UCSB LIBRARY 
 

 
 - 
 
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 A IP IP 1L IE IP (DIPS 
 TALES FOR THE PEOPLE, 
 
 AND THEIR CHILDREN. 
 
 The greatest care has been taken in selecting the works of which 
 
 the collection is composed, so that nothing either mediocre in 
 
 talent, or immoral in tendency, is admitted. 
 
 The following are comprised in the series, uniform in size and style : 
 MY UNCLE THE CLOCKMAKER. By Mary Howitt. 37 1-2 cts. 
 THE SETTLERS IN CANADA; written for Young People. By 
 
 Capt. Marryat. 2 vols., 75 cents. 
 DOMESTIC TALES AND ALLEGORIES. By Hannah More. 
 
 37 1-2 cents. 
 RURAL TALES ; portraying Social Life. By Hannah More. 37 1-8 
 
 cents. 
 THE POPLAR GROVE ; or, Little Harry and his Uncle Benjamin. 
 
 By Mrs. Copley. 37 1-2 cents. 
 
 EARLY FRIENDSHIPS. By Mrs, Copley. 37 1-2 cents. 
 THE CROFTON BOYS. By Harriet Martineau. 37 1-2 cents. 
 THE PEASANT AND THE PRINCE. By Harriet Martineau. 
 
 37 1-2 cents. 
 
 THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER. By Mrs. Cameron. 37 1-2 cents. 
 MASTERMAN READY ; or, the Wreck of the Pacific. Written 
 
 for Young People. By Captain Marryat. Three volumes ; each 
 
 37 1-2 cents. 
 
 THE LOOKING-GLASS FOR THE MIND ; or, Intellectual Mir- 
 ror. An elegant collection of Delightful Stories and Tales ; 
 
 many plates. 50 cents. 
 HOPE ON, HOPE EVER ; or, the Boyhood of Felix Law. By 
 
 Marv Howitt. 37 1-2 cents. 
 
 STRIVE AND THRIVE ; a Tale. By Mary Howitt. 37 1-2 cents. 
 SOWING AND REAPING : or, What will Come of it ? By Mary 
 
 Howitt. 37 1-2 cents. 
 WHO SHALL BE GREATEST ? a Tale. By Mary Howitt. 37 l- 
 
 cents. 
 WHICH IS THE WISER 1 or, People Abroad. By Mary Howitt. 
 
 37 1-2 cents. 
 LITTLE COIN, MUCH CARE ; or, How Poor People Live. By 
 
 Mary Howitt. 37 1-2 cents. 
 WORK AND WAGES ; or, Life in Service. By Mary Howitt 
 
 37 1-2 cents. 
 
 ALICE FRANKLIN. By Mary Howitt. "" 1-2 cents. 
 NO SENSE LIKE COMMON SENSE. By Maiy Howitt. 371-2cts. 
 THE DANGERS OF DINING OUT: To which is added the Con. 
 
 fessions of a Maniac. By Mrs. Ellis. 37 1-2 cents. 
 SOMERVILLE HALL : To which is added the Rising Tide. By Mr. 
 
 Ellis. 37 1-2 cents. 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS; or, Hints to those who would make Horn* 
 
 Happy. By Mrs. Ellis. 37 1-2 cents. 
 MINISTER'S FAMILY ; or, Hints to those who would make Horn* 
 
 Happy. By Mrs. Ellis. 37 1-2 ceots. 
 
 THE TWIN SISTERS ; a Tale By Mrs. Sandham. 37 1-2 cents. 
 TIRED OF HOUSEKEEPING; aTale. By T. S. Arthur. 37 1-8 ct* 
 YOUNG STUDENT. By Madame Guizot. 3 vols. $1 12. 
 
 OVE AND MONEY. By Mary Howitt. 37 1-2 cent. 
 
 ** Other works of equal interest will be added to tee erie*.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PASS 
 
 I. TOM FLETCHER THE CARRIER is OVERTAKEN BY A 
 
 PEDESTRIAN STRANGER .... 3 
 
 II. JOHN Fox SETTLES HIMSELF AT LENISCAR . . 14 
 
 III. DOUBLE LIGHTS ARE THROWN ACROSS JOHN Fox 30 
 
 IV. A STARTLING SIGHT INTRODUCES A STRANGE STORY 38 
 Y. THE FLAMSTEADS AND THEIR FORTUNES . . 45 
 
 VI. NEW FORTUNES OF THE FLAMSTEADS . . . 64 
 VII. A CLOUD ON THE SUNSHINE ... .78 
 
 VIII. DARKDAYI 100 
 
 IX. FRIENDS IN NEED AND PLANS IN NEED . .114 
 X. THE LAST DROP TO THE FULL CUP . . . 129 
 
 XI. JOHN Fox AGAIN 141 
 
 XII. THE OLD CLOCK WOOND DP AGAIN . . . 155
 
 NTISI'IECE.
 
 BY 
 
 D.APPLETON & CO., 200 BROADWAY 
 
 P H I LAD t LPH I A . 
 
 GE-ORGEL S.APPLELTON. 1*8 CHLSTNi 
 MDGCOXL.V.
 
 MY UNCLE THE CLOCKMAKER. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 TOM FLETCHER THE CARRIER IS OVERTAKEN BY A 
 PEDESTRIAN STRANGER. 
 
 THE dusk of an April evening was falling sombrely 
 over the earth, as a heavily-laden covered cart paused 
 at the foot of a long ascent towards a village in 
 Derbyshire. The cart was piled up with all sorts 
 of tubs, boxes, and packages, such as are generally 
 seen in the cart of a village carrier who goes weekly 
 between his own hamlet and the next market town, 
 taking thither the eggs, butter, &c. of his neighbours, 
 and bringing them back sundry things from the shops 
 in return, besides lots of things for the little shop- 
 keepers of the village tea-chests, sugar-tubs, soap- 
 boxes, brushes, and the like. Ay, many a time had 
 the lads of the villages through which that old cart 
 passed weekly, got behind it to speculate on the 
 precious contents of those packages. The little round 
 casks that made their mouths water, for they knew 
 that they were full of figs ; those mats, that were 
 stitched up so provokingly close, and, no doubt, were 
 almost bursting with oranges, or nuts, or almonds, or 
 raisin? ; and those long boxes with split hazel bands 
 on the outside, and so slightly made, that when the 
 bands were loosened, they seemed as if they would 
 fall to pieces. What did those long, pointed, flag* 
 like leaves, that stuck out between the box and the
 
 4 TOM FLETCHER THE CARRIER IS OVERTAKEN 
 
 lid, tell of but Spanish juice 1 That old cart was a 
 regular tantalizer every Saturday afternoon, as it went 
 slowly homeward through half-a-dozen villages and 
 paused, not for a very short time, occasionally before 
 the village ale-houses, for the carrier to wash the 
 dust out of his throat, as he said. Yet a most 
 slovenly and dirty old vehicle it was, nevertheless 
 splashed and daubed up to the very awning of tar- 
 pauling with one layer of mud on another ; for the 
 roads there, in those days, were of a most terrific 
 nature, and old Tom Fletcher the carrier thought it 
 totally waste of time to wash his cart, though he had 
 a week to do it in, being of the opinion of Dean 
 Swift's servant, that it would soon want doing again. 
 The very board on which his name was painted, as 
 by law required, was so splashed over, that nobody 
 was any the wiser for it ; and the oil-horn, which 
 contained the greasing for the wheels, and hung 
 dangling at the side of one of the &aid wheels, was so 
 encrusted with repeated layers of mud, that a very 
 animated dispute might have been held as to the fact 
 of its being a horn at all. That it was for the pur- 
 pose of lubricating the cart axles, you could see by 
 the quill end of a great stout turkey's feather sticking 
 up out of it, and partly keeping open the lid. 
 
 The cart was drawn by a sturdy bay horse, whose 
 shaggy heels were also loaded with the mud of the 
 roads, and no small quantity of the same abundant 
 article hung on his sides and in his long mane, which 
 wasofpale tawny hair, as if it had been faded by the sun. 
 The horse, which was, moreover, what is called a bald- 
 faced one, that is, had the greater part, and one eye, 
 white, was as remarkable a looking beast as you could 
 chance to see. He appeared to understand his busi- 
 ness as well as his master ; and when he came to the
 
 BY A PEDESTRIAN STRANGER. 5 
 
 foot of this ascent, he quietly stood still without his 
 driver having to say " Wo." He had stopped on this 
 spot, to an inch, every Saturday evening, at about 
 the same time, for the last seven years ; and, indeed, 
 through the whole ten miles of road that he was 
 accustomed to drag his load, summer and winter, he 
 had his regular places to stop, or to draw on more 
 actively, and his times for pausing, which he regulated 
 with very little order or direction from his master. 
 Indeed, so exact had the habits of the horse become, 
 that when he stopped out of his regular routine, or 
 stood still longer than his wont, Torn Fletcher the 
 carrier would say, " What ails thee, Smiler ? " and 
 would instantly look to see if his gears were all right, 
 or if he had got a pebble in his foot ; and if he did 
 not discover, which, however, was seldom the case, 
 the cause of this deviation from Smiler's usual habits, 
 would say, " Od rot thee, what ails thee ? arta turn- 
 ing lazy, or arta getting oud like thy mester ? Cup, 
 man, that '11 niver do; we canna afford to get either oud 
 or lazy ! Gee ! com mother- who ! " and a crack of his 
 whip put fresh life into the faithful old creature. 
 
 Tom Fletcher himself was as complete a character 
 as his horse, nay, he was so much of a character, that 
 he would not have set the value of a straw on his 
 horse if it had not been a kind of oddity, and had 
 had a will of its own. Tom was a sturdily-built 
 man of nearly sixty years of age, forty of which he 
 had plodded once a- week over this very ground to 
 the town of Nottingham and back. His figure now 
 stooped considerably forward, and except when he 
 stopped to speak to any one, he went along beside 
 his cart, with his face directed on the ground before 
 him, as if he were in deep thought, although what 
 his thoughts were about, it would have been difficult 
 
 B2
 
 6 TOM FLKTCHER THE CARRIER IS OVERTAKEN 
 
 to say. When he did lift up his head to speak 
 to you, or to address his word of command or 
 of encouragement to Smiler, you then saw a ruddy 
 face, full of strong sense and dry humour. His large 
 grey eyes had a quiet knowing look, from under the 
 broad brim of his old hat, that had generally a penny- 
 worth of whip-cord twisted under the band, in case 
 he should lose that from his lash. He wore sturdy 
 tall ankle boots, and old leather leggins, and over hig 
 coat a blue carter's frock, which frock, as he went 
 along, was generally twisted up, and tucked in at the 
 waist, so as to allow him to keep a hand in each 
 capacious outside pocket of his coat, with his whip 
 sticking up behind his arm. Out of these pockets 
 his hands were seldom drawn, except to lift and crack 
 his whip, to lift the beer-pot to his mouth at the road- 
 side alehouse, or to pull forth and deliver a letter, for 
 he was the postman along his whole line, or to drag 
 out some package from his cart. 
 
 Tom was a man of much business, for, besides all 
 the letters, newspapers, and packets that he had to 
 receive, and with them a most bewildering host of 
 directions how they were to be delivered in Notting- 
 ham, when he got there, from farmers and cottagers 
 and their wives, and from young men and girls to 
 their sweet-hearts, and how he was to bring answers 
 back ; and then all the popping out of doors and 
 garden gates as he came back, to receive these 
 answers, and all the scoldings he got for not finding 
 this or that person at home, and for not bringing 
 answers which had never been sent ; besides all this, 
 it was a manufacturing district, and he had a whole 
 mountain of white bags of stockings to carry to 
 Nottingham, and of cotton to bring from it, with a 
 pocket-full of money for the work done. Tom
 
 BY A PEDESTRIAN STRANGER. 7 
 
 Fletcher was a man, we raay be assured, eagerly 
 looked for at home on a Saturday night. But spite 
 of this, he never hurried himself. All his motions 
 were as regular as clock-work. He started to a 
 minute from home in the morning ; at the very 
 moment when the toll-bar men expected him to be 
 up, and open their gates for him, for he commenced his 
 journey at two or three o'clock in the morning, he 
 was there ; and it was a rare thing if he were not 
 seen coming up the lane into his own village within 
 half-an-hour of his regular time. Tom was a crabbed 
 sort of fellow in his manner, and if any one began to 
 question him, as to what had made him, on any occasion, 
 a few minutes later than usual, it put him amazingly 
 out of humour, and he would bluntly and tartly say, 
 " You sitten a-whom here, and thinken that a 
 hundred things can be done just as soon as one ! 
 Now, do just set off to Nottingham, and run round 
 to a' the hosiers' warehouses, and the grocers' and 
 drapers' shops, and carry a' th' silly bits o' love- 
 letters a' round the town, and come back to a quarter 
 of an hour, and I'll gie ye the cart and horse and every 
 thing into the bargain. Do pray ye, now try it try 
 it, and dunna bother me." 
 
 But Tom was not yet got home to have these 
 questions put to him. He was standing at the bot- 
 tom of the hill about two miles from home. Smiler 
 had made his usual number of snorts and blowings, 
 as if to clear his wind and wind-pipe, and take in a 
 stock of breath for the long pull up the hill ; and 
 Tom Fletcher had just picked up a great pebble to 
 scotch the wheel with when Smiler should stop again 
 in the ascent to rest ; and they were about to go on, 
 when up came a stranger and asked Tom how far it 
 was to the next village.
 
 8 TOM FLETCHER THE CARRIER IS OVERTAKEN 
 
 "As near as I can tell," said Tom, eying the in- 
 quirer, " and I have gone it some four thousand times, 
 it 's about two mile there and one back again." 
 
 " How can that be ?" said the stranger ; " I should 
 think it must be just as far one way as the other." 
 
 " Well, try it then, try it what 's the use of 
 axing me, if you known better than th' bam natives ? 
 Try it, and you'll soon know. Gee-up, Smiler, lad !" 
 
 And with that on went Smiler in good earnest, 
 like a sensible beast, knowing that a tough job was 
 before him. The old cart went on, lumbering up 
 the dirty lane, and its wheels jarring in the deep 
 ruts, and Tom, with his hands in his coat-pockets, 
 went on by its side, looking on the ground, as if 
 he had totally dismissed the stranger from his mind. 
 The stranger, who was a middle-sized but broad- 
 built man, of apparently Tom's own age, went on 
 slowly after, seeming also to think no more of the 
 churlish carrier, than the carrier did of him, but to 
 peer about in the twilight, as if to take cognizance 
 of what sort of a road he was in. He now turned 
 round, and gazed, as well as the feeble remains of 
 light would permit, down the road, then lifted his 
 eyes to the high hedges which stood on equally high 
 banks on each side of the lane ; and then went on 
 again looking, or endeavouring to look, into the banks, 
 as if he would fain discover what plants grew there. 
 
 It was, indeed, a delicious hour and scene. The 
 hedges, composed of tall, overhanging bushes of 
 hawthorn, crab and hazel, were already partly green 
 with their unfolding leaves ; and the banks be- 
 neath them sent forth on "the twilight air every 
 now and then the most delicious odour of violets 
 that grew thickly upon them. The showers of 
 April had at once left a balmy softness in the air,
 
 BY A PEDESTRIAN STRANGER. 9 
 
 that it was a luxury to breathe, and had called 
 forth the spirit of the violet and the primrose to 
 revive in the heart the memory of many a departed 
 spring. It seemed to do this in the bosom of the 
 stranger, for he went on with slower pace, pausing 
 sometimes and uttering to himself "charming! 
 charming ! " But, awakening again as out of his 
 reverie, he moved faster. The carrier's cart could no 
 longer be seen through the gloom, but could still be 
 heard rattling on its way, and every now and then 
 stopping, while the voice of the carrier was loudly 
 heard with its " Wo ! wo ! so then, Smiler ! " as he 
 clapped the great pebble under the wheel, to keep 
 the cart from running back. 
 
 The stranger again came up to him, and, as if not 
 at all regardful of the man's crabbed manner, said, 
 " Well, how is it now, my friend, that you make it 
 out to be twice as far to the village, as it is from it 
 to the bottom of the hill ? " 
 
 " Why, what should measure distance, but time 
 and labour?" said Tom Fletcher; " It 'a all up hill 
 there, and all down hill back again ; and if it do not 
 take you twice as long, and cost you twice as much 
 pains to go one way as the other, why then, call me 
 a sand-bag." 
 
 " Aha ! no bad way of reckoning, after all, and 
 rather new, too, which is something," said the 
 stranger ; " but are you the Leniscar carrier now-a- 
 days ? When I was in this country before, it was 
 one Dick Anthony. The roads were worse then 
 than now, which are still the worst 1 have seen these 
 twenty years ; and Dick went manfully through 
 them for many a year. Is he still living?" 
 
 " Living ?" exclaimed the carrier, " why, do you 
 think folks live here for ever ? I can tell you
 
 10 TOM FLETCHER THE CARRIER IS OVERTAKEN 
 
 that I have been the Leniscar carrier these forty years, 
 and Dick Anthony has been just that time in his grave!" 
 
 " Oh, indeed ! Poor Dick, how soon he must have 
 gone off. Little did I think, when I laughed at his 
 fright in these lanes, that he was so near his end. If 
 you knew Dick, you knew that he was too fond of 
 hot ale, with ginger in it, on his winter journeys, 
 and used sometimes to be missing for whole days 
 when he ought to have brought home the poor 
 people's things and money. Many a time have they 
 had to set out to seek him, and generally found him 
 in a public-house at Kimberly drinking with the 
 topers of the village. On one occasion he said he 
 had had such a fright that he dared not venture 
 forward, that he had seen the foul fiend. When 
 asked, however, to describe him, he could give no 
 farther account of him, than that he was ' all spotted 
 and spangled.' The laughter of the villagers was 
 excessive, and it became a common by-word, thai 
 a thing was ' all spotted and spangled,' like Dick 
 Anthony's devil. Poor Dick ! " 
 
 " M ester," said Tom Fletcher, who now began to 
 appear as curious, as he had before been crusty, " y<? 
 seem to ha' a famous memory. What yo sen is a- 
 by- word here yet." 
 
 " And who are living of the old people here yet f 
 continued the stranger. " Is parson Gould, <y 
 squire Hunter, or Ned Jackson the barber, or Bettj 
 Garner the pinder's widow, or old Thomas Hall, o; 
 who? What is become of the Billiards; are they 
 still here ? and Hives the miller, and those hand- 
 some sons of his?" 
 
 " Beleddy, Mester, yo 're a dab hand at axing 
 questions, at ony rate ! One has to look back a' 
 nation long way into one's books to find what yo
 
 BY A PEDESTRIAN STRANGER. 11 
 
 axen after. Most o' th' od folks yo talken on would 
 be oud folks wi' a vengeance, if they were living 
 now ! Uh, fee, fi, fo, fum, why, they Ve been dead 
 and gone a' most these half-hundred years. I 
 question if th' sexton could find their graves even, 
 he s had such generations to put to bed with his 
 spade since their time ! But I think it 's my turn 
 now to ax a question, and that is, and pray, who 
 may yo be ? Wer ye barn here ? Wer ony o' th' 
 oud ancients ye Ve been axing after yo 're relations ? 
 or how Avar it ? Here yo ha been of a sartinty ; and 
 I, that has spent a' my days here, should know 
 summat about ye!" 
 
 " It's but little that you'll remember of me, my 
 friend. I used to come here on business when I was 
 a youth, often. I was not from here, and none of 
 these people, nor indeed any people in this village of 
 Highknoll, were related to me. But with the fond- 
 ness for scenes where the light-hearted days .of our 
 youth were more or less spent I have a great liking 
 for much of this neighbourhood, and have always 
 determined, if I lived, one day to visit it again. Ah ! 
 beautiful, beautiful days have I spent here ! But 
 you go on farther, do you not to Leniscar ? 
 Thither I am desirous of going. I have a wish to 
 stay there awhile this spring. If the reality equal 
 the sweetness of my memory perhaps I may there 
 end my days. Is the place as still, as retired, as old- 
 fashioned as it was ? Are its old-fashioned cottages, 
 thatched and half-timbered, still standing in their 
 orchards and under their great walnuj trees ; or has 
 the busy, meddling, maiming rage for modern im- 
 provements, like the dry-rot, got in there, eating out all 
 the solid substance of life, and leaving only its form ? " 
 
 " By the mass, but yo done know how to ax
 
 12 TOM FLETCHEtt THE CARRIER IS OVERTAKE* 
 
 questions. Why yo must' be a lawyer. But as to 
 th' oud houses and th' oud trees, there they are, 
 sure enough, just as yo left 'em. Yo were there, 
 didn 't yo say ? " 
 
 " Thank God !" said the stranger; "then there is 
 peace in one place on the earth. Thank God ! 1 
 may hope then for some tranquil days ! " He sighed 
 and was silent. 
 
 Tom Fletcher grew every moment more full of 
 curiosity. Who could this be, that must be pretty 
 much of his mi age, who remembered everything so 
 minutely, and yet whom he could not for the life of 
 him call to mind. 
 
 "And pray what then may yo're name be?" 
 asked he. 
 
 "John Fox." 
 
 "John Fox Fox then of a sartin yo war na 
 barn i' Leniscar. There's no Foxes there, nor 
 hanna been i' my time." 
 
 " I fancy not," said the stranger laconically. 
 
 "And th' oud folks there? What o' th' oud 
 folks there did yo know ? " 
 
 " I did not ask after any old folks there, my friend." 
 
 " No, nor young uns nother, I reckon," added 
 Tom again rather crustily. 
 
 " Nor young ones but as you have asked me 
 mine I will take the liberty to ask you your name. 
 It is only right that we who are travelling on to the 
 same place, and may become neighbours, should be 
 better acquainted." 
 
 "My name, if that'll do yo ony good, is Tom 
 Fletcher." 
 
 " Tom Fletcher ! surely not the Tom Fletcher 
 that I knew. Tom Fletcher, the great, sturdy lad 
 that went to herd the cattle on the common ; that
 
 BY A PEDESTRIAN STRANGER. 13 
 
 had the battle with the great gipsy fellow who 
 would drive off the miller's mare on pretence that it 
 was one he himself had lost, and beat him by sud- 
 denly drawing a great wild-rose shoot with thorns as 
 long and hooked as a hawk's beak across the gipsy's 
 nose and brow, so that the smart and the gush of 
 blood completely disabled him till Tom had time to 
 give the alarm that Tom Fletcher you surely 
 cannot be ! " 
 
 " Zounds, Mester, who are yo I say again ? who 
 are yo? I should know yo, for yo known me. 
 Tell me at once, for tell me yo shall and must." 
 
 " You are then that same Tom Fletcher ?" said 
 the stranger stepping before the carrier. " You are ? 
 No, you cannot be. Time cannot have played such 
 tricks with us. What I what you, Tom Fletcher, 
 this weather-beaten, stooping old man ? Tom, the 
 boy, the jolly boy, the hardy, the warm-hearted 
 Tom, who was ready to be the champion of any one 
 who was weak or abused. Tom, who ducked the 
 tailor in Shaw's mill-dam because he ill-used his 
 parish' prentices 1 Who broke open the pinfold 
 many a night because the pinder did not give fodder 
 to the imprisoned cattle? Who raised a ladder to 
 the hall window, and enabled the maid who was 
 wrongfully accused, as everybody knew, of stealing 
 the squire's spoons, and had only been charged with 
 it from the wicked man's private resentment, and 
 enabled her to escape, and marched with her all night 
 to her own place of abode and friends ? No, this 
 cannot be that Tom Fletcher ! " 
 
 "It is no other, Mester," said Tom in great 
 astonishment ; " but how the dickens yo can remem- 
 ber me a' those years, and I canna, for the life of me, 
 remember yo, that beats me a' to snapdragons."
 
 14 JOHN POX SETTLES HIMSELF 
 
 "Give me your hand, Tom," said the stranger, 
 giving it a hearty gripe. " Rough as is the outside 
 which time and life's storms have given you, there 'a 
 a warm heart beats in that bosom, or nature is a 
 cheat. No, nothing could wholly change that. 
 Never mind if you cannot remember me, there was 
 nothing particular to remember. My mempry has 
 always been extraordinary, and besides, a Tom 
 Fletcher one does not so soon forget. Well, here 
 you are at Highknoll, you will have to stay some- 
 time and deliver your articles I shall post on. I 
 know the way. I shall find the old sign of the Cat 
 and Fiddle still hanging, 1 hope ; and to-morrow at 
 church we shall meet again. Good night." 
 
 With this the stout stranger strode forward, leav- 
 ing Tom Fletcher in such a state of wonderment a* 
 he had not experienced for years. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 JOHN POX SETTLES HIMSELF AT LENISCAR. 
 
 WHEN Tom Fletcher was turning out of his cart 
 the bags of cotton for the village stocking-makers, 
 which he had then and there, on arriving at home, to 
 deliver to the eager expectants, amongst the heavier 
 articles which he was accustomed to leave till the 
 Monday morning, he spied a stout, black portmanteau 
 which he had never seen put hi. It was so common 
 a circumstance, however, for articles to be put into 
 his cart while he was going his rounds in the town, 
 and had left it at the inn in the care of a boy that 
 he paid for the purpose, that this would not at all 
 have attracted his attention in itself. But the kind 
 of article was so very different to what he was accus-
 
 AT LEN1SCAR. 15 
 
 tomed to have committed to his care ; was so sub- 
 stantial, so good, so fashionable even Tom thought, 
 it was, in fact, the travelling portmanteau befitting a 
 gentleman of any rank that he wondered no little 
 in descrying it. " What 's that ?" said he to himself 
 aloud. " What have I got here ? That must be for the 
 stranger gentleman, now, I warrant me ;" and on stoop- 
 ing down to examine its address, sure enough it was for 
 " Mr. John Fox, at the Cat and Fiddle, Leniscar." 
 
 All Tom's curiosity was roused ; he dragged out 
 the large black portmanteau, but with especial care 
 not to rub or injure it against the rough tubs and 
 boxes amongst which it was lodged. The poor people 
 who stood round the end of the cart like a swarm of 
 bees around the entrance to the hive, each eager to 
 seize hold of his bag and see what quantity of work 
 the hosier had sent him for the week, although 
 anxiously bent on their own little but vital interests, 
 and clamorous to have their accounts looked into, 
 and the cash paid by the all-important Tom, having 
 still all their purchases for the Sunday's dinner, &c., 
 to make, yet no sooner saw this unusual object 
 appear at the opening of the cart than they were all 
 at once still. " What have you got there, Thomas ?" 
 asked a dozen voices of men and women at once. 
 
 " Why now, how am I likely to tell yo when I 
 dunna know mysen?" said Tom. 
 
 " By Guy ! but that belongs to some great gen- 
 tleman ; that's such a trunk as never war seen i' this 
 village before. My eye ! but isn't it a smart one ! 
 And what a weight !" said they, lifting it from the 
 ground, where Tom had set it to contemplate it. 
 " And what straps round it, and what neat work, and 
 what a handsome plate ! and, what 's that ? John 
 Fox ay, John Fox, engraved on it. And see on this
 
 16 JOHN FOX SKTTLES IIIMSF-I-F 
 
 ticket hanging to the handle, ' Mr. John Fox, at the 
 Cut and Fiddle !' Oh, the gentleman's at the Cat and 
 Fiddle ! Thomas, who is it ? Who is it, Thomas ? " 
 
 " Howd yo'r silly tongues," cried Tom, " that 'a 
 more than I know mysen ; the gentleman as yo seen 
 is at th* Cat and Fiddle, and if yo wanten to know 
 yo can go and axe there." With that Tom lifted 
 the portmanteau from the ground, and bearing it 
 away from the midst of the inquisitive throng whose 
 heads were all meeting over it, deposited it carefully 
 in a corner of his house, and refusing to answer one 
 of the thousand questions still put to him, began 
 busily opening his money bag, and from a roll of 
 papers began to hand out to each person the money 
 that belonged to him. This had the most decided effect; 
 all thoughts were instantly turned from the stranger 
 to more closely-touching concerns, and Tom Fletcher 
 speedily dismissed his crowd and turned to his supper, 
 that stood ready prepared for him by his pretty 
 niece. Here, however, the black portmanteau again 
 fell directly under his eye, and he found a crowd of 
 questions rising on his own mind as numerous and as 
 busy as those of his neighbours had been. The eyes of 
 the niece followed his, and no doubt she would have 
 given a trifle to know something about the stranger 
 gentleman too, but she was too well acquainted with 
 her uncle's humour to utter a single remark. She 
 only took care to help the hungry man to his steak, 
 set the tankard of cool ale just before him, and had 
 his pipe ready to hand to him when he had finished. 
 Over this Tom pondered a good while, endeavouring 
 to fish up out of the regions of his youthful memory 
 some John Fox, but in vain. He nodded, snatched 
 up his candle, and went to bed. 
 
 Weary as he was, and accustomed to indulge him-
 
 AT LENISC4R. 17 
 
 self in an extra hour or two of sleej- on a Sunday 
 morning, yet Tom Fletcher was up, had his break- 
 fast, fed and cleaned out his horse, and turned out 
 his three cows that his niece had milked, and at nine 
 o'clock was seen carrying the black portmanteau 
 down to the Cat and Fiddle. Here he expected to 
 find the mysterious John Fox at his breakfast in the 
 parlour, and hoped by further talk to come at some- 
 thing more tangible. To his disappointment, how- 
 ever, he learned that the gentleman had had his 
 breakfast in his chamber, but ordered his portman- 
 teau to be sent up to him, and then that nobody 
 should disturb him till dinner time, having first 
 inquired and found that the service at the church was 
 not till the afternoon, the single service in the village 
 alternating each week from morning to afternoon, 
 the clergyman having to preach also at a neighbour- 
 ing village. This was rather a trying fact to Tom, 
 and as the landlord and landlady, and half a dozen of 
 the villagers, who had already assembled there to 
 learn something about this important personage, for 
 rare indeed was the arrival of any guest at that out- 
 of-the-world hamlet, were equally curious with Tom, 
 they put the ale cup before him, and the sun stream- 
 ing into the familiar old room of the Cat and Fiddle 
 in a way to warm and call forth the closest thoughts 
 from the most iron breast, the whole group were 
 soon in full discourse about the stranger, and soon had 
 learned all that Tom knew. 
 
 There is seldom an event in nature, or in life, that 
 the clever men of this age cannot clear up. Does 
 a meteor appear in the sky, or a strange kind of 
 weather come, we have all the causes of these pheno- 
 mena laid by our philosophers as clearly before us, 
 as if they had been at the ordering of the thing. 
 02
 
 18 JOHN FOX SETTLES HIMSELF 
 
 Does a king or a ministry take some singular step, 
 it was all foreseen by certain people, though they 
 had kept their thoughts to themselves, lest they 
 should be thought rash ; but they can tell you what 
 will be the consequences of the step. The conse- 
 quences turn out to be quite different ; but, then, 
 they can directly tell you why this is so, and must be so 
 they had only overlooked some one little particular. 
 Relate to any of the clever men of our very enlight- 
 ened day, anything which you have heard that 
 astonishes you, and they will immediately show you 
 that there is no cause of astonishment at all it could 
 not be otherwise. Find out the next day that you 
 were wrong informed, and that the facts were so and 
 so, and your clever man will explain that also, and 
 show that it must equally be so. There is nothing 
 now which our clever men cannot irrefragably prove, 
 that a thing is black to-day that it id white 
 to-morrow, and green the next you only omitted 
 some influencing cause in your statement ; your 
 premises might be wrong, but their reasoning is 
 always right. How many political measures could 
 we refer to that were pronounced as pregnant with 
 national destruction if carried, which being carried, 
 and no destruction ensuing, these very same croakers 
 have been the first to prove that this must be 
 so. Their reasonings were right, but some fact or 
 facts had been carefully concealed from them. () ! it is 
 a most comfortable age, where statements may be 
 wrong, but every body is right ; and the clever 
 people always can account for every thing ! 
 
 Unfortunately for Leniscar, the philosophy of the. 
 age had not yet made its entrance there ; and accord- 
 ingly our group at the Cat and Fiddle, having heard 
 Tom Fletcher's story of what had passed with the
 
 AT LEN1SCAR. 19 
 
 stranger, were in a most pitiable condition. Every 
 body asked, " Who could this Mr. Fox be ? " No- 
 body could answer it. "It must be a thin, whipper- 
 snapper youth that used to come and take in stock- 
 ings for the hosiers at Nottingham ! " said one. 
 
 " Slim, whipper-snapper youth ! " cried Fom ; 
 " art thou a slim youth ? I tell thee, he 's as burly 
 as the old tower at Coldnor Castle ! " 
 
 " It must be a young lawyer's clerk that used to 
 come about the rents of Lord Ormond." Then it 
 was an auctioneer's clerk then a grocer's apprentice 
 that took orders then it was a relation of this or 
 the other family ! " Fox ! Fox ? who here was ever 
 married to a Fox ? Foxes in the parish there were 
 none, and never had been in the memory of man." 
 
 It was all in vain, not a thread of probability, much 
 less a whole clue, could be got hold of; and yet the 
 gentleman had an old attachment to the place; he 
 thought of ending his days there ! Before church- 
 time in the afternoon there was not a house iu which 
 this great topic and mystery had not been warmly 
 discussed ; and to such a height had the fever of 
 curiosity risen, that, on the clergyman's entering the 
 church, he was perfectly astonished he had never 
 seen such an attendance before ! Whilst he was in 
 the midst of his wonder, in walked the stranger, and 
 the universal stir which his entrance occasioned, and 
 the turning of all heads, and the- following of all 
 eyes, as he composedly walked up the centre aisle, 
 convinced the clergyman that this unknown person had 
 something to do with this unusual flocking to church. 
 
 In any tolerably populous place, Mr. John Fox 
 would not have presented any appearance sufficiently 
 marked to attract unusual attention. He was a 
 stout and grave-looking man, apparently of some-
 
 20 JOHN FOX SETTLES HIMSELF 
 
 thing more than sixty. His strong broad figure was 
 arrayed in an olive-green ample frock-coat, well 
 buttoned up, a pair of ample grey trousers, and 
 buckles as ample on his stout well-made shoes. His 
 head and face were of the same full and solid charac- 
 ter as his person. His hair was strong and gray, 
 and, as were also his whiskers, which were white, 
 was cut short. His countenance was of a deep 
 ruddy hue, with large gray eyes and bushy eye- 
 brows. His nose was of the strong, round, Oliver 
 Cromwell stamp, and there was a massy solidity about 
 the lower parts of the face, and a firmness about the 
 mouth, that proclaimed a grave, clear-headed, deter- 
 mined character. In his left hand he carried a 
 broadish brimmed hat, and in his right a stick of a 
 very remarkable character, which, as it did not fail 
 to astonish on this brief view, before its possessor 
 was hidden, all but his head, in the pew to which he 
 directed his steps, and afterwards was a subject of 
 much wonder and speculation, 1 may as well more 
 particularly describe. 
 
 It was, in the first place, like its master, of a very 
 solid and substantial character, and as he set it down 
 with a certain decided energy as he inarched up the 
 aisle, it sounded on the stone pavement, and clinked 
 on the brass of a monumental inscription, over which 
 he passed, with such a noticeable vigour, as attracted 
 all eyes to it. All eyes then saw that it was of a 
 dark yellowish hue, or, in reality, a genuine fox- 
 colour ; and as he afterwards held the head of it up 
 to his nose, that it had actually a fox's head, most 
 admirably and naturally carved. Besides this, it 
 was discernible that the whole stick was marked 
 all over with figures, which later and closer inspection 
 I roved to be on one side a most elaborate design of
 
 AT LENISCAU. 21 
 
 Solomon's Temple, and the signs of the zodiac, 
 stretching from the fox's head to the iron-shod end ; 
 on the other was an equally elahorate procession of 
 the beasts to the ark of Noah, which, first of ships, was 
 carved out as an exact counterpart of the Temple. 
 All this tracery, which was in fact most beautifully 
 and artistically executed, and was indeed the labour 
 of Mr. John Fox himself, in many a leisure hour, 
 Jid not fall to evcite the deepest admiration and 
 wonder in the minds of those simple villagers. The 
 mysterious figures were soon set down to be astrolo- 
 gical, and to enable the possessor on the spot, and at 
 any hour, to find out and to foretell anything. 
 Solomon, all the world over, is believed to have known 
 everything ; in the East, he has always been held to 
 be the prince of magicians in the West, to be 
 master of all knowledge under the sun ; and then the 
 beasts of old Noah, it was clear enough that this 
 grave stranger knew more than an almanack, if, 
 indeed, he were not the almanack-maker. Every 
 body surveyed him with deep awe. 
 
 This feeling of his strange and superior knowledge 
 was not a little increased by the very fact of his 
 walking leisurely into the very pew that he did. It 
 was evident that he knew the way to the pew 
 before he came into the church. He never looked to 
 right or left, but walked sedately on to it, as if it 
 had been his own ; and that pew was in fact that of 
 a family lately extinct in the place, and having just 
 now no proper occupants. It was evident that the 
 stranger knew it. Nay, he put his hand to the 
 button inside which held the door fast, just as if he 
 had always known the pew, seated himself so as to 
 have at once the best view of the congregation and 
 the clergyman, and all that in a moment, and with-
 
 22 JOHN FOX SETTLES HIMSELF 
 
 out having to make a single change. Fie drew a 
 very handsome but well-worn prayer-book from his 
 pocket, and became deeply attentive to the service. 
 
 There was no family of great worldly account in 
 this little hamlet ; merely farmers, cottagers and 
 labourers. When the service was over Mr. Fox 
 advanced to the clergyman and conversed a few 
 minutes with him, then quitted the church, making 
 a respectful bow to the people who were standing 
 about the door, and giving Tom Fletcher a familiar 
 shake of the hand, walked away with him and 
 Michael Shaw the miller, or as he was usually called 
 in the dialectical familiarity of the place, Mick Shay. 
 Having, however, told Tom that he should call on 
 him in the morning to have a little conversation with 
 him, he bade Mick and him good bye at the church- 
 yard gate, and took a solitary foot-path down the side 
 of a wood into the valley below the village. 
 
