inexpressibly. She looked upon the proposal as a sign that Theresa considered her as superannuated—that her nursling was weary of her, and wished to supplant her services by those of a younger maid. It seemed impossible to dislodge this idea when it had once entered into her head, and it led to frequent bursts of temper, in which she violently upbraided Theresa for her ingratitude towards so faithful a follower.

One day, Victorine went a little further in her expressions than usual, and Theresa, usually so forbearing towards her, turned at last. "Really, Victorine!" she said, "this is misery to both of us. You say you never feel so wicked as when I am near you; that my ingratitude is such as would be disowned by fiends; what can I, what must I do? You say you are never so unhappy as when you are near me; must we, then, part? Would that be for your happiness?"

"And is that what it has come to!" exclaimed Victorine. "In my country they reckon a building secure against wind and storm and all the ravages of time, if the first mortar used has been tempered with human blood. But not even our joint secret, though it was tempered well with blood, can hold our lives together! How much less all the care, all the love, that I lavished upon you in the days of my youth and strength!"

Theresa came close to the chair in which Victorine was seated. She took hold of her hand and held it fast in her own. "Speak, Victorine," said she, hoarsely, "and tell me what you mean. What is our joint secret? And what do you mean by its being a secret of blood? Speak out. I WILL know."

"As if you do not know!" replied Victorine, harshly. "You don't remember my visits to Bianconi, the Italian chemist in the Marais, long ago?" She looked into Theresa's face, to see if her words had suggested any deeper meaning than met the ear. No; Theresa's look was stern, but free and innocent.

"You told me you went there to learn the composition of certain unguents, and cosmetics, and domestic medicines."

"Ay, and paid high for my knowledge, too," said Victorine, with a low chuckle. "I learned more than you have mentioned, my lady countess. I learnt the secret nature of many drugs—to speak plainly, I learnt the art of poisoning. And," suddenly standing up, "it was for your sake I learnt it. For your service—you—who would fain cast me off in my old age. For you!"

Theresa blanched to a deadly white. But she tried to move neither feature nor limb, nor to avert her eyes for one moment from the eyes that defied her. "For my service, Victorine?"

"Yes! The quieting draught was all ready for your husband, when they brought him home dead."

"Thank God his death does not lie at your door!"

"Thank God?" mocked Victorine. "The wish for his death does lie at your door; and the intent to rid you of him does lie at my door. And I am not ashamed of it. Not I! It was not for myself I would have done it, but because you suffered so. He had struck you, whom I had nursed on my breast."

"Oh, Victorine!" said Theresa, with a shudder. "Those days are past. Do not let us recal them. I was so wicked because I was so miserable; and now I am so happy, so inexpressibly happy, that—do let me try to make you happy too!"

"You ought to try," said Victorine, not yet pacified; "can't you see how the incomplete action once stopped by Fate, was tried again, and with success; and how you are now reaping the benefit of my sin, if sin it was?"

"Victorine! I do not know what you mean!" But some terror must have come over her, she so trembled and so shivered.

"Do you not indeed? Madame Brownlow, the country girl from Crowley Parsonage, needed sleep, and would fain forget the little child's death that was pressing on her brain. I helped the doctor to his end. She sleeps now, and she has met her baby before this, if priests' tales are true. And you, my beauty, my queen, you reign in her stead! Don't treat the poor Victorine as if she were mad, and speaking in her madness. I have heard of tricks like that being played, when the crime was done, and the criminal of use no longer."

That evening, Duke was surprised by his wife's entreaty and petition that she might leave him, and return with Victorine and her other personal servants to the seclusion of Crowley Castle. She, the great London toast, the powerful enchantress of society, and most of all, the darling wife and true companion, with this sudden fancy for this complete retirement, and for leaving her husband when he was first fully entering into the comprehension of all that a wife might be! Was it ill health? Only last night she had been in dazzling beauty, in brilliant spirits; this morning only, she had been so merry and tender. But Theresa denied that she was in any way indisposed; and seemed suddenly so unwilling to speak of herself, and so much depressed, that Duke saw nothing for it but to grant her wish and let her go. He missed her terribly. No more pleasant tête-à-tête breakfasts, enlivened by her sense and wit, and cheered by her pretty caressing ways. No gentle secretary now, to sit by his side through long long hours, never weary. When he went into society, he no longer found his appearance watched and waited for by the loveliest woman there. When he came home from the House at night, there was no one to take an interest in his speeches, to be indignant at all that annoyed him, and charmed and proud of all the admiration he had won. He longed for the time to come when he would be able to go down for a day or two to see his wife; for her letters appeared to him dull and flat after her bright companionship. No wonder that her letters came out of a heavy heart, knowing what she knew.

She scarcely dared to go near Victorine, whose moods were becoming as variable as though she were indeed the mad woman she had tauntingly defied Theresa to call her. At times she was miserable because Theresa looked so ill, and seemed so deeply unhappy. M other times she was jealous because she fancied Theresa shrank from her and avoided her. So, wearing her life out with passion, Victorine's health grew daily worse and worse during that summer.

Theresa's only comfort seemed to be little Mary's society. She seemed as though she could not lavish love enough upon the motherless child, who repaid Theresa's affection with all the pretty demonstrativeness of her age. She would carry the little three-year-old maiden in her arms when she went to see Victorine, or would have Mary playing about in her dressing-room, if the old Frenchwoman, for some jealous freak, would come and arrange her lady's hair with her trembling hands. To avoid giving offence to Victorine, Theresa engaged no other maid; to shun over-much or over-frank conversation with Victorine, she always had little Mary with her when there was a chance of the French waiting-maid coming in. For, the presence of the child was a holy restraint even on Victorine's tongue; she would sometimes check her fierce temper, to caress the little creature playing at her knees; and would only dart a covert bitter sting at Theresa under the guise of a warning against ingratitude, to Mary.

Theresa drooped and drooped in this dreadful life. She sought out Madam Hawtrey, and prayed her to come on a long visit to the castle. She was lonely, she said, asking for madam's company as a favour to herself. Madam Hawtrey was difficult to persuade; but the more she resisted, the more Theresa entreated; and, when once madam was at the castle, her own daughter had never been so dutiful, so humble a slave to her slightest fancy as was the proud Theresa now.

Yet, for all this, the lady of the castle drooped and drooped, and when Duke came down to see his darling he was in utter dismay at her looks. Yet she said she was well enough, only tired. If she had anything more upon her mind, she refused him her confidence. He watched her narrowly, trying to forestal her smallest desires. He saw her tender affection for Mary, and thought he had never seen so lovely and tender a mother to another woman's child. He wondered at her patience with Madam Hawtrey, remembering how often his own stock had been exhausted by his mother-in-law, and how the brilliant Theresa had formerly scouted and flouted at the vicar's wife. With all this renewed sense of his darling's virtues and charms, the idea of losing her was too terrible to bear.

He would listen to no pleas, to no objections. Before he returned to town, where his presence was a political necessity, he sought the best medical advice that could be had in the neighbourhood. The doctors came; they could make but little out of Theresa, if her vehement assertion were true that she had nothing on her mind. Nothing.

"Humour him at least, my dear lady!" said the doctor, who had known Theresa from her infancy, but who, living at the distant county town, was only called in on the Olympian occasions of great state illnesses. "Humour your husband, and perhaps do yourself some good too, by consenting to his desire that you should have change of air. Brighthelmstone is a quiet village by the sea-side. Consent, like a gracious lady, to go there for a few weeks."

So, Theresa, worn out with opposition, consented, and Duke made all the arrangements for taking her, and little Mary, and the necessary suite of servants, to Brighton, as we call it now. He resolved in his own mind that Theresa's personal attendant should be some woman young enough to watch and wait upon her mistress, and not Victorine, to whom Theresa was in reality a servant. But of this plan, neither Theresa nor Victorine knew anything until the former was in the carriage with her husband some miles distant from the castle. Then he, a little exultant in the good management by which he supposed he had spared his wife the pain and trouble of decision, told her that Victorine was left behind, and that a new accomplished London maid would await her at her journey's end.

Theresa only exclaimed "O! What will Victorine say?" and covered her face, and sat shivering and speechless.

What Victorine did say, when she found out the trick, as she esteemed it, that had been played upon her, was too terrible to repeat. She lashed herself up into an ungoverned passion; and then became so really and seriously ill that the servants went to fetch Madam Hawtrey in terror and dismay. But when that lady came, Victorine shut her eyes, and refused to look at her. "She has got her daughter in her hand! I will not look!" Shaking all the time she uttered these awe-stricken words, as if she were in an ague-fit. "Bring the countess back to me. Let her face the dead woman standing there, I will not do it. They wanted her to sleep—and so did the countess, that she might step into her lawful place. Theresa, Theresa, where are you? You tempted me. What I did, I did in your service. And you have gone away, and left me alone with the dead woman! It was the same drug as the doctor gave, after all—only he gave little, and I gave much. My lady the countess spent her money well, when she sent me to the old Italian to learn his trade. Lotions for the complexion, and a discriminating use of poisonous drugs. I discriminated, and Theresa profited; and now she is his wife, and has left me here alone with the dead woman. Theresa, Theresa, come back and save me from the dead woman!"

Madam Hawtrey stood by, horror-stricken. "Fetch the vicar," said she, under her breath, to a servant.

"The village doctor is coming," said some one near. "How she raves! Is it delirium?"

"It is no delirium," said Bessy's mother, " Would to Heaven it were!"

Theresa had a happy day with her husband at Brighthelmstone before he set off on his return to London. She watched him riding away, his servant following with his portmanteau. Often and often did Duke look back at the figure of his wife, waving her handkerchief, till a turn of the road hid her from his sight. He had to pass through a little village not ten miles from his home, and there a servant, with his letters and further luggage, was to await him. There he found a mysterious, imperative note, requiring his immediate presence at Crowley Castle. Something in the awe-stricken face of the servant from the castle, led Duke to question him. But all he could say was, that Victorine lay dying, and that Madam Hawtrey had said that after that letter the master was sure to return, and so would need no luggage. Something lurked behind, evidently. Duke rode home at speed. The vicar was looking out for him. "My dear boy," said he, relapsing into the old relations of tutor and pupil, "prepare yourself."

"What for?" said Duke, abruptly; for the being told to prepare himself, without being told for what, irritated him in his present mood. "Victorine is dead?"

"No! She says she will not die until she has seen you, and got you to forgive her, if Madam Hawtrey will not. But first read this: it is a terrible confession, made by her before me, a magistrate, believing herself to be on the point of death!"

Duke read the paper—containing little more in point of detail than I have already given—the horrible words taken down in the short-hand in which the vicar used to write his mild prosy sermons: his pupil knew the character of old. Duke read it twice. Then he said: "She is raving, poor creature!" But for all that, his heart's blood ran cold, and he would fain not have faced the woman, but would rather have remained in doubt to his dying day.

He went up the stairs three steps at a time, and then turned and faced the vicar, with a look like the stem calmness of death. "I wish to see her alone." He turned out all the watching women, and then he went to the bedside where Victorine sat, half propped up with pillows, watching all his doings and his looks, with her hollow awful eyes. "Now, Victorine, I will read this paper aloud to you. Perhaps your mind has been wandering; but you understand me now?" A feeble murmur of assent met his listening ear. "If any statement in this paper be not true, make me a sign. Hold up your hand—for God's sake hold up your hand. And if you can do it with truth in this, your hour of dying, Lord have mercy upon you; but if you cannot hold up your hand, then Lord have mercy upon me!"

He read the paper slowly; clause by clause he read the paper. No sign; no uplifted hand. At the end she spoke, and he bent his head to listen. "The Countess—Theresa you know—she who has left me to die alone—she"—then mortal strength failed, and Duke was left alone in the chamber of death.

He stayed in the chamber many minutes, quite still. Then he left the room, and said to the first domestic he could find, "The woman is dead. See that she is attended to." But he went to the vicar, and had a long long talk with him. He sent a confidential servant for little Mary—on some pretext, hardly careful, or plausible enough; but his mood was desperate, and he seemed to forget almost everything but Bessy, his first wife, his innocent girlish bride.

Theresa could ill spare her little darling, and was perplexed by the summons; but an explanation of it was to come in a day or two. It came.

"Victorine is dead; I need say no more. She could not carry her awful secret into the next world, but told all. I can think of nothing but my poor Bessy, delivered over to the cruelty of such a woman. And you, Theresa, I leave you to your conscience, for you have slept in my bosom. Henceforward I am a stranger to you. By the time you receive this, I, and my child, and that poor murdered girl's mother, will have left England. What will be our next step I know not. My agent will do for you what you need."

Theresa sprang up and rang her bell with mad haste. "Get me a horse!" she cried, "and bid William be ready to ride with me for his life—for my life—along the coast, to Dover!"

They rode and they galloped through the night, scarcely staying to bait their horses. But when they came to Dover, they looked out to sea upon the white sails that bore Duke and his child away. Theresa was too late, and it broke her heart. She lies buried in Dover churchyard. After long years Duke returned to England; but his place in parliament knew him no more, and his daughter's husband sold Crowley Castle to a stranger.

CHAPTER III

HOW THE SIDE-ROOM WAS ATTENDED EY A DOCTOR

Andrew Halliday

How the Doctor found his way into our society, none of us can tell. It did not occur to us to inquire into the matter at the time, and now the point is lost in the dim obscurity of the past. We only know that he appeared suddenly and mysteriously. It was shortly after we had formed our Mutual Admiration Society, in this very room in Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings. We were discussing things in general in our usual amiable way, admiring poets, worshipping heroes, and taking all men and all things for what they seemed. We were young and ingenuous, pleased with our own ideas, and with each other's; full of belief and trust in all things good and noble, and with no hatred, save for what was false, and base, and mean. In this spirit we were commenting with indignation upon a new heresy with regard to the age of the world, when a strange voice broke in upon our conversation.

"I beg your pardon; you are wrong. The age of the world is exactly three millions eight hundred and ninety-seven thousand four hundred and twenty-five years, eight months, fourteen days, nine hours, thirty-five minutes, and seventeen seconds."

At the first sound of this mysterious voice we all looked up, and perceived standing on the hearth-rug before the fire by which you sit, Major, a little closely-knit, middle-aged man, dressed in black. He had a hooked nose, piercing black eyes, and a grizzled beard, and his head was covered with a shock of crisp dark hair. Our first impulse was to resent the stranger's interference as an impertinence, and to demand what business he had in that room in Mrs. Lirriper's house, sacred to the social meetings of the Mutual Admiration Society? But we no sooner set eyes upon him than the impulse was checked, and we remained for a minute or so gazing upon the stranger in silence. We saw at a glance that he was no mere meddling fool. He was considerably older than any of us there present, his face beamed with intelligence, his eyes sparkled with humour, and his whole expression was that of a man confident of mental strength and superiority. The look on his face seemed to imply that he had reckoned us all up in an instant. So much were we impressed by the stranger's appearance, that we quite forgot the queries which had naturally occurred to us when he interrupted our conversation: Who are you? Where do you belong to? How did you come here? It was allowable for a member of the society to introduce a friend; but none of us had introduced him, and we were the only members in the room. None of us had seen him enter, nor had we been conscious of his presence until we heard his voice. On comparing notes afterwards, it was found that the same thought had flitted across all our minds. Had he come down the chimney? Or up through the floor? But at the time, as we saw no smoke and smelt no brimstone, we dismissed the suspicion for the more natural explanation that some member had introduced him, and had gone away, leaving him there. I was mentally framing a civil question with the view of elucidating this point, when the stranger, who spoke with a foreign accent, again addressed us.

"I trust," he said, "I am not intruding upon your society; but the subject of your discussion is one that I have studied deeply, and I was betrayed into a remark by—by my enthusiasm: I beg you will pardon me."

He said this so affably, and with so much dignified politeness of an elderly kind, that we were all disarmed, and protested, in a body, that there was no occasion for any apology. And it followed upon this, in some sort of insensible way, that the stranger came and took a seat among us, and spent the evening with us, proving a match for us in the airy gaiety of our discussions, and more than a match for us in all kinds of knowledge. We were all charmed with the stranger, and he appeared to be highly pleased with us. When he went away he shook hands with us with marked cordiality and warmth, and left us his card. It bore this inscription:

DOCTOR GOLIATH, Ph.D.

After this, the doctor regularly frequented our society, and we took his coming as a matter of course; being quite content to accept his great learning and numerous accomplishments as a certificate of his eligibility for membership in our fraternity. It was no wonder that we came to look upon the doctor as a great personage. His fund of knowledge was inexhaustible. He seemed to know everything—not generally and in a superficial manner—but particularly and minutely. It was not, however, by making a parade of his knowledge that he gave us this impression. He let it out incidentally, as occasion required. If language were the topic, the doctor, by a few off-hand remarks, made it plain to us that he was acquainted with almost every language under the sun. He spoke English with an accent which partook of the character of almost every modern tongue. If law came up, he could discourse of codes and judgments with the utmost familiarity, citing act, chapter, and section, as if the whole study of his life had been law. So with politics, history, geology, chemistry, mechanics, and even medicine. Nothing came amiss to Doctor Goliath. He was an animated Cyclopaedia of universal knowledge. But there was nothing of the pedant about him. He treated his learning as bagatelle; he threw off his knowledge as other people throw off jokes; he was only serious when he mixed a salad, brewed a bowl of punch, or played a game of piquet. He was not at all proud of being able to translate the Ratcatcher's Daughter into six languages, including Greek and Arabic; but he believed he was the only man on the face of the earth who knew the exact proportions of oil and vinegar requisite for the proper mixture of a potato-salad. It was impossible to resist the spell of Doctor Goliath's wonderful character. He was learned in the highest degree; yet he had all the reckless jollity of a schoolboy, and could talk nonsense and make sport of wisdom and philosophy better than any of us. He took our society by storm; he became an oracle; we quoted him as an authority, and spoke of him as the doctor, as if there were no other doctor on the face of the earth.

Shortly before the doctor's appearance among us, we, the members of the Mutual Admiration Society, had sworn eternal friendship. We had vowed ever to love each other, ever to believe in each other, ever to be true and just and kindly towards each other, and never to be estranged one from another either by prosperity or adversity. As a sign and symbol of our brotherhood, we had agreed to call each other by familiar and affectionate abbreviations of our Christian names; and, in pursuance of this amiable scheme, we had arranged to present each other with loving cups. As we were a society of little wealth, except in the matter of loving kindness and mutual admiration, it was resolved that the cups should be fashioned of pewter, of the measure of one quart, and each with two handles. The order was given, the loving-cups were made, and each bore an inscription in this wise: "To Tom from Sam, Jack, Will, Ned, Charley, and Harry, a token of Friendship;" this inscription being only varied as regarded the relative positions of donors and recipient. The cups were all ready, and nothing remained to be done but to pay the money and bring them away from the shop of our Benvenuto Cellini, which was situated in the parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. A delay, however, occurred, owing to circumstances which I need not particularise further than to say, that they were circumstances over which we had no control.

This delay, owing to the obduracy of these uncontrollable circumstances, continued for some weeks, when, one evening, Tom came in with a large brown paper parcel under his arm. It was a parcel of strange and unwonted aspect.

"Ha! ha!" cried the doctor, "what have we here? Say, my Tom, is it something to eat, something to drink, something perchance to smoke? For in such things only doth my soul delight."

"I don't believe you when you say that, doctor," said Tom, quite seriously; for Tom had fallen more prostrate than any of us before the doctor's great character.

"Not believe me?" cried the doctor. "I mean it. Man, sir, is an animal whose only misfortune is, that he is endowed with the accursed power of thinking. If I were not possessed by this evil spirit of Thought, do you know what I would do?"

Tom could form no idea what he would do.

"Well, then," said the doctor, "I would lie all day in the sun, and eat potato-salad out of a trough!"

"What! like a pig?" Tom exclaimed.

"Yes, like a pig," said the doctor. "I never see a pig lying on clean straw, with his snout poked into a delightful mess of barley-meal and cabbage-leaves, but I become frightfully envious!"

"Oh, doctor!" we all exclaimed in chorus.

"Fact. I say to myself, How much better off, how much happier, is this pig than I! To obtain my potato-salad, without which life would be a blank, I have to do a deed my soul abhors. I have to work. The pig has no work to do for that troughful of barley-meal and cabbage-leaves. Because I am an animal endowed with the power of thought and reason, I was sent to school and taught to read. See what misfortune, what misery, that has brought upon me! You laugh, but am I not driven to read books, and parliamentary debates, and leading articles? I was induced the other day to attend a social congress. If I had been a pig, I should not have had to endure that."

"Ah, but, doctor," said Tom, "the pig has no better part."

The doctor burst into a yell of exultation.

"What! The pig no better part? Ha! ha! Sir, the better part of pig is pork. The butcher comes to me, and to the pig alike; but what remains of me when he has done his fell work? You put me in a box and screw me down, and stow me away out of sight; and you pretend to grieve for me. But the pig—you eat him, and rejoice in earnest! And that reminds me that I shall have a pork-chop for supper. By the way, is it a lettuce you have in that paper parcel, Tom?"

"It is not a lettuce, doctor."

"Not a lettuce! Ha! I see something glitter—precious metal—gold? no, silver! to obtain which, in a commensurate quantity, I would commit crimes—murder!"

"Oh, doctor," said Tom, "you are giving yourself a character which you don't deserve.""

"Am I?" said the doctor, "You don't know me. And after all, what is murder? Nothing. You kill two or three of your fellow-creatures—a dozen for that matter; what then? There are plenty more. Do you know what is the population of the earth? I will tell you. Exactly one thousand three hundred millions eight hundred and ninety-nine thousand six hundred and twenty souls. How many murders are committed in the course of a year do you imagine? You think only those you read of in the newspapers. Bah! An intimate knowledge of the subject enables me to inform you that the number of murders committed in Great Britain and Ireland, and the Channel Islands, annually, amounts to fifteen thousand seven hundred and forty-five. It is one of the laws of nature for keeping down the population. Every man who commits a murder, obeys this law."

Tom's hair was beginning to stand on end, for the doctor said all this with a terrible fierceness of manner. His strange philosophy was not without its effect upon the rest of us. We had been accustomed to a good deal of freedom in our discussions, but we had never ventured upon anything so audacious as this.

"Come, Tom," said the doctor, "unveil your treasure, and let me see if it be worth my while lying in wait for you in the dark lanes as you go home to-night."

"Well, no, it isn't, doctor," said Tom, "for the article is only of pewter." And Tom uncovered his loving-cup. Circumstances had relented in Tom's case, and he had gone and paid for his own loving-cup.

"Pewter!" said the doctor. "Bah! it is not worth my while; but if it had been silver, now, why then I might——" And the doctor put on a diabolical expression, that seemed to signify highway robbery accompanied with violence, and murder followed by immediate dissection. Presently the doctor noticed the inscription. "Ha! ha!" he said, "what is this? An inscription! 'To Tom, from Sam, Jack, Will, Ned, Charley, and Harry—a token of Friendship.' Friendship? Ha! ha! 'tis but a name, an empty name, a mockery, a delusion, and a snare. I tell you there is no such thing in the world."

"Oh, don't say that, doctor!" cried Tom, looking quite hurt.

"Ah," returned the doctor, "you will find it out. I have always found it out; and since I formed my first friendship and was deceived—it is now—let me see how many years?—one thousand eight hundred and——but no matter."

The doctor paused, as if oppressed with painful recollections.

"Ned," said Sam, leaning across to me, "do you know what I think the doctor is?"

"No," I said.

"Well," he said, "hang'd if I don't think he is the Wandering Jew. Look at his boots!"

I looked at his boots. They were not neat boots: that was all I perceived about them.

"Don't you observe/' said Sam, "how flat and trodden down they are? The doctor has done a deal of walking in those boots. Mark their strange and ancient shape! Look at the dust upon them—it is the dust of centuries!"

The doctor was roaring with laughter at the idea of our mutual presentation scheme, and was calling us "innocents," and Tom's loving-cup a "mug."

Tom was getting red in the face and looking ashamed. In fact, we were all looking rather sheepish; for it had never struck us until now, how silly and sentimental we all were. We said nothing to the doctor about the six other loving-cups that were waiting to be paid for and claimed; and when Tom, with a face as red as a coal, covered up his "mug" as the doctor called it and put it away, we were glad to change the subject, to escape from our embarrassment. We were so thoroughly ashamed of ourselves, that we endeavoured to redeem our characters in the eyes of the doctor, by plunging recklessly into any depth of cynical opinion that he chose to sound. And the doctor, in the course of time, led us to the very bottom of the pit of cynicism. As we listened to him, and held converse with him day after day, we began to see how very green and unsophisticated we had all been. We came to know that the poets and heroes whom we had worshipped were nothing but humbugs and pretenders; that the great statesmen whom we had believed in and admired, were blunderers or traitors; that the mighty potentates whose power and sagacity we had extolled, were tyrannical miscreants, or puppets in the hands of others; that the philanthropists whom all men praised, were conceited self-seeking hypocrites; that the patriots whose names we had reverenced in common with all the world, were scoundrels of the deepest dye. The doctor's influence led us on insensibly, step by step. How could we resist it? It was a fascination. He knew everything, could prove everything, and had such a store of facts that we had never heard of in support of his conclusions, that it was impossible, with our limited knowledge, to withstand him. We were shocked at first; but, as the revolution proceeded, we got used to the sight of blood, and saw the heads of our heroes fall, with the utmost indifference. At length we came to revel in it, and sought for new victims, that we might demolish them and do I our despite upon them. The doctor led the way I more boldly as we advanced. He hinted darkly at crimes in which he had had a hand, and at crimes which he would yet commit when the opportunity arrived. Whenever a murder was committed, the doctor was the friend and advocate of the murderer, and vowed fierce vengeance against the judge and jury who condemned him to be hanged. When news of war and disaster came, he rubbed his hands and gloated over it with glee, because he had prophesied what would happen through the imbecility and treason of infamous scoundrels who called themselves statesmen and generals.

Erom a Mutual Admiration Society, we became a society of iconoclasts. Tom, and Jack, arid Sam, and Harry, and the rest of us, who had begun by swearing eternal friendship, were now bitter disputants, despising each other's mental qualities, calling each other duffers behind each other's backs, and laughing all the old modest pretensions to scorn. The loving-cups had faded out of memory. I passed the shop of our Benvenuto Cellini, the pewterer, one day, and saw the whole six exposed in the window for sale. I called upon Tom, to show him an article demolishing a popular author whom we had once idolised, and I noticed his loving-cup stowed away under the table with a waste-paper-basket and a spittoon. It had grown dull and battered like a public-house pot, and was filled with short black pipes, and matches, and ends of cigars, and rubbish. I kicked it playfully with my foot, and laughed; and Tom blushed and put it away out of sight.

Our society, in its new form, prospered exceedingly. We became famous for the freedom of our speech and the audacity of our opinions. Our company was much sought after, and we were proud of our originality and independence. We spent all our leisure hours together, and our defiant discussions kept us in a constant state of mental intoxication. But a sober moment arrived.

Tom and I sat together, one gloomy day, alone. We were solemn and moody, and smoked in silence. At length Tom said:

"Ned, I passed the shop to-day, and saw those six loving-cups in the window."

I replied, fretfully, "Bother the loving-cups!"

"No," said Tom, "I have other thoughts at this present moment; I have had them often, but have smothered them—smothered them ruthlessly, Ned; but they have always come to life again. They are very lively to-night—owing, perhaps, to the fog, or the state of my liver, or the state of my conscience—and I can't smother them."

"What do you mean, Tom?"

"You remember when we ordered the cups?'

"Yes."

"The doctor came among us shortly afterwards."

"He did."

"And we didn't carry out our intention."

"No. You paid for yours, Tom, and brought it away, but the rest are still unredeemed pledges of affection."

"Exactly," said Tom; "and that was owing to the doctor. He laughed at us. He made us ashamed of ourselves. He made me ashamed of myself. But I had paid for my cup, and brought it away, and the thing was done. If I had not done it when I did, I should never have done it. What were we ashamed of?"

"Silliness," I said.

"No, kindliness and good feeling, which we can't have too much of in this short journey."

I did not answer. Tom. went on.

"This doctor has upset us all. He has changed our nature. He has turned the milk of human kindness that was in us, sour. He is a very fascinating person, I grant; but who is he? None of us know. He came among us mysteriously; we accepted him without question. Yet we don't know anything about him. We don't know what he is; what he does; where he lives; or even what country he belongs to."

"Well?"

"Well, I sometimes think he is the devil. He is very pleasant, but he is diabolical in all his views and opinions, nevertheless. If he is not the devil, he has, at any rate, played the devil with us. I feel it at quiet moments like these, when we are not excited and bandying flippant jokes and unbelieving sarcasms."

I smoked for a few moments in silence, and I then said:

"I feel it, too, exactly as you do, Tom. I have wished to say so often, only—only I didn't like."

"Ned that is exactly what I have felt. Suppose we take courage now."

"Suppose we do," I said.

"Very well, then," said Tom. "Let us find out who this Doctor Goliath is, what he is, and all about him."

Tom had scarcely said the words when the doctor came in. He had a small bag in his hand, and a parcel under his arm.

"I am not going to stay this evening," he said. "I have work to do—work that the world will hear of. Ha?" And he contracted his brows darkly, and laid his finger on his nose in a portentous manner.

"Good night," he said; "if I survive, well and good; if not, remember me—but as to that, I don't imagine for a moment that you will do anything of the sort. You will say 'poor wretch,' and then go on with your jokes and your sport. 'Tis the way of this vile world, which has been a huge mistake from the beginning. Farewell."

"Ned," said Tom, "let us follow him."

We did so. We followed him into the Strand and on to the bridge, where he had an altercation with the toll-keeper. We could hear the words "swindle," "imposition," "highway robbery;" and we saw the doctor's face under the lamp glaring savagely at the man. At length he flung down his halfpenny, and walked hurriedly on, but stopped abruptly at the first recess, turned into it, and looked over the parapet at the river. We had long seriously entertained the suspicion—among many others of a like kind—that the doctor knew something about the mysterious, and as yet undiscovered, murder, which is associated with that spot. He had hinted at it himself often.

"Look!" said Tom. "Fascination draws him. to the scene of his crime.—I almost wish he would throw himself over."

But the doctor did no such thing. After looking down at the river for a few moments, he leaped off the stone ledge, and passed on. We followed at a safe distance, and kept him in sight through a great many narrow and gloomy streets, where our only guide was the dark figure moving like a shadow before us. At length the doctor turned up a narrow passage, and disappeared. We ran forward to the entrance, but the passage was completely dark, and we could see nothing. We hesitated for a moment, but immediately summoned up courage and followed, groping our way in the dark with the assistance of the wall. On coming out at the other end of this dark tunnel, we found ourselves in a triangular court lighted by a single gas-lamp placed at the apex of the triangle. There seemed to be no entrance to it save by the narrow passage through which we had passed. All these strange and mysterious characteristics of the place we were enabled to see at a glance, by the aid of the one gas-lamp that stood like a mark of admiration in the corner. And that glance took in the cloudy figure of the doctor standing at a door in the darkest nook of the court, knocking. He was admitted before we reached the spot, but we had marked the house. It was number thirteen.

"An ogglesome number," said Tom. And there was an ogglesome plaster head over the doorway—a head, with a leer upon its face, and a reckoning-up expression, just like the doctor's. It seemed to be laughing at the fool's errand we had come upon.

I said, "What are we to do now?"

"Well, really, I don't know," said Tom.

" Stop," I cried; "I see a bill in the window. What does it say?"

Tom suggested, "Mangling done," as being most appropriate to a house inhabited by Doctor Goliath.

But it was not mangling. It was "Lodgings to Let for a Single Gentleman."

"Let us knock," I said, "and inquire about the lodgings, and ascertain what sort of a place it is."

We saw a light pass into the first floor. That was evidently the doctor's room, and he had gone up-stairs. We waited a little, and then knocked. The door was opened by an elderly lady of exceedingly benignant aspect, who wore the remnants of a smile upon her face. The smile was evidently not intended for us, but we took it as if it were, and reciprocated with a smiling inquiry about the lodgings. Would we step in and look at them? They were two rooms down stairs: a sitting-room and a bedroom. As the elderly lady, with a candle in her hand, was leading the way along the passage, the doctor called from above,

"Mrs. Mavor, I want you here directly."

"Excuse me a moment, gentlemen," said Mrs. Mavor; "the doctor, my first-floor lodger, has just come in, and wants his coffee. Pray take a seat in the parlour."

Mrs. Mavor left us, and went up-stairs, and the next moment we heard the doctor saying in loud and angry tones:

"Where is my spider? How dare you sweep away my spider with your murderous broom?"

"Oh, the nasty thing!" we heard Mrs. Mavor begin to say, but the doctor would not let her speak.

"Nasty thing! That's your opinion. What do you suppose that spider's opinion is of you, when you come and bring his house about his ears in the midst of his industry? How would you like it? Let me tell you that spider had as much right to live as you have; more—more! He was industrious, which you are not; he had a large family to support, which you have not; and if he did spread a net to catch the flies, don't you hang up 'Lodgings to Let,' and take in single young men, like myself, and do for them? You are a heartless, wicked woman, Mrs. Mavor."

Mrs. Mavor came down almost immediately, laughing.

"That's my first-floor lodger, Doctor Goliath," she said; "he has strange ways in some things, and pretends to get in an awful temper if any one touches his pets; but he is such a good kind soul!"

Tom and I began to stare.

"He has been with me now over seven years," Mrs. Mavor continued, "and he has behaved so well to me, and has been so kind to me when I have been ill, that nothing should induce me to take any person into the house that might disturb him or put him out of his ways. If the doctor were to leave Povis-place, I am sure I don't know what all the neighbours and the poor people about here would do; for he doctors them when they are ill, and he advises them when they are well, and he writes letters for them, and gets up subscriptions for them when there's any misfortune; and the children—they're all wild after him! Very often you'll see him here in the place, when he has been the gentlest and best of friends to their fathers and mothers, playing games with them, and a score of romping boys and girls on the top of his back—but he don't mind; he's so good natured, and so fond of children!"

Tom and I were opening our eyes wider and wider. The doctor called again: "Mrs. Mavor, bring me a ball of worsted, and let it be nice and soft."

Mrs. Mavor went up-stairs with the worsted, and came back again smiling.

"He has got his dumb pets round him now," she said, " and one of them has had an accident, and he can't bear to see the poor creature suffer. He is so tender-hearted!"

Tom and I were speechless. The doctor's pets, what could they be? Imps?

I said to Mrs. Mavor, that we had heard of Doctor Goliath, that he was a very learned and skilful man, and that we would like to have a peep at him, if she would permit us. Mrs. Mavor hesitated. He would be angry, she said, if he knew it. We put it upon our admiration for the man, and she consented; but we were only to peep through the door, and were not to make a noise.

We went up-stairs quietly to the doctor's landing. His door was ajar, and we could see nearly half the room through the crack, without being seen. If it had been possible to open our eyes any wider, we should have done it now.

For, the doctor was seated at a table on which his tea-things were laid. A canary-bird sat perched upon his head, a kitten was sporting at his feet, and he himself was occupied in binding up the leg of a guinea-pig.

"Poor little thing!" he was saying. "I am so sorry, so sorry; but never mind. There, there! I will bind up its poor little leg, and it will get well and run about as nicely as ever. Ah, little cat; now you know what I told you about that canary-bird. If you kill that canary-bird, I shall kill you. That is the law of Moses, little cat: it is a cruel law, I think, but I am afraid I should have to put it in force; for I love that little bird, and I love you, too, little cat, so you will not kill my pretty canary, will you? Sweet, sweet!" And the bird, perched upon the doctor's head, was answering "Sweet, sweet!"

Mrs. Mavor was behind us, calling to us in a loud whisper to come away. We astonished Mrs. Mavor and her lodger both. We walked right into the doctor's room.

He started at the sound of our footsteps; and when he saw us he turned pale with anger.

"What means this—this unwarrantable—this impertinent intrusion?"

He poured such a volley of angry words upon us that we were confused, and scarcely knew how to act. I saw that the only course was to take the bull by the horns.

"Doctor," I said, "you are an old humbug."

"What do you mean; what do you mean, sir? How dare you!" returned the doctor.

"And I say so too," struck in the mild Tom, who had never before been known to speak so bold: "doctor, you are an old humbug."

"Well, upon my word," said the doctor, "the audacity of this proceeding "

"Who taught us to be audacious, doctor?" Tom asked, before he could finish the sentence.

The doctor gave way. He laughed, and he looked sheepish—as sheepish as we had looked when he discovered our loving-cup scheme. He scarcely knew what to say, and he put on a fierce look again, and called Mrs. Mavor.

"How dare you allow strangers to enter my room in this manner? Take that bird and that mischievous cat and that nasty guinea-pig, away, directly."

"It's of no use, doctor," said Tom; "we have found you out, and you can't deceive us any more. I have thought until now that you were an incarnate fiend, but I find you belong to the other side." Tom evidently meant that the doctor was a sort of angel, but he did not use the word; being probably struck with the incongruity of associating an angelic embodiment with a wide-awake hat and Blucher boots.

The doctor laughed: which encouraged Tom to address a moral lesson, on the doctor's conduct, to Mrs. Mavor.

"To all of us, Mrs. Mavor, he has made himself out a diabolical person: fierce, bloodthirsty, cruel. We had made a little Paradise among ourselves, and he entered it, like the beguiling serpent, and made us all wicked and unhappy. What did he do it for?"

Mrs. Mavor, seeing that the doctor was getting the worst of it, plucked up courage and spoke out. "He does it everywhere beyond the boundaries of Povis-place, and I'll tell you what he does it for. He is ashamed of being good, and kind, and tender-hearted!''

"A pretty thing to be ashamed of," said Tom. "I've half a mind to punch his head!"

"No, don't," said the doctor, laughing. "Sit down and have a cup of coffee, and then Mrs. Mavor will come and join us in a game of whist, and we'll have a potato-salad for supper, and I'll brew such a bowl of punch as I flatter myself no man on the face of the earth besides myself——"

"Doctor," said Tom again, "you're a humbug."

We told all to the society, and the next time the doctor came among us at Mrs. Lirriper's here, he was received with shouts of derisive welcome.

The doctor gave a party in Povis-place, and we were all invited. There was so much victuals, there were so many bottles of German wine, and there was so large a number of guests, that Mrs. Mavor's small tenement was in some danger of bursting. If I remember rightly, the provisions were on the scale of a ham and two fowls and a dozen of hocheimer, to each guest: to say nothing of the potato-salad, which was made in a bran new wash-hand basin, purchased for the occasion.

And after supper there was a presentation. The loving-cups had been redeemed; and one more was added to the number; and there they were, all bright and glittering—having been rubbed up expressly for the occasion—in a row upon the table. And the extra one was inscribed, " To the Doctor, from Tom, Ned, Sam, Will, Jack, Charley, and Harry, a Token of Friendship and Esteem."

Though our old heroes and idols are all set up on their pedestals long ago, Major, we are still given to cynical and audacious talk in our society, which is still held in my rooms here. But it deceives no one; and when the doctor tries to be fierce, he blushes at the feeble and foolish attempt he is making to conceal the tenderness of the kindest heart that ever beat.

CHAPTER IV

HOW THE SECOND FLOOR KEPT A DOG

Edmund Yates

Mrs. Lirriper rather objects to dogs, you say, Major? Very natural in a London house. Shall I tell you why I hope she will not object to my dog, major? Help yourself. So I will.

"Ah, but, to goodness, look you, will her bite?" exclaimed an old Welshwoman, as she pulled her big hat further on her head, and looked askance at the big black dog which the man sitting next her had just hauled on to the coach-roof.

"It isn't a her, and he won't bite," was the sententious reply of the dog's master.

Not a pleasant-looking man, this; tall and thin, whiskerless and sallow faced; his head looking more like a bladder of lard surmounted by a scratch-wig, than anything human: dressed all in black, with a stiff shiny hat, beaver gloves, and thick lustreless Wellington boots. He had enormous collars encircling his face and growing peakedly out of a huge black silk cravat; he had a black satin waistcoat and a silver watch-guard, and an umbrella in a shiny oilskin case, and a hard slippery cold black cowskin bag, with J. M. upon it in staring white lettters; and he looked very much like what he was—Mr. John Mortiboy, junior partner in the house of Crump and Mortiboy, Manchester warehousemen, Friday-street, Cheapside, London.

What brought Mr. John Mortiboy into Wales to spend his holiday, or what induced such a pillar of British commerce to encumber himself with a dog, is no business of ours, Major. All I know, is, that he had been set down at the Barberth-road station, had dragged the black cow-skin bag from under his seat, had released the dog from a square bare receptacle which the animal had filled with howls, and had mounted himself and his dog on to the top of the coach travelling toward the little watering-place of Penethly. The dog, a big black retriever, lay on the coach-roof with his fine head erect, now gazing round the landscape, now dropping his cold muzzle between his paws and taking snatches of sleep. His master sat on the extreme edge of the seat, with one Wellington boot very much displayed and dangling in the air, and he, the Wellington boot's owner, apparently deriving much enjoyment from the suction of his umbrella-handle. He cast his big eyes round him now and then at certain portions of the scenery pointed out by the coachman, and expressed his opinion that it was "handsome," but beyond that never vouchsafed a word until the coach drew up at the Royal Inn at Penethly, when he went at once round to the stables and superintended the preparation of a meal for his dog, then ordered a "point steak well beat, potatoes, and a pint of sherry," to be ready for him in an hour's time; inquired the way to Albion Villa; and set off for Albion Villa accompanied by his dog Beppo.

I don't think Mr. John Mortiboy was much wanted at Albion Villa, nor that he was exactly the kind of man who would have suited its inmates. They were little conscious of the approach of his hard creaking boots, striding over the ill-paved High-street of the little town, and were enjoying themselves after their own simple fashion. The blinds were down, the candles were lighted, and Mrs. Barford was pretending to be knitting, but really enjoying a placid sleep; Ellen, her eldest daughter, was reading a magazine; Kate, her youngest, was making some sketches under the observant tuition of a slim gentleman with a light beard, who apparently took the greatest interest in his pupil. Upon this little group the clang of the gate bell, the creaking of Mr. John Mortiboy's boots, and the strident tones of Mr. John Mortiboy's voice, fell uncomfortably. "Say Mr. John Mortiboy, of London," he exclaimed, while yet in the little passage outside. The startled Welsh servant having obeyed him, he followed close upon her heels into the room.

"Servant, ladies!" said he, with a short circular nod, "servant, Mrs. Barford! Best to explain matters wholesale. You wonder who I am. You're sister-in-law to my uncle, Jonas Crump. I'm my uncle's partner in Friday-street. Done too much; rather baked in the head—heavy consignments and sitting up late at night poring over figures. The doctor recommended change of air; uncle Crump recommended Penethly, and mentioned you. I came down here, and have taken the liberty of calling. Down, Beppo! Don't mind him, miss, he won't hurt you."

"Oh! I'm not afraid of the dog!" said Ellen, with a slight start at Mr. Mortiboy's general manner, and at his calling her "Miss." Kate looked on in wonder, and the slim gentleman with the light beard confided to the said beard, the word "Brute."

" We're—very—pleased to see you, Mr. Mortiboy," said Mrs. Barford, " and—and hope that you will soon recover your health in our quiet village. I'm sure anything that we can—can do—my daughters, Miss Ellen, Miss Kate Barford; a friend of ours, Mr. Sandham—we shall be most happy to——" As Mrs. Barford's voice died away in the contemplation of the happiness before her, the young ladies and Mr. Sandham bowed, and Mr. Mortiboy favoured them with a series of short nods. Then he said, abruptly turning to the slim gentleman, "In the army, sir?"

"No, sir, I am not!" retorted the slim gentleman, with great promptitude.

"Beg pardon, no offence! Volunteer, perhaps? Hair, you know, beard, et caetera, made me think you were in the military line. Many young gents now-a-days are volunteers!"

"Mr. Sandham is an artist," said Mrs. Barford, interposing in dread lest there should be an outbreak.

"Oh ah!" said Mr. Mortiboy. "Bad trade that—demand not equal to supply, is it? Too many hands employed; barely bread and cheese, I'm told, for any but the top-sawyers."

"Sir!" said Mr. Sandham, in a loud tone of voice, and fiercely.

"Edward!" said Miss Kate, beneath her breath, appealingly.

"Won't you take some refreshment, Mr. Mortiboy?" asked Mrs. Barford, warningly. "We're just going to supper."

"No, thank you, mam," said Mr. Mortiboy. "I've a steak and potatoes waiting for me at the Royal, after which I shall turn in at once, as I'm done up by my journey. Good night, ladies all! Good night to you, sir! I'll look you up to-morrow morning, and if any of you want to go for a turn, I shall be proud to beau you about. Good night!" And beckoning his dog, Mr. Mortiboy took his departure.

Scarcely had the door closed behind him, than the long-restrained comments began.

"A pleasant visitor uncle Crump has sent us, mamma!" said Kate.

"Uncle Crump, indeed! Who never sent us anything before, except a five-pound note when poor papa died!" exclaimed Ellen.

"But you won't, will you, mamma, you won't be put upon in this way? You won't have this horrid man running in and out at all times and seasons, and——"

"And beau-ing us about! the vulgar wretch!" interrupted Kate.

"My dears! my dears!" said Mrs. Barford, "it strikes me that some one has been teaching you very strong language."

"Not I, Mrs. Barford," said Mr. Sandham; "absolve me from that; though I must own that if ever I saw a man who wanted kicking——"

"Nonsense, Mr. Sandham. This gentleman is imbued with certain London peculiarities, no doubt; but I dare say there's good in him. There must be, or he would never be the partner of such an upright man as Jonas Crump."

"Upright man! Pooh!" said Kate; and then the supper came in, and the subject dropped.

At nine o'clock next morning, just as the breakfast-things had been cleared, and Mrs. Barford was going through her usual interview with the cook, Kate, who was sitting in the little bay-window, started and exclaimed: "Oh, mamma! Here's this horrid man!"

Ellen peeped over her shoulder, and said, "I think he looks, if possible, more dreadful by daylight than by candlelight!"

Mr. John Mortiboy, utterly unconscious of the effect he was producing, unlatched the garden-gate, and then for the first time looking up, nodded shortly and familiarly at the sisters. "How do, young ladies?" he called from the garden. "Fine morning this; fresh and all that sort of thing! I feel better already. When a London man's a little overdone, nothing sets him up so soon, as a sniff of the briny."

And then he took a great gulp, as if to swallow as much fresh air as possible, and entered the house, followed by his dog.

"Did you hear him, Nelly?" asked Kate. "The wretch! I'm sure I won't be seen walking with him, in his nasty black clothes, like an undertaker!"

"He has a chimney-pot hat on, and has brought his umbrella! Fancy! At the sea!" said Ellen.

"Good morning, Mrs. Barford," said Mr. Mortiboy; "domestic arrangements, eh? I understand. If you've no objection, I'll do myself the pleasure of cutting my mutton with you to-day. And mutton it will be, I suppose! Can't get any beef here, I understand, except on Friday, which is killing-day for the barracks. Bad arrangement that; wants alteration."

"Hadn't you better alter it then, Mr. Mortiboy," said Kate; "superintending the butcher will be a pleasant way of spending your holiday."

"Joking, miss, eh? Well, I don't mind. But ain't you coming out, young ladies, for a mouthful of air. I suppose the old lady don't move so early."

"If you refer to mamma," said Ellen, frigidly, "she never goes out until just before dinner."

"Ah, I thought not. Old folks must wait until the air is what they call warmed by the sun. But that won't hinder our taking a turn, I suppose. Where's Whiskerandos?"

"If, as I presume, you mean Mr. Sandham, the gentleman who was here last night, I cannot inform you, Mr. Mortiboy," said Kate, with a very flushed face, and a slightly trembling voice; "but I would advise you not to let him hear you joking about him, as he is rather quick-tempered."

"Oh, indeed?" exclaimed Mr. Mortiboy, "a fire-eater is he? Well, there's no duelling now, you know. Any nonsense of that sort,—give a man in charge of a policeman, or summons him before a magistrate, and get him bound over."

Just at this moment Mrs. Barford came in and told the girls to get their hats on, and show Mr. Mortiboy the prettiest spots in the village, the Castle Hill, the ruined Abbey, and the Smuggler's Leap. To these places they went, Mr. Mortiboy discoursing the whole way of the badness of the roads, and of what improvements might be made if they had a properly constituted local board of health at Penethly; declaring that the cries of "Milford oysters," and "fresh haddick," were entirely unconstitutional and illegal, as no one had a right to shout in the public streets; that there ought to be proper stands provided for the car-drivers; and that a regular police supervision was urgently demanded. He did not think much of the Abbey ruins, and he laughed in scorn at the story of the Smuggler's Leap. As they were on their homeward way, coming round the Castle-hill, they met Mr. Sandham, very ruddy and fresh, and shiny, and with a couple of towels in his hand. He took off his wide-awake as he approached the ladies, and bowed slightly to Mr. Mortiboy.

"Ah, Mr. Sandham!" said Ellen, with an admonitory finger, "you have been bathing again by St. Catherine's Rock, after all the warning we gave you!"

"My dear Ellen," interposed Kate, with a petulant air, "how can you? If Mr. Sandham chooses to risk his life after what he has been told, it surely is nothing to us!"

"Now, Miss Kate, Miss Kate, that's not fair!" said Sandham; "you know," he added, dropping his voice, "that every word of yours would have weight with me, but the tide was slack this morning, and really there is no other place where a swimmer can really enjoy a bath. You are a swimmer, Mr. Mortiboy?"

"Yes, sir," replied that gentleman. "Yes, sir, I can manage it. I've had lessons at Peerless Pool and the Holborn Baths, and can keep up well enough. But I don't like it. I don't see much fun in what are absurdly called the 'manly exercises.' Twenty years ago, young men used to like driving coaches; now I can't conceive duller work than holding a bunch of thick leather reins in your hand, steering four tired horses, sitting on a hard seat, and listening to the conversation of an uneducated coachman. I never ride, because I hate bumping up and down on a hard saddle and rubbing the skin off my body; I never play cricket, because in the hot weather I like to keep quiet and cool, and not toil in the sun; and as to going out shooting and stumping over miles of stubble in September, lugging a big gun and tiring myself to death, I look upon that as the pursuit of a maniac! I am a practical man!"

"You are indeed!" said Kate, as she dropped gradually behind with Mr. Sandham, and left the practical man and her sister Ellen to lead the way to the house.

It is unnecessary to recount the sayings and doings of Mr. John Mortiboy during the next few days. It is enough that he spent the greater portion of them with the Barford family, and that he so elaborated his ideas of practicality, and so inveighed against everything that was not absolutely useful in a mercantile point of view—including, in a measure, art, poetry, music, and the domestic affections—that he incurred the unmitigated hatred of the young ladies, and even fell to zero in Mrs. Barford's estimation.

It was about the fifth morning after the intrusion of this utterly incongruous element into the society of Albion Villa, that Ellen and Kate strolled out immediately after breakfast with the view of escaping the expected visit of their persecutor, and made their way to the Castle Hill. The night had been tempestuous, and from their window they had noticed that a heavy sea was running: they consequently were not surprised to see a little group of people gathered on the heights looking towards St. Catherine's Rock: a huge mass of granite surmounted by an old ruin, round which, when it was insulated at high water, the tide always swept with a peculiar and dangerous swirl. But when they joined the group, among which were several of their friends, they found that the concourse were regarding, with interest mingled with fright, the movements of a swimmer who had rounded the extremity of Catherine's, and was seen making for the shore.

"He'll never do it," said Captain Calthorp, an old half-pay dragoon, who had been tempted by the cheapness of Penethly to pitch his tent there; "he'll never do it, by Jove! Yes! Well struggled, sir; he made a point there—hold on, now, and he's in."

"Who is it?" asked the coast-guard lieutenant, who was standing by. "Any one we know?"

"I can't tell at this distance!^ said Captain Calthorp, "though it looks like——stay! There's one of your look-out men on the height, with a glass; give him a hail!"

"Yoho! Morgan!" cried the lieutenant. "Ay, ay, sir!" was the man's ready response, though the glass was never moved. "Bring that glass down here!" "Ay, ay, sir;" and in two minutes the old coast-guard-man was by his officer's side. He saluted and handed the glass, but as he did so he said, in an under tone, "God help the gentleman, he's done! Ah, look you now, poor thing, nothing can save him."

"What!" cries the lieutenant, clapping the glass to his eye. "By Jove, you're right! he's in a bad way, and it——why it's the artist-chap, that friend of the Barfords'!"

"Who?" screamed Kate, rushing up at the moment. "Who did you say, Mr. Lawford? Oh, for God's sake, save him! Save him, Mr. Lawford! Save him, Captain Calthorp!"

"My dear young lady/' said the last-named gentleman, "I am sure Lawford didn't know you were here, or he wouldn't——"

"This is no time for ceremony, Captain Calthorp," said Ellen; "for Heaven's sake, let some effort be made to save my sister's——to save Mr. Sandham!"

"My dear Miss Barford," said Lawford, who had been whispering with Morgan, "I fear no mortal aid can avail the poor dear fellow now. Before we could descend the rock, and launch a boat, with the tide ebbing at the rate it now is——"

"Hur would have been swep' round Cath'rine's, and away out to sea!" said Morgan.

"Oh, help him!" screamed Kate. "Oh, how cruel! how cowardly! Oh, help him, Mr. Lawford!" She lifted up her hands piteously to the lieutenant. "Oh, Mr. Mortiboy," she exclaimed, as that gentleman came slowly sauntering up the hill with Beppo at his heels, "for God's sake, save Mr. Sandham!"

"Save—Mr. Sandham—my dear young lady; I don't exactly comprehend!" began Mr. Mortiboy, looking vaguely in the direction of her outstretched hand; then suddenly, "Good Lord! is that his head? There! Down there!"

"Yes!" whispered Ellen Barford; "yes! They say he will be whirled away before a boat could be launched —they say he is lost now!"

"Not at all! Not yet, at least!" replied Mortiboy, excited, but without much perceptible alteration of manner. "While there's life there's hope, you know, Miss B., and even yet we may—Here, Beppo! Hi, man! hi! Good boy!" The dog carne, leaping round his master. "Hi! ho! Not here! There! there! Look, boy!" catching him by the collar, and pointing down to where Sandham's head was a mere speck on the water. "Look, man! Look, old boy! He sees it, by Jove!" as the dog uttered a low growl, and became restive. "In, old man! In, fine fellow! In, Beppo! Look! Noble dog, in he goes!"

In he went, with one bound over the low stone wall, then quickly down the sloping slippery boulders, then with a plunge into the sea—lost sight of for a moment, rising to view again, paddling off straight for the drowning man. The swift current whirled him in eddies here and there, but still the brave dog persevered; the spectators held their breath, as they saw him bearing down upon the black speck, which was every second growing smaller and smaller, and receding further and further from the land. But the dog made grand progress, the strong sucking under-current helped him, and he arrived at Sandham's side just in time for the drowning man to fling his arm round the dog's neck, and to feel his shoulder seized by the dog's teeth. They saw this from the shore, and then Kate Barford fainted.

But the work was only half done: the dog turned round, and battled bravely for the shore, but he was encumbered by his burden, and now the current was against him. He strove and strove, but the way he made was small, and every foot was gained with intense struggling and exertion. "By Jove! He'll never do it," cried Lieutenant Lawford, with the glass at his eye; and, as he said the words, old Morgan, the preventive-man, added through his teeth, "Hur must be helped, at any cost," and sped away down the rock, shaping his course to where a small pleasure-boat lay high and dry on the sand. "I'm with you, governor," cried John Mortiboy; "I can't feather, but I pull a strongish oar;" and he followed the old man as best he could. The boat was reached, and pushed by main force to the water's edge, where Mortiboy entered it, and old Morgan ran in, waist-deep, to give it the starting shove, and then leaped in to join his comrade. On they pulled, Morgan with a measured steady stroke, Mortiboy with fevered strong jerks that sent the boat's head now to the right, now to the left: when old Morgan, suddenly looking over his shoulder, called out, "Hur's done! Hur's sinking now, both on 'em!" Mortiboy looked round too; they were still some ten boats' length from the objects of their pursuit, and both dog and man were vanishing. "Not yet!" cried he; and and in an instant he had torn off the black coat and the Wellington boots, and bad flung himself, as nobly as his own dog, into the sea.

A very few strokes brought him to Sandham; he seized him by the hair of his head, and battled bravely with the waves; the dog, recognising his master, seemed to take fresh courage, and the trio floated until old Morgan dragged them one by one into the boat. When they reached the shore, all Penethly was on the beach, cheering with all its might: they lifted out Mr. Sandham, insensible but likely to recover, and they administered a very stiff glass of grog to Mr. Mortiboy, who was shivering like an aspen-leaf, but who received even greater warmth from a warm pressure of Ellen Barford's hand, and a whispered "God bless you, Mr. Mortiboy!" than from the grog—though he took that, too, like a man whom it comforted. As for Beppo, I don't know what the fishing population would not have done for him, but that he positively refused to stir from Sandham's side. As they carried the artist up to his lodgings the dog buried his nose in the pendent hand, and did not leave until he had seen his charge safely placed in bed.

Mr. Sandham was, in his own words, "All right" next day, but Mr. Mortiboy, unaccustomed to exercise and damp, fell ill, and was confined to his bed for several weeks:—would have never left it, I think, but for the care and attention of his three nurses from Albion Villa. Of these, Ellen was the most constant and the most regular, and the patient always seemed better under her care.

"He is making progress, Kate," she said one night to her sister. "He is a good patient. You know, as he would say himself, he is so practical."

"God bless his practicality, Nell," said Kate, with tears in her eyes. "Think what it did for us!"

Three years have passed since then, Major, and a family group is going to be gathered in a large square room built as a kind of excrescence to a very pretty villa in Kensington. This is to be the studio of Mr. Sandham, A.R.A.. But as the mortar and plaster are extraordinarily slow in drying (when were they not, Major?), Mr. Sandham, A.R.A., come up from Wales with the family group, to take possession, has established the group at the excellent Lodgings of the excellent Mrs. Lirriper, and he, the owner of said studio, is smoking a pipe with a worthy Major, and smoothing with his slippered foot the rough curly back of his dog Beppo, who is stretched in front of the fire. Mrs. Sandham, formerly Kate Barford, is working at a baby's frock, and asking now and then the advice of her sister, who is frilling a little cap. (There they are, Major. Don't tell them that I said so.)

"How late John is to-night, Ellen," says old Mrs. Barford, from her place in the chimney-corner. (You hear her, Major?)

"Always at Christmas-time, dear mother," says Ellen. (There she is, Major.) "Since uncle Crump's death, you know, John's business is trebled, and it all hangs on him, dear old fellow!"

"He will be late for supper, Nelly," says Sandham. "(—Excuse me, Major.)"

"No he won't, Ned!" cries a cheery voice at the door as John Mortiboy appears; "no he won't. He's never late for anything good. Don't you know, he's a practical man?"

—Mr. Mortiboy, Major Jackman, Major, Mr. Mortiboy!

CHAPTER V

HOW THE THIRD FLOOR KNEW THE POTTERIES

Amelia Edwards

I am a plain man, Major, and you may not dislike to hear a plain statement of facts from me. Some of those facts lie beyond my understanding. I do not pretend to explain them. I only know that they happened as I relate them, and that I pledge myself for the truth of every word of them.

I began life roughly enough, down among the Potteries. I was an orphan; and my earliest recollections are of a great porcelain manufactory in the country of the Potteries, where I helped about the yard, picked up what halfpence fell in my way, and slept in a harness-loft over the stable. Those were hard times; but things bettered themselves as I grew older and stronger, especially after George Barnard had come to be foreman of the yard.

George Barnard was a Wesleyan—we were mostly dissenters in the Potteries—sober, clear-headed, somewhat sulky and silent, but a good fellow every inch of him, and my best friend at the time when I most needed a good friend. He took me out of the yard, and set me to the furnace-work. He entered me on the books at a fixed rate of wages. He helped me to pay for a little cheap schooling four nights a week; and he led me to go with him on Sundays to the chapel down by the river-side, where I first saw Leah Payne. She was his sweetheart, and so pretty that I used to forget the preacher and everybody else, when I looked at her. When she joined in the singing, I heard no voice but hers. If she asked me for the hymn-book, I used to blush and tremble. I believe I worshipped her, in my stupid ignorant way; and I think I worshipped Barnard almost as blindly, though after a different fashion. I felt I owed him everything. I knew that he had saved me, body and mind; and I looked up to him as a savage might look up to a missionary.

Leah was the daughter of a plumber, who lived close by the chapel. She was twenty, and George about seven or eight-and-thirty. Some captious folks said there was too much difference in their ages; but she was so serious-minded, and they loved each other so earnestly and quietly, that, if nothing had come between them during their courtship, I don't believe the question of disparity would ever have troubled the happiness of their married lives. Something did come, however; and that something was a Frenchman, called Louis Laroche. He was a painter on porcelain, from the famous works at Sèvres; and our master, it was said, had engaged him for three years certain, at such wages as none of our own people, however skilful, could hope to command. It was about the beginning or middle of September when he first came among us. He looked very young; was small, dark, and well made; had little white soft hands, and a silky moustache; and spoke English nearly as well as I do. None of us liked him; but that was only natural, seeing how he was put over the head of every Englishman in the place. Besides, though he was always smiling and civil, we couldn't help seeing that he thought himself ever so much better than the rest of us; and that was not pleasant. Neither was it pleasant to see him strolling about the town, dressed just like a gentleman, when working hours were over; smoking good cigars, when we were forced to be content with a pipe of common tobacco; hiring a horse on Sunday afternoons, when we were trudging a-foot; and taking his pleasure as if the world was made for him to enjoy, and us to work in.

"Ben, boy," said George, "there's something wrong about that Frenchman."

It was on a Saturday afternoon, and we were sitting on a pile of empty seggars against the door of my furnace-room, waiting till the men should all have cleared out of the yard. Seggars are deep earthen boxes in which the pottery is put, while being fired in the kiln.

I looked up, inquiringly.

"About the Count?" said I, for that was the nickname by which he went in the pottery.

George nodded, and paused for a moment with his chin resting on his palms.

"He has an evil eye," said he; "and a false smile. Something wrong about him."

I drew nearer, and listened to George as if he had been an oracle.

"Besides," added he, in his slow quiet way, with his eyes fixed straight before him as if he was thinking aloud, "there's a young look about him that isn't natural. Take him just at sight, and you'd think he was almost a boy; but look close at him—see the little line wrinkles under his eyes, and the hard lines about his mouth, and then tell me his age, if you can! Why, Ben boy, he's as old as I am, pretty near; ay, and as strong, too. You stare; but I tell you that, slight as he looks, he could fling you over his shoulder as if you were a feather. And as for his hands, little and white as they are, there are muscles of iron inside them, take my word for it."

"But, George, how can you know?"

"Because I have a warning against him," replied George, very gravely. "Because, whenever he is by, I feel as if my eyes saw clearer, and my ears heard keener, than at other times. Maybe it's presumption, but I sometimes feel as if I had a call to guard myself and others against him. Look at the children, Ben, how they shrink away from him; and see there, now! Ask Captain what he thinks of him! Ben, that dog likes him no better than I do."

I looked, and saw Captain crouching by his kennel with his ears laid back, growling audibly, as the Frenchman came slowly down the steps leading from his own workshop at the upper end of the yard. On the last step he paused; lighted a cigar; glanced round, as if to see whether any one was by; and then walked straight over to within a couple of yards of the kennel. Captain gave a short angry snarl, and laid his muzzle close down upon his paws, ready for a spring. The Frenchman folded his arms deliberately, fixed his eyes on the dog, and stood calmly smoking. He knew exactly how far he dared go, and kept just that one foot out of harm's way. All at once he stooped, puffed a mouthful of smoke in the dog's eyes, burst into a mocking laugh, turned lightly on his heel, and walked away; leaving Captain straining at his chain, and barking after him like a mad creature.

Days went by, and I, at work in my own department, saw no more of the Count. Sunday came—the third, I think, after I had talked with George in the yard. Going with George to chapel, as usual, in the morning, I noticed that there was something strange and anxious in his face, and that he scarcely opened his lips to me on the way. Still I said nothing. It was not my place to question him; and I remember thinking to myself that the cloud would all clear off as soon as he found himself by Leah's side, holding the same book, and joining in the same hymn. It did not, however, for no Leah was there, I looked every moment to the door, expecting to see her sweet face coming in; but George never lifted his eyes from his book, or seemed to notice that her place was empty. Thus the whole service went by, and my thoughts wandered continually from the words of the preacher. As soon as the last blessing was spoken, and we were fairly across the threshold, I turned to George, and asked if Leah was ill?

"No," said he, gloomily. "She's not ill."

" Then why wasn't she——?"

"I'll tell you why," he interrupted, impatiently. "Because you've seen her here for the last time. She's never coming to chapel again."

"Never coming to the chapel again?" I faltered, laying my hand on his sleeve in the earnestness of my surprise. "Why, George, what is the matter?"

But he shook my hand off, and stamped with his iron heel till the pavement rang again.

"Don't ask me," said he, roughly. "Let me alone. You'll know soon enough."

And with this he turned off down a by-lane leading towards the hills, and left me without another word.

I had had plenty of hard treatment in my time; but never, until that moment, an angry look or syllable from George. I did not know how to bear it. That day my dinner seemed as if it would choke me; and in the afternoon I went out and wandered restlessly about the fields till the hour for evening prayers came round. I then returned to the chapel, and sat down on a tomb outside, waiting for George. I saw the congregation go in by twos and threes; I heard the first psalm-tune echo solemnly through the evening stillness; but no George came. Then the service began, and I knew that, punctual as his habits were, it was of no use to expect him any longer. Where could he be? What could have happened? Why should Leah Payne never come to chapel again? Had she gone over to some other sect, and was that why George seemed so unhappy?

Sitting there in the little dreary churchyard with the darkness fast gathering around me, I asked myself these questions over and over again, till my brain ached; for I was not much used to thinking about anything in those times. At last, I could bear to sit quiet no longer. The sudden thought struck me that I would go to Leah, and learn what the matter was, from her own lips. I sprang to my feet, and set off at once towards her home.

It was quite dark, and a light rain was beginning to fall. I found the garden-gate open, and a quick hope flashed across me that George might be there. I drew back for a moment, hesitating whether to knock or ring, when a sound of voices in the passage, and the sudden gleaming of a bright line of light under the door, warned me that some one was coming out. Taken by surprise, and quite unprepared for the moment with anything to say, I shrank back behind the porch, and waited until those within should have passed out. The door opened, and the light streamed suddenly upon the roses and the wet gravel.

"It rains," said Leah, bending forward and shading the candle with her hand.

"And is as cold as Siberia," added another voice, which was not George's, and yet sounded strangely familiar. "Ugh! what a climate for such a flower as my darling to bloom in!"

"Is it so much finer in France?" asked Leah, softly.

"As much finer as blue skies and sunshine can make it. Why, my angel, even your bright eyes will be ten times brighter, and your rosy cheeks ten times rosier, when they are transplanted to Paris. Ah! I can give you no idea of the wonders of Paris—the broad streets planted with trees, the palaces, the shops, the gardens!—it is a city of enchantment."

"It must be, indeed!" said Leah. "And you will really take me to see all those beautiful shops?"

"Every Sunday, my darling—Bah! don't look so shocked. The shops in Paris are always open on Sunday, and everybody makes holiday. You will soon get over these prejudices."

"I fear it is very wrong to take so much pleasure in the things of this world," sighed Leah.

The Frenchman laughed, and answered her with a kiss.

"Good night, my sweet little saint!" and he ran lightly down the path, and disappeared in the darkness. Leah sighed again, lingered a moment, and then closed the door.

Stupified and bewildered, I stood for some seconds like a stone statue, unable to move; scarcely able to think. At length, I roused myself, as it were mechanically, and went towards the gate. At that instant, a heavy hand was laid upon my shoulder, and a hoarse voice close beside my ear, said:

"Who are you? What are you doing here?"

It was George. I knew him at once, in spite of the darkness, and stammered his name. He took his hand quickly from my shoulder.

"How long have you been here?" said he, fiercely. "What right have you to lurk about, like a spy in the dark? God help me, Ben— I'm half mad. I don't mean to be harsh to you."

"I'm sure you don't," I cried, earnestly.

"It's that cursed Frenchman," he went on, in a voice that sounded like the groan of one in pain. "He's a villain. I know he's a villain; and I've had a warning against him ever since the first moment he came among us. He'll make her miserable, and break her heart some day—my pretty Leah—and I loved her so! But I'll be revenged—as sure as there's a sun in heaven, I'll be revenged!"

His vehemence terrified me. I tried to persuade him to go home; but lie would not listen to me.

"No, no," he said. "Go home yourself, boy, and let me be. My blood is on fire: this rain is good for me, and I am better alone."

"If I could only do something to help you——"

"You can't," interrupted he. "Nobody can help me. I'm a ruined man, and I don't care what becomes of me. The Lord forgive me! my heart is full of wickedness, and my thoughts are the promptings of Satan. There go—for Heaven's sake, go. I don't know what I say, or what I do!"

I went, for I did not dare refuse any longer; but I lingered awhile at the corner of the street, and watched him pacing to and fro, to and fro in the driving rain. At length I turned reluctantly away, and went home.

I lay awake that night for hours, thinking over the events of the day, and hating the Frenchman from my very soul. I could not hate Leah. I had worshipped her too long and too faithfully for that; but I looked upon her as a creature given over to destruction. I fell asleep towards morning, and woke again shortly after daybreak. When I reached the pottery, I found George there before me, looking very pale, but quite himself, and setting the men to their work the same as usual. I said nothing about what had happened the day before. Something in his face silenced me; but seeing him so steady and composed, I took heart, and began to hope he had fought through the worst of his trouble. By-and-by the Frenchman came through the yard, gay and off-hand, with his cigar in his mouth, and his hands in his pockets. George turned sharply away into one of the workshops, and shut the door. I drew a deep breath of relief. My dread was to see them come to an open quarrel; and I felt that as long as they kept clear of that, all would be well.

Thus the Monday went by, and the Tuesday; and still George kept aloof from me. I had sense enough not to be hurt by this. I felt he had a good right to be silent, if silence helped him to bear his trial better; and I made up my mind never to breathe another syllable on the subject, unless he began.

Wednesday came. I had overslept myself that morning, and came to work a quarter after the hour, expecting to be fined; for George was very strict as foreman of the yard, and treated friends and enemies just the same. Instead of blaming me, however, he called me up, and said:

"Ben, whose turn is it this week to sit up?"

"Mine, sir," I replied. (I always called him " Sir" in working hours.)

"Well, then, you may go home to-day, and the same on Thursday and Friday; for there's a large batch of work for the ovens to-night, and there'll be the same to-morrow night and the night after."

"All right, sir," said I. "Then I'll be here by seven this evening."

"No, half-past nine will be soon enough. I've some accounts to make up, and I shall be here myself till then. Mind you are true to time, though."

"I'll be as true as the clock, sir," I replied, and was turning away when he called me back again.

"You're a good lad, Ben," said he. "Shake hands."

I seized his hand, and pressed it warmly.

"If I'm good for anything, George," I answered with all my heart, "it's you who have made me so. God bless you for it!"

"Amen!" said he, in a troubled voice, putting his hand to his hat.

And so we parted.

In general, I went to bed by day when I was attending to the firing by night; but this morning I had already slept longer than usual, and wanted exercise more than rest. So I ran home; put a bit of bread and meat in my pocket; snatched up my big thorn stick; and started off for a long day in the country. When I came home, it was quite dark and beginning to rain, just as it had begun to rain at about the same time that wretched Sunday evening: so I changed my wet boots, had an early supper and a nap in the chimney-corner, and went down to the works at a few minutes before half-past nine. Arriving at the factory gate, I found it ajar, and so walked in and closed it after me. I remember thinking at the time that it was unlike George's usual caution to leave it so; but it passed from my mind next moment. Having slipped in the bolt, I then went straight over to George's little counting-house, where the gas was shining cheerfully in the window. Here also, somewhat to my surprise, I found the door open, and the room empty. I went in. The threshold and part of the floor was wetted by the driving rain. The wages-book was open on the desk, George's pen stood in the ink, and his hat hung on its usual peg in the corner. I concluded, of course, that he had gone round to the ovens; so, following him, I took down his hat and carried it with me, for it was now raining fast.

The baking-houses lay just opposite, on the other side of the yard. There were three of them, opening one out of the other; and in each, the great furnace filled all the middle of the room. These furnaces are, in fact, large kilns built of brick, with an oven closed in by an iron door in the centre of each, and a chimney going up through the roof. The pottery, enclosed in seggars, stands round inside on shelves, and has to be turned from time to time while the firing is going on. To turn these seggars, test the heat, and keep the fires up, was my work at the period of which I am now telling you, Major.

Well! I went through the baking-houses one after the other, and found all empty alike. Then a strange vague uneasy feeling came over me, and I began to wonder what could have become of George. It was possible that he might be in one of the workshops; so I ran over to the counting-house, lighted a lantern, and made a thorough survey of the yards. I tried the doors; they were all locked as usual. I peeped into the open sheds; they were all vacant. I called "George! George!" in every part of the outer premises; but the wind and rain drove back my voice, and no other voice replied to it. Forced at last to believe that he was really gone, I took his hat back to the counting-house, put away the wages-book, extinguished the gas, and prepared for my solitary watch.

The night was mild, and the heat in the baking-rooms intense. I knew, by experience, that the ovens had been overheated, and that none of the porcelain must go in at least for the next two hours; so I carried my stool to the door, settled myself in a sheltered corner where the air could reach me, but not the rain, and fell to wondering where George could have gone, and why he should not have waited till the time appointed. That he had left in haste was clear—not because his hat remained behind, for he might have had a cap with him—but because he had left the book open, and the gas lighted. Perhaps one of the workmen had met with some accident, and he had been summoned away so urgently that he had no time to think of anything; perhaps he would even now come back presently to see that all was right before he went home to his lodgings. Turning these things over in my mind, I grew drowsy, my thoughts wandered, and I fell asleep.

I cannot tell how long my nap lasted. I had walked a great distance that day, and I slept heavily; but I awoke all in a moment, with a sort of terror upon me, and, looking up, saw George Barnard sitting on a stool before the oven door, with the firelight full upon his face.

Ashamed to be found sleeping, I started to my feet. At the same instant, he rose, turned away without even looking towards me, and went out into the next room.

"Don't be angry, George!" I cried, following him. "None of the seggars are in. I knew the fires were too strong, and——"

The words died on my lips. I had followed him from the first room to the second, from the second to the third, and in the third—I lost him!

I could not believe my eyes. I opened the end door leading into the yard, and looked out; but he was nowhere in sight. I went round to the back of the baking-houses, looked behind the furnaces, ran over to the counting-house, called him by his name over and over again; but all was dark, silent, lonely, as ever.

Then I remembered how I had bolted the outer gate, and how impossible it was that he should have come in without ringing. Then, too, I began again to doubt the evidence of my own senses, and to think I must have been dreaming.

I went back to my old post by the door of the first baking-house, and sat down for a moment to collect my thoughts.

"In the first place," said I to myself, "there is but one outer gate. That outer gate I bolted on the inside, and it is bolted still. In the next place, I searched the premises, and found all the sheds empty, and the workshop-doors padlocked as usual on the outside. I proved that George was nowhere about, when I came, and I know he could not have come in since, without my knowledge. Therefore it is a dream. It is certainly a dream, and there's an end of it."

And with this I trimmed my lantern and proceeded to test the temperature of the furnaces. We used to do this, I should tell you, by the introduction of little roughly-moulded lumps of common fire-clay. If the heat is too great, they crack; if too little, they remain damp and moist; if just right, they become firm and smooth all over, and pass into the biscuit stage. Well! I took my three little lumps of clay, put one in each oven, waited while I counted five hundred, and then went round again to see the results. The two first were in capital condition, the third had flown into a dozen pieces. This proved that the seggars might at once go into ovens One and Two, but that number Three had been overheated, and must be allowed to go on cooling for an hour or two longer.

I therefore stocked One and Two with nine rows of seggars, three deep on each shelf; left the rest waiting till number Three was in a condition to be trusted; and, fearful of falling asleep again, now that the firing was in progress, walked up and down the rooms to keep myself awake. This was hot work, however, and I could not stand it very long; so I went back presently to my stool by the door, and fell to thinking about my dream. The more I thought of it, the more strangely real it seemed, and the more I felt convinced that I was actually on my feet, when I saw George get up and walk into the adjoining room. I was also certain that I had still continued to see him as he passed out of the second room into the third, and that at that time I was even following his very footsteps. Was it possible, I asked myself, that I could have been up and moving, and yet not quite awake? I had heard of people walking in their sleep. Could it be that I was walking in mine, and never waked till I reached the cool air of the yard? All this seemed likely enough, so I dismissed the matter from my mind, and passed the rest of the night in attending to the seggars, adding fresh fuel from time to time to the furnaces of the first and second ovens, and now and then taking a turn through the yards. As for Number Three, it kept up its heat to such a degree that it was almost day before I dared trust the seggars to go in it.

Thus the hours went by; and at half-past seven on Thursday morning, the men came to their work. It was now my turn to go off duty, but I wanted to see George before I left, and so waited for him in the counting-house, while a lad named Steve Storr took my place at the ovens. But the clock went on from half-past seven to a quarter to eight; then to eight o'clock; then to a quarter-past eight—and still George never made his appearance. At length, when the hand got round to half-past eight, I grew weary of waiting, took up my hat, ran home, went to bed, and slept profoundly until past four in the afternoon.

That evening I went down to the factory quite early; for I had a restlessness upon me, and I wanted to see George before he left for the night. This time, I found the gate bolted, and I rang for admittance.

"How early you are, Ben!" said Steve Storr, as he let me in.

"Mr. Barnard's not gone?" I asked, quickly; for I saw at the first glance that the gas was out in the counting-house.

"He's not gone," said Steve, " because he's never been."

"Never been?"

"No: and what's stranger still, he's not been home either, since dinner yesterday."

"But he was here last night."

"Oh yes, he was here last night, making up the books. John Parker was with him till past six; and you found him here, didn't you, at half-past nine?"

I shook my head.

"Well, he's gone, anyhow. Good night!"

"Good night!"

I took the lantern from his hand, bolted him out mechanically, and made my way to the baking-houses like one in a stupor. George gone? Gone without a word of warning to his employer, or of farewell to his fellow-workmen? I could not understand it. I could not believe it. I sat down bewildered, incredulous, stunned. Then came hot tears, doubts, terrifying suspicions. I remembered the wild words he had spoken a few nights back; the strange calm by which they were followed; my dream of the evening before. I had heard of men who drowned themselves for love; and the turbid Severn ran close by—so close, that one might pitch a stone into it from some of the workshop windows.

These thoughts were too horrible. I dared not dwell upon them. I turned to work, to ree myself from them, if I could; and began by—examining the ovens. The temperature of all was much higher than on the previous night, the heat having been gradually increased during the ast twelve hours. It was now my business to keep the heat on the increase for twelve more; after which it would be allowed, as gradually, to subside, until the pottery was cool enough for removal. To turn the seggars, and add fuel to the two first furnaces, was my first work. As before, I found number three in advance of the others, and so left it for half an hour, or an hour. I then went round the yard; tried the doors; let the dog loose; and brought him back with me to the baking-houses, for company. After that, I set my lantern on a shelf beside the door, took a book from my pocket, and began to read.

I remember the title of the book as well as possible. It was called Bowlker's Art of Angling, and contained little rude cuts of all kinds of artificial flies, hooks, and other tackle. But. I could not keep my mind to it for two minutes together; and at last I gave it up in despair, covered my face with my hands, and fell into a long absorbing painful train of thought. A considerable time had gone by thus—maybe an hour—when I was roused by a low whimpering howl from Captain, who was lying at my feet. I looked up with a start, just as I had started from sleep the night before, and with the same vague terror; and saw, exactly in the same place and in the same attitude, with the firelight full upon him—George Barnard!

At this sight, a fear heavier than the fear of death fell upon me, and my tongue seemed paralysed in my mouth, Then, just as last night, he rose, or seemed to rise, and went slowly out into the next room. A power stronger than myself appeared to compel me, reluctantly, to follow him. I saw him pass through the second room—cross the threshold of the third room—walk straight up to the oven—and there pause. He then turned, for the first time, with the glare of the red firelight pouring out upon him from the open door of the furnace, and looked at me, face to face. In the same instant, his whole frame and countenance seemed to glow and become transparent, as if the fire were all within him and around him—and in that glow he became, as it were, absorbed into the furnace, and disappeared!

I uttered a wild cry, tried to stagger from the room, and fell insensible before I reached the door.

When I next opened my eyes, the grey dawn was in the sky; the furnace doors were all closed as I had left them when I last went round; the dog was quietly sleeping not far from my side; and the men were ringing at the gate, to be let in.

I told my tale from beginning to end, and was laughed at, as a matter of course, by all who heard it. When it was found, however, that my statements never varied, and, above all, that George Barnard continued absent, some few began to talk it over seriously, and among those few, the master of the works. He forbade the furnace to be cleared out, called in the aid of a celebrated naturalist, and had the ashes submitted to a scientific examination. The result was as follows:

The ashes were found to have been largely saturated with some kind of fatty animal matter. A considerable portion of those ashes consisted of charred bone. A semi-circular piece of iron, which evidently had once been the heel of a workman's heavy boot, was found, half fused, at one corner of the furnace. Near it, a tibia bone, which still retained sufficient of its original form and texture to render identification, possible. This bone, however, was so much charred, that it fell into powder on being handled.

After this, not many doubted that George Barnard had been foully murdered, and that his body had been thrust into the furnace. Suspicion fell upon Louis Laroche. He was arrested, a coroner's inquest was held, and every circumstance connected with the night of the murder was as thoroughly sifted and investigated as possible. All the sifting in the world, however, failed either to clear or to condemn Louis Laroche. On the very night of his release, he left the place by the mail train, and was never seen or heard of there, again. As for Leah, I know not what became of her. I went away myself before many weeks were over, and never have set foot among the Potteries from that hour to this.

CHAPTER VI

HOW THE BEST ATTIC WAS UNDER A CLOUD

Charles Allston Collins

Major, you have assured me of your sympathy; you shall receive my confidence. I not only seem—as you have searchingly observed—" under a cloud," but I am. I entered (shall I say like a balloon?) into a dense stratum of cloud, obscuring the wretched earth from view, in the year eighteen hundred and dash, in the sweet summer season, when nature, as has been remarked by some distinguised poet, puts on her gayest garb, and when her countenance is adorned with the sunniest and loveliest of smiles. Ah! what are now those smiles to me? What care I for sunshine or for verdure? For me, summer is no more. For, I must ever remember that it was in the summer that the canker ate its way into my heart's core—that it was in the summer that I parted with my belief in mankind—that it was in summer that I knew for the first time that WOMAN—but this is premature. Pray be seated.

I have no doubt that my appearance and words convey to you, Major, and to all observant persons, that I have an elevated soul. In fact, were it otherwise, how could I be under a cloud? The sordid soul won't blight. To one possessing an elevated soul like myself, the task of keeping accounts at a furrier's (in a large way) could not be otherwise than repugnant. It was repugnant, and the rapture of getting a holiday, which was annually accorded me in June—not a busy month in the fur-trade—was something perfectly indescribable. Of course, whenever my vacation time came round, I invariably rushed off to the country; there to indulge my natural tastes and commune with our mother, Nature.

On the particular occasion of which I have now to speak, I had, however, other communings to look forward to, besides those in which nature takes her silent yet eloquent part. I loved—Aha!—Love—Woman—Vertigo—Despair—I beg your pardon—I will be calm. I loved Miss Nuttlebury. Miss Nuttlebury lived in the neighbourhood of Dartford (at a convenient distance from the Powder-Mills), so in the neighbourhood of Dartford (rather further from the Powder-Mills) I determined to spend my vacation. I made arrangements at a certain small roadside inn for my board and lodging.

I was acquainted—nay, I was on friendly terms—with the Nuttleburys. Mr. Nuttlebury, a land surveyor in a rather small way, was an old friend of my father's; so I had access to the house. I had access also, as I thought, to the heart of Mary, which was Miss Nuttlebury's name. If I was mistaken—Aha!—but I am again premature. You are aware, or perhaps you are not aware, that my name is Oliver Cromwell Shrubsole—so called after the great Protector of British rights; the man who, or rather but for whom—but I am again premature, or rather, I should say, on the whole the reverse.

The first days of my residence near Fordleigh, the name of the village where the Nuttleburys dwelt, were happy in the extreme. I saw much of Mary. I walked with Mary, made hay with Mary, observed the moon in Mary's society, and in vain sought to interest Mary in those mysterious shadows which diversify the surface of that luminary. I subsequently endeavoured to interest the fair girl in other matters nearer home—in short, in myself; and I fondly imagined that I succeeded in doing so.

One day, when I had dropped in at the family dinner-hour—not from base motives, for I was boarded at my inn by contract—I found the family conversing on a subject which caused me considerable uneasiness. At the moment of my arrival, Mr. Nuttlebury was uttering these words:

"At what time will he be here, then?" (He?)

I listened breathless, after the first salutation had passed, for more; I was not long in ascertaining that "he" was a cousin of Mary's, who was coming down to spend some days at Fordleigh, and whose arrival was anticipated by the whole family with expressions of delight. The younger boy and girl Nuttleburys seemed to be especially rapturous at the prospect of the Beast's arrival, and from this I augured ill. Altogether, I felt that there was a trying scene coming; that my opportunities of converse with my soul's idol would be fewer than they had been, and that general discomfort and misery were about to ensue. I was right.

Oho!—I beg your pardon—I will be calm.

The Beast, "He," arrived in the course of that very afternoon, and I believe I am not speaking too strongly in affirming that we—"he" and I—hated each other cordially from the first moment of our exchanging glances. He was an under-hand looking beast, short of stature; such a creature as any high-souled woman should have abhorred the sight of; but his prospects were good, he having some small situation in the Custom-house, on the strength of which, he gave himself airs, as if he was a member of the government; and when he talked of the country, he spoke of it as "we." Alas! how could I compete with him? What could I talk about, except the fur-trade, and the best method of keeping the moths under? So, having nothing to talk about, I remained sulky and glum and silent: a condition in which a man does not usually tell to advantage in society. I felt that I was not telling to advantage, and this made me hate the beast—whose disgusting name was Huffell—more cordially than before. It affords me a gloomy pleasure to think that I never once lost an opportunity of contradicting him—flat—in the course of that first evening. But, somehow or other, he generally got the best of it: possibly because I had contradicted him for the sake of doing so, and without bestowing a thought upon the rights or wrongs of the matter under discussion. But the worst of it was, that it did appear to me, that Mary—my Mary—seemed to be on the side of Huffell. Her eyes would brighten—or I thought so—when he triumphed. And what right had she to go and fig herself out like that, in all her finery for Huffell? She never did so for me.

"This must be put a stop to, and promptly," I muttered to myself, as I walked back to my inn in a state of the most intense fury. And to leave him there with the field all to himself! What might he not be saying of me at that moment? Turning me into ridicule, perhaps? I resolved to crush him next day, or perish in the attempt.

Next day I lay in wait for him, and presently I thought my opportunity had come:

"WE shall have to make some change about that appointment of Sir Cornelius," said Huffell, "or he'll have all his family in the office in a week."

" What do you mean by 'we?' " I asked, with ferocious emphasis.

"I mean government," he answered, coolly.

"Well but you're not government," was my dignified reply. "The Custom-house, even as represented by those who hold high positions in it, has as little to do with governing the country as can well be imagined. The higher officials in the Custom-house, are at best rather government servants than government advisers, while the lower——"

"Well, sir, 'the lower?'"

"The less they try to connect themselves with their betters by talking about 'we,' the better for all parties.'" I said this in a scathing manner, and feeling painfully warm in the forehead.

"You're talking about what you don't understand, sir," said the exciseman, or the tide-waiter, or whatever he was. "We're all in the same boat. Pray do you never say 'we' when talking of your master's shop?"

"Master's shop, sir?"

"Oh, I beg your pardon," said he mockingly, "aren't you a cashier in a fur-shop?"

Shop! Fur-shop! I could have seen him—seen him—moth eaten.

"I'll tell you what I'm not, sir," I burst out, losing self-control, "I am not the man to put up with the con—foun—ded impudence of an obscure tide-waiter."

"Tide-waiter!" repeated the beast, starting to his feet.

"Tide-waiter," I calmly reiterated.

At this, the whole family of the Nuttleburys, who had hitherto appeared to be paralysed, interposed, one screeching out one thing, another yelling another. But they were all—Mary and all—against me, and affirmed that I had purposely picked a quarrel with their relation—which, by-the-by, I rather think I had. The unpleasantness ended in Mr. Nuttlebury's requesting me, in so many words, to withdraw.

"After what has occurred there is nothing left for me, but to do so," I remarked, making towards the door with much majesty; "but if Mr. Huffell thinks he has heard the fast of this, he is a good deal mistaken. As for you, Mary," I continued;—but before I could complete my sentence I experienced a sensation of an elderly hand in my coat-collar, and found myself in the passage, with the room door closed against me. I lost no time in vacating this ignominious position, and seeking the open air. Presently I found myself at my desk writing to Dewsnap.

Dewsnap was then my greatest friend. He was, like me, in the fur business, and was a fine honourable upright noble fellow, as bold as brass, and always especially sensitive about the point of honour. To this friend I wrote a long account of all that had happened; asking his advice. I mentioned at the end of my letter that I was only restrained by the want of a pair of pistols, from inviting this wretched being to a hostile meeting.

The next day I passed in retirement, speculating much on what Dewsnap's answer would be. It was a day of heavy rain, and I had plenty of time to mourn over my exclusion from the cheerful abode of the Nuttleburys, and to reflect how much better off my rival was (sunning himself in my adored one's smiles) than I, a lonely exile, flattening my nose against the window of a country inn, and watching the drippings of the roof-drain as they splashed into the fast-filling water-butt. It is needless to say that I retired to rest early, and that I was unable to sleep.

I could sleep next morning, however, and did so till a late hour. I was aroused from a heavy slumber, by a loud knocking at my door, and the sound of a voice which I seemed to recognise.

"Here, Shrubsole! Hi, Oliver! Let me in. Shrubsole, what a lazy fellow you are!"

Gracious Heaven, was it possible? Was it the voice of Dewsnap? I rose, unlocked the door, and jumped into bed again.

Yes, it was my friend. He entered erect, vigorous, energetic as usual, deposited a small carpet-bag near the door, and, retaining a curious-looking oblong mahogany box under his arm, advanced to greet me.

"What on earth do you do lying in bed at this time of the day?" said Dewsnap, grasping my hand.

"I couldn't sleep till morning came," I answered, passing my hand athwart my brow. "But how did you get away?"

"Oh, I've got a few days' holiday, and am come down to answer your letter in person. Well? How's this affair going on?"

"Do not ask me," I groaned. " It has made me wretched. I know no more. You don't know how fond I was of that girl."

"Well, and you shall have her yet. I'm going to settle it all for you," said Dewsnap, confidently.

"What do you mean to do?" I asked, with some hesitation.

"Do? Why, there's only one thing to do!" He rattled the queer-looking mahogany box as though it contained metallic pills.

"What have you got m that box?" I asked.

"There's a pair of pistols in this box," said Dewsnap, proudly, "with either one of which it would almost be a pleasure to find yourself winged."

"Sir?" I observed, sitting up in bed with marked displeasure.

"You mentioned your difficulty about weapons, so I borrowed them of a friend of mine—a gunmaker—and brought them down with me.

"Hang him!" I thought, "how very prompt he has been about it. Amazingly prompt, to be sure.—You think, then," I added, aloud, "that there's no—no other way out of the difficulty?"

"Apology," said Dewsnap, who had now opened the box, and was clicking away with the lock of one of the weapons, with the muzzle directed towards my head—"ample apology on the part of the other side—is the only alternative. Written apology, in fact."

"Ah," I replied, "I don't think the other side will agree to that."

"Then," said my friend, extending his pistol, and aiming at a portrait of the Marquis of Granby hanging over the fireplace: "then we must put a bullet into the exciseman."

(And suppose the exciseman puts a bullet into me, I thought to myself. So erratic is thought!)

"Where does the exciseman live?" inquired my friend, putting on his hat. "There is not a moment to be lost in these cases."

"Wait till I'm dressed," I remonstrated, "and I'll show you. Or you can go after breakfast."

"Not a bit of it. The people down stairs will tell me where to find him. Nuttlebury's, I think you said? I'll be there and back, by the time you're ready for breakfast."

He was out of the room almost before he had done speaking, and I was left to make my toilet and improve my appetite for breakfast with the reflection that the number of such meals in store for me was, perhaps, more limited than I could have wished. Perhaps I a little regretted having put the affair into the hands of my energetic friend. So erratic (I may again remark) is human thought!

I waited some time for my friend, but was obliged at last to begin breakfast without him. As the meal was approaching its termination, I saw him pass the window of the little parlour in which I took my meals, and immediately afterwards he entered the room.

"Well," he said, sitting down at the table and commencing a vigorous attack on the eatables, "it is as I expected. We are driven to extremities."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I mean," remarked Dewsnap, chipping away at his egg, "that the other side declines to apologise, and that consequently the other side must be bowled down;—shot." '

"Oh dear me," I said—relenting, Major, relenting—"I shouldn't like to do that."

"You wouldn't like to do that? May I ask, Mr. Shrubsole, what you mean by that remark?"

"I mean that, that—is there no other way out of it?"

"Now look here, Shrubsole," said my companion, with a severe air, and suspending for a moment his attack on the breakfast; "you have put this affair in my hands, and you must allow me to carry it through, according to the laws of honour. It is extremely painful to me to be engaged in such an affair" (I couldn't help thinking that he seemed rather to enjoy it), "but, being engaged in it, I shall go through with it to the end. Come! We'll get these things cleared away, and then you shall sit down and write a formal challenge, which I will undertake to deliver in the proper quarter."

Dewsnap was too much for me. He seemed to have all the right phrases at his tongue's end; he was so tremendously well-informed as to what was the right thing to do, and the right thing to say when conducting an affair of this kind, that I could not help asking him whether he had ever been engaged in one before?

"No," he said, "no; but I believe I have a sort of aptitude for the kind of thing. Indeed, I have always felt that I should be in my element in arranging the details of an affair of honour."

"How you would enjoy being a principal, instead of a second!" I said—rather maliciously; for Dewsnap's alacrity aggravated me.

"No, not a bit, my dear fellow. I take such an interest in this affair that I identify myself with you entirely, and quite feel as if I was a principal."

(Then you feel a very curious sensation about the pit of the stomach, my boy, I thought to myself. I did not however give the thought expression. I merely mention it as an instance of the erratic nature of thought.)

"By-the-by," remarked Dewsnap, as he pocketed my challenge and prepared to depart, "I forgot to mention that one or two fellows of our acquaintance are coming down."

" One or two fellows?" I repeated, in a highly displeased, nay, crushing tone.

"Yes, Cripps is coming, and Fowler, and perhaps Kershaw, if he can get away. We were talking your affair over, the evening before I left, and they were all so much interested in it—for I predicted from the first, that there must be a meeting—that they're all coming down to see you through it."

How I cursed my own folly in having entrusted the keeping of my honour to this dreadfully zealous friend of mine! I thought, as he marched off erect and fussy with that wretched challenge in his pocket, that there was something positively bloodthirsty about the man. And then those other fellows coming down for the express purpose of seeing somebody shot! For that was their purpose, I felt. I fully believed that, if by any fortunate chance there should be no blood shed, those so-called friends of mine would go away disgusted.

The train of reflection into which I had fallen was interrupted at this juncture, by the appearance outside the window, of three human figures. These turned out, on inspection, to be no other than the individuals whose taste for excitement I had been condemning so strongly in my own mind. There they were, Messrs. Cripps, Fowler, and Kershaw, grinning and gesticulating at me through the window, like vulgar unfeeling idiots as they were. And one of them (I think it was Cripps) had the brutality to put himself into the attitude supposed to be the correct one for a duellist, with his left hand behind his back, and his right raised as if to discharge an imaginary pistol.

They were in the room with me directly, large, noisy, and vulgar, laughing and guffawing—making comments on my appearance, asking me if I had made my will, what I had left to each of them, and otherwise conducting themselves in a manner calculated to turn one's milk of human kindness to bitterest gall. How they enjoyed it! When they learned that Dewsnap was actually at that time away on a war mission, and that he might return at any moment with the fatal answer—I say when they heard that, they positively gloated over me. They sat down and stared at me, and every now and then one of them would say, with a low, chuckling giggle, "I say, old fellow! How do you feel about it now?" It was a hideous relief to me when Dewsnap returned with the baleful news that the challenge was accepted, and that the meeting was appointed for the next morning at eight o'clock.

Those ruffians enjoyed themselves that afternoon to the utmost. They had such a pleasure in store for next day, that it gave an added zest to everything they did. It sharpened their appetites, it stimulated their thirst, it imparted to the skittles with which they amused themselves during the afternoon, an additional charm. The evening was devoted to conviviality. Dewsnap, after spending some time in oiling the triggers of the pistols, remarked that now they were in such prime condition, that they would "snap a fellow's head off, almost without his knowing it." This inhuman remark was made at the moment when we were separating for the night.

I passed the greater part of the dark hours, in writing letters of farewell to my relations, and in composing a stinger for Miss Mary Nuttlebury, which I trusted would embitter the whole of her future life. Then I threw myself on my bed—which was not wholly devoid of knobs— and found for a few hours the oblivion I desired.

We were first on the ground. Indeed, it was necessary that we should be, as those three ferocious Anabaptists, Cripps, Fowler, and Kershaw, had to be stowed away in places of concealment whence they could see without being seen; but even when this stowage had been accomplished and the fatal hour had arrived, we were still kept waiting so long that a faint hope—misgiving, I meant to say—began to dawn in my heart that my adversary had been seized with a sudden panic, and had fled at the last moment, leaving me master of the situation, with a bloodless victory.

The sound of voices, and of laughter—laughter!—reached me while I was musing on the prospect, of an honourable escape from my perilous position. In another moment my antagonist, still talking and laughing with some one who closely followed him, jumped over a stile at the side of the field in which we awaited him. Grinning in the most impudent manner, my antagonist inquired of his second, who was the village apothecary's assistant, whether he was a good hand at patching up bullet wounds?

It was at this moment that an incident occurred which caused a small delay in our proceedings. One of the Anabaptists—Cripps— had, with a view to concealment, and also perhaps with a view to keeping out of harm's way, perched himself in a tree which commanded a good view of the field of action; but not having used sufficient caution in the choice of his position, he had trusted his weight to a bough which proved unequal to the task of sustaining it. Consequently it happened that just as the seconds were beginning their preliminary arrangements, and during an awful pause, the unlucky Cripps came plunging and crashing to the ground, where he remained seated at the foot of the tree in a state of undignified ruin and prostration.

After this there was a prodigious row and confusion. My opponent having thus discovered that there was one person observing our proceedings from a place of concealment, concluded naturally enough that there might be others. Accordingly a search was promptly instituted, which ended in the unearthing of my two other friends, who were obliged to emerge from their hiding-places in a very humiliated and crestfallen condition. My adversary would not hear of fighting a duel in the presence of so large an audience, and so it ended in the three brutal Anabaptists being—very much to my satisfaction—expelled from the field. The appearance they presented as they retired along the pathway in Indian file, was the most abject thing I have ever beheld.

This little business disposed of, there remained the great affair of the day to settle, and it took a great deal of settlement. There were diversities of opinions about every detail connected with the murderous operations. There were disputes about the number of paces which should separate the combatants, about the length of those paces, about the proper method of loading pistols, about the best way of giving the signal to fire—about everything. But what disgusted me most, was the levity displayed by my opponent, who seemed to think the whole thing a capital joke, sneering and sniggering at everything that was done or said. Does the man bear a charmed life, I asked myself, that he behaves with such sickening flippancy when about to risk it?

At last all these endless preliminaries were settled, and Mr. Huffell and I remained staring defiance at each other with a distance of only twelve paces between us. The beast was grinning even now, and when he was asked for the last time whether he was prepared to make an apology, he absolutely laughed.

It had been arranged that one of the seconds, Huffell's as it happened, should count one, two, three, and that at the word "three" we should both fire (if we could) at the same moment. My heart felt so tight at about this period, that I fancied it must have contracted to half its usual size, and I had a sensation of being light on my legs, and inordinately tall, such as one has after having had a fever.

"One!" said the apothecary, and the monosyllable was followed by quite a long pause.

"Two!"

"Stop!" cried a voice, which I recognised as the voice of my adversary, "I have something to say."

I whisked myself round in a moment, and saw that Mr. Huffell had thrown his weapon down on the ground, and had left the position which had been assigned to him.

"What have you to say, sir?" asked the inexorable Dewsnap, in a severe tone; "whatever it is, you have chosen a most extraordinary moment to say it in."

"I have changed my mind,"said Mr. Huffell, in a lachrymose tone; "I think that duelling is sinful, and I consent to apologise."

Astounded as I was at this announcement, I had yet leisure to observe that the apothecary did not look in the least surprised at what had happened.

"You consent to apologise?" asked Dewsnap, "to resign all claim to the lady, to express your deep contrition for the insolent expressions you have made use of towards my friend?"

"I consent," was the reply.

"We must have it all down in writing, mind!" stipulated my uncompromising friend.

"You shall have it all down in writing," said the contrite one.

"Well, this is a most extraordinary and unsatisfactory sort of thing," said Dewsnap, turning to me. "What are we to do?"

"It is unsatisfactory, but I suppose we must accept his apology," I answered, in a leisurely and nonchalant manner. My heart expanded at about this period.

"Has anybody got writing materials about him by chance?" asked my second, in a not very conciliatory tone.

Yes, the apothecary had, and he whipped them out in a moment—a note-book of unusual size, and an indelible ink-pencil.

An apology of the most humble and abject kind was now dictated by my friend Dewsnap, and written down by the crushed and conquered Huffell. When he had affixed his signature to the document, it exactly filled one leaf of the apothecary's memorandum-book. The leaf was torn out and handed to my representative. At that moment the sound of the village-clock striking nine reached us from the distant church.

Mr. Huffell started as if the day were more advanced than he anticipated.

"I believe that the document is regular?" he asked. "If so, there is nothing to detain us in a spot henceforth replete with painful associations. Gentlemen both, good morning."

"Good morning, sir," said Dewsnap, sharply; "and allow me to add, that you have reason to consider yourself an uncommonly lucky young man."

"I do so consider myself, I assure you," retorted the servile wretch.

With that, he took his leave and disappeared over the stile, closely followed by his companion. Again I thought I heard this precious pair explode into fits of laughter as soon as they were on the other side of the hedge.

Dewsnap looked at me, and I looked at Dew-snap, but we could make nothing of it. It was the most inexplicable thing that the man should have gone so far, should have had his finger on the trigger of his pistol, should have waited till the very signal to fire was on the lips of his second, and should then have broken down in that lamentable manner. It really was, as my friend and I agreed, the most disgraceful piece of cowardice of which we had ever had experience. Another point on which we were agreed, was, that our side had come out of this affair with an amount of honour and glory such as is rarely achieved by the sons of men in this practical and un-romantic age.

And now behold the victor and his friends assembled round the small dining-table at the George and Dragon, and celebrating their triumph by a breakfast! in preparing which all the resources of the establishment were brought into play.

It was a solemn occasion. The moment, I acknowledge, was to me a glorious one. My friends, naturally proud of their associate, and anxious to commemorate in some fitting manner the event of the morning, had invited me to this meal to be provided at their own expense. These dear fellows were no longer my guests. I was theirs. Dewsnap was in the chair—it was of the Windsor pattern—I was placed on his right: while at the other end of the table, which was not very far off, another Windsor chair supported the person of Mr. Cripps, the vice. The viands set before us were of the most recherché description, and when these had been done full justice to, and the chair had called for a bottle of champagne, our hilarity began almost to verge on the boisterous. My own mirth, indeed, was chastened by one pervading thought, of which I never for a moment lost sight. Had I not a secret joy which champagne could neither increase nor diminish? Had not my rival formally abdicated, and was I not that very day to appear in the presence of Mary Nuttlebury as one who had risked his life for her sake? Yes. I waited impatiently for the hour when these good fellows should take their departure, determining that, the moment they were gone, I would take possession of the field ingloriously vacated by my rival, and would enjoy the fruits of my victory. I was aroused from these reflections by the voice of my friend Dewsnap. It was, however, no longer the familiar acquaintance who spoke, but the official chairman.

Mr. Dewsnap began by remarking that we were met together on an occasion and under circumstances, of a very peculiar—he might almost say of an anomalous—nature. To begin with, here was a social meeting—nay, a convivial meeting, taking place at ten o'clock in the forenoon. That was the first anomaly. And for what was that meeting convened? To commemorate an act belonging to a class of achievements usually associated with a bygone age, rather than with that in which an inexorable Destiny had cast the lots of the present generation. Here was the second anomaly. Yes, these were anomalies, but anomalies of what a delightful kind! Would there were more such! It was—Mr. Dewsnap went on to say—the fashion of the day to decry the practice of duelling, but he, for his part, had always felt that circumstances might occur in the course of any man's career which would render an appeal to arms desirable—nay, to one who was sensitive on the point of honour, inevitable—and he therefore thought it highly important that the practice of duelling should not wholly fall into desuetude, but should be occasionally revived, as it had been on—on—in short, the present occasion.

At this moment, curiously enough, a faint cheer was heard in the distance. It came, doubtless, from the throats of some of the village-boys, and presently subsided. It was enough, however, to deprive our worthy chair of the thread of his eloquence, so that he was compelled to start again on a new tack.

"Gentlemen," said Mr.Dewsnap, "I must throw myself on your indulgence if my words fail to flow as freely as I could wish. I am, to begin with, gentlemen, powerfully moved, and that alone is enough to deprive me of any small amount of eloquence of which I may at other times be possessed. Likewise, I must frankly own that I am unaccustomed to public speaking at ten o'clock in the morning, and that the day-light puts me out. And yet," continued the chair, "I do not know why this should be so. Do not wedding-breakfasts take place by daylight? And are not speeches made on those occasions? And, after all, why should we not look upon this very meal as, to a certain extent, a wedding-breakfast? You seem surprised, gentlemen, at this inquiry, but I will ask you whether the event we are met together to celebrate—the event of this morning—has not been the first act of a drama which we all hope will terminate in a wedding—the wedding of our noble and courageous friend?"

It was a curious thing that, just when our chairman had got as far as this in his speech, the cheering we had heard before was repeated; though now much more loudly. It was also a curious tiling that the bells of the village church, which was not very far off, began to ring a merry peal. There might not be much to concern us, in this, but still it was curious. The attention of Mr. Dewsnap's audience began to wander, and their glances were, from time to time, directed towards the window. Mr. Dewsnap's own attention began also to wander, and the thread of his discourse seemed once more to elude his grasp.

"Gentlemen," he began again, resolved, like a true orator as he was, to avail himself of accident, "I was remarking that this festive meal was, in some sort and by a figure of speech, a kind of wedding-breakfast, and while the words were yet upon my lips, behold the bells of the village church break out into a joyous peal! Gentlemen, there is something almost supernatural about this. It is a happy augury, and as such I accept it."

The bells were becoming quite frantic now, and the cheering was louder.

"And as such I accept it!" repeated Mr. Dewsnap. "Gentlemen, I should not be surprised if this were an ovation offered to our noble and courageous friend. The villagers have heard of his noble and courageous conduct, and are approaching the inn to offer their humble congratulations."

It was quite certain that the villagers were approaching the inn, for the sound of their voices became every moment louder and louder. We all began to be restless under our chairman's eloquence, and when at length the sound of wheels rapidly approaching was added to the cheering and the bell-ringing, I could bear it no longer, and rushed hastily to the window, followed by everybody else in the room, the chair himself included.

A carriage and pair drove swiftly past the window. Major, I sicken while I speak. There was a postilion on the near horse, and I on that postilion's jacket was a—Oho!—Excuse me, I beg—a wedding-favour. It was an open carriage, and in it were seated two persons; one, was the gentleman, who had made me that humble apology not much more than an hour ago; the other, was Mary Nuttlebury, now, if I were to believe the evidence of my senses, Mary Huffell. They both laughed when they saw me at the window, and kissed their hands to me as they whirled away.

I became as one frantic. I pushed my friends, who in vain sought to restrain me, on one side. I rushed out into the village street. I yelled after the carriage. I gesticulated at the carriage. I ran after the carriage. But to what purpose? It was over. The thing was done. I had to return to the inn, the laughing-stock of the rude and ignorant populace.

I know no more. I don't know what became of me, how my bill at the inn was defrayed, how I got away. I only know that I am finally, hopelessly, and irretrievably under a cloud; that all my old companions, and my old habits have become odious to me; and that even the very lodgings in which I formerly resided were so unbearable, owing to the furniture being impregnated with painful associations, that I was obliged to remove and take up my quarters elsewhere. This, sir, is how I came to occupy these rooms, and I may here mention—if indeed the testimonial of a blighted wretch is of any value—that I have no cause to regret my change of abode, and that I regard Mrs. Lirriper as a most unexceptionable person, labouring indeed, as far as I can see, under only one defect. She is A WOMAN.

CHAPTER VII

HOW THE PARLOURS ADDED A FEW WORDS

Charles Dickens

I have the honour of presenting myself by the name of Jackman. I esteem it a proud privilege to go down to posterity through the instrumentality of the most remarkable boy that ever lived,—by the name of JEMMY JACKMAN LIRRIPER,—and of my most worthy and most highly respected friend, Mrs. Emma Lirriper, of Eighty-one, Norfolk Street, Strand, in the County of Middlesex, in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

It is not for me to express the rapture with which we received that dear and eminently remarkable boy, on the occurrence of his first Christmas holidays. Suffice it to observe that when he came flying into the house with two splendid prizes (Arithmetic, and Exemplary Conduct), Mrs. Lirriper and myself embraced with emotion, and instantly took him to the Play, where we were all three admirably entertained.

Nor is it to render homage to the virtues of the best of her good and honoured sex—whom, in deference to her unassuming worth, I will only here designate by the initials E. L.—that I add this record to the bundle of papers with which our, in a most distinguished degree, remarkable boy has expressed himself delighted, before re-consigning the same to the left-hand glass closet of Mrs. Lirriper’s little bookcase.

Neither is it to obtrude the name of the old original superannuated obscure Jemmy Jackman, once (to his degradation) of Wozenham’s, long (to his elevation) of Lirriper’s. If I could be consciously guilty of that piece of bad taste, it would indeed be a work of supererogation, now that the name is borne by JEMMY JACKMAN LIRRIPER.

No, I take up my humble pen to register a little record of our strikingly remarkable boy, which my poor capacity regards as presenting a pleasant little picture of the dear boy’s mind. The picture may be interesting to himself when he is a man.

Our first reunited Christmas-day was the most delightful one we have ever passed together. Jemmy was never silent for five minutes, except in church-time. He talked as we sat by the fire, he talked when we were out walking, he talked as we sat by the fire again, he talked incessantly at dinner, though he made a dinner almost as remarkable as himself. It was the spring of happiness in his fresh young heart flowing and flowing, and it fertilised (if I may be allowed so bold a figure) my much-esteemed friend, and J. J. the present writer.

There were only we three. We dined in my esteemed friend’s little room, and our entertainment was perfect. But everything in the establishment is, in neatness, order, and comfort, always perfect. After dinner our boy slipped away to his old stool at my esteemed friend’s knee, and there, with his hot chestnuts and his glass of brown sherry (really, a most excellent wine!) on a chair for a table, his face outshone the apples in the dish.

We talked of these jottings of mine, which Jemmy had read through and through by that time; and so it came about that my esteemed friend remarked, as she sat smoothing Jemmy’s curls:

“And as you belong to the house too, Jemmy,—and so much more than the Lodgers, having been born in it,—why, your story ought to be added to the rest, I think, one of these days.”

Jemmy’s eyes sparkled at this, and he said, “So I think, Gran.”

Then he sat looking at the fire, and then he began to laugh in a sort of confidence with the fire, and then he said, folding his arms across my esteemed friend’s lap, and raising his bright face to hers. “Would you like to hear a boy’s story, Gran?”

“Of all things,” replied my esteemed friend.

“Would you, godfather?”

“Of all things,” I too replied.

“Well, then,” said Jemmy, “I’ll tell you one.”

Here our indisputably remarkable boy gave himself a hug, and laughed again, musically, at the idea of his coming out in that new line. Then he once more took the fire into the same sort of confidence as before, and began:

“Once upon a time, When pigs drank wine, And monkeys chewed tobaccer, ’Twas neither in your time nor mine, But that’s no macker——”

“Bless the child!” cried my esteemed friend, “what’s amiss with his brain?”

“It’s poetry, Gran,” returned Jemmy, shouting with laughter. “We always begin stories that way at school.”

“Gave me quite a turn, Major,” said my esteemed friend, fanning herself with a plate. “Thought he was light-headed!”

“In those remarkable times, Gran and godfather, there was once a boy,—not me, you know.”

“No, no,” says my respected friend, “not you. Not him, Major, you understand?”

“No, no,” says I.

“And he went to school in Rutlandshire——”

“Why not Lincolnshire?” says my respected friend.

“Why not, you dear old Gran? Because I go to school in Lincolnshire, don’t I?”

“Ah, to be sure!” says my respected friend. “And it’s not Jemmy, you understand, Major?”

“No, no,” says I.

“Well!” our boy proceeded, hugging himself comfortably, and laughing merrily (again in confidence with the fire), before he again looked up in Mrs. Lirriper’s face, “and so he was tremendously in love with his schoolmaster’s daughter, and she was the most beautiful creature that ever was seen, and she had brown eyes, and she had brown hair all curling beautifully, and she had a delicious voice, and she was delicious altogether, and her name was Seraphina.”

“What’s the name of your schoolmaster’s daughter, Jemmy?” asks my respected friend.

“Polly!” replied Jemmy, pointing his forefinger at her. “There now! Caught you! Ha, ha, ha!”

When he and my respected friend had had a laugh and a hug together, our admittedly remarkable boy resumed with a great relish:

“Well! And so he loved her. And so he thought about her, and dreamed about her, and made her presents of oranges and nuts, and would have made her presents of pearls and diamonds if he could have afforded it out of his pocket-money, but he couldn’t. And so her father—O, he WAS a Tartar! Keeping the boys up to the mark, holding examinations once a month, lecturing upon all sorts of subjects at all sorts of times, and knowing everything in the world out of book. And so this boy——”

“Had he any name?” asks my respected friend.

“No, he hadn’t, Gran. Ha, ha! There now! Caught you again!”

After this, they had another laugh and another hug, and then our boy went on.

“Well! And so this boy, he had a friend about as old as himself at the same school, and his name (for He had a name, as it happened) was—let me remember—was Bobbo.”

“Not Bob,” says my respected friend.

“Of course not,” says Jemmy. “What made you think it was, Gran? Well! And so this friend was the cleverest and bravest and best-looking and most generous of all the friends that ever were, and so he was in love with Seraphina’s sister, and so Seraphina’s sister was in love with him, and so they all grew up.”

“Bless us!” says my respected friend. “They were very sudden about it.”

“So they all grew up,” our boy repeated, laughing heartily, “and Bobbo and this boy went away together on horseback to seek their fortunes, and they partly got their horses by favour, and partly in a bargain; that is to say, they had saved up between them seven and fourpence, and the two horses, being Arabs, were worth more, only the man said he would take that, to favour them. Well! And so they made their fortunes and came prancing back to the school, with their pockets full of gold, enough to last for ever. And so they rang at the parents’ and visitors’ bell (not the back gate), and when the bell was answered they proclaimed ‘The same as if it was scarlet fever! Every boy goes home for an indefinite period!’ And then there was great hurrahing, and then they kissed Seraphina and her sister,—each his own love, and not the other’s on any account,—and then they ordered the Tartar into instant confinement.”

“Poor man!” said my respected friend.

“Into instant confinement, Gran,” repeated Jemmy, trying to look severe and roaring with laughter; “and he was to have nothing to eat but the boys’ dinners, and was to drink half a cask of their beer every day. And so then the preparations were made for the two weddings, and there were hampers, and potted things, and sweet things, and nuts, and postage-stamps, and all manner of things. And so they were so jolly, that they let the Tartar out, and he was jolly too.”

“I am glad they let him out,” says my respected friend, “because he had only done his duty.”

“O, but hadn’t he overdone it, though!” cried Jemmy. “Well! And so then this boy mounted his horse, with his bride in his arms, and cantered away, and cantered on and on till he came to a certain place where he had a certain Gran and a certain godfather,—not you two, you know.”

“No, no,” we both said.

“And there he was received with great rejoicings, and he filled the cupboard and the bookcase with gold, and he showered it out on his Gran and his godfather because they were the two kindest and dearest people that ever lived in this world. And so while they were sitting up to their knees in gold, a knocking was heard at the street door, and who should it be but Bobbo, also on horseback with his bride in his arms, and what had he come to say but that he would take (at double rent) all the Lodgings for ever, that were not wanted by this a boy and this Gran and this godfather, and that they would all live together, and all be happy! And so they were, and so it never ended!”

“And was there no quarrelling?” asked my respected friend, as Jemmy sat upon her lap and hugged her.

“No! Nobody ever quarrelled.”

“And did the money never melt away?”

“No! Nobody could ever spend it all.”

“And did none of them ever grow older?”

“No! Nobody ever grew older after that.”

“And did none of them ever die?”

“O, no, no, no, Gran!” exclaimed our dear boy, laying his cheek upon her breast, and drawing her closer to him. “Nobody ever died.”

“Ah, Major, Major!” says my respected friend, smiling benignly upon me, “this beats our stories. Let us end with the Boy’s story, Major, for the Boy’s story is the best that is ever told!”

In submission to which request on the part of the best of women, I have here noted it down as faithfully as my best abilities, coupled with my best intentions, would admit, subscribing it with my name,

J. JACKMAN.

THE PARLOURS.

MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS.

MRS. LIRRIPER'S LEGACY

1864

CONTENTS

I. Mrs. Lirriper Relates How She Went On, and Went Over.

II. A Past Lodger Relates a Wild Story of a Doctor.

III. Another Past Lodger Relates His Experience as a Poor Relation.

IV. Another Past Lodger Relates What Lot He Drew at Glumper House.

V. Another Past Lodger Relates His Own Ghost Story.

VI. Another Past Lodger Relates Certain Passages to Her Husband.

VII. Mrs. Lirriper Relates How Jemmy Topped Up.

CHAPTER I

MRS. LIPPIPER RELATES HOW SHE WENT ON, AND WENT OVER

Charles Dickens

Ah! It’s pleasant to drop into my own easy-chair my dear though a little palpitating what with trotting up-stairs and what with trotting down, and why kitchen stairs should all be corner stairs is for the builders to justify though I do not think they fully understand their trade and never did, else why the sameness and why not more conveniences and fewer draughts and likewise making a practice of laying the plaster on too thick I am well convinced which holds the damp, and as to chimney-pots putting them on by guess-work like hats at a party and no more knowing what their effect will be upon the smoke bless you than I do if so much, except that it will mostly be either to send it down your throat in a straight form or give it a twist before it goes there. And what I says speaking as I find of those new metal chimneys all manner of shapes (there’s a row of ’em at Miss Wozenham’s lodging-house lower down on the other side of the way) is that they only work your smoke into artificial patterns for you before you swallow it and that I’d quite as soon swallow mine plain, the flavour being the same, not to mention the conceit of putting up signs on the top of your house to show the forms in which you take your smoke into your inside.

Being here before your eyes my dear in my own easy-chair in my own quiet room in my own Lodging-House Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand London situated midway between the City and St. James’s—if anything is where it used to be with these hotels calling themselves Limited but called unlimited by Major Jackman rising up everywhere and rising up into flagstaffs where they can’t go any higher, but my mind of those monsters is give me a landlord’s or landlady’s wholesome face when I come off a journey and not a brass plate with an electrified number clicking out of it which it’s not in nature can be glad to see me and to which I don’t want to be hoisted like molasses at the Docks and left there telegraphing for help with the most ingenious instruments but quite in vain—being here my dear I have no call to mention that I am still in the Lodgings as a business hoping to die in the same and if agreeable to the clergy partly read over at Saint Clement’s Danes and concluded in Hatfield churchyard when lying once again by my poor Lirriper ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

Neither should I tell you any news my dear in telling you that the Major is still a fixture in the Parlours quite as much so as the roof of the house, and that Jemmy is of boys the best and brightest and has ever had kept from him the cruel story of his poor pretty young mother Mrs. Edson being deserted in the second floor and dying in my arms, fully believing that I am his born Gran and him an orphan, though what with engineering since he took a taste for it and him and the Major making Locomotives out of parasols broken iron pots and cotton-reels and them absolutely a getting off the line and falling over the table and injuring the passengers almost equal to the originals it really is quite wonderful. And when I says to the Major, “Major can’t you by any means give us a communication with the guard?” the Major says quite huffy, “No madam it’s not to be done,” and when I says “Why not?” the Major says, “That is between us who are in the Railway Interest madam and our friend the Right Honourable Vice-President of the Board of Trade” and if you’ll believe me my dear the Major wrote to Jemmy at school to consult him on the answer I should have before I could get even that amount of unsatisfactoriness out of the man, the reason being that when we first began with the little model and the working signals beautiful and perfect (being in general as wrong as the real) and when I says laughing “What appointment am I to hold in this undertaking gentlemen?” Jemmy hugs me round the neck and tells me dancing, “You shall be the Public Gran” and consequently they put upon me just as much as ever they like and I sit a growling in my easy-chair.

My dear whether it is that a grown man as clever as the Major cannot give half his heart and mind to anything—even a plaything—but must get into right down earnest with it, whether it is so or whether it is not so I do not undertake to say, but Jemmy is far outdone by the serious and believing ways of the Major in the management of the United Grand Junction Lirriper and Jackman Great Norfolk Parlour Line, “For” says my Jemmy with the sparkling eyes when it was christened, “we must have a whole mouthful of name Gran or our dear old Public” and there the young rogue kissed me, “won’t stump up.” So, the Public took the shares—ten at ninepence, and immediately when that was spent twelve Preference at one and sixpence—and they were all signed by Jemmy and countersigned by the Major, and between ourselves much better worth the money than some shares I have paid for in my time. In the same holidays the line was made and worked and opened and ran excursions and had collisions and burst its boilers and all sorts of accidents and offences all most regular correct and pretty. The sense of responsibility entertained by the Major as a military style of station-master my dear starting the down train behind time and ringing one of those little bells that you buy with the little coal-scuttles off the tray round the man’s neck in the street did him honour, but noticing the Major of a night when he is writing out his monthly report to Jemmy at school of the state of the Rolling Stock and the Permanent Way and all the rest of it (the whole kept upon the Major’s sideboard and dusted with his own hands every morning before varnishing his boots) I notice him as full of thought and care as full can be and frowning in a fearful manner, but indeed the Major does nothing by halves as witness his great delight in going out surveying with Jemmy when he has Jemmy to go with, carrying a chain and a measuring-tape and driving I don’t know what improvements right through Westminster Abbey and fully believed in the streets to be knocking everything upside down by Act of Parliament. As please Heaven will come to pass when Jemmy takes to that as a profession!

