UC-NRLF 
 
 i iiiiii 
 3 327 5^ 
 
mrf® / 
 
. vffi 
 
 <r 
 
 
 \ 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 <# 
 
 
 f X 
 
 
 f 
 
 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
 %> 
 
 r * 
 
 *« 
 
 
 # "<S 
 
 3> 
 
 *, 
 
 
 
 
 v<i 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 "TdxXn* 
 
 <& 
 
 <? V 
 
 
 # 
 
 „*.£- 
 
 
 Ccp) 
 
 <?, 
 
 y ?5i 
 
 J v •Q 
 
 .# 
 
 V 
 
 • 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 irkef, 
 
 
 f &sm^ \ 
 
 
THE BOY IN G-REY 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHEE STOEIES AND SKETCHES 
 
The Works of 
 HENRY KINGSLEY. 
 
 The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn. 
 
 Eavemshoe. 
 
 The Hillyars and the Burtons. 
 
 SlLCOTE OF SlLCOTES. 
 
 Stketton. 
 
 Austin Elliot and The Harvkys. 
 
 Mademoiselle Mathilde. 
 
 Old Margaret, and Other Stories. 
 
 Valentin, and Number Seventeen. 
 
 Oakshott Castle and The Grange Garden. 
 
 Eeginald Hetherege and Leighton Court. 
 
 The Boy in Grey, and Other Stories. 
 
" Philarete rose and stood in the bow of the canoe, with 
 outspread arms to balance himself." 
 
 The Boy in Grey.] 
 
 [Page 44. 
 
THE BOY IN GREY 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER STORIES AND SKETCHES 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY KINGSLEY 
 
 NEW EDITION 
 
 WITH A FRONTISPIECE BV A. FORESTIER 
 
 LONDON 
 
 WARD, LOCK & BO WD EN, LIMITED 
 
 WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C. 
 
 NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE 
 1895 
 
 [All rights rese>~ued\ 
 
t T<JL> 
 
 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 It was Prince Philarete's tenth birthday, and if you will find the 
 " Court Circular " for that date, you will read what beautiful 
 presents he had. 
 
 First, a great brass top, or, as Mr. Jenkins called it, a gyro- 
 trope, which spun for two hours and forty-six minutes, making all 
 the time a noise like the loudest railway whistle, only louder ; 
 which was a charming toy. 
 
 Next, a Noah's Ark, in which the elephant was as big as a 
 Newfoundland dog, and would serve for a rantoone ; and Noah 
 was as big as your sister's largest doll. All the animals had cloth 
 hides, coloured exactly like nature. If you wound up the brown 
 bear with a watch-key, he would run about for five minutes (that 
 was done by little wheels on his toes), and growl (that was done 
 by a bellows in his inside). And the rarer and more recently dis- 
 covered ones, such as the Wandoodle and Teezyweezy, and the 
 Rnmtifoozle, had only just been made, under the joint superin- 
 tendence of Mr. Frank Buckland and Mr. Tegetmeier. 
 
 There was another great fact about this Noah's Ark of his. 
 Professor Huxley had superintended the models of all the extinct 
 animals, even to that of the Xylopodotherium, the gigantic arma- 
 dillo, with a wooden leg, recently discovered in the drift of the 
 Appalachian mountains, near Millidgeville. The Professor would 
 not have taken that trouble for every one. But he knew that this 
 Prince could dree out the weird of the Boy in Gi-ey, and so he did 
 it for Mm. For the Professor talks much to the Boy in Grey, and 
 the Boy in Grey loves him. 
 
 " That was a fine Noah's Ark," you say ; " he must have been 
 glad." 
 
 We will see about that presently. 
 
 2 i 
 
2 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 Next he had a hox of French soldiers, each three inches high, 
 exactly like life. There were I don't know how many of these 
 beautiful wooden soldiers, and the hand of the little army was 
 mounted on a musical hox like a triumphal arch, inside of which 
 was a barrel with two tunes — " Partant pour la Syrie," and the 
 "Marseillaise;" and when you wound it up, you never knew 
 which it was going to play next, which was great fun — to folks at 
 a distance. 
 
 •. Well-, with- Vll- these lovely presents, Prince Philarete was not 
 enjoying"' his birthday at all. As his uncle, Prince Thalasses, 
 Load. 'High' Admiral of Liberia, remarked, "The boy was not 
 ' milking -'good -weather of it." Prince Thalasses had brought to his 
 nephew, the future Emperor of Liberia, one of the most beautiful 
 presents you ever saw. It was a little war-steamer, wound up by 
 clockwork, which would run for a quarter of an hour, and fire its 
 guns three times. After this it was no good whatever unless the 
 works were greased with the best butter, like the March Hare's 
 watch. 
 
 Prince Philarete cared for none of these things. The weird of 
 the Boy in Grey was on him, as it was, speaking with deep rever- 
 ence, on some twelve men more than eighteen hundred years ago. 
 The child wished to be alone, he knew not why, but he wanted 
 utter solitude. Men have lived in the desert, and have come 
 down into towns, and said the very words which, after a thousand 
 years, we are acting on now — words which make some men mad 
 with pure joy, now they see them being acted on, and which make 
 old men sing " Nunc Dimittis " with a new emphasis. He wanted 
 to be alone. 
 
 Prince Philarete had loved all his friends as a good boy should. 
 And indeed they were good friends enough, for they could die for 
 him, and one lad can do no more than that for another, unless he 
 can live for him. Arturio was the one who came to him first, 
 finding that he was alone. Arturio was one of his pages, a boy 
 of a great house, who was with him day and night ; the boy who 
 knew his ways and his thoughts beyond all boys. 
 
 Arturio found him sitting at the window alone. Arturio was a 
 very solemn boy. He was dressed in snow-white trousers, fitting 
 close to his leg, a black velvet tunic, a black velvet bonnet, and he 
 had on his breast, clasping his velvet tunic, a blazing diamond. 
 The Prince had often asked him to exchange this splendid cold 
 pure diamond for the flaming ruby which the Prince wore on the 
 same place. Arturio had always refused the offer, saying, " The 
 latter branch of our house has always worn the diamond. You 
 are mixed in blood with the Lancelots. I cannot exchange. I 
 
THE BOY IN GltKY. 3 
 
 ■nail not have my heart burnt out, even to serve my Lord and 
 Prince." 
 
 Arturio, with his black velvet and diamond, bowed himself on 
 this occasion, and told his Prince that their supper was ready. 
 Prince Philarete said that he was tired of his toys, and that lie 
 was not coming to supper at all. 
 
 Arturio agreed that the toys were all nonsense, and that his 
 Highness was right in refusing supper ; but the company of his 
 equals would surely please him. 
 
 "I have no equals," said Prince Philarete; "I shall have a 
 thousand wars hence, and then I shall be dead. But I have no 
 equals now." 
 
 "Your family traditions, Prince, make it necessary for me to 
 say that my family, had things been different, would have been as 
 good as yours ; " whereupon he kicked the Xylopodotherium. 
 
 " Don't be cross, Arturio," said the Prince ; "I can't come." 
 
 Arturio was not in the least cross : he never was, according to 
 his own account ; but he kicked the Xylopodotherium up into the 
 air, so that it fell on the nose of young Duke Polemos, who was 
 coming also to summon the Prince to supper. 
 
 "Oh, hang it," said Duke Polemos, "you have broken my 
 nose. You have shied a rocking-horse at me now : last time it 
 was one of your wooden generals." 
 
 " It was only a carefully- executed model of a Xylopodotherium," 
 said Duke Arturio. 
 
 •• Who's he?" said Duke Polemos. "Some of your lot, I 
 doubt. I'm of the Tenth Heavy Dragoons, and I don't care a 
 hang who knows it. What do you make of that, for instance ? " 
 
 " Nothing," said Duke Arturio, coldly. 
 
 " Well then, Prince, my dear, come to supper, for I am hungry. 
 There is jam, woodcock, ice-cream, and barley-sugar. Come to 
 supper." 
 
 " I want no supper," said the Prince ; " but come near to me, 
 Polemos." 
 
 Polemos came at once. He was a bold, thoughtless, possibly 
 cruel boy, but he loved the Prince. He was dressed" like Arturio, 
 his legs in close-fitting white, but his tunic was green, and it was 
 clasped at the breast by a great emerald. Arturio went, and left 
 the Prince alone with the stupid boy, the boy of the emerald. 
 And the boy of the emerald knelt beside his Prince, and said — 
 
 " What is it, my dear one '? " 
 
 " Change thine emerald for my ruby, Polemos : my ruby burns 
 my heart. I have asked Arturio for his cold clear diamond, and 
 he will not give it to me. Give me thine emerald." 
 
4 THE BOY IN OBEY. 
 
 "Never, my Prince, will I give thee my emerald. Wear thy 
 bonny ruby — that is the jewel of a good prince. Hhe, look at my 
 emerald : does it shine ? ' ' 
 
 "It is quite dull." 
 
 "Then there is peace in the land," said the stupid Polemos. 
 " Sec, my beloved, how your ruby is blazing." 
 
 "It is bright indeed," said the Prince. 
 
 " Do you know," said Polemos, " that when your ruby blazes 
 brightest, and when it burns your heart most, my old enemy, the 
 Boy in Grey, who wears the great sapphire upon his breast, 
 engraven with characters which no man can read, is nearest to 
 you. He is near now." 
 
 " The Boy in Grey ! I have not heard of him." 
 
 " No ; and that is just the bother," said Duke Polemos. " Your 
 family has always put up mine to fight him, and so we know some- 
 thing of him. We in our rude way love him. His brothers are 
 dear to us, and die for us. You will not come to supper, then ? 
 Here is Athanasio. I will begin without you." 
 
 " Athanasio," said the Prince, when they were alone, "bid me 
 not to supper. Tell me, my Athanasio, dost thou know aught of 
 a Boy in Grey ? ' ' 
 
 Athanasio was clothed like the other pages ; but his tunic, 
 which was black, was a little longer, and on his breast he wore a 
 great opal, which changed in colour as he moved. He crossed 
 bis hands on his breast and began bowing towards the door. 
 
 "Athanasio, come back and tell me of this Boy in Grey! " 
 cried the Prince. 
 
 Athanasio declined. "My lord," he said, "my family has 
 been in such perpetual debate with yours about this Boy for 
 eighteen centuries, that I would prefer to leave you two to a 
 personal interview. ' ' 
 
 " Give me thine opal, and I will give thee my ruby," cried the 
 Prince. 
 
 " The Boy in Grey would tear your heart out, my lord, if he 
 saw my opal there. Better wear your ruby. It is burning bright 
 to-night. The Boy is near." 
 
 And so Athanasio left him all alone, as the others had done, in 
 the window- seat in the shadow of the curtain. 
 
 And the ruby on his brave maroon tunic burnt bright and 
 steady, and warmed his heart. It flashed out great rays of light, 
 which lit up the limited landscape outside the window : only a 
 mass of rapidly falling snow. After a time the Prince slept, and 
 was only awakened by voices in the room. 
 
 The King in his royal robes ; the Queen also dressed up for a 
 
THE BOY IX GREY. 5 
 
 great occasion ; and some one else, more important and greater 
 than king or kaiser ever could be : a fairy — the Fairy Anangke. 
 A very dear old friend of mine, whom I have known almost as long 
 as any one. 
 
 Will yon please to remark that when you know Fairy Anangke 
 you know the best lady whom you can know. But if you can't 
 know Fairy Anangke intimately, you shoidd try to make her 
 acquaintance in some sort even at second-hand through the poor. 
 For unless you do, you are simply naught. 
 
 She was standing and talking to the King and Queen. She 
 was a pale woman with large eyes ; of very solemn aspect. She 
 was dressed in a long sweeping robe of black velvet, which covered 
 her feet, so that the wisest of our men never knew exactly which 
 way she woidd walk. I am only telling you the simple truth when 
 I say that she carried on her breast, one below the other, the 
 jewels which I have told you the boys whom I have described wore 
 upon their bosoms, all save the sapphire — the wine-dark sapphire, 
 in whose cold dark depths lay utter infinity, and the character, on 
 which were read nearly two thousand years ago, and have been 
 forgotten, that she had given to the Boy in Grey. 
 
 The King and the Queen and she were talking earnestly together, 
 and the Queen was crying bitterly, but the Prince coidd not hear 
 what they said. 
 
 " My dear old friend," said the Queen, kneeling down, " is it 
 not possible that he could be spared ? Did I not give my Henri, 
 and you know how that ended : did I not give my Louis, and 
 where is he ? Spare me this one." 
 
 " I have nothing to do with it. The weird of the Boy in Grey 
 is upon him, and he must dree it." 
 
 " And be killed by the Boy ! Ah, cruel, cruel Necessity ! " 
 
 "I am not cruel, Queen, indeed," said Fairy Anangke. "I 
 am a person of very little power, too. I am only cruel, after all, 
 to fools. Men can fight me, and beat me. I came only to tell 
 you that the weird is on him, and he must go." 
 
 " Will he die ? " said the Queen, at her feet. " Will my bonny 
 child be killed like the others ? You know. You can say." 
 
 " I do not know," said the Fairy. " But this I do know : the 
 others met the Boy and kissed him, Henri on the brow, Louis on 
 the cheek ; the Boy should be. kissed fully and fairly on the lips. 
 If Philarete does so, all will go well." 
 
 "Let me tell him," said the Queen, eagerly. 
 
 " Impossible," said the Fairy. " He must find it out for 
 himself." 
 
 " I u-ill tell my darling." 
 
6 THE BOY IN GBEY. 
 
 " If you offer to do so, I will make you and your husband 
 dumb : you know I can do that. I did so once or twice before. 
 I have the appointment of your Ministers nowadays, and I will 
 strike you both dumb once more by appointing Cacodemos if you 
 dare to say a word to the child." 
 
 So the King and Queen, terrified into submission, departed 
 slowly and sorrowfully upstairs, to receive their guests for the 
 grand dinner and ball which was to be given that night. 
 
 Woidd you like to go with me ? Well, we will just look in : we 
 must not stay long lest we should miss the Prince, who is lying in 
 the window- seat looking out upon the falling snow, with his ruby 
 blazing brightly. We will keep near him, and yet see some of 
 the company. For myself, I am very fond of fine company, and, 
 what is more, I believe that every one else is too. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Now the guests began to come ; ratterry-tatterry-tatterry-tat-tat- 
 tat went the knocker, and the footmen had the door open in half 
 a minute, and shut it instantly for fear two people should get in at 
 once without each of them making that horrible noise all over 
 again. This is the very highest breeding known ; All The World's 
 footmen do it. 
 
 They were all Ambassadors who came to dinner. After dinner, 
 to the ball, there were invited All The World and his wife ; Mr. 
 Nobody with all his relations, including his aunt's baby, whose 
 portrait was painted by the late Charles Bennett in "Nursery 
 Fun ; " and Everybody Else. We have only to do with the 
 Ambassadors. 
 
 The Turcomanian Ambassador came first. He was very cold, 
 and took off his goloshes in the hall, and was making himself 
 tidy, shivering over the fire, when the Muscovite Ambassador 
 arrived, and coming up to him, said — 
 
 " Grumph, it is hot here ! Are you any better '? " 
 
 "I am as well as ever I was in my life," said the Turcoman 
 Ambassador; "you are always saying I am sick. You said it 
 too often once, you know." 
 
 " Your constitution is ruined," said the Muscovite. 
 
 " You never had one any more than I," retorted the Turk. 
 
THE BOY IN GEEY. 7 
 
 " Hem ! hein ! " said the Gallic Ambassador ; " but, Messieurs, 
 consider ! " 
 
 And the English Ambassador said, " Come, gentlemen ! gentle- 
 men ! Pray I " 
 
 And the Hellenic Ambassador said, " That for his part he 
 thought his Excellency of Muscovy was quite correct" ; where- 
 upon all the other Ambassadors, Muscovy included, told him to 
 hold his tongue. Which he did. 
 
 The next arrival was the Ambassador from Columbia, who said 
 to the footman, "Young man, there is my best hat : treat it as 
 if my head was inside it, and as soon as the exchange drops I'll 
 give you a quarter dollar currency. — Why, if here ain't the 
 Etruscan Ambassador and the Latin Nuncio ! Well, I do admire ! 
 How air you, neighbours ? Folks have been telling me that 
 there have been words between you two about the busting down 
 of some rails between your two lots. Anything I can do in the 
 way of kind offices, I am sure — always happy. Here is the 
 young man come to say that the King and Queen arc fixed up 
 tight and spry, and ready to receive. Won't you go first, Gaul ? 
 Well, if you won't, I will. Come along." 
 
 This was uncommonly cool of the Columbian Ambassador, and 
 he seemed to think so himself, for he half turned round as he 
 walked upstairs to give them some of his conversation, and the 
 Prince heard him say — 
 
 "You didn't notice the Boy in Grey outside, did you, Mus- 
 covy ? ' ' 
 
 "No," said the Muscovite Ambassador, "I did not. He 
 never comes after me. I go after him. I have just been after 
 him lately." 
 
 " Well done," said the Columbian Ambassador, " so you have. 
 Nor you, Gaul ? " 
 
 " He is dead," said the Gallic Ambassador. 
 
 "He is outside among the carriages now," said the Columbian 
 Minister. 
 
 And the Prince peered more and more eagerly into the darkness 
 and the snow. 
 
 At last he saw him. He came and stood straight in front of 
 the window, and looked the Prince straight in the eyes. 
 
 Save for a grey seamless tunic, which reached half-way down 
 his thigh and half-way down his arm, the Boy was perfectly 
 naked, and stood with his bare feet in the snow, and his bare 
 head in the wind. His head was erect, majestic, and beautiful, 
 and his hair was wild. At his throat, as a clasp, like all the 
 boys we have seen, he wore a large jewel. His was a sapphire, 
 
8 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 bright as the moon in a frost, blue as the sea on a summer's day, 
 with varying light flashing from it on the Prince's face, and 
 seeming to show letters which he had never seen before. 
 
 The Boy neither spoke nor beckoned. For a few seconds only 
 the light from the Boy's sapphire mingled with the light from the 
 Prince's ruby, and made the falling snow purple. Then the Boy 
 turned and went away, and the Prince, bareheaded and thinly 
 clad as he was, rose and followed him swiftly. 
 
 The guests were coming in to the ball as the Prince passed 
 through them quickly. They most of them knew — courtiers 
 generally can see — what had happened to him. They fell away 
 right and left, and spoke in terrified whispers. "He is going 
 after the Boy in Grey as his brother did," was what they said, 
 and grew pale and horror-stricken. And the funds went down 
 four and three-quarters on the night, as the City intelligence 
 said ; at least the earliest men on the Exchange found it so the 
 first thing next morning. 
 
 "He is off," said the old seneschal, drawing back from the 
 door to let him pass, with a solemn and tender awe on his old 
 face ; " off, bareheaded, just as my two boys went." 
 
 "Did they come back, Master Clerk of Owsenford ? " said a 
 young footman in a whisper. 
 
 " Oh, yes, they came back again," said he ; " the cruel Mayor 
 of Paris thought he had got them safe, but they came back again. 
 Why, you know — 
 
 ' It fell about the Martinmas, 
 
 When nights were lon^' and mirk, 
 The clerk's two sons came home again ; 
 Their hats were of the birk. 
 
 ' It grew not by the bonny hill-side, 
 Nor yet by holt and sheugh ; 
 But by the gates of Paradise, 
 That birk grew fair eneugh.' 
 
 Yes ; they came back safe enough to Usher's Well ; hut they 
 went away again. 
 
 ' The cook doth craw, the day doth daw, 
 The chaunering worm doth chide ; 
 Gin we be missed out of our place, 
 A sair pain we must bide.' " 
 
 But the Prince was gone, and we must go after him. How 
 far '? As near about thirty-five thousand miles as need be. I 
 fancy a little more, but certainly not less. He ran down the 
 
THE BOY IN GREY. 9 
 
 steps, and diving in among the fretting horses and blazing 
 
 carriage-lamps, disappeared into the darkness and the drifting 
 snow. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The lights of the blazing 'windows of the palace guided him a 
 little at first ; but as the sound of the music died upon his car 
 the light died away also, and he found himself alone in the dark 
 in the lower and poorer quarter of the town, with no light hut his 
 ruby. There was no doubt about his way, for the ruby was very 
 bright now, and before him, pressed firmly into the snow, were 
 the naked footprints of the Boy in Grey. The Prince walked 
 very fast, and peered before him into the darkness for a glimpse 
 of the sapphire, but there was nothing to be seen. The cowering 
 poverty around him was asleep and silent, and he soon cleared 
 the City Augusta, and got into the great forest which lies beyond 
 it. And which forest is Fairyland : 
 
 " Oh ! see you not that bonny road 
 That winds along the fernie brae ? 
 Oh ! yon's the road to Fairyland, 
 Where thou and I this e'en must gae." 
 
 In that forest there is no snow or frost at any time of the 
 year : nobody ever feels pain in Fairyland, and nobody ever cries 
 there. There is no hunger or thirst in Fairyland. Every one 
 is happy in Fairyland ; but God's mercy on the boy or man who 
 goes to sleep there and thinks that it is heaven ! As our noble 
 old Bunyan teaches us, there is a " bye-way to hell out of it." 
 And so the Prince found himself at once in a warm beautiful 
 summer's night with a bright moon, which would have rejoiced 
 him extremely, only it got so very difhevdt to follow the tread of 
 the Boy in Grey through the grass and the flowers. It is always 
 easy enough in the snow ; any one can do it then, but only a few 
 can foUow his footsteps in the summer-time. 
 
 In a narrow pleasant path among hazel trees, down by a bright 
 stream, he met a beautiful lady all in black, with jewels on her 
 breast, and he said to her — 
 
 " If you please, ma'am, how am I to follow the Boy in Grey? " 
 
 And she said, " Ask every one you meet," and looked kindly 
 at him. After which she said, "You could not do this? " and, 
 
10 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 whiff ! she vanished away ; and the Prince laughed till the wood 
 rang, for it was really fine sport if you had seen it. I need not 
 tell you that this was the Fairy Anangke. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 There was something scuttling along in front of him, and when 
 he came up to it, he found it was a hedgehog. 
 
 " Have you seen the Boy in Grey ? " said the Prince. 
 
 " Eh ! " replied the hedgehog. " Speak louder — I am hard 
 of hearing." 
 
 " Have you seen the Boy in Grey ? " he said, louder. 
 
 " No ! " shouted the hedgehog. " Have you seen my wife ? " 
 
 " No, I have not," said the Prince. 
 
 " Then there is a pair of us," said the hedgehog. " I thought 
 one fool was enough at a time. She has been out ever since the 
 morning after some partridge eggs, and I don't know what is 
 become of her." 
 
 " I am sorry for that," said the Prince. 
 
 " It is not much business of yours, that I know of," said the 
 hedgehog. " If you see her, tell her she will catch it when she 
 comes home." 
 
 " Then, perhaps she won't come home at all," said the Prince. 
 
 " She'll come fast enough," said the hedgehog ; " because she 
 knows, if she don't come, that I shall come and fetch her. And 
 she wouldn't like that. She knows me." 
 
 At this point the hedgehog tucked his toes in, rolled himself 
 up in a ball, and lay for dead, with all his prickles up. But, 
 from the centre of the ball, like a person speaking from under 
 bedclothes, came a thin wiry voice, which said — 
 
 " It is no use trying it on. You have tried it on too often, and 
 you never made anything of it. Come on ! Come on ! " 
 
 The Prince thought that the hedgehog was alluding to him, 
 and was getting indignant : when he became aware of a pair of 
 bright eyes, and looking down, he saw that a beautiful fox was 
 cowering at his feet. 
 
 " Ho ! then it is you that the hedgehog is afraid of? " 
 
 " Without reason, dear Royal Highness," said the fox ; "I 
 assure you without reason. Our friend is too suspicious : if he 
 would onlv uncoil himself for a moment, I would " 
 
THE BOY IN GEEY. 11 
 
 " No doubt you would," said the hedgehog, from under the 
 bed-clothes. " But he knows a trick worth two of that. Come 
 on ! Why don't you come on ? " 
 
 The fox shrugged his shoulders at the Prince. 
 
 " Our friend's temper gets the better of him sometimes. But 
 he is amiable. Oh yes, without doubt he is amiable. Can I 
 serve your Royal Highness? " 
 
 " Have you seen the Boy in Grey go by ? I want to follow 
 him : he must be somewhere close by." 
 
 Whereupon the fox, exclaiming, " Traps and shot guns, and 
 no fair law allowed ! " took to his heels and sped away. 
 
 And the hedgehog, uncoiling himself, said, "I am going to 
 fetch my wife back with a flea in her ear ; " and off he went, but 
 not the same way as the fox. And the Prince went on, following 
 the footsteps, until he should meet some one else. 
 
 But before he met any one else, the moon had got low and 
 pale, the east had brightened from white to green, from green to 
 gold, and morning pierced the beautiful wood with millions of 
 beams of light. This was glorious for the Prince, for he knew 
 that a long summer's day was before him, and there are few boys 
 who do not know that that is the most glorious happiness which 
 this earth can bring. 
 
 The wood was filled with infinite birds, singing in rivalry : the 
 nightingale, who had slept an hour or so, found that he was in 
 the wood, and began again, " Tereu, Tereu, by-and-bye," till the 
 Prince stood and hollowed his hand against his ear, to catch such 
 sweet cadence. The thrush said, " Lirripo, Lirripo ! " and the 
 bold glorious blackbird said, " Love ! Love ! Love ! Love lies 
 a-bleeding. Pick him up ! Pick him up ! Pretty sweet ! Pretty 
 sweet ! Pick him up ! Pick him up ! " 
 
 "How beautifully you sing!" said the Prince, "and what a 
 fine golden bill you have ! " 
 
 " My ancestor, sir, got that golden bill at Glastonbury, hundreds 
 and hundreds of years ago. Were you ever there ? " 
 
 "No. Tell me the story." 
 
 " At Glastonbury is the thorn planted by Joseph of Arith- 
 mathsea down in the valley, and at the top of the hill called 
 ' Weary All ' was the church of St. Michael. And somebody 
 toiled up that hill one wild early spring evening ; and my ancestor 
 (who afterwards took the title of Earl of Chysorinchus, not now 
 continued in the family, in consequence of our great lawsuit with 
 the ring-ouzels about their assuming the white collar of the order 
 of St. Agnes, which we have discarded) was on the bush ; and we 
 sing the story like this : 
 
12 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 Magdalen at Michael's gate 
 
 Tirled at the pin ; 
 On Joseph's thorn sang the blackbird, 
 " Let her in ! Let her in ! " 
 
 " Hast thou seen the wounds ? " said Michael, 
 
 " Know'st thou thy sin? " 
 "It is evening, evening," sang the blackbird, 
 
 " Let her in ! Let her in ! " 
 
 " Yes, I have seen the wounds, 
 
 And I know rny sin." 
 " She knows it well, well, well," sang the blackbird, 
 " Let her in ! Let her in ! " 
 
 " Thou bringest no offerings," said Michael, 
 "Nought save sin." 
 
 And the blackbird sang, " She is sorry, sorry, sorry. 
 Let her in ! Let her in ! " 
 
 When he had sung himself to sleep, 
 
 And night did begin, 
 One came and opened Michael's gate, 
 
 And Magdalen went in. 
 
 " I am very glad of that," said the Prince. " I can't tell you 
 how glad I am of that ; and she must have been so very glad too. 
 And that's why you have a golden bill, yet. I am very glad they 
 let her in. Why did you quarrel with the ring-ouzels, did you 
 
 sa y ? " 
 
 " We are of the order of St. Cecilia," said the blackbird, 
 proudly. 
 
 But the jay said, " Yar ! Crar ! here's somebody coming, and 
 we shall all be murdered in our beds." And the rook said, 
 " Caw daw ! I wish I was in bed again." And the starling sat 
 on a tree, and chattered very fast, " My wife ought to have got 
 up and boiled the kettle." And the magpie said nothing at all, 
 for he had his eye on the Prince's ruby. But his wife told him 
 that it wouldn't do, and he agreed with regret that it wouldn't. 
 
 Here and there he could see the naked footstep which had 
 preceded his, sometimes on dewy turf, sometimes on the sand by 
 some clear stream, where the sleepy trout floated like the peacocks 
 of the water. Once in an open glade he missed the trail, and 
 looked about. Instantly there dashed down before him a beautiful 
 butterfly, a butterfly so beautiful that it fills one's mind with 
 humble awe and wonder to look at it. It's flight was like the 
 eagle's, and it hovered up and down before him. 
 
 "Oh, you glorious creature ! who arc you? " said the Prince. 
 
 " I am the Purple Emperor," said the butterfly. "I inhabit 
 
THE BOY IN GREY. 13 
 
 the tops of the highest oak trees in the New Forest, and I am the 
 most artistically coloured of all European butterflies. I have 
 come down to show you the way." 
 
 And it flew before him to the next stream, and then it flew up 
 towards the sun, for the boy's feet were plain again now. And 
 the Prince, as he stepped across the brook, sang out, loud, clear, 
 and joyfully : 
 
 " Wilt thou stay, or must I follow 
 O'er the brae and through the hollow ? 
 
 Stay, stay, Boy in Grey. 
 Best thee, rest, at evening's gloaming : 
 Wilful one, wilt thou be roaming 
 
 Till the breaking of the day ? 
 All night long I'll walk till morning ; 
 Let me find thee at the dawning ; 
 
 Stay, stay, Boy in Grey." 
 
 And the most remarkable thing was that the very next mom- 
 
 But I must not tell you too much at once. It would spoil the 
 story if I told it all to you at once. At least, so they say. 
 
 What with one pleasure and another, with flowers and insects 
 to look at, with health, youth, and vitality, the Prince was rather 
 dawdling, when he was aware of a pair of eyes, and looking up, 
 he saw a very large greyish bird, with its back towards him, but 
 which had turned its head right round, and was looking down the 
 back of its nock. 
 
 "You mustn't do that," said the Prince; "you will make 
 yourself ill." 
 
 " Not a bit of it," said the great snowy owl ; " we often do it 
 for hours together." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Because none of the English owls can, except us." 
 
 " That is not much of a reason," said the Prince. 
 
 " Good enough for us," said the owl. " I am going to fly to 
 Greenland directly ; this is too hot for me. Did you ever see me 
 fly?" 
 
 " Never," said the Prince ; " but if you fly with your head 
 turned that way, you will fly up against something and hurt your- 
 self. You can't possibly see which way you are going like that." 
 
 " Well, here goes, anyhow," said the owl, " before I am 
 roasted." And away he skipped over the tops of the trees like a 
 woodcock. 
 
 " If you please, sir," said a gentle voice, like a sigh, near him, 
 " I am the stag." 
 
 " So I should have gathered from your personal appearance," 
 
14 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 said the Prince, who was not behind in the royal art of making a 
 shrewd guess who people were he had never seen before. " I 
 have seen your portrait at the Royal Academy, by Sir Edwin 
 Landseer : it was very like. What arc you crying about, for 
 there are tears coursing themselves down your innocent nose ? " 
 
 "Mere habit," said the stag. "It is my lachrymathingamy 
 gland. Mere habit." 
 
 " Got over it," said the Prince. " We hate whimpering at our 
 place." 
 
 And so he went on, singing, from old echoes : 
 
 " Stay, stay, Boy in Grey, 
 The brave birds sing on every spray ; 
 Stay, stay, stay for me, 
 And see the things I will give thee. 
 I follow swift, but thou art fleeter : 
 Sure the present time is sweeter. 
 Bonny, bonny Boy, this merry, merry wood 
 Laughs around with all things good. 
 For the morrow means but sorrow ; 
 Of the future let us borrow : 
 If the morrow means but pain, 
 Days like these come not again. 
 Stay for me one summer's day, 
 Boy in Grey, Boy in Grey." 
 
 How long the Prince would have continued singing like this I 
 don't know, but he was stopped by a voice from the top of a tree, 
 saying that the Prince was singing mere Crambo, and that he 
 could make that sort of stuff by the yard. Looking up to see 
 who had uttered the impertinence, he saw that it was the magpie, 
 who had followed him in the hopes of his dropping his ruby. And, 
 indeed, the rest of this poem is lost to European literature. For 
 at this moment, crossing the small brook which divides his 
 European from his Asiatic dominions, he came on a spectacle so 
 absurd and ridiculous, and at the same time so humiliating to 
 every well-regulated mind, that I must take another chapter even 
 to speak of it. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " Baroora ! Baroora ! Baroo ! " said somebody, so loud and so 
 near that the Prince drew up short, and the whole wood echoed, 
 "Baroo! Baroo!" and turning to the right, the Prince saw a 
 
THL ]'..)V IN GSEY. 15 
 
 ridiculous black bear, with very long hair, and an absurd black- 
 and-tan nose ; which sat on its haunches, rocked itself to and fro, 
 and scratched its stomach with its fore paws. 
 
 "You must not make that noise here," said the Prince ; " I 
 cannot permit it for an instant." 
 
 "I am the Isabella bear ! Doodle-doodle-do ! " said the bear, 
 weeping bitterly. 
 
 " That makes not the least difference," said the Prince ; "I 
 cannot allow such a noise from you or any other bear. You really 
 must not do it. What is the matter with you ? " 
 
 "I am the Isabella bear," said the poor thing, dissolving into 
 tears. " Doodle-doodle ! Baroo ! baroo ! " 
 
 " You are a very ridiculous person," said the Prince. " Have 
 you seen the Boy in Grey '? '" 
 
 The bear rubbed her nose with her fore paws, but did not seem 
 inclined to answer. 
 
 "I believe that you are a thorough-going humbug, and that 
 there is nothing the matter with you at all," said the Prince, 
 looking back ; and immediately after he fell headlong over some- 
 thing flat on his face. It was only a lion, so it did not much 
 matter. " You stupid old ass! " said the Prince, "why do you 
 lie across the road like that ? " 
 
 " Gnorr ! hrump ! " said the lion. " I was watching here to 
 show your Highness the way ; and, gnorr hum garr ! I went to 
 sleep. He is on ahead. The tiger will show you the way to my 
 brother now." 
 
 " But what are you doing here? " said the Prince. 
 
 "I am occasionally found on the north-west of India," said 
 the lion, sitting down and scratching his head with his hind paw, 
 just like a cat. 
 
 " But that is not giving a good account of yourself," said the 
 Prince. " Get up ! " 
 
 And the lion got up. 
 
 " I want to stroke your nose," said the Prince ; " it is a very 
 nice nose." 
 
 " Gar ! garoar ! your Royal Highness is welcome. Put your 
 head into my mouth and look at my teeth. Do you know the use 
 of them?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " They are for your Royal Highness's enemies — that is to say, 
 if it be true that you are following the Boy." 
 
 " They are fine teeth," said the Prince. 
 
 " The hyaena has better," said the lion; "he can crunch up 
 bones which I can't." 
 
16 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 " Where shall t meet the hyaena? " said the Prince. 
 
 " When you come into Africa, you will meet him at the Cape," 
 said the lion. "Look out, sir; here is a messenger. Give me 
 a good report, sir. Gnarr, snorr, churruk ! " 
 
 And as the lion stood ruhhing his heard against the Prince's 
 legs, there descended from the sky a hird so amazingly wonderful, 
 that I would have hesitated even to mention it lest I should he 
 accused of invention. I can only say that there is such a bird, 
 because somebody killed one once, and got it skinned, and a lady 
 I know wears its skin in her hat at social gatherings. And 
 whenever I look at the bird I am less and less puzzled ; for I 
 know more and more strongly that there is a great beneficent 
 
 wm. 
 
 As for describing this bird, I cannot do it. Shakespeare and 
 Raphael could not have done it either. It is a bird so amazing 
 in its real artistic beauty, and in the thoughts which it brings on 
 those who choose to think, that I decline to say anything about it. 
 It lit down on the Prince's shoulder, and covered the Prince's 
 ruby with its tail ; and the lion said, " Humph, snurr ! this will 
 do ! " And the bird twittered in the Prince's ear, very low : 
 
 " Stop not, stay not, pretty pretty master ; 
 
 Follow, follow on to the very very last. 
 Stay not, fear not, follow, follow faster , 
 
 Hold the Boy, kiss the Boy, hold him fast. 
 Hold him, kiss him mouth to mouth, 
 All the world, from north to south, 
 From east to west, from night to day, 
 Shall laugh when thou kissest the Boy in Grey." 
 
 And the lion purred like a great cat, and said — 
 " That is something like talk. I thought he would have a 
 messenger." And the Prince said to the bird, " Let us sit down 
 and talk a few minutes." And the bird said, " Yes, my lord, we 
 will sit on the lion for a few minutes ; I have a few more words to 
 say." 
 
 And the lion lay down, with his nose between his fore paws, 
 and the Prince sat on him, and played with his mane, and the 
 bird sat on the Prince's shoulder, with its tail falling all _ down 
 the maroon velvet of the Prince's tunic, and whispered in his 
 ear, and 
 
 The lion heard every word, 
 But not a word said he : 
 " When princes talk to the Paradise bird, 
 There is no word for me." 
 
THE BOY IN GKEY. 17 
 
 " Grumph ! Will he go through with it ! " 
 
 What the bird said to the Prince you must find out for your- 
 self. / know ; and I know where I learnt it, too. But tins is 
 a fairy tale, and my reverence for the Bible is so deep that I 
 dislike to do more than just hint at it in a fantastic story like 
 this. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The end of the conversation with the bird I may give. 
 
 " Bird," said the Prince, " you have not told me your name." 
 
 "I am the Bird of Paradise. I have come down to bring you 
 this message." 
 
 "Ha! I thought I knew you," said the Prince; "and that 
 was (lone for him eighteen hundred years ago. Well, birdie, I 
 will do that for him. Just what Arturio and Athanasio are 
 alwavs telling me. I say, pretty bird, cannot you come with 
 me?" 
 
 And the Bird of Paradise twittered — 
 
 " All alone, all alone, pretty dear, 
 Through the moss-hags and marshes drear; 
 By the stream, through the wood, through the glen ; 
 By the crag, by the hollow, by the den : 
 By the ocean shore vacant and wide, 
 Left bare in the sleep of the tide ; 
 Till the dawning of the day 
 You must hunt the Boy in Grey. 
 All you want is resolution " 
 
 If you can find a decent rhyme for the last line, you will be able 
 to finish the verse. You do not know what rhymes with that last 
 word. But if you don't go after the Boy in Grey, you will find it 
 out when you least think it. 
 
 The Bird of Paradise said, " I must go now." 
 
 " Won't you come with me, pretty bird ? " said the Prince. 
 
 " No," said the bird, " I am going up there, and you must 
 meet him all alone. Not one solitary creature must be with you 
 when you two meet. Mind what I told you, and don't dawdle." 
 
 " Shall I ever see you again, sweet bird ? " said the Prince. 
 
 The Bird of Paradise was poising itself on its wings, and 
 preparing to fly upwards ; but when it heard these words, it came 
 and fluttered in front of the Prince's breast. 
 
 3 
 
18 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 And it said, " If you do as I have told you, and if all goes well, 
 you will see me again. In the darkest midnight of the darkest 
 night, in the darkest day of all thy life, when resolution has grown 
 to obstinacy, courage to fury, love to despair — when thy friends 
 are dead, thy fair name blackened, thy faith wavering, then I will 
 be with thee, if all goes well by to-morrow morning." 
 
 "Shall I call for thee, bird?" 
 
 " The Bird of Paradise needs no calling from him who drees 
 the weird of the Boy in Grey. I will be with you, if you do 
 what I tell you. I can say no more. I want to fly up and warm 
 my wings." 
 
 And up lie went towards the sky. 
 
 For a time the Prince could see him curling round and round, 
 bright as a star, but at last he was lost in the light of the sun. 
 
 "You'll mind what he told you," said the lion. "I knew 
 they'd send a messenger here ; and I'll tell you another thing : 
 there will be another messenger." 
 
 " What is her name ? " asked the Prince. 
 
 " "White's thrush," said the lion; "and he is first cousin to 
 the Bird of Paradise, and also to the lyre-bird of Australia, and 
 he also will have something to tell you. Kiss me, Prince, and let 
 me go, for here is the royal Bengal tiger coming, and I don't want 
 to have a turn up before your Royal Highness. Kiss me, dear. 
 Garr garr, garoo ! " 
 
 In another instant the tiger had bounded out of the jungle and 
 close to the Prince's legs, and with lifted lips and gleaming fangs 
 was face to face with the lion. The lion, silent as the grave, 
 inexorable as death, cold as fate, crouched also, belly to the earth, 
 and waited for his spring. Every gigantic muscle was tense and 
 sharp, and his fore paws clawed the ground in the delicious antici- 
 pation of onset. The tiger, standing erect, snarled and scowled. 
 Between the two stood the Prince, with his hands in the pockets 
 of his tight-fitting white trousers, who said — 
 
 "Now, you two, steady. You are losing your tempers" 
 (which was perfectly obvious); "you are in reality the best 
 friends in the world. Lion, old man!" 
 
 " Yes, my lord," said the lion. 
 
 " Go away, that's a dear." 
 
 And the lion went. 
 
 " Now, tiger, old boy ! tell us the way to the elephant ! " 
 
 AVas there anything that the tiger would not do for the beautiful 
 young Sahib ? Nothing. He salaamed until his head was right 
 down between his paws. Beautiful Sahib ! It was his humble 
 and deferential duty to inform his Royal Highness that the 
 
THE BOY IN GREY. 19 
 
 elephant was a large animal with a long trunk, and that his food 
 was entirely vegetable. 
 
 " Well, I suppose I know that, stupid," said the Prince. 
 
 "Oh, doubtless ! " with another salaam. "Of course his 
 Highness knew. Douhtless his Highness was also aware that 
 he (the tiger) fed very much on the reindeer in certain parts? " 
 
 " Xo, I didn't know that," said the Prince. "That can't be 
 true." 
 
 " We cross one another in the north of Asia, your Highness," 
 said the tiger with a humble smile. " My father and the lion's 
 father have had many a battle over the carcase of a reindeer." 
 
 And, indeed, it was perfectly true, as the Prince found out 
 when he got more familiar with Humboldt's " Aspects " and 
 Keith Johnstone's " Physical Atlas," strange as it seems the first 
 time you read it. 
 
 "Well, can you show me the way to the King Elephant?" 
 said the Prince. 
 
 " He is to be found close to the very summit of Adam's Peak, 
 in your island of Ceylon," said the tiger ; " your Royal Highness 
 knows that, of course." 
 
 " It is impossible that it could be so," said the Prince. " The 
 Peak is as sharp as the Matterhorn, and eight thousand feet 
 
 bi ° h -" 
 
 " Sweet Sahib, Sir Emerson Tennent saw his footsteps there : 
 
 you will believe him.'" 
 
 The tiger was getting rather the best of it ; but arguing with 
 an Asiatic is rather difficult. The Prince said, " Hm ! well, he 
 must know. I think I will go on and find a common elephant." 
 So he turned away, and all of a sudden the tiger set up such a 
 " Garr, buck buck, buck goor," that the whole wood rang, and 
 2,469 monkeys, who had been sitting in rows on the boughs of 
 trees, unobserved, and listening to every word, went up one bough 
 higher in columns of battalions in echelon from the left. Ami 
 the oldest monkey said that x- + 17 + \/y+'J= the square 
 described on the hypothenuse of the triangle of the First Life- 
 Guards' band. He thought he had better say something, and so 
 he said that — which did not happen to mean anything at all. 
 
 " What are you making that noise about ? " said the Prince, 
 turning on the tiger. 
 
 " I could not help it, Sahib," said the tiger, crouching. 
 
 "You had butter" said the Prince; "you made that noise 
 once before, and you remember what came of it." And on he 
 Went, until he was arrested by a very beautiful sight. 
 
 On a great straight bough, which stretched over his path, there 
 
20 THE BOY IN G1IEY. 
 
 sat twenty-nine peacocks in a row, with their backs towards him 
 and their tails drooping down. He was immensely delighted at 
 the beautiful sight, and was standing with his hands behind his 
 back, when the bird on the extreme left — who was, in reality, the 
 drill-sergeant — said — 
 
 " Tention ! Open order from the left." And all the birds 
 shifted along the bough until there were five feet between 
 each. 
 
 "Eight about face ! " said the sergeant ; and at once all the 
 peacocks shifted their tails over the bough, and confronted the 
 Prince. 
 
 "Prepare spread TAILS!" shouted the drill-sergeant; and 
 the Prince heard him say, in a lower voice, very rapidly, " Now, 
 at the second word of command, I want to see all them tails go 
 up together, same as in presenting of arms. I want 'em all up 
 together, and no fumbling with 'em — like a swell with a new 
 umbrella in a hailstorm. Spread TAILS ! " 
 
 And up they all went. All except 23's, which wouldn't go up 
 at all. He explained to the sergeant afterwards that it was 
 congenital weakness in his dorsal muscles, and that the doctor 
 never should have passed him ; but the sergeant reported him all 
 the same, and the elder Duke Polemos was absolutely furious. 
 However, in spite of 23's mishap, the spectacle was extremely 
 fine. The Prince, from his royal education, knew enough of drill 
 to keep their tails up till they were tired, and then tell them to 
 put them down again. So, after a few minutes, he sang out, 
 " Drop tails. Stand at EASE ! " which they did. 
 
 After such a splendid pageant, of course there was nothing to 
 do but to make a speech. He knew enough to know that. He 
 had never done it before, but as the Columbian Ambassador might 
 say, " waded in." He put his left hand inside the right breast of 
 his tunic, advanced his left leg, and began. 
 
 " Gentlemen, I can assure you that I am profoundly moved by 
 the generous manner in which you have drunk your tails — I 
 should say, spread my health. In the whole world, gentlemen, I 
 can conceive of no wnatsaname which is more gratifying to one's 
 feelings than a spectacle like this. The safety of this great 
 empire, gentlemen, upon which the sun never sets, is in my mind 
 twenty-five hours out of the twenty-four. And when I come to a 
 remote part of it, such, for instance, as Canada or New Zealand, 
 and find twenty-nine such peacocks as I have seen to-day, pre- 
 senting tails in such a manner as the peacocks before me, I lay 
 my head on my pillow in peace, knowing that the safety of our 
 empire is secured. Gentlemen, once more I beg to thank you in 
 
THE BOY IN GREY. 21 
 
 my own name and the name of my father for the way in which you 
 have thmgamied your whatsanames." 
 
 The sergeant called for three cheers, hut the birds were all 
 shoving and pecking, because some had too much Orange on 
 their necks, and some too much Green. 80 they never cheered 
 at all. 
 
 The Prince beckoned the sergeant down, and he floated down, 
 and alighted at his feet. 
 
 " Why," said the Prince, " are there twenty-nine of you ? " 
 
 " The Fairy Anangke said that there were to be three peacocks 
 for every year of your Royal Highness's life, just to make -333, 
 which is the nearest we can get to 1,000 by decimals, which is 
 the length of your Royal Highness's life, and which is doubled in 
 the number of the beast ; and three times 10 is 29." 
 
 " But three times 10 is 30," said the Prince. 
 
 " Not in the colonies, your Royal Highness," said the sergeant. 
 " No ! no ! Look at the seven per cent, ad valorem duty which 
 Canada puts upon British imports. No, no ! Peacock as I am, 
 I know that in the colonies two and two make five." 
 
 A low voice, like a vast gigantic sigh behind the Prince, said — 
 "a>= 20 
 y = 20 
 But 
 
 3,2569 _{_ ^2569 _ 50." 
 
 " That is the most absolute and perfect nonsense which ever 
 was talked. How dare you say that of numbers ? How dare you 
 say that two and two could make five in any possible combination 
 of any conceivable powers of numbers ? " 
 
 And, turning round, the Prince found himself face to face with 
 a great grey elephant, who was kneeling down with a log of wood, 
 six feet long, tight held in his trunk. 
 
 " Why, goodness me ! " said the Prince, it is you. I was 
 coming after you. Why did you say that two and two made 
 five ? " 
 
 " To call your attention from the peacock," said the elephant, 
 " who was saying just the same. Anangke says that you may 
 ride on me for a little way. Are you afraid of me, my pretty 
 master ? " 
 
 " Afraid of you, dear ? I was coming for you." 
 
 "Then," said the elephant, "stand still" ; and he put down 
 the log of wood, and he curled the trunk round the Prince's waist, 
 and hoisted him up on his shoulder. 
 
 " That is nice," said the Prince ; " but why are you taking up 
 that log of wood again ? We don't want that." 
 
22 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 " It is a railway sleeper," said the elephant. 
 
 " I see," said the Prince. " Arturio and Athanasio say that 
 the railways have done no good. Polemoi, father and son, say 
 they will extinguish war ! and the Polemoi say that war is bad, 
 and though it is their trade they are sick of it. What do you 
 think, my old ? " 
 
 And the elephant said " Hough ! " and he didn't say anything 
 else just then, but he trotted on with the Prince on his shoulders 
 and the railway sleeper in his trunk, until they came to the 
 Elephantpoor Junction of the Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta 
 Railway, at which place were assembled 500 elephants, 500 
 mahouts, 9,400 grass-cutters, 7,220 native troops, and 120 men 
 of the Royal Artillery to keep them in order, and knock their 
 heads together when they misbehaved : which they did most 
 effectually. 
 
 "Has the Boy in Grey come here, for I have lost his foot- 
 steps ? " said the Prince. 
 
 And the elephant put down the railway sleeper in its proper 
 place, and then pointed steadily to the great stone railway station 
 with his trunk, saying, " That is one of his footsteps. Did 
 Lord Arturio and Lord Athanasio say that railways were no 
 good ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Stuff and nonsense, and rubbish and humbug!" said the 
 elephant with a grunt. " Rapid interchange of commodities 
 brings about rapid interchange of ideas, and the earth not 
 belonging to the devil, the majority of ideas are good, and will 
 get acted on the more rapidly by increased means of communica- 
 tion. Believe an old Indian elephant. I say, Prince, my dear, 
 speak to this gentleman ; you are under great obligations to 
 him." 
 
 The Prince gave a royal bow to a camel who was gawking and 
 maundering by the road-side, and the camel bowed low in return. 
 When they were out of earshot, the Prince said — 
 
 " Elephant, please tell me why I am under obligations to him." 
 
 " My Prince, it was he who brought mathematics and chemistry 
 from the East to the shore of the Mediterranean, and rendered 
 the railway and the telegraph possible." 
 
 " Law ! " said the Prince. 
 
 "Yes, that is true," said the elephant. " Did you ever hear 
 of the great city he founded ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " They call it Palmyra now ; formerly it was called Tadmor-in- 
 the-Descrt." 
 
THE BOY IN GEEY. 23 
 
 " I have heard of it. It was a beautiful city. Did he found 
 if?" 
 
 "It was his stable," said the elephant. "Damascus was his 
 home. But what between the Chorasmians, the Moguls, and the 
 Crusaders, and the Saracens all getting together by the ears at 
 one and the same time, Palmyra got mined, and is what you see 
 it now." 
 
 "That is wonderful," said the Prince. "I wish I had been 
 more polite to him." 
 
 " You will meet him again,'' said the elephant. 
 " And where will that be ? " 
 
 "In the centre of Australia," said the elephant; "opening 
 out new lands of inestimable wealth for the brothers and sisters 
 of the Boy in Grey, your subjects. One M'Kinlay is leading him 
 there now." 
 
 The Prince sat forward on the elephant's back, with his hand 
 over his forehead, thinking deeply. 
 
 " elephant," he said, " wisest of beasts, tell me some more." 
 And they had arrived at the bank of the Ganges. And the 
 elephant turned his trunk over his shoulder, and, taking the 
 Prince round the waist, set him down on the sand, with his face to 
 the left, opposite a little heap of black ashes. The Prince backed 
 between the elephant's legs, and said — 
 
 "Elephant, I am frightened ; there has been a suttee." 
 And then the elephant took him round the waist once more, 
 and turned him to the right. And the Prince saw a bone sticking 
 up through the sand. And the Prince began to cry. 
 
 " elephant, do not make me look on death. I am too young 
 to look on death. I know that this is the place where the old 
 people were left to die ; but do not let me look on death." 
 
 But the elephant held him fast for a minute, and then turned 
 
 him sharp round towards the jungle through which they had come. 
 
 And lo ! a British officer of artillery, clothed all in white, with 
 
 a white puggery down his back, and a cloud of natives round him 
 
 making representations. 
 
 And R. A. said, " What is the good of lying like that? The 
 girl is only fourteen, and she don't want it, and the old man is 
 not seventy, and he don't want it — he will live for ten years. And 
 I'll tell you another thing : if I catch any of you at either of 
 these two abominations, I'll hang you up to the next tree. It is 
 indecent and abominable, superstitious savagery. 7" won't have 
 it ! I have been hard at work killing the tigers which you have 
 not pluck to kill for yourselves, and I have missed the train 
 listening to vour lies. There ! " 
 
24 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 And in fact at that moment the train went roaring over the 
 viaduct across the Ganges. And R. A. lost his temper to that 
 extent that there and then, summing up matters according to the 
 Rabelaisian manner, he hoxed, cuffed, and hanged his eighteen 
 syces, his punkah wallah, his moonshee, his clean linen wallah, 
 his dirty linen wallah, his powder wallah, his shot wallah, his wads 
 wallah, his caps wallah. 
 
 Then he had another turn at the moonshee, who, he said, was 
 the most thundering humbug of the lot. Then he made an 
 onslaught on his hath wallah, his sponge wallah, his toothhrush 
 wallah, his nailbrush wallah, his soap wallah, his hookahadar, his 
 fixature — the hest thing for curling the moustaches — wallah. 
 
 And then he had a pipe, and left the other two hundred and 
 fifty wallahs in peace. 
 
 " AVhat makes him so angry with them ? " said the Prince. 
 
 "They lie so to him," said the elephant. "And your people 
 hate it, and never forgive it. But high caste people like me know 
 what we owe to R. A." 
 
 " Was he the man who put a stop to suttees and exposure ? " 
 said the Prince. 
 
 " He has put a stop to many things," said the. elephant. " I 
 wish he would put a stop to Calcutta. Dalhousie, Canning, Elgin, 
 all dead in that ahominahle swamp. But, pretty master, we have 
 missed the train, and you must get right on the top of my head 
 and cross your legs to keep your feet dry. For we must swim." 
 
 " I don't mind wetting my feet," said the Prince. 
 
 " Yes, hut you must, said the elephant ; you will he in a cold 
 country this very evening." 
 
 " What country? " asked the Prince. 
 
 " Canada," said the elephant. " We have dawdled here too 
 long, and the Boy is at the Cape now, if he travels at his usual 
 speed ; and you will have to take ship straight from Cape Cormorin 
 to Vancouver's Island. You must miss the Cape." 
 
 " Then I shall not see the hyaena," said the Prince. 
 
 "But it is your only chance of catching the Boy," said the 
 elephant. " Sit tight, Prince." 
 
 And so the elephant swam over the river, and trotted southward 
 through India with the Prince on his head. And the Prince liked 
 it, for in point of conversation there is no one like the elephant. 
 He never says anything to you or me, hut that renders his conver- 
 sation the more delightful, hecause, don't you see ? there is no 
 one to contradict you. To princes, however, the elephant will 
 talk, and he talked gently to Prince Philarete as he trotted 
 through India. 
 
THE BOY IN GREY. 25 
 
 "If the Boy is gone from the shore," said the Prince, "shall 
 I find a ship to carry me after him? " 
 
 Said the elephant, jogging on faster and faster, " Then- will 
 be two ships waiting for selection by your Royal Highness. I, 
 who know nearly everything, know that. Shall I tell you about 
 them?" 
 
 " Please, dear." 
 
 "They are the ships of the Ancient Mariner and the Flying 
 Dutchman, and they have been racing home from China, to gel 
 the first cargo of tea into London. And they have come to illimi- 
 table grief. You have heard of the great annual race home from 
 China?" 
 
 The Prince had heard of it. 
 
 "Well, these two ships were first favourites for the race (I 
 hope you don't know what that means, because if you do you 
 were better dead), and they both sailed together from Hong 
 Kong, loaded with tea. And when they were in the China Sea 
 it came on to blow a cyclone, and all their masts went overboard. 
 Whereupon the Ancient Mariner rigged up a jury fore-topmast on 
 the stump of her foremast, put a rag of a sail on her, put his ship 
 to the wind, lashed the helm, and passed the word for all hands 
 to turn in till further orders. Which his crew did. And when 
 the skipper heard them all snoring, he went below and turned 
 in himself. 
 
 " But the Flying Dutchman, my dear Prince," said the 
 elephant, " did nothing of the kind. When his masts were 
 carried overboard, he was determined to assert himself; and 
 he ordered both watches on deck, and pointed out to them that 
 lie was the original Flying Dutchman, and that his mother kept 
 the sign of the ' Crooked Billet ' at the Five Points, Xew York. 
 And that didn't do any good in any way, because the starboard 
 watch were mostly negroes and Irish, and the larboard watch was 
 composed of those people who have generally given your Royal 
 Highness a jolly good licking whenever you have meddled with 
 them. 
 
 " Then the Flying Dutchman started all his tea overboard, like 
 the Boston folks ; but the crew said that was only cutting off his 
 nose to spite his face. 'Let them try what they could do,' they 
 said ; ' there was the Ancient Mariner not three miles to windward 
 making tolerable weather, and every hand asleep, with the helm 
 lashed.' 
 
 " And the skipper said they might try if they'd a mind, but 
 he wanted to try something else first. So he had both watches 
 up to the capstan, and read the Declaration of Independence 
 
26 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 in Iris Fire Brigade uniform ; but that didn't do, and so the crew- 
 began to see what tlwy could do. 
 
 " First of all they tried an ovation ; but they all got chucked 
 into the lee-scuppers together by a sudden pitch to larboard, 
 which, of course, pitched the starboard watch, composed of Irish 
 and negroes, on the larboard watch, composed of the Bunker's 
 Hillites ; and all the whitewash came oft' the Irish, and all the 
 black came off the negroes, and there was a nice mess. 
 
 " Then they gave the captain a serenade, and as soon as 
 he had got them to leave off he came to the fore part of the 
 quarter-deck, and, in a speech of four hours and twenty-six 
 minutes, again pointed out to them that he was the original 
 Flying Dutchman, and that his mother kept the sign of the 
 ' Crooked Billet ' at the Five Points, New York, and that any 
 man who said she did not was a low horse thief. But that did 
 no good. 
 
 " But it all came to the same in the end, my dear," said the 
 elephant; " the Ancient Mariner and the Flying Dutchman mean 
 the same thing, for they love the Boy in Grey. When the storm 
 was over, they both made to the same port. We shall see them 
 directly ; either of them will take you after the Boy, if he is gone. 
 See, here is the shore of the sea." 
 
 " And there is the print of his foot on the sand," said the 
 Prince. "He is gone. my elephant, where shall I find 
 him?" 
 
 " Well, I will tell you," said the elephant. " When the emu 
 wren lights on your shoulder as the Bird of Paradise did, and 
 when White's thrush sings its tor-r-r-oo, tor-r-r-oo, you are 
 not far from him. You have much to go through, and only 
 an afternoon and a night. Good-bye, love ! Come again ! come 
 again ! ' ' 
 
 And the elephant trotted away through the forest, and there 
 came to him the Ancient Mariner and the Flying Dutchman. 
 
 At first he thought that the Ancient Mariner was a boy, for his 
 gait was so elastic, and his eye and his complexion were clear ; 
 but looking at his head, he saw that his short cropped hair was 
 whitened with the snows of eleven centuries. He was dressed 
 only in the man-of-war's shirt and trousers, with bare feet and 
 bare bosom, like a man-of-war's boy, and his bare breast was 
 tattooed over with names innumerable, which the Prince tried 
 to read ; and as he tried to read them, he felt that the ruby 
 was not only burning his breast, but was illuminating certain 
 letters on the old young man's left breast over Am heart. And 
 the Prince read, all crowded together without order: — " Sluys, 
 
THE BOY IN GREY. 27 
 
 1340." " Sally, the Girl of my Heart." " Aboukir." " Frank- 
 lin." "Magpie schooner." "Rattlesnake." "Fox yacht." 
 " Trafalgar." " Lifeboat." " Warwick and Parliament, 1642." 
 "Atlantic Cable." "Drake for Acapulco." " Fitzroy." And 
 there were many more ; but the Prince read no more, but said 
 instantly to the Ancient Mariner, " I will sail with you, please." 
 
 Tbe Flying Dutchman spoke at once, and the Prince looked 
 at him. He was a glorious creature, nine hundred years younger 
 in years than the Ancient Mariner, yet not much younger in work. 
 He also had some names tattooed on his bare bosom, but they 
 were names which the Prince hated to look at : — " Chesapeake." 
 " Macedonian." 
 
 " It was a foolish quarrel, that of my fathers," he said. 
 
 " I shall have other names scored on my heart soon," said the 
 Flying Dutchman. Indeed he had, poor boy ; for soon after this 
 he fell to loggerheads with his brother about the relative height 
 of two stools, and Prince Philarete, trying to sit on both at once, 
 to show that there was no difference in the height of them, came 
 down by the run, and has to pay his own doctor's bill. At least, 
 so they say ; and all this is tiixe ; that is the point of the joke, 
 if there be any joke at having such words as " Antietam " or 
 " Chancellorsville " written on your heart. 
 
 "Sorry you can't sail with me, Prince," said the Flying 
 Dutchman ; " however, we are both bound for the same port 
 in the end. He will show you to the Boy in Grey as well as I." 
 
 And the Prince went on board the Ancient Mariner's ship, 
 which had come to grief in the China race, just like the Flying 
 Dutchman's. It was a remarkable ship, very much tinkered up, 
 but an uncommon good ship for sailing. 
 
 "When they got the anchor up, and had put some sail on her, 
 and she was moving through the water, the Ancient Mariner 
 gave his orders : " Lash the helm to windward ! " and they did 
 that. " All hands turn in ! " and they did that too, like winking. 
 And when the Ancient Mariner heard them all snoring in their 
 bunks, he went below and turned in himself, leaving the Prince 
 on the quarter-deck singing out, " Hi ! here ! hallo ! This won't 
 do, you know ! Get up, some of you ! " but they didn't mind him 
 a bit in the world. 
 
 " The ship will go to the bottom," said the Prince. 
 
 But she didn't, but got to British Columbia that very afternoon, 
 after a slow passage of one hour and twenty-two minutes. 
 
 This may appear incredible to certain captious and incredulous 
 readers ; but I can only say that I who write, and live thirty-five 
 miles from London, walked to my neighbour's door the other day 
 
28 THE BOY IN OBEY. 
 
 at half-past eleven. And I said to him, " Congress vetoed that 
 hill of the President's last night. I thought they would." I 
 forget what the matter was now : something which interested 
 us for a time. It is a standing joke with us now. The Times, 
 from which I got my information, must have had it hy half-past 
 six in the morning. To amuse one, as the French say, let us 
 recall the great telegraphic banquet given, I think, at the Lang- 
 ham Hotel ; when after dinner they telegraphed healths to New 
 York and to Calcutta, and received complimentary replies while 
 still over their wine, with an account of the weather. The worst 
 danger of all this is, that if we mislay our tempers we shall be 
 at war before we have time to find them again ; at least, that 
 is the elephant's opinion. 
 
 The Prince met the Russian Bear and the American Bear out 
 a-walking the other day in Alaska, and asked their opinion on 
 this subject ; but they were diplomatic. The Russian Bear said, 
 " Grumph ! " and the American Bear spoke for two hours and 
 forty-five minutes, using the most beautiful tropes and figures you 
 ever heard ; and ended by saying that after this short expression 
 of his sentiments he would conclude. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 It was a long broad ocean shore on which the Prince landed, but 
 the; naked footsteps were there before him, and he held his way 
 steadily across the broad sands towards the melancholy forest 
 capes which fringed them, and so plunged boldly and at once 
 into the great pine-forests of British Columbia, where he saw 
 nothing at all ; but coining on to the tracks of Lord Milton and 
 Doctor Cheadlc, and finding that the Boy in Grey's trail was the 
 same as theirs, he stepped out and got over the Rocky Mountains 
 into Canada in about half an hour, singing— 
 
 " Earth moves on with accumulative forces : 
 Where should we be but for those who've gone before ? 
 Shanks's mare, the iron foal, steamships, camels, horses, 
 Toiling onward night and day by desert, stream, and shore. 
 But Shanks his mare is always first, 
 Spite of hunger, danger, thirst ; 
 So here's a health, and three good cheers, 
 For all glorious pioneers. 
 There are none on the earth who can compare 
 With those who ride on Shanks his mare." 
 
THE BOY IN GEEY. 29 
 
 " The sentiment's very pretty," said a voice on a tree close 
 to him, " but it don't seem to me to scan out clean. Our people 
 are insisting on good scanning now, except in the case of Walt 
 "Whitman, who don't go in for that line of art. I can't offer more 
 than eighteen dollars, and I wouldn't oiler more than fourteen 
 if you weren't a Prince. I would make it more if I coidd, but 
 I have a large family, and I really can't. I'll guarantee you 
 a circulation in our bi-weekly of two hundred and fifty thousand. 
 Write it down, and I'll hand over the cash." 
 
 And the Prince said, " I'll see you bio wed first — as my father's 
 herald said to his new trumpet before he bought it," By which 
 piece of courtly dexterity the Prince only just saved himself from 
 making a most loiv and vulgar remark. 
 
 " Well, I don't blame you for holding out," said the American 
 mocking-bird. " Say twenty dollars. Come, I will sing you 
 a song." 
 
 And he sung him one, a real American. 
 
 " Hah ! " said the Prince ; " I heard that you could sing if you 
 chose." 
 
 And he tried to sing himself as he passed on into the forest. 
 But after that he did not make much hand of it, and after a time 
 let it alone He began again, seeking for the divine afflatus. 
 
 " Here's good health, and three good cheers, 
 To our glorious pioneers." 
 
 And the two pioneers in question were as near as possible 
 finding their names wedded to immortal verse, but for the life 
 of him the Prince could not find any rhyme for " Milton " except 
 "Stilton," or for " Cheadle " except' "Beadle." And they 
 neither of them suited, for no gentleman, leave alone a prince, 
 would take a liberty with another gentleman's name. So he sang 
 a song which had been taught him by a young lady-in-waiting 
 when he was very young. And lie remembered with sadness that 
 she died soon, before his brother Henri, and how sorry his mother 
 had been. This was the song : 
 
 " ' Who will be my love, 
 
 Now while the cowslip blows, 
 Bending as I pass, 
 
 Watching the wild hedge-rose? ' 
 
 " ' I will be thy love,' 
 
 Bang the bluebell loud and deep ; 
 ' I am blue as thine own eyes, darling, 
 And the rose is asleep.' 
 
30 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 "' I will be thine,' said the oak-leaf. 
 ' Cowslip and bluebell fade, 
 They faint and die in summer 
 Under my shade. ' 
 
 " The wild rose woke at last, 
 Sung out loud and free, 
 ' I am thy love, thine own love, 
 Come to me. 
 
 " ' I am the flower of delight, 
 Of memory, music, and song : 
 I sleep through the winter night, — 
 I have slept long. 
 
 " ' At the sound of thy feet in the dew, 
 At the sound of thy voice in the mead. 
 I awakened and budded and blew, 
 Thy love indeed.' 
 
 " With a kiss for the bluebell and rose, 
 And a smile for the oak overhead, 
 He bore back his heart to the cowslip. 
 But the cowslip was dead." 
 
 And then he turned to whistling, and he whistled '•' Acis and 
 Galatea " all through until he was near the very end. But when 
 he was nearly done, some one, sitting on a pine bough, who turned 
 out to he the carrion crow, said — 
 
 "Hawk. Crawk. That is only falsetto. The pitch is much 
 too high. Don't you know that we are all going to have new 
 pitch forks, I mean tuning forks, the vibrations of which will be 
 just 30,000 uth — 20-t x/^+iSjOOO 2 lower than the old ones ? You 
 are not up to the time." 
 
 "My time was very good," said the Prince; "and your 
 formula is nonsensical and impossible." 
 
 " That is what they say about here, anyhow," said the Crow. 
 " The old pitch murders my larnyx. Hawk. Shaw. Gab. 
 
 That is the way to sing." 
 " You are rather hoarse, sir," said the Prince. 
 "Like Falstaff, a\ ith Hallelujahing and singing of anthems," 
 said the crow. " Crawk. Here is the humming-bird. Now he 
 
THE BOY IN GREY. 31 
 
 is going to take my character away. I fell into trouble when I 
 was younger, I allow that ; but I hare been a respectable cha- 
 racter for these three clays, and am likely to be so for another 
 week if they don't leave their things lying about." 
 The humming bird sang, 
 
 .ill 
 
 J. JL Jt. 4. 
 
 i 
 
 w 
 
 And then he passed into prose, and said in Canadian French, very 
 jerky, with all the short syllables huddled together, and all the 
 long syllables lengthened into a drawl — 
 
 " Sir-r-r, I proceed to precise my accusation against that 
 gentleman in black on the bough there, who has just abandoned 
 speech. At one time parson, at one time priest ; at one time 
 politician, at one time philanthropist ; at one time burglar, at one 
 time pickpocket. Now a stealer of pence out of the trays of 
 blind men's dogs ; at another the robber of the slippers of the faith- 
 ful at the door of a mosque during prayer time. He is voleur, 
 coquin, brigand. I precise my accusation by accusing him of 
 stealing my wife's eggs." 
 
 " Why did she leave them about, then ? " bawled the carrion 
 crow. " I am one of the criminal classes, I am ; and what I 
 want is to be kep' out of temptation. And I don't want my 
 moral tone lowered by corporal punishment. That don't suit me, 
 that don't " 
 
 The Prince briefly explained to the carrion crow that he was 
 after the Boy in (Trey, and that he should be returning with him 
 to-morrow. And he told the carrion crow what he and the Boy 
 in Grey would do with him if they found him there on their 
 return. 
 
 And the carrion crow said, " Oh, blow that ! " and he flew 
 away through the wood, right against Colonel Henderson, who 
 having studied the works and ways, and also the hopes and 
 chances, of the criminal class, as Governor of West Australia, 
 wisely and well, happened to be walking homewards through this 
 very wood to see what he could do for the Prince, when the crow 
 flew against him. 
 
 And he knew his bird in an instant, did Colonel Henderson. 
 And the Colonel boxed his ears and put him in his coat pocket, 
 and there he is now. Only the Colonel takes him out once a year, 
 boxes his ears, and puts him in again. Since which course of 
 
32 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 proceeding the Registrar- General noticed that eggs, as an article 
 of human food, have increased -228 beyond the average of the 
 last ten years. This is at all events a result ; and as it comes 
 out of a State paper from Fetter Lane, you cannot for a moment 
 suppose that there is anything ex parte about it. 
 
 The next person the Prince met was an ermine in his summer 
 clothes. And the ermine said, " Bother you. Why can't your 
 mother wear Russian, and leave her own ermines alone? " And 
 he cut and ran for his life. 
 
 And the next person the Prince met was a noble young High- 
 lander, in deer-skin leggings, but with a plaid over his shoulders, 
 who was sitting in a canoe reading, and who bowed to him and 
 said — 
 
 " Ye're late, sir, and he is on before. But I would leave no 
 Indian to have the guiding of you. Get in, Prince, and talk to 
 me. There is no portage now between us and the great Atlantic. 
 Dare you go over Saute Sainte Marie with me ? ' ' 
 
 " Has he gone ? " 
 
 "Yes, he has gone," said the Highlander. 
 
 So the Prince got into the canoe, and nestled against the High- 
 lander. And the Highlander's name was Gil Macdonald. And 
 once this Highlander wrote a book, about how he got from Hud- 
 son's Bay to the Red River in a canoe. The book is out of print 
 and I have forgotten even the title ; but it remains one of the best 
 books of travel which I have read. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 As soon as the Prince was comfortably packed into the birch-bark 
 canoe beside the young Highlander, it occurred to the Prince to 
 ask the Highlander what he was. 
 
 " Clerk in the Hudson's Bay Company. Detailed by the Fairy 
 Anan gke and the Boy in Grey to help you on." 
 
 " We must go very fast." 
 
 " One thousand miles the hour. Ye'll be in time. You are to 
 go in shore at a hail. Mind the bough, dear." 
 
 And so they began their quaint voyage through Canada. 
 
 " What is the name of this river, please ? " asked the Prince. 
 
 " This is the Minncseewahaha, or River of Happy Recollec- 
 tions," answered Gil Macdonald. "You will see some bodies ye 
 ken weel enow." 
 
THE BOY IX GREY. 33 
 
 " It is very solemn and beautiful," said the Prince. 
 
 Indeed it was. It was a broad limestone river, ever growing 
 wider, crystal clear, with swift streams and eddies, and it swept on 
 walled by gigantic hemlock firs, sometimes by feathering oaks and 
 beeches ; very solemn, still, and silent indeed. The canoe scarcely 
 wanted the aid of Gil's paddle, and the Prince, with his cheek on 
 tht' deer-skin knee of Gil, looking dreamily into the tree-tops as 
 they sped swiftly along. 
 
 "Look over the side," said Gil. 
 
 And looking down, the Prince said, " Why, there are peacocks 
 in this water." 
 
 "They are the Salmofontalis, the burn trout of Canada " (he said 
 Salma fontaaleese, which King James I. of England and some more 
 recent authorities tell us is the proper way of pronouncing Latin) ; 
 " they are brighter in colour than our Salma fleuveeaateleese, and 
 are not to be confounded with them." 
 
 At this moment they rounded a turn in the river, and the Prince 
 made a jump to one side of the canoe, and with a loud glad cry 
 held out his arms. 
 
 •• Ha' a care, Prince ! Ha' a care ! " cried Gil. " Ye'll whohnj 
 us keel uppermost. These are unco kittle craft of ours, ye must ken. 
 I'll put ye ashore to the daft rintherout callant e'en now." 
 
 On the point of the rock stretching into the stream stood a boy 
 in light belted flannel trousers and a blue flannel shirt, who exe- 
 cuted a small short dance when he saw them. It was Scud East. 
 
 " Scud ! Scud ! " said the Prince, " who woidd have thought of 
 seeing you here? " and as he jumped ashore up ran Tom Brown 
 and Arthur, and there was such a cackling of happy recollections 
 that you could hardly hear yourself speak. 
 
 "But where is Martin? " said the Prince at last. 
 
 Scud put his hands to his mouth, and sent a shout through the 
 forest. " Madman ! Madman ! here is Philarete." 
 