 That afternoon and evening various were the 
 farmers, looking over their lands, and loving couples 
 pursuing retired walks, or seated on old stiles, who 
 encountered the stranger. He was now seen standing 
 at the head of Mick Shay's mill-dam, which was a 
 sheet of water really large enough to have been 
 honoured with the name of lake, covering perhaps 
 uot less than fifty acres, and lying between upland 
 slopes, varied with green enclosures, and woods 
 charming enough, in a more known part of the 
 country, to have made the whole scene admired for 
 its beauty. There he was looking down where its 
 waters shoot over the sluice and down on a flight of 
 rude steps into the valley below, forming in truth a 
 very fair cascade. Others saw him following solitarily 
 the curves of the brook which this water formed 
 down this valley, and which winded about, now
 
 At LENISCAR. 23 
 
 beneath tall trees, and now through the greenest 
 meadows, in true sylvan loveliness. Others again 
 saw him standing on the steps of Mick Shay's 
 wind-mill, on the hill near, for this worthy miller 
 had two strings to the bow of his trade, and ground 
 with both wind and water ; and from the airy 
 height of the said wind-mill steps, overlooking the 
 wide vale below, which for miles spread itself out 
 in most peaceful and rich beauty. By others 
 again he was met in a distant and deep wood. Of 
 several persons, when they came up to him, or he to 
 them, he had asked who still lived in this farm-house 
 and that cottage, and had merely remarked, " O, 
 indeed ! such a family, I believe, once lived there." 
 In every case he was right. The man must certainly 
 once have known this neighbourhood well who 
 could he be ? This, however, was a question which 
 was not likely to be soon answered. In consequence 
 of his interview the next morning with Tom Fletcher, 
 he was conducted by him to an old cottage near his 
 own, inhabited by its proprietors, Gabriel and Becky 
 Thorpe. These were two old but hale people with- 
 out children, who living on their own little patrimony, 
 had passed through life as through a quiet dream 
 their cow, their orchard, and garden, and their little 
 bit of land below, reaching in fact to the margin of 
 Leniscar dam Mick Shay's mill-dam, having found 
 them at once just enough labour and support. Here 
 John Fox was installed to his heart's content in the 
 parlour and one chamber of this old cottage, which 
 lay in the midst of its old garden, and surrounded by 
 a perfect sea of great old fruit-trees. In this cottage 
 and its garden, orchard and croft, John Fox seemed 
 perfectly to luxuriate in a quiet delight. They were 
 still, secluded, and old-fashioned enough, in all con-
 
 24 JOHN FOX SETTLES HIMSELF 
 
 science. The parlour was lofty enough not to 
 require him to stoop, and that was all. It had two 
 casement windows looking out into two parts of that 
 sunny garden. In those windows stood pots of balm 
 of Gilead, balsams, and myrtles. There was a squab or 
 wooden sofa in the room set against the wall near the 
 fire-place, which having on it a well-stuffed cushion 
 and pillow seemed to invite to many a pleasant after- 
 dinner doze. There was a dark old walnut sloping 
 desk by one wall, with a bookcase upon it, in which 
 Becky Thorpe had stowed out of tl.e way not only 
 her great green baize-covered Bible and her few other 
 good books, but also her best tea-things, and her best 
 tea and sugar. These were conveyed speedily to 
 some other place of deposit, and John Fox was put 
 into possession of all the mysterious little drawers 
 and slides, and secret places of this desk. A huge 
 chest full of books and other matters arrived by Tom 
 Fletcher's cart on the following Saturday, and the 
 bookcase was soon filled with books, such a set of 
 handsomely bound books as never were seen in that 
 cottage before, and all the interior of that desk with 
 parchments and papers that seemed of a most 
 momentous and of man-of-property-like character. 
 Becky Thorpe soon remarked that never for a 
 moment did Mr. Fox leave the key either in the 
 door of the desk or book-case when he was out, never 
 once did he even lay one of his books about. A most 
 particular man he is, said she, exact to a hair about 
 every thing, and very solemn, and sometimes of an awful 
 frame of mind, though still very pleasant, and what 
 pleased her and her Gabriel especially, very religious. 
 " One can see plainly," Becky Thorpe would say 
 to her neighbours, " that he has had his trials and 
 his experiences in this life, though he is not a man
 
 AT LEmSCAR. 25 
 
 that lets you see far into his affairs, nor into his 
 thoughts, excepting when he pleases. He reads a 
 chapter in the Bible every morning after breakfast, 
 and reads prayers every night before he goes to bed, 
 and he has Gabriel and me to go in and hear him, 
 which is a comfort to us. And my ! how he can read. 
 It's really more solemn and affecting than our 
 parson's reading i' th' pulpit. And he will often 
 come and sit with us of an evening, and talk with us 
 u'xuit our past life and experience, and it 's quite a 
 privilege to hear how he does talk. Oh, he is very 
 book-lamed, and has such a sweet spirit o' religion 
 as warms my old heart but to listen to his words." 
 
 But before we go farther into Becky's account of 
 John Fox, we will give some farther account of his 
 dwelling. He had soon not only his books and 
 papers, but Tom Fletcher had to convey from 
 Nottingham carpets and hearthrugs which he had 
 purchased for both parlour and bed-room, and not 
 only that but a nice carpet also for those old stairs up to 
 his room. Some hundreds of years had that old house 
 stood, but such a thing as a bit of carpet in it there 
 had never been before. " Oh, he has been used, one 
 can see," said Becky, " to grand houses and grand 
 ways. I and my oud man we are a' most afeard of 
 going up and down stairs, and I 've bought Gabriel a 
 pair of listing slippers to slip over his shoes when he 
 goes up stairs." 
 
 And really those little low rooms, with their neat 
 carpets and clean casements, with their snowy-white 
 curtains and their flower pots within, and the honey- 
 suckles, and rosemary, and blossoming apricot boughs 
 all about them without, were very charming. And that 
 rustic bed with its curtains of blue and white large 
 check, its variegated patch-work quilt, and its fair
 
 26 JOHN POX SETTLES 
 
 sheets, was attractive enough looking to make the old 
 gentleman betake himself to bed at the early hour of 
 nine, as he often did. Nor was the garden less 
 alluring. This was a lo-ngish square enclosure, sur- 
 rounded by tall hedges of lilacs, many of them of the 
 old white lilac kind that shoot up almost into trees, 
 and they were here and there intermingled with 
 syringaa, promising in the course of a few weeks to 
 burst out into whole oceans of beauty and fragraniT* 
 At the bottom was a rustic arbour where John Kox 
 used to take his pipe and his book, and enjoy the 
 hum of the bees which were busily flying in and out 
 of a row of hives near. Below the garden, the okl 
 orchard extended its shade of ancient trees, and 
 beyond that the green croft with tall hedges of haw- 
 thorn on each side extended down to the mill-dam. 
 
 As the time went on, and the lilacs and apple 
 trees put out their young leaves and their delicious- 
 blossoms, the old gentleman aeemed never wearied of 
 traversing to and fro in these rural enclosures. 
 There was not an old-fashioned flower or plant thaS 
 he did not seem to contemplate with delight as an 
 old acquaintance. The very stone-crop on the wall, 
 the great spurge, the blue monk's- hood, the com- 
 monest polyanthus, all filled him with pleasure. He 
 was soon acquainted with some famous old florists 
 in neighbouring villages, and had purchased from 
 them such a stock of auriculas, polyanthuses, ranun- 
 culuses, tulips, &c., as occupied almost a fourth of 
 Gabriel Thorpe's garden, which was given up for the 
 purpose. These were conveyed here in thek pots, 
 or were taken up out of their beds with all their soil 
 about them, so that they were never affected by the 
 removal ; and early in the morning and late at night 
 was Mr. Fox busy at work with his mats and his
 
 AT LENISCAR 27 
 
 sticks and his watering-pot, shading his precious 
 charge from cast winds, tying them up, and water- 
 ing them with a gusto that was itself intense 
 happiness. The village joiners were soon carrying 
 in frames, the glazier following with the glazed covers 
 and with hand-glasses, &c., and soon were seen, drop- 
 ping in of a fine evening, one or more of the old 
 florists to see their brother amateur and the flowers 
 they had sold him. 
 
 It would have done anybody good to have seen 
 these remarkable old village patriarchs, in their quiet 
 way, walking about the flower-beds, and making 
 their comments on the different plants. They were 
 men who never, perhaps, had been twenty miles in 
 their whole lives from their own homes, yet who had 
 sent out flowers which yet maintained all over the 
 kingdom the name and the fame which they gave 
 them. In this tranquil and beautiful pursuit they 
 had spent long and happy lives, and the very sunny 
 stillness and repose of gardens seemed to be in their 
 spirits. John Fox displayed a more active enthu- 
 siasm, in accordance with his energetic character, and 
 was never weary of lifting his glasses, taking down 
 his mats, and pointing out the advancing promises of 
 plants, which in the coming months were to put forth 
 all their glories. 
 
 The lake did not seem less affluent of pleasures for 
 him. Mick Shay had offered him his boat for use 
 whenever he wanted it, and it was a trait of delicate 
 kindness that would have done honour to a man of 
 far higher education and experience than Mick, that 
 the very next day after making the offer, John Fox, 
 on strolling down to the bottom of the meadow, 
 found the boat swinging at the steps of a little land- 
 ing-place, and fastened to a tree. Here it continued
 
 28 JOHN FOX SETTLES HIMSELF 
 
 daily to remain during the whole summer, excepting 
 when Mick wanted it occasionally a few hours for 
 himself. John Fox appeared to be a zealous fisher- 
 man, both with rod and net ; he traversed in the boat 
 every creek ani winding of this fine piece of water, 
 sometimes alone, lying for hours under the shade of 
 some great overhanging tree, and reading, whilst he 
 cast an occasional glance at his tackle ; sometimes 
 with Mick, who had a particular faculty of dropping 
 his cast-net over the great basking pikes of the pond, 
 or of lifting them out with a noose : sometimes 
 also Gabriel Thorpe accompanied the old gentleman 
 to act as rower, but he told Becky that for a keen 
 fisherman, as Mr. Fox was, it was very odd sometimes 
 to see how he would forget what he was about, and 
 would let a great fish lug and drag at his line till it 
 almost pulled his rod out of his hand, whilst he seemed 
 sunk in a brown study. " Nay," said he, ' I have 
 fairly seen the fish so eager to bite that they have 
 jumped up two or three at a time at his fly till they 
 have actually knocked their noses together, and yet 
 he has never seen them." Then again, according to 
 Gabriel, he would start up and begin fishing in des- 
 perate earnest, and would have him push on the boat 
 now hither and thither, now under this bank, and now 
 under the other, till as quickly getting tired he would 
 put the rod into Gabriel's hand and begin to read. 
 
 In one of these fishings, however, Gabriel made a 
 mistake that caused Mr. Fox to omit taking him for 
 a long time afterwards. John Fox was sunk into one 
 of his thoughtful moods one fine sunny afternoon, 
 when he suddenly heard Gabriel, who was in the boat, 
 say, " Nicholas Flamstead ? Why that 's the Clock- 
 maker ! " 
 
 John Fox started from his reverie, darted a keen
 
 AT LENISCAR. 20 
 
 and astonished glance at Gabriel, and saw him looking 
 at the fly-leaf of the volume, which he had laid down 
 in the boat, and gazing on the name written there, 
 which had occasioned this sudden query and exclama- 
 tion. A deeper colour, a solemn and a severe expres- 
 sion passed over the features of John Fox, as he took 
 hold of Gabriel's shoulder, and said, " Gabriel, what 
 are you doing ? That was the name and that was 
 the book of a once dear friend of mine. You know 
 not what a shock you have sent through me by the 
 sudden utterance of his name. Promise me solemnly, 
 that as long as I remain in your house, you never pro- 
 nounce it again, or look into book or paper of mine." 
 
 Gabriel closed the volume in haste, for he was of 
 a very placid, shrinking nature begged a thousand 
 pardons, and was glad when he could escape out of 
 the boat where Mr. Fox continued for some time to 
 fish with a grave earnestness, but without uttering 
 another sound. Deep were the cogitations of Gabriel 
 and Becky, however, when he reached home, on this 
 incident, for they knew something of the Clock- 
 maker's history, and were extremely anxious to know 
 more. But they did not dare to put any single query 
 to their inmate on the subject. He himself, how- 
 ever, one evening introduced the topic, said, of course 
 they knew much of his early friend's history ; what 
 happy days they had spent together at the native 
 village of the Clockmaker, not far off. 
 
 Then did Becky venture to say, " Oil, dear sir, 
 can you tell us what is become of him ? What 
 would not some in this country give to know 1 " 
 
 " 1 know it, I know it, Mrs Thorpe," returned 
 John Fox, while a very sad expression settled on hia 
 features ; " many and earnest, as you are aware, 
 have been the inquiries made after him, but no one, 
 
 D2
 
 30 DOUBLE LIGHTS ARE THROWN ACROSS 
 
 I believe, has yet been able to trace him farther than 
 the Cape of Good Hope." 
 
 The farther particulars which followed in conversa- 
 tion, we shall soon have to detail in the course of our 
 narrative ; we will, therefore, take another necessary 
 previous view of our friend John Fox, in the com- 
 pany of his two frequent associates, Tom Fletcher 
 and Mick Shay. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 DOUBLE LIGHTS ABE THROWN ACROSS JOHN FOX. 
 
 Two months had now rolled on since the arrival 
 of John Fox in Leniscar. He had fished, and had 
 seen his flowers come out with great delight. He 
 was found to be a great walker, and would set off and 
 stroll far and wide through the neighbouring country 
 and hamlets, returning only to his supper. The 
 mystery which hung around him was not one whit 
 dispersed. The ideas of his wealth and importance 
 were much heightened. He had letters directed to 
 him from London, with great seals, and addressed 
 " John Fox, Esquire." It was known that he had 
 been a friend of the Clock-maker's, whose mysterious 
 history had excited a deep interest in this part of the 
 country, but no one could draw from him a single 
 syllable more than what he had voluntarily uttered 
 to Gabriel and Becky Thorpe. He had a serious 
 and dignified manner, that inspired the deepest 
 respect in the minds of the villagers, and the more 
 so, as since his arrival, there was no case of distress 
 or of illness which Mick Shay or the village doctor 
 was not commissioned to relieve, from a source that 
 they never mentioned, but which no one hesitated to
 
 JOHN FOX. 31 
 
 set down as Mr. Fox. As he passed the very chil- 
 dren by the road-side or on the green, he filled them 
 with a nameless awe by the serious look with which 
 he regarded them, and yet, out of his capacious coat- 
 pockets they would very often find nuts, gingerbread, 
 and some half-pence suddenly flung amongst the 
 marbles that they were playing with, which occa- 
 sioned a busy scramble, to which, however, the 
 strange man never gave the slightest attention, but 
 was gone on, striding solemnly away with his fox- 
 stick in his hand. Nay, on one occasion he had 
 sorely frightened a little girl, who, with a heavy 
 basket, in her hurry to get over a stile to which he 
 was approaching, had left a piece of mud from her 
 shoe on the top rail. " Now, my little maiden," said 
 John Fox, gravely pointing with his awful hierogly- 
 phic stick to the mud, " can you tell me how I am 
 to get over here without dirtying my trousers ? " 
 
 The little girl, in her fright at being thus addressed 
 by so great a gentleman, clapped down her basket in 
 precipitation, and was about to wipe away the mud 
 with the little shawl which she had on her shoulders. 
 " Nay," said John Fox, laying hold on her, " for 
 that your mother would scold you. We can do better 
 than that." So saying, he took his own pocket- 
 handkerchief, wiped off the mud, and rolling up the 
 handkerchief said, " There, I think you will mind 
 better in future." The little girl, half out of her 
 wits, and with tears in her eyes, dropped a low 
 curtsey, and said " Yes, sir." " I believe you, my 
 pretty little maid so give that handkerchief to your 
 mother ; she can have it for the washing." 
 
 The little damsel hurried home with her load to 
 relate her adventure, and when the mother unfolded 
 the handkerchief, out dropped a guinea ! The
 
 32 DOUBLE LIGHTS ARE THROWN ACROSS 
 
 mother hurried as fast as the child had hurried 
 home, to Mr. Fox with the money. " Well," said 
 the old gentleman, "it is an old saying, 'Where 
 there is mud there is money ' and so it is, you see ; 
 probably it stuck in the mud it is none of mine ; if 
 you do not like it, give it to the child." 
 
 The place where John Fox was generally to be 
 found in an evening was Tom Fletcher's. It was 
 but a few steps from his own abode, and there was 
 sure to be found also Mick Shay. These were the 
 two people whose conversation he seemed still most 
 to affect. After his almost daily rambles, he had a 
 thousand questions to ask them of the places and 
 people where he had been, and this led to conversa- 
 tions in which the history of the whole country was 
 included. The homely humour and shrewd good 
 sense that marked the communications of these two 
 villagers, seemed to have a peculiar relish for him ; 
 and, in truth, they were of that sterling, though 
 rough old English stamp, that cannot fail to please 
 those who are charmed to find true sagacity and sound 
 principles in the lowliest forms and most obscure 
 situations. Tom, as we have seen, had a crabbed 
 way with him, but he was sound at heart as oak 
 itself. Mick was a very different person. He was 
 not more than five-and-thirty years of age, was tall 
 and somewhat spare in person, though remarkably 
 strong and active. He always wore a light gray coat 
 with pearl buttons, and a white hat, because his 
 trade did not suit dark colours. His face was some- 
 what long and thin, and had a mixed express on of 
 kindliness and quiet humour. He was naturally of a 
 sociable, but not merry temperament. In his youth 
 he had been reckoned somewhat wild, and fond of 
 resorting to wakes and fairs; but that was not
 
 JOHN FOX. 33 
 
 because he was of a dissipated turn, but because he 
 was fond of all kind of active sports, ami exhibitions 
 of the like kind, as racing, wrestling, running, and 
 so on. In these matters he had been too eager a 
 better, as well as actor, and that to his own cost. In 
 a wrestling match he had somewhat injured one of 
 his knees, and went with a slight stiffness in it ; and 
 there were those who said that he had lamed his 
 business by those feats to a still more serious degree. 
 Be that as it may, Mick was universally allowed to 
 be one of the shrewdest and wittiest fellows in the 
 whole neighbourhood ; yet he was reckoned anything 
 but a prosperous man. He now stayed more and more 
 at home, and seemed to have turned all his wrestling 
 and running habits into his tongue. He was a great 
 arguer, a great talker, and that in a quiet, but origi- 
 nal style, that was most picturesque and amusing, 
 and that generally soon brought the less clever wits 
 of the neighbourhood into a regular entanglement. 
 John Fox delighted above all things to draw him out, 
 and hear him talk. He said that it was to him like 
 looking on a green meadow in May, all full of cowslips 
 and daisies, and orchis blossoms, to hear Mick talk, 
 there were such flowery colours mixed up with such 
 a racy and yet exuberant humour in his speech. 
 He had a peculiar way in showing the follies of men, 
 by driving them to an extravagance. Thus Mr. 
 Fox was saying one evening that he had been in 
 various countries, and found one of the greatest com- 
 forts everywhere, as well as the greatest conducives 
 to health, was the avoidance of soft beds and too 
 softly- cushioned chairs. " There is laziness and 
 disease in them," said he, "and in hot climates, the 
 very plague ; I always sleep, by preference, on a 
 mattress."
 
 Si DOUBLE LIGHTS ABE THROWN ACROSS 
 
 " Why, Master," said Mick, " I wonder yon dunna 
 lie at once on a board. If a mattress be so much 
 healthier than a feather-bed, how much healthier and 
 agreeabler must a good deal board be than a mattress. 
 There now, you 're sitting in a chair with a rush 
 bottom don't, you think you'd be a deal healthier 
 and comfovtabler sitting on that three-legged stool ? 
 Nay, blame me if I don't think that you ought to 
 have nother chair nor stool, but to set down a post 
 and rail on the house floor to sit on. Or what think 
 you of a roughish faggot pretty well stuffed with 
 thorns? That would be very cool and healthy, and 
 not at all conducive to luxurious laziness." 
 
 " These are extremes, Mick silly extremes." 
 
 " Ay, Mester, and I'm fond of th' wise extremes- 
 that is, something extremely comfortable. Oh dunna 
 tell me about feather-beds being unhealthy ! Of a 
 winter night how softly and warmly they close up 
 about you ! Oh then you're as snug as an apple in 
 a dumpling." 
 
 " That 's the very thing, Mick," said John Fox, 
 " that makes a bed so unhealthy ; there is no circu- 
 lation of air you are closed up, as you say, like an 
 apple in dough." 
 
 " Circulation of air ! Oh hang it, who wants a 
 circulation of air on a winter's night ? Circulation 
 o' warmth, that 's what I want. Odd's, Mester, if 
 you want a circulation of air you may have it any 
 day on the top of my mill ; but, thank goodness, as 
 for me, I 'm not a windmill-sail, but a miller." 
 
 At this sally Tom Fletcher burst out into hearty 
 laughter, and Mr. Fox was fain to join in it ; he saw 
 that he might just as well have convinced Mick that 
 Mahommedanism was better than Christianity as that 
 mattresses were better than feather-beds.
 
 JOHN FOX. 35 
 
 " 1 '11 tell you what, Mester," said Mick the next 
 day as they were on the mill-dam fishing-, " if you 
 are so fond of hard lying and hard living you should 
 have such a wife as our friend Tom's was. Thank 
 heaven ! I hope it 's no sin to say so that she is in 
 her grave now, for Tom had a hard life of it with 
 her; and now he has a very neat and kind niece, 
 that makes his house like a little palace of comforts." 
 
 " What, was Tom's wife miserly ?" 
 
 " Miserly ! She 'd skin a flint for breakfast, and 
 split a straw and roast it for dinner. It was all 
 scrape, scrape, scrape with her. If you'd have flung 
 a shilling into this dam before her face, she 'd 
 have jumped in, with the best will in the world, and 
 drowned herself in the hope of picking up the shilling 
 as a ghost, and carrying it into the other world with 
 her. Do ye know, she kept a shop, and I used to 
 serve her with flour ; but it was always a regular 
 battle to get any money for it. Once the account 
 was seventy pounds ; so I goes in and says, ' 1 Ve a 
 big payment to-morrow, Martha -perhaps you'd let 
 me have that bit of an oddment for flour.' " 
 
 " ' Eh well-a-day, how thou dost talk,' said she ; 
 ' it 's but an hour sin that greedy grocer was here 
 from Nottingham ; he 's always a coming is that 
 rat-faced fellow, and he's drained me as dry as a 
 bone. In a bit I'll see what I can do for thee.' 
 
 " That had been her story for two months, so I got 
 up to come away. 
 
 " ' Sit thee down, Mick,' said Tom ; ' and now, 
 oud lady, up stairs with thee and down with the 
 mony and pay him/ 
 
 " ' Bless thee, lad ! I tell thee I have not a farthing, 
 if it war to save my life.' 
 
 " ' But I say, pay him; do 'at hear ? '
 
 (50 DOUBLE LIGHTS ARE THROWN ACROSS 
 
 " ' Oh never mind never mind,' says I, 'another 
 day will do, though I was at my wit's end for money, 
 but 1 was afeard of making words between a man 
 and his wife.' 
 
 " ' Sit thee down, Mick,' said Tom more earnestly. 
 
 " ' No,' said I, * I'm going; good night.' 
 
 " Tom started up, and holding his fist over my head, 
 said firmly, ' Other sit thee down, Mick, or I'll 
 knock thee down. Thou sfiall have it, I tell thee, 
 and so no more about it.' 
 
 " The moment the old woman heard this up she 
 jumped as nimble as a young lass, and up stairs she 
 went, and before a man could say ' Jack Robinson,' 
 she was down with the money, and said, ' Well 
 done, Mick, lad, I was only joking.' 
 
 " Now would you believe it, Mester, that old body 
 had stuffed the house, almost from top to bottom, 
 with bank-notes ? When she lay on her deathbed, 
 the cat, frightened by a strange dog, flew up stairs 
 and up her bed-curtains and on to the bed-tester, 
 and down comes a lot of something all ringling and 
 jingling all over the floor ; and what was it but 
 guineas and crowns and half-crowns, a whole pot full, 
 that she had hidden and that the cat had upset. 
 
 " One day Tom was folding up a heap of stockings 
 that he had bought from some poor maker, and was 
 going to take to sell to some hosier in Nottingham, 
 when he felt a something like a lump in one, puts 
 in his hand and pulls out what ? why just twenty 
 pounds' worth of bank paper. 
 
 " 'Now that's thy doing, Martha,' said he to his 
 wife as she lay in bed just by, ' Isn't that a silly 
 sort of a place to hide money in ? I might ha taken 
 this to th' hosiers, and where would it ha been then ? ' 
 
 u * But thou didn't take it,' said she very quietly,
 
 JOHN FOX. 37 
 
 ' and so th* hosier did not get it. What would ta 
 have, man?' 
 
 " Well, no sooner is th' old woman's corpse out 
 of the house than Tom sends for me, and we begins 
 a regular hunt. We turned up beds, ripped up beds 
 and mattresses, pulled down curtains, pulled open all 
 drawers, felt all about th' inside o' th' desk, up th' 
 chimney, under the thatch, nay into the very pigsty, 
 and everywhere there was money, money, money, 
 just like whisps o' hay. 'Good gracious!' says I, 
 ' what eyes must Martha have had for hiding-holes ; 
 but, Tom, where war thy eyesl' For years and years 
 had this poor old cretur been hoarding, and hiding, 
 and it 's ten to one if we have found above half her 
 money, but what we did find bought and paid for a 
 whole farm, I can tell ye." 
 
 " Tom is rich, then ? " said John Fox. " I am 
 very glad to hear it. But with such property why 
 does he go slaving to Nottingham every week ? " 
 
 " Oh, Tom thinks the folks could not carry on 
 without him. I Ve often asked him to give it up 
 and make himself easy and comfortable in his old 
 age. But he turned sharp on me, and said, ' What,, 
 thou wants to be rid o' me, dost ta. Didst ever 
 know an old tree shifted that did not die ? 'I'll 
 retire,' says an old tradesman ; ay, and he generally 
 retires into his grave ! I tell thee, Mick, when a 
 man has been active all his life, when he stops he 
 stagnates. His blood becomes full of melancholy, 
 and he 's gone. Stop a brook that has been running, 
 and turn it into a pool, and what is it ? a puddle f 
 When is it that it is clear, and singing, and good for 
 anything? While it is running. Stop it, and 
 you Ve done for it ! I 've been going all my life, 
 Mick ; and when I stop, I shall stop altogether !
 
 38 A STARTLING SIGHT INTRODUCES 
 
 No, no, nother Smilcr nor me want to retire yet, 
 as they call it first /ire, say I, and then retire. But 
 we 're neither of us yet so hard up as that comes to. 
 No, I shall go on yet, if it were only to carry the 
 young things their bits o' love-letters, and to bring 
 th' mester's letters and newspapers. When I want 
 to go to sleep under a sod, why, then, I shall cry 
 'wo!' for the last time, to old Smiler and, depend 
 upon it, it will be ' wo ' to us ! '" 
 
 The three acquaintances chatted on from evening 
 to evening in Tom Fletcher's house, or under the 
 trees in Gabriel's garden, with their pipes, and pots 
 of Cat-and-Fiddle ale, calm and cheerful as the sun 
 which often cast its setting beams upon them there, 
 when a single incident threw a rocket, as it were, in 
 amongst them, and made them leap up and fly a dozen 
 ways here, there, yonder ! and that to some purpose. 
 Let us see what this was, in another chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A STARTLING SIGHT INTRODUCES A STRANGE 8TOIIY. 
 
 IT was one evening about Midsummer that John 
 Fox, after one of his long rambles, entered hastily 
 into Tom Fletcher's, where Tom and Mick Shay 
 were hoping for his arrival. He looked flushed, 
 heated, and dusty. His usual armed-chair was 
 standing ready for him, and Tom's pretty niece rose, 
 made a curtsey, and drew the curtain to exclude a 
 blaze of sunshine which fell directly on the chair. 
 But Mr. Fox, instead of seating himself, took- a hasty 
 turn through the apartment, and then wiping his 
 brow, which displayed profuse perspiration, said.
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 39 
 
 "How's this, my friends? Do you know what I 
 have seen ? Do you know what has taken place ?" 
 
 " What 'a that ? " said both, at once, rising from 
 their chairs. 
 
 " Why, I have this afternoon strolled round by 
 Dainsby, and as I reached the gates of the old Hall, 
 what did I see? A sight that I could not have 
 believed could have been in this world. A sight worse 
 than if the ghost of my father had risen from the 
 grave and bade me follow him quick into the earth ! 
 Can the villain dare even that ? Are there no bounds 
 to his rascality ? Is there nothing but the utter 
 annihilation of all that is ancient and venerable that 
 will satisfy him ? That petty demon of an attorney 
 has at last put the finishing stroke to his presumption, 
 and if he be not stopped all is over!" 
 
 As John Fox finished this sentence, he stood 
 staring at Mick Shay without giving them a single 
 ray of information on the subject of his excitement. 
 
 " But what is it, mester?" asked Mick. " What 's 
 amiss ? Can we be of any use ? Tell us, can we 
 run for help anywhere ? " 
 
 " Ay, run, fly, fetch help, both of you let 's see, 
 where are my papers ? " 
 
 " Here are pen and ink, sir," said Tom's pretty niece, 
 reaching a little table and placing these articles on it. 
 
 " I forget," said John Fox, " my papers are at 
 home but it matters not, this will do." And with 
 this he seemed to collect himself a moment, and, 
 looking at the two astonished men, he said : 
 
 " Would you believe that Dainsby Old Hall is 
 going to be pulled down ? Would you believe that 
 that pestilent pettifogger Screw Pepper, has had the 
 audacity to doom the old mansion of the Flamsteads 
 to the hammer, and that, not as a whole, safe and
 
 40 A STARTLING SIGHT INTRODUCES 
 
 sound with the estate, but piecemeal, to be pulled 
 down by scoundrelly bricklayers and carpenters ; 
 and to he converted into a heap of dusty scantlings 
 and brickbats, and dispersed to the four winds of 
 heaven to build hovels and pigsties out of! " 
 
 " Dainsby Old Hall to be pulled down ? " cried both 
 Tom and Mick, in a breath. " Impossible ! They 
 may as well talk of pulling down the church." 
 
 " But I tell you they do not talk about it ; they are 
 actually proceeding to do it. They have doomed it, have 
 marked and condemned it. I have seen it with my 
 own eyes, and we must be quick or the ruin will begin." 
 
 With this John Fox drew a large handbill from 
 his pocket, and holding it up, they could see, in large 
 letters, the words "Dainsby Old Hall," and some- 
 thing, in letters nearly as gigantic, about "Lots"' and 
 'Building Materials." Having displayed this a 
 moment, the old gentleman, as if calmed by the act, 
 seated himself in his chair, and gazing on Tom and 
 Mick intently, who also reseated themselves on the 
 old squab opposite, he thus proceeded, in a tone and 
 language that presented a singular contrast to his 
 preceding excited address : 
 
 " I say, I strolled round to Dainsby, and I think I 
 never saw it and the country about it looking more 
 beautifully than in the summer richness of the pre- 
 sent time. All was so green, leaves and pasturage, 
 all so fresh, and tender, and luxuriant. The uplands 
 all strewn with flowers of aH hues ; the meadows so 
 deep in grass already. The birds everywhere sing- 
 ing ; the people everywhere busy as in the joy of 
 their hearts. All at once a peacock shouted from a 
 great elm-tree by the parsonage, and that called my 
 thoughts as by magic to the Old Hall. Ah ! thought 
 I, how joyous and how beautiful it used to be there,
 
 A STRANGE STORY. 41 
 
 and how melancholy it must be now. How often 
 have I heard in my young days the peacocks scream 
 from its lofty trees, and now it stands empty and 
 desolate. If I should go past, I suppose I should 
 hear nothing but the sparrows wrangling about its 
 roof, and hanging their long hay-tufts of nests from 
 its eaves. I should see nothing but weeds and decay- 
 ing wood-work and grown-up paths, where all used 
 to be so cheerful and so happy. A sort of melancholy 
 fascination drew me. I would go there ; I would 
 pass and see what a sad spectacle it was. But what 
 was that I saw at a distance, not sparrows on the 
 roof, but men. I was struck with a strange feeling. 
 What ! They are men ? My eyes do not deceive 
 me ? Yes, there they are. At the very top. They 
 have ladders and are ascending to the very cupola, to 
 the very vane. There again, and others walking 
 along the broad parapet ! Nay, there are some 
 actually in the balcony over the principal entrance. 
 What does it mean ? 
 
 " I hastened onward with a feverish eagerness, and 
 yet with a cold sensation at my heart. They were 
 workmen, joiners, bricklayers, and the like. I could 
 now see them plainly. And below, there in the 
 court, are more of them ! What will they do ? Is 
 the old place sold ? Will the purchaser repair it ? 
 But if so, why all these men at once here scram- 
 bling up like so many flies about it ? And &uch men, 
 for there seem to me to be as many masters as work- 
 men. And here again, what is this ? Before the 
 gates stood, drawn up, gigs, carts, shandry-dans. 
 What can it mean ? Are they valuers, sent by men 
 who wish to purchase ? 
 
 " I drew nearer. Yes, there is a sale intended. J 
 see the great hand-bills on the gate-posts and in the 
 
 E2
 
 42 A STARTLING SIGHT INTRODUCES 
 
 upper windows. But what is that? I came still 
 nearer, and a strange horror seized me ! I beheld 
 chalked on the front of the house on its roof, on its 
 very cupola in mammoth-like letters,, ' Lot 14,' 
 ' Lot 20,' ' Lot 25,' &c. The truth flushed at once 
 upon me ; they will sell the fine old place for mate- 
 rials ; they will pull it down ; and here are the birds 
 of prey gathered already around the carcase ! 
 
 " With trembling knees I advanced to one of the 
 great gate-posts, and read what confirmed all my 
 fears, what stands here ! " 
 
 John Fox again held up the great hand-bill, and 
 then flung it on the table before him. 
 
 When Tom and Mick had both satisfied their 
 curiosity, and expressed their astonishment over the 
 hand-bill, John Fox seemed to take up the thread of 
 his thoughts. 
 
 " I never till to-day," continued he, " felt what a 
 strange sensation it is to see a solid, substantial thing 
 that you love stand before you stand as if it made 
 part of the earth itself, and yet feel that in a few 
 days it will have vanished from the spot as if it were 
 a mere dream. Dainsby Old Hall ! why, it is con- 
 nected with my ideas of Dainsby as much as the very 
 church, or the very ground on which it is built. 
 One would just as soon expect the hills that rise all 
 around to skip away, the brook that has always run 
 down the valley, to disappear, and not even leave the 
 channel it has run in. There stood the old hall, as 
 I gazed on it, as solid, as ponderous, as stately, as 
 venerable as ever, and yet I knew that if nothing 
 extraordinary interposed in a fortnight, it would be 
 all down and dispersed like a house of cards. Is it 
 possible ? said I to myself; can that old house of 
 the Flamsteads be thus really conjured away like an
 
 A STRANGE STOUY. 43 
 
 egg from under a hat ? Why, it has stood there 
 I reckon these three hundred years, just as it does 
 now. There are all its walls, its windows, its gables, 
 and its cornices they are no shadows. There are 
 all its rooms and passages the very papers and the 
 pictures on the walls the very furniture which has 
 been used by so many individuals of the family and 
 their friends and I can see as plainly, as if I were 
 in it, every nook, and corner, and closet. There is 
 the old French settee on which the late Mrs. Flam- 
 stead used to sit at her work-table there is the bil- 
 liard-table at which we have had many a merry game 
 there are the old gentleman's desk and his easy- 
 chair, so worn out at the elbows. I see the very stag's 
 horns on which he used to hang his spurs and his 
 riding-whip. There are the old-fashioned screens, 
 and the rich cabinets sent from China by their cousin 
 the merchant ; and, in short, all through the house, 
 there is not a thing that has not a history and a value 
 that would draw tears from the very dead, at the 
 bare idea of their being carried away. Carried 
 away ! that is little ; the very rooms shall be 
 annihilated, turned into spaces of common air, into 
 nothing! It seemed to me as if such a thing was 
 impossible. They are real, human things ! said I. 
 They are they must be they cannot be other- 
 wise ! What ! shall I walk past here a month 
 hence and there shall be no Dainsby Old Hall ? Let 
 the earth vanish as soon ! 
 
 "And then I began running over in my head, or 
 rather in my heart, all the events which had stamped 
 a value on this house, and which belonged to it, and 
 it alone. I saw gay wedding-parties issue from it 
 amid the peal of merry bells and the fluttering of 
 white favours. 1 saw gay, handsome, laughing, and
 
 44 A STARTLING SIGHT, ETC. 
 
 tearful faces; they were like April mornings, all 
 dew, and sunshine, and beauty. I saw gay, hand- 
 some parties again alight at the gate, and enter it ; 
 there was feasting there was joy ! I saw eager 
 faces hurry through passages and across the court ; 
 and there were hasty but joyous feet ; the church- 
 bells again burst forth with their riot of gladness 
 there was an heir born ! O ! how many of these 
 gladsome events have there been at this old house ! 
 What gay, active, happy forms and faces ; what young 
 families, bound heart and hand, have grown up here! 
 And then there were death-beds, and slow-pacing 
 hearses old and honoured people, who left life- 
 long histories here, were going away. Nay, there 
 came such a train of such things across me, that 
 I became desperate. I clenched my hand at the 
 people coming out to their gigs, talking of their 
 future bargains, of lots, and sectioned masses of these 
 sacred walls, and laughing at what they called the 
 lumber of wigged and gowned ancients that would go 
 to the brokers to be palmed off as people of some 
 account. These fellows, I have no doubt, thought 
 me mad ; for, snatching that hand-bill from one ot 
 them, I said, ' Scoundrels ! you have not yet clutched 
 your prey ! ' and broke away in a state of frenzy. 
 
 " And yet I was much to blame. The men were 
 innocent men enough. They have nothing to do but 
 to follow their trade and make their bargains ; but 
 there is one villain who must be stopped, let it cost 
 what it may, Mick. Let us have the horse and 
 taxed-cart here in half-an-hour; I must be off to 
 Derby to-night. Tom, you must away to Ilipley 
 to the post, with a letter." 
 