Mentioning my poor Lirriper brings into my head his own youngest brother the Doctor though Doctor of what I am sure it would be hard to say unless Liquor, for neither Physic nor Music nor yet Law does Joshua Lirriper know a morsel of except continually being summoned to the County Court and having orders made upon him which he runs away from, and once was taken in the passage of this very house with an umbrella up and the Major’s hat on, giving his name with the door-mat round him as Sir Johnson Jones, K.C.B. in spectacles residing at the Horse Guards. On which occasion he had got into the house not a minute before, through the girl letting him on the mat when he sent in a piece of paper twisted more like one of those spills for lighting candles than a note, offering me the choice between thirty shillings in hand and his brains on the premises marked immediate and waiting for an answer. My dear it gave me such a dreadful turn to think of the brains of my poor dear Lirriper’s own flesh and blood flying about the new oilcloth however unworthy to be so assisted, that I went out of my room here to ask him what he would take once for all not to do it for life when I found him in the custody of two gentlemen that I should have judged to be in the feather-bed trade if they had not announced the law, so fluffy were their personal appearance. “Bring your chains, sir,” says Joshua to the littlest of the two in the biggest hat, “rivet on my fetters!” Imagine my feelings when I pictered him clanking up Norfolk Street in irons and Miss Wozenham looking out of window! “Gentlemen,” I says all of a tremble and ready to drop “please to bring him into Major Jackman’s apartments.” So they brought him into the Parlours, and when the Major spies his own curly-brimmed hat on him which Joshua Lirriper had whipped off its peg in the passage for a military disguise he goes into such a tearing passion that he tips it off his head with his hand and kicks it up to the ceiling with his foot where it grazed long afterwards. “Major” I says “be cool and advise me what to do with Joshua my dead and gone Lirriper’s own youngest brother.” “Madam” says the Major “my advice is that you board and lodge him in a Powder Mill, with a handsome gratuity to the proprietor when exploded.” “Major” I says “as a Christian you cannot mean your words.” “Madam” says the Major “by the Lord I do!” and indeed the Major besides being with all his merits a very passionate man for his size had a bad opinion of Joshua on account of former troubles even unattended by liberties taken with his apparel. When Joshua Lirriper hears this conversation betwixt us he turns upon the littlest one with the biggest hat and says “Come sir! Remove me to my vile dungeon. Where is my mouldy straw?” My dear at the picter of him rising in my mind dressed almost entirely in padlocks like Baron Trenck in Jemmy’s book I was so overcome that I burst into tears and I says to the Major, “Major take my keys and settle with these gentlemen or I shall never know a happy minute more,” which was done several times both before and since, but still I must remember that Joshua Lirriper has his good feelings and shows them in being always so troubled in his mind when he cannot wear mourning for his brother. Many a long year have I left off my widow’s mourning not being wishful to intrude, but the tender point in Joshua that I cannot help a little yielding to is when he writes “One single sovereign would enable me to wear a decent suit of mourning for my much-loved brother. I vowed at the time of his lamented death that I would ever wear sables in memory of him but Alas how short-sighted is man, How keep that vow when penniless!” It says a good deal for the strength of his feelings that he couldn’t have been seven year old when my poor Lirriper died and to have kept to it ever since is highly creditable. But we know there’s good in all of us,—if we only knew where it was in some of us,—and though it was far from delicate in Joshua to work upon the dear child’s feelings when first sent to school and write down into Lincolnshire for his pocket-money by return of post and got it, still he is my poor Lirriper’s own youngest brother and mightn’t have meant not paying his bill at the Salisbury Arms when his affection took him down to stay a fortnight at Hatfield churchyard and might have meant to keep sober but for bad company. Consequently if the Major had played on him with the garden-engine which he got privately into his room without my knowing of it, I think that much as I should have regretted it there would have been words betwixt the Major and me. Therefore my dear though he played on Mr. Buffle by mistake being hot in his head, and though it might have been misrepresented down at Wozenham’s into not being ready for Mr. Buffle in other respects he being the Assessed Taxes, still I do not so much regret it as perhaps I ought. And whether Joshua Lirriper will yet do well in life I cannot say, but I did hear of his coming out at a Private Theatre in the character of a Bandit without receiving any offers afterwards from the regular managers.

Mentioning Mr. Baffle gives an instance of there being good in persons where good is not expected, for it cannot be denied that Mr. Buffle’s manners when engaged in his business were not agreeable. To collect is one thing, and to look about as if suspicious of the goods being gradually removing in the dead of the night by a back door is another, over taxing you have no control but suspecting is voluntary. Allowances too must ever be made for a gentleman of the Major’s warmth not relishing being spoke to with a pen in the mouth, and while I do not know that it is more irritable to my own feelings to have a low-crowned hat with a broad brim kept on in doors than any other hat still I can appreciate the Major’s, besides which without bearing malice or vengeance the Major is a man that scores up arrears as his habit always was with Joshua Lirriper. So at last my dear the Major lay in wait for Mr. Buffle, and it worrited me a good deal. Mr. Buffle gives his rap of two sharp knocks one day and the Major bounces to the door. “Collector has called for two quarters’ Assessed Taxes” says Mr. Buffle. “They are ready for him” says the Major and brings him in here. But on the way Mr. Buffle looks about him in his usual suspicious manner and the Major fires and asks him “Do you see a Ghost sir?” “No sir” says Mr. Buffle. “Because I have before noticed you” says the Major “apparently looking for a spectre very hard beneath the roof of my respected friend. When you find that supernatural agent, be so good as point him out sir.” Mr. Buffle stares at the Major and then nods at me. “Mrs. Lirriper sir” says the Major going off into a perfect steam and introducing me with his hand. “Pleasure of knowing her” says Mr. Buffle. “A—hum!—Jemmy Jackman sir!” says the Major introducing himself. “Honour of knowing you by sight” says Mr. Buffle. “Jemmy Jackman sir” says the Major wagging his head sideways in a sort of obstinate fury “presents to you his esteemed friend that lady Mrs. Emma Lirriper of Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand London in the County of Middlesex in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Upon which occasion sir,” says the Major, “Jemmy Jackman takes your hat off.” Mr. Buffle looks at his hat where the Major drops it on the floor, and he picks it up and puts it on again. “Sir” says the Major very red and looking him full in the face “there are two quarters of the Gallantry Taxes due and the Collector has called.” Upon which if you can believe my words my dear the Major drops Mr. Buffle’s hat off again. “This——” Mr. Buffle begins very angry with his pen in his mouth, when the Major steaming more and more says “Take your bit out sir! Or by the whole infernal system of Taxation of this country and every individual figure in the National Debt, I’ll get upon your back and ride you like a horse!” which it’s my belief he would have done and even actually jerking his neat little legs ready for a spring as it was. “This,” says Mr. Buffle without his pen “is an assault and I’ll have the law of you.” “Sir” replies the Major “if you are a man of honour, your Collector of whatever may be due on the Honourable Assessment by applying to Major Jackman at the Parlours Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings, may obtain what he wants in full at any moment.”

When the Major glared at Mr. Buffle with those meaning words my dear I literally gasped for a teaspoonful of salvolatile in a wine-glass of water, and I says “Pray let it go no farther gentlemen I beg and beseech of you!” But the Major could be got to do nothing else but snort long after Mr. Buffle was gone, and the effect it had upon my whole mass of blood when on the next day of Mr. Buffle’s rounds the Major spruced himself up and went humming a tune up and down the street with one eye almost obliterated by his hat there are not expressions in Johnson’s Dictionary to state. But I safely put the street door on the jar and got behind the Major’s blinds with my shawl on and my mind made up the moment I saw danger to rush out screeching till my voice failed me and catch the Major round the neck till my strength went and have all parties bound. I had not been behind the blinds a quarter of an hour when I saw Mr. Buffle approaching with his Collecting-books in his hand. The Major likewise saw him approaching and hummed louder and himself approached. They met before the Airy railings. The Major takes off his hat at arm’s length and says “Mr. Buffle I believe?” Mr. Buffle takes off his hat at arm’s length and says “That is my name sir.” Says the Major “Have you any commands for me, Mr. Buffle?” Says Mr. Buffle “Not any sir.” Then my dear both of ’em bowed very low and haughty and parted, and whenever Mr. Buffle made his rounds in future him and the Major always met and bowed before the Airy railings, putting me much in mind of Hamlet and the other gentleman in mourning before killing one another, though I could have wished the other gentleman had done it fairer and even if less polite no poison.

Mr. Buffle’s family were not liked in this neighbourhood, for when you are a householder my dear you’ll find it does not come by nature to like the Assessed, and it was considered besides that a one-horse pheayton ought not to have elevated Mrs. Buffle to that height especially when purloined from the Taxes which I myself did consider uncharitable. But they were not liked and there was that domestic unhappiness in the family in consequence of their both being very hard with Miss Buffle and one another on account of Miss Buffle’s favouring Mr. Buffle’s articled young gentleman, that it was whispered that Miss Buffle would go either into a consumption or a convent she being so very thin and off her appetite and two close-shaved gentlemen with white bands round their necks peeping round the corner whenever she went out in waistcoats resembling black pinafores. So things stood towards Mr. Buffle when one night I was woke by a frightful noise and a smell of burning, and going to my bedroom window saw the whole street in a glow. Fortunately we had two sets empty just then and before I could hurry on some clothes I heard the Major hammering at the attics’ doors and calling out “Dress yourselves!—Fire! Don’t be frightened!—Fire! Collect your presence of mind!—Fire! All right—Fire!” most tremenjously. As I opened my bedroom door the Major came tumbling in over himself and me, and caught me in his arms. “Major” I says breathless “where is it?” “I don’t know dearest madam” says the Major—“Fire! Jemmy Jackman will defend you to the last drop of his blood—Fire! If the dear boy was at home what a treat this would be for him—Fire!” and altogether very collected and bold except that he couldn’t say a single sentence without shaking me to the very centre with roaring Fire. We ran down to the drawing-room and put our heads out of window, and the Major calls to an unfeeling young monkey, scampering by be joyful and ready to split “Where is it?—Fire!” The monkey answers without stopping “O here’s a lark! Old Buffle’s been setting his house alight to prevent its being found out that he boned the Taxes. Hurrah! Fire!” And then the sparks came flying up and the smoke came pouring down and the crackling of flames and spatting of water and banging of engines and hacking of axes and breaking of glass and knocking at doors and the shouting and crying and hurrying and the heat and altogether gave me a dreadful palpitation. “Don’t be frightened dearest madam,” says the Major, “—Fire! There’s nothing to be alarmed at—Fire! Don’t open the street door till I come back—Fire! I’ll go and see if I can be of any service—Fire! You’re quite composed and comfortable ain’t you?—Fire, Fire, Fire!” It was in vain for me to hold the man and tell him he’d be galloped to death by the engines—pumped to death by his over-exertions—wet-feeted to death by the slop and mess—flattened to death when the roofs fell in—his spirit was up and he went scampering off after the young monkey with all the breath he had and none to spare, and me and the girls huddled together at the parlour windows looking at the dreadful flames above the houses over the way, Mr. Buffle’s being round the corner. Presently what should we see but some people running down the street straight to our door, and then the Major directing operations in the busiest way, and then some more people and then—carried in a chair similar to Guy Fawkes—Mr. Buffle in a blanket!

My dear the Major has Mr. Buffle brought up our steps and whisked into the parlour and carted out on the sofy, and then he and all the rest of them without so much as a word burst away again full speed leaving the impression of a vision except for Mr. Buffle awful in his blanket with his eyes a rolling. In a twinkling they all burst back again with Mrs. Buffle in another blanket, which whisked in and carted out on the sofy they all burst off again and all burst back again with Miss Buffle in another blanket, which again whisked in and carted out they all burst off again and all burst back again with Mr. Buffle’s articled young gentleman in another blanket—him a holding round the necks of two men carrying him by the legs, similar to the picter of the disgraceful creetur who has lost the fight (but where the chair I do not know) and his hair having the appearance of newly played upon. When all four of a row, the Major rubs his hands and whispers me with what little hoarseness he can get together, “If our dear remarkable boy was only at home what a delightful treat this would be for him!”

My dear we made them some hot tea and toast and some hot brandy-and-water with a little comfortable nutmeg in it, and at first they were scared and low in their spirits but being fully insured got sociable. And the first use Mr. Buffle made of his tongue was to call the Major his Preserver and his best of friends and to say “My for ever dearest sir let me make you known to Mrs. Buffle” which also addressed him as her Preserver and her best of friends and was fully as cordial as the blanket would admit of. Also Miss Buffle. The articled young gentleman’s head was a little light and he sat a moaning “Robina is reduced to cinders, Robina is reduced to cinders!” Which went more to the heart on account of his having got wrapped in his blanket as if he was looking out of a violinceller case, until Mr. Buffle says “Robina speak to him!” Miss Buffle says “Dear George!” and but for the Major’s pouring down brandy-and-water on the instant which caused a catching in his throat owing to the nutmeg and a violent fit of coughing it might have proved too much for his strength. When the articled young gentleman got the better of it Mr. Buffle leaned up against Mrs. Buffle being two bundles, a little while in confidence, and then says with tears in his eyes which the Major noticing wiped, “We have not been an united family, let us after this danger become so, take her George.” The young gentleman could not put his arm out far to do it, but his spoken expressions were very beautiful though of a wandering class. And I do not know that I ever had a much pleasanter meal than the breakfast we took together after we had all dozed, when Miss Buffle made tea very sweetly in quite the Roman style as depicted formerly at Covent Garden Theatre and when the whole family was most agreeable, as they have ever proved since that night when the Major stood at the foot of the Fire-Escape and claimed them as they came down—the young gentleman head-foremost, which accounts. And though I do not say that we should be less liable to think ill of one another if strictly limited to blankets, still I do say that we might most of us come to a better understanding if we kept one another less at a distance.

Why there’s Wozenham’s lower down on the other side of the street. I had a feeling of much soreness several years respecting what I must still ever call Miss Wozenham’s systematic underbidding and the likeness of the house in Bradshaw having far too many windows and a most umbrageous and outrageous Oak which never yet was seen in Norfolk Street nor yet a carriage and four at Wozenham’s door, which it would have been far more to Bradshaw’s credit to have drawn a cab. This frame of mind continued bitter down to the very afternoon in January last when one of my girls, Sally Rairyganoo which I still suspect of Irish extraction though family represented Cambridge, else why abscond with a bricklayer of the Limerick persuasion and be married in pattens not waiting till his black eye was decently got round with all the company fourteen in number and one horse fighting outside on the roof of the vehicle,—I repeat my dear my ill-regulated state of mind towards Miss Wozenham continued down to the very afternoon of January last past when Sally Rairyganoo came banging (I can use no milder expression) into my room with a jump which may be Cambridge and may not, and said “Hurroo Missis! Miss Wozenham’s sold up!” My dear when I had it thrown in my face and conscience that the girl Sally had reason to think I could be glad of the ruin of a fellow-creeter, I burst into tears and dropped back in my chair and I says “I am ashamed of myself!”

Well! I tried to settle to my tea but I could not do it what with thinking of Miss Wozenham and her distresses. It was a wretched night and I went up to a front window and looked over at Wozenham’s and as well as I could make it out down the street in the fog it was the dismallest of the dismal and not a light to be seen. So at last I save to myself “This will not do,” and I puts on my oldest bonnet and shawl not wishing Miss Wozenham to be reminded of my best at such a time, and lo and behold you I goes over to Wozenham’s and knocks. “Miss Wozenham at home?” I says turning my head when I heard the door go. And then I saw it was Miss Wozenham herself who had opened it and sadly worn she was poor thing and her eyes all swelled and swelled with crying. “Miss Wozenham” I says “it is several years since there was a little unpleasantness betwixt us on the subject of my grandson’s cap being down your Airy. I have overlooked it and I hope you have done the same.” “Yes Mrs. Lirriper” she says in a surprise, “I have.” “Then my dear” I says “I should be glad to come in and speak a word to you.” Upon my calling her my dear Miss Wozenham breaks out a crying most pitiful, and a not unfeeling elderly person that might have been better shaved in a nightcap with a hat over it offering a polite apology for the mumps having worked themselves into his constitution, and also for sending home to his wife on the bellows which was in his hand as a writing-desk, looks out of the back parlour and says “The lady wants a word of comfort” and goes in again. So I was able to say quite natural “Wants a word of comfort does she sir? Then please the pigs she shall have it!” And Miss Wozenham and me we go into the front room with a wretched light that seemed to have been crying too and was sputtering out, and I says “Now my dear, tell me all,” and she wrings her hands and says “O Mrs. Lirriper that man is in possession here, and I have not a friend in the world who is able to help me with a shilling.”

It doesn’t signify a bit what a talkative old body like me said to Miss Wozenham when she said that, and so I’ll tell you instead my dear that I’d have given thirty shillings to have taken her over to tea, only I durstn’t on account of the Major. Not you see but what I knew I could draw the Major out like thread and wind him round my finger on most subjects and perhaps even on that if I was to set myself to it, but him and me had so often belied Miss Wozenham to one another that I was shamefaced, and I knew she had offended his pride and never mine, and likewise I felt timid that that Rairyganoo girl might make things awkward. So I says “My dear if you could give me a cup of tea to clear my muddle of a head I should better understand your affairs.” And we had the tea and the affairs too and after all it was but forty pound, and—— There! she’s as industrious and straight a creeter as ever lived and has paid back half of it already, and where’s the use of saying more, particularly when it ain’t the point? For the point is that when she was a kissing my hands and holding them in hers and kissing them again and blessing blessing blessing, I cheered up at last and I says “Why what a waddling old goose I have been my dear to take you for something so very different!” “Ah but I too” says she “how have I mistaken you!” “Come for goodness’ sake tell me” I says “what you thought of me?” “O” says she “I thought you had no feeling for such a hard hand-to-mouth life as mine, and were rolling in affluence.” I says shaking my sides (and very glad to do it for I had been a choking quite long enough) “Only look at my figure my dear and give me your opinion whether if I was in affluence I should be likely to roll in it?” That did it? We got as merry as grigs (whatever they are, if you happen to know my dear—I don’t) and I went home to my blessed home as happy and as thankful as could be. But before I make an end of it, think even of my having misunderstood the Major! Yes! For next forenoon the Major came into my little room with his brushed hat in his hand and he begins “My dearest madam——” and then put his face in his hat as if he had just come into church. As I sat all in a maze he came out of his hat and began again. “My esteemed and beloved friend——” and then went into his hat again. “Major,” I cries out frightened “has anything happened to our darling boy?” “No, no, no” says the Major “but Miss Wozenham has been here this morning to make her excuses to me, and by the Lord I can’t get over what she told me.” “Hoity toity, Major,” I says “you don’t know yet that I was afraid of you last night and didn’t think half as well of you as I ought! So come out of church Major and forgive me like a dear old friend and I’ll never do so any more.” And I leave you to judge my dear whether I ever did or will. And how affecting to think of Miss Wozenham out of her small income and her losses doing so much for her poor old father, and keeping a brother that had had the misfortune to soften his brain against the hard mathematics as neat as a new pin in the three back represented to lodgers as a lumber-room and consuming a whole shoulder of mutton whenever provided!

And now my dear I really am a going to tell you about my Legacy if you’re inclined to favour me with your attention, and I did fully intend to have come straight to it only one thing does so bring up another. It was the month of June and the day before Midsummer Day when my girl Winifred Madgers—she was what is termed a Plymouth Sister, and the Plymouth Brother that made away with her was quite right, for a tidier young woman for a wife never came into a house and afterwards called with the beautifullest Plymouth Twins—it was the day before Midsummer Day when Winifred Madgers comes and says to me “A gentleman from the Consul’s wishes particular to speak to Mrs. Lirriper.” If you’ll believe me my dear the Consols at the bank where I have a little matter for Jemmy got into my head, and I says “Good gracious I hope he ain’t had any dreadful fall!” Says Winifred “He don’t look as if he had ma’am.” And I says “Show him in.”

The gentleman came in dark and with his hair cropped what I should consider too close, and he says very polite “Madame Lirrwiper!” I says, “Yes sir. Take a chair.” “I come,” says he “frrwom the Frrwench Consul’s.” So I saw at once that it wasn’t the Bank of England. “We have rrweceived,” says the gentleman turning his r’s very curious and skilful, “frrwom the Mairrwie at Sens, a communication which I will have the honour to rrwead. Madame Lirrwiper understands Frrwench?” “O dear no sir!” says I. “Madame Lirriper don’t understand anything of the sort.” “It matters not,” says the gentleman, “I will trrwanslate.”

With that my dear the gentleman after reading something about a Department and a Marie (which Lord forgive me I supposed till the Major came home was Mary, and never was I more puzzled than to think how that young woman came to have so much to do with it) translated a lot with the most obliging pains, and it came to this:—That in the town of Sons in France an unknown Englishman lay a dying. That he was speechless and without motion. That in his lodging there was a gold watch and a purse containing such and such money and a trunk containing such and such clothes, but no passport and no papers, except that on his table was a pack of cards and that he had written in pencil on the back of the ace of hearts: “To the authorities. When I am dead, pray send what is left, as a last Legacy, to Mrs. Lirriper Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand London.” When the gentleman had explained all this, which seemed to be drawn up much more methodical than I should have given the French credit for, not at that time knowing the nation, he put the document into my hand. And much the wiser I was for that you may be sure, except that it had the look of being made out upon grocery paper and was stamped all over with eagles.

“Does Madame Lirrwiper” says the gentleman “believe she rrwecognises her unfortunate compatrrwiot?”

You may imagine the flurry it put me into my dear to be talked to about my compatriots.

I says “Excuse me. Would you have the kindness sir to make your language as simple as you can?”

“This Englishman unhappy, at the point of death. This compatrrwiot afflicted,” says the gentleman.

“Thank you sir” I says “I understand you now. No sir I have not the least idea who this can be.”

“Has Madame Lirrwiper no son, no nephew, no godson, no frrwiend, no acquaintance of any kind in Frrwance?”

“To my certain knowledge” says I “no relation or friend, and to the best of my belief no acquaintance.”

“Pardon me. You take Locataires?” says the gentleman.

My dear fully believing he was offering me something with his obliging foreign manners,—snuff for anything I knew,—I gave a little bend of my head and I says if you’ll credit it, “No I thank you. I have not contracted the habit.”

The gentleman looks perplexed and says “Lodgers!”

“Oh!” says I laughing. “Bless the man! Why yes to be sure!”

“May it not be a former lodger?” says the gentleman. “Some lodger that you pardoned some rrwent? You have pardoned lodgers some rrwent?”

“Hem! It has happened sir” says I, “but I assure you I can call to mind no gentleman of that description that this is at all likely to be.”

In short my dear, we could make nothing of it, and the gentleman noted down what I said and went away. But he left me the paper of which he had two with him, and when the Major came in I says to the Major as I put it in his hand “Major here’s Old Moore’s Almanac with the hieroglyphic complete, for your opinion.”

It took the Major a little longer to read than I should have thought, judging from the copious flow with which he seemed to be gifted when attacking the organ-men, but at last he got through it, and stood a gazing at me in amazement.

“Major” I says “you’re paralysed.”

“Madam” says the Major, “Jemmy Jackman is doubled up.”

Now it did so happen that the Major had been out to get a little information about railroads and steamboats, as our boy was coming home for his Midsummer holidays next day and we were going to take him somewhere for a treat and a change. So while the Major stood a gazing it came into my head to say to him “Major I wish you’d go and look at some of your books and maps, and see whereabouts this same town of Sens is in France.”

The Major he roused himself and he went into the Parlours and he poked about a little, and he came back to me and he says, “Sens my dearest madam is seventy-odd miles south of Paris.”

With what I may truly call a desperate effort “Major,” I says “we’ll go there with our blessed boy.”

If ever the Major was beside himself it was at the thoughts of that journey. All day long he was like the wild man of the woods after meeting with an advertisement in the papers telling him something to his advantage, and early next morning hours before Jemmy could possibly come home he was outside in the street ready to call out to him that we was all a going to France. Young Rosycheeks you may believe was as wild as the Major, and they did carry on to that degree that I says “If you two children ain’t more orderly I’ll pack you both off to bed.” And then they fell to cleaning up the Major’s telescope to see France with, and went out and bought a leather bag with a snap to hang round Jemmy, and him to carry the money like a little Fortunatus with his purse.

If I hadn’t passed my word and raised their hopes, I doubt if I could have gone through with the undertaking but it was too late to go back now. So on the second day after Midsummer Day we went off by the morning mail. And when we came to the sea which I had never seen but once in my life and that when my poor Lirriper was courting me, the freshness of it and the deepness and the airiness and to think that it had been rolling ever since and that it was always a rolling and so few of us minding, made me feel quite serious. But I felt happy too and so did Jemmy and the Major and not much motion on the whole, though me with a swimming in the head and a sinking but able to take notice that the foreign insides appear to be constructed hollower than the English, leading to much more tremenjous noises when bad sailors.

But my dear the blueness and the lightness and the coloured look of everything and the very sentry-boxes striped and the shining rattling drums and the little soldiers with their waists and tidy gaiters, when we got across to the Continent—it made me feel as if I don’t know what—as if the atmosphere had been lifted off me. And as to lunch why bless you if I kept a man-cook and two kitchen-maids I couldn’t got it done for twice the money, and no injured young woman a glaring at you and grudging you and acknowledging your patronage by wishing that your food might choke you, but so civil and so hot and attentive and every way comfortable except Jemmy pouring wine down his throat by tumblers-full and me expecting to see him drop under the table.

And the way in which Jemmy spoke his French was a real charm. It was often wanted of him, for whenever anybody spoke a syllable to me I says “Non-comprenny, you’re very kind, but it’s no use—Now Jemmy!” and then Jemmy he fires away at ’em lovely, the only thing wanting in Jemmy’s French being as it appeared to me that he hardly ever understood a word of what they said to him which made it scarcely of the use it might have been though in other respects a perfect Native, and regarding the Major’s fluency I should have been of the opinion judging French by English that there might have been a greater choice of words in the language though still I must admit that if I hadn’t known him when he asked a military gentleman in a gray cloak what o’clock it was I should have took him for a Frenchman born.

Before going on to look after my Legacy we were to make one regular day in Paris, and I leave you to judge my dear what a day that was with Jemmy and the Major and the telescope and me and the prowling young man at the inn door (but very civil too) that went along with us to show the sights. All along the railway to Paris Jemmy and the Major had been frightening me to death by stooping down on the platforms at stations to inspect the engines underneath their mechanical stomachs, and by creeping in and out I don’t know where all, to find improvements for the United Grand Junction Parlour, but when we got out into the brilliant streets on a bright morning they gave up all their London improvements as a bad job and gave their minds to Paris. Says the prowling young man to me “Will I speak Inglis No?” So I says “If you can young man I shall take it as a favour,” but after half-an-hour of it when I fully believed the man had gone mad and me too I says “Be so good as fall back on your French sir,” knowing that then I shouldn’t have the agonies of trying to understand him, which was a happy release. Not that I lost much more than the rest either, for I generally noticed that when he had described something very long indeed and I says to Jemmy “What does he say Jemmy?” Jemmy says looking with vengeance in his eye “He is so jolly indistinct!” and that when he had described it longer all over again and I says to Jemmy “Well Jemmy what’s it all about?” Jemmy says “He says the building was repaired in seventeen hundred and four, Gran.”

Wherever that prowling young man formed his prowling habits I cannot be expected to know, but the way in which he went round the corner while we had our breakfasts and was there again when we swallowed the last crumb was most marvellous, and just the same at dinner and at night, prowling equally at the theatre and the inn gateway and the shop doors when we bought a trifle or two and everywhere else but troubled with a tendency to spit. And of Paris I can tell you no more my dear than that it’s town and country both in one, and carved stone and long streets of high houses and gardens and fountains and statues and trees and gold, and immensely big soldiers and immensely little soldiers and the pleasantest nurses with the whitest caps a playing at skipping-rope with the bunchiest babies in the flattest caps, and clean table-cloths spread everywhere for dinner and people sitting out of doors smoking and sipping all day long and little plays being acted in the open air for little people and every shop a complete and elegant room, and everybody seeming to play at everything in this world. And as to the sparkling lights my dear after dark, glittering high up and low down and on before and on behind and all round, and the crowd of theatres and the crowd of people and the crowd of all sorts, it’s pure enchantment. And pretty well the only thing that grated on me was that whether you pay your fare at the railway or whether you change your money at a money-dealer’s or whether you take your ticket at the theatre, the lady or gentleman is caged up (I suppose by government) behind the strongest iron bars having more of a Zoological appearance than a free country.

Well to be sure when I did after all get my precious bones to bed that night, and my Young Rogue came in to kiss me and asks “What do you think of this lovely lovely Paris, Gran?” I says “Jemmy I feel as if it was beautiful fireworks being let off in my head.” And very cool and refreshing the pleasant country was next day when we went on to look after my Legacy, and rested me much and did me a deal of good.

So at length and at last my dear we come to Sens, a pretty little town with a great two-towered cathedral and the rooks flying in and out of the loopholes and another tower atop of one of the towers like a sort of a stone pulpit. In which pulpit with the birds skimming below him if you’ll believe me, I saw a speck while I was resting at the inn before dinner which they made signs to me was Jemmy and which really was. I had been a fancying as I sat in the balcony of the hotel that an Angel might light there and call down to the people to be good, but I little thought what Jemmy all unknown to himself was a calling down from that high place to some one in the town.

The pleasantest-situated inn my dear! Right under the two towers, with their shadows a changing upon it all day like a kind of a sundial, and country people driving in and out of the courtyard in carts and hooded cabriolets and such like, and a market outside in front of the cathedral, and all so quaint and like a picter. The Major and me agreed that whatever came of my Legacy this was the place to stay in for our holiday, and we also agreed that our dear boy had best not be checked in his joy that night by the sight of the Englishman if he was still alive, but that we would go together and alone. For you are to understand that the Major not feeling himself quite equal in his wind to the height to which Jemmy had climbed, had come back to me and left him with the Guide.

So after dinner when Jemmy had set off to see the river, the Major went down to the Mairie, and presently came back with a military character in a sword and spurs and a cocked hat and a yellow shoulder-belt and long tags about him that he must have found inconvenient. And the Major says “The Englishman still lies in the same state dearest madam. This gentleman will conduct us to his lodging.” Upon which the military character pulled off his cocked hat to me, and I took notice that he had shaved his forehead in imitation of Napoleon Bonaparte but not like.

We went out at the courtyard gate and past the great doors of the cathedral and down a narrow High-street where the people were sitting chatting at their shop doors and the children were at play. The military character went in front and he stopped at a pork-shop with a little statue of a pig sitting up, in the window, and a private door that a donkey was looking out of.

When the donkey saw the military character he came slipping out on the pavement to turn round and then clattered along the passage into a back yard. So the coast being clear, the Major and me were conducted up the common stair and into the front room on the second, a bare room with a red tiled floor and the outside lattice blinds pulled close to darken it. As the military character opened the blinds I saw the tower where I had seen Jemmy, darkening as the sun got low, and I turned to the bed by the wall and saw the Englishman.

It was some kind of brain fever he had had, and his hair was all gone, and some wetted folded linen lay upon his head. I looked at him very attentive as he lay there all wasted away with his eyes closed, and I says to the Major:

“I never saw this face before.”

The Major looked at him very attentive too, and he says:

“I never saw this face before.”

When the Major explained our words to the military character, that gentleman shrugged his shoulders and showed the Major the card on which it was written about the Legacy for me. It had been written with a weak and trembling hand in bed, and I knew no more of the writing than of the face. Neither did the Major.

Though lying there alone, the poor creetur was as well taken care of as could be hoped, and would have been quite unconscious of any one’s sitting by him then. I got the Major to say that we were not going away at present and that I would come back to-morrow and watch a bit by the bedside. But I got him to add—and I shook my head hard to make it stronger—“We agree that we never saw this face before.”

Our boy was greatly surprised when we told him sitting out in the balcony in the starlight, and he ran over some of those stories of former Lodgers, of the Major’s putting down, and asked wasn’t it possible that it might be this lodger or that lodger. It was not possible, and we went to bed.

In the morning just at breakfast-time the military character came jingling round, and said that the doctor thought from the signs he saw there might be some rally before the end. So I says to the Major and Jemmy, “You two boys go and enjoy yourselves, and I’ll take my Prayer Book and go sit by the bed.” So I went, and I sat there some hours, reading a prayer for him poor soul now and then, and it was quite on in the day when he moved his hand.

He had been so still, that the moment he moved I knew of it, and I pulled off my spectacles and laid down my book and rose and looked at him. From moving one hand he began to move both, and then his action was the action of a person groping in the dark. Long after his eyes had opened, there was a film over them and he still felt for his way out into light. But by slow degrees his sight cleared and his hands stopped. He saw the ceiling, he saw the wall, he saw me. As his sight cleared, mine cleared too, and when at last we looked in one another’s faces, I started back, and I cries passionately:

“O you wicked wicked man! Your sin has found you out!”

For I knew him, the moment life looked out of his eyes, to be Mr. Edson, Jemmy’s father who had so cruelly deserted Jemmy’s young unmarried mother who had died in my arms, poor tender creetur, and left Jemmy to me.

“You cruel wicked man! You bad black traitor!”

With the little strength he had, he made an attempt to turn over on his wretched face to hide it. His arm dropped out of the bed and his head with it, and there he lay before me crushed in body and in mind. Surely the miserablest sight under the summer sun!

“O blessed Heaven,” I says a crying, “teach me what to say to this broken mortal! I am a poor sinful creetur, and the Judgment is not mine.”

As I lifted my eyes up to the clear bright sky, I saw the high tower where Jemmy had stood above the birds, seeing that very window; and the last look of that poor pretty young mother when her soul brightened and got free, seemed to shine down from it.

“O man, man, man!” I says, and I went on my knees beside the bed; “if your heart is rent asunder and you are truly penitent for what you did, Our Saviour will have mercy on you yet!”

As I leaned my face against the bed, his feeble hand could just move itself enough to touch me. I hope the touch was penitent. It tried to hold my dress and keep hold, but the fingers were too weak to close.

I lifted him back upon the pillows and I says to him:

“Can you hear me?”

He looked yes.

“Do you know me?”

He looked yes, even yet more plainly.

“I am not here alone. The Major is with me. You recollect the Major?”

Yes. That is to say he made out yes, in the same way as before.

“And even the Major and I are not alone. My grandson—his godson—is with us. Do you hear? My grandson.”

The fingers made another trial to catch my sleeve, but could only creep near it and fall.

“Do you know who my grandson is?”

Yes.

“I pitied and loved his lonely mother. When his mother lay a dying I said to her, ‘My dear, this baby is sent to a childless old woman.’ He has been my pride and joy ever since. I love him as dearly as if he had drunk from my breast. Do you ask to see my grandson before you die?”

Yes.

“Show me, when I leave off speaking, if you correctly understand what I say. He has been kept unacquainted with the story of his birth. He has no knowledge of it. No suspicion of it. If I bring him here to the side of this bed, he will suppose you to be a perfect stranger. It is more than I can do to keep from him the knowledge that there is such wrong and misery in the world; but that it was ever so near him in his innocent cradle I have kept from him, and I do keep from him, and I ever will keep from him, for his mother’s sake, and for his own.”

He showed me that he distinctly understood, and the tears fell from his eyes.

“Now rest, and you shall see him.”

So I got him a little wine and some brandy, and I put things straight about his bed. But I began to be troubled in my mind lest Jemmy and the Major might be too long of coming back. What with this occupation for my thoughts and hands, I didn’t hear a foot upon the stairs, and was startled when I saw the Major stopped short in the middle of the room by the eyes of the man upon the bed, and knowing him then, as I had known him a little while ago.

There was anger in the Major’s face, and there was horror and repugnance and I don’t know what. So I went up to him and I led him to the bedside, and when I clasped my hands and lifted of them up, the Major did the like.

“O Lord” I says “Thou knowest what we two saw together of the sufferings and sorrows of that young creetur now with Thee. If this dying man is truly penitent, we two together humbly pray Thee to have mercy on him!”

The Major says “Amen!” and then after a little stop I whispers him, “Dear old friend fetch our beloved boy.” And the Major, so clever as to have got to understand it all without being told a word, went away and brought him.

Never never never shall I forget the fair bright face of our boy when he stood at the foot of the bed, looking at his unknown father. And O so like his dear young mother then!

“Jemmy” I says, “I have found out all about this poor gentleman who is so ill, and he did lodge in the old house once. And as he wants to see all belonging to it, now that he is passing away, I sent for you.”

“Ah poor man!” says Jemmy stepping forward and touching one of his hands with great gentleness. “My heart melts for him. Poor, poor man!”

The eyes that were so soon to close for ever turned to me, and I was not that strong in the pride of my strength that I could resist them.

“My darling boy, there is a reason in the secret history of this fellow-creetur lying as the best and worst of us must all lie one day, which I think would ease his spirit in his last hour if you would lay your cheek against his forehead and say, ‘May God forgive you!’”

“O Gran,” says Jemmy with a full heart, “I am not worthy!” But he leaned down and did it. Then the faltering fingers made out to catch hold of my sleeve at last, and I believe he was a-trying to kiss me when he died.

* * * * *

There my dear! There you have the story of my Legacy in full, and it’s worth ten times the trouble I have spent upon it if you are pleased to like it.

You might suppose that it set us against the little French town of Sens, but no we didn’t find that. I found myself that I never looked up at the high tower atop of the other tower, but the days came back again when that fair young creetur with her pretty bright hair trusted in me like a mother, and the recollection made the place so peaceful to me as I can’t express. And every soul about the hotel down to the pigeons in the courtyard made friends with Jemmy and the Major, and went lumbering away with them on all sorts of expeditions in all sorts of vehicles drawn by rampagious cart-horses,—with heads and without,—mud for paint and ropes for harness,—and every new friend dressed in blue like a butcher, and every new horse standing on his hind legs wanting to devour and consume every other horse, and every man that had a whip to crack crack-crack-crack-crack-cracking it as if it was a schoolboy with his first. As to the Major my dear that man lived the greater part of his time with a little tumbler in one hand and a bottle of small wine in the other, and whenever he saw anybody else with a little tumbler, no matter who it was,—the military character with the tags, or the inn-servants at their supper in the courtyard, or townspeople a chatting on a bench, or country people a starting home after market,—down rushes the Major to clink his glass against their glasses and cry,—Hola! Vive Somebody! or Vive Something! as if he was beside himself. And though I could not quite approve of the Major’s doing it, still the ways of the world are the ways of the world varying according to the different parts of it, and dancing at all in the open Square with a lady that kept a barber’s shop my opinion is that the Major was right to dance his best and to lead off with a power that I did not think was in him, though I was a little uneasy at the Barricading sound of the cries that were set up by the other dancers and the rest of the company, until when I says “What are they ever calling out Jemmy?” Jemmy says, “They’re calling out Gran, Bravo the Military English! Bravo the Military English!” which was very gratifying to my feelings as a Briton and became the name the Major was known by.

But every evening at a regular time we all three sat out in the balcony of the hotel at the end of the courtyard, looking up at the golden and rosy light as it changed on the great towers, and looking at the shadows of the towers as they changed on all about us ourselves included, and what do you think we did there? My dear, if Jemmy hadn’t brought some other of those stories of the Major’s taking down from the telling of former lodgers at Eighty-one Norfolk Street, and if he didn’t bring ’em out with this speech:

“Here you are Gran! Here you are godfather! More of ’em! I’ll read. And though you wrote ’em for me, godfather, I know you won’t disapprove of my making ’em over to Gran; will you?”

“No, my dear boy,” says the Major. “Everything we have is hers, and we are hers.”

“Hers ever affectionately and devotedly J. Jackman, and J. Jackman Lirriper,” cries the Young Rogue giving me a close hug. “Very well then godfather. Look here. As Gran is in the Legacy way just now, I shall make these stories a part of Gran’s Legacy. I’ll leave ’em to her. What do you say godfather?”

“Hip hip Hurrah!” says the Major.

“Very well then,” cries Jemmy all in a bustle. “Vive the Military English! Vive the Lady Lirriper! Vive the Jemmy Jackman Ditto! Vive the Legacy! Now, you look out, Gran. And you look out, godfather. I’ll read! And I’ll tell you what I’ll do besides. On the last night of our holiday here when we are all packed and going away, I’ll top up with something of my own.”

“Mind you do sir” says I.

“Don't you be afraid, Gran” cries Young Sparkles. “Now then! I'm going to read. Once, twice, three and away. Open your mouths and shut your eyes, and see what Fortune sends you. All in to begin. Look out Gran. Look out Godfather!”

So in his lively spirits Jemmy began a reading, and he read every evening while we were there, and sometimes we were about it late enough to have a candle burning quite steady out in the balcony in the still air. And so here is the rest of my Legacy niy dear that I now hand over to you in this bundle of papers all in the Major's plain round writing. I wish I could hand you the church towers over too, and the pleasant air and the inn yard and the pigeons often coming and perching on the rail by Jemmy and seeming to be critical with their heads on one side, but you'll take as you find.

CHAPTER II

A PAST LODGER RELATES A WILD STORY OF A DOCTOR

Charles Allston Collins

I have lived in a common-place way, Major, in common-place times, and should have mighty Ititle to tell of my own life and adventures (if I were put to it) that would be likely to interest any one save myself. But I have a story by me that shall be yours if you please. Of this story I have only to say a very few words. My father had the manuscript of it in his possession as long as I can remember, and he once allowed me, when I began to approach years of discretion, to read it. It was given to him by a very old friend, whom I dimly remember about our house when I was a boy—a French gentleman of obliging manners, and with a melancholy smile. He fades out of the memory of my youthful days very early, and I chiefly remember him because my father told me that he had received this manuscript from him, and that in parting with it the French gentleman had said: "Ah! few people would believe what went on at that time in France, but here's a specimen. I don't expect you to believe it, mind!"

When the time came for examining my deceased father's papers, this paper turned up among the rest. I put it aside, being immersed in business matters at the time, and only came upon it yesterday, in these very lodgings, in the course of a periodical rummage among a great box of papers from my bankers in the Strand hard by. The periodical rummage came to an end directly, and, with the zest naturally derived from a sense that I ought to be doing something else, I read over every word of the manuscript. It is faded and yellow, as you see; and it is odd, as you shall hear. Thus it goes:

It is pretty well known that as the eighteenth century drew towards its close, and as the moment approached when the mighty change which had been long threatening, was actually about to take place—it is well known, I say, that we Parisians had got into a condition of mind, which was about as bad as bad could be. Luxurious, used up, we had for the most part lost all sense of enjoyment; while as to any feeling of duty—Heaven help us! there was little enough of that. What did we believe of man's responsibility? We were here to enjoy ourselves if we could; if we could not—why, there was a remedy.

It was just one of those states of things which all thinking men were able to see, could not possibly last long. A great shock must be at hand, such men said: a constitution so utterly deranged must pass through some serious attack before it would be likely to get better. That "serious attack" came, and the great French Revolution inaugurated a new condition of affairs. What I have to relate, however, has nothing to do with the revolution, but took place some few years before that great convulsion shook the world, and another era began.

It is not to be supposed that men who held the opinions, and led the lives of the better class of Parisians at that time, were happy. Indeed, a frank open-hearted man, who was tolerably content with the world as he found it, and was able and willing to enjoy himself in it, would have been looked upon with contempt by the more, enlightened (and miserable) sort, and would have been regarded as a man deficient alike in intellect and "ton." There were few enough of such, however, and the representatives of the morbid class had it all their own way. Of course among these it was not likely that an agency so well calculated to help them out of their difficulties as suicide should be neglected, and it is not too much to say that the sacrifices offered up at that terrible shrine, were beyond all limits of ordinary proportion. It was such a resource to fall back upon, such a quick way out of the difficulty! Was money short? Was a wife troublesome, or a mistress obdurate? Was there a course of east wind setting in? Were pleasures pleasures no longer, while pain was still pain? Was life, for any reason, not worth having: was it a bore, a penance, a hell upon earth? Here was the remedy at hand—get rid of it. As to what lay beyond—pooh! one must take his chance. Perhaps there was nothing. Perhaps there were the Elysian Fields, with endless earthly gratifications, and sempiternal youth and freshness, to make them enjoyable. "Let us be off with all speed," said the weary ones; "who will help us on our way?"

Helpers were not wanting. There were cunning poisons which would dispose of you in a twinkling, and let you know nothing about it. There were baths and lancets, and anybody could seat himself in a warm bath and open one of his own veins and die with decency. Then there were pistols, beautiful little toys all inlaid with silver and mother-of-pearl, and with your own arms let into the butt, and your coronet, if you happened—which was very likely—to be a marquis. And was there not charcoal? The sleep said to be produced by its fumes was of the soundest—no dreams—no waking. But then you must be sure to stop up all the chinks, or you might happen to inhale a breath of air, and so find yourself back among the east winds and creditors, and the rest of the ills of life, with only a congestion of the head for your pains. All the various modes by which our poor little spark of life may be quenched, were in vogue at that time, but there was one particular method of doing the terrible business which was more fashionable than the rest, and of which it is my special business to treat.

There was a certain handsome street in Paris, and in the Faubourg St. Germain, in which there lived a certain learned and accomplished Doctor. We will call this learned man, Dr. Bertrand. He was a man of striking and rather agreeable appearance, with a fine portly figure, and a handsome and strikingly intelligent face; his age was somewhere between forty and fifty; but there was one characteristic about his countenance, which every one who came in contact with him must have felt, though not all would have been able to explain what it was that affected them. His eves were dead. They never changed, and they rarely moved. The rest of his face was as mobile as the faces of other people in the average, but not so with the eyes. They were of a dull leaden colour, and they actually seemed dead: the idea being further carried out by the livid and unwholesome tints of the skin around those organs. Judged from its hues, the skin might have mortified.

Dr. Bertrand, in spite of his dead eyes, was a personage of cheerful, almost gay, manners, and of an unvarying and amazing politeness. Nothing ever put him out. He was also a man surrounded by impenetrable mystery. It was impossible to get at him, or to break down the barriers which his politeness erected around him. Dr. Bertrand had made many discoveries by which the scientific world had profited. He was a rich man, and his pecuniary means had increased lately in a marked degree. The Doctor made no secret of his resources; it was part of his nature to enjoy luxury and splendour, and he lived in both. His house, an hotel of moderate size in the Hue Mauconseil, enclosed in a court-yard of its own, filled with shrubs and flowers, was a model of taste. His dining-room especially was the realised ideal of what such an apartment should be. Pictures, beautiful pictures—not pieces of wall furniture—decorated the walls, and these were lighted up at night in the most artful manner by lamps of enormous power. The floor was padded with the most splendid Persian carpets, the curtains and chairs were of the finest Utrecht velvet, and, in a conservatory outside, always heated to the most luxurious point, a fountain played perpetually: the light trickling of its water making music in the beautiful place.

And well might Dr. Bertrand have so perfect a dining-room in his house. To give dinners was a great part of Dr. Bertrand's business. In certain circles those dinners were highly celebrated, but they were always talked about under the rose. It was whispered that their splendour was fabulous; that the dishes and the wines reached a point of perfection absolutely unknown elsewhere; that the guests were waited upon by servants who knew their business, which is saying much; that they dined seated upon velvet fauteuils, and ate from golden plates; and it was said, moreover, that Dr. Bertrand entered into the spirit of the times, that he was a mighty and experienced chemist, and that it was an understood thing that Dr. Bertrand's guests did not feel life to be all they could wish, and had no desire to survive the night which succeeded their acceptance of his graceful hospitality.

Strange and intolerable imputation! Who could live under it? The Doctor could apparently. For he not only lived but throve and prospered under it.

It was a delicate and dainty way of getting out of the difficulties of life, this provided by Dr. Bertrand. You dined in a style of unwonted luxury, and you enjoyed excellent company, the Doctor himself the very best of company. You felt no uneasiness or pain, for the Doctor knew his business better than that; you went home feeling a little drowsy perhaps, just enough so to make your bed seem delightful; you went off to sleep instantly—the Doctor knew to a minute how to time it all—and you woke up in the Elysian Fields. At least that was where you expected to wake up. That, by-the-by, was the only part of the programme which the Doctor could not make sure of.

Now, there arrived at Dr. Bertrand's house one morning, a letter from a young gentleman named De Clerval, in which an application was made, that the writer might be allowed to partake of the Doctor's hospitality next day. This was the usual form observed, and (as was also usual) a very handsome fee accompanied the letter. A polite answer was returned in due time, enclosing a card of invitation for the following day, and intimating how much the Doctor looked forward to the pleasure of making Monsieur de Clerval's acquaintance.

A dull rainy day at the end of November, was not a day calculated to reconcile to life any one previously disapproving of the same. Everything was dripping. The trees in the Champs Elysées, the eaves of the sentry-boxes, the umbrellas of those who were provided with those luxuries, the hats of those who were not; all were dripping. Indeed, dripping was so entirely a characteristic of the day, that the Doctor, with that fine tact and knowledge of human nature which distinguished him, had, in arranging the evening programme, given orders that the conservatory fountain should be stopped, lest it should affect the spirits of his guests. Dr. Bertrand was always very particular that the spirits of his guests should not be damped.

Alfred de Clerval was something of an exception to the Doctor's usual class of visitors, la his case it was not ennui, nor weariness of life, nor a longing for sensation, that made him one of the Doctor's guests. It was a mixture of pique and vexation, with a real conviction that what he had set his heart upon, as alone capable of bringing him happiness, was out of his reach. He was of a rash impetuous nature, he believed that all his chance of happiness was gone for life, and he determined to quit life. Two great causes ordinarily brought grist to Dr. Bertrand's mill; money troubles, and love troubles. De Clerval's difficulties were of the latter description. He was in a fever of love and jealousy. He was, and had been for some time, the devoted lover of Mademoiselle Thérèse de Farelles: a noted beauty of that day. All had gone smoothly for a time, until a certain Vicomte de Noel, a cousin of the lady's, appeared upon the scene, and Alfred de Clerval becoming jealous, certain unpleasant scenes ensued, and finally a serious quarrel: Mademoiselle de Farelles belonging to that class of persons who are too proud to clear themselves from a false imputation when they might otherwise very easily do so. Throughout, De Clerval had never once seen the Vicomte; indeed, the principal intercourse between this last and Mademoiselle de Farelles, had been by letter, and it was partly this correspondence which had brought the quarrel about.

When De Clerval entered the salon of Dr. Bertrand where the guests were assembled before dinner, he found himself one of eight or ten persons, all about, like himself, to gather round the Doctor's table, with intentions of a desperate kind. Physiognomically they belonged to all manner of types, some being fat in the face, some thin in the face, some florid in the face, and some very pale in the face. In one respect alone there was a similarity among them; they all wore a sort of fixed impregnable expression which was intended to be, and to a certain extent was, unfathomable.

It has been said that there was every sort of person in this assembly. Here was, for instance, a fat man with a countenance naturally jovial, plethoric, in want of a little doctoring no doubt, too much of a "bon vivant" assuredly, but why on earth here now? If he had come in the morning to consult the Doctor on his digestion, one could understand; but what does he elo here now? That man knows that to-morrow morning it will be proclaimed to the world that he is ruined, and an impostor. His affairs will collapse, like a house made of cards, and he who has an especial affection for social importance, and who has hitherto enjoyed a good position among his fellows, knows that he would never be able to show his face again. True to his sociability and love of company, to the last, he comes to make an end in good society. Surely no other system, but Dr. Bertrand's, would ever have met the views of this unhappy speculator. Honour then to Dr. Bertrand! who provides every class of persons with the means of suicide.

Here, again, is an individual of another description altogether. A dark thin close-shaved man, who has the fixed unfathomable expression more developed than all the others. This morning his valet knocked at his door, and brought him a letter directed to Monsieur, which the fille de chambre had found on Madame's dressing-table. Madame herself was not in the room, there was only the letter lying before the looking-glass. Monsieur read it, and he is here dining with Dr. Bertrand, and his face is deadly white, and he does not speak a word.

Such guests as these and De Clerval were of an exceptional character. The right man in the right place was a tall faded young man, whom Alfred observed leaning against the chimney-piece, too languid to sit, stand, or recline, and so driven to lean. He had a handsome countenance as far as symmetry of feature and proportion went, but the expression was terrible: so blank, so weary, so hopeless, that one really almost felt that his coming there to dine with Dr. Bertrand was the best thing he could do. He was splendidly dressed, and the value of his waistcoat buttons and studs, seemed to prove that it was not poverty which had brought him there: just as tne utter vapidity and blankness of his weary face seemed to indicate that he was incapable of such a strength of love as would drive him to this last resource. No, this was a case of ennui: hopeless, final, terrible. Some of his friends had dined with Dr. Bertrand, and it seemed to have answered, as they never bored him again. He thought he would try it, so here he was come to dinner. Others were there, like this one. Men who had already outlived themselves, so to speak—outlived their better selves—their belief, their health, their natural human interest in the things that happen beneath the sun—men whose hearts had gone to the grave long ago, and whose bodies were now to follow.

"We do not go through the ceremony of introduction in these little reunions of ours," whispered the Doctor in De Clerval's ear; "we are all supposed to know each other." This was after the servant had solemnly announced dinner, and when the guests and their entertainers were passing to the salle-à-manger.

The room looked charming. The Doctor had not only caused the fountains to be stopped, but had even, to increase the comfort of the scene, directed that the great velvet curtains should be drawn over the entrance to the conservatory. The logs blazed upon the hearth, and the table was covered with glittering candles. For the Doctor well knew the effect of these, and how they add to the gaiety of every scene into which they are introduced.

The guests all took their places round that dreadful board, and perhaps at that moment—always a chilly one, under the circumstances—a serious sense of what they were doing forced itself upon some of them. Certainly Alfred de Clerval shuddered as he sat down to table, and certain good thoughts made a struggle to gain possession of his mind. But the die was cast. He had come to that place with an intent known to everybody present, and he must go through with the intent. He thought, too, that he caught the Doctor's eye fixed upon him. He must be a man—a MAN.

The Doctor seemed a little anxious at about this period of the entertainment, and now and then would sign impatiently to the servants to do their work swiftly. And so the oysters went round, and then some light wine. It was Château Yquem. The Doctor's wine was matchless.

Dr. Bertrand seemed resolved that there should be no pauses in the conversation, and tore himself to tatters—though apparently enjoying himself extremely—in order to keep it going at this time. There was one horrible circumstance connected with the flagging talk. No one alluded to the future. Nobody spoke of to-morrow. It would have been indelicate in the host; in the guests it would have been folly.

"On such a day as this," remarked the Doctor, addressing a distinguished looking spectre at the other end of the table, "you will have missed your drive in the Bois, M. le Baron?"

"No," replied the person addressed, "I was there in the afternoon for two hours."

"But the fog—could you see?"

"I had runners before me with torches. I had the idea that it might prove interesting."

"And, was it?" inquired another spectral personage, looking up suddenly: as if he rather regretted having committed himself to the Doctor's hospitality before trying this new experiment. "Was it interesting?"

"Not in the remotest degree," replied the Baron, in an extinguished sort of voice, and to the other's evident satisfaction. "It was impossible to go beyond a foot-pace, nothing but a grey mist was to be seen on all sides, the horses were bewildered and had to be led. In short, it was an experience to make a man commit sui——"

"Allow me strongly to 'recommend this salmi," cried the Doctor, in a loud voice. "My chef is particularly good at it." The Baron had got upon an awkward tack, and it was necessary to interrupt him. Dr. Bertrand well knew how difficult it was on these occasions to keep that horrid word, which the Baron had so nearly spoken, out of the conversation. Everybody tried to avoid it, but it would come up.

"For my part, I spent the day at the Louvre," said a little man with a green complexion, and all his features out of drawing. He was a gentleman who had hitherto been entirely unsuccessful in putting an end to himself. He had been twice cut down, and once sewn up when he had had the misfortune to miss his jugular by the eighth of an inch. He had been saved from drowning by a passing friend, whom he hated ever afterwards. He had charcoaled himself, forgetting to stop up the keyhole; and he had jumped out of window, just in time to be caught by a passing manure-cart. "I spent the day at the Louvre," remarked this unfortunate gentleman; "the effect of the fog upon some of the pictures was terrible."

"Dear me!" said the gentleman who had before regretted having missed the Bois in a fog, and who on the whole seemed to have come to the Doctor's prematurely; " I should like to have seen that very much, very much indeed. I wonder if there will be a fog to—to——"

"To-morrow," he was going to say. The Doctor thought the moment a propitious one for sending round the champagne; and even in this assembly it did its usual work, and the buzz of talk followed as it circulated.

"This poulet," said the Doctor, "is a dish on which we pride ourselves rather." It was curious that the Doctor's guests always had a disposition to avoid those dishes which he recommended the most strongly. They knew why they were come, and that was all very well; but there was something treacherous in recommending things. But the Doctor was up to this. He had given enough of these entertainments to enable him to observe how regular this shyness was in its action, and so he thus paved the way for the next dish, which was always the dish he wanted his guests to partake of, and which they did partake of almost invariably. The next dish in this case was a new one, a "curry à l'Anglaise," and almost everybody rushed at it headlong. The dish was a novelty even in England then, and in France wholly unknown. The Doctor smiled as he raised the champagne to his lips. "There is a fine tonic quality about these English curries," he remarked.

"And tonics always disagree with my head," said a little man at the end of the table, who had not yet spoken. And he ate no more curry.

Alfred de Clerval was, in spite of his sorrows, so far alive to all that was going on around him as to miss partaking of some of Dr. Bertrand's favourite dishes. He had also entered into conversation with one of his next neighbours. On his left was the commercial man, whose exposure was to take place next day; and this gentleman, naturally a bon vivant, was making the most of his time, and committing fearful havoc on the Doctor's dishes and wine. On the right of De Clerval was a gentleman whom Alfred had not observed until they were seated together at table, but he was a remarkable looking man. They talked at first of indifferent matters, or of what went on around them. They got on together, as the saying goes. Men are not very particular in forming acquaintances when their duration is likely to be short, and so when the wine had circulated for some time—and every man there partook of it fiercely—these two had got to speak freely, for men who were but friends of an hour.

"You are a young man," said the stranger, after a pause, during which he had observed De Clerval closely; "you are a young man to be dining with Dr. Bertrand."

"The Doctor's hospitality is, I suspect, suited at times to persons of all ages," replied Alfred. "I was going to add, and of both sexes. How is it, by-the-by, that there are no ladies among the Doctor's guests?"

"I suppose he won't have them," retorted the other, with bitterness; "and he is right! They would be going into hysterics in the middle of dinner, and disorganising the Doctor's arrangements, as they do disorder every system of which they form a part, even to the great world itself."

"True enough," thought Alfred to himself. "This man has suffered as I have, from being fool enough to put his happiness in a woman's keeping."

De Clerval stole a look at him. He was a man considerably his own senior. He was a very tall man, and had something of that languid air in all his movements which often belongs to height. His face was deeply marked for his age, but there was a very kind and merciful expression on it, and, though he looked weary and perhaps indolent, his was not by any means a blasé countenance. He looked like a man who has goodness in him, but instinctively and quite independent of any influence wrought by principle. A good nature, kind generous and honourable, was there; but the man had no rudder or compass to steer by. It was a fine new vessel adrift.

In his own terrible position one would say that such an one could have no leisure to think of anything else. A man under such circumstances might be excused for a little egotism, might be expected to be absorbed in himself and his own troubles; but it was not so with this stranger. His eye wandered from time to time round the table, and evidently his mind was largely occupied with speculations as to what the rest of Dr. Bertrand's patients were suffering under. "How curious it would be," he at length remarked to De Clerval, "if we could know what is amiss with each one of the guests assembled here. There is a little man opposite, for instance, who has not spoken once; see, he is writing in a furtive manner in his pocket-book—writing, perhaps, to some one who will be sorry to-morrow to hear what has happened. What on earth brought him here? One would have expected that he would have died somewhere in a corner alone. Perhaps he was afraid. There, again, is a man who, to all appearance, is worn out with illness. A fixed pain, perhaps, which is never to be better, and which he can—or will—bear no longer. One would have thought that he would have remained at home. But we all seem afraid to die in solitude, and the Doctor makes everything so very pleasant. Listen; here is a new surprise for us."

Dr. Bertrand was an energetic person, and a man of resource. Not only had he, in consideration of the fog and the rain, caused the fountain to be stopped, and the curtains to be drawn over the entrance to the conservatory, but he had arranged that some musicians should be placed where the flowers used to show, in order that a novel air of luxury might be given to this particular festival. Nor were these, common musicians, whose performance might have infused gloom rather than cheerfulness into the assembly. The Doctor had caused performers of choice ability to be selected, and their music now stole gently on the senses of the guests, and produced an effect that was infinitely agreeable.

"How well this man understands his business," remarked de Clerval to his neighbour. "There is something almost great about him."

There is nothing that varies more in its effect upon us than music; according to the circumstances under which we hear it, it will, to a great extent, prove either stimulating or saddening; still more, of course, does the effect depend upon the music selected. In this case, with the talk already started, with the wine circulating incessantly, with lights flashing in all directions, the effect of the music was exciting in the extreme. And then it had been selected with no common skill. It was not touching music, such as makes one think; but it was made up of a selection of vigorous gallant tunes that seemed to stir the blood in the veins, and rather agitate the nerves than soothe them.

The music was an experiment which Dr. Bertrand had not tried before, and he watched the effect of it carefully.

De Clerval and his neighbour were silent for a time, partly because they were listening to the music, and also because, for the moment, it was difficult to hear one another. The Doctor's guests were noisy enough now. The wine—the good wine—was doing its work, and loosening the tied-up tongues. What talk it was! Talk of the gaming-table, and the night revel. The horrid infidelity of the time brayed out by throats through which no word of prayer or song of praise had passed since the days of earliest childhood.

De Clerval and his neighbour were pursuing their conversation, when the attention of both was suddenly drawn to the opposite side of the table.

Behind the Doctor's chair there always stood a middle-aged man whose business it was to remain stationary in that place, and to keep a steady eye upon every one at table, in order that the very first sign of anything going wrong with a guest might be instantly observed and acted on. The Doctor's calculations were generally most accurate; still he was human, and occasionally some peculiarity of constitution on the part of one of his patients would defeat him. Or they might partake of certain dishes in continuous succession, some one or two only of which the Doctor had intended to be eaten consecutively. In short, unpleasant things would take place occasionally, and so this special officer was in attendance.

This individual suddenly bent down and drew his master's attention to a gentleman seated at the other end of the table, over whom there had gathered a certain strange rigidity of figure and face. He had dropped his fork, and now sat bolt upright in his chair, staring straight before him with a fixity of gaze and a drop of the lower jaw which Dr. Bertrand understood perfectly well.

"Peste!" said the Doctor. "How cantankerous some exceptional constitutions are! One never knows where to have them. You must not lose a second; call in the others and remove him. He is of an epileptic constitution. Lose not a moment."

The familiar disappeared for an instant, and returned, accompanied by four noiseless men, who followed him swiftly to the end of the table where the wretched guest was seated. He had already begun to shriek aloud, while his features were distorted horribly, and the foam was gathering on his lips.

"Oh, my life!" he screamed. "My lost life! Give it me—I must have it—a loan—it was only a loan! I have frittered it away. I want it back. Only a little of it, then; a very little would be something. Ah, it is this man!" The Doctor was near him now, and the epileptic made a furious attempt to get at him. "This man has got my life, my misspent life—it is going—going from me at his will—my life—my lost——" The miserable creature was overpowered and fainting, and the four noiseless men carried him away. Still, as they bore him through the door, he lifted up his voice again, and cried aloud for his youth—his lost youth—and said he would use it differently if they would give it back to him.

They could hear his screams for some time after that, even in the Doctor's padded and muffled house. The incident was horrible, and produced a state of excitement in the other guests. The noise and uproar which followed this terrible occurrence were hellish; everybody was up in arms at once, and it was upon the Doctor himself that all the indignation fell. What did he mean by it? He was an impostor. They had been brought there under false pretences. They had understood that what was done in that establishment was done decently, done effectually, done with a consideration for the feelings of the guests, done in a gentleman-like manner. Here they were, on the contrary, subjected to a scene which was horrible, disgusting, a thing of the hospitals, a horror!

The Doctor bowed before this storm of invectives. He was deeply, abjectly, miserable at what had occurred: such a thing was rare—rare in the extreme. There were people with constitutions that defied all calculation; people who did not know how to live, nor even how to—— Well, he could only express his profound regret. Would they do him the favour to taste this new wine just brought up? It was Lafitte of a celebrated year, and the Doctor drained off a bumper, by way of setting a good example. It was soon followed by the already half-drunken guests, and the noise and uproar became worse than ever.

"Did you observe what that gentleman partook of?'" asked Dr. Bertrand of his familiar. "The gentleman who has just made a scene, I mean?"

"By unlucky chance," was the reply, "he partook in succession of three of your most powerfully seasoned dishes. I was thinking—but it is not for me to speak——"

"Yes, yes, it is. What were you thinking?"

" I was thinking, monsieur, whether it was judicious to put three preparations of such great strength next to each other."

"Quite true, quite true," answered the Doctor. "I will make a note of the case."

Meanwhile, De Clerval and his neighbour had fallen again into conversation. There seemed about the stranger something like an interest in his companion. It appeared as if he still thought this dining-room of the Doctor's no place for so young a man.

"If I am too young to be here," said De Clerval, "ought not you, who are of maturer years, to be too wise?"

" No," replied the other; " I have reasoned the thing out, and have thought well and carefully of what I am doing. I had one last chance of happiness after many missed or thrown away; the chance has failed me; there is nothing in store; there is nothing possible now that would give me the least satisfaction. The world is of no use to me, and I am of no use in the world."

There was a pause. Perhaps De Clerval felt that under the circumstances there was little room for argument; perhaps he perceived that, to reason against a course which he was himself pursuing, and yet which he felt unaccountably inclined to reason against, was preposterous—at any rate he was silent and the stranger went on:

"It is curious, with regard to certain of one's relatives, how we lose sight of them for a time, a very long time even, and then some circumstance brings one into contact with them, arid the intercourse becomes intimate and frequent. It was so with me and my cousin. I had not seen her for years. I had been much away from Paris during those years—in Russia, at Vienna, and elsewhere—engaged in diplomatic service. In all the wild dissipations to be found at the different courts to which I was attached, I engaged with the most dissipated; and when I lately returned to Paris I believed myself to be a totally exhausted man, for whom a veritable emotion was henceforth out of the question. But I was mistaken."

"There is nothing," remarked Alfred, "that men are more frequently mistaken about."

"Well! I was so at any rate," continued the stranger. "After a lapse of many years I met my cousin again, and found in her, qualities so irresistible, so unlike any I had met with in the world, such freshness and truth——"

"There are such women on earth," interrupted De Clerval.

"In a word," continued the other, without noticing the interruption, "I came to the conclusion that, could I ally her destiny with mine, there was a new life and a happy one yet in store for me. I believed that I should be able to shake off my old vile garments, get rid of my old bad habits, and—begin again. What a vision came up before me of a life in which SHE should lead me and help me, be my guide along a good way better known to her than to me! I determined to make the cast, and that my life should depend on the issue of the throw. It was only yesterday that the cast was made—and the consequence is, that—that I am here."

Alfred was silent; a strange feeling of pity came over him for this man. In spite of his own trouble, there seemed to be a corner in his heart that was sorry yet for his neighbour.

"At that terrible' interview," the stranger went on, "I forced the truth from her. Thérèse was not a demonstrative woman. There was a fund of reserve about her which kept her from showing herself to every one. It was a fault, and so was her pride, the besetting sin of those who have never fallen."

From the moment when the name of Thérèse had been mentioned, the attention of Alfred had been drawn with increased fixity to the narrative to which he was listening. It was with greediness that he now caught at every word which followed.

"I forced the truth from her. I believe she spoke it the less unwillingly because it was her wish to save me from any delusion in the matter, and mercifully to deprive me of hope which could never have any real foundation. I besought her to tell me, in the name of Heaven's truth, was there one in the world more favoured—one who possessed the place in her heart which I had sought to occupy? She hesitated, but I pressed her hard and wrung it from her. Yes, there was one: one who held her heart for ever. I was greedy, I would know all: his name: his condition. And I did. I got to know it all—the history of their love—the name of my rival."

"And what was it?" asked Alfred, in a voice that seemed to himself like that of another man.

"Alfred de Clerval."

Alfred sprung to his feet, and looked towards the Doctor. "She loves me," he gasped, " and I am here!"

The sudden move of De Clerval attracted all attention. "Ah! another!" the guests yelled out. "Another who does not know how to behave himself. Another who is going to scream at us and drive us mad, and die before our very faces!"

"No, no!" cried Alfred. "No, no! not die, but live! I must live. All is changed, and I call upon this Doctor here to save me."

"How do you mean that 'all is changed?'" whispered the man whose narration had brought all this about. "Changed by what I have said?"

The noise was so great that De Clerval could not for the moment answer. The self-doomed wretches round the table seemed to feel a horrible jealousy at the idea of an escape. Even the Doctor sought in vain to restore order now.

"Ah, the renegade," cried the guests, "the coward! He is afraid. He has thought better of it! Impostor, what did he ever come among us for!"

"Hold! gentlemen," cried Alfred, in a voice that made the glasses ring; "I am neither coward nor renegade. I came here to die, because I wished to die. And now I wish to live—not from caprice nor fear, but because the circumstances which made me wish to die, are changed; because I have learnt the truth but this moment, learnt it in this room, learnt it at this table, learnt it of this gentleman."

"Tell me," said the stranger, now seizing him by the arm, "what had my story to do with all this? Unless—unless——"

"Monsieur le Vicomte de Noel," replied the other, "I am Alfred de Clerval, and the story you told me was of Thérèse de Farelles. Judge whether I am anxious to live or not."

A frightful convulsion passed over the features of the Vicomte de Noel, and he fell back in his chair.

Meanwhile the uproar continued among Dr. Bertrand's guests.

"We acknowledge nothing," one of the maddened wretches cried, "as a reason for breaking faith with Death. We are all his votaries. We came together in good fellowship to do him honour. Hurrah for Death! Here is a fellow who would turn infidel to our religion. A renegade, I say again, and what should be the fate of renegades!"

"Follow me without a moment's delay," whispered a voice in Alfred's ear. "You are in the greatest danger."

It was the Doctor's familiar spirit who spoke. Alfred turned to follow him. Then he hesitated, and, hastily leaning down, said these words in De Noel's ear:

"For Heaven's sake don't let your life be sacrificed in this horrible way. Follow me, I entreat you."

"Too late! It is over," gasped the dying man. He seemed to make an ineffectual effort to say more, and then he spread his arms out on the table, and his head fell heavily upon them.

"You will be too late in another instant," said the Doctor's servant, seizing Alfred hastily by the arm. As De Clerval passed through the side-door which the man opened, sucli a rush was made towards the place as plainly showed what a narrow escape he had had. The servant, however, locked and bolted the door in time, and those poor half-poisoned and half-drunken wretches were foiled in their purpose.

And now, that escape effected, and the excitement of the previous moment at an end, a strange weakness and giddiness came over De Clerval, and he sunk upon a large sofa to which he had mechanically found his way. The room was a large one, and dimly lighted by a simple lamp, shaded, which stood upon a bureau or escritoire nearly large enough to occupy one end of the room, and covered with papers, bottles, surgical instruments, and other medical lumber. The room was filled with such matters, and it opened into another and a smaller apartment, in which were crucibles, a furnace, many chemical preparations, and a bath which could be heated at the shortest notice.

"The Doctor will, be here himself immediately," said the familiar, approaching De Clerval with a glass, in which was some compound which he had hastily mixed; "meantime, he bade me give you this."

De Clerval swallowed the mixture, and the attendant left the room. No doubt there was work enough for him elsewhere. Before leaving, however, he told Alfred that he must by all means keep awake.

In compliance with these instructions, and feeling an unwonted drowsiness creeping over him, De Clerval proceeded to walk up and down the room. He was not himself. He would stop, almost without knowing it, in the middle of his promenade, become unconscious for a moment, then would be suddenly and violently roused by finding that his balance was going, and once he did fall. But he sprang up instantly, feeling that his life depended on it. He set himself mental tasks, tasks of memory, or he would try to convince himself that he was in possession of his faculties by reasoning as to where he was, what circumstances had occurred, and the like. "I am in Dr.—Dr.—study," he would say to himself. "I know all about it— waiting to see—waiting, mind, to see—I am waiting—Dr.——" He was falling into a state of insensibility in spite of all his efforts, when Dr. Bertrand, whose approach he had not heard, stood there before him. The sight of the Doctor roused him.

"Doctor, can you save me?"

"First, I must ask you a question," replied the Doctor. " It is about one of the dishes at table—now recollect yourself. The 'Curry à l'Anglaise.' Did you partake of it?"

De Clerval was silent for a moment, making a violent effort to collect his bewildered faculties.

At last he remembered something that decided him.

"No, I did not. I remember thinking that an English dish is never good in Erance, and I let it pass."

"Then," said Dr. Bertrand, "there is good hope. Eollow me into this room."

Eor a long time Alfred de Clerval's life was in the greatest danger. Although he had not partaken of that one particular dish which Dr. Bertrand considered it beyond his power to counteract, he had yet swallowed enough that was poisonous, to make his ultimate recovery exceedingly doubtful. Probably no other man but he who had so nearly caused his death could have saved his life. But Dr. Bertrand knew what was wrong—which is not always the case with doctors—and he also knew how to deal with that wrong. So, after a long and tedious illness and convalescence, Alfred so far recovered as to be able to drop the Doctor's acquaintance, which he was very anxious to do, and to take advantage of the information he had gained from the unfortunate Vicomte de Noel.

Whether Mademoiselle de Farelles was able to pardon the crime her lover had so nearly committed, in consideration of the fact that it was love for her which had led him on to attempt it, I don't know; but my belief is that she did pardon it.

For Dr. Bertrand, his career was a short one. The practices by which he was amassing a large fortune were not long in coming to the knowledge of the police authorities, and in due time it was determined by those who had the power to carry out their conclusions, that it would be for the good of the Doctor's health that the remainder of his life should be passed in the neighbourhood of Cayenne, where, if he chose, he might give dinners to such of the convicts as could be the most easily spared by government.

CHAPTER III

ANOTHER PAST LODGER RELATES HIS EXPERIENCE AS A POOR RELATION

Rosa Mulholland

The evening was raw and there was snow on the streets, genuine London snow, half-thawed, and trodden, and defiled with mud. I remembered it well, that snow, though it was fifteen years since I had last seen its cheerless face. There it lay, in the same old ruts, and spreading the same old snares on the side-paths. Only a few hours arrived from South America via Southampton, I sat in my room at Morley's Hotel, Charing Cross, and looked gloomily out at the fountains, walked up and down the floor discontentedly, and fiercely tried my best to feel glad that I was a wanderer no more, and that I had indeed got home at last.

I poked up my fire, and took a long look backward upon my past life, through the embers. I remembered how my childhood had been embittered by dependence, how my rich and respectable uncle, whose ruling passion was vainglory, had looked on my existence as a nuisance, not so much because he was obliged to open his purse to pay for my clothing and education, as because that, when a man, he thought I could reflect no credit upon his name. I remembered how in those days I had a soul for the beautiful, and a certain almost womanish tenderness of heart, which by dint of much sneering had been successfully extracted from me. I remembered my uncle's unconcealed relief at my determination to go abroad and seek my fortune, the cold good-by of my only cousin, the lonely bitter farewell to England hardly sweetened by the impatient hopes that consumed rather than cheered me—the hopes of name and gold, won by my own exertions, with which I should yet wring from those who despised me, the worthless respect which they denied me now.

Sitting there at the fire, I rang the bell, and the waiter came to me: an old man whose face I remembered. I asked him some questions. Yes, he knew Mr. George Rutland; recollected that many years ago he used to stay at Morley's when he came to London. Tiie old gentleman had always stayed there. But Mr. George was too grand for Morley's now. The family always came to town in the spring, but, at this season, "Rutland Hall, Kent," would be pretty sure to be their address.

Having obtained all the information I desired, I began forthwith to write a letter:

"Dear George,—I dare say you ^will be as much surprised to see my handwriting as you would to behold an apparition from the dead. However, you know I was always a ne'er-do-well, and I have not had the grace to die yet. I am ashamed not to be able to announce myself as having returned home with my fortune made; but mishaps will follow the most hardworking and well-meaning. I am still a young man, even though fifteen of the best years of my life may have been lost, and I am willing to devote myself to any worthy occupation. Meantime, I am anxious to see you and yours. A long absence from home and kindred makes one value the grasp of a friendly hand. I shall not wait for your reply to this, but go down to Kent the day after to-morrow, arriving, I believe, about dinner-time. You see I am making myself assured of your welcome for a few weeks, till I have time to look about me.

" I remain, dear George,

"Your old friend and cousin,

"GUY RUTLAND."

I folded this missive and placed it in its envelope. "I shall find out, once for all, what they are made of," I said, complacently, as I wrote the address, "George Rutland, Esq., Rutland Hall, Kent."

It was about seven on a frosty evening when I arrived at the imposing entrance of Rutland Hall. No Cousin George came rushing out to meet me. "Of course not," I thought; "I am unused to their formal manners in this country. He is lying in wait for me on the mat inside." I was admitted by a solemn person as quietly and mechanically as though my restoration to home and kindred were a thing that had happened regularly in his presence every day since his birth. He ushered me into a grand hall, but no mat supported the impatient feet of the dignified master of the house. "Ah!" said I, "even this, perhaps, were scarcely etiquette. No doubt he stands chafing on the drawing-room hearth-rug, and I have little enough time to make myself presentable before dinner." So, resigning myself to circumstances, I meekly followed a guide who volunteered to conduct me to the chamber assigned to my especial use. I had to travel a considerable distance before I reached it. "Dear me!" I remarked to myself when I did reach it, "I had expected to find the rooms in such a house more elegantly appointed than this!"

I made my toilette, and again submitting myself to my guide, was convoyed to the drawing-room door. All the way down stairs I had been conning pleasant speeches with which to greet my kinsfolk. I am not a brilliant person, but I sometimes succeed in pleasing when I try, and on this occasion I had the desire to do my best.

The drawing-room door was at the distant end of the hall, and my arrival had been so very quiet, that I conceived my expectant entertainers could hardly be aware of my presence in the house. I thought I should give them a surprise. The door opened and closed upon me, leaving me within the room. I looked around me, and saw—darkness there, and nothing more.

Ah, yes, but there was something more! There was a blazing fire which sent eddying swirls of light through the shadows, and right in the blush of its warmth a little figure was lounging in an easy-chair. The little figure was a girl of apparently about fifteen or sixteen years of age, dressed in a short shabby black frock, who was evidently spoiling her eyes by reading by the firelight. She lay with her head thrown back, a mass of fair curly hair being thus tossed over the velvet cushion on which it rested, while she held her book aloft to catch the light. She was luxuriating in her solitude, and little dreaming of interruption.

She was so absorbed in her book, the door had opened and closed so noiselessly, and the room was so large, that I was obliged to make a sound to engage her attention. She started violently then, and looked up with a nervous fearfulness in her face. She dropped her book, sat upright, and put out her hand, eagerly grasping a thing I had not noticed before, and which leaned against the chair—a crutch. She then got up leaning on it and stood before me. The poor little thing was lame, and had two crutches by her.

I introduced myself, and her fear seemed to subside. She asked me to sit down, with a prim little assumption of at-home-ness, which did not sit upon her with ease. She picked up her book and laid it on her lap; she produced a net from the recesses of her chair, and with a blush gathered up the curls and tucked them into its meshes. Then she sat quiet, but kept her hand upon her crutches, as if she was ready at a moment's notice to limp away across the carpet, and leave me to my own resources.

"Thomson thought there was nobody in the room," she said, as if anxious to account for her own presence there. "I always stay in the nursery, except sometimes when they all go out and I get this room to myself. Then I like to read here."

"Mr. Rutland is not at home?" I said.

"No, they are all out dining."

"Indeed! Your papa, perhaps, did not get my letter?"

She blushed crimson.

"I am not a Miss Rutland," she said. "My name is Teecie Ray. I am an orphan. My father was a friend of Mr. Rutland, and he takes care of me for charity."

The last word was pronounced with a certain controlled quiver of the lip. But she went on. "I don't know about the letter, but I heard a gentleman was expected. I did not think it could be to-night, though, as they all went out."

"A reasonable conclusion to come to," I thought, and thereupon began musing on the eagerness of welcome displayed by my affectionate Cousin George. If I were the gentleman expected, they must have received my letter, and in it were fully set forth the day and hour of my proposed arrival. "Ah! George, my dear fellow," I said, "you are not a whit changed!"

Arriving at this conclusion, I raised my glance, and met, full, the observant gaze of a pair of large shrewd grey eyes. My little hostess for the time being was regarding me with such a curiously legible expression on her face, that I could not but read it and be amused. It said plainly: "I know more about you than you think, and I pity you. You. come here with expectations which will not be fulfilled. There is much mortification in store for you. I wonder you came here at all. If I were once well outside these gates, I should never limp inside them again. If I knew a road out into the world you come from, I would set out bravely on my crutches. No, not even for the sake of a stolen hour like this, in a velvet chair, would I remain here."

How any one glance could say all this, was a riddle; but it did say all this. The language of the face was as simple to me as though every word had been translated into my ear. Perhaps a certain internal light, kindled long ago, before this little orphan was born, or George Rutland had become owner of Rutland Hall, assisted me in deciphering so much information so readily. However that may be, certain things before surmised became assured facts in my mind, and a quaint bond of sympathy became at once established between me and my companion.

"Miss Ray," I said, "what do you think of a man who, having been abroad for fifteen years, has the impudence to come home without a shilling in his pocket? Ought he not to be stoned alive?"

"I thought how it was," said she, shaking her head, and looking up with another of her shrewd glances. "I knew it, when they put you into such a bad bedroom. They are keeping all the good rooms for the people who are coming next week. The house will be full for Christmas. It won't do," she added, meditatively.

"What won't do?" I said.

"Your not having a shilling in your pocket. They'll sneer at you for it, and the servants will find it out. I have a guinea that old Lady Thornton gave me on my birthday, and if you would take the loan of it I should be very glad. I don't want it at all, and you could pay me back when you are better off."

She said this with such business-like gravity, that I felt obliged to control my inclination to laugh. She had evidently taken me under her protection. Her keen little wits foresaw snares and difficulties besetting my steps during my stay at Rutland Hall, to which my newer eyes, she imagined, must be ignorantly blind. I looked at her with amusement, as she sat there seriously considering my financial interests. I had a fancy to humour this quaint confidential relation that had sprung up so spontaneously between us. I said gravely:

"I am very much obliged to you for your offer, and will gladly take advantage of it. Do you happen to have the guinea at hand?"

She seized her crutches, and limped quickly out of the room. Presently she returned with a little bon-bon box, which she placed in my hand. Opening it, I found one guinea, wrapped up carefully in silver paper.

"I wish it had been more!" she said, wistfully, as I coolly transferred it to my pocket, box and all. " But I so seldom get money!"

At this moment, the solemn person who had escorted me hither and thither before, announced that my dinner was served.

On my return to the drawing-room, I found, to my intense disappointment, that my beneficent bird had flown. Teecie Ray had limped off to the nursery.

Next morning, at breakfast, I was introduced to the family. I found them, on the whole, pretty much what I had expected. My Cousin George had developed into a pompous portly paterfamilias; and, in spite of his cool professions of pleasure, was evidently very sorry to see me. The Mamma Rutland just countenanced me, in a manner the most frigidly polite. The grown-up young ladies treated me with the most well-bred negligence. Unless I had been very obtuse indeed, I could scarcely have failed to perceive the place appointed for me in Rutland Hall. I was expected to sit below the salt. I was that dreadful thing—a person of no importance. George amused himself with me for a few days, displaying to me his various fine possessions, and then, on the arrival of grander guests, left me to my own resources. The Misses Rutland endured my escort on their riding expeditions only till more eligible cavaliers appeared. As for the lady of the house, her annoyance at having me quartered indefinitely on her premises, was hardly concealed. The truth was, they were new people in the circle in which they moved, and it did not suit them to have a poor relation coming suddenly among them, calling them "cousin," and making himself at home in the house. For me, I was not blind, though none of these things did it suit me to see. I made myself as comfortable as was possible under the circumstances, took every sneer and snub in excellent part, and was as amiable and satisfied on all occasions as though I believed myself to be the most cherished inmate of the household. That this meanness of mine should provoke their contempt, I had hardly a right to complain of. Nor did I. I accepted this like the rest of their hospitality, and smiled contentedly as the days went on. The gloom which had oppressed me on my first arrival in England had all betaken itself away. How could I feel otherwise than supremely happy at finding myself thus surrounded by my kind relations, thus generously entertained under their hospitable roof?

As I found that the guests at Rutland Hall enjoyed a certain freedom in their choice of amusements, and the disposal of their time, I speedily availed myself of this privilege. I selected my own associates, and I entertained myself as pleased me best. Not finding myself always welcomed in the drawing-room, I contrived, by a series of the most dexterous artifices, to gain the free entrée of the nursery. In this nursery were growing up, some five or six younger branches of the Rutland family. After a certain hour in the day none of the elders ever thought of invading its remote precincts. Five o'clock in the evening was the children's tea-hour, and the pleasantest, I thought, in the twenty-four. Nurse was a staid woman, who knew how to appreciate a little present now and again, and to keep her own counsel on the subject. The children were not pleasant children; they were unruly mischievous little wretches. They conceived a sort of affection for me, because I sometimes brought to the nursery, sundry purchases made during solitary rides; picture-books, tops, dolls, or sweetmeats, procured by means of Teecie Ray's guinea. I suggested as much to Teecie one evening as she sat by, watching the distribution, and she nodded her head in sage satisfaction. She thought that I economised my substance very well. It covered a great many small extravagances, that guinea did.

Whatever might be my position at Rutland Hall, Teecie Ray's was simply intolerable. A spirit less brave must have been cowed and broken by it: a nature less delicate must have been blunted and made coarser. The servants openly neglected her, the children used her as they pleased; wreaked their humours on her, sparing neither blow nor taunt in their passions, and demanding from her at all times whatever service it suited their capricious fancy to need. Nurse, the only one who ever showed a grain of consideration for the orphan, would sometimes shield her from their impish attacks, when she could do so with safety to herself; but she was not permitted to deal with those darlings in the only fashion which would have been at all likely to bring them to reason. As for the elders of the house, Teecie Ray's momentary presence, or the mere mention of her name, was sufficient to ruffle their peace of mind. "What is to be done with that girl?" I heard Mrs. Rutland remark to one of her daughters. " If she were not lame, one might set her to earn her bread in some way; but, as it is——" A shrug of the shoulders, and a certain vinegar-like expression of countenance, which this lady knew how to assume, sufficiently developed the idea thus imperfectly expressed.

And how did Teecie Ray meet all this? She did not complain nor rebel, she did not sulk nor fret. Under that well-worn black frock of hers, she carried a little breastplate of sober determined endurance. When sorely tried, there was never any cowardly submission to be seen in her grave little face, neither was there ever in her manner or words either reproach or remonstrance. She simply endured. Her large patient eyes and mute wise mouth seemed to say,"Whatever I suffer, whatever I long to dare, gratitude shackles my limbs, and seals my lips. I am saved from many things; therefore I am dumb."

The second time I met my little benefactress, was a day or two after our first interview in the drawing-room. I came upon her, one afternoon by chance, limping down a hedge lane which lay to the back of the house, away beyond the gardens, and the kitchen gardens, and the pleasure-grounds. This lane, I found, led to a large meadow, and beyond the meadow there was a wooded hill, and far down at the distant side of the hill there was a river. This was Teecie Ray's favourite ramble, and her one avenue of escape from the torments of the nursery. I immediately began pouring forth a legion of perplexing troubles and difficulties, to all of which she listened with perfect credulity, expressing her sympathy as I went along by an expressive nod of the head, or a shrewd swift glance. Then she gave me her wise little counsel when all was told, and went home, I believe, pondering on my case.

As the days passed, and my relations became more and more involved in their winter gaieties, I found myself more and more thrown upon my own resources for amusement. Occasionally I was included in an invitation, and accepted it; but in general I preferred indulging my fancy for keeping aloof from those who were little charmed with my company. A system of the most unblushing bribery had won for me a warm welcome from the savage tribes in the nursery. Many and many an evening found me walking down that hedged lane in the frosty dusk, with Teecie Ray limping by my side, and talking her grave simple little talk. I had always some fresh puzzle to propose to her, and she was always ready to knit her smooth brows over its solution. Once she stopped short, and struck her little crutches on the snow.

"You ought to go away from here and work," she cried. "O, if I could!"

A certain Sir Harry arrived at Rutland Hall; I will not trouble myself to think of his second name; it is not worth remembering. He was a wealthy bachelor of high family, and his movements were watched with interest by the lady of the house. This Sir Harry had a fancy for smoking his cigar in the hedged lane, and on more than one occasion he encountered my little benefactress limping on her solitary way, and stared at the pretty fresh face under her old black hat, till it blushed with uncomfortable brilliance. Teecie changed her track like a hunted hare, but Sir Harry scented her out, and annoyed her with his fulsome compliments. The matter reached Mrs. Rutland's ears, and she vented her chagrin on the defenceless little girl. I know not what sorry accusations and reproaches she bestowed upon her during a long private lecture; but, that evening when, at the children's tea-hour, I entered the nursery door with a new ball in my hand for Jack (the youngest and least objectionable of the band), I saw Teecie Ray's face grievously clouded for the first time. It was flushed and swollen with passionate crying. I do not intend to commit to paper certain remarks which I made sotto voce on beholding this disfigurement.

"Come, come, Teecie," I said, while nurse was busy quelling a disturbance which had arisen because "Cousin Guy" had not brought something to every one else as well as Jack; "where is all your philosophy, little mother? You need never preach to me again, if you set me such a bad example."

Teecie said never a word, but stared on into the fire. This wound had cut deep. Sir Harry, and Mrs. Rutland, of Rutland Hall, at that moment I should have dearly loved to knock your two good-for-nothing heads together!

"Teecie," I said, "you have one friend, at any rate, even if he be not a very grand one."

She gave one of her quaint expressive little nods. Translated, it meant: "I understand all that, but I cannot talk just now." By-and-by, however, she brightened up, and went to the table to claim her share of tea and thick bread-and-butter, and I began to mend a bow belonging to Tom. Tom was one of the leaders of the unruly tribes, a regular savage chieftain.

Ere two days more had passed I felt strongly inclined to exercise the horsewhip on this young gentleman's shoulders. Tom, one fine morning, was seized with an impish inspiration to play a trick upon Teecie. Stealing her crutches, he walked about the nursery mimicking her poor little limp, and then marching off with them, heedless of her entreaties to have them restored, carried them in triumph out of doors, and smashed them in pieces with a hatchet. Teecie sat helpless in the din and riot of that ill-conditioned nursery. Bright bracing days came and found her a prisoner, looking with longing eyes through the window-panes, out over the beautiful country lanes. Tom saw her patience with the most audacious indifference. But why talk about Tom? I could not help believing, nor do I ever intend to help believing, that, older heads than Tom's plotted the cruel caging of that bonnie bird.

The bird drooped on its perch; but who cared? Nurse vowed it was a shame, and showed more kindness than usual to the prisoner, but I will not venture to decide how much of this tenderness was owing to the odd crown-pieces which found their way from my hand to hers—all out of the guinea, of course? O yes, all out of the guinea. And there was another friend who sometimes expressed an interest in Teecie Ray's existence. This was that Lady Thornton, whose bounty had indirectly furnished me with pocket-money during my stay at Rutland Hall. The favour of this old lady I had done my best to win. She was a nice comfortable old lady, and I liked her. It happened that she called one day during Teecie Ray's imprisonment, to invite the Rutlands and their visitors, great and small, young and old, to a party to be given at her house, a few miles distant. I chanced to be alone in the drawing-room when she arrived, and I seized the opportunity to tell her the story of Teecie's crutches.

"A bad boy!" she said. "A bad, malicious boy! She must get new crutches before my party."

"Of course she must," I said, very heartily.

The old lady threw back her head, raising her fat chin in a peculiar sort of way, and looking at me direct through her spectacles.

"Indeed!" she said. "Pray, young man, what particular interest do you take in Teecie Ray?"

I smiled. "Oh, Teecie and I are excellent friends," I said.

"Teecie and you!" she repeated. "Pray, are you aware that Miss Ray is eighteen years of age?"

"Is she indeed? I know nothing about the ages of little girls."

"But Teecie is not a little girl, Mr. Guy Rutland. Teecie Ray is a woman, I tell you!"

Teecie Ray a woman! I could not help laughing. What? My little benefactress, my little mother! I am afraid I scandalised Lady Thornton on that occasion by my utter scorn of her proposition. Christina Rutland swept into the room at this crisis, and relieved me in my difficulty. But often afterwards during that day, I laughed when I thought of Lady Thornton's piece of information. Teecie Ray a woman? Preposterous!

One morning, when it wanted but a week of the party, a curious event oceurred. The heads of the house met in consultation on the matter, in the library, before breakfast. An extraordinary Thing had arrived from London at Rutland Hall. The Thing was a large wooden case, directed to Teecie Ray. On being eagerly opened, it was found to contain a pair of crutches.

And such a pair of crutches! Light and symmetrical, and fanciful, works of art in their way. Tortoiseshell stems with silver mountings of exquisite workmanship, capped with dainty little cushions of embroidered velvet. Thunder-stricken were the elders of the house. "Who could have done this thing?" was on every lip. Who, indeed? Who outside of Rutland Hall had ever heard of Teecie Ray? These crutches were costly affairs. I knew the conclusion they came to, one and all. They pitched on Sir Harry as the culprit. It was a thorn in their side, and I rubbed my hands in glee.

Having considered the question in their dismay, they decided that Teecie should be kept in ignorance of her mysterious present. It was not fit for her to use, it would fill her mind with absurd ideas. And so, in spite of the arrival of her beautiful new crutches, poor Teecie still sat helpless in the nursery. The wooden case and its contents were hidden away, and no word was spoken of their existence.

I waited a few days to see if the elders would relent, but to no purpose. The bird still pined on its perch. No kindly hand seemed likely to open the cage door and let it fly. There sat Teecie, day after day, in her nursery chair, hemming aprons for nurse, or darning the children's stockings, looking longingly out of the window, and growing pale for want of fresh air. Still never rebelling, never complaining. Meantime the stir of Christmas preparation was agitating all the household, and the children were full of rapture at the prospect of Lady Thornton's Christmas party. There was great excitement in the nursery about pretty new dresses, wonderful fussing about ribbons, and muslins, and fripperies. Teecie alone sat silent in her shabby frock. By-and-by, her hands were full, bowing up sashes, sewing on tuckers, stitching rosettes on shoes. She was a nimble little workwoman, and they kept her busy. Seeing how well a lapful of bright ribbons became her, I thought it a pity she should not have a gay dress as well as the rest.

Nobody said, "Teecie, what will you wear?" nor even, "Teecie, are not you invited too?" No one seemed to expect for a moment that Teecie could wish to be merry with the rest. How could she go, she who was lame and had no crutches?

It happened that I had an errand to the nearest town. It was rather late when, on my return, I called at the best millinery establishment in the place, and asked for a parcel.

Yes, the parcel was ready. A large flat box. "Would the gentleman like to see the lady's pretty dress?" The box was opened, and a cloud of some airy fabric shaken out under my eyes. I cannot, of course, describe it, but it was something white, very pure and transparent, with something else of pink just blushing through it. It was very tasteful, I pronouced, trying to look wise. There was only one fault: "Did it not seem rather long for a little girl?" I asked, remembering the figure it was to adorn, with its short skirt just coming to the top of the boots, so well worn and mended.

"Oh, sir," said the milliner, with dignity, "you said the young lady was eighteen years of age, and of course we have given her a flowing skirt!"

It was late in the evening when I reached home. Two merry carriage-fulls were just departing from the door as I drove up. A few minutes afterwards, I was in the nursery with the milliner's parcel in my hands. There sat dear little Cinderella, resting one flushed cheek on her hand, and contemplating the litter of scraps of ribbon, fragments of lace, scissors, flowers, and reels of cotton, which lay scattered around her. She had had a toilsome tiresome day, and now they had got all they wanted of her, and had left her to her solitude.

A flash of pleasure sprang to her face when she saw me. "Oh! I thought you had gone with the rest," she said.

"No," said I, " I have not gone yet, but I am going presently. I came for you."

"For me!" she echoed in dismay. "You know I could not go. I have no dress, even if I could walk.'*

"A friend has sent you a dress," I said, "and I will undertake to provide the crutches. Nurse, will you please to take this box, and get Miss Teecie ready as quickly as possible. The carriage is waiting for us at the door."

Teecie flushed very red at first, and I thought she was going to burst out crying, and then she turned pale, and looked frightened. Nurse, to whom I had slipped a munificent Christmas-box, immediately fell into raptures over the pretty dress.

"Come, Teecie," I said, "make haste!" And, trembling between dread and delight, Teecie suffered herself to be carried off to her toilette.

By the time I returned from an exploring expedition, with the wonderful silver-and-tortoise-shell crutches under my arm, Teecie was ready.

Teecie was ready. Those three simple little words mean so much that I feel I must stop and try to translate them into all they are bound to convey. They do not mean that Teecie, the child whom I was wont to call my little benefactress, my little mother, had got on a nice new frock, and was equipped for a juvenile party like other children. But they mean that there, when I came back, stood a beautiful girl by the nursery fire, in a fair sweeping blush-coloured robe. When she turned ner head, I saw that the sweet face framed in its childlike curls was the same, but still the old Teecie Ray was gone, and here was (peccavi Lady Thornton!) a lovely woman.

We were all three ludicrously amazed at the sudden metamorphose that had taken place. Teecie was too simple not to show that she felt the change in herself, felt it keenly, with a strange delight and a strange shyness. Nurse had so long been accustomed to use her as a child that she stood bewildered. As for me, I was first frightened at what I had done, then enchanted, then foolishly awkward, and almost as shy as Teecie herself.

When I presented the crutches, nurse looked at me as though I must be some prince in disguise, out of the Arabian Nights. It was with a curious feeling that I saw Teecie try them, not limping now, rather gliding over the nursery floor, with the little velvet cushions hidden away amidst clouds of lace and muslin under her round white shoulders, and the airy masses of the fresh tinted gown just crushed back a little by the gleaming silver staves. I don't know why it was that I thought at that moment, with a certain rapture, of a guinea in a little bon-bon box, that lay below in the one shabby portmanteau which I had thought proper to bring with me to Rutland Hall!

Our equipage awaited us. It was too late now to withdraw from what I had undertaken. Teecie and I were soon dashing over the snowy roads to Lady Thornton's. I will not attempt to describe the remainder of that memorable evening, or the sensation caused by our arrival; the wonder and mortification of nry kind relations; or the mingled pleasure and displeasure of the hostess, who, while delighted to see her little favourite, took occasion to whisper angrily in my ear, "And pray, sir, how is all this to end?"

The scene was all new and delightful to Teecie, but her dread of Mrs. Rutland's portentous frown would not let her enjoy it. We both felt that a storm would burst over our heads that night, and we were not wrong. None of the family from. Rutland Hall took the least notice of us. When the time came for going home, they went off in their two carriages, and Teecie and I drove home as we had come. When we arrived, we found Cousin George and bis wife waiting for us in the library, armed to the teeth. I saw it was to be war and no quarter. Mrs. Rutland took Teecie into her clutches, and carried her off, and I was left with George. I need not repeat all that passed between us.

"Sir," he said, "we have suffered your insolent intrusion long enough. You leave this louse to-morrow morning."

"Cousin George," I said, "don't put yourself in a passion. I will go to-morrow morning, but upon one condition—that Teecie Hay may come with me, if she will."

He looked at me perfectly aghast. "Do you know," he said, "that she is a penniless friendless orphan, whom I have sheltered through charity?"

"I want to make her my wife," I said, sternly, "if, indeed, I be so fortunate as to have won her affections."

"And after that," he said, with a sneer "how do you propose to live? Upon air, or your friends?"

"Not upon you, George Rutland," I said, looking him steadily in the eyes. "Mark me. I have tried you out. I have sifted you, all in this house, like a handful of wheat. I found you all chaff, but the one golden grain which lies on my palm. I will keep it and treasure it, if I may. God grant I may!"

"Very fine," said George, "very fine. Remember, however, that from this moment I wash my hands of you both: you, Guy Rutland, and her, Teecie Ray."

"Amen!" I said, and bade him good night, and turned on my heel and left him.

Early next morning I knocked at the nursery door, and begged of nurse to awake Miss Teecie, and ask her to speak with me in the garden. I then went out to wait for her. It was Christmas morning, the day of peace and good will. What I felt was scarcely peace, as I looked over the calm landscape. And yet I bore no ill will to any man or woman.

Teecie came to me by-and-by; just the same old Teecie, limping over the frosty path in her short shabby frock, and looking half ashamed of her grand new crutches. I felt relieved when I saw her so. I was shy of the dainty lady whom I had called into existence the night before. And yet when I looked more closely, I knew that this was not quite the old Teecie, and that the very same Teecie of a day ago never, never, could come back. Something was altered. Whether the change was in her or me, or in both of us, I did not inquire. The change was not an unpleasant one.

We strolled out of the garden, and into the lane, and we talked earnestly all the way. On our way back I said:

"And you're not afraid of starving with me, Teecie? You'll take the risk?"

One of her old nods was Teecie's answer.

"Go and fetch your hat, then," said I, "and we won't even wait for breakfast. Don't bring anything else with you, not a shred. I have still some halfpence left—out of the guinea, you know—and we'll get all we want."

Teecie fetched her hat and returned, and we set off together. An hour afterwards we were man and wife. We said our prayers side by side in the church, and then we walked back to Rutland Hall, to say good-by to our kinsfolk. I believe they all thought me mad, and her a little fool;—at least until Cousin George received the cheque, which I sent him next day; a cheque to cover the expenses incurred by him through his charity to Teecie Ray. Then they began to wonder, and to waver. I took my wife abroad, and showed her the world. Time and care cured her of her lameness. It was not surprising that on her return to England her kinsfolk should scarcely recognise her—Teecie Rutland, nee Ray—walking without crutches, and the wife of a millionnaire! Half a bride-cake conciliated Lady Thornton, and the wonderful guinea is still in my possession. I call it Teecie's dower. The crutches, the donor of which I beg to assure you, major, was not Sir Harry, are also preserved as family curiosities.

CHAPTER IV

ANOTHER PAST LODGER RELATES WHAT LOT HE DREW AT GLUMPER HOUSE

Henry Spicer

If the dietary at Doctor Glumper's could not be pronounced purely Spartan in its principles, it was simply that the Spartan stomach—well disciplined as we know it to have been—would have revolted at such treatment. Salamis demanded other stamina than could be supplied by the washings of a beef-bone. Xerxes was .not deified under the immediate inspiration of rice-dumpling.

Doctor Glumper's was not much worse, in its commissariat, my dear Major Jackman, than hundreds of other establishments, at which—in those days—the sons of gentlemen studied and starved. There was enough to live upon, provided we could have fairly eaten what there was. Therein lay the difficulty. Our meals, bad enough at the beginning; of the week, grew gradually worse towards the end: insomuch that we arrived at the Sabbath, much in the condition of a band of young seafarers, who had been cast away, and were only saved from utter starvation by the opportune arrival of a ship freighted with roast-beef and Yorkshire pudding.

True, there was a life-boat. Its name, in our case, was "Hannah's Basket." Hannah was the laundress, and, on Saturday afternoon, after delivering the linen, regularly made her appearance in the playground, displaying the bottom of her buck-basket paved with delicacies, carefully selected on the principle of combining the three grand qualities of sweetness, stickiness, and economy.

Elegance and refinement were little thought of, in those days. The boy who brought a silver fork, would have been simply regarded as possessed of a jocular turn. As for the spoon and six towels, which, according to the printed terms of Glumper House, seemed absolutely essential to a sound classical education—the spoon found its way into a species of armoury of Mrs. Glumper's, formed of the spoils of the young Philistines, her pupils, prohibited toys, confiscated literature, and so forth; while the towels, absorbed in the general republic of that article, passed into indiscriminate use. Well, we had nothing to say against steel forks. The meat, peradventure, might have proved impervious to any less undaunted metal.

Our Monday's dinner was boiled leg of mutton. One helping. More was not refused; but the ill-concealed impatience with which the application was received, established the custom of contenting ourselves with what was first supplied. The due reward of this pusillanimity appeared on the following day, in the form of half-consumed joints—cold, ghastly, seamed with red murderous streaks, and accompanied by certain masses of ill-washed cabbage, interesting as an entomological study; but, as a viand, repulsive by reason of the caterpillars, whose sodden dull-green corpses I have seen lying in ranks beside the plates of fastidious feeders.

Three days a week, we had rice-pudding—a confection which, by an unfortunate conjuncture of circumstances, I never could from infancy endure; but the great trial of our lives, and stomachs, was reserved for Saturday, when we sat down to what was satirically styled a "beefsteak-pie."

Mean and debased must be the spirit of that bullock who would confess to any share in such a production! Into the composition of that dish beef entered as largely as the flesh of the unicorn into peas-porridge. The very wildness of the rumours that were afloat respecting its actual origin proved how dark, difficult, and mysterious was the inquiry. School tradition pointed to the most grotesque and inharmonious elements, as actually detected in the pie. Substances, in texture, flavour, and appearance, the reverse of bovine, bad been over and over again deposed to by the dismayed recipients, who proved their good faith by preferring famine itself to "beefsteak"-pie. The utter impossibility of identifying the ingredients as having pertained to any animal recognised by British cooks, was the terrific feature of the case.

Whatever was the prevailing element of the pie, it was supplemented with minor matters, about which, though they do not appear in any accepted recipe for the dish in question, there could be no dispute.

Sholto Shillito, for instance, who had the appetite of an ogre, boldly swallowed the portion assigned him, but quietly and sternly removed to the side of his plate three fingers and a ligament of the thumb of an ancient dog-skin glove.

Billy Duntze discovered and secreted something that was for several halves preserved in the school as the leg of a flamingo. At all events, it was introduced, so labelled, to every new arrival, on the very first evening of his sojourn among us.

George van Kempen found a pair of snuffers.

Charley Brooksbank remarked a singular protuberance in his portion of pie, and, carefully excavating the same, as if it were a Phoenician relic, brought to light something that looked like the head of a doll that had been afflicted with hydro-cephalus. On being cut into, it was green. For the first few weeks of each half—that is, while our pocket-money held out—we got on pretty well. Our pocket-money exhausted, starvation stared us in the face.

The present generation may wonder why we did not try the effect of respectful remonstrance. The times, as I have said, were different then, and besides, the present generation didn't personally know Mrs. Glumper. A fearful woman was Mrs. Glumper. I don't mean that she raved, struck, or demeaned herself in any way not ordinarily witnessed in polite society; but I do mean that she had a cool quiet scorn, a consciousness of a putting-down power, as though an elephant, just tickling the ground with a foot as big as a writing-table, were to show how easily and effectually he might, if he pleased, turn that table upon you.

In addition to this overbearing contempt, Mrs. Glumper had a thousand ways of making us uncomfortable, without resorting to overt tyranny; insomuch that to be "out of favour" with that excellent lady was regarded as the climax of school misery.

Not a word have I to say against the doctor. Even then I felt him to be a good man. In remembering his character, I believe him to have been one of the best that ever breathed. With the understanding of a sage, he was as simple as a child; so simple, that it was matter of genuine astonishment that he retained the coat upon his back; so simple, that the circumstance of his having espoused Mrs. G. became almost intelligible. For this guileless act, rumour even supplied the motive. Mrs. Glumper, then Miss Kittiewinkle, was herself the mistress of an extremely preparatory school, and it was in the cowed and miserable victims of her Muscovite rule that the kind doctor read an invitation of the most pressing kind, to take the mistress under his. The consequence of this union of interests was, that the establishment, losing its infantine character, flourished up into a school of seventy boys; only the very smallest of whom were submitted to Mrs. Glumper's immediate dominion.

Affairs were in this unsatisfactory position towards the middle of a certain half. It was precisely the period at which the greatest impecuniosity usually prevailed. Money was tighter than any one could recollect. Hannah's bread-stuffs were in a condition of blockade. Could "shirtings" have been exchanged for eatings, Hannah might have done a brisk business in turn-downs, but the old lady was too wary for such traffic.

We held a consultation. The doctor's cow, which sometimes grazed in the playing-field, was incidentally present, and by her sleek contented aspect, excited universal disgust.

"Crib her oilcake!" squeaked a voice from the outer senatorial circle.

"It is well for the honourable felon on the back benches," remarked our president, Jack Rogers, who delighted to give to our consultations the aspect of a grave debate, "that his skull is beyond punching-distance. If the oilcake, lavished on yonder pampered animal, had been vested in trustees, to the sole and separate use, notwithstanding coverture, of Mrs. Glumper—I—well, I will go so far as to say this council might have taken into consideration what has fallen from the distinguished thief. But it's Glumper's, and the proposal of the estimable criminal will be received with the contempt it deserves."

A murmur of approval greeted this speech, after which sundry suggestions were offered.

Burned pens (Gus Halfacre remarked) were edible. He might say, toothsome.

"My left boot is at the service of the commonwealth," said Frank Lightfoot. "The right, having been recently repaired and thickened, and being devoid of a large nail in the sole (of which I invite the state to take heed), I reserve to myself for the last extremity."

"Thus extremes will meet," observed the president. "But this is no season for jesting. Has anybody anything to propose?"

"We have always Murrell Robinson," said Sholto Shillito, gloomily, and with an aspect so wolfish, that the young gentleman alluded to—a plump rosy child of eight, who had not yet had time to dwindle—set up a howl of terror.

"It might—humph—yes, it might be politic," said the chairman, thoughtfully. "'Twould touch her home. If Jezebel Glumper lost a couple, say, of pupils, under the peculiar circumstances glanced at by the honourable senator in the inky corduroys, she might have some—shall I say bowels?—for those of the remainder. But the observation of my honourable friend has suggested to my mind a course of action which, though in some respects similar, and promising the like results, is not open to the same objections. Some fellow must bolt, placing on record his reasons for that step."

Jack's proposal, unexpected a

it was, met with considerable favour, the only difficulty being to decide who the fugitive should be. Bolting from school by no means implied return to the paternal mansion. Everybody looked inquiringly at his neighbour. No one volunteered.

The chairman surveyed us with mournful severity.

"There was once," he faltered, "an individual, known to you all (except the fifth class)—wept over by some—who, on learning that he might greatly benefit certain public property by jumping into a hole, asked no questions, popped in, and did it. Has our school no Curtius? Must seventy stomachs languish unsatisfied for want of a single heart? Shillito, you greedy young beggar, you will go."

Mr. Shillito emphatically invoked benediction on himself, in the event of his doing anything of the kind.

"Percy Pobjoy," said the president, "you are one at odds with fortune. You are penniless—worse, for your week's pay, old chap, is impounded for a month. You have sailed into the extreme north of Mrs, Glumper's favour, and are likely to make it your persistent abode, You detest rice. You have scruples concerning caterpillars. Percival, my friend, three ladies of eminence, whose names and office are fully recorded in your classical dictionary, unanimously select you as the party to perform this public service."

Mr. Pobjoy regretted to run counter to the anticipations of any lady, but, possessing, as he did, a grandmother who would, he conceived, prove more than a match for the three Destinies—and he would throw the Furies in—he must deny himself the gratification proposed.

"Then," resumed the president, cheerfully, with the air of having at last secured his man, I at once address myself to the distinguished senator on the inverted flower-pot. He who licked that bully, the miller's boy, in twelve minutes and a half, will be again our champion. Joles will go."

Mr. Joles somewhat sullenly failed to perceive the analogy between pitching into a cheeky clown, and running away from school. Could the honourable president detect the smallest indication of verdure in his (Mr. J.'s) sinister organ of vision? Such a contingency was, nevertheless, essential to his (Mr. J.'s) adopting the course required of him.

Other honourable senators having, when appealed to, returned answers of a no less discouraging character, there seemed to be but one course remaining—that of drawing lots. A resolution to do this was carried, after some discussion: it being agreed that he on whom the lot might fall should decamp on the morrow, and, having found some secure hiding-place, write to one of his schoolmates, or (perhaps preferably) to his own friends, declaring that the step he had taken was prompted by a reluctance to perish of starvation.

The proposed time was subsequently extended to one week, in order that he who drew the fatal lot might have time to try the effect of a touching appeal to his parents or friends, fairly setting forth the treatment we were experiencing. If this answered, well and good. If not, the honourable gentleman (said our chief) "will cut his lucky this day se'nnight."

Lots were then solemnly drawn, in the primitive Homeric fashion, every boy's name—those of the fifth class excepted—being inscribed in a slip of paper, and flung into a hat. There was a strong feeling in favour of exempting Jack Rogers, our president—the Nestor of the school—who, being near seventeen, and about to leave, would, no doubt, have preferred fighting through the remainder of his term, famish as he might. But the good fellow flounced at the idea, as though it had been an insult, and himself cast in his name.

Carefully following our classic model, the hat was then violently shaken. The lot that, in obedience to a fillip from the Fates, first leaped out and touched the earth, was to decide the question. Two flew out, but one of these rested on the shaker's sleeve. There was a decided disinclination to take up the other. It seemed as if nobody had, until this supreme crisis, fully realised the consequences that might ensue from thus abandoning at onee both school and home.

My heart, I confess, stood still for a moment, as Jack Rogers stood forward and picked up the paper. Then I felt the blood mount to my cheeks, as our leader slowly read, "Charles Stuart Trelawny."

"Always in luck, Charley!" he continued, laughing; but I think Jack only intended to keep up my spirits. "Write directly, my boy," he added, in a graver tone, "and, take my advice, write bang up to the governor. Treat it as a matter of business. Mamma is safe to put in her word."

I wrote at once:

"My dear Papa,—I hope you are quite well. I ain't. You know I'm not greedy, and not so foolish as to expect at school such jolly things as at home. So you must not be angry when I say what I'm obliged to say, that we can't eat what Mrs. Glumper says is dinner; and as there's nothing else but slop and a bit of bread, everybody's starving.

"I remain, your dutiful Son,

"C. S. TRELAWNY.

"P.S. If you don't like to speak to Mrs. Glumper, would you mind asking mamma and Agnes, with my love, to send me a big loaf of bread (with Crust, and, if possible, browned) that might last a week?

"Lieut.-Geu. Trelawny, C.B., K.H.,

Penrhyn Court."

I thought this despatch sufficiently businesslike, and waited with some anxiety for the result. If papa only knew what depended on his decision! He ought to put faith in me, for I had never been untruthful, and had done myself no more than justice in reminding him that I was no glutton.

It was, I believe, on the fourth day of suspense that a large parcel was brought into the playground, a crowd of curious and expectant youths escorting it, and witnessing its delivery. Small blame to them!

There resided within the limits of that parcel—for, though mighty, it had its limits—first, a beefsteak-pie, not only composed of real bee£ but enriched with eggs and minor excellences, all trembling in a jellied gravy of surpassing savour. There was, secondly, a chosen company of mince pies, clinging together from sheer richness, in such wise that a very stoic, if hungry, might be reluctant to "sever such sweet friends," and devour them two at a time.

There was revealed, in the third place, a large apple turnover: so called, I should surmise, because a boy might turn it over and over, and back again, and, after all, find himself unable to determine which looked the more enticing—the sugary, or the buttery side. And, finally, there was a cake which I can scarcely repent having characterised, at the moment, as "tremendous!"

There was no letter, but the augury seemed good. Such ambassadors as pies and turnovers speak with tongues of their own. It was not intended that we should perish. We should see the effect of my manly and business-like appeal, perhaps that very day, in an improved bill of fare, and a diminution of caterpillars. As to husbanding our new supplies, such an idea never occurred to any one. Alas, that we could not all partake! Lots had to be once more drawn, and a lucky party of eighteen, with Jack Rogers and myself, honorary, made extremely short work of the parcel.

Shade follows sunshine. There was no amelioration of the accustomed fare at dinner; but a decided cloud on Mrs. Glumper's haughty brow was interpreted favourably by Jack—a close observer of human nature—as evincing her disgust at the costly reform to which she saw herself committed.

Alas! for once, our leader was wrong. Not that day, nor the following day, nor any other day, so long as that establishment survived, was there any departure from the time-(dis)honoured rules of diet.

It was long before I came into possession of the state papers actually exchanged on this occasion. Premising that my father, busied with his other letters, had handed over mine to my mother, saying,"Do see to this, my dear," here they are:

The Lady Caroline Trelawny to Mrs. Glumper.

"Dear Mrs. Glumper,—I trust that the size of the parcel I forward to my boy, will not alarm you. Charley is growing very rapidly, so rapidly, indeed, that his father drew my attention to the circumstance, not without some misgiving that he might outgrow his strength. You may smile at the anxiety that prompts me to remind one so experienced as yourself in the care of youth, that good, clean, and sufficient food is more than ever necessary to my tall boy. He is not a dainty boy, and the conditions I have mentioned will, I am sure, meet all that he, or I, on his behalf, could desire. With compliments to Dr. Glumper, I am, dear Mrs. Glumper, sincerely yours,

"CAROLINE M. TRELAWNY."

Mrs. Glumper to the Lady Caroline Trelawny.

"Dear Madam,—Perhaps the most satisfactory answer I can make to your obliging note will be conveyed in the assurance that Dr. Glumper, myself, our family, and the masters (except Monsieur Legourmet, who insists on providing his own meals), live invariably with, and as, our boys; and that, in the matter of food, there is neither stint nor compulsion.

" Respectfully yours,

" JEZEBEL GLUMPER."

There was, unfortunately, just sufficient colouring of truth in this to satisfy the consciences of both ladies. They did dine, or rather sit down, with us, and being helped first to the tit-bits, accompanied with hot gravy and et caeteras, at their own cross-table, got on pretty well. As for the good old doctor, he was the most innocent of accomplices in promoting our starvation. He simply did as his wife decreed, caring nothing for himself, and would have starved with his bpys without a murmur.

After it became apparent that our move had failed, all, before the arrival of the fatal day, passed with me like a curious dream. I felt as if I no longer belonged to the school, hardly to myself, and though no verbal reference was made to my impending disappearance, I saw that no one had forgotten it. Significant were the facts, that Percy Pobjoy, who had owed me eightpence from time immemorial, borrowed that sum to repay me; and that another chap, with whom I had had a row, spontaneously asked my pardon.

Saturday—the day—appeared in due course. There remained but one more meal, one more chance for Mrs. Glumper and for me.

"If she gives us but a commonly decent feed to-day," muttered Jack Rogers, pinching my elbow, as we went in, "by Jove, Charley, my boy, we'll stop your nefarious plans!"

No such chance. There it was, the flabby mass of rice, helped first, as a good appetite-choking stuff, to relieve the succeeding dish from any undue pressure.

After rice appeared the much-dreaded pie, glaring yellowly, with its coarse pretentious outside—prototype of many a living humbug—veiling one knows not what of false and vile. O, the contrast to the rich and delicate article—alike only in name—sent by my mother!

The pie was served, and was undergoing the usual suspicious scrutiny, when Mrs. Glumper, with the voice of a herald, proclaimed:

"Master Trelawny will eat every grain of that rice before he receives anything further."

There was a half-audible titter; but I remained firm, and thus ended the last "dinner" at Glumper House.

Jack Rogers put his arm in mine.

"I'm sorry for this, Trelawny," he said.

"I'm not," said I, trying to smile, " exc—except for——" I thought of my mother, and broke down.

"We'll have a Palaver, at all events," said Jack.

In a moment, a large concourse assembled under our favourite elm. If the truth must out, I could have dispensed with this ceremony, which somehow imparted a sensation of being present at one's own burial. But Jack Rogers was not to be denied this splendid opportunity of speech-making.

He did speak, in a manner, and at a length, that must have been remembered in the school long after I—its theme—was forgotten there. In his peroration, he observed that the honour and the well-being of Glumper's could not, in this extremity, have been confided to worthier hands. Nor was it this community alone that was to profit by the important step about to be taken. The eyes of every school in Europe were, or would be, if they knew what was going on, fixed on Glumper House. Mr. Trelawny was about to place his foot on the first rung of the ladder of affluence, fame, and power. What pecuniary means, he would frankly ask, were at my disposal?

I replied, with the like openness, "Eight-pence,"

"The precise amount," resumed Jack, triumphantly, "(within one and tenpence) from whence colossal fortunes spring! 'He began his immortal career with half-a-crown.' Or, 'The origin of this eminent citizen was of the humblest; he commenced life with two-and-six-pence.' Or, 'Our modern Croesus began the battle of life with the moiety of a five-shilling piece. He died worth TWO MILLIONS sterling!' Such, are among our most familiar passages in biography. Charles, my boy, again you are in luck." And he shook my hand warmly.

I ventured incidentally to suggest that I was not in possession of the magical amount required.

"Nay, by George, but you shall be!" exclaimed Jack. "Here's sixpence towards it. Think of it when you're a confoundedly crusty old millionnaire, and send old Jack a haunch from one of your deer-parks—the Scotch one. Who'll subscribe to the Trelawny Testimonial?"

Hard up as the good chaps were, so many came forward, that a sum of about nine-and-sixpence was poured into the hands of our chief. But Jack's remark had been working strangely in my mind. Something admonished me to keep strictly to the rule which had, apparently, prospered so well.

In a few words I thanked my mates, therefore, for their kind intentions, but declined to take more than was required to make up the exact fortune-making sum. I would do nothing (I added, in substance) to risk a failure, nor impair the innate vigour, the youthful freshness, of half-a-crown, by dabbling with an adolescent amount like ten-and-twopence: a sum entirely unassociated with any of those encouraging biographies quoted by our president. I would take my half-crown—no more.

As the day was waning, it became necessary to make preparations for my departure. Accordingly, attended by a few faithful friends, I proceeded to make up a small bundle, such as I could conveniently carry, leaving the remainder of my possessions at the disposal of fate. There was one thing I was very loth to abandon. It was a flower-pot, containing the commencement of a very promising scarlet-runner. It had been the source of great interest and consolation. I half resolved to make it the sharer of my fortunes. But Jack Rogers objected. In vain he taxed his memory to recal any one instance in which the successful adventurer had flung himself upon the world with half-a-crown and a scarlet-runner. If the case of Jack and the Beanstalk were relied upon, he (Rogers) would only remark that the present age of inquiry had succeeded in throwing very considerable doubt upon portions of that narrative. This was enough.

About escaping, there was no difficulty. Part of the playing-field was out of sight of the house, and, although it was penal to frequent this portion, and it was the duty of the monitor of the day to report any one so doing, on the present occasion the monitor in person gave me a leg up the wall. There was a last shaking of hands, and a suppressed cheer, when I paused for a moment on the top.

"You'll write that letter to-morrow, then, from—from somewhere?" said Jack, mysteriously. (I nodded.) "All right, old boy?"

"Ye-es," I responded. "All right, you know. Hoor——"

Down I dropped adrift!

That wall seemed to make all the difference. I don't think that, until my feet alighted on the alien ground of Mr. Turfitt's brick-field, I had fully realised the fact of running away. But a runaway I was now; and, to do my boyish courage justice, no thought of returning or seeking the protection of home, ever entered into my imagination. One brief and bitter pang I did experience, as I thought of the probable effect the tidings of my flight might have upon the happy home circle; but I met it with the reflection that the letter I should write must set them at. ease as to my personal safety and prospects. In the mean time, it was obviously desirable to get away.

Dr. Glumper's was situated in an open suburb north of London, and therefore, well on the high road to fortune. I set my face straight towards the quarter in which I concluded the City to lie, and trudged on, vaguely wondering what would happen to me when bedtime came.

Suddenly, a bright thought, suggested by the name on a public-house sign, shot across my mind. I had a friend—Philip Concanen—who resided at Chelsea, nothing of a walk, five miles. Phil had long outgrown Glumper's, though his name and his fame and a very rudely-executed miniature of Mrs. G, carved on the inside of his whilom desk, still survived. He was a middle-aged man now—going on, I should think, for nineteen—and had called once at Glumper's in a gig, driving himself. I had been a favourite of Phil's, and felt convinced that he would not only afford me his counsel, but keep mine. Well over the first steps of my pilgrimage, I had no fears about the remainder.

Philip was already in business with his father and uncle—wealthy brewers and distillers—whose establishment displayed on its river-face a frontage so imposing as almost to justify the tradition that it had once been mistaken for Chelsea Hospital. On the land side, you merely dived down a dark and narrow lane, sole shaft to the gold mine that lay beyond. Down this passage, as evening fell, I groped my way, and, by great good luck, found Philip in sole command (till Monday morning) of "Concanen Brothers, and Concanen."

Philip gave me a cordial welcome, and, thanks to his old housekeeper, a most heart-reviving supper, and listened to my story with all the kindness and interest I had expected; also with a degree of gravity I had not expected. Intercourse with men and vats had already taken off the edge of his romance. There is, in beer, a decided tendency to sap the life of sentiment. In meal, I have since observed, a contrary rule prevails. Your miller's daughter—if he has one—is almost always a heroine.

