LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIEORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 Mr. H. H. Kil iani
 
 Mama . . . have pity on him and on me 
 
 Original Etching
 
 dlUustratrii ^trrluui iEiiitiint 
 
 HARD CASH 
 
 A MATTER-OF-FACT ROMANCE 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
 By 
 CHARLES READE, D. C. L. 
 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 DANA ESTE5 & COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNU 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 HARD CASH 
 Vol. I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 " Mama . . . have pity on him and on me " Frontispiece 
 
 Took off his hat to them 52 
 
 She shared her hymn book with him .... 129 
 
 Two BLACK men WERE FIGHTING AND STRUGGLING . 236 
 
 The men were upon him 304 
 
 Hardie got the notes and bills all in a hurry . 345
 
 PREFACE 
 
 "Hard Cash," like "The Cloister and the Hearth," 
 is a matter-of-fact romance ; that is, a fiction built on 
 truths ; and these truths have been gathered by long, 
 severe, systematic labor, from -a multitude of volumes, 
 pamphlets, journals, reports, blue-books, manuscript 
 narratives, letters, and living people, whom 1 have 
 sought out, examined, and cross-examined, to get at the 
 truth on each main topic I have striven to handle. 
 
 The madhouse scenes have been picked out by certain 
 disinterested gentlemen who keep private asylums, and 
 periodicals to puff them ; and have been met with bold 
 denials of public facts and with timid personalities, and 
 a little easy cant about Sensation ^ Novelists ; but in 
 reality those passages have been written on the same 
 system as the nautical, legal, and other scenes ; the best 
 
 • This slang term is not quite accurate as applied to me. Without sensa- 
 tion tticre can be no interest; but my plan is to mix a little character and a 
 Httle philosopliy with the sensational element.
 
 4 PREFACE. 
 
 evidence has been ransacked ; and a large portion of this 
 
 evidence I shall be happy to show at my honse to any 
 
 brother writer who is disinterested, and really cares 
 
 enough for truth and humanity to walk or ride a mile in 
 
 pursuit of them, 
 
 CHARLES READE. 
 6 Bolton Row, Mayf^ii 
 December 5, 1863.
 
 CORRESPONDENCE ELICITED BY THE 
 FIRST EDITION OF "HARD CASH." 
 
 Private Asylums. 
 
 To the Editor of the Daily Neics. 
 
 Sir, — When a writer of sensation romances makes a 
 heroine push a superfluous husband into a well, or set a 
 house on fire, in order to get rid of disagreeable testi- 
 mony, we smile over the highly seasoned dish, but do 
 not think it necessary to apply the warning to ourselves, 
 and for the future avoid sitting on the edge of a draw- 
 well, or having any but fireproof libraries. But when 
 we read, as in the novel " Very Hard Cash," now pub- 
 lishing in " All the Year Round," that any man may, at 
 any moment, be consigned to a fate which to a sane man 
 would be worse than death, and that not by the single 
 act of any of our Lady Audleys, or other interesting 
 criminals, but as part of a regular organized system, 
 in all compliance with the laws of the land — when we 
 read this, a thrill of terror goes through the public mind. 
 If what Mr. Charles Reade says be possible, who is safe ? 
 
 Allow me, as one thoroughly conversant with the work- 
 ing of the law of lunacy, to reassure the minds of your 
 readers, by informing them that it is not possible. So 
 
 5
 
 6 CORRESPONDENCE ELICITED BY THE 
 
 many are the checks and securities with which the legis- 
 lature has most properly surrounded the person of an 
 alleged lunatic; so vigilant, patient, and so zealous in 
 the discharge of their duties are the Commissioners in 
 Lunacy and the officially appointed visitors of asylums, 
 that any one (not a sensation writer) imagining that 
 these checks and securities could be evaded, these visit- 
 ors hoodwinked in the way the author describes, would 
 himself be a fit subject for a commission ^' de lunatlco 
 inqulretido.^' 
 
 So far from commissioners and visitors being put off 
 with any " formula," such as the author quotes, and 
 believing anybody rather than the patient himself, the 
 exact contrary is the fact, and very properly so. 
 
 In my own case. Earl Nelson, Viscount Folkestone, 
 General Buckley, M.P., the Rev, Charles Grove, and 
 Mr. Martin Coats, and in other asylums, magistrates of 
 equal intelligence and high standing, fill the office of 
 visitors ; and never in any case do they refuse a private 
 interview to any patient asking it. In these interviews 
 no interference of any doctors or attendants, or any 
 "formula," is possible, and the visitors will listen even 
 to the most incoherent ravings if there appears to be the 
 slightest clew to be gathered from them to any real 
 grievance. 
 
 1 say nothing of the terrible slander cast upon a body 
 of professional men to which I am proud to belong. 
 There is no redress for that. There are certain offences 
 with which no court of law can deal ; offences against 
 decency, good taste, and truth, which can be brought 
 before no tribunal but that of public opinion. 
 
 I would only challenge ]Mr. lieade, in conclusion, if he 
 has the slightest grounds for any belief in the possibility 
 of the incidents he has put in print, to state those 
 grounds. Let him quote his case, and openly and fear-
 
 FIRST EDITION OF "HARD CASH." 7 
 
 lessly declare when and where such atrocities occurred. 
 I do not ask for one in all points resembling that which 
 he has published ; but one that furnishes even the slight- 
 est excuse for such a libellous attack upon those medical 
 men who, like myself, practise in lunacy. 
 I am, etc., 
 
 J. S. BUSHNAN, M.D. 
 LA.VERSTOCK House Asylum, Salisbury. 
 
 Private Asylums. 
 
 To the Editor of the Daily News. 
 
 Sir, — My attention is drawn to a letter written to 
 you by J. S. Bushnan, ]M.D., to vent a little natural 
 irritation on the author of " Very Hard Cash," and lull 
 the public back into the false security from which that 
 work is calculated to rouse them. 
 
 1 pass by his personalities in silence ; but, when he 
 tells you, in the roundabout style of his tribe, that " Very 
 Hard Cash " rests on no basis of fact ; that sane persons 
 cannot possibly be incarcerated or detained under our 
 Lunacy Acts ; that the gentlemen who pay an asylum 
 four flying visits a year know all that passes in it the 
 odd three hundred and sixty -one days, and are never out- 
 witted and humbugged on the spot ; that no interference 
 of doctors or attendants between visitor and patient, and 
 no formulae of cant and deception are possible within 
 the walls of a madhouse — this is to play too hard upon 
 the credulity of the public, and the forgetfulness of the 
 press. 1 beg to contradict all and every one of his 
 general statements, more courteously, I trust, than he 
 has contradicted me, but quite as seriously and positively. 
 
 Dr. Bushnan knows neither the subject he is writing 
 of, nor the man he is writing at. In matters of lunacy, 
 1 am not only a novelist ; I am also that humble citizen,
 
 8 CORRESPONDENCE ELICITED BY THE 
 
 who, not long ago, with the aid of the press, protected a 
 sane man who had been falsely imprisoned in a private 
 lunatic asylum ; hindered his recapture, showed him his 
 legal remedy, fed, clothed, and kept him for twelve 
 months with the aid of one true-hearted friend, during 
 all which time a great functionary, though paid many 
 thousands a year to do what 1 was doing at my own ex- 
 pense — justice — did all he could to defeat justice, and 
 break the poor suitor's back and perpetuate his stigma, 
 by tyrannically postponing, and postponing, and postpon- 
 ing, and postponing his trial to please the defendant. At 
 last this great procrastinator retired, and so that worst 
 enemy of justice, "the postponement swindle," died, and 
 by its death trial by jury rose again from the dead, even 
 for an alleged lunatic. Well, sir, no sooner did we get 
 him before thirteen honest men in the light of day, than 
 this youth — whom the mad doctors had declared and still 
 declared insane, whom two homuncules, commissioners 
 in lunacy, had twice visited in the asylum, and conversed 
 with, and done nothing whatever towards his liberation — 
 stood up eight hours in the witness-box, was examined, 
 cross-examined, badgered; yet calm, self-possessed, and so 
 manifestly sane, that the defendant resigned the contest, 
 and compounded the inevitable damages, giving us a 
 verdict, the costs, fifty pounds cash, and an annuity of 
 one hundred pounds a year. 
 
 All this, says Dr. Bushnan, is impossible. 
 
 I closely examined this youth as to his fellow-patients, 
 and, as he could minutely describe the illusions of the 
 insane ones, I find it hard to doubt his positive state- 
 ment that two patients in that same house were perfectly 
 sane. 
 
 Of course the main event I have related made some 
 noise ; real and alleged lunatics heard there was a 
 Quixotic ass in this island, who would, in his unguarded
 
 FIRST EDITION OF "HARD CASH." 9 
 
 moments, give away justice at his own expense, instead 
 of selling it for so many thousands a year and not deliv- 
 ering the article ; and I was inundated with letters and 
 petitions, and opened a vein of private research by 
 which the readers of " Hard Cash " will profit, all except 
 ])r. Bushnan, A lady called on me and asked me to get 
 her sister out of a private asylum, assuring me she was 
 sane, and giving me proofs. Having observed that to 
 get out of an asylum you must first be out of it, I cud- 
 gelled my brains, and split this prisoner in half ; I drew 
 up a little document authorizing a certain sharp attorney 
 to proceed in law or equity for her relief ; and sent her 
 sister into the asylum to get it signed by the prisoner. 
 She did sign it, and thus armed, her other self, the 
 attorney, being outside the asylum, was listened to, 
 though a deaf ear had always been turned to her. After 
 a correspondence, which has served me as a model in 
 the current number of " Hard Cash," after, in vain, sug- 
 gesting her discharge to the parties pecuniarily inter- 
 ested in detaining her, the board actually plucked up 
 courage and discharged her themselves. We all saw her 
 often after this, and were hours in her company. She 
 was perfectly sane, as sane as I am, and much saner 
 than some of the mad doctors are at this hour, as time 
 will show. This case opened another vein of research, 
 and my detective staff was swelled by a respectable ex- 
 attendant (female), who gave me the names of two or 
 three sane ladies, at that time in durance vilest to her 
 knowledge. 
 
 Tliree years after the supposed date of Alfred 
 Hardie's impossible incarceration came the flagrant case 
 of " Mathew v. Harty," some of whose delicious inci- 
 dents have been used in " Hard Cash," and will be con- 
 tradicted by humbugs and condemned as improbable by 
 gulls; at least 1 venture to hope so. The defendant was
 
 10 CORRESPONDENCE ELICITED BY THE 
 
 one of that immaculate class, to criticise some of whom, 
 if I understand Dr. Bushnan aright, is to libel the whole 
 body ; and the plaintiff was a distinguished young 
 scholar in Dublin. Defendant enticed him into a mad- 
 house, and there left him in a common flagged cell ; but 
 to amuse his irrational mind, lent him what ? Peter 
 Parley, or Dr. Littlewit's conjectures about the intellect 
 of Hamlet ? Oh, dear no ; " Stack's Optics," " Lloyd's 
 Mechanical Philosophy," " Brinkley's Astronomy," 
 " Cicero de Officiis," and " Stock's Lucian." 
 
 Enter the oliicial inspector ; is appealed to, admits his 
 sanity, promises to liberate him, and with that promise 
 dismisses the matter from his official mind, and goes his 
 way contented. This was sworn to afterwards and not 
 contradicted. Then comes Dr. Harty and urges him to 
 confession in these memorable Avords, sworn to, and not 
 contradicted ; " Your safety will consist in acknowledg- 
 ing you are insane, and your sanity will appear by 
 admitting your insanity." Mathew saw the hook, and 
 declined the bait. Now there was in this asylum a boy 
 called Hoolahan, whose young mind had not been 
 poisoned, and whose naked eye was as yet undimmed by 
 the spectacles of cant and prejudice. So he saw at a 
 glance Mathew was sane, and, not being paid a thousand 
 a year to pity him, pitied him. Hoolahan took a letter 
 to Mathew's college chum. In that letter Mathew 
 poured out his wrongs and his distress. But suppose it 
 should be intercepted ! Mathew provided against this 
 contingency ; he couched his letter in Ciceronian Latin, 
 humbly conceiving that this language would puzzle the 
 doctors as much as the Latin in their prescriptions 
 would puzzle Cicero. Mr. Hall got the letter, and, not 
 being paid to protect alleged lunatics, took the matter 
 up in earnest, and so frightened Dr. Harty that he dis- 
 charged Mathew at once ; and said, " Now, don't you be
 
 FIKST EDITION OP "HARD CASH." 11 
 
 induced to bother me about this trifle ; I'm an okl man, 
 and going to die almost immediately." On this Mathew 
 took the alarm, and served a writ on him Avithout loss of 
 time. The cause came on, and was urged and defended 
 with equal forensic ability. But evidence decides cases, 
 and the plaintiff's evidence was overpowering. Then 
 the defendant, despairing of a verdict, bethought him 
 how he might lower the inevitable damages ; he 
 instructed his counsel to reveal that " the young man 
 who was now prosecuting him to the death was his own 
 illegitimate son." At this revelation, ably and feelingly 
 introduced by Counsellor Martly, the sensation was, of 
 course, immense, and being in Ireland, a gallery came 
 down just then and the coup de theatre was perfect. 
 Many tears were shed ; the public was moved ; the 
 plaintiff still more so. For it is not often that a man, 
 who has passed for an orphan all his life, can plant a 
 writ and reap a parent. '• Japhet in search of a Father " 
 should have wandered about serving writs. The jury 
 either saw that the relationship was irrelevant in a ques- 
 tion so broad and civic, or else they were fathers of 
 another stamp, and disapproved of tender parents who 
 disown their offspring for twenty-four years, and then 
 lock them up for mad, and only claim kindred in court 
 to mitigate damages. At all events they found for Mr. 
 Mathew, with damages one thousand pounds. All this, 
 says Dr. Eushnan, was utterly impossible. Well, the 
 impossibility in question disguised itself as fact, and 
 went through the hollow form of taking place, upon the 
 11th, 12th, and 13th December, 1851, and the myth is 
 recorded in the journals, and the authorized report by 
 Elrington, jun., and W. P. Carr, barristers-at-law, is pub- 
 lished in what may be an air bubble, but looks like a pam- 
 phlet by M'Glashan, 50 Upper Sackville Street, Dublin, 
 But I rely mainly on the private cases, which a large
 
 12 COllEESPONDENCE ELICITED BY THE 
 
 correspondence with strangers, and searching inquiry 
 amongst my acquaintances, have revealed to me ; unfor- 
 tunately these are nearly al\va3's accompanied with a 
 stipulation of secrecy ; so terrible, so ineradicable, is the 
 stigma. " Hall v. Semple " clearly adds its mite of 
 proof that certiticates of insanity are still given reck- 
 lessly : but to show you how strong I am, I do not rely 
 at all on disputable cases like Nottidge, Ruck, and 
 Leech ; though in the two latter of these cases the press 
 leaned strongly against the insanity of the prisoners, 
 and surely the press is less open to prejudice in this 
 matter than Dr. Bushnan is, who dates his confident con- 
 jectures from a madhouse. It seems I have related in 
 " Hard Cash " that in one asylum (not Dr. Wycherley's), 
 when Alfred Hardie went to complain to a visitor, a 
 keeper interfered and said, " Take care, sir, he is dan- 
 gerous." And this 1 then and there call a formula, one 
 out of many. " Dreamer," says Dr. Bushnan, " there 
 are no such things as formulae in madhouses ; and no 
 interference between patient and inspector is i^ossible, 
 for there are none in my asylum, and therefore there 
 can be none in any other." Oh, logic of psychological ! 
 
 Mr. Drummond, in a debate on lunacy, testiiied as 
 follows: "Now the honorable gentleman had remarked 
 that it was very easy for persons in those establishments 
 who had a complaint to make, to make it. Was it really 
 so ? (Hear, hear.) He thought otherwise. He could 
 only say that, whenever he had visited an asylum, and 
 went up to a lunatic who had stated that he had a 
 ground of complaint, some keeper immediately evinced 
 an unusual interest in his personal welfare, and cau- 
 tioned him, saying, ' Take care, sir, he is a very dan- 
 gerous man.' (Hear.) " 
 
 The length of this letter, which after all but skims the 
 matter, arises out of the importance of the subject, and
 
 FIRST EDITION OF "HARD CASH." 13 
 
 the nature of all argument based on evidence. It takes 
 but a few lines to make many bold assertions, and to 
 challenge Mr. Reade to prove them false. But the 
 Eeadian proofs cannot be so compressed. ^^ Phis negabit 
 in una, hard iinus doctor, quam ceiitum docti in centum 
 annis probai-erint." I conclude by begging you to find 
 space for the following extract from a respectable 
 journal. I have many such extracts in my London 
 house : this one is a fair representative of the press, and 
 of its convictions and expressions at the time when it 
 issued. Extract. — " Here are two cases [Mrs. Turner 
 and 'Mr. Leech] : "We have before us the particulars of 
 a third, but we are not, unfortunately, in a condition to 
 publish the names. Suffice it to say that an unfortunate 
 gentleman who had been suffering from bodily disorder 
 which finally affected his brain, but who was not mad, 
 was incarcerated in one of those horrid dens which are 
 called private lunatic asylums ; and there confined for 
 months. By his own account he was treated with the 
 greatest cruelty, strapped down to a bed with broad 
 bands of webbing, and kept there till it was supposed he 
 was dying. The result we will state in the sufferer's 
 own words : * My back, from lying in one constrained 
 posture, was a mass of ulcerated and sloughing sores ; 
 my right hand was swollen enormously, and useless ; 
 and two fingers of the left hand were permanently con- 
 tracted, and the joints destroyed. I also lost several 
 front teeth.' This poor man at last obtained his liberty, 
 and applied to the commissioners for redress. Their 
 letter in reply is now before us. The commissioners 
 merely say that, although they do not in any degree 
 impugn the integrity of the complainant's statements, 
 they are not of opinion that inquiry would answer any 
 good purpose. They add, however, that, ' in order to 
 mark their opinion on the suVjject they have granted Mr.
 
 14 CORRESPONDENCE ELICITED BY THE 
 
 a license provisionally for the limited period of 
 
 four months only, and that the renewal will depend upon 
 the condition and management of his establishment 
 being entirely satisfactory in the mean time.' [As if 
 any great criminal would not undertake to behave better 
 or more cautiously if, after detecting him by a miracle, 
 we Avere weak enough to bribe him to more skilful 
 hypocrisy by the promise of impunity. — c. R.J Poor 
 consolation this for all the misery the wretched sufferer 
 had undergone ! Here, then, are three cases following 
 one upon the other in rapid succession. How many 
 remain behind of which we know nothing ? The fact 
 would appear to be that under existing arrangements 
 any English man or woman may without much difficulty 
 be incarcerated in a private lunatic asylum when not 
 deprived of reason. If actually deprived of reason when 
 first confined, patients may be retained in duress when 
 their cure is perfected, and they ought to be released." 
 I am, etc., 
 The Author of " Very Hard Cash." 
 Magdalen Collegk, Oxford, October 23, 18G3. 
 
 To this letter I hear Dr. Bushnan has replied down in 
 the country. By this, and by his not sending me a copy, 
 may I not infer he prefers having it all his own way in 
 the neighborhood of his asylum to encountering me again 
 before the nation ? 
 
 The extract quoted above is, I believe, from the Times, 
 and was accompanied by an admirable letter of three 
 columns thus entitled : — 
 
 Lunatic Asylums and the Lunacy Laws. 
 {By a Physician.) 
 
 This honest inquirers should read, and also the news- 
 paper reports of false imprisonment and cruelty, during
 
 FIRST EDITION OF "HARD CASH." 15 
 
 the last twelve years, and the contemporaneous com. 
 ments of the press — before deciding to overrate my 
 imaginative powers, and underrate my sincerity, and my 
 patient, laborious industry. 
 
 In January, 1870, the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette 
 drew attention to the fact that several lunatics had died 
 of broken ribs in various asylums, and that the attend- 
 ants had furnished no credible solution of the myster}'. 
 This elicited the following letter from the author of 
 " Hard Cash " : — 
 
 How LuxATics' Ribs get Broken. 
 To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 Sir, — The Pall Mall Gazette, January 15, deals with 
 an important question, " the treatment of lunatics," and 
 inquires, inter alia, how Santa Xistri came to have his 
 breast-bone and eight ribs fractured at Hanwell; and 
 how other patients have died at the same place of simi- 
 lar injuries; and how ^Yilliam Wilson came to have 
 twelve ribs broken the other day at the Lancaster 
 County Asylum. The question is grave; the more so, 
 that, by every principle of statistics, scores of ribs must 
 be broken, one or two at a time, and nobody the wiser, 
 under a system Avhich rises periodically to such high 
 figures of pulverization, and so lets in the faint light of 
 an occasional inquest, conducted by credulity in a very 
 atmosphere of mendacity. I have precise information, 
 applicable to these recent cases, but not derived from 
 them, and ask leave to relate the steps by which the 
 truth came to me. 
 
 On the 2d January, 1851, Barnes, a lunatic, died at 
 Peckham House with an arm and four ribs broken. The 
 people of the asylum stuck manfully together, and
 
 16 CORRESPONDENCE ELICITED BY THE 
 
 agreed to know nothing about it; and justice would 
 have been baffled entirely, but for Donnelly, an insane 
 patient — he revealed that Hill, a keeper, had broken 
 the man's bones. Hill was tried at the Central Criminal 
 Court, and convicted of manslaughter on Donnelly's sole 
 evidence, the people of the asylum maintaining an obdu- 
 rate silence to the end. About 1858, I think, a lunatic 
 patient died suddenly, with his breast-bone and eight 
 ribs broken, which figures please compare with Santa 
 Nistri's. As it had taken a keeper to break the five 
 bones of Barnes, nobody believed that accident had 
 broken the nine bones of Seeker — that, I think, was 
 the victim's name ; but this time the people of the 
 asylum had it all their own way ; they stuck manfully 
 together, stifled truth, and baffled justice. (See the 
 Ninth Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, p. 25.) 
 
 Late in July, 1858, there was a ball at Colney Hatch. 
 The press were invited, and came back singing the 
 praises of that blest retreat. What order ! What gay- 
 ety ! What non-restraint ! 
 
 O fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint 
 Lunaticos. 
 
 Next week or so Owen Swift, one of the patients in that 
 blest retreat, died of the following injuries : breast-bone 
 and eleven ribs broken, liver ruptured. 
 
 Varney, a patient — whose evidence reads like that of 
 a very clear-headed gentleman, if you compare it with 
 the doctor's that follows it — deposed to this effect: 
 Thursday at dinner-time Swift was in good health and 
 spirits, and more voluble than Slater, one of the keepers, 
 approved. Slater said, "Hold your noise." Swift bab- 
 bled on. Slater threw the poor man down, and dragged 
 him into the padded room, which room then resounded 
 for several minutes with "a great noise of knocking and
 
 FIRST EDITION OF "HARD CASH." 17 ^ 
 
 bumping about" and with the sufferer's cries of agony 
 till these last were choked, and there Avas silence. Swift 
 was not seen again till Saturday morning ; and then, in 
 presence of Varney, he accused Slater to his face of hav- 
 ing maltreated hira, and made his words good by dying 
 that night or the very next morning. 
 
 This evidence was borne out by the state of the body 
 (fractured sternum, and eleven fractured ribs), and not 
 rebutted by any direct, or, indeed, rational testimony. 
 Yet the accused was set free. But the press and the 
 country took this decision ill. A Middlesex magistrate 
 wrote to the Times, August 21, 1860, to remonstrate, and 
 drew attention to a previous idiotic verdict in a similar 
 ease. And whereas the medical man of the establish- 
 ment had assisted to clear the homicide by his own igno- 
 rance of how bones can be broken wholesale without 
 proportionate bruises or flesh wounds, a correspondent 
 of the Daily Telegraph enlightened his professional 
 /gnorance on that head, and gave the public the only 
 adequate solution of Owen Swift's death, which had been 
 either spoken or written up to that day. 
 
 That one adequate solution was the true one. — Daily 
 Telegraph, August 9, 1860. 
 
 Time, 1862. Place, Hanwell. Matthew Geoghegan, a 
 patient, refused to go to bed. Jones, a keeper, threw 
 him down, and kicked him several times ; then got a 
 stick and beat him ; then got a fire-shovel and beat 
 him ; then jumped on his body ; then walked up and 
 down his body ; of which various injuries the man died, 
 not immediately, but yet so speedily that the cuts and 
 bruises were still there to show what had killed him. 
 
 Bone, a bricklayer, and eye-witness of the homicide, 
 swore to the above facts. Linch, Bone's laborer, another 
 eye-witness, swore to the same facts. The resident engi- 
 neer swore that Bone and Linch were both true men. 
 2
 
 18 CORRESPONDENCE ELICITED BY THE 
 
 Dr. Jephson had found the man Avith bruises, one of 
 which, on his abdomen, had been caused by the heel of 
 a boot. Per contra, a doctor was found to swear as 
 follows: ''I swear that I tltink he died of pleuro-pneu- 
 monia. I swear that I do7i't knoiv whether his external 
 injuries contributed to his death." 
 
 And upon this, though no pleuro-pneumonia could be 
 shown in the mutilated body, though Bone and Linch, 
 disinterested witnesses, deposed to plain facts, and the 
 doctor merely delivered a wild and improbable conjec- 
 ture, and then swore to his own ignorance on the point 
 in doubt, if doubt there could be — yet this jury, with 
 their eyes to confirm what their ears heard sworn, and 
 their ears to confirm what their eyes saw written on the 
 mangled corpse, actually delivered the following verdict : 
 " Deceased died after receiving certain injuries from 
 external violence ; but whether the death was occasioned 
 by natural causes, or by such violence, there was not 
 sufficient evidence to show." They then relieved their 
 consciences in the drollest way. They turned round on 
 Bone and Linch, and reprimanded them severely for not 
 having interfered to prevent the cruelty, which they 
 themselves were shielding in the present and fostering 
 in the future by as direct a lie as ever twelve honest 
 men delivered. Suppose the bricklayer and his man had 
 replied, "Why, look ye, gentlemen; we came into the 
 madhouse to lay bricks, not to do justice. But you came 
 into the madhouse to do justice. We should have lost 
 our bread if we had interfered ; but you could have 
 afforded to play the men — and didn't." 
 
 I enclose herewith the evidence of the bricklayers, and 
 the sworn conjectures of the doctor, in re Geoghegan ; 
 also the evidence of the doctor, and of the comparatively 
 clear-headed lunatic, in re Swift. 
 
 About this time my researches into the abuses of pri-
 
 FIRST EDITION OF "HARD CASH." 19 
 
 vate asyla (which abuses are quite distinct from the 
 subject in hand) brought me into contact with multifarious 
 facts, and with a higher class of evidence than the official 
 inquirers permit themselves to hear. They rely too 
 much on medical attendants and other servants of an 
 asylum, whose interest it is to veil ugly truths and 
 sprinkle hells with rose-water. I, on the contrary, ex- 
 amined a number of ex-patients who had never been too 
 mad to observe, and ex-attendants, male and female, who 
 had gone into other lines of life, and could now afford to 
 reveal the secrets of those dark places. 
 
 The ex-keepers were all agreed in this — that the 
 keepers know how to break a patient's bones without 
 bruising the skin ; and that the doctors have been duped 
 again and again by them. To put it in my own words, 
 the bent knees, big bluntish bones, and clothed, can be 
 applied with terrible force, yet not leave their mark upon 
 the skin of the victim. The refractory patient is thrown 
 down and the keeper walks up and down him on his 
 knees, and even jumps on his body, knees downwards, 
 until he is completely cowed. Should a bone or two be 
 broken in this process, it does not much matter to the 
 keeper: a lunatic complaining of internal injui-y is not 
 listened to. He is a being so full of illusions that nobody 
 believes in any unseen injury he prates about. 
 
 In these words, sir, you have the key to the death of 
 Barnes, of Seeker, if that was the man's name ; and of 
 other victims recorded by the commissioners, of Nistri, 
 and of William Wilson, at Lancaster. 
 
 I hope this last inquiry has not been weakly abandoned. 
 It is a very shocking thing that both brute force and 
 traditional cunning should be employed against persons 
 of weak understanding, and that they should be so often 
 massacred, so seldom avenged. 
 
 Something might be done if the people in Lancashire 
 would take the matter seriously.
 
 20 CORRESPONDENCE ELICITED BY THE 
 
 The first thing they should do is to inquire whether 
 the keeper who killed a stunted imbecile by internal 
 injuries in the Lancaster Asylum, May, 1863, is still in 
 that asj'^lum. See Public Opinion, November 19, 1863. 
 
 The next step is to realize and act upon the two fol- 
 lowing maxims : — 
 
 First, it is the sure sign of a fool to accept an inade- 
 quate solution of undeniable facts. 
 
 Secondly, to advance an inadequate solution of facts 
 so indisputable as twelve broken ribs is a sign either of 
 guilt or guilty connivance. 
 
 Honest men in Lancashire should inquire who first 
 put forward some stupid, impudent falsehood to account 
 for the tAvelve broken ribs of Wilson. The first liar was 
 probably the homicide, or an accomplice. 
 
 Just to prove the importance I attach to this inquiry, 
 permit me, through your columns, to offer a reward of 
 a hundred pounds to any person or persons who will give 
 such evidence as may lead to the conviction of the person 
 or persons who have killed William Wilson by kneeling 
 on him, by walking knees downwards upon him, and 
 jumping knees downwards upon him. 
 
 It is interest that closes men's mouths in these dark 
 places. We must employ the same instrument to open 
 them : it is our only chance. 
 
 I am, sir, yours very faithfully, 
 
 Charles Reade. 
 
 2 Albert Terrace, Knigiitsbridge, 
 January 17, 1870.
 
 FIRST EDITION OF "HARD CASH." 21 
 
 NOTICE, 1863. 
 
 I REQUEST all those persons in various ranks of life — 
 who by letter or vlvd voce have during the last five years 
 told me of sane persons incarcerated or detained in private 
 asylums, and of other abuses — to communicate with me 
 by letter. I also invite fresh communications: and 
 desii-e it to be known that this great question did not 
 begin with me in the pages of a novel, neither shall it 
 end there ; for, where justice and humanity are both 
 concerned, there — 
 
 Sirt sans faict 
 ^ iBieu ticplatt
 
 HAED CASH. 
 
 PROLOGUE. 
 
 In a snowy villa, with a sloping lawn, just outside the 
 great commercial seaport, Barkington, there lived a few 
 years ago a happy family. A lady, middle-aged, but still 
 charming, two young friends of hers, and a periodical 
 visitor. 
 
 The lady was Mrs. Dodd ; her occasional visitor was 
 her husband ; her friends were her son Edward, aged 
 twenty, and her daughter Julia, nineteen ; the fruit of a 
 misalliance. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd was originally Miss Fountain, a young lady 
 well born, high-bred, and a denizen of the fashionable 
 world. Under a strange concurrence of circumstances 
 she coolly married the captain of an East Indiaman. 
 The deed done, and with her eyes open, for she was not, 
 to say, in love with him, she took a judicious line; and 
 kept it; no hankering after Mayfair, no talking about 
 Lord "■ This " and Lady " That," to commercial gentle- 
 women; no amphibiousness. She accepted her place in 
 society, reserving the right to embellish it with the 
 graces she had gathered in a higher sphere. In her 
 home, and in her person, she was little less elegant than 
 a countess ; yet nothing more than a merchant-captain's 
 wife : and she reared that commander's children, in a 
 
 23
 
 24 HARD CASH. 
 
 suburban villa, with the manners which adorn a palace. 
 When they happen to be there. She had a bugbear : 
 Slang. Could not endure the smart technicalities cur- 
 rent ; their multitude did not overpower her distaste ; 
 she called them " jargon ; " " slang " was too coarse a 
 word for her to apply to slang : she excluded many 
 a good ''racy idiom " along with the real offenders; and 
 monosyllables in general ran some risk of having to 
 show their passports. If this was pedantry, it went no 
 further; she was open, free, and youthful with her 
 young pupils ; and had the art to put herself on their 
 level : often, when they were quite young, she would 
 feign infantine ignorance, in order to hunt trite truth in 
 couples with them, and detect, by joint experiment, that 
 rainbows cannot, or else will not, be walked into, nor 
 Jack-o'-lantern be gathered like a cowslip ; and that, 
 dissect we the vocal dog — whose hair is so like a lamb's 
 — never so skilfully, no fragment of palpable bark, no 
 sediment of tangible squeak, remains inside him to bless 
 the inquisitive little operator, etc. When they advanced 
 from these elementary branches to languages, history, 
 tapestry, and " what not," she managed still to keep by 
 their side learning with them, not just hearing them 
 lessons down from the top of a high tower of maternity. 
 She never checked their curiosity ; but made herself 
 share it ; never gave them, as so many parents do, a 
 white-lying answer : wooed their affections with subtle 
 though innocent art ; thawed their reserve, obtained their 
 love, and retained their respect. Briefly, a female Ches- 
 terfield ; her husband's lover after marriage, though not 
 before ; and the mild monitress, the elder sister, the 
 favorite companion and bosom friend, of both her chil- 
 dren. 
 
 They were remarkably dissimilar ; and, perhaps I may 
 be allowed to preface the narrative of their adventures
 
 HARD CASH. 25 
 
 by a delineation ; as in country churches an individual 
 pipes the key-note, and the tune comes raging after. 
 
 Edward, then, had a great calm eye, that was always 
 looking folk full in the face, mildly ; his countenance 
 comely and manly, but no more ; too square for Apollo; 
 but sufficed for John Bull. His figure it was that 
 charmed the curious observer of male beauty. He was 
 five feet ten ; had square shoulders, a deep chest, mascu- 
 line flank, small foot, high instep. To crown all this, a 
 head, overflowed by ripples of dark-brown hair, sat with 
 heroic grace upon his solid white throat, like some glossy 
 falcon new lighted on a Parian column. 
 
 This young gentleman had decided qualities, positive 
 and negative. He could walk up to a five-barred gate, 
 and clear it, alighting on the other side like a fallen 
 feather ; could row all day, and then dance all night ; 
 could fling a cricket-ball a hundred and six yards ; had a 
 lathe and a tool-box, and would make you in a trice 
 a chair, a table, a doll, a nutcracker, or any other mov- 
 able, useful, or the very reverse. And could not learn 
 his lessons, to save his life. 
 
 His sister Julia was not so easy to describe. Her 
 figure was tall, lithe, and serpentine ; her hair the color 
 of a horse-chestnut fresh from its pod ; her ears tiny and 
 shell-like, her eyelashes long and silky ; her mouth small 
 when grave, large when smiling ; her eyes pure hazel by 
 day, and tinged with a little violet by night. But in 
 jotting down these details, true as they are, I seem to 
 myself to be painting fire with a little snow and saffron 
 mixed on a marble palette. There is a beauty too spirit- 
 ual to be chained in a string of items; and Julia's fair 
 features were but the china vessel that brimmed over 
 with the higher loveliness of her souL Her essential 
 charm was, what shall I say ? Transparence. 
 
 You would have said her very body thought.
 
 2Q HARD CASH. 
 
 Modesty, intelligence, and, above all, enthusiasm, shone 
 through her, and out of her, and made her an airy, fiery, 
 household joy. Briefly, an incarnate sunbeam. 
 
 This one could leavn her lessons with unreasonable 
 rapidity, and until Edward went to Eton, would insist 
 upon learning his into the bargain, partly with the fond 
 notion of coaxing him on ; as the company of a swift 
 horse incites a slow one ; partly because she was deter- 
 mined to share his every trouble, if she could not remove 
 it. A little choleric, and indeed downright prone to that 
 more generous indignation which fires at the wrongs of 
 others. When heated with emotion, or sentiment, she 
 lowered her voice, instead of raising it like the rest 
 of us ; she called her mother " Lady Placid," and her 
 brother " Sir Imperturbable." And so much for out- 
 lines. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd laid aside her personal ambition with her 
 maiden name : but she looked high for her children. 
 Perhaps she was all the more ambitious for them, that 
 they had no rival aspirant in Mrs. Dodd. She educated 
 Julia herself from first to last : but with true feminine 
 distrust of her power to mould a lordling of creation, 
 she sent Edward to Eton, at nine. This was slackening 
 her tortoise ; for at Eton is no female master, to coax 
 dry knowledge into a slow head. However, he made 
 good progress in two branches — aquatics and cricket. 
 
 After Eton came the choice of a profession. His 
 mother recognized but four ; and these her discreet 
 ambition speedily sifted down to two. For military 
 heroes are shot now and then, however pacific the cent- 
 ury ; and naval ones drowned. She would never expose 
 her Edward to this class of accidents. Glory by all 
 means ; glory by the pail ; but safe glory, please ; or she 
 would none of it. Remained the church and the bar : 
 and, within these reasonable limits, she left her dear boy
 
 HARD CASH. 27 
 
 free as air; and not even hurried; there was plenty of 
 time to choose : he must pass through the university to 
 either. This last essential had been settled about a 
 twelvemonth, and the very day for his going to Oxford 
 was at hand, when one morning Mr. Edward formally 
 cleared his throat : it was an unusual act, and drew the 
 ladies' eyes upon him. He followed the solemnity up 
 by delivering calmly and ponderously a connected dis- 
 course, which astonished them by its length and purport. 
 "Mamma, dear, let us look the thing in the face. 
 (This was his favorite expression, as well as habit.) I 
 have been thinking it quietly over for the last six months. 
 Why send me to the university ? I shall be out of 
 place there. It will cost you a lot of money, and no 
 good. Xow, you take a fool's advice : don't you waste 
 your money and papa's sending a dull fellow like me to 
 Oxford. I did bad enough at Eton. Make me an 
 engineer, or something. If you were not so fond of me, 
 and I of you, I'd say send me to Canada, with a pickaxe ; 
 you know I have got no head-piece." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd had sat aghast, casting Edward deprecating 
 looks at the close of each ponderous sentence, but too 
 polite to interrupt a soul, even a son talking nonsense. 
 She now assured him she could afford very well to send 
 him to Oxford, and begged leave to remind him that he 
 was too good and too sensible to run up bills there, like 
 the young men who did not really love their parents. 
 "Then, as for learning, why, we must be reasonable in 
 our turn. Do the best you can, love. We know you 
 have no great turn for the classics ; we do not expect 
 you to take high honors like young Mr. Hardie ; besides, 
 that might make your head ache : he has sad headaches, 
 his sister told Julia. But, my dear, an university educa- 
 tion is indispensable ; do but see how the signs of it 
 follow a gentleman through life, to say nothing of the
 
 28 HARD CASH. 
 
 valuable acquaintances and lasting friendships he makes 
 there : even those few distinguished persons who have 
 risen in the world without it, have openly regretted the 
 want, and have sent their children : and that says volumes 
 to me." 
 
 "Why, Edward, it is the hall-mark of a gentleman," 
 said Julia, eagerly. Mrs. Dodd caught a flash of her 
 daughter: "And my silver shall never be without it," 
 said she, warmly. She added presently, in her usual 
 placid tone, " I beg your pardon, my dears, I ought to 
 have said my gold." With this she kissed Edward ten- 
 derly on the brow, and drew an embrace and a little 
 grunt of resignation from him. " Take the dear boy and 
 show him our purchases, love ! " said Mrs. Dodd, with a 
 little gentle accent of half reproach, scarce perceptible 
 to a male ear. 
 
 "Oh, yes;" and Julia rose and tripped to the door. 
 There she stood a moment, half turned, with arching 
 neck, coloring Avith innocent pleasure. " Come, darling. 
 Oh, you good-for-nothing thing ! " 
 
 The pair found a little room hard by, paved with china, 
 crockery, glass, baths, kettles, etc. 
 
 " There, sir. Look them in the face ; and us, if you 
 pan." 
 
 "Well, you know, I had no idea you had been and 
 bought a cart-load of things for Oxford." His eye 
 brightened ; he whipped out a two-foot rule, and began 
 to calculate the cubic contents. " I'll turn to and make 
 the cases, Ju." 
 
 The ladies had their way ; the cases were made and 
 despatched ; and one morning the bus came for Edward, 
 and stopped at the gate of Albion Villa. At this sight 
 mother and daughter both turned their heads quickly 
 away by one independent impulse, and set a bad example.
 
 HARD CASH. 29 
 
 Apparently neither of them liad calculated on this 
 paltry little detail ; they were game for theoretical de- 
 partures ; to impalpable universities: and "an air-drawn 
 bus, a bus of the mind," would not have dejected for a 
 moment their lofty Spartan souls on glory bent; safe 
 glory. But here was a bus of wood, and Edward going 
 bodily away inside it. The victim kissed them, threw 
 up his portmanteau and bag, and departed serene as 
 Italian skies ; the victors watched the pitiless bus quite 
 out of sight ; then went up to his bedroom, all disordered 
 by packing, and, on the very face of it, vacant ; and sat 
 down on his little bed intertwining and weeping. 
 
 Edward was received at Exeter College, as young gen- 
 tlemen are received at college; and nowhere else, I hope, 
 for the credit of Christendom. They showed him a hole 
 in the roof, and called it an "Attic;" grim pleasantry! 
 being a puncture in the modern Athens. They inserted 
 him ; told him what hour at the top of the morning he 
 must be in chapel ; and left him to find out his other ills. 
 His cases were welcomed like Christians, by the whole 
 staircase. These undergraduates abused one another's 
 crockery as their own : the joint stock of breakables 
 had just dwindled very low, and Mrs. Dodd's bountiful 
 contribution was a godsend. 
 
 The new-comer soon found that his views of a learned 
 university had been narrow. Out of place in it ? why, 
 he could not have taken his wares to a better market ; 
 the modern Athens, like the ancient, cultivates muscle 
 as well as, mind. The captain of the university eleven 
 saw a cricket-ball thrown all across the ground ; he in- 
 stantly sent a professional bowler to find out who that 
 Avas ; through the same ambassador the thrower was 
 invited to play on club days ; and proving himself an 
 infallible catch and long stop, a mighty thrower, a swift
 
 30 HARD CASH. 
 
 runner, and a steady, though not very brilliant, bat, he 
 was, after one or two repulses, actually adopted into the 
 ■university eleven. He communicated this ray of glory 
 by letter to his mother and sister with genuine delight, 
 coldly and clumsily expressed ; they replied with feigned 
 and fluent rapture. Advancing steadily in that line of 
 academic study, towards which his genius lay, he won a 
 hurdle race, and sent home a little silver hurdle ; and 
 soon after brought a pewter pot, with a Latin inscription 
 recording the victory at "Fives" of Edward Dodd: but 
 not too arrogantly ; for in the centre of the pot was this 
 device, " The Lord is my illumination." The curate of 
 Sandford, who pulled number six in the Exeter boat, left 
 Sandford for Witney ; on this he felt he could no 
 longer do his college justice by water, and his parish by 
 land, nor escape the charge of pluralism, preaching at 
 Witney and rowing at Oxford. He fluctuated, sighed, 
 kept his Witney, and laid down his oar. Then Edward 
 was solemnly weighed in his jersey and flannel trousers, 
 and proving only eleven stone eight, whereas he had 
 been ungenerously suspected of twelve stone,^ was elected 
 to the vacant oar by acclamation. He was a picture in a 
 boat; and oh ! well pulled, Six ! was a hearty ejaculation 
 constantly hurled at him from the bank by many men of 
 other colleges, and even by the more genial among the 
 cads, as the Exeter glided at ease down the river, or 
 shot up it in a race. 
 
 He was now as much talked of in the university as 
 any man of his college, except one. Singularly enough, 
 that one was his townsman ; but no friend of his ; he 
 was much Edward's senior in standing, though not in 
 age ; and this is a barrier the junior must not step over 
 — without direct encouragement — at Oxford. More- 
 
 1 There was at this time a prejudice against weight, which has yielded to 
 experience.
 
 HARD CASH. 31 
 
 over, the college was a large one, and some of "the 
 sets" very exclusive : young Hardie was Doge of a stu- 
 dious clique, and careful to make it understood that he 
 was a reading man who boated and cricketed to avoid 
 the fatigue of lounging, not a boatman or cricketer who 
 strayed into Aristotle in the intervals of perspiration. 
 
 His public running since he left Harrow was as 
 follows : the prize poem in his fourth term : the sculls 
 in his sixth ; the Ireland scholarship in his eighth (he 
 pulled second for it the year before) ; stroke of the 
 Exeter in his tenth ; and reckoned sure of a first class 
 to consummate his twofold career. 
 
 To this young Apollo, crowned with variegated laurel, 
 Edward looked up from a distance. The brilliant creat- 
 ure never bestowed a word on him by land ; and by 
 water only such observations as the following : " Time, 
 Six ! " "Well pulled, Six ! " " Very well pulled, Six ! " 
 Except, by-the-by, one race, when he swore at him like 
 a trooper for not being quick at starting. The excite- 
 ment of nearly being bumped by Brasenose in the first 
 hundred yards was an excuse ; however, Hardie apolo- 
 gized as they were dressing in the barge after the race ; 
 but the apology was so stiff, it did not pave the way to 
 acquaintance. 
 
 Young Hardie, rising twenty-one, thought nothing 
 human worthy of reverence but intellect. Invited to 
 dinner, on the same d^y, with the Emperor of Russia, 
 and Avith Voltaire, and with meek St. John, he would 
 certainly have told the coachman to put him down at 
 Voltaire. 
 
 His quick eye detected Edward's character ; but was 
 not attracted by it : says he, to one of his adherents, 
 " What a good-natured spoon that Dodd is ; Phoebus, 
 what a name ! " Edward, on the othej* hand, praised 
 this brilliant in all his letters, and recorded his triumphs
 
 32 HARD CASH. 
 
 and such of his witty sayings as leaked through his own 
 set, to reinvigorate mankind. This roused Julia's ire. 
 It smouldered through three letters : but burst out when 
 there was no letter, but Mrs. Dodd, meaning, Heaven 
 knows, no harm, happened to say meekly, a propos of 
 Edward t "You know, love, we cannot all be young 
 Hardies." — " No, and thank Heaven ! " said Julia, defi- 
 antly. "Yes, mamma," she continued, in answer to Mrs. 
 Dodd's eyebrow, which had curved ; " your mild glance 
 reads my soul ; I detest that boy." Mrs. Dodd smiled. 
 "Are you sure you know what the word 'detest' means ? 
 and what has young Mr. Hardie done, that you should 
 bestow so violent a sentiment on him ? " 
 
 "Mamma, I am Edward's sister," was the tragic reply ; 
 then, kicking off the buskin pretty nimbly, " there ! he 
 beats our boy at everything, and ours sits quietly down 
 and admires him for it : oh ! how can a man let anybody 
 or anything beat him ! I wouldn't ; without a desperate 
 struggle." She clenched her white teeth and imagined 
 the struggle. To be sure, she owned she had never seen 
 this Mr. Hardie ; but, after all, it was only Jane Hardie's 
 brother, as Edward was hers. " And would I sit down 
 and let Jane beat me at things ? never! never ! never ! I 
 couldn't." 
 
 " Your friend to the death, dear ; was not that your 
 expression ? " 
 
 " Oh, that was a slip of the tongue, dear mamma ; I 
 was off my guard. I generally am, by the way. But 
 now I am on it, and propose an amendment. Now I 
 second it. Now I carry it." 
 
 " And now let me hear it." 
 
 "She is my friend till death — or eclipse; and that 
 means until she eclipses me, of course." But she added 
 softly, and with sudden gravity, "Ah ! Jane Hardie has 
 a fault which will always prevent her from eclipsing 
 your humble servant iu this wicked world."
 
 HARD CASE. 33 
 
 " What is that ? " 
 
 " She is too good. jNIuch." 
 
 "Par exemple / " 
 
 " Too religious." 
 
 " Oh, that is another matter." 
 
 '•'For shame, mamma! I am glad to hear it: for I 
 scorn a life of frivolity ; but then, again, I should not 
 like to give up everything, you- know." Mrs. Dodd 
 looked a little staggered, too, at so vast a scheme of 
 capitulation. But " everything " was soon explained to 
 mean balls, concerts, dinner-parties in general, tea-parties 
 without exposition of Scripture, races and operas, cards, 
 charades, and whatever else amuses society without per- 
 ceptibly sanctifying it. All these, by Julia's account, 
 j\Iiss Hardie had renounced, and was now denouncing 
 (with the young the latter verb treads on the very heels 
 of the former). " And, you know, she is a district 
 visitor." 
 
 This climax delivered, Julia stopped short and awaited 
 the result. 
 
 IVIrs. Dodd heard it all with quiet disapproval and cool 
 incredulity. She had seen so many young ladies healed 
 of so many young enthusiasms by a wedding-ring. But, 
 while she was searching diligently in her mine of lady- 
 like English — mine with plenty of water in it, begging 
 her pardon — for expressions to convey inoffensively and 
 roundabout her conviction that Miss Hardie was a little 
 furious simpleton, the post came and swept the subject 
 away in a moment. 
 
 Two letters ; one from Calcutta, one from Oxford. 
 
 They came quietly in upon one salver, and were opened 
 and read with pleasurable interest, but without surprise 
 or misgiving ; and without the slightest foretaste of their 
 grave and singular consequences. 
 
 Rivers deep and broad start from such little springs. 
 3
 
 34 HARD CASH. 
 
 David's letter was of unusual length for him. The 
 main topics were, first, the date and manner of his return 
 home. His ship, a very old one, had been condemned in 
 port : and he was to sail a tine new teak-built vessel, 
 the Agra, as far as the Cape ; where her captain, just 
 recovered from a severe illness, would come on board 
 and convey her and him to England. In future, Dodd 
 was to command one of the company's large steamers to 
 Alexandria and back. 
 
 " It is rather a come-down for a sailor, to go straight ahead 
 like a wheelbarrow, in all weathers, with a steam-i)ot and a 
 crew of coal-heavers. But then I shall not be parted from my 
 sweetheart sucli long dreary spells as I have been these twenty 
 years, my dear love : so is it for me to complain ? " 
 
 The second topic was pecuniary ; the transfer of their 
 savings from India, where interest was higher than at 
 home, but the capital not so secure. 
 
 And the third was ardent and tender expressions of 
 affection for the wife and children he adored. These 
 effusions of the heart had no separate place, except in 
 my somewhat arbitrary analysis of the honest sailor's 
 letter ; they were the under-current. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd read part of it out to Julia : in fact, all but 
 the money matter : that concerned the heads of the fam- 
 ily more immediately ; and cash was a topic her daughter 
 did not understand nor care about. And when Mrs. Dodd 
 had read it with glistening eyes, she kissed it tenderly, 
 and read it all over again to herself, and then put it into 
 her bosom as naively as a milkmaid in love. 
 
 Edward's letter was short enough, and IMrs. Dodd 
 allowed Julia to read it to her, which she did with 
 panting breath and glowing cheeks, and a running tire 
 of comments.
 
 HARD CASH. 35 
 
 Dear Mamma, —I hope 3-011 and Ju are quite well-- 
 
 " Ju," murmured j\Irs. Docld. plaintively. 
 
 — And that there is good news about papa coming home. 
 As for me, 1 have plenty on my hands just now : all this term 1 
 have been ("' training' scratched out, and another word put 
 in: c-r — oh, I know") cramming. 
 
 " Cramming, love ? " 
 
 " Yes, that is the Oxfordish for studying." 
 
 — For smalls. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd contrived to sigh interrogatively. Julia, 
 who understood her every accent, reminded her that 
 "smalls" was the new word for "little go." 
 
 — Cramming for smalls ; and now I am in two races at 
 Henley, and that rather puts the snaffle on reading and goose- 
 berry-pie (Goodness me !), and adds to my chance of being 
 ploughed for smalls. 
 
 "What does it all mean ? " inquired mamma : " 'goose- 
 berry-pie,' and 'the snaffle,' and 'ploughed' ? " 
 
 ""Well, the gooseberry-pie is really too deep for me, 
 but ploughed is the new Oxfordish for 'plucked.' 
 mamma ! have you forgotten that ? Plucked was vul- 
 gar, so now they are ploughed." 
 
 — For smalls ; but I hope I shall not be, to vex you and Fuss. 
 
 " Heaven forbid he should be so disgraced ! But what 
 has the cat to do with it ? " 
 
 "Nothing on earth. Puss? that is me. How dare 
 he ? Did I not forbid all these nicknames and all this 
 Oxfordish, by proclamation, last long ? " 
 
 " Last long ? " 
 
 " Hem ! last protracted vacation." 
 
 -— Dear mamma, sometimes I cannot help being down in 
 the mouth (why, it is a string of pearls) to think you havo
 
 30 HARD CASH. 
 
 not got a son like Hardie. (At this unfortunate reflection it 
 was Julia''s turn to sufi"er. She deposited the letter in her lap, 
 and fired up. " Now, have I not a cause to hate and scorn and 
 despise le petit Hardie ? ") 
 
 "Julia!" 
 
 " I mean, to dislike with propriety and gently to 
 abominate — Mr. Hardie, junior." 
 
 — Dear mamma, do come to Henley on the tenth, you and 
 Ju. The university eights will not be there, but the head 
 boats of the Oxford and Cambridge river will ; and the Oxford 
 head boat is Exeter, you know ; and I pull Six. 
 
 " Then I am truly sorry to hear it ; my poor boy will 
 overtask his strength ; and how unfair of the other young 
 gentlemen ; it seems ungenerous, unreasonable ; my poor 
 child against so many." 
 
 — And I am entered for the sculls as well, and if you and 
 "the Impetuosity" (Vengeance!) were looking on from the 
 bank, I do think I should be lucky this time. Henley is a long 
 way from Barkington, but it is a pretty place ; all the ladies 
 admire it, and like to see both the universities out and a 
 stunning race. (Oh, well, there is an epithet. One would 
 think thunder was going to race lightning, instead of Oxford 
 Cambridge.) 
 
 If you can come, please write, and I will get you nice 
 lodgings ; I will not let you go to a noisy inn. Love to Julia 
 and no end of kisses to my pretty mamma. 
 
 From your afi'ectionate son, 
 
 Edward Dodd. 
 
 They wrote off a cordial assent, and reached Henley 
 in time to see the dullest town in Europe ; and also 
 to see it turn one of the gayest in an hour or two ; so 
 impetuously came both the universities pouring into it 
 — in all known vehicles that could go their pace — by 
 land and water.
 
 HARD CASH. 3'/ 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 It was a bright hot day in June. Mrs. Dodd and 
 Julia sat half reclining, with their parasols up, in an 
 open carriage, by the brink of the Thames at one of its 
 loveliest bends. 
 
 About a furlong up stream a silvery stone bridge, just 
 mellowed by time, spanned the river with many fair 
 arches. Through these the coming river peeped si:)ark- 
 ling a long way above, then came meandering a,nd shin- 
 ing down ; loitered cool and sombre under the dark 
 vaults, then glistened on again crookedly to the spot 
 where sat its two fairest visitors that day, but at that 
 very point flung off its serpentine habits, and shot 
 straight away in a broad stream of scintillating water 
 a mile long, down to an island in mid-stream, — a little 
 fairy island with old trees, and a white temple. To curl 
 round this fairy isle the broad current parted, and both 
 silver streams turned purple in the shade of the grove, 
 then winded and melted from the sight. 
 
 This noble and rare passage of the silvery Thames 
 was the Henley race-course. The starting-place was 
 down at the island, and the goal was up at a point in the 
 river below the bridge, but above the bend where Mrs. 
 Dodd and Julia sat, unruffled by the racing, and enjoy- 
 ing luxuriously the glorious stream, the mellow bridge 
 crowded with carriages, whose fair occupants stretched 
 a broad band of bright color above the dark figures 
 clustering on the battlements, and the green meadows 
 opposite with the motley crowd streaming up and down. 
 
 Nor was that sense, which seems especially keen and
 
 38 HARD CASH. 
 
 delicate in women, left unregaled in the general bounty 
 of the time. The green meadows on the opposite bank, 
 and the gardens at the back of our fair friends, flung 
 their sweet fresh odors at their liquid benefactor gliding 
 by ; and the sun himself seemed to burn perfumes, and 
 the air to scatter them, over the motley, merry crowd 
 that bright, hot, smiling, airy day in June. 
 
 Thus tuned to gentle enjoyment, the fair mother and 
 her lovely daughter leaned back in a delicious languor 
 proper to their sex, and eyed with unflagging though 
 demure interest, and furtive curiosity, the wealth of 
 youth, beauty, stature, agility, gayety, and good temper, 
 the two great universities had poured out upon those 
 obscure banks ; all dressed in neat but easy-fitting 
 clothes, cut in the height of the fashion, or else in jerseys 
 white or striped, and flannel trousers, and straw hats, or 
 cloth caps of bright and various hues, betting, strolling, 
 laughing, chaffing, larking, and whirling stunted blud- 
 geons at Aunt Sally. 
 
 But as for the sport itself they were there to see, the 
 centre of all these bright accessories, " the racing," my 
 ladies did not understand it, nor try, nor care a hook- 
 and-eye about it. But this mild dignified indifference to 
 the main event received a shock at 2 r.M., for then the 
 first heat for the cup came on, and Edward was in it. 
 So then racing became all in a moment a most interest- 
 ing pastime, — an appendage to loving. He left to join 
 his crew. And soon after the Exeter glided down the 
 river before their eyes, with the beloved one rowing 
 quietly in it. His jersey revealed not only the working 
 power of his arms, as sunburnt below the elbow as a 
 gypsy's, and as corded above as a blacksmith's, but also 
 the play of the great muscles across his broad and 
 deeply indented chest. His oar entered the water 
 smoothly, gripped it severely, then came out clean, and
 
 HARD CASH. 39 
 
 feathered clear and tunably on the ringing rowlock : the 
 boat jumped and then glided at each neat, easy, power- 
 ful stroke. " Oh, how beautiful and strong he is ! " cried 
 Julia. " I had no idea." 
 
 Presently the competitor for this heat came down, the 
 Cambridge boat, rowed by a fine crew in broad-striped 
 jerseys. "Oh, dear! " said Julia, "they are odious and 
 strong in this boat too. I wish I was in it — with a 
 gimlet ; he should win, poor boy." 
 
 Which corkscrew staircase to honor being inaccessible, 
 the race had to be decided by two unfeminine trifles 
 called " speed " and " bottom." 
 
 Few things in this vale of tears are more worthy a 
 pen of fire than an English boat-race, as seen by the 
 runners, of whom I have often been one. But this race 
 I am bound to indicate, not describe. I mean to show 
 how it appeared to two ladies seated on the Henley side 
 of the Thames, nearly opposite the winning-post. These 
 fair novices then looked all down the river, and could 
 just discern two whitish streaks on the water, one on 
 each side the little fairy isle, and a great black patch on 
 the Berkshire bank. The threatening streaks were the 
 two racing boats : the black patch was about a huudred 
 Cambridge and Oxford men, ready to run and halloo with 
 the boats all the way, or at least till the last puff of 
 wind should be run plus hallooed out of their young 
 bodies. Others less fleet and enduring, but equally 
 clamorous, stood in knots at various distances, ripe for 
 a shorter yell and run when the boats should come up 
 to them. Of the natives and country visitors, those who 
 were not nailed down by bounteous Fate ebbed and 
 flowed up and down the bank with no settled idea, but 
 of getting in the way as much as possible, and of getting 
 knocked into the Thames as little as might be.
 
 40 HARD CASH. 
 
 There was a long uneasy suspense. 
 
 At last a puff of smoke issued from a pistol down at 
 the island ; two oars seemed to splash into the water 
 from each white streak, and the black patch was moving: 
 so were the threatening streaks. Presently was heard a 
 faint, continuous, distant murmur, and the streaks began 
 to get larger and larger and larger ; and the eight splash- 
 ing oars looked four instead of two. 
 
 Every head was now turned down the river. Groups 
 hung craning over it like nodding bulrushes. 
 
 Next the runners were swelled by the stragglers they 
 picked up ; so were their voices ; and on came the 
 splashing oars and roaring lungs. 
 
 Now the colors of the racing jerseys peeped distinct. 
 The oarsmen's heads and bodies came swinging back like 
 one, and the oars seemed to lash the water savagely, like 
 a connected row of swords, and the spray squirted at 
 each vicious stroke. The boats leaped and darted side 
 by side, and, looking at them in front, Julia could not 
 say which was ahead. On they came nearer and nearer, 
 with hundreds of voices vociferating, " Go it, Cam- 
 bridge ! " " Well pulled, Oxford ! " " You are gaining, 
 hurrah!" ''Well pulled. Trinity!" "Hurrah!" "Ox- 
 ford ! " " Cambridge ! " " Now is your time, Hardie ; 
 pick her up ! " " Oh, well pulled. Six ! " " Well pulled, 
 Stroke ! " " Up, up ! lift her a bit ! " " Cambridge ! " 
 " Oxford ! " " Hurrah ! " 
 
 At this Julia turned red and pale by turns. " 
 mamma!" said she, clasping her hands and coloring 
 high, " would it be very wrong if I was to prai/ for 
 Oxford to win ? " 
 
 Mrs. Dodd had a monitory finger ; it was on her left 
 hand : she raised it, and that moment, as if she had 
 given a signal, the boats, foreshortened no longer, shot 
 'out to treble the length they had looked hitherto, and
 
 HARD CASH. 41 
 
 came broadside past our palpitating fair, the elastic row- 
 ers stretched like greyhounds in a chase, darting forward 
 at each stroke so boldly they seemed flying out of the 
 boats, and surging back as superbly, an eightfold human 
 wave : their nostrils all open, the lips of some pale and 
 glutinous, their white teeth all clenched grimly, their 
 young eyes all glowing, their supple bodies swelling, the 
 muscles writhing beneath their jerseys, and the sinews 
 starting on each bare brown arm ; their little shrill cox- 
 swains shouting imperiously at the young giants, and 
 working to and fro with them, like jockeys at a finish ; 
 nine souls and bodies fllung whole into each magnificent 
 effort ; water foaming and flying, rowlocks ringing, 
 crowd running, tumbling, and howling like mad ; and 
 Cambridge a boat's nose ahead. 
 
 They had scarcely passed our two spectators, when 
 Oxford put on a furious spurt, and got fully even with 
 the leading boat. There was a louder roar than ever 
 from the banl^. Cambridge spurted desperately in turn, 
 and stole those few feet back ; and so they went fighting 
 every inch of water. Bang ! A cannon on the bank 
 sent its smoke over both competitors : it dispersed in a 
 moment, and the boats were seen pulling slowly towards 
 the bridge, Cambridge with four oars, Oxford with six, 
 as if that gun had winged them both. 
 
 The race was over. 
 
 But who had won, our party could not see, and must 
 wait to learn. 
 
 A youth, adorned with a blue and yellow rosette, cried 
 out, in the hearing of Mrs. Dodd, " I say, they are prop- 
 erly pumped, both crews are ; " then, jumping on to a 
 spoke of her carriage-wheel, with a slight apology, he 
 announced that two or three were shut up in the Exeter. 
 
 The exact meaning of these two verbs passive was not 
 clear to Mrs. Dodd, but their intensity was : she flut
 
 42 HARD CASH. 
 
 tered, and wanted to go to her boy and nurse him, and 
 turned two most imploring eyes on Julia, and Julia 
 straightway kissed her with gentle vehemence, and 
 offered to run and see. 
 
 " What, amongst all those young gentlemen, love ? 
 I fear that would not be proper. See, all the ladies 
 remain apart." So they kept quiet and miserable, after 
 the manner of females. 
 
 Meantime the Cantab's quick eye had not deceived 
 him ; in each racing-boat were two young gentlemen 
 leaning collapsed over their oars ; and two more, who 
 were in a cloud, and not at all clear whether they were 
 in this world still, or in their zeal had pulled into a bet- 
 ter. But their malady was not a rare one in racing 
 boats, and the remedy always at hand ; it combined the 
 rival systems: Thames was sprinkled in their faces, — 
 Homoeopathy ; and brandy in a teaspoon trickled down 
 their throats, — Allopathy. Youth and spirits soon did 
 the rest ; and, the moment their eyes opened, their 
 mouths opened, and, the moment their mouths opened, 
 they fell a-chaffing. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd's anxiety and Julia's were relieved by the 
 appearance of Mr. Edward, in a tweed shooting-jacket, 
 sauntering down to them, hands in his pockets, and a 
 cigar in his mouth, placidly unconscious of their solici- 
 tude on his account. He was received with a little 
 guttural cry of delight. The misery they had been in 
 about him was duly concealed from him by both, and 
 Julia asked him warmly who had won. 
 
 " Oh, Cambridge." 
 
 " Cambridge ! Why, then you are beaten ? " 
 
 "Rather." (Puff.) 
 
 "And you can come here with that horrible calm, and 
 cigar, owning defeat, and puffing tranquillity, Avith the 
 same mouth. Mamma, we are beaten. Beaten, actually."
 
 HARD CASH. 43 
 
 ''Never mind," said Edward kindly, "you have seen 
 a capital race, the closest ever known on this river, and 
 one side or other must lose." 
 
 " And if they did not quite win, they very nearly 
 did," observed Mrs. Dodd composedly ; then, with heart- 
 felt content, '•' He is not hurt, and that is the main thing." 
 
 "Well, my Lady Placid and Mr. Imperturbable, I am 
 glad neither of your equanimities is disturbed ; but 
 defeat is a bitter pill to me." 
 
 Julia said this in her earnest voice, and, drawing her 
 scarf suddenly round her, so as almost to make it speak, 
 digested her bitter pill in silence, during which process 
 several Exeter men caught sight of Edward, and came 
 round him, and an animated discussion took place. They 
 began with asking him how it had happened, and, as he 
 never spoke in a hurry, supplied him with the answers. 
 A stretcher had broken in the Exeter. No, but the 
 Cambridge was a much better built boat, and her bottom 
 cleaner. The bow oar of the Exeter was ill, and not tit 
 for work. Each of these solutions was advanced, and 
 combated in turn, and then all together. At last the 
 Babel lulled, and Edward was once more appealed to. 
 
 " Well, I will tell you the real truth," said he, " how 
 it happened." (Puff.) 
 
 There was a pause of expectation, for the young man's 
 tone was that of conviction, knowledge, and authority. 
 
 "The Cambridge men pulled faster than we did." 
 (Puff.) 
 
 The hearers stared and then laughed. 
 
 " Come, old fellows," said Edward, " never win a boat- 
 race on dry land ! That is such a jAain thing to do: 
 gives the other side the laugh as well as the race. I 
 have heard a stretcher or two told, but I saw none 
 broken. (Puff.) Their boat is the worst I ever saw : it 
 dips every stroke. (Puff.) Their strength lies in the
 
 44 HARD CASH. 
 
 crew. It was a good race and a fair one. Cambridge 
 got a lead and kept it. (Puff.) They beat us a yard or 
 two at rowing ; but, hang it all ! don't let them beat us 
 at telling the truth, not by an inch." (Puff.) 
 
 "All right, old fellow!" was now the cry. One ob- 
 served, however, that Stroke did not take the matter so 
 coolly as Six, for he had shed a tear getting out of the 
 boat. 
 
 " Shed a fiddlestick I " squeaked a little sceptic. 
 
 "No," said another, "he didn't quite shed it; his 
 pride wouldn't let him." 
 
 " So he decanted it, and put it by for supper," sug- 
 gested Edward, and puffed. 
 
 " None of your chaff. Six. He had a gulp or two, and 
 swallowed the rest by main force." 
 
 "Don't you talk; you can swallow anything, it seems." 
 (Puff.) 
 
 " Well, I believe it," said one of Hardie's own set. 
 " Dodd doesn't know him as we do. Taff Hardie can't 
 bear to be beat." 
 
 When they were gone, Mrs. Dodd observed, "Dear 
 me ! what if the young gentleman did cry a little, it 
 was very excusable ; after such great exertions it was 
 disappointing, mortifying. I pity him for one, and wish 
 he had his mother alive and here, to dry them." ^ 
 
 "Mamma, it is you for reading us," cried Edward, 
 slapping his thigh. "Well, then, since you can feel for 
 a fellow, Hardie xvas a good deal cut up. You know the 
 university was in a manner beaten, and he took the 
 blame. He never cried; that was a cracker of those 
 fellows. But he did give one great sob, that was all, 
 and hung his head on one side a moment. But then he 
 fought out of it, directly, like a man, and there was an 
 end of it, or ought to have been. Hang chatterboxes 1" 
 
 • Ob where, and oh where, was her Lindley Murray gone ?
 
 HARD CASH. 45 
 
 " And what did you say to console him, Edward ? " 
 inquired Julia, warmly. 
 
 "What, me? Console my senior and my stroke ? No, 
 thank you." 
 
 At tliis thunderbolt of etiquette both ladies kept their 
 countenances — this was their muscular feat that day — 
 and the racing for the sculls came on : six competitors 
 — two Cambridge, three Oxford, one London. The three 
 heats furnished but one gootl race, a sharp contest 
 between a Cambridge man and Hardie, ending in favor 
 of the latter ; the Londoner walked away from his oppo- 
 nent. Sir Imperturbable's competitor was impetuous, 
 and ran into him in the first hundred yards, Sir I. con- 
 senting calmly. The umpire, appealed to on the spot, 
 decided that it was a foul, Mr. Dodd being in his own 
 water. He walked over ^h. course, and explained the 
 matter to his sister, who delivered her mind thus : — 
 
 " Oh ! if races are to be won by going slower than the 
 other, Ave may shine yet : only, I call it cheating, not 
 racing." 
 
 He smiled unmoved ; she gave her scarf the irony 
 twist, and they all went to dinner. The business recom- 
 menced with a race between a London boat and the 
 winner of yesterday's heat, Cambridge. Here the truth 
 of Edward's remark appeared. The Cambridge boat 
 was too light for the men, and kept burying her nose ; 
 the London craft, under a heavy crew, floated like a cork. 
 The Londoners soon found out their advantage, and, 
 overrating it, steered into their opponents' water pre- 
 maturely, in spite of a warning voice from the bank. 
 Cambridge saw, and cracked on for a foul ; and for about 
 a minute it was anybody's race. But the Londoners 
 pulled gallantly, and just scraped clear ahead. This 
 peril escaped, they kept their backs straight, and a clear 
 lead to the finish. Cambridge followed a few feet in
 
 46 HARD CASH. 
 
 their wake, pulling wonderfully fast to the end, but a 
 trifle out of form, and much distressed. 
 
 At this both universities looked blue, their humble 
 aspiration being, first, to beat off all the external world, 
 and then tackle each other for the prize. 
 
 Just before Edward left his friends for "the sculls," 
 the final heat, a note was brought to him. He ran his 
 eye over it, and threw it open into his sister's lap. The 
 ladies read it. Its writer had won a j)rize poem, and so 
 now is our time to get a hint for composition : — 
 
 Dear Sik, — Oxford must win something. Suppose we go 
 in for these sculls. You are a hoi'se that can sta}^; Silcock is 
 hot for the lead at starting, I hear • su I mean to work him out 
 of wind ; then you can wait on us, and pick u the race. My 
 head is not well enough to-day to win, but I am good to pump 
 the cockney ; he is quick, but a little stale. Yours truly, 
 
 Alfred Hardie. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd remarked that the language was sadly 
 figurative ; but she hoped Edward might be successful, 
 in spite of his correspondent's style. 
 
 Julia said she did not dare hope it. " The race is not 
 always to the slowest and the dearest." This was in 
 allusion to yesterday's " foul." 
 
 The skiffs started down at the island ; and, as they 
 were longer coming up than the eight-oars, she was in a 
 fever for nearly ten minutes ; at last, near the opposite 
 bank, up came the two leading skiffs struggling, both 
 men visibly exhausted ; Silcock ahead, but his rudder 
 overlapped by Hardie's bow ; each in his own water. 
 
 "We are third," sighed Julia, and turned her head 
 away from the river, sorrowfully ; but only for a 
 moment, for she felt Mrs. Dodd start and press her arm ; 
 and lo! Edward's skiff was shooting swiftly across from 
 their side of the river. He was pulling just within him-
 
 HARD CASH. 47 
 
 self, in beautiful form, and with far more elasticity than 
 the other two had got left. As he passed his mother 
 and sister, his eyes seemed to strike tire, and he laid out 
 all his powers, and went at the leading skiffs hand over 
 head. There was a yell of astonisliment and delight 
 from both sides of the Thames. He passed Hardie, 
 who upon that relaxed hi" speed. In tliirty seconds 
 more he was even with Silcock; then came a keen 
 struggle: but the new-comer was ''the horse that could 
 stay ; " he drew steadily ahead, and the stern of his 
 boat was in a line with Silcock's person, when the gun 
 fired, and a fearful roar from the bridge, the river, and 
 the banks, announced that the favorite university had 
 picked up the sculls in the person of Dodd of Exeter. 
 
 In due course he brought the little silver sculls, and 
 pinned them on his mother. 
 
 While she and Julia were telling him how proud they 
 were, and how happy they should be, but for their fears 
 that he would hurt himself, beating gentlemen ever so 
 much older than himself, came two Exeter men with 
 wild looks hunting for him. " Dodd ! Hardie wants 
 you directly." 
 
 " Don't you go, Edward," whispered Julia ; " why 
 should you be at Mr. Hardie's beck and call ? I never 
 heard of such a thing. That youth will make me hate 
 him." 
 
 " Oh, I think I had better just go and see what it is 
 about," replied Edward ; " I shall be back directly." 
 And on this understanding he Avent off with the men. 
 
 Half an hour passed ; an hour ; two hours ; and he did 
 not return. Mrs. Dodd and Julia sat wondering what 
 had become of him, and were looking all around, and 
 getting uneasy, when at last they did hear something 
 about him, but indirectly, and from an unexpected quar- 
 ter. A tall young man in a jersey and flannel trousers,
 
 48 HARD CASH. 
 
 and a little straw hat, with a purple rosette, came away 
 from the bustle to the more secluded part where they 
 sat, and made eagerly for the Thames, as if he was a 
 duck, and going in. But at the brink he flung himself 
 into a sitting posture, and dipped his white handkerchief 
 into the stream, then tied it viciously round his brow, 
 doubled himself up, with his head in his hands, and 
 rocked himself like an old woman — minus the patience, 
 of course. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd and Julia, sitting but a few paces behind 
 him, interchanged a look of intelligence. The young 
 gentleman was a stranger; but they had recognized a 
 faithful old acquaintance at the bottom of his panto- 
 mime. They discovered, too, that the afflicted one was 
 a personage : for he had not sat tliere long when quite a 
 little band of men came after him. Observing his semi- 
 circularity and general condition, they hesitated a 
 moment, and then one of them remonstrated eagerly. 
 " For Heaven's sake, come back to the boat ! there is a 
 crowd of all the colleges come round us ; and they all 
 say Oxford is being sold; we had a chance for the four- 
 oared race, and you are throwing it away." 
 
 " What do I care what they all say ? '' was the answer, 
 delivered with a kind of plaintive snarl. 
 
 " But we care." 
 
 " Care then ! I pity you." And he turned his back 
 fiercely on them, and then groaned by way of half 
 apology. Another tried him: "Come, give us a civil 
 answer, please." 
 
 "People that intrude upon a man's privacy, racked 
 with pain, have no right to demand civility," replied the 
 sufferer, more gently, but sullenly enough. 
 
 " Do you call this privacy ? " 
 
 " It was, a minute ago. Do you think I left tlie boat, 
 and came here among the natives, for company ? and 
 noise ? With my head splitting."
 
 HARD CASH. 49 
 
 Here Julia gave Mrs. Dodd a soft pinch, to which 
 Mrs. Dodd replied by a smile. And so they settled who 
 this petulant young invalid must be. 
 
 "There, it is no use," observed one, sntto voce, "the 
 bloke really has awful headaches, like a girl, and then 
 he always shuts up this way. You will only rile him, 
 and get the rough side of his tongue." 
 
 Here, then, the conference drew towards a close. But 
 a Wadham man, who was one of the ambassadors, inter- 
 posed. " Stop a minute," said he. "Mr. Hardie, I have 
 not the honor to be acquainted with you, and I am not 
 here to annoy you, nor to be affronted by you. But the 
 university has a ^take in this race, and the university 
 expostulates through us : through me, if you like." 
 
 " Who have I the honor ? " inquired Hardie, assuming 
 politeness sudden and vast. 
 
 " Badham, of Wadham." 
 
 "Badham o' Wadham ? Hear that, ye tuneful nine! 
 Well, Badham o' Wadham, you are no acquaintance of 
 mine ; so you may possibly not be a fool. Let us assume 
 by way of hypothesis that you are a man of sense, a man 
 of reason as well as of rhyme. Then follow my logic. 
 Hardie of Exeter is a good man in a boat when he has 
 not got a headache. 
 
 "When he has got a headache, Hardie of Exeter is 
 not worth a straw in a boat. 
 
 "Hardie of Exeter has a headache now. 
 
 "JS'/-yo, the university would put the said Hardie into 
 a race, headache and all, and reduce defeat to a certainty. 
 
 "And, eryo, on the same premises, I, not being an 
 egotist, nor an ass, have taken Hardie of Exeter and his 
 headache out of the boat, as I should have done any 
 other cripple. 
 
 " Secondly, I have put the best man on the river into 
 
 this cripple's place. 
 
 4
 
 50 HARD CASH. 
 
 " Total, I have given the university the benefit of my 
 brains ; and the university, not having brains enough to 
 see what it gains by the exchange, turns again and rends 
 rae, like an animal frequently mentioned in Scripture ; 
 but, nota bene, never once with approbation." 
 
 And the afflicted rhetorician attempted a diabolical 
 grin, but failed signally, and groaned instead, 
 
 " Is this your answer to the university, sir ? " 
 
 At this query, delivered in a somewhat threatening 
 ■ tone, the invalid sat up all in a moment, like a poked 
 lion. " Oh, if Badham o' Wadliam thinks to crush me 
 auctoritate sua et tot'ius universltatis, Badham o' AVadham 
 may just tell the whole university to go and be d — tl, 
 from the chancellor down to the junior cook at Skim- 
 mery Hall, with my compliments." 
 
 " Ill-conditioned brute ! " muttered Badham of Wad- 
 ham. " Serve you right if the university were to chuck 
 you into the Thames." And with this comment they 
 left him to his ill-temper. One remained; sat quietly 
 down a little way off ; struck a sweetly aromatic lucifer ; 
 and blew a noisome cloud, but the only one which 
 betokens calm. 
 
 As for Hardie, he held his aching head over his knees, 
 absorbed in pain, and quite unconscious that sacred pity 
 was poisoning the air beside him, and two pair of dove- 
 like eyes resting on him with womanly concern. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd and Julia had heard the greatest part of 
 this colloquy. They had terribly quick ears, and noth- 
 ing better to do with them just then. Indeed, their 
 interest was excited. 
 
 Julia went so far as to put her salts into Mrs. Dodd's 
 hand with a little earnest look. But IVtrs. Dodd did not 
 act upon the hint ; she had learned who the young man 
 was ; had his very name been strange to her, she would 
 have been more at her ease with him. Moreover, his
 
 HARD CASH. 51 
 
 rudeness to the other men repelled her a little ; above 
 all, he had uttered a monosyllable, and a stinger; a 
 thorn of speech not in her vocabulary, nor even in 
 society's. Those might be his manners, even Avhen not 
 aching. Still, it seems a feather would have turned the 
 scale in his favor: for she whispered, "I have a great 
 mind ; if I could but catch his eye." 
 
 While feminine pity and social reserve were holding 
 the balance so nicely, and nonsensically, about half a 
 split straw, one of the racing four-oars went down close 
 under the Berkshire bank. " London ! " observed Hardie's 
 adherent. 
 
 " What, are you there, old fellow ? " murmured Har- 
 die, in a faint voice. " 'Now, that is like a friend, a real 
 friend, to sit by me, and not make a row. Thank you ! 
 thank you ! " 
 
 Presently the Cambridge four-oar passed : it was 
 speedily followed by the Oxford ; the last came down in 
 mid-stream, and Hardie eyed it keenly as it passed. 
 " There," he cried, " was I wrong ? There is a swing 
 for you : there is a stroke. I did not know what a treas- 
 ure I had got sitting behind me." 
 
 The ladies looked, and lo ! the lauded stroke of the 
 four-oar was their Edward. 
 
 " Sing out, and tell him it is not like the sculls. He 
 must fight for the lead, at starting, and hold it with his 
 eyelids when he has got it." 
 
 The adherent bawled this at Edward, and Edward's 
 reply came ringing back in a clear, cheerful voice, " We 
 mean to try all we know." 
 
 " What is the odds ? " inquired the invalid faintly. 
 
 "Even on London; two to one against Cambridge; 
 three to one against us." 
 
 " Take all my tin, and lay it on," sighed the sufferer. 
 
 " Fork it out, then. Llallo ! eighteen pounds ? Fancy
 
 62 HARD CASH. 
 
 having eighteen pounds at the end of term ; I'll get the 
 odds up at the bridge directly. Here's a lady offering 
 you her smelling-bottle." 
 
 Hardie rose and turned round, and sure enough there 
 were two ladies seated in their carriage at some distance : 
 one of whom was holding him out three pretty little 
 things enough, — a little smile, a little blush, and a little 
 cut-glass bottle with a gold cork. The last panegyric 
 on Edward had turned the scale. 
 
 Hardie went slowly up to the side of the carriage, 
 and took off his hat to them with a half-bewildered air. 
 Now that he was so near, his face showed very pale : the 
 more so that his neck was a good deal tanned ; his eye- 
 lids were rather swollen, and his young eyes troubled 
 and almost filmy with the pain. The ladies saw, and 
 their gentle bosoms were touched ; they had heard of 
 him as a victorious young Apollo trampling on all diffi- 
 culties of mind and body ; and they saw him wan, and 
 worn, with feminine suffering: the contrast made him 
 doubly interesting. 
 
 Arrived at the side of the carriage, he almost started 
 at Julia's beauty. It was sun-like, and so were her two 
 lovely earnest eyes, beaming soft pity on him with an 
 eloquence he had never seen in human eyes before ; for 
 Julia's were mirrors of herself: they did nothing by 
 halves. 
 
 He looked at her and her mother, and blushed, and 
 stood irresolute awaiting their commands. This sudden 
 contrast to his petulance with his own sex paved the 
 way. *' You have a sad headache, sir," said Mrs. Dodd ; 
 " oblige me by trying my salts." 
 
 He thanked her in a low voice. 
 
 "And, mamma," inquired Julia, "ought he to sit in 
 the sun ? " 
 
 " Certainly not. You had better sit there, sir, and 
 profit by our shade and our parasols."
 
 ■ ... -'M^v 
 
 TOOK OFF HIS HAT TO THEM.
 
 HARD CASH. 53 
 
 '' Yes, mamma, but you know the real place where he 
 ought to be is bed." 
 
 " Oh, pray don't say that," implored the patient. 
 
 But Julia continued, with unabated severit}', — 
 
 "And that is where he v/ould go this minute, if I was 
 his mamma." 
 
 "Instead of his junior, and a stranger," said Mrs. 
 Dodd, somewhat coldly, dwelling with a very slight 
 monitory emphasis on the " stranger." 
 
 Julia said nothing, but drew in perceptibly, and was 
 dead silent ever after. 
 
 " madam ! " said Hardie eagerly, " I do not dispute 
 her authorit}', nor yours. You have a right to send me 
 where you please, after your kindness in noticing my 
 infernal head, and doing me the honor to speak to me, 
 and lending me this. But if I go to bed, my head will 
 be my master. Besides, I shall throw away what little 
 chance I have of making your acquaintance ; and the 
 race just coming off !" 
 
 "We will not usurp authority, sir," said Mrs. Dodd 
 quietly ; " but we know what a severe headache is, and 
 should be glad to see you sit still in the shade, and 
 excite yourself as little as possible." 
 
 " Yes, madam," said the youth humbly, and sat down 
 like a lamb. He glanced now and then at the island, 
 and now and then peered up at the radiant young mute 
 beside him. 
 
 The silence continued till it was broken by — a fish 
 out of "water. An undergraduate in spectacles came 
 mooning along, all out of his element. It was Mr. 
 Kennet, who used to rise at four every morning to his 
 Plato, and walk up Shotover Hill every afternoon, wet 
 or dry, to cool his eyes for his evening work. With 
 what view he deviated to Henley has not yet been ascer- 
 tained ; he was blind as a bat, and did not care a button
 
 54 HARD CASH. 
 
 about any earthly boat-race, except the one in the ^Eneid, 
 even if he couhl have seen one. However, nearly all 
 the men of his college went to Henley, and perhaps 
 some branch, hitherto unexplored, of animal magnetism 
 drew him after. At any rate, there was his body ; and 
 his mind at Oxford and Athens, and other venerable but 
 irrelevant cities. He brightened at sight of his doge, 
 and asked him warmly if he had heard the news. 
 
 " No ; what ? Nothing Avrong, I hope ? " 
 
 " Why, two of our men are ploughed, that is all," said 
 Kennet, affecting with Avithering irony to undervalue his 
 intelligence. 
 
 " Confound it, Kennet, how you frightened me ! I 
 was afraid there was some screw loose with the crew." 
 
 At this very instant the smoke of the pistol was seen 
 to puff out from the island, and Hardie rose to his feet. 
 " They are off ! " cried he to the ladies, and after first 
 putting his palms together with a hypocritical look of 
 apology, he laid one hand on an old barge that was 
 drawn up ashore, and sprang like a mountain goat on to 
 the bow, lighting on the very gunwale. The position 
 was not tenable an instant, but he extended one foot 
 very nimbly and boldty, and planted it on the other gun- 
 wale ; and there he was in a moment, headache and all, 
 in an attitude as large and inspired as the boldest gest- 
 ure antiquity has committed to marble : he had even 
 the advantage in stature over most of the sculptured 
 forms of Greece. But a double opera-glass at his eye 
 " spoiled the lot," as Mr. Punch says. 
 
 I am not to repeat the particulars of a distant race 
 coming nearer and nearer. The main features are always 
 the same, only this time it was more exciting to our fair 
 friends, on account of Edward's high stake in it. And 
 then their grateful though refractory patient, an au- 
 thority in their eyes, indeed all but a river-god, stood
 
 HARD CASH. 65 
 
 poised in air, and in excited whispers interpreted each 
 distant and unintelligible feature down to them : — 
 
 " Cambridge was off quickest. 
 
 " But not much. 
 
 " Anybody's race at present, madam. 
 
 " If this lasts long, we may win. None of them can 
 stay like us. 
 
 " Come, the favorite is not so very dangerous. 
 
 " Cambridge looks best. 
 
 " I wouldn't change with either, so far. 
 
 " Kow, in forty seconds more, I shall be able to pick 
 out the winner." 
 
 Julia went up this ladder of thrills to a high state of 
 excitement ; and, indeed, they were all so tuned to racing 
 pitch, that some metal nerve or other seemed to jar 
 inside all three, when the piercing, grating voice of 
 Kennet broke in suddenly with, — 
 
 " How do you construe ynaTQifiaoyo; ? " 
 
 The wretch had burrowed in the intellectual ruins of 
 Greece the moment the pistol went off, and college chat 
 ceased. Hardie raised his opera-glass, and his first im- 
 pulse was to brain the judicious Kennet, gazing up to 
 him for an answer, with spectacles goggling like super- 
 natural eyes of dead sophists in the san. 
 
 " How do you construe ' Hoc age,' you incongruous 
 dog ? Hold your tongue, and mind the race. 
 
 "There, I thought so. Where's your three to one, 
 now ? The cockneys are out of this event, any way. 
 Go on, universities, and order their suppers ! " 
 
 "But which is first, sir?" asked Julia, imploringly. 
 " Oh, which is first of all ? " 
 
 " Neither. Never mind, it looks well. London is 
 pumped ; and if Cambridge can't lead hira before this 
 turn in the river, the race will be ours. Now, look out! 
 By Jove, we are ahead / "
 
 66 HARD CASH. 
 
 The leading boats came on, Oxford pulling a long, 
 lofty, sturdy stroke, that seemed as if it never could 
 compete with the quick action of its competitor. Yet 
 it was undeniably ahead, and gaining at every swing. 
 
 Young Hardie writhed on his perch. He screeched 
 at them across the Thames, "Well pulled, Stroke ! Well 
 pulled all ! Splendidly pulled, Dodd ! You are walking 
 away from them altogether. Hurrah ! Oxford forever, 
 hurrah ! " The gun went off over the heads of the 
 Oxford crew in advance, and even Mrs. Dodd and Julia 
 could see the race was theirs. 
 
 *' We have Avon at last," cried Julia, all on fire, " and 
 fairly ; only think of that ! " 
 
 Hardie turned round, grateful to beauty for siding 
 with his university. "Yes, and tke fools may thank 
 me, or rather my man Dodd. Dodd forever ! Hurrah ! " 
 
 At this climax even Mrs. Dodd took a gentle share in 
 the youthful enthusiasm that was boiling around her, 
 and her soft eyes sparkled, and she returned the fervid 
 pressure of her daughter's hand ; and both their faces 
 were flushed with gratified pride and affection. 
 
 " Dodd ! " broke in " the incongruous dog," with a 
 voice just like a saw's ; " Dodd ? Ah, that's the man 
 who is just ploughed for smalls." 
 
 Ice has its thunderbolts.
 
 HARD CASH. 67 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 WixNixG boat-races was all very fine ; but a hundred 
 such victories could not compensate ^[r. Kennet's female 
 hearers for one such defeat as he had announced, — a 
 defeat that, to their minds, carried disgrace. Their 
 Edward plucked ! At first they were benumbed, and 
 sat chilled, with red cheeks, bewildered between present 
 trium})h and mortification at hand. Then the color 
 ebbed out of their faces, and they encouraged each other 
 feebly in whispers, " Might it not be a mistake ? " 
 
 But unconscious Kennet robbed them of this timid 
 hope. He was now in his element, knew all about it, 
 rushed into details, and sawed away all doubt from their 
 minds. The sum was this. Dodd's general performance 
 was mediocre, but passable : he was plucked for his 
 logic. Hardie said he was very sorry for it. "What 
 does it matter ?" answered Kennet; "he is a boating 
 man." 
 
 " AVell, and I am a boating man. Why, you told me 
 yourself, the other day, poor Dodd was anxious about it 
 on account of his friends. And, by-the-by, that reminds 
 me, they say he has got two pretty sisters here." 
 
 Says Kennet briskly, "I'll go and tell him; I know 
 him just to speak to." 
 
 " What, doesn't he know ? " 
 
 " How can he know ? " said Kennet jealously ; " the 
 testamurs were only just out as I came away." And 
 with this he started on his congenial errand. 
 
 Hardie took two or three of his long strides, and fairly 
 collared him. " You will do nothing of the kind."
 
 58 HARD CASH. 
 
 " What, not tell a man when he's ploughed ? That is 
 a good joke." 
 
 "No; there's time enough. Tell him after chapel 
 to-morrow, or m chapel, if you must: but why poison 
 his triumphal cup ? And his sisters, too, why spoil their 
 pleasure ? Hang it all, not a word about ' ploughing ' 
 to any living soul to-day ! " 
 
 To his surprise, Rennet's face expressed no sympathy, 
 nor even bare assent. At this Hardie lost patience, and 
 burst out impetiK)usly, "Take care how you refuse me; 
 take care how you thwart me in this. He is the best- 
 natured fellow in college. It doesn't matter to you, and 
 it does to him ; and if you do, then take my name off the 
 list of your acquaintance, for I'll never speak a word to 
 you again in this world ; no, not on my death-bed, by 
 Heaven ! " 
 
 The threat was extravagant; but youth's glowing cheek 
 and eye, and imperious lip, and simple generosity, made 
 it almost beautifi;!. 
 
 Rennet whined, " Oh ! if you talk like that, there is 
 an end to fair argument." 
 
 "End it, then ; and promise me, upon your honor." 
 
 '•'Why not? What bosh! There, I promise. Now, 
 how do you construe xii//t»'07?o(crr?/c ?" 
 
 The incongruous dog (" I thank thee, Taff, for teaching 
 me that word ") put this query with the severity of an 
 inquisitor bringing back a garrulous prisoner to the 
 point. Hardie replied gayly, "Any way you like, now 
 you are a good fellow again." 
 
 "Come, that is evasive. My tutor says it cannot 
 be rendered by any one English word ; no more can 
 
 "Why, what on earth can he know about English? 
 ynaTQift(t()yo; is a Cormorant; xv/uivon()taTj]Q is a Skinflint; 
 and your tutor is a Duffer. Hush! Reep dark, now!
 
 HAKD CASH. 69 
 
 here he comes." And he went hastily to meet Edward 
 Dodd, and by that means intercepted him on his way to 
 the carriage. "Give me j'our hand, Dodd," he cried; 
 "you have saved the university. You must be stroke 
 of the eight-oar after me. Let me see more of you than 
 I have, old fellow." 
 
 "With all my heart," replied Edward, calmly, but 
 taking the offered hand cordially, though he rather 
 wanted to get away to his mother and sister. " We will 
 pull together, and read together into the bargain," con- 
 tinued Hardie. 
 
 "Read together ? You and I ? What do you mean ? " 
 
 "Well, you see, I am pretty well up in the higher 
 books; what I have got to rub up is my divinity and my 
 logic, especially my logic. Will you grind logic with 
 me ? Say 'Yes,' for I know you will keep your word." 
 
 " It is too good an offer to refuse, Hardie ; but now I 
 look at you, 3'ou are excited, wonderfully excited, with 
 the race, eh ? Now, just — you — wait — quietly — till 
 next week, and then if you are so soft as to ask me in 
 cool blood " — 
 
 "Wait a week?" cried the impetuous youth. "Xo, 
 not a minute. It is settled. There, we cram logic 
 together next term." 
 
 And he shook Edward's hand again with glistening 
 eyes and an emotion that was quite unintelligible to 
 Edward ; but not to the quick, sensitive spirits, who sat 
 but fifteen yards off. 
 
 "You really must excuse me just now," said Edward, 
 and ran to the carriage, and pvit out both hands to the 
 fair occupants. They kissed him eagerly, with little 
 tender sighs ; and it cost them no slight effort not to 
 cry publicly over " the beloved," " the victorious," " the 
 ploughed." 
 
 Young Hardie stood petrified. What ? these ladies
 
 60 HARD CASH. 
 
 Dodd's sisters ! Why, one of them had called the otlier 
 mamma. Good Heavens ! all his talk in their hearing 
 had been of Dodd; and Kennet and he between them 
 had let out the very thing he wanted to conceal, espe- 
 ciall}'- from Dodd's relations. He gazed at them, and 
 turned hot to the very forehead. Then, not knowing 
 what to do or say, and being, after all, but a clever boy, 
 not a cool "never unready " man of the world, he slipped 
 away, blushing. Kennet followed, goggling. 
 
 Left to herself, Mrs. Dodd Avould have broken the bad 
 news to Edward at once, and taken the line of consoling 
 him under her own vexation : it would not have been 
 the first time that she had played that card. But young 
 Mr. Hardie had said it would be unkind to poison Edward's 
 day, and it is sweet woman's nature to follow suit ; so 
 she and Julia put bright faces on, and Edward passed a 
 right jocund afternoon with them ; he was not allowed 
 to surprise one of the looks they interchanged to relieve 
 their secret mortification. But, after dinner, as the time 
 drew near for him to go back to Oxford, INfrs. Dodd became 
 silent and a little distraite ; and at last drew her chair 
 away to a small table, and wrote a letter. 
 
 In directing it she turned it purposely, so that Julia 
 could catch the address : " Edward Dodd, Esq., Exeter 
 Collcfje, Oxford^ 
 
 Julia was naturally startled at first, and her eye roved 
 almost comically to and fro the letter and its destination 
 seated calm and unconscious of woman's beneficent wiles. 
 But her heart soon divined the mystery ; it was to reach 
 him the first thing in the morning, and spare him the 
 pain of writing the news to them ; and, doubtless, so 
 Avorded as not to leave him a day in doubt of their for- 
 giveness and sympath}-. 
 
 Julia took the missive, unobserved by the destination, 
 and glided out of the room to get it quietly posted.
 
 HARD CASH. 61 
 
 The servant girl was waiting on the second-floor lodgers, 
 and told her so, with a significant addition ; viz., that the 
 post was in this street, and only a few doors off. Julia 
 was a little surprised at her coolness, but took the hint 
 with perfect good temper, and just put on her shawl and 
 bonnet, and went with it herself. The post-office was 
 not quite so near as represented ; but she was soon there, 
 for she was eager till she had posted it ; but she came 
 back slowly and thoughtfully ; here in the street, lighted 
 only by the moon, and an occasional gas-light, there was 
 no need of self-restraint, and soon her mortification be- 
 trayed itself in her speaking countenance. And to think 
 that her mother, on whom she doted, should have to write 
 to her son, there present, and post the letter ! This made 
 her eyes fill, and before she reached the door of the lodg- 
 ing, they were brimming over. 
 
 As she put her foot on the step, a timid voice addressed 
 her in a low tone of supplication. "May I venture to 
 speak one word to you, Miss Dodd ? one single word? " 
 
 She looked up surprised ; and it was young Mr. Hardie. 
 
 His tall figure was bending towards her submissively, 
 and his face, as well as his utterance, betrayed consider- 
 able agitation. 
 
 And what led to so unusual a renco7itre between a 
 young gentleman and lady who had never been intro- 
 duced ? 
 
 " The tender passion," says a reader of many novels. 
 
 Why, yes ; the tenderest in all our nature, — 
 
 Wounded vanity. 
 
 Naturally proud and sensitive, and inflated by success 
 and flattery, Alfred Hardie had been torturing himself 
 ever since he fled Edward's female relations. He was 
 mortified to the core. He confounded "the fools" (his 
 favorite synonym for his acquaintance) for going and 
 calling Dodd's mother an elder sister, and so not giving
 
 63 HARD CASH. 
 
 him a chance to divine her. And then that he, who 
 prided himself on his discrimination, should take them 
 for ladies of rank, or, at all events, of the highest fashion; 
 and, climax of humiliation, that so great a man as he 
 should go and seem to court them by praising Dodd of 
 Exeter, by enlarging upon Dodd of Exetei*, by offering 
 to grind logic with Dodd of Exeter. Who would believe 
 that this was a coincidence, a mere coincidence ? They 
 could not be expected to believe it; female vanity would 
 not let them. He tingled, and was not far from hating 
 the whole family ; so bitter a thing is that which I have 
 ventured to dub "the tenderest passion." He itched to 
 soothe his irritation by explaining to Edward. Dodd 
 was a frank, good-hearted fellow ; he would listen to 
 facts, and convince the ladies in turn. Hardie learned 
 where Dodd's party lodged, and waited about the door 
 to catch him alone. Dodd must be in college b}^ twelve, 
 and would leave Henley before ten. He waited till he 
 was tired of waiting; but at last the door opened. He 
 stepped forward, and out tripped Miss Dodd. ''Confound 
 it ! " muttered Hardie, and drew back. However, he 
 stood and admired her graceful figure and action, her 
 ladylike speed without bustling. Had she come back at 
 the same pace, he would never have ventured to stop 
 her: on such a thread do things hang; but she returned 
 very slowlv hanging her head. Her look at him and his 
 headache recurred to him, a look brimful of goodness. 
 She would do as well as Edward, better perhaps. He 
 yielded to impulse, and addressed her, but with all the 
 trepidation of a youth defying the giant etiquette for the 
 first time in his life. 
 
 Julia was a little surprised and fluttered, but did not 
 betray it. She had been taught self-command by example, 
 if not by precept. 
 
 "Certainly, Mr. Hardie," said she, with a modest com-
 
 HARD CASH. 63 
 
 posure a young coquette might have envied under the 
 circumstances. 
 
 Hardie had now only to explain himself; but instead 
 of that, he stood looking at her with silent concern. The 
 fair face she raised to him was wet with tears ; so were 
 her eyeSj and even the glorious eyelashes were fringed 
 with that tender spray ; and it glistened in the moonlight. 
 
 This sad and pretty sight drove the vain but generous 
 youth's calamity clean out of his head. " Why, you are 
 crj^ng ! Miss Dodd, what is the matter ? I hope noth- 
 ing has happened." 
 
 Julia turned her head away a little fretfully, with a 
 "No, no." But soon her natural candor and simplicity 
 prevailed : a simplicity not without dignity. She turned 
 round to him, and looked him in the face. "Why should 
 I deny it to you, sir, who have been good enough to sym- 
 pathize with us ? We are mortified, sadly mortified, at dear 
 Edward's disgrace ; and it has cost us a struggle not to 
 disobey you, and j-joiso^i his trhimplial cup with sad looks. 
 And mamma had to write to him, and console him against 
 to-morrow ; but I hope he will not feel it so severely as 
 she does ; and I have just posted it myself, and, when I 
 thought of our dear mamma being driven to such expedi- 
 ents, I — oh ! " And the pure young heart, having opened 
 itself by words, must flow a little more. 
 
 " Oh ! pray, don't cry," said 3'oung Hardie, tenderly ; 
 "don't take such a trifle to heart so. You crying makes 
 me feel guilty for letting it happen. It shall never occur 
 again. If I had only known, it should never have hap- 
 pened at all." 
 
 "Once is enough," sighed Julia. 
 
 " Indeed you take it too much to heart ; it is only out 
 of Oxford a plough is thought much of, especially a single 
 one, that is so very common. You see, Miss Dodd, an 
 university examination consists of several items; neglect
 
 64 HARD CASH. 
 
 but one, and Crichton liimself would be ploughed ; because 
 brilliancy in your other papers is not allowed to count ; 
 that is how the most distinguished man of our day got 
 ploughed for smalls. I had a narrow escape, I know, for 
 one. But, Miss Dodd, if you knew how far your brother's 
 performance on the river outweighs a mere slip in the 
 schools in all univ^ersity men's eyes, the dons' and all, 
 you would not make this bright day end sadly to Oxford 
 by crying. Why, I could find you a thousand men who 
 would be ploughed to-morrow with glory and delight to 
 win one such race as your brother has won two." 
 
 Julia sighed again. But it sounded now half like a 
 sigh of relief; the final sigh, with which the fair consent 
 to be consoled. 
 
 And, indeed, this improvement in the music did not 
 escape Hardie ; he felt he was on the right tack. He 
 enumerated fluently, and by name, many good men, 
 besides Dean Swift, who had been ploughed, yet had 
 cultivated the field of letters in their turn ; and, in short, 
 he was so earnest and plausible, that something like a 
 smile hovered about his hearer's lips, and she glanced 
 askant at him with furtive gratitude from under her 
 silky lashes. But it soon recurred to her that this was 
 rather a long interview to accord to " a stranger," and 
 under the moon ; so she said a little stiffly, " And was 
 this what you were good enough to wish to say to me, 
 Mr. Hardie ? " 
 
 "No, Miss Dodd, to be frank, it was not. My motive 
 in addressing you, without the right to take such a free- 
 dom, was egotistical. I came here to clear myself. I — 
 I was afraid you must think me a humbug, you knoAV." 
 
 "I do not understand you, indeed." 
 
 "Well, I feared you and Mrs. Dodd might think 1 
 praised Dodd so, and did what little I did for him, know- 
 ing who you were, and wishing to curry favor with you
 
 HARD CASH. Go 
 
 by all that ; and that is so underhand and paltry a Avay 
 of going to work, I should despise myself." 
 
 "O Mr. Hardie!" said the young lady, smiling, ''how- 
 foolish ! Why, of course we knew you had no idea." 
 
 " Indeed I had not ; but how could you know it ? " 
 
 " Why, we saw it. Do you think we have no eyes ? 
 ah ! and much keener ones than gentlemen have. It is 
 mamma and I who are to blame, if anybody ; we ought 
 to have declared ourselves ; it would have been more 
 generous, more — manly. But we cannot all be gentle- 
 men, you know. It was so sweet to hear Edward praised 
 by one who did not know us : it was like stolen fruit ; 
 and by one whom others praise ; so, if you can forgive 
 us our slyness, there is an end of the matter." 
 
 "Forgive you? you have taken a thorn out of my 
 soul." 
 
 " Then, I am so glad you summoned courage to speak 
 to me without ceremony. Mamma would have done 
 better though ; but, after all, do not I know her ? My 
 mamma is all goodness and intelligence ; and be assured, 
 sir, she does you justice ; and is quite sensible of your 
 disinterested kindness to dear Edward." With this she 
 was about to retire. 
 
 " Ah ! But you, IVIiss Dodd ? with whom I have taken 
 this unwarrantable libert}' ? " said Hardie, imploringly. 
 
 " Me, iNIr. Hardie ? you do me the honor to require 
 my opinion of your performances, including, of course, 
 this self-introduction ? " 
 
 Hardie hung his head ; there was a touch of satire in 
 the lady's voice, he thought. 
 
 • Her soft eyes rested demurely on him a moment ; she 
 saw he was a little abashed. 
 
 " My opinion of it all is that you have been very kind 
 to us, in being most kind to our poor Edward. 1 never 
 saw nor read of anything more generous, more manly. 
 6
 
 66 HARD CASH. 
 
 And then, so thoughtful, so considerate, so delicate ! So, 
 instead of criticising you, as you seem to expect, his 
 sister only blesses you, and thanks you from the very 
 bottom of her heart." 
 
 She had begun with a polite composure borrowed from 
 mamma; but, once launched, her ardent nature got the 
 better ; her color rose and rose, and her voice sank and 
 sank, and the last words came almost in a whisper; and 
 such a lovely whisper : a gurgle from the heart ; and, 
 as she concluded, her delicate hand came sweeping out 
 with a heaven-taught gesture of large and sovereign cor- 
 diality, that made even the honest words and the divine 
 tones more eloquent. It was too much ; the young man, 
 ardent as herself, and not, in reality, half so timorous, 
 caught fire ; and, seeing a white, eloquent hand rather 
 near him, caught it, and pressed his warm lipB on it in 
 mute adoration and gratitude. 
 
 At this she was scared and offended. " Oh ! keep that 
 for the Queen ! " cried she, turning scarlet, and tossing 
 her fair head into the air, like a startled stag, and she 
 drew her hand away quickly and decidedly, though not 
 roughly. He stammered a lowly apology ; in the very 
 middle of it she said quietly, *'Good-by, Mr. Hardie," 
 and swept with a gracious little courtesy through the 
 doorway, leaving him spellbound. 
 
 And so the virginal instinct of self-defence carried her 
 off swiftly and cleverly. But none too soon ; for, on 
 entering the house, that external composure her two 
 mothers, Mesdames Dodd and Nature, had taught her, 
 fell from her like a veil, and she fluttered up the stairs 
 to her own room with hot cheeks, and panted there like 
 some wild thing that has been grasped at and grazed. 
 She felt young Hardie's lips upon the palm of her hand 
 plainly ; they seemed to linger there still ; it was like 
 light, but live velvet. This, and the ardent look he had
 
 HARD CASH. 67 
 
 poured into her eyes, set the 3'oung creature quivering. 
 Nobody had looked at her so before, and no young gentle- 
 man had imprinted living velvet on her hand. She was 
 alarmed, ashamed, and uneasy. What right had he to 
 look at her like that ? What shadow of a right to go 
 and kiss her hand ? He could not pretend to think she 
 had put it out to be kissed ; ladies put forth the back of 
 the hand for that, not the palm. The truth was, he was 
 an impudent fellow, and she hated him now, and herself 
 too, for being so simple as to let him talk to her; mamma 
 would not have been so imprudent when she was a girl. 
 
 She would not go down, for she felt there must be 
 something of this kind legibly branded on her face : " Oh ! 
 oh ! just look at this young lady ! She has been letting 
 a young gentleman kiss the palm of her hand ; and the 
 feel has not gone off yet ; you may see that by her 
 cheeks." 
 
 But, then, poor Edward ! she must go down. 
 
 So she put a wet towel to her tell-tale cheeks, and 
 dried them by artistic dabs, avoiding friction, and came 
 down-stairs like a mouse, and turned the door-handle 
 noiselessly, and glided into the sitting-room looking so 
 transparent, conscious, and all on fire with beauty and 
 animation, that even Edward was startled, and, in a 
 whisper, bade his mother observe what a pretty girl she 
 was ; " Beats all the county girls in a canter." Mrs. 
 Dodd did look ; and, consequently, as soon as ever 
 Edward was gone to Oxford, she said to Julia, " You are 
 feverish, love ; you have been excited with all this. 
 You had better go to bed." 
 
 Julia complied willingly, for she wanted to be alone 
 and think. She retired to her own room, and went the 
 whole day over again ; and was happy and sorry, exalted 
 and uneasy, by turns ; and ended by excusing Mr. 
 Hardie's escapade, and throwing the blame on herself.
 
 68 HARD CASH. 
 
 She ought to have been more distant ; gentlemen were 
 not expected, nor, indeed, much wanted, to be modest. 
 A little assurance did not misbecome them. " Really, 1 
 think it sets them off,-' said she to herself. 
 
 Grand total : " What vmst he think of me ? " 
 
 Time gallops in reverie ; the town clock struck twelve, 
 and with its iron tongue, remorse entered her youthful 
 conscience. Was this obeying mamma ? Mamma had 
 said, " Go to bed," not, " Go up-stairs and meditate upon 
 young gentlemen." She gave an expressive shake of her 
 fair shoulders, like a swan flapping the water off its 
 downy wings, and so dismissed the subject from her 
 mind. 
 
 Then she said her prayers. 
 
 Then she rose from her knees, and, in tones of honey, 
 said, " Puss ! puss ! pretty puss ! " and awaited a result. 
 
 Thieves and ghosts she did not believe in, yet credited 
 cats under beds, and thought them neither " harmless " 
 nor " necessary " there. 
 
 After tenderly evoking the dreaded and chimerical 
 quadruped, she proceeded none the less to careful re- 
 search, especially of cupboards. The door of one resisted, 
 and then yielded with a crack, and blew out the candle. 
 " There now," said she. 
 
 It was her only light, except her beauty. They allotted 
 each Hebe but one candle, in that ancient burgh. " Well," 
 she thought, "there is moonlight enough to t<wdress by." 
 She went to draw back one of the curtains ; but in the 
 act she started back with a little scream. There was a 
 tall figure over the way watching the house. 
 
 The moon shone from her side of the street full on 
 him, and in that instant her quick eye recognized Mr. 
 Hardie. 
 
 "Well!" said she aloud, and with an indescribable 
 inflection ; and hid herself swiftly in impenetrable 
 gloom.
 
 HARD CASH. 69 
 
 But, after awhile, Eve's daughter must have a peep. 
 She stole with iuHiiite caution to one side of the curtain, 
 and made an aperture just big enough for one bright eye. 
 Yes, there he was, motionless. " I'll tell mamma," said 
 she to him, malignantly, as if the sound could reach him. 
 
 Unconscious of the direful threat, he did not budge. 
 
 She was unaffectedly puzzled at this phenomenon ; 
 and, not being the least vain, fell to wondering whether 
 he played the nightly sentinel opposite every lady's win- 
 dow, who exchanged civilities with him. "Because, if 
 he does, he is a fool," said she, promptly. But on re- 
 flection, she felt sure he did nothing of the kind habitu- 
 ally, for he had too high an opinion of himself; she had 
 noted that trait in him at a very early stage. She satis- 
 fied herself, by cautious examination, that he did not 
 know her room. He was making a temple of the whole 
 lodging. "How ridiculous of him ! " Yet he appeared 
 to be happy over it ; there was an exalted look on his 
 moonlit face : she seemed now first to see his soul there. 
 She studied his countenance like an inscription, and 
 deciphered each rapt expression that crossed it, and 
 stored them in her memory. 
 
 Twice she left her ambuscade to go to bed; and twice 
 curiosity, or something, drew her back. At last, having 
 looked, peered, and peeped, till her feet were cold, and 
 her face the reverse, she informed herself that the fool- 
 ish thing had tired her out. 
 
 " Good-night, ISLr. Policeman," said she, pretending to 
 bawl to him. "And, oh, do rain ! As hard as ever you 
 can." With this benevolent aspiration, a little too vio- 
 lent to be sincere, she laid her cheek on her pillow 
 doughtily. 
 
 But her sentinel, when out of sight, had more power 
 to disturb her. She lay and wondered whether he was 
 still there, and what it all meant, and whatever mamma
 
 70 HARD CASH. 
 
 would say ; and which of the two, she or he, was the 
 head culprit in this strange performance, to which earth, 
 slie conceived, had seen no parallel; and, above all, what 
 he would do next. Her pulse galloped, and her sleep 
 was broken, and she came down in the morning a little 
 pale. Mrs. Dodd saw it at once, with the quick materual 
 eye, and moralized : " It is curious ; youth is so fond of 
 pleasure ; yet pleasure seldom agrees with youth ; this 
 little excitement has done your mother good, who is no 
 longer young; but it has been too much for you. I 
 shall be glad to have you back to our quiet home." 
 Ah ! Will that home be as tranquil now ?
 
 HARD CASH. 71 
 
 CHAPTER 111. 
 
 The long vacation commenced about a month after- 
 wards, and Hardie came to his t'atlier's house, to read lor 
 honors, unimpeded by university races and college lect- 
 ures ; and the ploughed and penitent one packed up his 
 Aldrich and his Whately, the then authorities in logic, 
 and brought them home, together with a tirm resolution 
 to master that joyous science before the next examina- 
 tion for smalls in October. But, lo ! ere he had been an 
 hour at home, he found his things put neatly away in his 
 drawers on the feminine or vertical system — deep strata 
 of waistcoats, strata of trousers, strata of coats, strata of 
 papers — and his logic gone. 
 
 In the course of the evening he taxed his sister good- 
 humoredly, and asked " what earthly use that book was 
 to her, not wearing curls." 
 
 " I intend to read it, and study it, and teach you it," 
 replied Julia, rather languidly — considering the weight 
 of the resolve. 
 
 " Oh, if you have boned it to read, 1 say no more ; the 
 crime will punish itself." 
 
 " Be serious, Edward, and think of mamma I 1 cannot 
 sit with my hands before me, and let you be reploughed." 
 
 "I don't want. But — reploughed! haw, haw! but 
 you can't help me at logic as you used at syntax. Why, 
 all the world knows a girl can't learn logic." 
 
 "A girl can learn anything she chooses to learn. 
 What she can't learn is things other people set her down 
 to." Before Edward could fully digest this revelation, 
 she gave the argument a new turn, by adding fretfully,
 
 72 HARD CASH. 
 
 " And don't be so unkind, thwarting and teasing me ! " 
 and all in a moment she was crying. 
 
 " Halloa ! " ejaculated Edward, taken quite by sur- 
 prise. " What is the matter, dears ? " inquired maternal 
 vigilance from the other end of the room. " You did 
 not speak brusquely to her, Edward ? " 
 
 "No, no," said Julia eagerly. "It is I that am 
 turned so cross and so peevish. I am quite a changed girl. 
 Mamma, what is the matter with me ? " And she laid 
 her brow on her mother's bosom. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd caressed the lovely head soothingly with 
 one hand, and made a sign over it to Edward to leave 
 them alone. She waited quietly till Julia was composed, 
 and then said softly, " Come, tell me what it is ; nothing 
 that Edward said to you, for I heard almost every word, 
 and I was just going to smile, or nearly, when you — 
 And, my love, it is not the first time, you know ; I would 
 not tell Edward, but I have more than once seen your 
 eyes with tears in thenv." 
 
 " Have you, mamma ? " said Julia, scarcely above a 
 whisper. 
 
 " AVhy, you know I have. But I said to myself it was 
 no use forcing confidence. I thought I would be very 
 patient, and wait till you came to me with it; so now, 
 what is it, my darling ? Why do you speak of one thing 
 and think of another, and cry without any reason that 
 your mother can see ? " 
 
 "I don't know, mamma," said Julia, hiding her head. 
 " I think it is because I sleep so badly. I rise in the 
 morning hot and quivering, and more tired than I lay 
 down." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd inquired how long this had been. 
 
 Julia did not answer this question ; she went on, with 
 her face still hidden, "Mamma, I do feel so depressed 
 and hysterical, or else in violent spirits; but not nice
 
 HARD CASH. 73 
 
 and cheerful as you are, and I used to be ; and I go from 
 one thing to another, and can settle to nothing ; even in 
 church I attend by fits and starts : I forgot to water my 
 very flowers last night, and I heard Mrs. INlaxley out of 
 my window tell Sarah I am losing my color. Am I ? 
 But what does it matter ? I am losing my sense, for I 
 catch myself forever looking in the glass, and that is a 
 sure sign of a fool, you know ; and I cannot pass the 
 shops ; I stand and look in, and long for the very dearest 
 silks, and for diamonds in my hair." A deep sigh fol- 
 lowed the confession of these multiform imperfections ; 
 and the culprit half i-aised her head to watch their effect. 
 
 As for Mrs. Dodd, she opened her eyes wide with sur- 
 prise ; but at the end of the heterogeneous catalogue she 
 smiled, and said, "I cannot believe tJiat. If ever there 
 was a young lady free from personal vanity, it is my 
 Julia. Why, your thoughts run by nature away from 
 yourself ; you were born for others." 
 
 Her daughter kissed her gratefully, and smiled : bi;t, 
 after a pause, said sorrowfully, " Ah, that was the old 
 Julia, as seen with your dear eyes. I have almost for- 
 gotten her. The new one is what I tell you, dear mamma, 
 and that (with sudden ferv^or) is a dreamy, wandering, 
 vain, egotistical, hysterical, abominable girl." 
 
 " Let me kiss this m.onster that I have brought into 
 the world," said Mrs. Dodd. " And now let me think." 
 She rested her eyes calm and penetrating upon her 
 daughter ; and at this mere look, but a very searching 
 one, the color mounted and mounted in Julia's cheek 
 strangely. 
 
 "After all," said Mrs. Dodd, thoughtfully, "yours is 
 a critical age ; perhaps my child is turning to a woman ; 
 my rosebud to a rose." And she sighed. Mothers will 
 sigh at things none other ever sighed at. 
 
 " To a weed, I fear," replied Julia. " What will you
 
 74 HARD CASH. 
 
 say when I own I felt no real joy at Edward's return 
 this time ? And yesterday I cried, ' Do get away, and 
 don't pester me ! ' " 
 
 " To your brother ? Oh ! " 
 
 "Oh, no ! mamma, that was to poor Spot. He jumped 
 on me in a i-everie, all affection, poor thing." 
 
 " Well, for your comfort, dogs do not appreciate the 
 niceties of our language." 
 
 " I am afraid they do ; when we kick them." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd smiled at the admission implied here, and 
 the deep penitence it was uttered with. But Julia re- 
 monstrated, " Oh, no ! no ! don't laugh at me, but help 
 me with your advice : you are so wise and so experienced : 
 you must have been a girl before you were an angel. 
 You must know what is the matter with me. Oh, do pray 
 cure me ; or else kill me, for I cannot go on like this, all 
 my affections deadened, and my peace disturbed." 
 
 And now the mother looked serious and thoughtful 
 enough ; and the daughter watched her furtively. " Julia," 
 said Mrs. Dodd, very gravely, '' if it was not my child, 
 reared under my eye, and never separated from me a single 
 day, I should say this young lady is either afflicted with 
 some complaint, and it affects her nerves and spirits; 
 or else she has — she is — what inexperienced young 
 people call ' in love.' You need not look so frightened, 
 child ; nobody in their senses suspects you of imprudence 
 or indelicacy ; and therefore I feel quite sure that your 
 constitution is at a crisis, or your health has suffered 
 some shock : pray Heaven it may not be a serious one. 
 You will have the best advice, and without delay, I 
 promise you." 
 