 The answer came from one hundred and fifty feet in the air, and 
 it was, " Don't kick up that beastly row, Scud. I have got the 
 eggs, and I have got a live raccoon round the neck. He has bit 
 me to the bone three times, but I have got him, and I am coming 
 down." 
 
 There was a slithering noise, and a terrible cracking of broken 
 boughs, and down came the Madman by the run ; sticking, however, 
 tight to his raccoon. 
 
 " Here," said the raccoon, " you keep your hands off me. What 
 were you doing up my tree ? I wasn't up to nothink. I'll have 
 you took to the Doctor as sure as you're born. Let me go, I tell 
 you." 
 
 4 
 
34 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 Martin offered him to the Prince, who let him go, and he ran 
 away. And he ran up into a tree, and began preaching a sermon 
 about Naboth's vineyard, or, as he put it, the invasion of other 
 chaps' little places. He began his sermon then, which was many 
 years ago, and he hasn't finished it yet. The last time I saw him 
 he was hammering away at it as hard as ever. 
 
 " We must cut, Philarete," said Tom Brown, " or we shall be 
 late for locking-up. The Boy in Grey was with us to-day. 
 Kemember what the Bird of Paradise said." 
 
 " 'Ware louts ! " cried Scud East. 
 
 And they turned towards the forest, and saw two dim figures 
 stalking through it ; both dressed like Indians. 
 
 " It is only Pathfinder and Chingachgook," said Tom Brown, 
 " going to set their beaver- traps. I say, Philarete, old boy, look 
 on the beavers when they hail you. Good-bye." 
 
 And so the Prince was in the canoe again speeding down the 
 river. He looked back at the next bend, and he saw Tom, Scud, 
 Arthur, and Martin standing in a row, watching him, with their 
 arms twined as closely round one another's necks as they have 
 twined them round our hearts. 
 
 The next turn in the river brought them a new adventure. Gil 
 with dexterity ran the canoe up a little sandy cove, right at the 
 feet of an aged gentleman in the costume of the early part of the 
 eighteenth century, who sat in a chair, with one leg crossed over 
 the other, thinking. Behind him was a black gentleman, with a 
 sky-blue tail coat down to his heels, and his collar up to his eyes, 
 and a large eye-glass, who also appeared lost in thought. 
 
 " How do you do, sir," said the Prince. 
 
 " I am perfectly well, sir," said Robinson Crusoe. 
 
 " Do you always sit like that ? " said the Prince, for he thought 
 he might have risen even if he had sat down directly afterwards. 
 
 "No, sir," said Robinson Crusoe, changing his legs; "I 
 sometimes sit like that." 
 
 " What do you do to pass away your time, sir? " 
 
 " Think," said Robinson Crusoe. 
 
 " What do you think about? " asked the Prince. 
 
 " The permission of evil." 
 
 "And what do you think about, for instance?" asked the 
 Prince, turing round to the gentleman in the sky-blue tail coat. 
 
 "Brack jebblem, sar," replied Friday, "him likewise think 
 about permissions of evil." 
 
 " Could you not give me a tune on your banjo ? " asked the 
 Prince. 
 
 " He has quitted such vanities," said Robinson Crusoe. 
 
THE BOY IN GEEY. 35 
 
 And the Prince got into the canoe again. 
 
 But he most solemnly avers that he saw the end of Mr. Friday's 
 banjo sticking out from under Robinson Crusoe's chair at the time 
 he was talking to him. He says he is sure of it. And Gil de- 
 clares that before they turned the next bend Friday had taken it 
 out and was hard at it, thrumpty thrumpty, with — 
 
 " Guinea-com, I love to hyam you." 
 
 " Two of the best fellows who ever lived," remarked Gil. " But 
 they have talked themselves to a deadlock, and there they are. 
 They dare not even get their banjoes out if any one's looking." 
 
 So they sailed on past another bend, and on a point were two 
 gentlemen aim in arm, standing waiting for them, and beside them 
 was a little young lady dressed for a ball with only one shoe on. 
 The Prince landed, walked up to them, and said — 
 
 "Dear Colonel Dobbin, I hope you are cpiite well. Colonel 
 Crawley, you are not looking well : I fear Coventry Island does 
 not agree with you. Give my love to Bawdy. Miss Cinderella, I 
 was delighted to hear that you got home from the Mansion House 
 ball quite safe ; I believe that I have to congratulate you. Give 
 my love to Toto, and ask him to come and play with me. I have 
 such fine toys ; I have a beautiful new Xylopodo " 
 
 Here the Prince broke off quite short, and retreated hurriedly 
 to the canoe. For he saw, coming swiftly through the forest, a 
 tall old lady in a dressing gown and nightcap, with a bundle of 
 tracts in one hand and a black dose in the other. And he knew 
 her, for it was Lady Southdown come to convert the Ladians ; so 
 he fled, and left Dobbin, Crawley, and Cinderella standing 
 together on the dim shore of the Minneseewahaha. 
 
 When he was afloat again he began to cry, which was not much 
 in his line. And when Gil asked him "what gar'd him greet," 
 he said, " I am so sorry for poor Colonel Crawley." 
 
 And Gil said, "There is more joy in heaven over the sinner 
 that repenteth, than over ninety and nine just men who need no 
 repentance. See to her, for instance, now. Do you mind what 
 the blackbird sang at Glastonbury ? " 
 
 The group which confronted the Prince at this landing was the 
 strangest and quaintest he had met yet. The woman to whom 
 Gil had pointed with his paddle was dressed in grey, with a 
 scarlet letter on her bosom. What the original letter was is no 
 matter now, for it was gone, and turned into a great red flaming 
 B. And his ruby burnt so hot upon his heart that he held it off 
 his breast. Beside her stood a tall gentleman about fifty, with a 
 folded paper in his hand, in clothes which apparently were not 
 made for him, but towards whom the Prince instantly conceived 
 
36 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 a deep devotion. Beside him stood a dead young lady of great 
 beauty, awful, beautiful, but apparently silent for ever, under 
 whose feet lay two rattlesnakes, crushed, thank Heaven ! to death 
 at last. 
 
 Colonel Sprowle began the conversation. 
 
 "I bid you welcome, sir. You are after the Boy in Grey. 
 Yes, sir. I have induced my two friends, Mrs. Hester Prvnne 
 and Miss Elsie Venner, to assist with me in giving you an ovation, 
 and, if agreeable, a serenade. I was killed, sir, as you no doubt 
 remember, in a piece of forest-land beyond the Chickahominy. I 
 have a neat oration wrote out, ready to deliver, sir, by old Wax- 
 works Ward, of BaldwinsviUe, Indiana, who came to a heap of 
 trouble down South himself. Instead of speaking it, sir, I will 
 just hand it over for you to read as you go down stream in 
 your dug-out. Our time is very short, sir ; we must be back 
 immediately." 
 
 Elsie Venner said, without a hiss in her voice now, but in round 
 sound English — 
 
 " The cock is crowing a merry midnight ; 
 I wot the wild fowls are boding day ; 
 The Psalms of Heaven will soon be sung, 
 And we'll be missed away." 
 
 And so they were gone, and the canoe went onwards, but the 
 Prince was crying again. He was crying about Colonel Sprowle 
 now ; thinking how Colonel Sprowle, when the Southerners had 
 the best of it, had defended that narrow 7 place in the woodlands 
 with a shrewdness and valour beyond all praise, knowing that he 
 was defending the retreat of the Northern army ; and how at 
 night, when Colonel Bernard came in with a flag of truce to sort 
 the dead, he found Colonel Sprowle nearest of all of them to the 
 enemy save two — two young men, the sons of the wild gipsy 
 woman who lived up the mountain and brought Bernard the 
 rattlesnakes, and were content to die with the Colonel, having 
 seen his works and his ways, and having made up their minds 
 that he was a good man. You say, young one, that this is all 
 Greek to you. Head " Elsie Venner," and it will be Greek no 
 longer. 
 
 " Dinna greet ower 'em," said Gil ; " they died the death of 
 men, fighting for their ain cause : would ye have better death 
 than that ? I wished them ill at one time, but they will doubtless 
 respect the claims both of the Hudson's Bay and the North-west 
 Company. Wipe your een, man ; wipe your een. Here's a whole 
 lot more of them." 
 
THE BOY IN GREY. 37 
 
 And indeed there were. In a pretty savannah, hemmed in by 
 the great forest, with one point of it running out into the stream, 
 there was such a crowd of faces that the Prince was quite confused. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 There was no doubt about one thing. The fat old lady in the 
 black bonnet, who was at the very point of the meadow, and was 
 hailing them by wildly waving a green umbrella, was Mrs. Gamp ; 
 and it was also perfectly evident that Mrs. Gamp was tipsy, for 
 she fell into the water sideways, and was pulled out by Tim 
 Linkinwater and Mr. Tapley. She said that she slipped, but 
 Captain Cuttle and Mrs. Xickleby agreed that she had had too 
 much to drink, and had overbalanced herself. So they left her to 
 be watched, and, as far as possible, dried, by Joe Gargery and 
 Mr. Snodgrass. 
 
 The proceedings were also disagreeably enlivened on the landing 
 of the Prince, by a terrible squabble between Aunt Clegg, Aunt 
 Pullet, Mr. Pecksniff, and the Queen of Hearts. Aunt Clegg's 
 thesis was that Mr. Pecksniff was not sober, and had lost one of 
 his shoes, a most undeniable major. But Aunt Pullet, taking up 
 the argument, made such a wild wandering affair of it, that the 
 Queen of Hearts, looking more cross than ever Tenniel made her 
 look, declared that in future all syllogisms were to be kept in 
 celarunt, under penalty of decapitation. And Mr. Pecksniff, a 
 man who never spoke the truth, applauded her highly. 
 
 Said Alice to Silas Marner, " How they squabble and fight ! 
 Come away with me, and show me your loom, my dear ; and show 
 me the place where you hid your money." 
 
 And so those two trotted off, and Tom Pinch ran after them, 
 and said, " Hi ! here ! Silas Marner, wait for me. Show me 
 your loom, and I will show you my organ." 
 
 So in consequence the Prince saw nothing of Silas Marner, 
 Tom Pincb, or Alice: those three went to Wonderland together. 
 But he had an interview with Aunt Clegg, for all that. 
 
 I am not in a position to state what passed. She succeeded in 
 exasperating him beyond mortal endurance, and he lost his 
 temper. Arthur Pendennis, Don Quixote, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
 three men always willing to make peace, interfered ; but it was 
 no good. She only said that three fools added to one made four. 
 
38 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 So they sent, by the Hon. Elijah Pogram's advice, for Doctor 
 Johnson, who said to Arthur Pendennis, " That which is nearest 
 to us affects us most : the passions rise higher at domestic than 
 at imperial tragedies." But Aunt Clegg had nailed her colours 
 to the mast, and said that you could always tell the biggest fools 
 in a company by the length of their words. There was nothing 
 to be done with her at all, until Pere Goriot, Mr. Jaggers, 
 Falstaff, and Madame Bonbeck got her in conversation and led 
 her away. 
 
 The elder Mr. Chuzzlewit said, " Really, that lady seems to 
 have mislaid her temper. We wanted to give the Prince a 
 welcome among us. Now I warn you, that if any gentleman mis- 
 lays his temper, I shall send for John Halifax; " and then this 
 party were among the past. 
 
 In a shady place by the river-side they saw Mr. Punch walking 
 up and down arm in arm with a Bishop. Mr. Punch was fault- 
 lessly dressed in a blue frock coat with velvet collar, white waist- 
 coat, and large watch chain, a beautiful new hat, and straw- 
 coloured kid gloves : the respectable millionaire all over. The 
 Prince hardly knew him ; but he could not help wondering what 
 the Bishop would say, if he knew that only the week before, Mr. 
 Punch, in far other costume, had beaten the Beadle's brains out, 
 and that he and his friends had stood by laughing and en- 
 couraging him, and that Athanasio had given him a threepenny- 
 piece to do it again. 
 
 He rather thought that he had best not land under the circum- 
 stances ; particularly as there was a bagpipe and fiddle plainly 
 audible in the next reach. They were soon round the bend, and 
 there was a crowd there with a vengeance. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 This crowd was more motley than the last, but Philarete knew 
 them better than those he had last seen. 
 
 Foremost among them, close to the water's edge, were two 
 great Scotch stag-hounds, which he knew to be Bran and Buscar, 
 and between them stood a little withered man in the dress 
 of the last century, whom he recognised in an instant as Peter 
 Peebles. 
 
 " And what are ye saying till it a', Prince ? " he began as soon 
 
THE BOY IN GREY. 39 
 
 as the canoe touched the shore. "Ye look brawly. But I hae 
 nae doubt ye are ganging a gait which will guide ye to sorrow. Ye 
 are in ill 'company, tor a breekit Hielandman is a Hielandman 
 still. When the deil gangs to kirk, he pits his tail down his 
 trouser-leg. A skeeley tod can make the same stink as a puir 
 brock when the dogs are at the cairn's mouth. Aweel. I hae to 
 
 apply to your Highness for letters of law-burrow against " 
 
 ."Hand your whist, mun ! " said Gil, furious at his insolence 
 against the Highlanders; "the Prince does not understand 
 Scottish law." 
 
 "And baud your whist, ye ill-looking, land-louping vaga- 
 bond!" replied Peter. "It is little that you or your forbears 
 ever kenned of Scottish law, save the big gallows at Crieff. 
 Ye are just as Hieland as the muckle deil himself. I apply 
 to his gracious Highness for letters of law-burrow against 
 Alexander Sanders, or Alick Glengoldnie of that ilk, vulgarly 
 known as Alick Dhu, for that he, having conceived a great and 
 deadly malice against the said complainer, he himself, his wife, 
 baims, men tenants, servants, and others, in his name, does con- 
 tinually cause, send, hound out, and command resett, assistance, 
 
 and rehabilitation to ane Meg Merrilies " 
 
 Here the Prince began to laugh, for he saw what was coming. 
 
 " who casts down his dikes, destroys his henings, wins 
 
 peats without license, liberty, or tolerance ; the whilk Meg 
 
 Merrilies is a daft randy quean, a spaewife and gipsy " 
 
 Here he got a box on the ear which sent him staggering, and 
 Philarete found himself standing face to face with a woman whom 
 he had never dreaded at her worst, but had always loved ; and he 
 saw that, scarred and smitten as the face was with eighty years of 
 sorrow, it was more beautiful than ever. She raised him, and sat 
 him on her strong arm, and he kissed her on the cheek, just as 
 the Baron of Bradwardine came up and demanded to take off his 
 boots after his battle with Peter Peebles ; a ceremony which the 
 Prince graciously pretermitted. 
 
 And then came a glorious hour, an hour the like of which 
 can come twice to no boy ; an hour with the people whom Scott 
 created. 
 
 He thought he had been but a few minutes when he heard Gil 
 crying for him, and Meg Merrilies hurried him down to the canoe. 
 Pete/ Peebles had disappeared for no good, thought Meg; and 
 now once more they were afloat on the Minneseewahaha. 
 
40 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 " Who are those two," asked the Prince in a whisper, " who are 
 lying there asleep together under the yew ? See, she has her 
 hand on his breast, and he has his hand in her hair." 
 
 " Whist ! " said Gil ; " they are no asleep, they are dead. It 
 is Romeo and Juliet. Sair misguided in this world by dynastic 
 tradition, but no divided in their death." 
 
 " Here are some others," said Philarete. " Who are those two 
 pretty ones sitting fishing and sucking oranges, and who are those 
 two beside them cracking nuts with their teeth ? " 
 
 " The twa with the oranges," said Gil, " are Paul and Virginia ; 
 the twa cracking nuts are Benedick and Beatrix." 
 
 " Are Benedick and Beatrix cross to one another now ? " 
 
 " No," said Gil, " they studied one another's tempers, and they 
 have but one soul between them till the crack of doom." 
 
 "Please Gil," .said Philarete, "what became of Maggie and 
 Tom Tulliver?" 
 
 "They live in the block house called Expiation, which is in 
 the centre of Lake Manitou, where we shall be directly. Lake 
 Manitou, ye doubtless ken, means the Lake of God ; the place 
 where He has prepared peace on earth for those that He thinks 
 need it. The brother and sister live there all alone, and no canoe 
 goes by their house. The Boy in Grey was with them for an hour 
 yestreen, but he is gone forward." 
 
 " Does any one else live on Lake Manitou ? " 
 
 " Only Hamlet, with Jacques to see after him and mind his 
 house. We shall see the lake directly, but we must go ashore 
 here. Did you hear that hail? " 
 
 " I heard some one grunting," said Philarete. 
 
 " It is the beavers," said Gil. " Mind what Tom Brown asked 
 of you." 
 
 They now landed in a very swampy place, and the Prince got 
 over one of his shoes in mud at once, and dirtied his white silk 
 stockings. "I shall have both my shoes off here directly," he 
 said. So Gil hoisted him on his back, and tho Prince went in 
 that fashion to the interview with the beavers. 
 
 And a nice mess they were making of it. There were two 
 streams which met inland, one called Capital and the other 
 Labour. Now, the older beavers had, from time immemorial, 
 possessed the stream called Capital, and had dammed it, and had 
 got on very well for many years, because their progeny were 
 always killed off by the Hudson Bay trappers to make beaver hats. 
 
THE BOY IN GEEY. 41 
 
 But a time came when Lincoln and Bennett invented silk hats, 
 and then there was much less demand for heaver-skins. Then 
 their progeny, not heing killed off in war, hegan to grow on them, 
 and it was necessary to come to some arrangement. 
 
 So the young beavers said that they must many and live, 
 and that they would go to the brook Labour, and dam that. 
 And the elder beavers said, " All right ; our brook is the 
 biggest." 
 
 But the younger beavers made such an enormously big dam 
 that they sent half the water over into the elder beavers' dam, 
 and flooded their lodges. Whereupon the elder beavers, after 
 scratching their heads with their tails, set to work and raised their 
 dam one foot, whereby they certainly succeeded in flooding the 
 lodges of the junior beavers, but were put to the expense of putting 
 an extra storey on their own, which the junior heavers could not 
 afford. 
 
 Consequently at the Prince's arrival, the whole place was in a 
 state of crock and mud. Gil, carrying the Prince, lost both his 
 moccasins, and drew his stockinged feet out of the dirt like 
 drawing corks. At last he perched the Prince on the master 
 heaver's lodge, and the beavers from botli rivers rallied round 
 him. The master beaver had rheumatism in the fishy part of his 
 tail, and could uot appear ; hut the Prince heard him as he sat on 
 the roof of his lodge, underneath him, grunting. 
 
 The Prince sat cross-legged on the roof of the master beaver's 
 lodge, while matters were explained to him by both the Capital 
 and Labour beavers. When he had read all they had to say, he 
 answered— 
 
 " Lower away both your dams, so as not to annoy one another," 
 which, for a hoy of ten years old, was not so bad. The beavers 
 set to work doing it at once. 
 
 But the skunk was furious. He had climbed out on to the dam 
 to listen, and when he heard the decision of the Prince he made 
 such a smell that the beavers chivied him and pulled him into the 
 clean water — a thing he hated. 
 
 But the beavers were greatly pleased with the Prince's decision. 
 The youngest and most hot-headed of the junior beavers said that 
 really after this the question between an hereditary and an elective 
 presidency was open to discussion. In fact, the Prince was a 
 success. The junior beavers at once held a mass meeting, and 
 unanimously resolved to leave off gnawing through a tall tree 
 called Commerce, which, had they continued, would have fallen 
 right across the senior heavers' lodges. 
 
 And then the Great Master Beaver of all Beavers (G.M.B.O.A.B. 
 
42 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 he called himself), in spite of his rheumatism, came out of his 
 lodge under water, and said with a grunt — 
 
 " Come into the Great Lodge and he made a Beaver. Come 
 and be initiated." 
 
 Philarete said that he must hurry along after the Boy in Grey, 
 and that he could not go under water in his best clothes. 
 
 " We will make you tt j3 ■* r" 
 
 "I don't think I shoidd like it," said Philarete. 
 
 " We will make you duplex a a duplex T t" 
 
 " I really have not time," said Philarete. 
 
 " Will you be K x x $ e ? " said the G.M.B.O.A.B. 
 
 " I have not got so far in my Buttmann's Greek grammar as 
 that. I remember x \lv p, but I don't like it." 
 
 " Well," said the Master Beaver, " you will be with us in time. 
 Take," he continued, " these two gentlemen to the river, wash the 
 Prince's silk stockings clean, and find Mr. Macdonald's moccasins. 
 Are you going to take him over the Saute Sainte Marie?" he 
 added to Gil Macdonalcl, in a whisper. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " You will try his metal there." 
 
 " It wants no trying," said Gil. " I have tried it, and it rings 
 true." 
 
 "Ah!" said the Master Beaver, "what Princes could do if 
 they chose ! " 
 
 " Ye may weel say that," replied Gil. " Alternate plagues and 
 blessings ; but Presidents and Emperors are but little better. By 
 the by, our people are not troubling yours just now. Beaver-skins 
 are no worth a bawbee." 
 
 " Well, that is a good thing," said the Master Beaver. 
 
 " I suppose ye've heard that the Hudson's Bay Company are 
 about selling their territory to the Dominion, and that you will be 
 at the tender mercy of the settlers ? " 
 
 The Master Beaver instantly dived into his lodge without saying 
 good-bye, and made his will, leaving the whole of his property to 
 the Hudson's Bay Company. But as he had not got any it did 
 not much matter, and they never took the trouble to prove his 
 will, as you will see if you examine the papers at this moment 
 before Parliament. 
 
 The junior beavers cleaned the Prince's stockings, and found 
 Gil's moccasins. After which they had another mass meeting, 
 and unanimously voted that it was Whit Monday (it was nothing 
 of the sort, it was the Saturday before the Tenth Sunday after 
 Trinity, but public opinion prevailed), and that consequently they 
 must all go to Greenwich fair in steamboats. Which they did. 
 
THE BOY IN GREY. 43 
 
 " Where next, Gil? " said Philarete. 
 
 " Lake Manitou," replied Gil, and added, " Mind, ye are no to 
 say one word to any one, save me, all the time yc cross it." 
 
 '" May I not say one word to Hamlet, just to tell him how sorry 
 I was about the accident with Polonius ? " 
 
 " Not one word." 
 
 " May I not kiss Maggie Tulliver ? Oh, please ! " 
 
 "Ye maun do nothing of the kind. Both she and Hamlet are 
 dreeing their weird, whilk the Papists have erected into the super- 
 stition of purgatory, an idle and foolish thing, hut for which they 
 say they find Scripture in John xx. verse 17, and elsewhere. It is 
 a thrawn thing to believe, but mind ye dinna speak to Hamlet or 
 Maggie Tulliver." 
 
 The river widened among majestic islands until it expanded 
 into the lake, a calm sheet of water among towering woodlands. 
 Gil had scarcely hegun paddling across it, when he hent down his 
 head, and whispered in Philarete's ear, " Yon's Maggie." 
 
 She was hare headed, and was pushing her canoe up a narrow 
 creek which ran into the forest, reading a book the while. The 
 dark night of her hair was towards them, and the Prince said — 
 
 " Will she turn her head ? " 
 
 " No fear," said Gil. " She reads nought but her Thomas a 
 Kempis now. Be quiet, man ! ye are among the deid folk." 
 
 " Does Tom love her now ? " asked Philarete, in spite of the 
 caution. 
 
 " Who could help it ? But she is not as she was. Her face is 
 always turned now towards that great God who inspired a woman 
 with the genius that created her." "Which was Greek to Philarete, 
 beyond Buttmann. 
 
 " Is that Hamlet ? " he asked. 
 
 " The gentleman fishing with a cork float off the little block 
 house ? No, that is Jacques. He is sitting there and thinking 
 about God's permission of evil and cruelty anent wounded staigs 
 and such cattle, just as Robinson Crusoe did, you remember, and 
 impinging live worms on his hook the while, to catch fish for 
 Lord Hamlet's dinner. He represents one kind of sentimentality. 
 Prince Hamlet (a bonny chiel, but misguided) sits up near the 
 roof, looking for his father's ghaist, and thinking that he had cut 
 one man's throat too few. The O'Donoghue's ghaist came from 
 the Lake of Killamey to plague him, but he would have none of 
 it, and threepit to the American Government anent the nuisance. 
 But the American Government made reply, that although the 
 O'Donoghue of that time had without doubt committed murder, 
 spulsie, deforcement, raid, violent incoming, and arson, yet it was 
 
44 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 committed on patriotic grounds ; and that therefore they could not 
 move in the matter. So Prince Hamlet retired north of the 
 Eider." 
 
 " I don't understand that last," said Philarete. 
 
 " No fear you would. It only means this. England was stale- 
 mated by America, and Prince Hamlet went to the wall, about the 
 Denmark business." 
 
 They had crossed the lake now, and were in the great river 
 again. Into the reservoir which they had crossed so quickly 
 innumerable rivers had poured their floods, and when Gil and the 
 Prince got into the new river they saw that it was four times the 
 size of the old one — broader, more majestic, more powerful. There 
 is no resisting these great American rivers ; you must swim with 
 the tide. Sometimes, however, old formations, like that of the 
 old sandstone at Niagara, rise and torture these rivers, which is a 
 great trouble. 
 
 " Sit again with your head on my knees, Prince," said Gil. 
 " Are you frightened ? " 
 
 " No," said Philarete. " I am afraid of nothing with you." 
 
 " We are going over the Saute Sainte Marie," said Gil. " Do 
 ye ken the mystery of it ? " 
 
 Said Philarete, '"No." 
 
 " The boy who dares to stand up in the canoe when she dips 
 over the lip of the Saute Sainte Marie — whilk, ye ken, is the Fall 
 of the Virgin — will live long, and sec the Boy in Grey. The boy 
 who dares not stand up will see him never, in this world or in the 
 next." 
 
 As Gil spoke, the terrible roar of the great cataract was in their 
 ears. The river, gathered from innumerable sources, was over- 
 whelmingly powerful, but glassy, smooth, and swift, walled by tall 
 pine trees. Passing rapidly round a bend in the river, Philarete 
 saw what was before him. He said, suddenly, " Must we go ? " 
 
 " After the Boy in Grey ? Yes," said Gil. 
 
 Philarete rose and stood in the bow of the canoe, with outspread 
 arms to balance himself. Water and earth alike fell away from 
 them utterly, and before he had time to say more than " 0* God, 
 who stillest the raging of the waters," he was alone with Gil in 
 a frail canoe among the hissing eddies of the most famous of 
 American rapids. 
 
 When the canoe gave the first sickening dip into the tortured 
 raging waters, he gave himself up for lost, the whole matter 
 seemed so helpless and horrible. For three-quarters of a mile 
 before him he saw nothing but a seething hill of water, dipping 
 one foot in thirty-seven, the roar of which was heard for thirty 
 
THE BOY IN GREY. 45 
 
 miles. Where were his father and mother now ? Where were 
 Polemos, Arturio, and Athanasio now? What were they doing 
 or thinking about? But the Boy in Grey was on before, and the 
 weird was on him, and so he stood with his arms out in the bow 
 of the canoe and balanced himself. 
 
 Peter Peebles was the last man they saw in this terrible part of 
 their journey. He had discovered a statute against the deforce- 
 ment and wilful misguidement of princes (" and sic cattle," he 
 said), "passed by the Scottish Parliament after the assault on the 
 pious body of the amiable and excellent Jamie Sixth of Scotland, 
 First of England, by the daft rintherout eallant Ruthveii at Perth. 
 Whili Act provided that any one, leave alone a Hieland cattle- 
 lifter, who shoidd commit deforcement, or in any way bring into 
 danger, or have suspicion of doing constructive spulsie on the 
 Lord's anointed, shoidd thereby and then " 
 
 They lost a lot of his argument here, for he was flying from one 
 rock to another, as if he were Mr. Bright, and they were a salmon. 
 And his wig was off, and his old coat-tads were flying about his 
 ears. The last they heard of him was — 
 
 "And so the aforesaid Peter Peebles deponeth and maketh 
 oath, that the aforesaid Gil or Gilbert Macdonald of Glen Strae, 
 in opposition of the law above mentioned, has violently possessed 
 himself of the person of an anointed prince, with a pair of silken 
 hose worth one hundred pounds Scots, and a ruby worth two 
 hundred mdlions Scots, whilk " 
 
 They saw no more of him after this. The Prince once looked 
 back on to the leaping wall of water which they had passed, and 
 wondered that they had lived. Yet they were alive. 
 
 " Xo more law now, GU," he said. 
 
 " Only a newer and a better one," said Gil, " and a stricter." 
 
 And that was the end of the Saute Sainte Marie. They were 
 out on a lake three hundred miles in length, and on the first 
 island they came to was the Fairy Anangke, sitting and netting 
 nets for the catching of crawfish. 
 
 "Well, and what do you think of the Saute Sainte Marie ? " 
 she asked. 
 
 " I like it now it is over," said the Prince. 
 
 •■ Why did you fear it at first, then? " said the Fairy. " Take 
 it all in all, they are as good as you." 
 
 "I don't understand you," said the Prince. 
 
 " I never supposed you woidd, my dear ; but there, hurry away 
 after the Boy in Grey. Dree out this weird, child, and you are 
 safe. Causes produce effects, child. As you behave now, your 
 actions will react. In the dark horror winch you will have to 
 
40 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 pass through, you will find the results of your own actions. Has 
 he been good, Gil ? " 
 
 " He'll do, madam." 
 
 " Well, your report is a good one ; though you are not to be 
 trusted about princes. Why did you Scotch Highlanders harbour 
 the Pretender at Benbecula and South Uist ? " 
 
 " Now / am going to catch it," Gil whispered to the Prince. 
 " Sentimental grounds, Madam Anangke." 
 
 " Sentimental grounds ! " said Fairy Anangke, scornfully. " It 
 was on sentimental grounds that the blessed Restoration was ac- 
 complished by your Duke of Albemarle, for the benefit of Lady 
 Castlemaine mainly. And the poor sailors lying dying in Pepys' 
 yard of starvation for their money, while the Dutch were burning 
 Chatham. Pish! Take him to Australia." 
 
 " She is very cross," said the Prince when they were alone. 
 
 " She is," said Gil. 
 
 " How far are you to go with me, Gil '? " 
 
 "All the way to Australia. She says, and none can resist 
 her." 
 
 " Do you mean that you and I are to go all round Cape Horn, 
 or through Magellan's Straits, in this canoe ? " 
 
 " Ye may go by the Cape if ye will." 
 
 " Shall I be frightened ? " said the Prince. 
 
 " Ye '11 never be frightened anymore," said Gil. "You have 
 come down the Great Rapid, and you will never know fear now ; 
 not even when you give up your soul to God. You have trusted 
 in God and in man, and have seen that neither would betray you." 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Gil Macdonald and Prince Philarete went safely round Cape 
 Horn in about fifteen hours, and this was, for one reason at least, 
 the most remarkable part of their voyage. 
 
 Not because it was done in a birch -bark canoe, against the 
 great booming west wind which plagued Magellan and nearly 
 ruined Anson. Pigafetta felt it, and Byron will tell you of that 
 wind. The reason why this part of their journey was the most 
 remarkable was this. When they came through Canada they saw 
 plenty of things ; round the Horn they saw nothing at all. 
 
 You say that there is nothing remarkable about that. I beg 
 
THE BOY IN GEEY. 47 
 
 your pardon. Did i/ou ever see nothing at all ? I never did, and 
 should very much like to make the acquaintance of a man who 
 had. 
 
 Because, don't you see, you cannot see nothing at all. And 
 yet that was all they saw, and therefore they must have seen that. 
 
 Let us be cool and logical. Let us not heat ourselves unneces- 
 sarily <>\vr this question. Let us get at the crux of it. There is 
 no greater mistake in this world than unnecessary heat over deep 
 matters of thought like this. It involves the great question of 
 Iamity. 
 
 They did not see anything at all, and therefore they saw noth- 
 ing. But you cannot see nothing. But they did. Therefore 
 they couldn't have. 
 
 Nonsense ? Yes. But you will have worse and more pernici- 
 ous nonsense than this to sort out for yourself before you have 
 worn out three pair of trousers — that is, if you mean to be a 
 man. 
 
 "Well, they saw something when they approached the Australian 
 shore. All the male adult colonists were down on the shore ; and 
 every man had brought his grandmother, and every man had 
 brought an egg, and was showing his grandmother how to suck it. 
 
 " Come here," they cried, as Gril and the Prince coasted along ; 
 " come here, you two, and learn to suck eggs. We will teach 
 you to suck all kinds of eggs, not merely those of the emu and 
 talegalla, but those of the blue-throated warbler. And we will 
 teach you to suck eggs which we have never seen. Come ashore, 
 come ashore." 
 
 But they never came ashore for all that, but coasted on till the 
 high wooded capes, no longer jutting into the sea, trended inland, 
 aiid at last were lost to the eye. Then began a long continuous 
 beach of sand, backed with low rolling sandhills. Then even 
 these were gone, and the coast got so low that it was only dis- 
 tinguished from the grey wild sea by the line of mad bursting 
 surf which broke up. The sea which the Greeks called barren 
 was swarming with life, beauty, and vitality ; the land was barren, 
 hideous, and seemed accursed. 
 
 A long black cloud lay along their southern horizon towards the 
 Pole, and from it came a blast from the Antarctic ice, cold as the 
 hancl of death upon the heart, yet as mad in its rage as the 
 Mistral. A pelting, pitiless shower deluged them, and hid sea 
 and sky and land as Gil hurried their frail bark towards the 
 leaping breakers, and whispered — 
 
 " Ye must land here. Good-bye." 
 
 That was all. How it happened he does not know ; how long 
 
48 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 it took ho does not know. There was wild confusion for a little 
 time, and then he found himself standing high and dry on the 
 awful desolate shore alone — with God. 
 
 The blinding shower had cleared away, hut the deadly cold wind 
 remained. He looked towards the sea — a mad wild stretch of 
 tumbled waters gnawing at the land. No signs of Gil or the 
 canoe. Gil had disappeared by glamour of his nation ; his 
 mother had been a noted spaewife, so that was not surprising. 
 He turned towards the land ; it was nothing but a level sea of 
 sand and salt, stretching away indefinitely northward, hideous, 
 barren, but only marked by the track of two resolute naked little 
 feet, not yet obliterated by the driving dust. 
 
 He was on the track now, and the ruby blazed and flamed out 
 finely, warming his heart. And he broke into song, even in that 
 hideous place, which God seemed to have forgotten. 
 
 All alone, thou and I in the desert, 
 
 In the land all forgotten of God, 
 In the land the last raised from the ocean, 
 
 In the land which no footsteps have trod, 
 In the land where the lost pioneer 
 
 Falls stricken in heart as in head, 
 In the land where his bones lie sand-buried, 
 
 In the land of the dead. 
 
 Hear me, darling, the hope of the nation, 
 
 Stay thy feet as thou Grossest the sand : 
 Thou art far on before me to landward ; 
 
 I look seaward — no help is at hand. 
 Stay thy feet in thy swiftness, I pray thee, 
 
 Through this region of drouth and of light : 
 Boy in Grey, I beseech thee to stay thee ; 
 
 Let me meet thee at night. 
 
 One said, who was never in error, 
 
 That the poor we had with us alway, 
 And in all times of sadness and terror, 
 
 When night is more bright than the day, 
 We can then lay our heads on thy bosom, 
 
 And, forgetful of false friends and old, 
 Find there all we wanted in this world, 
 
 Warm when others were cold. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 He was so very much pleased with his little song that he thought 
 the best thing he could do would be to sing it over again. A 
 
THE BOY IN GREY. 49 
 
 theatrical friend of mine tells me that encores are very seldom 
 successful : this one was a failure. 
 He began — 
 
 All alone, thou and I in the desert, 
 In the laud all forgotten of God— 
 
 and there he broke down. Was it forgotten of God ? 
 
 It seemed like it. A plain of level baking sand and salt as far 
 as the eye could reach, with a sky of brass overhead : not one 
 blade of grass or one drop of fresh water. Surely forgotten of 
 God if ever land was. He tried the song once more, but the 
 words stuck in his throat. 
 
 " Peem ! Peem ! " Who is this alone with us in this hideous 
 blazing desert ? A little golden fly ; in some ways more beauti- 
 fully organised than ourselves : a beautiful little golden fly, in 
 comparison to whose flight that of the eagle is a clumsy flapping, 
 and that of the woodcock a clumsy dash. That little fly makes 
 nine thousand strokes a minute with his pretty little wings. 
 What does he say as he hovers before Philarcte, passes him, goes 
 behind him, round his head, and at last lights on his shoulder ? 
 He is a very little fly, like a small stingless wasp, and he says 
 this— 
 
 " We are rather out of bounds, you and I. This is the desert, 
 where God is at work to found in future ages a new place for the 
 Boy in Grey's plough. This weary land is, chemically speaking, 
 already richer than the Polders which the Dutch reclaimed. It is 
 being gradually upheaved so that it can carry watercourses in 
 hollow places where there is but little evaporation. And the 
 armies of God are advancing on it, to shield it from the sun. A 
 few hundred miles northward you will meet their advance guard : 
 first skirmishers of bent grass, the little whorls of Banksia ; then 
 a forest of full-grown trees ; then Casuarinaa, at which point man 
 can live. Walk swiftly, and you will be among the towering box 
 forests of the gold land before you know where you are." 
 
 And so the fly flew away, and the Prince sped on several 
 hundred miles, until out of the salt desert he saw a small shattered 
 mountain, and under that mountain was a pool of fresh water, 
 with an old gum tree by the side of it. And the pool of fresh 
 water said to him — 
 
 " I am Jackson's Creek, and I am the finish and end of it. I 
 can't get any further at present, but I will bo down to the sea 
 some clay." 
 
 And the old blue gum said, " You and I have been a long time 
 about it." 
 
 5 
 
50 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 "I am not going to be much longer," said the water-hole: 
 " there has been a great storm up northward." 
 
 And as he spoke the Prince saw a hill of water coming down 
 the gully, carrying with it broken boughs, and sticks, and straw, 
 and dead kangaroos. And it burst into the pool and went sea- 
 ward, making a largeish lake in the desert, but scooping out a 
 fresh-water hole below the other. 
 
 " He is off," said the old gum-tree ; " we will soon have the 
 place in order at this rate. — Hi ! here ! don't go yet." 
 
 This last exclamation was not addressed to Prince Philarete, 
 but to a small tortoise, who had emerged from the old water-hole, 
 and was steadily bent down the side of the new stream to the 
 desert. 
 
 " I'm off too," said the tortoise. " I'm sick of seeing your old 
 boughs blown about. And you have been struck with lightning 
 three times— a thing you can't deny. I'm off to see the fun." 
 And away he pegged, twenty yards an hour. 
 
 " They are all leaving me," said the gum tree, weeping resinous 
 tears like the Prince's ruby. " The opossums will come soon and 
 live in my inside, and keep me awake all night ; the centipedes 
 will come and give me the tic -douloureux ; and the cockatoos will 
 come and pull and peck. And then the blackfellows will come 
 and make shields out of my bark, and will cut steps in me to get 
 at the opossums, and very likely set me on fire to burn them out. 
 I wish I was dead ! There is no place left in the world for a 
 gentleman of fixed opinions." 
 
 " You take this matter too much to heart, sir," said the Prince. 
 
 "Heart!" said the gum tree. "If you could only see my 
 inside, you would see that it has been gone for years. I shall 
 flare up like a foul chimney when they do set me on fire." 
 
 So he did ; but the oddest thing is that, although set on fire 
 three times, he is as well as ever. I have a personal acquaintance 
 with him, and on one occasion took the liberty of lighting a fire in 
 front of him, and sleeping inside him. 
 
 About a hundred miles on, the Prince came into a very pretty 
 country of acacias, with grass and everlasting flowers, where he 
 met a running brook, and he asked the brook where it was going ; 
 for, do you see, he had come that way himself, and wondered. 
 
 And the brook said, "As far as I can at present. Not farther 
 than the larger Banksias. This evaporation is telling on my 
 constitution already." 
 
 " You will not get to the sea, then ? " 
 
 "Not for a thousand years. In about that time I shall get 
 there." 
 
THE BOY IN GREY. 51 
 
 "Hawk! crawk ! chawk I "Wee! wah! chawk ! " said some- 
 body, to •whom the Prince turned and wished " Good morning." 
 
 " Say that again." 
 
 " Good morning, sir." 
 
 " Ho ! I am the Black Cockatoo with the yellow tail. I am 
 the worst tempered among the Scansores. I am the biggest 
 blackguard under the sun : that is about what I am." And he 
 hung on upside down, and pecked, and bit, and clawed, using the 
 most awful language all the time, until the Prince walked away 
 and left him, never stopping until he was brought up by a pair of 
 eyes in the grass. 
 
 " How do you do ? " said the Prince. But the eyes were there 
 still, though the mouth belonging to them said not one word. 
 
 This was not very comfortable. So the Prince advanced 
 towards the eyes, and found that they belonged to an insignificant 
 looking grey lizard, not nine inches long. 
 
 " Get up'," he said. 
 
 Whereupon the lizard said, " Piperry wip ! " emphatically, and 
 bolted out of the grass down the sandy path, full gallop, as if he 
 was going in for the Derby : he made such caracoles and demi- 
 voltes as you never saw in your fife ; and when he had gone down 
 the path for about fifty yards, he dashed into the heather again, 
 and was gone, leaving a cloud of dust behind him. I do not 
 know this gentleman's name. Philarete calls him the galloping 
 Hz aid. 
 
 Now in this sandy path there was a strange thing. The naked 
 footsteps of the Boy in Grey were plain enough, but in the sandy 
 path Philarete began to be aware that they were accompanied by 
 a fresh trail, and wherever he saw the Boy's footsteps in the sand 
 after this, even to nearly the last (as you will hear), he saw this 
 strange trail beside the Boy in Grey's naked footprints. 
 
 It puzzled him. The trail was so singular that I, who have 
 seen it often, can scarcely describe it. It was as though you put 
 your hand into the surface of the sand, and at intervals pushed it 
 from right to left ; that was all. What could it be ? 
 
 In a turn of the road, in a pleasant, happy, quiet little gully, 
 such as are to be seen in Australia and nowhere else — in a gully 
 of shadow, and trickling waters, and flowers, and the inurmur of 
 birds, in the earthly Paradise of the Australian spring — Philarete 
 met a quaint pretty little fellow, something like a small raccoon, 
 with white bands all over him, and a brush like a fox ; and, 
 seeing something intelligent in his eye, determined to converse 
 with him on the subject of this strange trail, now parallel to that 
 of the Boy in Grey. 
 
52 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 " What is your name, if you please ? " asked Philarete. 
 
 " They call me Myrmecohius now," he said ; " but I have not 
 got any real name. I was born before man and before speech, 
 and I have thirty-three molars. I am the oldest beast alive, and 
 the she-oak is the oldest tree. The she-oak has no real name 
 either, it is only a consolidated Equisetum." 
 
 " That is a very fine name, though," said Philarete. " But 
 look here, I want you to tell me something. What is the name 
 of that — person — who seems to be leaving his trail beside my 
 friend the Boy in Grey ? " 
 
 " Why," said the Myrmecohius, " the settlers call him the 
 Carpet Snake." 
 
 " Is that his real name ? " 
 
 "Well, it is hard to say what his real name is," said the 
 Myrmecohius. 
 
 " Is he, like you, too old to have a name ? " 
 
 " Oh no, he comes into historical times. You can read of him 
 in the third chapter of Genesis. He has kept his name, too, very 
 well. Cuvier gives him exactly the same name as the old Greeks 
 did." 
 
 "And what is that?" 
 
 "Python." 
 
 "The snake of Apollo?" 
 
 " The very same. Some call him ' Science ' now ; and he still 
 lives in the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which, as you are 
 doubtless aware, grows between the devil and the deep sea." 
 
 The frightened Prince said, " Why does he go with the Boy in 
 Grey?" 
 
 " To catch you and speak to you." 
 
 " Will he follow the Boy in Grey to the end ? " 
 
 " No ; your turn first, his afterwards. The time for the meet- 
 ing of the Python and the Boy in Grey alone is not yet. If the 
 two meet without you, there will be evil such as no man has seen. 
 Is Athanasio with you ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " I wish he was. There is a great deal more to be got out of 
 Mm yet ; however, if you must get on without him, get on. 
 Don't hurry, and don't dawdle. There is plenty of time, but 
 remember that the night cometh in which no man can work." 
 After saying which the Myrmecohius quietly skulked away into the 
 heather. 
 
 The next person he met was an American professor of natural 
 history, in green spectacles, who was, as he said, " Kinder looking 
 round and sorting things." He never said one single word, but 
 
THE BOY IN GIIEY. 53 
 
 he took off the Prince's cap and felt his head, after which he went 
 straight off, and wrote his great paper on the solitary occurrence 
 of a Doleco-cephalous Pithecoid in the interior of Australia. Such 
 is democratic respect for princes ! 
 
 The moment he was out of sight there was such a noise as you 
 never heard. If all the beasts in the Regent's Park were to have 
 nothing to eat for a fortnight, there would he a fine noise, I doubt 
 not ; but it would he nothing to the noise which arose the instant 
 the naturalist's back was turned. The Prince stopped his ears, 
 but all the beasts and the birds in the bush resolved themselves 
 into an indignation meeting, and carried him into the chair by 
 acclamation. 
 
 White's thrush (who had been in America) always declared to 
 the day of his death that all the pow-wows he'd ever seen were 
 fizzle to this. 
 
 Philarete, finding himself actually in the chair, bethought him- 
 self of his princely duties, and called for " Order ! " to which the 
 spur-winged plover began yelling "Hear! hear!" and found 
 himself unable to leave off for above a quarter of an bom 1 , not- 
 withstanding that all the other birds kept yelling and howling 
 " Silence ! " at him. 
 
 At last there was a dead sdence, which was broken by the 
 kangaroo, who moved the first resolution by saying " Poof." 
 
 " I deny it," said the scorpion, running round and round in the 
 sand ; "I deny it." 
 
 "Whereupon the laughing jackass came down off his tree, ate up 
 the scorpion, and flew up into his tree again ; whereupon the 
 duck-billed porcupine, bristling up his quills, moved that the 
 " laughing jackass was out of order." 
 
 The laughing jackass replied only " Ho ! ho ! ho ! Hah ! hah ! 
 he ! " 
 
 The porcupine was not going to be laughed out of his motion 
 to order. He called for a seconder. 
 
 The brush-turkey said " that two courses only were open to the 
 meeting, either to condemn the laughing jackass for his proceed- 
 ings with regard to the scorpion, or not to do so. For his part 
 he recommended the meeting to do neither." 
 
 The crow said that that was a recurrent negation. 
 
 The brush-turkey said he had left his dictionary on the piano, 
 and so he could not reply to his honourable friend's long 
 words. 
 
 Meanwhile there had come about a free fight between the 
 opossum and the native cat, who had got their teeth into one 
 another, and were making the dust fly, I can tell you. The 
 
54 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 meeting were highly delighted and excited, making a disorderly 
 ring round the combatants. 
 
 " Go it ! " yelled the eagle ; " three to two on the native cat ! 
 Go it, Dasyurus ! get your teeth in his nose and hold on. Go 
 it ! " And the old rascal, who had no more fight in him than 
 your grandmother, went on bohhing up and down in the most 
 ridiculous manner, drooping his wings and yelling, until the 
 Prince caught him a good box on the ears, and sent him 
 sprawling. 
 
 ' ' What are they fighting about ? ' ' asked the Prince of the 
 kangaroo, who seemed the most sensible person present. 
 
 " Nothing at all," said the kangaroo ; " that is the point of the 
 joke. It's a prize fight." 
 
 "It is one of our national sports," said the porcupine. 
 
 "Oh! it is one of your national sports, is it? And what is 
 the object of this meeting ? " 
 
 " To protest against the naturalist, who has been killing us for 
 specimens," said the kangaroo. " We have not been able to call 
 our souls our own. He says he wants to observe our habits, and 
 immediately kills us indiscriminately. I don't call that natural 
 history. Blow that. Poof." 
 
 "He wants to examine your internal construction," said the 
 Prince, who, like all true princes, was a patron of science. 
 
 " Internal construction ! " said the porcupine, with all his quills 
 up. "What odds is my inside to him? I don't want to bother 
 wfth Ms inside. If I had the examination of his internal con- 
 struction, I'd do it in a way he wouldn't like : yes, indeed." 
 
 The Prince argued that some of our highest poets and novel- 
 writers were in the habit of turning themselves inside out for the 
 inspection of the public, and that when the public got tired of that, 
 they generally took an historical or other character and tried to 
 turn him inside out ; but the porcupine could not be brought to 
 see matters in this light. 
 
 "Let him leave my inside alone, and I'll go bail I leave his 
 alone," was all that he would say, and that very sulkily. 
 
 The Prince finding that the rest of the meeting were all mad 
 over the prize fight between the opossum and the native cat, and 
 that to argue about the first principles of art with an ignorance as 
 crass as that of the porcupine, was useless, quietly vacated the 
 chair and slipped away into the wood. 
 
THE BOY IN GHEY. 55 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Now he came into the solemn towering hox forest. All around 
 him were great trees, as large as his father's largest oaks, beneath 
 which the level turf stretched away for miles in long Hats, with 
 brave flowers, orchises and everlasting flowers ; and sometimes 
 these forest flats would he broken by little abrupt rocky ridges, 
 with red clay and white quartz showing amidst the scant grass 
 and thick flowers ; and here the gold lay about so thick that you 
 could see it as you walked ; and on one hillside there were sap- 
 phires like blue stars, and they told him of the Boy in Grey, and 
 how he had gone by with a sapphire on his bosom bigger than any 
 of them.* Here also were snakes in plenty, harmless and 
 venomous ; but they never troubled him, poor things, any more 
 than they will trouble you, if you leave them alone. These rocky 
 rises, with glimpses of the distant blue mountains between the 
 tree-stems, were the most peaceful and beautiful places which he 
 had seen ; and here he met the king of the kangaroos. And the 
 king of the kangaroos asked him what o'clock it was. 
 
 " Greenwich time ? " asked Philaretc. 
 
 " Did you say Greenwich fair ? " said the kangaroo, who stood 
 seven feet high and looked rather stupid. 
 
 "No, Greenwich time. Eight hours difference, you know." 
 
 "Ho! " said the kangaroo ; "just scratch my head, will you 
 have the goodness ? " 
 
 And the Prince did so. 
 
 " I have got a message for you," said the kangaroo. 
 
 "From the Boy in Grey?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And what is it?" 
 
 "I have forgotten all about it. Or at least I have forgotten 
 whether I remember it or not ; or, to be more correct, I can't 
 remember whether I have forgotten it." 
 
 " Can't you think of it ? " said Philaretc. 
 
 " Oh, yes, I can think of it, but I can't remember one word of 
 it." 
 
 "What was it about?" 
 
 " It was about as long as my tail," said the kangaroo. 
 
 "How did it begin?" 
 
 "At the beginning," returned the kangaroo, promptly. "At 
 least, I am not sure that it did not begin in the middle." 
 
 * Black Hill, Buuinyong. The writer there fouuel a great number of 
 sapphires, but, not tbinking what they were, ultimately lost them all. 
 
56 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 " Do you think it began at the end ? " 
 
 " Very likely, for aught I know," said the kangaroo. 
 
 It was no use talking to the silly thing, and so he walked on. 
 But he had not gone a hundred yards before the kangaroo called 
 out, " Hi ! hullo ! come back ! " And the Prince went. 
 
 " Just scratch my head, will you ? " said the kangaroo. And 
 Philaretc walked away quite angry. 
 
 There were parrots enough here of all colours to have stocked 
 Jainrach's for a twelvemonth, whistling and jabbering and contra- 
 dicting. A solemn emu whom he met, and of whom he asked the 
 way, told him that this place was called Jaw Fair, corresponding 
 to Bunyan's Prating Bow, and that this was the great day of the 
 year with the Parrots' Benefit Societies, on which they spent 
 annually twenty-five per cent, of their savings. Pretty as the 
 parrots were, Philarete was glad enough to get out of the noise, 
 and thankfully accepted a seat on the emu's back : who neverthe- 
 less stood still after the Prince was comfortably between his 
 shoulders, and bent his beautiful neck and head in all directions. 
 
 "I am waiting for the white cockatoo," he explained. "He 
 has to come with us. He is attending Jaw Fair." 
 
 " Does he spend his money? " asked Philarete. 
 
 The emu made a noise in his stomach like the rattling of 
 pebbles. It was his way of laughing. 
 
 " Not he," he said. " He is too wide-awake for that. But he 
 likes society, and has great powers of conversation ; so he goes. 
 There is the eagle ready for us there on that bough. Oh, here is 
 the cockatoo. So off we go." 
 
 He bent his breast nearly to the ground, and away they went 
 twenty miles an hour. The eagle dipped off his bough, rushed 
 upwards like a rocket into the sky until he seemed a speck, 
 wheeled round, and came rushing close past the Prince's car like 
 a whirlwind ; after which he took up the position which he held 
 all through their wonderful journey, just a hundred yards in front 
 of the emu, ten feet from the ground. 
 
 The swift elastic emotion of the emu at first engaged Philarete's 
 attention, and then he began looking at the eagle as they sped 
 headlong forward. With wings fifteen feet across, this bird held 
 his magnificent course before them. Through the deep forest, 
 where the green and yellow lights fell flickering on his chocolate 
 and orange back, he held on like a meteor before them, until the 
 forest grew thinner and thinner, and they came on the wild wide 
 open plain, with a dim blue mountain here and there upon the 
 wide sea-like horizon — still before them always the steadfast 
 eagle, with his flying shadow upon the gulden grass. 
 
THE BOY IN GREY. 57 
 
 Northward ever, beyond the bounds of human knowledge, past 
 solitary lakes covered with black swans, ducks, and pelicans ; now 
 racing across the lower spore of some lonely extinct volcano, now 
 crossing some deep ravine scooped out of the table-land by some 
 fretting creek, growing siknt before the coming summer. But as 
 day waned, the day of all days in the Prince's life, they came to a 
 pleasant peaceful granite country, where there were trees and 
 ferns, as if in a European park, and a silent creek, with lilies, 
 and reeds, and rashes, which whispered and rustled in the 
 melancholy evening wind. 
 
 The eagle sat upon a tree, and the emu drank at the creek, 
 holding up his head after each draught, like the Interpreter's 
 fowl, to give thanks to Heaven. Now for the first time the 
 Prince saw that the cockatoo was with them, and thought that he 
 woidd like a little conversation ; but the cockatoo only said in a 
 whisper, " We cannot talk here." 
 
 " What place is this," said Philarete, " so solemn, so sad, and 
 yet so beautiful? " 
 
 " This is the Creek Mestibethiwong, the Creek of the Lost 
 Footsteps : follow me." 
 
 So he flew a little way and lighted on a tree, under which there 
 lay a human figure on its side, withered long since by rain and 
 sun, with the cheek pressed in the sand. So lies Leichardt, so 
 lay Wills. 
 
 While Phdarete was looking on him, not with terror but with 
 deep pity, the cockatoo lit upon his shoulder, and said — 
 
 " He set his feet before the feet of his fellows, and here his feet 
 failed him, and he lay down and died." 
 
 "All alone '? " said Philarete. " Alas ! to die so, away from 
 all! All alone?" 
 
 "Not alone," whispered the pretty bird. " See there, go and 
 look. You are not afraid." 
 
 Phdarete went up undismayed to look. By the dead man's 
 hand was a Bible, and Philarete read — 
 
 "When thou pa><e>t through the waters. I will be with thee ; 
 and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee." 
 
 " Not alone," said Philarete ; "I see." 
 
 At this moment there burst on his astonished ear such a 
 ravishing flood of melody that his breath came thick and short 
 with pleasure. Beginning with a few short sharp notes of perfect 
 quality, it rolled up into a trmnpet-like peal, and then died oil' in 
 a few bars like the booming of minster-bells on a still evening in 
 a deep wooded valley, in the land which had become a dim 
 nicinorv. 
 
58 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 "In all my father's land are no such hells as those. Who is it 
 that rings them over the dead man? " 
 
 " That is the Australian magpie," said his companion. " Now 
 lie down a little." 
 
 The setting sun was smiting the highest houghs as he laid his 
 head on the sand. For a little time he looked across to where 
 the dead man lay, and in a little time he slept. When he awoke 
 it was dark night, and his clothes were wet with dew. The emu, 
 the eagle, and the cockatoo were gone, and he was alone hy the 
 silent creek with the dead man. 
 
 Philarctc rose, and in the daze which followed his sleep called 
 to the dead pioneer to arise also. But the dead pioneer was past 
 calling hy all princes : he lay quite quiet hy the side of the Creek 
 of the Lost Footsteps. Philarete was now absolutely alone, with 
 a horror upon him. Now he knew that the dead man was dead ; 
 now he knew that he was 14,000 miles from home, alone and 
 without help, in the company of a dead man who had lain down 
 and died here. Who could help him in this terrihlc strait and in 
 this hlack midnight, under the strange Southern Cross, and 
 Magellan's clouds ? 
 
 There was hut One who could help the poor child, God Him- 
 self ; and the poor little man knelt down in the sand and prayed 
 that God would tell him how to follow the Boy in Grey, as 
 Christ did, and that he would he good to Arturio, Polemos, and 
 Athanasio. The hoy was very humhle. He was alone with 
 death, and he did not wish to die until he had seen the Boy in 
 Grey. Sometimes he wished he was back with his toys, some- 
 times he wished he was with rioting Polemos, sometimes he wished 
 that he was with Arturio, in spite of Arturio's priggishness ; hut 
 when he said his poor little prayer he thought more of Athanasio 
 than any one ; for Athanasio had loved the Boy in Grey, and his 
 family had quarrelled with the family of Athanasio on the subject. 
 But the poor little Prince said his prayer, as he looked on the dead 
 man by the silent creek, and his prayer was answered in a most 
 singular and remarkable way. From this moment he had no fear 
 whatever. He knew now that he could dree out his weird to the 
 end, without any fear of failure. He had been doing his very best, 
 and his work had been accepted ; the Great Cause was sending to 
 him inferior beasts to teach him the great lesson, that the higher 
 animals are far before us men in what is now called virtue. The 
 poor little man had been taught to pray, and he prayed ; and his 
 poor little prayer, arriving from his heart, was answered. 
 
 There was a tiny wind on his cheek, and a tiny voice in his ear : 
 a little bird lit on his shoulder, I doubt a democratic bird, and 
 
THE BOY IN GEEY. 59 
 
 said, " Don't be afraid of it now, Prince ; go through with it. He 
 is not far ; " and then the Prince saw that the emu wren had lit 
 on his left shoulder ; then he remembered what the elephant had 
 told him in India. He had no fear now, for the Elephant's words 
 were coming time, word for word. Xo fear or halting now : the 
 emu wren was on his shoulder, and the Boy in Grey was not far. 
 
 " Will you come on to my finger ? " said the Prince. 
 
 The emu wren did so. When he saw it the Prince gave a great 
 sigh. It was only a little bird, one of the smallest birds in exis- 
 tence ; it was only a little grey bird, without any "tropical" 
 colour at all ; but yet the most astoimdingly beautiful bird in 
 creation. Conceive a little tiny wren, which has a grey tail more 
 delicate than that of the Bird of Paradise. How did it get that 
 tail ? I, believing in a good God, cannot tell you. Competition 
 and selection I do believe in, but I have seen things which tell 
 me that there is a great Will, and the emu wren is one. 
 
 Such a very little bird, with such a very loug tail. It lit on 
 the Prince's forefinger in the dark, and it said, " Look at my 
 tail." 
 
 " I can't see," said the Prince ; " and he is dead." 
 
 "I am sorry you can't see my tail," said the emu wren, 
 " because I am a very hmnble little bird, and I like to be admired 
 sometimes. However, I had to come to you in the dark, and I 
 have come. Do you think that my tail came by competition or 
 selection ? " 
 
 " I don't suppose it matters much," said the Prince. 
 
 " He don't think it matters much," said the emu wren. " Pipe 
 up." 
 
 ''Who are you talking to?" said the Prince, with that dis- 
 regard of grammar which is not confined to princes, but which 
 has actually been attributed to deans. 
 
 (If you want a piece of fun, young man, just examine the 
 "grammar" of the last sentence — "a disregard of grammer 
 which is not confined to princes." It means absolutely nothing 
 at all, but you never would have seen it if I hadn't told you). 
 
 " Who are you talking to ? " he repeated. 
 
 " It's White's thrush," said the emu wren ; and White's thrush 
 flew up on a tree, and said, " Toroo ! toroo ! the night is dark, 
 but he must meet him before the morning, or the world will lapse 
 hack into its old folly. Hurry him on. I live in all lands, and I 
 tell you he must go." 
 
 " Take me on your shoulder," said the emu wren. 
 
 "Bonny sweet, of course I will," said the Prince. "But 
 why?" 
 
00 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 " Because of the carpet snake." 
 
 " Must I meet him ? " said Philarete. 
 
 " Yes, he is slower than the Boy in Grey. You must be quiet, 
 and let him have his will of you. You must he very quiet and 
 submissive, or you will never see the Boy in Grey, and then the 
 whole world will be ruined." 
 
 They sped on, these three, through the night, leaving the dead 
 man, the lost pioneer, lying where he was by the creek ; it seemed 
 nearly morning, when White's thrush said, " Toroo ! here he is." 
 
 " The Boy in Grey ? " whispered Philarete. 
 
 " No, the python," said White's thrash. 
 
 They were rising on to the mountains now, and Philarete put 
 his friend the emu wren off his shoulder on to a bush, for the 
 python, or carpet snake, had ceased following the Boy in Grey, 
 and was lying a dark mass on the sandy path before him. You 
 see that the emu wren had a suspicion or fancy, and the Prince, 
 being a real prince, was afraid that the snake of Apollo would 
 charm her, and then gobble her up and swallow her. The Prince, 
 being an fait with affairs, knew that the thing had happened 
 several times before, and his statesmanlike intellect told him that 
 it was very likely to happen again (as it has). So he put the 
 emu wren on a bush before he had his interview with the python, 
 or carpet snake. 
 
 Yet the ruby on his breast was blazing out now with a vengeance. 
 The Boy in Grey is not far off when the python is near. The 
 carpet snake raised his head from the ground, and lashing his tail 
 round the Prince's heel, passed his head between his legs, and 
 raised his head so that it nearly touched the Prince's face. Its 
 eyes were for one instant like beryl, and the Prince said, " I 
 understand, and I will go first: " then the python, or carpet 
 snake, uncoiled himself from the boy's body and let him go. 
 The Prince was alone with the emu wren and White's thrush, 
 and it was very dark, but he knew that if he could dree out the 
 weird a light would break on the world such as the world had 
 never seen yet. He had looked into the python's eyes, and he 
 had learnt something, for you learn quick in that school. Ho 
 had learned something from the King and Queen, his father and 
 mother ; now the only thing was to catch the Boy in Grey before 
 it was too late. 
 
 Some people older than children will read this story ; to them 
 we should say, " Help to catch the Boy in Grey. Whether you 
 are Dissenters, Romanists, Tractarians — whatsoever you are, catch 
 the Boy in Grey, even if you walk as far as Philarete after him." 
 Speaking now to my equals or superiors, I do appeal in favour of 
 
THE BOY IN GREY. Gl 
 
 the Boy in Grey. It would seem that they are going to keep the 
 very Bible from him. " Aux amies, Citoyens ! " 
 
 The Python dropped from Philarete's hody into the sand, and 
 he was free to go on through the darkness of the Australian night, 
 through the rustling Australian forest. The Prince went very 
 quickly ; the emu wren and White's thrush said each of them 
 that they had something to say to him, but the Prince only said, 
 " I have seen the python." The boy said that it was merely a 
 matter of time ; the python had not spoken to him, but he had 
 seen two things in the eyes of the python — Love and Hate. 
 Young man, you had better listen to this : Love, played with and 
 abused, is very apt to become furious Hate. I heard of a country 
 called Ireland once ; but that is no matter. Prince Philarete saw 
 that he must hurry after the Boy in Grey. 
 
 Whither? There were no footsteps in the sand now. 
 White's thrush had left him, and would guide him no more ; 
 only the little emu wren was on his finger, and he asked her, 
 " Hoav shall we find the Boy in Grey? " and she said, " I don't 
 exactly know." 
 
 "I would give you anything," said Philarete, "if you could 
 guide me to him." 
 
 "My dear," said the emu wren, "we have neither of us got 
 anything, that would come to the same thing in the end, and it 
 is not the least use asking the black cockatoo, he is so terribly 
 
 OlipoitS." 
 
 " Hah ! hah ! you two," said a voice over their heads. " Wee, 
 wah ! you're a pretty couple of fools. I saw Eyre through the 
 great Australian bight. I am the black cockatoo, and I have 
 heard every word you have said. I was Eyre's pilot. Do you 
 think I could not manage two such twopenny fools as you ? The 
 Boy in Grey is just over the mountain. Look sharp ! " 
 
 " I am afraid you are a very sad blackguard, sir," said the 
 Prince. 
 
 " Well, if ye have not found out that before you must be a 
 fool," said the black cockatoo. " You keep my counsel, and hang 
 Henderson, that's all we convicts want of you. We black 
 cockatoos don't like Henderson — he knows too much. We don't 
 mind Bruce so much, but we don't like Henderson." 
 
 But we are leaving our Prince alone, utterly alone in the desert. 
 The black cockatoo Hew away before the Prince in the direction of 
 the Boy in Grey, and the emu wren stepped away and saw she 
 could go no farther. 
 
 The night was very dark and the wood was very wild, the hill 
 was very steep, too, now, and he was utterly and entirely alone. 
 
62 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 There was a great thicket of Eucalypus Dumosa in her way, but 
 the naked feet of the Boy in Grey had crushed it down right and 
 left so that the Prince could follow. 
 
 But as he rose into the dim breezy solitude of the upper and 
 more open forest, he saw that he was getting into such a presence 
 as he had never seen before. The night was very dark and dim, 
 and night winds were making lonely whispers like the voices of 
 dead men among the boughs of the mountain forest trees. Yet 
 there was a light growing in his eye, and before he could tell what 
 light that was, he was out of the dark wood on to a breezy down, 
 where the night wind sighed old memories in the grass. Before 
 him was a profound valley, dark as the pit, and beyond that a vast 
 alp leaping up into the black sky with sheets of snow. That was 
 the light. 
 
 It was such a wild, bare, bald down, and it was so far from 
 home, and such a hopeless place, that the Prince would have been 
 frightened had not Cowardice and he parted company. So un- 
 utterably solitary so terribly magnificent. Around him, hundreds 
 of miles in every direction, was an ocean of rolling woodlands, 
 untrodden by human foot. The solitude of the plains is terrible, 
 but the solitude of the mountain forest is overwhelming. 
 
 The wind whistled through the grass and moved it. There 
 seemed to be nothing here save himself, and the stars, and the 
 alp ; but there was something else too. There was the Boy in 
 Grey. A cry rose in that solitary desert which seemed to bring 
 fresh flashes from the Southern Cross, for the Boy in Grey, with 
 naked feet, was lying in the grass before him, and the Prince 
 cried out, " My darling, I have got you at last! let us lie warm 
 together, for I am so very very cold." 
 
 So prince and peasant lay together in the long grass on the 
 windy solitary down. And as the Prince kissed the Boy in 
 Grey, with one kiss for Henri, one for Louis, and one for 
 Philarete, morning came down on the summit of the alp and 
 made it blaze again. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 When they awoke and rose to turn back together, the alp was all 
 one sheet of glory and light, and they laughed, those two together, 
 with their arms round one another's necks. 
 
THE BOY IN GREY. 03 
 
 " I thought I should never catch you," said the Prince. 
 
 " And I thought you were never coming," said the Boy in Grey. 
 
 " Where were you going ? " said the Prince. 
 
 " Down there," said the Boy in Grey. 
 
 "Into that dark and horrible valley?" said the Prince. 
 " What is the name of it ? " 
 
 " Revolution," said the Boy in Grey. 
 
 " But vou are coming back with me now ? " said Philarete. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " What is the name of the alp, boy ? " 
 
 " Duty," said the Boy in Grey. 
 
 " I see," said Philarete. " You were going to scale it through 
 the Valley of Revolution. Coidd we have gone up it together? " 
 
 " I don't know. I cannot tell in any way. It is a dark matter. 
 But if you had not come I should have tried it by myself. But 
 you were true to the time which old Anangke settled, and so we 
 will go happily home together." 
 
 " You will live with me now, you will live with Polemos, 
 Arturio, and Athanasio ? " said the Prince. 
 
 "I think not," said the Boy in Grey. "If Polemos would 
 give up his fury, if Arturio would give up being a prig, and 
 Athanasio being a bore, I could get on much bettor with your lot ; 
 at present I don't exactly like them. But with regard to yourself, 
 I am with you, my own love, to the world's end." 
 
 And so they walked back, and everybody saw that a coalition 
 had been made between the Prince and the Boy in Grey. The 
 Black Cockatoo was perfectly furious. He screeched and yelled 
 to that extent that the feathers went flying off the top of his head, 
 and he had to borrow an old wig from the Duck-billed Echidna, 
 before he coidd go to the International Exhibition at Melbourne. 
 And a nice figure he looked with his head all over porcupine- 
 quills. The Carrion Crow hated this arrangement, and being out 
 on ticket-ofdeave, called a meeting on Clerkenwell Green ; but 
 Colonel Henderson, having been round by Field Lane with Lord 
 Shaftesbury, happened to attend that meeting in an accidental 
 way, and very soon settled the Carrion Crow. There was a good 
 deal said about the coalition between the Prince and the Boy in 
 Grey. The very Ornithorhyncus paradoxus having come into it, 
 a gentleman I know well, but not free of speech ; the Whale makes 
 no objection, the Emu is perfectly charmed. The Parrot don't 
 care, because it is only something more to talk about ; but the 
 Echidna or Porcupine says there is a dereliction of principle. 
 But what are you to do with a porcupine ? Blackfellows brought 
 us two one afternoon, and we desired to tame them, and let them 
 
04 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 go. They at once buried themselves in the earth with a nimble- 
 ness and dexterity which the Right Hon. Robert Lowe, a country- 
 man of theirs, has never equalled at his best. Poi'cupines are not 
 dangerous. The Boy in Grey went quietly home with Prince 
 Philarete, caring nothing about what was said of them. 
 
 Swiftly as they went back to their home, the enemy was swifter. 
 The Prince and the Boy in Grey had been separated too long, and 
 fearful mischief had occurred. The Prince and the Boy in Grey 
 thought that only three nights had passed since one had been 
 away after the other into the snow on the night of the great ball 
 at the palace. The White Cockatoo soon set them right on that 
 point. 
 
 They were hurrying into town towards the palace as fast as 
 they could go, when some one sung out " Hi ! you two ! " and 
 they stopped. And the Prince looked round to see who spoke, 
 and it was the White Cockatoo in a cage, hung out of window, 
 holding on upside down by his perch, and screaming at intervals. 
 
 " Hullo, you sir ! " they said. " What are you doing here '? " 
 
 " I have been caught by a blackfellow, and sold to a nigger, 
 and the nigger taught me American, and then he sold me to a 
 sailor who taught me to swear (which he could), and the sailor 
 sold me to a Jew, who sold me to a first mate, and I learnt a deal 
 more bad language on the voyage, and the mate sold me to 
 Jamrach, and Jamrach sold me to my present proprietor. She 
 is an old lady of religious proclivities, and she don't approve of 
 me because I sometimes swear in conversation. I am trying to 
 get over it, and perhaps I may. I say, you two, you have made a 
 nice mess of it between you. Where the dickens have you been 
 so long, you two ? " 
 
 " So long ! " said Philarete ; "we have only been away three 
 days." 
 
 "You fool!" said the Cockatoo (for he is a very impudent 
 person), " you and the Boy in Grey have been away for eleven 
 years, and everything has gone to mops and brooms " (it was his 
 vulgar way of speaking). " We thought you were dead. The 
 Carrion Crow has been here and kicked up no end of a row about 
 you two." 
 
 They hurried on. " Come to the palace, darling," said the 
 Prince to the Boy in Grey. 
 
 " No," said the Boy. "Is it true that we have been eleven 
 years away ? Let us look at one another." 
 
 And they turned : they had been in Fairyland, where all things 
 are possible, and the idiotic old Cockatoo was right. 
 
 When they looked at one another now in the light of the 
 
THE BOY IN GREY. 65 
 
 summer's evening, each saw in the other a magnificent young 
 man, full of power, grace, and potential fury. 
 
 " I will not go to the palace," said the Boy in Grey. " I must 
 hurry to my hrothers : we have heen too long away, and I must 
 see to matters. "\Ye are too old to kiss, and I must be off. In 
 the darkest hour of the night which is coming I will be with you. 
 But you must call, or our people will not hear. Good-night, 
 until the dawn smites the cathedral spire as it did the alp." 
 
 And then he was gone, and his sapphire blazed no longer. 
 
 Philaivte went on to the palace gate, and at the palace gate he 
 met a gallant young gentleman, of gigantic stature, on whose 
 breast was an emerald, burning brightly. ''Who goes there?" 
 .-aid the grand young man, clashing his hand on his sword. He 
 did not know Philarete, but Philarete knew him : he said very 
 quietly, " Polemos," and the noble old lad knew him at once, and 
 said, not with effusion, because a time soldier never effuses — well, 
 we will not repeat what Polemos said : it wouldn't do to repeat 
 what Polemos said ; we always said that we could not report in 
 detail the language of Polemos, and we have not done so. There 
 cannot be the least harm, however, in saying that Polemos took 
 the outrageous liberty of smacking the Prince on the back, and 
 saying, " None too soon, boy, none too soon." 
 
 Polemos bellowed — I can use no other expression — and forth 
 came Athanasio, a line young man, but at this time a little weak 
 in the back (his family are troubled with chronic rickets, and have 
 given the State a deal of trouble one way or another, though they 
 have done much service). Athanasio came out and blessed the 
 arrangement generally, which made Polemos take the diametrically 
 opposite line. But the more Polemos went on, the more Atha- 
 nasio went on the opposite track — to use the words of Boileau, 
 " II benit subitement le (juerrier const?nie " — so dexterously every 
 time he opened his mouth, that Polemos got utterly sulky and 
 dumb, and let the quarrel stand over until the year 2666, in 
 which year it is wildly possible this squabble between soldier and 
 priest may be ended. 
 