 At this Mick Shay disappeared with long strides ; 
 Tom put on his carter's frock and hastened to supper
 
 THE FLAHSTEAB8, ETC. 45 
 
 up his horse, and in the meantime Mr. Fox wrote 
 his letter; and in half-an-hour Tom was posting off, 
 stick in hand, and Mick and Mr. Fox drove off in 
 the opposite direction at a spanking rate ; for Mick 
 disdained any but first-rate cattle, and his tall bay 
 mare went at a speed that would see them at Derby 
 within the hour. While they are thus gone there, on 
 important business, let us go back a good many years 
 and learn something more particular about Dainsby 
 Old Hall. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE FLAMSTEADS AND THEIR FORTUNES. 
 
 THE Flamsteads had been residents at Dainsby for 
 a vast period of time, probably from before the Nor- 
 man Conquest ; but they had not been the possessors 
 of what was called the Old Hall for half that time. 
 It was generally said to have been built in the reign 
 of Edward VI. They had acquired possession of it 
 only after the civil wars. Till then, they had been 
 plodding farmers a portion of the old yeomanry of 
 England. The Dainsbys became then extinct, and 
 the younger Flamstead of the time, having risen to a 
 captaincy in the parliamentary army, was enabled, by 
 favour at head-quarters, to make a cheap bargain for 
 the Hall and its estate. This estate did not exceed 
 five hundred acres, a good deal of it of strong wheat 
 land. The Flamsteads removed into the Hall, and 
 continued to cultivate the land themselves, maintain- 
 ing a station something like that of a gentleman- 
 farmer, before, however, such a compound term was 
 known. They were, in fact, gentry, yet never 
 associated, nor aimed to do so, with the chief gentry 
 of the country. They seemed to prefer preserving
 
 46 THE FLAMSTEADS AND 
 
 the plain and plodding character of the family, to 
 seeking, by higher accomplishment and ambition, to 
 raise themselves in the county-scale, and to connect 
 themselves with its wealthier families by marriage, 
 thus probably increasing the estate itself. Nay, the 
 two great highways to advancement, for those who 
 had a portion, and yet but a moderate portion of the 
 soil of their country the church and the law they 
 never entered upon. One would have thought that 
 this would have been the most natural way of secur- 
 ing an establishment for the younger sons ; but the 
 plain truth was, that they never seemed to seek any 
 sort of support for these. The eldest son always took 
 the estate ; the daughters always married off pretty 
 well, for it was a handsome family ; but the second 
 son, and there was, strangely enough, rarely more 
 than two sons, and often not more than one, was often 
 a sort of head-farmer or manager for the elder brother; 
 and if they did not agree, was often little better than 
 a vagabond. Once, indeed, the second son in his 
 old age actually worked on the roads, and the family 
 did not seem to trouble itself about it at all. This.- 
 poor, good-natured fellow, because he could not 
 tolerate the overbearing airs and niggardly conduct of 
 the elder brother, had disdained to remain under any 
 obligations to him, but applied at once to the parish 
 for relief, thinking this would pique his brother to 
 different conduct ; but, strange enough, the brother 
 came forward and said he thought that it was a very 
 good idea, and proposed that he should be made perma- 
 nent repairer of the road, with a cottage and a fixed 
 salary. " We have always been workers," said the 
 elder Flamstead, " work is no disgrace ; and it 
 makes very little difference whether our Guy (the 
 brother) level the clods in the fields or those on the
 
 THEIR FORTUNES. 47 
 
 roads." The post was given to this Guy Flamstead ; 
 and those persons who are actors in our story, John 
 Fox, Tom Fletcher, and even Mick Shay, could well 
 remember Guy when an old man, still following this 
 vocation. He was a very good-natured old fellow, 
 fond of a sup of ale, and not at all hurting himself by 
 labour. He might be seen slowly sauntering along 
 the highway, somewhere about the village, with a 
 shovel and a mud-rake over his arm ; but still oftener 
 were these implements to be seen reared at the ale- 
 house door, and old Guy to be found comfortably 
 seated witli some of his village cronies within. 
 Yet one circumstance, well attested, will not allow 
 us to believe that old Guy Flamstead was insensible 
 to the injustice of the family custom that excluded 
 the younger sons from a share of the family property ; 
 for once when a notoriously wicked and covetous old 
 fellow was on his death-bed, he went to visit him, 
 and thus addressed him " Well, so the doctor says 
 you are not long for this world. You '11 be sure to 
 see my father in the next world birds of a feather 
 will flock together, I warrant 'em, there. So be 
 sure to tell him that my brother Simon treads very 
 faithfully in his steps. He has turned me out on the 
 roads, you can say ; and now he has himself got a 
 second son to follow me ! " 
 
 The second son, Guy's nephew, here alluded to, 
 was the clockmaker, who, we have incidentally seen, 
 was the mystery of the neighbourhood. This youth, 
 as he advanced into his teens, displayed a consider- 
 ably thoughtful, and at the same time steady, cha- 
 racter. He saw his old uncle Guy on the roads and 
 his father in the possession of wealth. He heard 
 that this had always been the case in the family, and 
 asked why it should be so ? At this question every -
 
 48 THE FLASISTEADS AND 
 
 body opened their eyes very wide. His father stared, 
 his brother laughed, but as neither the stare nor the 
 laugh at all cleared up his ideas about the injustice 
 of this arrangement, he again asked the question 
 more loudly than before. On this his father said, 
 " Nick, dost thou* think thyself wiser than all the 
 generations that have gone before thee ? Dost thou 
 ask why the eldest son takes the estate ? 'Tis to 
 keep the estate together, to be sure. Where would it 
 have been now, think'st thou, if every younger Flam- 
 stead before our time had carried off a part of it ? I 
 tell thee, the auctioneer's hammer would have 
 knocked it into a thousand shivers." 
 
 " Ay, that would it," said his brother, laughing 
 again, " and neither thou nor I, Nicholas, would have 
 gotten an atom of it, so thou sees it is a deal better 
 as it i?, for now / get a good thing, and thou gets just 
 as much as thou would have had at any rate." 
 
 " But just tell me one thing, father," said Nicholas 
 Flamstead, now arrived at the sagacious age o 
 seventeen, " what reason is there in making one son 
 a gentleman and the next one a beggar? Is there 
 any such great virtue in coming a few days or years 
 earlier into the world ? " 
 
 " Well, I reckon there is," said the father ; " it 
 was always thought so, at least people always acted 
 as if they thought so, and I don't pretend to be wiser 
 than those who went before me. Besides, I expect 
 I can do as I like with my own." 
 
 " Only be sure that it is your own first, father," 
 replied Nicholas calmly. 
 
 The old man and the elder son opened their eyes 
 wider than ever. 
 
 * In this rude and primitive part of the country this form 
 of the pronoun was always familiarly used, and even ia fre- 
 quently so used to the present day.
 
 THEIR FORTUNES. 49 
 
 " Yes," repeated Nicholas, " be sure of that, or it 
 may bring a trouble after it. It seems to me that when 
 God gives children, he makes it a duty, a holy, a reli- 
 gious duty to act justly towards them. They are all his 
 children entrusted to your keeping for a while; and 
 if he give you substance to support them on, and you 
 give all to one and none to all but one, will he not one day 
 ask you a question or two about your stewardship ? " 
 
 The old man stared harder than ever. 
 
 " Nick," said he, " who taught thee all this fine 
 talk ? I never heard such in all my life before. I 
 never heard th' parson talk in that way." 
 
 " Then make me a parson, father," rejoined Nicho- 
 las, " and I will talk that way from the pulpit, for 
 it is high time." 
 
 " Parson !" exclaimed the brother. " Parson !" 
 exclaimed the old man. " No ! 'Od rabbit thee. 
 There never yet was a parson Flamstead in Dainsby. 
 No, I see what thou would be at; thou would be 
 tithing thy elder brother's lands." 
 
 "Oho! that's it, Nick, is it?" said the brother; 
 " so, if thou canst not have the estate thou will at 
 least try to skim the cream off it. A pretty parson 
 thou would make. One may see already what sort 
 of a lecture one should get though. No, Nick, no I 
 would much rather see thee clerk than parson." 
 
 " Well, let me be a clerk, then," said Nicholas ; 
 " let me be a tradesman, or what you will only one 
 thing I can tell you, I do not mean to be a beggar 
 and a hanger-on." 
 
 At these words so astonished was the old man, who 
 sate at his favourite evening's employment of winding 
 worsted from off a reel into balls for his wife to knit 
 with, that up he started in such a hurry that he 
 knocked down the reel.
 
 50 THE FLAMSTEADS AND 
 
 " There," said Nicholas, very composedly, raising 
 the reel again from the floor, " it has reeled a long 
 time, but it has fallen at last." 
 
 Neither father nor son saw the excellence of 
 Nicholas's pun, for they were too much amazed and 
 confounded at his daring doctrines, and especially at 
 his idea of being a tradesman. No Flamstead had 
 been a tradesman for generations ; they might be 
 farmers, might be outcasts, might work on the roads ; 
 but a tradesman ! that was a strange idea. They 
 could not have believed that a Flamstead could have 
 been so mean-spirited. 
 
 But Nicholas was still more mean-spirited ; for 
 without any further ceremony he marched off to the 
 little town of Alfreton, and apprenticed himself to a 
 clockmaker ! If the clock had walked out of the 
 church-steeple, and gone chiming all round the village ; 
 or if they had awoke some morning and found the 
 said steeple standing on the point of its spire, it would 
 not have more startled the inmates of Dainsby Old 
 Hall. It was such a degradation as had never before 
 befallen the Flamsteads in any age. Old Guy had 
 been, it is true, a common labourer on the roads ; but 
 what of that ? That was really a gentlemanly calling. 
 It was only mending the roads that belonged to the 
 Flamsteads, as the Flamsteads mended their acres ; 
 and besides, it was all in the parish. In Dainsby 
 parish what did it signify ? there stood the Old Hall 
 to say to anybody that the Flamsteads were gentle- 
 folks. But in a strange town, and in a little shop with 
 clocks and watches in the window ! Well, Nick was 
 crack-brained, and that was the long and short of it. 
 
 " No, he '11 disgrace me he '11 disgrace me," said 
 the brother ; " that 's what he means, because he can 
 have neither half the estate nor the tithe of it, and
 
 THEIR FORTUNES. 61 
 
 tell me of all my sins publicly into the bargain. But 
 there's a remedy even for that he shall no longer be 
 a brother of mine ! I disown him he belongs no more 
 to the family, and so we are not disgraced at all." 
 
 " No, that's right, Sykes," said the father, "that's 
 right that's a famous idea. I never thought of 
 that. He doesn't belong to the family, and so it is 
 no disgrace at all." 
 
 With this "famous idea" both father and son 
 appeared perfectly satisfied. Sykes laughed at his 
 happy conceit at least a dozen times hefore the day 
 was ended. The mother, who could neither oppose 
 them nor help her son Nicholas, was silent ; but she 
 thought, as she heard her husband and elder son 
 often call Nicholas a mean-spirited fool, that perhaps 
 he was no fool either. He had always had a turn 
 for mechanics, and he would thus at least have a 
 livelihood in his hands. She took care to send him 
 his box of clothes, and kept up a private correspond- 
 ence with him, and loaded the carrier's cart every 
 week with good things for him, plum-cakes and fruit 
 out of the green-house, garden, and orchard. 
 
 Nicholas did not venture for some time to visit his 
 native home, for he could not expect a very pleasant 
 reception from father and brother, and if it were 
 painful to him he knew that it would be tenfold so 
 to his mother. His father, indeed, wrote to his 
 master, threatening to indict him for inveigling away 
 his son ; but Nicholas put an end to this by declaring 
 that if they prevented his being a watchmaker he 
 would turn Methodist preacher, at that time a new, 
 and to people generally, a most odious character. 
 This had its full effect. After a while his mother 
 intimated to him that she thought he might walk 
 over to spend the Sunday with them. He did so,
 
 62 THE FLAMSTEADS AND 
 
 but it was a trying time. The father and brother, 
 who pretended not to see him at all, wore continually 
 asking what o'clock it was, and whether anybody 
 knew of a fellow from whom they could order a 
 good clock for the drawing-room. When Nicholas 
 handed to his brother a spoon at dinner, he smelt at 
 the handle, and asking his father if he did not think 
 it smelt of Florence oil, sent it away. The poor 
 mother, who was now roused to indignation, said, 
 " Oil ! if it do so it is the oil of fatness, which is 
 spoken of as a blessing in the Bible, and that often in 
 our days makes a lord mayor." 
 
 " A lord mayor ! Why, did they make lord 
 mayors out of clock-makers ? " 
 
 " Yes," said the mother, " and out of worse things ! 
 Was not Dick Whittington, a mere hawker of cats, 
 made three times lord mayor of London I And were 
 not all the lord mayors men who had gone up to 
 London from the country and had made fortunes in 
 trade, and not only rode in a golden coach as grand 
 as the king, but were often members of parliament, 
 and received in great honour at court ? Hold up thy 
 head, my Nicholas," said she proudly, "and one day, I 
 warrant, I shall see thee lord mayor of London." 
 
 If Mrs. Flamstead had prayed for the wisdom of 
 Solomon, it could not have framed for her a speech 
 so exactly adapted to the capacity of her husband and 
 son Sykes. Lord mayor ! it was a new idea. He 
 then, thought the old man, would be greater than the 
 Squire of Dainsby, and so thought the elder son. 
 From that day they neither talked of ordering clocks, 
 nor perceived any smell of Florence oil. Nicholas 
 came and went during the remainder of his apprentice- 
 ship, and was received with as much apparent friend- 
 liness by his father and brother as before by his
 
 THKIR FORTUNES. 53 
 
 mother with increasing affection. The first gold 
 watch which he could put together to his own satis- 
 faction, was presented by him to her on her birth-day, 
 and was worn by her with delight ; and the week 
 after Nicholas received from London a box containing 
 a set of the most perfect tools for his trade that had 
 ever been seen in the country, with a fine microscope 
 and a life of Flamstead the astronomer, a branch of 
 their family, with these lines written in it " Go on, 
 Nicholas Flamstead, and confer the like lasting 
 honour on your family ; if not through science then 
 through virtue." 
 
 It must have been at this period that our friend 
 John Fox was the comrade of Nicholas Flamstead, 
 and accompanied him in those frequent visits to 
 Dainsby, which appeared to have made indelible and 
 delightful impressions on his memory ; but whence 
 John Fox came, or who he was, does not by any 
 means appear. Could he be a fellow -apprentice ? 
 Or could he be some young lawyer's clerk of the little 
 town of Alfreton ? Or was he but we have never 
 met with any one who could give a clear answer to 
 these queries ; and John Fox was, of all persons, the 
 most reserved on the subject. It seemed to affect 
 him deeply, and make him, as a friend was once heard 
 to express it, " introvert himself, and roll himself up 
 in his inner man into the compass of a half-penny 
 ball." We will leave these unprofitable questions, 
 therefore, and pursue the history of Nicholas. 
 
 On the expiration of his short apprenticeship, he 
 went to London to perfect himself if with the hope of 
 being one day lord mayor, he did not succeed for, 
 a year afterwards, his old master dying, lie came 
 down to Alfreton and took his business. The open- 
 ing of Nicholas Flamstead's shop was an era in that 
 
 F2
 
 54 THE FLAMSTEADS AND 
 
 little town. For generations had its watch and clock 
 trade jogged on in the same easy, sleepy, unadvancing 
 way ; it was not a progress, but a stand-still in the 
 art. At once Nicholas dismissed all the old stock, 
 at a price that tempted the country people, who were 
 willing to carry watches as large as turnips, and set 
 up clocks that seemed the work of Tubal Cain. He 
 opened on a market-day with such a blaze of new 
 articles, as fairly struck the people dumb with 
 srmaze. What lovely little gold and silver watches ! 
 What handsome clocks and time-pieces in mahogany 
 cases, and in gold ! What new constructions of 
 works, and what wonders had Nicholas to exhibit 
 and explain to the customers. The consequence was, 
 that scarcely a person within twenty miles round was 
 now satisfied with his watch. He or she must have 
 one of the new construction, or principle, as Nicholas 
 called it. There was no talk but about levers, escape 
 movements, chronometers and engine-turning, and 
 ornamental engraving of cases. 
 
 Nicholas was soon compelled to run up a row of 
 new workshops, light and airy, and had such a row 
 of men at work in them, as had never been seen in 
 Alfreton before. People said that people might live 
 on clocks and watches instead of learn the time by 
 them. But it was not simply for Alfreton and the 
 country round, it was for London, that Nicholas 
 worked. He could afford to work cheaper in this 
 cheap neighbourhood, than could be done in London ; 
 and as his work was equal to anything there, it was 
 ordered by London houses, and was sent down again 
 to various towns, and even abroad. 
 
 Nicholas Flamstead was a flourishing man, and not 
 even his father would have been ashamed of him. 
 But during his abode in London both father and
 
 THEIR FORTUNES. 55 
 
 mother were gone to their ancestors : his brother 
 Sykes was now married, and had one little boy. 
 Sykes's wife, who was a very delicate and lady-like 
 woman, did not at all appear to despise the prosperous 
 Clockmaker. Many of her own relations, in fact, in 
 Derby, were connected with trade, and she was too 
 sensible not to know the value of it. Nicholas took a 
 particular fancy to his little nephew; used to carry him 
 out on a Sunday, when he came to Dainsby, to show 
 him the birds' nests in the hedges ; and begged that 
 they would let the little fellow, who was now four 
 years old, come and see him. This was done at 
 once, and often ; for Mrs. Flamstead whispered to her 
 husband that there was nothing like letting rich 
 uncles take a fancy to children, and her husband, not 
 quite so sagaciously, began to say, " Why, Nicholas 
 may never marry ; I shouldn't think he would. He 
 seems quite cut out for an old bachelor, and in fact 
 is married to his clock-making." 
 
 People are very apt to see this cut of the old 
 bachelor about their well-to-do relations, even when 
 they are young. In what it consists, however, it 
 would often not be so very easy to say. I am sure 
 it would not in the case of Nicholas Flamstead. He 
 was a young, active, sensible, social man ; that he 
 admired a fair, and, still more, a sensible, woman, any 
 body could see ; that he was fond of children, was 
 seen by his liking to his nephew. But as, in this 
 case, the wish was probably " father to the thought," 
 we need not here further pursue the inquiry. In 
 short, little Henry Flamstead used often to be driven 
 over in the carriage to his uncle's, and here, seated in 
 a tall chair, he would sit for hours by his uncle and 
 watch bis work. It would not have been easy to 
 say which was fonder of the other, the uncle or
 
 66 THE FLAMSTEADS AND 
 
 the nephew. Nicholas invented all sorts of pieces of 
 machinery for the little boy with bells and larums, 
 which, as they noisily ran down, made the little 
 fellow laugh till he shouted, or, as his delighted 
 uncle said, " chinked again." Others were little men 
 sawing, and water-wheels; and at last Nicholas even 
 made the hardy request to present him with a splen- 
 did cuckoo clock, in a great Chinese case, to stand in 
 the hall at Dainsby. There was but one point on 
 which he knew that his gift would find a repulsion in 
 the feelings of the parents, and that was to see on a 
 clock in Dainsby Old Hall, the name of a FLAMSTEAD, 
 3i AKEB ; but this, with a delicacy worthy of a true 
 man of merit, he laughingly told them should not 
 appear there till he could set under it lord mayor 
 of London ! 
 
 Fortune now seemed to shower her favours on 
 Nicholas ; his business was such as must in a few 
 years insure wealth, and at once wealth fell on him 
 from another quarter. His mother's sister, whom he 
 had merely seen when he was but a boy, as his 
 nephew Henry was now, died and left him ten 
 thousand pounds. She had not disdained to marry a 
 London tradesman, and knew not only how to dis- 
 cover merit but how to reward it in a few words. 
 "To my nephew, Nicholas Flamstead, Clockmaker 
 of Alfreton, Derbyshire, who disdained to be useless 
 to society, and was too proud to be a gentlemanly 
 beggar Ten Thousand Pounds." 
 
 " Well, now Nick will drop the clocks and watches 
 to a certainty," said his brother Sykes triumphantly. 
 " I don't believe he will," said Mrs. Sykes Flamstead; 
 and she was right. The ten thousand pounds was 
 well invested, and it remained there. The shop of 
 Nicholas Flamstead was as full of watches, wheels,
 
 THEIR FORTUNES. 57 
 
 and swinging pendulums as ever. Nobody could see 
 that the ten thousand pounds made a hair's difference 
 to the life, views, or prospects of Nicholas Flamstead. 
 But precisely at the moment when Nicholas seemed 
 more wedded to his business than ever, he astonished 
 the whole country. All at once, there was a rumour 
 that he had disposed of his business to a London 
 house and had disappeared. He had ridden over to 
 Dainsby on the Sunday, and had taken a very kind 
 leave of them, saying that he was going a longish 
 journey. The nursemaid said that she had never 
 seen Mr. Nicholas so fond of little Henry, nor kiss 
 him so when he went away ; and what astonished 
 them all no little, when the boy came to be undressed 
 there was found a most beautiful gold watch with a 
 gold chain in his pocket, inscribed within the case, 
 " To Henry Flamstead, as a remembrance from his 
 uncle Nicholas." The watch was declared soon 
 afterwards by a maker to be worth a hundred guineas. 
 Scarcely was the report of the disposal of his business 
 abroad, which was found by the family to be true, 
 than a hundred other obscure and contradictory 
 reports flew about. One said, " Ay, Mr. Nicholas 
 was a shrewd fellow. He was too wise, with ten 
 thousand pounds, to stick all his life to a watch- 
 maker's shop ; he would see the world, and did not 
 want the fuss of leave-taking." Another hinted that 
 there was a lady in the affair: that his visits to 
 London had been much more frequent than usual, 
 and his stay there a fortnight at a time, which might 
 be true enough when he was about, from whatever 
 cause, disposing of his concern. About a month after- 
 war is a hat was found on the banks of Butterly 
 Reservoir, a large sheet of water not many miles 
 from Alfreton, and although it had evidently lain
 
 68 THE FLAMSTKADS AND 
 
 long under water, or been drenched with rain, till 
 it had lost too much of its shape, and all trace of 
 name, of wearer or maker, there were not wanting 
 those who declared that it somehow strangely 
 reminded them of Nicholas Flamstead. This excited 
 a great sensation. The Flamsteads made all the 
 possible inquiries after the particulars of these matters, 
 and after Nicholas in London. Nowhere, however, 
 could anything be learned of his movements, except- 
 ing this important fact, that he had by a power of 
 attorney lodged the ten thousand pounds in the hands 
 of an eminent banking-house, with this strict and 
 literal order, that the said sum of ten thousand 
 pounds should remain in its present investment, and 
 the proceeds of it be also invested by the said house 
 according to the best of its judgment ; and that the 
 whole amount of capital and accumulated interest, or 
 investment of that interest, should remain till further 
 written order, or the return of the said owner. In 
 case he did not return or send such order, the said 
 sum should remain in the said hands till the period 
 when he, the said owner, should have arrived at the 
 natural age of eighty years, a reason for this being 
 given that many of the owner's ancestors had lived 
 to that age. Failing all order or return till that 
 period, the whole accumulated sums should then be 
 paid over to the owner's nephew, Henry Flamstead, 
 if surviving, or to his children if dead, in equal 
 shares. Failing issue on the part of the said Henry 
 Flamstead, the sum should go to build at Alfreton, 
 hospitals for poor clock and watchmakers -of Derby- 
 shire, with a stipulated weekly allowance. 
 
 The discovery of this singular fact gave a new and 
 active stimulus to the inquiries on the part of the 
 family of the missing clockmaker. A missing man
 
 THEIR FORTUNE!. 59 
 
 with ten thousand pounds is worth looking after. 
 Every rumour, therefore, of men being found in 
 this pond, and that river, was instantly attended to j 
 every inquiry Avas made amongst his own acquaint- 
 ances and connections in town and country, but he 
 neither floated up out of any water nor any society. 
 A few months after his disappearance there was a 
 slight clue to something like a love-affair laid hold of 
 in London, but nothing definite was made out. The 
 lady was gone out to India with her family, and 
 there was not one of their remaining friends that could 
 make more of the rumour than a rumour. This 
 clue, however, slight as it was, gave a direction to 
 the inquiries of. Nicholas's brother ; and it was soon 
 clearly ascertained that he had actually, Avithin a 
 week of his leaving Dainsby, embarked in the India- 
 man, Alicawn, for the Cape of Good Hope. The 
 result of inquiries at the Cape were not, however, 
 very. satisfactory. He had not gone to India with 
 the Alicawn, yet no trace of him was to be found in 
 the Cape Colony. For aught any one could tell, he 
 might be gone off to locate himself with the Caffres 
 or Hottentots, or to explore the interior. There was 
 a shipping clerk who seemed to recollect such a 
 gentleman at one time hovering about the harbour, 
 and being particularly anxious in his inquiries after 
 a certain ship expected from England on its voyage 
 to India. But when further pressed to refresh his 
 memory and add other particulars, they were so 
 unlike anything belonging to Mr. Nicholas Flamstead 
 that they only nullified his previous statements. 
 
 Here for a long time all intelligence stopped. That 
 Nicholas had been at the Cape vas certain, but how, 
 or when, he went thence, was wrapped in impenetrable 
 gloom. The matter seemed to have exhausted all
 
 60 THK FLAMSTEADS AN'D 
 
 rational conjecture, and to sleep ; when about two 
 years afterwards, some one accidentally saw in an 
 American paper the name of a Mr. Nic. Flamstead 
 as that of a rising senator in one of the Western 
 States. It turned out, however, to be, in reality, a 
 Mr. Nicander Flemsted, a Dane. This incident, 
 nevertheless, did not quench curiosity, it only turned 
 into a particular field the eyes of the inquirers, and 
 these now were not a few, for the mysterious disap- 
 pearance of a man of so much substance was become 
 almost a public topic. It was a most interesting 
 riddle which various people found various good 
 reason for desiring to solve. Colonial papers were 
 eagerly explored, and it was not long before sanguine 
 hopes were entertained that the retreat of the fugitive 
 would be detected. There were seen some adver- 
 tisements of some very large flocks of sheep, and an 
 immense stock of wool, for sale in the district of 
 Sidney, New South Wales, the property of a Mr. N. 
 Flamstead. What so likely as that Nicholas should 
 have shipped himself from the Cape for New Holland, 
 and embarked in what appeared then the most pro- 
 mising of speculations the growth of Australian 
 wool. It was recollected that Nicholas as a boy had 
 been much captivated by the relation of Colonial 
 adventure ; and that, moreover, he had been very 
 fond of sheep ; and bestowed much attention on 
 them on the farm. Eager were the inquiries now 
 sent out to Sidney, and in about twelve months more 
 a very circumstantial account was received, that the 
 Mr. N. Flamstead, in question, was a Mr. Noah 
 Flamstead, a well-known and very wealthy citizen of 
 Sidney, of at least seventy years of age, and having 
 equally well-known correspondents in London, to 
 whom the inquirers were referred. These repeated
 
 THEIR FORTUNES. 61 
 
 disappointments now, indeed, did cool the ardour of 
 search ; the relations were reluctantly compelled to 
 await the events of time, yet now scarcely more than 
 half hoping that even this would clear up the singu- 
 lar fate of the Clockmaker. But their hopes were 
 destined to receive a speedy revival. A clerk, at 
 Lloyd's, turning over a file of Indian papers for a 
 very different object, accidentally fell on the account 
 of a duel which had been fought in the suburbs of 
 the city of Bombay, and in which the name of Mr. 
 Nicholas Flamstead occurred at full length as the 
 challenger. It was stated that the quarrel had 
 arisen from a very singular and deeply interesting 
 love-affair. The two opponents had been both 
 zealous candidates for the hand of a young and lovely 
 lady of good family, and of singular beauty and 
 accomplishments, as well as of most fascinating dis- 
 position ; that, as is often the case, the one suitor 
 had the favour of the lady, the other that of her 
 family ; the intimacy had commenced in England ; 
 the family had suddenly embarked for India, the 
 father having received a high official appointment, 
 and the two rivals, it would seem, had immediately 
 followed. One, indeed, was supposed to have pre- 
 ceded the lady and her family. The date of these 
 transactions was precisely that of the disappearance 
 of Nicholas Flamstead ; and the duel had taken 
 place within a month of the arrival of the parties. 
 Nicholas Flamstead was actually the challenger; 
 his opponent was seriously but not mortally wounded. 
 But that which gave the most singular and melancholy 
 interest to this case was, that within six hours of 
 the taking place of this rencontre, the lady, on whose 
 account it had arisen, died of a rapid and malignant 
 o
 
 62 THE FLAMSTEADS AND 
 
 disease of the country, apparently that which is now 
 known by the name of the cholera. 
 
 These remarkable facts were immediately com- 
 municated to Mr. Sykes Flamstead, who hastened 
 up to London and put in train, through a high official 
 channel, the mc<jt efficient measures for ascertaining 
 the identity of Mr. Nicholas Flamstead, the Clock- 
 maker, with the Mr. Nicholas Flamstead of the duel. 
 Such were the collateral facts of the case that there 
 appeared very little doubt that these were one and 
 the same man. The impatience with which the 
 return of the Indian Mail was expected, may be 
 imagined. It came the gentleman had been readily 
 found the facts were all correctly stated ; but the 
 Mr. Nicholas Flamstead of the duel did not in any 
 single particular correspond with that sent of the 
 missing gentleman. Mr. Nicholas Flamstead, the 
 Clockmaker, was described as a person of full form, 
 five feet eight in height, of most decidedly formed 
 features, a fair and ruddy complexion, with light- 
 brown hair, and gray eyes. The Mr. Nicholas 
 Flamstead of the duel was a tall, thin man, of a 
 dark, sallow complexion, black shining hair, of a 
 longish and saturnine countenance. He was a mer- 
 chant of extensive affairs and was not related, nor 
 had, indeed, heard of the Flamsteads of Dainsby. 
 
 From this time nothing further was heard of the 
 Clockmaker. Not a rumour arose ; not an inquiry 
 was instituted ; all conjecture seemed completely at 
 fault, and a silence and oblivion fell over the actual 
 fate of Nicholas Flamstead as profound as death 
 itself. As years went on, the conviction that he 
 could not possibly be in existence grew almost to 
 certainty : there never came to the trustees of hia 
 property the slightest intimation from him or of hia
 
 THEIR FORTUNES. 63 
 
 existence. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty years rolled 
 over, and it was the same. Most of the hanking 
 firm into whose hands the Clockmaker had committed 
 his money, had successively departed this life ; yet 
 the property itself was as regularly attended to by 
 their sons and successors as it had been by themselves. 
 There wanted now but fifteen years till the time of 
 the trust should expire, and the whole now swollen 
 mass should devolve to the nephew of the vanished, 
 and, pretty certainly defunct, Clockmaker. And 
 what a sum it was ! So well had the banking-house 
 fulfilled its important trust ; so well had it exercised 
 the discretionary power vested in it, that the ten 
 thousand pounds was not now become forty thousand, 
 as in the regular course of accumulation, but by pur- 
 chase into certain companies for public accommoda- 
 tion in the metropolis, and in particular into a certain 
 water-company, that it had reached the actual sum 
 of eighty thousand pounds! We may imagine the 
 intense interest which every year added to the ex- 
 pectancy of this remarkable honey-fall. What specu- 
 lations were there in many fanciful heads ! Should 
 the old man now actually appear ! Should some 
 claimant, one of these days, arrive with the written 
 order or the will of the Clockmaker ; some young 
 Flamstead out of the back-settlements of some 
 distant colony, and swoop upon and bear away the 
 stupendous prize just as it seemed about to fall into 
 the hands of the long-expectant party. The very 
 thought was enough to drive a nervous man mad ; 
 nor were there wanting those good-natured people 
 who took care to suggest these fever-fraught ideas to 
 Mr. Henry Flamstead and his family. " It is really 
 now, ;i long time, to be sure," they would say ; " and 
 as to all earthly probability one might call it a
 
 04 NEW FORTUNES OP THE FLAMSTEADS 
 
 settled thing l>ut, as the old proverb has it, ' There 
 is many a slip between the cup and the lip.' " 
 
 The Flamstead family, however, had at this time 
 other goads of the 'too rid to sting and torture their 
 feelings ; and it is now our duty to turn back and 
 follow out another series of events. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 NEW FORTUNES OF THE FLAMSTEADS. 
 
 DURING the period we have referred to in endea- 
 vouring to unearth the Clockmaker in his sudden 
 burrowing down out of the cognizance of mankind, 
 if he had not, indeed, become earthed for ever, the 
 little nephew Henry had shot up into manhood. He 
 bore, however, a very different aspect, stamp and 
 spirit, to those of the old race of Flamsteads. They 
 were sturdy, hardy, plodding yeomen ; Henry was 
 tall and delicate in frame and aspect ; they had 
 adhered remarkably to the homely and somewhat 
 sordid way of living and thinking of their ancestors. 
 Henry had the mind and bearing, the feelings and 
 ideas of a gentleman, and that too of a sensitive and 
 refined one. As a boy he was always more fond of 
 his mother's society than his father's. He cared 
 little for looking after the cattle, and the sheep; 
 after the men in the farm and at plough, as his 
 father had done and wished him to do. He preferred 
 riding his pony, and reading a book, or listening to 
 the stories that his mother was accustomed to tell him. 
 Nothing, however, delighted him so much <is to 
 accompany his mother in her walks and her visits. 
 
 His father used to say, ' Why, Henry, you will 
 never be good for anything ; you are a regular
 
 NEW FOHTUNES OF THE FLAMSTEADS. 65 
 
 bantling. You are always hanging to your mother's 
 apron-string, like her pincushion. Out upon you ! 
 you will be quite nesh * and girlish ; nay, you must 
 surely be meant for a girl." 
 
 The old, rough farmers of the village said, " Ay, 
 here 's a change ! This is no chip of the old block. 
 The Flamstead blood has run out the Chetwynd 
 blood (that of his mother's family) has got the upper- 
 most, and master Henry will be none o' your clod-hop- 
 pers, but a thorough fine-fingered gentleman !" 
 
 There was a good deal of truth in the observations 
 of both father and neighbours. Henry did really 
 take extremely after his mother ; and his affection 
 for her was not greater than the influence of her 
 tastes and feelings were all-powerful over him. She 
 was a shrewd and, in many ways, a worldly-wise 
 woman ; but she was at the same time a very clever 
 and lady-like one. She had higher tastes and 
 accomplishments than had usually been the case 
 with the Flamsteads' wives. She had moved in a 
 much more refined circle. She had no child but 
 Henry, and thus he became son and daugher, and 
 everything to her. She had read a good deal, had a 
 deal of imagination, and found in Henry a most 
 willing listener to what there was no one besides at 
 home who understood or appreciated in her. She 
 inoculated Henry with her love of music and sing- 
 ing, as well as delighted him with her gifts in these 
 respects ; and thus, perhaps, still more softened his 
 character, already too soft for his position. 
 
 As he grew up he was sent, through her influence, 
 which was great over her husband, to a far higher 
 school than any one of his ancestors had gone to to 
 one, indeed, where he found the sons of almost all 
 
 * Tender. 
 
 02
 
 G6 NEW FORTUNES OF THE FLAMSTEAPS. 
 
 the gentry of his native county of his own age ; and 
 this again not only refined his manners, but gave a 
 more confirmed bias to his delicacy of taste. The 
 robuster habits of the more robust and more practical 
 portion of the boys he instinctively turned from. 
 His growth, frc>n his fifteenth to his twentieth year, 
 was so rapid that the most serious fears of consump- 
 tion were entertained ; and as he was the only child, 
 these fears were proportionably stronger. He was, 
 therefore, not once required by his father to devote 
 his attention to the business of the estate, but with 
 a servant and a due allowance was sent to travel in 
 different parts of the kingdom, or was accompanied 
 by his parents every summer to the sea-coast. 
 
 In his twentieth year he was a tall, slim youth, of 
 a very delicate and yet somewhat rosy complexion ; 
 yet this rose-hue was so soft and fugitive that the 
 paleness of languor might often be seen usurping its 
 place. He was of a very mild, quiet, and gentle 
 manner ; and, no doubt from his sense of his frail 
 hold of life, was of a decidedly religious turn of mind. 
 At this age his father met with his death in a singu- 
 lar manner. He was out following the hounds of 
 old Mr. Lowe, of Locko. They were crossing the 
 moors at Horristan, when, coming in the heat of the 
 pursuit to a sudden descent, which was covered with 
 a glazing of ice, his horse fell, and he was precipi- 
 tated with his head against a mass of stone that lay 
 on the moor, and was taken up dead. His mother 
 was so shocked at the news that she was seized with 
 spasms of the chest ; which, though conquered ap- 
 parently at the time, yet recurred again and again 
 at different intervals with such violence, that the 
 medical man apprehended their approach to the 
 region of the heart ; that she would probably one
 
 NEW FORTUNES OF THE FLAMSTEADS. 67 
 
 day expire suddenly. This, in fact, took place, as 
 she sate after dinner in a particularly gay humour. 
 The housekeeper had come in with some story of 
 a ludicrous nature, which had just occurred in the 
 village, at which she was so much amused that she 
 laughed heartily, and in the midst of her mirth, lay- 
 ing her hand suddenly on her heart, said painfully 
 " Oh, Heavens !" and expired in her chair. 
 
 The Flamsteads had usually been a tolerably long- 
 lived family, and there had most frequently been 
 seen here an old grandfather occupying the easy- 
 chair, when the children of the son in his prime were 
 playing around it. But here, now, was the sole 
 descendant of the race left suddenly alone in his 
 house at the age of twenty-one, and that with so frail 
 an apparent hold on life, that it well might create 
 fears of the endurance of the line. There was also 
 reason in the state and habits of Henry Flamstead 
 for the wondering of the neighbours how it would 
 be with the management of the estate. " Mr. 
 Henry," said they, v ' is no farmer ; he is no man of 
 business ; he will probably let the property and go 
 and live somewhere else." 
 