My friend criticised with some severity the golden visions of Jack Rogers, repudiated belief in the efficacy of half-a-crown as the especial keystone of affluence, and even hinted (though remotely) at the desirability of my making terms with the home authorities, and abandoning my enterprise.

On this point, however, I was firmness itself and after a lengthened discussion the following convention was agreed to:

That the old housekeeper, Mrs. Swigsby, should be admitted to our complete confidence, with a view to my occupancy of the spare bedroom till Monday. That on that day I should transfer my quarters to Philip's own private smoko-harness room, from whence a side portal and a passage, dark at noon, gave upon Paradise-alley, and thence to the privacy of Jew's-road. That I should retain such refuge until I had enjoyed an opportunity of "feeling my way"—which, indeed, would necessarily occur whenever I crossed the threshold. That on the slightest suspicion of my whereabout becoming known, I should depart, so as to avoid compromising my friend. Lastly, that I should at once write to my parents an assurance of my personal safety.

With some difficulty—owing to Mrs. Swigsby's being a deafer human creature than I could have conceived possible—that excellent lady was indoctrinated in the matter, and dismissing from her mind a first idea that I was the nephew of Mr. Arthur Thistlewood, and deeply compromised in certain, then recent, proceedings in Cato-street, promised every assistance. This arranged, I sat down to my letter:

'"My dear Papa and Mama,—I hope you are quite well. We ate up the Pie and other Things you so kindly sent, and then began Starving again. Rice, and Catterpillars, and what they call Beefstake-Pie but Isn't, as usual. I hoped you would have written to Mrs. Glumper, but perhaps you were Afrade. We held a Counsel, and Settled to run away One by One—till the Dinners get better. We drew Lots, and it Fell to me. I knew you would Aprove, for I heard you once say, about Captain Shurker, that it wasn't honourable to Back Out. I have my Second-best suit, some linen, my Bible, and Latin Delectus, and a Sum of Money which is the Beginning of a Fortune. I know what I am Doing—that is, I shall To-morrow—so I hope you won't be angry and kiss Mama and my love to Agnes and I am your Afectionate Dutiful Son,

"C. S. TRELAWNY."

Early on Monday morning, Phil introduced me to my new quarters in the smoko-harness room, where we found Mrs. Swigsby engaged in constructing what she called a "trumpery" bed. Prom the good lady's demeanour, I could not help fancying that she even now harboured some misgivings concerning me, for she glanced at me now and then as if she expected me to go off like a grenade. It was useless, however, to attempt to enlighten her further. Phil confessed as much, and owned that we must take our chance.

He introduced me to the dark passage and private entrance, and presenting me with the key, took his leave, assuring me that no one would enter the apartment until evening, when he would himself bring me supper, bear me company at that meal, and hear how I had felt my way.

When, a few minutes later, I turned into Jew's-road, the sensation of not belonging to myself came back rather strongly, bringing with it a brother sensation, still less soothing—that of not, for the moment, belonging to anybody else! Nevertheless, I held up my head, and marched on as confidently as if I expected an influential friend to meet me by appointment at the next corner.

How—how did people begin? Usually,I thought, with some happy incident. Would any obliging infant, of high birth, do me the favour to be nearly run over? Any stout gentleman—victim to casual orange-peel—trip and be picked up by me? Any hurrying man of commerce let fall a book containing securities of inestimable value, close to my feet? No; most of these things had had their turn. Fortune scorns to repeat herself. I had a conviction that I must begin at the foot of the ladder. "He" (some great man) "once swept a barber's shop," was a legend of my childhood. Where was such a barber?

"Wanted, a Lad."

It came like an answer. Were these characters real? If so, Fortune—though she writes an indifferent hand—has not deserted me. I am a lad. And wanted. Behold me!

I entered the establishment. It wasn't a barber's. Greasier. Pigs' toes, I imagine, prevailed.

"What can I do for you, young gentleman?" inquired the stout white-aproned proprietor, brandishing an immense knife.

"Please, do you want a lad?" I asked.

The man looked at me from head to foot. Then he said:

"We did, but unfortnetly we only takes six parlour-boarders at a time; and the Markiss o' Queerfinch has just grabbed the last wacancy for his seventeenth son."

"I—I want to be a lad, sir," I faltered.

"Lookee here, young gentleman; if you don't want none of my trotters, use your own, or you'll get me into a scrape as well as yourself. Now, off with you!"

Twice more, tempted by similar announcements, I ventured to prefer my claims, but with no better success. One glance at my exterior seemed to satisfy everybody that I was not the lad for them. Yes, I was too smart! The recent runaway was visible in my still glossy blue jacket and gilt buttons; not to mention the snowy turn-down. I was not sorry when evening came, that I might return home, and recount my adventures to the sympathising Phil.

Philip agreed that I was not, perhaps, exactly the sort of messenger a struggling tripe-seller would select, but suggested that I might fly at higher game. Why not feel my way among classes to whom a gentlemanly appearance and manner did not form an insuperable objection?

Why not, indeed? Time was precious. Mrs. Swigsby's misgivings were evidently on the increase. I would do it to-morrow.

"Right, my boy," said Phil, as he bade me good night. "Straight, now, to the fountain head, you. know."

I didn't exactly know. Feeling one's way, and going to the fountain head—though admirable as general principles—were, not so easy of application. Where was the fountain head?

"In your great banking and commercial firms," Phil had said, over our wine; "always deal with Principals."

My friend evidently assumed that I should seek out parties of this description. Accordingly, selecting from the Directory the names of a very eminent City banking firm, I, "felt my way" towards their distant domicile, and found myself in the presence of about fifty clerks—all busily employed. After standing for some time unnoticed, I approached one of the desks.

"Please, sir, I want your head."

"My what?" inquired the clerk, with considerable energy. "What do you want with my head?'

I explained that I meant his Principal; the head of the firm: whereupon the clerk smiled languidly.

"Mr. Ingott's down at Goldborough Park," he said, " but if it's anything about the Turkish Loan, we'll send an express. He can be here tomorrow."

I assured him it had nothing to do with the Turkish Loan, or any loan, and that any other partner of the house would do as well.

The clerk nodded, whispered to another clerk and desiring me to follow, led the way through a labyrinth of desks, into an inner room, where sat an old gentleman reading the paper. He looked at me inquiringly through his gold eye-glasses. The clerk whispered—and—

"Well, my young friend?" said the old banker.

"Pl—please, sir," I blurted out, "do you want a confidential lad?"

The clerk tittered; but the old gentleman, with one look, dismissed him, and proceeded:

"Who sent you hither, my boy, and what do you mean?"

His manner was very kind, so I told him at once, that nobody sent me; that, acting upon advice, I was engaged in feeling my way, and wished to begin by being a lad—a confidential lad, if possible; that, with that view, I had come straight to the fountain head; that, being, I must confess, at variance with my friends, I could not mention whence I came, but that he might rely upon my honesty; and that I was prepared, if necessary, to deposit in the hands of the firm a certain sum of money, as an indemnification for any losses that might be incurred through my inexperience.

The old gentleman inquired the amount.

"Two-and-sixpence."

I saw his eye twinkle; then, as if a sudden thought had struck him, he put his hand upon my shoulder and turned me to the light.

"Hem—I thought so," I fancied I heard him mutter. Then he added aloud: "See here, my lad. I cannot make so important an engagement on my own responsibility. I must consult my partners in the firm. Sit down in the messenger's room—that door yonder. In half an hour I will give you your answer."

In the messenger's room I found a respectable-looking youth, eating bread-and-cheese. He offered me some, but I could not eat. Kind as the old gentleman's manner was, there was something in it that gave me uneasiness. It almost seemed as if he knew me.

"Who," I asked the messenger, "is that old gentleman who said he must consult his partners?"

"Sir Edward Goldshore—him that lives at Bilton Abbey, near Penrhyn."

" Penrhyn? General Trelawn/s?"

"That, sir, is the ticket. The general often lunches here when he's in town. Consult his partners, did the governor say? Why, they're all out of town but him!"

"Don't you," I asked, faintly, "think this room of yours rather hot? I'll—take a run—and—and come back before I'm wanted.''

Ere the youth could start any objections I had vanished.

That unlucky day was doomed to an unluckier close. Concanen made his appearance in the harness-room with a somewhat harassed face.

"It's a bore, my dear old fellow, but I fear your camp must be broken up. There's no trusting old Swigsby. You must move on, Charley, my boy, and, if you won't go slick home, like a reasonable chap, feel your way in other quarters."

There was, obviously, no alternative. I marched on the following morning. But Phil's good offices did not cease until he had seen me established in a (very humble) lodging not far distant, but in a locality where I could continue to feel my way without much chance of recognition. The rent—five shillings a week—Phil at first insisted on paying; but, on my representation that the acceptance of any money aid might vitiate my entire future, the kind fellow consented to purchase, at full value, such articles of my wardrobe as would supply me with all that was necessary for an entire week, leaving my half-crown still intact.

Thus was I, for the second time, adrift. Fortune kept steadily aloof. Go whither, ask whom, I would, the same suspicious look invariably greeted me. Whether I brushed my jacket neatly, or tore experimental holes in the elbows, it seemed that I could never hit the desired medium between gentility and vagabondism.

I shall not describe at length those miserable days, nor the steady diminution of my hopes and resources, until the middle of the second week found me, with my rent paid, indeed, but destitute of every thing save the clothes I stood in, and sixpence!

I had given up in despair all search for employment. Go home I would not. Of Phil I had heard nothing, and I feared to compromise him by any overt communication. What was to be done?

One morning, I was prowling feebly about, very hungry, and, every now and then, feeling the sixpence in my jacket-pocket, as though the very sight of a cook-shop might have drawn it forth, when I noticed an old Jew seated on the lower steps of a house. He was not a neat or a well-washed Jew. I don't think that I ever in after life beheld a dirtier; but my attention was drawn to him by the demeanour of a potboy, who, in passing, had muttered, "Old chap's sewn up!" and whistled on two fingers, almost over the man's head, a paean of congratulation upon the circumstance.

The old Jew looked faintly up. The face, though grimy, was not, I thought, ignoble; and, indifferent whither I strolled, I turned to take another look at him. He was very old, very ragged, and, to all appearance, famine-stricken; at least, I never saw hunger written so legibly in any face, except my own. He made a languid motion with his fingers towards me, like a dying creature, but did not beg, and I passed on my way. Suddenly, the thought shot across me, "Should the old man die!"

The sixpence seemed to give a spontaneous leap in my pocket, as though inspired with the same idea. Back I went, wavering, for, if I yielded to charitable impulse, what must I myself do? If he would divide it with me—but how ask a dying man for change? I passed him again.

Either my fancy misled me, or the sixpence gave me a discontented punch in the side. "But," I answered, as though in remonstrance with it, "you, are the last hope of my fortune; in giving you, I part with millions—'two millions.'" A last emphatic punch determined me. I turned once more, walked hastily back, and dropped my two millions into the old man's hand!

How I got through the remainder of that day I hardly know. It was about dusk, when, growing every moment more faint and desponding, I turned to crawl homeward. I was pausing unconsciously before a baker's window, when a hand touched my shoulder. It was my Jew. The old man had changed considerably for the better, and now, of the two, looked far the more alive.

"Good rolls those," said the old Jew, approvingly. "Hungry?"

Almost too weary to speak, I nodded.

"And—and—no money?" asked the old man, with curious eagerness.

I shook my head, and prepared to move away.

"I—I spent that sixpence," resumed the Jew, "but if you don't despise a poor man's haunt, I'll give you a supper, and, if you need it, lodging too. My castle is close at hand."

I looked at him with surprise, and followed him. Falling into a sort of mendicant gait, he shuffled feebly on, and, turning into a dark narrow street, composed of very small tenements indeed, paused at one of the nearest, and struck upon the window-sill with his crutch-stick.

"Take hold of my coat when she opens the door/' said the old Jew. "You may find it darkish below."

It was darkish, insomuch that the "she" who opened to us was invisible in the gloom, but a silver voice, that was not the Jew's, uttered an exclamation of welcome, and died away, like a spirit's, into some upper region, whither we stumbled in pursuit. A candle-end, dimly flickering in the comer, revealed our conductress in the person of a girl of about fifteen, attired in a thick white robe which covered her from neck to foot, and seemed, so far as I might presume to judge, to be her only garment. The large sleeves were turned back to the elbows, as if she had been engaged in household work, and the inaudibility of her movements was accounted for by her feet being bare. A broad white fillet tied back immense masses of dark brown hair. The face! Boy as I was, and a very sleepy and exhausted one—I was roused at once into a state of stupid ecstasy by one glance at her marvellous beauty. "Is it a woman? Is it a woman?" I remember gasping, as it were, to myself. And as she stood, for a few seconds, motionless, her form and dress like sculpture, her white arms extended towards me in questioning surprise, I felt as if it would be no sin to fall at her feet, in adoration of what seemed more of Heaven than earth.

"Supper, Zell," said the old Jew, and darkness fell upon the scene. Zell had vanished.

The rest of that evening was a blank, with passing gleams of Paradise. Fatigue and inanition forced me to sleep, even while striving to eat. But, in those intervals of glory, I was conscious of sitting at a feast, between the Queen of the Fairies, and an exceedingly ragged old Hebrew whom she addressed as grandfather; sensible that the latter (speaking as though I had been absent) told the former a story about me and a sixpence, which seemed to be amusing; aware, finally, that Queen Titania remarked, in a pitying voice:

"The child! He ought to be in bed!" And, without further ceremony, put me there.

My couch was on the floor of that same apartment, and the last thing I remember was Titania's foot, so small, so purely white, so bluely veined, withal so near my lips, that I would have kissed it, if I dared—but went to sleep while thinking of it.

My rest was so profound, that, when I awoke to another day, Zell and her grandfather were finishing breakfast. Both were dressed as on the preceding day; the old man, with his squalid aspect, tattered garments, and rusty shoes, offering a strange contrast to the bewitching creature, fresh and sweet as a dewy moss-rose, who sat beside him. If her beauty had asserted itself in the semi-darkness overnight, the full light of day only confirmed it more. The countenance was unquestionably of the Jewish order, but of the richest tint, the most refined and delicate mould. I lay in a sort of joyful stupor, utterly unable to remove my eyes from the glorious object. If love were ever born at eleven years old, here was the nativity of a passion that could never die. O, angel!— Zell suddenly discovered that I was awake.

After bringing me some tea, she quitted the room, and the old man came and sat down beside me. Having questioned me about my home and friends—to which I candidly replied that I had, at present, none to speak of, being engaged in simply feeling my way—he went on:

"You have been frank with me, my boy. I'll be frank with you. Though a very poor, poor man—oh, a very poor man—I am not, as you supposed, a beggar. I have means of living, such as they are, but these compel me to be much from home. My granddaughter, my Zell (what fool gave her that name I know not; she is called Zeruiah), has neither relation nor friend. For reasons I cannot now explain, she never quits this house. My heart bleeds at the solitude to which I am forced to condemn her. Stay with us, child, for a while. You shall have board and lodging, it may be some trifle over, when times are good. You can go on messages for Zell, and help her in the house. What say you?"

If the old gentleman had intimated that the reversion of the crown of England awaited my acceptance, my heart would have throbbed with far less exultant joy! Stay with her! See her! Serve her! Be her blessed thrall!

What I replied, I know not. I only know that ten minutes later the old gentleman had shuffled forth, and I, washing teacups under the eye of my beautiful mistress, had broken one, and received a box on the ear, delivered without any ceremony whatever. Zell was evidently as impulsive as she was beautiful. Presuming on her immense seniority of four years, the young lady made no more account of me than if I had been a kitten.

The room we sat in, and a little nook above, where Zell slept, were, like herself, scrupulously clean: all the remainder of the mansion being apparently given fairly over to decay and dirt. Our slender meals were prepared in the sitting-room, and provided from a daily sum, of I should think about fourpence-halfpenny, doled out by the lord of the mansion before leaving. My lady would instruct me where and how to invest this capital to the greatest advantage, and, according to my success, reward me on my return with a radiant smile, or a sounding box on the ear.

Mistress Zell seldom making me the recipient of her thoughts and words, it was by slow degrees that I learned the following particulars: That my host, Mr. Moses Jeremiah Abrahams, was a gentleman of habits so penurious, that he might have rivalled, if not eclipsed, the most illustrious misers of the age, had he only possessed anything to hoard. That Zell was dressed as I beheld her, to preclude the possibility of her going forth—to incur expenses—in the public ways. (As, sitting on the ground, while she told me this, I looked up in my lady's glorious eyes, it struck me that the old man might have had a tenderer reason.) That Mr. Abrahams, absent, most days, till dark, was, on certain days, later still. Finally, that I must not be surprised if, on one or more of those days, I heard his signal on the window-sill, but not himself on the stairs. "And woe to you!" concluded my lady, threatening me with her little hand, "if you betray our secret!"

"Our!" My heart turned faint, I caught her meaning instantly, and experienced the first burning touch of jealousy. My mistress had a lover.

"What makes you colour so, you stupid foolish boy?" said my lady, half laughing, half angry. "Can we trust you, or can we not?"

I stammered some nonsense about being at her command, body and soul. And I have no doubt I meant it.

My devotion was soon tested. That very evening (one of Mr. Abrahams' late ones) a knock, like his, sounded on the window-sill. Zell, bidding me follow, flew down stairs, and, softly opening the window, was clasped in the embrace of an individual to all appearance as ragged and infirm of mien as her grandfather himself.

For a moment she suffered this, then drew back, leaving the visitor her hand, which that monster, whoever he was, seemed to devour with kisses. There ensued a whispered conversation, during which I observed that the speakers referred to me. Then, as if alarmed by a signal from without, the stranger vanished. We returned up-stairs.

Next morning my mistress gave me a note without address. I was to take it to a particular shop, and give it to a particular stranger who would accost me. No particular stranger was there. Afraid to return without fulfilling my mission, I was lingering over some trifling purchase, when a phaeton dashed up to the door, and a gentleman entered the shop. He was very handsome, wore thick black moustaches carefully curled, had long gilt spurs, and looked like an officer. He was well known to the shop-people, for he tossed about a number of articles, laughing and jesting with the mistress, but purchased nothing. Could this be my man? I managed, at all events, to let him see what I was carrying. We left the shop together.

"Toss it over! Quick, my lad!" said the gentleman, sharply. "Take this, and this" (he gave me another note, and half-a-crown). "And meet me here to-morrow."

I told him I did not want his money, but would take his note. He looked at me, uttered a long low whistle—expressive, I take it, of astonishment—and drove away.

The joy in my sweet mistress's eyes, and a white hand stroking my curls, even while she read the letter, were a sufficient reward. Then she made me her confidant. Her suitor was Lord John Loveless, son of the proud Earl of St. Buryans, with whom, owing to some little financial misunderstanding, poor Lord John was, for the moment, on terms so far from satisfactory, as to render it improbable that the earl would yield anything like a cordial assent to his son's union with the granddaughter of an impoverished Jew. Hence the necessity for those clandestine interviews, which my mistress atoned for to her conscience, by sternly forbidding her lover ever to cross the threshold.

My lord was at the shop next morning as soon as I.

He took me familiarly by the arm.

"Come and take a pull on the river, boy. I want to have a talk with you."

It was not far to the river. We got a boat, and pulled ff, my companion chatting pleasantly enough. At last he said:

"That old governor of yours keeps you pretty short, I take it? What does he do, now, with his money? Do you never hear him counting his guineas? Come!"

I positively denied it, and gave such candid reasons for my conviction that he was all but a pauper, that my companion seemed staggered. He became grave, not to say morose, and the row home seemed to bore him. I did not report to my lady all that had passed between us; I could not have left out his bad spirits when I described to him her poverty, and that might have pained her.

After this, my lord's visits became less frequent, and my mistress's smiles rarer. She moved about with a slower and a sadder step; and sometimes sat with her marble arms crossed on her lap, until I almost doubted if she lived. At which times, I would creep into the field of her eye, if but to change its fixed expression.

A terrible event came to rouse her. The old gentleman was brought home, one night, dying. He had been hustled, knocked down, and robbed, by some miscreants in the street. Though he had sustained no injury that should ordinarily prove mortal, the shock to his system, and, still more, the alleged robbery to which he perpetually referred, combined to give him to the grave. In spite of medical efforts he sank fast, and, at midnight, died.

My mistress, who had never left his side, bore all with a strange patience. I never saw her weep, but her white face and gleaming eyes struck me with awe.

A will, duly executed, was found, in which the old man, in general terms, bequeathed to his granddaughter, Zeruiah Abrahams, everything of which he should die possessed, appointing one Lemuel Samuelson guardian and executor. What money the old man had about him, when robbed, was never known. All the coin in the house amounted to no more than sufficed to pay the medical attendant, while the furniture was probably not worth more than twenty or thirty pounds. Part of this, with the assistance of a neighbour, we sold, to spare the old man a pauper's funeral; the rest, we thought, would provide clothes for Zell (since we must both now go out and feel our way), and support us both until we found our way. When this was done, the house looked desolate and wretched enough, and my poor mistress scarcely less so. Though she never spoke of it, the desertion of her lover—of whom in all that distressful time we never heard—cut her to the heart's core.

One day, .before her clothes came, as I was moving restlessly about the room, thinking what I could say to comfort her, she suddenly lifted her head:

"Charley, will you desert me, too?"

"Zell! 'Desert you' " Like a young fool, as I was, I burst into a passion of tears.

" Don't—don't! My dear child—my good ch——!" And, infected by my tears, poor Zell laid her head on the table and wept aloud.

Almost at that moment my eye was caught by an urchin in the street, beckoning eagerly. Stammering some excuse, I ran out.

"Gem' giv' me a bob," said the boy, "fur to say as he's a waitin' at the corner."

At the corner; or, more correctly, round it, stood Lord John Loveless.

"Now, my boy," said his lordship, very hurriedly, "I am here at great risk to—to myself, and have only a moment to stay. About your mistress? Is she well? Is she cared for? Did the old fellow really die a beggar?"

I replied, that the old gentleman had neither lived nor died a beggar, but that we had no money, and intended to feel our way towards work, as soon as we could go out.

Lord Joha seemed struck at this, and made an irresolute movement in the direction of the house.

"Won't you come in?" I forced myself to say.

"N—no," was the reply. "I can't. Urgent business elsewhere. See, boy. Give her this. Say I have been absent with my regiment, or I'd have sent before."

And, if ever noble gentleman skulked away, I think Lord John did.

Kneeling at my sweet mistress's feet, I faithfully recounted the interview. Zell listened, without once removing her eyes from mine. Then she said: "Put his—his wretched alms—into a cover, and take it to the address I shall write." All which was duly done.

But, the events of the day were not over. As we sat towards evening, discussing projects for the morrow, a stranger somewhat peremptorily demanded admittance, and, in company with another individual who had apparently been lurking aloof, produced some papers, and declared himself in possession of the house. He was our landlord. Our rent was deeply in arrear. His applications and threats having been alike disregarded by the eccentric Mr. Abrahams, he had taken the necessary steps to resume possession, and now came, inspired with an intense hatred (as he openly declared) for all Jew tenants, to enforce his rights.

It was in vain to remonstrate. We had not one shilling in our possession, and, for furniture, only our beds, chairs, table, and cooking utensils: all which, united, would not have paid half the debt.

"At least, sir," said my mistress, "you will not turn us into the streets, to-night?"

"Well!" said the fellow, reluctantly, "hardly that. But I'm up to these dodges, I promise you. Let you stay, and here you will stay. We'll stop that game. Without beds and window-sashes, you'll soon be ready to go. Collect the traps, Bill Bloxam, and look alive."

"It will soon be night, sir," said Zell, pale as a ghost: "a night that promises to be both cold and wet; in charity, leave us the protection of windows."

"Pin up your petticoat," returned the landlord, coolly. "Here she goes!"

He roughly tore at the window-sash. Out it came, crashing. But the rotten woodwork at the side, deprived of its support, and yielding as it seemed to some pressure from within, came away also. There was a heavy rushing fall that shook the very house—a rolling, ringing, spinning, settling down! From end to end, the apartment was literally carpeted with gold!

"Phsh!" said the reeling landlord, as he wiped the dust from Ins eyes.

My mistress was the first to recover composure. A watchman, on his way to night-duty, attracted by the crash, stood opposite. She bade me call him in, and, dismissing the now subdued landlord, procured a trusty guardian for the night. My mistress also despatched a special messenger in quest of Mr. Lemuel Samuelson, who, arriving with the dawn, joined us in further investigations.

Two thousand seven hundred guineas had been scattered on the floor. In different parts of the house, generally crammed into chinks and chasms of the decaying woodwork, were bank-notes to the amount of thirty-two thousand pounds. But even that was a trifle compared to the crafty old miser's foreign securities, which, disinterred in one lump, represented the immense sum of two hundred and ninety thousand pounds.

"And now, my love," said Mr. Samuelson, when both search and calculation were exhausted, "you will give Mrs. S. and me the pleasure of your company, at my little box at Sydenham, until you decide what next to do."

My mistress at once assented. Since the discovery of the treasure, she had had intervals of the deepest melancholy. Was she thinking what might have been, had the old man been less reticent? She had hardly addressed a word to me, and, until Mr. Samuelson came obsequiously to hand her to the carriage, I knew not if she would even bid me farewell. At last it was her guardian himself who drew her attention to me, by asking if she had any directions to give the "lad."

"The lad," repeated Zell, abstractedly.

"Call at my office, boy!" said Mr. Samuelson, who seemed impatient to get away. "By-the-by, what's your name?"

I made no answer. I was looking at my mistress.

"Sulky, eh?" said Mr. Samuelson. "Worse for you. Come, my love."

"Charley! Charley!" said Zell.

Then I could not answer. She waved her hand towards me, but her guardian led her away,

All that day, I sat at the window, as though I had fully expected her to return; but, in reality, I had no such idea. I knew that my darling mistress was gone—for ever, ever, gone—and had taken with her all joy, all happiness, all desire of life. I was conscious of a sense of hunger, but had no heart to look for food; at the time when we used to prepare our supper on those happy evenings, I crept to my lady's little bed, and lay down there. A curious rushing sound was in my ears, and my pulse seemed rather to give a continuous shudder, than to beat. Dreams came, without introductory ceremony of the sleep. I heard myself shouting and struggling. Then, darkness . . . .

I awoke in my father's house. I had been there three weeks. Though very weak, I was in the path of recovery, and was soon in condition to return to school. But not to Glumper's. No.

I learned that, in my delirium, I had given a clue to my name and residence. What after-communications I made, I cannot say: I only know that both my mother, and my saucy little Agues, were as familiar with the name of Zell as my own daily thoughts were. She was my love, my queen, my darling only mistress. In that faith, and in the firm assurance that I should one blessed day see her again, I grew to manhood.

There was a grand ball at Dublin Castle, at which I, a young lieutenant of dragoons, chanced to be present and abetting. The reception was more than usually crowded and magnificent, it being the farewell of a popular lord-lieutenant.

As the latter moved about among his smiling guests, he halted at a group beside me.

"Well, young gentlemen," said his excellency, "who is the successful knight? Surely this prize is not to escape us all! Resplendent beauty—sweetness— accomplishments—twelve thousand a year. Shame to Ireland, if this Mexican belle quits us to-night, her last in the land (for I hear she returns to Mexico), a disengaged woman!"

"She will not, my lord," replied Colonel Walsingham.

"Hah! Who wins?" asked his excellency, hardly less interested than if he had himself been a candidate.

"That is doubtful, still," put in young Lord Goring. "Hawkins, Rushton, O'Rourke, Walsingham, St. Buryans, my humble self, have all been 'mentioned' in the race. St. Buryans for choice."

"Why so?" asked his lordship.

"The lady has been seated this whole evening beside St. Buryans' lady-mother," said Goring, in a low voice. "And she's the cleverest woman, at a finish, in Christendom—or Jewry either."

"You said it would be decided to-night?"

"Thus. The young lady will dance but once, the last dance. We have all solicited the honour. She reserves her choice. It has been agreed to accept the augury. Your lordship understands? The unsuccessful withdraw."

His excellency nodded, smiled, and passed on,

A few minutes later, a movement in the room drew my attention. All eyes seemed directed towards one object. Up the centre of the room, leaning on the arm of Lord John Loveless, now Earl St. Buryans, was passing my beautiful mistress! Taller—fuller, no whit lovelier, for that could not be. She looked full in my face. I thought she paused for a second. No, the superb brown eyes were languidly withdrawn, and, without recognition, she moved on.

The last dance was announced from the orchestra. As if under a spell, I placed myself opposite to my lady's chair, though remote from it. I saw the rival suitors, with well-bred self-possession, gather round, and each in turn prefer his claim. All were declined. St. Buryans—by whose haughty-looking mother my lady sat—alone remained. He approached her with confidence, his mother greeting him with a victorious smile. Before he could open his lips, Zell rose:

"Give me your arm. I wish to cross the room," she said to him haughtily.

She did cross. She came to me. Drawing her arm away from her conductor's, she held out both her little hands.

"Charley, Charley! Don't you know me? I come to ask you to—to dance with me—with your old friend, Zell."

We have more than one deer park—but it was from the Scotch one that, on Zell's reminder (she always pretends to be older and more thoughtful than I), I sent my friend Jack Rogers a haunch worthy of a king's acceptance.

CHAPTER V

ANOTHER PAST LODGER RELATES HIS OWN GHOST STORY

Amelia Edwards

The circumstances I am about to relate to you have truth to recommend them. They happened to myself, and my recollection of them is as vivid as if they had taken place only yesterday. Twenty years, however, have gone by since that night. During those twenty years I have told the story to but one other person. I tell it now with a reluctance which I find it difficult to overcome. All I entreat, meanwhile, is that you will abstain from forcing your own conclusions upon me. I want nothing explained away. I desire no arguments. My mind on this subject is quite made up, and, having the testimony of my own senses to rely upon, I prefer to abide by it.

Well! It was just twenty years ago, and within a day or two of the end of the grouse season. I had been out all day with my gun, and had had no sport to speak of. The wind was due east; the month, December; the place, a bleak wide moor in the far north of England. And I had lost my way. It was not a pleasant place in which to lose one's way, with the first feathery flakes of a coming snow-storm just fluttering down upon the heather, and the leaden evening closing in all around. I shaded my eyes with my hand, and stared anxiously into the gathering darkness, where the purple moorland melted into a range of low hills, some ten or twelve miles distant. Not the faintest smoke-wreath, not the tiniest cultivated patch, or fence, or sheep-track, met my eyes in any direction. There was nothing for it but to walk on, and take my chance of finding what shelter I could, by the way. So I shouldered my gun again, and pushed wearily forward; for I had been on foot since an hour after daybreak, and had eaten nothing since breakfast.

Meanwhile, the snow began to come down with ominous steadiness, and the wind fell. After this, the cold became more intense, and the night came rapidly up. As for me, my prospects darkened with the darkening sky, and my heart grew heavy as I thought how my young wife was already watching for me through the window of our little inn parlour, and thought of all the suffering in store for her throughout this weary night. We had been married four months, and, having spent our autumn in the Highlands, were now lodging in a remote little village situated just on the verge of the great English moorlands. We were very much in love, and, of course, very happy. This morning, when we parted, she had implored me to return before dusk, and I had promised her that I would. What would I not have given to have kept my word!

Even now, weary as I was, I felt that with a supper, an hour's rest, and a guide, I might still get back to her before midnight, if only guide and shelter could be found.

And all this time, the snow fell and the night thickened. I stopped and shouted every now and then, but my shouts seemed only to make the silence deeper. Then a vague sense of uneasiness came upon me, and I began to remember stories of travellers who had walked on and on in the falling snow until, wearied out, they were fain to lie down and sleep their lives away. Would it be possible, I asked myself, to keep on thus through all the long dark night? Would there not come a time when my limbs must fail, and my resolution give way? When I, too, must sleep the sleep of death. Death! I shuddered. How hard to die just now, when life lay all so bright before me! How hard for my darling, whose whole loving heart——but that thought was not to be borne! To banish it, I shouted again, louder and longer, and then listened eagerly. Was my shout answered, or did I only fancy that I heard a far-off cry? I halloed again, and again the echo followed. Then a wavering speck of light came suddenly out of the dark, shifting, disappearing, growing momentarily nearer and brighter. Running towards it at full speed, I found myself, to my great joy, face to face with an old man and a lantern.

"Thank God!" was the exclamation that burst involuntarily from my lips.

Blinking and frowning, he lifted his lantern and peered into my face.

"What for?" growled he, sulkily.

"Well—for you. I began to fear I should be lost in the snow."

"Eh, then, folks do get cast away hereabouts fra' time to time, an' what's to hinder you from bein' cast away likewise, if the Lord's so minded?"

"If the Lord is so minded that you and I shall be lost together, friend, we must submit," I replied; " but I don't mean to be lost without you. How far am I now from Dwolding?"

"A gude twenty mile, more or less."

"And the nearest village?"

"The nearest village is Wyke, an' that's twelve mile t'other side."

"Where do you live, then?"

"Out yonder," said he, with a vague jerk of the lantern.

"You're going home, I presume?"

"Maybe I am."

"Then I'm going with you."

The old man shook his head, and rubbed his nose reflectively with the handle of the lantern.

"It ain't o' no use," growled he. " He 'ont let you in—not he."

"We'll see about that," I replied, briskly. "Who is He?"

"The master."

"Who is the master?"

"That's nowt to you," was the unceremonious reply.

"Well, well; you lead the way, and I'll engage that the master shall give me shelter and a supper to-night."

"Eh, you can try him!" muttered my reluctant guide; and, still shaking his head, he hobbled, gnome-like, away through the falling snow. A large mass loomed up presently out of the darkness, and a huge dog rushed out, barking furiously,

"Is this the house?" I asked.

"Ay, it's the house. Down, Bey!" And he fumbled in his pocket for the key.

I drew up close behind him, prepared to lose no chance of entrance, and saw in the little circle of light shed by the lantern that the door was heavily studded with iron nails, like the door of a prison. In another minute he had turned the key and I had pushed past him into the house.

Once inside, I looked round with curiosity, and found myself in a great raftered hall, which served, apparently, a variety of uses. One end was piled to the roof with corn, like a barn. The other was stored with flour-sacks, agricultural implements, casks, and all kinds of miscellaneous lumber; while from the beams overhead hung rows of hams, flitches, and bunches of dried herbs for winter use. In the centre of the floor stood some huge object gauntly dressed in. a dingy wrapping-cloth, and reaching half way to the rafters. Lifting a corner of this cloth, I saw, to my surprise, a telescope of very considerable size, mounted on a rude moveable platform with four small wheels. The tube was made of painted wood, bound round with bands of metal rudely fashioned; the speculum, so far as I could estimate its size in the dim light, measured at kast fifteen inches in diameter. While I was yet examining the instrument, and asking myself whether it was not the work of some self-taught optician, a bell rang sharply.

"That's for you," said my guide, with a malicious grin. "Yonder's his room."

He pointed to a low black door at the opposite side of the hall. I crossed over, rapped somewhat loudly, and went in, without waiting for an invitation. A huge, white-haired old man rose from a table covered with books and papers, and confronted me sternly.

"Who are you?" said he. "How came you here? What do you want?"

"James Murray, barrister-at-law. On foot across the moor. Meat, drink, and sleep."

He bent his bushy brows into a portentous frown.

"Mine is not a house of entertainment," he said, haughtily. "Jacob, how dared you admit this stranger?"

"I didn't admit him," grumbled the old man. "He followed me over the muir, and shouldered his way in before me. I'm no match for six foot two."

"And pray, sir, by what right have you forced an entrance into my house?"

"The same by which I should have clung to your boat, if I were drowning. The right of self-preservation."

"Self-preservation?"

"There's an inch of snow on the ground already," I replied, briefly; "and it would be deep enough to cover my body before daybreak."

He strode to the window, pulled aside a heavy black curtain, and looked out.

"It is true," he said. " You can stay, if you choose, till morning. Jacob, serve the supper."

With this he waved me to a seat, resumed his own, and became at once absorbed in the studies from which I had disturbed him.

I placed my gun in a corner, drew a chair to the hearth, and examined my quarters at leisure. Smaller and less incongruous in its arrangements than the hall, this room contained, nevertheless, much to awaken my curiosity. The floor was carpetless. The whitewashed walls were in parts scrawled over with strange diagrams, and in others covered with shelves crowaed with philosophical instruments, the uses of many of which were unknown to me. On one side of the fireplace, stood a bookcase filled with dingy folios; on the other, a small organ, fantastically decorated with painted carvings of mediaeval saints and devils. Through the half-opened door of a cupboard at the further end of the room, I saw a long array of geological specimens, surgical preparations, crucibles, retorts, and jars of chemicals; while on the mantelshelf beside me, amid a number of small objects, stood a model of the solar system, a small galvanic battery, and a microscope. Every chair had its burden. Every corner was heaped high with books. The very floor was littered over with maps, casts, papers, tracings, and learned lumber of all conceivable kincis.

I stared about me with an amazement increased by every fresh object upon which my eyes chanced to rest. So strange a room I had never seen; yet seemed it stranger still, to find such a room in a lone farm-house amid those wild and solitary moors! Over and over again, I looked from my host to his surroundings, and from his surroundings back to my host, asking myself who and what he could be? His head was singularly fine; but it was more the head of a poet than of a philosopher. Broad in the temples, prominent over the eyes, and clothed with a rough profusion of perfectly white hair, it had all the ideality and much ot the ruggedness that characterises the head of Louis von Beethoven. There were the same deep lines about the mouth, and the same stern furrows in the brow. There was the same concentration of expression. While I was yet observing him, the door opened, and Jacob brought in the supper. His master then closed his book, rose, and with more courtesy of manner than he had yet shown, invited me to the table.

A dish of ham and eggs, a loaf of brown bread, and a bottle of admirable sherry, were placed before me.

"I have but the homeliest farm-house fare to offer you, sir," said my entertainer. "Your appetite, I trust, will make up for the deficiencies of our larder."

I had already fallen upon the viands, and now protested, with the enthusiasm of a starving sportsman, that I had never eaten anything so delicious.

He bowed stiffly, and sat down to his own supper, which consisted, primitively, of a jug of milk and a basin of porridge. We ate in silence, and, when we had done, Jacob removed the tray. I then drew my chair back to the fireside. My host, somewhat to my surprise, did the same, and turning abruptly towards me, said:

"Sir, I have lived here in strict retirement for three-and-twenty years. During that time, I have not seen as many strange faces, and I have not read a single newspaper. You are the first stranger who has crossed my threshold for more than four years. Will you favour me with a few words of information respecting that outer world from which I have parted company so long?"

"Pray interrogate me," I replied. "I am heartily at your service."

He bent his head in acknowledgment; leaned forward, with his elbows resting on his knees and his chin supported in the palms of his hands; stared fixedly into the fire; and proceeded to question me.

His inquiries related chiefly to scientific matters, with the later progress of which, as applied to the practical purposes of life, he was almost wholly unacquainted. No student of science myself, I replied as well as my slight information permitted; but the task was far from easy, and I was much relieved when, passing from interrogation to discussion, he began pouring forth his own conclusions upon the facts which I had been attempting to place before him. He talked, and I listened spellbound. He talked till I believe he almost forgot my presence, and only thought aloud. I had never heard anything like it then; I have never heard anything like it since. Familiar with all systems of all philosophies, subtle in analysis, bold in generalisation, he poured forth his thoughts in an uninterrupted stream, and, still leaning forward in the same moody attitude with his eyes fixed upon the fire, wandered from topic to topic, from speculation to speculation, like an inspired dreamer. From practical science to mental philosophy; from electricity in the wire to electricity in the nerve; from Watts to Mesmer, from Mesmer to Reichenbach, from Reichenbach to Swedenborg, Spinoza, Condillac, Descartes, Berkeley, Aristotle, Plato, and the Magi and mystics of the East, were transitions which, however bewildering in their variety and scope, seemed easy and harmonious upon his lips as sequences in music. By-and-by—I forget now by what link of conjecture or illustration—he passed on to that field which lies beyond the boundary line of even conjectural philosophy, and reaches no man knows whither. He spoke of the soul and its aspirations; of the spirit and its powers; of second sight; of prophecy; of those phenomena which, under the names of ghosts, spectres, and supernatural appearances, have been denied by the sceptics and attested by the credulous, of all ages.

"The world," he said, "grows hourly more and more sceptical of all that lies beyond its own narrow radius; and our men of science foster the fatal tendency. They condemn as fable all that resists experiment. They reject as false all that cannot be brought to the test of the laboratory or the dissecting-room. Against what superstition have they waged so long and obstinate a war, as against the belief in apparitions? And yet what superstition has maintained its hold upon the minds of men so long and so firmly? Show me any fact in physics, in history, in archaeology, which is supported by testimony so wide and so various. Attested by all races of men, in all ages, and in all climates, by the soberest sages of antiquity, by the rudest savage of to-day, by the Christian, the Pagan, the Pantheist, the Materialist, this phenomenon is treated as a nursery tale by the philosophers of our century. Circumstantial evidence weighs with them as a feather in the balance. The comparison of causes with effects, however valuable in physical science, is put aside as worthless and unreliable. The evidence of competent witnesses, however conclusive in a court of justice, counts for nothing. He who pauses before he pronounces, is condemned as a trifler. He who believes, is a dreamer or a fool."

He spoke with bitterness, and, having said thus, relapsed for some minutes into silence. Presently he raised his head from his hands, and added, with an altered voice and manner,

"I, sir, paused, investigated, believed, and was not ashamed to state my convictions to the world. I, too, was branded as a visionary, held up to ridicule by my contemporaries, and hooted from that field of science in which I had laboured with honour during all the best years of my life. These things happened just three-and-twenty years ago. Since then, I have lived as you see me living now, and the world has forgotten me, as I have forgotten the world. You have my history."

"It is a very sad one," I murmured, scarcely knowing what to answer.

"It is a very common one," he replied. "I have only suffered for the truth, as many a better and wiser man has suffered before me."

He rose, as if desirous of ending the conversation, and went over to the window.

"It has ceased snowing," he observed, as he dropped the curtain, and came back to the fireside.

"Ceased!" I exclaimed, starting eagerly to my feet. "Oh, if it were only possible—but no! it is hopeless. Even if I could find my way across the moor, I could not walk twenty miles to-night."

"Walk twenty miles to-night!" repeated my host. "What are you thinking of?"

"Of my wife," I replied, impatiently. "Of my young wife, who does not know that I have lost my way, and who is at this moment breaking her heart with suspense and terror."

"Where is she?"

"At Dwolding, twenty miles away."

"At Dwolding," he echoed, thoughtfully. "Yes, the distance, it is true, is twenty miles; but—are you so very anxious to save the next six or eight hours?"

"So very, very anxious, that I would give ten guineas at this moment for a guide and a horse."

"Your wish can be gratified at a less costly rate," said he, smiling. "The night mail from the north, which changes horses at Dwolding, passes within five miles of this spot, and will be due at a certain cross-road in about an hour and a quarter. If Jacob were to go with you across the moor, and put you into the old coach-road, you could find your way, I suppose, to where it joins the new one?"

"Easily—gladly."

He smiled again, rang the bell, gave the old servant his directions, and, taking a bottle of whisky and a wine-glass from the cupboard in which he kept his chemicals, said:

"The snow lies deep, and it will be difficult walking to-night on the moor. A glass of usquebaugh before you start?"

I would have declined the spirit, but he pressed it on me, and I drank it. It went down my throat like liquid flame, and almost took my breath away.

"It is strong," he said; "but it will help to keep out the cold. And now you have no moments to spare. Good night!"

I thanked him for his hospitality, and would have shaken hands, but that he had turned away before I could finish my sentence. In another minute I had traversed the hall, Jacob had locked the outer door behind me, and we were out on the wide white moor.

Although the wind had fallen, it was still bitterly cold. Not a star glimmered in the black vault overhead. Not a sound, save the rapid crunching of the snow beneath our feet disturbed the heavy stillness of the night. Jacob, not too well pleased with his mission, shambled on before in sullen silence, his lantern in his hand, and his shadow at his feet. I followed, with my gun over my shoulder, as little inclined for conversation as himself. My thoughts were full of my late host. His voice yet rang in my ears. His eloquence yet held my imagination captive. I remember to this day, with surprise, how my over-excited brain retained whole sentences and parts of sentences, troops of brilliant images, and fragments of splendid reasoning, in the very words in which he had uttered them. Musing thus over what I had heard, and striving to recal a lost link here and there, I strode on at the heels of my guide, absorbed and unobservant. Presently—at the end, as it seemed to me, of only a few minutes—he came to a sudden halt, and said:

"Yon's your road. Keep the stone fence to your right hand, and you can't fail of the way."

"This, then, is the old coach-road?"

"Ay, 'tis the old coach-road."

"And how far do I go, before I reach the cross-roads?"

"Nigh upon three mile."

I pulled out my purse, and he became more communicative.

"The road's a fair road enough," said he, "for foot passengers; but 'twas over steep and narrow for the northern traffic. You'll mind where the parapet's broken away, close again the sign-post. It's never been mended since the accident."

"What accident?"

"Eh, the night mail pitched right over into the valley below—a gude fifty feet an' more—just at the worst bit o' road in the whole county."

"Horrible! Were many lives lost?"

"All. Four were found dead, and t'other two died next morning."

"How long is it since this happened?"

"Just nine year."

"Near the sign-post, you say? I will bear it in mind. Good night."

"Gude night, sir, and thankee." Jacob pocketed his half-crown, made a faint pretence of touching his hat, and trudged back by the way he had come.

I watched the light of his lantern till it quite disappeared, and then turned to pursue my way alone. This was no longer matter of the slightest difficulty, for, despite the dead darkness overhead, the line of stone fence showed distinctly enough against the pale gleam of the snow. How silent it seemed now, with only my footsteps to listen to; how silent and how solitary! A strange disagreeable sense of loneliness stole over me. I walked faster. I hummed a fragment of a tune. I cast up enormous sums in my head, and accumulated them at compound interest. I did my best, in short, to forget the startling speculations to which I had but just been listening, and, to some extent, I succeeded.

Meanwhile the night air seemed to become colder and colder, and though I walked fast I found it impossible to keep myself warm. My feet were like ice. I lost sensation in my hands, and grasped my gun mechanically. I even breathed with difficulty, as though, instead of traversing a quiet north country highway, I were scaling the uppermost heights of some gigantic Alp. This last symptom became presently so distressing, that I was forced to stop for a few minutes, and lean against the stone fence. As I did so, I chanced to look back up the road, and there, to my infinite relief, I saw a distant point of light, like the gleam of an approaching lantern. I at first concluded that Jacob had retraced his steps and followed me; but even as the conjecture presented itself, a second light flashed into sight—a light evidently parallel with the first, and approaching at the same rate of motion. It needed no second thought to show me that these must be the carriage-lamps of some private vehicle, though it seemed strange that any private vehicle should take a road professedly disused and dangerous.

There could be no doubt, however, of the fact, for the lamps grew larger and brighter every moment, and I even fancied I could already see the dark outline of the carriage between them. It was coming up very fast, and quite noiselessly, the snow being nearly a foot deep under the wheels.

And now the body of the vehicle became distinctly visible behind the lamps. It looked strangely lofty. A sudden suspicion flashed upon me. Was it possible that I had passed the cross-roads in the dark without observing the sign-post, and could this be the very coach which I had come to meet?

No need to ask myself that question a second time, for here it came round the bend of the road, guard and driver, one outside passenger, and four steaming greys, all wrapped in a soft haze of light, through which the lamps blazed out, like a pair of fiery meteors.

I jumped forward, waved my hat, and shouted. The mail came down at full speed, and passed me. For a moment I feared that I had not been seen or heard, but it was only for a moment. The coachman pulled up; the guard, muffled to the eyes in capes and comforters, and apparently sound asleep in the rumble, neither answered my hail nor made the slightest effort to dismount; the outside passenger did not even turn his head. I opened the door for myself, and looked in. There were but three travellers inside, so I stepped in, shut the door, slipped into the vacant corner, and congratulated myself on my good fortune.

The atmosphere of the coach seemed, if possible, colder than that of the outer air, and was pervaded by a singularly damp and disagreeable smell. I looked round at my fellow-passengers. They were all three, men, and all silent. They did not seem to be asleep, but each leaned back in his corner of the vehicle, as if absorbed in his own reflections. I attempted to open a conversation.

"How intensely cold it is to-night," I said, addressing my opposite neighbour.

He lifted his head, looked at me, but made no reply.

"The winter," I added, "seems to have begun in earnest."

Although the corner in which he sat was so dim that I could distinguish none of his features very clearly, I saw that his eyes were still turned full upon me. And yet he answered never a word.

At any other time I should have felt, and perhaps expressed, some annoyance, but at the moment I felt too ill to do either. The icy coldness of the night air had struck a chill to my very marrow, and the strange smell inside the coach was affecting me with an intolerable nausea. I shivered from head to foot, and, turning to my left-hand neighbour, asked if he had any objection to an open window?

He neither spoke nor stirred.

I repeated the question somewhat more loudly, but with the same result. Then I lost patience, and let the sash down. As I did so, the leather strap broke in my hand, and I observed that the glass was covered with a thick coat of mildew, the accumulation, apparently, of years. My attention being thus drawn to the condition of the coach, I examined it more narrowly, and saw by the uncertain light of the outer lamps that it was in the last state of dilapidation. Every part of it was not only out of repair, but in a condition of decay. The sashes splintered at a touch. The leather fittings were crusted over with mould, and literally rotting from the woodwork. The floor was almost breaking away beneath my feet. The whole machine, in short, was foul with damp, and had evidently been dragged from some outhouse in which it had been mouldering away for years, to do another day or two of duty on the road.

I turned to the third passenger, whom I had not yet addressed, and hazarded one more remark.

"This coach," I said, "is in a deplorable condition. The regular mail, I suppose, is under repair?"

He moved his head slowly, and looked me in the face, without speaking a word. I shall never forget that look while I live. I turned cold at heart under it. I turn cold at heart even now when I recal it. His eyes glowed with a fiery unnatural lustre. His face was livid as the face of a corpse. His bloodless lips were drawn back as if in the agony of death, and showed the gleaming teeth between.

The words that I was about to utter died upon my lips, and a strange horror—a dreadful horror—came upon me. My sight had by this time become used to the gloom of the coach, and I could see with tolerable distinctness. I turned to my opposite neighbour. He, too, was looking at me, with the same startling pallor in his face, and the same stony glitter in his eyes. I passed my hand across my brow. I turned to the passenger on the seat beside my own, and saw—oh Heaven! how shall I describe what I saw? I saw that he was no living man—that none of them were living men, like myself! A pale phosphorescent light—the light of putrefaction—played upon their awful faces; upon their hair, dank with the dews of the grave; upon their clothes, earth-stained and dropping to pieces; upon their hands, which were as the hands of corpses long buried. Only their eyes, their terrible eyes, were living; and those eyes were all turned menacingly upon me!

A shriek of terror, a wild unintelligible cry for help and mercy, burst from my lips as I flung myself against the door, and strove in vain to open it.

In that single instant, brief and vivid as a landscape beheld in the flash of summer lightning, I saw the moon shining down through a rift of stormy cloud—the ghastly sign-post rearing its warning finger by the wayside—the broken parapet—the plunging horses—the black gulf below. Then, the coach reeled like a ship at sea. Then, came a mighty crash—a sense of crushing pain—and then, darkness.

It seemed as if years had gone by when I awoke one morning from a deep sleep, and found my wife watching by my bedside. I will pass over the scene that ensued, and give you, in half a dozen words, the tale she told me with tears of thanksgiving. I had fallen over a precipice, close against the junction of the old coach-road and the new, and had only been saved from certain death by lighting upon a deep snowdrift that had accumulated at the foot of the rock beneath. In this snowdrift I was discovered at daybreak, by a couple of shepherds, who carried me to the nearest shelter, and brought a surgeon to my aid. The surgeon found me in a state of raving delirium, with a broken arm and a compound fracture of the skull. The letters in my pocket-book showed my name and address; my wife was summoned to nurse me; and, thanks to youth and a fine constitution, I came out of danger at last. The place of my fall, I need scarcely say, was precisely that at which a frightful accident had happened to the north mail nine years before.

I never told my wife the fearful events which I have just related to you. I told the surgeon who attended me; but he treated the whole adventure as a mere dream born of the fever in my brain. We discussed the question over and over again, until we found that we could discuss it with temper no longer, and then we dropped it. Others may form what conclusions they please—I know that twenty years ago I was the fourth inside passenger in that Phantom Coach.

CHAPTER VI

ANOTHER PAST LODGER RELATES CERTAIN PASSAGES TO HER HUSBAND

Hesba Stretton

[INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY MAJOR JACKMAN. The country clergyman and his quiet and better than pretty wife, who occupied my respected friend's second floor for two spring months of four successive years, were objects of great interest, both with my respected friend and with me. One evening we took tea with them, and happened to speak of a pretty wilful-looking young creature and her husband—friends of theirs—who had dined with them on the previous day. "Ah!" said the clergyman, taking his wife's hand very tenderly in his; "thereby hangs a tale. Tell it to our good friends, my dear." "I can address it, Owen," said his wife, hesitating, "to nobody but you." "Address it, then, to me, my darling," said he, "and Mrs. Lirriper and the Major will be none the worse listeners." So she went on as follows, with her hand resting in his all the time. Signed, J. JACKMAN.]

The first time I saw you again, after the years long and many which had passed over us since our childhood, I was watching for you on the peak of the hill, from whence I could see furthest down the steep and shady lane along which you were coming up to our hamlet from the plain below me. All day I had been anxious that when you arrived, our hills, which you must have forgotten, should put on their most gorgeous beauty; but now the sunset was come which would leave us the bare and grey outlines of the rocks only, and, from the kindling sky there fell bars of golden sunshine, with darker rays underlying them, slanting down the slopes of the mountain, and touching every rounded knoll and little dimpling dell with such a glory, that even the crimson and purple tints of the budding bilberry wires far away towards the level table-land where the summits blended, glowed, and burned under the farewell light. Just then there came a shout of welcome, like the shout of harvest-home, ringing up through the quiet air, and, straining my shaded eyes to catch the first glimpse, I saw you walking in the midst of a band of our sturdy, sunburnt villagers, with the same slight and delicate-looking frame, and pale, grave pleasant face, and shy and timid manner that were yours when we were boy and girl together.

Our little hamlet had gathered itself from time to time, without any special plan or purpose, upon one of the lower terraces of our cluster of mountains, separated from the nearest villages by a wide tract of land, only to be crossed by steep, stony, deep-rutted lanes, overhung with wild hedgerows, and almost impassable in the winter. During the summer, when the faint tones of the bells of our parish church were borne up to us on the calm air, a little procession of us, the girls and children riding on rough hill-ponies, were wont to wind down the lanes to the Sunday morning service; but in winter no one thought of the pilgrimage, unless some of the young men had sweethearts in the village whom they hoped to meet at church. Mr. Vernon, the rector, being an archdeacon, hardly less than a bishop in dignity and importance, was deeply distressed at the heathenish darkness of his mountain district; and he and my father, who owned the great hill-farm, which gave employment to the people of our hamlet, at last built the little red-brick church, with no tower, and smaller than our barn, which stands upon the point of the mountain terrace, overlooking the great plain that stretches away from our feet up to the very far horizon.

There might have been a difficulty in finding a curate who would live up at Ratlinghope, with no other social intercourse than could be obtained by a long march into the peopled plain below us; but I knew afterwards that the church, so far as my father's share in it was concerned, had been built for you. You were just taking orders, and you had a pleasant remembrance of the large old rambling half-timber house where you had spent some months of your childhood; so when we wrote to you that your dwelling would be in our own house, your study being the blue parlour which looked down the green sheltered dell where the young lambs were folded, you answered that you would gladly take the charge, and live with us again on the sweet, free heathery uplands, where you had breathed in health and strength in your early boyhood.

You were grave and studious, and withal so simple-hearted, that the seclusion and the primitive manners of our hamlet made it a very Eden to you. You had never forgotten our old haunts, and we revisited them together, for in the first moment of our greeting you had fallen into your habit of dependence upon me, and of demanding my companionship, as when you were a delicate boy of six years, and I a strong, healthy, mountain girl three years older. To me only, could you utter your thoughts freely, for your natural shyness closed your lips to strangers; and all were strangers to you, even those who had known you for a lifetime, if they did not possess the touch of sympathy which your spirit needed before it would open its treasures. Up on the hill-side, when the steady noontide seemed as unchangeable as the everlasting rocks about us, or when the tremulous dusk stole with silent shadows over the fading headlands, you and I sat together, while I listened to the unreserved outpourings of your thoughts and fancies, boyish sometimes, for you were young still, but in my heart there was an ever-growing tenderness and care for you, which could find no flaw, and feel no weariness. You were apt to be unmindful of the hours, and it was I who made it my duty to watch their flight for you, and see to it that the prayer-bell, the single bell that hung under a little pent-roof against the church, should be tolled at the due time; for Mr. Vernon, in consideration of our heathenish condition, made it a point that the evening service should be read three times a week. And as it was needful that our household should set a pattern to the rest of the villagers, and it interfered with my father's evening pipe, and my mother could not be troubled to change her afternoon cap for her church bonnet, it always fell to my lot to walk with you—do you remember?—only a few hundred yards or so along the brow of the hill, to the little church.

I was about to say that it was the happiest time of my life; but all true life is gain; and the sorrows that befal us are none other than solemn massive foundation-stones laid low in unfathomable gloom, that a measureless content may be built upon them. You remember the first burial-service you had to read, when you besought me to stand beside you at the open grave, because never before had the mournful words been uttered by your lips. It was only the funeral of a little child, and the tiny grave, when the clods were heaped upon it, was no larger than a molehill in the meadows; yet your voice faltered, and your hands trembled as you cast this first small seed into that God's Acre of ours. The autumn night set in while we lingered in silence beside the nameless coffin, long after the mother and her companion who had brought it to its solitary grave, had turned away homeward. It was the flapping of wings close beside us that caused us to lift up our eyes, and from the fir-trees above us four rooks flew home across the darkening sky to their nests in the plain below. You know how of old the flight of birds would fill me with vague superstitions, and just then the heavy fluttering of their dusky wings overhead, as they beat the air for their start, caused a sudden tremor and shudder to thrill through me.

"What ails you, Jane?" you asked.

"Nothing ails me, Mr. Scott," I said.

"Call me Owen," you answered, laying your hand upon my arm, and looking straight into my eyes, for we were of the same height, and stood level with one another: "I do not like to hear you call me anything but Owen. Have you forgotten how we used to play together? Do you remember how I fell into the sheep-pool when we were alone in the valley, and you wasted no time in fruitless cries, but waded in at once, and dragged me out of the water? You would carry me home in your strong arms, though the path was along the hill-side, and you had to rest every few minutes; while I looked up into your rosy face with a very peaceful feeling. Your face is not rosy now, Jane."

How could it be, while your words brought such a dull heavy pain to my heart? I seemed suddenly to be so many, many years older than you! Sometimes of late I had detected myself reckoning your age and mine by the month, and the day of the month, and always finding, with a pang faint and slight, that you were indeed so many years younger than I. Yet the heart takes little heed of age. And I, for the quiet life I had led among the mountains, just one regular single round of summer and winter, coming stealthily and uncounted in their turn from season to season, might have been little more than some yearling creature, that has seen but one spring-time and felt the frosts of but one Christmas. While you, with your great acquirements of learning, and the weighty thoughts that had already wrinkled your broad forehead, and the burden of study that had bowed down your young shoulders, seemed to have borne the full yoke of the years which had laid so gentle a touch upon me.

"I remember very well, Owen," I said; "I was proud of having you to take charge of. But you must go in now; the fog is rising, and you are not over strong."

I spoke with the old tone of authority, and you left me, standing alone beside the little grave. The churchyard extended to the very edge of the steep hill, which looked far and wide over the great plain. It was hidden now by a white lake of mist floating beneath me, upon which the hunting-moon, rising slowly behind the eastern hills, shone down with cold pale beams; for the harvest was over, and the heavy October fogs gathered in the valleys, and hung in light clouds about the fading coppices in the hollows of the mountains. I turned heart-sick to the little open grave, the first in the new graveyard, which was waiting until the sheep were herded for the sexton to fill it up for ever with the clods; the baby hands and feet folded there in eternal rest, had never been stained with selfishness, and the baby lips, sealed in eternal silence, had uttered never a word of bitterness. So, I said, looking down sadly into the narrow tiny grave, so shall it be with my love; I bury it here while it is yet pure and unselfish, like a seed sown in God's Acre; and from it shall spring a plentiful harvest of happiness for Owen, and of great peace for myself.

It may be that the autumn fog was more harmful than usual, for I was ill after that night with my first serious illness; not merely ailing, but hanging doubtfully between life and death. I grew to think of our summer months together as of a time long since passed, and almost enwrapped in forgetfulness. My mother laughed when I stroked her grey hair with my feeble fingers, and told her I felt older than she was.

"Nay," she said, "we must have you younger and bonnier than ever, Jane. We must see what we can do for you before you come down stairs, and meet Owen. Poor Owen! Who would have dreamt that he could be more heartbroken and disconsolate than Jane's own mother? Poor Owen!"

My mother was smiling significantly, and looking keenly at me over her glasses, but I said nothing; only turned away my face from her scrutiny to the frosted window, where winter had traced its delicate patterns upon the latticepanes.

"Jane," she went on, clasping my finders in hers, "don't you know that we all wish it, Owen's father, and yours, and me? We thought of it before he came here. Owen is poor, but we have enough for both of you, and I love him like my own son. You need never leave the old home. Jane, don't you love Owen?"

"But I am older than he is," I whispered.

"A marvellous difference," she said, with another laugh; "so am I older than father, but who could tell it was so now? And what does it matter if Owen loves you?"

I wish to cast no blame on you, but there was much in your conduct to feed the sweet delusion which brought fresh health and strength to me. You called my mother, "Mother." You sent fond messages by her, which lost nothing in tone or glance by her delighted repetition of them. You considered no walk too far to get flowers for me from the gardens in the plain below. When I grew well enough to come down stairs you received me with a rapture of congratulation. You urged that the blue parlour, with its southern aspect and closely-fitting wainscot, was the warmest room in the house, and you would not be satisfied until the great chintz-covered sofa with its soft cushions was lifted out of its corner, and planted upon the hearth, for me to lie there, watching you while you were busy among your books; and many times a day you read some sentence aloud, or brought a volume to my side that I might look over the same page, while you waited patiently as my slower eyes and brain were longer than yours in taking in the sense. Even when you were away at the rectory—for during my illness you had begun to spend your evenings there, when you had no church duty—I sat in your study, with your books about me, in which there were passages marked out for me to read. I lingered over getting well.

I was lying on the sofa one evening, wrapped in my mother's white shawl, and just passing into a dreamy slumber, when I heard you entering from one of your visits to the rectory. I cannot tell why I did not rouse myself, unless it seemed to me only as part of a dream, but you crossed the floor noiselessly, and stood beside me for a minute or two, looking down—I felt it—upon my changed face, and closed eyelids. Had I been asleep I should never have felt the light, timid, fluttering touch of your lips upon mine. But my eyes opened at once, and you fell back.

"What is it, Owen?" I asked you calmly, for I felt as if by instinct that the caress was not for me. "Why did you kiss me, Owen?"

"I wonder I never did it before," you said, "you are so like a sister to me. I have no other sister, Jane, and my mother died when I was very young."

You stood opposite to me in the bright firelight with a face changing and flushing like a girl's, and a happy youthful buoyant gladness in it very different to your usually quiet aspect. As I looked at you the old pain returned like a forgotten burden upon my heart.

"I am so happy," you said, crossing over the hearth again, and kneeling down beside me.

"Is it anything you can tell me, dear Owen?" I said, laying my hand upon your hair, and wondering even then at the whiteness and thinness of my poor fingers. The door behind you was opened quietly, but you did not hear it, and my mother stood for an instant in the doorway smiling on us both; I felt keenly how she would misunderstand.

Then you spoke to me, shyly at first, but gathering confidence, of Adelaide Vernon. I knew her well: a little lovely graceful creature, with coquettish school-girl ways, which displayed themselves even at church, though her black browed and swarthy aunt sat beside her in the rector's pew. While you spoke, growing eloquent with a lover's rhapsodies, the fair young face, with its pink and white tints, and soft dainty beauty, rose up before me; and your praises seemed to flood my aching heart like a wide breaking in of water, which rolled desolately against me.

I need not remind you of the opposition your love met. Mr. Vernon was averse to marrying his portionless niece to his poor curate of Ratlinghope; but his disapproval was nothing to the vehement rage with which Mrs. Vernon, who had other views for Adelaide, set her face against it. The rector came up to our house, and told us—you remember?—with tears wrung from him, proud and reticent man as he was, that he dreaded nothing less than a return of that fearful malady of madness, which had kept his wife a prisoner for years under his own roof. There was as bitter, but a more concealed resentment in our own household, which you only felt indirectly and vaguely. I learned now with what a long premeditated plan your father and mine had schemed for our marriage. Your poor foolish love seemed to every one but yourself and me a rash selfishness. Even I thought at times that half Adelaide's love for you sprang from pure contrariness and childish romance, just feeding upon the opposition it met with. How I smoothed your path for you; how, without suffering the coldness of disappointment to creep over me, I sought your happiness in your own way as if it had been mine also; you partly know. So we prevailed at last.

In spite of all my smothered pain, it was pleasant to see you watch the building of your little parsonage, the square red brick house beside the church, with the doors and windows pricked out with blue tesselated tile-work. It was not a stone's throw from our home, and the blue parlour saw little of your presence, and the dust gathered on the books you had been wont to read. But you would have me to share your exultation. Whenever the large beams were being fitted into your roof, or the cope-stones built into your walls, or the blue tiles set round your windows, I must look on with you, and hearken to your fears lest the home should be unworthy of Adelaide. All my sad thoughts—for day after day you were setting your foot upon my heart—I worked away in busy labour at your house, and in wistful contrivances to make the little nest look elegant and pretty in the sight of Adelaide Vernon.

Your marriage was to be on the Tuesday, and on. the Monday I went down with you to the rectory. The place had become familiar to you, all but the long low southern wing, with its blank walls ivy-grown, and with its windows opening upon the other side over a wide shallow mere, fed with the waters of a hundred mountain brooks. They were Mrs. Vernon's apartments, built for her during her protracted and seemingly hopeless malady, for her husband had promised her that she should never be removed from under his roof. She kept them under her own charge, rarely suffering any foot to enter them, and Mr. Vernon drew me aside when we reached the house, and implored me to venture upon making my way, if possible, to his wife, who had shut herself up in them since the previous evening, and had refused to admit even him. I crossed the long narrow passage which separated them from the rest of the dwelling, and rapped gently at the door, and after a minute's silence I heard Mrs. Vernon's voice asking, "Who is there?"

"Only Jane Meadows," I answered.

I was a favourite with her, and after a slight hesitation, the door was opened, and Mrs. Vernon stood before me: her tall and powerful figure wrapped in a dressing-gown, which left the sinewy arms bare to the elbow, while the thick locks of her black hair, just streaked with grey, fell dishevelled about her swarthy face. The room behind her was littered from end to end, and the fire at which she had been sitting was choked up with cinders, while the window, tarnished with dust, gave no glimpse of the mountain landscape beyond. She returned to her chair before the fire, and surveyed me with a sullen frown from under her reddened eyelids. The trembling of her limbs, muscular as they were, and the glistening of her face, told me not more surely than the faint and sickly odour pervading the room, that she had been taking opium.

"Jane,'* she cried, with a burst of maudlin tears, which she did not attempt to conceal, "come here, and sit down beside me. I am so miserable, Jane. Your mother was here on Saturday, telling me that you love Owen Scott, and everybody wanted him to marry you. Adelaide, the poor little painted doll, is not fit to be his wife, and she will make him wretched. And you will be miserable, like all of us."

My heart sank at the thought of your wretchedness. "I am not miserable," I replied, throwing my own arms round her, and looking up into her wrathful eyes. "You don't know how strong and peaceful we grow when we seek the happiness of those we love. We cannot decide who shall love whom, and it was not God's will that Owen should choose me. Let us make them as happy as we can."

She let me lead her to her seat, and talk to her about you and Adelaide in a way that tranquillised her, until she consented to dress herself with my aid, and return with me to the company assembled in the other part of the house.

But there was something in Adelaide's whole conduct which tended to irritate Mrs. Vernon. She was playing silly pranks upon us all, but especially upon her gloomy aunt, about whom she hovered with a fretting waywardness mingled with an unquiet tenderness, which displayed itself in numberless childish ways; but with such grace and prettiness, that none of us could find it in our hearts to chide her, except Mrs. Vernon herself. I was glad when the time came for us to leave; though you loitered across the lawn, looking back every minute at Adelaide, who stood in the portico: her white dress gleaming amid the shadows, and she kissing her little hand to you with a laugh whose faint musical ringing just reached our ears.

You slept that night, as we often sleep, unwitting that those who are dear to us as our own souls are passing through great perils. You slept, and it was I who watched all night, and called you early in the morning, with the news that the sun was rising over the hills into a cloudless sky, and that your marriage-day was come.

We were at the rectory betimes, yet the villagers had reared an arch of flowers over the gates. Mrs. Vernon, dressed with unusual richness and care, was watching for us at the portico, and received us both with a grave but kindly greeting. All the house was astir with the hurrying of many feet, and the sharp click of doors slamming to and fro; but though you waited restlessly, no one else came near us in the little room where we three sat together, until the door was slowly opened—you turning to it with rapturous impatience—and Mr. Vernon entered and told us that Adelaide was nowhere to be found.

"Don't alarm yourself," said Mr. Vernon to his wife, "but Adelaide has been missing since daybreak; she was gone when her companions went to call her. You remember she used to walk in her sleep if she were much excited; and this morning the hall door was open, and her bonnet was found on the way to Ratlinghope. The agitation of yesterday must have caused this."

"She was coming to me!" you said, with a vivid smile and a glow which faded as you began to realise the fact of Adelaide's disappearance.

The hills stretched away for many a mile, with shelving rocks here and there, which hung over deep still tarns, black with shadows, and hedged in by reedy thickets. And there were narrow rifts, cleaving far down into the living stone of the mountain range, and overgrown with brambles, where the shepherds sometimes heard their lambs bleating piteously, out of sight or reach of help, until the dreary moan died away from the careless echoes. "Children have been lost there," cried Mrs. Vernon, wringing her hands distractedly; and if Adelaide had wandered away in the darkness, she might be lying now dead in the depths of the black tarns, or imprisoned alive in one of the clefts of the rocks.

I never left your side that day; and as hour after hour passed by, I saw a grey ghastly change creep over your young face, as your heart died within you. Mrs. Vernon kept close beside us, though we soon distanced every other seeker, and her wonderful strength continued unabated, even when your despairing energy was exhausted. I knew the mountains as well as the shepherds did; and from one black unruffled tarn, to another like itself, gloomy and secret-looking, I led you without speaking; save that into every gorge, whose depth our straining eyes could not penetrate, we called aloud, until the dark dank walls of the gulf muttered back the name of Adelaide. There was no foot-weariness for us as long as the daylight lasted; and it seemed as if the sun could not go down until we had found her. Now and then we tarried upon the brow of some headland, with our hands lifted to our ears that we might catch the most distant whisper of the signal-bells; the faintest tone that ever reached the uplands, if there were any to be borne to us upon the breeze, from the church belfry in the plain far away.

The search was continued for many days; but no trace of Adelaide was found, except a lace cap which lay soiled and wet with dew near to one of the tarns which we three had visited; but without discovering it then. Mrs. Vernon rallied our hopes and energies long after all reasonable ground for either was lost, and then she fell into a depression of spirits which almost threatened a renewal of her early malady. She collected all Adelaide's little possessions, and spent many hours of each day among them in her own apartments; but she was always ready to leave them, when you, in your sore grief, wandered to the old home of the lost girl; and then she strove to console you with a patient tenderness strange to see in a woman so rigid and haughty. But you refused to be comforted; and putting on one side all the duties of your office, you roamed ceaselessly about the hills; dragging yourself back again almost lifeless to our house—for your own you would never enter—and asking me ni»ht after night, as the sunset and darkness spread upon the mountains, if there were no place left unexplored. As though it were possible to call back again the dead past, and find her yet alive among the desolate hills!

In the midst of it all another trouble befel us. Before the new year came in, my mother fell ill of the sickness in which she died. I think that first roused you from the solitude of your despair. Though you could not yet front the kindly familiar faces of your old congregation, there seemed to be some little break in the cloud of hopelessness which hung about you, in the care you began to feel for her. It was but a few days before she died, and after you had been reading to her, as she lay very feeble, and often dozing away with weakness, that she suddenly roused herself, and looked at you with eager, eyes.

"You'll always be fond of Jane, Owen?"

"Always. She has been the truest of sisters to me."

"Ah!" sighed my mother, "you little think how she has loved you. Not one woman in a thousand could have done as our Jane has. Boy, it's not possible you'll ever be loved so again on earth."

You had never thought of it before, and your face grew paler than my mother's. I sat behind the curtains, where you could see me though she could not; and you looked across at me fixedly, still keeping your station by her side. I smiled with the tears standing in my eyes, but with no foolish burning in my cheeks, for if it would comfort you in any degree, I was neither afraid nor ashamed that you should know it.

"Ever since you came," my mother murmured, "smoothing every stone out of your path, and only fretting because she could not bear every trouble for you! If you ever marry, Owen, she will live only for you, and your wife and children. You will always care tor her, Owen?"

"I will never marry any other woman," you said, laying your lips upon my mother's wrinkled hand.

I know it was a comfort to you. Perhaps in the suddenness and mystery of your loss, you felt as if everything was wrecked, and nothing remained to life but a bleak, black dreariness. But from that hour, there was a light, very feeble and dim and lustreless—a mere glow-worm in the waste wilderness—which shone upon your path. You began to return to your old duties, though it was as if you were leaning upon me, and trusting to my guiding. There was no talk of love between us; it was enough that we understood one another.

We might have gone on quietly thus, year after year, until the memory of Adelaide had faded away, but that it was not many months before my father, who had been younger than my mother, and was a fine man yet, announced to me that he was about to marry again. The news had reached you elsewhere; for, on the same evening, while I was sitting alone with my troubled thoughts, you called me into the blue parlour, and made me take my old seat in the corner of the chintz-covered sofa, while you knelt down beside me.

"Jane," you said, very gently, "I want to offer my poor home to you."

"No, no, Owen," I cried, looking down upon your face, so grey and unsmiling, with dark circles under your sunken eyes, "you are young yet, and will meet with some other woman—a dear sister she shall ever be to me—younger and brighter, and more fitted for you than I am. You shall not sacrifice yourself to me."

"But, Jane," you urged, and a pleasant light dawned in your eyes, "I cannot do without you. You know I could not go alone into yonder little house, which stands empty by the church; and how could I go away from Ratlinghope, leaving you behind me? I have no home but where you are; and I love you more than I ever thought to love any woman again."

Maybe you remember what more you said; every word is in my heart to this day.

I thought it over in the quiet night. You were poor, and I, inheriting my mother's fortune, could surround you with comforts; secretly in my judgment, there had grown the conviction that you would never be what the world calls a prosperous man. The time was come when we must be separated or united for ever; and if you parted from me, I could never more stand between you and any sorrow. So I became your wife nearly twelve mouths after your great loss and misery.

Those first weeks of our marriage had more sunshine than I had ever dared to hope for. You seemed to shake off a great burden, now that it was irrevocably settled that our lives were to be passed together. Not a single lurking dread remained in my heart that you were otherwise than happy.

We came back to England some days earlier than we intended, for a letter reached me after many delays, with the news that Mrs. Vernon was ill, and implored us to hasten our return. We stayed on our way homeward at the rectory, where I soon left you with Mr. Vernon, while I was conducted to the entrance of the long passage which led to Mrs. Vernon's apartments. Her lady, the servant said in a whisper, was ailing more in mind than in body, and she dared not disobey her strict orders not to venture further. I went on, for I knew her caprices; and once again I was admitted, when she heard me say, calling myself by your name, that it was Jane Scott who sought entrance. There was no new gleam of madness in her dark eyes. She grasped my hands nervously, and held them fast, while she questioned me about our journey, and what your manner had been. Were you happy? Had you altogether ceased to grieve for Adelaide? Was your whole love mine? Was there perfect unalloyed content in our mutual affection?

"Jane," she said, with her lips close tomy ear, though she spoke in a loud shrill tone, "I had sworn that Adelaide should never marry Owen Scott. Partly for your sake, for your mother said it was killing you. Partly because it was better for her to marry my rich nephew. Jane, I must have what I set my mind upon, or I should die. What was Adelaide, that I should lose my life, or worse, ten times worse, lose my reason again for her sake? I did it for the best, Jane. I never thought how it was to end. It only seemed to me, if I could hide her from one day till the next, something would happen. But it was a long long time, a dreadful time, till Owen came to tell us he was going to marry you. You understand, Jane?"

"No, no!" I cried.

"It seemed so easy a thing to do, and best for all of us. I carried her here in the night, like the baby she is. I have never been cruel to her, never, Jane. But the time seemed long, long, and she was wild and cunning at first. I only thought of a little while, and afterwards I grew afraid. But she will not come out now, though I try to rouse her. Go in, Jane, and make her come out!"

Mrs. Vernon drew me across the inner apartment to the door of a small chamber, padded throughout, and with no opening except into the ante-room. It had been constructed for herself in the seasons of her most dangerous paroxysms, and was so carefully planned that no sound of her wild ravings could be heard, and no glimpse of her face could be seen, through the window which overlooked the mere. And here lay your Adelaide asleep, wan and emaciated, with a dimness on her golden curls, and all the rosy tints of her beauty faded.

"She has been taking laudanum," said Mrs. Vernon. "I gave it to her at first, when I was compelled to be away for a long time, and now she has a craving for it. I have never been cruel to her, Jane. She has had everything she wanted."

You know how I came down to the library, where you and Mr. Vernon were sitting, and told you and Mr. Vernon all. You know how, while Mr. Vernon bowed his grey head upon his hands, you stretched out your arms to me, and cried, with an exceeding bitter cry as if I could find a remedy for you, "Help me, Jane!"

Dear, my heart fluttered towards you for a moment, longing to be clasped in your outstretched arms, and pour out all my love to you, which had ever been tongue-tied, lest you should weary of it; but I hardened myself against the yearning. In the great mirror on the staircase I scarcely knew the white-faced despairing woman, who was sweeping by, erect and stern, and the two men with downcast heads and lingering footsteps who were following her. You spoke no word, either of you, but passed through the outer apartment, with its tarnished window and sullied disorder, where Mrs. Vernon sat cowering in the furthest corner, and entered the room within, where Adelaide lay asleep, but breathing fitfully, as on the verge of waking. I dragged myself (for I was faint) to the casement, which I pushed open, and looked out upon the purple hills, purple with heather-bells, where we had thought her unknown tomb was. Up yonder stood our home, the home we had built for Adelaide, and which we had never yet entered; and turning away my aching eyes from it, I looked back again upon you, who were standing beside her, with a depth of tender and horror-stricken pitjr on your bending face.

Whether it was the fresh air from the hills, or some mysterious influence of your presence penetrating her sleeping senses, we cannot tell; but while I looked, unable to turn away my eyes from you both, her mouth quivered, and her long eyelashes trembled, half opening and closing again, as if too languid to bear the light, until you touched her hands softly and timidly, and breathed "Adelaide!" And she awoke fully, with a sharp shrill cry, as if you were at last come for her deliverance, and springing into your arms, she clung to you, with her little hands clasped round you as though they would never unlock again; while you laid your cheek clown upon her dim dishevelled curls, and I heard you murmur, "My darling!" Yet yonder was our home, yours and mine, Owen; and the ring that was on my finger—the only one I wore, I cared so much for it—was our marriage-ring.

You turned to me, Owen, with that full, searching gaze, eye to eye, and soul to soul, which we could bear from one another. Adelaide was come back from the dead to bring to us greater sorrow than her death had brought. We saw it all, you and I, while she was still clinging to you with sobs and childish caresses, and I stood aloof at the window. I knew how much you had to say to her which no other ear might listen to. I knew what it would be wisest and best to do. I took Mr. Vernon's arm, and I drew him away from the room, and I left you and Adelaide together.

I know now that it was not long before you came to me—only ten minutes—such a trifle of time as one gives ungrudgingly to the dreariest beggar on the roadside who has a piteous tale to tell. But all the past, and all the dreaded future being present with me, the moments seemed endless in their immortal bitterness, until you entered the room where I had shut myself in alone, and coming swiftly up to me where I stood upon the hearth, hid your face upon my shoulder with strong sobs and tears.

"I will go awav, Jane," you said at last, "by myself for a few days, till she is gone from here. You will take care of her for me. She knows all now."

"I will do anything for you," I answered, still chary of my words, as it was my wont to be, lest my love should weary you.

You left rne, as it was best you should do, alone, with the charge of that perplexed household upon me; Adelaide broken in health and spirits; Mrs. Vernon plunged into the frenzy of her old malady; the story running far and wide throughout the country. Every day I found my comfort and strength in the letter that came from you, wherein you had the generosity to lay bare your heart to me as frankly as ever. So the hard task began to grow lighter; the tangled coil to unravel itself. Mr. Vernon procured a nurse to take care of his wife, and I accompanied Adelaide to the distant dwelling of some friends, where we hoped she might sooner recover her health; nor did I leave her until I saw her resuming her playful girlish ways, and coquettish graces. At last I was free to go home; to go to the home you and I had built on the rock, watching together its beams laid, and its roof raised. But I was alone there. If Adelaide had been your young and beautiful wife, you would have crossed the threshold hand in hand, uttering such words of welcome as would never have died out of her memory, if it had been like mine.

The jealous misgiving was unworthy of you and myself, dear. I paced the little rooms, taking up the trinkets which you had bought anxiously and lavishly for Adelaide, and always laying them down again with a sharper pang. Did you wish rne to die, Owen? Was your heart aching to take her back again? I rested at last in your little study, where your books lay in scattered heaps before the empty shelves. The days were gone for ever when we had read them together on the hillside, in the first careless freedom of your sojourn with us. I sat down among them, covering my face with my hands, and I heard and I saw nothing.

Nothing, my love, my dear, until your hand rested on my head, and your voice, in hearty cheery tones, fell on my delighted ear.

"Jane," you said, "my darling, my wife! We are come home at last. I meant to be here first, but it is ever you who welcome me. The trouble is past. I love you better, love you more, than ever I loved Adelaide."

You lifted up my head, and made me look into your face. It was at once peaceful and exultant, as the face of a man who has gone through a great conflict, and come out of it more than conqueror. You laid your lips to mine with one long kiss, which told me infinitely better than words could tell, that never more need shadow of doubt or distrust of your love fall upon my spirit. Such as I was, you gathered me into your inmost heart, barring it against any memory or any fancy that might betray me. The deep foundations had been laid, and any storm that beat against our confidence and content would beat against them all in vain.

Love, we have learned to speak of the past calmly, and Adelaide has been to see us with her husband.

CHAPTER VII

Mrs. Lirriper Relates How Jemmy Topped Up

Charles Dickens

Well my dear and so the evening readings of those jottings of the Major’s brought us round at last to the evening when we were all packed and going away next day, and I do assure you that by that time though it was deliciously comfortable to look forward to the dear old house in Norfolk-street again, I had formed quite a high opinion of the French nation and had noticed them to be much more homely and domestic in their families and far more simple and amiable in their lives than I had ever been led to expect, and it did strike me between ourselves that in one particular they might be imitated to advantage by another nation which I will not mention, and that is in the courage with which they take their little enjoyments on little means and with little things and don’t let solemn big-wigs stare them out of countenance or speechify them dull, of which said solemn big-wigs I have ever had the one opinion that I wish they were all made comfortable separately in coppers with the lids on and never let out any more.

“Now young man,” I says to Jemmy when we brought our chairs into the balcony that last evening, “you please to remember who was to ‘top up.’”

“All right Gran” says Jemmy. “I am the illustrious personage.”

But he looked so serious after he had made me that light answer, that the Major raised his eyebrows at me and I raised mine at the Major.

“Gran and godfather,” says Jemmy, “you can hardly think how much my mind has run on Mr. Edson’s death.”

It gave me a little check. “Ah! it was a sad scene my love” I says, “and sad remembrances come back stronger than merry. But this” I says after a little silence, to rouse myself and the Major and Jemmy all together, “is not topping up. Tell us your story my dear.”

“I will” says Jemmy.

“What is the date sir?” says I. “Once upon a time when pigs drank wine?”

“No Gran,” says Jemmy, still serious; “once upon a time when the French drank wine.”

Again I glanced at the Major, and the Major glanced at me.

“In short, Gran and godfather,” says Jemmy, looking up, “the date is this time, and I’m going to tell you Mr. Edson’s story.”

The flutter that it threw me into. The change of colour on the part of the Major!

“That is to say, you understand,” our bright-eyed boy says, “I am going to give you my version of it. I shall not ask whether it’s right or not, firstly because you said you knew very little about it, Gran, and secondly because what little you did know was a secret.”

I folded my hands in my lap and I never took my eyes off Jemmy as he went running on.

“The unfortunate gentleman” Jemmy commences, “who is the subject of our present narrative was the son of Somebody, and was born Somewhere, and chose a profession Somehow. It is not with those parts of his career that we have to deal; but with his early attachment to a young and beautiful lady.”

I thought I should have dropped. I durstn’t look at the Major; but I know what his state was, without looking at him.

“The father of our ill-starred hero” says Jemmy, copying as it seemed to me the style of some of his story-books, “was a worldly man who entertained ambitious views for his only son and who firmly set his face against the contemplated alliance with a virtuous but penniless orphan. Indeed he went so far as roundly to assure our hero that unless he weaned his thoughts from the object of his devoted affection, he would disinherit him. At the same time, he proposed as a suitable match the daughter of a neighbouring gentleman of a good estate, who was neither ill-favoured nor unamiable, and whose eligibility in a pecuniary point of view could not be disputed. But young Mr. Edson, true to the first and only love that had inflamed his breast, rejected all considerations of self-advancement, and, deprecating his father’s anger in a respectful letter, ran away with her.”

My dear I had begun to take a turn for the better, but when it come to running away I began to take another turn for the worse.

“The lovers” says Jemmy “fled to London and were united at the altar of Saint Clement’s Danes. And it is at this period of their simple but touching story that we find them inmates of the dwelling of a highly-respected and beloved lady of the name of Gran, residing within a hundred miles of Norfolk-street.”

I felt that we were almost safe now, I felt that the dear boy had no suspicion of the bitter truth, and I looked at the Major for the first time and drew a long breath. The Major gave me a nod.

“Our hero’s father” Jemmy goes on “proving implacable and carrying his threat into unrelenting execution, the struggles of the young couple in London were severe, and would have been far more so, but for their good angel’s having conducted them to the abode of Mrs. Gran; who, divining their poverty (in spite of their endeavours to conceal it from her), by a thousand delicate arts smoothed their rough way, and alleviated the sharpness of their first distress.”

Here Jemmy took one of my hands in one of his, and began a marking the turns of his story by making me give a beat from time to time upon his other hand.

“After a while, they left the house of Mrs. Gran, and pursued their fortunes through a variety of successes and failures elsewhere. But in all reverses, whether for good or evil, the words of Mr. Edson to the fair young partner of his life were, ‘Unchanging Love and Truth will carry us through all!’”

My hand trembled in the dear boy’s, those words were so wofully unlike the fact.

“Unchanging Love and Truth” says Jemmy over again, as if he had a proud kind of a noble pleasure in it, “will carry us through all! Those were his words. And so they fought their way, poor but gallant and happy, until Mrs. Edson gave birth to a child.”

“A daughter,” I says.

“No,” says Jemmy, “a son. And the father was so proud of it that he could hardly bear it out of his sight. But a dark cloud overspread the scene. Mrs. Edson sickened, drooped, and died.”

“Ah! Sickened, drooped, and died!” I says.

“And so Mr. Edson’s only comfort, only hope on earth, and only stimulus to action, was his darling boy. As the child grew older, he grew so like his mother that he was her living picture. It used to make him wonder why his father cried when he kissed him. But unhappily he was like his mother in constitution as well as in face, and he died too before he had grown out of childhood. Then Mr. Edson, who had good abilities, in his forlornness and despair, threw them all to the winds. He became apathetic, reckless, lost. Little by little he sank down, down, down, down, until at last he almost lived (I think) by gaming. And so sickness overtook him in the town of Sens in France, and he lay down to die. But now that he laid him down when all was done, and looked back upon the green Past beyond the time when he had covered it with ashes, he thought gratefully of the good Mrs. Gran long lost sight of, who had been so kind to him and his young wife in the early days of their marriage, and he left the little that he had as a last Legacy to her. And she, being brought to see him, at first no more knew him than she would know from seeing the ruin of a Greek or Roman Temple, what it used to be before it fell; but at length she remembered him. And then he told her, with tears, of his regret for the misspent part of his life, and besought her to think as mildly of it as she could, because it was the poor fallen Angel of his unchanging Love and Constancy after all. And because she had her grandson with her, and he fancied that his own boy, if he had lived, might have grown to be something like him, he asked her to let him touch his forehead with his cheek and say certain parting words.”

Jemmy’s voice sank low when it got to that, and tears filled my eyes, and filled the Major’s.

“You little Conjurer” I says, “how did you ever make it all out? Go in and write it every word down, for it’s a wonder.”

Which Jemmy did, and I have repeated it to you my dear from his writing.

Then the Major took my hand and kissed it, and said, “Dearest madam all has prospered with us.”

“Ah Major” I says drying my eyes, “we needn’t have been afraid. We might have known it. Treachery don’t come natural to beaming youth; but trust and pity, love and constancy,—they do, thank God!”

DOCTOR MARIGOLD'S PRESCRIPTIONS

1865

CONTENTS

I. To Be Taken Immediately

II. Not To Be Taken at Bed-Time

III. To Be Taken at the Dinner-Table

IV. Not To Be Taken For Granted

V. To Be Taken In Water

VI. To Be Taken With a Grain of Salt

VII. To Be Taken and Tried

VIII. To Be Taken For Life

CHAPTER I

TO BE TAKEN IMMEDIATELY

Charles Dickens

I am a Cheap Jack, and my own father’s name was Willum Marigold. It was in his lifetime supposed by some that his name was William, but my own father always consistently said, No, it was Willum. On which point I content myself with looking at the argument this way:—If a man is not allowed to know his own name in a free country, how much is he allowed to know in a land of slavery? As to looking at the argument through the medium of the Register, Willum Marigold come into the world before Registers come up much—and went out of it too. They wouldn’t have been greatly in his line neither, if they had chanced to come up before him.

I was born on the Queen’s highway, but it was the King’s at that time. A doctor was fetched to my own mother by my own father, when it took place on a common; and in consequence of his being a very kind gentleman, and accepting no fee but a tea-tray, I was named Doctor, out of gratitude and compliment to him. There you have me. Doctor Marigold.

I am at present a middle-aged man of a broadish build, in cords, leggings, and a sleeved waistcoat the strings of which is always gone behind. Repair them how you will, they go like fiddle-strings. You have been to the theatre, and you have seen one of the wiolin-players screw up his wiolin, after listening to it as if it had been whispering the secret to him that it feared it was out of order, and then you have heard it snap. That’s as exactly similar to my waistcoat as a waistcoat and a wiolin can be like one another.

I am partial to a white hat, and I like a shawl round my neck wore loose and easy. Sitting down is my favourite posture. If I have a taste in point of personal jewelry, it is mother-of-pearl buttons. There you have me again, as large as life.

The doctor having accepted a tea-tray, you’ll guess that my father was a Cheap Jack before me. You are right. He was. It was a pretty tray. It represented a large lady going along a serpentining up-hill gravel-walk, to attend a little church. Two swans had likewise come astray with the same intentions. When I call her a large lady, I don’t mean in point of breadth, for there she fell below my views, but she more than made it up in heighth; her heighth and slimness was—in short THE heighth of both.

I often saw that tray, after I was the innocently smiling cause (or more likely screeching one) of the doctor’s standing it up on a table against the wall in his consulting-room. Whenever my own father and mother were in that part of the country, I used to put my head (I have heard my own mother say it was flaxen curls at that time, though you wouldn’t know an old hearth-broom from it now till you come to the handle, and found it wasn’t me) in at the doctor’s door, and the doctor was always glad to see me, and said, “Aha, my brother practitioner! Come in, little M.D. How are your inclinations as to sixpence?”

You can’t go on for ever, you’ll find, nor yet could my father nor yet my mother. If you don’t go off as a whole when you are about due, you’re liable to go off in part, and two to one your head’s the part. Gradually my father went off his, and my mother went off hers. It was in a harmless way, but it put out the family where I boarded them. The old couple, though retired, got to be wholly and solely devoted to the Cheap Jack business, and were always selling the family off. Whenever the cloth was laid for dinner, my father began rattling the plates and dishes, as we do in our line when we put up crockery for a bid, only he had lost the trick of it, and mostly let ’em drop and broke ’em. As the old lady had been used to sit in the cart, and hand the articles out one by one to the old gentleman on the footboard to sell,  just in the same way she handed him every item of the family's property, and they disposed of it in their own imaginations from morning to night. At last the old gentleman, lying bedridden in the same room with the old lady, cries out in the old patter, fluent, after having been silent for two days and nights: " Now here, my jolly companions every one—which the Nightingale club in a village was held, At the sign of the Cabbage and Shears, Where the singers no doubt would have greatly excelled, But for want of taste voices and ears—now here, my jolly companions every one, is a working model of a used-up old Cheap Jack, without a tooth in his head, and with a pain in every bone: so like life that it would be just as good if it wasn't better, just as bad if it wasn't worse, and just as new if it wasn't worn out. Bid for the working model of the old Cheap Jack, who has drunk more gunpowder-tea with the ladies in his time than would blow the lid off a washerwoman's copper, and carry it as many thousands of miles higher than the moon as nought nix nought, divided by the national debt, carry nothing to the poor-rates, three under, and two over. Now my hearts of oak and men of straw, what do you say for the lot? Two shillings, a shilling, tenpence, eightpence, sixpence, fourpence. Twopence? Who said twopence? The gentleman in the scarecrow's hat? I am ashamed of the gentleman in the scarecrow's hat. I really am ashamed of him for his want of public spirit. Now I'll tell you what I'll do with you. Come! I'll throw you in a working model of a old woman that was married to the old Cheap Jack so long ago, that upon my word and honour it took place in Noah's Ark, before the Unicorn could get in to forbid the banns by blowing a tune upon his horn. There now! Come! What do you say for both? I'll tell you what I'll do with you. I don't bear you malice for being so backward. Here! If you make me a bid that'll only reflect a little credit on your town, I'll throw you in a warming-pan for nothing, and lend you a toasting-fork for life. Now come; what do you say after that splendid offer? Say two pound, say thirty shillings, say a pound, say ten shillings, say five, say two and six. You don't say even two and six? You say two and three? No. You shan't have the lot for two and three. I'd sooner give it you, if you was good looking enough. Here! Missis! Chuck the old man and woman into the cart, put the horse to, and drive 'em away and bury 'em!" Such were the last words of Willum Marigold, my own father, and they were carried out, by him and by his wife my own mother on one and the same day, as I ought to know, having followed as mourner.

My father had been a lovely one in his time at the Cheap Jack work, as his dying observations went to prove. But I top him. I don't say it because it's myself, but because it has been universally acknowledged by all that has had the means of comparison. I have worked at it. I have measured myself against other public speakers, Members of Parliament, Platforms, Pulpits, Counsel learned in the law—and where I have found 'em good, I have took a bit of imitation from 'em, and where I have found 'em bad, I have let 'em, alone. Now I'll tell you what. I mean to go down into my grave declaring that of all the callings ill used in Great Britain, the Cheap Jack calling is the worst used. Why ain't we a profession? Why ain't we endowed with privileges? Why are we forced to take out a hawkers' license, when no such thing is expected of the political hawkers? Where's the difference betwixt us? Except that we are Cheap Jacks and they are Dear Jacks, I don't see any difference but what's in our favour.

For look here! Say it's election-time. I am on the footboard of my cart in the market-place on a Saturday night. I put up a general miscellaneous lot. I say: "Now here my free and independent woters, I'm a going to give you such a chance as you never had in all your born days, nor yet the days preceding. Now I'll show you what I am a going to do with you. Here's a pair of razors that'll shave you closer than the Board of Guardians, here's a flat-iron worth its weight in gold, here's a frying-pan artificially flavoured with essence of beefsteaks to that degree that you've only got for the rest of your lives to fry bread and dripping in it and there you are replete with animal food, here's a genuine chronometer watch in such a solid silver case that you may knock at the door with it when you come home late from a social meeting and rouse your wife and family and save up your knocker for the postman, and here's half a dozen dinner plates that you may play the cymbals with to charm the baby when it's fractious. Stop! I'll throw you in another article and I'll give you that, and it's a rolling-pin, and if the baby can only get it well into its mouth when its teeth is coming and rub the gums once with it, they'll come through double, in a fit of laughter equal to being tickled. Stop again! I'll throw you in another article, because I don't like the looks of you, for you haven't the appearance of buyers unless I lose by you, and because I'd rather lose than not take money to-night, and that's a looking-glass in which you may see how ugly you look when you don't bid. What do you say now? Come'! Do you say a pound? Not you, for you haven't got it. Do you say ten shillings? Not you, for you owe more to the tallyman. Well then, I'll tell you what I'll do with you. I'll heap 'em all on the footboard of the cart—there they are! razors, flat-iron, frying-pan, chronometer watch, dinner plates, rolling-pin, and looking-glass—take 'em all away for four shillings, and I'll give you sixpence for your trouble!" This is me, the Cheap Jack. But on the Monday morning, in the same marketplace, comes the Dear Jack on the hustings—his cart—and what does he say? "Now my free and independent woters, I am a going to give you such a chance" (he begins just like me) "as you never had in all your born days, and that's the chance of sending Myself to Parliament. Now I'll tell you what I am a going to do for you. Here's the interests of this magnificent town promoted above all the rest of the civilised and uncivilised earth. Here's your railways carried, and your neighbours' railways jockeyed. Here's all your sons in the Post-office. Here's Britannia smiling on you. Here's the eyes of Europe on you. Here's uniwersal prosperity for you, repletion of animal food, golden cornfields, gladsome homesteads, and rounds of applause from your own hearts, all in one lot and that's myself. Will you take me as I stand? You won't? Well then, I'll tell you what I'll do with you. Come now! I'll throw you in anything you ask for. There! Church-rates, abolition of church-rates, more malt tax, no malt tax, uniwersal education to the highest mark or uniwersal ignorance to the lowest, total abolition of flogging in the army or a dozen for every private once a month all round, Wrongs of Men or Rights of Women,—only say which it shall be, take 'em or leave 'em, and I'm of your opinion altogether, and the lot's your own on your own terms. There! You won't take it yet? Well then, I'll tell you what I'll do with you. Come! You are such free and independent woters, and I am so proud of you—you are such a noble and enlightened constituency, and I am so ambitious of the honour and dignity of being your member, which is by far the highest level to which the wings of the human mind can soar—that I'll tell you what I'll do with you. I'll throw you in all the public-houses in your magnificent town for nothing. Will that content you? It won't? You won't take the lot yet? Well then, before I put the horse in and drive away, and make the offer to the next most magnificent town that can be discovered, I'll tell you what I'll do. Take the lot, and I'll drop two thousand pound in the streets of your magnificent town for them to pick up that can. Not enough? Now look here. This is the very furthest that I'm a going to. I'll make it two thousand five hundred. And still you won't? Here, missis! Put the horse—no, stop half a moment, I shouldn't like to turn my back upon you neither for a trifle, I'll make it two thousand seven hundred and fifty pound. There! Take the lot on your own terms, and I'll count out two thousand seven hundred and fifty pound on the footboard of the cart, to be dropped in the streets of your magnificent town for them to pick up that can. What do you say? Come now! You won't do better, and you may do worse. You take it? Hooray! Sold again, and got the seat!"

These Dear Jacks soap the people shameful, but we Cheap Jacks don't. We tell 'em the truth about themselves to their faces, and scorn to court 'em. As to wenturesomeness in the way of puffing up the lots, the Dear Jacks beat us hollow. It is considered in the Cheap Jack calling that better patter can be made out of a gun than any article we put up from the cart, except a pair of spectacles. I often hold forth about a gun for a quarter of an hour, and feel as if I need never leave off. But when I tell 'em what the gun can do, and what the gun has brought down, I never go half so far as the Dear Jacks do when they make speeches in praise of their guns—their great guns that set 'em on to do it. Besides, I'm in business for myself, I ain't sent down into the market-place to order, as they are. Besides again, my guns don't know what I say in their laudation, and their guns do, and the whole concern of'em have reason to be sick and ashamed all round. These are some of my arguments for declaring that the Cheap Jack calling is treated ill in Great Britain, and for turning warm when I think of the other Jacks in question setting themselves up to pretend to look down upon it.

I courted my wife from the footboard of the cart. I did indeed. She was a Suffolk young woman, and it was in Ipswich market-place right opposite the corn-chandler's shop. I had noticed her up at a window last Saturday that was, appreciating highly. I had took to her, and I had said to myself, "If not already disposed of, I'll have that lot." Next Saturday that come, I pitched the cart on the same pitch, and I was in very high feather indeed, keeping 'em laughing the whole of the time and getting off the goods briskly. At last I took out of my waistcoat-pocket, a small lot wrapped in soft paper, and I put it this way (looking up at the window where she was). "Now here my blooming English maidens is an article, the last article of the present evening's sale, which I offer to only you the lovely Suffolk Dumplings biling over with beauty, and I won't take a bid of a thousand pound for, from any man alive. Now what is it? Why, I'll tell you what it is. It's made of fine gold, and it's not broke though there's a hole in the middle of it, and it's stronger than any fetter that ever was forged, though it's smaller than any finger in my set of ten. Why ten? Because when my parents made over my property to me, I tell you true, there was twelve sheets, twelve towels, twelve tablecloths, twelve knives, twelve forks, twelve tablespoons, and twelve teaspoons, but my set of fingers was two short of a dozen and could never since be matched. Now what else is it? Come I'll tell you. It's a hoop of solid gold, wrapped in a silver curl-paper that I myself took off the shining locks of the ever beautiful old lady in Threadneedle-street, London city. I wouldn't tell you so if I hadn't the paper to show, or you mightn't believe it even of me. Now what else is it? It's a man-trap and a handcuff, the parish stocks and a leg-lock, all in gold and all in one. Now what else is it? It's a wedding ring. Now I'll tell you what I'm a-going to do with it. I'm not a-going to offer this lot for money, but I mean to give it to the next of you beauties that laughs, and I'll pay her a visit to-morrow morning at exactly half after nine o'clock as the chimes go, and I'll take her out for a walk to put up the banns." She laughed, and got the ring handed up to her. When I called in the morning, she says, "Oh dear! It's never you and you never mean it?" "It's ever me," says I, "and I am ever yours, and I ever mean it." So we got married, after being put up three times—which, by-the-by, is quite in the Cheap Jack way again, and shows once more how the Cheap Jack customs pervade society.

She wasn't a bad wife, but she had a temper. If she could have parted with that one article at a sacrifice, I wouldn't have swopped her away in exchange for any other woman in England. Not that I ever did swop her away, for we lived together till she died, and that was thirteen year. Now my lords and ladies and gentlefolks all, I'll let you into a secret, though you won't believe it. Thirteen year of temper in a Palace would try the worst of you, but thirteen year of temper in a Cart would try the best of you. You are kept so very close to it in a cart, you see. There's thousands of couples among you, getting on like sweet ile upon a whetstone in houses five and six pairs of stairs high, that would go to the Divorce Court in a cart. Whether the jolting makes it worse, I don't undertake to decide, but in a cart it does come home to you and stick to you. Wiolence in a cart is so wiolent, and aggrawation in a cart is so aggrawating.

We might have had such a pleasant life! A roomy cart, with the large goods hung outside and the bed slung underneath it when on the road, an iron pot and a kettle, a fireplace for the cold weather, a chimney for the smoke, a hanging shelf and a cupboard, a dog, and a horse. What more do you want? You draw off upon a bit of turf in a green lane or by the roadside, you hobble your old horse and turn him grazing, you light your fire upon the ashes of the last visitors, you cook your stew, and you wouldn't call the Emperor of France your father. But have a temper in the cart, flinging language and the hardest goods in stock at you, and where are you then? Put a name to your feelings.

My dog knew as well when she was on the turn as I did. Before she broke out, he would give a howl, and bolt. How he knew it, was a mystery to me, but the sure and certain knowledge of it would wake him up out of his soundest sleep, and he would give a howl, and bolt. At such times I wished I was him.

The worst of it was, we had a daughter born to us, and I love children with all my heart. When she was in her furies, she beat the child. This got to be so shocking as the child got to be four or five year old, that I have many a time gone on with my whip over my shoulder, at the old horse's head, sobbing and crying worse than ever little Sophy did. Eor how could I prevent it? Such a thing is not to be tried with such a temper—in a cart—without coming to a fight. It's in the natural size and formation of a cart to bring it to a fight. And then the poor child got worse terrified than before, as well as worse hurt generally, and her mother made complaints to the next people we lighted on, and the word went round, "Here's a wretch of a Cheap Jack been a beating his wife."

Little Sophy was such a brave child! She grew to be quite devoted to her poor father, though he could do so little to help her. She had a wonderful quantity of shining dark hair, all curling natural about her. It is quite astonishing to me now, that I didn't go tearing mad when I used to see her run from her mother before the cart, and her mother catch her by this hair, and pull her down by it, and beat her.

Such a brave child I said she was. Ah! with reason.

"Don't you mind next time, father dear," she would whisper to me, with her little face still flushed, and her bright eyes still wet; "if I don't cry out, you may know I am not much hurt. And even if I do cry out, it will only be to get mother to let go and leave off." What I have seen the little spirit bear—for me—without crying out!

Yet in other respects her mother took great care of her. Her clothes were always clean and neat, and her mother was never tired of working at 'em. Such is the inconsistency in things. Our being down in the marsh country in unhealthy weather, I consider the cause of Sophy's taking bad low fever; but however she took it, once she got it she turned away from her mother for evermore, and nothing would persuade her to be touched by her mother's hand. She would shiver and say "No, no, no," when it was offered at, and would hide her face on my shoulder, and hold me tighter round the neck.

The Cheap Jack business had been worse than ever I had known it, what with one thing and what with another (and not least what with railroads, which will cut it all to pieces, I expect at last), and I was run dry of money. For which reason, one night at that period of little Sophy's being so bad, either we must have come to a dead-lock for victuals and drink, or I must have pitched the cart as I did.

I couldn't get the dear child to lie down or leave go of me, and indeed I hadn't the heart to try, so I stepped out on the footboard with her holding round my neck. They all set up a laugh when they see us, and one chuckle-headed Joskin (that I hated for it) made the bidding, "tuppence for her!"

"Now, you country boobies," says I, feeling as if my heart was a heavy weight at the end of a broken sash-line, "I give you notice that I am a going to charm the money out of your pockets, and to give you so much more than your money's worth that you'll only persuade yourselves to draw your Saturday night's wages ever again arterwards, by the hopes of meeting me to lay 'em out with, which you never will, and why not? Because I've made my fortune by selling my goods on a large scale for seventy-five per cent less than I give for 'em, and I am consequently to be elevated to the House of Peers next week, by the title of the Duke of Cheap and Markis Jackaloorul. Now let's know what you want to-night, and you shall have it. But first of all, shall I tell you why I have got this little girl round my neck? You don't want to know? Then you shall. She belongs to the Fairies. She's a fortune-teller. She can tell me all about you in a whisper, and can put me up to whether you're a-gomg to buy a lot or leave it. Now do you want a saw? No, she says you don't, because you're too clumsy to use one. Else here's a saw which would be a lifelong blessing to a handy man, at four shillings, at three and six, at three, at two and six, at two, at eighteenpence. But none of you shall have it at any price, on account of your well-known awkwardness which would make it manslaughter. The same objection applies to this set of three planes which I won't let you have neither, so don't bid for 'em. Now I am a-going to ask her what you do want. (Then I whispered, "Your head burns so, that I am afraid it hurts you bad, my pet," and she answered, without opening her heavy eyes, "Just a little, father.") Oh! This little fortune-teller says it's a memorandum-book you want. Then why didn't you mention it? Here it is. Look at it. Two hundred superfine hot-pressed wire-wove pages—if you don't believe me, count 'em—ready ruled for your expenses, an everlastingly-pointed pencil to put 'em down with, a double-bladed penknife to scratch 'em out with, a book of printed tables to calculate your income with, and a camp-stool to sit down upon while you give your mind to it! Stop! And an umbrella to keep the moon off when you give your mind to it on a pitch dark night. Now I won't ask you how much for the lot, but how little? How little are you thinking of? Don't be ashamed to mention it, because my fortune-teller knows already. (Then making believe to whisper, I kissed her, and she kissed me.) Why, she says you're thinking of as little as three and threepence! I couldn't have believed it, even of you, unless she told me. Three and threepence! And a set of printed tables in the lot that'll calculate your income up to forty thousand a year! With an income of forty thousand a year, you grudge three and sixpence. Well then, I'll tell you my opinion. I so despise the threepence, that I'd sooner take three shillings. There. For three shillings, three shillings, three shillings! Gone. Hand 'em over to the lucky man."

As there had been no bid at all, everybody looked about and grinned at everybody, while I touched little Sophy's face and asked her if she felt faint or giddy. "Not very, father. It will soon be over." Then turning from the pretty patient eyes, which were opened now, and seeing nothing but grins across my lighted grease-pot, I went on again huny Cheap Jack style. "Where's the butcher?" (My sorrowful eye had just caught sight of a fat young butcher on the outside of the crowd.) She says the good luck is the butcher's. "Where is he?" Everybody handed on the blushing butcher to the front, and there was a roar, and the butcher felt himself obliged to put his hand in his pocket and take the lot. The party so picked out, in general does feel obliged to take the lot—good four times out of six. Then we had another lot the counterpart of that one, and sold it sixpence cheaper, which is always wery much enjoyed. Then we had the spectacles. It ain't a special profitable lot, but I put 'em on. and I see what the Chancellor of the Exchequer is going to take off the taxes, and I see what the sweetheart of the young woman in the shawl is doing at home, and I see what the Bishops has got for dinner, and a deal more that seldom fails to fetch 'em up in their spirits; and the better their spirits, the better their bids. Then we had the ladies' lot—the teapot, tea-caddy, glass sugar basin, half a dozen spoons, and caudle-cup—and all the time I was making similar excuses to give a look or two and say a word or two to my poor child. It was while the second ladies' lot was holding 'em enchained that I felt her lift herself a little on my shoulder, to look across the dark street. "What troubles you, darling?" "Nothing troubles me, father. I am not at all troubled. But don't I see a pretty churchyard over there?" "Yes, my dear." "Kiss me twice, dear father, and lay me down to rest upon that churchyard grass so soft and green." I staggered back into the cart with her head dropped on my shoulder, and I says to her mother, "Quick. Shut the door! Don't let those laughing people see!" "What's the matter?" she cries. "O, woman, woman," I tells her, "you'll never catch my little Sophy by her hair again, for she has flown away from you!"

Maybe those were harder words than I meant 'em, but from that time forth my wife took to brooding, and would sit in the cart or walk beside it, hours at a stretch, with her arms crossed and her eyes looking on the ground. When her furies took her (which was rather seldomer than before) they took her in a new way, and she banged herself about to that extent that I was forced to hold her. She got none the better for a little drink now and then, and through some years I used to wonder as I plodded along at the old horse's head whether there was many carts upon the road that held so much dreariness as mine, for all my being looked up to as the King of the Cheap Jacks. So sad our lives went on till one summer evening, when as we were coming into Exeter out of the further West of England, we saw a woman beating a child in a cruel manner, who screamed, "Don't beat me! O mother, mother, mother!" Then my wife stopped her ears and ran away like a wild thing, and next day she was found in the river.

Me and my dog were all the company left in the cart now, and the dog learned to give a short bark when they wouldn't bid, and to give another and a nod of his head when I asked him: "Who said half-a-crown? Are you the gentleman, sir, that offered half-a-crown?" He attained to an immense heighth of popularity, and I shall always believe taught himself entirely out of his own head to growl at any person in the crowd that bid as low as sixpence. But he got to be well on in years, and one night when I was conwulsing York with the spectacles, he took a conwulsion on his own account upon the very footboard by me, and it finished him.

Being naturally of a tender turn, I had dreadful lonely feelings on me arter this. I conquered 'em at selling times, having a reputation to keep (not to mention keeping myself), but they got me down in private and rolled upon me. That's often the way with us public characters. See us on the footboard, and you'd give pretty well anything you possess to be us. See us off the footboard, and you'd add a trifle to be off your bargain. It was under those circumstances that I come acquainted with a giant. I might have been too high to fall into conversation with him, had it not been for my lonely feelings. For the general rule is, going round the country, to draw the line at dressing up. When a man can't trust his getting a living to his undisguised abilities, you consider him below your sort. And this giant when on view figured as a Roman.

He was a languid young man, which I attribute to the distance betwixt his extremities. He had a little head and less in it, he had weak eyes and weak knees, and altogether you couldn't look at him without feeling that there was greatly too much of him both for his joints and his mind. But he was an amiable though timid young man (his mother let him out, and spent the money), and we come acquainted when he was walking to ease the horse betwixt two fairs. He was called Rinaldo di Velasco, his name being Pickleson.

This giant otherwise Pickleson mentioned to me under the seal of confidence, that beyond his being a burden to himself, his life was made a burden to him, by the cruelty of his master towards a step-daughter who was deaf and dumb. Her mother was dead, and she had no living soul to take her part, and was used most hard. She travelled with his master's caravan only because there was nowhere to leave her, and this giant otherwise Pickleson did go so far as to believe that his master often tried to lose her He was such a very languid young man, that I don't know how long it didn't take him to get this story out, but it passed through his defective circulation to his top extremity in course of time.

When I heard this account from the giant otherwise Pickleson, and likewise that the poor girl had beautiful long dark hair, and was often pulled down by it and beaten, I couldn't see the giant through what stood in my eyes. Having wiped 'em, I give him sixpence (for he was kept as short as he was long), and he laid it out in two threepennorths of gin-and-water, which so brisked him up, that he sang the Favourite Comic of Shivery Shakey, ain't it cold. A popular effect which his master had tried every other means to get out of him as a Roman, wholly in vain.

His master's name was Mim, a wery hoarse man and I knew him to speak to. I went to that Fair as a mere civilian, leaving the cart outside the town, and I looked about the back of the Vans while the performing was going on, and at last sitting dozing against a muddy cartwheel, I come upon the poor girl who was deaf and dumb. At the first look I might almost have judged that she had escaped from the Wild Beast Show, but at the second I thought better of her, and thought that if she was more cared for and more kindly used she would be like my child. She was just the same age that my own daughter would have been, if her pretty head had not fell down upon my shoulder that unfortunate night.

To cut it short, I spoke confidential to Mim while he was beating the gong outside betwixt two lots of Pickleson's publics, and I put it to him, "She lies heavy on your own hands; what'll you take for her?" Mim was a most ferocious sweater. Suppressing that part of his reply, which was much the longest part, his reply was, "A pair of braces." "Now I'll tell you," says I, "what I'm a going to do with you. I'm a going to fetch you half a dozen pair of the primest braces in the cart, and then to take her away with me." Says Mim (again ferocious), "I'll believe it when I've got the goods, and no sooner." I made all the haste I could, lest he should think twice of it, and the bargain was completed, which Pickleson he was thereby so relieved in his mind that he come out at his little back door, longways like a serpent, and give us Shivery Shakey in a whisper among the wheels at parting.

It was happy days for both of us when Sophy and me began to travel in the cart. I at once give her the name of Sophy, to put her ever towards me in the attitude of my own daughter. We soon made out to begin to understand one another through the goodness of the Heavens, when she knowed that I meant true and kind by her. In a very little time she was wonderful fond of me. You have no idea what it is to have any body wonderful fond of you, unless you have been got down and rolled upon by the lonely feelings that I have mentioned as having once got the better of me.

You'd have laughed—or the rewerse—it's according to your disposition—if you could have seen me trying to teach Sophy. At first I was helped—you'd never guess by what—milestones. I got some large alphabets in a box, all the letters separate on bits of bone, and say we was going to WINDSOR, I give her those letters in that order, and then at every milestone I showed her those same letters in that same order again, and pointed towards the abode of royalty. Another time I give her CA R T, and then chalked the same upon the cart. Another time I give her D O C T O R M A R I G O L D, and hung a corresponding inscription outside my waistcoat. People that met us might stare a bit and laugh, but what did I care if she caught the idea? She caught it after long patience and trouble, and then we did begin to get on swimmingly, I believe you! At first she was a little given to consider me the cart, and the cart the abode of royalty, but that soon wore off.

We had our signs, too, and they was hundreds in number. Sometimes, she would sit looking at me and considering hard how to communicate with me about something fresh—how to ask me what she wanted explained—and then she was (or I thought she was; what does it signify?) so like my child with those years added to her, that I half believed it was herself, trying to tell me where she had been to up in the skies, and what she had seen since that unhappy night when she flied away. She had a pretty face, and now that there was no one to drag at her bright dark hair and it was all in order, there was a something touching in her looks that made the cart most peaceful and most quiet, though not at all melancolly. [N.B. In the Cheap Jack patter, we generally sound it, lemonjolly, and it gets a laugh.]

The way she learnt to understand any look of mine was truly surprising. When I sold of a night, she would sit in the cart unseen by them outside, and would give a eager look into my eyes when I looked in, and would hand me straight the precise article or articles I wanted. And then she would clap her hands and laugh for joy. And as for me, seeing her so bright, and remembering what she was when I first lighted on her, starved and beaten and ragged, leaning asleep against the muddy cart-wheel, it give me such heart that I gained a greater heighth of reputation than ever, and I put Pickleson down (by the name of Mim's Travelling Giant otherwise Pickleson) for a fypunnote in my will.

This happiness went on in the cart till she was sixteen year old. By which time I began to feel not satisfied that I had done my whole duty by her, and to consider that she ought to have better teaching than I could give her. It drew a many tears on both sides when I commenced explaining my views to her, but what's right is right and you can't neither by tears nor laughter do away with its character.

So I took her hand in mine, and I went with her one day to the Deaf and Dumb Establishment in London, and when the gentleman come to speak to us, I says to him: "Now I'll tell you what I'll do with you sir. I am nothing but a Cheap Jack, but of late years I have laid by for a rainy day notwithstanding. This is my only daughter (adopted) and you can't produce a deafer nor a dumber. Teach her the most that can be taught her, in the shortest separation that can be named—state the figure for it—and I am game to put the money down. I won't bate you a single farthing sir but I'll put down the money here and now, and I'll thankfully throw you in a pound to take it. There!" The gentleman smiled, and then, "Well, well," says he, "I must first know what she has learnt already. How do you communicate with her?" Then I showed him, and she wrote in printed writing many names of things and so forth, and we held some sprightly conversation, Sophy and me, about a little story in a book which the gentleman showed her and which she was able to read. "This is most extraordinary," says the gentleman; "is it possible that you have been her only teacher?" "I have been her only teacher, sir," I says, "besides herself." "Then," says the gentleman, and more acceptable words was never spoke to me, "you're a clever fellow, and a good fellow." This he makes known to Sophy, who kisses his hands, claps her own, and laughs and cries upon it.

We saw the gentleman four times in all, and when he took down my name and asked how in the world it ever chanced to be Doctor, it come out that he was own nephew by the sister's side, if you'll believe me, to the very Doctor that I was called after. This made our footing still easier, and he says to me:

"Now Marigold, tell me what more do you want your adopted daughter to know?"

"I want her sir to be cut off from the world as little as can be, considering her deprivations, and therefore to be able to read whatever is wrote, with perfect ease and pleasure."

"My good fellow," urges the gentleman, opening his eyes wide, "why I can't do that myself!"

I took his joke and give him a laugh (knowing by experience how flat you fall without it) and I mended my words accordingly.

"What do you mean to do with her afterwards?" asks the gentleman, with a sort of a doubtful eye. " To take her about the country?"

"In the cart sir, but only in the cart. She will live a private life, you understand, in the cart. I should never think of bringing her infirmities before the public. I wouldn't make a show of her, for any money."

The gentleman nodded and seemed to approve.

"Well," says he, "can you part with her for two years?"

"To do her that good—yes, sir."

"There's another question," says the gentleman, looking towards her: "Can she part with you for two years?"

I don't know that it was a harder matter of itself (for the other was hard enough to me), but it was harder to get over. However, she was pacified to it at last, and the separation betwixt us was settled. How it cut up both of us when it took place, and when I left her at the door in the dark of an evening, I don't tell. But I know this:—remembering that night, I shall never pass that same establishment without a heart-ache and a swelling in the throat, and I couldn't put you up the best of lots in sight of it with my usual spirit—no, not even the gun, nor the pair of spectacles—for five hundred pound reward from the Secretary of State for the Home Department, and throw in the honour of putting my legs under his mahogany arterwards.

Still, the loneliness that followed in the cart was not the old loneliness, because there was a term put to it however long to look forward to, and because I could think, when I was anyways down, that she belonged to me and I belonged to her. Always planning for her coming back, I bought in a few months' time another cart, and what do you think I planned to do with it? I'll tell you. I planned to fit it up with shelves, and books for her reading, and to have a seat in it where I could sit and see her read, and think that I had been her first teacher. Not hurrying over the job, I had the fittings knocked together in contriving ways under my own inspection, and here was her bed in a berth with curtains, and there was her reading-table, and here was her writing-desk, and elsewhere was her books in rows upon rows, picters and no picters, bindings and no bindings, gilt-edged and plain, just as I could pick 'em up for her in lots up and down the country, North and South and West and East, Winds liked best and winds liked least, Here and there and gone astray, Over the hills and far away. And when I had got together pretty well as many books as the cart would neatly hold, a new scheme come into my head which, as it turned out, kept my time and attention a good deal employed and helped me over the two years stile.

Without being of an awaricious temper, I like to be the owner of things. I should'nt wish, for instance, to go partners with yourself in the Cheap Jack cart. It's not that I mistrust you, but that I'd rather know it was mine. Similarly, very likely you'd rather know it was yours. Well! A kind of a jealousy began to creep into my mind when I reflected that all those books would have been read by other people long before they was read by her. It seemed to take away from her being the owner of 'em like. In this way, the question got into my head:—Couldn't I have a book new-made express for her, which she should be the first to read?

It pleased me, that thought did, and as I never was a man to let a thought sleep (you must wake up all the whole family of thoughts you've got and burn their nightcaps, or you won't do in the cheap Jack line), I set to work at it. Considering that I was in the habit of changing so much about the country, and that I should have to find out a literary character here to make a deal with, and another literary character there to make a deal with, as opportunities presented, I hit on the plan that this same book should be a general miscellaneous lot—like the razors, flat-iron, chronometer watch, dinner plates, rolling-pin, and looking-glass—and shouldn't be offered as a single indiwidual article like the spectacles or the gun. When I had come to that conclusion, I come to another, which shall likewise be yours.

Often had I regretted that she never had heard me on the footboard, and that she never could hear me. It ain't that I am vain, but that you don't like to put your own light under a bushel. What's the worth of your reputation, if you can't convey the reason for it to the person you most wish to value it? Now I'll put it to you. Is it worth sixpence, fippence, fourpence, threepence, twopence, a penny, a halfpenny, a farthing? No, it ain't. Not worth a farthing. Very well then. My conclusion was, that I would begin her book with some account of myself. So that, through reading a specimen or two of me on the footboard, she might form an idea of my merits there. I was aware that I couldn't do myself justice. A man can't write his eye (at least I don't know how to), nor yet can a man write his voice, nor the rate of his talk, nor the quickness of his action, nor his general spicy way. But he can write his turns of speech, when he is a public speaker—and indeed I have heard that he very often does, before he speaks 'em.