 That very evening, Mrs. Dodd sent a servant into the 
 town with a note like a cocked-hat for Mr. Osmond, a 
 consulting surgeon, Avho bore a high reputation in Bark- 
 ington. He came ; and proved too plump for that
 
 HARD CASH. 75 
 
 complete elegance she would have desired in a medical 
 attendant, but had a soft hand, a gentle touch, and a 
 subdued manner. He spoke to the patient with a kind- 
 ness which won the mother directly ; had every hope of 
 setting her right without any violent or disagreeable 
 remedies ; but, when she had retired, altered his tone ; 
 and told Mrs. Dodd seriously she had done well to send 
 for him in time; it was a case of ''hyperaesthesia" 
 (Mrs. Dodd clasped her hands in alarm), " or, as unpro- 
 fessional persons would say, ' excessive sensibility.' " 
 
 Mrs. Dodd was somewhat relieved. Translation blunts 
 thunderbolts. She told him she had always feared for 
 her child on that score. But was sensibility curable ? 
 Could a nature be changed ? 
 
 He replied that the idiosyncrasy could not; but its 
 morbid excess could, especially when taken in time. 
 Advice was generally called in too late. However, here 
 the only serious symptom was the insomnia. " We must 
 treat her for that," said he, writing a prescription; "but 
 for the rest, active employment, long walks, or rides, 
 and a change of scene and associations, will be all that 
 will be required. In these cases," resumed Mr. Osmond, 
 "connected as they are with hypersemia, some medical 
 men consider moderate venesection to be indicated." 
 He then put on his gloves, saying, " The diet, of course, 
 must be antiphlogistic. Let us say then, for breakfast, 
 dry toast with very little butter — no coffee — cocoa 
 (from the nibs), or weak tea: for luncheon, beef-tea or 
 mutton-broth : for dinner, a slice of roast chicken, and 
 tapioca or semolina pudding. I would give her one glass 
 of sherry, but no more, and barley-water; it would be as 
 well to avoid brown meats, at all events for the present. 
 With these precautions, my dear madam, I think your 
 anxiety will soon be happily removed." 
 
 Julia took her long walks and light diet ; and became
 
 76 HARD CASH. 
 
 a little pale at times, and had fewer bursts of high spirits 
 ill the intervals of depression. Her mother went with 
 her care to a female friend. The lady said she would 
 not trust to surgeons and apothecaries ; she would have 
 a downright physician. " Why not go to the top of the 
 tree at once, and call in Dr. Short ? You have heard of 
 him ? '"' 
 
 " Oh, yes ; 1 have even met him in society ; a most 
 refined person : I will certainly follow your advice and 
 consult him. Oh, thank you, Mrs. Bosauquet ! Apropos, 
 do you consider him skilful ? " 
 
 " Oh, immensely ; he is a particular friend of my hus- 
 band's." 
 
 This was so convincing, that off went another three- 
 cocked note, and next day a dark-green carriage and pair 
 dashed up to Mrs. Dodd's door, and Dr. Short bent him- 
 self in an arc, got out, and slowly mounted the stairs. 
 He was six feet two, wonderfully thin, livid, and gentle- 
 man-like. Fine long head, keen eye, lantern jaws. At 
 sight of him ]\Irs. Dodd rose and smiled, Julia started and 
 sat trembling. He stepped across the room inaudibl}^, 
 and after the usual civilities, glanced at the patient's 
 tongue, and touched her wrist delicately. "Pulse is 
 rapid," said he. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd detailed the symptoms. Dr. Short listened 
 with the patient politeness of a gentleman, to Avhom all 
 this was superfluous. He asked for a sheet of note-paper, 
 and divided it so gently, he seemed to be persuading one 
 thing to be two ; he wrote a pair of prescriptions, and 
 whilst thus employed looked up every now and then and 
 conversed with the ladies. 
 
 " You have a slight subscapular affection. Miss Dodd : 
 1 mean a little pain under the shoulder-blade." 
 
 " Xo, sir," said Julia, quietly. 
 
 Dr. Short looked a little surprised ; his female patients
 
 HARD CASH. 77 
 
 rarely contradicted him. Was it for them to disown 
 things lie was so good as to assign them ? 
 
 "Ah !" said he, "you are not conscious of it: all the 
 better ; it must be slight ; a mere uneasiness : no more." 
 He then numbered the prescriptions 1, 2, and advised 
 Mrs. Dodd to drop No. 1 after the eighth day, and substi- 
 tute No. 2, to be continued until convalescence. He put 
 on his gloves, to leave. Mrs. Dodd, then, with some 
 hesitation, asked him humbly whether she might ask 
 him what the disorder was. "Certainly, madam," said 
 he, graciously ; "your daughter is laboring under a slight 
 torpidity of the liver. The first prescription is active, 
 and is to clear the gland itself, and the biliary ducts, of 
 the excretory accumulation ; and the second is exhibited 
 to promote a healthy normal habit in that important 
 part of the vascular system." 
 
 " .What, then, it is not hyperaisthesia ? " 
 
 " Hyperaesthesia ? There is no such disorder in the 
 books." 
 
 "You surprise me," said Mrs. Dodd. "Dr. Osmond 
 certainly thought it w^as hypereesthesia." And she con- 
 sulted her little ivory tablets whereon she had written 
 the word. 
 
 But, meantime, Dr. Short's mind, to judge by his 
 countenance, was away roaming distant space in search 
 of Osmond. "Osmond? Osmond? I do not know 
 that name in medicine." 
 
 "Oh, oh, oh!" cried Julia, "and they both live in the 
 same street ! " Mrs. Dodd held up her finger to this out- 
 spoken patient. 
 
 But a light seemed to break in on Dr. Short. " Ah ! 
 you mean Mr. Osmond: a surgeon. A very respectable 
 man, a most respectable man. I do not know a more 
 estimable person — in his grade of the profession — than 
 my good friend Mr. Osmond. And so lie gives opinions
 
 78 HARD CASH. 
 
 ill medical cases, does he ? " Dr. Short paused, appar. 
 eutly to realize this phenomenon in the world of mind. 
 He resumed in a different tone : " You may have mis- 
 understood him. Hypersesthesia exists, of course, since 
 he says so. But hypersesthesia is not a complaint ; it 
 is a symptom. Of biliary derangement. My worthy friend 
 looks at disorders from a mental point; very natural: 
 his interest lies that way, perhaps you are aware : but 
 profounder experience proves that mental sanity is 
 merely one of the results of bodily health : and I am 
 happy to assure you that, the biliary canal once cleared, 
 and the secretions restored to the healthy habit by these 
 prescriptions, the hyperaesthesia, and other concomitants 
 of hepatic derangement, will disperse, and leave our in- 
 teresting patient in the enjoyment of her natural intelli- 
 gence, her friends' affectionate admiration, and above all, 
 of a sound constitution. Ladies, I have the honor" — 
 and the doctor eked out this sentence by rising. 
 
 '•Oh, thank you, Dr. Short," said INlrs. Dodd, rising 
 with him ; "j-ou inspire me with contidence and grati- 
 tude." As if under the influence of these feelings only, 
 she took Dr. Short's palm and pressed it. Of the two 
 hands which met for a moment then, one was soft and 
 melting, the other a bunch of bones ; but both were very 
 white, and so equally adroit, that a double fee passed 
 without the possibility of a bystander suspecting it. 
 
 For the benefit of all young virgins afflicted like Julia 
 Dodd, here are the doctor's prescriptions : — 
 
 FOR MISS DODD. 
 
 ^ Pil: Hydi-arg: Chlor: Co: 
 
 singul : nocte sumend : 
 Decoc : Aloes Co: 5j 
 omni mane. 
 
 viii. Sept. J. S.
 
 HARD CASH. 79 
 
 FOR MISS DODD. 
 
 9 Conf : Sennae. 
 
 Potass : Bitartx'at. 
 Extr : Tarax : a a 5 ss 
 Misft: Elect: Cujus sum : 3j omni mane. 
 
 xviii. Sept. J. S. 
 Id : Anglice reddit : per me Carol : Arundin : 
 The same done into English bj me. C. R. 
 
 FOR MISS DODD. 
 
 1. O Jupiter, aid us ! Plummer's pill to be taken every 
 night. 1 oz. compound decoction of Aloes every morning. 
 
 8th Sept. J. S. 
 
 FOR MISS DODD. 
 
 2. O Jupiter, aid us ! with Confection of Senna, Bitartrate 
 of Potash, extract of Dandelion, of each half an ounce, let an. 
 electuary be mixed ; of which let her take one drachm every 
 morning. 
 
 18th Sept. J. S. 
 
 "Quite the courtier," said Mrs. Dodd, delighted. Julia 
 assented : she even added, with a listless yawn, " 1 had 
 no idea that a skeleton was such a gentleman-like thing ; 
 I never saw one before." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd admitted he was very thin. 
 
 "Oh, no, mamma; 'thin' implies some little flesh. 
 When he felt my pulse, a chill struck to my heart ; 
 Death in a black suit seemed to steal up to me, and lay 
 a finger on my wrist : and mark me for his own." 
 
 ^[rs. Dodd forbade her to give way to such gloomy 
 ideas; and expostulated firmly with her for judging 
 learned men by their bodies. " However," said she, " if 
 the good, kind doctor's remedies do not answer his ex- 
 pectations and mine, I shall take you to Loudon directly. 
 I do hope papa will soon be at home." 
 
 Poor Mrs. Dodd was herself slipping into a morbid
 
 80 HARD CASH. 
 
 state. A mother collecting doctors I It is a most fasci- 
 nating kind of connoisseiirship ; grows on one like 
 drink ; like polemics ; like melodrama ; like the MIL 
 lennium ; like anything. 
 
 Sure enough, the very next week she and Julia sat 
 patiently at the morning levee of an eminent and titled 
 London- surgeon. Full forty patients were before them, 
 so they had to wait and wait. At last they were ushered 
 into the presence-chamber, and Mrs. Dodd entered on 
 the beaten ground of her daughter's symptoms. The 
 noble surgeon stopped her civilly but promptly. " Aus- 
 cultation will give us the clew," said he, and drew his 
 stethoscope. Julia shrank and cast an appealing look 
 at her mother; but the impassive chevalier reported on 
 each organ in turn without moving his ear from the 
 keyhole. " Lungs pretty sound," said he, a little plaint- 
 ively : " so is the liver. Now for the — Hum ? There 
 is no cardiac insufficiency, I think, neither mitral nor 
 tricuspid. If we find no tendency to hypertrophy we 
 shall do very well. Ah, I have succeeded in diagnosing 
 a slight diastolic murmur; very slight." He deposited 
 the instrument, and said, not without a certain shade 
 of satisfaction that his research had not been fruitless, 
 " Tlie heart is the peccant organ." 
 
 ''0 sir! is it serious ?" said poor Mrs. Dodd. 
 
 " By no means. Try this (he scratched a prescription 
 which would not have misbecome the tomb of Cheops) ; 
 and come again in a month." Ting ! He struck a bell. 
 That "ting" said, "Go, live guinea; and let another 
 come." 
 
 " Heart-disease now ! " said Mrs. Dodd, sinking back 
 in her hired carriage, and the tears were in her patient 
 eyes. 
 
 "My own, own mamma," said Julia, earnestl}', "do 
 not distress yourself. I have no disease in the world,
 
 HAKD CASH. 81 
 
 but my old, old, old one, of being a naughty, wayward 
 girl. As for you, mamma, you have resigned your own 
 judgment to your inferiors, and that is both our misfort- 
 unes. Dear, dear mamma, do take me to a doctress next 
 time, if you have not had enough." 
 
 " To a what, love ? " 
 
 " A she-doctor, then." 
 
 "A female physician, child ? There is no such thing. 
 No ; assurance is becoming a characteristic of our sex ; 
 but we have not yet intrvided ourselves into the learned 
 professions, thank Heaven ! " 
 
 " Excuse me, mamma, there are one or two ; for the 
 newspapers say so." 
 
 " Well, dear, there are none in this country, happily." 
 
 "What, not in London ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Then what is the Tise of such a great, overgrown 
 place, all smoke, if there is nothing in it you cannot 
 find in the country ? Let us go back to Barkington this 
 very day, this minute, this instant ; eh, pray, pray ! " 
 
 "And so you shall — to-morrow. But you must pity 
 your poor mother's anxiety, and see Dr. Chalmers first." 
 
 "O mamma, not another surgeon ! He frightened me ; 
 he hurt me ; I never heard of such a thing; oh, please 
 not another surgeon." 
 
 " It is not a surgeon, dear ; it is the court physician." 
 
 The court physician detected " a somewhat morbid 
 condition of the great nervous centres." To an inquiry 
 whether there was heart-disease, he replied, " Pooh ! " 
 On being told Sir William had announced heart-disease, 
 he said, " Ah ! that alters the case entirely ^ He main- 
 tained, however, that it must be trifling, and would go 
 no further, the nervous system once restored to its 
 healthy tone. "0 Jupiter, aid us ! Blue pill and Seid- 
 litz powder."
 
 82 HARD CASH. 
 
 Dr. Kenyon found the mucous membrane was irritated 
 and required soothing. "0 Jupiter, etc." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd returned home consoled and confused ; Julia 
 listless and apathetic. Tea was ordered, with two or 
 three kinds of bread, thinnest slices of meat, and a little 
 blanc-raange, etc., their favorite repast after a journey ; 
 and whilst the tea was drawing, Mrs. Dodd looked over 
 the card-tray and enumerated the visitors that had called 
 during their absence : " Dr. Short — Mr. Osmond — ]\Irs. 
 Hetherington — Mr. Alfred Hardie — Lady Dewry — 
 Mrs. and IVIiss Bosanquet. What a pity Edward was 
 not at home, dear ; jVIr. Alfred Hardie's visit must have 
 been to him." 
 
 " Oh, of course, mamma." 
 
 "A very manly young gentleman." 
 
 "Oh, yes. ISTo. He is so riide." 
 
 '•Is he ? Ah, he was ill just then, and pain irritates 
 gentlemen : they are not accustomed to it, poor things." 
 
 "That is like you, dear mamma; making excuses for 
 one." Julia added, faintly, " But he is so impetuous." 
 
 " I have a daughter who reconciles me to impetuosity. 
 And he must have a good heart, he was so kind to my 
 boy." 
 
 Julia looked down smiling; but presently seemed to 
 be seized with a spirit of contradiction ; she began to 
 pick poor Alfred to pieces; he was this, that, and the 
 other ; and then so bold, she might say impudent. 
 
 IMrs. Dodd replied calmly that he was very kind to 
 her boy. 
 
 "0 mamma, you cannot approve all the words he 
 spoke." 
 
 "It is not worth while to remember all the words 
 young gentlemen speak, nowadays ; he was very kind to 
 my boy, I remember that." 
 
 The tea was now ready, and Mrs. Dodd sat down, and
 
 HAKD CASH. 83 
 
 patted a chair, with a smile of invitation for Julia to 
 come and sit beside her. But Julia said, " In one min- 
 ute, dear," and left the room, 
 
 AVhen she came back, she fluttered up to her mother 
 and kissed her vehemently, then sat down radiant. 
 "Ah!" said Mrs. Dodd, "why, you are looking yourself 
 once more. How do j-ou feel now ? Better ? " 
 
 '•' How do I feel ? Let me see : the world seems one 
 e-nor-raous flower-garden, and me, the butterfly it all 
 belongs to." She spake, and to confirm her words the 
 airy thing went waltzing, sailing, and fluttering round 
 the room, and sipping mamma every now and then on 
 the wing. 
 
 In this buoyancy she remained some twenty-four hours ; 
 and then came clouds and chills, which, iu their turn, 
 gave way to exaltation, duly followed by depression. 
 Her spirits were so uncertain, that things too minute to 
 justify narration turned the scale either way: a word 
 from ]\Irs. Dodd — a new face at St. Anne's Church look- 
 ing devoutly her way — a piece of town gossip distilled 
 in her ear by ]\[rs. Maxley — and she was sprightly or 
 languid, and both more than reason. 
 
 One drizzly afternoon they were sitting silent and 
 saddish in the drawing-room, Mrs. Dodd correcting the 
 mechanical errors in a drawing of Julia's, and admiring 
 the rare dash and figure, and Julia doggedly studying 
 Dr. AYhately's logic, with now and then a sigh, when 
 suddenly a trumpet seemed to articulate in the little 
 hall : " Mestress Doedd at home ? " 
 
 The lady rose from her seat, and said w4th a smile of 
 pleasure, " I hear a voice." 
 
 The door opened, and in darted a gray-headed man, 
 with handsome but strongly marked features, laughing 
 and shouting like a schoolboy broke loose. He cried 
 out, " Aha ! I've found y' out at last." Mrs. Dodd glided
 
 84 HARD CASH. 
 
 to meet hiiu, and put out both her hands, the palms 
 downwards, with the prettiest air of ladylike cordiality ; 
 he shook them heartily. " The vagabins said y' had left 
 the town ; but y' had only flitted from the quay to the 
 subbubs ; 'twas a pashint put me on the scint of ye. 
 And how are y' all these years ? an' how's Sawmill ?" 
 
 " Sawmill ! What is that ? " 
 
 "It's just your husband. Isn't his name Sawmill ?" 
 
 " Dear, no ! Have you forgotten ? — David." 
 
 " Ou, ay. I knew it was some Scripcher Petrarch or 
 another, Daavid, or Naathan, or Sawmill. And how is 
 he, and where is he ? " 
 
 JVIrs. Dodd replied that he was on the seas, but 
 expect — 
 
 "Then I wish him well oif 'em, confound 'em onean- 
 nall ! Halloa ! why, this will be the little girl grown up 
 int' a wumman while ye look round." 
 
 " Yes, my good friend ; and her mother's darling." 
 
 "And she's a bonny lass, I can tell ye. But no freend. 
 to the dockers, I see." 
 
 " Ah ! " said jVIrs. Dodd sadly, " looks are deceitful ; 
 she is under medical advice at this very" — 
 
 " Well, that won't hurt her, unless she takes it." And 
 he burst into a ringing laugh : but, in the middle of it, 
 stopped dead short, and his face elongated. " Lordsake, 
 mad'm," said he, impressively, "mind what y' are at, 
 though: Barkton's just a trap for fanciful femuls: 
 there's a n'oily ass called Osmond, and a canting cut- 
 throat called Stephenson, and a genteel, cadaveris old 
 assassin called Short, as long as a May-pole, they'd soon 
 take the rose out of Miss Floree's cheek here. Why, 
 they'd starve Cu})id, an' veneseck Venus, an' blister 
 Pomonee, the vagabins." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd looked a little confused, and exchanged 
 speaking glances with Julia. However, she said,
 
 HARD CASH. 85 
 
 calmly, ''I have consulted Mr. Osmond, and Dr. Short; 
 but have not relied on them alone. I have taken her to 
 Sir William Best. And to Dr. Chalmers. And to Dr. 
 Kenyon." And she felt invulnerable behind her phalanx 
 of learning and reputation. 
 
 " Good Hivens ! " roared the visitor, "what a gauntlet 
 o' gabies for one girl to run ; and come out alive ! And 
 the pieter of health. My faith, INIiss Floree, y' are 
 tougher than ye look." 
 
 " My daughter's name is Julia," observed iMrs. Dodd, 
 a little haughtily ; but instantly recovering herself, she 
 said, " This is Dr. Sampson, love, an old friend of your 
 mother's." 
 
 " And th' author an' invintor of th' great chrono- 
 thairnial therey o' midicine, th' unity perriodicity an' 
 remittency of all disease," put in the visitor, with such 
 prodigious swiftness of elocution, that the words went 
 tumbling over one another like railway carriages out on 
 pleasure, and the sentence was a pile of loud, indistinct 
 syllables. 
 
 Julia's lovely eyes dilated at this clishmaclaver, and 
 she bowed coldly. Dr. Sampson had revealed in this 
 short interview nearly all the characteristics of voice, 
 speech, and manner, she had been taught from infancy 
 to shun : boisterous, gesticulatory, idiomatic : and had 
 taken the discourse out of her mamma's mouth twice ; 
 now Albion Villa was a Red Indian hut in one respect : 
 here nobody interrupted. 
 
 ]\rrs. Dodd had little personal egotism, but she had a 
 mother's, and could not spare this opportunit}- of adding 
 another doctor to her collection ; so she said, hurriedly, 
 " Will you permit me to show you what your learned 
 confreres have prescribed her ? " Julia sighed aloud, 
 and deprecated the subject with earnest furtive signs ; 
 Mrs. Dodd would not see them. Xow, Dr. Sampson was
 
 86 HARD CASH. 
 
 himself afflicted with what I shall venture to call a 
 mental ailment; to wit, a furious intolerance of other 
 men's opinions ; he had not even patience to hear them. 
 " Mai — dear — mad'm," said he, hastily, " when you've 
 told me their names, that's enough. Short treats her for 
 liver, Sir William goes in for lung disease or heart, 
 Chalmers sis it's the nairves, and Kinyon the mookis 
 membrin ; and /say they are fools and lyres all four." 
 
 "Julia! " ejaculated Mrs. Dodd, "this is very extraor- 
 dinary." 
 
 " No, it is not extraordinary," cried Dr. Sampson, 
 defiantly; "nothing is extraordinary. D'ye think I've 
 known these shallow men thirty years, and not plumbed 
 'urn ? " 
 
 " Shallow, my good friend ? Excuse me ! they are 
 the ablest men in your own branch of your own learned 
 profession." 
 
 " Th' ablest ? Oh, you mean the money-makingest ; 
 now listen me ! our lairned profession is a rascally one. 
 It is like a barrel of beer. What rises to the top?" 
 Here he paused for a moment, then answered himself 
 furiously, "The Scum!" 
 
 This blast blown, he moderated a little. " Look see ! " 
 said he, " up to three or four thousand a year, a docker 
 is often an honest man, and sometimes knows something 
 of midiclne ; not much, because it is not taught any- 
 where ; but, if he is making over five thousand, he must 
 be a rogue or else a fool ; either he has booed an' booed, 
 and cript an' crawled, int' wholesale collusion with th' 
 apothecary an' th' accoucheur — the two jockeys that 
 drive John Bull's faemily coach — and they are sucking 
 the pashint togither, like a leash o' leeches; or else he 
 has turned spicialist; has tacked his name to some 
 poplar disorder, real or imaginary; it needn't exist to be 
 poplar. Now, those four you have been to are spicialists,
 
 HARD CASH. 87 
 
 and that means monomaniacs — their buddies exspatiate 
 in West-ind squares, but their souls dwell in a n'alley, 
 ivery man jacik of 'em ; Aberford's in Stomich Alley, 
 Chalmers's in Nairve Court, Short's niver stirs out o' 
 Liver Lane, Paul's is stuck fast in Kidney Close, 
 Kinyon's in Mookis Membrin INIews, and Hibbard's in 
 Lung Passage. Look see ! nixt time y' are out of sorts, 
 stid o' consulting three bats an' a n'owl at a guinea the 
 piece, send direct to me, and Pll give y' all their 
 opinions, and all their prescriptions, gratis. And 
 deevilich dear ye'U find 'em at the price, if ye swallow 
 'm." 
 
 INfrs. Dodd thanked him coldly for the offer, but said 
 she would be more grateful if he would show his supe- 
 riority to persons of known ability, by just curing her 
 daughter on the spot. 
 
 "Well, I will," said he, carelessly; and all his fire 
 died out of him. " Put out your tongue ! — Now your 
 pulse ! " 
 
 Mrs. Dodd knew her man (ladies are very apt to 
 fathom their male acquaintance — too apt, /think) ; and, 
 to pin him to the only medical theme which interested 
 her, seized the opportunity while he was in actual con- 
 tact with Julia's wrist, and rapidly enumerated her 
 symptoms, and also told him what Mr. Osmond had said 
 about hyperaesthesia. 
 
 " Goose Greece ! " barked Sampson, loud, clear, and 
 sharp as an irritated watch-dog; but this one bow-wow 
 vented, he was silent as abruptly. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd smiled, and proceeded to hyperaemia, and 
 thence to the antiphlogistic regimen. 
 
 At that unhappy adjective, Sampson jumped up, cast 
 away his patient's hand, forgot her existence — she was 
 but a charming individual — and galloped into his native 
 region, generalities.
 
 88 HARD CASH. 
 
 " Antiphlogistic ! Mai — clear — mad'm, that one long 
 fragmint of ass's jaw has slain a million. Adapted to 
 the weakness of human nature, which receives with 
 rivirince ideas however childish, that come draped in 
 long-tailed and exotic words, that aasinine polysyllable 
 has riconciled the modern mind to the chimeras of th' 
 ancients, and ontbutchered the guillotine, the musket, 
 and the sword ; ay, and but for me 
 
 " Had ban-ed the door 
 For cintui'ies more, 
 
 on the great coming sceince, the sceince of healing dis- 
 eases instead of defining and dividing 'em and lengthen- 
 ing their names and their durashin, and shortening 
 nothing but the pashint. Th' antiphlogistic therey is 
 this: That disease is fiery, and that any artificial exhaus- 
 tion of vital force must cool the system, and reduce the 
 morbid fire, called, in their donkey Latin, ' fiamma,' and 
 in their compound donkey Latin, 'inflammation,' and, in 
 their goose Greece, ' phlogosis,' ' phlegmon,' etc. And 
 accordingly th' antiphlogistic practice is, to cool the sick 
 man by bleeding him, and, when blid, either to rebleed 
 him with a change of instrument, bites and stabs instid 
 of gashes, or else to rake the blid, and then blister the 
 blid and raked, and then push mercury till the teeth of 
 the blid, raked and blistered shake in their sockets, and 
 to starve the blid, purged, salivated, blistered wretch 
 from first to last. This is the antiphlogistic system. It 
 is seldom carried out entire, because the pashint at the 
 first or second link in their rimedial chain, expires ; or 
 else gives such plain signs of sinking, that even these 
 ass-ass-ins take fright, and try t' undo their own work, 
 'not disease's, by tonics an' turtle, and stimulants : which 
 things given at the riglit time instead of tlie wrong, 
 given when the pashint was merely weakened by hia
 
 HARD CASH. 89 
 
 disorder, and not enfeebled by their didly rimedies, 
 would have cut th' ailment down in a few hours." 
 
 " Dear me ! " said Mrs. Dodd ; '• and now, my good 
 friend, with respect to viy daughter ^' — 
 
 "N' list me!" clashed Sampson; '^ye're goen to 
 fathom th' antiphlogistics, since they still survive an' 
 slay in holes and corners like Barkton and d'ltly ; I've 
 driven the vamperes out o' the cintres o' civilization. 
 Begin with their coolers ! Exhaustion is not a cooler, it 
 is a feverer, and they know it ; the way parrots know 
 sentences. Why are we all more or less feverish at 
 night ? because we are weaker. Starvation is no cooler, 
 it is an inflamer, and they know it, as parrots know 
 trutl^s, but can't apply them ; for they know that burn- 
 ing fever rages in ivery town, street, camp, where famine 
 is. As for bloodletting, their prime cooler, it is inflam- 
 matory; and they knoAv it (parrot-wise), for the thump- 
 ing heart, and bounding pulse, of pashints blid by 
 butchers in black, and bullocks blid by butchers in blue, 
 prove it ; and they have recorded this in all their books ; 
 yet stabbed, and bit, and starved, and mercuried, and 
 murdered, on. But mind ye, all their sham coolers are 
 real weakeners (I wonder they didn't inventory Satin 
 and his brimstin lake among their refrijrators), and this 
 is the point whence t' appreciate their imbecility, and 
 the sairvice I have rendered mankind in been th' first t' 
 attack their banded school, at a time it seemed imprig- 
 nable." 
 
 " Ah, this promises to be very interesting," sighed 
 Mrs. Dodd ; '' and before you enter on so large a field, 
 perhaps it would be as well to dispose of a little 
 matter which lies at my heart. Here is v^y i^oor daugh- 
 ter" — 
 
 " Klissmee ! A human bean is in a constant state of 
 flux and reflux ; his component particles move, change.
 
 90 HARD CASH. 
 
 disappear, and are renewed; liis life is a round of exhaus- 
 tior. and repair. Of this repair the brain is the sovereign 
 ajint by night and day ; and the blood the great living 
 material ; and digestible food th' indispensible supply. 
 And this balance of exhaustion and repair is too nice to 
 tamper with ; disn't a single sleepless night, or dinner- 
 less day, write some pallor on the face, and tell against 
 the buddy ? So does a single excessive perspiration, a 
 trifling diary, or a cut finger, though it takes but half an 
 ounce of blood out of the system. And what is the cause 
 of that rare ivint — which occurs only to pashints that 
 can't afford docking — Dith from old age? Think ye 
 the man really succumms under years, or is mowed down 
 by time ? Nay, yon's just potry an' bosh. Nashins 
 have been thinned by the lancet, but niver by the 
 scythe ; and years are not forces, but misures of events. 
 No, Centenarius decays and dies, bekase his bodil' expin- 
 diture goes on, and his bodil' income falls off by failure 
 of the reparative and reproductive forces. And now sup- 
 pose bodil' exhaustion and repair were a mere matter of 
 pecuniary, instead of vital, economy ; what would you 
 say to the steward or housekeeper, who, to balance your 
 accounts and keep you solvent, should open every known 
 channel of expinse with one hand, and with the other — 
 stop the supplies ? Yet this is how the dockers for 
 thirty cinturies have burned th' human candle at both 
 ends, yet wondered the light of life expired under their 
 hands." 
 
 "It seems irrational. Then in my daurjlder'' s case you 
 would " — 
 
 "Looksee! A pashint falls sick. What haps directly? 
 Why, the balance is troubled, and exhaustion exceeds 
 repair. For proof, obsairve the buddy when disease is 
 fresh ! 
 
 " And you will always find a loss of flesh.
 
 HARD CASH. 91 
 
 To put it economikl}', and then you must understand it, 
 bein' a housekeeper — 
 
 " Whativer the disease. Us form or essence, 
 Expinditure goes on, and income lessens. 
 
 But to this sick and therefore weak man, comes a docker 
 purblind with cinturies of cant, pricident, blood and 
 goose Greece ; imagines him a fiery pervalid, though the 
 common-sense of mankind, through its interpreter com- 
 mon language, pronounces him an 'invalid,' gashes him 
 with a lancet, spills out the great liquid material of all 
 repair by the gallon, and fells this weak man, wounded 
 now, and pale, and fainting, with dith stamped on his 
 face, to th' earth, like a bayoneted soldier or a slaugh- 
 tered ox. If the weak man, wounded thus, and weakened, 
 survives, then the chartered thugs who have drained him 
 by the bung-hole, turn to and drain him by the spigot ; 
 they blister him, and then calomel him ; and lest nature 
 should have the ghost of a chance to counterbalance 
 these frightful outgoings, they keep strong meat and 
 drink out of his system emptied by their stabs, bites, 
 purges, mercury, and blisters ; damdijjits ! And that, 
 Asia excipted, was profissional midicine from Hippo- 
 crates to Sampsin ; antiphlogistic is but a modern name 
 for an ass-ass-inating routine which has niver varied a 
 hair since scholastic midicine, the silliest and didliest of 
 all the hundred forms of quackery, first rose — unlike 
 sceince, art, religion, and all true suns — in the West; 
 to wound the sick ; to weaken the weak ; and mutilate 
 the hurt ; and thin mankind." 
 
 The voluble impugner of his own profession delivered 
 these two last words in thunder so sudden and effective 
 as to strike Julia's work out of her hands. But here, as 
 in nature, a moment's pause followed the thunderclap;
 
 92 HARD CASH. 
 
 SO Mrs. Dodd, who had long been patiently watching her 
 opportunity, smothered a shriek, and edged in a word : 
 " This is irresistible ; you have confuted everybody to 
 their heart's content : and now the question is, what 
 course shall we substitute ? " She meant, " in the great 
 case, which occupies me." But Sampson attached a 
 nobler, wider, sense to her query, " What course ? 
 Why, the great Chronothairmal practice, based on the 
 remittent and febrile character of all desease ; above all, 
 on 
 
 " The law of Perriodkdty, a law 
 Midicine yet has wells of light to draw. 
 
 By remittency, I mean th' ebb of disease, by perrio- 
 dicity, th' ebb and also the flow, the paroxysm and the 
 remission. These remit and recur, and keep time like 
 the tides, not in ague and remittent fever only, as the 
 profission imagines to this day, but in all diseases from a 
 scirrhus in the pylorus t' a toothache. And I discovered 
 this, and the new paths to cure of all diseases it opens. 
 Alone I did it ; and what my reward ? hooted, insulted, 
 belied, and called a quack, by the banded school of pro- 
 fissional assassins, who in their day hooted Harvey and 
 Jinner, authors too of great discoveries, but discoveries 
 narrow in their consequences compared Avith mine. T' 
 appreciate Chronothairmalism, ye must begin at the 
 beginning ; so just answer me — What is man ? " 
 
 At this huge inquiry whirring up all in a moment, 
 like a cock-pheasant in a wood, Mrs. Dodd sank back in 
 her chair despondent. Seeing her hors de combat, Samp- 
 son turned to Julia and demanded, twice as loud, " What 
 IS MAN ? " Julia opened two violet eyes at him, and 
 then looked at her mother for a hint how to proceed. 
 
 " How can that child answer such a question ? " sighed 
 .Mrs. Dodd. " Let us return to the point."
 
 HARD CASH. 93 
 
 "I have never strayed an inch from it. It's about 
 ' Young Physic.' " 
 
 "iS'o, excuse me, it is about a young lady. Universal 
 medicine ! what have I to do with that ? " 
 
 " Now tliis is the way with tliem all," cried Sampson, 
 furious ; " there lowed John Bull. The men and women 
 of this benighted nashin have an ear for anything ; pro- 
 vided it matters nothing : talk jology, conchology, ento- 
 mology, theology, meteorology, astronomy, deuteronomy, 
 botheronomy, or boshology, and one is listened to with 
 riverence, because these are all far-off things in fogs ; 
 but at a word about the great, near, useful art of heal- 
 ing, y' all stop your ears ; for why ? your life and daili- 
 anhourly happiness depend on it. But ' no,' sis John 
 Bull, the knowledge of our own buddies, and how to 
 save our own bakin, beef I mean, day by day from dis- 
 ease and chartered ass-ass-ins, all that may interest the 
 thinkers in Saturn, but what the deevil is it t' us ? talk 
 t' «s of the hiv'nly buddies, not of our own ; babble o' 
 comets an' meteors an' ethereal nibulse (never mind the 
 nibulae in our own skulls). Discourse t' us of predisti- 
 nashin, Spitzbairgen seaweed, the last novel, the siventh 
 vile ; of Chrischinizing the Patagonians on condition they 
 are not to come here and Chrischinize the Whitechapel- 
 ians ; of the letter to the Times from the tinker wrecked 
 at Timbuctoo ; and the dear professor's lecture on the 
 probabeelity of snail-shells in the back-yard of the moon : 
 but don't ask us to know ourselves. — Ijjits !" 
 
 The eloquent speaker, depressed by the perversity of 
 Englishmen in giving their minds to every part of crea- 
 tion but their bodies, suffered a momentary loss of energy ; 
 then ]\Irs. Dodd, who had long been watching, lynx-like, 
 glided in. " Let us compound. You are for curing all the 
 world, beginning with nobody. My ambition is to cure 
 my (jirl, and leave mankind in peace. Now, if you will
 
 94 HARD CASH. 
 
 begin with my Julia, I will submit to rectify the universe 
 in its proper turn. Any time will do to set the human 
 race right ; you own it is in no hurry ; but mi/ child's 
 case presses ; so do pray cure her for me. Or at least 
 tell me what her indisposition is." 
 
 '< Oh ! What, didn't I tell you ? Well, there's noth- 
 ing the matter with her." 
 
 At receiving this cavalier reply for the reward of all 
 her patience, Mrs. Dodd was so hurt, and so nearly angry, 
 that she rose with dignity from her seat, her cheek act- 
 ually pink, and the water in her eyes. Sampson saw she 
 was ruffled, and appealed to Julia, of all people. " There 
 now. Miss Julee," said he, ruefully, '"'she is in a rage 
 because I won't humbug her. Poplits voolt decipee. I 
 tell you, ma'am, it is not a midical case ; give me disease 
 and I'll cure 't. Stop, I'll tell ye what do ; let her 
 take and swallow the Barkton docks' prescriptions, and 
 Butcher Best's and canting Kinyon's, and after those 
 four tinkers there'll be plenty holes to mend ; then send 
 for me ! " 
 
 Here was irony. Mrs. Dodd retorted by finesse ; she 
 turned on him with a treacherous smile and said, "Never 
 mind doctors and patients ; it is so long since we met ; 
 1 do hope you will waive ceremony, and dine with me 
 en ami.'' 
 
 He accepted with pleasure ; but must return to his inn 
 first and get l-id of his dirty boots, and pashints. And 
 with this he whipped out his watch, and saw that, deal- 
 ing with universal medicine, he had disappointed more 
 than one sick individual ; so shot out as hard as he had 
 shot in, and left the ladies looking at one another after 
 the phenomenon. 
 
 " Well ! " said Julia, with a world of meaning. 
 
 " Yes, dear," replied Mrs. Dodd, " he is a little eccen- 
 tric. I think I will request them to make some addition 
 to the dinner"
 
 HARD CASH. ^ 
 
 "No, mamma, if you please, not to put me off so trans- 
 parently. If I had interrupted, and shouted, and behaved 
 so, you would have packed me off to bed, or somewhere, 
 directly." 
 
 " Don't say ' packed,' love. Dismissed me to bed." 
 
 "Ah!" cried Julia, "that privileged person is gone, 
 and we must all mind our p's and q's once more." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd, with an air of nonchalance, replied to the 
 effect that Dr. Sampson was not her oft'spring ; and so 
 she was not bound to correct his eccentricities. " And 
 I suppose," said she, languidly, " we must accept these 
 extraordinary people as we find them. But that is no 
 reason why you should say p's and q's, darling." 
 
 That day her hospitable board was spread over a trap. 
 Blessed with an oracle irrelevantly fluent, and dumb to 
 the point, she had asked him to dinner with maternal 
 address. He could not be on his guard eternall}^ ; sooner 
 or later, through inadvertence, or in a moment of con- 
 vivial recklessness, or in a parenthesis of some grand 
 generality, he would cure her child : or, perhaps, at his 
 rate of talking, would wear out his idle themes, down to 
 the very " well-being of mankind ; " and then Julia's 
 mysterious indisposition would come on the blank tapis. 
 With these secret hopes she presided at the feast, all 
 grace and gentle amity. Julia, too, sat down with a 
 little design, but a very different one; viz., of being chilly 
 company, for she disliked this new acquaintance, and 
 hated the science of medicine. 
 
 The unconscious object chatted away with both, and 
 cut their replies very short, and did strange things : sent 
 away Julia's chicken, regardless of her scorn, and pre- 
 scribed mutton ; called for champagne and made her 
 drink it, and pout; and thus excited Mrs. Dodd's hopes 
 that he was attending to the case by degrees. 
 
 But, after dinner, Julia, to escape medicine universal,
 
 96 HARD CASH. 
 
 and particular, turned to her mother, and dilated on the 
 treachery of her literary guide, tlie "Criticaster." "It 
 said ' Odds and Ends ' was a good novel to read by the sea- 
 side. So I thouglit, ' Then oh, how different it must be 
 from most books, if you can sit by tlie glorious sea and 
 even look at it.' So I sent for it directly, and, would 
 you believe, it was an ignoble thing; all flirtations and 
 curates. The sea, indeed ! A pond would be fitter to 
 read it by ; and one with a good many geese on." 
 
 " AVas ever such simplicity ? " said Mrs. Dodd. "Why, 
 my dear, that phrase about the sea does not mean any- 
 thing. I shall have you believing that Mr. So-and-So, 
 a novelist, can ' wither fashionable folly,'' and that ' a 
 painful incident^ to one shopkeeper has ^throiim a gloom^ 
 over a whole market-town, and so on. Nowadays every 
 third phrase is of this character; a starling's note. Once, 
 it appears, there was an age of gold, and then came one 
 of iron, and then of brass. All these are gone, and the 
 age of 'jargon' has succeeded." 
 
 She sighed, and Sampson generalized; he plunged 
 from the seaside novel into the sea of fiction. He re- 
 christened that joyous art feckshin, and lashed its living 
 professors. " You devour their three volumes greedily," 
 said he, "but after your meal you feel as empty as a 
 drrum ; there is no leading idea in 'um ; now, there 
 always is — in Moliere: and he comprehended the midi- 
 cine of his age. But what fundamental truth d'our 
 novelists iver convey ? All they can do is pile incidents. 
 Their customers dictate th' article ; unideaed melodrams 
 for unideaed girls. The writers and their feckshins 
 belong to one species, and that's ' the non-vertebrated 
 animals;' and their midicine is bosh; why, they bleed 
 still for falls and fevers, and niver mention vital chro- 
 nometry. Then they don't look straight at nature, but 
 see with their ears, and repeat one another twelve deep.
 
 HARD CASH. 97 
 
 Now, listen me! there are the cracters for an 'ideaed 
 feckshin' in Barkington, and I'd write it, too, only I 
 haven't time." 
 
 At this, Julia, forgetting her resolution, broke out, 
 "Komantic characters in Barkington? who? who?" 
 
 " Who should they be but my pashints ? Ay, ye may 
 lauch, ]\riss Julee, but wait till ye see them." He was 
 then seized with a fit of candor, and admitted that some, 
 even of his patients, were colorless ; indeed, not to mince 
 the matter, six or seven of that sacred band were nullity 
 in person. "I can compare the beggars to nothing," 
 said he, " but the globules of the do-nothings ; dee — d 
 insipid, and nothing in 'em. But the others make up. 
 Man alive, I've got a ' a rosy-cheeked miser,' and an ' ill- 
 used attorney,' and an ' honest screw,' he is a gardener, 
 with a head like a cart-horse." 
 
 " Mamma ! mamma ! that is Mr. Maxley," cried Julia, 
 clapping her hands, and thawing in her own despite. 
 
 " Then there's my virgin martyr, and my puppy ; they 
 are brother and sister ; and there's their father, but he 
 is an impenetrable dog — won't unbosom. Howiver, he 
 sairves to draw chicks for the other two, and so keep 
 'em goen. By-the-by, 3'ou know my puppy." 
 
 " We have not that honor. We do not know Mr. 
 Sampson's puppy, love ? " inquired Mrs. Dodd, rather 
 languidly. 
 
 " Mamma ! — I — I — know no one of that name." 
 
 " Don't tell me ! Why, it was he sent me here : told 
 me where you lived, and I was to make haste, for Miss 
 Dodd was very ill : it is young Hardie, the banker's son, 
 ye know." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd said, good-humoredly, but with a very slight 
 touch of irony, that really they were very much flattered 
 by the interest Mr. Alfred Hardie had shown ; especially 
 as her daughter had never exchanged ten words with
 
 98 HARD CASH. 
 
 hiiu, Julia colored at this statement, the accuracy of 
 which she had good reason to doubt ; and the poor girl 
 felt as if an icicle passed swiftly along her back. And 
 then for the first time in her life she thought her mother 
 hardly gracious; and she wanted to say she was obliged 
 to Mr. Alfred Hardie, but dared not, and despised herself 
 for not daring. Her composure was farther attacked by 
 Mrs. Dodd looking full at her, and saying interrogatively, 
 "I wonder how that 3'oung gentleman could know about 
 your being ill," 
 
 At this Julia eyed her plate very attentively, and 
 murmured, " I believe it is all over the town ; and seri- 
 ously too, so Mrs. Maxley says : for she tells me that in. 
 Barkington, if more than one doctor is sent for, that 
 bodes ill for the patient." 
 
 " Deevelich ill ! " cried Sampson, heartily. 
 
 " For two J3'h3-sicians, like a pah* of oars, 
 Conduek him faster to the Styjjui shores.'"* 
 
 Julia looked him in the face and coldly ignored this 
 perversion of IMrs. Maxley's meaning ; and Mrs. Dodd 
 returned pertinaciously to the previous topic. "Mr. 
 Alfred Hardie interests me ; he was good to Edward. 
 I am curious to know why you call him a puppy ? " 
 
 " Only because he is one, ma'am. And that is no 
 reason at all with 'the Six,' He is a juveneel pidant, 
 and a puppy, and contradicts ivery new truth, bekase it 
 isn't in Aristotle and th' Eton Grammar ; and he's such 
 a chatterbox, ye can't get in a word idgeways ; and he 
 and his sister — that's my virgin martyr — are a farce. 
 He keeps sneerin' at her relijjin, and that puts her in 
 such a rage, she threatens 't' intercede for him at the 
 throne.' " 
 
 1 Garth.
 
 HARD CASH. 99 
 
 "Jargon," sighed IMrs. Dodd, and just shrugged her 
 lovely shoulders. "We breathe it — we float in an 
 atmosphere of it. My love ? " And she floated out 
 of the room, and Julia floated after. 
 
 Sampson sat meditating on the gullibility of man in 
 matters medical. This favorite speculation detained 
 him late, and almost his first Avord on entering the 
 drawing-room was, "Good-night, little girl," 
 
 Julia colored at this broad hint, drew herself up, and 
 lighted a bed-candle. She went to Mrs. Dodd, kissed 
 her, and whispered in her ear, " I hate him ! " and, as 
 she retired, her whole elegant person launched ladylike 
 defiance ; under which brave exterior no little uneasiness 
 was hidden. "Oh, what will become of me," thought she, 
 " if he has gone and told him about Henley ? " 
 
 "Let's see the prescriptions, ma'am," said Dr. Sampson. 
 
 Delighted at this concession, Mrs. Dodd took them out 
 of her desk and spread them earnestly. He ran his eye 
 over them, and pointed out that the mucous-membrane 
 man and the nerve man had prescribed the same medi- 
 cine on irreconcilable grounds ; and a medicine, more- 
 over, whose effect on the nerves was nil, and on the 
 mucous membrane was not to soothe it, but plough it 
 and harrow it ; " and did not that open her eyes ? " He 
 then reminded her that all these doctors in consultation 
 would have contrived to agree. "But you," said he, 
 "have baffled the collusive hoax by which Dox arrived 
 at a sham uniformity — honest uniformity can never exist 
 till scientific principles obtain. Listme ! To begin : is 
 the pashint in love ? " 
 
 The doctor put this query in just the same tone in 
 which they inquire, "Any expectoration?" But Mrs. 
 Dodd, in reply, was less dry and business-like. She 
 started and looked aghast. This possibility had once, 
 for a moment, occurred to her, but only to be rejected, 
 the evidence being all against it.
 
 100 HAED CASH. 
 
 " In love ? " said she. " That child, and I not know 
 it!" 
 
 He said he had never supposed that. ''But I thought 
 I'd just ask ye ; for she has no bodily ailment, and the 
 paassions are all counterfeit diseases ; they are con- 
 nected, like all diseases, with cerebral instability, have 
 their heats and chills like all diseases, and their par- 
 oxysms and remissions like all diseases. Nlistme ! You 
 have detected the signs of a slight cerebral instability ; I 
 have ascertained th' absence of all physical cause : then 
 why make this healthy pashint's buddy a test-tube for 
 poisons ? Sovereign drugs (I deal with no other, I leave 
 the nullities to the noodles) are either counter-poisons or 
 poisons, and here there is nothing to counter-poison at 
 prisent. So I'm for caushin, and working on the safe 
 side th' hidge, till we are less in the dark. Mind ye, 
 young women at her age are kittle cattle ; they have 
 gusts o' this, and gusts o' that, th' unreasonable imps ! 
 D'ye see these two pieces pasteboard ? They are tickets 
 for a ball, 
 
 In Barkton town-hall." 
 
 *' Yes, of course I see them," said INIrs. Dodd, dolefully. 
 " Well, I prescribe 'em. And Avhen they have been 
 taken. 
 
 And the paslunt well shaken, 
 
 perhaps we shall see whether we are on the right sys- 
 tem : and if so, we'll dose her with youthful society in a 
 more irrashinal forrm ; conversaziones, cookeyshines, et 
 citera. And if we find ourselves on the wrong tack, why 
 then, we'll hark back. 
 
 Stick blindly to/ a course,' the dockers cry. 
 
 But it does me harm : Then 'twill do good by-an-by. 
 
 Where lairned ye that, Echoes of Echoes, say ! 
 
 The killer ploughs ' a course,' the healer 'feels his way.^^''
 
 HARD CASH. 101 
 
 So mysterious are the operations of the human mind, 
 that, Avhen we have exploded in verse tuneful as the 
 above, ^u'e lapse into triumph instead of penitence. Not 
 that doggerel meets with reverence here below — the 
 statues to it are few, and not in marble, but in the 
 material itself — but then an impromptu! A moment 
 ago our posy was not : and now is •, with the speed, if 
 not the brilliancy, of lightning, we have added a hand- 
 ful to the intellectual dust-heap of an oppressed nation. 
 From this bad eminence Sampson then looked down 
 complacently, and saw Mrs. Dodd's face as long as his 
 arm. She was one that held current opinions ; and the 
 world does not believe poetry can sing the practical; 
 verse and useful knowledge pass for incompatibles ; and, 
 though doggerel is not poetry, yet it has a lumbering pro- 
 clivit}' that way, and so forfeits the confidence of grave, 
 sensible people. This versification, and this impalpable 
 and unprecedented prescription she had waited for so 
 long, seemed all of a piece to poor mamma : wild, unprac- 
 tical, and — '' oh, horror ! horror ! " — eccentric. 
 
 Sampson read her sorrowful face after his fashion. 
 '• Oh, I see, ma'am," cried he. " Cure is not welcome 
 unless it comes in the form consecrated by cinturies of 
 slaughter. Well then, give me a sheet." He '.ook the 
 paper and rent it asunder, and wrote this on tte larger 
 fragment : — 
 
 r_ Die JSIercur. circa x. hor : vespert: 
 eat in musca ad Aulam oppid: 
 
 Saltet cum xiii canicul : 
 proesertim meo. Dom : reddita, 
 6 hora matutin : dorraiat at jDrand: 
 Repetat stultit : pro re nata. 
 
 He handed this with a sort of spiteful twinkle to Mrs, 
 Dodd, and her countenance lightened again. Her sex
 
 102 HARD CASH. 
 
 will generally compound with whoever can give as well 
 as take. Now she had extracted a real, grave prescrip- 
 tion, she acquiesced in the ball, though not a county one •, 
 '' To satisfy your whim, my good, kind friend, to whom I 
 owe so much." 
 
 Sampson called on his way back to town, and, in 
 course of conversation, praised Nature for her beautiful 
 instincts, one of which, he said, had inspired Miss Julee, 
 at a credulous age, not to swallow "the didly drastics of 
 the tinkerin dox." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd smiled, and requested permission to con- 
 tradict him ; her daughter had taken the several pre- 
 scriptions. 
 
 Sampson inquired brusquely if she took him for a fool. 
 
 She replied, calmly, " No ; for a very clever, but rather 
 opinionated personage." 
 
 "Opininated? So is ivery man who has grounds for 
 his opinin. D'ye think, because Dockers Short an' Bist 
 an' Kinyon an' Cuckoo and Jackdaw an' Starling an' Co. 
 don't know the dire effecks of calomel an' drastics on 
 the buddy, I don't know't ? Her eye, her tongue, her 
 skin, her voice, her elastic walk, all tell me she has not 
 been robbed of her vital resources. Why, if she had 
 taken that genteel old thief Short's rimidies alone, the 
 girl's gums would be sore. 
 
 And herself at dith's door." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd was amused. " Julia, this is so like the 
 gentlemen ; they are in love with argument. They go 
 on till they reason themselves out of their reason. Why 
 beat about the bush, when there she sits ? " 
 
 " What, go t' a wumman for the truth, when I can go 
 t' infallible inference ? " 
 
 " You may always go to my David's daughter for the
 
 HARD CASH. 103 
 
 truth," said Mrs. Dodd, with dignity. She then looked 
 the inquiry : aud Julia replied to her look as follows : 
 first, she colored very high; then she hid her face in 
 both her hands ; then rose, and, turning her neck swiftly, 
 darted a glance of fiery indignation and bitter reproach 
 on Dr. Meddlesome, and left the apartment mighty stag- 
 like. 
 
 " Maircy on us ! " cried Sampson. " Did ye see that, 
 ma'am ? Yon's just a bonny basilisk. Another such 
 thunderbolt as she dispinsed, and ye'll be ringing for 
 your maid to sweep up the good physician's ashes." 
 
 Julia did not return till the good physician was gone 
 back to London. Then she came in with a rush, and, 
 demonstrative toad, embraced Mrs. Dodd's knees, and 
 owned she had cultivated her geraniums with all those 
 medicines, liquid and solid ; and only one geranium had 
 died. 
 
 There is a fascinating age when an intelligent girl is 
 said to fluctuate between childhood and Avomanhood. 
 Let me add that these seeming fluctuations depend much 
 on the company she is in : the budding virgin is princess 
 of chameleons ; and, to confine ourselves to her two most 
 piquant contrasts, by her mother's side she is always 
 more or less childlike ; but, let a nice young fellow 
 engage her apart, and, hey presto ! she shall be every 
 inch a woman : perhaps at no period of her life are the 
 purely mental characteristics of her sex so supreme in 
 her : thus her type, the rosebud, excels in essence of 
 rosehood the rose itself. 
 
 My reader has seen Julia Dodd play both parts ; but 
 it is her child's face she has now been turning for several 
 pages ; so it may be prudent to remind him she has 
 shone on Alfred Hardie in but one light ; a young, but 
 Juno-like, woman. Had she shown " my puppy " her
 
 104 HARD CASH. 
 
 cliiklisli qualities, he would have despised her ; he had 
 left that department himself so recently. But nature 
 guarded the budding fair from such a disaster. 
 
 We left Alfred Hardie standing in the moonlight 
 gazing at her lodging. This was sudden ; but, let slow 
 coaches deny it as loudly as they like, fast coaches exist ; 
 and love is a passion which, like hate, env}', avarice, etc., 
 has risen to a great height in a single day. Not that 
 Alfred's was " love at first sight ; " for he had seen her 
 beauty in the full blaze of day with no deeper feeling 
 than admiration ; but in the moonlight he came under 
 more sovereign spells than a fair face : her virtues and 
 her voice. The narrative of their meeting has indicated 
 the first, and, as to the latter, Julia was not one of those 
 whose beauty goes out with the candle ; her voice was 
 that rich, mellow, moving organ, which belongs to no 
 rank nor station ; is born, not made ; and, flow it from 
 the lips of dairymaid or countess, touches every heart, 
 gentle or simple, that is truly male. And this divine 
 contralto, full, yet penetrating. Dame Nature had inspired 
 her to lower when she was moved or excited, instead of 
 raising it : and then she was enchanting. All uncon- 
 sciously she cast this crowning spell on Alfred, and he 
 adored her. In a word, he caught a child-woman away 
 from its mother ; his fluttering captive turned, put on 
 composure, and bewitched him. 
 
 She left him, and the moonlight night seemed to 
 blacken. But within his young breast all was light, 
 new light. He leaned opposite her window in an Elys- 
 ian reverie, and let the hours go by. He seemed to 
 have vegetated till then, and lo ! true life had dawned. 
 He thought he should love to die for her ; and, when he 
 was calmer, he felt he was to live for her, and welcomed 
 his destiny with rapture. He passed the rest of the 
 Oxford term in a soft ecstasy ; called often on Edward,
 
 HARD CASH. 105 
 
 and took a sudden and prodigious interest in him; and 
 counted the days glide by and the happy time draw near, 
 ■when he should be four mouths iu the same town with 
 his enchantress. This one did not trouble the doctors ; 
 he glowed with a steady fire ; no heats and chills, and 
 sad misgivings ; for one thing, he was not a woman, a 
 being tied to that stake, suspense, and compelled to wait 
 and wait for others' actions. To him, life's path seemed 
 paved with roses, and himself to march it iu eternal sun- 
 shine, buoyed by perfumed wings. 
 
 He came to Barkington to try for the lovely prize. 
 Then first he had to come down from love's sky, and 
 realize how hard it is here below to court a young lady 
 — who is guarded by a mother — without an introduction 
 in the usual form. The obvious course was to call on 
 Edward. Having parted from him so lately, he forced 
 himself to wait a few days, and then set out for Albion 
 Villa. 
 
 As he went along, he arranged the coming dialogue 
 for all the parties : Edward was to introduce him ; Mrs. 
 Dodd to recognize his friendship for her son ; he was to 
 say he was the gainer by it ; Julia, silent at first, was to 
 hazard a timid observation, and he to answer gracefully, 
 and draw her out, and find how he stood in her opinion : 
 the sprightly affair should end by his inviting Edward 
 to dinner. That should lead to their inviting him in 
 turn, and then he should have a word with Julia, and 
 find out what houses she visited, and get introduced to 
 their proprietors ; arrived at this point, his mind went 
 over hedge and ditch faster than my poor pen can fol- 
 low ; as the crow flies, so flew he, and had reached the 
 church-porch under a rain of nosegays with Julia — in 
 imagination — by then he arrived at Albion Villa in the 
 body. Yet he knocked timidly ; his heart beat almost 
 as hard as his hand.
 
 106 HAF.D CASH. 
 
 Sarah, the black-eyed housemaid; " answered the door." 
 
 " Mr. Edward Dodd ? " 
 
 " Not at home, sir. Left last week." 
 
 « For long ? " 
 
 " I don't rightly know, sir. But he Avon't be back 
 this week, I don't think." 
 
 "Perhaps," stammered Alfred, "the ladies — Mrs. 
 Dodd — might be able to tell me." 
 
 " Oh, yes, sir. But my mistress she's in London just 
 now." 
 
 Alfred's eyes flashed. "Could I learn from Miss 
 Dodd ? " 
 
 " La, sir, she is in London along with her ma ; why, 
 'tis for her they are gone, to insult the great doctors." 
 
 He started. " She is not ill ? Nothing serious ? " 
 
 " Well, sir, we do hope not ; she is pining a bit, as 
 young ladies w^ll." 
 
 Alfred was anything but consoled by this off-hand 
 account ! he became alarmed, and looked wretched. 
 Seeing him so perturbed, Sarah, who was blunt but 
 good-natured, added, "But cook she says hard work 
 would cure our miss of all she ails. But who shall I 
 say was asking ? for my work is a bit behindhand." 
 
 Alfred took the hint reluctantly, and drew out his 
 card-case, saying, " For INIr. Edward Dodd." She gave 
 her clean but wettish hand a hasty wipe with her apron, 
 and took the card ; he retired, she stood on the step and 
 watched him out of sight, said "Oho!" and took his 
 card to the kitchen for preliminary^ inspection and dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 Alfred Hardie was resolute, but sensitive. He had 
 come on the wings of love and hope ; he went away 
 heavily : a housemaid's tongue had shod his elastic feet 
 with lead in a moment ; of all misfortunes sickness was 
 what he had not anticipated, for she looked immortal
 
 HARD CASK. 107 
 
 Perhaps it was that fair and treacherous disease, con- 
 sumption. Well, if it "was, he Avould love her all the 
 more, would wed her as soon as he was of age, and carry 
 her to some soft Southern clime, and keep each noxious 
 air at bay, and prolong her life, perhaps save it. 
 
 And now he began to chafe at the social cobwebs that 
 kept him from her. But just as his impatience was 
 about to launch him into imprudence, he was saved by 
 a genuine descendant of Adam. James Maxley kept 
 Mr. Hardie's little pleasaunce trim as trim could be, by 
 yearly contract. This entailed short but frequent visits ; 
 and Alfred often talked with him, for the man was really 
 a bit of a character, had a shrewd rustic wit, and a ready 
 tongue, was rather too fond of law, and much too fond 
 of money, but scrupulously honest, head as long as Cud- 
 worth's, but broader, and could not read a line. One 
 day he told Alfred that he must knock off now, and take 
 a look in at Albion Villee. The captain w^as due, and 
 on no account would he, Maxle}', allow that there ragged 
 box round the captain's quarterdeck : " That is how he 
 do name their little mossel of a lawn ; and there he 
 walks for a wager, athirt and across, across and athirt, 
 five steps and then about : and I'd a'most bet ye a half- 
 penny he thinks hisself on the salt sea ocean, bless his 
 silly old heart ! " 
 
 All this time Alfred, after the first start of joyful 
 surprise, was secretly thanking his stars for sending him 
 an instrument. To learn whether she had returned, he 
 asked ^Maxley whether the ladies had sent for him. 
 
 "Not they," said Maxley, rather contemptuously; 
 " what do women-folk care about a border, without 'tis 
 a lace one to their nightcaps, for none but the father of 
 all vanity to see. Not as I have aught to say again the 
 pair; they keep their turf tidyish, — and pay ready 
 money — and a few flowers in their pots; but the rest
 
 108 HARD CASH. 
 
 may shift for itself. Ye see, Master Alfred," explained 
 Maxley, wagging his head wisely, "nobody's pride can 
 be everywhere. Now theirs is in-a-doors ; their with- 
 drawing-rooni it's like the queen's palace, my missus 
 tells me ; she is wrapped up in 'em, ye know. But the 
 captain for my money." 
 
 The sage shouldered his tools and departed. But he 
 left a good hint behind him. Alfred hovered about the 
 back door the next day till he caught IVIrs. Maxley ; she 
 supplied the house with eggs and vegetables. " Could she 
 tell him whether his friend Edward Dodd was likely to 
 come home soon ? " She thought not ; he was gone away 
 to study. " He haven't much head-piece, you know, not 
 like what IVIiss Julia have. Mrs. and miss are to be 
 home to-day ; they wrote to cook this morning. I shall 
 be there to-morrow, sartain, and I'll ask in the kitchen 
 when Master Edward is a-comlng back." She prattled 
 on. The ladies of Albion Villa were good kind ladies ; 
 the very maid-servants loved them. Miss was more for 
 religion than her mother, and went to St. Anne's Church 
 Thursday evenings, and Sundays morning and evening ; 
 and visited some poor women in the parish with food 
 and clothes. Mrs. Dodd could not sleep a wink when 
 the wind blew hard at night, but never complained, only 
 came down pale to breakfast. Miss Julia's ailment was 
 nothing to sjjeak of, but they were in care along of being 
 so wrapped up in her, and no wonder, for if ever there 
 was a duck ! — 
 
 Acting on this intelligence, Alfred went early the next 
 Sunday to St. Anne's Church, and sat down in the side 
 gallery at its east end. While the congregation flowed 
 quietly in, the organist played the Agnus Dei of Mozart. 
 Those pious, tender tones stole over this hot young heart, 
 and whispered, "Peace, be still!" He sighed wearily, 
 and it passed through his mind that it might have
 
 HARD CASH. 109 
 
 been better for him, and especially for his studies, if 
 he had never seen lier. Suddenly the aisle seemed to 
 lighten up; she was gliding along it, beautiful as May, 
 and modesty itself in dress and carriage. She went 
 into a pew and kneeled a minute, then seated herself and 
 looked out the lessons for the day. Alfred gazed at her 
 face ; devoured it. But her eyes never roved. She 
 seemed to have put off feminine curiosity and the 
 world, at the church-door. Indeed, he wished she was 
 not quite so heavenly discreet ; her lashes were delicious, 
 but he longed to see her eyes once more, to catch a 
 glance from them, and by it decipher his fate. 
 
 But no ; she was there to worship, and did not discern 
 her earthly lover, whose longing looks were glued to 
 her, and his body rose and sank with the true worship- 
 pers, but with no more spirituality than a piston, or a 
 Jack-in-the-box. 
 
 In the last hymn before the sermon, a well-meaning 
 worshipper in the gallery delivered a leading note, a 
 high one, with great zeal, but small precision, being 
 about a semitone flat. At this outrage on her too sensi- 
 tive ear, Julia Dodd turned her head swiftly to discover 
 the offender, and failed ; but her two sapphire eyes met 
 Alfred's ijoint-blank. 
 
 She was crimson in a moment, and lowered them on 
 her book again, as if to look that way was to sin. It 
 was but a flash, but sometimes a flash flres a mine. 
 
 The lovely blush deepened and spread before it melted 
 away, and Alfred's late cooling heart warmed itself at 
 that sweet glowing cheek. She never looked his way 
 again, not once, which was a sad disappointment ; but 
 she blushed again and again before the service ended, 
 only not so deeply : now there was nothing in the ser- 
 mon to make her blush. I might add, there was nothing 
 to redden her cheek with religious excitement. There
 
 110 HARD CASH. 
 
 was a little candid sourness — oil and vinegar — against 
 sects and Low Churchmen, but tliin generality predomi- 
 nated. Total: "Acetate of morphia," for dry souls to 
 sip. 
 
 So Alfred took all the credit of causing those sweet 
 irrelevant blushes, and gloated; the young wretch could 
 not help glorying in his power to tint that fair statue of 
 devotion with earthly thoughts. 
 
 But stay ! that dear blush, was it pleasure or pain ? 
 What if the sight of him was intolerable ? 
 
 He would know how he stood with her, and on the 
 spot. He was one of the first to leave the church ; he 
 made for the churchyard gate, and walked slowly back- 
 wards and forwards by it with throbbing heart till she 
 came out. 
 
 She was prepared for him now, and bowed slightly to 
 him with the most perfect composure, and no legible 
 sentiment, except a certain marked politeness many of 
 our young ladies think wasted upon young gentlemen, 
 and are mistaken. 
 
 Alfred took off his hat in a tremor, and his eyes im- 
 plored and inquired, but met with no further response ; 
 and she walked swiftly home, though without apparent 
 effort. He looked longingly after her, but discretion 
 forbade. 
 
 He now crawled by Albion Villa twice every day, wet 
 or dry, and had the good-fortune to see her twice at the 
 drawing-room window. He was constant at St. Anne's 
 Church, and one Thursday crept into the aisle to be 
 nearer to her, and he saw her steal one swift look at the 
 gallery, and look grave; but soon she detected him, and 
 though she looked no more towards him, she seemed 
 demurely complacent. Alfred had learned to note these 
 subtleties now, for love is a microscope. What he did 
 not know was, that his timid ardor was pursuing a mas-
 
 HARD CASH. Ill 
 
 terly course; that to find herself furtively followed 
 everywhere, and hovered about for a look, is apt to 
 soothe womanly pride, and stir womanly pity, and to 
 keep the female heart in a flutter of curiosity and 
 emotion, two porters that open the heart's great gate to 
 love. 
 
 Xow the evening before his visit to the Dodds, Dr. 
 Sampson dined with the Hardies, and happened to men- 
 tion the Dodds among his old patients. " The Dodds 
 of Albion Villa ? " inquired Miss Hardie, to her brother's 
 no little surprise. '- Albyn fiddlestick ! " said the pol- 
 ished doctor. " Xo ; they live by the water-side : used 
 to ; but now they have left the town, I hear. He is a sea- 
 captain and a fine lad, and Mrs. Dodd is just the best- 
 bred woman I ever prescribed for, except Mrs. Sampson." 
 
 " It is the Dodds of Albion Villa," said ]\Iiss Hardie. 
 "They have two children, — a son, his name is Edward; 
 and a daughter, Julia; she is rather good-looking, — a 
 gentleman's beauty." 
 
 Alfred stared at his sister. "Was she blind, with her 
 " rather good-looking " ? 
 
 Sampson was quite pleased at the information. " X' 
 listen me ! I saved that girl's life when she was a year 
 old." 
 
 "Then she is ill now, doctor," said Alfred hastily'. 
 " Do go and see her. Hum ! the fact is, her brother is 
 a great favorite of mine." He then told him how to 
 find Albion Villa. " Jenny dear," said he, when Samp- 
 son was gone, " 3-ou never told me you knew her." 
 
 " Knew who, dear ? " 
 
 " Whom ? Why, Dodd's sister." 
 
 " Oh, she is a new acquaintance, and not one to inter- 
 est you. We only meet in the Lord ; I do not visit 
 Albion Villa. Her mother is an amiable worldling." 
 
 " Unpardonable combination ! " said Alfred with a
 
 112 HARD CASH. 
 
 slight sneer. "So you and INIiss Dodd meet only at 
 church ? " 
 
 " At church ? hardly. She goes to St. Anne's ; sits 
 under a preacher who starves his flock with moral dis- 
 courses, and holds out the sacraments of the Church as 
 the means of grace." 
 
 Alfred shook his head good-humoredly. " 'Now, Jenny, 
 that is a challenge ; and you know we both got into a 
 fury the last time we were betrayed into that miserable 
 waste of time and temper, — theological discussion. 
 No, no: — 
 
 Let sects delight to bark and bite, 
 
 For 'tis their nature to ; 
 Let gown and surplice grOAvl and fight. 
 
 For Satan makes them so. 
 
 But let you and I cut High Church and Low Church, 
 and be brother and sister. Do tell me in English where 
 you meet Julia Dodd, that's a dear; for young ladies 
 ' meeting in the Lord ' conveys no positive idea to my 
 mind." 
 
 Jane Hardie sighed at this confession. " We meet in 
 the cottages of the poor and the sick, whom He loved 
 and pitied when on earth ; and we, His unworthy serv- 
 ants, try to soothe their distress, and lead them to Him 
 who can heal the soul as well as the body, and wipe 
 away all the tears of all His people." 
 
 " Then it does you infinite credit, Jane," said Alfred 
 warmly. *' Now, that is the voice of true religion, and 
 not the whine of this sect, nor the snarl of that. And 
 so she joins you in this good work ? I am not sur- 
 prised." 
 
 "We meet in it now and then, dear; but she can 
 hardly be said to have joined me. I have a district, you 
 know ; but poor Mrs. Dodd will not allow Julia to enlist
 
 HARD CASH. 113 
 
 in the service. She visits independently, and by fits 
 and starts ; and I am afraid she thinks more of comfort- 
 ing their perishable bodies than of feeding their souls. 
 It was but the other day she confessed to me her back- 
 wardness to speak in the Avay of instruction to women 
 as old as her mother. She finds it so much easier to let 
 them run on about their earthly troubles ; and of course 
 it is much easier. Ah, the world holds her still in some 
 of its subtle meshes." 
 
 The speaker uttered this sadly ; but presently, bright- 
 ening up, said, with considerable bonhomie, and almost 
 a sprightly air, " But she is a dear girl, and the Lord 
 will yet light her candle." 
 
 Alfred pulled a face as of one that drinketh verjuice 
 unawares : but let it pass : hypercriticism was not his 
 cue just then. " Well, Jenny," said he, " I have a favor 
 to ask you. Introduce me to your friend Miss Dodd. 
 Will you ? " 
 
 Miss Hardie colored faintly. "I would rather not, 
 dear Alfred : the introduction could not be for her eternal 
 good. Julia's soul is in a very ticklish state ; she Avavers 
 as yet between this world and the other world ; and it 
 won't do ; it won't do ; there is no middle path. You 
 would very likely turn the scale, and then I should 
 have fought against her everlasting v/elfare — my 
 friend's." 
 
 " What, am I an infidel ? " inquired Alfred, angrily. 
 Jane looked distressed. " Oh, no, Alfred ; but you are a 
 worldling." 
 
 Alfred, smothering a strong sense of irritation, be- 
 sought her to hear reason ; these big words were out of 
 place here. *' It is Dodd's sister ; and he will introduce 
 me at a word, worldling as I am." 
 
 "Then why urge me to do it, against my conscience ? " 
 asked the young lady, as sharply as if she had been a
 
 114 HARD CASH 
 
 woman of the world. " You cannot be in love with her, 
 as you do not know her.^' 
 
 Alfred did not reply to this unlucky thrust, but madt* 
 a last effort to soften her. " Can you call yourself my 
 sister, and refuse me this trifling service, which her 
 brother, who loves her and esteems her ten times more 
 sincerely than you do, would not think of refusing me 
 if he was at home ? " 
 
 '•' Why should he ? He is in the flesh himself; let the 
 carnal introduce one another. I really must decline ; 
 but I am very, very sorry that you feel hurt about it." 
 
 ''And I am very sorry I have not 'an amiable world- 
 ling' for my sister, instead of an unamiable and devilish 
 conceited Christian." And, with these bitter words, 
 Alfred snatched a candle and bounced to bed in a fury. 
 So apt is one passion to rouse up others. 
 
 Jane Hardie let fall a gentle tear : but consoled her- 
 self with the conviction that she had done her duty, and 
 that Alfred's anger was quite unreasonable, and so he 
 would see as soon as he should cool. 
 
 The next day the lover, smarting under this check, and 
 spurred to fresh efforts, invaded Sampson. That worthy 
 was just going to dine at Albion Villa, so Alfred post- 
 poned pumping him till next day. Well, he called at 
 the inn next day, and if the doctor was not just gone 
 back to London ! 
 
 Alfred wandered disconsolate homewards. 
 
 In the middle of Buchanan Street, an agitated treble 
 called after him, " Mr. Half red ! hoh, Mr. Halfred ! " He 
 looked back and saw Dick Absalom, a promising young 
 cricketer, brandishing a document and imploring aid. 
 " Master Halfred, dooee please come here. I durstn't 
 leave the shop." 
 
 There is a tie between cricketers far too strong for 
 social distinctions to divide, and, though Alfred muttered
 
 HARD CASH. 115 
 
 peevishly, "Whose cat is dead now?" he obeyed the 
 strange summons. 
 
 The distress was a singular one. IMaster Absalom, I 
 must premise, was the youngest of two lads in the 
 employ of Mr. Jenner, a benevolent old chemist, a disci- 
 ple of ]\ralthus. Jenner taught the virtues of drugs and 
 minerals to tender youths, at the expense of the public. 
 Scarcely ten minutes had elapsed since a pretty servant 
 girl came into the shop, and laid a paper on the counter, 
 saying, " Please to make that up, young man." Now at 
 fifteen we are gratified by inaccuracies of this kind from 
 ripe female lips : so master Absalom took the prescrip- 
 tion with a complacent grin ; liis eye glanced over it ; it 
 fell to shaking in his hand, chill dismay penetrated his 
 heart ; and, to speak with Oriental strictness, his liver 
 turned instantly to water. However, he made a feeble 
 clutch at mercantile mendacity, and stammered out, 
 " Here's a many hingredients, and the governor's out 
 walking, and he's been and locked the drawer where he 
 keeps our haulhoppy. You couldn't come again in half 
 an hour, miss, could ye ? " She acquiesced readily, for 
 she was not habitually called miss, and she had a follower, 
 a languid one, living hard by, and belonged to a class 
 which thinks it consistent to come after its followers. 
 
 Dicky saw her safe off, and groaned at his ease. Here 
 was a prescription full of new chemicals, sovereign, no 
 doubt ; i.e., deadly when applied Jennerically ; and the 
 very directions for use were in Latin words he had 
 encountered in no prescription before. A year ago, 
 Dicky would have counted the prescribed ingredients on 
 his fingers, and then taken down an equal number of little 
 articles, solid or liquid, mixed them, delivered them, and 
 so to cricket, serene : but now, his mind, to apply the 
 universal cant, was "in a transition state." A year's 
 practice had chilled the youthful valor which used to
 
 116 HARD CASH. 
 
 scatter epsom salts, or oxalic acid ; magnesia, or corro- 
 sive sublimate. An experiment or two by himself and 
 his compeers, with comments by the coroner, had enlight- 
 ened him as to the final result on the human body of 
 potent chemicals fearlessly administered, leaving hira 
 dark as to their distinctive qualities applied remedially. 
 "What should he do ? run with the prescription to old 
 Taylor in the next street, a chemist of forty years ? 
 Alas ! at his tender age he had not omitted to chaff 
 that reverend rival persistently and publicly. Humble 
 his establishment before the King Street one ? Sooner 
 perish drugs, and come eternal cricket ! And, after all, 
 why not ? Drummer-boys, and powder-monkeys, and 
 other imps of his age that dealt destruction, did not 
 dejjopulate gratis ; mankind acknowledged their services 
 in cash: but old Jenner, taught by philosophy through 
 its organ the newspapers that "knowledge is riches," 
 was above diluting with a few shillings a week the 
 wealth a boy acquired behind his counter: so his appren- 
 tices got no salary. Then why not shut up the old 
 rogue's shutters, and excite a little sympathy for him, to 
 be followed by a powerful reaction on his return from 
 walking ; and go and offer his own services on the 
 cricket-ground to field for the gentlemen by the hour, or 
 bowl at a shilling on their bails ? 
 
 "Bowling is the lay for me," said he j "you get money 
 for that, and you only bruise the gents a bit and break 
 their thumbs : you can't put their vital sparks out as 
 you can at tins work." 
 
 By a striking coincidence the most influential mem- 
 ber of the cricket club passed while Dick was in this 
 quandar}'. 
 
 " Mr. Halfred, you was always very good to me on 
 the ground; you couldn't have me hired by the club, 
 could ye ? for I am sick of this trade ; I wants to 
 bowL"
 
 HARD CASH. 117 
 
 " You little duffer ! " said Alfred, "cricket is a recrea- 
 tion, not a business. Besides, it only lasts five months, 
 unless you adjourn to the antipodes. Stick to the shop 
 like a man, and make your fortune." 
 
 " O ]\[r. Halfred," said Dick, sorrowfully, '■' how can 1 
 find fortune here ? Jenner don't pay. And the crowner 
 declares he will not have it; and the Barton Chronicle 
 says us young gents ought all to be given a holiday to 
 go and see one of us hanged by lot; but this is what 
 have broke this camel's back at last : here's a dalled 
 thing to come smiling and smirking in with, and put 
 it across a counter in a poor boy's hand. Oh ! oh ! 
 oh!" 
 
 "Dick," said Alfred, "if you blubber, I'll give you a 
 hiding. You have stumbled on a passage you can't con- 
 strue. Well, who has not ? but we don't shed the briny 
 about it. Here, let me have a go at it." 
 
 "Ah, I've heard you are a scholard," said Dick, "but 
 you won't make out this ; there's some new preparation 
 of mercury, and there's musk, and there's horehound, 
 and there's a neutral salt; and dal his old head that 
 wrote it ! " 
 
 " Hold your jaw, and listen, while I construe it to you. 
 ^ Die Jlercurii, on Wednesday — dec'imd hord vesperiinu, 
 at ten o'clock at night — eat in musca;^ what does that 
 mean? ^ Eat in musca?^ I see; this is modern lan- 
 guage with a vengeance. ' Let him go in a fly to the 
 town-hall. Saltet, let him jump — cum tredecim canicul'is, 
 with thirteen little dogs — /^/-cpser^m meo, especially with 
 my little dog.' Dicky, this prescription emanates from 
 Bedlam direct. ^ Domum reddita ' — hallo ! it is a woman, 
 then. 'Let her go in a fly to the town-hall,' eh? 'Let 
 her jump,' no, 'dance, with thirteen whelps, especially 
 mine.' Ha ! ha ! ha ! And who is the woman that is to 
 do all this, I wonder ? "
 
 118 HARD CASH. 
 
 "Woman, indeed!" said a treble at the door; "no 
 more than I am; it's for a young lady. jirainy !" 
 
 This polite ejaculation was drawn out by the speaker's 
 sudden recognition of Alfred, who had raised his head 
 at lier remonstrance, and now started in his turn: for it 
 was the black-eyed servant of Albion Villa. They looked 
 at one another in expressive silence. 
 
 " Yes, sir, it is for my young lady. Is it ready, younji 
 man ? " 
 
 " No, it ain't : and never will," squealed Dick, angrily ; 
 " it's a vile hoax ; and you ouglit to be ashamed of your 
 self bringing it into a respectable shop." 
 
 ^.Ifred silenced him, and told Sarah he thought Miss 
 Dodd ought to know the nature of this prescription 
 before it went round the chemists. 
 
 He borrowed paper of Dick, and wrote : — 
 
 "Mr. Alfred Hardie presents his compliments to Miss Dodd, 
 and begs leave to inform her that he has, by the merest acci- 
 dent, intercepted the enclosed prcscrijjtion. As it seems rather 
 a sorry jest, and tends to attract attention to Miss Dodd and 
 her movements, he has ventured, with some misgivings, to 
 send it back with a literal translation, on reading which it will 
 be for Miss Dodd to decide whether it is to circulate. 
 
 " ' On Wednesday, at ten p.m., let her go in a lly to the town- 
 hall and dance with \ . ° '/especially with mine: re- 
 
 thirteen / , , ' \ turn home 
 
 v^ whelps, J 
 
 at six A.M., and sleep till dinner, and repeat the folly as occa- 
 sion serves.'" 
 
 " Suppose I could get it into miss's hands when she's 
 
 alone ? " whispered Sarah. 
 
 " You would earn my warmest gratitude." 
 
 " ' Warmest gratitude ! ' Is that a warm gownd or a 
 
 warm cloak, I wonder ? "
 
 HABD CASH. 119 
 
 " It is both, when the man is a gentleman, and a pretty, 
 dark-eyed girl pities him and stands his friend." 
 
 Sarah smiled, and whispered, " Give it me ; I'll do my 
 best." 
 
 Alfred enclosed the prescription and his note in one 
 cover, handed them to her, and slipped a sovereign into 
 her hand. He whispered, " Be prudent." 
 
 " I'm dark, sir," said she : and went off briskly home- 
 wards, and Alfred stood rapt in dreamy joy, and so 
 self-elated that, had he been furnished like a peacock, he 
 would have instantly become "a thing all eyes," and 
 choked up Jenner's shop, and swept his counter. He 
 had made a step towards familiarity, had written her a 
 letter; and then, if this prescription came, as he suspected, 
 from Dr. Sampson, she would, perhaps, be at the ball. 
 This opened a delightful vista. Meantime, Mrs. Dodd 
 had communicated Sampson's opinion to Julia, adding 
 that there was a prescription besides, gone to be made 
 up. "However, he insists on your going to this ball." 
 
 Julia begged hard to be excused : said she was in no 
 humor for balls : and, Mrs. Dodd objecting that the 
 tickets had actually been purchased, she asked leave to 
 send them to the Dartons : " They will be a treat to Rose 
 and Alice ; they seldom go out : mamma, I do so fear 
 they are poorer than people think. May I ? " 
 
 "It would be but kind," said Mrs. Dodd. "Though 
 really, why my child should always be sacrificed to other 
 people's children " — 
 
 *' Oh, a mighty sacrifice ! " said Julia. She sat down 
 and enclosed the tickets to Rose Darton, with a little 
 sugared note. Sarah being out, Elizabeth took it. Sarah 
 met her at the gate, but did not announce her return : 
 she lurked in ambush till Julia happened to go to her 
 own room, then followed her, and handed Alfred's mis- 
 give, and watched her slyly, and, being herself expedi-
 
 120 HARD CASH. 
 
 tious as the wind in matters of the heart, took it foi 
 granted the enclosure was something very warm indeed; 
 so she said with feigned simplicity, "I suppose it is all 
 right now, miss ? " and retreated swelling with a secret, 
 and tormented her fellow-servants all day with innuen- 
 does dark as Erebus. 
 
 Julia read the note again and again : her heart beat 
 at those few ceremonious lines. "■ He does not like me 
 to be talked of," she said to herself. '' How good he is ! 
 What trouble he takes about me! Ah! he ivill be 
 there." 
 
 She divined rightly ; on Wednesday, at ten, Alfred 
 Hardie was in the ballroom. It was a magnificent room, 
 well lighted, and at present not half tilled, though dancing 
 had commenced. The figure Alfred sought Avas not there, 
 and he wondered he had been so childish as to hope she 
 w^ould come to a city ball. He played the fine gentle- 
 man ; would not dance. He got near the door with 
 another Oxonian, and tried to avenge himself for her 
 absence, on the townspeople who were there, by quizzing 
 them. 
 
 But in the middle of this amiable occupation, and, 
 indeed, in the middle of a sentence, he stopped short, 
 and his heart throbbed, and he thrilled from head to 
 foot ; for two ladies glided in at the door, and passed up 
 the room with the unpretending composure of well-bred 
 people. They were equally remarkable ; but Alfred saw 
 only the radiant young creature in flowing muslin, with 
 the narrowest sash in the room, and no ornament but a 
 necklace of large pearls, and her own vivid beauty. She 
 had altered her mind about coming, with apologies for 
 her vacillating disposition so penitent and dispropor- 
 tionate, that her indulgent and unsuspecting mother was 
 really quite amused. Alfred was not so happy as to 
 know that she had changed her mind with his note.
 
 HARD CASH. 121 
 
 Perhaps even this knowledge could have added little to 
 that exquisite moment, when, unhoped for, she passed 
 close to him, and tlie fragrant air from her brushed iiis 
 cheek ; and seemed to whisper, " Follow me, and be my 
 slave."
 
 ?2u4 HAKD UASH. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 He did follow her, and, convinced that she would be 
 engaged ten deep in five minutes, hustled up to the 
 master of the ceremonies and begged an introduction. 
 The great banker's son was attended to at once. Julia 
 saw them coming, as her sex can see, without looking. 
 Her eyes were on fire, and a delicious blush on her cheeks, 
 M'^hen the M. C. introduced Mr. Alfred Hardie with due 
 pomp. He asked her to dance. 
 
 " I am engaged for this dance, sir," said she softly. 
 
 " The next ? " asked Hardie, timidly. 
 
 " With pleasure." 
 
 But when they had got so far they were both seized 
 with bashful silence ; and, just as Alfred was going to 
 try and break it, Cornet Bosanquet, aged eighteen, height 
 five feet four inches, strutted up with clanking heel, and, 
 glancing haughtily up at him, carried Julia off, like a 
 steam-tug towing away some fair schooner. To these 
 little thorns society treats all anxious lovers ; but the 
 incident was new to Alfred, and discomposed him, and, 
 besides, he had nosed a rival in Sampson's prescription. 
 So now he thought to himself, "That little ensign is 'his 
 puppy.' " 
 
 To get rid of INIrs. Dodd, he offered to conduct her to 
 a seat. She thanked him ; she would rather stand where 
 she could see her daughter dance. On this he took her 
 to the embrasure of a window opposite where Julia and 
 her partner stood, and they entered a circle of spectators. 
 The band struck up, and the solemn skating began. 
 
 " Who is this lovely creature in white ? " asked a
 
 HARD CASH. 123 
 
 middle-aged solicitor. " In white ? I do not see any 
 beauty in white," replied his daughter. " Why, there, 
 before your eyes," said the gentleman, loudly. 
 
 " What, that girl dancing with the little captain ? I 
 don't see much beauty in her. And what a rubbishing 
 dress." 
 
 "It never cost a pound, making and all," suggested 
 another Barkingtonian nymph. 
 
 " But what splendid pearls ! " said a third. "Can they 
 be real ? " 
 
 " Real ? what an idea ! " ejaculated a fourth. " Who 
 puts on real pearls as big as peas with muslin at twenty 
 pence the yard ? " 
 
 " Weasels ! " muttered Alfred, and quivered all over ; 
 and he felt to Mrs. Dodd so like a savage going to spring, 
 that she laid her hand upon his Avrist, and said gently, 
 but with authority, "Be calm, sir! and oblige me by not 
 noticing these people." 
 
 Then they threw dirt on her bouquet, and then on her 
 shoes, while she was winding in and out before their eyes 
 a grace, and her soft muslin drifting and flowing like»an 
 appropriate cloud round a young goddess. 
 
 " A little starch would make it set out better. It's as 
 limp as a towel on the line." 
 
 " I'll be sworn it was washed at home," 
 
 " Where it was made." 
 
 " I call it a rag, not a gown." 
 
 " Do let us move," whispered Alfred. 
 
 "I am very comfortable here," whispered Mrs. Dodd. 
 " How can these things annoy my ears while I have eyes ? 
 Look at her; she is the best-dressed lady in the room. 
 Her muslin is Indian, and of a quality unknown to these 
 provincial shopkeepers : a rajah gave it us ; her pearls 
 were my mother's, and have been in every court in 
 Europe ; and she herself is beautiful, would be beautiful
 
 124 HARD CASH. 
 
 dressed like the dowdies Avho are criticising her ; and I 
 think, sir, she dances as well as any lady can encumbered 
 with an atom that does not know the figure." All this 
 with the utmost placidity. 
 
 Then, as if to extinguish all doubt, Julia flung them a 
 heavenly smile ; she had been furtively watching them 
 all the time, and she saw they were talking about her. 
 
 The other Oxonian squeezed up to Hardie. " Do you 
 know the beauty ? She smiled your way." 
 
 ''Ah !" said Hardie, deliberately, "you mean that young 
 lady with the court pearls, in that exquisite Indian muslin, 
 which floats so gracefully, while the other muslin girls 
 are all crimp and stiff, like little pigs clad in crackling ? " 
 
 "Ha! ha! ha! Yes. Introduce me." 
 
 "I could not take such a liberty with the queen of the 
 ball." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd smiled, but felt nervous and ill at ease. 
 She thought to herself, "Now, here is a generous, impet- 
 uous thing." As for the hostile party, staggered at first 
 by the masculine insolence of young Hardie, it soon 
 recovered, and, true to its sex, attacked him obliquely, 
 through his white ladye. 
 
 "Who is the beauty of the ball ? " asked one, haughtily. 
 
 "I don't know; but not that mawkish thing in limp 
 muslin." 
 
 "I should say Miss Hetherington is the belle," sug- 
 gested a third. 
 
 "Which is Miss Hetherington?" asked the Oxonian 
 coolly of Alfred. 
 
 " Oh ! she won't do for us. It is that little chalk-faced 
 girl, dressed in pink with red roses ; the pink of vulgarity 
 and bad taste." 
 
 At this both Oxonians laughed arrogantly, and Mrs. 
 Dodd withdrew her hand from the speaker's arm, and 
 glided away behind the throng. Julia looked at him
 
 SHE SHARED HER HYMN BOOK WITH HIM.
 
 HARD CASH. 125 
 
 with marked anxiety. He returned her look, and was 
 sore puzzled what it meant, till he found Mrs. Dodd had 
 withdrawn softly from him ; then he stood confused, 
 regretting too late he had not obeyed her positive 
 request, and tried to imitate her dignified forbearance. 
 
 The quadrille ended. He instantly stepped forward, 
 and, bowing politely to the cornet, said authoritatively, 
 " Mrs. Dodd sends me to conduct you to her. With your 
 permission, sir." His arm was offered and taken before 
 the little warrior knew where he was. 
 
 He had her on his arm, soft, light, and fragrant as 
 zephyr, and her cool breath wooing his neck; oh, the 
 thrill of that moment ! but her first word was to ask 
 him, with considerable anxiety, ''Why did mamma leave 
 you ? " 
 
 "Miss Dodd, I am the most unhappy of men." 
 
 "No doubt, no doubt," said she a little crossly. She 
 added with one of her gushes of naivete, " and I shall be 
 unhappy too if you go and displease mamma." 
 
 " What could I do ? A gang of snobbesses were 
 detracting from — somebody. To speak plainly, they 
 were running down — the loveliest of her sex. Your 
 mamma told me to keep quiet. And so I did till I got 
 a fair chance, and then I gave it them in their teeth." 
 He ground his own, and added, " I think I was very good 
 not to kick them." 
 
 Julia colored with pleasure, and proceeded to turn it 
 off. "Oh I most forbearing and considerate," said she. 
 "Ah ! by the way, I think I did hear some ladies express 
 a misgiving as to the pecuniary value of my costume. 
 Ha! ha! Oh — you — foolish! Fancy noticing that! 
 Why, it is in little sneers that the approval of the ladies 
 shows itself at a ball, and it is a much sincerer compliment 
 than the gentlemen's bombastical praises, ' the fairest of 
 her sex,' and so on, that none but the 'silliest of her sex' 
 believe."
 
 126 HARD CASH. 
 
 "Miss Dodd, I never said the fairest of her sex. I 
 said the loveliest." 
 
 " Oh ! that alters the case entirely," said Julia, whose 
 spirits were mounting with the lights and music, and 
 Alfred's company ; " so now come and be reconciled to 
 the best and wisest of her sex ; ay ! and the beautifullest, 
 if you but knew her sweet, dear, darling face as I do. 
 There she is ; let us fly. 
 
 "Mamma, here is a penitent for you, real or feigned, 
 I don't know which." 
 
 "Real, IVIrs. Dodd," said Alfred. "I had no right to 
 disobey you and risk a scene. You served me right by 
 abandoning me. I feel the rebuke and its justice. Let 
 me hope your vengeance will go no further." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd smiled at the grandiloquence of youth, and 
 told him he had mistaken her character. "I saw I had 
 acquired a generous, hot-headed ally, who was bent on 
 doing battle with insects, so I withdrew ; but so I should 
 at Waterloo, or anywhere else where people put them- 
 selves in a passion." 
 
 The band struck up again. 
 
 "Ah!" said Julia, "and I promised j'ou this dance; 
 but it is a waltz, and my guardian angel objects to the 
 valse a deux tempsy 
 
 "Decidedly. Should all the mothers in England permit 
 their daughters to romp and wrestle in public, and call it 
 waltzing, I must stand firm till they return to their 
 senses." 
 
 Julia looked at Alfred despondentl}'. He took his cue, 
 and said with a smile, "Well, perhaps it is a little rompy ; 
 a donkey's gallop, and then twirl her like a mop." 
 
 " Since you admit that, perhaps you can waltz prop- 
 erly ? " said Mrs. Dodd. 
 
 Alfred said he ought. He had given his whole soul to 
 it in Germany last long.
 
 HARD CASH. 127 
 
 " Then I can have the pleasure of dropping the tyrant. 
 Away with you both while there is room to circulate." 
 
 Alfred took his partner delicately ; they made just two 
 catlike steps forward, and melted into the old-fashioned 
 waltz. 
 
 It was an exquisite moment. To most young people 
 love comes after a great deal of waltzing. But this pair 
 brought the awakened tenderness and trembling sensi- 
 bilities of two burning hearts to this their first intoxicat- 
 ing whirl. To them, therefore, every thing was an event, 
 everything was a thrill : the first meeting and timid 
 pressure of their hands, the first delicate enfolding of 
 her supple waist by his strong arm but trembling hand, 
 the delightful unison of their unerring feet, the move- 
 ment, the music, the soft delicious whirl, her cool breath 
 saluting his neck, his ardent but now liquid eyes seeking 
 hers tenderly and drinking them deep, hers that now and 
 then sipped his so sweeth'; all these were new and sepa- 
 rate joys, that linked themselves in one soft delirium of 
 bliss. It was not a waltz, it was an ecstasy. 
 
 Starting almost alone, this peerless pair danced a 
 gauntlet. On each side admiration and detraction buzzed 
 all the time. 
 
 " Beautiful ! They are turning in the air." 
 
 "Quite gone by. That's how the old fogies dance," 
 
 Chorals of shallow males. How well she waltzes. 
 
 Chorus of shallow females. How well he waltzes. 
 
 But they noted neither praise nor detraction; they saw 
 nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing, but themselves and 
 the other music, till two valsers a deux temps plunged 
 into them. Thus smartly reminded they had not earth 
 all to themselves, they laughed good-humoredly, and 
 paused. 
 
 " Ah ! I am happy ! " gushed from Julia. She blushed 
 at herself, and said severely, " You dance very well, sir."
 
 128 HARD CASH. 
 
 This was said to justify her unguarded admission, and 
 did, after a fashion. " 1 think it is time to go to 
 mamma," said she demurely. 
 
 " So soon ; and I had so much to say to you." 
 
 " Oh ! very well. I am all attention." 
 
 The sudden facility offered set Alfred stammering a 
 little. "1 wanted to apologize to you for something — 
 you are so good, you seem to have forgotten it — but 1 
 dare not hope that — I mean at Henley — - when the 
 beauty of your character, and your goodness, so over- 
 powered me, that a fatal impulse " — 
 
 "What do you mean, sir?" said Julia, looking him 
 full in the face, like an offended lion, while, with true 
 feminine and Julian inconsistency, her bosom fluttered 
 like a dove. "1 never exchanged one word with you in 
 my life before to-day ; and 1 never shall again if you 
 pretend the contrary." 
 
 Alfred stood stupefied, and looked at her in piteous 
 amazement. 
 
 *' I value your acquaintance highly, Mr. Hardie, now I 
 have made it, as acquaintances are made ; but please to 
 observe, I never saw you before — scarcely ; not even in 
 church." 
 
 " As you please," said he, recovering his wits in part. 
 " What you say, I'll swear to." 
 
 ''Then I say, never remind a lady of what you ought 
 to wish her to forget." 
 
 "I was a fool. And you are an angel of tact and 
 goodness." 
 
 " Oh, now I am sure it is time to join mamma," said 
 she, in the dryest, drollest way. " Valsons." 
 
 They waltzed down to Mrs. Dodd, exchanging hearts 
 at every turn, and they took a good many in the space 
 of a round table, for in truth both were equally loath to 
 part.
 
 flARD CASH. l29 
 
 Afr two o'clock Mrs. Dodd resumed commonplace views 
 of a daughter's health, and rose to go. 
 
 Her fly had played her false, and, being our island 
 home, it rained buckets. Alfred ran, before they could 
 stop him, and caught a fly. He was dripping. Mrs. 
 Dodd expressed her regrets ; he told her it did not 
 matter; for him the ball was now over, the flowers 
 faded, and the lights darkness visible. 
 
 "The extravagance of these children!" said Mrs. 
 Dodd to Julia, with a smile, as soon as he was out of 
 hearing. Julia made no reply. 
 
 Next day she was at evening church; the congrega- 
 tion was very sparse. The first glance revealed Alfred 
 Hardie standing in the vevy next pew. He wore a calm 
 front of conscious rectitude, under which peeped sheep- 
 faced misgivings as to the result of this advance ; for, 
 like all true lovers, he was half impudence, half timidity ; 
 and both on the grand scale. 
 
 Now, Julia in a ballroom was one creature, another in 
 church. After the first surprise, which sent the blood 
 for a moment to her cheek, she found he had come with- 
 out a prayer-book. She looked sadly and half reproach- 
 fully at him ; then put her white hai:id calmly over the 
 wooden partition, and made him read with her out of 
 her book. She shared her hymn-book with him, too, and 
 sang her Maker's praise modestly and soberly, but ear- 
 nestly, and quite undisturbed by her lover's presence. 
 It seemed as if this pure creature was drawing him to 
 heaven holding by that good book, and by her touching 
 voice. He felt good all over. To be like her he 
 tried to bend his whole mind on the prayers of the 
 Church, and for the first time realized how beautiful 
 they are. 
 
 After service he followed her to the door. Island 
 home again, by the pailful ; and she had a thick shawl,
 
 130 HAKD CASH. 
 
 but no umbrella. He had brought a large one on the 
 chance'; he would see her home. 
 
 " Quite unnecessary, it is so near." 
 
 He insisted; she persisted; and, persisting, yielded. 
 They said but little, yet they seemed to interchange 
 volumes ; and, at each gas-light they passed, they stole a 
 look, and treasured it to feed on. 
 
 That night was one broad step more towards the great 
 happiness, or great misery, which awaits a noble love. 
 Such loves, somewhat rare in nature, have lately become 
 so very rare in fiction, that I have ventured, with many 
 misgivings, to detail the peculiarities of its rise and 
 progress. But now for a time it advanced on beaten 
 tracks ; Alfred had the right to call at Albion Villa, and 
 he came twice ; once when Mrs. Dodd was out. This 
 was the time he stayed the two hours. A Mrs. James 
 invited Jane and him to tea and exposition. There he 
 met Julia and Edward, who had just returned. Edward 
 was taken with Jane Hardie's face and dovelike eyes ; 
 eyes that dwelt with a soft and chastened admiration on 
 his masculine face and his model form, and their owner 
 felt she had received " a call " to watch over his spiritual 
 weal. So they paired off. 
 
 Julia's fluctuating spirits settled now into a calm, 
 demure complacency. Her mother, finding this strange 
 remedial virtue in youthful society, gave young parties, 
 inviting Jane and Alfred in their turn. Jane hesitated ; 
 but, as she could no longer keep Julia from knowing her 
 worldly brother, and hoped a way might be opened for 
 her to rescue Edward, she relaxed her general rule, 
 which was to go into no company unless some religious 
 service formed part of the entertainment. Yet her con- 
 science was ill at ease ; and, to set them an example, she 
 took care, when she asked the Dodds in return, to have 
 a clergyman there of her own party, who could pray and 
 expound with unction.
 
 HARD CASH. 131 
 
 Mrs. Dodd, not to throw cold water on what seemed 
 to gratify her children, accepted Miss Hardie's' invita- 
 tion; but she never intended to go, and at the last 
 moment wrote to say she was slightly indisposed. The 
 nature of her indisposition she revealed to Julia alone : 
 " That young lady keeps me on thorns. I never feel 
 secure she will not say or do something extravagant or 
 unusual ; she seems to suspect sobriety and good taste 
 of being in league with impiety. Here I succeed in 
 bridling her a little ; but encounter a female enthusiast 
 in her own house? merci! After all, there must be 
 something good in her, since she is your friend, and you 
 are hers ; but I have something more serious to say 
 before you go there. It is about her brother ; he is a 
 flirt ; in fact, a notorious one, more than one lady tells 
 me." 
 
 Julia was silent, but began to be very uneasy ; they 
 were sitting and talking after sunset, yet without can- 
 dles ; she profited for once by that prodigious gap in the 
 intelligence of "the sex." 
 
 " I hear he pays you compliments, and I have seen a 
 disposition to single you out. Now, my love, you have 
 the good sense to know that, whatever a young gentle- 
 man of that age says to you, he says to many other 
 ladies ; but your experience is not equal to your sense, 
 so profit by mine ; a girl of your age must never be 
 talked of with a person of the other sex; it is fatal, 
 fatal ! but if you permit yourself to be singled out, you 
 will be talked of, and distress those who love you. It is 
 easy to avoid injudicious duets in society : oblige me by 
 doing so to-night." To show how much she was in 
 earnest, Mrs. Dodd hinted that, were her admonition 
 neglected, she should regret for once having kept clear 
 of an enthusiast. 
 
 Julia had no alternative : she assented in a faint voice.
 
 132 HARD CASH. 
 
 After a pause she faltered out, "And suppose he should 
 esteem me seriously ? " 
 
 Mrs. Dodd replied quickly, " Then that would be much 
 worse. But," said she, "I have no apprehensions on 
 that score ; you are a child, and he is a precocious boy, 
 and rather a flirt. But forewarned is forearmed. So 
 now run away and dress, sweet one ; my lecture is quite 
 ended." 
 
 The sensitive girl went up to her room with a heavy 
 heart. All the fears she had lulled of late revived. 
 She saw plainly now that Mrs. Dodd only accepted 
 Alfred as a pleasant acquaintance ; as a son-in-law he 
 was out of the question. "Oh, what will she say when 
 she knows all ? '" thought Julia. 
 
 Next day, sitting near the window, she saw him 
 coming up the road. After the first movement of pleas- 
 ure at the bare sight of him, she was- sorry he had come. 
 Mamma's suspicions aAvake at last, and here he was 
 again ; the third call in one fortnight ! She dared not 
 risk an interview with him, ardent and unguarded, under 
 that penetrating eye, which she felt would now be on 
 the watch. She rose hurriedly, said as carelessly as she 
 could, " I am going to the school ; " and, tying her 
 bonnet on all in a flurry, whipped out at the back door 
 with her shawl in her hand, just as Sarah opened the 
 front door to Alfred. She then shuffled on her shawl, 
 and whisked through the little shrubbery into the open 
 field, and reached a path that led to the school ; and so 
 gratified was she at her dexterity in evading her favorite, 
 that she hung her head, and went murmuring, "Cruel, 
 cruel, cruel ! " 
 1 Alfred entered the drawing-room gayly, with a good- 
 sized card and a prepared speech. His was not the visit 
 of a friend but a functionary ; the treasurer of the 
 cricket-ground come to book two of his eighteen to play
 
 HARD CASH. 133 
 
 against the All England Eleven next month. "As for 
 you, my worthy sir (turning to Edward), 1 shall just 
 put 3'ou down Avithout ceremony. But I must ask leave 
 to book Captain Dodd. jMrs. Dodd, I come at the uni- 
 versal desire of the club: they say it is sure to be a dull 
 match without Captain Dodd. Besides, he is a capital 
 player." 
 
 " Mamma, don't you be caught by his chaff," said 
 Edward, quietly. " Papa is no player at all. Anything 
 more unlike cricket than his way of making runs ! " 
 
 " But he makes them, old fellow ; now you and I, at 
 Lord's the other day, played in first-rate form : left 
 shoulder well up, and achieved, with neatness, precision, 
 dextei'ity, and despatch, the British duck's-egg." 
 
 " 3Iisericorde ! What is that ? " inquired ]\Irs. Dodd. 
 
 " Why, a round 0," said the other Oxonian, coming to 
 his friend's aid. 
 
 " And what is that, pray ? " 
 
 Alfred told her " The round 0," which had yielded to 
 " the duck's Qg%^^ and was becoming obsolete, meant the 
 cipher set by the scorer against a player's name, who is 
 out without making a run. 
 
 "I see," sighed Mrs. Dodd. *'The jargon of the day 
 penetrates to your very sports and games. And why 
 British ? " 
 
 "Oh, 'British' is redundant: thrown in by the univer- 
 sities." 
 
 " But what does it mean ? " 
 
 " It means nothing. That is the beauty of it. British 
 is inserted in imitation of our idols, the Greeks ; they 
 adored redundancy." 
 
 In short, poor Alfred, though not an jNI.P., was talking 
 to put off time, till Julia should come in ; so he now 
 favored Mrs. Dodd, of all people, with a flowery descrip- 
 tion of her husband's play, which I, who have not his
 
 134 HARD CASH. 
 
 motive for volubility, suppress. However, he wound up 
 with the captain's "moral influence." "Last match," 
 said he, " Barkington did not do itself justice. Several, 
 that could have made a stand, were frightened out, 
 rather than bowled, by the London professionals. Then 
 Captain Dodd went in, and treated those artists with the 
 same good-humored contempt he would a parish bowler ; 
 and, in particular, sent Mynne's over-tossed balls flying 
 over his head for five, or to square leg for four ; and, on 
 his retiring with twenty-five, scored in eight minutes, 
 the remaining Barkiugtonians were less funky, and made 
 some fair scores." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd smiled a little ironically at this tirade, but 
 said she thought she might venture to promise Mr. 
 Dodd's co-operation, should he reach home in time. 
 Then, to get rid of Alfred before Julia's return, the 
 amiable worldling turned to Edward. *' Your sister will 
 not be back, so you may as well ring the bell for luncheon 
 at once. Perhaps j\Ir. Hardie will join us ? " 
 
 Alfred declined, and took his leave with far less 
 alacrity than he had entered ; Edward went down-stairs 
 with him. 
 
 " Miss Dodd gone on a visit ? " asked Alfred, affecting 
 carelessness. 
 
 " Only to the school. By-the-by, I will go and fetch 
 her." 
 
 "No, don't do that; call on my sister instead, and 
 then you will pull me out of a scrape. I promised to 
 bring her here ; but her saintship was so long adorning 
 * the poor perishable body,' that I came alone." 
 
 "I don't understand you," said Edward. "I am not 
 the attraction here ; it is Julia." 
 
 " How do you know that ? When a young lady inter- 
 ests herself in an undergraduate's soul, it is a pretty 
 sure sign she likes the looks of him. But perhaps you
 
 HARD CASH. 135 
 
 don't want to be converted ; if so, keep clear of her. 
 ' Bar the fell dragon's blighting way ; but shun that 
 lovely snare.' " 
 
 "On the contrary," said Edward, calmly, "I only wish 
 she could make me as good as she is, or half as good." 
 
 " Give her the chance, old fellow, and then it won't be 
 your fault if she makes a mess of it. Call at two, and 
 Jenny will receive you very kindly, and will show you 
 you are in the 'gall of bitterness and the bond of 
 iniquity.' Now, won't that be nice ? " 
 
 " I will go," said Edward, gravely. 
 
 They parted. Where Alfred went, the reader can, 
 perhaps, guess ; Edward to luncheon. 
 
 "Mamma," said he, with that tranquillity which sat 
 so well on him, "don't you think Alfred Hardie is 
 spoony upon our Julia ? " 
 
 Mrs. Dodd suppressed a start, and (perhaps to gain 
 time before replying sincerely) said she had not the 
 honor of knowing what "spoony" meant. 
 
 " ^Yhy, sighs for her and dies for her, and fancies she 
 is prettier than Miss Hardie. He must be over head 
 and ears to think that." 
 
 " Fie, child ! " was the answer. " If I thought so, I 
 should withdraw from their acquaintance. Excuse me; 
 I must put on my bonnet at once, not to lose this fine 
 afternoon." 
 
 Edward did not relish her remark ; it menaced more 
 spoons than one. However, he was not the man to be 
 cast down at a word; he lighted a cigar, and strolled 
 towards Hardie's house. Mr. Hardie, senior, had left 
 three days ago on a visit to London. Miss Hardie 
 received him ; he passed the afternoon in calm compla- 
 cency, listening reverently to her admonitions, and look- 
 ing her softly out of countenance, and into earthly 
 affections, with his lion eyes.
 
 136 HARD CASH. 
 
 Meantime his remark, so far from really seeming foolish 
 to Mrs. Dodd, was the true reason for her leaving him 
 so abrii])tly. " Even this dear slow thing sees it," 
 thought she. She must talk to Julia more seriously, and 
 would go to the school at once. She went up-stairs, and 
 put on her bonnet and shawl before the glass, then 
 moulded on her gloves, and came down equipped. On 
 the stairs was a large window looking upon the open 
 field : she naturally cast her eyes through it, in the 
 direction she was going, and what did she see but a 
 young lady and gentleman coming slowly down the path 
 towards the villa. Mrs. Dodd bit her lip with vexation, 
 and looked keenly at them, to divine on what terms 
 they were. And the more she looked, the more uneasy 
 she grew. 
 
 The head, the hand, the whole body of a sensitive 
 young woman walking beside him she loves, betray her 
 heart to experienced eyes watching unseen, and espe- 
 cially to female eyes. And why did Julia move so 
 slowly, especially after that warning ? Why was her 
 head averted from that encroaching boy, and herself so 
 near him ? Why not keep her distance, and look him 
 full in the face ? Mrs. Dodd's first impulse was that of 
 leopardesses, lionesses, hens, and all the mothers in 
 nature, — to dart from her ambush and protect her 
 young, but she controlled it by a strong effort. It 
 seemed wiser to descry the truth, and then act with reso- 
 lution ; besides, the young people were now almost at 
 the shrubbery, so the mischief, if any, was done. 
 
 They entered the shrubbery. 
 
 To Afrs. Dodd's surprise and dismay, they did not 
 come out this side so quickly. She darted her eye into 
 the plantation, and lo ! Alfred had seized the fatal 
 opportunity foliage offers, even when thinnish : he held 
 Julia's hand, and was pleading eagerly for something
 
 HARD CASH. 137 
 
 she seemed not disposed to grant, for she turned away 
 and made an effort to leave him. But INIrs. Dodd, stand- 
 ing there quivering with maternal anxiety, and hot with 
 shame, could not but doubt the sincerity of that grace- 
 ful resistance. If she had been quite in earnest, Julia 
 had fire enough in her to box the little wretch's ears. 
 She ceased even to doubt, when she saw that her daugh- 
 ter's opposition ended in his getting hold of two hands 
 instead of one, and devouring them with kisses, while 
 Julia still drew her head and neck away ; but the rest of 
 her supple frame seemed to yield and incline, and draw 
 softly towards her besieger by some irresistible spell. 
 
 " I can bear no more ! " gasped Mrs. Dodd aloud, and 
 turned to hasten and part them ; but even as she curved 
 her stately neck to go, she caught the lovers parting, and 
 a very pretty one, too, if she could but have looked at 
 it, as these things ought always to be looked at, artist- 
 ically. 
 
 Julia's head and lovely throat, unable to draw the 
 rest of her away, compromised: they turned, declined, 
 drooped, and rested one half moment on her captor's 
 shoulder, like a settling dove ; the next, she scudded 
 from him, and made for the house alone. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd, deeply indignant, but too wise to court a 
 painful interview with her own heart beating high, went 
 into the drawing-room, and there sat down to recover 
 some little composure. But she was hardly seated when 
 Julia's innocent voice was heard calling, " Mamma, 
 mamma ! " and soon she came bounding into the draw- 
 ing-room, brimful of good news, her cheeks as red as 
 fire, and her eyes wet with happy tears, and there con- 
 fronted her mother, who had started up at her footstep, 
 and now, with one hand nipping the back of the chair 
 convulsively, stood lofty, looking strangely agitated and 
 hostile.
 
 138 HAKD CASH. 
 
 The two ladies eyed one another, silent, yet expressive, 
 like a picture facing a statue ; but soon the color died 
 out of Julia's face as well, and she began to cower with 
 vague fears before that stately figure, so gentle and 
 placid usually, but now so discomposed and stern. 
 
 '' Where have you been, Julia ? " 
 
 " Only at the school," she faltered. 
 
 " Who was your companion home ? " 
 
 " Oh, don't be angry with me ! It was Alfred." 
 
 " Alfred ! His Christian name ! You try my patience 
 too hard." 
 
 "Forgive me! I was not to blame this time indeed, 
 indeed ! You frighten me. What will become of me ? 
 What have I done, for my own mamma to look at me 
 so?" 
 
 Mrs. Dodd groaned. "Was that young coquette I 
 watched from my window the child I have reared ? 
 No face on earth is to be trusted after this. ' What 
 have you done,' indeed ? Only risked your own mother's 
 esteem, and nearly broken her heart ! " And with these 
 words her own courage began to give way, and she sank 
 into a chair with a deep sigh. 
 
 At this Julia screamed, and threw herself on her 
 knees beside her, and cried, " Kill me ! oh, pray kill 
 me, but don't drive me to despair with such cruel words 
 and looks ! " and fell to sobbing so wildly that Mrs. 
 Dodd altered her tone with almost Uidicrous rapidity. 
 " There, do not terrify me with your impetuosity, after 
 grieving me so. Be calm, child ; let me see whether I 
 cannot remedy your sad imprudence, and, that I may, 
 pray tell nie the whole truth. How did this come 
 about ? " 
 
 In reply to this question, which she somewhat mis- 
 took, Julia sobbed out, "He met me c-coming out of the 
 school, and asked to s-see me home. I said, ' No, thank
 
 HARD CASH. 139 
 
 you/ because I th-thought of your warning. 'Oh, yes,' 
 said he, and would walk with me, and keep saying he 
 loved me. So, to stop him, I said, ' M-much ob-liged, 
 but I was b-busy and had no time to flirt.' — ' Nor have 
 I the in-inclination,' said he. ' That is not what others 
 say of you,' said I, — you know what you t-told me, 
 mamma, — so at last he said d-did ever he ask any lady 
 to be his wife ? ' I suppose not,' said I, ' or you would 
 be p-p-private property "by now instead of p-public.' " 
 
 " Now there was a foolish speech ; as much as to say 
 nobody could resist him." 
 
 " W-wasn't it ? And n-no more they could. You 
 have no idea how he makes love ; so unladylike ; keeps 
 advancing and advancing, and never once retreats, nor 
 even st-ops. ' But I ask yoic to be my wife,' said he. 
 mamma, I trembled so ! Why did I tremble ? I 
 don't know. I made myself cold and haughty : ' I 
 should make no reply to such ridiculous questions ; say 
 that to mamma, if you dare ! ' I said." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd bit her lip, and said, " Was there ever such 
 simplicity ? " 
 
 " Simple ! ^Tiy, that was ray cunning. You are the 
 only creature he is afraid of, so I thought to stop his 
 mouth with you. But instead of that my lord said 
 calmly, ' That was understood : he loved me too Avell 
 to steal me from her to whom he was indebted for me.' 
 Oh, he has always an answer ready. And that makes 
 him such a p-pest." 
 
 " It was an answer that did him credit." 
 
 " Dear mamma, now did it not ? Then at parting he 
 said he would come to-morrow and ask you for my hand, 
 but I must intercede wdth j-ou first, or you would be sure 
 to say ' No.' So I declined to interfere : ' W-w-Avhat 
 was it to me ? ' I said. He begged and prayed me : 
 ' Was it likely you would give him such a treasure a^
 
 140 HARD CASH. 
 
 me unless I stood his friend ? ' (For the b-b-brazen 
 thing turns humble now and then.) And ! mamma, 
 he did so implore me to pity him, and kept saying no 
 man ever loved as he loved me, and with his begging 
 and praying me so passionately, oh, so passionately ! I 
 felt something warm drop from his poor eyes on my 
 hand. Oh ! oh ! oh ! oh ! What could I do ? And 
 then, you know, I wanted to get away from him. So I 
 am afraid I did just say 'yes,' but only in a whisper. 
 JNIarama, my own, good, kind, darling mamma, have pity 
 on him and on me : we love one another so." 
 
 A shower of tender tears gushed out in support of 
 this appeal, and in a moment she was caught up in Love's 
 mighty arms, and her head laid on her mother's yearn- 
 ing bosom. No word was needed to reconcile these two. 
 
 After a long silence, Mrs. Dodd said this would be a 
 warning never to judge her sweet child from a distance 
 again, nor unheard. ''And therefore," said she, "let 
 me hear from your own lips how so serious an attach- 
 ment could spring up ; why, it is scarcely a month since 
 you were first introduced at that ball." 
 
 " Mamma," murmured Julia, hanging her head, " you 
 are mistaken: we knew each other before." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd looked all astonishment. 
 
 " Now I will ease my heart," said Julia impetuously, 
 addressing some invisible obstacle. " I tell you I am 
 sick of having secrets from my own mother." And 
 with this out it all came. She told the story of her 
 heart better than I have, and, woman-like, dwelt on the 
 depths of loyalty and delicate love she had read in 
 Alfred's moonlit face that night at Henley. She said no 
 eloquence could have touched her like it. "Mamma, 
 something said to me, ' Ay, look at him well, for that is 
 your Imsband to be.' " She even tried to solve the mys- 
 tery of her sol-disant sickness : " I was disturbed by a
 
 HARD CASH. 141 
 
 feeling so new and so powerful,^ but, above all, by hav- 
 ing a secret from you : the first, the last."' 
 
 " Well, darling, then why have a secret ? Why not 
 trust me, your friend as well as your mother ? " 
 
 " Ah ! why, indeed ? I am a puzzle to myself. I 
 wanted you to know, and yet I could not tell you. I 
 kept giving you hints, and hoped so you would take 
 them, and make me speak out. But when I tried to 
 tell you plump, something kept pull — pull — pulling 
 me inside, and I couldn't. Mark my words : some day 
 it will turn out that I am neither more nor less than a 
 fool." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd slighted this ingenious solution. She said, 
 after a moment's reflection, that the fault of this mis- 
 understanding lay between the two. '' I remember now 
 I have had many hints : my mind must surely have gone 
 to sleep. I was a poor simple woman who thought her 
 daughter was to be always a child. And you were very 
 wrong to go and set a limit to your mother's love : there 
 is none, — none whatever." She added, "I must import 
 a little prudence and respect for the world's opinion 
 into this new connection ; but whoever you love shall 
 find no enemy in me." 
 
 Next day Alfred came to know his fate. He Avas 
 received with ceremonious courtesy. At first he was a 
 good deal embarrassed, but this was no sooner seen than 
 it was relieved by Mrs. Dodd with tact and gentleness. 
 When her turn came she said, " Your papa ? Of course 
 you have communicated this step to him ? " 
 
 Alfred looked a little confused, and said, " No : he 
 left for London two days ago, as it happens." 
 