 But Henry Flamstead had more strength of cha- 
 racter than of constitution ; he did not pretend to be 
 his own farmer, had no great taste for it, nor faith in 
 his own skill ; but he selected a superior working 
 man, and made him his farmer and bailiff, and found 
 it answer extremely well. He rode over his lands 
 every day, and conversed with this man on all the 
 agricultural matters. He shot, and fished, and 
 coursed with great enjoyment. Everybody was sur- 
 prised to see that not only did his affairs go on well, 
 but that he evidently improved in health and spirits. 
 But he was a solitary man here ; his tastes differed
 
 68 NEW FORTUNES OF THE FLAMSTEAD8. 
 
 much from those of his neighbours. He was always 
 kind and affable with them, but he \vanted other 
 society, and this he used to seek very much among 
 his mother's relatives in Derby, and the following 
 spring he suddenly surprised the whole of Dainsby 
 by bringing home, as his wife, a fair lady, one of hia 
 own cousins. This lady, who was as near as possible 
 of his own age, was a lively, sunny-looking woman, 
 who seemed to have no other object of admiration or 
 of ambition but her husband. She was a fair, blue- 
 eyed, happy-looking creature, that made a sunshine 
 in the house, and, indeed, soon throughout the whole 
 village. Many said that Mr. Henry, who was a 
 man that might have picked and chosen anywhere 
 amongst the ladies of the county, had not shown 
 much wordly wisdom by selecting his pretty cousin 
 who had no fortune ; but those who saw Mrs. 
 Flamstead with the eyes of true discernment, saw 
 that she was one of the pearls of great price that 
 Solomon speaks of. Perhaps she was a little too 
 much like her husband in tone of mind, a little too 
 gentle and soft ; perhaps some one of more energy 
 and will had been better; but it might be that a 
 change after all would not have been more blessed in 
 its results. Henry had brought genuine sunshine 
 heart and soul sunshine into his house which filled 
 and irradiated every room of it with a feeling of love 
 and peace ; and instead of that he might have had, as 
 was said, more energy and will in the shape of a 
 tempest. 
 
 As it was, time rolled on blissfully. Henry 
 Flamstead saw almost every year a fresh chubby 
 cherub on his hearth. There grew up in this beautiful 
 sunshine a sound of laughter, a hum as of bees, a 
 singing as of larks and throstles, and if we could but
 
 NEW FORTUNES OF THE FLAMRTEADS. 69 
 
 have looked into the breakfast-room of Dainsby Old 
 Hall some fine May morning, we should have seen 
 one of the most delightful scenes of mortal happiness 
 that the rolling earth could show us. There sat the 
 lively, sunny mother on one side of the table ; there, 
 on the other, the happy and gay father, and all 
 round on either hand such a troop of sunny, rosy, 
 chatting children, as might well make the parents 
 look so bright and benignant, and feel that heaven 
 really did begin on earth. There you would have 
 probably seen the windows open, and have perceived 
 from the sunny garden the odorous breath of flowers 
 come stealing in warm as if mixed with sunbeams, 
 and the chirp of sparrows, and the sonorous cawing 
 of rooks in the lofty new-leaved elms, till Dainsby 
 Old Hall was not full of life and joy within only, but 
 without also. Oh ! how much do the evidences of 
 life and gladness go together ! Can the bird sing, 
 and the flowers breathe forth sweetness, and the very 
 rooks caw with lustiness and joy around the dwellings 
 of care and of guilt ? We can scarcely believe it 
 we can scarcely acknowledge the probability of such 
 a thing. If it exists, one's ears and hearts are deaf to 
 it; but when the music of existence rings joyously 
 from the hearth- stone how its reverberations seem to 
 waken accordant tones in the open air, and heaven 
 and earth, sky and water, seem to sing together. 
 
 But could we look again into this old breakfast 
 parlour, we should perceive a solemn hush. There 
 is an air of gravity on those beaming, childish faces ; 
 the father utters the expressive words of thankful- 
 ness and blessing to which the very ancestors on the 
 walls seem to listen, and then again all is eager mer- 
 riment. There are white dresses and girlish figures 
 clustering around the mother as she goes down the
 
 70 
 
 long, old walks, and beside those green walls of 
 clipped bo*, and arrows and balls are flying up in 
 the blue air from boyish hands ; there are ponies 
 mounted, and away with the father over field and 
 hill ; or sober voices are calling to sober hours of 
 study. So flcv on many days and many years 
 how different to the days of old at Dainsby. 
 
 But there was a still greater change in the life 
 and spirit of things there. Henry Flamstead had 
 retained all the religious feeling of his early youth, 
 but he had in some degree forsaken the religion of 
 his ancestors. The Vicar of Dainsby was also the 
 Vicar of Brexdell, a place at some distance. He 
 was an old bachelor and a sordid one. Once a week 
 he came and performed Divine service in the church, 
 and that was all that his parishioners saw of him. 
 This created great discontent. It was what had 
 never occurred before. The living of Dainsby was 
 quite sufficient for the maintenance of a minis- 
 ter, and the parsimony of its incumbent would not 
 afford it a curate. The people petitioned the vicar 
 zealously for a resident curate, and Mr. Henry 
 Flamstead took the lead. It was in vain ; and what 
 was more, it only angered the vicar. The methodists 
 now becoming strong, numerous, and active, soon saw 
 the vacant field and stepped into it. At first they 
 preached in the open air ; no one invited them under 
 a roof, and only the poor stood and heard them. 
 But soon this gathering of the poor increased. They 
 praised the new preachers they compared them 
 with their own vicar. The contrast provoked 
 remarks amongst the farmers ; the discontent grew, 
 and first one and then another went out to hear. 
 Suddenly there was an event which made a sensation 
 through the whole place. Farmer Westbrook had
 
 NEW FORTUNES OF THE FLAMSTEAD8. 71 
 
 offered the methodists his barn, and invited the 
 preachers to make his house their place af call. A 
 revolution was now begun a strife, a convulsion, that 
 had pretty much in the same manner gone through 
 almost every parish in England. It was a real civil 
 war between church and schism ; between old things 
 and opinions, and the new. The poor almost with 
 one voice and spirit crowded to the new banner of 
 devotion; the farmers were arrayed in opposite 
 ranks. Some even who had been loudest against the 
 vicar now became silent for a time, and then as loud 
 on the other side. They were wroth with the pastor, 
 but they were loyal to the church. Amongst these 
 was Henry Flamstead. Much as he was disgusted 
 with the vicar, he had never anticipated any change 
 like this. His friends, educational and ancestral 
 opinions and prejudices, leaned all the other way ; 
 but, at the same time, he was too liberal and 
 enlightened to prefer utter neglect of the people, 
 only too common then in country places, to zeal and 
 attention to them. He stood, therefore, long zeal- 
 ously aloof from this new movement. He watched 
 it, and heard what was said for and against it. But 
 at length when he heard, particularly in more genteel 
 circles, and by those who had previously taken no 
 pains to judge for themselves, the most absurd and 
 false stories of the methodist proceedings, his just and 
 generous feelings impelled him to explain, to rectify, 
 and justify. As he still watched the effects of the 
 new proceedings, and saw order, industry, sobriety, 
 and intelligence taking place of ignorance and 
 demoralization, he said, "there can be no mistake here 
 there is no doubt which of these two things to 
 choose there can be no question whether we shall 
 have zealous pastors or careless ones tin earnest, con-
 
 72 NEW FORTUNES OP THE FLAMSTEAJ7S. 
 
 tented, and reformed people or sottish ignorance, and 
 the ale-house flourishing more than the house of 
 worship ; " and the people of Dainsby were soon after 
 treated to a new surprise in seeing Mr. Henry 
 Flamstead and his family walk into the barn, and 
 seat themselves just before the preacher. 
 
 From that day their attendance was regular, ant) 
 within three months the most substantial leaders of 
 the methodist congregation were invited one evening 
 to meet Mr. Flamstead at the Hall, and were trans- 
 ported with the communication of the fact, that it 
 was his wish to present them with a piece of ground 
 upon which to build a chapel, and two hundred and 
 fifty pounds towards its erection. We can well 
 imagine the sensation which this news, like a flash 
 of lightning, shot through the parish. We need not 
 add more than that within a year a handsome chapel 
 stood complete in the midst of Dainsby, and that 
 the family pew of the Flamsteads stood empty in the 
 church, whilst a neat one near the pulpit of the 
 chapel was duly seen filled with the squire's family. 
 
 The consequent revolution which this circum- 
 stance occasioned in the life and connections of Mr. 
 Flamstead it requires no great stretch of imagina- 
 tion to perceive. In the country at large he was a 
 shunned and marked man. He was regarded as a 
 traitor to the established church, as a silly enthusiast, 
 as a weak fanatic, as a vain, ambitious man, who pre- 
 ferred to be at the head of a party, to being the quiet, 
 stanch, respectable pillar of a great national fabric. 
 All these charges and assertions he had calculated 
 upon, and knew how to bear. He was flung for 
 society very much upon the people of his own 
 parish, and on a class in worldly rank far inferior to 
 what he had been accustomed to mingle with. On
 
 NEW FORTUNES OF THE FLAMSTEADS. 73 
 
 the other hand he found himself actively occupied 
 and bound up with a new class of interests. He was 
 placed actually at thehead of a newreligious movement 
 in his own neighbourhood. His example gave a fresh 
 eclat and life to the cause. Most of what he believed 
 to be of eternal importance he now saw depending 
 essentially upon himself. He came into contact and 
 correspondence with the active movers of a new and 
 gi-eat system ; linked up, even in this secluded corner, 
 with the vital action of the whole world. The 
 missions of his own people, and the intelligence 
 which came, both through ever-arriving new 
 preachers, and the " Methodist Magazine," opened up 
 a world, vast and incalculable in its influences on man- 
 kind, that gave a new impulse and value to existence. 
 Time ran on Henry Flamstead, by the active 
 duties that had devolved on him, by having to act 
 and think for others, was, as every one saw, become a 
 much more practical, busy, managing character than 
 he was before. He not only thought and worked 
 for the society, but he thought and worked for his 
 family. He had, in a few years after his joining the 
 Methodist body, no fewer than five children around 
 his table, and every prospect of a steady increase of 
 the number ; this was another new feature of the 
 Flamstead family, and he could not, like his fore- 
 fathers, look with a sloth-like indifference to the future 
 fortunes of his children. Circumstances not only 
 infused new spirit into him, but into the times. The 
 great war of French aggression was raging all over 
 Europe. Napoleon, like a new incarnation of the 
 ancient spirit of universal domination, with the ter- 
 rific powers of more truly scientific than civilized 
 Europe to work with, was overrunning the nations, 
 and making the proudest monarchs stoop like slaves.
 
 74 NE\ FORTCXES OP THE FLAMSTEACS. 
 
 The price of all agricultural produce in still free and 
 active England rose to a pitch that made men regard 
 laud as so much gold that only wanted shovelling up. 
 It was greedily bought up on all sides. The higher 
 it rose in consequent value the greater became the 
 mania of its acquisition. Mr. Flamstead was not 
 exempt from this contagion. He found his corn such 
 a mine of wealth that he naturally looked out for 
 still more land, not only as an investment for surplus 
 capital, but as a source of such brilliant returns. 
 He bought extensively ; and from year to year as 
 his taste for purchase was universally perceived, 
 more and more was offered to him by shrewd and 
 differently calculating men, at prices, which however 
 exorbitant did not then appear so. 
 
 By the time that some of hh elder children were 
 assuming the forms of men and women, Henry Flam- 
 stead found himself in possession of five times the 
 extent of the earth's surface that had ever acknow- 
 ledged the ownership of his family. 
 
 If we were now to take another peep at Dainsby 
 Old Hall and the Flamstead family, we should find 
 it as bright and charming a scene of human happiness 
 as the green vales of England could present to us, in 
 all their woody mazes, or on all their sunny slopes. 
 There were nine young Flamsteads gathered around 
 their parents. The eldest of these was a daughter, 
 a gentle creature much resembling her father in 
 person and character, bearing the name of Elizabeth 
 in the baptismal record, but known in the family 
 only by that of Betsy. The next was a son, George, 
 an active, light-hearted, vigorous youth, in whom his 
 father delighted to find wondrous resemblance to his 
 uncle, the Clockmaker; and the third was another 
 daughter, a shorter and merrier crea'nre than her
 
 NEW FORTUNES OP THE FLAMSTKADS. 5 
 
 sister a maiden with all the sunny form and bright- 
 heartedncss of her mother the little, domestic Anne. 
 Nobody, however, would picture her by that word 
 she was the good and blithe Nancy. As these young 
 people will have presently to figure in this family 
 story, we give this brief sketch of their personalities,, 
 and leave the younger herd at present to their 
 games and their sunshine. 
 
 Within and without Dainsby Old Hall had now 
 an air of prosperous joy. Its walls, roof, windows, 
 and wood-work were in the most bright and perfect 
 order. New stables and out-buildings had been 
 added, and the whole, instead of staring across the 
 lawn, had been planted off by a screen of young trees. 
 Beyond these, if you penetrated, you soon found 
 yourself in an extensive farm-yard, where all modern 
 improvements, both in live stock and their habitations 
 and accommodations, were the most conspicuous. 
 The fine dairy, the stately bullocks at straw before 
 the great open doors of the barn, where a thrashing 
 machine was knocking out the corn at a rate that 
 would have amazed the owner's grandfather ; the 
 shapely swine, the broods of poultry, peacocks, 
 guinea-fowls, ducks, geese, turkeys, and hens all 
 testified to the reign of abundance. If it were winter, 
 the tall oxen, as we have said, were feeding from 
 cribs before the great barn-doors, or were luxuriously 
 Feeding on turnips and beet-root cut for them with 
 ftcw and rapid machines. If it were summer, what 
 <s, scene of beauty was presented by the sleek and 
 mottled herds, and the gay steeds grazing in the 
 rich meadows before the house. To the house 
 itself there ran a new carriage road, with a proud 
 sweep through shrubbery and flower-bordered wood- 
 lands ; an<J handsome carriages rolled lightly along it,
 
 76 KEW FORTUNES OP THE FLAMSTEADS. 
 
 conveying visitors from neighbouring families, for 
 Mr. Henry Flamstead was too influential and pros- 
 perous a man to be entirely cut, even for his Metho- 
 dism, especially with the princely sum into which 
 the wealth of the Clockmaker was rolling itself for 
 him and his children, in view. The family carriage 
 itself was rich and well appointed, and truly did 
 handsome and happy faces beam from it as it passed 
 along. At times, too, a troop of young horsemen 
 and horsewomen dashed out from its gates and away 
 through the neighbouring country, or came hurrying 
 in at the clamorous tone of the dinner bell. 
 
 Everything seemed to glide oruat Dainsby Old 
 Hall in a joyous, easy, full and flowing course ; there 
 was, in its truest sense, peace and plenty within its 
 walls. " The rich man has many friends," and Mr. 
 Henry Flamstead was rich. Around his table were 
 frequently assembled the most cordial and radiant 
 faces. From London, from many a part of the king- 
 dom, came the ministers and agents, and the leading 
 members of the religious body with which the family 
 were united. Some of their highest pleasures were 
 in their great religious meetings and gatherings in 
 town and country, and in the presence of the great 
 men of the connection. 
 
 The young people had no lack of associates of their 
 own age, and to them, in this glad season of their 
 existence, life indeed wore a sunlit face. George had 
 finished his education, and one of his most intimate 
 comrades at Repton school was also now a compara- 
 tively near neighbour, and an almost constant guest 
 in the family. Robert Nadell was a solitary person 
 in his own little hamlet of Millbrook, for he was the 
 only child of a gentleman of good property there, and 
 it was not to be wondered at that he was glad to get
 
 NEW FORTUNES OF THE FLASISTEADS. 11 
 
 away as often as possible into so cheerful and happy a 
 scene as that which surrounded his old schoolfellow. 
 They fished, rode, shot, coursed together ; they 
 worked industriously at the various mechanical 
 labours of turning, joinering, and even wagon and 
 plough- making, of which George was passionately 
 fond. He had actually engaged a skilful wheelwright 
 and farming-implement maker, and was daily to l>e 
 found busily employed in the shop, working away 
 with mallet and chisel as admirably as any apprentice 
 in the trade. Nay, he came eventually to pride 
 himself on being able, if need were, to turn out as 
 good a plough, pair of harrows, winnowing machine, 
 or wagon, and paint them, too, and then use them, 
 as any man in England. Here again his father saw 
 the mechanical turn of his uncle Nicholas, and would 
 often say, " What would he not give that the Clock- 
 maker could see George at his labours." 
 
 We must not, however, pretend that the young 
 Robert Nadell was so much enamoured of wagon 
 and cart-making as of other objects at the Hall. My 
 young readers would justly smile at my want of 
 observation if I did not at once tell them that I have 
 long been aware, from the moment that he appeared 
 upon the scene, that there were other attractions at 
 Dainsby Old Hall, which drew him thither so con- 
 tinually. Nay, I will at once confess that George 
 Flamstead would often come running into the house, 
 with a loud cry of " Robert ! Robert ! where in the 
 world is that fellow gone to now again ? What, 
 cutting papers? when I want you to strike with the 
 great hammer ! Come along, the wheel is ready to 
 be tired, and here you are !" 
 
 Robert, in fact, soon became the declared and the 
 accepted lover of Miss Flamstead, and as George and 
 
 H2
 
 78 A CLOCD ON THE SUNSHINE. 
 
 he had long seemed more like brothers than friends, 
 Robert seemed now to become really the brother of the 
 whole young group, and one of the family. There 
 was scarcely a day that he was not there, and in all 
 their rides and walks, their amusements, and their 
 serious and religious occupations and engagements, 
 he was seen taking part. Time rolled on gallantly 
 at Dainsby Old Hall ; it was, indeed, one of the most 
 perfect of earth's paradises. Youth, rejoicing in 
 innocence and love, and the daily course of life 
 filled up with duties that gave peace to the heart, 
 and bound it up in sympathy with the interests of 
 men. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A CLOUD ON THE SUNSHINE. 
 
 UNSTABLE and precarious as is human prosperity, 
 that of the Flamsteads appeared to most eyes as likely 
 to endure as that of any mortal lot whatever. There 
 was so much property, so much virtue, so much 
 domestic affection, as well as apparent health. Yet 
 the Flamsteads were not exempt from their quota of 
 enemies and croakers ; there were those who were 
 fond of comparing Henry with his ancestors, and 
 commenting on the difference. The simple old 
 folks, how homely, how careful, how plodding they 
 had been. There was a pretty change here. 
 This Mr. Henry Flamstead, why, he was quite a fine, 
 delicate gentleman his own fathers would not have 
 known him. They used to trudge about over their 
 fields, and after their ploughmen. He wont jaunting 
 rnafine horse they used to stop a gap or dig a 
 post-hole, if necessary, with their o\vn hands ; he 
 would not soil his fingers with his native earth, but
 
 A CLOUD ON TIIK SUNSHINE. 79 
 
 went about with gloves on his hands, as if it were 
 always winter. They went to attend at all fairs and 
 markets, and made all their bargains about corn and 
 cattle themselves; he kept a bailiff to do all that. 
 They were contented to drive a gig and Mr. Henry's 
 father had only an open carriage here now was an 
 open carriage, a close carriage, and a pony carriage. 
 They used to keep little company, and old-fashioned 
 hours, and spread old-fashioned fare on their table 
 here, who could tell out of what regions all the 
 folks, gentle and simple, came. From the four 
 winds, nay, from forty winds, did they seem to blow 
 together. Gentry, preachers heaven could tell who 
 or what they were, but never was there a week, and 
 often not a day, but somebody was posting up to the 
 Hall. Well, well ! it used to be said that 4i a penny 
 saved is a penny got," and that " many birds picking 
 at the barn-door would soon bring ninepence to a 
 groat ;" but here, if people could believe their eyes, 
 all the old maxims were proved to be nonsense, for the 
 more there was spent, the more there was left behind. 
 " Time would show," added they, however, with a 
 sort of self-consolatory reflection and a knowing nod. 
 
 Others, again, when it was remarked what a vast 
 quantity of land Mr. Flarnstead had bought, asked if 
 they knew as certainly that it was all paid for; or if 
 paid for to the seller, as was generally said to be the 
 case, whether there might not be heavy mortgages lying 
 on it. If the old Flamsteads had not laid up an 
 unknown hoard, this must be the case. Many 
 inquiries were made on this head, and yet nothing 
 could be discovered. Joy and plenty sat on the 
 towers of Dainsby Old Hall and the curious won- 
 dered, and the pious saw it as the blessing of God. 
 
 The mystery, however, which the simple people
 
 80 A CLOUD ON THE SUNSHINE. 
 
 of Dainsby could not clear up, I can, and now will. 
 There were heavy mortgages on the newly-purchased 
 lands. Mr. Henry Flamstead was but one amongst 
 a most extensive class, who saw, in the high value 
 given to landed produce by the war, a means offered, 
 and which once gone could never recur, of making a 
 great increase to their estates. The extra proceeds 
 of their estates, at a moderate calculation, would, in 
 twenty years at least, double them. The firm eleva- 
 tion, the extensive conquests, the active arrangements 
 of Napoleon, coupled with his unparalleled military 
 genius, seemed to their imaginations to present a 
 prospect of the continuance of this state of things, 
 when the determined resistance of Great Britain was 
 taken into the account, to which no man could set a 
 precise termination. Under this impression, as I 
 have said, great and numerous purchases were made, 
 and money taken up upon them, which was to be 
 annually paid off by instalments, and the most con- 
 fident certainty was entertained that ten or more years, 
 according to the amount of produce, would see all 
 debt cleared off, and the family prosperity thus mag- 
 nificently augmented. 
 
 Unfortunately for numbers of these sanguine specu- 
 lators, Providence had set a nearer bound to the 
 bloody course of Napoleon than the shrewdest politi- 
 cian could prognosticate ; the soaring spirit of pre- 
 sumption, puffed up by unparalleled success, was to 
 find, not from the hand of man, but from the right 
 arm of the Almighty, wrapped in the tempests 
 and the frozen terrors of the north, its first and effec- 
 tual check. At the sublime signal of Heaven, the 
 nations rose in countless legions ; the Cossacks, and 
 the very Tartars, came sweeping down from the wall 
 of China ; and, like the locusts from the East, covered
 
 A CLOUD ON THE SUNSHINE. 81 
 
 the face of the earth, and chased the discomfited 
 Emperor to his own imperial city, and into the 
 victorious power of England. At once peace returned ; 
 all Europe felt a sudden revulsion, as from the excite- 
 ment of delirium to the stupor of temporary inanition. 
 All the towering schemes and prices incident on this 
 great and unnatural war toppled down, and buried 
 such speculators as Henry Flamstead by thousands 
 in their ruins. Before the artificial breakwater of 
 the corn bill could be cast up against the refluent tide 
 of prices and circumstances, the ruin of numbers was 
 complete. The fall in the price of land was so great, 
 that in many instances that which was bought was 
 not only lost, but it swallowed up that which the 
 possessor had before. How many families can yet 
 testify with sorrow, and from the depths of irremedi- 
 able poverty, to these facts. 
 
 Mr. Flamstead's purchases, extensive as they were, 
 did not, however, necessarily involve anything like 
 ruin. Had he had no expectations, he must have 
 been compelled to let all his possessions go, and to 
 have encumbered his original estate considerably to 
 have discharged the still surplus debt upon it, but 
 then there was the rapidly accumulating property of 
 the Clockmaker, which, from that time, in twenty 
 years, must, if no claimant from the vanished owner 
 appeared, which now seemed totally improbable, fall 
 in and discharge everything, and leave also a hand- 
 some addition to his wealth. This he was able to 
 shew to his creditors, and so reasonable did it appear, 
 that they were for the most part ready to leave their 
 mortgages as they were, in reliance on a statement 
 which he laid before them, by which it appeared that 
 by a system of rigid economy, and by other plans, he 
 could, in the meantime, manage to defray the annual
 
 82 A OLOUD ON THE SUNSHINE. 
 
 interest. It was evident, indeed, that a most radical 
 change must take place in the whole mode of life, 
 views, and occupations of the Flamstcad family. 
 The carriage must be laid down; all unnecessary 
 horses be disposed of; a simple and strict plan of 
 housekeeping must be adopted, and strictly adhered 
 to ; and that liberal hospitality which had made 
 Dainsby Old Hall the genial and happy resort of so 
 many, must receive a check as frosty and repugnant to 
 the dispositions of the owners, as that of the frosts and 
 snows of Russia had been to Napoleon. All these things, 
 however, under a sense of duty, and an animating 
 hope that success would eventually crown their exer- 
 tions, sanctify their sacrifices, and make all in the 
 end well, were most cheerfully borne by every mem- 
 ber of the family ; and this, and the sound unity and 
 strong affection of the whole kindred group, made 
 them treat with indifference the outward coldness 
 which always follows the overcloudingof the sunof for- 
 tune, and the ill-natured sneers which the envious shot 
 about like burning arrows at the bared heads that 
 were left exposed by evil chance to their assaults. 
 
 There was a shadow, a gloom, but not a darkness ; 
 a hush, but not a horror, fallen on Dainsby Old Hall, 
 and well would it have been if this state of things had 
 remained ; but it is rare when so great a shaking 
 comes on a house if it do not continue to crack, its 
 foundations to give way, and its walls to open wider 
 chasms, threatening even total ruin. It was soon 
 found to be the case here, and as is usually the fact, 
 the further mischief came from a quarter where 
 there was the least apparent adverse momentum. 
 
 Amongst the creditors of Mr. Henry Flamstead, 
 there were two from whom he had borrowed a joint 
 sum on his note of five hundred pounds. The sum
 
 A CLOUD ON THE SUNSHINE. 83 
 
 was so small, that it was not deemed of sufficient 
 importance to secure it by mortgage. It was, indeed, 
 such a sum as Mr. Flamstead held himself qualified 
 to pay off at any short notice, and had taken it on that 
 condition. The owners of this sum were two men 
 who were closely connected by marriage, they had 
 in fact married two sisters, and they were as closely 
 connected in trade. They were from the neighbouring 
 town of Belper ; the one a frame-smith, the other a 
 sinker-maker. These terms are probably sufficiently 
 obscure to the general reader to require some expla- 
 nation, as they are of local existence. The frame- 
 smith is the smith who makes the stocking-loom or 
 frame, as it is called where it is mostly used, in 
 Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and Leicestershire. 
 The sinker-maker is the maker of the sinkers or 
 strips of iron belonging to the machinery of the frame, 
 and which derive their name from sinking down upon 
 the woof and pressing it into its proper place. So 
 little is known even of the existence of such a trade 
 in other parts of the country, that some years ago a 
 Conservative paper in Liverpool, describing some 
 radical political procession at Nottingham, which it 
 did in sufficiently depreciatory terms, added, " And 
 there were sinker-makers, too, a kind of fellows whose 
 business we do not understand, but which the very 
 name indicates to be among the lowest of the low." 
 
 Now though the business of a sinker-maker has 
 nothing necessarily in it to cause its practisers to be 
 the " lowest of the low," yet it so happened that the 
 sinker-maker who was a joint proprietor of this five 
 hundred pounds might without any outrage on justice 
 have been classed in that category. His name was 
 Ned Stocks, and that of his friend and brother-in-law, 
 the framesmith, Peter Snape. Ned Stocks and Peter
 
 84 A CLOUD ON TUB SUNSHINE. 
 
 Snape were so much of a genus, and so much im- 
 pressed by the same operating causes with the like 
 qualities and character, that there could be no need 
 under any circumstances to attempt a distinction 
 between them. They were, in fact, in almost every 
 particular, inseparable. They were of the same or 
 of nearly the same age, about fifty ; they had a con- 
 siderable personal resemblance, and were so ever- 
 lastingly together that they had often been taken for 
 twins. They did not indeed live hi one house, but 
 they lived in two close adjoining ones, and thi'ir shops 
 lay behind their houses, and were only divided by 
 the road into their gardens, which gardens again were 
 only separated by a common walk. They were men 
 who had gone on from youth hammering and filing 
 away amid heaps of iron and smithy- slag, and never 
 were clean except on a Sunday, or when they went 
 out on business, when they washed their hands aiid 
 faces, leaving there a clearly defined boundary line 
 of the old accumulation of smoke and iron-smut 
 under their hair, ears, and in the hollows of their 
 eyes. Nay, their whole skins were saturated with smut, 
 so that it gave them what might truly be called dark 
 complexions ; and the same sombre sadness was in- 
 corporated into what they put on as their best or 
 worky-day garments. 
 
 Good workmen were Ned and Peter, but that was 
 the only point in which good could be applied to 
 them. They were, in truth, two of the most thorough- 
 bred grubs that ever crawled on the earth. Nay, the 
 term grub does not suit them ; it has something soft 
 about it, and Ned Stocks and Peter Snape had 
 nothing soft, not even their flesh. That was made, 
 as it were, of iron wire, and their hearts might be 
 supposed to be compounded of iron weights ; they were
 
 A CLOUD ON THE SUNSHINE. 85 
 
 hard, hard, hard, from top to toe, from skin to centre, 
 as their own bars of steel. They were harder, for 
 they could shape and weld the bars the bars, it 
 might be believed, could never make any impression 
 on them, not even to break their heads, for these 
 seemed like Goliath's, as described by Thomas 
 Ellwood ; 
 
 " Upon his head a pot of brass he wore." 
 
 Their very ideas were hard and metallic, and moved 
 in straight lines, like steam-engines on iron roads, 
 but not so fast. They had grubbed on for nearly 
 thirty years together in their trade, and had no living 
 sentiment but to make money and put it out to 
 interest. So gross and overpowering was this feeling, 
 that it had, in reality, certainly cramped and con- 
 tracted the way of their own fortune, for they scraped 
 together every penny they could to put it out, and 
 left themselves only just enough to keep their trade 
 going in a very small way ; and they took long credit 
 for themselves that they might have the cash which 
 ought to have paid their debts, out at interest. 
 
 Such were the two hopeful creditors of Henry 
 Flamstead, who, when every enlightened man was 
 satisfied with his statement, remained dissatisfied. 
 They had taken alarm ; the country was in a state 
 of alarm ; there were every day the most awful 
 details in the newspapers of bankruptcies, and sales of 
 estates for debt, and they had but one idea of safety 
 that was to see with their own eyes, and handle 
 with their own hands their money. 
 
 Accordingly it was not many days after Mr. Henry 
 Flamstead had requested a private interview with 
 his creditors, and of Ned and Peter among them, 
 when those two worthies again appeared at the Hall, 
 and said that they had taken second thoughts, and they
 
 86 A CLOUD ON THE SUNSHINE. 
 
 would prefer having the mDney. The truth was, 
 this had been their first and their only thought, but 
 they had not dared to utter it in the presence of so 
 many great and respectable gentlemen, for these 
 sordid reptiles, though the very thunder of heaven 
 would not be able to turn them out of their own 
 ignorant and obstinate track, had yet a slavish fear 
 of intelligent and higher minds ; or they had feared 
 that had they expressed any dissatisfaction, that 
 feeling might have spread, all might become as jealous 
 as they were, that some one might be helped before 
 them, and then there would be a scramble, and in the 
 scramble a rending, and they might all come in only 
 for a fragment. True, therefore, to the selfish instinct 
 they went away in silence, and now returned in 
 silence, and would be glad to have their money. 
 
 Mr. Flamstead told them that if they insisted upon 
 it, they should have it ; but as they knew the state of the 
 money market, they were aware that he could not at 
 once command even that sum, except on most extra- 
 vagant conditions, and conditions therefore evidently 
 detrimental to the securities on the estate of the other 
 parties. They must therefore wait till the time 
 required by their note six months after notice. 
 
 As ignorant of all forms of business as they were 
 greedy, they said " Nay, but they must have it at 
 once. The circumstances," said they, " made them 
 uneasy, and justified their demanding it at once." 
 Mr. Flamstead steadily resisted this he had in fact no 
 means of doing otherwise, but offered, if they were 
 at all anxious as to the nature of the security, to give 
 them a mortgage on lands probably clear. 
 
 This, however, did not at all meet their views. 
 They declared that they did not pretend to know 
 what was clear and what was not ; they only knew
 
 A CLOUD ON THE SUNSHINE. 87 
 
 that a deal of money was owing on the estate, and for 
 ought they knew, more than it was worth. They 
 seemed to catch additional alarm at the offer of a 
 mortgage, as if it were only another means of binding 
 them fast to the estate and the general case. They 
 feared in their own minds that every man, like 
 them, was only pretending on the day of meeting to be 
 satisfied, in order secretly to pounce on the .property 
 and be served before the rest ; they had therefore 
 but one cuckoo note " We mun ha' our money ! " 
 
 Mr. Flamstead saw himself suddenly placed by 
 these stupid and pig-headed fellows in a very delicate 
 situation. If he made an effort and paid off these 
 men, it would be trumpeted abroad, and the conse- 
 quences, in the feverish state of the times, might be 
 a general panic amongst his more heavily implicated 
 creditors, and bankruptcy and total ruin be the result. 
 If he refused them there was equal danger to be 
 apprehended from their clamorous discontent. He 
 therefore took a middle course, and proceeded to 
 consult his attorney, and be advised by him whether 
 to pay at an early day, or at the end of the six 
 months. But it was easier, difficult as that was, to 
 make up his own mind, than to get rid of these two 
 leeches. They still sat doggedly in their chairs, say- 
 ing that they would not go without their money. 
 They remained there hours, spite of Mr. Flamstead 
 telling them that he had not that sum of money in 
 the house, and that he could not make money, and 
 that it was therefore impossible that they could then 
 and there receive it. On this Peter Snape gave a 
 ghastly smile, and attempted the perpetration of a 
 witticism. 
 
 " One would ha' thought," said he, " that yo could 
 ha' made munny welly a while ago, yo seemed to
 
 88 A CLOUD ON THE SUNSHINE. 
 
 swell out into such grander. Yo did it rarely ; and 
 now it comes t' th' pinch, yo canna pay a poor body 
 a poor five hundred. Well, well, we inua see what's 
 to be done." 
 
 With this they slowly withdrew, looking round 
 them when they reached the lawn, as if they were 
 actually afraid that not only Mr. Flainstead, but 
 Dainsby Old Hall, might run away as soon as their 
 backs were turned. 
 
 Dreadful was the night which Henry Flainstead 
 did not sleep, but toss through, after the departure 
 of these iron-souled fellows. He saw in perspective 
 the degradations and difficulties which he might pos- 
 sibly have to go through. To be thus cramped and 
 tortured for five hundred pounds ! Why, the very 
 minerals under his estate were worth twenty thousand. 
 He arose early and rode off to his attorney. His 
 advice was to soothe the men. He knew them well, 
 he said, and could assure him that not all the 
 eloquence of Chatham would have the slightest 
 power of persuasion to delay them. They were 
 banded together like night and darkness like death 
 and sin ; their only feeling or conception was, that 
 they wanted their money, and they would have it. 
 He advised, therefore, to write to them and say that 
 at the earliest possible day they should be paid off. 
 
 It is difficult to say what advice in this ease would 
 have been the best. Nothing but paying the money 
 could remove the difficulty, and under the circum- 
 stances of the general lack of confidence. in the 
 country, that was a greater difficulty than all. The 
 letter which, on his own suggestion, the attorney 
 wrote, was, however, most disastrous. The two 
 ravenous men appeared again the very next day at 
 the Hall ; that, in their mind, was the earliest pos-
 
 A CLOUD ON THE SUNSHINE 89 
 
 sible day, and they were as doggedly insolent, and 
 importunate, and immoveable, as before. They took 
 no notice of Mr. Flamstead's explanations, that 
 the earliest possible day, in a case and in times like 
 this, might be considered in a few weeks or a month. 
 At that they only looked at one another, and then 
 said, " It does na' sinnify, Mester Flamstead, we mun 
 ha' our inunny. Yo seem to ha' famous things here," 
 looking around the room, " why dunna yo ca' a sale, 
 and sell some on 'em and pay yo'r way ? " 
 
 Henry Flamstead could not, wrung as his heart 
 was, resist a smile at this, and he quietly observed, 
 that it was not quite so bad as that yet. He had to 
 endure their presence and their low drawling inso- 
 lence for five mortal hours. To turn them out was, 
 he knew, not be vertured on, unless the cash was 
 ready to pay down the next day. So here he sat, 
 begging them to take his word, and to withdraw 
 for the present, as he had family matters to attend to. 
 
 " Take his word ! how were they to take his 
 word ? " the)' asked ; " had they not taken him at his 
 word, and come there on his promise to pay them at 
 the earliest possible day ? " 
 
 They took the base opportunity when a servant 
 came into the room on business, to raise their voices, 
 and to say more loudly than ever, " We wanten our 
 munny ! we mun ha' our munny ! " 
 
 It was very difficult with Henry Flamstead to 
 preserve his patience with these men there was 
 another person to who* > it was more so his son 
 George, who, coming into the house while they were 
 there, found his mother weeping, and his sisters, 
 Betsy and Nancy, in a state of great excitement. To 
 his questions as to the cause, the little impetuous 
 Nancy gave answer in the most indignant terms, and 
 i2
 
 90 4 CLOUD ON THE SUNSHINE. 
 
 George catching the generous and contagious fire of his 
 sister's zeal, over what she called " this shameful, 
 this most detestable treatment of her father," declared, 
 whilst all the blood in his body seemed to mount 
 into his face, " That he would go in and pitch those 
 two miserable old codgers to Jericho ! " 
 
 Fortunately his father met him in the hall, and 
 seeing his state of excitement, took him by the arm 
 into another room, and told him that he felt and 
 appreciated his affectionate sympathy, but he must 
 now call upon him to show not only sympathy, but a 
 wise prudence. One rash action, he represented to 
 him, would now assuredly plunge them all into incon- 
 ceivable difficulties and distress. 
 
 George at once declared that he saw it, and would 
 restrain himself. He put such compulsion on him- 
 self, that he went in and told the men that his father 
 had to attend to some unavoidable business, and was 
 therefore obliged to leave them ; he could not sec 
 them again that day, but that he was sure that his 
 father's attorney would, in as little time as possible, 
 arrange for the payment of the money. This intelli- 
 gence Ned and Peter received with a simultaneous 
 grunt, like two old wild boars. They departed without 
 a word, but with significant glances at each other, and 
 the next day brought a new personage on the scene. 
 