Well! Having formed that resolution, then come the question of a name. How did I hammer that hot iron into shape? This way. The most difficult explanation I had ever had with her was, how I come to be called Doctor, and yet was no Doctor. After all, I felt that I had failed of getting it correctly into her mind, with my utmost pains. But trusting to her improvement in the two years, I thought that I might trust to her understanding it when she should come to read it as put down by my own hand. Then I thought I would try a joke with her and watch how it took, by which of itself I might fully judge of her understanding it. We had first discovered the mistake we had dropped into, through her having asked me to prescribe for her when she had supposed me to be a Doctor in a medical point of view, so thinks I, "Now, if I give this book the name of my Prescriptions, and if she catches the idea that my only Prescriptions are for her amusement and interest—to make her laugh in a pleasant way, or to make her cry in a pleasant way—it will be a delightful proof to both of us that we have got over our difficulty. It fell out to absolute perfection. For when she saw the book, as I had it got up—the printed and pressed book—lying on her desk in her cart, and saw the title, DOCTOR MARIGOLD'S PRESCRIPTIONS, she looked at me for a moment with astonishment, then fluttered the leaves, then broke out a laughing in the charmingest way, then felt her pulse and shook her head, then turned the pages pretending to read them most attentive, then kissed the book to me, and put it to her bosom with both her hands. I never was better pleased in all my life!

But let me not anticipate. (I take that expression out of a lot of romances I bought for her. I never opened a single one of 'em—and I have opened many—but I found the romancer saying "let me not anticipate." Which being so, I wonder why he did anticipate, or who asked him to it.) Let me not, I say, anticipate. This same book took up all my spare time. It was no play to get the other articles together in the general miscellaneous lot, but when it come to my own article! There! I couldn't have believed the blotting, nor yet the buckling to at it, nor the patience over it. Which again is like the footboard. The public have no idea.

At last it was done, and the two years' time was gone after all the other time before it, and where it's all gone to, Who knows? The new cart was finished—yellow outside, relieved with wermillion and brass fittings—the old horse was put in it, a new 'un and a boy being laid on for the Cheap Jack cart—and I cleaned myself up to go and fetch her. Bright cold weather it was, cart-chimneys smoking, carts pitched private on a piece of waste ground over at Wandsworth where you may see 'em from the Sou' Western Railway when not upon the road. (Look out of the right-hand window going down.)

"Marigold," says the gentleman, giving his hand hearty, "I am very glad to see you."

"Yet I have my doubts, sir," says I, "if you can be half as glad to see me, as I am to see you."

"The time has appeared so long; has it, Marigold?"

"I won't say that, sir, considering its real length; but——"

"What a start, my good fellow!"

Ah! I should think it was! Grown such a woman, so pretty, so intelligent, so expressive! I knew then that she must be really like my child, or I could never have known her, standing quiet by the door.

"You are affected," says the gentleman in a kindly manner.

" I feel, sir," says I, "that I am but a rough chap in a sleeved waistcoat."

"I feel," says the gentleman, "that it was you who raised her from misery and degradation, and brought her into communication with her kind. But why do we converse alone together, when we can converse so well with her? Address her in your own way."

"I am such a rough chap in a sleeved waistcoat, sir," says I, "and she is such a graceful woman, and she stands so quiet at the door!"

"Try if she moves at the old sign," says the gentleman.

They had got it up together o' purpose to please me! For when I give her the old sign, she rushed to my feet, and dropped upon her knees, holding up her hands to me with pouring tears of love and joy; and when I took her hands and lifted her, she clasped me round the neck and lay there; and I don't know what a fool I didn't make of myself, until we all three settled down into talking without sound, as if there was a something soft and pleasant spread over the whole world for us.

Now I'll tell you what I am a going to do with you. I am a going to offer you the general miscellaneous lot, her own book, never read by anybody else but me, added to and completed by me after her first reading of it, eight-and-forty printed pages, six-and-ninety columns, Whiting's own work, Beaufort House to wit, thrown off by the steam-ingine, best of paper, beautiful green wrapper, folded like clean linen come home from the clear-starcher's, and so exquisitely stitched that, regarded as a piece of needlework alone it's better than the sampler of a seamstress undergoing a Competitive Examination for Starvation before the Civil Service Commissioners—and I offer the lot for what? For eight pound? Not so much. For six pound? Less. For four pound? Why, I hardly expect you to believe me, but that's the sum. Four pound! The stitching alone cost half as much again. Here's forty-eight original pages, ninety-six original columns, for four pound. You want more for the money? Take it. Three whole pages of advertisements of thrilling interest thrown in for nothing. Read 'em and believe 'em. More? My best of wishes for your merry Christmases and your happy New Years, your long lives and your true prosperities. Worth twenty pound good if they are delivered as I send them. Remember! Here's a final prescription added, "To be taken for life," which will tell you how the cart broke down, and where the journey ended. You think Four Pound too much? And still you think so? Come! I'll tell you what then. Say Four Pence, and keep the secret.

CHAPTER II

NOT TO BE TAKEN AT BED-TIME

Rosa Mulholland

This is the legend of a house called the Devil's Inn, standing in the heather on the top of the Connemara mountains, in a shallow valley hollowed between five peaks. Tourists sometimes come in sight of it on September evenings; a crazy and weather-stained apparition, with the sun glaring at it angrily between the hills, and striking its shattered window-panes. Guides are known to shun it, however.

The house was built by a stranger, who came no one knew whence, and whom the people nicknamed Coll Dhu (Black Coll), because of his sullen bearing and solitary habits. His dwelling they called the Devil's Inn, because no tired traveller had ever been asked to rest under its roof, nor friend known to cross its threshold. No one bore him company in his retreat but a wizen-faced old man, who shunned the good-morrow of the trudging peasant when he made occasional excursions to the nearest village for provisions for himself and master, and who was as secret as a stone concerning all the antecedents of both.

For the first year of their residence in the country, there had been much speculation as to who they were, and what they did with themselves up there among the clouds and eagles. Some said that Coll Dhu was a scion of the old family from whose hands the surrounding lands had passed; and that, embittered by poverty and pride, he had come to bury himself in solitude, and brood over his misfortunes. Others hinted of crime, and flight from another country; others again whispered of those who were cursed from their birth, and could never smile, nor yet make friends with a fellow-creature till the day of their death. But when two years had passed, the wonder had somewhat died out, and Coll Dhu was little thought of, except when a herd looking for sheep crossed the track of a big dark man walking the mountains gun in hand, to whom he did not dare say "Lord save you!" or when a housewife rocking her cradle of a winter's night, crossed herself as a gust of storm thundered over her cabin-roof, with the exclamation, "Oh, then, it's Coll Dhu that has enough o' the fresh air about his head up there this night, the crature!"

Coll Dhu had lived thus in his solitude for some years, when it became known that Colonel Blake, the new lord of the soil, was coming to visit the country. By climbing one of the peaks encircling his eyrie, Coll could look sheer down a mountain-side, and see in miniature beneath him, a grey old dwelling with ivied chimneys and weather-slated walls, standing amongst straggling trees and grim warlike rocks, that gave it the look of a fortress, gazing out to the Atlantic for ever with the eager eyes of all its windows, as if demanding perpetually, "What tidings from the New World?"

He could see now masons and carpenters crawling about below, like ants in the sun, over-running the old house from base to chimney, daubing here and knocking there, tumbling down walls that looked to Coll, up among the clouds, like a handful of jackstones, and building up others that looked like the toy fences in a child's Farm. Throughout several months he must have watched the busy ants at their task of breaking and mending again, disfiguring and beautifying; but when all was done he had not the curiosity to stride down and admire the handsome paneling of the new billiard-room, nor yet the fine view which the enlarged bay-window in the- drawing-room commanded of the watery highway to Newfoundland.

Deep summer was melting into autumn, and the amber streaks of decay were beginning to creep out and trail over the ripe purple of moor and mountain, when Colonel Blake, his only daughter, and a party of friends, arrived in the country. The grey house below was alive with gaiety, but Coll Dhu no longer found an interest in observing it from his eyrie. When he watched the sun rise or set, he chose to ascend some crag that looked on no human habitation. When he sallied forth on his excursions, gun in hand, he set his face towards the most isolated wastes, dipping into the loneliest valleys, and scaling the nakedest ridges. When he came by chance within call of other excursionists, gun in hand he plunged into the shade of some hollow, and avoided an encounter. Yet it was fated, for all that, that he and Colonel Blake should meet.

Towards the evening of one bright September day, the wind changed, and in half an hour the mountains were wrapped in a thick blinding mist. Coll Dhu was far from his den, but so well had he searched these mountains, and inured himself to their climate, that neither storm, rain, nor fog, had power to disturb him. But while he stalked on his way, a faint and agonised cry from a human voice reached him through the smothering mist. He quickly tracked the sound, and gained the side of a man who was stumbling along in danger of death at every step.

"Follow me!" said Coll Dhu to this man, and, in an hour's time, brought him safely to the lowlands, and up to the walls of the eager-eyed mansion.

"I am Colonel Blake," said the frank soldier, when, having left the fog behind him, they stood in the starlight under the lighted windows. "Pray tell me quickly to whom I owe my life."

As he spoke, he glanced up at his benefactor, a large man with a sombre sun-burned face.

"Colonel Blake," said Coll Dhu, after a strange pause, "your father suggested to my father to stake his estates at the gaming table. They were staked, and the tempter won. Both are dead; but you and I live, and I have sworn to injure you."

The colonel laughed good humouredly at the uneasy face above him.

"And you began to keep your oath to-night by saving my life?" said he. "Come! I am a soldier, and know how to meet an enemy; but I had far rather meet a friend. I shall not be happy till you have eaten my salt. We have merry-making to-night in honour of my daughter's birthday. Come in and join us?"

Coll Dhu looked at the earth doggedly.

"I have told you," he said, "who and what I am, and I will not cross your threshold."

But at this moment (so runs my story) a French window opened among the flower-beds by which they were standing, and a vision appeared which stayed the words on Coll's tongue. A stately girl, clad in white satin, stood framed in the ivied window, with the warm light from within streaming around her richly-moulded figure into the night. Her face was as pale as her gown, her eyes were swimming in tears, but a firm smile sat on her lips as she held out both hands to her father. The light behind her, touched the glistening folds of her dress—the lustrous pearls round her throat—the coronet of blood-red roses which encircled the knotted braids at the back of her head. Satin, pearls, and roses—had Coll Dhu, of the Devil's Inn, never set eyes upon such things before?

Evleen Blake was no nervous tearful miss. A few quick words—"Thank God! you're safe; the rest have been home an hour"—and a tight pressure of her father's fingers between her own jewelled hands, were all that betrayed the uneasiness she had suffered.

"Faith, my love, I owe my life to this brave gentleman!" said the blithe colonel. "Press him to come in and be our guest, Evleen. He wants to retreat to his mountains, and lose himself again in the fog where I found him; or, rather, where he found me! Come, sir" (to Coll), "you must surrender to this fair besieger."

An introduction followed. "Coll Dhu!" murmured Evleen Blake, for she had heard the common tales of him; but with a frank welcome she invited her father's preserver to taste the hospitality of that father's house. "I beg you to come in, sir," she said; "but for you our gaiety must have been turned into mourning. A shadow will be upon our mirth if our benefactor disdains to join in it."

With a sweet grace, mingled witli a certain hauteur from which she was never free, she extended her white hand to the tall looming figure outside the window; to have it grasped and wrung in a way that made the proud girl's eyes flash their amazement, and the same little hand clench itself in displeasure, when it had hid itself like an outraged thing among the shining folds of her gown. Was this Coll Dhu mad, or rude?

The guest no longer refused to enter, but followed the white figure into a little study where a lamp burned; and the gloomy stranger, the bluff colonel, and the young mistress of the house, were fully discovered to each other's eyes. Evleen glanced at the new comer's dark face, and shuddered with a feeling of indescribable dread and dislike; then, to her father, accounted for the shudder after a popular fashion, saying lightly: "There is some one walking over my grave."

So Coll Dhu was present at Evleen Blake's birthday ball. Here he was, under a roof which ought to have been his own, a stranger, known only by a nickname, shunned and solitary. Here he was, who had lived among the eagles and foxes, lying in wait with a fell purpose, to be revenged on the son of his father's foe for poverty and disgrace, for the broken heart of a dead mother, for the loss of a self-slaughtered father, for the dreary scattering of brothers and sisters. Here he stood, a Samson shorn of his strength; and all because a haughty girl had melting eyes, a winning mouth, and looked radiant in satin and roses.

Peerless where many were lovely, she moved among her friends, trying to be unconscious of the gloomy fire of those strange eyes which followed her unweariedly wherever she went. And when her father begged her to be gracious to the unsocial guest whom he would fain conciliate, she courteously conducted him to see the new picture-gallery adjoining the drawing-rooms; explained under what odd circumstances the colonel had picked up this little painting or that; using every delicate art her pride would allow to achieve her father's purpose, whilst maintaining at the same time her own personal reserve; trying to divert the guest's oppressive attention from herself to the objects for which she claimed his notice. Coll Dhu followed his conductress and listened to her voice, but what she said mattered nothing; nor did she wring many words of comment or reply from his lips, until they paused in a retired corner where the light was dim, before a window from which the curtain was withdrawn. The sashes were open, and nothing was visible but water; the night Atlantic, with the full moon riding high above a bank of clouds, making silvery tracks outward towards the distance of infinite mystery dividing two worlds. Here the following little scene is said to have been enacted.

"This window of my father's own planning, is it not creditable to his taste?" said the young hostess, as she stood, herself glittering like a dream of beauty, looking on the moonlight.

Coll Dhu made no answer; but suddenly, it is said, asked her for a rose from a cluster of flowers that nestled in the lace on her bosom.

For the second time that night Evleen Blake's eyes flashed with no gentle light. But this man was the saviour of her father. She broke off a blossom, and with such good grace, and also with such queen-like dignity as she might assume, presented it to him. Whereupon, not only was the rose seized, but also the hand that gave it, which was hastily covered with kisses.

Then her anger burst upon him.

"Sir," she cried, "if you are a gentleman you must be mad! If you are not mad, then you are not a gentleman!"

"Be merciful," said Coll Dhu; " I love you. My God, I never loved a woman before! Ah!" he cried, as a look of disgust crept over her face, "you hate me. You shuddered the first time your eyes met mine. I love you, and you hate me!"

"I do," cried Evleen, vehemently, forgetting everything but her indignation. "Your presence is like something evil to me. Love me?—your looks poison me. Pray, sir, talk no more to me in this strain."

"I will trouble you no longer," said Coll Dhu. And, stalking to the window, he placed one powerful hand upon the sash, and vaulted from it out of her sight.

Bare-headed as he was, Coll Dhu strode off to the mountains, but not towards his own home. All the remaining dark hours of that night he is believed to have walked the labyrinths of the hills, until dawn began to scatter the clouds with a high wind. Fasting, and on foot from sunrise the morning before, he was then glad enough to see a cabin right in his way. Walking in, he asked for water to drink, and a corner where he might throw himself to rest.

There was a wake in the house, and the kitchen was full of people, all wearied out with the night's watch; old men were dozing over their pipes in the chimney-corner, and here and there a woman was fast asleep with her head on a neighbour's knee. All who were awake crossed themselves when Coll Dhu's figure darkened the door, because of his evil name; but an old man of the house invited him in, and offering him milk, and promising him a roasted potato by-and-by, conducted him to a small room off the kitchen, one end of which was strewed with heather, and where there were only two women sitting gossiping over a fire.

"A thraveller," said the old man, nodding his head at the women, who nodded back, as if to say "he has the traveller's right." And Coll Dhu flung himself on the heather, in the furthest corner of the narrow room.

The women suspended their talk for a while; but presently, guessing the intruder to be asleep, resumed it in voices above a whisper.

There was but a patch of window with the grey dawn behind it, but Coll could see the figures by the firelight over which they bent: an old woman sitting forward with her withered hands extended to the embers, and a girl reclining against the hearth wall, with her healthy face, bright eyes, and crimson draperies, glowing by turns in the flickering blaze.

"I do' know," said the girl, "but it's the quarest marriage iver I h'ard of. Sure it's not three weeks since he tould right an' left that he hated her like poison!"

"Whist, asthoreen!" said the colliagh, bending forward confidentially; "throth an' we all know that o' him. But what could he do, the crature! When she put the burragh-bos on him!"

"The what?" asked the girl.

"Then the burragh-bos machree-o? That's the spanchel o' death, avourneen; an' well she has him tethered to her now, bad luck to her!"

The old woman rocked herself and stifled the Irish cry breaking from her wrinkled lips by burying her face in her cloak.

"But what is it?" asked the girl, eagerly. "What's the burragh-bos, anyways, an' where did she get it?"

"Och, och! it's not fit for comin' over to young ears, but cuggir (whisper), acushla! It's a sthrip o' the skin o' a corpse, peeled from the crown o' the head to the heel, without crack or split, or the charrm's broke; an' that, rowled up, an' put on a sthring roun' the neck o' the wan that's cowld by the wan that wants to be loved. An' sure enough it puts the fire in their hearts, hot an' sthrong, afore twinty-four hours is gone."

The girl had started from her lazy attitude, and gazed at her companion with eyes dilated by horror.

"Marciful Saviour!" she cried. "Not a sowl on airth would bring the curse out o' heaven by sich a black doin'!"

"Aisy, Biddeen alanna! an' there's wan that does it, an' isn't the divil. Arrah, asthoreen, did ye niver hear tell o' Pexie na Pishrogie, that lives betune two hills o' Maam Turk?"

"I h'ard o' her," said the girl, breathlessly.

"Well, sorra bit lie, but it's hersel' that does it. She'll do it for money any day. Sure they hunted her from the graveyard o' Salruck, where she had the dead raised; an' glory be to God! they would ha' murthered her, only they missed her thracks, an' couldn't bring it home to her afther."

"Whist, a-wauher" (my mother), said the girl; "here's the thraveller gettin' up to set off on his road again! Och, then, it's the short rest he tuk, the sowl!"

It was enough for Coll, however. He had got up, and now went back to the kitchen, where the old man had caused a dish of potatoes to be roasted, and earnestly pressed his visitor to sit down and eat of them. This Coll did readily; having recruited his strength by a meal, he betook himself to the mountains again, just as the rising sun was flashing among the waterfalls, and sending the night mists drifting down the glens. By sundown the same evening he was striding over the hills of Maam Turk, asking of herds his way to the cabin of one Pexie na Pishrogie.

In a hovel on a brown desolate heath, with scared-looking hills flying off into the distance on every side, he found Pexie: a yellow-faced hag, dressed in a dark-red blanket, with elf-locks of coarse black hair protruding from under an orange kerchief swathed round her wrinkled jaws. She was bending over a pot upon her fire, where herbs were simmering, and she looked up with an evil glance when Coll Dhu darkened her door.

"The burragh-bos is it her honour wants?" she asked, when he had made known his errand. "Ay, ay; but the arighad, the arighad (money) for Pexie. The burragh-bos is ill to get."

"I will pay," said Coll Dhu, laying a sovereign on the bench before her.

The witch sprang upon it, and chuckling, bestowed on her visitor a glance which made even Coll Dhu shudder.

"Her honour is a fine king," she said, " an' her is fit to get the burragh-bos. Ha! ha! her sall get the burragh-bos from Pexie. But the arighad is not enough. More, more!"

She stretched out her claw-like hand, and Coll dropped another sovereign into it. Whereupon she fell into more horrible convulsions of delight.

"Hark ye!" cried Coll. "I have paid you well, but if your infernal charm does not work, I will have you hunted for a witch!"

"Work!" cried Pexie, rolling up her eyes. "If Pexie's charrm not work, then her honour come back here an' carry these bits o' mountain away on her back. Ay, her will work. If the colleen hate her honour like the old diaoul hersel', still an' withal her will love her honour like her own white sowl afore the sun sets or rises. That, (with a furtive leer,) or the colleen dhas go wild mad afore wan hour."

"Hag!" returned Coll Dhu; "the last part is a hellish invention of your own. I heard nothing of madness. If you want more money, speak out, but play none of your hideous tricks on me."

The witch fixed her cunning eyes on him, and took her cue at once from his passion.

"Her honour guess thrue," she simpered; "it is only the little bit more arighad poor Pexie want."

Again the skinny hand was extended. Coll Dhu shrank from touching it, and threw his gold upon the table.

" King, king!" chuckled Pexie. "Her honour is a grand king. Her honour is fit to get the burragh-bos. The colleen dhas sall love her like her own white sowl. Ha, ha!"

"When shall I get it?" asked Coll Dhu, impatiently.

"Her honour sall come back to Pexie in so many days, do-deag (twelve), so many days, fur that the burragh-bos is hard to get. The lonely graveyard is far away, an' the dead man is hard to raise——"

"Silence!" cried Coll Dim; "not a word more. I will have your hideous charm, but what it is, or where you get it, I will not know."

Then, promising to come back in twelve days, he took his departure. Turning to look back when a little way across the heath, he saw Pexie gazing after him, standing on her black hill in relief against the lurid flames of the dawn, seeming to his dark imagination like a fury with all hell at her back.

At the appointed time Coll Dhu got the promised charm. He sewed it with perfumes into a cover of cloth of gold, and slung it to a fine-wrought chain. Lying in a casket which had once held the jewels of Coll's broken-hearted mother, it looked a glittering bauble enough. Meantime the people of the mountains were cursing over their cabin fires, because there had been another unholy raid upon their graveyard, and were banding themselves to hunt the criminal down.

A fortnight passed. How or where could Coll Dhu find an opportunity to put the charm round the neck of the colonel's proud daughter? More gold was dropped into Pexie's greedy claw, and then she promised to assist him in his dilemma.

Next morning the witch dressed herself in decent garb, smoothed her elf-locks under a snowy cap, smoothed the evil wrinkles out of her face, and with a basket on her arm locked the door of the hovel, and took her way to the lowlands. Pexie seemed to have given up her disreputable calling for that of a simple mushroom-gatherer. The housekeeper at the grey house bought poor Muireade's mushrooms of her every morning. Every morning she left unfailingly a nosegay of wild flowers lor Miss Evleen Blake, "God bless her! She had never seen the darling young lady with her own two longing eyes, but sure hadn't she heard tell of her sweet purty face, miles away!" And at last, one morning, whom should she meet but Miss Evleen herself returning alone from a ramble. Whereupon poor Muireade "made bold" to present her flowers in person.

"Ah," said Evleen, "it is you who leave me the flowers every morning? They are very sweet."

Muireade had sought her only for a look at her beautiful face. And now that she had seen it, as bright as the sun, and as fair as the lily, she would take up her basket and go away contented. Yet she lingered a little longer.

" My lady never walk up big mountain?" said Pexie.

"No," Evleen said, laughing; she feared she could not walk up a mountain.

"Ah yes; my lady ought to go, with more gran' ladies an' gentlemen, ridin' on purty little donkeys, up the big mountain. Oh, gran' things up big mountain for my lady to see!"

Thus she set to work, and kept her listener enchained for an hour, while she related wonderful stories of those upper regions. And as Evleen looked up to the burly crowns of the hills, perhaps she thought there might be sense in this wild old woman's suggestion. It ought to be a grand world up yonder.

Be that as it may, it was not long after this when Coll Dhu got notice that a party from the grey house would explore the mountains next day; that Evleen Blake would be of the number; and that he, Coll, must prepare to house and refresh a crowd of weary people, who in the evening should be brought, hungry and faint, to his door. The simple mushroom gatherer should be discovered laying in her humble stock among the green places between the hills, should volunteer to act as guide to the party, should lead them far out of their way through the mountains and up and down the most toilsome ascents and across dangerous places; to escape safely from which, the servants should be told to throw away the baskets of provisions which they carried.

Coll Dhu was not idle. Such a feast was set forth, as had never been spread so near the clouds before. We are told of wonderful dishes furnished by unwholesome agency, and from a place believed much hotter than is necessary for purposes of cookery. We are told also how Coll Dhu's barren chambers were suddenly hung with curtains of velvet, and with fringes of gold; how the blank white walls glowed with delicate colours and gilding; how gems of pictures sprang into sight between the panels; how the tables blazed with plate and gold, and glittered with the rarest glass; how such wines flowed, as the guests had never tasted; how servants in the richest livery, amongst whom the wizen-faced old man was a mere nonentity, appeared, and stood ready to carry in the wonderful dishes, at whose extraordinary fragrance the eagles came pecking to the windows, and the foxes drew near the walls, snuffing. Sure enough, in all good time, the weary party came within sight of the Devil's Inn, and Coll Dhu sallied forth to invite them across his lonely threshold. Colonel Blake (to whom Evleen, in her delicacy, had said no word of the solitary's strange behaviour to herself) hailed his appearance with delight, and the whole party sat down to Coll's banquet in high good humour. Also, it is said, in much amazement at the magnificence of the mountain recluse.

All went in to Coll's feast, save Evleen Blake, who remained standing on the threshold of the outer door; weary, but unwilling to rest there; hungry, but unwilling to eat there. Her white cambric dress was gathered on her arms, crushed and sullied with the toils of the day; her bright cheek was a little sun-burned; her small dark head with its braids a little tossed, was bared to the mountain air and the glory of the sinking sun; her hands were loosely tangled in the strings of her hat; and her foot sometimes tapped the threshold stone. So she was seen.

The peasants tell that Coll Dhu and her father came praying her to enter, and that the magnificent servants brought viands to the threshold; but no step would she move inward, no morsel would she taste.

"Poison, poison!" she murmured, and threw the food in handfuls to the foxes, who were snuffing on the heath.

But it was different when Muireade, the kindly old woman, the simple mushroom-gatherer, with all the wicked wrinkles smoothed out of her face, came to the side of the hungry girl, and coaxingly presented a savoury mess of her own sweet mushrooms, served on a common earthen platter.

"An' darlin', my lady, poor Muireade her cook them hersel', an' no thing o' this house touch them or look at poor Muireade's mushrooms."

Then Evleen took the platter and ate a delicious meal. Scarcely was it finished when a heavy drowsiness fell upon her, and, unable to sustain herself on her feet, she presently sat down upon the door-stone. Leaning her head against the framework of the door, she was soon in a deep sleep, or trance. So she was found.

"Whimsical, obstinate little girl!" said the colonel, putting his hand on the beautiful slumbering head. And taking her in his arms, he carried her into a chamber which had been (say the story-tellers) nothing but a bare and sorry closet in the morning, but which was now fitted up with Oriental splendour. And here on a luxurious couch she was laid, with a crimson coverlet wrapping her feet. And here in the tempered light coming through jewelled glass, where yesterday had been a coarse rough-hung window, her father looked his last upon her lovely face.

The colonel returned to his host and friends, and by-and-by the whole party sallied forth to see the after-glare of a fierce sunset swathing the hills in flames. It was not until they had gone some distance that Coll Dhu remembered to go back and fetch his telescope. He was not long absent. But he was absent long enough to enter that glowing chamber with a stealthy step, to throw a light chain around the neck of the sleeping girl, and to slip among the folds of her dress the hideous glittering burragh-bos.

After he had gone away again, Pexie came stealing to the door, and, opening it a little, sat down on the mat outside, with her cloak wrapped round her. An hour passed, and Evleen Blake still slept, her breathing scarcely stirring the deadly bauble on her breast. After that, she began to murmur and moan, and Pexie pricked up her ears. Presently a sound in the room told that the victim was awake and had risen. Then Pexie put her face to the aperture of the door and looked in, gave a howl of dismay, and fled from the house, to be seen in that country no more.

The light was fading among the hills, and the ramblers were returning towards the Devil's Inn, when a group of ladies who were considerably in advance of the rest, met Evleen Blake advancing towards them on the heath, with her hair disordered as by sleep, and no covering on her head. They noticed something bright, like gold, shifting and glancing with the motion of her figure. There had been some jesting among them about Evleen's fancy for failing asleep on the door-step instead of coming in to dinner, and they advanced laughing, to rally her on the subject. But she stared at them in a strange way, as if she did not know them, and passed on. Her friends were rather offended, and commented on her fantastic humour; only one looked after her, and got laughed at by her companions for expressing uneasiness on the wilful young lady's account.

So they kept their way, and the solitary figure went fluttering on, the white robe blushing, and the fatal burragh-bos glittering in the reflexion from the sky. A hare crossed her path, and she laughed out loudly, and clapping her hands, sprang after it. Then she stopped and asked questions of the stones, striking them with her open palm because they would not answer. (An amazed little herd sitting behind a rock, witnessed these strange proceedings.) By-and-by she began to call after the birds, in a wild shrill way, startling the echoes of the hills as she went along. A party of gentlemen returning by a dangerous path, heard the unusual sound and stopped to listen.

" What is that?" asked one.

"A young eagle," said Coll Dhu, whose face had become livid; "they often give such cries."

"It was uncommonly like a woman's voice!" was the reply; and immediately another wild note rang towards them from the rocks above: a bare saw-like ridge, shelving away to some distance ahead, and projecting one hungry tooth over an abyss. A few more moments and they saw Evleen Blake's light figure fluttering out towards this dizzy point.

"My Evleen!" cried the colonel, recognising his daughter, "she is mad to venture on such a spot!"

"Mad!" repeated Coll Dhu. And then dashed off to the rescue with all the might and swiftness of his powerful limbs.

When he drew near her, Evleen had almost reached the verge of the terrible rock. Very cautiously he approached her, his object being to seize her in his strong arms before she was aware of his presence, and carry her many yards away from the spot of danger. But in a fatal moment Evleen turned her head and saw him. One wild ringing cry of hate and horror, which startled the very eagles and scattered a flight of curlews above her head, broke from her lips. A step backward brought her within a foot of death.

One desperate though wary stride, and she was struggling in Coll's embrace. One glance in her eyes, and he saw that he was striving with a mad woman. Back, back, she dragged him, and he had nothing to grasp by. The rock was slippery and his shod feet would not cling to it. Back, back! A hoarse panting, a dire swinging to and fro; and then the rock was standing naked against the sky, no one was there, and Coll Dhu and Evleen Blake lay shattered far below.

CHAPTER III

TO BE TAKEN AT THE DINNER-TABLE

Charles Allston Collins

Does any one know who gives the names to our streets'? Does any one know who invents the mottoes which are inserted in the cracker-papers, along with the sugar-plums?—I don't envy him his intellectual faculties, by-the-by, and I suspect him to be the individual who translates the books of the foreign operas. Does any one know who introduces the new dishes, Kromeski's, and such-like? Does any one know who is responsible for new words, such as shunt and thud, shimmer, ping (denoting the crack of the rifle), and many others? Does any one know who has obliged us to talk for ever about "fraternising" and "cropping up"? Does any one know the Sage to whom perfumers apply when they have invented a shaving-soap, or hair-wash, and who furnishes the trade with such names for their wares as Rypophagon, Euxesis, Depilatory, Bostrakeison? Does any one know who makes the riddles?

To the last question—only—I answer, Yes; I know.

In a certain year, which, I don't mind mentioning may be looked upon as included in the present century, I was a little boy—a sharp little boy, though I say it, and a skinny little boy. The two qualities not unfrequently go together. I will not mention what my age was at the time, but I was at school not far from London, and I was of an age when it is customary, or was customary, to wear a jacket and frill.

In riddles, I had at that early age a profound and solemn joy. To the study of those problems, I was beyond measure addicted, and in the collecting of them I was diligent in the extreme; It was the custom at the time for certain periodicals to give the question of a conundrum in one number, and the answer in the next. There was an interval of seven days and nights between the propounding of the question, and the furnishing of the reply. What a time was that for me! I sought the solution of the enigma, off and on (generally on), during the leisure hours of the week (no wonder I was skinny!), and sometimes, I am proud to remember, I became acquainted with the answer before the number containing it reached me from the official source. There was another kind of puzzle which used to appear when my sharp and skinny boyhood was at its sharpest and skinniest, by which I was much more perplexed than by conundrums or riddles conveyed in mere words. I speak of what may be called symbolical riddles—rebus is, I believe, their true designation—little squalid woodcuts representing all sorts of impossible objects huddled together in incongruous disorder; letters of the alphabet, at times, and even occasionally fragments of words, being introduced here and there, to add to the general confusion. Thus you would have: a Cupid mending a pen, a gridiron, the letter x, a bar of music, p. u. g. and a fife—you would have these presented to you on a certain Saturday, with the announcement that on the following Saturday there would be issued an explanation of the mysterious and terrific jumble. That explanation would come, but with it new difficulties worse than the former. A birdcage, a setting sun (not like), the word "snip," a cradle, and some quadruped to which it would have puzzled Buffon himself to give a name. With these problems I was not successful, never having solved but one in my life, as will presently appear. Neither was I good at poetical riddles, in parts—slightly forced—as " My first is a boa-constrictor, My second's a Roman lictor, My third is a Dean and Chipter, And my whole goes always on tip-ter." These were too much for me.

I remember on one occasion accidentally meeting with a publication in which there was a rebus better executed than those to which I had been accustomed, and which mystified me greatly. First of all there was the letter A; then came a figure of a clearly virtuous man in a long gown, with a scrip, and a staff, and a cockle-shell on his hat; then followed a representation of an extremely old person with flowing white hair and beard; the figure 2 was the next symbol, and beyond this was a gentleman on crutches, looking at a five-barred gate. Oh, how that rebus haunted me! It was at a sea-side library that I met with it during the holidays, and before the next number came out I was back at school. The publication in which this remarkable picture had appeared was an expensive one, and quite beyond my means, so there was no way of getting at the explanation. Determined to conquer, and fearing that one of the symbols might escape my memory, I wrote them down in order. In doing so, an interpretation flashed upon me. A—Pilgrim—Age—To—Cripple—Gate. Ah! was it the right one? Had I triumphed, or had I failed? My anxiety on the subject attained such a pitch at last, that I determined to write to the editor of the periodical in which the rebus had appeared, and implore him to take compassion upon me and relieve my mind. To that communication I received no answer. Perhaps there was one in the notices to correspondents—but then I must have purchased the periodical to get it.

I mention these particulars because they had something—not a little—to do with a certain small incident which, small though it was, had influence on my after life. The incident in question was the composition of a riddle by the present writer. It was composed with difficulty, on a slate; portions of it were frequently rubbed out, the wording of it gave me a world of trouble, but the work was achieved at last. "Why," it was thus that I worded it in its final and corrected form, "Why does a young gentleman who has partaken freely of the pudding, which at this establishment precedes the meat, resemble a meteor?—Because he's effulgent—a full gent!"

Hopeful, surely! Nothing unnaturally premature in the composition. Founded on a strictly boyish grievance. Possessing a certain archaeological interest in its reference to the now obsolete practice of administering pudding before meat at educational establishments, with the view of damping the appetite (and constitution) of the pupils.

Though inscribed upon perishable and greasy slate, in ephemeral slate-pencil, my riddle lived. It was repeated. It became popular. It was all over the school, and at last it came to the ears of the master. That unimaginative person had no taste for the fine arts. I was sent for, interrogated as to whether this work of art was the product of my brain, and, having given an answer in the affirmative, received a distinct, and even painful, punch on the head, accompanied by specific directions to inscribe straightway the words "Dangerous Satirising," two thousand times, on the very slate on which my riddle had been originally composed.

Notwithstanding this act of despotism, on the part of the unappreciative Beast who invariably treated me as if I were not profitable (when I knew the contrary), my reverence for the great geniuses who have excelled in the department of which I am speaking, grew with my growth, and strengthened with &c. Think of the pleasure, the rapture, which Riddles afford to persons of wholesomely constituted mind! Think of the innocent sense of triumph felt by the man who propounds a riddle to a company, to every member of which it is a novelty. He alone is the proprietor of the answer. His is a glorious position. He keeps everybody waiting. He wears a calm and plncid smile. He has the rest at his mercy. He is happy——innocently happy.

But who makes the Riddles?

I DO.

Am I going to let out a great mystery? Am I going to initiate the uninitiated? Am I going to let the world know how it is done?

Yes. I am.

It is done in the main by the Dictionary; but the consultation of that work of reference, with a view to the construction of riddles, is a process so bewildering—it puts such a strain upon the faculties—that at first you cannot work at it for more than a quarter of an hour at once. The process is terrific. First of all you get yourself thoroughly awake and on the alert—it is good to run the fingers through the hair roughly at this crisis—then you take your Dictionary, and, selecting a particular letter, you go down the column, stopping at every word that looks in the slightest degree promising, drawing back from it as artists draw back from a picture to see it the better, twisting it, and turning it, and if it yield nothing, passing on to the next. With the substantives you occupy yourself in an especial manner, as more may be done witlh them than with any of the other parts of speech; while as to the words with two meanings, you must be in a bad state indeed, or have particularly ill luck, if you fail to get something out of them.

Suppose that you are going in for a day's riddling—your dinner depending on the success of your efforts. I take your Dictionary, and open it at hap-hazard. You open, say, among the Fs, and you go to work.

You make several stoppages as you go down the column. You pause naturally at the word Felt. It is a past participle of the verb to feel, and it is a substance used in making hats. You press it hard. Why is a hatter—No—Why may a hatter invariably be looked upon as a considerate person? Because he has always felt for—No. That won't do. You go on. "Fen"—a chance here for a well-timed thing about the Fenian Brotherhood. This is worth a struggle, and you make a desperate one. A Fen is a marsh. In a marsh there is mud. Why was it always to be expected that the Irish rebels must ultimately stick in the mud? Because theirs was a Fen-ian movement.—Intolerable! Yet you are loth to abandon the subject. A Fen is a Morass. More-ass. Why is an Irish rebel more ass than knave? No, again it won't do!

Disconsolate, but dogged, you go on till you arrive at "Fertile." Fer-tile. Tile—Tile, a Hat. Why is a Hat made of Beaver, like land that always yields fine crops? Because it may be called Fertile (Fur-tile). That will do. Not first-class, but it will do. Riddling is very like fishing. Sometimes you get a small trout, sometimes a large one. This is a small trout, but it shall go into the basket, nevertheless. And now you are fairly warming to your work. You come to "Forgery." You again make a point. Forgery. For-gery—For Jerry. A complicated riddle of a high order. Intricate, and of the Coleridge kind. Why—No, If—If a gentleman, having a favourite son of tender years, named Jeremiah, were in the course of dessert to put a pear in his pocket, stating, as he did so, that the fruit was intended for his beloved boy, why, in making such an explanation, would he mention a certain act of felony once punishable by death?—Because he would say that it was Forgery—For Jerry. Into the basket.

It never rains but it pours. Another complex one, of the same type. Fungus! If a well-bred lady should, in sport, poke her cousin Augustus in the ribs with her lilac and white parasol, and hurt him, what vegetable product would she mention in facetiously apologising? Fungus. Fun Gus! In with it.

The Fs being exhausted, you take a short rest. Then, screwing your faculties up afresh, and seizing the Dictionary again, you open it once more. Cs this time lie before you, a page of Cs. You pause, hopeful, at corn. The word has two meanings, it ought to answer. It shall be made to answer. This is a case of a peculiar kind. You determine to construct a riddle by rule. There is no genius needed here. The word has two meanings; both shall be used; it is a mechanical process. Why is a reaper at his work, like a chiropodist?—Because he's a corn-cutter. Made by rule, complete, impregnable; but yet not interesting. The Cs are not propitious, and you apply to the Bs. In your loitering mood you drop down upon the word "Bring," and with idiotcy at hand sit gazing at it. Suddenly you revive—Bring, Brought, Brought up. Brought up will do. Why is the coal-scuttle which Mary has conveyed from the kitchen to the second floor, like an infant put out to dry-nurse?—Because it's brought up by hand. You try once more, and this time it is the letter H on which your hopes depend. The columns under H, duly perused, bring you in due time to Horse. Why is a horse attached to the vehicle of a miser, like a war-steamer of the present day?—Because he's driven by a screw. Another? Hoarse. Why is a family, the members of which have always been subject to sore-throats, like "The Derby?"—Because it's a hoarse-race (Horse-race).

It is by no means always the case, however, that the Dictionary affords so large a yield as this. It is hard work—exhausting work—and, worst of all, there is no end to it. You get, after a certain time, incapable of shaking off the shop even in your moments of relaxation. Nay, worse. You feel as if you ought to be always at it, lest you should miss a good chance, that would never return. It is this that makes epigrammatic literature wearing. If you go to the play, if you take up a newspaper, if vou ensconce yourself in a corner with a blessed work of fiction, you find yourself still pursued and haunted by your profession. The dialogue to which you listen when you go to the theatre, the words of the book you are reading, may suggest something, and it behoves you to be on the look-out. Horrible and distracting calling! You may get rid of your superfluous flesh more quickly by going through a course of riddling, than by running up-hill in blankets for a week together, or going through a systematic course of Turkish baths.

Moreover, the cultivator of epigrammatic literature has much to undergo in the disposal of his wares, when they are once ready for the market. There is a public sale for them, and, between ourselves, there is a private ditto. The public demand for the article, which it has been so long my lot to supply, is not large, nor, I am constrained to say, is it entirely cordial. The periodicals in which your rebus or your conundrum appears hebdomadally, are not numerous; nor are the proprietors of such journals respectfully eager for this peculiar kind of literature. The conundrum or the rebus will knock about the office for a long time, and, perhaps, only get inserted at last because it fits a vacant space. When we are inserted, we always—always mind—occupy an ignoble place. We come in at the bottom of a column, or occupy the very last lines of the periodical in which we appear—in company with that inevitable game at chess in which white is to check-mate in four moves. One of the best riddles—the best, I think, that I ever made—was knocking about at the office of a certain journal six weeks before it got before the public. It ran thus: Why is a little man who is always telling long stories about nothing, like a certain new kind of rifle? ANSWER: Because he's a small-bore.

This work was the means of bringing me acquainted with the fact that there was a Private as well as a Public sale for the productions of the epigrammatic artist. A gentleman, who did not give his name—neither will I give it, though I know it well—called at the office of the periodical in which this particular riddle appeared, on the day succeeding its publication, and asked for the name and address of its author. The sub-editor of the journal, a fast friend of mine, to whom I owe many a good turn, furnished him with both, and, on a certain day, a middle-aged gentleman of rather plethoric appearance, with a sly twinkle in his eye, and with humorous lines about his mouth—both eye and mouth were utter impostors, for my friend had not a particle of humour in his composition—came gasping up my stairs, and introducing himself as an admirer of genius—"and therefore," he added, with a courteous wave of the hand, "your very humble servant"—wished to know whether it would suit my purpose to supply him, from time to time, with certain specimens of epigrammatic literature, now a riddle, now an epigram, now a short story that could be briefly and effectively told, all of which should be guaranteed to be entirely new and original, which should be made over wholly and solely to him, and to which no other human being should have access on any consideration whatever. My gentleman added that he was prepared to pay very handsomely for what he had, and, indeed, mentioned terms which caused me to open my eyes to the fullest extent of which those organs are capable.

I soon found out what my friend Mr. Price Scrooper was at. I call him by this name (which is fictitious, but something like his own), for the sake of convenience. He was a diner-out, who held a somewhat precarious reputation, which, by hook or crook, he had acquired as a sayer of good things, a man sure to have the last new story at the end of his tongue. Mr. Scrooper liked dining-out above all things, and the horror of that day when there should come a decline in the number of his invitations was always before his eyes. Thus it came about that relations were established between us—between me, the epigrammatic artist, and Price Scrooper, the diner-out.

I fitted him with a good thing or two even on the very day of his paying me a first visit. I gave him a story which I remembered to have heard my father tell when I was an infant—a perfectly safe story, which had been buried for years in oblivion. I supplied him with a riddle or two which I happened to have by me, and which were so very bad that no company could ever suspect them of a professional origin. I set hm up in epigram for some time, and he set me up in the necessaries of life for some time, and so we parted mutually satisfied.

The commercial dealings thus satisfactorily established were renewed steadily and at frequent intervals. Of course, as in all earthly relations, there were not wanting some unpleasant elements to qualify the generally comfortable arrangements. Mr. Scrooper would sometimes complain that some of the witticisms with which I had supplied him, had failed in creating an effect—had hardly proved remunerative, in short. What could I reply? I could not tell him that this was his fault. I told him a story given by Isaac Walton, of a clergyman who, hearing a sermon preached by one of his cloth with immense effect, asked for the loan of it. On returning the sermon, however, after having tried it on his own congregation, he complained that it had proved a total failure, and that his audience had responded in no degree to his eloquence. The answer of the original proprietor of the sermon was crushing: "I lent you," he said, "indeed, my fiddle, but not my fiddle-stick;" meaning, as Isaac explains, rather unnecessarily, "the manner and intelligence with which the sermon was to be delivered."

My friend did not seem to feel the application of this anecdote. I believe he was occupied, while I spoke, in committing the story to his memory for future use—thus getting it gratuitously out of me—which was mean.

In fact, Mr. Scrooper, besides his original irreparable deficiency, was getting old and stupid, and would often forget or misapply the point of a story, or the answer to a conundrum. With these last I supplied him freely, working really hard to prepare for his use such articles as were adapted to his peculiar exigencies. As a diner-out, riddles of a convivial sort—alluding to matters connected with the pleasures of the table—are generally in request, and with a supply of these I fitted Mr. Scrooper, much to his satisfaction. Here are some specimens, for which I charged him rather heavily:

Why is wine—observe how easily this is brought in after dinner—why is wine, made up for the British market, like a deserter from the army?

Because it's always brandied (branded) before it's sent off.

Why is a ship, which has to encounter rough weather before it reaches its destination, like a certain wine which is usually adulterated with logwood and other similar matters?

Because it goes through a vast deal before it comes into port.

What portion of the trimming of a lady's dress resembles East India sherry of the first quality?

That which goes round the Cape.

One of his greatest difficulties, my patron told me—for he was as frank with me as a man is with his doctor or his lawyer—was in remembering which were the houses where he had related a certain story, or propounded a certain conundrum; who were the people to whom such and such a riddle would be fresh; who were the people to whom it was already but too familiar. Mr. Scrooper had also a habit of sometimes asking the answer to a riddle instead of the question, which was occasionally productive of confusion; or, giving the question properly, he would, when his audience became desperate and gave it up, supply them with the answer to an altogether different conundrum.

One day, my patron came to me in a state of high indignation. A riddle—bran new, and for which I had demanded a high price, thinking well of it myself—had failed, and Mr. Scrooper came to me in a rage to expostulate.

"It fell as flat as ditch-water," he said. "Indeed, one very disagreeable person said there was nothing in it, and he thought there must be some mistake. A very nasty thing to say, considering that the riddle was given as my own. How could I be mistaken in my own riddle?"

"May I ask," said I, politely, "how you worded the question?"

"Certainly. I worded it thus: Why are we justified in believing that the pilgrims to Mecca, undertake the journey with mercenary motives?"

" Quite right," said I; " and the answer?"

"The answer," replied my patron, " was as you gave it me: Because they go for the sake of Mahomet."

"I am not surprised," I said, coldly, for I felt that I had been unjustly blamed, "that your audience was mystified. The answer, as I gave it to you, ran thus: Because they go for the sake of the profit (Prophet)!"

Mr. Scrooper subsequently apologised.

I draw near to the end of my narrative. The termination is painful, so is that of King Lear. The worst feature in it is, that it involves the acknowledgment of a certain deplorable piece of weakness on my own part.

I was really in the receipt of a very pretty little income from Mr. Scrooper, when one morning I was again surprised by a visit from a total stranger—again, as on a former occasion, a middle-aged gentleman—again an individual with a twinkling eye and a humorous mouth—again a diner-out, with two surnames—Mr. Kerby Postlelhwaite I will call him, which is sailing as near the wind as I consider safe.

Mr. Kerby Postlethwaite came on the errand which had already brought Mr. Scrooper to the top of my stairs. He, too, had seen one of my productions in a certain journal (for I still kept up my relation with the public press), and he too having a similar reputation to maintain, and finding his brain at times rather sterile, had come to me to make exactly the same proposal which had already been made by Mr. Price Scrooper.

For a time the singularity of the coincidence absolutely took my breath away, and I remained staring speechlessly at my visitor in a manner which might have suggested to him that I was hardly the man to furnish him with anything very brilliant. However, I managed to recover myself in time. I was very guarded and careful in my speech, but finally expressed my readiness to come to terms with my new employer. These were soon settled: Mr. Kerby Postlethwaite having even more liberal views as to this part of the business than those entertained by Mr Price Scrooper.

The onlv difficulty was to supply this gentleman quickly enough with what he wanted He was in a hurry. He was going that very evening to a dinner-party, and it was supremely important that he should distinguish himself. The occasion was a special one. It must be something good. He would not stick at a trifle in the matter of terms, but he did want some thing super-excellent. A riddle—a perfectly new riddle—he would like best.

My stores were turned over, my desk was ransacked, and still he was not satisfied. Suddenly it flashed into my mind that I had some thing by me which would exactly do. The very thing; a riddle alluding to a subject of the day; a subject just at that time in everybody's mouth. One which there would be no difficulty in leading up to. In short, a very neat thing indeed. There was but one doubt in my mind. Had I already sold it to my original employer? That was the question, and for the life of me I could not answer it with certainty. The life of one addicted to such pursuits as mine, is chaotic; and with me more particularly, doing an extensive public and private trade, it was especially so. I kept no books, nor any record of my professional transactions. One thing which influenced me strongly to believe the riddle to be still unappropriated, was, that I had certainly received no intelligence as to its success or failure from Mr. Scrooper, whereas that gentleman never failed to keep me informed on that momentous point. I was in doubt, but I ended (so princely were the terms offered by my new patron) in giving myself the benefit of that doubt, and handing over the work of art in question to Mr. Kerby Postlethwaite.

If I were to say that I felt comfortable after having brought this transaction to a close, I should not speak the truth. Horrible misgivings filled my mind, and there were moments when, if it had been possible to undo what was done, I should have taken that retrogressive step. This, however, was out of the question. I didn't even know where my new employer was to be found. I had nothing for it but to wait and try my best to feel sanguine.

The circumstances which distinguished the evening of that eventful day on which I first received a visit from my new patron, were subsequently related to me with great accuracy, and not without rancorous comment, by both of those who sustained leading parts in the evening's performances. Yes, terrible to relate, on the following day both my patrons came to me, overflowing with fury, to tell me what had happened, and to denounce me as the first cause of the mischief. Both were furious, but my more recent acquaintance, Mr. Postlethwaite, was the more vehement in his wrath,

It appeared, according to this gentleman's statement, that having repaired at the proper time to the residence of the gentleman whose guest he was to be that evening, and who, he took occasion to inform me, was a personage of consideration, he found himself in the midst of a highly distinguished company. He had intended to be the last arrival, but a fellow named Scrooper, or Price, or something of that sort— both names, perhaps—was yet expected. He soon arrived, however, Mr. Postlethwaite said, and the company went down to dinner.

Throughout the meal, the magnificent nature of which I will not dilate upon, these two gentlemen were continually at loggerheads. They appear—and in this both the accounts which reached me tally—to have contradicted each other, interrupted each other, cut into each other's stories, on every occasion, until that sort of hatred was engendered between them which Christian gentlemen sharing a meal together do sometimes feel towards each other. I suspect that each had heard of the other as a "diner-out," though they had not met before, and that each was prepared to hate the other.

Adhering to the Postlethwaitean narrative faithfully, I find that all this time, and even when most aggravated by the conduct of my earliest patron, he was able to comfort himself with the reflection that he had by him in store the weapon wherewith, when the proper moment should arrive, to inflict the coup de grace upon his rival. That weapon was my riddle—my riddle fitted to a topic of the day.

The moment arrived. I shudder as I proceed. The meal was over, the wines had circulated once, and Mr. Kerby Postlethwaite began gently insidiously and with all the dexterity of an old performer, to lead the conversation in the direction of THE TOPIC. His place was very near to the seat occupied by my original patron, Mr. Price Scroooer. What was Mr. Postlethwaite's astonishment to hear that gentleman leading such conversation, as was within his jurisdiction, also in the direction of THE TOPIC! "Does he see that I want a lead, and is he playing into my hands?" thought my newest client. "Perhaps he's not such a bad fellow, after all. I'll do as much for him another time." This amicable view of the matter was but of brief duration. Madness was at hand! Two voices were presently heard speaking simultaneously: (Both speaking at once)

MR. PRICE SCROOPER. The subject suggested a riddle to me this morning, as I was thinking it over.

MR. KERBY POSTLETHWAITE. A view of the thing struck me in the light of a riddle, this morning, quite suddenly.

The two were silent, each having stopped the other.

"I beg your pardon," said my first patron, with ferocious politeness, "you were saying that you——"

"Had made a riddle," replied my second patron. "Yes. I think that you also alluded to your having done something of the sort?"

"I did."

There was silence all round the table. Some illustrious person broke it at last by saying, "What a strange coincidence!"

"At all events," cried the master of the house, "let us hear one of them. Come, Scrooper, you spoke first."

"Mr. Postlethwaite, I insist upon having your riddle," said the lady of the house, with whom Mr. P. was the favourite.

Under these circumstances both gentlemen paused, and then, each bursting forth suddenly, there was a renewal of duet.

MR. PRICE SCROOPER. Why does the Atlantic cable, in its present condition—

MR. KERBY POSTLETHWAITE. Why does the Atlantic cable, in its present condition—

At this there was a general roar and commotion among those present. "Our riddles appear to be somewhat alike?" remarked Mr. Postlethwaite, in a bitter tone, and looking darkly at my first patron.

"It is the most extraordinary thing," replied that gentleman, "that I ever heard of!"

"Great wits jump," said the illustrious person who had previously spoken of an "extraordinary coincidence."

"At any rate, let us hear one of them," cried the host. "Perhaps they vary after the first few words. Come, Scrooper."

"Yes, let us hear one of them to the end," said the lady of the house, and she looked at Mr. Postlethwaite. This last, however, was sulky. Mr. Price Scrooper took advantage of the circumstance to come out with the conundrum in all its integrity.

"Why," asked this gentleman once more, "is the Atlantic cable, in its present condition, like a schoolmaster?"

"That is my riddle," said Mr. Postlethwaite, as soon as the other had ceased to speak. "I made it myself."

"On the contrary, it is mine, I assure you," replied Mr. Scrooper, very doggedly. "I composed it while shaving this morning."

Here again there was a pause, broken only by interjectional expressions of astonishment on the part of those who were present—led by the illustrious man.

Again the master of the house came to the rescue. "The best way of settling it," he said, "will be to ascertain which of our two friends knows the answer. Whoever knows the answer can claim the riddle. Let each of these gentlemen write down the answer on a piece of paper, fold it up, and give it to me. If the answers are identical, the coincidence will indeed be extraordinary."

"It is impossible that any one but myself can know the answer," remarked my first patron, as he wrote on his paper and folded it.

My second patron wrote also, and folded. "The answer," he said, "can only be known to me."

The papers were unfolded by the master of the house, and read one after the other.

ANSWER written by Mr. Price Scrooper: "Because it's supported by buoys (boys)."

ANSWER written by Mr. Kerby Postlethwaite: "Because it's supported by buoys (boys)."

There was a scene. There were recriminations. As I have said, on the following morning both gentlemen visited me betimes. They had not much to say after all. Were they not both in my power?

The curious thing is, that from that time dates the decline of my professional eminence. Of course, both my patrons took leave of me for ever. But I have also to relate that my powers of riddling took leave of me also. My mornings with the Dictionary became less and less productive of results, and, only a fortnight ago last Wednesday, I sent to a certain weekly publication a rebus presenting the following combination of objects: A giraffe, a haystack, a boy driving a hoop, the letter X, a crescent, a human mouth, the words "I wish," a dog standing on its hind legs, and a pair of scales. It appeared. It took. It puzzled the public. But for the life of me I cannot form the remotest idea what it meant, and I am ruined.

CHAPTER IV

NOT TO BE TAKEN FOR GRANTED

Hesba Stretton

To-day I, Eunice Fielding, have been looking over the journal which I kept of the first few weeks of my life in the world, after I left the seclusion of the German Moravian school, where I was educated. I feel a strange pity for myself, the tender ignorant innocent school-girl, freed from the peaceful shelter of the Moravian settlement, and thrust suddenly into the centre of a sorrowful household.

As I turn to this first page, there rises before me, like the memory of a former life, a picture of the noiseless grass-grown streets of the settlement, with the old-fashioned dwellings, and the quiet and serene faces looking out kindly upon the troop of children passing to the church. There is the home of the Single Sisters, with its shining and spotless casements; and close beside it, is the church where they and we worshipped, with its broad central aisle always separating the women from the men. I can see the girls in their picturesque caps, trimmed with scarlet, and the blue ribbons of the matrons, and the pure white head-gear of the widows; the burial-ground, where the separation is still maintained, and where the brethren and the sisters lie in undivided graves; and the kindly simple-hearted pastor, who was always touched with the feeling of our weakness. I see it all, as I turn over the pages of my short journal, with just a faint longing to return to the repose and innocent ignorance which encircled me while I dwelt among them, safely shut in from the sorrows of the world.

Nov. 7. At home once more after an absence of three years; but home is changed. There used to be a feeling of mother's presence everywhere about the house, even if she were in the remotest room; but now, Susannah and Priscilla are wearing her apparel, and as they go in and out, and I catch a glimpse of the soft dove-coloured folds of the dresses, I look up with a start, half in hope of seeing my mother's face again. They are much older than I am, for Priscilla was ten years of age when I was born, and Susannah is three years older than Priscilla. They are very grave and serious, and it is well known, even in Germany, how religious they are. I suppose by the time I am as old as they are, I shall be the same.

I wonder if my father ever felt like a child; he looks as if he had lived for centuries. Last night I could not venture to look too closely into his face; but to-day I can see a very kind and peaceful expression underlying all the wrinkles and lines of care. In his soul there is a calm serene depth which no tempest can touch. That is plain. He is a good man, I know, though his goodness was not talked about at school, as was Susannah's and Priscilla's. When the coach set me down at the door, and he ran out into the street bareheaded, and took me at once into his arms, carrying me like a little child into our home, all my sorrow upon leaving my schoolfellows, and the sisters, and our pastor, vanished away in the joy of being with him. God helping me—and surely he will help me to do this—I will be a comfort to my father.

The house is very different to what it was in my mother's time. The rooms look gloomy, for the walls are damp and mildewed, and the carpets are worn threadbare. It seems as if my sister had taken no pride in household matters. To be sure Priscilla is betrothed to one of the brethren, who dwells in Woodbury, about ten miles from here. She told me last night what a beautiful house he had, and how it was furnished with more luxury and costliness than our people often care for, inasmuch as we do not seek worldly show. She also displayed the fine linen she has been preparing for herself, with store of dresses, both in silks and stuffs. They looked so grand, spread out upon the poor furniture of our chamber, that I could not help but cast up in my own mind what the cost would be, and I inquired how my father's business prospered: at which Priscilla coloured, but Susannah uttered a low deep groan, which was answer enough.

This morning I unpacked my trunk, and gave a letter from the church to each of my sisters. It was to make known to them that Brother Schmidt, a missionary in the West Indies, desires that a fitting wife should be chosen for him by casting of lots, and sent out to him. Several of the single sisters in our settlement have given in their names, and such is the repute of Susannah and Priscilla, that they are notified of the application, that they may do likewise. Of course Priscilla, being already betrothed, has no thought of doing so; but Susannah has been deep in meditation all day, and now she is sitting opposite to me, pale and solemn, her brown hair, in which I can detect a silver thread or two, braided closely down her thin cheeks; but as she writes, a faint blush steals over her face, as if she were listening to Brother Schmidt, whom she has never seen, and whose voice she never heard. She has written her name—I can read it, "Susannah Fielding"—in her clear round steady hand, and it will be put into the lot with many others, from among which one will be drawn out, and the name written thereon will be that of Brother Schmidt's appointed wife.

Nov. 9. Only two days at home; but what a change there is in me. My brain is all confusion, and it might be a hundred years since I left school. This morning two strangers came to the house, demanding to see my father. They were rough hard men, whose voices sounded into my father's office, where he was busy writing, while I sat beside the fire, engaged in household sewing. I looked up at the loud noise of their voices, and saw him turn deadly pale, and bow his white-haired head upon his hands. But he went out in an instant, and returning with the strangers, bade me go to my sisters. I found Susannah in the parlour, looking scared and bewildered, and Priscilla in hysterics. After much ado they grew calmer, and when Priscilla was lying quiet on the sofa, and Susannah had sat down in mother's arm-chair to meditate, I crept back to my father's office, and rapping softly at the door, heard him say, "Come in." He was alone, and very sad.

"Father," I asked, "what is the matter?" and seeing his dear kind face, I flew to him.

"Eunice," he whispered very tenderly, "I will tell you all."

So then as I knelt at his knee, with my eyes fastened upon his, he told me a long history of troubles, every word of which removed my schooldays farther and farther from me, and made them seem like the close of a finished life. The end of all was that these men were sent by his creditors to take possession of everything in our old home, where my mother had lived and died.

I caught my breath at first, as if I should go into hysterics like Priscilla, but I thought what good would that do for my father? So after a minute or two I was able to look up again bravely into his eyes. He then said he had his books to examine, so I kissed him, and came away.

In the parlour Priscilla was lying still, with her eyelids closed, and Susannah was quite lost in meditation. Neither of them noticed me entering or departing. I went into the kitchen to consult Jane about my father's dinner. She was rocking herself upon a chair, and rubbing her eyes red with her rough apron; and there in the elbow-chair which once belonged to my grandfather—all the Brethren knew George Fielding—sat one of the strangers, wearing a shaggy brown hat, from under which he was staring fixedly at a bag of dried herbs hanging to a hook in the ceiling. He did not bring his eyes down, even when I entered, and stood thunderstruck upon the door-sill; but he rounded up his large mouth, as if he were going to whistle.

"Good morning, sir," I said, as soon as I recovered myself; for my father had said we must regard these men only as the human instruments permitted to bring affliction to us; "will you please to tell me your name?"

The stranger fixed his eyes steadily upon me. After which he smiled a little to himself. " John Robins is my name," he said, "and England is my nation, Woodbury is my dwelling-place, and Christ is my salvation."

He spake in a sing-song tone, and his eyes went up again to the bag of marjoram, twinkling as if with great satisfaction; and I pondered over his reply, until it became quite a comfort to me.

"I'm very glad to hear it," I said, at last, "because we are religious people, and I was afraid you might be different."

"Oh, I'll be no kind of nuisance, miss," he answered; "you make yourselves comfortable, and only bid Maria, here, to draw me my beer regular, and I'll not hurt your feelings."

"Thank you," I said. "Jane, you hear what Mr. Robins says. Bring some sheets down to air, and make up the bed in the Brothers' chamber. You'll find a bible and hymn-book on the table there, Mr. Robins." I was leaving the kitchen, when this singular man struck his clenched fist upon the dresser, with a noise which startled me greatly.

"Miss," he said, "don't you put yourself about; and if anybody else should ever put you out, about anything, remember John Robins of Woodbury. I'm your man for anything, whether in my line or out of my line; I am, by——"

He was about to add something more, but he paused suddenly, and his face grew a little more red, as he looked up again to the ceiling. So I left the kitchen.

I have since been helping my father with his books, being very thankful that I was always quick at sums.

P.S. I dreamed that the settlement was invaded by an army of men, led by John Robins, who insisted upon becoming our pastor.

November 10. I have been a journey of fifty miles, one half of it by stage-coach. I learned for the first time that my mother's brother, a worldly rich man, dwells fifteen miles beyond Woodbury. He does not belong to our people, and he was greatly displeased by my mother's marriage. It also appears that Susannah and Priscilla were not my mother's own daughters. My father had a little forlorn hope that our worldly kinsman might be inclined to help us in our great extremity; so I went forth with his blessings and prayers upon my errand. Brother More, who came over to see Priscilla yesterday, met me at Woodbury Station, and saw me safely on the coach for my uncle's village. He is much older than I fancied; and his face is large, and coarse, and flabby-looking. I am surprised that Priscilla should betroth herself to him. However, he was very kind to me, and watched the coach out of the inn-yard; but almost before he was out of my sight, he was out of my mind, and I was considering what I should say to my uncle.

My uncle's house stands quite alone in the midst of meadows and groves of trees, all of which are leafless now, and waved to and fro in the damp and heavy air, like funeral plumes. I trembled greatly as I lifted the brass knocker, which had a grinning face upon it; and I let it fall with one loud single rap, which set all the dogs barking, and the rooks cawing in the tops of the trees. The servant conducted me across a low-roofed hall, to a parlour beyond: low-roofed also, but large and handsome, with a warm glow of crimson, which was pleasant to my eyes, after the grey gloom of the November day. It was already afternoon; and a tall fine-looking old man was lying comfortably upon a sofa fast asleep; while upon the other side of the hearth sat a dwarfed old lady, who lifted her fore-finger with a gesture of silence, and beckoned me to take a seat near the fire. I obeyed, and presently fell into a meditation.

At length a man's voice broke the silence, asking in a drowsy tone,

"What young lass is this?"

"I am Eunice Fielding," I replied, rising with reverence to the aged man, my uncle; and he gazed upon me with his keen grey eyes, until I was abashed, and a tear or two rolled down my cheeks in spite of myself, for my heart was very heavy.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "as like Sophy as two peas out of one pod!" and he laughed a short laugh, which, in my ears, lacked merriment. "Come here, Eunice," he added, "and kiss me."

Whereupon I walked gravely across the open space between us, and bent my face to his; but he would have me to sit upon his knee, and I, who had been at no time used to be fondled thus, even by my father, sat there uncomfortably.

"Well, my pretty one," said my uncle, "what is your errand and request to me? Upon my soul, I feel ready to promise thee anything."

As he spake, I bethought me of King Herod, and the sinful dancing-girl, and my heart sank within me; but at last I took courage, as did Esther the queen, and I made known my urgent business to him, telling him, even with tears, that my father was threatened with a prison, if he could find none to befriend him.

"Eunice," said my uncle, after a very long silence, "I will make a bargain with you and your father. He stole away my favourite sister from me, and I never saw her face again. I've no children, and I'm a rich man. If your father will give you up to me, keeping no claim upon you—even to never seeing your face again, if I so will it—then I will pay all his debts, and adopt you as my own daughter."

Before he could finish all these words, I sprang away from him, feeling more angered than I had ever done in my life.

"It could never be," I cried. "My father could never give me up, and I will never leave him."

"Be in no hurry to decide, Eunice," he said "your father has two other daughters. I will give you an hour to reflect."

Upon that he and his wife left me alone in the pleasant room. My mind was firmly made up from the beginning. But as I sat before the glowing fire, it seemed as if all the bleak cold days of the coming winter trooped up and gathered round me, chilling the warm atmosphere of the room, and touching me with icy fingers, until I trembled like a coward. So I opened my little lot-book, which our pastor had given unto me, and I looked anxiously at the many slips of paper it contained. Many times I had drawn a lot from it, and found but vague counsel and comfort. But I now drew therefrom again, and the words upon the lot were, "Be of good courage!" Then I was greatly strengthened.

When the hour was ended, my uncle returned, and urged me with many worldly persuasions and allurements, mingled with threatenings, until at length I grew bold to answer him according to his snares.

"It is an evil thing," I said, "to tempt a child to forsake her father. Providence has put it into your power to lessen the sorrows of your fellow-creatures, but you seek to add to them. I would rather dwell with my father in a jail, than with you in a palace."

I turned and left him, finding my way out through the hall into the deepening twilight. It was more than a mile from the village through which the coach passed; and the hedge-banks rose high on each side of the deep lane. Though I walked very swiftly, the night came on before I had proceeded far from my uncle's house, with such thick gloom and fog that I could almost feel the darkness. "Be of good courage, Eunice!" said I; and to drive away the fears which lay in wait for me if I yielded but a little, I lifted up my voice, and began to sing our Evening Hymn.

Suddenly a voice a little way before me, took up the tune, in a clear deep rich tone, like that of the Brother who taught us music in the Settlement. As I stopped instantly, my heart leaping up with fear and a strange gladness, the voice before me ceased singing also.

"Good night," it said. There was such kindness and frankness and sweetness in the voice, that I trusted it at once.

"Wait for me," I said; "I am lost in the night, and I want to find my way to Longville."

"I am going there too," said the voice, to which I drew nearer each moment; and immediately I saw a tall dark figure in the mist beside me.

"Brother," I said, trembling a little, though wherefore I knew not. "are we far from Longville?"

"Only ten minutes' walk," he answered, in a blithe tone, which cheered me not a little. "Take my arm, and we shall soon be there."

As my hand rested on his arm lightly, I felt a sense of great support and protection. As we came near the lighted window of the village inn, we looked into one another's faces. His was pleasant and handsome, like some of the best pictures I have ever seen. I do not know why, but I thought of the Angel Gabriel.

"We are at Longville," he said; "tell me where I can take you to."

"Sir," I answered, for I could not say Brother to him in the light; "I wish first to get to Woodbury."

"To Woodbury," he repeated, " at this time of night, and alone! There is a return coach coming up in a few minutes, by which I travel to Woodbury. Will you accept of my escort there?"

"Sir, I thank you," I answered; and I stood silent beside him, until the coach lamps shone close upon us in the fog. The stranger opened the door, but I hung back with a foolish feeling of shame at my poverty, which it was needful to conquer.

"We are poor people," I stammered. "I must travel outside."

"Not such a winter's night as this," he said. "Jump in."

"No, no," I replied, recovering my senses, "I shall go outside." A decent country woman, with a child, were already seated on the top of the coach, and I quickly followed them. My seat was the outer one, and hung over the wheels. The darkness was so dense that the fitful glimmer of the coach-lamps upon the leafless hedge-rows was the only light to be seen. All else was black, pitchy night. I could think of nothing but my ather, and the jail opening to imprison him. Presently I felt a hand laid firmly on my arm, and Gabriel's voice spake to me:

"Your seat is a dangerous one," he said. "A sudden jerk might throw you off."

"I am so miserable," sobbed, all my courage breaking down; and in the darkness I buried my face in my hands, and wept silently; and even as I wept, the bitterness of my sorrow was assuaged.

"Brother," I said—for in the darkness I could all him so again. "I am only just come home from school, and I have not learned the ways and roubles of the world yet."

"My child," he answered, in a low tone, "I saw you lean your head upon your hands and weep. Can I be of any help to you?"

"No," I replied; "the sorrow belongs to me only, and to my house."

He said no more, but I felt his arm stretched out to form a barrier across the space where I might have fallen; and so through the black night we rode on to Woodbury.

Brother More was awaiting me at the coach-office., He hurried me away, scarcely giving me time to glance at Gabriel, who stood looking after me. He was eager to hear of my interview with my uncle; when I told him of my failure, he grew thoughtful, saying little until I was in the railway carriage, when he leaned forward and whispered, " Tell Priscilla I will come over in the morning."

Brother More is a rich man; perhaps, for Priscilla's sake, he will free my father.

Nov. 11. I dreamed last night that Gabriel stood beside me, saying, "I come to bring thee glad tidings." But as I listened eagerly, he sighed, and vanished away.

Nov. 15. Brother More is here every day, but he says nothing about helping my father. If help does not come soon, he will be cast into prison. Peradventure, my uncle will relent, and offer us some easier terms. If it were only to live half my time with him, I would consent to dwell in his house, even as Daniel and the three children dwelt unharmed in the court of Babylon. I will write to him to that effect.

Nov. 19. No answer from my uncle. To-day, going to Woodbury with Priscilla, who wished to converse with the pastor of the church there, I spent the hour she was engaged with him in finding my way to the jail, and walking round the outside of its gloomy and massive walls. I felt very mournful and faint-hearted, thinking of my poor father. At last, being very weary, I sat down on the step at the gateway, and looked into my little lot-book again. Once more I drew the verse, "Be of good courage." Just then, Brother More and Priscilla appeared. There was a look upon his face which I disliked, but I remembered that he was to be my sister's husband, and I rose and offered him my hand, which he tucked up under his arm, his fat hand resting upon it. So we three walked to and fro under the prison walls. Suddenly, in a garden sloping away beneath us, I perceived him whom I call Gabriel (not knowing any other name), with a fair sweet-looking young woman at his side. I could not refrain from weeping, for what reason I cannot tell, unless it be my father's affairs. Brother More returned home with us, and sent John Robins away. John Robins desired me to remember him, which I will as long as I live.

Nov. 20. Most miserable day. My poor father is in jail. At dinner-time to-day two most evil-looking men arrested him. God forgive me for wishing they were dead! Yet my father spake very patiently and gently.

"Send for Brother More," he said, after a pause, "and act according to his counsel."

So after a little while they carried him away.

What am I to do?

Nov. 30. Late last night we were still discoursing as to our future plans. Priscilla thinks Brother More will hasten their marriage, and Susannah has an inward assurance that the lot will fall to her to be Brother Schmidt's wife. She spake wisely of the duties of a missionary's wife, and of the grace needed to fulfil them. But I could think of nothing but my father trying to sleep within the walls of the jail.

Brother More says he thinks he can see a way to release my father, only we are all to pray that we may have grace to conquer our self-will. I am sure I am willing to do anything, even to selling myself into slavery, as some of our first missionaries did in the slave-times in the West Indies. But in England one cannot sell one's self, though I would be a very faithful servant. I want to get at once a sum large enough to pay our debts. Brother More bids me not spoil my eyes with crying.

Dec. 1. The day on which my father was arrested, I made a last appeal to my uncle. This morning I had a brief note from him, saying he had commissioned his lawyer to visit me, and state the terms on which he was willing to aid me. Even as I read it, his lawyer desired to see me alone. I went to the parlour, trembling with anxiety. It was no other than Gabriel who stood before me, and I took heart, remembering my dream that he appeared to me, saying, "I come to bring thee glad tidings."

"Miss Eunice Fielding," he said, in his pleasant voice, and looking down upon me with a smile which seemed to shed sunshine upon my sad and drooping spirit.

"Yes," I answered, my eyes falling foolishly before his; and I beckoned to him to resume his seat, while I stood leaning against my mother's great arm-chair.

"I have a hard message for you," said Gabriel; "your uncle has dictated this paper, which must be signed by you and your father. He will release Mr. Fielding, and settle one hundred pounds a year upon him, on condition that he will retire to some German Moravian settlement, and that you will accept the former terms."

"I cannot," I cried bitterly. "Oh! sir, ought I to leave my father?"

"I am afraid not," he answered, in a low voice.

"Sir," I said, "you must please say ' no' to my uncle."

"I will," he replied, "and make it sound as gently as I can. You have a friend in me, Miss Eunice."

His voice lingered upon Eunice, as if it were no common name to him, but something rare and pleasing. I never heard it spoken so pleasantly before. After a little while he rose to take his leave.

"Brother," I said, giving him my hand, "farewell."

"I shall see you again, Miss Eunice," he answered.

He saw me again sooner than he expected, for I travelled by the next train to Woodbury, and, as I left the dark carriage in which I journeyed, I saw him alight from another part of the train, and at the same instant his eyes fell upon me.

"Where are you going to now, Eunice?" he demanded.

It seemed a pleasanter greeting than if he had called me Miss. I told him I knew my way to the jail, for that I had been not long ago to look at the outside of it. I saw the tears stand in his eyes, but, without speaking, he drew my hand through his arm, and I silently, but with a very lightened heart, walked beside him to the great portal of my father's prison.

We entered a square court, with nothing to be seen save the grey winter sky lying, as it were flat, overhead; and there was my father, pacing to and fro, with his arms crossed upon his breast and his head bowed down, as if it would never be raised again. I cried aloud, and ran and fell on his neck, and knew nothing more until I opened my eyes in a small bare room, and felt my father holding me in his arms, and Gabriel kneeling before me, chafing my hands, and pressing his lips upon them.

Afterwards Gabriel and my father conferred together; but before long Brother More arrived, whereupon Gabriel departed. Brother More said, solemnly:

"That man is a wolf in sheep's clothing, and our Eunice is a tender lamb."

I cannot believe that Gabriel is a wolf.

Dec. 2. I have taken a room in a cottage near the jail, the abode of John Robins and his wife, a decent tidy woman. So I can spend every day with my father.

Dec. 13. My father has been in prison a whole fortnight. Brother More went over to see Priscilla last night, and this morning he is to lay before us his plan for my father's release. I am going to meet him at the jail.

When I entered the room, my father and Brother More looked greatly perturbed, and my poor father leaned back in his chair, as if exhausted after a long conflict.

"Speak to her, brother," he said.

Then Brother More told us of a heavenly vision which had appeared to him, directing him to break off his betrothal to Priscilla, and to take me—me!—for his wife. After which he awoke, and these words abode in his mind, "The dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure."

"Therefore, Eunice," he said, in an awful voice, "do you and Priscilla see to it, lest you should be found fighting against the Lord."

I was struck dumb as with a great shock, but I heard him add these words:

"I was also instructed in the vision, to set your father free, upon the day that you become my wife."

"But," I said at last, my whole heart recoiling from him, "this would be a shameful wrong to Priscilla. It cannot be a vision from Heaven, but a delusion and snare. Marry Priscilla, and set my father free? Surely, surely, it was a lying vision."

"No," he said, fastening his gaze upon me; "I chose Priscilla rashly of my own judgment. Therein I erred; but I have promised her half her dowry as a compensation for my error."

"Father," I cried, "surely I ought to have some direction also, as well as he. Why should only he have a vision?" Then I added that I would go home and see Priscilla, and seek a sign for my own guidance.

December 14. Priscilla was ill in bed when I reached home, and refused to see me. I arose at five o'clock this morning, and stole down into the parlour. As I lighted the lamp, the parlour looked forlorn and deserted, and yet there lingered about it a ghostly feeling, as if perhaps my mother, and the dead children whom I never saw, had been sitting on the hearth in the night, as we sat in the daytime. Maybe she knew of my distress, and had left some tokens for my comfort and counsel. My Bible lay upon the table, but it was closed; her angel fingers had not opened it upon any verse that might have guided me. There was no mode of seeking direction, save by casting of lots.

I cut three little slips of paper of one length, and exactly similar—three, though surely I only needed two. Upon the first I wrote, "To be Brother More's wife," and upon the second, "To be a Single Sister." The third lay upon the desk, blank and white, as if waiting for some name to be written upon it, and suddenly all the chilly cold of the winter morning passed into a sultry heat, until I threw open the casement, and let the frosty air breathe upon my face. I said in my own heart I would leave myself a chance, though my conscience smote me for that word "chance." So I laid the three slips of paper between the leaves of my Bible, and sat down opposite to them, afraid of drawing the lot which held the secret of my future life.

There was no mark to guide me in the choice of one slip of paper from another; and I dared not stretch out my hand to draw one of them. For I was bound to abide by the solemn decision. It seemed too horrible to become Brother More's wife; and to me the Sisters' Home, where the Single Sisters dwell, having all things in common, seems dreary and monotonous and somewhat desolate. But if I should draw the blank paper! My heart fluttered; again and again I stretched out my hand, and withdrew it; until at last the oil in the lamp being spent, its light grew dimmer and dimmer, and, fearful of being still longer without guidance, I snatched the middle lot from between the leaves of my Bible. There was only a glimmer of dying light, by which I read the words, "To be Brother More's wife."

That is the last entry in my journal, written three years ago.

When Susannah came down stairs and entered the parlour, she found me sitting before my desk, almost in an idiotic state, with that miserable lot in my hand. There was no need to explain it to her; she looked at the other slip of paper, one blank, and the other inscribed, "To be a Single Sister," and she knew I had been casting lots. I remember her crying over me a little, and kissing me with unaccustomed tenderness; and then she returned ito her chamber, and I heard her speaking to Priscilla in grave and sad tones. After that, we were all passive; even Priscilla was stolidly resigned. Brother More came over, and Susannah informed him of the irrevocable lot which I had drawn; but besought him to refrain from seeing me that day; and he left me alone to grow somewhat used to the sense of my wretchedness.

Early the next morning I returned to Woodbury; my only consolation being the thought that my dear father would be set free, and might live with me in wealth and comfort all the rest of his life. During the succeeding days I scarcely left his side, never suffering Brother More to be alone with me; and morning and night John Robins or his wife accompanied me to the gate of the jail, and waited for me to return with them to their cottage.

My father was to be set free, only on my wedding-day, and the marriage was hurried on. Many of Priscilla's store of wedding garments were suitable for me. Every hour brought my doom nearer.

One morning, in the gloom and twilight of a December dawn, I suddenly met Gabriel in my path. He spake rapidly and earnestly, but I scarcely knew what he said, and I answered, falteringly:

"I am going to be married to Brother Joshua More on New Year's-day, and he will then release my father."

"Eunice," he cried, standing before me in the narrow path, "you can never marry him. I know the fat hypocrite. Good Heaven! I love you a hundred times better than he does. Love! The rascal does not know what it means."

I answered not a word, for I felt afraid both of myself and him, though I did not believe Gabriel to be a wolf in sheep's clothing.

"Do you know who I am?" he asked.

"No," I whispered.

"I am your uncle's nephew by marriage," he said, "and I have been brought up in his house. Break off this wicked marriage with the fellow More, and I will engage to release your father. I am young, and can work. I will pay your father's debts."

"It is impossible," I replied. "Brother More has had a heavenly vision, and I have drawn the lot. There is no hope. I must marry him upon New Year's-day."

Then Gabriel persuaded me to tell him the whole story of my trouble. He laughed a little, and bade me be of good comfort; and I could not make him understand how impossible it was that I should contend against the dispensation of the lot.

Always when I was with my father I strove to conceal my misery, talking to him of the happy days we should spend together some time. Likewise I sang within the walls of the prison, the simple hymns which we had been wont to sing in the peaceful church at school amid a congregation of serene hearts, and I strengthened my own heart and my father's by the recollected counsels of my dear lost pastor. Thus my father guessed little of my hidden suffering, and looked forward with hope to the day that would throw open his prison doors.

Once I went to the pastor, dwelling in Woodbury, and poured out my heart to him—save that I made no mention of Gabriel—and he told me it was often thus with young girls before their marriage, but that I had a clear leading; he also told me that Brother More was a devout man, and I should soon love and reverence him as my husband.

At length the last day of the year came; a great day among our people, when we drew our lot for the following year. Everything seemed at an end. All hope fled from me, if there ever had been any hope in my heart. I left my father early in the evening, for I could no longer conceal my wretchedness; yet when I was outside the prison walls I wandered to and fro, hovering about it, as if these days, miserable as they had been, were happy to those which were drawing near. Brother More had not been near us all day, but doubtless he was busy in his arrangements to release my father. I was still lingering under the great walls, when a carriage drove up noiselessly—for the ground was sprinkled with soft snow—and Gabriel sprang out, and almost clasped me in his arms.

"My dear Eunice," he said, "you must come with me at once. Our uncle will save you from this hateful marriage."

I do not know what I should have done had not John Robins called out from the driver's seat, "All right, Miss Eunice; remember John Robins."

Upon that I left myself in Gabriel's hands, and he lifted me into the carriage, wrapping warm coverings about me. It seemed to me no other than a happy dream, as we drove noiselessly along snowy roads, with the pale wan light of the young moon falling upon the white country, and now and then shining upon the face of Gabriel, as he leaned forward from time to time to draw the wrappers closer round me.

We might have been three hours on the way, when we turned into a by-road, which presently I recognised as the deep lane wherein I had first met Gabriel. We were going then to my uncle's house. So with a lightened heart I stepped out of the carriage, and entered his doors for the second time.

Gabriel conducted me into the parlour which I had seen before, and placed me in a chair upon the hearth, removing my shawl and bonnet with a pleasant and courteous care; and he was standing opposite to me, regarding me with a smile upon his handsome face, when the door opened and my uncle entered.

"Come and kiss me, Eunice," he said; and I obeyed him wonderingly.

"Child," he continued, stroking my hair back from my face, "you would not come to me of your own will, so I commissioned this young fellow to kidnap you. We are not going to have you marry Joshua More. I cannot do with him as my nephew. Let him marry Priscilla."

There was such a hearty tone in my uncle's voice, that for a moment I felt comforted, though I knew that he could not set aside my lot. So he seated me beside him, while I still looked with wonderment into his face.

"I am going to draw a lot for you," he said, with an air of merriment; "what would my little rosebud say to her fat suitor, if she knew that her father was a freed man at this moment?"

I dared not look into his face or into Gabriel's. For I remembered that I myself had sought for a token; and that no earthly power could set aside that, or the heavenly vision also, which Brother More had seen.

"Uncle," I said, shuddering, "I have no voice in this matter. I drew the lot fairly, and I must abide by it. You cannot help me."

"We will see," he answered; "it is New Year's-eve, you know, and time to draw again. The lot will neither be to become Brother More's wife, nor a Single Sister, I promise you. We shall draw the blank this time!"

While I yet wondered at these words, I heard a sound of footsteps in the hall, and the door opened, and my beloved father stood upon the threshold, stretching out his arms to me. How he came there I knew not; but I flew to him with a glad cry, and hid my face upon his breast.

"You are welcome, Mr. Fielding," said my uncle; "Phil!"—it did now appear that Gabriel's name was Philip—"bring Mr. More this way."

I started with fright and wonder, and my father also looked troubled, and drew me nearer to his side., Brother More entered with a cowardly and downcast mien, which made him appear a hundred-fold more repulsive in my eyes, as he stood near the door, with his craven face turned towards us.

"Mr. More," said my uncle, "I believe you are to marry my niece, Eunice Fielding, tomorrow?"

"I did not know she was your niece," he answered, in an abject tone. "I would not have presumed——"

"But the heavenly vision, Mr. More?" interrupted my uncle.

He looked round for a moment, with a spiritless glance, and his eyes sank.

"It was a delusion," he muttered.

"It was a lie!" said Gabriel.

"Mr. More," continued my uncle, "if the heavenly vision be true, it will cost you the sum of five thousand five hundred pounds, the amount in which you are indebted to me, with sundry sums due to my nephew here. Yet if it be true, you must abide by it, of course."

"It was not true," he answered; "the vision was concerning Priscilla, to whom I was betrothed. I was ensnared to change the name to that of Eunice."

"Then go and marry Priscilla," said my uncle, good humouredly. "Philip, take him away."

But Priscilla would have no more to do with Brother More, and shortly afterwards she settled among the Single Sisters in the same settlement where I had lived my quiet and peaceful youth. Her store of wedding garments, which had been altered to fit me, came in at last for Susannah, who was chosen to be the wife of Brother Schmidt, according to her inward assurance; and she went out to join him in the West Indies, from whence she writes many happy letters. I was troubled for a time about my lot, but certainly if Brother More's vision was concerning Priscilla, I could not be required to abide by it. Moreover, I never saw him again. My uncle and father, who had never met before, formed a close friendship, and my uncle would hear of nothing but that we should dwell together in his large mansion, where I might be as a daughter unto both of them. People say we have left the Church of the United Brethren; but it is not so. Only, as I had found one evil man. within it, so also I have found some good men without it.

Gabriel is not one of the Brethren.

CHAPTER V

TO BE TAKEN IN WATER

Walter Thornbury

Minnie, my blessed little wife, and I, had been just one month married. We had returned only two days from our honeymoon tour at Killarney. I was a junior partner in the firm of Schwarzmoor and Laddock, bankers, Lombard-street (I must conceal real names), and I had four days more of my leave of absence still to enjoy. I was supremely happy in my bright new cottage south-west of London, and was revelling in delicious idleness on that bright October morning, watching the great yellow leaves fall in the sunshine. Minnie sat by me under the hawthorn-tree; otherwise, I should not have been supremely happy.

Little Betsy, Minnie's maid, came fluttering down the garden with an ominous-looking letter in her hand.

It was a telegram from Mr. Schwarzmoor. It contained only these words:

"We want you to start to the Continent directly with specie. Neapolitan loan. No delay. Transactions of great importance since you left. Sorry to break up holiday. Be at office by 6.30. Start from London Bridge by 9.15, and catch Dover night boat."

"Is the boy gone?"

"Boy did not leave it, sir. Elderly gentleman, going to Dawson's, brought it. The office boy was out, and the gentleman happened to be coming past our house."

"Herbert dear, you won't go, you mustn't go," said Minnie, leaning on my shoulder, and bending down her face. "Don't go."

" I must, my dearest. The firm has no one to trust to, but me, in such a case. It is but a week's absence. I must start in ten minutes, and catch the 4.20 on its way up."

"That was a very important telegram," I said sharply to the station-master, "and you ought not to have sent it by any unknown and unauthorised person. Who was this old gentleman, pray?"

"Who was it, Harvey?" said the station-master, rather sulkily, to the porter.

"Old gent, sir, very respectable, as comes to the Dawsons', the training-stables. Has horses there."

"Do not let that sort of thing occur again, Mr. Jennings," I said, "or I shall be obliged to report it. I wouldn't have had that telegram mislaid, for a hundred pounds."

Mr. Jennings, the station-master, grumbled something, and then boxed the telegraph boy's ears. Which seemed to do him (Mr. Jennings) good.

"We were getting very anxious," said Mr. Schwarzmoor, as I entered the bank parlour, only three minutes late. "Very anxious, weren't we, Goldrick?"

"Very anxious," said the little neat head clerk. "Very anxious."

Mr. Schwarzmoor was a full faced man of about sixty, with thick white eyebrows and a red face—a combination which gave him an expression of choleric old age. He was a shrewd severe man of business: a little impetuous and fond of rule, but polite, kind, and considerate.

"I hope your charming wife is quite well. Sorry, indeed, to break up your holiday; but no help for it, my dear fellow. There is the specie in those two iron boxes, enclosed in leather to look like samples. They are fastened with letter-locks, and contain a quarter of a million in gold. The Neapolitan king apprehends a rebellion." (It was three years before Garibaldi's victories.) "You will take the money to Messrs. Pagliavicini and Rossi, No. 172 Toledo, Naples. The names that open the locks are, on the one with the white star on the cover, Masinisa; on the one with the black star, Cotopaxo. Of course you will not forget the talismanic words. Open the boxes at Lyons, to make sure that all is safe. Talk to no one. Make no friends on the road. Your commission is of vast importance."

"I shall pass," said I. "for a commercial traveller."

"Pardon me for my repeated cautions, Blamyre, but I am an older man than you, and know the danger of travelling with specie. If your purpose was known to-night in Paris, your road to Marseilles would be as dangerous as if all the galley-slaves at Toulon had been let loose in special chase of you. I do not doubt your discretion: I only warn you to be careful. Of course, you go armed?"

I opened my coat, and showed a belt under my waistcoat, with a revolver in it. At which warlike spectacle the old clerk drew back in alarm.

"Good!" said Mr. Schwarzmoor. "But one grain of prudence is worth five times the five bullets in those five barrels. You will stop in Paris to-morrow to transact business with Lefebre and Desjeans, and you will go on by the 12.15 (night) to Marseilles, catching the boat on Friday. We will telegraph to you at Marseilles. Are the letters for Paris ready, Mr. Hargrave?"

"Yes, sir, nearly ready. Mr. Wilkins is hard at them."

I reached Dover by midnight, and instantly engaged four porters to carry my specie chests down the stone steps leading from the pier to the Calais boat. The first was taken on board quite safely; but while the second was being carried down, one of the men slipped, and would certainly have fallen into the water, had he not been caught in the arms of a burly old Indian officer, who, laden with various traps, and urging forward his good-natured but rather vulgar wife, was preceding me.

"Steady there, my lad," he said. "Why, what have you got there? Hardware?"

"Don't know, sir; I only know it's heavy enough to break any man's back," was the rough answer, as the man thanked his questioner in his blunt way.

"These steps, sir, are very troublesome for bringing down heavy goods," said an obliging voice behind me. "I presume, sir, from your luggage, that we are of the same profession?"

I looked round as we just then stepped on board. The person who addressed me was a tall thin man, with a long and rather Jewish nose, and a narrow elongated face. He wore a greatcoat too short for him, a flowered waistcoat, tight trousers, a high shirt collar, and a light sprigged stiff neckcloth.

I replied that I had the honour to be a commercial traveller, and that I thought we were going to have a rough night of it.

"Decidedly dirty night," he replied; "and I advise you, sir, to secure a berth at once. The boat, I see, is very crowded."

I went straight to my berth, and lay down for an hour; at the end of that time I got up and looked around me. At one of the small tables sat half a dozen of the passengers, including the old Indian and my old-fashioned interrogator. They were drinking bottled porter, and appeared very sociable. I rose and joined them, and we exchanged some remarks not complimentary to night travelling.

"By Jove, sir, it is simply unbearable!" said the jovial Major Baxter (for he soon told us his name); "it is as stifling as Peshawah when the hot Tinsang wind is blowing; suppose we three go on deck and take a little air? My wife suffers in these crossings; she's invisible, I know, till the boat stops. Steward, bring up some more bottled porter."

When we got on deck, I saw, to my extreme surprise, made conspicuous by their black and white stars, four other cases exactly similar to mine, except that they had no painted brand upon them. I could hardly believe my eyes; but there they were; leather covers, letter-locks, and all.

"Those are mine, sir," remarked Mr. Levison (I knew my fellow-commercial's name from the captain's having addressed him by it). "I am travelling for the house of Mackintosh. Those cases contain waterproof paletots, the best made. Our house has used such cases for forty years. It is sometimes inconvenient, this accidental resemblance of luggage—leads to mistakes. Your goods are much heavier than my goods, as I judge? Gas improvements, railway chairs, cutlery, or something else in iron?"

I was silent, or I made some vague reply.

"Sir," said Levison, "I augur well of your future; trade secrets should be kept inviolate. Don't you think so, sir?"

The major thus appealed to, replied, " Sir, by Jove, you're right! One cannot be too careful in these days. Egad, sir, the world is a mass of deceit."

"There's Calais light!" cried some one at that moment; and there it was, straight ahead, casting sparkles of comfort over the dark water.

I thought no more of my travelling companions. We parted at Paris: I went my way and they went their way. The major was going to pay a visit at Dromont, near Lyons; thence he would go to Marseilles en route for Alexandria. Mr. Levison was bound for Marseilles, like myself and the major, but not by my train—at least he feared not—as he had much to do in Paris.

I had transacted my business in the French capital, and was on my way to the Palais Royal, with M. Lefebre fils, a great friend of mine. It was about six o'clock, and we were crossing the Rue St. Honoré, when there passed us a tall Jewish-looking person, in a huge white mackintosh, whom I recognised as Mr. Levison. He was in a hired open carriage, and his four boxes were by his side. I bowed to him, but he did not seem to notice me.

"Eh bien! That drôle, who is that?" said my friend, with true Parisian superciliousness.

I replied that it was only a fellow-passenger, who had crossed with me the night before.

In the very same street I ran up against the major and his wife, on their way to the railway station.

"Infernal city, this," said the major; "smells so of onion. I should like, if it was mine, to wash it out, house by house; 'tain't wholesome, 'pon my soul 'tain't wholesome. Julia, my dear, this is my pleasant travelling companion of last night. By-the-by, just saw that commercial traveller! Sharp business man that: no sightseeing about him. Bourse and bank all day,— senior partner some day."

"And how many more?" said my friend Lefebre, when we shook hands and parted with the jolly major. "That is a good boy—he superabounds—he overflows—but he is one of your epicurean lazy officers, I am sure. Your army, it must be reformed, or India will slip from you like a handful of sand—vous verrez, mon cher."

Midnight came, and I was standing at the terminus, watching the transport of my luggage, when a cab drove up, and an Englishman leaping out asked the driver in excellent French for change for a five-franc piece. It was Levison; but I saw no more of him, for the crowd just then pushed me forward

I took my seat with only two other persons in the carriage—two masses of travelling cloak and capote—two bears, for all I could see to the contrary.

Once away from the lights of Paris, and in the pitch dark country, I fell asleep and dreamed of my dear little wife, and our dear little home. Then a feeling of anxiety ran across my mind. I dreamed that I had forgotten the words with which to open the letter-locks. I ransacked mythology, history, science, in vain. Then I was in the banking parlour at No. 172 Toledo, Naples, threatened with instant death by a file of soldiers, if I did not reveal the words, or explain where the boxes had been hid; for I had hidden them for some inscrutable no reason. At that moment an earthquake shook the city, a flood of fire rolled past beneath the window, Vesuvius had broken loose and was upon us. I cried in my agony—"Gracious Heaven, reveal to me those words!" when I awoke.

"Dromont! Dromont! Dix minutes d'arrête, messieurs."

Half blinded with the sudden light, I stumbled to the buffet, and asked for a cup of coffee, when three or four noisy young English tourists came hurrying in, surrounding a quiet imperturbable elderly commercial traveller. It was actually Levison again! They led him along in triumph, and called for champagne.

"Yes! yes!" the leader said. "You must have some, old fellow. We have won three games, you know, and you held such cards, too. Come along, look alive, you fellow with the nightcap—Cliquot—gilt top, you duffer. You shall have your revenge before we get to Lyons, old chap."

Levison chattered good humouredly about the last game, and took the wine. In a few minutes the young men had drunk their champagne, and had gone out to smoke. In another moment Levison caught my eye.

"Why, good gracious," he said, "who'd have thought of this! Well, I am glad to see you. Now, my dear sir, you must have some champagne with me. Here, another bottle, monsieur, if you please. I hope, long before we get to Lyons, to join you, my dear sir. I am tired of the noise of those youngsters. Besides, I object to high stakes, on principle."

The moment the waiter brought the champagne, Levison took the bottle.

"No," he said; "I never allow any one to open wine for me." He turned his back from me to remove the wire; removed it; and was filling my glass; when up dashed a burly hearty man to shake hands with me—so awkward in bis heartiness that he broke the champagne bottle. Not a drop of the wine was saved. It was the major—hot as usual, and in a tremendous bustle.

"By Jove, sir; dooced sorry. Let me order another bottle. How are you, gentlemen? Lucky, indeed, to meet you both again. Julia's with the luggage. We can be very cozy together. More champagne here. What's bottle in French? Most shameful thing! Those French friends of Julia's were gone off to Biarritz, pretending to have forgotten that we were coming—after six weeks with us in London, too! Precious shabby, not to put too fine a point upon it. By Jove, sir, there's the bell. We'll all go in the same carriage; They will not bring that champagne."

Levison looked rather annoyed. "I shall not see you," he said, "for a station or two. I must join those boys, and let them give me my revenge. Cleared me out of twenty guineas! I have not been so imprudent since I was first on the road. Good-bye, Major Baxter—goodbye, Mr. Blamyre!"

I wondered how this respectable old fellow, who so keenly relished his game at whist, had got hold of my name; but I remembered in a moment that he must have seen the direction on my luggage.

Flashes of crimson and green lights, a shout from some pointsman, a glimpse of rows of poplars, and lines of suburban houses, and we once more plunged into the yielding darkness.

I found the major very droll and pleasant, but evidently ruled by his fussy, good-natured, managing, masculine wife. He was full of stories of bungalows, compounds, and the hills; in all of which narrations he was perpetually interrupted by Mrs. Baxter.

"By Jove, sir!" he said, "I wish I could sell out, and go into your line of business. I am almost sick of India—it deranges one's liver so infernally."

"Now, John, how can you go on so! You know you never had a day's illness in all your life, except that week when you smoked out a whole box of Captain Mason's cheroots."

"Well, I pulled through it, Julia," said the major, striking himself a tremendous blow on the chest; "but I've been an unlucky devil as to promotion—always bad luck in everything. If I bought a horse, it made a point of going lame next day; never went in a train but it broke down."

"Now don't, John; pray don't go on so," said Mrs. Baxter, "or I shall really be very angry. Such nonsense! You'll get your step in time. Be patient, like me, major; take things more quietly. I hope you put a direction on that hat-box of yours? Where is the sword-case? If it wasn't for me, major, you'd get to Suez with nothing but the coat on your back."

Just then, the train stopped at Charmont, and in tripped Levison, with his white mackintosh over his arm, and his bundle of umbrellas and sticks.

"No more sovereign points for me!" he said, producing a pack of cards. "But if you and the major and Mrs. Baxter would like a rubber—shilling points—I'm for you. Cut for partners."

We assented with pleasure. We cut for partners. I and Mrs. Baxter against the major and Levison. We won nearly every game. Levison played too cautiously, and the major laughed, talked, and always forgot what cards were out.

Still it killed the time; the red and black turned up, changed, and ran into remarkable sequences; and the major's flukes and extraordinary luck in holding (not in playing) cards amused us, we laughed at Levison's punctilious care, and at Mrs. Baxter's avarice for tricks, and were as pleasant a party as the dim lamp of a night-train ever shone on. I could think of little, nevertheless, but my precious boxes.

There we were rushing through France, seeing nothing, heeding nothing, and having as little to do with our means of transit as if we had been four Arabian princes, seated on a flying enchanted carpet.

The game gradually grew more intermittent, the conversation more incessant. Levison, stiff of neckcloth as ever, and imperturbable and punctilious as ever, became chatty. He grew communicative about his business.

"I have at last," he said, in his precise and measured voice, "after years of attention to the subject, discovered the great secret which the waterproofers have so long coveted; how to let out the heated air of the body, and yet at the same time to exclude the rain. On my return to London, I offer this secret to the Mackintosh firm for ten thousand pounds; if they refuse the offer, I at once open a shop in Paris, call the new fabric Magentosh, in honour of the emperor's great Italian victory, and sit down and quietly realise a cool million—that's my way!"

"That's the real business tone," said the major, admiringly.

"Ah, major," cried his wife, ever ready to improve a subject, " if you had only had a little of Mr. Levison's prudence and energy, then, indeed, you'd have been colonel of your regiment before this."

Mr. Levison then turned the conversation to the subject of locks.

" I always use the letter-lock myself," he said. "My two talismanic words are TURLURETTE and PAPAGAYO—two names I once heard in an old French farce—who could guess them? It would take the adroitest thief seven hours to decipher even one. You find letter-locks safe, sir?" (He turned to me.)

I replied dryly that I did, and asked what time our train was due at Lyons.

"We are due at Lyons at 4.30," said the major; "it is now five to four. I don't know how it is, but I have a sort of presentiment tonight of some break-down. I am always in for it. When I went tiger-hunting, it was always my elephant that the beast pinned. If some of us were ordered up to an unhealthy out-of-the-way fort, it was always my company. It may be superstitious, I own, but I feel we shall have a break-down before we get to Marseilles. How fast we're going! Only see how the carriage rocks!"

I unconsciously grew nervous, but I concealed it. Could the major be a rogue, planning some scheme against me? But no: his red bluff face, and his clear good-uatured guileless eyes, refuted the suspicion.

"Nonsense, be quiet, major; that's the way you always make a journey disagreeable," said his wife, arranging herself for sleep. Then Levison began talking about his early life, and how, in George the Fourth's time, he was travelling for a cravat house in Bond-street. He grew eloquent in favour of the old costume.

"Low Radical fellows," he said, "run down the first gentleman in Europe, as he was justly called. I respect his memory. He was a wit, and the friend of wits; he was lavishly generous, and disdained poor pitiful economy. He dressed well, sir; he looked well, sir; he was a gentleman of perfect manners. Sir, this is a slovenly and shaoby age. When I was young, no gentleman ever travelled without at least two dozen cravats, four whalebone stiffeners, and an iron to smooth the tie, and produce a thin equal edge to the muslin. There were no less, sir, than eighteen modes of putting on the cravat; there was the cravate à la Diane, the cravate à l'Anglaise, the cravate au naeud Gordieu, the cravate——"

The train jolted, moved on, slackened, stopped.

The major thrust his head out of window, and shouted to a passing guard:

" Where are we?"

"Twenty miles from Lyons—Fort Rouge, monsieur."

"What is the matter? Anything the matter?"

An English voice answered from the next window:

"A wheel broken, they tell us. We shall have to wait two hours, and transfer the luggage."

"Good Heaven!" I could not help exclaiming.

Levison put his head out of window. "It is but too true," he said, drawing it in again; " two hours' delay at least, the man says. Tiresome, very—but such things will happen on the road; take it coolly. We'll have some coffee and another rubber. We must each look to our own luggage; or, if Mr. Blamyre goes in and orders supper, I'll see to it all. But, good gracious, what is that shining out there by the station lamps? Hei, monsieur!" (to a passing gendarme whom the major had hailed), "what is going on at the station?"

"Monsieur," said the gendarme, saluting, "those are soldiers of the First Chasseurs; they happened to be at the station on their way to Châlons; the station-master has sent them to surround the luggage-van, and see to the transfer of the baggage. No passenger is to go near it, as there are government stores of value in the train."

Levison spat on the ground and muttered execrations to himself:—I supposed at French railways.

"By Jove, sir, did you ever see such clumsy carts?" said Major Baxter, pointing to two country carts, each with four strong horses, that were drawn up under a hedge close to the station; for we had struggled on as far as the first turn-table, some hundred yards from the first houses of the village of Fort Rouge.

Levison and I tried very hard to get near our luggage, but the soldiers sternly refused our approach. It gave me some comfort, however, to see my chests transferred carefully, with many curses on their weight. I saw no sign of government stores, and I told the major so.

"Oh, they're sharp," he replied, "dooced sharp. Maybe the empress's jewels—one little package only, perhaps; but still not difficult to steal in a night confusion."

Just then there was a shrill piercing whistle, as if a signal. The horses in the two carts tore into a gallop, and flew out of sight.

"Savages, sir; mere barbarians still," exclaimed the major; "unable to use railways even now we've given them to them."

"Major!" said his wife, in a voice of awful reproof, "spare the feelings of these foreigners, and remember your position as an officer and a gentleman."

The major rubbed his hands, and laughed uproariously.

"A pack of infernal idiots," cried Levison; "they can do nothing without soldiers; soldiers here, soldiers there, soldiers everywhere."

"Well, these precautions are sometimes useful, sir," said Mrs. B.; "France is a place full of queer characters. The gentleman next you any day at a table d'hôte may be a returned convict. Major, you remember that case at Cairo three years ago?"

"Cairo, Julia my dear, is not in France."

"I know that, major, I hope. But the house was a French hotel, and that's the same thing." Mrs. B. spoke sharply.

"I shall have a nap, gentlemen. For my part, I'm tired," said the major, as we took our places in the Marseilles train, after three hours' tedious delay. "The next thing will be the boat breaking down, I suppose."

"Major, you wicked man, don't fly out against Providence," said his wife.

Levison grew eloquent again about the Prince Regent, his diamond epaulettes, and his inimitable cravats; but Levison's words seemed to lengthen, and gradually became inaudible to me, until I heard only a soothing murmur, and the rattle and jar of the wheels.

Again my dreams were nervous and uneasy. I imagined I was in Cairo, threading narrow dim streets, where the camels jostled me and the black slaves threatened me, and the air was eavy with musk, and veiled faces watched me from latticed casements above. Suddenly a rose fell at my feet. I looked up, and a face like my Minnie's, only with large liquid dark eyes like an antelope's, glanced forth from behind a water-vase and smiled. At that moment, four Mamelukes appeared, riding down the street at full gallop, and came upon me with their sabres flashing. I dreamed I had only one hope, and that was to repeat the talismauic words of my letter-locks. Already I was under the hoofs of the Mamelukes' horses. I cried out with great difficulty, "Cotopaxo! Cotopaxo!" A rough shake awoke me. It was the major, looking bluff but stern.

"Why, you're talking in your sleep!" he said; "why the devil do you talk in your sleep? Bad habit. Here we are at the breakfast-place."

"What was I talking about?" I asked, with ill-concealed alarm.

"Some foreign gibberish," returned the major.

"Greek, I think," said Levison; "but I was just off too."

We reached Marseilles. I rejoiced to see its almond-trees and its white villas. I should feel safer when I was on board ship, and my treasure with me. I was not of a suspicious temperament, but I had thought it remarkable that during that long journey from Lyons to the seaboard, I had never fallen asleep without waking and finding an eye upon me—either the major's or his wife's. Levison had slept during the last four hours incessantly. Latterly, we had all of us grown silent, and even rather sullen. Now we brightened up.

"Hôtel de Londres! Hôtel de l'Univers! Hôtel Impérial!" cried the touts, as we stood round our luggage, agreeing to keep together.

"Hôtel Impérial, of course," said the major; "best house."

A one-eyed saturnine half-caste tout shrunk up to us.

"Hôtel Impérial, sare. I am Hôtel Impérial; all full; not a bed; no—pas de tout—no use, sare!"

"Hang it! the steamer will be the next thing to fail."

"Steamer, sare—accident with boiler; won't start till minuit et vingt minutes—half-past midnight, sare."

"Where shall we go?" said I, turning round and smiling at the three blank faces of my companions. "Our journey seems doomed to be unlucky. Let us redeem it by a parting supper. My telegraphing done, I am free till half-past eleven."

"I will take you," said Levison, " to a small but very decent hotel down by the harbour. The Hôtel des Etrangers."

"Curséd low nasty crib—gambling place!" said the major, lighting a cheroot, as he got into an open fly.

Mr. Levison drew himself up in his punctilious way. "Sir," he said, "the place is in new hands, or I would not have recommended the house, you may rely upon it."

"Sir," said the major, lifting his broad-brimmed white hat, "I offer you my apologies. I was not aware of that."

"My dear sir, never mention the affair again."

"Major, you're a hot-headed simpleton," were Mrs. B.'s last words, as we drove off together.

As we entered a bare-looking salon with a dinner-table in the middle and a dingy billiard-table at one end, the major said to me, "I shall go and wash and dress for the theatre, and then take a stroll while you do your telegraphing. Go up first, Julia, and see the rooms."

"What slaves we poor women are!" said Mrs. B., as she sailed out.

"And I," said Levison, laying down his railway rug, "shall go out and try and do some business before the shops shut. We have agents here in the Canabière."

"Only two double-bedded rooms, sare," said the one-eyed tout, who stood over the luggage.

"That will do," said Levison, promptly, and with natural irritation at our annoyances. "My friend goes by the boat to-night; he does not sleep here. His luggage can be put in my room, and he can take the key, in case he comes in first,"

"Then now we are all right," said the major. "So far, so good!"

When I got to the telegraph-office, I found a telegram from London awaiting me. To my surprise and horror, it contained only these words:

"You are in great danger. Do not wait a moment on shore. There is a plot against you. Apply to the prefect for a guard."

It must be the major, and I was in his hands! That rough hearty manner of his was all a trick. Even now, he might be carrying off the chests. I telegraphed back:

"Safe at Marseilles. All right up to this."

Thinking of the utter ruin of our house if I were robbed, and of dear Minnie, I flew back to the hotel, which was situated in a dirty narrow street near the harbour. As I turned down the street, a man darted from a doorway and seized my arm. It was one of the waiters. He said hurriedly, in French: "Quick, quick, monsieur; Major Baxter is anxious to see you, instantly, in the salon. There is no time to lose."

I ran to the hotel, and darted into the salon. There was the major pacing up and down in extraordinary excitement; his wife was looking anxiously out of window. The manner of both was entirely changed. The major ran up and seized me by the hand. "I am a detective officer, and my name is Arnott," he said. "That man Levison is a notorious thief. He is at this moment in his room, opening one of your specie chests. You must help me to nab him. I knew his little game, and have check-mated him. But I wanted to catch him in the act. Julia, finish that brandy-and-water while Mr. Blamyre and myself transact our business. Have you got a revolver, Mr. Blamyre, in case he shows fight? I prefer this." (He pulled out a staff.)

"I have left my revolver in the bedroom," I breathlessly exclaimed.

"That's bad; never mind, he is not likely to hit us in the flurry. He may not even think of it. You must rush at the door at the same moment as I do. These foreign locks are never any good. It's No. 15. Gently!"

We came to the door. We listened a moment. We could hear the sound of money chinking in a bag. Then a low dry laugh, as Levison chuckled over the word he had heard me utter in my sleep. " Cotopaxo—ha! ha!"

The major gave the word, and we both rushed at the door. It shook, splintered, was driven in. Levison, revolver in hand, stood over the open box, ankle deep in gold. He had already filled a huge digger's belt that was round his waist, and a courier's bag that hung at his side. A carpet-bag, half full, lay at his feet, and, as he let it fall to open the window bolt, it gushed forth a perfect torrent of gold. He did not utter a word. There were ropes at the window, as if he had been lowering, or preparing to lower, bags into the side alley. He gave a whistle, and some vehicle could be heard to drive furiously off.

"Surrender, you gallows-bird! I know you," cried the major. "Surrender! I've got you now, old boy."

Levison's only reply was to pull the trigger of the revolver; fortunately, there was no discharge. I had forgotten to cap it.

"The infernal thing is not capped. One for you, Bobby," he said quietly. Then hurling it at the major with a sudden fury, he threw open the window and leaped out.

I leaped after him—it was a ground floor room—raising a hue and cry. Arnott remained to guard the money.

A moment more and a wild rabble of soldiers, sailors, mongrel idlers, and porters, were pursuing the flying wretch with screams and hoots, as in the dim light (the lamps were just beginning to be kindled) we tore after him, doubling and twisting like a hare, among the obstacles that crowded the quay. Hundreds of blows were aimed at him; hundreds of hands were stretched to seize him; he wrested himself from one; he felled another; he leaped over a third; a Zouave's clutch was all but on him, when suddenly his foot caught in a mooring ring, and he fell headlong into the harbour. There was a shout as he splashed and disappeared in the dark water, near which the light of only one lamp moved and glittered. I ran down the nearest steps and waited while the gendarmes took a boat and stolidly dragged with hooks for the body.

"They are foxes, these old thieves. I remember this man here at Toulon. I saw him branded. I knew his face again in a moment. He has dived under the shipping, got into some barge and hid. You'll never see him again," said an old grey gendarme who had taken me into the boat.

"Yes we shall, for here he is!" cried a second, stooping down and lifting a body out of the water by the hair.

"Oh, he was an artful file," said a man from a boat behind us. It was Arnott. "Just came to see how you were getting on, sir. It's all right with the money; Julia's minding it. I often said that fellow would catch it some day, now he's got it. He all but had you, Mr. Blamyre. He'd have cut your throat when you were asleep, rather than miss the money. But I was on his track. He didn't know me. This was my first cruise for some time against this sort of rogue. Well; his name is off the books; that's one good thing. Come, comrades, bring that body to land. We must strip him of the money he has upon him, which at least did one good thing while in his possession—it sent the scoundrel to the bottom."

Even in death, the long face looked craftily respectable when we turned it to the lamp-light.

Arnott told me all, in his jovial way, on my return to the hotel, where I loaded him and Mrs. B. (another officer) with thanks. On the night I started, he had received orders from the London head office to follow me, and watch Levison. He had not had time to communicate with my partners. The driver of our train had been bribed to make the engine break down at Fort Rouge, where Levison's accomplices were waiting with carts to carry off the luggage in the confusion and darkness, or even during a sham riot and fight. This plan Arnott had frustrated by getting the police to telegraph from Paris, for soldiers to be sent from Lyons, and be kept in readiness, at the station. The champagne he spilt had been drugged. Levison, defeated in his first attempt, had then resolved to try other means. My unlucky disclosure of the mystery of the letter-lock had furnished him with the power of opening that one chest. The break-down of the steamer, which was accidental (as far as could ever be ascertained), gave him a last opportunity.

That night, thanks to Arnott, I left Marseilles with not one single piece of money lost. The journey was prosperous. The loan was effected on very profitable terms. Our house has flourished ever since, and Minnie and I have flourished likewise—and increased.

CHAPTER VI

TO BE TAKEN WITH A GRAIN OF SALT

Charles Dickens

I have always noticed a prevalent want of courage, even among persons of superior intelligence and culture, as to imparting their own psychological experiences when those have been of a strange sort. Almost all men are afraid that what they could relate in such wise would find no parallel or response in a listener’s internal life, and might be suspected or laughed at. A truthful traveller, who should have seen some extraordinary creature in the likeness of a sea-serpent, would have no fear of mentioning it; but the same traveller, having had some singular presentiment, impulse, vagary of thought, vision (so-called), dream, or other remarkable mental impression, would hesitate considerably before he would own to it. To this reticence I attribute much of the obscurity in which such subjects are involved. We do not habitually communicate our experiences of these subjective things as we do our experiences of objective creation. The consequence is, that the general stock of experience in this regard appears exceptional, and really is so, in respect of being miserably imperfect.

In what I am going to relate, I have no intention of setting up, opposing, or supporting, any theory whatever. I know the history of the Bookseller of Berlin, I have studied the case of the wife of a late Astronomer Royal as related by Sir David Brewster, and I have followed the minutest details of a much more remarkable case of Spectral Illusion occurring within my private circle of friends. It may be necessary to state as to this last, that the sufferer (a lady) was in no degree, however distant, related to me. A mistaken assumption on that head might suggest an explanation of a part of my own case,—but only a part,—which would be wholly without foundation. It cannot be referred to my inheritance of any developed peculiarity, nor had I ever before any at all similar experience, nor have I ever had any at all similar experience since.

It does not signify how many years ago, or how few, a certain murder was committed in England, which attracted great attention. We hear more than enough of murderers as they rise in succession to their atrocious eminence, and I would bury the memory of this particular brute, if I could, as his body was buried, in Newgate Jail. I purposely abstain from giving any direct clue to the criminal’s individuality.

When the murder was first discovered, no suspicion fell—or I ought rather to say, for I cannot be too precise in my facts, it was nowhere publicly hinted that any suspicion fell—on the man who was afterwards brought to trial. As no reference was at that time made to him in the newspapers, it is obviously impossible that any description of him can at that time have been given in the newspapers. It is essential that this fact be remembered.

Unfolding at breakfast my morning paper, containing the account of that first discovery, I found it to be deeply interesting, and I read it with close attention. I read it twice, if not three times. The discovery had been made in a bedroom, and, when I laid down the paper, I was aware of a flash—rush—flow—I do not know what to call it,—no word I can find is satisfactorily descriptive,—in which I seemed to see that bedroom passing through my room, like a picture impossibly painted on a running river. Though almost instantaneous in its passing, it was perfectly clear; so clear that I distinctly, and with a sense of relief, observed the absence of the dead body from the bed.

It was in no romantic place that I had this curious sensation, but in chambers in Piccadilly, very near to the corner of St. James’s-street. It was entirely new to me. I was in my easy-chair at the moment, and the sensation was accompanied with a peculiar shiver which started the chair from its position. (But it is to be noted that the chair ran easily on castors.) I went to one of the windows (there are two in the room, and the room is on the second floor) to refresh my eyes with the moving objects down in Piccadilly. It was a bright autumn morning, and the street was sparkling and cheerful. The wind was high. As I looked out, it brought down from the Park a quantity of fallen leaves, which a gust took, and whirled into a spiral pillar. As the pillar fell and the leaves dispersed, I saw two men on the opposite side of the way, going from West to East. They were one behind the other. The foremost man often looked back over his shoulder. The second man followed him, at a distance of some thirty paces, with his right hand menacingly raised. First, the singularity and steadiness of this threatening gesture in so public a thoroughfare attracted my attention; and next, the more remarkable circumstance that nobody heeded it. Both men threaded their way among the other passengers with a smoothness hardly consistent even with the action of walking on a pavement; and no single creature, that I could see, gave them place, touched them, or looked after them. In passing before my windows, they both stared up at me. I saw their two faces very distinctly, and I knew that I could recognise them anywhere. Not that I had consciously noticed anything very remarkable in either face, except that the man who went first had an unusually lowering appearance, and that the face of the man who followed him was of the colour of impure wax.

I am a bachelor, and my valet and his wife constitute my whole establishment. My occupation is in a certain Branch Bank, and I wish that my duties as head of a Department were as light as they are popularly supposed to be. They kept me in town that autumn, when I stood in need of change. I was not ill, but I was not well. My reader is to make the most that can be reasonably made of my feeling jaded, having a depressing sense upon me of a monotonous life, and being “slightly dyspeptic.” I am assured by my renowned doctor that my real state of health at that time justifies no stronger description, and I quote his own from his written answer to my request for it.

As the circumstances of the Murder, gradually unravelling, took stronger and stronger possession of the public mind, I kept them away from mine by knowing as little about them as was possible in the midst of the universal excitement. But I knew that a verdict of Wilful Murder had been found against the suspected murderer, and that he had been committed to Newgate for trial. I also knew that his trial had been postponed over one Sessions of the Central Criminal Court, on the ground of general prejudice and want of time for the preparation of the defence. I may further have known, but I believe I did not, when, or about when, the Sessions to which his trial stood postponed would come on.

My sitting-room, bedroom, and dressing-room, are all on one floor. With the last there is no communication but through the bedroom. True, there is a door in it, once communicating with the staircase; but a part of the fitting of my bath has been—and had then been for some years—fixed across it. At the same period, and as a part of the same arrangement,—the door had been nailed up and canvased over.

I was standing in my bedroom late one night, giving some directions to my servant before he went to bed. My face was towards the only available door of communication with the dressing-room, and it was closed. My servant’s back was towards that door. While I was speaking to him, I saw it open, and a man look in, who very earnestly and mysteriously beckoned to me. That man was the man who had gone second of the two along Piccadilly, and whose face was of the colour of impure wax.

The figure, having beckoned, drew back, and closed the door. With no longer pause than was made by my crossing the bedroom, I opened the dressing-room door, and looked in. I had a lighted candle already in my hand. I felt no inward expectation of seeing the figure in the dressing-room, and I did not see it there.

Conscious that my servant stood amazed, I turned round to him, and said: “Derrick, could you believe that in my cool senses I fancied I saw a——” As I there laid my hand upon his breast, with a sudden start he trembled violently, and said, “O Lord, yes, sir! A dead man beckoning!”

Now I do not believe that this John Derrick, my trusty and attached servant for more than twenty years, had any impression whatever of having seen any such figure, until I touched him. The change in him was so startling, when I touched him, that I fully believe he derived his impression in some occult manner from me at that instant.

I bade John Derrick bring some brandy, and I gave him a dram, and was glad to take one myself. Of what had preceded that night’s phenomenon, I told him not a single word. Reflecting on it, I was absolutely certain that I had never seen that face before, except on the one occasion in Piccadilly. Comparing its expression when beckoning at the door with its expression when it had stared up at me as I stood at my window, I came to the conclusion that on the first occasion it had sought to fasten itself upon my memory, and that on the second occasion it had made sure of being immediately remembered.

I was not very comfortable that night, though I felt a certainty, difficult to explain, that the figure would not return. At daylight I fell into a heavy sleep, from which I was awakened by John Derrick’s coming to my bedside with a paper in his hand.

This paper, it appeared, had been the subject of an altercation at the door between its bearer and my servant. It was a summons to me to serve upon a Jury at the forthcoming Sessions of the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey. I had never before been summoned on such a Jury, as John Derrick well knew. He believed—I am not certain at this hour whether with reason or otherwise—that that class of Jurors were customarily chosen on a lower qualification than mine, and he had at first refused to accept the summons. The man who served it had taken the matter very coolly. He had said that my attendance or non-attendance was nothing to him; there the summons was; and I should deal with it at my own peril, and not at his.

For a day or two I was undecided whether to respond to this call, or take no notice of it. I was not conscious of the slightest mysterious bias, influence, or attraction, one way or other. Of that I am as strictly sure as of every other statement that I make here. Ultimately I decided, as a break in the monotony of my life, that I would go.

The appointed morning was a raw morning in the month of November. There was a dense brown fog in Piccadilly, and it became positively black and in the last degree oppressive East of Temple Bar. I found the passages and staircases of the Court-House flaringly lighted with gas, and the Court itself similarly illuminated. I think that, until I was conducted by officers into the Old Court and saw its crowded state, I did not know that the Murderer was to be tried that day. I think that, until I was so helped into the Old Court with considerable difficulty, I did not know into which of the two Courts sitting my summons would take me. But this must not be received as a positive assertion, for I am not completely satisfied in my mind on either point.

I took my seat in the place appropriated to Jurors in waiting, and I looked about the Court as well as I could through the cloud of fog and breath that was heavy in it. I noticed the black vapour hanging like a murky curtain outside the great windows, and I noticed the stifled sound of wheels on the straw or tan that was littered in the street; also, the hum of the people gathered there, which a shrill whistle, or a louder song or hail than the rest, occasionally pierced. Soon afterwards the Judges, two in number, entered, and took their seats. The buzz in the Court was awfully hushed. The direction was given to put the Murderer to the bar. He appeared there. And in that same instant I recognised in him the first of the two men who had gone down Piccadilly.