 Athanasio then informed Philarete that his father and mother 
 were both dead, that Cacodemus was Prime Minister, and that it 
 was all Philarete's fault for going away for eleven years and six 
 months, when 
 
 Arturio, with his diamond blazing brightly, dashed out of the 
 door, and said, " You fools ! where is my boy '? " and the splendid 
 young giant put his arm over Philarete's shoulder, and led him in. 
 Of all his friends, Philarete had loved Arturio least ; but now — 
 but now his heart beat only one solitary measure with his. 
 
 6 
 
66 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 " Are they really dead ? " said Philarete. 
 
 "They are dead," said Arturio, "and you will see them no 
 more, for ever. You do not fear death ? " 
 
 "I am not come to that yet," said Philarete, quickly; "I 
 should he glad to have time to weep for them." 
 
 " Work first, weeping after," said Arturio. " To-night is the 
 night of all time. You have kissed the Boy in Grey, and the 
 Carrion Crow has babbled out the fact. My Prince, my beloved, 
 have I ever been hard with you ? " 
 
 " It is all forgiven now, Arturio. You have never been so well 
 beloved as you are now." 
 
 " I shall die to-night," said Arturio, " I know it. It was not 
 given to me to kiss the Boy in Grey. But, Prince, I wish you to 
 see and to act. Cacodemus, weary of your long delay, is in 
 revolution, and we must fight this night. Our only hope is in 
 you, and in the Boy in Grey." 
 
 No time for sorrow over his lost parent ; no time for anything 
 save action. It was his dawdling which had ruined everything, 
 as he thought. It was his dawdling after the Boy in Grey which 
 saved the kingdom, I say. 
 
 It is no use talking politics here. Any child nowadays can 
 understand me when I say that Cacodemus had gone to the bad 
 altogether. He had not only deserted the monarchy, a thing we 
 do not like, but he had been talking excited bosh among people 
 who could not argue with him, and who, in consequence, believed 
 in him. We have seen the same thing a hundred times over. 
 
 " We must fight to-night or never," said Arturio, and the 
 Cockatoo quite agreed ; for the Cockatoo had, it seemed, been 
 at the Ballarat riots, and had thought it necessary to open its 
 cage and get out, for the purpose of advising the Prince. For 
 a similar reason the Myrmecobius came in and said that he had 
 thirty-two molars, which was not to the point in any way ; but 
 he was a deputation, and was dismissed with politeness. The 
 American Bear and Tom Brown also got up a deputation ; but 
 the American Bear fell downstairs (as plantigrades will) and broke 
 a gas lamp, and said that Tom Brown must pay it, or he'd hire a 
 judge and make him. In fact, there were endless deputations, in 
 the middle of which the Carrion Crow escaped and carried off all 
 the plate and a good deal of the jewellery. In fact, there was a 
 terrible fight on hand, and Arturio, no bad politician with all his 
 faults, could not for a moment say which way it was going. 
 
 Arturio hoped that Philarete would live through it. As for 
 himself, he knew he must die in the quarrel, and he was content. 
 But would Athauasio be killed ? that was the question. AVhat I 
 
THE BOY IN GBEY. 67 
 
 am telling you is perfectly true, that Arturio would die for Atha- 
 nasio. The real aristocrat will die for the Churchman. It is an 
 old bargain. I am not sure that it is any business of mine, I only 
 speak of matters as I find them. On that night of storm and war 
 Arturio was more anxious about Athanasio than he was about 
 Philarete or the Boy in Grey. 
 
 Cacodemus had played his cards very well. He had said two 
 lies : he had said that the Boy in Grey and the Prince were dead. 
 The dog knew better — he knew that they had met, had kissed, 
 and were coming. The Fly of the desert had told him that the 
 Cockatoo had told all the other cockatoos about it, and cockatoos 
 spread intelligence very fast, as every one knows. But he lied on, 
 and said that they were dead. The Tiger and the Elephant had 
 an interview with him, and begged him to mind what he was at, 
 for they did not want the old story over again. He kicked the 
 Tiger (Cacodemus has pluck), and ordered the Elephant out of 
 the room. The Elephant at once departed to Jarnrach's, and on 
 his way he met the Boy in Grey and told him 7m opinion, and 
 the Boy in Grey, now grown to a noble young giant, told him his 
 opinion. The Elephant offered his services, combined with those 
 of his friend the Tiger, but the Boy in Grey thought he had better 
 not avail himself of them save in case of emergency. I want you 
 to pay particular attention to this. If you have our Boy in Grey 
 with you, you can do without either the Tiger or the Elephant. 
 You don't see it '? Wait till you are forty. 
 
 But the night was a night of storm and fury. At seven o'clock 
 that night the attack on the palace began, and poor young Prince 
 Philarete, who had been eleven years in Fairyland, like his elder 
 brother Louis XYL, found himself face to face with an infuriated 
 mob directed by Cacodemus. 
 
 Louis XYL, Philarete's elder brother, never kissed the Boy 
 fairly. Our Prince had — that makes the difference between the 
 two princes. The supreme and awful hour was nearly the same 
 with both, but "you may wear your rue with a difference." 
 There anus a seethine howling hell of the wrath and rage of a 
 neglected population outside Philarete's palace. Then shattering 
 file-firing from his soldiers, under the direction of Polemos. Then 
 the terrible bursting of doors by the mob ; then the doors burst 
 open and the mob in ; then his gallant guards fighting from stair 
 to stair ; then his gallant men and brave gentlemen lying dead 
 around him. Polemos dead, with his sword clutched tightly in 
 his hand ; Arturio dead and perfectly quiet, having worked till 
 death ; Athanasio dead with his arms crossed (he had not fought, 
 but was shot down). All his friends dead, and he, poor Prince, 
 
68 THE BOY IN GREY. 
 
 standing at the top of the great marble staircase, with the ruhy 
 blazing-like fire, praying to the mad neglected mob to hold their 
 
 hands. 
 
 They would not hold their hands. Their wrongs were very 
 deep, and that grand young prince had been away eleven years in 
 Fairyland. They would have his life as they had had those of 
 Polernos, Arturio, and Athanasio ; they came rushing up the stair- 
 case towards the Prince, when the straggling crowd flickered and 
 waved like a flame suddenly blown by the wind. 
 
 For the Boy in Grey had his arm round the Prince's neck, 
 and had his cheek against his. The gallant young men stood 
 there together, and the mob fell back. The bare legs and the 
 naked feet of the Boy in Grey saved that State. I am under the 
 impression myself (I may be mistaken), that those bare legs and 
 naiad feet are a little wanted, not only in England, but in 
 America. 
 
 And I have come to a most singular conclusion also, to which 
 I beg to draw your particular attention ; and my conclusion is 
 that I have told my story, and the time is come when I have no 
 more to say. I wish oth jr writers of stories would leave off when 
 they come to an end and finish. In point of fact, I wish I could 
 myself. I really won't be long. It is not me, it is the Cockatoo. 
 
 The Cockatoo declares in the most emphatic manner that the 
 Boy in Grey never made any speech at the Prince's wedding. 
 Now, the Elephant, the Emu, the Mymiecobius, the Tiger, and 
 the Xylopodotheriuni, or the extinct animal with a wooden leg, 
 are perfectly unanimous in telling me that the Cockatoo is an old 
 fool. I don't know whether the Cockatoo is right or I am right. 
 I disagree with the Cockatoo on many points. I think that he 
 sits too late at his club, and is apt to say (like the late Mr. 
 Richard Swiveller) the first thing which comes into his head. 
 These are habits of which I cannot approve ; yet your Cockatoo is 
 a gentleman. It seems to me that you never know when you are 
 right. But the Prince Philarete did his best. You go do your 
 best, and you won't come far wrong. 
 
 Do as the Wombat does. The other day I had an interview 
 with the Wombat. He wanted to be scratched on his back, and 
 he tub I me so. I refused to do it, but there was no bad blood 
 between US. We are as good friends as ever. 
 
 Therefore we most earnestly hope that the Cockatoo is wrong. 
 
 THE END. 
 
HORNBY MILLS GARDEN. 
 
HORNBY MILLS GARDEN. 
 
 Horticulturus and Viator had a discussion about gardens and 
 gardening the other day, as they went along the Great Eastern 
 Railway, past Paul's at Cheshunt, and Rivers' at Sawbridgeworth. 
 Viator, perhaps ill-naturedly, advanced the theory that in the 
 matter of gardening we were going back, if not into barbarism, at 
 least into " Chineseism ; " that one of our new ribbon gardens 
 was, in the first instance, as ugly as it was possible to make any 
 arrangement of beautiful flowers ; and, secondly, that it was 
 never worth looking at twice. Viator instanced my Lord this's 
 garden, and then my Lord the other's garden, and lastly lost his 
 temper in falling foul of the last hideous horror of coloured walks : 
 set up for the example and admiration of mankind by the Horti- 
 cultural Society at South Kensington. Horticulturus, though 
 jealous of the honour of that body, has imbibed too much of the 
 sweetness of his own flowers to be angry with Viator. He 
 smilingly put the question by, saying that the Horticultural 
 Society was bound to be in the van of horticultural thought, and 
 that brickdust walks were that van. When Viator asked him, in 
 return, whether the Horticultural Society could not lead public 
 taste instead of following it, he became interested in the doings 
 of a roach-fisher on the banks of the Lea. He would not fight 
 that point. 
 
 Viator tried him on another : on the expense of this bedding 
 system. 
 
 " Every one now," said Viator, " down to the farmers' wives, 
 are discontented unless they have their beds brown and bare for 
 six months, and for the other six filled with formal patterns of 
 geraniums, calceolarias, and lobelias, the keeping of which 
 through the winter costs money. Very little has been done for 
 cottage gardeners — which, I take it, means people who cannot 
 afford a gardener— by the Horticultural Society. Why don't you 
 encourage the discovery of good hardy perennials from temperate 
 regions, instead of ransacking the tropics for things which, how- 
 
72 HORNBY MILLS GARDEN. 
 
 ever beautiful, can only be grown by noblemen and rich trades- 
 men ? Why, that most excellent and admirable handbook, ' The 
 Cottage Gardener's Dictionary,' has got so dreadfully genteel in 
 its notions, that I am ashamed to open it ; it makes me feel like 
 a poverty-stricken snob. Just take the directions for growing a 
 common anemone. ' Take maiden loam from the surface of a 
 pasture, turf and all [how would my landlord like that, I 
 wonder ?] ; to every load of this add one of cowdung, and half a 
 load of sea or drift sand ; form the whole into a ridge, and let it 
 remain a year at least, turning it every three months.' If you 
 cannot do this, says ' The Cottage Gardener's Dictionary,' you 
 may possibly get on (miserable snob that you are) by doing this — 
 ' Get light garden soil and rotted cowdung, one load of the 
 former to half a load of the latter, and a quarter of sea sand.' 
 Now, this is a fine look-out for a man who wants a few anemones, 
 is it not ? " 
 
 "Don't run down that book," said Horticulturus ; "it is a 
 very good book." 
 
 " It is a wonderful good book," said Viator ; " but it is too 
 doctrinaire for poor and ignorant people like me. I don't want 
 cowdung and sea sand. I want anemones. And I get them." 
 
 " But you are on the chalk, you know." 
 
 "I was not always, and I always had them," said Viator; 
 " but you cannot deny, even if I give up anemones, that you can 
 make a garden bloom from January to December, without keeping 
 a gardener up half the night watching your flues." 
 
 " You are in the main right," said Horticulturus; "but not 
 altogether. I allow that we are neglecting some of the most 
 beautiful flowers ; I allow that we are getting too absurdly formal 
 in gardening, as in many other things ; but you cannot have a 
 perfect English garden without some things which require heat 
 through the winter, unless you are prepared to buy them." 
 
 " Unless y°u are prepared to buy them at half-a-crown a 
 dozen ! " retorted Viator, " that is better than having your man, 
 your groom, gardener, knife-cleaner, pig-feeder, game-keeper, 
 boot-polisher, message-goer, clothes-brusher, up three-quarters of 
 the night, all through a long frost, to look after them. Yes, I 
 allow all that. The question is, what can we poor folks do towards 
 having a garden, if we can't afford a gardener ? " 
 
 " Shall I hore you," said Horticulturus, " if I describe to you 
 a certain menage where there teas such a garden ; one of the 
 most beautiful I have ever seen ? " 
 
 Viator begged him to proceed. 
 
 " When I was a boy," said Horticulturus, "and a very young 
 
HORNBY MILLS GARDEN. 73 
 
 one, I used to be very much petted, and, I fear, very much spoilt, 
 in a certain country bouse in Lincolnshire. 
 
 " It was not a nobleman's house, or a baronet's house, or even 
 a squire's house. It was a large house attached to a great water- 
 mill. The people of the house made their money by trade, as 
 the tall chimney stalk beyond the shrubbery, by the carp pond, 
 plainly showed to any one passing within a mile or so of the 
 place. As for we little folks, u-e knew well enough about the 
 business, and were rather proud of it too. 
 
 '• We used to say, and I believe now, that the house had been 
 a 'religious house,' because of the great fish-ponds which sur- 
 rounded it. The fact that it lay in a hole, rather below the level 
 of the neighbouring ditches, seems to comfirm that theory, though 
 the house itself was scarce a century old. There was a rookery, 
 in elnis planted certainly at the Restoration, and the garden 
 invaded their shadows, until nothing would bloom in the shade 
 except primroses, which grew white and flesh-colour in the 
 darkness ; a wilderness of wild hyacinths, shining in May like 
 another heaven ; wood anemones, wood sorrel ; the blue pasque 
 anemone. And as the summer heat settled down, and made the 
 summer beds blaze like a scarlet mass of geraniums, and infinite 
 varieties of other beautiful flowers, the golden Tutsan St. John's 
 wort lit up the darkness of the shrubbery. Waterer in those 
 days was a comparatively young man at Bagshot, and Azaleas 
 were hardly invented. 
 
 " It was a house of noble and genei'ous profusion. There was 
 not any venison, because there was no pretension to a park ; but 
 there was everything else. There were hunters, which would 
 carry Uncle Jack and Uncle Tom (heavy weights) over anything, 
 reasonable or unreasonable ; there was a dog cart for Uncle 
 Seithenin, who was fat and puffed, and who never rode ; and there 
 was a pair of carriage horses which would take Aunt Bridget to 
 Lincoln races on the Tuesday, with I dare not say how many of 
 us riotous young monkeys in and about the carriage, and would 
 repeat the performance on Friday, with another relay of riotous 
 young rascals and rascalesses ; and would never wink their eye. 
 There was a wonderful cob, the governor's ; and there was a still 
 more wonderful pony, bought for seven pounds ten at Horncastle 
 fair, and brought home in the gig in a gale of wind, in front of 
 Uncle Jack and Uncle Tom ; and they had driven over two fallen 
 trees by the way. 
 
 " There was in the house everything which makes life worth 
 having. Maids to wait indoors (and how much better they wait 
 than men), grooms in their proper place out of doors, running 
 
74 HORNBY MILLS GARDEN. 
 
 out «at the first ring of the horses' feet on the yard pavement. 
 Cocks and hens (fine-bred Dorkings and game fowls ; Cochins 
 and Brahmas had not heen selected or developed) ; pigeons 
 (mainly Runts, hut a pair or two of Fantails and Almonds for the 
 ladies), turkeys, guinea-fowl. Hohbes, old Berkshire, and China 
 pigs ; ducks in the old monk's fish-ponds ; carp of sixteen pounds 
 weight, and tench of four ; a hawk and a stork. It was a para- 
 dise of a place, altogether, for old as well as for young, hut 
 entirely after a schoolboy's heart. When I read Marjorie Fleming 
 the other day, I fully sympathised with her when she said, ' I am 
 going to Braehead, where there are ducks, cocks, hens, bubbly- 
 jocks, two dogs, two cats, and swine, which is delightful.' They 
 satisfied her soul, those pigs. 
 
 "A busy hrisk house, until you opened a gate in a wall, and 
 passed into the odorous silence and heat of the garden ; here was 
 a stillness scarcely disturbed by the cawing of the rooks. This 
 was the ladies' quarter. This was the life's amusement of the 
 two maiden sisters of the house, Aunt Bridget and Aunt Hester. 
 On this garden they lavished all their own perfect refinement ; to 
 this garden I wish to call your attention, as a type of English garden 
 now almost extinct ; and before I have finished with it, I think 
 you will allow that I was right in speaking of the general menage 
 of this particular country house. 
 
 " Young folks, folks under, say, sixteen, were, as a rule, 
 excluded from this garden. When Aunt Bridget and Aunt 
 Hester were younger and more inexperienced, they used to accept 
 offers of assistance from the greatest of their little nephews and 
 nieces ; but in my time they had grown too wise. The peculi- 
 arity of that family was that it was a chivying family. No three 
 young members of it ever got together without one member 
 starting off like a lunatic, and the other two members starting off after 
 him or her, howling like gorillas. This did not do in this particular 
 garden, /was admitted to it only because, in the first place, I 
 was a visitor ; and, in the second, because in my case chivying 
 was only an occasional weakness, not a confirmed habit. Alas ! 
 the family ' chivied ' away a fearful sum of money before they had 
 finished. 
 
 " Extravagant as all the other arrangements in the house were, 
 there was no extravagance in the garden. There was no gardener, 
 for instance, worth calling so, only an old man kept on by the 
 week, with sometimes a labourer to help him ; all the direction, 
 and no inconsiderable part of the work, was done by those two 
 charming refined maiden ladies. A rich acquaintance of ours, 
 Mr. Dash, has made me laugh to-day, by telling me of a letter 
 
HORNBY MILLS GARDEN. 75 
 
 he had received from a gardener who had advertised for a situation. 
 This gentleman gardener said ' that he did not like the tunc of 
 Mr. Dash's letter, and thought the place would not suit him.' 
 Now the old garden I speak of is not much smaller than my friend 
 Dash's garden, and, I think, infinitely more beautiful. The one 
 was kept in order by two old maids and a cripple ; the other is 
 handed over to the tender mercies of a prig who is an approver 
 of the tone of his master's letter. 
 
 " In the one case, the garden is a pleasure, and has interest for 
 one ; in the other, your servant is your master, and gardens for 
 his own glorification. Le jeu ne vaut pus la chaudeUe. Make 
 the whole place into a croquet ground. English stud grooms 
 have aroused the British Lion, and masters have asserted them- 
 selves in their stables, and protested against the doctrine that two 
 thousand pounds' worth of horseflesh was bought for the especial 
 behoof of the servant : it is nearly time that the ladies of England 
 should rise against the gardeners, whose sole object seems to be 
 to avoid all hard work, to cany off prizes at the shows, and to 
 make ' their ' garden as much like the nearest nobleman's as 
 possible. 'I am not going to take "my" horses out this 
 weather,' the coachman was saying a few years ago. The 
 gardener is equally rebellious, though in a different way. He 
 sneers at vou with precedents, until the battle is not worth fight- 
 ing, and you yield. The lady is apt to say, ' He is an excellent 
 gardener, he came from Lord Thingamy's, he must have his own 
 way, or he will go.' Let him go, and use your own brains, which 
 are as good as his, and your own well-formed taste, which is a 
 hundred and fifty times better than his. If you want bands of 
 red, yellow, and blue, like these new vulgar cockney ribbon 
 gardens; if you want to utilise your flowers in barbarously 
 imitating the most barbarous pattern on a bad Chinese shawl ; if 
 you want to commit the artistic blasphemy of making flowers 
 hideous, by planting them in patterns which would make Owen 
 Jones howl with anguish, then keep your gardener. You may 
 partly succeed in your efforts at ugliness at first, but before 
 autumn nature will be too strong for you, and for the gardener 
 who don't like the tone of your last letter. Before the first frost, 
 when you have got tired of this miserable imitation of arabesque, 
 go and look at your long-neglected beds. You will see that 
 nature has been hard at work against you, and has nearly undone 
 your work, or, for politeness' sake, your gardener's work, and that 
 the flowers have stretched out their arms towards one another, 
 and mingled their individual beauties in a soft, hazy cloud of 
 colour. 
 
70 HORNBY MILLS GARDEN. 
 
 " Let us look again at this garden, managed by the two maiden 
 ladies and the old man, and let us compare it with one of your 
 new-fashioned gardens, which show nothing but bare brown earth 
 from November to May. 
 
 " There were but few sorts of chrysanthemums cultivated then, 
 and those of inferior sorts ; but such as there were, were gay and 
 gaudy enough. In an open winter, their yellow had scarcely 
 become tinged with the delicate rose-pink which marks their 
 decay, when the Christmas rose (Helleborus niger) began to blaze 
 out in white patches of large flowers at regular intervals about 
 the otherwise empty beds ; and before they were gone, the whole 
 map of the garden was marked out by brilliant golden lines. The 
 little aconite, planted thickly, close under the box edging, showed 
 the shape of each parterre in a hard golden line. The garden, 
 beautiful at all times, was seldom more beautiful than at the 
 beginning of February, when the aconite and hellebore were in 
 flower ; but before the yellow bands and the brilliant white patches 
 had begun to fade, the colour of the garden had changed : the 
 Hepaticas — crimson and blue alternately, and giving a general 
 effect of purple, planted closely just inside the aconites — marked 
 out the beds once more with a new colour, and held on nearly till 
 March. 
 
 " But by this time nature, under the guidance of our two ladies, 
 had begun to rebel against formalism, and there was no more 
 ' ribbon gardening.' After the Hepaticas, the flower borders 
 began to possess a new interest, and your admiration of ' bands 
 of colour ' became lost in the contemplation of individual beauty. 
 From the centre of each bed, white, yellow, and purple, arose a 
 corona of crocuses, about two feet in diameter, matted thickly 
 together, and the whole garden shone like fire, relieved by the 
 moonlight effect of the snowdrops. Almost with them came 
 patches of the pale pink dog-toothed violet, and the white dog- 
 toothed violet with the purple eye (which last is, with very few 
 exceptions, one of the most beautiful flowers in nature, and the 
 roots cost sixpence apiece). None of the above-mentioned roots 
 were ever moved ; they cost nothing whatever in maintaining ; 
 and, once planted, would flourish for ever, being far best left 
 alone. 
 
 " I say that one flower succeeded the other in this wonderful 
 garden ; but the truth is there was no break. The crocuses were 
 not fairly done, and the dog-toothed violets not half done, when a 
 still more fantastic piece of colour trickery was ready for your eye. 
 A ring arose round the fading crocuses, cunningly alternated in 
 every other bed. In the one bed this ring was made up oi cream- 
 
HORNBY MILLS GARDEN. 77 
 
 colour, pink, white, and purple, all commingled ; in the next, of a 
 vivid intense scarlet, more vivid than most Geraniums, nearly, or 
 quite, equalling the brightest tropaeolum ; and these hands were 
 about a foot broad. What were these flowers? These were 
 the anemones, nodding their heads to one another in the March 
 wind, and seeming to congratulate one another on the coming 
 spring. "We must now leave the principle borders for a while, 
 and go down to certain sloping beds near the gold-fish pond, in 
 front of the moss-house, which were never disturbed by the 
 gardener's fork, and which are quite ready for us now. 
 
 "The first thing which struck the eye here, in this quiet sheltered 
 spot, sloping south, were bright patches of the common primrose, 
 shining among the ferns and other green vegetation like groups of 
 stars ; until you had ceased looking at them, you could not take 
 in the fact that there was a haze of blue violets mingled through 
 them, which was loading the air with perfume. Primulas, too, of 
 every wonderful variety were here. All the beautiful polyanthuses, 
 some running almost into dull purple, others almost into fiery 
 scarlet. The pale and coloured primroses, the commoner auriculae, 
 the sturdy oxlip, the delicate scented cowslip, even the rare pale 
 blue bird's-eye primrose. There were orchises from the meadow 
 trenches, sombre-coloured fritillarias from the Oxford meadows, 
 blue pasque anemones : every flower which spoke of spring, of 
 budding leaves, of singing-birds, of the renewed hopes and plans 
 which always come to us at that time, year after year, until the 
 eternal spring buds forth which never turns into summer ; all these 
 were collected here in that quiet sunny border beside the fish- 
 pond, and close to the churchyard." 
 
 Viator here begged Horticulturus not to be sentimental. 
 
 " Every flower in that spring border," Horticulturus said 
 obstinately, " spoke of spring-time, and youth, and hope, and 
 love-making. And of all the beds in the garden, those two quiet 
 melancholy old maids— quiet and melancholy amidst all the grow- 
 ing extravagance and profusion around them — loved that secluded 
 border the best, and tended it most carefully. They may have 
 walked out among the blooming meadow flowers, not alone, once 
 on a time, and that may have been the reason why they bent their 
 spare and weakening bodies, and their faces, which grew more 
 anxious year by year, as the reckless riot went on, so lovingly over 
 them now. 
 
 " The wonderful freshness and beauty of our English spring 
 flowers is scarcely beaten by any class of flowers in the world," 
 he continued, "anymore than a good example of our English 
 spring is to be rivalled, either for weather or for colouring, else- 
 
78 HOHNBY MILLS GARDEN. 
 
 where. The Australian spring, when nature expresses herself in 
 a sudden efflorescence of delicate, hitherto unnamed, orchises ; 
 when the earth is all flowers, and the air like maddening cham- 
 pagne, that is a season which goes near to satisfy your soul ; hut 
 an English spring is finer. The ' luslmess ' of the English spring 
 vegetation is, I think you will find, unsurpassed in the world. I 
 have had a glimpse of the tropics, and you may see the tropics at 
 Sydenham and at Kew pretty well : have they anything to offer 
 you like an acre or so of wild hluc Hyacinths in the middle of 
 May ? Ireland I have not seen, but I have seen Devonshire. 
 Devonshire is ' lush ' to a degree, hut coarse. Animal life begins 
 to get scarcer there than in that richer band of country which is 
 washed from the chalk hills of the southern and eastern counties. 
 Where, as in Devon, every ditch is full of trout, and every little 
 stream is overshadowed by ' osmunda regalis,' nature is beginning 
 to get coarse, gaudy, and tropical. Nature thinks most carefully 
 and most delicately in her temperate regions, where her soul is 
 tried by the battle with a winter. South ol the line of winter 
 snow she gets profligate and careless. In the midland, eastern, 
 and south-eastern counties she bestirs herself: she produces a 
 dozen species there for one in Devon : there are ten species of fish 
 in Berkshire for one in Devonshire. When she loses the stimulus 
 of winter she gets lazy, and dreams herself away into such things 
 as trout and king fern." 
 
 Viator began to wonder whether Mr. Richard Swiveller had been 
 dining with Mr. Ruskin, and, having taken too much wine, was 
 trying to emulate that gentleman's style. No, it was his sensible 
 friend, Horticultures, who was making these wonderful flights. 
 He struck in directly. 
 
 " A half truth," he said, " after a whole one, which you seldom 
 get, is one of the finest things going. It at all events promotes 
 discussion. But I never heard any good of a quarter truth. 
 What you say about animal life is a quarter truth or less. True 
 as it is about Devonshire, it is false about the tropics, and what is 
 more, about Scotland. I could tell you where you were wrong, 
 but I want to hear more about this garden of yours. Let us leave 
 these ' spring beds,' which have led you such a wonderful ramble, 
 and come back to the main garden, which flowered like Chats- 
 worth, without any expense, and to the two old maids. What, for 
 instance, succeeded this waving glory of parti-coloured anemones 
 which I have seen, and can therefore appreciate ? " 
 
 " They were contemporary with the wallflowers," said Horti- 
 culturus, " which were in separate beds, and with the tulips, which 
 were in a close-planted ring round them, and which were, about 
 
HORNBY MILLS GARDEN. 79 
 
 the middle of May, removed to make room for the geraniums," 
 &c. 
 
 " The London artisans might grow these flowers ? " 
 
 " These and a great many more. I wish I could give a hand 
 to help these artisan flower-shows. They appeal to the sentimental 
 part of me strongly. Dickens, or rather Mr. Timothy Linkin- 
 water, quite as real a person as Dickens himself, originated 
 them, you know, when you and I were hoys. You remember the 
 hyacinths in the broken water jug ? I thought you did. The 
 chrysanthemums in the Temple Gardens are the glorious outcome 
 of those hyacinths." 
 
 " H'm," said Viator, "what you would do without your Shak- 
 speare and your Dickens, I do not know. You are always quoting 
 them. "What came next '? " 
 
 " Tulips. Now there again is a flower which is prohahly more 
 than any other easily cultivated by the artisan. (Working man, 
 you say ; well and good, we will say working man, then, though 1 
 work sometimes.) Your working man ought to he told with regard 
 to tulips that if he spends a trifle of money in the first instance, 
 he will get a flower which is not only ornamental to his window, 
 but is remunerative. If he will get from that invaluable little 
 book, 'The Cottage Gardener's Dictionary,' or Koutledge's 
 'Choice Flowers,' the jioints of a good tulip, and the way of 
 cultivating it, he will find that the second year's offset will nearly 
 nay him for the original root. Tulips could be as well cultivated 
 in London as they are in Holland. The smoke don't affect them 
 very much, in fact very little. So you see that a dexterous artisan 
 gains nearly three weeks' pleasant contemplation of a beautiful 
 flower, and it costs him nothing. Nay, more, the contemplation 
 of that flower in a spring evening would keep him from the public- 
 house. What sends them to the public-houses is, that from hase 
 to garret, there is no thing of beauty on which they can rest their 
 eye." 
 
 "Is that so?" said Viator, with a slow smile. "I should 
 have thought otherwise. If you set me to contemplate a tulip for 
 the whole of a spring evening, I should certainly, as the working 
 man would, adjourn to the public-house — I mean to the club. 
 Now go on : and get practical once more about Hornby Mills." 
 
 " Meanwhile, ever since the middle of February, a hot-bed had 
 been made, and dozen upon dozen of flowerpots filled with choice 
 flower-seeds, and by the time the tulips were removed the beds 
 Mere ready for their reception. Carter's or Sutton's lists will tell 
 you what these plants were. China asters and stocks are those 
 which live most in my memory : and of these, mostly the latter." 
 
80 HOllNBY MILLS GARDEN. 
 
 " Stocks ? " 
 
 " Yes. My first introduction to stocks was at Aix-la-Chapelle. 
 Behind a manufactory there, was a garden, into which I had leave 
 to wander. It was a garden with a fountain in the middle ; a 
 garden looked into by three white walls of factory, with those long 
 continental windows, which one never sees in this little island of 
 ours. There is no gravel about Aix-la-Chapelle, or if there is I 
 never saw any, for the garden walks are made from the cinders of 
 the manufactory fires. Placed against that dull funereal substi- 
 tute for our bright English gravel, I first saw the dull funereal 
 colour of first-rate German stocks, and I have admired them and 
 believed in them ever since. Zinnias, stocks and Salpiglossis arc 
 the only flowers I can name, in the limits of my knowledge, which 
 have good half tints. No stock with a positive colour about it is 
 worth a halfpenny. The colour of a stock in its brightest tones 
 should be ashy and funereal. This is not difficult to account for. 
 German stocks naturally come from Germany, and their dull half 
 colours are of course a natural outcome of the dreamy Teutonic 
 mind which " 
 
 "Please don't," interrupted Viator; "where can you get the 
 seed ? Let us have done with the Teutonic mind." 
 
 "Page's at Southampton," Horticulturus replied. "I don't 
 see what reason you have got to interrupt me." 
 
 " Have you anything more to tell me about this wonderful 
 garden ? " 
 
 " A great deal. I could put more into your head about garden- 
 ing than ever was there before ; but you won't let me do it in my 
 own way. Once more ; is the garden we saw to-day, a labyrinth 
 of badly-conceived and worse-executed Chinese patterns, with a 
 Scotch gardener to show you over it, and point out (not explain, a 
 Scotchman even couldn't do that) its barbarisms — is that a garden 
 at all?" 
 
 "A sort of one." 
 
 " A sort of one, exactly. But these two old ladies of mine had 
 flowers in their borders all the year round, whereas my lord's beds 
 are utterly empty six months in the year. Can you gather 
 that?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well, when the time came their garden was just as brilliant 
 as my lord's, and ten times more artistic. Time would fail me 
 were I to attempt to tell you of the beauty of these flower-beds in 
 summer ; of the mass of colour, confused but always artistic, which 
 grew brighter as the summer went on, and which lay round the 
 towering spikes of the hollyhocks, the various lilies and bee lark- 
 
HORNBY MILLS GARDEN. 81 
 
 spurs (the Delphinium formosum, the most splendid of our per- 
 ennials — unless the new blue columbine of last year, which I have 
 not yet seen, is destined to beat it — was not invented then). 
 These hollyhocks and bee larkspurs were insignificant-looking 
 things, just outside the anemones, if you will do me the favour to 
 remember ; not obscuring them in the least till they were out of 
 flower, and then shooting up, and hiding the untidy crocus grass, 
 and the seedy-looking foliage of the anemones, until they in their 
 turn died down with the first frosts of autumn. 
 
 "So much," continued Horticultures, "for the most perfect 
 and well- arranged garden I have ever seen, and what is more, the 
 cheapest. Let me recapitulate for a moment. The centre of each 
 bed was filled in an oval or square of two feet, more or less, with 
 thickly-planted crocuses ; outside this, a ring of anemones ; out- 
 side this again, a ring of hollyhocks and delphinia ; then a bare 
 space, of say four feet, to receive the summer flowers. Then the 
 Hepaticas, a hedge of ivy-shaped leaves in summer, for a few 
 weeks in early spring a blaze of crimson and purple ; then the 
 closely-planted aconites and then the box. Such was the garden. 
 I can describe its colour, but the hot rich scent of it is beyond me. 
 The recollection of it makes me faint. It was the sweetest smell- 
 ing garden I was ever in." 
 
 " Was ? " said the unsentimental Viator. 
 "Yes. It is gone now. It was the most cheap and the 
 prettiest garden of its pretensions I ever saw, but it is gone. 
 Part of the old house is left and a well-to-do man lives in it. 
 But he has laid three quarters of it down in turf, because he says, 
 much as he likes flowers, that he can't afford them. But Aunt 
 Bridget and Aunt Hester never spent one half on their glorious 
 garden which he does on his formal, and somewhat ugly (if flowers 
 could be ugly), rows of calceolarias and scarlet geraniums. Now, 
 in July, instead of the eye wandering from one curious piece of 
 beauty to another, it loses itself, and gets thoroughly cocknified in 
 running along mere bands of colour." 
 
 " All the old perennials eradicated ? " asked Viator. 
 " Very nearly. Nature occasionally reasserts herself, to the 
 great disgust of his gardener. Some of the old tulips still insist 
 on peering up through the new turfed ground, to be nipped off by 
 the new mowing machine. Impertinent crocuses still appear in 
 the middle of the beds. The dear old Hepaticas still hope to be 
 forgotten by the new cockney gardener, and modestly thrust 
 themselves up in his absence (for he never is in the flower-garden 
 before May) and appeal to his more highly educated master. He 
 pleads for them, but what pleading is of any avail against the 
 
 7 
 
82 HORNBY MILLS GARDEN. 
 
 spite of a doctrinaire new broom? To give you an instance. 
 There was a flower in that garden which for some reasons was 
 very dear to Aunt Bridget and Aunt Hester. It was the < tree 
 balsam,' a flower which sheds its seed and reappears in spring. 
 My friend's wife took a fancy to it, and would have some of them 
 preserved. In my presence the gardener told his master (or 
 servant) that it was a common cottage flower, and was not fit to 
 be seen in a gentleman's garden, and spitefully maimed and rooted 
 up as many as he dare. I am stating a plain fact." 
 
 " We are running too much into priggishness," said Viator ; 
 " the competitive examination " 
 
 " Who is talking too fast now? " asked Horticulturus, sharply. 
 " I am not the only person who ought to be taken up shortly." 
 
 " Then the old family gave up this house, as I gather, and it 
 has passed into other hands? " asked Viator. 
 
 He grew grave. " Well, the fact of the matter is, that although 
 the garden was very cheaply managed, it was the only cheap thing 
 about the place. When the ruin began, or where it began, I 
 have never been able to settle with myself to this day. You can 
 ruin yourself at anything you take in hand, if you give your mind 
 to it," from horse-racing up to chapel-building. There are a whole 
 lot of ways of ruining yourself if you only take care," he con- 
 tinued, frowning, and scratching his head. " Fox-hunting, 
 steeple-chasing, coursing, and farming ; neglecting your business, 
 keeping too free a table, going to law about nothing at all, going to 
 all the races, buying horses, selling them again by the auctioneer 
 in a hurry ; building cottages for labourers at a calculated return 
 of four per cent, when no reasonable being would do so under 
 seven ; buying pictures without knowing a hang about them ; 
 renting shooting ; having a good sound family sherry at sixty-two, 
 and port at eighty, and making your guests drink a good deal of 
 each ; going to London, which is ruin, and going to Paris, which 
 is bankruptcy. Lor' bless you ! a man with a genius for ruining 
 himself might do it with any one of these things. And the male 
 Hornbys had not only the genius for ruining themselves, but they 
 did all these things together. 
 
 " Their extravagance got greater and greater as time went on, 
 and as ruin got nearer. The old people, both father and mother, 
 were dead by now. Uncle Jack got louder, coarser, and more 
 dictatorial ; Uncle Tom, the proudest and cleverest of the men 
 Hornbys, got more witty and more genial ; and Uncle Seithenin 
 kept the fox-hunters and shooters up later at night. At first, 
 gentle, but determined Aunt Bridget, and the gentle, but timid 
 Aunt Hester, tried to stem the torrent. Aunt Bridget, the bigge: 
 
HORNBY MILLS GARDEN. 83 
 
 and more strong-minded sister, would say, ' Gentleman, we shall 
 be happy to see you in the drawing-room at your earliest conveni- 
 ence ; ' and Aunt Hester (the ex-beauty of the county) would pipe 
 out a few words about a 'little music' But the two ladies were 
 left to sit in their drawing-room alone, and the men would stay 
 arguing, sometimes quarrelling, over their wine, until a theory 
 was erected that the ladies must be gone to bed. 
 
 " Then the counting-house and tobacco ; then everybody saying 
 the first thing which came into his head, and every one talking at 
 once ; and so on all night, till some not tipsy guest, wandering 
 out into the glorious summer morning at four o'clock, before going 
 to bed, would find Aunt Hester at her flower-beds. And she 
 would turn her beautiful withered face on his, and say, ' You 
 gentlemen were rather late last night, were you not ? ' And so 
 that belated wanderer, having in his eye a distant view of strong- 
 minded Aunt Bridget, looming large and grand among the distant 
 hollyhocks, and seeing an immediate chance of ' catching it ' from 
 her, would sneak off to bed, feeling very much ashamed of himself. 
 
 " As time, and as ruin also, went on, matters began to get too 
 fast and too furious for Aunt Bridget and Aunt Hester. They 
 were always ill when there was a dinner-party ; and as there was 
 one now every day, we ought to suppose that their health was 
 utterly undermined. But no. When the crash came, theirs were 
 the stoutest hearts, the soundest heads, and the ablest bodies in 
 the establishment. They knew what must come, far better than 
 their drink-sodden brothers. The bitterness of death was past 
 with them. They had seen the thunderstorm rising over the 
 horizon long ago, and had spoken to their brothers. Uncle Jack 
 had told them to mind their own business, Uncle Tom had sneered 
 at them, and Uncle Seithenin had stared at them wonderingly out 
 of his watery, drunken eyes." 
 
 " And how did the crash come ? " 
 
 "Suddenly, of course. The whole thing went wrong at once. 
 Everything was ready for it, of course ; but it came suddenly, 
 after all. They had been neglecting the manufactory and busi- 
 ness, and the goods turned out were of inferior quality, notoriously 
 so, it appeared afterwards. The goods were not consumed near 
 the mills, but fourteen thousand miles away, and it is a far cry to 
 Loch Awe. Then they had lost a lawsuit, a twopenny-halfpenny 
 squabble about a trespass ; and it was just so doubtful that they 
 were able, in sheer temper, to carry it to a higher court. The 
 married sister's dowry had never been paid, but was supposed to 
 be invested in the business, and her husband came down for it. 
 Uncle Tom (the clever and handsome one) came back from Lincoln 
 
84 HORNBY MILLS GARDEN. 
 
 Races, looking like death ; but was soon after gone again to 
 Liverpool, with that most sour-headed horse, Nogo, and a villain- 
 ous-looking steeple-chase rider, who looked like Mr. Sponge's 
 illegitimate brother returned from Botany Bay, to try his luck 
 at the great cross-country race ; with no success at all. Then, 
 on one Saturday night, the hands were kept about till twelve 
 o'clock, or a little past, and regaled with beer, getting paid about 
 half-past one. The next Saturday night they were paid in part. 
 Still, none of the tradesmen were dreaming of pressing. No one 
 dreamt they were coming to a standstill. Old Chancy, the lawyer, 
 will tell you that at this time, if they had put their affairs in his 
 hands, they might have spent their thousand a year apiece now. 
 
 " That Saturday night at Hornby Mills (and it was Easter-eve) 
 they say was a very ' wet ' one. Every one drank, and drank 
 hard — except Uncle Tom : he refused his drink (a good drinking 
 man, too) steadily. But Aunt Bridget, walking out into the brisk, 
 sweet spring air, and preparing her mind for the blessed renewal 
 of all good resolutions which are made at the altar on Easter day, 
 found him lying drunk among her lilies of the valley, in the south 
 spring bed, which I have described before. She went and roused 
 a groom, pointed out his master to him, walked away over the 
 common, and tried to forget it. The groom went near the drunken 
 man, but not very near : he went back to the rooms over the 
 stable, looking ten years older in his fright and consternation, 
 and roused the other grooms and helpers. Uncle Tom, lying 
 among the lilies, was not drunk, but dead." 
 
 And Horticulturus told Viator how : and they both sat silent a 
 minute. Uncle Tom had cut his throat. 
 
 " He was the last of that family with a grain of conscience and 
 honesty, and that was what it brought him to. And that is what 
 consistent, selfish heathenism, not to mention heavy drinking, 
 may bring any physically brave and originally honest man to." 
 
 " That is very horrible," said Viator. " I shall never look at 
 lilies of the valley again without seeing a red stain on them. You 
 ought not to have told it." 
 
 " That is right," said Horticulturus. " If you shut your eyes 
 tight enough, you know, you won't see anything." 
 
 " I suppose the crash came soon after this ? " asked Viator. 
 
 " Soon is not the word. The whole game was over in an 
 instant : everything was perfectly quiet before this. The gun- 
 powder at Delhi was only a stored mass of black grains, until 
 Willoughby, looking round to the waiting conductors, saw by their 
 eyes that they were ready, and threw down his hat. The run for 
 tlie Jumna Bridge, when the black thread fuses were fizzing on 
 
HORNBY MILLS GARDEN. S5 
 
 fast towards the iron doors, was not more rapid than the rush of 
 ruin on the dear devoted old house. It seems to me scarce a 
 short week before it was all over. The other brothers made no 
 effort : Uncle Seithenin had always been tipsy, and Uncle Jack 
 never very sober ; and now they did nothing and thought of less. 
 Those two noble old heroes, the sisters, worthy to be mentioned 
 with almost any hero, made an offer of some poor pittance they 
 had in their own right ; but the creditors had not heart to accept 
 it : besides, the ruin, when it came to be examined, was so awful 
 and so gigantic, that their poor but noble little offer was really not 
 worth accepting. Nearly one hundred and eighty thousand pounds 
 was their deficit ; and in their fall they dragged down a county 
 bank with them, which had, like Paul, Strahan, and Bates, thrown 
 good money after bad, to keep afloat their greatest creditor ; and 
 which bank, had it not been for the Hombys, could have struggled 
 on until happier times. So that Aunt Bridget and Aunt Hester 
 had to retire to a little cottage with two drunken brothers, and 
 this additional misery. They consistently believed, to the day ot 
 their deaths, that the rain of all the people who had to begin life 
 over again by the failure of the bank lay at their doors. Pool- 
 innocent souls, they had done their little possible always." 
 
 "And this is your pleasant discourse about flower-gardens ? " 
 said Viator. " What became of the brothers ? " 
 
 " They did what such men generally do in such cases — took to 
 their bed's and died of nothing in particular — of mildew, I should 
 say, if the faculty recognised such a disease. Uncle Seithenin, 
 who went first, appeared before the registrar-general with the 
 ticket of ' Pneumonia, combined with delirium tremens.' Maria, 
 the faithful old maid, who stuck to the family in their retirement, 
 had been long accustomed to remark about Uncle Seithenin, ' that 
 the drink had taken hold of his passages ; ' which I suppose means 
 the same thing ; and she, goodness knows, had seen enough of 
 drinking in that house to be, to a certain extent, a judge. As for 
 Uncle Jack, he went to bed vnv night, and declined to get up the 
 next morning, and, indeed, never got up any more : his ticket 
 was, 1 believe, ' General decay.' But he took to his bed and 
 died, of no acute disease, at the age of fifty-five, within a year of 
 his bankruptcy. With Uncle Seithenin you never could have 
 done much ; with Uncle Jack you might have done a great deal 
 more ; with poor Uncle Tom you might have done anything. But 
 the school in which they were brought up would, saving your 
 presence, have ruined me and you as certainly as it did them. 
 The practical creed which those men were taught, as soon as they 
 were old enough to stay in the dining-room after the ladies, was 
 
86 HORNBY MILLS GARDEN. 
 
 this : that there was only one thing finer than low intrigue, and 
 that was hard-drinking. I don't say that their own father encour- 
 aged them, hut he sat at the end of a table and held his tongue. 
 As for religious thought among the men of that household, they 
 could hardly understand the idea, if it had ever been presented 
 to them, and it never was. I, as a high churchman, would 
 rather " 
 
 " We needn't mind what you, Horticultnrus, would rather," 
 said Viator; "but these women of yours seem to have been so 
 vastly superior to the men, how do you account for that ? " 
 
 "My dear Viator," said Horticulturus, earnestly, "the other 
 day I was confabulating with a Union schoolmaster, one of the 
 finest fellows who ever stepped, whose whole heart and brain are 
 in his work, and who studies the character of every boy as care- 
 fully, according to his light, as Arnold. His object is to get as 
 many of his boys as he can into the amry, chiefly as bandsmen, 
 for he trains them to music. His difficulty is that the most of 
 thorn walk so badly, and it is difficult to teach them to march, 
 and the doctor is apt to reject them. I asked him why this was. 
 He said ' Sir, three-quarters (I forget the proportion) of these 
 boys are illegitimate, or have been deserted. They have never 
 had a mother's care, and no one will take the trouble to teach a 
 child to feel his feet except his oim mother. Now that gives one a 
 little light. Old Mrs. Hornby was a superior woman in every 
 respect ; but old Hornby was not at all her equal. I could say a 
 great deal about the superiority of the women over the men in 
 the manufacturing class, but unless you wish " 
 
 Viator begged him not to trouble himself. 
 
 " The girls, then, were carefully trained by their mother. Old 
 Hornby was very anxious that the boys should not be milksops, 
 and he had his will ; they were taught to despise the influence of 
 women very young, and were taken out of their mother's power 
 almost as soon as they could ride their ponies. Old Hornby was 
 anxious that they should be chips of the old block, as like to him 
 when they came to his age as they could be ; he had his will here 
 too in a way, for they were chips of the old block, but only chips. 
 Old Hornby used loudly to say that his sons should be gentlemen, 
 though lie could never be one. He had not his will here at all, 
 for they never were gentlemen, not even gallant Uncle Tom, 
 though their sisters were ladies, and most perfect ladies too. If 
 they had been left more under their mother's influence, and sent 
 to school when the time came, they might have made gentlemen. 
 But then they weren't, and that makes all the difference, don't 
 you see ? " 
 
HORXBY MILLS GARDEN. S7 
 
 Viator saw all that. 
 
 " Well, now we come," said Horticulturus, " to the end of it 
 all. Aunt Bridget and Aunt Hester lingered on a lew years in 
 their cottage, until the stouter and more energetic Aunt Bridget 
 died very suddenly ; Aunt Hester lingered on in her solitude till 
 very lately. 
 
 " It was last Easter-day that I saw her last. She came slowly 
 creeping up to the altar rails after every one else, and all alone. 
 When she rose I saw that she was almost too feehle to stand, 
 and I stepped out and took her to her pew. When, after church, 
 she found out who it was who had helped her, the poor old lady's 
 expressions of humhle gratitude were painfully affecting. I begged 
 her to let me take her home, and we went together into her little 
 cottage garden, for she insisted on giving me some flowers, ' they 
 were all she had to give now,' she said. They had brought all 
 the old, hardy, and beautiful spring flowers out of the old south 
 border, and so her little garden was blooming bright and fair in 
 the April sun. She made me up a little bouquet of narcissus and 
 oxlips : I had always admired oxlips as a lad, she remembered, I 
 used to say they were such sturdy flowers. And then, calling me 
 by my Christian name, she spoke a little of the dead and of the 
 past. They were all gone from her now, she said, and it was 
 very lonely sometimes, very lonely. The winter nights were so 
 very, very long. ' Old people's memories,' she added, with a 
 feeble smile, ' generally get dulled, but mine is as keen as ever. 
 1 cannot forget ; there is no relief for me in that way.' And so 
 I left her standing in the sweet spring weather among her opening 
 flowers, and went my way, somewhat disinclined for noisy and 
 foolish conversation that day. 
 
 " She was not alone long. She died five days after, the last 
 of her name. They have built a cockney villa where her cottage 
 was, and all the flowers are gone. I was pleased to see, however, 
 an irrepressible tulip forcing his way up between the bricks in the 
 stable yard. I respected him and felt inclined to kiss him as the 
 last of the Old Lot. Well, here is Cambridge." 
 
11771' LADY HOBNBUBTS BALL WAS 
 POSTPONED. 
 
WHY LADY HOKNBUBY'S BALL WAS 
 POSTPONED. 
 
 Court Journal, April 12th. — "Lady Horubury's ball on May 
 2nd is unavoidably postponed." 
 
 " What is the matter ? " said all the world and his wife. On 
 this occasion the world and his wife were very easily satisfied ; 
 Sir John must have had another stroke, and Lady Hornbury 
 would soon be the most beautiful widow in England of her age, 
 while her daughter Edith would be one of the greatest heiresses. 
 The male line was notoriously extinct. Sir John was a shrewd 
 man of business, a little apt to be near, and the very last man in 
 the world to enrich unnecessarily a successor to his house in the 
 shape of a new husband for Lady Hornbury. The world and his 
 wife were easily satisfied ; one of the pleasantest houses in 
 London would be closed that season, and of course Lady Horn- 
 bury could not go out in the present state of her husband's health. 
 So said the world that week, but the world was astonished out of 
 all propriety when it went into the Park next day to find Sir John 
 — faultlessly dressed and as upright as if paralysis and he had 
 never made acquaintance — riding his celebrated bay, with his 
 faultlessly appointed groom quite a long way behind him, by no 
 means close to him, as he used to ride when Sir John was likely 
 to have a seizure. The world, in short, was utterly puzzled ; the 
 more so when he answered that Lady Hornbury was perfectly 
 well, but had been called suddenly from town on business, and 
 would probably not appear for a considerable time. Sir John 
 was a man who generally did his own business as well as his 
 wife's, and it seemed very strange that he should be riding about 
 so coolly in the Park, and Lady Hornbury gone away on business. 
 Mystery was added to mystery when Hunter, of the Dragoons, 
 came on the scene and reported himself returning from the camp 
 at Chalons, where he had been professionally examining the 
 French cavalry : he said that he had met Lady Hornbury at the 
 station at Calais, just getting into the Paris train. Here was a 
 
92 WHY LADY HORNBUKY'S BALL WAS POSTPONED. 
 
 great mystery ; Edith Hornbury was at school in Paris, and was 
 to come out at the great ball now postponed. What on earth was 
 the matter ? 
 
 Sir John and Lady Hornbury were, deservedly, nearly the most 
 popular people in London ; they were wealthy, clever, kindly, 
 and good-humoured. He was much older than she, but she was 
 absolutely devoted to him, and never left him for an instant in his 
 very numerous illnesses, one of which had resulted in a very 
 dangerous attack of paralysis. There was perfect confidence 
 between them, although Sir John had hitherto left all matters 
 relating to his daughter to the care of his wife, only asking from 
 time to time how the girl was getting on. She was all that could 
 be desired ; discreet, beautiful, accomplished, and perfectly 
 obedient in everything, a most model young lady in every 
 respect : early in her life she had shown a will of her own, but 
 it seemed to have been perfectly subdued by her parents' kindness 
 and indulgence. An event which had taken place a year before 
 this had shown her submission in the most remarkable way. She 
 had been staying at a country house, her old Aunt Hornbury's, 
 where there was a large general society, and a style of living 
 under the careless, good-humoured old maid most conducive to 
 mild flirtation, or, what the old lady called it, " the young people 
 being happy together." The old lady, however, drew a pretty 
 sharp line in these matters, and thinking that Edith's attention 
 was a little too much engaged by a very handsome young fellow, 
 a Mr. Holmsdale, wrote to her mother cmietly, and Edith went 
 very submissively home. Her mother never mentioned the matter 
 to her, and all was perfectly secret, until some months after, the 
 maid who had been with her at her aunt's tremblingly told her 
 that Miss Edith was corresponding with this Mr. Holmsdale, and 
 handed her a letter of which the following were the contents : — 
 
 " Sir, — Once more I request you to cease this utter folly. I 
 have unfortunately once told you that you are not indifferent to 
 me, and for that one expression in a moment of weakness I am to 
 be persecuted to death. You must take your final answer, and 
 further letters from you, sir, will be instantly laid before my 
 father." 
 
 " I think that our girl has behaved very well indeed," said Sir 
 John, when his wife showed him the letter. " Deuced well. I 
 wish my sister would keep her house in better order. The girl 
 sha'n't go there again. I think we are very well out of it ; give me 
 the letter." 
 
WHY LADY HORXBURY'S BALL WAS POSTTOXED. 93 
 
 " "What arc you going to do with it ? " 
 
 " Send it to him addressed in my handwriting, with my name 
 
 signed in the comer. I shall send it under cover to my sister ; 
 her butler knows his address. W T ho is this Holmsdale '? " 
 
 "I don't know; the villain ! " exclaimed Lady Hombury. 
 
 " We don't know that he is a villain, my dear," said Sir John ; 
 " he must he a gentleman, or my sister would never have had him 
 to her house." 
 
 "A clandestine correspondence ! " said Lady Hombury, brid- 
 ling. 
 
 " My dear, did we have no clandestine correspondence when I 
 was a younger brother, and a dragoon, with five hundred a year, 
 and you a fine lady, with Lord Bumpster at your heels every- 
 where '? Did not you tell me once that if your mother pressed on 
 the match with him that you would run away with me on five 
 hundred a year and your own fortune, and trust to my poor 
 brother Toni to get us something ? And you would have done it, 
 my lady, come." 
 
 " I was very young and foolish," said Lady Hombury. 
 
 " Well, and Edith is young and wise," said Sir John, kissing 
 her. " Now the first thing to do is to turn that maid of Edith's 
 out of the house." 
 
 " Why ? We owe her much," said Lady Hombury. 
 
 " I tell you that no right-thinking young woman would have 
 betrayed a* kind and gentle young mistress like Edith in a love 
 affair," said the atrocious dragoon, Sir John. " What would you 
 have said to your own maid in old times if she had done it to 
 you ? " 
 
 The argumentum ad hominem was a little too much for honest 
 Lady Hombury, and she had to laugh again. " But," she added, 
 "if we send her away she will talk about the matter all over the 
 town and country." 
 
 " Well, then,* double her wages and let her stay," said Sir 
 John ; "but don't let me see her. And as for Edith, let her 
 have change of scene ; give her a year's school somewhere. Send 
 her to'Comtesse d'Aurilliac, at Paris ; she can't come to any harm 
 with that old dragon." 
 
 "My daughter will come to no harm anywhere," said Lady 
 Hombury, proudly. 
 
 " Thai I am quite sure of, my dear. But the society at the 
 old lady's pension is very agreeable ; none but the very best 
 legitimist girls, and no followers allowed." 
 
 " I would not be vulgar, Sir John, if I were in your place," 
 said the lady ; " will you ever forget the barracks ? " 
 
94 WHY LADY HORNBURY'S BALL WAS POSTPONED 
 
 " You were very nearly knowing a good deal about them your- 
 self, my lady, that night when you proposed to run away with 
 me." 
 
 Lady Hombury swept out of the room majestically, and left 
 Sir John laughing. There was very little conversation between 
 mother and daughter, for Edith found in a day or two, by an 
 answer which came from Holmsdale, that her father and mother 
 knew everything. She was completely impassive in their hands ; 
 but apparently the Holmsdale wound had gone a little deeper 
 than her mother had thought for. Edith spoke very little, and 
 seemed cheerful at the thought of going to Paris. In a week she 
 was with the Comtesse d'Aurilliac. 
 
 Every letter from the Comtesse breathed delighted admiration 
 for her charming and beautiful pupil. Since Madame had been 
 forced by the lamentable occurrences of the Revolution (her two 
 aunts perished in the September massacres) to take pupils, she 
 had never had such a pupil as Edith. She was the admiration 
 of every one who had seen her, and the brightest star in her little 
 legitimist galaxy : everything went perfectly well for three months, 
 and Sir John and Lady Hornbury were delighted. 
 
 About this time there came to Sir John and Lady Hornbury a 
 lumbering young nobleman of vast wealth, who was in some sort 
 a connection of theirs ; so near that they called him cousin. He 
 called one morning to say that he was going to Paris, and to 
 burden himself with any commissions to Edith. 
 
 " I should like to see my old playmate very much," he said. 
 " I was a lover of hers when we were in the schoolroom ; I should 
 like very much to see her once more, though I suppose she is 
 getting too fine for me." 
 
 There was not the slightest objection to his seeing as much of 
 his cousin as he chose, and Lady Hornbury wrote a note in her 
 best French (Madame d'Aurilliac did not speak English, nor did 
 Lord Lumberton speak French), whereby the Comtesse d'Aurilliac 
 was requested to receive Lord Lumberton as one of their own 
 family. The Comtesse received him in French, and he responded 
 in English : he stayed on in Paris, and in two months the 
 Comtesse found it necessary to write to Lady Hombury as 
 follows : — 
 
 "Madame, — My Lord Lumberton's visits are extremely 
 frequent here, and I should be very glad to know your instruc- 
 tions as regards them. I have not the least reason to believe 
 that anything has passed between Milord and your beautiful 
 daughter, but at the same time, Madame, I think that he thinks 
 
WHY LADY HORNBUETS BALL WAS POSTPONED. 95 
 
 of her a little more than he does of my other young ladies, while 
 she treats him with merely the kindness of a cousin. I observe 
 that in our little family parties she prefers dancing with M. de 
 Kocroy, a gentleman of the very highest refinement and introduc- 
 tion, until lately gentleman-in-waiting to his most Christian 
 Majesty Henri Y. at Frohsdorf (whom may the holy saints have 
 in their keeping) ; M. de Rocroy, however, appears as indifferent 
 to her as she "is to him. This feeling of Milord Lumherton's 
 may ripen into an attachment, or it may not. I only await your 
 instructions as to my management in this affair." 
 
 "What shall we do now?" said Lady Hornhury to her 
 hushand. 
 
 "Do!" said Sir John. "Nothing at all. If Lumherton 
 likes to fall in love with her, I don't see why we should put a 
 spoke in his wheel. The lad is a good honest fellow enough, and 
 would make any woman in the world happy. Old D'Aurilliac says 
 that she doesn't care for him, so there is no immediate danger : 
 let Lumherton go to her, but don't say anything to the girl 
 herself. Write and tell old D'Aurilliac that we approve of his 
 visits." 
 
 " But Edith is not out," said Lady Hornhury. 
 
 " My hanker's hook tells me that," said Sir John. " If she 
 can make up her mind before she does come out, all the better for 
 her." 
 
 " He may gain her affections before she has had an opportunity 
 of choosing." 
 
 " That is precisely what happened to yourself, and if you don't 
 regret it I am sure I don't ; you know that we were engaged 
 hefore you came out. No, there is not an unmarried man in 
 London whom I would prefer to Lumherton." 
 
 " But, Sir John, suhmissive as Edith is now, you must re- 
 member the time, not so very long ago, when she had hoth a will 
 and temper of her own. Any attempt to force her inclinations 
 would he fatal." 
 
 " When will a woman learn to argue? " said Sir John, testily. 
 " I don't want to force her inclinations, I only want her to receive 
 Lumherton's visits. If you don't wish Lumherton to see her, 
 you are doing the very best thing to make her think more of him 
 by sending him to the right-about without the ghost of a cause." 
 
 Lady Hornhury gave way after a time, good-humouredly. 
 She was a woman, and, good and honest as she was, would very 
 much have liked to have had Edith out in London, and to have 
 cone through that game of chess with eligible suitors as castles 
 
96 WHY LADY HORNBURY'S BALL WAS POSTPONED. 
 
 and knights, and with ineligible suitors as pawns, in which every 
 British mother delights. But she yielded ; Lumberton would 
 most certainly "do." She wrote to Madame d'Aurilliac at once 
 before she went out, and, being in a hurry, wrote in English. 
 What follows is part of her letter : 
 
 "Both Sir John and I quite approve of Lord Lumberton's 
 visits. Edith and he were cousins and playmates, and the matter 
 is quite a family one." 
 
 Which Madame, with the aid of a dictionary, translated to 
 mean that the two families had agreed on a manage de convenance 
 in the French fashion. 
 
 The effect of this wonderful discovery on the part of Madame 
 was singularly delightful to Lord Lumberton, who was by this 
 time honestly head over heels in love with his cousin ; and also 
 singularly and terribly disagreeable to poor Edith, who, for 
 reasons of her own, was nearly out of her mind. Whenever Lord 
 Lumberton came now he was left alone with her, Madame 
 d'Aurilliac always quitting the room after a short time, with a 
 far-seeing air, as though she was looking towards St. Petersburg, 
 to see if the ice was breaking up so as to allow of navigation ; 
 and the young ladies leaving also with that air of espieglerie or 
 archness of which some Parisian ladies are mistresses, and which 
 has occasioned more than one British islander, while suffering 
 from the spleen, to long to throw his boots at their heads. 
 Lumberton desired to do nothing of the kind ; he was in love, 
 and he liked it, though sometimes he would have wished when 
 they were alone that he had something to say for himself. Edith 
 of course knew that he loved her, and she had no dislike for him, 
 but would chat with him over old times, about his sisters, his 
 horses, his dogs, and such things, which helped him on wonder- 
 fully. Edith knew that some day or another he would speak, and 
 she was quite ready for him. Good fellow as he was, she would 
 as soon have married a chiffonier. She never alluded to his 
 attentions to her mother, and Madame d'Aurilliac only occasionally 
 mentioned his presence at her house as a matter of form. So 
 matters went on for months, until there came a cataclysm. Lady 
 Hornbury received this letter : — 
 
 " Madame, — When I receive a viper into my bosom, or a snake 
 into my house, what do I do ? I expel that snake or that viper. 
 Madame, I have discovered a snake in the form of your daughter's 
 maid, Rose Dawson, and I have expelled her with ignominy, 
 having first had her boxes searched by warrant from the Juge 
 d'Instruction. Madame, we found four thousand francs in gold, 
 which we could not retain, so she is yone free. 
 
WHY LADY HORNBURY'S BALL WAS POSTPONED. 97 
 
 " My eyes, Madame, have long been directed in a certain 
 quarter. I have now, in consequence of the Revolution, to address 
 my attention to the forming of young ladies. I have therefore an 
 eye not readily deceived. I have noticed for a long time looks of 
 intelligence pass between M. de Rocroy and your daughter's 
 beautiful, but wicked, maid. I saw an intrigue, and I watched ; 
 last night they were in the shrubbery together for an hour, and at 
 last I came on them as they were saying farewell. Him I 
 banished my house at once, telling him that his sacred Majesty 
 Henri V. (whom the Virgin and saints preserve till he comes to 
 his own) should hear of this violation of my hearth. Her I 
 despatched as you have heard. I have broken the truth to your 
 sweet and gentle daughter, who has acquiesced, though with 
 sorrow." 
 
 " I told you that girl was no good," said Sir John. "You 
 had better send for her home and provide for her, or she will be 
 talking about the Holmsdale business with emendations and 
 editions. I shall, if Lumberton ever says anything to me about 
 Edith, tell him the whole of that matter." 
 
 " I suppose we ought," said Lady Hornbury. " If Lumberton 
 cannot see how well she behaved, he is unworthy of her ; but 
 wait till he speaks, for it is not everybody's business. I don't 
 think that he cares much for her. I hear nothing of it from 
 Madame." 
 
 But Lumberton spoke very shortly afterwards. He spoke 
 kindly, honestly, and tenderly. He said he would wait any time 
 she chose, that she should come out and look round in the London 
 world to see if there was any one she liked better, but that he 
 would not take No as an answer now. He looked so noble and 
 manly in his faith and honour, that for one instant she felt 
 inclined to confide everything to him, but she felt a chill as she 
 reflected that she was in France, and that a deadly duel would be 
 the consequence. She had been ready for him very long, and she 
 was ready for him now. 
 
 " Cousin," she said, " if you think that I do not love you and 
 respect you for what you have said, you are very much mistaken ; 
 but I vow before heaven that if you ever speak to me like this 
 again I will enter the Romish Church and take the veil." 
 
 "Edith! " 
 
 ' ' Do you remember in old times my starving myself for a 
 day because I was not allowed to go to Lady Maitland's children's 
 bail?" 
 
 " Yes, I remember it." 
 
 8 
 
98 WHY LADY HOBNBURY'S BALL WAS POSTTONED. 
 
 " I will starve myself for good if you ever speak to me like this 
 again. Now you must go ; you must go at once." 
 
 " Never to meet again ? " 
 
 " Never until you have given up all intention or hope of 
 mentioning this subject to me." 
 
 " Then it is never," said the poor young gentleman. " Good- 
 bye, Edith." And so he went. 
 
 "I could have managed him in no other way," thought Edith, 
 after he had gone. " Poor fellow ! how happy he will make some 
 good woman when he has forgotten me. He has gone upstairs to 
 Madame d'Aurilliac to tell her. Well, Madame, you will not be 
 long in arriving, but it is to no purpose." 
 
 In fact, Madame d'Aurilliac arrived in about a quarter of an 
 hour with some crochet work, smiling ; and Edith's old will was 
 roused, for she saw that the old Frenchwoman was going to play 
 a game with her which a child of six years old could have seen 
 through, and she was determined to beat Madame's refined 
 French fence by what Madame would have called the British boxe. 
 
 " I have intruded, I am afraid," said Madame, "but where, 
 then, is Lord Lumberton ? " 
 
 "I thought he was upstairs with you, Madame," said Edith, 
 looking straight at her. 
 
 " He was on the stairs, and I saw him just one instant. I 
 thought he had come bach." 
 
 " I thought I heard you wishing him good-night outside the 
 door, Madame, and telling him that you would put everything 
 right for him." 
 
 " Lovers' ears are quick," said Madame, with a smile, which 
 showed Edith that she had aroused the hereditary temper of the 
 D'Aurilliacs ; a notoriously bad one. 
 
 " There are no lovers' ears here, Madame," said Edith. "It 
 is useless to fence. You know as much as I can tell you. My 
 cousin Lumberton proposed to me just now, and I have vowed 
 that I would sooner take the veil or starve myself to death than 
 see him again." 
 
 "This decision must be reconsidered, mademoiselle," said 
 Madame d'Aurilliac. 
 
 " In my coffin, then," said Edith. 
 
 " Mademoiselle is doubtless aware that the match has been 
 made up between the two families." 
 
 " That is utterly false," replied Edith. 
 
 " I have it in black and white in your mother's own hand," 
 said the French schoolmistress. And we must remember that 
 she believed that she was speaking the truth and doing her duty. 
 
WHY LADY HOKXBURY'S BALL WAS POSTPONED. 99 
 
 " It is impossible ! " 
 
 " But it is true, Mademoiselle. It is very easy to see why it 
 is true. In France it is said by English tellers of falsehood that 
 the majority of French ladies have attachments after they are 
 married. It is false, at least with regard to the Court of his 
 Majesty of France, Henri V. (as for Orleanists, Bonapartists, 
 Republicans, all things are possible with them). But the worst 
 detractors of our country always say of French girls that they are 
 carefully watched and guarded until they leave the cloister or the 
 pension for an establishment. After that the Lady Superior or the 
 lady of the pension is not considered answerable. The husband 
 is answerable then, and that is the reason why French husbands 
 are the most attentive of all." 
 
 " What is all this to me, Madame ? " 
 
 " Thus much, mademoiselle," replied Madame d'Aurilliac, 
 glowering at her, " if I had known as much about you as I do 
 now, I would never have admitted you into my house." 
 
 •'What do you mean by that?" said Edith, turning deadly 
 pale, but still perfectly courageous. She saw herself brought to 
 bay with Madame d'Aurilliac, and determined to fight. 
 
 " I hardly like to say," replied Madame. 
 
 " Pray do not spare me." 
 
 "If I had known before that there had been a scandal about 
 you with that M. Holmsdale, I would never have had you here. 
 If it got abroad it would ruin me. Great Heaven, a clandestine 
 correspondence ! " 
 
 Edith staggered to the wall and leant against it. Old 
 D'Aurilliac eyed her scientifically to see if she was going to fall, 
 but perceiving that she was not, unrolled some more cotton, and 
 went on at her crochet like Clotlio. 
 
 " Are you going to speak, mademoiselle ?" she said at last; 
 and Edith turned a ghastly face towards her. 
 
 " Did my father and mother tell you this unhappy business? " 
 
 "It is quite true, then," said Madame, taking up a missed 
 stitch. " No, or I would never have had you here at all. It was 
 your treacherous viper of a maid who told me, and gave me proofs 
 in black and white, long after you came here, for five francs. I 
 make inquiries of all young ladies. She is a wicked viper, that 
 girl. You were so kind and so good to her, and she betrays you 
 not once to your father but twice to me. Is it true ? But I 
 know it is, for you lean against the wall." 
 
 Edith roused herself. "Madame," she said, "there was a 
 complication with Mr. Holmsdale." 
 
 " Which now is in the possession of an infuriated maid-servant," 
 
100 WHY LADY HOBNBUKY'S BALL WAS POSTPONED. 
 
 hissed out Madame d'Aurilliac, " who may ruin the character of 
 my establishment by telling your story. Come, mademoiselle, 
 no more words. This match with Lord Lumherton is fixed on 
 by your parents. I have told Lord Lumherton to call and renew 
 his proposals in a week. If they are not answered satisfactorily 
 then, I must take means to vindicate the honour of my establish- 
 ment at whatever cost. Go to your room, mademoiselle." 
 
 "Madame," said Edith before she went, "I have only to stay 
 a few weeks with you : could you not let me talk ahout this with 
 my parents? " 
 
 " You will find them as inexorable as I am, mademoiselle. Your 
 cousin's visits here have been admitted in the most open manner, 
 and this is not a bureau tie manage." 
 
 On the 11 th of April, Lady Hornhury received the following 
 telegram : — 
 
 "D'Aurilliac, Rue St. Honore, Paris, to Lady Hornbury, Port- 
 land Place, London. Come instantly. Frightful trouble ahout 
 Edith." 
 
 " What on earth is the matter now ? " said Sir John. 
 
 " I can't conceive," said Lady Hornhury. " Edith must be ill. 
 I must hurry away. Put off the ball." 
 
 And so Ave have got round to the beginning of the story again. 
 
 We must, however, leave Lady Hornbury to go to Paris, and 
 stay in London with Sir John for a short time. Sir John took 
 his ride in the Park very comfortably in spite of Madame d'Auril- 
 liac's telegram, not believing that anything very great was the 
 matter. During his ride he met with an old friend who inquired 
 after his wife, and on being told that she was gone to Paris, asked 
 Sir John to come and take dinner with him. Sir John declined, 
 on the ground that his lawyer was coming to dine with him, and 
 to discuss very particular business. " Indeed," he said, " old 
 Compton is so very urgent and mysterious that he makes me a 
 trifle uneasy : his news is very disagreeable, because he says that 
 he will only discuss it after dinner." 
 
 " That looks bad," said his old friend, laughing. " I'll bet you 
 five pounds that you have lost some money." 
 
 "I suppose I have," said Sir John. "I shall sell that horse 
 and groom yonder. What will you give me for them ? " 
 
 " I'll take the horse," said his old friend, " but I won't have 
 the groom. You and your wife have an ugly trick of making your 
 servants so comfortable that they are discontented everywhere 
 else." 
 
WHY LADY HOENBUBX'S BALL WAS POSTPONED. 101 
 
 So they parted, and Sir John went home to dinner at six, the 
 hour in which he delighted, hut at which he never was allowed to 
 dine when Lady Hornhury was at home. Mr. Compton w;;s very 
 punctual, but was evidently very serious ; and before dinner was 
 over Sir John had calculated his losses at about fraro ten to twentj 
 thousand pounds. When the seiwants were tfut of the room, and 
 Mr . Compton proposed business, that gentleman looked so very 
 grave that Sir John thought he should be well out of it with fifty 
 thousand. 
 
 •• Now, frowner, how much is it?" said Sir John, laughing. 
 " How much is it ? Put a name to the figure, and have it over." 
 
 " To what figure, Sir John ? " 
 
 " To the figure of the sum I have lost. You look so black that 
 1 have put it at fifty thousand pounds. Is it the colliery ? " 
 
 " The colliery is doing splendidly, Sir John. The sixty- 
 fathom level has been struck, and the seam is seven feet thick. 
 But " 
 
 " What is it, then ? " 
 
 " Sir John, did you ever hear of your brother, Sir Thomas's, 
 domestic life '? " 
 
 " Yes," said Sir John. 
 
 "Do you remember a certain Marchioness de Tout? " 
 
 " And poor Tom's connection with her"? Certainly. She left 
 her husband for him, you know, and there was a fearful scandal. 
 Tom fought tlie Marquis and was wounded, but he and the 
 Marchioness did not live long together after she was divorced 
 from her husband. She was a violent and reckless woman, and 
 became more violent and reckless after the loss of her good name. 
 She died in a religious house, and poor Tom broke his heart over 
 her desertion of him, for, with all his faults, lie was a most affec- 
 tionate fellow. I knew my brother so well that I am perfectly 
 sure that she left him through no fault of his. I feel certain he 
 would have made her every reparation in his power. As you your- 
 self know, three thousand a year was paid to her under his will 
 out of the estates." 
 