 This personage was Mr. Screw Pepper, an attorney 
 of Derby. Mr. Screw Pepper was one of a very 
 large class of attorneys. He wa c a man who had the 
 reputation of being a desper . t e clever fellow, and as 
 being pre-eminently a man of sharp practice. He 
 had been the son of a hostler who was accustomed to 
 bring up a gig from some livery stables, for a lawyer 
 who regularly had it thence, and who, when the gig, 
 as was often the case, had to wait long before the
 
 A CLOUD ON THE SUNSHINE. 91 
 
 lawyer's door, used to leave it in the care of his son, 
 a great shock-headed lad, who soon attracted the 
 lawyer's notice by the assiduousness of his attentions 
 in holding the horse while he got in, and making the 
 most profound bows for the two-pence that he often 
 received. The lawyer soon afterwards wanting a boy 
 to sweep out the office, and carry out messages, 
 thought this the very lad for the purpose. In this 
 post he displayed so much shrewdness that he 
 eventually was put upon an office stool, and employed 
 in copying voluminous documents. Here again his 
 zeal and success were so great that his master saw 
 in him the rough, hairy caterpillar, out of which a 
 great hawk-moth of an attorney must certainly 
 come ; and looking forward to his own ease in future 
 years, when such a shrewd, active, and, as he hoped, 
 humbly obsequious partner would be most invaluable, 
 he had him articled, and Screw Pepper rapidly 
 became furbished up into a shabby-smart sort 
 of a clerk, with clothes thread-bare, and almost 
 bursting with his growing bulk, and with many jokes 
 and insults to bear from the more genteel of his 
 fellow clerks, but with a wonderful self-complacency, 
 and an unbounded show of reverence for his master. 
 He was accustomed on all occasions to hold up the 
 said master as the most profound lawyer, and only 
 held back by the jealous intrigues of the profession 
 from being actually attorney-general. These praises 
 were sure by some means to get to the ears of the 
 said illustrious lawyer, and Mr. Screw Pepper stood 
 in consequent favour with him. We need not pur- 
 sue very minutely his office career. He went through 
 the necessary years of clerkship with the greatest 
 satisfaction to himself and employer, who was so 
 proud of his discernment in the discovery of such an
 
 92 A CLOUD ON THE SUNSHINE. 
 
 acute and indefatigable legal genius that he advance 
 the necessary means, and, after a short sojourn in 
 London, Mr. Screw Pepper came down to his admiring 
 friends a Master Extraordinary in Chancery, and 
 was duly admitted as a partner in the firm of Look- 
 out, Hook, and Pepper. 
 
 In this firm, however, Mr. Screw Pepper proved 
 only too active and clever. He was far too clever 
 for the united powers of observation and cheek of 
 Messrs, Lookout and Hook, and these were by no 
 means contemptible. He not only very soon dived 
 into all the arcana of their practice and connections, 
 but was found to be availing himself of them to his 
 own exclusive benefit, in a manner that counselled 
 as speedy a quittance of him as possible. On the 
 abrupt dissolution of partnership which ensued great 
 was the marvel and the curiosity. Lookout and 
 Hook answered with grave and mysterious looks 
 when spoken to on the subject, and strange stories 
 to the disadvantage of Mr. Screw Pepper flew about. 
 But Mr. Sctew Pepper looked anything but cast-down 
 or mortified by the change. He was, on all occasions, 
 lively, smiling, bustling, and displaying a happy 
 imperturbability to all the foolish qualities of shame 
 and despondence. He also answered, when spoken 
 to on the subject, with mysterious but with almost 
 merry looks ; and as to those stories to his disadvan- 
 tage, they as suddenly dropped, at least into the 
 most confidential whispers, as they had arisen, for 
 Mr. Screw Pepper was not a man to be trifled with. 
 
 The good people of Derby soon saw him take a 
 house, and open offices, small it must be confessed, 
 but, like himself, with a smart, aspiring air about 
 them. He and a single clerk made up the whole 
 professional force in these offices, and there was but
 
 A CLOUD ON THE SUNSHINE. 93 
 
 a scanty display of japanned-boxes, bookshelves, and 
 parchment under operation ; yet Mr. Screw Popper 
 was so constantly in active motion, now with large- 
 folded papers tied with red tape in his hand, going to 
 and fro in the town, and now setting off by the coach 
 with a huge great coat on his arm, and a boy carrying 
 his carpet-bag, that people said the fellow must really 
 find something to do. There were, it is true, some 
 of Lookout and Hook's clerks who declared with 
 much merriment at their evening smoking companies, 
 that their governors, Lookout and Hook, had set 
 boys to follow Mr. Pepper, and that they had found 
 that he was regularly in the practice of carrying 
 these tape-tied papers about the town for hours every 
 day ; and that they had dodged him, after parading 
 some of the main streets, through the most obscure 
 alleys and yards, till he reappeared in other great 
 streets, without calling at a single door. They pro- 
 tested, too, that his coach journeys, and sometimes 
 equally bustling departures in gigs, were of equal 
 importance. They had traced him to an inn on the 
 Burton road, where he had got down, professing to 
 wait for another coach going across to Hinckley ; 
 and on another occasion had seen him impatiently 
 inquiring for the house of some great landed pro- 
 prietor, some five miles off, to which he had ostensi- 
 bly set out to walk, but had been traced only to 
 a rabbit warren, where he had pulled out of his 
 pocket a paper of sandwiches and a little bottle of 
 brandy, had regaled himself, whistled a tune, and 
 then strolled back again in time for the afternoon 
 coach, to which he bustled up as if he had been 
 detained by momentous business, till he had but just 
 been able to save the conveyance. 
 
 These might, it is true, be envious inventions;
 
 94 A CLOUD ON THB SUNSHINE. 
 
 one thing is certain, that for some time only the 
 lowest mid most simple class of clients were seen 
 entering or issuing from the office of Mr. Screw 
 Pepper. But in awhile he began to have a certain 
 character for being a man of sharp practice, which 
 means, according to common and unprofessional 
 ideas, a man that sticks at nothing, but will under- 
 take any job, however foul, and drag it through by 
 any means. The local court, called the Peveril 
 Court, for the recovery of small debts, soon saw him 
 an active practitioner. Any one who wanted to com- 
 pel some poor wretch, who had not enough to find 
 bread for his children, to pay some paltry debt, 
 perhaps not even a just one, or to see him turned 
 from his wretched home and flung into a more 
 wretched one, the low, dilapidated, and squalid 
 building called the prison of this court, went to Mr. 
 Screw Pepper, and was sure to have his thirst of 
 vengeance satisfied, and was sure to have to pay 
 smartly for it himself. Let us take a case of this 
 description which was in these same screwing hands. 
 The debt was thirty shillings. The writ and other 
 documents were served, not on the debtor, but on his 
 attorney, another man of like fame and practice. 
 
 The plaintiff, after the lapse of some eight or ten 
 months, entering the office of Mr. Pepper to inquire 
 into the progress of this cause, was received by him 
 with the most obstreperous bursts of merriment. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " asked the plaintiff. " ( )h, 
 capital ! capital !" cried Mr. Pepper ; " a most famous, 
 capital joke!" "Joke! what joke?" asked again 
 the plaintiff. " Why," replied Mr. Screw Pepper, 
 still interrupted by fresh outbreaks of laughter, " we 
 have sued the defendant, brought the cause to trial, won 
 it, got a verdict, and then found that the defendant has
 
 A CLOUD ON THE SUNSHINE. 95 
 
 been dead and buried these six months! ha! ha! ha!" 
 " And do you think that a joke ? " " Oh, a capital 
 joke, to sue, and get a verdict against a dead man ! 
 ha ! ha ! ha ! ha ! ha ! ha ! " 
 
 The plaintiff, who began to feel that what was a 
 joke to Mr. Screw Pepper, would be no joke to him- 
 self, upbraided Mr. Pepper for not taking better care 
 to know whether the man were alive or not. 
 
 " Oh, I assure you, all is quite regular, quite 
 regular. We served the documents on the defen- 
 dant's attorney, and he always replied, ' All right ! all 
 right !' " " But what effects had the man ?" " Oh, 
 that is quite as full of fun. We got an execution 
 against his goods, and sold up the widow, and have 
 credited your account with the balance of the proceeds 
 one pound five shillings." 
 
 The plaintiff found, indeed, that it was no joke to 
 him when Mr. Screw Pepper's bill appeared it 
 being exactly as many pounds as the sum sued for 
 was shillings namely thirty. 
 
 But we are not to suppose that all Mr. Screw Pep- 
 per's exploits were of this costly kind to the client 
 costly they were, but so generally to the other un- 
 fortunate party, that he grew gradually into great 
 request, even with persons of higher stand and pre- 
 tensions. He was soon seen with a smart gig of his 
 own, and a boy with a bit of yellow lace, or, &a 
 envious neighbours called it, bed-lace, round his hat, 
 driving him, while a large blue-stuff bag was sure to 
 be seen protruding out of the vehicle somewhere. He 
 was a sedulous attender at the market on the farmers, 
 as if he had much business amongst them. Here he 
 was very jolly, jocose, smart, and talkative, and got 
 the reputation of a prodigiously clever man, as sharp 
 as a needle with two points. One instance of this
 
 06 A CLOUD ON THK SUNSHINE. 
 
 clever practice we may give, as it serves to show 
 
 he so rapidly ingratiated himself among the simple 
 
 sons of the soil. 
 
 An old farmer, as Mr. Screw Pepper was talking 
 with him in the corn-market, casting scowling looks 
 at another not far off, observed, " Now, there 's a 
 fellow that you 'd take by his looks to be as honest as 
 the day, and yet let me tell you, there is not a greater 
 scamp between here and London. That villain owes 
 me forty pounds, and the wisest lawyer of you all 
 cannot get it from him." " Why not ? " asked Mr. 
 Screw Pepper, eyeing the man askance, " why not ? " 
 "Why not?" replied the fanner, "because I have no 
 evidence, that 's why not. I sold him a horse for the 
 money. Says he, ' Let 's go in and take a pint of port 
 on it.' In we goes, and then says he, ' I shall not 
 pay you to-day, but this day next week at market/ 
 ' Very well,' says I. But next market-day cornea, 
 and my gentleman says not a word about paying : so 
 I ups to him, and jogging him on the elbow, says 
 'To-day you recollect!' 'To-day? what of to- 
 day ? ' says he, as innocent as a sucking pigeon ; ' what 
 of to-day ?' ' Why, to-day you promised to pay for 
 the horse ! ' ' Pay for the horse ! ' says he, as if all 
 in astonishment ; ' what ? why I paid you there and 
 then ! did the wine get into your head so that you've 
 forgotten that ? ' I was struck on my chest as if 
 with a big stone. It knocked all the wind out of me, 
 for I saw that the fellow meant gillery. Long and 
 short he stuck to it, and not a soul has been able 
 t' extract a doit out of him." " Phoh !" said Screw 
 Pepper, " I '11 get it for you." " I '11 tell thee 
 what, man," said the old farmer, delighted ; " if thou 
 gets it, here 's a ten pound note for thee that, 's all 
 I can say ; but I think thou '11 find thy match there.
 
 A CLOUD ON THE SUNSHINE. 97 
 
 Many a clever fellow has had a try at him." Mr. 
 Screw Pepper disappeared, and, before the market 
 was over, walking up to the old farmer, pulled out 
 a roll of papers, and said, " Look at these there 's 
 the money for you, however ! " " Burn me ! " 
 exclaimed the old farmer, seizing the notes ; " why 
 that never can be. How canst ta ha' done that ?" 
 But it was so, and Mr. Screw Pepper declared nothing 
 had been easier to manage. " I asked the man," 
 said he, " to go and take part of a bottle of wine 
 with me. In the course of conversation we grew 
 merry together, when, poking the fellow in the side, 
 I said, ' Commend me to you for a deep one ! I Ve 
 heard of the clever trick that you played off on 
 Farmer so and so. Ha ! ha ! that beats me hollow. 
 I could hardly believe the farmer such a fool!' 
 ' Oh,' said the fellow, ' he *s fool enough for more 
 than that. I could chouse him again as easy as this ' 
 snapping his fingers. ' You really did it then?' 
 said 1, admiringly. ' It really was true 1 I never 
 thought it more than a feigned joke!' 'Did it? 
 To be sure I did!' said the fellow, off his guard 
 'and' 'And you must pay the money!' said I, 
 seriously, ' for I am his evidence, and will arrest you 
 at once, if you do not.' That's all that passed 
 nothing in the world could be simpler." 
 
 This anecdote wonderfully spread the fame and 
 extended the practice of Mr. Screw Pepper all through 
 the country, and it was no longer necessary for him 
 to walk round the town with tape-tied paper, or to 
 take the coach to a distant rabbit-warren and seek 
 practice by eating sandwiches, and whistling after them 
 under the- flowery gorse-bushes in May. He was a 
 welcome and merry guest amongst the farmers on 
 
 K
 
 98 A CLOUD ON THE SUNSHINE. 
 
 Sundays, and his sharp practice became from year to 
 year more widely diffused and known. He had long 
 been the attorney of Ned Stocks and Peter Snape, 
 and to him they now betook themselves. 
 
 Mr. Screw Pepper rubbed his hands as the prospect 
 of this business opened upon him. Mr. Henry Flam- 
 stead and the estate of Dainsby Old Hall ! Never had 
 such a goodly prize fallen into his net. Never did he 
 expect such a splendid one from such clients as 
 Ned Stocks and Peter Snape. When he had sounded 
 the depths of the business, and had come to a full 
 knowledge of the meeting of the creditors, of who they 
 were, and of something like an idea of the extent of 
 the claims on the estate, he was hardly able to con- 
 tain himself, for he saw a most glorious field of legal 
 enterprise, speculation, and peculation before him. 
 He therefore assumed a very serious air, and told his 
 worthy clients that it wag a very serious business, 
 and that they had done quite right in coming at once 
 to him. From what they had informed him, he 
 now informed them in return, by the aid of his 
 superior knowledge, that not a moment was to be 
 lost. If they had gone begging and praying for their 
 money, dallying between Mr. Flamstead and that 
 old fox, his lawyer, as Mr. Screw Pepper called him, 
 the consequence would most likely have been that 
 some of the greater- creditors would have struck the 
 docket against Flamstead ; he would then have teen 
 bankrupt, and amid the mass of heavier claimants 
 they would have been thrust into the back-ground, 
 and probably have come off, in the end, with Hobson's 
 share, something less than nothing. But now, he 
 hoped so at least, they were the first in the field- 
 they would seize time by the forelock, and procuring
 
 A CLOUD ON THE SUNSHINE. 99 
 
 a statute of bankruptcy against their debtor, they 
 would, instead of the last, be the first of creditors. 
 
 It would be impossible to describe the alternate 
 terror and eagerness of the two men, as Mr. Screw 
 Pepper thus harangued them. At one moment they 
 were fit to die with fear lest some one else should 
 get the start, and that they should have no weight in 
 the matter; at another they fairly cried out, " Haste, 
 haste, Mr. Pepper, haste, and get hold of the property." 
 
 Mr. Screw Pepper, indeed, let no grass grow under 
 his feet. Mr. Henry Flamslead scarcely knew that 
 this man of sharp practice was employed against him, 
 when to his utter consternation and inexpressible 
 surprise he found himself a declared bankrupt. 
 Every exertion was made by his attorney to have 
 this set aside, and the business arranged by a simple 
 assignment to his creditors, and for the estate to be 
 put in trust for them till the claims upon it were 
 liquidated, and which, by a statement drawn up by 
 him, showed could be readily done in at farthest 
 seven years ; but Mr. Screw Pepper was far too 
 great a master of artifice for him. He represented 
 the state of the times ; the almost nominal value of 
 the property in consequence, and the very heavy 
 claims on this estate. Assignees were chosen to 
 manage the business, and these were such as Mr. 
 Pepper more particularly wished to work with. His 
 representations to the main creditors were very 
 different to those which he made to the Court of 
 Bankruptcy. To these he declared that everything 
 depended on management that he had no fear that 
 with the assignees appointed he should be able to pay 
 to every creditor twenty shillings in the pound. 
 These, relying on his well-known business powers, 
 depended very much upon him, and the conduct of
 
 100 DARK DAYS. 
 
 the affair fell very much into the hands of himself 
 and a small knot of creditors who were least likely 
 to interfere with his proceedings, amongst whom 
 were conspicuous Ned Stocks and Peter Snape. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 DARK DAYS. 
 
 THE thunderbolt of calamity had fallen on Dainsby 
 Old Hall. The effects of it who shall describe ? If 
 we were to say the reader can imagine them it is 
 no use attempting to describe them the reader 
 might very probably imagine something very melan- 
 choly and very desolate, yet very different to the 
 truth. If we do attempt to describe them we are 
 not sure that we shall in any adequate degree succeed. 
 
 Who, indeed, could represent the gloom without 
 and the death-like coldness within the hearts of those 
 on whom this blasting bolt had fallen? This, so 
 lately happy and joyous house, that so lately happy 
 and united family. There was a silence not merely in 
 the house, but in the very courts and gardens around 
 it. The very cattle scarcely lowed ; the very birds 
 seemed to have been terrified, and ceased to sing. The 
 dogs that used to meet the bounding steps of the young 
 people with frantic leaps and barkings, now silently 
 wagged their tails, gazed with a wistful, melancholy 
 look into their faces, and followed them in silence. 
 
 As to the family itself, it seemed that not merely 
 misfortune but sickness had fallen on them ; and in 
 such a violent shock how could one be separated from 
 the other ? The mother was really ill in bed, the 
 daughters were weeping by her bedside ; George was 
 wandering uneasily from place to place, from field to
 
 DARK PAYS. 101 
 
 field, and Mr. Henry Flamstead sat for days in his 
 chair more like a ghost than a living man, and 
 heaving such sighs ! The reproaches which he east 
 on himself were bitter beyond description. His fine 
 old house and estate, so substantial, so sufficient, so 
 clear, and free from touch of lawyer and creditor, 
 and now assuredly to be torn in pieces, and from him 
 and his for ever, by such wretches as Nea Stocks and 
 Peter Snape, and Screw Pepper. The very thought 
 of this was often too much for endurance. Henry 
 Flamstead would rise up, stride hastily to and fio, 
 strike his hand on his forehead, and cursing his 
 ambitious speculations, drop down again into his seat 
 with the perspiration streaming from his face, and 
 with groans of the deepest misery. " What would 
 his ancestors say to this, could they see it ? What 
 would his children be ? Beggars, miserable beggars !" 
 
 But Mr. Screw Pepper did not leave Henry Flam- 
 stead too much time to agonise himself with these 
 reflections. He soon appeared at the Hall, and pro- 
 fessing deep regret at the necessity for this state of 
 affairs, in a tone that was anything but regretful, 
 apologised that his duty to his clients obliged him to 
 put a person into the house to prevent any suspicion 
 of anything being conveyed from the premises. 
 
 This fact itself was a bitter baptism to Mr. Flam- 
 stead. With 'his delicate and sensitive feelings, the 
 very circumstance that a spy must be set over him 
 and his family; that he was, in his own house, a 
 suspected and watched personage, as if he were 
 capable of committing petty frauds ; that he was to 
 be treated by such souls as Pepper, Stocks, and 
 Snape, as if he were a Pepper, Stocks, or Snape 
 that was degradation, that was sufficiently galling and 
 humiliating; but what was still more so, was the 
 K 2
 
 102 DARK DATS. 
 
 man sent for the purpose of being watch and guardian 
 of the creditors' interests. 
 
 This was a faithful tool and servant of Mr. Screw 
 Pepper, one Gideon Spine. 
 
 Gideon was, like his master, one of a large class, 
 whose abundant", however, is often denied by the 
 wealthy and well-educated amongst readers, because 
 it is not the happy and fortunate who are made aware 
 of the existence of such men ; the two classes walk 
 through life in very different places. What, indeed, 
 have the happy and fortunate, the educated and 
 accomplished, the writers and the readers of poetry 
 and romance, to do with parish-officers and constables ? 
 It is another class who are made only too well 
 acquainted with the existence of this class of men 
 the poor, or those who are about to become so the 
 unfortunate. The happy and the rich ride through 
 the world rather than walk through it. From gay 
 and pleasant carriages they look down on the dusty 
 pedestrian throng, and care little who they are - 
 whether they be of the devouring or devoured class. 
 What interest have they in the wearers of coarse 
 linen and threadbare Yorkshire ? What matters it 
 whether it stretch across the broad back of a parish- 
 officer, or the narrow one of a parish pauper over 
 the well-fed sides of a harpy of the law, or the lean 
 members of him of whom he is in pursuit ? But in 
 the great throng itself, into what close yet unsavoury 
 acquaintanceship are its living atoms crushed ! How 
 they look into each other's faces, and instinctively 
 know the beak from the victim the leech from the 
 poor creature on which it is about ravenously to 
 fasten ! Then how numerous appears in the thronged 
 highway of life the genus to which Gideon Spine 
 belonged !
 
 DAHK DAYS. 103 
 
 Gideon was now an old looking fellow of fifty. 
 Whether he had starved himself, or sordid cares did 
 the work of starvation, he had a lean, hony figure, 
 and a winkled and cadaverous countenance. He 
 was tall had large hands and feet wore a coarse 
 long coat of duffle gray, with huge pockets behind, 
 usually stuffed full of papers, and red old pocket- 
 books, whose sides were bulged out with their con- 
 tents. He walked with a tallish and stout oak 
 sapling, and leaned forward considerably in his walk. 
 He generally had. a good deal of gray hair hanging 
 about his shoulders, and left his gray whiskers long 
 and lank. He had a thin and drawling voice, and a 
 still and cold manner, that to no man's knowledge 
 had ever been lit up by a smile. 
 
 Gideon Spine had, for upwards of twenty years, 
 been well known all round that part of the country as 
 a parish officer of a large country parish, or, rather, 
 sometimes of one parish and sometimes of another. 
 He was engaged on the avowed ground that there was 
 no man who could do the parish business so cheaply as 
 he could. Whoever, indeed, could extract anything 
 from Gideon Spine, in the shape of parish relief, could 
 certainly have found honey in a wasp's-nest. Gideon's 
 soul had a hardness as of granite ; and it was 
 neither the heat of indignation, nor the tenderness of 
 entreaty, that could make any impression upon it. 
 He was quiet, of very few words, and immoveable. 
 You might have said that he possessed an admirable 
 patience and self-possession, if he had had any feel- 
 ing that was excitable ;. but nobody could remember 
 ever witnessing any feeling in him, except of a pale 
 and deathly anger, when any of his prisoners 
 attempted to escape from him, when he has been 
 known to rise into the most ghastly and malignant
 
 104 DARK DATS. 
 
 fury, in which he would kick, and throttle, and strike 
 the offenders on the head with his heavy oak sapling, 
 in a murderous rage. 
 
 There was no appearance in which Gideon Spine 
 was more familiar to the people than thaf of riding 
 in a cart through the villages, with a family of 
 wretched orphan children, whom he was conveying 
 to some distant factory, where he made a well-known 
 trade of selling them at the usual price of five pounds 
 a-piece, for such a term as should entitle them to a 
 settlement, and prevent the parish which employed 
 him ever being troubled with them again. It was 
 by frequently meeting him at sessions, on parish 
 business, and seeing the admirable qualifications that 
 he possessed for a servant of the law his perfect 
 freedom from anything like the weaknesses which 
 poets and such effeminate people try to dignify with 
 the epithet humanity his stoic-like firmness and 
 adherence to the only legitimate object of gaining his 
 end, without any regard to cries, entreaties, prayers, 
 or any other ill-timed interruptions that Mr. Screw 
 Pepper was made ambitious to engage him in his 
 service. He had succeeded ; and this valuable ser- 
 vant had now been some years his trusty agent in 
 many a delicate business. Since Spenser described 
 his iron man, Talus, who went thrashing his way 
 through the world with his iron flail, there never 
 had been seen such a man as Gideon Spine. 
 
 The trusty Gideon was now installed at Dainsby 
 as watch and guardian of the estate of the creditors. 
 He had his bed in one of the garrets he was not 
 particular where took his seat in the kitchen, and 
 eat and drank there without word or remark, when- 
 ever any meal was set on the table. Only once did 
 he deign to open his mouth during the three first
 
 DARK DAYS. 105 
 
 days that he was there, spite of all the keen things 
 which the indignant servants, who hated both his 
 presence and his office, addressed to him, or to one 
 another. Once, on the third day, however, at dinner, 
 as Gideon stretched out his own knife, and carved 
 rudely from the piece of beef to which no one invited 
 him, a maid servant said " You make pretty free, 
 master, at other people's tables ! " " Yes," replied 
 Gideon, coolly ; " but not at thine, or thy master's ! " 
 " At whose, then ? " asked the girl. " At the credi- 
 tors'," rejoined Gideon, and pursued his meal in peace, 
 regardless of all the sharp shots of wrath and ridicule 
 that flew about his ears. 
 
 Gideon Spine's regular employment was to keep a 
 sharp look out that nothing was carried off; his 
 incidental labour was to make an inventory of all that 
 the house, garden, farm-yard, and farm contained. 
 In the pursuance of both these occupations, he was 
 now in one place and now in another, and opened 
 doors, peeped into the most private rooms, and even 
 walked into them, without the least ceremony. He 
 had a pace as stealthy as a cat, and you never were 
 sure where he was. In the garden arbour, when 
 they fancied him away in the fields or the woods, for 
 he undertook to count all the trees, by some mode of 
 arithmetic of his own, and to cast up the whole 
 amount of their value ; and when they had been 
 freely dealing with both Gideon and his masters a 
 low cougli would apprise them that he was behind 
 the vegetable wall, and had heard everything. In 
 the midst of some confidential talk on their own 
 affairs in their most private rooms, Gideon would 
 coolly walk in and stand and contemplate a ward- 
 robe, a glass, or a chest of drawers, as if estimating 
 their value ; and they might just as well tell the
 
 106 DARK DAYS. 
 
 furniture itself to go away as Gideon. He was a 
 continual goad reminding them from hour to hour 
 of the reality of their melancholy and mortifying 
 circumstances. 
 
 We must pass rapidly over the years of still deep- 
 ening sorrow and trial that awaited this unhappy 
 family. I say years, for such was the fact. It 
 was not Mr. Screw Pepper's intention to let the 
 estate of Dainsby pass too rapidly through his fingers. 
 In the repeated and rigid examinations to which 
 Mr. Henry Flamstead was subjected, in that process 
 of the rack and the harrow which is called making 
 a full and complete surrender of all his effects to his 
 creditors, it soon became known to the assignees that 
 the important property of the Clockmaker \vas, failing 
 any re-appearance of the said Clockmaker, Mr. Flam- 
 stead's. This raised the cupidity of Mr. Screw 
 Pepper to the utmost extremity. As if the estate 
 had not been, if fairly dealt with, far more than 
 sufficient to satisfy all the claims of the creditors, he 
 represented to them how desirable and how just it 
 would be to obtain possession of this money. That 
 obtained, they would all be paid at once, and the 
 estate might remain intact to Mr. Flamstead. He 
 advised, therefore, that no sale of the estate should 
 take place till the attempt had been made to secure 
 this money, but the rents merely be collected to defray 
 the interest of the debt. 
 
 Mr. Screw Pepper having effected this arrange- 
 ment, immediately hastened up to London, and 
 exerted all his arts of legal eloquence and finesse, to 
 induce the banking-house which held this money in 
 hand to surrender it to the creditors, but in vain. 
 He commenced a suit against them for the recovery 
 of it, pleading the long disappearance, and, according
 
 DARK DAYS. 107 
 
 to all human calculation, absolute certainty of the 
 decease of the Clockmaker, but with as little success ; 
 the house stood on the clear and simple words of the 
 trust, and the court confirmed their view of the 
 matter. 
 
 Mr. Screw Pepper, baffled here, did not, however, 
 abandon his endeavour to grasp this golden treasure. 
 He tried to persuade Mr. Henry Flamstead to sur- 
 render his claim on the reversion, holding out 
 as an inducement that it would facilitate the settle- 
 ment of his affairs, and might prove the entire 
 salvation of his estate. So satisfied was he, Mr. 
 Screw Pepper said, of the certainty of this property 
 falling to Mr. Flamstead, that if Mr. Flamstead 
 would grant a conditional claim upon it to the cre- 
 ditors, he had but little hesitation in saying, that all 
 might be brought at once to relinquish their demands 
 of present payment, and leave their debts in full 
 confidence upon this joint security. 
 
 But Mr. Flamstead, great as was the temptation 
 to save his estate, entertained too deep a distrust of 
 Mr. Screw Pepper to consent to any such arrange- 
 ment. He affirmed that the security of the estate 
 was itself ample enough for all that stood against it ; 
 that nothing was more demonstrative of this than the 
 fact, that, Bpite of all the law expenses thrown upon 
 it, it still paid all the interest ; and that the minerals, 
 still untouched, were worth twenty or thirty thou- 
 sand pounds. He demanded that the statute of 
 bankruptcy should be withdrawn, and protested that 
 nothing but the most false representations kept him 
 and his estate in the circumstances in which they were. 
 
 Mr. Screw Pepper affected to regard these re- 
 monstrances as so many unwarranted attacks en his 
 professional advice and conduct, and became only the
 
 108 DARK DATS. 
 
 more bitter and exacting. In fact he was most deeply 
 disappointed in his hopes of establishing a claim on 
 the Clockmaker's wealth, and determined to revenge 
 himself on Mr. Flamstead for his firm resistance to 
 his plans. He commenced, therefore, a system of 
 persecution, by which he hoped finally to break 
 Mr. Flamstead 's stubborn will. He caused him to 
 be again and again called before the assignees, and to 
 undergo the most shamefully rigorous and inquisito- 
 rial cross-examination as to the full disclosure of all 
 his effects. He even called upon him to surrender 
 the watch he wore the beautiful watch the gift of 
 his uncle, the Clockmaker, in his boyhood, and which 
 was endeared to him by numberless pleasant memo- 
 ries. Mr. Flamstead, bowed down as he \vas by the 
 load of cruel mdignities^ and sorrows that had been 
 piled upon him, yet pleaded hard and imploringly to 
 bo allowed to retain this, urging that it was well 
 known that the estate was more than sufficient for 
 all demands, and that it could not be just to deprive 
 him of his personal possessions. But Mr. Screw 
 Pepper denied that the estate was sufficient, and 
 declared this watch to be of far more than the value 
 which could be allowed to remain with a bankrupt. 
 With the obedience of a child he surrendered this 
 precious gift, and had afterwards the mortification to 
 hear of Mr. Screw Pepper parading it in his pocket. 
 
 Bitter potions were now rapidly administered. 1 1 wa& 
 declared time to offer the estate for sale. It was adver- 
 tised, bills were printed, and the family were ordered to 
 quit the house. It would be in vain to endeavour to 
 depict the utter misery of this time. Where should the 
 broken-hearted family go on quitting their old home, 
 the home of so many generations of their ancestors, the 
 home of so many blissful days, where should they
 
 DARK DAYS. 109 
 
 go ? Mr. Flamstead proposed to remove to a small 
 cottage in the village that belonged to the estate ; to 
 have so much plain furniture from the hall as would 
 suffice, and to be allowed a certain sum for the main- 
 tenance of the family till the affairs were wound up, 
 assured, as he stated, that there would be a hand- 
 some remainder for himself. But every one of these re- 
 quests were peremptorily refused. He was told that all 
 must be sold the cottage, the furniture, everything, 
 and that no maintenance could be allowed to him till it 
 was ascertained whether there was any surplus or not. 
 The reception of this intelligence seemed to stun 
 the whole family, and to lay them prostrate on the very 
 earth. Utter ruin and starvation stared them in the 
 face. Where should they go ? What should they 
 do ? There was not a family in the village that they 
 had a claim upon for shelter, and a temporary main- 
 tenance. They had not escaped in their misfortunes 
 those usual accompaniments of calamity, which give 
 to it its truest bitterness. Their own relations had 
 heaped reproaches of extravagance, mismanagement, 
 and foolish ambition upon them, without offering 
 them any consolation, or an asylum. There were 
 many circumstances common to falling fortunes, which 
 we cannot enumerate here, that contributed to sink 
 them into desolation and despair. Mr. Flamstead 
 had suffered terribly in health and spirits ; a deep 
 and depressing melancholy had seized upon him, and 
 he was heard frequently to say, " Oh if my uncle the 
 Clockmaker were alive, I should not be in this condi- 
 tion I should not want a friend." His wife had 
 sunk still more in health and spirits. The servants 
 had been successively dismissed, and the elder sisters 
 had at once to attend on their mother, and care for 
 the younger children.
 
 110 DARK DAYS. 
 
 But there was one house and one heart that was 
 open to the afflicted family, and they were those of 
 the widow Wc-stbrook. 
 
 Farmer Westbrook, we have seen, was the first 
 to give a place of reception to the methodists. He 
 had now been dead some years, but his widow had 
 continued the farm, which belonged to a merchant of 
 London, and had managed the affairs with admirable 
 ability and success. 
 
 The Widow Westbrook was one of those women 
 that an Englishman loves to describe. She was in 
 one word a genuine Englishwoman. She was comely 
 in form and face, high-minded, warm-hearted, 
 clever-headed, discreet, and yet bold. She was what 
 is called a woman on a large scale ; tall, portly, fresh, 
 and active in carriage. She was not more than five- 
 and-thirty, and had a handsome style of features, a 
 fair ruddy complexion, and a voice and manner that 
 made you feel at once that she was full of right sense 
 nd feeling, and would scorn a mean action, as she 
 would despise the man who did one. 
 
 After her husband's death, people said it would be 
 a difficult thing for her to keep on the farm. It was 
 a large one, and required good and stirring manage- 
 ment. "It would be a very awkward thing," said 
 many, " for a woman to go to market and chaffer about 
 com and cattle amongst a crowd of rude men." Nay, 
 so far did some carry it, that they were kind enough 
 to apply to the landlord for the farm itself, in case, aa 
 they expected, she would leave it. But Widow 
 Westbrook declared that with God's help she had no 
 thought of leaving it. Her husband had a lease, of 
 which eighteen years still remained, and if she lived 
 so long she hoped to be on the same spot when the 
 lease expired. She Boon showed that she was very
 
 DARK DAYS. Ill 
 
 capable of managing her affairs. She put on stout 
 ankle boots, and strode over her farm as boldly as any 
 farmer. She went into fields even when ploughs 
 were at work, stepped from furrow to furrow, and 
 aoon let the ploughman see that she had an eye to 
 detect both what was well and ill done. In short, 
 there was no farm that was better or more perfectly 
 managed than hers. As to buying and selling, she 
 had an upper labourer, an experienced and shrewd 
 man, to whom she intrusted this business, after set- 
 ting her own value on the cattle, and with success ; 
 and as it regarded her corn, there was a worthy miller 
 who undertook to buy it at a time's price himself, or 
 to dispose of it for her in the market, which he did to 
 her high satisfaction. That miller was no other than 
 Mick Shay. There were not wanting those who 
 declared that Mick was over head and ears in love 
 with the widow, and if it were so, it was no wonder. 
 But Widow Westbrook had refused no lets than five 
 or six offers of marriage since her husband's death, 
 and declared she would always remain single. 
 Whether she had said nay to Mick Shay nobody 
 could with truth tell ; but everybody saw that Mick 
 was regular in his calls there on his way to Derby 
 market, and that they often talked a long time a 
 very long time over the yard-gate; but as every body 
 might hear, if they drew near, it was all about corn and 
 cattle, hay and straw, and ducks and geese, and the like. 
 Mrs. Westbrook, after her husband o death, not only 
 continued to carry on his farm, but carried on likewise 
 his interest in the methodist society. She became a 
 class-leader, and one of the most active, and judicious, 
 and influential persons connected with the chapel. 
 In this character she came much into the society of 
 the Flamsteads, and a great mutual interest sprung
 
 112 DARK DATS. 
 
 up between them. The clear and sound judgment of 
 Mrs. Westbrook was most confidently relied on by 
 Mr and Mrs. Flamstead, and her energetic spirit 
 often imparted its force to their more timid and 
 languid movements. On the other hand, the thorough 
 amiability and honesty of the Flamsteads greatly 
 pleased Mrs. Westbrook. Strong characters are 
 flattered by nothing so much as by seeing their plans 
 and propositions followed out by their friends, and 
 Mrs. Westbrook was always certain of having the 
 support of the Flamsteads, if she once could convince 
 them of the propriety of any object. The two elder 
 daughters took the most affectionate fancy to her. 
 To go round and see her superintend all the operations 
 of butter and cheese-making ; to gather vegetables 
 and fruit for household purposes; to stroll with her 
 through her orchard, and garden, and fields, and to 
 learn, by watching and helping her, all the female 
 acts of preserving, home-made-wine making, and so 
 on, was not, though my fine-lady readers might think 
 otherwise, in that simple country-place, inconsistent 
 with the dignity of Squire Flamstead's daughters, 
 even in their best days. 
 
 Mrs. Westbrook took a lively interest in the attach- 
 ment of Betsy to Robert Nadell, and many were the 
 happy summer evenings in which these three took tea 
 together in Mrs. Westbrook's arbour, and sat and 
 talked on all that interested them in the little society 
 of the place, their connections, hopes, and pleasures. 
 
 From the first moment that trouble reached the 
 Flamsteads, Mrs. Westbrook had been the most 
 zealous and sympathising of friends, Could she have 
 roused Mr. Flamstead to the spirited measures which 
 she recommended, and which she, in her own case, 
 would certainly have adopted, it is very questionable
 
 DARK BAYS. 113 
 
 whether Mi 1 . Screw Pepper would have been able to 
 establish such a power over the estate, or have 
 carried things with the high hand that he did. But 
 when she warmly counselled him to such, he only 
 shook his head, and said there were particulars that 
 she did not know of. 
 
 The day for removal approached, and Mrs. West- 
 brook was the true friend in need. She came the 
 moment she heard that this was imperative, and said 
 that they must all come to her till something farther 
 could be done. It was in vain that they represented 
 that they should fill her house from bottom to top, 
 and that they knew not if they should ever be able 
 to make her a recompense. 
 
 " The recompense," said Mrs. Westbrook, " is to 
 come to me and let me feel that I can be of any use 
 to my friends." 
 