If my name had been called then, I doubt if I could have answered to it audibly. But it was called about sixth or eighth in the panel, and I was by that time able to say, “Here!” Now, observe. As I stepped into the box, the prisoner, who had been looking on attentively, but with no sign of concern, became violently agitated, and beckoned to his attorney. The prisoner’s wish to challenge me was so manifest, that it occasioned a pause, during which the attorney, with his hand upon the dock, whispered with his client, and shook his head. I afterwards had it from that gentleman, that the prisoner’s first affrighted words to him were, “At all hazards, challenge that man!” But that, as he would give no reason for it, and admitted that he had not even known my name until he heard it called and I appeared, it was not done.

Both on the ground already explained, that I wish to avoid reviving the unwholesome memory of that Murderer, and also because a detailed account of his long trial is by no means indispensable to my narrative, I shall confine myself closely to such incidents in the ten days and nights during which we, the Jury, were kept together, as directly bear on my own curious personal experience. It is in that, and not in the Murderer, that I seek to interest my reader. It is to that, and not to a page of the Newgate Calendar, that I beg attention.

I was chosen Foreman of the Jury. On the second morning of the trial, after evidence had been taken for two hours (I heard the church clocks strike), happening to cast my eyes over my brother jurymen, I found an inexplicable difficulty in counting them. I counted them several times, yet always with the same difficulty. In short, I made them one too many.

I touched the brother jurymen whose place was next me, and I whispered to him, “Oblige me by counting us.” He looked surprised by the request, but turned his head and counted. “Why,” says he, suddenly, “we are Thirt——; but no, it’s not possible. No. We are twelve.”

According to my counting that day, we were always right in detail, but in the gross we were always one too many. There was no appearance—no figure—to account for it; but I had now an inward foreshadowing of the figure that was surely coming.

The Jury were housed at the London Tavern. We all slept in one large room on separate tables, and we were constantly in the charge and under the eye of the officer sworn to hold us in safe-keeping. I see no reason for suppressing the real name of that officer. He was intelligent, highly polite, and obliging, and (I was glad to hear) much respected in the City. He had an agreeable presence, good eyes, enviable black whiskers, and a fine sonorous voice. His name was Mr. Harker.

When we turned into our twelve beds at night, Mr. Harker’s bed was drawn across the door. On the night of the second day, not being disposed to lie down, and seeing Mr. Harker sitting on his bed, I went and sat beside him, and offered him a pinch of snuff. As Mr. Harker’s hand touched mine in taking it from my box, a peculiar shiver crossed him, and he said, “Who is this?”

Following Mr. Harker’s eyes, and looking along the room, I saw again the figure I expected,—the second of the two men who had gone down Piccadilly. I rose, and advanced a few steps; then stopped, and looked round at Mr. Harker. He was quite unconcerned, laughed, and said in a pleasant way, “I thought for a moment we had a thirteenth juryman, without a bed. But I see it is the moonlight.”

Making no revelation to Mr. Harker, but inviting him to take a walk with me to the end of the room, I watched what the figure did. It stood for a few moments by the bedside of each of my eleven brother jurymen, close to the pillow. It always went to the right-hand side of the bed, and always passed out crossing the foot of the next bed. It seemed, from the action of the head, merely to look down pensively at each recumbent figure. It took no notice of me, or of my bed, which was that nearest to Mr. Harker’s. It seemed to go out where the moonlight came in, through a high window, as by an aerial flight of stairs.

Next morning at breakfast, it appeared that everybody present had dreamed of the murdered man last night, except myself and Mr. Harker.

I now felt as convinced that the second man who had gone down Piccadilly was the murdered man (so to speak), as if it had been borne into my comprehension by his immediate testimony. But even this took place, and in a manner for which I was not at all prepared.

On the fifth day of the trial, when the case for the prosecution was drawing to a close, a miniature of the murdered man, missing from his bedroom upon the discovery of the deed, and afterwards found in a hiding-place where the Murderer had been seen digging, was put in evidence. Having been identified by the witness under examination, it was handed up to the Bench, and thence handed down to be inspected by the Jury. As an officer in a black gown was making his way with it across to me, the figure of the second man who had gone down Piccadilly impetuously started from the crowd, caught the miniature from the officer, and gave it to me with his own hands, at the same time saying, in a low and hollow tone,—before I saw the miniature, which was in a locket,—“I was younger then, and my face was not then drained of blood.” It also came between me and the brother juryman to whom I would have given the miniature, and between him and the brother juryman to whom he would have given it, and so passed it on through the whole of our number, and back into my possession. Not one of them, however, detected this.

At table, and generally when we were shut up together in Mr. Harker’s custody, we had from the first naturally discussed the day’s proceedings a good deal. On that fifth day, the case for the prosecution being closed, and we having that side of the question in a completed shape before us, our discussion was more animated and serious. Among our number was a vestryman,—the densest idiot I have ever seen at large,—who met the plainest evidence with the most preposterous objections, and who was sided with by two flabby parochial parasites; all the three impanelled from a district so delivered over to Fever that they ought to have been upon their own trial for five hundred Murders. When these mischievous blockheads were at their loudest, which was towards midnight, while some of us were already preparing for bed, I again saw the murdered man. He stood grimly behind them, beckoning to me. On my going towards them, and striking into the conversation, he immediately retired. This was the beginning of a separate series of appearances, confined to that long room in which we were confined. Whenever a knot of my brother jurymen laid their heads together, I saw the head of the murdered man among theirs. Whenever their comparison of notes was going against him, he would solemnly and irresistibly beckon to me.

It will be borne in mind that down to the production of the miniature, on the fifth day of the trial, I had never seen the Appearance in Court. Three changes occurred now that we entered on the case for the defence. Two of them I will mention together, first. The figure was now in Court continually, and it never there addressed itself to me, but always to the person who was speaking at the time. For instance: the throat of the murdered man had been cut straight across. In the opening speech for the defence, it was suggested that the deceased might have cut his own throat. At that very moment, the figure, with its throat in the dreadful condition referred to (this it had concealed before), stood at the speaker’s elbow, motioning across and across its windpipe, now with the right hand, now with the left, vigorously suggesting to the speaker himself the impossibility of such a wound having been self-inflicted by either hand. For another instance: a witness to character, a woman, deposed to the prisoner’s being the most amiable of mankind. The figure at that instant stood on the floor before her, looking her full in the face, and pointing out the prisoner’s evil countenance with an extended arm and an outstretched finger.

The third change now to be added impressed me strongly as the most marked and striking of all. I do not theorise upon it; I accurately state it, and there leave it. Although the Appearance was not itself perceived by those whom it addressed, its coming close to such persons was invariably attended by some trepidation or disturbance on their part. It seemed to me as if it were prevented, by laws to which I was not amenable, from fully revealing itself to others, and yet as if it could invisibly, dumbly, and darkly overshadow their minds. When the leading counsel for the defence suggested that hypothesis of suicide, and the figure stood at the learned gentleman’s elbow, frightfully sawing at its severed throat, it is undeniable that the counsel faltered in his speech, lost for a few seconds the thread of his ingenious discourse, wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, and turned extremely pale. When the witness to character was confronted by the Appearance, her eyes most certainly did follow the direction of its pointed finger, and rest in great hesitation and trouble upon the prisoner’s face. Two additional illustrations will suffice. On the eighth day of the trial, after the pause which was every day made early in the afternoon for a few minutes’ rest and refreshment, I came back into Court with the rest of the Jury some little time before the return of the Judges. Standing up in the box and looking about me, I thought the figure was not there, until, chancing to raise my eyes to the gallery, I saw it bending forward, and leaning over a very decent woman, as if to assure itself whether the Judges had resumed their seats or not. Immediately afterwards that woman screamed, fainted, and was carried out. So with the venerable, sagacious, and patient Judge who conducted the trial. When the case was over, and he settled himself and his papers to sum up, the murdered man, entering by the Judges’ door, advanced to his Lordship’s desk, and looked eagerly over his shoulder at the pages of his notes which he was turning. A change came over his Lordship’s face; his hand stopped; the peculiar shiver, that I knew so well, passed over him; he faltered, “Excuse me, gentlemen, for a few moments. I am somewhat oppressed by the vitiated air;” and did not recover until he had drunk a glass of water.

Through all the monotony of six of those interminable ten days,—the same Judges and others on the bench, the same Murderer in the dock, the same lawyers at the table, the same tones of question and answer rising to the roof of the court, the same scratching of the Judge’s pen, the same ushers going in and out, the same lights kindled at the same hour when there had been any natural light of day, the same foggy curtain outside the great windows when it was foggy, the same rain pattering and dripping when it was rainy, the same footmarks of turnkeys and prisoner day after day on the same sawdust, the same keys locking and unlocking the same heavy doors,—through all the wearisome monotony which made me feel as if I had been Foreman of the Jury for a vast period of time, and Piccadilly had flourished coevally with Babylon, the murdered man never lost one trace of his distinctness in my eyes, nor was he at any moment less distinct than anybody else. I must not omit, as a matter of fact, that I never once saw the Appearance which I call by the name of the murdered man look at the Murderer. Again and again I wondered, “Why does he not?” But he never did.

Nor did he look at me, after the production of the miniature, until the last closing minutes of the trial arrived. We retired to consider, at seven minutes before ten at night. The idiotic vestryman and his two parochial parasites gave us so much trouble that we twice returned into Court to beg to have certain extracts from the Judge’s notes re-read. Nine of us had not the smallest doubt about those passages, neither, I believe, had any one in the Court; the dunder-headed triumvirate, having no idea but obstruction, disputed them for that very reason. At length we prevailed, and finally the Jury returned into Court at ten minutes past twelve.

The murdered man at that time stood directly opposite the Jury-box, on the other side of the Court. As I took my place, his eyes rested on me with great attention; he seemed satisfied, and slowly shook a great gray veil, which he carried on his arm for the first time, over his head and whole form. As I gave in our verdict, “Guilty,” the veil collapsed, all was gone, and his place was empty.

The Murderer, being asked by the Judge, according to usage, whether he had anything to say before sentence of Death should be passed upon him, indistinctly muttered something which was described in the leading newspapers of the following day as “a few rambling, incoherent, and half-audible words, in which he was understood to complain that he had not had a fair trial, because the Foreman of the Jury was prepossessed against him.” The remarkable declaration that he really made was this: “My Lord, I knew I was a doomed man, when the Foreman of my Jury came into the box. My Lord, I knew he would never let me off, because, before I was taken, he somehow got to my bedside in the night, woke me, and put a rope round my neck.”

CHAPTER VII

TO BE TAKEN AND TRIED

Mrs. Gascoyne

There can hardly be seen anywhere, a prettier village than Cumner, standing on the brow of a hill which commands one of the finest views in England, and flanked by its broad breezy common, the air of which is notorious for clearness and salubrity. The high road from Dring, for the most part shut in by the fences of gentlemen's seats, opens out when it reaches this common, and, separating from the Tenelms road, ascends in a north-westerly direction till it comes in sight of Cumner. Every step is against the collar, yet so gradual is the ascent, that you scarcely realise it until, turning, you behold the magnificent panorama spread around and beneath.

The village consists chiefly of one short street of somewhat straggling houses, among which you observe its little post-office, its police station, its rustic public-house (the Dunstan Arms), whose landlord also holds the general shop across the way; and its two or three humble lodging-houses. Eacing you as you enter the street, which is a cul-de-sac, is the quaint old church, standing not more than a bow-shot from the Rectory. There is something primitive and almost patriarchal in this quiet village, where the pastor lives surrounded by his flock, and can scarcely move from his own gate without finding himself in the midst of them.

Cumner Common is skirted on three sides by dwellings, varying in size and importance, from the small butcher's shop standing in its own garden, and under the shadow of its own apple-trees, to the pretty white house where the curate lodges, and the more pretentious abodes of those who are, or consider themselves, gentry. It is bounded on the east by the low stone wall and gateway of Mr. Malcolmson's domain; the modest dwelling of Simon Eade, that gentleman's bailiff, half covered with creepers, the autumnal hues of which might rival the brightest specimens of American foliage; lastly, by the high brick wall (with its door in the centre), which completely shuts in Mr. Gibbs's "place." On the south side runs the high road to Tenelms, skirting the great Southanger property, of which Sir Oswald Dunstan is proprietor.

Hardly could the pedestrian tourist, on his way from Dring, fail to pause at the rustic stile nearly opposite the blacksmith's forge, and, resting upon it, gaze down on the magnificent prospect of wood and water spread at his feet— a prospect to which two ancient cedars form no inappropriate foreground. That stile is not often crossed, for the footpath from it leads only to the farm called the Plashetts; but it is very constantly used as a resting-place. Many an artist has sketched the view from it; many a lover has whispered tender words to his mistress beside it; many a weary tramp has rested his or her feet on the worn stone beneath.

This stile was once the favourite resort of two young lovers, inhabitants of the district, and soon to be united. George Eade, the only son of Mr. Malcolmson's bailiff, was a stalwart good-looking young fellow of some six-and-twenty, who worked for that gentleman under his father, and was in the receipt of liberal wages. Honest, steady, and fond of self-cultivation, he was capable, if not clever—persevering, if not rapid—an excellent specimen of an honest English peasant. But he had certain peculiarities of disposition and temper, which served to render him considerably less popular than his father. He was reserved; feeling strongly, but with difficulty giving expression to his feelings; susceptible to, and not easily forgiving, injuries; singularly addicted to self-accusation and remorse. His father, a straightforward open-hearted man of five-and-forty, who had raised himself by sheer merit from the position of a labourer to that of the trusted manager of Mr. Malcolmson's property, was highly respected by that gentleman, and by the whole country-side. His mother, feeble in health, but energetic of spirit, was one of the most excellent of women.

This couple, like many of their class, had married imprudently early, and had struggled through many difficulties in consequence: burying, one after another, three sickly children in the little churchyard at Cumner where they hoped one day themselves to lie. On the one son that remained to them their affections were centred. The mother, especially, worshipped her George with an admiring love that partook of idolatry. She was not without some of the weaknesses of her sex. She was jealous; and when she discovered the flame which had been kindled in the heart of her son by the soft blue eyes of Susan Archer, her feelings towards that rosy-cheeked damsel were not those of perfect charity. True, the Archers were people who held themselves high, occupying a large farm under Sir Oswald Duustan; and they were known to regard Susan's attachment as a decided lowering of herself and them. That attachment had sprung up, as is not unfrequently the case, in the hop-gardens. The girl had been ailing for some time, and her shrewd old doctor assured her father that there was no tonic so efficacious as a fortnight's hop-picking in the sunny September weather. Now there were but few places to which so distinguished a belle as Susan could be permitted to go for such a purpose; but her family knew and respected the Eades, and to Mr. Malcolm-son's hop-grounds she was accordingly sent. The tonic prescribed produced the desired effect. She lost her ailments; but she lost her heart too. George Eade was good looking, and up to that time had never cared for woman. The love he conceived for the gentle, blue-eyed girl was of that all-absorbing character which natures stern and concentrated like his, are fitted to feel, and to feel but once in a lifetime. It carried all before it. Susan was sweet tempered and simple hearted, of a yielding disposition, and, though not unconscious of her beauty, singularly little spoilt by the consciousness. She gave her whole heart to the faithful earnest man whom she reverenced as her superior in moral strength, if not in outward circumstances. They exchanged no rings on the balmy evening which witnessed their plighted faith, but he took from her hat the garland of hops she had laughingly twisted round it, and looking down upon her sweet face with a great love in his brown eyes, whispered, "I shall keep this whilst I live, and have it buried with me when I die!"

But, there was a certain Geoffrey Gibbs, the owner of the "Place" on Cunmer Common, who had paid, and was still paying marked attention to the beautiful Susan. This man, originally in trade, had chanced, some years before, to see in the newspapers a notice that if he would apply to a certain lawyer in London, he would hear of something greatly to his advantage. He did so, and the result was, his acquisition of a comfortable independence, left him by a distant kinsman whom he had never so much as seen. This windfall changed his whole prospects and manner of life, but not his character, which had always been that of an unmitigated snob. In outward circumstances, however, he was a gentleman living on his income, and, as such, the undoubted social superior of the Archers, who were simply tenant-farmers. Hence their desire that Susan should favour his suit. Some people were of opinion, that he had no serious intention of marrying the girl; and Susan herself always encouraged this notion; adding, that were he ten times as rich, and a hundred times as devoted as he represented himself to be, she would die rather than accept the cross-grained monster.

He was frightful; less from defects of feature than from utter disproportion of form, and a sinister expression of countenance, far worse than actual ugliness. His legs were as short as his body and hands were long, while his head would have been well suited to the frame of a Hercules; giving him a top-heavy appearance that was singularly ungraceful. His eyebrows were shaggy and overhanging, his eyes small and malicious looking, his nose was beak-shaped, his mouth immense, with thick sensual lips. He wore huge false-looking chains, outrageous shirt-pins and neckcloths, and cutaway sporting coats of astounding colours. He was a man who delighted in frightening inoffensive females, in driving within an inch of a lady's pony-carriage, or in violently galloping past some timid girl on horseback, and chuckling at her scared attempts to restrain her plunging steed. Like all bullies, he was of course a coward at heart.

Between this man and George Eade a keen hatred existed. George despised as well as detested Gibbs. Gibbs envied as much as he abhorred the more fortunate peasant, who was beloved where he met with nothing but coldness and rebuffs.

Susan's heart was indeed wholly George's, yet it was only when her health had again begun to fail, that her father was frightened into a most unwilling consent to their union; which consent no sooner became known to Mr. Malcolmson, than he voluntarily raised the young man's wages, and undertook to put in repair for him a cottage of his own, not far from that of Simon Eade.

But, when the news of the approaching marriage reached the ears of Gibbs, his jealous fury was aroused to the utmost. He rushed down to the Plashetts, and, closeting himself with Mr. Archer, made brilliant offers of settlement on Susan, if she would consent even now to throw over her lover, and become his wife. But he only succeeded in distressing the girl, and tantalising her father. Willingly, indeed, would the latter have acceded to his wishes, but he had passed his solemn word to George, and Susan held him to it. No sooner, however, was Gibbs gone, than the old man burst into loud lamentations over what he called her self-sacrifice; and her eldest brother coming in, joined in reproaching her for refusing prospects so advantageous. Susan was weak, and easily influenced. She was cut to the heart by their cruel words, and went out to meet her lover with her spirits depressed, and her eyes red and swollen. George, shocked at her appearance, listened with indignation to her agitated recital of what had passed.

"Keep your carriage, indeed!" he exclaimed, with bitter scorn. "Does your father make more count of a one-horse shay than of true love such as mine? And a fellow like Gibbs, too! That I wouldn't trust a dog with!"

"Father don't see it so," the girl sobbed out. "Father says he'd make a very good husband, once we was married. And I'd be a lady, and dress fine, and have servants! Father thinks so much of that!"

"So it seems; but don't you be led by him, Susan, darling! 'Tisn't riches and fine clothes that makes folks' happiness—'tis better things! See here, my girl——" He stopped short, and faced her with a look of unutterable emotion. "I love ye so true, that if I thought—if I thought it'd be for your good to marry this fellow—if I thought ye'd be happier with him than with me, I'd—I'd give ye up, Susan! Yes—and never come near ye more! I would indeed!"

He paused, and, raising his hand with a gesture that had in it a rude solemnity very impressive, repeated once more, "I would indeed! But ye'd not be happy with Geoffrey Gibbs. Ye'd be miserable—ill-used, perhaps. He ain't a man to make any woman happy—I'm as sure o' that, as that I stand here. He's bad at heart—downright cruel. And I!—what I promise, I'll act up to—O! steady. I'll work for you, and slave for you, and—and love you true!"

He drew her towards him as he spoke, and she, reassured by his words, nestled lovingly to bis side. And so they walked on for some moments in silence.

"And, darling," he added, presently, "I've that trust—that faith—in me—that once we're married, and you're mine—safe—so's no one can come between us, I'll get on; and who knows but ye may ride in your carriage yet. Folks do get on, when they've a mind to, serious."

She looked up at him with fond admiring eyes. She honoured him for his strength, all the more because of her own weakness.

"I don't want no carriage," she murmured; "I want nothing but you, George. 'Tisn't I, you know, that wish things different—'tis father——"

The moon had risen, the beautiful bright September moon, nearly at the full; and its light shone on the lovers as they retraced their steps through the silent Southanger woods—how solemn and lovely at that hour!—towards Susan's home. And before they had reached the gate of the Plashetts, her sweet face was again bright with smiles, and it had been agreed between them that to avoid a repetition of such attempts on the part of Gibbs, and such scenes with her father, she should propose to go to her aunt's, Miss Jane Archer's, at Ormiston, for a fortnight of the three weeks that yet remained before the marriage should take place.

She acted on this idea, and George took advantage of her absence to attend a sale on the other side of the county, and procure certain articles of furniture required for their new home. Once away, he obtained leave to prolong his stay with a friend till the time of Susan's return. It was pleasanter for him not to be at home at this period. His mother seemed to grow more averse to his marriage, the nearer it approached; declaring that no good could possibly come of union with a girl who had been too much waited upon and flattered, to make a good wife for a plain hard-working man. These remarks, indescribably galling to the lover because not wholly without foundation, had given rise to more than one dispute between his mother and him, which had not tended to diminish the half-unconscious dislike the good woman felt towards her future daughter-in-law.

When George returned home after his fortnight's holiday, he found, instead of the expected letter from his betrothed announcing her arrival at the Plashetts, one addressed to him in a strange hand, and containing the following words:

"George Eade, you are being done. Look to G. G.

"A WELL-WISHER."

Perplexed at so mysterious a communication, he was somewhat annoyed to find that Gibbs had quitted Cumner from the very day after his own departure, and was still absent. This struck him as remarkable; but Susan had written him only a week before, a letter so full of tenderness that he could not bring himself to entertain a single doubt of her truth. But on the very next morning, his mother handed him a letter from Farmer Archer, enclosing one from his sister, informing him that her niece had left her house clandestinely two days before, to be married to Mr. Gibbs. It appeared that the girl had gone, as on previous occasions, to spend the day with a cousin, and that not returning at night, it was concluded she had settled to sleep there. The next morning had brought, instead of herself, the announcement of her marriage.

On reading this news, George was at first conscious of but one feeling. Utter incredulity. There must be some error somewhere; the thing could not be. While his father, with tears in his honest eyes, exhorted him to bear up like a man under this blow, and his mother indignantly declared that a girl who could so conduct herself was indeed a good riddance, he sat silent, half stupified. Such a breach of faith seemed, to his earnest and loyal nature, simply impossible.

Another half-hour brought confirmation that could not be doubted. James Wilkins, Mr. Gibbs's man-servant, came grinning and important, with a letter for George, which had been enclosed in one from his master to himself. It was from Susan, and signed with her new name.

"I know," it said, "that for what I have done, I shall be without excuse in your eyes—that you will hate and despise me as much as you have hitherto loved and trusted me. I know that I have behaved to you very, very bad, and I don't ask you to forgive me. I know you can't. But I do ask you to refrain from vengeance. It can't bring back the past. Oh, George! if ever you cared for me, listen to what I entreat now. Hate and despise me—I don't expect no other—but don't you revenge my ill conduct on anyone. Forget all about me—that's the best thing for both of us. It would have been better if we had never beheld one another."

Much more followed in the same strain—weak, self-accusing, fearful of consequences—wholly unworthy of George.

He gazed at the letter, holding it in those strong sinewy hands that would have toiled for her so hard and so faithfully. Then, without a word, he held it out to his father, and left the room. They heard him mount the narrow stairs, lock himself into his little garret, and they heard no more.

After a while his mother went to him. Although personally relieved at her son's release, that feeling was entirely absorbed in tender and loving pity for what she knew must be his sufferings. He was sitting by the little casement, a withered branch of hops upon his knee. She went and laid her cheek to his.

"Have patience, lad!" she said, with earnest feeling. "Try—try—to have faith, and comfort'll be sent ye in time. It's hard to bear, I know—dreadful hard and bitter—but for the poor parents' sakes who loves ye so dear, try and bear it."

He looked up at her with cold tearless eyes. "I will," he said, in a hard voice. "Don't ye see I am trying?"

His glance was dull and hopeless. How she longed that tears would come and relieve his bursting heart!

"She wasn't worthy of ye, my boy. I always told ye——"

But he stopped her with a stern gesture.

"Mother! Not a word o' that, nor of her, from this hour. What she's done ain't so very bad after all. I'm all right—I am. Father and you shan't see no difference in me, leastways, not if you'll forbear naming of her ever, ever again. She's turned my heart to stone, that's all! No great matter!"

He laid his hand on his broad chest and heaved a great gasping sigh. "This morning I had a heart o' flesh here," he said; "now it's a cold, heavy stone. But it's no great matter."

"Oh, don't ye speak like that, my lad!" his mother cried, bursting into tears, and throwing her arms around him. "It kills me to hear ye!"

But he gently unwound those arms, and kissing her on the cheek, led her to the door. "I must go to work now," he said; and, descending the stairs before her, he quitted the cottage with a firm step.

From that hour no one heard him speak of Susan Gibbs. He never inquired into the circumstances of her stay at Ormiston; he never spoke of them, nor of her, to her relations or to his own. He avoided the former; he was silent and reserved with the latter. Susan appeared to be, for him, as though she had never been.

And from that hour he was an altered being. He went about his work as actively, and did it as carefully, as ever; but it was done sternly, doggedly, like an imperative but unwelcome duty. No man ever saw a smile upon his lips; no jocular word ever escaped them. Grave and uncompromising, he went his ungenial way, seeking for no sympathy, and bestowing none, avoiding all companionship save that of his parents;—a sad and solitary man.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gibbs's "Place" on Cumner Common was advertised as to be let; strangers hired it, and for nearly three years nothing was seen of him or of his wife. Then news arrived one day that they were to be expected shortly, and quite a ferment of expectation was created in the little village. They came, and certain rumours that had reached it from time to time were found to have only too much foundation in truth.

For it had oozed out, as such things do ooze, that Gibbs shamefully ill used his pretty wife, and that the marriage, which on his side had been one of love, had turned out miserably. Her father and brothers, who had been to see them more than once, had been strangely reserved on the subject of those visits, and it was generally understood that the old farmer lamented his daughter's marriage now, as much as he had formerly longed for it. No one wondered, when they saw her. She was the shadow of her former self; still lovely, but broken, cowed, pale; all the bloom faded; all the spirit crushed out of her. No smile was ever seen upon those pretty lips now, except when she played with her boy, a fair-haired little fellow, the image of herself. But even in her intercourse with this child she was sternly restricted, and her tyrant would not unfrequently dismiss him with an oath, and forbid her to follow him to his nursery.

In spite of their being such near neighbours, the Gibbses had been some time in the place before George met his former love. He never went to Cumner church (nor to any, indeed), and she never quitted her own house, except to drive with her husband, or walk through the Southanger Woods to her father's. George might have beheld her driving past his father's door with a high-stepping horse that always seemed on the point of running away; but he never looked at her, nor replied to his mother's remarks respecting her and her smart turn-out. Yet though he resolutely kept the door of his own lips, he could not close the lips of other people, or his own ears. Do what he would, the Gibbses and their doings pursued him still. His master's labourers gossiped about the husband's brutality; the baker's boy had no end of stories to tell, of the oaths he had heard, and even the blows he had witnessed, when "Gibbs was more than usual excited with drink." The poor frightened wife was understood to have declared that but for her dread of what he might be driven to do in his fury, she would go before a magistrate and swear the peace against him. George could not close his ears to all this; and men said that the expression of his eyes on those occasions was not good to look upon.

One Sunday, the Eades were sitting over their frugal one o'clock dinner, when they heard the sound of a carriage driving furiously past. Mrs. Eade caught up her stick, and, in spite of her lameness, hobbled to the window.

"I thought so!'' she cried. "It's Gibbs driving to Tenelms, and drunk again, seemingly. See how he's flogging of the horse. And he's got the little lad, too! He'll not rest till he've proken that child's neck, or the mother's. Simmons declares——"

She stopped, suddenly aware of her son's breath upon her cheek. He had actually come to the window, and now, leaning over her, was gazing sternly at the figures in the carriage, flying down the hill towards the Tenelms road.

" I wish he might break his own neck!" George muttered between his teeth.

"Oh, George! George! don't name such things," Mrs. Eade cried, with a pale shocked face. "It ain't Christian. We've all need of repentance, and our times is in His hand."

"If ye frequented church, my lad, 'stead of keeping away, as I grieve to see ye do," his father said, severely, "ye'd have better feelings in your heart. They'll never prosper ye, mark my words."

George had returned to his seat, but he rose again as his father said this. "Church!" he cried, in a loud harsh voice—" I was going there once, and it wasn't permitted. I'll go there no more. D'ye think," he continued, while his white lips trembled with uncontrollable emotion—"d'ye think, because I'm quiet, and do my work reg'lar, d'ye think I've forgotten? Forgotten!" He brought his clenched fist down upon the table with startling violence. "I tell ye when I forget, I'll be lying stark and stiff in my coffin! Let be—let be!" as his mother tried to interrupt him; "ye mean well, I know, but women haven't the judgment to tell when to speak, and when to hold hard. Ye'd best never name that scoundrel 'fore me again, nor yet church." With that, he went from the room and from the house.

Mrs. Eade fretted sadly over these evidences of George's rancorous and ungodly disposition. To her, he seemed to be on the high road to perdition, and she ended by sending to Mr. Murray, the rector, to beg he would be pleased to look in upon her some morning soon, as she was greatly troubled in her mind. But Mr. Murray was at that time ill, and nearly a fortnight elapsed before he was able to answer her summons. Meanwhile, other events occurred.

It was notorious that one of Mrs. Gibbs's greatest trials was about her boy, whom her husband persisted in driving out, at the risk, as every one thought, of his life. Fearful had been the scenes between the parents on this account; but the more she wept and implored, the more he resisted her entreaties. One day, to frighten her still more, he placed the little fellow, with the whip in his hand, on the carriage-seat alone, and stood at his door himself, loosely holding the reins, and jeering at his wife, who in an agony of terror kept beseeching him to get in, or to let her do so. Suddenly the report of a gun was heard in a neighbouring field; the horse took fright, and started off wildly, jerking the reins from the hands of the half-intoxicated Gibbs; the whip fell from the hands of the child on the animal's back, still further exciting it; and the boy, thrown with violence to the bottom of the carriage, lay half stunned by the shock.

George was close by when this occurred. He threw himself on the flying horse, and, seizing the bearing-rein with his whole strength, held on like grim death, in spite of being half dragged, half borne, along in its headlong flight. At last the animal, getting its legs entangled in the long trailing reins, fell with fearful violence, and lay stunned and motionless. George was thrown to the ground, but escaped with a few trifling bruises. The child at the bottom of the carriage, though frightened and screaming, was altogether uninjured. In less than five minutes half the village was collected on the spot, inquiring, congratulating, applauding; and Susan, with her rescued child clinging to her bosom, was covering George's hands with passionate tears and kisses.

"Bless you! Bless you a thousand times!" she cried, sobbing hysterically. "You've saved my darling's life! He might have been killed but for you! How can I ever——"

But a rough hand shoved her aside. "What are you after now?" Gibbs's furious voice was heard to cry, with a shocking oath. "Leave that fellow alone, or I'll——! Are you making a fool of yourself this way, because he's lamed the horse so that he'll have to be shot?"

The poor thing sank down on the bank and broke into a fit of hysterical weeping; whilst a murmur of "Shame, shame!" rose among the bystanders.

George Eade had turned coldly from Susan when she rushed up to him, and had striven to withdraw his hands from her grasp; but now, confronting Gibbs, he said, "It'll be a good deed done, whoever shoots that brute of yours, and it'd be a better still to shoot you as a man would a mad dog!"

All heard the words. All trembled at his look as he uttered them. The whole of the pent-up rage and resentment of the last three years seemed concentrated in that one look of savage and unutterable hatred.

Mr. Murray found poor Mrs. Eade very suffering, when, two mornings after, he called to congratulate her on her son's escape. She had not closed her eyes since the accident. George's look and words, as they had been described to her, haunted her. The good clergyman could give her but scant comfort. He had tried again and again to reason with and soften her son, but ineffectually. George answered him, with a certain rude respect, that as long as he did his work properly, and injured no man, he had a right to decide for himself in matters concerning only himself; and one of his fixed decisions was never again to see the inside of a church.

"It's a hard trial, my good friend," said Mr. Murray, "a hard and mysterious trial. But I say to you, have faith. There is a hidden good in it, that we can't see now."

"It'd be strange if I wasn't thankful for his being spared," Mrs. Eade replied. "It'd be worse than anything to have the dear lad took, revengeful and unforgiving as he is now. But you see, sir——"

She was stopped in her eager speech by a knock at the door. The son of Mr. Beach, the neighbouring butcher, peeped in. He scraped a bow on seeing the clergyman sitting with her, and looked from one to the other with a doubtful demeanour.

"I don't want nothing this morning, thank you, Jim," Mrs. Eade said. Then, struck with the peculiar expression of the young man's face, she added: "Ain't Mr. Beach so well this morning? You look all nohow."

"I'm—I'm a bit flustered," the youth replied, wiping his steaming forehead; " I've just been seeing him, and it gave me such a turn!"

"Him!' who?"

"Sure! Haven't ye heard, sir? Gibbs have been found dead in Southanger Woods—murdered last night. They say——"

"Gibbs murdered!"

There was a pause of breathless horror.

"They've been carrying his corpse to the Dunstan Arms, and I see it."

Mrs. Eade turned so deadly faint that the clergyman called out hurriedly for Jemima, the servant girl. But Jemima had run out wildly on hearing the appalling intelligence, and was now midway between her master's house and the Gibbs's, listening to a knot of people, all wondering, surmising, gazing with scared eyes at that door in the high wall, the threshold of which its master would never cross again, except feet foremost.

The Eades' parlour was soon full to overflowing. Most of the dwellers on the common had congregated there—why, perhaps none would have cared to explain. Simon Eade came in among the first, and was doing his best to soothe and restore the poor fainting woman, who could hardly as yet realise what had occurred. In the midst of the confusion—the questioning, the describing of the position of the body, the rifled pockets, the dreadful blow from behind, the number of hours since the deed was done—in the midst of all this, steps were heard outside, and George came into the midst of them.

Then a sudden hush succeeded to the Babel of sounds, which he could not but have heard as he crossed the threshold. There was something ominous in that silence.

No need to ask if he knew. His face, pale as death, haggard, streaming with perspiration, proved all too plainly he was aware of the ghastly horror. But his first words, low, and uttered half unconsciously, were long after remembered:

"I WISH I'D BEEN FOUND DEAD IN THAT WOOD 'STEAD OF GIBBS!"

Various circumstances arose, one after another, that united to surround George with a kind of network of suspicion. Simon Eade sustained himself like a man, with a proud confidence in the innocence of his boy, touching even those who could not share it; and with a pious trust that Providence would yet see that innocence proved. But the poor feeble mother, shaken by ill health, half crazed by the remembrance of words and looks she would give the world to forget, could do little but weep, and utter broken supplications to Heaven.

George offered no resistance on his apprehension. Sternly, but without eagerness, he declared his innocence, and from that moment he kept entire silence. His features worked convulsively when lie wrung his father's hand on parting, and gazed on the pale face of his mother, who had swooned away on seeing the police; but he soon recovered his self-possession, and accompanied the officers with a steady step, and a fixed, though gloomy countenance.

The body of the deceased had been discovered about ten A.M. by a farmer going to the Plashetts, who had been attracted to the spot by the howls of Gibbs's dog. The corpse lay among the underwood, at a short distance from the footpath leading from the stile so often mentioned, through the wood to the Plashetts, arid had apparently been dragged that short distance. Evidences of a fierce struggle were visible on and around the footpath, and some blood also: which appeared to have flowed from a wound in the back of the head of the deceased, who must have been struck from behind, by some heavy, though not blunt, instrument. When found, he had been dead, according to the medical testimony, some eleven or twelve hours. The pockets were turned inside out, and the watch and a purse had been taken, as well as a seal ring.

Gibbs's two servants, James and Bridget Williams, deposed that their master had quitted his own house on the night of the murder, at twenty minutes past eight, being unusually sober; that he had set his watch, the last thing, by the kitchen clock, and had observed that he should go to the Dunstan Arms first, and afterwards to the Plashetts. That his not returning that night had occasioned no uneasiness, as he was in the habit of frequently absenting himself until morning, and had his latch-key always with him.

On the other hand, Simon Eade, his wife, and servant girl, all deposed that George returned home on the night of the murder, at nine o'clock, having been out since tea-time; that there was nothing unusual in either his manner or appearance; that he supped, and afterwards remained with his parents till ten, when the whole family retired to bed; and that he came down next morning in the sight of Jemima, who had herself risen somewhat earlier than usual.

On his left wrist was found a recent cut, which he stated had been caused by his clasp-knife slipping, as he was cutting his bread and cheese. In the same manner he sought to account for certain marks of blood on the inside of his coat sleeves and on his trousers. The only article belonging to the deceased that was found in his possession was a small lead pencil, marked with the initials "G. G." and three notches; these Job Brettle, the blacksmith, swore Gibbs had handed him the pencil to cut, on the afternoon of the murder. He (Brettle) noticed both notches and initials at the time, and could swear that the pencil in the prisoner's possession was the pencil he had cut. George maintained that he had picked it up on the common, and that he had no idea to whom it belonged.

It came out in cross-examination that a more desperate quarrel than ever, had taken place on the morning of the murder, between Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs; after which, she had been heard to declare that she could support that life no longer, and would apply for help to one who would not refuse it. That she had sent a letter soon after to George Eade, by the son of a neighbouring cottager, and had gone out herself at night, a few minutes after her husband, returning again in a quarter of an hour, more or less, when she had retired to her bedroom, and had not again quitted it until news was brought next morning of the discovery of the corpse.

When questioned by the coroner as to where she had been overnight, no reply could be elicited from her; but she fainted so frequently while under examination, that her evidence was singularly broken and incoherent.

George admitted having gone to the Southanger Woods at about twenty minutes to eight on the night of the murder; but he refused to assign any special reason for going there, declaring that he had not remained there more than a quarter of an hour at most. He stated that, as he was re-crossing the stile, he saw Gibbs and his dog at a distance, making directly for it. The moon shone almost as bright as day, and he recognised him distinctly. To avoid meeting him, he took the Dring road, and walked nearly as far as the turnpike, when he turned about, and so reached home at nine o'clock without having met a soul.

The following were (briefly) the points in the prisoner's favour:

1. The evidence of three credible witnesses that he returned home at nine o'clock, and sat down to supper without any appearance of hurry or agitation.

2. The shortness of the time in which to commit such a deed, and effectually to conceal the property taken from the deceased.

3. The high, moral character born by the prisoner up to that time.

The points against him were:

1. The cut on his wrist, and marks of blood on his clothes.

2. Gibbs's pencil, found upon him.

3. The absence of testimony corroborative of his own account of his doings during the thirty minutes that intervened between Gibbs's leaving the Dunstan Arms (where he had gone straight from home) and his (George's) own return to his father's.

4. The bitter animosity he was known to cherish against the deceased, and certain words he had been heard to utter respecting him, indicating a desire for his life.

By the evidence of the landlord of the Dunstan Arms, it appeared that Gibbs had left his place to proceed to the Plashetts, at a few minutes before half-past eight o'clock. Now, it would take some four or five minutes' moderate walking for one leaving the public-house, to reach the spot where Gibbs's body was found; thus reducing the period for the murder to be committed in (if committed by George at that time) to three or four and twenty minutes, if he ran home at his full speed, or to nineteen or twenty minutes, if he walked at an average pace.

The demeanour of the prisoner before the magistrates, was stern, and even defiant; but he betrayed no emotion. He was fully committed for trial at the approaching assizes.

Meanwhile, opinion respecting him was greatly divided in Cumner. He had never been a popular man, and his extreme reserve during the last three years had alienated many who, at the period of his great trouble, had been disposed to sympathise with him. And, although he had always held a high place in public estimation, the impression that he was a man of unusually fierce passions, and implacable resentment, had gained ground of late. In short, not a few of those who knew him best, believed that, worked up to savage fury by the sufferings of the woman he had once so fondly loved, and by long brooding over his own wrongs, he had revenged both himself and her by taking the life of his enemy. He might, it was thought, have easily slipped out of his father's house in the dead of night, have waylaid and murdered Gibbs as he was returning from the Plashetts, and have secreted or destroyed the property in order to throw suspicion off the right scent.

His trial will long be remembered in those parts, as well from the intense excitement it occasioned in that particular locality, as from the strong interest manifested about it throughout the kingdom. The most eminent counsel were engaged on his behalf; and Mr. Malcolmson, who never could believe in his guilt, spared neither pains nor expense to aid his cause. He was perfectly calm when he stood in the dock, the one object on which countless eyes were eagerly riveted; but the change that had taken place in his outward seeming, struck even the most indifferent beholder with compassion, and possibly did more to impress the jury in his favour, than even the eloquence of his counsel, wonderful as that proved. For, his sufferings must have been intense. He had grown years older, during the last few weeks. His hair had thinned; his clothes hung upon his attenuated frame. He, once so ruddy and vigorous, stood there wan, haggard, drooping. Even the expression of his countenance had altered; it was stern no more.

A sound like one vast sobbing sigh went through the crowded court when the verdict, Not Guilty, was heard; but no applause, no public mark of joy or gratulation. And silently, with downcast eyes, like a doomed man, George Eade returned with one parent to the home where the other sat praying for his release.

It had been expected that, if acquitted, he would leave Cumner, and seek his fortunes elsewhere. But it was consistent with the character of the man, to brave the opinion of his fellows, and he did so in this instance. On the first Sunday, to the surprise of all, he made his appearance in church, sitting apart from the rest of the congregation, as though unwilling to obtrude himself upon them; from that time his attendance was invariable. Nor was this the only change observable in his conduct. His moroseness had passed away. He had become subdued, patient, manifesting a touching gratitude to those who treated him with common civility, as though he felt himself unworthy of their notice; unremitting in his devotion to his parents; working hard all the day; sometimes puzzling over a book at night; never alluding to the past—never forgetting it; melancholy—more melancholy than ever; but no longer bitter nor resentful. Such had George Eade become; and when men saw him at a distance, they followed him with their eyes, and asked one another in a whisper, "Did he do it?"

He and Susan never met. She long lay dangerously ill at her father's house, whither she had removed after the tragical event. And the old farmer was fitly punished for his sordid coveting of Gibbs's wealth, when it was found that the latter had settled only fifty pounds a year upon his wife, to be forfeited altogether if she should make a second marriage.

It was about a twelvemonth after these events that, one bright moonlight night, as Mr. Murray was sitting in his library alone, his servant entered to inform him that a stranger, who gave his name as Luke Williams, desired to speak with him. It was past ten o'clock, and the clergyman's hours were early and regular.

"Tell him to call to-morrow morning," said he; "this is not a fit hour for business."

"I did tell him so, sir," the man replied; "but he declared his was a business that would not wait an hour."

"Is he a beggar?"

"He didn't beg, sir; but he looks shocking, quite shocking——"

"Show him in."

The man entered; truly a shocking object. Pale, hollow-eyed, cadaverous, with a racking cough that caused him to pant and gasp for breath, he looked like one in the last stage of consumption. He gazed at Mr. Murray with a strange and mournful expression, and Mr. Murray gazed at him.

"Well?"

The stranger glanced at the servant.

"Leave the room, Robert."

Robert did so, but remained in close proximity outside.

"This is a strange hour at which to disturb me. Have you something to say?"

"It is a strange hour, sir, for coming; but my reason for coming is stranger."

The man turned to the window, the curtains of which were not drawn, and gazed at the full October moon, which lighted up the quaint old church hard by, the humble gravestones, the quiet home scene, and shed a solemn glory over all.

"Well?" Mr. Murray asked once more.

But the man's eyes were fixed on the sky.

"Yes," he said, shuddering, "it shone like that—like that—the night of the—murder. It did indeed. It shone on his face—Gibbs's—as he lay there—it shone on his open eyes—I couldn't get them to shut; do what I would, they would stare at me. I've never seen moonlight like that since, till to-night. And I'm come to give myself up to you. I always felt I should, and it's better done and over. Better over."

"You murdered Gibbs? You?"

" I did. I've been there to-night, to look at the place. I felt I must see it again; and I saw his eyes, as plain as I see you, open, with the moonlight shining on them. Ah, a horrible sight!"

"You look very wild and ill. Perhaps——"

"You doubt me. I wish I could doubt. See here."

With a trembling emaciated hand he drew from his pocket the watch, seal ring, and purse that had belonged to Gibbs; and laid them on the table. Mr. Murray knew them.

"I used the money," said the man, faintly. "There were but a few shillings, and I was in great want."

Then he sank down on a chair with a dreadful groan.

Mr. Murray gave him a restorative, and after a time he rallied. With his hollow eyes still gazing at the moonlight, and with that ever-recurring shudder, he faltered out at intervals the following story.

He and Gibbs had been formerly associated in disreputable money transactions, which had ended in his own ruin. Being in abject distress, he had, on the promise of a considerable bribe, agreed to aid Gibbs in a plot to obtain possession of Susan's person. When she and George had separated for the fortnight previous to their contemplated marriage, the two confederates had followed her to Ormiston, and, concealing themselves in a low part of the town, had kept close watch upon her movements. Ascertaining that she was to spend the day with a cousin, they sent a woman, a creature of their own, to waylay her on her road, with a message purporting to come from George Eade, imploring her to hasten to him immediately, as he was injured by an accident on the railroad, and might have but a few hours to live. Appalled by such intelligence, the poor girl hurried to the place where the woman led her, entered without a shadow of suspicion a lonely house in the suburbs, and found herself in the presence of Gibbs and Williams, who, instantly securing the door, informed her that this subterfuge had been resorted to in order to get her into the power of the former. They told her that she was now in a place where screams would not be heeded, even if heard, and whence she would find it impossible to escape, and that she would not be quitted night or day by them or their female assistant, until she should consent to become the wife of Gibbs. Who added, with furious oaths, that had her union with George Eade taken place, he would have shot him down on his way from church.

Wild with terror and astonishment, helpless, bewildered, the girl resisted longer than might have been expected in one naturally weak. But finding herself incessantly watched, trembling, too, for her life (for Gibbs stood over her with a loaded pistol and the most furious threats), she was frightened at last into writing, at his dictation, the letters to her aunt and lover, announcing her marriage; though that event did not really take place till nearly three weeks later, when, worn out, and almost stupified into acquiescence, she was married in due form. Even then, Williams declared that she would have resisted still, but for her fears for her lover's safety. His life seemed to be dearer to her than her own happiness, and Gibbs had sworn so vehemently that his life should be the immediate forfeit of his union with her, that she felt that union would be impossible. She married, therefore, offering herself up as a kind of ransom for the man she loved. Then Williams claimed his reward.

But his worthless confederate was not one to fulfil honestly any promise involving the sacrifice of money. He paid the first of three instalments agreed upon; but constantly shirked the payment of the others, until at last, Williams finding himself in immediate danger of arrest, made his way down to the neighbourhood of Cumner, and lurking about the Southanger Woods, the deep recesses of which were well calculated for concealment, watched his opportunity, and accosted Gibbs one evening as he was driving home from Tenelms alone. That worthy, though, as usual, half drunk, recognised him at once, and swearing at him for an impudent beggar, did his best to drive his horse over him. Infuriated by such treatment, Williams wrote him a letter, declaring that if he failed to bring, on a certain night to a certain spot in Southanger Woods, every shilling of the sum he had promised to pay, he (Williams) would the very next morning go before the nearest magistrate and reveal the whole plot of Susan's abduction and marriage.

Alarmed by this threat, Gibbs answered the appointment, but without bringing the money; indeed, it soon became clear that he had no more intention of paying it than before. Williams, exasperated beyond endurance by these repeated disappointments, and rendered desperate by want, swore he would at least possess himself of whatever money or valuables the other had about him. Gibbs resisted with fury, and a fierce struggle ensued, during which he repeatedly endeavoured to stab his opponent with his clasp-knife. At length Williams prevailed, and throwing all his strength into one supreme effort, hurled Gibbs to the ground, the back of whose head striking with fearful violence against a tree, he was killed by the force of the blow. Appalled by his own act, and by the probable consequences to himself, Williams hastily dragged the body from the footpath, rifled the pockets, and hurried away from the scene. The church clock struck ten as he emerged from Southanger Woods; he walked all that night, rested the next day in an old outhouse, and succeeded in reaching London undiscovered. But he was, almost immediately afterwards, arrested for debt, and had remained in prison until within the last few days, when he was released chiefly because he was believed to be dying of consumption. And he was dying, he added, despairingly. For, since that fearful night, the victim's upturned eyes had followed him everywhere—everywhere—and his life had been a burden to him.

Such was the tale, told in broken whispers in the dead of night, to the clergyman, by that miserable man: a tale impossible to doubt, and triumphantly proving the innocence of one who had been too long suspected. Before twelve o'clock next day, the whole village was ringing with the news of Williams's confession, which spread like wildfire.

George bore his triumph, as he had borne unjust suspicion. The man's character had been strangely purified in the furnace of that affliction. The awful fate of his enemy, overtaking him with the suddenness of a chastisement from Heaven, had struck George at the time with a strange compassion, as well as self-upbraiding. For, though guiltless of Gibbs's death, he was not guiltless of many and eager longings for it; and he would have given worlds to have forgiven him, as he hoped himself to be forgiven. Hence his first sad and self-accusing words in his father's house, after hearing of the murder.

It may be mentioned, by the way, that the object of the letter he had received from Susan on the morning of the fatal day, had been to implore him to call upon her father that very afternoon, and induce him to take immediate steps for effecting her separation from her husband, of whom she went in fear of her life, and by whom she was watched too closely to be able to assist herself. And as her letters were liable to be opened, she entreated George to meet her in Southanger Woods that night, in order to inform her of the result of his negotiation (which was never even entered into, as the farmer happened to be from home). Finding however, that Gibbs was bound to the Plashetts from the public-house, she had rushed out hastily to warn George of the circumstance, and so prevent a meeting between the two, which was very near taking place.

Susan fully confirmed the testimony of Williams as to the circumstances of her abduction. That wretched man survived his confession little more than a week, and died in prison, penitent.

And once more George and Susan met. At that interview he took from his bosom a little silken bag, in which was a bunch of withered hops, so dried by time, that they almost crumbled aeneath his touch. And he held them up to her.

There is a cottage on Cumner Common, not far from Simon Eade's, the walls of which are covered with roses and clematis. There you may see Susan, if not as beautiful as of yore, still fair; and happy now, with her brown-eyed baby in her arms; and, if you choose your hour, you may catch George, too, coming into dinner or to tea, stalwart, handsome, with a bright cheery look on his honest English face, that will do you good to look upon.

CHAPTER VIII

TO BE TAKEN FOR LIFE

Charles Dickens

Sophy read through the whole of the foregoing several times over, and I sat in my seat in the Library Cart (that's the name we give it) seeing her read, and I was as pleased and as proud as a Pug-Dog with his muzzle black-leaded for an evening party and his tail extra curled by machinery. Every item of my plan was crowned with success. Our reunited life was more than all that we had looked forward to. Content and joy went with us as the wheels of the two carts went round, and the same stopped with us when the two carts stopped.

But I had left something out of my calculations. Now, what had I left out? To help you to guess I’ll say, a figure. Come. Make a guess and guess right. Nought? No. Nine? No. Eight? No. Seven? No. Six? No. Five? No. Four? No. Three? No. Two? No. One? No. Now I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you. I’ll say it’s another sort of figure altogether. There. Why then, says you, it’s a mortal figure. No, nor yet a mortal figure. By such means you got yourself penned into a corner, and you can’t help guessing a immortal figure. That’s about it. Why didn’t you say so sooner?

Yes. It was a immortal figure that I had altogether left out of my Calculations. Neither man’s, nor woman’s, but a child’s. Girl’s or boy’s? Boy’s. “I, says the sparrow with my bow and arrow.” Now you have got it.

We were down at Lancaster, and I had done two nights more than fair average business (though I cannot in honour recommend them as a quick audience) in the open square there, near the end of the street where Mr. Sly’s King’s Arms and Royal Hotel stands. Mim’s travelling giant, otherwise Pickleson, happened at the self-same time to be trying it on in the town. The genteel lay was adopted with him. No hint of a van. Green baize alcove leading up to Pickleson in a Auction Room. Printed poster, “Free list suspended, with the exception of that proud boast of an enlightened country, a free press. Schools admitted by private arrangement. Nothing to raise a blush in the cheek of youth or shock the most fastidious.” Mim swearing most horrible and terrific, in a pink calico pay-place, at the slackness of the public. Serious handbill in the shops, importing that it was all but impossible to come to a right understanding of the history of David, without seeing Pickleson.

I went to the Auction Room in question, and I found it entirely empty of everything but echoes and mouldiness, with the single exception of Pickleson on a piece of red drugget. This suited my purpose, as I wanted a private and confidential word with him, which was: “Pickleson. Owing much happiness to you, I put you in my will for a fypunnote; but, to save trouble, here’s fourpunten down, which may equally suit your views, and let us so conclude the transaction.” Pickleson, who up to that remark had had the dejected appearance of a long Roman rushlight that couldn’t anyhow get lighted, brightened up at his top extremity, and made his acknowledgments in a way which (for him) was parliamentary eloquence. He likewise did add, that, having ceased to draw as a Roman, Mim had made proposals for his going in as a conwerted Indian Giant worked upon by The Dairyman’s Daughter. This, Pickleson, having no acquaintance with the tract named after that young woman, and not being willing to couple gag with his serious views, had declined to do, thereby leading to words and the total stoppage of the unfortunate young man’s beer. All of which, during the whole of the interview, was confirmed by the ferocious growling of Mim down below in the pay-place, which shook the giant like a leaf.

But what was to the present point in the remarks of the travelling giant, otherwise Pickleson, was this: “Doctor Marigold,”—I give his words without a hope of conweying their feebleness,—“who is the strange young man that hangs about your carts?”—“The strange young man?” I gives him back, thinking that he meant her, and his languid circulation had dropped a syllable. “Doctor,” he returns, with a pathos calculated to draw a tear from even a manly eye, “I am weak, but not so weak yet as that I don’t know my words. I repeat them, Doctor. The strange young man.” It then appeared that Pickleson, being forced to stretch his legs (not that they wanted it) only at times when he couldn’t be seen for nothing, to wit in the dead of the night and towards daybreak, had twice seen hanging about my carts, in that same town of Lancaster where I had been only two nights, this same unknown young man.

It put me rather out of sorts. What it meant as to particulars I no more foreboded then than you forebode now, but it put me rather out of sorts. Howsoever, I made light of it to Pickleson, and I took leave of Pickleson, advising him to spend his legacy in getting up his stamina, and to continue to stand by his religion. Towards morning I kept a look out for the strange young man, and—what was more—I saw the strange young man. He was well dressed and well looking. He loitered very nigh my carts, watching them like as if he was taking care of them, and soon after daybreak turned and went away. I sent a hail after him, but he never started or looked round, or took the smallest notice.

We left Lancaster within an hour or two, on our way towards Carlisle. Next morning, at daybreak, I looked out again for the strange young man. I did not see him. But next morning I looked out again, and there he was once more. I sent another hail after him, but as before he gave not the slightest sign of being anyways disturbed. This put a thought into my head. Acting on it I watched him in different manners and at different times not necessary to enter into, till I found that this strange young man was deaf and dumb.

The discovery turned me over, because I knew that a part of that establishment where she had been was allotted to young men (some of them well off), and I thought to myself, “If she favours him, where am I? and where is all that I have worked and planned for?” Hoping—I must confess to the selfishness—that she might not favour him, I set myself to find out. At last I was by accident present at a meeting between them in the open air, looking on leaning behind a fir-tree without their knowing of it. It was a moving meeting for all the three parties concerned. I knew every syllable that passed between them as well as they did. I listened with my eyes, which had come to be as quick and true with deaf and dumb conversation as my ears with the talk of people that can speak. He was a-going out to China as clerk in a merchant’s house, which his father had been before him. He was in circumstances to keep a wife, and he wanted her to marry him and go along with him. She persisted, no. He asked if she didn’t love him. Yes, she loved him dearly, dearly; but she could never disappoint her beloved, good, noble, generous, and I-don’t-know-what-all father (meaning me, the Cheap Jack in the sleeved waistcoat) and she would stay with him, Heaven bless him! though it was to break her heart. Then she cried most bitterly, and that made up my mind.

While my mind had been in an unsettled state about her favouring this young man, I had felt that unreasonable towards Pickleson, that it was well for him he had got his legacy down. For I often thought, “If it hadn’t been for this same weak-minded giant, I might never have come to trouble my head and wex my soul about the young man.” But, once that I knew she loved him,—once that I had seen her weep for him,—it was a different thing. I made it right in my mind with Pickleson on the spot, and I shook myself together to do what was right by all.

She had left the young man by that time (for it took a few minutes to get me thoroughly well shook together), and the young man was leaning against another of the fir-trees,—of which there was a cluster,—with his face upon his arm. I touched him on the back. Looking up and seeing me, he says, in our deaf-and-dumb talk, “Do not be angry.”

“I am not angry, good boy. I am your friend. Come with me.”

I left him at the foot of the steps of the Library Cart, and I went up alone. She was drying her eyes.

“You have been crying, my dear.”

“Yes, father.”

“Why?”

“A head-ache.”

“Not a heart-ache?”

“I said a head-ache, father.”

“Doctor Marigold must prescribe for that head-ache.”

She took up the book of my Prescriptions, and held it up with a forced smile; but seeing me keep still and look earnest, she softly laid it down again, and her eyes were very attentive.

“The Prescription is not there, Sophy.”

“Where is it?”

“Here, my dear.”

I brought her young husband in, and I put her hand in his, and my only farther words to both of them were these: “Doctor Marigold’s last Prescription. To be taken for life.” After which I bolted.

When the wedding come off, I mounted a coat (blue, and bright buttons), for the first and last time in all my days, and I give Sophy away with my own hand. There were only us three and the gentleman who had had charge of her for those two years. I give the wedding dinner of four in the Library Cart. Pigeon-pie, a leg of pickled pork, a pair of fowls, and suitable garden stuff. The best of drinks. I give them a speech, and the gentleman give us a speech, and all our jokes told, and the whole went off like a sky-rocket. In the course of the entertainment I explained to Sophy that I should keep the Library Cart as my living-cart when not upon the road, and that I should keep all her books for her just as they stood, till she come back to claim them. So she went to China with her young husband, and it was a parting sorrowful and heavy, and I got the boy I had another service; and so as of old, when my child and wife were gone, I went plodding along alone, with my whip over my shoulder, at the old horse’s head.

Sophy wrote me many letters, and I wrote her many letters. About the end of the first year she sent me one in an unsteady hand: “Dearest father, not a week ago I had a darling little daughter, but I am so well that they let me write these words to you. Dearest and best father, I hope my child may not be deaf and dumb, but I do not yet know.” When I wrote back, I hinted the question; but as Sophy never answered that question, I felt it to be a sad one, and I never repeated it. For a long time our letters were regular, but then they got irregular, through Sophy’s husband being moved to another station, and through my being always on the move. But we were in one another’s thoughts, I was equally sure, letters or no letters.

Five years, odd months, had gone since Sophy went away. I was still the King of the Cheap Jacks, and at a greater height of popularity than ever. I had had a first-rate autumn of it, and on the twenty-third of December, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, I found myself at Uxbridge, Middlesex, clean sold out. So I jogged up to London with the old horse, light and easy, to have my Christmas-eve and Christmas-day alone by the fire in the Library Cart, and then to buy a regular new stock of goods all round, to sell ’em again and get the money.

I am a neat hand at cookery, and I’ll tell you what I knocked up for my Christmas-eve dinner in the Library Cart. I knocked up a beefsteak-pudding for one, with two kidneys, a dozen oysters, and a couple of mushrooms thrown in. It’s a pudding to put a man in good humour with everything, except the two bottom buttons of his waistcoat. Having relished that pudding and cleared away, I turned the lamp low, and sat down by the light of the fire, watching it as it shone upon the backs of Sophy’s books.

Sophy’s books so brought Sophy’s self, that I saw her touching face quite plainly, before I dropped off dozing by the fire. This may be a reason why Sophy, with her deaf-and-dumb child in her arms, seemed to stand silent by me all through my nap. I was on the road, off the road, in all sorts of places, North and South and West and East, Winds liked best and winds liked least, Here and there and gone astray, Over the hills and far away, and still she stood silent by me, with her silent child in her arms. Even when I woke with a start, she seemed to vanish, as if she had stood by me in that very place only a single instant before.

I had started at a real sound, and the sound was on the steps of the cart. It was the light hurried tread of a child, coming clambering up. That tread of a child had once been so familiar to me, that for half a moment I believed I was a-going to see a little ghost.

But the touch of a real child was laid upon the outer handle of the door, and the handle turned, and the door opened a little way, and a real child peeped in. A bright little comely girl with large dark eyes.

Looking full at me, the tiny creature took off her mite of a straw hat, and a quantity of dark curls fell about her face. Then she opened her lips, and said in a pretty voice,

“Grandfather!”

“Ah, my God!” I cries out. “She can speak!”

“Yes, dear grandfather. And I am to ask you whether there was ever any one that I remind you of?”

In a moment Sophy was round my neck, as well as the child, and her husband was a-wringing my hand with his face hid, and we all had to shake ourselves together before we could get over it. And when we did begin to get over it, and I saw the pretty child a-talking, pleased and quick and eager and busy, to her mother, in the signs that I had first taught her mother, the happy and yet pitying tears fell rolling down my face.

MUGBY JUNCTION

1866

CONTENTS

Barbox Brothers

Barbox Brothers and Co.

Main Line

No. 1 Branch Line

No. 2 Branch Line

No. 3 Branch Line

No. 4 Branch Line

No. 5 Branch Line

BARBOX BROTHERS

Charles Dickens

I.

“Guard! What place is this?”

“Mugby Junction, sir.”

“A windy place!”

“Yes, it mostly is, sir.”

“And looks comfortless indeed!”

“Yes, it generally does, sir.”

“Is it a rainy night still?”

“Pours, sir.”

“Open the door. I’ll get out.”

“You’ll have, sir,” said the guard, glistening with drops of wet, and looking at the tearful face of his watch by the light of his lantern as the traveller descended, “three minutes here.”

“More, I think.—For I am not going on.”

“Thought you had a through ticket, sir?”

“So I have, but I shall sacrifice the rest of it. I want my luggage.”

“Please to come to the van and point it out, sir. Be good enough to look very sharp, sir. Not a moment to spare.”

The guard hurried to the luggage van, and the traveller hurried after him. The guard got into it, and the traveller looked into it.

“Those two large black portmanteaus in the corner where your light shines. Those are mine.”

“Name upon ’em, sir?”

“Barbox Brothers.”

“Stand clear, sir, if you please. One. Two. Right!”

Lamp waved. Signal lights ahead already changing. Shriek from engine. Train gone.

“Mugby Junction!” said the traveller, pulling up the woollen muffler round his throat with both hands. “At past three o’clock of a tempestuous morning! So!”

He spoke to himself. There was no one else to speak to. Perhaps, though there had been any one else to speak to, he would have preferred to speak to himself. Speaking to himself he spoke to a man within five years of fifty either way, who had turned grey too soon, like a neglected fire; a man of pondering habit, brooding carriage of the head, and suppressed internal voice; a man with many indications on him of having been much alone.

He stood unnoticed on the dreary platform, except by the rain and by the wind. Those two vigilant assailants made a rush at him. “Very well,” said he, yielding. “It signifies nothing to me to what quarter I turn my face.”

Thus, at Mugby Junction, at past three o’clock of a tempestuous morning, the traveller went where the weather drove him.

Not but what he could make a stand when he was so minded, for, coming to the end of the roofed shelter (it is of considerable extent at Mugby Junction), and looking out upon the dark night, with a yet darker spirit-wing of storm beating its wild way through it, he faced about, and held his own as ruggedly in the difficult direction as he had held it in the easier one. Thus, with a steady step, the traveller went up and down, up and down, up and down, seeking nothing and finding it.

A place replete with shadowy shapes, this Mugby Junction in the black hours of the four-and-twenty. Mysterious goods trains, covered with palls and gliding on like vast weird funerals, conveying themselves guiltily away from the presence of the few lighted lamps, as if their freight had come to a secret and unlawful end. Half-miles of coal pursuing in a Detective manner, following when they lead, stopping when they stop, backing when they back. Red-hot embers showering out upon the ground, down this dark avenue, and down the other, as if torturing fires were being raked clear; concurrently, shrieks and groans and grinds invading the ear, as if the tortured were at the height of their suffering. Iron-barred cages full of cattle jangling by midway, the drooping beasts with horns entangled, eyes frozen with terror, and mouths too: at least they have long icicles (or what seem so) hanging from their lips. Unknown languages in the air, conspiring in red, green, and white characters. An earthquake, accompanied with thunder and lightning, going up express to London. Now, all quiet, all rusty, wind and rain in possession, lamps extinguished, Mugby Junction dead and indistinct, with its robe drawn over its head, like Cæsar.

Now, too, as the belated traveller plodded up and down, a shadowy train went by him in the gloom which was no other than the train of a life. From whatsoever intangible deep cutting or dark tunnel it emerged, here it came, unsummoned and unannounced, stealing upon him, and passing away into obscurity. Here mournfully went by a child who had never had a childhood or known a parent, inseparable from a youth with a bitter sense of his namelessness, coupled to a man the enforced business of whose best years had been distasteful and oppressive, linked to an ungrateful friend, dragging after him a woman once beloved. Attendant, with many a clank and wrench, were lumbering cares, dark meditations, huge dim disappointments, monotonous years, a long jarring line of the discords of a solitary and unhappy existence.

“—Yours, sir?”

The traveller recalled his eyes from the waste into which they had been staring, and fell back a step or so under the abruptness, and perhaps the chance appropriateness, of the question.

“Oh! My thoughts were not here for the moment. Yes. Yes. Those two portmanteaus are mine. Are you a Porter?”

“On Porter’s wages, sir. But I am Lamps.”

The traveller looked a little confused.

“Who did you say you are?”

“Lamps, sir,” showing an oily cloth in his hand, as farther explanation.

“Surely, surely. Is there any hotel or tavern here?”

“Not exactly here, sir. There is a Refreshment Room here, but——” Lamps, with a mighty serious look, gave his head a warning roll that plainly added—“but it’s a blessed circumstance for you that it’s not open.”

“You couldn’t recommend it, I see, if it was available?”

“Ask your pardon, sir. If it was——?”

“Open?”

“It ain’t my place, as a paid servant of the company, to give my opinion on any of the company’s toepics,”—he pronounced it more like toothpicks,—“beyond lamp-ile and cottons,” returned Lamps in a confidential tone; “but, speaking as a man, I wouldn’t recommend my father (if he was to come to life again) to go and try how he’d be treated at the Refreshment Room. Not speaking as a man, no, I would not.”

The traveller nodded conviction. “I suppose I can put up in the town? There is a town here?” For the traveller (though a stay-at-home compared with most travellers) had been, like many others, carried on the steam winds and the iron tides through that Junction before, without having ever, as one might say, gone ashore there.

“Oh yes, there’s a town, sir! Anyways, there’s town enough to put up in. But,” following the glance of the other at his luggage, “this is a very dead time of the night with us, sir. The deadest time. I might a’most call it our deadest and buriedest time.”

“No porters about?”

“Well, sir, you see,” returned Lamps, confidential again, “they in general goes off with the gas. That’s how it is. And they seem to have overlooked you, through your walking to the furder end of the platform. But, in about twelve minutes or so, she may be up.”

“Who may be up?”

“The three forty-two, sir. She goes off in a sidin’ till the Up X passes, and then she”—here an air of hopeful vagueness pervaded Lamps—“does all as lays in her power.”

“I doubt if I comprehend the arrangement.”

“I doubt if anybody do, sir. She’s a Parliamentary, sir. And, you see, a Parliamentary, or a Skirmishun——”

“Do you mean an Excursion?”

“That’s it, sir.—A Parliamentary or a Skirmishun, she mostly does go off into a sidin’. But, when she can get a chance, she’s whistled out of it, and she’s whistled up into doin’ all as,”—Lamps again wore the air of a highly sanguine man who hoped for the best,—“all as lays in her power.”

He then explained that the porters on duty, being required to be in attendance on the Parliamentary matron in question, would doubtless turn up with the gas. In the meantime, if the gentleman would not very much object to the smell of lamp-oil, and would accept the warmth of his little room.——The gentleman, being by this time very cold, instantly closed with the proposal.

A greasy little cabin it was, suggestive, to the sense of smell, of a cabin in a Whaler. But there was a bright fire burning in its rusty grate, and on the floor there stood a wooden stand of newly trimmed and lighted lamps, ready for carriage service. They made a bright show, and their light, and the warmth, accounted for the popularity of the room, as borne witness to by many impressions of velveteen trousers on a form by the fire, and many rounded smears and smudges of stooping velveteen shoulders on the adjacent wall. Various untidy shelves accommodated a quantity of lamps and oil-cans, and also a fragrant collection of what looked like the pocket-handkerchiefs of the whole lamp family.

As Barbox Brothers (so to call the traveller on the warranty of his luggage) took his seat upon the form, and warmed his now ungloved hands at the fire, he glanced aside at a little deal desk, much blotched with ink, which his elbow touched. Upon it were some scraps of coarse paper, and a superannuated steel pen in very reduced and gritty circumstances.

From glancing at the scraps of paper, he turned involuntarily to his host, and said, with some roughness:

“Why, you are never a poet, man?”

Lamps had certainly not the conventional appearance of one, as he stood modestly rubbing his squab nose with a handkerchief so exceedingly oily, that he might have been in the act of mistaking himself for one of his charges. He was a spare man of about the Barbox Brothers time of life, with his features whimsically drawn upward as if they were attracted by the roots of his hair. He had a peculiarly shining transparent complexion, probably occasioned by constant oleaginous application; and his attractive hair, being cut short, and being grizzled, and standing straight up on end as if it in its turn were attracted by some invisible magnet above it, the top of his head was not very unlike a lamp-wick.

“But, to be sure, it’s no business of mine,” said Barbox Brothers. “That was an impertinent observation on my part. Be what you like.”

“Some people, sir,” remarked Lamps in a tone of apology, “are sometimes what they don’t like.”

“Nobody knows that better than I do,” sighed the other. “I have been what I don’t like, all my life.”

“When I first took, sir,” resumed Lamps, “to composing little Comic-Songs—like——”

Barbox Brothers eyed him with great disfavour.

“—To composing little Comic-Songs-like—and what was more hard—to singing ’em afterwards,” said Lamps, “it went against the grain at that time, it did indeed.”

Something that was not all oil here shining in Lamps’s eye, Barbox Brothers withdrew his own a little disconcerted, looked at the fire, and put a foot on the top bar. “Why did you do it, then?” he asked after a short pause; abruptly enough, but in a softer tone. “If you didn’t want to do it, why did you do it? Where did you sing them? Public-house?”

To which Mr. Lamps returned the curious reply: “Bedside.”

At this moment, while the traveller looked at him for elucidation, Mugby Junction started suddenly, trembled violently, and opened its gas eyes. “She’s got up!” Lamps announced, excited. “What lays in her power is sometimes more, and sometimes less; but it’s laid in her power to get up to-night, by George!”

The legend “Barbox Brothers,” in large white letters on two black surfaces, was very soon afterwards trundling on a truck through a silent street, and, when the owner of the legend had shivered on the pavement half an hour, what time the porter’s knocks at the Inn Door knocked up the whole town first, and the Inn last, he groped his way into the close air of a shut-up house, and so groped between the sheets of a shut-up bed that seemed to have been expressly refrigerated for him when last made.

II.

“You remember me, Young Jackson?”

“What do I remember if not you? You are my first remembrance. It was you who told me that was my name. It was you who told me that on every twentieth of December my life had a penitential anniversary in it called a birthday. I suppose the last communication was truer than the first!”

“What am I like, Young Jackson?”

“You are like a blight all through the year to me. You hard-lined, thin-lipped, repressive, changeless woman with a wax mask on. You are like the Devil to me; most of all when you teach me religious things, for you make me abhor them.”

“You remember me, Mr. Young Jackson?” In another voice from another quarter.

“Most gratefully, sir. You were the ray of hope and prospering ambition in my life. When I attended your course, I believed that I should come to be a great healer, and I felt almost happy—even though I was still the one boarder in the house with that horrible mask, and ate and drank in silence and constraint with the mask before me, every day. As I had done every, every, every day, through my school-time and from my earliest recollection.”

“What am I like, Mr. Young Jackson?”

“You are like a Superior Being to me. You are like Nature beginning to reveal herself to me. I hear you again, as one of the hushed crowd of young men kindling under the power of your presence and knowledge, and you bring into my eyes the only exultant tears that ever stood in them.”

“You remember Me, Mr. Young Jackson?” In a grating voice from quite another quarter.

“Too well. You made your ghostly appearance in my life one day, and announced that its course was to be suddenly and wholly changed. You showed me which was my wearisome seat in the Galley of Barbox Brothers. (When they were, if they ever were, is unknown to me; there was nothing of them but the name when I bent to the oar.) You told me what I was to do, and what to be paid; you told me afterwards, at intervals of years, when I was to sign for the Firm, when I became a partner, when I became the Firm. I know no more of it, or of myself.”

“What am I like, Mr. Young Jackson?”

“You are like my father, I sometimes think. You are hard enough and cold enough so to have brought up an acknowledged son. I see your scanty figure, your close brown suit, and your tight brown wig; but you, too, wear a wax mask to your death. You never by a chance remove it—it never by a chance falls off—and I know no more of you.”

Throughout this dialogue, the traveller spoke to himself at his window in the morning, as he had spoken to himself at the Junction overnight. And as he had then looked in the darkness, a man who had turned grey too soon, like a neglected fire: so he now looked in the sun-light, an ashier grey, like a fire which the brightness of the sun put out.

The firm of Barbox Brothers had been some offshoot or irregular branch of the Public Notary and bill-broking tree. It had gained for itself a griping reputation before the days of Young Jackson, and the reputation had stuck to it and to him. As he had imperceptibly come into possession of the dim den up in the corner of a court off Lombard Street, on whose grimy windows the inscription Barbox Brothers had for many long years daily interposed itself between him and the sky, so he had insensibly found himself a personage held in chronic distrust, whom it was essential to screw tight to every transaction in which he engaged, whose word was never to be taken without his attested bond, whom all dealers with openly set up guards and wards against. This character had come upon him through no act of his own. It was as if the original Barbox had stretched himself down upon the office floor, and had thither caused to be conveyed Young Jackson in his sleep, and had there effected a metempsychosis and exchange of persons with him. The discovery—aided in its turn by the deceit of the only woman he had ever loved, and the deceit of the only friend he had ever made: who eloped from him to be married together—the discovery, so followed up, completed what his earliest rearing had begun. He shrank, abashed, within the form of Barbox, and lifted up his head and heart no more.

But he did at last effect one great release in his condition. He broke the oar he had plied so long, and he scuttled and sank the galley. He prevented the gradual retirement of an old conventional business from him, by taking the initiative and retiring from it. With enough to live on (though, after all, with not too much), he obliterated the firm of Barbox Brothers from the pages of the Post-Office Directory and the face of the earth, leaving nothing of it but its name on two portmanteaus.

“For one must have some name in going about, for people to pick up,” he explained to Mugby High Street, through the Inn window, “and that name at least was real once. Whereas, Young Jackson!—Not to mention its being a sadly satirical misnomer for Old Jackson.”

He took up his hat and walked out, just in time to see, passing along on the opposite side of the way, a velveteen man, carrying his day’s dinner in a small bundle that might have been larger without suspicion of gluttony, and pelting away towards the Junction at a great pace.

“There’s Lamps!” said Barbox Brothers. “And by the bye——”

Ridiculous, surely, that a man so serious, so self-contained, and not yet three days emancipated from a routine of drudgery, should stand rubbing his chin in the street, in a brown study about Comic Songs.

“Bedside?” said Barbox Brothers testily. “Sings them at the bedside? Why at the bedside, unless he goes to bed drunk? Does, I shouldn’t wonder. But it’s no business of mine. Let me see. Mugby Junction, Mugby Junction. Where shall I go next? As it came into my head last night when I woke from an uneasy sleep in the carriage and found myself here, I can go anywhere from here. Where shall I go? I’ll go and look at the Junction by daylight. There’s no hurry, and I may like the look of one Line better than another.”

But there were so many Lines. Gazing down upon them from a bridge at the Junction, it was as if the concentrating Companies formed a great Industrial Exhibition of the works of extraordinary ground spiders that spun iron. And then so many of the Lines went such wonderful ways, so crossing and curving among one another, that the eye lost them. And then some of them appeared to start with the fixed intention of going five hundred miles, and all of a sudden gave it up at an insignificant barrier, or turned off into a workshop. And then others, like intoxicated men, went a little way very straight, and surprisingly slued round and came back again. And then others were so chock-full of trucks of coal, others were so blocked with trucks of casks, others were so gorged with trucks of ballast, others were so set apart for wheeled objects like immense iron cotton-reels: while others were so bright and clear, and others were so delivered over to rust and ashes and idle wheelbarrows out of work, with their legs in the air (looking much like their masters on strike), that there was no beginning, middle, or end to the bewilderment.

Barbox Brothers stood puzzled on the bridge, passing his right hand across the lines on his forehead, which multiplied while he looked down, as if the railway Lines were getting themselves photographed on that sensitive plate. Then was heard a distant ringing of bells and blowing of whistles. Then, puppet-looking heads of men popped out of boxes in perspective, and popped in again. Then, prodigious wooden razors, set up on end, began shaving the atmosphere. Then, several locomotive engines in several directions began to scream and be agitated. Then, along one avenue a train came in. Then, along another two trains appeared that didn’t come in, but stopped without. Then, bits of trains broke off. Then, a struggling horse became involved with them. Then, the locomotives shared the bits of trains, and ran away with the whole.

“I have not made my next move much clearer by this. No hurry. No need to make up my mind to-day, or to-morrow, nor yet the day after. I’ll take a walk.”

It fell out somehow (perhaps he meant it should) that the walk tended to the platform at which he had alighted, and to Lamps’s room. But Lamps was not in his room. A pair of velveteen shoulders were adapting themselves to one of the impressions on the wall by Lamps’s fireplace, but otherwise the room was void. In passing back to get out of the station again, he learnt the cause of this vacancy, by catching sight of Lamps on the opposite line of railway, skipping along the top of a train, from carriage to carriage, and catching lighted namesakes thrown up to him by a coadjutor.

“He is busy. He has not much time for composing or singing Comic Songs this morning, I take it.”

The direction he pursued now was into the country, keeping very near to the side of one great Line of railway, and within easy view of others. “I have half a mind,”’ he said, glancing around, “to settle the question from this point, by saying, ‘I’ll take this set of rails, or that, or t’other, and stick to it.’ They separate themselves from the confusion, out here, and go their ways.”

Ascending a gentle hill of some extent, he came to a few cottages. There, looking about him as a very reserved man might who had never looked about him in his life before, he saw some six or eight young children come merrily trooping and whooping from one of the cottages, and disperse. But not until they had all turned at the little garden-gate, and kissed their hands to a face at the upper window: a low window enough, although the upper, for the cottage had but a story of one room above the ground.

Now, that the children should do this was nothing; but that they should do this to a face lying on the sill of the open window, turned towards them in a horizontal position, and apparently only a face, was something noticeable. He looked up at the window again. Could only see a very fragile, though a very bright face, lying on one cheek on the window-sill. The delicate smiling face of a girl or woman. Framed in long bright brown hair, round which was tied a light blue band or fillet, passing under the chin.

He walked on, turned back, passed the window again, shyly glanced up again. No change. He struck off by a winding branch-road at the top of the hill—which he must otherwise have descended—kept the cottages in view, worked his way round at a distance so as to come out once more into the main road, and be obliged to pass the cottages again. The face still lay on the window-sill, but not so much inclined towards him. And now there were a pair of delicate hands too. They had the action of performing on some musical instrument, and yet it produced no sound that reached his ears.

“Mugby Junction must be the maddest place in England,” said Barbox Brothers, pursuing his way down the hill. “The first thing I find here is a Railway Porter who composes comic songs to sing at his bedside. The second thing I find here is a face, and a pair of hands playing a musical instrument that don’t play!”

The day was a fine bright day in the early beginning of November, the air was clear and inspiriting, and the landscape was rich in beautiful colours. The prevailing colours in the court off Lombard Street, London city, had been few and sombre. Sometimes, when the weather elsewhere was very bright indeed, the dwellers in those tents enjoyed a pepper-and-salt-coloured day or two, but their atmosphere’s usual wear was slate or snuff coloured.

He relished his walk so well that he repeated it next day. He was a little earlier at the cottage than on the day before, and he could hear the children up-stairs singing to a regular measure, and clapping out the time with their hands.

“Still, there is no sound of any musical instrument,” he said, listening at the corner, “and yet I saw the performing hands again as I came by. What are the children singing? Why, good Lord, they can never be singing the multiplication table?”

They were, though, and with infinite enjoyment. The mysterious face had a voice attached to it, which occasionally led or set the children right. Its musical cheerfulness was delightful. The measure at length stopped, and was succeeded by a murmuring of young voices, and then by a short song which he made out to be about the current month of the year, and about what work it yielded to the labourers in the fields and farmyards. Then there was a stir of little feet, and the children came trooping and whooping out, as on the previous day. And again, as on the previous day, they all turned at the garden-gate, and kissed their hands—evidently to the face on the window-sill, though Barbox Brothers from his retired post of disadvantage at the corner could not see it.

But, as the children dispersed, he cut off one small straggler—a brown-faced boy with flaxen hair—and said to him:

“Come here, little one. Tell me, whose house is that?”

The child, with one swarthy arm held up across his eyes, half in shyness, and half ready for defence, said from behind the inside of his elbow:

“Phoebe’s.”

“And who,” said Barbox Brothers, quite as much embarrassed by his part in the dialogue as the child could possibly be by his, “is Phoebe?”

To which the child made answer: “Why, Phoebe, of course.”

The small but sharp observer had eyed his questioner closely, and had taken his moral measure. He lowered his guard, and rather assumed a tone with him: as having discovered him to be an unaccustomed person in the art of polite conversation.

“Phoebe,” said the child, “can’t be anybobby else but Phoebe. Can she?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Well,” returned the child, “then why did you ask me?”

Deeming it prudent to shift his ground, Barbox Brothers took up a new position.

“What do you do there? Up there in that room where the open window is. What do you do there?”

“Cool,” said the child.

“Eh?”

“Co-o-ol,” the child repeated in a louder voice, lengthening out the word with a fixed look and great emphasis, as much as to say: “What’s the use of your having grown up, if you’re such a donkey as not to understand me?”

“Ah! School, school,” said Barbox Brothers. “Yes, yes, yes. And Phoebe teaches you?”

The child nodded.

“Good boy.”

“Tound it out, have you?” said the child.

“Yes, I have found it out. What would you do with twopence, if I gave it you?”

“Pend it.”

The knock-down promptitude of this reply leaving him not a leg to stand upon, Barbox Brothers produced the twopence with great lameness, and withdrew in a state of humiliation.

But, seeing the face on the window-sill as he passed the cottage, he acknowledged its presence there with a gesture, which was not a nod, not a bow, not a removal of his hat from his head, but was a diffident compromise between or struggle with all three. The eyes in the face seemed amused, or cheered, or both, and the lips modestly said: “Good-day to you, sir.”

“I find I must stick for a time to Mugby Junction,” said Barbox Brothers with much gravity, after once more stopping on his return road to look at the Lines where they went their several ways so quietly. “I can’t make up my mind yet which iron road to take. In fact, I must get a little accustomed to the Junction before I can decide.”

So, he announced at the Inn that he was “going to stay on for the present,” and improved his acquaintance with the Junction that night, and again next morning, and again next night and morning: going down to the station, mingling with the people there, looking about him down all the avenues of railway, and beginning to take an interest in the incomings and outgoings of the trains. At first, he often put his head into Lamps’s little room, but he never found Lamps there. A pair or two of velveteen shoulders he usually found there, stooping over the fire, sometimes in connection with a clasped knife and a piece of bread and meat; but the answer to his inquiry, “Where’s Lamps?” was, either that he was “t’other side the line,” or, that it was his off-time, or (in the latter case) his own personal introduction to another Lamps who was not his Lamps. However, he was not so desperately set upon seeing Lamps now, but he bore the disappointment. Nor did he so wholly devote himself to his severe application to the study of Mugby Junction as to neglect exercise. On the contrary, he took a walk every day, and always the same walk. But the weather turned cold and wet again, and the window was never open.

III.

At length, after a lapse of some days, there came another streak of fine bright hardy autumn weather. It was a Saturday. The window was open, and the children were gone. Not surprising, this, for he had patiently watched and waited at the corner until they were gone.

“Good-day,” he said to the face; absolutely getting his hat clear off his head this time.

“Good-day to you, sir.”

“I am glad you have a fine sky again to look at.”

“Thank you, sir. It is kind of you.”

“You are an invalid, I fear?”

“No, sir. I have very good health.”

“But are you not always lying down?”

“Oh yes, I am always lying down, because I cannot sit up! But I am not an invalid.”

The laughing eyes seemed highly to enjoy his great mistake.

“Would you mind taking the trouble to come in, sir? There is a beautiful view from this window. And you would see that I am not at all ill—being so good as to care.”

It was said to help him, as he stood irresolute, but evidently desiring to enter, with his diffident hand on the latch of the garden-gate. It did help him, and he went in.

The room up-stairs was a very clean white room with a low roof. Its only inmate lay on a couch that brought her face to a level with the window. The couch was white too; and her simple dress or wrapper being light blue, like the band around her hair, she had an ethereal look, and a fanciful appearance of lying among clouds. He felt that she instinctively perceived him to be by habit a downcast taciturn man; it was another help to him to have established that understanding so easily, and got it over.

There was an awkward constraint upon him, nevertheless, as he touched her hand, and took a chair at the side of her couch.

“I see now,” he began, not at all fluently, “how you occupy your hand. Only seeing you from the path outside, I thought you were playing upon something.”

She was engaged in very nimbly and dexterously making lace. A lace-pillow lay upon her breast; and the quick movements and changes of her hands upon it, as she worked, had given them the action he had misinterpreted.

“That is curious,” she answered with a bright smile. “For I often fancy, myself, that I play tunes while I am at work.”

“Have you any musical knowledge?”

She shook her head.

“I think I could pick out tunes, if I had any instrument, which could be made as handy to me as my lace-pillow. But I dare say I deceive myself. At all events, I shall never know.”

“You have a musical voice. Excuse me; I have heard you sing.”

“With the children?” she answered, slightly colouring. “Oh yes. I sing with the dear children, if it can be called singing.”

Barbox Brothers glanced at the two small forms in the room, and hazarded the speculation that she was fond of children, and that she was learned in new systems of teaching them?

“Very fond of them,” she said, shaking her head again; “but I know nothing of teaching, beyond the interest I have in it, and the pleasure it gives me when they learn. Perhaps your overhearing my little scholars sing some of their lessons has led you so far astray as to think me a grand teacher? Ah! I thought so! No, I have only read and been told about that system. It seemed so pretty and pleasant, and to treat them so like the merry Robins they are, that I took up with it in my little way. You don’t need to be told what a very little way mine is, sir,” she added with a glance at the small forms and round the room.

All this time her hands were busy at her lace-pillow. As they still continued so, and as there was a kind of substitute for conversation in the click and play of its pegs, Barbox Brothers took the opportunity of observing her. He guessed her to be thirty. The charm of her transparent face and large bright brown eyes was, not that they were passively resigned, but that they were actively and thoroughly cheerful. Even her busy hands, which of their own thinness alone might have besought compassion, plied their task with a gay courage that made mere compassion an unjustifiable assumption of superiority, and an impertinence.

He saw her eyes in the act of rising towards his, and he directed his towards the prospect, saying: “Beautiful, indeed!”

“Most beautiful, sir. I have sometimes had a fancy that I would like to sit up, for once, only to try how it looks to an erect head. But what a foolish fancy that would be to encourage! It cannot look more lovely to any one than it does to me.”

Her eyes were turned to it, as she spoke, with most delighted admiration and enjoyment. There was not a trace in it of any sense of deprivation.

“And those threads of railway, with their puffs of smoke and steam changing places so fast, make it so lively for me,” she went on. “I think of the number of people who can go where they wish, on their business, or their pleasure; I remember that the puffs make signs to me that they are actually going while I look; and that enlivens the prospect with abundance of company, if I want company. There is the great Junction, too. I don’t see it under the foot of the hill, but I can very often hear it, and I always know it is there. It seems to join me, in a way, to I don’t know how many places and things that I shall never see.”

With an abashed kind of idea that it might have already joined himself to something he had never seen, he said constrainedly: “Just so.”

“And so you see, sir,” pursued Phoebe, “I am not the invalid you thought me, and I am very well off indeed.”

“You have a happy disposition,” said Barbox Brothers: perhaps with a slight excusatory touch for his own disposition.

“Ah! But you should know my father,” she replied. “His is the happy disposition!—Don’t mind, sir!” For his reserve took the alarm at a step upon the stairs, and he distrusted that he would be set down for a troublesome intruder. “This is my father coming.”

The door opened, and the father paused there.

“Why, Lamps!” exclaimed Barbox Brothers, starting from his chair. “How do you do, Lamps?”

To which Lamps responded: “The gentleman for Nowhere! How do you DO, sir?”

And they shook hands, to the greatest admiration and surprise of Lamp’s daughter.

“I have looked you up half-a-dozen times since that night,” said Barbox Brothers, “but have never found you.”

“So I’ve heerd on, sir, so I’ve heerd on,” returned Lamps. “It’s your being noticed so often down at the Junction, without taking any train, that has begun to get you the name among us of the gentleman for Nowhere. No offence in my having called you by it when took by surprise, I hope, sir?”

“None at all. It’s as good a name for me as any other you could call me by. But may I ask you a question in the corner here?”

Lamps suffered himself to be led aside from his daughter’s couch by one of the buttons of his velveteen jacket.

“Is this the bedside where you sing your songs?”

Lamps nodded.

The gentleman for Nowhere clapped him on the shoulder, and they faced about again.

“Upon my word, my dear,” said Lamps then to his daughter, looking from her to her visitor, “it is such an amaze to me, to find you brought acquainted with this gentleman, that I must (if this gentleman will excuse me) take a rounder.”

Mr. Lamps demonstrated in action what this meant, by pulling out his oily handkerchief rolled up in the form of a ball, and giving himself an elaborate smear, from behind the right ear, up the cheek, across the forehead, and down the other cheek to behind his left ear. After this operation he shone exceedingly.

“It’s according to my custom when particular warmed up by any agitation, sir,” he offered by way of apology. “And really, I am throwed into that state of amaze by finding you brought acquainted with Phoebe, that I—that I think I will, if you’ll excuse me, take another rounder.” Which he did, seeming to be greatly restored by it.

They were now both standing by the side of her couch, and she was working at her lace-pillow. “Your daughter tells me,” said Barbox Brothers, still in a half-reluctant shamefaced way, “that she never sits up.”

“No, sir, nor never has done. You see, her mother (who died when she was a year and two months old) was subject to very bad fits, and as she had never mentioned to me that she was subject to fits, they couldn’t be guarded against. Consequently, she dropped the baby when took, and this happened.”

“It was very wrong of her,” said Barbox Brothers with a knitted brow, “to marry you, making a secret of her infirmity.’

“Well, sir!” pleaded Lamps in behalf of the long-deceased. “You see, Phoebe and me, we have talked that over too. And Lord bless us! Such a number on us has our infirmities, what with fits, and what with misfits, of one sort and another, that if we confessed to ’em all before we got married, most of us might never get married.”

“Might not that be for the better?”

“Not in this case, sir,” said Phoebe, giving her hand to her father.

“No, not in this case, sir,” said her father, patting it between his own.

“You correct me,” returned Barbox Brothers with a blush; “and I must look so like a Brute, that at all events it would be superfluous in me to confess to that infirmity. I wish you would tell me a little more about yourselves. I hardly knew how to ask it of you, for I am conscious that I have a bad stiff manner, a dull discouraging way with me, but I wish you would.”

“With all our hearts, sir,” returned Lamps gaily for both. “And first of all, that you may know my name——”

“Stay!” interposed the visitor with a slight flush. “What signifies your name? Lamps is name enough for me. I like it. It is bright and expressive. What do I want more?”

“Why, to be sure, sir,” returned Lamps. “I have in general no other name down at the Junction; but I thought, on account of your being here as a first-class single, in a private character, that you might——”

The visitor waved the thought away with his hand, and Lamps acknowledged the mark of confidence by taking another rounder.

“You are hard-worked, I take for granted?” said Barbox Brothers, when the subject of the rounder came out of it much dirtier than be went into it.

Lamps was beginning, “Not particular so”—when his daughter took him up.

“Oh yes, sir, he is very hard-worked. Fourteen, fifteen, eighteen hours a day. Sometimes twenty-four hours at a time.”

“And you,” said Barbox Brothers, “what with your school, Phoebe, and what with your lace-making——”

“But my school is a pleasure to me,” she interrupted, opening her brown eyes wider, as if surprised to find him so obtuse. “I began it when I was but a child, because it brought me and other children into company, don’t you see? That was not work. I carry it on still, because it keeps children about me. That is not work. I do it as love, not as work. Then my lace-pillow;” her busy hands had stopped, as if her argument required all her cheerful earnestness, but now went on again at the name; “it goes with my thoughts when I think, and it goes with my tunes when I hum any, and that’s not work. Why, you yourself thought it was music, you know, sir. And so it is to me.”

“Everything is!” cried Lamps radiantly. “Everything is music to her, sir.”

“My father is, at any rate,” said Phoebe, exultingly pointing her thin forefinger at him. “There is more music in my father than there is in a brass band.”

“I say! My dear! It’s very fillyillially done, you know; but you are flattering your father,” he protested, sparkling.

“No, I am not, sir, I assure you. No, I am not. If you could hear my father sing, you would know I am not. But you never will hear him sing, because he never sings to any one but me. However tired he is, he always sings to me when he comes home. When I lay here long ago, quite a poor little broken doll, he used to sing to me. More than that, he used to make songs, bringing in whatever little jokes we had between us. More than that, he often does so to this day. Oh! I’ll tell of you, father, as the gentleman has asked about you. He is a poet, sir.”

“I shouldn’t wish the gentleman, my dear,” observed Lamps, for the moment turning grave, “to carry away that opinion of your father, because it might look as if I was given to asking the stars in a molloncolly manner what they was up to. Which I wouldn’t at once waste the time, and take the liberty, my dear.”

“My father,” resumed Phoebe, amending her text, “is always on the bright side, and the good side. You told me, just now, I had a happy disposition. How can I help it?”

“Well; but, my dear,” returned Lamps argumentatively, “how can I help it? Put it to yourself sir. Look at her. Always as you see her now. Always working—and after all, sir, for but a very few shillings a week—always contented, always lively, always interested in others, of all sorts. I said, this moment, she was always as you see her now. So she is, with a difference that comes to much the same. For, when it is my Sunday off and the morning bells have done ringing, I hear the prayers and thanks read in the touchingest way, and I have the hymns sung to me—so soft, sir, that you couldn’t hear ’em out of this room—in notes that seem to me, I am sure, to come from Heaven and go back to it.”

It might have been merely through the association of these words with their sacredly quiet time, or it might have been through the larger association of the words with the Redeemer’s presence beside the bedridden; but here her dexterous fingers came to a stop on the lace-pillow, and clasped themselves around his neck as he bent down. There was great natural sensibility in both father and daughter, the visitor could easily see; but each made it, for the other’s sake, retiring, not demonstrative; and perfect cheerfulness, intuitive or acquired, was either the first or second nature of both. In a very few moments Lamps was taking another rounder with his comical features beaming, while Phoebe’s laughing eyes (just a glistening speck or so upon their lashes) were again directed by turns to him, and to her work, and to Barbox Brothers.

“When my father, sir,” she said brightly, “tells you about my being interested in other people, even though they know nothing about me—which, by-the-by, I told you myself—you ought to know how that comes about. That’s my father’s doing.”

“No, it isn’t!” he protested.

“Don’t you believe him, sir; yes, it is. He tells me of everything he sees down at his work. You would be surprised what a quantity he gets together for me every day. He looks into the carriages, and tells me how the ladies are dressed—so that I know all the fashions! He looks into the carriages, and tells me what pairs of lovers he sees, and what new-married couples on their wedding trip—so that I know all about that! He collects chance newspapers and books—so that I have plenty to read! He tells me about the sick people who are travelling to try to get better—so that I know all about them! In short, as I began by saying, he tells me everything he sees and makes out down at his work, and you can’t think what a quantity he does see and make out.”

“As to collecting newspapers and books, my dear,” said Lamps, “it’s clear I can have no merit in that, because they’re not my perquisites. You see, sir, it’s this way: A Guard, he’ll say to me, ‘Hallo, here you are, Lamps. I’ve saved this paper for your daughter. How is she a-going on?’ A Head-Porter, he’ll say to me, ‘Here! Catch hold, Lamps. Here’s a couple of wollumes for your daughter. Is she pretty much where she were?’ And that’s what makes it double welcome, you see. If she had a thousand pound in a box, they wouldn’t trouble themselves about her; but being what she is—that is, you understand,” Lamps added, somewhat hurriedly, “not having a thousand pound in a box—they take thought for her. And as concerning the young pairs, married and unmarried, it’s only natural I should bring home what little I can about them, seeing that there’s not a Couple of either sort in the neighbourhood that don’t come of their own accord to confide in Phoebe.”

She raised her eyes triumphantly to Barbox Brothers as she said:

“Indeed, sir, that is true. If I could have got up and gone to church, I don’t know how often I should have been a bridesmaid. But, if I could have done that, some girls in love might have been jealous of me, and, as it is, no girl is jealous of me. And my pillow would not have been half as ready to put the piece of cake under, as I always find it,” she added, turning her face on it with a light sigh, and a smile at her father.

The arrival of a little girl, the biggest of the scholars, now led to an understanding on the part of Barbox Brothers, that she was the domestic of the cottage, and had come to take active measures in it, attended by a pail that might have extinguished her, and a broom three times her height. He therefore rose to take his leave, and took it; saying that, if Phoebe had no objection, he would come again.

He had muttered that he would come “in the course of his walks.” The course of his walks must have been highly favourable to his return, for he returned after an interval of a single day.

“You thought you would never see me any more, I suppose?” he said to Phoebe as he touched her hand, and sat down by her couch.

“Why should I think so?” was her surprised rejoinder.

“I took it for granted you would mistrust me.”

“For granted, sir? Have you been so much mistrusted?”

“I think I am justified in answering yes. But I may have mistrusted, too, on my part. No matter just now. We were speaking of the Junction last time. I have passed hours there since the day before yesterday.”

“Are you now the gentleman for Somewhere?” she asked with a smile.

“Certainly for Somewhere; but I don’t yet know Where. You would never guess what I am travelling from. Shall I tell you? I am travelling from my birthday.”

Her hands stopped in her work, and she looked at him with incredulous astonishment.

“Yes,” said Barbox Brothers, not quite easy in his chair, “from my birthday. I am, to myself, an unintelligible book with the earlier chapters all torn out, and thrown away. My childhood had no grace of childhood, my youth had no charm of youth, and what can be expected from such a lost beginning?” His eyes meeting hers as they were addressed intently to him, something seemed to stir within his breast, whispering: “Was this bed a place for the graces of childhood and the charms of youth to take to kindly? Oh, shame, shame!”

“It is a disease with me,” said Barbox Brothers, checking himself, and making as though he had a difficulty in swallowing something, “to go wrong about that. I don’t know how I came to speak of that. I hope it is because of an old misplaced confidence in one of your sex involving an old bitter treachery. I don’t know. I am all wrong together.”

Her hands quietly and slowly resumed their work. Glancing at her, he saw that her eyes were thoughtfully following them.

“I am travelling from my birthday,” he resumed, “because it has always been a dreary day to me. My first free birthday coming round some five or six weeks hence, I am travelling to put its predecessors far behind me, and to try to crush the day—or, at all events, put it out of my sight—by heaping new objects on it.”

As he paused, she looked at him; but only shook her head as being quite at a loss.

“This is unintelligible to your happy disposition,” he pursued, abiding by his former phrase as if there were some lingering virtue of self-defence in it. “I knew it would be, and am glad it is. However, on this travel of mine (in which I mean to pass the rest of my days, having abandoned all thought of a fixed home), I stopped, as you have heard from your father, at the Junction here. The extent of its ramifications quite confused me as to whither I should go, from here. I have not yet settled, being still perplexed among so many roads. What do you think I mean to do? How many of the branching roads can you see from your window?”

Looking out, full of interest, she answered, “Seven.”

“Seven,” said Barbox Brothers, watching her with a grave smile. “Well! I propose to myself at once to reduce the gross number to those very seven, and gradually to fine them down to one—the most promising for me—and to take that.”

“But how will you know, sir, which is the most promising?” she asked, with her brightened eyes roving over the view.

“Ah!” said Barbox Brothers with another grave smile, and considerably improving in his ease of speech. “To be sure. In this way. Where your father can pick up so much every day for a good purpose, I may once and again pick up a little for an indifferent purpose. The gentleman for Nowhere must become still better known at the Junction. He shall continue to explore it, until he attaches something that he has seen, heard, or found out, at the head of each of the seven roads, to the road itself. And so his choice of a road shall be determined by his choice among his discoveries.”

Her hands still busy, she again glanced at the prospect, as if it comprehended something that had not been in it before, and laughed as if it yielded her new pleasure.

“But I must not forget,” said Barbox Brothers, “(having got so far) to ask a favour. I want your help in this expedient of mine. I want to bring you what I pick up at the heads of the seven roads that you lie here looking out at, and to compare notes with you about it. May I? They say two heads are better than one. I should say myself that probably depends upon the heads concerned. But I am quite sure, though we are so newly acquainted, that your head and your father’s have found out better things, Phoebe, than ever mine of itself discovered.”

She gave him her sympathetic right hand, in perfect rapture with his proposal, and eagerly and gratefully thanked him.

“That’s well!” said Barbox Brothers. “Again I must not forget (having got so far) to ask a favour. Will you shut your eyes?”

Laughing playfully at the strange nature of the request, she did so.

“Keep them shut,” said Barbox Brothers, going softly to the door, and coming back. “You are on your honour, mind, not to open you eyes until I tell you that you may?”

“Yes! On my honour.”

“Good. May I take your lace-pillow from you for a minute?”

Still laughing and wondering, she removed her hands from it, and he put it aside.

“Tell me. Did you see the puffs of smoke and steam made by the morning fast-train yesterday on road number seven from here?”

“Behind the elm-trees and the spire?”

“That’s the road,” said Barbox Brothers, directing his eyes towards it.

“Yes. I watched them melt away.”

“Anything unusual in what they expressed?”

“No!” she answered merrily.

“Not complimentary to me, for I was in that train. I went—don’t open your eyes—to fetch you this, from the great ingenious town. It is not half so large as your lace-pillow, and lies easily and lightly in its place. These little keys are like the keys of a miniature piano, and you supply the air required with your left hand. May you pick out delightful music from it, my dear! For the present—you can open your eyes now—good-bye!”

In his embarrassed way, he closed the door upon himself, and only saw, in doing so, that she ecstatically took the present to her bosom and caressed it. The glimpse gladdened his heart, and yet saddened it; for so might she, if her youth had flourished in its natural course, having taken to her breast that day the slumbering music of her own child’s voice.

BARBOX BROTHERS AND CO.

Charles Dickens

With good-will and earnest purpose, the gentleman for Nowhere began, on the very next day, his researches at the heads of the seven roads. The results of his researches, as he and Phoebe afterwards set them down in fair writing, hold their due places in this veracious chronicle. But they occupied a much longer time in the getting together than they ever will in the perusal. And this is probably the case with most reading matter, except when it is of that highly beneficial kind (for Posterity) which is “thrown off in a few moments of leisure” by the superior poetic geniuses who scorn to take prose pains.

It must be admitted, however, that Barbox by no means hurried himself. His heart being in his work of good-nature, he revelled in it. There was the joy, too (it was a true joy to him), of sometimes sitting by, listening to Phoebe as she picked out more and more discourse from her musical instrument, and as her natural taste and ear refined daily upon her first discoveries. Besides being a pleasure, this was an occupation, and in the course of weeks it consumed hours. It resulted that his dreaded birthday was close upon him before he had troubled himself any more about it.

The matter was made more pressing by the unforeseen circumstance that the councils held (at which Mr. Lamps, beaming most brilliantly, on a few rare occasions assisted) respecting the road to be selected were, after all, in nowise assisted by his investigations. For, he had connected this interest with this road, or that interest with the other, but could deduce no reason from it for giving any road the preference. Consequently, when the last council was holden, that part of the business stood, in the end, exactly where it had stood in the beginning.

“But, sir,” remarked Phoebe, “we have only six roads after all. Is the seventh road dumb?”

“The seventh road? Oh!” said Barbox Brothers, rubbing his chin. “That is the road I took, you know, when I went to get your little present. That is its story. Phoebe.”

“Would you mind taking that road again, sir?” she asked with hesitation.

“Not in the least; it is a great high-road after all.”

“I should like you to take it,” returned Phoebe with a persuasive smile, “for the love of that little present which must ever be so dear to me. I should like you to take it, because that road can never be again like any other road to me. I should like you to take it, in remembrance of your having done me so much good: of your having made me so much happier! If you leave me by the road you travelled when you went to do me this great kindness,” sounding a faint chord as she spoke, “I shall feel, lying here watching at my window, as if it must conduct you to a prosperous end, and bring you back some day.”

“It shall be done, my dear; it shall be done.”

So at last the gentleman for Nowhere took a ticket for Somewhere, and his destination was the great ingenious town.

He had loitered so long about the Junction that it was the eighteenth of December when he left it. “High time,” he reflected, as he seated himself in the train, “that I started in earnest! Only one clear day remains between me and the day I am running away from. I’ll push onward for the hill-country to-morrow. I’ll go to Wales.”

It was with some pains that he placed before himself the undeniable advantages to be gained in the way of novel occupation for his senses from misty mountains, swollen streams, rain, cold, a wild seashore, and rugged roads. And yet he scarcely made them out as distinctly as he could have wished. Whether the poor girl, in spite of her new resource, her music, would have any feeling of loneliness upon her now—just at first—that she had not had before; whether she saw those very puffs of steam and smoke that he saw, as he sat in the train thinking of her; whether her face would have any pensive shadow on it as they died out of the distant view from her window; whether, in telling him he had done her so much good, she had not unconsciously corrected his old moody bemoaning of his station in life, by setting him thinking that a man might be a great healer, if he would, and yet not be a great doctor; these and other similar meditations got between him and his Welsh picture. There was within him, too, that dull sense of vacuity which follows separation from an object of interest, and cessation of a pleasant pursuit; and this sense, being quite new to him, made him restless. Further, in losing Mugby Junction, he had found himself again; and he was not the more enamoured of himself for having lately passed his time in better company.

But surely here, not far ahead, must be the great ingenious town. This crashing and clashing that the train was undergoing, and this coupling on to it of a multitude of new echoes, could mean nothing less than approach to the great station. It did mean nothing less. After some stormy flashes of town lightning, in the way of swift revelations of red brick blocks of houses, high red brick chimney-shafts, vistas of red brick railway arches, tongues of fire, blocks of smoke, valleys of canal, and hills if coal, there came the thundering in at the journey’s end.

Having seen his portmanteaus safely housed in the hotel he chose, and having appointed his dinner hour, Barbox Brothers went out for a walk in the busy streets. And now it began to be suspected by him that Mugby Junction was a Junction of many branches, invisible as well as visible, and had joined him to an endless number of byways. For, whereas he would, but a little while ago, have walked these streets blindly brooding, he now had eyes and thoughts for a new external world. How the many toiling people lived, and loved, and died; how wonderful it was to consider the various trainings of eye and hand, the nice distinctions of sight and touch, that separated them into classes of workers, and even into classes of workers at subdivisions of one complete whole which combined their many intelligences and forces, though of itself but some cheap object of use or ornament in common life; how good it was to know that such assembling in a multitude on their part, and such contribution of their several dexterities towards a civilising end, did not deteriorate them as it was the fashion of the supercilious Mayflies of humanity to pretend, but engendered among them a self-respect, and yet a modest desire to be much wiser than they were (the first evinced in their well-balanced bearing and manner of speech when he stopped to ask a question; the second, in the announcements of their popular studies and amusements on the public walls); these considerations, and a host of such, made his walk a memorable one. “I too am but a little part of a great whole,” he began to think; “and to be serviceable to myself and others, or to be happy, I must cast my interest into, and draw it out of, the common stock.”

Although he had arrived at his journey’s end for the day by noon, he had since insensibly walked about the town so far and so long that the lamp-lighters were now at their work in the streets, and the shops were sparkling up brilliantly. Thus reminded to turn towards his quarters, he was in the act of doing so, when a very little hand crept into his, and a very little voice said:

“Oh! if you please, I am lost!”

He looked down, and saw a very little fair-haired girl.

“Yes,” she said, confirming her words with a serious nod. “I am indeed. I am lost!”

Greatly perplexed, he stopped, looked about him for help, descried none, and said, bending low.

“Where do you live, my child?”

“I don’t know where I live,” she returned. “I am lost.”

“What is your name?”

“Polly.”

“What is your other name?”

The reply was prompt, but unintelligible.

Imitating the sound as he caught it, he hazarded the guess, “Trivits.”

“Oh no!” said the child, shaking her head. “Nothing like that.”

“Say it again, little one.”

An unpromising business. For this time it had quite a different sound.

He made the venture, “Paddens?”

“Oh no!” said the child. “Nothing like that.”

“Once more. Let us try it again, dear.”

A most hopeless business. This time it swelled into four syllables. “It can’t be Tappitarver?” said Barbox Brothers, rubbing his head with his hat in discomfiture.

“No! It ain’t,” the child quietly assented.

On her trying this unfortunate name once more, with extraordinary efforts at distinctness, it swelled into eight syllables at least.

“Ah! I think,” said Barbox Brothers with a desperate air of resignation, “that we had better give it up.”

“But I am lost,” said the child, nestling her little hand more closely in his, “and you’ll take care of me, won’t you?”

If ever a man were disconcerted by division between compassion on the one hand, and the very imbecility of irresolution on the other, here the man was. “Lost!” he repeated, looking down at the child. “I am sure I am. What is to be done?”

“Where do you live?” asked the child, looking up at him wistfully.

“Over there,” he answered, pointing vaguely in the direction of his hotel.

“Hadn’t we better go there?” said the child.

“Really,” he replied, “I don’t know but what we had.”

So they set off, hand-in-hand. He, through comparison of himself against his little companion, with a clumsy feeling on him as if he had just developed into a foolish giant. She, clearly elevated in her own tiny opinion by having got him so neatly out of his embarrassment.

“We are going to have dinner when we get there, I suppose?” said Polly.

“Well,” he rejoined, “I—Yes, I suppose we are.”

“Do you like your dinner?” asked the child.

“Why, on the whole,” said Barbox Brothers, “yes, I think I do.”

“I do mine,” said Polly. “Have you any brothers and sisters?”

“No. Have you?”

“Mine are dead.”

“Oh!” said Barbox Brothers. With that absurd sense of unwieldiness of mind and body weighing him down, he would have not known how to pursue the conversation beyond this curt rejoinder, but that the child was always ready for him.

“What,” she asked, turning her soft hand coaxingly in his, “are you going to do to amuse me after dinner?”

“Upon my soul, Polly,” exclaimed Barbox Brothers, very much at a loss, “I have not the slightest idea!”

“Then I tell you what,” said Polly. “Have you got any cards at your house?”

“Plenty,” said Barbox Brothers in a boastful vein.

“Very well. Then I’ll build houses, and you shall look at me. You mustn’t blow, you know.”

“Oh no,” said Barbox Brothers. “No, no, no. No blowing. Blowing’s not fair.”

He flattered himself that he had said this pretty well for an idiotic monster; but the child, instantly perceiving the awkwardness of his attempt to adapt himself to her level, utterly destroyed his hopeful opinion of himself by saying compassionately: “What a funny man you are!”

Feeling, after this melancholy failure, as if he every minute grew bigger and heavier in person, and weaker in mind, Barbox gave himself up for a bad job. No giant ever submitted more meekly to be led in triumph by all-conquering Jack than he to be bound in slavery to Polly.

“Do you know any stories?” she asked him.

He was reduced to the humiliating confession: “No.”

“What a dunce you must be, mustn’t you?” said Polly.

He was reduced to the humiliating confession: “Yes.”

“Would you like me to teach you a story? But you must remember it, you know, and be able to tell it right to somebody else afterwards.”

He professed that it would afford him the highest mental gratification to be taught a story, and that he would humbly endeavour to retain it in his mind. Whereupon Polly, giving her hand a new little turn in his, expressive of settling down for enjoyment, commenced a long romance, of which every relishing clause began with the words: “So this,” or, “And so this.” As, “So this boy;” or, “So this fairy;” or, “And so this pie was four yards round, and two yards and a quarter deep.” The interest of the romance was derived from the intervention of this fairy to punish this boy for having a greedy appetite. To achieve which purpose, this fairy made this pie, and this boy ate and ate and ate, and his cheeks swelled and swelled and swelled. There were many tributary circumstances, but the forcible interest culminated in the total consumption of this pie, and the bursting of this boy. Truly he was a fine sight, Barbox Brothers, with serious attentive face, and ear bent down, much jostled on the pavements of the busy town, but afraid of losing a single incident of the epic, lest he should be examined in it by-and-by, and found deficient.

Thus they arrived at the hotel. And there he had to say at the bar, and said awkwardly enough; “I have found a little girl!”

The whole establishment turned out to look at the little girl. Nobody knew her; nobody could make out her name, as she set it forth—except one chamber-maid, who said it was Constantinople—which it wasn’t.

“I will dine with my young friend in a private room,” said Barbox Brothers to the hotel authorities, “and perhaps you will be so good as to let the police know that the pretty baby is here. I suppose she is sure to be inquired for soon, if she has not been already. Come along, Polly.”

Perfectly at ease and peace, Polly came along, but, finding the stairs rather stiff work, was carried up by Barbox Brothers. The dinner was a most transcendant success, and the Barbox sheepishness, under Polly’s directions how to mince her meat for her, and how to diffuse gravy over the plate with a liberal and equal hand, was another fine sight.

“And now,” said Polly, “while we are at dinner, you be good, and tell me that story I taught you.”

With the tremors of a Civil Service examination upon him, and very uncertain indeed, not only as to the epoch at which the pie appeared in history, but also as to the measurements of that indispensable fact, Barbox Brothers made a shaky beginning, but under encouragement did very fairly. There was a want of breadth observable in his rendering of the cheeks, as well as the appetite, of the boy; and there was a certain tameness in his fairy, referable to an under-current of desire to account for her. Still, as the first lumbering performance of a good-humoured monster, it passed muster.

“I told you to be good,” said Polly, “and you are good, ain’t you?”

“I hope so,” replied Barbox Brothers.

Such was his deference that Polly, elevated on a platform of sofa cushions in a chair at his right hand, encouraged him with a pat or two on the face from the greasy bowl of her spoon, and even with a gracious kiss. In getting on her feet upon her chair, however, to give him this last reward, she toppled forward among the dishes, and caused him to exclaim, as he effected her rescue: “Gracious Angels! Whew! I thought we were in the fire, Polly!”

“What a coward you are, ain’t you?” said Polly when replaced.

“Yes, I am rather nervous,” he replied. “Whew! Don’t, Polly! Don’t flourish your spoon, or you’ll go over sideways. Don’t tilt up your legs when you laugh, Polly, or you’ll go over backwards. Whew! Polly, Polly, Polly,” said Barbox Brothers, nearly succumbing to despair, “we are environed with dangers!”

Indeed, he could descry no security from the pitfalls that were yawning for Polly, but in proposing to her, after dinner, to sit upon a low stool. “I will, if you will,” said Polly. So, as peace of mind should go before all, he begged the waiter to wheel aside the table, bring a pack of cards, a couple of footstools, and a screen, and close in Polly and himself before the fire, as it were in a snug room within the room. Then, finest sight of all, was Barbox Brothers on his footstool, with a pint decanter on the rug, contemplating Polly as she built successfully, and growing blue in the face with holding his breath, lest he should blow the house down.

“How you stare, don’t you?” said Polly in a houseless pause.

Detected in the ignoble fact, he felt obliged to admit, apologetically:

“I am afraid I was looking rather hard at you, Polly.”

“Why do you stare?” asked Polly.

“I cannot,” he murmured to himself, “recall why.—I don’t know, Polly.”

“You must be a simpleton to do things and not know why, mustn’t you?” said Polly.

In spite of which reproof, he looked at the child again intently, as she bent her head over her card structure, her rich curls shading her face. “It is impossible,” he thought, “that I can ever have seen this pretty baby before. Can I have dreamed of her? In some sorrowful dream?”

He could make nothing of it. So he went into the building trade as a journeyman under Polly, and they built three stories high, four stories high; even five.

“I say! Who do you think is coming?” asked Polly, rubbing her eyes after tea.

He guessed: “The waiter?”

“No,” said Polly, “the dustman. I am getting sleepy.”

A new embarrassment for Barbox Brothers!

“I don’t think I am going to be fetched to-night,” said Polly. “What do you think?”

He thought not, either. After another quarter of an hour, the dustman not merely impending, but actually arriving, recourse was had to the Constantinopolitan chamber-maid: who cheerily undertook that the child should sleep in a comfortable and wholesome room, which she herself would share.

“And I know you will be careful, won’t you,” said Barbox Brothers, as a new fear dawned upon him, “that she don’t fall out of bed?”

Polly found this so highly entertaining that she was under the necessity of clutching him round the neck with both arms as he sat on his footstool picking up the cards, and rocking him to and fro, with her dimpled chin on his shoulder.

“Oh, what a coward you are, ain’t you?” said Polly. “Do you fall out of bed?”

“N—not generally, Polly.”

“No more do I.”

With that, Polly gave him a reassuring hug or two to keep him going, and then giving that confiding mite of a hand of hers to be swallowed up in the hand of the Constantinopolitan chamber-maid, trotted off, chattering, without a vestige of anxiety.

He looked after her, had the screen removed and the table and chairs replaced, and still looked after her. He paced the room for half an hour. “A most engaging little creature, but it’s not that. A most winning little voice, but it’s not that. That has much to do with it, but there is something more. How can it be that I seem to know this child? What was it she imperfectly recalled to me when I felt her touch in the street, and, looking down at her, saw her looking up at me?”

“Mr. Jackson!”

With a start he turned towards the sound of the subdued voice, and saw his answer standing at the door.

“Oh, Mr. Jackson, do not be severe with me! Speak a word of encouragement to me, I beseech you.”

“You are Polly’s mother.”

“Yes.”

Yes. Polly herself might come to this, one day. As you see what the rose was in its faded leaves; as you see what the summer growth of the woods was in their wintry branches; so Polly might be traced, one day, in a careworn woman like this, with her hair turned grey. Before him were the ashes of a dead fire that had once burned bright. This was the woman he had loved. This was the woman he had lost. Such had been the constancy of his imagination to her, so had Time spared her under its withholding, that now, seeing how roughly the inexorable hand had struck her, his soul was filled with pity and amazement.

He led her to a chair, and stood leaning on a corner of the chimney-piece, with his head resting on his hand, and his face half averted.

“Did you see me in the street, and show me to your child?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Is the little creature, then, a party to deceit?”

“I hope there is no deceit. I said to her, ‘We have lost our way, and I must try to find mine by myself. Go to that gentleman, and tell him you are lost. You shall be fetched by-and-by.’ Perhaps you have not thought how very young she is?”

“She is very self-reliant.”

“Perhaps because she is so young.”

He asked, after a short pause, “Why did you do this?”

“Oh, Mr. Jackson, do you ask me? In the hope that you might see something in my innocent child to soften your heart towards me. Not only towards me, but towards my husband.”

He suddenly turned about, and walked to the opposite end of the room. He came back again with a slower step, and resumed his former attitude, saying:

“I thought you had emigrated to America?”

“We did. But life went ill with us there, and we came back.”

“Do you live in this town?”

“Yes. I am a daily teacher of music here. My husband is a book-keeper.”

“Are you—forgive my asking—poor?”

“We earn enough for our wants. That is not our distress. My husband is very, very ill of a lingering disorder. He will never recover——”

“You check yourself. If it is for want of the encouraging word you spoke of, take it from me. I cannot forget the old time, Beatrice.”

“God bless you!” she replied with a burst of tears, and gave him her trembling hand.

“Compose yourself. I cannot be composed if you are not, for to see you weep distresses me beyond expression. Speak freely to me. Trust me.”

She shaded her face with her veil, and after a little while spoke calmly. Her voice had the ring of Polly’s.

“It is not that my husband’s mind is at all impaired by his bodily suffering, for I assure you that is not the case. But in his weakness, and in his knowledge that he is incurably ill, he cannot overcome the ascendancy of one idea. It preys upon him, embitters every moment of his painful life, and will shorten it.”

She stopping, he said again: “Speak freely to me. Trust me.”

“We have had five children before this darling, and they all lie in their little graves. He believes that they have withered away under a curse, and that it will blight this child like the rest.”

“Under what curse?”

“Both I and he have it on our conscience that we tried you very heavily, and I do not know but that, if I were as ill as he, I might suffer in my mind as he does. This is the constant burden:—‘I believe, Beatrice, I was the only friend that Mr. Jackson ever cared to make, though I was so much his junior. The more influence he acquired in the business, the higher he advanced me, and I was alone in his private confidence. I came between him and you, and I took you from him. We were both secret, and the blow fell when he was wholly unprepared. The anguish it caused a man so compressed must have been terrible; the wrath it awakened inappeasable. So, a curse came to be invoked on our poor, pretty little flowers, and they fall.’”

“And you, Beatrice,” he asked, when she had ceased to speak, and there had been a silence afterwards, “how say you?”

“Until within these few weeks I was afraid of you, and I believed that you would never, never forgive.”

“Until within these few weeks,” he repeated. “Have you changed your opinion of me within these few weeks?”

“Yes.”

“For what reason?”

“I was getting some pieces of music in a shop in this town, when, to my terror, you came in. As I veiled my face and stood in the dark end of the shop, I heard you explain that you wanted a musical instrument for a bedridden girl. Your voice and manner were so softened, you showed such interest in its selection, you took it away yourself with so much tenderness of care and pleasure, that I knew you were a man with a most gentle heart. Oh, Mr. Jackson, Mr. Jackson, if you could have felt the refreshing rain of tears that followed for me!”

Was Phoebe playing at that moment on her distant couch? He seemed to hear her.

“I inquired in the shop where you lived, but could get no information. As I had heard you say that you were going back by the next train (but you did not say where), I resolved to visit the station at about that time of day, as often as I could, between my lessons, on the chance of seeing you again. I have been there very often, but saw you no more until to-day. You were meditating as you walked the street, but the calm expression of your face emboldened me to send my child to you. And when I saw you bend your head to speak tenderly to her, I prayed to GOD to forgive me for having ever brought a sorrow on it. I now pray to you to forgive me, and to forgive my husband. I was very young, he was young too, and, in the ignorant hardihood of such a time of life, we don’t know what we do to those who have undergone more discipline. You generous man! You good man! So to raise me up and make nothing of my crime against you!”—for he would not see her on her knees, and soothed her as a kind father might have soothed an erring daughter—“thank you, bless you, thank you!”

When he next spoke, it was after having drawn aside the window curtain and looked out awhile. Then he only said:

“Is Polly asleep?”

“Yes. As I came in, I met her going away up-stairs, and put her to bed myself.”

“Leave her with me for to-morrow, Beatrice, and write me your address on this leaf of my pocket-book. In the evening I will bring her home to you—and to her father.”

* * *

“Hallo!” cried Polly, putting her saucy sunny face in at the door next morning when breakfast was ready: “I thought I was fetched last night?”