 " That is unfortunate," said Mrs. Dodd. " Your best 
 
 I Perhaps even this faint attempt at self-analysis was due to the influence 
 of Dr. Whately, for, by nature, young ladies of this age seldom turn the eye 
 inward.
 
 142 HARD CASH. 
 
 plan would be to write to liim at once : I need hardly 
 tell you that we shall enter no family without an invita- 
 tion from its head." 
 
 Alfred replied that he was well aware of that, and 
 that he knew his father, and could answer for him. 
 *' No doubt," said Mrs. Dodd, *' but, as a matter of rea- 
 sonable form, I prefer he should answer for himself," 
 Alfred would write by this post. " It is a mere form," 
 said he, " for my father has but one answer to his chil- 
 dren : * Please yourselves.' He sometimes adds, ' and 
 how much money shall you want ? ' These are his two 
 formulae." 
 
 He then delivered a glowing eulogy on his father ; 
 and Mrs. Dodd, to whom the boy's character was now a 
 grave and anxious study, saw with no common satisfac- 
 tion his cheek flush, and his eyes moisten, as he dwelt 
 on the calm, sober, unvarying affection and reasonable 
 indulgence he and his sister had met with all their lives 
 from the best of parents. Returning to the topic of 
 topics, he proposed an engagement. " I have a ring in 
 my pocket," said this brisk wooer, looking down. But 
 this Mrs. Dodd thought premature and unnecessary. 
 " You are nearly of age," said she, " and then you will 
 be able to marry if you are in the same mind." But, 
 upon being warmly pressed, she half conceded even 
 this. "Well," said she, "on receiving your father's 
 consent, you can projwse an engagement to Julia, and 
 she shall use her own judgment ; but, until then, you 
 will not even mention such a thing to her. May I count 
 on so much forbearance from you, sir ? " 
 
 " Dear Mrs. Dodd," said Alfred, " of course you may. 
 I should indeed be ungrateful if I could not wait a post 
 for that. May I write to my father here ? " added he 
 naively. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd smiled, furnished him with writing mate- 
 rials, and left him with a polite excuse.
 
 HARD CASH. 143 
 
 Albion Villa, Sept. 29. 
 
 My dear Father, — You are too thorough a man of the 
 world, and too well versed in human nature, to be surprised 
 at hearing that I, so long invulnerable, have at last formed a 
 devoted attachment to one whose beauty, goodness, and accom- 
 plishments I will not now enlarge upon; they are indescriba- 
 ble, and you will very soon see them and judge for yourself. 
 The attachment, though short in weeks and months, has been a 
 very long one in hopes, and fears, and devotion. I should have 
 told you of it before you left, but, in truth, I had no idea I 
 was so near the goal of all my earthly hopes ; there were many 
 difficulties ; but these have just cleared away almost miracu- 
 lously, and nothing now is wanting to my happiness but your 
 consent. It would be aflfectatiou, or worse, in me to doubt 
 that you will grant it. But, in a matter so delicate, I venture 
 to ask you for something more : the mother of my ever and 
 only beloved Julia is a lady of high breeding and sentiments ; 
 she will not let her daughter enter any family without a cordial 
 invitation from its head. Indeed, she has just told me so. I 
 ask, therefore, not your bare consent, of which I am sure, 
 since my happiness for life depends on it, but a consent so 
 gracefully worded — and who can do this better than you? — 
 as to gratify the just pride and sensibilities of the high-minded 
 family, about to confide its brightest ornament to my care. 
 
 My dear father, in the nlidst of felicity almost more than any 
 mortal, the thought has come that this letter is my first step 
 towards leaving the paternal roof under which I have been so 
 happy all my life, thanks to you. I should indeed be unworthy 
 of all your goodness if this thought caused me no emotion. 
 
 Yet I do but yield to nature's universal law. And, should I 
 be master of my own destiny, I will not go far from you. I 
 have been unjust to Barkington ; or rather, I have echoed, 
 Avithout thought, Oxonian prejudices and affectation. On 
 mature reflection, I know no better residence for a married 
 man. 
 
 Do you remember about a j'ear ago you mentioned a ]\Iiss 
 Lucy Fountain to us as " the most perfect gentlewoman you 
 had ever met"? Well, strange to say, it is that very lady's 
 daughter ; and I think when you see her you will say the breed
 
 144 HARD CASH. 
 
 has anything but declined, in spite of Horace and his " dam- 
 nosa qiiid non.'''' Her brother is my dearest friend, and she is 
 Jenny's ; so a more happy alliance for all })arties was never 
 projected. 
 
 Write to me by return, dear father, and believe me, 
 Ever your dutiful and grateful son, 
 
 Alfued Hardie. 
 
 As he concluded, Julia came in, and he insisted on her 
 reading this masterpiece. She hesitated. Then he told 
 her with juvenile severity that a good husband always 
 shares his letters with his wife. 
 
 " His wife ? Alfred ! " and she colored all over. 
 " Don't call me names,''^ said she, turning it off, after her 
 fashion. " I can't bear it ; it makes me tremble. With 
 fury." 
 
 "This will never do, sweet one," said Alfred gravely. 
 *' You and I are to have no separate existence, now ; you 
 are to be I, and I am to be you. Come ! " 
 
 " No ; you read me so much of it as is proper for me 
 to hear. I shall not like it so well from your lips ; but 
 never mind." 
 
 When he came to read it, he appreciated the delicacy 
 that had tempered her curiosity. He did not read it all 
 to her, but nearly. 
 
 " It is a beautiful letter," said she ; " a little pom- 
 pouser than mamma and 1 write. ' The paternal roof ! ' 
 But all that becomes you ; you are a scholar ; and, dear 
 Alfred, if I should separate you from your papa, I will 
 never estrange you from him ; oh, never, never! May I 
 go for my work? for, methinks, most erudite, the 
 ' maternal dame,' on domestic cares intent, hath confided 
 to her offspring the recreation of your highness." The 
 gay creature dropped him a courtesy, and fled to tell 
 Mrs. Dodd the substance of "the sweet letter the dear 
 high-tlowu thing had written."
 
 HARD CASH. 145 
 
 By tlien he had folded and addressed it, she returned 
 and brought her work ; charity children's great cloaks ; 
 her mother had cut them, and in the height of the fash- 
 ion, to Jane Hardie's dismay ; and Julia was binding, 
 hooding, etcaetering them. 
 
 How demurely she bent her lovely head over her 
 charitable work, while Alfred poured his tale into her 
 ears ! How careful she was not to speak, when there 
 was a chance of his speaking ! How often she said one 
 thing so as to express its opposite, a process for which 
 she might have taken out a patent ! How she and Alfred 
 compared heart-notes, and their feelings at each stage of 
 their passion ! Their hearts put forth tendril after ten- 
 dril, and so curled and clung round each other. 
 
 In the afternoon of the second blissful day, Julia sud- 
 denly remembered that this was dull for her mother. 
 To have such a thought was to fly to her ; and she flew 
 so swiftly that she caught Mrs. Dodd in tears, and trying 
 adroitly and vainly to hide them. 
 
 " What is the matter ? I am a wretch. I have left 
 you alone." 
 
 "Do not think me so peevish, love ! you have but sur- 
 prised the natural regrets of a mother at the loss of her 
 child." 
 
 " mamma," said Julia warmly, '' and do you think 
 all the marriage in the world can ever divide you and me 
 — can make me lukewarm to my own sweet, darling, 
 beautiful, blessed, angel mother ? Look at me ; I am as 
 much your Julia as ever; and shall be while 1 live. 
 Your son is your son till he gets him a wife; but your 
 daughter's your daughter, all — the — days — of her 
 
 LIFE." 
 
 Divine power of native eloquence; with this trite dis- 
 tich you made hexameters tame ; it gushed from that 
 great young heart with a sweet infantine ardor, that 
 10
 
 146 HARD CASH. 
 
 even virtue can only pour Avhen young, and youth when 
 virtuous ; and, at the words I have emphasized by the 
 poor device of capitals, two lovely, supple arms flew wide 
 out like a soaring albatross's wings, and then went all 
 round the sad mother, and gathered every bit of her up 
 to the generous young bosom. 
 
 "I know it, I know it ! " cried Mrs. Dodd, kissing her ; 
 "I shall never lose my daughter while she breathes. 
 But I am losing my child. You are turning to a woman 
 visibly ; and you were such a happy child. Hence my 
 misgivings, and these weak tears, which you have dried 
 with a word, see!" and she contrived to smile. "And 
 now go down, dearest; he may be impatient; men's love 
 is so fiery." 
 
 The next day Mrs. Dodd took Julia apart and asked her 
 whether there was an answer from ISIr. Hardie. Julia 
 replied, from Alfred, that Jane had received a letter last 
 night, and, to judge by the contents, Mr. Hardie must 
 have left London before Alfred's letter got there. " He 
 is gone to see poor Uncle Thomas." 
 
 " Why do you call him ' poor ' ? " 
 
 " Oh, he is not very clever; has not much mind, Alfred 
 says ; indeed, hardly any." 
 
 " You alarm me, Julia ! " cried Mrs. Dodd : " what ? 
 madness in the family you propose to marry into ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, mamma," said Julia, in a great hurry ; " no 
 madness; only a little imbecility." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd's lip curved at this Julian answer; but just 
 then her mind was more drawn to another topic. A 
 serious doubt passed through her, whether, if Mr. Hardie 
 did not write soon, she ought not to limit his son's attend- 
 ance on her daughter. " He follows her about like a 
 little dog," said she half-fretfully. 
 
 Next day, by previous invitation. Dr. Sampson made 
 Albion Villa his headouarters. Darting in from London
 
 HARD CASH. 147 
 
 lie found Alfred sitting very close to Julia over a book. 
 '• Lordsake ! " cried he, "here's 'my puppy,' and ' m' 
 enthusiast/ cheek by chovvl." Julia turned scarlet, and 
 Alfred ejaculated so loudly, that Sampson inquired what 
 on airth was the matter now ? 
 
 " Oh, nothing ; only here have I been jealous of my 
 own shadow, and pestering her who 'your puppy ' was ; 
 and she never would tell me. All 1 could get from her," 
 added he, turning suddenly from gratitude to revenge, 
 " was — that he was no greater a puppy than yourself, 
 doctor." 
 
 "0 Alfred, no; I only said no vainer," cried Julia in 
 dismay. 
 
 " Well, it is true," said Sampson, contentedly, and 
 proceeded to dissect himself just as he would a stranger. 
 " 1 am a vain man ; a remarkably vain man. But then, 
 I'm a man of great mirit." 
 
 "All vain people are that," suggested Alfred dryly. 
 
 " Who should know better than you, young Oxford ? 
 Y' have got a hidache." 
 
 " No, indeed." 
 
 " Don't tell lies now. Ye can't deceive me ; man, I've 
 an eye like a hawk. And what's that ye're studying 
 with her ? Ovid, for a pound." 
 
 " No, medicine ; a treatise on your favorite organ, the 
 brain ; by one Dr. Whately." 
 
 " He is chaffing you, doctor," said Edward ; " it is 
 logic. He is coaching her, and then she will coach me." 
 
 " Then 1 forbid the chaff-cutting, young Pidant. Logic 
 is an ill plaster to a sore head." 
 
 " Oh, ' the labor we delight in, physics pain.' " 
 
 "Jinnyiis, Jinnyus ; 
 Take care o' your carkuss," 
 
 retorted the master of doggerel. "And that is a pro-
 
 148 HARD CASH. 
 
 founder remark than you seem to think, by your grin- 
 ning, all of ye." 
 
 Julia settled the question by putting away the book. 
 And she murmured to Alfred, " 1 wisli I could steal your 
 poor dear headaches ; you might give me half of them at 
 least ; you would, too, if you really loved me." 
 
 This sound remonstrance escaped criticism by being 
 nearly inaudible, and by Mrs. Dodd entering at the same 
 moment. 
 
 After the first greeting, Sampson asked her with merry 
 arrogance, how his prescription had worked. "Is her 
 sleep broken still, ma'am ? Are her spirits up and down ? 
 Shall we have to go back t' old Short and his black 
 draught ? How's her mookis membrin ? An' her 
 biliary ducks ? an' — She's off like a flash." 
 
 " And no wonder," said Mrs. Dodd, reproachfully. 
 
 Thus splashed Sampson among the ducks ; one of 
 them did not show her face again till dinner. 
 
 Jane Hardie accompanied her brother by invitation. 
 The general amity was diversified, and the mirth nowise 
 lessened, by constant passages of arms between Messrs. 
 Sampson and Alfred Hardie. 
 
 After tea came the first contretemps. Sampson liked 
 a game of cards ; he could play, yet talk chronothermal- 
 isra, as the fair can knit babies' shoes, and imbibe the 
 poetasters of the day. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd had asked Edward to bring a fresh pack. 
 He was seen by his guardian angel to take them out 
 of his pocket and undo them ; presently Sampson, in his 
 rapid way, clutched hold of them ; and found a slip of 
 paper curled round the ace of spades, with this written 
 very clear in pencil : " Remembek thy Creator in the 
 
 DAYS OF THY YOUTH ! " 
 
 " What is this '.' " cried Sampson, and read it out aloud. 
 Jane Hardie colored, and so betrayed herself. Her
 
 HARD CASH. 149 
 
 " word in season " had strayed. It was the young and 
 comely Edward she wished to save from the diabolical 
 literature, the painted perdition ; and not the uninterest- 
 ing old sinner Sampson, who proceeded to justify her 
 preference by remarking that " Remember not to trump 
 your partner's best card, ladies," would be more to the 
 point. 
 
 Everybody, except this hardened personage, was thor- 
 oughly uncomfortable. As for Alfred, his face betrayed 
 a degree of youthful mortification, little short of agony. 
 Mrs. Dodd was profoundly disgusted, but fortunately for 
 the Hardies, caught sight of his burning cheeks and com- 
 pressed lips. "Dr. Sampson," said she, with cold dig- 
 nity, "you will, I am sure, oblige me by making no more 
 comments ; sincerity is not always discreet, but it is 
 always respectable ; it is one of your own titles to esteem. 
 I dare say," added she with great sweetness, " our re- 
 sources are not so narrow that we need shock anybody's 
 prejudices, and, as it happens, I was just going to ask 
 Julia to sing ; open the piano, love, and try if you can 
 persuade Miss Hardie to join you in a duet." 
 
 At this, Jane and Julia had an earnest conversation at 
 the piano, and their words, uttered in a low voice, were 
 covered by a contemporaneous discussion between Samp- 
 son and Mrs. Dodd. 
 
 Jane. No, you must not ask Sampson. Hum! for all that, 
 
 me: I have forsworn these vani- young ladies' singing is a poor 
 
 ties. I have not opened my piano substitute for cards, and even for 
 
 this two years. conversation. 
 
 Julia. Oh, what a pity! music Mrs. Dodd. That depends upon 
 
 is so beautiful ; and surely we can the singer, I presume, 
 
 choose our songs, as easily as our Sampson. Mai — dear — madam, 
 
 words; ah, how much more easily, they all sing alike; just as they 
 
 Jane. Oh, I don't go so far as all write alike. I can hardly tell 
 
 to call music wicked: but music one fashionable tune from an- 
 
 In society is such a snare. At other: and nobody can tell one 
 
 least I found it so; my playing word from another, when they 
 
 was highly praised; and that cut out all the consonants. N'
 
 150 
 
 HARD CASH. 
 
 stirred up vanity: and so did my 
 singing, with which I had even 
 more reason to be satisfied. 
 Snares! snares! 
 
 Jidia. Goodness me! I don't 
 find them so. Now you mention 
 it, gentlemen do praise one; but, 
 dear me, tliey praise every lady, 
 even when we have been singing 
 every other note out of tune. The 
 little unmeaning compliments of 
 society, can they catch anything 
 so great as a soul ? 
 
 Jane. I pray daily not to be 
 led into temptation, and shall I 
 go into it of my own accord ? 
 
 Julia. Not if you find it a 
 temptation. At that rate I ought 
 to decline. 
 
 Jane. That doesn't follow. My 
 conscience is not a law to yours. 
 Besides,your mamma said "Sing;" 
 and a parent is not to be disobeyed 
 upon a doubt. If papa were to 
 insist on my going to a ball even, 
 or reading a novel, I think I 
 should obey; and lay the whole 
 case before Him. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd (from a distance). 
 Come, my dears. Dr. Sampson is 
 getting so impatient for your 
 song. 
 
 listen me. This is what I heard 
 sung by a lady last night : — 
 
 Ee un Da' ei u aa an oo 
 
 By oo eeeeyee aa 
 
 Vaullee, vaullee, vauUee, vaullee, 
 
 Vaullee om is igh eeaa 
 
 An ellin in is ud. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd. That sounds like 
 gibberish. 
 
 Sampson. It is gibberish, but 
 it's Drydenish in articulating 
 mouths. It is, — 
 
 He sung Darius great and good, 
 By too severe a fate 
 Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, 
 Fallen from his high estate, 
 And weltering in his blood. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd. I think you exag- 
 gerate. I will answer for Julia 
 that she shall speak as distinctly 
 to music as you do in conversation. 
 
 Sa7npson (all unconscious of the 
 tap). Time will show, madam. 
 At prisent they seem to be in no 
 hurry to spatter us with their 
 word-jelly. Does some spark of 
 pity linger in their marble bos'ms ? 
 or do they prefer inaud'ble chit- 
 chat t' inarticulate mewin? 
 
 Julia, thus pressed, sang one of those songs that come 
 and go every season. She spoke the words clearly, and 
 with such variety and intelligence, that Sampson recanted, 
 and broke in upon the "Very pretty," " How sweet," and 
 " Who is it by ? " of the others, by shouting, " Very weak 
 trash, very cleanly sung. Now give us something worth 
 the wear and tear of your orgins. Immortal vairse widded 
 t' immortal sounds ; that is what I understand b' a song." 
 
 Alfred whispered, "No, no, dearest; sing something 
 suitable to you and me."
 
 HARD CASH. 151 
 
 "Out of the question. Then go further away, dear; 
 I shall have more courage."' 
 
 He obeyed, and she turned over two or three music- 
 books ; and finally sang from memory. She cultivated 
 musical memory, having observed the contempt with 
 which men of sense visit the sorry pretenders to music, 
 who are tuneless and songless among the nightingales, 
 and anywhere else away from their books. How will 
 they manage to sing in heaven ? Answer me that. 
 
 The song Julia Dodd sang on this happy occasion, to 
 meet the humble but heterogeneous views of Messrs. 
 Sampson and Hardie, was a simple, eloquent Irish song, 
 called " Aileen Aroon," whose history, by-the-by, was a 
 curious one. Early in this century it occurred to some- 
 body to hymn a son of George the Third for his double 
 merit in having been born, and going to a ball. People 
 who thus apply the fine arts in modern days are seldom 
 artists ; accordingly, this parasite could not invent a 
 melody ; so he coolly stole " Aileen Aroon," soiled it by 
 inserting sordid and incongruous jerks into the refrain, 
 and calling the stolen and adulterated article "Robin 
 Adair." An artisan of the same kidney was soon found 
 to write words down to the degraded ditty : and so 
 strong is flunkeyism, and so weak is criticism, in these 
 islands, that the polluted tune actually superseded the 
 clean melody ; and this sort of thing, — 
 
 Who was in uniform at the ball ? 
 
 Silly Billy, - 
 
 smothered the immortal lines. 
 
 But Mrs. Dodd's severe taste in music rejected those 
 ignoble jerks, and her enthusiastic daughter, having the 
 option to hymn immortal Constancy or mortal Fat, 
 decided thus ; —
 
 152 HARD CASH. 
 
 When like the early rose, 
 
 Aileen aroon, 
 Beauty in childhood glows, 
 
 Aileen aroon, 
 When like a diadem, 
 Buds blush round the stem, 
 Which is the fairest gem ? 
 
 Aileen aroon. 
 
 Is it the laughing eye ? 
 
 Aileen aroon. 
 Is it the timid sigh ? 
 
 Aileen aroon. 
 Is it the tender tone. 
 Soft as the stringed harp's moan? 
 No ; it is truth alone, 
 
 Aileen aroon. 
 
 I know a valley fair, 
 
 Aileen aroon, 
 I know a cottage there, 
 
 Aileen aroon. 
 Far in that valley's shade, 
 1 know a gentle maid. 
 Flower of the hazel glade, 
 
 Aileen aroon. 
 
 Who in the song so sweet ? 
 
 Aileen aroon. 
 Who in the dance so fleet ? 
 
 Aileen aroon. 
 Dear are her charms to me. 
 Dearer her laughter free, 
 Dearer her constancy, 
 
 Aileen aroon. 
 
 JTouth must with time decay, 
 
 Aileen aroon. 
 
 Beauty must fade away, 
 
 A.ileen aroon.
 
 HARD CASH. 153 
 
 Castles arc sacked in war, 
 Chieftains are scattered far. 
 Truth is a fixed star, 
 
 Aileen aroon. 
 
 The way the earnest singer sang these lines is beyond 
 the conception of ordinary singers, public or private. 
 Here one of nature's orators spoke poetry to music witli 
 an eloquence as fervid and delicate as ever rung in the 
 Forum. She gave each verse with the same just variety 
 as if she had been reciting, and, when she came to the 
 last, where the thought rises abruptly, and is truly noble, 
 she sang it with the sudden pathos, the weight, and the 
 swelling majesty, of a truthful soul hymning truth with 
 all its powers. 
 
 All the hearers, even Sampson, were thrilled, aston- 
 ished, spell-bound : so can one wave of immortal music 
 and immortal verse (alas ! how seldom they meet !) heave 
 the inner man when genius interprets. Judge, then, 
 what it was to Alfred, to whom, with these great words 
 and thrilling tones of her rich, swelling, ringing voice, 
 the darling of his own heart vowed constancy, while her 
 inspired face beamed on him like an angel's. 
 
 Even Mrs. Dodd, though acquainted with the song, 
 and with her daughter's rare powers, gazed at her now 
 with some surprise, as well as admiration, and kept a 
 note Sarah had brought her, open, but unread, in her 
 hand, unable to take her eyes from the inspired song- 
 stress. However, just before the song ended, she did 
 just glance down, and saw it was signed Richard Hardie. 
 On this her eye devoured it; and in one moment she 
 saw that the writer declined, politely but peremptorily, 
 the proposed alliance between his son and her daugh- 
 ter. 
 
 The mother looked up from this paper at that living 
 radiance and incarnate melody in a sort of stupor: it
 
 154 HARD CASH. 
 
 seemed hardly possible to her that a provincial banker 
 could refuse an alliance with a creature so peerless as 
 that. But so it was ; and despite her habitual self- 
 government, Mrs. Dodd's white hand clenched the note 
 till her nails dented it ; and she reddened to the brow 
 with anger and mortification. 
 
 Julia, whom she had trained never to monopolize atten- 
 tion in society, now left the piano in spite of remon- 
 strance, and soon noticed her mother's face: for from 
 red it had become paler than usual. " Are you unwell, 
 dear ? " said she, sotto voce. 
 
 " No, love." 
 
 "Is there anything the matter, then ?" 
 
 " Hush ! We have guests : our first duty is to them." 
 With this Mrs. Dodd rose, and, endeavoring not to look 
 at her daughter at all, went round and drew each of her 
 guests out in turn. It was the very heroism of courtesy; 
 for their presence was torture to her. At last, to her 
 infinite relief, they went, and she was left alone with 
 her children. She sent the servants to bed, saying she 
 would undress Miss Dodd : and accompanied her to her 
 room. There the first thing she did was to lock the 
 door ; and the next was to turn round and look at her 
 full. 
 
 "I always thought you the most lovable child I ever 
 saw ; but I never admired you as I have to-night ; my 
 noble, my beautiful daughter, who would grace the high- 
 est family in England." With this, Mrs. Dodd began to 
 choke, and kissed Julia eagerly with the tears in her 
 eyes, and drew her with tender, eloquent defiance to her 
 bosom. 
 
 " My own mamma," said Julia, softly, " what has hap- 
 pened ? " 
 
 "My darling," said Mrs. Dodd, trembling a little, 
 " have you pride ? have you spirit ? "
 
 HARD CASH. ib5 
 
 « T think I have." 
 
 "I hope so: for you will need them both. Read 
 that ! " And she held out Mv. Hardie's letter, but 
 turned her own head away, not to see her girl's face 
 under the insult.
 
 IHQ HARD CASH. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Julia took Mr. Hardie's note and read it: — 
 
 Madam, — I have received a very juvenile letter from my 
 son, by which I learn he has formed a sudden attachment to 
 your daughter. He tells me, however, at the same time, that 
 you await my concurrence before giving your consent. I ap- 
 preciate your delicacj' ; and it is with considerable regret I now 
 write to inform you this match is out of the question. I have 
 thought it due to you to communicate this to yourself and with- 
 out delay, and feel sm"e that you will, under the circumstances, 
 discountenance my son's further visits at your house. 
 1 am, madam, 
 
 With sincere respect. 
 
 Your faithful servant, 
 
 RiCHAKD HaKDIE. 
 
 Julia read this letter, and re-read it in silence. It 
 was an anxious moment to the mother. 
 
 " Shall our pride be less than this parvenu's ? " she 
 faltered. "Tell me yourself, what ought we to do ?" 
 
 '•' What we ought to do is, never to let the name of 
 Hardie be mentioned again in this house." 
 
 This reply was very comforting to Mrs. Dodd. 
 
 " Shall I write to him, or do you feel strong enough ? " 
 
 "I feel that, if I do, I may aifront him. He had no 
 right to pretend that his father would consent. You 
 write, and then we shall not lose our dignity, though we 
 are insulted. 
 
 " I feel so weary, mamma. Life seems ended. 
 
 "I could have loved him well. And now show me
 
 HARD CASH. 157 
 
 how to tear him out of my heart : or what will become 
 of me ? " 
 
 AVhile Mrs. Dodd wrote to Alfred Hardie, Julia sank 
 down and laid her head on her mother's knees. The 
 note was shown her ; she approved it languidly. A long 
 and sad conversation followed ; and after kissing her 
 mother and clinging to her, she Avent to bed chilly and 
 listless, but did not shed a single tear. Her young heart 
 was benumbed by the unexpected blow. 
 
 Next morning early Alfred Hardie started gayly to 
 spend the day at Albion Villa. Not a hundred yards 
 from the gate he met Sarah, with Mrs. Dodd's letter, en- 
 closing a copy of his father's to her. Mrs. Dodd here 
 reminded him that his visits had been encouraged only 
 upon a misapprehension of his father's sentiments ; for 
 which misapprehension he was in some degree to blame : 
 not that she meant to reproach him on that score, espe- 
 cially at this unhappy moment : no, she rather blamed 
 herself for listening to the sanguine voice of youth ; but 
 the error must now be repaired. She and Julia would 
 always wish him well, and esteem him, provided he 
 made no further attempt to compromise a young lady 
 who could not be his wife. The note concluded thus : — 
 
 Individually I tliink I have some right to count on your 
 honorable feeling to hold no communication with my daughter, 
 and not in any way to attract her attention, under the present 
 circumstances. 
 
 I am, 
 
 Dear Mr. Alfred Hardie, 
 With many regrets at the pain I fear 
 I am giving you, 
 Your sincere friend and well-wisher, 
 
 Lucy Dodd. 
 
 Alfred on reading this letter literally staggered : but 
 proud and sensitive, as well as loving, he manned him*
 
 158 HARD CASH. 
 
 self to hide his wound from Sarah, whose black eyes 
 were bent on him in merciless scrutiny. He said dog- 
 gedly, though tremulously, " Very well ! " then turned 
 quickly on his heel, and went slowly home. Mrs. Dodd, 
 with well-feigned indifference, questioned Sarah pri- 
 vately : the girl's account of the abrupt way in which 
 he had received the missive added to her anxiety. She 
 warned the servants that no one was at home to Mr. 
 Alfred Hardie. 
 
 Two days elapsed, and then she received a letter from 
 him. Poor fellow, it was the eleventh. He had written 
 and torn up ten. 
 
 Dear Mrs. Dodb, — I have gained some victories in my 
 life ; but not one without two defeats to begin with ; how then 
 can I expect to obtain such a prize as dear Julia without a 
 check or two ? You need not fear that I shall intrude after 
 your appeal to me as a gentleman ; but I am not going to give 
 in because my father has written a hasty letter from Yorkshire. 
 He and I must have many a talk face to face before I consent 
 to be miserable for life. Dear Mrs. Dodd, at first receipt of 
 your cruel letter, so kindly worded, I was broken-hearted ; but 
 now I am myself again : difficulties are made for ladies to 
 yield to, and for men to conquer. Only for pity's sake do not 
 you be my enemy : do not set her against me for my father's 
 fault. Think, if you can, how my heart bleeds at closing this 
 letter without one word to her I love, better, a thousand times 
 better, than my life. 
 
 I am, 
 
 Dear Mrs. Dodd, 
 
 Yours sorrowfully, 
 
 but not despairing, 
 Alfred Hardie. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd kept this letter to herself. She could not 
 read it quite unmoved, and therefore she felt sure it 
 would disturb her daughter's heart the more. 
 
 Alfred had now a soft but dangerous antagonist in
 
 HARD CASH. l69 
 
 Mrs. Dodd. All the mother was in arms to secure her 
 daughter's happiness, coute que coute! and the surest 
 course seemed to be to detach her affections from 
 Alfred. What hope of a peaceful heart without this ? 
 and what real happiness without peace ? But, too wise 
 and calm to interfere blindly, she watched her daughter 
 day and night, to find whether love or pride was the 
 stronger : and this is what she observed : — 
 
 Julia never mentioned Alfred. She sought occupation 
 eagerly : came oftener than usual for money, saying it 
 was for " luxury." She visited the poor more constantly, 
 taking one of the maids with her, at Mrs. Dodd's request. 
 She studied logic with Edward. She went to bed rather 
 early, fatigued, it would appear, by her activity : and 
 she gave the clew to her own conduct one day : 
 " Mamma," said she, " nobody is downright unhappy 
 who is good." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd noticed also a certain Avildness and almost 
 violence, with which she threw herself into her occupa- 
 tions : and a worn look about the eyes that told of a 
 hidden conflict. On the whole Mrs. Dodd was hopeful ; 
 for she had never imagined the cure would be speedy or 
 easy. To see her child on the right road was much. 
 Only the great healer Time could " medicine her to that 
 sweet peace which once she owned ; " and even time 
 cannot give her back her childhood, thought the mother, 
 with a sigh. 
 
 One day came an invitation to an evening party at a 
 house where they always wound up with dancing. Mrs. 
 Dodd was for declining as usual ; for since that night 
 Julia had shunned parties. " Give me the sorrows of 
 the poor and afflicted," was her cry ; 'Hhe gayety of the 
 hollow world jars me more than I can bear." But now 
 she caught with a sort of eagerness at this invitation. 
 " Accept. They shall not say I am wearing the willow."
 
 160 HARD CASH. 
 
 "My brave girl!" said Mrs. Dodd, joyfully, "I would 
 not press it ; but you are right ; we owe it to ourselves 
 to outface scandal. Still, let there be no precipitation ; 
 we must not undertake beyond our strength." 
 
 " Try me to-night," said Julia ; " you don't know what 
 I can do. 1 dare say he is not pining for me." 
 
 She was the life and soul of the party, and, indeed, so 
 feverishly brilliant, that Mrs. Dodd said softly to her, 
 " Gently, love ; moderate your spirits, or they will 
 deceive our friends as little as they do me." 
 
 Meantime, it cost Alfred Hardie a severe struggle to 
 keep altogether aloof from Julia. In fact, it was a state 
 of daily self-denial, to which he would never have com- 
 mitted himself, but that he was quite sure he could 
 gradually win his father over. At his age we are apt 
 to count without our antagonist. 
 
 Mr. Richard Hardie was "a long-headed man." He 
 knew the consequence of giving one's reasons ; eternal 
 discussion ending in war. He had taken care not to 
 give any to Mrs. Dodd, and he was as guarded and re- 
 served with Alfred. The young man begged to know 
 the why and the wherefore, and, being repulsed, em- 
 ployed all his art to elicit them by surprise, or get at 
 them by inference : but all in vain ; Hardie senior was 
 impenetrable ; and inquiry, petulance, tenderness, logic, 
 were all shattered on him as the waves break on Ailsa 
 Craig. 
 
 Thus began dissension, decently conducted at first, 
 between a father, indulgent hitherto, and an affectionate 
 son. 
 
 In this unfortunate collision of two strong and kin- 
 dred natures, every advantage was at present on the 
 father's side ; age, experience, authority, resolution, 
 hidden and powerful motives, to which my reader even 
 has no clew as yet ; a purpose immutable and concealed.
 
 HARD CASH. 161 
 
 Add to these a colder nature and a far colder affection ; 
 for Alfred loved his father dearly. 
 
 At last, one day, the impetuous one lost his self-com- 
 mand, and said he was a son, not a slave, and had little 
 respect for authority Avhen afraid or ashamed to appeal 
 to reason. Hardie senior turned on him with a gravity 
 and dignity no man could wear more naturally. " Alfred, 
 have I been an unkind father to you all these years?" 
 
 "Oh, no, father, no; 1 have said nothing that can be so 
 construed. And that is the mystery to me ; you are act- 
 ing quite out of character." 
 
 " Have I been one of those interfering, pragmatical 
 fathers who cannot let their children enjoy themselves 
 their own way ? " 
 
 "No, sir; you have never interfered, except to pay for 
 anything I wanted." 
 
 " Then make the one return in your power, young 
 man ; have a little faith in such a father, and believe 
 that he does not interfere now but for your good, and 
 under a stern necessity; and that when he does interfere 
 for once, and say, ' this thing sha.ll not be,' it shall not be 
 — by Heaven ! " 
 
 Alfred was overpowered by the weight and solemnity 
 of this. Sorrow, vexation, and despondency all ruslied 
 into his heart together, and unmanned him for a 
 moment ; he buried his face in his hands, and some- 
 thing very like a sob burst from his young heart. At 
 this Hardie senior took up the newspaper with imper- 
 turbable coldness, and wore a slight curl of the lip. All 
 this was hardly genuine, for he was not altogether 
 unmoved ; but he was a man of rare self-command, and 
 chose to impress on Alfred that he was no more to be 
 broken or melted than a mere rock. 
 
 It is always precarious to act a part ; and this cyni- 
 cism was rather able than wise; Alfred looked up and 
 11
 
 162 HARD CASH. 
 
 watched him keenly as he read the monetary article with 
 tranquil interest; and then, for the first time in his life^ 
 it iiashed into the young man's mind tliat liis father was 
 not a father. " I never knew him till now," thought he. 
 " This man is aaroo^o,-." ^ 
 
 Thus a gesture, so to speak, sowed the first seed of 
 downright disunion in Richard Hardie's house — dis- 
 union, a fast-growing plant, when men set it in the soil 
 of the passions. 
 
 Alfred, unlike Julia, had no panacea. Had any lips, 
 except perhaps hers, told him that " to be good is to be 
 happy here below," he would have replied, '•'' Negatur ; 
 contradicted by daily experience." It never occurred to 
 him, therefore, to go out of himself and sympathize with 
 the sordid sorrows of the poor, and their bottomless 
 egotism in contact with the well-to-do. He brooded on 
 his own love, and his own unhappiness, and his own 
 father's cruelty. His nights were sleepless, and his days 
 leaden. He tried hard to read for his first class, but for 
 once even ambition failed ; it ended in flinging books 
 away in despair. He wandered about dreaming and 
 hoping for some change, and bitterly regretting his 
 excessive delicacy, which had tied his own hands and 
 brought him to a standstill. He lost his color and what 
 little flesh he had to lose ; for such young spirits as this 
 are never plump. In a word, being now strait-jacketed 
 into feminine inactivity, while void of feminine patience, 
 his ardent heart was pining and fretting itself out. He 
 was in this condition, when one day Peterson, liis 
 Oxonian friend, burst in on him open-mouthed with 
 delight, and, as usual with bright spirits of this calibre, 
 did not even notice his friend's sadness. " Cupid had 
 clapped him on the shoulder," as Shakespeare hath it ; 
 and it was a deal nicer than the bum-bailiff rheumatism. 
 
 > Without bowels of affectiou.
 
 HARD CASH. 163 
 
 " Oh, such a divine creature ! Met her twice ; you 
 know her by sight ; her name is Docld. But I don't 
 care ; it shall be Peterson ; the rose by any other name, 
 etc." Then followed a rapturous description of the 
 lady's person, well worth omitting, " And such a jolly 
 girl ! brightens them all up wherever she goes ; and such 
 a dancer ; did the cachouka with a little Spanish bloke 
 Bosanquet has got hold of, and made his black bolus eyes 
 twinkle like midnight cigars ; danced it with castanets, 
 and smiles, and such a what d'ye call 'em, my boy, you 
 know ; such a ' go.' " 
 
 " You mean such an abandon,''^ groaned Alfred, turning 
 sick at heart, 
 
 "That's the word. Twice the spirit of Duvernay, and 
 ten times the beauty. But just you hear her sing, that 
 is all ; Italian, French, German, English even," 
 
 " Plaintive songs ? " 
 
 " Oh, whatever they ask for. Make you laugh or make 
 you cry — to order; never says no. Just smiles and sits 
 down to the music-box. Only she won't sing two run- 
 ning; they have to stick a duffer in between. I shall 
 meet her again next week : will you come ? Any friend 
 of mine is welcome. Wish me joy, old fellow; I'm a 
 gone coon." 
 
 This news put Alfred in a frenzy of indignation and 
 fear. Julia dancing the cachouka ! Julia a jolly girl ! 
 Julia singing songs pathetic or merry, whichever were 
 asked for ! The heartless one ! He called to mind all 
 he had read in the classics, and elsewhere, about the 
 fickleness of woman. But this impression did not last 
 long ; he recalled Julia's character, and all the signs of a 
 love tender and true she had given him ; he read her by 
 himself, and, lover-like, laid all the blame on another. 
 It was all her cold-blooded mother. " Fool that I have 
 been. I see it all now. She appeals to my delicacy to
 
 164 HARD CASH. 
 
 keep away; then she goes to Julia and says, 'See, he 
 deserts you at a word from his father. Be proud, be 
 gay ! He never loved you ; marry another.' The shallow 
 plotter forgets that whoever she does marry I'll kill. 
 How many unsuspicious girls have these double-faced 
 mothers deluded so ? They do it in half the novels, 
 especially in those written by women ; and why ? 
 because these know the perfidy and mendacity of their 
 sex better than we do ; they see them nearer, and with 
 their souls undressed. War, Mrs. Dodd, war to the 
 death ! From this moment I am alone in the world 
 with her. I have no friend but Alfred Hardie; and 
 my bitterest enemies are my cold-blooded father, and 
 her cold-blooded mother." 
 
 The above sentences, of course, were never uttered. 
 But they represent his thoughts accurately, though in a 
 condensed form, and are, as it were, a minia-ture of this 
 young heart boiling over. 
 
 From that moment he lay in wait for her, and hovered 
 about the house day and night, determined to appeal to 
 her personally, and undeceive her, and baffle her mother's 
 treachery. But at this game he was soon detected; Mrs. 
 Dodd lived on the watch now. Julia, dressed to go out, 
 went to the window one afternoon to look at the 
 weather ; but retreated somewhat hastily and sat down 
 on the sofa. 
 
 " You flutter, darling," said Mrs. Dodd. " Ah, he is 
 there." 
 
 '' Yes." 
 
 " You had better take off your things." 
 
 " Oh, yes. I tremble at the thoughts of meeting him. 
 Mamma, he is changed, sadly changed. Poor, poor 
 Alfred ! " She went to her own room and prayed for 
 him. She informed the Omniscient that, though much 
 greater and better in other respects than she was, he had
 
 HARD CASH. 165 
 
 not patience. She prayed, with tears, that he might 
 have Christian patience granted him from on high. 
 
 " Heart of stone ! she shuns me," said Alfred outside. 
 He had seen her in her bonnet. 
 
 INIrs. Dodd waited several days to see whether this 
 annoyance would not die of itself ; waiting was her plan 
 in most things. Finding he was not to be tired out, she 
 sent Sarah out to him with a note carefully sealed. 
 
 jNIr. Alfred Hakdie, — Is it generous to confine my 
 daughter to the house ? 
 
 Yours regretfully, 
 
 Lucy Dodd, 
 
 A line came back instantly in pencil. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd, — Is all the generosit}- and all the good faith to 
 be on one side ? 
 
 Yours in despair, 
 
 Alfred Hardie. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd colored faintly ; the reproach pricked her, 
 but did not move her. She sat quietly down tliat 
 moment, and wrote to a friend in London, to look out 
 for a furnished villa in a healthy part of the suburbs, 
 with immediate possession. " Circumstances," said she, 
 " making it desirable we should leave Barkington imme- 
 diately, and for some months." 
 
 The Bosanquets gave a large party ; Mrs. and Miss 
 Dodd were there. The latter was playing a part in a 
 charade to the admiration of all present, when in came 
 Mr. Peterson, introducing his friend, Alfred Hardie. 
 
 Julia caught the name, and turned a look of alarm on 
 her mother : but went on acting. 
 
 Presently she caught sight of him at some distance. 
 He looked very pale, and his glittering eye was fixed on 
 her with a sort of stern wonder.
 
 166 HARD CASH. 
 
 Such a glance from fiery eyes, that had always dwelt 
 tenderly on her till then, struck her like a weapon. She 
 stopped short, and turned red and pale by turns. 
 '•' There, that is nonsense enough," said she bitterly, and 
 went and sat by Mrs. Dodd. The gentlemen thronged 
 round her with compliments, and begged her to sing. 
 She excused herself. Presently she heard an excited 
 voice, towards which she dared not look ; it was inquir- 
 ing whether any lady could sing " Aileen Aroon." With 
 every desire to gratify the young millionnaire, nobody 
 knew " Aileen Aroon," nor had ever heard of it. 
 
 " Oh, impossible ! " cried Alfred. " Why, it is in 
 praise of constancy, a virtue ladies shine in ; at least, 
 they take credit for it." 
 
 "Mamma," whispered Julia, terrified, "get me away, 
 or there will be a scene. He is reckless." 
 
 " Be calm, love," said Mrs. Dodd, " there shall be 
 none." She rose and glided up to Alfred Hardie, looked 
 coldly in his face ; then said with external politeness 
 and veiled contempt, "I will attempt the song, sir, since 
 you desire it." She waved her hand, and he followed 
 her sulkily to the piano. She sang "Aileen Aroon," not 
 with her daughter's eloquence, but with a purity and 
 mellowness that charmed the room : they had never 
 heard the genius sing it. 
 
 As spirits are said to overcome the man at whose 
 behest they rise, so this sweet air, and the gush of 
 reminiscence it awakened, overpowered him wlio had 
 evoked them. Alfred put his hand unconsciously to his 
 swelling heart, cast one look of anguish at Julia, and 
 hurried away half choked. Nobody but Julia noticed. 
 
 A fellow in a rough great-coat and tattered white hat 
 opened the fly door for Mrs. Dodd. As Julia followed 
 her, he kissed her skirt unseen by Mrs. Dodd ; but her
 
 HARD CASH. 167 
 
 quick ears caught a heart-breaking sigh. She looked 
 and recognized Alfred in that disguise ; the penitent fit 
 had succeeded to the angry one. Had Julia observed ? 
 To ascertain this without speaking of him, Mrs. Dodd 
 waited till they had got some little distance, then quietly 
 put out her hand and rested it for a moment on her 
 daughter's ; the girl was trembling violently. " Little 
 wretch ! " came to Mrs. Dodd's lips, but she did not utter 
 it. They were near home before she spoke at all, and 
 then she only said very kindly, "IMy love, you will not 
 be subjected again to these trials ; "' a remark intended 
 quietly to cover the last occurrence as well as Alfred's 
 open persecution. 
 
 They had promised to go out the very next day ; but 
 Mrs. Dodd went alone, and made excuses for Miss Dodd. 
 On her return she found Julia sitting up for her, and a 
 letter come from her friend, describing a pleasant cot- 
 tage, now vacant, near Maida Vale. j\[rs. Dodd handed 
 the open letter to Julia ; she read it without comment. 
 
 *^ We will go up to-morrow and take it for three 
 months. Then the Oxford vacation will terminate." 
 
 " Yes, mamma." 
 
 I am now about to relate a circumstance by no means 
 without parallels, but almost impossible to account for ; 
 and, as nothing is more common and contemptible than 
 inadequate solutions, I will offer none at all ; but so it 
 was, that Mrs. Dodd awoke in the middle of that very 
 night in a mysterious state of mental tremor; trouble, 
 veiled in obscurity, seemed to sit heavy on her bosom. 
 So strong, though vague, was this new and mysterious 
 oppression, that she started up in bed and cried aloud, 
 "David! — Julia! — Oh, what is the matter?" The 
 sound of her own voice dispelled the cloud in part, but 
 not entirely. She lay awhile, and then finding herself
 
 168 HARD CASH. 
 
 quite averse to sleep, rose and went to her window, and 
 eyed the weather anxiously. It was a fine night ; soft 
 fleecy clouds drifted slowly across a silver moon. The 
 sailor's wife was reassured on her husband's behalf. Her 
 next desire was to look at Julia sleeping ; she had no 
 particular object ; it was the instinctive impulse of an 
 anxious mother whom something had terrified. She put 
 on her slippers and dressing-gown, and, lighting a candle 
 at her night-lamp, opened her door softly and stepped 
 into the little corridor. But she had not taken two steps 
 when she was arrested by a mysterious sound. 
 
 It came from Julia's room. 
 
 What was it ? 
 
 jNIrs. Dodd glided softly nearer and nearer, all her 
 senses on the stretch. 
 
 The sound came again. It was a muffled sob. 
 
 The stifled sound, just audible in the dead stillness of 
 the night, went through and through her who stood there 
 listening aghast. Her bowels yearned over her child ; 
 and she hurried to the door, but recollected herself, and 
 knocked very gently. " Don't be alarmed, love, it is 
 only me. May I come in ? " She did not wait for the 
 answer, but turned the handle and entered. She found 
 Julia sitting up in bed, looking wildly at her, with cheeks 
 flushed and wet. She sat on the bed and clasped her to 
 her breast in silence : but more than one warm tear ran 
 down upon Julia's bare neck ; the girl felt them drop, 
 and her own gushed in a shower. 
 
 " Oh, what have I done ? " she sobbed. " Am I to 
 make you wretched, too ? " 
 
 Mrs. Dodd did not immediately reply. She was there 
 to console ; and her admirable good-sense told her that 
 to do that she must be calmer than her patient ; so, even 
 while she kissed and wept over Julia, she managed grad- 
 ually to recover her composure. "Tell me, my child,"
 
 HARD CASH. 169 
 
 said she, "why do 3-011 act a part with nie ? Why brave 
 it out under my eye, and spend the night secretly in 
 tears ? Are you still afraid to trust me ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, no ! but I thought I was so strong, so proud : 
 I undertook miracles. I soon found my pride was a mole- 
 hill, and my love a mountain. I could not hold out by 
 day if I did not ease my breaking heart at night. How 
 unfortunate ! I kept my head under the bed-clothes, too ; 
 but you have such ears. I thought I would stifle my 
 grief, or else perhaps you would be as wretched as I am : 
 forgive me ! pray, forgive me ! " 
 
 " On one condition," said Mvs. Dodd, struggling with 
 the emotion these simple words caused her. — "Anything 
 to be forgiven," cried Julia, impetuously. "I'll go to 
 London. I'll go to Botany Bay. I deserve to be 
 hanged." 
 
 " Then, from this hour, no half-confidences between us. 
 Dear me, you carry in your own bosom a much harsher 
 judge, a much less indulgent friend, than I am. Come ! 
 trust me with your heart. Do you love him very much ? 
 Does your happiness dej^end on him ? " 
 
 At this point-blank question, Julia put her head over 
 Mrs. Dodd's shoulder, not to be seen ; and, clasping her 
 tight, murmured scarce above a whisper, "I don't know 
 how much I love him. When he came in at that party 
 I felt his slave ; his unfaithful adoring slave ; if he had 
 ordered me to sing ' Aileen Aroon,' I should have obeyed ; 
 if he had commanded me take his hand and leave the 
 room, I think I should have obeyed. His face is always 
 before me as plain as life ; it used to come to me bright 
 and loving ; now it is pale and stern and sad ; I Avas not 
 so Avretched till I saw he was pining for me, and thinks 
 me inconstant. mamma ! so pale ! so shrunk ! so reck- 
 less ! He was sorry for misbehaving that night : he 
 changed clothes with a beggar to kiss my dress : poor
 
 170 HARD CASH. 
 
 thing ! poor tiling ! Who ever loved as he does me ? 1 
 am dying for him ; I am dying." 
 
 '•' There ! there ! " said Mrs. Dodd, soothingly. " You 
 have said enough. This must be love. I am on your 
 Alfred's side from this hour." 
 
 Julia opened her eyes, and was a good deal agitated as 
 "well as surprised. "Pray do not raise my hopes," she 
 gasped. "We are parted forever. His father refuses. 
 Even you seemed averse ; or have I been dreaming ? " 
 
 " Me, dearest ? How can I be averse to anything 
 lawful, on which I find your heart is really set, and your 
 happiness at stake ? Of course I have stopped the actual 
 intercourse, under existing circumstances ; but these cir- 
 cumstances are not unalterable : your only obstacle is 
 Mr. Kichard Hardie." 
 
 " But what an obstacle ! " sighed Julia. " His father ! 
 a man of iron ! so everybody says ; for I have made 
 inquiries — oh !" And she was abashed. She resumed, 
 hastily, " And that letter, so cold, so cruel ! I feel it was 
 written by one not open to gentle influences. He does 
 not think me worthy of his son ; so accomplished, so dis- 
 tinguished, at the very university where our poor Edward 
 — has — you know " — 
 
 " Little simpleton ! " said Mrs. Dodd, and kissed her 
 tenderly; "your iron man is the commonest clay; sor- 
 did ; pliable ; and your stern heroic Brutus is a shop- 
 keeper ; he is open to the gentle influences which sway 
 the kindred souls of the men you and I buy our shoes, 
 our tea, our gloves, our fish-kettles, of : and these influ- 
 ences I think I command, and am prepared to use them 
 to the utmost." 
 
 Julia lay silent, and wondering what she could mean. 
 
 But Mrs. Dodd hesitated now ; it pained and revolted 
 her to shoAv her enthusiastic girl the world as it is. She 
 said as much, and added, " I seem to be going to aid all
 
 HARD CASH. 171 
 
 these people to take the bloom from my own child's inno- 
 cence. Heaven help me ! " 
 
 " Oh, never mind that," cried Julia, in her ardent way j 
 "give me truth before error, however pleasing." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd replied only by a sigh : grand general 
 sentiments like that, never penetrated her mind : they 
 glided off like water from a duck's back. "We will 
 begin with this mercantile Brutus, then," said she, with 
 such a curl of the lip. Brutus had rejected her daughter. 
 
 '' IMr. Eichard Hardie was born and bred in a bank ; 
 one where no wild thyme blows, my poor enthusiast ; 
 nor cowslips nor the nodding violet grows ; but gold 
 and silver chink, and things are discounted, and men 
 grow rich, slowly but surely, by lawful use of other peo- 
 ple's money. Breathed upon by these 'gentle influences,' 
 he was, from his youth, a remarkable man ; measured by 
 trade's standard. At five and twenty, divine what he 
 did ! He saved the bank. You have read of bubbles ; 
 the Mississippi Bubble and the South Sea Bubble. Well, 
 in the year 1825, it was not one bubble, but a thousand ; 
 mines by the score, and in distant lands ; companies by 
 the hundred ; loans to every nation or tribe ; doAvn to 
 Guatemala, Patagonia, and Greece ; two hundred new 
 ships were laid on the stocks in one year, for your dear 
 papa told me ; in short, a fever of speculation, and the 
 whole nation raging with it : my dear, princes, dukes, 
 duchesses, bishops, poets, lawyers, physicians, were seen 
 struggling with their own footmen for a place in the 
 Exchange : and, at last, good, steady old Mr. Hardie, 
 Alfred's grandfather, was drawn into the vortex. Now, 
 to excuse him and appreciate the precocious Richard, you 
 must try and realize that these bubbles, when they rise, 
 are as alluring and reasonable, as they are ridiculous and 
 incredible when one looks back on them ; even soap- 
 bubbles, you know, have rainbow hues till they burst;
 
 172 HARD CASH. 
 
 and, indeed, the blind avarice of men does but resemble 
 the blind vanity of women : look at our grandmothers' 
 hoops, and our mothers' short waists and monstrous heads. 
 Yet in their day what woman did not glory in these 
 insanities ? Well then, Mr. Richard Hardie, at twenty- 
 five, was the one to foresee the end of all these bubbles ; 
 he came down from London and brought his people to 
 their senses by sober reason, and ' sound commercial 
 principles ; ' that means, I believe, ' Get other people's 
 money, but do not risk your own.' His superiority was 
 so clear, that his father resigned the helm to him, and, 
 thanks to his ability, the bank weathered the storm, 
 while all the other ones in the town broke or suspended 
 their trade. Now, you know, youth is naturally ardent 
 and speculative : but Richard Hardie's was colder and 
 wiser than other people's old age : and that is one trait. 
 Some years later, in the height of his prosperity, — I 
 reveal this only for your comfort, and on your sacred 
 promise, as a person of delicacy, never to repeat it to a 
 soul, — Richard Hardie was a suitor for my hand." 
 
 " ]\[amma ! " 
 
 "Do not ejaculate, sweetest. It discomposes me. 
 'Nothing is extraordinary,' as that good creature. Dr. 
 Sampson, says. He must have thought it would answer, 
 in one way or another, to have a gentlewoman at the 
 head of his table ; and I was not penniless, bien entendu. 
 Failing in this, he found a plain little thing, Avith a 
 gloomy temper and no accomplishments nor graces ; but 
 her father could settle twenty thousand pounds. He 
 married her directly : and that is a trait. He sold his 
 father's and grandfather's house and place of business, 
 in spite of all their associations, and obtained a lease of 
 his present place from my uncle Fountain : it seemed a 
 more money-making situation. A trait. He gives me 
 no reason for rejecting my daughter. Why ? because he
 
 HARD CASH. 173 
 
 is not proud of his reasons : this walking avarice has 
 intelligence : a trait. Now put all this together, and 
 who more transparent than the profound Mr. Hardie ? 
 He has declined our alliance because he takes for granted 
 we are poor. When I undeceive him on that head, he 
 will reopen negotiations in a letter ; No. 2 of the corre- 
 spondence ; copied by one of his clerks : it will be calm, 
 plausible, flattering : in short, it will be done like a gen- 
 tleman, though he is nothing of the kind. And this 
 brings me to what I ought to have begun with ; your 
 dear father and I have always lived within our income 
 for our children's sake ; he is bringing home the bulk of 
 our savings this very voyage, and it amounts to fourteen 
 thousand })Ounds." 
 
 " Oh, what an enormous sum ! " 
 
 "No, dearest, it is not a fortune in itself. But it is a 
 considerable sum to possess, independent of one's settle- 
 ment and one's income. It is loose cash, to speak a la 
 Hardie ; that means, I can do what I choose with it ; and 
 of course I choose — to make you happy. How I shall 
 work on what you call iron, and I venture to call clay, 
 must be guided by circumstances. I think of depositing 
 three or four thousand pounds every month with Mr. 
 Hardie ; he is our banker, you know. He will most 
 likely open his eyes, and make some move before the 
 whole sum is in his hands. If he does not, I shall per- 
 haps call at his bank, and draw a check for fourteen 
 thousand pounds. The wealthiest provincial banker 
 does not keep such a sum floating in his shop-tills. 
 His commercial honor, the one semi-chivalrous senti- 
 ment in his soul, would be in peril. He would yield, 
 and with grace : none the iess readily that his house and 
 his bank, which have been long heavily mortgaged to our 
 trustees, were made virtually theirs by agreement yester- 
 day (I set this on foot within twelve hours of Mr. Iron's
 
 174 HARD CASH. 
 
 impertinent letter), and he will say to himself, 'She can 
 — post me, I think these people call it — this afternoon 
 for not cashing her check, and she can turn me and my 
 bank into the street to-morrow : ' and then, of course, he 
 shall see by my manner the velvet paw is offered as well 
 as the claw. He is pretty sure to ask himself which will 
 suit the ledger best — this cat's friendship and her four- 
 teen thousand pounds or — an insulted mother's enmity ? " 
 And Mrs. Placid's teeth made a little click just audible 
 in the silent night. 
 
 " mamma ! my heart is sick. Am I to be bought 
 and sold like this ? " 
 
 Mrs. Dodd sighed; but said calmly, "You must pay 
 the penalty for loving a parvenu's son. Come, Julia, no 
 peevishness, no more romance, no more vacillation. You 
 have tried pride, and failed pitiably ; now I insist on 
 your trying love ! Child, it is the bane of our sex to 
 carry nothing out : from that weakness I will preserve 
 you. And, by-the-by, we are not going to jnarry Mr. 
 Richard Hardie, but Mr. Alfred. Now, Mr. Alfred, with 
 all his faults and defects " — 
 
 " Mamma ! what faults ? what defects ? " 
 
 " — Is a gentleman ; tlianks to Oxford and Harrow and 
 nature. My darling, pray to Heaven night and day for 
 your dear father's safe return ; for on him, and him alone, 
 your happiness depends : as mine does." 
 
 " Mamma," cried Julia, embracing her, " what do poor 
 girls do who have lost tlieir mother ? " 
 
 " Look abroad and see," was the grave reply. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd then begged her to go to sleep, like a good 
 child, for her health's sake : all would be well ; and with 
 this was about to return to her own room, but a white 
 hand and arm darted out of the bed and caught her. 
 "What ! Hope has come to me by night in the form of 
 an angel, and shall I let her go back to her own room ?
 
 HARD CASH. 175 
 
 Never, never, never, never, never ! " And she patted the 
 bed expressively, and with the prettiest impatience. 
 
 " Well, let Hope take off her earrings first," suggested 
 Mrs. Dodd. 
 
 "No, no; come here directly, earrings and all." 
 
 " No, thank you : or I shall have them wounding you 
 next." 
 
 Mrs. Hope quietly removed her earrings, and the ten- 
 der pair passed the rest of the night in one another's 
 arms. The young girl's tears were dried, and hope re- 
 vived, and life bloomed again : only henceforth her 
 longing eyes looked out to sea for her father, homeward 
 bound. 
 
 Next day, as they were seated together in the drawing- 
 room, Julia came from the window with a rush, and 
 kneeled at Mrs. Dodd's knees, with bright, imploring 
 face upturned. 
 
 "He is there, and — I am to speak to him ? Is that 
 it?" 
 
 " Dear, dear, dear mamma ! " was the somewhat 
 oblique reply. 
 
 " Well, then, bring me my things." 
 
 She was ten minutes putting them on ; Julia tried to 
 expedite her, and retarded her. She had her pace, and 
 could not go beyond it. 
 
 Now by this time Alfred Hardie was thoroughly mis- 
 erable. Unable to move his father, shunned by Julia, 
 sickened by what he had heard, and indeed seen, of her 
 gayety and indifference to their separation, stung by 
 jealousy, and fretted by impatience, he was drinking 
 nearly all the bitters of that sweet passion, love. But, 
 as you are aware, he ascribed Julia's inconstancy, light- 
 ness, and cruelty, all to Mrs. Dodd. He hated her cor- 
 dially, and dreaded her into the bargain ; he played the 
 sentinel about her door all the more because she had
 
 176 HARD CASH. 
 
 asked liim not to do it. ''Always do what your enemy 
 particularly objects to," said he, applying to his own case 
 the wisdom of a Greek philosopher, one of his teachers. 
 
 So, when the gate suddenly opened, and instead of 
 Julia, this very Mrs. Dodd walked towards him, his feel- 
 ings were anything but enviable. He wished himself 
 away heartily, but was too proud to retreat. He stood 
 his ground. She came up to him ; a charming smile 
 broke out over her features. " Ah, ]\Ir. Hardie," said 
 she, "if you have nothing better to do, will you give 
 me a minute ? " He assented with surprise and an ill 
 grace. 
 
 " May I take your arm ? " 
 
 He offered it with a worse. 
 
 She laid her hand lightly on it, and it shuddered at 
 her touch. He felt like walking with a velvet tigress. 
 
 By some instinct she divined his sentiments, and found 
 her task more difficult than she had thought; she took 
 some steps in silence. At last, as he was no dissembler, 
 he burst out passionately, " Why are you my enemy ? " 
 
 " I am not your enemy," said she quietly. 
 
 " Kot openly, but all the more dangerous. You keep 
 us apart, you bid her be gay, and forget me ; you are a 
 cruel, hard-hearted lady." 
 
 "No, I am not, sir," said Mrs. Dodd, simply. 
 
 " Oh ! I believe you are good and kind to all the rest 
 of the world, but you know you have a heart of iron 
 for me." 
 
 " I am my daughter's friend, but not your enemy : it 
 is you who are too inexperienced to know how delicate, 
 how difficult, my duties are. It is only since last night 
 I see my way clear ; and look, I come at once to you 
 with friendly intentions. Su})pose I were as impetuous 
 as you are ! I should, perhaps, be calling you ungrate- 
 ful."
 
 HARD CASH. 177 
 
 He retorted bitterly : " Give me something to be 
 grateful for, and you shall see whether that baseness is 
 in my nature." 
 
 " I have a great mind to put you to the proof," said 
 she archly. " Let us walk down this lane ; then you 
 can be as unjust to me as you think 'proper, without 
 attracting public attention." 
 
 In the lane she told him quietly she knew the nature 
 of his father's objections to the alliance he had so much 
 at heart, and they were objections which her husband, 
 on his return, would remove. On this he changed his 
 tone a little, and implored her piteously not to deceive 
 him, 
 
 " I will not," said she, " upon my honor. If you are 
 as constant as my daughter is in her esteem for you, — 
 notwithstanding her threadbare gayety worn over loyal 
 regret, and to check a parcel of idle ladies' tongues, — 
 you have nothing to fear from me, and everything to 
 expect. Come, Alfred, — may I take that liberty with, 
 you ? — let us understand one another. We only want 
 that, to be friends." 
 
 This was hard to resist ; and at his age. His lip trem- 
 bled, he hesitated, but at last gave her his hand. She 
 walked two hours with him, and laid herself out to 
 enlighten, soothe, and comfort his sore heart. His hopes 
 and happiness revived under her magic, as Julia's had. 
 In the midst of it all, the wise woman quietly made 
 terms. He was not to come to the house but on her 
 invitation, unless indeed he had news of the Agra to 
 communicate ; but he might write once a week to her, 
 and enclose a few lines to Julia. On this concession, 
 he proceeded to mumble her white wrist, and call her 
 his best, dearest, loveliest friend : his mother. " Oh, 
 remember," said he, Avith a relic of distrust, "you are 
 the only mother I can ever hope to have." 
 12
 
 178 HARD CASH. 
 
 That touched her. Hitherto, he had been to hei but 
 a tiling her daughter loved. 
 
 Her eyes filled. " ]\Iy poor, warm-hearted, motherless 
 boy," she said, "pray for my husba,nd's safe return. 
 For on that your happiness depends, and hers, and 
 mine." 
 
 So now two more bright eyes looked longingly sea- 
 ward for the Agra homeward bound.
 
 HAED CASH. 179 
 
 CHAPTER VIL 
 
 KoRTH latitude 23^, longitude east 113; the time 
 Marcli of this same year ; the wind southerly ; the port 
 Whampoa, in the Canton Eiver. Ships at anchor reared 
 their tall masts here and there ; and the broad stream 
 was enlivened and colored by junks and boats of all 
 sizes and vivid hues, propelled on the screw principle by 
 a great scull at the stern, with projecting handles for 
 the crew to work ; and at times a gorgeous mandarin 
 boat, with two great glaring eyes set in the bows, came 
 flying, rowed with forty paddles by an armed crew, 
 whose shields hung on the gunwale and flashed fire in 
 the sunbeams : the mandarin, in conical and buttoned 
 hat, sitting on the top of his cabin calmly smoking 
 paradise, alias opium, while his gong boomed and his 
 boat flew fourteen miles an hour, and all things scuttled 
 out of his celestial way. And there, looking majestic- 
 ally down on all these water ants, — the huge Agra, 
 cynosure of so many loving eyes and loving hearts in 
 England, lay at her moorings, homeward bound. 
 
 Her tea not being yet on board, the ship's hull floated 
 high as a castle, and to the subtle, intellectual, doll- 
 faced, bolus-eyed people, that sculled to and fro busy as 
 bees, though looking forked mushrooms, she sounded 
 like a vast musical shell ; for a lusty harmony of many 
 mellow voices vibrated in her great cavities, and made 
 the air ring cheerily around her. The vocalists were the 
 Cyclops, to judge by the tremendous thumps that kept 
 clean time to their sturdy tune. Yet it was but human 
 labor, so heavy and so knowing, that it had called in
 
 180 
 
 HAKD CASH. 
 
 music to help. It was the third mate and his gang 
 completing his floor to receive the coming tea-chests. 
 Yesterday he had stowed his dunnage, many hundred 
 bundles of light, flexible canes from Sumatra and 
 ]\Ialacca ; on these he had laid tons of rough saltpetre, 
 in two-hundred-pound gunny-bags, and was now mashing 
 it to music, bags and all. His gang of fifteen, naked to 
 the waist, stood in line, with huge wooden beetles called 
 commanders, and lifted them high and brought them 
 down on the nitre in cadence with true nautical power 
 and unison, singing as follows, with a ponderous bump 
 on the first note in each bar : — 
 
 i!=d: 
 
 One now it is gone, There's an - o-ther yet to 
 
 -7-^ 
 
 come, 
 
 And a - way 
 
 ^ -A :^ -A- 
 
 we'll go to Flanders, A - 
 
 ■ ^ Ik 1^ — ^ — S — 
 
 #..- 
 
 — !>; — N — i — s- 
 
 U± ^ ^ • ^-l=r^^^ H 
 
 i) 
 
 
 ,-»• ■» . . 
 
 mongst our wooden com-manders, where we'll get wine in 
 
 -y-r-t M 
 
 — ^ s 1 
 
 t — ^~ 
 
 — : — 
 
 n 
 
 ^'"—r^—^ 
 
 -^-—t—r-^ 
 
 — • — 
 
 4 
 
 
 -?-' 
 
 M , 1 
 
 * V 
 
 ^... 
 
 ' 
 
 
 — — u 
 
 plen - ty, Rum, bran - dy, and Ge - na - vy. 
 Here goes two. Owe me there two, &c. 
 
 And so up to fifteen, when the stave was concluded 
 with a shrill " Spell, oh ! " and the gang relieved, stream- 
 ing with perspiration. When the saltpetre was well 
 mashed, they r(jlled ton water-butts on it, till the floor 
 was like a billiard-table. A fleet of chop-boats then
 
 HARD CASH. 181 
 
 began to arrive, so many per day, with the tea-chests. 
 Mr. Grey proceeded to lay the first tier on his saltpetre 
 floor, and then built the chests, tier upon tier, beginning 
 at the sides, and leaving in the middle a lane somewhat 
 narrower than a tea-chest. Then he applied a screw- 
 jack to the chests on both sides, and so enlarged his 
 central aperture, and forced the remaining tea-chests in ; 
 and behold the enormous cargo packed as tight as ever 
 shopkeeper packed a box — nineteen thousand eight 
 hundred and six chests, sixty half chests, fifty quarter 
 chests. 
 
 "While Mr. Grey was contemplating his work with 
 singular satisfaction, a small boat from Canton came 
 alongside, and Mr. Tickell, midshipman, ran up the 
 side, skipped on the quarter-deck, saluted it first, and 
 then the first mate ; and gave him a line from the cap- 
 tain, desiring him to take the ship down to Second Bar, 
 for her water, at the turn of the tide. 
 
 Two hours after receipt of this order the ship swung 
 to the ebb. Instantly ]Mr. Sharpe unmoored, and the 
 Agra began her famous voyage, with her head at right 
 angles to her course ; for the wind being foul, all Sharpe 
 could do was to set his topsails, driver, and jib, and keep 
 her in the tide way, and clear of the numerous craft, by 
 backing or filling as the case required ; which he did 
 with considerable dexterity, making the sails steer the 
 helm for the nonce. He crossed the bar at sunset, and 
 brought to with the best bower anchor in five fathoms 
 and a half. Here they began to take in their water, and 
 on the fifth day the six-oared gig was ordered up to 
 Canton for the captain. The next afternoon he passed 
 the ship in her, going down the river to Lin-Tin, to 
 board the Chinese admiral for his chop, or permission 
 to leave China. All night the Agra showed three lights 
 at her mizzen-peak for him, and kept a sharp lookout.
 
 182 HARD CASH. 
 
 But he did not come ; he was having a very serious talk 
 with the Chinese admiral. At daybreak, however, the 
 gig was reported in sight; Sharpe told one of the mid- 
 shipmen to call the boatswain and man the side. Soon 
 the gig ran alongside ; two of the ship's boys jumped 
 like monkeys over the bulwarks, lighting, one on the 
 main channels, the other on the midship port, and put 
 the side ropes assiduously in the captain's hands ; he 
 bestowed a slight paternal smile on them, the first the 
 imps had ever received from an officer, and went lightly 
 up the sides. The moment his foot touched the deck, 
 the boatswain gave a frightful shrill whistle; the men 
 at the sides uncovered ; the captain saluted the quarter- 
 deck, and all the officers saluted him, which he returned, 
 and stepping for a moment to the weather-side of his 
 deck, gave the loud command, '^ All hands heave anchor." 
 He then directed Mr. Sharpe to get what sail he could 
 on the ship, the wind being now westerly, and dived 
 into his cabin. 
 
 The boatswain piped three shrill pipes, and "All 
 hands up anchor," was thrice repeated forward, followed 
 by private admonitions, " Rouse and bitt ! " " Show a 
 leg!" etc., and up tumbled the crew with "homeward 
 bound" written on their tanned faces. 
 
 (Pipe.) " Up all hammocks." 
 
 In ten minutes the ninety and odd hammocks were 
 all stowed neatly in the netting, and covered with a 
 snowy hammock cloth ; and the hands were active, 
 unbitting the cable, shipping the capstan bars, etc. 
 
 " All ready below, sir," cried a voice. 
 
 " Man the bars," returned Mr. Sharpe from the quarter- 
 deck. "Play up, fifer. Heave away." 
 
 Out broke the merry fife with a rhythmical tune, and 
 tramp, tramp, tramp went a hundred and twenty feet 
 round and round; and, with brawny chests pressed tight
 
 HAED CASH. 183 
 
 against the capstan-bars, sixty fine fellows "walked the 
 ship up to her anchor, drowning the fife at intervals with 
 their sturdy song, as pat to their feet as an echo, — 
 
 Heave with a will, j-e jolly boys, 
 
 Heave ai'ound : 
 We're off from Chainee, jolly boys. 
 
 Homeward bound. 
 
 "Short stay apeak, sir," roars the boatswain from 
 forward. 
 
 "Unship the bars. Way aloft. Loose sails. Let fall." 
 
 The ship being now over her anchor, and the top-sails 
 set, the capstan-bars were shipped again, the men all 
 heaved with a will, the messenger grinned, the anchor 
 was torn out of China with a mighty heave, and then 
 run up with a luff tackle and secured, the ship's head 
 cast to port. 
 
 "Up with the jib. ^Man the taupsle halliards. All 
 hands make sail." Eound she came slow and majestic- 
 ally ; the sails filled, and the good ship bore away for 
 England. 
 
 She made the Bogue forts in three or four tacks, and 
 ^here she had to come to again for another chop ; China 
 being a place as hard to get into as heaven, and to get 
 out of as — chancery. At three p.m. she was at ]\[acao, 
 and hove-to four miles from the land to take in her 
 passengers. 
 
 A gun was fired from the forecastle. Xo boats came 
 off. Sharpe began to fret ; for the wind, though light, 
 had now got to the north-west, and they were wasting it. 
 After awhile the captain came on deck, and ordered all 
 the carronades to be scaled. The eight heavy reports 
 bellowed the great ship's impatience across the water, 
 and out pulled two boats with the passengers. "While 
 thej were coming, Dodd sent and ordered the gunner to
 
 184 HARD CASH. 
 
 load the carronades with shot, and secure and apron 
 them. The first boat brought Colonel Kenealy, Mr. FuU- 
 alove, and a prodigious negro, who all mounted by the 
 side-ropes. But the whip was rigged for tlie next boat, 
 and the Honorable Mrs. Beresford and poodle hoisted on 
 board. Item, her white maid ; item, her black nurse ; 
 item, her little boy, and male Oriental in charge thereof, 
 the strangest compound of dignity and servility and of 
 black and white, being clad in snowy cotton and japanned 
 to the nine. 
 
 Mrs. Beresford was the wife of a Member of Council 
 in India. She had been to jNIacao for her boy's health, 
 intending to return to Calcutta ; but meantime her hus- 
 band was made a director, and went home, so she was 
 going to join him. A tall, handsome lady, with too 
 curved a nose. 
 
 Like most aquiline women, she was born to domineer 
 a bit ; and, for the last ten years, Orientals cringing at 
 her knee, and Europeans flattering at her ear, had nursed 
 this quality high, and spoiled her Avith all their might. 
 A similar process had been applied to her boy Frederick 
 from infancy. He was now nearly six. Arrogance and 
 caprice shone so in both their sallow faces, and spoke so 
 in every gesture, that, as they came on board, Sharpe, a 
 reader of passengers, whispered the second mate, "Bay- 
 liss, we have shipped the devil." 
 
 " And a cargo of his imps," grunted Mr. Bayliss. 
 
 Mr. Fullalove was a Methodist parson — to the naked 
 eye ; grave, sober, lean, lank-haired. But some men are 
 hidden fires. Fullalove was one of the extraordinary 
 products of an extraordinary nation, the United States 
 of America. He was an engineer for one thing, and an 
 inventive and practical mechanician; held two patents of 
 his own creating, which yielded him a good income both 
 at home and in Great Britain. Such results are seldom
 
 HARD CASH. 185 
 
 achieved without deep study and seclusion; and, accord- 
 ingly, Joshua Fullalove, when the inventive fit was on, 
 would be buried deep as Archimedes for a twelvemonth, 
 burning the midnight oil. Then, his active element pre- 
 dominating, the pale student would dash into the forest 
 or the prairie, with a rifle and an Indian, and come out 
 bronzed, and more or less bepanthered or bebuffaloed; 
 thence invariably to sea for a year or two ; there, Anglo- 
 Saxon to the backbone, his romance had ever an eye to 
 business. He was always after foreign mechanical inven- 
 tions, — he was now importing an excellent one from 
 Japan, — and ready to do lucrative feats of knowledge. 
 Thus he bought a Turkish ship at the bottom of the 
 Dardanelles for twelve hundred dollars, raised her cargo 
 (hardware), and sold it for six thousand dollars ; then 
 weighed the empty ship, pumped her, repaired her, and 
 navigated her himself into Boston harbor, Massachusetts. 
 On the way he rescued, with his late drowned ship, a 
 Swedish vessel, and received salvage. He once fished 
 eighty elephants' tusks out of a craft foundered in the 
 Firth of Forth, to the disgust of elder Anglo-Saxons look- 
 ing on from the shore. These unusual pursuits were 
 varied by a singular recreation ; he played at elevating 
 the African character to European levels. "With this 
 view he had bought the Vespasian for eighteen hundred 
 dollars; whereof anon. America is fertile in mixtures: 
 what do we not owe her ? Sherry-cobbler, gin-sling, cock- 
 tail, mint-julep, brand3--smash, sudden death, eye-openers. 
 Well, one day she outdid herself, and mixed Fullalove : 
 Quaker, Nimrod, Archimede, philanthropist, decorous Ked 
 Rover, and what not. 
 
 The passenger boats cast loose. 
 
 " All hands make sail ! " 
 
 The boatswain piped, the light-heeled topsmen sped up 
 the ratlines, and lay out on the yards, while all on deck
 
 186 HARD CASH. 
 
 looked up, as usual, to see them work. Out bellied sail 
 after sail aloft; the ship came courtesying round to the 
 southward, spread her snowy pinions high and wide, 
 and went like a bird over the wrinkled sea, homeward 
 bound. 
 
 It was an exhilarating start, and all faces were bright 
 — but one. The captain looked somewhat grave and 
 thoughtful, and often scanned the horizon with his glass. 
 He gave polite but very short answers to his friend 
 Colonel Kenealy, who was firing nothings in his ear, and 
 sent for the gunner. 
 
 While that personage, a crusty old Niler, called Monk, 
 is cleaning himself to go on the quarter-deck, peep we 
 into Captain Dodd's troubled mind, and into the circum- 
 stances which connect him with the heart of this story, 
 despite the twelve thousand miles of water between him 
 and the lovers at Barkington. 
 
 It had always been his pride to lay by money for his 
 wife and children, and, under advice of an Indian friend, 
 he had, during the last few years, placed considerable 
 sums, at intervals, in a great Calcutta house, which gave 
 eight per cent for deposits ; swelled by fresh capital, and 
 such high interest, the hoard grew fast. When his old 
 ship, sore battered off the Cape, was condemned by the 
 Company's agents at Canton, he sailed to Calcutta, intend- 
 ing to return thence to England as a passenger. But 
 while he was at Calcutta the greatest firm there sus- 
 pended payment, carr3'ing astonishment and dismay into 
 a hundred families. At such moments the press and the 
 fireside ring for a little while the common-sense cry, 
 "Good interest means bad security."^ As for Dodd, who 
 till then had revered all these great houses with nautical 
 or childlike confidence, a blind terror took the place of 
 blind trust in him. He felt guilty towards his children 
 
 1 The Duke of Wellington (the iron one) is the author of this saying.
 
 HAED CASH. 187 
 
 for risking their money (he had got to believe it was 
 theirs, not his), and vowed, if he could only get hold of 
 it once more, he would never trust a penny of it out of 
 his own hands again, except, perhaps, to the Bank of Eng- 
 land. But should he ever get it ? It was a large sum. 
 He went to Messrs. Anderson and Anderson, and drew 
 for his fourteen thousand pounds. To his disma}-, but 
 hardly to his surprise, the clerks looked at one another, 
 and sent the check into some inner department. Dodd 
 was kept waiting. His heart sank within him ; there 
 was a hitch. 
 
 Meantime came a government officer, and paid in an 
 enormous sum in notes and mercantile bills, principally 
 the latter. 
 
 Presently Dodd was invited into the manager's room. 
 
 *' Leaving the country, Captain Dodd ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " You had better take some of your money in bills at 
 sight on London." 
 
 " I would rather have notes, sir," faltered Dodd. 
 
 "Oh! bills by Oliveira upon Baring are just as good, 
 even without our indorsement. However, you can have 
 half and half. Calcutta does but little in English bank- 
 notes, you know." 
 
 They gave him his money. The bills were all mani- 
 festl}' good; but he recognized one of them as having 
 just been paid in b}' the civilian. He found himself 
 somehow safe in the street clutching the cash, with one 
 half of his great paternal heart on fire, and the other 
 half freezing. He had rescued his children's fortune, 
 but he had seen destruction graze it. The natural chill 
 at being scraped by peril soon passed, the triumphant 
 glow remained. The next sentiment was precaution; he 
 filled with it to the brim. He went and bought a great 
 broad pocket-book with a key to it ; though he was on
 
 188 HARD CASH. 
 
 dry land, he covered it with oiled silk against the water, 
 and sewed the whole thing to his flannel waistcoat, and 
 felt for it with his hand a hundred times a day; the fruit 
 of his own toil, his children's hoard, the rescued treasure 
 he was to have the joy of bringing home safe to the dear 
 partner of all his joys. 
 
 Unexpectedly he was ordered out to Canton to sail 
 the Agra to the Cape. Then a novel and strange feeling 
 came over him like a cloud ; that feeling was a sense of 
 personal danger; not that the many perils of the deep 
 were new to him. He had faced them these five and 
 twenty years, but till now they were little present to 
 his imagination ; they used to come, be encountered, be 
 gone ; but now, though absent, they darkened the way. 
 It was the pocket-book, the material treasure, the hard 
 cash, which had lately set him in a glow, seemed now to 
 load his chest and hang heavy round the neck of his 
 heart. Sailors are more or less superstitious ; and men 
 are creatures of habit, even in their courage. .Xow David 
 had never gone to sea with a lot of money on him before. 
 As he was a stout-hearted man, these vague forebodings 
 would, perhaps, have cleared away with the bustle, Avhen 
 the Agra set her studding sails off Macao, but for a piece 
 of positive intelligence he had picked up at Lin-Tin. The 
 Chinese admiral had warned him of a pirate, a daring 
 pirate, who had been lately cruising in these waters ; first 
 heard of south the line ; but had since taken a Russian 
 ship at the very mouth of the Canton River, murdered 
 the crew in sight of land, and sold the women for slaves 
 or worse. Dodd asked for particulars. Was he a La- 
 (Ironer, a IVfalay, a Bornese ? In what latitude was he 
 to be looked for ? The admiral on this examined his 
 memoranda. By these it appeared little was known as 
 yet about the miscreant, except that he never cruised 
 long on one ground; the crew was a mixeijl one; the
 
 HARD CASH. 189 
 
 captain was believed to be a Portuguese, and to have a 
 consort commanded by his brother ; but this was doubt- 
 fid, at all events the pair had never been seen at work 
 together. 
 
 The gunner arrived and saluted the quarter-deck ; the 
 captain on this saluted him, and beckoned him to the 
 weather side. On this the other officers kept religiously 
 to leeward. 
 
 "Mr. Monk," said Dodd, "you Avill clean and prepare 
 all the small arms directly." 
 
 " Ay, ay, sir ! " said the old Niler, with a gleam of 
 satisfaction. 
 
 " How many of your deck guns are serviceable ? " 
 
 This simple question stirred up in one moment all the 
 bile in the poor old gentleman's nature. 
 
 " My deck guns serviceable ! How the can they, 
 
 when that son of a sea cook, your third mate, has been 
 and lashed the water butts to their breechings, and 
 jammed his gear in between their nozzles, till they can't 
 breathe, poor things, far less bark ? I wish he was lashed 
 between the devil's hind-hocks, with a red-hot cable, as 
 tight as he has jammed my guns." 
 
 "Be so good as not to swear, Mr. Monk," said Dodd. 
 " At your age, sir, I look to you to set an example to the 
 petty officers." 
 
 " Well, I won't swear no more, sir ; d d if I do ! " 
 
 He added very loudly and with a seeming access of ire, 
 "And I ax your pardon, captain, and the deck's." 
 
 When a man has a deep anxiety, some human midge 
 or mosquito buzzes at him. It is a rule. To Dodd, 
 heavy with responsibility, and a dark misgiving he must 
 not communicate, came delicately, and by degrees, and 
 with a semigenuflexion every three steps, one like a mag- 
 pie ; and, putting his hands together, as our children do 
 to approach the Almighty, delivered himself thus, in
 
 190 HARD CASH. 
 
 modulated tones, and good Hindostanee: "The Daughter 
 of Light, in whose beams I, Ramgolam, bask, glows with 
 an amicable desire to see the lord commander of the ship 
 resembling a mountain, and to make a communica- 
 tion." 
 
 Taught by sad experience how weighty are the com- 
 munications the daughters of light pour into nautical 
 commanders at sea, Dodd hailed j\Ir. Tickell, a midship- 
 num, and sent him down to the lady's cabin. Mr. Tickell 
 soon came back reddish, but grinning, to say that noth- 
 ing less than the captain would do. 
 
 Dodd sighed, and dismissed Monk, with a promise to 
 inspect the gun-deck himself; then went down to Mrs. 
 Beresford and found her indignant. "Why had he stopped 
 the ship miles and miles from Macao, and given her the 
 trouble and annoyance of a voyage in that nasty little 
 boat ? — Dodd opened his great brown eyes, " Why, 
 madam, it is shoal water off Macao ; we dare not come 
 in." 
 
 "No evasion, sir. What have I to do with your shoal 
 water ? it was laziness, and want of consideration for a 
 lady who has rented half your ship." 
 
 " Nothing of the kind, madam, I assure you." 
 
 "Are you the person they call Gentleman Dodd?" 
 
 « Yes." 
 
 " Then don't contradict a lady ! or I shall take the 
 liberty to dispute your title." 
 
 Dodd took no notice of this, and, with a patience few 
 nautical commanders would have shown, endeavored to 
 make her see that he was obliged to give jSIacao shoals a 
 wide berth, or cast away the ship. She would not see 
 it. When Dodd saw she wanted, not an explanation, 
 but a grievance, he ceased to thwart her. " I am neglect- 
 ing my duties to no purpose," said he, and left her 
 without ceremony. This was a fresh offence; and; as
 
 HARD CASH. 191 
 
 he went out, she declared open war. And she made it, 
 too, from that hour : a war of pins and needles. 
 
 Dodd went on the gun-deck, and found that the defence 
 of the ship had, as usual in these peaceful days, been 
 sacrificed to the cargo. Out of twenty eighteen-pounders 
 she carried on that deck, he cleared three, and that with 
 difficulty. To clear any more he must have sacrificed 
 either merchandise or water; and he was not the man 
 to do either on the mere chance of a danger so unusual 
 as an encounter with a pirate. He was a merchant cap- 
 tain, not a Avarrior. 
 
 Meantime, the Agra had already shown him great 
 sailing qualities ; the log was hove at sundown and gave 
 eleven knots ; so that with a good breeze abaft, few fore- 
 and-aft-rigged pirates could overhaul her. And this 
 wind carried her swiftly past one nest of them, at all 
 events, the Ladrone isles. At nine p.m. all the lights 
 were ordered out. Mrs. Beresford had brought a novel 
 on board, and refused to comply : the master-at-arms 
 insisted ; she threatened him with the vengeance of the 
 Company, the premier, and the nobility and gentry of 
 the British realm. The master-at-arms, finding he had 
 no chance in argument, doused the glim — pitiable 
 resource of a weak disputant — then basely fled the 
 rhetorical consequences. 
 
 The northerly breeze died out, and light, variable 
 winds baffled the ship. It was the 6th April ere she 
 passed the Macclesfield Bank in latitude 16. And now 
 they sailed for many days ovit of sight of land. Dodd's 
 chest expanded; his main anxiety at this part of the 
 voyage lay in the state cabin; of all the perils of the 
 sea, none shakes a sailor like fire. He set a watch day 
 and night on that spoiled child. 
 
 On the 1st May they passed the great Nantuna, and 
 got among the Bornese and Malay Islands : at which the
 
 192 HARD CASH. 
 
 captain's glass began to sweep the horizon again : and 
 night and day at the dizzy foretop gallant masthead he 
 perched an eye. 
 
 They crossed the line in longitude 107, with a slight 
 breeze, but soon fell into the doldrums. A dead calm, 
 and nothing to do but kill time. Dodd had put down 
 Neptune : that old blackguard could no longer row out 
 on the ship's port side and board her on the starboard, 
 pretending to come from ocean's depths, and shave the 
 novices with a rusty hoop, and dab a soapy brush in 
 their mouths. "But champagne popped, the sexes flirted, 
 and the sailors spun fathomless yarns, and danced rat- 
 tling hornpipes, fiddled to by the grave Fullalove. "If 
 there is a thing I can dew, it's fiddle," said he. He and 
 his friend, as he systematically called Vespasian, taught 
 the crew Yankee steps, and were beloved. One honest 
 saltatory British tar offered that Western pair his grog 
 for a week. Even Mrs. Beresford emerged, and walked 
 the deck, quenching her austere regards with a familiar 
 smile on Colonel Kenealy, her escort ; this gallant good- 
 natured soldier flattered her to the nine ; and, finding 
 her sweeten with his treacle, tried to reconcile her to his 
 old friend Dodd. Straight she soured, and forbade tbe 
 topic imperiously. 
 
 By this time the mates and midshipmen of the Agra 
 had fathomed their captain. Mr. Tickell delivered the 
 mind of the united midshipmen when he proposed 
 Dodd's health in their mess-room, "as a navigator, a 
 mathematician, a seaman, a gentleman, and a brick, 
 with 3 times 3." 
 
 Dodd never spoke to his oflicers like a ruffian, nor yet 
 palavered them ; but he had a very pleasant way of con- 
 veying appreciation of an officer's zeal, by a knowing 
 nod with a kindly smile on the heels of it. As for the 
 men, they seldom come in contact with the captain of a
 
 HARD CASH. 193 
 
 well-officered ship: this crew only knew him at first as 
 a good-tempered soul, who didn't bother about nothing. 
 But one day, as they lay becalmed south of the line, a 
 jolly foretopman came on the quarter-deck with a fid of 
 soup, and saluting and scraping, first to the deck, then 
 to the captain, asked him if he would taste that. 
 
 *'Yes, my man. Smoked!" 
 
 "Like and blazes, your honor, axing your pardon, 
 
 and the deck's." 
 
 "Young gentleman," said Dodd to Mr. Meredith, a 
 midshipman, " be so good as to send the cook aft." 
 
 The cook came, and received, not an oath nor a threat, 
 but a remonstrance and a grim warning. 
 
 In the teeth of this he burned the soup horribly the 
 very next day. The crew sent the lucky foretopman aft 
 again. He made his scrape and presented his fid. The 
 captain tasted the soup, and sent jVIr. Grey to bid the 
 boatswain's mate pipe the hands on deck and bring the 
 cook aft. 
 
 " Quartermaster, unsling a fire-bucket, and fill it from 
 the men's kids. Mr. Tickell, see the cook swallow his 
 own mess. Bosen's mate, take a bight of the flying jib 
 sheet, stand over him, and start him if he dallies with 
 it." With this the captain went below ; and the cook, 
 supping at the bucket, delivered himself as follows : 
 "Well, ye lubbers, it is first-rate. There^s no burn in it. 
 It goes down like oil. Curse your ladylike stomachs ; 
 you ain't fit for a ship ; why don't ye go ashore and man 
 a gingerbread coach, and feed off French frogs and 
 
 Italian baccy-pipe stems ? (Whack.) What the is 
 
 that for ? " 
 
 Boatstvain's mate. Sup more, and jaw less. 
 
 " Well, I am supping as fast as I can. (Whack, 
 whack.) Bloody end to ye, what are ye about ? (Whack, 
 whack, whack.) Joe, Lord bless you, I can't eat any 
 13
 
 194 HARD CASH. 
 
 more of it. (Whack.) I'll give you my grog for a 
 
 week, only to let me fling the stuff over the side. 
 
 (Whack, whack, whack.) Oh, good, kind, dear Mr. 
 Tickell, do go down to the captain for me." (Whack, 
 whack.) 
 
 " Avast ! " cried the captain reappearing ; and the 
 uplifted rope fell harmless. 
 
 " Silence, fore and aft ! " 
 
 (Pipe.) 
 
 " The cook has received a light punishment this time, 
 for spoiling the men's mess. My crew shall eat nothing 
 I can't eat myself. My care is heavier than theirs is ; 
 but not my work, nor my danger in time of danger. 
 Mind that, or you'll find I can be as severe as any 
 master afloat. Purser." 
 
 " Sir." 
 
 *' Double the men's grog ; they have been cheated of 
 their meal." 
 
 " Ay, ay, sir." 
 
 " And stop the cook's and his mate's for a week." 
 
 " Ay, ay, sir." 
 
 "Bosen, pipe down." 
 
 " Shipmates, listen to me," said the foretopman 
 "This old Agra is a d — d com-for-table ship." 
 
 The oracular sentence was hailed with a ringing cheer. 
 Still, it is unlucky the British seaman is so enamoured of 
 theological terms, for he constantly misapplies them. 
 
 After lying a week like a dead log on the calm but 
 heaving waters, came a few light puffs in the upper air 
 and inflated the topsails only ; the ship crawled south- 
 ward, the crew whistling for wind. 
 
 At last, one afternoon, it began to rain, and after the 
 rain came a gale from the eastward. The watchful 
 skipper saw it purple the water to windward, and 
 ordered the topsails to be reefed and the lee ports
 
 HAED CASH. 195 
 
 closed. This last order seemed an excess of precaution ; 
 but Dodd Avas not yet thoroughly acquainted with his 
 ship's qualities ; and the hard cash round his neck made 
 him cautious. The lee ports were closed, all but one, 
 and that was lowered. Mr. Grey was Avorking a prob- 
 lem in his cabin, and wanted a little light and a little 
 ail", so he just drooped his port; but, not to deviate from 
 the spirit of his captain's instructions, he fastened a 
 tackle to it, that he might have mechanical force to close 
 it with should the ship lie over. 
 
 Down came the gale with a whoo, and made all crack. 
 The ship lay over pretty much, and the sea poured in at 
 Mr. Grey's port. He applied his purchase to close it. 
 But though his tackle gave him the force of a dozen 
 hands, he might as well have tried to move a mountain ; 
 on the contrary, the tremendous sea rushed in and burst 
 the port wide open. Grey, after a vain struggle with its 
 might, shrieked for help; down tumbled the nearest 
 hands, and hauled on the tackle in vain. Destruction 
 was rushing on the ship, and on them first. But, mean- 
 time, the captain, with a shrewd guess at the general 
 nature of the danger he could not see, had roared out, 
 " Slack the main sheet ! " The ship righted, and the 
 port came flying to, and terror-stricken men breathed 
 hard, up to their waists in water and floating boxes. 
 Grey barred the unlucky port, and went aft, drenched in 
 body, and wretched in mind, to report his own fault. 
 He found the captain looking grim as death. He told 
 him, almost crying, what he had done, and how he had 
 miscalculated the power of the water. 
 
 Dodd looked and saw his distress. " Let it be a lesson, 
 sir," said he, sternly. " How many ships have been lost 
 by this in fair weather, and not a man saved to tell how 
 the craft was fooled away." 
 
 " Captain, bid me fling myself over the side, and I'll 
 do it."
 
 196 HARD CASH. 
 
 "Humph! I'm afraid I can't afford to lose a good 
 officer for a fault he — will — never — repeat." 
 
 It blew hard all night, and till twelve the next day. 
 The Agra showed her weak point : she rolled abominably. 
 A dirty night came on. At eight bells, Mr. Grey, touched 
 by Dodd's clemency, and brimful of zeal, reported a light 
 in Mrs. Beresford's cabin. It had been put out as usual 
 by the master-at-arms ; but the refractory one had 
 relighted it. 
 
 " Go and take it away," said Dodd. 
 
 Soon screams were heard from the cabin. "Oh, 
 mercy ! mercy ! I will not be drowned in the dark." 
 
 Dodd, who had kept clear of her so long, went down 
 and tried to reassure her. 
 
 " Oh, the tempest ! the tempest ! " she cried. " And 
 
 TO BE DROWNED IN THE DARK ! " 
 
 " Tempest ? It is blowing half a gale of wind, that 
 is all." 
 
 " Half a gale ! Ah, that is the way you always talk 
 to us ladies. Oh, pray give me my light, and send me a 
 clergyman." 
 
 Dodd took pity, and let her have her light, with a 
 midshipman to watch it. He even made her a hypo- 
 critical promise that, should there be one grain of danger, 
 he would lie to ; but said he must not make a foul wind 
 of a fair one for a few lee lurches. Tlie Agra broke 
 plenty of glass and crockery, though, with her fair wind 
 and her lee lurches. 
 
 Wind down at noon next day, and a dead calm. 
 
 At two P.M. the weather cleared; the sun came out 
 high in heaven's centre ; and a balmy breeze from the 
 .west. 
 
 At six twenty-five, the grand orb set calm and red, and 
 the sea was gorgeous with miles and miles of great ruby 
 dimples J it was the first glowing smile of southern lati-
 
 HARD CASH. 197 
 
 tnde. The night stole on so soft, so clear, so balmy, all 
 were loath to close their eyes on it ; the passengers lin- 
 gered long on deck, watching the Great Bear dip, and 
 tlie Southern Cross rise, and overhead a whole heaven of 
 glorious stars most of us have never seen, and never 
 shall see in this world. No belching smoke obscured, 
 no plunging paddles deafened ; all was musical ; the soft 
 air sighing among the sails ; the phosphorescent water 
 bubbling from the ship's bows ; the murmurs from little 
 knots of men on deck, subdued by the great calm ; home 
 seemed near, all danger far; peace ruled the sea, the sky, 
 the heart ; the ship, making a track of white fire on the 
 deep, glided gently yet swiftly homeward, urged by 
 snowy sails piled up like alabaster towers against a 
 violet sky, out of which looked a thousand eyes of holy, 
 tranquil fire. So melted the sweet night away. 
 
 Now carmine streaks tinged the eastern sky at the 
 water's edge ; and that water blushed ; now the streaks 
 turned orange, and the waves below them sparkled. 
 Thence splashes of living gold flew and settled on the 
 ship's white sails, the deck, and the faces; and with no 
 more prologue, being so near the line, up came majestic- 
 ally a huge, fiery, golden sun, and set the sea flaming 
 liquid topaz. 
 
 Instant the look-out at the foretop gallant masthead 
 hailed the deck below. " Strange sail ! Right ahead ! " 
 
 The strange sail was reported to Captain Dodd, then 
 dressing in his cabin. He came soon after on deck and 
 hailed the look-out : " Which way is she standing ? " 
 
 " Can't say, sir. Can't see her move any." 
 
 Dodd ordered the boatswain to pipe to breakfast ; and 
 taking his deck-glass went lightly up to the foretop gal- 
 lant mast-crosstrees. Thence, through the light haze of 
 a glorious morning, he espied a long low schooner, latine- 
 rigged, lying close under Point Leat, a small island about
 
 198 HARD CASH. 
 
 nine miles distant on the weather bow; and nearly in 
 the Agra's course then approaching the Straits of Gasper, 
 4 latitude S. 
 
 " She is hove to," said Dodd, very gravely. 
 
 At eight o'clock, the stranger lay about two miles to 
 windward, and still hove to. 
 
 By this time all eyes were turned upon her and half a 
 dozen glasses. Everybody, except the captain, delivered 
 an opinion. She was a Greek lying to for water : she 
 was a Malay coming north with canes, and short of 
 hands : she was a pirate watching the straits. 
 
 The captain leaned silent and sombre with his arms 
 on the bulwarks, and watched the suspected craft. 
 
 Mr. Fullalove joined the group, and levelled a power- 
 ful glass of his own construction. His inspection was 
 long and minute, and, while the glass was at his eye, 
 Sharpe asked him, half in a whisper, could he make out 
 anything ? 
 
 '•'Wal/' said he, "the varmint looks considerable 
 snaky." Then, without moving his glass, he let drop 
 a word at a time, as if the facts were trickling into his 
 telescope at the lens, and out at the sight. " One — two 
 — four — seven, false ports." 
 
 There was a momentary murmur among the officers all 
 round. But British sailors are undemonstrative ; Colonel 
 Kenealy, strolling the deck with his cigar, saw they 
 were Avatching another ship with maritime curiosity, and 
 making comments ; but he discerned no particular emotion 
 nor anxiety in what they said, nor in the grave, low tones 
 they said it in. Perhaps a brother seaman would though. 
 
 The next observation that trickled out of Fullalove's 
 tube was this : " I judge there are too few hands on deck, 
 and too many — white — eyeballs — glittering at the port- 
 holes." 
 
 *' Confound it ! " muttered Bayliss, uneasily ; " how 
 can you see that ? "
 
 HARD CASH. 199 
 
 Fullalove replied only by quietly handing his glass 
 to Dodd. The captain, thus appealed to, glued his eye 
 to the tube, 
 
 " Well, sir ; see the false ports, and the white eye- 
 brows?" asked Sharpe, ironically. 
 
 '' I see this is the best glass I ever looked through,* 
 said Dodd, doggedly, without interrupting his inspection. 
 
 '• I think he is a Malay pirate," said Mr. Grey. 
 
 Sharpe took him up very quickly, and, indeed, angrily : 
 "Xonsense. And if he is, he won't venture on a craft 
 of this size."' 
 
 **Says the whale to the swordfish," suggested Fulla- 
 love, with a little guttural laugh. 
 
 The captain, with the American glass at his eye, 
 turned half round to the man at the wheel : " Star- 
 board I " 
 
 " Starboard it is." 
 
 *' Steer south south-east." 
 
 '• Ay, ay, sir." And the ship's course was thus altered 
 two points. 
 
 This order lowered Dodd fifty per cent in Mr. Sharpe's 
 estimation. He held his tongue as long as he could : but 
 at last his surprise and dissatisfaction burst out of him : 
 " Won't that bring him out on us ? " 
 
 " Very likely, sir," replied Dodd. 
 
 " Begging your pardon, captain, would it not be wiser 
 to keep our course, and show the blackguard we don't 
 fear him ? " 
 
 " When we do ? Sharpe, he has made up his mind an 
 hour ago whether to lie still, or bite ; my changing my 
 course two points won't change his mind, but it may 
 make him declare it ; and / must know what he does 
 intend, before I run the ship into the narrows ahead." 
 
 " Oh, I see," said Sharpe, half convinced. 
 
 The alteration in the Agra's course produced no move-
 
 200 HARD CASH. 
 
 ment on the part of the mysterious schooner. Sbe lay to 
 under the land still, and with only a few hands on deck, 
 while the Agra edged away from her and entered the 
 straits between Long Island and Point Leat, leaving 
 the schooner about two miles and a half distant to the 
 north-west. 
 
 Ah ! The stranger's deck swarms black with men. 
 
 His sham ports fell as if by magic, his guns grinned 
 through the gaps like black teeth ; his huge foresail rose 
 and filled, and out he came in chase. 
 
 The breeze was a kiss from heaven, the sky a vaulted 
 sapphire, the sea a million dimples of liquid, lucid 
 gold.
 
 HARD CASH. 201 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Amongst the curiosities of human reasoning is this : 
 one forms a judgment on certain statements ; they turn 
 out incorrect, yet the judgment sound. 
 
 This occurs oftenest when, to divine what any known 
 person will do in a case stated, we go boldly by his char- 
 acter, his habits, or his interest: for these are great 
 forces, towards which men gravitate through various and 
 even contrary circumstances. 
 
 Now women, sitting at home out of detail's way, are 
 somewhat forced, as well as naturally inclined, to rely 
 on their insight into character ; and, by this broad clew, 
 often pass through false or discolored data to a sound 
 calculation. 
 
 Thus it was Mrs. Dodd applied her native sagacity to 
 divine why Eichard Hardie declined Julia for his son's 
 wife, and how to make him withdraw that dissent : and 
 the fair diviner was much mistaken in detail, but right 
 in her conclusion ; for Kichard Hardie was at that 
 moment the unlikeliest man in Barkington to decline 
 Julia Dodd — with Hard Cash in five figures — for his 
 daughter-in-law. 
 
 I am now about to make a revelation to the reader, 
 that will incidentally lead him to Mrs. Dodd's conclu- 
 sion, but by a different path. 
 
 The outline she gave her daughter and my reader of 
 Eichard Hardie's cold and prudent youth was substan- 
 tially correct ; but something had occurred since then, 
 unknown to her, unknown to all Barkington. The cent- 
 uries had blown a respectable bubble.
 
 202 HARD CASH. 
 
 About two hundred and fifty years ago, some genius, 
 as unknown as the inventor of the lathe, laid the first 
 wooden tramroad, to enable a horse to draw forty-two 
 hundredweight instead of seventeen. The coal-owners 
 soon used it largely. In 1738, iron rails were invented : 
 but prejudice, stronger than that metal, kept them down, 
 and the wooden ones in vogue, for some thirty years. 
 Then iron prevailed. 
 
 Meantime, a much greater invention had been creep- 
 ing up to join the metal way ; I mean the locomotive 
 power of steam, whose history is not needed here. 
 Enough that in 1804 took place as promising a wedding 
 as civilization ever saw ; for then an engine built by 
 Trevethick, a great genius frittered for want of pluck, 
 drew carriages laden with ten tons, five miles an hour on 
 a Welsh railway. Next stout Stephenson came on the 
 scene, and insisted on benefiting mankind in spite of 
 themselves, and of shallow legislators, a priori reasoners, 
 and a heavy review, whose political motto was Stemiis 
 super antiquas vias, which may be rendered, Better 
 stand still on turnpikes than move on rails. 
 
 His torments and triumph are history. 
 
 Two of his repartees seem neat : — 1. To Lord Noodle, 
 or Lord Doodle, which was it ? objecting haughtily, 
 "And suppose a cow should get in the way of your 
 engine, sir ? " he replied, " Why, then it would be bad — 
 for the coow." The objector had overrated the obstruct- 
 ive power of his honored parent. 
 
 2. To the a priori reasoners, who sat in their studies 
 and demonstrated with complete unanimity that un- 
 cogged wheels would revolve on a smooth rail, but leave 
 the carriage in statu quo, he replied by building an engine 
 with Lord Ravensworth's noble aid, hooking on eight 
 carriages, and rattling off up an incline. " Solvitur ambu- 
 lando" quoth Stephenson the stout-hearted, to Messrs. A 
 Priori.
 
 HARD CASH. 203 
 
 Next a coach ran on the Stockton and Darlington 
 raih 
 
 Next the Liverpool and ^Manchester line was projected. 
 Oh, then what bitter opposition to the national benefac- 
 tors, and the good of man I 
 
 Awake from the tomb echoes of dead Cant. 
 
 "The revolving wheels might move the engine on a 
 rail, but what would that avail if they could not move 
 them in the closet, and on a mathematical paper ? Rail- 
 ways would be bad for canals, bad for morals, bad for 
 highwaymen, bad for roadside inns : the smoke would 
 kill the partridges (' Aha I thou hast touched us nearly,' 
 said the country gentlemen), the travellers would go 
 slowly to their destination, but swift to destruction." 
 And the Heavy Review, whose motto was '• Stcmus suj^er 
 turnpikes," offered "to back old Father Thames against 
 the Woolwich railway for any sum." And Black Will, 
 who drove the next heaviest ephemeral in the island, 
 told a schoolboy, who now writes these pages, " There's 
 nothing can ever be safe at twenty miles an hour, with- 
 out 'tis a bird in the air;" and confirmed it with an 
 oath. Briefly, buzz ! buzz ! buzz ! 
 
 Gray was crushed, Trevethick driven out of the country, 
 stout Steevie thwarted, badgered, taunted, and even in- 
 sulted, and bespattered with dirt, I might say Avith dung ; 
 since his opponents discharged their own brains at him 
 by speech and writing. At last, when after the manner 
 of men they had manured their benefactor well, they 
 consented to reap him. Railways prevailed and in- 
 creased, till, lo and behold ! a prime minister with a spade 
 delving one in the valley of the Trent. The tide turned; 
 good working railways from city to city became an 
 approved investment of genuine capital ; notwithstand- 
 ing the frightful frauds and extortion to which the pro- 
 jectors were exposed in a parliament which under a new
 
 204 HARD CASH. 
 
 temptation showed itself as corrupt and greedy as any 
 nation or age can parallel. 
 
 When this sober state of things had endured some 
 time, there came a y.ear that money was loose, and a 
 speculative fever due in the whirligig of time. Then 
 railways bubbled. New ones were advertised, fifty a 
 month, and all went to a premium. High and low scram- 
 bled for the shares, even when the projected line was 
 to run from the town of Nought to the village of Nothing 
 across a goose common. The flame spread, fanned by 
 prospectus and advertisement, two mines of glowing fic- 
 tion, compared with which the legitimate article is a mere 
 tissue of understatements : princes sat in railway tenders, 
 and clove the air like the birds whose effigies surmount 
 their armorials ; our stifEest peers relaxed into boards ; 
 bishops warned their clergy against avarice, and buttered 
 Hudson an inch thick for shares ; and turned their little 
 aprons into great pockets ; men, stainless hitherto, put 
 down their infants, nurses included, as independent sub- 
 scribers, and bagged the coupons, capturl tartaros : nearly 
 everything that had a name, and by some immense for- 
 tuity could write it, demanded its part in the new and 
 fathomless source of wealth : a charwoman's two sons 
 •were living in a garret on fifteen shillings apiece per 
 week ; down went their excellencies' names for thirty- 
 seven thousand pounds worth of bubbling iron ; another 
 shareholder applied imperiously from a house in Grosve- 
 nor Square ; he had breakfasted on the steps. Once 
 more, in Time's whirligig, gentlemen and their footmen 
 jostled one another on the Exchange, and a motley crew 
 of peers and printers, vicars and admirals, professors, 
 cooks, costermongers, cotton-spinners, waiters, coachmen, 
 priests, potboys, bankers, braziers, dairymen, mail-guards, 
 barristers, spinsters, butchers, beggars, duchesses, rag- 
 merchants — in one word, of nobs and snobs — fought and
 
 HARD CASH. 205 
 
 scrambled pellraell for the popular paper ; and all to get 
 rich in a day.^ 
 
 Eichard Hardie had some money in existing railways ; 
 but he declined to invest his hard cash upon hypotheti- 
 cals. He was repeatedly solicited to be a director; but 
 always declined. Once he was offered a canny bribe of 
 a thousand pounds to let his name go on a provisional 
 committee. He refused with a characteristic remark : 
 " I never buy any merchandise at a fancy price, not even 
 hard cash." 
 
 Antidote to the universal mania, Barkington had this 
 one wet blanket : an unpopular institution ; but far more 
 salutary than a damp sheet, especially in time of bubble. 
 
 Nearly all his customers consulted Eichard Hardie, 
 and this was the substance of his replies : " The bubbles 
 of history, including the great one of my youth, were 
 national, as well as individual, follies. It is not so now : 
 the railways, that ruin their allottees and directors, will 
 be pure additions to the national property, and some day 
 remove one barrier more from commerce. The Dutch 
 tulip frenzy went on a petty fancy : the railway fury goes 
 on a great fact. Our predecessors blew mere soap bub- 
 bles ; w^e blow an iron bubble : but here the distinction 
 ends ; in 1825 the country undertook immediate engage- 
 ments, to fulfil which a century's income would not have 
 sufficed: to-day a thousand railway companies are regis- 
 tered, requiring a capital of six hundred millions, and 
 another thousand projected, to cost another five hundred 
 millions. Where is the money to come from ? If the 
 world was both cultivated and civilized (instead of 
 neither), and this nation could be sold, with every build- 
 ing, ship, quadruped, jewel, and marketable female in it, 
 it would not fetch the money to make these railways ; 
 
 ^ For the humors of the time see the parliamentary return of Railway 
 Subscribers, published 1846 : Francis's British Railway : Kvaus's Commerciail 
 Crisis : aud the pamphlets and journals of the day.
 
 206 HARD CASH. 
 
 j-et the country undertakes to create them in three years 
 ivith its floating capital. Arithmetic of Bedlam ! The 
 thing cannot last a year without collapsing." Richard 
 Hardie talked like this from first to last. But, when he 
 saw that shares invariably mounted ; that even those who, 
 for want of interest, had to buy them at a premium, sold 
 them at a profit ; Avhen he saw paupers making large 
 fortunes in a few months, by buying into every venture 
 and selling the next week ; he itched for his share of the 
 booty, and determined to profit in act by the credulity 
 of mankind, as well as expose it in words. He made 
 use of his large connections to purchase shares ; which 
 he took care to part with speedily ; he cleared a good 
 deal of money, and that made him hungrier: he went 
 deeper and deeper into what he called Flat catching, till 
 one day he stood to win thirty thousand pounds at a 
 coup. 
 
 But it is dangerous to be a convert, real or false, to 
 bubble : the game is to be rash at once, and turn prudent 
 at the full tide. When Richard Hardie was up to his 
 chin in these time bargains, came an incident not easy 
 to foresee : the conductors of the Times, either from 
 patriotism, or long-sighted policy, punctured the bladder, 
 though they were making thousands weekly by the rail- 
 way advertisements. The time was so well chosen, and 
 the pin applied, that it was a death-blow : shares declined 
 from that morning, and the inevitable panic was advanced 
 a week or two. The more credulous speculators held on 
 in hopes of a revival ; but Hardie, who knew that the 
 collapse had been merely hastened, saw the gravity of 
 the situation, and sold largely at a heavy loss. But he 
 could not sell all the bad paper he had accumulated for 
 a temporary purpose : the panic came too swiftly, and too 
 strong ; soon tliere were no buyers at any price. The 
 biter was bit : the fox who had said, " This is a trap ; I'll
 
 HARD CASH. 207 
 
 lightly come and lightly go," was caught by the light 
 fantastic toe. 
 
 In this emergency he showed high qualities : vast 
 financial abilitj', great fortitude, and that sense of 
 commercial honor which Mrs. Dodd justly called his 
 semi-chivalrous sentiment. He mustered all his private 
 resources to meet his engagements, and maintain his 
 high position. Then commenced a long and steady 
 struggle, conducted with a Spartan dignity and self- 
 command, and a countenance as close as wax. Little 
 did any in Barkington guess the doubts and fears, the 
 hopes and despondencies, which agitated and tore the 
 heart and brain that schemed, and throbbed, and glowed, 
 and sickened by turns, beneath that steady, modulated 
 exterior. And so for months and months he secretly 
 battled with insolvency ; sometimes it threatened in the 
 distance, sometimes at hand, but never caught him 
 unawares : he provided for each coming danger, he en- 
 countered each immediate attack. But not unscathed in 
 morals. Just as matters looked brighter, came a concen- 
 tration of liabilities he could not meet without emptying 
 his tills, and so incurring the most frightful danger of 
 all. He had provided for its coming too ; but a decline, 
 greater than he had reckoned on, in the value of his 
 good securities, made that provision inadequate. Then 
 it was he committed a faux-jjas. He was one of his 
 own children's trustees, and the other two signed after 
 him like machines. He said to himself, "My honor is 
 my children's ; my position is worth thousands to thern. 
 I have sacrificed a fortune to preserve it ; it would be 
 madness to recoil now." He borrowed three thousand 
 pounds of the trust mone}^, and, soon after, two thousand 
 more : it kept him above water ; but the peril and the 
 escape on such terms left him gasping inwardly. 
 
 At last, when even his granite nature was almost worn
 
 208 HARD CASH. 
 
 down with labor, anxiety, and struggling all alone with- 
 out a word of comfort — for the price of one grain of 
 sympathy would have been "Destruction" — he shuffled 
 off his iron burden, and breathed again. 
 
 One day he spent in a sort of pleasing lethargy, like a 
 strong swimmer who, long and sore buffeted by the 
 waves, has reached the shore at last. 
 
 The next day his cashier, a sharp-visaged, bald-headed 
 old man called young Skinner, invited his attention rather 
 significantly to the high amount of certain balances com- 
 pared with the cash at his (Skinner's) disposal. 
 
 " Indeed ! " said Hardie, quietly ; " that must be regu- 
 lated." He added graciously, as if conferring a great 
 favor, "I'll look into the books myself, Skinner." 
 
 He did more : he sat up all night over the books ; and 
 his heart died within him. Bankruptcy seemed coming 
 towards him, slow, perhaps, but sure. And meantime to 
 live with the sword hanging over him by a hair ! 
 
 Soon matters approached a crisis ; several large drafts 
 were drawn, which would have cleaned the bank out, but 
 that the yearly rents of a wealthy nobleman had for 
 some days past been flowing in. This nobleman had 
 gone to explore Syria and Assyria. He was a great 
 traveller, who contrived to live up to his income at 
 home, but had never been able to spend a quarter of it 
 abroad, for want of enemies and masters — better known 
 as friends and servants — to help him. So Hardie was 
 safe for some months, unless there should be an extraor- 
 dinary run on him, and that was not likely this year; 
 the panic had subsided, and, nota bene, his credit had 
 never stood higher. The reason was, he had been double- 
 faced ; had always spoken against railways : and his 
 wise words were public, whereas his fatal acts had been 
 done in the dark. 
 
 But now came a change, a bitter revulsion, over this
 
 HARD CASH. 209 
 
 tossed mind : hope and patience failed at last, and his 
 virtue, being a thing of habit and traditions, rather than 
 of the soul, wore out; nay, more, this man, who had 
 sacrificed so nobly to commercial integrity, filled with 
 hate of his idol, and contempt of himself. " Idiot ! " 
 said he, " to throw away a fortune fighting for honor, — 
 a greater bubble than that which has ruined me — instead 
 of breaking like a man, with a hidden purse, and start- 
 ing fair again as sensible traders do." 
 
 No honest man in the country that year repented of 
 his vices so sincerely as Eichard Hardie loathed his 
 virtue. And he did not confine his penitence to senti- 
 ment ; he began to spend his days at the bank poring 
 over the books, and to lay out his arithmetical genius in 
 a subtle process, that should enable him by degrees to 
 withdraw a few thousands from human eyes for his 
 future use, despite the feeble safeguards of the existing 
 law. In other words, Richard Hardie, like thousands 
 before him, was fabricating and maturing a false balance- 
 sheet. 
 
 One man in his time plays many animals. Hardie at 
 this period turned mole. He burrowed darkling into 
 ces alienum.. There is often one of these sleek miners 
 in a bank : it is a section of human zoology the journals 
 have lately enlarged on, and drawn the pains-taking 
 creature grubbing and mining away brief opulence ; and 
 briefer penal servitude than one could wish. I rely 
 on my reader having read these really able sketches of 
 my contemporaries ; and spare him minute details that 
 possess scarcely a new feature, except one : in that bank 
 was not only a mole ; but a mole-catcher : and contrary 
 to custom, the mole was the master, the mole-catcher the 
 servant. The latter had no hostile views ; far from it ; 
 he was rather attached to his master : but his attention 
 was roused by the youngest clerk, a boy of sixteen, 
 14
 
 210 ^HARD CASH. 
 
 being so often sent for into the bank parlor, to copy into 
 the books some arithmetical result, without its process. 
 Attention soon became suspicion ; and suspicion found 
 many little things to feed on, till it grew to certainty. 
 But the outer world was none the wiser : the mole-catcher 
 was no chatterbox ; he was a solitary man ; no wife nor 
 mistress about him ; and he revered the mole, and liked 
 him better than anything in the world — except money. 
 
 Thus the great banker stood, a colossus of wealth and 
 stability to the eye, though ready to crumble at a touch ; 
 and indeed self-doomed ; for bankruptcy was now his 
 game. 
 
 This was a miserable man ; far more miserable than 
 his son whose happiness he had thwarted : his face was 
 furrowed, and his hair thinned by secret struggle : and 
 of all the things that gnawed him, like the fox, beneath 
 his Spartan robe, none was more bitter than to have 
 borrowed five thousand pounds of his children, and 
 sunk it. 
 
 His wife's father, a keen man of business, who saw there 
 was little affection on his side, had settled his daughter's 
 money on her for life, and, in case of her death, on the 
 children upon coming of age. The marriage of Alfred 
 or Jane would be sure to expose him ; settlements would 
 be proposed ; lawyers engaged to peer into the trust, etc. 
 No they must remain single for the present, or else 
 marry wealth. 
 
 So, when his son announced an attachment to a young 
 lady living in a suburban villa, it was a terrible blow, 
 though he took it with outward calm, as usual. But if, 
 instead of prating about beauty, virtue, and breeding, 
 Alfred had told him hard cash in five figures could be 
 settled by the bride's family on the young couple, he 
 would have welcomed the wedding with great external 
 indifference, but a secret gush of joy ; for then he could
 
 HARD CASH, 211 
 
 throw himself on Alfred's generosity, and be released 
 from that one corroding debt ; perhaps allowed to go on 
 drawing the interest of the remainder. 
 