 " That is all true, Sir John, but I fear that he married her." 
 
 " Then why on earth did he keep his marriage secret? " 
 
 " He was not proud of it," said Mr. Compton. " It was a dis- 
 creditable affair from beginning to end. She found that by her 
 conduct she had lost all claim upon society, and she led him a 
 terrible life, accusing him, perhaps with reason, of having cut her 
 off from the world she loved so well. She got terribly anxious 
 about her future state — superstitiously so. She left him to enter 
 a religious house at Amiens." 
 
102 WHY LADY HORNBURY'S BALL WAS POSTPONED. 
 
 " Yes," said Sir John. 
 
 " I fear," said Mr. Compton, " that he had married her hefore 
 she left him : in fact, I know it." 
 
 " Good Heaven ! " exclaimed Sir John. 
 
 '■Yes ; and i fear that, out of mere spite to him and to his 
 family, she concealed the fact that she had a son by him in that 
 religious house. Such is apparently the case, however, and 
 according to the other party's statements, that same son is 
 alive." 
 
 " This is too monstrous to be true ! " said Sir John. 
 
 " I don't know what to make of it," said Mr. Compton. " You 
 never can reckon on an angry woman. It would seem that she 
 left with the Lady Superior at her death a packet which was not 
 to be opened for twenty-four years. This trust was handed from 
 one Lady Superior to another, and was opened last year only. It 
 contains, according to the other party, the proofs of her marriage 
 and of the birth of this boy, which the other party have verified 
 and are prepared to bring into court to-morrow. The other party 
 have a terrible case, and Watson and Hicks are about the most 
 respectable and safe firm in London." 
 
 " Then I have never been Sir John Hornbury at all? " said Sir 
 John, with a coolness which utterly astonished Mr. Compton. 
 
 "If their story is right," said Mr. Compton. " We have got 
 to see about that." 
 
 " AVhat became of this boy ? " 
 
 " He was given over to the Jesuits, and was brought up at 
 Stonyhurst. His mother provided for him partly with the nine 
 thousand pounds which she had drawn from the estate in three 
 years, and partly from her own property, which was a very good 
 one. The Jesuits were honest stewards for the boy, according to 
 Watson and Hicks, and although he refused to become a priest, 
 the young man is pretty well off." 
 
 " Do you believe this story ? " 
 
 Mr. Compton did not speak one word, but shook his head. 
 
 " Ruin ? " said Sir John, quietly. 
 
 " It looks very much like it," said Mr. Compton. " I have been 
 busy about the thing without troubling you, and I cannot at present 
 see that we have a leg to stand on. But I come to the strangest 
 part of the whole story. This young man will make any com- 
 promise which you please on your own terms ; will leave you in 
 possession of the estates and title for your life ; will do anything 
 you can suggest, on one condition." 
 
 " You amaze me. What is his condition? " 
 
 "The hand of Miss Edith." 
 
WHY LADY HORNBURY'S BALL WAS POSTPONED. 103 
 
 " Like his impudence," exclaimed Sir John, " to ask Edith to 
 marry him before she has seen him. Why, Compton," he went 
 on, almost violently, " if Edith were to offer to save me by such 
 an unnatural mktch, I would refuse my consent in such terms as 
 would render a renewal of the offer impossible. I would sooner 
 live in a garret on bread than consent to such an arrangement. 
 And Edith,' my own daughter, do you think that she would degrade 
 herself by marrying a man she did not love ? You know her 
 better, Compton." 
 
 " I do, Sir John, and I know you pretty well also. Of course 
 neither of you would consent for an instant — only — — " 
 
 " We shall have nothing then," said Sir John, " if this be true. 
 My poor Mary, my poor Mary ! " 
 
 " You will have Lady Hornbury's fortune, Sir John, five hundred 
 a year." 
 
 " Aye, but he will want that. I must be £300,000 in his 
 debt." 
 
 " It is settled on herself." 
 
 " Aye, but I will make her give it to him — every penny ; she 
 never disobeyed me yet, and she will not now." 
 
 Mr. Compton looked at his old friend with eyes which were 
 brightened with admiration. "And this," he thought, "is the 
 man whom the world calls mean in money matters, and jealous of 
 his young wife?" "Sir John," he continued aloud, "I have 
 something to tell you which will surprise you more than anything, 
 my dear old friend. This young man has told W T atson in con- 
 fidence, and Watson has toid me in confidence, that he not only 
 knows Miss Edith, but is absolutely certain that he gained her 
 affections eight months ago when she was staying with her aunt. 
 
 Mr. Holmsdale says " 
 
 " What ! " cried Sir John. 
 
 " Mr. Holmsdale — by-the-bye, I forgot to tell you that the 
 young gentleman who claims to be Sir Richard Hornbury goes by 
 the name of Holmsdale, which the Jesuits gave him (they seem to 
 have given him none of their evil ways, for he is behaving very 
 well). Mr. Holmsdale says that he is absolutely certain that his 
 attentions would not be disagreeable to Miss Edith, and should 
 his claim, on examination, be allowed by you, he asks you to put 
 the question to the young lady herself." 
 
 " Why, Compton," said Sir John, solemnly, striking his hand 
 on the table, " Lady Hornbury and I sent that young man to the 
 right-about with a flea in his ear eight months ago. I believe 
 Edith did care for him, though she behaved splendidly, sir ; 
 nobly." 
 
104 WHY LADY HOllNBURY'S BALL WAS POSTPONED. 
 
 "Of that I have no doubt," said Mr. Compton. "Now the 
 question is, supposing all things go wrong with us, will you " 
 
 " You must ask her mother about that. If Edith really cares 
 for the man, I would drop my title and live quietly at Huntly 
 Bank on a thousand a year. I should be sorry to lose my servants 
 and horses, but Mary could go into society as well as Mrs. Horn- 
 bury as she could as Lady Hornbury. No, if she cares for this 
 man, and he is really the man " 
 
 " Of which we are not sure as yet," interrupted Mr. Compton. 
 
 "Of which we are not sure as yet," repeated Sir John; "I 
 would do anything I could for peace. For, Compton, we must not 
 take this into court without a very good case ; a better one than 
 we have at present. I am not going to throw £100,000 into 
 Watson and Hicks' lap, and leave you unpaid." 
 
 " I'd fight the matter for you if you were bankrupt to-morrow, 
 Sir John," exclaimed Mr. C mipton. 
 
 " I have not the least doubt of it at all, you obstinate old man. 
 Now I will go to bed and sleep over it. I should like to see this 
 Holmsdale. Have you any idea whether he knew of this when he 
 first knew my daughter ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Compton, " as Watson pointed out to me, he 
 had been to them about his claim before he ever saw her. His 
 affection for her is utterly disinterested. "When he got his dis- 
 missal from her he waited to see if he could see her again, and 
 win her affections entirely without letting her know the fearful 
 power in his hands. Watson says — and Watson knows young men 
 pretty well — that Mr. Holmsdale will not move in the matter at 
 all during your life, unless Miss Edith marries some one else. 
 That is Watson's opinion. I am of opinion that he might if he 
 were to find a young lady more accessible than Miss Edith, but 
 that is all guess-work. Has Miss Edith any predilections in 
 another quarter '? " 
 
 " That good ass Lumberton seems smitten," said Sir John, 
 "but I don't think old D'Aurilliac has given him much chance. 
 Good-night." 
 
 AVe must now leave Sir John to his own thoughts, and take 
 flight to Paris, where the most terrible events were taking place. 
 Lady Hornbury got to the Hotel Meurice by two o'clock in the 
 day, and by half-past two she was in the salon of Madame d'Auril- 
 liac, in the Rue St. Honore, awaiting that lady's pleasure with 
 deep anxiety. She had not asked for Edith, considering it wiser 
 to see the duenna herself. It is worthy of note that Lady Horn- 
 bury had been thinking matters over and had come to the con- 
 clusion that Edith was not ill. Having allayed her maternal fears 
 
WHY LADY HOUNBUltY'S BALL WAS POSTPONED. 105 
 
 on this point without the least foundation, she had travelled on 
 alone, and by thinking about her sea-sickness, the rumbling of 
 the railway, and her postponed ball, she had arrived in Paris ex- 
 tremely cross ; and was just nourishing a mortal hatred against 
 Madame d'Aurilliac for having telegraphed instead of writing more 
 fully, when that good lady entered the room in full war paint and 
 feathers, looking daggers. Lady Hornbury saw that there was 
 going to be a fight, and was determined that she would not be the 
 lasl to begin it. The conversation was carried on in French, 
 which was greatly to Madame d'Aurilliac's advantage. But then 
 Lady Hornbury had a great advantage in not understanding the 
 most stinging of Madame's points, and so preserving a coolness 
 which deserted that lady at one period of the conversation. 
 
 " How do you do, Madame, and how is my daughter Edith? 
 May I ask the reason of this mysterious telegram, and whether 
 my daughter is ill? " 
 
 "I am not in the least degree aware of the state of your 
 daughter's health, Madame? " 
 
 " Would you be kind enough to explain yourself, Madame ? " 
 
 " Certainly. Your daughter left here five days ago." 
 
 " And where is she gone, if you please ? " said Lady Hornbury. 
 
 " Into Burgundy." 
 
 " With your leave, Madame ? " 
 
 " No, Madame, without my knowledge. I have nourished a 
 viper in my bosom which I was weak enough not to expel." 
 
 " If you allude to my daughter as a viper, Madame, you forget 
 yourself ; and as for expelling her, she seems to have expelled 
 herself. Are any further explanations convenient ? " 
 
 "I have been most grossly deceived, yet I have borne every- 
 thing. Madame, when I took your daughter into my house, did 
 you say a word about the clandestine correspondence with 
 Hohnsdale?" 
 
 "Certainly not," said Lady Hornbury. "It was no business 
 of yours : and what you choose to call a clandestine correspon- 
 dence was limited to a single letter from her, in which she forbade 
 Mr. Hohnsdale to speak to her." 
 
 " Madame, her late maid tells quite another story," said 
 Madame d'Aurilliac. 
 
 "If Madame chooses to believe the word of a discharged and 
 most unprincipled servant in preference to mine, I can only pity 
 Madame : my daughter is incapable of a mean or underhanded 
 action." 
 
 " I think that you will change your opinion of Madame Rocroy 
 directly," said Madame d'Aurilliac. 
 
100 WHY LADY HORNBTJRY'S BALL WAS POSTPONED. 
 
 "Madame Rocroy ? I never heard of the woman," said Lady 
 Hornhury. 
 
 " Your daughter Edith is now Madame Rocroy," said Madame 
 d'Aurilliac. " She was married four days ago secretly at the 
 Mairic of this arrondissement, and afterwards at the Carmelite 
 chapel in the Rue de Brissac, and at the Protestant church in the 
 Rue d'Aguesseau." 
 
 Though Madame d'Aurilliac said this while she was looking 
 straight into the eyes of Lady Hornhury, the Englishwoman never 
 flinched or changed colour. Her mouth was as dry as dust, and 
 her heart going wildly, hut she never moved a muscle before the 
 Frenchwoman. " Not before her," she thought, " not before 
 that woman." 
 
 "And who," she asked, " is the gentleman whom Madame has 
 selected for my son-in-law? " 
 
 " Madame is kind enough to throw the blame on me. I thank 
 Madame very much indeed for allowing me to admit a viper to 
 my house, and then throwing the blame of what has happened on 
 me." 
 
 "Now, my dear Madame," said Lady Hornhury, who by this 
 time had managed to moisten her dry mouth and get her heart a 
 little quiet. " We do not want any more vipers, if you please ; 
 we have had vipers enough. I must ask you civilly to give me an 
 account of this matter from beginning to end, first requesting you 
 to give me your honour as a D'Aurilliac that my daughter was 
 married as you say." 
 
 " Madame de Rocroy," said Madame d'Aurilliac, " has made a 
 marriage which I should have recommended myself had it been 
 sanctioned by your ladyship. M. de Rocroy is a gentleman in 
 every way worthy of the best woman in France, and of fortune, not 
 large, but good. He is a gentleman high in favour with his 
 Majesty Henri V., as these jewels will show. It would seem that 
 his majesty condescended to take interest in the love affairs of M. 
 do Rocroy, and knew what was going on, for these jewels have 
 arrived only to-day from Frohsdorf, as a bridal present for 
 Madame Rocroy. Here are the jewels, my lady ; perhaps you will 
 take charge of them." 
 
 " Thank you," said Lady Hornhury, coolly. " I may as well 
 take them until my daughter arrives in England ; they are very 
 fine jewels ; indeed, I think that I will wear them myself until my 
 daughter, Madame what name did you say ? " 
 
 " Rocroy." 
 
 "Ah ! Rocroy claims them. And now, my dear creature, how 
 did all this come about? I am really dying to know." 
 
WHY LADY HOENBURYS BALL WAS POSTPONED. 10? 
 
 "Insular wretch," thought Madame d'Aurilliac ; "she cares 
 nothing for her daughter." 
 
 There was a wild, nearly bursting heart behind Lady Hornbury's 
 broad bosom which told another tale though ; and one sentence 
 was ringing in the ear of her mind continually. " It will kill 
 John ; it will kill John ; " but she faced the Frenchwoman as 
 though she had no fox under her tunic. 
 
 " In consequence of your directions with regard to the visits of 
 Lord Lumberton as the fiance of Miss Hombury " 
 
 "None such were given," said Lady Hornbury, interrupting. 
 
 "I beg Madame' s pardon. Here is Madame's letter, in which 
 you told me that his visits were a family affair." 
 
 " I wish I had written in French," said Lady Hornbury. 
 
 " I wish you had, Madame. I suppose that with that letter in 
 my hand I may be excused from blame." 
 
 " Go on with your tale, and we will talk about blame after- 
 wards," said Lady Hornbury, who felt a trifle guilty, though she 
 would have died sooner than show it. 
 
 " In consequence of that letter I admitted Lord Lumberton's 
 visits ; nay, after I had discovered the affair Holmsdale, I 
 encouraged them." 
 
 Lady Hombury nodded, and sneezed in the most unconcerned 
 manner, and said, " Go on, Madame, for you begin to interest 
 me." 
 
 "I encouraged his visits, knowing what I knew, and at last he 
 proposed to her. She refused him with scorn, and he told me of 
 it. I went to her and told her that in consequence of the affair 
 Holmsdale she was destined to marry that young man by her 
 parents' orders." 
 
 "Oh, you told her that, did you, Madame'?" said Lady 
 Hombury. 
 
 "Yes, Madame; I considered that I was acting under your 
 instructions, and I told her that. I told her that she must give 
 Lord Lumberton a favourable answer in five days. On the second 
 day after that she was gone, and at night the young Comte de 
 Milleflenrs came and told me all that had happened : he had acted 
 as groomsman, and his sister as bridesmaid." 
 
 " How very nice of them," said Lady Hombury. " You have 
 not got such a thing as a hairpin, have you, Countess ? for I slept 
 in the train last night, and my hair is coming down. Now about 
 this young Milleflenrs. He is quite respectable ? " 
 
 " He is gentleman-in-waiting to his Majesty Henri Y." 
 
 " Ah ! we call him Comte de Chambord ; I respect your 
 prejudices ; he will clairn his title as King of France some day, 
 
103 WHY LADY HORNBURY'S BALL WAS POSTPONED. 
 
 and I wish he may get it." (This vulgarism was utterly lost on 
 Madame d'Aurilliac.) " Well, Madame, if you will send me a 
 note of my daughter's expenses here to my hotel to-night, I will 
 discharge it. May I ask, had you any suspicions of the attentions 
 of M. de Rocroy towards my daughter ? " 
 
 " Madame's memory is short. I thought that his attentions 
 were directed to your daughter's maid, and so I discharged her ; 
 she was only the go-hetween subsidised by Rocroy." 
 
 "Ah! I see," said Lady Hornbury. "Well, Madame, I 
 suppose that neither of us has much cause to talk about this 
 matter. I do not want to talk about it, and I should think you 
 did not either. You had better not. If you hold your tongue, I 
 will hold mine ; if you speak, I will ruin you ; you depend on your 
 pension ; and affairs of this kind, so grossly misconducted as this 
 has been by you, would ruin a dozen pensions." 
 
 So Lady Hornbury got into her fiacre and went to the Hotel 
 Meurice after her great victory. Madame d'Aurilliac would have 
 given a year's income had she seen her in her bedroom, alone 
 with her maid, an old friend, who had been her nurse in times 
 gone by. 
 
 " Pinner," said Lady Hornbury, throwing herself in a chair, 
 " I have borne up before that woman, but I am going to die." 
 
 "What is the matter, my lady?" said the maid, kneeling 
 before her. 
 
 " I never can face Sir John. And oh, my Edith ! my Edith ! 
 dearer than ever, why could you not have trusted your mother? " 
 
 " Is Miss Edith dead ? " asked the frightened maid. 
 
 " No, Pinner ; but she has married a Frenchman, and deceived 
 us all. Oh, Madame d'Aurilliac, I will remember you ! " 
 
 Pinner got her mistress to bed as soon as possible. Lady 
 Hornbury wrote a letter to her daughter, poste restante, Dijon, full 
 of tenderness and kindness, only regretting that Edith had not 
 confided in her, and putting her entirely in the right about Lord 
 Lumberton's attentions. " I will not conceal from you the fact, 
 my darling, that we should have liked you to marry Lord 
 Lumberton, but that old idiot, Madame d'Aurilliac, mistook 
 everything. As for this Rocroy of yours, give him a box on the 
 ears for me, and tell him that I will give him another when I meet 
 him." 
 
 That was the way that Lady Hornbury got out of the difficulty : 
 was she a wise woman, or was she not ? I think that she was 
 wise. She said to Pinner before she cried herself to sleep, " She 
 shall love me still, though that miserable old Frenchwoman made 
 her distrust me. We must be off by the first train to Calais, and 
 
WHY LADY HOENBUEY'S BALL WAS POSTPONED. 109 
 
 I must break it to Sir John. That woman D'Aurilliac will send 
 in her hill to-night. Wait up and pay it. It will he 10,000 
 francs, or thereabouts. Don't haggle ; I'll give her her receipt 
 some day." 
 
 Sir John slept over Mr. Compton's astonishing communication, 
 and he came to this conclusion, that it was in all probability 
 perfectly true. 
 
 In the first place, it was obvious that Compton believed it, and 
 Compton was the first solicitor in London. It was also ohvious 
 that Watson believed it, and Watson was the last man in tin' 
 world to take up a case unless he was as good as certain. 
 Compton might still find something not known as yet, hut it 
 seemed highly improbable. Sir John quietly acquiesced in the 
 matter as far as he was concerned : the worst thing was the 
 breaking it to his wife. 
 
 "How will she take it?" he repeated to himself a hundred 
 times over. " There will he one explosion when I tell her the 
 truth about Compton's story, and another when I order her to 
 give up her fortune. I wonder how she will get through with it. 
 Poor sweetheart, she has never seen trouble yet." 
 
 Here she was, late the next day, fresh from Paris with a new 
 bonnet and a frank smile. "Now, John," she said, "you may 
 kiss me, but if you rumple my bonnet you rumple two pound four, 
 and so I warn you. And how are you, my dear ? " 
 
 " I am as well as ever I was, I think," said Sir John. " I am 
 wonderfully well. But I will come up to your dressing-room while 
 you change your dress for dinner, for I have some very heavy news 
 to tell you." 
 
 "I suppose that you have heard about half the truth, John," 
 she said. " Come up and tell your story. Then I will tell mine. 
 Any one to dinner ? ' ' 
 " Mr. Compton." 
 
 " The very man," she said. " Now, my dear, tell me your 
 story while I am dressing." 
 
 " Mary, I fear we are utterly ruined." 
 " How ? — In money ? " she asked, combing her hair. 
 " I fear so." 
 
 " How very curious. Have you been speculating ? " 
 " No. I am, it would seem, not Sir John Hornbury at all." 
 "Don't say another word," she cried. " I know what is the 
 matter. Tom was married, and had a son." 
 " My darling, I fear that it is only too true." 
 " I knew it," she said, looking at him triumphantly, and plying 
 her hair-brushes. " I knew it as soon as you spoke. Tell me 
 
110 WHY LADY HOHNBURY'S BALL WAS POSTPONED. 
 
 all about it, and don't keep me waiting. I was certain it was that 
 when you spoke." 
 
 Sir John sat down and told her the whole matter, as Compton 
 had related it, from beginning to end. 
 
 " Well," she said, " surprises will never cease in the world. At 
 all events, we have my fortune, and we can be very comfortable 
 on that." 
 
 " Mary," said Sir John. 
 
 "Yes, clear." 
 
 " If this man is proved to be my nephew, I shall owe him about 
 £800,000." 
 
 " I am afraid so ; but we never can pay it." 
 
 " ^Ye can pay him your £15,000." 
 
 " If you think it necessary to your honour, of course I will obey 
 you ; but it leaves us penniless. I suppose that we ought to give 
 it. I will tell you what I can do better than most women : I can 
 give music lessons." 
 
 " You are not afraid of the future, then, without a penny ? " 
 
 " Not in the least. I have got you, John, and it will go hard 
 but what I will keep you. I am not afraid so long as you are 
 with me." 
 
 " Come here, you golden woman, and sit on my knee," said 
 Sir John. 
 
 She came, and their cheeks were together, and her brown hair 
 was mingling with his grey hair, and they sat in the silence of 
 love. 
 
 " Then you do not mind it ? " he asked. 
 
 " I don't see that there is anything to mind in it," she said. 
 " I like money and society more than most, but I love you better 
 than all. We are not the first people who have lost their money, 
 and we sha'n't be the last. I should have liked my fifteen 
 thousand pounds for your sake, but it must go if it turns out that 
 we have been living false lives." 
 
 "Edith could make everything straight for us," said Sir John. 
 
 "How?" 
 
 " The claimant is that young man Holmsdale who was in love 
 with Edith. He will never move in the matter during my lifetime 
 if Editli marries him. He says that he has won her love, could 
 the match be brought about. And, by the way, how is Edith, for 
 I had forgotten to ask you ? ' ' 
 
 " Now this is checkmate," said Lady Hornbury. " How is 
 Edith ? Why, Edith is as well as a bride can expect to be. 
 Editli, living in that atmosphere of lies which every Frenchwoman 
 carries about with her, has been frightened by old D'Aurilliac into 
 
WHY LADY HOBNBURY'S BALL WAS POSTPONED. Ill 
 
 running away with a French count. Edith is now Madame de 
 Rocroy." 
 
 " Is he a gentleman ? " asked Sir John. 
 
 "Oh yes; a man about Frohsdorf. By-the-bye, here are the 
 jewels which the Gomte de Chamhord sent her." 
 
 " She might have done worse," said Sir John. " Has he 
 money? " 
 
 " He has enough," said Lady Hombury. 
 
 " Well, then, under the circumstances, we really must not 
 grumble," said Sir John. "Now come, let us go down and 
 meet old Compton." 
 
 Old Compton was waiting for them, and dinner was waiting for 
 all three of them ; but old Compton wanted a few words on busi- 
 ness before they went into the dining-room. 
 
 " Sir John," he said, "you have, I suppose, put her ladyship 
 in possession of the facts ? " 
 
 " I have," said Sir John. 
 
 " My lady," said Mr. Compton, " I have been at work ever since 
 I spoke to Sir John, and I have to tell your ladyship that we have 
 not a leg to stand on ; those Jesuits are good men of business." 
 
 " Well, we have prepared our minds. We are beggars." 
 
 " Sir John told you the terms of the compromise ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Lady Hombury, " but such a compromise happens 
 to be impossible. My daughter Edith has married a Frenchman. 
 She is now Madame de Eocrov." 
 
 " Madame de what ! " shouted old Compton. 
 
 " Madame de Rocroy," said Lady Hombury. " My daughter's 
 husband's name is Richard de Rocroy." 
 
 "Have the goodness to bring me a glass of wine," said old 
 Compton. "I am faint." 
 
 Lady Hombury rang the bell violently, and, not waiting for the 
 footman, hurried Mr. Compton and Sir John into the dining-room, 
 where she poured out a glass of wine. 
 
 " Don't you see what you have done ? " said Mr. Compton, after 
 he had drunk his wine. 
 
 " Not in the least," said Lady Hornbury. 
 
 "Don't you see that your daughter has married Holmsdale, the 
 very man we wanted her to many? This Holmsdale, whom I 
 believe to be your nephew, always has taken the title of Rocroy in 
 France. Your daughter has married her cousin, and we are un- 
 commonly well out of it. Sir John, do you forget everything when 
 you forget that the family name of the De Touls was Rocroy? " 
 
 "I had completely forgotten it," said Sir John. Ami so they 
 went to dinmr and discussed matters very quietly. 
 
112 WHY LADY HORNBURY'S BALL WAS POSTPONED. 
 
 "How could this astounding result have come about?" said 
 Sir John. 
 
 " It is perfectly plain to me now that we have to thank the folly 
 and stupidity of the Comtesse d'Aurilliac for this," said Lady 
 Hornbury. " She put things in a false light to Edith, and Edith 
 was foolish enough to believe that we should force her into a 
 marriage with Lnmberton. Well now, what do you say about my 
 going to Dijon and taking Mr. Compton ? " 
 
 " Or what do you say to my going to Dijon and taking Lady 
 Hornbury ? " said Mr. Compton. 
 
 " Well, you must fight it out on the way as to who is the com- 
 mander-in-chief," said Sir John, "but you had better both go. 
 Compton, you have full power to act for me with this man. I feel 
 sure that I shall like him. Mary, my love, what do you say to 
 dropping the title, and becoming Mrs. Hornbury? " 
 
 " I think on the whole that it would be the best thing to do for 
 Edith's sake. The world will say some hard things of us — will 
 say, for example, that we discovered the justice of the claim, and 
 sacrificed our daughter to save ourselves, but we, knowing other- 
 wise, can laugh at that. However, nothing can be done until I 
 have taken Mr. Compton to Dijon." 
 
 Edith had written a letter to her mother which had crossed that 
 lady's ; she was therefore profoundly astonished, as she was sitting 
 alone deeply anxious, to see her mother come sailing into the room, 
 and saying, "My sweet Edith, get me some tea. I am as tired 
 as if I had walked all the way. Where is your cousin ? " 
 
 " My cousin, mamma ? " 
 
 " I should say your husband. Don't you know that you have 
 married your cousin, and are Lady Hornbury ? Come here and 
 kiss me, you curious child. So he has never told you." 
 
 Meanwhile Mr. Compton and Edith's husband had been in con- 
 versation. At first that young gentleman emphatically refused to 
 touch the estates, titles, or anything else, save a decent allowance 
 from Sir John. The most that he could be got to do was this : 
 he was to be received as a nephew of Sir John's and heir to the 
 baronetcy at Sir John's death, drawing such money as should be 
 decided on from the estates. The marriage was to be immediately 
 announced, and Sir John was at once to be told to do so. 
 
 " Now, my dear sir, I want to ask you to do a certain thing very 
 much." 
 
 "I will do it," said Richard Hornbury. 
 
 " Go at once, to-morrow, to Frohsdorf, and take your wife with 
 you. You are pretty sure of a welcome there." 
 
 " I see," said the bridegroom, laughing. 
 
WHY LADY HORNBURY'S BALL WAS POSTPONED. 113 
 
 People in London have got over the matter very easily. Sir 
 John appeared in the Park on his famous horse, and told everybody 
 his own version of the affair. His daughter, Edith, had married 
 her cousin Dick, abroad, and her mother had gone over to sec her. 
 The bride and bridegroom were staying with the Comto de Cham- 
 bord at Frohsdorf : the jewels which the bride had received from 
 the legitimist aristocracy were very handsome, monstrous hand- 
 some : the girl had won everybody's heart over there. 
 
 The world was a little puzzled about this new nephew of Sir 
 John's, and also rather amazed at the suddenness of the marriage ; 
 but there came half a dozen other things to wonder about, and so 
 the postponement of Lady Hornbury's ball was soon forgotten. 
 
yiiV EPISODE IN THE LIEE OF CHARLES 
 MOBDA UNT. 
 
AN EPISODE IN THE LIEE OF 
 CHAELES MORDAUNT. 
 
 " Lokd Barnstaple presents his compliments to the Reverend 
 James Mordaunt, and will do himself the honour to wait on him 
 at one p.m., on Thursday next, the 27th of July, to discuss parochial 
 matters. An answer would oblige." 
 " Crowshoe Castle, 25/7/53." 
 
 This document looks innocent and harmless at first, but it fell 
 like a thunderbolt in the quiet household of the Reverend James 
 Mordaunt. No one was with him when he received it but his 
 daughter Alice; he at once handed it to her, and announced his 
 intention of selling out the only property he had in the world, 
 £1,200 3 per Cents., and emigrating to western Canada. 
 
 " I don't think I would do that, pa," said Alice, " you are too 
 old, my dear. Stay here and fight it out." 
 
 "I am only forty-five," returned the Reverend James, " and I 
 am as strong as a horse, but now that this young prig of a noble- 
 man has come to back up the Rector and the Archdeacon, I had 
 better go at once than stay too long." 
 
 " We don't know that he is a prig, pa," said Alice. 
 
 "He took a 'first,' " said the Reverend James, "and I know 
 what that means with a nobleman." 
 
 "Well, my dear," said Alice, " you would have taken one if 
 you could have afforded the coaching." 
 
 " It don't matter," said the Reverend James. "His mind is 
 poisoned against me, and I will not stand it any longer." 
 
 " You don't know that his mind is poisoned against you," urged 
 Alice. " Hear the man." 
 
 "I suppose I must," said the Reverend James, with a vexed 
 air. "Rut I'll tell you what I will do. I will walk over to the 
 Bishop this afternoon, get a bed there, and come back to-morrow 
 morning." 
 
 117 
 
118 AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHABLES MORDAUNT. 
 
 " Could not you borrow farmer Willesden's horse ? " asked Alice ; 
 " fourteen miles is a long walk." 
 
 " I can't borrow bis horse, for to-morrow is market day, and he 
 will want it. He would lend it to me and say he did not want it, 
 but I am obliged to him too much already. God bless him ! How 
 much money have we ? " 
 
 " Thirteen and sixpence." 
 
 "Give me five, old girl," said the Reverend James, "because 
 if the palace is full, I must sleep at the inn. Where is diaries ? " 
 
 " Oh ! I forgot to tell you. Charles has got three days' work 
 with the railway surveyors, at seven-and-sixpence a day. His 
 mathematics come in very well there : I wish it would lead to 
 something permanent. ' ' 
 
 " Is there anything owing in the village ? " asked the Reverend 
 James. 
 
 " One-and-sixpence to the butcher," said Alice; "but I will 
 slip round and pay that." 
 
 " Do so, old girl, and if Charles comes home before I am back, 
 give him my love, and tell him where I am gone." And so the 
 reverend gentleman put two half-crowns in his pocket, took his 
 stick, and walked stoutly away to the Bishop. 
 
 The Reverend James Mordaunt was a curate of Sprowston, with 
 a salary of £120 a year, and a private income of £35 arising from 
 the £1,200 before spoken of. On this income he had married, 
 and his wife had died three years afterwards, leaving him to bring 
 up a boy and a girl, Charles and Alice, in the most grinding poverty. 
 Charles was now twenty-one, and his sister nineteen, both of them 
 marvels of beauty and intelligence. Mr. Mordaunt had nothing 
 to give them but learning, example, and love, and he gave them 
 all these three things without stint. Too hopelessly poor to give 
 much in charity, he was more deeply loved by the poor than any 
 man for miles round ; and his son and daughter shared the love 
 which was their father's due and they deserved it. Knowing 
 absolutely nothing of the outside world, except what their father 
 had told them from old recollections, they grew up perfectly innocent 
 and contented, supposing that other poor people's lives were much 
 like their own. 
 
 Their father was a tremendous power in their little world ; there 
 was no appeal from him. The magistrates made room for his 
 shabby coat on the bench, and were relieved when he was gone, 
 taking his handsome, inexorable face and his withering oratory 
 with him. The boldest farmer grew pale if he appeared to eat his 
 eighteen -pennyworth at the market ordinary ; they wondered among 
 one another whose turn it was for a few stinging and never-to-be- 
 
AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES MORDAUNT. 119 
 
 forgotten words. The lash of the man's satire brought blood, and 
 blond which took a long time in healing; but the man's lite was 
 so blameless, so noble, and so pure, that, as years went on, the 
 stupidest farmers began to see that he was living consistently that 
 life which he discoursed on every Sunday from the pulpit — the 
 life of Christ. He made them fear him first, they got to love him 
 afterwards. 
 
 He came suddenly from Oxford with a young wife, and he at 
 once began fighting everybody ; he took up the case of the agri- 
 cultural poor, and fought the farmers more like a fiend than a 
 decent English clergyman. He had no money, which was a dis- 
 advantage ; and he had less than no influence, which was possibly 
 worse. But he fought on for all that through thick and thin. It 
 was a long and dark night for him after his wife died, and when 
 he had to wake up in the morning and find she was not by his 
 side, but in the cold churchyard outside the window. It was a 
 long and bitter struggle to rear those two poor children without 
 any money at all : but the man won. People generally — lords, 
 squires, magistrates, farmers — began to be aware of a pale, hand- 
 some, and very poor man, with twice the brains and three times 
 the debating power of any of them, who went up and down their 
 little world, not pleading for the poor, but ordenng that the law 
 of the land should be put in force in their favour. 
 
 The poor, as a matter of course, took to him at once ; the 
 farmers were longer in winning, for they said that he made mis- 
 chief, as he certainly did. But one day at the market dinner, 
 farmer Willesden, his chief opponent at first, saw that, although 
 he had often "caught it" from Mr. Mordaunt, yet he always, 
 somehow, found Mr. Mordaunt in the right ; and that Mr. Mor- 
 daunt was as game to stand between landlord and tenant as he was 
 to stand between fanner and labourer. In short, Mr. Mordaunt 
 had won the respect of the farmers ; and such is the bull-headed 
 per.-istency of those gentlemen, that if you once gain their confi- 
 dence you must be an utter fool to lose it again. 
 
 When he first came into the parish, the lord of the manor, 
 Lord Barnstaple, was very old, and was devoting the remainder of 
 a very busy and well-spent life to politics ; when he was not in his 
 place in the House of Lords he was at Cannes. The Bishop was 
 also very old and very cynical, having been throughout all his lite 
 a politician far more than an ecclesiastic, a writer of pamphlets 
 more than a preacher. The Hector of Sprowston was also infirm 
 and epiite unfit for his duties. Lord Barnstaple was a very strong- 
 Whig, and it was to his iutlueiice that the Bishop owed his posi- 
 tion, while the infirm Lector was also a Whig and an old college 
 
120 AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES MORDAUNT. 
 
 friend of Lord Barnstaple's. What between Whiggery and old 
 age, not one of the three interfered in any way with Mr. Mor- 
 daunt ; but time brought changes, and at the time when Mr. 
 Mordaunt had got everybody with him, the old Rector died. He 
 sent for Mr. Mordaunt on his death-bed, and urged him to perse- 
 vere in his present course as long as he lived. 
 
 "I have wasted my life in politics, Mordaunt," he said, " or I 
 would have done what you are doing. I earnestly beg of you to 
 persevere. Remember my words, and don't give up. One of the 
 reasons why I am loth to die even now is, that you have got a 
 worthless man and tyrant coming. I could not stop it ; Lord 
 Barnstaple wishes to be rid of the man, and make him hold his 
 tongue ; so he has shelved him here. I have extorted a promise 
 from Lord Barnstaple that you are not to be removed save at your 
 own wish — that is all which I could do. Be as wise as a serpent, 
 and as harmless as a dove. Good-bye, my dear Mordaunt ; I wish 
 I was young again, and able to stand beside you. You will find 
 that I have left you my private sacramental plate ; take it as an 
 earnest of what might have been if I had been younger. Good- 
 bye." 
 
 So the good old fellow died, and the Rev. L. Easy reigned in 
 his stead. Mr. Easy was the greatest of all bear-leaders of 
 ancient or modern times : for winking at, or ignoring, vice among 
 rich young men he was a Petronius Arbiter : in expanding on the 
 virtues of a protecting family he was a Horace. The worst of it 
 was, that he was a dunce ; and when the pestilent system of com- 
 petitive examination came in it was discovered that although the 
 famous Letmedown Easy could still conceal or palliate the vices 
 of his pupils, he was utterly unable to get them through their 
 examinations. He found his old trade going from under his feet 
 and into the hands of honest men ; he had saved money, but it 
 would never pay him to invest in the employment of coaches ; he 
 was as nearly as possible retiring from the trade when a job fell 
 into his hands which enabled him to retire with honour. The 
 second son of Lord Barnstaple was requested to retire from Eton 
 without further delay, and did so retire. 
 
 Lord Barnstaple was at Cannes when he heard of this terrible 
 blow ; but he wrote to the Bishop, and the Bishop, then very 
 infirm, wrote that Easy was always the man in these cases. Lord 
 Barnstaple sent Lord Edward Hemling to Mr. Easy with a letter, 
 in which certain contingencies were mentioned if the lad could be 
 got through his examination for the army. It has been said that 
 the old nobleman promised him a thousand pounds and his next 
 living ; and it has also been said that when Lord Edward Hemling 
 
AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES MORDAUNT. 121 
 
 arrived, and was examined by the Rev. Mr. Easy, that the rev. 
 gentleman scratched his head and told his wife that he did not 
 half like the job. Encouraged by her, however, she being ten 
 times more unscrupulous than himself, he undertook the matter. 
 Then follows a very odd and dark story. A young man, a printer, 
 was sentenced to six months' hard labour for stealing some papers 
 two days before the examination. Duplicate proofs were taken, 
 and only one set were found on the young man (now married and 
 conducting a nourishing printing business in Ontario) ; as to what 
 had become of the other set the young man was most discreetly 
 silent, and he did his six months with a joyous alacrity which won 
 him the good opinion of every official in Coldbath Fields. In the 
 meantime, Lord Edward had passed his examination, and had 
 joined a regiment of the Foot-Guards, and after three months was 
 requested to exchange for being drunk at mess. A meeting of 
 the Guards' Club unanimously expelled him, and he shortly after- 
 wards joined a West India regiment on the west coast of Africa ; 
 and in spite of all that his hard-worked brother officers coidd do 
 for him by advice and assistance, he died of drink and fever. 
 
 Still Mr. Easy had fulfilled his bargain with Lord Barnstaple, 
 and Lord Barnstaple was not a man who forgot. On the rector's 
 death, Mr. Easy came into the living of Sprowston, and all the 
 Lord Barnstaples in the world could not put him out of it. Be- 
 sides, he knew things about Lord Edward which it was impossible 
 to talk about in society, but about which there was nothing to 
 prevent his talking now that he had got everything he could 
 possibly get ; he had, therefore, the whip-hand of Lord Barnstaple, 
 and, having been a rogue all his life, he would not scruple to use 
 it if it suited his purpose. The only thing which kept Mr. 
 Mordaunt's house over his head was this — 
 
 Lord Bideford, the eldest son of Lord Barnstaple, was a very 
 different man to his brother Lord Edward. He was by another 
 mother. Lord Barnstaple had married, first, Lady Alice Barty, 
 the beauty of a family which has given us some of our best states- 
 men, and by her he had Lord Bideford. A long time after her 
 death, his lordship made a most imprudent marriage, and the less 
 which is said about that the better ; the offspring of this marriage 
 was Lord Edward. Lord Bideford was a very silent young man, 
 and no one seemed to know anything about him, save that he had 
 taken a "first" at Oxford, and was very silent in Parliament. 
 Now, in the course of nature, Lord Bideford would soon be Lord 
 Barnstaple and master of Crowshoe. Mrs. Easy, who was fond 
 of dress and show, was very anxious to have the entree of that 
 castle ; and, as some rumours had reached her as to the fact that 
 
122 AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHAELES MOEDAUNT. 
 
 the young lord was not only very silent but very obstinate, she 
 urged on her husband that it would be very impolitic to take ulti- 
 mate measures with regard to Mr. Mordaunt until they had 
 gathered the opinions of Lord Bideford. Meanwhile she quite 
 agreed to the plan of leading him the life of a dog and making hia 
 resignation his own act : they could get a young man cheaper by 
 sixty pounds, and that would enable her to go to London everv 
 year. 
 
 Mr. Mordaunt was a very mild High Churchman, and had 
 introduced some extremely mild alterations in the church service, 
 after a long consultation with the farmers ; who, being every one 
 of them Conservatives, gladly acquiesced in what he did when he 
 pointed out to them that he was simply carrying out the directions 
 of the Prayer-book, on which they pinned their faith. He 
 shortened the services individually, although the actual length of 
 them was greater than ever. He had a communion at eight 
 o'clock every Sunday morning, which was well attended ; and, in 
 fact, did quietly and exactly what the Prayer-book told him to do. 
 He made also, on the other hand, great friends with the dissenting 
 minister (Wesleyan), and they had hot arguments in their walks 
 as to what John Wesley would say if he knew that his followers 
 had seceded from the establishment after his death. Then an 
 Irish harvestman fell ill in his parish ; and when Mr. Mordaunt 
 found that he was a Roman Catholic, he borrowed farmer Willes- 
 den's horse and gig, drove to the nearest town where there was a 
 Roman Catholic priest, and fetched him over in triumph in broad 
 daylight, and insisted on his staying all night, asking one or two 
 of the farmers, and his friend the dissenting minister, to meet him 
 in the evening. The evening passed off in the most charming 
 manner ; though the Wesleyan minister afterwards told Mr. Mor- 
 daunt that he was vexed at not being able to hold his own in 
 learning with the man of the Establishment or the Romanist. 
 Farmer Willesdcn was so taken with the Romanist, that he sent 
 him a pair of spring chickens on Good Friday, in all innocence, 
 thinking that it would be a delicate attention, under the impres- 
 sion that Good Friday was the great holiday in the Romish church. 
 
 Now all these lapsariau backslidings from grace were Aery soon 
 told to the Rev. Letmedown Easy, by the admiring fanners. 
 That they were abominable and audacious no one could deny ; the 
 question was, how to utilise thein with Lord Bideford, and procure 
 the removal of Mr. Mordaunt without shutting up Crowshoe 
 Castle. They could save sixty pounds a year by getting rid of 
 Mr. Mordaunt. 
 
 The first question with this worthy pair was this : what was 
 
AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES MORDAUNT. 123 
 
 Lord Bideford ? Lord Barnstaple was a shining light among the 
 evangelicals, and it was notorious that his brother-in-law had 
 practically appointed the last five bishops. He was too old to be 
 taken into the calculations, however ; and the question was, what 
 were Lord Bideford's religious opinions '? It was a very difficult 
 question to answer. Lord Bideford certainly attended, with great 
 diligence and regularity, the afternoon service at All Saints, 
 Margaret Street ; but he was also to be seen at Vere Street 
 listening to Mr. Maurice, and he frequently preached at Field 
 Lane : a most tiresome and puzzling young man ! But Field 
 Lane and his preaching there did the business. He might listen 
 to Maconochie, Stopford Brooke — to any one, in short ; but the 
 fact of his preaching under the presidency of Lord Shaftesbury 
 settled the question : the man was an evangelical, like his father. 
 
 Consequently the Rev. Letniedown Easy became violently evan- 
 gelical, according to his view of evangelicalism. The leader of 
 that party in the church remonstrated with him in an angry manner 
 about what he did, and went so far as to tell him that he was 
 persecuting a better man than himself. But Lord Bideford was 
 silent ; and so Mr. Easy saw Crowshoe Castle open to him. 
 
 However, the principle thing in hand was to force Mr. Mordaunt 
 to resign. He began with the farmers, trying to undermine his 
 influence with them. They at once burnt him in effigy on the 
 village green, and, assisted by their hinds, howled outside his 
 house so long, that Mr. Easy fled to the cellar for refuge. He 
 failed with the farmers ; but he had Farmer Willesden up at 
 Petty Sessions for language likely to provoke a breach of the peace. 
 The chairman fined "Willesden five shillings, and he put two pounds 
 in the poor-box. Willesden, meeting Mr. Easy outside the court, 
 repeated the language, I regret to say, with adjectives. The 
 chairman, Sir Pitchcroft Cockpole, said to Mr. Easy, afterwards, 
 " You had better leave that man Mordaunt alone. He has been 
 master here for a few years, and he is likely to remain master." 
 
 Mr. Easy's hands were, however, considerably strengthened by 
 a new Archdeacon, a man by no means of the " Grantly " type of 
 archdeacon. He and Easy had more than once played into one 
 another's hands, it was said, though that was extremely improb- 
 able, for the Archdeacon was one of the most cautious men in 
 creation, and had only lost a bishopric by slightly ratting at the 
 wrong time. He was a kinsman of Easy's, and was not best 
 pleased at finding his kinsman there, for the ugly old story about 
 Lord Edward's examination papers was still spoken of, and, like 
 all untruths, was believed in. Two courses only were open to 
 the Archdeacon, either to throw his kinsman overboard, or to 
 
124 AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES MORDAUNT. 
 
 Lack him up through thick and thin. After due thought, he chose 
 the latter. 
 
 What induced Mr. Mordaunt just at this time to preach a 
 sermon hefore his new Hector, airing his views as regarded the 
 spiritual sovereignty of the Queen, no man can tell. It is enough 
 that he did it, and that Mr. Easy requested him to hand over the 
 original MS. in the vestry for immediate conveyance to the old 
 Bishop. The old man read it in Led while Mr. Easy was taking 
 lunch, and then called Mr. Easy to his bedside. 
 
 " This is a curious sermon, Mr. Easy," said the Bishop ; " and 
 Mr. Mordaunt is a very curious man ; hut you had much better 
 make friends with him than quarrel with him. You will never get 
 on in that parish if you do." 
 
 Mr. Easy thought differently, and put every possible annoyance 
 he could in Mr. Mordaunt's way, until that gentleman began to 
 think of giving up the whole thing and emigrating. Two changes 
 happened, however, which made him hang on — Lord Barnstaple 
 and the old Bishop died within one week. 
 
 The new Bishop was an old friend of his, and when he went to 
 the palace received him with open arms. On the occasion of his 
 first visit Mr. Mordaunt said nothing at all about his troubles. 
 Mr. Easy, however, saved him that trouble by stating his case 
 to the new, young, and vigorous Bishop without delay. The new 
 Bishop heard them with the greatest patience and attention, and 
 afterwards said, " I cannot see myself that there is any case 
 against him. You say that his continuation there is scandalous. 
 As the French say, ' Voulez-vous preciser votre accusation? ' " 
 
 That was very difficult, Mr. Easy said, after a few moments. 
 " He associates with the farmers." 
 
 " That is very good," said the Bishop. " That is an old habit 
 of my own." 
 
 " His son takes work in the fields, and takes money for it." 
 
 " Sooner than loaf, cheat, or beg," said the Bishop. " I am 
 sorry that the son of an educated gentleman like Mordaunt should 
 be brought so low ; but the early Christians did that same thing. 
 St. Paul was only a tent-maker, you know, Mr. Easy. Is there 
 anything against the young man's character ? Is he the sort of 
 young man who would have come in your way in your former line 
 of business, Mr. Easy? " 
 
 Mr. Easy, devoutly wishing the Bishop somewhere, replied 
 that there was nothing against the young man in a moral point of 
 view. 
 
 "Well," said the Bishop; "it is a most disgraceful scandal. 
 Here is a man like Mordaunt, a man worth twenty such men as 
 
AN EPISODE m THE LIFE OF CHARLES MORDAUNT. 125 
 
 you or I, Mr. Easy, obliged to send his son into the harvest-field 
 for a living. It is the most shameful thing I ever heard of." 
 
 So the Archdeacon and Mr. Easy took very little by their 
 motion. Mr. Mordaunt came over to the Bishop by summons, 
 and spent the day with him. They talked over many old matters, 
 and at the end Mr. Mordaunt asked the Bishop what he knew 
 about the new Lord Barnstaple. 
 
 " Exactly nothing," said the Bishop. " I think that he is a 
 terrible prig, and will probably assist Easy, who saved his half- 
 brother from disgrace, and who was a nominee of Barnstaple's 
 lather. Meanwhile, go home, old friend, commit no indiscretions, 
 and hold your own." 
 
 Things were exactly in this state when Mr. Mordaunt received 
 the intimation of Lord Barnstaple's visit. He was very anxious 
 about that visit, and, as we have seen before, walked away to his 
 old friend, the Bishop, to consult him. The Bishop made him 
 stay all night, and all the next day, and the next night. The 
 Dean and the Precentor, cunning men when there was a kindly. 
 Christian act to be done, begged of him, as a personal favour, to 
 stay over the day and intone for the Precentor, who had a con- 
 venient cough. Mr. Mordaunt could intone with the besl 
 them, and so he spent a whole happy day under the glorious old 
 arches, doing service after service. 
 
 "I feel young again, Bishop," he said at night, when they 
 were going to bed : "I will sing matins and go home." 
 
 And after matins away he went walking, and thinking what 
 preparations Alice had been making for Lord Barnstaple, but not 
 much caring, for the cathedral music was in his ears, and so he 
 sang all the way. 
 
 He arrived in the afternoon, and. opening his own door, passed 
 into the parlour. His daughter Alice was standing beside the 
 chimneypiece, and with her was a tall and strong man, whom he 
 knew well, the inspector of police. 
 
 Alice was ghastly pale, and was moistening her dry lips with 
 her tongue. 
 
 "Papa," she said, "here is Inspector Morton, who has been 
 waiting for you." 
 
 Mr. Mordaunt saw that something was very wrong, and he left 
 off humming a Gregorian chant to say, "How do, Morton? 
 Come after me ? I don't think you gentlemen practise in the 
 ecclesiastical courts. You will have to take me in execution for 
 unpaid costs in the ecclesiastical court some day, but my time is 
 not come yet." 
 
 •• Papa," said Alice, " don't joke ; it is Charles." 
 
126 AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES MOEDAUNT. 
 
 " What has he hcen doing ? " said Mr. Mordaunt. 
 
 " Oh, father, don't break down ; he is arrested for burglary ! " 
 
 " Charles arrested for burglary ! " exclaimed Mr. Mordaunt, 
 laughing. "No: this is very good — this is as good as a play. 
 Easy will make something of this. Leave the room, old girl, and 
 let me talk to the Inspector." 
 
 "What is this story, Inspector?" said Mr. Mordaunt, when 
 his daughter was gone. 
 
 " Well, sir, I am sorry to tell you that Mr. Charles is in 
 custody for attempted burglary at Barnstaple." 
 
 " But that is forty miles away," said Mr. Mordaunt, " and the 
 whole thing is ridiculous." 
 
 " It looks so, sir ; but he was watched into a door, and then 
 out of the same door two hours after, and was captured." 
 
 " But, my good Inspector, this is perfect midsummer madness. 
 My son is incapable of such an act." 
 
 The Inspector came close to Mr. Mordaunt and whispered in 
 his ear. As he whispered to him Mr. Mordaunt' s face grew more 
 and more ashy pale, and at last he begged him to desist, and 
 staggered to a chair. 
 
 After a few minutes he raised his ghastly face to the Inspector's, 
 and said, " I would sooner that it had been burglary than 
 that." 
 
 " No doubt, sir," said the Inspector ; "we know your principles 
 about here, and we know Mr. Charles's principles also. There 
 ain't two men more loved in these parts than you two. But you 
 have not heard me out, sir. That Inspector Bryan is a fool, 
 sir. I was over to Barum yesterday, and I went and see Master 
 Charles, and he give me the office, and I went and got this." 
 
 There came a flush into Mr. Mordaunt' s pale face as he looked 
 at the little paper which I have noticed in the face of more than 
 one middle-aged man. The lordly and imperial look of the young 
 bridegroom is not more lordly than the look of the young grand- 
 father. Mordaunt held his head higher than he had ever done 
 since he led his bride out of church three-and-twenty years ago. 
 What was Easy to him now ? what was the Archdeacon ? In his 
 new pride they might go hang themselves. 
 
 " Now how did all this come out, Inspector ? " said he. 
 
 " That is as you think, sir," said the Inspector. 
 
 " We must not leave her in a false position," said Mr. 
 Mor daunt. 
 
 " Certainly not," said the Inspector. 
 
 " I will step round to the old man first, and tell him the truth," 
 said Mr. Mordaunt. And the Inspector departed. Mr. Mordaunt 
 
AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES MOBDAUNT. 127 
 
 went up to his daughter's room, and found her crying in bed. 
 " Alice," he said, "you must listen to me." 
 
 "About Charles?'" 
 
 " Yes, about Charles. Charles has been married for two 
 months, without my knowledge." 
 
 " To Mary Willesden ? " 
 
 " To the same young lady. I suppose he has done very wrong, 
 but that is a matter of detail. He was caught trying to see her, 
 but I will go over and make it all right for him to-morrow." 
 
 " I knew he loved her, father; but I did not think of this. 
 Our Charles is an honest man, and we can hold up our heads 
 before fifty Lord Barnstaplcs when he comes." 
 
 Mr. Mordaunt went round to Farmer Willesden' s at once, and 
 after a somewhat difficult interview the farmer agreed to go to 
 Barum the next morning, to scold Charles, and to bail him out. 
 They went, but Charles had been discharged five hours previously, 
 and was gone no one knew whither. 
 
 The next day came the following letter from Charles : — 
 
 " My Dear Father — I greatly regret that I have deceived you 
 for the first time in my life ; and I ought, I suppose, to regret 
 that I cannot regret it. 
 
 " My life was utterly unendurable. I had no opening, and no 
 chance of any opening in the world. With the education of a 
 gentleman I was leading the life of a clodhopper. Only one thing 
 prevented me from enlisting in a dragoon regiment, and that was 
 my love for Mary Willesden. She urged on me that I could never 
 marry her if I turned soldier. I was at one time actually 
 desperate ; I am so no longer, thanks to Tom Harvey." 
 
 Mr. Mordaunt paused. "Tom Harvey," he thought, "the 
 miller's son. Why, Tom Harvey has got a mill in Canada." 
 
 " He was," the letter went on, " Mary Willesden's cousin, as 
 you know. He was a great friend of mine when we were boys 
 together. He has done very well in Ontario, and is making his 
 fortune. He came over here four months ago on commercial 
 business, and I met him in Barnstaple. 
 
 " He asked me to come back with him to Canada ; but I 
 demurred about leaving Mary. He then began to urge on me the 
 plan of marrying her secretly and telling of it afterwards. He 
 said that it often occurred in Canada and in the United States, 
 that a young man would marry a young woman, and leave her 
 with her mother until he had got a home for her. At last I 
 determined to do so ; and one reason of my secrecy was, that I 
 knew that you were in trouble with the Rector and the Archdeacon. 
 
128 AN EPISODE IN THE LIEE OF CHARLES MOltDAUNT. 
 
 We wore married two months ago. Tom Harvey, whose time was 
 out in England, returned from London to Barnstaple, and urged 
 me more strongly than ever to come to Canada with him in a brig 
 which is taking slates to Quebec. I consented ; but of course I 
 had to tell Mary. She arranged to let me in quietly, and I went 
 in and stayed for two hours. As I came out, the police got hold 
 of me, and I should have been tried for burglary if Tom Harvey 
 and his aunt bad not made it all right. Tom has paid my passage, 
 and has lent me money. As for my darling wife, father, you and 
 Alice must take care of her until I claim her. I regret to say 
 that, if all goes well, you will find yourself a grandfather before I 
 return. Now I must have your forgiveness ; and, with love to 
 Alice, I say good-bye, and God bless you ! 
 
 " Charles Mordaunt." 
 
 Mr. Mordaunt and Farmer Willesden had a long confabulation 
 over this letter ; and old Lady Ascot says that they had three 
 pints of small ale and a vast number of pipes over it. If there is 
 one quality more than another which adorns her ladyship, it is 
 that of inexorable truth. I had the honour of asking her, at a 
 grand party one night, whether she was quite sure that they only 
 had three pints and not four. She replied that it was only three, 
 and, as she drew the beer herself, she ought to know, and so I 
 disputed the fact no longer. 
 
 " Well, parson," said Farmer Willesden, " so my daughter is 
 married to a gentleman ! Who'd have thought it ? " 
 
 " To a beggar, you mean, I think," said Mr. Mordaunt. 
 
 " There ain't nought of a beggar about he" said Farmer Wil- 
 lesden, laughing. " How sly they was about it, pretty dears ! 
 Don't you love 'em, parson ? " 
 
 " I don't quite understand about it, farmer," said Mr. Mor- 
 daunt. "I did not miss Mary, at all. Why was she at 
 Barnstaple ? " 
 
 " Oh ! why, she wanted to go there to be finished ; and so I 
 sent her." 
 
 "To be finished!" 
 
 "Ah, at the boarding-school. And she stayed there long 
 enough to make her marriage in Barum legal ; and so they was 
 asked there, and they was married there. Don't e'e see?" 
 
 " They have both deceived us sadly, farmer." 
 
 " What would you have 'em do ? " cried the farmer. " When 
 you made love to your poor lady that's gone, did you go and tell 
 your mother ? " 
 
 " I certainly did not," said Mr. Mordaunt. 
 
AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES MOEDAUNT. 129 
 
 " Then you deceived her sadly," said the farmer. " They all 
 do it. If young folks mean to come together they'll do it, and 
 small blame to them. However, your son has behaved like an 
 honourable and good young man to my daughter, which is more 
 to the purpose." 
 
 " In marrying her, leaving her on our hands, and running away 
 to Canada ! " said Mr. Mordaunt, aghast. 
 
 " Be sure," said the farmer. " He had not got money enough 
 to keep her, and so he cut away to Canada to get some. Lord 
 bless you ! if ever fortune was writ in a man's face it is writ in 
 Charles's ! " 
 
 " Do you know, Willesden," said Mr. Mordaunt, " that I think 
 you are as great a fool as I am." 
 
 Willesden grinned, but added, more seriously, " My girl must 
 come away from that school. She had better come to her 
 mother." 
 
 "No," said Mr. Mordaunt, "she must come to me. My boy 
 has made, I think, a fool of himself ; and her coming here, and 
 our making all things public, will stop every one's mouth. Don't 
 you see ? " 
 
 " It won't do you any good with the Rector and the Arch- 
 deacon," said the farmer, rather ruefully. 
 
 "Never mind me. I am in trouble so hard with them that 
 nothing can make it worse. Send her here to-morrow night. 
 And so the farmer departed. 
 
 "Dear Bishop, — My son has married one of my farmer's 
 daughters, and has gone to Canada to make a home for her. 
 The boy is as innocent and as pure as you are. Please give 
 every one the rights of the story. 
 
 " James Mordaunt." 
 
 " Dear Mordaunt, — I will do as you desire, but take the 
 young lady into your own house at once ; that act will do more 
 than all my words. Barnstaple is to be with you to-morrow. I 
 cannot in any way make him out. What it is I cannot conceive. 
 He is an awful prig, and silently dangerous. You must think of 
 this : he may mean you well or ill ; if he means you well he can 
 do absolutely nothing for you, beyond bringing his influence to 
 bear on that (here came an erasure) Easy to keep you in your 
 place : if he mean you well he can still do nothing ; he will not 
 have a living dropping in these ten years, and he is in opposi- 
 tion, and so he cannot get you a Chancellor's living. The worst 
 men I ever have to deal with are Cambridge Conservatives and 
 
 10 
 
130 AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHABLES MOllDAUNT. 
 
 Oxford Radicals. As a Cambridge man myself I naturally think 
 an Oxford Radical the worst : he is one ; mind him. 
 
 " George Crediton." 
 
 Poor frightened Mary Mordaunt, nee Willesden, arrived at the 
 home of her husband's father in a great state of trepidation and 
 terror. But in a quarter of an hour she found that she was the 
 most precious thing there. Poverty may be brutalising to the 
 extremely poor and unrefined ; but one of the lessons we can 
 learn from the French every day, if we choose to know them, is 
 this — that poverty among refined people has a most ennobling 
 influence. Take that little knot of highly-educated paupers in 
 Judea, eighteen hundred years ago, as an example. Mary, the 
 pretty, innocent bride, found herself queen of the establishment. 
 She was to sleep with Alice, and as they went upstairs together, 
 Mr. Mordaunt said — 
 
 " He has gone to prepare a place for you, darling. Trust 
 him, and we shall all be together again soon in a happier land 
 than this. See, pretty ; I have twelve hundred pounds, which 
 would be a fortune to him, and which I will freely give if he can 
 establish himself. Why, we are wealthy people, my love. Now, 
 leave crying ; we shall be rich there." 
 
 " I only cry, sir, because I am so happy," said Mary ; " I 
 shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." 
 
 However, none of these sentimentalities could put off the 
 inexorable arrival of Lord Barnstaple, now delayed for two days, 
 his lordship having had to make a speech at the county agri- 
 cultural meeting, which was given in the Times at full length, 
 and which most carefully expressed nothing at all about the 
 movements of the Opposition. Lord Barnstaple rode up to Mr. 
 Mordaunt's door at half-past twelve, and, finding no groom, led 
 his horse round to the stable, took off his bridle and put a halter 
 on him, took off the saddle, and then came out to the pump with 
 a bucket to get him a pail of water. 
 
 At this point Mr. Mordaunt caught him. " My lord," he said, 
 " I did not see you arrive. I am ashamed " 
 
 " At what ? "' said Lord Barnstaple. " At a man attending to 
 his horse ? ' The merciful man is merciful to his beast,' parson." 
 
 " No, but I am ashamed that you should have had to see to 
 your horse, when I would have done it," said Mr. Mordaunt. 
 
 " The Church of England has got low enough without the 
 spectacle of an ordained minister grooming a nobleman's horse." 
 
 " You will have your own way, my lord." 
 
 " I intend to," said Lord Barnstaple, and then Mr. Mordaunt 
 
AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES MORDAUNT. 131 
 
 looked at him. Prig he might be, according to our good Bishop's 
 
 views, but a man he certainly was. A very noble-looking young 
 man, with a singularly set jaw, and a curious reticence of expres- 
 sion which puzzled INIr. Mordaunt extremely. 
 
 He brought Lord Barnstaple into the parlour, where there was 
 some simple refreshment ; there was no one there but poor Mary, 
 who A\as curtseying. Mr. Mordaunt asked where Alice was, and 
 she replied that Alice was gone away. She seemed in great trepi- 
 dation at the sight of the great lord, and Mr. Mordaunt did really 
 wish that Alice had been there to receive him. He presented 
 Mary. 
 
 " My daughter, my lord." 
 
 "I was not aware that you had two daughters, Mr. Mordaunt." 
 
 "I ought to have said my daughter-in-law," said Mr. Mor- 
 daunt. '• My dear son has made a romantic match, and has gone 
 to Canada to make a home for his bride, leaving his pretty rosebud 
 cf a bride here with us." 
 
 " Quite so," said Lord Barnstaple. "It must have required 
 singular resolution to leave such a beautiful bride." 
 
 " Ah ! but he wanted to stay with her for many years, my lord, 
 until his death, not for a poor foolish few, and then leave her in 
 poverty. When you think of it, my lord, he had acted like a man 
 and a gentleman." 
 
 There was a brilliance in Lord Barnstaple's eyes when Mr. 
 Mordaunt said this, which attracted that gentleman strangely. 
 Lord Barnstaple only said — 
 
 " That is a very beautiful story. And you, my dear madam, 
 are contented to wait." 
 
 " I think that he will send for me soon," she said, quietly, 
 " for I know that he will as soon as he can. I was down to 
 the sea the other day, and the sailors' wives told me that their 
 husbands were away three years together sometimes. But 
 there are no more loving wives than sailors' wives. I can 
 wait." 
 
 The man whom the Bishop had called a prig, looked steadily 
 at her, and Mr. Mordaunt saw a tear trickle down his face. Lord 
 Barnstaple was himself in one moment, however. 
 
 "May I ask this young lady to retire while we talk business," 
 he said. "We have secrets to talk of, which must be trusted to 
 no ears but our own." 
 
 Mary hurriedly retired, and Lord Barnstaple with a bow opened 
 the door for her, and shut it after her. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Mordaunt, as we are alone together, I will tell 
 you what is the matter with you. You are horridly poor." 
 
132 AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHAKLES MOltDAUNT. 
 
 " Yes, my lord." 
 
 " And you arc bullied out of your life by a rascal aud a prig. 
 Tbc rascal is Easy, and the prig the Archdeacon." 
 
 " I will not say a word against either of them," said Mr. 
 Mor daunt. 
 
 " No, but I know it. It is in our favour that the Archdeacon 
 is not only a prig, but a flunkey : it is in our favour that the 
 fellow Easy is not only a rogue, but a flunkey : by one bold 
 stroke I can mend matters for you. I have not got a living to 
 give you, and I can't get one for you at present ; but I have 
 no domestic chaplain. My father's domestic chaplain and I 
 never agreed ; he has a good living, and his chaplaincy lapsed 
 with my father's death. I wish to appoint you my domestic 
 chaplain, at the same salary, £250 a year. At the same time 
 there is no librarian at Crowshoe, and the books are in a devil 
 of a state ; you must really undertake them at a salary of £150 
 a year. I can't give more, and if you think that insufficient 
 I'll tell you what we will do to end the thing in a friendly 
 manner, and without a squabble. Let us both write to Piazzi at 
 the British Museum, and see if he considers it enough. If he 
 decides against me, of course I must pay extra." 
 
 " My lord, God is very good to me." 
 
 "He is good to all who seek Him," said Lord Barnstaple, 
 sententiously. "But don't you see, my dear soul, that the 
 keys of Crowshoe are in your hands, and that by this manoeuvre 
 we have entirely bowled out the adversary ? I'd have given you 
 a living fifty times over if I had one, but I want to keep you here, 
 and I don't see any other way of doing it." 
 
 "Why should you be so generous to me, my lord, whom you 
 have never seen, and of whom you know nothing ? ' ' 
 
 " Know what ? " said Lord Barnstaple, sharply. 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 "Don't I?" said his lordship. "Now I'll go saddle my 
 horse. I suppose your daughter Alice will not appear. Well, 
 it's all equal to me, as the French say. She will have to see me 
 some day. Talk about this matter, of your being appointed 
 domestic chaplain and librarian, it will save you trouble. Tell 
 the Bishop about it, he is a capital gossip, and tell him that if I 
 am a prig, I am not the only one in the world." 
 
 And so he saddled the horse and rode away, leaving Mr. Mor- 
 daunt dazed, but almost directly afterwards he rode back again, 
 jumped off his horse, and laid his hand on Mr. Mordaunt's 
 shoulder. "I forgot one thing," he said. "You are not 
 ashamed of being poor. I brought fifty pounds in notes for you 
 
AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHAELES MOEDAUNT. 133 
 
 in advance of your salary. Here it is — God bless you, good-bye," 
 and so he was off at last. 
 
 So Mr. Alordaunt stood there a rich man — rich beyond his 
 utmost expectations ; and all by the sudden act of a young noble- 
 man, who was a prig. He had no hesitation in accepting the 
 whole matter any more than he would have rebelled to God 
 about a thunderstorm which had knocked his chimneys about 
 his ears. One ecclesiastical instinct was always in his mind, 
 and he acted on it. He wrote to his Bishop : the Archdeacon 
 said once, " that if his cat had died he would have walked over 
 and told the Bishop." 
 
 His mind being eased in that way, he went to look for Alice ; 
 but Alice was nowhere to be found. She must be at some of the 
 neighbours' houses : she had been frightened by Lord Barnstaple, 
 and was keeping out of the way. At ten o'clock he went to 
 bod : at eleven he was awakened by a candle in his eyes, and 
 the figure of Alice before him, who sat down on the bed. 
 " Father, what money have you ? " 
 " A great deal. Fifty pounds." 
 " Has Lord Barnstaple given you money ? " 
 "I am to have four hundred a year from him." 
 She sat thinking for a little, and then she said, " I want 
 forty pounds." 
 "For what?" 
 
 " To go to Charles. To go to Canada." 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Do not ask, unless you want me to fall dead at your feet. 
 Save me ! that is all I ask. Give me the money." 
 
 A wild, dark suspicion formed itself in Mr. Mordaunt's 
 head. 
 
 " This is Lord Barnstaple's money," he said, coldly. 
 "Bless his money, and bless him for what he has done for 
 you ! He is a good man. But you must save me, father. I 
 must go to Charles. I am innocent ! but I must go to Charles. 
 Oh God ! — father, do not hesitate ! " 
 
 " Can you tell me no more, sweetheart ? " said Mr. Mordannt. 
 " Not a word ! — not a word ! " she said. " I will tell you all 
 when I am in Canada — but I cannot now." 
 
 " Xow look here, Alice, let us be in some way reasonable. 
 You cannot go to Canada to-night, but you can go to bed. 
 Wait till to-morrow, and we will talk it all over. If you are 
 in trouble, which you will not tell about, what is easier than to 
 do this : to sell out our twelve hundred pounds, and for you, 
 and Mary, and I all to go to Canada together ? I can pay 
 
134 AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES MOltDAUNT. 
 
 Lord Barnstaple back his fifty pounds, and we can all part 
 friends, and join Charles." 
 
 Then she began to cry, and then she told the whole 
 truth. 
 
 She had been to an aunt's house at Exeter a few months 
 before, and she bad been often out walking by herself, as very 
 poor girls have to walk. Wombwell's menagerie was there, and 
 the tiger got out and crawled down towards the river. She saw 
 the thing going along, and pointed it out to a gentleman, who 
 raised the alarm, and made her acquaintance. He was a very 
 nice and handsome gentleman, and begged to be allowed to call 
 on her to see if she had recovered her fright. Her aunt — 
 having inspected the gentleman on his first visit, and having 
 seen that there was no harm in him — had allowed Mr. Mortimer's 
 visits with great complacency, more particularly after she had 
 seen him in eager conversation with Lord Fortescue. The old 
 lady knew that Lord Fortescue would allow no man to speak to 
 him who was not an honest man ; and Lord Fortescue was the 
 only nobleman she knew by sight ; and so Mr. Mortimer was 
 allowed to see as much of Alice as he chose ; and he made love 
 to Alice, and Alice was very deeply attached to him. But Mr. 
 Mortimer never made any distinct proposal ; and so, when Alice 
 came home, she set her mind on forgetting Mr. Mortimer, but 
 found that she could not in any way do so. 
 
 When Lord Barnstaple rode into the garden she was looking 
 out of the window, and she saw at once that Mr. Mortimer and 
 Lord Barnstaple were the same man. Lord Barnstaple had 
 deceived her, and he was a false and untruthful man : he had as 
 good as wooed her under a false name, and that she would 
 never forgive. Yet she loved him, admired him, and, after all, 
 respected him. All this she poured into her father's ear as she 
 lay on the bed beside him. 
 
 " Yet you would have taken his money to fly from him." 
 
 " Yes," she said. " I would have taken it because I know him 
 to be honest, noble, and good. We could pay it back. Father ! 
 he wants to marry me — I have known that some time, though he 
 never said so. As Mortimer, I would have married him, because, 
 in spite of his deceit, I love him ; but as Lord Barnstaple I will 
 not see him again. See if I am not right. Look at Charles's 
 marriage, and ask me if I am to drag down a man whom I really 
 love to that level ? And look again, father, after what you have 
 told me to-night, how should we stand if I were to marry him ? 
 You have taken money from him. Would not all your friends — 
 even the Bishop — say that you had sold me ? How would your 
 
AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES MORDAUNT. 135 
 
 name stand then ■ Your name is all that you have bad these 
 many years — would you lose that .' 
 
 "We had better fly," said Mr. Mordannt. " What loose cash 
 have we '? ' ' 
 
 " Eight pounds." 
 
 " Nothing owing ? " 
 
 '• Nothing." 
 
 " Then, it you will get off the bed, I will get up : we will scud 
 this fifty pounds civilly to Lord Barnstaple. We will go to London, 
 sell out the twelve hundred pounds, and we will all go to Canada 
 together. If he wants you he can come there after you." 
 
 So it happened the next morning when the pretty bride, Mary, 
 was lying in her bed, Alice came to her and woke her, saying, 
 "You must get up and go down to your father and mother to say 
 good-bye." 
 
 " Why? " said simple Mary. 
 
 " Because we are going to Canada, to Charles," said Alice ; and 
 as Mary put her ami round Alice's neck, they felt they were 
 sisters. 
 
 Free at last. Xo more trouble with the Archdeacon, Mr. Easy, 
 the farmers, nay even with the Bishop, his dear friend. A new life 
 was before him and he knew it. Haste and speed were necessary, 
 and there must be but few farewells ; all the people must learn their 
 loss after he was gone. 
 
 It was early in the bright morning when he set out to see the 
 Bishop ; hours before Mr. Easy woidd leave his bed. The hinds 
 were going to their labour, and one after another greeted him as 
 he walked swiftly along. One very old man stopped him and 
 asked him to sit on a heap of stones at the roadside, which Mr. 
 Mordannt immediately did. 
 
 " Parson," said the old man, " I want you to tell me something. 
 I want you to tell me about the New Jerusalem, on which you 
 preached last Sunday. Is it in this world or in the next ? " 
 
 " In both," said Mr. Mordannt, at once ; " for me it is in this 
 world, for you iu the next. I am going to it, I believe, before 
 dissolution; you must wait until you are dead. See, George," 
 continued Mr. Mordaunt, "I am going to be very rich just now, 
 and you shall never go into the house." 
 
 The old man nodded, but said nothing : a humbug would have 
 loaded Mr. Mordaunt with blessings, old George only nodded, yet 
 I do not think that Mr. Mordaunt was any the worse for the silent 
 blessings which followed him along the lonely road. 
 
 He burst in upon the Bishop, pushing past the footman before 
 his name could be announced. "I am off, old fellow," was the 
 
136 AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES MORDAUNT. 
 
 salutation which the serious young footman heard before he shut 
 the door. 
 
 " Yes," said the Bishop, " and whither ? " 
 
 " Canada — Ontario, after my boy." 
 
 " Then the visit of Lord Barnstaple was not satisfactory ? " said 
 the Bishop. 
 
 "In a pecuniary way, yes; in other ways, no. Ask him, he 
 will tell you the truth. I don't see my way to certain arrange^ 
 ments, and so I shall go to Canada, and take my boy's bride with 
 me." 
 
 " And your daughter ? " 
 
 " She goes also." 
 
 "I don't quite understand," said the Bishop, "but you know 
 best. Everything you do must be for the best. About the parish, 
 are you going to leave it in Easy's hands ? " 
 
 " Yes : it must bo so. Even Paul sowed the seed, and left it 
 to grow among the churches. Yes." 
 