“So you were, Polly, but I asked leave to keep you here for the day, and to take you home in the evening.”

“Upon my word!” said Polly. “You are very cool, ain’t you?”

However, Polly seemed to think it a good idea, and added: “I suppose I must give you a kiss, though you are cool.” The kiss given and taken, they sat down to breakfast in a highly conversational tone.

“Of course, you are going to amuse me?” said Polly.

“Oh, of course!” said Barbox Brothers.

In the pleasurable height of her anticipations, Polly found it indispensable to put down her piece of toast, cross one of her little fat knees over the other, and bring her little fat right hand down into her left hand with a business-like slap. After this gathering of herself together, Polly, by that time a mere heap of dimples, asked in a wheedling manner:

“What are we going to do, you dear old thing?”

“Why, I was thinking,” said Barbox Brothers, “—but are you fond of horses, Polly?”

“Ponies, I am,” said Polly, “especially when their tails are long. But horses—n—no—too big, you know.”

“Well,” pursued Barbox Brothers, in a spirit of grave mysterious confidence adapted to the importance of the consultation, “I did see yesterday, Polly, on the walls, pictures of two long-tailed ponies, speckled all over——”

“No, no, NO!” cried Polly, in an ecstatic desire to linger on the charming details. “Not speckled all over!”

“Speckled all over. Which ponies jump through hoops——”

“No, no, NO!” cried Polly as before. “They never jump through hoops!”

“Yes, they do. Oh, I assure you they do! And eat pie in pinafores——”

“Ponies eating pie in pinafores!” said Polly. “What a story-teller you are, ain’t you?”

“Upon my honour.—And fire off guns.”

(Polly hardly seemed to see the force of the ponies resorting to fire-arms.)

“And I was thinking,” pursued the exemplary Barbox, “that if you and I were to go to the Circus where these ponies are, it would do our constitutions good.”

“Does that mean amuse us?” inquired Polly. “What long words you do use, don’t you?”

Apologetic for having wandered out of his depth, he replied: “That means amuse us. That is exactly what it means. There are many other wonders besides the ponies, and we shall see them all. Ladies and gentlemen in spangled dresses, and elephants and lions and tigers.”

Polly became observant of the teapot, with a curled-up nose indicating some uneasiness of mind. “They never get out, of course,” she remarked as a mere truism.

“The elephants and lions and tigers? Oh, dear no!”

“Oh, dear no!” said Polly. “And of course nobody’s afraid of the ponies shooting anybody.”

“Not the least in the world.”

“No, no, not the least in the world,” said Polly.

“I was also thinking,” proceeded Barbox, “that if we were to look in at the toy-shop, to choose a doll——”

“Not dressed!” cried Polly with a clap of her hands. “No, no, NO, not dressed!”

“Full-dressed. Together with a house, and all things necessary for housekeeping——”

Polly gave a little scream, and seemed in danger of falling into a swoon of bliss. “What a darling you are!” she languidly exclaimed, leaning back in her chair. “Come and be hugged, or I must come and hug you.”

This resplendent programme was carried into execution with the utmost rigour of the law. It being essential to make the purchase of the doll its first feature—or that lady would have lost the ponies—the toy-shop expedition took precedence. Polly in the magic warehouse, with a doll as large as herself under each arm, and a neat assortment of some twenty more on view upon the counter, did indeed present a spectacle of indecision not quite compatible with unalloyed happiness, but the light cloud passed. The lovely specimen oftenest chosen, oftenest rejected, and finally abided by, was of Circassian descent, possessing as much boldness of beauty as was reconcilable with extreme feebleness of mouth, and combining a sky-blue silk pelisse with rose-coloured satin trousers, and a black velvet hat: which this fair stranger to our northern shores would seem to have founded on the portraits of the late Duchess of Kent. The name this distinguished foreigner brought with her from beneath the glowing skies of a sunny clime was (on Polly’s authority) Miss Melluka, and the costly nature of her outfit as a housekeeper, from the Barbox coffers, may be inferred from the two facts that her silver tea-spoons were as large as her kitchen poker, and that the proportions of her watch exceeded those of her frying-pan. Miss Melluka was graciously pleased to express her entire approbation of the Circus, and so was Polly; for the ponies were speckled, and brought down nobody when they fired, and the savagery of the wild beasts appeared to be mere smoke—which article, in fact, they did produce in large quantities from their insides. The Barbox absorption in the general subject throughout the realisation of these delights was again a sight to see, nor was it less worthy to behold at dinner, when he drank to Miss Melluka, tied stiff in a chair opposite to Polly (the fair Circassian possessing an unbendable spine), and even induced the waiter to assist in carrying out with due decorum the prevailing glorious idea. To wind up, there came the agreeable fever of getting Miss Melluka and all her wardrobe and rich possessions into a fly with Polly, to be taken home. But, by that time, Polly had become unable to look upon such accumulated joys with waking eyes, and had withdrawn her consciousness into the wonderful Paradise of a child’s sleep. “Sleep, Polly, sleep,” said Barbox Brothers, as her head dropped on his shoulder; “you shall not fall out of this bed easily, at any rate!”

What rustling piece of paper he took from his pocket, and carefully folded into the bosom of Polly’s frock, shall not be mentioned. He said nothing about it, and nothing shall be said about it. They drove to a modest suburb of the great ingenious town, and stopped at the fore-court of a small house. “Do not wake the child,” said Barbox Brothers softly to the driver; “I will carry her in as she is.”

Greeting the light at the opened door which was held by Polly’s mother, Polly’s bearer passed on with mother and child in to a ground-floor room. There, stretched on a sofa, lay a sick man, sorely wasted, who covered his eyes with his emaciated hand.

“Tresham,” said Barbox in a kindly voice, “I have brought you back your Polly, fast asleep. Give me your hand, and tell me you are better.”

The sick man reached forth his right hand, and bowed his head over the hand into which it was taken, and kissed it. “Thank you, thank you! I may say that I am well and happy.”

“That’s brave,” said Barbox. “Tresham, I have a fancy—Can you make room for me beside you here?”

He sat down on the sofa as he said the words, cherishing the plump peachey cheek that lay uppermost on his shoulder.

“I have a fancy, Tresham (I am getting quite an old fellow now, you know, and old fellows may take fancies into their heads sometimes), to give up Polly, having found her, to no one but you. Will you take her from me?”

As the father held out his arms for the child, each of the two men looked steadily at the other.

“She is very dear to you, Tresham?”

“Unutterably dear.”

“God bless her! It is not much, Polly,” he continued, turning his eyes upon her peaceful face as he apostrophized her, “it is not much, Polly, for a blind and sinful man to invoke a blessing on something so far better than himself as a little child is; but it would be much—much upon his cruel head, and much upon his guilty soul—if he could be so wicked as to invoke a curse. He had better have a millstone round his neck, and be cast into the deepest sea. Live and thrive, my pretty baby!” Here he kissed her. “Live and prosper, and become in time the mother of other little children, like the Angels who behold The Father’s face!”

He kissed her again, gave her up gently to both her parents, and went out.

But he went not to Wales. No, he never went to Wales. He went straightway for another stroll about the town, and he looked in upon the people at their work, and at their play, here, there, every-there, and where not. For he was Barbox Brothers and Co. now, and had taken thousands of partners into the solitary firm.

He had at length got back to his hotel room, and was standing before his fire refreshing himself with a glass of hot drink which he had stood upon the chimney-piece, when he heard the town clocks striking, and, referring to his watch, found the evening to have so slipped away, that they were striking twelve. As he put up his watch again, his eyes met those of his reflection in the chimney-glass.

“Why, it’s your birthday already,” he said, smiling. “You are looking very well. I wish you many happy returns of the day.”

He had never before bestowed that wish upon himself. “By Jupiter!” he discovered, “it alters the whole case of running away from one’s birthday! It’s a thing to explain to Phoebe. Besides, here is quite a long story to tell her, that has sprung out of the road with no story. I’ll go back, instead of going on. I’ll go back by my friend Lamps’s Up X presently.”

He went back to Mugby Junction, and, in point of fact, he established himself at Mugby Junction. It was the convenient place to live in, for brightening Phoebe’s life. It was the convenient place to live in, for having her taught music by Beatrice. It was the convenient place to live in, for occasionally borrowing Polly. It was the convenient place to live in, for being joined at will to all sorts of agreeable places and persons. So, he became settled there, and, his house standing in an elevated situation, it is noteworthy of him in conclusion, as Polly herself might (not irreverently) have put it:

“There was an Old Barbox who lived on a hill,

And if he ain’t gone, he lives there still.”

* * *

HERE FOLLOWS THE SUBSTANCE OF WHAT WAS SEEN, HEARD, OR OTHERWISE PICKED UP, BY THE GENTLEMAN FOR NOWHERE, IN HIS CAREFUL STUDY OF THE JUNCTION.

MAIN LINE

THE BOY AT MUGBY

Charles Dickens

I am the boy at Mugby. That’s about what I am.

You don’t know what I mean? What a pity! But I think you do. I think you must. Look here. I am the boy at what is called The Refreshment Room at Mugby Junction, and what’s proudest boast is, that it never yet refreshed a mortal being.

Up in a corner of the Down Refreshment Room at Mugby Junction, in the height of twenty-seven cross draughts (I’ve often counted ’em while they brush the First-Class hair twenty-seven ways), behind the bottles, among the glasses, bounded on the nor’west by the beer, stood pretty far to the right of a metallic object that’s at times the tea-urn and at times the soup-tureen, according to the nature of the last twang imparted to its contents which are the same groundwork, fended off from the traveller by a barrier of stale sponge-cakes erected atop of the counter, and lastly exposed sideways to the glare of Our Missis’s eye—you ask a Boy so sitiwated, next time you stop in a hurry at Mugby, for anything to drink; you take particular notice that he’ll try to seem not to hear you, that he’ll appear in a absent manner to survey the Line through a transparent medium composed of your head and body, and that he won’t serve you as long as you can possibly bear it. That’s me.

What a lark it is! We are the Model Establishment, we are, at Mugby. Other Refreshment Rooms send their imperfect young ladies up to be finished off by our Missis. For some of the young ladies, when they’re new to the business, come into it mild! Ah! Our Missis, she soon takes that out of ’em. Why, I originally come into the business meek myself. But Our Missis, she soon took that out of me.

What a delightful lark it is! I look upon us Refreshmenters as ockipying the only proudly independent footing on the Line. There’s Papers, for instance—my honourable friend, if he will allow me to call him so—him as belongs to Smith’s bookstall. Why, he no more dares to be up to our Refreshmenting games than he dares to jump a top of a locomotive with her steam at full pressure, and cut away upon her alone, driving himself, at limited-mail speed. Papers, he’d get his head punched at every compartment, first, second, and third, the whole length of a train, if he was to ventur to imitate my demeanour. It’s the same with the porters, the same with the guards, the same with the ticket clerks, the same the whole way up to the secretary, traffic-manager, or very chairman. There ain’t a one among ’em on the nobly independent footing we are. Did you ever catch one of them, when you wanted anything of him, making a system of surveying the Line through a transparent medium composed of your head and body? I should hope not.

You should see our Bandolining Room at Mugby Junction. It’s led to by the door behind the counter, which you’ll notice usually stands ajar, and it’s the room where Our Missis and our young ladies Bandolines their hair. You should see ’em at it, betwixt trains, Bandolining away, as if they was anointing themselves for the combat. When you’re telegraphed, you should see their noses all a-going up with scorn, as if it was a part of the working of the same Cooke and Wheatstone electrical machinery. You should hear Our Missis give the word, “Here comes the Beast to be Fed!” and then you should see ’em indignantly skipping across the Line, from the Up to the Down, or Wicer Warsaw, and begin to pitch the stale pastry into the plates, and chuck the sawdust sangwiches under the glass covers, and get out the—ha, ha, ha!—the sherry,—O my eye, my eye!—for your Refreshment.

It’s only in the Isle of the Brave and Land of the Free (by which, of course, I mean to say Britannia) that Refreshmenting is so effective, so ’olesome, so constitutional a check upon the public. There was a Foreigner, which having politely, with his hat off, beseeched our young ladies and Our Missis for “a leetel gloss host prarndee,” and having had the Line surveyed through him by all and no other acknowledgment, was a-proceeding at last to help himself, as seems to be the custom in his own country, when Our Missis, with her hair almost a-coming un-Bandolined with rage, and her eyes omitting sparks, flew at him, cotched the decanter out of his hand, and said, “Put it down! I won’t allow that!” The foreigner turned pale, stepped back with his arms stretched out in front of him, his hands clasped, and his shoulders riz, and exclaimed: “Ah! Is it possible, this! That these disdaineous females and this ferocious old woman are placed here by the administration, not only to empoison the voyagers, but to affront them! Great Heaven! How arrives it? The English people. Or is he then a slave? Or idiot?” Another time, a merry, wideawake American gent had tried the sawdust and spit it out, and had tried the Sherry and spit that out, and had tried in vain to sustain exhausted natur upon Butter-Scotch, and had been rather extra Bandolined and Line-surveyed through, when, as the bell was ringing and he paid Our Missis, he says, very loud and good-tempered: “I tell Yew what ’tis, ma’arm. I la’af. Theer! I la’af. I Dew. I oughter ha’ seen most things, for I hail from the Onlimited side of the Atlantic Ocean, and I haive travelled right slick over the Limited, head on through Jee-rusalemm and the East, and likeways France and Italy, Europe Old World, and am now upon the track to the Chief Europian Village; but such an Institution as Yew, and Yewer young ladies, and Yewer fixin’s solid and liquid, afore the glorious Tarnal I never did see yet! And if I hain’t found the eighth wonder of monarchical Creation, in finding Yew and Yewer young ladies, and Yewer fixin’s solid and liquid, all as aforesaid, established in a country where the people air not absolute Loo-naticks, I am Extra Double Darned with a Nip and Frizzle to the innermostest grit! Wheerfur—Theer!—I la’af! I Dew, ma’arm. I la’af!” And so he went, stamping and shaking his sides, along the platform all the way to his own compartment.

I think it was her standing up agin the Foreigner as giv’ Our Missis the idea of going over to France, and droring a comparison betwixt Refreshmenting as followed among the frog-eaters, and Refreshmenting as triumphant in the Isle of the Brave and Land of the Free (by which, of course, I mean to say agin, Britannia). Our young ladies, Miss Whiff, Miss Piff, and Mrs. Sniff, was unanimous opposed to her going; for, as they says to Our Missis one and all, it is well beknown to the hends of the herth as no other nation except Britain has a idea of anythink, but above all of business. Why then should you tire yourself to prove what is already proved? Our Missis, however (being a teazer at all pints) stood out grim obstinate, and got a return pass by Southeastern Tidal, to go right through, if such should be her dispositions, to Marseilles.

Sniff is husband to Mrs. Sniff, and is a regular insignificant cove. He looks arter the sawdust department in a back room, and is sometimes, when we are very hard put to it, let behind the counter with a corkscrew; but never when it can be helped, his demeanour towards the public being disgusting servile. How Mrs. Sniff ever come so far to lower herself as to marry him, I don’t know; but I suppose he does, and I should think he wished he didn’t, for he leads a awful life. Mrs. Sniff couldn’t be much harder with him if he was public. Similarly, Miss Whiff and Miss Piff, taking the tone of Mrs. Sniff, they shoulder Sniff about when he is let in with a corkscrew, and they whisk things out of his hands when in his servility he is a-going to let the public have ’em, and they snap him up when in the crawling baseness of his spirit he is a-going to answer a public question, and they drore more tears into his eyes than ever the mustard does which he all day long lays on to the sawdust. (But it ain’t strong.) Once, when Sniff had the repulsiveness to reach across to get the milk-pot to hand over for a baby, I see Our Missis in her rage catch him by both his shoulders, and spin him out into the Bandolining Room.

But Mrs. Sniff,—how different! She’s the one! She’s the one as you’ll notice to be always looking another way from you, when you look at her. She’s the one with the small waist buckled in tight in front, and with the lace cuffs at her wrists, which she puts on the edge of the counter before her, and stands a smoothing while the public foams. This smoothing the cuffs and looking another way while the public foams is the last accomplishment taught to the young ladies as come to Mugby to be finished by Our Missis; and it’s always taught by Mrs. Sniff.

When Our Missis went away upon her journey, Mrs. Sniff was left in charge. She did hold the public in check most beautiful! In all my time, I never see half so many cups of tea given without milk to people as wanted it with, nor half so many cups of tea with milk given to people as wanted it without. When foaming ensued, Mrs. Sniff would say: “Then you’d better settle it among yourselves, and change with one another.” It was a most highly delicious lark. I enjoyed the Refreshmenting business more than ever, and was so glad I had took to it when young.

Our Missis returned. It got circulated among the young ladies, and it as it might be penetrated to me through the crevices of the Bandolining Room, that she had Orrors to reveal, if revelations so contemptible could be dignified with the name. Agitation become awakened. Excitement was up in the stirrups. Expectation stood a-tiptoe. At length it was put forth that on our slacked evening in the week, and at our slackest time of that evening betwixt trains, Our Missis would give her views of foreign Refreshmenting, in the Bandolining Room.

It was arranged tasteful for the purpose. The Bandolining table and glass was hid in a corner, a arm-chair was elevated on a packing-case for Our Missis’s ockypation, a table and a tumbler of water (no sherry in it, thankee) was placed beside it. Two of the pupils, the season being autumn, and hollyhocks and dahlias being in, ornamented the wall with three devices in those flowers. On one might be read, “MAY ALBION NEVER LEARN;” on another “KEEP THE PUBLIC DOWN;” on another, “OUR REFRESHMENTING CHARTER.” The whole had a beautiful appearance, with which the beauty of the sentiments corresponded.

On Our Missis’s brow was wrote Severity, as she ascended the fatal platform. (Not that that was anythink new.) Miss Whiff and Miss Piff sat at her feet. Three chairs from the Waiting Room might have been perceived by a average eye, in front of her, on which the pupils was accommodated. Behind them a very close observer might have discerned a Boy. Myself.

“Where,” said Our Missis, glancing gloomily around, “is Sniff?”

“I thought it better,” answered Mrs. Sniff, “that he should not be let to come in. He is such an Ass.”

“No doubt,” assented Our Missis. “But for that reason is it not desirable to improve his mind?”

“Oh, nothing will ever improve him,” said Mrs. Sniff.

“However,” pursued Our Missis, “call him in, Ezekiel.”

I called him in. The appearance of the low-minded cove was hailed with disapprobation from all sides, on account of his having brought his corkscrew with him. He pleaded “the force of habit.”

“The force!” said Mrs. Sniff. “Don’t let us have you talking about force, for Gracious’ sake. There! Do stand still where you are, with your back against the wall.”

He is a smiling piece of vacancy, and he smiled in the mean way in which he will even smile at the public if he gets a chance (language can say no meaner of him), and he stood upright near the door with the back of his head agin the wall, as if he was a waiting for somebody to come and measure his heighth for the Army.

“I should not enter, ladies,” says Our Missis, “on the revolting disclosures I am about to make, if it was not in the hope that they will cause you to be yet more implacable in the exercise of the power you wield in a constitutional country, and yet more devoted to the constitutional motto which I see before me,”—it was behind her, but the words sounded better so,—“‘May Albion never learn!’”

Here the pupils as had made the motto admired it, and cried, “Hear! Hear! Hear!” Sniff, showing an inclination to join in chorus, got himself frowned down by every brow.

“The baseness of the French,” pursued Our Missis, “as displayed in the fawning nature of their Refreshmenting, equals, if not surpasses, anythink as was ever heard of the baseness of the celebrated Buonaparte.”

Miss Whiff, Miss Piff, and me, we drored a heavy breath, equal to saying, “We thought as much!” Miss Whiff and Miss Piff seeming to object to my droring mine along with theirs, I drored another to aggravate ’em.

“Shall I be believed,” says Our Missis, with flashing eyes, “when I tell you that no sooner had I set my foot upon that treacherous shore——”

Here Sniff, either bursting out mad, or thinking aloud, says, in a low voice: “Feet. Plural, you know.”

The cowering that come upon him when he was spurned by all eyes, added to his being beneath contempt, was sufficient punishment for a cove so grovelling. In the midst of a silence rendered more impressive by the turned-up female noses with which it was pervaded, Our Missis went on:

“Shall I be believed when I tell you, that no sooner had I landed,” this word with a killing look at Sniff, “on that treacherous shore, than I was ushered into a Refreshment Room where there were—I do not exaggerate—actually eatable things to eat?”

A groan burst from the ladies. I not only did myself the honour of jining, but also of lengthening it out.

“Where there were,” Our Missis added, “not only eatable things to eat, but also drinkable things to drink?”

A murmur, swelling almost into a scream, ariz. Miss Piff, trembling with indignation, called out, “Name?”

“I will name,” said Our Missis. “There was roast fowls, hot and cold; there was smoking roast veal surrounded with browned potatoes; there was hot soup with (again I ask shall I be credited?) nothing bitter in it, and no flour to choke off the consumer; there was a variety of cold dishes set off with jelly; there was salad; there was—mark me!—fresh pastry, and that of a light construction; there was a luscious show of fruit; there was bottles and decanters of sound small wine, of every size, and adapted to every pocket; the same odious statement will apply to brandy; and these were set out upon the counter so that all could help themselves.”

Our Missis’s lips so quivered, that Mrs. Sniff, though scarcely less convulsed than she were, got up and held the tumbler to them.

“This,” proceeds Our Missis, “was my first unconstitutional experience. Well would it have been if it had been my last and worst. But no. As I proceeded farther into that enslaved and ignorant land, its aspect became more hideous. I need not explain to this assembly the ingredients and formation of the British Refreshment sangwich?”

Universal laughter,—except from Sniff, who, as sangwich-cutter, shook his head in a state of the utmost dejection as he stood with it agin the wall.

“Well!” said Our Missis, with dilated nostrils. “Take a fresh, crisp, long, crusty penny loaf made of the whitest and best flour. Cut it longwise through the middle. Insert a fair and nicely fitting slice of ham. Tie a smart piece of ribbon round the middle of the whole to bind it together. Add at one end a neat wrapper of clean white paper by which to hold it. And the universal French Refreshment sangwich busts on your disgusted vision.”

A cry of “Shame!” from all—except Sniff, which rubbed his stomach with a soothing hand.

“I need not,” said Our Missis, “explain to this assembly the usual formation and fitting of the British Refreshment Room?”

No, no, and laughter. Sniff agin shaking his head in low spirits agin the wall.

“Well,” said Our Missis, “what would you say to a general decoration of everythink, to hangings (sometimes elegant), to easy velvet furniture, to abundance of little tables, to abundance of little seats, to brisk bright waiters, to great convenience, to a pervading cleanliness and tastefulness positively addressing the public, and making the Beast thinking itself worth the pains?”

Contemptuous fury on the part of all the ladies. Mrs. Sniff looking as if she wanted somebody to hold her, and everbody else looking as if they’d rayther not.

“Three times,” said Our Missis, working herself into a truly terrimenjious state,—“three times did I see these shameful things, only between the coast and Paris, and not counting either: at Hazebroucke, at Arras, at Amiens. But worse remains. Tell me, what would you call a person who should propose in England that there should be kept, say at our own model Mugby Junction, pretty baskets, each holding an assorted cold lunch and dessert for one, each at a certain fixed price, and each within a passenger’s power to take away, to empty in the carriage at perfect leisure, and to return at another station fifty or a hundred miles farther on?”

There was disagreement what such a person should be called. Whether revolutionise, atheist, Bright (I said him), or Un-English. Miss Piff screeched her shrill opinion last, in the words: “A malignant maniac!”

“I adopt,” says Our Missis, “the brand set upon such a person by the righteous indignation of my friend Miss Piff. A malignant maniac. Know, then, that that malignant maniac has sprung from the congenial soil of France, and that his malignant madness was in unchecked action on this same part of my journey.”

I noticed that Sniff was a-rubbing his hands, and that Mrs. Sniff had got her eye upon him. But I did not take more particular notice, owing to the excited state in which the young ladies was, and to feeling myself called upon to keep it up with a howl.

“On my experience south of Paris,” said Our Missis, in a deep tone, “I will not expatiate. Too loathsome were the task! But fancy this. Fancy a guard coming round, with the train at full speed, to inquire how many for dinner. Fancy his telegraphing forward the number of dinners. Fancy every one expected, and the table elegantly laid for the complete party. Fancy a charming dinner, in a charming room, and the head-cook, concerned for the honour of every dish, superintending in his clean white jacket and cap. Fancy the Beast travelling six hundred miles on end, very fast, and with great punctuality, yet being taught to expect all this to be done for it!”

A spirited chorus of “The Beast!”

I noticed that Sniff was agin a-rubbing his stomach with a soothing hand, and that he had drored up one leg. But agin I didn’t take particular notice, looking on myself as called upon to stimulate public feeling. It being a lark besides.

“Putting everything together,” said Our Missis, “French Refreshmenting comes to this, and oh, it comes to a nice total! First: eatable things to eat, and drinkable things to drink.”

A groan from the young ladies, kep’ up by me.

“Second: convenience, and even elegance.”

Another groan from the young ladies, kep’ up by me.

“Third: moderate charges.”

This time a groan from me, kep’ up by the young ladies.

“Fourth:—and here,” says Our Missis, “I claim your angriest sympathy,—attention, common civility, nay, even politeness!”

Me and the young ladies regularly raging mad all together.

“And I cannot in conclusion,” says Our Missis, with her spitefullest sneer, “give you a completer pictur of that despicable nation (after what I have related), than assuring you that they wouldn’t bear our constitutional ways and noble independence at Mugby Junction, for a single month, and that they would turn us to the right-about and put another system in our places, as soon as look at us; perhaps sooner, for I do not believe they have the good taste to care to look at us twice.”

The swelling tumult was arrested in its rise. Sniff, bore away by his servile disposition, had drored up his leg with a higher and a higher relish, and was now discovered to be waving his corkscrew over his head. It was at this moment that Mrs. Sniff, who had kep’ her eye upon him like the fabled obelisk, descended on her victim. Our Missis followed them both out, and cries was heard in the sawdust department.

You come into the Down Refreshment Room, at the Junction, making believe you don’t know me, and I’ll pint you out with my right thumb over my shoulder which is Our Missis, and which is Miss Whiff, and which is Miss Piff, and which is Mrs. Sniff. But you won’t get a chance to see Sniff, because he disappeared that night. Whether he perished, tore to pieces, I cannot say; but his corkscrew alone remains, to bear witness to the servility of his disposition.

No. 1 BRANCH LINE

THE SIGNAL-MAN

Charles Dickens

“Halloa! Below there!”

When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short pole. One would have thought, considering the nature of the ground, that he could not have doubted from what quarter the voice came; but instead of looking up to where I stood on the top of the steep cutting nearly over his head, he turned himself about, and looked down the Line. There was something remarkable in his manner of doing so, though I could not have said for my life what. But I know it was remarkable enough to attract my notice, even though his figure was foreshortened and shadowed, down in the deep trench, and mine was high above him, so steeped in the glow of an angry sunset, that I had shaded my eyes with my hand before I saw him at all.

“Halloa! Below!”

From looking down the Line, he turned himself about again, and, raising his eyes, saw my figure high above him.

“Is there any path by which I can come down and speak to you?”

He looked up at me without replying, and I looked down at him without pressing him too soon with a repetition of my idle question. Just then there came a vague vibration in the earth and air, quickly changing into a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush that caused me to start back, as though it had force to draw me down. When such vapour as rose to my height from this rapid train had passed me, and was skimming away over the landscape, I looked down again, and saw him refurling the flag he had shown while the train went by.

I repeated my inquiry. After a pause, during which he seemed to regard me with fixed attention, he motioned with his rolled-up flag towards a point on my level, some two or three hundred yards distant. I called down to him, “All right!” and made for that point. There, by dint of looking closely about me, I found a rough zigzag descending path notched out, which I followed.

The cutting was extremely deep, and unusually precipitate. It was made through a clammy stone, that became oozier and wetter as I went down. For these reasons, I found the way long enough to give me time to recall a singular air of reluctance or compulsion with which he had pointed out the path.

When I came down low enough upon the zigzag descent to see him again, I saw that he was standing between the rails on the way by which the train had lately passed, in an attitude as if he were waiting for me to appear. He had his left hand at his chin, and that left elbow rested on his right hand, crossed over his breast. His attitude was one of such expectation and watchfulness that I stopped a moment, wondering at it.

I resumed my downward way, and stepping out upon the level of the railroad, and drawing nearer to him, saw that he was a dark, sallow man, with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows. His post was in as solitary and dismal a place as ever I saw. On either side, a dripping-wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of sky; the perspective one way only a crooked prolongation of this great dungeon; the shorter perspective in the other direction terminating in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel, in whose massive architecture there was a barbarous, depressing, and forbidding air. So little sunlight ever found its way to this spot, that it had an earthy, deadly smell; and so much cold wind rushed through it, that it struck chill to me, as if I had left the natural world.

Before he stirred, I was near enough to him to have touched him. Not even then removing his eyes from mine, he stepped back one step, and lifted his hand.

This was a lonesome post to occupy (I said), and it had riveted my attention when I looked down from up yonder. A visitor was a rarity, I should suppose; not an unwelcome rarity, I hoped? In me, he merely saw a man who had been shut up within narrow limits all his life, and who, being at last set free, had a newly-awakened interest in these great works. To such purpose I spoke to him; but I am far from sure of the terms I used; for, besides that I am not happy in opening any conversation, there was something in the man that daunted me.

He directed a most curious look towards the red light near the tunnel’s mouth, and looked all about it, as if something were missing from it, and then looked at me.

That light was part of his charge? Was it not?

He answered in a low voice: “Don’t you know it is?”

The monstrous thought came into my mind, as I perused the fixed eyes and the saturnine face, that this was a spirit, not a man. I have speculated since, whether there may have been infection in his mind.

In my turn, I stepped back. But in making the action, I detected in his eyes some latent fear of me. This put the monstrous thought to flight.

“You look at me,” I said, forcing a smile, “as if you had a dread of me.”

“I was doubtful,” he returned, “whether I had seen you before.”

“Where?”

He pointed to the red light he had looked at.

“There?” I said.

Intently watchful of me, he replied (but without sound), “Yes.”

“My good fellow, what should I do there? However, be that as it may, I never was there, you may swear.”

“I think I may,” he rejoined. “Yes; I am sure I may.”

His manner cleared, like my own. He replied to my remarks with readiness, and in well-chosen words. Had he much to do there? Yes; that was to say, he had enough responsibility to bear; but exactness and watchfulness were what was required of him, and of actual work—manual labour—he had next to none. To change that signal, to trim those lights, and to turn this iron handle now and then, was all he had to do under that head. Regarding those many long and lonely hours of which I seemed to make so much, he could only say that the routine of his life had shaped itself into that form, and he had grown used to it. He had taught himself a language down here,—if only to know it by sight, and to have formed his own crude ideas of its pronunciation, could be called learning it. He had also worked at fractions and decimals, and tried a little algebra; but he was, and had been as a boy, a poor hand at figures. Was it necessary for him when on duty always to remain in that channel of damp air, and could he never rise into the sunshine from between those high stone walls? Why, that depended upon times and circumstances. Under some conditions there would be less upon the Line than under others, and the same held good as to certain hours of the day and night. In bright weather, he did choose occasions for getting a little above these lower shadows; but, being at all times liable to be called by his electric bell, and at such times listening for it with redoubled anxiety, the relief was less than I would suppose.

He took me into his box, where there was a fire, a desk for an official book in which he had to make certain entries, a telegraphic instrument with its dial, face, and needles, and the little bell of which he had spoken. On my trusting that he would excuse the remark that he had been well educated, and (I hoped I might say without offence) perhaps educated above that station, he observed that instances of slight incongruity in such wise would rarely be found wanting among large bodies of men; that he had heard it was so in workhouses, in the police force, even in that last desperate resource, the army; and that he knew it was so, more or less, in any great railway staff. He had been, when young (if I could believe it, sitting in that hut,—he scarcely could), a student of natural philosophy, and had attended lectures; but he had run wild, misused his opportunities, gone down, and never risen again. He had no complaint to offer about that. He had made his bed, and he lay upon it. It was far too late to make another.

All that I have here condensed he said in a quiet manner, with his grave, dark regards divided between me and the fire. He threw in the word, “Sir,” from time to time, and especially when he referred to his youth,—as though to request me to understand that he claimed to be nothing but what I found him. He was several times interrupted by the little bell, and had to read off messages, and send replies. Once he had to stand without the door, and display a flag as a train passed, and make some verbal communication to the driver. In the discharge of his duties, I observed him to be remarkably exact and vigilant, breaking off his discourse at a syllable, and remaining silent until what he had to do was done.

In a word, I should have set this man down as one of the safest of men to be employed in that capacity, but for the circumstance that while he was speaking to me he twice broke off with a fallen colour, turned his face towards the little bell when it did NOT ring, opened the door of the hut (which was kept shut to exclude the unhealthy damp), and looked out towards the red light near the mouth of the tunnel. On both of those occasions, he came back to the fire with the inexplicable air upon him which I had remarked, without being able to define, when we were so far asunder.

Said I, when I rose to leave him, “You almost make me think that I have met with a contented man.”

(I am afraid I must acknowledge that I said it to lead him on.)

“I believe I used to be so,” he rejoined, in the low voice in which he had first spoken; “but I am troubled, sir, I am troubled.”

He would have recalled the words if he could. He had said them, however, and I took them up quickly.

“With what? What is your trouble?”

“It is very difficult to impart, sir. It is very, very difficult to speak of. If ever you make me another visit, I will try to tell you.”

“But I expressly intend to make you another visit. Say, when shall it be?”

“I go off early in the morning, and I shall be on again at ten to-morrow night, sir.”

“I will come at eleven.”

He thanked me, and went out at the door with me. “I’ll show my white light, sir,” he said, in his peculiar low voice, “till you have found the way up. When you have found it, don’t call out! And when you are at the top, don’t call out!”

His manner seemed to make the place strike colder to me, but I said no more than, “Very well.”

“And when you come down to-morrow night, don’t call out! Let me ask you a parting question. What made you cry, ‘Halloa! Below there!’ to-night?”

“Heaven knows,” said I. “I cried something to that effect——”

“Not to that effect, sir. Those were the very words. I know them well.”

“Admit those were the very words. I said them, no doubt, because I saw you below.”

“For no other reason?”

“What other reason could I possibly have?”

“You had no feeling that they were conveyed to you in any supernatural way?”

“No.”

He wished me good-night, and held up his light. I walked by the side of the down Line of rails (with a very disagreeable sensation of a train coming behind me) until I found the path. It was easier to mount than to descend, and I got back to my inn without any adventure.

Punctual to my appointment, I placed my foot on the first notch of the zigzag next night, as the distant clocks were striking eleven. He was waiting for me at the bottom, with his white light on. “I have not called out,” I said, when we came close together; “may I speak now?” “By all means, sir.” “Good-night, then, and here’s my hand.” “Good-night, sir, and here’s mine.” With that we walked side by side to his box, entered it, closed the door, and sat down by the fire.

“I have made up my mind, sir,” he began, bending forward as soon as we were seated, and speaking in a tone but a little above a whisper, “that you shall not have to ask me twice what troubles me. I took you for some one else yesterday evening. That troubles me.”

“That mistake?”

“No. That some one else.”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Like me?”

“I don’t know. I never saw the face. The left arm is across the face, and the right arm is waved,—violently waved. This way.”

I followed his action with my eyes, and it was the action of an arm gesticulating, with the utmost passion and vehemence, “For God’s sake, clear the way!”

“One moonlight night,” said the man, “I was sitting here, when I heard a voice cry, ‘Halloa! Below there!’ I started up, looked from that door, and saw this Some one else standing by the red light near the tunnel, waving as I just now showed you. The voice seemed hoarse with shouting, and it cried, ‘Look out! Look out!’ And then again, ‘Halloa! Below there! Look out!’ I caught up my lamp, turned it on red, and ran towards the figure, calling, ‘What’s wrong? What has happened? Where?’ It stood just outside the blackness of the tunnel. I advanced so close upon it that I wondered at its keeping the sleeve across its eyes. I ran right up at it, and had my hand stretched out to pull the sleeve away, when it was gone.”

“Into the tunnel?” said I.

“No. I ran on into the tunnel, five hundred yards. I stopped, and held my lamp above my head, and saw the figures of the measured distance, and saw the wet stains stealing down the walls and trickling through the arch. I ran out again faster than I had run in (for I had a mortal abhorrence of the place upon me), and I looked all round the red light with my own red light, and I went up the iron ladder to the gallery atop of it, and I came down again, and ran back here. I telegraphed both ways, ‘An alarm has been given. Is anything wrong?’ The answer came back, both ways, ‘All well.’ ”

Resisting the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing out my spine, I showed him how that this figure must be a deception of his sense of sight; and how that figures, originating in disease of the delicate nerves that minister to the functions of the eye, were known to have often troubled patients, some of whom had become conscious of the nature of their affliction, and had even proved it by experiments upon themselves. “As to an imaginary cry,” said I, “do but listen for a moment to the wind in this unnatural valley while we speak so low, and to the wild harp it makes of the telegraph wires.”

That was all very well, he returned, after we had sat listening for a while, and he ought to know something of the wind and the wires,—he who so often passed long winter nights there, alone and watching. But he would beg to remark that he had not finished.

I asked his pardon, and he slowly added these words, touching my arm:

“Within six hours after the Appearance, the memorable accident on this Line happened, and within ten hours the dead and wounded were brought along through the tunnel over the spot where the figure had stood.”

A disagreeable shudder crept over me, but I did my best against it. It was not to be denied, I rejoined, that this was a remarkable coincidence, calculated deeply to impress his mind. But it was unquestionable that remarkable coincidences did continually occur, and they must be taken into account in dealing with such a subject. Though to be sure I must admit, I added (for I thought I saw that he was going to bring the objection to bear upon me), men of common sense did not allow much for coincidences in making the ordinary calculations of life.

He again begged to remark that he had not finished.

I again begged his pardon for being betrayed into interruptions.

“This,” he said, again laying his hand upon my arm, and glancing over his shoulder with hollow eyes, “was just a year ago. Six or seven months passed, and I had recovered from the surprise and shock, when one morning, as the day was breaking, I, standing at the door, looked towards the red light, and saw the spectre again.” He stopped, with a fixed look at me.

“Did it cry out?”

“No. It was silent.”

“Did it wave its arm?”

“No. It leaned against the shaft of the light, with both hands before the face. Like this.”

Once more I followed his action with my eyes. It was an action of mourning. I have seen such an attitude in stone figures on tombs.

“Did you go up to it?”

“I came in and sat down, partly to collect my thoughts, partly because it had turned me faint. When I went to the door again, daylight was above me, and the ghost was gone.”

“But nothing followed? Nothing came of this?”

He touched me on the arm with his forefinger twice or thrice giving a ghastly nod each time:

“That very day, as a train came out of the tunnel, I noticed, at a carriage window on my side, what looked like a confusion of hands and heads, and something waved. I saw it just in time to signal the driver, Stop! He shut off, and put his brake on, but the train drifted past here a hundred and fifty yards or more. I ran after it, and, as I went along, heard terrible screams and cries. A beautiful young lady had died instantaneously in one of the compartments, and was brought in here, and laid down on this floor between us.”

Involuntarily I pushed my chair back, as I looked from the boards at which he pointed to himself.

“True, sir. True. Precisely as it happened, so I tell it you.”

I could think of nothing to say, to any purpose, and my mouth was very dry. The wind and the wires took up the story with a long lamenting wail.

He resumed. “Now, sir, mark this, and judge how my mind is troubled. The spectre came back a week ago. Ever since, it has been there, now and again, by fits and starts.”

“At the light?”

“At the Danger-light.”

“What does it seem to do?”

He repeated, if possible with increased passion and vehemence, that former gesticulation of, “For God’s sake, clear the way!”

Then he went on. “I have no peace or rest for it. It calls to me, for many minutes together, in an agonised manner, ‘Below there! Look out! Look out!’ It stands waving to me. It rings my little bell——”

I caught at that. “Did it ring your bell yesterday evening when I was here, and you went to the door?”

“Twice.”

“Why, see,” said I, “how your imagination misleads you. My eyes were on the bell, and my ears were open to the bell, and if I am a living man, it did NOT ring at those times. No, nor at any other time, except when it was rung in the natural course of physical things by the station communicating with you.”

He shook his head. “I have never made a mistake as to that yet, sir. I have never confused the spectre’s ring with the man’s. The ghost’s ring is a strange vibration in the bell that it derives from nothing else, and I have not asserted that the bell stirs to the eye. I don’t wonder that you failed to hear it. But I heard it.”

“And did the spectre seem to be there, when you looked out?”

“It WAS there.”

“Both times?”

He repeated firmly: “Both times.”

“Will you come to the door with me, and look for it now?”

He bit his under lip as though he were somewhat unwilling, but arose. I opened the door, and stood on the step, while he stood in the doorway. There was the Danger-light. There was the dismal mouth of the tunnel. There were the high, wet stone walls of the cutting. There were the stars above them.

“Do you see it?” I asked him, taking particular note of his face. His eyes were prominent and strained, but not very much more so, perhaps, than my own had been when I had directed them earnestly towards the same spot.

“No,” he answered. “It is not there.”

“Agreed,” said I.

We went in again, shut the door, and resumed our seats. I was thinking how best to improve this advantage, if it might be called one, when he took up the conversation in such a matter-of-course way, so assuming that there could be no serious question of fact between us, that I felt myself placed in the weakest of positions.

“By this time you will fully understand, sir,” he said, “that what troubles me so dreadfully is the question, What does the spectre mean?”

I was not sure, I told him, that I did fully understand.

“What is its warning against?” he said, ruminating, with his eyes on the fire, and only by times turning them on me. “What is the danger? Where is the danger? There is danger overhanging, somewhere on the Line. Some dreadful calamity will happen. It is not to be doubted this third time, after what has gone before. But surely this is a cruel haunting of me. What can I do?”

He pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped the drops from his heated forehead.

“If I telegraph Danger, on either side of me, or on both, I can give no reason for it,” he went on, wiping the palms of his hands. “I should get into trouble, and do no good. They would think I was mad. This is the way it would work:—Message: ‘Danger! Take care!’ Answer: ‘What Danger? Where?’ Message: ‘Don’t know. But, for God’s sake, take care!’ They would displace me. What else could they do?”

His pain of mind was most pitiable to see. It was the mental torture of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an unintelligible responsibility involving life.

“When it first stood under the Danger-light,” he went on, putting his dark hair back from his head, and drawing his hands outward across and across his temples in an extremity of feverish distress, “why not tell me where that accident was to happen,—if it must happen? Why not tell me how it could be averted,—if it could have been averted? When on its second coming it hid its face, why not tell me, instead, ‘She is going to die. Let them keep her at home’? If it came, on those two occasions, only to show me that its warnings were true, and so to prepare me for the third, why not warn me plainly now? And I, Lord help me! A mere poor signal-man on this solitary station! Why not go to somebody with credit to be believed, and power to act?”

When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor man’s sake, as well as for the public safety, what I had to do for the time was to compose his mind. Therefore, setting aside all question of reality or unreality between us, I represented to him that whoever thoroughly discharged his duty must do well, and that at least it was his comfort that he understood his duty, though he did not understand these confounding Appearances. In this effort I succeeded far better than in the attempt to reason him out of his conviction. He became calm; the occupations incidental to his post as the night advanced began to make larger demands on his attention: and I left him at two in the morning. I had offered to stay through the night, but he would not hear of it.

That I more than once looked back at the red light as I ascended the pathway, that I did not like the red light, and that I should have slept but poorly if my bed had been under it, I see no reason to conceal. Nor did I like the two sequences of the accident and the dead girl. I see no reason to conceal that either.

But, what ran most in my thoughts was the consideration how ought I to act, having become the recipient of this disclosure? I had proved the man to be intelligent, vigilant, painstaking, and exact; but how long might he remain so, in his state of mind? Though in a subordinate position, still he held a most important trust, and would I (for instance) like to stake my own life on the chances of his continuing to execute it with precision?

Unable to overcome a feeling that there would be something treacherous in my communicating what he had told me to his superiors in the Company, without first being plain with himself and proposing a middle course to him, I ultimately resolved to offer to accompany him (otherwise keeping his secret for the present) to the wisest medical practitioner we could hear of in those parts, and to take his opinion. A change in his time of duty would come round next night, he had apprised me, and he would be off an hour or two after sunrise, and on again soon after sunset. I had appointed to return accordingly.

Next evening was a lovely evening, and I walked out early to enjoy it. The sun was not yet quite down when I traversed the field-path near the top of the deep cutting. I would extend my walk for an hour, I said to myself, half an hour on and half an hour back, and it would then be time to go to my signal-man’s box.

Before pursuing my stroll, I stepped to the brink, and mechanically looked down, from the point from which I had first seen him. I cannot describe the thrill that seized upon me, when, close at the mouth of the tunnel, I saw the appearance of a man, with his left sleeve across his eyes, passionately waving his right arm.

The nameless horror that oppressed me passed in a moment, for in a moment I saw that this appearance of a man was a man indeed, and that there was a little group of other men, standing at a short distance, to whom he seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he made. The Danger-light was not yet lighted. Against its shaft, a little low hut, entirely new to me, had been made of some wooden supports and tarpaulin. It looked no bigger than a bed.

With an irresistible sense that something was wrong,—with a flashing self-reproachful fear that fatal mischief had come of my leaving the man there, and causing no one to be sent to overlook or correct what he did,—I descended the notched path with all the speed I could make.

“What is the matter?” I asked the men.

“Signal-man killed this morning, sir.”

“Not the man belonging to that box?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not the man I know?”

“You will recognise him, sir, if you knew him,” said the man who spoke for the others, solemnly uncovering his own head, and raising an end of the tarpaulin, “for his face is quite composed.”

“O, how did this happen, how did this happen?” I asked, turning from one to another as the hut closed in again.

“He was cut down by an engine, sir. No man in England knew his work better. But somehow he was not clear of the outer rail. It was just at broad day. He had struck the light, and had the lamp in his hand. As the engine came out of the tunnel, his back was towards her, and she cut him down. That man drove her, and was showing how it happened. Show the gentleman, Tom.”

The man, who wore a rough dark dress, stepped back to his former place at the mouth of the tunnel.

“Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir,” he said, “I saw him at the end, like as if I saw him down a perspective-glass. There was no time to check speed, and I knew him to be very careful. As he didn’t seem to take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were running down upon him, and called to him as loud as I could call.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Below there! Look out! Look out! For God’s sake, clear the way!’ ”

I started.

“Ah! it was a dreadful time, sir. I never left off calling to him. I put this arm before my eyes not to see, and I waved this arm to the last; but it was no use.”

Without prolonging the narrative to dwell on any one of its curious circumstances more than on any other, I may, in closing it, point out the coincidence that the warning of the Engine-Driver included, not only the words which the unfortunate Signal-man had repeated to me as haunting him, but also the words which I myself—not he—had attached, and that only in my own mind, to the gesticulation he had imitated.

No. 2 BRANCH LINE

THE ENGINE-DRIVER

Andrew Halliday

"Altogether? Well. Altogether, since 1841, I've killed seven men and boys. It ain't many in all those years."

These startling words he uttered in a serious tone as he leaned against the Station-wall. He was a thick-set, ruddy-faced man, with coal-black eyes, the whites of which were not white, but a brownish-yellow, and apparently scarred and seamed, as if they had been operated upon. They were eyes that had worked hard in looking through wind and weather. He was dressed in a short black pea-jacket and grimy white canvas trousers, and wore on his head a flat black cap. There was no sign of levity in his face. His look was serious even to sadness, and there was an air of responsibility about his whole bearing which assured me that he spoke in earnest.

"Yes, sir, I have been for five-and-twenty years a Locomotive Engine-driver; and in all that time, I've only killed seven men and boys. There's not many of my mates as can say as much for themselves. Steadiness, sir—steadiness and keeping your eyes open, is what does it. When I say seven men and boys, I mean my mates—stokers, porters, and so forth. I don't count passengers."

How did he become an. engine-driver?

"My father," he said, "was a wheelwright in a small way, and lived in a little cottage by the side of the railway which runs betwixt Leeds and Selby. It was the second railway laid down in the kingdom, the second after the Liverpool and Manchester, where Mr. Huskisson was killed, as you may have heard on, sir. When the trains rushed by, we young 'uns used to run out to look at 'em, and hooray. I noticed the driver turning handles, and making it go, and I thought to myself it would be a fine thing to be a engine-driver, and have the control of a wonderful machine like that. Before the railway, the driver of the mail-coach was the biggest man I knew. I thought I should like to be the driver of a coach. We had a picture in our cottage of George the Third in a red coat. I always mixed up the driver of the mail-coach—who had a red coat, too—with the king, only he had a low-crowned broad-brimmed hat, which the king hadn't. In my idea, the king couldn't be a greater man than the driver of the mail-coach. 1 had always a fancy to be a head man of some kind. When I went to Leeds once, and saw a man conducting a orchestra, I thought I should like to be the conductor of a orchestra. When I went home I made myself a bâton, and went about the fields conducting a orchestra. It wasn't there, of course, but I pretended it was. At another time, a man with a whip and a speaking-trumpet, on the stage outside a show, took my fancy, and I thought I should like to be him. But when the train came, the engine-driver put them all in the shade, and I was resolved to be a engine-driver. It wasn't long before I had to do something to earn my own living, though I was only a young 'un. My father died suddenly—he was killed by thunder and lightning while standing under a tree out of the rain—and mother couldn't keep us all. The day after my father's burial I walked down to the station, and said I wanted to be a engine-driver. The station-master laughed a bit, said I was for beginning early, but that I was not quite big enough yet. He gave me a penny, and told me to go home and grow, and come again in ten years' time. I didn't dream of danger then. If I couldn't be a engine-driver, I was determined to have something to do about a engine; so, as I could get nothing else, I went on board a Humber steamer, and broke up coals for the stoker. That was how I began. From that, I became a stoker, first on board a boat, and then on a locomotive. Then, after two years' service, I became a driver on the very Line which passed our cottage. My mother and my brothers and sisters came out to look at me, the first day I drove. I was watching for them and they was watching for me, and they waved their hands and hoora'd, and I waved my hand to them. I had the steam well up, and was going at a rattling pace, and rare proud I was that minute. Never was so proud in my life!

"When a man has a liking for a thing it's as good as being clever. In a very short time I became one of the best drivers on the Line. That was allowed. I took a pride in it, you see, and liked it. No, I didn't know much about the engine scientifically, as you call it; but I could put her to rights if anything went out of gear—that is to say, if there was nothing broken—but I couldn't have explained how the steam worked inside. Starting a engine, it just like drawing a drop of gin. You turn a handle and off she goes; then you turn the handle the other way, put on the brakes, and you stop her. There's not much more in it, so far. It's no good being scientific and knowing the principle of the engine inside; no good at all. Fitters, who know all the ins and outs of the engine, make the worst drivers. That's well known. They know too much. It's just as I've heard of a man with regard to his inside: if he knew what a complicated machine it is, he would never eat, or drink, or dance, or run, or do anything, for fear of busting something. So it is with fitters. But us as are not troubled with such thoughts, we go ahead.

"But starting a engine's one thing and driving of her is another. Any one, a child a'most, can turn on the steam and turn it off again; but it ain't every one that can keep a engine well on the road, no more than it ain't every one who can ride a horse properly. It is much the same thing. If you gallop a horse right off for a mile or two, you take the wind out of him, and for the next mile or two you must let him trot or walk. So it is with a engine. If you put on too much steam, to get over the ground at the start, you exhaust the boiler, and then you'll have to crawl along till your fresh water boils up. The great thing in driving, is, to go steady, never to let your water get too low, nor your fire too low. It's the same with a kettle. If you fill it up when it's about half empty, it soon comes to the boil again; but if you don't fill it up until the water's nearly out, it's a long time in coming to the boil again. Another thing; you should never make spurts, unless you are detained and lose time. You should go up a incline and down a incline at the same pace. Sometimes a driver will waste his steam, and when he comes to a hill he has scarcely enough to drag him up. When you're in a train that goes by fits and starts, you may be sure that there is a bad driver on the engine. That kind of driving frightens passengers dreadful. When the train, after rattling along, suddenly slackens speed when it ain't near a station, it may be in the middle of a tunnel, the passengers think there is danger. But generally it's because the driver has exhausted his steam.

"I drove the Brighton express, four or five years before I come here, and the annuals—that is, the passengers who had annual tickets—always said they knew when I was on the engine, because they wasn't jerked. Gentlemen used to say as they came on to the platform, 'Who drives to-day—Jim Martin?' And when the guard told them yes, they said ' All right,' and took their seats quite comfortable. But the driver never gets so much as a shilling; the guard comes in for all that, and he does nothing much. Few ever think of the driver. I dare say they think the train goes along of itself; yet if we didn't keep a sharp look-out, know our duty, and do it, they might all go smash at any moment. I used to make that journey to Brighton in fifty-two minutes. The papers said forty-nine minutes, but that was coming it a little too strong. I had to watch signals all the way, one every two miles, so that me and my stoker were on the stretch all the time, doing two things at once—attending to the engine and looking out. I've driven on this Line, eighty-one miles and three-quarters, in eighty-six minutes. There's no danger in speed if you have a good road, a good engine, and not too many coaches behind. No, we don't call them carriages, we call them 'coaches.'

"Yes; oscillation means danger. If you're ever in a coach that oscillates much, tell of it at the first station and get it coupled up closer. Coaches when they're too loose are apt to jump, or swing off the rails; and it's quite as dangerous when they're coupled up too close. There ought to be just space enough for the buffers to work easy. Passengers are frightened in tunnels, but there's less danger, now, in tunnels than anywhere else. We never enter a tunnel unless it's signalled Clear.

"A train can be stopped wonderful quick, even when running express, if the guards act with the driver and clap on all the brakes promptly. Much depends upon the guards. One brake behind, is as good as two in front.

The engine, you see, loses weight as she burns her coals and consumes her water, but the coaches behind don't alter. We have a good deal of trouble with young guards. In their anxiety to perform their duties; they put on the brakes too soon, so that sometimes we can scarcely drag the train into the station; when they grow older at it they are not so anxious, and don't put them on soon enough. It's no use to say, when an accident happens, that they did not put on the brakes in time; they swear they did, and you can't prove that they didn't.

"Do I think that the tapping of the wheels with a hammer is a mere ceremony? Well, I don't know exactly; I should not like to say. It's not often that the chaps find anything wrong. They may sometimes be half asleep when a train comes into a station in the middle of the night. You would be yourself. They ought to tap the axle-box, but they don't.

"Many accidents take place that never get into the papers; many trains, full of passengers, escape being dashed to pieces by next door to a miracle. Nobody knows anything about it but the driver and the stoker. I remember once, when I was driving on the Eastern Counties. Going round a curve, I suddenly saw a train coming along on the same line of rails. I clapped on the brake, but it was too late, I thought. Seeing the engine almost close upon us, I cried to my stoker to jump. He jumped off the engine, almost before the words were out of my mouth. I was just taking my hand off the lever to follow, when the coming train turned off on the points, and the next instant the hind coach passed my engine by a shave. It was the nearest touch I ever saw. My stoker was killed. In another half second I should have jumped off and been killed too. What would have become of the train without us is more than I can tell you.

"There are heaps of people run over that no one ever hears about. One dark night in the Black Country, me and my mate felt something wet and warm splash in our faces. 'That didn't come from the engine, Bill,' I said. 'No,' he said; ' it's something thick, Jim.' It was blood. That's what it was. We heard afterwards that a collier had been run over. When we kill any of our own chaps, we say as little about it as possible. It's generally—mostly always—their own fault. No, we never think of danger ourselves. We're used to it, you see. But we're not reckless. I don't believe there's any body of men that takes more pride in their work than engine-drivers do. We are as proud and as fond of our engines as if they were living things; as proud of them as a huntsman or a jockey is of his horse. And a engine has almost as many ways as a horse; she's a kicker, a plunger, a roarer, or what not, in her way. Put a stranger on to my engine, and he wouldn't know what to do with her. Yes; there's wonderful improvements in engines since the last great Exhibition. Some of them take up their water without stopping. That's a wonderful invention, and yet as simple as A B C. There are water-troughs at certain places, lying between the rails. By moving a lever you let down the mouth of a scoop into the water, and as you rush along the water is forced into the tank, at the rate of three thousand gallons a minute.

"A engine-driver's chief anxiety is to keep time; that's what he thinks most of. When I was driving the Brighton express, I always felt like as if I was riding a race against time. I had no fear of the pace; what I feared was losing way, and not getting in to the minute. We have to give in an account of our time when we arrive. The company provides us with watches, and we go by them. Before starting on a journey, we pass through a room to be inspected. That's to see if we are sober. But they don't say nothing to us, and a man who was a little gone might pass easy. I've known a stoker that had passed the inspection, come on to the engine as drunk as a fly, flop down among the coals, and sleep there like a log for the whole run. I had to be my own stoker then. If you ask me if engine-drivers are drinking men, I must answer you that they are pretty well. It's trying work; one half of you cold as ice; t'other half hot as fire; wet one minute, dry the next. If ever a man had an excuse for drinking, that man's a engine-driver. And yet I don't know if ever a driver goes upon his engine drunk. If he was to, the wind would soon sober him.

"I believe engine-drivers, as a body, are the healthiest fellows alive; but they don't live long. The cause of that, I believe to be the cold food, and the shaking. By the cold food, I mean that a engine-driver never gets his meals comfortable. He's never at home to his dinner. When he starts away the first thing in the morning, he takes a bit of cold meat and a piece of bread with him for his dinner; and generally he has to eat it in the shed, for he mustn't leave his engine. You can understand how the jolting and shaking knocks a man up, after a bit. The insurance companies won't take us at ordinary rates. We're obliged to be Foresters, or Old Friends, or that sort of thing, where they ain't so particular. The wages of a engine-driver average about eight shillings a day, but if he's a good schemer with his coals—yes, I mean if he economises his coals—he's allowed so much more. Some will make from five to ten shillings a week that way. I don't complain of the wages particular; but it's hard lines for such as us, to have to pay income-tax. The company gives an account of all our wages, and we have to pay. It's a shame.

"Our domestic life—our life at home, you mean? Well, as to that, we don't see much of our families. I leave home at half-past seven in the morning, and don't get back again until half-past nine, or maybe later. The children are not up when I leave, and they've gone to bed again before I come home. This is about my day:—Leave London at 8.45; drive for four hours and a half; cold snack on the engine step; see to engine; drive back again; clean engine; report myself; and home. Twelve hours' hard and anxious work, and no comfortable victuals. Yes, our wives are anxious about us; for we never know when we go out, if we'll ever come back again. We ought to go home the minute we leave the station, and report ourselves to those that are thinking on us and depending on us; but I'm afraid we don't always. Perhaps we go first to the public-house, and perhaps you would, too, if you were in charge of a engine all day long. But the wives have a way of their own, of finding out if we're all right. They inquire among each other. 'Have you seen my Jim?' one says. ' No,' says another, 'but Jack see him coming out of the station half an hour ago.' Then she knows that her Jim's all right, and knows where to find him if she wants him. It's a sad thing when any of us have to carry bad news to a mate's wife. None of us likes that job. I remember when Jack Davidge was killed, none of us could face his poor missus with the news. She had seven children, poor thing, and two of 'em, the youngest, was down with the fever. We got old Mrs. Berridge—Tom Berridge's mother—to break it to her. But she knew summat was the matter, the minute the old woman went in, and, afore she spoke a word, fell down like as if she was dead. She lay all night like that, and never heard from mortal lips until next morning that her George was killed. But she knew it in her heart. It's a pitch and toss kind of a life ours!

"And yet I never was nervous on a engine but once. I never think of my own life. You go in for staking that, when you begin, and you get used to the risk. I never think of the passengers either. The thoughts of a engine-driver never go behind his engine. If he keeps his engine all right, the coaches behind will be all right, as far as the driver is concerned. But once I did think of the passengers. My little boy, Bill, was among them that morning. He was a poor little cripple fellow that we all loved more nor the others, because he was a cripple, and so quiet, and wise-like. He was going down to his aunt in the country, who was to take care of him for a while. We thought the country air would do him good. I did think there were lives behind me that morning; at least, I thought hard of one little life that was in my hands. There were twenty coaches on; my little Bill seemed to me to be in every one of 'em. My hand trembled as I turned on the steam. I felt my heart thumping as we drew close to the pointsman's box; as we neared the Junction, I was all in a cold sweat. At the end of the first fifty miles I was nearly eleven minutes behind time. 'What's the matter with you this morning?' my stoker said. 'Did you have a drop too much last night?' 'Don't speak to me, Fred,' I said, 'till we get to Peterborough; and keep a sharp look-out, there's a good fellow.' I never was so thankful in my life as when I shut off steam to enter the station at Peterborough. Little Bill's aunt was waiting for him, and I saw her lift him out of the carriage. I called out to her to bring him to me, and I took him upon the engine and kissed him—ah, twenty times I should think—making him in such a mess with grease and coal-dust as you never saw.

"I was all right for the rest of the journey. And I do believe, sir, the passengers were safer after little Bill was gone. It would never do, you see, for engine-drivers to know too much, or to feel too much."

No. 3 BRANCH LINE

THE COMPENSATION HOUSE

Charles Allston Collins

"There's not a looking-glass in all the house, sir. It's some peculiar fancy of my master's. There isn't one in any single room in the house."

It was a dark and gloomy-looking building, and had been purchased by this Company for an enlargement of their Goods Station. The value of the house had been referred to what was popularly called "a compensation jury," and the house was called, in consequence, The Compensation House. It had become the Company's property; but its tenant still remained in possession, pending the commencement of active building operations. My attention was originally drawn to this house because it stood directly in front of a collection of huge pieces of timber which lay near this part of the Line, and on which I sometimes sat for half an hour at a time, when I was tired by my wanderings about Mugby Junction.

It was square, cold, grey-looking, built of rough-hewn stone, and roofed with thin slabs of the same material. Its windows were few in number, and very small for the size of the building. In the great blank, grey broadside, there were only four windows. The entrance-door was in the middle of the house; there was a window on either side of it, and there were two more in the single story above. The blinds were all closely drawn, and, when the door was shut, the dreary building gave no sign of life or occupation.

But the door was not always shut. Sometimes it was opened from within, with a great jingling of bolts and door-chains, and then a man would come forward and stand upon the doorstep, snuffing the air as one might do who was ordinarily kept on rather a small allowance of that element. He was stout, thickset, and perhaps fifty or sixty years old—a man whose hair was cut exceedingly close, who wore a large bushy beard, and whose eye had a sociable twinkle in it which was prepossessing. He was dressed, whenever I saw him, in a greenish-brown frock-coat made of some material which was not cloth, wore a waistcoat and trousers of light colour, and had a frill to his shirt—an ornament, by the way, which did not seem to go at all well with the beard, which was continually in contact with it. It was the custom of this worthy person, after standing for a short time on the threshold inhaling the air, to come forward into the road, and, after glancing at one of the upper windows in a half mechanical way, to cross over to the logs, and, leaning over the fence which guarded the railway, to look up and down the Line (it passed before the house) with the air of a man accomplishing a self-imposed task of which nothing was expected to come. This done, he would cross the road again, and turning on the threshold to take a final sniff of air, disappeared once more within the house, bolting and chaining the door again as if there were no probability of its being reopened for at least a week. Yet half an hour had not passed before he was out in the road again, sniffing the air and looking up and down the Line as before.

It was not very long before I managed to scrape acquaintance with this restless personage. I soon found out that my friend with the shirt-frill was the confidential servant, butler, valet, factotum, what you will, of a sick gentleman, a Mr. Oswald Strange, who had recently come to inhabit the house opposite, and concerning whose history my new acquaintance, whose name I ascertained was Masey, seemed disposed to be somewhat communicative. His master, it appeared, had come down to this place, partly for the sake of reducing his establishment—not, Mr. Masey was swift to inform me, on economical principles, but because the poor gentleman, for particular reasons, wished to have few dependents about him—partly in order that he might be near his old friend, Dr. Garden, who was established in the neighbourhood, and whose society and advice were necessary to Mr. Strange's life. That life was, it appeared, held by this suffering gentleman on a precarious tenure. It was ebbing away fast with each passing hour. The servant already spoke of his master in the past tense, describing him to me as a young gentleman not more than five-and-thirty years of age, with a young face, as far as the features and build of it went, but with an expression which had nothing of youth about it. This was the great peculiarity of the man. At a distance he looked younger than he was by many years, and strangers, at the time when he had been used to get about, always took him for a man of seven or eight-and-twenty, but they changed their minds on getting nearer to him. Old Masey had a way of his own of summing up the peculiarities of his master, repeating twenty times over: "Sir, he was Strange by name, and Strange by nature, and Strange to look at into the bargain."

It was during my second or third interview with the old fellow that he uttered the words quoted at the beginning of this plain narrative.

"Not such a thing as a looking-glass in all the house," the old man said, standing beside my piece of timber, and looking across reflectively at the house opposite. "Not one."

"In the sitting-rooms, I suppose you mean?"

"No, sir, I mean sitting-rooms and bedrooms both; there isn't so much as a shaving-glass as big as the palm of your hand anywhere."

"But how is it?'" I asked. "Why are there no looking-glasses in any of the rooms?"

"Ah, sir!" replied Masey, "that's what none of us can ever tell. There is the mystery. It's just a fancy on the part of my master. He had some strange fancies, and this was one of them. A pleasant gentleman he was to live with, as any servant could desire. A liberal gentleman, and one who gave but little trouble; always ready with a kind word, and a kind deed, too, for the matter of that. There was not a house in all the parish of St. George's (in which we lived before we came down here) where the servants had more holidays or a better table kept; but, for all that, he had his queer ways and his fancies, as I may call them, and this was one of them. And the point he made of it, sir," the old man went on; "the extent to which that regulation was enforced, whenever a new servant was engaged; and the changes in the establishment it occasioned! In hiring a new servant, the very first stipulation made, was that about the looking-glasses. It was one of my duties to explain the thing, as far as it could be explained, before any servant was taken into the house. 'You'll find it an easy place,' I used to say, 'with a liberal table, good wages, and a deal of leisure; but there's one thing you must make up your mind to; you must do without looking-glasses while you're here, for there isn't one in the house, and, what's more, there never will be.'"

"But how did you know there never would be one?" I asked.

"Lor' bless you, sir! If you'd seen and heard all that I'd seen and heard, you could have no doubt about it. Why, only to take one instance:—I remember a particular day when my master had occasion to go into the housekeeper's room, where the cook lived, to see about some alterations that were making, and when a pretty scene took place. The cook—she was a very ugly woman, and awful vain—had left a little bit of a looking-glass, about six inches square, upon the chimney-piece; she had got it surreptions, and kept it always locked up; but she'd left it out, being called away suddenly, while titivating her hair. I had seen the glass, and was making for the chimney-piece as fast as I could; but master came in front of it before I could get there, and it was all over in a moment. He gave one long piercing look into it, turned deadly pale, and seizing the glass, dashed it into a hundred pieces on the floor, and then stamped upon the fragments and ground them into powder with his feet. He shut himself up for the rest of that day in his own room, first ordering me to discharge the cook, then and there, at a moment's notice."

"What an extraordinary thing!" I said, pondering.

"Ah, sir," continued the old man, "it was astonishing what trouble I had with those women-servants. It was difficult to get any that would take the place at all under the circumstances. 'What not so much as a mossul to do one's 'air at?' they would say, and they'd go off, in spite of extra wages. Then those who did consent to come, what lies they would tell, to be sure! They would protest that they didn't want to look in the glass, that they never had been in the habit of looking in the glass, and all the while that very wench would have her looking-glass, of some kind or another, hid away among her clothes up-stairs. Sooner or later, she would bring it out too, and leave it about somewhere or other (just like the cook), where it was as likely as not that master might see it. And then—for girls like that have no consciences, sir—when I had caught one of 'em at it, she'd turn, round as bold as brass, 'And how am I to know whether my 'air's parted straight?' she'd say, just as if it hadn't been considered in her wages that that was the very thing which she never was to know while she lived in our house. A vain lot, sir, and the ugly ones always the vainest. There was no end to their dodges. They'd have looking-glasses in the interiors of their workbox-lids, where it was next to impossible that I could find 'em, or inside the covers of hymn-books, or cookery-books, or in their caddies. I recollect one girl, a sly one she was, and marked with the small-pox terrible, who was always reading her prayer-book at odd times. Sometimes I used to think what a religious mind she'd got, and at other times (depending on the mood I was in) I would conclude that it was the marriage-service she was studying; but one day, when I got behind her to satisfy my doubts—lo and behold! it was the old story: a bit of glass, without a frame, fastened into the kiver with, the outside edges of the sheets of postage-stamps. Dodges! Why they'd keep their looking-glasses in the scullery or the coal-cellar, or leave them in charge of the servants next door, or with the milk-woman round the corner; but have 'em they would. "And I don't mind confessing, sir," said the old man, bringing his long speech to an end, "that it was an inconveniency not to have so much as a scrap to shave before. 1 used to go to the barber's at first, but I soon gave that up, and took to wearing my beard as my master did; likewise to keeping my hair"— Mr. Masey touched his head as he spoke—"so short, that it didn't require any parting, before or behind."

I sat for some time lost in amazement, and staring at my companion. My curiosity was powerfully stimulated, and the desire to learn more was very strong within me.

"Had your master any personal defect," I inquired, "which might have made it distressing to him to see his own image reflected?"

"By no means, sir," said the old man. "He was as handsome a gentleman as you would wish to see: a little delicate-looking and careworn, perhaps, with a very pale face; but as free from any deformity as you or I, sir. No, sir, no; it was nothing of that."

"Then what was it? What is it?" I asked, desperately. "Is there no one who is, or has been, in your master's confidence?"

"Yes, sir," said the old fellow, with his eyes turning to that window opposite. "There is one person who knows all my master's secrets, and this secret among the rest."

"And who is that?"

The old man turned round and looked at me fixedly. "The doctor here," he said. "Dr. Garden. My master's very old friend."

"I should like to speak with this gentleman," I said, involuntarily.

" He is with my master now," answered Masey. "He will be coming out presently, and I think I may say he will answer any question you may like to put to him." As the old man spoke, the door of the house opened, and a middle-aged gentleman, who was tall and thin, but who lost something of his height by a habit of stooping, appeared on the step. Old Masey left me in a moment. He muttered something about taking the doctor's directions, and hastened across the road. The tall gentleman spoke to him for a minute or two very seriously, probably about the patient up-stairs, and it then seemed to me from their gestures that I myself was the subject of some further conversation between them. At all events, when old Masey retired into the house, the doctor came across to where I was standing, and addressed me with a very agreeable smile.

"John Masey tells me that you are interested in the case of my poor friend, sir. I am. now going back to my house, and if you don't mind the trouble of walking with me, I shall be happy to enlighten you as far as I am able."

I hastened to make my apologies and express my acknowledgments, and we set off together. When we had reached the doctor's house and were seated in his study, I ventured to inquire after the health of this poor gentleman.

"I am afraid there is no amendment, nor any prospect of amendment," said the doctor. " Old Masey has told you something of his strange condition, has he not?"

"Yes, he has told me something," I answered, "and he says you know all about it."

Dr. Garden looked very grave. "I don't know all about it. I only know what happens when he comes into the presence of a looking-glass. But as to the circumstances which have led to his being haunted in the strangest fashion that I ever heard of, I know no more of them than you do."

"Haunted?" I repeated. "And in the strangest fashion that you ever heard of?"

Dr. Garden smiled at my eagerness, seemed to be collecting his thoughts, and presently went on:

"I made the acquaintance of Mr. Oswald Strange in a curious way. It was on board of an Italian steamer, bound from Civita Vecchia to Marseilles. We had been travelling all night. In the morning I was shaving myself in the cabin, when suddenly this man came behind me, glanced for a moment into the small mirror before which I was standing, and then, without a word of warning, tore it from the nail, and dashed it to pieces at my feet. His face was at first livid with passion—it seemed to me rather the passion of fear than of anger—but it changed after a moment, and he seemed ashamed of what he had done. Well," continued the doctor, relapsing for a moment into a smile, "of course I was in a devil of a rage. I was operating on my under-jaw, and the start the thing gave me caused me to cut myself. Besides, altogether it seemed an outrageous and insolent thing, and I gave it to poor Strange in a style of language which I am sorry to think of now, but which, I hope, was excusable at the time. As to the offender himself, his confusion and regret, now that his passion was at an end, disarmed me. He sent for the steward, and paid most liberally for the damage done to the steam-boat property, explaining to him, and to some other passengers who were present in the cabin, that what had happened had been accidental. For me, however, he had another explanation. Perhaps he felt that I must know it to have been no accident—perhaps he really wished to confide in some one. At all events, he owned to me that what he had done was done under the influence of an uncontrollable impulse—a seizure which took him, he said, at times—something like a fit. He begged my pardon, and entreated that I would endeavour to disassociate him personally from this action, of which he was heartily ashamed. Then he attempted a sickly joke, poor fellow, about his wearing a beard, and feeling a little spiteful, in consequence, when he saw other people taking the trouble to shave; but he said nothing about any infirmity or delusion, and shortly after left me.

"In my professional capacity I could not help taking some interest in Mr. Strange. I did not altogether lose sight of him after our sea-journey to Marseilles was over. I found him a pleasant companion up to a certain point; but I always felt that there was a reserve about him. He was uncommunicative about his past life, and especially would never allude to anything connected with his travels or his residence in Italy, which, however, I could make out had been a long one. He spoke Italian well, and seemed familiar with the country, but disliked to talk about it.

"During the time we spent together there were seasons when he was so little himself, that I, with a pretty large experience, was almost afraid to be with him. His attacks were violent and sudden in the last degree; and there was one most extraordinary feature connected with them all:— some horrible association of ideas took possession of him whenever he found himself before a looking-glass. And after we had travelled together for a time, I dreaded the sight of a mirror hanging harmlessly against a wall, or a toilet-glass standing on a dressing-table, almost as much as he did.

"Poor Strange was not always affected in the same manner by a looking-glass. Sometimes it seemed to madden him with fury; at other times, it appeared to turn him to stone: remaining motionless and speechless as if attacked by catalepsy. One night—the worst things always happen at night, and oftener than one would think on stormy nights—we arrived at a small town in the central district of Auvergne: a place but little known, out of the line of railways, and to which we had been drawn, partly by the antiquarian attractions which the place possessed, and partly by the beauty of the scenery. The weather had been rather against us. The day had been dull and murky, the heat stifling, and the sky had threatened mischief since the morning. At sundown, these threats were fulfilled. The thunderstorm, which had been all day coming up—as it seemed to us, against the wind—burst over the place where we were lodged, with very great violence.

"There are some practical-minded persons with strong constitutions, who deny roundly that their fellow-creatures are, or can be, affected, in mind or body, by atmospheric influences. I am not a disciple of that school, simply because I cannot believe that those changes of weather, which have so much effect upon animals, and even on inanimate objects, can fail to have some influence on a piece of machinery so sensitive and intricate as the human frame. I think, then, that it was in part owing to the disturbed state of the atmosphere that, on this particular evening I felt nervous and depressed. When my new friend Strange and I parted for the night, I felt as little disposed to go to rest as I ever did in my life. The thunder was still lingering among the mountains in the midst of which our inn was placed. Sometimes it seemed nearer, and at other times further off; but it never left off altogether, except for a few minutes at a time. I was quite unable to shake off a succession of painful ideas which persistently besieged my mind.

"It is hardly necessary to add that I thought from time to time of my travelling-companion in the next room. His image was almost continually before me. He had been dull and depressed all the evening, and when we parted for the night there was a look in his eyes which I could not get out of my memory.

"There was a door between our rooms, and the partition dividing them was not very solid; and yet I had heard no sound since I parted from him which could indicate that he was there at all, much less that he was awake and stirring. I was in a mood, sir, which made this silence terrible to me, and so many foolish fancies—as that he was lying there dead, or in a fit, or what not—took possession of me, that at last I could bear it no longer. I went to the door, and, after listening, very attentively but quite in vain, for any sound, 1 at last knocked pretty sharply. There was no answer. Feeling that longer suspense would be unendurable, I, without more ceremony, turned the handle and went in.

" It was a great bare room, and so imperfectly lighted by a single candle that it was almost impossible—except when the lightning flashed—to see into its great dark corners. A small rickety bedstead stood against one of the walls, shrouded by yellow cotton curtains, passed through a great iron ring in the ceiling. There was, for all other furniture, an old chest of drawers which served also as a washing-stand, having a small basin and ewer and a single towel arranged on the top of it. There were, moreover, two ancient chairs and a dressing-table. On this last, stood a large old-fashioned looking-glass with a carved frame.

"I must have seen all these things, because I remember them so well now, but I do not know how I could have seen them, for it seems to me that, from the moment of my entering that room, the action of my senses and of the faculties of my mind was held fast by the ghastly figure which stood motionless before the looking-glass in the middle of the empty room.

"How terrible it was! The weak light of one candle standing on the table shone upon Strange's face, lighting it from below, and throwing (as I now remember) his shadow, vast and black, upon the wall behind him and upon the ceiling overhead. He was leaning rather forward, with his hands upon the table supporting him, and gazing into the glass which stood before him with a horrible fixity. The sweat was on his white face; his rigid features and his pale lips showed in that feeble light were horrible, more than words can tell, to look at. He was so completely stupified and lost, that the noise I had made in knocking and in entering the room was unobserved by him. Not even when I called him loudly by name did he move or did his face change.

"What a vision of horror that was, in the great dark empty room, in a silence that was something more than negative, that ghastly figure frozen into stone by some unexplained terror! And the silence and the stillness! The very thunder had ceased now. My heart stood still with fear. Then, moved by some instinctive feeling, under whose influence I acted mechanically, I crept with slow steps nearer and nearer to the table, and at last, half expecting to see some spectre even more horrible than this which I saw already, I looked over his sJioulder into the looking-glass. I happened to touch his arm, though only in the lightest manner. In that one moment the spell which had held him— who knows how long?—enchained, seemed broken, and he lived in this world again. He turned round upon me, as suddenly as a tiger makes its spring, and seized me by the arm.

"I have told you that even before I entered my friend's room I had felt, all that night, depressed and nervous. The necessity for action at this time was, however, so obvious, and this man's agony made all that I had felt, appear so trifling, that much of my own discomfort seemed to leave me. I felt that I must be strong.

"The face before me almost unmanned me. The eyes which looked into mine were so scared with terror, the lips—if I may say so—looked so speechless. The wretched man gazed long into my face, and then, still holding me by the arm, slowly, very slowly, turned his head. I had gently tried to move him away from the looking-glass, but he would not stir, and now he was looking into it as fixedly as ever. I could bear this no longer, and, using such force as was necessary, I drew him gradually away, and got him to one of the chairs at the foot of the bed. 'Come!' I said—after the long silence my voice, even to myself, sounded strange and hollow—'come! You are over-tired, and you feel the weather. Don't you think you ought to be in bed? Suppose you lie down. Let me try my medical skill in mixing you a composing draught.'

"He held my hand, and looked eagerly into my eyes. 'I am better now,' he said, speaking at last very faintly. Still he looked at me in that wistful way. It seemed as if there were something that he wanted to do or say, but had not sufficient resolution. At length he got up from the chair to which I had led him, and beckoning me to follow him, went across the room to the dressing-table, and stood again before the glass. A violent shudder passed through his frame as he looked into it; but apparently forcing himself to go through with what he had now begun, he remained where he was, and, without looking away, moved to me with his hand to come and stand beside him. I complied.

" 'Look in there!' he said, in an almost inaudible tone. He was supported, as before, by his hands resting on the table, and could only bow with his head towards the glass to intimate what he meant. 'Look in there!' he repeated.

"I did as he asked me.

" 'What do you see?' he asked next.

" 'See?' I repeated, trying to speak as cheerfully as I could, and describing the reflexion of his own face as nearly as I could. 'I see a very, very pale face with sunken cheeks——'

" 'What?' he cried, with an alarm in his voice which I could not understand.

" 'With sunken cheeks,' I went on, ' and two hollow eyes with large pupils.'

"I saw the reflexion of my friend's face change, and felt his hand clutch my arm even more tightly than he had done before. I stopped abruptly and looked round at him. He did not turn his head towards me, but, gazing still into the looking-glass, seemed to labour for utterance.

" 'What,' he stammered at last. ' Do—you—see it—too?'

" 'See what?' I asked, quickly.

" 'That face!' he cried, in accents of horror. 'That face—which is not mine—and which—I SEE INSTEAD OF MINE—always!'

"I was struck speechless by the words. In a moment this mystery was explained—but what an explanation! Worse, a hundred times worse, than anything I had imagined. What! Had this man lost the power of seeing his own image as it was reflected there before him? and, in its place, was there the image of another? Had he changed reflexions with some other man? The frightfulness of the thought struck me speechless for a time—then I saw how false an impression my silence was conveying.

" 'No, no, no!' I cried, as soon as I could speak—'a hundred times, no! I see you, of course, and only you. It was your face I attempted to describe, and no other.'

"He seemed not to hear me. 'Why, look there!' he said, in a low, indistinct voice, pointing to his own image in the glass. 'Whose face do you see there?'

" 'Why yours, of course.' And then, after a moment, I added, ' Whose do you see?'

"He answered, like one in a trance, 'His—only his—always his!' He stood still a moment, and then, with a loud and terrific scream, repeated those words, 'ALWAYS HIS, ALWAYS HIS,' and fell down in a fit before me.

"I knew what to do now. Here was a thing which, at any rate, I could understand. I had with me my usual small stock of medicines and surgical instruments, and I did what was necessary: first to restore my unhappy patient, and next to procure for him the rest he needed so much. He was very ill—at death's door for some days—and I could not leave him, though there was urgent need that I should be back in London. When he began to mend, I sent over to England for my servant—John Masey—whom I knew I could trust. Acquainting him with the outlines of the case, I left him in charge of my patient, with orders that he should be brought over to this country as soon as he was fit to travel.

"That awful scene was always before me. I saw this devoted man day after day, with the eyes of my imagination, sometimes destroying in his rage the harmless looking-glass, which was the immediate cause of his suffering, sometimes transfixed before the horrid image that turned him to stone. I recollect coming upon him once when we were stopping at a roadside inn, and seeing him stand so by broad daylight. His back was turned towards me, and I waited and watched him for nearly half an hour as he stood there motionless and speechless, and appearing not to breathe. I am not sure but that this apparition seen so by daylight was more ghastly than that apparition seen in the middle of the night, with the thunder rumbling among the hills.

"Back in London in his own house, where he could command in some sort the objects which should surround him, poor Strange was better than he would have been elsewhere. He seldom went out except at night, but once or twice I have walked with him by daylight, and have seen him terribly agitated when we have had to pass a shop in which looking-glasses were exposed for sale.

"It is nearly a year now since my poor friend followed me down to this place, to which I have retired. For some months he has been daily getting weaker and weaker, and a disease of the lungs has become developed in him, which has brought him to his death-bed. I should add, by-the-by, that John Masey has been his constant companion ever since I brought them together, and I have had, consequently, to look after a new servant.

"And now tell me," the doctor added, bringing his tale to an end, "did you ever hear a more miserable history, or was ever man haunted in a more ghastly manner than this man?"

I was about to reply, when we heard a sound of footsteps outside, and before I could speak old Masey entered the room, in haste and disorder.

"I was just telling this gentleman," the doctor said; not at the moment observing old Masey's changed manner: "how you deserted me to go over to your present master."

"Ah! sir," the man answered, in a troubled voice, "I'm afraid he won't be my master long."

The doctor was on his legs in a moment. "What! Is he worse?"

"I think, sir, he is dying," said the old man.

"Come with me, sir; you may be of use if you can keep quiet." The doctor caught up his hat as he addressed me in those words, and in a few minutes we had reached The Compensation House. A few seconds more and we were standing in a darkened room on the first floor, and I saw lying on a bed before me—pale, emaciated, and, as it seemed, dying—the man whose story I had just heard.

He was lying with closed eyes when we came into the room, and I had leisure to examine his features. What a tale of misery they told! They were regular and symmetrical in their arrangement, and not without beauty—the beauty of exceeding refinement and delicacy. Force there was none, and perhaps it was to the want of this that the faults—perhaps the crime—which had made the man's life so miserable were to be attributed. Perhaps the crime? Yes, it was not likely that an affliction, lifelong and terrible, such as this he had endured, would come upon him unless some misdeed had provoked the punishment. What misdeed we were soon to know.

It sometimes—I think generally—happens that the presence of any one who stands and watches beside a sleeping man will wake him, unless his slumbers are unusually heavy. It was so now. While we looked at him, the sleeper awoke very suddenly, and fixed his eyes upon us. He put out his hand and took the doctor's in its feeble grasp. "Who is that?" he asked next, pointing towards me.

"Do you wish him to go? The gentleman knows something of your sufferings, and is powerfully interested in your case; but he will leave us, if you wish it," the doctor said.

"No. Let him stay."

Seating myself out o"f sight, but where I could both see and hear what passed, waited for what should follow. Dr. Garden and John Masey stood beside the bed. There was a moment's pause.

"I want a looking-glass," said Strange, without a word of preface.

We all started to hear him say those words.

"I am dying," said Strange; "will you not grant me my request?"

Doctor Garden whispered to old Masey; and the latter left the room. He was not absent long, having gone no further than the next house. He held an oval-framed mirror in his hand when he returned. A shudder passed through the body of the sick man as he saw it.

"Put it down," he said, faintly—"anywhere—for the present."

No one of us spoke. I do not think, in that moment of suspense, that we could, any of us, have spoken if we had tried.

The sick man tried to raise himself a little. "Prop me up," he said. "I speak with difficulty—I have something to say."

They put pillows behind him, so as to raise his head and body.

"I have presently a use for it," he said, indicating the mirror. "I want to see——" He stopped, and seemed to change his mind. He was sparing of his words. "I want to tell you—all about it." Again he was silent. Then lie seemed to make a great effort and spoke once more, beginning very abruptly.

"I loved my wife fondly. I loved her—her name was Lucy. She was English; but, after we were married, we lived long abroad—in Italy. She liked the country, and I liked what she liked. She liked to draw, too, and I got her a master. He was an Italian. I will not give his name. We always called him 'the Master.' A treacherous insidious man this was, and, under cover of his profession, took advantage of his opportunities, and taught my wife to love him—to love him.

"I am short of breath. I need not enter into details as to how I found them out; but I did find them out. We were away on a sketching expedition when I made my discovery. My rage maddened me, and there was one at hand who fomented my madness. My wife had a maid, who, it seemed, had also loved this man—the Master—and had been ill treated and deserted by him. She told me all. She had played the part of go-between—had carried letters. When she told me these things, it was night, in a solitary Italian town, among the mountains. 'He is in his room now,' she said, 'writing to her.'

"A frenzy took possession of me as I listened to those words. I am naturally vindictive—remember that—and now my longing for revenge was like a thirst. Travelling in those lonely regions, I was armed, and when the woman said, 'He is writing to your wife,' I laid hold of my pistols, as by an instinct. It has been some comfort to me since, that I took them both. Perhaps, at that moment, I may have meant fairly by him—meant that we should fight. I don't know what I meant, quite. The woman's words, 'He is in his own room now, writing to her,' rung in my ears.

The sick man stopped to take breath. It seemed an hour, though it was probably not more than two minutes,, before he spoke again.

"I managed to get into his room unobserved. Indeed, he was altogether absorbed in what he was doing. He was sitting at the only table in the room, writing at a travelling-desk, by the light of a single candle. It was a rude dressing-table, and—and before him—exactly before him—there was—there was a looking-glass.

"I stole up behind him as he sat and wrote by the light of the candle. I looked over his shoulder at the letter, and I read, 'Dearest Lucy, my love, my darling.' As I read the words, I pulled the trigger of the pistol I held in my right hand, and killed him— killed him—but, before he died, he looked up once—not at me, but at my image before him in the glass, and his face—such a face—has been there—ever since, and mine—my face—is gone!"

He fell back exhausted, and we all pressed forward thinking that he must be dead, he lay so still.

But he had not yet passed away. He revived under the influence of stimulants. He tried to speak, and muttered indistinctly from time to time words of which we could sometimes make no sense. We understood, however, that he had been tried by an Italian tribunal, and had been found guilty; but with such extenuating circumstances that his sentence was commuted to imprisonment, during, we thought we made out, two years. But we could not understand what he said about his wife, though we gathered that she was still alive, from something he whispered to the doctor of there being provision made for her in his will.

He lay in a doze for something more than an hour after he had told his tale, and then he woke up quite suddenly, as he had done when we had first entered the room. He looked round uneasily in all directions, until his eye fell on the looking-glass.

"I want it," he said, hastily; but I noticed that he did not shudder now, as it was brought near. When old Masey approached, holding it in his hand, and crying like a child, Dr. Garden came forward and stood between him and his master, taking the hand of poor Strange in his.

"Is this wise?" he asked. "Is it good, do you, think, to revive this misery of your life now, when it is so near its close? The chastisement of your crime," he added, solemnly, "has been a terrible one. Let us hope in God's mercy that your punishment is over."

The dying man raised himself with a last great effort, and looked up at the doctor with such an expression on his face as none of us had seen on any face, before.

"I do hope so," he said, faintly, "but you must let me have my way in this—for if, now, when I look, I see aright—once more—I shall then hope yet more strongly—for I shall take it as a sign."

The doctor stood aside without another word, when he heard the dying man speak thus, and the old servant drew near, and, stooping over softly, held the looking-glass before his master. Presently afterwards, we, who stood around looking breathlessly at him, saw such a rapture upon his face, as left no doubt upon our minds that the face which had haunted him so long, had, in his last hour, disappeared.

No. 4 BRANCH LINE

THE TRAVELLING POST-OFFICE

Hesba Stretton

Many years ago, and before this Line was so much as projected, I was engaged as a clerk in a Travelling Post-office running along the Line of railway from London to a town in the Midland Counties, which we will call Fazeley. My duties were to accompany the mail-train which left Fazeley at 8.15 P.M., and arrived in London about midnight, and to return by the day mail leaving London at 10.30 the following morning, after which I had an unbroken night at Fazeley, while another clerk discharged the same round of work; and in this way each alternate evening I was on duty in the railway post-office van. At first I suffered a little from a hurry and tremor of nerve in pursuing my occupation while the train was crashing along under bridges and through tunnels at a speed which was then thought marvellous and perilous; but it was not long before my hands and eyes became accustomed to the motion of the carriage, and I could go through my business with the same despatch and ease as in the post-office of the country town where I had learned it, and from which I had been promoted by the influence of the surveyor of the district, Mr. Huntingdon. In fact, the work soon fell into a monotonous routine, which, night after night, was pursued in an unbroken course by myself and the junior clerk, who was my only assistant: the railway post-office work not having then attained the importance and magnitude it now possesses.

Our route lay through an agricultural district containing many small towns, which made up two or three bags only; one for London; another perhaps for the county town; a third for the railway post-office, to be opened by us, and the enclosures to be distributed according to their various addresses. The clerks in many of these small offices were women, as is very generally the case still, being the daughters and female relatives of the nominal postmaster, who transact most of the business of the office, and whose names are most frequently signed upon the bills accompanying the bags. I was a young man, and somewhat more curious in feminine handwriting than I am now. There was one family in particular, whom I had never seen, but with whose signatures I was perfectly familiar—clear, delicate, and educated, very unlike the miserable scrawl upon other letter-bills. One New Year's-eve, in a moment of sentiment, I tied a slip of paper among a bundle of letters for their office, upon which I had written, "A happy New Year to you all." The next evening brought me a return of my good wishes, signed, as I guessed, by three sisters of the name of Clifton. From that day, every now and then, a sentence or two as brief as the one above passed between us, and the feeling of acquaintance and friendship grew upon me, though I had never yet had an opportunity of seeing my fair unknown friends.

It was towards the close of the following October that it came under my notice that the then Premier of the ministry was paying an autumn visit to a nobleman, whose country seat was situated near a small village on our line of rail. The Premier's despatch-box, containing, of course, all the despatches which it was necessary to send down to him, passed between him and the Secretary of State, and was, as usual, entrusted to the care of the post-office. The Continent was just then in a more than ordinarily critical state; we were thought to be upon the verge of an European war; and there were murmurs floating about, at the dispersion of the ministry up and down the country. These circumstances made the charge of the despatch-box the more interesting to me. It was very similar in size and shape to the old-fashioned workboxes used by ladies before boxes of polished and ornamental wood came into vogue, and, like them, it was covered with red morocco leather, and it fastened with a lock and key. The first time it came into my hands I took such special notice of it as might be expected. Upon one corner of the lid I detected a peculiar device scratched slightly upon it, most probably with the sharp point of a steel pen, in such a moment of preoccupation of mind as causes most of us to draw odd lines and caricatured faces upon any piece of paper which may lie under our hand. It was the old revolutionary device of a heart with a dagger piercing it; and I wondered whether it could be the Premier, or one of his secretaries, who had traced it upon the morocco.

This box had been travelling up and down for about ten days, and, as the village did not make up a bag for London, there being very few letters excepting those from the great house, the letter-bag from the house, and the despatch-box, were handed direct into our travelling post-office. But in compliment to the presence of the Premier in the neighbourhood, the train, instead of slackening speed only, stopped altogether, in order that the Premier's trusty and confidential messenger might deliver the important box into my own hands, that its perfect safety might be ensured. I had an undefined suspicion that some person was also employed to accompany the train up to London, for three or four times I had met with a foreign-looking gentleman at Euston-square, standing at the door of the carriage nearest the post-office van, and eyeing the heavy bags as they were transferred from my care to the custody of the officials from the General Post-office. But though I felt amused and somewhat nettled at this needless precaution, I took no further notice of the man, except to observe that he had the swarthy aspect ot a foreigner, and that he kept his face well away from the light of the lamps. Except for these things, and after the first time or two, the Premier's despatch-box interested me no more than any other part of my charge. My work had been doubly monotonous for some time past, and I began to think it time to get up some little entertainment with my unknown friends, the Cliftons. I was just thinking of it as the train stopped at the station about a mile from the town where they lived, and their postman, a gruff matter-of-fact fellow— you could see it in every line of his face—put in the letter-bags, and with them a letter addressed to me. It was in an official envelope, "On Her Majesty's Service," and the seal was an official seal. On the folded paper inside it (folded officially also) I read the following order: "Mr. Wilcox is requested to permit the bearer, the daughter of the postmaster at Eaton, to see the working of the railway post-office during the up-journey." The writing I knew well as being that or one of the surveyor's clerks, and the signature was Mr. Huntingdon's. The bearer of the order presented herself at the door, the snorting of the engine gave notice of the instant departure of the train, I held out my hand, the young lady sprang lightly and deftly into the van, and we were off again on our midnight journey.

She was a small slight creature, one of those slender little girls one never thinks of as being a woman, dressed neatly and plainly in a dark dress, with a veil hanging a little over her face and tied under her chin: the most noticeable thing about her appearance being a great mass of light hair, almost yellow, which had got loose in some way, and fell down her neck in thick wavy tresses. She had a free pleasant way about her, not in the least bold or forward, which in a minute or two made her presence seem the most natural thing in the world. As she stood beside me before the row of boxes into which I was sorting my letters, she asked questions and I answered as if it were quite an every-day occurrence for us to be travelling up together in the night mail to Euston-square station. I blamed myself for an idiot that I had not sooner made an opportunity for visiting my unknown friends at Eaton.

"Then," I said, putting down the letter-bill from their own office before her, "may I ask which of the signatures I know so well, is yours? Is it A. Clifton, or M. Clifton, or S. Clifton? She hesitated a little, and blushed, and lifted up her frank childlike eyes to mine.

"I am A. Clifton," she answered.

" And your name?" I said.

"Anne;" then, as if anxious to give some explanation to me of her present position, she added, "I was going up to London on a visit, and I thought it would be so nice to travel in the post-office to see how the work was done, and Mr. Huntingdon came to survey our office, and he said he would send me an order."

I felt somewhat surprised, for a stricter martinet than Mr. Huntingdon did not breathe; but I glanced down at the small innocent face at my side, and cordially approved of his departure from ordinary rules.

"Did you know you would travel with me?" I asked, m a lower voice; for Tom Morville, my junior, was at my other elbow.

"I knew I should travel with Mr. Wilcox," she answered, with a smile that made all my nerves tingle.

"You have not written me a word for ages," said I, reproachfully.

"You had better not talk, or you'll be making mistakes," she replied, in an arch tone. It was quite true; for, a sudden confusion coming over me, I was sorting the letters at random.

We were just then approaching the small station where the letter-bag from the great house was taken up. The engine was slackening speed. Miss Clifton manifested some natural and becoming diffidence.

"It would look so odd," she said, "to any one on the platform, to see a girl in the post-office van! And they couldn't know I was a postmaster's daughter, and had an order from Mr. Huntingdon. Is there no dark corner to shelter me?"

I must explain to you in a word or two the construction of the van, which was much less efficiently fitted up than the travelling post-offices of the present day. It was a reversible van, with a door at each right-hand corner. At each door the letter-boxes were so arranged as to form a kind of screen about two feet in width, which prevented people from seeing all over the carriage at once. Thus the door at the far end of the van, the one not in use at the time, was thrown into deep shadow, and the screen before it turned it into a small niche, where a slight little person like Miss Clifton was very well concealed from curious eves. Before the train came within the light from the lamps on the platform, she ensconced herself in this shelter. No one but I could see her laughing face, as she stood there leaning cautiously forward with her finger pressed upon her rosy lips, peeping at the messenger who delivered into my own hands the Premier's despatch-box, while Tom Morville received the letter-bag of the great house.

"See," I said, when we were again in motion, and she had emerged from her concealment, "this is the Premier's despatch-box, going back to the Secretary of State. There are some state secrets for you, and ladies are fond of secrets."

"O! I know nothing about politics," she answered, indifferently, "and we have had that box through our office a time or two."

"Did you ever notice this mark upon it," I asked—" a heart with a dagger through it?" and bending down my face to hers, I added a certain spooney remark, which I do not care to repeat. Miss Clifton tossed her little head, and pouted her lips; but she took the box out of my hands, and carried it to the lamp nearest the further end of the van, after which she put it down upon the counter close beside the screen, and I thought no more about it. The midnight ride was entertaining in the extreme, for the girl was full of young life and sauciness and merry humour. I can safely aver that I have never been to an evening's so-called entertainment which, to me, was half so enjoyable. It added also to the zest and keen edge of the enjoyment to see her hasten to hide herself whenever I told her we were going to stop to take up the mails.

We had passed Watford, the last station at which we stopped, before I became alive to the recollection that our work was terribly behindhand. Miss Clifton also became grave, and sat at the end of the counter very quiet and subdued, as if her frolic were over, and it was possible she might find something to repent of in it. I had told her we should stop no more until we reached Euston-square station, but to my surprise I felt our speed decreasing, and our train coming to a stand-still. I looked out and called to the guard in the van behind, who told me he supposed there was something on the line before us, and that we should go on in a minute or two. I turned my head, and gave this information to my fellow-clerk and Miss Clifton.

"Do you know where we are?" she asked, in a frightened tone.

"At Camden-town," I replied. She sprang hastily from her seat, and came towards me.

"I am close to my friend's house here," she said, "so it is a lucky thing for me. It is not five minutes' walk from the station. I will say good-bye to you now, Mr. Wilcox, and I thank you a thousand times for your kindness."

She seemed flurried, and she held out both her little hands to me in an appealing kind of way, as if she were afraid of my detaining her against her will. I took them both into mine, pressing them with rather more ardour than was quite necessary.

"I do not like you to go alone at this hour," I said, "but there is no help for it. It has been a delightful time to me. Will you allow me to call upon you to-morrow morning early, for I leave London at 10.30; or on Wednesday, when I shall be in town again?"

"O," she answered, hanging her head, "I don't know. I'll write and tell mamma how kind you have been, and, and—but I must go, Mr. Wilcox."

" I don't like your going alone," I repeated.

"O! I know the way perfectly," she said, in the same flurried manner, "perfectly, thank you. And it is close at hand. Good-bye!"

She jumped lightly out of the carriage, and the train started on again at the same instant. We were busy enough, as you may suppose. In five minutes more we should be in Euston-square, and there was nearly fifteen minutes' work still to be done. Spite of the enjoyment he had afforded me, I mentally anathematised Mr. Huntingdon and his departure from ordinary rules, and, thrusting Miss Clifton forcibly out of my thoughts, I set to work with a will, gathered up the registered letters for London, tied them into a bundle with the paper bill, and then turned to the corner of the counter for the despatch-box.

You have guessed already my cursed misfortune. The Premier's despatch-box was not there. For the first minute or so I was in nowise alarmed, and merely looked round, upon the floor, under the bags, into the boxes, into any place into which it could have fallen or been deposited. We reached Euston-square while I was still searching, and losing more and more of my composure every instant. Tom Morville joined me in my quest, and felt every bag which had been made up and sealed. The box was no small article which could go into little compass; it was certainly twelve inches long, and more than that in girth. But it turned up nowhere. I never felt nearer fainting than at that moment.

"Could Miss Clifton have carried it off?" suggested Tom Morville.

"No," I said, indignantly but thoughtfully, "she couldn't have carried off such a bulky thing as that, without our seeing it. It would not go into one of our pockets, Tom, and she wore a tight-fitting jacket that would not conceal anything."

"No, she can't have it," assented Tom; "then it must be somewhere about." We searched again and again, turning over everything in the van, but without success. The Premier's despatch-box was gone; and all we could do at first was to stand and stare at one another. Our trance of blank dismay was of short duration, for the van was assailed by the postmen from St. Martin's-le-Grand, who were waiting for our charge. In a stupor of bewilderment we completed our work, and delivered up the mails; then, once more we confronted one another with pale faces, frightened out of our seven senses. All the scrapes we had ever been in (and we had had pur usual share of errors and blunders) faded into utter insignificance compared with this. My eye fell upon Mr. Huntingdon's order tying among some scraps of waste paper on the floor, and I picked it up, and put it carefully, with its official envelope, into my pocket.

"We can't stay here," said Tom. The porters were looking in inquisitively; we were seldom so long in quitting our empty van.

"No," I replied, a sudden gleam of sense darting across the blank bewilderment of my brain; "no, we must go to head-quarters at once, and make a clean breast of it. This is no private business, Tom."

We made one more ineffectual search, and then we hailed a cab and drove as hard as we could to the General Post-office. The secretary of the Post-office was not there, of course, but we obtained the address of his residence in one of the suburbs, four or five miles from the City, and we told no one of our misfortune, my idea being that the fewer who were made acquainted with the loss the better. My judgment was in the right there.

We had to knock up the household of the secretary—a formidable personage with whom I had never been brought into contact before— and in a short time we were holding a strictly private and confidental interview with him, by the glimmer of a solitary candle, just serving to light up his severe face, which changed its expression several times as I narrated the calamity. It was too stupendous for rebuke, and I fancied his eyes softened with something like commiseration as he gazed upon us. After a short interval of deliberation, he announced his intention of accompanying us to the residence of the Secretary of State; and in a few minutes we were driving back again to the opposite extremity of London. It was not far off the hour for the morning delivery of letters when we reached our destination; but the atmosphere was yellow with fog, and we could see nothing as we passed along in almost utter silence, for neither of us ventured to speak, and the secretary only made a brief remark now and then. We drove up to some dwelling enveloped in fog, and we were left in the cab for nearly half an hour, while our secretary went in. At the end of that time we were summoned to an apartment where there was seated at a large desk a small spare man, with a great head, and eyes deeply sunk under the brows. There was no form of introduction, of course, and we could only guess who he might be; but we were requested to repeat our statement, and a few shrewd questions were put to us by the stranger. We were eager to put him in possession of everything we knew, but that was little beyond the fact that the despatch-box was lost.

"That young person must have taken it," he said.

"She could not, sir," I answered, positively, but deferentially. "She wore the tightest-fitting pelisse I ever saw, and she gave me both her hands when she said good-bye. She could not possibly have it concealed about her. It would not go into my pocket."

"How did she come to travel up with you in the van, sir?" he asked, severely.

I gave him for answer the order signed by Mr. Huntingdon. He and our secretary scanned it closely.

"It is Huntingdon's signature without doubt," said the latter; "I could swear to it anywhere. This is an extraordinary circumstance!"

It was an extraordinary circumstance. The two retired into an adjoining room, where they stayed for another half-hour, and when they returned to us their faces still bore an aspect of grave perplexity.

"Mr. Wilcox and Mr. Morville," said our secretary, "it is expedient that this affair should be kept inviolably secret. You must even be careful not to hint that you hold any secret. You did well not to announce your loss at the Post-office, and I shall cause it to be understood that you had instructions to take the despatch-box direct to its destination. Your business now is to find the young woman, and return with her not later than six o'clock this afternoon to my office at the General Post-office. What other steps we think it requisite to take, you need know nothing about; the less you know, the better for yourselves."

Another gleam of commiseration in his official eye made our hearts sink within us. We departed promptly, and, with that instinct of wisdom which at times dictates infallibly what course we should pursue, we decided our line of action. Tom Morville was to go down to Camden-town, and inquire at every house for Miss Clifton, while I—there would be just time for it—was to run down to Eaton by train and obtain her exact address from her parents. We agreed to meet at the General Post-office at half-past five, if I could possibly reach it by that time; but in any case Tom was to report himself to the secretary, and account for my absence.

When I arrived at the station at Eaton, I found that I had only forty-five minutes before the up train went by. The town was nearly a mile away, but I made all the haste I could to reach it. I was not surprised to find the post-office in connexion with a bookseller's shop, and I saw a pleasant elderly lady seated behind the counter, while a tall dark-haired girl was sitting at some work a little out of sight. I introduced myself at once.

"I am Frank Wilcox, of the railway post-office, and I have just run down to Eaton to obtain some information from you."

"Certainly. We know you well by name," was the reply, given in a cordial manner, which was particularly pleasant to me.

"Will you be so good as give me the address of Miss Anne Clifton in Camden-town?" I said.

"Miss Anne Clifton?" ejaculated the lady.

"Yes. Your daughter, I presume. Who went up to London last night."

"I have no daughter Anne," she said; "I am Anne Clifton, and my daughters are named Mary and Susan. This is my daughter Mary."

The tall dark-haired girl had left her seat, and now stood beside her mother. Certainly she was very unlike the small golden-haired coquette who had travelled up to London with me as Anne Clifton.

"Madam," I said, scarcely able to speak, "is your other daughter a slender little creature, exactly the reverse of this young lady?"

"No," she answered, laughing; "Susan is both taller and darker than Mary. Call Susan, my dear."

In a few seconds Miss Susan made her appearance, and I had the three before me—A. Clifton, S. Clifton, and M. Clifton. There was no other girl in the family; and when I described the young lady who had travelled under their name, they could not think of any one in the town—it was a small one—who answered my description, or who had gone on a visit to London. I had no time to spare, and I hurried back to the station, just catching the train as it left the platform. At the appointed hour I met Morville at the General Post-office, and threading the long passages of the secretary's offices, we at length found ourselves anxiously waiting in an ante-room, until we were called into his presence. Morville had discovered nothing, except that the porters and policemen at Camden-town station had seen a young lady pass out last night, attended by a swarthy man who looked like a foreigner, and carried a small black portmanteau.

I scarcely know how long we waited; it might have been years, for I was conscious of an ever-increasing difficulty in commanding my thoughts, or fixing them upon the subject which had engrossed them all day. I had not tasted food for twenty-four hours, nor closed my eyes for thirty-six, while, during the whole of the time, my nervous system had been on full strain.

Presently, the summons came, and I was ushered, first, into the inner apartment. There sat five gentlemen round a table, which was strewed with a number of documents. There were the Secretary of State, whom we had seen in the morning, our secretary, and Mr. Huntingdon; the fourth was a fine-looking man, whom I afterwards knew to be the Premier; the fifth I recognised as our great chief, the Postmaster-General. It was an august assemblage to me, and I bowed low; but my head was dizzy, and my throat parched.

"Mr. Wilcox," said our secretary, "you will tell these gentlemen again, the circumstances of the loss you reported to me this morning."

I laid my hand upon the back of a chair to steady myself, and went through the narration for the third time, passing over sundry remarks made by myself to the young lady. That done, I added the account of my expedition to Eaton, and the certainty at which I had arrived that my fellow-traveller was not the person she represented herself to be. After which, I inquired with indescribable anxiety if Mr. Huntingdon's order were a forgery?

"I cannot tell, Mr. Wilcox," said that gentleman, taking the order into his hands, and regarding it with an air of extreme perplexity. "I could have sworn it was mine, had it been attached to any other document. I think Forbes's handwriting is not so well imitated. But it is the very ink I use, and mine is a peculiar signature."

It was a very peculiar and old-fashioned signature, with a flourish underneath it not unlike a whip-handle, with the lash caught round it in the middle; but that did not make it the more difficult to forge, as I humbly suggested. Mr. Huntingdon wrote his name upon a paper, and two or three of the gentlemen tried to imitate the flourish, but vainly. They gave it up with a smile upon their grave faces.

"You have been careful not to let a hint of this matter drop from you, Mr. Wilcox?" said the Postmaster-General.

"Not a syllable, my lord," I answered.

"It is imperatively necessary that the secret should be kept. You would be removed from the temptation of telling it, if you had an appointment in some office abroad. The packet-agency at Alexandria is vacant, and I will have you appointed to it at once."

It would be a good advance from my present situation, and would doubtless prove a stepping, stone to other and better appointments; but I had a mother living at Fazeley, bedridden and paralytic, who had no pleasure inexistence except having me to dwell under the same roof with her. My head was growing more and more dizzy, and a strange vagueness was creeping over me.

"Gentlemen," I muttered, " I have a bedridden mother whom I cannot leave. I was not to blame, gentlemen." I fancied there was a stir and movement at the table, but my eyes were dim, and in another second I had lost consciousness.

When I came to myself, in two or three minutes, I found that Mr. Huntingdon was kneeling on the floor beside me, supporting my head, while our secretary held a glass of wine to my lips. I rallied as quickly as possible, and staggered to my feet; but the two gentlemen placed me in the chair against which I had been leaning, and insisted upon my finishing the wine before I tried to speak.

"I have not tasted food all day," I said, faintly.

"Then, my good fellow, you shall go home immediately," said the Postmaster-General; "but be on your guard! Not a word of this must escape you. Are you a married man?"

"No, my lord," I answered.

"So much the better," he added, smiling. "You can keep a secret from your mother, I dare say. We rely upon your honour."

The secretary then rang a bell, and I was committed to the charge of the messenger who answered it; and in a few minutes I was being conveyed in a cab to my London lodgings. A week afterwards, Tom Morville was sent out to a post-office in Canada, where he settled down, married, and is still living, perfectly satisfied with his position, as he occasionally informs me by letter. For myself, I remained as I desired, in my old post as travelling-clerk until the death of my mother, which occurred some ten or twelve months afterwards. I was then promoted to an appointment as a clerk in charge, upon the first vacancy.

The business of the clerks in charge is to take possession of any post-office in the kingdom, upon the death or resignation of the postmaster, or when circumstances of suspicion cause his suspension from office. My new duties carried me three or four times into Mr. Huntingdon's district. Though that gentleman and I never exchanged a word with regard to the mysterious loss in which we had both had an innocent share, he distinguished me with peculiar favour, and more than once invited me to visit him at his own house. He lived alone, having but one daughter, who had married, somewhat against his will, one of his clerks: the Mr. Forbes whose handwriting had been so successfully imitated in the official order presented to me by the self-styled Miss Anne Clifton. (By the way, I may here mention, though it has nothing to do with my story, that my acquaintance with the Cliftons had ripened into an intimacy, which resulted in my engagement and marriage to Mary.)

It would be beside my purpose to specify the precise number of years which elapsed before I was once again summoned to the secretary's private apartment, where I found him closeted with Mr. Huntingdon. Mr. Huntingdon shook hands with unofficial cordiality; and then the secretary proceeded to state the business on hand.

"Mr. Wilcox, you remember our offer to place you in office in Alexandria?" he said.

"Certainly, sir," I answered.

"It has been a troublesome office," he continued, almost pettishly. "We sent out Mr. Forbes only six months ago, on account of his health, which required a warmer climate, and now his medical man reports that his life is not worth three weeks' purchase."

Upon Mr. Huntingdon's face there rested an expression of profound anxiety; and as the secretary paused he addressed himself to me.

"Mr. Wilcox," he said, "I have been soliciting, as a personal favour, that you should be sent out to take charge of the packet agency, in order that my daughter may have some one at hand to befriend her, and manage her business affairs for her. You are not personally acquainted with her, but I know I can trust her with you."

"You may, Mr. Huntingdon," I said, warmly. "I will do anything I can to aid Mrs. Forbes. When do you wish me to start?"

"How soon can you be ready?" was the rejoinder.

"To-morrow morning."

I was not married then, and I anticipated no delay in setting off. Nor was there any. I travelled with the overland mail through France to Marseilles, embarked in a vessel for Alexandria, and in a few days from the time I first heard of my destination set foot in the office there. All the postal arrangements had fallen into considerable irregularity and confusion; for, as I was informed immediately on my arrival, Mr. Forbes had been in a dying condition for the last week, and of course the absence of a master had borne the usual results. I took formal possession of the office, and then, conducted by one of the clerks, I proceeded to the dwelling of the unfortunate postmaster and his no less unfortunate wife. It would be out of place in this narrative to indulge in any traveller's tales about the strange place where I was so unexpectedly located. Suffice it to say, that the darkened sultry room into which I was shown, on inquiring for Mrs. Forbes, was bare of furniture, and destitute of all those little tokens of refinement and taste which make our English parlours so pleasant to the eye. There was, however, a piano in one of the dark corners of the room, open, and with a sheet of music on it. While I waited for Mrs. Forbes's appearance, I strolled idly up to the piano to see what music it might be. The next moment my eye fell upon an antique red morocco workbox standing on the top of the piano—a workbox evidently, for the lid was not closely shut, and a few threads of silk and cotton were hanging out of it. In a kind of dream—for it was difficult to believe that the occurrence was a fact—I carried the box to the darkened window, and there, plain in my sight, was the device scratched upon the leather: the revolutionary symbol of a neart with a dagger through it. I had found the Premier's despatch-box in the parlour of the packet-agent of Alexandria!

I stood for some minutes with that dreamlike feeling upon me, gazing at the box in the dim obscure light. It could not be real! My fancy must be playing a trick on me! But the sound of a light step—for, light as it was, I heard it distinctly as it approached the room—broke my trance, and I hastened to replace the box on the piano, and to stoop down as if examining the music before the door opened. I had not sent in my name to Mrs. Forbes, for I did not suppose that she was acquainted with it, nor could she see me distinctly, as I stood in the gloom. But I could see her. She had the slight slender figure, the childlike face, and the fair hair of Miss Anne Clifton. She came quickly across the room, holding out both her hands in a childish appealing manner.

"O!" she wailed, in a tone that went straight to my heart, "he is dead! He has just died!"

It was no time then to speak about the red morocco workbox. This little childish creature, who did not look a day older than when I had last seen her in my travelling post-office, was a widow in a strange land, far away from any friend save myself. I had brought her a letter from her father. The first duties that devolved upon me were those of her husband's interment, which had to take place immediately. Three or four weeks elapsed before I could, with any humanity, enter upon the investigation of her mysterious complicity in the daring theft practised on the government and the post-office.

I did not see the despatch-box again. In the midst of her new and vehement grief, Mrs. Forbes had the precaution to remove it before I was ushered again into the room where I had discovered it. I was at some trouble to hit upon any plan by which to gain a second sight of it; but I was resolved that Mrs. Forbes should not leave Alexandria without giving me a full explanation. We were waiting for remittances and instructions from England, and in the mean time the violence of her grief abated, and she recovered a good share of her old buoyancy and loveliness, which had so delighted me on my first acquaintance with her. As her demands upon my sympathy \veakened, my curiosity grew stronger, and at last mastered me. I carried with me a netted purse which required mending, and I asked her to catch up the broken meshes while I waited for it.

"I will tell your maid to bring your work-box," I said, going to the door and calling the servant. "Your mistress has a red morocco workbox," I said to her, as she answered my summons.

"Yes, sir," she replied.

"Where is it?"

"In her bedroom," she said.

"Mrs. Forbes wishes it brought here." I turned back into the room. Mrs. Forbes had gone deadly pale, but her eyes looked sullen, and hsr teeth were clenched under her lips with an expression of stubbornness. The maid brought the workbox. I walked, with it in my hands, up to the sofa where she was seated.

"You remember this mark?" I asked; " I think neither of us can ever forget it,"

She did not answer by word, but there was a very intelligent gleam in her blue eyes.

"Now," I continued, softly, "I promised your father to befriend you, and I am not a man to forget a promise. But you must tell me the whole simple truth."

I was compelled to reason with her, and to urge her for some time. I confess I went so far as to remind her that there was an English consul at Alexandria, to whom I could resort. At last she opened her stubborn lips, and the whole story came out, mingled with sobs and showers of tears.

She had been in love with Alfred, she said, and they were too poor to marry, and papa would not hear of such a thing. She was always in want of money, she was kept so short; and they promised to give her such a great sum—a vast sum—five hundred pounds.

"But who bribed you?" I inquired.

A foreign gentleman whom she had met in London, called Monsieur Bonnard. It was a French name, but she was not sure that he was a Frenchman. He talked to her about her father being a surveyor in the post-office, and asked her a great number of questions. A few weeks after, she met him in their own town by accident, she and Mr. Forbes; and Alfred had a long private talk with him, and they came to her, and told her she could help them very much. They asked her if she could be brave enough to carry off a little red box out of the travelling post-office, containing nothing but papers. After a while she consented. When she had confessed so much under compulsion, Mrs. Forbes seemed to take a pleasure in the narrative, and went on fluently.

"We required papa's signature to the order, and we did not know how to get it. Luckily he had a fit of the gout, and was very peevish; and I had to read over a lot of official papers to him, and then he signed them. One of the papers I read twice, and slipped the order into its place after the second reading. I thought I should have died with fright; but just then he was in great pain, and glad to get his work over. I made an excuse that I was going to visit my aunt at Beckby, but instead of going there direct, we contrived to be at the station at Eaton a minute or two before the mail train came up. I kept outside the station door till we heard the whistle, and just then the postman came running down the road, and I followed him straight through the booking-office, and asked him to give you the order, which I put into his hand. He scarcely saw me. I just caught a glimpse of Monsieur Bonnard's face through the window of the compartment next the van, when Alfred had gone. They had promised me that the train should stop at Camden-town, if I could only keep your attention engaged until then. You know how I succeeded."

"But how did you dispose of the box?" I asked. "You could not have concealed it about you; that I am sure of."

"Ah!" she said, "nothing was easier. Monsieur Bonnard had described the van to me, and you remember I put the box down at the end of the counter, close to the corner where I hid myself at every station. There was a door with a window in it, and I asked if I might have the window open, as the van was too warm for me. I believe Monsieur Bonnard could have taken it from me by only leaning through his window, but he preferred stepping out, and taking it from my hand, just as the train was leaving Watford—on the far side of the carriages, you understand. It was the last station, and the train came to a stand at Camden-town. After all, the box was not out of your sight more than twenty minutes before you missed it. Monsieur Bonnard and I hurried out of the station, and Alfred followed us. The box was forced open—the lock has never been mended, for it was a peculiar one—and Monsieur Bonnard took possession of the papers. He left the box with me, after putting inside it a roll of notes. Alfred and I were married next morning, and I went back to my aunt's; but we did not tell papa of our marriage for three or four months. That is the story of my red morocco workbox."

She smiled with the provoking mirthfulness of a mischievous child. There was one point still, on which my curiosity was unsatisfied.

"Did you know what the despatches were about?" I asked.

"O no!" she answered; "I never understood politics in the least. I knew nothing about them. Monsieur did not say a word; he did not even look at the papers while we were by. I would never, never, have taken a registered letter, or anything with money in it, you know. But all those papers could be written again quite easily. You must not think me a thief, Mr. Wilcox; there was nothing worth money among the papers."

"They were worth five hundred pounds to you," I said. "Did you ever see Bonnard again?"

"Never again," she replied. " He said he was going to return to his native country. I don't think Bormard was his real name."

Most likely not, I thought; but I said no more to Mrs. Forbes. Once again I was involved in a great perplexity about this affair. It was clearly my duty to report the discovery at head-quarters, but I shrank from doing so. One of the chief culprits was already gone to another judgment than that of man; several years had obliterated all traces of Monsieur Bonnard; and the only victim of justice would be this poor little dupe of the two greater criminals. At last I came to the conclusion to send the whole of the particulars to Mr. Huntingdon himself; and I wrote them to him, without remark or comment.

The answer that came to Mrs. Forbes and me in Alexandria was the announcement of Mr. Huntingdon's sudden death of some disease of the heart, on the day which. I calculated would put him in possession of mv communication. Mrs. Forbes was again overwhelmed with apparently heartrending sorrow and remorse. The income left to her was something less than one hundred pounds a year. The secretary of the post-office, who had been a personal friend of the deceased gentleman, was his sole executor; and I received a letter from him, containing one for Mrs. Forbes, which recommended her, in terms not to be misunderstood, to fix upon some residence abroad, and not to return to England. She fancied she would like the seclusion and quiet of a convent; and I made arrangements for her to enter one in Malta, where she would still be under British protection. I left Alexandria myself on the arrival of another packet-agent; and on my return to London I had a private interview with the secretary. I found that there was no need to inform him of the circumstances I have related to you, as he had taken possession of all Mr. Huntingdon's papers. In consideration of his ancient friendship, and of the escape of those who most merited punishment, he had come to the conclusion that it was quite as well to let bygones be bygones.

At the conclusion of the interview I delivered a message which Mrs. Forbes had emphatically entrusted to me.

"Mrs. Forbes wished me to impress upon your mind," I said, "that neither she nor Mr. Forbes would have been guilty of this misdemeanour if they had not been very much in love with one another, and very much in want of money."

"Ah!" replied the secretary, with a smile, "if Cleopatra's nose bad been shorter, the fate of the world would have been different!"

No. 5 BRANCH LINE

THE ENGINEER

Amelia B. Edwards

His name, sir, was Matthew Price; mine is Benjamin Hardy. We were born within a few days of each other; bred up in the same village; taught at the same school. I cannot remember the time when we were not close friends. Even as boys, we never knew what it was to quarrel. We had not a thought, we had not a possession, that was not in common. We would have stood by each other, fearlessly, to the death. It was such a friendship as one reads about sometimes in books: fast and firm as the great Tors upon our native moorlands, true as the sun in the heavens.

The name of our village was Chadleigh. Lifted high above the pasture flats which stretched away at our feet like a measureless green lake and melted into mist on the furthest horizon, it nestled, a tiny stone-built hamlet, in a sheltered hollow about midway between the plain and the plateau. Above us, rising ridge beyond ridge, slope beyond slope, spread the mountainous moor-country, bare and bleak for the most part, with here and there a patch of cultivated field or hardy plantation, and crowned highest of all with masses of huge grey crag, abrupt, isolated, hoary, and older than the deluge. These were the Tors—Druids' Tor, King's Tor, Castle Tor, and the like; sacred places, as I have heard, in the ancient time, where crownings, burnings, human sacrifices, and all kinds of bloody heathen rites were performed. Bones, too, had been found there, and arrow-heads, and ornaments of gold and glass. I had a vague awe of the Tors in those boyish days, and would not have gone near them after dark for the heaviest bribe.