 Thus, in reality, all the interests, with which this 
 stor}' deals, converged towards one point : the fourteen 
 thousand pounds. Richard Hardie's opposition was a 
 mere misunderstanding ; and, if he had been told of the 
 cash, and to what purpose Mrs. Dodd destined it, and 
 then put on board the Agra in the Straits of Gasper, he 
 would have calmly taken off his coat, and helped to 
 defend the bearer of it against all assailants as stoutly, 
 and, to all appearance, imperturbably, as he had fought 
 that other bitter battle at home. For there was some- 
 thing heroic in this erring man, though his rectitude 
 depended on circumstances.
 
 212 HARD CASH. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The way the pirate dropped the mask, showed his 
 black teeth, and bore up in chase, was terrible : so 
 dilates and bounds the sudden tiger on his unwary prey. 
 There were stout hearts among the officers of the peace- 
 able Agra ; but danger in a new form shakes the brave ; 
 and this was their first pirate : their dismay broke out in 
 ejaculations not loud but deep. " Hush ! " said Dodd, 
 doggedly ; " the lady ! " 
 
 Mrs. Beresford had just come on deck to enjoy the 
 balmy morning. 
 
 " Sharpe," said Dodd, in a tone that conveyed no sus- 
 picion to the new-comer, " set the royals, and flying jib. 
 Port ! " 
 
 " Port it is," cried the man at the helm. 
 
 '* Steer due south ! " And, with these words in his 
 mouth, Dodd dived to the gun-deck. 
 
 By this time elastic Sharpe had recovered the first 
 shock ; and the order to crowd sail on the ship galled his 
 pride and his manhood ; he muttered, indignantly, " The 
 white feather ! " This eased his mind, and he obeyed 
 orders briskly as ever. While he and his hands were 
 setting every rag the ship could carry on that tack, the 
 other officers, having unluckily no orders to execute, 
 stood gloomy and helpless, with their eyes glued by a 
 sort of sombre fascination, on that coming fate : and they 
 literally jumped and jarred, when Mrs. Beresford, her 
 heart opened by tlie lovely day, broke in on their nerves 
 with her light treble. 
 
 " What a sweet morning, gentlemen ! After all, a
 
 HAUD CASH. 213 
 
 voyage is a delightful thing ; oh, what a splendid sea ! 
 and the very breeze is -warm. Ah I and there's a little 
 ship sailing along : here, Freddy, Freddy darling, leave 
 off beating the sailor's legs, and come here and see this 
 pretty ship. What a pity it is so far off ! Ah, ah ! 
 what is that dreadful noise ?" 
 
 For her horrible small talk, that grated on those anx- 
 ious souls like the mockery of some infantine fiend, was 
 cut short by ponderous blows and tremendous smashing 
 below. It was the captain staving in water-casks : the 
 water poured out at the scuppers. 
 
 "Clearing the lee guns," said a middy, off his guard. 
 
 Colonel Keuealy pricked up his ears, drew his cigar 
 from his mouth, and smelt powder. "What, for action ? " 
 said he briskly. " Where's the enemy ? " 
 
 Fullalove made him a signal, and they went below. 
 
 Mrs. Beresford had not heard, or not appreciated, the 
 remark : she prattled on till she made the mates and 
 midshipmen shudder. 
 
 Realize the situation, and the strange incongruity 
 between the senses and the mind in these poor fel- 
 lows ! The day had ripened its beauty ; beneath a purple 
 heaven shone, sparkled, and laughed a blue sea, in 
 whose waves the tropical sun seemed to have fused 
 his beams ; and beneath that fair, sinless, peaceful sky, 
 wafted by a balmy breeze over those smiling, transparent 
 golden waves, a bloodthirsty pirate bore down on them 
 with a crew of human tigers ; and a lady babble babble 
 babble babble babble babble babbled in their quivering 
 ears. 
 
 But now the captain came bustling on deck, eyed 
 the loftier sails, saw they were drawing well, appointed 
 four midshipmen a staff to convey his orders ; gave 
 Bayliss charge of the carronades, Grey of the cutlasses, 
 and directed Mr. Tickell to break the bad news gently to
 
 214 HAKD CASH. 
 
 Mrs. Beresford, and to take her below to the orlop deck ; 
 ordered the purser to serve out beef, biscuit, and grog 
 to all hands, saying, "Men can't work on an empty 
 stomach ; and fighting is hard work ; " then beckoned 
 the officers to come round him. " Gentlemen," said he 
 confidentially, " in crowding sail on this ship I had no 
 hope of escaping that fellow on this tack, but I was, and 
 am, most anxious to gain the open sea, where I can 
 square my yards and run for it, if I see a chance. At 
 present I shall carry on till he comes up within range ; 
 and then, to keep the company's canvas from being shot 
 to rags, I shall shorten sail ; and to save ship and cargo 
 and all our lives, I shall fight while a plank of her 
 swims. Better be killed in hot blood than walk the 
 plank in cold." 
 
 The officers cheered faintly ; the captain's dogged 
 resolution stirred up theirs. 
 
 The pirate had gained another quarter of a mile and 
 more. The ship's crew were hard at their beef and 
 grog, and agreed among themselves it was a comfortable 
 ship ; they guessed what was coming, and woe to the 
 ship in that hour if the captain had not won their 
 respect. Strange to say, there were two gentlemen in 
 the Agra to whom the pirate's approach was not alto- 
 gether unwelcome. Colonel Kenealy and Mr. Fullalove 
 were rival sportsmen and rival theorists. Kenealy stood 
 out for a smooth bore, and a four-ounce ball : Fullalove 
 for a rifle of his own construction. Many a doughty 
 argument they had, and many a bragging match ; neither 
 could convert the other. At last Fullalove hinted that 
 by going ashore at the Cape, and getting each behind a 
 tree at one hundred yards, and popping at one another, 
 one or other would be convinced. 
 
 " Well, but," said Kenealy, " if he is dead, he will be 
 no wiser; besideS; to a fellow like me, who has had the
 
 HARD CASH. 215 
 
 luxury of popping at his enemies, popping at a friend is 
 .poor insipid work." 
 
 " That is true," said the other regretfully. " But I 
 reckon we shall never settle it by argument." 
 
 Theorists are amazing ; and it was plain, by the alac- 
 rity Avith which these good creatures loaded the rival 
 instruments, that to them the pirate came not so much 
 a pirate as a solution. Indeed, Kenealy, in the act of 
 charging his piece, was heard to mutter, " Now this is 
 lucky." However, these theorists were no sooner loaded, 
 than something occurred to make them more serious. 
 They were sent for in haste to Dodd's cabin : they 
 found him giving Sharpe a new order. 
 
 " Shorten sail to the taupsles and jib, get the colors 
 ready on the halliards, and then send the men aft." 
 
 Sharpe ran out full of zeal, and tumbled over Ramgo- 
 1am, who was stooping remarkably near the keyhole. 
 Dodd hastily bolted the cabin-door, and looked with 
 trembling lip and piteous earnestness in Kenealy's face 
 and Fullalove's. They were mute with surprise at a 
 gaze so eloquent yet mysterious. 
 
 He manned himself, and opened his mind to them 
 Avith deep emotion, yet not without a certain simple 
 dignity. 
 
 " Colonel," said he, " you are an old friend ; you, sir, 
 are a new one ; but I esteem you highly, and what my 
 young gentlemen chaff you about, you calling all men 
 brothers, and making that poor negro love you, instead 
 of fear you, that shows me you have a great heart. My 
 dear friends, I have been unlucky enough to bring my 
 children's fortune on board this ship : here it is, under 
 my shirt. Fourteen thousand pounds. This weighs me 
 down. Oh, if they should lose it after all ! Do pray 
 give me a hand apiece, and pledge your sacred words to 
 take it home safe to my wife at Barkington, if you, or
 
 216 HARD CASH. 
 
 either of you, should see this bright sun set to-day, and I 
 should not." 
 
 "Why, Dodd, old fellow," said Kenealy cheerfully, 
 " this is not the way to go into action." 
 
 " Colonel," replied Dodd, " to save this ship and cargo 
 I must be wherever the bullets are, and I will, too." 
 
 Fullalove, more sagacious than the worthy colonel, 
 said earnestly, " Captain Dodd, may I never see Broad- 
 way again, and never see heaven at the end of my time, 
 if I fail you. There's my hand." 
 
 "And mine," said Kenealy warmly. 
 
 They all three joined hands, and Dodd seemed to 
 cling to them. 
 
 " God bless you both ! God bless you ! Oh, what a 
 weight your true hands have pulled off my heart ! 
 Good-by for a few minutes. The time is short. I'll 
 just offer a prayer to the Almighty for wisdom, and then 
 I'll come up and say a word to the men, and fight the 
 ship, according to my lights." 
 
 Sail was no sooner shortened, and the crew ranged, 
 than the captain came briskly on deck, saluted, jumped 
 on a carrouade, and stood erect. He was not the man 
 to show the crew his forebodings. 
 
 (Pipe.) " Silence fore and aft." 
 
 " My men, the schooner coming up on our weather 
 quarter is a Portuguese pirate. His character is known: 
 he scuttles all the ships he boards, dishonors the women, 
 and murders the crew. We cracked on to get out of the 
 narrows, and now we have shortened sail to fight this 
 blackguard, and teach him to molest a British ship. I 
 promise, in the Company's name, twenty pounds prize 
 money to every man before the mast if we beat him off 
 or out-manoeuvre him, thirty if we sink him, and forty 
 if we tow him astern into a friendly port. Eight guns 
 are clear below, three on the weather side, five on the
 
 HARD CASH. 217 
 
 lee ; for, if he knows his business, he will come up on 
 the lee quarter : if he doesn't, that is no fault of yours 
 nor mine. The muskets are all loaded, the cutlasses 
 ground like razors " — 
 
 " Hurrah ! " 
 
 "We have got women to defend" — 
 
 '' Hurrah ! " 
 
 " A good ship under our feet, the God of justice over- 
 head, British hearts in our bosoms, and British colors 
 flying — run 'em up — over our heads. (The ship's 
 colors flew up to the fore, and the Union Jack to the 
 mizzen-peak.) Xow, lads, I mean to fight this ship 
 while a plank of her (stamping on the deck) swims 
 beneath my foot, and — What do you say ? " 
 
 The reply was a fierce " Hurrah ! " from a hundred 
 throats, so loud, so deep, so full of volume, it made the 
 ship vibrate, and rang in the creeping-on pirate's ears. 
 Fierce, but cunning, he saw mischief in those shortened 
 sails, and that Union Jack, the terror of his tribe, rising 
 to a British cheer : he lowered his mainsail, and crawled 
 up on the weather quarter. Arrived within a cable's 
 length, he double-reefed his foresail to reduce his rate 
 of sailing nearly to that of the ship ; and the next 
 moment a tongue of flame, and then a gush of smoke, 
 issued from his lee bow, and the ball flew screaming 
 like a sea-gull over the Agra's mizzen-top. He then put 
 his helm up, and fired his other bow-chaser, and sent the 
 shot hissing and skipping on the water past the ship. 
 This prologue made the novices wince. Bayliss wanted 
 to reply with a carronade, but Dodd forbade him sternly, 
 saying, " If we keep him aloof we are done for." 
 
 The pirate drew nearer, and fired both guns in suc- 
 cession, hulled the Agra amidships, and sent an eighteen- 
 pound ball through her foresail. Most of the faces were 
 pale on the quarter-deck : it was very trying to be shot
 
 218 HARD CASH. 
 
 at, and hit, and make no return. The next double 
 discharge sent one shot smash through the stern cabin- 
 window, and splintered the bulwark with another, wound- 
 ing a seaman slightly. 
 
 '' Lie dowx forward ! " shouted Dodd. " Bayliss, 
 give him a shot." 
 
 The carronade was fired with a tremendous report, but 
 no visible effect. The pirate crept nearer, steering in 
 and out like a snake to avoid the carronades, and firing 
 those two heavy guns alternately into the devoted ship. 
 He hulled the Agra now nearly every shot. 
 
 The two available carronades replied noisily, and 
 jumped as usual: they sent one thirty-two-pound shot 
 clean through the schooner's deck and side, but that was 
 literally all they did worth speaking of. 
 
 " Curse them ! " cried Dodd ; " load them with grape I 
 they are not to be trusted with ball. And all my eigh- 
 teen-pounders dumb ! The coward won't come alongside 
 and give them a chance." 
 
 At the next discharge the pirate chipped the mizzen- 
 niast, and knocked a sailor into dead pieces on the fore- 
 castle. Dodd put his helm down ere the smoke cleared, 
 and got three carronades to bear, heavily laden with 
 grape. Several pirates fell, dead or wounded, on the 
 crowded deck, and some holes appeared in the foresail ; 
 this one interchange was quite in favor of the ship. 
 
 But the lesson made the enemy more cautious : he 
 crept nearer, but steered so adroitly, now right astern, 
 now on the quarter, that the ship could seldom bring 
 more than one carronade to bear, while he raked her 
 fore and aft with grape and ball. 
 
 In this alarming situation Dodd kept as many of the 
 men below as possible ; but, for all he could do, four 
 were killed and seven wounded. 
 
 Fullalove's word came too true : it was the sword-fisb
 
 HARD CASH. 219 
 
 and the whale : it was a fight of hammer and anvil ; 
 one hit, the other made a noise. Cautious and cruel, 
 the pirate hung on the poor hulking creature's quarters, 
 and raked her at point-blank distance. He made her 
 pass a bitter time. And her captain ! To see the splin- 
 tering hull, the parting shrouds, the shivered gear, and 
 hear the shrieks and groans of his wounded, and he 
 unable to reply in kind ! The sweat of agony poured 
 down his face. Oh, if he could but reach the open sea, 
 and square his yards, and make a long chase of it ; per- 
 haps fall in with aid. Wincing under each heavy blow, 
 he crept doggedly, patiently, on, towards that one 
 visible hope. 
 
 At last, when the ship was cloved with shot, and pep- 
 pered with grape, the channel opened ; in five minutes 
 more he could put her dead before the wind. 
 
 Ko. The pirate, on whose side luck had been from 
 the first, got half a broadside to bear at long musket 
 shot, killed a midshipman by Dodd's side, cut away two 
 of the Agra's mizzen shrouds, Avounded the gaff, and cut 
 the jib-stay : down fell that powerful sail into the water, 
 and dragged across the ship's forefoot, stopping her way 
 to the open sea she panted for. The mates groaned : the 
 crew cheered stoutly, as British tars do in any great 
 disaster. The pirates yelled with ferocious triumph, 
 like the devils they looked. 
 
 But most human events, even calamities, have two 
 sides. The Agra being brought almost to a standstill, 
 the pirate forged ahead against his will, and the combat 
 took a new and terrible form. The elephant gun popped, 
 and the rifle cracked, in the Agra's mizzen-top, and the 
 man at the pirate's helm jumped into the air and fell 
 dead; both theorists claimed him. Then the three car- 
 ronades peppered him hotly, and he hurled an iron shower 
 back with fatal effect. Then at last the long eighteen-
 
 220 HARD CASH. 
 
 I)ounders on the gun-deck got a word in. The old Nilei 
 was not the man to miss a vessel alongside in a quiet 
 sea : he sent two round shot clean through him ; the 
 third splintered his bulwark, and swept across his deck. 
 
 " His masts ! fire at his masts ! " roared Dodd to Monk 
 through his trumpet ; he then got the jib clear, and made 
 what sail he could without taking all the hands from the 
 guns. 
 
 This kept the vessels nearly alongside a few minutes, 
 and the fight was hot as fire. The pirate now for the 
 first time hoisted his flag. It was black as ink. His 
 crew yelled as it rose : the Britons, instead of quail- 
 ing, cheered with fierce derision ; the pirate's wild crew 
 of yellow Malays, black chinless Papuans, and bronzed 
 Portuguese, served their side guns, twelve-pounders, well 
 and with ferocious cries ; the white Britons, drunk with 
 battle now, naked to the waist, grimed with powder, and 
 spotted like leopards with blood, their own and their 
 mates', replied with loud undaunted cheers, and deadly 
 hail of grape from the quarter-deck ; while the master- 
 gunner and his mates, loading with a rapidity the mixed 
 races opposed could not rival, hulled the schooner well 
 between wind and water, and then fired chain shot at her 
 masts, as ordered, and began to play the mischief with 
 her shrouds and rigging. Meantime, Fullalove and 
 Kenealy, aided by Vespasian, who loaded, were quietly 
 butchering the pirate crew two a minute, and hoped to 
 settle the question they were fighting for ; smooth bore 
 V. rifle : but unluckily neither fired once without killing; 
 so " there was nothing proven." 
 
 The pirate, bold as he was, got sick of fair fighting 
 first ; he hoisted his mainsail and drew rapidly ahead, 
 with a slight bearing to windward, and dismounted a 
 carrouade and stove in the ship's quarter-boat, by way of 
 a parting kick.
 
 HARD CASH. 221 
 
 The men hurled a contemptuous cheer after him ; they 
 thought they had beaten him off. But Dodd knew better. 
 He was but retiring a little way to make a more deadly 
 attack than ever : he would soon wear, and cross the 
 Agra's defenceless bows, to rake her fore and aft at 
 pistol-shot distance : or grapple, and board the enfeebled 
 ship two hundred strong. 
 
 Dodd flew to the helm, and with his own hands put it 
 hard a-weather, to give the deck guns one more chance, 
 the last, of sinking or disabling the destroyer. As the 
 ship obeyed, and a deck gun bellowed below him, he saw 
 a vessel running out from Long Island, and coming 
 swiftly up on his lee quarter. 
 
 It was a schooner. Was she coming to his aid ? 
 
 Horror ! A black flag floated from her foremast head. 
 
 While Dodd's eyes were staring almost out of his head 
 at this death-blow to hope. Monk fired again ; and just 
 then a pale face came close to Dodd's, and a solemn voice 
 
 whispered in his ear: "Our ammunition is nearly done! ■• 
 
 Dodd seized Sharpe's hand convulsively, and pointed 
 to the pirate's consort coming up to finish them ; and 
 said, with the calm of a brave man's despair, " Cutlasses ! 
 and die hard ! " 
 
 At that moment the master-gunner fired his last gun. 
 It sent a chain shot on board the retiring pirate, took off 
 a Portuguese head and spun it clean into the sea ever 
 so far to windward, and cut the schooner's foremast so 
 nearly through that it trembled and nodded, and pres- 
 ently snapped with a loud crack, and came down like a 
 broken tree, with the yard and sail ; the latter overlap- 
 ping the deck and burying itself, black flag and all, in 
 the sea ; and there, in one moment, lay the destroyer 
 buffeting and wriggling — like a heron on the water with 
 his long wing broken — an utter cripple. 
 
 The victorious crew raised a stunning cheer.
 
 222 HARD CASH. 
 
 " Silence ! " roared Dodd, with his trumpet. " All 
 hands make sail ! " 
 
 He set his courses, bent a new jib, and stood out to 
 windward close hauled, in hopes to make a good offing, 
 and then put his ship dead before the wind, which was 
 now rising to a stiff breeze. In doing this, he crossed 
 the crippled pirate's bows within eighty yards : and sore 
 was the temptation to rake him ; but his ammunition 
 being short, and his danger being imminent from the 
 other pirate, he had the self-command to resist the great 
 temptation. 
 
 He hailed the mizzen-top : " Can you two hinder them 
 from firing that gun ? " 
 
 "I rather think we can," said Fullalove, "eh, colonel?" 
 and tapped his long rifle. 
 
 The ship no sooner crossed the schooner's bows * than 
 a Malay ran forward with a linstock. Pop went the 
 colonel's ready carbine, and the INIalay fell over dead, 
 and the linstock flew out of his hand. A tall Portuguese, 
 with a movement of rage, snatched it up, and darted to 
 the gun : the Yankee rifle cracked, but a moment too 
 late. Bang ! went the pirate's bow-chaser, and crashed 
 into the Agra's side, and passed nearly through her. 
 
 " Ye missed him ! ye missed him ! " cried the rival 
 theorist, joyfully. He was mistaken : the smoke cleared, 
 and there was the pirate captain leaning wounded against 
 the mainmast with a Yankee bullet in his shoulder, and 
 his crew uttering yells of dismay and vengeance. They 
 jumped and raged and brandished their knives and made 
 horrid gesticulations of revenge ; and the white eyeballs 
 of the Malays and Papuans glittered fiendishly ; and the 
 wounded captain raised his sound arm and had a signal 
 hoisted to his consort, and she bore up in chase, and 
 
 » Being disabled, the schooner's head had come round to windward, though 
 she wag drifting to leeward.
 
 HARD CASH. 223 
 
 jamming her fore latine flat as a board, lay far nearer 
 the wind than the Agra could, and sailed three feet to 
 her two, besides. On this superiority being made clear, 
 the situation of the merchant Vessel, though not so 
 utterly desperate as before ]\ronk fired his lucky shot, 
 became pitiable enough. If she ran before the \;'ind, the 
 fresh pirate would cut her off : if she lay to windward, 
 she might postpone the inevitable and fatal collision with 
 a foe as strong as that she had only escaped by a rare 
 piece of luck ; but this would give the crippled pirate 
 time to refit and unite to destroy her. Add to this the 
 failing ammunition and the thinned crew. 
 
 Dodd cast his eyes all round the horizon for help. 
 
 The sea was blank. 
 
 The bright sun was hidden now ; drops of rain fell, 
 and the wind was beginning to sing, and the sea to rise 
 a little. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said he, " let us kneel down and pray 
 for wisdom in this sore strait." 
 
 He and his officers kneeled on the C|uarter-deck. When 
 they rose, Dodd stood rapt about a minute ; his great 
 thoughtful eye saw^ no more the enemy, the sea, nor 
 anything external ; it was turned inward. His officers 
 looked at him in silence. 
 
 " Sharpe," said he, at last, " there must be a way out 
 of them both with such a breeze as this is now, if we 
 could but see it." 
 
 " Ay, if" groaned Sharpe. 
 
 Dodd mused again. 
 
 "About ship ! " said he, softly, like an absent man. 
 
 " Ay, ay, sir ! " 
 
 " Steer due north ! " said he, still like one whose mind 
 was elsewhere. 
 
 While the ship was coming about, he gave minute 
 orders to the mates and the gunner, to insure co-opera-
 
 224 HARD CASH. 
 
 tion in the delicate and dangerous manoeuvres that were 
 sure to be at hand. 
 
 The wind was west-north-west : he was standing north : 
 one pirate lay on his lee beam stopping a leak between 
 wind and water, and hacking the deck clear of his broken 
 mast and yards. The other fresh, and thirsting for the 
 easy prey, came up to weather on him and hang on his 
 quarter, pirate fashion. 
 
 When they were distant about a cable's length, the 
 fresh pirate, to meet the ship's change of tactics, changed 
 his own, luffed up, and gave the ship a broadside, well 
 aimed but not destructive, the guns being loaded with 
 ball. 
 
 Dodd, instead of replying immediately, put his helm 
 hard up and ran under the pirate's stern, while he was 
 jammed up in the wind, and with his five eighteen- 
 pounders raked him fore and aft, then paying off, gave 
 him three carronades crammed with grape and canister; 
 the rapid discharge of eight guns made the ship tremble, 
 and enveloped her in thick smoke ; loud shrieks and 
 groans were heard from the schooner ; the smoke 
 cleared ; the pirate's mainsail hung on deck, his jib- 
 boom was cut off like a carrot and the sail struggling : 
 his foresail looked lace, lanes of dead and wounded lay 
 still or writhing on his deck, and his lee scuppers ran 
 blood into the sea, Dodd squared his yards and bore 
 away. 
 
 The ship rushed down the wind, leaving the schooner 
 staggered and all abroad. But not for long; the pirate 
 wore, and fired his bow-chasers at the now flying Agra, 
 split one of the carronades in two, and killed a Lascar, 
 and made a hole in the foresail ; this done, he hoisted 
 his mainsail again in a trice, sent his wounded below, 
 flung his dead overboard, to the horror of their foes, and 
 came after the flying ship, yawing and firing his bow*
 
 HARD CASH. 225 
 
 chasers. The ship was silent. She had no shot to 
 throw away. Not only did she take these blows like 
 a coward, but all signs of life disappeared on her, except 
 two men at the wheel, and the captain on the main 
 gangway. 
 
 Dodd had ordered the crew out of the rigging, armed 
 them with cutlasses, and laid them flat on the forecastle. 
 He also compelled Kenealy and Fullalove to come down 
 out of harm's way, no wiser on the smooth bore question 
 than they went up. 
 
 The great patient ship ran environed by her foes : one 
 destroyer right in her course, another in her wake, fol- 
 lowing her with yells of vengeance, and pounding away 
 at her — but no reply. 
 
 Suddenly the yells of the pirates on both sides ceased, 
 and there was a moment of dead silence on the sea. 
 
 Yet nothing fresh had happened. 
 
 Yes, this had happened : the pirates to windward and 
 the pirates to leeward of the Agra had found out, at one 
 and the same moment, that the merchant captain they 
 had lashed and bullied and tortured, was a patient but 
 tremendous man. It was not only to rake the fresh 
 schooner, he had».put his ship before the wind, but also 
 by a double, daring master-stroke to hurl his monster 
 ship bodily on the other. Without a foresail she could 
 never get out of her way. The pirate crew had stopped 
 the leak, and cut away and unshipped the broken fore- 
 mast, and were stepping a new one, when they saw the 
 huge ship bearing down in full sail. Nothing easier than 
 to slip out of her way could they get the foresail to draw ; 
 but the time was short, the deadly intention manifest, 
 the coming destruction swift. 
 
 After that solemn silence came a storm of cries and 
 curses, as their seamen went to work to lit the yard and 
 raise the sail j while their lighting men seized their 
 15
 
 226 HARD CASH. 
 
 matchlocks and trained the guns. They were ■well com- 
 maiided by an heroic, able villain. Astern the consort 
 thundered ; but the Agra's response was a dead silence 
 more awful than broadsides. 
 
 For then was seen with what majesty the enduring 
 Anglo-Saxon fights. 
 
 One of that indomitable race on the gangway, one at 
 the foremast, two at the wheel, conned and steered the 
 great ship down on a hundred matchlocks and a grinning 
 broadside, just as they would have conned and steered 
 her into a British harbor. 
 
 " Starboard ! " said Dodd, in a deep calm voice, with 
 a motion of his hand. 
 
 " Starboard it is." 
 
 The pirate wriggled ahead a little. The man forward 
 made a silent signal to Dodd. 
 
 " Port ! " said Dodd, quietly. 
 
 "Port it is." 
 
 But at this critical moment the pirate astern sent a 
 mischievous shot and knocked one of the men to atoms 
 at the helm. 
 
 Dodd waved his hand without a word, and another man 
 rose from the deck and took his place in. silence, and laid 
 his unshaking hand on the wheel stained with that man's 
 warm blood whose place he took. 
 
 The high ship was now scarce sixty yards distant ; 
 she seemed to know : she reared her lofty figure-head with 
 great awful shoots into the air. 
 
 But now the panting pirates got their new foresail 
 hoisted with a joyful shout ; it drew, the schooner gath- 
 ered way, and their furious consort close on the Agra's 
 heels just then scourged her deck with grape. 
 
 "Port !" said Dodd, calmly. 
 
 ''Port it is." 
 
 The giant prow darted at the escaping pirate. That
 
 HARD CASH. 227 
 
 acre of coming canvas took the Avind out of the swift 
 schooner's foresail ; it flapped ; oh, then she was doomed ! 
 That awful moment parted the races on board her : the 
 Papuans and Sooloos, their black faces livid and blue 
 with horror, leaped yelling into the sea, or crouched and 
 whimpered ; the yellow Malays and brown Portuguese, 
 though blanched to one color now, turned on death like 
 dying panthers, fired two cannon slap into the ship's 
 bows, and snapped their muskets and matchlocks at 
 their solitary executioner on the ship's gangway, and 
 out flew their knives like crushed wasps' stings. Crash ! 
 the Indiaman's cutwater in thick smoke beat in the 
 schooner's broadside : down went her masts to leeward 
 like fishing-rods whipping the water ; there Avas a horri- 
 ble shrieking yell ; wild forms leaped off on the Agra, and 
 were hacked to pieces almost ere they reached the deck 
 — a surge, a chasm in the sea, filled with an instant rush 
 of ingulfing waves, a long, awful, grating, grinding noise 
 never to be forgotten in this world, all along under the 
 ship's keel — and the fearful majestic monster passed on 
 over the blank she had made, with a pale crew standing 
 silent and awe-struck on her deck ; a cluster of wild 
 heads and staring eyeballs bobbing like corks in her 
 foaming wake, sole relic of the blotted-out destroyer ; 
 and a wounded man staggering on the gangway, with 
 hands uplifted and staring eyes. 
 
 Shot in two places, the head and the breast. 
 
 With a loud cry of pity and dismay, Sharpe, Fullalove, 
 Kenealy, and others rushed to catch him ; but, ere they 
 got near, the captain of the triumphant ship fell down 
 on his hands and knees, his head sunk over the gangway, 
 and his blood ran fast and pattered in the midst of them, 
 on the deck he had defended so bravely.
 
 228 HARD CASH. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 They got to the wounded captain and raised him. He 
 revived a little ; and the moment he caught sight of Mr. 
 Sharpe he clutched him, and cried, " Stunsels ! " 
 
 " captain ! " said Sharpe, " let the ship go ; it is you 
 we are anxious for now." 
 
 At this Dodd lifted up his hands and beat the air 
 impatiently, and cried again in the thin, querulous voice 
 of a wounded man, but eagerly, " Stunsels ! stunsels ! " 
 
 On this Sharpe gave the command : — 
 
 " Make sail ! All hands set stunsels 'low and aloft ! " 
 
 While the unwounded hands swarmed into the rigging, 
 the surgeon came aft in all haste ; but Dodd declined him 
 till all his men should have been looked to ; meantime 
 he had himself carried to the poop, and laid on a mattress, 
 his bleeding head bound tight with a wet cambric hand- 
 kerchief, and his pale face turned towards the hostile 
 schooner astern. She had hove to, and was picking up 
 the survivors of her blotted-out consort. The group on 
 the Agra's quarter-deck watched her to see what she would 
 do next; flushed with immediate success, the younger 
 officers crowed their fears, she would not be game to 
 attack them again ; Dodd's fears ran the other way. He 
 said, in the weak voice to which he was now reduced, 
 "They are taking a wet blanket aboard; that crew of 
 blackguards we swamped won't want any more of us ; it 
 all depends on the pirate captain ; if he is not drowned, 
 then blow wind, rise sea, or there's trouble ahead for us." 
 
 As soon as the schooner had picked up the last
 
 IIAKD CASH. 229 
 
 swimmer, she hoisted foresail, mainsail, and jib, with 
 admirable rapidity, and bore down in chase. 
 
 The Agra had, meantime, got a start of more than a 
 mile, and was now running before a stiff breeze with 
 studding sails alow and aloft. 
 
 In an hour the vessels ran nearly twelve miles, and 
 the pirate had gained half a mile. 
 
 At the end of the next hour they were out of sight of 
 land ; wind and sea rising, and the pirate only a quarter 
 of a mile astern. 
 
 The schooner was now rising and falling on the waves ; 
 the ship only nodding, and firm as a rock. 
 
 " Blow wind, rise sea ! " faltered Dodd. 
 
 Another half-hour passed without perceptibly altering 
 the position of the vessels. Then suddenly the wounded 
 captain laid aside his glass, after a long examination, and 
 rose unaided to his feet in great excitement, and found 
 his manly voice for a moment ; he shook his fist at the 
 now pitching schooner, and roared, " Good-by, ye Portu- 
 guese lubber I out-fought — out-manceuvred — axd out- 
 sailed ! " 
 
 It was a burst of exultation rare for him ; he paid for 
 it by sinking faint and helpless into his friend's arms; 
 and the surgeon, returning soon after, insisted on his 
 being taken to his cabin, and kept quite quiet. 
 
 As they were carrying him below, the pirate captain 
 made the same discovery ; that the ship was gaining on 
 him. He hauled to the wind directly, and abandoned 
 the chase. 
 
 When the now receding pirate was nearly hull down, 
 the sun began to set. Mr. Tickell looked at him, and 
 said, " Hallo, old fellow ! Avhat are you about ? Why, it 
 isn't two o'clock." 
 
 The remark was quite honest. He really feared for a 
 moment that orb was mistaken, and would get himself,
 
 230 HARD CASH. 
 
 and others, into trouble. However, the middy proved to 
 be wrong, and the sun right to a minute ; time flies fast, 
 fighting. 
 
 Mrs. Beresford came on deck with brat and poodle. 
 Fred, a destructive child, clapped his hands with glee at 
 the holes in the canvas ; Snap toddled about smelling 
 the blood of the slain, and wagging his tail, by halves, 
 perplexed. "Well, gentlemen," said Mrs. Beresford, "I 
 hope you have made noise enough over one's head ; and 
 what a time you did take to beat that little bit of a 
 thing. — Freddy, be quiet; you worry me. Where is 
 your bearer ? — Will anybody oblige me by finding 
 Ramgolam ? " 
 
 " I will," said Mr. Tickell, hastily, and ran off for the 
 purpose ; but he returned after some time with a long 
 face. No Ramgolam to be found. 
 
 Fullalove referred her, with humor-twinkling eye, to 
 Vespasian. " I have a friend here who says he can tell 
 you something about him." 
 
 " Can you, my good man ? " inquired the lady, turning 
 haughtily towards the negro. 
 
 " Iss, missy," said Vespasian, showing his white teeth 
 in a broad grin, " dis child knows where to find dat ar 
 niggar, widout him been and absquatulated since." 
 
 " Then go and fetch him directly." 
 
 Vespasian went off with an obedient start. 
 
 This annoyed Fullalove, interfered with his system. 
 "Madam," said he, gravely, "would you oblige me by 
 bestowing on my friend a portion of that courtesy with 
 which you favor me, and which becomes you so grace- 
 fully ? " 
 
 "Certainly not," replied Mrs. Beresford. "Mr. Fulla- 
 love, I am out of patience with you ; the idea of a sensi- 
 ble, intelligent gentleman like you calling that creature 
 your friend ! and you an American, where they do noth-
 
 HARD CASH. 231 
 
 ing but whip them from morning till night. Who ever 
 heard of making friends with a black ? Now, what is 
 the meaning of this ? I detest practical jokes." For 
 the stalwart negro had returned, bringing a tall bread- 
 bag in his arms. He now set it up before her, remark- 
 ing, "Dis yar bag white outside, but him nation black 
 inside." To confirm his words, he drew off the bag, and 
 revealed Ramgolam, his black skin 'powdered with meal. 
 The good-natured negro then blew the flour off his face, 
 and dusted him a bit. The spectators laughed heartily, 
 but Raifigolam never moved a muscle. Not a morsel dis- 
 composed at what would have made an European misera- 
 bly ashamed, even in a pantomime, the Caucasian darky 
 retained all his dignity, while the African one dusted 
 him ; but, being dusted, he put on his obsequiousness, 
 stepped forward, joined his palms together to Mrs. 
 Beresford, like mediaeval knights and modern children 
 at their devotions, and addressed her thus : — 
 
 "Daughter of light, he who basks in your beams, said 
 to himself, 'The pirates are upon us, those children of 
 blood, whom Sheitan their master blast forever ! They 
 will ravish the Queen of Sunshine and the ayahs, and 
 throw the sahibs and sailors into the sea; but, bread 
 being the staff of existence, these foxes of the water will 
 not harm it, but keep it for their lawless appetites ; there- 
 fore, Ramgolam, son of Chittroo, son of Soonarayan, will 
 put the finger of silence on the lip of discretion, and be 
 bread in the day of adversity. The sons of Sheitan will 
 peradventure return to dry land, and close the eye of 
 watchfulness ; then will I emerge like the sun from a 
 cloud, and depart in peace.' " 
 
 " Oh, very well," said Mrs. Beresford ; " then you are 
 an abominable egotist, that is all, and a coward; and, 
 thank Heaven, Freddy and I were defended by English 
 and Americans, and — hem! — their friends, and not by
 
 232 HARD CASH. 
 
 Hindoos." She added, charmingly, "This shows me 
 my first words on coming here ought to have been to 
 offer my warmest thanks to the brave men who have 
 defended me and my child," and swept them so queenly 
 a courtesy, that the men's hats and caps flew off in an 
 instant. " iMr. Black," said she, turning with a voice of 
 honey to Vespasian, but aiming obliquely at Fullalove's 
 heart, '^ would you oblige me by kicking that dog a little; 
 he is always smelling what does not belong to him. 
 Why, it is blood. Oh ! " and she turned pale in a moment. 
 
 Sharpe thought some excuse necessary. ''You see, 
 ma'am, we haven't had time to clean the decks since." 
 
 "It is the blood of men; of the poor fellows who 
 have defended u.s so nobly," faltered the lady, trembling 
 visibl}". 
 
 " Well, ma'am," said Sharpe, still half apologetically, 
 "you know a ship can't fight all day long without an 
 accident or two." He added with nautical simplicity and 
 love of cleanliness, "However, the deck will be cleaned 
 and holy-stoned to-morrow, long before you turn out." 
 
 Mrs. Beresford was too much overcome to explain how 
 much deeper her emotion was than a dislike to stained 
 floors. She turned faint, and, on getting the better of 
 that, went down to her cabin crying. Thence issued a 
 royal order that the wounded were to have wine and 
 every luxury they could fancy, without limit or stint, at 
 her expense. 
 
 The next day a deep gloom reigned in the ship. The 
 crew were ranged in their Sunday clothes, and bare- 
 headed. A grating was rigged. Sharpe read the burial 
 service ; and the dead, each man sewed up in his ham- 
 mock, with a thirty-two-pound shot, glided off the grating 
 into the sea with a sullen plunge ; while their shipmates 
 cried so, that the tears dripped on the deck. 
 
 With these regrets for the slain, too violent to last,
 
 HARD CASH, 233 
 
 was mingled a gloomy fear that death had a heavier blow 
 
 in store. The surgeon's report of Captain Dodd was 
 most alarming; he had become delirious about midnight, 
 and so continued. 
 
 Sharpe commanded the ship; and the rough sailors 
 stepped like cats over that part of the deck beneath 
 which their unconscious captain lay. If two men met 
 on the quarter-deck, a look of anxious but not hopeful 
 inquiry was sure to pass between them. 
 
 Among the constant inquirers was Eamgolam. The 
 grave Hindoo often waylaid the surgeon at the captain's 
 door, to get the first intelligence. This marked sympathy 
 with the hero in extremity was hardly expected from a 
 sage who at the first note of war's trumpet had vanished 
 in a meal-bag. However, it went down to his credit. 
 One person, however, took a dark view of this innocent 
 circumstance. But then that hostile critic was Vespasian, 
 a rival in matters of tint. He exploded in one of those 
 droll rages darkies seem liable to. " Massa Cunnel," said 
 he, " what for dat yar niggar always prowling about the 
 capn's door ? What for he ask so many stupid questions ? 
 Dat ole fox arter no good; him heart so black as um 
 skin, dam ole niggar ! " 
 
 Fullalove suggested slyly that a person with a dark 
 skin might have a grateful heart. And the colonel, who 
 dealt little in innuendo, said, "Come, don't you be so hard 
 on jet, you ebony ! " 
 
 "Bery well, gemmen," replied Vespasian, ceremoni- 
 ously, and with seeming acquiescence. Then, with sud- 
 den ire, "Because Goramighty made you white, you tink 
 you bery wise without any more trouble. Dat ar niggar 
 am an abommable egotisk." 
 
 "Pray what does that mean?" inquired Kenealy, 
 innocently. 
 
 " What him mean ? w^hat him mean ? Yah ! yah ! "
 
 234 HARD CASH. 
 
 " Yes. What does it mean ? " 
 
 " What him mean ? Yah ! What, dinn't you heal 
 Missy Besford niiscal him an abommable egotisk ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Fullalove, winking to Kenealy ; " but we 
 don't know what it means. Do you, sir ?" 
 
 "Iss, sar. Dat are expression he signify a darned old 
 cuss dat says to dis child, 'My lord Vespasium, take 
 benevolence on your insidious slave, and invest me in a 
 bread-bag,' instead of fighting for de ladies like a freen- 
 independum citizen. Kow you two go fast asleep. Dis 
 child he shut one eye and open de oder bery wide open 
 on dat ar niggar." And with this mysterious threat he 
 stalked away. 
 
 His contempt for a black skin, his ebullitions of unex- 
 pected ire, his turgid pomposity, and love of long terms, 
 may make the reader smile ; but they could hardly amuse 
 his friends just then : everything that touched upon Dodd 
 was too serious now. The surgeon sat up with him nearly 
 all night. In the daytime those two friends sat for hours 
 in his cabin, watching sadly, and silently moistening his 
 burning brow and his parched lips. 
 
 At length, one afternoon, there came a crisis, which 
 took an unfavorable turn. Then the surgeon, speaking 
 confidentially to these two stanch friends, inquired if 
 they had asked themselves what should be done with 
 the body. " Why I ask," said he, " we are in a very hot 
 latitude ; and if you wish to convey it to Barkington, the 
 measures ought to be taken in time, in fact, within an 
 hour or two after death." 
 
 The poor friends Avere shocked and sickened by this 
 horrible piece of foresight. But Colonel Kenealy said 
 with tears in his eyes that his old friend should never 
 be buried like a kitten. 
 
 " Then you had better ask Sharpe to give me an order 
 for a barrel of spirits," said the surgeon.
 
 HARD CASH. 235 
 
 " Yes, yes, for two if you like. Oh, don't die, Dodd, 
 my poor old fellow ! How shall I ever face his wife — I 
 remember her, the loveliest girl you ever saw — with 
 such a tale as this ? She will think it a cruel thing I 
 should come out of it without a scratch, and a ten times 
 better man to be dead ; and so it is. It is cruel, it is 
 unjust, it is monstrous : him to be lying there, and we 
 muffs to be sitting croaking over him and watching for 
 his last breath like three cursed old ravens." And the 
 stout colonel groaned aloud. 
 
 When the surgeon left them, they fell naturally upon 
 another topic : the pledge they had given Dodd about 
 the fourteen thousand pounds. They ascertained it was 
 upon him, next his skin ; but it seemed as unnecessary 
 as it was repugnant, to remove it from his living person. 
 They agreed, however, that instantly on his decease 
 they would take possession of it, note the particulars, 
 seal it up, and carry it to Mrs. Dodd, with such comfort 
 as they could hope to give her by relating the gallant 
 act in which his precious life was lost. 
 
 At nine p.m. the surgeon took his place by Dodd's bed- 
 side ; and the pair, whom one thing after another had 
 drawn so close together, retired to Kenealy's cabin. 
 
 Many a merry chat they had had there, and many a 
 gasconade, being rival hunters ; but now they were 
 together for physical companionship in sorrow, rather 
 than for conversation. They smoked their cigars in 
 moody silence, and at midnight shook hands with a sigh, 
 and parted. That sigh meant to say that in the morning 
 all would be over. 
 
 They turned in ; but ere either of them was asleep, 
 suddenly the captain's cabin seemed to fill with roars 
 and shrieks of wild beasts, that made the whole ship 
 ring in the silent night ; the savage cries were answered 
 on deck by shouts of dismay and many pattering feet
 
 236 HARD CASH. 
 
 making for the companion ladder ; but the nearest per- 
 sons to the cabin, and the first to reach it, were Kenealy 
 and Fullalove, who burst in, the former with a drawn 
 sword, the latter with a revolver, both in their night- 
 gowns, and there saw a sight that took their breath 
 away. 
 
 The surgeon was not there ; and two black men, one 
 with a knife and one with his bare claws, were fighting 
 and struggling and trampling all over the cabin at once, 
 and the dying man sitting up in his cot, pale, and 
 glaring at them.
 
 TWO BLACK MEX . . . ^VERE FIGHTING AXD STKUGGLING.
 
 HARD CASH. 237 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The two supple, dusky forms went whirling so fast, 
 there was no grasping them to part them. But presently 
 the negro seized the Hindoo by the throat ; the Hindoo 
 just pricked him in the arm with his knife, and the next 
 moment his own head was driven against the side of the 
 cabin with a stunning crack, and there he was, pinned 
 and wriggling and bluish with fright, whereas the other 
 swart face close against his was dark-gray with rage, 
 and its two fireballs of eyes rolled fearfully, as none but 
 African eyes can roll. 
 
 FuUalove pacified him by voice and touch ; he with- 
 drew his iron grasp with sullen and lingering reluctance, 
 and glared like a disappointed mastiff. The cabin was 
 now full, and Sharpe was for putting both the blacks in 
 irons. No splitter of hairs was he. But Fullalove sug- 
 gested there might be a moral distinction between things 
 that looked equally dark to the eye. 
 
 "Well, then, speak quick, both of you," said Sharpe, 
 "or I'll lay ye both by the heels. Ye black scoundrels, 
 Avhat business have you in the captain's cabin, kicking 
 up the devil's delight ? " 
 
 Thus threatened, Vespasian panted out his tale ; he 
 had discovered this nigger, as he persisted in calling 
 the Hindoo, eternally prowling about the good captain's 
 door, and asking stupid questions : he had watched him, 
 and, on the surgeon coming out with the good news that 
 the captain was better, in had crawled " this yar abom- 
 mable egotisk." And he raised a ponderous fist to point 
 the polysyllables ; with this aid the sarcasm would
 
 238 HARD CASH. 
 
 doubtless have been crushing, but Fullalove hung on the 
 sable orator's arm, and told him dryly to try and speak 
 without gesticulating. " The darned old cuss ! " said 
 Vespasian, with a pathetic sigh at not being let hit him. 
 He resumed, and told how he had followed the Hindoo 
 stealthily, and found him with a knife uplifted over the 
 captain — a tremor ran through all present — robbing 
 him. At this a loud murmur filled the room : a very 
 ugly one, the sort of snarl with which dogs fly at dogs' 
 throats with their teeth, and men fly at men's throats 
 with a cord. 
 
 " Be quiet," said Sharpe imperiously. " I'll have no 
 lynching in a vessel I command. Now then, you sir, 
 how do you know he was robbing the captain ? " 
 
 " How do I know ? Yah ! yah ! Cap'n, if you please 
 you tell dis unskeptical gemman whether you don't miss 
 a lilly book out of your bosom ! " 
 
 During this extraordinary scene, Dodd had been look- 
 ing from one speaker to another in great surprise and 
 some confusion ; but, at the negro's direct appeal, his 
 hand went to his breast, and clutched it with a feeble 
 but heart-rending cry. 
 
 " Oh, him not gone far. Yah, yah ! " and Vespasian 
 stooped, and took up an oilskin packet off the floor, and 
 laid it on the bed; "dis child seen him in dat ar nig- 
 gar's hand, and heard him go whack on de floor." 
 
 Dodd hurried the packet into his bosom, then turned 
 all gratitude to his sable friend : " Now God bless you ! 
 God bless you ! Give me your honest hand ! You don't 
 know w'hat you have done for me and mine." 
 
 And, sick as he was, he wrung Vespasian's hand with 
 convulsive strength, and would not part wdth it. Vespa- 
 sian patted him soothingly all over, and whimpered out, 
 "Nebber you mind, cap'n! You bery good man; dis 
 child bery fond of you a long time ago. You bery good
 
 HARD CASH. 239 
 
 man, outrageous good man, damn good man ! I propose 
 your health ; iuvalesce directly ! " 
 
 While Dodd was speaking, the others were silent out 
 of respect ; but now Sharpe broke in, and, with the 
 national desire to hear both sides, called on Ramgolam 
 for his version. The Hindoo now was standing with 
 his arms crossed on his breast, looking all the martyr, 
 meek and dignified. He inquired of Sharpe, in very 
 broken English, whether he spoke Hindostanee. 
 
 " Not I : nor don't act it neither," said Sharpe. 
 
 At this confession Ramgolam looked down on him 
 with pity and mild contempt. 
 
 Mr. Tickell was put forward as interpreter. 
 
 Ramgolam (in Hindostanee). He whom Destiny, too 
 strong for mortals, now oppresses with iron hand, and 
 feeds with the bread of affliction — 
 
 Mr. Tickell (translating). He who by bad luck has 
 got into trouble — 
 
 Eamgolavi. Has long observed the virtues that em- 
 bellish the commander of this ship resembling a moun- 
 tain, and desired to imitate them — 
 
 Tickell. Saw what a good man the captain is, and 
 wanted to be like him — 
 
 Vespasian. The darned old cuss ! 
 
 Ramgolam. Seeing him often convey his hand to his 
 bosom, I ascribed his unparalleled excellence to the pos- 
 session of some sovereign talisman. (Tickell managed 
 to translate this sentence all but the word talisman, 
 which he rendered, with all a translator's caution, " arti- 
 cle.") Finding him about to depart to the regions of 
 the blessed, where such auxiliaries are not needed, and 
 being eager to emulate his perfections here below, I 
 came softly to the place where he lay — 
 
 Tickell. When I saw him going to slip his cable, 
 I wanted to be as good a fellow as he is, so I crept along- 
 side —
 
 240 HARD CASH. 
 
 Ramgolam. And gently, and without force, made 
 myself proprietor of the amulet, and inheritor of a good 
 man's qualities — 
 
 Tickell. And quietly boned the article, and the 
 captain's virtues. I don't know what the beggar means. 
 
 Ramgolam. Then a traitor with a dark skin, but 
 darker soul — 
 
 Tickell. Then another black-hearted nigger — 
 
 Ramgolam. Came furiously and misappropriated the 
 charm thus piously obtained — 
 
 Tickell. Kan in and stole it from me. 
 
 Ramgolam. And bereft me of the excellences I was 
 inheriting; and — 
 
 Here Sharpe interrupted the dialogue by putting the 
 misappropriator of other men's Adrtues in irons ; and 
 the surgeon insisted on the cabin being cleared. But 
 Dodd would not part with the three friends yet; he 
 begged them to watch him, and see nobody else came to 
 take his children's forture. 
 
 " I'll sink or swim \Tith it ; but, oh, I doubt we shall 
 have no luck whilt it is aboard me. I never had a 
 pirate alongside before in all these years. What is this ? 
 here's something in it now : something hard — something 
 heavy ; and — why, it is a bullet ! " 
 
 On this announcement, an eager inspection took place : 
 and, sure enough, a bullet had passed through Dodd's 
 coat and waistcoat, etc., and through the oilskin, and 
 the leather pocket-book, and just dented the " Hard 
 Cash," no more. 
 
 There was a shower of comments and congratulations. 
 
 The effect of this discovery on the sick man's spirits 
 was remarkable. " I was a villain to belie it," said he. 
 " It is my wife's, and my children's ; and it has saved 
 my life for them." 
 
 He kissed it, and placed it iu his bosom, and sood
 
 HARD CASH. 241 
 
 after sunk into a peaceful slumber. The excitement 
 had not the ill effect the surgeon feared. It somewhat 
 exhausted him, and he slept long, but on awakening, 
 was pronounced out of danger. To tell the truth, the 
 tide had turned in his favor over-night; and it was to 
 convey the good news on deck the surgeon had left him. 
 
 While Dodd was recovering, the Agra was beating 
 westward, with light but contrary winds ; and a good 
 month elapsed Avithout any incident affecting the Hard 
 Cash whose singular adventures I have to record. In 
 this dearth please put up with a little characteristic trifle, 
 which did happen one moonlight night. Mr. Fullalove 
 lay coiled below decks in deep abstraction, meditating a 
 patent ; and, being in shadow and silent, he sav/ Vespa- 
 sian in the moonlight creeping on all fours like a guilty 
 thing into the bedroom of Colonel Kenealy, then fast 
 asleep. A horrible suspicion thrilled through Fullalove : 
 a suspicion he waited grimly to verify. 
 
 The transatlantic mixture, Fullalove, was not merely 
 an inventor, a philanthrope, a warrior, a preacher, a 
 hunter, a swimmer, a fiddler, a sharp fellow, a good 
 fellow, a Puritan, and a Bohemian, he was also a theo- 
 rist : and his theory, which dub we the Africax 
 THEORY, had two branches : 1. That the races of men 
 started equal, but accident upon accident had walked 
 some tribes up a ladder of civilization, and kicked 
 others down it, and left others standing at the foot. 
 2. That the good work of centuries could be done, at 
 a pinch, in a few generations, by artificial condensation 
 of the favorable circumstances. For instance, secure 
 this worker in ebony a hundred and fifty years' life, and 
 he would sign a penal bond to produce negroes of the 
 fourth descent equal in mind to the best contemporary 
 white. "You can breed brains/' said he, "under any 
 skin, as inevitably as fat. It takes time and the right 
 16
 
 242 HARD CASH. 
 
 crosses ; but so does fat, or rather it did, for fat is an 
 institution now." And here our republican must have a 
 slap at thrones. "Compare," said he, "the 0})portuni- 
 ties of these distinguished gentlemen and ladies with 
 their acts. Their seats have been high, but their minds 
 low, I swan. They have been breeders for ages, and 
 know the two rudiments of the science ; have crossed 
 and crossed for grenadiers, race-horses, poultry, and prize 
 bullocks, and bred in and in for fools; but which of 
 them has ever aspired to breed a Newton, a Pascal, a 
 Shakespeare, a Solon, a Raphael? Yet all these were 
 results to be obtained by the right crosses, as surely as 
 a swift horse or a circular sow. Now fancy breeding 
 short-horns when you might breed long heads." So 
 Vespasian was to engender young Africa, he was to be 
 first elevated morally and intellectually as high as he 
 would go, and then set to breed, his partner, of course, 
 to be elected by FuUalove, and educated as high as she 
 would consent to without an illicit connection with the 
 experimentalist. He would be down on their pickanin- 
 nies before the parents could transfer the remnant of 
 their own weaknesses to them, polysyllables included, 
 and would polish these ebony chips, and, at the next 
 cross, reckoned to rear a genius, by which time, as near 
 as he could calculate, he the theorist would be in his 
 dotage, and all the better, make a curious contrast in 
 favor of young Africa. 
 
 Vespasian could not hit a barn-door sitting — with a 
 rifle ; it was purely with a view to his moral improve- 
 ment, mind you, that Fullalove invited him into the 
 mizzen-top to fight the pirate. The patient came gin- 
 gerly, and shivered there with fear. But five minutes 
 elapsing, and he not killed, that weakness gave way to a 
 jocund recklessness ; and he kept them all gay with his 
 quaint remarks, of which I must record but one. When
 
 HARD CASH. 243 
 
 they crossed the stern of the pirate, the distance was so 
 Ksmall that tlie faces of that motley crew were plainly 
 visible ; now, Vespasian was a merciless critic of colored 
 skins. " Wal," said he, turning up his nose sky high, 
 "dis child never seen such a mixellaneous biling o' 
 darkies as this yar; wh}', darned ef there ain't every 
 color in the rainbow, from the ace of spades down to 
 the fine dissolving views." This amazing description, 
 coupled with his look of affront and disgust, made the 
 white men roar ; for men fighting for their lives have a 
 greater tendency to laugh than one would think possible. 
 Fullalove was proud of the critic, and for awhile lost 
 sight of the pirate in his theory, which also may seem 
 strange. But your true theorist is a man apart ; he can 
 withdraw into himself under difficulties. What said 
 one of the breed two thousand years ago ? 
 
 " Media inter prnslia semper 
 Sideribus coelique plagis Superisque vacavi." 
 
 '•' Oh, the great African heart I " said Fullalove after the 
 battle. "By my side he fears no danger. Of all men, 
 negroes are the most capable of friendship ; their affec- 
 tion is a mine ; and we have only worked it with the 
 lash; and that is a ridicalous mining tool, I rather 
 think." 
 
 When Vespasian came out so strong versus Ramgolam, 
 Fullalove was even more triumphant : for, after all, it is 
 not so much the heart as the intelligence of the negro 
 we albiculi affect to doubt. 
 
 '• Oh, the great African intellect ! " said Fullalove, 
 publicly, taking the bull by the horns. 
 
 "I know," said Mrs. Beresford, maliciously; "it is 
 down in the maps as the great African Desert." 
 
 To balance his many excellences, Vespasian had an 
 infirmity. This was an ungovernable itch for brushing
 
 244 HARD CASH. 
 
 whites. If he was talking with one of that always 
 admired, and now beloved, race, and saw a speck of dirt 
 on him, he would brush him unobtrusively, but effectu- 
 ally, in full dialogue : he would steal behind a knot of 
 whites, and brush whoever needed it, however little. 
 Fullalove remonstrated, but in vain ; on this one point 
 instinct would not yield to reason. He could not keep 
 his hands off a dusty white. He would have died of 
 the miller of Dee. But the worst was, he did not stop 
 at clothes ; he loathed ill-blacked shoes ; woe to all foot- 
 leather that did not shine ; his own skin furnished a 
 perilous standard of comparison. He was eternally 
 blacking boots en amateur. Fullalove got in -a rage at 
 this, and insisted on his letting his fellow-creatures' 
 leatlier alone. Vespasian pleaded hard, especially for 
 leave to black Colonel Kenealy. "The cunnell," said 
 he, pathetically, "is such a tarnation fine gentleman 
 spoilt for want of a lilly bit of blacking." Fullalove 
 replied that the colonel had got a servant whose mission 
 it was to black his shoes. This simply amused Vespa- 
 sian. " A servant ? " said he. " Yah ! yah ! What is 
 the use of white servants ? They are not biddable. 
 Massa Fullalove, sar, Goramighty He reared all white 
 man to kick up a dust, white servants inspecially, and 
 the darkies to brush 'era ; and likewise additionally to 
 make their boots shine, a lilly bit." He concluded with 
 a dark hint that the colonel's white servant's own shoes, 
 though better blacked than his master's, were any- 
 thing but mirrors, and that this child had his eye on 
 them. 
 
 The black desperado emerged on tiptoe from Kenealy's 
 cabin, just as Macbeth does from the murdered Duncan's 
 chamber ; only with a pair of boots in his hand instead 
 of a pair of daggers ; got into the moonlight, and finding
 
 HARD CASH. 245 
 
 himself uninterrupted, assumed the whistle of innocence, 
 and polished them to the nine, chuckling audibly. 
 
 Fullalove watched him with an eye like a rattlesnake, 
 but kept quiet. He saw interference would only demor- 
 alize him worse ; for it is more ignoble to black boots 
 clandestinely, than bravely : men ditto. 
 
 He relieved his heart with idioms. "Darn the critter ! 
 he's fixed my flint eternally. Now I cave. I-»swan to 
 man I may just hang up my fiddle, for this darky's too 
 hard a row to hoe." 
 
 It was but a momentary dejection. The mixture was 
 (inter alia) a theorist and an Anglo-Saxon, two indom- 
 itables. He concluded to temporize with the brush and 
 breed it out. 
 
 " I'm bound to cross the obsequious cuss with the cat- 
 awamptiousest gal in Guinea, and one that never saw a 
 blacking-bottle, not even in a dream." Majora canamus. 
 
 Being now about a hundred miles south of the Mauri- 
 tius, in fine weather with a light breeze, Dodd's marine 
 barometer began to fall steadily ; and by the afternoon 
 the declension had become so remarkable that he felt 
 uneasy ; and somewhat to the surprise of the crew, — for 
 there was now scarce a breath of air, — furled his slight 
 sails, treble-reefed his topsails, had his top-gallant, and 
 royal, yards, and gaff-topsail, sent on deck, got his flying- 
 jib-boom in, etc., and made the ship snug. 
 
 Kenealy asked him what was the matter ? 
 
 " Barometer going down, moon at the full, and Jonah 
 aboard," was the reply, uttered doggedly. 
 
 Kenealy assured him it was a beautiful evening, pre- 
 cursor of a fine day. *' See how red the sunset is : — 
 
 ' Evening red and morning gray 
 Are the sure signs of a fine day.' " 
 
 Dodd looked, and shook his head. The sun was red,
 
 246 HARD CASH. 
 
 but the wrong red, an angry red; and, as he dipped into 
 the wave, discharged a lurid coppery hue that rushed in 
 a moment like an embodied menace over the entire 
 heavens. The wind ceased altogether ; and in the middle 
 of an unnatural and suspicious calm the glass went down, 
 down, down. 
 
 The moon rose, and instantly all eyes were bent on 
 her with suspicion ; for in this latitude the hurricanes 
 generally come at the full moon. She was tolerably 
 clear, however ; but a light scud sailing across her disk 
 showed there was Avind in the upper regions. 
 
 Dodd trusted to science, barred the lee-ports, and had 
 the dead lights put into the stern-cabin and secured, 
 then turned in for an hoar's sleep. 
 
 Science proved a prophet. Just at seven bells, in one 
 moment, like a thunderbolt from the sky, a heavy squall 
 struck the ship. Under a less careful captain her lee- 
 ports would have been open, and she might have gone to 
 the bottom like a bullet. 
 
 " Let go the main sheet ! " roared Sharpe, hastily, to a 
 hand he had placed there on purpose ; he let go, and 
 there was the sail flapping like thunder, and the sheet 
 lashing everything in the most dangerous way. Dodd 
 was on deck in a moment. " Helm hard up ! Hands 
 shorten sail ! " 
 
 (Pipe.) " All hands furl sail, ahoy ! " 
 
 Up tumbled -the crew, went cheerily to work, and by 
 three bells in the middle watch, had hauled up what was 
 left of the shivered mainsail, and hove the ship to, 
 under close-reefed main topsail and storm staysails ; and 
 so the voyage was suspended. 
 
 A heavy sea got up under a scourging wind that rose 
 and rose, till the Agra, under the pressure of that single 
 sail treble-reefed, heeled over so as to dip her lee chan- 
 ne]?.. This went on till the waves rolled so high, and
 
 HARD CASH. 247 
 
 the squalls were so bitter, that sheets of water were 
 actuall}' torn off their crests and launched incessantly 
 on deck, not only drenching Dodd and his officers, which 
 they did not mind, but threatening to flood the ship. 
 
 Dodd battened down the hatches and stopped that 
 game. 
 
 Then came a danger no skill could avert; the ship 
 lurched so violently now as not merely to dip, but bury 
 her lower deck port-pendants ; and so a good deal of 
 water found ingress through the windage. Then Dodd 
 set a gang to the pumps, for he said, " We can hardly 
 hope to weather this out without shipping a sea, and I 
 won't have water coming in upon water." 
 
 And now the wind, raging and roaring like discharges 
 of artillery, and not like wind as known in our seas, 
 seemed to have put out all the lights of heaven. The 
 sky was inky black, and quite close to their heads ; and 
 the wind still increasing, the vessel came down to her 
 extreme bearings, and it was plain she would soon be on 
 her beam ends. Sharpe and Dodd met, and holding on 
 by the life-lines, applied their speaking-trumpets tight 
 to each other's ears, and even then they had to bawl. 
 
 " She can't carry a rag much longer." 
 
 "1^0, sir, not half an hour." 
 
 "Can we furl that main taupsle ?'' 
 
 Sharpe shook his head. " The first moment we start 
 a sheet, the sail will whip the mast out of her." 
 
 " You are right. Well, then, I'll cut it away." 
 
 " Volunteers, sir ? " 
 
 "Ay, twelve; no more. Send them to my cabin." 
 
 Sharpe's difficulty was to keep the men back, so eagei 
 were the fine fellows to risk their lives. However, he 
 brought twelve to the cabin, headed by Mr. Grey, who 
 had a right, as captain of the watch, to go with them ; 
 on which right he insisted, in spite of Dodd's earnest
 
 248 HARD CASH. 
 
 request that he would forego it. When Dodd saw his 
 resolution, he dropped the friend and resumed the cap- 
 tain ; and spoke to them through a trumpet, the first 
 time he had ever used one in a cabin or seen one used. 
 
 " Mr. Gre5' and men going aloft to save the mainmast, 
 by cutting the sail away." 
 
 "Ay, ay, sir!" 
 
 " Service of danger, great danger I " 
 
 "Hurrah!" 
 
 " But great dangers can be made smaller by working 
 the right way. Attend ! Lay out all on the yard, and 
 take your time from one : man at the lee yard arm ; 
 don't know who that will be, but one of the smartest- 
 men in the ship. Order to him is : hold his knife hand 
 well up ; rest to see ; and then in knives altogether j mind 
 and cut from you, and below the reef band ; and then I 
 hope to see all come down alive." 
 
 Mr. Grey and his twelve men left the cabin, and hey ! 
 for the maintop. The men let the officer lead them as 
 far as Jacob's ladder, and then hurrah for the lee yard 
 arm ! That was where all wanted to be, and but one 
 could be ; Grey was as anxious as the rest ; but officers 
 of his rank seldom go aloft, and soon fall out of their 
 catlike habits. He had done about six ratlines, when, 
 instead of going hand over head, he spread his arms to 
 seize a shroud on each side of him ; by this he weakened 
 his leverage; and the wind just then came fiercer, caught 
 him, and flattened him against the rigging as tight as if 
 nature had caught up a mountain for a hammer and 
 nailed him with a cedar; he was spread-eagled. The 
 men accepted him at once as a new patent ratline with a 
 fine resisting power; they went up him, and bounded 
 three ordinary ratlines at a go off all his promontories, 
 especially his shoulders and his head, receiving his com- 
 pliments in the shape of hearty curses ; they gained the
 
 HARD CASH. 249 
 
 top, and lay out on the yard with their hair flying like 
 streamers ; and who got the place of honor but Thomp- 
 son, the jolly fore-topman, who couldn't stand smoked 
 pea soup ! So strong and so weak are men. 
 
 Thompson raised his knife high; there was a pause ; 
 then in went all their knives, and away went the sail 
 into the night of the storm, and soon seemed a sheet of 
 writing-paper, and more likely to hit the sky than the 
 sea. The men came down, picked their officer ofE the 
 rigging, had a dram in the captain's cabin, and saw him 
 enter their names in the log-book for good service, and 
 in the purser's for extra grog on Sundays from there to 
 Gravesend. 
 
 The ship was relieved, and all looked well, till the 
 chronometer, their only guide now, announced sunset; 
 when the wind, incredible as it may appear, increased, 
 and one frightful squall dipped the muzzles of the lee 
 carronades in the water. 
 
 Then was heard the first cry of distress : an appalling 
 sound; the wail of brave men. And they had borne it 
 all so bravely, so cheerfully, till now. But now they 
 knew something must go, or else the ship ; the suspense 
 was awful, but very short. Crack ! crash ! the fore and 
 main topmast both gone short off by the caps ; and the 
 ship recovered slowly, hesitatingly, tremblingly. 
 
 Relieving her from one danger, this subjected her to 
 another and a terrible one. The heavy spars that had 
 fallen, unable to break loose from the rigging, pounded 
 the ship so savagely as to threaten to stave in her side. 
 Add to this that with laboring so long and severely some 
 of the ship's seams began now to open and shut and dis- 
 charge the oakum, which is terrible to the bravest sea- 
 men. Yet neither this stout captain nor his crew 
 shirked any danger men had ever grappled with since 
 men were ; Dodd ordered them to cut away the wreck to
 
 *J5i) HARD CASH. 
 
 leeward ; it was done ; then to windward ; this, the more 
 ticklish operation, was also done smartly ; the wreck 
 passed under the ship's quarter, and she drifted clear of 
 it. They breathed again. 
 
 At eight bells in the first watch it began to thunder 
 and lighten furiously ; but the thunder, though close, 
 was quite inaudible in the tremendous uproar of the 
 wind and sea. It blew a hurricane : there were no more 
 squalls now : but one continuous tornado, which in its 
 passage through that great gaunt skeleton, the ship's 
 rigging and bare poles, howled and yelled and roared so 
 terrifically, as would have silenced a salvo of artillery 
 fired alongside. The overwhelming sea ran in dark 
 watery mountains crested with devilish fire. The inky 
 blackness added supernatural horror ; the wrath of the 
 Almighty seemed upon them ; and His hand to drop the 
 black sky down on them for their funeral pall. Surely 
 Noah from his ark saw nothing more terrible. 
 
 What is that ? close on the lee bow ; close : the flash 
 of a gun ; another ; another ; another. A ship in dis- 
 tress firing minute-guns in their ears; yet no sound: 
 human thunder silenced, as God's thunder was silenced, 
 by the uproar of his greater creatures in their mad rage. 
 The Agra fired two minute-guns to let the other poor 
 ship know she had a companion in her helplessness, and 
 her distress ; and probably a companion in her fate. 
 Even this companionship added its mite of danger : for 
 both ships were mere playthings of the elements ; they 
 might be tossed together ; and then, what would be their 
 fate ? Two eggs clashed together in a great boiling 
 caldron, and all the life spilt out. 
 
 Yet did each flash shoot a ray of humanity and 
 sympathy into the thick black supernatural horror. 
 
 And now came calamity upon calamity. A tremendous 
 sea broke the tiller at the rudderhead, and not only was
 
 HARD CASH. 251 
 
 the ship in danger of falling off and shipping the sea, 
 but the i-udder hammered lier awfully, and bade fair to 
 stave in her counter, which is another word for destruc- 
 tion. Thus death came at them with two hands open at 
 once. 
 
 These vessels always carry a spare tiller ; they tried 
 to ship it ; but the difficulty was prodigious. No light 
 but the miserable deck-lantern — one glowworm in 
 Egypt supernaturally darkened — the Agra never on an 
 even keel, and heeling over like a seesaw more than a 
 ship ; and then every time they did place the tiller, and 
 get the strain on with their luff tackles, the awful sea 
 gave it a blow and knocked it away like a hair. 
 
 At last they hit it off, or thought they had, for the 
 ponderous thumps of the rudder ceased entirely. How- 
 ever, the ship did not obey this new tiller like the old 
 one ; her head fell off in an unlucky moment when seven 
 waves were rolling in one, and, on coming to the wind- 
 ward again, she shipped a sea. It came in over her bow 
 transversely; broke as high as the mainstay, and hid 
 and buried the Avhole ship before the mast; carried away 
 the waist bulwarks on both sides, filled the launch, and 
 drowned the live stock which Avere in it; swept four 
 water-butts and three men away into the sea, like corns 
 and straws ; and sent tons of water down the forescuttle 
 and main hatchway, which was partly opened not to 
 stifle the crew ; and flooded the gun-deck ankle deep. 
 
 Dodd, who was in the cabin, sent the whole crew to 
 the pumps, except the men at the wheel ; and prepared 
 for the worst. 
 
 In men so brave as he was, when hope dies, fear dies. 
 His chief care now was to separate the fate of those he 
 loved from his own. He took a bottle, inserted the fatal 
 money in it, with a few words of love to his wnfe, and of 
 direction to any stranger that should fall in with it j
 
 252 HARD CASH. 
 
 secured the cork with melted sealing-wax, tied oilskin 
 over it and melted wax on that; applied a preparation to 
 the glass to close the pores ; and to protect it against 
 other accidents, and attract attention, fastened a black 
 painted bladder to it by a stout tarred twine, and painted 
 " Agra, lost at sea," in white on the bladder. He had 
 logged each main incident of the storm with that curt, 
 business-like accuracy which reads so cold and small a 
 record of these great and terrible tragedies. He now 
 made a final entry a little more in character with the 
 situation : " About eight bells in the morning watch 
 shipped a heavy sea forward. The rudder being now 
 damaged, and the ship hardly manageable, brought the 
 log and case on deck, expecting to founder shortly. Sun 
 and moon hidden this two days, and no observation pos- 
 sible ; but by calculation of wind and current, we should 
 be about fifty miles to the southward of the INIauritius. 
 God's will be done." 
 
 He got on deck with the bottle in his pocket, and the 
 bladder peeping out ; put the log, and its case, down on 
 deck, and by means of the life-lines craAvled along on his 
 knees, and with great difiiculty to the wheel. Finding 
 the men could hardly hold on, and dreading another sea, 
 Dodd, with his own hands, lashed them to the helm. 
 
 While thus employed, he felt the ship give a slight 
 roll, a very slight roll, to windward. His experienced 
 eye lightened with hope, he cast his eager glance to lee- 
 ward. There it is a sailor looks for the first spark of 
 hope. Ay, thereaway was a little, little gleam of light. 
 He patted the helmsman on the shoulder and pointed to 
 it ; for now neither could one man speak for the wind, 
 nor another hear. The sailor nodded joyfully. 
 
 Presently the continuous tornado broke into squalls. 
 
 Hope grew brighter. 
 
 But, unfortunately, in one furious squall the ship
 
 HARD CASH. 253 
 
 broke round off so as to present lier quarter to the sea at 
 an unlucky moment ; for it came seven deep again, a 
 roaring mountain, and hurled itself over her stern and 
 quarter. The mighty mass struck her stern frame with 
 the Aveight of a hundred thousand tons of water, and 
 drove her forward as a boy launelies his toy-boat on a 
 pond ; and, though she made so little resistance, stove in 
 the dead lights and the port frames, burst through the 
 cabin bulkheads, and M'ashed out all the furniture, and 
 Colonel Kenealy in his night-gown with a table in his 
 arms borne on water three feet deep, and carried him 
 under the poop awning away to the lee quarter-deck 
 scuppers ; and flooded the lower deck. Above, it swept 
 the quarter-deck clean of everything except the shriek- 
 ing helmsmen; Avashed Dodd away like a cork, and 
 would have carried him overboard if he had not brought 
 up against the mainmast and grasped it like grim death, 
 half drowned, half stunned, sorely bruised, and gasping 
 like a porpoise ashore. 
 
 He held on by the mast in water and foam, panting. 
 He rolled his despairing eyes around: the bulwarks 
 fore and aft were all in ruins, with wide chasms, as 
 between the battlements of some decayed castle ; and 
 through the gaps he saw the sea yawning wide for him. 
 He dared not move ; no man was safe a moment unless 
 lashed to mast or helm. He held on, expecting death. 
 But presently it struck him he could see much farther 
 than before. He looked up ; it was clearing overhead ; 
 and the uproar abating visibly. And now the wdnd did 
 not decline as after a gale ; extraordinary to the last, it 
 blew itself out. 
 
 Sharpe came on deck, and crawled on all fours to his 
 captain, and helped him to a life-line. He held on by it, 
 and gave his orders. The wind was blown out ; but the 
 sea was as dangerous as ever. The ship began to roll to
 
 254 HARD CASH. 
 
 windward. If that was not stopped, her fate was sealed. 
 Dodd had the main trysail set, and then the fore trysail, 
 before he would yield to go below, though drenched, and 
 sore, and hungry, and worn out. Those sails steadied 
 the ship ; the sea began to go down by degrees ; the 
 celestial part of nature was more generous ; away flew 
 every cloud, out came the heavenly sky bluer and lovelier 
 than ever they had seen it ; the sun flamed in its centre. 
 Kature, after three days' eclipse, was so lovely, it seemed 
 a new heavens and a new earth. If there was an infidel 
 on board who did not believe in God, now his soul felt 
 Him, in spite of the poor little head ; as for Dodd, who 
 was naturally pious, he raised his eyes towards that 
 lovely sky in heartfelt, though silent, gratitude to its 
 Maker for saving the ship and cargo and her people's 
 lives, not forgetting the private treasure he was carrying 
 home to his dear wife and children. 
 
 AYith this thought, he naturally looked down ; but 
 missed the bladder that had lately protruded from his 
 pocket ; he clapped his hand to his pocket all in a flut- 
 ter. The bottle was gone. In a fever of alarm and 
 anxiety, but with good hopes of finding it, he searched 
 the deck ; he looked in every cranny, behind every coil 
 of rope the sea had not carried away. 
 
 In vain. 
 
 The sea, acting on the buoyant bladder attached, had 
 clearly torn the bottle out of his pocket, when it washed 
 him against the mast. His treasure then must have been 
 driven much farther ; and how far ? Who could tell ? 
 
 It flashed on the poor man with fearful distinctness 
 that it must either have been picked up by somebody in 
 the ship ere now, or else carried out to sea. 
 
 Strict inquiry was made amongst the men. 
 
 No one had seen it. 
 
 The fruit of his toil and prudence, the treasure love,
 
 HARD CASH. 255 
 
 not avarice, had twined with his heartstrings, was gone. 
 In its defence he had defeated two pirates, each his 
 superior in force ; and now conquered the elements at 
 their maddest. And in the very moment of that great 
 victory — it was gone
 
 256 HARD CASH. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 In the narrative of home events I skipped a little 
 business, not quite colorless, but irrelevant to the love 
 passages then on hand. It has, however, a connection 
 with the curious events now converging to a point; so, 
 with the reader's permission, I will place it in logical 
 sequence, disregarding the order of time. The day Dr. 
 SampscMi splashed among the ducks, and one of them hid 
 till dinner, the rest were seated at luncheon, when two 
 patients were announced as waiting — Mr. and Mrs. 
 Maxley. Sampson refused to see them, on this ground: 
 " I will not feed and heal." But Mrs. Dodd interceded, 
 and he yielded. " Well, then, show them in here ; they 
 are better cracters than pashints." On this, a stout 
 fresh-colored woman, the picture of health, was ushered 
 in, and courtesied all round. " Well, what is the matter 
 now ? " inquired Sampson, rather roughly. " Be seated, 
 Mrs. Maxley," said Mrs. Dodd, benignly. 
 
 " I thank ye kindly, ma'am ; " and she sat down. 
 "Doctor, it is that pain." 
 
 ''Well, don't say 'that pain.' Describe it. Now 
 listen all of ye ; ye're goen' to get a clinical lecture." 
 
 "If yo;( please, ma'am," said the patient, "it takes me 
 here under my left breest, and runs right to my elbow, it 
 do ; and bitter bad 'tis while it do last ; chokes me, 
 mostly ; and I feel as I must die ; and if I was to move 
 hand or fut, I think I should die, that I do." 
 
 " Poor woman," said Mrs. Dodd. 
 
 "Oh, she isn't dead yet," cried Sampson cheerfully. 
 " She'll sell addled eggs over all our tombstones ; that is
 
 BLARt) CASH. 257 
 
 to say, if she minds what I bid her. \Yhen was your last 
 spasm ? " 
 
 " J^o longer agone than yestereen, ma'am ; and so I 
 said to my master, ' The doctor he is due to-morrow, Sally 
 up at Albion tells me ; and ' " — 
 
 " Whisht ! whisht ! who cares what 3'ou said to Jack, 
 and Jill said to you ? What was the cause ? " 
 
 " The cause ! What, of my pain ? He says, * What 
 was the cause ? ' " 
 
 " Ay, the cause. Just obsairve, jintlemen," said 
 Sampson, addressing imaginary students, " how startled 
 they all are if a docker deviates from profissional habits 
 into sceince, and takes the right eend of the stick for 
 once b' asking for the cause." 
 
 " The cause was the will of God, I do suppose,"' said 
 Mrs. Maxley. 
 
 " Stuff I " shouted Sampson, angrily. " Then why 
 come to mortal me to cure you ? " 
 
 Alfred put in his oar. " He does not mean the ' final 
 cause ; ' he means the 'proximate cause.' " 
 
 " My poor dear creature, I baint no Latiner," objected 
 the patient. 
 
 Sampson fixed his e3'es sternly on the slippery dame. 
 "What I want to know is, had you been running up- 
 stairs ? or eating fast ? or drinking fast ? or grizzling 
 over twopence ? or quarrelling your husband ? Come 
 now, which was it ? " 
 
 " Me quarrel with my man ! We haven't never been 
 disagreeable, not once, since we went to church a pair and 
 came back a couple. I don't say but what we mayn't 
 have had a word or two at odd times, as married folk 
 will." 
 
 " And the last time you had a word or two — y' inf air- 
 nal quibbler — was it just before your last spasm, eh ? " 
 
 "Well, it might J I am not gainsaying that: but you 
 17
 
 258 HARD CASH. 
 
 said quarrel, says you; 'quarrel' it were your word; 
 and I defy all Barkton, gentle and simple, to say as how 
 me and my master" — 
 
 "Whisht ! whisht! Now, jintlemen, ye see what the 
 great coming sceince — the sceince of healing — has to 
 contind with. The dox are all fools ; but one : and the 
 pashints are lyres, ivery man Jack. N' listen me ; y' 
 have got a disease that you can't eradicate ; but you may 
 muzzle it for years, and die of something quite different 
 when your time's up." 
 
 " Like enough, sir. If yoxi please, ma'am. Dr. Stephen- 
 son do blame my indigestion for it." 
 
 "Dr. Stephenson's an ass." 
 
 " Dear heart, how cantankerous you be. To be sure, 
 Dr. Osmond he says no : it's miiscular, says he." 
 
 "Dr. Osmond's an ijjit. List me; you mustn't grizzle 
 about money ; you mustn't gobble, nor drink your beer 
 too fast." 
 
 " You are wrong, doctor ; I never drink no beer : it 
 costs." 
 
 "Your catlap, then. And, above all, no grizzling! 
 Go to church whenever you can without losing a far- 
 thing. It's medicinal ; soothes the brain, and takes it 
 off worldly cares. And have no words with your hus- 
 band : or he'll outlive you ; it's his only chance of get- 
 ting the last word. Care killed a cat, a nanimal with 
 eight lives more than a chatterbox. If you worry or 
 excite your brain, little Maxley, you will cook your own 
 goose — by a quick tire." 
 
 " Dear heart, these be unked sayings. Won't ye give 
 me nothing to make me better, sir ? " 
 
 " iSTo ; I never tinker ; I go to the root : you may buy 
 a vile of chlorofm and take a puff if you feel premonory 
 symps : but a quiet brain is your only real chance. Now 
 slope ; and send the male screw."
 
 HARD CASH. 259 
 
 " Anan ? " 
 
 "Your husband." 
 
 *' That I will, sir. Your sarvant, doctor ; your sarvant, 
 ma'am ; sarvant, all the company." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd hoped the poor woman had nothing very 
 serious the matter. 
 
 " Oh, it is a mortal disease," replied Sampson, as cool 
 as a cucumber. " She has got angina jnctoris, or brist- 
 pang, a disorder that admirably eximplifies the pretin- 
 sions of midicine t' a sceince." And with this he dashed 
 into monologue. 
 
 Maxley's tall, gaunt form came slouching in, and trav- 
 ersed the floor, pounding it with heavy nailed boots. 
 He seated himself gravely at Mrs. Dodd's invitation, 
 took a handkerchief out of his hat, wiped his face, and 
 surveyed the company, grand and calm. In James Max- 
 ley all was ponderous ; his head was huge ; his mouth, 
 when it fairly opened, revealed a chasm, and thence 
 issued a voice naturally stentorian by its volume and 
 native vigor. But, when the owner of this incarnate 
 bassoon had a mind to say something sagacious, he sank 
 at once from his habitual roar to a sound scarce above a 
 whisper; a contrast mighty comical to hear, though on 
 paper nil. 
 
 " Well, what is it, Maxley ? Rheumatism again ? " 
 
 "No, that it ain't," bellowed Maxley, defiantly. 
 
 " What then ? Come, look sharp." 
 
 "Well, then, doctor, I'll tell you. I'm sore troubled 
 • — with — a — mouse." 
 
 This malady, announced in the tone of a proclamation, 
 and coming after so much solemn preparation, amused 
 the party considerably, although parturient mountains 
 had ere then produced muscipular abortions. 
 
 "A mouse ! " inquired Sampson, disdainfully. "Where ? 
 tip your sleeve ? Don't come to me : go t' a sawbones
 
 260 HARD CASH. 
 
 and have your arm cut off. I've seen 'em mutilate a 
 pashint for as little." 
 
 Maxley said it was not up his sleeve, worse luck. 
 
 On this, Alfred hazarded a conjecture. Might it not 
 have gone down his throat ? " Took his potato-trap for 
 the pantry-door. Ha ! ha ! " 
 
 "Ay, I hear ye, young man, a-laughing at your own 
 sport," said Maxley, winking his eye; "but tain't the 
 biggest mouth as catches the most : you sits yander fit 
 to bust : but (with a roar like a lion) ye never offers me 
 none on't, neither sup nor bit." 
 
 At this sudden turn of Mr. Maxley's wit, light and 
 playful as a tap of the old English quarter-staff, they 
 were a little staggered, all but Edward, who laughed and 
 supplied him zealously with sandwiches. 
 
 " You're a gentleman, you are," said Maxley, looking 
 full at Sampson and Alfred to point the contradistinction. 
 
 Having thus disposed of his satirists, he contemplated 
 the sandwiches with an inquiring and philosophic eye. 
 "Well," said he, after long and thoughtful inspection, 
 " you gentlefolks won't die of hard work ; your sarvants 
 must cut the very meat to fit your mouths." And not 
 to fall behind the gentry in a great and useful depart- 
 ment of intelligence, he made precisely one mouthful of 
 each sandwich. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd was secretly amazed, and taking care not 
 to be noticed by Maxley, said confidentially, " Monsieur 
 avait b'len raison ; le souris a passe jKir laP 
 
 The plate cleared, and washed down with a tumbler of 
 port, Maxley resumed, and informed the doctor that the 
 mouse was at this moment in his garden eating his 
 bulbs. " And I be come here to put an end to her, if 
 I've any luck at all." 
 
 Sampson told him he needn't trouble. "Nature has 
 put an end to her, as long as her body."
 
 HARD CASH. 261 
 
 Mr. IMaxley was puzzled for a moment ; then opened 
 his mouth from ear to ear in a guffaw that made the 
 glasses ring. His humor was perverse : he was wit- 
 proof and fun-proof ; but at a feeble jest would some- 
 times roar like a lion inflated with laughing-gas. 
 Laughed he ever so loud and long, he always ended 
 abruptly and without gradation ; his laugh was a clean 
 spadeful dug out of merriment. He resumed his gravity 
 and his theme, all in an instant : " White arsenic she 
 won't look at, for I've tried her; but they tell me there's 
 another sweetmeat come up : which they call it strick- 
 nine." 
 
 " Hets ! let the poor beasty alone. Life's as sweet tit 
 as tus." 
 
 "If you was a gardener, you'd feel for the bulbs, 
 not for the varmin," remonstrated Maxley, rather arro- 
 gantly. 
 
 " But bein' a man of seeince, I feel for th' higher or- 
 ganization. ]\Iice are a part of nature as much as 
 market-gardeners." 
 
 '"' So be stoats ; and adders ; and doctors." 
 
 Sampson appealed: "Jintlemen, here's a pretty pa- 
 shint: reflects on our lairned profission, and it never 
 costs him a guinea ; for the dog never pays." 
 
 '• Don't let my chaff choke ye, doctor. That warn't 
 meant for you altogether. So if ye have got a little bit 
 of that 'ere about you " — 
 
 "I'm not a rat-catcher, my man: I don't go with dith 
 in my pocket, like the surgeons that carry a lancet. And 
 if I had murder in both pockets, you shouldn't get any. 
 Here's a greedy dog ! got a thousand pounds in the 
 bank ; and grudges his healer a guinea, and his mouse a 
 stand-up bite." 
 
 "Xow, who have been a-telling 3'ou lies?" inquired 
 Maxley, severely. " My missus, for a farthing. I'm not
 
 \ 
 
 262 HARD CASH. 
 
 a thousand-pound man; I'm a nine-hundred-pound man: 
 and it's all safe at Hardie's : " here he went from his 
 roar to his Avhisper, " I don't hold Avith Lunnon banks ; 
 they be like my missus's eggs : all one outside, and the 
 rotten ones only known by breaking. "Well (loud) I be 
 pretty close, I don't deny it; but (confidentially) my 
 missus beats me. I look twice at a penny ; but she 
 looks twice at both sides of a halfpenny before she will 
 let him go : and it's her being so close have raised all 
 this here bobbery ; and so I told her ; says I, ' Missus, — 
 if you would but leave an end of a dip, or a paring of 
 cheese, about your cupboard, she would bide at home ; 
 but you hungers her so, you drives her a-field right on 
 atop o' my roots.' — 'Oh,' says my missus, 'if /was to 
 be as wasteful as yott be, where should ive be, come 
 Christmas day ? Every tub on its own bottom,' says 
 she ; ' man and wife did ought to keep theirselves to 
 theirselves, she to the house, and I to the garden.' — ' So 
 be it,' says I, 'and by the same toaken, don't let me 
 catch them " Ns " in my garden again, or I'll spoil their 
 clucking and scratching,' says I, 'for I'll twist their 
 dalled necks ; ye've got a yard,' says I, ' and a roost, and 
 likewise a turnpike, you and your poultry ; so bide at 
 home the lot ; and don't come a-scratching o' me ; ' and 
 with that we had a ripput ; and she took one of her 
 pangs ; and then I behoved to knock under ; and that is 
 alius the way if ye quarrel with women folk ; they are 
 sworn to get the better of ye by hook or by crook ; now 
 dooe give me a bit of that ere, to quiet this here, as eats 
 me up by the roots and sets my missus and me by the 
 ears." 
 
 "Jushcm ac tenacem proposiit vimm,''^ whispered Alfred 
 to Edward. 
 
 Sampson told him angrily to go to a certain great 
 personage.
 
 HARD CASH. 263 
 
 "Not afore my betters," whispered Mr. Maxley, smit 
 with a sudden respect for etiquette. " Won't ye now ? " 
 
 " I'll see ye hanged first, ye miserly old assassin." 
 
 " Then I have nothing to thank you for," roared Maxley, 
 and made his adieus, ignoring with marked contempt 
 the false physician who declined to doctor the foe of his 
 domestic peace and crocuses. 
 
 " Quite a passage of arms," said Edward. 
 
 "Yes," said Mrs. Dodd, " and of bludgeons and things, 
 rather than the polished rapier. What expressions to 
 fall from two highly educated gentlemen ! Slope — 
 potato-trap — sawbones — catlap — je n^en finirais ^:)rt5." 
 
 She then let them know that she meditated a "dic- 
 tionary of jargon : " in hopes that its bulk might strike 
 terror into honest citizens, and excite an anti-jargon 
 league to save the English language, now on the verge 
 of dissolution. 
 
 Sampson was pleased with this threat. "Now, that 
 is odd," said he ; " why, I am compilin' a vocablary 
 myself. I call 't th' ass-ass-ins' dickshinary ; showing 
 how, by the use of mealy-mouthed an' d' exotic phrases, 
 knaves can lead fools by th' ear t' a vilent dith. F'r 
 instance : if one was to say to John Bull, ' Now I'll cut a 
 great gash in your arm and let your blood run till ye 
 drop down senseless,' he'd take fright and say, 'Call 
 another time ! ' So the profissional ass-ass-in words it 
 thus : ' I'll bleed you from a large orifice till th' occur- 
 rence of syncope.' All right, sis John : he's bled from 
 a lar j 'orifice, and dies three days after of th' assassin's 
 knife hid in a sheath o' goose grease. But I'll blow the 
 gaff with my dickshinary." 
 
 "Meantime, there is another contribution to mine," 
 said Mrs. Dodd. 
 
 And they agreed in the gayety of their hearts to com- 
 pare their rival lexicons.
 
 264 HARD CASH. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The subsiding sea was now a liquid paradise : it3 
 great pellucid braes and hillocks shone with the sparkle 
 and the hues of all the jewels in an emperor's crown. 
 Imagine — after three days of inky sea, and pitchy sky, 
 and death's deep jaws snapping and barely missing — 
 ten thousand great slopes of emerald, aquamarine, ame- 
 thyst, and topaz, liquid, alive, and dancing jocundly 
 beneath a gorgeous sun j and you will have a faint idea 
 of what met the eyes and hearts of the rescued looking 
 out of that battered, jagged ship, upon ocean smiling 
 back to smiling heaven. 
 
 Yet one man felt no buoyancy, nor gush of joy. He 
 leaned against a fragment of the broken bulwark, con- 
 fused between the sweetness of life preserved, and the 
 bitterness of treasure lost, his wife's and children's 
 treasured treasure ; benumbed at heart, and almost 
 weary of the existence he had battled for so stoutly. 
 He looked so moody, and answered so grimly and unlike 
 himself, that they all held aloof from him ; heavy heart 
 among so many joyful ones, he was in true solitude ; the 
 body in a crowd, the soul alone. And he was sore as 
 well as heavy; for of all the lubberly acts he had ever 
 known, the way he had lost liis dear ones' fortune seemed 
 to him the worst. 
 
 A voice sounded in his ear: "Poor thing; she has 
 foundered." 
 
 It was Fullalove scanning the horizon with his famous 
 glass. 
 
 "Foundered? Who?" said Dodd; though he did
 
 HARD CASH. 265 
 
 not care raucli who sank, who swam. Then he remem- 
 bered the vessel, whose fiasliing guns had shed a human 
 ray on the unearthly horror of the black hurricane. He 
 looked all round. 
 
 Blank ! 
 
 Ay, she had perished with all hands. The sea had 
 swallowed her and spared him ; ungrateful. 
 
 This turned his mind sharply. Suppose the Agra had 
 gone down, the money would be lost as now, and his life 
 into the bargain, a life dearer to all at home than millions 
 of gold: he prayed inwardly to Heaven for gratitude, 
 and goodness to feel its mercy. This softened him a 
 little ; and his heart swelled so, he wished he was a 
 woman to cry over his children's loss for an hour, and 
 then shake all off and go through his duty somehow ; for 
 now he was paralyzed, and all seemed ended. Next, 
 nautical superstition fastened on him. That pocket- 
 book of his was Jonah; it had to go, or else the ship ; the 
 moment it did go, the storm had broken as by magic. 
 
 Now, superstition is generally stronger than rational 
 religion, whether they lie apart, or together in one mind; 
 and this superstitious notion did something toward steel- 
 ing the poor man. " Come," said he to himself, " my 
 loss has saved all these poor souls on board this ship. So 
 be it ! Heaven's will be done ! I must bustle, or else 
 go mad." 
 
 He turned-to and worked like a horse ; and with his 
 own hands helped the men to rig parallel ropes — a sub- 
 stitute for bulwarks — till the perspiration ran down 
 him. 
 
 Bayliss now reported the well nearly dry, and Dodd 
 was about to bear up and make sail again, when one of 
 the ship-boys, a little fellow with a bright eye and a chin 
 like a monkey's, came up to him and said, — 
 
 "Please, captain ! " then glared with awe at what he 
 had douB; and broke down.
 
 266 HARD CASH. 
 
 " Well, my little man ? " said Dodd, gently. 
 
 Thus encouraged, the boy gave a great gulp, and burst 
 in a brogue : " Och, your arnr, sure there's no rudder on 
 her at all barrin the tiller." 
 
 '•' What d'ye mean ? " 
 
 '^ Don't murrder me, your arnr, and I'll tell ye. It's 
 meself looked over the starrn just now ; and I seen there 
 was no rudder at all, at all. Mille diaoul, sis I ; ye old 
 bitch, I'll tell his arnr what y'are after, slipping your 
 rudder like my granny's list shoe, I will." 
 
 Dodd ran to the helm and looked down ; the brat was 
 right : the blows which had so endangered the ship, had 
 broken the rudder, and the sea had washed away more 
 than half of it. The sight and the reflection made him 
 faintish for a moment. Death passing so very close 
 to a man sickens him afterwards ; unless he has the luck 
 to be brainless. 
 
 " What is your name, urchin ? " 
 
 "Ned Murphy, sir." 
 
 " Very well. Murphy, then you are a fine little fellow, 
 and have wiped all our eyes in the ship ; run and send 
 the carpenter aft." 
 
 "Ay, ay, sir." 
 
 The carpenter came. Like most artisans, he was clever 
 in a groove ; take him out of that, and lo ! a mule, a pig, 
 an owl. He was not only unable to invent, but so stiffly 
 disinclined ; a makeshift rudder was clean out of his 
 way ; and, as his whole struggle was to get away from 
 every suggestion Dodd made, back to groove aforesaid, 
 the thing looked hopeless. Then Fullalove, who had 
 stood by grinning, offered to make a bunkum rudder, 
 provided the carpenter and mates were put under his 
 orders. " But," said he, " I must bargain they shall be 
 disrated if they attempt to reason." — " That is no more 
 than fair," said Dodd. The Yankee inventor demanded
 
 HARD CASH. 267 
 
 a spare maincap, and cut away one end of the square 
 piece, so as to make it fit the stern-post ; through the 
 circle of the cap he introduced a spare niizzen tojDmast ; 
 to this he seized a length of junk, another to that, another 
 to that, and so on : to the outside junk he seized a spare 
 maintop-gallant mast, and this conglomerate, being now 
 nearly as broad as a rudder, he planked over all. The 
 sea by this time was calm ; he got the machine over 
 the stern, and had the square end of the cap bolted to 
 the stern-post. He had already fixed four spans of nine- 
 inch hawser to the sides of the makeshift, two fastened 
 to tackles, which led into the gunroom ports, and were 
 bowsed taut — these kept the lower part of the makeshift 
 close to the stern-post — and two, to which guys Avere 
 now fixed and led through the aftermost ports on to the 
 quarter-deck, where luff tackles were attached to them, 
 by means of which the makeshift was to be worked as a 
 rudder. 
 
 Some sail was now got on the ship, and she was found 
 to steer very well. Dodd tried her on every tack ; and 
 at last ordered Sharpe to make all sail, and head for the 
 Cape. 
 
 This electrified the first mate. The breeze was very 
 faint but southerly, and the Mauritius under their lee. 
 They could make it in a night, and there refit, and ship 
 a new rudder. He suggested the danger of sailing six- 
 teen hundred miles, steered by a Gimcrack, and implored 
 Dodd to put into port. Dodd answered with a rough- 
 ness and a certain wildness never seen in him before: 
 " Danger, sir ! There will be no more foul weather this 
 voyage ; Jonah is overboard." Sharpe stared an inquiry. 
 " I tell you we sha'n't lower our topgallants once from 
 this to the Cape : Jonah is overboard ; " and he slapped 
 his forehead in despair; then, stamping impatiently with 
 his foot, told Sharpe his duty was to obey orders, not
 
 268 HARD CASH. 
 
 discuss them. "Certainly, sir," said Sharpe, sullenly, 
 and went out of the cabin with serious thoughts of com- 
 municating to the other mates an alarming suspicion 
 about Dodd, that now, for the first time, crossed his 
 mind. But long habit of discipline prevailed, and he 
 made all sail on the ship, and bore away for the Cape, 
 with a heavy heart : the sea was like a mill-pond, but in 
 that he saw only its well-known treachery, to lead them 
 on to this unparalleled act of madness ; each sail lie 
 hoisted seemed one more agent of destruction rising at 
 his own suicidal command. 
 
 Towards evening it became nearly dead calm. The 
 sea heaved a little, but was waveless, glassy, and the 
 color of a rose, incredibly brave and delicate. 
 
 The lookout reported pieces of wreck to windward. 
 As the ship was making so little way, Dodd beat up 
 towards them ; he feared it was a British ship that had 
 foundered in the storm, and thought it his duty to ascer- 
 tain and carry the sad news home. In two tacks they 
 got near enough to see with their glasses that the frag- 
 ments belonged, not to a stranger, but to the Agra her- 
 self ; there was one of her water-butts, and a broken mast 
 with some rigging; and as more wreck was descried 
 coming in at a little distance, Dodd kept the ship close 
 to the wind to inspect it : on drifting near, it proved to 
 be several pieces of the bulwark, and a mahogany table 
 out of the cuddy. This sort of flotsam was not worth 
 delaying the ship to pick it up ; so Dodd made sail 
 again, steering now south-east. 
 
 He had sailed about half a mile when the lookout 
 hailed the deck again. 
 
 " A man in the water!" 
 
 " Whereabouts ? " 
 
 *' A short league on the weather quarter." 
 
 " Oh, we can't beat to windward for Aiw," said Sharpe. 
 " He is dead long ago."
 
 HARD CASH. 269 
 
 •'Holds his head very high for a corpse," said the 
 lookout. 
 
 " I'll soon know," cried Dodd. " Lower the gig : I'll 
 go myself." 
 
 The gig was lowered, and six swift rowers pulled him 
 to windward, while the ship kept on her course. 
 
 It is most unusual for a captain to leave the ship at 
 sea on such petty errands ; but Dodd half hoped the 
 man might be alive. And he was so unhappy ; and, like 
 his daughter, who probably derived the trait from him, 
 grasped instinctively at a chance of doing kindness to 
 some poor fellow alive or dead. That would soothe his 
 own sore, good heart. 
 
 When they had pulled about two miles, the sun was 
 sinking into the horizon. " Give way, men," said Dodd, 
 " or we shall not be able to see him." The men bent to 
 their oars, and made the boat fly. 
 
 Presently the coxswain caught sight of an object 
 bobbing on the water abeam. 
 
 "Why, that must be it," said he: "the lubber! to 
 take it for a man's head. Why, it is notliing but a 
 thundering old bladder speckled white." 
 
 " What ? " cried Dodd, and fell a-trembling. " Steer 
 for it ! Give way ! " 
 
 " Ay, ay, sir ! " 
 
 They soon came alongside the bladder, and the cox- 
 swain grabbed it. " Hallo ! here's something lashed to 
 it : a bottle I " 
 
 " Give it me ! " gasped Dodd in a voice choked with 
 agitation. " Give it me ! Back to the ship ! Fly ! Fly ! 
 Cut her off, or she'll give us the slip now.^' 
 
 He never spoke a word more, but sat in a stupor of 
 joyful wonder. 
 
 They soon caught the ship : he got into his cabin, he 
 scarce knew how, broke the bottle to atoms, and found
 
 270 HARD CASH. 
 
 the indomitable cash iminjured. With trembling hands 
 he restored it to its old place in his bosom, and sewed it 
 tighter than ever. Until he felt it there once more, he 
 could hardly realize a stroke of good-fortune that seemed 
 miraculous, though, in reality, it was less strange than 
 the way he had lost it,i but, now laid bodily on his 
 heart, it set his bosom on fire : oh, the bright eye, the 
 bounding pulse, the buoyant foot, the reckless joy ! He 
 slapped Sharpe on the back a little vulgarly for him. 
 
 " Jonah is on board again, old fellow : look out for 
 squalls." He uttered this foreboding in a tone of triumph, 
 and with a gay, elastic recklessness which harmonized 
 so well with his makeshift rudder, that Sharpe groaned 
 aloud, and wished himself under any captain in the world 
 but this, and in any other ship. He looked round to 
 make sure he was not watched, and then tapped his fore- 
 head significantly. This somewhat relieved him, and he 
 did his duty smartly for a man going to the bottom with 
 his eyes open. 
 
 But ill-luck is not to be bespoken any more than good. 
 The Agra's seemed to have blown itself out : the wind 
 veered to the south-west, and breathed steadily in that 
 quarter for ten days. The top-gallant sails were never 
 lowered nor shifted day nor night all that time, and not 
 a single danger occurred between this and the Cape, 
 except to a monkey, which I fear I must relate on 
 account of its remoter consequences. One fine after- 
 noon everybody was on deck amusing themselves as 
 they could; Mrs. Beresford, to wit, was being flattered 
 under the poop awning by Kenealy. The feud between 
 her and Dodd continued, but under a false impression. 
 The lady had one advantage over the gentler specimens 
 of her sex : she v/as never deterred from a kind action 
 by want of pluck, as they are. Pluck ? Aquilina was 
 
 • The Agra, being much larger than the bottle, had drift«d faster to lee 
 ward in the storm.
 
 HARD CASH. 271 
 
 brimful of it. When she found Dodd was wounded, she 
 cast her wrongs to the wind, and offered to go and nurse 
 him. Her message came at an unlucky moment, and by 
 an unlucky messenger: the surgeon said hastily, "I 
 can't have him bothered." The stupid servant reported, 
 " He can't be worried ; " and Mrs. Beresford, thinking 
 Dodd had a hand in this answer, was bitterly mortified, 
 and with some reason. She would have forgiven him, 
 though, if he had died, but, as he lived, she thought she 
 had a right to detest him, and did, and showed her sen- 
 timents like a lady, by never speaking to liim, nor look- 
 ing at him, but ignoring him with frigid magnificence on 
 his own quarter-deck. 
 
 Now, among the crew of this ship was a favorite 
 goat, good-tempered, affectionate, playful, but a single 
 vice counterbalanced all his virtues : he took a drop. 
 A year or two ago some light-hearted tempter taught him 
 to sip grog : he took to it kindly, and was now arrived 
 at such a pitch, that at grog-time he used to butt his 
 way in among the sailors, and get close to the canteen, 
 and, by arrangement, an allowance was always served him. 
 On imbibing it he passed, with quadrupedal rapidity, 
 through three stages, the absurd, the choleric, the sleepy, 
 and was never his own goat again until he awoke from 
 the latter. Now ]\Iaster Fred Beresford encountered him 
 in the second stage of irabriety, and, being a rough 
 playfellow, tapped his nose with a battledoor. Instantly 
 Billy butted at him ; mischievous Fred screamed and 
 jumped on the bulwarks. Pot-angry Billy went at him 
 there, whereupon the young gentleman, with an eldrich 
 screech, and a comparative estimate of perils that 
 smacked of inexperience, fled into the sea, at the very 
 moment when his anxious mother was rushing to save 
 him. She uttered a scream of agony, and would act- 
 ually have followed him, but was held back uttering
 
 272 HARD CASH. 
 
 shriek after shriek, that pierced every heart within 
 hearing. 
 
 But Dodd saw the boy go overboard, and vaulted over 
 the bulwark near the helm, roared in the very air, 
 " Heave the ship to ! " and went splash into the water 
 about ten yards from the place : he was soon followed 
 by Vespasian, and a boat was lowered as quickly as pos- 
 sible. Dodd caught sight of' a broad straw hat on the 
 top of a wave, swam lustily to it, and found Freddy 
 inside : it was tied under his chin, and would have 
 floated Goliath. Dodd turned to the ship, saw the poor 
 mother with white face and arras outstretched as if she 
 would fly at them, and held the urchin up high to her 
 with a joyful "hurrah." The ship seemed alive and to 
 hurrah in return with giant voice. The boat soon picked 
 them up, and Dodd came up the side .with Freddy in 
 his arms, and placed him in his mother's with honest 
 pride and deep parental sympathy. 
 
 Guess how she scolded and caressed her child all in a 
 breath, and sobbed over him ! For this no human pen 
 has ever told, nor ever will. All I can just manage to 
 convey is, that, after she had all but eaten the little 
 torment, she suddenly dropped him, and made a great 
 maternal rush at Dodd. She flung her arms round him, 
 and kissed him eagerly, almost fiercely : then, carried 
 away wild by mighty nature, she patted him all over in 
 the strangest way, and kissed his waistcoat, his arms, 
 his hands, and rained tears of joy and gratitude on 
 them. 
 
 Dodd was quite overpowered : " No ! no ! " said he. 
 "Don't, now ! pray, don't! There, I know, my dear, I 
 know : I'm a father." And he was very near whimper- 
 ing himself, but recovered the man and the commander, 
 and said soothingly, " There, there ! " and handed her 
 tenderly down to her cabin.
 
 HABD CASH. 273 
 
 All this time he had actually forgotten the packet ; 
 but now a horrible fear came on him. He hurried to his 
 own cabin and examined it. A little salt water had 
 oozed through the bullet-hole and discolored the leather, 
 but that was all. He breathed again. 
 
 " Thank Heaven I forgot all about it ! " said he : " it 
 would have made a cur of me." 
 
 La Beresford's petty irritation against Dodd melted 
 at once before so great a thing : she longed to make 
 friends with him, but for once felt timid. It struck her 
 now all of a sudden that she had been misbehaving. 
 However, she caught Dodd alone on the deck, and said 
 to him softly, " I want so to end our quarrel."' 
 
 " Our quarrel, madam ! •' said he ; " why, 1 know of 
 none ; oh, about the light, eh ? Well, you see the mas- 
 ter of a ship is obliged to be a tyrant in some things." 
 
 "I make no complaint," said the lady hastily, and 
 hung her head. " All I ask j'ou is to forgive one who 
 has behaved like a fool, without even the excuse of 
 being one ; and — will you give me your hand, sir ? " 
 
 "Ay, and with all my heart," said Dodd warmly, 
 enclosing the soft little hand in his honest grasp. 
 
 And with no more ado these two highflyers ended 
 one of those little misunderstandings petty spirits nurse 
 into a feud. 
 
 The ship being in port at the Cape, and two hundred 
 hammers tapping at her, Dodd went ashore in search of 
 Captain Robarts, and made the Agra over to him in the 
 friendliest way, adding warmly that he had found every 
 reason to be satisfied with the officers and the crew. To 
 his surprise, Captain Robarts received all this ungra- 
 ciously. "You ought to have remained on board, sir, 
 and made me over the command on the quarter-deck." 
 Dodd replied, politely, that it would have been more 
 formal. " Suppose I return immediately, and man the 
 18
 
 274 HARD CASH. 
 
 side for you, and then you board her, say in half an 
 liour." 
 
 " I shall come when I like," replied Robarts, crustily. 
 
 "■ And when will you like to come ? " inquired Dodd 
 with imperturbable good-humor. 
 
 " Now : this moment ; and I'll trouble you to come 
 along with me." 
 
 " Certainly, sir." 
 
 They got a boat, and went out to the ship. On com- 
 ing alongside, Dodd thought to meet his wishes by 
 going first and receiving him, but the jealous, cross- 
 grained fellow shoved roughly before him and led the 
 way up the ship's side. Sharpe and the rest saluted 
 him. He did not return the salute, but said hoarsely, 
 " Turn the hands up to muster." 
 
 When they were all aft, he noticed one or two with 
 
 their caps on. " Hats off, and be to you ! " cried 
 
 he. " Do you know where you are ? Do you know who 
 you are looking at ? If not, I'll show you. I'm here to 
 restore discipline to this ship : so mind how you run 
 athwart my hawse : don't you play with the bull, my 
 
 men, or you'll find his horns sharp. Yipe down ! 
 
 Now you, sir, bring me the log-book." 
 
 He ran his eye over it, and closed it contemptuously. 
 " Pirates and hurricanes ! I never fell in with pirates 
 nor hurricanes : I have heard of a breeze, and a gale, 
 but I never knew a seaman worth his salt say 'hurri- 
 cane.' Get another log-book, Mr. Sharpe ; put down 
 that it begins this day at noon, and enter that Captain 
 Robarts came on deck, found the ship in a miserable 
 condition, took the command, mustered the officers and 
 men, and stopped the ship's company's grog for a week, 
 for receiving him with hats on." 
 
 Even Sharpe, that walking Obedience, was taken aback. 
 "Stop — the ship's company's — grog — for a week, sir?"
 
 HARD CASH. 275 
 
 " Yes, sir, for a week ; and if you fling my orders back 
 in my face instead of clapping on sail to execute them, 
 I'll have you towed ashore on a grating. Your name is 
 Sharpe : well, my name is Damnedsharpe, and so you'll 
 find." 
 
 In short, the new captain came down on the ship like 
 a blight. 
 
 He was especially hard on Dodd : nothing that com- 
 mander had done was right, nor, had he done the con- 
 trary, would that have been right ; he was disgracefully 
 behind time ; and he ought to have put in to the Isle of 
 France, which would have retarded him : his rope bul- 
 warks were lubberly ; his rudder a disgrace to naviga- 
 tion : he, Robarts, was not so green as to believe that 
 any master had really sailed sixteen hundred miles with 
 it, and, if he had, more shame for him. Briefly, a 
 marine criticaster. 
 
 All this was spoken at Dodd, — a thing no male does 
 unless he is an awful snob, — and grieved him, it was so 
 unjust. He withdrew wounded to the little cabin he 
 was entitled to as a passenger, and hugged his treasure 
 for comfort. He patted the pocket-book, and said to it, 
 " Kever you mind. The greater Tartar he is, the less 
 likely to sink you, or run you on a lee shore." 
 
 "With all his love of discipline, Robarts was not so 
 fond of the ship as Dodd. 
 
 While his repairs were going on, he was generally 
 ashore, and by this means missed a visit. Commodore 
 Collier, one of the smartest sailors afloat, espied the 
 Yankee makeshift from the quarter-deck of his vessel, 
 the Salamanca, fifty guns. In ten minutes he was under 
 the Agra's stern inspecting it, then came on board, and 
 was received in form by Sharpe and. the other officers 
 " Are you the master of this ship, sir ? " he asked. 
 
 " No, commodore. I am the first mate : the captain 
 is ashore."
 
 276 HARD CASH. 
 
 " I am sorry for it. I want to talk about his rudder." 
 
 " Oh, he had nothing to do with that," replied Sharpe 
 eagerly : " that was our dear old captain : he is on 
 board. Young gentleman, ask Captain Dodd to oblige 
 me by coming on deck. Hy ! and Mr. Fullalove, too." 
 
 " Young gentleman ? " inquired Collier. " What the 
 devil officer is that?" 
 
 '• That is a name we give the middies ; I don't know 
 why." 
 
 '■Nor I neither ; ha I ha!" 
 
 Dodd and Fullalove came on deck, and Commodore 
 Collier bestowed the highest compliments on the "make- 
 shift." Dodd begged him to transfer them to the real 
 inventor, and introduced Fullalove. 
 
 '■ Ay," said Collier, '• I know you Yankees are very 
 handy. I lost my rudder at sea once, and had to ship a 
 makeshift : but it was a curs't complicated thing ; not 
 a patch upon yours, Mr. Fullalove. Yours is ingenious 
 and simj^le. Ship has been in action, I see : pray how 
 was that, if I may be so bold ? " 
 
 "Pirates, commodore," said Sharpe. " We fell in with 
 a brace of Portuguese devils, latine-rigged, and carried ten 
 guns apiece, in the Straits of Gaspar : fought 'em from 
 noon till sundown, riddled one, and ran down the other 
 and sunk her in a moment. That was all your doing, 
 captain ; so don't try to shift it on other people ; for we 
 won't stand it." 
 
 "If he denies it, I won't believe him," said Collier: 
 " for he has got it in his eye. Gentlemen, will you do 
 me the honor to dine with me to-day on board the flag- 
 ship ? " 
 
 Dodd and Fullalove accepted. Sharpe declined, with 
 regret, on the score of duty. And as the cocked hat 
 went down the side, after saluting him politely, he 
 could not help thinking to himself what a difference
 
 HARD CASH. 277 
 
 between a real captain, who had something to be proud 
 of, and his own unlicked cub of a skipper with the 
 manners of a pilot-boat. He told Robarts the next day : 
 Robarts said nothing, but his face seemed to turn 
 greenish ; and it embittered his hatred of Dodd the 
 inoffensive. 
 
 It is droll and sad, but true, that Christendom is full 
 of . men in a hurry to hate. And a fruitful cause is 
 jealousy. The schoolmen — or rather certain of the 
 schoolmen, for nothing is much shallower than to speak 
 of all those disputants as one school — defined woman: 
 "a featherless biped vehemently addicted to jealousy." 
 Whether she is more featherless than the male, can be 
 decided at a trifling expense of time, money, and reason : 
 you have but to go to court. But as for envy and 
 jealousy, 1 think it is pure, unobservant, antique cant 
 Avhich has fixed them on the female character distinc- 
 tively. As a molehill to a mountain, is women's jeal- 
 ousy to men's. Agatha may have a host of virtues and 
 graces, and yet her female acquaintance will not hate 
 her, provided she has the moderation to abstain from 
 being downright pretty. She may sing like an angel, 
 paint like an angel, talk, write, nurse the sick, — all like 
 an angel, and not rouse the devil in her fair sisters : so 
 long as she does not dress like an angel. But, the minds 
 of men being much larger than women's, yet very little 
 greater, they hang jealousy on a thousand pegs. Where 
 there was no peg, I have seen them do with a pin. 
 
 Captain Robarts took a pin : ran it into his own heart, 
 and hung that sordid passion on it. 
 
 He would get rid of all the Doddites before he sailed. 
 He insulted Mr. Tickell, so that he left the service, and 
 entered a mercantile house ashore : he made several of 
 the best men desert : and the ship went to sea short of 
 hands. This threw heavier work on the crew ; and led
 
 ^78 HARD CASH. 
 
 to many p-anishments, and a steady current of abuse. 
 Sharpe became a mere machine, always obeying, never 
 speaking : Grey was put under arrest for remonstrating 
 against ungentlemanly language : and Bayliss, being at 
 bottom of the same breed as Robarts, fell into his humor, 
 and helped hector the petty officers and men. The crew, 
 depressed and irritated, went through their duties puUy- 
 hauly-wise. There was no song under the forecastle in 
 the first watch, and often no grog on the mess-table at 
 one bell. Dodd never came on the quarter-deck without 
 being reminded he was only a passenger, and the ship 
 was now under naval discipline. " / was reared in the 
 royal navy, sir," would Robarts say : " second lieutenant 
 aboard tlie Atalanta : that is the school, sir, that is the 
 only school that breeds seamen." Dodd bore scores of 
 similar taunts as a Newfoundland puts up with a terrier 
 in office : he seldom replied, and, when he did, in a few 
 quiet dignified words that gave no handle. 
 
 Robarts, who bore the name of a lucky captain, had 
 fair weather all the way to St. Helena. 
 
 The guard-ship at this island was the Salamanca. 
 She had left the Cape a week before the Agra. Captain 
 Robarts, with his characteristic good breeding, went to 
 anchor in-shore of Her Majesty's ship: the wind failed 
 at a critical moment, and a foul became inevitable: 
 Collier was on his quarter-deck, and saw what would 
 happen long before Robarts did; he gave the needful 
 orders, and it was beautiful to see how in half a minute 
 the frigate's guns were run in, her ports lowered, her 
 yards toppled on end, and a spring carried out and" 
 hauled on. 
 
 The Agra struck abreast her own forechains on the 
 Salamanca's quarter. 
 
 (Pipe.) " Boarders away. Tomahawks ! cut every- 
 thing tliat holds !" was heard from the frigate's quarter-
 
 HARD CASH. 279 
 
 deck. Rush came a boarding party on to the merchant 
 ship, and hacked away without mercy all her lower rig- 
 ging that held on to the frigate, signal halliards and all ; 
 others boomed her otf with capstan bars, etc., and in 
 two minutes the ships were clear. A lieutenant and 
 boat's crew came for Robarts, and ordered him on board 
 the Salamanca, and, to make sure of his coming, took 
 him back with them. He found Commodore Collier 
 standing stiff as a ramrod on his quarter-deck. " Are 
 you the master of the Agra?" (His quick eye had 
 recognized her in a moment.) 
 
 "I am, sir." 
 
 "Then she was commanded by a seaman, and is com- 
 manded by a lubber. Don't apply for your papers this 
 week; for you won't get them. Good-morning. Take 
 him awa3^" 
 
 They returned Robarts to his ship ; and a suppressed 
 grin on a score of faces showed him the clear command- 
 ing tones of the commodore had reached his own deck. 
 He soothed himself by stopping the men's grog and 
 mast-heading three midshipmen that same afternoon. 
 
 The night before he weighed anchor, this disciplina- 
 rian was drinking very late in a low public-house. There 
 was not much moon, and the officer in charge of the ship 
 did not see the gig coming till it was nearly alongside : 
 then all was done in a flurry. 
 
 " Hy ! man the side ! Lanterns there ! Jump, you 
 boys ! or you'll catch pepper." 
 
 The boys did jump, and little Murphy, not knowing 
 the surgeon had ordered the ports to be drooped, bounded 
 over the bulwarks like an antelope, lighted on the mid- 
 ship port, which stood at this angle/, and glanced off 
 into the ocean, lantern foremost ; he made his little hole 
 in the water within a yard of Captain Robarts. That 
 dignity, though splashed, took no notice of so small an
 
 280 HARD CASH. 
 
 incident as a gone ship-boy : and if Murphy had been 
 wise and stayed with Nep., all had been well. But the 
 poor urchin inadvertently came up again, and without 
 the lantern. One of the gig's crew grabbed him by the 
 hair, and prolonged his existence by an inconsiderate 
 impulse. 
 