 " When do you go ? " asked the Bishop. 
 
 "Now, instantly. Give me your blessing and send me," and 
 he knelt down at once. 
 
 " Let us pray for a little more light, Mordaunt," said the Bishop, 
 and they did so, but none came ; then Mr. Mordaunt knelt and 
 received the benediction, and passing swiftly through the Bishop's 
 domestics, was through the town, and was making the dust fly on 
 the king's highway before the Bishop had made up his mind 
 whether he should detain him or not. 
 
 Mr. Mordaunt met the Archdeacon on his cob, and he stopped 
 him. "Mr. Archdeacon," he said, "we have not been friends, 
 and yet I have a favour to ask you." 
 
 The Archdeacon, who was a gentleman, at once dismounted. 
 " Dear Mordaunt," he said, " was it all my fault? " 
 
 "No! no! All mine," said Mr. Mordaunt. "I am away to 
 Canada, and shall never see you again. But use your influence 
 with the farmers in my old parish, and see to my poor when I am 
 away." 
 
 And so he was gone, and the Archdeacon was left standing in 
 the road beside his cob, in sight of his wondering groom, as Mr. 
 Mordaunt sped away amid the dust. And the Archdeacon saw 
 there and then that they had lost the best man in the whole 
 diocese, and like an honest fellow as he was took the lesson to 
 heart, and acted on it. There is no stouter champion of the 
 agricultural poor in the land now than our Archdeacon. 
 
 Mr. Mordaunt met Mr. and Mrs. Easy in a pony carriage, and 
 he stopped them. "I am going away," he said; "going away 
 
AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES MOEDAUNT. 137 
 
 for ever. Let us part friends, and see to my people when I am 
 gone." 
 
 Mrs. Easy (who always drove) whipped the pony, and went on ; 
 and so Mordaunt went on to his own, and they drove to their place. 
 At this Christmas time let us say, " God forgive us all." 
 
 Christmas time in the western part of Ontario is a very pleasant 
 time indeed. The snow is set hard, and you can drive the most 
 beautiful horses in sleighs from one house to another all the night 
 through. Even in that paradise, however, there are drawbacks. 
 You get no newspapers for a long time together in winter, while 
 you get more wolves than you want. 
 
 In the extreme West, almost on the Old Buffalo tracks, was a 
 Christmas party — Mr. Mordaunt, his son Charles, his son's wife, 
 Mary, a baby of one year old, Alice Mordaunt, and some servants, 
 Irish all, who were in a state of wonder and delight at the astound- 
 ing wealth all around them. There was simply more than you 
 could cat if you put your mind to it. Mr. Mordaunt had been 
 away in the sleigh, late in the day, preaching, and had just come 
 home. 
 
 Denis was bedding up the horses, and Biddy was waiting for 
 the word to put on the dinner. Some one was wanting ; it was 
 Father Moriarty. 
 
 "Divvle a sowl of the blessed cratur will be here this night," 
 said Biddy. " And by the name of the ever-blessed Saint Patrick, 
 hark to 'the wolves. The Mother of God shield the holy 
 man ! " 
 
 " He'll come," said Mr. Mordaunt. " I left him close by ; don't 
 be a fool, Biddy." 
 
 " Sorra a one of me would be a fool, and me living in a heretic's 
 house," replied Biddy; "but I'd like to be shrived this blessed 
 night, to pray the better in the morning for him that needs all our 
 prayers." 
 
 " What? " said Mr. Mordaunt. 
 
 ' ' Just nothing, ' ' said Biddy ; ' ' hark to the wolves then. Whisht, 
 all of you, there's one blowing under the door now ; give me the 
 broom, Miss Mordaunt," and Biddy with infinite ninibleness and 
 dexterity dashed to the door, and as nearly as possible hit the 
 wolf over the head. 
 
 " Bad cess to the divvle," she said ; " I nearly had him. And 
 the blessed father out among them ; " but before she had time to 
 blow off the steam, the "blessed father" opened the door again 
 and walked in, saying — 
 
 " Peace upon this" house and all in it ; Mordaunt, this is the 
 most splendid thing of modem times." 
 
138 AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES MORDAUNT. 
 
 " What is the most splendid thing in modern times, you Irish 
 lunatic?" said Mr. Mordaunt. 
 
 "It is an English lunatic this time, my hoy, and more power 
 to his elhow. The devil helps heretics. Here is one of your 
 young English lords, with his doctor, has started from the Pacific 
 side and won his way across the Rocky Mountains. Only him 
 and his doctor, and an Indian. We shall make something of you 
 English yet, if you attend to us." 
 
 " It is impossihle," said Charles Mordaunt. " I cannot believe 
 it. No man could have done it." 
 
 " It's true, nevertheless," said the good Father, rather seriously. 
 " Some said he was a prig, and perhaps he is ; some said he was 
 a fool, and mayhe he might he. But to disprove their words he 
 set a task hefore him such as no man ever undertook. He did 
 not care for life, for they say that a young lady had cast away his 
 love : of that I know nothing. He has won, however, and has 
 done a thing which will never he forgotten." 
 
 " Is he safe, Father ? " cried Alice. 
 
 " Oh ! yes, he is safe enough — and the doctor, a broth of a 
 hoy of divilment — and the Indian, the grinning, brown-faced nagur. 
 They are all safe enough." 
 
 " Where are they? " cried Alice. 
 
 " They were at the door just now, in the cold, among the wolves," 
 said Father Moriarty. " But maybe, if they are kept there much 
 longer, they will go on to another farm." 
 
 Alice threw the door open, and fell fairly into Lord Barnstaple's 
 arms. Father Moriarty kissed every one all round, beginning with 
 Mr. Mordaunt and ending with the baby and the Indian. I have 
 little more to tell ; I fancy that the story has told itself by this 
 time. But, as a personal matter, I should very much have liked the 
 Archdeacon and Mr. Letmedown Easy to have seen that Christmas 
 party ; it would have done the Archdeacon good. Mr. Easy is a 
 hopeless person. 
 
 They kept it up, I beg of you : the Indian, under the laws of 
 the state, was not allowed liquor, but the others (with the exception 
 of the baby) had a moderate quantity of hot wine and water ; and 
 I believe that the deleterious herb, tobacco, was used to some 
 extent. Lord Barnstaple and Alice sat side by side, and Lord 
 Barnstaple sang a song (he could no more sing than your grand- 
 mother, but did his duty). Father Moriarty sang the " Last Rose 
 of Summer " very beautifully and well ; and then, who should sing 
 but Mr. Mordaunt : he sang " The Graves of a Household," and 
 very well, too. In short, in the whole of our good Queen's dominions 
 there was not a pleasanter Christmas party than there was in that 
 
AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CHAELES MORDAUNT. 139 
 
 farm-house in Western Ontario that Christmas night : though the 
 cold was an illimitable number of degrees below zero, and the 
 wolves came and blew under the door as soon as Father Moriarty 
 began singing. 
 
 Lord Barnstaple was married at Montreal by his father-in-law, 
 Mr. Mordaunt ; he returned to England and holds his present 
 position, about which we need say nothing. Mr. Mordaunt never 
 returned ; he says that, with all its faults, Ontario is dearer to him 
 than any land in the world. He lives with his son Charles, who, 
 if he had been here, might have been a third-rate clerk. I asked 
 an old friend the other day what Mr. Mordaunt was like now. He 
 said, " A man swift and eager in doing good." 
 
 Father Moriarty is in great trouble about the infallibility pro- 
 nunciation. He will have nothing to do with it at all. But I 
 think that Father Moriarty is a man who can take very good care 
 of himself in a free country. He knows as well as we do that the 
 first real freedom dates from Christianity, and that whatever 
 Churches may have done with our Charter since then, our 
 Charter remains indefeasible. Christianity means freedom ; and 
 so we may wish both Father Moriarty and Mr. Mordaunt many 
 happy Christmases, even though the snow is piled high over the 
 roof-tree, and the wolves are smelling and blowing round the 
 door. 
 
MALMAISON. 
 
MALMAISON. 
 
 PAKT I. 
 
 That part of Lorraine which lies nearest to Prussia and to Luxem- 
 burg is very little known to ordinary travellers. In good years, 
 when the Moselle is full, idle tourists go up the river as far as 
 Alf, get out of the steamer there and then, and go on by the quiet 
 little baths of Bertrich, across the Eifel by Bittburg, and so on to 
 Treves. Few, however, go higher than Treves. The river, although 
 very beautiful, is more monotonous than the Rhine, and travellers 
 are easily tired before they get past Treves. Beyond this glorious 
 old city, with its Roman ruins, however, the Moselle has some 
 grand reaches ; and having passed Treves, you get to Remeck, a 
 most beautiful place, and beyond Remeck you come to Sierck. 
 At Sierck the Stomberg rises 1,200 feet out of the river, part of 
 the mountain being in Luxemburg or Dutch territory, and part of 
 it in France. From this really noble hill you look into glorious 
 Lorraine, and see the river winding away like a silver ribbon 
 towards Thionville, which is in sight, and so on to Metz, with her 
 
 artcpavojfia Trvpyanov. 
 
 I have only to shut my eyes now, in this quiet London street, 
 to see the wide plains stretching far away before me, bounded by 
 forest, brilliant near the riverside with vineyards, and overarched 
 everywhere by a cloudless sun. I can see the spires of the village 
 churches, some far out upon the plain among the cornfields, some 
 nestling among the boscage of the forest, some just peeping from 
 among the trees in a hollow by a trout-stream — -nay, I can go 
 farther than that in my imagination, for I can hear three old 
 familiar voices calling to me, and saying, " Confess, now, that 
 there is no place in the whole Avorld like our Lorraine." I find 
 myself answering, " No, and your Lorraine shall be as fair as 
 ever again, my loved ones." And so I open my eyes again, and 
 look on the dull London street, and the old voices are dumb for a 
 time. 
 
 143 
 
141 MALMAISON. 
 
 I go back to Lorraine with more recent recollections. Once 
 more I am in the old land. 
 
 " Is the green land stained brown with flame? " 
 
 They will not let me go over that ridge, and look at Bazaine 
 lying under Metz. Not a human being on this autumn afternoon 
 is allowed to look at him. I say that I am a swift runner, and 
 will be back in three-quarters of an hour. The Bavarian officer 
 says no, and the guns begin to mutter again. All around in the 
 steaming heat the German swarm are under arms, for he is 
 coming out once more. You may see everything and hear every- 
 thing ; but you must not look on doomed Bazaine. He must not 
 know that we are here. I hold my open letter in my hand, yet I 
 am laughed at. Mademoiselle must do without her news this 
 time, and if Louis dies, tant pis pour lui. 
 
 So I sit on a broken wall, and look at Lorraine until the 
 ambulance is ready. And wonderfully beautiful it is, even now. 
 South is Metz, with the great cathedral, like a ship at sea, sailing 
 amidst the grim smoke. To the right is Champagne, a dim 
 pearl-grey cloud ; to the left the Vosges and the hills of the 
 Moselle. Around is a hideous and horrible ruin, such as the 
 human mind cannot understand until it has seen it with the eye 
 of the flesh. That heap of shattered stone behind me was once a 
 farmhouse, and in the lower part of the ruins of it I detect an 
 eye, then a head, then a very weary old woman, who pulls herself 
 out from among the ruins, and, looking round her, asks for bread 
 for the love of God. I have bread, and give it to her, and ask 
 her if she knows people who lived here — one called Courrier. 
 She throws her bread upon the ground, and clutches me by both 
 arms. She is the very woman we thought dead — old Sophie, the 
 nurse of the family. Is it possible, we ask, to get this letter into 
 Metz underground ? It is only to Mademoiselle Marie, to tell her 
 that he is dying at Briey. The old woman looked cautiously 
 round and took the letter from me, after which she caught up the 
 bread again, and began gnawing it like a hound. 
 
 I asked how the letter was to get into Metz, and she laughed 
 at me. I must do her the honour to say, that while I looked at 
 that old lady, I felt very "much reminded of the first French 
 revolution, and of the good women who sat and knitted under the 
 guillotine. But somehow or another I had a feeling that that 
 letter would get into the hands for which it was intended in some 
 way. I was doing a thing which possibly I ought not to have 
 done. If my letter could get in, other information could get in 
 
MALMAISON. 145 
 
 with it ; and I felt that I was betraying my trust to my employers. 
 But I could not help it. He looked so bonny on his bed when I 
 thought he was dying, that I could not refuse him. And the 
 siege was not very close then ; also the doctor said, that if I did 
 not promise him, he would die. I promised him. What could 
 I do? 
 
 However, the letter went. The old woman finished her bread, 
 and I was wondering what would happen to a German officer if 
 he fell asleep in a house of hers, when she looked round again and 
 gave a low whistle. Instantly the ruins of the house behind us 
 seemed to move, and a young man in a blouse came into the open 
 air. He was a very handsome young man, and I began at once 
 to- think of St. Just, and of what might happen to a German 
 officer if that young man caught him asleep. The old woman 
 embraced the young man tenderly, and, I suppose, gave him the 
 letter, for I never saw any more of it. At this moment a 
 Brandenberg staff-officer came riding past, and the old woman 
 dashed out on him at once, and pulled him up. 
 
 I never in my life saw anything so astoundingly clever. We 
 had very nearly got into a heavy scrape ; for the young man, 
 Sophie's son, was actually standing by us, with my letter on him, 
 and in all human probability enough treasonable matter on him to 
 hang us altogether. The old lady saved us all by taking the bull 
 by the horns, and roundly abusing the staff-officer, who behaved 
 like a thorough gentleman. Her cow, she said, had been taken 
 by the German Landwehr, who chose to call themselves soldiers. 
 The staff-officer said that he was very sorry, but that the 
 requisition had been made formally through the maire. It was 
 the maire who had taken her cow, not he. She replied that the 
 maire was a gentleman, and not a Prussian, and would never 
 have taken an old woman's cow. The staff-officer asked if she 
 could point out the man who had taken her cow without the 
 authority of the maire. The old woman said that she could not, 
 at her time of life, single out one thief from 750,000. As our 
 good luck would have it, I burst out laughing here, and the good- 
 natured staff-officer joined, recognising me. He took out a thaler, 
 and asked me to give it to the poor woman; "for," he said, 
 " she would never take it from me, poor old soul." 
 
 Indeed he was right ; for when he was away over the hillside, I 
 gave it to her, and she stamped it into the earth, and spat on it. 
 Afterwards the Lorraine peasantry got to know the Germans 
 better, and to love them more. 
 
 That was the saddest evening I had in the whole war. I took 
 away old Sophie, and together, under the gathering gloom of the 
 
 11 
 
146 MALMAISON. 
 
 summer night, we saw the horrible ruins of a beautiful place, 
 Malmaison, which I bad known before under very different 
 circumstances. 
 
 Until I went to the wars I bad never seen death, save in the 
 faces of those dear to me. Now I have seen so many dead faces, 
 that they are confused in my memory, and I cannot say this one 
 lay lure, or that one lay there. I remember when I was a boy 
 crying over a house which had been burnt down ; but I had not 
 known the house. Now, in a certain way, I knew Malmaison 
 well, for Marie and her cousins had described it to me a hundred 
 times. I bad, in fact, seen it once ; and as a lad I used to think 
 of it as an earthly paradise. We four fools went in the omnibus 
 to Hampton Court once, when we were all children, and it was my 
 treat. They thought highly of Hampton Court, but they said 
 one and all, "Mais Malmaison! " To tell the truth, I believed 
 in Malmaison just as much as I did in my boyhood, when I got 
 the last view of it, under the guidance of old Sophie. Then I 
 saw that I and my dear French friends, who had left France so 
 long ago, had rather miscalculated height and space. Malmaison 
 must have been very beautiful ; but had only been a grand farm 
 chateau after all. 
 
 I have an extreme objection to the melting mood ; I agree 
 with Mark Tapley, that it never did any good to man or woman. 
 But somehow, when I had shown my pass to the German sentry, 
 and old Sophie had taken me round into the flower-garden which 
 I knew so well by report and recollection, as well as by sight — 
 when I saw the Malmaison of my boy's fancy a ghastly heap of 
 hideous ruins, I, like a great fool, sat down on the edge of the 
 dried-up fountain, and began crying like a girl. At that moment 
 Bazaine (to annoy me) burst into a wild hideous roar of artillery 
 and musketry fire two miles off. I would not have cared much 
 for that ; but I was afraid that I heard the heavier guns firing 
 from the forts. In case of a mere sortie, I did not care ; but 
 when the " town guns " began to go sharp and swift in that 
 month, correspondents had to be in front pretty quickly- And I 
 was to the north, with no road, whereas all the other fellows were 
 to the east. 
 
 But Bazaine got cpaiet, and the old woman and I buried our 
 man. The Prussian lieutenant (a Pomeranian) said that she was 
 a witch, and objected ; but the old Frenchwoman and I got it 
 through. She frightened him a little by saying that she could 
 find amber in the forest, if she chose. She says that our lad was 
 buried in consecrated ground. I extremely doubt it. Malmaison 
 is so utterly shattered, that you cannot judge by an inch or two. 
 
MAIiMAISON. 147 
 
 She knew where he lay — it was in the corner of the orchard by 
 the pond. I knew the place more by observation. The Pome- 
 ranian lieutenant gave us hands, and we got a good grave dug in 
 the orchard. I had seen by that time a good deal of trench- work, 
 and so I happened to do the last honours of death for Alphonse, 
 whom I remember as a mere chdd with a drum. I recollect 
 boxing his ears for playing his drum on the day of the late Duke 
 of Wellington's funeral, and I am sorry for it now. I did what 
 none of his family could do for him — I buried him with military 
 honours. Perhaps the stay-at-home people would care to know 
 what military honours are like. You take your man by his two 
 heels as if he was a wheelbarrow, and you drag him to the edge of 
 the trench. Then you get down yourself, and pull him in, laying 
 him as decently as you can. Then you get out, and he stays 
 there. Then you pitch the earth down on his face as if he were a dog. 
 
 That night above Metz I spent with old Sophie, and I got all 
 the truth from her. I do not assert that I did my duty by my 
 employers — in fact, I know that I did not. My employers were 
 very strongly German, and I in reason was strongly German also ; 
 but I had lived so very much in France, that I was sympathetically 
 and sentimentally most decidedly French. I can stand unutt< r- 
 able horrors as well as another; I have proved it. I have looked 
 into more dead men's faces than I could count ; I have been in 
 more hospitals than I can well remember. At Sedan I waited at 
 the comer of the street while 12,000 French prisoners passed, yet 
 I was always in terror that I should see the face of Alphonse 
 Courrier. In all the hideous butchery I never saw it at all. The 
 English doctor who got me to go with him and examine the dead 
 at La Chapelle thought my nerve was at fault at first. He said 
 kindly, " You will get used to this." I said, " If I could see one 
 face, I would care for nothing." I did not know that the man we 
 buried at Malmaison was the man whose face I dreaded to meet 
 at Givonne. I wish I had known; I thought that it was a son or 
 relation of Sophie's. In truth, the man we buried in the orchard 
 was our own Alphonse. It is too horrible to think of now. 
 
 They look so pretty, those French dead ! Long lines of scarlet 
 and blue — you cannot tell how beautiful they look until you have 
 seen them. I have tried hard, but I never dreamt that I should 
 see death in this degree. And to think of my burying Alphonse, 
 and the old witch Sophie keeping her secret ! The heaped blue 
 Germans beyond Bazeilles were very terrible, the trenches there 
 are terrible ; but at the last, in the mere beauty of death, France 
 is supreme. No human mind ever conceived anything more 
 terriblv beautiful than the French dead on these fields. 
 
148 MALMAISON. 
 
 I would not have cared much, had it not heen for Alphonse. I 
 always liked the hoy, and I knew that he loved Marie, as hoys 
 will love. I had loved her myself, in fact ; and when the dead 
 lad had been dragged to his grave in the orchard by the heels, 
 and when old Sophie told me that the unrecognisable corpse was 
 that of Alphonse, I took her away with me ; and in a half-ruined 
 room of the old chateau she and I talked through the whole story 
 together. The room was the headquarters of General von Stein, 
 who sat by the window ; while I, with old Sophie under my pro- 
 tection, cowered over the fire, surrounded by French peasants who 
 had crept in for warmth.* The room properly belonged to the 
 Pomeranians, but they gave us the best places. Young Franz 
 Hertz (of Pomerania), who was a friend of mine, and who had 
 been educated at King's College with me, asked me why I had 
 got the old Frenchwoman in tow. I told him very quickly who 
 she was ; and he went away at once, and came back with sausage 
 and wine for her. At this moment Bazaine began, or, to be more 
 correct, some of his outposts began, a spluttering fire of musketry, 
 and a few large guns were fired. It might be a sortie, or it might 
 not ; but the German officers hurried out, and left old Sophie and 
 me alone to talk through the story. 
 
 The Courriers have always been rich, and the Canzons are 
 richer than they. The Canzons are of an old family — a family 
 who, however, kept a great deal of their property in Champagne 
 through the Revolution. The Courriers made their money while 
 the Canzons kept it. But an alliance was made between the two 
 families in 1838, when the gentle and pretty Alice de Canzon 
 married Adolphe Courrier. At the same time Elise Courrier 
 married young Hubert de Canzon. Some said that they were mere 
 manages de convenances, but it was not the fact. Old Courrier 
 (into whose share of the Revolution of 1792 I decline to inquire) 
 was a kind of tenant of old De Canzon in the Champagne wine 
 trade. The children had grown up together, and so no one was 
 in the least surprised at their making mutual marriages. But 
 there was something more tender between the families than mere 
 mercantile matters. The old men had a very strong feeling 
 towards one another. The Courriers and the Canzons had helped 
 one another through very hard times with all loyalty and good- 
 will. That traditional loyalty descended to other generations. 
 Elise Courrier-Canzon died ten years after she had given birth 
 to Marie Canzon, and old Canzon dying a few years afterwards, 
 left Marie Canzon his heiress. 
 
 * The writer is only describing what he has seen. 
 
MALMAISOX. 149 
 
 The families were Huguenots, and it so happened that both 
 old Courrier (still alive at eighty) aud De Canzon desired that 
 their grandchildren should have a certain amount of English 
 education. 
 
 It therefore came about that Marie De Canzon was in England 
 with her two cousins. Marie used to go to school at Mrs. 
 Protheroe's, in Earl's Gardens, Brompton ; and the two cousins, 
 Louis and Alphonse, were boarded with my father, a clergyman 
 at Holloway, fur the purpose of attending King's College. My 
 father was glad to have two French boys in his house ; and he 
 used to make us speak French at dinner. My father was also 
 of the Evangelical school, and was rather proud of having 
 Huguenots in the house. If my father ever could have bored me, 
 it would have been on the subject of the revocation of the Edict 
 of Xantes. 
 
 I wanted to be a soldier ; but my father could not afford it, 
 and wanted me to be a clergyman. To this I objected ; and the 
 end of it all is that I am a journalist. When war ceases, I shall 
 have to find a new employment. However, it has not ceased as 
 yet. "While there is life there is hope. I will undertake to go 
 under fire for any paper — political principles no object — for fifty 
 pounds a month, and twenty francs a day for expenses, excluding 
 telegrams, which are always incorrect. I suppose that I shall 
 end by going to a farm in Ontario, just to win bread between the 
 wars, for I never can settle down permanently any more. I have 
 the war-fever on me ever since the Crimean campaign, when I, 
 as a mere boy, won the applause of Europe by my letters. I 
 have been through every campaign since that ; and I wake in the 
 night, here in quiet England, and fancy that I hear the sound of 
 guns. I have been wounded twice : once on the day of Balaclava, 
 and once on the day of Agra. I suppose I shall have peace in my 
 grave, for there seems no peace here. 
 
 There was a time in my life when things were not so with me. 
 The morning of my life at college was very peaceful. Louis and 
 Alphonse Courrier used to go to the college together, though I 
 was much older than either of them, and in the senior depart- 
 ment. Louis, again, was much older than Alphonse, who was 
 about the same age as his cousin Marie. I took to these gentle 
 French lads, as some English boys will take to French boys in 
 preference to any boys of their own nation. They were so gentle 
 and pleasant, that it was impossible to help loving at least one of 
 them, and besides, they were the only two pupils my father had 
 at the time, so we were always together. They knew no ill, and 
 were content with the simplest pleasures — an excursion to 
 
150 MALMAISOK. 
 
 Hampstead Heath, or, still better, a ramble among the shops, 
 were pleasures enough for us. I have been very fine since then, 
 and have dined with princes and rajahs ; but I never was so 
 happy as I was in the very old clays before this journalist business 
 began. 
 
 One Christmas my mother announced to us that we were to 
 have a visitor, but she refused to tell us the name. On 
 Christmas-eve a fly drove up to the door, and there stepped from 
 it Marie Canzon, at the sight of whom her cousins gave a wild 
 cry of joy. 
 
 She was an exquisite blonde young woman, of about fifteen 
 years old ; very tall for her age. I have never seen any one so 
 beautiful in my life. She is handsome still, in spite of all she 
 has gone through. Ask any of those kindly romantic Germans 
 who were first into Metz, whether they remember the beautiful 
 Frenchwoman who watched by two corpses under the cathedral ; 
 ask Bazaine if he remembers the lady who headed the women of 
 Metz, when they came and prayed him not to surrender to the 
 very last ; ask the Germans if they remember the lady who 
 carried the white flag in that most lamentable sortie of women. 
 
 I remember that there was deep frost and ice when she came ; 
 and that the waters were bearing, and all the world was on the 
 ice. It was early in the day when she came, and we were going 
 to skate on our pet piece of water, St. James's Park. She asked 
 to go with us, and my mother gave leave ; and so we took her 
 tripping among us. 
 
 Her whole soul seemed filled with delight, but delight of a 
 very quiet kind. She thought that we boys were doing her the 
 very highest honour in the world. She was humbly grateful to 
 us ; and she once said to me — 
 
 " You are too kind altogether, monsieur, to burden yourself 
 with me ; but I will be very good, and do exactly as I am told. 
 I have never seen ice, save once on the Moselle at Thionville. 
 Monsieur knows Thionville ? No ! Well, I can assure monsieur 
 that Thionville is a very nice place, though not so nice as Metz ; 
 but of all places in the world, I think Strasburg the finest, in 
 regard to shops. Stay, I am incorrect, as usual. I said that I 
 had only seen ice once ; yet I have seen it twice. I saw some at 
 Namur on the Meuse. Does monsieur know Namur ? " 
 
 I did not. 
 
 " Ah-h-h ! but at Namur, in the shop on the other side of the 
 way from the Hotel de l'Europe, there is the finest gingerbread 
 in all the world. I stayed with my aunt Courrier at Lafontaine 
 for a week, and I used to walk into Namur every day to buy that 
 
MALMAISON. Ill 
 
 gingerbread. It was a speciality of Monsieur Leroy's. I like 
 Sedan also ; but Bazeilles is very pleasant — you are more in the 
 country. There are very pleasant places round Sedan, where all 
 the world goes and has milk and strawberries — for example, Fond 
 de Givonne, and beyond again, up the little valley to Givonne. 
 Monsieur must travel and see these placi s." 
 
 Monsieur travelled and saw them years after. Sedan was a 
 horrible pest-house ; Bazeilles a ruin and a horror such as the 
 world had never seen before ; Fond de Givonne ruined with 
 shells ; and the height between Givonne and Fond de Givonne 
 covered with French corpses in heaps. 
 
 So we took her on to the ice, while we skated round her. I 
 can see her now, sitting on a chair, which I hired for her, her 
 eyes bright with pleasure, thinking herself as hue as a queen, 
 but perfectly humble and grateful. After a time she asked us to 
 skate away, for she was perfectly safe ; and we did so. "When 
 we came back after half-an-hour, we found her in animated con- 
 versation with the man who let out the chairs and skates. We 
 told her that it was time to go home, and she came at once ; but 
 when I offered the man the money for the chair, he emphatically 
 refused to take it, to my great astonishment. He looked like a 
 common "ice blackguard;" but he would have none of my 
 money — " he woidd not take money for miss." 
 
 When we were tripping home she took my arm — she was 
 nearly as tall as myself, though I am not small — and asked me if 
 I would do her a favour. I tell the honest truth when I say that 
 I was so madly in love with her, that I would have done any- 
 thing. 
 
 " I cannot tell you how it was ; 
 But this I know, it came to pass," 
 
 as Christina Eossetti sings. I promised her that I would do 
 everything she told me for ever. 
 
 "But that is unreasonable," she said ; "but the English are 
 bizarre. I ask you to do one thing for me, and you promise to 
 do all things. I do not understand." 
 
 " Chivalry," I said. 
 
 "Oh, comme cela" she said, laughing. " Well, now then, 
 good knight, you must take me to see the wife of that man who 
 hired to us the chair. He is in distress, and I have money, and 
 I want to give him some. You hear, you knight ? " 
 
 I heard, and I obeyed. She had got the address neatly written 
 down in her pocket-book, and we went the next day. As we 
 started together, she said to me — 
 
152 MALMAISON. 
 
 "You are so very kind to me, that I do not know how to 
 thank you. For you to take me to the ice yesterday, and again 
 to take me to these poor people ! I will try to give no trouhle to 
 vou ; hut you spoil me with your kindness. Will you do more 
 for me ? " 
 
 I do not rememher exactly what I said, hut I did not make a 
 fool of myself. 
 
 " Then," she said, " I want to slide on the ice, as I saw those 
 people doing, and I want you to show me a shop where they sell 
 chocolate." 
 
 I went with her then to Fortnum and Mason's ; after which we 
 crossed the ice together, and went down the Horseferry Road into 
 a slum, where she found the woman she wanted in bed with a 
 baby, and four children cowering about the floor before an empty 
 fireplace. She looked round the room with a rather experienced 
 eye, as it struck me, and without saying more than " Good- 
 morning " to the woman, took out a sovereign, and requested me 
 to step out and order in half a ton of coals and some small wood 
 to be sent round instantly. I went at once in admiration, and 
 she followed, only, however, to turn into a butcher's, which she 
 had obseiwed in passing. "I am quite safe," she said; and 
 when I came back after ordering the coals, I found her in the 
 woman's room chattering, and preparing beef-tea in the only 
 saucepan which had not been pawned. 
 
 " Have you no sisters of charity here in England? " she said. 
 
 I said, "No, with the exception of the Roman Catholic 
 sisters." 
 
 " Tant pis" she said. " We French Protestants have, 
 though. We are before you English Protestants in that. You 
 English should have sisters of charity. My old nurse was one 
 only last year, and I worked with her; so I know, though I am 
 only fifteen. Could you nurse a man with a broken leg? " 
 
 I said, "No." 
 
 "Ah, but I could," she said, triumphantly. "I helped to 
 nurse old Pierre, our gardener. I am rich, I ; hut I would 
 sooner relieve human suffering than marry a minister of state. 
 Now let us go slide. I say, you kind Englishman, you will take 
 me there to that poor woman again to-morrow ? " 
 
 I promised, and we went and slid. I can see her now, with 
 the thoughtful look on her face as she was preparing, the look 
 of calm pleasure as she was progressing, and the bright flash 
 of triumph when she ended. We were on a very quiet piece 
 of the ice behind the island, where other ladies were sliding, 
 but Marie was as quiet as any of them. A great hulking Irish- 
 
MALMAISON. 153 
 
 man, a sergeant iu the Coldstream Guards, O'Halloran (he was 
 shot through the heart just in front of Jones, of the Daily X< ws, 
 trying to get over the vineyard wall at Inkerman), came over from 
 the barracks, and said that he would cut the slide clean for the 
 ladies. He came down by the run, and Marie laughed so 
 prettily, that O'Halloran said he was quite sure that her ladyship 
 was an Irishwoman. 
 
 I don't know what I said that evening as we walked home. 
 Bad nonsense, I doubt ; I only know that she was crying when 
 we came to the door, and that when I had gone up to my room 
 she came and kissed me, and told me that it never could be. 
 With her glorious frankness she told me that it might be with 
 Louis, but with no other in this world. I accepted my fate, and 
 am a journalist unto this day. It seems hard : I woidd have 
 worked for her well, and you shall see that I did work for her. 
 She knows why she made her decision once for all, and left me 
 a little like the Wandering Jew, and very much like a stormy 
 petrel. 
 
 I had got the answer which no gentleman takes twice from any 
 woman, and with an aching heart I began to watch many things, 
 young as I was. First, I looked at my own prospects, and saw 
 that they were very bad. My father was very poor, and I 
 perceived that unless I could do something for myself, I should 
 have hard work to keep the wolf from the door. I thought of 
 journalism, and I saw (young as I was) an opportunity of destroy- 
 ing the fiction that Paissia only resumed the right of sending ships 
 through the Dardanelles. I was the first who said that she 
 never had it. I wrote a leading article on the subject, and sent 
 it to a newspaper which I knew agreed with me. The article 
 was inserted, and I was requested to call on the editor. I dared 
 not go ; I was little more than a schoolboy, almost without down 
 on my face — I should have ruined everything by going. I told 
 my dear father the whole truth, and he went to the editor with a 
 high hand. The editor was utterly astonished at seeing my 
 father, a London rector, and was more than utterly astonished 
 at hearing that the article was written by bis son. The editor 
 offered money for the article, but my father refused it. He 
 said that in the case of a young man like myself, with such 
 brilliant prospects before him, it was extremely doubtful whether 
 it was not the duty of a father to stand between him and the 
 press. I think that my father got the best of it for the time, 
 in spite of his verbosity; but at the same time I am only a 
 journalist, with prospects of Ontario. 
 
 There was a sickening of the heart as I watched the relations 
 
154 MALMAISON. 
 
 between Louis, Marie, and Alphonse. As time went on, the 
 sickening at the heart grew worse and worse ; for while I saw 
 that she never could love ine as a wife should love her hushand, 
 I saw that she loved Louis, and that Alphonse loved her. 
 Before the end of these Christmas holidays Louis was her 
 avowed lover, and we heard from France that the members of the 
 two families, Courrier and Cauzon, had required for family 
 reasons that they should be affianced. Louis was therefore 
 engaged to Marie, while Alphonse was desperately in love with 
 her ; from this moment I say nothing of myself. 
 
 I think that Louis loved her — I am sure that he did : that she 
 loved him, I know to my cost. We must say one word for Alphonse, 
 whom Sophie and I buried in the orchard the other day. He was 
 as brave and as true a boy as ever lived. Always in my mind he 
 seemed the superior of Louis ; he seemed to me the model of a 
 French lad ; perhaps a lad who was more inclined to attend to 
 words than to facts ; very much the same kind of lad as is prepared 
 to resume this war. He loved Marie with a wild and devoted love, 
 such as Louis and I never could give her. I need not say which 
 was his favourite author. He loved Marie and France together, 
 and he would read Thiers at night until my father took the book 
 away from him, for fear he should set the house on fire. 
 
 I argued with him on this matter of Francomania. France, I 
 declared, was after all only a congeries of states, most of which 
 had been in historical times held by England. It was of no more 
 use than shying bread pills against the sides of the Monarch. He 
 believed in France, and taunted me with the relations between 
 England, Scotland, and Ireland. There he was unanswerable, and 
 I had to give way to him at once. He had erected a god, and 
 called it France, and who was I that I should gainsay him ? Have 
 we not a god called England ourselves ? The pretty little fellow 
 loved France as he loved Marie ; he died for both of them ; what 
 man could do more ? It seems to us, in the beginning of a new 
 movement about the rights of women, that women, if they gain 
 much, will lose much. The relations between men and women 
 will be altered, and God only knows whether it will be for better 
 or for worse. Alphonse would have been a simple slave to Marie, 
 which would have been ill and foolish ; but they might have been 
 happy, if in this bad world any one can be happy. It was, how- 
 ever, evident to me that Alphonse was in love with Marie before 
 the down was on his chin. The boy did not know what was the 
 matter with him, and I naturally was the last person to speak about 
 it, because I was in love with her myself. 
 
 I cannot say that I ever thoroughly lured Louis. He was a 
 
MALMAISON. 155 
 
 prig, and I dislike prigs; and again. French prigs are the worst 
 
 of all prigs, not excepting English and Prussian prigs. I do not 
 say lor an instant that I speak without prejudice, because lie was 
 my rival in regard to the matter of Marie. You may say that 
 Alphonse was to a certain extent my rival ; hut I could at any tunc 
 have taken Alphonse round the neck and told him the whole truth, 
 whereas I would have died sooner than tell Louis one solitary 
 word. It comes to the same thing in the end. Louis went to 
 Brienne, from which school he at once, with his English education, 
 got his commission, while Alphonse and myself were left alone in 
 England with [Marie. 
 
 I had given the matter entirely up ; I saw that she would never 
 be the wife of myself or of any other Englishman ; hut I was very 
 much distressed at seeing the* effect of her presence on Alphonse. 
 As the lad matured, the love grew. He was aware that Marie was 
 engaged to his brother ; he was quite leal and true ; kit I have 
 had that lad, who slept in the same room with me, crying half the 
 night over a matter which he would sooner die than divulge. I 
 knew what the matter was ; and I take the opportunity of saying, 
 that the mere matter of crying is no proof of cowardice in a French 
 boy, as it is in the case of an English boy. They are more excit- 
 able ; hut in the face of an enemy they have always had the 
 character of courage. Alphonse used to cry, and I used to think 
 him a fool for doing it ; we shall see the end of this boy before we 
 have done. 
 
 My father had three months' leave from bis living from the 
 bishop, and. bethinking him of many economical matters, thought 
 that the cheapest thing to do was to go abroad, brush up his 
 languages, and also take my mother, myself, and Alphonse. Marie 
 staved at her school. It was a trip well conceived (there never 
 was any one like my father) and well carried out. We went to 
 Antwerp ; from Antwerp to Cologne, from Cologne to Coblentz, 
 and so by steamer up the Moselle to Alf. ]S~ow my father was a 
 geologist, and he must needs see the Dolomite. After we had 
 finished trying to break our necks, and drown ourselves in number- 
 less lakes (now marked by the track of Prince Frederick Charles's 
 armies), we headed for Treves, and from Treves on to Wasserbillig 
 and away into Lorraine on foot, three happy boys — for my father 
 was as good a boy at fifty-three as either Alphonse or I. Leaving 
 Wasserbillig, we walked so far and so fast, that we got into Metz 
 as the drums were heating the "couchez." Heavens! it seems 
 as if it had all been a hundred years ago, and in another world. 
 
 My father was a singularly resolute man, who had not only read 
 history, but who was determined that every one else should hear 
 
156 MALMAISON. 
 
 it from his mouth. The end of our journey was Malmaison, close 
 to Amandvilliers (the centre of the hattle of Gravelotte, according 
 to Bazaine) ; hut my father wished to improve our minds by going 
 round to Thionville and Longwy ; and so we tramped with him 
 over the dusty roads, and when we got near Thionville, we hung 
 on his words as he told us the glorious old story of the horse and 
 the bundle of hay. We slept at Petonville, I remember ; and I 
 remember also that my father took us over Luxemburg frontier to 
 a place called Otange, where the landlord of the inn in which we 
 slept told him that he had killed forty boars with his own hand in 
 the last winter. My father said that he had not come to hear 
 lies, but that he wanted to see the iron gate from the heights. 
 We boys kept close to my father's coat-tails while he brushed 
 through the copsewood, for we expected a boar every instant. I 
 recollect seeing chimneys below me through trees ; and my father 
 turned and said to us, or to the air, " The French are mad ; in 
 case of a violation of neutral territory, this place might be shelled 
 in an hour. I shall go on to La Chapelle, you boys." 
 
 We had not the slightest objection to go on to La Chapelle, so 
 long as he took us to Malmaison at last. We walked quickly away 
 with my father, and we got a bed in one of the outskirts of La 
 Chapelle, at a place called Aboue. It was a very pleasant little 
 place, and Madame Duprez (the landlady) was very kind to us 
 boys. My father and she fell to what may be called "polite 
 loggerheads" on the subject of Romanism; but when she gave 
 him his chamber candlestick they were the best of friends. My 
 father hoped that she would find her way ultimately to a good 
 place, and she hoped most sincerely that he would not find himself 
 in a very had place. She had nailed her colours to the mast, and 
 I do not think there was much harm done ; they agreed to squabble 
 over religious matters, and they did it. The next time that I was 
 at Aboue, madame's house was ripped to pieces by shells, and I 
 saw there what I hope I shall never see again — the French dead 
 who had died from their wounds were brought out into the pretty 
 street, and laid with their faces covered by a cloth, ready for the 
 German burial-party. 
 
 Then, I remember, we looked about Sedan, and we thought it 
 a very dull place ; and we went across to Bazeilles, and that was 
 intolerably dull. Little did we dream that Sedan was a word to 
 be written on the hearts of this generation. My father did not 
 think highly of Sedan in any way. He did not like the cookery. 
 Perhaps if he had known that his son was to sit there with German 
 officers, eating horsdlush, he would have liked it less. 
 
 My father, Alphonse, and myself cut straight across the country 
 
MALMAISOX. 157 
 
 from Sedan to Briey, passing as we went Montmedy, a place which 
 caused my father to lecture about the old Spanish-French fight 
 there. From Montmedy we passed away south ; and my father, 
 who carried a little fishing-rod (from which implement of war he 
 was never separated), caught trout, grayling, and chub, while 
 Alphonse and I rolled in the grass, and read Grant's novels. It 
 was a quiet happy time; and going over the ground again last 
 year, I could not help making a fool of myself at seeing the pretty 
 dead Frenchmen lying in the old spots anburied, where my father 
 had been catching trout. If this is read by any young man who 
 intends to be a journalist, let him take my advice, and get rid of 
 sentimentality. I am assure that young man. that after he has 
 looked into the first dead face, the process will be by no means 
 difficult. After one or two violent outbreaks, he will become 
 perfectly fit for his work — that is to say, to a certain extent 
 brutalised. 
 
 I can still hear my father's British roar in the principal hotel 
 at Briey. I remember the little inn in front of the chateau, served, 
 even in those old times, by the little niece of old Sophie, and who 
 bore her name. Young Sophie has grown up now, and has covered 
 herself with a glory which is not of this world. On the honible 
 day of St. Privat, when the glass was broken in her house and her 
 brother's with the concussion of the cannon, she never lost heart 
 for an instant. She slaved all the morning among the French and 
 German wounded ; and the next day, when the Germans came in, 
 she served them without any pay at all. I have few pleasant 
 recollections in my life, for I have been a wild wandering bird ; 
 but have a pleasure in remembering young Sophie. 
 
 Briey, I remember, in the old times before the cataclysm, was 
 a pretty, abrupt town over a little stream, with narrow streets and 
 a nice chateau in a little square. My father knocked up the cure 
 (as was his habit in all Romanist towns), and had a rather strong 
 argument with him on the subject of religion. On the occasion 
 of our visit to Briey, the argument between Romanism and Pro- 
 testantism was continued far into the night ; and when my father 
 came to bed with me, he talked himself to sleep on the subject. 
 Meanwhile Alphonse and I had been doing a little matter on our 
 own account. The lady of the chateau had caught us in the square, 
 and had taken us into the chateau itself. Little did I think to 
 what purposes that chateau was to be applied last year. 
 
 When I went in with her into her garden, it was a garden of 
 all delight. She let us turn on the fountains, and she let us eat 
 the strawberries, which grew on terrace after terrace. "When I 
 went into it last year it was a hospital. There were five young 
 
158 MALMAISON. 
 
 Frenchmen and one young German in the salon ; and there was 
 also some one else, of whom we shall hear anon. At the time of 
 my first visit to the chateau of Briey there was no dream of the 
 horrors of war. I have been there twice ; but I never will go any 
 moi'e — never more, for ever. Briey is, as the Scotch say, a place 
 which I have " put past." 
 
 My father's argument with the cure was so exceedingly warm, 
 and so successful on my father's side, that the cure insisted that 
 he should accompany us to the village of Ste. Marie aux Chenes, 
 where lived a cure who would demolish and ruin my father, with 
 fifty-Protestant power at his back. The cure was politely inftiriated 
 at my father's arguments, but pleaded inexperience in divinity ; 
 so all the way from Aboue to Ste. Marie my father hurled the 
 fathers of the Church at his head like German cannon-shots. In 
 the horrible shattering roar of last year, I remember smiling at 
 the old ecclesiastical battle. My father had distinctly the best of 
 it until we reached Ste. Marie aux Chenes, and met the cure of 
 that place out walking. Our good young man of Briey handed 
 my father over like a bale of goods to the cure of Ste. Marie, and 
 
 the cure (now Monseigneur of R ) took him in hand. My 
 
 impression was, that although my father's arguments were excellent, 
 he got the worst of it. But I am only a journalist, and not worth 
 listening to. 
 
 But under the broad hlack skirts of my father and the cures of 
 Briey and Ste. Marie aux Chenes, I saw, in the midst of the 
 ecclesiastical battle, the village which is the centre of one of the 
 battles for this century at least — the village of St. Privat. Bazaine 
 says, that Amandvilliers, three miles away, was the object of his 
 centre attack, in the battle called Gravelotte. Bazaine should 
 know better than I ; but St. Privat is shattered far more than 
 Amandvilliers ; and so I fancy that Bazaine's grand plan must 
 have gone a little wrong, as French plans generally seem to have 
 done last year. 
 
 Alphonse and I liked St. Privat very much, because the mairc 
 had a remarkable kind of early pear in his garden, which, as he 
 proudly remarked, were ripe before the strawberries were gone. 
 I pointed out to the maire, that if I said that we had eaten pears 
 and strawberries together, we should not be believed. The maire 
 laughed, and advised me not to tell the story, adding that I was 
 a boy of genius. Yet I have something stranger to tell than the 
 fact of eating pears and strawberries at one and the same time. 
 
 I have come home so weary and so broken-hearted over this 
 matter, that I must be allowed to tell my story in my own way, or 
 I cannot tell it at all. I must, for instance, tell you what St. 
 
MALMAISON. 159 
 
 Privat was like before the day of judgment came, and it was left 
 
 the hideous heap of ruins which it is now. It was never a pretty 
 village ; it lay out on the bald plains of the table-land of Lorraine, 
 looking at the pearl-grey cloud which we boys were told was 
 Champagne, and at the rolling peaks which we were told were the 
 Vosges. It seems very strange to me that those who have taken 
 such an interest in this war have heard of Gravelotte, but do not 
 seem to have heard of St. Privat. The horrible shattered ruin of 
 St. Privat is worse than anything except Bazeilles. Among the 
 nun who guided those God- sent waggons of the International 
 Society you will not find one who does not tell you that St. Privat 
 is the worst thing of all. Readers may think I am writing fiction 
 when I mention St. Privat ; would they be so good as to get the 
 Report of these glorious Quakers, who have been risking their 
 lives by disease ? I, who write these words, was in St. Privat in 
 the lowest depth of her ruin. We had to ask the German doctor 
 where certain wounded were after whom we had come. "Moved 
 to the rear," he said ; " we expect Bazaine out every instant, and 
 there will be a great battle." I looked right and left over the 
 desolated fields, and saw the steel-blue line which hemmed Bazaine 
 in, and I came to certain conclusions which were found to be correct. 
 I remember in these late horrible times likening Bazaine to Sterne's 
 starling, but that is no matter. On the old visit to St. Privat 
 things were very different. My father was now determined to see 
 Metz or die, and the last memory I have of St. Privat is this. 
 My father had so violently squabbled with the cures of Aboue, Ste. 
 Marie aux Chenes, and St. Privat, that he gave the cure of St. 
 Privat his own private copy of Thomas a Kempis as a keepsake. 
 The cure of St. Privat gave my father pears in his bonhomie — he 
 had little to give then, and less now — and my father put them in 
 his pocket, and when the diligence for Metz came in, sat on them, 
 and made jam of them. Pretty old times ! I do not like laughing 
 at my father, God bless him ; but it is better to make a harmless 
 joke about one's own father than cry over the corpse of Alphonse. 
 Through all this break-heart business my father is dearer to me 
 than any other. Yet we who have seen matters, get so used to 
 them, that we can make a joke about our own fathers. Believe 
 me that I tell you the truth about that. Experto crude ; war is 
 brutalising, not ennobling. The German officers, commanding 
 the best of all good men, say so, and in the German army there 
 are men who can think while they fight. 
 
 My lather was bound to go to Metz, or perish in the attempt, 
 because he said that the expanse of that great apse dominated in 
 the most inartistic way the height of the main tower. Whether 
 
160 MALMAISON. 
 
 he thought that he could put the matter right by going there, I 
 am unable to say : I can only say that we never went there, in 
 consequence of my father having a violent attack of sciatica, which 
 laid him up at Amandvillicrs. Some fool of a doctor had told my 
 father that his life was not good : and so, when I and Alphonse 
 got him to his bed at Madame Leroy's at Amandvillicrs, four 
 miles from Metz, my father told me that he was not in any way 
 afraid of death, and that all his affairs were in order. (They were 
 not, but that is no matter.) My father now told me for the first 
 time, that Louis was at Metz, and he begged me to send for him. 
 I of course at once sent Alphonse. He went and fetched Louis but 
 by that time my father was perfectly well ; and instead of having 
 his dying directions, only found a powerfully-built English parson 
 before him, intent on bullying him on any point he would like to 
 air. I am a little bit afraid that my dear father did bully Louis. 
 I never had sciatica myself, but I should conceive it to be nearly 
 as exasperating a disease as toothache. At all events, my father, 
 who was the sweetest-tempered of human beings, was very cross 
 over it ; but he brightened up and got pleasant when Louis said 
 that he had got leave from his regiment, and that he insisted on 
 our all going away to Malmaison together. Malmaison was Louis's 
 property, you will see, and he was to marry Marie in spite of every 
 one. Nevertheless, we had a very pleasant day, though my father 
 would be jocular over Louis's red trousers. These were old, old 
 times. 
 
 We got, I remember, one of those queer vehicles now called an 
 americaine. Louis and Alphonse sat in front, while my father 
 and I sat under the hood. Louis drove., with his red trousers, on 
 the splashboard, and, as my father remarked once or twice, drove 
 principally into the ditch ; but that ditch was not deep enough 
 then to bury dead men, and so we reached Malmaison with 
 nothing worse than my father's objurgations. 
 
 At "that time the ghastly old harridan who now calls herself 
 Sophie was an uncommonly handsome woman of forty-eight. 
 She was then very brisk and gentle, and she showed us every- 
 thing, to my father's great approval. The country around was 
 bare, without hedges, and well tilled, and my father said that it 
 reminded him of Waterloo. There was an undoubted resem- 
 blance, as we all agreed. Malmaison is singularly like Hugo- 
 mont, only it is bigger, and stands more alone. 
 
 That day among days was a great day for me. Sophie got 
 the peacock to come and eat corn ; and she gave me a feather 
 which he had dropped out of his tail. And there were fowls 
 there of the Crevecceur sort, which could hardly see to eat for 
 
MALMAISON. 161 
 
 feathers. There was also a delicious kind of swine, like a grey- 
 hound, about which I irritated Sophie, because I said they must 
 be wild. Sophie said that they were such good pigs that they 
 would fatten on anything. I asked her why she did not give 
 them something to fatten on. She rode the high horse with me, 
 and said that I doubtless knew best. 
 
 We wore to lie at Malmaison, and that was most delightful ; 
 because we should see the place again the next morning. I went 
 to bed very early with Alphonse ; but my father and Louis sat up 
 to drink a 'bottle of Walportsheimer together. I was very restless 
 (Heaven only knows why — I do not believe in brain-waves), and 
 I was walking up and down the room in my shirt, when my father 
 came in. 
 
 " I was going to rouse you up, my boy," he said. " Why are 
 you not in bed ? " 
 
 And I answered that I could not tell. I could not sleep. I 
 said that there were ghosts — I was young enough to say that — 
 and my father did not laugh at me, but said that there were 
 ghosts enough there, without doubt, but that was not the time 
 for seeing them. He then told me to put on my trousers, which 
 I did, and to come downstairs, which I did. 
 
 I had to look on the game which the forester had just brought 
 in, and the beauty of the sight was beyond belief. The heaped 
 French dead, which I saw afterwards in the dung-yard before the 
 door, were not more beautiful. The forester had cast down a 
 great wild boar, and on it he had thrown hares, blackcock, hazel- 
 hens, and quail. I was very much delighted with it. My father 
 pointed out to me that the real beauty of heaped game consisted 
 in the wondrous half-tints and colours. And then I went upstairs, 
 and lay quiet beside Alphonse until the glorious sun awoke us in 
 the morning, and we rose and stood looking together across the 
 vast iields of waving grain which spread round us on all sides. I 
 said to Alphonse, " What a big dog is yonder on the lawn ! " and 
 he said, " Dog ! it is a boar." 
 
 I dressed hurriedly and ran downstairs as fast as I could, and 
 out round the garden to capture that boar. I very nearly suc- 
 ceeded, for I met the brute in an alley, with a box-hedge on each 
 side, through which he could not pass. With the madness of 
 youth I tried to seize the animal ; but after a fierce grunt he 
 turned back and hurried through some flowers. Louis, who ran 
 up, drew his sword as the boar went past him, and cut at him, 
 and says he thinks that he hurt him ; but I am now so used to 
 French war despatches, that I am very doubtful. 
 
 Louis had come out after me, and had met the boar at the end 
 
 12 
 
1G2 MALMAISON. 
 
 of an alley through which I hud chased him. Louis was at that 
 time seventeen, whereas I was nearly nineteen ; hut Louis, in 
 consequence of his red trousers, was a great deal more than a 
 hundred years older than I was. I yielded entirely to Louis's 
 knowledge of the world, and gave way to him on all points. 
 Louis had had four months in a French regiment, and knew 
 everything. My father used to talk too fast ; hut my father, 
 although a clergyman, knew a great deal, in consequence of 
 having to take pupils to eke out his income. 
 
 Louis said to me — 
 
 "Come to hreakfast, and leave the hunting of hoars. There 
 has arrived a German, a cousin of Marie's, from Saxony. Come 
 quickly, or he will eat all." 
 
 I ran up to our hedroom and made myself tidy, and I came 
 down and met this hrute of a Saxon. My French proclivities 
 were then so strong that I considered this young man as my 
 natural enemy hefore I saw him. I was most agreeably sur- 
 prised. The young man to whom I was introduced was one of 
 the handsomest young men I had ever seen. He was very 
 blonde, and, in fact, his moustache was no darker than a tooth- 
 hrush, though his whiskers were darker. He took me utterly hy 
 surprise with his politeness and his wonderful knowledge. He told 
 me quietly that I was the first educated English youth he had 
 met, and he wished me to explain to him some passages in Mad 
 Tom in King J .car. He was puzzled ahout the " old grey rat 
 and the ditch-dog ; " and I explained to him the difference be- 
 tween the old English rat and the water-vole. Then he must 
 have me explain Avhy " Hopdance crieth in Tom's belly for two 
 white herring." I explained to him that white herring was to be 
 distinguished from red herring, and that Tom was supposed to be 
 thirsty. Then I got talking over the subject, and among other 
 things told him that the character of Mad Tom was entirely 
 artificial, although probably the greatest effort of all Shak- 
 speare's genius. I said that Mad Tom was a gentleman, who 
 was fit to govern the people by knowing their wants, and that 
 he showed his knowledge of their wants in his assumed madness. 
 I warmed with the theme to this young Saxon officer, and told 
 him roundly to his face that no German poet had ever equalled 
 the line in Mad Tom in which he says — 
 
 " Away to wakes and fairs and market towns." 
 
 I went on eagerly, and abused Shakspeare for the utter im- 
 probability of Edgar acting so wondrous well as to identify 
 
MALMAISON. 163 
 
 himself so thoroughly with a lunatic heggar, whose only pleasure 
 
 was motion and excitement. I went through the character from 
 beginning to end ; and when I had finished my say, I saw young 
 Caspar the Saxon and my father looking at me steadily and 
 calmly, while Louis and Alphonse were laughing. 
 
 "He should write that down," said my father. "The hoy 
 thinks." 
 
 "He has told me more than I knew before," said Caspar. 
 "Who knows the route from here to Ste. Marie? Can one get 
 to Ahoue any shorter way than by La Tige ? " 
 
 "I cannot say," said Louis. " You seem to know the country 
 pretty well." 
 
 " We study geography, we Germans, " said young Caspar. 
 " We may need it." 
 
 Louis was furious in a moment. 
 
 " You mean the geography of Lorraine," he said. 
 
 "I mean geography generally," said Caspar. 
 
 After this, Louis strutted and fumed, and I was very glad that 
 we got out of it without a quarrel, more particularly as Caspar 
 told me that he happened to be in love with Marie, and that he 
 was perfectly prepared to put a bullet into any man who ventured 
 to be in love with her besides himself. I replied, on the other 
 hand, that I was violently in love with her myself, and that I was 
 perfectly ready to be shot at his earliest convenience. He saw 
 the outrageous nonsense of his proposition, and laughed. But 
 he asked me whether Marie loved me ; and I said no, I did not 
 think so. "Any one else?" I said that we were all such 
 children, that we should not think of such things. I said that 
 I was still such a baby, that I could run after a peacock ; and he 
 said, that though his beard was grown early, he was as great a 
 baby as I was. 
 
 So we parted ; and my father insisted on having sciatica again 
 and going hack to Luxemburg. On arriving at Luxemburg my 
 father sent for the doctor ; and the doctor being out, he sent 
 round for the prime minister. The prime minister being at the 
 Cafe de l'Union, and being hunted up there by a dexterous and 
 nimble commissionaire, came at once on being told that an 
 Englishman of eminence was in trouble. I do not know why 
 my father did this; hut I only know that there was the most 
 awful row you ever heard in your life. The most unfortunate 
 thing was that the prime minister could understand English, and 
 so could understand what my father said. I do most sincerely 
 hope that the new Education Boards will put an entire veto on 
 the learning of languages. It is the greatest mistake in the 
 
164 MALMAISON. 
 
 world. All difficulties with America, for example, would sink 
 iuto nothing if we did not understand one another's language. 
 My father could talk both German and French to a limited 
 extent ; but that night, with the irritation of the sciatica on 
 him, he persisted in talking English, and, as I have said, the 
 prime minister understood him. My father ended by saying that 
 a state which would raise no army had no raison d'etre at all. 
 
 The prime minister burst out of the room, and fell over my 
 father's foot-pan. At the same time the Prussian officer of the 
 garrison came into my father's bedroom, and asked to see his 
 passport. My father was thoroughly cross now, and said that 
 his passport was under his pillow, but that he would not show it 
 to any German unhung. This conduct on the part of a British 
 rector naturally led to a terrible scene, in which I, as an un- 
 developed journalist, took part. My father refused to get out of 
 bed, and so the whole quarrel was carried out on the stairs. 
 Alphonse was of no use ; he got frightened. I stood on the 
 stairs, and called the Prussian officer every name I could lay my 
 tongue to ; but he would not go at all. Then I said in German 
 that I would make him go. Upon this he requested me to come 
 to the bottom of the stairs. I at once did so, and there was a 
 struggle, the landlord holding the light. I got by far the worst 
 of it ; for the Prussian was stronger than I was, and I was marched 
 off to a guard-house, while my father was arrested in his bed. 
 
 Alphonse meanwhile had knocked up a bill of sixteen francs in 
 bribery and treating. The lad said that he paid for a bottle of 
 wine for the prime minister ; but I doubt that, because the prime 
 minister was a gentleman, and the boy could not be trusted to 
 tell the truth. My father and I were liberated, and so ended 
 our first expedition through Luxemburg and Lorraine. 
 
 It is as well to state the whole truth, even in a story like this. 
 Luxemburg must be very careful, if she desires to preserve her 
 neutrality now. The Germans have been very long-suffering with 
 her, and she must take care. The neutrality of Luxemburg has 
 cost the Germans 20,000 lives ; and when men get mad, as they 
 are getting now, a small state like Luxemburg must look out lest 
 she commit a violation of neutrality.* 
 
 * On the great day of Sedan, when we were pushing forward to the 
 fight, the Brandenburg Hussars, the regiment of the ever-memorable 
 Ziethcn, were sitting with their horses' fore-hoofs on the frontier of 
 Luxemburg. The writer happened to be with them ; and sooner than 
 the line should be violated, they backed their horses, lest the hind feet 
 of their horses sliould go over the frontier line. To this I can swear. 
 One violation of neutral territory occurred : a hunted Saxon hussar, of 
 
MALMAISON. 105 
 
 PART II. 
 
 So ends our first visit to Malmaison. After this there came 
 a long time and worry. Louis wanted to marry Marie, and the 
 whole party of Courriers and Canzons, who seemed to get more 
 
 innumerable as time went on, insisted most emphatically that 
 they were both too yoting ; and as the wild argument went on it 
 became evident, both to myself and my father, that Marie was 
 getting very doubtful whether she cared to marry him at all. 
 There were two parties among the Courriers and Canzons, by no 
 means divided by name, only by sex. The women, to one woman 
 or nearly so, said that she ought to many him ; and the men, to 
 a man or nearly so, said that she ought to have time to think 
 over the matter. As it was no possible business of my father's, 
 he naturally took the most lively interest in it. He took the 
 female side of the question, and worked at it to that extent that 
 he got into trouble with his Bishop. My father knew one of the 
 Courriers, a teacher of languages, who was an emigre of old 
 times, and who lived at Chelsea and cultivated tulips and ranun- 
 culuses ; my father must needs go to him and talk over the 
 matter. The end of the interview was so very stormy, that the 
 old Frenchman told my father that he was to be found at 
 Boulogne, or, if it pleased him, at Calais, any day which he 
 chose to name. On discovering that my father was an ecclesi- 
 astic, he got still more infuriated, for he said my father, by his 
 language, had violated the sanctity of his order. I do not believe 
 that my father went farther than to tell the old man that he was 
 not speaking the truth. My father was the most perfectly refined 
 gentleman ; never rude, though he might be boisterous and con- 
 tradictory at times. Anyhow, he wounded that Frenchman's 
 feelings to that extent that he wrote to the Bishop ; and the 
 Bishop wrote, in a rather peremptory manner, to my father. I 
 will give the correspondence : 
 
 Enclosure Xo. 1. From the Bishop. 
 
 " Reverend axd dear Sir, — I beg to call your attention to 
 the enclosed copy of a communication which has been addressed 
 to me by M. Ernest Courrier, and I beg to call your immediate 
 attention to it." 
 
 a regiment I know pretty well, crossed the Alsette, and his horse was 
 shot dead under him on the wrong side of the frontier. With the 
 exception of that case, I will defy any Luxemburger to prove a case of 
 violation of frontier against the Germans. They were violating such 
 neutrality continually, as I can prove. 
 
166 MALMAISON. 
 
 Enclosure No. 2. From M. E. Courtier to the Bishop. 
 
 " Monseigneur, — I beg emphatically to call your attention at 
 once to the conduct of the Anglican parish priest of Holloway, 
 who has, under protection of his sacred cloth, spoken injuries of 
 me in my presence, not in any way to he tolerated by a man of 
 honour. Had I been Living in a civilised country, I, as a military 
 man, though now retired, should not have dreamt of writing to 
 any man's colonel about such an affair myself; I should have 
 taken the usual course with Mr. Thompson, and have fought him. 
 But, Monseigneur my Lord Bishop, I have already done that, and 
 he declines to meet me, on ecclesiastical grounds. My sword 
 failing me, I am obliged to invoke the thunders of the Church, 
 and request your excommunication. As a republican and com- 
 munist myself, I do not think they will have the least effect, as I 
 am bound to tell you ; but a Frenchman's honour is at stake." 
 
 Enclosure No. 3. From the Bishop to M. Courrier. 
 
 " Dear Sir, — Voulez-vouz preciser votre accusation ? What 
 has he said ? I know that he is often emporte, but he is certainly 
 a gentleman ; pray answer at once, for I have a great respect for 
 him." 
 
 Enclosure No. 4. From M. Courrier to the Bishop. 
 
 " Monseigneur, — I deeply regret the conclusion of your most 
 courteous (though brief) letter. You say that you have great 
 respect for Rector Thompson ; I, for my part, have none what- 
 ever, and so it gives me deep pain to disagree with so gifted a 
 man as your lordship. The affair between myself and Rector 
 Thompson eats itself, and I have been informed by a compatriot 
 that the Rector Thompson has called me in public an old fool of a 
 French-grammar teacher. I take no notice of this, because it 
 only conies from second hand ; but as you ask me to precise my 
 accusation, I will do so, and tell you what Rector Thompson said 
 to my face. I will leave you, monseigneur, to decide whether or 
 no he is fit to minister the offices of the religion in which you 
 both believe, but in which I do not. 
 
 " A marriage is on the tapis between my cousin Louis and 
 Mario Canzon. I, with the rest of my family, object to it. They 
 are both too young to know their own minds. When I said this 
 to Rector Thompson, who knows nothing about the matter, he 
 said I was as one deprived of understanding ; and when I said 
 that the girl did not want the man, he said that I was not 
 
MALMAISON. 107 
 
 speaking the truth. I have thus, my dear Monseigneur, precised 
 my accusation." 
 
 Enclosure No. 5. From the Bishop to my Fatlu r. 
 
 " Reverend and dear Sir, — I have received a letter from M. 
 Courrier of Chelsea, in which he accuses you of calling him an old 
 fool, and also accusing him of untruth. Is this so? " 
 
 Enclosure Xo. G. From my Father to the Bishop. 
 " My dear Lord Bishop, — It is perfectly true that I called 
 M. Courrier an old fool (and if he is anything, he is that) ; it is 
 equally true that I think him so ; and if your lordship chooses to 
 suspend me, I shall submit to your lordship's decision with the 
 most perfect and entire obedience. I am here, my lord, to speak 
 the truth, and I will speak it. The man is an old fool ; I never 
 saw a greater. With regard to my telling him that he was not 
 speaking the truth, I acknowledge that also, and I will hold to my 
 words. " Any punishment from your lordship will be received with 
 thankfulness and meekness ; but I am resolute." 
 
 Enclosure Xo. 7. From the Bishop to my Father. 
 " Reverend and dear Sir, — There is something behind-hand 
 which you have not told me. Please, like an old friend and fellow- 
 collegian, tell me why you are so hot over this business. Dear 
 Sam] tell me the whole truth. Never mind Bishop or Rector, but 
 let me know all, as if we were in neighbouring beds, as at Eton 
 thirty years ago. This Frenchman is very troublesome, and you 
 know that you were a fighting boy in old times. Let me know all 
 about it, old friend — dear friend for ever. You know my position ; 
 don't try me too hard." 
 
 Enclosure No. 8. From my Father to the Bishop. 
 
 " Dear George, — You remember that pretty boy Shepherd of 
 Lincoln '? Well, he has clone no good except marry a wife as 
 pretty as himself, beget nine children, and then die of phthisis. 
 He was my curate when he died ; and I don't in the least degree 
 see what Mrs. Shepherd is to do. Under-paid parsons should not 
 marry ; — but, at all events, send me something for her, and get 
 some of your charitable women to do something to prevent her 
 going entirely to the bad. 
 
 " There has been trouble between us for a post or two, my dear 
 (1. orge, and I will tell you all about it. As in all great rows of 
 this kind, there is something personal going. Marie Canzon is 
 
1G8 MALMAISON. 
 
 engaged to one of my former pupils, Louis Courrier; but his 
 brother Alphonse is as badly in love with her as Louis. Now this 
 I could stand — I could see my way out of all that ; but my own 
 boy, the boy of my heart, who will take to nothing [this is your 
 journalist] is as bad about her as any one. I want to see her 
 married out of the way. She is a good girl, and has money ; but 
 I do not want my son to marry her. He is a capital fellow, but 
 an utter fool. [I must pause to call your attention to the fact 
 that my father is alluding to me. Nothing has happened since 
 which makes me think my father wrong.] I don't know what I 
 can do with him, and I wish I may be hanged if he knows what 
 he is going to do with himself. But he must not marry that girl. 
 If she were poor, my dear Bishop, I would not care ; for the boy 
 has pluck and chivalry, and they would get on together ; but the 
 girl is rich, and my boy would never stand being kept by his wife. 
 Old Courrier is exasperated over the matter, and I have lost my 
 temper with him. That is all. Mind you, Bishop— or rather 
 George — I am not sure whether she does not love Alphonse the 
 best, when all is said and done ; but I will not have my son marry 
 a rich woman, on whom he is dependent. A man had better hang 
 himself than do that." 
 
 Enclosure No. 9. From the Bishop to my Father. 
 
 " Dear Sam, — I see you have not clearly explained the old 
 Frenchman's exasperation ; but I will do that for you. Don't let 
 the girl marry your boy. Any man who lives on his wife's money 
 becomes necessarily brutalised. The very savages don't do it. I 
 don't want to make woman utterly dependent on man ; but, until 
 these rascally laws against women are abolished, the old evil will 
 go on. I know a very good fellow now, who through illness has 
 been forced to cut into his wife's property, and now wishes he was 
 dead for doing so. Pray don't let your son marry this rich 
 Frenchwoman. A man had better marry a dairy-maid than marry 
 a rich woman, more particularly of another nation, with all sorts 
 of foreign influences around her, political and religious alike." 
 
 Here closes this curious correspondence. Old M. Courrier 
 made friends with my father, through the Bishop's influence ; 
 and with regard to Mario, myself, Louis, and Alphonse, we never 
 married at that time. 
 
 Pretty times came. I did little good at the university ; but a 
 man came to me and asked would I go for the Daily Intelligence 
 to Balaclava. I would have gone on bread and water ; and I 
 
MALMAISON. 169 
 
 went. The affair of Sebastopol must never be compared to the 
 affair of Sedan. It must always be remembered that the affair of 
 Sedan is the most terrible thing in history. In those very old 
 days I was very young, and went away with the most enormous 
 belief in the French army ; and as a matter of fact I have never 
 had to alter my opinion of it at all. I believe now, that if the 
 best generals are appointed, and if the officers will get out of that 
 absurd habit of sauntering into the first cafe the moment their 
 men are dismissed, there will arise from the ashes of the present 
 ruined army an army as fine as France ever saw. A French baron 
 said to me the other day, just after Forbach, " Nos officiers sont 
 touj ours en cafe." It is terribly true about French officers; let 
 English officers take care that it is not said about them. In the 
 Crimea there were no temptations of that kind, and look how well 
 both English and French did ! No three armies ever behaved 
 more nobly in the field than the British, the French, and the 
 Russian. For me, after Inkerman, I would back the Russians 
 against the Germans ; but then I should require one German to 
 three Russians, which is very long odds. I am of opinion, that, 
 of all the troops in the world, the Germans are the best, and the 
 Bavarians the best of the Germans. (An exasperating friend of 
 mine says that the Affgbans, give them equal arms, are the best 
 of all ; but he is a lunatic at large.) It is most perfectly certain 
 that Saxony, Bavaria, and Baden have developed powers of swift 
 marching, and elan in attack, to which no other nation can com- 
 pare. I am speaking simple truth when I tell this story. I 
 interchanged bows with General Alvensleben in Lorraine, and in 
 five days he had taken up his command before Paris. In old 
 times the French used to say of other armies, " lis marchent, 
 nous courons." The reverse is the truth now. The French 
 march slowly and fight badly. Why ? Because in the llashy 
 Italian war the Emperor Napoleon III. won his battles by de- 
 stroying his best troops. That is the little reason why. 
 
 As to the Crimea, Louis was in that fight on the telegraph -hill 
 at the Alma, which Kinglake denies altogether. He was, how- 
 ever, wounded and decorated, and seemed to like it. After this 
 he went to New Caledonia, where he did not get decorated ; and 
 then he went to Mexico, where he did. He was out of the Italian 
 business altogether, and was always going to marry Marie when 
 he came home. He seemed in no great hurry ; and indeed Marie 
 waited with wonderful patience. She, during the Mexican busi- 
 ness, went into retreat, taking vows for four months with the 
 Sceurs des Sept Donleurs, in a dirty, silly, insignificant place 
 called Sedan. (The place is on the Meuse, and has pleasant 
 
170 MALMAISON. 
 
 groves on the glacis.) Louis was very angry at her doing this; 
 and when Bazaine sent him home with despatches, he went 
 straight to Sedan, after depositing his despatches at Paris, for 
 the purpose of seeing Marie. Marie, heing en retraite, was not 
 allowed to see him, which gave rise to the following correspon- 
 dence : — 
 
 The Lady Superior of Notre Dame des Sept Douleurs, Sedan, to 
 M. Louis Courrier. 
 " Monsieur, — I have the honour to inform you, that Made- 
 moiselle Canzon is en rttraite. 
 
 " Agatha." 
 
 M. Louis Courrier to Lady Superior. 
 "Venerable Mother, — Mademoiselle Marie Canzon is fiancee 
 to me, and if I do not see her I will beat your doors down. We 
 have done by no means well in Mexico, and are a little out of 
 temper. If you refuse me a sight of Marie, I will have the 
 garrison of Sedan at your gate." 
 
 The Lady Superior of the Sept Douleurs to the Captain Louis 
 
 Courrier. 
 " Dear Sir, — I received your communication duly. I have 
 only to say that we will die praying. You have our entire forgive- 
 ness. When we meet in another and a better world, which seems 
 hardly probable, you will regret this." 
 
 Louis Courrier to the Lady Superior. 
 " Madame or Most Holy Mother, — I should be very much 
 obliged if you would explain yourself. Neither I nor any of the 
 garrison have the slightest intention of cutting your throat or 
 injuring you in any way. I have come from Mexico, and I want 
 to see my fiancee. Why can I not see her? 
 
 " Louis Courrier." 
 
 Lady Superior to Louis. 
 << c< IR) — I am not aware that you wished to cut my throat ; 
 but Mademoiselle Canzon is in retreat, and cannot be seen at 
 present." 
 
 Bishop L to Louis Courrier. 
 
 " Dear Captain, — I am very sorry for you, but what can I do ? 
 Your lady-love is in retreat, and, as far as I see, must stay there 
 
MALMAISON. 171 
 
 for another month. Let her remain ; let her be. Are yon sure 
 of her ? In my opinion you have rivals. I know who those 
 rivals are, but I do not choose to tell. Don't plague the girl with 
 your addresses. I assure you that I want to see the girl as well 
 married as if I was her father. I would not object to her marrying 
 a Protestant Englishman or an utter atheist like yourself. Leave 
 the girl alone, and she will come to you. She does not know her 
 own mind yet. Let her alone, and you may get her yet. I could 
 tell you more, but I dare not. Be kind to her, lad, and she will 
 be kind to you through everything." 
 