I have said that we were born in the same village. He was the son of a small farmer, named William Price, and the eldest of a family of seven; I was the only child of Ephraim Hardy, the Chadleigh blacksmith—a well-known man in those parts, whose memory is not forgotten to this day. Just so far as a farmer is supposed to be a bigger man than a blacksmith, Mat's father might be said to have a better standing than mine; but William Price, with his small holding and his seven boys, was, in fact, as poor as many a day-labourer; whilst, the blacksmith, well-to-do, bustling, popular, and open-handed, was a person of some importance in the place. All this, however, had nothing to do with Mat and myself. It never occurred to either of us that his jacket was out at elbows, or that our mutual funds came altogether from my pocket. It was enough for us that we sat on the same school-bench, conned our tasks from the same primer, fought each other's battles, screened each other's faults, fished, nutted, played truant, robbed orchards and birds' nests together, and spent every half-hour, authorised or stolen, in each other's society. It was a happy time; but it could not go on for ever. My father, being prosperous, resolved to put me forward in the world. I must know more, and do better, than himself. The forge was not good enough, the little world of Chadleigh not wide enough, for rne. Thus it happened that I was still swinging the satchel when Mat was whistling at the plough, and that at last, when my future course was shaped out, we were separated, as it then seemed to us, for life. For, blacksmith's son as I was, furnace and forge, in some form or other, pleased me best, and I chose to be a working engineer. So my father by-and-by apprenticed me to a Birmingham iron-master; and, having bidden farewell to Mat, and Chadleigh, and the grey old Tors in the shadow of which I had spent all the days of my life, I turned my face northward, and went over into "the Black country."

I am not going to dwell on this part of my story. How I worked out the term of my apprenticeship; how, when I had served my full time and become a skilled workman, I took Mat from the plough and brought him over to the Black Country, sharing with him lodging, wages, experience—all, in short, that I had to give; how he, naturally quick to learn and brimful of quiet energy, worked his way up a step at a time, and came by-and-by to be a "first hand" in his own department; how, during all these years of change, and trial, and effort, the old boyish affection never wavered or weakened, but went on, growing with our growth and strengthening with our strength—are facts which I need do no more than outline in this place.

About this time—it will be remembered that I speak of the days when Mat and I were on the bright side of thirty—it happened that our firm contracted to supply six first-class locomotives to run on the new line, then in process of construction, between Turin and Genoa. It was the first Italian order we had taken. We had had dealings with France, Holland, Belgium, Germany; but never with Italy. The connexion, therefore, was new and valuable—all the more valuable because our Transalpine neighbours had but lately begun to lay down the iron roads, and would be safe to need more of our good English work as they went on. So the Birmingham firm set themselves to the contract with a will, lengthened our working hours, increased our wages, took on fresh hands, and determined, if energy and promptitude could do it, to place themselves at the head of the Italian labour-market, and stay there. They deserved and achieved success. The six locomotives were not only turned out to time, but were shipped, despatched, and delivered with a promptitude that fairly amazed our Piedmontese consignee. I was not a little proud, you may be sure, when I found myself appointed to superintend the transport of the engines. Being allowed a couple of assistants, I contrived that Mat should be one of them; and thus we enjoyed together the first great holiday of our lives.

It was a wonderful change for two Birmingham operatives fresh from the Black Country. The fairy city, with its crescent background of Alps; the port crowded with strange shipping; the marvellous blue sky and bluer sea; the painted houses on the quays; the quaint cathedral, faced with black and white marble; the street of jewellers, like an Arabian Nights' bazaar; the street of palaces, with its Moorish court-yards, its fountains and orange-trees; the women veiled like brides; the galley-slaves chained two and two; the processions of priests and friars; the everlasting clangour of bells; the babble of a strange tongue; the singular lightness and brightness of the climate—made, altogether, such a combination of wonders that we wandered about, the first day, in a kind of bewildered dream, like children at a fair. Before that week was ended, being tempted by the beauty of the place and the liberality of the pay, we had agreed to take service with the Turin and Genoa Railway Company, and to turn our backs upon Birmingham for ever.

Then began a new life—a life so active and healthy, so steeped in fresh air and sunshine, that we sometimes marvelled how we could have endured the gloom of the Black Country. We were constantly up and down the line: now at Genoa, now at Turin, taking trial trips with the locomotives, and placing our old experiences at the service of our new employers.

In the mean while we made Genoa our headquarters, and hired a couple of rooms over a small shop in a by-street sloping down to the quays. Such a busy little street—so steep and winding that no vehicles could pass through it, and so narrow that the sky looked like a mere strip of deep-blue ribbon overhead! Every house in it, however, was a shop, where the goods encroached on the footway, or were piled about the door, or hung like tapestry from the balconies; and all day long, from dawn to dusk, an incessant stream of passers-by poured up and down between the port and the upper quarter of the city.

Our landlady was the widow of a silver-worker, and lived by the sale of filigree ornaments, cheap jewellery, combs, fans, and toys in ivory and jet. She had an only daughter named Gianetta, who served in the shop, and was simply the most beautiful woman I ever beheld. Looking back across this weary chasm of years, and bringing her image before me (as I can and do) with all the vividness of life, I am unable, even now, to detect a flaw in her beauty. I do not attempt to describe her. I do not believe there is a poet living who could find the words to do it; but I once saw a picture that was somewhat like her (not half so lovely, but still like her), and, for aught I know, that picture is still hanging where I last looked at it—upon the walls of the Louvre. It represented a woman with brown eyes and golden hair, looking over her shoulder into a circular mirror held by a bearded man in the background. In this man, as I then understood, the artist had painted his own portrait; in her, the portrait of the woman he loved. No picture that I ever saw was half so beautiful, and yet it was not worthy to be named in the same breath with Gianetta Coneglia.

You may be certain the widow's shop did not want for customers. All Genoa knew how fair a face was to be seen behind that dingy little counter; and Gianetta, flirt as she was, had more lovers than she cared to remember, even by name. Gentle and simple, rich and poor, from the red-capped sailor buying his earrings or his amulet, to the nobleman carelessly purchasing half the filigrees in the window, she treated them all alike—encouraged them, laughed at them, led them on and turned them off at her pleasure. She had no more heart than a marble statue; as Mat and I discovered by and-by, to our bitter cost.

I cannot tell to this day how it came about, or what first led me to suspect how things were going with us both; but long before the waning of that autumn a coldness had sprung up between my friend and myself. It was nothing that could have been put into words. It was nothing that either of us could have explained or justified, to save his life. We lodged together, ate together, worked together, exactly as before; we even took our long evening's walk together, when the day's labour was ended; and except, perhaps, that we were more silent than of old, no mere looker-on could have detected a shadow of change. Yet there it was, silent and subtle, widening the gulf between us every day.

It was not his fault. He was too true and gentle-hearted to have willingly brought about such a state of things between us. Neither do I believe—fiery as my nature is—that it was mine. It was all hers—hers from first to last —the sin, and the shame, and the sorrow.

If she had shown a fair and open preference for either of us, no real harm could have come of it. I would have put any constraint upon myself, and, Heaven knows! have borne any suffering, to see Mat really happy. I know that he would have done the same, and more if he could, for me. But Gianetta cared not one sou for either. She never meant to choose between us. It gratified her vanity to divide us; it amused her to play with us. It would pass my power to tell how, by a thousand imperceptible shades of coquetry—by the lingering of a glance, the substitution of a word, the flitting of a smile—she contrived to turn our heads, and torture our hearts, and lead us on to love her. She deceived us both. She buoyed us both up with hope; she maddened us with jealousy; she crushed us with despair. For my part, when I seemed to wake to a sudden sense of the ruin that was about our path and I saw how the truest friendship that ever bound two lives together was drifting on to wreck and ruin, I asked myself whether any woman in the world was worth what Mat had been to me and I to him. But this was not often. I was readier to shut my eyes upon the truth than to face it; and so lived on, wilfully, in a dream.

Thus the autumn passed away, and winter came—the strange, treacherous Genoese winter, green with olive and ilex, brilliant with sunshine, and bitter with storm. Still, rivals at heart and friends on the surface, Mat and I lingered on in our lodging in the Vicolo Balba. Still Gianetta held us with her fatal wiles and her still more fatal beauty. At length there came a day when I felt I could bear the horrible misery and suspense of it no longer. The sun, I vowed, should not go down before I knew my sentence. She must choose between us. She must either take me or let me go. I was reckless. I was desperate. I was determined to know the worst, or the best. If the worst, I would at once turn my back upon Genoa, upon her, upon all the pursuits and purposes of my past life, and begin the world anew. This I told her, passionately and sternly, standing before her in the little parlour at the back of the shop, one bleak December morning.

"If it's Mat whom you care for most," I said, "tell me so in one word, and I will never trouble you again. He is better worth your love. I am jealous and exacting; he is as trusting and unselfish as a woman. Speak, Gianetta; am I to bid you good-bye for ever and ever, or am I to write home to my mother in England, bidding her pray to God to bless the woman who has promised to be my wife?"

"You plead your friend's cause well," she replied, haughtily. "Matteo ought to be grateful. This is more than he ever did for you."

"Give me my answer, for pity's sake," I exclaimed, "and let me go!"

"You are free to go or stay, Signor Inglese," she replied. "I am not your jailor."

"Do you bid me leave you?"

"Beata Madre! not I."

"Will you marry me, if I stay?"

She laughed aloud—such a merry, mocking, musical laugh, like a chime of silver bells!

"You ask too much," she said.

"Only what you have led me to hope these five or six months past!"

"That is just what Matteo says. How tiresome you both are!"

"O, Gianetta," I said, passionately, "be serious for one moment! I am a rough fellow, it is true—not half good enough or clever enough for you; but I love you with my whole heart, and an Emperor could do no more."

"I am glad of it," she replied; "I do not want you to love me less."

"Then you cannot wish to make me wretched! Will you promise me?"

"I promise nothing," said she, with another burst of laughter; "except that I will not marry Matteo!"

Except that she would not marry Matteo! Only that. Not a word of hope for myself. Nothing but my friend's condemnation. I might get comfort, and selfish triumph, and some sort of base assurance out of that, if I could. And so, to my shame, I did. I grasped at the vain encouragement, and, fool that I was! let her put me off again unanswered. From that day, I gave up all effort at self-control, and let myself drift blindly on—to destruction.

At length things became so bad between Mat and myself that it seemed as if an open rupture must be at hand. We avoided each other, scarcely exchanged a dozen sentences in a day, and fell away from all our old familiar habits. At this time—I shudder to remember it!—there were moments when I felt that I hated him.

Thus, with the trouble deepening and widening between us day by day, another month or five weeks went by; and February came; and, with February, the Carnival. They said in Genoa that it was a particularly dull carnival; and so it must have been; for, save a flag or two hung out in some of the principal streets, and a sort of festa look about the women, there were no special indications of the season. It was, I think, the second day when, having been on the line all the morning, I returned to Genoa at dusk, and, to my surprise, found Mat Price on the platform. He came up to me, and laid his hand on my arm.

"You are in late," he said. "I have been waiting for you three-quarters of an hour. Shall we dine together to-day?"

Impulsive as I am, this evidence of returning good will at once called up my better feelings.

"With all my heart, Mat," I replied; "shall we go to Gozzoli's?"

"No, no," he said, hurriedly. "Some quieter place—Some place where we can talk. I have something to say to you."

I noticed now that he looked pale and agitated, and an uneasy sense of apprehension stole upon me. We decided on the "Pescatore," a little out-of-the-way trattoria, down near the Molo Vecchio. There, in a dingy salon, frequented chiefly by seamen, and redolent of tobacco, we ordered our simple dinner. Mat scarcely swallowed a morsel; but, calling presently for a bottle of Sicilian wine, drank eagerly.

"Well, Mat," I said, as the last dish was placed on the table, "what news have you?"

"Bad."

" I guessed that from your face.'*

"Bad for you—bad for me. Gianetta."

"What of Gianetta?"

He passed his hand nervously across his lips.

"Gianetta is false—worse than false," he said, in a hoarse voice. "She values an honest man's heart just as she values a flower for her hair—wears it for a day, then throws it aside for ever. She has cruelly wronged us both."

"In what way? Good Heavens, speak out!"

"In the worst way that a woman can wrong those who love her. She has sold herself to the Marchese Loredano."

The blood rushed to my head and face in a burning torrent. I could scarcely see, and dared not trust myself to speak

"I saw her going towards the cathedral," he went on, hurriedly. "It was about three hours ago. I thought she might be going to confession, so I hung back and followed her at a distance. When she got inside, however, she went straight to the back of the pulpit, where this man was waiting for her. You remember him—an old man who used to haunt the shop a month or two back. Well, seeing how deep in conversation they were, and how they stood close under the pulpit with their backs towards the church, I fell into a passion of anger and went straight up the aisle, intending to say or do something: I scarcely knew what; but, at all events, to draw her arm through mine, and take her home. When I came within a few feet, however, and found only a big pillar between myself and them, I paused. They could not see me, nor I them; but I could hear their voices distinctly, and—and I listened."

"Well, and you heard——"

"The terms of a shameful bargain—beauty on the one side, gold on the other; so many thousand francs a year; a villa near Naples——Pah! it makes me sick to repeat it."

And, with a shudder, he poured out another glass of wine and drank it at a draught.

"After that," he said, presently, "I made no effort to bring her away. The whole thing was so cold-blooded, so deliberate, so shameful, that I felt I had only to wipe her out of my memory, and leave her to her fate. I stole out of the cathedral, and walked about here by the sea for ever so long, trying to get my thoughts straight. Then I remembered you, Ben; and the recollection of how this wanton had come between us and broken up our lives drove me wild. So I went up to the station and waited for you. I felt you ought to know it all; and— and I thought, perhaps, that we might go back to England together."

"The Marchese Loredano!"

It was all that I could say; all that I could think. As Mat had just said of himself, I felt "like one stunned." '

"There is one other thing I may as well tell you," he added, reluctantly, "if only to show you how false a woman can be. We—we were to have been married next month."

"We? Who? What do you mean?"

"I mean that we were to have been married—Gianetta and I."

A sudden storm of rage, of scorn, of incredulity, swept over me at this, and seemed to carry my senses away.

''You!" I cried. "Gianetta marry you! I don't believe it."

"I wish I had not believed it," he replied, looking up as if puzzled by my vehemence. "But she promised me; and I thought, when she promised it, she meant it."

"She told me, weeks ago, that she would never be your wife!"

His colour rose, his brow darkened; but when his answer came, it was as calm as the last.

"Indeed!" he said. "Then it is only one baseness more. She told me that she had refused you; and that was why we kept our engagement secret."

"Tell the truth, Mat Price," I said, well-nigh beside myself with suspicion. "Confess that every word of this is false! Confess that Gianetta will not listen to you, and that you are afraid I may succeed where you have failed. As perhaps I shall—as perhaps I shall, after all!"

"Are you mad?" he exclaimed. "What do you mean?"

"That I believe it's just a trick to get me away to England—that I don't credit a syllable of your story. You're a liar, and I hate you!"

He rose, and, laying one hand on the back of his chair, looked me sternly in the face.

"If you were not Benjamin Hardy," he said, deliberately, "I would thrash you within an inch of your life."

The words had no sooner passed his lips than I sprang at him. I have never been able distinctly to remember what followed. A curse—a blow—a struggle—a moment of blind fury—a cry—a confusion of tongues—a circle of strange faces. Then I see Mat lying back in the arms of a bystander; myself trembling and bewildered—the knife dropping from my grasp; blood upon the floor; blood upon my hands; blood upon his shirt. And then I hear those dreadful words:

"O, Ben, you have murdered me!"

He did not die—at least, not there and then. He was carried to the nearest hospital, and lay for some weeks between life and death. His case, they said, was difficult and dangerous. The knife had gone in just below the collarbone, and pierced down into the lungs. He was not allowed to speak or turn—scarcely to breathe with freedom. He might not even lift his head to drink. I sat by him day and night all through that sorrowful time. I gave up my situation on the railway; I quitted my lodging in the Vicolo Balba; I tried to forget that such a woman as Gianetta Coneglia had ever drawn breath. I lived only for Mat; and he tried to live more, I believe, for my sake than his own. Thus, in the bitter silent hours of pain and penitence, when no hand but mine approached his lips or smoothed his pillow, the old friendship came back with even more than its old trust and faithfulness. He forgave me, fully and freely; and I would thankfully have given my life for him.

At length there came one bright spring morning, when, dismissed as convalescent, he tottered out through the hospital gates, leaning on my arm, and feeble as an infant. He was not cured; neither, as I then learned to my horror and anguish, was it possible that he ever could be cured. He might live, with care, for some years; but the lungs were injured beyond hope of remedy, and a strong or healthy man he could never be agian. These, spoken aside to me, were the parting words of the chief physician, who advised me to take him further south without delay.

I took him to a little coast-town called Rocca, some thirty miles beyond Genoa—a sheltered lonely place along the Riviera, where the sea was even bluer than the sky, and the cliffs were green with strange tropical plants, cacti, and aloes, and Egyptian palms. Here we lodged in the house of a small tradesman; and Mat, to use his own words, "set to work at getting well in good earnest." But, alas! it was a work which no earnestness could forward. Day after day he went down to the beach, and sat for hours drinking the sea air and watching the sails that came and went in the offing. By-and-by he could go no further than the garden of the house m which we lived. A little later, and he spent his days on a couch beside the open window, waiting patiently for the end. Ay, for the end! It had come to that. He was fading fast, waning with the waning summer, and conscious that the Reaper was at hand. His whole aim now was to soften the agony of my remorse, and prepare me for what must shortly come.

"I would not live longer, if I could," he said, lying on his couch one summer evening, and looking up to the stars. "If I had my choice at this moment, I would ask to go. I should like Gianetta to know that I forgave her."

"She shall know it," I said, trembling suddenly from head to foot.

He pressed my hand.

"And you'll write to father?"

"I will."

I had drawn a little back, that he might not see the tears raining down my cheeks; but he raised himself on his elbow, and looked round.

"Don't fret, Ben," he whispered; laid his head back wearily upon the pillow—and so died.

And this was the end of it. This was the end of all that made life life to me. I buried him there, in hearing of the wash of a strange sea on a strange shore. I stayed by the grave till the priest and the bystanders were gone. I saw the earth filled in to the last sod, and the gravedigger stamp it down with his feet. Then, and not till then, I felt that I had lost him for ever—the friend I had loved, and hated, and slain. Then, and not till then, I knew that all rest, and joy, and hope were over for me. From that moment my heart hardened within me, and my life was filled with loathing. Day and night, land and sea, labour and rest, food and sleep, were alike hateful to me. It was the curse of Cain, and that my brother had pardoned me made it lie none the lighter. Peace on earth was for me no more, and goodwill towards men was dead in my heart for ever. Remorse softens some natures; but it poisoned mine. I hated all mankind but above all mankind I hated the woman who had come between us two, and ruined both our lives.

He had bidden me seek her out, and be the messenger of his forgiveness. I had sooner have gone down to the port of Genoa and taken upon me the serge cap and shotted chain of any galley-slave at his toil in the public works; but for all that I did my best to obey him. I went back, alone and on foot. I went back, intending to say to her, "Gianetta Coneglia, he forgave you; but God never will." But she was gone. The little shop was let to a fresh occupant; and the neighbours only knew that mother and daughter had left the place quite suddenly, and that Gianetta was supposed to be under the "protection" of the Marchese Loredano. How I made inquiries here and there—how I heard that they had gone to Naples—and how, being restless and reckless of my time, I worked my passage in a French steamer, and followed her—how, having found the sumptuous villa that was now hers, I learned that she had left there some ten days and gone to Paris, where the Marchese was ambassador for the Two Sicilies—how, working my passage back again to Marseilles, and thence, in part by the river and in part by the rail, I made my way to Paris—how, day after day, I paced the streets and the parks, watched at the ambassador's gates, followed his carriage, and at last, after weeks of waiting, discovered her address—how, having written to request an interview, her servants spurned me from her door and flung my letter in my face—how, looking up at her windows, I then, instead of forgiving, solemnly cursed her with the bitterest curses my tongue could devise—and how, this done, I shook the dust of Paris from my feet, and became a wanderer upon the face of the earth, are facts which I have now no space to tell.

The next six or eight years of my life were shifting and unsettled enough. A morose and restless man, I took employment here and there, as opportunity offered, turning my hand to many things, and caring little what I earned, so long as the work was hard and the change incessant. First of all I engaged myself as chief engineer in one of the French steamers plying between Marseilles and Constantinople. At Constantinople I changed to one of the Austrian Lloyd's boats, and worked for some time to and from Alexandria, Jaffa, and those parts. After that, I fell in with a party of Mr. Layard's men at Cairo, and so went up the Nile and took a turn at the excavations of the mound of Nimroud. Then I became a working engineer on the new desert line between Alexandria and Suez; and by-and-by I worked my passage out to Bombay, and took service as an engine fitter on one of the great Indian railways. I stayed a long time in India; that is to say, I stayed nearly two years, which was a long time for me; and I might not even have left so soon, but for the war that was declared just then with Russia. That tempted me. For I loved danger and hardship as other men love safety and ease; and as for my life, I had sooner have parted from it than kept it, any day. So I came straight back to England; betook myself to Portsmouth, where my testimonials at once procured me the sort of berth I wanted. I went out to the Crimea in the engine-room of one of her Majesty's warsteamers.

I served with the fleet, of course, while the war lasted; and when it was over, went wandering off again, rejoicing in my liberty. This time I went to Canada, and after working on a railway then in progress near the American frontier, I presently passed over into the States; journeyed from north to south; crossed the Rocky Mountains; tried a month or two of life in the gold country; and then, being seized with a sudden, aching, unaccountable longing to revisit that solitary grave so far away on the Italian coast, I turned my face once more towards Europe.

Poor little grave! I found it rank with weeds, the cross half shattered, the inscription half effaced. It was as if no one had loved him, or remembered him. I went back to the house in which we had lodged together. The same people were still living there, and made me kindly welcome. I stayed with them for some weeks. I weeded, and planted, and trimmed the grave with my own hands, and set up a fresh cross in pure white marble. It was the first season of rest that I had known since I laid him there; and when at last I shouldered my knapsack and set forth again to battle with the world, I promised myself that, God willing, I would creep back to Rocca, when my days drew near to ending, and be buried by his side.

From hence, being, perhaps, a little less inclined than formerly for very distant parts, and willing to keep within reach of that grave, I went no further than Mantua, where I engaged myself as an engine-driver on the line, then not long completed, between that city and Venice. Somehow, although I had been trained to the working engineering, I preferred in these days to earn my bread by driving. I liked the excitement of it, the sense of power, the rush of the air, the roar of the fire, the flitting of the landscape. Above all, I enjoyed to drive a night express. The worse the weather, the better it suited with my sullen temper. For I was as hard, and harder than ever. The years had done nothing to soften me. They had only confirmed all that was blackest and bitterest in my heart.

I continued pretty faithful to the Mantua line, and had been working on it steadily for more than seven months when that which I am now about to relate took place.

It was in the month of March. The weather had been unsettled for some days past, and the nights stormy; and at one point along the line, near Ponte di Brenta, the waters had risen and swept away some seventy yards of embankment Since this accident, the trains had all been obliged to stop at a certain spot between Padua and Ponte di Brenta, and the passengers, with their luggage, had thence to be transported in all kinds of vehicles, by a circuitous country road, to the nearest station on the other side of the gap, where another train and engine awaited liem. This, of course, caused great confusion ind annoyance, put all our time-tables wrong, and subjected the public to a large amount of inconvenience. In the mean while an army of navvies was drafted to the spot, and worked day and night to repair the damage. At this time I was driving two through trains each day; namely, one from Mantua to Venice in the early morning, and a return train from Venice to Vlantua in the afternoon—a tolerably full day's vork, covering about one hundred and ninety miles of ground, and occupying between ten and eleven hours. I was therefore not best pleased when, on the third or fourth day after the accident, I was informed that, in addition to my regular allowance of work, I should that evening be required to drive a special train to Venice. This special train, consisting of an engine, a single carriage, and a break-van, was to leave the Mantua platform at eleven; at Padua the passengers were to alight and find post-chaises waiting to convey them to Ponte di Brenta; at Ponte di Brenta another engine, carriage, and break-van were to be in readiness. I was charged to accompany them throughout.

"Corpo di Bacco," said the clerk who gave me my orders, " you need not look so black, man. You are certain of a handsome gratuity. Do you know who goes with you?"

"Not I."

"Not you, indeed! Why, it's the Duca Loredano, the Neapolitan ambassador."

"Loredano!" I stammered. "What Loredano? There was a Marchese——"

"Certo. He was the Marchese Loredano some years ago; but he has come into his dukedom since then."

"He must be a very old man by this time."

"Yes, he is old; but what of that? He is as hale, and bright, and stately as ever. You have seen him before?"

"Yes," I said, turning away; " I have seen him—years ago."

"You have heard of his marriage?"

I shook my head.

The clerk chuckled, rubbed his hands, and shrugged his shoulders.

"An extraordinary affair," he said. " Made a tremendous esclandre at the time. He married his mistress—quite a common, vulgar girl—a Genoese—very handsome; but not received, of course. Nobody visits her."

"Married her!" I exclaimed. "Impossible."

"True, I assure you."

I put my hand to my head. I felt as if I had had a fall or a blow.

"Does she—does she go to-night?" I faltered.

"O dear, yes—goes everywhere with him —never lets him out of her sight. You'll see her—la bella Duchessa!"

With this my informant laughed, and rubbed his hands again, and went back to his office.

The day went by, I scarcely know how, except that my whole soul was in a tumult of rage and bitterness. I returned from my afternoon's work about 7.25, and at 10.30 I was once again at the station. I had examined the engine; given instructions to the Fochista, or stoker, about the fire; seen to the supply of oil; and got all in readiness, when, just as I was about to compare my watch with the clock in the ticket-office, a hand was laid upon my arm, and a voice in my ear said:

"Are you the engine-driver who is going on with this special train?"

I had never seen the speaker before. He was a small, dark man, muffled up about the throat, with blue glasses, a large black beard, and his hat drawn low upon his eyes.

"You are a poor man, I suppose," he said, in a quick, eager whisper, "and, like other poor men, would not object to be better off. Would you like to earn a couple of thousand florins?"

"In what way?"

"Hush! You are to stop at Padua, are you not, and to go on again at Ponte di Brenta?"

I nodded.

" Suppose you did nothing of the kind. Suppose, instead of turning off the steam, you jump off the engine, and let the train run on?"

"Impossible. There are seventy yards of embankment gone, and——"

"Basta! I know that. Save yourself, and let the train run on. It would be nothing but an accident."

I turned hot and cold; I trembled; my heart beat fast, and my breath failed.

"Why do you tempt me?" I faltered.

"For Italy's sake," he whispered; "for liberty's sake. I know you are no Italian; but, for all that, you may be a friend. This Loredano is one of his country's bitterest enemies. Stay, here are the two thousand florins."

I thrust his hand back fiercely.

"No—no," I said. "No blood-money. If I do it, I do it neither for Italy nor for money; but for vengeance."

"For vengeance!" he repeated.

At this moment the signal was given for backing up to the platform. I sprang to my place upon the engine without another word. When I again looked towards the spot where he had been standing, the stranger was gone.

I saw. them take their places—Duke and Duchess, secretary and. priest, valet and maid. I saw the station-master bow them into the carriage, and stand, bareheaded, beside the door. I could not distinguish their faces; the platform was too dusk, and the glare from the engine fire too strong; but I recognised her stately figure, and the poise of her head. Had I not been told who she was, I should have known her by those traits alone. Then the guard's whistle shrilled out, and the station-master made his last bow; I turned the steam on; and we started.

My blood was on fire. I no longer trembled or hesitated. I felt as if every nerve was iron, and every pulse instinct with deadly purpose. She was in my power, and I would be revenged. She should die—she, for whom I had stained my soul with my friend's blood! She should die, in the plentitude of her wealth and her beauty, and no power upon earth should save her!

The stations flew past. I put on more steam; I bade the fireman heap in the coke, and stir the blazing mass. I would have outstripped the wind, had it been possible. Faster and faster—hedges and trees, bridges and stations, flashing past—villages no sooner seen than gone—telegraph wires twisting, and dipping, and twining themselves in one, with the awful swiftness of our pace! Faster and faster, till the fireman at my side looks white and scared, and refuses to add more fuel to the furnace. Faster and faster, till the wind rushes in our faces and drives the breath back upon our lips.

I would have scorned to save myself. I meant to die with the rest. Mad as I was— and I believe from my very soul that I was utterly mad for the time—I felt a passing pang of pity for the old man and his suite. I would have spared the poor fellow at my side, too, if I could; but the pace at which we were going made escape impossible.

Vicenza was passed—a mere confused vision of lights. Pojana flew by. At Padua, but nine miles distant, our passengers were to alight. I saw the fireman's face turned upon me in remonstrance; I saw his lips move, though I could not hear a word; I saw his expression change suddenly from remonstrance to a deadly terror, and then—merciful Heaven! then, for the first time, I saw that he and I were no longer alone upon the engine.

There was a third man—a third man standing on my right hand, as the fireman was standing on my left—a tall, stalwart man, with short curling hair, and a flat Scotch cap upon his head. As I fell back in the first shock of surprise, he stepped nearer; took my place at the engine, and turned the steam off. I opened my lips to speak to him; he turned his head slowly, aad looked me in the face.

Matthew Price!

I uttered one long wild cry, flung my arms wildly up above my head, and fell as if I had been smitten with an axe.

I am prepared for the objections that may be made to my story. I expect, as a matter of course, to be told that this was an optical illusion, or that I was suffering from pressure on the brain, or even that I laboured under an attack of temporary insanity. I have heard all these arguments before, and, if I may be forgiven for saying so, I have no desire to hear them again. My own mind has been made up upon this subject for many a year. All that I can say—all that I know is—that Matthew Price came back from the dead to save my soul and the lives of those whom I, in my guilty rage, would have hurried to destruction. I believe this as I believe in the mercy of Heaven and the forgiveness of repentant sinners.

NO THOROUGHFARE

1867

Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins

[Mr. Dickens wrote the "Overture" and the "Third Act"; Mr. Collins wrote the "Second Act"; the remaining material was written jointly.]

THE OVERTURE

Day of the month and year, November the thirtieth, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-five. London Time by the great clock of Saint Paul’s, ten at night. All the lesser London churches strain their metallic throats. Some, flippantly begin before the heavy bell of the great cathedral; some, tardily begin three, four, half a dozen, strokes behind it; all are in sufficiently near accord, to leave a resonance in the air, as if the winged father who devours his children, had made a sounding sweep with his gigantic scythe in flying over the city.

What is this clock lower than most of the rest, and nearer to the ear, that lags so far behind to-night as to strike into the vibration alone? This is the clock of the Hospital for Foundling Children. Time was, when the Foundlings were received without question in a cradle at the gate. Time is, when inquiries are made respecting them, and they are taken as by favour from the mothers who relinquish all natural knowledge of them and claim to them for evermore.

The moon is at the full, and the night is fair with light clouds. The day has been otherwise than fair, for slush and mud, thickened with the droppings of heavy fog, lie black in the streets. The veiled lady who flutters up and down near the postern-gate of the Hospital for Foundling Children has need to be well shod to-night.

She flutters to and fro, avoiding the stand of hackney-coaches, and often pausing in the shadow of the western end of the great quadrangle wall, with her face turned towards the gate. As above her there is the purity of the moonlit sky, and below her there are the defilements of the pavement, so may she, haply, be divided in her mind between two vistas of reflection or experience. As her footprints crossing and recrossing one another have made a labyrinth in the mire, so may her track in life have involved itself in an intricate and unravellable tangle.

The postern-gate of the Hospital for Foundling Children opens, and a young woman comes out. The lady stands aside, observes closely, sees that the gate is quietly closed again from within, and follows the young woman.

Two or three streets have been traversed in silence before she, following close behind the object of her attention, stretches out her hand and touches her. Then the young woman stops and looks round, startled.

“You touched me last night, and, when I turned my head, you would not speak. Why do you follow me like a silent ghost?”

“It was not,” returned the lady, in a low voice, “that I would not speak, but that I could not when I tried.”

“What do you want of me? I have never done you any harm?”

“Never.”

“Do I know you?”

“No.”

“Then what can you want of me?”

“Here are two guineas in this paper. Take my poor little present, and I will tell you.”

Into the young woman’s face, which is honest and comely, comes a flush as she replies: “There is neither grown person nor child in all the large establishment that I belong to, who hasn’t a good word for Sally. I am Sally. Could I be so well thought of, if I was to be bought?”

“I do not mean to buy you; I mean only to reward you very slightly.”

Sally firmly, but not ungently, closes and puts back the offering hand. “If there is anything I can do for you, ma’am, that I will not do for its own sake, you are much mistaken in me if you think that I will do it for money. What is it you want?”

“You are one of the nurses or attendants at the Hospital; I saw you leave to-night and last night.”

“Yes, I am. I am Sally.”

“There is a pleasant patience in your face which makes me believe that very young children would take readily to you.”

“God bless ‘em! So they do.”

The lady lifts her veil, and shows a face no older than the nurse’s. A face far more refined and capable than hers, but wild and worn with sorrow.

“I am the miserable mother of a baby lately received under your care. I have a prayer to make to you.”

Instinctively respecting the confidence which has drawn aside the veil, Sally—whose ways are all ways of simplicity and spontaneity—replaces it, and begins to cry.

“You will listen to my prayer?” the lady urges. “You will not be deaf to the agonised entreaty of such a broken suppliant as I am?”

“O dear, dear, dear!” cries Sally. “What shall I say, or can say! Don’t talk of prayers. Prayers are to be put up to the Good Father of All, and not to nurses and such. And there! I am only to hold my place for half a year longer, till another young woman can be trained up to it. I am going to be married. I shouldn’t have been out last night, and I shouldn’t have been out to-night, but that my Dick (he is the young man I am going to be married to) lies ill, and I help his mother and sister to watch him. Don’t take on so, don’t take on so!”

“O good Sally, dear Sally,” moans the lady, catching at her dress entreatingly. “As you are hopeful, and I am hopeless; as a fair way in life is before you, which can never, never, be before me; as you can aspire to become a respected wife, and as you can aspire to become a proud mother, as you are a living loving woman, and must die; for GOD’S sake hear my distracted petition!”

“Deary, deary, deary ME!” cries Sally, her desperation culminating in the pronoun, “what am I ever to do? And there! See how you turn my own words back upon me. I tell you I am going to be married, on purpose to make it clearer to you that I am going to leave, and therefore couldn’t help you if I would, Poor Thing, and you make it seem to my own self as if I was cruel in going to be married and not helping you. It ain’t kind. Now, is it kind, Poor Thing?”

“Sally! Hear me, my dear. My entreaty is for no help in the future. It applies to what is past. It is only to be told in two words.”

“There! This is worse and worse,” cries Sally, “supposing that I understand what two words you mean.”

“You do understand. What are the names they have given my poor baby? I ask no more than that. I have read of the customs of the place. He has been christened in the chapel, and registered by some surname in the book. He was received last Monday evening. What have they called him?”

Down upon her knees in the foul mud of the by-way into which they have strayed—an empty street without a thoroughfare giving on the dark gardens of the Hospital—the lady would drop in her passionate entreaty, but that Sally prevents her.

“Don’t! Don’t! You make me feel as if I was setting myself up to be good. Let me look in your pretty face again. Put your two hands in mine. Now, promise. You will never ask me anything more than the two words?”

“Never! Never!”

“You will never put them to a bad use, if I say them?”

“Never! Never!”

“Walter Wilding.”

The lady lays her face upon the nurse’s breast, draws her close in her embrace with both arms, murmurs a blessing and the words, “Kiss him for me!” and is gone.

Day of the month and year, the first Sunday in October, one thousand eight hundred and forty-seven. London Time by the great clock of Saint Paul’s, half-past one in the afternoon. The clock of the Hospital for Foundling Children is well up with the Cathedral to-day. Service in the chapel is over, and the Foundling children are at dinner.

There are numerous lookers-on at the dinner, as the custom is. There are two or three governors, whole families from the congregation, smaller groups of both sexes, individual stragglers of various degrees. The bright autumnal sun strikes freshly into the wards; and the heavy-framed windows through which it shines, and the panelled walls on which it strikes, are such windows and such walls as pervade Hogarth’s pictures. The girls’ refectory (including that of the younger children) is the principal attraction. Neat attendants silently glide about the orderly and silent tables; the lookers-on move or stop as the fancy takes them; comments in whispers on face such a number from such a window are not unfrequent; many of the faces are of a character to fix attention. Some of the visitors from the outside public are accustomed visitors. They have established a speaking acquaintance with the occupants of particular seats at the tables, and halt at those points to bend down and say a word or two. It is no disparagement to their kindness that those points are generally points where personal attractions are. The monotony of the long spacious rooms and the double lines of faces is agreeably relieved by these incidents, although so slight.

A veiled lady, who has no companion, goes among the company. It would seem that curiosity and opportunity have never brought her there before. She has the air of being a little troubled by the sight, and, as she goes the length of the tables, it is with a hesitating step and an uneasy manner. At length she comes to the refectory of the boys. They are so much less popular than the girls that it is bare of visitors when she looks in at the doorway.

But just within the doorway, chances to stand, inspecting, an elderly female attendant: some order of matron or housekeeper. To whom the lady addresses natural questions: As, how many boys? At what age are they usually put out in life? Do they often take a fancy to the sea? So, lower and lower in tone until the lady puts the question: “Which is Walter Wilding?”

Attendant’s head shaken. Against the rules.

“You know which is Walter Wilding?”

So keenly does the attendant feel the closeness with which the lady’s eyes examine her face, that she keeps her own eyes fast upon the floor, lest by wandering in the right direction they should betray her.

“I know which is Walter Wilding, but it is not my place, ma’am, to tell names to visitors.”

“But you can show me without telling me.”

The lady’s hand moves quietly to the attendant’s hand. Pause and silence.

“I am going to pass round the tables,” says the lady’s interlocutor, without seeming to address her. “Follow me with your eyes. The boy that I stop at and speak to, will not matter to you. But the boy that I touch, will be Walter Wilding. Say nothing more to me, and move a little away.”

Quickly acting on the hint, the lady passes on into the room, and looks about her. After a few moments, the attendant, in a staid official way, walks down outside the line of tables commencing on her left hand. She goes the whole length of the line, turns, and comes back on the inside. Very slightly glancing in the lady’s direction, she stops, bends forward, and speaks. The boy whom she addresses, lifts his head and replies. Good humouredly and easily, as she listens to what he says, she lays her hand upon the shoulder of the next boy on his right. That the action may be well noted, she keeps her hand on the shoulder while speaking in return, and pats it twice or thrice before moving away. She completes her tour of the tables, touching no one else, and passes out by a door at the opposite end of the long room.

Dinner is done, and the lady, too, walks down outside the line of tables commencing on her left hand, goes the whole length of the line, turns, and comes back on the inside. Other people have strolled in, fortunately for her, and stand sprinkled about. She lifts her veil, and, stopping at the touched boy, asks how old he is?

“I am twelve, ma’am,” he answers, with his bright eyes fixed on hers.

“Are you well and happy?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“May you take these sweetmeats from my hand?”

“If you please to give them to me.”

In stooping low for the purpose, the lady touches the boy’s face with her forehead and with her hair. Then, lowering her veil again, she passes on, and passes out without looking back.

ACT I

THE CURTAIN RISES

In a court-yard in the City of London, which was No Thoroughfare either for vehicles or foot-passengers; a court-yard diverging from a steep, a slippery, and a winding street connecting Tower-street with the Middlesex shore of the Thames; stood the place of business of Wilding & Co., Wine Merchants. Probably as a jocose acknowledgment of the obstructive character of this main approach, the point nearest to its base at which one could take the river (if so inodorously minded) bore the appellation Break-Neck-Stairs. The court-yard itself had likewise been descriptively entitled in old time, Cripple Corner.

Years before the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, people had left off taking boat at Break-Neck-Stairs, and watermen had ceased to ply there. The slimy little causeway had dropped into the river by a slow process of suicide, and two or three stumps of piles and a rusty iron mooring-ring were all that remained of the departed Break-Neck glories. Sometimes, indeed, a laden coal barge would bump itself into the place, and certain laborious heavers, seemingly mud-engendered, would arise, deliver the cargo in the neighbourhood, shove off, and vanish; but at most times the only commerce of Break-Neck-Stairs arose out of the conveyance of casks and bottles, both full and empty, both to and from the cellars of Wilding & Co., Wine Merchants. Even that commerce was but occasional, and through three-fourths of its rising tides the dirty indecorous drab of a river would come solitarily oozing and lapping at the rusty ring, as if it had heard of the Doge and the Adriatic, and wanted to be married to the great conserver of its filthiness, the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor.

Some two hundred and fifty yards on the right, up the opposite hill (approaching it from the low ground of Break-Neck-Stairs) was Cripple Corner. There was a pump in Cripple Corner, there was a tree in Cripple Corner. All Cripple Corner belonged to Wilding and Co., Wine Merchants. Their cellars burrowed under it, their mansion towered over it. It really had been a mansion in the days when merchants inhabited the City, and had a ceremonious shelter to the doorway without visible support, like the sounding-board over an old pulpit. It had also a number of long narrow strips of window, so disposed in its grave brick front as to render it symmetrically ugly. It had also, on its roof, a cupola with a bell in it.

“When a man at five-and-twenty can put his hat on, and can say ‘this hat covers the owner of this property and of the business which is transacted on this property,’ I consider, Mr. Bintrey, that, without being boastful, he may be allowed to be deeply thankful. I don’t know how it may appear to you, but so it appears to me.”

Thus Mr. Walter Wilding to his man of law, in his own counting-house; taking his hat down from its peg to suit the action to the word, and hanging it up again when he had done so, not to overstep the modesty of nature.

An innocent, open-speaking, unused-looking man, Mr. Walter Wilding, with a remarkably pink and white complexion, and a figure much too bulky for so young a man, though of a good stature. With crispy curling brown hair, and amiable bright blue eyes. An extremely communicative man: a man with whom loquacity was the irrestrainable outpouring of contentment and gratitude. Mr. Bintrey, on the other hand, a cautious man, with twinkling beads of eyes in a large overhanging bald head, who inwardly but intensely enjoyed the comicality of openness of speech, or hand, or heart.

“Yes,” said Mr. Bintrey. “Yes. Ha, ha!”

A decanter, two wine-glasses, and a plate of biscuits, stood on the desk.

“You like this forty-five year old port-wine?” said Mr. Wilding.

“Like it?” repeated Mr. Bintrey. “Rather, sir!”

“It’s from the best corner of our best forty-five year old bin,” said Mr. Wilding.

“Thank you, sir,” said Mr. Bintrey. “It’s most excellent.”

He laughed again, as he held up his glass and ogled it, at the highly ludicrous idea of giving away such wine.

“And now,” said Wilding, with a childish enjoyment in the discussion of affairs, “I think we have got everything straight, Mr. Bintrey.”

“Everything straight,” said Bintrey.

“A partner secured——”

“Partner secured,” said Bintrey.

“A housekeeper advertised for——”

“Housekeeper advertised for,” said Bintrey, “‘apply personally at Cripple Corner, Great Tower-street, from ten to twelve’—to-morrow, by the bye.”

“My late dear mother’s affairs wound up——”

“Wound up,” said Bintrey.

“And all charges paid.”

“And all charges paid,” said Bintrey, with a chuckle: probably occasioned by the droll circumstance that they had been paid without a haggle.

“The mention of my late dear mother,” Mr. Wilding continued, his eyes filling with tears and his pocket-handkerchief drying them, “unmans me still, Mr. Bintrey. You know how I loved her; you (her lawyer) know how she loved me. The utmost love of mother and child was cherished between us, and we never experienced one moment’s division or unhappiness from the time when she took me under her care. Thirteen years in all! Thirteen years under my late dear mother’s care, Mr. Bintrey, and eight of them her confidentially acknowledged son! You know the story, Mr. Bintrey, who but you, sir!” Mr. Wilding sobbed and dried his eyes, without attempt at concealment, during these remarks.

Mr. Bintrey enjoyed his comical port, and said, after rolling it in his mouth: “I know the story.”

“My late dear mother, Mr. Bintrey,” pursued the wine-merchant, “had been deeply deceived, and had cruelly suffered. But on that subject my late dear mother’s lips were for ever sealed. By whom deceived, or under what circumstances, Heaven only knows. My late dear mother never betrayed her betrayer.”

“She had made up her mind,” said Mr. Bintrey, again turning his wine on his palate, “and she could hold her peace.” An amused twinkle in his eyes pretty plainly added—“A devilish deal better than you ever will!”

“‘Honour,’” said Mr. Wilding, sobbing as he quoted from the Commandments, “‘thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land.’ When I was in the Foundling, Mr. Bintrey, I was at such a loss how to do it, that I apprehended my days would be short in the land. But I afterwards came to honour my mother deeply, profoundly. And I honour and revere her memory. For seven happy years, Mr. Bintrey,” pursued Wilding, still with the same innocent catching in his breath, and the same unabashed tears, “did my excellent mother article me to my predecessors in this business, Pebbleson Nephew. Her affectionate forethought likewise apprenticed me to the Vintners’ Company, and made me in time a free Vintner, and—and—everything else that the best of mothers could desire. When I came of age, she bestowed her inherited share in this business upon me; it was her money that afterwards bought out Pebbleson Nephew, and painted in Wilding and Co.; it was she who left me everything she possessed, but the mourning ring you wear. And yet, Mr. Bintrey,” with a fresh burst of honest affection, “she is no more. It is little over half a year since she came into the Corner to read on that door-post with her own eyes, WILDING AND CO., WINE MERCHANTS. And yet she is no more!”

“Sad. But the common lot, Mr. Wilding,” observed Bintrey. “At some time or other we must all be no more.” He placed the forty-five year old port-wine in the universal condition, with a relishing sigh.

“So now, Mr. Bintrey,” pursued Wilding, putting away his pocket-handkerchief, and smoothing his eyelids with his fingers, “now that I can no longer show my love and honour for the dear parent to whom my heart was mysteriously turned by Nature when she first spoke to me, a strange lady, I sitting at our Sunday dinner-table in the Foundling, I can at least show that I am not ashamed of having been a Foundling, and that I, who never knew a father of my own, wish to be a father to all in my employment. Therefore,” continued Wilding, becoming enthusiastic in his loquacity, “therefore, I want a thoroughly good housekeeper to undertake this dwelling-house of Wilding and Co., Wine Merchants, Cripple Corner, so that I may restore in it some of the old relations betwixt employer and employed! So that I may live in it on the spot where my money is made! So that I may daily sit at the head of the table at which the people in my employment eat together, and may eat of the same roast and boiled, and drink of the same beer! So that the people in my employment may lodge under the same roof with me! So that we may one and all—— I beg your pardon, Mr. Bintrey, but that old singing in my head has suddenly come on, and I shall feel obliged if you will lead me to the pump.”

Alarmed by the excessive pinkness of his client, Mr. Bintrey lost not a moment in leading him forth into the court-yard. It was easily done; for the counting-house in which they talked together opened on to it, at one side of the dwelling-house. There the attorney pumped with a will, obedient to a sign from the client, and the client laved his head and face with both hands, and took a hearty drink. After these remedies, he declared himself much better.

“Don’t let your good feelings excite you,” said Bintrey, as they returned to the counting-house, and Mr. Wilding dried himself on a jack-towel behind an inner door.

“No, no. I won’t,” he returned, looking out of the towel. “I won’t. I have not been confused, have I?”

“Not at all. Perfectly clear.”

“Where did I leave off, Mr. Bintrey?”

“Well, you left off—but I wouldn’t excite myself, if I was you, by taking it up again just yet.”

“I’ll take care. I’ll take care. The singing in my head came on at where, Mr. Bintrey?”

“At roast, and boiled, and beer,” answered the lawyer, prompting—“lodging under the same roof—and one and all——”

“Ah! And one and all singing in the head together——”

“Do you know, I really would not let my good feelings excite me, if I was you,” hinted the lawyer again, anxiously. “Try some more pump.”

“No occasion, no occasion. All right, Mr. Bintrey. And one and all forming a kind of family! You see, Mr. Bintrey, I was not used in my childhood to that sort of individual existence which most individuals have led, more or less, in their childhood. After that time I became absorbed in my late dear mother. Having lost her, I find that I am more fit for being one of a body than one by myself one. To be that, and at the same time to do my duty to those dependent on me, and attach them to me, has a patriarchal and pleasant air about it. I don’t know how it may appear to you, Mr Bintrey, but so it appears to me.”

“It is not I who am all-important in the case, but you,” returned Bintrey. “Consequently, how it may appear to me is of very small importance.”

“It appears to me,” said Mr. Wilding, in a glow, “hopeful, useful, delightful!”

“Do you know,” hinted the lawyer again, “I really would not ex——”

“I am not going to. Then there’s Handel.”

“There’s who?” asked Bintrey.

“Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Kent, Purcell, Doctor Arne, Greene, Mendelssohn. I know the choruses to those anthems by heart. Foundling Chapel Collection. Why shouldn’t we learn them together?”

“Who learn them together?” asked the lawyer, rather shortly.

“Employer and employed.”

“Ay, ay,” returned Bintrey, mollified; as if he had half expected the answer to be, Lawyer and client. “That’s another thing.”

“Not another thing, Mr. Bintrey! The same thing. A part of the bond among us. We will form a Choir in some quiet church near the Corner here, and, having sung together of a Sunday with a relish, we will come home and take an early dinner together with a relish. The object that I have at heart now is, to get this system well in action without delay, so that my new partner may find it founded when he enters on his partnership.”

“All good be with it!” exclaimed Bintrey, rising. “May it prosper! Is Joey Ladle to take a share in Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Kent, Purcell, Doctor Arne, Greene, and Mendelssohn?

“I hope so.”

“I wish them all well out of it,” returned Bintrey, with much heartiness. “Good-bye, sir.”

They shook hands and parted. Then (first knocking with his knuckles for leave) entered to Mr. Wilding from a door of communication between his private counting-house and that in which his clerks sat, the Head Cellarman of the cellars of Wilding and Co., Wine Merchants, and erst Head Cellarman of the cellars of Pebbleson Nephew. The Joey Ladle in question. A slow and ponderous man, of the drayman order of human architecture, dressed in a corrugated suit and bibbed apron, apparently a composite of door-mat and rhinoceros-hide.

“Respecting this same boarding and lodging, Young Master Wilding,” said he.

“Yes, Joey?”

“Speaking for myself, Young Master Wilding—and I never did speak and I never do speak for no one else—I don’t want no boarding nor yet no lodging. But if you wish to board me and to lodge me, take me. I can peck as well as most men. Where I peck ain’t so high a object with me as What I peck. Nor even so high a object with me as How Much I peck. Is all to live in the house, Young Master Wilding? The two other cellarmen, the three porters, the two ‘prentices, and the odd men?”

“Yes. I hope we shall all be an united family, Joey.”

“Ah!” said Joey. “I hope they may be.”

“They? Rather say we, Joey.”

Joey Ladle shook his held. “Don’t look to me to make we on it, Young Master Wilding, not at my time of life and under the circumstances which has formed my disposition. I have said to Pebbleson Nephew many a time, when they have said to me, ‘Put a livelier face upon it, Joey’—I have said to them, ‘Gentlemen, it is all wery well for you that has been accustomed to take your wine into your systems by the conwivial channel of your throttles, to put a lively face upon it; but,’ I says, ‘I have been accustomed to take my wine in at the pores of the skin, and, took that way, it acts different. It acts depressing. It’s one thing, gentlemen,’ I says to Pebbleson Nephew, ‘to charge your glasses in a dining-room with a Hip Hurrah and a Jolly Companions Every One, and it’s another thing to be charged yourself, through the pores, in a low dark cellar and a mouldy atmosphere. It makes all the difference betwixt bubbles and wapours,’ I tells Pebbleson Nephew. And so it do. I’ve been a cellarman my life through, with my mind fully given to the business. What’s the consequence? I’m as muddled a man as lives—you won’t find a muddleder man than me—nor yet you won’t find my equal in molloncolly. Sing of Filling the bumper fair, Every drop you sprinkle, O’er the brow of care, Smooths away a wrinkle? Yes. P’raps so. But try filling yourself through the pores, underground, when you don’t want to it!”

“I am sorry to hear this, Joey. I had even thought that you might join a singing-class in the house.”

“Me, sir? No, no, Young Master Wilding, you won’t catch Joey Ladle muddling the Armony. A pecking-machine, sir, is all that I am capable of proving myself, out of my cellars; but that you’re welcome to, if you think it is worth your while to keep such a thing on your premises.”

“I do, Joey.”

“Say no more, sir. The Business’s word is my law. And you’re a going to take Young Master George Vendale partner into the old Business?”

“I am, Joey.”

“More changes, you see! But don’t change the name of the Firm again. Don’t do it, Young Master Wilding. It was bad luck enough to make it Yourself and Co. Better by far have left it Pebbleson Nephew that good luck always stuck to. You should never change luck when it’s good, sir.”

“At all events, I have no intention of changing the name of the House again, Joey.”

“Glad to hear it, and wish you good-day, Young Master Wilding. But you had better by half,” muttered Joey Ladle inaudibly, as he closed the door and shook his head, “have let the name alone from the first. You had better by half have followed the luck instead of crossing it.”

ENTER THE HOUSEKEEPER

The wine merchant sat in his dining-room next morning, to receive the personal applicants for the vacant post in his establishment. It was an old-fashioned wainscoted room; the panels ornamented with festoons of flowers carved in wood; with an oaken floor, a well-worn Turkey carpet, and dark mahogany furniture, all of which had seen service and polish under Pebbleson Nephew. The great sideboard had assisted at many business-dinners given by Pebbleson Nephew to their connection, on the principle of throwing sprats overboard to catch whales; and Pebbleson Nephew’s comprehensive three-sided plate-warmer, made to fit the whole front of the large fireplace, kept watch beneath it over a sarcophagus-shaped cellaret that had in its time held many a dozen of Pebbleson Nephew’s wine. But the little rubicund old bachelor with a pigtail, whose portrait was over the sideboard (and who could easily be identified as decidedly Pebbleson and decidedly not Nephew), had retired into another sarcophagus, and the plate-warmer had grown as cold as he. So, the golden and black griffins that supported the candelabra, with black balls in their mouths at the end of gilded chains, looked as if in their old age they had lost all heart for playing at ball, and were dolefully exhibiting their chains in the Missionary line of inquiry, whether they had not earned emancipation by this time, and were not griffins and brothers.

Such a Columbus of a morning was the summer morning, that it discovered Cripple Corner. The light and warmth pierced in at the open windows, and irradiated the picture of a lady hanging over the chimney-piece, the only other decoration of the walls.

“My mother at five-and-twenty,” said Mr. Wilding to himself, as his eyes enthusiastically followed the light to the portrait’s face, “I hang up here, in order that visitors may admire my mother in the bloom of her youth and beauty. My mother at fifty I hang in the seclusion of my own chamber, as a remembrance sacred to me. O! It’s you, Jarvis!”

These latter words he addressed to a clerk who had tapped at the door, and now looked in.

“Yes, sir. I merely wished to mention that it’s gone ten, sir, and that there are several females in the Counting-house.”

“Dear me!” said the wine-merchant, deepening in the pink of his complexion and whitening in the white, “are there several? So many as several? I had better begin before there are more. I’ll see them one by one, Jarvis, in the order of their arrival.”

Hastily entrenching himself in his easy-chair at the table behind a great inkstand, having first placed a chair on the other side of the table opposite his own seat, Mr. Wilding entered on his task with considerable trepidation.

He ran the gauntlet that must be run on any such occasion. There were the usual species of profoundly unsympathetic women, and the usual species of much too sympathetic women. There were buccaneering widows who came to seize him, and who griped umbrellas under their arms, as if each umbrella were he, and each griper had got him. There were towering maiden ladies who had seen better days, and who came armed with clerical testimonials to their theology, as if he were Saint Peter with his keys. There were gentle maiden ladies who came to marry him. There were professional housekeepers, like non-commissioned officers, who put him through his domestic exercise, instead of submitting themselves to catechism. There were languid invalids, to whom salary was not so much an object as the comforts of a private hospital. There were sensitive creatures who burst into tears on being addressed, and had to be restored with glasses of cold water. There were some respondents who came two together, a highly promising one and a wholly unpromising one: of whom the promising one answered all questions charmingly, until it would at last appear that she was not a candidate at all, but only the friend of the unpromising one, who had glowered in absolute silence and apparent injury.

At last, when the good wine-merchant’s simple heart was failing him, there entered an applicant quite different from all the rest. A woman, perhaps fifty, but looking younger, with a face remarkable for placid cheerfulness, and a manner no less remarkable for its quiet expression of equability of temper. Nothing in her dress could have been changed to her advantage. Nothing in the noiseless self-possession of her manner could have been changed to her advantage. Nothing could have been in better unison with both, than her voice when she answered the question: “What name shall I have the pleasure of noting down?” with the words, “My name is Sarah Goldstraw. Mrs. Goldstraw. My husband has been dead many years, and we had no family.”

Half-a-dozen questions had scarcely extracted as much to the purpose from any one else. The voice dwelt so agreeably on Mr. Wilding’s ear as he made his note, that he was rather long about it. When he looked up again, Mrs. Goldstraw’s glance had naturally gone round the room, and now returned to him from the chimney-piece. Its expression was one of frank readiness to be questioned, and to answer straight.

“You will excuse my asking you a few questions?” said the modest wine-merchant.

“O, surely, sir. Or I should have no business here.”

“Have you filled the station of housekeeper before?”

“Only once. I have lived with the same widow lady for twelve years. Ever since I lost my husband. She was an invalid, and is lately dead: which is the occasion of my now wearing black.”

“I do not doubt that she has left you the best credentials?” said Mr. Wilding.

“I hope I may say, the very best. I thought it would save trouble, sir, if I wrote down the name and address of her representatives, and brought it with me.” Laying a card on the table.

“You singularly remind me, Mrs. Goldstraw,” said Wilding, taking the card beside him, “of a manner and tone of voice that I was once acquainted with. Not of an individual—I feel sure of that, though I cannot recall what it is I have in my mind—but of a general bearing. I ought to add, it was a kind and pleasant one.”

She smiled, as she rejoined: “At least, I am very glad of that, sir.”

“Yes,” said the wine-merchant, thoughtfully repeating his last phrase, with a momentary glance at his future housekeeper, “it was a kind and pleasant one. But that is the most I can make of it. Memory is sometimes like a half-forgotten dream. I don’t know how it may appear to you, Mrs. Goldstraw, but so it appears to me.”

Probably it appeared to Mrs. Goldstraw in a similar light, for she quietly assented to the proposition. Mr. Wilding then offered to put himself at once in communication with the gentlemen named upon the card: a firm of proctors in Doctors’ Commons. To this, Mrs. Goldstraw thankfully assented. Doctors’ Commons not being far off, Mr. Wilding suggested the feasibility of Mrs. Goldstraw’s looking in again, say in three hours’ time. Mrs. Goldstraw readily undertook to do so. In fine, the result of Mr. Wilding’s inquiries being eminently satisfactory, Mrs. Goldstraw was that afternoon engaged (on her own perfectly fair terms) to come to-morrow and set up her rest as housekeeper in Cripple Corner.

THE HOUSEKEEPER SPEAKS

On the next day Mrs. Goldstraw arrived, to enter on her domestic duties.

Having settled herself in her own room, without troubling the servants, and without wasting time, the new housekeeper announced herself as waiting to be favoured with any instructions which her master might wish to give her. The wine-merchant received Mrs. Goldstraw in the dining-room, in which he had seen her on the previous day; and, the usual preliminary civilities having passed on either side, the two sat down to take counsel together on the affairs of the house.

“About the meals, sir?” said Mrs. Goldstraw. “Have I a large, or a small, number to provide for?”

“If I can carry out a certain old-fashioned plan of mine,” replied Mr. Wilding, “you will have a large number to provide for. I am a lonely single man, Mrs. Goldstraw; and I hope to live with all the persons in my employment as if they were members of my family. Until that time comes, you will only have me, and the new partner whom I expect immediately, to provide for. What my partner’s habits may be, I cannot yet say. But I may describe myself as a man of regular hours, with an invariable appetite that you may depend upon to an ounce.”

“About breakfast, sir?” asked Mrs. Goldstraw. “Is there anything particular——?”

She hesitated, and left the sentence unfinished. Her eyes turned slowly away from her master, and looked towards the chimney-piece. If she had been a less excellent and experienced housekeeper, Mr. Wilding might have fancied that her attention was beginning to wander at the very outset of the interview.

“Eight o’clock is my breakfast-hour,” he resumed. “It is one of my virtues to be never tired of broiled bacon, and it is one of my vices to be habitually suspicious of the freshness of eggs.” Mrs. Goldstraw looked back at him, still a little divided between her master’s chimney-piece and her master. “I take tea,” Mr. Wilding went on; “and I am perhaps rather nervous and fidgety about drinking it, within a certain time after it is made. If my tea stands too long——”

He hesitated, on his side, and left the sentence unfinished. If he had not been engaged in discussing a subject of such paramount interest to himself as his breakfast, Mrs. Goldstraw might have fancied that his attention was beginning to wander at the very outset of the interview.

“If your tea stands too long, sir——?” said the housekeeper, politely taking up her master’s lost thread.

“If my tea stands too long,” repeated the wine-merchant mechanically, his mind getting farther and farther away from his breakfast, and his eyes fixing themselves more and more inquiringly on his housekeeper’s face. “If my tea—— Dear, dear me, Mrs. Goldstraw! what is the manner and tone of voice that you remind me of? It strikes me even more strongly to-day, than it did when I saw you yesterday. What can it be?”

“What can it be?” repeated Mrs. Goldstraw.

She said the words, evidently thinking while she spoke them of something else. The wine-merchant, still looking at her inquiringly, observed that her eyes wandered towards the chimney-piece once more. They fixed on the portrait of his mother, which hung there, and looked at it with that slight contraction of the brow which accompanies a scarcely conscious effort of memory. Mr. Wilding remarked.

“My late dear mother, when she was five-and-twenty.”

Mrs. Goldstraw thanked him with a movement of the head for being at the pains to explain the picture, and said, with a cleared brow, that it was the portrait of a very beautiful lady.

Mr. Wilding, falling back into his former perplexity, tried once more to recover that lost recollection, associated so closely, and yet so undiscoverably, with his new housekeeper’s voice and manner.

“Excuse my asking you a question which has nothing to do with me or my breakfast,” he said. “May I inquire if you have ever occupied any other situation than the situation of housekeeper?”

“O yes, sir. I began life as one of the nurses at the Foundling.”

“Why, that’s it!” cried the wine-merchant, pushing back his chair. “By heaven! Their manner is the manner you remind me of!”

In an astonished look at him, Mrs. Goldstraw changed colour, checked herself, turned her eyes upon the ground, and sat still and silent.

“What is the matter?” asked Mr. Wilding.

“Do I understand that you were in the Foundling, sir?”

“Certainly. I am not ashamed to own it.”

“Under the name you now bear?”

“Under the name of Walter Wilding.”

“And the lady——?” Mrs. Goldstraw stopped short with a look at the portrait which was now unmistakably a look of alarm.

“You mean my mother,” interrupted Mr. Wilding.

“Your—mother,” repeated the housekeeper, a little constrainedly, “removed you from the Foundling? At what age, sir?”

“At between eleven and twelve years old. It’s quite a romantic adventure, Mrs. Goldstraw.”

He told the story of the lady having spoken to him, while he sat at dinner with the other boys in the Foundling, and of all that had followed in his innocently communicative way. “My poor mother could never have discovered me,” he added, “if she had not met with one of the matrons who pitied her. The matron consented to touch the boy whose name was ‘Walter Wilding’ as she went round the dinner-tables—and so my mother discovered me again, after having parted from me as an infant at the Foundling doors.”

At those words Mrs. Goldstraw’s hand, resting on the table, dropped helplessly into her lap. She sat, looking at her new master, with a face that had turned deadly pale, and with eyes that expressed an unutterable dismay.

“What does this mean?” asked the wine-merchant. “Stop!” he cried. “Is there something else in the past time which I ought to associate with you? I remember my mother telling me of another person at the Foundling, to whose kindness she owed a debt of gratitude. When she first parted with me, as an infant, one of the nurses informed her of the name that had been given to me in the institution. You were that nurse?”

“God forgive me, sir—I was that nurse!”

“God forgive you?”

“We had better get back, sir (if I may make so bold as to say so), to my duties in the house,” said Mrs. Goldstraw. “Your breakfast-hour is eight. Do you lunch, or dine, in the middle of the day?”

The excessive pinkness which Mr. Bintrey had noticed in his client’s face began to appear there once more. Mr. Wilding put his hand to his head, and mastered some momentary confusion in that quarter, before he spoke again.

“Mrs. Goldstraw,” he said, “you are concealing something from me!”

The housekeeper obstinately repeated, “Please to favour me, sir, by saying whether you lunch, or dine, in the middle of the day?”

“I don’t know what I do in the middle of the day. I can’t enter into my household affairs, Mrs. Goldstraw, till I know why you regret an act of kindness to my mother, which she always spoke of gratefully to the end of her life. You are not doing me a service by your silence. You are agitating me, you are alarming me, you are bringing on the singing in my head.”

His hand went up to his head again, and the pink in his face deepened by a shade or two.

“It’s hard, sir, on just entering your service,” said the housekeeper, “to say what may cost me the loss of your good will. Please to remember, end how it may, that I only speak because you have insisted on my speaking, and because I see that I am alarming you by my silence. When I told the poor lady, whose portrait you have got there, the name by which her infant was christened in the Foundling, I allowed myself to forget my duty, and dreadful consequences, I am afraid, have followed from it. I’ll tell you the truth, as plainly as I can. A few months from the time when I had informed the lady of her baby’s name, there came to our institution in the country another lady (a stranger), whose object was to adopt one of our children. She brought the needful permission with her, and after looking at a great many of the children, without being able to make up her mind, she took a sudden fancy to one of the babies—a boy—under my care. Try, pray try, to compose yourself, sir! It’s no use disguising it any longer. The child the stranger took away was the child of that lady whose portrait hangs there!”

Mr. Wilding started to his feet. “Impossible!” he cried out, vehemently. “What are you talking about? What absurd story are you telling me now? There’s her portrait! Haven’t I told you so already? The portrait of my mother!”

“When that unhappy lady removed you from the Foundling, in after years,” said Mrs. Goldstraw, gently, “she was the victim, and you were the victim, sir, of a dreadful mistake.”

He dropped back into his chair. “The room goes round with me,” he said. “My head! my head!” The housekeeper rose in alarm, and opened the windows. Before she could get to the door to call for help, a sudden burst of tears relieved the oppression which had at first almost appeared to threaten his life. He signed entreatingly to Mrs. Goldstraw not to leave him. She waited until the paroxysm of weeping had worn itself out. He raised his head as he recovered himself, and looked at her with the angry unreasoning suspicion of a weak man.

“Mistake?” he said, wildly repeating her last word. “How do I know you are not mistaken yourself?”

“There is no hope that I am mistaken, sir. I will tell you why, when you are better fit to hear it.”

“Now! now!”

The tone in which he spoke warned Mrs. Goldstraw that it would be cruel kindness to let him comfort himself a moment longer with the vain hope that she might be wrong. A few words more would end it, and those few words she determined to speak.

“I have told you,” she said, “that the child of the lady whose portrait hangs there, was adopted in its infancy, and taken away by a stranger. I am as certain of what I say as that I am now sitting here, obliged to distress you, sir, sorely against my will. Please to carry your mind on, now, to about three months after that time. I was then at the Foundling, in London, waiting to take some children to our institution in the country. There was a question that day about naming an infant—a boy—who had just been received. We generally named them out of the Directory. On this occasion, one of the gentlemen who managed the Hospital happened to be looking over the Register. He noticed that the name of the baby who had been adopted (‘Walter Wilding’) was scratched out—for the reason, of course, that the child had been removed for good from our care. ‘Here’s a name to let,’ he said. ‘Give it to the new foundling who has been received to-day.’ The name was given, and the child was christened. You, sir, were that child.”

The wine-merchant’s head dropped on his breast. “I was that child!” he said to himself, trying helplessly to fix the idea in his mind. “I was that child!”

“Not very long after you had been received into the Institution, sir,” pursued Mrs. Goldstraw, “I left my situation there, to be married. If you will remember that, and if you can give your mind to it, you will see for yourself how the mistake happened. Between eleven and twelve years passed before the lady, whom you have believed to be your mother, returned to the Foundling, to find her son, and to remove him to her own home. The lady only knew that her infant had been called ‘Walter Wilding.’ The matron who took pity on her, could but point out the only ‘Walter Wilding’ known in the Institution. I, who might have set the matter right, was far away from the Foundling and all that belonged to it. There was nothing—there was really nothing that could prevent this terrible mistake from taking place. I feel for you—I do indeed, sir! You must think—and with reason—that it was in an evil hour that I came here (innocently enough, I’m sure), to apply for your housekeeper’s place. I feel as if I was to blame—I feel as if I ought to have had more self-command. If I had only been able to keep my face from showing you what that portrait and what your own words put into my mind, you need never, to your dying day, have known what you know now.”

Mr. Wilding looked up suddenly. The inbred honesty of the man rose in protest against the housekeeper’s last words. His mind seemed to steady itself, for the moment, under the shock that had fallen on it.

“Do you mean to say that you would have concealed this from me if you could?” he exclaimed.

“I hope I should always tell the truth, sir, if I was asked,” said Mrs. Goldstraw. “And I know it is better for me that I should not have a secret of this sort weighing on my mind. But is it better for you? What use can it serve now——?”

“What use? Why, good Lord! if your story is true——”

“Should I have told it, sir, as I am now situated, if it had not been true?”

“I beg your pardon,” said the wine-merchant. “You must make allowance for me. This dreadful discovery is something I can’t realise even yet. We loved each other so dearly—I felt so fondly that I was her son. She died, Mrs. Goldstraw, in my arms—she died blessing me as only a mother could have blessed me. And now, after all these years, to be told she was not my mother! O me, O me! I don’t know what I am saying!” he cried, as the impulse of self-control under which he had spoken a moment since, flickered, and died out. “It was not this dreadful grief—it was something else that I had it in my mind to speak of. Yes, yes. You surprised me—you wounded me just now. You talked as if you would have hidden this from me, if you could. Don’t talk in that way again. It would have been a crime to have hidden it. You mean well, I know. I don’t want to distress you—you are a kind-hearted woman. But you don’t remember what my position is. She left me all that I possess, in the firm persuasion that I was her son. I am not her son. I have taken the place, I have innocently got the inheritance of another man. He must be found! How do I know he is not at this moment in misery, without bread to eat? He must be found! My only hope of bearing up against the shock that has fallen on me, is the hope of doing something which she would have approved. You must know more, Mrs. Goldstraw, than you have told me yet. Who was the stranger who adopted the child? You must have heard the lady’s name?”

“I never heard it, sir. I have never seen her, or heard of her, since.”

“Did she say nothing when she took the child away? Search your memory. She must have said something.”

“Only one thing, sir, that I can remember. It was a miserably bad season, that year; and many of the children were suffering from it. When she took the baby away, the lady said to me, laughing, ‘Don’t be alarmed about his health. He will be brought up in a better climate than this—I am going to take him to Switzerland.’”

“To Switzerland? What part of Switzerland?”

“She didn’t say, sir.”

“Only that faint clue!” said Mr. Wilding. “And a quarter of a century has passed since the child was taken away! What am I to do?”

“I hope you won’t take offence at my freedom, sir,” said Mrs. Goldstraw; “but why should you distress yourself about what is to be done? He may not be alive now, for anything you know. And, if he is alive, it’s not likely he can be in any distress. The, lady who adopted him was a bred and born lady—it was easy to see that. And she must have satisfied them at the Foundling that she could provide for the child, or they would never have let her take him away. If I was in your place, sir—please to excuse my saying so—I should comfort myself with remembering that I had loved that poor lady whose portrait you have got there—truly loved her as my mother, and that she had truly loved me as her son. All she gave to you, she gave for the sake of that love. It never altered while she lived; and it won’t alter, I’m sure, as long as you live. How can you have a better right, sir, to keep what you have got than that?”

Mr. Wilding’s immovable honesty saw the fallacy in his housekeeper’s point of view at a glance.

“You don’t understand me,” he said. “It’s because I loved her that I feel it a duty—a sacred duty—to do justice to her son. If he is a living man, I must find him: for my own sake, as well as for his. I shall break down under this dreadful trial, unless I employ myself—actively, instantly employ myself—in doing what my conscience tells me ought to be done. I must speak to my lawyer; I must set my lawyer at work before I sleep to-night.” He approached a tube in the wall of the room, and called down through it to the office below. “Leave me for a little, Mrs. Goldstraw,” he resumed; “I shall be more composed, I shall be better able to speak to you later in the day. We shall get on well—I hope we shall get on well together—in spite of what has happened. It isn’t your fault; I know it isn’t your fault. There! there! shake hands; and—and do the best you can in the house—I can’t talk about it now.”

The door opened as Mrs. Goldstraw advanced towards it; and Mr. Jarvis appeared.

“Send for Mr. Bintrey,” said the wine-merchant. “Say I want to see him directly.”

The clerk unconsciously suspended the execution of the order, by announcing “Mr. Vendale,” and showing in the new partner in the firm of Wilding and Co.

“Pray excuse me for one moment, George Vendale,” said Wilding. “I have a word to say to Jarvis. Send for Mr. Bintrey,” he repeated—“send at once.”

Mr. Jarvis laid a letter on the table before he left the room.

“From our correspondents at Neuchâtel, I think, sir. The letter has got the Swiss postmark.”

NEW CHARACTERS ON THE SCENE

The words, “The Swiss Postmark,” following so soon upon the housekeeper’s reference to Switzerland, wrought Mr. Wilding’s agitation to such a remarkable height, that his new partner could not decently make a pretence of letting it pass unnoticed.

“Wilding,” he asked hurriedly, and yet stopping short and glancing around as if for some visible cause of his state of mind: “what is the matter?”

“My good George Vendale,” returned the wine-merchant, giving his hand with an appealing look, rather as if he wanted help to get over some obstacle, than as if he gave it in welcome or salutation: “my good George Vendale, so much is the matter, that I shall never be myself again. It is impossible that I can ever be myself again. For, in fact, I am not myself.”

The new partner, a brown-cheeked handsome fellow, of about his own age, with a quick determined eye and an impulsive manner, retorted with natural astonishment: “Not yourself?”

“Not what I supposed myself to be,” said Wilding.

“What, in the name of wonder, did you suppose yourself to be that you are not?” was the rejoinder, delivered with a cheerful frankness, inviting confidence from a more reticent man. “I may ask without impertinence, now that we are partners.”

“There again!” cried Wilding, leaning back in his chair, with a lost look at the other. “Partners! I had no right to come into this business. It was never meant for me. My mother never meant it should be mine. I mean, his mother meant it should be his—if I mean anything—or if I am anybody.”

“Come, come,” urged his partner, after a moment’s pause, and taking possession of him with that calm confidence which inspires a strong nature when it honestly desires to aid a weak one. “Whatever has gone wrong, has gone wrong through no fault of yours, I am very sure. I was not in this counting-house with you, under the old régime, for three years, to doubt you, Wilding. We were not younger men than we are, together, for that. Let me begin our partnership by being a serviceable partner, and setting right whatever is wrong. Has that letter anything to do with it?”

“Hah!” said Wilding, with his hand to his temple. “There again! My head! I was forgetting the coincidence. The Swiss postmark.”

“At a second glance I see that the letter is unopened, so it is not very likely to have much to do with the matter,” said Vendale, with comforting composure. “Is it for you, or for us?”

“For us,” said Wilding.

“Suppose I open it and read it aloud, to get it out of our way?”

“Thank you, thank you.”

“The letter is only from our champagne-making friends, the house at Neuchâtel. ‘Dear Sir. We are in receipt of yours of the 28th ult., informing us that you have taken your Mr. Vendale into partnership, whereon we beg you to receive the assurance of our felicitations. Permit us to embrace the occasion of specially commanding to you M. Jules Obenreizer.’ Impossible!”

Wilding looked up in quick apprehension, and cried, “Eh?”

“Impossible sort of name,” returned his partner, slightly—“Obenreizer. ‘—Of specially commanding to you M. Jules Obenreizer, of Soho Square, London (north side), henceforth fully accredited as our agent, and who has already had the honour of making the acquaintance of your Mr. Vendale, in his (said M. Obenreizer’s) native country, Switzerland.’ To be sure! pooh pooh, what have I been thinking of! I remember now; ‘when travelling with his niece.’”

“With his——?” Vendale had so slurred the last word, that Wilding had not heard it.

“When travelling with his Niece. Obenreizer’s Niece,” said Vendale, in a somewhat superfluously lucid manner. “Niece of Obenreizer. (I met them in my first Swiss tour, travelled a little with them, and lost them for two years; met them again, my Swiss tour before last, and have lost them ever since.) Obenreizer. Niece of Obenreizer. To be sure! Possible sort of name, after all! ‘M. Obenreizer is in possession of our absolute confidence, and we do not doubt you will esteem his merits.’ Duly signed by the House, ‘Defresnier et Cie.’ Very well. I undertake to see M. Obenreizer presently, and clear him out of the way. That clears the Swiss postmark out of the way. So now, my dear Wilding, tell me what I can clear out of your way, and I’ll find a way to clear it.”

More than ready and grateful to be thus taken charge of, the honest wine-merchant wrung his partner’s hand, and, beginning his tale by pathetically declaring himself an Impostor, told it.

“It was on this matter, no doubt, that you were sending for Bintrey when I came in?” said his partner, after reflecting.

“It was.”

“He has experience and a shrewd head; I shall be anxious to know his opinion. It is bold and hazardous in me to give you mine before I know his, but I am not good at holding back. Plainly, then, I do not see these circumstances as you see them. I do not see your position as you see it. As to your being an Impostor, my dear Wilding, that is simply absurd, because no man can be that without being a consenting party to an imposition. Clearly you never were so. As to your enrichment by the lady who believed you to be her son, and whom you were forced to believe, on her showing, to be your mother, consider whether that did not arise out of the personal relations between you. You gradually became much attached to her; she gradually became much attached to you. It was on you, personally you, as I see the case, that she conferred these worldly advantages; it was from her, personally her, that you took them.”

“She supposed me,” objected Wilding, shaking his head, “to have a natural claim upon her, which I had not.”

“I must admit that,” replied his partner, “to be true. But if she had made the discovery that you have made, six months before she died, do you think it would have cancelled the years you were together, and the tenderness that each of you had conceived for the other, each on increasing knowledge of the other?”

“What I think,” said Wilding, simply but stoutly holding to the bare fact, “can no more change the truth than it can bring down the sky. The truth is that I stand possessed of what was meant for another man.”

“He may be dead,” said Vendale.

“He may be alive,” said Wilding. “And if he is alive, have I not—innocently, I grant you innocently—robbed him of enough? Have I not robbed him of all the happy time that I enjoyed in his stead? Have I not robbed him of the exquisite delight that filled my soul when that dear lady,” stretching his hand towards the picture, “told me she was my mother? Have I not robbed him of all the care she lavished on me? Have I not even robbed him of all the devotion and duty that I so proudly gave to her? Therefore it is that I ask myself, George Vendale, and I ask you, where is he? What has become of him?”

“Who can tell!”

“I must try to find out who can tell. I must institute inquiries. I must never desist from prosecuting inquiries. I will live upon the interest of my share—I ought to say his share—in this business, and will lay up the rest for him. When I find him, I may perhaps throw myself upon his generosity; but I will yield up all to him. I will, I swear. As I loved and honoured her,” said Wilding, reverently kissing his hand towards the picture, and then covering his eyes with it. “As I loved and honoured her, and have a world of reasons to be grateful to her!” And so broke down again.

His partner rose from the chair he had occupied, and stood beside him with a hand softly laid upon his shoulder. “Walter, I knew you before to-day to be an upright man, with a pure conscience and a fine heart. It is very fortunate for me that I have the privilege to travel on in life so near to so trustworthy a man. I am thankful for it. Use me as your right hand, and rely upon me to the death. Don’t think the worse of me if I protest to you that my uppermost feeling at present is a confused, you may call it an unreasonable, one. I feel far more pity for the lady and for you, because you did not stand in your supposed relations, than I can feel for the unknown man (if he ever became a man), because he was unconsciously displaced. You have done well in sending for Mr. Bintrey. What I think will be a part of his advice, I know is the whole of mine. Do not move a step in this serious matter precipitately. The secret must be kept among us with great strictness, for to part with it lightly would be to invite fraudulent claims, to encourage a host of knaves, to let loose a flood of perjury and plotting. I have no more to say now, Walter, than to remind you that you sold me a share in your business, expressly to save yourself from more work than your present health is fit for, and that I bought it expressly to do work, and mean to do it.”

With these words, and a parting grip of his partner’s shoulder that gave them the best emphasis they could have had, George Vendale betook himself presently to the counting-house, and presently afterwards to the address of M. Jules Obenreizer.

As he turned into Soho-square, and directed his steps towards its north side, a deepened colour shot across his sun-browned face, which Wilding, if he had been a better observer, or had been less occupied with his own trouble, might have noticed when his partner read aloud a certain passage in their Swiss correspondent’s letter, which he had not read so distinctly as the rest.

A curious colony of mountaineers has long been enclosed within that small flat London district of Soho. Swiss watchmakers, Swiss silver-chasers, Swiss jewellers, Swiss importers of Swiss musical boxes and Swiss toys of various kinds, draw close together there. Swiss professors of music, painting, and languages; Swiss artificers in steady work; Swiss couriers, and other Swiss servants chronically out of place; industrious Swiss laundresses and clear-starchers; mysteriously existing Swiss of both sexes; Swiss creditable and Swiss discreditable; Swiss to be trusted by all means, and Swiss to be trusted by no means; these diverse Swiss particles are attracted to a centre in the district of Soho. Shabby Swiss eating-houses, coffee-houses, and lodging-houses, Swiss drinks and dishes, Swiss service for Sundays, and Swiss schools for week-days, are all to be found there. Even the native-born English taverns drive a sort of broken-English trade; announcing in their windows Swiss whets and drams, and sheltering in their bars Swiss skirmishes of love and animosity on most nights in the year.

When the new partner in Wilding and Co. rang the bell of a door bearing the blunt inscription OBENREIZER on a brass plate—the inner door of a substantial house, whose ground story was devoted to the sale of Swiss clocks—he passed at once into domestic Switzerland. A white-tiled stove for winter-time filled the fireplace of the room into which he was shown, the room’s bare floor was laid together in a neat pattern of several ordinary woods, the room had a prevalent air of surface bareness and much scrubbing; and the little square of flowery carpet by the sofa, and the velvet chimney-board with its capacious clock and vases of artificial flowers, contended with that tone, as if, in bringing out the whole effect, a Parisian had adapted a dairy to domestic purposes.

Mimic water was dropping off a mill-wheel under the clock. The visitor had not stood before it, following it with his eyes, a minute, when M. Obenreizer, at his elbow, startled him by saying, in very good English, very slightly clipped: “How do you do? So glad!”

“I beg your pardon. I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Not at all! Sit, please.”

Releasing his visitor’s two arms, which he had lightly pinioned at the elbows by way of embrace, M. Obenreizer also sat, remarking, with a smile: “You are well? So glad!” and touching his elbows again.

“I don’t know,” said Vendale, after exchange of salutations, “whether you may yet have heard of me from your House at Neuchâtel?”

“Ah, yes!”

“In connection with Wilding and Co.?”

“Ah, surely!”

“Is it not odd that I should come to you, in London here, as one of the Firm of Wilding and Co., to pay the Firm’s respects?”

“Not at all! What did I always observe when we were on the mountains? We call them vast; but the world is so little. So little is the world, that one cannot keep away from persons. There are so few persons in the world, that they continually cross and re-cross. So very little is the world, that one cannot get rid of a person. Not,” touching his elbows again, with an ingratiatory smile, “that one would desire to get rid of you.”

“I hope not, M. Obenreizer.”

“Please call me, in your country, Mr. I call myself so, for I love your country. If I could be English! But I am born. And you? Though descended from so fine a family, you have had the condescension to come into trade? Stop though. Wines? Is it trade in England or profession? Not fine art?”

“Mr. Obenreizer,” returned Vendale, somewhat out of countenance, “I was but a silly young fellow, just of age, when I first had the pleasure of travelling with you, and when you and I and Mademoiselle your niece—who is well?”

“Thank you. Who is well.”

“—Shared some slight glacier dangers together. If, with a boy’s vanity, I rather vaunted my family, I hope I did so as a kind of introduction of myself. It was very weak, and in very bad taste; but perhaps you know our English proverb, ‘Live and Learn.’”

“You make too much of it,” returned the Swiss. “And what the devil! After all, yours was a fine family.”

George Vendale’s laugh betrayed a little vexation as he rejoined: “Well! I was strongly attached to my parents, and when we first travelled together, Mr. Obenreizer, I was in the first flush of coming into what my father and mother left me. So I hope it may have been, after all, more youthful openness of speech and heart than boastfulness.”

“All openness of speech and heart! No boastfulness!” cried Obenreizer. “You tax yourself too heavily. You tax yourself, my faith! as if you was your Government taxing you! Besides, it commenced with me. I remember, that evening in the boat upon the lake, floating among the reflections of the mountains and valleys, the crags and pine woods, which were my earliest remembrance, I drew a word-picture of my sordid childhood. Of our poor hut, by the waterfall which my mother showed to travellers; of the cow-shed where I slept with the cow; of my idiot half-brother always sitting at the door, or limping down the Pass to beg; of my half-sister always spinning, and resting her enormous goître on a great stone; of my being a famished naked little wretch of two or three years, when they were men and women with hard hands to beat me, I, the only child of my father’s second marriage—if it even was a marriage. What more natural than for you to compare notes with me, and say, ‘We are as one by age; at that same time I sat upon my mother’s lap in my father’s carriage, rolling through the rich English streets, all luxury surrounding me, all squalid poverty kept far from me. Such is my earliest remembrance as opposed to yours!’”

Mr. Obenreizer was a black-haired young man of a dark complexion, through whose swarthy skin no red glow ever shone. When colour would have come into another cheek, a hardly discernible beat would come into his, as if the machinery for bringing up the ardent blood were there, but the machinery were dry. He was robustly made, well proportioned, and had handsome features. Many would have perceived that some surface change in him would have set them more at their ease with him, without being able to define what change. If his lips could have been made much thicker, and his neck much thinner, they would have found their want supplied.

But the great Obenreizer peculiarity was, that a certain nameless film would come over his eyes—apparently by the action of his own will—which would impenetrably veil, not only from those tellers of tales, but from his face at large, every expression save one of attention. It by no means followed that his attention should be wholly given to the person with whom he spoke, or even wholly bestowed on present sounds and objects. Rather, it was a comprehensive watchfulness of everything he had in his own mind, and everything that he knew to be, or suspected to be, in the minds of other men.

At this stage of the conversation, Mr. Obenreizer’s film came over him.

“The object of my present visit,” said Vendale, “is, I need hardly say, to assure you of the friendliness of Wilding and Co., and of the goodness of your credit with us, and of our desire to be of service to you. We hope shortly to offer you our hospitality. Things are not quite in train with us yet, for my partner, Mr. Wilding, is reorganising the domestic part of our establishment, and is interrupted by some private affairs. You don’t know Mr. Wilding, I believe?”

Mr. Obenreizer did not.

“You must come together soon. He will be glad to have made your acquaintance, and I think I may predict that you will be glad to have made his. You have not been long established in London, I suppose, Mr. Obenreizer?”

“It is only now that I have undertaken this agency.”

“Mademoiselle your niece—is—not married?”

“Not married.”

George Vendale glanced about him, as if for any tokens of her.

“She has been in London?”

“She is in London.”

“When, and where, might I have the honour of recalling myself to her remembrance?”

Mr. Obenreizer, discarding his film and touching his visitor’s elbows as before, said lightly: “Come up-stairs.”

Fluttered enough by the suddenness with which the interview he had sought was coming upon him after all, George Vendale followed up-stairs. In a room over the chamber he had just quitted—a room also Swiss-appointed—a young lady sat near one of three windows, working at an embroidery-frame; and an older lady sat with her face turned close to another white-tiled stove (though it was summer, and the stove was not lighted), cleaning gloves. The young lady wore an unusual quantity of fair bright hair, very prettily braided about a rather rounder white forehead than the average English type, and so her face might have been a shade—or say a light—rounder than the average English face, and her figure slightly rounder than the figure of the average English girl at nineteen. A remarkable indication of freedom and grace of limb, in her quiet attitude, and a wonderful purity and freshness of colour in her dimpled face and bright gray eyes, seemed fraught with mountain air. Switzerland too, though the general fashion of her dress was English, peeped out of the fanciful bodice she wore, and lurked in the curious clocked red stocking, and in its little silver-buckled shoe. As to the elder lady, sitting with her feet apart upon the lower brass ledge of the stove, supporting a lap-full of gloves while she cleaned one stretched on her left hand, she was a true Swiss impersonation of another kind; from the breadth of her cushion-like back, and the ponderosity of her respectable legs (if the word be admissible), to the black velvet band tied tightly round her throat for the repression of a rising tendency to goître; or, higher still, to her great copper-coloured gold ear-rings; or, higher still, to her head-dress of black gauze stretched on wire.

“Miss Marguerite,” said Obenreizer to the young lady, “do you recollect this gentleman?”

“I think,” she answered, rising from her seat, surprised and a little confused: “it is Mr. Vendale?”

“I think it is,” said Obenreizer, dryly. “Permit me, Mr. Vendale. Madame Dor.”

The elder lady by the stove, with the glove stretched on her left hand, like a glover’s sign, half got up, half looked over her broad shoulder, and wholly plumped down again and rubbed away.

“Madame Dor,” said Obenreizer, smiling, “is so kind as to keep me free from stain or tear. Madame Dor humours my weakness for being always neat, and devotes her time to removing every one of my specks and spots.”

Madame Dor, with the stretched glove in the air, and her eyes closely scrutinizing its palm, discovered a tough spot in Mr. Obenreizer at that instant, and rubbed hard at him. George Vendale took his seat by the embroidery-frame (having first taken the fair right hand that his entrance had checked), and glanced at the gold cross that dipped into the bodice, with something of the devotion of a pilgrim who had reached his shrine at last. Obenreizer stood in the middle of the room with his thumbs in his waistcoat-pockets, and became filmy.

“He was saying down-stairs, Miss Obenreizer,” observed Vendale, “that the world is so small a place, that people cannot escape one another. I have found it much too large for me since I saw you last.”

“Have you travelled so far, then?” she inquired.

“Not so far, for I have only gone back to Switzerland each year; but I could have wished—and indeed I have wished very often—that the little world did not afford such opportunities for long escapes as it does. If it had been less, I might have found my follow-travellers sooner, you know.”

The pretty Marguerite coloured, and very slightly glanced in the direction of Madame Dor.

“You find us at length, Mr. Vendale. Perhaps you may lose us again.”

“I trust not. The curious coincidence that has enabled me to find you, encourages me to hope not.”

“What is that coincidence, sir, if you please?” A dainty little native touch in this turn of speech, and in its tone, made it perfectly captivating, thought George Vendale, when again he noticed an instantaneous glance towards Madame Dor. A caution seemed to be conveyed in it, rapid flash though it was; so he quietly took heed of Madame Dor from that time forth.

“It is that I happen to have become a partner in a House of business in London, to which Mr. Obenreizer happens this very day to be expressly recommended: and that, too, by another house of business in Switzerland, in which (as it turns out) we both have a commercial interest. He has not told you?”

“Ah!” cried Obenreizer, striking in, filmless. “No. I had not told Miss Marguerite. The world is so small and so monotonous that a surprise is worth having in such a little jog-trot place. It is as he tells you, Miss Marguerite. He, of so fine a family, and so proudly bred, has condescended to trade. To trade! Like us poor peasants who have risen from ditches!”

A cloud crept over the fair brow, and she cast down her eyes.

“Why, it is good for trade!” pursued Obenreizer, enthusiastically. “It ennobles trade! It is the misfortune of trade, it is its vulgarity, that any low people—for example, we poor peasants—may take to it and climb by it. See you, my dear Vendale!” He spoke with great energy. “The father of Miss Marguerite, my eldest half-brother, more than two times your age or mine, if living now, wandered without shoes, almost without rags, from that wretched Pass—wandered—wandered—got to be fed with the mules and dogs at an Inn in the main valley far away—got to be Boy there—got to be Ostler—got to be Waiter—got to be Cook—got to be Landlord. As Landlord, he took me (could he take the idiot beggar his brother, or the spinning monstrosity his sister?) to put as pupil to the famous watchmaker, his neighbour and friend. His wife dies when Miss Marguerite is born. What is his will, and what are his words to me, when he dies, she being between girl and woman? ‘All for Marguerite, except so much by the year for you. You are young, but I make her your ward, for you were of the obscurest and the poorest peasantry, and so was I, and so was her mother; we were abject peasants all, and you will remember it.’ The thing is equally true of most of my countrymen, now in trade in this your London quarter of Soho. Peasants once; low-born drudging Swiss Peasants. Then how good and great for trade:” here, from having been warm, he became playfully jubilant, and touched the young wine-merchant’s elbows again with his light embrace: “to be exalted by gentlemen.”

“I do not think so,” said Marguerite, with a flushed cheek, and a look away from the visitor, that was almost defiant. “I think it is as much exalted by us peasants.”

“Fie, fie, Miss Marguerite,” said Obenreizer. “You speak in proud England.”

“I speak in proud earnest,” she answered, quietly resuming her work, “and I am not English, but a Swiss peasant’s daughter.”

There was a dismissal of the subject in her words, which Vendale could not contend against. He only said in an earnest manner, “I most heartily agree with you, Miss Obenreizer, and I have already said so, as Mr. Obenreizer will bear witness,” which he by no means did, “in this house.”

Now, Vendale’s eyes were quick eyes, and sharply watching Madame Dor by times, noted something in the broad back view of that lady. There was considerable pantomimic expression in her glove-cleaning. It had been very softly done when he spoke with Marguerite, or it had altogether stopped, like the action of a listener. When Obenreizer’s peasant-speech came to an end, she rubbed most vigorously, as if applauding it. And once or twice, as the glove (which she always held before her a little above her face) turned in the air, or as this finger went down, or that went up, he even fancied that it made some telegraphic communication to Obenreizer: whose back was certainly never turned upon it, though he did not seem at all to heed it.

Vendale observed too, that in Marguerite’s dismissal of the subject twice forced upon him to his misrepresentation, there was an indignant treatment of her guardian which she tried to check: as though she would have flamed out against him, but for the influence of fear. He also observed—though this was not much—that he never advanced within the distance of her at which he first placed himself: as though there were limits fixed between them. Neither had he ever spoken of her without the prefix “Miss,” though whenever he uttered it, it was with the faintest trace of an air of mockery. And now it occurred to Vendale for the first time that something curious in the man, which he had never before been able to define, was definable as a certain subtle essence of mockery that eluded touch or analysis. He felt convinced that Marguerite was in some sort a prisoner as to her freewill—though she held her own against those two combined, by the force of her character, which was nevertheless inadequate to her release. To feel convinced of this, was not to feel less disposed to love her than he had always been. In a word, he was desperately in love with her, and thoroughly determined to pursue the opportunity which had opened at last.

For the present, he merely touched upon the pleasure that Wilding and Co. would soon have in entreating Miss Obenreizer to honour their establishment with her presence—a curious old place, though a bachelor house withal—and so did not protract his visit beyond such a visit’s ordinary length. Going down-stairs, conducted by his host, he found the Obenreizer counting-house at the back of the entrance-hall, and several shabby men in outlandish garments hanging about, whom Obenreizer put aside that he might pass, with a few words in patois.

“Countrymen,” he explained, as he attended Vendale to the door. “Poor compatriots. Grateful and attached, like dogs! Good-bye. To meet again. So glad!”

Two more light touches on his elbows dismissed him into the street.

Sweet Marguerite at her frame, and Madame Dor’s broad back at her telegraph, floated before him to Cripple Corner. On his arrival there, Wilding was closeted with Bintrey. The cellar doors happening to be open, Vendale lighted a candle in a cleft stick, and went down for a cellarous stroll. Graceful Marguerite floated before him faithfully, but Madame Dor’s broad back remained outside.

The vaults were very spacious, and very old. There had been a stone crypt down there, when bygones were not bygones; some said, part of a monkish refectory; some said, of a chapel; some said, of a Pagan temple. It was all one now. Let who would make what he liked of a crumbled pillar and a broken arch or so. Old Time had made what he liked of it, and was quite indifferent to contradiction.

The close air, the musty smell, and the thunderous rumbling in the streets above, as being, out of the routine of ordinary life, went well enough with the picture of pretty Marguerite holding her own against those two. So Vendale went on until, at a turning in the vaults, he saw a light like the light he carried.

“O! You are here, are you, Joey?”

“Oughtn’t it rather to go, ‘O! You’re here, are you, Master George?’ For it’s my business to be here. But it ain’t yourn.”

“Don’t grumble, Joey.”

“O! I don’t grumble,” returned the Cellarman. “If anything grumbles, it’s what I’ve took in through the pores; it ain’t me. Have a care as something in you don’t begin a grumbling, Master George. Stop here long enough for the wapours to work, and they’ll be at it.”

His present occupation consisted of poking his head into the bins, making measurements and mental calculations, and entering them in a rhinoceros-hide-looking note-book, like a piece of himself.

“They’ll be at it,” he resumed, laying the wooden rod that he measured with across two casks, entering his last calculation, and straightening his back, “trust ‘em! And so you’ve regularly come into the business, Master George?”

“Regularly. I hope you don’t object, Joey?”

“I don’t, bless you. But Wapours objects that you’re too young. You’re both on you too young.”

“We shall got over that objection day by day, Joey.”

“Ay, Master George; but I shall day by day get over the objection that I’m too old, and so I shan’t be capable of seeing much improvement in you.”

The retort so tickled Joey Ladle that he grunted forth a laugh and delivered it again, grunting forth another laugh after the second edition of “improvement in you.”

“But what’s no laughing matter, Master George,” he resumed, straightening his back once more, “is, that young Master Wilding has gone and changed the luck. Mark my words. He has changed the luck, and he’ll find it out. I ain’t been down here all my life for nothing! I know by what I notices down here, when it’s a-going to rain, when it’s a-going to hold up, when it’s a-going to blow, when it’s a-going to be calm. I know, by what I notices down here, when the luck’s changed, quite as well.”

“Has this growth on the roof anything to do with your divination?” asked Vendale, holding his light towards a gloomy ragged growth of dark fungus, pendent from the arches with a very disagreeable and repellent effect. “We are famous for this growth in this vault, aren’t we?”

“We are Master George,” replied Joey Ladle, moving a step or two away, “and if you’ll be advised by me, you’ll let it alone.”

Taking up the rod just now laid across the two casks, and faintly moving the languid fungus with it, Vendale asked, “Ay, indeed? Why so?”

“Why, not so much because it rises from the casks of wine, and may leave you to judge what sort of stuff a Cellarman takes into himself when he walks in the same all the days of his life, nor yet so much because at a stage of its growth it’s maggots, and you’ll fetch ‘em down upon you,” returned Joey Ladle, still keeping away, “as for another reason, Master George.”

“What other reason?”

“(I wouldn’t keep on touchin’ it, if I was you, sir.) I’ll tell you if you’ll come out of the place. First, take a look at its colour, Master George.”

“I am doing so.”

“Done, sir. Now, come out of the place.”

He moved away with his light, and Vendale followed with his. When Vendale came up with him, and they were going back together, Vendale, eyeing him as they walked through the arches, said: “Well, Joey? The colour.”

“Is it like clotted blood, Master George?”

“Like enough, perhaps.”

“More than enough, I think,” muttered Joey Ladle, shaking his head solemnly.

“Well, say it is like; say it is exactly like. What then?”

“Master George, they do say——”

“Who?”

“How should I know who?” rejoined the Cellarman, apparently much exasperated by the unreasonable nature of the question. “Them! Them as says pretty well everything, you know. How should I know who They are, if you don’t?”

“True. Go on.”

“They do say that the man that gets by any accident a piece of that dark growth right upon his breast, will, for sure and certain, die by murder.”

As Vendale laughingly stopped to meet the Cellarman’s eyes, which he had fastened on his light while dreamily saying those words, he suddenly became conscious of being struck upon his own breast by a heavy hand. Instantly following with his eyes the action of the hand that struck him—which was his companion’s—he saw that it had beaten off his breast a web or clot of the fungus even then floating to the ground.

For a moment he turned upon the Cellarman almost as scared a look as the Cellarman turned upon him. But in another moment they had reached the daylight at the foot of the cellar-steps, and before he cheerfully sprang up them, he blew out his candle and the superstition together.

EXIT WILDING

On the morning of the next day, Wilding went out alone, after leaving a message with his clerk. “If Mr. Vendale should ask for me,” he said, “or if Mr. Bintrey should call, tell them I am gone to the Foundling.” All that his partner had said to him, all that his lawyer, following on the same side, could urge, had left him persisting unshaken in his own point of view. To find the lost man, whose place he had usurped, was now the paramount interest of his life, and to inquire at the Foundling was plainly to take the first step in the direction of discovery. To the Foundling, accordingly, the wine-merchant now went.

The once familiar aspect of the building was altered to him, as the look of the portrait over the chimney-piece was altered to him. His one dearest association with the place which had sheltered his childhood had been broken away from it for ever. A strange reluctance possessed him, when he stated his business at the door. His heart ached as he sat alone in the waiting-room while the Treasurer of the institution was being sent for to see him. When the interview began, it was only by a painful effort that he could compose himself sufficiently to mention the nature of his errand.

The Treasurer listened with a face which promised all needful attention, and promised nothing more.

“We are obliged to be cautious,” he said, when it came to his turn to speak, “about all inquiries which are made by strangers.”

“You can hardly consider me a stranger,” answered Wilding, simply. “I was one of your poor lost children here, in the bygone time.”

The Treasurer politely rejoined that this circumstance inspired him with a special interest in his visitor. But he pressed, nevertheless for that visitor’s motive in making his inquiry. Without further preface, Wilding told him his motive, suppressing nothing. The Treasurer rose, and led the way into the room in which the registers of the institution were kept. “All the information which our books can give is heartily at your service,” he said. “After the time that has elapsed, I am afraid it is the only information we have to offer you.”

The books were consulted, and the entry was found expressed as follows:—

“3d March, 1836. Adopted, and removed from the Foundling Hospital, a male infant, named Walter Wilding. Name and condition of the person adopting the child—Mrs. Jane Ann Miller, widow. Address—Lime-Tree Lodge, Groombridge Wells. References—the Reverend John Harker, Groombridge Wells; and Messrs. Giles, Jeremie, and Giles, bankers, Lombard Street.”

“Is that all?” asked the wine-merchant. “Had you no after-communication with Mrs. Miller?”

“None—or some reference to it must have appeared in this book.”

“May I take a copy of the entry?”

“Certainly! You are a little agitated. Let me make a copy for you.”

“My only chance, I suppose,” said Wilding, looking sadly at the copy, “is to inquire at Mrs. Miller’s residence, and to try if her references can help me?”

“That is the only chance I see at present,” answered the Treasurer. “I heartily wish I could have been of some further assistance to you.”

With those farewell words to comfort him Wilding set forth on the journey of investigation which began from the Foundling doors. The first stage to make for, was plainly the house of business of the bankers in Lombard Street. Two of the partners in the firm were inaccessible to chance-visitors when he asked for them. The third, after raising certain inevitable difficulties, consented to let a clerk examine the ledger marked with the initial letter “M.” The account of Mrs. Miller, widow, of Groombridge Wells, was found. Two long lines, in faded ink, were drawn across it; and at the bottom of the page there appeared this note: “Account closed, September 30th, 1837.”

So the first stage of the journey was reached—and so it ended in No Thoroughfare! After sending a note to Cripple Corner to inform his partner that his absence might be prolonged for some hours, Wilding took his place in the train, and started for the second stage on the journey—Mrs. Miller’s residence at Groombridge Wells.

Mothers and children travelled with him; mothers and children met each other at the station; mothers and children were in the shops when he entered them to inquire for Lime-Tree Lodge. Everywhere, the nearest and dearest of human relations showed itself happily in the happy light of day. Everywhere, he was reminded of the treasured delusion from which he had been awakened so cruelly—of the lost memory which had passed from him like a reflection from a glass.

Inquiring here, inquiring there, he could hear of no such place as Lime-Tree Lodge. Passing a house-agent’s office, he went in wearily, and put the question for the last time. The house-agent pointed across the street to a dreary mansion of many windows, which might have been a manufactory, but which was an hotel. “That’s where Lime-Tree Lodge stood, sir,” said the man, “ten years ago.”

The second stage reached, and No Thoroughfare again!

But one chance was left. The clerical reference, Mr. Harker, still remained to be found. Customers coming in at the moment to occupy the house-agent’s attention, Wilding went down the street, and entering a bookseller’s shop, asked if he could be informed of the Reverend John Harker’s present address.

The bookseller looked unaffectedly shocked and astonished, and made no answer.

Wilding repeated his question.

The bookseller took up from his counter a prim little volume in a binding of sober gray. He handed it to his visitor, open at the title-page. Wilding read:

“The martyrdom of the Reverend John Harker in New Zealand. Related by a former member of his flock.”

Wilding put the book down on the counter. “I beg your pardon,” he said thinking a little, perhaps, of his own present martyrdom while he spoke. The silent bookseller acknowledged the apology by a bow. Wilding went out.

Third and last stage, and No Thoroughfare for the third and last time.

There was nothing more to be done; there was absolutely no choice but to go back to London, defeated at all points. From time to time on the return journey, the wine-merchant looked at his copy of the entry in the Foundling Register. There is one among the many forms of despair—perhaps the most pitiable of all—which persists in disguising itself as Hope. Wilding checked himself in the act of throwing the useless morsel of paper out of the carriage window. “It may lead to something yet,” he thought. “While I live, I won’t part with it. When I die, my executors shall find it sealed up with my will.”

Now, the mention of his will set the good wine-merchant on a new track of thought, without diverting his mind from its engrossing subject. He must make his will immediately.

The application of the phrase No Thoroughfare to the case had originated with Mr. Bintrey. In their first long conference following the discovery, that sagacious personage had a hundred times repeated, with an obstructive shake of the head, “No Thoroughfare, Sir, No Thoroughfare. My belief is that there is no way out of this at this time of day, and my advice is, make yourself comfortable where you are.”

In the course of the protracted consultation, a magnum of the forty-five year old port-wine had been produced for the wetting of Mr. Bintrey’s legal whistle; but the more clearly he saw his way through the wine, the more emphatically he did not see his way through the case; repeating as often as he set his glass down empty. “Mr. Wilding, No Thoroughfare. Rest and be thankful.”

It is certain that the honest wine-merchant’s anxiety to make a will originated in profound conscientiousness; though it is possible (and quite consistent with his rectitude) that he may unconsciously have derived some feeling of relief from the prospect of delegating his own difficulty to two other men who were to come after him. Be that as it may, he pursued his new track of thought with great ardour, and lost no time in begging George Vendale and Mr. Bintrey to meet him in Cripple Corner and share his confidence.

“Being all three assembled with closed doors,” said Mr. Bintrey, addressing the new partner on the occasion, “I wish to observe, before our friend (and my client) entrusts us with his further views, that I have endorsed what I understand from him to have been your advice, Mr. Vendale, and what would be the advice of every sensible man. I have told him that he positively must keep his secret. I have spoken with Mrs. Goldstraw, both in his presence and in his absence; and if anybody is to be trusted (which is a very large IF), I think she is to be trusted to that extent. I have pointed out to our friend (and my client), that to set on foot random inquiries would not only be to raise the Devil, in the likeness of all the swindlers in the kingdom, but would also be to waste the estate. Now, you see, Mr. Vendale, our friend (and my client) does not desire to waste the estate, but, on the contrary, desires to husband it for what he considers—but I can’t say I do—the rightful owner, if such rightful owner should ever be found. I am very much mistaken if he ever will be, but never mind that. Mr. Wilding and I are, at least, agreed that the estate is not to be wasted. Now, I have yielded to Mr. Wilding’s desire to keep an advertisement at intervals flowing through the newspapers, cautiously inviting any person who may know anything about that adopted infant, taken from the Foundling Hospital, to come to my office; and I have pledged myself that such advertisement shall regularly appear. I have gathered from our friend (and my client) that I meet you here to-day to take his instructions, not to give him advice. I am prepared to receive his instructions, and to respect his wishes; but you will please observe that this does not imply my approval of either as a matter of professional opinion.”

Thus Mr. Bintrey; talking quite is much at Wilding as to Vendale. And yet, in spite of his care for his client, he was so amused by his client’s Quixotic conduct, as to eye him from time to time with twinkling eyes, in the light of a highly comical curiosity.

“Nothing,” observed Wilding, “can be clearer. I only wish my head were as clear as yours, Mr. Bintrey.”

“If you feel that singing in it coming on,” hinted the lawyer, with an alarmed glance, “put it off.—I mean the interview.”

“Not at all, I thank you,” said Wilding. “What was I going to——”

“Don’t excite yourself, Mr. Wilding,” urged the lawyer.

“No; I wasn’t going to,” said the wine-merchant. “Mr. Bintrey and George Vendale, would you have any hesitation or objection to become my joint trustees and executors, or can you at once consent?”

“I consent,” replied George Vendale, readily.

“I consent,” said Bintrey, not so readily.

“Thank you both. Mr. Bintrey, my instructions for my last will and testament are short and plain. Perhaps you will now have the goodness to take them down. I leave the whole of my real and personal estate, without any exception or reservation whatsoever, to you two, my joint trustees and executors, in trust to pay over the whole to the true Walter Wilding, if he shall be found and identified within two years after the day of my death. Failing that, in trust to you two to pay over the whole as a benefaction and legacy to the Foundling Hospital.”

“Those are all your instructions, are they, Mr. Wilding?” demanded Bintrey, after a blank silence, during which nobody had looked at anybody.

“The whole.”

“And as to those instructions, you have absolutely made up your mind, Mr. Wilding?”

“Absolutely, decidedly, finally.”

“It only remains,” said the lawyer, with one shrug of his shoulders, “to get them into technical and binding form, and to execute and attest. Now, does that press? Is there any hurry about it? You are not going to die yet, sir.”

“Mr. Bintrey,” answered Wilding, gravely, “when I am going to die is within other knowledge than yours or mine. I shall be glad to have this matter off my mind, if you please.”

“We are lawyer and client again,” rejoined Bintrey, who, for the nonce, had become almost sympathetic. “If this day week—here, at the same hour—will suit Mr. Vendale and yourself, I will enter in my Diary that I attend you accordingly.”

The appointment was made, and in due sequence, kept. The will was formally signed, sealed, delivered, and witnessed, and was carried off by Mr. Bintrey for safe storage among the papers of his clients, ranged in their respective iron boxes, with their respective owners’ names outside, on iron tiers in his consulting-room, as if that legal sanctuary were a condensed Family Vault of Clients.

With more heart than he had lately had for former subjects of interest, Wilding then set about completing his patriarchal establishment, being much assisted not only by Mrs. Goldstraw but by Vendale too: who, perhaps, had in his mind the giving of an Obenreizer dinner as soon as possible. Anyhow, the establishment being reported in sound working order, the Obenreizers, Guardian and Ward, were asked to dinner, and Madame Dor was included in the invitation. If Vendale had been over head and ears in love before—a phrase not to be taken as implying the faintest doubt about it—this dinner plunged him down in love ten thousand fathoms deep. Yet, for the life of him, he could not get one word alone with charming Marguerite. So surely as a blessed moment seemed to come, Obenreizer, in his filmy state, would stand at Vendale’s elbow, or the broad back of Madame Dor would appear before his eyes. That speechless matron was never seen in a front view, from the moment of her arrival to that of her departure—except at dinner. And from the instant of her retirement to the drawing-room, after a hearty participation in that meal, she turned her face to the wall again.

Yet, through four or five delightful though distracting hours, Marguerite was to be seen, Marguerite was to be heard, Marguerite was to be occasionally touched. When they made the round of the old dark cellars, Vendale led her by the hand; when she sang to him in the lighted room at night, Vendale, standing by her, held her relinquished gloves, and would have bartered against them every drop of the forty-five year old, though it had been forty-five times forty-five years old, and its nett price forty-five times forty-five pounds per dozen. And still, when she was gone, and a great gap of an extinguisher was clapped on Cripple Corner, he tormented himself by wondering, Did she think that he admired her! Did she think that he adored her! Did she suspect that she had won him, heart and soul! Did she care to think at all about it! And so, Did she and Didn’t she, up and down the gamut, and above the line and below the line, dear, dear! Poor restless heart of humanity! To think that the men who were mummies thousands of years ago, did the same, and ever found the secret how to be quiet after it!

“What do you think, George,” Wilding asked him next day, “of Mr. Obenreizer? (I won’t ask you what you think of Miss Obenreizer.)”

“I don’t know,” said Vendale, “and I never did know, what to think of him.”

“He is well informed and clever,” said Wilding.

“Certainly clever.”

“A good musician.” (He had played very well, and sung very well, overnight.)

“Unquestionably a good musician.”

“And talks well.”

“Yes,” said George Vendale, ruminating, “and talks well. Do you know, Wilding, it oddly occurs to me, as I think about him, that he doesn’t keep silence well!”

“How do you mean? He is not obtrusively talkative.”

“No, and I don’t mean that. But when he is silent, you can hardly help vaguely, though perhaps most unjustly, mistrusting him. Take people whom you know and like. Take any one you know and like.”

“Soon done, my good fellow,” said Wilding. “I take you.”

“I didn’t bargain for that, or foresee it,” returned Vendale, laughing. “However, take me. Reflect for a moment. Is your approving knowledge of my interesting face mainly founded (however various the momentary expressions it may include) on my face when I am silent?”

“I think it is,” said Wilding.

“I think so too. Now, you see, when Obenreizer speaks—in other words, when he is allowed to explain himself away—he comes out right enough; but when he has not the opportunity of explaining himself away, he comes out rather wrong. Therefore it is, that I say he does not keep silence well. And passing hastily in review such faces as I know, and don’t trust, I am inclined to think, now I give my mind to it, that none of them keep silence well.”

This proposition in Physiognomy being new to Wilding, he was at first slow to admit it, until asking himself the question whether Mrs. Goldstraw kept silence well, and remembering that her face in repose decidedly invited trustfulness, he was as glad as men usually are to believe what they desire to believe.

But, as he was very slow to regain his spirits or his health, his partner, as another means of setting him up—and perhaps also with contingent Obenreizer views—reminded him of those musical schemes of his in connection with his family, and how a singing-class was to be formed in the house, and a Choir in a neighbouring church. The class was established speedily, and, two or three of the people having already some musical knowledge, and singing tolerably, the Choir soon followed. The latter was led, and chiefly taught, by Wilding himself: who had hopes of converting his dependents into so many Foundlings, in respect of their capacity to sing sacred choruses.

Now, the Obenreizers being skilled musicians, it was easily brought to pass that they should be asked to join these musical unions. Guardian and Ward consenting, or Guardian consenting for both, it was necessarily brought to pass that Vendale’s life became a life of absolute thraldom and enchantment. For, in the mouldy Christopher-Wren church on Sundays, with its dearly beloved brethren assembled and met together, five-and-twenty strong, was not that Her voice that shot like light into the darkest places, thrilling the walls and pillars as though they were pieces of his heart! What time, too, Madame Dor in a corner of the high pew, turning her back upon everybody and everything, could not fail to be Ritualistically right at some moment of the service; like the man whom the doctors recommended to get drunk once a month, and who, that he might not overlook it, got drunk every day.

But, even those seraphic Sundays were surpassed by the Wednesday concerts established for the patriarchal family. At those concerts she would sit down to the piano and sing them, in her own tongue, songs of her own land, songs calling from the mountain-tops to Vendale, “Rise above the grovelling level country; come far away from the crowd; pursue me as I mount higher; higher, higher, melting into the azure distance; rise to my supremest height of all, and love me here!” Then would the pretty bodice, the clocked stocking, and the silver-buckled shoe be, like the broad forehead and the bright eyes, fraught with the spring of a very chamois, until the strain was over.

Not even over Vendale himself did these songs of hers cast a more potent spell than over Joey Ladle in his different way. Steadily refusing to muddle the harmony by taking any share in it, and evincing the supremest contempt for scales and such-like rudiments of music—which, indeed, seldom captivate mere listeners—Joey did at first give up the whole business for a bad job, and the whole of the performers for a set of howling Dervishes. But, descrying traces of unmuddled harmony in a part-song one day, he gave his two under cellarmen faint hopes of getting on towards something in course of time. An anthem of Handel’s led to further encouragement from him: though he objected that that great musician must have been down in some of them foreign cellars pretty much, for to go and say the same thing so many times over; which, took it in how you might, he considered a certain sign of your having took it in somehow. On a third occasion, the public appearance of Mr. Jarvis with a flute, and of an odd man with a violin, and the performance of a duet by the two, did so astonish him that, solely of his own impulse and motion, he became inspired with the words, “Ann Koar!” repeatedly pronouncing them as if calling in a familiar manner for some lady who had distinguished herself in the orchestra. But this was his final testimony to the merits of his mates, for, the instrumental duet being performed at the first Wednesday concert, and being presently followed by the voice of Marguerite Obenreizer, he sat with his mouth wide open, entranced, until she had finished; when, rising in his place with much solemnity, and prefacing what he was about to say with a bow that specially included Mr. Wilding in it, he delivered himself of the gratifying sentiment: “Arter that, ye may all on ye get to bed!” And ever afterwards declined to render homage in any other words to the musical powers of the family.

Thus began a separate personal acquaintance between Marguerite Obenreizer and Joey Ladle. She laughed so heartily at his compliment, and yet was so abashed by it, that Joey made bold to say to her, after the concert was over, he hoped he wasn’t so muddled in his head as to have took a liberty? She made him a gracious reply, and Joey ducked in return.

“You’ll change the luck time about, Miss,” said Joey, ducking again. “It’s such as you in the place that can bring round the luck of the place.”

“Can I? Round the luck?” she answered, in her pretty English, and with a pretty wonder. “I fear I do not understand. I am so stupid.”

“Young Master Wilding, Miss,” Joey explained confidentially, though not much to her enlightenment, “changed the luck, afore he took in young Master George. So I say, and so they’ll find. Lord! Only come into the place and sing over the luck a few times, Miss, and it won’t be able to help itself!”

With this, and with a whole brood of ducks, Joey backed out of the presence. But Joey being a privileged person, and even an involuntary conquest being pleasant to youth and beauty, Marguerite merrily looked out for him next time.

“Where is my Mr. Joey, please?” she asked Vendale.

So Joey was produced, and shaken hands with, and that became an Institution.

Another Institution arose in this wise. Joey was a little hard of hearing. He himself said it was “Wapours,” and perhaps it might have been; but whatever the cause of the effect, there the effect was, upon him. On this first occasion he had been seen to sidle along the wall, with his left hand to his left ear, until he had sidled himself into a seat pretty near the singer, in which place and position he had remained, until addressing to his friends the amateurs the compliment before mentioned. It was observed on the following Wednesday that Joey’s action as a Pecking Machine was impaired at dinner, and it was rumoured about the table that this was explainable by his high-strung expectations of Miss Obenreizer’s singing, and his fears of not getting a place where he could hear every note and syllable. The rumour reaching Wilding’s ears, he in his good nature called Joey to the front at night before Marguerite began. Thus the Institution came into being that on succeeding nights, Marguerite, running her hands over the keys before singing, always said to Vendale, “Where is my Mr. Joey, please?” and that Vendale always brought him forth, and stationed him near by. That he should then, when all eyes were upon him, express in his face the utmost contempt for the exertions of his friends and confidence in Marguerite alone, whom he would stand contemplating, not unlike the rhinocerous out of the spelling-book, tamed and on his hind legs, was a part of the Institution. Also that when he remained after the singing in his most ecstatic state, some bold spirit from the back should say, “What do you think of it, Joey?” and he should be goaded to reply, as having that instant conceived the retort, “Arter that ye may all on ye get to bed!” These were other parts of the Institution.

But, the simple pleasures and small jests of Cripple Corner were not destined to have a long life. Underlying them from the first was a serious matter, which every member of the patriarchal family knew of, but which, by tacit agreement, all forbore to speak of. Mr. Wilding’s health was in a bad way.

He might have overcome the shock he had sustained in the one great affection of his life, or he might have overcome his consciousness of being in the enjoyment of another man’s property; but the two together were too much for him. A man haunted by twin ghosts, he became deeply depressed. The inseparable spectres sat at the board with him, ate from his platter, drank from his cup, and stood by his bedside at night. When he recalled his supposed mother’s love, he felt as though he had stolen it. When he rallied a little under the respect and attachment of his dependants, he felt as though he were even fraudulent in making them happy, for that should have been the unknown man’s duty and gratification.

Gradually, under the pressure of his brooding mind, his body stooped, his step lost its elasticity, his eyes were seldom lifted from the ground. He knew he could not help the deplorable mistake that had been made, but he knew he could not mend it; for the days and weeks went by, and no one claimed his name or his possessions. And now there began to creep over him a cloudy consciousness of often-recurring confusion in his head. He would unaccountably lose, sometimes whole hours, sometimes a whole day and night. Once, his remembrance stopped as he sat at the head of the dinner-table, and was blank until daybreak. Another time, it stopped as he was beating time to their singing, and went on again when he and his partner were walking in the court-yard by the light of the moon, half the night later. He asked Vendale (always full of consideration, work, and help) how this was? Vendale only replied, “You have not been quite well; that’s all.” He looked for explanation into the faces of his people. But they would put it off with “Glad to see you looking so much better, sir;” or “Hope you’re doing nicely now, sir;” in which was no information at all.

At length, when the partnership was but five months old, Walter Wilding took to his bed, and his housekeeper became his nurse.

“Lying here, perhaps you will not mind my calling you Sally, Mrs. Goldstraw?” said the poor wine-merchant.

“It sounds more natural to me, sir, than any other name, and I like it better.”

“Thank you, Sally. I think, Sally, I must of late have been subject to fits. Is that so, Sally? Don’t mind telling me now.”

“It has happened, sir.”

“Ah! That is the explanation!” he quietly remarked. “Mr. Obenreizer, Sally, talks of the world being so small that it is not strange how often the same people come together, and come together at various places, and in various stages of life. But it does seem strange, Sally, that I should, as I may say, come round to the Foundling to die.”

He extended his hand to her, and she gently took it.

“You are not going to die, dear Mr. Wilding.”

“So Mr. Bintrey said, but I think he was wrong. The old child-feeling is coming back upon me, Sally. The old hush and rest, as I used to fall asleep.”

After an interval he said, in a placid voice, “Please kiss me, Nurse,” and, it was evident, believed himself to be lying in the old Dormitory.

As she had been used to bend over the fatherless and motherless children, Sally bent over the fatherless and motherless man, and put her lips to his forehead, murmuring:

“God bless you!”

“God bless you!” he replied, in the same tone.

After another interval, he opened his eyes in his own character, and said: “Don’t move me, Sally, because of what I am going to say; I lie quite easily. I think my time is come, I don’t know how it may appear to you, Sally, but——”

Insensibility fell upon him for a few minutes; he emerged from it once more.

“—I don’t know how it may appear to you, Sally, but so it appears to me.”

When he had thus conscientiously finished his favourite sentence, his time came, and he died.

ACT II

VENDALE MAKES LOVE

The summer and the autumn passed. Christmas and the New Year were at hand.

As executors honestly bent on performing their duty towards the dead, Vendale and Bintrey had held more than one anxious consultation on the subject of Wilding’s will. The lawyer had declared, from the first, that it was simply impossible to take any useful action in the matter at all. The only obvious inquiries to make, in relation to the lost man, had been made already by Wilding himself; with this result, that time and death together had not left a trace of him discoverable. To advertise for the claimant to the property, it would be necessary to mention particulars—a course of proceeding which would invite half the impostors in England to present themselves in the character of the true Walter Wilding. “If we find a chance of tracing the lost man, we will take it. If we don’t, let us meet for another consultation on the first anniversary of Wilding’s death.” So Bintrey advised. And so, with the most earnest desire to fulfil his dead friend’s wishes, Vendale was fain to let the matter rest for the present.

Turning from his interest in the past to his interest in the future, Vendale still found himself confronting a doubtful prospect. Months on months had passed since his first visit to Soho Square—and through all that time, the one language in which he had told Marguerite that he loved her was the language of the eyes, assisted, at convenient opportunities, by the language of the hand.