 *' Where is the other lantern ? " was Robarts's first 
 word on reaching the deck : as if he didn't know. 
 
 " Gone overboard, sir, Avith the boy Murphy." 
 
 " Stand forward, you sir," growled Robarts. 
 
 Murphy stood forward, dripping and shivering with 
 cold and fear. 
 
 " What d'ye mean by going overboard with the ship's 
 lantern ? " 
 
 ''Och, your arnr, sure some unasy divil drooped the 
 port ; and the lantern and me we had no foothold at all, 
 at all, and the lantern Avent into the say, bad luck to 
 ut; and I went afther to try and save ut — for your 
 arnr." 
 
 "Belay all that!" said Robarts; "do you think you 
 can blarney me, you young monkey ? Here, Bosen's mate, 
 take a rope's-end and start him ! Again ! Warm him 
 well! That's right." 
 
 As soon as the poor child's .shrieks subsided into sobs, 
 the disciplinarian gave him explanation, for ointment. 
 " I can't have the company's stores expended this way." 
 
 " The force of discipline could no farther go," than to 
 flog zeal for falling overboard : so, to avoid anticlimax in 
 that port, Robarts weighed anchor at daybreak ; and there 
 was a south-westerly breeze waiting for this favorite of 
 fortune, and carried hiin past the Azores. Off Ushant it 
 was westerly, and veered to the nor'-west just before 
 they sighted the Land's End ; never was such a charm- 
 ing passage from the Cape. The sailor who had the 
 luck to sight Old England first, nailed his starboard
 
 HARD CASH. 281 
 
 shoe to the mainmast for contributions ; and all hearts 
 beat joyfully ; none more than David Dodd's. His eye 
 devoured the beloved shore : he hugged the treasure his 
 own ill-luck had jeopardized — but Robarts had sailed it 
 safe into British waters — and forgave the man his ill 
 manners for his good luck. 
 
 Robarts steered in for the Lizard ; but, when abreast 
 the Point, kept v/ell out again, and opened the Channel, 
 and looked out for a pilot. 
 
 One was soon seen working out towards him, and the 
 Agra brought to; the pilot descended from his lugger 
 into his little boat, rowed alongside, and came on deck ; 
 a rough, tanned sailor, clad in flushing ; and in build and 
 manner might have passed for Robarts's twin brother. 
 
 " Xow, then, you sir, what will you take this ship up 
 to the Downs for ? " 
 
 "Thirty pounds." 
 
 Robarts told him roughly he would not get thirty 
 pounds out of him. 
 
 "Thyse and no higher, my Bo," answered the pilot, 
 sturdily : he had been splicing the main brace, and would 
 have answered an admiral. 
 
 Robarts swore at him lustil}' : pilot discharged a volley 
 in return v/ith admirable promptitude. Robarts retorted, 
 the other rough customer rejoined, and soon all Billings- 
 gate thundered on the Agra's quarter-deck. Finding, to 
 his infinite disgust, his visitor as great a blackguard as 
 himself, and not to be outsworn, Robarts ordered him 
 to quit the ship on pain of being man-handled over the 
 side. 
 
 <' Oh, that is it, is it ? " growled the other: " here's fill 
 and be off then." He prudently bottled the rest of his 
 rage till he got safe into his boat : then shook his fist at 
 the Agra, and cursed her captain sky-high. " You see 
 the fair wind, but you don't see the Channel fret
 
 282 HARD CASH. 
 
 a-coming, ye greedy gander. Downs ! You'll never see 
 
 them : you have saved your money, and lost your 
 
 ship, ye lubber." 
 
 Robarts hurled back a sugar-plum or two of the same 
 kind, and then ordered Bayliss to clap on all sail, and 
 keep a mid-channel course through the night. 
 
 At four bells in the middle watch Sharpe, in charge of 
 the ship, tapped at Robarts's door. " Blowing hard, sir, 
 and the weather getting thickish." 
 
 " Wind fair still ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Then call me if it blows any harder," grunted 
 Robarts. 
 
 In two hours more, tap, tap, came Bayliss, in charge. 
 " If we don't take sail in, they'll take themselves out." 
 
 " Furl to'gallen'sels, and call me if it gets any worse." 
 
 In another hour Bayliss was at him again. " Blowing 
 a gale, sir, and a Channel fog on." 
 
 "Reef taupsels, and call me if it gets any worse." 
 
 At daybreak Dodd was on deck, and found the ship 
 flying through a fog so thick, that her forecastle was 
 invisible from the poop, and even her foremast loomed 
 indistinct and looked distant. "You'll be foul of some- 
 thing or other, Sharpe," said he. 
 
 " What is that to you ? " inquired a loud rough voice 
 behind him. "I don't allow passengers to handle my 
 ship." 
 
 "Then do pray handle her yourself, captain ! Is this 
 weather to go tearing happy-go-lucky up the Channel ? " 
 
 "I mean to sail her without your advice, sir: and, 
 being a seaman, I shall get all I can out of a fair 
 wind." 
 
 " That is right. Captain Robarts ; if you had but the 
 British Channel all to yourself." 
 
 "Perhaps you will leave me my deck all to myself."
 
 HARD CASH. 283 
 
 "I should be delighted: but my anxiety will not let 
 me." With this Dodd retired a few steps, and kept a 
 keen lookout. 
 
 At noon, a lusty voice cried, "Land on the weather 
 beam ! " 
 
 All eyes were turned that way, and saw nothing. 
 
 Land in sight was reported to Captain Robarts. 
 
 Now that worthy was in reality getting secretly anx- 
 ious : so he ran on deck crying, " Who saw it ? " 
 
 " Captain Dodd, sir." 
 
 " Ugh ! Nobody else ? " 
 
 Dodd came forward, and, with a respectful air, told 
 him that, being on the lookout, he had seen the coast of 
 the Isle of Wight in a momentary lift of the haze. 
 
 " Isle of Fiddlestick ! " was the polite reply ; " Isle of 
 Wight is eighty miles astern by now." 
 
 Dodd answered firmly that he was well acquainted 
 with every outline in the Channel, and the land he had 
 seen was St. Katharine's Point. 
 
 Robarts deigned no reply, but had the log heaved : it 
 showed the vessel to be running twelve knots an hour. 
 He then went to his cabin and consulted his chart ; and, 
 having worked his problem, came hastily on deck, and 
 Avent from rashness to wonderful caution. " Turn the 
 hands out, and heave the ship to ! " 
 
 The manoeuvre was executed gradually and ably, and 
 scarce a bucketful of water shipped. "Furl taupsels and 
 set the main trysail ! There, Mr. Dodd, so much for you 
 and your Isle of Wight. The land you saw was Dunge- 
 ness, and you would have run on into the North Sea, I'll 
 be bound." 
 
 When a man, habitually calm, turns anxious, he becomes 
 more irritable: and the mixture of timidity and rashness 
 he saw in Robarts made Dodd very anxious.
 
 284 HARD CASH. 
 
 He replied angrily, " At all events I should not make 
 a foul wind out of a fair one by heaving to ; and if I did, 
 I would heave to on the right tack." 
 
 At this sudden facer — one, too, from a patient man — 
 Robarts staggered a moment. He recovered, and, with 
 an oath, ordered Dodd to go below, or he would have 
 him chucked into the hold. 
 
 "Come, don't be an ass, Robarts," said Dodd, con- 
 temptuously. Then, lowering his voice to a whisper, 
 " Don't you know the men only want such an order as 
 that, to chuck you into the sea ? " 
 
 Robarts trembled. '' Oh, if you mean to head a 
 mutiny " — 
 
 " Heaven forbid, sir ! But I won't leave the deck in 
 dirty weather like this, till the captain knows where he 
 is " ' 
 
 Towards sunset it got clearer, and they drifted past a 
 revenue cutter, who was lying to with her head to the 
 northward. She hoisted no end of signals, but they 
 understood none of them ; and her captain gesticulated 
 wildly on her deck. 
 
 " What is that Fantoccini dancing at ? " inquired Cap- 
 tain Robarts, brutally, 
 
 " To see a first-class ship drift to leeward in a narrow 
 sea, with a fair wind," said Dodd, bitterly. 
 
 At night it blew hard, and the sea ran high and irregu- 
 lar. The ship began to be uneasy, and Robarts very 
 properly ordered the top-gallant and royal yards to be 
 sent down on deck. Dodd would have had them down 
 twelve hours ago. The mate gave the order: no one 
 moved. The mate went forward angry. He came back 
 pale. The men refused to go aloft ; they would not risk 
 their lives for Captain Robarts. 
 
 The officers all assembled and went forward : they 
 promised and threatened ; but all in vain. The crew
 
 HARD CASH. 285 
 
 stood sullen together, as if to back one another, and put 
 forward a spokesman to say that " there was not one of 
 them the captain hadn't started, and stopped his grog a 
 dozen times : he had made the ship hell to them ; and 
 now her masts and yards and hull might go there along 
 with her skipper, for them." 
 
 Kobarts received this tidings in sullen silence. " Don't 
 tell that Dodd, whatever you do," said he. '• They will 
 come round now they have had their growl : they are too 
 near home to shy away their pay." 
 
 Robarts had not sufficient insight into character to 
 know that Dodd would instantly have sided with him 
 against mutiny. 
 
 But at this juncture the ex-captain of the Agra was 
 down in the cabin with his fellow-passengers, preparing 
 a general remonstrance : he had a chart before him, and 
 a pair of compasses in his hand. 
 
 "St. Katharine's Point lay about eight miles to wind- 
 ward at noon ; and we have been drifting south and east 
 this twelve hours, through lying to on the starboard tack ; 
 and besides, the ship has been conned as slovenly as she 
 is sailed. I've seen her allowed to break off a dozen 
 times, and gather more leeway: ah! here is Captain 
 Robarts. Captain, you saw the rate we passed the 
 revenue cutter. That vessel was nearly stationary ; so 
 what we passed her at, was our own rate of drifting, and 
 our least rate ; putting all this together, we can't be many 
 miles from the French coast, and, unless we look sharp 
 and beat to windward, I pronounce the ship in danger." 
 
 A horse-laugh greeted this conclusion. 
 
 " We are nearer Yarmouth sands than France, I promise 
 you : and nothing under our lee nearer than Rotterdam." 
 
 A loud cry from the deck above: "A light on the 
 
 LEE BOW I " 
 
 " There ! " cried Robarts, with an oath : " foul of her
 
 286 HARD CASH. 
 
 next ! through me listening to your nonsense." He ran 
 upon deck, and shouted through his trumpet, " All hands 
 wear ship ! " 
 
 The crew, who had heard the previous cry, obeyed 
 orders in the presence of an immediate danger; and per- 
 haps their growl had really relieved their ill-humor. 
 Robarts with delight saw them come tumbling up, and 
 gave his orders lustily : "Brail up the trysel ! Up with 
 the helm ! in with the weather main brace ! square the 
 after-yards ! " 
 
 The ship's bow turned from the wind, an<J, as soon as 
 she got way on her, Robarts ran below again, and en- 
 tered the cabin triumphant. 
 
 " That is all right : and now, Captain Dodd, a word 
 with you : you will either retire at once to your cabin, 
 or will cease to breed disaffection in my crew, and 
 groundless alarm in my passengers, by instilling your 
 own childish, ignorant fears. The ship has been under- 
 logged a hundred miles, sir, and but for my caution in 
 lying to for clear weather we should be groping among 
 the Fern Isl— " 
 
 Crash ! 
 
 An unheard-of shock threw the speaker and all the 
 rest in a mass on the floor, smashed every lamp, put out 
 every light; and, with a fierce grating noise, the ship 
 was hard and fast on the French coast, with her stern to 
 the sea. 
 
 One awful moment of silence ; then amid shrieks of 
 agony, the sea struck her like a rolling rock, solid to 
 crush, liquid to drown : and the comb of a wave smashed 
 the cabin-windows and rushed in among them as they 
 floundered on the floor, and wetted and chilled them to 
 the marrow ; a voice in the dark cried, " God ! we are 
 dead men."
 
 HARD CASfl. 287 
 
 CHAPTER XTII. 
 
 "On deck for your lives !" cried Dodd, forgetting in 
 that awful moment he was not the captain ; and drove 
 them all up, Robarts included, and caught hold of Mrs. 
 Beresford and Freddy at their cabin-door and half car- 
 ried them with him. Just as they got on deck the third 
 wave, a high one, struck the ship and lifted her bodily 
 up, canted her round, and dashed her down again some 
 yards to lecAvard, throwing them down on the hard and 
 streaming deck. 
 
 At this tremendous shock the ship seemed a live thing 
 shrieking and wailing, as well as quivering with the 
 blow. 
 
 But one voice dissented loudly from the general dis- 
 may. " All right, men," cried Dodd, firm and trumpet- 
 like. " She is broadside on now. Captain Robarts, look 
 alive, sir ! Speak to the men ! don't go to sleep ! " 
 
 Robarts was in a lethargy of fear. At this appeal he 
 started into a fury of ephemeral courage : " Stick to the 
 ship," he yelled; "there is no danger if you stick to 
 the ship," and with this snatched a life buoy, and hurled 
 himself into the sea. 
 
 Dodd caught up the trumpet that fell from his hand, 
 and roared, " I command this ship. Officers, come round 
 me ! Men, to your quarters ! Come, bear a hand here, 
 and fire a gun ! That will show us where we are, and 
 let the Frenchmen know." 
 
 The carronade was fired, and its momentary flash 
 revealed that the ship was ashore in a little bay ; the
 
 288 HARD CASH. 
 
 land abeam was low and some eighty yards off; but 
 there was something black and rugged nearer the ship's 
 stern. 
 
 Their situation was awful. To windward huge black 
 waves rose like tremendous ruins, and came rolling, 
 fringed with devouring tire; and each wave, as it charged 
 them, curled up to an incredible height and dashed down 
 on the doomed ship — solid to crush, liquid to drown — 
 with a ponderous stroke that made the poor souls stag- 
 ger; and sent a sheet of water so clean over her that 
 part .fell to leeward, and only part came down on deck, 
 foretaste of a watery death ; and each of these fearful 
 blows drove the groaning, trembling vessel farther on 
 the sand, bumping her along as if she had been but a 
 skiff. 
 
 Now it was men showed their inner selves. 
 
 Seeing death so near on one hand, and a chance of 
 escape on the other, seven men proved unable to resist 
 the two great passions of fear and hope on a scale so 
 gigantic, and side by side. Bayliss, a midshipman, and 
 five sailors, stole the only available boat and lowered her. 
 
 She was swamped in a moment. 
 
 Many of the crew got to the rum, and stupefied them- 
 selves to their destruction. 
 
 Others rallied round their old captain, and recovered 
 their native courage at the brave and hopeful bearing he 
 wore over a heart full of anguish. He worked like a horse, 
 encouraging, commanding, doing : he loaded a carronade 
 with a pound of powder and a coil of rope, with an iron 
 bar attached to a cable, and shot the rope and bar ashore. 
 
 A gun was now fired from the guard-house, whose 
 light Eobarts had taken for a ship. But, no light being 
 shown any nearer on the coast, and the ship expected 
 every minute to go to pieces, Dodd asked if any one 
 would try to swim ashore with a line made fast to a 
 hawser on board.
 
 HARD CASH. 289 
 
 A sailor offered to go if any other man would risk bis 
 life along with him. Instantly FuUalove stripped, and 
 Vespasian next. • 
 
 "Two is enough on such a desperate errand,"' said 
 Dodd, with a groan. But now emulation was up, and 
 neither Briton, Yankee, nor negro would give way ; a 
 line was made fast to the sailor's waist, and he was low- 
 ered to leeward ; his venturesome rivals followed. The 
 sea swallowed those three heroes like crumbs; and small 
 was the hope of life for them. 
 
 The three heroes being first-rate swimmers and divers, 
 and going with the tide, soon neared the shore on the 
 ship's lee quarter ; but a sight of it was enough ; to 
 attempt to land on that rock with such a sea on, was to 
 get their skulls smashed like eggshells in a moment. 
 They had to coast it, looking out for a soft place. 
 
 They found one, and tried to land ; but so irresistible 
 was the suction of the retiring wave, that, whenever 
 they got foot on the sand, and tried to run, they were 
 wrenched out to sea again, and pounded black and blue 
 and breathless by the curlino- breaker they met coming in. 
 
 After a score of vain efforts, the negro, throwing him- 
 self on his back, went in with a high wave, and, on 
 touching the sand, turned, dug all his ten claws into it, 
 clenched his teeth, and scrambled like a cat at a wall : 
 having more power in his toes than the Europeans, and 
 luckily getting one hand on a firm stone, his prodigious 
 strength just enabled him to stick fast while the wave 
 went back ; and then, seizing the moment, he tore him- 
 self ashore, but bleeding and bruised all over, and with 
 a tooth actually broken by clenching in the convulsive 
 struggle. 
 
 He found some natives dancing about in violent agita- 
 tion with a rope, but afraid to go in and help him ; and 
 no wonder, not being sea-gulls. By the light of their 
 19
 
 290 HARD CASH. 
 
 lanterns, he saw Fullalove washing in and out like a log. 
 He seized one end of the rope, dashed in and grabbed 
 his friend, and they were hauled ashore together, both 
 breathless, and Fullalove speechless. 
 
 The negro looked round for the sailor, but could not 
 see him. Soon, however, there was a cry from some 
 more natives about fifty yards off, and lanterns held up ; 
 away he dashed with the rope, just in time to see Jack 
 make a last gallant attempt to land. It ended in his 
 being flung up like a straw into the air ou the very crest 
 of a wave fifteen feet high, and out to sea with his arms 
 whirling, and a death-shriek which was echoed by every 
 woman within hearing. 
 
 In dashed Vespasian with the rope, and gripped the 
 drowning man's long hair with his teeth : then jerked 
 the rope, and they were both pulled ashore with infinite 
 difficulty. The good-natured Frenchmen gave them all 
 three lots of vivats and brandy and pats on the back, 
 and carried the line for them to a flagstaff on the rocks 
 nearer the stern of the ship. 
 
 The ship began to show the first signs of breaking up : 
 hammered to death by the sea, she discharged the oakum 
 from her opening seams, and her decks began to gape and 
 grin fore and aft. Corpses of drunken sailors drowned 
 between decks now floated up amidships, and washed 
 and rolled about among the survivors' feet. These, see- 
 ing no hope, went about making up all quarrels, and 
 shaking hands in token of a Christian end. One or two 
 came to Dodd with their hands out. 
 
 " Avast, ye lubbers ! " said he angrily ; "do you think 
 I have time for nonsense ? Folksel ahoy ! axes, and cut 
 the weather shrouds ! " 
 
 It was done ; the foremast went by the board directly, 
 and fell to leeward : a few blows of the axe from Dodd's 
 own hand sent the mainmast after it.
 
 HARD CASH. 291 
 
 The Agra rose a streak ; and the next wave carried lier 
 a little farther in shore. 
 
 And now the man in charge of the hawser reported 
 with joy that there was a strain on it. 
 
 This gave those on board a hope of life. Dodd bustled 
 and had the hawser carefully paid out by two men, while 
 he himself secured the other end in the mizzen-top ; he 
 had left that mast standing on purpose. 
 
 There was no fog here ; but great heavy black clouds 
 flying about with amazing swiftness extinguished the 
 moon at intervals : at others she glimmered through a 
 dull mist in which she was veiled, and gave the poor 
 souls on the Agra a dim peep of the frail and narrow 
 bridge they must pass to live. A thing like a black 
 snake went down from the mizzen-top, bellying towards 
 the yawning sea, and soon lost to sight : it was seen rising 
 again among some lanterns on the rock ashore : but what 
 became of it in the middle ? The darkness seemed to 
 cut it in two ; the sea to swallow it. Yet, to get from a 
 ship going to pieces under them, the sailors precipitated 
 themselves eagerly on that black thread bellying to the 
 sea and flickering in the wind. They went down it, one 
 after another, and anxious eyes straining after them saw 
 them no more : but this was seen, that scarce one in three 
 emerged into the lights ashore. 
 
 Then Dodd got an axe, and stood in the top, and 
 threatened to brain the first man who attempted to go 
 on the rope. 
 
 " We must make it taut first," said he ; " bear a hand 
 here with a tackle." 
 
 Even while this was being done, the other rope, whose 
 end he had fired ashore, was seen moving to windward. 
 The natives, it seems, had found it, half buried in sand. 
 
 Dodd unlashed the end from the bulwarks and carried 
 it into the top, and made it fast : and soon there were two
 
 292^ HARD CASH. 
 
 black snakes dipping shorewards and waving in the ait 
 side by side. 
 
 The sailors scrambled for a place, and some of them 
 were lost by their own rashness. Kenealy waited coolly, 
 and went by himself. 
 
 Finally, Dodd was left in the ship with jMr. Sharpe 
 and the women, and little Murphy, and Ramgolam, 
 whom Robarts had liberated to show his contempt of 
 Dodd. 
 
 He now advised Mrs. Beresford to be lashed to Sharpe 
 and himself, and venture the passage ; but she screamed 
 and clung to him, and said, "I dare not, oh, I dare not!" 
 
 "Then I must lash you to a spar," said he, "for she 
 can't last much longer." He ordered Sharpe ashore. 
 Sharpe shook hands with him ; and went on the rope 
 with tears in his eyes. 
 
 Dodd went hard to work, lashed ISIrs. Beresford to a 
 piece of broken water-butt : filled Fred's pockets with 
 corks and sewed them up (you never caught Dodd with- 
 out a needle ; only, unlike the women's, it ^^as always 
 kept threaded). Mrs. Beresford threw her arms round 
 his neck and kissed him wildly ; a way women have in 
 mortal peril : it is but their homage to courage. " All 
 right ! " said Dodd, interpreting it as an appeal to his 
 protection, and affecting cheerfulness: "we'll get ashore 
 together on the poop awning, or somehow; never you 
 fear. I'd give a thousand pounds to know when high 
 water is." 
 
 At this moment, with a report like a cannon, the lower 
 decks burst fore and aft : another still louder, and the 
 Agra's back broke. She parted amidships v/ith a fear- 
 ful yawn, and the waves went toppling and curling clean 
 through her. 
 
 At this appalling sound and sight, the few creatures 
 left on the poop cowered screaming and clinging at Dodd's 
 knees, and fought for a bit of him.
 
 HARD CASH. 293 
 
 Yes, as a flood brings incongruous animals together on 
 some little isle, in brotherhood of fear — creatures who 
 never met before without one eating the other; and 
 there they cuddle — so the thief Ramgolam clung to the 
 man he had tried to rob ; the Hindoo ayah and the Eng- 
 lish maid hustled their mistress, the haughty Mrs. Beres- 
 ford, and were hustled by her, for a bit of this human 
 pillar ; and little Murphy and Fred Beresford wriggled 
 in at him where they could : and the poor goat crept into 
 the quivering mass trembling like an aspen, and not a 
 butt left either in his head or his heart. Dodd stood in 
 the middle of these tremblers, a rock of manhood : and 
 when he was silent and they heard only the voice of the 
 waves, they despaired ; and, whenever he spoke, they 
 started at the astounding calmness of his voice and 
 words : and life sounded possible. 
 
 " Come," said he, " this won't do any longer. All hands 
 into the mizzen-top ! " 
 
 He helped them all up, and stood on the ratlines him- 
 self ; and, if you will believe me, the poor goat wailed 
 like a child below. He found in that new terror and 
 anguish a voice goat was never heard to speak in before. 
 But they had to leave him on deck : no help for it. Dodd 
 advised Mrs. Beresford once more to attempt the rope; 
 she declined. " I dare not I I dare not ! " she cried, but 
 she begged Dodd hard to go on it and save himself. 
 
 It was a strong temptation : he clutched the treasure 
 in his bosom, and one sob burst from the strong man. 
 
 That sob was but the tax paid by nature : for pride, 
 humanity, and manhood stood stanch in spite of it. 
 "Xo, no, I can't," said he: "I mustn't. Don't tempt 
 me to leave you in tnis plight, and be a cur! Live or die, 
 I must be the last man on her. Here's something coming 
 out to us, the Lord in heaven be praised!" 
 
 A bright lighi was seen moving down the black line
 
 294 HARD CASH. 
 
 that held them to the shore ; it descended slowly within 
 a foot of the billows, and lighting them up showed their 
 fearful proximity to the rope in mid passage : they had 
 washed off many a poor fellow at that part. 
 
 "Look at that! Thank Heaven you did not try it!" 
 said Dodd to Mrs. Beresford. 
 
 At this moment a higher wave than usual swallowed 
 up the light: there was a loud cry of dismay from the 
 shore, and a wail of despair from the ship. 
 
 No ! not lost after all ! The light emerged : and 
 mounted, and mounted towards the ship. 
 
 It came near and showed the black shiny body of 
 Vespasian with very little on but a handkerchief and a 
 lantern, the former round his waist, and the latter lashed 
 to his back : he arrived with a " Yah ! yah ! " and showed 
 his white teeth in a grin. 
 
 Mrs. Beresford clutched his shoulder, and whimpered, 
 " Mr. Black ! " 
 
 " Iss, missy, dis child bring good news. Cap'n ! Massah 
 Fullalove send you his congratulations, and the compli- 
 ments of the season 5 and take the liberty to observe the 
 tide am turned in twenty minutes." 
 
 The good news thus quaintly ai^nounced, caused an 
 outburst of joy from Dodd, and, sailor-like, he insisted on 
 all hands joining in a cheer. The shore re-echoed it 
 directly. And this encouraged the forlorn band still 
 more ; to hear other hearts beating for them so near. 
 Even the intervening waves could not quite annul the 
 sustaining power of sympath}^ 
 
 At this moment came the first faint streaks of welcome 
 dawn, and revealed their situation move fully. 
 
 The vessel lay on the edge of a sand-bank. She was 
 clean in two, the stern lying somewhat higher than the 
 stem. The sea rolled through her amidships six feet 
 broad, frightful to look at; and made a clean breach over
 
 HARD CASH. 295 
 
 her forward, all except the bowsprit, to the end of which 
 three poor sailors were now discovered to be clinging. 
 The after part of the poop was out of water, and in a 
 corner of it the goat crouched like a rabbit: four dead 
 bodies washed about beneath the party trembling in the 
 mizzen-top, and one had got jammed in the wheel, face 
 uppermost, and glared up at them, gazing terror-stricken 
 down. 
 
 No sign of the tide turning yet : and much reason to 
 fear it would turn too late for them, and the poor fellows 
 shivering on the bowsprit. 
 
 These fears were well founded. 
 
 A huge sea rolled in, and turned the fore part of the 
 vessel half over, buried the bowsprit, and washed the 
 men oif into the breakers. 
 
 Mrs. Beresford sank down and prayed, holding Vespa- 
 sian by the knee. 
 
 Fortunately, as in that vessel wrecked long sj'ne on 
 ^Melita, " the hind part of the ship stuck fast and remained 
 immovable." 
 
 But for how long ? 
 
 Each wave now struck the ship's weather quarter with 
 a sound like a cannon fired in a church, and sent the 
 water clean into the mizzen-top. It hit them like strokes 
 of a whip. They were drenched to the skin, chilled to 
 the bone, and frozen to the heart with fear. They made 
 acquaintance that hour with death. Ay, death itself 
 has no bitterness that forlorn cluster did not feel : only 
 the insensibility that ends that bitterness was wanting. 
 
 Xow the sea, you must know, was literally strewed 
 with things out of the Agra: masts, rigging, furniture, 
 tea-chests, bundles of canes, chairs, tables ; but, of all this 
 jetsam, Dodd's eye had been for some little time fixed 
 on one object: a live sailor drifting ashore on a great 
 wooden case : it struck him after awhile that the moD
 
 296 
 
 HARD CASH. 
 
 made very little way ; and at last seemed to go up and 
 down in one place. By and by he saw him nearer and 
 nearer, and recognized him. It was one of the three 
 washed off the bowsprit. 
 
 He cried joyfully, " The tide has turned ! here's 
 Thompson coming out to sea." 
 
 Then there ensued a dialogue, incredible to landsmen, 
 between these two sailors, the captain of the ship and 
 the captain of the foretop ; one perched on a stationary 
 fragment of that vessel, the other drifting on a pianoforte ; 
 and both bawling at one another across the jaws of death. 
 
 " Thompson ahoy ! " 
 
 « Hal-lo ! " 
 
 "Whither bound?" 
 
 " Going out with the tide, and be d d to me.** 
 
 " What, can't ye swim ? " 
 
 "Like a brass figure-head. It's all over with poor 
 Jack, sir." 
 
 " All over ? Don't tell me ! Look out now as you 
 drift under our stern, and we'll lower you the four-inch 
 hawser." 
 
 "Lord bless you, sir; do, pray!" cried Thompson, 
 losing his recklessness with the chance of life. 
 
 By this time the shore was black with people, and a 
 boat was brought down to the beach, but to attempt to 
 launch it was to be sucked out to sea. 
 
 At present all eyes Avere fixed on Thompson drifting 
 to destruction. 
 
 Dodd cut the four-inch hawser, and Vespasian, on deck, 
 lowered it with a line, so that Thompson presently drifted 
 right athwart it: "All right, sir!" said he, grasping it: 
 and amidst thundering acclamations was drawn to land 
 full of salt water and all but insensible. The piano 
 landed at Dunkirk, three weeks later. 
 
 In the bustle of this good and smart action the tide 
 retired perceptibly.
 
 HARD CASH. 297 
 
 By and by the sea struck lower and with less weight. 
 
 At nine p.m. Dodd took his little party down on deck 
 again, being now the safest place ; for the mast might go. 
 
 It was a sad scene : the deck was now dry^ and the 
 dead bodies lay quiet around them, with glassy eyes : 
 and, grotesquely horrible, the long hair of two or three 
 was stitf and crystallized with the saltpetre in the ship. 
 
 Mrs. Beresford clung to Vespasian : she held his bare 
 black shoulder with one white and jewelled hand, and 
 his wrist with the other, tight. " Mr. Black," said she, 
 " how brave you are ! It is incredible. Why you came 
 back. I must feel a brave man with both my hands, or 
 1 shall die. Your skin is nice and soft too. I shall 
 never outlive this dreadful day." 
 
 And, now that the water was too low to wash them off 
 the hawser, several of the ship's company came back to 
 the ship to help the women down. 
 
 By noon the Agra's deck was thirty feet from the 
 sand. The rescued ones wanted to break their legs and 
 necks : but Dodd would not permit even that. He super- 
 intended the whole manoeuvre, and lowered, first the dead, 
 then the living, not omitting the poor goat, who was 
 motionless and limp with fright. 
 
 When they were all safe on the sand, Dodd stood alone 
 upon the poop a minute, cheered by all the sailors, French 
 and English, ashore : then slid down a rope and rejoined 
 his companions. 
 
 To their infinite surprise, the undaunted one was found 
 to be snivelling. 
 
 "Oh, dear, what is the matter ?" said Mrs. Beresford, 
 tenderly. 
 
 "The poor Agra, ma'am! She was such a beautiful 
 sea-boat : and just look at her now ! Never sail again ! 
 never ! never ! She was a little crank in beating, I can't 
 deny it : but how she did fly with the wind abaft ! She
 
 298 HARD CASH. 
 
 sank a pirate in the straits, and weathered a hurricane 
 off the iSIauritius ; and after all for a lubber to go and 
 lay her bones ashore in a fair wind : poor dear beauty ! " 
 
 He maundered thus, and kept turning back to look at 
 the wreck, till he happened to lay his hand on his breast. 
 He stopped in the middle of his ridiculous lament, wore 
 a look of self-reproach, and cast his eyes upward in heart- 
 felt gratitude. 
 
 Tlie companions of so many adventures dispersed. 
 
 A hospitable mayoress entertained Mrs. Beresford and 
 suite, and she took to her bed ; for she fell seriously ill 
 as soon as ever she could do it with impunity. 
 
 Colonel Kenealy went off to Paris. "I'll gain that 
 any way by being wrecked," said he. 
 
 H there be a lover of quadrupeds here, let him know 
 that Billy's weakness proved his strength. Being bran- 
 died by a good-natured French sailor, he winked his eye; 
 being brandied greatly, he staggered up, and butted his 
 benefactor, like a man. 
 
 Fullalove had dry clothes and a blazing fire ready for 
 Dodd at a little rude anberge. He sat over it and dried 
 a few bank-notes he had loose about him, and examined 
 his greater treasure, his children's. The pocket-book 
 was much stained, but no harm whatever done to the 
 contents. 
 
 In the midst of this emplo3'ment the shadow of an 
 enormous head was projected right upon his treasure. 
 
 Turning with a start he saw a face at the window, one 
 of those vile mugs which are found to perfection amongst 
 the canaille of the French nation ; bloated, blear-eyed, 
 grizzly, and wild-beast like. The ugly thing, on being 
 confronted, passed slowly out of the sun, and Dodd thought 
 no more of it. 
 
 The owner of this sinister visage was Andre Thibout, 
 of whom it might be said, like face like life ; for he was
 
 HAKD CASH. 099 
 
 one of those ill-omeued creatures who feed upon the mis- 
 fortunes of their kind, and stand on shore in foul weather 
 hoping the worst, instead of praying for the best: briefly, 
 a wrecker. He and his comrade, Jacques Moinard, had 
 heard the Agra's gun fired, and come down to batten on 
 the wreck ; but lo ! at the turn of the tide, there were 
 gendarmes and soldiers lining the beach, and the bayonet 
 interposed between theft and misfortune. So now the 
 desperate pair were prowling about like hungry, battled 
 woh'es, curses on their lips, and rage at their hearts. 
 
 Dodd was extremely anxious to get to Barkington 
 before the news of the wreck; for, otherwise, he knew his 
 wife and children would suffer a year's agony in a single 
 day. The only chance he saw was to get to Boulogne in 
 time to catch the Nancy sailing packet ; for it was her 
 day. But then Boulogne was eight leagues distant, and 
 there was no public conveyance going. FuUalove, enter- 
 ing heartily into his feelings, was gone to look for horses 
 to hire, aided by the British consul. The black hero was 
 up-stairs clearing out with a pin two holes that had fallen 
 into decay for want of use. These holes were in his ears. 
 
 And now, worn out by anxiety and hard work, Dodd 
 began to nod in his chair by the fire. 
 
 He had not been long asleep when the hideous face of 
 Thibout reappeared at the window, and watched him. 
 Presently a low whistle was uttered outside, and soon 
 the two ruffians entered the room, and, finding the land- 
 lady there as well as Dodd, called for a little glass apiece 
 of absinthe. While drinking it they cast furtive glances 
 towards Dodd, and waited till she should go about her 
 business, and leave them alone with him. 
 
 But the good woman surprised their looks, and know- 
 ing the character of the men, poured out a cup of coffee 
 from a great metal reservoir by the fire, and waked Dodd 
 without ceremony. " Void voire cafe, monsieur f " making 
 believe he had ordered it.
 
 800 HARD CASH. 
 
 '' lleixi, madame!" replied he, for liis wife had taugh'; 
 iiim a little French. 
 
 "One may sleep mal a 2)roj)os,^' muttered the woman in 
 his ear. " My man is at the fair, and there are people 
 here who are not worth any great things." 
 
 Dodd rubbed his eyes and saw those two foul faces at 
 the end of the kitchen ; for such it was, though called 
 salle a manner. " Humph ! " said he, and instinctively 
 buttoned his coat. 
 
 At that Thibout touched Moinard's knee under the 
 table. 
 
 Fullalove came in soon after, to say he had got two 
 horses, and they would be here in a quarter of an hour. 
 
 " Well, but Vespasian, how is he to go ? " inquired 
 Dodd. 
 
 " Oh ! we'll send him on ahead, and then ride and tie." 
 
 " No, no," said Dodd, " I'll go ahead. That will shake 
 me up. I think I should tumble off a horse, I'm so dead 
 sleepy." 
 
 Accordingly, he started to walk on the road to Boulogne. 
 
 He had not been gone three minutes when Moinard 
 sauntered out. 
 
 Moinard had not been gone two minutes when Thibout 
 strolled out. 
 
 Moinard kept Dodd in sight, and Thibout kept Moinard. 
 
 The horses were brought soon after ; but unfortunately 
 the pair did not start immediately, though, had they 
 known it, every moment was precious. They wasted 
 time in argument. Vespasian had come down with a 
 diamond ring in one ear, and a ruby in the other. Full- 
 alove saw this retrograde stej), and said grimly, "Have 
 you washed but half your face, or is this a return to 
 savagery ? " 
 
 Vespasian wore an air of offended dignity. " jSTo, sar j 
 these yar decorations come off a lady ob i cibilisation.
 
 
 THE MEN WEUE UPON' HIM.
 
 HARD CASH. 301 
 
 Missy Beresford donated 'em me. Says she, 'Massah 
 Black,' — yah! yah! She always nicknominates dis child 
 Massa Black, — 'while I was praying Goramighty for self 
 and pickaninny, I seen you out of one corner of my eye 
 admirationing my rings ; den just you take 'em,' says dat 
 ar aristocracy; 'for 1 don't admirationize 'em none; I've 
 been shipwrecked.' So 1 took 'em wid incredible conde- 
 scension ; and dat ar beautiful lady says to me, ' Oh, get 
 along wid your nonsense about colored skins ! I have 
 inspectionated your conduct, Massa Black, and likewise 
 your performances on the slack rope,' says she, ' in time 
 of shipwreck ; and darn me,' says she, ' but you are a 
 man, you are.' — 'No, missy,' says I, superciliously, 'dis 
 child am not a man, if you please, but a colored gem- 
 man.' " He added, he had put them in his ears because 
 the biggest would not go on his little finger. 
 
 FuUalove groaned. " And, of course, the next thing, 
 you'll ring your snout like a pig or a Patagonian ; there, 
 come along, ye darn'd — anomaly ! " 
 
 He was going to say "cuss," but, remembering. his 
 pupil's late heroic conduct, softened it down to anomaly. 
 
 But Vespasian always measured the force of words 
 by their length or obscurity. " Anomaly " cut him to 
 the heart. He rode off in moody silence and dejec- 
 tion, asking himself sorrowfully what he had done that 
 such a mountain of vituperation should fall on him. 
 "Anomaly !" 
 
 They cantered along in silence; for Fullalove was 
 digesting this new trait in his pupil, and asking himself 
 could he train it out, or must he cross it out. Just out- 
 side the town they met Captain liobarts walking in. He 
 had landed three miles off down the coast. " Hallo ! " 
 said FuUalove. 
 
 "I suppose you thought I was drowned ? " said Eobarts, 
 spitefully ; " but you see I'm alive still."
 
 302 HARD CASH. 
 
 Fullalove replied, "Well, captain, that is only one 
 mistake more you've made, I reckon." 
 
 About two English miles from the town, they came to 
 a long, straight slope up and down, where they could 
 see a league before them, and there they caught sight of 
 David Dodd's tall figure mounting the opposite rise. 
 
 Behind him at some little distance were two men 
 going the same way, but on the grass by the roadside, 
 Avhereas David was on the middle of the road. 
 
 "He walks well for Jacky Tar," said Fullalove. 
 
 "Iss, sar," said Vespasian, sulkily; " but dis 'analogy' 
 tink he not walk so fast as those two behind him, cos 
 they catch him up." 
 
 Now Vespasian had hardly uttered these words when a 
 thing occurred so sudden and alarming, that the speaker's 
 eyes protruded, and he was dumfounded a moment ; the 
 next a loud cry burst from both him and his companion 
 at once ; and they lashed their horses to the gallop, and 
 went tearing down the hill in a fury of rage and appre- 
 hension. 
 
 Mr. Fullalove was right, I think ; a sailor is seldom a 
 smart walker ; but Dodd was a cricketer, you know, as 
 well. He swung along at a good pace, and in high spirits. 
 He had lost nothing but a few clothes and a quadrant and 
 a chronometer. It was a cheap wreck to him and a joy- 
 ful one ; for peril past is present delight. He had saved 
 his life, and what he valued more, his children's money. 
 Never was that dear companion of his perils so precious 
 to him as now. One might almost fancy that, by some 
 strange sympathy, he felt the immediate happiness of his 
 daughter depended on it. Many in my day believe that 
 human minds can thus communicate, overleaping material 
 distances. Not knowing, I can't say. However, no such 
 solution is really needed here. All the members of an 
 united and loving family feel together and work together,
 
 HARD CASH. 303 
 
 without specific concert, though hemispheres lie between; 
 it is one of the beautiful traits of true family affection. 
 Now the Dodds, father, mother, sister, brother, were more 
 one in heart and love than any other family I ever saw. 
 Woe to them if they had not ! 
 
 David, then, walked towards Boulogne that afternoon 
 a happy man. Already he tasted by anticipation the 
 warm caresses of his wife and children, and saw himself 
 seated at the hearth with those beloved ones clustering 
 close round him. How would he tell them its adventures, 
 its dangers from pirates, its loss at sea, its recovery, its 
 wreck, its coming ashore dry as a bone ; and conclude by 
 taking it out of his bosom, and dropping it in his wife's 
 lap with cheer boys cheer ! 
 
 Trudging on in this delightful reverie, his ear detected 
 a pit-pat at some distance behind him. He looked round 
 with very slight curiosity, and saw two men coming up ; 
 even in that hasty glance he recognized the foul face of 
 Andre Thibout, a face not to be forgotten in a day. I 
 don't know how it was, but he saw in a moment that 
 face was after him to rob him, and he naturally enough 
 concluded it was their object. 
 
 And he was without a weapon, and they were doubt- 
 less armed. Indeed, Thibout was swinging a heavy 
 cudgel. 
 
 Poor Dodd's mind went into a whirl, and his body into 
 a cold sweat. In such moments men live a year. To 
 gain a little time he walked swiftly on, pretending not 
 to have noticed them ; but oh ! his eyes roved wildly to 
 each side of the road for a chance of escape. He saw 
 none. To his right was a precipitous rock ; to his left 
 a profound ravine with a torrent below, and the sides 
 scantily clothed with fir-trees and bushes. He was, in 
 fact, near the top of a long rising ground called "Za mau- 
 vaise cote/' on account of a murder committed there two 
 hundred years ago.
 
 304 HARD CASH. 
 
 Presently he heard the men close behind him. At the 
 same moment he saw at the side of the ravine a flint 
 stone about the size of two fists. He made but three 
 swift strides, snatched it up, and turned to meet the 
 robbers, drawing himself up high, and showing tight in 
 every inch. 
 
 The men were upon him. His change of attitude was 
 so sudden and fiery that they recoiled a step ; but it was 
 only for a moment. They had gone too far to retreat; 
 they divided, and Thibout attacked him on his left with 
 uplifted cudgel, and Moinard on his right with a long 
 glittering knife. The latter, to guard his head from the 
 stone, whipped off his hat, and held it before his head ; 
 but Dodd was what is called " left-handed," "ambidexter" 
 would be nearer the mark (he carved and wrote with his 
 right hand, heaved weights and flung cricket-balls with 
 his left). He stepped forward, flung the stone in Thi- 
 bout's face with perfect precision, and that bitter impetus 
 a good thrower lends at the moment of delivery, and 
 almost at the same moment shot out his right hand and 
 caught Moinard by the throat. Sharper and fiercer col- 
 lision was never seen than of these three. 
 
 Thibout's face crashed; his blood squirted all round 
 the stone, and eight yards off lay that assailant on his 
 back. 
 
 Moinard was more fortunate. He got two inches of 
 his knife into Dodd's left shoulder, at the very moment 
 Dodd caught him in his right-hand vise. And now one 
 vengeful hand of iron grasped him felly by the throat ; 
 another seized his knife arm and twisted it back like a 
 child's. He kicked and struggled furiously ; but in half 
 a minute the mighty English arm and iron fingers held 
 the limp body of Jacques Moinard, with its knees knock- 
 ing, temples bursting, throat relaxed, eyes protruding, 
 and livid tongue lolling down to his chin ; a few seconds
 
 HARD CASH. 305 
 
 more, and with the same stalwart arm that kept liis 
 relaxed and sinking body from falling, Dodd gave him 
 one fierce whirl round to the edge of the road, then put 
 a foot to his middle, and spurned his carcass with amaz- 
 ing force and fury down the precipice. Crunch ! crunch ! 
 it plunged from tree to tree, fi-om bush to bush, and at 
 last rolled into a thick bramble, and there stuck in tlie 
 form of a crescent. But Dodd had no sooner sent him 
 headlong by that mighty effort, than his own sight dark- 
 ened, his head swam, and, after staggering a little way, 
 he sank down in a state bordering on insensibility. Mean- 
 time Fullalove and Vespasian were galloping down the 
 opposite hill to his rescue. 
 
 Unfortunately, Andre Thibout was not dead ; nor even 
 mortally wounded. He was struck on the nose and 
 mouth : that nose was flat for the rest of his life, and 
 half his front teeth were battered out of their sockets : 
 but he fell, not from the brain being stunned, but the 
 body driven to earth by the mere physical force of so 
 momentous a blow : knocked down like a ninepin. He 
 now sat up bewildered, and found himself in a pool of 
 blood, his own. He had little sensation of pain ; but 
 he put his hand to his face, and found scarce a trace 
 of his features ; and his hand came away gory. He 
 groaned. 
 
 Rising to his feet, he saw Dodd sitting at some 
 distance : his first impulse was to fly from so terrible 
 an antagonist : but, as he made for the ravine, he ob- 
 served that Dodd was in a helpless condition, wounded 
 perhaps by Moinard. And where was Moinard ? 
 
 Nothing visible of him but his knife ; that lay glitter- 
 ing in the road. 
 
 Thibout, with anxious eye turned towards Dodd, 
 kneeled to pick it up : and in the act a drop of his 
 own blood fell on the dust beside it. He snarled like 
 SO
 
 306 HARD CASH. 
 
 a wounded tiger, spat out half a dozen teeth, and crept 
 on tiptoe to his safe revenge. 
 
 Awake from your lethargy, or you are a dead man ! 
 
 No. Thibout got to him unperceived, and the knife 
 glittered over his head. 
 
 At this moment the air seemed to fill with clattering 
 hoofs and voices, and a pistol-shot rang. Dodd heard 
 and started, and so saw his peril. He put up his left 
 hand to parry the blow, but feebly. Luckily for him, 
 Thibout's eyes were now turned another way, and glar- 
 ing with stupid terror out of his mutilated visage : a 
 gigantic mounted fiend, with black face and white gleam- 
 ing, rolling eyes, was coming at him like the wind, uttering 
 horrid howls ; Thibout launched himself at the precipice 
 with a shriek of dismay, and went rolling after his com- 
 rade ; but, ere he had gone ten yards, he fell across a 
 young larch-tree, and hung balanced. Up came the foam- 
 ing horses : Fullalove dismounted hastily and fired three 
 deliberate shots down at Thibout from his revolvei*. 
 He rolled off, and never stopped again till he splashed 
 into the torrent, and lay there staining it with blood 
 from his battered face and perforated shoulder. 
 
 Vespasian jumped off, and with glistening eyes admin- 
 istered some good brandy to Dodd. He, unconscious of 
 his wound, a slight one, relieved their anxiety by assur- 
 ing them somewhat faintly he was not hurt, but that, 
 ever since that "tap on the head" he got in the Straits 
 of Gaspar, any angry excitement told on him, made his 
 head swim, and his temples seem to swell from the 
 inside. 
 
 " I should have come off second-best but for you, my 
 dear friends. Shake hands over it, do ! Lord bless 
 you ! Lord bless you both ! As for you, Vespasian, I 
 do think you are my guardian angel. Why, this is the 
 second time you've saved it. No, it isn't : for it's the 
 third."
 
 HARD CASH. 307 
 
 "Now you git along, Massa Cap'n," said Vespasian. 
 " You bery good man, ridicalous good man : and dis child 
 aren't no gardening angel at all ; he ar a darned anat- 
 omy " (with such a look of offended dignity at Fullalove). 
 
 After examining the field of battle and comparing 
 notes, they mounted Dodd on Vespasian's horse, and 
 walked quietly till Dodd's head got better ; and then 
 they cantered on three abreast, Vespasian in the middle 
 with one sinewy hand on each horse's mane ; and such 
 was his muscular power that he often relieved his feet 
 by lifting himself clean into the air : and the rest of 
 the time his toe but touched the ground : and he sailed 
 like an ostrich : and grinned and chattered like a monkey. 
 
 Sad to relate, neither Thibout nor Moinard was ended. 
 The guillotine stood on its rights. ]\[eantime, what was 
 left of them crawled back to the town stiff and sore, and 
 supped together — Moinard on liquids only — and vowed 
 revenge on all wrecked people. 
 
 The three reached Boulogne in time for the Xancy, 
 and put Dodd on board : the pair decided to go to the 
 Yankee paradise — Paris. 
 
 They parted with regret and tenderly, like old tried 
 friends ; and Vespasian told Dodd, with tears in his eyes, 
 that, though he was in point of fact only a darned anem- 
 one, he felt like a colored gemman at parting from his 
 dear old captain. 
 
 The master of the Nancy knew Dodd well, and gave 
 him a nice cot to sleep in. He tumbled in with a bad 
 headache and quite worn out, and never woke for fifteen 
 hours. 
 
 And when he did wake he was safe at Barkington. 
 
 He and It landed on the quay. He made for home. 
 
 On the way he passed Hardie's bank, a firm synonymous 
 in his mind with the Bank of England. 
 
 A thrill of joy went through him. Now It was safe.
 
 308 HARD CASH. 
 
 "When he first sewed It on in China, It seemed secure 
 nowhere except on his own person. But, since then, 
 tlie manifold perils by sea and land It had encountered 
 through being on him, had caused a strong reaction in 
 his mind on that point. He longed to see It safe out of 
 his own hands and in good custody. 
 
 He made for Hardie's door with a joyful rush, waved 
 his cap OTer his head in triumph, and entered the bank 
 with It. 
 
 Ah I
 
 HARD CASH. 309 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Chronology. — The Hard Cash sailed from Canton 
 months before the boat-race at Henley recorded in 
 Chapter I.,, but it landed in Barkington a fortnight 
 after the last home event I recorded in its true series. 
 
 Xo\v this fortnight, as it happens, was fruitful of 
 incidents, and must be dealt with at once. After that, 
 " love " and " cash," the converging branches of this 
 stor}', will flow together in one stream. 
 
 Alfred Hardie kept faith with ISIrs. Dodd, and, by an 
 effort she appreciated, forbore to express his love for 
 Julia except by the pen. He took in Lloyd's shipping 
 news, and got it down by rail in hopes there would be 
 something about the Agra ; then he could call at Albion 
 Yilla ; Mrs. Dodd had given him that loop-hole : mean- 
 time he kept hoping for an invitation, which never came. 
 
 Julia was now comparatively happy, and so indeed 
 was Alfred ; but then the male of our species likes to be 
 superlatively happy, not comparatively; and that Mrs. 
 Dodd forgot, or perhaps had not observed. 
 
 One day Sampson was at Albion Villa, and Alfred 
 knew it. Now, though it was a point of honor with 
 poor Alfred not to hang about after Julia until her 
 father's return, he had a perfect right to lay in wait 
 for Sampson, and hear something about her ; and he 
 was so deep in love that even a word at second-hand 
 from her lips was a drop of dew to his heart. 
 
 So he strolled up towards the villa. He had nearly 
 reached it, when a woman ran past him making the
 
 310 HAED CASH. 
 
 most extraordinary sounds ; I can only describe it as 
 screaming under her breath. Though he only saw her 
 back, he recognized Mrs. Maxley. One back differeth 
 from another, whatever you may have been told to the 
 contrary in novels and plays. He called to her ; she 
 took no notice, and darted wildly through the gate of 
 Albion Villa. Alfred's curiosity was excited, and he 
 ventured to put his head over the gate ; but Mrs. 
 Maxley had disappeared. 
 
 Alfred had half a mind to go in and inquire if 
 anything was the matter : it would be a good excuse. 
 
 While he hesitated, the dining-room windoAv was 
 thrown violently up, and Sampson looked out: "Hy! 
 Hardie ! my good fellow ! for heaven's sake a fly ! and 
 a fast one ! " 
 
 It was plain something very serious had occurred, so 
 Alfred flew towards the nearest fly-stand. On the way, 
 he fell in with a chance fly drawn up at a public-house ; 
 he jumped on the box and drove rapidly towards Albion 
 Villa. Sampson was hobbling to meet him — he had 
 sprained his ankle, or would not have asked for a con- 
 veyance ; to save time, he got up beside Alfred, and told 
 him to drive hard to Little Friar Street. On the way he 
 explained hurriedly : Mrs. Maxley had burst in on him 
 at Albion Villa to say her husband was dying in tor- 
 ment ; and indeed the symptoms she gave were alarm- 
 ing, and, if correct, looked very like lockjaw ; but her 
 description had been cut short by a severe attack, which 
 choked her and turned her speechless and motionless and 
 white to the very lips. 
 
 "'Oho,' sis I, 'brist-pang !' And at such a time, ye 
 know. But these women are as unseasonable as they 
 are unreasonable. Xow angina ])ictorls, or brist-pang, is 
 not curable through the lungs nor the stomick nor the 
 liver nor the stays nor the saucepan, as the bungliutink-
 
 HARD CASH. 311 
 
 erindox of the schools pretind, but onl}^ through that 
 mighty mainspring the brain ; and instid of going mean- 
 dering to the brain round by the stoniiek, and so giving 
 the wumman lots o' time to die first, which is the scho- 
 lastic practice, I wint at the brain direct, took a puff o' 
 chlorofm, put m' arm round her neck, laid her back in 
 a chair — she didn't struggle, for when this disorrder 
 grips ye, ye can't move hand nor foot — and had my 
 lady into the land of Xod in half a minute ; thin off t' 
 her husband ; so here's th' healer between two stools — 
 spare the whipcord, spoil the knacker ! — it would be a 
 good joke if I was to lose both pashints for want of 
 a little unbeequity, wouldn't it — Lash the lazy vagabin ! 
 — Not that I care : what interest have I in their lives ? 
 the}" never pay ; but, ye see, custom's second nature ; an 
 d'I've formed a vile habit : I've got to be a healer among 
 the killers ; an d'a Triton among — the millers ; here we 
 are at last, Hiven be praised." And he hopped into the 
 house faster than most people can run on a good errand. 
 Alfred flung the reins to a cad, and followed him. 
 
 The room was nearly full of terrified neighbors ; 
 Sampson shouldered them all roughly out of his way ; 
 and there, on a bed, lay Maxley's gaunt figure in agony. 
 
 His body was drawn up b}" the middle into an arch, 
 and nothing touched the bed but the head and the heels ; 
 the toes were turned back in the most extraordinary con- 
 tortion, and the teeth set by the rigor of the convulsion ; 
 and in the man's Avhite face and fixed eyes were the hor- 
 ror and anxiety that so often show themselves when the 
 body feels itself in the gripe of death. 
 
 Mr. Osmond, the surgeon, was there ; he had applied a 
 succession of hot cloths to the pit of the stomach, and 
 was trying to get laudanum down the throat, but the 
 clenched teeth were impassable. 
 
 He now looked up and said politely, "Ah! Dr.
 
 312 HARD CASH. 
 
 Sampson, I am glad to see you here. The seizure is 
 of a cataleptic nature, I apprehend. The treatment 
 hitherto has been hot epithems to the abdomen, and " — 
 
 Here Sampson, who had examined the patient keenly 
 and paid no more attention to Osmond than to a fly 
 buzzing, interrupted him as unceremoniously, — 
 
 " Poisoned," said he, philosophically. 
 
 " Poisoned ! " screamed the people. 
 
 "Poisoned!" cried Mr. Osmond, in whose little list 
 of stereotyped maladies poisoned had no place. "Is 
 there any one you have reason to suspect ? " 
 
 "I don't suspect nor conject, sir; I know. The man 
 is poisoned ; the substance, strychnine. Xow stand out 
 of the way, you gaping gabies, and let me work. Hy, 
 young Oxford ! you are a man ; get behind and hold both 
 his arms for your life ! That's you." 
 
 He whipped off his coat, laid hold of Osmond's 
 epithems, chucked them across the room, saying, " You 
 may just as well squirt rose-water at a house on fire," 
 drenched his handkerchief with chloroform, sprang upon 
 the patient like a mountain cat, and chloroformed him 
 with all his might. 
 
 Attacked so skilfully and resolutely, Maxley resisted 
 little for so strong a man ; but the potent poison Avithin 
 fought virulently : as a proof, the chloroform had to be 
 renewed three times before it could produce any effect. 
 At last the patient yielded to the fumes, and became 
 insensible. 
 
 Then the arched body subsided, and the rigid muscles 
 relaxed and turned supple. Sampson kneaded the man 
 like dough by way of comment. 
 
 " It is really very extraordinary," said Osmond. 
 
 "Mai — dearr — sirr — nothing's extraornary; t' a man 
 that knows the reason of iverything." 
 
 He then inquired if any one in the room had noticed 
 at what intervals of time the pains came on.
 
 HAED CASH. 313 
 
 " I am sorry to say it is continuous," said Osmond. 
 
 " ]\rai — dearr — sirr — notliing on airth is continuous •, 
 ivery thing has paroxysms and remissions — from a tooth- 
 ache t' a cancer." 
 
 He repeated his query in various forms, till at last a 
 little girl squeaked out: "If — you — please, sir, the 
 throes do come about every ten minutes, for I was 
 a-looking at the clock; I carries father his dinner at 
 twelve." 
 
 " If you please, ma'am, there's half a guinea for you 
 for not being such a n' ijjit as the rest of the world, 
 especially the dockers." And he jerked her half a 
 sovereign. 
 
 A stupor fell on the assembly. They awoke from it 
 to examine the coin and see if it was real, or only 
 yellow air. 
 
 Maxley came to, and gave a sigh of relief. When he 
 had been sensible, yet out of pain, nearly eight minutes 
 by the clock, Sampson chloroformed him again. " I'll 
 puzzle ye, my friend strych," said he. '-'How will ye 
 get your perriodical paroxysm Avhen the man is insensi- 
 ble ? The dox say y' act direct on the spinal marrow. 
 Well, there's the spinal marrow where you found it just 
 now. Act on it again, my lad ! I give ye leave — if ye 
 can. Ye can't ; bekase ye must pass through the brain 
 to get there ; and I occupy the brain with a swifter ajint 
 than y' are, and mean to keep y' out of it till your power 
 to kill evaporates, being a vigitable." 
 
 With this his spirits mounted, and he indulged in a 
 harmless and favorite fiction: he feigned the company 
 were all males and medical students, Osmond included, 
 and he the lecturer: "Now, jintlemen," said he, ''ob- 
 sairve the great therey of the perriodeecity and remit- 
 tency of all disease, in conjunckshin with its practice. 
 All diseases have paroxysms, and remissions, which
 
 314 HARD CASH. 
 
 occur at intervals ; sometimes it's a year, sometimes a 
 day, au hour, ten minutes ; but whatever th' interval, 
 they are true to it; they keep time. Only when the 
 disease is retirin', the remissions become longer, the par- 
 oxysms return at a greater interval ; and just the revairse 
 when the pashint is to die. This, jintlemen, is man's 
 life from the womb to the grave ; the throes that precede 
 his birth are remittent like iverything else, but come at 
 diminished intervals when he has really made up his 
 mind to be born (his first mistake, sirs, but not his last) ; 
 and the paroxysms of his mortal disease come at shorter 
 intervals when he is really goon off the hooks, but still 
 chronometrically, just as watches keep time whether 
 they go fast or slow. Now, jintlemen, isn't this a beau- 
 tiful therey ? " 
 
 • " Oh, mercy ! oh, good people, help me ! Jesus 
 Christ, have pity on me ! " And the sufferer's body was 
 bent like a bow, and his eyes filled with horror, and his 
 toes pointed at his chin. 
 
 The doctor hurled himself on the foe : " Come," said 
 he, "smell to this, lad! That's right! He is better 
 already, jintlemen, or he couldn't howl, ye know. Deevil 
 a howl in um before I gave um puff chlorofm. Ah ! 
 would ye ? would ye ? " 
 
 "Oh! oh! oh! oh! ugh! — ah!" 
 
 The doctor got off the insensible body, and resumed 
 his lecture calmly, like one who has disposed of some 
 childish interruption : " And now to th' application of 
 the therey : if the poison can reduce the tin minutes' 
 interval to five minutes, this pashint will die ; and if I 
 can get the tin minutes up t' half hour, this pashint will 
 live. Any way, jintlemen, we won't detain y' unreason- 
 ably ; the case shall be at an end by one o'clock." 
 
 On hearing this considerate stipulation, up went three 
 women's aprons to their eyes.
 
 HARD CASH. 315 
 
 "Alack! poor James Maxley ! lie is at his last liour; 
 it be just gone twelve, and a dies at one." 
 
 Sampson turned on the weepers. "Who says that, y' 
 ijjits ? I said the case would end at one : a case ends 
 when the pashint gets well, or dies." 
 
 "Oh, that is good news for poor Susan Maxley; her 
 man is to be well by one o'clock, doctor says." 
 
 Sampson groaned, and gave in. He was strong, but 
 not strong enough to make the populace suspend an 
 opinion. 
 
 Yet, raethinks it might be done by chloroforming 
 them. 
 
 The spasms camxe at longer intervals and less violent ; 
 and Maxley got so fond of the essence of insensibility, 
 that he asked to have some in his own hand to apply at 
 the first warning of the horrible pains. 
 
 Sampson said, " Any fool can complete the cure ; " 
 and, by way of practical comment, left him in Mr. 
 Osmond's charge, but with an understanding that the 
 treatment should not be varied, that no laudanum should 
 be given ; but, in due course, a stiff tumbler of brandy 
 and water, or two. " If he gets drunk, all the better ; a 
 little intoxication weakens the body's memory of the 
 pain it has endured, and so expedites the cure. Now off 
 we go to th' other." 
 
 "The body's memory!" said IMr. Osmond to himself; 
 " what on earth does the quack mean ? " 
 
 The driver, de jure, of the fly, was not quite drunk 
 enough to lose his horse and vehicle without missing 
 them. He was on the lookout for the robber; and, as 
 Alfred came round the corner full pelt, darted at the 
 reins with a husky remonstrance, and Alfred cut into 
 him with the whip : an angry explanation — a guinea — 
 and behold, the driver sitting behind, complacent and 
 nodding.
 
 316 HARD CASH. 
 
 Arrived at Albion Villa, Alfred asked Sampson sub- 
 missively if he might come in and see the wife cured. 
 
 " Why, of course," said Sampson, not knowing the 
 delicate position. 
 
 "Then ask me in before Mrs. Dodd," murmured 
 Alfred, coaxingly. 
 
 " Oo, ay," said the doctor, knowingly. " I see." 
 
 Mrs. Maxley was in the dining-room ; she had got well 
 of herself, but was crying bitterly, and the ladies would 
 not let her go home yet ; they feared the worst, and that 
 some one would blurt it out of her. 
 
 To this anxious trio entered Sampson, radiant : " There, 
 it's all right. Come, little Maxley, ye needn't cry ; he 
 has got lots more mischief to do in the world, yet; but, 
 oh, wumman, it is lucky you came to me and not to any 
 of the tinkering dox. No more cat and dog for you and 
 liim, but for the clironothairmal therey ; and you may 
 bless my puppy's four bones, too ; he ran and stole a fly 
 like a man, and drove hilter-skilter ; now, if I had got 
 to your house two minutes later, your Jamie would have 
 lairned the great secret ere this." He threw up the 
 window. " Haw, you ! come away, and receive the 
 applause due from beauty t' ajeelity." 
 
 Alfred came in timidly, and was received with perfect 
 benignity and self-possession by Mrs. Dodd ; but Julia's 
 face was dyed with blushes, and her eyes sparkled the 
 eloquent praise she was ashamed to speak before them 
 all. But such a face as hers scarce needed the help of a 
 voice at such a time. And, indeed, both the lovers' faces 
 were a pretty sight, and a st\idy. How they stole loving 
 glances ! but tried to keep within bounds, and not steal 
 more than three per minute ! and how unconscious they 
 endeavored to look the intervening seconds ! and what 
 windows were the demure complacent visages they 
 thought they were making shutters of! Innocent love
 
 HARD CASH. 317 
 
 has at least this advantage over melodramatic, that it 
 can extract exquisite sweetness out of so small a thing. 
 These sweethearts were not alone, could not open their 
 hearts, must not even gaze too long ; yet to be in the 
 same room even on such terms was a taste of heaven. 
 
 "But, dear heart!" said Mrs. Maxley, "ye don't tell 
 me what he ailed. Ma'am, if you had seen him, you 
 would have said he was taken for death." 
 
 " Pray what is the complaint ? " inquired Mrs. Dodd. 
 
 " Oh, didn't I tell ye ? poisoned." 
 
 This intelligence was conveyed with true scientific 
 calmness, and received with feminine ejaculations of 
 horror. Mrs. Maxley was indignant into the bargain: 
 " Don't ye go giving my house an ill name ! We keeps 
 no poison." 
 
 Sampson fixed his eyes sternly on her: " Wumman, ye 
 know better : ye keep strychnine for th' use and delec- 
 tation of your domistic animal." 
 
 " Strychnine ! I never heard tell of it. Is that Latin 
 for arsenic ? " 
 
 "Now isn't this lamentable? Why, arsenic is a 
 mital, strychnine a vigitable. Nlist me ! Your man 
 was here seeking strychnine to poison his mouse, a 
 harmless, domistic, necessary mouse : I told him mice 
 were a part of nature as much as Maxleys, and life as 
 sweet tit as tim ; but he was dif to sceintitic and chris- 
 chin preceps, so I told him to go to the Deevil ; ' I will,' 
 sis he, and went t' a docker. The two assassins have 
 poisoned the poor beastie between 'em ; and thin, been 
 the greatest miser in the world, except one, he will have 
 roasted his victim, and ate her on the sly, imprignated 
 with strychnine. 'I'll steal a march on t'other miser,' 
 sis he, and that's you ; t' his brain flew the strychnine ; 
 his brain sint it to his spinal marrow, and we found my 
 lorrd bent like a bow, and his jaw locked, and nearer
 
 318 HARD CASH. 
 
 knowin' the great secret than any man in England will 
 be this year to live : and sairves the assassinating old 
 vagibin right." 
 
 ''Heaven forgive you, doctor," said Mrs. Maxley, half 
 mechanically. 
 
 " For curin a murrderer ? Not likely." 
 
 Mrs. Maxley, who had shown signs of singular uneasi- 
 ness during Sampson's explanation, now rose, and said, 
 in a very peculiar tone, she must go home directly. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd seemed to enter into her feelings, and 
 made her go in the fly, taking care to pay the fare and 
 the driver out of her own purse. As the woman got 
 into the fly, Sampson gave her a piece of friendly and 
 practical advice. " Nixt time he has a mind to breakfast 
 on strychnine, you tell me; and I'll put a pinch of 
 arsenic in the saltcellar, and cure him safe as the 
 bank. But this time he'd have been did, and stiff, 
 long before such a slow ajint as arsenic could get a hold 
 on nm." 
 
 They sat down to luncheon, but neither Alfred nor 
 Julia fed much, except upon sweet, stolen looks; and 
 soon the active Sampson jumped up, and invited Alfred 
 to go round his patients. Alfred could not decline, but 
 made his adieus with regret so tender and undisguised, 
 that Julia's sweet eyes filled, and her soft hand instinct- 
 ively pressed his at parting to console him. She blushed 
 at herself afterwards, but at the time she was thinking 
 only of him. 
 
 Maxley and his wife came up in the evening with a 
 fee. They had put their heads together, and proffered 
 one guinea. "Man and wife be one flesh, you know, 
 doctor," said the rustic miser. 
 
 Sampson, whose natural choler was constantly checked 
 by his humor, declined this profuse proposal. " Here's 
 vanity!" said he; "now do you really think your two
 
 HARD CASH. 319 
 
 lives are worth a guinea ? Why, it's two hundred and 
 fiftj^-two pence ! ten liundred and eight fartliings ! " 
 
 The pair affected disappointment : vilely. 
 
 At all events, he must accept this basket of gudgeons 
 Maxley had brought along. Being poisoned Avas quite 
 out of Maxley's daily routine, and had so unsettled him 
 that he had got up, and gone fishing, to the amazement 
 of the parish, 
 
 Sampson inspected the basket. " Why, they are only 
 fish ! " said he. " / ivas in hoj)€s they were pashints." 
 He accepted the gudgeons, and inquired how Maxley 
 got poisoned. It came out that Mrs. Maxley, seeing her 
 husband set apart a portion of his Welsh rabbit, had 
 " grizzled," and asked what that was for ? and being told 
 "for the mouse," and to "mind her own business," had 
 grizzled still more, and furtively conveyed a portion 
 back into the pan for her master's own use. She had 
 been quaking dismally all the afternoon at what she had 
 done; but finding Maxley — hard but just — did not 
 attack her for an involuntary fault, she now brazened it 
 out and said, " Men didn't ought to have poison in the 
 house unbeknown to their wives. Jem had got no more 
 than he worked for," etc. But, like a woman, she 
 vowed vengeance on the mouse ; whereupon Maxley 
 threatened her with the marital correction of neck- 
 twisting, if she laid a finger on it. 
 
 " My eyes be open now to what a poor creature do feel 
 as dies poisoned. Let her a-be ; there's room in our 
 place for her and we." 
 
 Next day he met Alfred, and thanked him with 
 warmth, almost with emotion. " There ain't many in 
 Barkington as ever done me a good turn. Master Alfred; 
 you be one on em ; you comes after the captain in my 
 book now." 
 
 Alfred suggested that his claims were humble com- 
 pared with Sampson's.
 
 320 HARD CASH. 
 
 "No, no," said Maxley, going down to his whisper, 
 and looking monstrous wise; "doctor didn't go out of 
 business for me ; you did." 
 
 The sage miser's gratitude had not time to die a 
 natural death before circumstances occurred to test it. 
 On the morning of that eventful day, which concluded 
 my last chapter, he received a letter from Canada. His 
 wife was out with eggs ; so he caught little Rose Sutton, 
 that had more than once spelled an epistle for him, and 
 she read it out in a loud and reckless whine : " ' At — 
 noon — this — very — dale — Muster — Hardie's a-g-e-n-t 
 
 — aguent — d-i-s dis, h-o-n — Honored — dis-Honorec? — 
 a — bill ; and sayed.' " Here she made a full stop. 
 Then on to the next verse. 
 
 " * There — were no — more — asses.' " 
 
 "Mercy on us! but it can't be asses, wench: drive 
 your spe-ad into't again." 
 
 " ' A-s-s-e-t-s. Assets.' " 
 
 " Ah ! Go an ! go an ! " 
 
 " ' Now — Fatther — if — you — leave — a s-h-i-1-l-i-n-g 
 shilling — at — Hardie's — after — this — b-1-a-m-e — 
 ble-am — your — self — not — me — for — this — is — 
 the — waie — the — r-o-g-u-e-s — rogews — all — bre-ak 
 
 — they — go — at — a — d-i-s-t-a-n-c-e — distance — first 
 
 — and — then — at — h-o-m-e — whuoame. Dear — 
 fatther ' — Lawk o'daisy, what ails you, Daddy Maxley ? 
 You be as white as a Sunday smock. Be you poisoned 
 again, if you please ? " 
 
 " Worse than that — worse i " groaned Maxley, trem- 
 bling all over. " Hush I — hold your tongue ! Give me 
 that letter ! Don't you never tell nobody nothing of 
 what you have been a-reading to me, and I'll — I'll — 
 It's only Jem's fun : he is alius running his rigs — that's 
 a good wench now, and I'll give ye a halfpenny." 
 
 " La, daddy," said the child, opening her eyes, " I
 
 HARD CASH. 821 
 
 never heeds what I re-ads: I be wrapped up in the spell- 
 ing. Dear heart, what a sight of long words folks puts 
 in a letter, more than ever drops out of their mouths ; 
 which their fingers be longer than their tongues, I do 
 suppose." 
 
 ]\raxley hailed this information characteristically : 
 ''Then we'll say no more about the halfpenny." 
 
 At this Rose raised a lamentable cry, and pearly tears 
 gushed forth. 
 
 "There, there," said Maxley, deprecatingly ; "here's 
 two apples for ye : ye can't get them for less, and a half- 
 penny or a ha'porth is all one to you : but it is a great 
 odds to me. And apples they rot ; halfpence don't." 
 
 It was now nine o'clock. The bank did not open till 
 ten ; but Maxley went and hung about the door, to be 
 the first applicant. 
 
 As he stood there trembling with fear lest the bank 
 should not open at all, he thought hard, and the result 
 was a double resolution : he would have his money out 
 to the last shilling, and, this done, would button up his 
 pockets and padlock his tongue. It was not his busi- 
 ness to take care of his neighbors, nor to blow the 
 Hardies, if they paid him his money on demand. " So 
 not a word to my missus, nor yet to the town-crier," 
 said he. 
 
 Ten o'clock struck, and the bank shutters remained 
 up. Five minutes more, and the watcher was in agony. 
 Three minutes more, and up came a boy of sixteen 
 whistling, and took down the shutters with an indiffer- 
 ence that amazed him. '-Bless your handsome face!" 
 said Maxley, with a sigh of relief. 
 
 He now summoned all his firmness, and, having re- 
 course to an art in which these shrewd rustics are 
 supreme, made his face quite inexpressive, and so walked 
 into the bank the every -day Maxley, externally; but, 
 21
 
 322 HARD CASH. 
 
 within, a volcano ready to burst if there should be the 
 slightest hesitation to pay him his money. 
 
 "Good-morning, Mr. Maxlcy," said young Skinner. 
 
 "Good-morning, sir," 
 
 " What can we do for you ? " 
 
 "Oh, I'll wait my turn, sir." 
 
 " Well, it is your turn now, if you like." 
 
 " How much have you got of mine, if you please, sir ? " 
 
 "Your balance? I'll see. Nine hundred and four 
 pounds." 
 
 "Well, sir, then if you please, I'll draa tliatP 
 
 " It has come," thought Skinner. " What, going to 
 desert us ? " he stammered. 
 
 "^STo," said the other, trembling inwardly, but not 
 moving a facial muscle ; " it is only for a day or two, 
 sir." 
 
 " Ah ! I see, going to make a purchase. By-the-by, 
 I believe Mr. Hardie means to offer you some grounds 
 he is buying outside the town; will that suit your 
 book ? " 
 
 " I dare say it will, sir." 
 
 " Then perhaps you will wait till our governor comes 
 in?" 
 
 " I have no objection." 
 
 "He won't be long. Pine weather for the gardens, 
 Mr. Maxley." 
 
 " Moderate, sir. I'll take my money, if you please. 
 Counting of it out, that will help pass the time till 
 Muster Hardie comes. You ha'n't made away with it ? " 
 
 " What d'ye mean, sir ? " 
 
 " Hardies hain't turned thieves, be they ? " 
 
 " Are you mad or intoxicated, James Maxley ? " 
 
 " Neither, sir ; but I wants my own, and I wool have 
 it too : so count out on this here counter, or I'll cry the 
 town round that there door."
 
 HARD CASH. 323 
 
 " Henry, score James Maxley's name off the books," 
 said Skinner, with cool dignity. But, when he had said 
 this, he was at his wits' end : there Avere not nine hun- 
 dred pounds of hard cash in the bank, nor anything 
 like it.
 
 324 HARD CASH. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Skinner — called " young " because he had once had 
 a father on the premises — was the mole-catcher. The 
 feelings with which he had now for some months watched 
 his master grubbing, were curiously mingled. There 
 was the grim sense of superiority every successful de- 
 tective feels as he sees the watched one working away 
 unconscious of the eye that is on him ; but this was 
 more than balanced by a long habit of obsequious rever- 
 ence. When A has been looking up to B for thirty 
 years, he cannot look down on him all of a sudden, 
 merely because he catches him falsifying accounts. Wh}^, 
 man is a cooking animal ; bankrupt man especially. 
 
 And then Richard Hardie overpowered Skinner's 
 senses : he was dignity in person ; he was six feet two, 
 and always wore a black surtout buttoned high, and a 
 hat with a brim a little broader than his neighbors, yet 
 not broad enough to be eccentric or slang. He moved 
 down the street touching his hat, — while other hats 
 were lifted high to him, — a walking column of cash. 
 And when he took off this ebon crown, and sat in the 
 bank parlor, he gained in appearance more than he lost, 
 for then his whole head was seen, long, calm, majestic ; 
 that senatorial front, and furrowed face, overawed all 
 comers : even the little sharp-faced clerk would stand 
 and peep at it utterly puzzled between what he knew 
 and what he eyed ; nor could he look at that head and 
 face without excusing them. What a lot of money they 
 must have sunk before they came down to fabricating 
 a balance-sheet !
 
 HARD CASH. 325 
 
 And by and by custom somewhat blunted his sense 
 of the dishonesty, and he began to criticise the thing 
 arithmetically instead of morally ; that view once ad- 
 mitted, he was charmed with the ability and subtlety of 
 his dignitied sharper; and so the mole-catcher began 
 gradually, but effectually, to be corrupted by the mole. 
 He who watches a dishonest process and does not stop 
 it, is half-way towards conniving ; who connives, is half- 
 way towards abetting. 
 
 The next thing was. Skinner felt mortified at his mas- 
 ter not trusting him. Did he think old Bob Skinner's 
 son would blow on Hardie after all these years ? 
 
 This rankled a little, and set him to console himself 
 by admiring his own cleverness in penetrating this great 
 distrustful man. Now of all sentiments vanity is the 
 most restless and the surest to peep out. Skinner was 
 no sooner inflated, than his demure, obsequious manner 
 underwent a certain change ; slight and occasional only ; 
 but Hardie was a subtle man, and the perilous path he 
 was treading made him wonderfully watchful, suspicious, 
 and sagacious ; he said to himself, " What has come to 
 Skinner ? I must know." So he quietly watched his 
 watcher, and soon satisfied himself he suspected some- 
 thing amiss. From that hour Skinner was a doomed 
 clerk. 
 
 It was two o'clock; Hardie had just arrived, and sat 
 in the parlor Cato-like, and cooking. 
 
 Skinner was in high spirits ; it was owing to his pres- 
 ence of mind the bank had not been broken some hours 
 ago by Maxley : so now, while concluding his work, he 
 was enjoying by anticipation his employer's gratitude. 
 "He can't hold aloof after this," said Skinner; "he 
 must honor me with his confidence. And I will deserve 
 it. I do deserve it." 
 
 A grave, calm, passionless voice invited him into the 
 parlor.
 
 326 HAED CASH. 
 
 He descended from his desk and went in, swelling 
 with demure complacency. 
 
 He found Mr. Hardie seated garbling his accounts 
 with surpassing dignity. The great man handed him an 
 envelope, and cooked majestic on. A wave of that 
 imperial hand, and Skinner had mingled with the past. 
 
 For know that the envelope contained three things : 
 a check for a month's wages, a character, and a dismissal, 
 very polite, and equally peremptory. 
 
 Skinner stood paralyzed : the complacency died out 
 of his face, and rueful wonder came instead. It Avas 
 some time before he could utter a word ; at last he fal- 
 tered, " Turn me away, sir ? turn away Noah Skinner ! 
 Your father would never have said such a word to viy 
 father." Skinner uttered this his first remonstrance in 
 a voice trembling with awe, but gathered courage when 
 he found he had done it, yet lived. 
 
 Mr. Hardie evaded his expostulation by a very simple 
 means ; he made no reply, but continued his work, digni- 
 fied as Brutus, inexorable as fate, cool as cucumber. 
 
 Skinner's anger began to rise. He watched Mr. 
 Hardie in silence, and said to himself, "Curse you! you 
 were born without a heart !" 
 
 He waited, however, for some sign of relenting ; and, 
 hoping for it, the water came into his own eyes. But 
 Hardie was impassive as ice. 
 
 Then the little clerk, mortified to the core, as well as 
 wounded, ground his teeth, and drew a little nearer to 
 this incarnate Arithmetic, and said with an excess of 
 obsequiousness, " Will you condescend to give me a 
 reason for turning me away all in a moment, after five 
 and thirty years' faithful services ? " 
 
 " Men of business do not deal in reasons," was the 
 cool reply ; " it is enough for you that I give you an 
 excellent character, and that we part good friends."
 
 HARD CASH. 327 
 
 " That we do not," replied Skinner sharply ; " if we 
 stay together, we are friends : but we part enemies, if 
 Ave do part." 
 
 "As you please, Mr. Skinner. I will detain you no 
 longer." 
 
 And Mr. Hardie waved him away so grandly, that he 
 started and almost ran to the door. When he felt the 
 handle, it acted like a prop to his heart. He stood firm, 
 and rage supplied the place of steady courage. He clung 
 to the door, and whispered at his master ; such a whis- 
 per ! so loud, so cutting, so full of meaning and malice ; 
 it was like a serpent hissing at a man. " But I'll give 
 you a reason, a good reason, why you had better not 
 insult me so cruel ; and what is more, I'll give you two : 
 and one is that but for me the bank must have closed 
 this day at ten o'clock — ay, you may stare ; it was I 
 saved it, not you : and the other is that, if you make an 
 enemy of me, you are done for. I know too much to be 
 made an enemy of, sir, — a great deal too much." 
 
 At this, jSIr. Hardie raised his head from his book and 
 eyed his crouching, venomous assailant full in the face, 
 majestically, as one can fancy a lion rearing his ponder- 
 ous head, and looking lazily and steadily at a snake that 
 has just hissed in a corner. Each word of Skinner's 
 was a barbed icicle to him : yet not a muscle of his close 
 countenance betra3'ed his inward suffering. 
 
 One thing, however, even he could not master, his 
 blood ; it retired from that stoical cheek to the chilled 
 and foreboding heart; and the sudden pallor of the 
 resolute face told Skinner his shafts had gone home. 
 "Come, sir," said he, affecting to mingle good-fellowship 
 with his defiance ; " why bundle me off these premises, 
 when you will be bundled off them yourself before the 
 week is out ? " 
 
 " You insolent scoundrel ! Humph ! explain, Mr. 
 Skinner."
 
 328 HARD CASH. 
 
 "Ah, what! have I warmed your marble up a bit? 
 Yes, I'll explain. The bank is rotten, and can't last 
 fort^'-eight hours." 
 
 "Oh, indeed! blighted in a day — by the dismissal of 
 Mr. Xoah Skinner. Do not repeat that after you have 
 been turned into the streets, or you will be indicted; at 
 present we are confidential. Anything more before you 
 quit the rotten bank ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir, plenty. I'll tell you your own history, past, 
 present, and to come. The road to riches is hard and 
 rugged to the likes of me ; but your good father made it 
 smooth and easy to you, sir ; you had only to take the 
 money of a lot of fools that fancy they can't keep it 
 themselves ; invest it in consols and exchequer bills, 
 live on half the profits, put by the rest, and roll in 
 wealth. But this was too slow, and too sure, for you ; 
 you must be Rothschild in a day ; so you went into 
 blind speculation, and flung old Mr. Hardie's savings 
 into a well. And now, for the last eight months, you 
 have been doctoring the ledger ; " Hardie winced just 
 perceptibly; "you have put down our gains in white, 
 our losses in black, and so you keep feeding your pocket- 
 book and emptying our tills : the peai; will soon be 
 ripe, and then you will let it drop, and into the bank- 
 ruptcy court we go. But, what you forget, fraudulent 
 bankruptcy isn't the turnpike way of trade : it is a 
 broad road, but a crooked one : skirts the prison-wall, 
 sir, and sights the herring-pond." 
 
 An agony went across Mr. Hardie's great face ; and 
 seemed to furrow as it ran. 
 
 "Not but what j/on are all right, sir," resumed his 
 little cat-like tormentor, letting him go a little way, to 
 nail him again by and by : "you have cooked the books 
 in time ; and Cocker was a fool to you. 'Twill be all 
 down in black and white. Great sacrifices: no reserve:
 
 HARD CASH. 329 
 
 creditors take everything ; dividend fourpence in the 
 pound, furniture of house and bank, JNIrs. Hardie's por- 
 trait, and down to the coal-scuttle. Bankrupt saves noth- 
 ing but his honor, and — the six thousand pounds or so 
 he has stitched into his old great-coat: hands his new- 
 one to the official assignees, like an honest man." 
 
 Hardie uttered something between a growl and a 
 moan. 
 
 " Now comes the per contra : poor little despised Noah 
 Skinner has kept genuine books, while you have been 
 preparing false ones. I took the real figures home every 
 afternoon on loose leaves, and bound 'em : and very 
 curious they will read in court alongside of yours. I did 
 it for amusement o' nights ; I'm so solitary and so fond 
 of figures : I must try and turn them to profit : for I'm 
 out of place now in my old age. Dearee me ! how 
 curious that you should go and pick out me of all men, 
 to turn into the street like a dog — like a dog — like a 
 dog.'' 
 
 Hardie turned his head away ; and, in that moment of 
 humiliation and abject fear, drank all the bitterness of 
 moral death. 
 
 His manhood urged him to defy Skinner and return to 
 the straight path, cost what it might. But how could 
 he ? His own books were all falsified. He could place 
 a true total before his creditors by simply adding the 
 contents of his secret hoard to the assets of the bank ; 
 but with this true arithmetical result he could not square 
 his books, except by ;onjectural and fabricated details, 
 which would be detected, and send him to prison ; for 
 who would believe he was lying in figures only to .get 
 back to the truth? No; he had entangled himself in his 
 own fraud, and was at the mercy of his servant. He 
 took his line. " Skinner, it was your interest to leave 
 me whilst the bank stood ; then you would have got a
 
 oSO HARD CASH. 
 
 place directly ; but since you take umbrage at my dis- 
 missing you for your own good, I must punish you — by 
 keeping you." 
 
 " I am quite ready to stay and serve you, sir," replied 
 Skinner hastilj^ ; " and as for my angry words, think no 
 more of them ! it went to my heart to be turned away 
 at the very time you need me most." 
 
 " Hypocritical rogue ! " thought Hardie. " That is 
 true, Skinner," said he ; "I do indeed need a faithful 
 and sympathizing servant, to advise, support, and aid me. 
 Ask yourself whether any man in England needs a con- 
 fidant more than I ! It was bitter at first to be discov- 
 ered even by you : but now I am glad you know all ; for 
 I see I have undervalued your ability as well as your 
 zeal." 
 
 Thus Mr. Hardie bowed his pride to flatter Skinner : 
 and soon saw by the little fellow's heightened color that 
 this was the way to make him a clerk of wax. 
 
 The banker and his clerk were reconciled. Then the 
 latter was invited to commit himself by carrying on the 
 culinary process in his own hand. He trembled a little : 
 but complied, and so became an accomplice ; on this his 
 master took him into his confidence, and told him every- 
 thing it was impossible to hide from him. 
 
 '• And now, sir," said Skinner, *' let me tell you what 
 I did for you this morning. Then perhaps you won't 
 wonder at my being so peppery. Maxley suspects: he 
 came here and drew out every shilling. I was all in a 
 perspiration what to do. But I put a good face on, 
 and " — 
 
 Skinner then confided to his principal how he had 
 evaded Maxley, and saved the bank ; and the stratagem 
 seemed so incredible and droll, that they both laughed 
 over it long and loud. And in fact it turned out a first- 
 rate practical jest ; cost two lives.
 
 HARD CASH. 331 
 
 While they were laughing, the young clerk looked in, 
 and said, ''Captain Dodd, to speak with you, sir." 
 
 " Captain Dodd ! " And all Mr. Hardie's forced merri- 
 ment died awa}^ and his face betrayed his vexation for 
 once. " Did you go and tell him I was here ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir ; I have no orders ; and he said you would 
 be sure to see him." 
 
 " Unfortunate ! Well, you may show him in when I 
 ring your bell." 
 
 The youngster being gone, Mr. Hardie explained to 
 his new ally in a few hurried words the danger that 
 threatened him from Miss Julia Dodd. " And now," 
 said he, " the women have sent her father to soften his. 
 I shall be told his girl will die if she can't have my boy, 
 etc. As if I care who lives or dies." 
 
 On this Skinner got up all in a hurry, and offered to 
 go into the office. 
 
 " On no account," said Mr. Hardie, sharply. " I shall 
 make my business with you the excuse for cutting this 
 love-nonsense mighty short. Take your book to the 
 desk, and seem buried in it." 
 
 He then touched the bell, and both confederates fell 
 into an attitude ; never were a pair so bent over their 
 little accounts ; lies, like themselves. 
 
 Instead of the heart-broken father their comedy awaited, 
 in came the gallant sailor with a brown cheek reddened 
 by triumph and excitement, and almost shouted in a 
 genial, jocund voice, "How d'ye do, sir? It is a long 
 time since I came across your hawse." And with this he 
 held out his hand cordially. Hardie gave his mechanic- 
 ally, and remained on his guard ; but somewhat puzzled. 
 Dodd shook his cold hand heartily. " Well, sir, liere I 
 am, just come ashore, and visiting you before my very 
 wife : what d'ye think of that ? " 
 
 " I am highly honored, sir," said Hardie : then, rather
 
 332 HARD CASH. 
 
 stiffly and incredulously, "And to what may I owe this 
 extraordinary preference ? Will you be good enough to 
 state the purport of this visit — briefly — as Mr. Skinner 
 and I are much occupied." 
 
 " The purport ? Why, what does one come to a banker 
 about ? I have got a lot of money I want to get rid 
 of." 
 
 Hardie stared; but was as much on his guard as ever; 
 only more and more puzzled. 
 
 Then David winked at him with simple cunning, took 
 out his knife, undid his shirt, and began to cut the 
 threads which bound the cash to his flannel. 
 
 At this Skinner wheeled round on his stool to look, 
 and both he and Mr. Hardie inspected the unusual panto- 
 mime with demure curiosity. 
 
 Dodd next removed the oilskin cover, and showed the 
 pocket-book, brought it down with a triumphant smack 
 on the hollow of his hand, and, in the pride of his heart, 
 the joy of his bosom, and the fever of his blood — for 
 there were two red spots on his cheek all the time — told 
 the cold pair its adventures in a few glowing words ; the 
 Calcutta firm, — the two pirates, — the hurricane, — the 
 wreck, — the land-sharks, — he had saved it from. " And 
 here it is, safe in spite of them all. But I won't carry it 
 on me any more ; it is unlucky : so you must be so good 
 as to take charge of it for me, sir." 
 
 "Very well, Captain Dodd. You wish it placed to 
 Mrs. Dodd's account, I suppose." 
 
 "No! no! I have nothing to do with that: this is 
 between you and me." 
 
 " As you please," 
 
 " Ye see it is a good lump, sir." 
 
 " Oh, indeed ! " said Hardie, a little sneeringly. 
 
 " I call it a thundering lot o' money. But I suppose it 
 is not much to a rich banker like you." Then he lowered
 
 HARD CASH. 333 
 
 his voice, and said with a certain awe : " It's — fourteen 
 — thousand — pounds." 
 
 "Fourteen thousand pounds!" cried Hardie. Then 
 with sudden and consummate coolness, " Why, certainly 
 an established bank like this deals with more consider- 
 able deposits than that. Skinner, why don't you give 
 the man a chair ? " 
 
 " No, no ! " said Dodd. " I'll heave to till I get this off 
 my mind ; but I won't anchor anywhere but at home." 
 He then opened the pocket-book and spread the contents 
 out before Mr. Hardie, who ran over the notes and bills, 
 and said the amount was £14,010. 12s. 6d. 
 
 Dodd asked for a receipt. 
 
 " Why, it is not usual, when there is an account." 
 
 Dodd's countenance fell : " Oh, I should not like to 
 part with it, unless I had a receipt." 
 
 " You mistake me," said Hardie, with a smile. " An 
 entry in your banker's books is a receipt. However, you 
 can have one in another form." He then unlocked a 
 desk ; took out a banker's receipt ; and told Skinner to 
 fill it in. This done, he seemed to be absorbed in some 
 more important matter. 
 
 Skinner counted the notes and left them Avith Mr. 
 Hardie ; the bills he took to his desk to note them on 
 the back of the receipt. Whilst he was writing this 
 with his usual slowness and precision, poor Dodd's heart 
 oveiflowed: "It is my children's fortune, ye see: I don't 
 look on a sixpence of it as mine : that it is what made 
 me so particular. It belongs to my little Julia, bless 
 her ! — she is a rosebud if ever there was one ; and oh, 
 such a heart ; and so fond of her poor father ; but not 
 fonder than he is of her — and to my dear boy Edward; 
 he is the honestest young chap you ever saw : what he 
 says, 3'ou may swear to, with your eyes shut ; but how 
 could they miss either good looks or good hearts, and
 
 334 HARD CASH. 
 
 her children ? the best wife and the best mother in Eng- 
 land. She has been a true consort to me this many a 
 year, and I to her, in deep water and shoal, let the wind 
 blow high or low. Here is a Simple Simon vaunting his 
 own flesh and blood! No wonder that little gentleman 
 there is grinning at me: well, grin away, lad! perhaps 
 you haven't got any children. But you have, sir: and 
 you know how it is with us fathers ; our hearts are so 
 full of the little darlings, out it must come. You can 
 understand how joyful I feel at saving their fortune 
 from land sharks and sea sharks, and landing it safe in 
 an honest man's hands, like you and your father before 
 you." 
 
 Skinner handed him the receipt. 
 
 He cast his eye over it. " All right, little gentleman. 
 Now my heart is relieved of such a weight : I feel to 
 have just cleared out a cargo of bricks. Good-by ! 
 shake hands ! I wish you were as happy as I am. I 
 wish all the world was happy. God bless you ! God 
 bless you both ! " 
 
 And with this burst he was out of the room, and 
 making ardently for Albion Villa. 
 
 The banker and his clerk turned round on their seats 
 and eyed one another a long time in silence and amaze- 
 ment. 
 
 Was this thing a dream ? their faces seemed to ask. 
 
 Then Mr. Hardie rested his senatorial head on his 
 hand, and pondered deeply. Skinner, too, reflected on 
 this strange freak of fortune : and the result was that he 
 burst in on his principal's reverie with a joyful shout: 
 "The bank is saved ! Hardie's is good for another hun- 
 dred years." 
 
 The banker started, for Skinner's voice sounded like a 
 pistol-shot in his ear, so high strung Avas he with 
 thought.
 
 HARD CASH. 335 
 
 "Hush! hush!" he said: and pondered again in 
 silence. 
 
 At last he turned to Skinner. " You think our course 
 is plain ? I tell you it is so dark and complicated, it 
 would puzzle Solomon to know what is best to be done." 
 
 "Save the bank, sir! whatever you do." 
 
 " How can I save the bank with a few thousand pounds, 
 which I must refund when called on ? You look keenly 
 into what is under your eye. Skinner ; but you cannot 
 see a yard beyond your nose. Let me think." 
 
 After awhile he took a sheet of paper, and jotted 
 down " the materials," as he called them, and read them 
 out to his accomplice. 
 
 " 1. A bank too far gone to be redeemed. If I throw 
 this money into it, I shall ruin Captain Dodd, and do 
 myself no good, but only my creditors. 
 
 " 2. Miss Julia Dodd, virtual proprietor of this four- 
 teen thousand pounds : or of the greater part, if I 
 choose. The child that marries first usually jockeys the 
 other. 
 
 " 3. Alfred Hardie, my son and my creditor, deep in 
 love with Ko. 2, and at present somewhat alienated from 
 me by my thwarting a silly love affair; which bids fair 
 to improve into a sound negotiation. 
 
 "4. The fourteen thousand pounds paid to me per- 
 sonally after banking hours, anri not entered on the 
 banking books, nor known but to you and me, 
 
 "Now suppose I treat this advance as a personal trust? 
 The bank breaks ; the money disappears. Consternation 
 of the Dodds, who, until enlightened by the public set- 
 tlement, will think it has gone into the well. 
 
 "In that interval I talk Alfred over; and promise to 
 produce the fourteen thousand pounds intact, with my 
 paternal blessing on him and Miss Dodd ; provided he 
 will release me from my debt to him, and give me a life
 
 336 HARD CASH. 
 
 interest in half the money settled ou him by ray wife's 
 father to my most unjust and insolent exclusion. Their 
 passion will soon bring the young people to reason ; and 
 then they will soon melt the old ones." 
 
 Skinner was struck with this masterly little sketch. 
 But he detected one fatal flaw : " You don't say what is 
 to become of me." 
 
 '' Oh, I haven't thought of that yet." 
 
 '•But do think of it, sir! that I may have the pleasure 
 of co-operating. It would never do for you and me to be 
 pulling two ways, you know." 
 
 '• I will not forget you," said Hardie, wincing under 
 the chain this little wretch held him with, and had 
 jerked him by way of reminder. 
 
 "But surely, Skinner, you agree with me it would be 
 a sin and a shame to rob this honest captain of his 
 money — for my creditors; curse them! Ah, you are 
 not a father. How quickly he found that out ! Well, I 
 am ; and he touched me to the quick ; I love my little 
 Jane as dearly as he loves his Julia, every bit ; and I 
 feel for him. And then he put me in mind of my own 
 father ; poor man. That seems strange, doesn't it ? a 
 sailor ; and a banker. Ah ! it was because they Avere 
 both honest men. Yes, it was like a wholesome flower 
 coming into a close room, and then out again and leaving 
 a whiff behind, was that sailor. He left the savor of 
 probity and simplicity behind, though he took the things 
 themselves away again. Why, why couldn't he leave us 
 what is more wanted here than even his money? His 
 integrity ; the pearl of price, that my father, whom I 
 used to sneer at, carried to his grave ; and died simple, 
 but wise ; honest, but rich ; rich in money, in credit, in 
 honor, and eternal hopes ; Skinner ! Skinner ! I wish 
 I had never been born." 
 
 Skinner was surprised ; he was not aware that intelli-
 
 HARD CASH. 887 
 
 gent men, who sin, are subject to fits of remorse ; nay, 
 more, he was frightened; for the emotion of this iron 
 man, so hard to move, was overpowering when it came ; 
 it did not soften, it convulsed him, 
 
 '' Don't talk so, sir," said the little clerk, " Keep up 
 your heart ! Have a drop of something." 
 
 " You are right," said Mr. Hardie, gloomily ; " it is 
 idle to talk ; we are all the slaves of circumstances," 
 
 With this, he unlocked a safe that stood against the 
 wall, chucked the fourteen thousand pounds in, and 
 slammed the iron door sharply ; and, as it closed upon 
 the cash with a clang, the parlor door burst open as if by 
 concert, and David Dodd stood on the threshold, looking 
 terrible. His ruddy color was all gone, and he seemed 
 black and white with anger and anxiety. And out of 
 this blanched, yet lowering face, his eyes glowed like 
 coals, and roved keenly to and fro between the banker 
 and the clerk. 
 
 A thunder-cloud of a man.
 
 g38 HARD CASH. 
 
 CHAPTEK XVI. 
 
 James Maxley came out of the bank that morning 
 with nine hundred and four pounds buttoned up tight in 
 the pocket of his leather breeches, a joyful man ; and so 
 to his work ; and home at one o'clock to dinner. 
 
 At two P.M., he was thoughtful ; uneasy at three ; 
 wretched at 3.30. 
 
 He was gardener as well as capitalist; and Mr. Hardie 
 owed him thirty shillings for work. 
 
 Such is human nature in general, and Maxley's in par- 
 ticular, that the nine hundred pounds in pocket seemed 
 small, and the thirty shillings in jeopardy, large. 
 
 "I can't afford to go with the creditors," argued 
 Maxley ; " dividend on thirty shillings ? why, that will 
 be about thirty pence ; the change for a hard * half- 
 crown." 
 
 He stuck his spade in the soil, and made for his 
 debtor's house. As he came up the street, Dodd shot 
 out of the bank, radiant, and was about to pass him with- 
 out notice, full of his wife and children ; but Maxley 
 stopped him with a right cordial welcome, and told him 
 he had given them all a fright this time. 
 
 " What, is it over the town already, that my ship has 
 been wrecked ? " And Dodd looked annoyed. 
 
 " Wrecked ? No ; but you have been due this two 
 months, ye know. Wrecked ? Why, captain, you 
 haven't ever been wrecked ? " And he looked him all 
 over as if he expected to see " wrecked " branded ou 
 him by the elements. 
 
 ' i. e., a half-crown in one piece.
 
 HARD CASH. 339 
 
 "Ay, James, wrecked on the French coast, and lost 
 ray chronometer, and a tiptop sextant. But what of 
 that? I saved It. I have just landed It in the bank. 
 Good-by; I must sheer off; I long to be home." 
 
 " Stay a bit, captain," said Maxley ; ''I am not quite 
 easy in my mind. I saw you come out of Hardie's ; I 
 thought in course you had been in to draa ; but you says 
 different. Now, what was it you did leave behind you at 
 that there shop, if you please : not money ? " 
 
 "Not money? Only fourteen thousand pounds. How 
 the man stares ! Why, it's not mine, James ; it's my 
 children's ; there, good-by ; " and he was actually off this 
 time. But Maxley stretched his long limbs, and caught 
 him in two strides, and griped his shoulder without 
 ceremony. " Be you mad ? " said he, sternly. 
 
 " No ; but I begin to think you are." 
 
 " That is to be seen," said Maxley, gravely. " Before 
 I lets you go, you must tell me whether you be jesting, 
 or whether you have really been so simple as to drop 
 fourteen — thousand — pounds at Hardie's ? " No judge 
 upon the bench, nor bishop in his stall, could be more 
 impressive than this gardener was, when he subdued the 
 vast volume of his voice to a low, grave utterance of this 
 sort. 
 
 Dodd began to be uneasy. " Why, good heavens, there 
 IS nothing wrong with the old Barkington bank ?" 
 
 "Nothing wrong ?" roared Maxley; then Avhispered, 
 '•' Holt ! I was laad once for slander, and cost me thirty 
 pounds ; nearly killed my missus it did." 
 
 •' Man ! " cried Dodd, " for my children's sake tell me 
 if you know anything amiss. After all, I'm like a 
 stranger here ; more than two years away at a time." 
 
 " I'll tell you all I know," whispered Maxley, " 'tis the 
 least I can do. What (roaring) do — you — think — I've 
 forgotten you saving my poor boy out o' that scrape, and
 
 340 HARD CASH. 
 
 getting him a good place in Canada, and — why, he'd 
 have been put in prison but for you, and that would ha' 
 broken my heart and his mother's — and " — The stout 
 voice began to quaver. 
 
 "Oh, bother all that now," said Dodd, impatiently. 
 " The bank ! you have grounded me on thorns." 
 
 " Well, I'll tell ye ; but you must promise faithful not 
 to go and say I told ye, or you'll get me laad again ; and 
 I likes to laa them, not for they to laa me." 
 
 " I promise, I promise." 
 
 " Well then, I got a letter to-day from my boy, him as 
 you was so good to, and here 'tis in my breeches pocket, 
 — Laws ! how things do come round snveli/ ; why, lookee 
 here now ; if so be you hadn't been a good friend to he, 
 he wouldn't be where he is : and if so be he warn't where 
 he is, he couldn't have writ me this here, and then where 
 should you and 7 be ? " 
 
 " Belay your jaw, and show me this letter," cried 
 David, trembling all over. 
 
 " That I wool," said Maxley, diving a hand into his 
 pocket. " Hush ! lookee yander now ; if there ain't 
 Master Alfred a-watching of us two out of his window ; 
 and he have got an eye like a hawk, he have. Step in 
 the passage, captain, and I'll show it you." 
 
 He drew him aside into the passage, and gave him the 
 letter. Dodd ran his eye over it hastily, uttered a cry 
 like a wounded lion, dropped it, gave a slight stagger, 
 and rushed away. 
 
 Maxley picked up his letter, and watched Dodd into 
 the bank again ; and reflected on his work. His heart 
 was warmed at having made a return to the good captain. 
 
 His head suggested that he was on the road which 
 leads to libel. 
 
 But he had picked up at the assizes a smattering of 
 the law of evidence ; so he coolly tore the letter in
 
 HARD CASH. 341 
 
 pieces. " There now," said he to himself, " if Hardies 
 do laa me for publishing of this here letter, why, they 
 pours their water into a sieve. Ugh ! " And with this 
 exclamation he started, and then put his heavy boot on 
 part of the letter, and ground it furtively into the mud ; 
 for a light hand had settled on his shoulder, and a keen 
 young face was close to his. 
 
 It was Alfred Hardie, who had stolen on him like a 
 cat. " I'm laad," thouglit Maxley. 
 
 " Maxley, old fellow," said Alfred, in a voice as coax- 
 ing as a woman's, " are you in a good humor ? " 
 
 " Well, Master Halfred, sight of you mostly puts me 
 in one, especially after that there strychnine job." 
 
 " Then tell me," whispered Alfred, his eyes sparkling, 
 and his face beaming, '•' who was that you were talking 
 to just now ? — was it — wasn't it — who was it ? "
 
 342 HARD CASH. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 While Dodd stood lowering in the doorway, he was 
 nevertheless making a great effort to control his agita- 
 tion. 
 
 At last he said in a stern but low voice, in which, how- 
 ever, a quick ear might detect a tremor of agitation, " I 
 have changed my mind, sir ; I want my money back." 
 
 At this, though David's face had prepared him, Mr. 
 Hardie's heart sank ; but there was no help for it ; he 
 said faintly, " Certainly. May I ask " — and there he 
 stopped ; for it Avas hardly prudent to ask anything. 
 
 " No matter," replied Dodd, his agitation rising even 
 at this slight delay ; " come ! my money ! I must and 
 will have it." 
 
 Hardie drew himself up majestically. " Captain 
 Dodd, this is a strange way of demanding what nobody 
 here disputes." 
 
 "Well, I beg your pardon," said Dodd, a little awed 
 by his dignity and fairness : " but I can't help it." 
 
 The quick, supple banker saw the slight advantage he 
 had gained, and his mind went into a whirl ; what 
 should he do ? It was death to part with this money 
 and gain nothing by it ; sooner tell Dodd of the love 
 affair, and open a treaty on this basis ; he clung to this 
 money like limpet to its rock ; and so intense and rapid 
 were his thoughts and schemes how to retain it a little 
 longer, that David's apologies buzzed in his ear like the 
 drone of a beetle. 
 
 The latter went on to say, " You see, sir, it's my chil-
 
 HARD CASH. 343 
 
 dreii's fortune, my boy Edward's and my little Julia's ; 
 and so many have been trying to get it from me, that my 
 blood boils up in a moment about it now. — My poor 
 head ! — You don't seem to understand what I am say- 
 ing ! there then, I am a sailor ; I can't go beating and 
 tacking, like you landsmen, with the wind dead astarn ; 
 the long and the short is, I don't feel it safe here ; don't 
 feel it safe anywhere, except in my wife's lap. So no 
 more words ; here's your receipt ; give me my money." 
 
 " Certainly, Captain Dodd. Call to-morrow morning 
 at the bank, and it will be paid on demand in the regular 
 way ; the bank opens at ten o'clock." 
 
 " No, no ; I can't wait. I should be dead of anxiety 
 before then. Why not pay it me here, and now ? You 
 took it here." 
 
 " We receive deposits till four o'clock ; but we do not 
 disburse after three. This is the system of all banks." 
 
 " That is all nonsense ; if you are open to receive 
 money, you are open to pay it." 
 
 "My dear sir, if you were not entirely ignorant of 
 business, you would be aware that these things are not 
 done in this way ; money received is passed to account, 
 and the cashier is the only person who can honor your 
 draft on it : but, stop ; if the cashier is in the bank, we 
 may manage it for you yet ; Skinner, run and see 
 whether he has left ; and, if not, send him to me 
 directly." The cashier took his cue, and ran out. 
 
 David was silent. 
 
 The cashier speedily returned, saying, with a dis- 
 appointed air, " The cashier has been gone this quarter 
 of an hour." 
 
 David maintained an ominous silence. 
 
 '* That is unfortunate," remarked Hardie. " But, after 
 all, it is only till to-morrow morning: still I regret this 
 circumstance, sir ; and I feel that all these precautions
 
 344 HARD CASH. 
 
 we are obliged to take must seem unreasonable to you : 
 but experience dictates this severe routine ; and, were 
 we to deviate from it, our friends' money would not be 
 so safe in our hands as it always has been at present." 
 
 David eyed him sternly, but let him run on. When 
 he had concluded his flowing periods, David said quietly, 
 "So you can't give me my own because your cashier 
 has carried it away ? " 
 
 Hardie smiled: "No, no; but because he has locked 
 it up, and carried away the key." 
 
 " It is not in this room, then ? " 
 
 «No." 
 
 " Are you sure ? " 
 
 *' Positive." 
 
 " What, not in that safe of yours, there ? ** 
 
 " Certainly not," said Hardie, stoutly. 
 
 " Open the safe : the keys are in it." 
 
 " Open the safe ? What for ? " 
 
 "To show me it is not in the right-hand partition 
 of that safe; there: there." And David pointed at the 
 very place where it was. 
 
 The dignified Mr. Hardie felt ready to sink with 
 shame : a kind of shudder passed througli him, and he 
 was about to comply, heart-sick : but then wounded pride 
 and the rage of disappointment stung him, and he turned 
 in defiance: "You are impertinent, sir: and I shall not 
 reward your curiosity and your insolence by showing 
 you the contents of my safes." 
 
 " My money ! my money ! " cried David, fiercely : " no 
 more words, for I sha'n't listen to them : I know you 
 now for what you are ! a thief ! I sazv you put it into 
 that safe : a liar is always a thief. You want to steal 
 my children's money : I'll have your life first. My 
 money, ye pirate, or I'll strangle you ! " And he ad- 
 vanced upon him purple with rage, and shot out his long
 
 HAKDIE GUT THE NOTES AND BILLS ALL IX A HURRY.
 
 HARD CASH. 345 
 
 threatening arm, and brown fingers working in the air. 
 "D'ye know what I did to a French land-shark that 
 tried to rob me of it? I throttled him with these fin- 
 gers till his eyes and his tongue started out of him; he 
 came for m}^ children's money, and I killed him so — so 
 — so — as I'll kill you, you thief ! you liar ! you scoun- 
 drel ! " 
 
 His face black and convulsed with rage, and his out- 
 stretched fingers working convulsively, and hungering 
 for a rogue's throat, made the resolute Hardie quake ; 
 he whipped out of the furious man's way, and got to the 
 safe, pale and trembling. " Hush ! no violence ! " he 
 gasped: "I'll give you your money this moment, you 
 ruffian." 
 
 While he unlocked the safe with trembling hands, 
 Dodd stood like a man petrified: his arm and fingers 
 stretched out and threatening; and Skinner saw him 
 pull at his necktie furiously, like one choking. 
 
 Hardie got the notes and bills all in a hurry, and held 
 them out to Dodd. 
 
 In which act, to his consternation, and surprise, and 
 indignation, he received a back-handed blow on the eye 
 that dazzled him for an instant; and there was David 
 with his arms struggling wildly, and his fists clenched, 
 his face purple, and his eyes distorted so that little was 
 seen but the whites ; the next moment his teeth gnashed 
 loudly together, and he fell headlong on the floor with a 
 concussion so momentous, that the windows rattled, 
 and the room shook violently ; the dust rose in a cloud. 
 
 A loud ejaculation burst from Hardie and Skinner. 
 
 And then there was an awful silence.
 
 346 HARD CASH. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIIT. 
 
 When David fell senseless on the floor, Mr. Hardie 
 was somewhat confused by the back-handed blow from 
 his convulsed and whirling arm. But Skinner ran to 
 him, held up his head, and whipped off his neckcloth. 
 
 Then Hardie turned to seize the bell and ring for 
 assistance ; but Skinner shook his head and said it was 
 useless ; this was no faint : old Betty could not help him. 
 
 "It is a bad day's w^ork, sir," said he, trembling: "he 
 is a dead man." 
 
 " Dead ? Heaven forbid ! " 
 
 " Apoplexy ! " whispered Skinner. 
 
 " Run for a doctor then : lose no time : don't let us 
 have his blood on our hands. Dead ? " 
 
 And he repeated the word this ^Mne in a very different 
 tone ; a tone too strange and significant to escape Skin- 
 ner's quick ear. However, he lairl David's head gently 
 down, and rose from his knees to obey. 
 
 What did he see now, but ]\[r. Hardie, with his back 
 turned, putting the notes and bills softly into the safe 
 again oxit of sight ! He saw, comprehended, and took 
 his own course with equal raoidity. 
 
 "Come, run!" cried Mr, Hardie; "I'll take care of 
 him ; every moment is precious." 
 
 "Wants to get rid of me!" thought Skinner. "No, 
 sir," said he, " be ruled by mc : let us take him to his 
 friends : he won't live ; and we shall get all the blame if 
 we doctor him." 
 
 Already egotism had whispered Hardie, " How lucky 
 if he should die ! " and now a still guiltier thought
 
 HARD CASH. 347 
 
 flashed through him : he did not try to conquer it ; he 
 only trembled at himself for entertaining it. 
 
 " At least give him air ! " said he, in a quavering 
 voice, consenting in a crime, yet compromising with his 
 conscience, feebly. 
 
 He threw the window open with great zeal, with pro- 
 digious zeal : for he wanted to deceive himself as well 
 as Skinner. With equal parade he helped carry Dodd 
 to the window ; it opened on the ground : this done, the 
 self-deceivers put their heads together, and soon man- 
 aged matters so that two porters, known to Skinner, 
 were introduced into the garden, and informed that a 
 gentleman had fallen down in a fit, and they were to 
 take him home to his friends, and not talk about it : 
 there might be an inquest, and that was so disagreeable 
 to a gentleman like Mr. Hardie. The men agreed at 
 once for a sovereign apiece. It was all done in a great 
 hurry and agitation, and while Skinner accompanied the 
 men to see that they did not blab, Mr. Hardie went into 
 the garden to breathe and think. But he could do neither. 
 
 He must have a look at it. 
 
 He stole back, opened the safe, and examined the 
 notes and bills. 
 
 He fingered them. 
 
 They seemed to grow to his finger. 
 
 He lusted after them. 
 
 He said to himself, *' The matter has gone too far to 
 stop ; I must go on borrowing this money of the Dodds, 
 and make it the basis of a large fortune : it will be best 
 for all parties in the end." 
 
 He put it into his pocket-book : that pocket-book into 
 his breast-pocket ; and passed by his private door into 
 the house : and to his dressing-room. 
 
 Ten minutes later he left the house with a little black 
 bag in his hand.
 
 348 HARD CASH. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 "What will ye giv^e me, and I'll tell ye ? " said Maxley 
 to Alfred Hardie. 
 
 " Five pounds." 
 
 " That is too much." 
 
 "Five shillings, then." 
 
 " That is too little. Lookee here ; your garden owes 
 me thirty shillings for work : suppose you pays me, and 
 that will save me from going to your dad for it." 
 
 Alfred consented readily, and paid the money. Then 
 Maxley told him it was Captain Dodd he had been talk- 
 ing with. 
 
 " I thought so ! I thought so ! " cried Alfred, joyfully, 
 "but I was afraid to believe it : it was too delightful: 
 Maxley, you're a trump : you don't know what anxiety 
 you have relieved me of ; some fool has gone and re- 
 ported the Agra wrecked ; look here ! " and he showed 
 him his Lloyd's; "luckily it has only just come; so I 
 haven't been miserable long." 
 
 " Well, to be sure, news flies fast nowadays. He have 
 been wrecked, for that matter." He then surprised 
 Alfred by telling him all he had just learned from 
 Dodd ; and was going to let out about the fourteen 
 thousand pounds, when he recollected this was the 
 banker's son, and while he was talking to him, it sud- 
 denly struck Maxley that this young gentleman would 
 come down in the world, should the bank break : and 
 then the Dodds, he concluded, judging others by him- 
 self, would be apt to turn their backs on him. Now he 
 liked Alfred, and was disposed to do him a good turn,
 
 HARD CASH. 349 
 
 when he could without hurting James Maxley. "Mr. 
 Alfred," said he, "I know the world better than you do: 
 you be ruled by me, or you'll rue it : you put on your 
 Sunday coat this minute, and off like a shot to Albyn 
 Yillee ; you'll get there before the captain : he have got 
 a little business to do first ; that is neither here nor 
 there ; besides, you are young and lissom. You be the 
 first to tell Missus Dodd the good news ; and, when the 
 captain comes, there sets you aside Miss Julee : and 
 don't you be shy and shamefaced : take him when his 
 heart is warm, and tell him why you are there : ' I love 
 her dear,' says you. He be only a sailor, and they never 
 has no sense nor prudence : he is a'most sure to take you 
 by the hand, at such a time : and once you get his word, 
 he'll stand good, to his own hurt ; he's one of that sort, 
 bless his sill}- old heart." 
 
 A good deal of this was unintelligible to Alfred ; but 
 the advice seemed good ; advice generally does when it 
 squares with our own wishes : he thanked Maxley, left 
 him, made a hasty toilet, and ran to Albion Villa. 
 
 Sarah opened the door to him ; in tears. 
 
 The news of the wreck had come to Albion Villa just 
 half an hour ago ; and in that half-hour they had tasted 
 more misery than hitherto their peaceful lot had brought 
 them in years. Mrs. Dodd was praying and crying in 
 her room ; Julia had put on her bonnet, and was descend- 
 ing in deep distress and agitation, to go down to the 
 quay and learn more if possible. 
 
 Alfred saw her on the stairs, and at sight of her pale, 
 agitated face, flew to her. 
 
 She held out both hands piteously to him : ''0 Alfred ! " 
 
 " Good news ! " he panted. " He is alive ; Maxley 
 has seen him — I have seen him — he will be here 
 directly — my own love, dry your eyes — calm your 
 fears — he is safe ; he is well : hurrah ! hurrah ! "
 
 350 HARD CASH. 
 
 The girl's pale face flushed red with hope, then pale 
 again with emotion, then rosy red with transcendent 
 joy : " Oh, bless you ! bless you ! " she murmured, in 
 her sweet gurgle so full of heart : then took his head 
 passionately with both her hands, as if she was going to 
 kiss him : uttered a little inarticulate cry of love and 
 gratitude over him, then turned and flew up the stairs, 
 crying " Mamma ! mamma ! " and burst into her mother's 
 room. When two such impetuosities meet as Alfred and 
 Julia, expect quick work. 
 
 What happened in Mrs. Dodd's room may be imagined : 
 and soon both ladies came hastily out to Alfred, and he 
 found himself in the drawing-room seated between them, 
 and holding a hand of each, and playing the man de- 
 lightfully, soothing and assuring them ; Julia believed 
 him at a word, and beamed with unmixed delight and 
 anticipation of the joyful meeting ; Mrs. Dodd cost him 
 more trouble : her soft hand trembled still in his ; and 
 she put question upon question. But, when he told her 
 he with his own eyes had seen Captain Dodd talking to 
 Maxley, and gathered from Maxley he had been ship- 
 wrecked on the coast of France, and lost his chronom- 
 eter and his sextant, these details commanded credit; 
 bells were rung : the captain's dressing-room ordered to 
 be got ready ; the cook put on her mettle, and Alfred 
 invited to stay and dine with the long-expected one : 
 and the house of mourning became the house of joy. 
 
 " And then it. was he who brought the good news," 
 whispered Julia to her mother ; " and that is so sweet." 
 
 '^ Yes, dear," said Mrs. Dodd ; " he will make even me 
 love him. The fourteen thousand pounds ! I hope that 
 was not lost in the wreck." 
 