 Louis to the Bishop, 
 " Monseigxeur, — I do not understand your letter entirely. 
 Marie wasJiancSe to me, and, in the name of all furies, I will have 
 the contract carried out." 
 
 The Bishop to Louis. 
 " My dear Boy, — No one ever dreamt that you icould under- 
 stand my letter. I only say this to you — don't marry that woman 
 until you have thoroughly won her heart. Come, captain, let us 
 have it out between us. What have you done to deserve her ? I 
 have got you there. She is infinitely your superior. You are a 
 mere machine. She has genius ; you have none. You are a 
 sharp fellow ; she is no fool. She may marry you if you behave 
 yourself. If she marries you, it will be the first piece of folly she 
 has ever committed. In the meantime, I ask you to leave the 
 Lady Superior of the Sept Douleurs alone." 
 
 Louis to the Bishop of L . 
 
 " Monseigneur, — I thank you for your allusions to my Voltair- 
 ism ; but I deeply regret that I cannot take your advice, excellent 
 as it was. My sweetheart is mewed up by the Lady Superior of 
 Notre Dame des Sept Douleurs, and I cannot in any way get at 
 her. I am only a young Frenchman, and not a young English- 
 man ; if I am not allowed to see my sweetheart, I will raise a dust 
 about your head and that of the Lady Superior which will sweep 
 you utterly away. Such an affair would not be tolerated for one 
 instant in England or Prussia. I demand to see this girl, who is 
 fiancee to me. I demand to know her mind about myself." 
 
 The Bishop to Louis. 
 
 " Dear Sir, — I will take good care that you see the girl. Do 
 not get emportS. I will meet you in Bazeilles to-morrow morning 
 at ten, and I will bring the girl with me." 
 
172 MALMAISON. 
 
 That is actually a fact. Louis, by some of those wonderful 
 arrangements of the French army, found it possible to be at Sedan, 
 because Marie Canzon was staying with her aunt. The Bishop, 
 for reasons only known to himself and probably the Pope, was there 
 also ; and Sedan being a most disagreeable place, you naturally 
 strolled out to Bazeilles. So the Bishop, Louis, and Marie were 
 all together in the, street of Bazeilles. 
 
 Bazeilles was a little suburb of Sedan, with a very pretty street. 
 There were trees there, and the workpeople from the manufactories 
 made it like a Clamart or a Meudon, and used to go out to it and 
 amuse themselves in front of the cafes. They used to bathe in 
 the Meuso also, but no one bathes now lest he should swim against 
 a corpse. I asked, the other day, at Nanrar in Belgium, "Had 
 any corpses come down?" and the singularly practical answer 
 was, "Not yet; we shall have no bodies down until the winter 
 flood." It was at Bazeilles that Marie and Louis met at this 
 time. 
 
 He saw her at the street's end ; and when the Bishop had 
 descried him, he went into the church and assisted the cure, 
 leaving her to tell the whole story by herself. I think he was 
 wise. 
 
 Louis came clanking on towards her, in his blue tunic and 
 scarlet trousers, looking like a king of men. She was dressed in 
 quiet grey, but looking as lovely as Frenchwomen always do. 
 She ran up to him and took his hands in hers. 
 
 " There is difficulty in seeing you," he said. 
 
 " Will you kiss me, Louis ? " 
 
 " Do you care for me, Marie ? " 
 
 " I think I care for you more than any man on the face of the 
 earth. There are two others, Louis — there are two others whom 
 I love." 
 
 " There may be half a hundred, for all I know. All I want to 
 know is, whether you love me above all men in the whole world ? " 
 
 Marie said — 
 
 " I love you as well as any, but I love the Englishman and 
 Alphonse as well as I do you. Dearest welldoved, do not let 
 ns marry ; it would be a betise." 
 
 " I will murder Alphonse and the Englishman ! " said Louis. 
 
 "Dearest, why?" she answered. "They have done no 
 harm." 
 
 " They have done harm to me, curse them! I wanted you, 
 and you will not come to me." 
 
 "Think of your own folly, my Louis. You would never be 
 contented with one-third of a heart. Pray think one instant. I 
 
MALMAlSOX. 173 
 
 love you, but I love others as well. What would you have? I 
 know' that you do not want my money; if you care for it, I will 
 give it you at once. You have only to say one solitary word, and 
 all the money which I have is yours for ever. Leave me poor, 
 for your own dear sake ; but understand once for all, that at 
 present I cannot be the wife of you or any other man. Will you 
 take my money, and let me go free ? " 
 
 Louis could not do that. I think that at the bottom he was a 
 snob, but at all events he was not snob enough for that. He 
 said — 
 
 • • Am I such a hound that you cannot take me?" 
 
 " Dear Louis, you are the best of men, I am sure, the very best 
 of men ; but, dear, dear Louis, I am afraid I cannot marry you." 
 
 Louis urged his case. 
 
 "Ami ill-looking? " 
 
 She answered by saying, " Give me a kiss." 
 
 And he bent his handsome head down, and gave her one. 
 
 " You are the handsomest man in France," she said. 
 
 And he did not disagree with her. 
 
 " Am I cruel? " he said. 
 
 " I never knew you so," she answered ; " you have always been 
 kind." 
 
 " Have I worried you with my attentions ? " 
 
 "Never, dearest Louis, for an instant." 
 
 " Then why cannot it be ? " 
 
 " Because it cannot, Louis ; it can never be in all time. I 
 cannot, cannot do it." 
 
 " Are you going to marry the Englishman ? " 
 
 "Now, Louis," she said, "we are coming to terms. I swear 
 to you, in this street of Bazeilles, that if I ever marry any one, it 
 shall be you. Will that content you ? " 
 
 Louis said, "That ought to content any man;" for Louis, 
 though a prig, was a gentleman. 
 
 " I love Alphonse, I love the Englishman, and I love you far 
 more dearly than you think ; but why cannot I love you without 
 marrying you ? I have three friends now ; why should I make 
 two out of the three enemies ? Do you see ? " 
 
 Louis never could be brought to see it. Alphonse and your 
 humble servant accepted their fate. Marie did not want to marry 
 — an old fool at our club said that she would have been a great 
 fool if she had ; but he was only an old fool, such as one meets. 
 
 At this period of the conversation the Bishop, having finished 
 service, deployed out of the church, and came upon Louis and 
 Marie. 
 
174 MALMAiSON. 
 
 "I know," lie began, "all that you have been saying. Has 
 she told you that she has taken vows for one year ? " 
 
 Louis stood aghast. His hopes were over. 
 
 "Ah, but she has, though," said the Bishop ; "and I think 
 that she is perfectly right, if it is only on the ground of defending 
 her property. Like a true woman, she has concealed the whole 
 truth ; but she has done it. She did not tell you ? " 
 
 " No, Monseigneur," said Louis. 
 
 " You must have penance for that, my lady," said the Bishop. 
 " But you see your fate, M. Louis Courrier. For me, I would 
 sooner have had her marry the Protestant Englishman ; for the 
 English have a notion of Christianity, though their sacraments are 
 of no avail to salvation. It is all over ; she has taken vows for 
 one year." 
 
 The dark, horrible cloud came down. In an evil hour France 
 marched on Germany, and the Teutonic wave rose like a sea. 
 Every one who knew anything about affairs knew that it was a 
 horrible and ghastly affair ; but our daily press insisted on fiddling 
 while Rome was burning. I was among the French emigres at 
 Mondorf, and was talking to them about the state of affairs. It 
 was most obvious that I could not get into Metz (the last man who 
 ever left Metz was the correspondent of the Scotsman). It was 
 obvious on the 10th of August that I could not get into Metz, and 
 so I determined to get into Thionville. With this idea, I stayed 
 a little time at Mondorf, making expeditions across the frontier. 
 
 I came, hurried with dust and heat, back to Mondorf. The 
 first thing I asked for was my own paper, which was handed to me. 
 I was very late for the dinner, but I asked for soup, and ate it. 
 Then I looked up at the French Baron, an emiijre from Metz, a 
 man whom I had met often before. I bowed to him, his wife, and 
 his two beautiful young daughters, and they returned my 
 bows. 
 
 " What news, M. le Redacteur ? " he said. 
 
 I said in reply, " M. Ic Baron, the worst of news. I cannot 
 conceal the truth from you. The French are beaten back on all 
 quarters. M. le Baron, the French are not fighting." 
 
 A Frenchman said the 32nd Chasseurs had been cut to pieces ; 
 a lady in the room rose and left the table. She went down through 
 every kind of danger to Metz. The 32nd Chasseurs was her own 
 son's regiment ; at Metz she heard that the regiment had never 
 been engaged, but was at Strasburg. 
 
 But to resume : When I told the Baron of the results of Forbach 
 and Spiecheren he sat silent, and his beautiful daughters began to 
 
MALMAISON. 175 
 
 cry. And looking past them I saw a woman I never thought to 
 see again ; it was Marie Canzon, dressed all in grey. 
 
 I said to her at once, " Come here ; " and she came. I said, 
 " Where are you going ? " 
 She said, "Into Metz." 
 
 I replied, " I am a hired man, and cannot go. Hired men can 
 do nothing. Hired men have no souls. When once a man is 
 hired and paid, he is dead for most good things : a man had better 
 he dead and trusting to God's mercy than he hired to lie." 
 
 "You need not" lie," she said. "You never did lie in old 
 times." 
 
 "I never lie now," I answered; " hut I am irritated, dearest 
 Marie, by my proprietors writing and asking me to put a gloss on 
 to matters which are perfectly obvious, to suit their politics." 
 
 She laughed so pleasantly. " I can give you a piece of good 
 advice," she said. 
 
 " And what is that ? " 
 
 " Do nothing of the kind, hut speak the plain truth. You are 
 poor and must live ; hut you are not poorer than I am." 
 " You are so rich." 
 
 "I am vowed to poverty; my money goes to the poor. Now 
 we must have a most important talk together ; you must get me 
 into Metz." 
 
 " Marie, it is utterly impossible. has come out, the last 
 
 man left ; has been too late ; dare not try it for his 
 
 life. I cannot do it ; it is utterly impossible." 
 
 " I know that it is utterly impossible," she said ; " but it must 
 be done, and you must do it." 
 
 " But my duty to my proprietors ? " I said. 
 "I am not talking about your proprietors ; I am talking of 
 mine." 
 
 " Who are they, Marie ? " 
 
 " The Jesuits. I am ordered into Metz, and I must go. Am 
 I to go alone, or will you help me ? If you can get me to St. 
 Privat and Malmaison, I am safe. You must do it, you know, 
 dear. We have got word that Sister Agatha is dead, and I am 
 to take her place. I do not know the route from here to Malmai- 
 son ; but I must go as far as that, and then I will trouble you no 
 farther." 
 
 A dog would have done it for her, though how it was to be done 
 required the sharpest of brains, and a considerable knowledge of 
 localities, already got by scouting ; and I may say that I have a 
 considerable amount of that courage which Aristotle calls linritpia ; 
 besides, an old Oxford captain or Cambridge captain is not easily 
 
17G MALMAISON. 
 
 beaten : I took it into my head that I would do this thing, and I 
 did it. I went a rather remarkable way to work about it, however. 
 I told her to stay where she was for two hours, and not go to bed 
 until I came home ; I then lighted my cigar, and sauntered down 
 the street to the Cafe de l'Union to look at the telegrams, with my 
 hands in my breeches-pockets. 
 
 I knew that I should meet the staff of the Luxemburg army 
 there — but I commit no one in any way whatever, the Luxemburg 
 people are terribly French. But I was not very long at that cafe ; 
 I was very soon down in the lower town (the only thing worth 
 seeing at Mondorf, if it mattered), and went into the Cabaret 
 Moses, which was kept by an aged Jew ; and if there was a Chris- 
 tian in the place except myself, I am none. I wish that I had 
 had a Jew with me, but I had not, and being extremely unlike a 
 Jew myself, I had to brazen it out as an English commercial 
 traveller. I seemed to play the rule pretty well, for the Jews 
 took me entirely at my own valuation. I spoke neither French 
 nor German, but simple plain English. I knew that by that 
 means I should catch a Jew who could speak English, and I 
 caught three in no time. The English are by no means the 
 stupidest of nations. I had not been speaking ten minutes when 
 a young Jew came rushing into the room eager to see the English 
 commercial traveller, and eager for trade. I at once saw that he 
 was the man I wanted, because he was obviously the poorest of 
 the Jews, but I did not tell him so. I saw that he was poor, and 
 a tanner by trade from the colour of his fingers ; he was my man. 
 
 I say that my course of action was most distinctly immoral, but 
 I thought that it was for the best. She was very dear to me even 
 then, and I would have died to serve her. 
 
 To this young Jew I pointed out that it was notorious that they 
 were certain to have their horses die in Metz, and that it would 
 be (God forgive me ; I cannot forgive myself) a most excellent 
 thing to have an agent in Metz to buy up the dead horses — at 
 that time I did not know that they would have to eat them. I 
 will tell the truth, and the truth is that I lied for Marie's sake, 
 though she never knew it. I told this young Jew tanner that I 
 was a commercial traveller, and that if he could get my wife 
 underground into Metz I would pay him, and, if it suited us both, 
 do business with him as regarded the horses' skins. I expect that 
 one of the heaviest outcomes of this war, as of all others, will be a 
 habit of hard lying not known in times of peace. 
 
 The young Jew believed me, for which I was extremely sorry ; 
 he winked his eye and went away. I sat there smoking and 
 thinking for above an hour, aud the results of my thoughts were, 
 
MAIiMAISON. 177 
 
 that I was a great rascal, ami that the cigars wore extremely bad ; 
 but my Jew came to me at last with a man whom I had seen 
 before. I dare not give his name, or the place of his abode. I 
 was most utterly astounded. 
 
 " M., you know what I want." 
 
 " Tout est possible, monsieur." 
 
 " Mais, mon cher, e'est si dangereux." 
 
 " Le danger est pour vous, mon ami." 
 
 I never was more astonished in all my life. He was perfectly 
 ready to help us in any way, and if the revanche came, it must 
 ultimately fall on him. It is no use blinding our eyes to the 
 fact that the Luxemburg people love the French in the deepest 
 manner. They may be foolish or they may not, but we consider 
 the definition of a fool is " a man who won't face facts." I wish 
 that Ireland loved us as well as Luxemburg loves France. Ireland 
 seems not to love us at any time, but the love of Luxemburg for 
 France is a matter which I have by no means made out. 
 
 My grey-haired acquaintance said that matters would be 
 extremely difficult, but that he would do everything he could. 
 
 I asked what could he do ? 
 
 He answered, " Eien du tout," and went away. 
 
 And as I was asking the Jew if he could do anything, he 
 suddenly flew into a most violent temper, and said that all wo 
 Christians were congenital fools. I let his temper go by (and a 
 Jew, though violent, is not ill-tempered for a long time), and then 
 I asked him, " was there a chance *? " 
 
 •• A chance with a Jew in it !" he said ; " you have only got to 
 hold your tongue." 
 
 " At what time shall I have to come to you ? " I asked. 
 
 The Jew said, " About eleven." 
 
 I wont to Marie, and told her to hold herself in readiness about 
 twelve ; then I ordered the horses, stipulating that they wore not 
 to go farther than Bettemburg, and then I sent off my despatch. 
 My despatch was all lamentation and mourning and woe ; for 
 our paper wont a little on the French side at that time. But a 
 journalist must live — every one must live ; and it seems to me 
 that this war has plagued the journalists worse than any others. 
 For me, I am a sad fellow, I doubt, for I should have minded my 
 own business before getting Mario into Metz. 
 
 Some things a journalist remembers for ever. I remember the 
 getting of Mario into Metz. "When I remember that great journey, 
 I am a little proud of my own courage, but I am still prouder of 
 hers. When I came to her at twelve, every one had gone to bed 
 except "in' sleepy waiter. I was attended by the Jew whom I had 
 
 13 
 
178 MALMAISON. 
 
 deceived, and the tall grey-headed Luxemburg gentleman, also a 
 Jew. Marie was nearly asleep ; Imt I roused her, and I told her 
 that it was time to go. She had everything ready, and between 
 sleeping and waking asked which route we were to take. 
 
 "What matters it, Marie?" I said. "We have consulted, 
 M. L. has consulted, and M. Solomans has consulted. We are in 
 the hands of M. Solomans. Come, therefore, away." 
 " (lo, dear lady," said M. L. 
 " But what route ? " she still urged. 
 
 " Esch, Audun la Tige, and Briey," I answered ; " it is the 
 only chance. We must get on through Ste. Marie aux Chenes 
 and St. Privat." 
 
 " God's will he done," she said ; and we went away together. 
 I don't know what women are made of, myself ; I only know 
 that, as we were rattling over the great Luxemburg bridges, Marie 
 kissed my hand, and said, "Are we going to see Malmaison?" 
 And I don't know what men are made of ; for I did not kiss her 
 hand in return, and made the perfectly idiotic remark that we 
 should find out some day. As that remark meant nothing, it 
 can have done no harm. 
 
 How strange it seemed, rattling all alone with her over the 
 great bridges which span the magnificent glen of the Alsette in 
 the moonlight ! Our carriage was a small open one, a very pleasant 
 little carriage indeed. M. L. and the Jew were on the box beside 
 the driver, arguing as Jews will, and I found that^ they were 
 driving to the railway station which is outside the glacis. I stood 
 up, and whispered to M. L. — 
 
 " That is no use, the line was cut to-day." 
 M. L. said, " Taiscz-vous, mon cher, taisez-vous." 
 We were at the railway station in a minute, and at a beck from 
 M. L. I jumped out. The Luxemburg line was in French hands, 
 as the Luxemburgers know to their cost ; and I was hurried into a 
 room between the two Jews, and found myself face to face with a 
 small Parisian, who happened to be a friend of mine. The matter 
 was put before him, and he was at once a conspirator." 
 
 " Mademoiselle is a Sister of Charity," he said, " and she will 
 get into Metz. Our line was cut below Bettemburg to-day, but 
 where we do not know," and then he pegged away at his telegraph, 
 and began eating chocolate. 
 
 He took things remarkably cool, and said that the French were 
 getting badly beaten, while we waited. Before there was time 
 for much discussion, the wire began clicking again ; and in ten 
 minutes from our entering the office, he had got his answer, and 
 said — 
 
MALMAISON. 179 
 
 " I have asked if there are carriages at Bettemburg, and if there 
 are carriages at Esch. Tlie answer is Yes. We arc sending down 
 two engines to Bettemburg at once to examine the line towards 
 Thionville, but an engine will also start to Esch immediately after, 
 and time is short. Will Mademoiselle — I should say la soeur — 
 dare to go on it '? It will save much time." 
 
 I ran out to ask her, and she consented at once. There was 
 no trouble with the railway people ; we merely paid first-class fare, 
 and I hoisted her up among the coke on the engine, and took my 
 place beside her. A great man saw us, and came up and spoke to 
 me, asking my intentions. I pointed to her sitting on the coke, 
 and told him quietly what we were trying to do — that we were 
 trying to get into Metz. He said not one word ; but he went to 
 the buffet (then shut), kicked at the door till it was opened by a 
 sleepy young mau (also of my acquaintance), and returned with a 
 basket containing a fowl, some bread, and a bottle of wine for the 
 refreshment of Mademoiselle. 
 
 " You," he said to me, " will be shot for a spy, but stay by her 
 as long as you can ; " and so he jumped off the engine just as my 
 young friend the Jew tanner jumped on. 
 
 " I have made it right," he said, in English. " I have tele- 
 graphed to all our people. I have to pay altogether sixty-six 
 francs : but you will pay me in return when the business between 
 us is settled. The gallantry of your wife is so great, that I would 
 do ten times that for you." 
 
 I was so taken aback, that I felt like a dog. At the risk of 
 ruining everything I told him the whole truth, standing on the 
 step of the engine ; she was not my wife, and I had deceived 
 him. 
 
 " I wish you had trusted me before," said this good young man. 
 " I thought it was odd that your wife should have taken vows ; but 
 I never know what you Christians will do next. At all events, it 
 is not too late ; I and M. L. and the rest of our people will see 
 you through, depend on that." 
 
 " Let me pay you for the telegrams," I cried. 
 
 " Not one stiver," he cried. " The God of Moses bless you 
 both ! " 
 
 And that was the end of my singularly sharp bargain with the 
 Jew tanner. I felt fearfully degraded, and I told "Marie so ; in 
 fact, I told her the whole truth ; and I rather fancy that that Jew 
 tanner in Mondorf will find himself in possession of more capital 
 for his business than he anticipated. 
 
 The drivers were French, one a native of Dol in Brittany, and 
 the other from Dieppe in Normandy. Until we were fairly under 
 
180 MALMAISON. 
 
 way they never noticed either Marie or myself, and I thought they 
 were going to he uncivil. But it was merely diplomacy; the 
 instant we were oft' they were "down on us" by turns. The 
 stoker was the first, and he instructed me how to take my own 
 greatcoat, lay Marie on it, and cover her with my railway rug, 
 " for," he said, " those who go to God's good works must he cared 
 for hy all who love God." 
 
 I thought that this benighted stupid Breton papist was not very 
 far from the kingdom of God — in fact, I thought that he was very 
 near it indeed. 
 
 Marie lay on the coke, quite quiet, without asking one question. 
 She said once — 
 
 "I am not in the least afraid with you; but it is so very 
 strange." 
 
 I said, " It is as strange as a nightmare." 
 Then the Normandy driver came up and said, " She should 
 cover her face over, for I must open the furnace. We are in 
 danger, Monsieur, for those two locked engines are close before 
 us ; but we are safe, for she is going to God's work. I hear that 
 our people are beaten everywhere ? " 
 "I fear so." 
 
 " A very good thing for them. But w r e must be very careful. 
 These Prussians care neither for dog nor devil, and they may have 
 cut the line on neutral territory. Have you seen these Prussians, 
 M. the Englishman?" 
 
 " I have lived among them." 
 " What do you think of them ? " 
 
 " That they are the best and kindest people alive," I said. 
 " That is very possible," he said. " The only one I ever knew 
 worked with me at Mulhouse, and all the difference I could see 
 between him and myself was, that he knew ten times more on 
 general matters than I did myself. Monsieur, as a neutral, do you 
 think these wars right? " 
 
 I said, " I think them of the devil. The English are never at 
 peace, and so an Englishman may at least speak." 
 
 " How beautiful she looks ! " he said, turning round from his 
 crank and his fire, and declining further argument. " Attend to 
 me, Monsieur. She wants to get into Metz. Well, then, they 
 say that the line is cut somewhere between Bettemburg and 
 Thionville. If you choose, I will follow the two engines before 
 us, and try to get her to Thionville." 
 
 " My lad," I said, " I would go to the mischief after you, but we 
 want to get in by the line of Esch ; follow your orders, and shunt 
 at Bettemburg." 
 
MALMAISON. 181 
 
 " She should try Thionville," he said. 
 
 "Ah, hut she'd fail," I said. " She has courage enough, but 
 she does not know everything." 
 
 So when we came to Bettemburg we were properly shunted on 
 the line to Esch, at which place I took leave of my two friends of 
 the locomotive, as far as I can see, for ever. 
 
 I got Marie a hed in Esch, to my immense surprise, and 1 also 
 slept myself with the landlord's son over the henroost. That 
 young man had a dexterity in catching fleas which I never saw 
 exhibited before, though I have had some experiences in Germany. 
 It is my opinion that that young man never sleeps at all, which 
 seems on the face of it an impossibility. I can only say, that the 
 night I was there he spent in cracking fleas. I allowed myself to 
 be "grazed on," and slept until the cock woke, which seemed to 
 me to he about five minutes after I had got to sleep. I dressed 
 myself in a neglige manner, and tried to get hold of that cock and 
 pay for him after ; hut I could get neither the front door nor the 
 hack door open. In the mean time the landlord, who had been 
 dining with some friends, and who likewise had bought a revolver, 
 raised a cry of " Voleurs ! " on me, and my life was saved by the 
 nimbleness and dexterity of a little Jew ; and I was allowed to go 
 to hed again, wondering why all the Jews in Jewry should turn up 
 just when they were wanted. 
 
 When I came down to breakfast next morning, I was received 
 with remarkable empressement by every one. Every one seemed 
 to know our business, and every one seemed most frantically fond 
 of me. "When Marie came down, the whole of the little company 
 rose like one man. There was a place left next me for her — next 
 to the landlord ; but I noticed that the little Jew stuck to his 
 place on my left. I soon knew why. 
 
 " Monsieur," he said, " it is all equal. I know all about you. 
 You are not of the Red Cross of Geneva ? " 
 
 I said frankly — " How could I be ? 1 am a journalist." 
 
 " But you want to get through with the good Sister ? " 
 
 "I must." 
 
 " I know. I know all. My uncle has telegraphed to me. Will 
 
 you please take my directions ? The Red Cross with and 
 
 are going to and fro, but you cannot." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Because you have Bemstorff's pass on you at this moment to 
 the Brandenburgers, and you would he torn to pieces if your 
 papers were examined." 
 
182 MALMAISON. 
 
 " How the devil did you know that? " I asked, furiously. 
 
 " Jews know many things," said the boy. " Now I want you 
 to listen to me. There has been a row this morning at Audun la 
 Tige, and six Germans have been killed. Archduke Charles has 
 ordered the place to be burnt ; but you must get through it. You 
 must walk, and you will find your carriage on the hill beyond the 
 town." 
 
 " But our luggage ? " 
 
 " Your luggage has gone on. I was with Mademoiselle Marie 
 before you were, and she packed her bag and sent it on. That 
 is what made her so late for breakfast. Do you know that my 
 brother has been up and packed your things for you, and that 
 they are over the frontier now ? " 
 
 "Now I am ruined," I said; "this has ruined everything. 
 My private papers — good heavens ! " 
 
 " What, you mean "your locked writing-case ? " and the young 
 rascal produced it from under the table. 
 
 I did not know whether to kick him or kiss him. I said — 
 
 " You are pretty free and easy, my lad." 
 
 " Jews are," he said. " Now look here," he went on ; " you 
 look out for our people, and don't quarrel with the Jesuits. We 
 rule the roast; you others are nothing." 
 
 I was so utterly astounded at the boy that I said — 
 
 " What do you think of the Red Republicans ? " 
 
 The scorn of that boy's face is not to be described by powers so 
 poor as mine. 
 
 I said, "They'll win." 
 
 And the Jew boy said, " Win ! " and sniffed. 
 
 However, this is only the opinion of a Jew boy on the confines 
 of Luxemburg. In what follows, the author is most extremely 
 careful to keep perfectly close to the truth in details, and so he 
 will omit Marie altogether, and, merely saying "we" instead of 
 " I," will just simply tell the plain truth, without one single 
 exaggeration. 
 
 We walked very fast to the frontier on the little Alsette, and 
 there saw our first dead horse — a disagreeable experience, for he 
 had bled so terribly on the grass of the pretty meadow. And 
 there was other blood than that of horses, and one of us got a 
 little frightened. Not I. I said, " You will have to go through 
 worse than this;" and the other person said, "I do not doubt 
 it." But as we were in the midst of one of the most famous 
 fights, at that time, known in history, we said no more. 
 
 The French peasantry had taken Archduke Charles at his 
 word, and were filing into Luxemburg. I saw it with my own 
 
MALMAISON. 183 
 
 eyes, and so I can describe it ; or if you bind me down, I cannot 
 describe it. It was all so utterly new, and to me so extremely 
 painful. I will not say that it was horrible, even at the worst 
 moment. It was immeasurably sad. 
 
 We found ourselves pressing on amidst a sea of blue-clothed 
 peasants, talking loudly, and carrying burdens, walking as swiftly 
 as they could, the men carrying the bundles and the women carry- 
 ing the children and leading the cows. I said to Marie, " If 
 this ^oes on, I shall put my head in a corner and make a fool of 
 myself." 
 
 My companion expressed exactly the same sentiment, though 
 in more refined language. The flight from Audun la Tige is a 
 thing which no man born of a true woman will ever forget to the 
 day of his death. We adhere strictly to facts, and adhere so 
 strictly, that some of our facts about Audun la Tige may have 
 been read before. 
 
 In the crowd and confusion of the fugitives one thing struck 
 me most strongly : a woman — and a beautiful woman too — was 
 standing before a little auberge, and saying continually, " Dix- 
 huit ans, dix-hait ans! " I do not know in the least what she 
 meant ; but she had a baby in her arms, and the baby was 
 dead. 
 
 We went on walking swiftly, until there were very few fugitives. 
 The last we met were three young men running, and after them 
 a young man who was very drunk. Then we entered the French 
 village, which we believed to be doomed.* 
 
 It was a very pretty village, with sheets of rolling woodland all 
 around it. A prosperous little village ; but the first thing we 
 saw as noticeable was a white flag with a red cross on it, and a 
 dark-blue figure in the centre of the street, who instantaneously 
 seemed to aim at us with his musket. I at once threw myself 
 between Marie and the Zunduadelgewehr, and running towards 
 the German, asked what he meant by coming to the " present " 
 before a lady. He was a fine lad, a finer I have never seen, and 
 he laughed at me. " It was the new drill," he said. " Why, the 
 very Belgians did the same." It was pretty true ; but I most 
 certainly wish, that in challenging entirely inoffensive persons 
 like myself, foreign nations would not come to the "present." I 
 blew this lad up about it, and he, like a sensible lad, agreed with 
 
 * It is scarcely fair to write all this down in a little story which is 
 professedly fictional, because it happens to be every word of it true. The 
 flight of the French peasantry from Audun la Tige was in its way more 
 remarkable than the slaughter at Sedan. At least so the writer thinks, 
 who saw both things. 
 
184 MALMAISON. 
 
 me, and also asked me if I had the Illustrated London News. I 
 happened to have that paper, and gave it to him. 
 
 " The staff-officer," he said, "is of the Brandenburg Hussars. 
 He is at the upper end of the town. I know who you are. You 
 are the Englishman who is pushing his wife into Metz ; a Jew 
 told me." 
 
 At the upper end of the town we met the Brandenburghers — 
 the Brandenburg Hussars, the regiment of Ziethen. They had 
 called hack the carriage which had been sent on by the Jews, and 
 they kept us there. The colonel came to me personally, and said 
 that Madame must wait, for that he knew absolutely nothing. 
 She must go into Metz, of course, if she chose ; but he could say 
 nothing at all. 
 
 A very old German Jew, a sutler, came out and took the com- 
 mandant aside. If I were to die to-morrow, I could not tell you 
 what that Jew said to him ; but he came back to me and said — 
 
 " Has the young lady courage ? " 
 
 I said, " She has the courage of a Frenchwoman." 
 
 " The business will be very difficult in crossing the lines. It 
 would be much better for her to go in one of the Johanniter 
 wagons, if she does not mind riding in the straw. The Jew says 
 that it would be much better." 
 
 I thanked him heartily, and put the question to Marie ; and 
 she said she would like it better; and so I dismissed the carriage, 
 and hoisted her into the tail of the Johanniter wagon, and we 
 began our quaint journey into Lorraine. 
 
 We soon left the trail of Brandenburg and Saxony, who had, 
 you will understand, kept very closely to the Luxemburg frontier 
 in their eagerness to dash at the French left ; for in real truth 
 they troubled Vinoy but little, and fought against M'Mahon. We 
 were, by advice of the Jew, on a Johanniter wagon ; but the 
 English Society under FurLoy was in the same train, and so 
 Marie and I in the straw went travelling up the hills, on one of 
 the strangest journeys ever known. 
 
 So very strange it was to be sitting beside her in that straw, 
 and talking over old friends and playmates, and passing through 
 quiet, empty villages, in which every house was shut up. There 
 was above Audun la Tige a solitary old woman in a field with a 
 cow. She had a rope round the cow's neck, and was arguing 
 with it ; but the cow disagreed with her, and she banged that cow 
 on the neck, and made it come the way she wanted. I remember 
 that that was one event. After the desolate old woman and her 
 solitary cow, we mounted to the plateau of Lorraine, and began 
 to get to the German outposts, toiling along very slowly. 
 
MALMAISON. 185 
 
 A German general came pricking up with gold spectacles, and 
 I jumped down and arrested bim. I told him that I was helping 
 a young French lady to get into Metz, and he at once rode up to 
 the tail of our wagon, and getting off his horse, spoke to her 
 bareheaded. 
 
 " You will find it both difficult and dangerous, Madame," he 
 said; "but if anything can do it, this will. I wiH write you a 
 paper, which will do you all the good I can. I understand, of 
 course, from looking at your face, that you will not read tins 
 paper, but will merely present it to Dr. F. I also understand 
 that you will give no military information." 
 
 " Sir," she said, " I am utterly incapable of such a thing. I 
 am as incapable of it as I am of neglecting to thank you for 
 your wonderful kindness. Do not destroy our country utterly, 
 "sir." 
 
 " Madame, that must depend on your rulers. Mein Herr " (to 
 me), " stop your wagon, for I must write." 
 
 I shall never forget his sweet calm face as he stood and wrote 
 a note in a book which he took from his pocket, standing at the 
 tail of our wagon. It was very quickly written, and I never 
 saw it ; he folded it, and handed it to Marie. It was hurriedly 
 directed in pencil to Dr. Fuchs, the hero of the hospitals, the 
 man whose name should live for all time. 
 
 When the wagon-wheels had ceased rattling, I became aware of 
 a sound in the air other than thunder. I took the liberty of 
 asking the general if there was any heavy bombardment going on. 
 He said, "Our people are saluting Thionville ; nothing more 
 than that." And so we toiled on again ; and after a few miles, 
 now in the rear of the other wagons, we were out of the German 
 band, and into the French band, which extended there from 
 Audun la Remain to Briey. The last we saw of the Germans 
 was this : Our friend the general was feeling the French with the 
 extreme left of the Brandenburgers as far as he dare go. He 
 rode very slowly, and hung about our wagon with one of his staff- 
 officers. On a sudden, close to Audun la Remain, three flying 
 horsemen, accompanied by a prisoner, came round on the tail of 
 our wagon, one of whom made reports to him, and one of whom 
 was sitting on his horse, deadly pale, and spirting blood over his 
 blonde moustache. These were his Uhlans, sent to " feel " the 
 enemy, and one of whom had felt a chassepot through his chest. 
 The young man with the blood running over his moustache had 
 his hand clutched tight on the bridle of a young French officer 
 and that young French officer was Louis, though Marie did not 
 see it ! 
 
18G MALMAISON. 
 
 That was all that we saw of him for the present, for dealing a 
 hlow to the wounded German, he got his bridle loose, and sped 
 away across the fields. The German general cried out to the 
 Uhlans, who were away after him, and they came hack. The 
 wounded Uhlan looked round sleepily, kicked his feet out of his 
 stirrups, and fell heavily over on the ground, with that ugly noise 
 which nothing hut a falling man can make. 
 
 "He is in your line, I think," said the general. "Will you 
 take him ? ' ' 
 
 I had got him into the wagon already, but I heard the general 
 say to the other Uhlans— 
 
 " If Bazaine is out again, we shall have a battle to-morrow. 
 Von Hezzerstein, Alvensleben is at Amandvilliers ; get to him 
 across country, and see for the orders." 
 
 By this time I had got my wounded Uhlan up into the straw. 
 Von' Hezzerstein, the Uhlan— a nobleman, if it mattered — jumped 
 off his horse, and kissed him. They seem to have been fast 
 friends, for he kissed him before he sped away, and our wagon 
 went on. 
 
 I said to Marie, "Now you have one of your enemies in your 
 hands." 
 
 And she said, " Thank God." 
 
 But we could do absolutely nothing. The German had been 
 shot through the chest, and the wagon with the doctor was on 
 before. We did not know what to do in any way. It became 
 evident to us that he was dying in our arms, and Marie asked 
 him of what religion he was. He said feebly that he was a 
 Catholic. 
 
 " Then we are both puzzled," said Marie. "We can neither 
 of us do anything for him." 
 
 " Why can't you leave him to God ? " I said a little angrily. 
 And indeed we did ; and when morning broke over the beautiful 
 Lorraine, and we got into Briey, the horrihle thunder of the battle 
 of the 16th was roaring in our ears, and the young German was 
 dead between us in the straw. We had to take him out ourselves, 
 with the help of the driver, who gave us very little assistance, for 
 he was scared. The Johanniters buried him according to their 
 vows. 
 
 Marie was bound by her vows, and I was determined to follow 
 her as far as I could ; so I went about at Briey, and asked every- 
 body. Everybody said that getting into Metz was folly ; but Marie 
 was* most resolute, and I determined to go with her as far as my 
 duty to my proprietors would allow me. I was very late in making 
 
MALMAISON. 187 
 
 my inquiries, and Marie had gone to bed ; so I told the immortal 
 Mademoiselle Sophie that I must speak to Marie in her hud. 
 
 •• Mais elle n'est pas madame." 
 
 " Diablo ! " (I am afraid I went so far as that,) " I want to get 
 her into Metz, and must speak to her. Come with me, and rouse 
 her. If she is fool enough to mind you and me in her hedroom, 
 she is not fit for the work which is before her." 
 
 Sophie nodded her head nearly off, and when it was nearly off 
 her handsome shoulders said — - 
 
 " Mais vous avez raison." 
 
 Sophie went in, and turned her head over. 
 
 " C'est Monsieur le Redacteur," she said. 
 
 And Marie turned her face on her pillow towards me, half-asL ep 
 and half-awake, and said — 
 
 "What is it, my friend?" 
 
 Ah, heavens ! if she could have said that a few years before ! 
 Not that I complain in any way ; things would have been different, 
 but they would not have been so well. I told my mother this story 
 (as I tell her everything) when I came back from the war, and she 
 said to me, " Sweetheart, would you have had it otherwise ? " and 
 I said, " Not for a million worlds." 
 
 I sat on a chair in the room, and I said — 
 
 "Marie, there is but one chance for us. Can you walk to 
 Metz ? I have been in every direction asking, and that is our only 
 chance." 
 
 " I can walk far and fast," she said. 
 
 " I have been collecting information," I said, " and I have found 
 a Jew who can take you in. It is horribly dangerous, and let me 
 persuade you not to go." 
 
 " I am bound to go," she said. 
 
 I said, "I cannot go farther than St. Privat or Amandvilliers." 
 
 " My dear friend," she said, laughing, " I woidd not be bothered 
 with you farther. But we must pass Mahnaison? " 
 
 " I fear so. Let me see the place before I die, and then let me 
 die." 
 
 We left her to sleep. Mademoiselle Sophie came out of her 
 room with me. 
 
 "Your Englishwomen are both resolute and spirituelle" she 
 said ; and I agreed with her. 
 
 Let me give a tribute to a very grand woman. Mademoiselle 
 Sophie of Briey is not the sort of woman at present producible in 
 England. She has worked like a galley-slave with her brother 
 to make her house a good one, and the war has ruined her and her 
 brother. They have actually nothing at all ; hut in her complaints 
 
188 MALMAISON. 
 
 about the German requisitions there was not one word of anger. 
 She was quite prepared to begin life over again. Lazy English 
 ladies might take a lesson from Mademoiselle Sophie. 
 
 I can see her now coming into my bedroom at four o'clock in 
 the morning with the petites chases for Mademoiselle Marie. When 
 we started at half-past four, the awful horror of the day of the 17th 
 bad not begun. Sophie shrieked after us " Bon voyage," and we 
 were away together down the steep street over the pretty bridge, 
 and then up through Aboue, one of the sweetest places on the 
 earth. I remember that we waited on the bridge to see a man 
 throwing a casting-net, and while we were there we heard the 
 cannon begin in the summer morning. 
 
 I asked her to turn even then, but she refused, and we went up 
 aloft on to the plateau, where we two solitary poor fools saw the 
 affair of the 17th, one of the most terrible battles of all. I was afraid 
 of her a little at first, because she clutched my arm once when she 
 saw Ste. Marie aux Chenes burn, but she only said — 
 
 " The thing has to be done, and must be done. I must get into 
 Metz this way." 
 
 The affair of St. Privat was singularly horrible among all the 
 great battles. The Germans felt for Bazaine's left, and debouching 
 from tbe woods, found him in force at Ste. Marie, at St. Privat, 
 and at Amaudvilliers. We believe that that is the real truth about 
 tbe August battles. I see that Bazaine now says, that Amandvilliers 
 was the central point of the great battle of Gravelotte. We shall 
 never know. 
 
 Marie and I saw the battle of St. Privat very well from a distance. 
 She stood the fire and smoke very well, and she sat most patiently 
 with me under a tree. The French were not driven back fairly 
 before three in the afternoon, and then I thought it safe to go on. 
 There was not the least difficulty. There was not one who was 
 not too tired to interfere with one ; but just before we came to Ste. 
 Marie aux Chenes, I saw, from the heaped scarlet and blue masses 
 on the road, that we were coming among the dead, and I was 
 anxious. 
 
 I said, " You know what those are, lviug in the road and in the 
 fields?" 
 
 She said, " I am not in the least afraid." 
 
 But, as in all cases, the first dead man upset her — a very pretty 
 lad, in scarlet trousers and a blue tunic, who lay across the road 
 right in our path, with his face to the sky, one leg straight out 
 and one bent up nearly double. She began to cry ; but when I 
 bent down and searched the dead man for papers to send to his 
 friends she was quite comfortable again. She never flinched during 
 
MALMAISON. 189 
 
 the whole of that horrible day after the first dead man, though I 
 flinched more than once among the wounded. 
 
 As an illustration of her nerve, I can tell this : The Germans 
 were hurrying away the wounded French to Ste. Marie, St. Privat, 
 and the Chateau at Jerusalem. She left me to look at the piles 
 of dead by herself, and after a little while came hurrying to me, 
 Baying, "Here is a man who is not dead; " and I hurried away 
 breatliless. It was a chasseur, and I tore his tunic open, and put 
 my hand on his heart. She was right. She had seen it from his 
 face. I ran to the German officer, and we saved the man. 
 
 I was not in the least degree afraid of her now. I could not go 
 with her myself; I must leave. I got her safe through the dead 
 to Malmaison, which is between St. Privat and Amandvilliers ; at 
 that place I thought her life had come to an end, for although the 
 last ruin of the place was reserved for a time, yet it was as good 
 as ruined now. Everything was so much destroyed by the troops, 
 that the bombardment affected it very little. It was only made a 
 heap of broken stonework after every room in the house had been 
 violated before. 
 
 From Malmaison I got her to the ridge above Metz, and there 
 was an objurgation between a German officer, a Jew, and a Jesuit. 
 But the Jew and the Jesuit had the best of it ; for, after I had 
 shown Dr. F. a pass, she was let to go on ; and I saw her go down 
 all alone along the road with the Jew beside her, while the German 
 officer marched me in an entirely contrary direction. I took the 
 liberty to remark that I was a British citizen ; but it was no good. 
 Tlmt game is over for the present. As far as my experience goes, 
 you had better call yourself a Greek than an Englishman nowa- 
 days. I, in my own person, have been taken to task by Luxem- 
 burgers. National humiliation can't go much further. However, 
 Marie was safe into Metz, and I had to go to work for my news- 
 paper again. 
 
 I ran off as hard as I could go after the Brandenburgers, and 
 got in with them, whereby I got into trouble with my proprietors, 
 because Yon Heldensheim insisted that all my letters sent by the 
 field-post should be open ; and I now discover that he has put lewd 
 (in the good sense, ludibrice) remarks into them, and has done me 
 no good, either with my employers or the general public. Yon 
 Heldensheim shall answer for this. He dared not have taken such 
 a liberty with some others. It is altogether too bad of him. A 
 Frenchman would never have made such a mauvaise plaisanterie. 
 But I have my eye on Yon Heldensheim ; and when he least expects 
 it, I will be down on him. 
 
 Then came the unutterable ruin of Sedan. But, as Thackeray 
 
190 MALMAISON. 
 
 did in " Pendcnnis," I began my story at the latter end. Will you 
 have the conclusion of it ? I will give it you. 
 
 Marie was in Metz all through the siege. I have nearly told 
 my story, and why should one continue a story when every educated 
 person could end it for himself? 
 
 Marie had been a whole fortnight, or nearly so, in Metz, when 
 my duties called me once more to Briey ; and I at once went to 
 the inn kept by Mademoiselle Sophie, the niece of old Sophie, the 
 nurse of the Courriers, who has been mentioned before. 
 
 She was very mysterious and cool ; and I asked her if I had 
 given any offence, whereupon she kissed me, and began to cry. I 
 could not exactly understand why at first, but it seemed that there 
 was plenty to cry about. Louis was desperately wounded, and 
 lying at Amandvilliers. 
 
 " So close to his old home," I said. 
 
 " There is no home now," she replied ; " Malmaison was burned 
 down on the 18th." 
 
 " Anything further ? " I said. 
 
 " Yes," she said ; "he wants a letter got into Metz to Marie. 
 Can you do it ? " 
 
 " I cannot undertake it," I said. " I got her in, but I cannot 
 undertake to get a letter in now. Have you heard of Alphonse ? " 
 
 "Yes, he was here yesterday; he has gone in person to the 
 Archduke, to get his brother brought here. If you could go to 
 St. Privat, I believe that you could get a letter taken. Louis will 
 die if he does not see her — indeed I believe he will die anyhow." 
 
 " Has Alphonse gone to the Archduke ? " I asked, amazed. 
 
 " Yes ; I told him to go and speak for himself." 
 
 " Why ? he might have written." 
 
 "He refused to write to the Archduke save as citoyen," said 
 Sophie. " Hark ! God, they have begun again ? " 
 
 The windows began shaking and clattering, and the German 
 garrison poured swiftly out from their billets, and formed up in 
 the square. I left Sophie with the letter to Marie on me ; and 
 running into the stable saddled my horse, and rode southward at 
 a hard gallop. When I was on the plateau above Aboue, I saw at 
 once that Bazaine was out, and that one way or another it was all 
 over. Men now call that horrible, hopeless confusion the battle 
 of Gravelotte. 
 
 It only took seven hours ; but I was twenty-six hours before I 
 could get on to the ruins of Malmaison, and helped old Sophie to 
 bury Alphonse. He had been on his way towards the Archduke, 
 but had come to his old home, and had stood there a little too 
 long. He could not have been very long there ; but the business 
 
MALMAISON. 191 
 
 of Gravelotte was very sudden, and the French raced up so quickly, 
 that they were in the orchard before the Germans were ready ; and 
 it is quite doubtful whether Alphonso was killed by French or 
 German bullets. The rest you know. The letter from Louis got 
 into Metz, but no answer ever came out. 
 
 The sortie of women had taken place, and the surrender was 
 over, before I ever saw Louis. He was lying still at Amandvillicrs, 
 greatly better, but still weak. When I turned his head over, he 
 asked me had Marie been heard of. 
 
 I said that I had been into Metz. 
 
 " Did you see Marie ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Is she dead '? " he asked, sitting up in his bed. 
 
 I bowed my head. 
 
 " I wish I was," he said. " I wanted to begin all over again 
 with her. I know I could have won her. I am so utterly changed, 
 now that it is too late. I am so much better than I was. All my 
 chauvinism is gone, and I am so very humble. It does seem very 
 hard of God. How did she go to Him ? " 
 
 " She was killed in the streets by a shell, helping the wounded." 
 
 " Where is Alphonse ? " 
 
 " With God. Killed in the orchard at Malmaison, trying to get 
 at the Archduke." 
 
 He lay down for a moment, and then turned his face to me and 
 said — 
 
 " There shall be vengeance for all this." 
 
 God grant that his words may not come true ! 
 
NEW YEAR'S DAY AT WINDSOR, 1327. 
 
 14 193 
 
1 
 
NEW YEAR'S DAY AT WINDSOR, 1327. 
 
 SIR HENRY MALLORY'S STORY. 
 
 "The story must be told, Sir Henry, here, and at once, without 
 delay or omission, or you will exchange Windsor for the Tower. 
 On your allegiance ! tell me something to make me forget these 
 Scots, I pray you of your* love." 
 
 "But, sire*! " 
 
 " I say nothing about that. Go on, sweet Sir Henry : I want 
 to hear much how you saw this man, and what he was like. Why 
 do you delay ? ' ' 
 
 " The story is dull." 
 
 "Then both Mortimer and Despencer were bars. Go on, old 
 friend. Such modesty does not become an old ambassador. 
 Seneschal, is there an army of bears down there ? I do not 
 demand silence, but the noise is abominable. Altogether villanous. 
 If the men below the salt can't take their Christmas liquor with- 
 out that noise, they must have no more. If they are quarrelling, 
 send a herald to them. Now, Sir Henry, as soon as you can hear 
 yourself speak, go on. Drink from my cup first, finish the wine, 
 and put that ring on your finger, which you shall find at the 
 bottom. Hey, Sir Henry, we have a jewel or two. Got you such 
 a ring as that from your wondrous Venetian friends for the telling 
 of a tale?" 
 
 " Your Majesty's generosity surpasses theirs, as their splendour 
 surpasses yours. Well turned, but not true. I must unsay it. 
 The men I speak of were as generous as they were splendid." 
 
 " And we, poor King of England, are nobody. Go on. I 
 cannot buy you to speak aught but truth, not with a hundred 
 rings." 
 
 "When I come to compare Windsor," said the sturdy old 
 gentleman, " with the palace of those two merchants at Venice, 
 your Grace, this dear old palace where I have lived so long, and 
 where I hope, by your Grace's mercy, to die, seems to me like a 
 
 195 
 
190 NEW YEAR'S DAY AT WINDSOR, 1327. 
 
 mean barn. I am no minstrel — so little a one that my old 
 tongue cannot tell all the magnificence of what I saw at the house 
 of those two venerable men, still less can I invent aught. When 
 I arrived at their house, the night I was bidden to supper, 
 and stepped from the boat, I told my name and titles. There 
 were some forty servants about the door, and when they caught 
 my name, two beautiful youths, of a courtliness and a grace 
 
 which " 
 
 " What are you looking at ? " asked the King. " Herald," he 
 roared, " tell those young bears' whelps, Percy and Seymour, to 
 be still. It is monstrous, one's pages fighting before one's eyes. 
 Two such beautiful and graceful youths, whose courtliness and 
 grace my pages (Satan couple the young hounds, a thirsty ill- 
 scenting day, on the top of Bagshot-heath !) had as well imitate. 
 Yes, Sir Henry, I follow you. What said these youths to 
 you?" 
 
 " They told me that they were detached for my service the 
 whole of that evening, by Signor Nicolo and Senor Maffeo, and 
 they begged me to follow them to the banquet-hall. I, seeing by 
 their manner that they were gentle, begged of them to walk slowly, 
 that I might admire the wonders in the great galleries through 
 which we passed. They pointed them out to me, but I did not 
 notice them so closely as I might have done, for the largest part 
 of my mind was given up to counting the paces which I stepped, 
 so that I might gain, on my own authority, some idea of the length 
 of the vast corridors which we were traversing. This puzzled my 
 two youths considerably, for they ran on before me, and placed 
 themselves before the most remarkable objects, to wait my coming ; 
 and they evidently wondered why I walked with my head down, 
 and counted as I went. One of them thought I was doing 
 my devotions, and seeing that I was without a rosary, offered me 
 his, which was of large pearls ; but the other said, in a low voice, 
 in his musical tongue, ' He is an Englishman, he is only mad,' 
 and after that they wondered no more. 
 
 " ' Mad, you say ! ' said the first. ' But he is ambassador from 
 the King of England." 
 
 " ' My sweetest Antonio,' said the other, ' what should a mad- 
 man, King of Madmen, do with a sane ambassador ? What fearful 
 political complications woidd arise if he were to send us any one 
 but a lunatic ; or even a lunatic whose lunacy does not exhibit 
 itself openly, as this one's madness does. We might think him a 
 sane man, and believe what he said. And what then ? ' 
 
 " I heard every word of this, though they did not think it. I 
 amused myself with them," 
 
NEW YEAR'S DAY AT WlNDSOB, 1327. 197 
 
 "But," interposed the King, " can you tell me anything of the 
 galleries which you passed through ? Was your whole soul taken 
 up with counting your steps? " 
 
 " I can tell your Grace this. I passed through three corridors, 
 each one hundred aud twenty feet long, hefore I came to the last 
 and fourth, in which the supper was laid, and in which the guests 
 were assembled. These three galleries, three hundred and sixty 
 feet in length, were all lined with mirrors in golden frames, which 
 reached to the richly-fretted ceiling : excepting, of course, the 
 windows, which, now it being night, were draped with crimson 
 satin. Thus much I observed ; hut the other wonders — the 
 statues, the tall vases of glass, handed and twisted of various 
 colours, the great picture of the proud Cimahue, of Michael slaving 
 the Dragon — many other things I hurried hy, or only had them 
 shown to me hy my two guides, lest I should miss my counting. 
 The floor was covered with the richest cloths." 
 
 The King's fool had assumed, at the beginning of the story, a 
 look of respectful attention, which by degrees he had developed 
 into a look of deep wonder, which now had become an expression 
 of the most dumbfounded astonishment caricatured to the utter- 
 most. Of course every one had been watching, knowing that he 
 would be doing something soon, and at this point young Percy the 
 page found that he could not help it any longer, and giggled. 
 The spark had fallen on gunpowder. The whole of the party burst 
 into such a roar of laughter at once, that the people down the 
 table looked towards the royal chair. The King was very angry, 
 but when he saw the fool's face he was forced to grin. 
 
 " Pr'ythee, gossip," said the fool to Sir Henry, "pass on and 
 come to the dragons." 
 
 " There be no dragons, fool." 
 
 "Marry, thou shouldst have had dragons. Thou art a poor 
 jongleur. Thou wilt mar the tale without a dragon or two. I 
 pray let us have them." 
 
 " Wilt thou peace, thou ape ? " said the King, angrily ; and Sir 
 Henry went on. 
 
 " The floors were covered with the richest fabrics, and the 
 galleries were grander than anything your Majesty can fancy, and 
 yet the banqueting-hall infinitely surpassed the galleries in beauty. 
 My tongue fails to describe the richness of the plate, and still 
 more the wondrous splendour of the flowers which covered the 
 supper-table in great profusion, and all of which were utterly 
 unknown to me, as they were from roots and seeds which Signor 
 Nicolo had procured from the uttermost limits of the East. 
 
 " They tarried for ine, it appeared, and, after their form of 
 
198 NEW YEAR'S DAY AT WINDSOR, 1327. 
 
 politeness, came forward in a body to greet me, each presenting 
 himself by name. I prayed their forgiveness. They, on their 
 part, abased themselves before me for having assembled too soon. 
 All were Venetians, sire, except myself, and a Genoese prisoner, 
 to whom these true gentlemen gave the precedence, as a prisoner 
 of war, before every one else, myself included. He insisted on 
 waiving his claim in my favour, and so I sat on the left of Signor 
 Maffeo, and he below me. The conversation, as supper went on, 
 was mainly addressed to us two, and I supposed at first it was 
 only politeness; but, after a little conversation with me, the 
 Genoese prisoner raised his forefinger slightly, and the conversa- 
 tion became general, Signor Maffeo even turning from us and 
 talking to the infirm Signor Nicolo, his brother. I began to see, 
 sire (otherwise I had been a poor ambassador from England), that 
 there was a plot, a good-natured plot abroad, and that I was to 
 act in it. 
 
 " I now turned and looked at my fellow-conspirator, the Genoese 
 gentleman prisoner. He was a young gentleman of singular 
 beauty, and dressed with extreme richness and elegance. His 
 manners were as charming as his appearance. 
 
 " 'Dear English signor,' he said, as soon as the others were 
 talking freely, ' I want your help. Let us drink together.' 
 
 " We did so. ' There is a play, a plot, a conspiracy, to be 
 acted here, and you must play the principal part in it. Do you 
 consent ? ' 
 
 ' ' ' The players in mysteries have their written parts given 
 them,' I said, ' and even the mummers rehearse their nonsense 
 in a dark bam. I consent, but I must know my part.' 
 
 "'It is only this. When I nudge you — so, — speak out to 
 Signor Nicolo, and ask him to show you his magic amulet. 
 Wlien he has handed it to you, pass it to me, instead of giving it 
 to him.' 
 
 " ' Is that all I have to do ? ' 
 
 " ' That is all. You were late for supper, and I was waiting to 
 explain more to you. We are too close to the old man to explain 
 now.' 
 
 " ' Can you explain nothing, sweet sir ? ' 
 
 " 'I fear being overheard, but I will say thus much. Signor 
 Maffeo is talking loud to his brother. Signor Nicolo is infirm, and 
 any agitation will make his heart beat dangerously. The leeches 
 dread his death in case of any news being conveyed to him 
 suddenly. Now a most unexpected and joyful event has occurred, 
 and we wished to break it to him. The only thing which will 
 make the old man speak of his son is that talisman. He never 
 
NEW YEAR'S DAY AT WINDSOR, 1327. 199 
 
 speaks of his son but when he is telling the story of that talisman, 
 and we want him to tell it to-night. It is our only chance of 
 breaking the glorious news to him without killing him.' 
 
 " I understood him now, and grasped him by the arm. 'Do 
 you mean to say that he is free ? ' I asked. 
 
 " ' Sweet sir, he is in Venice. You did not catch my name, as 
 I saw, when I introduced myself.' 
 
 " ' Who are you, dear gentleman ? ' 
 
 " ' I am Giovanni Doria, and he is exchanged for me.' 
 
 "I brought my hand heavily down upon the table, and as I 
 committed that breach of good manners, I perceived that the 
 Venetian gentlemen who were supping with us had for once in a 
 way, in their eagerness, forgotten theirs. I saw in a moment that 
 every man in the room was in the plot, for they had all ceased 
 talking and were looking eagerly at me and Doria. I smiled so as 
 to show them that I was in their secret, and the general conversa- 
 tion buzzed up louder than before. 
 
 "But the sudden silence, and the smiting of my fist upon 
 the table, had aroused Signor Nicolo, and he turned and spoke 
 to me. ' Has anything irritated you, my English friend ? ' 
 he said. ' Doria is a sacred person, but if it were any other, 
 I will answer for it in my own body, my boy being away, old as 
 I am.' 
 
 "'No one has irritated me, dear sir,' I said. 'Only the 
 spiders spun a cobweb between me and my goblet, and in breaking 
 it through I hit the table.' 
 
 " The old man was puzzled but contented. Doria laughed 
 at me. 
 
 " ' It was not so bad,' he said ; ' but your English humour will 
 never stand comparison with our Italian wit. You should have 
 said, " I was contented to think that I should never have words to 
 make our poor islanders believe in the splendour of the Venetian 
 merchants, and in my vexation at that thought I committed this 
 breach of manners." ' 
 
 " ' That would have been rather clumsier, and much more 
 untrue than the explanation which I gave,' I answered. ' Let be : 
 he believes neither the one nor the other. Let us talk sense. 
 Why did you select me for your fellow-conspirator on this most 
 joyful occasion ? ' 
 
 "'For the first reason,' he answered, 'because he is very 
 jealous of showing his talisman to any one but foreigners, and he 
 never shows it twice to any man ; and, as I told you before, never 
 speaks of his son unless he shows it. I have seen it once, and 
 you were the only available foreigner. That is the first reason. 
 
200 NEW YEAR'S DAY AT WINDSOR, 1327. 
 
 For the second, we felt sure that you would come kindly into the 
 plot. Your gentle demeanour, and your heautiful and amiable 
 lace -' " 
 
 At this point the King's fool was taken with an obstinate fit of 
 coughing. The King looked up. " Sir Hubert Venables," he 
 said. " Sweet friend, smite me my poor fool upon the back, I 
 pray thee. He hath a cough, and the phlegm will kill him. I 
 should be wood were my poor fool to die." 
 
 Sir Hubert, nineteen stone of strength and good-humour, moved 
 towards the fool : but the fool was not fool enough to bide a slap 
 from that terrible hand. He dived under the table and passed 
 below the salt, where he revenged himself by telling a story very 
 like Sir Henry's but with a few utterly incredible incidents, cari- 
 caturing that most excellent old pedant's voice and manner in a 
 way which made necessary the presence of the seneschal, a herald, 
 and lastly the order of royalty itself to silence the uproarious 
 laughter. 
 
 " Twenty years ago, Sir Fool, I was handsomer than any man 
 in this room, except, of course, your Majesty." 
 
 " Exactly," said the King. " Now go on." 
 
 "I was, it appeared," continued Sir Henry, " to take my 
 opportunity to ask for Signor Nicolo's amulet, and to request 
 him to tell me the story about it. To lead up to this result, 
 Giovanni Doria left off speaking to me, and left me sitting silent. 
 It was a long time before the dulled faculties of Signor Nicolo 
 took notice of this. The main part of the supper had been cleared 
 away, and nothing had been on the table for some time but the 
 fruits and the wine, but yet I sat still and silent, acting my part 
 the best way I could. 
 
 " Signor Maffeo was not in the secret, and he and his brother 
 remained talking very eagerly together. The general buzz of 
 conversation which went on along each side of the table made 
 them think, I suppose, that their guests were well entertained, 
 and that they might speak together without breach of manners. 
 At last, Maffeo, who sat next to me, turned and saw me silent, 
 and saw also that Doria was deeply engaged in conversation with 
 the man beside him. He instantly nudged his brother, and said, 
 ' Nicolo, we are poor hosts. I thought, Signor Mallory, you were 
 in talk with Signor Doria.' 
 
 "'I have been silent this half-hour,' I said. 'I have not 
 spoken to a soul since Signor Doria entered into talk with yon 
 Florentine gentleman.' 
 
NEW YEAHS DAY AT WINDSOR, 1327. 201 
 
 " They used great civility towards rue at ouce, these two old 
 gentlemen, askiug ruy pardon many times. But I answered that 
 I bad been well entertained looking at tbe admirable beauty of 
 their riches ; but I said I had a favour to ask. If they thought 
 they had erred in any way in courtesy to me, the granting of that 
 favour would throw the balance of debt on my side. I asked 
 would Signer Nicolo show me the great talisman, and tell me the 
 story about it. 
 
 " He willingly acquiesced. He put back the collar of his dark- 
 blue velvet and gold gown, and took from his neck, from under- 
 neath his clothes, the chain on which the talisman hung, and 
 handed it to me. Your Majesty, it took away my breath. In my 
 wonder and excitement, I dropped the whole thing rattling into 
 my plate, to the great amusement of the brothers ; but none of 
 the other gentleman at table took notice of the rattle, but only 
 talked the louder, almost as though they were brawling. 
 
 " The chain on which the talisman hung was the handsomest 
 and the thickest I have ever seen ; but it was the talisman itself 
 which struck me with such amazement. It was an oblong 
 sapphire, close on three inches in length, which was attached 
 to the chain by the slender thread of gold which went round 
 it, and which could scarcely be called a setting. It was a water- 
 worn sapphire, having over nearly the whole of its surface a 
 frosted pale blue colour ; in one place only had it been touched 
 by the jeweller's wheel. On one side only of it, a space of some 
 half an inch, had been cut flat and polished, and through this 
 shining surface you could look down into the wine-dark depths 
 of the greatest jewel which the world has ever seen." 
 
 " This is a good tale," said the King, "a wondrous good tale. 
 I like much these great jewels in a tale. They cost the teller 
 nothing, and the hearer feels as though they belonged to him, 
 or, at least, that he had seen them. Give me jewels in a tale. 
 They are better than dragons." 
 
 " But this is every word of it true, your Majesty," said Sir Henry. 
 
 "Did ever any one accuse thee of being able to invent a tale 
 for thyself"? Thou hast no talent that way. My grandsire sent 
 no minstrels or jongleurs on his errands. That diamond on thy 
 finger would show' that these Venetians have jewels such as we 
 have never seen. The story is a good story, but the worse for 
 being true. Canst thou not invent aught ? Go on." 
 
 " I asked him, then," continued Sir Henry, " his tale about 
 this jewel, and he told it to me. I will pass by that tale and 
 come to the end of mine." 
 
202 NEW YEAR'S DAY AT WINDSOR, 1327. 
 
 " At thy peril," said the King. " It may be a better tale than 
 thine own, for aught I know. Tell it." 
 
 Sir Henry Mallory put his hands slightly abroad, and bowed 
 his head gently, as though he would say, " If you choose to 
 be bored, it is not my fault," and after this courtier-like protest, 
 went on to tell Signor Nicolo's story. 
 
 " ' It is a mistake to suppose, dear Englishman,' said Signor 
 Nicolo, ' that my friend Kublai Khan was the son of Octai. On 
 the contrary, he was his youngest nephew save one. 
 
 " ' Mangu, his brother, was son of Tuli, and was left young 
 with an only sister, to whom he was deeply attached ; gave her 
 in marriage to the Emperor of India, Conon the First, and took 
 his, the Emperor's sister, as his bride in exchange. 
 
 " ' He had never seen this lady until she arrived at Campion, 
 the day before their nuptials. Mangu became deeply in love with 
 her, and from all I could gather from those old men, who in my 
 time were still about the court of Kublai Khan, and who remem- 
 bered her, there was no wonder at it. She was a most peerless 
 body. But beauty does not save from death, and before they had 
 been married seven months this beautiful lady died. 
 
 " ' Mangu was inconsolable. He made a vow before the small 
 household idol, an idol which corresponds among the Tartars 
 to the Lares or Penates of the Romans, Signor Mallory, that 
 he would never look on the face of woman again. He kept his 
 vow religiously, as religiously as any of our churchmen, with the 
 hope of immortality before them, keep it. He was a heathen, 
 and had no such hopes, but he kept his vow, and he died without 
 issue. 
 
 " ' When he felt death was creeping on him he began to feel 
 anxious about his successors. The wife of Conon, the elder King 
 of India, had now three beautiful sons, Ganlu, Camul, and Kublai. 
 Mangu wrote a letter to Conon, begging that in brotherly love he 
 would send him his three youths, and that he would give him the 
 one he should choose to fill the throne of Tartary. 
 
 " ' The King Conon wrote, saying, " Choose between them ; " 
 and the three princes were started on their journey with the 
 greatest magnificence. What need to dwell on the elephants 
 and the camels, the horses, the rich presents which were sent ? 
 Head any eastern tale, Sir Henry, and fill up the gap according 
 to your own imagination. 
 
 " 'The great procession which accompanied these three princes 
 took a year in reaching Mangu's capital. Many delays took place 
 from flooded rivers, from snowstorms, and other accidents of 
 
NEW YEAE'S DAY AT WINDSOR, 1327. 203 
 
 travel, such as I have related to my friends in this hall in 
 recounting my own travels until my tongue has grown weary. 
 Many lives were lost, the camels most of them died, hut the 
 elephants and the horses arrived towards the end of the year, 
 within a day's walk of the capital of Mangu. There, for the 
 first time, they met with his emissaries. Hitherto, since coming 
 into the dominions of the Khan, they had had no credentials save 
 the golden plate which he had sent with his ambassador. This 
 had been enough : the mere showing of it had been sufficient for 
 each governor of every province through which they had passed. 
 The whole resources of each province had been put at their dis- 
 posal, but they had hitherto had no personal recognition. At 
 this point, with the towers of the capital in sight, they were met 
 by ten thousand cavalry on white horses, each common man 
 clothed in cloth of silver and blue velvet, and the officers clothed 
 in cloth of gold and crimson satin.' " 
 
 "Beat me that fool," cried the King, in extreme anger. 
 "Bang me that fool on his pate, with a flagon. Cut me his 
 ears. Percy, spawn of the devil, why laughest thou ? Can I 
 not hear my tale without this indecent laughter ? It comes 
 from the incredible babble of that fool there. What said he, 
 Percy? I will know, by — (goto Chaucer for an oath). Speak, 
 sir." 
 
 "He said only," replied that mischievous young rascal Percy, 
 who ought to have been a midshipman, by-the-bye, and who was 
 very much frightened at the King's manner — "he said only that 
 this Signor Nicolo of Venice was a better story-teller than Sir 
 Henry Mallory : that we should have dragons anon now, and 
 mayhap some unicorns and a phoenix if we gave Sir Henry 
 time." 
 
 " Tuni the fool out," cried the King; and the fool went out 
 by one door, ran down the lower ward to the curfew tower with 
 a face of dismay, told a drunken old warder that the castle was 
 on fire, and persuaded him to ring the alarum bell, aroused all the 
 townsfolk of Windsor, (who came swarming into the middle ward 
 to render assistance) ; and long before Sir Henry's story was 
 finished stepped back again by a door behind the dais, and, with 
 a sanctimonious air, quietly took a chair behind the King, beside 
 his confessor, as he did so passing his finger three or four times 
 round the crown of his head in an impertinent allusion to the 
 reverend gentleman's tonsure. 
 
 " ' The three princes,' " continued Sir Henry, " ' were met 
 
204 NEW YEAR'S DAY AT WINDSOR, 1327. 
 
 by this splendid cavalcade, the commander of which, clothed 
 
 " Let that pass," said the King. " Let us have no more tailor's 
 hills, sweet Sir Henry." 
 
 " ' told them that they were to he conducted into the 
 
 town the next morning in the greatest state, hut that Manga 
 Khan desired that they would house where they were for the 
 night. The apartments set aside for them were very homely, 
 after what they had been accustomed to in India, hut they all 
 three acquiesced with a good grace. 
 
 " 'At twelve o'clock that night,' said Signor Nicolo, ' Ganlu, 
 the oldest prince, sitting alone in his room, among his books, 
 heard a knock at his door. His servant, timidly appearing, 
 announced that an old priest would speak to him. 
 
 "'"A Nestorian, I doubt, or a Mahoniedau," said Ganlu, 
 looking up from his hooks. 
 
 " ' " A priest of our own faith," said the servant. 
 " ' The priest was shown in, humbly dressed, but a noble-looking 
 old man. 
 
 " ' " What wonldst thou, my father ? " said Prince Ganlu. 
 " ' " I have here a talisman," said the priest, showing him the 
 talisman which you hold in your hand, Signor Mallory, " which 
 will enable you to win the love of your uncle, and to succeed 
 to the throne of Tartary. I would know what you woidd offer 
 me for it." 
 
 ""'Dost thou believe, dear father," said Ganlu, "in com- 
 mandment xc. ? " 
 
 " ' " Not I," said the old priest. 
 
 " ' "Dost thou then believe," retorted Ganlu, " that any man 
 can come to salvation, save through our faith? " 
 
 "'"I must certainly believe it," said the old priest. "But 
 what wilt thou give me for my talisman ? " 
 
 " ' " The curse of Kehama fall on thee and thy talisman, thou 
 heretic ! Depart ! " 
 
 " ' So he departed from the prig Ganlu, and went on to the 
 drunkard, Camul. Camul had not only gotten himself disguised, 
 in liquor but his servants also. The old priest found them all 
 uproarious, and was hustled in before the presence of the Prince 
 by a dozen grooms and courtesans somewhat more drunk than 
 the Prince himself, who was drunk enough. He delivered his 
 message. 
 
 " ' " I bring you here a talisman which shall secure your suc- 
 cession to the throne of Tartary. What will vou give me for 
 it?" 
 
NEW YEAR'S DAY AT WINDSOR, 1327. 20S 
 
 " ' " Sit clown and drink, you old fool," cried Prince Camul. 
 " 'Slake me this old fool drunk, you fellows," cried Camul, "We 
 will bargain afterwards." 
 
 " ' But the old fellow escaped them, and went to the lodgings 
 of Kublai, to see what mart he could get there for his talisman. 
 
 " ' The whole building was wrapped in darkness, but the old 
 man passed quietly in, picking his way through the sleeping 
 attendants by the light of a few dim lamps, which were still left 
 burning, until he came to the chamber of the sleeping Kublai, 
 whom he shook by the shoulder, saying once more, " Prince, 
 arise ! I have here a talisman which shall give thee the Khanate 
 of Tartary." 
 
 " ' " May the great fiend seize the Khanate of Tartary ! I had 
 as lief you made me whipper to the madmen in India. Avaunt ! " 
 
 " ' " Yet, see my talisman." 
 
 " ' " Thou and thy talisman! Thou prating old knave, is there 
 not a time for all things ; and is not this the time for sleep ? 
 Harow ! Wala ! there ! — Push me forth this old fool ; yet use 
 him gently, youths. If the gods bless you, your curls will some 
 day be grey and thin as his locks are now. Good night, thou 
 foolish old person. Here is money for thee." 
 
 " ' The old priest was gently and kindly pushed out by the 
 young warriors in attendance, and disappeared. The next day 
 the cavalcade moved on into the town, and at the palace the three 
 youths were brought into the great hall of council, and among 
 fifteen hundred warriors, sitting in ab 1 his awful magnificence, was 
 Manga, mightiest sovereign of the earth, grandson of the mightier 
 Gingliis. 
 
 " 'And when they saw that he was none other than the old 
 priest, their hearts failed them. Here was a to-do indeed ! The 
 eldest had consigned him to condemnation as a heretic ; the 
 second had insulted him, and had wanted to make him drunk ; 
 and the third had called him an old fool and turned him out 
 of the house. India was a year's journey away. Was there no 
 hope ? They looked round ; the serried ranks had closed in on 
 all sides, and the infuriated Khan had descended from the throne 
 and was advancing towards them. 
 
 m u Pace it out like men," Kublai had time to say, when the 
 Khan was upon them. He smiled sweetly to them and held out 
 his hands. " I see three pairs of my sweet sister's eyes," he said. 
 " Ganlu, thou art scholarly and wise. Camul, thou art a merry 
 companion. You two shall stay with us a time, and carry presents 
 back to our brother. Kublai, you know that there is a time and 
 a season for all things. You know the reverence due to grey 
 
206 NEW YEAR'S DAY AT WINDSOR, 1327. 
 
 hairs ; you go homo no more. Henceforth thou art Khan of 
 Tartar) 7 ." ' " 
 
 "And immediately he had spoken these words," continued the 
 fool, hehmd Sir Henry Mallory, with the most perfectly absurd 
 imitation of his voice and manner — "four thousand three hundred 
 and seventy-six golden trumpets hegan to play, each one a different 
 tune, and played until dark, so that the day was spent in harmony. 
 This Cubley Khan, your Grace, and my very sweet and gentle 
 masters all " (here came a grin and a bow even more ridiculously 
 like Sir Henry's than the voice in which the fool spoke), "was 
 own brother to Cubley, the bear-warden of Southwark, who last 
 year, coming home disguised in drink, was refused entry by his 
 wife, and went to bed with his bears ; since when naught has 
 been seen of him. Gallant and noble knights, this is all my 
 tale." 
 
 " 'Tis a merry fool," said the King, laughing; " you must 
 forgive him, Sir Henry." 
 