What was the obstacle in his way? The one immovable obstacle which had been in his way from the first. No matter how fairly the opportunities looked, Vendale’s efforts to speak with Marguerite alone ended invariably in one and the same result. Under the most accidental circumstances, in the most innocent manner possible, Obenreizer was always in the way.

With the last days of the old year came an unexpected chance of spending an evening with Marguerite, which Vendale resolved should be a chance of speaking privately to her as well. A cordial note from Obenreizer invited him, on New Year’s Day, to a little family dinner in Soho Square. “We shall be only four,” the note said. “We shall be only two,” Vendale determined, “before the evening is out!”

New Year’s Day, among the English, is associated with the giving and receiving of dinners, and with nothing more. New Year’s Day, among the foreigners, is the grand opportunity of the year for the giving and receiving of presents. It is occasionally possible to acclimatise a foreign custom. In this instance Vendale felt no hesitation about making the attempt. His one difficulty was to decide what his New Year’s gift to Marguerite should be. The defensive pride of the peasant’s daughter—morbidly sensitive to the inequality between her social position and his—would be secretly roused against him if he ventured on a rich offering. A gift, which a poor man’s purse might purchase, was the one gift that could be trusted to find its way to her heart, for the giver’s sake. Stoutly resisting temptation, in the form of diamonds and rubies, Vendale bought a brooch of the filagree-work of Genoa—the simplest and most unpretending ornament that he could find in the jeweller’s shop.

He slipped his gift into Marguerite’s hand as she held it out to welcome him on the day of the dinner.

“This is your first New Year’s Day in England,” he said. “Will you let me help to make it like a New Year’s Day at home?”

She thanked him, a little constrainedly, as she looked at the jeweller’s box, uncertain what it might contain. Opening the box, and discovering the studiously simple form under which Vendale’s little keepsake offered itself to her, she penetrated his motive on the spot. Her face turned on him brightly, with a look which said, “I own you have pleased and flattered me.” Never had she been so charming, in Vendale’s eyes, as she was at that moment. Her winter dress—a petticoat of dark silk, with a bodice of black velvet rising to her neck, and enclosing it softly in a little circle of swansdown—heightened, by all the force of contrast, the dazzling fairness of her hair and her complexion. It was only when she turned aside from him to the glass, and, taking out the brooch that she wore, put his New Year’s gift in its place, that Vendale’s attention wandered far enough away from her to discover the presence of other persons in the room. He now became conscious that the hands of Obenreizer were affectionately in possession of his elbows. He now heard the voice of Obenreizer thanking him for his attention to Marguerite, with the faintest possible ring of mockery in its tone. (“Such a simple present, dear sir! and showing such nice tact!”) He now discovered, for the first time, that there was one other guest, and but one, besides himself, whom Obenreizer presented as a compatriot and friend. The friend’s face was mouldy, and the friend’s figure was fat. His age was suggestive of the autumnal period of human life. In the course of the evening he developed two extraordinary capacities. One was a capacity for silence; the other was a capacity for emptying bottles.

Madame Dor was not in the room. Neither was there any visible place reserved for her when they sat down to table. Obenreizer explained that it was “the good Dor’s simple habit to dine always in the middle of the day. She would make her excuses later in the evening.” Vendale wondered whether the good Dor had, on this occasion, varied her domestic employment from cleaning Obenreizer’s gloves to cooking Obenreizer’s dinner. This at least was certain—the dishes served were, one and all, as achievements in cookery, high above the reach of the rude elementary art of England. The dinner was unobtrusively perfect. As for the wine, the eyes of the speechless friend rolled over it, as in solemn ecstasy. Sometimes he said “Good!” when a bottle came in full; and sometimes he said “Ah!” when a bottle went out empty—and there his contributions to the gaiety of the evening ended.

Silence is occasionally infectious. Oppressed by private anxieties of their own, Marguerite and Vendale appeared to feel the influence of the speechless friend. The whole responsibility of keeping the talk going rested on Obenreizer’s shoulders, and manfully did Obenreizer sustain it. He opened his heart in the character of an enlightened foreigner, and sang the praises of England. When other topics ran dry, he returned to this inexhaustible source, and always set the stream running again as copiously as ever. Obenreizer would have given an arm, an eye, or a leg to have been born an Englishman. Out of England there was no such institution as a home, no such thing as a fireside, no such object as a beautiful woman. His dear Miss Marguerite would excuse him, if he accounted for her attractions on the theory that English blood must have mixed at some former time with their obscure and unknown ancestry. Survey this English nation, and behold a tall, clean, plump, and solid people! Look at their cities! What magnificence in their public buildings! What admirable order and propriety in their streets! Admire their laws, combining the eternal principle of justice with the other eternal principle of pounds, shillings, and pence; and applying the product to all civil injuries, from an injury to a man’s honour, to an injury to a man’s nose! You have ruined my daughter—pounds, shillings, and pence! You have knocked me down with a blow in my face—pounds, shillings, and pence! Where was the material prosperity of such a country as that to stop? Obenreizer, projecting himself into the future, failed to see the end of it. Obenreizer’s enthusiasm entreated permission to exhale itself, English fashion, in a toast. Here is our modest little dinner over, here is our frugal dessert on the table, and here is the admirer of England conforming to national customs, and making a speech! A toast to your white cliffs of Albion, Mr. Vendale! to your national virtues, your charming climate, and your fascinating women! to your Hearths, to your Homes, to your Habeas Corpus, and to all your other institutions! In one word—to England! Heep-heep-heep! hooray!

Obenreizer’s voice had barely chanted the last note of the English cheer, the speechless friend had barely drained the last drop out of his glass, when the festive proceedings were interrupted by a modest tap at the door. A woman-servant came in, and approached her master with a little note in her hand. Obenreizer opened the note with a frown; and, after reading it with an expression of genuine annoyance, passed it on to his compatriot and friend. Vendale’s spirits rose as he watched these proceedings. Had he found an ally in the annoying little note? Was the long-looked-for chance actually coming at last?

“I am afraid there is no help for it?” said Obenreizer, addressing his fellow-countryman. “I am afraid we must go.”

The speechless friend handed back the letter, shrugged his heavy shoulders, and poured himself out a last glass of wine. His fat fingers lingered fondly round the neck of the bottle. They pressed it with a little amatory squeeze at parting. His globular eyes looked dimly, as through an intervening haze, at Vendale and Marguerite. His heavy articulation laboured, and brought forth a whole sentence at a birth. “I think,” he said, “I should have liked a little more wine.” His breath failed him after that effort; he gasped, and walked to the door.

Obenreizer addressed himself to Vendale with an appearance of the deepest distress.

“I am so shocked, so confused, so distressed,” he began. “A misfortune has happened to one of my compatriots. He is alone, he is ignorant of your language—I and my good friend, here, have no choice but to go and help him. What can I say in my excuse? How can I describe my affliction at depriving myself in this way of the honour of your company?”

He paused, evidently expecting to see Vendale take up his hat and retire. Discerning his opportunity at last, Vendale determined to do nothing of the kind. He met Obenreizer dexterously, with Obenreizer’s own weapons.

“Pray don’t distress yourself,” he said. “I’ll wait here with the greatest pleasure till you come back.”

Marguerite blushed deeply, and turned away to her embroidery-frame in a corner by the window. The film showed itself in Obenreizer’s eyes, and the smile came something sourly to Obenreizer’s lips. To have told Vendale that there was no reasonable prospect of his coming back in good time, would have been to risk offending a man whose favourable opinion was of solid commercial importance to him. Accepting his defeat with the best possible grace, he declared himself to be equally honoured and delighted by Vendale’s proposal. “So frank, so friendly, so English!” He bustled about, apparently looking for something he wanted, disappeared for a moment through the folding-doors communicating with the next room, came back with his hat and coat, and protesting that he would return at the earliest possible moment, embraced Vendale’s elbows, and vanished from the scene in company with the speechless friend.

Vendale turned to the corner by the window, in which Marguerite had placed herself with her work. There, as if she had dropped from the ceiling, or come up through the floor—there, in the old attitude, with her face to the stove—sat an Obstacle that had not been foreseen, in the person of Madame Dor! She half got up, half looked over her broad shoulder at Vendale, and plumped down again. Was she at work? Yes. Cleaning Obenreizer’s gloves, as before? No; darning Obenreizer’s stockings.

The case was now desperate. Two serious considerations presented themselves to Vendale. Was it possible to put Madame Dor into the stove? The stove wouldn’t hold her. Was it possible to treat Madame Dor, not as a living woman, but as an article of furniture? Could the mind be brought to contemplate this respectable matron purely in the light of a chest of drawers, with a black gauze held-dress accidentally left on the top of it? Yes, the mind could be brought to do that. With a comparatively trifling effort, Vendale’s mind did it. As he took his place on the old-fashioned window-seat, close by Marguerite and her embroidery, a slight movement appeared in the chest of drawers, but no remark issued from it. Let it be remembered that solid furniture is not easy to move, and that it has this advantage in consequence—there is no fear of upsetting it.

Unusually silent and unusually constrained—with the bright colour fast fading from her face, with a feverish energy possessing her fingers—the pretty Marguerite bent over her embroidery, and worked as if her life depended on it. Hardly less agitated himself, Vendale felt the importance of leading her very gently to the avowal which he was eager to make—to the other sweeter avowal still, which he was longing to hear. A woman’s love is never to be taken by storm; it yields insensibly to a system of gradual approach. It ventures by the roundabout way, and listens to the low voice. Vendale led her memory back to their past meetings when they were travelling together in Switzerland. They revived the impressions, they recalled the events, of the happy bygone time. Little by little, Marguerite’s constraint vanished. She smiled, she was interested, she looked at Vendale, she grew idle with her needle, she made false stitches in her work. Their voices sank lower and lower; their faces bent nearer and nearer to each other as they spoke. And Madame Dor? Madame Dor behaved like an angel. She never looked round; she never said a word; she went on with Obenreizer’s stockings. Pulling each stocking up tight over her left arm, and holding that arm aloft from time to time, to catch the light on her work, there were moments—delicate and indescribable moments—when Madame Dor appeared to be sitting upside down, and contemplating one of her own respectable legs, elevated in the air. As the minutes wore on, these elevations followed each other at longer and longer intervals. Now and again, the black gauze head-dress nodded, dropped forward, recovered itself. A little heap of stockings slid softly from Madame Dor’s lap, and remained unnoticed on the floor. A prodigious ball of worsted followed the stockings, and rolled lazily under the table. The black gauze head-dress nodded, dropped forward, recovered itself, nodded again, dropped forward again, and recovered itself no more. A composite sound, partly as of the purring of an immense cat, partly as of the planing of a soft board, rose over the hushed voices of the lovers, and hummed at regular intervals through the room. Nature and Madame Dor had combined together in Vendale’s interests. The best of women was asleep.

Marguerite rose to stop—not the snoring—let us say, the audible repose of Madame Dor. Vendale laid his hand on her arm, and pressed her back gently into her chair.

“Don’t disturb her,” he whispered. “I have been waiting to tell you a secret. Let me tell it now.”

Marguerite resumed her seat. She tried to resume her needle. It was useless; her eyes failed her; her hand failed her; she could find nothing.

“We have been talking,” said Vendale, “of the happy time when we first met, and first travelled together. I have a confession to make. I have been concealing something. When we spoke of my first visit to Switzerland, I told you of all the impressions I had brought back with me to England—except one. Can you guess what that one is?”

Her eyes looked stedfastly at the embroidery, and her face turned a little away from him. Signs of disturbance began to appear in her neat velvet bodice, round the region of the brooch. She made no reply. Vendale pressed the question without mercy.

“Can you guess what the one Swiss impression is which I have not told you yet?”

Her face turned back towards him, and a faint smile trembled on her lips.

“An impression of the mountains, perhaps?” she said slyly.

“No; a much more precious impression than that.”

“Of the lakes?”

“No. The lakes have not grown dearer and dearer in remembrance to me every day. The lakes are not associated with my happiness in the present, and my hopes in the future. Marguerite! all that makes life worth having hangs, for me, on a word from your lips. Marguerite! I love you!”

Her head drooped as he took her hand. He drew her to him, and looked at her. The tears escaped from her downcast eyes, and fell slowly over her cheeks.

“O, Mr. Vendale,” she said sadly, “it would have been kinder to have kept your secret. Have you forgotten the distance between us? It can never, never be!”

“There can be but one distance between us, Marguerite—a distance of your making. My love, my darling, there is no higher rank in goodness, there is no higher rank in beauty, than yours! Come! whisper the one little word which tells me you will be my wife!”

She sighed bitterly. “Think of your family,” she murmured; “and think of mine!”

Vendale drew her a little nearer to him.

“If you dwell on such an obstacle as that,” he said, “I shall think but one thought—I shall think I have offended you.”

She started, and looked up. “O, no!” she exclaimed innocently. The instant the words passed her lips, she saw the construction that might be placed on them. Her confession had escaped her in spite of herself. A lovely flush of colour overspread her face. She made a momentary effort to disengage herself from her lover’s embrace. She looked up at him entreatingly. She tried to speak. The words died on her lips in the kiss that Vendale pressed on them. “Let me go, Mr. Vendale!” she said faintly.

“Call me George.”

She laid her head on his bosom. All her heart went out to him at last. “George!” she whispered.

“Say you love me!”

Her arms twined themselves gently round his neck. Her lips, timidly touching his cheek, murmured the delicious words—“I love you!”

In the moment of silence that followed, the sound of the opening and closing of the house-door came clear to them through the wintry stillness of the street.

Marguerite started to her feet.

“Let me go!” she said. “He has come back!”

She hurried from the room, and touched Madame Dor’s shoulder in passing. Madame Dor woke up with a loud snort, looked first over one shoulder and then over the other, peered down into her lap, and discovered neither stockings, worsted, nor darning-needle in it. At the same moment, footsteps became audible ascending the stairs. “Mon Dieu!” said Madame Dor, addressing herself to the stove, and trembling violently. Vendale picked up the stockings and the ball, and huddled them all back in a heap over her shoulder. “Mon Dieu!” said Madame Dor, for the second time, as the avalanche of worsted poured into her capacious lap.

The door opened, and Obenreizer came in. His first glance round the room showed him that Marguerite was absent.

“What!” he exclaimed, “my niece is away? My niece is not here to entertain you in my absence? This is unpardonable. I shall bring her back instantly.”

Vendale stopped him.

“I beg you will not disturb Miss Obenreizer,” he said. “You have returned, I see, without your friend?”

“My friend remains, and consoles our afflicted compatriot. A heart-rending scene, Mr. Vendale! The household gods at the pawnbroker’s—the family immersed in tears. We all embraced in silence. My admirable friend alone possessed his composure. He sent out, on the spot, for a bottle of wine.”

“Can I say a word to you in private, Mr. Obenreizer?”

“Assuredly.” He turned to Madame Dor. “My good creature, you are sinking for want of repose. Mr. Vendale will excuse you.”

Madame Dor rose, and set forth sideways on her journey from the stove to bed. She dropped a stocking. Vendale picked it up for her, and opened one of the folding-doors. She advanced a step, and dropped three more stockings. Vendale stooping to recover them as before, Obenreizer interfered with profuse apologies, and with a warning look at Madame Dor. Madame Dor acknowledged the look by dropping the whole of the stockings in a heap, and then shuffling away panic-stricken from the scene of disaster. Obenreizer swept up the complete collection fiercely in both hands. “Go!” he cried, giving his prodigious handful a preparatory swing in the air. Madame Dor said, “Mon Dieu,” and vanished into the next room, pursued by a shower of stockings.

“What must you think, Mr. Vendale,” said Obenreizer, closing the door, “of this deplorable intrusion of domestic details? For myself, I blush at it. We are beginning the New Year as badly as possible; everything has gone wrong to-night. Be seated, pray—and say, what may I offer you? Shall we pay our best respects to another of your noble English institutions? It is my study to be, what you call, jolly. I propose a grog.”

Vendale declined the grog with all needful respect for that noble institution.

“I wish to speak to you on a subject in which I am deeply interested,” he said. “You must have observed, Mr. Obenreizer, that I have, from the first, felt no ordinary admiration for your charming niece?”

“You are very good. In my niece’s name, I thank you.”

“Perhaps you may have noticed, latterly, that my admiration for Miss Obenreizer has grown into a tenderer and deeper feeling——?”

“Shall we say friendship, Mr. Vendale?”

“Say love—and we shall be nearer to the truth.”

Obenreizer started out of his chair. The faintly discernible beat, which was his nearest approach to a change of colour, showed itself suddenly in his cheeks.

“You are Miss Obenreizer’s guardian,” pursued Vendale. “I ask you to confer upon me the greatest of all favours—I ask you to give me her hand in marriage.”

Obenreizer dropped back into his chair. “Mr. Vendale,” he said, “you petrify me.”

“I will wait,” rejoined Vendale, “until you have recovered yourself.”

“One word before I recover myself. You have said nothing about this to my niece?”

“I have opened my whole heart to your niece. And I have reason to hope——”

“What!” interposed Obenreizer. “You have made a proposal to my niece, without first asking for my authority to pay your addresses to her?” He struck his hand on the table, and lost his hold over himself for the first time in Vendale’s experience of him. “Sir!” he exclaimed, indignantly, “what sort of conduct is this? As a man of honour, speaking to a man of honour, how can you justify it?”

“I can only justify it as one of our English institutions,” said Vendale quietly. “You admire our English institutions. I can’t honestly tell you, Mr. Obenreizer, that I regret what I have done. I can only assure you that I have not acted in the matter with any intentional disrespect towards yourself. This said, may I ask you to tell me plainly what objection you see to favouring my suit?”

“I see this immense objection,” answered Obenreizer, “that my niece and you are not on a social equality together. My niece is the daughter of a poor peasant; and you are the son of a gentleman. You do us an honour,” he added, lowering himself again gradually to his customary polite level, “which deserves, and has, our most grateful acknowledgments. But the inequality is too glaring; the sacrifice is too great. You English are a proud people, Mr. Vendale. I have observed enough of this country to see that such a marriage as you propose would be a scandal here. Not a hand would be held out to your peasant-wife; and all your best friends would desert you.”

“One moment,” said Vendale, interposing on his side. “I may claim, without any great arrogance, to know more of my country people in general, and of my own friends in particular, than you do. In the estimation of everybody whose opinion is worth having, my wife herself would be the one sufficient justification of my marriage. If I did not feel certain—observe, I say certain—that I am offering her a position which she can accept without so much as the shadow of a humiliation—I would never (cost me what it might) have asked her to be my wife. Is there any other obstacle that you see? Have you any personal objection to me?”

Obenreizer spread out both his hands in courteous protest. “Personal objection!” he exclaimed. “Dear sir, the bare question is painful to me.”

“We are both men of business,” pursued Vendale, “and you naturally expect me to satisfy you that I have the means of supporting a wife. I can explain my pecuniary position in two words. I inherit from my parents a fortune of twenty thousand pounds. In half of that sum I have only a life-interest, to which, if I die, leaving a widow, my widow succeeds. If I die, leaving children, the money itself is divided among them, as they come of age. The other half of my fortune is at my own disposal, and is invested in the wine-business. I see my way to greatly improving that business. As it stands at present, I cannot state my return from my capital embarked at more than twelve hundred a year. Add the yearly value of my life-interest—and the total reaches a present annual income of fifteen hundred pounds. I have the fairest prospect of soon making it more. In the meantime, do you object to me on pecuniary grounds?”

Driven back to his last entrenchment, Obenreizer rose, and took a turn backwards and forwards in the room. For the moment, he was plainly at a loss what to say or do next.

“Before I answer that last question,” he said, after a little close consideration with himself, “I beg leave to revert for a moment to Miss Marguerite. You said something just now which seemed to imply that she returns the sentiment with which you are pleased to regard her?”

“I have the inestimable happiness,” said Vendale, “of knowing that she loves me.”

Obenreizer stood silent for a moment, with the film over his eyes, and the faintly perceptible beat becoming visible again in his cheeks.

“If you will excuse me for a few minutes,” he said, with ceremonious politeness, “I should like to have the opportunity of speaking to my niece.” With those words, he bowed, and quitted the room.

Left by himself, Vendale’s thoughts (as a necessary result of the interview, thus far) turned instinctively to the consideration of Obenreizer’s motives. He had put obstacles in the way of the courtship; he was now putting obstacles in the way of the marriage—a marriage offering advantages which even his ingenuity could not dispute. On the face of it, his conduct was incomprehensible. What did it mean?

Seeking, under the surface, for the answer to that question—and remembering that Obenreizer was a man of about his own age; also, that Marguerite was, strictly speaking, his half-niece only—Vendale asked himself, with a lover’s ready jealousy, whether he had a rival to fear, as well as a guardian to conciliate. The thought just crossed his mind, and no more. The sense of Marguerite’s kiss still lingering on his cheek reminded him gently that even the jealousy of a moment was now a treason to her.

On reflection, it seemed most likely that a personal motive of another kind might suggest the true explanation of Obenreizer’s conduct. Marguerite’s grace and beauty were precious ornaments in that little household. They gave it a special social attraction and a special social importance. They armed Obenreizer with a certain influence in reserve, which he could always depend upon to make his house attractive, and which he might always bring more or less to bear on the forwarding of his own private ends. Was he the sort of man to resign such advantages as were here implied, without obtaining the fullest possible compensation for the loss? A connection by marriage with Vendale offered him solid advantages, beyond all doubt. But there were hundreds of men in London with far greater power and far wider influence than Vendale possessed. Was it possible that this man’s ambition secretly looked higher than the highest prospects that could be offered to him by the alliance now proposed for his niece? As the question passed through Vendale’s mind, the man himself reappeared—to answer it, or not to answer it, as the event might prove.

A marked change was visible in Obenreizer when he resumed his place. His manner was less assured, and there were plain traces about his mouth of recent agitation which had not been successfully composed. Had he said something, referring either to Vendale or to himself, which had raised Marguerite’s spirit, and which had placed him, for the first time, face to face with a resolute assertion of his niece’s will? It might or might not be. This only was certain—he looked like a man who had met with a repulse.

“I have spoken to my niece,” he began. “I find, Mr. Vendale, that even your influence has not entirely blinded her to the social objections to your proposal.”

“May I ask,” returned Vendale, “if that is the only result of your interview with Miss Obenreizer?”

A momentary flash leapt out through the Obenreizer film.

“You are master of the situation,” he answered, in a tone of sardonic submission. “If you insist on my admitting it, I do admit it in those words. My niece’s will and mine used to be one, Mr. Vendale. You have come between us, and her will is now yours. In my country, we know when we are beaten, and we submit with our best grace. I submit, with my best grace, on certain conditions. Let us revert to the statement of your pecuniary position. I have an objection to you, my dear sir—a most amazing, a most audacious objection, from a man in my position to a man in yours.”

“What is it?”

“You have honoured me by making a proposal for my niece’s hand. For the present (with best thanks and respects), I beg to decline it.”

“Why?”

“Because you are not rich enough.”

The objection, as the speaker had foreseen, took Vendale completely by surprise. For the moment he was speechless.

“Your income is fifteen hundred a year,” pursued Obenreizer. “In my miserable country I should fall on my knees before your income, and say, ‘What a princely fortune!’ In wealthy England, I sit as I am, and say, ‘A modest independence, dear sir; nothing more. Enough, perhaps, for a wife in your own rank of life who has no social prejudices to conquer. Not more than half enough for a wife who is a meanly born foreigner, and who has all your social prejudices against her.’ Sir! if my niece is ever to marry you, she will have what you call uphill work of it in taking her place at starting. Yes, yes; this is not your view, but it remains, immovably remains, my view for all that. For my niece’s sake, I claim that this uphill work shall be made as smooth as possible. Whatever material advantages she can have to help her, ought, in common justice, to be hers. Now, tell me, Mr. Vendale, on your fifteen hundred a year can your wife have a house in a fashionable quarter, a footman to open her door, a butler to wait at her table, and a carriage and horses to drive about in? I see the answer in your face—your face says, No. Very good. Tell me one more thing, and I have done. Take the mass of your educated, accomplished, and lovely country-women, is it, or is it not, the fact that a lady who has a house in a fashionable quarter, a footman to open her door, a butler to wait at her table, and a carriage and horses to drive about in, is a lady who has gained four steps, in female estimation, at starting? Yes? or No?”

“Come to the point,” said Vendale. “You view this question as a question of terms. What are your terms?”

“The lowest terms, dear sir, on which you can provide your wife with those four steps at starting. Double your present income—the most rigid economy cannot do it in England on less. You said just now that you expected greatly to increase the value of your business. To work—and increase it! I am a good devil after all! On the day when you satisfy me, by plain proofs, that your income has risen to three thousand a year, ask me for my niece’s hand, and it is yours.”

“May I inquire if you have mentioned this arrangement to Miss Obenreizer?”

“Certainly. She has a last little morsel of regard still left for me, Mr. Vendale, which is not yours yet; and she accepts my terms. In other words, she submits to be guided by her guardian’s regard for her welfare, and by her guardian’s superior knowledge of the world.” He threw himself back in his chair, in firm reliance on his position, and in full possession of his excellent temper.

Any open assertion of his own interests, in the situation in which Vendale was now placed, seemed to be (for the present at least) hopeless. He found himself literally left with no ground to stand on. Whether Obenreizer’s objections were the genuine product of Obenreizer’s own view of the case, or whether he was simply delaying the marriage in the hope of ultimately breaking it off altogether—in either of these events, any present resistance on Vendale’s part would be equally useless. There was no help for it but to yield, making the best terms that he could on his own side.

“I protest against the conditions you impose on me,” he began.

“Naturally,” said Obenreizer; “I dare say I should protest, myself, in your place.”

“Say, however,” pursued Vendale, “that I accept your terms. In that case, I must be permitted to make two stipulations on my part. In the first place, I shall expect to be allowed to see your niece.”

“Aha! to see my niece? and to make her in as great a hurry to be married as you are yourself? Suppose I say, No? you would see her perhaps without my permission?”

“Decidedly!”

“How delightfully frank! How exquisitely English! You shall see her, Mr. Vendale, on certain days, which we will appoint together. What next?”

“Your objection to my income,” proceeded Vendale, “has taken me completely by surprise. I wish to be assured against any repetition of that surprise. Your present views of my qualification for marriage require me to have an income of three thousand a year. Can I be certain, in the future, as your experience of England enlarges, that your estimate will rise no higher?”

“In plain English,” said Obenreizer, “you doubt my word?”

“Do you purpose to take my word for it when I inform you that I have doubled my income?” asked Vendale. “If my memory does not deceive me, you stipulated, a minute since, for plain proofs?”

“Well played, Mr. Vendale! You combine the foreign quickness with the English solidity. Accept my best congratulations. Accept, also, my written guarantee.”

He rose; seated himself at a writing-desk at a side-table, wrote a few lines, and presented them to Vendale with a low bow. The engagement was perfectly explicit, and was signed and dated with scrupulous care.

“Are you satisfied with your guarantee?”

“I am satisfied.”

“Charmed to hear it, I am sure. We have had our little skirmish—we have really been wonderfully clever on both sides. For the present our affairs are settled. I bear no malice. You bear no malice. Come, Mr. Vendale, a good English shake hands.”

Vendale gave his hand, a little bewildered by Obenreizer’s sudden transitions from one humour to another.

“When may I expect to see Miss Obenreizer again?” he asked, as he rose to go.

“Honour me with a visit to-morrow,” said Obenreizer, “and we will settle it then. Do have a grog before you go! No? Well! well! we will reserve the grog till you have your three thousand a year, and are ready to be married. Aha! When will that be?”

“I made an estimate, some months since, of the capacities of my business,” said Vendale. “If that estimate is correct, I shall double my present income——”

“And be married!” added Obenreizer.

“And be married,” repeated Vendale, “within a year from this time. Good-night.”

VENDALE MAKES MISCHIEF

When Vendale entered his office the next morning, the dull commercial routine at Cripple Corner met him with a new face. Marguerite had an interest in it now! The whole machinery which Wilding’s death had set in motion, to realise the value of the business—the balancing of ledgers, the estimating of debts, the taking of stock, and the rest of it—was now transformed into machinery which indicated the chances for and against a speedy marriage. After looking over results, as presented by his accountant, and checking additions and subtractions, as rendered by the clerks, Vendale turned his attention to the stock-taking department next, and sent a message to the cellars, desiring to see the report.

The Cellarman’s appearance, the moment he put his head in at the door of his master’s private room, suggested that something very extraordinary must have happened that morning. There was an approach to alacrity in Joey Ladle’s movements! There was something which actually simulated cheerfulness in Joey Ladle’s face

“What’s the matter?” asked Vendale. “Anything wrong?”

“I should wish to mention one thing,” answered Joey. “Young Mr. Vendale, I have never set myself up for a prophet.”

“Who ever said you did?”

“No prophet, as far as I’ve heard I tell of that profession,” proceeded Joey, “ever lived principally underground. No prophet, whatever else he might take in at the pores, ever took in wine from morning to night, for a number of years together. When I said to young Master Wilding, respecting his changing the name of the firm, that one of these days he might find he’d changed the luck of the firm—did I put myself forward as a prophet? No, I didn’t. Has what I said to him come true? Yes, it has. In the time of Pebbleson Nephew, Young Mr. Vendale, no such thing was ever known as a mistake made in a consignment delivered at these doors. There’s a mistake been made now. Please to remark that it happened before Miss Margaret came here. For which reason it don’t go against what I’ve said respecting Miss Margaret singing round the luck. Read that, sir,” concluded Joey, pointing attention to a special passage in the report, with a forefinger which appeared to be in process of taking in through the pores nothing more remarkable than dirt. “It’s foreign to my nature to crow over the house I serve, but I feel it a kind of solemn duty to ask you to read that.”

Vendale read as follows:—“Note, respecting the Swiss champagne. An irregularity has been discovered in the last consignment received from the firm of Defresnier and Co.” Vendale stopped, and referred to a memorandum-book by his side. “That was in Mr. Wilding’s time,” he said. “The vintage was a particularly good one, and he took the whole of it. The Swiss champagne has done very well, hasn’t it?”

“I don’t say it’s done badly,” answered the Cellarman. “It may have got sick in our customers’ bins, or it may have bust in our customers’ hands. But I don’t say it’s done badly with us.”

Vendale resumed the reading of the note: “We find the number of the cases to be quite correct by the books. But six of them, which present a slight difference from the rest in the brand, have been opened, and have been found to contain a red wine instead of champagne. The similarity in the brands, we suppose, caused a mistake to be made in sending the consignment from Neuchâtel. The error has not been found to extend beyond six cases.”

“Is that all!” exclaimed Vendale, tossing the note away from him.

Joey Ladle’s eye followed the flying morsel of paper drearily.

“I’m glad to see you take it easy, sir,” he said. “Whatever happens, it will be always a comfort to you to remember that you took it easy at first. Sometimes one mistake leads to another. A man drops a bit of orange-peel on the pavement by mistake, and another man treads on it by mistake, and there’s a job at the hospital, and a party crippled for life. I’m glad you take it easy, sir. In Pebbleson Nephew’s time we shouldn’t have taken it easy till we had seen the end of it. Without desiring to crow over the house, young Mr. Vendale, I wish you well through it. No offence, sir,” said the Cellarman, opening the door to go out, and looking in again ominously before he shut it. “I’m muddled and molloncolly, I grant you. But I’m an old servant of Pebbleson Nephew, and I wish you well through them six cases of red wine.”

Left by himself, Vendale laughed, and took up his pen. “I may as well send a line to Defresnier and Company,” he thought, “before I forget it.” He wrote at once in these terms:

“Dear Sirs.  We are taking stock, and a trifling mistake has been discovered in the last consignment of champagne sent by your house to ours. Six of the cases contain red wine—which we hereby return to you. The matter can easily be set right, either by your sending us six cases of the champagne, if they can be produced, or, if not, by your crediting us with the value of six cases on the amount last paid (five hundred pounds) by our firm to yours.

Your faithful servants,

“WILDING AND CO.”

This letter despatched to the post, the subject dropped at once out of Vendale’s mind. He had other and far more interesting matters to think of. Later in the day he paid the visit to Obenreizer which had been agreed on between them. Certain evenings in the week were set apart which he was privileged to spend with Marguerite—always, however, in the presence of a third person. On this stipulation Obenreizer politely but positively insisted. The one concession he made was to give Vendale his choice of who the third person should be. Confiding in past experience, his choice fell unhesitatingly upon the excellent woman who mended Obenreizer’s stockings. On hearing of the responsibility entrusted to her, Madame Dor’s intellectual nature burst suddenly into a new stage of development. She waited till Obenreizer’s eye was off her—and then she looked at Vendale, and dimly winked.

The time passed—the happy evenings with Marguerite came and went. It was the tenth morning since Vendale had written to the Swiss firm, when the answer appeared, on his desk, with the other letters of the day:

“Dear Sirs.  We beg to offer our excuses for the little mistake which has happened. At the same time, we regret to add that the statement of our error, with which you have favoured us, has led to a very unexpected discovery. The affair is a most serious one for you and for us. The particulars are as follows:

“Having no more champagne of the vintage last sent to you, we made arrangements to credit your firm to the value of six cases, as suggested by yourself. On taking this step, certain forms observed in our mode of doing business necessitated a reference to our bankers’ book, as well as to our ledger. The result is a moral certainty that no such remittance as you mention can have reached our house, and a literal certainty that no such remittance has been paid to our account at the bank.

“It is needless, at this stage of the proceedings, to trouble you with details. The money has unquestionably been stolen in the course of its transit from you to us. Certain peculiarities which we observe, relating to the manner in which the fraud has been perpetrated, lead us to conclude that the thief may have calculated on being able to pay the missing sum to our bankers, before an inevitable discovery followed the annual striking of our balance. This would not have happened, in the usual course, for another three months. During that period, but for your letter, we might have remained perfectly unconscious of the robbery that has been committed.

“We mention this last circumstance, as it may help to show you that we have to do, in this case, with no ordinary thief. Thus far we have not even a suspicion of who that thief is. But we believe you will assist us in making some advance towards discovery, by examining the receipt (forged, of course) which has no doubt purported to come to you from our house. Be pleased to look and see whether it is a receipt entirely in manuscript, or whether it is a numbered and printed form which merely requires the filling in of the amount. The settlement of this apparently trivial question is, we assure you, a matter of vital importance. Anxiously awaiting your reply, we remain, with high esteem and consideration,

“DEFRESNIER & CIE.”

Vendale had the letter on his desk, and waited a moment to steady his mind under the shock that had fallen on it. At the time of all others when it was most important to him to increase the value of his business, that business was threatened with a loss of five hundred pounds. He thought of Marguerite, as he took the key from his pocket and opened the iron chamber in the wall in which the books and papers of the firm were kept.

He was still in the chamber, searching for the forged receipt, when he was startled by a voice speaking close behind him.

“A thousand pardons,” said the voice; “I am afraid I disturb you.”

He turned, and found himself face to face with Marguerite’s guardian.

“I have called,” pursued Obenreizer, “to know if I can be of any use. Business of my own takes me away for some days to Manchester and Liverpool. Can I combine any business of yours with it? I am entirely at your disposal, in the character of commercial traveller for the firm of Wilding and Co.”

“Excuse me for one moment,” said Vendale; “I will speak to you directly.” He turned round again, and continued his search among the papers. “You come at a time when friendly offers are more than usually precious to me,” he resumed. “I have had very bad news this morning from Neuchâtel.”

“Bad news,” exclaimed Obenreizer. “From Defresnier and Company?”

“Yes. A remittance we sent to them has been stolen. I am threatened with a loss of five hundred pounds. What’s that?”

Turning sharply, and looking into the room for the second time, Vendale discovered his envelope case overthrown on the floor, and Obenreizer on his knees picking up the contents.

“All my awkwardness,” said Obenreizer. “This dreadful news of yours startled me; I stepped back——” He became too deeply interested in collecting the scattered envelopes to finish the sentence.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” said Vendale. “The clerk will pick the things up.”

“This dreadful news!” repeated Obenreizer, persisting in collecting the envelopes. “This dreadful news!”

“If you will read the letter,” said Vendale, “you will find I have exaggerated nothing. There it is, open on my desk.”

He resumed his search, and in a moment more discovered the forged receipt. It was on the numbered and printed form, described by the Swiss firm. Vendale made a memorandum of the number and the date. Having replaced the receipt and locked up the iron chamber, he had leisure to notice Obenreizer, reading the letter in the recess of a window at the far end of the room.

“Come to the fire,” said Vendale. “You look perished with the cold out there. I will ring for some more coals.”

Obenreizer rose, and came slowly back to the desk. “Marguerite will be as sorry to hear of this as I am,” he said, kindly. “What do you mean to do?”

“I am in the hands of Defresnier and Company,” answered Vendale. “In my total ignorance of the circumstances, I can only do what they recommend. The receipt which I have just found, turns out to be the numbered and printed form. They seem to attach some special importance to its discovery. You have had experience, when you were in the Swiss house, of their way of doing business. Can you guess what object they have in view?”

Obenreizer offered a suggestion.

“Suppose I examine the receipt?” he said.

“Are you ill?” asked Vendale, startled by the change in his face, which now showed itself plainly for the first time. “Pray go to the fire. You seem to be shivering—I hope you are not going to be ill?”

“Not I!” said Obenreizer. “Perhaps I have caught cold. Your English climate might have spared an admirer of your English institutions. Let me look at the receipt.”

Vendale opened the iron chamber. Obenreizer took a chair, and drew it close to the fire. He held both hands over the flames. “Let me look at the receipt,” he repeated, eagerly, as Vendale reappeared with the paper in his hand. At the same moment a porter entered the room with a fresh supply of coals. Vendale told him to make a good fire. The man obeyed the order with a disastrous alacrity. As he stepped forward and raised the scuttle, his foot caught in a fold of the rug, and he discharged his entire cargo of coals into the grate. The result was an instant smothering of the flame, and the production of a stream of yellow smoke, without a visible morsel of fire to account for it.

“Imbecile!” whispered Obenreizer to himself, with a look at the man which the man remembered for many a long day afterwards.

“Will you come into the clerks’ room?” asked Vendale. “They have a stove there.”

“No, no. No matter.”

Vendale handed him the receipt. Obenreizer’s interest in examining it appeared to have been quenched as suddenly and as effectually as the fire itself. He just glanced over the document, and said, “No; I don’t understand it! I am sorry to be of no use.”

“I will write to Neuchâtel by to-night’s post,” said Vendale, putting away the receipt for the second time. “We must wait, and see what comes of it.”

“By to-night’s post,” repeated Obenreizer. “Let me see. You will get the answer in eight or nine days’ time. I shall be back before that. If I can be of any service, as commercial traveller, perhaps you will let me know between this and then. You will send me written instructions? My best thanks. I shall be most anxious for your answer from Neuchâtel. Who knows? It may be a mistake, my dear friend, after all. Courage! courage! courage!” He had entered the room with no appearance of being pressed for time. He now snatched up his hat, and took his leave with the air of a man who had not another moment to lose.

Left by himself, Vendale took a turn thoughtfully in the room.

His previous impression of Obenreizer was shaken by what he had heard and seen at the interview which had just taken place. He was disposed, for the first time, to doubt whether, in this case, he had not been a little hasty and hard in his judgment on another man. Obenreizer’s surprise and regret, on hearing the news from Neuchâtel, bore the plainest marks of being honestly felt—not politely assumed for the occasion. With troubles of his own to encounter, suffering, to all appearance, from the first insidious attack of a serious illness, he had looked and spoken like a man who really deplored the disaster that had fallen on his friend. Hitherto Vendale had tried vainly to alter his first opinion of Marguerite’s guardian, for Marguerite’s sake. All the generous instincts in his nature now combined together and shook the evidence which had seemed unanswerable up to this time. “Who knows?” he thought. “I may have read that man’s face wrongly, after all.”

The time passed—the happy evenings with Marguerite came and went. It was again the tenth morning since Vendale had written to the Swiss firm; and again the answer appeared on his desk with the other letters of the day:

“Dear Sir. My senior partner, M. Defresnier, has been called away, by urgent business, to Milan. In his absence (and with his full concurrence and authority), I now write to you again on the subject of the missing five hundred pounds.

“Your discovery that the forged receipt is executed upon one of our numbered and printed forms has caused inexpressible surprise and distress to my partner and to myself. At the time when your remittance was stolen, but three keys were in existence opening the strong-box in which our receipt-forms are invariably kept. My partner had one key; I had the other. The third was in the possession of a gentleman who, at that period, occupied a position of trust in our house. We should as soon have thought of suspecting one of ourselves as of suspecting this person. Suspicion now points at him, nevertheless. I cannot prevail on myself to inform you who the person is, so long as there is the shadow of a chance that he may come innocently out of the inquiry which must now be instituted. Forgive my silence; the motive of it is good.

“The form our investigation must now take is simple enough. The handwriting of your receipt must be compared, by competent persons whom we have at our disposal, with certain specimens of handwriting in our possession. I cannot send you the specimens for business reasons, which, when you hear them, you are sure to approve. I must beg you to send me the receipt to Neuchâtel—and, in making this request, I must accompany it by a word of necessary warning.

“If the person, at whom suspicion now points, really proves to be the person who has committed this forger and theft, I have reason to fear that circumstances may have already put him on his guard. The only evidence against him is the evidence in your hands, and he will move heaven and earth to obtain and destroy it. I strongly urge you not to trust the receipt to the post. Send it to me, without loss of time, by a private hand, and choose nobody for your messenger but a person long established in your own employment, accustomed to travelling, capable of speaking French; a man of courage, a man of honesty, and, above all things, a man who can be trusted to let no stranger scrape acquaintance with him on the route. Tell no one—absolutely no one—but your messenger of the turn this matter has now taken. The safe transit of the receipt may depend on your interpreting literally the advice which I give you at the end of this letter.

“I have only to add that every possible saving of time is now of the last importance. More than one of our receipt-forms is missing—and it is impossible to say what new frauds may not be committed if we fail to lay our hands on the thief.

Your faithful servant,

ROLLAND,

(Signing for Defresnier and Cie.)

Who was the suspected man? In Vendale’s position, it seemed useless to inquire.

Who was to be sent to Neuchâtel with the receipt? Men of courage and men of honesty were to be had at Cripple Corner for the asking. But where was the man who was accustomed to foreign travelling, who could speak the French language, and who could be really relied on to let no stranger scrape acquaintance with him on his route? There was but one man at hand who combined all those requisites in his own person, and that man was Vendale himself.

It was a sacrifice to leave his business; it was a greater sacrifice to leave Marguerite. But a matter of five hundred pounds was involved in the pending inquiry; and a literal interpretation of M. Rolland’s advice was insisted on in terms which there was no trifling with. The more Vendale thought of it, the more plainly the necessity faced him, and said, “Go!”

As he locked up the letter with the receipt, the association of ideas reminded him of Obenreizer. A guess at the identity of the suspected man looked more possible now. Obenreizer might know.

The thought had barely passed through his mind, when the door opened, and Obenreizer entered the room.

“They told me at Soho-square you were expected back last night,” said Vendale, greeting him. “Have you done well in the country? Are you better?”

A thousand thanks. Obenreizer had done admirably well; Obenreizer was infinitely better. And now, what news? Any letter from Neuchâtel?

“A very strange letter,” answered Vendale. “The matter has taken a new turn, and the letter insists—without excepting anybody—on my keeping our next proceedings a profound secret.”

“Without excepting anybody?” repeated Obenreizer. As he said the words, he walked away again, thoughtfully, to the window at the other end of the room, looked out for a moment, and suddenly came back to Vendale. “Surely they must have forgotten?” he resumed, “or they would have excepted me?”

“It is Monsieur Rolland who writes,” said Vendale. “And, as you say, he must certainly have forgotten. That view of the matter quite escaped me. I was just wishing I had you to consult, when you came into the room. And here I am tried by a formal prohibition, which cannot possibly have been intended to include you. How very annoying!”

Obenreizer’s filmy eyes fixed on Vendale attentively.

“Perhaps it is more than annoying!” he said. “I came this morning not only to hear the news, but to offer myself as messenger, negotiator—what you will. Would you believe it? I have letters which oblige me to go to Switzerland immediately. Messages, documents, anything—I could have taken them all to Defresnier and Rolland for you.”

“You are the very man I wanted,” returned Vendale. “I had decided, most unwillingly, on going to Neuchâtel myself, not five minutes since, because I could find no one here capable of taking my place. Let me look at the letter again.”

He opened the strong room to get at the letter. Obenreizer, after first glancing round him to make sure that they were alone, followed a step or two and waited, measuring Vendale with his eye. Vendale was the tallest man, and unmistakably the strongest man also of the two. Obenreizer turned away, and warmed himself at the fire.

Meanwhile, Vendale read the last paragraph in the letter for the third time. There was the plain warning—there was the closing sentence, which insisted on a literal interpretation of it. The hand, which was leading Vendale in the dark, led him on that condition only. A large sum was at stake: a terrible suspicion remained to be verified. If he acted on his own responsibility, and if anything happened to defeat the object in view, who would be blamed? As a man of business, Vendale had but one course to follow. He locked the letter up again.

“It is most annoying,” he said to Obenreizer—“it is a piece of forgetfulness on Monsieur Rolland’s part which puts me to serious inconvenience, and places me in an absurdly false position towards you. What am I to do? I am acting in a very serious matter, and acting entirely in the dark. I have no choice but to be guided, not by the spirit, but by the letter of my instructions. You understand me, I am sure? You know, if I had not been fettered in this way, how gladly I should have accepted your services?”

“Say no more!” returned Obenreizer. “In your place I should have done the same. My good friend, I take no offence. I thank you for your compliment. We shall be travelling companions, at any rate,” added Obenreizer. “You go, as I go, at once?”

“At once. I must speak to Marguerite first, of course!”

“Surely! surely! Speak to her this evening. Come, and pick me up on the way to the station. We go together by the mail train to-night?”

“By the mail train to-night.”

It was later than Vendale had anticipated when he drove up to the house in Soho-square. Business difficulties, occasioned by his sudden departure, had presented themselves by dozens. A cruelly large share of the time which he had hoped to devote to Marguerite had been claimed by duties at his office which it was impossible to neglect.

To his surprise and delight, she was alone in the drawing-room when he entered it.

“We have only a few minutes, George,” she said. “But Madame Dor has been good to me—and we can have those few minutes alone.” She threw her arms round his neck, and whispered eagerly, “Have you done anything to offend Mr. Obenreizer?”

“I!” exclaimed Vendale, in amazement.

“Hush!” she said, “I want to whisper it. You know the little photograph I have got of you. This afternoon it happened to be on the chimney-piece. He took it up and looked at it—and I saw his face in the glass. I know you have offended him! He is merciless; he is revengeful; he is as secret as the grave. Don’t go with him, George—don’t go with him!”

“My own love,” returned Vendale, “you are letting your fancy frighten you! Obenreizer and I were never better friends than we are at this moment.”

Before a word more could be said, the sudden movement of some ponderous body shook the floor of the next room. The shock was followed by the appearance of Madame Dor. “Obenreizer” exclaimed this excellent person in a whisper, and plumped down instantly in her regular place by the stove.

Obenreizer came in with a courier’s big strapped over his shoulder.

“Are you ready?” he asked, addressing Vendale. “Can I take anything for you? You have no travelling-bag. I have got one. Here is the compartment for papers, open at your service.”

“Thank you,” said Vendale. “I have only one paper of importance with me; and that paper I am bound to take charge of myself. Here it is,” he added, touching the breast-pocket of his coat, “and here it must remain till we get to Neuchâtel.”

As he said those words, Marguerite’s hand caught his, and pressed it significantly. She was looking towards Obenreizer. Before Vendale could look, in his turn, Obenreizer had wheeled round, and was taking leave of Madame Dor.

“Adieu, my charming niece!” he said, turning to Marguerite next. “En route, my friend, for Neuchâtel!” He tapped Vendale lightly over the breast-pocket of his coat and led the way to the door.

Vendale’s last look was for Marguerite. Marguerite’s last words to him were, “Don’t go!”

ACT III

IN THE VALLEY

It was about the middle of the month of February when Vendale and Obenreizer set forth on their expedition. The winter being a hard one, the time was bad for travellers. So bad was it that these two travellers, coming to Strasbourg, found its great inns almost empty. And even the few people they did encounter in that city, who had started from England or from Paris on business journeys towards the interior of Switzerland, were turning back.

Many of the railroads in Switzerland that tourists pass easily enough now, were almost or quite impracticable then. Some were not begun; more were not completed. On such as were open, there were still large gaps of old road where communication in the winter season was often stopped; on others, there were weak points where the new work was not safe, either under conditions of severe frost, or of rapid thaw. The running of trains on this last class was not to be counted on in the worst time of the year, was contingent upon weather, or was wholly abandoned through the months considered the most dangerous.

At Strasbourg there were more travellers’ stories afloat, respecting the difficulties of the way further on, than there were travellers to relate them. Many of these tales were as wild as usual; but the more modestly marvellous did derive some colour from the circumstance that people were indisputably turning back. However, as the road to Basle was open, Vendale’s resolution to push on was in no wise disturbed. Obenreizer’s resolution was necessarily Vendale’s, seeing that he stood at bay thus desperately: He must be ruined, or must destroy the evidence that Vendale carried about him, even if he destroyed Vendale with it.

The state of mind of each of these two fellow-travellers towards the other was this. Obenreizer, encircled by impending ruin through Vendale’s quickness of action, and seeing the circle narrowed every hour by Vendale’s energy, hated him with the animosity of a fierce cunning lower animal. He had always had instinctive movements in his breast against him; perhaps, because of that old sore of gentleman and peasant; perhaps, because of the openness of his nature; perhaps, because of his better looks; perhaps, because of his success with Marguerite; perhaps, on all those grounds, the two last not the least. And now he saw in him, besides, the hunter who was tracking him down. Vendale, on the other hand, always contending generously against his first vague mistrust, now felt bound to contend against it more than ever: reminding himself, “He is Marguerite’s guardian. We are on perfectly friendly terms; he is my companion of his own proposal, and can have no interested motive in sharing this undesirable journey.” To which pleas in behalf of Obenreizer, chance added one consideration more, when they came to Basle after a journey of more than twice the average duration.

They had had a late dinner, and were alone in an inn room there, overhanging the Rhine: at that place rapid and deep, swollen and loud. Vendale lounged upon a couch, and Obenreizer walked to and fro: now, stopping at the window, looking at the crooked reflection of the town lights in the dark water (and peradventure thinking, “If I could fling him into it!”); now, resuming his walk with his eyes upon the floor.

“Where shall I rob him, if I can? Where shall I murder him, if I must?” So, as he paced the room, ran the river, ran the river, ran the river.

The burden seemed to him, at last, to be growing so plain, that he stopped; thinking it as well to suggest another burden to his companion.

“The Rhine sounds to-night,” he said with a smile, “like the old waterfall at home. That waterfall which my mother showed to travellers (I told you of it once). The sound of it changed with the weather, as does the sound of all falling waters and flowing waters. When I was pupil of the watchmaker, I remembered it as sometimes saying to me for whole days, ‘Who are you, my little wretch? Who are you, my little wretch?’ I remembered it as saying, other times, when its sound was hollow, and storm was coming up the Pass: ‘Boom, boom, boom. Beat him, beat him, beat him.’ Like my mother enraged—if she was my mother.”

“If she was?” said Vendale, gradually changing his attitude to a sitting one. “If she was? Why do you say ‘if’?”

“What do I know?” replied the other negligently, throwing up his hands and letting them fall as they would. “What would you have? I am so obscurely born, that how can I say? I was very young, and all the rest of the family were men and women, and my so-called parents were old. Anything is possible of a case like that.”

“Did you ever doubt——”

“I told you once, I doubt the marriage of those two,” he replied, throwing up his hands again, as if he were throwing the unprofitable subject away. “But here I am in Creation. I come of no fine family. What does it matter?”

“At least you are Swiss,” said Vendale, after following him with his eyes to and fro.

“How do I know?” he retorted abruptly, and stopping to look back over his shoulder. “I say to you, at least you are English. How do you know?”

“By what I have been told from infancy.”

“Ah! I know of myself that way.”

“And,” added Vendale, pursuing the thought that he could not drive back, “by my earliest recollections.”

“I also. I know of myself that way—if that way satisfies.”

“Does it not satisfy you?”

“It must. There is nothing like ‘it must’ in this little world. It must. Two short words those, but stronger than long proof or reasoning.”

“You and poor Wilding were born in the same year. You were nearly of an age,” said Vendale, again thoughtfully looking after him as he resumed his pacing up and down.

“Yes. Very nearly.”

Could Obenreizer be the missing man? In the unknown associations of things, was there a subtler meaning than he himself thought, in that theory so often on his lips about the smallness of the world? Had the Swiss letter presenting him followed so close on Mrs. Goldstraw’s revelation concerning the infant who had been taken away to Switzerland, because he was that infant grown a man? In a world where so many depths lie unsounded, it might be. The chances, or the laws—call them either—that had wrought out the revival of Vendale’s own acquaintance with Obenreizer, and had ripened it into intimacy, and had brought them here together this present winter night, were hardly less curious; while read by such a light, they were seen to cohere towards the furtherance of a continuous and an intelligible purpose.

Vendale’s awakened thoughts ran high while his eyes musingly followed Obenreizer pacing up and down the room, the river ever running to the tune: “Where shall I rob him, if I can? Where shall I murder him, if I must?” The secret of his dead friend was in no hazard from Vendale’s lips; but just as his friend had died of its weight, so did he in his lighter succession feel the burden of the trust, and the obligation to follow any clue, however obscure. He rapidly asked himself, would he like this man to be the real Wilding? No. Argue down his mistrust as he might, he was unwilling to put such a substitute in the place of his late guileless, outspoken childlike partner. He rapidly asked himself, would he like this man to be rich? No. He had more power than enough over Marguerite as it was, and wealth might invest him with more. Would he like this man to be Marguerite’s Guardian, and yet proved to stand in no degree of relationship towards her, however disconnected and distant? No. But these were not considerations to come between him and fidelity to the dead. Let him see to it that they passed him with no other notice than the knowledge that they had passed him, and left him bent on the discharge of a solemn duty. And he did see to it, so soon that he followed his companion with ungrudging eyes, while he still paced the room; that companion, whom he supposed to be moodily reflecting on his own birth, and not on another man’s—least of all what man’s—violent Death.

The road in advance from Basle to Neuchâtel was better than had been represented. The latest weather had done it good. Drivers, both of horses and mules, had come in that evening after dark, and had reported nothing more difficult to be overcome than trials of patience, harness, wheels, axles, and whipcord. A bargain was soon struck for a carriage and horses, to take them on in the morning, and to start before daylight.

“Do you lock your door at night when travelling?” asked Obenreizer, standing warming his hands by the wood fire in Vendale’s chamber, before going to his own.

“Not I. I sleep too soundly.”

“You are so sound a sleeper?” he retorted, with an admiring look. “What a blessing!”

“Anything but a blessing to the rest of the house,” rejoined Vendale, “if I had to be knocked up in the morning from the outside of my bedroom door.”

“I, too,” said Obenreizer, “leave open my room. But let me advise you, as a Swiss who knows: always, when you travel in my country, put your papers—and, of course, your money—under your pillow. Always the same place.”

“You are not complimentary to your countrymen,” laughed Vendale.

“My countrymen,” said Obenreizer, with that light touch of his friend’s elbows by way of Good-Night and benediction, “I suppose are like the majority of men. And the majority of men will take what they can get. Adieu! At four in the morning.”

“Adieu! At four.”

Left to himself, Vendale raked the logs together, sprinkled over them the white wood-ashes lying on the hearth, and sat down to compose his thoughts. But they still ran high on their latest theme, and the running of the river tended to agitate rather than to quiet them. As he sat thinking, what little disposition he had had to sleep departed. He felt it hopeless to lie down yet, and sat dressed by the fire. Marguerite, Wilding, Obenreizer, the business he was then upon, and a thousand hopes and doubts that had nothing to do with it, occupied his mind at once. Everything seemed to have power over him but slumber. The departed disposition to sleep kept far away.

He had sat for a long time thinking, on the hearth, when his candle burned down and its light went out. It was of little moment; there was light enough in the fire. He changed his attitude, and, leaning his arm on the chair-back, and his chin upon that hand, sat thinking still.

But he sat between the fire and the bed, and, as the fire flickered in the play of air from the fast-flowing river, his enlarged shadow fluttered on the white wall by the bedside. His attitude gave it an air, half of mourning and half of bending over the bed imploring. His eyes were observant of it, when he became troubled by the disagreeable fancy that it was like Wilding’s shadow, and not his own.

A slight change of place would cause it to disappear. He made the change, and the apparition of his disturbed fancy vanished. He now sat in the shade of a little nook beside the fire, and the door of the room was before him.

It had a long cumbrous iron latch. He saw the latch slowly and softly rise. The door opened a very little, and came to again, as though only the air had moved it. But he saw that the latch was out of the hasp.

The door opened again very slowly, until it opened wide enough to admit some one. It afterwards remained still for a while, as though cautiously held open on the other side. The figure of a man then entered, with its face turned towards the bed, and stood quiet just within the door. Until it said, in a low half-whisper, at the same time taking one stop forward: “Vendale!”

“What now?” he answered, springing from his seat; “who is it?”

It was Obenreizer, and he uttered a cry of surprise as Vendale came upon him from that unexpected direction. “Not in bed?” he said, catching him by both shoulders with an instinctive tendency to a struggle. “Then something is wrong!”

“What do you mean?” said Vendale, releasing himself.

“First tell me; you are not ill?”

“Ill? No.”

“I have had a bad dream about you. How is it that I see you up and dressed?”

“My good fellow, I may as well ask you how it is that I see you up and undressed?”

“I have told you why. I have had a bad dream about you. I tried to rest after it, but it was impossible. I could not make up my mind to stay where I was without knowing you were safe; and yet I could not make up my mind to come in here. I have been minutes hesitating at the door. It is so easy to laugh at a dream that you have not dreamed. Where is your candle?”

“Burnt out.”

“I have a whole one in my room. Shall I fetch it?”

“Do so.”

His room was very near, and he was absent for but a few seconds. Coming back with the candle in his hand, he kneeled down on the hearth and lighted it. As he blew with his breath a charred billet into flame for the purpose, Vendale, looking down at him, saw that his lips were white and not easy of control.

“Yes!” said Obenreizer, setting the lighted candle on the table, “it was a bad dream. Only look at me!”

His feet were bare; his red-flannel shirt was thrown back at the throat, and its sleeves were rolled above the elbows; his only other garment, a pair of under pantaloons or drawers, reaching to the ankles, fitted him close and tight. A certain lithe and savage appearance was on his figure, and his eyes were very bright.

“If there had been a wrestle with a robber, as I dreamed,” said Obenreizer, “you see, I was stripped for it.”

“And armed too,” said Vendale, glancing at his girdle.

“A traveller’s dagger, that I always carry on the road,” he answered carelessly, half drawing it from its sheath with his left hand, and putting it back again. “Do you carry no such thing?”

“Nothing of the kind.”

“No pistols?” said Obenreizer, glancing at the table, and from it to the untouched pillow.

“Nothing of the sort.”

“You Englishmen are so confident! You wish to sleep?”

“I have wished to sleep this long time, but I can’t do it.”

“I neither, after the bad dream. My fire has gone the way of your candle. May I come and sit by yours? Two o’clock! It will so soon be four, that it is not worth the trouble to go to bed again.”

“I shall not take the trouble to go to bed at all, now,” said Vendale; “sit here and keep me company, and welcome.”

Going back to his room to arrange his dress, Obenreizer soon returned in a loose cloak and slippers, and they sat down on opposite sides of the hearth. In the interval Vendale had replenished the fire from the wood-basket in his room, and Obenreizer had put upon the table a flask and cup from his.

“Common cabaret brandy, I am afraid,” he said, pouring out; “bought upon the road, and not like yours from Cripple Corner. But yours is exhausted; so much the worse. A cold night, a cold time of night, a cold country, and a cold house. This may be better than nothing; try it.”

Vendale took the cup, and did so.

“How do you find it?”

“It has a coarse after-flavour,” said Vendale, giving back the cup with a slight shudder, “and I don’t like it.”

“You are right,” said Obenreizer, tasting, and smacking his lips; “it has a coarse after-flavour, and I don’t like it. Booh! It burns, though!” He had flung what remained in the cup upon the fire.

Each of them leaned an elbow on the table, reclined his head upon his hand, and sat looking at the flaring logs. Obenreizer remained watchful and still; but Vendale, after certain nervous twitches and starts, in one of which he rose to his feet and looked wildly about him, fell into the strangest confusion of dreams. He carried his papers in a leather case or pocket-book, in an inner breast-pocket of his buttoned travelling-coat; and whatever he dreamed of, in the lethargy that got possession of him, something importunate in those papers called him out of that dream, though he could not wake from it. He was berated on the steppes of Russia (some shadowy person gave that name to the place) with Marguerite; and yet the sensation of a hand at his breast, softly feeling the outline of the packet-book as he lay asleep before the fire, was present to him. He was ship-wrecked in an open boat at sea, and having lost his clothes, had no other covering than an old sail; and yet a creeping hand, tracing outside all the other pockets of the dress he actually wore, for papers, and finding none answer its touch, warned him to rouse himself. He was in the ancient vault at Cripple Corner, to which was transferred the very bed substantial and present in that very room at Basle; and Wilding (not dead, as he had supposed, and yet he did not wonder much) shook him, and whispered, “Look at that man! Don’t you see he has risen, and is turning the pillow? Why should he turn the pillow, if not to seek those papers that are in your breast? Awake!” And yet he slept, and wandered off into other dreams.

Watchful and still, with his elbow on the table, and his head upon that hand, his companion at length said: “Vendale! We are called. Past Four!” Then, opening his eyes, he saw, turned sideways on him, the filmy face of Obenreizer.

“You have been in a heavy sleep,” he said. “The fatigue of constant travelling and the cold!”

“I am broad awake now,” cried Vendale, springing up, but with an unsteady footing. “Haven’t you slept at all?”

“I may have dozed, but I seem to have been patiently looking at the fire. Whether or no, we must wash, and breakfast, and turn out. Past four, Vendale; past four!”

It was said in a tone to rouse him, for already he was half asleep again. In his preparation for the day, too, and at his breakfast, he was often virtually asleep while in mechanical action. It was not until the cold dark day was closing in, that he had any distincter impressions of the ride than jingling bells, bitter weather, slipping horses, frowning hill-sides, bleak woods, and a stoppage at some wayside house of entertainment, where they had passed through a cow-house to reach the travellers’ room above. He had been conscious of little more, except of Obenreizer sitting thoughtful at his side all day, and eyeing him much.

But when he shook off his stupor, Obenreizer was not at his side. The carriage was stopping to bait at another wayside house; and a line of long narrow carts, laden with casks of wine, and drawn by horses with a quantity of blue collar and head-gear, were baiting too. These came from the direction in which the travellers were going, and Obenreizer (not thoughtful now, but cheerful and alert) was talking with the foremost driver. As Vendale stretched his limbs, circulated his blood, and cleared off the lees of his lethargy, with a sharp run to and fro in the bracing air, the line of carts moved on: the drivers all saluting Obenreizer as they passed him.

“Who are those?” asked Vendale.

“They are our carriers—Defresnier and Company’s,” replied Obenreizer. “Those are our casks of wine.” He was singing to himself, and lighting a cigar.

“I have been drearily dull company to-day,” said Vendale. “I don’t know what has been the matter with me.”

“You had no sleep last night; and a kind of brain-congestion frequently comes, at first, of such cold,” said Obenreizer. “I have seen it often. After all, we shall have our journey for nothing, it seems.”

“How for nothing?”

“The House is at Milan. You know, we are a Wine House at Neuchâtel, and a Silk House at Milan? Well, Silk happening to press of a sudden, more than Wine, Defresnier was summoned to Milan. Rolland, the other partner, has been taken ill since his departure, and the doctors will allow him to see no one. A letter awaits you at Neuchâtel to tell you so. I have it from our chief carrier whom you saw me talking with. He was surprised to see me, and said he had that word for you if he met you. What do you do? Go back?”

“Go on,” said Vendale.

“On?”

“On? Yes. Across the Alps, and down to Milan.”

Obenreizer stopped in his smoking to look at Vendale, and then smoked heavily, looked up the road, looked down the road, looked down at the stones in the road at his feet.

“I have a very serious matter in charge,” said Vendale; “more of these missing forms may be turned to as bad account, or worse: I am urged to lose no time in helping the House to take the thief; and nothing shall turn me back.”

“No?” cried Obenreizer, taking out his cigar to smile, and giving his hand to his fellow-traveller. “Then nothing shall turn me back. Ho, driver! Despatch. Quick there! Let us push on!”

They travelled through the night. There had been snow, and there was a partial thaw, and they mostly travelled at a foot-pace, and always with many stoppages to breathe the splashed and floundering horses. After an hour’s broad daylight, they drew rein at the inn-door at Neuchâtel, having been some eight-and-twenty hours in conquering some eighty English miles.

When they had hurriedly refreshed and changed, they went together to the house of business of Defresnier and Company. There they found the letter which the wine-carrier had described, enclosing the tests and comparisons of handwriting essential to the discovery of the Forger. Vendale’s determination to press forward, without resting, being already taken, the only question to delay them was by what Pass could they cross the Alps? Respecting the state of the two Passes of the St. Gotthard and the Simplon, the guides and mule-drivers differed greatly; and both passes were still far enough off, to prevent the travellers from having the benefit of any recent experience of either. Besides which, they well knew that a fall of snow might altogether change the described conditions in a single hour, even if they were correctly stated. But, on the whole, the Simplon appearing to be the hopefuller route, Vendale decided to take it. Obenreizer bore little or no part in the discussion, and scarcely spoke.

To Geneva, to Lausanne, along the level margin of the lake to Vevay, so into the winding valley between the spurs of the mountains, and into the valley of the Rhone. The sound of the carriage-wheels, as they rattled on, through the day, through the night, became as the wheels of a great clock, recording the hours. No change of weather varied the journey, after it had hardened into a sullen frost. In a sombre-yellow sky, they saw the Alpine ranges; and they saw enough of snow on nearer and much lower hill-tops and hill-sides, to sully, by contrast, the purity of lake, torrent, and waterfall, and make the villages look discoloured and dirty. But no snow fell, nor was there any snow-drift on the road. The stalking along the valley of more or less of white mist, changing on their hair and dress into icicles, was the only variety between them and the gloomy sky. And still by day, and still by night, the wheels. And still they rolled, in the hearing of one of them, to the burden, altered from the burden of the Rhine: “The time is gone for robbing him alive, and I must murder him.”

They came, at length, to the poor little town of Brieg, at the foot of the Simplon. They came there after dark, but yet could see how dwarfed men’s works and men became with the immense mountains towering over them. Here they must lie for the night; and here was warmth of fire, and lamp, and dinner, and wine, and after-conference resounding, with guides and drivers. No human creature had come across the Pass for four days. The snow above the snow-line was too soft for wheeled carriage, and not hard enough for sledge. There was snow in the sky. There had been snow in the sky for days past, and the marvel was that it had not fallen, and the certainty was that it must fall. No vehicle could cross. The journey might be tried on mules, or it might be tried on foot; but the best guides must be paid danger-price in either case, and that, too, whether they succeeded in taking the two travellers across, or turned for safety and brought them back.

In this discussion, Obenreizer bore no part whatever. He sat silently smoking by the fire until the room was cleared and Vendale referred to him.

“Bah! I am weary of these poor devils and their trade,” he said, in reply. “Always the same story. It is the story of their trade to-day, as it was the story of their trade when I was a ragged boy. What do you and I want? We want a knapsack each, and a mountain-staff each. We want no guide; we should guide him; he would not guide us. We leave our portmanteaus here, and we cross together. We have been on the mountains together before now, and I am mountain-born, and I know this Pass—Pass!—rather High Road!—by heart. We will leave these poor devils, in pity, to trade with others; but they must not delay us to make a pretence of earning money. Which is all they mean.”

Vendale, glad to be quit of the dispute, and to cut the knot: active, adventurous, bent on getting forward, and therefore very susceptible to the last hint: readily assented. Within two hours, they had purchased what they wanted for the expedition, had packed their knapsacks, and lay down to sleep.

At break of day, they found half the town collected in the narrow street to see them depart. The people talked together in groups; the guides and drivers whispered apart, and looked up at the sky; no one wished them a good journey.

As they began the ascent, a gleam of sun shone from the otherwise unaltered sky, and for a moment turned the tin spires of the town to silver.

“A good omen!” said Vendale (though it died out while he spoke). “Perhaps our example will open the Pass on this side.”

“No; we shall not be followed,” returned Obenreizer, looking up at the sky and back at the valley. “We shall be alone up yonder.”

ON THE MOUNTAIN

The road was fair enough for stout walkers, and the air grew lighter and easier to breathe as the two ascended. But the settled gloom remained as it had remained for days back. Nature seemed to have come to a pause. The sense of hearing, no less than the sense of sight, was troubled by having to wait so long for the change, whatever it might be, that impended. The silence was as palpable and heavy as the lowering clouds—or rather cloud, for there seemed to be but one in all the sky, and that one covering the whole of it.

Although the light was thus dismally shrouded, the prospect was not obscured. Down in the valley of the Rhone behind them, the stream could be traced through all its many windings, oppressively sombre and solemn in its one leaden hue, a colourless waste. Far and high above them, glaciers and suspended avalanches overhung the spots where they must pass, by-and-by; deep and dark below them on their right, were awful precipice and roaring torrent; tremendous mountains arose in every vista. The gigantic landscape, uncheered by a touch of changing light or a solitary ray of sun, was yet terribly distinct in its ferocity. The hearts of two lonely men might shrink a little, if they had to win their way for miles and hours among a legion of silent and motionless men—mere men like themselves—all looking at them with fixed and frowning front. But how much more, when the legion is of Nature’s mightiest works, and the frown may turn to fury in an instant!

As they ascended, the road became gradually more rugged and difficult. But the spirits of Vendale rose as they mounted higher, leaving so much more of the road behind them conquered. Obenreizer spoke little, and held on with a determined purpose. Both, in respect of agility and endurance, were well qualified for the expedition. Whatever the born mountaineer read in the weather-tokens that was illegible to the other, he kept to himself.

“Shall we get across to-day?” asked Vendale.

“No,” replied the other. “You see how much deeper the snow lies here than it lay half a league lower. The higher we mount the deeper the snow will lie. Walking is half wading even now. And the days are so short! If we get as high as the fifth Refuge, and lie to-night at the Hospice, we shall do well.”

“Is there no danger of the weather rising in the night,” asked Vendale, anxiously, “and snowing us up?”

“There is danger enough about us,” said Obenreizer, with a cautious glance onward and upward, “to render silence our best policy. You have heard of the Bridge of the Ganther?”

“I have crossed it once.”

“In the summer?”

“Yes; in the travelling season.”

“Yes; but it is another thing at this season;” with a sneer, as though he were out of temper. “This is not a time of year, or a state of things, on an Alpine Pass, that you gentlemen holiday-travellers know much about.”

“You are my Guide,” said Vendale, good humouredly. “I trust to you.”

“I am your Guide,” said Obenreizer, “and I will guide you to your journey’s end. There is the Bridge before us.”

They had made a turn into a desolate and dismal ravine, where the snow lay deep below them, deep above them, deep on every side. While speaking, Obenreizer stood pointing at the Bridge, and observing Vendale’s face, with a very singular expression on his own.

“If I, as Guide, had sent you over there, in advance, and encouraged you to give a shout or two, you might have brought down upon yourself tons and tons and tons of snow, that would not only have struck you dead, but buried you deep, at a blow.”

“No doubt,” said Vendale.

“No doubt. But that is not what I have to do, as Guide. So pass silently. Or, going as we go, our indiscretion might else crush and bury me. Let us get on!”

There was a great accumulation of snow on the Bridge; and such enormous accumulations of snow overhung them from protecting masses of rock, that they might have been making their way through a stormy sky of white clouds. Using his staff skilfully, sounding as he went, and looking upward, with bent shoulders, as it were to resist the mere idea of a fall from above, Obenreizer softly led. Vendale closely followed. They were yet in the midst of their dangerous way, when there came a mighty rush, followed by a sound as of thunder. Obenreizer clapped his hand on Vendale’s mouth and pointed to the track behind them. Its aspect had been wholly changed in a moment. An avalanche had swept over it, and plunged into the torrent at the bottom of the gulf below.

Their appearance at the solitary Inn not far beyond this terrible Bridge, elicited many expressions of astonishment from the people shut up in the house. “We stay but to rest,” said Obenreizer, shaking the snow from his dress at the fire. “This gentleman has very pressing occasion to get across; tell them, Vendale.”

“Assuredly, I have very pressing occasion. I must cross.”

“You hear, all of you. My friend has very pressing occasion to get across, and we want no advice and no help. I am as good a guide, my fellow-countrymen, as any of you. Now, give us to eat and drink.”

In exactly the same way, and in nearly the same words, when it was coming on dark and they had struggled through the greatly increased difficulties of the road, and had at last reached their destination for the night, Obenreizer said to the astonished people of the Hospice, gathering about them at the fire, while they were yet in the act of getting their wet shoes off, and shaking the snow from their clothes:

“It is well to understand one another, friends all. This gentleman——”

“—Has,” said Vendale, readily taking him up with a smile, “very pressing occasion to get across. Must cross.”

“You hear?—has very pressing occasion to get across, must cross. We want no advice and no help. I am mountain-born, and act as Guide. Do not worry us by talking about it, but let us have supper, and wine, and bed.”

All through the intense cold of the night, the same awful stillness. Again at sunrise, no sunny tinge to gild or redden the snow. The same interminable waste of deathly white; the same immovable air; the same monotonous gloom in the sky.

“Travellers!” a friendly voice called to them from the door, after they were afoot, knapsack on back and staff in hand, as yesterday; “recollect! There are five places of shelter, near together, on the dangerous road before you; and there is the wooden cross, and there is the next Hospice. Do not stray from the track. If the Tourmente comes on, take shelter instantly!”

“The trade of these poor devils!” said Obenreizer to his friend, with a contemptuous backward wave of his hand towards the voice. “How they stick to their trade! You Englishmen say we Swiss are mercenary. Truly, it does look like it.”

They had divided between the two knapsacks such refreshments as they had been able to obtain that morning, and as they deemed it prudent to take. Obenreizer carried the wine as his share of the burden; Vendale, the bread and meat and cheese, and the flask of brandy.

They had for some time laboured upward and onward through the snow—which was now above their knees in the track, and of unknown depth elsewhere—and they were still labouring upward and onward through the most frightful part of that tremendous desolation, when snow begin to fall. At first, but a few flakes descended slowly and steadily. After a little while the fall grew much denser, and suddenly it began without apparent cause to whirl itself into spiral shapes. Instantly ensuing upon this last change, an icy blast came roaring at them, and every sound and force imprisoned until now was let loose.

One of the dismal galleries through which the road is carried at that perilous point, a cave eked out by arches of great strength, was near at hand. They struggled into it, and the storm raged wildly. The noise of the wind, the noise of the water, the thundering down of displaced masses of rock and snow, the awful voices with which not only that gorge but every gorge in the whole monstrous range seemed to be suddenly endowed, the darkness as of night, the violent revolving of the snow which beat and broke it into spray and blinded them, the madness of everything around insatiate for destruction, the rapid substitution of furious violence for unnatural calm, and hosts of appalling sounds for silence: these were things, on the edge of a deep abyss, to chill the blood, though the fierce wind, made actually solid by ice and snow, had failed to chill it.

Obenreizer, walking to and fro in the gallery without ceasing, signed to Vendale to help him unbuckle his knapsack. They could see each other, but could not have heard each other speak. Vendale complying, Obenreizer produced his bottle of wine, and poured some out, motioning Vendale to take that for warmth’s sake, and not brandy. Vendale again complying, Obenreizer seemed to drink after him, and the two walked backwards and forwards side by side; both well knowing that to rest or sleep would be to die.

The snow came driving heavily into the gallery by the upper end at which they would pass out of it, if they ever passed out; for greater dangers lay on the road behind them than before. The snow soon began to choke the arch. An hour more, and it lay so high as to block out half the returning daylight. But it froze hard now, as it fell, and could be clambered through or over. The violence of the mountain storm was gradually yielding to steady snowfall. The wind still raged at intervals, but not incessantly; and when it paused, the snow fell in heavy flakes.

They might have been two hours in their frightful prison, when Obenreizer, now crunching into the mound, now creeping over it with his head bowed down and his body touching the top of the arch, made his way out. Vendale followed close upon him, but followed without clear motive or calculation. For the lethargy of Basle was creeping over him again, and mastering his senses.

How far he had followed out of the gallery, or with what obstacles he had since contended, he knew not. He became roused to the knowledge that Obenreizer had set upon him, and that they were struggling desperately in the snow. He became roused to the remembrance of what his assailant carried in a girdle. He felt for it, drew it, struck at him, struggled again, struck at him again, cast him off, and stood face to face with him.

“I promised to guide you to your journey’s end,” said Obenreizer, “and I have kept my promise. The journey of your life ends here. Nothing can prolong it. You are sleeping as you stand.”

“You are a villain. What have you done to me?”

“You are a fool. I have drugged you. You are doubly a fool, for I drugged you once before upon the journey, to try you. You are trebly a fool, for I am the thief and forger, and in a few moments I shall take those proofs against the thief and forger from your insensible body.”

The entrapped man tried to throw off the lethargy, but its fatal hold upon him was so sure that, even while he heard those words, he stupidly wondered which of them had been wounded, and whose blood it was that he saw sprinkled on the snow.

“What have I done to you,” he asked, heavily and thickly, “that you should be—so base—a murderer?”

“Done to me? You would have destroyed me, but that you have come to your journey’s end. Your cursed activity interposed between me, and the time I had counted on in which I might have replaced the money. Done to me? You have come in my way—not once, not twice, but again and again and again. Did I try to shake you off in the beginning, or no? You were not to be shaken off. Therefore you die here.”

Vendale tried to think coherently, tried to speak coherently, tried to pick up the iron-shod staff he had let fall; failing to touch it, tried to stagger on without its aid. All in vain, all in vain! He stumbled, and fell heavily forward on the brink of the deep chasm.

Stupefied, dozing, unable to stand upon his feet, a veil before his eyes, his sense of hearing deadened, he made such a vigorous rally that, supporting himself on his hands, he saw his enemy standing calmly over him, and heard him speak.

“You call me murderer,” said Obenreizer, with a grim laugh. “The name matters very little. But at least I have set my life against yours, for I am surrounded by dangers, and may never make my way out of this place. The Tourmente is rising again. The snow is on the whirl. I must have the papers now. Every moment has my life in it.”

“Stop!” cried Vendale, in a terrible voice, staggering up with a last flash of fire breaking out of him, and clutching the thievish hands at his breast, in both of his. “Stop! Stand away from me! God bless my Marguerite! Happily she will never know how I died. Stand off from me, and let me look at your murderous face. Let it remind me—of something—left to say.”

The sight of him fighting so hard for his senses, and the doubt whether he might not for the instant be possessed by the strength of a dozen men, kept his opponent still. Wildly glaring at him, Vendale faltered out the broken words:

“It shall not be—the trust—of the dead—betrayed by me—reputed parents—misinherited fortune—see to it!”

As his head dropped on his breast, and he stumbled on the brink of the chasm as before, the thievish hands went once more, quick and busy, to his breast. He made a convulsive attempt to cry “No!” desperately rolled himself over into the gulf; and sank away from his enemy’s touch, like a phantom in a dreadful dream.

The mountain storm raged again, and passed again. The awful mountain-voices died away, the moon rose, and the soft and silent snow fell.

Two men and two large dogs came out at the door of the Hospice. The men looked carefully around them, and up at the sky. The dogs rolled in the snow, and took it into their mouths, and cast it up with their paws.

One of the men said to the other: “We may venture now. We may find them in one of the five Refuges.” Each fastened on his back a basket; each took in his hand a strong spiked pole; each girded under his arms a looped end of a stout rope, so that they were tied together.

Suddenly the dogs desisted from their gambols in the snow, stood looking down the ascent, put their noses up, put their noses down, became greatly excited, and broke into a deep loud bay together.

The two men looked in the faces of the two dogs. The two dogs looked, with at least equal intelligence, in the faces of the two men.

“Au secours, then! Help! To the rescue!” cried the two men. The two dogs, with a glad, deep, generous bark, bounded away.

“Two more mad ones!” said the men, stricken motionless, and looking away in the moonlight. “Is it possible in such weather! And one of them a woman!”

Each of the dogs had the corner of a woman’s dress in its mouth, and drew her along. She fondled their heads as she came up, and she came up through the snow with an accustomed tread. Not so the large man with her, who was spent and winded.

“Dear guides, dear friends of travellers! I am of your country. We seek two gentlemen crossing the Pass, who should have reached the Hospice this evening.”

“They have reached it, ma’amselle.”

“Thank Heaven! O thank Heaven!”

“But, unhappily, they have gone on again. We are setting forth to seek them even now. We had to wait until the Tourmente passed. It has been fearful up here.”

“Dear guides, dear friends of travellers! Let me go with you. Let me go with you for the love of GOD! One of those gentlemen is to be my husband. I love him, O, so dearly. O so dearly! You see I am not faint, you see I am not tired. I am born a peasant girl. I will show you that I know well how to fasten myself to your ropes. I will do it with my own hands. I will swear to be brave and good. But let me go with you, let me go with you! If any mischance should have befallen him, my love would find him, when nothing else could. On my knees, dear friends of travellers! By the love your dear mothers had for your fathers!”

The good rough fellows were moved. “After all,” they murmured to one another, “she speaks but the truth. She knows the ways of the mountains. See how marvellously she has come here. But as to Monsieur there, ma’amselle?”

“Dear Mr. Joey,” said Marguerite, addressing him in his own tongue, “you will remain at the house, and wait for me; will you not?”

“If I know’d which o’ you two recommended it,” growled Joey Ladle, eyeing the two men with great indignation, “I’d fight you for sixpence, and give you half-a-crown towards your expenses. No, Miss. I’ll stick by you as long as there’s any sticking left in me, and I’ll die for you when I can’t do better.”

The state of the moon rendering it highly important that no time should be lost, and the dogs showing signs of great uneasiness, the two men quickly took their resolution. The rope that yoked them together was exchanged for a longer one; the party were secured, Marguerite second, and the Cellarman last; and they set out for the Refuges. The actual distance of those places was nothing: the whole five, and the next Hospice to boot, being within two miles; but the ghastly way was whitened out and sheeted over.

They made no miss in reaching the Gallery where the two had taken shelter. The second storm of wind and snow had so wildly swept over it since, that their tracks were gone. But the dogs went to and fro with their noses down, and were confident. The party stopping, however, at the further arch, where the second storm had been especially furious, and where the drift was deep, the dogs became troubled, and went about and about, in quest of a lost purpose.

The great abyss being known to lie on the right, they wandered too much to the left, and had to regain the way with infinite labour through a deep field of snow. The leader of the line had stopped it, and was taking note of the landmarks, when one of the dogs fell to tearing up the snow a little before them. Advancing and stooping to look at it, thinking that some one might be overwhelmed there, they saw that it was stained, and that the stain was red.

The other dog was now seen to look over the brink of the gulf, with his fore legs straightened out, lest he should fall into it, and to tremble in every limb. Then the dog who had found the stained snow joined him, and then they ran to and fro, distressed and whining. Finally, they both stopped on the brink together, and setting up their heads, howled dolefully.

“There is some one lying below,” said Marguerite.

“I think so,” said the foremost man. “Stand well inward, the two last, and let us look over.”

The last man kindled two torches from his basket, and handed them forward. The leader taking one, and Marguerite the other, they looked down; now shading the torches, now moving them to the right or left, now raising them, now depressing them, as moonlight far below contended with black shadows. A piercing cry from Marguerite broke a long silence.

“My God! On a projecting point, where a wall of ice stretches forward over the torrent, I see a human form!”

“Where, ma’amselle, where?”

“See, there! On the shelf of ice below the dogs!”

The leader, with a sickened aspect, drew inward, and they were all silent. But they were not all inactive, for Marguerite, with swift and skilful fingers, had detached both herself and him from the rope in a few seconds.

“Show me the baskets. These two are the only ropes?”

“The only ropes here, ma’amselle; but at the Hospice——”

“If he is alive—I know it is my lover—he will be dead before you can return. Dear Guides! Blessed friends of travellers! Look at me. Watch my hands. If they falter or go wrong, make me your prisoner by force. If they are steady and go right, help me to save him!”

She girded herself with a cord under the breast and arms, she formed it into a kind of jacket, she drew it into knots, she laid its end side by side with the end of the other cord, she twisted and twined the two together, she knotted them together, she set her foot upon the knots, she strained them, she held them for the two men to strain at.

“She is inspired,” they said to one another.

“By the Almighty’s mercy!” she exclaimed. “You both know that I am by far the lightest here. Give me the brandy and the wine, and lower me down to him. Then go for assistance and a stronger rope. You see that when it is lowered to me—look at this about me now—I can make it fast and safe to his body. Alive or dead, I will bring him up, or die with him. I love him passionately. Can I say more?”

They turned to her companion, but he was lying senseless on the snow.

“Lower me down to him,” she said, taking two little kegs they had brought, and hanging them about her, “or I will dash myself to pieces! I am a peasant, and I know no giddiness or fear; and this is nothing to me, and I passionately love him. Lower me down!”

“Ma’amselle, ma’amselle, he must be dying or dead.”

“Dying or dead, my husband’s head shall lie upon my breast, or I will dash myself to pieces.”

They yielded, overborne. With such precautions as their skill and the circumstances admitted, they let her slip from the summit, guiding herself down the precipitous icy wall with her hand, and they lowered down, and lowered down, and lowered down, until the cry came up: “Enough!”

“Is it really he, and is he dead?” they called down, looking over.

The cry came up: “He is insensible; but his heart beats. It beats against mine.”

“How does he lie?”

The cry came up: “Upon a ledge of ice. It has thawed beneath him, and it will thaw beneath me. Hasten. If we die, I am content.”

One of the two men hurried off with the dogs at such topmost speed as he could make; the other set up the lighted torches in the snow, and applied himself to recovering the Englishman. Much snow-chafing and some brandy got him on his legs, but delirious and quite unconscious where he was.

The watch remained upon the brink, and his cry went down continually: “Courage! They will soon be here. How goes it?” And the cry came up: “His heart still beats against mine. I warm him in my arms. I have cast off the rope, for the ice melts under us, and the rope would separate me from him; but I am not afraid.”

The moon went down behind the mountain tops, and all the abyss lay in darkness. The cry went down: “How goes it?” The cry came up: “We are sinking lower, but his heart still beats against mine.”

At length the eager barking of the dogs, and a flare of light upon the snow, proclaimed that help was coming on. Twenty or thirty men, lamps, torches, litters, ropes, blankets, wood to kindle a great fire, restoratives and stimulants, came in fast. The dogs ran from one man to another, and from this thing to that, and ran to the edge of the abyss, dumbly entreating Speed, speed, speed!

The cry went down: “Thanks to God, all is ready. How goes it?”

The cry came up: “We are sinking still, and we are deadly cold. His heart no longer beats against mine. Let no one come down, to add to our weight. Lower the rope only.”

The fire was kindled high, a great glare of torches lighted the sides of the precipice, lamps were lowered, a strong rope was lowered. She could be seen passing it round him, and making it secure.

The cry came up into a deathly silence: “Raise! Softly!” They could see her diminished figure shrink, as he was swung into the air.

They gave no shout when some of them laid him on a litter, and others lowered another strong rope. The cry again came up into a deathly silence: “Raise! Softly!” But when they caught her at the brink, then they shouted, then they wept, then they gave thanks to Heaven, then they kissed her feet, then they kissed her dress, then the dogs caressed her, licked her icy hands, and with their honest faces warmed her frozen bosom!

She broke from them all, and sank over him on his litter, with both her loving hands upon the heart that stood still.

ACT IV

THE CLOCK-LOCK

The pleasant scene was Neuchâtel; the pleasant month was April; the pleasant place was a notary’s office; the pleasant person in it was the notary: a rosy, hearty, handsome old man, chief notary of Neuchâtel, known far and wide in the canton as Maître Voigt. Professionally and personally, the notary was a popular citizen. His innumerable kindnesses and his innumerable oddities had for years made him one of the recognised public characters of the pleasant Swiss town. His long brown frock-coat and his black skull-cap, were among the institutions of the place: and he carried a snuff-box which, in point of size, was popularly believed to be without a parallel in Europe.

There was another person in the notary’s office, not so pleasant as the notary. This was Obenreizer.

An oddly pastoral kind of office it was, and one that would never have answered in England. It stood in a neat back yard, fenced off from a pretty flower-garden. Goats browsed in the doorway, and a cow was within half-a-dozen feet of keeping company with the clerk. Maître Voigt’s room was a bright and varnished little room, with panelled walls, like a toy-chamber. According to the seasons of the year, roses, sunflowers, hollyhocks, peeped in at the windows. Maître Voigt’s bees hummed through the office all the summer, in at this window and out at that, taking it frequently in their day’s work, as if honey were to be made from Maître Voigt’s sweet disposition. A large musical box on the chimney-piece often trilled away at the Overture to Fra Diavolo, or a Selection from William Tell, with a chirruping liveliness that had to be stopped by force on the entrance of a client, and irrepressibly broke out again the moment his back was turned.

“Courage, courage, my good fellow!” said Maître Voigt, patting Obenreizer on the knee, in a fatherly and comforting way. “You will begin a new life to-morrow morning in my office here.”

Obenreizer—dressed in mourning, and subdued in manner—lifted his hand, with a white handkerchief in it, to the region of his heart. “The gratitude is here,” he said. “But the words to express it are not here.”

“Ta-ta-ta! Don’t talk to me about gratitude!” said Maître Voigt. “I hate to see a man oppressed. I see you oppressed, and I hold out my hand to you by instinct. Besides, I am not too old yet, to remember my young days. Your father sent me my first client. (It was on a question of half an acre of vineyard that seldom bore any grapes.) Do I owe nothing to your father’s son? I owe him a debt of friendly obligation, and I pay it to you. That’s rather neatly expressed, I think,” added Maître Voigt, in high good humour with himself. “Permit me to reward my own merit with a pinch of snuff!”

Obenreizer dropped his eyes to the ground, as though he were not even worthy to see the notary take snuff.

“Do me one last favour, sir,” he said, when he raised his eyes. “Do not act on impulse. Thus far, you have only a general knowledge of my position. Hear the case for and against me, in its details, before you take me into your office. Let my claim on your benevolence be recognised by your sound reason as well as by your excellent heart. In that case, I may hold up my head against the bitterest of my enemies, and build myself a new reputation on the ruins of the character I have lost.”

“As you will,” said Maître Voigt. “You speak well, my son. You will be a fine lawyer one of these days.”

“The details are not many,” pursued Obenreizer. “My troubles begin with the accidental death of my late travelling companion, my lost dear friend Mr. Vendale.”

“Mr. Vendale,” repeated the notary. “Just so. I have heard and read of the name, several times within these two months. The name of the unfortunate English gentleman who was killed on the Simplon. When you got that scar upon your cheek and neck.”

“—From my own knife,” said Obenreizer, touching what must have been an ugly gash at the time of its infliction.

“From your own knife,” assented the notary, “and in trying to save him. Good, good, good. That was very good. Vendale. Yes. I have several times, lately, thought it droll that I should once have had a client of that name.”

“But the world, sir,” returned Obenreizer, “is so small!” Nevertheless he made a mental note that the notary had once had a client of that name.

“As I was saying, sir, the death of that dear travelling comrade begins my troubles. What follows? I save myself. I go down to Milan. I am received with coldness by Defresnier and Company. Shortly afterwards, I am discharged by Defresnier and Company. Why? They give no reason why. I ask, do they assail my honour? No answer. I ask, what is the imputation against me? No answer. I ask, where are their proofs against me? No answer. I ask, what am I to think? The reply is, ‘M. Obenreizer is free to think what he will. What M. Obenreizer thinks, is of no importance to Defresnier and Company.’ And that is all.”

“Perfectly. That is all,” asserted the notary, taking a large pinch of snuff.

“But is that enough, sir?”

“That is not enough,” said Maître Voigt. “The House of Defresnier are my fellow townsmen—much respected, much esteemed—but the House of Defresnier must not silently destroy a man’s character. You can rebut assertion. But how can you rebut silence?”

“Your sense of justice, my dear patron,” answered Obenreizer, “states in a word the cruelty of the case. Does it stop there? No. For, what follows upon that?”

“True, my poor boy,” said the notary, with a comforting nod or two; “your ward rebels upon that.”

“Rebels is too soft a word,” retorted Obenreizer. “My ward revolts from me with horror. My ward defies me. My ward withdraws herself from my authority, and takes shelter (Madame Dor with her) in the house of that English lawyer, Mr. Bintrey, who replies to your summons to her to submit herself to my authority, that she will not do so.”

“—And who afterwards writes,” said the notary, moving his large snuff-box to look among the papers underneath it for the letter, “that he is coming to confer with me.”

“Indeed?” replied Obenreizer, rather checked. “Well, sir. Have I no legal rights?”

“Assuredly, my poor boy,” returned the notary. “All but felons have their legal rights.”

“And who calls me felon?” said Obenreizer, fiercely.

“No one. Be calm under your wrongs. If the House of Defresnier would call you felon, indeed, we should know how to deal with them.”

While saying these words, he had handed Bintrey’s very short letter to Obenreizer, who now read it and gave it back.

“In saying,” observed Obenreizer, with recovered composure, “that he is coming to confer with you, this English lawyer means that he is coming to deny my authority over my ward.”

“You think so?”

“I am sure of it. I know him. He is obstinate and contentious. You will tell me, my dear sir, whether my authority is unassailable, until my ward is of age?”

“Absolutely unassailable.”

“I will enforce it. I will make her submit herself to it. For,” said Obenreizer, changing his angry tone to one of grateful submission, “I owe it to you, sir; to you, who have so confidingly taken an injured man under your protection, and into your employment.”

“Make your mind easy,” said Maître Voigt. “No more of this now, and no thanks! Be here to-morrow morning, before the other clerk comes—between seven and eight. You will find me in this room; and I will myself initiate you in your work. Go away! go away! I have letters to write. I won’t hear a word more.”

Dismissed with this generous abruptness, and satisfied with the favourable impression he had left on the old man’s mind, Obenreizer was at leisure to revert to the mental note he had made that Maître Voigt once had a client whose name was Vendale.

“I ought to know England well enough by this time;” so his meditations ran, as he sat on a bench in the yard; “and it is not a name I ever encountered there, except—” he looked involuntarily over his shoulder—“as his name. Is the world so small that I cannot get away from him, even now when he is dead? He confessed at the last that he had betrayed the trust of the dead, and misinherited a fortune. And I was to see to it. And I was to stand off, that my face might remind him of it. Why my face, unless it concerned me? I am sure of his words, for they have been in my ears ever since. Can there be anything bearing on them, in the keeping of this old idiot? Anything to repair my fortunes, and blacken his memory? He dwelt upon my earliest remembrances, that night at Basle. Why, unless he had a purpose in it?”

Maître Voigt’s two largest he-goats were butting at him to butt him out of the place, as if for that disrespectful mention of their master. So he got up and left the place. But he walked alone for a long time on the border of the lake, with his head drooped in deep thought.

Between seven and eight next morning, he presented himself again at the office. He found the notary ready for him, at work on some papers which had come in on the previous evening. In a few clear words, Maître Voigt explained the routine of the office, and the duties Obenreizer would be expected to perform. It still wanted five minutes to eight, when the preliminary instructions were declared to be complete.

“I will show you over the house and the offices,” said Maître Voigt, “but I must put away these papers first. They come from the municipal authorities, and they must be taken special care of.”

Obenreizer saw his chance, here, of finding out the repository in which his employer’s private papers were kept.

“Can’t I save you the trouble, sir?” he asked. “Can’t I put those documents away under your directions?”

Maître Voigt laughed softly to himself; closed the portfolio in which the papers had been sent to him; handed it to Obenreizer.

“Suppose you try,” he said. “All my papers of importance are kept yonder.”

He pointed to a heavy oaken door, thickly studded with nails, at the lower end of the room. Approaching the door, with the portfolio, Obenreizer discovered, to his astonishment, that there were no means whatever of opening it from the outside. There was no handle, no bolt, no key, and (climax of passive obstruction!) no keyhole.

“There is a second door to this room?” said Obenreizer, appealing to the notary.

“No,” said Maître Voigt. “Guess again.”

“There is a window?”

“Nothing of the sort. The window has been bricked up. The only way in, is the way by that door. Do you give it up?” cried Maître Voigt, in high triumph. “Listen, my good fellow, and tell me if you hear nothing inside?”

Obenreizer listened for a moment, and started back from the door.

“I know!” he exclaimed. “I heard of this when I was apprenticed here at the watchmaker’s. Perrin Brothers have finished their famous clock-lock at last—and you have got it?”

“Bravo!” said Maître Voigt. “The clock-lock it is! There, my son! There you have one more of what the good people of this town call, ‘Daddy Voigt’s follies.’ With all my heart! Let those laugh who win. No thief can steal my keys. No burglar can pick my lock. No power on earth, short of a battering-ram or a barrel of gunpowder, can move that door, till my little sentinel inside—my worthy friend who goes ‘Tick, Tick,’ as I tell him—says, ‘Open!’ The big door obeys the little Tick, Tick, and the little Tick, Tick, obeys me. That!” cried Daddy Voigt, snapping his fingers, “for all the thieves in Christendom!”

“May I see it in action?” asked Obenreizer. “Pardon my curiosity, dear sir! You know that I was once a tolerable worker in the clock trade.”

“Certainly you shall see it in action,” said Maître Voigt. “What is the time now? One minute to eight. Watch, and in one minute you will see the door open of itself.”

In one minute, smoothly and slowly and silently, as if invisible hands had set it free, the heavy door opened inward, and disclosed a dark chamber beyond. On three sides, shelves filled the walls, from floor to ceiling. Arranged on the shelves, were rows upon rows of boxes made in the pretty inlaid woodwork of Switzerland, and bearing inscribed on their fronts (for the most part in fanciful coloured letters) the names of the notary’s clients.

Maître Voigt lighted a taper, and led the way into the room.

“You shall see the clock,” he said proudly. “I possess the greatest curiosity in Europe. It is only a privileged few whose eyes can look at it. I give the privilege to your good father’s son—you shall be one of the favoured few who enter the room with me. See! here it is, on the right-hand wall at the side of the door.”

“An ordinary clock,” exclaimed Obenreizer. “No! Not an ordinary clock. It has only one hand.”

“Aha!” said Maître Voigt. “Not an ordinary clock, my friend. No, no. That one hand goes round the dial. As I put it, so it regulates the hour at which the door shall open. See! The hand points to eight. At eight the door opened, as you saw for yourself.”

“Does it open more than once in the four-and-twenty hours?” asked Obenreizer.

“More than once?” repeated the notary, with great scorn. “You don’t know my good friend, Tick-Tick! He will open the door as often as I ask him. All he wants is his directions, and he gets them here. Look below the dial. Here is a half-circle of steel let into the wall, and here is a hand (called the regulator) that travels round it, just as my hand chooses. Notice, if you please, that there are figures to guide me on the half-circle of steel. Figure I. means: Open once in the four-and-twenty hours. Figure II. means: Open twice; and so on to the end. I set the regulator every morning, after I have read my letters, and when I know what my day’s work is to be. Would you like to see me set it now? What is to-day? Wednesday. Good! This is the day of our rifle-club; there is little business to do; I grant a half-holiday. No work here to-day, after three o’clock. Let us first put away this portfolio of municipal papers. There! No need to trouble Tick-Tick to open the door until eight to-morrow. Good! I leave the dial-hand at eight; I put back the regulator to I.; I close the door; and closed the door remains, past all opening by anybody, till to-morrow morning at eight.”

Obenreizer’s quickness instantly saw the means by which he might make the clock-lock betray its master’s confidence, and place its master’s papers at his disposal.

“Stop, sir!” he cried, at the moment when the notary was closing the door. “Don’t I see something moving among the boxes—on the floor there?”

(Maître Voigt turned his back for a moment to look. In that moment, Obenreizer’s ready hand put the regulator on, from the figure “I.” to the figure “II.” Unless the notary looked again at the half-circle of steel, the door would open at eight that evening, as well as at eight next morning, and nobody but Obenreizer would know it.)

“There is nothing!” said Maître Voigt. “Your troubles have shaken your nerves, my son. Some shadow thrown by my taper; or some poor little beetle, who lives among the old lawyer’s secrets, running away from the light. Hark! I hear your fellow-clerk in the office. To work! to work! and build to-day the first step that leads to your new fortunes!”

He good-humouredly pushed Obenreizer out before him; extinguished the taper, with a last fond glance at his clock which passed harmlessly over the regulator beneath; and closed the oaken door.

At three, the office was shut up. The notary and everybody in the notary’s employment, with one exception, went to see the rifle-shooting. Obenreizer had pleaded that he was not in spirits for a public festival. Nobody knew what had become of him. It was believed that he had slipped away for a solitary walk.

The house and offices had been closed but a few minutes, when the door of a shining wardrobe in the notary’s shining room opened, and Obenreizer stopped out. He walked to a window, unclosed the shutters, satisfied himself that he could escape unseen by way of the garden, turned back into the room, and took his place in the notary’s easy-chair. He was locked up in the house, and there were five hours to wait before eight o’clock came.

He wore his way through the five hours: sometimes reading the books and newspapers that lay on the table: sometimes thinking: sometimes walking to and fro. Sunset came on. He closed the window-shutters before he kindled a light. The candle lighted, and the time drawing nearer and nearer, he sat, watch in hand, with his eyes on the oaken door.

At eight, smoothly and softly and silently the door opened.

One after another, he read the names on the outer rows of boxes. No such name as Vendale! He removed the outer row, and looked at the row behind. These were older boxes, and shabbier boxes. The four first that he examined, were inscribed with French and German names. The fifth bore a name which was almost illegible. He brought it out into the room, and examined it closely. There, covered thickly with time-stains and dust, was the name: “Vendale.”

The key hung to the box by a string. He unlocked the box, took out four loose papers that were in it, spread them open on the table, and began to read them. He had not so occupied a minute, when his face fell from its expression of eagerness and avidity, to one of haggard astonishment and disappointment. But, after a little consideration, he copied the papers. He then replaced the papers, replaced the box, closed the door, extinguished the candle, and stole away.

As his murderous and thievish footfall passed out of the garden, the steps of the notary and some one accompanying him stopped at the front door of the house. The lamps were lighted in the little street, and the notary had his door-key in his hand.

“Pray do not pass my house, Mr. Bintrey,” he said. “Do me the honour to come in. It is one of our town half-holidays—our Tir—but my people will be back directly. It is droll that you should ask your way to the Hotel of me. Let us eat and drink before you go there.”

“Thank you; not to-night,” said Bintrey. “Shall I come to you at ten to-morrow?”

“I shall be enchanted, sir, to take so early an opportunity of redressing the wrongs of my injured client,” returned the good notary.

“Yes,” retorted Bintrey; “your injured client is all very well—but—a word in your ear.”

He whispered to the notary and walked off. When the notary’s housekeeper came home, she found him standing at his door motionless, with the key still in his hand, and the door unopened.

OBENREIZER’S VICTORY

The scene shifts again—to the foot of the Simplon, on the Swiss side.

In one of the dreary rooms of the dreary little inn at Brieg, Mr. Bintrey and Maître Voigt sat together at a professional council of two. Mr. Bintrey was searching in his despatch-box. Maître Voigt was looking towards a closed door, painted brown to imitate mahogany, and communicating with an inner room.

“Isn’t it time he was here?” asked the notary, shifting his position, and glancing at a second door at the other end of the room, painted yellow to imitate deal.

“He is here,” answered Bintrey, after listening for a moment.

The yellow door was opened by a waiter, and Obenreizer walked in.

After greeting Maître Voigt with a cordiality which appeared to cause the notary no little embarrassment, Obenreizer bowed with grave and distant politeness to Bintrey. “For what reason have I been brought from Neuchâtel to the foot of the mountain?” he inquired, taking the seat which the English lawyer had indicated to him.

“You shall be quite satisfied on that head before our interview is over,” returned Bintrey. “For the present, permit me to suggest proceeding at once to business. There has been a correspondence, Mr. Obenreizer, between you and your niece. I am here to represent your niece.”

“In other words, you, a lawyer, are here to represent an infraction of the law.”

“Admirably put!” said Bintrey. “If all the people I have to deal with were only like you, what an easy profession mine would be! I am here to represent an infraction of the law—that is your point of view. I am here to make a compromise between you and your niece—that is my point of view.”

“There must be two parties to a compromise,” rejoined Obenreizer. “I decline, in this case, to be one of them. The law gives me authority to control my niece’s actions, until she comes of age. She is not yet of age; and I claim my authority.”

At this point Maître Voigt attempted to speak. Bintrey silenced him with a compassionate indulgence of tone and manner, as if he was silencing a favourite child.

“No, my worthy friend, not a word. Don’t excite yourself unnecessarily; leave it to me.” He turned, and addressed himself again to Obenreizer. “I can think of nothing comparable to you, Mr. Obenreizer, but granite—and even that wears out in course of time. In the interests of peace and quietness—for the sake of your own dignity—relax a little. If you will only delegate your authority to another person whom I know of, that person may be trusted never to lose sight of your niece, night or day!”

“You are wasting your time and mine,” returned Obenreizer. “If my niece is not rendered up to my authority within one week from this day, I invoke the law. If you resist the law, I take her by force.”

He rose to his feet as he said the last word. Maître Voigt looked round again towards the brown door which led into the inner room.

“Have some pity on the poor girl,” pleaded Bintrey. “Remember how lately she lost her lover by a dreadful death! Will nothing move you?”

“Nothing.”

Bintrey, in his turn, rose to his feet, and looked at Maître Voigt. Maître Voigt’s hand, resting on the table, began to tremble. Maître Voigt’s eyes remained fixed, as if by irresistible fascination, on the brown door. Obenreizer, suspiciously observing him, looked that way too.

“There is somebody listening in there!” he exclaimed, with a sharp backward glance at Bintrey.

“There are two people listening,” answered Bintrey.

“Who are they?”

“You shall see.”

With this answer, he raised his voice and spoke the next words—the two common words which are on everybody’s lips, at every hour of the day: “Come in!”

The brown door opened. Supported on Marguerite’s arm—his sun-burnt colour gone, his right arm bandaged and clung over his breast—Vendale stood before the murderer, a man risen from the dead.

In the moment of silence that followed, the singing of a caged bird in the court-yard outside was the one sound stirring in the room. Maître Voigt touched Bintrey, and pointed to Obenreizer. “Look at him!” said the notary, in a whisper.

The shock had paralysed every movement in the villain’s body, but the movement of the blood. His face was like the face of a corpse. The one vestige of colour left in it was a livid purple streak which marked the course of the scar where his victim had wounded him on the cheek and neck. Speechless, breathless, motionless alike in eye and limb, it seemed as if, at the sight of Vendale, the death to which he had doomed Vendale had struck him where he stood.

“Somebody ought to speak to him,” said Maître Voigt. “Shall I?”

Even at that moment Bintrey persisted in silencing the notary, and in keeping the lead in the proceedings to himself. Checking Maître Voigt by a gesture, he dismissed Marguerite and Vendale in these words:—“The object of your appearance here is answered,” he said. “If you will withdraw for the present, it may help Mr. Obenreizer to recover himself.”

It did help him. As the two passed through the door and closed it behind them, he drew a deep breath of relief. He looked round him for the chair from which he had risen, and dropped into it.

“Give him time!” pleaded Maître Voigt.

“No,” said Bintrey. “I don’t know what use he may make of it if I do.” He turned once more to Obenreizer, and went on. “I owe it to myself,” he said—“I don’t admit, mind, that I owe it to you—to account for my appearance in these proceedings, and to state what has been done under my advice, and on my sole responsibility. Can you listen to me?”

“I can listen to you.”

“Recall the time when you started for Switzerland with Mr. Vendale,” Bintrey begin. “You had not left England four-and-twenty hours before your niece committed an act of imprudence which not even your penetration could foresee. She followed her promised husband on his journey, without asking anybody’s advice or permission, and without any better companion to protect her than a Cellarman in Mr. Vendale’s employment.”

“Why did she follow me on the journey? and how came the Cellarman to be the person who accompanied her?”

“She followed you on the journey,” answered Bintrey, “because she suspected there had been some serious collision between you and Mr. Vendale, which had been kept secret from her; and because she rightly believed you to be capable of serving your interests, or of satisfying your enmity, at the price of a crime. As for the Cellarman, he was one, among the other people in Mr. Vendale’s establishment, to whom she had applied (the moment your back was turned) to know if anything had happened between their master and you. The Cellarman alone had something to tell her. A senseless superstition, and a common accident which had happened to his master, in his master’s cellar, had connected Mr. Vendale in this man’s mind with the idea of danger by murder. Your niece surprised him into a confession, which aggravated tenfold the terrors that possessed her. Aroused to a sense of the mischief he had done, the man, of his own accord, made the one atonement in his power. ‘If my master is in danger, miss,’ he said, ‘it’s my duty to follow him, too; and it’s more than my duty to take care of you.’ The two set forth together—and, for once, a superstition has had its use. It decided your niece on taking the journey; and it led the way to saving a man’s life. Do you understand me, so far?”

“I understand you, so far.”

“My first knowledge of the crime that you had committed,” pursued Bintrey, “came to me in the form of a letter from your niece. All you need know is that her love and her courage recovered the body of your victim, and aided the after-efforts which brought him back to life. While he lay helpless at Brieg, under her care, she wrote to me to come out to him. Before starting, I informed Madame Dor that I knew Miss Obenreizer to be safe, and knew where she was. Madame Dor informed me, in return, that a letter had come for your niece, which she knew to be in your handwriting. I took possession of it, and arranged for the forwarding of any other letters which might follow. Arrived at Brieg, I found Mr. Vendale out of danger, and at once devoted myself to hastening the day of reckoning with you. Defresnier and Company turned you off on suspicion; acting on information privately supplied by me. Having stripped you of your false character, the next thing to do was to strip you of your authority over your niece. To reach this end, I not only had no scruple in digging the pitfall under your feet in the dark—I felt a certain professional pleasure in fighting you with your own weapons. By my advice the truth has been carefully concealed from you up to this day. By my advice the trap into which you have walked was set for you (you know why, now, as well as I do) in this place. There was but one certain way of shaking the devilish self-control which has hitherto made you a formidable man. That way has been tried, and (look at me as you may) that way has succeeded. The last thing that remains to be done,” concluded Bintrey, producing two little slips of manuscript from his despatch-box, “is to set your niece free. You have attempted murder, and you have committed forgery and theft. We have the evidence ready against you in both cases. If you are convicted as a felon, you know as well as I do what becomes of your authority over your niece. Personally, I should have preferred taking that way out of it. But considerations are pressed on me which I am not able to resist, and this interview must end, as I have told you already, in a compromise. Sign those lines, resigning all authority over Miss Obenreizer, and pledging yourself never to be seen in England or in Switzerland again; and I will sign an indemnity which secures you against further proceedings on our part.”

Obenreizer took the pen in silence, and signed his niece’s release. On receiving the indemnity in return, he rose, but made no movement to leave the room. He stood looking at Maître Voigt with a strange smile gathering at his lips, and a strange light flashing in his filmy eyes.

“What are you waiting for?” asked Bintrey.

Obenreizer pointed to the brown door. “Call them back,” he answered. “I have something to say in their presence before I go.”

“Say it in my presence,” retorted Bintrey. “I decline to call them back.”

Obenreizer turned to Maître Voigt. “Do you remember telling me that you once had an English client named Vendale?” he asked.

“Well,” answered the notary. “And what of that?”

“Maître Voigt, your clock-lock has betrayed you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have read the letters and certificates in your client’s box. I have taken copies of them. I have got the copies here. Is there, or is there not, a reason for calling them back?”

For a moment the notary looked to and fro, between Obenreizer and Bintrey, in helpless astonishment. Recovering himself, he drew his brother-lawyer aside, and hurriedly spoke a few words close at his ear. The face of Bintrey—after first faithfully reflecting the astonishment on the face of Maître Voigt—suddenly altered its expression. He sprang, with the activity of a young man, to the door of the inner room, entered it, remained inside for a minute, and returned followed by Marguerite and Vendale. “Now, Mr. Obenreizer,” said Bintrey, “the last move in the game is yours. Play it.”

“Before I resign my position as that young lady’s guardian,” said Obenreizer, “I have a secret to reveal in which she is interested. In making my disclosure, I am not claiming her attention for a narrative which she, or any other person present, is expected to take on trust. I am possessed of written proofs, copies of originals, the authenticity of which Maître Voigt himself can attest. Bear that in mind, and permit me to refer you, at starting, to a date long past—the month of February, in the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty-six.”

“Mark the date, Mr. Vendale,” said Bintrey.

“My first proof,” said Obenreizer, taking a paper from his pocket-book. “Copy of a letter, written by an English lady (married) to her sister, a widow. The name of the person writing the letter I shall keep suppressed until I have done. The name of the person to whom the letter is written I am willing to reveal. It is addressed to ‘Mrs. Jane Anne Miller, of Groombridge Wells, England.’”

Vendale started, and opened his lips to speak. Bintrey instantly stopped him, as he had stopped Maître Voigt. “No,” said the pertinacious lawyer. “Leave it to me.”

Obenreizer went on:

“It is needless to trouble you with the first half of the letter,” he said. “I can give the substance of it in two words. The writer’s position at the time is this. She has been long living in Switzerland with her husband—obliged to live there for the sake of her husband’s health. They are about to move to a new residence on the Lake of Neuchâtel in a week, and they will be ready to receive Mrs. Miller as visitor in a fortnight from that time. This said, the writer next enters into an important domestic detail. She has been childless for years—she and her husband have now no hope of children; they are lonely; they want an interest in life; they have decided on adopting a child. Here the important part of the letter begins; and here, therefore, I read it to you word for word.”

He folded back the first page of the letter and read as follows.

“ * * * Will you help us, my dear sister, to realise our new project? As English people, we wish to adopt an English child. This may be done, I believe, at the Foundling: my husband’s lawyers in London will tell you how. I leave the choice to you, with only these conditions attached to it—that the child is to be an infant under a year old, and is to be a boy. Will you pardon the trouble I am giving you, for my sake; and will you bring our adopted child to us, with your own children, when you come to Neuchâtel?

“I must add a word as to my husband’s wishes in this matter. He is resolved to spare the child whom we make our own any future mortification and loss of self-respect which might be caused by a discovery of his true origin. He will bear my husband’s name, and he will be brought up in the belief that he is really our son. His inheritance of what we have to leave will be secured to him—not only according to the laws of England in such cases, but according to the laws of Switzerland also; for we have lived so long in this country, that there is a doubt whether we may not be considered as I domiciled, in Switzerland. The one precaution left to take is to prevent any after-discovery at the Foundling. Now, our name is a very uncommon one; and if we appear on the Register of the Institution as the persons adopting the child, there is just a chance that something might result from it. Your name, my dear, is the name of thousands of other people; and if you will consent to appear on the Register, there need be no fear of any discoveries in that quarter. We are moving, by the doctor’s orders, to a part of Switzerland in which our circumstances are quite unknown; and you, as I understand, are about to engage a new nurse for the journey when you come to see us. Under these circumstances, the child may appear as my child, brought back to me under my sister’s care. The only servant we take with us from our old home is my own maid, who can be safely trusted. As for the lawyers in England and in Switzerland, it is their profession to keep secrets—and we may feel quite easy in that direction. So there you have our harmless little conspiracy! Write by return of post, my love, and tell me you will join it.” * * *

“Do you still conceal the name of the writer of that letter?” asked Vendale.

“I keep the name of the writer till the last,” answered Obenreizer, “and I proceed to my second proof—a mere slip of paper this time, as you see. Memorandum given to the Swiss lawyer, who drew the documents referred to in the letter I have just read, expressed as follows:—‘Adopted from the Foundling Hospital of England, 3d March, 1836, a male infant, called, in the Institution, Walter Wilding. Person appearing on the register, as adopting the child, Mrs. Jane Anne Miller, widow, acting in this matter for her married sister, domiciled in Switzerland.’ Patience!” resumed Obenreizer, as Vendale, breaking loose from Bintrey, started to his feet. “I shall not keep the name concealed much longer. Two more little slips of paper, and I have done. Third proof! Certificate of Doctor Ganz, still living in practice at Neuchâtel, dated July, 1838. The doctor certifies (you shall read it for yourselves directly), first, that he attended the adopted child in its infant maladies; second, that, three months before the date of the certificate, the gentleman adopting the child as his son died; third, that on the date of the certificate, his widow and her maid, taking the adopted child with them, left Neuchâtel on their return to England. One more link now added to this, and my chain of evidence is complete. The maid remained with her mistress till her mistress’s death, only a few years since. The maid can swear to the identity of the adopted infant, from his childhood to his youth—from his youth to his manhood, as he is now. There is her address in England—and there, Mr. Vendale, is the fourth, and final proof!”

“Why do you address yourself to me?” said Vendale, as Obenreizer threw the written address on the table.

Obenreizer turned on him, in a sudden frenzy of triumph.

“Because you are the man! If my niece marries you, she marries a bastard, brought up by public charity. If my niece marries you, she marries an impostor, without name or lineage, disguised in the character of a gentleman of rank and family.”

“Bravo!” cried Bintrey. “Admirably put, Mr. Obenreizer! It only wants one word more to complete it. She marries—thanks entirely to your exertions—a man who inherits a handsome fortune, and a man whose origin will make him prouder than ever of his peasant-wife. George Vendale, as brother-executors, let us congratulate each other! Our dear dead friend’s last wish on earth is accomplished. We have found the lost Walter Wilding. As Mr. Obenreizer said just now—you are the man!”

The words passed by Vendale unheeded. For the moment he was conscious of but one sensation; he heard but one voice. Marguerite’s hand was clasping his. Marguerite’s voice was whispering to him:

“I never loved you, George, as I love you now!”

THE CURTAIN FALLS

May-day. There is merry-making in Cripple Corner, the chimneys smoke, the patriarchal dining-hall is hung with garlands, and Mrs. Goldstraw, the respected housekeeper, is very busy. For, on this bright morning the young master of Cripple Corner is married to its young mistress, far away: to wit, in the little town of Brieg, in Switzerland, lying at the foot of the Simplon Pass where she saved his life.

The bells ring gaily in the little town of Brieg, and flags are stretched across the street, and rifle shots are heard, and sounding music from brass instruments. Streamer-decorated casks of wine have been rolled out under a gay awning in the public way before the Inn, and there will be free feasting and revelry. What with bells and banners, draperies hanging from windows, explosion of gunpowder, and reverberation of brass music, the little town of Brieg is all in a flutter, like the hearts of its simple people.

It was a stormy night last night, and the mountains are covered with snow. But the sun is bright to-day, the sweet air is fresh, the tin spires of the little town of Brieg are burnished silver, and the Alps are ranges of far-off white cloud in a deep blue sky.

The primitive people of the little town of Brieg have built a greenwood arch across the street, under which the newly married pair shall pass in triumph from the church. It is inscribed, on that side, “HONOUR AND LOVE TO MARGUERITE VENDALE!” for the people are proud of her to enthusiasm. This greeting of the bride under her new name is affectionately meant as a surprise, and therefore the arrangement has been made that she, unconscious why, shall be taken to the church by a tortuous back way. A scheme not difficult to carry into execution in the crooked little town of Brieg.

So, all things are in readiness, and they are to go and come on foot. Assembled in the Inn’s best chamber, festively adorned, are the bride and bridegroom, the Neuchâtel notary, the London lawyer, Madame Dor, and a certain large mysterious Englishman, popularly known as Monsieur Zhoé-Ladelle. And behold Madame Dor, arrayed in a spotless pair of gloves of her own, with no hand in the air, but both hands clasped round the neck of the bride; to embrace whom Madame Dor has turned her broad back on the company, consistent to the last.

“Forgive me, my beautiful,” pleads Madame Dor, “for that I ever was his she-cat!”

“She-cat, Madame Dor?

“Engaged to sit watching my so charming mouse,” are the explanatory words of Madame Dor, delivered with a penitential sob.

“Why, you were our best friend! George, dearest, tell Madame Dor. Was she not our best friend?”

“Undoubtedly, darling. What should we have done without her?”

“You are both so generous,” cries Madame Dor, accepting consolation, and immediately relapsing. “But I commenced as a she-cat.”

“Ah! But like the cat in the fairy-story, good Madame Dor,” says Vendale, saluting her cheek, “you were a true woman. And, being a true woman, the sympathy of your heart was with true love.”

“I don’t wish to deprive Madame Dor of her share in the embraces that are going on,” Mr. Bintrey puts in, watch in hand, “and I don’t presume to offer any objection to your having got yourselves mixed together, in the corner there, like the three Graces. I merely remark that I think it’s time we were moving. What are your sentiments on that subject, Mr. Ladle?”

“Clear, sir,” replies Joey, with a gracious grin. “I’m clearer altogether, sir, for having lived so many weeks upon the surface. I never was half so long upon the surface afore, and it’s done me a power of good. At Cripple Corner, I was too much below it. Atop of the Simpleton, I was a deal too high above it. I’ve found the medium here, sir. And if ever I take it in convivial, in all the rest of my days, I mean to do it this day, to the toast of ‘Bless ‘em both.’”

“I, too!” says Bintrey. “And now, Monsieur Voigt, let you and me be two men of Marseilles, and allons, marchons, arm-in-arm!”

They go down to the door, where others are waiting for them, and they go quietly to the church, and the happy marriage takes place. While the ceremony is yet in progress, the notary is called out. When it is finished, he has returned, is standing behind Vendale, and touches him on the shoulder.

“Go to the side door, one moment, Monsieur Vendale. Alone. Leave Madame to me.”

At the side door of the church, are the same two men from the Hospice. They are snow-stained and travel-worn. They wish him joy, and then each lays his broad hand upon Vendale’s breast, and one says in a low voice, while the other steadfastly regards him:

“It is here, Monsieur. Your litter. The very same.”

“My litter is here? Why?”

“Hush! For the sake of Madame. Your companion of that day——”

“What of him?”

The man looks at his comrade, and his comrade takes him up. Each keeps his hand laid earnestly on Vendale’s breast.

“He had been living at the first Refuge, monsieur, for some days. The weather was now good, now bad.”

“Yes?”

“He arrived at our Hospice the day before yesterday, and, having refreshed himself with sleep on the floor before the fire, wrapped in his cloak, was resolute to go on, before dark, to the next Hospice. He had a great fear of that part of the way, and thought it would be worse to-morrow.”

“Yes?”

“He went on alone. He had passed the gallery when an avalanche—like that which fell behind you near the Bridge of the Ganther——”

“Killed him?”

“We dug him out, suffocated and broken all to pieces! But, monsieur, as to Madame. We have brought him here on the litter, to be buried. We must ascend the street outside. Madame must not see. It would be an accursed thing to bring the litter through the arch across the street, until Madame has passed through. As you descend, we who accompany the litter will set it down on the stones of the street the second to the right, and will stand before it. But do not let Madame turn her head towards the street the second to the right. There is no time to lose. Madame will be alarmed by your absence. Adieu!”

Vendale returns to his bride, and draws her hand through his unmaimed arm. A pretty procession awaits them at the main door of the church. They take their station in it, and descend the street amidst the ringing of the bells, the firing of the guns, the waving of the flags, the playing of the music, the shouts, the smiles, and tears, of the excited town. Heads are uncovered as she passes, hands are kissed to her, all the people bless her. “Heaven’s benediction on the dear girl! See where she goes in her youth and beauty; she who so nobly saved his life!”

Near the corner of the street the second to the right, he speaks to her, and calls her attention to the windows on the opposite side. The corner well passed, he says: “Do not look round, my darling, for a reason that I have,” and turns his head. Then, looking back along the street, he sees the litter and its bearers passing up alone under the arch, as he and she and their marriage train go down towards the shining valley.