 On the day that they were to remove, she had 
 arranged that they should come and dine with her. 
 There should be no spectacle, no stir, no melancholy 
 procession. Her covered spring-cart should go up to 
 the hall, and in it, laid comfortably on a bed and 
 cushions, Mrs. Flamstead, who was in the lowest 
 state of debility, should be quietly conveyed to her 
 house without anybody being the wiser. The 
 children should make a detour and cross over the 
 fields by a road well known to them, and avoid the 
 village and the gaze of the villagers ; and Betsy and 
 Nancy should walk down direct to the farm, while 
 Mr. Flamstead and George should drop in as if by 
 chance. The cart should go again in the evening for 
 their effects, and the whole transfer should be made 
 with the greatest quietness. 
 
 Melancholy and wringing to the hearts of all as was 
 this abandonment of the home of so many precious
 
 114 FRIENDS IN NEED. 
 
 daysand recollections, and with the prospect of seeing 
 it made over to strangers for ever ; yet, perhaps, no 
 plan could so much lessen the force of their grief as 
 this. They found themselves, without any formality 
 of departure, all assembled, as they had often been 
 before, round the hospitable board of Widow West- 
 brook, with the same comely and cordial face beam- 
 ing welcome upon them as ever. But there was a 
 weight and a consciousness of the reality which 
 nothing could lift from their spirits. The}- were 
 outcasts from their home and property ; the future 
 was dark before them. They could do little more 
 than sit and weep together. In the evening came 
 their effects. These were in reality nothing more 
 than their clothes and their private papers. Every- 
 thing else, even small pieces of furniture and nick- 
 nacks, the gifts ot' friends, were not permitted to be 
 brought away merely the trunks which contained 
 what I have stated. 
 
 We may believe that it was a melancholy and a 
 sleepless night to all except the children, who, with 
 the light-heartedness of childhood, which is regardless 
 of the strangest changes in life, so that food and rest 
 and the sight of nature be left them, were all day 
 delighted to run about the farm-yard and farm, and 
 to watch the turkeys, the pigeons, and the people 
 feeding and milking the cows, and at night dropped 
 into their beds as peacefully as they had done in 
 the brightest days at the hall. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FRIENDS IN NEED, AND PLANS IN NEED. 
 
 BUT if the night were melancholy, the morning 
 was still more so. The whole elder portion of the
 
 AND PLANS IN NEED. 115 
 
 family held a solemn council with Mrs. Westbrook, 
 as what was best to do for the future. Not to weigh 
 on her kindness for more than a few days they were 
 resolved. George declared that he had well con- 
 sidered what was best for him already, and that there 
 was nothing which he found too humble for him 
 which gave him any degree of present support. He 
 held it for certain that in fifteen years the whole pro- 
 perty of the Clockmaker would be theirs, and raise 
 them above all necessity ; he did not despair but that 
 something might yet be done to pluck the property 
 out of the hands of the present unprincipled people 
 who had possession of it ; but till then, it became 
 them not to be a burden to their friends. In antici- 
 pation of this event, he had been to the agricultural 
 implement maker, who used to work for him, but 
 who was now master of a justly flourishing concern 
 at Derby, and had engaged himself as clerk and 
 superintendent in the occasional absence of the 
 master, at a salary of four-and-twenty shillings 
 a-week. As he was also to be allowed to do actual 
 work after the regular hours of business, he had no 
 doubt of his being able to gain his fivo-and-thirty 
 shillings or two pounds a week, and he hoped to be 
 able to share at least twenty shillings of it with his 
 family. That, he knew, would be but little towards 
 their actual necessities, to say nothing of comforts. 
 Something further must be sought to assist ; none that 
 could by respectable means obtain even a few shillings 
 must neglect to do it, and if they only cured them- 
 selves of the false shame of resorting to labour, they 
 should at least make an honourable conquest over 
 false prejudices. 
 
 As George said this, his father gazed at him with 
 a look of strange amaze. It was evident that nothing
 
 116 FRIENDS IN NEED, 
 
 so practical as this had ever entered his head during 
 the whole course of his misfortunes. There was a 
 singular contention of feelings in his bosom. He 
 knew not whether more to admire George's energy, 
 wonder at his plans, or shrink from this humble track 
 of usefulness that his son pointed out to him. Bui 
 soon his own good sense, seconded by the cheerful out- 
 break of applauding voices from Mrs. Westbrook and 
 his elder daughters, took the lead of all other feel- 
 ings and sentiments, and he cried with Mrs. West- 
 brook, " Well done, George ! that is brave. That 
 is what we must all endeavour to imitate. 1 1 is no use 
 now sinking into utter despondency. Those who have 
 got the upper hand of us are not disposed to be very 
 accommodating to us. Let us then not beg and sue to 
 them. Let them not have the power to humiliate us. 
 To work and maintain ourselves, watching for the 
 return of a better day, is no degradation it must be 
 pleasing in the sight of God, and of every good man." 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Flamstead ! " exclaimed Mrs. West- 
 brook, " how you rejoice me to hear you talk so. 
 We will all see what is to be done. We will find out 
 something, never fear, to make you all at least comfort- 
 able till, as you say, better days come and depend 
 upon it they will come. It is good for us to be tried; 
 God knows that in his fatherly goodness, and if we 
 are not the better for it, it is our own fault." 
 
 " Oh, what can we do ? " exclaimed both Betsy 
 and Nancy in one breath ; " we will not be idle we 
 must, and will do something, but what; dear Mrs. 
 Westbrook, help us to think what ? " 
 
 " I have been thinking about it," replied Mrs. 
 Westbrook, smiling ; " and I think I have something 
 already for you, Miss Betsy. I wish it were worthy 
 of you but we must, at first, get what we can."
 
 AND PLAKS IN NEED. 117 
 
 Mrs. Westbrook then eaid that she had a friend in 
 Derby, a milliner and mantua-maker in good busi- 
 ness, and she had spoken to her of Betsy. She had 
 told her what a beautiful needle-woman she was 
 what a fine taste she had in matters of dress ; and 
 her friend, who was a very good woman, would 
 rejoice to have Miss Betsy's services for a time. She 
 should, she said, sit in her own private room with 
 herself and another young lady who was learning the 
 business, to begin in a large way in a city in the West 
 of England, a relative of her own ; and though, per- 
 haps, she should not be able to give Miss Flamstead 
 much money just at first, till she got into all their 
 ways, yet she could offer her a quiet home, with 
 great privacy, and in a while, she did not doubt, a 
 handsome remuneration." 
 
 Betsy agreed at once to accept this offer. She 
 knew Mrs. Fernhead ; she had often been at her 
 shop ; she was sure she would like her and then 
 she should be so near George. 
 
 "And me?" inquired Nancy, with tears and 
 smiles in her eyes at once. 
 
 " Ah ! " said Mrs. Westbrook, " you, dear little 
 soul, must stay and be nurse and housekeeper to your 
 dear parents. Oh, where can you be so happy and 
 so useful ? I shall keep little Edward, Jane, and 
 Maty with me, and you will have the three others. 
 You must have a cottage somewhere near here, and 
 then we shall see one another. We shall often meet 
 to cry a little, and to scold a little together, at the 
 world and its worst folks. Oh, those good-for- 
 nothing Screw Peppers, and Stocks, and Snapes, and 
 Spines ! we '11 be happy in spite of them ! We '11, 
 be happy in abusing them. Don't cry so now, Mrs. 
 Flamstead what 's the use of it ? " 
 
 f
 
 118 FRIENDS IN NEED, 
 
 Mrs. Flamstead lay crying on the sofa, and the 
 tears of her daughters fell as fast as her own. 
 
 " What nonsense it is ! " continued Mrs. West- 
 brook, stealthily wiping tears from her own eyes, 
 " what nonsense it is, when all will soon be well 
 again. I know it will. I am sure it will. Who 
 knows what God has in store ? Who knows how he 
 can and will confound all these poor, miserable, 
 wretched people ? Oh, a day will come ! I feel as 
 sure of it, as I am sure that that Screw Pepper is a 
 double-dyed villain, and I shall see you all settled down 
 again in' that dear old house, just as if you had only 
 been on a bit of a journey." 
 
 Thus ran on the good, kind-hearted, buxom widow, 
 with a voice that had a wonderful power of comfort 
 in it ; and the afflicted family, now smiling, now 
 weeping, began actually to feel as she spoke, as if 
 such a day would one day come, and felt stronger 
 and better. George and Betsy were impatient to 
 enter on their new life ; and in a few days Mrs. 
 Westbrook sent them off together in her gig, while 
 she sent their trunks by the carrier, and the next 
 day persuaded Mr. Flamstead himself to drive her 
 over to see that all was comfortable. 
 
 Mr. Flamstead had a strange shrinking at the idea 
 of finding his son George, the long-regarded heir of 
 Dainsby Old Hall, at work at an agricultural imple- 
 ment maker's, and his eldest daughter stitching away 
 in a mantua-maker's shop. But when he actually 
 saw them, he was surprised to find how little the 
 reality was like his fancy. George was seated in a 
 very respectable counting-house, occupied at the 
 books; and in the ample warehouses of the ingenious 
 mechanist was such a display of scientific and curious 
 farming apparatus, as really deeply interested him. 
 
 t
 
 AND PLANS IN NEED. 119 
 
 Betsy was also seated comfortably in a small, but 
 neat parlour, and was engaged with her needle on a 
 fine piece of lace, just as she might have been at 
 home. Both expressed themselves much satisfied, 
 and were sure that they should be happy, if they 
 could only know that those at home were so. Poor 
 Henry Flamstead, humbled and stripped as he was, 
 came home with a lighter heart. 
 
 Kind, and cordial, and cheering, as Mrs. Westbrook 
 was, it was a depressing feeling to the sensitive mind 
 of Mr. Flamstead, that there was he and his family, 
 no less than nine persons, pressing heavily on the 
 generous hospitality of the good widow ; and he wag 
 anxious to get into a cottage of his own, however poor, 
 though he really, as yet, could not tell where either 
 the money to furnish it, or to furnish the table from 
 day to day, was to come from. Mrs. Westbrook, 
 though she threw no obstacle in his way, still said, 
 " Pray, don't hurry, Mr. Flamstead, there is no occa- 
 sion let us see what may turn up in a while." 
 
 " What can turn up ? " asked he despondingly. 
 
 " Ah, that I cannot tell. How can one tell all the 
 plans which our good Father in Heaven has for us ? 
 But something will you '11 see something will aa 
 sure as the sun is sent round the world every day to 
 look after us all like a great shepherd, and to scatter 
 cocks of hay and strengthening corn amongst us, 
 God's human flock, as he goes." 
 
 Mrs. Westbrook smiled so sweetly and confidingly 
 as she said this, that Mr. Flamstead could not help 
 looking at her with a sort of feeling that she had 
 something more on her mind than she said that one 
 did not see into all her plans. Be that as it may, 
 one evening, about a fortnight afterwards, Mick Shay 
 came hastily into the Widow Westbrook's. The
 
 120 FRIENDS IN NEED, 
 
 widow had been all round the village all the afternoon 
 with Mr. Flamstead, looking at cottages and rooms 
 in houses to see what would best suit his family. So 
 eager was he to get into one of them, as if Mrs. 
 Westbrook's good table, flowing with the milk and 
 honey of plenty, and ungrudging kindness, had in it 
 something that quite made him in a hurry to get 
 away from it so he thought this and then that, 
 and then the other, would do excellently. To none 
 of them, however, did Mrs. Westbrook seem very 
 much inclined ; one was too small, another too 
 gloomy. They must really have something sunny, 
 and with a sunny garden, though it was small, and 
 the third was actually damp. Oh, they would get 
 lumbago, rheumatism, consumption, there. " It's all 
 in good time ; don't you think so, Michael ? " said 
 Mrs. Westbrook, "all quite in good time yet." " Did 
 you ever gauge a boat, M ester? " asked Mick, without 
 making any reply to the question of the widow. 
 "No, I never did," replied Henry Flamstead. " But 
 you could, no doubt, with a very little instruction. 
 Lord bless me! it's the easiest thing in the world. 
 You just poke a stick with marks ready made on it 
 down the side of a boat, as it 's on th' water here 
 and there and then look at a little book wi* tables 
 o* figures in it, and then you have an exact account 
 of the weight o' coals or other goods i' th' boat." " I 
 have no doubt," replied Mr. Flamstead, " that I very 
 soon could do that." " Oh, for that matter, I could 
 soon do it myself, though I never war much of a 
 hand at reckoning," said Mick, " but if you think 
 that just that easy sort of a thing would suit you 
 just till your own affairs take a turn why, you 
 see, I think you can have it." " Can 1 1" demanded 
 Mr. Flamstead eagerly, who saw a prospect of sup-
 
 AND PLANS IN NEED. 121. 
 
 port open before him, just calculated for his not 
 very hardy frame or turn of mind. " What is it, 
 Michael ? Is it on the canal Oh, pray what is it ? " 
 " It's just what you say," returned Michael, " I 
 heard th' other day that th' clerk on th' Cromford 
 Canal, at Coldnor Park, was going to leave so says 
 I, that 's just the very thing for squire Flamstead, 
 i'th' present distress. A more easy post just to 
 watch out of his house as the boats come, drop hia 
 stick into th' water, look at his book, say 'All'a 
 right,' and in again. A nice little house with the 
 walls all covered with apricot and pear-trees. I've 
 always admired how neat that house was, and what 
 apricots and pears that man had and there 's a nice 
 garden with a famous row of beehives he'll leave 
 the bee-hives to a sartainty he'll never take the 
 bees wi' him. It's just the thing, says I to myself, 
 and no time's to be lost, ' faint heart never won fair 
 lady,' " and here Michael glanced at the widow " so 
 1 up and off to Mester Jessop o' Butterly. I know, 
 says I, he's a man that has weight wi' th' proprietors, 
 and he'll lean to a born gentleman, and a good gentle- 
 man, as sure as he is a gentleman himself. So I off, 
 and gets speech of him, and blame me but he made 
 th' blood fly out o' my heart into my heels ! " "How? 
 Why ? " inquired Widow Westbrook sharply. . 
 "Why just by shaking his head. Thinks I it's 
 all over he 's promised it to somebody or other 
 before I knew ding my buttons now ! But he was 
 not shaking his head about that after all. It was out o' 
 regard to the squire's misfortunes ' Mick,' says he, 
 * I 'm heartily glad that you 're come as you are. 
 Another hour and it had been too late; I am just 
 going to the committee where there are forty appli- 
 cants waiting ; but I must have it for Mr. Flamstead
 
 122 FRIENDS IN NEED, 
 
 if I can he's a worthy man, and that Lawyel 
 
 Pepper is a d d rascal ; and I am grieved at my 
 
 heart for Mr. Flamstead. But Michael,' continued 
 he, ' you f ve your horse with you I reckon, so mount 
 and away with me : there 's no time like the pre- 
 sent. You can wait a few minutes there, and you '11 
 know the upshot of the business at once.' So off we 
 went, and as we rode along he would have me tell 
 him all about this bad business, and the goings on of 
 this Screw Pepper. At which he shook his head 
 again, and never said another word till we got to the 
 Inn where the committee were sitting. But heaven 
 help me ! I could ha ' cried, really I could, to see the 
 crowd of poor, thin, down-looking men there were all 
 anxiously waiting here about this place. They were 
 evidently men that had suffered a deal. They had 
 supped on sorrow, and breakfasted on nothing. And 
 how they had brushed up their old threadbare coats, 
 and put on the shirt that had the decentish collar and 
 wristbands. Oh my ! but those pale, thin faces, 
 they couldn't brush up them, and when they saw me 
 come, what a look they gave me, as if they saw 
 another enemy. ' Mick,' said some of them that 
 knew me, ' why sure thou art not a candidate ? ' 
 ' Why not ? ' said I, for I did not know rightly 
 what to say, ' why not ? I dunna sec why a man 
 that can gauge a flour bag canna gauge a boat. I 've 
 been so long i ' th' dust, I think it would do me no 
 harm to be in th ' water a bit.' Burn it ! I won- 
 dered at myself for joking 'it's cruel,' said I to 
 myself, 'it 's worse than a bumbailiff ; ' but I didn't 
 know what to say I tell ye because, yo see, I was 
 in some sort a candidate r And then that poor ghastly 
 smile that they gave at my joke. ' Nay. Mick,' said 
 one of them, 'thou artn't after the place or thou
 
 AND FLANS IN NEED. 123 
 
 couldn't make merry about it.' 'Merry,' says I, 
 ' Heaven knows I am anything but merry so let's 
 have something to drink.' I flung down half-a-crown 
 that instant comes a man with a pen behind his 
 ear, looks and beckons to me ; and when I gets out, 
 ' There 's that,' said he, ' with Mr. Jessop's compli- 
 ments.' I looks at the paper, but my hand trembled, 
 my head swam, I couldn't read a letter it. looked all 
 like scrawls and crooked ss's ; so 1 stuffed it into my 
 pocket and rushed out of the house. My horse 
 seemed as fond of going as myself ; he set off wi ' a 
 whuh; and it was not till I got upon Coldnor common 
 that I got down, tied him to a gorse-bush, and began 
 to read. There's the paper the place is yours ! " 
 
 Who shall tell the joy and surprise that ran 
 through all the assembled guests. There was more 
 rejoicing, more tears of joy, spite of their pity for the 
 forty disappointed candidates, over the unexpected 
 gain of this little post, than if the whole wealth of 
 the Oloekmaker had dropped into Dainsby Hall in 
 the days of its prosperity. 
 
 Those who had said that Michael Shaw was in 
 love with the Widow Westbrook would now have 
 said that the widow was perfectly enamoured of 
 Michael ; she looked as if she were actually going to 
 embrace him, but she did no more than shake his 
 hand cordially in both of hers, and exclaimed, 
 "Michael! Michael! why, this is a feather in thy 
 cap ! Well, success to all honest millers for ever and 
 aver, say I ! " 
 
 " And Michael Shaw above all others ! " exclaimed 
 little Nancy, the tears starting from her eyes, nay, 
 seeming to run all over her handkerchief which could 
 neither stop them, nor the smiles which burst out 
 like June sunshine from among them. Mr.
 
 124 FRIENDS IN NEE, 
 
 Flamstead shook Mick by the hand, but could not 
 say a word ; and Mrs. Flamstead as she lay on the sofa 
 quietly weeping to herself, with two or three children 
 clinging about her, thanked him by her silence too. 
 Mrs. Westbrook was, in the meantime, bustling 
 about, and in came the tea-things. The whole 
 party sate down and soon were in a perfect ocean of 
 plans for furnishing and flitting, and everything. 
 The Widow Westbrook was to go with Mr. 
 Flamstead and Nancy the next day to buy furniture, 
 which Mick Shay and Tom Fletcher claimed the 
 right of fetching and putting into the house. 
 
 All the business of that buying and flitting, the 
 looking over the little house and garden, how well- 
 pleased the Flamsteads seemed with all, and what 
 satisfaction they promised themselves in the humble 
 premises, and how Mrs. Westbrook and Mick Shay 
 came actually together the first day that all was com- 
 pleted, and drank tea with them, all this we must 
 leave to the imagination of the reader. In a very few 
 weeks everybody seemed settled into his or her place 
 as if it had belonged to them for years. Henry 
 Flamstead, although still to all appearance a melan- 
 choly man, performed his duty with attention and 
 to the full satisfaction of the company. Nancy was 
 as neat and thrifty a housekeeper as one could 
 see anywhere. There were three of the younger 
 children with them at home, where Nanc_, instructed 
 them when her work was done, and who played and 
 weeded in the garden at other times. Mrs. Flam- 
 stead was really better as if with the very change of 
 air. The other three children were with Mrs. 
 Westbrook, and every Sunday the whole family, by 
 the good widow's peremptory order, met at her house, 
 went to the chapel together, and spent the day in much
 
 AND PLANS IN NEED. 125 
 
 -uiet satisfaction ; George and Betsy excepted, who, 
 Tiovvever, were generally with them once a month, and 
 George who was a good walker much oftener. 
 
 Though we are not to suppose that former days, that 
 Dainsby Old Hall, or the state of the family property 
 and affairs were ever out of their minds, or that they 
 could be perfectly happy under such circumstances, 
 yet they were not the less thankful to a good Pro- 
 vidence for so good, though humble a position as 
 they had found for the present. Their real religious 
 feeling was only the more deepened by their -mis- 
 fortunes, and they could now more forcibly bless God 
 for the benefits they enjoyed than they could formerly 
 for the most abundant flow of their good fortune. 
 
 It was true that the active Screw Pepper was busy 
 with legal chicanery with the Dainsby estate, and, as 
 was said by the knowing head-shakers, drawing the 
 very marrow out of it for himself. It was true that 
 his creature, Gideon Spine, with his vulgar dowdy 
 wife and children, was located in the hall, and was 
 duly seen going round with his book from farm to 
 farm, cottage to cottage, collecting rents and arrears 
 of rents. It was true that with fortune's smiles, 
 many another smile had vanished from once friendly 
 faces, but yet there was a support and a haven for 
 the present, and good hope for the future. 
 
 " Were but my uncle the Clockmaker alive, 
 how soon all would be right ! " still sighed Henry 
 Flamstead ; yet he was always reminded that if he 
 were not here himself, his wealth would ere long be 
 theirs, and set all in order again. 
 
 Through all, Mrs. Wcstbrook was the steady, 
 animating, and counselling friend. She was not con- 
 tent even to be that she broke forth in no sparing 
 terms on all and every one who seemed to forget iu 
 x2
 
 126 FRIENDS IN NEED, 
 
 the present conditions of the Flamsteads, the friend- 
 ship and favour of the past times. One instance of 
 this I must not omit, 
 
 Dainshy Old Hall had always been the welcome 
 and cheering home, and resort of the methodist 
 ministers who came to preach at the chapel. But 
 when misfortune fell on the Flamsteads, the place of 
 entertainment became the house of Mrs. Westbrook. 
 She soon began to notice that some of these preachers 
 seemed to come and go and make little inquiry after 
 their old friends and entertainers. She was inwardly 
 piqued, but for some time she said nothing except to 
 herself, which was this, " So, they have forgotten the 
 roof that covered them ; the table that was spread 
 for them ; the hand that fed them and welcomed them. 
 Now, that which is their case would be mine also. 
 Oho, youngsters ! but I shall take you to task though !" 
 
 These preachers were, it must be understood, 
 chiefly young men, who were called local, or oc- 
 casional preachers, that is, preachers who were in a 
 process of initiation for the regular ministry, or who 
 were a kind of amateur preachers in their own 
 neighbourhood ; men in business who had not any 
 ultimate ideas of being anything more. These 
 preachers are generally sent into the country, 
 especially those who are making their first essays, 
 and thus, while acquiring, by practice, confidence and 
 experience themselves, serve to relieve the labours of 
 the Regular or Round Preachers, so called because 
 they go certain rounds in a fixed district. Many of 
 these young men were, as the greater number of the 
 Methodist preachers of that time were, persons of 
 very little education, nailers, potters, framesmiths, 
 and such like from Belper, and such manufacturing 
 places. There were truly many things which they
 
 AND PLANS IN NEED. 127 
 
 had to learn, and Mrs. Westbrook did not fail to do 
 her best to enlighten them on many points, and now 
 especially on this. " How is it," she asked, " that 
 you do not go to the Hall now ?" " Oh, it is in the 
 hands of the creditors; we could notdo that." "True, 
 not to eat and drink, or to sleep but you could 
 at least go, and ask Mr. and Mrs. Flamstead how 
 they do." " Oh, we Ve done that at the chapel." 
 " Well, that 's something, to be sure ; but I should like 
 you much better, let me tell you, if you went and did 
 the same at the Hall. It used to be no trouble to go 
 there." When the Flamsteads had left the Hall, and 
 were located, as we have j ust seen, " Well," Mrs. West- 
 brook would ask of one or another of them, " do you 
 ever, in your rounds, look in at the Flamsteads ? Do 
 you ever see Miss Flamstead, or Mr. George, at 
 Derby?" 
 
 The answers to these questions did not altogether 
 please her. They had not been lately at Derby ; 
 they had not been either at Mr. Flamstead's lately ; 
 they were so driven for time to go to the places where 
 they had to preach, on Sundays and other evenings; 
 that they were often pinched for time, and so on." 
 
 " My youngsters," thought Mrs. Westbrook, " I 
 must cure you of this coldness towards old friends 
 under a cloud. That is not the way that I want to 
 see religion taught." 
 
 There was about to be a great preaching and col- 
 lection on the anniversary of the opening of the 
 chapel. The liberal contribution of Mr. Flamstead 
 being necessarily withdrawn, made a zealous effort 
 for the chapel funds imperative. Mrs. Westbrook 
 exerted herself for this purpose ; and the most dis- 
 tinguished man of the whole society, at that time, 
 the Rev. Jabez Bunting, was prevailed upon to come
 
 128 FRIENDS IN NEED, ETC. 
 
 down to preach the anniversary sermon. That cir- 
 cumstance was in itself success. People flocked at 
 the news from the whole country round. The 
 chapel was crowded to excess ; and amongst the rest 
 were seen almost every preacher of the vicinity. The 
 Flamsteads were all in their old seat ; not with the 
 air of gay prosperity as formerly, but with a sad, 
 subdued, and yet grateful expression of feature and 
 bearing. The preacher spoke especially of the 
 changeableness of fortune, of the deceitfulness of 
 riches and of that' deceitfulness being often niaJe 
 by Providence, a means of discovering the deceitful- 
 ness of the world. He drew various pictures ia 
 which people of the world dealt deceitfully "as a 
 summer brook, that by reason of drought passeth 
 away," and he said, that Christ, our teacher and 
 example, had declared, "It shall not be so among my 
 disciples." " By this shall all men know, that ye are 
 my disciples, if ye love one another." He then 
 declared how earnestly he longed that the society, 
 and especially their ministers, would seize on and 
 maintain that glorious mark of Christian membership 
 and Christian contrast to the world. That they 
 should, great and small, rich and poor, be bound 
 together in a bond of union stronger than all the 
 ruling powers of the world, and triumphant over all 
 its guile. On his brethren of the ministry did he 
 particularly call to maintain the great and godlike 
 testimony of Divine love. " I have sometimes heard 
 with regret,"said he, "my brethren of the ministry say, 
 ' we fear to call too much on such and such, in his pre- 
 sent circumstances, lest we should be burdensome ' 
 but, oh, my brethren, what burden is so heavy and 
 crushing as the burden of unkindness and neglect ! " 
 If any one had watched the countenance of Mrs.
 
 THE LAST DROP, ETC. 129 
 
 Westbrook, while the preacher was in reality dealing 
 these hard blows that were felt in all their weight in 
 certain bosoms, they would have seen a singular 
 expression of satisfaction and humour in her eyes and 
 about her mouth, which at length vanished in a deep 
 and tender emotion. 
 
 The moment the service was over, Jabez Bunting 
 descended the steps of the pulpit, and, going into the 
 seat of the Flamstcads, shook them all, with the 
 most cordial kindness, by the hands; and, after he 
 had shook hands also and greeted many others of the 
 congregation, he gave one arm to Mr. Flamstead, and 
 the other to his wife, and walked on with them to 
 Mrs. Westbrook's, where a large company of the 
 congregation dined together. From that day Mrs. 
 Westbrook had no longer any need to lecture the 
 young preachers on recollecting our friends in 
 trouble. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE LAST DROP TO THE FULL CUP. 
 
 THE fury of the tempest of misfortune seemed to 
 have spent itself on the Flamsteads. They had 
 found a humble but secure shelter from it, and each 
 discharging the duties of his new position, awaited in 
 patient resignation the better unfoldings of the future. 
 But that future was not to arrive without a deeper 
 baptism. 
 
 " Where is Robert Nadell ? " it began to be fre- 
 quently asked by one and another of the Flamsteads. 
 " I have not seen him lately ; I do not see him so 
 often as formerly ! " 
 
 " Where is Robert Nadell ? " I have no doubt that 
 many a young reader has already asked. And I
 
 130 THE LAST DROP 
 
 wish, with the Flamsteads, that I could give a good 
 account of this young man. 
 
 In the first outbreak of their trouble he had been 
 most generous and sympathising, most kind. He 
 was always with them trying to cheer them up ; 
 assuring them that things would turn out better than 
 they imagined. He had entreated his father to come 
 forward and assist Mr. Flamstead with money and 
 advice, and when he found it vain, no one had so 
 deeply regretted it as himself. He spoke warmly 
 and indignantly of the coldness and selfishness of the 
 world. He was always with George, managing such 
 affairs as Mr. Flamstead was prevented from attending 
 to by the pressing circumstances in which he was 
 suddenly placed. He read to Mrs. Flamstead, and 
 was, to all the young children, like the best of 
 brothers. The whole family was charnud by his 
 truth and affections. Betsy was prouder than ever of 
 her choice, and Nancy was most eloquent in his praise. 
 Mrs. Westbrook often said to him, ' Mr. Nadell, 
 you have acted like a man ! You know not how 
 much I admire you but only hold on !" 
 
 " Why do you always say ' hold on ?' asked Nancy 
 quite affronted, " do you think that Robert would 
 change ? Has any one behaved more nobly, more 
 like a true friend than he ?" 
 
 " That is just what I say," Mrs. Westbrook 
 repeatedly replied to Nancy, " I admire Robert 
 Nadell's behaviour so much that 1 am jealous lest 
 he should ever change." 
 
 " Change ! how you do talk, dear Mrs. Westbrook," 
 repeated Nancy, " I cannot tell you how disagreeable 
 your words sound to me for Heaven's sake never 
 say so again ! " 
 
 But many months were not passed before poor
 
 TO TBE FULL CUP. 131 
 
 Nancy thought often on Mrs. Westbrook's words, 
 and felt i still colder feeling accompany the memory 
 of them than had attended their utterance. Robert 
 Nadell certainly did not come to see them so often, 
 True, Betsy was at Derby ; George was there, and 
 there, of course, Robert would go. They had 
 nothing to amuse him at their poor house, no fields, 
 no woods, no shooting, no fishing, no George, and 
 above all, no Betsy why should he come then so 
 much ? 
 
 But unfortunately George, when he came home, 
 began also to ask the same questions. " Where is 
 Robert Nadell now-a-days?" 
 
 These questions were often followed by a strange 
 silence. It was true that Robert still did come to 
 Coldnor still did go to Derby, and on such occasions 
 was most kind, most friendly. But somehow George 
 found and Nancy found that there was not the same 
 transparency of character the openness of mind 
 about him. He did not talk so much of his hopes, 
 his views, his plans. Betsy made no such inquiries ; 
 " and," said Nancy, " surely if Robert did not show 
 the same warmth of attachment, the same zeal as 
 formerly, she would. She would tell me; we have 
 never had any secrets and obscurities between us!" 
 Then again fell the strange words of Mrs. Westbrook 
 on Nancy's mind, and she resolved to write to Betsy 
 and put some searching questions to her. She did 
 so, and Betsy wrote back immediately, " Oh no ! 
 Robert was not cold, not changed 1 He was still as 
 ki.nd, as true as ever ; but he was in trouble. His 
 father was, as was quite in keeping with his worldly 
 character, now quite opposed to the match. He had 
 been very severe upon Robert regarding it. Robert 
 had communicated all his troubles to her, and she
 
 132 THE LAST DROP 
 
 had offered to set him at liberty, cost what it would, 
 rather than be the cause of family disunion between 
 father and son. Besides," said she, " she was proud ; 
 ahe was a Flamstead, and if she were not to have a 
 penny, would not enter a family that thought itself 
 disgraced by her." 
 
 This letter filled Nancy with indescribable trouble. 
 She was hurt that Robert, who was young enough to 
 wait, ay, even for ten years, should not quietly let 
 his father's opposition blow over, without troubling 
 poor Betsy with it, while she was away from her 
 family. She, too, was proud, and said indignantly, 
 " What ! is not Betsy Flamstead good enough for 
 that miserly curmudgeon ? Oh, I wish it were but 
 me ! I would soon let the old gentleman see that, if 
 * my heart would break for it; I would refuse the 
 finest lord in the land, if he would not prefer me to 
 the Queen herself ! But, alas for poor Betsy ! Oh ! 
 shall she be miserable! shall she be despised! It 
 is a shame I cannot bear it. I will away to Betsy. 
 I will see Robert, and talk to him that I will." 
 
 Nancy was, in fact, soon over at Derby ; and soon 
 sent for Robert from his father's house. She was, as 
 was inseparable from her nature, warm, indignant, 
 vehement, and full of trouble. She told him that she 
 had advised her sister to give him up, if he showed 
 the least coolness, the slightest unworthincss. She 
 was too proud of her sister to wish to see her allow- 
 ing any one to hold her, except on the terms of 
 that pride which any honourable man would feel in 
 her attachment. She wept impetuously, and then 
 declared that if she could believe Robert Nadell any- 
 thing but the true and noble gentleman, he had ever 
 showed himself, that was the last word she would 
 ever speak to him.
 
 TO THE FULL CUP. 133 
 
 The consequence of all this scene was, that Robert 
 Nadell protested, and that with tears, that never had 
 he been more entirely attached to Betsy Flamstead ; 
 and never had he been more proud of her than in her 
 present situation ; never for a moment had he enter- 
 tamed any thought but that of the profoundest pride 
 in her, and affection for her. Nancy shed a fresh 
 flood of tears, then lighted up as rapidly into radiant 
 smiles, and Robert departed, leaving behind him an 
 impression of the most unbroken truth. 
 
 But let us take a peep at his reception by his father 
 the same evening, as he entered to supper. The 
 father was a stout, gentlemanly man, who had spent 
 many years in the army, and still bore the name of 
 Captain Nadell. He was a rosy-complexioned, 
 cheerful, and good-natured man, according to com- 
 mon opinion. A very fluent man in company : a 
 man who had seen a deal, and heard a deal of the 
 world. He knew, indeed, so much of the world, 
 that he had no idea of his son's marrying, except so 
 as to ensure a good portion of its favour. So long as 
 the Flamsteads were the Flamsteads of Dainsby Old 
 Hall, it was all very well. He never asked the 
 reason of his son's going there so much it was quite 
 natural. George and he were inseparable cronies; 
 and, besides, there were the Miss Flamsteads, very 
 charming girls no harm could happen there. When 
 Robert used to return from Dainsby, his father used 
 to joke him pleasantly, and ask him how the Miss 
 Flamsteads were, and especially Miss Flamstead, but 
 that was all. He never told his son that he fancied 
 Miss Flamstead had particular attractions for him, 
 or that it would be agreeable to himself to see such 
 an alliance. When others rallied him on Robert 
 being so much at Dainsby, he took it all very smil-
 
 Z34 THE LAST DROP 
 
 ingly ; "Young people," he said, " would flock togethel 
 it was all very natural." That was all the per- 
 spicacity that Captain Nadell gave to his wishes. 
 
 But now, since the fall of the Flamsteads, it was 
 with a very different greeting that Robert was received 
 from his visits to them. " Well, Bob, where have you 
 been ? not to the Flamsteads again, I hope. You 
 surely are not so green as that. You have no idea, 
 I suppose, of marrying into a ruined family. Of 
 course, you know that to marry one of such a family, 
 is to marry all a pretty marriage settlement, indeed. 
 Let me just tell you, Bob, it is easier to get into a 
 trap than to get out of it. But if you get into a 
 marrying trap, with a needy woman, there are just 
 four ways of getting out of it : first, by undergoing a 
 good horse- whipping; secondly, by having a bullet put 
 through your head ; thirdly, by paying a good sum of 
 money ; and fourthly, and lastly, by marrying, which, 
 in such a case, is by far the worst alternative of all." 
 
 To this exposition of parental and practical wisdom, 
 Robert ventured to say something about old friends ; 
 of the meanness of deserting such in trouble ; of the 
 great expectations of the Flamsteads still. To which 
 his father only replied, with a knowing smile, " That 
 a green goose was reckoned a very good sort of thing, 
 but that such a green goose as a young man stuffed 
 with all these old-world and romantic notions, he 
 never wished to see at his table. To be plain," con- 
 cluded he, "do just as you please, Bob; marry a 
 mantua-maker if you like, but don't expect that one 
 penny of my money will be bestowed on such an ass! " 
 
 Such was the lecture which was bestowed on 
 Robert Nadell on that evening after his affecting 
 interview with Miss Nancy, and which was, with much 
 other banter, often repeated to him. But this was not
 
 TO THE FULL CUP. 135 
 
 all ; the cunning father understood military tactics 
 well enough, to turn many another battery of social 
 ridicule upon his sentimental son, in the circle of 
 their friends. He sent him to make a tour amongst 
 his numerous relations in different parts of the king- 
 dom, and earnestly desired, by private letters, that 
 Robert should be exposed to the most dangerous 
 assaults from the ranks of beauty, wit, wealth, and 
 accomplishments. 
 
 Shall we confess that this succeeded ? Shall we 
 add another to the list of faithless lovers? The fact 
 is stronger than our inclination, and we are forced to 
 say that Robert Nadell, to use the mildest term, was 
 a weak young man. He was like a thousand others, 
 who mean well, exceedingly well ; who would never 
 fall if they were never tempted ; who would even go 
 right and act nobly, if they were always surrounded 
 by the good and the generous ; but who are too weak 
 of nature or of purpose to resist the influence of those 
 about them. Before that summer was over, Betsy 
 Flamstead, in reply to a letter to Robert Nadell, 
 complaining of never hearing from him, received one 
 from him, dated from the north of England, express- 
 ing all his old affection, but confessing that such was 
 the opposition of his father and friends, that he saw 
 nothing but ruin for them both in such a union, and 
 therefore, with the persuasion that he should never be 
 happy again, he thought it was better that they should 
 for ever abandon their long-cherished hopes. 
 
 Sick at heart as poor Betsy Flamstead was, she 
 nevertheless wrote a letter in reply, overflowing with 
 the most generous sentiments, and bidding her lover, 
 with her warmest blessing, be as free as the winds ; 
 and within a month received the certain intelligence 
 that Robert Nadell was about to be married to a
 
 136 THE LAST DROP 
 
 wealthy heiress, of whose beauty and wit fame spoke 
 in most eulogistic terms. 
 