 " I will when I have done laughing at the knave," said Sir 
 Henry, good-humouredly. " Now I come to the more serious 
 part of my story." 
 
 " Now hath Sir Henry finished fooling, and beginneth to be 
 serious," shouted the fool with the voice of a herald. 
 
 "Quiet, dear gossip," said Sir Henry. "I will make thee 
 weep ere I've done, even now;" and there were no more 
 interruptions. 
 
 " Such was the story of Signor Nicolo, your Grace, about the 
 talisman which I still hold in my hand. It was, he went on to 
 tell me, the very talisman which Mangu Khan had carried in his 
 hand, as an excuse, when he went at night in the disguise of a 
 priest, to see his three nephews, as they really were. At this 
 moment the talisman was gently taken from my hand by Giovanni 
 Doria, the Genoese gentleman prisoner who sat at my left. I saw 
 that my part in the play was done, and I sat back, while Doria 
 leant over me and Signor Maffeo and entered into eager conversa- 
 tion with old Signor Nicolo. I wondered much what was to 
 follow, and I looked round. All the guests were sitting perfectly 
 silent, looking steadily at us ; and I noticed, moreover, that a 
 great crimson silk curtain had been let down in the arch which 
 divided the banqueting-hall from the first of the great galleries 
 which I have described, and which now blocked the view of the 
 first gallery from us. We were shut in together by that curtain, 
 which filled the arch. What was to come from behind that 
 
NEW YEAE'S DAY AT WINDSOR, 1327. 207 
 
 curtain I could not guess. I had cars for the conversation of 
 Signor Doria and Signor Xicolo, but my eyes were on the 
 curtain. 
 
 " Signor Doria, leaning over me, began a sharp eager conversa- 
 tion with Signor Nicolo. I could see now, that whatever of a 
 secret there was, Signor Maffeo was not in it ; he was as puzzled 
 as I was. And I may now remark, your Grace, that the whole of 
 these Venetian gentlemen, on that night, and on every other 
 occasion, showed a fineness of breeding, a giving up of themselves 
 to others, a consideration of others' wishes and hopes, such as 
 one never sees in this dear England of ours. But of all the 
 gentlemen, Signor Doria of Genoa was the finest. If he had 
 been the old man's son, instead of a prisoner of war, he could not 
 have shown a finer courtesy. He, with the talisman in his hand, 
 began the conversation across me. I leant back, watching all 
 parties. 
 
 " 'You have not told us yet,' said Signor Doria, 'how you 
 became possessed of this talisman, my dear father.' 
 
 " 'It is not mine,' said the old man, with a sigh. 'It is my 
 glorious son's. Kublai Khan gave it to him after his return from 
 his mission to Caracan. When your uncle Lampa took him 
 prisoner, I wore it myself as a relic of my poor boy, whom I am 
 never to see again. Your uncle Lampa was my dear friend when 
 we were hoys at Genoa, before this weary wandering began. Why 
 has he not sent me my boy back, dear Giovanni ? ' 
 
 " ' This talisman has magical properties, has it not ? ' said 
 Doria. 'May I look into it?' 
 
 " ' Fools say that it will show the past and the present, but not 
 the future,' said Signor Xicolo. ' Any talisman would do that, I 
 think. I only want my boy. I am a-weary of waiting. Let me 
 look upon his face and die.' 
 
 "Doria had got the sapphire between his face and Signor 
 Xieolo's, and was looking over it at the old man, with his great 
 grey eyes. A more beautiful face, or more beautiful eyes, I shall 
 never see again, your Grace, until I see Doria's in heaven. ' I 
 will look into this jewel, dear father,' he said, ' and I will tell you 
 what I see. The past and the present, saidst thou ? I will tell 
 thee what I see.' 
 
 " ' Go on, then, if the humour takes thee,' said the old man, 
 smiling. ' Canst thou see my boy's face ? That were the bravest 
 sight of all.' 
 
 " ' I see,' said Doria, who was not looking into the jewel at all, 
 but watching the old man — ' I see two gentlemen, wandering on 
 through woods, mountains, townsof people, so strange that I know 
 
208 NEW YEAR'S DAY AT WINDSOR, 1327. 
 
 not of their nation — year after year towards the east. And with 
 them I see a youth, with whose beauty none living may compare ; 
 aud they have wandered so long that the youth has grown into a 
 man. At first into a young man, whose laughing eyes sparkle at 
 each new wonder on his wondrous wayside ; but at last, before his 
 journey is ended, into a solemn man, a statesman, a king among 
 all the kings of the earth — a man before whose gentle and wise 
 counsels wild war dies into silence, and treason and anarchy give 
 way to loyalty and peace.' 
 
 " ' Thou readest truly enough,' said the old man, weeping. 
 ' Who could not read this of my son ? But ah ! the bitter 
 present ! ' 
 
 " 'I follow this young man, now middle-aged, on his glorious 
 career. I have seen in this stone twenty-six years of his life. 
 I see him wearying of his noble work among the nations who know 
 not God, and pining for his own beautiful Venice. I see him 
 persuading the two old gentlemen, who are with him, to return, 
 and I see them return.' 
 
 " ' Ah, weary day 1 ' said Signor Nicolo. 
 
 " ' Now I see a sea-fight, in shallow waters. And I hear the 
 cries of the victorious Genoese galleys, and they cry, " Doria ! 
 Doria ! " and then they sail away, and two old men are left 
 wailing on the shore.' 
 
 " Signor Nicolo bowed his head. 
 
 " ' Then I see the palaces at Genoa, my own dear home. And 
 I see the man we speak of courted, caressed, loved by high and 
 low. A prisoner, truly, such a prisoner as am I, but with the 
 court ot a prince. That is what I see.' 
 
 " ' That is all the past and the present,' interposed solemn 
 Signor Maffeo, ' I could see that. Thou canst not see the future, 
 dear Doria. They who said that that talisman could show the 
 future, lied. What more dost thou see of the present ? ' 
 
 " ' I see nothing more,' cried Doria, casting the noble jewel 
 down with a clash, ' but I hear. I hear footsteps. I hear them 
 coming towards us. Up the staircase, through the corridor, 
 through gallery after gallery towards us. And those footsteps are 
 the footsteps of the Arbiter of Cathay, and he is here ! ' " 
 
 " I, your Grace," said Sir Henry Mallory to Edward the Third, 
 " had begun to guess what was coming, but very dimly. I, 
 therefore, hearing every word which Doria spoke, looked steadily 
 at the crimson curtain which filled the arch, knowing by instinct 
 that the secret would be read by that curtain. Not anotber 
 Venetian gentleman looked towards it, though some of them were 
 
XEW YEAR'S DAY AT WINDSOR, 1327. 209 
 
 young, and, of course, curious. As I said before, your Grace, 
 their manners are better than ours. 
 
 "But at a certain point in Signor Doria's conversation, I saw 
 that I had not looked in vain. The curtain was raised at one 
 comer, and a man came in and stood perfectly silent and still 
 before it, looking towards us, who were at the upper end of the 
 table. He was a very tall man, with a large brown beard, not 
 shaved according to the Venetian fashion of the time, but growing 
 large and loose. He was clothed entirely from head to foot in 
 white satin, with a few slashes of amber-coloured velvet here and 
 there ; and from his left shoulder hung a short amber-coloured 
 velvet cloak. One could, in these colours, see him well with the 
 crimson satin curtain behind him : he stood perfectly still and 
 silent, as I said, and I knew in a moment that I was looking on 
 the immortal MARCO POLO ! 
 
 " I left feasting my eyes on him at once. I had seen him. 
 My grandchildren could say now, ' Our grandsire saw Marco Polo 
 at Venice, after his return from captivity at Genoa.' I turned to 
 the group on my right. Doria sank back in his chair, saying, 
 ' I hope it has not killed him ! ' Dandalo, who had been talking 
 ship-talk all the evening, on the left side of the Poli, came up 
 and said, ' What ho ! Signor Nicolo, thy son is come back ! ' 
 But we could not rouse the old man for some time. We brought 
 up Marco Polo himself, but the old gentleman did not know hhn 
 at first. When he did, he kissed him, and asked him where he 
 had been. The whole plot was a failure, as it seemed to us, after 
 all the pains we had taken. Marco Polo knelt at his father's 
 knees, and took his head on his shoulder. There was the brown 
 beard of the one and the white beard of the other intermingling, 
 and the blue velvet and gold of Signor Nicolo's dress was inter- 
 mixed with the white satin and amber of Signor Marco (a strange 
 picture, your Grace), with all the brilliant dress and jewellery of 
 Venice crowding round. Every one stood perfectly silent ; Maft'eo 
 alone weeping. Since the world began, your Grace, I doubt if a 
 nobler company was ever assembled ; there were twenty-nine of 
 the most richly dressed men in Europe crowding round the old 
 man and his son, who were in one another's arms after their 
 weary separation, and whilst we looked on, we were joined 
 bv another." 
 
 " And who was he ? " said Edward the Third. 
 
 "Death, your majesty. Marco Polo, after a time, half rose, 
 and looked into his father's face, and then gently laid him back 
 in his chair, and closed his eyes. He turned his noble presence 
 round on us, and said, ' Gentlemen, I have been bravely welcomed 
 
 15 
 
210 NEW YEAR'S DAY AT WINDSOR, 1327. 
 
 back to Venice. The conqueror of all conquerors has come to 
 greet me." 
 
 " And that was the only time you ever saw him," said the King, 
 " Now describe to us what manner of man he was." 
 
 "He was," said the fool, with his former imitation of Sir 
 Henry, " as like my Lord Mortimer as two peas. I mean as my 
 Lord Mortimer was fifty years ago, when he was younger, and not 
 so ill-looking. I " 
 
 At this moment a grave old gentleman approached the King. 
 
 " May it please your Grace, my Lord Mortimer humbly, and of 
 his duty, prayeth you incontinent to send him your fool, to answer 
 certain matters." 
 
 " Thou lunatic ! " said the King, " what hast thou been 
 doing ? ' ' 
 
 " Your Grace's fool has roused the townsfolk," said the old 
 gentleman. 
 
 " Bid them go to bed again," said the King. 
 
 "But the townsfolk have aroused your Grace's mother, the 
 Queen," said the old gentleman. 
 
 " The devil," said the King. " Thou unlucky fool ! what hast 
 thou been doing? " 
 
 " I did but tell a mournful story, like Sir Henry Mallory," said 
 the fool, fairly aghast at having aroused the ' she-wolf of France 
 from her lair.*' " I did but tell the warder that the castle was 
 a-fire, and bid him ring the bell. I am lost," continued the 
 reckless man, " unless with your Grace's protection. It will be a 
 worse business than Berkeley." 
 
 For one moment after these terrible words the poor young King 
 stood ghastly white, licking his dry lips, and making as though 
 he would swallow something down his choking throat. But he 
 was a king, and he swallowed it. In less than a minute he spoke 
 again. 
 
 " Fly, fool, fly ! Get sanctuary at Eton. Tell my mother that 
 my fool is not here. I will be with her directly. To bed, 
 gentlemen, to bed. Sir Henry Mallory, I thank you for your 
 story." 
 
 Note.— The Printer's Devil, who is going in for a scholarship at 
 Christehurch, would be very happy to know what the author means by 
 taking such astounding liberties with the pedigree of the Great Mogul 
 family ; more particularly as the P.D. is indebted to him in another 
 work for a very correct pedigree of those rascals. 
 
 Author to P. D. : The necessities of fiction are unavoidable. Look at 
 Scott, and don't abuse me. 
 
JACKSON OF PAULS. 
 
JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 " It is a terribly fast college," said Mrs. Jackson to the Dean of 
 Crediton as they lay in bed together one night ; "it is getting a 
 very bad name. Mr. Dickson, who was senior proctor last year, 
 said that it had the worst name for riotous conduct in the wbole 
 university ; he said that quiet men were afraid to walk past the 
 gate, because the men dropped champagne bottles on the pave- 
 ment, which exploded just in front of the feet of passers-by." 
 
 "My dear," said the Dean, "I have done that trick with an 
 empty bottle a hundred times ; it is perfectly safe if you calcu- 
 late the distance : all you have got to look to is the pace your man 
 is walking, and so put it well in front of him and not hit him on 
 the head. I don't see any harm in that." 
 
 Mrs. Dean sniffed and went on with her accusation : " Then 
 they caught one of the marshal's men, who was posting a notice 
 on the buttery door rather late, and they forced ice-cream down 
 his throat with spoons, until he roared for mercy, and bus had 
 neuralgia ever since." 
 
 " Serve him right," said the Dean. " The marshal's men have 
 no right inside our gates ; the notices are always posted by the 
 porter. In my time I'd have " 
 
 " Never mind what you would have done, Mr. Dean ; spare me 
 if you please," said Mrs. Dean. " I suppose that you approve of 
 their getting over the master's garden wall, stealing his cabbages, 
 and planting them in rows in the turf in quad, with their pokers ; 
 I shall hear of your approving of that next, I suppose. Perhaps 
 you would like the minor canons and the choristers to do the same 
 by you." 
 
 " Well, I don't uphold that," said the Dean, who was a great 
 gardener. " Of course they oughtn't to do that ; but a cad can't 
 exist in that college, if he ever gets in — the men are all gentle- 
 
214 JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 
 
 " Do you call it gentlemanly to steal cabbages, Dean ? " 
 
 " They did not steal them, my love," said the Dean, " they did 
 not put them to any improper use — or at least they made no use 
 of them," he added, correcting himself. 
 
 " I consider that cabbages are not grown to be planted on 
 grassplots," said Mrs. Jackson. 
 
 " My dear, boys will be boys," said the Dean, " and they have 
 had four first classes in this year, and are head of the river. By 
 George — I meant St. George, my love — how I laughed when I saw 
 the dear lads go dancing away ahead of Balliol. No, no, my love, 
 he will come to no harm there." 
 
 " There have been eighteen rustications in two terms," said 
 Mrs. Jackson. 
 
 "Well, my dear," said the Dean, "there were about as many 
 when I was there, and the college has turned out ME." 
 
 There was no use for the good-natured lady to continue the 
 argument any further ; she only laughed and said that she wished 
 Charles was going anywhere else. 
 
 Charles Jackson was following fairly in his father's footsteps, 
 and there was every appearance of his taking a first-rate position 
 in the world. At the great school of Stevedon, almost the greatest 
 in all England, the cleverest masters said that he was a boy who 
 would " do " before he had been there a week. Among the other 
 boys of his own age he was a little king, and very soon gained the 
 respect of the senior boys by his talents and his manly bearing ; he 
 went through the school like a lord, taking at one examination 
 more prizes than he could carry, as many as Prince Giglio in 
 " the Rose and the Ring " ever got ; he left that school captain, 
 and his name is fondly remembered there now by the older 
 masters. 
 
 When he went to that school he met another new boy, and in 
 the confusion of the new coiners that boy and he were thrown 
 together in the junior dormitory. Here, for the first time, all the 
 new boys were overhauled, and their names asked. Charles Jack- 
 son was passed without any particular comment, for he was exces- 
 sively cool and strong, and looked quite the match for any boy in 
 the room ; but when his ordeal was over the other boy, with whom 
 Charles had made a slight acquaintance, without asking his name, 
 was had up before the conclave on the biggest boy's bed, and he 
 was asked his name. He was as big and as bold as Charles, and 
 he answered quite quietly and coolly— 
 " Lord Edward D ever est." 
 
 '•' Oh, this one's a lord," said one of them. " Here's a lark ! 
 Who is your father? " 
 
JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 215 
 
 " Lord Eyre." 
 
 " How much money have you got, my lord ? " said the biggest 
 boy, sarcastically. 
 
 " Three-and-sixpence," the boy answered, with the most perfect 
 coolness ; and added, " that must last me to the end of the half, 
 so I shall take care of it." 
 
 There were yells of laughter and wild dances round the lord 
 with the three-and-sixpence, but Charles, slipping on his trousers, 
 ducked in among them and laid his hand on Lord Edward's 
 shoulder. 
 
 " You snobs and cowards," he said, " ridiculing a boy because 
 he has no money. Come, we two will fight any four in the room, 
 won't we, you other boy ?"" 
 
 Lord Edward Deverest thought highly of the arrangement, but 
 no other four seemed to see their way to it, and so, after a few 
 growlings from the senior boys (the eldest of whom had not been 
 there a year) about cocky youngsters, our pair were allowed to go 
 to bed unmolested ; and during the whole of the school career the 
 notorious impecuniosity of Lord Edward Deverest was never once 
 alluded to. He never went in debt, and never borrowed. Once 
 Charles, who was an only son, and very rich, begged him to borrow 
 the money from him to buy a new bat on which Lord Edward had 
 set his heart. On that one occasion the lad borrowed the money 
 of Charles, and instantly wrote to his father to say what he had done, 
 adding that nothing but extreme emergency would have caused him 
 to do such a thing, for that the bat would have been gone the next 
 day ; by return of post Lord Eyre sent back the money, but not 
 one farthing extra. A short time after he met the Dean in society, 
 and said to him — - 
 
 ' ' My son borrowed fifteen shillings of yours the other day, Mr. 
 Dean. I have paid it back without a word, because I want to 
 teach my young rascal economy. I am poor enough in all con- 
 science, and Xorthcot " (his eldest son) " being blind and unable 
 to take his place in the world, Edward will have next to nothing." 
 These two went through school together. This poverty of Lord 
 Edward kept him from a great deal of the society of the school, 
 because many of the amusements were very expensive, and Lord 
 Edward would have nothing for which he could not pay. This 
 fact threw him almost entirely on the society of Charles Jackson, 
 and the two boys had that boy-love for one another which I hope 
 none of our readers have forgotten in the turmoils of life : there is 
 no love except the love of a good woman which surpasses it in 
 purity and in the incitement to noble deeds. Lord Edward was 
 very clever, but not quite so clever as Charles Jackson, yet his 
 
216 JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 
 
 diligence was such that they ran a kindly race with one another : 
 when the Erie scholarship was competed for, the matter seemed to 
 lie between Lord Edward and Charles. Charles won. 
 
 Lord Edward's tutor had him into his private room, and said, 
 " Deverest, what a horrible mess you have made." 
 
 " Well, sir, I could not help it." 
 
 "It is your Latin prose has ruined you, and would ruin any 
 tutor's reputation, sir. You put ' dicebit ' for the future of 
 ' dice' " 
 
 " I did it on purpose, sir," he said, looking stubborn. 
 
 " In the name of confusion, why ? " 
 
 " Can I trust you not to tell ? " 
 
 " Of course," said the tutor. 
 
 " I did it to lose the scholarship. Charles Jackson is the only 
 friend I have in the world, and I think he is glad he has got it. 
 I did not know how the thing was going, for I am better than him 
 in mathematics, and so I muckered my Latin prose." 
 
 The tutor said not one word, but he tapped the lad on the 
 shoulder, and sent him out of the room. 
 
 So came the end of school and the parting. Lord Eyre was 
 terribly poor, and had been saving hard, poor gentleman, to keep 
 Lord Edward at the university, in hopes that he might make a 
 great name and get into office. The loss of the scholarship 
 determined him ; he wrote to his son : 
 
 " Dear Lad, — Better luck next time, but you must go into the 
 army ; you have done well and nobly, but your mother and I have 
 talked over matters, and you must prepare your mind for the 
 Grenadier Guards. Come home, my boy, and bring Charles 
 Jackson with you. 
 
 " Eyre." 
 
 So it came about that while the Dean and his wife were dis- 
 puting in bed about Charles being entered at another college 
 (Charles had been already entered at Paul's), the two lads were 
 amusing themselves at Eyre Castle. 
 
 Lord Eyre was a lean and worn gentleman of the middle age, 
 bitterly poor for his station, paying every one their last penny, but 
 often trudging home from the House of Lords to his lodging 
 through the mud to save the expense of a cab. He said once at 
 the foreign minister's dinner to a young nobleman, " My lord, my 
 daughter Edith is dressed very much by the money which I save 
 in cabs and cigars." 
 
 " But you are a great smoker," said Lord Desmoulins (he was 
 
JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 217 
 
 au advanced Radical, and claimed collateral kinship with the great 
 Camille Desmoulins of the Revolution). 
 
 " Yes, my lord, hut I smoke pipes ; and to tell the truth I 
 always drink beer, when I can get it, in preference to wine. I 
 drink Mr. Michael Bass's beer, my lord, a most respectable man 
 whose acquaintance I have the honour to have made. It has been 
 urged against him in a late election that he is a brewer, a fact 
 which he cannot deny, but further than that there is nothing 
 against his character." 
 
 Lord Desmoulins, the extravagant dandy Radical, ventured no 
 more words, but asked after Lady Edith Deverest. 
 
 " She is quite well, and will appear rather later this season in 
 consefjuence of one of my tenants having died, and of my refusing 
 to push his widow for the rent. I had only eighteen pounds to 
 come to town with myself." 
 
 This Lord Eyre, with the heart and head of a gentleman, the 
 body of a giant, and the kindliness of a Pantagruel, was the justest, 
 kindest, and best loved landlord in the county. Poor as he was, 
 no man ever dreamt of seeking a farm on any other man's estate, 
 if there was one to be had on his. The people called him " the 
 good lord," and although on economic grounds he smoked tobacco 
 and drank Bass's beer, he was one of the most accomplished 
 gentlemen in the land, and his house was most refined and per- 
 fectly mise for twenty miles round. 
 
 " There is my father," said Lord Edward to Charles as they 
 got out at the station. " God bless his sweet heart? he's getting 
 younger every year. He has brought over the waggonette, and 
 I'm blessed if there is not Edith sitting in it. Here Tom, Tom, 
 see after the luggage. Charley, let me run on." And in less than 
 a minute the young gentleman had bounced into the waggonette 
 and was exchanging kisses with his father and sister. 
 
 Charles came up and was welcomed. 
 
 " Now," said my lord, " we have got the young rascal who has 
 robbed my son of his scholarship. Now we have him, and we will 
 put him in the dungeon under the keep. Mind he does not bolt, 
 Tom," he added to the groom. 
 
 The groom laughed so pleasantly that Charles came to the con- 
 clusion that Lord Eyre was a good master. He looked at Lord 
 Eyre, and gave his word of honour that he would not make any 
 attempt to escape. While they were laughing he turned, and for 
 the first time in his life saw Lady Edith. 
 
 It was all over at once. There was no doubt about the matter. 
 In Lady Edith he saw the friend of his heart, his boy-love, trans- 
 formed into a beautiful young woman, the flash of whose eyes sent 
 
218 JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 
 
 his blood tingling about his ears. The creature he had loved best 
 in the world had been Lord Edward, and he was repeated in his 
 sister. It was all over at once : there was no mistake about it : 
 that woman or death — that woman or ruin. 
 
 To all honest men this matter will come sooner or later : what 
 I say is, the sooner the better. In this particular case, however, 
 the young lady had been to a certain extent prepared for the 
 arrival of her brother's friend. He had written to her about him 
 for four years, and had extolled him as a marvel of learning and 
 diligence. He had confided to her the fact that he was doubtful 
 about Charles's mathematics, and that he had deliberately 
 muckered his own Latin prose, and she had congratulated herself 
 on the nobility of her brother. She had expected to see a pale- 
 faced young bookworm ; the lad she saw was one of the grandest 
 and noblest lads ever seen. 
 
 " He is more beautiful than my brother," she thought. 
 
 And he thought, " She is far handsomer than her brother." 
 
 Now this is not a love-making story ; it is a simple matter-of- 
 fact little story of no pretensions whatever, limited as to space (for 
 our editor stands no nonsense, and I do not blame him), so I will 
 just say this : Three weeks afterwards Charles Jackson had his 
 arm round Lady Edith's waist in the conservatory. And if you 
 do not know what that means you had better try it by experience. 
 The fact is, they were engaged : with only the father to get 
 over. 
 
 " You had better go to papa," she said. 
 
 " I think I had." And he went to papa. 
 
 Lord Eyre was busy at his accounts. " What do you want, my 
 dear Charles ? " he said, briskly and cheerfully. 
 
 "I am in love with Lady Edith, sir," blurted out Charles. 
 
 " I don't see my way to it, my lad," said Lord Eyre. " It won't 
 do." 
 
 " Can't you? as we are both plain speakers, my lord, give me 
 a trial, and see how I do at the university? " 
 
 Lord Eyre hesitated ; but at the end he said, " No, the thing 
 must be finished and ended." He would not even give him a trial. 
 " Have you spoken to her ? " he added. 
 
 " Yes, my lord." 
 
 "And she? " 
 
 " She said yes, my lord." 
 
 " Well, come back with a good degree this time three years, 
 and we will think of it." 
 
 " May I see her before I go, my lord ? " 
 
 "You may see her as much as you like as long as you stay; 
 
JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 219 
 
 and as for the letters you write to her, you may write as many as 
 you like, and her mother sha'n't look at them. I am going to write 
 one now, so good night." 
 His lordship wrote : — 
 
 "Dear Dean, — Your son has proposed to my daughter. I am 
 utterly opposed to the matter altogether, for I helieve she would 
 have Lord Atterly, who will he home from the Mediterranean next 
 week. If your son does well within the next three years, I shall 
 haye no objection further to offer. 
 
 " Eyre." 
 
 The Dean wrote : — 
 
 "My Lord, — I am perfectly astounded at what you tell me. 
 The ungrateful audacity of my son in proposing marriage at the 
 age of nineteen has filled me with dismay. At my death my son 
 will have nearly £80,000 first and last, and the idea of his daring 
 to propose marriage without consulting me is absolutely pre- 
 posterous. I have ordered him home by this post." 
 
 Lord Eyre wrote : — 
 
 " Dear Dean, — You had better keep your breath to cool your 
 porridge. I am a very poor man, because I have to pay off some 
 heavy mortgages ; but I shall be a rich man, if I live, in ten years. 
 Northcot will have no children, and I am going to send Edward 
 into the Guards, where, if I am any judge of politics, he stands a 
 good chance of having his head broke. I won't have the matter 
 broken off entirely, unless she accepts Atterly. If she does that, 
 it is all over between us. I am at present a poor man, and I want 
 to keep two strings to my bow. Your son will be a very good 
 second string, and I believe that the girl likes him better than she 
 does Atterly. 
 
 "Eyre." 
 
 It was all over for the present, and Charles went to Paul's 
 while Lord Edward went into the Guards. Sometimes Lord 
 Edward would come to Paul's and have a boisterous clay and 
 night, and sometimes Charles would get leave from the head of 
 his house to go to London, and have a rather boisterous day in 
 Birdcage Walk. On one occasion, I remember, he missed the last 
 train, and the kindly Guardsmen invaded the Paddington station 
 and chartered a special engine for him. He got to his destination 
 at a quarter past two. It is not true that he knocked up the vice- 
 
220 JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 
 
 chancellor to explain the delay. It was Giggles of the Fusiliers 
 who did that, and the vice-chancellor pointed oiit to him in a neat 
 speech that he was not sober (which was actually the fact). The 
 Guardsmen telegraphed up the line, and then went back on the 
 engine at half-past three. Where are they now ? Rotting on 
 Crimean hillsides. 
 
 Charles was the steadiest of youths. He certainly caught it 
 most fearfully at collections for this engine escapade : all his dons 
 had a turn at him one after the other ; but his diligence was so great, 
 and his escapades were so few, that he got off pretty easily ; the 
 more so as they had previously whetted their teeth on one Charles 
 Ravenshoe, a very bad character, who had come up just before, 
 and had caught it hot and heavy. The fact of the matter was that 
 the dons saw a prospective first in Charles Jackson, and they liked 
 firsts at Paul's. Making a first out of Charles Ravenshoe was a 
 hopeless thing, but Charles Jackson was a very hopeful subject, 
 and a proper amount of wigging might do it. The master said 
 that really and truly, when all was said and done, he did not see 
 much wrong in the young man's collections. His papers were 
 simply admirable, and his " viva voce " was as good as he had 
 ever heard. 
 
 The Dean said that his papers were good enough, and his " viva 
 voce " good enough, but that if he was going to make it a practice 
 to come down in the dead of night on steam-engines with a parcel 
 of howling drunken Guardsmen, he had better carry his talents 
 elsewhere. 
 
 The bursar, no one ever knew why, said that his father was a 
 most eminent man in the Church. 
 
 This exasperated the Dean, who said that some of the most 
 troublesome cubs he had ever known had come from great Church 
 families. 
 
 Charles got his caution from his first collections, and was very 
 careful, working hard for the first three terms. His smalls were, 
 of course, a day's holiday to him, but he wanted honours in 
 moderation ; there he was a certain first, in two schools. Every- 
 thing was going well with him, when 
 
 There came a letter from Lord Eyre : — 
 
 "Dear Lad, — Cease corresponding with Edith. Conceive it 
 to be all over. Atterly is come, and she will have him. 
 
 " Eyre." 
 
 Consider it as all over ! Certainly he had not heard of her for 
 
JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 221 
 
 weeks. "They will break her heart, but I will not help," the 
 gallant lad said. " Oh, my darling, my darling ! " 
 
 He had already rowed stroke in the torpid, young as he was, 
 and the torpid was a good one. He went to Jones, the captain 
 and secretary, and he said — 
 
 " Jones, you only row well how side." 
 
 " Well, that is true, young one. I row three in the four now. 
 What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Try me as stroke of the four." 
 
 Jones looked at him. " Can you mark your stroke, lad '? You 
 are very young." 
 
 " Try me," said Charles. 
 
 " You row well, hut you are very inexperienced." 
 
 " I'll tear the d — d boat to pieces for strength," said Charles. 
 
 "We don't want the boat torn to pieces," said Jones; "but 
 you row before me and see what we can do. We ought not to go 
 on at all ; there is not a week to the race, and we are all mops 
 and brooms. Urquhart is sick, and I cannot row stroke side. 
 My lad, if you can give us a stroke well marked, we will take the 
 boat from Chelsea to Hackney." 
 
 They paddled down to the white tree, getting gently together. 
 " See," said Balliol and Exeter, " those Paul's men have got their 
 torpid stroke in their four." And the cads betted six to four 
 against Paul's at Iffley, but the watermen at the University barge 
 only woidd bet at evens. 
 
 For before starting from the white tree Charles said, quietly, 
 "I only want my stroke rowed up to, and if you can do it we 
 must win, for I have the devil in me." 
 
 The watermen listened to the oars all clicking together, and 
 made their arrangements at once. In times of extreme anguish 
 the intellect gets quickened, and Charles's intellect was quickened 
 now. He knew the stroke those men wanted, he had studied 
 them from the bank day after day ; he had seen that four long- 
 backed men will never row well behind a short-backed stroke, and 
 be gave them their will. As soon as they had stretched them- 
 selves he gave them a sharper stroke, and they answered to it in 
 that short course. They came thundering up from the gut, in a 
 way which made any speculation about the fours perfectly useless. 
 Paul's raced down Pembroke and Exeter in an absurd manner, 
 and Jones, the Paul's captain, said, " I will never distrust a 
 youngster as stroke." 
 
 Must I go on '? I fear so ; there is so much mincing of matters 
 nowadays that real truth is nearly useless. After the race 
 Charles went to the supper in the rooms of a man he hardly knew, 
 
222 JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 
 
 and there and then, before the first lobster was eaten, he an- 
 nounced his intention of getting entirely drunk. 
 
 Jones, the captain, reasoned with him, but he was not to bo 
 dissuaded. " I am going to get drunk — indeed, I am drunk 
 now." 
 
 " But you have had nothing to drink," urged Jones. 
 
 "But I am drunk, and intend to be more so. I'll be a 
 drunkard for the rest of my life, and I will die of delirium tremens. 
 Confound it, our family is a good one, and we could buy him up 
 ten times over. But he is a good fellow, and yet I have ten devils 
 in me." 
 
 " Don't get drunk, old fellow," said the captain. 
 
 " Oh, you mean intoxicated. No, I have not come to that yet. 
 But I am going to make hay." 
 
 " Don't be a fool," said the captain, in a whisper. 
 
 " Why not ? " replied Charles ; " a girl has made a fool of me. 
 I will make a fool of myself. I say, you fellows, I want to know 
 the number of your staircases. Jones, old boy, one word with 
 you." 
 
 " Come here, old man," said the captain, gently. 
 
 " Jones, I am mad. I have been true to her, and during this 
 last week, after her father cast me off, she has not written me one 
 solitary line. If she had written one solitary line to say that she 
 loved me I would not have cared ; but she is false, and I am 
 mad ! " 
 
 Jones (God bless thee, dear Jones, our old captain ! shall I 
 give thy name ? no, for thou art a country parson now) did not 
 quite know what to say. He asked if insanity was congenital in 
 the family, for he had been in for physical science, and knew what 
 he was about. 
 
 " No," said Charles, " there is no madness in our family ; but 
 I am going to have a bonfire in quad, this very evening." 
 
 " I will punch your head if you try it," said the captain. 
 
 " Of course you can do it if you choose," said Charles ; and so 
 the matter ended for the time. 
 
 Now it so happened that Charles, who had announced his inten- 
 tion of getting drunk, took hardly anything to drink, and although 
 he grew more boisterous and reckless as the hours went on, 
 remained perfectly sober as far as stimulants were concerned. 
 " One thing she shall never hear of me," he thought ; " she shall 
 never hear that I was drunk." But all this time, I regret to say, 
 our beloved old captain insisted on drinking "bishop" in large 
 quantities, and what with coming off training and with being half 
 intoxicated with success at winning the fours before he began at 
 
JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 223 
 
 the " bishop," ho at about eleven o'clock began to look on Charles 
 Jackson's idea of a bonfire in quad, as a very good one, and to 
 wonder that he had not thought of it himself. 
 
 " You are a deuced clever fellow, Jackson," he said, in a loud 
 voice, to no one in particular. "You are fit to be an arch- 
 chancellor, I should say a vice-bishop. We'll do it, my lad." 
 
 " What shall we do ? " shouted Jack Croft (No. 2). 
 
 " You are interrupting the chair, sir," said the captain ; " you 
 always are interrupting the chair. Hold your tongue, sir." 
 
 "Hang it, old chap," said Jack, "we are out of training, and 
 a man may speak." 
 
 "A man may not speak, sir," said the captain, solemnly. " I 
 believe that I am captain of the boat, sir ; you will scarcely go as 
 far, I take it, in your course of mendacious inebriety, as to deny 
 that, sir." 
 
 " I never denied it," said Jack Croft, who saw that his chief 
 had had more than was good for him, and who wanted to keep 
 matters quite quiet. 
 
 " Very good, sir. I am captain of the eight, but I am not 
 captain of the eleven. The captain of the eleven is a gentleman 
 possessed of every Christian virtue ; but he is doing his best to 
 ruin the boat, and ruin this college in the eyes of Europe." 
 
 The captain of the eleven, who was present, said, " You had 
 butter go to bed, old chap." 
 
 " Not at all, sir," said the captain of the eight. "To a mind 
 constituted like yours, sir, I should conceive that the spectacle of 
 my being carried to bed drunk would give satisfaction. But I am 
 not drunk, sir ; I never am. You seduce my best men, sir, to 
 your cricket — a most immoral game, sir — and leave me a widow 
 and an orphan, comparatively speaking ; have you no morality, sir ? 
 have you no thought about what I must feel ? Why, only last 
 term, sir, you spoilt the boat by carrying away young Dickson — 
 you tore him shrieking from my amis, and instead of rowing a 
 good seven in the boat, he was bowled out with five runs at 
 Kennington. And you, calling yourself after that a man and a 
 Christian, tell me to go to bed. Sir, I propose that we have a 
 bonfire in quad." 
 
 There was no hope of the captain after this, but his nonsense 
 seemed contagious. What in broad daylight would have seemed 
 a monstrous piece of folly, now seemed rather a smart piece of 
 nonsense. It was odd to see Charles Jackson, the only perfectly 
 sober man of the party, marshalling this outrageous and perfectly 
 objectless act against law and order. He was the most persistent 
 of the whole lot. Jack Croft told him to take care, and not be 
 
224 JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 
 
 too prominent ; Dundas warned hiin about the same matter, like 
 a cautious Scotchman ; Livingstone the American pointed out to 
 him that he had a career before him, and that he might better 
 leave it to others ; O'Flaherty the Irishman, who loved him well, 
 told him that he would see the bonfire through and the captain to 
 bed, and take the consequences. But Charles Jackson said, 
 quietly, to O'Flaherty, " A girl has sold me, and I am going to 
 the devil," and O'Flaherty understood at once. 
 
 O'Flaherty and Charles had never been such hearty friends as 
 they were now. " I'll be into it with you, lad : there'll be blazes 
 own row, but save the captain. If there's a woman in the case, 
 I'm your man. But the captain is drunk, and will think better ot 
 it on the morrow. We must save the captain." 
 
 Among all the young lunatics the Irishman was the most 
 thoughtful. " We will have the divvle's own diversion," he said. 
 " I have no reputation to lose, but you and the captain have. 
 Come, go to your beds." 
 
 But Charles was perfectly desperate — he wanted to be rusti- 
 cated. He and O'Flaherty ransacked the scout's holes and got 
 the necessary faggots. The proceedings were very much inter- 
 rupted by the captain, who insisted that no bonfire in quad, could 
 be lucky unless it was fed by a freshman's tea-things ; they 
 accordingly went to the next freshman's door, broke it down with 
 a coal hammer, and threw (under the captain's and O'Flaherty's 
 directions) all his things out of window. I am not exaggerating 
 in the slightest degree. I would give chapter and verse for every 
 word of this, and at the same time I would have let any lady I 
 know walk unattended through the town, while I would not have 
 let her walk through Bonn or through Paris. 
 
 The bonfire came off at eleven ; a little before twelve there was 
 a great riot at the porter's lodge. The captain had been carried 
 to bed after trying to immolate himself on the ashes. His 
 ground for this proceeding was that the quad, was Smithfield, 
 and that he was a true Protestant so far as regarded the captain 
 of the eleven. The Dean came out in his shirt and trousers, and 
 said that if the porter could not keep the place quiet, he would do 
 it himself. He then, after recognising two or three rioters, went 
 to see the smouldering bonfire. The next morning there was a 
 common room on Charles Jackson and O'Flaherty the Irishman. 
 
 "Could not you have spared Charles Jackson, Mr. Dean?" 
 said the Master. 
 
 "No," said the Dean, "the boy has gone mad and must be 
 brought to his senses. It is make a spoon or spoil a kom with 
 him. I think there is a good chance with him ; he has been 
 
JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 225 
 
 disappointed about a woman ; give him two terms, Master, and he 
 will come back again. I like a boy that will go to the mischief 
 for a woman." 
 
 " And 'Flaherty ? " 
 
 " O'Flaherty is an Irishman, and consequently a lunatic. But 
 he is a fine fellow, and the time will come when the English and 
 Irish heart will beat together. Don't send him down, Master, it 
 would break his heart. Dear Master, whatever you do, don't 
 send O'Flaherty down." 
 
 The young gentlemen were brought in at once. The Master 
 asked Charles Jackson if he had anything to do with the gross 
 breach of discipline which had occurred the night before. 
 
 "I am in reality the sole culprit," said Charles; "I egged 
 the others on." 
 
 " Why? " said the Dean. 
 
 " I wanted to get rusticated, sir. You are a good man, Mr. 
 Dean, and I tell you that I am half mad." 
 
 There was a flush on the Dean's face which had not been there 
 for many years, when he said to the Master, " He must go down 
 for two terms, Master." 
 
 Master acquiesced, and down went Charles for two terms ; and 
 the Dean followed him out of the room. 
 
 " Don't be downhearted, old man," said the Dean when they 
 were on the stairs ; "go back and study with your father and 
 come back to us. Have I ever been harsh to you ? If I have, 
 forgive me. My poor boy, win her by work : you can do any- 
 thing." 
 
 " Sir," said Charles, " she is going to be married." 
 
 And the Dean said, " The devil ! " It was very wrong of him 
 to do so, but he said it. 
 
 The Dean was much shorter and sharper with Mr. O'Flaherty 
 than the Master supposed he would have been. The Dean, on 
 returning to the common room, requested sharply to be informed 
 whether English colleges were to be invaded by low Irish riff- 
 raff ; but Mr. O'Flaherty, seeing with the wonderful perception oi 
 his nation that the Dean meant no mischief, replied that " Begorra, 
 he couldn't tell." 
 
 " What do you mean, sir ? " 
 
 " Only what I say, sir. I was sent here to be educated, and 
 I'm having a beautiful education, the best part of which I have 
 got from you. This is a fine University altogether, Mr. Dean; 
 and if there is a bonfire in quad, now and then, why, it's good for 
 the gardeners. Put it to yourself, sir : you look "out of window 
 and see us making a bonfire, and we look up at your window and 
 
 16 
 
226 JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 
 
 sec you looking out at it. I'd bet my life, sir, that whenever we 
 make a bonfire wo shall find you looking out at it." 
 
 " It's no use rusticating the man, Mr. Master," said the Dean. 
 " Gate him." 
 
 " That's not much," said the irrepressible Irishman ; " I've 
 been gated ever since I came here. I was gated two days after I 
 came into residence, and my accumulations of gating have got so 
 large that if the last trump sounds next Good Friday before nine, 
 as Dr. Camming says it will, I sha'n't be out of college." 
 
 " Don't talk that nonsense here, sir," said the Dean, "You 
 are gated." 
 
 PART II. 
 
 Charles was very anxious about his father's reception of him, 
 but there was no necessity for his anxiety at all ; the College 
 Dean's letter had gone before him. The College Dean's letter 
 was so like himself that I give it ; 
 
 " Don't scold this boy, it won't do. There is a woman in the 
 case. Make him read with you : be kind to him, he is a splendid 
 fellow." 
 
 I do not suppose that there was much need for this letter, 
 but it had some effect, for the Dean of Crediton could scarcely 
 have been well pleased at having his son rusticated. When 
 Charles got out of his fly at the; door of the Deanery, the Dean 
 kissed him on both cheeks and said, " You young Gaby, what 
 on earth did you want to make a bonfire in quad, for ? My 
 dear lad, I will tell you the honest truth, I did the same thing 
 in that very same college in 1806, but that was a political 
 bonfire. I pointed out to the dons that we burnt Bonaparte in 
 effigy after Austerlitz. You should have burnt the Emperor 
 Nicholas in effigy, and you would only have been gated for two 
 days." 
 
 Charles's mother, further than saying to the Dean that she 
 had told the Dean what would occur if he went to that college, 
 never more alluded to the matter, and so Charles was perfectly 
 comfortable at home. His father and he had a long talk, and 
 they agreed that this disaster would ruin all chances of his getting 
 a first " You see, my boy, that hard as you read with me I am 
 past the age. I do not know the new art of cram, but let you 
 and I go to the bottom of things. I am better in mathematics 
 than in classics, and we will go in together on good sound solid 
 work. I have such faith in the old University (never use that 
 horrid word ' 'varsity,' my lad ; don't vulgarise the old place) 
 
JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 227 
 
 that I feel sure some men are left there who will recognise it in 
 
 the schools." 
 
 Father and son sat down to their labour of love in the old 
 cathedral close. The Dean was rector of one of the parishes in 
 the town, but he took an additional curate, and explained the 
 matter to the Bishop. "I am teaching my son, my lord," he 
 said. " The poor in my parish are excellently tended, and shall 
 suffer no harm in any way." 
 
 " Your son got into a scrape, did he not, Mr. Dean ? " said the 
 Bishop. 
 
 " Yes, ray lord, and I want to get him out of it." 
 
 "Money?" said the Bishop in an indifferently inquiring way, 
 spinning his eye-glass round and round. 
 
 " Xo, my lord, a woman," said the Dean. 
 
 " Hey, hey ! " said the Bishop, " that's bad — that is a very 
 sad pity indeed. The world looks lightly on a young man who 
 has gone wrong with his money, particularly when there is a rich 
 father to pay ; but the world looks askance when there is a woman 
 in the case. Has he married her '? " 
 
 " The mischief is that she won't many him," said the Dean. 
 
 " Some previous tenderness, I suppose," said the Bishop. "Is 
 the young woman of the lower class ? " 
 
 •• My lord,'' said the Dean, " you are labouring under a mistake. 
 The young lady in question is Lady Edith Deverest." 
 
 The Bishop gave a great start. 
 
 " She has refused him and he is desperate, my lord,' 'continued 
 the Dean. 
 
 " Oh, this will do, Dean. This will make a man of him, if we 
 guide things rightly. Bring the boy to dinner at the palace. He 
 is rusticated, is he not ? What did he do ? " 
 
 " Made a bonfire in quad, alter the fours.'' 
 
 " Which he won, I remember," said the Bishop, with a some- 
 what guilty look. " I rather think that he is not the first member 
 of his family who did that." 
 
 " He is not, my lord," said the Dean, roundly. " I remember 
 a ladder which was used in getting into college when some people 
 forgot the hour at Christ Ch " 
 
 •• Not another word, Dean ; not another word. You said 
 ladder, I think ; bring your boy up the ladder of learning, and 
 do not remember everything, because one man's memory is quite 
 as good as another's. Keep the lad to his books, and we will 
 see him through if he were to bum the college down. That 
 young man Dickson is ill again, and we shall lose the best tenor 
 in the anthem this afternoon, and I fear for ever. Choristers 
 
228 JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 
 
 never make good tenors, so I never asked for a note out of that 
 young man's head in church till he was eighteen. He was Mrs. 
 Bishop's pad groom, and foster-brother with my eldest boy, but 
 he will die, Dean. With regard to your boy, keep him to his 
 books. Dean." 
 
 " My lord." 
 
 " Bring your lad to see young Dickson after service. Let him 
 see him in his bed ; it will sober him." 
 
 " Is he very ill ? " said the Dean. 
 
 " He will never sing any more," said the Bishop, with a sigh. 
 
 The Dean did not go to evensong that afternoon. He took 
 Charles to see the young singer who was dying. 
 
 The Dean left Charles entirely to himself, and sat in a corner 
 talking to the young man's mother. The Bishop was perfectly 
 right, for even Charles could see that the young man would sing 
 no more except in heaven. Charles did not know the meaning of 
 those thin grasping fingers — fingers which seem always trying to 
 grip the shore of time to avoid the sea of eternity. Charles had 
 never seen death, had never seen a dying person. The young 
 man asked him in a rattling whisper to raise him up ; Charles 
 did so, getting his body behind the young man's ; and he sat so 
 patiently for a quarter of an hour, with the young man's hand in 
 his. The young man did not speak till after a few moments, and 
 when he did, he asked Charles to kiss him. Strange as it was 
 to his habits, he did so. Almost immediately after came that 
 strange quiver which no man used to hospitals ever forgets, and 
 then the young man rolled off Charles's arm into the bed — 
 dead ! 
 
 Though he had never seen death before, he knew what had 
 happened, and lie called his father. The Dean closed the eyes 
 before the wailing mother, but he did not wait to catch the 
 Bishop as he came out from evensong ; he stayed with his son to 
 watch what the first effects of the sight of death would have on 
 him. 
 
 " Father, I have had a great lesson," said Charles. "Death 
 looks beautiful like that. I wish that Edith had been there with 
 us. Let us go home to our books." 
 
 The Dean gave up his son's logic as hopeless after this, and 
 considered him as ruined in that respect. But then it must be 
 remembered that the Dean had not fallen in love for five-and- 
 twenty years (when he courted Mrs. Dean), and that logic and 
 love do not go together. Still there are measures in affairs, and 
 the Dean could by no means understand why Charles Jackson 
 should have wished Lady Edith to have been with him at the 
 
JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 229 
 
 death of this young man. Perhaps ho had forgotten that the 
 highest ami purest form of sentimentalism crops up over a death- 
 bed : almost as if the dead clay cried to Heaven for reproduction. 
 A conceit — cela va sa?is dire. I have only to say that the Dean 
 and Charles went away to their books. 
 
 Father and son worked away, and day by day the father saw 
 that, great as his scholarship was, he was not up to the time ; he 
 had to call up a lean young Minor Canon to their assistance, and 
 after that they got on much better ; but the three worked like 
 horses, and made pretty good weather of it. The lean Minor 
 Canon was eminently good at mathematics, having been educated 
 at Cambridge, where he had been fifteenth wrangler, and had 
 been glad to take a minor canonry with £250 a year, and a wild 
 chance of mathematical teaching. The Dean's classics were un- 
 impeachable, and so Charles was not so very badly off ; but the 
 hopes of a first were extremely dim. " In fact," said the Dean 
 to himself, " the idea is impossible : the loss of these two terms 
 has ruined us utterly. I wish Lady Edith was at the bottom of 
 the Red Sea. I wonder if he thinks of her." 
 
 The way that those three sat hour after hour and inked them- 
 selves was a great " caution," as an American would say. Some- 
 times they read the newspaper (the Evening Mail three times a 
 week), and they became gradually aware that a great European 
 war was on hand, and that the allied troops had landed in the 
 Crimea. 
 
 *' But what does all tbis matter unto me, 
 Whose mind is tilled with indices and surds, 
 X 2 + Ix + 53 
 
 as Lewis Carroll sings in "Phantasmagoria." 
 
 Charles began now to take great interest in the war, a far 
 greater interest than his father and the Minor Canon liked. Mr. 
 Dean happened to speak to my lord bishop on the subject. 
 
 " My boy is not going on well, Bishop," said the Dean. 
 
 " What is he doing now ? " said the Bishop. 
 
 " Beading the newspaper about the war." 
 
 " That is not unnatural," replied the Bishop, " seeing that his 
 sweetheart's brother landed in the Crimea a fortnight ago." 
 
 " It plays mischief with his work. His tutor says that he 
 wishes me to stop the paper altogether." 
 
 " Your tutor is no better than one deprived of understanding," 
 said the Bishop, angrily. "You must not make a fool of the 
 boy; you should excite him about the war, he will work the 
 
230 JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 
 
 better. Man, how I worked in the Waterloo year when I thought 
 that Laura would have had Petre sooner than me. I said to my- 
 self, if she cannot have one kind of honour laid at her feet she 
 shall have another. Petre was killed at Mont St. Jean. Atterly 
 has gone with his regiment, has he not ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "That is against your hoy's chance. All the women will he 
 mad over the men of this campaign. Ha ! I could tell you 
 something if I chose." 
 
 " Well, tell it." 
 
 " Lady Edith would he very sorry if anything were to happen 
 to Atterly, hut I am not at all sure that she would break her 
 heart." 
 
 " Does she not love him ? " said the Dean, in a whisper. 
 
 "My dear soul, how can I possibly tell?" said the Bishop, 
 petulantly. " Leave things alone and don't fuss. Will you 
 intone Litany to-morrow morning? I wish you would. Your 
 continual attention to this boy of yours makes people talk. You 
 are neglecting the services, you very scandalous man." 
 
 The Dean intoned the Litany the very next day (it being 
 Friday), perfectly unconscious that a Litany of quite another 
 character had been previously intoned. In those days intelli- 
 gence did not travel as fast as it does now, and the Dean was 
 totally unaware that the Guards had, before he sang a note, 
 pressed up the hill beyond the Alma above the stream, had never 
 gone back under the deadly fire of the glorious Russians, but had 
 gone on. The Dean had no idea, I say, of what had happened, 
 but had some kind of idea of what mi<jht have happened. When 
 he came to the most affecting passage in the most beautiful 
 service used by any Church he began to waver. He was a man 
 worthy of feeling the Litany ; and he began to waver at this 
 point, though he had been singing splendidly before : 
 
 " That it may please Thee to preserve all that travel by land 
 or by water ; " and here he suddenly thought of Lord Edward 
 Devercst. He got through the passage about women labouring 
 with child, sick persons, "and young children, but when he came 
 to " all prisoners and captives," the organ went on, but the Dean 
 stopped : and a very sharp chorister says that he never took up 
 the intoning until he came to "our enemies, persecutors, and 
 slanderers," and that the rain must have been coming in through 
 the north window, for that the Dean's book was spotted with 
 water. Well, after all, it was only his own boy's boy-love — the 
 boy dearest to his son after that boy's sister — who might be 
 prisoner or worse. A man may surely be allowed a tear over 
 
JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 231 
 
 his prayer-book, when one of those who is dearest to his own 
 dearest is likely to be lying dead. 
 
 "Why did you stop in Litany this afternoon, father?" said 
 Charles. 
 
 " I thought of Edward, rny dear," said the Dean, wearily. 
 
 " Father, let me go as war correspondent or something. I shall 
 go mad like this." 
 
 " No," said the Dean most emphatically, " you will stay where 
 vou are. You could not do the slightest good to the country. 
 You must stay here and keep to your books. Do you think that 
 all victories are won by war ? You shall go to the nest one, but 
 you shall not go to this." 
 
 " But Edward ? " 
 
 " How in the name of confusion could you help Edward if you 
 did go?" 
 
 This was unanswerable, because there did not happen to be any 
 answer to it. The Dean, the Minor Canon, and Charles sat down 
 to their books again ; but the Minor Canon had a heap of trouble 
 with Charles, who began to give him theorems in mathematics 
 which, as the Minor Canon pointed out with tears to the Dean, 
 travelled out of mathematics altogether and went into the region 
 of logic and ethics. They were, as he pointed out, hopeless : 
 
 x = population of Russia 
 y = population of England 
 therefore x = 60,000,000 
 and y = 30,000,000. 
 
 Annual increase of Russia (say) 10,000, annual increase ot 
 England (say) 40,000. Wanted the relative powers of lighting 
 — that is to say, the exact value of the difference between 
 x and y. 
 
 The Dean was very angry at this particular theorem, and con- 
 soled the Minor Canon by telling him that there had not been 
 lunacy in the family since his grandfather had voted fur Fox. 
 
 The classics of Charles were very good, and they were all work- 
 ing away at the mathematics, in the intervals of their talking 
 about the war, which even the Minor Canon began to understand, 
 when they had a very rude awakening. 
 
 There caiue a day* in Charles's life when " surds " by no means 
 rhymed with "eleven-thirds." Charles and the Minor Canon 
 were alone together at some advanced mathematics when the 
 Dean came in and put his hand round his son's neck. 
 
 "Charles," he said, " I want your attention. There has been 
 a meat battle — the battle of the Alma." 
 
232 JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 
 
 " Have the Grenadiers beun engaged? " shouted Charles. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Is Edward mentioned ? " 
 
 "Yes. Sit down and listen; I am only reading you the 
 telegram from the daily paper : 
 
 " ' Young Arbuthnot ran on with the colours, and fell at once, 
 the flag folding over his body. There was a struggle for the 
 colours, in which Lord Edward Deverest and Lord Atterly took 
 part, and I regret to say were both killed. Lord Edward Deverest 
 fought to the last, using a gun rammer with terrible effect after 
 his sword was broken. Lord Atterly, like Lord Edward Deverest, 
 was killed by a close musketry fire with the old round ball. When 
 I got up 1 thought that Lord Edward Deverest was alive, for he 
 looked so very quiet, and was smiling, but he was quite dead. 
 Lord Atterly lay with his face downwards, and so I could not 
 see it.' " 
 
 Charles rose and said, " Edward ! Edward ! Edward ! " Then 
 he broke out into a passion of tears and said, " That I should be 
 floundering here among these mathematics while my love lies dead." 
 
 "Go to her," said the Dean, furiously. "Go to her, if you 
 are a son of mine ; leave your studies for a week and go to her. 
 She loves only three in the world — yourself, Edward, aud Atterly. 
 I doubt if she cared much for Atterly. I say nothing about that ; 
 she may have loved the man or she may not. Eyre has been a 
 fool about Atterly. I would have settled as much on the girl as 
 Atterly ; it was only the title which kicked the balance. Go to 
 her ; there is nothing wrong between you at all, but Eyre wanted 
 her to marry into her own order, and the brave girl gave up every- 
 thing to her father's will. Go to her, boy. Two of those she 
 loved have died bravely : go to her at once and comfort her. I 
 don't know what her relations were to Atterly, but do not make 
 love to her ; speak only about her brother, and if Lord Eyre asks 
 any questions, tell him that I will give you £40,000 on the day 
 you are married. Nay, stop, do not do that : he is a gentleman, 
 and I am a gentleman ; just simply go to her and see how she 
 will receive you." 
 
 "I want to see Edith, my lord," said Charles when he was 
 shown into his presence. 
 
 " My boy, it is a sad time," said Lord Eyre. 
 
 " The better reason that I should go to her, my lord." 
 
 " God knows she wants comforting," said Lord Eyre. " Do 
 you know, lad, that the matter between her and Atterly came to 
 nothing at all. That is why Atterly went with his regiment. Go 
 to her and comfort her. Come here." 
 
JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 233 
 
 Charles, awed, went to him. 
 
 " Did you love hini as you said ? " 
 
 "I only loved her through him," said Charles, very quietly. 
 " I loved' him before I ever loved her. My darling lies out on 
 the Crimean hillside, hut his sister lives, and loves me as I loved 
 him." 
 
 " He was your Xenos," said Lord Eyre, bending his head 
 down. 
 
 " He was more than any Xenos to me, my lord : and if you 
 will let me go to her I will he more than a husband to her." 
 
 " I urged her about Atterly," said Lord Eyre. 
 
 " You have no reason to urge her about me, my lord. I knew 
 that you wanted money brought into the family — I can bring it. 
 Now, my lord, quick and let me go to her." 
 
 He went to her. What passed I do not know in any way, for 
 the simple reason that lovers are not in the habit of telling their 
 secrets before third parties. I could tell a secret or two myself 
 perhaps, but it would not go into evidence, because no jury will 
 convict without three witnesses, and the third is always wanting 
 in cases of this kind. It is quite enough to say that Charles 
 returned to Lord Eyre and informed him that as far as Lady 
 Edith was concerned there was no trouble whatever. 
 
 " Then all you have got to do," said Lord Eyre, "is to get a 
 tine degree. I don't mind leaving my lassie with you now. I want 
 to be buried in Oxford, and I have left the money for a funeral 
 sermon." 
 
 " Do not talk of funerals, my lord." 
 
 " Here it is," said Lord Eyre. "Edward, sweetheart, love, I 
 will be with you directly ! " and Lord Eyre fell heavily back on 
 the sofa. 
 
 Charles was eager and diligent with him : you may be as eager 
 and as diligent with a man as you choose, but after he is dead you 
 can do nothing with him. 
 
 Charles went very quietly back to Edith after he had arranged 
 everything. It was a terrible moment. 
 
 "Edith! " 
 
 " Has he given his consent ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Then you can stay and comfort me, for my darling Edward. 
 Oli, my darling Edward ! Oh, my pretty darling ! And poor 
 Atterly, Charles ; he was rough and rude, but he loved me dearly. 
 Charles, when we go to church, let us say a prayer together for 
 the souls of Edward and Atterly. It is very wrong, I know, but 
 God will not be very angry. Let us go to papa and comfort him. 
 
234 JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 
 
 Oh, my beloved, let us weep together, for we can never rejoice 
 any more ! " 
 
 ""Edith!" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Can you bear any more ? " 
 
 " I do not think so. Come closer to me. I think that I can 
 bear anything with you." 
 
 " Your father is dead." 
 
 There was a burst of tears and then a long silence. The last 
 words she said to him were — 
 
 "I'll go to my old nurse, Charles. How kind it would be of 
 God if He would let us all die and meet in heaven ! " 
 
 The terrible catastrophe of the deaths of her brother and her 
 father following so closely on one another made her refuse the visits 
 of Charles. He went back to the Dean his father, the Minor 
 Canon his tutor, and to his studies. 
 
 " Father," he said once, " I feel like a brute." 
 
 " And in what ? " said the Dean. 
 
 " I have been living the life of a brute here while our boys have 
 been dying in the Crimea." 
 
 " If we are all to go fighting," said the Dean, " let me know, 
 and I will go into training at once. You will do far better for 
 her if you can get a second than if you went fighting," 
 
 Very little passed between Charles and Lady Edith after this. 
 She was relegated to an aged aunt, who was also a dragon, and 
 Charles saw veiy little of her, except, as one might say, through 
 the wrong end of a telescope This pleased the Dean his father 
 very much, and it also pleased the Dean of his college. The Dean 
 of Crediton about this time was made Fellow of All Souls, and 
 came into residence, bringing with him the Minor Canon as mathe- 
 matical tutor to his son — a measure which gave the deepest offence 
 to the College Dean. All kinds of reports have got out about that 
 dinner (I mean of course the celebrated dinner in Paul's common 
 room to the Dean of Crediton). The hall was under repair, and 
 they dined in common room, and the scouts say that the Dean of 
 College called the Dean of Crediton no better than a fool for 
 thinking that his son would be a first. The Dean of Crediton is 
 represented as replying with considerable vivacity — a fact which 
 heated the quarrel. The College Dean went so far as to say that 
 it was an insult to the University to bring a Cambridge man up as 
 coach. But this is only what we heard through the scouts. As 
 for the noise they made over that dinner I can answer with a dozen 
 others. If we had made half such a row, there would have been 
 half a dozen gated for the rest of term. I heard them, and so 
 
JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 235 
 
 did O'Flaherty and Jack Croft ; and the devil prompted Jack Croft 
 
 to bet O'Flaherty two pounds sterling that he would not go into 
 the common room and ask if the college was on fire. Which thing 
 O'Flaherty instantaneously did, winning his two pounds and getting 
 gated at four o'clock for the rest of his ill-spent life. 
 
 It is very odd about this fantastic young gentleman that he got 
 an uncommonly good second, and is carrying everything before 
 him at the bar. We have not to do with O'Flaherty, however. 
 The captain passed and was ordained before Charles's turn came. 
 Livingstone the American, though only third in classics, was first 
 in physical science. But now came the autumn in which Charles 
 was to stand or fall. And it was noticed that the Dean his father 
 got more proud as the time went on, came more to Oxford, and 
 fought the College Dean in the most persistent manner. Nobody 
 ever got the best of the College Dean yet (at least I never heard 
 of any one who did), but if ever the College Dean met his match 
 he nut it in the Dean of Crediton. 
 
 The examinations came on, and folks talked about them ; there 
 were three or four certain firsts, beyond that all was chaos. Jack- 
 son was mentioned as a man who might have had a first, but he 
 had been sent down for a row, he had been disappointed about a 
 woman, and her brother had been killed in the Crimea, and her 
 father had died in a fit. Jackson had no chance among under- 
 graduates. He would do well in his classics possibly, and might 
 get a third. 
 
 The Dean chose to satisfy himself, and when he went to the 
 schools and heard his boy's name read out the first time he was 
 not very much surprised. He went back to the hotel and said, 
 "You have got your first, my lad." And there were great re- 
 joicings. But the old Dean stayed up for the mathematical class 
 list, and if you will believe me the Minor Canon had done his 
 duty so well that Charles Jackson was first in mathematics too. 
 A Paul's man says that the Dean put down his shovel hat and 
 danced on it, but Paid's men in the good old days were always 
 poking fun, and were never lower than fourth on the river. Let it 
 pass. Charles was a double first. 
 
 Did he marry Lady Edith ? I suppose he did, because in the 
 visitors' book at Balaclava you will find the name of Charles 
 Jackson and Lady Edith Jackson side by side. He is an eminent 
 Q.C., and will be a judge before long. The calumny of his having 
 ornamented the statue in the quadrangle of Paul's with a wash- 
 hand basin and daffodils on Easter Monday is a pure fiction, which 
 has been traced to another quarter. 
 
 So sadness passes into laughter. He had loved the boy so 
 
236 JACKSON OF PAUL'S. 
 
 dearly that he had a double love for his sister. There is no cloud 
 between them. Sometimes iu tbe winter's night he will awake and 
 say to her, " Edward must be lying cold to-nigbt." And some- 
 times when they are walking together in spring-time, she will say 
 to him, " I wonder how brave the irises look on Edward's grave." 
 And there, if you please, is the whole of my little romance. He 
 loved the brother witb the love of a boy, and now he loves the 
 sister with the love of a man. 
 
 As for the Dean, Charles's father, he is living an entirely new 
 life. It is told of him that in old times he fought " Abingdon 
 Bill." But that was nothing to his present pugnacity. He is 
 lighting Purchas, Voysey, Liddon, and O'Neil all at once. He 
 says that he has beaten Dean Stanley, and not only Stanley, but 
 the whole of the Evangelical party. He may have, or on the 
 other hand he may not : but, put it how you will, Dean Jack- 
 son is a good man, and the world would be worse without him. 
 There is one man, however, whom he will never beat, and that is 
 the Dean of Paul's. Having heard that that inexorable man has 
 taken a college living, my friend, long Galton, has put his name 
 on the books again, and is going to take his master's. 
 
ETBE'S MAECH. 
 
EYRE'S MARCH.* 
 
 PART I. 
 
 The colony of South Australia, now the largest of the five colonies, 
 was, about the year 1841, practically the smallest. The area 
 available, cither for cultivation or pasturage, seemed at that time to 
 be extremely limited. Northward of the colony lay, or seemed to 
 lie, the hideous, hopeless basin of Lake Torrens — a land of salt mud 
 and shifting sand, from the description of Sturt and Eyre, in which 
 human life was impossible, and the external aspects of which were 
 so horrible that the eye wearied with looking on them, and the 
 sickened soul soon brooded itself into madness. North-westward 
 nothing had as yet been discovered but grassless deserts, while 
 westward no human foot had penetrated beyond Eyre's peninsula. 
 But the coast line to the west, between Port Lincoln, in South 
 Australia, and King George's Sound, in West Australia, a distance 
 of thirteen hundred miles, had been surveyed by Flinders from the 
 sea, and pronounced by him to be what it is. 
 
 That main part of the South Australian coast called the 
 Australian Bight is a hideous anomaly, a blot on the face of 
 nature, the sort of place one gets into in bad dreams. For seven 
 hundred miles there is no harbour fit to shelter a mere boat from 
 the furious south wind, which rushes up from the Antarctic ice to 
 supply the vacuum caused by the burning, heated, waterless conti- 
 nent. But there is worse than this. For eleven hundred miles 
 no rill of water, no, not the thickness of a baby's little finger, 
 trickles over the cruel cliffs into the sailless, deserted sea. I cast 
 my eve over the map of the world, and see that it is without 
 parallel anywhere. A land which seems to have been formed not 
 
 * This narrative was written four months before tit*' Jamaica rebellion, 
 
 at a time when the author believed Mr. Eyre to be dead ; not in the least 
 degree knowing that Eyre, Governor of Jamaica, was the old hero Eyre 
 of his youthful admiration. Both parties, therefore, in the great Eyre 
 controversy may read it without prejudice. 
 
240 EYRE'S MARCH. 
 
 by the 'prentice hand of nature, but by nature in her dotage. A 
 work badly conceived at first, and left crude and unfinished by the 
 death of the artist. Old thoughts, old conceptions which pro- 
 duced good work, and made the earth glad cycles agone, attempted 
 again with a failing hand. Conceive digging through a three-foot 
 crust of pleioeene formation, filled with crude, almost imbecile, 
 forms of the lowest animal life, millions of ages later than Eozoon 
 Canadense, yet hardly higher ; and then finding shifting sea-sand 
 below ! Horrible, most horrible ! 
 
 This, the most awful part of the earth's crust, a thousand miles 
 in length, has been crossed once, and once only. Not by a well- 
 appointed expedition with camels, with horse-drays, preserved 
 meats, and a fiddler ; but by a solitary man on foot. A man irri- 
 tated by disappointment ; nigh worn-out by six months' dread 
 battle with nature in her cruellest form : a man who, having been 
 commissioned to do something in the way of exploration, would 
 not return home without results : a man in whose path lurked 
 murder— foul, treacherous, unexpected — the murder of a well-tried 
 friend. To such a man has hitherto been reserved the task of 
 walking a thousand miles round the Australian Bight. Was there 
 ever such a walk yet ? I have never heard of such another. 
 
 Of this Mr. Eyre, who made this unparalleled journey, I know- 
 but little, save this : — He knew more about the aboriginal tribes, 
 their habits, language, and so on, than any man before or since. 
 He was appointed Black Protector for the Lower Murray, and did 
 his work well. He seems to have been (teste Charles Sturt, from 
 whom there is no appeal) a man eminently kind, generous, and 
 just. No man concealed less than Eyre the vices of the natives, 
 but no man stood more steadfastly in the breach between them and 
 the squatters (the great pastoral aristocracy) at a time when to do 
 so was social ostracism. The almost unexampled valour which led 
 him safely through the hideous desert into which we have to follow 
 him, served him well in a fight more wearing and more dangerous 
 to his rules of right and wrong. He pleaded for the black, and 
 tried to stop the war of extermination which was, is, and I sup- 
 pose will be, carried on by the colonists against the natives in the 
 unsettled districts beyond reach of the public eye. His task was 
 hopeless. It was easier for him to find water in the desert than to 
 find mercy for the savages. Honour to him for attempting it, 
 however." 
 
 It is interesting to remember also, that this band of country of 
 
 * These words were published in Macmillan's Magazine one month 
 before we heard of the Jamaica rebellion. I have not altered one word 
 of the narrative. 
 
EYRE'S MARCH. 241 
 
 which we have been speaking practically divides the penal settle- 
 ment of Western Australia from the civilised republics of the 
 eastern coast, and must be crossed by any convict who should 
 make his escape. The terror of the colonists which showed itself 
 in such extreme irritation the other day, when it was proposed to 
 send more criminals to Perth, was not without foundation, how- 
 ever. There is very little doubt that a practicable route exists from 
 the east to the west, in the centre of the continent, about a 
 thousand miles to the north of the southern coast, probably, I 
 have thought for a long time, by the Valley of the Murchison. 
 
 It was originally proposed to send out an expedition under the 
 command of Mr. Eyre to cross the bight to the westward ; but his 
 opinion was that although a light party might force their way, yet 
 their success would be in the main useless, as it would be impos- 
 sible ever to follow with stock in consequence of the badness of 
 the country, and thus the main object of the expedition woidd be 
 missed, and the expense incurred without adequate commercial re- 
 sults. The committee, therefore, yielding to his representations, 
 commissioned him to go north, and attempt to explore the interior. 
 
 In this be was unsuccessful. Four hundred miles to the north 
 of Adelaide he got into the miserable country, known then as the 
 basin of Lake Torrens — now known as Lakes Gregory, Torrens, 
 and Blanche — a flat depressed region of the interior, not far from 
 equal to the basin of Lake Superior, of alternate mud, brackish 
 water, and sand ; after very wet seasons probably quite covered with 
 water, but in more moderate ones intersected with bands of dry land 
 varying in size. It is certain that in lHil Eyre found a ring of 
 water round him five hundred miles in extent ; and that in 1860 
 AlacKinlay crossed it, finding nothing but a desert fifty miles broad, 
 without water visible on either hand — came immediately into good 
 country abounding with water, and crossed the continent from south 
 to north. 
 
 Such an achievement was not for Eyre. To MacKinlay and 
 others was left the task of showing the capabilities of Australia ; 
 to Eyre that of showing her deficiencies. Beaten back from the 
 north at all points, he determined to follow out the first plan of 
 the expedition, and try the coast-line westward. He forced his 
 way out of this horrid barren region, bounded (if the reader will 
 kindly look at his Keith Johnston, plate 19, enlarged plate of 
 Australia in the comer, or at any available map of Australia) by 
 Lakes Torrens, Gregory, and Blanche — he crossed the quasi- 
 embouchure of Lake Torrens into the sea : he passed through that 
 great peninsula which now bears his name, "Eyria"; and after 
 various difficulties and aggravations, he formed a depot of his 
 
 17 
 
242 EYRE'S MARCH. 
 
 party at Streaky Bay, just a thousand miles on the eastern or 
 wrong side of King George's Sound, the ohject of his journey. 
 
 Here weary months were past, in desperate fruitless efforts to 
 find a better country to the westward or northward. No water 
 was to be had except by digging, and that was generally brackish, 
 sometimes salt. The country was treeless and desolate, of lime- 
 stone and sand, the great oolite cliffs, which wall the ocean for 
 so many hundred miles, just beginning to rise towards the surface. 
 The heat was so fearful that, on one of the expeditions which Mr. 
 Eyre made westward, a strong, courageous man lay down, as 
 uneducated men will do when things get to a certain stage of 
 desperation. But Eyre got him up again, and got him down to 
 the shore, where they found the shadow of a great rock in that 
 weary land, and saved themselves by bathing the whole afternoon. 
 This was the sort of country they had to contend with. 
 
 Eyre succeeded in rounding the head of the bight by taking a 
 dray full of water with him, making a distance of 138 miles. 
 The country, however, did not improve, and after seven months 
 he was back at his depot at Fowler's Bay (lat. 32° S., long. 132° 
 E.) with no better results than these. 
 
 The expedition had hitherto consisted of Mr. Eyre, Mr. Scott, 
 Mr. Eyre's overseer, two Englishmen, a corporal of engineers, 
 and two natives. Moreover, a small ship had been at his com- 
 mand, and had more than once communicated with Adelaide. It 
 had been Mr. Eyre's later plan to take part of his party overland, 
 and keep this vessel to co-operate with him ; but the answer from 
 Adelaide was inexorable, though polite ; the vessel must not leave 
 the limits of the colony — must not, that is to say, go further west 
 than long. 130° E. ; no farther, indeed, than Eyre had been 
 himself. This was a great disappointment and perplexity. What 
 to do ? — But home save by one route — never ! After very little 
 cogitation he came to the following desperate resolution — to dis- 
 miss the whole of the expedition except one man, and with three 
 natives to face the thing out himself. 
 
 Taking his young companion, Mr. Scott, to walk him upon the 
 shore, he unfolded his plan to him, and gently hut firmly dis- 
 missed him. Scott pleaded hard to shire the danger, but Eyre 
 was immovable. He had selected another, a trusty, tried servant 
 and comrade for years past, the man hitherto mentioned as his 
 overseer. 
 
 This man Mr. Eyre took on one side, and spoke to most 
 earnestly. He pointed the almost hopelessness of their task — 
 thi' horror of the country before them — the perils of thirst, the 
 perils of savages, the awful distance — nine hundred miles. Then 
 
EYRE'S MAKGH. 243 
 
 ho told him that ho was free to return to Adelaide and civilisation, 
 and leave him alone ; and then he asked him, Would he go now '? 
 And the answer was, " Yes, by heaven, to the very end ? " 
 
 His name is worth recording — John Baxter. A good, sound, 
 solid English name. The man himself, too, seems to have been 
 nobly worthy of his name, and to have possessed no small portion 
 of the patient and steadfast temper of his great Shropshire name- 
 sake. 
 