 "0 mamma, who cares? when his own dear, sweet, 
 precious life has been in danger, and is mercifully pre- 
 served. Why does he not come ? I shall scold him for
 
 ttARb CASH. aoi 
 
 keeping us waiting : you know I am not a bit afraid of 
 him, though he is papa : indeed, I am ashamed to say I 
 govern him with a rod of — no matter what. Do, do, do 
 let us all three put on our bonnets, and run and meet 
 him. I want him so to love somebody the very first 
 day." 
 
 Mrs Dodd said, " Well, wait a few minutes, and then 
 if he is not here you two shall go. I dare hardly trust 
 myself to meet my darling husband in the open street." 
 
 Julia ran to Alfred : " If he does not come in ten min- 
 utes, you and I may go and meet him." 
 
 " You are an angel," murmured Alfred. 
 
 " You are another," said Julia, haughtily. " Oh, dear ! 
 I can't sit down, and I don't want flattery : I want papa. 
 A waltz ! a waltz ! then one can go mad with joy without 
 startling propriety : I can't answer for the consequences 
 if I don't let off a little, little happiness." 
 
 " That I will," said Mrs. Dodd, '•' for I am as happy 
 as you, and happier." She played a waltz. 
 
 Julia's eyes were a challenge. Alfred started up and 
 took her ready hand, and soon the gay young things 
 were whirling round, — the happiest pair in England. 
 
 But in the middle of the joyous whirl, Julia's quick 
 ear, on the watch all the time, heard the gate swing to : 
 she glided like an eel from Alfred's arm, and ran to the 
 window. Arrived there, she made three swift vertical 
 bounds like a girl with a skipping-rope, only her hands 
 were clapping in the air at the same time ; then down 
 the stairs, screaming, " His chest ! his chest ! he is com- 
 ing, coming, come." 
 
 Alfred ran after her. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd, unable to race with such antelopes, slipped 
 quietly out into the little balcony. 
 
 Julia had seen two men carrying a trestle with a tar- 
 paulin over itj and a third walking beside. Dodd's
 
 352 HARD CASH. 
 
 heavy sea-chest had been more than once carried home 
 this way. Slie met the men at the door, and overpowered 
 them witli questions. 
 
 " Is it his clothes ? then he wasn't so much wrecked 
 after all. Is he with you ? is he coming directly ? 
 Why don't you tell me ? " 
 
 The porters at first wore the stolid, impassive faces of 
 their tribe, but, when this bright young creature ques- 
 tioned them, brimming over with ardor and joy, their 
 countenances fell, and they hung their heads. 
 
 The little, sharp-faced man, who was walking beside 
 the other, stepped forward to reply to Julia. 
 
 He was interrupted by a terrible scream from the 
 balcony. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd was leaning wildly over it, with dilating 
 eyes and quivering hand that pointed down to the other 
 side of the trestle : " Julia ! Julia ! " 
 
 Julia ran round, and stood petrified, her pale lips 
 apart, and all her innocent joy frozen in a moment. 
 
 The tarpaulin was scanty there, and a man's hand 
 and part of his arm dangled helpless out. 
 
 The hand was blanched, and wore a well-known ring.
 
 HAED CASH. 353 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 In the terror and confusion no questions were then 
 aslied. Alfred got to David's head, and told Skinner to 
 take his feet : Mrs. Dodd helped, and they carried him up 
 and laid him on her bed. The servant-girls cried, and 
 wailed, and were of little use ; Mrs. Dodd hurried them 
 off for medical aid, and she and Julia, though pale as 
 ghosts, and trembling in every limb, were tearless, and 
 almost silent, and did all for the best. They undid a 
 shirt-button that confined his throat ; they set his head 
 high, and tried their poor little eau-de-Cologne and femi- 
 nine remedies; and each of them held an insensible 
 hand in both hers, clasping it piteously and trying to 
 hold him tight, so that Death should not take him away 
 from them. 
 
 " ]\ry son, where is my son ? " sighed Mrs. Dodd. 
 
 Alfred threw his arm round her neck. "You have 
 one son here : what shall I do ? " 
 
 The next minute he was running to the telegraph- 
 office for her. 
 
 At the gate he found Skinner hanging about, and 
 asked him hurriedly hoAV the calamity had happened. 
 Skinner said Captain Dodd had fallen down senseless in 
 the street, and he had passed soon after, recognized him, 
 and brought him home. " I have paid the men, sir : I 
 wouldn't let them ask the ladies at such a time." 
 
 " Oh, thank you ! thank you. Skinner ! I will repay 
 you : it is me you have obliged." And Alfred ran off 
 with the words in his mouth. 
 
 Skinner looked after him and muttered, " I forgot 
 23
 
 354 HARD CASH. 
 
 hhn. It is a nice mess : wish I was out of it." And he 
 went back, hanging his head, to Alfred's father. 
 
 Mr. Osmond met him. Skinner turned and saw him 
 enter the villa. 
 
 Mr. Osmond came softly into the room, examined 
 Dodd's eye, felt his pulse, and said he must be bled at 
 once. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd was averse to this. " Oh, let us try every- 
 thing else first," said she ; but Osmond told her there 
 was no other remedy. *' All the functions we rely on in 
 the exhibition of medicines are suspended." 
 
 Dr. Short now drove up, and was ushered in. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd asked him imploringly whether it was 
 necessary to bleed. But Dr. Short knew his business 
 too well to be entrapped into an independent opinion 
 where a surgeon had been before him. He drew Mr. 
 Osmond apart, and inquired what he had recommended ; 
 this ascertained, he turned to Mrs. Dodd and said, " I 
 advise venesection or cupping." 
 
 "0 Dr. Short, pray have pity, and order something 
 less terrible. Dr. Sampson is so averse to bleeding." 
 
 " Sampson ? Sampson ? never heard of him." 
 
 " It is the chronothermal man," said Osmond. 
 
 " Oh, ah ! but this is too serious a case to be quacked. 
 Coma, with stertor, and a full, bounding pulse, indicates 
 liberal blood-letting. I would try venesection, then cup, 
 if necessary, or leech the temple. I need not say, sir, 
 calomel must complete the cure. The case is simple, 
 and, at present, surgical ; I leave it in competent hands." 
 And he retired, leaving the inferior practitioner well 
 pleased with him and with himself, — no insignificant 
 part of a physician's art. 
 
 When he was gone, Mr. Osmond told jNIrs. Dodd that 
 however crotchety Dr. Sampson might be, he was an 
 able man, and had very properly resisted the indiscrimi-
 
 HARD CASH. 355 
 
 nate use of the lancet : the profession owed him much. 
 '•' But in apoplexy the leech and the lancet are still our 
 sheet anchors." 
 
 jNIrs. Dodd uttered a faint shriek. *' Apoplexy ! 
 David ! Oh, my darling ! have you come home for 
 this ? " 
 
 Osmond assured her apoplexy was not necessarily 
 fatal, provided the cerebral blood-vessels were relieved 
 in time by depletion. 
 
 The fixed eye, and terrible stertorous breathing on the 
 one hand, and the promise of relief on the other, over- 
 powered Mrs. Dodd's reluctance. She sent Julia out of 
 the room on a pretext, and then consented with tears to 
 David's being bled. But she would not yield to leave 
 the room ; no, this tender woman nerved herself to see 
 her husband's blood flow, sooner than risk his being 
 bled too much by the hard hand of custom. Let the 
 peevish fools, who make their own troubles in love, com- 
 pare their slight and merited pangs with this : she was 
 his true lover and his wife, yet there she stood with eye 
 horror-stricken yet unflinching, and saw the stab of the 
 little lancet, and felt it deeper than she would a javelin 
 through her own body, and watched the blood run that 
 was dearer to her than her own. 
 
 At the first prick of the lancet David shivered, and, 
 as the blood escaped, his eye unfixed, and the pupils 
 contracted and dilated, and once he sighed. *' Good 
 sign that," said Osmond. 
 
 " Oh, that is enough, sir," said Mrs. Dodd : " we shall 
 faint if you take any more." 
 
 Osmond closed the vein, observing that a local bleeding 
 would do the rest. When he had stanched the blood, 
 Mrs. Dodd sank half fainting in her chair; by some 
 marvellous sympathy it was she who had been bled, and 
 whose vein was now closed. Osmond sprinkled water
 
 356 HARD CASH. 
 
 in her face : she tlianked him, and said sweetly, "You 
 see I couhl not have lost any more." 
 
 When it was over she came to tell Julia ; she found 
 her sitting on the stairs crying, and pale as marble. She 
 suspected. And there was Alfred hanging over her, and 
 in agony at her grief : out came his love for her in words 
 and accents unmistakable, and this in Osmond's hearing 
 and the maid's. 
 
 '' Oh, hush ! hush ! " cried poor Mrs. Dodd, and her 
 face was seen to burn through her tears. 
 
 And this was the happy, quiet little villa of my open- 
 ing chapters. 
 
 Ah, Kichard Hardie ! Richard Hardie ! 
 
 The patient was cupped on the nape of the neck by 
 Mr. Osmond, and, on the glasses drawing, showed signs 
 of consciousness, and the breathing was relieved ; these 
 favorable symptoms were neither diminished nor in- 
 creased by the subsequent application of the cupping 
 needles. 
 
 " We have turned the corner," said Mr. Osmond, 
 cheerfully. 
 
 Rap, rap, rap came a telegraphic message from Dr. 
 Sampson, and was brought up to the sickroom. 
 
 " Out visiting patients when yours came. In apoplexy with 
 a red face and stertorous breathing, put tlie feet in mustard 
 bath and dash much cold water on the head from above. On 
 revival give emetic ; cure with sulphate of quinine. In apo- 
 plexy with a white face, treat as for a simple faint : here emetic 
 dangerous. In neither apoplexy bleed. Coming down by 
 train." 
 
 This message added to Mrs. Dodd's alarm, the whole 
 treatment varied so far from what had been done. She 
 faltered her misgivings : Osmond reassured her. " Not 
 bleed in apoplexy ! " said he superciliously ; " why, it is
 
 HARD CASH. 357 
 
 the universal practice. Judge for yourself. You see 
 the improvement." Mrs. Dodd admitted it. 
 
 " Then as to the cold water," said Osmond, " I would 
 hardly advise so rough a remedy. And he is going on 
 so well. But you can send for ice, and, meantime, give 
 me a good-sized stocking." 
 
 He cut and fitted it adroitly to the patient's head, then 
 drenched it with eau-de-Cologne, and soon the head began 
 to steam. 
 
 By and by David muttered a few incoherent words ; 
 and the anxious wa-tchers thanked God aloud for them. 
 
 At length Mr. Osmond took leave with a cheerful 
 countenance, and left them all grateful to him, and with 
 a high opinion of his judgment and skill, especially 
 Julia. She said Dr, Sampson was very amusing to talk 
 to, but she should be sorry to trust to that rash, reck- 
 less, boisterous man in time of danger. 
 
 About two in the morning a fly drove rapidly up to 
 the villa, and Sampson got out. 
 
 He found David pale and muttering, and his wife and 
 children hanging over him in deep distress. 
 
 He shook hands with them in silence, and eyed the 
 patient keenly. He took the nightcap off, removed the 
 pillows, lowered his head, and said quietly, "This is 
 the cold fit come on : we must not shut our eyes on 
 the pashint. Why, what is this ? he has been cupped ! " 
 And Sampson changed color, and his countenance fell. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd saw, and began to tremble. " I could not 
 hear from you ; and Dr. Short and Mr. Osmond felt 
 quite sure; and he seems better. Dr. Sampson, why 
 were you not here ? We have bled him as well. Oh, 
 don't, don't, don't say it was wrong ! He would have 
 died : they said so. David ! David ! your wife has 
 killed you." And she knelt and kissed his hand and 
 implored his pardon, insensible.
 
 358 HARD CASH. 
 
 Julia clung sobbing to her mother, in a vain attempt 
 to comfort her. 
 
 Sampson groaned. 
 
 "No, no," said he: "don't go on so, my poor soul; 
 you did all for the best ; and now we must make the 
 best of what is done. Hartshorn ! brandy ! and caution. 
 For those two assassins have tied my hands." 
 
 While applying these timid remedies, he inquired if 
 the cause was known. They told him they knew noth- 
 ing, but that David had been wrecked on the coast of 
 France, and had fallen down senseless in the street : a 
 clerk of Mr. Hardie's had recognized him, and brought 
 him home, so Alfred said. 
 
 " Then the cause is mintal," said Sampson, " unless 
 he got a blow on the hid in bein' wrecked." 
 
 He then examined David's head carefully, and found a 
 long sear. 
 
 " But this is not it," said he ; " this is old." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd clasped her hands, and assured him it was 
 new to her : her David had no scar there when he left 
 her last. 
 
 Pursuing his examination, Sampson found an open 
 wound in his left shoulder. 
 
 He showed it them, and they were all as pale as the 
 patient in a moment. He then asked to see his coat, 
 and soon discovered a corresponding puncture in it, 
 which he examined long and narrowly. 
 
 " It is a stab — with a one-edged knife." 
 
 There was a simultaneous cry of horror. 
 
 "Don't alarm yourselves for that," said Sampson, "it 
 is nothing; a mere flesh-wound. It is the vein-wound 
 that alarms me. This school knows nothing about the 
 paroxysms and remissions of disease. They have bled 
 and cupped him for a passing fit. It has passed into the 
 cold stage, but no quicker than it would have done with-
 
 HARD CASH. 350 
 
 out stealing a drop of blood. To-morrow, by disease's 
 nature, lie will have another hot fit in spite of their bleed- 
 ing. Then those ijjits would leech his temples ; and on 
 that paroxysm remitting by the nature of disease, vv^ould 
 fancy their leeches had cured it." 
 
 The words were the old words, but the tone and man- 
 ner were so different; no shouting, no anger; all was 
 spoken low and gently, and with a sort of sad and weary 
 and worn-out air. 
 
 He ordered a kettle of hot water and a quantity of 
 mustard, and made his preparations for the hot tit, as 
 he called it, maintaining the intermittent and febrile 
 character of all disease. 
 
 The patient rambled a good deal, but quite incoher- 
 ently, and knew nobody. 
 
 But about eight o'clock in the morning he was quite 
 quiet, and apparently sleeping ; so Mrs. Dodd stole out of 
 the room to order some coffee for Sampson and Edward. 
 They were nodding, worn out with watching. 
 
 Julia; whose high-strung nature could dispense with 
 sleep on such an occasion, was on her knees praying for 
 her father. 
 
 Suddenly there came from the bed, like a thunder- 
 clap, two words uttered loud and furiously : — 
 
 "Hardie! Villain!" 
 
 Up started the drowsy watchers, and rubbed their 
 eyes. They had heard the sound but not the sense. 
 
 Julia rose from her knees bewildered and aghast ; she 
 had caught the strange words distinctly ; words that 
 were to haunt her night and day. 
 
 They were followed immediatel}' by a loud groan ; and 
 the stertorous breathing recommenced, and the face was 
 no longer pale, but flushed and turgid. On this Sampson 
 hurried Julia from the room, and, with Edward's help, 
 placed David on a stool in the bath, and getting on a
 
 360 HARD CASH. 
 
 chair, discharged half a bucket of cold water on his head ; 
 the patient gasped ; another, and David shuddered, stared 
 wildly, and put his hand to his head ; a third, and he 
 staggered to his feet. 
 
 At this moment, Mrs. Dodd coming hastily into the 
 room, he looked steadily at her and said, " Lucy ! " 
 
 She ran to throw her arms round him, but Sampson 
 interfered : '^ Gently ! gently ! " said he ; " we must have 
 no violent emotions." 
 
 "Oh, no ! I will be prudent." And she stood quiet 
 with her arras still extended, and cried for joy. 
 
 They got David to bed again, and Sampson told Mrs. 
 Dodd there was no danger now from the malady, but 
 only from the remedies. 
 
 And, in fact, David fell into a state of weakness and 
 exhaustion, and kept muttering unintelligibly. 
 
 Dr. Short called in the morning, and was invited to 
 consult with Dr. Sampson. He declined. " Dr. Sampson 
 is a notorious quack ; no physician of any eminence will 
 meet him in consultation." 
 
 " I regret that resolution," said Mrs. Dodd, quietly, 
 "as it Avill deprive me of the advantage of your skill." 
 
 Dr. Short bowed stiffly : " I shall be at your service, 
 madam, when that empiric has given the patient up." 
 And he drove away. 
 
 Osmond, finding Sampson installed, took the politic 
 line ; he contrived to glide by fine gradations into the 
 empiric's opinions, without recanting his owp, which 
 were diametrically opposed. 
 
 Sampson, before he shot back to town, asked him to 
 provide a good, reliable nurse. 
 
 He sent a young woman of iron ; she received Samp- 
 son's instructions, and assumed the command of the sick- 
 room, and was jealous of IMrs. Dodd and Julia; looked 
 on them as mere rival nurses, amateurs, who, if not
 
 HARD CASH. 361 
 
 snubbed, might ruin the professionals ; she seemed to 
 have forgotten in the hospitals all about the family 
 affections, and their power of turning invalids them- 
 selves into nurses. 
 
 The second night she got the patient all to herself for 
 four hours; from eleven till two. 
 
 The ladies having consented to this arrangement, in 
 order to recruit themselves for the work they were not 
 so mad as to intrust wholly to a hireling, nurse's feathers 
 smoothed themselves perceptibly. 
 
 At twelve the patient was muttering and murmuring 
 incessantly about wrecks and money and things ; of 
 which vain babble, nurse showed her professional con- 
 tempt by nodding. 
 
 At 12.30 she slept. 
 
 At 1.20 she snored very loud, and woke instantly at 
 the sound. 
 
 She took the thief out of the candle, and went like a 
 good sentinel to look at her charge. 
 
 He was not there. 
 
 She rubbed her eyes, and held the candle over the 
 place where he ought to be, where, in fact, he must be; 
 for he was far too weak to move. 
 
 She tore the bedclothes down ; she beat and patted 
 the clothes with her left hand, and the candle began to 
 shake violently in her right. 
 
 The bed was empty. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd was half asleep, when a hurried tap came 
 to her door ; she started up in a moment, and great dread 
 fell on her ; was David sinking ? 
 
 " Ma'am ! Ma'am ! Is he here ? " 
 
 "He ! Who ? " cried Mrs. Dodd, bewildered. 
 
 " Why, him ! he can't be far off." 
 
 In a moment Mrs. Dodd had opened the door ; and her 
 tongue and the nurse's seemed to clash together, so fast
 
 362 HARD CASH. 
 
 came the agitated words from each in turn ; and crying, 
 " Call my son ! Alarm the house ! " Mrs. Dodd darted 
 into the sickroom. She was out again in a moment, and 
 up in the attics rousing the maids, while the nurse thun- 
 dered at Edward's door, and Julia's, and rang every bell 
 she could get at. The inmates were soon alarmed, and 
 flinging on their clothes ; meantime Mrs. Dodd and the 
 nurse scoured the house and searched every nook in it 
 down to the very cellar ; they found no David. 
 
 But they found something. 
 
 The street door ajar. 
 
 It Avas a dark, drizzly night. 
 
 Edward took one road, IVIrs. Dodd and Elizabeth 
 another. 
 
 They were no sooner gone, than Julia drew the nurse 
 into a room apart, and asked her eagerly if her father 
 had said nothing. 
 
 " Said nothing, miss ? Why, he was a-talking all the 
 night incessant." 
 
 " Did he say anything particular ? think now." 
 
 "No, miss; he went on as they all do just before a 
 change. I never minds 'em ; I hear so much of it." 
 
 " nurse, nurse ! have pity on me ; try and recol- 
 lect." 
 
 " Well, miss, to oblige you, then ; it was mostly fights 
 this time — and wrecks — and villains — and bankers — 
 and sharks." 
 
 " Bankers ? " asked Julia eagerly. 
 
 " Yes, miss ; and villains, they come once or twice, but 
 most of the time it was sharks and ships and money, and 
 ■ — hotch-potch I call it, the way they talk ; bless your 
 heart, they know no better ; everything they ever saw 
 or read or heard tell of, it all comes out higgledy-piggledy 
 just before they goes off; we that makes it a business 
 never takes no notice of what they says, miss ; and never
 
 HARD CASH. 
 
 863 
 
 repeats it out of one sick-house into another ; that you 
 maij rely on." 
 
 Julia scarcely heard this ; her hands were tight to her 
 brow as if to aid her to think with all her force. 
 
 The result was, she told Sarah to put on her bonnet, 
 and rushed up-stairs. 
 
 She was not gone three minutes ; but in that short 
 interval the nurse's tongue and Sarah's clashed together 
 swiftly and incessantly. 
 
 Julia heard them. She came down with a long cloak 
 on, whipped the hood over her head, beckoned Sarah 
 quickly, and darted out. Sarah followed instinctively, 
 but, ere they had gone many yards from the house, said, 
 "0 miss, nurse thinks you had much better not go." 
 
 "Nurse thinks ! Nurse thinks ! What does she know 
 of me and my griefs ? " 
 
 "Why, miss, she is a very experienced woman, and 
 she says — Oh, dear! oh, dear! And such a dark, cold 
 night for you to be out ! " 
 
 " Nurse ? Nurse ? What did she say ? " 
 
 " Oh, I haven't the heart to tell you ; if you would but 
 come back home with me ! She says as much as that 
 poor master's troubles will be over long before we can 
 get to him." And with this Sarah burst out sobbing. 
 
 " Come quicker," cried Julia, despairingly. But after 
 awhile she said, "Tell me; only don't stop me." 
 
 "Miss, she says she nursed Mr. Campbell, the young 
 curate that died last harvest-time but one, you know ; 
 and he lay just like master, and she expecting a change 
 every hour; and miss, she met him coming down- 
 stairs in his night-gownd, and he said, 'Nurse, I am all 
 right now,' says he, and died momently in her arms at 
 the stair-foot. And she nursed an old farmer that lay as 
 weak as master, and, just when they looked for him to 
 go, lo and behold him dressed and out digging potatoes,
 
 3g4 HARD CASH. 
 
 and fell down dead before they could get hands on him 
 mostly ; and nurse have a friend, that have seen more 
 than she have, which she is older than nurse, and says a 
 body's life is all one as a rushlight, flares up strong 
 momently justly before it goes out altogether. Dear 
 heart, whei*ever are we going to in the middle of the 
 night ? " 
 
 " Don't you see ? to the quay." 
 
 " Oh, don't go there, miss, whatever ! I can't abide 
 the sight of the water, when a body's in trouble." Here 
 a drunken man confronted them, and asked them if they 
 wanted a beau ; and, on their slipping past him in silence, 
 followed them, and offered repeatedly to treat them. 
 Julia moaned, and hurried faster. " miss," said 
 Sarah, " what could you expect, coming out at this time 
 of night ? I'm sure the breath is all out of me ; you do 
 tear along so." 
 
 " Tear ? we are crawling. Ah, Sarah, you are not his 
 daughter. There, follow me ! I cannot go so slow." 
 And she set off to run. 
 
 Presently she passed a group of women standing talk- 
 ing at a corner of the street; and windows were open 
 with nightcapped heads framed in them. 
 
 She stopped a moment to catch the words ; they were 
 talking about a ghost which was said to have just passed 
 down the street, and discussing whether it was a real 
 ghost, or a trick to frighten people. 
 
 Julia uttered a low cry, and redoubled her speed, and 
 was soon at Mr. Richard Hardie's door; but the street 
 was deserted, and she was bewildered, and began to think 
 she had been too hasty in her conjecture. A chill came 
 over her impetuosity. The dark, drizzly, silent night, 
 the tall masts, the smell of the river, how strange it all 
 seemed ; and she to be there alone at such an hour. 
 
 Presently she heard voices somewhere near. She
 
 HARD CASH. 865 
 
 crossed over to a passage that seemed to lead towards 
 them ; and then she heard the voices plainly, and among 
 them one that did not mingle with the others, for it was 
 the voice she loved. She started back and stood irreso- 
 lute. Would he be displeased with her ? 
 
 Feet came trampling slowly along the passage. 
 
 His voice came with them. 
 
 She drew back and looked round for Sarah. 
 
 While she stood fluttering, the footsteps came close, 
 and there emerged from the passage into the full light 
 of the gas-lamp Alfred and two policemen, carrying a 
 silent, senseless figure, in a nightgown, with a great-coat 
 thrown over part of him. 
 
 It was her father; mute and ghastly. 
 
 The policemen still tell of that strange meeting under 
 the gas-light by Hardie's Bank ; and how the young lady 
 flung her arms round her father's head, and took him for 
 dead, and kissed his pale cheeks, and moaned over him ; 
 and how the young gentleman raised her against her 
 will, and sobbed over her ; and how they, though police- 
 men, cried like children. And to them I must refer the 
 reader : I have not the skill to convey the situation. 
 
 They got more policemen to help, and carried him to 
 Albion Villa. 
 
 On the way something cold and mj^sterious seemed to 
 have come between Julia and Alfred. They walked 
 apart in gloomy silence broken only by foreboding sighs. 
 
 I pass over the tempest of emotions under which that 
 sad burden entered Albion Villa; and hurry to the next 
 marked event. 
 
 Next day the patient had lost his extreme pallor, and 
 wore a certain uniform sallow hue ; and at noon, just 
 before Sampson's return, he opened his eyes wide, and 
 fixed them on Mrs. Dodd and Julia, who were now his 
 nurses. They hailed this with delight, and held their
 
 366 HARD CASH. 
 
 breath to hear him speak to them the first sweet words 
 of reviving life and love. 
 
 But soon to their surprise and grief they found he did 
 not know them. They spoke to him, each in turn, and 
 told him piteously who they were, and implored him 
 with tears to know them, and to speak to them. But 
 no, he fixed a stony gaze on them that made them shud- 
 der; and their beloved voices passed over him like an 
 idle wind. 
 
 Sampson, when he came, found the ladies weeping by 
 the bedside. 
 
 They greeted him with affection, Julia especially: the 
 boisterous controversialist had come out a gentle, zealous 
 artist, in presence of a real danger. 
 
 Dr. Sampson knew nothing of what had happened in 
 his absence. He stepped to the bedside cheerfully; and 
 the ladies' eyes Avere bent keenly on his face in silence. 
 
 He had no sooner cast eyes on David than his counte- 
 nance fell, and his hard but expressive features filled 
 with concern. 
 
 That was enough for Mrs. Dodd ; " And he does not 
 know me," she cried : " he does not know my voice. 
 His voice would call me back from the grave itself. He 
 is dying. He will never speak to me again. Oh, my 
 poor orphan girl ! " 
 
 "No! no!" said Sampson, "you are quite mistaken : 
 he will not die. But" — 
 
 His tongue said no more. His grave and sombre face 
 spoke volumes.
 
 HARD CASH. 367 
 
 CHAPTEE XXI. 
 
 To return to the bank : Skinner came back from the 
 Dodds' that miserable afternoon, in a state of genuine 
 agitation and regret. He was human and therefore 
 mixed ; and their desolation had shocked him. 
 
 The footman told him Mr. Hardie was not at home ; 
 gone to London, he believed. Skinner walked away de- 
 jected. What did this mean ? Had he left the country ? 
 
 He smiled at his fears, and felt positive ^Iv. Hardie 
 had misled the servants, and was quietly waiting for him 
 in the bank parlor. 
 
 It was now dusk : he went round to that little dark 
 nook of the garden the parlor-window opened on, and 
 tapped: there was no reply; the room looked empty. 
 He tried the s?sh : it yielded: ^Mr. Hardie had been too 
 occupied with embezzling another's property to take 
 common precautions in defence of his own ; never in his 
 life before had he neglected to fasten the iron shutters 
 with his own hand, and to-day he had left the very 
 window unfastened. This augured ill. "He is off: he 
 has done me along with the rest," thought Skinner. 
 He stepped into the room, found a lucifer-box, shut the 
 shutters, lighted a candle, and went peering about 
 amongst the banker's papers, to see if he could find a 
 clew to his intentions: and, as he pottered and peered, 
 he quaked as well : a detector by dishonest means feels 
 thief-like; and is what he feels. He made some little 
 discoveries, that guided him in his own conduct ; lie felt 
 more and more sure his employer would outwit him if 
 he could; and resolved it should be diamond cut diamond.
 
 368 HARD CASH. 
 
 The church clock struck one. 
 
 He started at the hour, crept out, and closed the 
 window softly ; then away by the garden-gate. 
 
 A light was still burning in Alfred's room : and at this 
 Skinner had another touch of compunction; "There is 
 one won't sleep this night along of our work," thought he. 
 
 At three next afternoon Mr. Hardie reappeared. 
 
 He had gone up to town to change the form of the 
 deposit : he took care to think of it as a deposit still, 
 the act of deposit having been complete, the withdrawal 
 incomplete, and by no fault of his, for he had offered it 
 back; but fate and accident had interposed — he had 
 converted the notes into gold direct, and the bills into 
 gold through notes ; this was like going into the river 
 to hide his trail. Next process : he turned his gold into 
 five-hundred-pound notes, and came flying home Avitli 
 them. 
 
 His return was greeted by Skinner with a sigh of 
 relief. Hardie heard it, interpreted it aright, and sent 
 for him into the parlor : and there told him with a great 
 affectation of frankness what he had done : then asked 
 significantly if there was any news at Albion Villa. 
 
 Skinner in reply told Mr. Hardie of the distress he 
 had witnessed up at Albion Villa; "And, sir," said he, 
 lowering his voice, "Mr. Alfred helped carry the body 
 up-stairs. It is a nice mess altogether, sir, when you 
 come to think." 
 
 " Ah ! all the better," was the cool reply : " he will be 
 useful to let us know what we want ; he will tell Jane, 
 and Jane me. You don't think he will live, do you ? " 
 
 " Live ! no : and then who will know the money is 
 here ? " 
 
 "Who should know? Did not he say he had just 
 landed, and been shipwrecked ? Shipwrecked men do not 
 bring fourteen thousand pounds ashore." The speaker's
 
 HARD CASH. 3G0 
 
 eyes sparkled; Skinner watched him demurely. ''Skin- 
 ner," said he, solemnly, " I believe my daughter Jane is 
 right; and that Providence really interferes sometimes 
 in the affairs of this world ; you know how I have strug- 
 gled, to save my family from disgrace and poverty ; 
 those struggles have failed in a great degree ; but Heaven 
 has seen them, and saved this money from the sea, and 
 dropped it into my very hands to retrieve my fortunes 
 with. I must be grateful ; spend a portion of it on 
 charity, and rear a noble fortune on the rest. Confound 
 it all ! " 
 
 And his crestfallen countenance showed some ugly 
 misgiving had flashed on him quite suddenly. 
 
 " What, sir ? what ? " asked Skinner, eagerly. 
 
 "The receipt!"
 
 370 HARD CASH. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 " The receipt ? Oh, is that all ? you have got that," 
 said Skinner very coolly. 
 
 "What makes you think so?" inquired the other, 
 keenly. He instantly suspected Skinner of having it. 
 
 " Why, sir, I saw it in his hand." 
 
 "Then it has got to Albion Villa, and we are ruined." 
 
 " No, no, sir ; you won't hear me. I am sure I saw it 
 fall out of his hand when he was taken ill ; and I think, 
 but I won't be sure, he fell on it. Any way, there was 
 nothing in his hands when I delivered him at Albion 
 Villa, so it must be here. I dare say you have thrown 
 it into a drawer or somewhere, promiscuously." 
 
 "No, no. Skinner," said Mr. Hardie, with increasing 
 alarm ; "it is useless for us to deceive ourselves. I was 
 not three minutes in the room, and thought of nothing 
 but getting to town and cashing the bills." 
 
 He rang the bell sharply, and on Betty coming in, 
 asked her what she had done with that paper that was 
 on the floor ? 
 
 " Took it up and put it on the table, sir. This was it, 
 I think." And she laid her finger upon a paper. 
 
 "No, no," said Mr. Hardie. "The one I mean was 
 much smaller than that." 
 
 " What," said she, with that astonishing memory for 
 trifles peo])le have who never read, "was it a little crum- 
 pled-up paper, lying by the basket ? 
 
 " Yes, yes ; that sounds like it." 
 
 " Oh ! I put that hito the basket." 
 
 Mr. Hardie's eye fell directly on the basket, but it
 
 HARD CASH. 371 
 
 was empty. She caught his glance, and told him she 
 had emptied it iu the dust-hole as usual. Mr. Hardie 
 uttered an angry exclamation. Betty, an old servant of 
 his wife's, resented it with due dignity by tossing her 
 head as she retired. 
 
 " There is no help for it," said Mr. Hardie, bitterly ; 
 "we must go and grub in the dust-hole now." 
 
 " Why, sir, your name is not on it, after all." 
 
 " What does that matter ? A man is bound by the act 
 of his agent ; besides, it is my form, and my initials on 
 the back. Come, let us put a good face on the thing." 
 And he led the way to the kitchen, and got up a little 
 laugh, and asked the scullery maid if she could show 
 Mr. Skinner and him the dust-hole. She str.red, but 
 obeyed, and the pair followed her, making merry. 
 
 The dust-hole was empty. 
 
 The girl explained : " It is the dustman's day. He 
 came at eleven o'clock in the morning and carr'd all the 
 dust away, and grumbled at the paper and the bones, he 
 did. So I told him beggars mustn't be choosers. Just 
 like his impudence ! when he gets it for nothing, and 
 sells it for a mint outside the town." The unwonted 
 visitors left her in dead silence almost before she had 
 finished her sentence. 
 
 Mr. Hardie sat down in his parlor, thoroughly discom- 
 posed ; Skinner watched him furtively. 
 
 At last the former broke out: "This is the Devil's 
 doing; the Devil in person. No intelligence nor ability 
 can resist such luck. I almost wish we had never med- 
 dled with it. We shall never feel safe, never be safe." 
 
 Skinner made light of the matter, treated the receipt 
 as thrown into the sea. "Why, sir," said he, "by this 
 time it will have found its way to that monstrous heap 
 of ashes on the London road, and who will ever look for 
 it there ? or notice it if they find it ? " Hardie shook
 
 372 HARD CASH. 
 
 his head. " That monstrous heap is all sold every year 
 to the farmers. That receipt, worth fourteen thousand 
 pounds to me, will be strewed on the soil for manure ; 
 then some farmer's man or farmer's boy that goes to the 
 Sunday school will read it, see Captain Dodd's name, and 
 bring it to Albion Villa in hopes of a sixpence, — a six- 
 pence. Heaven help the man who does a doubtful act, 
 and leaves damnatory evidence on paper kicking about 
 the world." 
 
 From that hour the cash Hardie carried in his bosom, 
 without a right to it, began to blister. 
 
 He thought of telling the dustman he had lost a paper, 
 and setting him to examine the mountain of ashes on the 
 London road ; but here caution stepped in. How could 
 he describe the paper without awakening curiosity and 
 defeating his own end ? He gave that up. It was better 
 to let the sleeping dog lie. 
 
 Finally he resolved to buy security in a world where, 
 after all, one has to buy everything. So he employed 
 an adroit agent, and quietly purchased that mountain, 
 the refuse of all Barkington. But he felt so ill used, he 
 paid for it in his own notes ; by this means the treaty 
 reverted to the primitive form of barter,^ ashes for rags. 
 
 This transaction he concealed from his confederate. 
 
 When he had completed it, he was not yet secure ; for 
 another day had passed, and Captain Dodd alive still. 
 Men often recover from apoplexy, especially when they 
 survive the first twenty-four hours. Should he live, he 
 would not now come into any friendly arrangement with 
 the man who had so nearly caused his death. So, then, 
 good-by to the matrimonial combination Hardie had at 
 first relied on to patch his debt to Alfred and his broken 
 fortunes. Then, as to keeping the money and defying 
 
 • Or exchange of commodities without the aid of money. See Homer, and 
 Welsh villages, passim.
 
 HARD CASH. 873 
 
 Dodd, that would be very difficult and dangerous ; mer- 
 cantile bills are traceable things, and criminal prosecu- 
 tions awkward ones. He found himself in a situation 
 he could not see his way through by any mental effort ; 
 there were so many objections to every course, and so 
 many to its opposite. " He walked among fires," as the 
 Latins say. But the more he pondered on the course to 
 be taken should Dodd live, the plainer did this dilemma 
 stare him in the face ; either he must refund, or fly the 
 country with another man's money, and leave behind him 
 the name of a thief. Parental love, and the remains of 
 self-respect, writhed at this thought ; and with these 
 combined a sentiment less genuine, but by no means 
 feeble, the love of reputation. So it was with a reluc- 
 tant and sick heart he went to the shipping-office, and 
 peered at the posters to see when the next ship sail'^d 
 for the United States. Still he did go. 
 
 Intent on his own schemes, and expecting every day 
 to be struck in front, he did not observe that a man in 
 a rusty velveteen coat followed him, and observed this 
 act, and, indeed, all his visible acts. 
 
 Another perplexity was when he should break. There 
 were objections to doing it immediately, and objections 
 to putting it off. 
 
 With all this the man was in a ferment : by day he 
 sat waiting and fearing, by night he lay sleepless and 
 thinking ; and, though his stoical countenance retained 
 its composure, the furrows deepened in it, and the iron 
 nerves began to twitch at times from strain of mind and 
 want of sleep, and that rack, suspense. Not a night that 
 he did not awaken a dozen times from his brief dozes 
 with a start, and a dread of exposure by some mysterious, 
 unforeseen means. 
 
 It is remarkable how truths sometimes flash on men 
 at night in hours of nervous excitement j it was in one
 
 374 HARD CASH. 
 
 of these nightly reveries David Dodd's pocket-book flashed 
 back upon Mv. Hardie. He saw it before his eyes quite 
 plain, and on the inside of the leather cover a slip of 
 paper pasted, and written on in pencil or pale ink, he 
 could not recall which. 
 
 What was that writing ? It might be the numbers of 
 the notes, the description of the bills. Why had he not 
 taken it out of the dying man's pocket? "Fool! fool!" 
 he groaned ; " to do anything by halves." 
 
 Another night he got a far severer shock. Lying in 
 his bed dozing and muttering as usual, he was suddenly 
 startled out of that uneasy slumber by three tremendous 
 knocks at the street-door. 
 
 He sprang out of bed, and in his confusion made sure 
 the officers of justice were come for him. He began to 
 huddle on his clothes with a vague notion of flight. 
 
 He had got on his trousers and slippers, and was look- 
 ing under his pillow for the fatal cash, when he heard 
 himself called loudly and repeatedly by name; but this 
 time the sound came from the garden into which his bed- 
 room looked. He opened it very softly, in trepidation 
 and wonder, which were speedily doubled by Avhat met 
 his eyes ; for there, right in front of his window, stood 
 an unearthly figure, corresponding in every particular to 
 that notion of a ghost in which we are reared, and which, 
 when our nerves are healthy, we can ridicule as it 
 deserves ; but somehow it is never cleaned out of our 
 imagination so thoroughly as it is out of onr judgment. 
 
 The figure was white as a sheet, and seemed super- 
 naturally tall, and it cried out in a voice like a wounded 
 lion's, "You villain! you Plardie ! give me back my 
 money, my fourteen thousand pounds. Give me my 
 children's money, or may your children die before your 
 eyes ; give me my darlings' money, or may the eternal 
 curse of God light on you and yours, you scoundrel ! "
 
 HARD CASH. 3(0 
 
 And the figure kneeled on the grass, and repeated the 
 terrible imprecation almost in the same words, that 
 Hardie shrank b'ack, and, resolute as he was, cowered 
 with superstitious awe. 
 
 But this sentiment soon gave way to vulgar fears ; the 
 man would alarm the town. And, in fact, Mr. Hardie, 
 in the midst of his agitation, was dimly conscious of 
 hearing a window open softl}^ not very far from him. 
 But it was a dark night. He put his head out in great 
 agitation, and whispered, '' Hush I hush I and I'll bring 
 it you down directly." 
 
 Internally cursing his hard fate, he got the fatal cash, 
 put on his coat, hunted for the key of the bank parlor, 
 and, having found it, went softly down the stairs, 
 unlocked the door, and went to open the shutters. 
 
 At this moment his ear caught a murmur, a low buzz- 
 ing of voices in the garden. 
 
 He naturally thought that Captain Dodd was exposing 
 him to some of the townspeople ; he was puzzled what 
 to do, and, like a cautious man as he was, remained 
 passive, but on the watch. 
 
 Presently the voices were quiet, and he heard footsteps 
 come very slowly towards the window at which he stood, 
 and then make for the little gate. On this he slipped 
 into the kitchen, which faced the street, and got to a 
 window there, and listened. His only idea was to catch 
 their intentions, if possible, and meet them accordingl3% 
 He dared not open the window, for above him on the 
 pavement he saw a female figure half standing, half 
 crouching ; but soon that figure rushed wildly out of his 
 sight to meet the footsteps, and then he ventured to open 
 the window, and, listening, heard cries of despair, and a 
 young heart-broken voice say her father was dead. 
 
 " Ah ! that is all right," muttered Hardie. 
 
 Still even this profound egotist was not yet so hard-
 
 376 HARD CASH. 
 
 ened, but that he felt one chill of horror at himself for 
 the thought, a passing chill. 
 
 He listened and listened, and by and"by he heard the 
 slow feet recommence their journey, amidst sobs and 
 sighs ; and those sorrowful feet, and the sobs and sighs 
 of his causing, got fainter and fainter, retreated, and left 
 him in quiet possession of the fourteen thousand pounds 
 he had brought down to give it up ; two minutes ago it 
 was not worth as many pence to him. 
 
 He drew a long breath of relief. " It is mine ; I am 
 to keep it. It is the will of Heaven." 
 
 Poor Heaven ! 
 
 He went to his bed again, and by a resolute effort 
 composed himself, and determined to sleep. And, in 
 fact, he was just dropping off, when suddenly he started 
 wide awake again ; for it recurred to him vividly that a 
 window in his house had opened, while David was curs- 
 ing him, and demanding his children's money. 
 
 Whose window ? 
 
 Half a dozen people and more slept on that side of 
 the house. 
 
 Whose window could it be ? 
 
 He walked among fires.
 
 HARD CASH. 377 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Not many days after this a. crowd of persons stood 
 in front of the old bank, looking, half stupefied, at 
 the shutters, and at a piece of paper pasted on them 
 announcing a suspension, only for a month or so, and 
 laying the blame on certain correspondents not speci- 
 fied. 
 
 So great was the confidence inspired by the old bank, 
 that many said it would come round, it must come round, 
 in a month ; but other of ^Nlr. Hardie's unfortunate clients 
 recognized in the abov^e a mere formula to let them down 
 by degrees ; they had seen many statements as hopeful 
 end in a dividend of sixpence in the pound. 
 
 Before the day closed, the scene at the bank-door was 
 heart-rending; respectable persons, reduced to pauperism 
 in that one day, kept arriving and telling their fellow- 
 sufferers their little all was with Hardie, and nothing 
 before them but the workhouse or the almshouse; ruined 
 mothers came and held up their ruined children for the 
 banker to see ; and the doors were hammered at, and the 
 house as well as the bank was beleaguered by a weeping, 
 wailing, despairing crowd. 
 
 But, like an idle wave beating on a rock, all this 
 human misery dashed itself in vain against the bank- 
 er's brick walls and shutters, hard to them as his very 
 heart. 
 
 The next day they mobbed Alfred and hissed him at 
 the back door. Jane was too ashamed and too fright- 
 ened to stir out. Mr. Hardie sat calmly putting the 
 finishing strokes to his fabricated balance-sheet.
 
 378 HARD CASH. 
 
 Some innocent and excited victims went to the mayor 
 for redress ; to the aklermen, the magistrates, — in vain. 
 
 Towards afternoon the banker's cool contempt for his 
 benefactors, whose lives he had darkened, received a 
 temi)orary check : a heavy stone was flung at the bank 
 shutters. This ferocious blow made him start, and the 
 place rattle ; it was the signal for a shower : and pres- 
 ently tink, tink, went the windows of the house, and in 
 came the stones, starring the mirrors, upsetting the 
 chairs, denting the papered walls, chipping the mantel- 
 pieces, shivering the bell-glasses and statuettes, and 
 strewing the room with dirty pebbles, and painted frag- 
 ments, and glittering ruin. 
 
 Hardie winced : this was the sort of appeal to touch 
 him. But soon he recovered his sang-froid. "Thank 
 you," said he, "I'm much obliged to you; now I'm in 
 the right and you are in the wrong." And he put liim- 
 self under protection of the police, and fee'd them so 
 royally that they were zealous on his behalf, and rough 
 and dictatorial even Avith those who thronged the place 
 only to moan and lament and hold up their ruined chil- 
 dren. "You must move on, you misery," said the 
 police. And the}^ were right ; misery gains nothing by 
 stopping the way, — nothing by bemoaning itself. 
 
 But if the banker, naturally egotistical, and now 
 entirely Avrapped in his own plans and fears and well- 
 earned torments, was deaf to the anguish of his clients, 
 there were others in his house who felt it keenly and 
 deeply. Alfred and Jane were heart-broken ; they sat 
 hand in hand in a little room, drawn closer by misfort- 
 une, and heard the groans at their door ; and the tears 
 of pity ran down their own cheeks hot with shame, and 
 Alfred wrote on the fly-leaf of his "Ethics" a vow to 
 pay every shilling his father owed these poor people — 
 before he died. It was like him, and like his happy age,
 
 HARD CASH. 379 
 
 at which the just and the generous can command, in 
 imagination, the means to do kindred deeds. 
 
 Soon he found, to his horror, that he had seen but a 
 small percentage of the distress his father had caused ; 
 the greater griefs, as usual, stayed at home. Behind the 
 gadding woes lay a terrible number of silent, decent, 
 ruined homes, and broken hearts, and mixed sorrows so 
 unmerited, so complicated, so piteous, and so cruel, that 
 he was ready to tear his hair, to know them and not be 
 able to relieve them instantly. 
 
 Of that mere sample I give a mere sample : divine the 
 bulk then, and revolve a page of human history often 
 turned by the people, but too little studied by statisti- 
 cians and legislators. 
 
 Mr. Esgar, a respectable merchant, had heavy engage- 
 ments, to meet which his money lay at the old bank. 
 Living at a distance he did not hear the news till near 
 dinner-time, and he had promised to take his daughters 
 to a ball that night. He did so, left them there, went 
 home, packed up their clothes, and valuables, and next 
 day levanted with them to America, taking all the money 
 he could scrape together in London ; and so he passed 
 his ruin on to others. Esgar was one of those who wear 
 their honesty long, but loose : it was his first disloyal 
 act in business ; " Dishonesty made me dishonest," was 
 his excuse. Valeat quantum. 
 
 John Shaw, a steady footman, had saved and saved, 
 from twenty-one years old to thirty-eight, for " Footman's 
 Paradise," a public-house. He was now engaged to a 
 comely barmaid, who sympathized with him therein ; 
 and he had just concluded a bargain for the "Rose and 
 Crown " in the suburbs. Unluckily for him, the money 
 had not been paid over. The blow fell ; he lost his all : 
 not his money only, but his wasted life. He could not 
 be twenty-one again, so he hanged himself within forty-
 
 380 HARD CASH. 
 
 eight hours, and was buried by the parish, grumbling a 
 little, pitying none. 
 
 James and Peter Gilpin, William Scott, and Joel 
 Paton, were poor fishermen, and Anglo-Saxon heroes : 
 that's heroes with an eye to the main chance. They 
 risked their lives at sea to save a ship and get salvage ; 
 failing there, they risked their lives all the same, like 
 fine fellows as they were, to save the crew. They suc- 
 ceeded, but ruined their old boat. A subscription was 
 raised, and prospered so, that a boat-builder built them 
 a new one on tick, price eighty-five pounds, and the pub- 
 licans said, '•' Drink, boys, drink ; the subscription will 
 cover all : it is up to a hundred and twenty already." 
 The subscription money was swallowed with the rest, 
 and the Anglo-Saxon heroes hauled to prison. 
 
 Dr. Phillips, aged seventy-four, warned by growing 
 infirmities, had sold a tidy practice, with house, furni- 
 ture, and good-will, for a fair price, and put it in the 
 bank, awaiting some investment. The money was gone 
 now, and the poor old doctor, with a wife and daughter 
 and a crutch, was at once a pauper and an exile ; for he 
 had sold under the usual condition, not to practise with- 
 in so many miles of his siiccessor. He went to that 
 successor, and begged permission to be his assistant at a 
 small, small salary. "I want a younger man," was the 
 reply. Then he went round to his old patients, and 
 begged a few half-guineas to get him a horse and chaise 
 and keep him over the first month in his new place. They 
 pitied him, but most of them were sufferers too by 
 Hardie, and all they gave him did but buy a donkey and 
 cart ; and with that he and his Avent slowly and sadly to 
 a village ten miles distant from the place where all his 
 life had been spent in comfort and good credit. The 
 poor old gentleman often looked back from his cart at 
 the church spires of Barkington.
 
 HARD CASH. 381 
 
 From seventeen till now almost fourscore 
 There lived he, but now lived there no more. 
 At seventeen man}' their fortunes seek ; 
 But at fourscore it is too old a week. 
 
 Arrived at his village, he had to sell his donkey and 
 trust to his crutch. And so infirmity crept about, beg- 
 ging leave to cure disease, with what success may be 
 inferred from this : Miss Phillips, a ladylike girl of 
 eighteen, was taken up by Farmer Giles before Squire 
 Langton, for stealing turnips out of a field; the farmer 
 was hard, and his losses in Hardie's bank had made him 
 bitter hard, so the poor girl's excuse, that she could not 
 let her father starve, had no effect on him : to jail she 
 should go.^ 
 
 Took to the national vice, and went to the national 
 dogs, Thomas Fisher, a saving tinman, and a bachelor; 
 so I expect no pity for him. 
 
 To the same goal, by the same road, dragging their 
 families, went the Rev. Henry Scudamore, a curate; 
 Philip Hall, a linendraper ; Neil Pratt, a shoemaker ; 
 Simon Harris, a greengrocer; and a few more; but the 
 above were all prudent, laborious men, who took a 
 friendly glass, but seldom exceeded, until Hardie's bank- 
 ruptcy drove them to the devil of drink for comfort. 
 
 Turned professional thief, Joseph Locke, working 
 locksmith, who had just saved money enough to buy a 
 shop and good-will, and now lost it every penny. 
 
 Turned atheist, and burned the family Bible before 
 his weeping wife and terrified children and gaping serv- 
 ant girl, Mr. Williams, a Sunday-school teacher, known 
 
 1 I f5nd, however, that Squire Langton resolutely refused to commit Miss 
 Pliillips. Tlie real reason, I suspect, was, that he had a respect for the gos- 
 pel, and not much for the law, except those invaluable clauses wliich restrain 
 poaching. The reason he gave was, "Turnips be hanged! If she hadn't 
 eaten them, the fly would." However, he found means to muzzle Giles, and 
 sent the old doctor two couple of rabbits.
 
 382 HARD CASH. 
 
 hitherto only as a mild, respectable man, a teetotaller, 
 jind a good parent and hnsband. He did not take to 
 drinking, but he did to cursing, and forbade his own flesh 
 and blood ever to enter a church again. This man 
 became an outcast, shunned by all. 
 
 Three elderly sisters, the Misses Lunley, well born 
 and. bred, lived together on their funds, which, small 
 singly, united made a decent competence. Two of them 
 had refused marriage in early life for fear the third 
 should fall into less tender hands than theirs. For 
 Miss Blanche Lunley was a cripple ; disorder of the 
 spine had robbed her, in youth's very bloom, of the 
 power not only to dance as you girls do, but to walk or 
 even stand upright, leaving her two active little hands, 
 and a heart as nearly angelic as we are likely to see here 
 on earth. 
 
 She lay all day long on a little iron bedstead at the 
 window of their back parlor that looked on a sunny 
 little lawn, working eagerly for the poor ; teaching the 
 poor, young and old, to read, chiefly those of her own 
 sex ; hearing the sorrows of the poor, composing the 
 quarrels of the poor, relieving their genuine necessities 
 with a little mone}', and much ingenuit}^ and labor. 
 
 Some poor woman, in a moment of inspiration, called 
 Miss Blanche "the sunshine of the poor." The word 
 was instantly caught up in the parish, and had now this 
 many years gently displaced " Lunley," and settled on her 
 here below, and its echo gone before her up to heaven. 
 
 The poor " sunshine of the poor " was happy ; life 
 was sweet to her. To know whether this is so, it is 
 useless to inquire of the backbone, or the limbs ; look 
 at the face ! She lay at her Avindow in the kindred sun- 
 shine, and in a Avorld of sturdy, able, agile cursers, 
 grumblers, and j^awners, her face, pale as ashes, wore 
 the eternal sunshine of a happy, holy smile.
 
 HARD CASH. 383 
 
 But there came one to her bedside, and told her the 
 bank was broken, and all the money gone she and her 
 sisters had lent Mr. Hardie. 
 
 The saint clasped her hands, and said, " Oh, my poor 
 people ! What will become of them ? " And the tears 
 ran down her pale and now sorrowful cheeks. 
 
 At this time she did not know the full extent of their 
 losses. 
 
 But they had given Mr. Hardie a power of attorney 
 to draw out all their consols. That remorseless man 
 had abused the discretion this gave him, and beggared 
 them — they were his personal friends too — to swell 
 his secret hoard. 
 
 When "the sunshine of the poor" heard this, and 
 knew that she was now the poorest of the poor, she 
 clasped her hands and cried, " Oh, my poor sisters ! my 
 poor sisters ! " and she could work no more for sigh- 
 ing. 
 
 The next morning found "the sunshine of the poor" 
 extinct in her little bed ; ay, dead of grief with no 
 grain of egotism in it : gone straight to heaven without 
 one angry word against Kichard Hardie or any other. 
 
 Old Betty had a horror of the -workhouse. To save 
 her old age from it she had deposited her wages in the 
 bank for the last twenty years, and also a little legacy 
 from Mr. Hardie's father. She now went about the 
 house of her master and debtor, declaring she was sure 
 he would not rob he7% and, if he did, she would never go 
 into the poorhouse. " I'll go out on the common, and 
 die there. Nobody will miss me." 
 
 The next instance led to consequences upon conse- 
 quences : and that is my excuse for telling it the reader 
 somewhat more fully than Alfred heard it. 
 
 Mrs. Maxley, one night, found something rough at her 
 feet in bed. " What on earth is this ? " said she.
 
 38-1 HARD CASH. 
 
 "Never you mind," said Maxley ; "say it's my 
 breeches, what then ? " 
 
 " Why, what on earth does the man put his breeches 
 to bed for ? " 
 
 " That is my business," roared Maxley; and whispered 
 dryly, " 'tain't for you to wear 'em, howsever." 
 
 This little spar led to his telling her he had drawn 
 out all their money ; but, when she asked the reason, he 
 snubbed her again indirectly ; recommended her sleep. 
 
 The fact is, the small-clothes were full of bank-notes, 
 and Maxley always followed them into bed now for fear 
 of robbers. 
 
 The bank broke on a Tuesday ; Maxley dug on impas- 
 sive ; and when curious people came about him to ask 
 whether he was a loser, he used to inquire very gravely, 
 and dwelling on every syllable, " Do — you — see — any- 
 thing — green — in this here eye ? " 
 
 Friday was club day : the clubsmen met at the " Grey- 
 hound " and talked over their losses. Maxley sat smok- 
 ing complacently ; and, when his turn came to groan, he 
 said dryly, " I draad all mine a week afore. (Exclama- 
 tions.) I had a hinkling. My boy Jack he wrote to me 
 from Canada as how Hardies was rotten out there. Now 
 these here bankers they be like an oak-tree; they do go 
 at the limbs first, and then at the heart." 
 
 The club was wroth. " What ? you went and made 
 yourself safe, and never gave any of us a chance ! Was 
 that neighborly ? was that — clubable ? " 
 
 To a hailstorm of similar reproaches, Maxley made 
 but one reply : " 'Twarn't my business to take care o' 
 you." He added, however, a little sulkily, " I was laad 
 for slander once ; scalded dog fears lue-warm water." 
 
 " Oh," said one, " I don't believe him. He puts a good 
 face on it, but his nine hundred is gone along with ourn." 
 
 " Tain't gone far, then." With this he put his han^
 
 HARD CASH. 
 
 ooO 
 
 in his pocket, and after some delay pulled out a nice new 
 crisp note and held it up : " What is that ? 1 ask the 
 company." 
 
 " Looks like a ten-pun note, James." 
 
 "Well, the bulk 'grees with the sample; I knows 
 where to find eight score and nine to match this here." 
 
 The note was handed round : and on inspection each 
 countenance in turn wore a malicious smile ; till at last 
 Maxley, surrounded by grinning faces, felt uneasy. 
 
 " What be 'e all grinning at like a litter o' Chessy cats ? 
 warn't ye ugly enough without showing of your rotten 
 teeth ? " 
 
 "Haw! haAv!" 
 
 "Better say 'tain't money at all, but only a wench's 
 curl-paper : " and he got up and snatched it fiercely out 
 of the last inspector's hand. "Ye can't run your rigs 
 on me," said he. " What an if I can't read words, I can 
 figures ; and I spelt the ten out on every one of them, 
 afore I'd take it." 
 
 A loud and general laugh greeted this boast. 
 
 Then Maxley snatched up his hat in great wrath, and 
 some anxiety, and went out followed by a peal. 
 
 In five minutes he was at home ; and tossed the note into 
 his wife's lap. She was knitting by a farthing dip. 
 " Dame ! " said he, controlling all appearance of anxiety, 
 " what d'ye call that ? " 
 
 She took up the note and held it close to the candle : 
 "Why, Jem, it is a ten-pound note, one of Hardie's — as 
 was." 
 
 " Then what were those fools laughing at ? " And he 
 told her all that had happened. 
 
 Mrs. Maxley dropped her knitting and stood up trem- 
 bling : " Why, you told me you had got our money all 
 safe out. " 
 
 " Well, and so I have, ye foolish woman : " and he drew
 
 386 HARD CASH. 
 
 the whole packet out of his pocket and flung them 
 fiercely on the table. Mrs. Maxley ran her finger and 
 eye over them, and uttered a scream of anger and despair, 
 
 " These ! these be all Hardie's notes," she cried ; " and 
 what vally be Hardie's notes when Hardie's be broke ? " 
 
 Maxley staggered as if he had been shot. 
 
 The woman's eyes flashed fur}^ at him : " This is your 
 work, ye born idiot: 'Mind your own business,' says 
 you : you must despise your wedded wife, that has more 
 brains in her finger than you have in all your great, long, 
 useless carcass : you must have your secrets : one day 
 poison, another day beggary : j'ou have ruined me, you 
 have murdered me : get out of my sight ! for if I find a 
 knife I'll put it in you, I will." And in her ungovernable 
 passion, she actually ran to the dresser for a knife : at 
 which Maxley caught up a chair and lifted it furiously 
 above his head to fling at her. 
 
 Luckily the man had more self-command than the 
 woman ; he dashed the chair furiously on the floor, and 
 ran out of the house. 
 
 He wandered about half stupid : and presently his feet 
 took him mechanically round to his garden. He pottered 
 about among his plants, looking at them, inspecting them 
 closely, and scarce seeing them. However, he covered 
 up one or two, and muttered, " I think there will be a 
 frost to-night : I think there will be a frost." Then 
 'his legs seemed to give way. He sat down and thought 
 of his wedding-day : he began to talk to himself out loud, 
 as some peo^Dle do in trouble : " Bless her comely face," 
 said he, " and to think I had my arm lifted to strike her, 
 after wearing her so long, and finding her good stuff upon 
 the whole. Well, thank my stars I didn't. We must 
 make the best on't : money's gone ; but here's the garden 
 and our hands still : and 'tain't as if we were single to 
 gnaw our hearts alone : wedded life cuts grief a two.
 
 HARD CASH. 387 
 
 Let's make it up : and begin again. Sixty, come Martin- 
 }nas : and Susan forty -eight : and I be a'most weary of 
 turning moulds." 
 
 He went round to his front door. 
 
 There was a crowd round it ; a buzzing crowd, with all 
 their faces turned towards his door. 
 
 He came at their backs, and asked peevishly what was 
 to do now. Some of the women shrieked at his voice. 
 The crowd turned about, and a score of faces peered at 
 him : some filled with curiosity, some with pity. 
 
 "Lord help us!" said the poor man, "is there any 
 more trouble a-foot to-day ? Stand aside, please ; and 
 let me know." 
 
 " No ! no ! " cried a woman, " don't let him." 
 
 " Not let me go into my own house, young woman ? " 
 said Maxley, wath dignity : " be these your manners ? " 
 
 " James ! I meant you no ill. Poor man ! " 
 
 " Poor soul ! " said another. 
 
 " Stand aloof ! " said a strange map. " Who has as 
 good a right to be there as he have ? " 
 
 A lane was made directly, and Maxley rushed down 
 between two rows of peering faces, with his knees knocking 
 together, and burst into his own house. A scream from 
 the women inside, as he entered, and a deep groan from 
 the strong man bereaved of his mate, told the tragedy. 
 Poor Susan JNIaxley was gone. 
 
 She had died of breast-pang, within a minute of his 
 leaving her ; and the last words of two faithful spouses 
 were words of anger. 
 
 All these things, and many more less tragic, but very 
 deplorable, came to Alfred Hardie's knowledge, and 
 galled and afflicted him deeply. And several of these 
 revelations heaped discredit high upon Richard Hardie, 
 till the young man, born with a keen sense of justice, 
 and bred amongst honorable minds, began to shudder at 
 his own father.
 
 388 HARD CASH. 
 
 Herein he was aloi)e ; Jane, with the affectionate 
 blindness of her sex, could throw her arms round her 
 father's neck, and pity him for his losses — by his own 
 dishonesty — and pity him most when some victim of 
 his unprincipled conduct died, or despaired. " Poor papa 
 will feel this so deeply," was her only comment on such 
 occasions. 
 
 Alfred was not sorry she could take this view ; and 
 left her unmolested to confound black with white, and 
 wrong with right, at affection's dictates, but his own 
 trained understanding was not to be duped in matters 
 of plain morality. And so, unable to cure the wrongs he 
 deplored, unable to put his conscience into his pocket, 
 like Richard Hardie, or into his heart like Jane, he 
 wandered alone, or sat brooding and dejected : and 
 the attentive reader, if I am so fortunate as to possess 
 one, will not be surprised to learn that he was troubled 
 too with dark mysterious surmises he half dreaded, yet 
 felt it his duty, to fathom. These and Mrs. Dodd's loss 
 by the bank combined to keep him out of Albion Villa. 
 He often called to ask after Captain Dodd, but was 
 ashamed to enter the house. 
 
 Now Richard Hardie's anxiety to know whether David 
 was to die or live had not declined, but rather increased. 
 If the latter, he was now resolved to fly to the United 
 States with his booty, and cheat his alienated son along 
 with the rest : he had come by degrees down to this. It 
 was on Alfred he had counted to' keep him informed of 
 David's state : but, on his putting a smooth inquiry, the 
 young man's face flushed with shame, or anger, or some- 
 thing, and he gave a very short, sharp, and obscure reply. 
 In reality he did not know much, nor did Sarah, his 
 informant; for of late the servants had never been 
 allowed to enter David's room. 
 
 Mr. Hardie, after this rebuff, never asked Alfred again
 
 HARD CASH. 389 
 
 but having heard Sampson's name mentioned as Dodd's 
 medical attendant, wrote and asked him to come and 
 dine, next time he should visit Barkington : — 
 
 You will find me a fallen man (said he) ; to-mon'ow we 
 resign our house and premises and furniture to the assignees, 
 and go to live at a little furnished cottage not very far from 
 your friends the Dodds. It is called " Musgrove Cottage." 
 There, where we have so little to offer besides a welcome, 
 none but true friends will come near us : indeed, there are 
 very few I should venture to ask for such a proof of fidelity to 
 your broken friend. 
 
 R. II. 
 
 The good-hearted Sampson sent a cordial reply, and 
 came to dinner at Musgrove Cottage. 
 
 Now all Hardie wanted of him in reality was to know 
 about David ; so when Jane had retired, and the decanter 
 circulated, he began to pump him by his vanity. " I 
 understand," said he, "you have wrought one of your 
 surprising cures in this neighborhood. Albion Villa ! " 
 
 Sampson shook his head sorrowfully : Mr. Hardie's 
 eyes sparkled; Alfred watched him keenly and bit- 
 terly. 
 
 " How can I work a great cure after those ass-ass-ins 
 Short and Osmond ? Look,- see ! the man had been 
 wounded in the hid, and lost blood: thin stabbed in the 
 shoulder; and lost more blood." Both the Hardies 
 uttered an ejaculation of unfeigned surprise. " So, instid 
 of recruiting the buddy thus exhausted of the great liquid 
 material of all repair, the profissional ass-ass-in came 
 and exhausted him worse : stabbed him while he slept ; 
 stabbed him unconscious, stabbed him in a vein : and 
 stole more blood from him. Wasn't that enough ? No ! 
 the routine of profissional ass-ass-ination had but begun ; 
 nixt they stabbed him with cupping-needles, and so stole 
 more of his life-blood. And they were goeu from their
 
 390 HAKD CASH. 
 
 stabs to their bites, goen to leech his temples, and so 
 hand him over to the sixton." 
 
 " But you came in and saved him," cried Alfred. 
 
 " 1 saved his life," said Sampson, sorrowfully : " but 
 life is not the only good thing a man may be robbed of by 
 those who steal his life-blood, and so impoverish and 
 water the contints of the vessels of the brain." 
 
 " Dr. Sampson," said Alfred, " what do you mean by 
 these mysterious words ? you alarm me." 
 
 " What, don't you know ? Haven't they told you ? " 
 
 "Ko, I have not had the courage to enter the house 
 since the bank " — He stopped in confusion. 
 
 *'Ay, I understand," said Sampson: "however, it can't 
 be hidden now — 
 
 " He is a maniac." 
 
 Sampson made this awful announcement soberly and 
 sorrowfully. 
 
 Alfred groaned aloud, and even his father experienced 
 a momentary remorse ; but so steady had been the progress 
 of corruption, that he felt almost unmixed joy the next 
 instant; and his keen-witted son surprised the latter 
 sentiment in his face, and shuddered with disgust. 
 
 Sampson went on to say that he believed the poor 
 man had gone flourishing a razor; and j\[rs. Dodd had 
 said, " Yes, kill me, David : kill the mother of your 
 children," and never moved : which feminine, or in other 
 words irrational, behavior, had somehow disarmed him. 
 But it would not happen again : his sister had come : a 
 sensible, resolute woman. She had signed the order, 
 and Osmond and he the certificates, and he was gone to 
 a private asylum. " Talking of that," said Sampson, 
 rising suddenly, "I must go and give them a word of 
 comfort; for they are just breaking their hearts at part- 
 ing with him, poor things: I'll be back in an hour."
 
 HARD CASH. 391 
 
 On his departure, Jane returned and made the tea in 
 the dinmg-room : they lived like that now. 
 
 Mr. Hardie took it from his favorite's little white 
 hand, and smiled on her : he should not have to go to a 
 foreign land after all : who would believe a madman if 
 he should rave about his thousands ? He sipped his tea 
 luxuriously, and presently delivered himself thus, with 
 bland self-satisfaction : — 
 
 '' My dear Alfred, some time ago you wished to marry 
 a young lady without fortune ; you thought that I had a 
 large one : and you expected me to supply all deficiencies. 
 You did not overrate my parental feeling ; but you did 
 my means : I would have done this for you, and with 
 pleasure, but for my own coming misfortunes. As it 
 was, I said, ' No.' And, when you demanded, somewhat 
 peremptorily, my reasons, I said, 'Trust me.' Well, you 
 see I was right: such a marriage would have been your 
 utter ruin. However, I conclude after what Dr. Sampson 
 has told us, you have resigned it on other grounds. Jane, 
 my dear, Captain Dodd, I am sorry to say, is afflicted. 
 He has gone mad." 
 
 '' Gone mad ? oh, how shocking ! What will become 
 of his poor children ? " She thought of Edward first. 
 
 " We have just heard it from Sampson. And I presume, 
 Alfred, you are not so far gone as to insist on propagating 
 insanity, by a marriage with his daughter." 
 
 At this conclusion, which struck her obliquely, though 
 aimed at Alfred, Jane sighed gently ; and her dream of 
 earthly happiness seemed to melt away. 
 
 But Alfred ground his teeth, and replied with great 
 bitterness and emotion, " I think, sir, you are the last 
 man who ought to congratulate yourself on the affliction 
 that has fallen on that unhappy family I aspire to enter, 
 all the more that now they have calamities for me to 
 share " —
 
 392 HAKD CASH. 
 
 "More fool you," put in ]\[r. Hardie, calmly. 
 
 '' — For I much fear you are one of the causes of that 
 calamity." 
 
 jNIr. Hardie assumed a puzzled air. " I don't see how 
 that can be, do you, Jenny ? Sampson told us the 
 causes : a wound on the head, a wound in ' the arm, 
 bleeding, cupping, etc." 
 
 "There may be other causes Dr. Sampson has not 
 been told of — yet." 
 
 " Possibly. I really don't know what you allude to." 
 
 The son fixed his eyes on the father, and leaned across 
 the table to him till their faces nearly met. 
 
 " The fourteen thousand pounds, sir."
 
 HARD CASH. 393 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Mr. Hardie was taken by surprise for once, and had 
 not a word to say, but looked in his son's face, mute and 
 gasping as a fish. 
 
 During this painful silence his children eyed him 
 inquiringly, but not with the same result ; for one face 
 is often read differently by two persons : to Jane, whose 
 intelligence had no aids, he seemed unaffectedly puzzled ; 
 but Alfred discerned beneath his wonder the terror of 
 detection rising, and then thrust back by the strong will ; 
 that stoical face shut again like an iron door, but not 
 quickly enough; the right words, the "open sesame," 
 had been spoken, and one unguarded look had confirmed 
 Alfred's vague suspicions of foul play. He turned his 
 own face away ; he was alienated by the occurrences of 
 the last few months, but nature and tender reminiscences 
 still held him by some fibres of the heart. In a moment 
 of natural indignation he had applied the touchstone, 
 but its success grieved him ; he could not bear to go on 
 exposing his father, so he left the room with a deep sigh, 
 in which pity mingled with shame and regret. He wan- 
 dered out into the silent night, and soon was leaning on 
 the gate of Albion Villa, gazing wistfully at the windows, 
 and sore perplexed and nobly wretched. 
 
 As he was going out, Mr. Hardie raised his eyebrows 
 with a look of disinterested wonder and curiosity, and 
 touched his forehead to Jane, as much as to say, " Is he 
 disordered in his mind ? " 
 
 As soon as they were alone, he asked her coolly what 
 Alfred meant. She said she had no idea. Then he
 
 394 HARD CASH. 
 
 examined her keenly about this fourteen thousand 
 pounds ; and found, to his relief, Alfred had never 
 even mentioned it to her. 
 
 And now Richard Hardie, like his son, wanted to be 
 alone, and think over this new peril that had risen in the 
 bosom of his own family ; and, for once, the company 
 of his favorite child was irksome. He made an excuse 
 and strolled out in his turn into the silent night. It 
 was calm and clear ; the thousand holy eyes under which 
 men prefer to do their crimes — except when they are in 
 too great a hurry to wait — looked down and seemed to 
 wonder anything can be so silly as to sin ; and beneath 
 their pure gaze the man of the world pondered with 
 all his soul. He tormented himself with conjectures : 
 through what channel did Alfred suspect him ? through 
 the Dodds ? were they aware of their loss ? had the 
 pocket-book spoken ? If so, why had not Mrs. Dodd or 
 her son attacked him ? But then, perhaps Alfred was 
 their agent : they Avished to try a friendly remonstrance 
 through a mutual friend before proceeding to extremities ; 
 this accorded with Mrs. Dodd's character as he remem- 
 bered her. 
 
 The solution was reasonable, but he was relieved of it 
 by recollecting what Alfred had said : that he had not 
 entered the house since the bank broke. 
 
 On this he began to hope Alfred's might be a mere 
 suspicion he could not establish by any proof, and, at all 
 events, he would lock it in his own breast like a good 
 son ; his never having given a hint even to his sister 
 favored this supposition. 
 
 Thus meditating, Mr. Hardie found himself at the 
 gate of Albion Villa. 
 
 Yet he had strolled out with no particular intention 
 of going there. Had his mind, apprehensive of danger 
 from that quarter, driven his body thither?
 
 HARD CASH. 395 
 
 He took a look at the house, and the first thing he saw- 
 was a young lady leaning over the balcony and murmur- 
 ing softly to a male figure below, whose outline jNIr. Hardie 
 could hardly discern, for it stood in the shadow. Mr, 
 Hardie was delighted : "Aha, Miss Juliet," said he, "if 
 Alfred does not visit you, some one else does. You 
 have soon supplied your peevish lover's place." He 
 then withdrew softly from the gate, not to disturb the 
 intrigue, and watched a few yards off, determined to see 
 who Julia's nightly visitor was, and give Alfred surprise 
 for surprise. 
 
 He had not long to wait ; the man came away directly, 
 and walked, head erect, past Mr. Hardie, and glanced 
 full in his face, but did not vouchsafe him a word. 
 It was Alfred himself. jNFr. Hardie was profoundly 
 alarmed and indignant. " The young traitor ! Never 
 enter the house ? no ; but he comes and tells her every- 
 thing directly, under her window, on the sly : and, when 
 he is caught — defies me to my face." And now he sus- 
 pected female cunning and malice in the way that thun- 
 derbolt had been quietly prepared for him and launched, 
 without warning, in his very daughter's presence, and 
 the result just communicated to Julia Dodd. 
 
 In a very gloomy mood he followed his son, and heard 
 his firm though elastic tread on the frosty ground, and 
 saw how loftily he carried his head, and from that mo- 
 ment feared and very, very nearly hated him. 
 
 The next day he feigned sick, and sent for Osmond. 
 That worthy prescribed a pill and a draught : the former 
 laxative, the latter astringent. This ceremony performed, 
 Mr. Hardie gossiped with him ; and, after a detour or 
 two, glided to his real anxiety. " Sampson tells me you 
 know more about Captain Dodd's case than he does ; he 
 is not very clear as to the cause of the poor man's going 
 mad."
 
 896 HARD CASH. 
 
 " The cause ? Why, apoplexy." 
 
 " Yes ; but I mean, what caused the apoplexy ? " 
 
 My. Osmond replied that apoplexy was often idiopathic' 
 Captain Dodd, as he understood, had fallen down in the 
 street in a sudden fit ; " But as for the mania, that is to 
 be attributed to an insufficient evacuation of blood while 
 under the apoplectic coma." 
 
 " Not bled enough ! Why, Sampson says it is because 
 he was bled too much." 
 
 Osmond was amused at this, and repeated that the 
 mania came of not being bled enough. 
 
 The discussion was turned into an unexpected quarter 
 by the entrance of Jane Hardie, who came timidly in 
 and said, " Mr. Osmond, I cannot let you go without 
 telling you how anxious I am about Alfred. He is so 
 thin and pale and depressed." 
 
 " Nonsense, Jane ! " said Mr. Hardie ; " have we not all 
 cause to be dejected in this house ? " But she persisted 
 gently that there was more in it than that ; and his head- 
 aches were worse ; and she could not be easy any longer 
 without advice. 
 
 " Ah ! those headaches," said Mr. Osmond, " they 
 always made me uneasy. To tell the truth. Miss 
 Hardie, I have noticed a remarkable change in him ; 
 but I did not like to excite apprehensions. And so he 
 mopes, does he ? seeks solitude, and is taciturn and 
 dejected ? " 
 
 " Yes. But I do not mind that so much as his turning 
 so pale and thin." 
 
 " Oh, it is all part of one malady." 
 
 " Then you know what is the matter ? " 
 
 " I think I do ; and yours is a wise and timely anxiety. 
 Your brother's is a very delicate case of a hypereesthetic 
 
 » "Arising of itself." A term rather hastily applied to disorders the coining 
 ■igns of which have not been detected by the medical attendant. 
 The birth of Topsy was idiopathic — in that learned lady's opinion.
 
 HARD CASH. 397 
 
 character, and I should like to have the advice of a pro- 
 found physician. Let me see, Dr. W^'cherley will be with 
 me to-morrow ; may I bring him over as a friend ? " 
 
 This proposal did not at all suit Mr, Hardie ; he put 
 his own construction on Alfred's pallor and dejection, 
 and was uneasy at the idea of his being cross-questioned 
 by a couple of doctors. 
 
 '' No, no," said he ; " Taff has fancies enough already ; 
 I cannot have you gentlemen coming here to fill his head 
 with man}^ more." 
 
 " Oh, he has fancies, has he ? " said Osmond, keenly. 
 " IVIy dear sir, we shall not say one word to h im ; that 
 might irritate him ; but I should like you to hear a truly 
 learned opinion." 
 
 Jane looked so imploringly, that Mr. Hardie yielded 
 a reluctant assent, on those terms. 
 
 So the next day, by appointment, Mr. Osmond intro- 
 duced his friend Dr. Wycherley : bland and bald, with a 
 fine head, and a face naturally intelligent, but crossed 
 every now and then by gleams of vacancy ; a man of 
 large reading, and of tact to make it subserve his inter- 
 ests. A voluminous writer on certain medical subjects, 
 he had so saturated himself with circumlo(!ution, that it 
 distilled from his very tongue ; he talked like an article ; 
 a quarterly one ; and so gained two advantages : 1st, He 
 rarely irritated a fellow-creature ; for, if he began a sen- 
 tence hot, what with its length, and what with its windi- 
 ness, he ended it c6ol : item, stabs by polysyllables are 
 pricks by sponges. 2dly, This foible earned him the 
 admiration of fools ; and that is as invaluable as they 
 are innumerable. 
 
 Yet was there, in the mother-tongue he despised, one 
 gem of a word he vastly admired, like most quarterly 
 writers. That charming word, the pet of the polysyl- 
 labic, was " OF."
 
 398 HARD CASH. 
 
 He opened the matter in a subdued and sympathizing 
 tone well calculated to win a loving father such as Richard 
 Hardie — was not. 
 
 " jNIy good friend here informs me, sir, you are so 
 fortunate as to possess a son of distinguished abilities, 
 and who is at present laboring under some of those pre- 
 cursory indications of incipient disease of the cerebro- 
 psycliical organs, of which I have been, I may say, some- 
 what successful in diagnosing the symptoms. Unless I 
 have been misinformed, he has, for a considerable time, 
 experienced persistent headache of a kephalalgic or true 
 cerebral type, and has now advanced to the succeeding 
 stage of taciturnity and depression, not ^ unaccompanied 
 with isolation, and probably constipation ; but as yet 
 without hallucination, though possibly, and, as my expe- 
 rience of the great majority of these cases would induce 
 me to say, probably, he is not^ undisturbed by one or 
 more of those latent, and, at first, trifling aberrations, 
 either of the intelligence or the senses, which, in their 
 preliminary stages, escape the observation of all but the 
 expert nosologist." 
 
 " There, you see," said Osmond, " Dr. "Wycherley agrees 
 with me ; yet, I assure you, I have only detailed the 
 symptoms, and not the conclusion I had formed from 
 them." 
 
 Jane inquired timidly what that conclusion was. 
 
 " Miss Hardie, we think it one of those obscure tend- 
 encies which are very curable if taken in time " — Dr. 
 "Wycherley ended the sentence — "But no longer reme- 
 diable if the fleeting opportunity is allowed to escape, 
 and diseased action to pass into diseased organization." 
 
 Jane looked awe-struck at their solemnity, but IMr. 
 Hardie, who was taking advice against the grain, turned 
 satirical. " Gentlemen," said he, " be pleased to begin 
 
 1 Anglice, " accompanied." ' Anglice, " disturbed."
 
 HAED CASH. 399 
 
 by moderating yoi;r own obscurity ; and then, perhaps I 
 shall see better how to cure my son's disorder : what the 
 deuce are you driving at ? " 
 
 The two doctors looked at one another inquiringly, 
 and so settled how to proceed. Dr. Wycherley explained 
 to Mr. Hardie that there was a sort of general unreason- 
 able and superstitious feeling abroad, a kind of terror of 
 the complaint with which his son was threatened ; '■•and 
 ivhich, instead of the m.ost remediable of disorders, is 
 looked at as the most incurable of maladies ; " it was on 
 this account he had learned to approach the subject with 
 singular caution, and even with a timidity which was 
 kinder in appearance than in reality; that he must 
 admit. 
 
 " Well, you may speak out, as far as I am concerned," 
 said Mr. Hardie, with consummate indifference. 
 
 "Oh, yes!" said Jane, in a fever of anxiety; "pray 
 conceal nothing from us." 
 
 " Well, then, sir, I have not as yet had the advantage 
 of examining your son personally, but from the diagnos- 
 tics I have no doubt whatever he is laboring under the 
 first foreshadowings of cerebro-psychical perturbation. 
 To speak plainly, the symptoms are characteristic of 
 the initiatory stage of the germination of a morbid state 
 of the phenoinena of intelligence." 
 
 His unprofessional hearers only stared. 
 
 "In one word, then," said Dr. Wycherley, waxing 
 impatient at their abominable obtusement, "it is the 
 premonitory stage of the precursory condition of an 
 organic affection of the brain." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Mr. Hardie, " the brain ! * I see ; the boy 
 is going mad." 
 
 The doctors stared in their turn at the prodigious cool- 
 ness of a tender parent. "Xot exactly," said Dr, 
 
 ^ What a blessing there are a few English words left in all our dialects.
 
 400 HARD CASH. 
 
 Wycherley ; " I am habitually averse to exaggeration Ot 
 symptoms. Your son's suggest to me 'the incubation of 
 insanity,' nothing more." 
 
 Jane uttered an exclamation of horror : the doctor 
 soothed her with an assurance that there was no cause 
 for alarm. "Incipient aberration" was of easy cure: 
 the mischief lay in delay. " Miss Hardie," said he 
 paternally, " during a long and busy professional career, 
 it has been my painful province to witness the deplor- 
 able consequences of the non-recognition, by friends and 
 relatives, of the precedent symptoms of those organic 
 affections of the brain, the relief of which was within 
 the reach of well-known therapeutic agents, if exhibited 
 seasonably." 
 
 He went on to deplore the blind prejudice of unpro- 
 fessional persons ; who chose to fancy that other dis- 
 eases creep, but insanity pounces on a man : which he 
 expressed thus neatly : " That other deviations from 
 organic conditions of health are the subject of clearly 
 defined though delicate gradations, but that the worst 
 and most climacteric forms of cerebro-psychical dis- 
 order are suddenly developed affections presenting no 
 evidence of any antecedent cephalic organic change, and 
 unaccompanied by a premonitory stage, or by incipient 
 symptoms." 
 
 This chimera h proceeded to confute, by experience : 
 he had repeatedly been called in to cases of mania de- 
 scribed as sudden, and almost invariably found the 
 patient had been cranky for years ; which he condensed 
 thus : " His conduct and behavior for many years pre- 
 viously to anj symptom of mental aberration being 
 noticed, lina been characterized by actions quite irrec- 
 oncilable with the supposition of the existence of per- 
 fect sanity of intellect." 
 
 He instanced a parson, whom he had lately attended,
 
 HARD CASH. 401 
 
 and found him as constipated, and as convinced he was 
 John the Baptist engaged to the Princess Mary, as could 
 be. " But," continued the learned doctor, "upon investi- 
 gation of this afflicted ecclesiastic's antecedent history, 
 I discovered that, for years before this, he had exhibited 
 conduct incompatible with the hypothesis of a mind 
 whose equilibrium had been undisturbed : he had caused 
 a number of valuable trees to be cut down on his estate, 
 without being able to offer a sane justification for such 
 an outrageous proceeding : and had actually disposed of 
 a quantity of his patrimonial acres, ^ and which^ clearly 
 he never would have parted with had he been in anything 
 resembling a condition of sanity." 
 
 '■' Did he sell the land and timber below the market 
 price ? " inquired Mr. Hardie, perking up, and exhibit- 
 ing his first symptom of interest in the discussion. 
 
 "On that head, sir, my informant, his heir-at-law, gave 
 me no information : nor did I enter into that class of 
 detail ; you naturally look at morbid phenomena in a 
 commercial spirit, but we regard them medically; and, 
 all this time, most assiduously visiting the sick of his 
 parish and preaching admirable sermons." 
 
 The next instance he gave was of a stockbroker suffer- 
 ing under general paralysis and a rooted idea that all the 
 specie in the Bank of England was his, and ministers in 
 league with foreign governments to keep him out of it. 
 "Him," said the doctor, "I discovered to have been for 
 years guilty of conduct entirely incompatible with the 
 hypothesis of undisordered mental functions. He had 
 accused his domestics of peculation, and had initiated 
 legal proceedings with a view of prosecuting in a court 
 of law one of his oldest friends." 
 
 " Whence you infer that, if my son has not for years 
 been doing cranky acts, he is not likely to be deranged 
 at present." 
 26
 
 402 HARD CASH. 
 
 This adroit twist of the argument rather surprised Dr, 
 Wycherley. However, he was at no loss for a reply. 
 " It is not insanity, but the incubation of insanity, which 
 is suspected in your intelligent son's case : and the best 
 course will be for me to enumerate in general terms the 
 several symptoms of 'the incubation of insanity:'" he 
 concluded with some severity, "after that, sir, I shall 
 cease to intrude what I fear is an unwelcome convic- 
 tion." 
 
 The parent, whose levity and cold reception of good 
 tidings he had thus mildly, y t with due dignity, rebuked, 
 was a man of the world : and liked to make friends, not 
 enemies : so he took the hint, and made a very civil 
 speech, assuring Dr. Wycherley that, if he ventured to 
 differ from him, he was none the less obliged by the 
 kind interest he took in a comparative stranger : and 
 would be very glad to hear all about the " incubation of 
 insanity." 
 
 Dr. Wycherley bowed slightly ; and complied : — 
 
 " One diagnostic preliminary sign of abnormal cerebral 
 action is kephalalgia, or true cerebral headache ; I mean 
 persistent headache not accompanied by a furred tongue, 
 or other indicia significant of abdominal or renal dis- 
 order as its origin." 
 
 Jane sighed. " He had sad headaches." 
 
 "The succeeding symptom is a morbid affection of 
 sleep. Either the patient suffers from insomnia; or else 
 from hypersomnia, which we sub-divide into sopor, 
 earns, and lethargus; or thirdly from kakosomnia, or a 
 propensity to mere dozing, and to all the morbid phe- 
 nomena of dreams." 
 
 "Papa," said Jane, "poor Alfred sleeps very badly: I 
 hear him walking at all hours of the night." 
 
 "I thought as much," said Dr. Wycherley ; "insomnia 
 is the commonest feature. To resume : the insidious
 
 HARD CASH. 403 
 
 advance of morbid thought is next marked by high 
 spirits, or else by low spirits ; generally the latter. The 
 patient begins by moping, then shows great lassitude and 
 ennui, then becomes abstracted, moody, and occupied 
 with a solitary idea." 
 
 Jane clasped her hands, and the tears stood in her 
 eyes ; so well did this description tally with poor Alfred's 
 case. 
 
 "And at this period," continued Dr. Wycherley, "my 
 experience leads me to believe that some latent delusion 
 is generally germinating in the mind, though often con- 
 cealed with consummate craft by the patient : the open 
 development of this delusion is the next stage, and, 
 with this last morbid phenomenon, incubation ceases and 
 insanity begins. Sometimes, however, the illusion is 
 physical rather than psychical, of the sense rather than 
 of the intelligence. It commences at night : the incu- 
 bator begins by seeing nocturnal visions, often of a 
 photopsic ^ character, or hearing nocturnal sounds, neither 
 of which have any material existence, being conveyed to 
 his optic or auricular nerves not from without, but from 
 Avithin, by the agency of a disordered brain. These the 
 reason, hitherto unimpaired, combats at first, especially 
 when they are nocturnal only : but being reproduced, and 
 becoming diurnal, the judgment succumbs under the 
 morbid impression produced so repeatedly. These are 
 the ordinary antecedent S3-mptoms characteristic of the 
 incubation of insanity ; to which are frequently added 
 somatic exaltation, or, in popular language, ph3-sical 
 excitability — a disposition to knit the brows — great 
 activity of the mental faculties — or else a well-marked 
 decline of the powers of the understanding — an exag- 
 geration of the normal conditions of thought — or a 
 reversal of the mental habits and sentiments, such as 
 
 > Luminous.
 
 404 HARD CASH. 
 
 a sudden aversion to some person hitherto beloved, or 
 some study long relished and pursued." 
 
 Jane asked leave to note these all down in her note-book. 
 
 ]\Ir. Hardie assented adroitly ; for he was thinking 
 whether he could not sift some grain out of all this 
 chaff. Should Alfred blab his suspicions, here were two 
 gentlemen who would at all events help him to throw 
 ridicule on them. 
 
 Dr. Wycherley, having politely aided Jane Hardie to 
 note down " the preliminary process of the incubation 
 of disorders of the intellect," resumed: "Now, sir, your 
 son appears to be in a very inchoate stage of the malady : 
 he has cerebral kephalalgia and insomnia" — 
 
 " And, oh, doctor," said Jane, " he knits his brows 
 often ; and has given up his studies ; won't go back to 
 Oxford this term." 
 
 " Exactly ; and seeks isolation, and is a pre}' to morbid 
 distraction and reverie: but has no palpable illusions; 
 has he ? " 
 
 '"■Not that I know of," said Mr. Hardie. 
 
 '•Well, but," objected Jane, "did not he say something 
 to you very curious the other night ; about Captain Dodd 
 and fourteen thousand pounds ? " 
 
 Mr. Hardie's blood ran cold": "Xo," he stammered, 
 "not that I remember." 
 
 '' Oh, yes, he did, papa : you have forgotten it : but 
 at the time you were quite puzzled what he could mean : 
 and you did so." She put her finger to her forehead : and 
 the doctors interchanged a meaning glance. 
 
 "I believe you are right, Jenny," said j\[r. Hardie, 
 taking the cue so unexpectedly offered him : '• he did 
 say some nonsense I could not make head nor tail of; 
 but we all have our crotchets ; there, run away, like a 
 good girl, and let me explain all this to our good friends 
 here : and mind, not a word about it to Alfred."
 
 HARD CASH. 405 
 
 When she was goue, he said, "Gentlemen, my son is 
 over head and ears in love ; that is all." 
 
 "Ay, erotic monomania is a very ordinary phase of 
 insanity," said Dr. Wycherley. 
 
 "His unreasonable i)assion for a girl he knows he can 
 never marry makes him somewhat crotchety and cranky : 
 that, and over-study, may have uuhinged his mind a 
 little : suppose I send him abroad ? my good brother will 
 hud the means ; or we could advance it him, I and the 
 other trustees ; he comes into ten thousand pounds in a 
 month or two." 
 
 The doctors exchanged a meaning look. They then 
 dissuaded him earnestly from the idea of Continental 
 travel. 
 
 " Cculum non animam mutant qui trans mare currunt^^ 
 said Wycherley, and Osmond explained that Alfred would 
 brood abroad as Avell as at home, if he went alone : and 
 Dr. Wycherley summed up thus : " The most advisable 
 course is to give him the benefit of the personal superin- 
 tendence of some skilful physician possessed of means 
 and appliances of every sort for soothing and restraining 
 the specific malady." 
 
 Mr. Ha'rdie did not at first see the exact purport of 
 this oleaginous periphrasis. Presently he caught a 
 glimpse : but said he thought confinement was hardly 
 the thing to drive away melancholy. 
 
 " Not in all respects," replied Dr. Wyeherly : " but, 
 on the other hand, a little gentle restraint is the safest 
 way of effecting ,a disruption of the fatal associations 
 that have engendered and tend to perpetuate the disorder. 
 Besides, the medicinal appliances are invaluable ; includ- 
 ing, as they do, the nocturnal and diurnal attendance of 
 a psycho-physical physician, who knows the psycho-so- 
 matic relation of body and mind, and can apply ])hysical 
 remedies, of the effect of which on the physical iustru-
 
 406 HARD CASH. 
 
 ment of intelligence, the gray matter of the brain, we 
 have seen so many examples." 
 
 The good doctor then feelingly deplored the inhu- 
 manity of parents and guardians in declining to subject 
 their incubators to opportune and salutary restraint under 
 the more than parental care of a psycho-somatic physi- 
 cian. On this head he got quite warm, and inveighed 
 against the abominable cruelty of the thing. " It is 
 contrary," said he, "to every principle of justice and 
 humanit}^, tliat a fellow-creature, deranged perhaps only 
 on one point, should for the want of the early attention 
 of those, whose duty it is to watch over him, linger out 
 his existence separated from all who are dear to him, 
 and condemned without any crime to be a prisoner for 
 life." 
 
 Mr. Hardie was puzzled by this sentence, in which the 
 speaker's usual method was reversed, and the thought was 
 bigger than the words. 
 
 "Oh," said he at last, "I see. We ought to incar- 
 cerate our children to keep them from being incarcer- 
 ated." 
 
 " That is one way of putting it with a vengeance," 
 said Mr. Osmond, staring. " Ko ; what my good friend 
 means " — 
 
 "Is this ; where the patient is possessor of an income 
 of such a character as to enable his friends to show a 
 sincere affection by anticipating the consequences of 
 neglected morbid phenomena of the brain, there a lament- 
 able want of humanity is exhibited by the persistent 
 refusal to the patient, on the part of his relatives, of 
 the incalculable advantage of the authoritative advice 
 of a competent physician accompanied with the safe- 
 guards and preventives of " — 
 
 But ere the mellifluous pleonast had done oiling his 
 paradox with fresh polysyllables, to make it slip into the
 
 HARD CASH. 407 
 
 banker's navroAv understanding, he met with a curious 
 interruption. Jane Hardie fluttered in to say a man 
 "was at the door accusing himself of being deranged. 
 
 " How often this sort of coincidence occurs/' said 
 Osmond, philosophically. 
 
 "Do not refuse him, dear papa; it is not for money ; 
 he only wants you to give him an order to go into a 
 lunatic asylum." 
 
 "Note, there is a sensible man,^' said Dr. "Wycherley, 
 
 "AVell, but," objected Mr. Hardie, "if he is a sensible 
 man, why does he want to go to an asylum ? " 
 
 "Oh, they are all sensible at times," observed Mr. 
 Osmond. 
 
 " Singularly so," said Dr. Wycherley, warmly. And he 
 showed a desire to examine this paragon, who had the 
 sense to know he was out of his senses. 
 
 " It would be but kind of you, sir," said Jane ; "poor, 
 poor man ! " She added, he did not like to come in, and 
 would they mind just going out to him ? 
 
 " Oh, no, not in the least ; especially as you seem 
 interested in him." 
 
 And they all three rose and went out together, and 
 found the petitioner at the front door. Who should it 
 be but James ^faxley I 
 
 His beard was unshaven, his face haggard, and every- 
 thing about him showed a man broken in spirit as well 
 as fortune ; even his voice had lost half its vigor, and, 
 whenever he had uttered a consecutive sentence or two, 
 his head dropped on his breast, pitiably ; indeed, this 
 sometimes occurred in the middle of a sentence, and 
 then the rest of it died on his lips. 
 
 Mr. Richard Hardie was not prepared to encounter one 
 of his unhappy creditors thus publicly, and, to shorten 
 the annoyance, would have dismissed him roughly ; but 
 he dared not ; for IVIaxley was no longer alone, nor
 
 408 HARD CASH. 
 
 unfriended ; when Jane left him, to intercede for him, a 
 young man joined him, and was now comforting him 
 with kind words, and trying to get him to smoke a cigar; 
 and this good-hearted young gentleman was the banker's 
 son in the flesh, and his opposite in spirit, Mr. Alfred 
 Hardie. 
 
 Finding these two in contact, the doctors interchanged 
 demurest glances. 
 
 Mr. Hardie asked Maxley sullenly what he wanted of 
 them. 
 
 " Well, sir," said Maxley, despondingly, " I have been 
 to all the other magistrates in the borough ; for what 
 with losing my money, and what with losing my missus, 
 I think I bain't quite right in my head ; I do see such 
 curious things, enough to make a body's skin creep at 
 times." And down went his head on his chest. 
 
 " Well ? " said INIr. Hardie, peevishly ; " go on ; you 
 went to the magistrates, and what then ? " 
 
 Maxley looked up, and seemed to recover the thread ; 
 " Why, they said * no,' they couldn't send me to the 
 'sylum, not from home ; I must be a pauper first. So 
 then my neiglibors they said I had better come to you." 
 And down went his head again, 
 
 *' Well, but," said jNIr. Hardie, '-you cannot expect me 
 to go against the other magistrates." 
 
 " Why not, sir ? You have had a hatful o' money of 
 me ; the other gentlemen hain't had a farthing. They 
 owes me no service, but you does ; nine hundred pounds' 
 worth if ye come to that." 
 
 There was no malice in this ; it was a plain broken- 
 hearted man's notion of give and take ; but it was a 
 home-thrust all the same ; and Mr, Hardie was visibly 
 discountenanced, and Alfred more so. 
 
 Mr. Osmond, to relieve a situation so painful, asked 
 Maxley rather hastily what were the curious things he 
 saw.
 
 HARD CASH. 409 
 
 Maxley shuddered. " Tlie unreasonablest beasts, sir, 
 you ever saw or heard tell on ; mostly snakes and 
 dragons. Can't stoop my head to do no work, for them, 
 sir. Bless your heart, if I was to leave you gentlemen 
 now, and go and dig for live minutes in my garden, they 
 would come about me as thick as slugs on cabbage ; why, 
 'twas but yestere'en I tried to hoe a bit, and up come the 
 fearfullest great fiery sarpint ; scared me so, I heaved my 
 hoe and laid on un' properly ; presently 1 seemed to come 
 out of a sort of a kind of a red mist into the clear ; and 
 there laid my poor missus's favorite hen ; I had been 
 and killed her for a sarpint !" He sighed; then, after a 
 moment's pause, lowered his voice to a whisper, " Now 
 suppose I was to go and take some poor Christian for 
 one of these gre-at bloody dragons I do see at odd times, 
 I might do him a mischief, you know, and not mean him 
 no harm neither. Oh, dooee take and have me locked 
 up, gentlemen, dooee now : tellee I ain't fit to be about, 
 my poor head is so mazed." 
 
 " Well, well," said Mr. Hardie, " I'll give you an order 
 for the union." 
 
 " What, make a pauper of me ? " 
 
 " I cannot help it," said the magistrate ; " it is the 
 routine ; and it was settled at a meeting of the bench 
 last month that we must adhere to the rule as strictly as 
 possible ; the asylum is so full ; and you know, Maxley, 
 it is not as if you were dangerous." 
 
 "That I be, sir; I don't know what I'm a-looking at, 
 or a-doing. Would I ha' gone and killed my poor 
 Susan's hen if I hadn't a been beside myself ? and she 
 in her grave, poor dear ; no, not for untold gold ; and I 
 be fond of that too ; used to be, however ; but now I don't 
 seem to care for money nor nothing else." And his head 
 dropped. 
 
 "Look here, Maxley, old fellow," said Alfred, sarcas
 
 410 HARD CASH. 
 
 tically, " you must go to the workhouse ; and stay there 
 till you hoe a pauper ; take him for a crocodile, and kill 
 him ; then you will get into an asylum, whether the 
 Barkington magistrates like it or not ; that is the 
 routine, I believe ; and as reasonable as most routine." 
 
 Dr. Wycherley admired Alfred for this, and whispered 
 ]\Ir. Osmond, " How subtly they reason !" 
 
 Mr. Hardie did not deign to answer his son, who 
 indeed had spoken at him, and not to him. 
 
 As for poor Maxley, he was in sad and sober earnest, 
 and could not relish nor even take in Alfred's irony ; he 
 lifted his head and looked Mr. Hardie in the face. 
 
 " You be a hard man," said he, trembling with emotion. 
 " You robbed me and my missus of our all, you ha' 
 broke her heart, and turned my head, and if I was to 
 come and kill you 'twould only be clearing scores. 
 'Stead of that I comes to you like a lamb, and says, give 
 me your name on a bit of paper, and put me out of 
 harm's way. ' No,' says you, ' go to the workhouse ! ' 
 Be you in the workhouse ? You that owes me nine hun- 
 dred pounds and my dead missus ? " With this he went 
 into a rage, took a packet out of his pocket, and flung 
 nine hundred pounds of Mr. Hardie's paper at Mr. 
 Hardie's head before any one could stop him. 
 
 But Alfred saw his game, stepped forward, and caught 
 it with one hand, and with the dexterity of a wicket- 
 keeper, within a foot of his father's nose. "How's that, 
 umpire ? " said he ; then, a little sternlv, " Don't do that 
 again, Mr. Maxley, or I shall have to give you a hiding 
 — to keep up appearances." He then put the notes in 
 his pocket, and said quietly, "/ shall give you your 
 money for these, before the year ends." 
 
 " You won't be quite so mad as that, I hope," remon- 
 strated his father. But he made no reply ; they \ev^ 
 seldom answered one another now.
 
 HARD CASH. 411 
 
 "Oh," said Dr. Wyclierley, inspecting liim like a 
 human curiosity, ^^ nullum maynuni inf/enlum sine mix- 
 turd dementice.'' 
 
 ^^ Nee parvum sine mixturd stultitice,^' retorted Alfred 
 in a moment ; and met his offensive gaze with a point- 
 blank look of supercilious disdain. 
 
 Then having shut him up, he turned to Osmond. 
 " Come," said he, " prescribe for this poor fellow, who 
 asks for a hospital, so routine gives him a workhouse ; 
 come, you know there is no limit to your skill and good- 
 nature ; you cured Spot of the worms, cure poor old 
 Maxley of his snakes ; oblige me." 
 
 '• That I will, Mr. Alfred," said Osmond, heartil}- ; and 
 wrote a prescription on a leaf of his memorandum-book, 
 remarking that, though a simple purgative, it had made 
 short work of a great many serpents and dragons, and 
 not a few spectres and hobgoblins into the bargain. 
 
 The young gentleman thanked him graciously, and 
 said kindly to Maxley, '•' Get that made up — here's a 
 guinea — and I'll send somebody to see how you are 
 to-morrow." 
 
 The poor man took the guinea and the prescription, 
 and his head drooped again, and he slouched away. 
 
 Dr. Wycherley remarked significantly that his conduct 
 was worth imitating by all persons similarly situated ; 
 and concluded oracularly, " Prophylaxis is preferable to 
 therapeusis." 
 
 " Or, as Porson would say, ' Prevention is better than 
 cure.' " 
 
 With this parting blow the Oxonian suddenly saun- 
 tered away, unconscious, it seemed, of the existence of 
 his companions. 
 
 " I never saw a plainer case of incubation," remarked 
 Dr. Wycherley with vast benevolence of manner. 
 
 " Maxley 's ? "
 
 412 HARD CASH. 
 
 '' Oh, no ; that is parochial. It is your profoundly 
 interesting son I alluded to. Did you notice his super- 
 cilious departure ? And his morbid celerity of repartee ? " 
 
 Mr. Hardie replied Avith some little hesitation, " Yes ; 
 and, excuse me, I thought he had rather the best of the 
 battle with you." 
 
 '' Indubitably so," replied Dr. Wycherley ; " they 
 always do ; at least, svich is my experience. If ever I 
 break a lance of wit with an incubator, I calculate with 
 confidence on being unhorsed with abnormal rapidity ; 
 and rare, indeed, are the instances in which my antici- 
 pations are not promptly and fully realized; by a similar 
 rule of progression the incubator is seldom a match for 
 the confirmed maniac, either in the light play of sar- 
 casm, the coruscations of wit, or the severer encounters 
 of dialectical ratiocination." 
 
 "Dear, dear, dear ! Then how is one to know a genius 
 from a madman ? " inquired Jane. 
 
 " By sending for a psychological j^hysician.''^ 
 
 " If I understand the doctor right, the two things are 
 not opposed," remarked Mr. Hardie. 
 
 Dr. Wycherley assented, and made a remarkable state- 
 ment in confirmation : "One half of the aggregate of the 
 genius of the country is at present under restraint ; 
 fortunately for the community; and still more fortu- 
 nately for itself." 
 
 He then put on his gloves, and, with much kindness 
 but solemnity, warned Mr. Hardie not to neglect his 
 son's case, nor to suppose that matters could go on like 
 this without "disintegrating or disorganizing the gray 
 matter of the brain." "I admit," said he, "that in some 
 recorded cases of insanity the brain on dissection has 
 revealed no signs of structural or functional derange- 
 ment, and that, on the other hand, considerable ence- 
 phalic disorganization has been shown to have existed in
 
 HARD CASH. 413 
 
 other cases without aberration or impairment of the 
 reason : but such phenomena are to be considered as 
 pathological curiosities, with which the empiric would 
 fain endeavor to disturb the sound general conclusions 
 of science. The only safe mode of reasoning on matters 
 so delicate and profound is a priori; and, as it may 
 safeh^ be assumed as a self-evident proposition, that dis- 
 turbed intelligence bears the same relation to the brain 
 as disordered respiration does to the lungs, it is not 
 logical, reasoning a priori, to assume the possibility that 
 the studious or other mental habits of a kephalalgic, and 
 gifted, youth, can be reversed, and erotic monomania 
 germinate, with all the morbid phenomena of isolation, 
 dejection of the spirits, and abnormal exaltation of the 
 powers of wit and ratiocination, without some consider- 
 able impairment, derangement, disturbance, or modifica- 
 tion, of the psychical, motorial, and sensorial functions 
 of the great cerebral ganglion. But it would be equally 
 absurd to presuppose that these several functions can be 
 disarranged for months, without more or less disorgani- 
 zation of the medullary, or even of the cineritious, matter 
 of the encephalon. Therefore — dissection of your 
 talented son would doubtless reveal at this moment 
 either steatomatous or atheromatous dej^osits in the 
 cerebral blood-vessels, or an encysted abscess, probably 
 of no very recent origin, or, at the least, considerable 
 inspissation, and opacity, of the membranes of the 
 encephalon, or more or less pulpy disorganization of 
 one or other of the hemispheres of the brain ; good- 
 morning ! " 
 
 " Good-morning, sir ; and a thousand thanks for your 
 friendly interest in my unhappy boy." 
 
 The psycho-cerebrals " took their departure " (psycho- 
 cerebral for " went away "), and left Jane Hardie brim- 
 ful of anxiety. Alfred was not there to dispose of the
 
 414 HARD CASH. 
 
 tirade in two words, '' Petltlo jir'incipil" and so smoke 
 on : and, not being an university woman, she could not 
 keep her eye on the original assumption while following 
 the series of inferences the learned doctor built so 
 neatly, story by story, on the foundation of the quick- 
 sand o/a loose conjecture.* 
 
 "Now not a word of this to Alfred," said ISIr. Hardie. 
 " I shall propose him a little foreign tour, to amuse his 
 mind." 
 
 "Yes, but, papa, if some serious change is really 
 going on inside his poor head ? " 
 
 Mr. Hardie smiled sarcastically. " Don't you see that 
 if the mind can wound the brain, the mind can cure it ? " 
 Then, after awhile, he said parentally, "My child, I 
 must give you a lesson : men of the Avorld use enthusi- 
 asts, like those two I have just been drawing out, for 
 their tools ; we don't let them make tools of us. Os- 
 mond, you know, is jackal to an asylum in London. Dr. 
 Wycherley, I have heard, keeps two or three such estab- 
 lishments by himself or his agents, blinded by self- 
 interest and that of their clique. What an egotistical 
 world it is, to be sure ! They would confine a melan- 
 choly youth in a gloomy house, among afflicted persons, 
 and give him nothing to do but brood, and so turn the 
 scale against his reason ; but / have my children's inter- 
 est at heart more than my own. I shall send him abroad, 
 and so amuse his mind with fresh objects, break off sad 
 
 1 So novices sitting at a conjuror see him take a wedding-ring, and put it in 
 a little box before a lady; then cross the theatre with another little box, and 
 put tliat before another lady. " Hey presto! pass! " in box 2 is discovered a 
 wedding-ring, which is instantly ««»;/;?!?(/ to be tlw ring; on this the green 
 minds are fixed, and with this is sham business done. Box 1, containing the 
 real ring all the time, is overlooked ; and the confederate, in livery or not, docs 
 what he likes with it ; imprisons it in an orange —for the good of its health. 
 
 So poor Argan, when Fleurant enumerates tlie consequences of his omitting 
 a single — dose shall I say ? — is terrified by the threatened disorders, which 
 succeed to each other logically enough : all the absurdity being in thctirst link 
 of the chain; and from that his mind is diverted.
 
 fiARD CASH. 415 
 
 associations, and restore him to a brilliant career. I 
 count on you to second me in my little scheme for his 
 good." 
 
 "ThatlAvill, papa." 
 
 "Somehow, I don't know why, he is coolish to me." 
 
 " He does not understand 3'ou as I do, my own papa." 
 
 "But he is affectionate with you, I think.'' 
 
 " Oh, yes, more than ever : trouble has drawn us closer. 
 Papa, in the midst of our sorrow, how much we have to 
 be thankful for to the Giver of all good things ! " 
 
 "Yes, little angel; and you must improve Heaven's 
 goodness by working on your brother's affection, and 
 persuading him to this Continental tour." 
 
 Thus appealed to, Jane promised warmly ; and the 
 man of the world, finding he had a blind and willing 
 instrument in the one creature he loved, kissed her on 
 the forehead, and told her to run away, for here was JNIr. 
 Skinner, who no doubt wanted to speak on business. 
 
 Skinner, who had in fact been holding respectfully 
 aloof for some time, came forward on Jane's retiring, 
 and in a very obsequious tone requested a private inter- 
 view. Mr. Hardie led the way into the little dining- 
 room. 
 
 They w'ere no sooner alone than Skinner left off fawn- 
 ing, very abruptly, and put on a rugged, resolute manner 
 that was new to him. "I am come for my commission," 
 said he sturdily. 
 
 i\[r. Hardie looked an inquiry. 
 
 "Oh, you don't know what I mean, of course," said 
 the little clerk, almost brutally. "I've waited, and 
 waited, to see if you would have the decency, and the 
 gratitude, and the honesty, to offer me a trifle out of it ; 
 but I see I might wait till doomsday before you would 
 ever think of thinking of anybody but yourself. So 
 now shell out without more words, or I'll blow the gaff."
 
 41g HARD CASH. 
 
 The little wretch raised his voice louder and louder at 
 every sentence. 
 
 " Hush ! hush ! Skinner," said Mr. Hardie anxiously, 
 " you are under some delusion. When did I ever decline 
 to recognize your services ? I always intended to make 
 you a present, a handsome present." 
 
 " Then why didn't ye do it without being forced ? 
 Come, sir, you can't draw the wool over Noah Skinner's 
 eyes : I have had you watched, and you are looking 
 towards the United States, and that is too big a country 
 for me to hunt you in. I'm not to be trifled with : I'm 
 not to be palavered : give me a thousand pounds of it 
 this moment, or I'll blow the whole concern, and you 
 along with it." 
 
 " A thousand pounds ? " 
 
 " Now look at that ! " shrieked Skinner. " Serves me 
 right for not saying seven thousand. What right have 
 you to a shilling of it more than I have ? If I had the 
 luck to be a burglar's pal instead of a banker's, I should 
 have half. Give it me this moment, or I'll go to Albion 
 Villa and have you took up for a thief, as you are." 
 
 " But I haven't got it on me." 
 
 "That's a lie: you carry it where he, did, close to 
 your heart : I can see it bulge ; there. Job was a patient 
 man, but his patience went at last." With this he ran 
 to the window and threw it open. 
 
 Hardie entreated him to be calm. " I'll give it you, 
 Skinner," said he, "and with pleasure, if you will give 
 me some security that you will not turn round, as soon 
 as you have got it, and be my enemy." 
 
 "Enemy of a gent that pays me a thousand pounds ? 
 nonsense ! Why should I ? We are in the same boat •, 
 behave like a man, and you know you have nothing to 
 fear from me ; but I will — not — go halves in a theft 
 for nothing, would you ? Come, how is it to be, peace or
 
 HARD CASH. 417 
 
 war ? Will you be content with thirteen thousand 
 pounds that don't belong to you, not a shilling of it, or 
 will you go to jail a felon, and lose it every penny ? " 
 
 Mr. Hardie groaned aloud, but there was no help for 
 it. Skinner was on sale, and must be bought. 
 
 He took out two notes for five hundred pounds each, 
 and laid them on the table, after taking their numbers. 
 
 Skinner's eyes glistened. " Thank you, sir," said he. 
 He put them in his pocket. Then he said quietly, " Now 
 you have taken the numbers, sir, so I'll trouble you for 
 a line to make me safe against the criminal law. You 
 are a deep one : you might say I robbed you." 
 
 " That is a very unworthy suspicion. Skinner, and a 
 childish one." 
 
 "Oh, it is diamond cut diamond. A single line, sir, 
 just to say that in return for his faithful services, you 
 have given Noah Skinner two notes for five hundred 
 pounds, Nos. 1084 and 85." 
 
 " With all my heart, on your giving me a receipt for 
 them." 
 
 It was Skinners turn to hesitate. After reflecting, 
 however, on all the possible consequences, he saw noth- 
 ing to fear, so he consented. 
 
 The business comj^leted, a magic change took place in 
 the little clerk. " Now we are friends again, sir, and 
 I'll give you a piece of advice : mind your eye with Mr. 
 Alfred : he is down on us." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " inquired Mr. Hardie with ill- 
 disguised anxiety. 
 
 " I'll tell you, sir. He met me this morning, and says 
 he to me, ' Skinner, old boy, I want to speak a word to 
 you.' He puts his hands on my shoulder, and turns 
 me round, and says he all at one time, ' The fourteen 
 thousand pounds ! ' You might have knocked me down 
 with a feather. And he looked me through like a gim- 
 27
 
 418 HARD CASH. 
 
 let, mind ye. 'Come now,' says he, 'you see I know all; 
 make a clean breast of it.' So then I saw he didn't 
 know all, and I brazened up a bit: told him I hadn't a 
 notion what he meant. 'Oh, yes, I did,' he said; 'Cap- 
 tain Dodd's fourteen thousand pounds ! It had passed 
 through my hands.' Then I began to funk again at 
 his knowing that : perhaps he only guessed it after all ; 
 but at the time I thought he knew it : I was flustered, 
 ye see. But I said, ' I'd look at the books, but I didn't 
 think his deposit was anything like that.' — 'You little 
 equivocating humbug,' says he, ' and which was better, 
 to tell the truth at once and let Captain Dodd, who 
 never did me any harm, have his own, or to hear it told 
 me in the felon's dock ? ' Those were his words, sir, 
 and they made my blood run cold ; and if he had gone 
 on at me like that, I should have split, I know I should, 
 but he just said, ' There, your face has given your 
 tongue the lie: you haven't brains enough to. play the 
 rogue.' Oh, and another thing: he said he wouldn't 
 talk to the sparrow-hawk any more, when there was the 
 kite hard by, so by that I guess your turn is coming, sir, 
 so mind your eye. And then he turned his back on me 
 with a look as if I was so much dirt. But I didn't 
 mind that: I was glad to be shut of him at any price." 
 
 This intelligence discomposed Mr. Hardie terribly : 
 it did away with all hope that Alfred meant to keep his 
 suspicions to himself. " Why did you not tell me this 
 before ? " said he reproachfully. 
 
 Skinners sharp visage seemed to sharpen as he re- 
 plied, " Because I wanted a thousand pounds first." 
 
 " Curse your low cunning ! " 
 
 Skinner laughed. " Good-by. sir; take care of your- 
 self, and I'll take care of mine. I'm afraid of Mr. 
 Alfred and the stone jug, so I'm off to London, and 
 there I'll un-Skinner myself into Mr. Something or
 
 HAKD CASH. 419 
 
 other, and make my thousand pounds breed ten." And 
 he whipped out, leaving his master filled with rage and 
 dismay. 
 
 ''Outwitted even by this little wretch !" 
 
 He was now accountable for fourteen thousand pounds, 
 and had only thirteen thousand left, if forced to reim- 
 burse ; so that it was quite on the cards for him to lose 
 a thousand pounds by robbing his neighbor and risking 
 his own immortal jewel. This galled him to the quick, 
 and altogether his equable temper began to give way : 
 it had already survived half the iron of his nerves. He 
 walked up and down the parlor, chafing like an irritated 
 lion. In which state of his mind the one enemy he now 
 feared and hated walked quietly into the room, and 
 begged for a little serious conversation with him. 
 
 " It is like your effrontery," said Mr. Hardie ; " I won- 
 der you are not ashamed to look your father in the face." 
 
 " Having wronged nobody, I can look anybody in the 
 face," replied Alfred, looking him in the face point- 
 blank. 
 
 At this swift rejoinder, Mr. Hardie felt like a too 
 confident swordsman, who, attacking in a passion, sud- 
 denly receives a prick that shows him his antagonist is 
 not one to be trifled with. He was on his guard directly, 
 and said coldly, " You have been belying me to my 
 very clerk." 
 
 " No, sir, you are mistaken : I have never mentioned 
 your name to 3'our clerk." 
 
 jNIr. Hardie reflected on what Skinner had told him, 
 and found he had made another false move. He tried 
 again, "Nor to the Dodds ? " with an incredulous sneer. 
 
 " Nor to the Dodds," replied Alfred calmly. 
 
 " What, not to IMiss Julia Dodd ? " 
 
 " No, sir, I have seen her but once, since — I discov- 
 ered about the fourteen thousand pounds."
 
 420 HARD CASH. 
 
 " What fourteen thousand pounds ? " inquired Mr. 
 Hardie, innocently. 
 
 " What fourteen thousand pounds ! " repeated the 
 young man, disdainfully. Then suddenly turning on 
 his father, with red brow and flashing eyes, " The four- 
 teen tliousand pounds Captain Dodd brought home from 
 India : the fourteen thousand pounds I heard him claim 
 of you with curses ; ay ! miserable son and miserable 
 man that I am ! I heard my own father called a villain ; 
 and what did my father reply ? Did you hurl the words 
 back into your accuser's throat ? No : you whispered, 
 'Hush ! hush ! I'll bring it you down.' Oh, what a hell 
 shame is ! " 
 
 Mr. Hardie turned pale, and almost sick. With these 
 words of Alfred's fled all hope of ever deceiving him. 
 
 *' There, there," said the young man, lowering his voice 
 from rage to profound sorrow : " I don't come here to 
 quarrel with my father, nor to insult him, God knows ; 
 and I entreat you for both our sakes not to try my tem- 
 per too hard by these childish attempts to blind me ; 
 and, sir, pray dismiss from your mind the notion that I 
 have disclosed to any living soul my knowledge of this 
 horrible secret. On the contrary, I have kept it gnaw- 
 ing my heart, and almost maddening me at times. For 
 my own personal satisfaction I have applied a test both 
 to you and Skinner, but that is all I have done : I have 
 not told dear Julia, nor any of her family, and now, if 
 you will only listen to me, and do what I entreat you to 
 do, she shall never know ; oh, never ! " 
 
 " Oho ! " thought Mr. Hardie, " he comes with a pro- 
 posal. I'll hear it, any way." 
 