 The poor girl had buried in her bleeding bosom 
 the dissolution of her engagement with her faithless 
 lover ; and now the news of his perfidy came to her, 
 mingled with indignant upbraidings of him, from her 
 own family, and especially from Nancy. Fain would 
 she have defended him to her own heart and to them, 
 but it was in vain. 1 1 is conduct had been cruel beyond 
 words, and she brooded on it over her daily work, 
 and laboured on with a feeling that could not long 
 endure. It was not many weeks before Mrs. West- 
 brook was informed by her friend, Mrs. Fernhead, 
 that something was sadly amiss with Miss Flamstead ; 
 there was some heavy trouble on her mind, she was 
 sure, and she really was not fit for her daily business. 
 Mi's. Westbrook only too well divined the cause. 
 She hastened to Derby, and was shocked to see the 
 change in poor Betsy. She took her home with her 
 immediately, and tried to comfort and amuse her, 
 but Betsy begged to be allowed to go to her o\vn home, 
 to her parents and sisters, where she still rapidly 
 faded away under the most fatal species of consump- 
 tion that of the heart. Poverty and daily labour 
 she had borne like a heroine borne it bravely, 
 cheerfully ; but to feel that she was despised, deserted, 
 for her poverty, by him on whom her heart rested as 
 on her faith, stung her to the very heart's core was 
 like the rude hand which breaks the green corn-stalks, 
 so that nothing can ever raise them again. 
 
 The home of the Flamsteads was now truly a home 
 of desolation. All former troubles became forgotten 
 in this cruel sin against one of the gentlest spirits that 
 ever appeared on the earth. This admirable daughter 
 and sister, who had surrendered all her bright pro-
 
 TO THE FULL CUP. 137 
 
 s pects almost without a sigh, who had submitted to 
 daily labour as if she had been born to it, to lift off, 
 as much as possible, the burden of care from her 
 parents to be thus rudely snatched away from life, 
 for that was too evident, by one who had so well- 
 known her, and all her love for him it was bitter 
 beyond words. 
 
 George vowed the most deadly vengeance. It was 
 in vain that Nancy, whose quick resentment had 
 tended in no small degree to inflame his, now terrified 
 at the effect of her words, implored him not to do 
 anything which might increase the affliction of the 
 family. It was in vain that father, mother, and 
 even Betsy, to whom suspicion of George's intentions 
 somehow made their way, endeavoured to lay him 
 under a promise not to meet Robert Nadell in any 
 manner it was well-known that he wrote to him, 
 sought to get to his presence, and heaped all sorts of in- 
 sults on him ; to which he received only for answer, that 
 Mr. Robert Nadell would on no account go out with 
 him. He acknowledged that he had given him and 
 his family sufficient cause of resentment against him ; 
 and he would not enter into any arrangement that 
 might endanger his adding the most fatal increase to 
 the sorrow he had already occasioned them. 
 
 These circumstances, however, tended to aggravate 
 in no small degree the misery of the Flamsteads. 
 From day to day Betsy visibly declined, and the fears 
 which haunted the whole house of some dreadful 
 affray between the two young men, hung like a 
 thunder-cloud ready to burst upon the devoted family 
 with more mischief. At length, in the last stage of 
 failing strength, Betsy seized her brother's hand as he 
 one day sate by her bed-side, and prayed him, as 
 he valued her love, and would wish to cherish her 
 
 N2
 
 138 THE LAST DROP 
 
 memory in peace and with a calm conscience, that he 
 would promise for her final peace, promise for her 
 sake, and for the sake of those religious principles in 
 which they had all been brought up, and with which all 
 her hope of happiness and of re-union was bound up, 
 to renounce his vows of vengeance. The scene, the 
 place were too solemn and sacred in their claims to 
 be withstood. The sister who had been his com- 
 panion in childhood, who had grown up with him as 
 a shape, of joy and generous affection, now lay before 
 him pale as the lily of spring, angelic as that heaven 
 to which she was speedily to be summoned ; and he, 
 bent down with a passion of tears, vowed to fulfil 
 her desires, ay, under all circumstances, be they 
 what they might. 
 
 That very evening, as George strode back with a 
 sad heart towards Derby, in a deep, hollow way on a 
 solitary moor, he met suddenly, and face- to face, 
 Robert Nadell. The two young men paused and 
 looked into each other's face. There was a deep 
 silence both were pale as death. At length Robert 
 Nadell said, " I am unarmed if you mean to fulfil 
 your vows, I tell you once more I will not strike 
 you ! " There came another vow, like a lightning 
 flash, across the mind of George : " You have already 
 done enough ! " he said in a deep voice, and strode on 
 his way. 
 
 But these two young men were doomed to meet 
 once -more, and under still more striking circum- 
 stances. 
 
 It was not many days before the bell at Dainsby 
 Church tolled for the passing soul of a maiden of 
 twenty-two they were the years of Betsy Flamstead } 
 and every villager said at once, " She is gone ! " They 
 were right : and a week afterwards the bell was tolling
 
 TO THE PULL CUP. 139 
 
 again to call her to her grave, to take her place beside 
 her ancestors who had gone down to the dust, most of 
 them in age, and with hearts that had slumbered as 
 it were, along the patli of life not like her been cut 
 down in her bloom by the sickle of unkindness. 
 
 With the simplicity of the place the funeral train 
 went over hill and dale pursuing a narrow bridle-road 
 that led more directly, and, indeed, with less observa- 
 tion to her native village. Far as they had had to 
 come, her coffin was borne on men's shoulders, and 
 three sets of bearers relieved each other. They went 
 on to the singing of a psalm, and there was something 
 deeply affecting as over the brown heath, and along the 
 wood-side, now brilliant with the hues of autumn, that 
 long sable train was seen by the solitary farmer in his 
 fields, moving in the stillness of that retired region, 
 and the mournful cadence of the psalm fell distantly 
 on his ear. 
 
 But the funeral train had now reached a long nar- 
 row wood that filled up a deep valley between hilly 
 fields. It had descended into this glen, that went by 
 the name of Egriff Dingle, and the bearers of the 
 coffin were just about to issue forth on the other side into 
 the open fields, when a horseman came at a rapid trot 
 round a bushy knoll and halted close to the gate, 
 which was held open by a tall man who stood with his 
 back to the horseman. The rider with the universal 
 feeling of reverence, on such occasions in the country, 
 instantly took off his hat, and sate on his horse bare- 
 headed. But what was the astonishment of the pall- 
 bearers as they glanced at him and saw that he was 
 Robert Nadell. 
 
 He was pale as death itself there was an expres- 
 sion of astonishment and even horror in his counte- 
 nance that could not be mistaken. It was evident that
 
 140 THE LAST DROP 
 
 this was no premeditated encounter it was at once 
 unexpected by him and astounding. It seemed as if 
 horse and man were fixed to the spot. The black 
 procession came up the steep ascent out of the glen, 
 every figure stooping, as men do who climb a steep 
 path, and every one, on reaching the gate, looking un 
 and glaring with surprise on the horseman. 
 
 It would require the pen of an archangel to describe 
 all that was expressed and felt by every one of those 
 successive gazers. Who shall describe the effect of the 
 quick, momentary glance of George Flamstead, of the 
 woe- stricken paleness and meek sorrow of the father ? 
 If a file of deadly enemies, each armed with a loaded 
 musket, had issued from the glen and fixed their eyes 
 on Robert Nadell, it would have been nothing to the 
 horror which then seized him. Years of conflicting 
 agonies withered him up, as the glances of these 
 injured beings fell upon him. He felt that scorn, 
 contempt, and hatred were but a faint portion of the 
 feelings that overwhelmed him. His heart, his life, 
 his conscience seemed to him laid bare to the eyes of 
 every one that passed, and that every one in succes- 
 sion pronounced his eternal doom. If the earth 
 would have opened its mouth and swallowed him up, 
 he would have blessed it. But the procession went 
 on ; the psalm again sounded its mournful melody, 
 and there sate the tall horseman as if turned to stone. 
 
 The tall man was about to close the gate when he 
 too became aware of the horseman. The man was 
 Michael Shaw. He gazed at the figure of horror for 
 a moment, and then said solemnly " Robert Nadell, 
 come on, the way is open. She whom thou hast 
 murdered is going to her rest but here is thy way 
 into the world to which thou belongest. Come on, 
 Robert Nadell ; and, dreadful as is this righteous
 
 TO THK FULL CUP. 141 
 
 judgment, believe that God wills not thy utter 
 destruction. His hand it is plainly that has led thee 
 up here at this moment, for I feel sure that thou 
 wouldst of thy own will have been far enough off to- 
 day : and when that hand lies heavy on thee, as it 
 will for years, day and night, summer and winter, in. 
 the field and in the city-street, let it have its way 
 even when thou groanest under it, for it surely means 
 to punish only to be merciful, or it would have left 
 thee to the last and the long reckoning ! Go, 
 Robert Nadellj and if it can, peace go with thee ; but 
 when wilt thou have a peace like yon sleeping 
 maiden ? " 
 
 With a sudden glance at the speaker, as of a mad- 
 man's, Robert Nadell struck his spurs into the 
 flanks of his steed, and the animal snorting, dashed 
 down the glen, and Michael Shaw, pausing a moment, 
 watched him gallop onwards, till a sudden sweep hid 
 him from the view. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 JOHN FOX AGAIN. 
 
 IT was at this crisis that Mr. John Fox arrived at 
 Leniscar. The winter had passed over since the 
 events which we last related. The Flamsteads in 
 their little cottage were living still and retired, and 
 bearing with resignation all the trials with which a 
 wise Providence had seen meet to visit them. The 
 turf had grown green on Betsy Flamstead's grave, 
 and the violets, which loving hands had planted there, 
 filled the air with their fragrance ; and the yet un- 
 soiled garland of white flowers, as was the village 
 custom, swung from the chancel-roof above the pew 
 of the Flamsteads, commemorating her early death.
 
 142 JOHN FOX AGAIN. 
 
 Old Gideon Spine was still established at Dainsby 
 Old Hall, with his wife and family, appearing in 
 that quiet house as much in place as so many owls or 
 jack-daws or rats that had got in since it was deserted. 
 Gideon held no communication with the inhabitants 
 of the village, except regularly every Monday morn- 
 ing to call at the cottages for the week's rent. He 
 seemed to grow every day more and more surly and 
 crabbed, and had already heaped upon himself a 
 pretty good share of the people's hatred, about which, 
 however, he appeared very little to concern himself. 
 In the meantime, his master, Mr. Screw Pepper, had 
 been busy with the estate, but had brought affairs as 
 little apparently towards a termination as when he 
 first got them into his hands. There had been no less 
 than five years expended on the settlement of the 
 bankrupt's concerns : there had been no less than 
 seven sales advertised of the property, in one form and 
 another, all of which had come to nothing. In one 
 case, there was the confident prospect pleaded, of a 
 sale by private contract, and, therefore, the public 
 sale was postponed. In another instance, it was 
 declared that the property was actually disposed of 
 by private contract ; yet in a while it was again made 
 known that the purchaser had, after signing the 
 agreement, run off from his bargain on some dissatis- 
 faction or other ; there had been legal process resorted 
 to, to compel the completion of his purchase, but it 
 had not succeeded. The rest of the sales did not obtain 
 a bid equal to the valuation, and therefore the pro- 
 perty had been bought in for the court by some one 
 appointed for the purpose, on the. plea that it would 
 be unjust to the claims of the creditors to let the 
 estate go on these terms. 
 
 All this, people saw very well, was making dread-
 
 JOHN FOX AGAIN. 143 
 
 ful havoc with the property, by heaping a monstrous 
 load of legal charge and other expenses upon it. In 
 the meantime Mr. Screw Pepper seemed to flourish 
 wonderfully. He had removed into a larger house, 
 drove a handsomer carriage, with a full-sized and full- 
 liveried servant, and was become much more lofty 
 and consequential in his bearing. 
 
 It seemed to be extremely unpleasant to him that 
 Mr. Flamstead had obtained the humble employ- 
 ment that he had. He determined to annoy him to 
 the utmost. He declared that a bankrupt, whose 
 affairs were not settled, could not have a house well- 
 furnished without being called upon to account for 
 the possession of so much property, and accordingly 
 he did call upon him for such an explanation. Mr. 
 Flamstead appeared before the commissioners with 
 the utmost composure, and showed with the most 
 cool and perfect candour that every piece of furniture 
 which stood in his house was a generous loan of the 
 Widow Westbrook. This was a, poser for Mr. Screw 
 Pepper ; but it only seemed to fill him with a more 
 bitter spirit. He demanded an account of Mr. Flam- 
 stead's salary, which, besides the house, was one 
 pound a week ; and he declared that he considered 
 this too much for a bankrupt, whose effects were of 
 such trivial value that they were actually unsaleable, 
 and that it was but fitting that he paid seven shillings 
 per week to the account of the creditors. The piti- 
 fulaess of this demand was too much for even the 
 most sordid assignees, with the exception of Stocks 
 and Snape, who thought it a burning shame that a 
 man who owed so much money as Mr. Flamstead did, 
 ehould bo living in so much luxury ; these worthy 
 fellows, by-the-by, being annually in full receipt of 
 interest of the whole of their debt on the estate.
 
 144 JOHN POX AGAIN. 
 
 Mr. Screw Pepper was not, in the meantime, 
 beaten from his purpose of petty annoyance of a man 
 whom he saw so thoroughly despised him, and whom 
 lie knew he was so deeply robbing and injuring. He 
 stated to the assignees that Mr. Flamstead was not 
 only in the receipt of one pound a week, clear of all 
 reduction, but that he had every reason to believe 
 that he had the assistance of friends and children. 
 The children he had out at constant employment, 
 who. as they were single persons, no doubt could and 
 would confer part of their gains on their father. He 
 called on Mr. Flamstead to make a full disclosure, 
 on oath, of all such receipts. Mr. Flamstead declared 
 himself perfectly willing to do so ; but this was 
 warmly opposed by the assignees, except the two 
 notorious ones, Stocks and Snape, who were as greedy 
 for this disclosure as if they were losing the whole 
 interest, and were sure to lose the whole principal 
 also. But Mr. Screw Pepper had not yet done; 
 there was the old subject of the Clockmaker's wealth. 
 He contended that, as the property was actually un- 
 saleable, it was absolutely necessary that Mr. Flam- 
 stead should make over his reversionary claim on this 
 property, and in this demand he was strongly sup- 
 ported by the assignees. But Mr. Flamstead aa 
 steadily refused. He declared, whatever might be 
 said of the unsaleableness of the estate, he knew 
 very well that it was worth far more than their 
 demands upon it. He called upon the assignees to 
 answer honestly whether every creditor was not 
 annually and duly paid the interest on his debt ; and 
 he demanded that he should be put into possession 
 of his own property, out of which he had been so 
 unjustly driven ; and that he would engage to pay 
 every man his own. He said that now it was very
 
 JOHN FOX AGAIN. 145 
 
 different to what it was when the wai 1 had just 
 ceased. The corn-bill had now taken effect, and & 
 high value was again given to landed produce ; and 
 that, if the estate were fairly brought to the hammer,. 
 it would not only sell for as much as it owed, but 
 would leave a handsome surplus. Then there were 
 the minerals he had been told by Mr. Screw Pepper 
 that they were of very little value that no one would 
 offer more than the merest trifle for them ; and that 
 while they found it impossible, when they were 
 offered with the land, to obtain a bidding equal to the 
 amount for the whole, on the other hand, when they 
 reserved the minerals for separate sale, no one would 
 bid at all for the land, declaring, very naturally, that the 
 value of the land would be in great measure destroyed, 
 if the proprietors of the minerals could come at any 
 time and delve and turn it all up, topsy-turvy. 
 
 " Yet, notwithstanding this statement," said Mr. 
 Flamstead, " I have heard, from good authority, 
 that Mr. Pepper now offers the minerals by private 
 contract, at a price equal to that of the estate itself; 
 in fact, at such an extravagant price as totally pre- 
 vented their sale." He ended by calling upon Mr. 
 Pepper to answer, before the assignees, to this charge. 
 
 On this, Mr. Screw Pepper turned red, pale-yellow, 
 and then broke forth into the most vehement denials 
 of the truth of these abominable attacks, as he called 
 them, on his character, heaping on Mr. Flamstead 
 the most opprobrious terms. 
 
 The assignees were compelled to interfere, but Mr. 
 Flamstead coolly and steadily adhered to his point,, 
 and offered to bring forward respectable evidence of 
 what he asserted. Adding, moreover, that as it 
 regarded the property of the Clockmaker, that even 
 were the estate deficient, which he altogether denied,
 
 140 JOHN FOX AGAIN". 
 
 he never would consent to convey away that which 
 was not his own, which indeed might still be the 
 property of a living man, and which might never 
 become his, but his children's, who had no concern 
 whatever with their father's management of his estate, 
 nor were responsible for his deficiencies, nor called 
 upon by law or justice to make good, out of funds fur- 
 nished to them by a totally different person, the waste 
 or imprudence of their parent. It was quite enough 
 that they would derive nothing from that parent. 
 
 This spirited conduct of Mr. Flamstead, and the 
 true character which he had dared to give of the pro- 
 ceedings of Screw Pepper, did not fail to fill that per- 
 sonage with the most diabolical spirit of revenge. He 
 vowed vengeance, not alone for himself, but his 
 two friends Stocks and Snape, who gloated over the 
 very idea of it, saying, " Ay, that's right ! trounce 
 him ! trounce him ! Bring his proud stomach down !" 
 
 The very first steps towards Mr. Pepper's revenge 
 was to mutilate the estate for ever, and to render it 
 impossible that it should ever revert to the Flam- 
 steads. He stated therefore to the assignees that as it 
 had been found fruitless to attempt to sell the estate 
 as a whole, it was now necessary to adopt another 
 plan. The estate must be divided into so many lots, 
 each of which would be sold separately as circum- 
 stances might dictate. Thus people of less property 
 might be accommodated ; farmers who might wish to 
 buy a single farm to live upon ; people who did not 
 want estates but only investments. The house had 
 better, as an incumbrance to any one lot, be at once 
 sold in lots for building materials, and so pulled down 
 and done away with. 
 
 It was in pursuance of this malicious policy that it 
 had been, as already stated, found by Mr. John Fox
 
 JOHN FOX AGAIN. 147 
 
 measured out into sundry lots, and those lots chalked 
 upon them in huge figures ; a fact which had filled 
 him with such a fit of indignation, and had sent him 
 off in such a hurry to Derby. But before we proceed 
 to inquire what were the results of his expedition to 
 Derby with Mick Shay, we must say a few words. 
 
 From the first of Mr. Fox's coming into this 
 neighbourhood he had been particularly inquisitive 
 after Mr. Flamstead. He seemed to cherish the 
 most agreeable recollections of the times that he had 
 spent at Dainsby with his friend the clockmaker. 
 lie heard with deep sympathy the story of the mis- 
 fortunes of the family, and they were often a subject 
 of conversation between him, Tom Fletcher, and 
 Mick Shay. He listened with evident strong feeling 
 to the relation of the mournful fate of Miss Flam- 
 stead, and made Mick Shay point out to him one 
 Sunday soon after, the grave of this amiable young 
 lady. He made Mick also introduce him to the 
 Widow \Vestbrook, to whom he spoke in warm terms 
 of praise for her genuine friendship to the unfortunate 
 family. He delighted to hear Mrs. Westbrook talk 
 of the Flamsteads, and she, in her turn, was also 
 surprised to find how much he really knew of the 
 family history. It had been, he said, a favourite 
 topic of the Clockmakers in their rambles when in 
 this neighbourhood. He went one day also in Derby 
 to see George Flamstead at the agricultural imple- 
 ment-makers ; saw a wonderful likeness to the clock- 
 maker in him, when the Clockmaker was of the same 
 age. He applauded George, whom he found shaping 
 a piece of wood with an adze, with as much skill and 
 as little false shame as the most regularly educated 
 workman could possess, for his manly resolve to 
 maintain himself by honest labour. It was just what
 
 J48 JOHN FOX AGAIN. 
 
 his uncle the Clockmakcr did, and he trusted he would 
 find it as fortunate as the Clockmakcr had done. 
 
 " But," said George, " I do not find that the 
 Clockmakor was so particularly fortunate. That he 
 entered into an honest trade was sensible and manly, 
 but to leave his business in its prosperity and take 
 himself off, Heaven knows where, was not quite so 
 great an evidence of sense." 
 
 " There you are right," said John Fox ; " the 
 Clockmaker's fate is a mysterious one ; we will trust 
 that in that particular yours will be different. I 
 like your observations, young man. And pray what 
 do you propose to do when you enter into business 
 for yourself?" 
 
 George raised himself, and looking at the stranger 
 with a peculiar expression said, " That 'a a very plain 
 question, I may say, for one whom I never saw 
 before ; but as I see that you take some interest in 
 our family I will answer it as frankly as it is put. 
 My movements must be regulated by those of my 
 family in a great measure. It is my first and 
 hounden duty to contribute to their comfort. They 
 have much at stake, and much to lose here. They 
 have many children whose interests and happiness 
 through life depend upon them, and they have many 
 and subtle enemies, who are on the watch to snatch 
 away from them every means of future support both 
 for them and their children. I know not how far I 
 may be nble to defend or assist them, for I know 
 little of the law, and we have few relatives who seem 
 disposed to stand by us in the assertion of our rights ; 
 but I will do what I can, more or less, and 1 feel that 
 I am called upon to be always at hand and always 
 on the watch to be useful." f ' That is well said," 
 rejoined John Fox ; " but were you not held by such
 
 JCIIN FOX AGAIN. 149 
 
 considerations what course would you choose for your- 
 self? " " For myself ? " said George ; " for myself 
 there is but one choice away to America. Here, to 
 succeed, wants money, friends, a peculiar auspicious- 
 ness of fortune ; but there !" said lie, his eyes flashing 
 with enthusiasm, u this axe would be enough for me. 
 I would labour till I had some hoard of dollars, and 
 then the far west should find me a field of action, in 
 which I should not fear to find a new and ample estate. 
 What cannot youth, enterprise, study, and persever- 
 ance accomplish if they have but such an ample field ?" 
 " There spoke the Clockmaker again," said Mr. 
 Fox, smiling. "How do we see, every day, how 
 much easier it is to see other people's faults than our 
 own ! It was but just now that you blamed the 
 Clockmaker for the very spirit of enterprise which 
 you now show yourself so entirely to possess." 
 " Yes, but," sai'i George, " there is a difference. 
 If I had here a business like the Clockmaker's I 
 should certainly stay and make the most of it. The 
 Clockmaker abandoned both that and a really inde- 
 pendent fortune to vanish Heaven knows whither !" 
 " That is true indeed," said the old gentleman. 
 " He might be of great service were he here now. 
 But if he be not here there is a friend of his ; and I 
 say cheer up, George Flamstead ; I like your spirit 
 much, and there may come a day when I may be 
 able to be of use to you." 
 
 He shook George cordially by the hand, bade him 
 be sure to go to see him when he went to Lenis- 
 car, and went away leaving George full of strange 
 speculations. 
 
 " This man," said he to himself, " seems a very 
 sensible person. He seems to like our family ; he 
 may one day be of use, he says, and he is rich, Mick 
 o2
 
 150 JOHN FOX 
 
 Shay says. Ay, what use might not such a man be 
 of, if he were but such a fine fellow as one reads of 
 in books. I should up and say to him at once, 
 ' Here is a glorious opportunity to testify an old 
 regard for a fallen family. What are a few hundred 
 pounds to you ? Stand by this Mr. Flamstead ; you 
 may rescue him from the harpies who devour him, 
 and make a whole family happy without harming a 
 single hair to yourself.' And the man should say 
 in return, ' To be sure, you are quite right, 
 young fellow ; and I will do it.' How easily such 
 things are done on paper but stuff! it is not so 
 easily done on this mercenary earth. One cannot 
 fall in with these heroes of romance these men of 
 great hearts and generous sentiments. All men, 
 especially men of money, are no\v-a-<Iays so dread- 
 fully unsentimental. They are so abominably trades- 
 man-like. I sometimes amuse myself but that is 
 not exactly the word employ myself as I walk the 
 streets with examining all the gentlemen's counte- 
 nances, to see if I could find a poet or a hero among 
 them, and I know not how it is, I think I must be 
 miserably uncharitable; there seems nothing but a 
 cold, polished, selfish expression on all faces. No, 
 this old gentlemen, who however does what no one 
 else does walk out of his way to talk with a young 
 fellow with an axe in his hand will talk of sym- 
 pathy, but that will be all; and that is all that I 
 shall ask from him." 
 
 This old gentleman, however, did not only visit 
 George, but bis father also. He was sure of a cor- 
 dial reception from Mr. Henry Flamstead, because 
 he came to talk of the Clockmaker. He declared 
 that he remembered Henry Flamstead as a little boy, 
 having seen him once at his uncle's, and described
 
 JOHN FOX AGAIN. 151 
 
 his appearance and dress, which were exactly those 
 of himself, in a miniature of himself at that age, 
 which he possessed. He tried to recall some 
 remembrance of the stranger, and had a strange 
 feeling that he had certainly seen him nay, could 
 recall the tones of his voice but yet could make 
 out nothing clearly. They talked for many hours 
 of the Clockmaker, for whom Henry Flamstead could 
 not sufficiently express his affectionate remembrance ; 
 of the confidence he entertained, that, were he here, 
 he would, by the energy of his character, speedily 
 relieve him from his ruthless enemies. From this 
 they went into the affairs of the estate ; and the old 
 gentleman, who seemed well acquainted with the 
 laws and usages connected with property, displayed 
 much interest in diving into all the intricacies of the 
 question, and in endeavouring to make himself 
 master of all its difficulties. His good sense, his 
 affability, his knowledge of the world and foreign 
 lands, but above all his praises of the fine spirit of 
 George, made Mr. Fox speedily a welcome visitor 
 at the cottage ; and it became a frequent afternoon's 
 walk of his over there, when he would listen to all 
 Mr. Flamstead's details of his views and his troubles 
 with his creditors. It was not long before he seemed 
 to have possessed himself of a clear notion of the 
 case, and pointed out to Mr. Flamstead where he 
 thought matters had gone wrong, and what were the 
 great obstacles in the way of his ever recovering his 
 property. That Mr. Screw Pepper was an arch 
 scoundrel, and was pluming himself from the spoils 
 of the estate, he declared himself as sure of as that he 
 liv( d. He promised to keep an eye on the affair, 
 and to give Mr. Flamstead any advice and aid that 
 lie could, whenever there appeared any opportunity
 
 152 JOHN FOX AGAIN. 
 
 of doing so. Mr. Flamstead was no liitle elated by 
 the acquisition of the acquaintance of this able and 
 experienced man, and was never so happy as when 
 he saw him marching slowly down the towing-path 
 of the canal, with his curious fox-stick in his hand. 
 He was quickly seen from a little window near the 
 fire-place, by which the approach of the boats was 
 watched, and Miss Nancy, to whom he showed a 
 great liking, speedily began to set out the tea-things, 
 and send off one of the children for some fresh 
 radishes out of the garden, and cresses from the brook 
 that ran at its bottom. He was very attentive to 
 Mrs. Flamstead, whose health was now much better, 
 though she was far from having regained the sunny 
 brightness and joyousness of her former life. Her 
 genuine religion induced her to strive for content- 
 ment and thankfulness, that in the troubles that had 
 overtaken them, they had been favoured with a 
 haven of shelter, humble and lowly as it was. But 
 the experience and habits of her whole earlier life led 
 her at the same time deeply to regret what they had 
 lost, when she looked round and saw her troop of 
 blooming children, and asked herself how they were 
 to be educated how established in life ! if they 
 were really to descend from the station which their 
 fathers had always occupied, and to have to battle 
 with the roughest circumstances of life; it was 
 enough to fall with a dismal heaviness on her heart. 
 Then there was her excellent husband, patiently but 
 with a downcast spirit performing his humble duties 
 for his humble pittance, while the daily and the 
 hourly thought of his bosom was the blight of all his 
 hopes the ruin of his paternal estate ! Then there 
 was George, so good, so sensible, so dutiful and self- 
 sacrificing, who, instead of the heir of Dainsby, wag
 
 JOHN FOX AGAIN. 153 
 
 the labouring companion of artisans ; and, finally, 
 there was the sorrowful fate of Betsey a wringing 
 memory to a mother's heart. It must he confessed 
 that Mrs. Flamstead had enough to bend her down 
 with sighs and tears ! 
 
 On these subjects how many hours did she converse 
 with Mr. Fox ! There was a sincere tone of sympa- 
 thy that drew her to him. He listened, and without 
 denying that her sorrows had a deep and bitter root, 
 he would still throw in a consolatory hope ; things, 
 he trusted, would mend. They had at least a certain, 
 though a somewhat distant prospect of wealth, even 
 if Dainsby were not rescued from its devourers. But 
 even that he hoped. He was indignant at the lawyer. 
 It would, he said, give him genuine satisfaction to see 
 that fellow well exposed and punished. Nay, he 
 would willingly give a few hundreds towards that 
 object himself; for of all things did his soul loathe 
 an undermining upstart of a pettifogging lawyer ! 
 
 The energy with which Mr. Fox spoke on these 
 subjects, never failed to kindle their sympathy and 
 lighten their hearts. Oh ! how cheering, how ingra- 
 tiating it is, when the world deals hardly with us, 
 to hear the genuine tones of warm-hearted truth. 
 At such times Nancy would draw near to the old 
 man and gaze on him in admiration that she could not 
 suppress, till, sometimes his eye catching the delighted 
 expression of her face, he would put his hand on 
 her shoulder, and say, " Why, my dear girl, your 
 face is a morning sun in spring ; it seems to bring 
 back all one's youth with its green leaves and its dew !" 
 
 But while Mr. Fox grew more and more interested 
 m the Flamsteads, and more and more a favourite with 
 them, when talking with Tom Fletcher and Michael 
 Shaw, he would often say, " Well, Henry Flamstead
 
 154 JOHN FOX AGAIN. 
 
 is an excellent man. I think I never sawa man of purer 
 and simpler mind and feelings. He is a real gentle- 
 man; but somehow, I must confess, that I do think he 
 has been somewhat too much of the gentleman. How 
 many generations had his ancestors kept Dainsby Old 
 Hall and its lands together ? and it is not to be supposed 
 that any one of that old race of hardy, careful men 
 would have ever allowed a Screw Pepper, or any of 
 his tribe, to put a foot on their soil. I am afraid that 
 Mr. Henry was not altogether a man of business." 
 
 "No, that's just what I've always said," Tom 
 Fletcher would remark; "he's a good gentleman 
 as ever was born ; but he 's, let me tell you, too fine 
 fingered, too delicate, for these times. It always 
 used to give me a comical feeling when I seed him 
 riding on a fine horse, with clean doe-skin gloves on. 
 * That was not the way thy fathers got their stuff 
 together,' I used to say to myself." 
 
 " Hold thy tongue, Tom ! " Mick would break in. 
 " Do'st think it was th' doe-skin gloves and the fine 
 horse that lost Dainsby. No not it ! It was 
 change of the times. I '11 say this, that I never 
 saw a gentleman, no, nor even a farmer, look after 
 his business better than he did. He rode a fine 
 horse ! "Well, he could the sooner look after a lot 
 of men. He wore doe-skin gloves! Well, he was 
 a gentleman, and had the education of a gentleman ; 
 and there 's an old proverb, ' that a master's eye is 
 worth a score of masters' hands.' Never tell me that 
 Mr. Flamstead did not use his eyes ! My word 
 though, but 1 never met with a man, gentle nor simple, 
 that knew the value of a quarter of corn better than 
 he ! But the times took him in, and many another, 
 as clever as him ; and when a man 's down, it 's down 
 with him, and every fool is ready to set a foot on him.
 
 THE OLD CLOCK, ETC. 155 
 
 If Mr. Flamstead had not had a conscience, he would 
 have beaten that Screw Pepper to nothing. But 
 that 's what it is, th" one 's a gentleman with a con- 
 science, th' other 's a rogue without one ; and it 
 needs no conjurer to tell which of the two has the 
 betcer of the strift. But this I say, and will say 
 before any man, Mr. Flamstead has no occasion to 
 hold down his head before any man alive, for he 
 never did the thing that he need be ashamed of; and if 
 right things prosper, and there 's a Providence in hea- 
 ven, he '11 raise his head one day above all his enemies, 
 and sit in Dainsby Old Hall again like any lord ! " 
 
 That Mr. John Fox, although he seemed to side 
 with Tom Fletcher, always evidently delighted to 
 hear Michael thus hold forth, Michael himself 
 thought ; for when he went away on such evenings, 
 the old gentleman would give him a hearty shake 
 of the hand at parting, and say " Good bye, 
 Michael, thou hast a good heart at any rate." At 
 which Michael would touch his hat, and say to him- 
 self, " And I think I know another that has." 
 
 Such were the conversations both at the Flam- 
 steads' cottage and at Tom Fletcher's, that were 
 suddenly interrupted by the journey to Derby, about 
 the Old Hall. I must now take a view of the conse- 
 quences of that hasty trip. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE OLD CLOCK WOUND UP AGAIN. 
 
 ON their arrival in Derby, Mr. John Fox ordered 
 Michael Shaw to drive to the office of Harpur and Fife, 
 the lawyers. This was the great law firm of the place. 
 There was none of the small smartness of Mr. Screw
 
 166 THE OLD CLOCK 
 
 Pepper's offices about those of Harpu r and Fife. They 
 were, on the contrary, spacious, still, and substantial. 
 Mr. Fox dismissed Michael to the inn, bidding him 
 be ready to attend to any message he might send him, 
 and then entered the lobby of Harpur and Fife's offices. 
 Here he saw on various doors brass-plates bearing 
 the inscriptions " Mr. Harpur's office," " Mr. Fife's 
 office," " Clerks' office," " Private office," &c. &c. 
 On another brass-plate in the wall stood conspicu- 
 ously, " Porter's bell," and the handle of the bell 
 hung just above it, with a " Here I am, you see ; 
 why don't you ring me ? " sort of look. Mr Fox 
 instantly did ring it, and a grave man in drab livery 
 appearing, he inquired whether Mr. Harpur was in ? 
 To which the grave man as gravely replied, that he 
 would inquire. On this he stepped ktto Mr. Harpur's 
 office, and came out again, begging to be favoured 
 with the gentleman's name. It was given. Instantly 
 the grave man returned with a much livelier air, and 
 begged Mr. Fox to walk in. This he did, but instead 
 of Mr. Harpur, he found only Mr. Harpur's clerk, 
 who informed him that Mr. Harpur was not at this 
 moment within. It was, indeed, far beyond the hours 
 at which either of the principals attended at the office ; 
 but that if Mr. Fox had business of importance, he 
 had no doubt but that Mr. Fife could be found at 
 home, and he would send for him. Mr. Fox replied 
 that his business was with Mr, Harpur, and that he 
 must see him at once. 
 
 The clerk gave a sort of wondering stare, said that 
 Mr. Harpur was not in the habit of attending to any 
 but the most extraordinary business after four o'clock, 
 and that now it would be just after his dinner hour, 
 when they had the strictest orders not send to him, 
 except on matters almost of life and death. " Give me
 
 WOUND UP AGAIN. 157 
 
 his address at once," said Mr. Fox ; " or, by-the-by, 
 I think I know it well enough I will go to him." 
 " Very well, sir," said the clerk, as if he had the 
 strongest certainty that the gentleman would not be 
 permitted to disturb Mr. Harpur's evening repose. 
 
 As Mr. Fox returned through the lobby, the clerks' 
 office-door stood open, and he could see by the lamps 
 still burning that it was a very extensive apartment, 
 and bore every mark of that great practice which 
 Harpur and Fife were known to possess. 
 
 The clerk who, by Mr. Fox's manner, seemed 
 inspired by a certain respect, and as if he had a feeling 
 that the gentleman's name stood in the books in 
 characters of importance, offered to send a guide with 
 him ; but Mr. Fox said that he knew the address 
 pretty well by letter, and that he wished to try his 
 memory as to the localities of the town ; adding, as 
 he bustled away, "And, besides, I've an English 
 tongue in my head I shall not get far wrong." 
 
 Mr. Fox made his way to a long and wide street, 
 very different to any other street in the town, and 
 paused before a pair of large gates, where the house 
 seemed to stand in the court, within a lofty wall. 
 A pull at the bell, and he was admitted by the lodge- 
 porter's wife, who, on his saying that he was going 
 to see Mr. Harpur, unlike the clerk, made no remark, 
 and let him pass on. Mr. Fox, by the well-lighted 
 lamp which hung over the hall door, could see that 
 the house and premises were of princely size and 
 character. On one side of the court opened a fine 
 garden ; on the other, were the outbuildings. There 
 was a colonnade along the house-front, and the lamp- 
 light flung down into it, showed lofty, and substantial, 
 and well-painted, and well-kept doors and windows. 
 In fact, all around displayed the presence of wealth.
 
 .153 THE OLD CLOCK 
 
 and a quiet state. Mr. Harpur, indeed, was the great 
 legal man of the county. He had been near half a 
 century in practice. He was the steward of half-a- 
 dozen noblemen, and had had transactions with the 
 affairs of many others, as well as witli nearly every 
 landed proprietor of the county. He was the clerk 
 of the county court ; treasurer of a variety of public 
 institutions ; and the great pillar on which the 
 magistrates depended in all their weightier difficulties 
 the prisons, the house of correction, every such 
 thing saw in him a visitor, and the most influential 
 of visitors. In short, he was the great man of the 
 place. There was nothing like the petty smartness of 
 Mr. Screw Pepper about him, or his whereabouts. 
 Quietness was the characteristic that belonged to him. 
 A large, quiet house ; ample, quiet gardens ; quiet ser- 
 vants ; a quiet, very lady-like wife, who, in a very well 
 built, but not showy carriage, made her calls on the 
 ladies of the county, and was always at the head of all 
 balls, assemblies, concerts, and such things, with her 
 husband, and the elite of the town. Mr. Harpur was 
 a portly man, whose well-fed countenance had the rich, 
 but not rude tint, which evidenced of long enjoyment 
 of haunches of venison, and good old port. He could 
 be very solemn, or very affable, and even jocose in his 
 manner. To Mr. Screw Pepper, and such people, he 
 was the former, and this man, always ready enough to 
 show his airs to others, behaved with the profoundest 
 respect to Mr. Harpur, and deferred to his judgment 
 with the most ludicrous servility, in matters of business. 
 Mr. Fox was speedily admitted" to Mr. Harpur. 
 The great man quickly appeared, recognised Mr. 
 Fox as an old acquaintance, shook him heartily by 
 the hand, and bade him come along. Tea was in the 
 drawing-room, and he must introduce him to Mrs.
 