 He then took a line well known to artful men : he 
 encouraged Alfred to show his hand, maintaining a com- 
 plete reserve as to his own. " You say you did not 
 communicate your illusion about this fourteen thousand
 
 HARD CASH. 421 
 
 pounds to Julia Dodd that night : may I ask then (with- 
 out indiscretion) what did pass between you two ? " 
 
 '' I will tell you, sir. She saw me standing there, and 
 asked me in her own soft angel voice if I Avas iinhappy. 
 I told her I must be a poor creature if I could be happy. 
 Then she asked me, with some hesitation, I thoiight, why 
 I was unhappy. I said, because I could not see the path 
 of honor and duty clear ; that, at least, Avas the purport. 
 Then she told me that in all difficulties she had found 
 the best way was to pray to God to guide her ; and she 
 begged me to lay my care before Him and ask His 
 counsel. And then I thanked her, and bade her good- 
 night, and she me ; and that was all that passed between 
 us two unhapi^y lovers, whom you have made miserable, 
 and even cool to one another, but not hostile to you. 
 And you played the spy on us, sir, and misunderstood 
 us, as spies generally do. Ah, sir ! a few months ago 
 you would not have condescended to that." 
 
 Mr. Hardie colored, but did not reply. He had passed 
 from the irritable into the quietly vindictive stage. 
 
 Alfred then deprecated further discussion of what was 
 past, and said abruptly, " I have an offer to make you : 
 in a very short time I shall have ten thousand pounds ; 
 I will not resign my whole fortune ; that would be unjust 
 to myself and my wife ; and I loathe and despise injust- 
 ice in all its forms, however romantic or plausible. 
 But, if you will give the Dodds their fourteen thousand 
 pounds, I will share my little fortune equally with you, 
 and thank you, and bless you. Consider, sir, with your 
 abilities and experience five thousand pounds may yet 
 be the nucleus of a fortune ; a fortune built on an honor- 
 able foundation. I know you will thrive with my five 
 thousand pounds, ten times more than with their four- 
 teen thousand ; and enjoy the blessing ,of blessings, a 
 clear conscience."
 
 422 HARD CASH. 
 
 Now this offer was no sooner made than Mr. Hardie 
 shut his face, and went to mental arithmetic, like one 
 doing a sum behind a thick door. He would have taken 
 ten thousand: but five thousand did not much tempt 
 him : besides, would it be five thousand clear ? He al- 
 ready owed Alfred two tliousand five hundred. It flashed 
 through him that a young man who loathed and despised 
 injustice — even to himself — would not consent to be 
 diddled by him out of one sum while making him a 
 present of another : and then there was Skinner's thou- 
 sand to be reimbursed. He therefore declined in these 
 terms : — 
 
 " This offer shows me you are sincere in these strange 
 notions you have taken up. I am sorry for it : it looks 
 like insanity. These nocturnal illusions, these imagin- 
 ary sights and sounds, come of brooding on a single 
 idea, and often usher in a calamity one trembles to 
 think of. You have made me a proposal : I make you 
 one ; take a couple of hundred pounds (I'll get it from 
 your trustees), and travel the Continent for four months ; 
 enlarge and amuse your mind with the contemplation of 
 nature and manners and customs ; and if that does not 
 clear this phantom fourteen thousand pounds out of your 
 head, I am much mistaken." 
 
 Alfred replied that foreign travel was his dream : but 
 he could not leave Barkington wliile there was an act of 
 justice to be done. 
 
 "Then do me justice, boy," said jNFr. Hardie, Avith won- 
 derful dignity, all things considered. " Instead of brood- 
 ing on your one fantastical idea, and shutting out all 
 rational evidence to the contrary, take the trouble to 
 look through my books : and they will reveal to you a 
 fortune, not of fourteen thousand, but of eighty thou- 
 sand pounds, honorably sacrificed in the vain struggle 
 to fulfil my engagements : who, do you think, will
 
 HARD CASH. 423 
 
 believe, against such evidence, the preposterous tale 
 you have concocted against your poor father ? Already 
 the tide is turning, and all, who have seen the accounts 
 of the bank, pity me ; they will pity me still more if 
 ever they hear my own flesh and blood insults me in the 
 moment of my fall ; sees me ruined by my honesty, and 
 living in a hovel, yet comes into that poor but honest 
 abode, and stabs me to the heart by accusing me of steal- 
 ing fourteen thousand pounds : a sum that would have 
 saved me, if I could only have laid my hands on it." 
 
 He hid his face to conceal its incongruous expression : 
 and heaved a deep sigh. 
 
 Alfred turned his head away and groaned. 
 
 After awhile he rose from his seat and went to the 
 door ; but seemed reluctant to go : he cast a longing, 
 lingering look on his father, and said beseechingly, 
 " Oh, think ! you are not my flesh and blood more than 
 I am yours ; is all the love to be on my side ? have I no 
 influence even when right is on my side ? " Then he 
 suddenly turned and threw himself impetuously on his 
 knees. '' Your father was the soul of honor ; your son 
 loathed fraud and injustice from his cradle; you stand 
 between two generations of Hardies, and belong to nei- 
 ther; do but reflect one moment how bright a thing 
 honor is, how short and uncertain a thing life is, how 
 sure a thing retribution is, in this world or the next : 
 it is your guardian angel that kneels before you now, 
 and not your son ; oh, for Christ's sake, for my mother's 
 sake, listen to my last appeal. You don't know me : I 
 cannot compound with injustice. Pity me, pity her I 
 love, pity yourself ! " 
 
 '• You young viper ! " cried the father, stung with re- 
 morse but not touched with penitence. " Get awa}^, you 
 amorous young hypocrite ; get out of my house, get out 
 of my sight, or I shall spurn you and curse you at my 
 feet."
 
 424 HARD CASH. 
 
 " Enough ! " said Alfred, rising and turning suddenly 
 calm as a statue: "let us be gentlemen, if you please, 
 even though we must be enemies. Good-by, my father 
 that was." 
 
 And he walked gently out of the room, and, as he 
 passed the window, Mr. Hardie heard his great heart 
 sob. 
 
 He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. "A 
 hard tussle," thought he, " and with my own unnatural, 
 ungrateful flesh and blood ; but I have won it : he hasn't 
 told the Dodds ; he never will : and, if he did, who 
 would believe him, or them ? " 
 
 At dinner there was no Alfred ; but after dinner a 
 note to Jane informing her he had taken lodgings in the 
 town, and requesting her to send his books and clothes 
 in the evening. Jane handed the note to her father and 
 sighed deeply. Watching his face as he read it, she saw 
 him turn rather pale, and look more furrowed than ever. 
 
 "Papa ! " said she, " what does it all mean ? " 
 
 " I am thinking." 
 
 Then, after a long pause, he ground his teeth and 
 said, " It means — war : war between my own son and 
 me."
 
 HARD CASH. 405 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 LoxG before this open rupture Jane Hardie had asked 
 her father sorrowfully, whether she was to discontinue 
 her intimacy with the Dodds : she thought of course he 
 would say " Yes ; " and it cost her a hard struggle be- 
 tween inclination and filial duty to raise the question. 
 But Mr. Hardie was anxious her friendship with that 
 family should continue ; it furnished a channel of news, 
 and in case of detection might be useful to avert or 
 soften hostilities ; so he answered rather sharply, '• On 
 no account : the Dodds are an estimable family : pray be 
 as friendly with them as ever you can." Jane colored 
 with pleasure at this most unexpected reply : but her 
 wakeful conscience reminded her this answer was given • 
 in ignorance of her attachment to Edward Dodd ; and 
 urged her to confession. But at that nature recoiled : 
 Edward had not openh" declared his love to her; so 
 modest pride, as well as modest shame, combined with 
 female cowardice to hold back the avowal. 
 
 So then Miss Tender Conscience tormented herself ; 
 and recorded the struggle in her diary ; but briefly, and 
 in terms vague and typical ; not a word about "a young 
 man " — or " crossed in love " — but one obscure and 
 hasty slap at the carnal affections, and a good deal about 
 the " saints in prison," and " the battle of Armageddon." 
 
 Yet to do her justice, laxity of expression did not act 
 upon her conduct and warp that, as it does most mystical 
 speakers. 
 
 To obey her father to the letter, she maintained a 
 friendly correspondence with Julia Dodd, exchanging
 
 426 HARD CASH. 
 
 letters daily ; but, not to disobey him in the spirit, she 
 ceased to visit Albion Villa. Thus she avoided Edward, 
 and extracted from the situation the utmost self-denial, 
 and the least possible amount of " carnal pleasure," as 
 she naiv'ely denominated an interchange of worldly affec- 
 tion, however distant and respectful. 
 
 One day she happened to mention her diary, and say 
 it was a present comfort to her, and instructive to review. 
 Julia, catching at every straw of consolation, said she 
 would keep one too, and asked a sight of Jane's for a 
 model. " No, dear friend," said Jane : " a diary should 
 be one's self on paper." 
 
 This was fortunate : it precluded that servile imita- 
 tion, in which her sex excels even mine ; and conse- 
 quently the two records reflect two good girls, instead 
 of one in two skins ; and may be trusted to conduct this 
 narrative forward, and relieve ils monotony a little: 
 only of course the reader must not expect to see the 
 plot of a story carried minutely out in two crude compo- 
 sitions written with an object so distinct : he must 
 watch for glimpses and make the most of indications. 
 Nor is this an excessive demand upon his intelligence ; 
 for, if he cannot do this with a book, how will he do it in 
 real life, where male and female characters reveal their 
 true selves by glimpses only, and the gravest and most 
 dramatic events give the diviner so few and faint signs 
 of their coming ? 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM JULTA DODd's DIARY. 
 
 " Dec. 5. It is all over ; they have taken papa away 
 to an asylum : and the house is like a grave, but for our 
 outbursts of sorrow. Just before he went away the 
 medal came — oh, no, I cannot. Poor, poor mamma ! 
 
 "8 P.M. In the midst of our affliction Heaven sent us 
 a ray of comfort : the kindest letter from a lady, a perfect
 
 HARD CASH. 427 
 
 stranger. It came yesterday ; but now I have got it to 
 copy : oh, bless it ; and the good, kind writer. 
 
 Dear Madam, — I scarcely know whether to hope or to fear 
 that your good husband may have nientioneil my name to you ; 
 however, he is just the man to pass over both my misbehavior 
 and his own gallantry ; so I beg permission to introduce my- 
 self. I and my little boy were inissengers by the .Agra; I was 
 spoiled b}' a long residence in India, and gave j'our husband 
 sore trouble by resisting discipline, refusing to put out my 
 light at nine o'clock, and in short by being an unreasonable 
 woman, or rather, a spoiled child. Well, all my little attempts 
 at a feud failed ; Captain Dodd did his duty, and kept his tem- 
 per provokingh': the only revenge he took was a noble one; 
 he jumped into the sea after m}' darling Freddy, and saved him 
 from a watery grave, and his mother from madness or death ; 
 yet he was himself hardly recovered from a wound he had 
 received in defending us all against pirates. Need I say more 
 to one who is herself a mother ? You will know how our lit- 
 tle misunderstanding ended after tliat. As soon as we were 
 friends I made him talk of his family ; yourself, Edward, 
 Julia, I seem to know you all. 
 
 When the ruffian, who succeeded our good captain, had 
 wrecked poor us, and then deserted us, your husband resumed 
 the command, and saved Freddy and me once more by his 
 courage, his Avonderful coolness, and his skill. Since then the 
 mouse has been at work for the lion ; I despair of conveying 
 any pleasure by it to a character so elevated as Captain Dodd ; 
 his reward must be his own conscience ; but we poor little 
 women like external shows, do we not? and so I thought a 
 medal of the Humane Society might give some pleasure to you 
 and ]\Iiss Dodd. Xever did medal nor order repose on a 
 nobler heart. The case was so strong, and so well supported, 
 that the society did not hesitate : and you will receive it very 
 soon after this. 
 
 You will be surprised, dear madam, at all this from a stran- 
 ger to yourself, and will, perhaps, set it down to a wish to 
 intrude on j'our acquaintance. Well, then, dear madam, )-ou 
 will not be far wrongs, I should like much to know one whose
 
 428 HAED CASH. 
 
 charactei- I already seem acquainted with ; and to convey per- 
 sonally my gratitude and admiration of your husband ; I could 
 pour it out more freely to you, you know, than to him. 
 1 am, 
 
 Dear madam, 
 
 Yours very faithfully, 
 Louisa Beresford. 
 
 " And the medal came about an hour before the fly to 
 take him away. His dear name was on it, and his brave, 
 courageous acts. 
 
 " Oh, shall I ever be old enough and hard enough to 
 speak of this without stopping to cry ? 
 
 "We fastened it round his dear neck with a ribbon. 
 Mamma would put it inside his clothes for fear the 
 silver should tempt some wretch ; I should never have 
 tliouglit of that : is there a creature so base ? And we 
 told the men how he had gained it (they were servants 
 of the asylum), and we showed them how brave and good 
 he was, and would be again if they would be kind to 
 him and cure him. And mamma bribed them with 
 money to use him kindly : I thought they would be 
 offended and refuse it : but they took it, and their faces 
 showed she was wiser than I am. He keeps away from 
 us too. It is nearly a fortnight now. 
 
 "Dec. 7. Aunt Eve left to-day. IMamma kept her 
 room and could not speak to lier: cannot forgive her 
 interfering between papa and her. It does seem strange 
 tliat any one but mamma should be able to send papa 
 out of the liouse, and to such a place ; but it is the law ; 
 and Edward, who is all good-sense, says it was necessary : 
 he says mamma is unjust: grief makes her unreasona- 
 ble. I don't know who is in the right, and I don't much 
 care : but I know I am sorry for Aunt Eve, and very, 
 very sorry for nuxmina. 
 
 " Dec. 8. I am an egotist : found myself out this morn-
 
 HARD CASH. 
 
 429 
 
 ing; and it is a good thing to keep a diary. It^ was 
 overpowered at first by grief for mamma : but now the 
 house is sad and quiet: I am always thinking of Jiim ; and 
 that is egotism. 
 
 " Why does he stay away so ? I almost wish I could 
 think it was coldness or diminished affection ; for I fear 
 something worse ; something to make him wretched. 
 Those dreadful words papa spoke before he was afflicted! 
 words I will never put on paper ; but they ring in my 
 ears still; they appall me : and then found at their very 
 door! Ah, and I knew I should find him near that house. 
 And now he keeps away. 
 
 "Dec. 9. All day trying to comfort mamma. She 
 made a great effort, and wrote to Mrs. Beresford. 
 
 POOR mamma's letter. 
 
 Dear Madam, — Your kind and valued letter reached us in 
 deep atHiction, and 1 am little able to I'eply to 30U as you deserve. 
 My poor husband is very ill ; so ill tliat he no longer remem- 
 bers the past, neither the brave acts that liave won him your 
 esteem, nor even the face of his loving and unhappy wife, wlio 
 now thanks you with many tears for your sweet letter. Heart- 
 brolven as my children and I are, we yet derive some consola- 
 tion from it. We have tied the medal round his neck, madam, 
 and thank you far more than we can find words to express. 
 
 In conclusion, I pray Heaven, that in your bittei'est hour, you 
 may find the consolation you have administered to us : no, no, 
 1 pray you may never, never stand in such need of comfort. 
 I am, dear madam. 
 
 Yours gi'atefully and sincerely, 
 
 Lucr DoDD. 
 
 "Dec. 10, Sunday. At St. Anne's in the morning. Tried 
 hard to apply the sermon. He spoke of griefs, but so 
 coldly ; surely he never felt one : he was not there. Mem. : 
 
 1 Egotism. The abstract quality evolved from the concrete terra egotiat 
 by feminine art, without the aid of grammar.
 
 430 HARD CASH. 
 
 always pray against wandering thoughts on entering 
 church. 
 
 "Dec. 11. A diary is a dreadful thing. Everything 
 must go down now, and, amongst the rest, that the poor 
 are selfish. 1 could not interest one of mine in mamma's 
 sorrows ; no, they must run back to their own little 
 sordid troubles, about money and things. I was so pro- 
 voked with jNlrs. Jackson (she owes mamma so much) 
 that I left her hastil}^ : and that was impatience. 1 had 
 a mind to go back to her; but would not; and that was 
 pride. Where is my Christianity ? 
 
 " A kind letter from Jane Hardie. But no word of 
 hhn. 
 
 "Dec. 12. To-day Edward told me plump I must not 
 go on taking things out of the house for the poor ; 
 mamma gave me the reason. ' We are poor ourselves, 
 thanks to ' — And then she stopped. Does she suspect ? 
 How can she ? She did not hear those two dreadful words 
 of papa's. They are like two arrows in my heart. And 
 so we are poor : she says we have scarcely anything to 
 live upon after paying the two hundred and fifty pounds 
 a year for papa. 
 
 '•'Dec. 13. A comforting letter from Jane. She sends 
 me Heb. xii. 11, and says, 'Let us take a part of the 
 Bible, and read two chapters prayerfully, at the same 
 hour of the day: will ten o'clock in the morning suit 
 you? and, if so, will you choose where to begin?' I 
 will, sweet friend, I will : and then, though some cruel 
 mystery keeps us apart, our souls will be together over 
 the sacred page, as I hope they will one day be together 
 in heaven; yours will^ at any rate. Wrote back, yes, and 
 a thousand thanks, and should like to begin with the 
 Psalms ; they are sorrowful, and so are we. And I must 
 pray not to think too much of him. 
 
 "If everything is to be put down one does, I cried
 
 HARD cAsa. 431 
 
 long and bitterly to find I had written that I must pray 
 to God against liim. 
 
 " Dec. 14. It is plain he never means to come again. 
 Mamma says nothing, but that is out of pity for me ; I 
 have not read her dear face all these years for nothing. 
 She is beginning to think him unworthy, when she thinks 
 of him at all. There is a mystery ; a dreadful mystery : 
 may he not be as mystified, too, and perhaps tortured like 
 me with doubts and suspicions ? they say he is pale and 
 dejected. Poor thing! But then, oh, why not come to 
 me and say so? Shall I write to him ? Xo, I will cut 
 my hand off sooner. 
 
 " Dec. 16. A blessed letter from Jane. She says, ' Let- 
 ter-writing on ordinary subjects is a sad waste of time 
 and very unpardonable among His people.' And so it is ; 
 and my weak hope, daily disappointed, that there may 
 be something in her letter, only shows how inferior I 
 am to my beloved friend. She says, ' I should like to 
 fix another hour for us two to meet at the throne to- 
 gether : will five o'clock suit you ? we dine at six, but I 
 am never more than half an hour dressing.' 
 
 " The friendship of this saint, and her bright example, 
 is what Heaven sends me in infinite mercy and goodness 
 to soothe my aching heart a little : for him I shall never 
 see again. 
 
 " I have seen him this very evening. 
 
 "It was a beautiful night: I went to look at — the 
 world to come I call it — for I believe the redeemed are 
 to inhabit those very stars hereafter, and visit them all 
 in turn — and this world I now find is a world of sorrow 
 and disappointment — so I went on the balcony to look 
 at a better one : and oh, it seemed so hoh', so calm, so 
 pure, that heavenly world : I gazed and stretched my 
 hands towards it for ever so little of its holiness and 
 purity ; and that moment, I heard a sigh. I looked, and
 
 432 HARD CASH. 
 
 there stood a gentleman just outside our gate, and it was 
 him. T nearly screamed, and my heart beat so. He did 
 not see me ; for I had come out softly, and his poor head 
 was down, down upon his breast ; and he used to carry 
 it so high, a little, little while ago ; too high, some said ; 
 but not I. I looked, and my misgivings melted away ; 
 it flashed on me as if one of those stars had written it 
 with its own light in my heart — 'There stands grief, 
 not guilt.' And before I knew what I was about, I 
 had whispered ' Alfred ! ' The poor boy started and ran 
 towards me, but stopped short and sighed again. My 
 heart yearned ; but it was not for me to make advances 
 to him, after his unkindness ; so I spoke to him as coldly 
 as ever I could, and I said, 'You are imhappy.' 
 
 "He looked up to me, and then I saw even by that 
 light that he is enduring a bitter, bitter struggle ; so pale, 
 so worn, so dragged ! — Now how many times have I cried 
 this last month ? more than in all the rest of my life, a 
 great deal. — ' Unhappy ! ' he said ; ' I must be a con- 
 temptible thing if I was not unhappy.' And then he 
 asked me, should not I despise him if he was happy. I 
 did not answer that ; but I asked him why he was un- 
 happy. And when I had, I was half frightened, for he 
 never evades a question the least bit. 
 
 " He held his head higher still, and said, ' I am un- 
 happy because I cannot see the path of honor.' 
 
 " Then I babbled something, I forget what : then he 
 went on like this — ah, I never forget what he says — 
 he said Cicero says ^quitas ijjsa lucet per se ; something 
 sifjnijicat ^ something else : and he repeated it slowly for 
 me, he knows I know a little Latin ; and told me that was 
 as much as to say, ' Justice is so clear a thing, that who- 
 ever hesitates must be on the road of wrong. 'And yet,' 
 he said bitterly, '/ hesitate and doubt, in a matter of 
 
 1 Dubitatio cogitationcm slgnificat iiytirim.
 
 HARD CASH. 433 
 
 right and wrong, like an academic philosopher weighing 
 and balancing mere speculative straws.' Those were his 
 very words. ' And so/ said he, ' I am miserable ; deserv- 
 ing to be miserable.' 
 
 " Then I ventured to remind him that he, and I, and 
 all Christian souls, had a resource not known to heathen 
 philosophers, however able. And I said, ' Dear Alfred, 
 when I am in doubt and difficulty, I go and pray to Him, 
 to guide me aright : have you done so ? ' No, that had 
 never occurred to him ; but he would, if I made a point 
 of it ; and at any rate he could not go on in this way ; I 
 should soon see him again, and, once his mind was made 
 up, no shrinking from mere consequences, he promised 
 me. Then we bade one another good-night, and he went 
 off holding his head as proudly as he used : and j)oor 
 silly me fluttered, and nearly h}-sterical, as soon as I 
 quite lost sight of him. 
 
 " Dec. 17. At church in the morning : a good sermon. 
 Notes and analysis. In the evening Jane's clergyman 
 preached. She came. Going out I asked her a question 
 about what we had heard ; but she did not answer me. 
 At parting she told me she made it a rule not to speak 
 coming from church, not even about the sermon. This 
 seemed austere to poor me. But of course she is right. 
 Oh, that I was like her ! 
 
 "Dec. 18. Edward is coming out. This boy, that one 
 has taught all the French, all the dancing, and nearly all 
 the Latin he knows, turns out to be one's superior, 
 infinitely : I mean in practical good-sense. Mamma 
 had taken her pearls to the jeweller and borrowed two 
 hundred pounds. He found this out and objected. She 
 told him a part of it was required to keep him at Oxford. 
 * Oh, indeed/ said he : and we thought of course there 
 was an end : but next morning he was off before break- 
 fast, and the day after he returned from Oxford with his 
 28
 
 434 HARD CASH. 
 
 caution money, forty pounds, and gave it mamma ; she 
 had forgotten all about it. And he had taken his name 
 off the college books and left the university forever. 
 The poor, gentle tears of mortification ran down his 
 mother's cheeks, and I hung round her neck, and scolded 
 him like a vixen ; as I am. We might have spared tears 
 and fury both, for he is neither to be melted nor irritated 
 by poor little us. He kissed us and coaxed us like a supe- 
 rior being, and set to work in his quiet, sober, ponderous 
 way, and proved us a couple of fools to our entire satis- 
 faction, and that without an unkind word : for he is as 
 gentle as a lamb, and as strong as ten thousand elephants. 
 He took the money back, and brought the pearls home 
 again, and he has written ' Soyez de votre Sij<:cle' in 
 great large letters, and has pasted it on all our three 
 bedroom-doors, inside. • And he has been all these years 
 quietly cutting up the Morning Advertise); and arranging 
 the slips with wonderful skill and method. He calls it 
 ' digesting the 'Tiser ! ' and you can't ask for any modern 
 information, great or small, but he'll find you something 
 about it in this digest. Such a folio ! It takes a man to 
 open and shut it. And he means to be a sort of little 
 papa in this house, and mamma means to let him. And 
 indeed, it is so sweet to be commanded ; besides, it saves 
 thinking for one's self, and that is such a worry. 
 
 " Dec. 19. Yes, they have settled it : we are to leave 
 here, and live in lodgings to save servants. How we are 
 to exist even so, mamma cannot see, but Edward can ; he 
 says we two have got popular talents, and he knows tlie 
 markets (what does that mean, I wonder ?), and the world 
 in general. I asked him wherever he picked it up, his 
 knowledge : he said, ' In the 'Tiser.' I asked him would 
 he leave the place where she lives. He looked sad, but 
 said, ' Yes : for the good of us all.' So lie is better tlian 
 I am : but who is not ? I wasted an imploring look on
 
 HARD CASH. 435 
 
 Ilim ; but not on mamma ; she looked back to me, and 
 then said sadly, ' Wait a few days, Edward, for — mij 
 sake.' That meant for poor credulous Julia's, who still 
 believes in him. My sweet mother ! 
 
 " Dec. 21. Told mamma to-day I would go for a gov- 
 erness, to help her, since we are all ruined. She kissed 
 me and trembled; but she did not say 'No;' so it will 
 come to that. He will be sorry. When I do go, I think 
 I shall find courage to send him a line : just to say I am 
 sure he is not to blame for witlidrawing. Indeed, how 
 could I ever marry a man whose father I have heard my 
 father call — (The pen was drawn through the rest.) 
 
 '"' Dec. 22. A miserable day : low-spirited and hysteri- 
 cal. We are really going away. Edward has begun to make 
 packing-cases ; I stood over him and sighed, and asked him 
 questions : he said he was going to take unfurnished 
 rooms in London, send up what furniture is absolutely 
 necessary, and sell the rest by auction, with the lease of 
 our dear, dear house, where we were all so happy once. 
 So, what with his ' knowledge of the markets, and the 
 world,' and his sense, and his strong will, we have only 
 to submit. And then he is so kind, too : ' Don't cry, 
 little girl,' he said. 'Not but what I could turn on the 
 waters myself if there was anything to be gained by it. 
 Shall I cry, Ju,' said he, 'or shall I whistle ? I think I'll 
 whistle.' And he whistled a tune right through while he 
 worked with a heart as sick as my own, perhaps. Poor 
 Edward ! 
 
 " Dec. 23. My Christian friend has her griefs too. 
 But then sAe puts them to profit ; she says to-day, ' We 
 are both tasting the same flesh-crucifying but soul-profit- 
 ing experience.' Her every word is a rebuke to me; torn 
 at this solemn season of the year with earthly passions. 
 Went down after reading her letter, and played and sang 
 the Gloria in Excelsis of Fergolesi, with all my soul. So
 
 436 HARD CASH. 
 
 then I repeated it, and burst out crying in the middle. 
 Oh, shame ! shame ! 
 
 " Dec. 24. Edward started for London at five in the 
 morning to take a place for us. The servants were next 
 told, and received warning ; the one we had the poorest 
 opinion of, she is such a flirt, cried, and begged mamma 
 to let her share our fallen fortunes, and said she could 
 cook a little and would do her best. I kissed her vio- 
 lently, and quite forgot I was a young lady till she her- 
 self reminded me ; and she looked frightened at mamma. 
 But mamma only smiled through her tears, and said, 
 * Think of it quietly, Sarah, before you commit yourself.' 
 
 " I am now sitting in my old room, cold as a stone ; for 
 I have packed up some things ; so the first step is actu- 
 ally taken. Oh, if I but knew that he was happy ! 
 Then I could endure anything. But how can I think 
 so ? Well, I will go, and never tell a soul what I sus- 
 pect, and he cannot tell, even if he knows, for it is his 
 father. Jane, too, avoids all mention of her own father 
 and brother more than is natural. Oh, if I could only 
 be a child again ! 
 
 "Regrets are vain ; I will cease even to record them ; 
 these diaries feed one's selfishness, and the unfortunate 
 passion that will make me a bad daughter and an un- 
 grateful soldier of Him who was born as to-morrow : to 
 your knees, false Christian ! to your knees ! 
 
 " I am calmer now ; and feel resigned to the will of 
 Heaven, or benumbed, or something. I will pack this 
 box and then go down and comfort my mother, and visit 
 my poor people, perhaps for the last time ; ah me ! 
 
 " A knock at the street-door ! his knock ! I know every 
 echo of his hand, and his foot. Where is my composure 
 now ? 1 flutter like a bird. I will not go down. He 
 will think I love him so.
 
 HARD CASH. 437 
 
 " At least I will wait till he has nearly gone. 
 -' Elizabeth has come to say I am wanted in the draw- 
 ing-room, 
 
 "So I must go down whether I like or no. 
 
 "Bedtime. Oh, that I had the pen of a writer to 
 record the scene I have witnessed, worthily ! When 
 I came in, I found mamma and him both seated in 
 dead silence. He rose and looked at me and I at him, 
 and years seemed to have rolled over his face since 
 last I saw it ; I was obliged to turn my head away ; I 
 courtesied to him distantly, and may Heaven forgive me 
 for that ; and we sat down, and presently turned round 
 and all looked at one another like the ghosts of the 
 happy creatures we once were altogether. 
 
 " Then Alfred began, not in his old imperative voice, 
 but scarce above a whisper ; and oh, the words such as 
 none but himself in the wide world would have spoken ! 
 I love him better than ever ; I pity him ; I adore him ; 
 he is a scholar ; he is a chevalier ; he is the soul of honor ; 
 he is the most unfortunate and proudest gentleman 
 beneath the sun ; my darling ! my darling ! 
 
 " He said, ' Mrs. Dodd, and you, Miss Dodd, whom I 
 loved before I lost the right to ask you to be mine, and 
 whom I shall love to the last hour of my miserable ex- 
 istence, I am come to explain my own conduct to you, 
 and to do you an act of simple justice, too long delayed. 
 To begin with myself, you must know that my under- 
 standing is of the academic school ; I incline to weigh 
 proofs before I make up my mind. But then I differ 
 from that school in this, that I cannot think myself to 
 an eternal standstill (such an expression! but what 
 does that matter, it was his). I am a man of action ; in 
 Hamlet's place I should have either turned my ghost 
 into ridicule, or my uncle into a ghost ; so I kept away
 
 438 HARD CASH. 
 
 from you while m doubt, but now I doubt no longer. I 
 take my line ; ladies, you have been swindled out of a 
 large sum of money.' 
 
 " My blood ran cold at these words. Surely nothing 
 on earth but a man could say this right out like that. 
 
 " Mamma and I looked at one another ; and what did 
 I see in her face, for the first time ? Why, that she had 
 her suspicions too, and had been keeping them from me. 
 Pitying angel ! 
 
 " He went on: 'Captain Dodd brought home several 
 thousand pounds ? ' 
 
 " Mamma said ' Yes.' And I think she was going to 
 say how much, but he stopped her and made her write 
 the amount in an envelope, while he took another and 
 wrote in it with his pencil ) he took both envelopes to 
 me, and asked me to read them out in turn ; I did, and 
 mamma's said fourteen thousand pounds ; and his said 
 fourteen thousand pounds. Mamma looked such a look 
 at me. 
 
 " Then he turned to me : ' Miss Dodd, do you remem- 
 ber that night you and I met at Richard Hardie's door? 
 Well, scarce five minutes before that, your father was 
 standing on our lawn and called to the man, who was my 
 father, in a loud voice — it rings in my ears now — 
 *' Hardie ! villain ! give me back my money, my fourteen 
 thousand pounds ! give me my children's money, or may 
 your children die before your eyes." Ah, you wince to 
 hear me whisper these dreadful words ; what if you had 
 been where I was and heard them spoken, and in a terri- 
 ble voice ; the voice of despair, the voice of truth ! Soon 
 a window opened cautiously, and a voice whispered, 
 "Hush! I'll bring it you down." And this voice was 
 the voice of fear, of dishonesty, and of Richard Hardie.' 
 
 " He turned deadly white when he said tliis, and I 
 cried to mamma, *0h, stop him ! stop him !' And she
 
 HARD CASH. 439 
 
 said, 'Alfred, think what you are saying. Why do you 
 tell us what we had better never know ? ' He answered 
 directl}', — 
 
 "'Because it is the truth; and because I loathe injust- 
 ice. Some time afterwards I taxed Mr. Richard Hardie 
 with this fourteen thousand pounds ; and his face be- 
 trayed him. I taxed his clerk. Skinner ; and Skinner's 
 face betrayed him ; and he fled the town that very 
 night.' 
 
 " My mother looked much distressed, and said, ' To 
 what end do you raise this pitiable subject ? Your 
 father is a bankrupt, and we but suffer with the rest.' 
 
 " 'No, no,' said he, 'I have looked through the bank- 
 rupt's books, and there is no mention of the sum. And 
 then who brought Captain Dodd here ? Skinner ; and 
 Skinner is his detected confederate. It is clear to me 
 poor Captain Dodd trusted that sum to us before he had 
 the fit ; beyond this all is conjecture.' 
 
 " JMamma looked at me again, and said, ' What a7n I 
 to do, or say ? ' 
 
 "I screamed, 'Do nothing, say nothing; oh, pray, pray 
 make him hold his tongue, and let the vile money go. 
 It is not his fault.' 
 
 "'Do?' said the obstinate creature; 'why, tell 
 Edward, and let him employ a sharp attorney ; you 
 have a supple antagonist, and a daring one. Need I say 
 I have tried persuasion, and even bribes ; but he defies 
 me. Set an attorney on him, or the police. Fiat jus- 
 titia, mat caelum.'' I put both hands out to him and 
 burst out, 'O Alfred, why did you tell ? A son expose 
 his own father ? For shame ; for shame ! I have sus- 
 pected it all long ago ; but / would never have told.' 
 
 " He started a little, but said, ' Miss Dodd, you were 
 very generous to me ; but that is not exactly a reason 
 why 1 should be a cur to you, and an accomplice in a
 
 440 HARD CASH. 
 
 theft by which you suffer. I have no pretensions to 
 religion like my sister ; so I can't afford to tamper with 
 plain right and wrong. What, look calmly on, and see 
 one man defraud another ? I can't do it. See tjou 
 defrauded ? you, Mrs. Dodd, for whom I profess affec- 
 tion and friendship ? You, Miss Dodd, for whom 1 pro- 
 fess love and constancy ? Stand and see you swindled 
 into poverty ? Of what do you think I am made ? My 
 stomach rises against it, my blood boils against it, my 
 flesh creeps at it, my soul loathes it ; ' then after this great 
 burst he seemed to turn so feeble. ' Oh,' said he, falter- 
 ing, * I know what I have done ; I have signed the death- 
 warrant of our love, dear to me as life. But I can't help 
 it. Julia, Julia, my lost love, you can never look on 
 me again ; you must not love a man you cannot marry, 
 Cheat Hardie's wretched son. But what could I do ? 
 Fate offers me but the miserable choice of desolation or 
 cowardly rascality. I choose desolation. And I mean 
 to stand by my choice like a man. So good-by, ladies.' 
 
 "The poor, proud creature rose from his seat, and 
 bowed stiffly and haughtily to us both, and was going 
 away without another word, and I do believe forever. 
 But his soul had been too great for his body ; his poor 
 lips turned pale, and he staggered, and would have 
 fallen, but mamma screamed to me, and she he loves so 
 dearly, and abandons so cruelly, woke from a stupor of 
 despair, and fl.ew and caught him fainting in these arms.
 
 HARD CASH. 441 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 " We laid the poor, proud creature on the sofa, and 
 bathed his face with eau de Cologne. He spoke directly, 
 and said that was nice, and ' His head ! his head ! ' And 
 I don't think he was ever quite insensible, but he did not 
 know what was going on, for presently he opened his 
 eyes wide, and stared at us so, and then closed them with, 
 oh, such a sigh ; it swelled my heart almost to biirsting. 
 And to think I could say nothing ; but mamma Soothed 
 him and insisted on his keeping quiet ; for he wanted to 
 run away from us. She was never so good to him before ; 
 she said, ' My dear child, you have my pity and my 
 esteem ; alas ! that at your age you should be tried like 
 this. How few in this sorry world would have acted 
 like you ; I should have sided with my own flesh and 
 blood, for one.' 
 
 " ' What, right or wrong ? ' he asked. 
 
 " ' Yes,' said she, '■ right or wrong.' Then she turned 
 to me : ' Julia, shall all the generosity be on his side ? ' 
 
 " I kissed her and clung to her, but dared not speak ; 
 but I was mad enough to hope, I scarcely know what, 
 till she said in the same kind, sorrowful voice, ' I agree 
 with you ; you can never be my son, nor Julia's husband. 
 But as for that money, it revolts me to proceed to ex- 
 tremes against one, who after all is j-our father, my poor, 
 poor, chivalrous boy.' • But she would decide nothing 
 without Edward; he had taken his father's place in this 
 house. So then I gave all up, for Edward is made of 
 iron. Alfred was clearer-sighted than I, and never had 
 a hope 5 he put his arm round mamma and kissed her,
 
 442 HARD CASH. 
 
 and she kissed him ; and he kissed my hand and crept 
 away, and I heard his step on the stair, and on the road 
 ever so far, and life seemed ended for me when I heard 
 it no more. 
 
 " Edward has come home. Mamma told him all : he 
 listened gravely ; 1 hung upon his lips, and at last the 
 oracle spoke, and said, ' This is a nice muddle.' 
 
 " More we could not get from him ; he must sleep on 
 it. suspense ! you torture ! He had seen a place he 
 thinks will suit us; it is a bad omen his saying that so 
 soon after. As I went to bed I could not help whisper- 
 ing, 'If he and I are parted, so will you and Jane.' The 
 cruel boy answered me ovt loud, ' Thank you, little girl ; 
 that is a temptation, and you have put me on my guard.' 
 
 " Oh, how hard it is to understand a man ! they are so 
 impracticable with their justice and things. I came 
 away with my cheeks burning, and my heart like a 
 stone ; to bed, but not to sleep. My poor, poor, unhappy, 
 noble Alfred ! 
 
 " Dec. 27. Mamma and Edward have discussed it : 
 they say nothing to me. Can they have written to him ? 
 I go about my duties like a ghost, and pray for submis- 
 sion to the Divine Will. 
 
 "Dec. 28. To-day, as I was reading by main force to 
 Mrs. Eagleton's sick girl, came Sarah all in a hurry 
 with, I was wanted, miss. But I ivould finish my chap- 
 ter, and oh, how hard the Devil tried to make me gabble 
 it! so I clenched my teeth at him, and read it as if I 
 was spelling it ; and then didn't 1 fly ? 
 
 "He was there, and they all sat waiting for me. I 
 w^as hot and cold all at the same time, and he rose and 
 bowed to me, and I courtesied to him, and sat down and 
 took my work, and didn't know one bit what I was doing. 
 
 "And our new oracle, Edward, laid down the law like
 
 HARD CASH. 443 
 
 anything, 'Look here, Hardie,' said he, 'if anybody but 
 you had told us about this fourteen thousand pounds, I 
 should have set the police on your governor before now. 
 But it seems to me a shabby thing to attack a father on 
 the son's information, especially when it's out of love for 
 one of us he has denounced his own flesh and blood.' 
 
 " ' No, no,' said Alfred, eagerly, ' out of love of 
 justice.' 
 
 " ' Ah, you think so, my fine fellow, but you would not 
 have done it for a stranger,' said Edward. Then he 
 went on : ' Of all blunders, the worst is to fall between 
 two stools; look here, mamma; we decide, for the son's 
 sake, not to attack the father; after that it would be 
 very inconsistent to turn the cold shoulder to the son. 
 Another thing, who suffers most by this fraud ? why, the 
 man that marries Julia.' Alfred burst out impetuously, 
 *0h, prove that to me, and let me be that sufferer.' 
 Edward turned calmly to mamma : ' If the fourteen thou- 
 sand pounds was in our hands, what should you do 
 with it ? ' 
 
 " The dear thing said she should settle at least ten 
 thousand of it on me, and marry me to this poor mother- 
 less boy, ' whom I have learned to lov^e myself,' said 
 she. 
 
 " ' There,' said Edward, ' you see it is you who lose by 
 your governor's — I won't say what — if you marry my 
 sister.' ' 
 
 "Alfred took his hand and said, 'God bless you for 
 telling me this.' 
 
 " Then Edward turned to mamma and me, and said, 
 ' This poor fellow has left his father's house because he 
 wronged us : then this house ought to open its arms to 
 him : that is only justice ; but now to be just to our side ; 
 I have been to Mr. Crawford, the lawyer, and I find this 
 Hardie junior has ten thousand pounds of his own.
 
 444 HAUD CASH. 
 
 That ought to be settled on Julia, to make up for what 
 she loses by Hardie senior's — I won't say what.' 
 
 " ' If anybody settles any of their trash on me, I'll 
 beat them, and throw it in the lire,' said I; 'and I hate 
 money.' 
 
 " The oracle asked me directly did I hate clothes and 
 food, and charit}'' to the poor, and cleanliness, and 
 decency ? Then I didn't hate money, ' for none of these 
 things can exist without money, you little romantic hum- 
 bug ; you shut up ! ' 
 
 " Mamma rebuked him for his expressions, but approved 
 his sentiments. But I did not care for his sentiments, 
 for he smiled on me and said, '■ We two are of one mind ; 
 we shall transfer our fortune to Captain Dodd, whom my 
 father has robbed. Julia will consent to share my honest 
 poverty.' 
 
 " ' Well, we will talk about that,' said Edward pomp- 
 ously. 
 
 " ' Talk about it without me, then ! ' I cried, and got 
 up, and marched out, indignant; only it was partly my 
 low cunning to hide my face that I could not keep the 
 rapture out of. And, as soon as I had retired with cold 
 dignity, off I skipped into the garden to let my face 
 loose, and I think they sent him after me : for I heard 
 his quick step behind me : so I ran away from him as 
 hard as I could ; so of course he soon caught me in the 
 shrubbery where he first asked me to be his ; and he 
 kissed both my hands again and again like wildfire, as 
 he is, and he said, ' You are right, dearest ; let them talk 
 of their trash while I tell you how I adore you ; poverty 
 with you will be the soul's wealth; even misfortune, by 
 your side, would hardly be misfortune ; let all the world 
 go, and let you and I be one, and live together, and die 
 together ; for now ] see I could not have lived without 
 you, nor without your love.' And I whispered something
 
 HARD CASH. 445 
 
 on his shoulder, no matter what; what signifies the 
 cackle of a goose ? and we mingled our happy tears, and 
 our hearts, and our souls. Ah, love is a sweet, a dread- 
 ful passion; what we two have gone through for one 
 another in a few months ! He dined with us, and Edward 
 and he sat a long, long time talking; I dare say it was 
 only about their odious money ; still I envied Edward 
 having him so long. But at last he came up, and 
 devoured me with his lovely gray eyes, and I sang liim 
 * Aileen Aroon,' and he whispered things in my ear ; oh ! 
 such sweet, sweet, idiotic, darling things; I will not 
 part with even the shadow of one of them by putting it 
 on paper, only I am the blessedest creature in all the 
 world, and I only hope to goodness it is not very wicked 
 to be so happy as I am. 
 
 " Dec. 31. It is all settled. Alfred returns to Oxford 
 to make up for lost time, the time spent in construing 
 me instead of Greek; and at the end of term he is to 
 come of age and marry — somebody. Marriage ! what a 
 word to put down ! It makes me tingle ; it thrills me ; 
 it frightens me deliciously, no, not deliciously, anything 
 but: for suppose, being both of us fiery, and they all say 
 one of them ought to be cold-blooded for a pair to be 
 happy ; I should make him a downright bad wife. Why, 
 then, I hope I shall die in a year or two out of my dar- 
 ling's way, and let him have a good one instead. I'd 
 come back from the grave and tear her to pieces. 
 
 "Jan. 4. Found a saint in a garret over a stable. 
 Took her my luncheon clandestinely ; that is ladylike 
 for ' under my apron,' and was detected and expostulated 
 by Ned. He took me into his studio — it is carpeted 
 with shavings — and showed me the 'Tiser digest, an 
 enormous book he has made of newspaper cuttings all 
 in apple-pie order; and out of this authority he proved 
 vice and poverty abound most wherever there are most
 
 446 HAED CASH. 
 
 charities. Oh, and Hlie poor' a set of intoxicated 
 sneaks, and me a demoralizing influence. It is all very 
 fine, but why are there saints in garrets, and half- 
 starved ? that rouses all my evil passions, and I cannot 
 bear it ; it is no use. 
 
 " Jan. 6. Once a gay day, but now a sad one. ]\ramma 
 gone to see poor papa, where he is. Alfred found me 
 sorrowful, and rested my forehead on his shoulder ; that 
 soothed me while it lasted. I think I should like to 
 grow there. Mem. : to burn this diary, and never let a 
 creature see a syllable. 
 
 " As soon as he was gone, prayed earnestly on my 
 knees not to make an idol of him. For it is our poor 
 idols that are destroyed for our weakness, which, really, 
 I cannot quite see the justice of. 
 
 " Jan. 8. Jane does not approve my proposal that we 
 should praise now and then at the same hour instead of 
 always praying. The dear girl sends me her unconverted 
 diary ' to show me she is " a brand." ' I have read most 
 of it. But really it seems to me she was always good- 
 ish, only she went to parties, and read novels, and 
 enjoyed society. 
 
 " There, I have finished it. Oh, dear, how like her 
 MTiconverted diary is to my converted one ! 
 
 " Jan. 14. A sorrowful day. He and I parted, after a 
 fortnight of the tenderest affection and that mutual 
 respect, without which neither of us, I think, could love 
 long. I had resolved to be very brave ; but we were 
 alone ; and his bright face looked so sad, the change in 
 it took me by surprise, and my resolution failed ; I clung 
 to him. If gentlemen could interpret as we can, he 
 would never have left me. It is better as it is. He 
 kissed my tears away as fast as they came ; it was the 
 first time he had ever kissed more than my hand, so I 
 shall have that to think of, and his dear, promised let-
 
 HARD CASH. 447 
 
 ters ; but it made me cry more at the time, of course. 
 Some day, when we have been married years and years, 
 I shall tell him not to go and pay a lady for every tear, 
 if he wants her to leave off. 
 
 " The whole place so gloomy and vacant now. 
 
 "Jan. 20. Poverty stares us in the face. Edward says 
 we could make a modest living in London, and nobody 
 be the wiser; but here we are known', and '■must be 
 ladies and gentlemen, and fools,' he says. He has now 
 made me seriously promise not to give money and things 
 out of the house to the poor: it is robbing my mother 
 and him. Ah, now I see it is nonsense to despise money ; 
 here I come home sad from my poor people, and I used 
 to return warm all over. And the poor old souls do not 
 enjoy my sermons half so much as when I gave them 
 nice things to eat along with them. 
 
 " The dear boy, that I always loved dearly, but admire 
 and love now that he has turned an intolerable tyrant, 
 and he used to be wax, has put down two maids out of 
 our three, and brings our dinner up himself in a jacket, 
 then puts on his coat and sits down with us, and we sigh 
 at him, and he grins and derides us ; he does not care 
 one straw for pomp. And mamma and I have to dress 
 one another now, and I like it. 
 
 "Jan. 30. He says we may now, by great economy, 
 subsist honestly till my wedding-day ; but then, mamma 
 and he must ^absquatulate.^ Oh, what stout hearts men 
 have. They can jest at sorrow even when, in spite of 
 their great thick skins, they feel it. Ah, the real poor 
 are happy ; they marry, and need not leave the parish 
 where their mother lives. 
 
 " Feb. 4. A kind and most delicate letter from Jane. 
 She says, 'Papa and I are much grieved at Captain 
 .Dodd's affliction, and deeply concerned at your loss by 
 the bank. Papa has asked Uncle Thomas for two hun-
 
 448 HARD CASH. 
 
 dred pounds, and I entreat you to oblige me by receiving 
 it at my hands, and applying it according to the dictates 
 of your own affectionate heart.' 
 
 ''Actually, our viceroy will not let me take it; he says 
 he will not accept a crumb from the man who owes us a 
 loaf. 
 
 " Feb. 8. Jane mortified, and no wonder. If she knew 
 how very poor we are, she would be surprised as well. 
 I have implored her not to take it to heart, for that all 
 will be explained one day, and she will see we could not. 
 
 " His dear letters ! I feed on them. We have no 
 secrets, no two minds. He is to be a first-class, and 
 then a private tutor. Our money is to go to mamma; it 
 is he and I that are to work our fingers to the bone (I 
 am so happy!), and never let them be driven by injust- 
 ice from their home. But all this is a great secret. 
 The viceroy will be defeated, only I let him talk till 
 Alfred is here to back me. No, it is not just the right- 
 ful owner of fourteen thousand pounds should be poor. 
 
 " How shallow female education is : I was always led 
 to suppose modesty is the highest virtue. No such 
 thing ! Justice is the queen of the virtues. He is 
 justice incarnate. 
 
 "March 10. On reperusing this diary, it is demoral- 
 izing, very : it feeds self. Of all the detestable compo- 
 sitions ! Me, me, me, from one end to another ; for when 
 it is not about myself it is about Alfred, and that it is 
 my he-me though not my she-one. So now to turn over 
 a new leaf : from this day I shall record only the things 
 that happen in this house, and what my betters say to 
 we, not what I say, and the texts and outline of the 
 sermons, and Jane's Christian admonitions." 
 
 Before a resolve so virtuous all impure spirits retire, 
 taking off tlieir hats, and bowiug down to the very 
 ground, but apprehending small beer.
 
 HARD CASH. 443 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM JANE HARDIE's DIARY. 
 
 "March 3. In my district again, the first time since 
 my illness, from which I am indeed but half recov^ered. 
 Spoke faithfully to Mrs. B. about her infidel husband; 
 told her not to try and talk to liim, but to talk to God 
 about him. Gave her my tract, ' A quiet heart.' Came 
 home tired. Prayed to be used to sharpen the sickles 
 of other reapers. 
 
 " March 4. At St. Philip's to hear the bishop. In the 
 midst of an excellent sermon on Gen. i. 2, he came out 
 with the waters of baptism, to my horror ; he disclaimed 
 the extravagant view some of them take, then hankered 
 after what he denied, and then partly unsaid that, too. 
 While the poor man was trimming his sails, I slunk 
 behind a pillar in the corner of my pew, and fell on my 
 knees, and prayed « against the stream of poison flowing 
 on the congregation. Oh, I felt like Jeremiah in his 
 dungeon. 
 
 " In the evening papa forbade me to go to church 
 again ; said the wind was too cold. I kissed him, and 
 went up to my room and put my head between the 
 pillows not to hear the bells. Prayed for poor & Alfred. 
 
 " March 5. Sadly disappointed in J. D. I did hope 
 he was imbittering the world to her by degrees. But 
 for some time past she writes in ill-concealed spirits. 
 
 "Another friend, after seeking rest in the world, is 
 now seeking it in ritualism. May both be drawn from 
 their rotten reeds to the cross !
 
 450 HARD CASH. 
 
 And, oh, this moral may my heart retain. 
 All hopes of happiness on earth are vain. 
 
 " March 6. The cat is out of the bag. She is corre- 
 sponding with Alfred, indeed she makes no secret of it. 
 Wrote her a c faithful letter. Received a short reply, 
 saying I had made her unhappy, and begging me to sus- 
 pend my judgment till she could undeceive me without 
 giving me too much pain. What mystery is this ? 
 
 " March 7. Alfred announces his unalterable determin- 
 ation to marry Julia. I read the letter to papa directly. 
 He was silent for a long time, and then said, ' All the 
 worse for both of them.' It was all I could do to sup- 
 press a thrill of carnal complacency at the thought this 
 might in time pave the way to another union. Even to 
 think of that now is a sin. 1 Cor. vii. 20-4 plainly shows 
 that whatever position ^ of life we are placed in, there 
 it is our duty to abide. A child, for instance, is placed 
 in subjection to her parents, and must not leave them 
 without their consent. 
 
 " March 8. Sent two cups of cold water to two fellow- 
 pilgrims of mine on the way to Jerusalem ; viz., to E. H., 
 Rom. viii. 1 ; to Mrs. M., Phil. ii. 27. 
 
 "Prayed for increase of humility. I am so afraid my 
 great success e in His vineyard has seduced me into feel- 
 ing as if there was a spring of living water in myself, 
 instead of every drop being derived from the true fountain. 
 
 "March 9. Dr. Wycherley closeted two hours with 
 papa ; papa had sent for him, I find. What is it makes 
 me think that man is no true friend to Alfred in his 
 advice ? I don't like these roundabout speakers. The> 
 lively oracles are not roundabout. 
 
 "March 10. My beloved friend and fellow-laborer, 
 
 Charlotte D , ruptured a blood-vessel « at three p.m., 
 
 and was conveyed in the chariots of angels to the heav-
 
 HARD CASH. 451 
 
 enly banqueting-house, to go no more out. ]May I be 
 found watching. 
 
 " March 11. Dreadfully starved with these afternoon 
 sermons. If they go on like this, I really viust stay at 
 home and feed upon the Word. 
 
 "March 12. Alfred has written to his trustees, and 
 announced his coming marriage, and told them he is 
 going to settle all his money upon the Dodds. Papa 
 quite agitated by this news; it did not come from Alfred; 
 one of the trustees wrote to papa. Oh, the blessing of 
 Heaven will never rest on this unnatural marriage. 
 Wrote a faithful letter to Alfred Avhile papa was writ- 
 ing to our trustee. 
 
 '• March 13. My book on Solomon's Song now ready 
 for publication; but it is so difficult nowadays to find 
 a publisher for such a subject. The rage is for senti- 
 mental sermons, or else for fiction/ under a thin disguise 
 of religious biography. 
 
 •' March 14. Mr. Plummer, of whose zeal and unction I 
 had heard so much, was in the town, and heard of me, 
 and came to see me by appointment just after luncheon. 
 Such a sweet meeting. He came in and took my hand, 
 and in that posture prayed that the Holy Spirit might 
 be with us to make our conversation profitable to us, and 
 redound to His glory. Poor man, his wife leads him a 
 cat-and-dog life, I hear, with her jealousy. We had a 
 siveet talk. He admires Canticles almost as much as I 
 do,2 and has promised to take my book and get it cast 
 on the Lord .7 for me. 
 
 "March 15. To i^lease, one must not be faithful./^ Miss 
 L., after losing all her relations, and at thirty years of 
 age, is to be married next week. She came to me and 
 gushed out about the blessing of having at last one 
 earthly friend to Avhom she could confide everything. 
 On this I felt it my duty to remind her she might lose
 
 452 HARD CASH. 
 
 him by death, and then what a blank ! and I was going 
 on to detach her from the arm of flesh, when she burst 
 out crying and left me abruptly ; couldn't bear the truth, 
 poor woman. 
 
 " In the afternoon met him and bowed, and longed to 
 speak, but thought it my duty not to ; cried bitterly on 
 reaching home. 
 
 "March 17. Transcribed all the^ texts on Solomon's 
 Song. It seems to be the way HeJ has marked out for 
 me to serve Him. 
 
 " March 19. Received this letter from Alfred : — 
 
 Dear Jane, — I send you a dozen kisses and a jMece of 
 advice : learn more, teach less ; study more, preach less ; and 
 don't be in such a hurr}' to judge and condemn your intellectual 
 and moral superiors on insufficient information. 
 Your atrectiouate brother, 
 
 Alfred. 
 
 A poor return for me loving his soul as my own. I do 
 but advise him the self-denial I myself pursue. Woe be 
 to him if he rejects it. 
 
 " March 20. A perverse reply from J. D. I had pro- 
 posed we should plead for our parents at the throne. 
 She says she fears that might seem like assuming the 
 office of the mediator, and, besides, her mother is nearer 
 heaven than she is. What blindness ! I don't know a 
 more thoroughly unhealthy mind than poor Mrs.^ Dodd's. 
 I am learning to pray walking. Got this idea from Mr. 
 Plummer. How closely he walks ! His mind so exactly 
 suits mine. 
 
 " March 22. Alfred returned. Went to meet him at 
 the station. How bright and handsome he looked ! He 
 kissed nie so affectionately, and was as kind and loving 
 as could be. I, poor unfaithful wretch, went hanging m on 
 his arm, and had not the heart to dash his carnal happi- 
 ness just then.
 
 HARD CASH. 453 
 
 "He is gone there. 
 
 " March 24. Stole into Alfred's lodging when he was 
 out; and, after prayer, pinned Deut. xxvii. 16, Prov. xiii. 
 1 and XV. 5, and Mark vii. 10, upon his bed-curtains. 
 
 '* March 25. Alfred has been in my room, and nailed 
 Matt. vii. 1, Mark x. 7, and Ezek. xviii. 20 on my wall. 
 He found my diary, and has read it, not to profit by, alas ! 
 but to scoff." 
 
 [Specimen of Alfred's comments. N.B. — Fraternal 
 criticism. 
 
 a. Nolo Ejpiscopari. 
 
 b. It's an ill wind that blows nobody good. 
 
 d. The old trick : picking one text, straining it, and 
 ignoring six. So then nobody who is not born married, 
 must get married. 
 
 e. Recipe. To know people's real estimate of them- 
 selves, study their language of self-depreciation. If, 
 even when they undertake to lower themselves, they 
 cannot help insinuating self-praise, be sure their humil- 
 ity is a puddle, their vanity is a well. This sentence is 
 typical of the whole diary, or rather lary ; it sounds 
 Publican, smells Pharisee. 
 
 X. How potent a thing is language in the hand of a 
 master ! Here is sudden death made humorous by a few 
 incongruous phrases neatly disposed. 
 
 /. Excuse me, there is still a little market for the 
 liquefaction of Holy Writ, and the perversion of Holy 
 Writ ; two deathless arts, which meet in your comment 
 on the song you ascribe to Solomon. 
 
 z. More than Mrs. Plummer does, apparently. 
 
 g. Apotheosis of the British public. How very like 
 profaneness some people's piety is ! 
 
 c. h. Faith, with this school, means anything the oppo- 
 site of charity, 
 
 i. You are morally truthful, but intellectually menda-
 
 454 HARD CASH. 
 
 cious. The texts on Solomon's Song ! You know very 
 well there is not one. No grave writer in all Scripture 
 has ever deigned to cite or notice that coarse composition : 
 puellamm delicice. 
 
 j. Modest periphrasis for " I like it." Motto for this 
 diary, " £^go, et Deus mens." 
 
 k. In other words, a good, old-fashioned, sober, humble 
 Christian, to whom the daring familiarities of your school 
 seem blasphemies. 
 
 m. Here I recognize my sister; somewhat spoiled by 
 a detestable sect, but lovable by nature (which she is for- 
 ever abusing), and therefore always amiable, when off 
 her guard.] 
 
 "March 28. Mr. Crawford the attorney called, and told 
 papa his son had instructed him to examine the trust- 
 deed, and to draw his marriage settlement. Papa treated 
 him with the greatest civility, and brought him the deed. 
 He wanted to take it away to copy, but papa said he had 
 better send a clerk here. Poor papa hid his distress 
 from this gentleman, though not from me, and gave him 
 a glass of wine. 
 
 " Then Mr. Crawford chatted, and let out Alfred had 
 asked him to advance a hundred pounds for the wedding 
 presents, etc. Papa said he might do so with perfect 
 safety. 
 
 "But the moment he was gone, his whole manner 
 changed. He walked about in terrible anger and agita- 
 tion, and then sat down and wrote letters ; one was to 
 Uncle Thomas, and one to a Mr. Wycherley, T believe a 
 brother of the doctor's. I never knew him so long writ- 
 ing two letters before. 
 
 " Heard a noise in the road, and it was Mr. Maxley 
 and the boys after him hooting; they have found out 
 his infirmity. What a savage animal is man, till grace 
 changes him ! The poor soul had a stick, and now and
 
 HARD CASH. 455 
 
 then turned and struck at them; but his tormentors were 
 too nimble. I drew papa to the window, and showed 
 him, and reminded him of the poor man's request. He 
 answered impatiently, what was that to him ? ' We have 
 a worse case nearer hand. Charity begins at home.' I 
 ventured to say yes, but it did not begin and end at 
 home. 
 
 " March 31. Mr. Osmond here to-day ; and, over my 
 work, I heard papa tell him Alfred is blackening his 
 character in the town with some impossible story about 
 fourteen thousand pounds. Mr. Osmond very kind and 
 sympathizing; set it all down to illusion; assured papa 
 there was neither malice nor insincerity in it. ' But 
 what the better am I for that ? ' said poor papa, ' if I 
 am slandered, I am slandered.' And they went out to- 
 gether. 
 
 "Papa seems to feel this engagement more than all 
 his troubles, and, knowing by sad experience it is useless 
 to expostulate with Alfred, I wrote a long and faithful 
 letter to Julia just before luncheon, putting it to her as 
 a Christian whether she could reconcile it to her profes- 
 sion to set a son against his father, and marry him in 
 open defiance. 
 
 " She replied, three p.m., that her mother approved the 
 marriage, and she owed no obedience, nor affection either, 
 to riuj parent. 
 
 "Three-thirty, sent back a line rebuking her for this 
 quibble, 
 
 "At five received a note from Mrs. Dodd proposing 
 that the correspondence between myself and her daughter 
 should cease for the present. 
 
 "Five-thirty, retorted with an amendment that it should 
 cease /orever. No reply. Such are worldlings! Remon- 
 strance only galls them. And so in one afternoon's cor- 
 respondence ends one more of my Christian friendships
 
 456 HARD CASH. 
 
 with persons of my own sex. This is the eighth to 
 which a carnal attacliment has been speedily fatal. 
 
 "In the evening Alfred came in looking very red, and 
 asked me whether it was not self-reliant and uncharita- 
 ble of me to condemn so many estimable persons, all 
 better acquainted with the circumstances than I am. I 
 replied with the fifth commandment. He bit his lip and 
 said, 'We had better not meet again, until you have 
 found out which is worthiest of honor, your father or 
 your brother.' And with this he left abruptly, and some- 
 thing tells me I shall not see him again. My faithful- 
 ness has wounded him to the quick. Alas ! Prayed for 
 him, and cried myself to sleep. 
 
 "April 4. Met him disguised as a common workman, 
 and carrying a sackful of things. I was so shocked, I 
 could not maintain my resolution ; I said, '0 Mr. Edward, 
 what are you doing ? ' He blushed a little, but told me 
 he was going to sell some candlesticks and things of his 
 making, and he should get a better price in that dress ; 
 all traders looked on a gentleman as a thing made to be 
 pillaged. Then he told me he was going to turn them 
 into a bonnet and a wreath ; and his beautiful brown eyes 
 sparkled with affection. What egotistical creatures they 
 must be ! I was quite overcome, and said, ' Oh, why 
 did he refuse our offer ? Did he hate me so very much 
 that he would not even take his due from my hand?' — 
 'No,' he said, ' nobody in our house is so unjust to you as 
 to hate you. My sister honors you, and is very sorry you 
 think ill of her ; and as for me, I love, you know how I 
 love you.' I hid my face in my hands, and sobbed out, 
 'Oh! you must not, you must not; my poor father has 
 one disobedient child already.' He said softly, 'Don't 
 cry, dear one ; have a little patience ; perhaps the clouds 
 will clear, and, meantime, why think so ill of us ? Con- 
 sider, we are four in number, of different dispositions,
 
 HARD CASH. 457 
 
 yet all of one mind about Julia marrying Alfred. May 
 we not be right ? may we not know something we love 
 you too well to tell 3'ou ? ' His words and his rich manly 
 voice were so soothing. I gave him just one hand while 
 I still hid my burning face with the other; he kissed the 
 hand I yielded him, and left me abruptly. 
 
 " If Alfred should be right ! I am staggered now ; he 
 puts it so much more convincingly. 
 
 " April 5. A letter from Alfred announcing his wed- 
 ding by special license for the 11th. 
 
 " Made no reply. What coxdd I say ? 
 
 "Papa, on my reading it out, left his very breakfast 
 half finished, and packed up his bag and rushed up to 
 London. I caught a side view of his face, and I am mis- 
 erable. Such a new, such a terrible expression ! a vile 
 expression ! Heaven forgive me, it seemed the look 
 of one who meditated a crime."
 
 458 HARD CASH. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 The spirit of dissension in Musgrove Cottage pene- 
 trated to the very kitchen. Old Betty sided with Alfred, 
 and combated in her place the creed of the parlor. 
 " Why, according to miss, the young sparrows are bound 
 never to fly out of the nest, or else have the Bible flung 
 at 'em. She do go on about God's will ; seems to me 
 'tis His will the world should be peopled by body and 
 beast, — which they are both His creatures — and, by 
 the same toaken, if they don't marry they does wus. 
 Certainly whilst a young man bides at home, it behoves 
 him to be dutiful : but that ain't to say he is to bide at 
 home forever. Master Alfred's time is come to leave 
 we, and be master in a house of his own, as his father 
 done before him, which he forgets that now ; he is grown 
 to man's estate, and got his mother's money, and no more 
 bound to our master than I be." She said, too, that 
 " parting blights more quarrels than it breeds ; " and 
 she constantly invited Peggy to speak up, and gainsay 
 her. But Peggy was a young woman with white eye- 
 lashes, and given to looking down, and not to speaking 
 up ; she was always watching Mr. Hardie in company, 
 like a cat cream, and hovering about him when alone. 
 Betty went so far as to accuse her of colloguing with 
 him against Alfred, and of " setting her cap at master," 
 which accusation elicited no direct reply, but stinging 
 innuendoes hours after. 
 
 Now, if one looks into the thing, the elements of dis- 
 cord had attacked Albion Villa quite as powerfully as 
 Musgrove Cottage, but had hitherto failed signally ; the
 
 HARD CASH. 459 
 
 mutual affection of the Dodds was so complete, and no 
 unprincipled person among them to split the good. 
 
 And, now that the wedding di-ew near, there was but 
 one joyful heart within the walls, though the others 
 were too kind and unselfish to throw cold water. Mrs. 
 Dodd's own wedding had ended in a piteous separation, 
 and now to part with her darling child and launch her 
 on the uncertain waves of matrimony ! She heaved 
 many a sigh when alone, but as there were no bounds to 
 her maternal love, so there were no exceptions to her 
 politeness ; over her aching heart she forced on a wed- 
 ding face, subdued but hopeful, for her daughter, as she 
 would for any other young lady about to be married 
 beneath her roof. 
 
 It wanted but six days, when one morning after break- 
 fast the bereaved wife and mother, about to be deserted, 
 addressed her son and viceroy thus : " Edward, we must 
 borrow fifty pounds." 
 
 " Fifty pounds ? what for ? who wants that ? " 
 
 "Why, /want it," said Mrs. Dodd, stoutly. 
 
 " Oh, if you want it — what to do, please ? " 
 
 " Why, to buy her wedding clothes, dear." 
 
 " I thought what her ' I ' would come to," said Julia, 
 reproachfully. 
 
 Edward shook his head, and said, " He who goes 
 a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing." 
 
 " But she is not a he," objected Mrs. Dodd, Avith the 
 subtlety of a schoolman; "and whoever heard of a 
 young lady being married without some things to be 
 married in ? " 
 
 " Well, I've heard nudity is not the cheese on public 
 occasions ; but why not go dressed like a lady as she 
 always does, only with white gloves, and be married 
 without any bother and nonsense ? " 
 
 " You talk like a boy," said Mrs. Dodd. " I could not
 
 460 HARD CASH. 
 
 bear it. My poor child ! " and she cast a look of tender- 
 est pity on the proposed victim. "Well, suppose we 
 make the poor child the judge," suggested Edward. He 
 then put it to Julia whether, under the circumstances, 
 she would wish them to run in debt, buying her finery 
 to wear for a day. " It was not fair to ask A^r," said 
 Mrs. Dodd with a sigh. 
 
 Julia blushed and hesitated, and said she would be 
 candid, and then stopped. 
 
 "Ugh!" ejaculated Edward. "This is a bad begin- 
 ning. Girl's candor ! Now for a masterpiece of du- 
 plicity." 
 
 Julia inquired how he dared ; and Mrs. Dodd said 
 warmly that Julia was not like other people, she could 
 be candid : had actually done it, more than once, within 
 her recollection. The young lady justified the excep- 
 tion as follows : " If I was going to be married to myself, 
 or to some gentleman I did not care for, I would not 
 spend a shilling. But I am going to marry him ; and 
 so — Edward, think of them saying, 'What has he 
 married ? a dowdy : why, she hadn't new things on to 
 go to church with him, — no bonnet, no wreath, no new 
 white dress ! ' To mortify him the very first day of 
 our " — The sentence remained unfinished, but two 
 lovely eyes filled to the very brim without running over, 
 and completed the sense, and did the viceroy's business 
 though a brother. " Why, you dear little goose," said 
 he ; " of course I don't mean that. I have as good as 
 got the things we must buy ; and those are a new- 
 bonnet " — 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 " A wreath of orange blossoms " — 
 
 " Oh, you good boy ! " 
 
 "Four pairs of gloves: two white — one is safe to 
 break — two dark, very dark, invisible green, or visible
 
 HAKD CASH. 461 
 
 black ; last the honeymoon. All the rest you must find 
 in the house." 
 
 " What, fit her out with a parcel of old things ? Can 
 you be so cruel, so unreasonable, dear Edward ? " 
 
 '' Old things ! Why, where is all your gorgeous attire 
 from Oriental climes ? I see the splendiferous articles 
 arrive, and then they vanish forever." 
 
 "Now, shawls and Indian muslins ! pray what use are 
 they to a bride ? " 
 
 " W^hy, what looks nicer than a white muslin dress ? " 
 
 "Married in muslin? The very idea makes me 
 shiver." 
 
 " Well, clap her on another petticoat." 
 
 " How can you be so childish ? iMuslin is not the 
 thing. '^ 
 
 " Ko more is running in debt." 
 
 He then suggested that a white shawl or two should 
 be cut into a bridal dress. A this both ladies' fair 
 throats opened on him with ridicule : cut fifty-guinea 
 shawls into ten-pound dresses ! that was male econom}^, 
 was it ? Total : a wedding was a wedding ; new things 
 always had had to be bought for a wedding, and always 
 would, in secula seculorum. 
 
 " Kew things ? Yes," said the pertinacious wretch, 
 " but they need not be n'^'w-bougl.t things. You ladies 
 go and confound the worl'^'s eyes with your own in the 
 drollest way : if gorgeous attire has lain long in your 
 drawers, you fancy t' e worl ' will detect on its glossy 
 surface how long you had it, and gloated over it, and 
 made it stale to your eye, before you could bring your 
 mind to wear it. That is your delusion, that and the 
 itch for going out shopping; oh, I'm down on you. 
 Mamma, dear, you open that gigantic wardrobe of yours, 
 and I'll oil my hair, whitewash my mug (a little moan 
 from Mrs. D.), and do the counter-jumping business to
 
 462 HARD CASH. 
 
 the life ; hand the things down to you, unroll 'em, grin, 
 charge you a hundred per cent over value, note them 
 down in a penny memorandum-book, sing out 'Caesh'i 
 caesh ! ' etc., and so we shall get all Julia wants, and go 
 through the ritual of shopping without the substantial 
 disgrace of running in debt." 
 
 ]\[rs. Dodd smiled admiringly, as ladies generally do 
 at the sauciness of a young male, but proposed an 
 amendment. She would open her wardrobe, and look 
 out all the contents for Edward's inspection; and, if 
 the mere sight of them did not convince him they Avere 
 inappropriate to a bride, why, then she would coincide 
 Avith his views, and resign her own. 
 
 " All right," said he. " That will take a jolly time, 
 I know ; so I'll go to my governor first for the bonnet 
 and wreath." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd drew in at this last slang Avord ; she 
 had heard young gentlemen apply it to their fathers. 
 Edward, she felt sure, Avould not so sully that sacred 
 relation: still the Avord Avas obnoxious for its past 
 offences, and she froze at it. " I have not the honor to 
 know Avho the personage is you so describe," said she 
 formally. Edward replied very carelessly that it Avas 
 an upholsterer at the north end of the tOAvn. 
 
 " Ah, a tradesman you patronize." 
 
 "Humph! AVell, yes, that is the word, mamma; 
 haAV, haw ! I have been making the bloke a lot of oak 
 candlesticks, and human heads Avith sparkling eyes, for 
 walking-sticks, etc. And now I'll go and draAV my — 
 protegees — blunt." The lady's hands Avere uplifted 
 towards pitying Heaven Avith one impulse ; the young 
 Avorkman grinned. " Soyons de notre slecle,'' said he, 
 and departed Avhistling in the tenor clef. He had the 
 mellowest Avhistle. 
 
 After a fcAV minutes Avell spent in deploring the fall
 
 HARD CASH. 463 
 
 of her Oxonian, and gently denouncing his motto, and 
 his century, its ways, and above all its words, Mrs. Dodd 
 took Julia to her bedroom, and unlocked drawers and 
 doors in her wardrobe ; and straightway Sarah, who was 
 hurriedly flogging the chairs with a duster, relaxed, and 
 began to work on a cheval-glass as slowly as if she was 
 drawing Nelson's lions at a thousand pounds the tail. 
 Mrs. Dodd opened a drawer and took out three pieces of 
 worked Indian muslin, a little disco. ored by hoarding. 
 "There, that must be bleached and make you some 
 wrappers for the honeymoon, if the weather is at all 
 fine, and petticoats to match ; " next an envelope con- 
 sisting of two foolscap sheets tacked. This, carefully 
 undone upon the bed, revealed a Brussels lace flounce 
 and a veil. " It was my own," said Mrs. Dodd softly. 
 " I saved it for you ; see, here is your name written on 
 it seventeen years ago. I thought, 'This dear little 
 toddler will have wings some day, and then she will 
 leave me.' But now I am almost afraid to let you wear 
 it; it might bring you misfortune. Suppose after years 
 of wedded love you should be bereaved of " — Mrs. 
 Dodd choked, and Julia's arms were round her neck in 
 a moment. 
 
 *' I'll risk it," cried she, impetuously. " If it but 
 makes me as beloved as you are, I'll wear it come weal 
 come woe ! And then I shall feel it over me at the 
 altar like my guardian angel's wings, my own sweet, 
 darling mamma. Oh, what an idiot, what a wretch I 
 am, to leave you at all ! " 
 
 This unfortunate, unexpected burst interrupted busi- 
 ness sadly. Mrs. Dodd sank down directly on the bed 
 and wept ; Julia cried over her, and Sarah plumped her- 
 self down in a chair and blubbered. But wedding flow- 
 ers are generally well watered in the private apartments. 
 
 Patient Mrs. Dodd soon recovered herself. " This is
 
 464 HARD CASH. 
 
 childish of me. When I think that there are mothers 
 who see their chiklren go from the house corpses, not 
 brides, I ought to be ashamed of myself. Come ! a 
 Voeuvre. Ah, here is something." And she produced 
 a white China crape shawl. "Oh, how sweet!" said 
 Julia ; " why have you never worn it ? " 
 
 " Dear me, child, what use would things be to those 
 I love, if I went and ivore them ? " 
 
 The next article she laid her hand on was a roll of 
 white poplin, and drew an exclamation from Mrs. Dodd 
 herself. " If I had not forgotten this, and it is the very 
 thing. Your dear papa bought me this in London, and 
 I remonstrated with him well for buying me such a deli- 
 cate thing, only once wear. I kissed it and put it away, 
 and forgot it. They say, if you keep a thing seven 
 years — it is just seven years since he gave it to me. 
 Really, the dear boy is a witch: this is your wedding 
 dress, my precious precious." She unrolled a few yards 
 on the bed to show it, and asked the gloating Sarah, with 
 a great appearance of consideration, whether they were 
 not detaining her from her occupations. 
 
 "Oh, no, mum. This glass have got so dull; I'm just 
 polishing of it a bit. I sha'n't be a minute now, mum." 
 
 From silver tissue paper Mrs. Dodd evolved a dress 
 (unmade) of white crape embroidered in true-lover's 
 knots of violet silk, and ears of wheat in gold. Then 
 there was a scream at the glass, and Sarah seen in it 
 with ten claws in the air very wide apart ; she had slyly 
 turned the mirror, and was devouring the reflection of 
 the hnery, and this last Indian fabric overpowered her. 
 Her exclamation was instantly followed by much polish- 
 ing, but Mrs. Dodd replied to it after the manner of her 
 sex : " Well, it is lovely," said she to Julia ; " but where 
 is the one with beetle wings ? Oh, here." 
 
 "Heal beetles' wings, mamma?" inquired Julia.
 
 HARD CASH. 4G5 
 
 Yes, love," 
 
 " So they are, and how wicked ! and what a lovely 
 green ! I will never wear them ; they are prismatic. 
 Now, if ever I am to be a Christian, I had better begin ; 
 everything has a beginning. Oh, vanity of women, you 
 stick at nothing ! A thousand innocent lives stolen to 
 make one dress ! " And she put one hand before her 
 eyes, and with the other ordered the dress back into the 
 wardrobe with genuine agitation, 
 
 " My dear, what expressions ! And you need not wear 
 it ; indeed neither of them is fit for that purpose. But 
 you must have a pretty thing or two about you, I have 
 hoarded these a good many years ; now it is your turn to 
 have them by you. And let me see ; you want a travel- 
 ling cloak : but the dear boy will not let us ; so choose a 
 warm shawl." 
 
 A rich but modest one was soon found, and Julia tried 
 it on, arching her supple neck, and looking down over 
 her shoulder to see the effect behind, in which attitude, 
 oh, for an immortal brush to paint her, or anything half 
 as bright, supple, graceful, and every inch a woman ! At 
 this moment Mrs. Dodd threw a lovely blue Indian shaAvl 
 on the bed, galvanizing Sarah so that up went her hands 
 again, and the door opened softly and a handsome head 
 in a paper cap peeped on the scene, inquiring with mock 
 timidity, " May the ' British Workman ' come in ? " He 
 was invited warmly ; Julia whipped his cap off, and tore 
 it in two, reddening, and Mrs. Dodd, intending to compli- 
 ment his foresight, showed him the bed laden with the 
 treasures they had disinterred from vanity's mahogany 
 tomb. 
 
 " Well, mother," said he, " you were right, and I was 
 wrong : they are inappropriate enough, the whole lot." 
 
 The ladies looked at one another, and Sarah permitted 
 herself a species of snort.
 
 466 HARD CASH. 
 
 " Do we want Sarah ? '' he asked, quietly. She retired 
 bridling. 
 
 "Inappropriate?" exclaimed Mrs. Dodd. "There is 
 nothing here unfit for a bride's trousseau." 
 
 '• Good heavens ! Would you trick her out like a 
 princess ? " 
 
 "We must. We are too poor to dress her like a lady." 
 
 "Cinderella; at your service," observed Julia compla- 
 cently, and pirouetted before him in her new shawl. 
 
 Ideas rejected peremptorily at the time often rankle, 
 and bear fruit by and by. Mrs. Dodd took up the blue 
 shawl, and said she would make Julia a peignoir of it ; 
 and the border, being narrowish, would do for the bottom. 
 "That was a good notion of yours, darling," said she, 
 bestowing a sweet smile on Edward. He grunted. Then 
 she took out a bundle of lace: "Oh, for pity's sake no 
 more," cried the " British Workman." 
 
 " Now, dearest, you have interfered once in feminine 
 affairs, and we submitted. But, if you say another word, 
 I will trim her poplin with Honiton two feet deep." 
 
 " Quarter ! quarter ! " cried Edward. " I'm dumb ; 
 grant me but this ; have nothing made up for her out of 
 the house : you know there is no dressmaker in Bark- 
 ington can cut like you : and then that will put some 
 limit to our inconsistency." Mrs. Dodd agreed; but she 
 must have a woman in to sew. 
 
 Edward grunted at this, and said, "I wish I could 
 turn you these gowns with my lathe ; what a deal of 
 time and bother it would save. However, if you want 
 any stuffing, come to me; I'll lend you lots of shavings; 
 make the silk rustle. Oh, here is my governor's contri- 
 bution." And he produced seven pounds ten shillings. 
 
 "Now, look there," said Julia, sorrowfully, "it is 
 money. And I thought you were going to bring me the 
 very bonnet yourself. Then I should have valued it."
 
 HARD CASH. 467 
 
 "Oh, yes," replied tlie young gentleman, ironically; 
 " can I choose a bonnet to satisfy such swells as you and 
 mamma? I'll tell you what I'll do; I'll go with you 
 and look as wise as Solomon, all the time you are 
 choosing it." 
 
 " A capital plan," said Julia. 
 
 Edward then shook his fist at the finery : and retired 
 to work again for his governor : " Flowers," he observed, 
 " are indispensable, at a wedding breakfast ; I hear too 
 it is considered the right cheese to add something in the 
 shape of grub." Exit whistling in the tenor clef; and 
 keeping their hearts up, like a man. 
 
 So now there were two workshops in Albion Villa; 
 Ned's study, as he called it, and the drawing-room : in 
 the former shavings flew, and settled at their ease, and 
 the whirr of the lathe slept not; the latter was all 
 patterns, tapes, hooks and eyes, whalebone, cuttings of 
 muslin, poplin and paper; clouds of lining muslin, 
 snakes of piping; skeins, shreds ; and the floor literally 
 sown with pins, escaped from the fingers of the fair, 
 those taper fingers so typical of the minds of their 
 owners : for they have softness, suppleness, nimbleness, 
 adroitness, and " a plentiful lack " of tenacity. 
 
 The days passed in hard work, and the evenings in 
 wooing, never sweeter than when it has been so earned : 
 and at last came the wedding eve. Dr. Sampson, who 
 was to give the bride away, arrived just before dinner- 
 time: the party, including Alfred, sat down to a charm- 
 ing little dinner ; they ate beetles' wings, and drank 
 Indian muslin fifteen years in the wood. For the lathe 
 and the chisel proved insufficient, and Julia having really 
 denied herself, as an aspirant to Christianity, that assas- 
 sin's robe, Mrs. Dodd sold it under the rose to a fat old 
 dowager — for whom nothing was too fine — and so kept 
 up appearances.
 
 468 HARD CASH. 
 
 Julia and Alfred were profoundly happy at bottom ; 
 yet their union was attended with too many drawbacks 
 for boisterous gayety, and Alfred, up to this time, had 
 shown a seriousness and sobriety of bliss, that won Mrs. 
 Dodd's gratitude : it was the demeanor of a delicate 
 mind; it became his own position, at odds with his own 
 flesh and blood for Julia's sake ; it became him as the 
 son-in-law of a poor woman so lately bereaved of her 
 husband, and reduced to poverty by one bearing the name 
 of Hardie. 
 
 But now Dr. Sampson introduced a gayer element. He 
 had seen a great deal of life ; i.e., of death and trouble. 
 This had not hardened him, but, encountering a sturdy, 
 valiant, self-protecting nature, had made him terribly 
 tough and elastic ; it was now his way never to go 
 forward or backward a single step after sorrow. He 
 seldom mentioned a dead friend or relation ; and, if 
 others forced the dreary topic on him, they covild never 
 hold him to it; he was away directly to something 
 pleasant or useful, like a grasshopper skipping off a grave 
 into the green grass. He had felt keenly about David 
 while there was anything to be done : but now his poor 
 friend was in a madhouse, thanks to the lancet: and 
 there was an end of him. Thinking about him would do 
 him no good. The present only is irresistible ; past and 
 future ills the mind can bar out by a resolute effort. 
 The bride will very likely die of her first child ! Well 
 then, forget that just now. Her father is in an asylum ! 
 Well then, don't remember him at the wrong time : there 
 sit female beauty and virtue i-eady to wed manly wit 
 and comeliness, seated opposite ; see their sweet stolen 
 glances; a few hours only between them and wedded 
 rapture : and I'm here to give the lovely virgin away : 
 fill the bumper high! dam vivlmus vivamns. In this 
 glorious spirit he rattled on^ and soon drew the young
 
 HARD CASH. 469 
 
 people out, and silvery peals of laughter rang round the 
 genial board. 
 
 This jarred on Mrs. Dodd. She bore it in silence some 
 time; but with the grief it revived and sharpened by 
 contrast, and the polite effort to hide her distress, found 
 herself becoming hysterical : then she made the usual 
 signal to Julia, and beat an early retreat. She left 
 Julia in the drawing-room, and went and locked herself 
 in her own room. " Oh, how can they be so cruel as to 
 laugh and giggle in my David's house ! " She wept 
 sadly, and for the first time felt herself quite lonely in 
 the world : for what companionship between the gay and 
 the sad-hearted ? Poor thing, she lived to reproach her- 
 self even with this, the nearest aj^proach she ever made 
 to selfishness. 
 
 Ere long she crept into Julia's room and humbly busied 
 herself packing her trunks for the wedding tour. The 
 tears fell fast on her white hands. 
 
 She would not have been left alone a minute if Julia's 
 mind had not been occupied just then with an affec- 
 tionate and amiable anxiety : she earnestly desired to 
 reconcile her Alfred and his sister before the wedding; 
 and she sat in the drawing-room thinking whether it 
 could be done, and how. 
 
 At last she sat down blushing, and wrote a little note, 
 and rang the bell for Sarah, and sent it courageously into 
 the dining-room. 
 
 Sarah very prudently listened at the keyhole before 
 entering ; for she said to herself, " If they are talking 
 free, I sha'n't go in till it's over." 
 
 The persons so generously suspected were discussing 
 a parchment Alfred had produced, and wanted signed : 
 " You are our trustee, my boy," said he to Edward : " so 
 just write your name here, and mine comes here, and the 
 witnesses there : the doctor and Sarah will do. Send for 
 a pen."
 
 470 HAED CASH. 
 
 " Let's read it first, please." 
 
 " Eeacl it ! What for ? " 
 
 "Catch me signing a paper without reading it, my 
 boy." 
 
 " What, can't you trust me ? " inquired Alfred, hurt. 
 
 " Oh, yes. And can't 3^ou trust me ? " 
 
 " There's a question : why, I have appointed you my 
 trusty in the deed ; he, he ! " 
 
 "Well, then, trust me without my signing, and I'll 
 trust you without reading." 
 
 Sampson laughed at this retort, and Alfred reddened ; 
 he did not want the deed read. But while he hesitated 
 Sarah came in with Julia's note, asking him to come to 
 her for a minute. This sweet summons made him indif- 
 ferent to prosaic things. " Well, read away," said he : 
 " one comfort, you will be no wiser." 
 
 "What, is it in Latin?" asked Edward, with a wry 
 face. 
 
 " No such luck. Deeds used to be in Latin ; but Latin 
 could not be made obscure enough. So now dark deeds 
 are written in an unknown tongue called ' Lawyerish,' 
 where the sense is ' as one grain of wheat in two bushels 
 of chaff,' pick it out if you can." 
 
 " Whatever man has done, man may do," said Dr. 
 Sampson, stoutly. "You have rid it, and yet under- 
 stood it: so why mayn't we, ye monster o' conceit?" 
 
 "Eead it?" said Alfred. "I never read it: would 
 not read it for a great deal of money. The moment I 
 saw what a senseless rigmarole it was, I flung it down 
 and insisted on the battological author furnishing me 
 with an English translation. He complied : the crib 
 occupies just twenty lines ; tlie original three folio 
 pages, as you see. That crib, gentlemen," added he, 
 severely, " is now in my waistcoat pocket ; and you shall 
 never see it — for your impudence. No, seat 3"ourselves
 
 HARD CASH. 471 
 
 by that pool of parchment (sedet eternumque sedebif, etc.), 
 and fish for Lawyer Crawford's ideas, i-ari nantes in 
 {/urgite vasfo.'' And with this he flew iip-stairs on the 
 wings of love. Julia met him in the middle of the 
 room, all in a flutter : " It is to ask you a favor. I am 
 unhappy — about one thing." 
 
 She then leaned one hand softly on his shoulder, and 
 curving her lovely, supple neck, looked round into his 
 face and watched it as she preferred her petition : " It is 
 about Jane and you. I cannot bear to part you two in 
 this way : only think, six days you have not spoken, and 
 I am the cause." 
 
 "iSTot the only cause, love." 
 
 '• I don't know, darling. But it is very cruel. I have 
 got my dear mother and Edward; you have nobody — 
 but me. Alfred," said she with gentle impetuosity, 
 "now is the time; your papa is away." 
 
 " Oh, is he ? " said Alfred, carelessly. 
 
 "Yes. Sarah says Betty says he is gone to Uncle 
 Thomas. So I know you won't refuse me, my own 
 Alfred : it is to go to your sister this minute and make 
 it up." 
 
 "What, and leave you?" objected Alfred, ruefully. 
 
 "Xo, no; you are with the gentlemen, you know: you 
 are not here, in reality, till tea. ]\[ake them an excuse : 
 say the truth; say it is me : and come back to me with 
 good news." 
 
 He consented on these terms. 
 
 Then she armed him with advice: "You go to make 
 peace ; it is our last chance ; now remember, you must 
 be very generous, very sweet-tempered. Guard against 
 your impetuosity. Do take warning by me ; see how 
 impetuous I am. And then, you know, after all, she is 
 only a lady, and a great creature like you ought not to 
 be ruffled by anything so small as a lady's tongue : the
 
 472 HARD CASH. 
 
 idea ! And, dearest, don't go trusting to your logic, but 
 do descend to the arts of persuasion, because tliey are 
 far more convincing somehow : please try them." 
 
 *' Yes. Enumerate them." 
 
 " Why, kissing, and coaxing, and — don't ask me." 
 
 " Will you bestow a specimen of those arts on me, if 
 I succeed? 
 
 " Try me," said she : and looked him earnestly in the 
 face ; but lowered her long lashes slowly and shyly, 
 as she realized to what her impetuosity was pledging 
 itself. 
 
 Alfred got his hat and ran to Musgrove Cottage. 
 
 A man stepped out of the shadow of a hedge opposite 
 Albion Villa, and followed him, keeping in shadow as 
 much as possible. 
 
 The door of Musgrove Cottage was opened to him by 
 old Betty with a joyful start : " Mr. Alfred, I declare ! 
 Come in : there's only me and miss : master is in York- 
 shire, and that there crocodile, Peggy, she is turned 
 away — for sauce — and a good riddance of bad rubbish. 
 Miss is in the parlor." 
 
 She ushered him triumphantly fci. Jane was seated 
 reading : she dropped her book, and ran and kissed him 
 with a cry of joy. So warm a reception surprised him 
 agreeably, and simplified his task. He told her he was 
 come to try and make it up with her before the Avedding. 
 " We lose your presence, dear Jenny," said he, " and that 
 is a great grief to us, valuing you as we do ; don't refuse 
 us your good wishes to-morrow." 
 
 '•Dearest Alfred," said she, "can j'ou think it? I 
 pray for you day and night ; and I have begun to blame 
 myself for being so sure you were in the wrong and poor 
 papa faultless. What you sent me half in jest, I take 
 in earnest. 'Judge not, that ye be not judged.' " 
 
 " Why, Jenny," said Alfred, " how red your eyes are !'"
 
 HARD CASH. 473 
 
 At this observation the young saint laid her head on 
 her brother's shoulder and had a good cry like any other 
 girl. When she recovered a little she told hira, yes, she 
 had been very unhappy ; that he had always been a dear 
 good brother to her, and the only one she had, and that 
 it cut her to the heart not to be at his wedding, it seemed 
 so unkind. 
 
 Alfred set her on his knee, — she had more soul than 
 body, — and kissed her and comforted her ; and, in this 
 happy revival of natural affection, his heart opened, he 
 was off his guard, and told her all ; gave her the several 
 proofs their father had got the fourteen thousand pounds. 
 Jane, arrested by the skill and logical clearness with 
 which he marshalled the proofs, listened in silence, and 
 presently a keen shudder ran through her frame, and 
 reminded him he was setting a daughter against her 
 father. 
 
 " There," said he, '' I always said I would never tell 
 you, and now I've done it. Well, at least you will see 
 with what consideration and unheard-of leniency the 
 Dodds for our sake are treating Mr, Eichard Hardie. 
 Just compare their conduct to him with his to them. 
 And which is most to his advantage ? that I should 
 marry Julia, and give ]\[rs. Dodd the life interest in my 
 ten thousand pounds, to balance his dishonesty, or for 
 him to be indicted as a thief ? Ned Dodd told us 
 plainly he would have set the police on him, had any 
 other but his son been the informant." 
 
 '• Did he say that ? Alfred ! this is a miserable 
 world." 
 
 " I can't see that : it is the jolliest world in the world; 
 everything is bright and lovely, and everybody is happy 
 except a few sick people, and a few peevish ones that 
 run to meet trouble. To-morrow I marry my sweet 
 Julia. Richard Hardie will find we two don't molest him,
 
 474 HAKD CASH. 
 
 nor trouble our heads about him : he will get used to us, 
 and one tine day we shall say to him, 'Now we know all 
 about the fourteen thousand pounds : just leave it by 
 will to dear Jenny, and let my friend Dodd marry her, 
 and you can enjoy it unmolested for your lifetime.' He 
 will consent, and you will marry Ned, and then you'll 
 find the world has been wickedly slandered by dishonest 
 men and dismal dogs." 
 
 In this strain he continued till he made her blush a 
 good deal and smile a little, — a sad smile. 
 
 But at last she said, " If I was sure all this is true, I 
 think I should go, with a heavy heart, to your wedding. 
 If I don't, the best part of me will be there, — my 
 prayers, and my warm, warm wishes for you both. Kiss 
 her for me, and tell her so, and that I hope we shall 
 meet round His throne soon, if we cannot meet at His 
 altar to-morrow." 
 
 Brother and sister then kissed one another affection- 
 ately ; and Alfred ran back like the wind to Albion 
 Cottage. Julia was not in the drawing-room, and some 
 coolish tea was. After waiting half an hour he got 
 impatient, and sent Sarah to say he had a message for 
 her. Sarah went up-stairs to Mrs. Dodd's room, and was 
 instantly absorbed. After waiting again a long time, 
 Alfred persuaded Edward to try his luck. Edward went 
 up to Mrs. Dodd's room, and was absorbed. 
 
 The wedding-dress was being solemnly tried on. A 
 clean linen sheet was on the floor, and the bride stood 
 on it, receiving the last touches of the milliner's art. 
 With this and her white poplin and lace veil she seemed 
 framed in white, and her cheeks bloomed so, and her 
 eyes beamed, with excitement and innocent vanity, that 
 altogether she was supernaturally lovely. 
 
 Once enter the room enchanted by this snow-clad rose, 
 and — Vestigia nulla retrorsum.
 
 HARD CASH. 475 
 
 However, Edward escaped at last, and told Alfred 
 what was on foot, and drew a picture of the bride with 
 white above and white below. 
 
 "Oh, let me see her," implored the lover. 
 
 Edward must ask mamma about tliat. He did, and 
 mamma said, " Certainly not : the last person in the 
 Avorld that shall see her in her wedding-dress." But she 
 should come down to him in half an hour. It seemed a 
 very long half-hour. However, by way of compensation, 
 he was alone when she did come. " Good news ? " she 
 asked eagerly. 
 
 " Capital : we are the best of friends. Why, she is 
 half inclined to come.'' 
 
 "Then — oh, how good you are! oh, how I love 
 you!" 
 
 And she flung a tender arm round his neck, like a 
 young goddess making love ; and her sweet face came 
 so near his, he had only to stoop a little, and their lips 
 met in a long, blissful kiss. 
 
 That kiss was an era in her life. Innocence itself, 
 she had put up her delicious lips to her lover in pure, 
 though earnest affection; but the male fire with which 
 his met them, made her blush as well as thrill, and she 
 drew back a little, abashed and half scared, and nestled 
 on his shoulder, hiding a face that grew redder and 
 redder. 
 
 He bent his graceful head, and murmured down to 
 her, " Are 3'ou afraid of me, sweetest ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, no ! Yes, a little. I don't know. I was 
 afraid I had made too free with my treasure : you don't 
 quite belong to me yet, you know." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I do ; and, what is more, you belong to me. 
 Don't you, sweet rebel ? " 
 
 " Ah, that I do, heart and soul, my own, own, own." 
 
 A few more soft, delicious murmurs, and then Julia
 
 476 HARD CASH. 
 
 was summoned to more rites of vanity, and tlie lovers 
 parted with tender reluctance for those few hours. 
 
 Alfred went home to his lodgings. 
 
 He had not been there above ten minutes, when he 
 came out hastily, and walked quickly to the " White 
 Lion," the principal inn in Barkington. He went into 
 the stable-yard, and said a few words to the ostler, then 
 returned to his lodgings. 
 
 The man followed him at a distance, from Albion 
 Terrace, watched him home, dogged him to the " White 
 Lion," and by and by entered the yard and offered the 
 ostler a glass of ale at the tap. 
 
 At Albion Villa they Avere working on Julia's dresses 
 till past midnight ; and then Mrs. Dodd insisted on her 
 going to bed. She obeyed, but when the house was all 
 quiet came stealing out to her mother, and begged to 
 sleep with her. The sad mother strained her in a tearful 
 embrace ; and so they passed the night, clinging to one 
 another more as the parting drew near. 
 
 Edward arranged the wedding-breakfast for after the 
 ceremony, and sent the ladies up a cup of coffee, and a 
 bit of toast, apiece. They could hardly find appetite 
 even for this, or, indeed, time, there was so much still 
 to do. 
 
 At ten o'clock Julia was still in the height of dressing, 
 delayed by contretemps upon contretemps. Sarah and 
 her sister did her hair up too loose, and, being a glorious 
 mass, it threatened all to come down ; and, meantime, a 
 hairpin quietly but persistently bored her cream-white 
 poll. 
 
 " Oh. run for mamma ! " she cried. 
 
 Mamma came half dressed, had the hair all down 
 again, and did it up with adroit and loving hand, and put 
 on the orange-wreath, kissed her admiringly, and retired 
 to her own toilet ; and the girls began to lace the bride's 
 body.
 
 HARD CASH. 477 
 
 Bump came Edward's foot against the door, making 
 them all shriek. 
 
 " Now I dou't want to hurry you ; but Dr. Sampson is 
 come." 
 
 The handmaids, flustered, tried to go faster 3 and when 
 the work was done Julia took her little hand-glass and 
 inspected her back. '' Oh ! " she screamed, " I am 
 crooked. There, go for mamma." 
 
 Mamma soon came, and the poor bride held out implor- 
 ing hands. " I'm all awry : I'm as crooked as a ram's 
 horn." 
 
 '' La, miss," said Sarah, " it's only behind : nobody 
 will notice it." 
 
 "How can they help it ? Mamma, a77i I deformed ? " 
 
 Mrs. Dodd smiled superior, and bade her be calm. " It 
 is the lacing, dear. No, Sarah, it is no use your pulling 
 it : all the pulling in the world will not straighten it. 
 I thought so : you have missed the second top hole." 
 
 Julia's little foot began to beat a tattoo on the floor. 
 " There is not a soul in the house but you can do the 
 simplest thing. Eyes and no eyes, fingers and no fin- 
 gers ! I never did^ 
 
 " Hush, love, we all do our best." 
 
 " Oh, I am sure of that ; poor things ! " 
 
 ^^ Nobody can lace you if you fidget about, love," 
 objected Mrs. Dodd. 
 
 (Bump.) " Now I don't want to hurry any man's cat- 
 tle, but the bridesmaids are come." 
 
 " Oh, dear ! I shall never be ready in time," said 
 Julia ; and the tattoo recommenced. 
 
 " Plenty of time, love," said Mrs. Dodd, quietly lac- 
 ing : " not half-past ten yet. Sarah, go and see if the 
 bridegroom has arrived." 
 
 Sarah returned with the reassuring tidings that the 
 bridegroom had not yet arrived, though the carriages 
 had.
 
 478 HARD CASH. 
 
 " Oh, thank Heaven he is not come ! " said Julia. " If 
 I keep him waiting to-day, he might say, * Oho ! ' " 
 
 Under dread of a comment so significant, she was 
 ready at last, and said majestically he might come now 
 whenever he liked. 
 
 Meantime, down-stairs an uneasiness of the opposite 
 kind was growing. Ten minutes past the appointed 
 time, and the bridegroom not there. So while Julia, 
 now full dressed, and easy in her mind, was directing 
 Sarah's sister to lay out her plain travelling-dress, bonnet 
 and gloves, on the bed, Mrs. Dodd was summoned down- 
 stairs. She came down with Julia's white gloves in her 
 hand, and a needle and thread, the button sewed on by 
 trade's fair hand having flown at the first strain. Edward 
 met her on the stairs. " What had we better do, 
 mother ? " said he sotto voce ; " there must be some 
 mistake. Can you remember? Wasn't he to call for 
 me on the way to church ? " 
 
 " I really do not know," said Mrs. Dodd. " Is he at 
 the church, do you think ? " 
 
 " No, no : either he was to call for me here, or I for 
 him. I'll go to the church, though : it is only a step." 
 
 He ran off, and in a little more than five minutes came 
 into the drawing-room. 
 
 '•No, he is not there. I must go to his lodgings. 
 Confound him ! he has got reading Aristotle, I suppose." 
 
 This passed before the whole party, Julia excepted. 
 
 Sampson looked at his watch, and said he could con- 
 duct the ladies to the church while Edward went for 
 Alfred. " Division of labor," said he gallantly, " and 
 mine the delightful half." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd demurred to the plan. She was for wait- 
 ing quietly in one place. 
 
 " Well, but," said Edward, " we may overdo that ; 
 here it is a quarter past eleven, and you know they can't
 
 HARD CASH. 479 
 
 be married after twelve. No, I really think you had 
 better all go Avith the doctor: I dare say we shall be 
 there as soon as you will." 
 
 This was agreed on after some discussion. Edward, 
 however, to provide against all contingencies, begged 
 Sampson not to wait for him should Alfred reach the 
 church by some other road. " I'm only groomsman, you 
 know," said he. He ran off at a racing pace. The bride 
 was then summoned, admired, and handed into one car- 
 riage with her two bridesmaids, INliss Bosanquet and 
 Miss Darton. Sampson and Mrs. Dodd went in the 
 other ; and by half-past eleven they were all safe in the 
 church. 
 
 A good many people, high and low, were about the 
 door, and in the pews, waiting to see the beautiful Miss 
 Dodd married to the son of a personage once so popular 
 as Mr. Hardie : it had even transpired that Mr. Hardie 
 disapproved the match. They had been waiting a long 
 time, and were beginning to wonder what was the mat- 
 ter, when, at last, the bride's party walked up the aisle 
 with a bright April sun shining on them through the 
 broad old windows. The bride's rare beauty and stag- 
 like carriage of her head, imperial in its loveliness and 
 orange-wreath, drew a hum of admiration. 
 
 The party stood a minute or two at the east end of the 
 church, and then the clergyman came out and invited 
 them into the vestry. 
 
 Their reappearance was eagerl}^ expected ; in silence 
 at first, but presently in loud and multitudinous whispers. 
 
 At this moment, a young lady with almost perfect 
 features and sylph-like figure, modestly dressed in dove- 
 colored silk, but with a new chip bonnet and white 
 gloves, entered a pew near the west door and said a 
 little prayer ; then proceeded up the aisle, and exchanged 
 a word with the clerk, then into the vestry.
 
 480 HARD CASH. 
 
 "Cheep! cheep! cheep!" went fifty female tongues, 
 and the arrival of the bridegroom's sister became public 
 news. 
 
 The bride welcomed her in the vestry with a sweet 
 guttural of surprise and delight, and they kissed one 
 another like little tigers. 
 
 " Oh, my darling Jane, how kind of you ! have I got 
 you back to make my happiness complete ? " 
 
 Now none of her own party had thought it wise to tell 
 Julia there was any hitch, but Miss Hardie blurted out, 
 naturally enough, " But where's Alfred ? " 
 
 "I don't know, dear," said Julia, innocently. "Are 
 not he and Edward in another part of the church ? I 
 thought we were waiting till twelve o'clock, perhaps. 
 Mamma dear, you know everything, I suppose this is all 
 right ? " 
 
 Then, looking round at her friends' faces, she saw in 
 a moment that it was all wrong. Sampson's in particu- 
 lar was burning with manly indignation, and even her 
 mother's discomposed, and trying to smile. 
 
 When the innocent saw this, she suspected her beloved 
 was treating her cavalierly, and her poor little mouth 
 began to work, and she had much ado not to whimper. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd, to encourage her, told her not to be put 
 out ; it had been arranged all along that Edward should 
 go for him : " Unfortunately, we had an impression it 
 was the other way, but now Edward is gone to his 
 lodging^." 
 
 "No, mamma," said Julia, "Alfred was to call for 
 Edward, because our house was on the way." 
 
 "Are you sure, my child?" asked Mrs. Dodd, very 
 gravely. 
 
 "Oh, yes, mamma," said Julia, beginning to tremble-, 
 "at a quarter before eleven; I heard them settle it." 
 
 The matter was terribly serious now; indeed, it began
 
 HARD CASH. 481 
 
 to look hopeless. Weather overclouded, raindrops fall- 
 ing, and hard upon twelve o'clock. 
 
 They all looked at one another in despair. 
 
 Suddenly there was a loud, long buzzing heard outside, 
 and the house of God turned into a gossiping fair. 
 " Talk of money-changers," said Satan that day, " give 
 me the exchangers of small talk." 
 
 '•Thank Heaven they are come," said j\Irs. Dodd. 
 But, having thus relieved her mind, she drew herself up, 
 and prepared a freezing reception for the defaulter. 
 
 A whisper reached their excited ears : " It is young 
 Mr. Dodd ! " and next moment Edward came into the 
 vestry — alone. The sight of him was enough — his 
 brow wet with perspiration, his face black and white 
 with bitter wrath. 
 
 "Come home, ^ni/ people," he said, sternly; "there 
 will be no wedding here to-day." 
 
 The bridesmaids cackled questions at him ; he turned 
 his back on them. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd knew her son's face too well to waste 
 inquiries. " Give me ray child ! " she cried, in such a 
 burst of raother's anguish long restrained, that even the 
 insult to the bride was forgotten for one moment, till 
 she was seen tottering into her mother's arms and cring- 
 ing, and trying to hide bodily in her. "Oh, throw a 
 shawl over me," she moaned ; " hide all this." 
 
 Well, they all did w^hat they could. Jane hung round 
 her neck and sobbed, and said, "I've a sister now, 
 and no brother." The bridesmaids cried. The young 
 curate ran and got the fly to the vestry-door ; " Get 
 into it," he said, " and you will at least escape the cu- 
 rious crowd." 
 
 " God bless you, Mr. Hurd," said Edward, half-choked. 
 He hurried the insulted bride and her mother in ; Julia 
 huddled and shrank into a corner under Mrs. Dodd's
 
 482 HARD CASH. 
 
 shawl ; Mrs. Dodd head all the blinds down in a moment, 
 and they went home as from a funeral. 
 
 A}-, and a funeral it was, for the sweetest girl in Eng- 
 land buried her hopes, her laugh, her May of youth, in 
 that church that day. 
 
 When she got to Albion Villa, she cast a wild look all 
 around, for fear she should be seen in her wedding- 
 clothes, and darted moaning into the house. 
 
 Sarah met her in the hall, smirking, and saying, 
 "Wish you j—" 
 
 The poor bride screamed fearfully at the mocking 
 words, and cut the conventional phrase in two as with a 
 razor ; then fled to her own room and tore off her wreath, 
 her veil, her pearls, and had already strewed the room, 
 when Mrs. Dodd, with a foot quickened by affection, 
 burst in and caught her half fainting, and laid her, weary 
 as old age, and cold as a stone, upon lier mother's bosom, 
 and rocked her as in the days of happy childhood, never 
 to return, and bedewed the pale face with her own tears. 
 
 Sampson took the bridesmaids each to her residence, 
 on purpose to leave Edward free. He came home, 
 washed his face, and, sick at heart, but more master of 
 himself, knocked timidly at Julia's door. 
 
 "Come in, my son/' said a broken voice. 
 
 He crept in, and saw a sorry sight. The travelling- 
 dress and bonnet Avere waiting still on the bed; the 
 bridal wreath and veil lay on the floor, and so did half 
 the necklace, and the rest of the pearls all about the 
 floor; and Julia, with all her hair loose and hanging 
 below her waist, lay faintly quivering in her mother's 
 arms. 
 
 Edward stood and looked, and groaned. 
 
 Mrs. Dodd whispered to him over Julia, " Not a tear ! 
 not a tear ! " 
 
 "Dead, or false ? " moaned the girl : "dead, or false ?
 
 HARD CASH. 483 
 
 Oh, that I could believe he was false ; no, no, he is dead, 
 dead." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd whispered again over her girl. 
 
 "Tell her something: give us tears — the world for 
 one tear ! " 
 
 "What shall I say ? " gasped Edward. 
 
 "Tell her the truth, and trust to God, whose child 
 she is." 
 
 Edward knelt on the floor and took her hand. 
 
 " My poor little Ju ! " he said, in a voice broken with 
 pity and emotion, " would you rather have him dead or 
 false to you ? " 
 
 "Why, false, a thousand times. It's Edward. Bless 
 your sweet face, my own, own brother; tell me he is 
 false, and not come to deadly harm." 
 
 "You shall judge for yourself," he groaned. "I went 
 to his lodgings. He had left the town. The woman told 
 me a letter came for him last night ; a letter in — a 
 female hand. The scoundrel came in from us, got this 
 letter, packed up his things directly, paid his lodging, 
 and went off in a two-horse fly at eight o'clock in the 
 morning."
 
 484 HARD CASH. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 At these plain proofs of Alfred's infidelity, Julia's 
 sweet throat began to swell hysterically, and then her 
 bosom to heave and pant ; and, after a piteous struggle, 
 came a passion of sobs and tears so wild, so heart-broken, 
 that Edward blamed himself bitterly for telling her. 
 
 But Mrs. Dodd sobbed, "No, no, I would rather have 
 her so ; only leave her with me now. Bless you, darling, 
 leave us quickly." 
 
 She rocked and nursed her deserted child hours and 
 hours, and so the miserable day crawled to its close. 
 
 Down-stairs the house looked strange and gloomy ; she, 
 who had brightened it all, was darkened herself. The 
 wedding-breakfast and flowers remained in bitter mockery. 
 Sarah cleared half the table, and Sampson and Edward 
 dined in moody silence. 
 
 Presently Sampson's eye fell upon the deed. It lay 
 on a small table, with a pen beside it, to sign on their 
 return from church. 
 
 Sampson got hold of it and dived in the verbiage. He 
 came up again with a discovery. In spite of its feeble- 
 ness, verbosity, obscurity, and idiotic way of expressing 
 itself, the deed managed to convey to David and Mrs. 
 Dodd a life interest in nine thousand five hundred pounds, 
 with reversion to Julia and the children of the projected 
 marriage. Sampson and Edward put their heads over 
 this, and it puzzled them. " Why, man," said Sampson, 
 " if the puppy had signed this last night, he would be a 
 beggar now." 
 
 "Ay !" said Edward, "but after all he did not sign it."
 
 HARD CASH. 485 
 
 "Nay, but that was your fault, not his. The lad was 
 keen to sign." 
 
 " That is true ; and perhaps if we had pinned him to 
 this, last night, he would not have dared insult n:y sister 
 to-day." 
 
 Sampson changed the subject by inquiring suddenly 
 which way he was gone. 
 
 " Curse him, I don't know, and don't care. Go where 
 he will, I shall meet him again some day; and then" — 
 Edward spoke almost in a whisper, but a certain grind 
 of his Avhite teeth and flashing of liis lion eyes made the 
 incomplete sentence very expressive. 
 
 "What ninnies you young men are," said the doctor; 
 " even you, that I dub ' my fathom o' good-sense.' Just 
 finish your denner, and come with me." 
 
 "No, doctor, I'm off my feed for once. If you had 
 been up-stairs and seen my poor sister ! Hang the grub, 
 it turns my stomach." And he shoved his plate away, 
 and leaned over the back of his chair. 
 
 Sampson made him drink a glass of wine, and then 
 they got up from the half-finished meal, and went hur- 
 riedly to Alfred's lodgings ; the doctor, though sixty, 
 rushing along with all the fire and buoyancy of early 
 youth. They found the landlady surrounded by gossips 
 curious as themselves, and longing to chatter, but no 
 materials. The one new fact they elicited was that the 
 vehicle was a "White Lion" fly, for she knew the young 
 man by the cast in his eye. "'Come away," shouted the 
 doctor, unceremoniously, and in two minutes they were 
 in the yard of the " White Lion." 
 
 Sampson called the hostler. Out came a hard-featured 
 man with a strong squint. Sampson concluded this was 
 his man, and said roughly, " Where did you drive young 
 Hardie this morning ? " 
 
 He seemed rather taken aback by this abrupt question,
 
 486 HARD CASH. 
 
 but reflected and slapped his thigh. " Why, that is the 
 party from Mill Street." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Druv him to Silverton Station, sir. And wasn't long 
 about it either ; gent was in a hurry." 
 
 " What train did he go by ? " 
 
 "Well, I don't know, sir; I left him at the station." 
 
 "W^ell, then, where did he take his ticket for? Where 
 did he tell the porter he was going ? Think now, and 
 I'll give y' a sovereign." 
 
 The hostler scratched his head, and seemed at first 
 inclined to guess for the sovereign; but at last said, "I 
 should only be robbing you, gents. Ye see, he paid the 
 fly then and there, and gave me a crown, and I druv 
 away directly." 
 
 On this they gave him a shilling, and left him. But 
 on leaving the yard, Edward said, " Doctor, I don't like 
 that fellow's looks; let us try the landlord." They went 
 into the bar and made similar inquiries. The landlord 
 was out ; the mistress knew nothing about it, but took a 
 book out of a drawer, and turned over the leaves. She 
 read out an entry to this effect : — 
 
 " Pair horse fly to Silverton. Take up in Mill Street 
 at eight o'clock. Is that it, sir ? " Sampson assented ; 
 but Edward told her the hostler said it was Silverton 
 Station. 
 
 "No; it is Silverton in the book, sir. Well, you see, 
 it is all one to us ; the station is further than the town, 
 but we charge seven miles whichever 'tis." 
 
 Bradshaw, inspected then and there, sought in vain to 
 conceal that four trains reach Silverton from different 
 points between 8.50 and 9.25 a.m. 
 
 The friends retired with this scanty information. 
 Alfred could hardly have gone to London ; for there was 
 a train up from Barkington itself at 8.30. But he might
 
 HAKD CASH. 487 
 
 have gone to almost any other part of the island, or out 
 of it for that matter. Sampson fell into a brown study. 
 
 After a long silence, which Edward was too sad to 
 break, he said thoughtfully, "Bring sceince to bear on 
 this hotch-potch. Facks are never really opposed to 
 facks, thej'" onnly seem to be ; and the true solution is 
 the one which riconciles all the facks ; for instance, the 
 chronothairmal therey riconciles all th' undisputed facks 
 in midicine. So noAv sairch for a solution to riconcile 
 the deed with the puppy levanting." 
 
 Edward searched, but could find none ; and said so. 
 
 "Can't you?" said Sampson; "then I'll give you a 
 couple. Say he is touched in the upper story for one." 
 
 " What do you mean ? mad ? " 
 
 " Oh, there are degrees of f rinzy. Here is th' incon- 
 sistency of conduct that marks a disturbance of the 
 reason ; and, to tell the truth, I once knew a young 
 fellow that played this very prank at a wedding, and 
 the nixt thing we hard, my lorrd was in Bedlam." 
 
 Edward shook his head. "It is the villain's heart, 
 not his brain." 
 
 Sampson then offered another solution, in which he 
 owned he had more confidence. 
 
 " He has been courting some other wummun first ; she 
 declined, or made believe ; but, when she found he had 
 the spirit to go and marry an innocent girl, then the jade 
 wrote to him and yielded. It's a married one, likely. 
 I've known women go further for hatred of a wummun 
 than they Avould for love of a man; and here was 
 a temptation ! to snap a lover off th' altar, and insult 
 a rival, all at one blow. He meant to marry ; he meant 
 to sign that deed ; ay, and, at his age, even if he had 
 signed it, he would have gone off at passion's call, and 
 beggared himself. What enrages me is that we didn't 
 let him sign it, and so nail the young rascal's money."
 
 488 HARD CASH. 
 
 " Curse liis money," said Edward, " and him too ! Wait 
 till I can lay my hand on him ; I'll break every bone in 
 his skin." 
 
 " And I'll help you." 
 
 In the morning, Mrs. Dodd left Julia for a few min- 
 utes expressly to ask Sampson's advice. After Alfred's 
 conduct she was free, and fully determined, to defend 
 herself and family against spoliation by any means in 
 her power ; so she now showed the doctor David's letter 
 about the fourteen thousand pounds ; and the empty 
 pocket-book ; and put together the disjointed evidence 
 of Julia, Alfred, and circumstances, in one neat and 
 luminous statement : Sampson was greatly struck with 
 the revelation ; he jumped off his chair and marched 
 about excited ; said truth was stranger than fiction, and 
 this was a manifest swindle ; then he surprised Mrs. 
 Dodd in her turn by assuming that old Hardie was at 
 the bottom of yesterday's business. Neither Edward 
 nor his mother could see that, and said so ; his reply was 
 characteristic : " Of course you can't ; you are Anglo- 
 saxins ; th' Anglosaxins are good at drawing distinc- 
 tions ; but they can't gineralize. I'm a Celt, and gin- 
 eralize — as a duck swims. I discovered th' unity of all 
 disease ; it would be odd if I could not trace the mani- 
 form iniquities you suffer to their one source." 
 
 "But what is the connecting link ? " asked Mrs. Dodd, 
 still incredulous. 
 
 " "Why, Eichard Hardie's interest." 
 
 " Well, but the letter ? " objected Edward. 
 
 " There goes th' Anglosaxin again," remonstrated 
 Sampson ; " puzzling his head over petty details ; and 
 they are perhaps mere blinds thrown out by the enemy. 
 Put this and that together ; Hardie senior always averse 
 to this marriage ; Hardie senior Avanting to keep four- 
 teen thousand pounds of yours ; if his son, who knows of
 
 HARD CASH. 489 
 
 the fraud, became your mother's son, the swindle wouhl 
 be hourly in danger (no connection ? y' unhappy Anglo- 
 saxins ! why, the two things are interwoven). And so 
 young Hardie is got out of the way ; old Hardie's doing, 
 or I'm a Dutchman." 
 
 This reasoning still appeared forced and fanciful to 
 Edward ; but it began to make some little impression on 
 ]\Irs. Dodd, and encouraged her to own that her poor 
 daughter suspected foul play. 
 
 " Well, that is possible too ; whativer tempted man 
 has done, tempted man will do ; but more likely he has 
 bribed Jezabel to write and catch the goose by the heart. 
 Gintlemen, I'm a bit of a physiognomist; look. at old 
 Hardie's lines : his cords I might say ; and deeper every 
 time I see him ; sirs, there's an awful weight on that 
 man's mind. Looksee ! I'll just send a small trifle of a 
 detective down to watch his game, and pump his people ; 
 and, as soon as it is safe, we'll seize the old bird, and, 
 once he is trapped, the young one will reappear like 
 magic ; th' old one will disgorge ; we'll just compound 
 the felony — been an old friend — and recover the cash." 
 
 A fine sketch ; but Edward thought it desperately 
 wild, and jVfrs. Dodd preferred employing a respectable 
 attorney to try and obtain justice in the regular way. 
 Sampson laughed at her ; what was the use of attacking 
 in the regular way an irregular genius like old Hardie ? 
 " Attorneys are too humdrum for such a job," said he ; 
 " they start with a civil letter putting a rogue on his 
 guard ; they proceed t' a writ, and then he digs a hole 
 in another county and buries the booty; or sails t' 
 Australia with it. N'list'me ; I'm an old friend, and an 
 insane lover of justice — I say insane, because my pas- 
 sion is not returned, or the jade wouldn't keep out of 
 my way so all these years — you leave all this to me." 
 