 WOUND UP AGAIN. 159 
 
 Harpur. Mr. Fox declared that he should have 
 much pleasure to make the acquaintance of Mrs. 
 Harpur, and would therefore step into the drawing- 
 room for a few minutes, and should indeed be glad 
 of a cup of tea ; but that he must beg Mr. Harpur's 
 attention for a few minutes in privacy. Mr. Harpur 
 called for lights, ;md led the way to his library, 
 where Mr. Fox had so soon explained his errand that 
 both gentlemen were quickly in Mrs. Harpur's large 
 and splendid drawing-room, chatting with Mrs. 
 Harpur on a variety of things and persons, that to my 
 reader would prove only so many puzzles, without a 
 world of preliminary explanation. We will leave 
 them to spend a comfortable evening together without 
 further remark, than that Michael Shaw received an 
 order from Mr. Fox to take a good horse at day- 
 break and convey the letter which was given to him 
 to Mr. Henry Flamstead, and return, if possible, 
 with an answer by ten o 'clock. The commission was 
 duly executed by Michael, and at ten Mr. Fox took 
 his way again to the office of Harpur and Fife, where he 
 was conducted by the grave porter, at his first glance, 
 and without a word, to the office of Mr. Harpur, and 
 where Mr. Harpur was not only in waiting, but Mr. 
 Screw Pepper also very soon made his appearance. 
 
 Mr. Harpur, with a formal politeness, presented 
 Mr. Pepper a chair, observing, "This gentleman, 
 Mr. Pepper, is a friend of Mr. Flamstead, of 
 Dains' y, and is requested by his friend to make 
 some inquiries into the present position of the affairs 
 of the bankruptcy." 
 
 Mr. Screw Pepper cast a glance at Mr. Fox, made 
 a grave bow, to which he received one very much its 
 counterpart from Mr. Fox. It was evident that 
 such a thing as a friend of Mr. Flamstead making
 
 160 THE OLD CLOCK 
 
 any inquiry into these affairs, and especially so sub- 
 stantial looking a friend, and in such a place as the 
 office of Mr. Harpur, was quite a new and unexpected 
 thing to him. " He would be very happy," he 
 observed, " to give the gentleman any information 
 in his power. He could assure him that it had been 
 a very troublesome business." " I should think so," 
 replied Mr. Fox, " for it has now, by all accounts, 
 been five years in hand, and is, as I find it, now in a 
 very awkward case, if it be necessary to pull down the 
 Hall, and to dispose of the estate in parcels. You must 
 indeed have been very unsuccessful in your efforts to 
 sell, if that be necessary." " My dear sir," said Mr. 
 Screw Pepper, " if I were to give you a full history 
 of all the difficulties we have had to contend with, it 
 would be a very long history indeed. The fact is as 
 you see it ; we are at our wits' end, and shall be 
 thankful indeed to get enough to cover all expenses, 
 by every contrivance that we can." " On the other 
 hand," said Mr. Fox, " my friend Flamstead makes 
 the most lamentable complaints of ill-usage : that 
 such is the real value of the estate that there was 
 no just cause to take it out of his hands ; that it 
 has been grossly mismanaged ; that he has not been 
 fairly dealt by, or the estate would long ago have been 
 sold and a handsome surplus handed over to him." 
 
 Mr. Screw Pepper reddened at this statement; 
 but on recollecting where and in what presence he 
 was, he assumed a mild and injured air, and said, 
 " This does not surprise me, s;r, I assure you, at all. 
 I and the assignees have had much to bear from the 
 petulance and insinuations of Mr. Flamstead. Per- 
 haps, however, it was only natural that a man who 
 had lost so handsome a property by his own impru 
 deuce, and was by no means, as might It suppose^,
 
 WOUND UP AGAIN . 161 
 
 9 nice calculator, should feel irritated by seeing 
 everything in the world gone from him. Believe 
 me, no management could satisfy such a man ; but 
 this he would say," continued he, " for himself and 
 the assignees, that happy should they be at any time 
 to receive an offer which would cover the debts." 
 " And what may the amount of those debts be ? " 
 inquired Mr. Fox. " Thirty thousand pounds." 
 
 "Thirty thousand pounds ; and did Mr. Screw Pep- 
 per mean to say that the estate would not fetch that 
 sum ? " " Yes, that sum it certainly would fetch ; but 
 then there were also the legal charges for law pro- 
 ceedings, agency, and measures necessary to effect a 
 sale, which of necessity was altogether a large sum." 
 
 " And what sum ? " asked Mr. Fox. 
 
 Mr. ScrewPepper hesitated " He did not know 
 that he was at liberty to expose the affairs of the 
 bankruptcy, at least without knowing what was the 
 gentleman's object in these inquiries. At the proper 
 time both Mr. Flamstead and all others whom ii 
 concerned would have a proper statement." 
 
 ' But Mr. Pepper," said Mr. Harpur, " it seems to 
 me only fair to give a candid statement to this 
 gentleman. The bankrupt has certainly in such an 
 estate a great matter of interest as well as his credi- 
 tors. Now I, as a lawyer, know that large expenses 
 must and will have accumulated, and I say that I, as 
 a lawyer, were I engaged in this business, should 
 have no hesitation to state them. Perhaps they 
 may be as much as ten thousand pounds ? " 
 
 " They are more, I believe," said Mr. Screw 
 Pepper, but with evident reluctance. 
 
 " Well," said Mr. Fox, " say that they could by 
 any possibility be twenty thousand pounds that 
 would make but fifty thousand and you do not 
 p2
 
 102 THE OLD CLOCK 
 
 really mean to say that the estate would not fetch in 
 the market that sum, without the necessity of pulling 
 it, as it were, to pieces ? " 
 
 " Yes, I mean to say that. I protest to you that 
 we have never yet been able to obtain such an offer." 
 
 " And you would be glad to get such a one ? " 
 
 " Glad ! yes, indeed, we should," said Mr. Pepper, 
 resuming something of his chuckling and self-compla- 
 cent manner; " but I am afraid that we might wait, not 
 for five, but for ten years before we could possibly 
 obtain that. We should jump at it." 
 
 "You would? then let me tell you," said Mr. 
 Fox, " that I am the purchaser." 
 
 " You the purchaser, for fifty thousand pounds ? " 
 
 " I ! " repeated Mr. Fox, in the same tone as the 
 astonished lawyer, " the purchaser for fifty thousand 
 pounds ; that is to say, I will purchase the estate here 
 on the spot, without a single look at it, for that sum, 
 it being always understood that nothing but fair and 
 just debts and expenses shall be paid ; and whatever 
 surplus shall remain of that sum, shall be paid over 
 to my friend Flamstead." 
 
 " Of course," said Mr. Harpur. 
 
 *' Of course," said Mr. Screw Pepper, but with a 
 strange sort of chop-fallen melancholy ; adding, how- 
 ever, " but let us see the sale is advertised to come 
 off in a few days had not the gentleman better take 
 the chance of the biddings? he might get it for some- 
 ting less. " Mr. Screw Pepper," said Mr. Harpur 
 gravely, " that is now quite out of the question. My 
 friend here wishes to preserve the house and estate 
 entire. He might risk a part of this at a public sale. 
 Besides, you have advertised the house in lots : you 
 cannot have the sale except on these conditions. 
 That would not suit my client in short, the thing is
 
 WOUND UP AGAIN. 163 
 
 done you have made your offer, and it has been 
 accepted." " Oh yes," said Mr. Pepper flurriedly, 
 " so far as I am concerned, oh j r es ! but still, you see 
 the assignees may not be satisfied to forego the sale. 
 I am taken somewhat by surprise. I " 
 
 *' Mr. Pepper," said Mr. Harpur, still more gravely, 
 and with a certain severe sternness, "what am I to 
 think ? You declare positively that you have never 
 been able to obtain such an offer ; that you never 
 expect such a one if you were to wait five or ten 
 years. Pray, what do you mean ? As a professional 
 man, I hope you will reflect on what you are doing. 
 I am evidence that the estate is bought and sold." 
 
 r. Pepper seemed to gasp for breath, he was .pale 
 as hes, but saw what was inevitable, and added in 
 a low tone, " Very well ; there is one thing, however, 
 necessary, and that is, that I should understand 
 clearly this gentleman's responsibility of course, 
 Mr. Harpur, seeing him as your client, I do not doubt 
 this ; but, as the sale is fixed, it could not be put off 
 without the utmost certainty that this bargain will be 
 completed." Mr. Fox nodded to Mr. Harpur, who 
 then said, " You will have a deposit as guarantee 
 against all such chance. Mr. Pepper, what do you 
 require for that purpose?" "Five thousand pounds." 
 " Have the goodness to give him a cheque for ten 
 thousand," said Mr. Fox. 
 
 Mr. Pepper looked astonished at the stranger. Mr. 
 Harpur sat down, drew forth a cheque-book, and wrote 
 a cheque for the specified sum. As he handed it to 
 Mr. Pepper, he said, " You will see now that it is 
 necessary to draw up the agreement on the spot." 
 He rung the bell, a certain clerk was ordered to be 
 sent for, to whom Mr. Harpur dictated the terms of 
 the agreement for the sale of Dainsby Old Hall and
 
 164 THE OLD CLOCK 
 
 estate. Into the particulars of this we need not enter. 
 It was agreed that the draft of conveyance should bo 
 ready by a certain day, and that the estate should be 
 conveyed free of all mortgages, debts, or incumbrances 
 whatever, the purchaser guaranteeing to pay the pur- 
 chase-money into the hands of Messrs. Harpur and 
 Fife, before signing the title-deeds. 
 
 Mr. Screw Pepper then took his leave, and no 
 sooner was the door of the office closed upon him, than 
 Mr. Harpur turned to Mr. Fox, and laughing said, 
 "A fox indeed you are, my friend. You have fairly 
 entrapped this wily Screw Pepper, or corkscrew, we 
 might call him. He will hang himself for vexation. 
 But I have not done with him yet. I promise you 
 he shall have a proper sifting, and not one shilling 
 shall he get of his bill, which is not justly his due." 
 
 When Mr. Fox appeared at the inn again, he was 
 in the brightest spirits. He ordered a famous dinner, 
 and some fine old port in, and Michael and he sat and 
 enjoyed themselves famously. It was not, however, 
 till they were driving homeward that Mr. Fox said, 
 " Well, Michael, I think we have put a scotch into 
 this Mr. Screw Pepper's wheel at last. I've stopped 
 the sale." " Well done ! well done ! " said Michael, 
 " that was a bit of work worth being in a hurry for. 
 Let 's make haste and carry the news." Michael with 
 this gave his horse the whip, and away they went at 
 full speed. "You've really stopped the sale ! " "I've 
 done more than that I Ve bought the estate ! " 
 " You Ve bought the estate ! for Mr. Flamstead, 
 I reckon."" For Mr. Flamstead ? Oh, Mick, I wish 
 I could ; but where was he to get the money ? I am 
 afraid there will be nothing over Avhen all is paid. 
 No, I Ve done the best thing I could. I bought the 
 Hall aud the estate, to prevent them being pulled to
 
 WOUND TJP AGAIN. 165 
 
 pieces. Only think what a grief it would have been 
 to all the family to have the old house pulled down 
 stick and stone." " To be sure," said Michael, with 
 a cold sort of voice " but someway I always counted 
 on the old place coming to Mr. Flamstead again I 
 am afraid it will hurt him when he hears of it." 
 
 " What !" said Mr. Fox, " when he hears that I Ve 
 bought it, and that he can come there as often as he 
 likes ? Michael you don't congratulate me then ? " 
 
 " Why yes, I congratulate you dang my buttons ! 
 I don't know rightly what 1 should think." And 
 Michael fell into a deep silence again, which was unin- 
 terrupted for the rest of the way. Mr. Fox alighted 
 at his cottage, saying to Michael " I am in your 
 debt, Michael we will settle when I see you next," 
 and Michael, with a strange look, gave his horse a cut 
 and drove away. 
 
 The next day Mr. Fox met Tom Fletcher, and was 
 about to put out his hand to give him a shake, but 
 Tom kept his hands in his pockets, gave a sort of 
 nod, said " A fine day, Mester," and strode on. 
 
 " That fellow, Mick, is affronted that I have 
 bought the Flamstead estate for myself," said Mr. 
 Fox, " and has communicated his ill-humour to this 
 surly old carrier, now !" 
 
 Mr. Fox did not enter Tom's cottage that day, but 
 steered his way to the Flamsteads. He had, in the 
 letter which Mick had fetched from Mr. Flumstead, 
 received his full permission to do whatever he thought 
 right on his behalf, and " could I," said he to himself, 
 "do better than save the estate from utter ruin? 
 They will certainly be well pleased with what I 
 have done." 
 
 It was a pleasant autumn evening as he drew near 
 Mr. Flamstead's cottage; the sun shone glowingly
 
 1GO THE OLD Cf-OCK 
 
 on his garden. The goldfinch hung in the porch 
 over the door, and was picking his gioundsel seeds 
 from between the wires of his cage, and chirping 
 melodiously as if overflowing with happiness. All 
 looked full of peaceful domestic joy. Mr. Fox 
 opened the door the family sat together at tea. 
 
 " Just in time ! " said John Fox, who went up and 
 shook Mr. and Mrs. Flamstead by the hand heartily, 
 gave Miss Nancy a pleasant nod, bade her be going 
 on and he would take a chair for himself. Nancy 
 handed him a cup of tea. 
 
 " Well," said he, as he placed it before him, 
 " we 've caught this Mr. Pepper at last I think. Do 
 you know, 1 have bought the estate." 
 
 " I hear so," said Mr. Flamstead, cooly ; Mrs. 
 Flamstead sighed ; and there was a strange silence. 
 
 "What the dickens!" thought John Fox, "they're 
 discontented too ! Now what would people have ? 
 Did they expect that I should buy the property and 
 make them a present of it ? Zounds ! I must see if 
 I can't drive a little sense into them ! " 
 
 He then went on to tell in what condition he found 
 the property, and related all the particulars of the 
 interview with Screw Pepper, adding, however, that 
 he hoped out of the fifty thousand pounds, that when 
 all just demands were paid, a handsome surplus 
 would remain for Mr. Flamstead. 
 
 " You are very good, Mr Fox," said Mr. Flam- 
 stead, and again there was silence. 
 
 " Well," said Mr. Fox, " I did hope that I should 
 have pleased you. I confess, too, that I all my life 
 have had a liking for this old place, and should be 
 proud to be the possessor of it ; but as you dp not 
 seem pleased, I can only say that if you can find a 
 friend, before the title-deeds are signed, who will
 
 wotwn UP AGAIN. 167 
 
 advance you the money, I will give up the bargain to 
 you." 
 
 " You are very good," again said Mr. Flamstead, 
 " but you know very well that 1 have no such friend 
 I have but one and if he be living he is not here 
 you may, therefore, safely say what you do and yet 
 * let me say, you may well call it a bargain. Fifty 
 thousand pounds ! yes, indeed it is a bargain ! " 
 
 " Well," rejoined Mr. Fox, " I can sincerely enter 
 into your feelings, Mr. Flamstead. I know how you 
 must feel, and I will tell you at once, that so far from 
 wishing to make any bargain at your expense, we 
 will have, if you please, the whole estate valued by 
 fair and honest men, and I will pay its full value. 
 You shall have that, and all that I can wring out of 
 this miserable lawyer I don't wish to be hard nay, 
 I must confess that I want to serve you both out of 
 regard for you and your family ; and I have pleased 
 myself with this idea, that George might come and 
 manage the estate for me." 
 
 These statements seemed to excite a good deal of 
 surprise, and to soften down wonderfully the minds of 
 the family. They said it was really kind, really very 
 generous, there was a great cordiality. Nancy put 
 away the cup of tea, that Mr. Fox had allowed to 
 stand till it was cold, and poured him out some fresh, 
 holding out to him the plate of bread-and-butter, and 
 pressing him to make a good tea after his walk. But 
 somehow, there was a weight, a sadness, a constraint 
 still in the house, and Mr. John Fox took an early 
 and dissatisfied leave. 
 
 In the course of the following week the old gentle- 
 man walked down to Dainsby. He strolled past the 
 hall gates, contemplating, no doubt, the time when 
 he should be in possession of it, and then made a visit
 
 168 THE OLD CLOCK 
 
 to the Widow Westbrook. The buxom widow wag 
 in her yard feeding a brood of pheasants that had 
 been reared under a hen, the old bird having been 
 killed by a labourer accidentally, as she sat on her 
 nest. Mr. Fox was not without apprehensions that 
 the coldness which had so manifested itself in 
 Michael and Tom, and the Flamsteads, would also 
 meet him here. But to his agreeable surprise 
 Mrs. Westbrook was as smiling and as cordial as 
 ever. After some conversation on the pheasants, 
 she said good-humouredly, " Well, Mr. Fox, I hear 
 that you have bought the Dainsby estate ! " "Yes, I 
 have." " Oh, I am so pleased, you don't know. To 
 think that we shall have that dear, good family, after 
 all they have suffered, in the old place again." 
 " What ? " said Mr. Fox, " how?" / Ve bought it, 
 do you understand, Mrs. Westbrook, and not they" 
 " Oh yes, I understand you 've bought it, but for 
 them of course! " " How of course, Mrs. Westbrook? 
 how of course ? I should be glad to know." " Why, 
 you have bought it for them and not for yourself, 
 Mr. Fox," said Mrs. Westbrook, gravely and with 
 evident surprise, *' I never dreamed of any thing else." 
 "And pray, Mrs. Westbrook," said Mr. Fox, "as you 
 are a clever woman of business, can you tell me where 
 the Flamsteads are to get the money from to pay for 
 it ? " " The money to pay for it ? Why from you to 
 be sure, Mr. Fox, what else ? That 's what I always 
 made myself sure of when I heard you had bought it. 
 * He is fond of the family,' I said, ' and has determined 
 to buy it for them to get them out of that wretch's 
 hands, and then he will let his money lie on 
 mortgage, and all will be as it should be.' " " As it 
 should be, Mrs. Westbrook ? If I am to credit the 
 assignees there will be little or no surplus when the
 
 WOUND UP AGAIN. 169 
 
 debts are paid, and then what is there to pay the 
 interest of so large a sum as fifty thousand pounds ? " 
 " Oh, the rental will pay that sure enough, and 
 in a few years all that money of the Clockmaker's 
 will drop in and clear off everything." 
 
 Mr. Fox shook his head ; " I am afraid, Mrs. 
 Westbrook," said he, " that at my time of life it 
 would not be reckoned a very sane thing to depend 
 on the money of the Clockmaker. ' A bird in the 
 hand,' is the maxim, you know, of old." 
 
 "Oh !" said Mrs. Westbrook, casting an indignant 
 and contemptuous glance at Mr. Fox, " I see how it 
 is. After all, you are no better than the rest. You 
 go about pretending such a friendship for the old 
 Clockmaker, and for the family, and it's only to 
 worm yourself into all the secrets of the affairs, and 
 then you pop in and buy the place for yourself. 
 Now, I '11 tell you just what I think of you, and that 
 is, you are a hypocritical, sneaking, designing old 
 fellow ! What family have you, pray, that you 
 should need such a hall and estate for as this? 
 Surely you could, at least, have bought the place 
 conditionally for the Flamsteads, and let them have 
 it when their uncle's money does come in. Out 
 upon you, Mr. Fox ! out upon you ! " 
 
 Mrs. Westbrook rose in her indignation, as it were, 
 six inches higher in her shoes. She was as warm, 
 and as rosy as one of her own paeonies ; and poor 
 Mr. Fox seemed to shrink up dwarfed and confounded 
 before her. 
 
 She flung the last food out of the basin to the 
 pheasants, and was turning disdainfully away, when 
 Mr. Fox said, " You are very hard upon me, Mrs. 
 Westbrook, very hard. You do not consider that I 
 have nephews and nieces of my own that look to me
 
 170 THE OLD CLOCK 
 
 for provision, and I cannot really buy large estates to 
 give away to friends." " Oh, you have relations, have 
 you ? I see how it is. There 's worse than no 
 chance for the Flamsteads at all, then. Oh, you 
 cunning old Fox, why did you not mention these 
 relations before ? J 've done with you ! Get out of 
 my yard I 've done with you ! " 
 
 Mrs. Westbrook turned into her house like a 
 storm-wind. Poor Mr. Fox stood a moment looking 
 after her, and then retraced his way up the village, 
 apparently in no very agreeable frame of mind. 
 
 But rich men have wonderful powers of reconcilia- 
 tion. It was not long before Tom Fletcher and 
 Michael Shaw were quite won over by Mr. Fox. 
 They took up his cause ; they were as friendly as 
 ever with him; nay, they argued with Mrs. 
 Westbrook in his favour. 
 
 " What would people have?" they said. "What 
 can the man do? He has saved the estate from 
 being torn to pieces has he not? He has done 
 more than any one else has done. And who expects, 
 now-a-days, that people are going to give estates 
 away. Has he not fairly bought it, and offered to 
 let the Flamsteads have it, if they can pay for it, and 
 more than that, to get all he can out of the assignees 
 for them and to give even more for the property, if 
 it be worth it ? What more can you want ? " 
 
 " That man can persuade those two fools to any- 
 thing," said Mrs. Westbrook, angrily. " They shall 
 never come about my place ! " There was quite a 
 feud. The Flamsteads and Mrs. Westbrook held 
 move warmly, more closely than ever together 
 whilst the zealous widow looked as coldly on Mr. 
 Fox, Tom, and Michael, as the cold and distant Alps 
 on the far-off plains of Italy.
 
 WOUND UP AGAIN. l7l 
 
 Time rolled on, and at length, in October, Mr 
 Fox informed Tom and Michael that all was settled ; 
 the writings were signed, and he was empowered to 
 enter at once on possession. These two worthies, 
 who now entered with all the zeal of partizans into 
 the cause of Mr. Fox, begged to have the pleasure of 
 going to turn out old Gideon Spine and his family ; 
 and having obtained this permission, away they went 
 in Michael's taxed-cart. They whirled up to the 
 great gate, which they found locked ; and gave a 
 famous pull at the bell, which rang out loud and 
 hollow, as bells do sound in great, deserted places. 
 
 " What grass there is growingi'th' court," said Tom 
 Fletcher, as he peeped through the bars of the gate ; 
 " and what bushes there hangen from th' very pillars 
 o' th' gates , and what a nation heap o' jack-a-daws 
 about th' place ! But here comes th' oud woman ! " 
 This was Mrs. Gideon Spine, who was coming to 
 open the gate. Having told her that they wanted to 
 speak with Gideon, they followed her up the court, 
 rejoicing themselves in the thought of speedily 
 packing Gideon and all his brood out of the house. 
 When they had, however, advanced a little way, 
 they saw in a sunny corner two or three children 
 seated on the ground, and making circles of stones, 
 which they were imagining to be houses and fire- 
 places, as children do. The sight, simple as it was, 
 someway considerably abated their ardour. " Poor 
 things," said Mick to himself, " they are not in fault, 
 and yet they must pack it 'a hard, though ! " 
 
 But while this was passing in Michael's mind, 
 there appeared old Gideon at the hall-door, who, 
 holding it half-open, called loudly for his wife to 
 come to him quickly. At his call the wife sprang 
 hastily up the steps, he pulled her in, and Tom and
 
 172 THE OLD CLOCK 
 
 Michael, who followed hastily after, found the door 
 banged in their faces, and heard the key turned in 
 the lock, and all the heavy bolts drawn. They shook 
 the door, knocked, shouted, but all in vain. Presently 
 Gideon looked out of a window above, and told them 
 that he was aware of their object, but that he held 
 the house for the assignees, and should not surrender 
 it without a written order from Mr. Pepper. 
 
 Our heroes were fairly baffled. They might 
 place the house in a sort of siege with very little 
 prospect of carrying it by storm ; they therefore 
 hastily again mounted the taxed-cart, and drove off 
 to inform Mr. Fox. That gentleman was very indig- 
 nant at the news, and declared that the very next 
 morning he would break down the door and pitch 
 Gideon down the steps. He set out, attended by Mick 
 and Tom, for this adventurous purpose ; but, to their 
 common surprise, on arriving there, they found the 
 doors open, and the whole Spine family fled. 
 
 There was now a speedy influx of bricklayers and 
 carpenters into the Hall. Men were set to work to 
 lop away wild boughs and break up and re-gravel 
 walks, and women to weed and dig away with knives 
 the grass from the crevices of the court-pavement. 
 All was life and bustle where desolation and silence 
 had reigned so long. It was amazing what a change 
 a few weeks effected. But this change, this bustle, 
 this employment of so many people, seemed to cast 
 deeper sadness on the Flamsteads, and to make Mrs. 
 Westbrook only the more disinclined for accommoda- 
 tion with Mr. Fox or Michael. There was a regular 
 schism. True, however, in ahout six weeks there 
 was some little abatement in the violence of her 
 feelings, from the fact of Mr. Flamstead receiving a 
 letter from Mr. Fox, stating that Mr. Harpur having
 
 WOUND UP AGAIN. 173 
 
 had Mr. Screw Pepper's bill taxed, ten thousand 
 pounds had been struck off at once, which Mr. Fox 
 had paid into Smith's bank for Mi 1 . Flamstead. Mr. 
 Flanistead was much affected by this ; he called on 
 Mr. Fox, and gave him his warmest thanks. He 
 - begged that he would overlook any feeling which 
 himself or his family had shown, but that he trusted 
 Mr. Fox would understand the excited and irritable 
 state of their minds. The old gentleman not only 
 received Mr. Flamstead very cordially, but pressed 
 him to come often to visit him. 
 
 Time rolled on, and it was wonderful to see how 
 rapidly things rolled on with it. All within and 
 without the Hall assumed the most prosperous air. 
 On the other hand, the Flamstcads had given up the 
 post on the canal, and had taken a pretty house about 
 a mile from Dainsby. In Derby, since Mr. Harpur 
 had got hold of the business, such discoveries were 
 made of the dishonest transactions of Mr. Screw 
 Pepper, that not only had the said amazing sum of 
 ten thousand pounds been struck off his bill, but Mr. 
 Harpur declared he never would cease till he was 
 struck off the roll of attorneys. So vigorously did 
 he prosecute this object that one day it was rumoured 
 that Mr. Pepper had not only taken himself off to 
 America, but had carried off with him the money of 
 Ned Stocks and Peter Snape, which had been left 
 in his hands for him to invest again for them. This 
 was news that seemed to rejoice everybody that heard 
 it, for these greedy and remorseless men were the 
 original cause of all the Flamsteads' troubles. At 
 the winding up of the accounts of the Dainsby 
 estate five thousand pounds more out of the fifty 
 thousand paid by Mr. John Fox were handed over 
 to Mr. Flamstead.
 
 174 THE OLD CLOCK 
 
 So far had these circumstances, and the very 
 friendly disposition of Mr. Fox towards the Flam- 
 stead family, softened every painful feeling occasioned 
 by his purchase of the estate, that though none of 
 them had ventured near the Hall since he had 
 removed to it, yet as Christmas was approaching, Mr. 
 Fox ventured on the bold experiment of inviting the 
 whole family to come and eat their Christmas dinner 
 with him. He knew, he said, that it would be a 
 hard struggle for them, but to make it easier lie 
 would invite them all alone, and he hinted that, as 
 lie expressed it, the ice once broken, they would not 
 find it again difficult. 
 
 It was a hard combat between sensibility and a sense 
 of duty. Fifteen thousand pounds Mr. Fox had 
 been the means of saving to them ; he had rid them 
 and the country of their worst enemy ; he had saved 
 the estate and the beloved old house from dismem- 
 berment and ruin; and who could tell whether or 
 not one day, when the Clockmaker's fortune fell in, 
 they might not have a chance of purchasing it once 
 more. Besides this, the old gentleman still declared 
 that he would have the estate valued, and that they 
 should have the benefit of it ; and still offered George 
 a handsome income to live with him, and to become 
 his steward. 
 
 These considerations were not to be overlooked. 
 They put a stern restraint on their feelings, and 
 resolved, cost what it would, to accept the invitation. 
 
 The day came. As the dinner hour approached, 
 the Flamsteads in their simple barouche drove up 
 the village, and up to the Hall gates. The villagers 
 gazed all from their windows as they went in that 
 direction; and when they actually saw them take 
 the turn to the Hall, they were lost in astonishment.
 
 WOUND UP AGAIN. 175 
 
 Why they are actually going to the Hall ! They 
 are actually gone there ! How can they bear to sec 
 that old place in the hands of a stranger ? 
 
 Yes, we may repeat the question, and say, How 
 could they ? It was a severe trial. As the servants 
 in rich liveries came out on the steps to receive them, 
 I believe that there was not one of the party who 
 did not tremble every limb. They entered the well- 
 known hall. How exactly was everything as it had 
 been! but how bright and beautiful! There was 
 the curious cuckoo-clock which had been made by 
 Nicholas Flamstead, but without his name, which at 
 that moment struck five, with the same soft ringing 
 tones, and the cuckoo shouting from within. 
 
 Mr. Fox came from the library to meet them. 
 He welcomed them most heartily, but yet with a 
 respectful tenderness, which showed that he under- 
 stood their feelings. He led them into the ample 
 drawing-room that they knew so well ; the very 
 children were silent with the effect of memory, and 
 the sense of the present. Mr. Fox led Mrs. Flam- 
 stead to the sofa, and placed her in the very spot she 
 used so commonly to occupy ; she could no longer con- 
 tain herself, and her tears, spite of herself, burst 
 forth. The kind host did not seem to notice it, but 
 bustled about, and made every one be seated, and 
 then began talking of the villain Pepper a subject 
 which he hoped would arouse them, and turn them 
 a little from the present scene. H e told them of the 
 sharp pursuit which had been made after him, and 
 the narrow escape he had had of being taken on board 
 the vessel, when under sail from Liverpool. He then 
 entered into othei details of his notorious exploits. 
 Dinner was announced, and he led in Mrs. FJamstead. 
 There was an awkwardness here that even Mr. Fox
 
 176 THE OLD CLOCK 
 
 seemed to feel vividly. At the head of that table 
 had Mrs. Flamstead so many years presided. But he 
 said, " Here, my dear Mrs. Flamstead, you are very 
 delicate, you must take your seat by me. Miss Nancy 
 will oblige me by taking the head of the table." 
 They sat down in silence. It was a heavy affair. 
 Old feelings and memories came crowding upon them 
 on so many sides, that the dinner seemed rather to 
 choke them than do them any good. It was a 
 thorough martyrdom. The host exerted himself 
 wonderfully to talk and to infuse some liveliness into 
 the group, but it did not succeed. 
 
 When the dessert was set on the table and the 
 servants withdrawn, the host himself seemed to 
 breathe more freely. He put round the decanters, 
 helped to fruit, and said, " Come, now, pray do let us 
 be a little gayer. There is nothing which I so much 
 wish as to accustom you to come here often, and 
 to come with pleasure. George, my good fellow, do 
 cut some of those oranges for us. Nancy, my dear, 
 distribute some of those almonds and raisins amongst 
 the youngsters. Bob there ! You are fond of nuts, I 
 know; why don't you crack some? and give Jane 
 some, who sits beside you as meek as if she belonged 
 to nobody. Come, let's be merry." 
 
 There were some melancholy smiles, and a vain 
 attempt to comply, but it was a vain one. How 
 could they be merry there ? 
 
 "This will never do!" exclaimed the old gentleman, 
 striking his hand upon the table. " We must try 
 another song. Listen, my friends, I have some news 
 for you. The Clockmaker I have heard of him 
 to-day he is alive ! " 
 
 It was as if he had given an electric shock to the 
 whole family they started up from their seats
 
 WOUND UP AGAIN. 177 
 
 "Alive! You have heard of him? Where? 
 How ? " 
 
 Mr. Flamstead looked as if he saw a ghost. His 
 face was ashy pale ; his eyes seemed starting from 
 his head with intense anxiety, his left hand was 
 thrust into his hair, while his right rested on the 
 table to support him. " Alive ! Is my uncle then 
 in England ? Thank God, that I may yet see him 
 again in life ! " 
 
 " Henry," said the host solemnly, " should you 
 know the Clockmaker if you saw him ? May not 
 forty years have altered him past your recognition." 
 
 " No, no ! I cannot believe it I see him clearly as 
 on the last day we parted my uncle's form is 
 impressed upon my memory by so much kindness 
 I should know him the moment I saw him ! " 
 
 The old man smiled, and then shaking his head, 
 said, " Henry, you are mistaken ; you see him as he 
 was, not as he is. Time is a cunning disguiser. 
 You have seen your uncle, and did not know him. 
 He has been with you ; has talked with you, but 
 you knew him not. / am Nicholas Flamstead, the 
 Clockmaker ! " 
 
 There was a moment's silence of startled astonish- 
 ment, and then an exclamation, " You ! you our 
 uncle ! You, indeed, our beloved, long-lost uncle !'" 
 
 " I see it ! " then cried Henry Flamstead, frantic- 
 ally striking his hand on his forehead, " how could I 
 be so blind ! How often have I felt that I knew that 
 voice that that eye had a familiar expression ! " 
 He sprang forward : there was a scene of embracing 
 and weeping, and recognition, that made the very 
 servants in the hall wonder what was the matter. 
 
 When the confusion and the excitement had some- 
 what abated, " Yes," said the old man, radiant with
 
 178 THE OLD CLOCK 
 
 smiles and emotion, " I am the Clockmaker in this 
 house I was born, and lived here a boy and a youth ; 
 from this house I went forth and commenced life for 
 myself; a mother's blessed memory hallows this 
 house : no wonder that it was dear to me. You are 
 the only relations 1 have in this world. This house 
 and all that it contains are yours ! " His voice was 
 here choked with emotion, and tears and sobs of 
 affectionate gladness were heard all round him. 
 
 " What," said he, again recovering himself, " what 
 so delightful could I picture to myself, as to spend the 
 evening of my days amongst those who are nearest 
 and dearest to me ? I came back with a trembling 
 heart. The circumstances of an eventful youth had 
 made me keep aloof so long from my native land, 
 that I hardly knew how I should find things here. 
 News that came to me from my friend Harpur, has- 
 tened my steps. I was but just in time to save this 
 place, and to punish a scoundrel on whose course my 
 eye had long been fixed. Thank God that I was in time, 
 and that now all is safe. Here is your own home ; 
 but here also is mine. I have taken the liberty to 
 select two rooms for my own. The bed-room I used 
 to occupy when a boy here, and the little library which 
 overlooks my fiivourite view of the village. But that 
 reminds me we must send the news to Mrs. West- 
 brook ; I am not quite easy till she and I are friends ; 
 she is a woman in ten thousand ; I would not be a day 
 longer out of her favour for the worth of her farm." 
 
 At this upsprung the whole troop of children, all 
 eager to run off. " Nay ! nay ! stop ! stop !" cried 
 the Clockmaker. " George and Nancy, you shall 
 stay here. What, it is so late is it, for the children ? 
 well, it is a fine moonlight night, and not a quarter 
 of a mile's run for them; let them go you shall
 
 WOUND UP AGAIN. 179 
 
 meet them and Mrs. Westbrook at the gafe, for I'll 
 lay any money she will come back with them." 
 
 Away went the young ones, and such of the villagers 
 as were out wondered what was the matter. Pre- 
 sently the whole troop burst into Mrs. Westbrook's 
 house. " Our uncle the Clockmaker is come ! our 
 uncle the Clockmaker is come ! It's Mr. Fox ! he r s 
 at the Hall we' re all there, and it's to be our home 
 again ! " 
 
 They seized on the bewildered widow, and began 
 dragging her along with them, never noticing Michael 
 Shaw, who, dressed up in his very best, had been 
 eating a little supper with the widow. " You must 
 come ! come instantly. He has sent for you. Papa 
 and mamma want you they all want you ! " 
 
 By the help of Michael Shaw the Widow West- 
 brook soon understood the cause of all this jubilation, 
 and presently the out-of-door villagers saw her very 
 hastily moving along, surrounded by the Flamstead 
 children, some of whom were skipping before her, 
 some holding by her cloak. 
 
 The handsome widow seemed to be laughing and 
 crying at the same time. At length some villager 
 said to her, " What 's amiss, Mrs. Westbrook. Pray 
 what's all this about?" 
 
 " Good news ! " cried the widow, pointing to the 
 Hall, and hastening on ; she could say no more, but 
 the children cried, " Oh, yes ! good news our uncle 
 the Clockmaker is come again ! ' 
 
 The news flew from house to house; and, late 
 though it was, it reached the ears of the ringers. 
 At once they ran off to the steeple ; and before 
 Mrs. Westbrook had reached the Hall, the bells were 
 ringing away merrily for the return of the Clock- 
 maker.
 
 180 THE OLD CLOCK WOUND VP AGAIN. 
 
 We need not say how George and Nancy Flam- 
 stead met the widow at the gate, or how they led her 
 in in triumph, or how she was received by the Clock- 
 maker and Mr. and Mrs. Flamstead. 
 
 A glorious .evening was that at the Hall ; and 
 before it was over, Michael Shaw and Tom Fletcher 
 walked in. The rogues ! they had been a long time 
 in the secret. The pretended John Fox was obliged 
 to let them into it. O how Widow Westbrook 
 scolded them for shabby fellows for not letting her 
 into the secret ! and yet there are those who say, 
 that in her joy she must soon have forgiven Michael, 
 for in the very next March their banns were pub- 
 lished in Dainsby Church, and there was a merry 
 wedding in April,, and as merry a piece of work in 
 transporting the windmill, and erecting it on th.o 
 hill above the widow's house, on a piece of land given 
 to him by Nicholas Flamstead as a keepsake. 
 George was seen on this occasion with his axe and 
 his hammer, and never was a merrier evening spent 
 
 than that at the house of Widow Westb no, 
 
 we are wrong at that of Michael and Phoebe Shaw, 
 where the Flamsteads, the Harpurs, and honest Tom 
 Fletcher were assembled to celebrate the raising of 
 the mill ; and when the final toast given by Henry 
 Flamstead was " The happy return of my Uncle th 
 Ctockmaker !" 
 
 THE END.
 
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