 "Stop a minute," said Edward; "you must not go
 
 490 HABD CASH. 
 
 compromising us ; and we have no money to pay for 
 luxuries, like detectives." 
 
 " I won't compromise any one of you ; and my detec- 
 tive sha'n't cost y' a penny." 
 
 "Ah, my dear friend," said Mrs. Dodd, "the fact is, 
 you do not know all the difficulties that beset us. Tell 
 him, Edward. Well, then, let me. The poor boy is 
 attached to this gentleman's daughter, whom you pro- 
 pose to treat like a felon ; and he is too good a son and 
 too good a friend for me to — what, what, shall I do ? " 
 
 Edward colored up to the eyes ; " Who told you that, 
 mother ? " said he. " Well, yes, I do love her, and I'm 
 not ashamed of it. Doctor," said the poor fellow after 
 awhile, " I see now I am not quite the person to advise 
 my mother in this matter. I consent to leave it in your 
 hands." 
 
 And in pursuance of this resolution, he retired to his 
 study. 
 
 "There's a domnable combination," said Sampson, 
 dryly. " Truth is sairtainly more wonderful than 
 feckshin. Here's ray fathom o' good-sense in love with 
 a wax doll, and her brother jilting his sister, and her 
 father pillaging his mother. It beats hotch-potch." 
 
 Mrs. Dodd denied the wax doll ; but owned Miss 
 Hardie was open to vast objections: "An inestimable 
 young lady ; but so odd ; she is one of these uneasy- 
 minded Christians that have sprung up ; a religious 
 egotist, and malade imaginaire, eternally feeling her 
 own spiritual pulse " — 
 
 " I know the disorrder," cried Sampson, eagerly ; " the 
 pashints have a hot fit (and then they are saints) ; fol- 
 lowed in due course by the cold fit (and then they are 
 the worst of sinners) ; and so on in endless rotation ; 
 and, if they could only realize my great discovery, the 
 perriodicity of all disease, and time their sintiments.
 
 HARD CASH. 491 
 
 they would find the hot fit and the cohl return chrono- 
 metrically, at intervals as riglar as the tide's ebb and 
 flow ; and the soul has nothing to do with either febrile 
 symptom. Why, religion, apart from intermittent fever 
 of the brain, is just the caumest, peaceablest, sedatest 
 thing in all the world." 
 
 " Ah, you are too deep for me, my good friend. All I 
 know is that she is one of this new school, whom I take 
 the liberty to call ' the fidgety Christians.' They 
 cannot let their poor souls alone a minute ; and they 
 pester one day and night with the Millennium ; as if we 
 shall not all be dead long before that ; but the worst is, 
 they apply the language of earthly passion to the Saviour 
 of mankind, and make one's flesh creep at their blas- 
 phemies; so coarse, so familiar; like that rude multitude 
 which thronged and pressed Him when on earth. But, 
 after all, she came to the church, and took my Julia's 
 part; so that shows she has principle ; and do pray spare 
 me her feelings in any step you take against that dis- 
 honorable person her father ; I must go back to his 
 victim, my poor, poor child ; I dare not leave her long. 
 doctor, such a night ! and, if she dozes for a minute, it 
 is to wake with a scream and tell me she sees him dead ; 
 sometimes he is drowned ; sometimes stained with 
 blood ; but always dead." 
 
 This evening Mr. Hardie came along in a fly with his 
 luggage on the box, returning to jMusgrove Cottage as 
 from Yorkshire ; in passing Albion Villa he cast it a 
 look of vindictive triumph. He got home and nodded 
 by the fire in his character of a man wearied by a long 
 journey. Jane made him some tea, and told him how 
 Alfred had disappeared on his wedding-day. 
 
 " The young scamp," said he ; he added, coolly, " It is 
 no business of mine ; I had no hand in making the
 
 492 HARD CASH. 
 
 match, thank Heaven." In the conversation that 
 ensued, he said he had always been averse to the mar- 
 riage ; but not so irreconcilably as to approve this open 
 breach of faith with a respectable young lady ; " This 
 will recoil upon our name, you know, at this critical 
 time," said he. 
 
 Then Jane mustered courage to confess that she had 
 gone to the wedding herself : " Dear papa," said she, 
 "it was made clear to me that the Dodds are acting in 
 what they consider a most friendly way to you. They 
 think — I cannot tell you what they think. But, if mis- 
 taken, they are sincere ; and so, after prayer, and you 
 not being here for me to consult, I did go to the church. 
 Forgive me, papa ; I have but one brother ; and she is 
 my dear friend." 
 
 Mr. Hardie's countenance fell at this announcement, 
 and he looked almost diabolical. But on second thoughts 
 he cleared up wonderfully ; " I will be frank with you, 
 Jenny ; if the wedding had come off, I should have been 
 deeply hurt at your supporting that little monster of 
 ingratitude ; he not only marries against his father's 
 will (that is done every day), but slanders and maligns 
 him publicly in his hour of poverty and distress. But, 
 now that he has broken faith and insulted ]\Iiss Dodd as 
 well as me, I declare I am glad you Avere there, Jenny. 
 It will separate us from his abominable conduct. But 
 what does he say for himself ? What reason does he 
 give ? " 
 
 " Oh, it is all mystery as yet." 
 
 *' Well, but he must have sent some explanation to the 
 Dodds." 
 
 " He may have ; I don't know. I have not ventured 
 to intrude on my poor insulted friend. Papa, I hear her 
 distress is fearful ; they fear for her reason. Oh, if 
 harm comes to her, God will assuredly punish him
 
 HARD CASH. 493 
 
 whose heartlessness and treachery has brought her to it. 
 Mark mj words," she continued with great emotion, 
 " this cruel act Avill not go unpunished, even in this 
 world." 
 
 "There, there, change the subject," said ^Mr. Hardie, 
 peevishly. " What have I to do with his pranks ? he 
 has disowned me for his father, and I disown hiui for 
 my son." 
 
 The next day Peggy Black called, and asked to see 
 master. Old Betty, after the first surprise, looked at 
 her from head to foot, and foot to head, as if measuring 
 her for a suit of disdain ; and told her she might 
 carry her own message ; then flounced into the kitchen, 
 and left her to shut the street-door, which she did. She 
 went and dropped her courtesy at the parlor-door, and in 
 a niminy-piminy voice said she was come to make her 
 submission, and would he forgive her, and give her 
 another trial ? Her penitence, after one or two convul- 
 sive efforts, ended in a very fair floAv of tears. 
 
 Mr. Hardie shrugged his shoulders, and asked Jane 
 if the girl had ever been saucy to her. 
 
 " Oh, no, papa ; indeed, I have no fault to find with 
 poor Peggy." 
 
 " "Well, then, go to. your work, and try and not offend 
 Betty ; remember she is older than you." 
 
 Peggy went for her box and bandbox, and reinstated 
 herself quietly, and all old Betty's endeavors to irritate 
 her only elicited a calm cunning smile, with a depres- 
 sion of her downy eyelashes. 
 
 ALBION VILLA. 
 
 Next morning Edward Dodd was woke out of a sound 
 sleep at about four o'clock, by a hand upon his shoulder ; 
 he looked up, and rubbed his eyes ; it was Julia stand- 
 ing by his bedside, dressed, and in her bonnet;
 
 494 HARD CASH. 
 
 " Edward," she said, in a hurried whisper, "there is foul 
 play ; I cannot sleep, I cannot be idle. He has been 
 decoyed away, and perhaps murdered. Oh, pray get up 
 and go to the police office or somewhere with me." 
 
 " Very well ; but wait till morning." 
 
 " Xo ; now ; now ; now ; now. I shall never go out of 
 doors in the daytime again. Wait ? I'm going crazy 
 with wait, wait, wait, wait, waiting." 
 
 Her hand was like fire on him, and her eyes super- 
 naturally bright. 
 
 " There," said Edward with a groan, " go down-stairs, 
 and I will be with you directly." 
 
 He came down ; they went out together ; her little 
 burning hand pinched his tight, and her swift foot 
 seemed scarcely to touch the ground ; she kept him at 
 his full stride till they got to the central police station. 
 There, at the very thought of facing men, the fiery inno- 
 cent suddenly shrank together, and covered her blushing 
 face with her hot hands. She sent him in alone. He 
 found an intelligent superintendent, who entered into 
 the case with all the coolness of an old official hand. 
 
 Edward came out to his sister, and as he hurried her 
 home, told her what had passed : " The superintendent 
 asked to see the letter ; I told him he had taken it with 
 him ; that was a pity, he said. Then he made me 
 describe Alfred to a nicety; and the description will go 
 up to London this morning, and all over Barkington, and 
 the neighborhood, and the county." 
 
 She stopped to kiss him, then went on again with her 
 head down, and neither spoke till they were nearly home : 
 then Edward told her the superintendent felt quite sure 
 that the villain was not dead ; nor in danger of it. 
 
 " Oh, bless him ! bless him ! for saying so." 
 
 "And that he will turn up in London before very 
 long ; not in this neighborhood : he says he must have
 
 HARD CASH. 495 
 
 known the writer of the letter, and his taking his lug- 
 gage with him shows he has gone off deliberately. iVIy 
 poor little Ju, now do try and look at it as he does, and 
 everybody else does ; try and see it as you Avould if you 
 were a bystander." 
 
 She laid her soft hand on his shoulder as if to support 
 herself floating in her sea of doubt: "I do see I am a 
 poor credulous girl ; but how can my Alfred be false to 
 me ? Am I to doubt the Bible ? am I to doubt the sun ? 
 Is nothing true in heaven or earth ? Oh, if I could only 
 have died as I was dressing for church — died while he 
 seemed true ! He is true : the wicked creature has cast 
 some spell on him : he has gone in a moment of delir- 
 ium ; he will regret what he has done, perhaps regrets it 
 now. I am ungrateful to you, Edward, and to the good 
 policeman, for sa3ing he is not dead. What more do I 
 require ? he is dead to me. Edward, let us leave this 
 place. We xoere going : let us go to-day ; this very day ; 
 oh, take me, and hide me where no one that knows me 
 can ever see me again." A flood of tears came to her 
 relief: and she went along sobbing and kissing her 
 brother's hand every now and then. 
 
 But as they drew near the gate of Albion Villa, twilight 
 began to usher in the dawn. Julia shuddered at even 
 that faint light, and fled like a guilty thing, and hid her- 
 self sobbing in her own bedroom. 
 
 ^fr. Bichard Hardie slept better now than he had done 
 for some time past, and therefore woke more refreshed 
 and in better spirits. He knew an honest family was 
 miserable a few doors off ; but he did not care. He got 
 up and shaved with a mind at ease. One morning when 
 he had removed the lather from one-half his face, he 
 happened to look out of window, and saw on the wall 
 opposite — a placard : a large placard to this effect : — -
 
 4961 HARD CASH. 
 
 ONE HUNDRED GUINEAS REWARD! 
 
 Whereas on the 11th instant Mr. Alfred Hai'die disappeared 
 mysteriously from his lodgings in 15 Mill Street under circum- 
 stances suggesting a suspicion of foul play, know all men that 
 the above reward will be paid to any person or persons who 
 shall first inform the undersigned where the said Alfred 
 Hardie is to be found, and what person or persons, if any, 
 have been concerned in his disappearance. 
 
 Alexander Sampson, 
 
 39 Pope Street, 
 
 Napoleon Square, 
 
 London.
 
 HARD CASH. 497 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 The note Alfred Hardie received on tlie 10th of April, 
 was from Peggy Black. The letters were well formed, 
 for she had been educated at the national school : but 
 the style was not upon a par. 
 
 Mr. Alfred, Sir, — JNIargaret Black sends her respects, 
 and if you want to know the truth about the money, I can tell 
 you all, and where it is at this present time. Sir, I am now in 
 situation at Silv^erton Grove House about a furlong from the 
 station ; and if you will be so good to call there- and ask for 
 Margaret, I will tell you where it is, which I mean the four- 
 teen thousand pounds ; for it is a sin the j'oung lad}' should be 
 beguiled of her own. Only j'ou must please come tliis even- 
 ing, or else to-raori'ow before ten o'clock, by reason my mis- 
 tress and me we are going up to London that day early, and 
 she talk of taking me abroad along with her. 
 I remain, sir, 
 
 Yours respectfully to command, 
 
 Margaret Black. 
 
 If you please, sir, not to show this letter on no account. 
 
 Alfred read this twice over, and felt a contemptuous 
 repugnance towards the writer, a cashiered servant, who 
 offered to tell the truth out of spite, having easily re- 
 sisted every worthy motive. Indeed, I think he would 
 have perhaps dismissed the subject into the fire, but for 
 a strange circumstance that had occurred to him this 
 very afternoon ; but I had no opportunity to relate it 
 till now. Well, just as he was going to dress for dinner, 
 he received a visit from Dr. Wycherley, a gentleman he
 
 493 HARD CASH. 
 
 scarcely knew by name. Dr. Wycherley inquired aftei 
 his kephalalgia ; Alfred stared and told liim it was much 
 the same ; troubled him occasionally. 
 
 " And your insomnia ? " 
 
 "I don't know the word: have you any authority 
 for it ? " 
 
 Dr. Wycherley smiled with a sort of benevolent supe- 
 riority, that galled his patient, and proceeded to inquire 
 after his nightly visions and voices. But at this Alfred 
 looked grave as well as surprised and vexed. He was 
 on his guard now, and asked himself seriously what was 
 the meaning of all this, and could his father have been 
 •SO mad as to talk over his own shame with this stranger : 
 he made no reply whatever. 
 
 Dr. Wycherley's curiosity was not of a very ardent 
 kind: for he was one of those who first form an opinion, 
 and then collect the materials of one : and a very little 
 fact goes a long way with such minds. So, when he got 
 no answer about the nocturnal visions and voices, he 
 glided calmly on to another matter. "By-the-by, that 
 fourteen thousand pounds ! " 
 
 Alfred started ; and then eyed him keenly : " What 
 fourteen thousand pounds ? " 
 
 *' The fabulous sum you labor under the impression of 
 your father having been guilty of clandestinely appro- 
 priating." 
 
 This was too much for Alfred's patience. ''I don't 
 know who you are, sir," said he ; "I never exchanged 
 but three words in my life with you, and do you suppose 
 I will talk to a stranger on family matters of so delicate a 
 kind as this ? I begin to think you have intruded your- 
 self on me simply to gratify an impertinent curiosity." 
 
 "The hypothesis is at variance with my established 
 character," replied the oleaginous one. "Do me the jus- 
 tice to believe in the necessity of this investigation, and 
 that it is one of a most friendly character."
 
 HARD CASH. 499 
 
 "Then I decline the double nuisance : your curiosity 
 and your friendship ! Take them both out of my room, 
 sir, or I shall turn them both out by one pair of shoulders." 
 
 '• You shall smart for this," said the doctor, driven to 
 plain English by anger, that great solvent of circumlocu- 
 tion with ■which nature has mercifully supplied us. He 
 made to the door, opened it, and said in considerable 
 excitement to some one outside, " Excited ! — Very ! " 
 
 Now Dr. Pleonast had no sooner been converted to the 
 vernacular, and disappeared, than another stranger en- 
 tered the room: he had evidently been lurking in the 
 passage : it Avas a man of smallish stature, singularly 
 gaunt, angular, and haggard, but dressed in a spruce suit 
 of black, tight, new, and glossy. In short, he looked 
 like Romeo's apothecary gone to Stultz with the money. 
 He fluttered in with pale cheek and apprehensive body, 
 saying hurriedly, " Now, my dear sir, he calm : jpray be 
 calm : I have come down all the way from London to 
 see you, and I am sure you won't make me lose my 
 journey ; will you now ? " 
 
 " And pray who asked you to come all the way from 
 London, sir ? " 
 
 " A person to whom your health is very dear." 
 
 "Oh, indeed ; so I have secret friends, have I ? Well, 
 you may tell my secret, underhand friends, I never was 
 better in my life." 
 
 '•' I am truly glad to hear it," said the little man : " let 
 me introduce myself, as Dr. Wycherley forgot to do it." 
 And he handed Alfred a card, on which his name and 
 profession were written. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Speers," said Alfred, " I have only a 
 moment to give you, for 1 must dress for dinner. What 
 do you want ? " 
 
 "I come, sir, in hopes of convincing your friends you 
 are not so very ill ; not incurable. W"hy, your eye is
 
 500 HARD CASH. 
 
 steady, your complexion good ; a little higli with the 
 excitement of this conversation ; but, if we can only get 
 over this little delusion, all will be well." 
 
 " What little delusion ? " 
 
 " About the fourteen thousand pounds, you know." 
 
 *' What fourteen thousand pounds ? I have not men- 
 tioned fourteen thousand pounds to you, have I ? " 
 
 " No, sir : you seem to shun it like poison ; that is the 
 worst of it ; you talk about it to others fast enough ; 
 but to Dr. Wycherley and myself, who could cure you 
 of it, you would hide all about it, if you could." 
 
 At this Alfred rose and put his hands in his pockets 
 and looked down grimly on his inquisitor. " Mr. Speers," 
 said he, " you had better go. There is no credit to be 
 gained by throwing so small an apothecary as you, out 
 of that window , and you won't find it pleasant either ; 
 for, if you provoke me to it, I shall not stand upon cere- 
 mony ; I sha'n't open the window first, as I should for 
 Dr. What's his corf unded name." 
 
 At these suggestive words, spoken with suppressed 
 ire and flashing eyes, Speers scuttled to the door crab- 
 wise, holding the young lion in check, conventionally ; 
 to wit, with an eye as valiant as a sheep's ; and a joyful 
 apothecary was he when he found himself safe outside 
 the house and beside Dr. Wycherley, who was waiting 
 for him. 
 
 Alfred soon cooled, and began to laugh at his own 
 anger and the unbounded impudence of his visitors: 
 but, on the other hand, it struck him as a grave circum- 
 stance that so able a man as his father should stir muddy 
 water ; should go and talk to these strangers about the 
 money he had misappropriated. He puzzled himself all 
 the time he was dressing : and, not to trouble the reader 
 with all the conjectures that passed through his mind, 
 he concluded at last, that Mr. Hardie must feel very
 
 HARD CASH. 501 
 
 strong, very sure there was no evidence against him but 
 his son's, or he woukl not take the eightli comniandmeut 
 by the horns like tliis. 
 
 " Injustice carries it with a high hand," thought Alfred, 
 with a sigh. He was not the youth to imitate his father's 
 shamelessness : so he locked this last incident in his 
 own breast ; did not even mention it to Julia. 
 
 But now, on reading Peggy's note, his warlike instincts 
 awoke, and, though he despised his correspondent and 
 her motives, he could not let such a chance pass of de- 
 feating brazen injustice. It was unfortunate and awk- 
 ward to have to go to Silverton on his wedding morning; 
 but, after all, there was plenty of time. He packed up 
 his things at once for the wedding tour, and in the morn- 
 ing took them with him in the fly to Silverton ; his plan 
 was to come back direct to Albion Villa: so he went to 
 Silverton Grove full dressed, all ready for the wedding. 
 
 As it happened he overtook his friend Peterson just 
 outside the town, called to him gayly, and invited him 
 to church and breakfast. 
 
 To his surprise the young gentleman replied sullenly 
 that he should certainly not come. 
 
 "Xot come, old fellow ? " said Alfred, hurt. 
 
 "You have a good cheek to ask me," retorted the 
 other. 
 
 This led to an explanation. Peterson's complaint was 
 that he had told Alfred he was in love with Julia, and 
 Alfred had gone directly and fallen in love with her just 
 to cut him out. 
 
 " What are you talking about ? " said Alfred : " so this 
 is the reason j'ou have kept away from me of late : why, 
 I was engaged to her at the very time ; only my father 
 was keeping us apart." 
 
 "Then why didn't you say so ? " 
 
 "Because my love is not of the prattling sort."
 
 502 HARD CASH. 
 
 " Oh, nonsense ; I don't believe a word of it." 
 
 " You don't believe my word ! Did you ever know me 
 tell a lie? At that rate, think what you please, sir: 
 drive on, Strabo." 
 
 And so ended that little friendship. 
 
 On the road our ardent youth arranged in his head a 
 noble scheme. He would bring Peggy Black home with 
 him, compensating her liberally for the place she would 
 thereby lose : would confront her privately with his 
 father, and convince him it was his interest to restore 
 the Dodds their money with a good grace, take the five 
 thousand pounds he had already offered, and countenance 
 the wedding by letting Jane be present at it. It was 
 hard to do all this in the time, but well worth trying 
 for, and not impossible : a two-horse fly is not a slow 
 conveyance, and he offered the man a guinea to drive 
 fast ; so that it was not nine o'clock when they reached 
 Silverton Grove House, a place Alfred had never heard 
 of; this, however, I may observe, was no wonder: for it 
 had not borne that name a twelvemonth. 
 
 It was a large square mansion of red brick, with stone 
 facings and corners, and with balustrades that hid the 
 garret windows. It stood in its own grounds, and the 
 entrance was through handsome iron gates, one of which 
 was wide open to admit people on foot or horseback. 
 The fly-man got down and tried to open the other, but 
 could not manage it. " There, don't waste time," said 
 Alfred, impatiently, "let me out." 
 
 He found a notice under the bell, " Ring and enter." 
 He rang accordingl}^, and at the clang the hall-door 
 opened, as if he had pulled a porter along with the bell ; 
 and a gray-haired servant out of livery stood on the steps 
 to receive him. Alfred hurried across the plat, which 
 was trimmed as neatly as a college green, and asked the 
 servant if he could see Margaret Black.
 
 HARD CASH. 603 
 
 "Margaret Black?" said the man, doubtfully ; "I'll 
 inquire, sir. Please to follow me." 
 
 They entered a handsome hall, with antlers and armor ; 
 from this a double staircase led up to a landing with 
 folding-doors in the centre of it ; one, of these doors was 
 wide open like the iron gate outside. The servant 
 showed Alfred up the left-hand staircase, through the 
 open door, into a spacious drawing-room, handsomely 
 though not gayly furnished and decorated ; but a little 
 darkened by Venetian blinds. 
 
 The old servant walked gravely on, and on, till Alfred 
 began to think he would butt the wall ; but he put his 
 hand out and opened a door, that might very well escape 
 a stranger's notice ; for it was covered with looking-glass, 
 and matched another narrow mirror in shape and size ; 
 this door led into a very long room, as plain and even 
 sordid as the drawing-room was inviting ; the unpapered 
 walls were a cold drab, and wanted washing ; there was 
 a thick cobweb up in one corner, and from the ceiling 
 hung the tail of another, which the housemaid's broom 
 had scotched not killed ; that side of the room they 
 entered by was all books. The servant said, " Stay here 
 a moment, sir, and I'll send her to you." With this he 
 retired into the drawing-room, closing the door softly 
 after him ; once closed it became invisible ; it fitted like 
 wax, and left nothing to be seen but books ; not even a 
 knob. It shut to with that gentle but clean click which 
 a spring bolt, however polished and oiled and gently 
 closed, will emit. Altogether it was enough to give 
 some people a turn. But Alfred's nerves were not to be 
 affected by trifles ; he put his hands in his pockets and 
 walked up and down the room, quietly enough at first, 
 but by and by uneasily. "Confound her for wasting 
 my time," thought he ; " why doesn't she come ? " 
 
 Then, as he had learned to pick up the fragments of
 
 504 HARD CASH. 
 
 time and hated dawdling, he went to take a book from 
 the shelves. 
 
 He found it was a piece of iron, admirably painted; it 
 chilled his hand with its unexpected coldness ; and all 
 the books on and about the door were iron and chilly. 
 
 " Well," thought he, " this is the lirst dummy ever 
 took me in. What a fool the man must be ! Why, he 
 could have bought books with ideas in them for the 
 price of these impostors." 
 
 Still Peggy did not come. So he went to a door oppo- 
 site, and at right angles to the farthest window, meaning 
 to open it and inquire after her ; lo and behold ! he found 
 this was a knob without a door. There had been a door, 
 but it was blocked up. The only available door on that 
 side had a keyhole, but no latch nor handle. 
 
 Alfred was a prisoner. 
 
 He no sooner found this out than he began to hammer 
 on the door with his fists, and call out. 
 
 This had a good effect, for he heard a woman's dress 
 come rustling : a key was inserted, and the door opened. 
 But, instead of Peggy, it was a tall, well-formed woman 
 of thirty, with dark-gray eyes, and straightish eyebrows, 
 massive and black as jet. She was dressed quietly, but 
 like a lady. Mrs. Arehbold, for that was her name, cast 
 on Alfred one of those swift, all-devouring glances, with 
 which her sex contrive to take in the features, character, 
 and dress of a person from head to foot, and smiled 
 most graciously on him, revealing a fine white set of 
 teeth. She begged him to take a seat, and sat down 
 herself. She had left the door ajar. 
 
 "I came to see Margaret Black," said Alfred. 
 
 '' Margaret Black ? There is no such person here," 
 was the quiet reply. 
 
 " What, has she gone away so early as this ? " 
 
 Mrs. Arehbold smiled, and said, soothingly, "Are
 
 HARD CASH. 505 
 
 you sure she ever existed ; except in your imagina- 
 tion ? " 
 
 Alfred laughed at this, and showed her Peggy's letter. 
 She ran her eye over it, and returned it him with 
 a smile of a different kind, half pitying, half cynical. 
 But presently resuming her former manner, " I remem- 
 ber now," said she in dulcet tones ; " the anxiety you 
 are laboring under is about a large sum of money, is it 
 not ? " 
 
 "What, can you give me any information about it ?" 
 said he, surprised. 
 
 " I think w^e can render you great service in the 
 matter, infinite service, Mr. Hardie," was the reply, in a 
 voice of very honey. 
 
 Alfred was amazed at this. " You say you don't know 
 Peggy ! And yet you seem to know me. I never saw 
 you in my life before, madam ; what on earth is the 
 meaning of all this ? " 
 
 " Calm yourself," said Mrs. Archbold, laying a white 
 and finely moulded hand upon his arm ; " there is no 
 "wonder nor mystery in the matter ; you were expected.''^ 
 
 The color rushed into Alfred's face, and he started to 
 his feet; some vague instinct told him to be gone from 
 this place. 
 
 The lady fixed her eyes on him, put her hand to a gold 
 chain that was round her neck, and drew out of her white 
 bosom, not a locket, nor a key, but an ivory whistle ; 
 keeping her eye steadily fixed on Alfred, she breathed 
 softly into the whistle. Then two men stepped quietly 
 in at the door ; one was a short, stout snob, with great 
 red whiskers, the other a wiry gentleman with iron-gray 
 hair. The latter spoke to Alfred, and began to coax 
 him. If jNIrs. Archbold was honey, this personage was 
 treacle. " Be calm, my dear young gentleman ; don't 
 agitate yourself. You have been sent here for your
 
 506 HABD CASH. 
 
 good; and that j'ou may be cured, and so restored to 
 society and to your anxious and affectionate friends." 
 
 '' What are you talking about ? Avhat do you mean ? " 
 cried Alfred : "are you mad ? " 
 
 "No, we are not," said the short snob, Avith a coarse 
 laugh. 
 
 " Have done with this fooling, then," said Alfred, 
 sharply; "the person I came to see is not here: good- 
 morning." 
 
 The short man instantly stepped to the door, and put 
 his back to it. The other said calmly, " ISTo, Mr. Hardie; 
 you cannot leave the house at present." 
 
 " Can't I ? Why not, pray ? " said Alfred, drawing 
 his breath hard ; and his eyes began to glitter danger- 
 ously. 
 
 " We are responsible for your safety ; we have force 
 at hand if necessary ; pray do not compel us to summon 
 it." 
 
 "' Why, where am I ?" said Alfred, panting now; " is 
 this a prison ? " 
 
 " No, no," said IMrs. Archbold, soothingly ; " it is a 
 place where you will be cured of your headaches and 
 your delusions, and subjected to no unnecessary pain nor 
 restraint." 
 
 " Oh, bother ! " said the short snob, brutally. " Why 
 make two bites of a cherry ? You are in mi/ asylum, 
 young gentleman, and a devilish lucky thing for you." 
 
 At this fatal word " asylum," Alfred uttered a cry of 
 horror and despair, and his eyes roved wildly round the 
 room in search of escape. But the windows of the room, 
 though outside the house they seemed to come as low as 
 those of the drawing-room, were partly bricked up within, 
 and made just too high to be reached without a chair. 
 And his captors read that wild glance directly, and the 
 doctor whipped one chair away, while Mrs. Archbold,
 
 HARD CASH. 507 
 
 with more tact, sat quietly down on the other. They 
 all three blew their whistles shrill}-. 
 
 Alfred uttered an oath and rushed at the door ; but 
 heard heavy feet running on stone passages towards the 
 whistles, and felt he had no chance out that way ; his 
 dilating eye fell upon the handle of the old defunct door; 
 he made a high leap, came down with his left foot on its 
 knob of brass, and, though of course he could not stand 
 on it, contrived to spring from it slap at the window — 
 Mrs. Archbold screamed — he broke the glass with his 
 shoulder, and tore and kicked the woodwork, and 
 squeezed through on to a stone ledge outside, and stood 
 there bleeding and panting, just as half a dozen keepers 
 burst into the room at his back. He was more than 
 twenty feet from the ground ; to leap down was death or 
 mutilation ; he saw the fly-man driving away. He yelled 
 to him, " Hy ! hy ! stop ! stop ! " The fly-man stopped 
 and looked round. But soon as he saw who it was, he 
 just grinned : Alfred could see his hideous grin ; and there 
 was the rattle of chairs, being brought to the window, 
 and men were mounting softly to secure him ; a coarse 
 hand stole towards his ankle ; he took a swift step and 
 sprang desperately on to the next ledge — it was an old 
 manor house, and these ledges were nearly a foot broad 
 — from this one he bounded to the next, and then to a 
 third, the last but one on this side of the building; the 
 corner ledge was but half the size, and offered no safe 
 footing ; but close to it he saw the outside leaves of a 
 tree. That tree then must grow close to the corner ; 
 could he but get round to it, he might yet reach the 
 ground whole. Urged by that terror of a madhouse, 
 which is natural to a sane man, and in England is fed by 
 occasional disclosures, and the general suspicion they 
 excite, he leaped on to a piece of stone no bigger than 
 one's hat, and tli^n whirled himself round into the tree^ 
 all eyes to see and claws to grasp.
 
 508 HARD CASH. 
 
 It was a weeping asli ; he could get hold of nothing 
 but soft yielding slivers, that went through his fingers, 
 and so down with him like a bulrush, and souse he went 
 with his hands full of green leaves, over head and ears 
 into the water of an enormous iron tank that fed the 
 baths. 
 
 The heavy plunge, the sudden cold water, the instant 
 darkness, were appalling; yet, like the fox among the 
 hounds, the gallant young gentleman did not lose heart 
 nor give tongue. He came up gurgling and gasping, and 
 swimming for his life in manly silence ; he swam round 
 and round the edge of the huge tank, trying in vain to 
 get a hold upon its cold rusty walls. He heard whistles 
 and voices about ; they came faint to him where he was, 
 but he knew they could not be very far off. 
 
 Life is sweet. It flashed across him how, a few years 
 before, an university man of great promise had perished 
 miserably in a tank on some Swiss mountain, a tank 
 placed for the comfort of travellers. He lifted his eyes 
 to heaven in despair and gave one great sob. 
 
 Then he turned upon his back and floated ; but he was 
 obliged to paddle with his hands a little to keep up. 
 
 A window opened a few feet above him, and a face 
 peered out between the bars. 
 
 Then he gave all up for lost, and looked to hear a 
 voice denounce him : but no ; the livid face and staring 
 eyes at the window took no notice of him ; it was a 
 maniac, whose eyes, bereft of reason, conveyed no images 
 to the sentient brain ; only by some half-vegetable 
 instinct this darkened man was turning towards the 
 moaning sun, and staring it full in the face ; Alfred saw 
 the rays strike and sparkle on tliose glassy orbs, and fire 
 them ; yet they never so much as winked. He was 
 appalled yet fascinated by this weird sight ; could not 
 take his eyes off it, and shuddered at it in the very
 
 HARD CASH. 509 
 
 water. With such creatures as that he must be confined, 
 or die miserably like a mouse in a basin of water. 
 
 He hesitated between two horrors. 
 
 Presently his foot struck something, and he found it 
 was a large pipe that entered the tank to the distance of 
 about a foot. This pipe was not more than three feet 
 under water, and Alfred soon contrived to get irpon it, 
 and rest his fingers upon the iron edge of the tank. The 
 position was painful; yet so he determiiied to remain till 
 night ; and then, if possible, steal away. Every faculty 
 of mind and body was strung up to defend himself 
 against the wretches who had entrapped him. 
 
 He had not been long in this position, when voices 
 approached, and next the shadow of a ladder moved 
 across the wall towards him. The keepers were going 
 to search his pitiable hiding-place. They knew, what he 
 did not, that there was no outlet from the premises ; so 
 now, having hunted every other corner and cranny, they 
 came, by what is called the exhaustive process of reason- 
 ing, to this tank ; and when they got near it, something 
 in the appearance of the tree caught the gardener's quick 
 eye. Alfred, quaking, heard him say, '' Look here ! He 
 is not far from this." 
 
 Another voice said, " Then the Lord have mercy on 
 him ; why, there's seven foot of water ; I measured it 
 last night." 
 
 At this Alfred was conscious of a movement and a 
 murmur, that proved humanity was not extinct ; and the 
 ladder was fixed close to the tank, and feet came hastily 
 up it. 
 
 Alfred despaired. 
 
 But, as usual with spirits so quick-witted and resolute, 
 it was but for a moment. " One man in his time plays 
 many animals ; " he caught at the words he had heard, 
 and played the game the jackal desperate plays in India,
 
 510 HARD CASH. 
 
 the fox in England, the elephant in Ceylon : he feigned 
 death ; filled his mouth with water, floated on his back 
 paddling imperceptibly, and half closed his eyes. 
 
 He was rewarded by a loud shout of dismay just above 
 his head, and very soon another ladder was placed on 
 the other side, and with ropes and hands he was drawn 
 out and carried down the ladder: he took this oppor- 
 tunity to discharge the water from his mouth ; on which 
 a coarse voice said, " Look there ! his troubles are at 
 an end." 
 
 However, they laid him on the grass, and sent for the 
 doctor; then took off his coat, and one of them began to 
 feel his heart to see whether there was any pulsation left ; 
 he*found it thumping. "Look out," he cried in some 
 alarm; "he's shamming, Abraham." 
 
 But, before the words were well uttered, Alfred, who 
 was a practised gymnast, bounded off the ground without 
 touching it with his hands, and fled like a deer towards 
 the front of the house : for he remembered the open 
 iron gate : the attendants followed shouting, and whistle 
 answered whistle all over the grounds. Alfred got safe 
 to the iron gate : alas ! it had been closed at the first 
 wliistle twenty minutes ago. He turned in rage and 
 desperation, and the head keeper, a powerful man, was 
 rushing incautiously upon him. Alfred instantly steadied 
 himself, and with his long arm caught the man in full 
 career a left-handed blow like the kick of a pony, that 
 laid his cheek open and knocked him stupid and stagger- 
 ing ; he followed it up like lightning with his right, 
 and, throwing his whole weight into this second blow, 
 sent the staggering man to grass ; slipped past another, 
 and skirting the south side of the house got to the 
 tank again well in advance of his pursuers, seized the 
 ladder, carried it to the garden-wall, and was actually 
 half way up it, and saw the open country and liberty,
 
 HAKD CASH. 511 
 
 when the ladder was dragged away and he fell heavily 
 to the ground, and a keeper threw himself bodily on him. 
 Alfred half expected this, and, drawing up his foot in 
 time, dashed it furiously in the coming face, actually 
 knocking the man backwards ; another kneeled on his 
 chest ; Alfred caught him by the throat so felly that he 
 lost all power, and they rolled over and over together, 
 and Alfred got clear and ran for it again, and got on the 
 middle of the lawn, and hallooed to the house, " Hy ! hy ! 
 Are there any more sane men imprisoned there ? come 
 out, and fight for your lives ! " Instantly the open 
 windows were filled with white faces, some grinning, 
 some exulting, all greatly excited ; and a hideous uproar 
 shook the whole place — for the poor souls were all sane 
 in their own opinion — and the whole force of attendants, 
 two of them bleeding profusely from his blows, made a 
 cordon and approached him ; but he was too cunning to 
 wait to be fairl}^ surrounded; he made his rush at an 
 under keeper, feinted at his head, caught him a heavy 
 blow in the pit of the stomach, doubled him up in a 
 moinent, and off again, leaving the man on his knees 
 vomiting and groaning. Several mild maniacs ran out 
 in A'"ast agitation, and to curry favor, offered to help catch 
 him. Vast was their zeal. But when it came to the 
 point, they only danced wildly about and cried, " Stop 
 him ! for God's sake stop him ! he's ill, dreadfully ill ; 
 poor wretch ! knock out his brains ! " And, whenever he 
 came near them, away they ran whining like kicked curs. 
 Mrs. Archbold, looking out at a window, advised them 
 all to let him alone, and she would come out and persuade 
 him. But they would not be advised : they chased him 
 about the lawn ; but so swift of foot was he, and so long 
 in the reach, that no one of them could stop him, nor 
 indeed come near him, without getting a facer that came 
 like a flash of lightning.
 
 612 HARD CASH. 
 
 At last, however, they got so well round him, he saw 
 Ills chance was gone: he took off his hat to Mrs. Arch- 
 bold at the window, and said quietly, "I surrender to 
 i/ou, madam." 
 
 At these words they rushed on him rashly ; on this he 
 planted two blows right and left, swift as a cat attacked 
 by dogs ; administered two fearful black eyes, and in- 
 stantly folded his arms, saying haughtily, " It was to the 
 lady I yielded, not to you fellows." 
 
 They seized him, shook their lists in his face, cursed 
 him, and pinned him ; he was quite passive : they hand- 
 cuffed him, and drove him before them, shoving him 
 every now and then roughly by the shoulders. He made 
 no resistance, spoke no word. They took him to the 
 strong-room, and manacled his ankles together with an 
 iron hobble, and then strapped them to the bedposts, 
 and fastened his body down by broad bands of ticking 
 with leathern straps at the ends : and so left him more 
 helpless than a swaddled infant. The hurry and excite- 
 ment of defence were over, and a cold stupor of misery 
 came down and sat like lead on him. He lay mute as 
 death in his gloomy cell, a tomb within a living tomb. 
 And, as he lay, deeper horror grew and grew in his 
 dilating eyes : gusts of rage swept over him, shook him, 
 and passed : then gusts of despairing tenderness ; all 
 came and went, but his bonds. What would his Julia 
 think ? If he could only let her know ! At this thought 
 he called, he shouted, he begged for a messenger ; there 
 was no reply. The cry of a dangerous lunatic from the 
 strong-room was less heeded here than a bark from any 
 dog-kennel in Christendom. " This is my father's doing," 
 he said. " Curse him ! curse him ! curse him ! " and his 
 brain seemed on fire, his temples throbbed : he vowed to 
 God to be revenged on his father. 
 
 Then he writhed at his own meanness in coming to
 
 HARD CASH. 518 
 
 visit a servant, and liis folly in being caught by so shal- 
 low an artifice. He groaned aloud. The clock in the 
 hall struck ten. There was just time to get back if they 
 Avould lend him a conveyance. He shouted, he screamed, 
 he prayed. He offered terms humbly, piteously ; he would 
 forgive his father, forgive them all, he would say no more 
 about the money, would do anything, consent to anything, 
 if they would only let him keep faith with his Julia : 
 they had better consent, and not provoke his vengeance. 
 " Have mercy on me ! " he cried. "Don't make me in- 
 sult her I love. They will all be waiting for me. It 
 is my wedding-day ; you can't have known it is my wed- 
 ding-day ; fiends, monsters, I tell you it is my wedding- 
 day. Oh, pray send the lady to me : she can't be all 
 stone, and my misery might melt a stone." He listened 
 for an answer, he prayed for an answer. There was 
 none. Once in a madhouse, the sanest man is mad, 
 however interested and barefaced the motive of the 
 relative who has brought two of the most venal class 
 upon the earth to sign away his wits behind his back : 
 and once hobbled and strapped, he is a dangerous maniac, 
 for just so man\- days, weeks, or years, as the hobbles, 
 handcuffs, and jacket happen to be left upon him by 
 inhumanity, economy, or simple carelessness. Poor 
 Alfred's cries and prayers were heard : but no more 
 noticed than the night howl of a wolf on some distant 
 mountain. All was sullen silence, but the grating tongue 
 of the clock, which told the victim of a legislature's 
 shallowness and a father's avarice that Time, deaf to his 
 woe, as were the walls, the men, the women, and the 
 cutting bands, was stealing away with iron finger his last 
 chance of meeting his beloved at the altar. 
 
 He closed his eyes, and saw her lovelier than ever, 
 dressed all in white, waiting for him with sweet concern 
 in that peerless face. " Julia ! Julia ! " he cried, with a
 
 514 HARD CASH. 
 
 loud heart-broken cry. The half-hour struck. At that 
 he struggled, he writhed, he bounded : he made the very- 
 room shake, and lacerated his flesh; but that was all. 
 No answer. No motion. No help. No hope. 
 
 The perspiration rolled down his steaming body. The 
 tears burst from his young eyes and ran down his cheeks. 
 He sobbed, and sobbing almost choked, so tight were his 
 linen bands upon his bursting bosom. 
 
 He lay still exhausted. 
 
 The clock ticked harshly on : the rest was silence. 
 With this miserable exception; ever and anon the vic- 
 tim's jammed body shuddered so terribly it shook and 
 rattled the iron bedstead, and told of the storm within, 
 the agony of the racked and all-foreboding soul. 
 
 For then rolled over that young head hours of mortal 
 anguish that no tongue of man can utter, nor pen can 
 shadow. Chained sane amongst the mad; on his wed- 
 ding-day ; expecting with tied hands the sinister acts of 
 the soul-murderers who had the power to make their lie 
 a truth! We can paint the body writhing vainly against 
 its unjust bonds ; but who can paint the loathing, agonized 
 soul in a mental situation so ghastly ? For my part I 
 feel it in my heart of hearts ; but am impotent to convey 
 it to others ; impotent, impotent. 
 
 Pray think of it for yourselves, men and women, if 
 you have not sivo)'?i never to think over a novel. Think 
 of it for your own sakes ; Alfred's turn to-day, it may be 
 yours to-morrow
 
 HARD CASH. 615 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 At two o'clock an attendant stole on tiptoe to the 
 strong-room, unlocked the door, and peeped cautiously 
 in. Seeing the dangerous maniac quiet, he entered with 
 a plate of lukewarm beef and potatoes, and told him 
 bluntly to eat. The crushed one said he could not eat. 
 "You must," said the man. "Eat!" said Alfred; "of 
 what do you think I am made ? Pray put it down, and 
 listen to me. I'll give you a hundred pounds to let me 
 out of this place ; two hundred ; three." 
 
 A coarse laugh greeted this proposal. " You might as 
 well have made it a thousand when you was about it." 
 
 " So I will," said Alfred, eagerly, " and thank you on 
 my knees besides. Ah, I see you don't believe I have 
 money. I give you my honor I have ten thousand 
 pounds : it was settled on me by my grandfather, and I 
 came of age last week." 
 
 " Oh, that's like enough," said the man, carelessly. 
 " Well, you are green. Do you think them as sent you 
 here will let you spend your money ? ISTo, your money 
 is theirs now." 
 
 And he sat down with the plate on his knee, and began 
 to cut the meat in small pieces ; while his careless words 
 entered Alfred's heart, and gave him such a glimpse of 
 sinister motives and dark acts to come as set him shud- 
 dering. 
 
 " Come, none o' that," said the man, suspecting this 
 shudder; he thought it was the prologue to some desperate 
 act; for all a chained madman does is read upon this 
 plan } his terror passes for rage, his very sobs for snarls.
 
 516 HARD CASH. 
 
 '<0h, be honest with me," said Alfred, imploringly. 
 " Do you think it is to steal my money the wretch has 
 stolen my liberty ? "' 
 
 " What wretch ? " 
 
 " My father." 
 
 '" I know nothing about it," said the man, sullenly ; " in 
 course there's mostly money behind, Avhen young gents 
 like you come to be took care of. But you mustn't go 
 thinking of that, or you'll excite yourself again ; come, 
 you eat your vittles like a Christian, and no more about 
 it." 
 
 " Leave it, that is a good fellow ; and then I'll try and 
 eat a little by and by. But my grief is great — Julia ! 
 Julia ! — what shall I do ? And I am not used to eat 
 at this time. "Will you, my good fellow ? " 
 
 " Well, I will, now you behave like a gentleman," said 
 the man. 
 
 Then Alfred coaxed him to take off the handcuffs. He 
 refused, but ended by doing it ; and so left him. 
 
 Four more leaden hours rolled by, and then this same 
 attendant (his name was Brown) brought him a cup of 
 tea. It was welcome to his parched throat ; he drank it, 
 and ate a mouthful of the meat to please the man, and 
 even asked for some more tea. 
 
 At eight four keepers came into his room, undressed 
 him, compelled him to make his toilet, etc., before 
 them, which put him to shame — being a gentleman — 
 almost as much as it would a woman : they then hobbled 
 him, and fastened his ankles to the bed, and put his hands 
 into muffles, but did not confine his body ; because they 
 had lost a lucrative lodger only a month ago, throttled 
 at night in a strait-waistcoat. 
 
 Alfred lay in this plight, and compared with anguish 
 unspeakable his joyful anticipations of this night with 
 the strange and cruel reality. " My wedding-night ! my
 
 HARD CASH. 517 
 
 wedding-night ! " he cried aloud, and burst into a passion 
 of grief. 
 
 By and hy he consoled himself a little with the hope 
 that he could not long be incarcerated as a madman being 
 sane ; and his good wit told him his only chance was 
 calmness. He would go to sleep and recover composure 
 to bear his wrongs with dignity, and quietly baffle his 
 enemies. 
 
 Just as he was dropping off, he felt something crawl 
 over his face. Instinctively he made a violent motion 
 to put his hands, up. Both hands were confined ; he 
 could not move them. He bounded, he flung, he writhed. 
 His little persecutors were quiet a moment, but the next 
 they began again ; in vain he rolled and writhed, and 
 shuddered with loathing inexpressible. The}' crawled, 
 they smelt, they bit. 
 
 Many a poor soul these little wretches had distracted 
 with the very sleeplessness the madhouse professed to 
 cure, not create. In conjunction with the opiates, the 
 confinement, and the gloom of Silverton House, they 
 had driven many a feeble mind across the line that 
 divides the weak and nervous from the unsound. 
 
 When he found there was no help, Alfred clenched his 
 teeth and bore it. '"'Bite on, ye little wretches," he said ; 
 "bite on, and divert my mind from deeper stings than 
 yours — if you can." 
 
 And they did, a little. 
 
 Thus passed the night in mental agon}^, and bodily 
 irritation and disgust. At daybreak the feasters on his 
 flesh retired, and utterly worn out and exhausted he 
 sank into a deep sleep. 
 
 At half-past seven the head keeper and three more 
 came in, and made him dress before them. They hand- 
 cuffed him, and took him down to breakfast in the noisy 
 ward, set him down on a little bench by the wall like a
 
 518 HARD CASH. 
 
 naughty boy, and ordered a dangerous maniac to feed 
 him. 
 
 The dangerous maniac obeyed, and went and sat beside 
 Alfred Avith a basin of thick gruel and a great wooden 
 spoon. He shovelled the gruel down his charge's throat 
 mighty superciliously from the very first; and presently, 
 falling into some favorite and absorbing train of thought, 
 he fixed his eye on vacancy, and handed the spoonfuls 
 over his left shoulder with such rapidity and reckless- 
 ness that it was more like sowing than feeding. Alfred 
 cried out, " Quarter ! I can't eat so» fast as that, old 
 fellow." 
 
 Something in his tone struck the maniac ; he looked 
 at Alfred full. Alfred looked at him in return, and 
 smiled kindly but sadly. 
 
 " Hallo ! " cried the maniac. 
 
 "What's up now? " said a keeper, fiercely. 
 
 "Why, this man is sane; as sane as I am." 
 
 At this there was a hoarse laugh. 
 
 " Saner," persisted the maniac, " for I am a little 
 queer at times, you know." 
 
 "And no mistake, Jemmy. Now what makes you 
 think he is sane ? " 
 
 " Looked me full in the face, and smiled at me." 
 
 " Oh, that is your test, is it ? " 
 
 " Yes, it is. You try it on any of those mad beggars 
 there, and see if they can stand it." 
 
 "Who invented gunpowder ? " said one of the insulted 
 persons, looking as sly and malicious as a magpie going 
 to steal. 
 
 Jemmy exploded directly: "I did, ye rascal, ye liar, 
 ye rogue, ye Baconian!" and going higher, and higher, 
 and higher in this strain, was very soon handcutfed 
 with Alfred's handcuffs, and seated on Alfred's bench, 
 and tied to two rinses in the wall. On this his martial
 
 HAED CASH. 519 
 
 ardor went down to zero. " Hei-e is treatment, sir," said 
 he piteously to Alfred. " I see 3*011 are a gentleman ; 
 now look at this. All spite and jealousy because I 
 invented that invaluable substance, which has done so 
 much to prolong human life and alleviate human misery." 
 
 Alfred was now ordered to feed Jemmy, which he did, 
 so quickly were their parts inverted. 
 
 Directly after breakfast Alfred demanded to see the 
 proprietor of the asylum. 
 
 Answer : Doesn't live here. 
 
 The doctor then. 
 
 Oh, he has not come. 
 
 This monstrosity irritated Alfred. " Well, then," said 
 he, "whoever it is that rules this den of thieves when 
 those two are out of it." 
 
 " I rule in Mr. Baker's absence," said the head keeper, 
 "and I'll teach you manners, you young blackguard. 
 Handcuff him." 
 
 In five minutes Alfred was handcuffed and flung into 
 a padded room. 
 
 " Stay there till j^ou know how to speak to your 
 betters,^' said the head keeper. 
 
 Alfred walked up and down, grinding his teeth with 
 rage, for five long hours. 
 
 Just before dinner Brown came and took him into a 
 parlor, where Mrs. Archbold was seated writing. Brown 
 retired. The lady finished what she was doing, and 
 kept Alfred standing, like a schoolboy going to be 
 lectui-ed. At last she said, " I have sent for you to give 
 you a piece of advice : it is to try and make friends with 
 the attendants." 
 
 " Me make friends with the scoundrels ! I thirst for 
 their lives. madam, I fear I shall kill somebody 
 here." 
 
 "Foolish boy, they are too strong for you. Your
 
 520 HARD CASH. 
 
 worst enemies could wish nothing worse for you than 
 that you should provoke thein.^' In saying these words 
 she was so much more kind and womanly that Alfred 
 conceived hopes, and burst out, *'0 madam, you are 
 human then ; you seem to pity me ; pray give me pen 
 and paper, and let me write to my friends to get me out 
 of this terrible place ; do not refuse me." 
 
 jVIrs. Archbold resumed her distant manner without 
 a]i])avent effort ; she said nothing, but she placed writing 
 materials before him. She then left the room and locked 
 him in. 
 
 He wrote a few hasty, ardent words to Julia, telling 
 her how he had been entrapped, but not a word about 
 his sufferings — he was too generous to give her need- 
 less pain — and a line to Edward, imploring him to come 
 at once with a lawyer and an honest physician, and 
 liberate him. 
 
 Mrs. Archbold returned soon after, and he asked her 
 if she would lend him sealing-Avax. " I dare not trust 
 to an envelope in such a place as this," said he. She 
 lent him sealing-wax. 
 
 "But how am I to post it ? " said he. 
 
 " Easily ; there is a box in the house ; I will show 
 you." 
 
 She took him and showed him the box ; he put his 
 letters into it, and in the ardor of his gratitude kissed 
 her hand; she winced a little and said, "Mind, this is 
 not by my advice ; I would never tell my friends I had 
 been in a madhouse, oh, never. I would be calm, make 
 friends with the servants — they are the real masters — 
 and never let a creature know where I had been." 
 
 "Oh, you don't know my Julia," said Alfred; "she 
 will never desert me, never think the worse of me 
 because I have been entrapped illegally into a mad- 
 house."
 
 HAKD CASH. 521 
 
 "Illegally, Mr. Hardie! you deceive yourself. Mr. 
 Baker told me the order was signed by a relation, and 
 the certificates by first-rate lunacy doctors." 
 
 "AVhat on earth has that to do with it, madam, when 
 I am as sane as you are ? " 
 
 "It has everything to do with it. Mr. Baker could be 
 punished for confining a madman in this house without 
 an order and two certificates; but he couldn't for con- 
 fining a sane person under an order and two certificates." 
 
 Alfred could not believe this, but she convinced him 
 that it was so. 
 
 Then he began to fear he should be imprisoned for 
 years ; he turned pale, and looked at her so piteously, 
 that to soothe him she told him sane people were never 
 kept in asylums now, they only used to be. 
 
 '•' How can they ? " said she. " The London asylums 
 are visited four times a year by the commissioners, and 
 the country asylums six times, twice by the commission- 
 ers, and four times by the justices. We shall be inspected 
 this week or next, and then you can speak to the jus- 
 tices ; mind and be calm ; say it is a mistake ; offer tes- 
 timony ; and ask either to be discharged at once, or to 
 have a commission of lunacy sit on you ; ten to one your 
 friends will not face public proceedings ; but you must 
 begin at the foundation, by making the servants friendly 
 — and by — being calm." She then fixed her large gray 
 eye on him and said, "Xow, if I let you dine with me 
 and the first-class patients, will you pledge me your 
 honor to ' be calm,' and not attempt to escape ? " Alfred 
 hesitated at that. Her eye dissected his character all 
 the time. "I promise," said he at last, with a deep 
 sigh. "]\Iay I sit by you? There is something so 
 repugnant in the very idea of mad people." 
 
 "Try and remember it is their misfortune, not their 
 crime," said Mrs. Archbold, just like a matronly sister 
 admonishing a brother from school.
 
 522 HARD CASH. 
 
 She then whistled in a whisper for Brown, who was 
 lurking about unseen all the time. He emerged and 
 walked about with Alfred, and, by and by, looking down 
 from a corridor, they saw ]\[rs. Archbold driving the 
 second-class Avomen before her to dinner like a flock of 
 animals. Whenever one stopped to look at anything, or 
 try and gossip, the philanthropic Archbold went at her 
 just like a shepherd's dog at a refractory sheep, caught 
 her by the shoulders, and drove her squeaking, headlong. 
 
 At dinner Alfred was so fortunate as to sit opposite a 
 gentleman who nodded and grinned at him all dinner 
 with a horrible leer. He could not, however, enjoy this 
 to the full, for a little distraction at his elbow : his right- 
 hand neighbor kept forking pieces out of his plate and 
 substituting others from his own; there was even a 
 tendency to gristle in the latter. Alfred remonstrated 
 gently at first ; the gentleman forbore a minute, then 
 recommenced ; Alfred laid a hand very quietly on his 
 wrist and put it back. Mrs. Archbold's quick eye sur- 
 prised this gesture. " What is the matter there ? " said 
 she. 
 
 "Oh, nothing serious, madam," replied Alfred, "only 
 this gentleman does me the honor to prefer the contents 
 of my plate to his own." 
 
 " Mr. Cooper ! " said the Archbold, sternly. 
 
 Cooper, the head-keeper, pounced on the offender, 
 seized him roughly by the collar, dragged him from the 
 table, knocking his chair down, and bundled him out of 
 the room with ignominy and fracas, in spite of a remon- 
 strance from Alfred, " Oh, don't be so rough with the 
 poor man." 
 
 Then the novice laid down his knife and fork, and ate 
 no more. "I am grieved at my own ill-nature in com- 
 plaining of such a trifle," said he, when all Avas quiet. 
 
 The company stared considerably at this remark; it
 
 HARD CASH. 523 
 
 seemed to them a most morbid perversion of sensibility ; 
 for the deranged, thin-skinned beyond conception in 
 their own persons, and alive to the shadow of the shade 
 of a wrong, are stoically indifferent to the woes of others. 
 
 Though Alfred was quiet as a lamb all day, the attend- 
 ants returned him to the padded room at night, because 
 he had been there last night ; but they only fastened one 
 ankle to the bedpost, so he encountered his Liliputians 
 on tolerably fair terms — numbers excepted ; they 
 swarmed. Unable to sleep, he put out his hand and 
 groped for his clothes. But they were outside the door, 
 according to rule. 
 
 Day broke at last, and he took his breakfast quietly 
 with the iirst-class patients. It consisted of cool tea in 
 small basins instead of cups, and tablespoons instead of 
 teaspoons, and thick slices of stale bread thinly buttered. 
 A few patients had gruel or porridge instead of tea. 
 After breakfast Alfred sat in the first-class patients' 
 room, and counted the minutes and the hours till Edward 
 should come. After dinner he counted the hours till 
 tea-time. Xobody came, and he went to bed in such 
 grief and disappointment as some men live to eighty 
 without ever knowing. 
 
 But when two o'clock came next da}', and no Edward, 
 and no reply, then the distress of his soul deepened. 
 He implored ^Irs. Archbold to tell him what was the 
 cause. She shook her head, and said, gravel}', it was 
 but too common ; a man's nearest and dearest were very 
 apt to hold aloof from him the moment he was put into 
 an asylum. 
 
 Here an old lady put in her word. "Ah, sir, you 
 must not hope to hear from anybody in this place. Why, 
 I have been two years writing and writing, and can't get 
 a line from my own daughter. To be sure she is a fine 
 lady now, but it was her poor neglected mother that
 
 524 HAED CASH. 
 
 pinclied and pinched to give her a good education, and 
 that is how she caught a good husband. But it's my 
 belief the post in our hall isn't a real post, but only a 
 box; and I think it is contrived so as the letters fall 
 down a pipe into that Baker's hands, and so then when 
 the postman comes " — 
 
 The Archbold bent her bushy brows on this chatty 
 personage. " Be quiet, Mrs. Dent ; you are talking non- 
 sense, and exciting yourself ; you know you are not to 
 speak on that topic. Take care." 
 
 The jDOor old woman was shut up like a knife, for the 
 Archbold had a way of addressing her own sex that 
 crushed them. The change was almost comically sudden 
 to the mellow tones in which she addressed Alfred the 
 very next moment on the very same subject. " jNlr. 
 Baker, I believe, sees the letters; and, where our poor 
 patients (with a glance at Dent) write in such a way as 
 to wound and perhaps terrify those who are in reality 
 their best friends, they are not always sent. But I con- 
 clude your letters have gone. If you feel you can be 
 calm, why not ask Mr. Baker ? He is in the house now, 
 for a wonder." 
 
 Alfred promised to be calm ; and she got him an inter- 
 view with Mr. Baker. 
 
 He was a full-blown pawnbroker of Silverton town, 
 whom the legislature, Avith that keen knowledge of 
 human nature which marks the British senate, permitted, 
 and still permits, to speculate in insanity, stipulating, 
 however, that the upper servant of all in his asylum 
 should be a doctor ; but omitting to provide against the 
 instant dismissal of the said doctor should he go and rob 
 his employer of a lodger — by curing a patient. 
 
 As you are not the British legislature, I need not tell 
 you that to this pawnbroker insanity mattered nothing, 
 nor sanity ; his trade lay in catching and keeping and
 
 HAKD CASH. 525 
 
 Stinting as many lodgers, sane or insane, as he could 
 hold. 
 
 There are certain formulae in these quiet retreats which 
 uaturally impose upon greenhorns such as Alfred certainly 
 was, and some visiting justices and lunacy commissioners 
 would seem to be. Baker had been a lodging-house keeper 
 for certified people many years, and knew all the formulae, 
 — some call them dodges ; but these must surely be vulgar 
 minds. 
 
 Baker worked " the see-saw formula." 
 
 "Letters, young gentleman?'' said he, "they are not 
 in my department. They go into the surgery, and are 
 passed by the doctor, except those he examines and orders 
 to be detained." 
 
 Alfred demanded the doctor. 
 
 " He is gone," was the reply. (Formula.) 
 
 Alfred found it as hard to be calm, as some people find 
 it easy to say that word over the wrongs of others. 
 
 The next day, but not till the afternoon, he caught the 
 doctor. " My letters ! Surely, sir, you have not been so 
 cruel as to intercept them ? " 
 
 "I intercept no letters," said the doctor, as if scandal- 
 ized at the very idea. "I see who writes them, and hand 
 them to ]Mr. Baker, with now and then a remark. If an} 
 are detained, the responsibility rests with him." 
 
 " He says it rests with you." 
 
 "You must have misunderstood him." 
 
 " Not at all, sir. One thing is clear, my letters have 
 been stolen either by him or you, and I will know 
 which." 
 
 The doctor parried with a formula. 
 
 " You are excited, IMr. Hardie. Be calm, sir, be calm ; 
 or you will be here all the longer." 
 
 All Alfred obtained by this interview was a powerful 
 opiate. The head keeper brought it him in bed. He
 
 626 HARD CASH. 
 
 declined to take it. The man whistled, and the room 
 filled with keepers. 
 
 "Now," said Cooper, "down with it, or you'll have to 
 be drenched with this cowhorn." 
 
 "You had better take it, sir," said Brown; "the doctor 
 has ordered it you." 
 
 "The doctor ? Well, let me see the doctor about it." 
 
 " He is gone." 
 
 " He never ordered it me," said Alfred. Then fixing 
 his eyes sternly on Cooper, " You miscreants, you want 
 to poison me. Xo, I will not take it. Murder ! murder ! " 
 
 Then ensued a struggle, on which I draw a veil ; but 
 numbers won the day, with the help of handcuffs and a 
 cowhorn. 
 
 Brown went and told Mrs. Archbold, and what Alfred 
 had said. 
 
 " Don't be alarmed," said that strong-minded lady ; "it 
 is only one of the old fool's composing draughts. It will 
 spoil the poor boy's sleep for one night, that is all. Go 
 to him the first thing in the morning." 
 
 About midnight Alfred was seized with a violent head- 
 ache and fever; towards morning he was light-headed, 
 and Brown found him loud and incoherent, only he 
 returned often to an expression Mr. Brown had never 
 heard before, — 
 
 "Justifiable parricide. Justifiable parricide. Justifi- 
 able parricide." 
 
 Most people dislike new phrases. Brown ran to consult 
 Mrs. Archbold about this one. After the delay insepa- 
 rable from her sex, she came in a morning wrapper ; and 
 they found Alfred leaning over the bed and bleeding 
 violently at the nose. They were a good deal alarmed, 
 and tried to stop it ; but Alfred was quite sensible now, 
 and told them it was doing him good. 
 
 " I can manage to see now," he said ; " a little while 
 ago I was blind with the poison."
 
 HARD CASH. 627 
 
 Thej' unstrapped his ankle and made him comfortable, 
 and Mrs. Archbold sent Brown for a cup of strong coffee 
 and a glass of brandy. He tossed them off, and soon 
 after fell into a deep sleep that lasted till tea-time. This 
 sleep the poor doctor ascribed to the sedative effect of 
 his opiate. It tvas the natural exhaustion consequent 
 on the morbid excitement caused by his cursed opiate. 
 
 "Brown," said Mrs. Archbold, "if Dr. Bailey prescribes 
 again, let me know. He sha'n't square this patient with 
 his certificates, whilst I am here." 
 
 This was a shrewd but uncharitable speech of hers. 
 Dr. Bailey was not such a villain as that. 
 
 He was a less depraved, and more dangerous animal ; 
 he was a fool. 
 
 The farrago he had administered would have done an 
 excited maniac no good, of course, but no great harm. 
 It was dangerous to a sane man, and Alfred to the naked 
 eye was a sane man. But then Bailey had no naked eye 
 left ; he had been twenty years an M.D. The certificates 
 of Wycherley and Speers were the green spectacles he 
 wore — very green ones — whenever he looked at Alfred 
 Hardie. 
 
 Perhaps in time he will forget those certificates, and, 
 on his spectacles dropping off, he will see Alfred is sane. 
 If he does, he will publish him as one of his most remark- 
 able awes. 
 
 ]\Ieanwhile the whole treatment of this ill-starred young 
 gentleman gravitated towards insanity. The inner mind 
 was exasperated by barefaced injustice and oppression, 
 above all, by his letters being stopped ; for that con- 
 vinced him both Baker and Bailey, with their see-saw 
 evasions, knew he was sane, and dreaded a visit from 
 honest, understanding men ; and the mind's external 
 organ, the brain, which an asylum professes to soothe, 
 was steadily undermined by artificial sleeplessness. A
 
 528 HARD CASH. 
 
 man can't sleep in irons till he is used to them ; and, 
 when Alfred was relieved of these, his sleep was still 
 driven away by biting insects and barking dogs, — two 
 opiates provided in many of these placid retreats, with a 
 view to the permanence, rather than the comfort, of the 
 lodgers. 
 
 On the eighth day Alfred succeeded at last in au 
 object he had steadily pursued for some time. He caught 
 the two see-saw humbugs together. 
 
 "Now," said he, ^^you say he intercepts my letters, 
 and he says it is you who do it. Which is the truth ? " 
 
 They were staggered, and he followed up his advan- 
 tage. "Look me in the face, gentlemen," said he. "Can 
 you pretend you do not know I am sane ? Ah ! you turn 
 your heads away. You can only tell this barefaced lie 
 behind my back. Do you believe in God, and in a judg- 
 ment to come ? Then if you cannot release me, at least 
 don't be such scoundrels as to stop my letters, and so 
 swindle me out of a fair trial, an open, public trial." 
 
 The doctor parried with a formula. " Publicity would 
 be the greatest misfortune could befall you. Pray be 
 calm." 
 
 Now, an asylum is a place not entirely exempt from 
 prejudices ; and one of them is that any sort of appeal 
 to God Almighty is a sign or else forerunner of maniacal 
 excitement. 
 
 These philosophers forget that by stopping letters, 
 evading public trials, and, in a word, cutting off all 
 appeals to human justice, they compel the patient to 
 turn his despairing eyes and lift his despairing voice 
 to Him whose eye alone can ever really penetrate these 
 dark abodes. 
 
 However, the patient who appealed to God above a 
 whisper in Silverton Grove House used to get soothed 
 directly; and the tranquillizing influences employed were 
 morphia, croton-oil, or a blister.
 
 HARD CASH. 529 
 
 The keeper came to Alfred in his room. "Doctor has 
 ordered a blister." 
 
 " What for ? Send for him directly." 
 
 "He is gone." 
 
 This way of ordering torture, and then coolly going, 
 irritated Alfred beyond endurance. Though he knew he 
 should soon be powerless, he showed fight, made his mark 
 as usual on a couple of his zealous attendants ; but not 
 having room to work in was soon overpowered, hobbled, 
 and handcuffed ; then they cut off his hair, aud put a 
 large blister on the top of his head. 
 
 The obstinate brute declined to go mad. They began 
 to respect him for this tenacity of purpose ; a decent bed- 
 room w'as allotted him ; his portmanteau and bag were 
 brought him, and he w^as let walk every day on the lawn 
 with a keeper, only there were no ladders left about, and 
 the trap-door was locked ; i.e., the iron gate. 
 
 On one of these occasions he heard the gatekeeper 
 whistle three times consecutively. His attendant fol- 
 lowed suit, and hurried Alfred into the house, which soon 
 rang with treble signals. 
 
 " What is it ? " inquired Alfred. 
 
 "The visiting justices are in sight. Go into your 
 room, please." 
 
 "Yes, I'll go," said Alfred, affecting cheerful compli- 
 ance, and the man ran off. 
 
 The whole house was in a furious bustle. All the 
 hobbles and chains and instruments of restraint were 
 hastily collected and bundled out of sight, and clean 
 sheets were being put on many a filthy bed whose occu- 
 pant had never slept in sheets since he came there, when 
 two justices arrived and were shown into the drawing- 
 room. 
 
 During the few minutes they were detained there by 
 Mrs. Archbold, who was mistress of her whole business, 
 84
 
 ^30 HARD CASH. 
 
 quite a new face was put on everything and everybody ; 
 ancient cobwebs fell ; soap and water explored unwonted 
 territories ; the harshest attendants began practising 
 pleasant looks and kind words on the patients, to get 
 into the way of it, so that it might not come too abrupt 
 and startle the patients visibl}^ under the visitors' eyes: 
 something like actors working up a factitious sentiment 
 at the wing for the public display, or like a race-horse's 
 preliminary canter. Alfred's heart beat with joy inex- 
 pressible. He had only to keep calm, and this was his 
 last day at Silverton Grove. The first thing he did was 
 to make a careful toilet. 
 
 The stinginess of relations and the greed of madhouse 
 proprietors make many a patient look ten times madder 
 than he is, by means of dress. Clothes wear out in an 
 asylum, and are-not always taken off though agriculture 
 has long and justly claimed them for her own. And 
 when it is no longer possible to refuse the Rev. Mad Tom 
 or Mrs. Crazy Jane some new raiment, then consanguin- 
 eous munificence does not go to Poole or Elise, but oftener 
 to paternal or maternal wardrobes, and even to the ances- 
 tral chest, the old oak one, singing, — 
 
 "Poor things, they are out of the world, what need for 
 them to be in the fashion !" (Formula.) 
 
 This arrangement keeps the bump of self-esteem down, 
 especially in women, and so co-operates with many other 
 little arrangements to perpetuate the lodger. 
 
 Silverton Grove in particular was supplied with the 
 grotesque in dress from an inexhaustible source. When- 
 ever money was sent Baker to buy a patient a suit, he 
 went from his lunacy shop to his pawnbroker's, dived 
 headlong into unredeemed pledges, dressed his patient 
 as gentlemen are dressed to reside in cherry-trees, and 
 pocketed five hundred ])er cent on the double transaction. 
 Now Alfred had already observed that many of the patients
 
 HARD CASH. 531 
 
 looked madder than they were ; thanks to short trousers 
 and petticoats, holey gloveSjSar-cutting shirt-collars, frilled 
 bosoms, shoes made for and declined by the very infantry, 
 coats short in the waist and long in the sleeves, coalscuttle 
 bonnets, and grand-maternal caps. So he made his toilet 
 with care, and put his best hat on to hide his shaven 
 crown. He then kept his door ajar, and waited for a 
 chance of speaking to the justices. One soon came ; a 
 portly old gentleman, with a rubicund face and honest 
 eye, walked slowly along the corridor, looking as wise as 
 he could, cringed on by Cooper and Dr. Bailey ; the latter 
 had arrived post-haste, and Baker had been sent for. 
 Alfred came out, touched his hat respectfully, and begged 
 a private interview with the magistrate. The old gentle- 
 man bowed politely, for Alfred's dress, address, and coun- 
 tenance left no suspicion of insanity possible in an 
 unprejudiced mind. 
 
 But the doctor whispered in his ear, "Take care, sir. 
 Dangerous ! " 
 
 Xow, this is one of the most effective of the formula 
 in a private asylum. How can an inexperienced stranger 
 know for certain that such a statement is a falsehood ? 
 and even the just do not love justice — to others — quite 
 so well as they love their own skins. So Squire Tollett 
 very naturally declined a private interview with Alfred ; 
 and even drew back a step, and felt uneasy at being so 
 near him. Alfred implored him not to be imposed upon. 
 "An honest man does not whisper," said he. "Do not 
 let him poison your mind against me; on my honor I am 
 as sane as you are, and he knows it. Pray, pray use your 
 own eyes and ears, sir, and give yourself a chance of dis- 
 covering the truth in this stronghold of lies." 
 
 "Don't excite yourself, ]Mr. Hardie," put in the doctor, 
 parentally. (Formula.) 
 
 "■ Don't you interrupt me, doctor ; I am as calm as you
 
 532 HAED CASH. 
 
 are. Calmer; for, see, you are pale at this moment; that 
 is with fear that your wickedness in detaining a sane man 
 here is going to be exposed. Oh, sir," said he, turning 
 to the justice, " fear do violence from me, not even angry 
 words ; my misery is too deep for irritation or excitement. 
 I am an Oxford man, sir, a prize man, an Ireland scholar. 
 But, unfortunately for me, my mother left me ten thou- 
 sand pounds, and a heart. I love a lady whose name I 
 will not pollute by mentioning it in this den of thieves. 
 ]My father is the well-known banker, bankrupt, and cheat, 
 of Barkington. He has wasted his own money, and now 
 covets his neighbor's and his son's. He had me entrapped 
 here on my wedding-day, to get hold of my money, arnd 
 rob me of her I love. I appeal to you, sir, to discharge 
 me ; or, if you have not so much confidence in your own 
 judgment as to do that, then I demand a commission of 
 lunacy, and a public inquiry." 
 
 Dr. Bailey said, " That would be a most undesirable 
 exposure, both to yourself and your friends." (Formula.) 
 
 " It is only the guilty who fear the light, sir," was 
 the prompt reply. 
 
 ]Mr. Tollett said he thought the patient had a legal 
 right to a commission of lunacy if there was property, 
 and he took note of the application. He then asked 
 Alfred if he had any complaint to make of the food, the 
 beds, or the attendants. 
 
 '• Sir," said Alfred, " I leave those complaints to the 
 insane ones : with me the gigantic wrong drives out the 
 petty worries. I cannot feel my stings for my deep 
 wound." 
 
 " Oh, then, you admit you are not treated tinkindhj 
 here ? " 
 
 "I admit nothing of the kind, sir. I merely decline 
 to encumber your memory with jietty injuries, when you 
 are good enough to inquire into a monstrous one."
 
 HARD CASH. 533 
 
 "Now that is very sensible and considerate," said Mr. 
 Tollett. " I will see you, sir, before we leave." 
 
 With this promise Alfred was obliged to be content. 
 He retired respectfully, and the justice said, " He seems 
 as sane as I am." The doctor smiled. The justice 
 observed it, and, not aware that this smile was a formula, 
 as much so as a prize-fighter's or a ballet-dancer's, began 
 to doubt a little : he reflected a moment, then asked who 
 had signed the certihcates. 
 
 " Dr. Wycherley for one." 
 
 " Dr. Wycherley ? that is a great authority." 
 
 "One of the greatest in the country, sir." 
 
 " Oh, then one would think he must be more or less 
 deranged." 
 
 " Dangerously so at times. But in his lucid intervals 
 you never saAv a more quiet, gentlemanly creature." 
 (Formula.) 
 
 " How sad ! " 
 
 " Ver}'. He is my most interesting patient (formula), 
 though terribly violent at times. AVould you like to see 
 the medical journal about him ? " 
 
 '' Yes ; by and by." 
 
 The inspection then continued 5 the inspector admired 
 the clean sheets that covered the beds, all of them dirty, 
 some filthy : and asked the more reasonable patients to 
 speak freely and say if they had any complaint to make. 
 This question being with the usual sagacity of public 
 inspectors put in the presence of Cooper and the doctor, 
 who stuck to Tollett like wax, the mad people all declared 
 they were very kindly treated : the reason they were so 
 unanimous was this : they knew by experience that, if 
 they told the truth, the justices could not at once remedy 
 their discomforts, whereas the keepers, the very moment 
 the justices left the house, would knock them down, beat 
 them, shake them, strait-jacket them, and starve them ;
 
 534 HARD CASH. 
 
 and the doctor, less merciful, would doctor them. So 
 they shook in their shoes, and vowed they were very 
 comfortable in Silverton Grove. 
 
 Thus, in later days, certain commissioners of lunacy 
 inspecting Accomb House, extracted nothing from Mrs. 
 Turner, but that she was happy and comfortable under 
 the benignant sway of Metcalf the mild — there present. 
 It was only by a miracle the public learned the truth : 
 and miracles are rare. 
 
 Meantime, Alfred had a misgiving. The plausible 
 doctor had now Squire Tollett's ear, and Tollett was old, 
 and something about him reminded the Oxonian of a 
 trait his friend Horace had detected in old age : 
 
 Vel qubd res onines timide gelide que niinistrat. 
 Dilator, spe longus, iners, etc. 
 
 He knew there was another justice in the house, but he 
 knew also he should not be allowed to get speech with 
 him, if by cunning or force it could be prevented. He 
 kept his door ajar. Presently Nurse Hannah came 
 bustling along with an apronful of things, and let herself 
 into a vacant room hard by. This Hannah was a young 
 woman with a pretty and rather babyish face, diversified 
 by a thick biceps muscle in her arm that a blacksmith 
 need not have blushed for. And I suspect it was this 
 masculine charm, and not her feminine features, that had 
 won her the confidence of Baker and Co., and the respect 
 of his female patients : big or little, excited or not excited, 
 there was not one of them this bicipital baby-face could 
 not pin by the wrists, and twist her helpless into a 
 strong-room, or handcuff her unaided in a moment ; and 
 she did it too on slight provocation. Nurse Hannah 
 seldom came into Alfred's part of the house ; but when 
 she did meet him, she generally gave him a kind look in 
 passing; and he had resolved to speak to her, and try if
 
 HARD CASH. 535 
 
 He could touch her couscience, or move her pity. He 
 saw what she was at, but was too politic to detect her 
 openly and irritate her. He drew back a step, and said 
 softly, " Nurse Hanna.h ! Are you there ? " 
 
 "Yes, I am here," said she, sharply, and came out of 
 the room hastily, and shut it. " What do you want, 
 sir ? •' 
 
 Alfred clasped his hands together. " If you are a 
 woman, have pity on me." 
 
 She was taken by surprise. " What can I do ? " said 
 she in some agitation. " I am only a servant." 
 
 '•'At least tell me where I can find the visiting jus- 
 tice, before the keepers stop me." 
 
 " Hush ! Speak lower," said Hannah. " You liave 
 complained to one, haven't you ? " 
 
 " Yes ; but he seems a feeble old fogy. Where is the 
 other? Oh, pray tell me ! " 
 
 " I mustn't ; I mustn't. In the noisy ward. There, 
 run." 
 
 And run he did. 
 
 Alfred was lucky enough to get safe into the noisy 
 ward without being intercepted. And then he encount- 
 ered a sunburned gentleman, under thirty, in a riding- 
 coat, with a hunting-whip in his hand. It was Mr. Vane, 
 a Tory squire and large landholder in the county. 
 
 Now, as Alfred entered at one door. Baker himself 
 came in at the other, and they nearly met at Vane. But 
 Alfred saluted him first, and begged respectfully for an 
 interview. 
 
 " Certainly, sir," said Mr. Vane. 
 
 " Take care, sir ; he is dangerous," whispered Baker. 
 Instantly Mr. Vane's countenance changed. Bvit this 
 time Alfred overheard the formula, and said quietly, 
 "Don't believe him, sir. I am not dangerous; I am as 
 sane as any man in England. Pray examine me, and 
 judge for yourself."
 
 536 HARD CASH. 
 
 "Ah, that is his delusion," said Baker. "Come, Mr. 
 Hardie, I allow you great liberties, but you abuse them. 
 You really must not monopolize his worship with your 
 fancies. Consider, sir, you are not the only patient he 
 has to examine." 
 
 Alfred's heart sank ; he turned a look of silent agony 
 on Mr. Vane. 
 
 Mr. Vane, either touched by that look, or irritated by 
 Baker's pragmatical interference, or perhaps both, looked 
 that person coolly in the face, and said sternly, "Be 
 silent, sir, and let the gentleman speak to me."
 
 HARD CASH. 537 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 Alfred, thus encouraged, told his story with forced 
 calmness, and without a word too much. Indeed, so 
 clear and telling was the narrative, and the logic so 
 close, that incoherent patients one or two stole up and 
 listened with wonder and a certain dreamy complacency; 
 the bulk, however, held aloof apathetic, inextricably 
 wrapped in fictitious autobiography. 
 
 His story told, Alfred offered the Dodds in evidence 
 that the fourteen thousand pounds was no illusion, and 
 referred to his sister and sev^eral friends as witnesses to 
 his sanity, and said the letters he wrote were all stopped 
 in the asylum ; and why ? That no honest man or 
 woman might know where he was. 
 
 He ended by convincing Mr. Vane he was a sane and 
 injured man, and his father a dark, designing person. 
 
 Mr. Vane asked him whether he had any other revela- 
 tions to make. Alfred replied, " Not on my own account, 
 but for the sake of those afflicted persons who are here 
 for life. Well, the beds want repaving ; the vermin 
 thinning ; the instruments of torture want abolishing, 
 instead 'of hiding for an hour or two when you happen 
 to come : what do the patients gain by that ? The mad- 
 men dare not complain to you, sir ; because the last time 
 one did complain to the justices (it was Mr. Petworth), 
 they had no sooner passed through the iron gate, than 
 Cooper made an example of him : felled him with his 
 fist, and walked up and down him on his knees, crying, 
 'I'll teach you to complain to the justices.' But one or 
 two gentlemanly madmen, who soon found out that I am
 
 538 HARD CASH. 
 
 not one of them, have complained to me that the attend- 
 ants v/ash them too much like hansom cal)S, strip them 
 naked, and mop them on the flag-stones, then fling on 
 their clothes without drying them. They say, too, that 
 the meat is tough and often putrid, the bread stale, the 
 butter rancid, the vegetables stinted since they can't be 
 adulterated ; and as for sleep, it is hardly known, for 
 the beds are so short your feet stick out; insects, with- 
 out a name to ears polite, but highly odoriferous and pro- 
 foundly carnivorous, bite you all night, and dogs howl 
 eternally outside ; and, when exhausted nature defies 
 even these enemies of rest, then the doctor, who seems 
 to be in the pay of insanit}', claps you on a blister by 
 brute force, and so drives away sleep, insanity's cure, 
 or hocusses you by brute force as he did me, and so steals 
 your sleep, and tries to steal your reason, with his opium, 
 henbane, morphia, and other tremendous brain-stealers. 
 With such a potion, sir, administered by violence, he 
 gave me in one night a burning fever, headache, loss of 
 sight, and bleeding at the nose, as Mrs. Archbold will 
 tell you. Oh, look into these things, sir, in pity to those 
 whom Heaven has afflicted ! To me they are but strokes 
 with a feather; I am a sane man torn from love and 
 happiness, and confined among the mad; discomfort is 
 nothing to me, comfort is nothing ; you can do nothing 
 for me but restore me to my dignity as a man, my lib- 
 erty as a Briton, and the rights as a citizen I have been 
 swindled out of by a fraudulent bankrupt and his tools, 
 two venal doctors, Avho never saw me but for one five 
 minutes, but came to me ready bribed at a guinea apiece, 
 and so signed away my wits behind my back." 
 
 '• Now, Mr. Baker," said Vane, " what do you say to 
 all this ? " 
 
 Baker smiled with admirable composure, and replied 
 with crafty moderation, " He is a gentleman, and believes
 
 HARD CASH. 530 
 
 every word he says ; but it is all his delusions. Why, 
 to begin, sir, his father has nothing to do with putting 
 hira in here ; nothing on earth. (Alfred started, then 
 smiled incredulous.) And, in the next place, there are 
 no instruments of restraint here, but two pair of hand- 
 cuffs and two strait-jackets, and these never hardly used; 
 we trust to the padded rooms, you know. And, sir," 
 said he, getting warm, which instantly affected his pro- 
 nunciation, "if there's a hinsect in the ouse, I'll heat 
 im." 
 
 Delusion is a big word, especially in a madhouse : it 
 overpowers a visitor's understanding. Mr. Vane was 
 staggered. Alfred, whose eager e3'es Avere never off his 
 face, saw this with dismay, and feeling that, if he failed 
 in the simpler matter, he should be sure to fail in estab- 
 lishing his sanity, he said with inward anxiety, though 
 with outward calmness, '' Suppose we test these delu- 
 sions ? " 
 
 "With all my heart," said Vane, 
 
 Baker's countenance fell. 
 
 "Begin with the instruments of restraint. Find me 
 them." 
 
 Baker's countenance brightened up ; he had no fear 
 of their being found. 
 
 " I will," said Alfred ; "please to follow me." 
 
 Baker grinned with anticipated triumph. 
 
 Alfred led the way to a bedroom near his own, and 
 asted ]\rr. Baker to unlock it. Baker had not the ke}- ; 
 no more had Cooper. The latter was sent for it; he 
 returned, saying the key was mislaid. 
 
 "That I expected," said Alfred. "Send for the 
 kitchen poker, sir : I'll soon unlock it." 
 
 "Fetch the kitchen poker," said Vane. 
 
 " Good gracious, sir ! " said Cooper ; " he only wants 
 that to knock all our brains out. You have no idea of 
 his strength and ferocity."
 
 640 HARD CASH. 
 
 "Well lied, Cooper," said Alfred, ironically. 
 
 " Fetch me the poker," said Vaue. 
 
 Cooper went for it, and came back with the key 
 instead. 
 
 The door Avas opened, and they all entered. Alfred 
 looked under the bed. The rest stood round it. 
 
 There was nothing to be seen but a year's dust. 
 
 Alfred was dumfoundered, and a cold perspiration 
 began to gather on his brow. He saw at once a false 
 move would be fatal to him. 
 
 " Well, sir," said Vane, grimly, " where are they ? " 
 
 Alfred caught sight of a small cupboard ; he searched 
 it : it was empty. Baker and Cooper grinned at his de- 
 lusion quietly, but so that Vane might see that formula. 
 Alfred returned to the bed and shook it. Cooper and 
 Baker left off grinning ; Alfred's uick eye caught this, 
 and he shook the bed violently, furiously. 
 
 " Ah ! " said Mr. Vane, " I hear a chink." 
 
 " It is an iron bedstead, and old," suggested Baker. 
 
 Alfred tore off the bedclothes, and then the i lattress. 
 Below the latter was a framework, and below he frame- 
 work a receptacle about six inches deep, five feet long, 
 and three broad, filled, with chains, iron bel.s, wrist- 
 locks, muffles, and screw-locked hobbles, etc., — a regular 
 Inquisition. 
 
 If Baker had descended from the Kemble family, 
 instead of rising from nothing, he could not have acted 
 better. " Good heavens ! " cried he, " where do these 
 come from ? They must have been left here by the last 
 proprietor." 
 
 Vane replied only by a look of contempt, and ordered 
 Cooper to go and ask Mr. Tollett to come to him. 
 
 Alfred improved the interval. "Sir," said he, "all 
 my delusions, fairly tested, will turn out like this." 
 
 " They shall be tested, sir j I give you my word."
 
 HARD CASH. 541 
 
 IMr. Tollett came, and the two justices commenced a 
 genuine scrutiny, their first. They went now upon the 
 true method in which all these dark places ought to be 
 inspected. They did not believe a word ; they suspected 
 everything; they examined patients apart, detected 
 cruelty, filth, and vermin under philanthropic phrases 
 and clean linen ; and the upshot was, they reprimanded 
 Baker and the attendants severely, and told him his 
 license should never be renewed, unless at their next 
 visit the whole asylum was reformed. They orde ed all 
 the iron body-belts, chains, leg-locks, wrist-locks, and 
 muffs, to be put into IMr. Tollett's carriage, and con- 
 cluded a long inspection by inquiring into Alfred's 
 sanity. At this inquiry they did not allow Baker to be 
 even present, but only Dr. Bailey. 
 
 First they read the order, and found it really was not 
 Alfred's father who had put him inlo the asylum. Then 
 th'";' read the certificates, especially Wycherley's. It 
 accuGcd Alfred cf headache, insomnia, nightly visions, 
 a rooted delusion (pecuniary), a sudden version to an 
 affectionate father ; and at the doctor's last visit, a wild 
 look (formula), great excitement, and threats of violence 
 without any provocation to justify hem. This over- 
 powered the wor'-hy squires' understandings, to begin. 
 But they proceeued to examine th. three books an 
 asylum has to keep by law : the visitors' book, the case 
 book, and the medical journal. All these were kept 
 with the utmost looseness in Silverton House, as indeed 
 they are in the very best of these places. However, by 
 combining the scanty notices in the several books, they 
 arrived at this total : — 
 
 " Admitted April 11. Had a very wild look, and was 
 much excited. Attempted suicide by throwing himself 
 into a tank. Attacked the keepers, for rescuing him, 
 with prodigious strength and violence. Refused food,"
 
 542 HARD CASH. 
 
 Aud some days after came an entry with bis initiala 
 instead of his name, which was contrary to law. " A. H. 
 Much excited. Threats. Ordered a composing draught.'' 
 
 And a day or two after: *' A. H. Excited. Blas^jhe- 
 mous. Ordered blister." 
 
 Tlie fii'st entry, however, was enough. The doctor 
 had but seen real facts through his green spectacles, and 
 lo ! " suicide," " homicide," and " refusal of food," three 
 cardinal points of true mania. 
 
 Mr. Vane asked Dr. Bailey whether he was better since 
 he came. 
 
 "Oh, infinitely better," said Dr. Bailey. ""\Ye hope 
 to cure him in a month or two." 
 
 They then sent for Mrs. Archbold, aud had a long talk 
 with her, recommending Alfred to her especial care ; and, 
 having acted on his judgment and infoinnation in the 
 teeth of those who called him insane, turned tail at 
 a doctor's certificate, distrusted their eyesight at an 
 unsworn affidavit. 
 
 Alfred was packing up his things to go awa}', bright 
 as a lark. Mrs. Archbold came to him, and told him she 
 had orders to give him every comfort, and the justices 
 hoped to liberate him at their next visit. 
 
 The poor wretch turned pale. "At their next visit ! " 
 he cried. "What, not to-day? AVhen is their next 
 visit?" 
 
 Mrs. Archbold hesitated, but at last she said, ""Why, 
 you know ; I told you. They come four times every 
 year." 
 
 The disappointment was too bitter. The contempti- 
 ble result of all his patience, self-command, and success, 
 was too heart-breaking. He groaned aloud. " And you 
 can come with a smile and tell me that; you cruel 
 woman." Then he broke down altogether and Inirst out 
 crying. " You were born without a heart," he sobbed.
 
 HARD CASH. 543 
 
 Mrs. Archbold qiiiverecl at that. " I wish I had been," 
 said she, in a strange, soft, moving voice ; then casting 
 an eloquent look of reproach on him, she Avent away in 
 visible agitation, and left him sobbing. Once out of his 
 sight she rushed into another room, and there, taking no 
 more notice of a gentle madwoman its occupant than of 
 the bed or the table, she sank into a chair, and, throwing 
 her head back with womanly abandon, laid her hand 
 upon her bosom that heaved tempestuously. 
 
 And soon the tears trickled out of her imperious eyes, 
 and ran unrestrained. 
 
 The mind of Edith Archbold corresponded with her 
 powerful frame, and bushy brows. Inside this woman 
 all was vigor; strong passions, strong good-sense to 
 check or hide them ; strong will to carry them out. 
 And between these mental forces a powerful struggle 
 was raging. She was almost impenetrable to mere per- 
 sonal beauty, and inclined to despise early youth in 
 the other sex; and six months spen* with Alfred in a 
 quiet country house would probably have left her reason- 
 ably indifferent to him. But the first day she saw him 
 in Silverton House, he brol'e through her guard, and 
 pierced at once to her depths ; first he terrified her by 
 darting through the window to escape : and terror is a 
 passion. So is pity ; and never in her life had she 
 overflowed Avith it as when she saw him drawn out of 
 the tank an 1 laid on the grass. If, after all, he was as 
 sane as he looked, that brave, high-spirited young creature, 
 who preferred death to the touch of coarse confining 
 hands ! 
 
 Kg sooner had he filled her with dismay and pity, than 
 he bounded from the ground before her eyes and fled : 
 she screamed, and hoped he would escape ; she could not 
 help it. Next she saw liim fighting alone against seven 
 or eight, and with unheard-of prowess almost beating
 
 544 HARD CASH. 
 
 them. She sat at the window panting, with clenclied 
 teeth and hands, and wished him to beat, and admired 
 him, wondered at him. He yielded, but not to them : to 
 her. All the compliments she had ever received were 
 tame compared with this one. It thrilled her vanity. 
 He was like the men she had read of, and never seen ; 
 the young knights of chivalry. She glowed all over at 
 him, and detecting herself in time was frightened. Her 
 strong good-sense warned her to beware of this youth, 
 who was nine years her junior, yet had stirred her to all 
 her depths in an hour ; and not to see him nor think of 
 him too much. Accordingly she kept clear of him 
 altogether at first. Pity soon put an end to that ; and 
 she protected and advised him, but with a cold and lofty 
 demeanor put on express. What with her kind acts and 
 her cold manner he did not know what to make of her ; 
 and often turned puzzled earnest eyes upon her, as much 
 as to say, Are you really my friend or not ? Once she 
 forgot herself and smiled so tenderly in answer to these 
 imploring eyes, that his hopes rose very high indeed. 
 He flattered himself she would let him out of the 
 asylum before long. That was all Julia's true lover 
 thought of. 
 
 A feeling hidden, and not suppressed, often grows fast 
 in a vigorous nature. Mrs. Archbold's fancy for Alfred 
 was subjected to this dangerous treatment; and it smoul- 
 dered, and smouldered, till from a penchant it warmed 
 to a fancy, from a fancy to a passion. But penchant, 
 fancy, or passion, she hid it with such cunning and reso- 
 lution, that neither Alfred nor even those of her own 
 sex saw it; nor did a creature even suspect it, except 
 Nurse Hannah ; but her eyes were sharpened by jealousy, 
 for that muscular young virgin was beginning to sigh 
 for him herself, with a gentle timidity that contrasted 
 Vrettily with her biceps muscle and prowess against her 
 own sex.
 
 HARD CASH. 545 
 
 Mrs. Archbold had more passion than tenderness, but 
 ■what woman is not to be surprised and softened ? When 
 her 3'oung favorite, the greatest fighter she had ever 
 seen, broke down at the end of his gallant effort and 
 began to cry like a girl, her bowels of compassion yearned 
 within her, and she longed to cry with him. She only 
 saved herself from some imprudence by flight, and had 
 her cry alone. After a flow of tears such a woman is 
 invincible ; she treated Alfred at tea-time with remark- 
 able coldness and reserve. This piece of acting led to 
 unlooked-for consequences ; it emboldened Cooper, who 
 was raging against Alfred for telling the justices, but 
 had forborne from violence, for fear of getting the house 
 into a fresh scrape. He now went to the doctor, and 
 asked for a powerful drastic ; Bailey gave him two pills, 
 or rather boluses, containing croton-oil — i7iter alia ; for 
 Bailey was one of the farraginous fools of the unscien- 
 tific science. Armed with this weapon of destruction, 
 Cooper entered Alfred's bedroom at night, and ordered 
 him to take them : he refused. Cooper whistled, and 
 four attendants came. Alfred knew he should soon be 
 powerless ; he lost no time, sprang at Cooper, and with 
 his long arm landed a blow that knocked him against 
 the wall, and in this position, where his body could not 
 give, struck him again with his whole soul, and cut his 
 cheek right open. The next minute he was pinned, 
 handcuffed, and in a strait-jacket, after crippling one 
 assailant with a kick on the knee. 
 
 Cooper, half-stunned, and bleeding like a pig, recov- 
 ered himself now, and burned for revenge. He uttered 
 a frightful oath, and jumped on Alfred as he lay bound 
 and powerless, and gave him a lesson he never forgot. 
 
 Every art has its secrets ; the attendants in such mad- 
 houses as this have been for years possessed of one they 
 are too modest to reveal to justices, commissioners, or
 
 546 HARD CASH. 
 
 the public : the art of breaking a man's ribs, or breast 
 bone, or both, without bruising him externally. The 
 convicts at Toulon arrive at a similar result by another 
 branch of the art: they stuff the skin of a conger eel 
 with powdered stone ; then give the obnoxious person a 
 sly crack with it ; and a rib or backbone is broken with 
 no contusion to mark the external violence used. But 
 Mr. Cooper and his fellows do their work with the knee- 
 joint: it is round, and leaves no bruise. They subdue 
 the patient by walking up and down him on their knees. 
 If they don't jump on him, as well as promenade him, 
 the man's spirit is often the only thing broken ; if they 
 do, the man is apt to be broken bodily as well as mentally. 
 Thus died Mr. Sizer in ISo-l, and two others quite 
 recently. And how many more, God only knows ; we 
 can't count the stones at the bottom of a dark well. 
 
 Cooper then sprang furiously on Alfred, and went 
 kneeling up and down him. Cooper was a heavy man, 
 and his weight crushed and hurt the victim's legs ; but 
 that was a trifle ; as often as he kneeled on Alfred's chest, 
 the crushed one's whole framework seemed giving way, 
 and he could scarcely breathe. But Brown drew Cooper 
 back by the collar, saying, " D'ye want to kill him ? " 
 And at this moment Mrs. Archbold, who was on the 
 Avatch, came in with Hannah and another nurse, and the 
 three women at a word from their leader pinned Cooper 
 simultaneously, and, taking him at a disadvantage, hand- 
 cuffed him in a moment with a strength, sharpness, skill, 
 and determination not to be found in women out of a 
 madhouse — luckily for the newspaper husbands. 
 
 The other keepers looked astounded at this master- 
 stroke ; but, as no servant had ever affronted Mrs. Arch- 
 bold without being dismissed directly, they took their 
 cue and said, " We advised him, ma'am, but he would not 
 listen to us."
 
 HARD CASH. 547 
 
 " Cooper," said Mrs. Archbold as soon as she recovered 
 her breath, " you are not fit for your place. To-morrow 
 you go, or I go." 
 
 Cooper, cowed in a moment by the handcuffs, began 
 to whine and say that it was all Alfred's fault. 
 
 But Mrs. Archbold was now carried away by two pas- 
 sions instead of one, and they were together too much for 
 prudence ; she took a handful of glossy locks out of her 
 bosom and shook them in Cooper's face. 
 
 "You monster !" said she; "you should go, iov that, 
 if you were my own brother." 
 
 The two young nurses assented loudly, and turned and 
 cackled at Cooper for cutting off such lovely hair. 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders at them, and said, sulkily, 
 to Mrs. Archbold, " Oh, I didn't know. Of course, if 
 you have fallen in love with him, my cake is burnt. 
 'Tisn't the first lunatic you have taken a fancy to." 
 
 At this brutal speech, all the more intolerable for not 
 being quite false, Mrs. Archbold turned ashy pale and 
 looked round for a weapon to strike him dead ; but 
 found none so handy and so deadly as her tongue. 
 
 " It is not the first you have tried to murder," said 
 she. " I know all about that death in Calton Retreat : 
 3^ou kept it dark before the coroner, but it is not too late, 
 I'll open the world's eyes ; I was only going to dismiss 
 you, sir: but you have insulted me. I'll hang you in 
 reply." 
 
 Cooper turned very pale and was silent ; his tongue 
 clove to the roof of his mouth. 
 
 But a feeble, unexpected voice issued from the bed 
 and murmured cheerfully, though with some difficulty, a 
 single word : — 
 
 "Justice!" 
 
 At an expression so out of place, they all started with 
 surprise.
 
 548 HARD CASH. 
 
 Alfred went on: "You are putting the saddle on the 
 wrong horse. The fault lies with those villains Baker 
 and Bailey. Cooper is only a servant, you know, and 
 obeys orders." 
 
 '' What business had the wretch to cut you' hair off ? " 
 said Mrs. Archbold, turning on Alfred w. ih flashing 
 eyes. Her blood once up, she was ready to quarrel even 
 with him for taking part against himself. 
 
 "Because he was ordered to put on a blister, and hair 
 must come off before a blister can go on," replied Alfred, 
 soberly. 
 
 "That is no excuse for him beating you, and trying to 
 break your front teeth." 
 
 She didn't mind so much about his side ribs. 
 
 " No," replied Alfred. " But I hit him first ; look at 
 the bloke's face. Dear Mrs. Archbold, you are my best 
 friend in this horrid place, and you have beautiful eyes, 
 and talk of teeth, look at yours ! but you haven't much 
 sense of justice : forgive me for saying so. Put the 
 proposition into signs ; there is nothing like that for 
 clearing away prejudice. B and C have a scrimmage: 
 B begins it, C gets the worst of it ; in comes A and 
 turns away — C. Is that justice ? It is me you ought 
 to turn away; and I Avish to Heaven you would: dear 
 Mrs. Archbold, do pray turn me away, and keep the 
 other blackguard." 
 
 At this extraordinary and, if I may be allowed the 
 expression, Alfredian speech, the men first stared, and 
 then laughed; the women smiled, and then were nearer 
 crying than laughing. 
 
 And so it was, that justice handcuffed, strait-jacketed, 
 blistered, and impartial, sent from its bed of torture a 
 beam through Cooper's tough hide to his inner heart. 
 He hung his head and stepped towards Alfred : " You're 
 what I call a man," he said. " I don't care a curse
 
 HARD CASH. 540 
 
 whether I stay or go, after what she has said to lue. 
 But, come what may, you're a gentleman, and one as can 
 put hisself in a poor man's place. Why, sir, I wasn't 
 always so rough ; but I have been twenty years at it ; 
 and mad folk they'd Avear the patience out of Jove, and 
 the milk of human kindness out of saints and opossums. 
 However, if I was to stay here all my life, instead of 
 going to-morrow, I'd never lift hand to trouble you again, 
 for you taking my part against yourself like that." 
 
 " I'll put that to the test," said Mrs. Archbold, sharply. 
 " Stay — on your probation. Hannah ! " 
 
 And baby-face biceps at a look took off his handcuffs ; 
 which she had been prominent in putting on. 
 
 This extraordinary scene ended in the men being dis- 
 missed, and the women remaining and going to work 
 after their kind. 
 
 "The bed is too short, for one thing," said Hannah. 
 *' Look at his poor feet sticking out, and cold as a stone. 
 Just feel of them, Jane." 
 
 "No, no; murder!" cried Alfred ; " that tickles." 
 
 Hannah ran for a chair, Jane for another pillow. Mrs. 
 Archbold took off his handcuffs, and, passing her hand 
 softly and caressingly over his head, lamented the loss 
 of his poor hair. Amongst them they relieved him of 
 his strait-jacket, set up his head, covered his feet, and he 
 slept like a top for want of drastics and opiates, and in 
 spite of some brilliant charges by the Liliputian cavalry. 
 
 After this the attendants never molested Alfred again ; 
 nor did the doctor ; for Mrs. Archbold got his boluses, 
 and sent them up to a famous analyzing chemist in 
 London, and told him she had ; and said, " I'll thank you 
 not to prescribe at random for tliat patient any more." 
 He took the lady's prescription, coming as it did in a 
 voice quietly grim, and with a momentary but wicked 
 glance shot from under her black brows.
 
 650 HARD CASH. 
 
 Alfred was all the more miserable at his confinement : 
 his melancholy deepened now there was no fighting to 
 excite him. A handsome, bright young face clouded 
 with sadness is very joitiable, and I need not say that 
 both the women who had fallen in love with him had 
 their eyes, or at least the tails of their eyes, forever on 
 his face. The result varied with the characters of the 
 watchers. That young face, ever sad, made Mrs. Arch- 
 bold sigh, and long to make him happy under her wing. 
 . How it wrought on the purer and more womanly Hannah 
 will be revealed by the incident I have to relate. Alfred 
 was sitting on a bench in the corridor bowed down by 
 grief, and the Archbold lurking in a room hard by, feast- 
 ing her eyes on him through an aperture in the door 
 — caused by the inspection plate being under repair — 
 when an erotic maniac was driven past. She had ob- 
 tained access — with marvellous cunning — to the men's 
 side ; but was now coming back with a flea in her ear, 
 and faster than she went, being handcuffed and pro- 
 pelled by baby-face biceps. On passing the disconso- 
 late Alfred, the latter eyed him coyly, gave her stray 
 sheep a coarse push — as one pushes a thing — and laid 
 a timid hand, gentle as falling down, upon the rougher 
 sex. Contrast sudden and funny. 
 
 " Don't be so sad, sir," she murmured, cooing like the 
 gentlest of doves. " I can't bear to see you look like 
 that." 
 
 Alfred looked up, and met her full with his mournful, 
 honest eyes. " Ah, Hannah, how can I be anything but 
 sad, imprisoned here, sane amongst the mad ? " 
 
 " Well, and so am I, sir ; so is Mrs. Archbold herself." 
 
 " Ay, but you have not been entrapped, imprisoned, on 
 your wedding-day. I cannot even get a word sent to my 
 Julia, my wife that ought to be. Only think of the 
 affront they have made me put on hei- I love better, ten
 
 HARD CASH. 551 
 
 times better, than mj-self. Why, she must have been 
 waiting for me, humiliated perliaps b}^ my absence. 
 ^yllat will she think of me ? The rogues will tell her a 
 thousand lies : she is very high-spirited, Hannah, impetu- 
 ous like myself, only so gentle and so good; oh, my 
 angel, my angel, I shall lose you forever ! " 
 
 Hannah clasped her hands, with tears in her eyes ; 
 "Xo, no," she cried; "it is a burning shame to part 
 true lovers like you and her. Hush ! speak low. Brown 
 told me you are as well as he is.'' 
 
 " God bless him for it, then." 
 
 " You have got money, they say : try it on with 
 Brown." 
 
 " I wilL Oh, you darling ! "\Miat is the matter ? " 
 
 For baby-face was beginning to whimper. 
 
 " Oh, nothing, sir ; only you are so glad to go ; and we 
 shall be sorry to part with you, but you won't care for 
 that. Oh! oh! oh!" 
 
 " "What, do you think I shall forget you and your 
 kindness ? Never. I'll square accounts with friends 
 and foes ; not one shall be forgotten." 
 
 " Don't offer me any of your money," sobbed Hannah, 
 " for I wouldn't touch it. Good-by," said she : " I sha'n't 
 have as much as a kiss for it, I'll be bound. Good-by," 
 said she again, and never moved. 
 
 " Oh, won't you, though ? " cried Alfred, gayly. " What 
 is that ? and that ? and that ? Now what on earth are 
 you crying about ? Dry your tears, you dear good- 
 hearted girl : no, I'll dry them for you." 
 
 He took out a white handkerchief, and dried her 
 cheeks gently for her, and gave her a parting kiss ; but 
 the Archbold's patience was exhausted : a door opened 
 nearly opposite, and there she stood yellow with jeal- 
 ousy, and sombre as night with her ebon brows. At 
 sight of this lowering figure Hannah uttered a squawk,
 
 552 HARD CA.SH. 
 
 and fled with cheeks red as fire. Alfred, not aware of 
 Mrs. Archbold's smouldering passion, and little dream- 
 ing that jealous angi ish and rage stood incarnate before 
 him, burst out laughing Kke mischievous boy. On this 
 she swept upon him, and took him by both shoulders, 
 and awed him wit her lowering brows close to his. 
 " You ungrateful wretch," she said, violently, and 
 panted. 
 
 His color rose. * Ungrateful ? That I am not, 
 madam. Why do you cail me so ? " 
 
 " You are, you are. Whc^t have I done to you that 
 you run from me to the very servants ? However, she 
 shall be packed off this very night, and you to thank 
 for it." 
 
 This was the way to wound the generous youth. 
 " Now it is you that are ungenerous," he said. " What 
 harm has the poor girl done ? She had a virtuous 
 movement, and pitied me for the heartless fraud I suf- 
 fer by ; that is all. Pray, do you never pity me ? " 
 
 "Was it this virtuous movement set her kissing you?" 
 said the Archbold, clenching her teeth as if the word 
 stung her, like the sight. 
 
 " She didn't, now," said Alfred : " it was I kissed 
 her." 
 
 " And yet you pretend to love your Julia so truly ? " 
 
 " This is no place for that sacred name, madam. But 
 be sure I have no sec ets from her, and kiss nobody she 
 would not kiss hers K." 
 
 " She must be a very accommodating young lady." 
 
 At this insult Alf vid rosv. pale with anger, and was 
 about to efy his monitor mortally, but the quick-witted 
 woman saw and uisarmed him ; in one moment, before 
 ever he could speak, she was a transformed creature, a 
 penitent : she put her hands together supplicatiugly, and 
 murmured, —
 
 HARD CASH, 553 
 
 "I didn't mean it: I respect her and your love for 
 her : forgive me, Alfred ; I am so unhappy ; oh, forgive 
 mc !" 
 
 And behold, she held his hand between her soft, 
 burning palms, and her proud head sank languidly on 
 his shoulder, and the inevitable tears ran gently. 
 
 Morals apart, it was glorious love-making. 
 
 "Bother the woman !" thought Alfred. 
 
 "Promise me not to do it again," she murmured, 
 "and the girl shall stay." 
 
 "O Lord, yes ! I promise ; though I can't see what it 
 matters to you." 
 
 "Not much, cruel boy, alas ! but it matters to her ; 
 for," — she kissed Alfred's hand gently and rose to her 
 feet and moved away, but at the second step turned her 
 head sudden as a bird and finished her sentence, — "if 
 you kiss her before me, I shall kill her before you." 
 
 Here was a fresh complication. The men had left ofif 
 blistering, torturing, and bullying him ; but his guardian 
 angels, the women, were turning up their sleeves to pull 
 caps over him, and plenty of the random scratches 
 would fall on him. If anything could have made him 
 pine more to be out of the horrid place, this voluptuous 
 prospect would. He hunted everywhere for Brown. 
 But he was away the day with a patient. At night he 
 lay awake for a long time, thinking how he should open 
 the negotiation : he shrank from it. He felt a delicacy 
 about bribing Beelzebub's servant to betray him. 
 
 As Hannah had originated the idea, he thought he 
 might very well ask her to do the dirty work of bribing 
 Brown, and he would pay her for it : only in money, not 
 kisses. With this resolution he sank to sleep ; and his 
 s])irit broke prison : he stood with Julia before the 
 altar, and the priest made them one. Then the church 
 and the company and daylight disappeared, and her own
 
 554 HARD CASH. 
 
 sweet, low, moving voice came thrilling, "My own, 
 own, own." She murmured, "I love you ten times 
 more for all you have endured for me ;'' and with this 
 her sweet lips settled on his like the dew. 
 
 Impartial sleep flies at the steps of the scaffold and 
 the gate of Elysium : so Alfred awoke at the above, but 
 doubted whether he was quite awake, for two velvet lips 
 seemed to be still touching his. He stirred, and some- 
 body was gone like the wind, with a rustle of flying pet- 
 ticoats, and his door shut in a moment : it closed with 
 a catch-lock. This dastardly vision had opened it with 
 her key, and left it open to make good her retreat if 
 he should awake. Alfred sat up in bed indignant, and 
 somewhat fluttered. "Confound her impudence !" said 
 he. But there was no help for it : he grinned and bore 
 it, as he had the blisters, and boluses, etc., rolled the 
 clothes round his shoulders, and off to the sleep of the 
 just again. Not so the passionate hypocrite, who, mad- 
 dened by a paroxysm of jealousy, had taken this cow- 
 ardly advantage of a prisoner. She had sucked fresh 
 poison from those honest lips, and filled her veins with 
 molten fire. She tossed and turned the livelong night 
 in a high fever of passion, nor were the cold chills 
 wanting of shame and fear at what she had done. 
 
 In the morning Alfred remembered this substantial 
 vision, and determined to find out which of those two it 
 was. "I shall know by her looks," said he : "she won't 
 be able to meet my eye." Well, the first he saw was 
 Mrs. Archbold. She met his eye full with a mild and 
 pensive dignity. "Come, it is not you," thought Al- 
 fred. Presently he fell in with Hannah. She wore a se- 
 rene, infantine face, the picture of unobtrusive modesty. 
 Alfred was dumfounded. "It's not this one, either," 
 said he. "But then, it must. Confound her impudence 
 for looking so modest !" However, he did not speak to
 
 HARD CASH. 555 
 
 her: he was looking out for a face that interested him 
 far more, — the weather-beaten countenance of Giles 
 Brown. He saw him once or twice, but could not get 
 him alone till the afternoon. He invited him into his 
 room, and, when he goi him there, lost no time. " Just 
 look me in the face. Brown," said he quietly. Brown 
 looked him in the face. 
 
 " Xow, sir, am I mad or sane ? " 
 
 Brown turned his head away. Alfred laughed. " No, 
 no, none of your tricks, old fellow : look me in the face 
 while you anower." 
 
 The man -folored. " I can't look a gentleman like you 
 in the face, and tell him he is mad." 
 
 "I should think not. Well, now, what shall I give 
 you to help me escape ? " 
 
 " Hush ! don't mention that, sir : it's as much as my 
 place is worth even to listen to you." 
 
 " Well, then I must give a^ou as much as your place is 
 worth. Please to calculate that, and name the figure." 
 
 " My place ! I wouldn't lose it for a hundred pounds." 
 
 " Exactly. Then I'll give you a hundred guineas." 
 
 " And how am I to get my money, sir ? " 
 
 " The first time you are out, come to Albion Villa, in 
 Barkington, and I'll have it all ready for you." 
 
 " And suppose you were to say, ' Xo : you didn't 
 ought ever to have been confined ? ' " 
 
 " I must trouble you to look in my face again, ]\Ir. 
 Brown. Now, do you see treason, bad faith, avarice, in- 
 gratitude, rascality, in it ? " 
 
 "Not a grain of 'em," said Brown, with an accent of 
 conviction. " Well, now, I'll tell you the truth. I can 
 read a gent by this time, and I'm no more afeared for 
 the money than if I had it in my hand. But, ye see 
 my stomach won't let me do it." 
 
 This was a sad disappointment, so sudden, too.
 
 556 HARD CASH. 
 
 " Your stomach ? " said Alfred, ruefully. " What do you 
 mean ? " 
 
 " Ay, my stomach. Wouldn't your stomach rise against 
 serving a man that had done you the worst turn one man 
 can do another, — been and robbed you of your sweet- 
 heart ? " 
 
 Alfred stared with amazement. 
 
 Brown continued, and now with some emotion : " Han- 
 nah Blake and I were very good friends till you came ; 
 and I was thinking of asking her to name the day, but 
 now she won't look at me. * Don't come teasing me,' 
 says she, ' I am meat for your master.' It's you that 
 have turned the girl's head, sir." 
 
 *' Bother the women I " said Alfred, cordially. " Oh, 
 what plagues they are ! And how unjust you are, to 
 spite me for the fault of another. Can I help the fools 
 from spooning upon me ? " He reflected a moment, then 
 burst out, " Brown, 3-ou are a duffer, a regular duffer. 
 What, don't you see your game is to get me out of the 
 place ? If you do, in forty-eight hours I shall be mar- 
 ried to my Julia, and that dumpling-faced girl will be 
 cured. But if you keep me here, by Gee ! sir, I'll make 
 hot love to your Hannah, boiling hot, hotter than ever 
 was, — out of the isles of Greece. Oh ! do help me out, 
 and I'll give you the hundred pounds, and I'll give 
 Hannah another hundred pounds, on condition she mar- 
 ries you ; and if she won't marry you, she sha'n't have 
 a farthing, only a good hiding." 
 
 Brown was overpowered by his maniac's logic. " You 
 have a head," said he ; " there's my hand : I'll go in, if 
 I die for it." 
 
 They now put their heads together over the means. 
 Brown's plan was to wait, and wait, for an opportunity ; 
 Alfred's was to make one this very ntght. 
 
 " But how can I ? " said Brown. '•' I sha'n't have the
 
 HARD CASH. 557 
 
 key of your room, I am not ou watch in your part 
 to-night." 
 
 '' Borrow Hannah's." 
 
 '' Hannah's ? She has got no key of the male patients' 
 rooms." 
 
 " Oh, yes, she has ; of mine, at all events." 
 
 " What makes you think that, sir ? " said Brown, 
 suspiciously. 
 
 Alfred didn't know what to say : he could not tell him 
 why he felt sure she had a key. 
 
 "Just go quietly and ask her for it," said he; "don't 
 tell her I sent you, now." 
 
 Brown obeyed, and returned in half an hour with the 
 key of the vacant bedroom, where the hobbles and chains 
 were hidden on the arrival of the justices. 
 
 " She tells me this is the only key she has of any 
 room in this corridor. But, dear heart," said Brown, 
 '•' how quick-sighted the women are ! She said, says she, 
 ' If it is to bring sorrowful true lovers together again, 
 Giles, or the like of that, I'll try and get the key you 
 want off Mrs. Archbold's bunch, though I get the sack 
 for it,' says she. ' I know she leaves them in the parlor 
 at night,' says Hannah. She is a trump, you must 
 allow." 
 
 Alfred colored up. He suspected he had been unjust. 
 
 "She is a good, kind, single-hearted girl," said he; 
 " and neither of you shall find me ungrateful." 
 
 It was evident, by the alacrity Brown now showed, 
 that he had got his orders from Hannah. 
 
 It was agreed that Alfred should lie down at night in 
 his clothes, ready to seize the right moment ; that Han- 
 nah should get the key, and watch the coast clear, and 
 let him out into the corridor ; and Brown get him down 
 by a back stairs, and out on the lawn. There he would 
 find a ladder close by the wall, and his own arms and 
 legs must do the rest.
 
 658 HARD CASH. 
 
 And now Alfred was a changed creature; his eye 
 sparkled ; he walked on air, and already sniffed the air 
 of liberty. 
 
 After tea Brown brought in some newspapers, and 
 made Alfred a signal, previously agreed on, that the 
 ladder was under the east wall. He went to bed early, 
 put on his tweed shooting-jacket and trousers, and lay 
 listening to the clock with beating heart. 
 
 At first, feet passed to and fro from time to time. 
 These became less frequent as the night wore on. 
 
 Presently a light foot passed, stopped at the door, and 
 made a sharp scratch on it with some metal instrument. 
 
 It was the key. The time was not ripe to use it, but 
 good Hannah had taken this way to let him know she 
 had got it. 
 
 This little scratch outside his door, oh, it made his 
 heart leap and thrill. One great difficulty was overcome. 
 He waited, and waited, but with glowing, hopeful heart* 
 and at last a foot came SAviftly, the key turned, and 
 Hannah opened the door. She had a bull's-eye lantern. 
 
 " Take your shoes in your hand," she whispered, " and 
 follow me." 
 
 He followed her. She led him in and out, to the door 
 of the public room belonging to the second-class patients. 
 Then she drew her whistle, and breathed very softly. 
 Brown answered as softly from the other end. He was 
 waiting at the opposite door. 
 
 "All right," said she; "the dangerous part is over." 
 She put a key into the door, and said very softly, " Good- 
 by." 
 
 " God bless you, Hannah ! " said Alfred, with deep 
 emotion. " God in heaven bless you for this ! " 
 
 " He will. He does," said the single-hearted girl, and 
 put her other hand to her breast with a great gulp. She 
 opened the door slowly. "Good-by, dear. I shall never 
 see you again."
 
 HARD CASH. 559 
 
 And so these two parted ; for Hannah couhl not bear 
 the sight of Giles at that moment. He was welcome to 
 Alfred though, most welcome, and conducted him by 
 devious ways to the kitchen, lantern in hand. 
 
 He opened the kitchen-door softly, and saw two burly 
 strangers seated at a table, eating with all their souls, 
 and Mrs. Archbold standing before the fire, but looking 
 towards him: for she had heard his footsteps ever so 
 far off. 
 
 The men looked up, and saw Alfred. They rose to 
 their feet, and said, " This will be the gentleman, madam ? " 
 
 "Yes," said ]\[rs. Archbold. 
 
 "Your servant, sir," said the man very civilly. "If 
 you are ready we are."
 
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