 Baxter remaining linn, his plan required no more maturing. 
 Although the Adelaide Government had refused to allow the 
 schooner to co-operate with him, they had generously sent him 
 everything else he had asked. With a view to his westward 
 journey, he had asked them to send him large quantities of bran 
 and oats, to put his horses — in sad, low condition, in this almost 
 grassless desert — into such strength as would enable them to 
 start with some wild hope of success. They had done so, and 
 now Eyre, dismissing all his companions except Baxter and three 
 natives, determined to remain encamped where he was until the 
 bran and oats were consumed, and then set out. 
 
 So in camp he remained for six weeks, his horses improving 
 day by day. Baxter, the self-devoted hero, was a somewhat 
 diligent and unromantic hero, and all this time worked like a 
 galley-slave. A strange fellow, this quiet Baxter. He could 
 make shoes among other things, could shoe the horses, make 
 pack-saddles, do a hundred and fifty things ; all of which he did 
 with steady, quiet diligence these lonely six weeks, as if a little 
 voice was ever singing in his ear, " The night cometh in which no 
 man can work." I confess that I shoidd have liked to know that 
 man Baxter, but that is impossible ; one can only say that once 
 there was a very noble person whom men called so, and that not 
 ten educated persons living ever heard of his name. 
 
 The six weeks passed; the horses and men got into good con- 
 dition, as well fit for their hopeless journey as hor.-es and men 
 were ever likely to he. It became time to start, and they pre- 
 pared to start ; and here occurs one of those curious coincidences 
 of time which do not startle us in a novel like ''Aurora Floyd," 
 because we know that the author has command of time and space, 
 and uses them with ability for our amusement, but which do 
 startle us, and become highly dramatic, when we find them in a 
 commonplace journal like that of Eyre. Eyre and Baxter were 
 engaged in burying such stores as they could not take with them, 
 when they heard a shot from the bay. Th inkin g some whalers 
 had com.- in. they hurriedly concealed their work, and went 
 towards the shore. It was no whaler. It was their own cutter, 
 
244 EYRE'S MARCH. 
 
 the Hero, which had been to Adelaide, and had returned. The 
 two men they met on the shore were the captain of the Hero and 
 young Scott, who brought a message and innumerable letters. 
 
 The message, verbally delivered, nay, enforced by Scott, and 
 the gist of the innumerable letters, was all the same. "You 
 have failed in your plans of invading our hopeless interior country. 
 So did Sturt and others. But don't take it to heart. Come 
 back to us. You have done and suffered enough to make the 
 colony love and respect you. Come back to us, and we will give 
 you a welcome, with three times three. But for God's sake give 
 up this hopeless, suicidal, solitary expedition to the West. You 
 yourself first pointed out the hopelessness of such an expedition, 
 and we sec from your reports how utterly hopeless it is ; you were 
 right. Come back, and make a fresh start. Don't in your noble 
 obstinacy commit suicide." 
 
 Not a word said, if you will please to remark it (though he does 
 not, never thought of it), of sending the cutter along the shore to 
 co-operate with him. Rather singular, and rather, I think, dis- 
 graceful. "My dear fellow," said the Irish gentleman, "I'd 
 share my last meal with you. If I had only a potato left, I'd 
 give you the skin." 
 
 The answer to these letters was quietly, and possibly foolishly, 
 decisive. " The money raised for this expedition was raised for 
 exploring the West coast. I diverted these funds, and persuaded 
 the committee to let me undertake a Northern expedition. I have 
 failed in that. I decline to return home without result, and so — 
 and so — will go westward, thank you, to such fate as God shall 
 send. Will not at all events return an unsuccessful man ; will 
 leave my bones in the desert sooner than that. And so good-bye, 
 young Scott ; Baxter and I will pull through it somehow — or 
 won't. Love to Adelaide friends, and many thanks for kind 
 wishes (not a word about the twopenny-halfpenny business of 
 refusing him the ship), and so we will start if you please. As for 
 going home again, save by King George's Sound, once for all, 
 No." 
 
 A most obstinate and wrong-headed man. Baxter it seems 
 equally wrong-headed. Scott went back with his message, and 
 Eyre and Baxter started, with three savages, on their journey. 
 
 One of these savages requires notice from us ; his name was 
 Wylie. A frizzly-haired, slab-sided, grinning, good-natured young 
 rascal ; with infinite powers of giggling on a full belly, and plain- 
 tively weeping on an empty one — at least so I should guess. But 
 withal some feeling of a faithful dog-like devotion in the darkened 
 soul of him, as events proved — something more in the inside of 
 
EYUES MAKCH. 245 
 
 the man than any marmoset or other monkey ever had got, or ever 
 would get, after any number of cycles, one cannot help thinking. 
 This fellow Wylie was a man after ail ; as were, indeed, the other 
 two natives, though bad enough specimens of the genus. 
 
 Having now brought my reader on to the real starting-point of 
 the great adventure, we may as well sum up the forces by which 
 this campaign against Nature, in her very worst mood, was to be 
 accomplished. The party which accompanied Mr. Eyre when he 
 took a final farewell of Mr. Scott, on the morning of the 25th of 
 February, 1841, consisted of — John Baxter, the useful hero ; the 
 black hoy "Wylie, before spoken of ; two other black boys ; nine 
 horses ; a Timor pony (a small kind of fiend or devil, who has 
 been allowed, for purposes, to assume the form of a diminutive 
 horse, and in comparison with which Cruiser, or Mr. Gurney's 
 grey colt, would show like Cotswold lambs who have joined the 
 Band of Hope) ; a foal (the best part of one of your high-bred 
 weedy Australian colts is a certain cut out of the flank ; if you 
 are lucky enough to happen upon a Clydesdale foal, try a steak 
 out of the shoulder — but this is mere cannibalism) ; and six 
 sheep — merinoes (ten pounds to the quarter, at the outside). 
 Along the shore Eyre had, in a previous expedition, buried flour 
 enough to last the party, at the rate of six pounds a week, for 
 nine weeks. With this army, and with these resources, Eyre 
 formed a flying column, cut himself off from his base of opera- 
 tions, and entered on a march of eight hundred and fifty miles 
 through a hopelessly hostile country. Hostile, not so much 
 because the natives he might meet on his march outnumbered him 
 as fifty to one, but because Nature herself was in her cruel, 
 thirsty sleep of summer, and was saying to him, in every high 
 floating yellow cloud which passed over his head southward, 
 " Fool, desist ; I am not to be troubled yet." Murder, too, was 
 looking at him out of two pairs of shifting eyes ; but he did not 
 see her, and went on. 
 
 On the 2Gth of February, 184-1, they made a place called by 
 the few scattered natives Yeercumban Kowee, the furthest point 
 they had hitherto reached in any of their excursions from the 
 camp. It is so much less abominable than the country around 
 that the natives have thought it worthy of a name. It is in fact 
 a few hills of driving sand, where, by digging, one may obtain 
 water ; but, for all that, the best place in seven hundred miles of 
 coast. It is the sort of place in which an untravelled reader 
 would suppose a man woidd lie down and die in despair, merely 
 from finding himself there, or would suppose so until he found 
 out how very little man can live with, and how very, very dear life 
 
246 EYRE'S MARCH. 
 
 gets in great solitude. Or to correct myself once more, how very, 
 very strong in such situations becomes the desire of seeing a loved 
 face again ; or, failing that, of seeing a face which will connect 
 one, however distantly, with the civilisation which is so far off, 
 with the face of a man who will at all events tell those for whose 
 applause we strive how we strove and how we died. 
 
 Here the terrible part of his adventure begins. From this he 
 was 12M miles without water, toiling over the summit of those 
 great unbroken cliffs which form the southern buttress of 
 Australia. I must say a few words about these cliffs, once and 
 for all. 
 
 These cliffs make two great stretches ; first from the 131st to 
 the 129th parallel, east of Greenwich, 120 miles, and then again 
 from the east of the 126th parallel to east of the 121th, a 
 distance of 120 miles more. They range from 300 to GOO feet 
 high, the height, let us say, of the ghastly chalk wall at Alum 
 Bay, or the cliffs between Folkestone and Dover — and are unbroken 
 almost by a single ravine leading to the sea ; and, where such 
 ravines do occur, they are only waterless sandy valleys. Their 
 geological formation is very fantastic. The strata are level, 
 showing a gradual upheaval from a vastly distant centre. The 
 upper half consists of a limestone — corresponding in some way, I 
 guess, to the Maestricht beds of Europe, but infinitely harder — 
 the lower part of chalk, very soft and friable, with horizontal beds 
 of flint. The lower half has succumbed to the sea and to the 
 weather at a far quicker rate than the upper, leaving it overhang- 
 ing. In many places, the upper strata have come crashing down, 
 a million tons at a time, producing, in that land of hopeless 
 horror, a specimen of coast scenery more weird and wild than one 
 has ever seen, or, to tell the truth, wishes to sec. One would 
 rather read about such places among the rustling leaves of an 
 English spring. 
 
 Eyre judged that his first spell towards water would be a long 
 one. Ho started first with two horses, a black young man, and 
 the sheep, leaving Baxter and the two other blacks to follow with 
 the rest of the horses. The black he took with him was, I think, 
 Wylie, the good one, but I am not sure. It does not much 
 matter. His royal laziness behaved much as such always do : 
 insisted on riding the saddle horse, and making Eyre walk and 
 lead the pack horse ; Eyre also doing what civilised men always 
 do on such occasions, submitting. And in this way they went 
 for four days, with just enough water to keep them alive, but none 
 for the horses or the poor creeping sheep. On the fourth day, 
 rain threatened, but none fell ; the sheep could get no further ; 
 
EYRE'S MARCH. 247 
 
 so they made a yard of boughs, and left them for Baxter to pick 
 ap, and hurried on to find water, and it' possible save the lives 
 
 of the whole party, which even at this early stage seemed 
 doomed. 
 
 At the 120th weary mile the cliffs broke for the first time, and 
 there was a ravine to the sea. The blacks had told them of water 
 hereabouts, to he gol by digging ; hut their ideas of distance were 
 as vague as those of MelvilTs South Sea islander. " How ole I 
 is? Berry ole. Thousand year. More." The question was, 
 •• Was tJutt the place '? " It is as useless to speculate what would 
 have heroine of the expedition had there not happened a lucky 
 accident, as it was for Mrs. Wilfer to calculate on what would 
 have happened to her daughter Lavinia, it' she, Airs. Wilfer, had 
 never got married. " With all due respect, ma, I don't think you 
 know either." A lucky accident did occur, however. Eyre passed 
 this, the wrong valley, in the dark, and at daybreak found him- 
 self so far beyond it that he halted in an agony of doubt as to 
 whether he should go hack or not. He saw, however, miles 
 ahead, that the cliff had receded from the sea, and that there 
 was more promise of some drain of underground water ahead. 
 He decided to go on, and, at the 135th mile, came upon sand- 
 hills, with a few holes which the natives had dug for water. 
 
 Try to realise this for yourselves. Fancy being alone in 
 London, with the depopulated ruins of it all around, and having 
 to lead a horse to the nearest availahle water at Gloucester, in 
 burning weather, through deep sand. Who would do it for a 
 bet? And this with a knowledge that there was worse to come. 
 But why enlarge on it? This Eyre expedition is entirely without 
 parallel ; and so comfortahly forgotten too ! 
 
 They scraped away live feet of sand that night, and watered 
 the horses, now five days without drink, and unable to feed on 
 such miserable grass as there was for sheer choking drought. 
 Phase to notice this fact, you readers who are interested about 
 horses. It strikes one as being curious, and somewhat new. 
 There is no such insatiable drunkard as your horse, but see what 
 he can do if he is pushed. 
 
 Eyre had nothing with which to dig out this live feet of sand 
 but shells left by the natives, who rambled down here, at the risk 
 of their lives, to get fish, a certain red berry which grew here- 
 abouts—and which I cannot identify — sea anemones, winkles, and 
 other alongshore rubbish, which, however, were luxuries to them 
 (the country behind must have been a bad one). These said 
 shells, I take it, were the Australian type of those great Venus' 
 Ears which one sees in the shell-shops here, and which come from 
 
248 EYRE'S MARCH. 
 
 the Channel Islands. However, he got the sand dug out with 
 them and went to sleep : which makes pause the first. 
 
 He had now to go hack, with water slung in kegs, to fetch up 
 Baxter and the two natives, who were toiling along after him, in 
 that weary, waterless track of 135 miles along which he had 
 come. He had just got hack to the dry ravine first mentioned, 
 when he saw Baxter and party winding down the opposite side 
 towards him. He had got over that first weary spell as well as 
 Eyre himself. 
 
 The sheep, which Eyre had left behind for Baxter to pick up 
 and bring on, had been now six days without water, and the 
 horses five. Baxter had left part of the luggage and of the pack- 
 horses behind some miles. They sent back for these, and then 
 prepared for another start. 
 
 The natives had told them of two watering places hereabouts, 
 but they had found only one. They now moved westward ; but, 
 after forty miles, finding no water, Eyre had to send Baxter back 
 for a supply, remaining alone with the sheep, and six days' 
 supply for himself, until Baxter's return. In spite of the rest- 
 lessness of the miserable thirsty sheep, he had time to look at his 
 charts and calculate his chances. He was eight hundred miles 
 from help, and might possibly hope, with all luck, to do it in 
 twelve weeks. He was being choked with sand. He counted 
 twenty blood-sucking flies, each leaving an irritating aching sting, 
 in eight square inches of his legs at one time, and other things 
 far too tedious to mention to us gentlemen of England, who live 
 at home at ease, and to whom quick Indian marches and thirsty 
 bush-rides are but as dreams. And the worst was by no means 
 come to him yet ; there was disaster waiting on his track still. 
 We have just been sympathising deeply with Frederick's troubles 
 in the Seven Years' War, but poor Eyre has put him out of our 
 head altogether. Frederick got himself into a great mess — 
 might have been left a mere duke, like Devonshire or Suther- 
 land — but never into such a mess as this. Here we come to 
 pause the second. 
 
 Baxter came up. They got the whole party together and went 
 on. The cliffs had now receded from the shore, but were still 
 there, inland some few miles, leaving a band of sand-hills between 
 thorn and the sea. 
 
 When they were seventy miles (London to Portsmouth, say) 
 from the last water, their way was impeded by dense scrub 
 (Eucalyptus Dumosa, I suppose, though the surveyors will make 
 Eucalyptus masculine, and birch don't grow in Australia). Here 
 they began, in despair of pulling through otherwise, to throw 
 
EYRES MARCH. 249 
 
 away their baggage. They then took to the shore, but found 
 themselves turned out of their way, and their weary journey 
 nearly doubled, by a strange new enemy. Vast lines of dry 
 seaweed, too high for them to surmount, resembling stacked hay 
 more than anything else, turned them right and left, across and 
 across the vast ocean shore, until the tide rose and drove them 
 against the impenetrable scrub ; where the two younger blacks 
 amused themselves by getting water from the roots of the scrub 
 trees. These wretched boys, though but poor adepts at this sort 
 of thing, got some pints of water in this way ; and I should like 
 to transcribe a passage from Mr. Eyre's journal at this place, 
 which bears on their singular way of life, and is curious. They 
 are a few of the words of a man who knew that doomed race 
 better than any man has done before or since, and are entitled to 
 respect on that account alone : — 
 
 " Natives who, from infancy, have been accustomed to travel through 
 arid regions, can remain any length of time out in a country where 
 there are no indications of water. The circumstance of natives being 
 seen, in travelling through an unknown district, is therefore no proof 
 of the existence of water in their vicinity. I have myself observed, 
 that no part of the country is so utterly worthless as not to have 
 attractions sufficient occasionally to tempt the wandering savage into 
 its recesses. In the arid, barren, naked plains of the north, with not 
 a shrub to shelter him from the heat, not a stick to burn for his fire 
 (except what he carried with him), the native is found, and where, as 
 far as I could ascertain, the whole country around appeared equally 
 devoid of either animal or vegetable life. In other cases, the very regions 
 which, in the eyes of the European, are most barren and worthless, are 
 to the native the most valuable and productive. Such are dense brushes 
 or sandy tracts of country, covered with shrubs — for here the wallabie, 
 the opossum, the kangaroo rat, the bandicoot, the leipoa, snakes, lizards, 
 iguanas, and many other animals, reptiles, birds, &c, abound ; whilst 
 the kangaroo, the emu, and the native dog are found upon their border?, 
 or in the vicinity of those small grassy plains which are occasionally met 
 with amidst the closest brushes." 
 
 The horses now, on which so much depended, began to fail. 
 Five days of waterless misery had passed over their heads, and 
 horse nature failed under the strain. The poor little Timor 
 dropped at the 120th mile of this stage, the first of all. The 
 others, whenever there was a halt, with dull eyes and drooping 
 cars, followed Eyre and Baxter about like dogs, mutely praying 
 for that water which they were unable to supply. They were as 
 gods to the poor dumb helpless animals. 
 
 The tide once more drove them against the impenetrable scrub 
 on the shore, and forced them to halt. Poor Baxter began to get 
 
250 EYRE'S MARCH. 
 
 very low spirited ; nay, worse than that, began to set his mind on 
 the hopeless task of going back to Fowler's Bay. Eyre beguiled 
 him on, but agreed with him as to their nearly hopeless position, 
 knowing that things would be much worse before they were bettor. 
 During this halt it became evident that the horses must be hurried 
 on to water. They buried all their loads in the sand, and pushed 
 on with the barebacked horses ; but they had tried them too far — - 
 two more dropped behind, and they were overtaken by night. 
 
 The cheerless morning found them among the fragments of 
 some ancient wreck. Some ship, years long ago, perhaps before 
 the miserable coast had a name, had been blown on shore, and the 
 crow either mercifully killed in the rollers, or left to wander a few 
 days among the thirsty scrub before they lay down for the last 
 time : — a dispiriting incident. They were now reduced to the 
 dew on the leaves ; Eyre collected it with a sponge, the natives 
 with wisps of grass. 
 
 The miserable details are wearisome to write down. At the 
 160th mile from the last water, after seven days' drought for 
 the horses and their one sheep, and two for themselves, Eyre and 
 the overseer having gone on in desperation alone, digging in the 
 first likely spot they had seen, found the sand moist and fresh, 
 and soon came on an abundance of excellent water. 
 
 Among these sand-hills they stayed for twenty-eight days, Eyre 
 going back alone with a boy to recover the baggage. On the 
 occasion of this expedition they speared a sting ray, and ate him. 
 This proved a somewhat valuable discovery, as it eked out their 
 fast-failing provisions. The weather became cold, but no rain 
 fell though there were occasionally heavy thunderstorms. The 
 cliffs again approached the shore about fourteen miles to the 
 westward ; and Baxter went forward to examine them. His 
 report was exceedingly unfavourable. Of course it was im- 
 possible for them to go any way but along the top of them, and 
 the downs appeared to be grassless and waterless. Baxter was 
 anxious to go back, but Eyre quietly determined to go on. 
 
 They killed one of their horses, and the natives feasted on it 
 all day long, while they made some unsuccessful efforts to jerk it. 
 The effect of this great feed of meat was exactly such as Mr. 
 Bumble would have expected. The natives grew rebellious, 
 announced their intention of shifting for themselves, and marched 
 off. Even the gentle Wylie, the King George's Sound native, 
 shared in the revolt. The younger of the two Port Lincoln 
 blacks, however, was sufficiently under command to obey the eye 
 and voice of Mr. Eyre, and to remain behind. 
 
 Still they lingered hero, unwilling to face the next 150 miles of 
 
EYRE'S MARCH. 251 
 
 cliff, where they knew there could be no water without rain. But 
 the rain did not come ; and, having killed their last sheep, they 
 prepared to set forward. The night before they started, how- 
 ever, the two native deserters, beaten back by hunger and thirst, 
 returned. Wylie was frankly penitent, and acknowledged that he- 
 had made a fool of himself; but the Port Lincoln blacks sat 
 sulking by the fire, refusing to speak. 
 
 They now went on their weary way and ascended the cliffs. 
 The downs were, as Baxter bad reported, waterless and stony, 
 with a dwarf tea-scrub (much like our chalk-down juniper). The 
 first night, for the first time on the journey, the blacks were set 
 to watch the horses. 
 
 Eyre had intended to travel the main part of the next night ; 
 but when it came on, Baxter urged him so strongly to remain that 
 he yielded, the more easily as Baxter's reasons appeared good. 
 Rain was threatening, and they were now in a place where water 
 might be collected from the rock-pools, whereas, were they to 
 advance, and the country to get sandy, the rain would he of no 
 use to them. So they stayed where they were, and it was 
 Baxter and Eyre's turn to watch the horses. Eyre, not being 
 sleepy, took the first watch, and Baxter and the natives lay down 
 tn sleep. 
 
 The night was cold and wild, with scud driving across the 
 moon, and a rushing wind which tossed the shrubs and sang 
 loudly among the rocks. The place was very solitary — a high 
 treeless down 400 feet above the vast Southern Ocean : a place 
 not unlike the great down above Freshwater. The horses were 
 very restless, keeping Eyre moving up and down, till at half-past 
 ten he had lost sight of the camp fires. While he was looking 
 round to catch a sight of them he saw a gun fired about a quarter 
 of a mile off. Calling out, and receiving no answer, he ran 
 towards the spot, and was met by Wylie, crying, " Come here ! 
 come here ! " He ran in terror on to the camp fire, and there 
 he found poor Baxter weltering in his blood inarticulate. How 
 many minutes it was before he died, Eyre cannot say ; but he 
 did not speak or recognise him. The poor tortured body sank 
 into quiescence, without one word having passed the lips ; and 
 tlw soul, still in its agony of torture, of indignation, of horror, 
 with a burthen of explanations and messages to loved ones at 
 home still struggling, and struggling in vain, to get sent by its 
 usual channel, went wandering away over the desolate down-lands 
 to . 
 
 And poor Eyre was left alone in the waterless desert, TjOO miles 
 from help, with terror, unutterable grief, and despair for his com- 
 
252 EYRE'S MARCH. 
 
 panions. No others, unless it were the crawling sea, the thirsty 
 down, and a crouching whining savage, who wrung his hands and 
 whimpered ! No other, indeed, except the God in whom he 
 trusted, and who delivered him even out of this ! 
 
 PART II. 
 
 Five hundred miles from any hope of help, in the very centre of 
 the most horrihle waterless desert on the face of the earth, poor 
 Eyro stood that night, on the desolate down ahove the desolate 
 sea, all alone save* for one crouching, guilty-looking savage, and 
 the corpse of his dearly loved companion lying stark and bloody 
 in the flying gleams of the moon. 
 
 First terror, then indignation, then gnef, then the dull horror 
 of utter loneliness and despair, and the indescribable ghastly 
 oppression of great and hopeless distance, which clawed at his 
 heart like a nightmare ; these were his other companions. 
 Sometimes he prayed, sometimes ho wept, sometimes he walked 
 up and down, in short, tiger-like snatches, in his furious indigna- 
 tion meditating revenge before death. But all the time the cold 
 chill wind rushed over the down, drove the sparks of the fire 
 landward, and moved the dead man's hair. Whose imagination 
 is powerful enough to conceive the unutterable horrors of such a 
 night, in such a place ? 
 
 The man was a high-strung and very sensitive man. This mad 
 journey of his would prove it to a thoughtful reader, even if he 
 would not take my word for it. But, high-strung and sensitive as 
 he was, he was as indestructible a man as Big Boone himself. 
 Nay, if Big Boone had, with his vast frame, found himself in this 
 match against Nature, I think, if I may be allowed a sporting 
 phrase, that I should have backed Nature. 
 
 But there was such an irrepressible vitality about this man, 
 such a dexterous manipulation of the very worst materials, that 
 he could not bo beaten. In the midst of his very despair he had 
 taken measures for continuing the struggle, and had completed 
 them long before the morning dawned. The first discovery he 
 made in the dark was the very unpleasant one that he was left 
 without the means of self-defence, or, what was dearer just now, 
 Revenge ; that the two blacks had got the available firearms, and 
 were lurking round among the scrub with them ; and that his 
 life was not worth five minutes' purchase of any one's money. 
 Ho had pistols, but no cartridges. His only other hope was in a 
 rifle, which they had not taken. But this rifle was unserviceable. 
 
EYRE'S MARCH. 253 
 
 The murdered man had, a few days before, done the only un- 
 dexterous thing recorded of him — tried to wash out the ritle while 
 it was loaded. By the time he had found out it was loaded, he 
 had wetted and partly washed out the powder, so that it was 
 impossible to get it out ; they had no screw to draw the bullet, 
 and the rifle had been thrown aside as utterly useless. (Rifles 
 are the most utterly useless trash in Australia, even for kangaroo - 
 shooting. Elcy's green cartridge in a double barrel is the only 
 arm which a reasonable man uses for the larger game.) This 
 disabled rifle was his only hope, and his only chance of getting it 
 to work was to melt out the bullet. He put the barrel in the 
 lire ; but there was powder enough left to explode, and the bullet 
 whizzed close by his ear. After such an accident at such a time 
 he may be considered safe. 
 
 When the rifle was loaded he felt more secure. The next 
 thing which engaged the attention of our iro\vfj>)n<; was the horses, 
 on whom everything depended. He went into the scrub after 
 them at the risk of being shot, and got them. After this he 
 waited for morning. 
 
 The raving wind went down towards morning, and by degrees 
 the grey dawn crept over the desolate down, and bit by bit showed 
 him all the circumstances and all the extent of the horrible mid- 
 night disaster. Baxter lay in his shirt about five yards from his 
 bed, shot through the breast, soaking in blood ; his eyes, Eyre 
 tells us, were still open, but glazed in death ; and the same 
 expression of stern resolution which he had worn in life was still 
 on the face of the corpse. The camp was plundered, and every- 
 thing was broken by the murderers. After examination he found 
 that all they had left was forty pounds of flour and four gallons of 
 water. 
 
 Before he started westward, one duty remained to him, that of 
 paying the last tribute of decency and friendship to his dead 
 friend. The soil was bare limestone rock for miles around, and 
 time was life. All that he could do for the poor senseless corpse 
 was to wrap its head decently in a blanket, and leave it to wither 
 in the winds. There it lies still, and there most likely it will lie 
 for ever. Old Earth is such a bitter cruel stepmother in that 
 accursed country, that she even refuses to take her dead children 
 back to her bosom. 
 
 \uu must be nearly sick of these accumulated horrors. But 
 from this point a new horror begins to dog his steps — Murder. 
 However long and weary the thirsty day might have been, sleep, 
 rest, unconsciousness, dreams of home, now became impossible. 
 His life was at the mercy of two sneaking, crawling savages, who 
 
254 EYRE'S MARCH. 
 
 might pounce on him the instant his eyes closed, and kill him. 
 A lander or gentler man never lived, hut he made a certain 
 determination. He resolved to shoot these two savages on the 
 first opportunity. " Would they give him one ? " That was the 
 question ; or would they prowl and sneak round him until they 
 murdered him ? — a fine problem for a maddened man, five hundred 
 miles from help. Meanwhile there was one other chance. He 
 had not studied these savages so many years for nothing ; he 
 knew their laziness, and he thought, with his horses and his 
 pluck, that he might outwalk them. 80 he started away as early 
 as he could, and left Baxter with his head rolled in a blanket 
 alone on the desert down. 
 
 Of Wylie, the black who had stood by him, he had no fear. 
 He knew that the two South Australian blacks would, after the 
 manner of their folk, inevitably murder Wylie, the King George's 
 Sound native, who came from another tribe and spoke another 
 language, the instant they had done using him, as the strongest 
 of the three, in helping them back to Fowler's Bay. He knew 
 also that Wylie was perfectly aware of this himself. And, 
 although he strongly suspected Wylie of being a participator of 
 the plunder of the camp, he knew that Wylie's only chance of life 
 was loyalty to him. Wylie, he believes, had arranged with the 
 two other natives for a grand feed on the stock of provisions, but 
 had been frightened and shocked by the murder. Events proved 
 that Wylie knew on which side his interest lay. 
 
 Wylie was a very good, a somewhat exceptional specimen of 
 his people, as Eyre, a lover and protector of the blacks, allows. 
 Now, you know these people will </o. God never made the 
 Port land Bay district for them. All one asks is, that the thing 
 should be done with decency, and with every sort of indulgence ; 
 whereas it is not, but in a scandalous and disgraceful manner. 
 Of course these Australians must he improved, but let the 
 improvement be done with some show of decency. But we may 
 preach and preach, and the same old story will go on, now there 
 is no Governor Gipps ; and so we will leave preaching, and mind 
 our business, for public opinion, unbacked by a Governor Gipps, 
 is but a poor thing for the blacks. 
 
 Eyre, however, as he started at eight o'clock on the morning 
 after the murder, with his forty pounds of flour and his four 
 gallons of water, was not, probably, in the humour to think 
 deeply over this cmestion. His life's work had been, and was tc 
 be, the protection of these savages against the whiles. But on 
 this particular morning things had gone so very cross with him, 
 that he found the leading resolution in his very resolute mind was 
 
EYRE'S MARCH. 255 
 
 to cut off the first one he caught sight of, like a rahhit. " How 
 circumstances do change people." His horses had now been 
 three days without water, and where the next was to he got he 
 had no idea. However, he started over the downs, on his five 
 hundred miles' tramp, in an exceedingly defiant mood. " Nut an 
 ounce of die in him," as I heard a cockney blacksmith say about 
 a sick friend. 
 
 He had one interview, and one only, with these murderous 
 young vagabonds. At four o'clock in the afternoon, he saw them 
 approaching cautiously. One cannot help wishing that he had 
 had an Enfield rifle, instead of one of those miserable tilings we 
 called rifles in those days ; hut he had not. A rifle of those 
 times was not sighted above a hundred yards, and they would not 
 give him a shot. He walked towards them, but they kept beyond 
 distance ; and at last, in despair, he threw down his own rifle, 
 and advanced unarmed, hoping to get near enough to run in on 
 one of them, wrest his loaded gun from him, and, &c. If I am 
 not mistaken, the Victoria Cross has been given for less than 
 this. But they would not come near him, hut kept away, crying 
 out for Wylie. Master Wylie, to whom every cry of theirs was a 
 fresh piece of evidence as to his complicity in the murder, did 
 not know them, had never seen these low coloured persons before, 
 wondered what they could possibly mean by hollering after him, 
 and so on, with all the transparent childish cunning of a savage ; 
 leading his horses on, and leaving the question in the hands of 
 Providence, and those of an extremely infuriated English gentle- 
 man called Eyre ; and walked calmly on in saint-like innocence. 
 
 Eyre could do nothing with them; they only went on running 
 away, and implicating Wylie's character to an extent which must 
 have exasperated that young gentleman to a pitch many degrees 
 beyond murder. After a time Eyre came hack, picked up his 
 rifle, and saw them no more. 
 
 What they did, or what became of them, we shall never know 
 exactly. If they did not die of famine, they were most certainly 
 murdered by the first natives they came across. One can guess 
 at their motives in plundering the camp and murdering Baxter. 
 They possibly (I will go no further than possibly) wanted a good 
 feed, and hated Baxter. But this is an exceptional case. In 
 general, you can form no guess whatever of an Australian black's 
 motives. If you notice, you will find yourself very much puzzled 
 by the motives of your own children. But their motives for 
 action are the hardest common sense, if you compare them with 
 those of an Australian black. The only crime which 1 have 
 heard of on this side of the water, and which I can compare to 
 
256 EYRE'S MARCH. 
 
 the aimless murders so common among these queer Australians, 
 is the murder committed by Constance Kent on her little brother. 
 It was Australian " all over." I knew the old hand at once. 
 
 Allow me to tell an anecdote in illustration. I was staying in 
 an Australian country house once, in the far west — a real 
 Australian country house, where the kangaroos came skipping, 
 and staring, and gandcring past the dining-room windows ; 
 where the opossums held high jinks and murdered sleep in the 
 shrubberies every night ; where the native cats stowed themselves 
 under your hed until you had gone to sleep, and then proclaimed 
 their case against an ungrateful world in a noise which might be 
 achieved, in an inferior degree, by a wicked old torn cat, carefully 
 trained by a howling ape and a hyena ; — a house with a flower- 
 garden, at the bottom of which was a lake on which no one was 
 allowed to fire a shot, and which swarmed all through the burning 
 summer's day with teal, widgeon, 'great cranes, pelicans, black 
 swans, and purple water-hens ; — a house in which the scorpions 
 came tittle, tittle, tittle, along the passage, looked in at the 
 library door to see how you were getting on, and then packed 
 themselves away under the door-mat ; where enormous centipedes 
 came from under the fender at a terrific pace, eight inches long, 
 twenty legs aside, struck with a sudden uncontrollable impulse to 
 walk up the leg of your trousers, and see what that was like ; — a 
 house where some one was always going to bed after breakfast, 
 and "coming down" as fresh as paint, just out of his bath, to 
 an eight o'clock dinner ; where you slept all day, and went out 
 a-fishing as soon as the night was dark enough ; Avhere your 
 papers were the Spectator and the Illustrated London News, and 
 one's drink weak claret and water; — a real old 100,000 acre, two 
 thousand a year, Australian country house, in short. 
 
 In such a house as this, it once befell that I had to stay for an 
 indefinite time. On the first morning, when I came down (there 
 was only one storey, hut I will continue the fiction) to breakfast, 
 I found a very smart-looking native girl, dressed much as your 
 own housemaid is dressed, dusting the room. She looked so 
 much smarter and brighter than any native woman I had ever 
 
 seen before, that I asked Mrs. L (may her days be long in 
 
 the land), the Scotch housekeeper, about her antecedents. 
 
 There was a queer story about her. Her brother, a native, 
 was one groom, and another young native was another groom ; 
 and one day, not two months before, these two young rascals had 
 agreed to murder her. There was no more cause for it than 
 there is for your murdering me, but they thought they would like 
 to do it ; they had not tasted blood lately, and, although they 
 
BYRE'S .MARCH. 257 
 
 were very well oil", had plenty to eat, worked no more than they 
 chose, and so on, yet things were rather slow in those parts; so 
 they thought they would murder this young woman. They pro- 
 ceeded to do so ; they had got her down, her brother was 
 throttling her — hope was lost— it was a matter of moments — 
 when ■ 
 
 Here comes your sensation — Mrs. L , a very strong and 
 
 opinionated Scotchwoman, came in and caught them at it. Xot 
 only caught them at it, but caught the principal offender across 
 the hack of the head with a carpet-broom, stopped the whole 
 business, and routed the enemy single-handed. It is time we 
 
 walked on with Eyre, and so we must have done with Mrs. L ; 
 
 I have no more to tell you of her than this : When the station 
 was attacked by the blacks, she and the two gentlemen of the 
 house were alone. The two hundred savages were so near 
 accomplishing their object, that they actually were upon the roof, 
 and were casting their spears in upon the three. The roof would 
 not fire, in consequence of a heavy rain, and my two hosts picked 
 off every man who appeared in the gap of the roof which they 
 
 had made. Mrs. L all the time stood between them, loading 
 
 their guns and handing them to them alternately, until assistance 
 came from Port Fairy. Another fact about her is this : I never 
 could convince her that the great wedge-tailed eagle of Australia 
 was to be compared to our own two-penny-halfpenny golden eagle. 
 The colonists have, for their own reasons, christened these birds 
 "eagle-hawks." "Ye have no been to Scotland'?" she would 
 say ; " I tell ye, sir, they are naething to the Scottish eagle." 
 Common specimens measured fifteen feet across the wings ! 
 
 What with Mrs. L and the eagles, we have left poor Eyre 
 
 on his waterless down, five hundred miles from help, somewhat 
 too long. We shall have one more terrible push with him, and 
 then the story will become more pleasant, or rather less horrible, 
 to read. 
 
 Alter the interview with the murderers, Eyre pushed on as 
 rapidly as possible far into the night, for eighteen miles further ; 
 knowing well that he would thus get a good start of those lazy 
 young gentlemen, who would not travel more than a few miles 
 without lying down. The next day, which was the 1st of .May, 
 the first day of winter in that hemisphere, they got the horses 
 along twenty-eight miles, and it was getting evident that it could 
 not continue much longer, as they had been already live days 
 without water, and had no hope of any lor two days more. 
 
 Xo change has as yet taken place in the character of the 
 country. They were still travelling over the weary downs ; the 
 
 18 
 
258 EYRE'S MARCH. 
 
 surface of the ground a cream-coloured limestone, full of shells, 
 lmt with no water, and scarcely any grass or vegetation at all, 
 except the scrub I have compared to juniper, for the sake of an 
 English reader. But to Eyre's keen, well-trained eye, a change 
 had taken place which made his heart leap with hope. Stumbling 
 along, lame, suffering, and miserable, he came on one little 
 Banksia, trying to grow in the cruel, rocky soil. Only one tiny 
 twig, I guess, witli a whorl of oak-like leaves around the top, 
 brave little pioneer of the following army. At first only one. 
 Then, after an interval, two or three ; then half-a-dozen, I dare 
 say, and one bigger than the rest, which had succeeded in 
 blossoming and seeding, and was the parent of all these little 
 ones. But, at all events, there were the Banksias, with hope 
 hovering over their delicate green foliage. They were the har- 
 bingers of a better country beyond — they never erred. But oh, 
 the next two days, and the horses failing, mile after mile ! To be 
 so near, and yet so far oil'! Wylie wanted to lie down, and so he 
 did. Eyre himself would have been most willing to lie down and 
 die, but still the weary feet went on almost mechanically. 
 
 At last it was done. Seven days, and 150 miles from the last 
 water, they led their horses down a gorge in the cliffs, to the shore. 
 The cliffs had come to an end, and a long line of lower sandhills 
 stretched before them. They found a native well immediately ; 
 the horses were watered, and they lay down to sleep, away from 
 the well, lest, as was most improbable, the murderers should have 
 kept pace with them, and should surprise and kill them in the 
 night. No such thing, however, occurred, and they never saw 
 them again. Without doubt, they perished miserably in the bush, 
 as, when they deserted, they were seventy miles from water in one 
 direction, and eighty in the other. 
 
 Here another symptom of a better country appeared in the 
 form of black cockatoos — an immense funereal-looking bird, with 
 the most funereal note I ever heard, "Wee-wah! wee-wah ! " 
 like a rusty sign on a post — yet welcomer to them than a lorikeet 
 would have been for plumage, or than an organ-voiced magpie, 
 finest of song-birds after the nightingale. Rain came now, when 
 it was not wanted, and the weather on that broad desolate shore 
 grew wild and stormy. Eyre was suflering agonies of pain with 
 what is called there "poisoned hand." But things on the whole 
 looked brighter. 
 
 One of the horses was now so utterly done up that he deter- 
 mined to kill it, and to stay in one place for a few days to feed 
 upon it. He communicated his intention to Wylie, who said, 
 with extreme emphasis, " Master, you shall see me sit up all night 
 
EYRE'S B1ABCH. 259 
 
 eating ; " a promise or tin-cut which he carefully fulfilled. No 
 sooner was so much of the horse's skin removed as to make it 
 possible to get at some of the meat, than Wylie lit a fire, and 
 began cooking and eating. That night he cooked twenty pounds 
 weight of it, and he ate the main part before morning. Eyre 
 calculates that Wylie, or any other black, would eat you his nine 
 pounds a day on an average. I never myself calculated the 
 amount, but I have seen them at it. Of course Wylie was 
 horribly ill. I think I know his symptoms, though Eyre does not 
 give them. Set a number of blacks to work on a bullock which 
 — which you don't want for your own use, let us say ; and you 
 will see very marly this : Your black fellow will begin cooking 
 and eating, the meat not being done quite so brown as Mrs. 
 George Rokesmith liked her cutlets ; and after a time his stomach 
 will begin to swell. As the swelling goes on, the feeding becomes 
 .-.lower and slower, and he becomes silent. Then bis face becomes 
 passive and thoughtful, then perturbed and anxious, lastly morose 
 and fretful. Then he begins to whimper, ami throw the things 
 about, and make foolish blows in the direction of bis wife, who is 
 far enough oil' by now, I warrant you. To finish all, he rolls 
 himself on the ground with plaintive howls, until the colic has 
 mended itself. 
 
 This feed of meat made Eyre very ill, too. Even Wylie found 
 out that the pleasure was not worth the cost, balanced in his mind 
 the relative values of horse-flesh and colic, ami gave up the horse- 
 flesh, consenting to a frugal supper of a little bit of bread and a 
 spoonful of flour boiled into paste. I mention this fact as being 
 the only circumstance which seems in the least degree incredible 
 in Eyre's journal. 
 
 Though the weather set in deadly cold, though so cold that 
 sleep was difficult, though Eyre's health began to fail, and though 
 they had between four and five hundred miles to go, yet new signs 
 of iiope followed one another faster and faster. Here (position 
 roughly l'2i E. '■)'■'>' S.) the Banksias became more common, and 
 a new tree began to appear — the silver wattle (an acacia, one of 
 the most familiar trees in the rich parts of Australia, but whose 
 botanical name I have not handy). Mure than this, at this point 
 they saw their first hill. They had passed over a weary table-land, 
 four or five hundred feet high, which I have, perhaps wrongly, 
 characterised as a ••down"; but it was only a table-land, the 
 southern lip of that miserable internal basin or depression which 
 so long deluded geographers into the belief of a central sea — the 
 elevated ground which stops all the internal waters, originated by 
 a rainfall nearly equal to that of Ireland or Devonshire, back into 
 
2G0 EYRE'S MARCH. 
 
 that vast depressed region which we used to call Lake Torrens, to 
 be evaporated there instead of finding their way to the sea by a 
 hundred beautiful harbours. They had passed over this weary 
 table-land, but they had never seen a hill. Now they saw one. 
 A real Australian hill, with its crags rounded by the forest which 
 grew upon it ; a real hill, a father of waters. Eyre, with his 
 traveller's eye, rejoiced ; and one who has travelled in those 
 quaint regions can sympathise with him. Once, after a long spell 
 through a depressed forest country, with a somewhat depressed 
 and saturnine friend of mine, I saw such a hill. My cynical friend 
 turned to me, and said quietly, " High hills and all pleasant 
 places, praise ye the Lord." 
 
 The character of the country continued to give them fresh hopes 
 of ultimate success, for its geological character changed, and 
 sheets of granite began to appear at low water. It gradually rose 
 until it displaced the porous oolite ; and, at last, Eyre found that 
 he had conic to a country which would carry water upon its 
 surface. He found a slender thread of water trickling over a 
 granite rock. It was but a mere " weep," but it was the first he 
 had met since he had left Streaky Lay, nearly eight hundred 
 miles behind. Grass grew more abundantly also ; and the 
 Xanthorea, or grass tree, began to appear. It got bitter cold, so 
 that a new fear took possession of him — whether or no he should 
 be able to face the next three hundred miles with cold and starva- 
 tion as his companions. Scurvy, according to all precedent, would 
 soon set in ; and already he had to use force to get Wylie to move 
 after sitting down. Really it seemed a hopeless business even 
 now. He little knew what a glorious piece of good fortune God's 
 providence had in store for him. One cannot help seeing that, 
 but for one singular accident, the chances were still 100 to 1 
 against him. 
 
 The French whaler, Mississippi, commanded by one Rossiter, 
 an Englishman, had found herself in these Australian seas just as 
 the Pritchard-Tahitian dispute had breezed up to that extent that 
 war between France and England seemed almost a matter of 
 certainty. Rossiter became very much alarmed. To go home 
 and lose his voyage was ruin ; to be captured by a British cruiser 
 was ruin and imprisonment besides ; yet there was no coast but 
 that of the enemy for some thousands of miles. Under these 
 circumstances he betook himself to the most desolate aud out-of- 
 the-way place he could think of, and anchored in a bay in lat. 34°, 
 long., 122' behind an island. It was a fine enough anchorage, 
 but in those times it had no name. It was so desolate and so 
 utterly out of the way of all human knowledge, that in the year of 
 
EYRE'S MARCH. 261 
 
 grace 1841 it had actually no name, for the simple reason that no 
 one had ever been there before. 
 
 " A waste land where no one comes, 
 Or hath come since the making of the world." 
 
 They knew this coast — that it was waterless and uninhabited 
 for a thousand miles. It did not matter to them : they had their 
 ship, and cared little for the shore. They used to see it there 
 every day, yellow and bare and treeless, with a few mountains on 
 the left in the dim hot distance ; so it had been for ever, and 
 would be for evermore. But one day it had a strange new interest 
 for them : they, as they were idly busying themselves with cleaning 
 their cables, which were foul, saw a man moving on the shore. It 
 seemed incredible, but their glasses confirmed it. It was a white 
 man, who knelt on a point and was making a fire to signal them. 
 Half-a-dozen of them tumbled into a whale boat ; and, as the 
 beautiful craft came leaping and springing towards the shore, their 
 wonder grew into amazement. It was a white man indeed, but 
 such a man as they had never seen before. He was wan and thin, 
 his clothes were ragged ; he seemed wild, and looked like one who 
 had risen from the dead : a man who had evidently such a story 
 to tell that you trembled while you waited for him to begin. Such 
 a man stood on the very verge of a wave-worn rock among the 
 climbing surge, with strained eyes and parted lips eagerly holding 
 out both his wasted hands towards them. 
 
 To say that they had him into the plunging boat oft' the slippery 
 sea-weed in a minute ; to say that they embraced him, patted him 
 on the back, and looked foudly at him, that they in one breath 
 demanded his story of him, and in the next forbade him to open 
 his mouth until he had refreshed himself — is only to say that they 
 were sailors, and, what is more, Frenchmen. Here was something 
 which suited their great sailor hearts entirely. Here was un- 
 precedented headlong courage: here was endurance ccprally unprece- 
 dented : here was a man who had been where no one had been 
 before, and had seen what no one could ever see again. To be 
 blown a thousand miles out of your course was one thing, but to 
 have walked a thousand miles was quite another. If Eyre had 
 done the distance in a fast spring cart (that mode of locomotion 
 which a sailor specially affects), it would have been a noble action. 
 But to have walked seemed, I suspect, to put a halo of romance 
 about the affair which it would not have had otherwise. At all 
 events, their hearts were in the right place ; and Eyre, from a 
 lonely, hopeless wanderer, found himself suddenly transformed 
 into a hero, 
 
2G!I EYRE'S MAliCH. 
 
 One must, be allowed to be mildly jocular for a moment, for the 
 story lias been so miserably tragical hitherto; We would try to 
 avoid the sin of jocularity as much as possible ; there is very little 
 temptation to it here ; and yet I should be disposed to guess that 
 Eyre was inclined to laugh boisterously at the smallest joke. 
 
 That night he slept on board the Mississippi. As the night 
 darkened, the wind rose and moaned till the moan grew into a 
 shriek, and then raved on till it became a gale. But the good 
 ship Mississippi, in the lee of the island, cared little for this, and 
 Eyre less. Lying warm and snug in his bunk, between the 
 blankets, he only heard the slopping tread of the officer of the 
 watch overhead, and so knew it was raining : only heard the wild 
 wind aloft among the rigging, and so knew that it was blowing. 
 He thought how that rain was beating and that wind was tearing 
 among the desolate sand-hills, where he would have lain this night 
 had it not been for the providence of a merciful God, who, it 
 seemed to him, was resolved to set; him through it all, and not let 
 his adventure end in utter useless disaster. So, every time he 
 was awakened by the officer of the watch or the wind in the rigging. 
 he said a short fervent prayer of deep thankfulness to Almighty 
 God for His mercy, and then turned himself to happy sleep once 
 more, only to hear the wild rain and the wilder wind singing a 
 pleasant bass through his hopeful dreams. 
 
 For, if he could get through with this business, he had done 
 what no man had ever done before, or would ever do again. The 
 thing could never be repeated ; there was not, and there is not, 
 room on the earth for the repetition of such an adventure by a 
 sane man. If lie did it — if the cup was not dashed from his lips 
 now — he would be immortal. It is perfectly certain that his 
 adventure was, in its way, the greatest ever carried through ; but, 
 as for the immortality of it, I cannot find any one in London who 
 ever heard of it or of him. A few of the oldsters in Melbourne, 
 and a few more in Sydney, remember the thing being done ; but 
 the expedition led to nothing positive — only proved in the most 
 offensively practical way that you could not, whereas Eyre's duty as 
 a man and explorei 'had been supposed to be to prove that you could. 
 
 He stayed a fortnight with Captain Rossiter, who treated him 
 with the extremest kindness, though he himself was in deep 
 anxiety about the war and the fate of his ship. He fitted out 
 Eyre with every necessary and luxury, and started him again on 
 his journey with every good wish. Eyre gave him bills on his 
 agent at Albany for the things he had, but they were never pre- 
 sented. He never again saw or heard of the man to whom he was 
 so deeply indebted. 
 
EYRE'S MARCH. 263 
 
 Ee had now been a year exactly on this expedition. The splendid 
 staff of companions with which he had started was dwindled down 
 to one solitary savage, and there were yet two hundred and fifty 
 
 utiles of distance ; but still hope grew stronger each mile they 
 made forward through the driving bitter weather. The country 
 got more interesting as his journal becomes less so. 
 
 One morning when he ruse he told Wylie that they would see 
 the mountains beyond the Sound before night. Wylie was very 
 sceptical about it — in fact, never really believed that theywould 
 reach the Sound at all. But in the afternoon the grand rugged 
 outline of his native hills broke upon his view, and lie ^a\{' way to 
 the wildest transports "f joy. He knew every valley in them, and 
 every tree which feathered their sides. There his own brothers 
 and relations were waiting for him now. 
 
 The fourth day from this they left their horses and pushed on 
 rapidly. It was a fearfully wet day, and, though they were close 
 to tin' town, they had not met a living creature facing the furious 
 weather. The first creature they met was a native, who knew 
 Wylie, and from him they learnt that they had been given up two 
 months before. Shortly after Wylie was in the bosom of his 
 enraptured tribe, and Eyre was shaking hands with Lady Spencer. 
 
 Wylie was pensioned by Government, and retired to his tribe, 
 where, I have no doubt, he took heartily to lying about his journey. 
 and in due time got to believe his own lies. He may he alive 
 now, and may have seen Rcdpath. Peace he with him ! 
 
 Mr. Eyre hail now finished his journey. From the time he had 
 dismissed the rest of his staff, and had come on with the overseer 
 alone, he had been four months and ten days, and had travelled 
 in actual distance about a thousand miles. Since Baxter was 
 murdered, and he was entirely alone with Wylie, he had been two 
 months and five days, and had come between five and six hundred 
 miles. The distance passed over, without finding one drop of 
 surface water, was seven hundred miles, the distance from London 
 to Vienna. He returned to Adelaide, and met with the welcome 
 he deserved, ami so the great adventure came to an end. That 
 dreadful hand of country has never been invaded since, and 
 Baxter's bones still 1 i * • out on the desolate down, bleaching in the 
 winds. 
 
THE MAECH OF CHARLES STUET. 
 
THE MAECH OF CHAELES STUET. 
 
 Just now, when so much attention is being called to Australian 
 exploration, and while the work is going on so very satisfactorily, 
 it may not he amiss if we while away half an hour in recalling the 
 deeds of an earlier adventurer in the same field, at a time when 
 the nature of the country towards the interior was utterly unknown, 
 when nearly every plant was new, and when no navigable river had 
 been discovered to the eastward of the Blue Mountains. Let us 
 follow the footsteps of the first successful explorer of the interior 
 of the great continent — of the man who penetrated almost to the 
 centre of it, and who left his name like a monument on the great 
 hare map of Australia for twenty years, hundreds and hundreds of 
 miles beyond the boldest of his contemporaries. Let us follow the 
 track of Charles Sturt, the father of Australian exploration. 
 
 From 1788 to 1813, the narrow strip of land between the Blue 
 Mountains and the sea was found sufficient for the wants of a popu- 
 lation amounting, in the latter year, to 10,100, including 1,100 
 military (population at present about 1,400,000). At this period, 
 no white man had penetrated 100 miles from the sea ; hut, to the 
 west, the mountains hung like a dark curtain, and shut out the 
 knowledge of all beyond. 
 
 These mountains are but little more than 8,000 feet in height, 
 hut among the most singularly abrupt in the world — so abrupt, 
 that they baffled every attempt to surmount them. The intrepid 
 surgeon, Bass, explorer of the southern coast, was foiled, after the 
 most desperate efforts. Mi-. Cayley penetrated sixteen miles, to 
 meet with the same disappointment. At length, however, in the 
 year LSI:',, the first greai drought of the colony settled down 
 inexorably ; and Providence said, in most unmistakable terms, 
 " Cross those mountains or starve." 
 
 Three men rose and obeyed — Blaxland, Wentworth, and Lieu- 
 tenant Lawson, of the 11) 1th regiment. They fought their way to 
 the summit, and looked over into the glorious western land. Then 
 their provisions failed, and they came back and told what they had 
 seen. 
 
268 THE MARCEI OF CHARLES STURT. 
 
 Australia was blessed in those clays with a most energetic 
 governor. This governor, Macquarie by name, not only sent 
 instantly his surveyor-general, who confirmed the good news and 
 discovered the river Macquarie, but set his convicts to work, and 
 made a splendid road — an Australian Simplon through the moun- 
 tain — and in fifteen months from that time, just as Bonaparte 
 landed from Elba, drove his wife over the mountains (say in a gig, 
 for respectability's sake) ; picnie'd on the Macquarie river, and 
 founded the flourishing town of Bathurst. 
 
 Everything went charmingly. Mr. Evans proceeded to the 
 westward from the picnic party, discovered another fine river (the 
 Lachlan) flowing, like the Macquarie, full and free to the west. 
 It seemed that, according to all precedent, these waters ran into 
 larger ones, and that a Nile or a Mississippi was to be discovered 
 by merely following one's nose. The men of those times were 
 ignorant of the vast depressed basin of the interior, in which so 
 many fine streams lose themselves by evaporation. Oxley dis- 
 covered this region. Sturt attacked it ; was beaten back from it 
 time after time on the west and north-west, but conquered it 
 gloriously on the south-west, after a journey for which we are at a 
 loss to find a parallel. 
 
 In 1817, Mr. Oxley, surveyor-general, went down the Lachlan, 
 and found that it lost itself among level marshes. He tried the 
 Macquarie, with the same result. The channel of this last river 
 was lost among vast reed beds. A third river (the Castlereagh), 
 traced by him, confirmed the previous observations. There was 
 no doubt now that, in ordinary seasons, these large streams 
 were spread abroad into a dead level country, and were lost by 
 sheer evaporation, unless, indeed, they found their way into a vast 
 tideless sea in the interior. 
 
 So stood the question until 1828. In 182G another fearful 
 drought set in, and lasted for two years. After that time the western 
 rivers were reported to be lower than they had ever been seen ; and 
 it became evident that now or never was the time to penetrate the 
 vast reedy marshes which had stopped Oxley, and, by crossing 
 them, to see what lay beyond. An expedition was formed, and 
 the command of it was given to Captain Charles Sturt, of the 39th 
 regiment. He started from Paramatta on the 9th of November, 
 1828 ; and on the 26th of December, having proceeded about a 
 hundred miles down the Macquarie, and having passed for some 
 days through a level, dreary flat, with belts of reeds, he came to 
 a wall of reeds, which prevented his further progress by land, and 
 necessitated the launching of his boat. 
 
 At first the course of the river was narrow and tortuous ; but at 
 
THE MARCH OF CHARLES STURT. 269 
 
 length, in ;i very few miles, it grew broader. This, so far from 
 being a good sign, was a bad one. The river was spreading out 
 into the marsh ; for the flood-marks, which formerly were many 
 feet above the water, were now barely a foot. It was evident that 
 the river was losing power ; the current grew almost imperceptible, 
 and at this point, also, the trees disappeared. Three miles 
 farther the river, thirty yards broad as it was, came to an 
 end ; the boat grounded, and Captain Start got out ; and, fur his 
 own satisfaction, walked right round the end of it, and got in 
 again. There was an end of the Macquorie. 
 
 Unsupplied by any tributaries, and receiving its waters entirely 
 from mountains 200 miles away, the time had come for the river 
 when its mountain supply was counterbalanced in the very dry 
 season by evaporation. In very wet seasons the surplus water 
 is carried westward by fifty tiny channels. Carried westward, but 
 whither ? Into an inland sea, or into a great watercourse running 
 north-west ? That was the problem before Captain Sturt — the 
 problem he solved at last. 
 
 Having rowed back to his camp, Captain Sturt made an expedi- 
 tion, a circuit of some 200 miles to the north-west, which resulted 
 in nothing. From this time till the 18th of January the whole 
 party persevered in their efforts to get round the north of the 
 miserable country which surrounded the marshes. Every attempt 
 to the westward was foiled. The ascent of a small mountain 
 rising out of the waste revealed nothing whatever except the 
 horrible level expanse, stretching westward like a sea. They were, 
 in fact, standing on the St. Eilda of the dividing range, and looking 
 over the Atlantic of low land so recently raised from the sea. 
 
 So they struggled, westward and northward, without hope, down 
 a dry creek, with sometimes, but very seldom, a pool of water in 
 it. And suddenly, without expectation or preparation of any kind, 
 they came to the edge of a cliff some fifty or sixty feet high, at the 
 base of which flowed a magnificent river, stretching away from 
 north-east to south-west in vast reaches, eighty yards broad, and 
 evidently of great depth. Splendid trees grew on its banks ; its 
 waters were covered with countless legions of pelicans, swans, and 
 ducks ; the native paths on each side of it were as broad as roads. 
 It was a magnificent discovery. In one instant it dispelled the 
 notion — which had arisen one hardly knows how — that the trend of 
 land was towards the north-west. It proved at a glance that this was 
 a great trench, carrying off all the innumerable eastern rivers 
 southward, ami showed that the Southern Ocean, and not Torres 
 Straits, received their waters. That its sources and its emhouchure 
 were both far distant from the place where Sturt stood, in silent 
 
270 THE MAUCH OV CHAliLES STURT. 
 
 gratitude, was evident from its great size and depth ; and from 
 this moment the Darling took its place for ever among the great 
 rivers of the world, and Charles Sturt's name was written down 
 among the foremost of the great band of successful explorers. 
 
 Though a great geographical blunder, involving an error of 
 nearly 2,000 miles, had been cleared up, it fared but poorly with 
 the expedition. In five minutes, or less, congratulations and 
 hand-shakings were exchanged for looks of incredulous horror. 
 They forced their way to the banks of the stream, and found it was 
 salt, too salt to be drunk. 
 
 But little more remains to be said of this great river in this 
 place. They followed it down for many miles, subsisting pre- 
 cariously on the puddles of fresh water which lay about the bank. 
 The river at night was covered with leaping fish ; innumerable 
 wild fowl still ileated on its bosom ; the banks were fertile and 
 beautiful ; but the water is salt. The bidlocks stood in it, with 
 only their noses above water, and refused to drink it ; the men 
 who attempted to do so were made fearfully ill. At one time they 
 found a current in it, which they discovered was fed by great brine 
 springs ; at another it ceased altogether, and a bar of dry sand, 
 ever which you might ride, crossed it. A strange, weird, anomalous 
 river, on whose banks they were nigh dying of thirst ! 
 
 It was necessary to turn. It was resolved on. Captain Start 
 was merely to go a few miles down the river, on a forlorn hope, 
 leaving the party behind in camp. The day was intensely clear 
 and cloudless, burning hot, without a breath of air. Captain 
 Sturt and Mr. Hume were sitting on the ground together, making 
 their chart, when they heard the boom of a great cannon, fired 
 apparently about five miles to the N.W. The whole expedition 
 heard it ;' there was no doubt about it. A man was sent up a tree, 
 and reported nothing but perfectly level wooded country in every 
 direction. What that sound was we shall never know. Neither 
 the captain in the army, nor the brave gentleman-pioneer and 
 bushman, nor the convicts, could make head or tale of it. No 
 doubt, coining at such a time, "it made a strong impression on 
 us for the rest of the day." 
 
 Captain Sturt, with Mr. Hume, went forty miles down the river, 
 and found it stretching away south-west, in reaches grander and 
 more majestic than before, covered with wildfowl, swarming with 
 fish, but as salt as ever. There he left it, to meet it twice again 
 — once higher up, as we shall see immediately ; and once again 
 hundreds of miles away, in the most awful moment of his adven- 
 turous life. 
 
 We need say but little more. After terrible hardships the ex- 
 
THE MARCH OF CHAELES STURT. 271 
 
 pedition succeeded in striking fclie Darling ninety miles higher up 
 than the first point of discovery, and recognised it in an instant. 
 The same long canal-like reaches ; the same clouds of water-fowl 
 
 and shoals of fish ; the water still intensely salt ! They had now- 
 seen it through 150 miles of its course, and found no change. It 
 was time to abandon the expedition. They got hack in safety, 
 having by tact and courage avoided any collision with the natives. 
 The results were important. The trend of the interior basin was 
 southward, not northward ! From the water-marks by the shore 
 of this great canal-like river, it was evident that in nine summers 
 nut of ten. in any season almost but this, the driest hitherto known 
 in the history of the colony, the rainfall would be sufficiently great 
 to overpower the brine springs in its bed, ami make it run fresh. 
 And, lastly, from the size of the channel, it was inferred that the 
 sources of the river were many hundred miles to the north, pro- 
 bably within the tropic. 
 
 And now we come to the second and greater expedition. The 
 question remained. " What becomes of the Darling towards the 
 southwest '? " 
 
 It seemed an utterly hopeless task to carry boats back to the 
 point at which Captain Sturt had touched it, to launch them on 
 its waters, and to run down. The plan evidently was to try and 
 cut it at a point lower down ; hut how '? The Macquarie had been 
 tried, as we see. The Lachlan was known to be a miserable poor 
 thing of a river, worse than the Macquarie. What remained '? 
 What river was there flowing west with vitality sufficient to reach 
 the Darling before it perished *? 
 
 The Morumbidgee '? Well, that did seem something of the 
 kind — rising here behind Mount Dromedary, fed by a thousand 
 streaming creeks, from a thousand peaceful gullies, till it grew 
 to manhood, to strength, to passion, and hurled itself madly 
 from right to left, against buttress after buttress of its moun- 
 tain-walled prison, until it was free ; and then sweeping on, 
 sleeping here, snarling there, under lofty hanging woodlands, 
 through broad, rich river flat-, through a country tit for 
 granary of an empire, sometimes in reaches still as glass, some- 
 times in long foaming shallows of frosted silver. A river among 
 rivers, growing in majesty and beauty, a- a hundred tributaries 
 added to its volume, until at last, where the boldest stockman had 
 Lft it and turned, it went still westward, a chain of crimson 
 
 * This branch of the Darling, which may be called the true Darling, 
 
 loses its name higher up, but may be ronghly said to rise in the latitude 
 of Moii tun Hay (27 |. The lower part, however, receives waters from far 
 inside the tropic. 
 
272 THE MARCH OF CHARLES STUET. 
 
 reaches, towards the setting sun ! Could this river die, save in 
 the great eternal ocean ? Was there a curse on the land, that 
 such a thing should happen? 
 
 This is very unhusiness-like language. But I think it must 
 have been something of this kind which Charles Sturt meant, 
 when he said that the attention of the Colonial Government was, 
 under these circumstances, drawn to the fact that the volume of 
 water in the Morumbidgee was more considerable than that in 
 either of the rivers before mentioned, and did not seem to decrease, 
 but rather the contrary, in a westerly direction. So they deputed 
 Captain Sturt to follow down the Morumbidgee, and find out 
 whether he could carry it on until it cut the Darling. Saul went 
 after his father's asses, and found a kingdom. Captain Sturt 
 went to look after that miserable old Darling, and found a kingdom 
 also, and a very fine one too. 
 
 But there was another reason which gave people great hopes 
 that the Morumbidgee went somewhere, and not nowhei'e, like 
 other Australian rivers. In 1825 Mr. Hume (before mentioned) 
 and Mr. Hovell had gone a strange journey to the south-west, 
 keeping great mountains on their left, to the south and east, nearly 
 all the way, through an utterly unknown but fine and well-watered 
 country, until, when 500 miles from Sydney, they came on a great 
 arm of the sea, and came back again, disputing whether or no they 
 had reached the Port Phillip of Collins, or the Western Port of 
 Bass. It was, in fact, the former, though they could not decide 
 it. This journey of theirs, down to the desolate shores of a lonely 
 sea, was made only forty-five years ago ; yet the best way to 
 describe it now is to say that they passed through the towns of 
 Yass, Groulbourn, Albury (with the wonderful bridge), Wangaratta, 
 Benalla, Seymour, and Kilmore, until they came to the city of 
 Melbourne, which is now slightly larger than Bristol, and exports 
 eleven millions a year. "Darn 'em," said an eld Yankee to me 
 once, a propos of the new South Australian discoveries, " they're 
 at it again, you see." 
 
 On their route they crossed three large streams, going north 
 and west from the mountains which were between them and the 
 sea, which they named the Hume, the Ovens, and the Goulhurn. 
 Now, if either of these streams joined the Morumbidgee, there 
 were great hopes that their united tides would he strong enough 
 to bear one on to the junction with the Darling. These were the 
 prospects of the expedition. We will now resume our narrative. 
 
 A whale-boat was constructed, fitted loosely, and taken to pieces 
 again and packed in the drays, ready for construction in the 
 interior. A still was also provided, lest the waters of the Darling 
 
THE MARCH OF CHABLES STURT. -_>73 
 
 should be found salt where they struck it. The expedition started 
 from Sydney on the 3rd of November, 1829, exactly a year after 
 the starting of the previous one, whose course we have so shortly 
 followed. Mr Hume was unable to accompany Captain Shirt on 
 this journey. His principle companions were Mr. George Macleay ; 
 Harris, his soldier servant ; Hopkinson, soldier friend of Harris ; 
 Frazer, an eccentric Scot, declining to forego his uniform ; dogs; 
 a tame black boy on horsehack ; Clayton, a stolid carpenter ; the 
 rest convicts. 
 
 On the 21st of the mouth, they were getting among the furthest 
 stations. " From east-south-east to west-north-west, the face of 
 the country was hilly, broken, and irregular, forming deep ravines 
 and precipitous glens, amid which I was well aware the Morum- 
 bidgee was still struggling for freedom ; while mountains succeeded 
 mountains in the background, and were themselves overtopped by 
 lofty and distant peaks." So says Captain Sturt, in his vigorous, 
 well-chosen language. 
 
 At last they reached the river of their hopes, rushing, crystal 
 clear, over a bed of mountain debris, in great curves and reaches, 
 across and across the broad meadows, which lay in the lap of the 
 beautiful wooded mountains which towered up on all sides, and 
 which, in places, abutted so closely on the great stream that they 
 had to cross and recross it many times, with great difficulty. 
 Immediately they were beyond the limits of all geographical 
 knowledge ; the last human habitation was left behind at the 
 junction of the Tumut, a river as big as the Morumbidgee, about 
 ten miles above the present town of Guudagai, which has since 
 acquired a disastrous notoriety for its fatal floods. The river was 
 stronger and broader than ever, leading them on towards the great 
 unknown south-west. 
 
 The reaches grew broader, and the pasture on the flats more 
 luxuriant ; yet still hope grew stronger. The natives, such as 
 they saw, were friendly ; they caught fish, one of which weighed 
 •10 pounds (a small thing that, though ; they run up to 120 
 pounds). The ranges still continued on either hand. Hope grew 
 higher and higher — it was to be a mere holiday expedition ! At 
 length they left the ranges, and came out on to the great basin of 
 the interior once more ; and a dull, unexpressed anxiety began to 
 -row on them hour after hour. The country was getting so 
 horribly like the miserable desert which had balked them before, 
 on the Macquarie.* Still the river held on bravely, and any 
 
 * How greatly would their anxiety have been increased had they been 
 aware, as we are now, that the river had actually bifurcated already 
 immediately below the beautiful Hamilton Plains, and that, after a 
 
 19 
 
274 THE MARCH OF CHARLES STURT. 
 
 unexperienced man would have scouted the ideas of its losing itself 
 among reed marshes. But ugly symptoms began to show them- 
 selves. The soil grew sandy, and was covered with the claws of 
 dead crayfish. The hated cypress began to show, too. Two 
 blacks, who had been induced to accompany them, turned back, 
 evidently never expecting to see them again. Things began to 
 look bad. 
 
 And worse as they went on. They began to get among the 
 reeds again. The plains stretched away treeless and bare to the 
 north-east as far as they could see, and the river, their last hope, 
 began to grow smaller. They got entangled among sheets of 
 polygonum (a gloomy and leafless bramble) ; the crested pigeon 
 and the black email appeared — all strong symptoms of the interior 
 desert. 
 
 Toiling over a dreary sand plain, in which the dray horses sunk 
 fetlock-deep, they came to a broad, dry creek, which seemed to be 
 the junction or one of the junctions of the Lachlan. They headed 
 back to the river again ; hut one of the men, sent on on horse- 
 back, rode back to say that the noble river was gone — that there 
 was nothing to be seen but reeds, reeds, reeds in all directions. 
 They had been deceived by another Macquarie ! 
 
 Fortunately not. After a terrible day on horseback, Sturt 
 forced his way to the river once more, and lay down, half dead 
 with fatigue, in utter despair on its banks. He could not sleep, 
 but, as he lay awake under the winking stars, his purpose grew. 
 At daybreak he was up and on horseback with Macleay. They 
 rode till noon through belts of reeds, the river still holding its own 
 to the south-west. At noon Sturt reined up, and the deed was 
 done. He asked no advice, he allowed no discussion. He told 
 Mr. Macleay that to push round the reeds toward the north-west 
 in search of the Darling was to endanger the expedition — that the 
 river was still alive ; that at any moment it might join a stream 
 from the south-east (he meant one of the three streams discovered 
 by Hovell and Hume before mentioned) ; that his fixed and un- 
 alterable purpose was to send the drays and horses back, to put 
 together the whale-boat, and to row down the river into such 
 country and towards such fate as Providence should will. 
 
 One can fancy the smile that came over Macleay's face as his 
 tall, gaunt chief sat upright in his saddle and announced his 
 determination to take this bold and desperate step, for such it was. 
 All the expedition, convicts and all, understood the situation 
 
 ramble of 150 miles, with more or less prosperity, the smaller arm 
 reached the Murray eleven miles above the junction of the main 
 channel ! 
 
The march of ciiaeles sxuut. 275 
 
 perfectly, and worked accordingly. In seven days not only had 
 the whale-boat been put together, but a tree had been felled from 
 the forest, sawn up, «n<l another boat built and painted ; and at 
 th, end of the seventh day loth irere i)i the water ready for 
 loading. 
 
 Of the convicts he took the carpenter, Clayton, who had super- 
 intended and mainly done this wonderful week's work (what could 
 such a line fellow have been doing to get transported?), Mulhol- 
 land, and Macnamee ; of free men, Harris, the captain's servant, 
 Hopkinson, and Frazer (all these three, I believe, soldiers). The 
 others were sent home, under charge of Hubert Harris, with 
 despatches. 
 
 So they started, rowing the whale-boat, and towing the little 
 boat which they had made after them. The stream was strong, 
 and they swept on between the walls of reeds at a good pace. 
 Two emus swimming across the river before them caused them to 
 laud ; and, forcing their way to the other bank, they found that 
 the reeds were ceasing, and that they were fairly committed to 
 the level interior on a stream which was obviously contracting. 
 
 Again the reeds hemmed them in on all sides, so closely that 
 there was barely room to land and camp ; the river holding clue 
 west. On the morning of the second day the skill' they were 
 towing struck on a sunken log, and went down, with all their 
 stores. The day was spent in raising her, and in diving after the 
 head of the still to which they attached such importance. In the 
 morning it was recovered, and they made sixteen miles. The 
 fourth day of their voyage found them still hemmed in by reeds, 
 which overshadowed the still diminishing river ; and it came on 
 to rain, turning also very cold. They camped at two o'clock. No 
 tributary had met them as yet, and hope began to die. 
 
 As the current began to deaden, the vast logs earned down by 
 the floods from the better country above began to choke the river, 
 rendering the navigation difficult. But on the sixth day of their 
 voyage there came a gleam of hope. A running creek from the 
 south-east, the first tributary for 3-40 miles, joined the Moruin- 
 bidgee, and the boat struck on a reef of rocks, the first ribs of the 
 earth found west of the dividing range ; the river grew slightly 
 better, and even the country seemed slightly to improve. 
 
 But next day it seemed as if it were all over with the expedition. 
 The river contracted, and was so obstructed by a netwoi'k of fallen 
 logs that it was impossible to proceed. Night fell upon them, and 
 they delayed the attempt of their forlorn hope until the morning. 
 
 They started early. The current was, strange to say, swift 
 ouce more, and every man had to be on the alert to keep his 
 
270 THE MARCH OF CHARLES STURT. 
 
 part of the boat from striking the jagged points of the trees, 
 which, being carried down mots foremost, presented a horrible 
 chcval de /rise, one touch against which would have left them 
 hopelessly destitute in the midst of a miserable desert. Hopkin- 
 
 son stood in the how, and behaved like a hero, leaping off on to 
 snags, which sank under his weight, and saving them a dozen 
 times. They pushed through the harrier, which had delayed 
 them the night before; hut, alas! at every reach the same 
 difficulties occurred. At one o'clock they stopped a short time, 
 and then proceeded, the hanks becoming more narrow and 
 gloomier, the turns in the river more abrupt, and the stream very 
 swift. At three o'clock Hopkinson, who was in the hows, called 
 out that they were approaching a junction ; in less than one 
 single minute afterwards, they were shot like an arrow from a 
 bow, through a narrow channel into a magnificent river. The 
 Morumbidgee was no more ; and they, dazed and astonished, 
 were floating on the bosom of the majestic Murray, henceforth 
 one of the great rivers of the world. 
 
 "What a moment in the man's life ! It was not merely that 
 a desperate adventure had terminated — as it would seem at 
 the moment — favourably. There was more to congratulate him- 
 self on than the mere lucky issue of an adventure. A very care- 
 fully considered geographical problem, originated by his sagacity, 
 had' been solved by his perseverance. He had argued that the 
 Hume, Ovens, and Goulhourn, seen by Hume and Hovell flowing 
 north, would "form a junction," or, as vulgarians would say, 
 "join," and that the Morumbidgee would retain sufficient 
 strength to carry its waters to them. The one difficulty had 
 been the Morumbidgee, and that river had not deceived him, 
 though he had so cruelly suspected it. Sturt must have felt on 
 that afternoon, as Adams did, when, having finished his vast 
 calculations, be sat looking through his telescope, and saw the 
 long-expected Neptune roll into the field, or as Herschel and his 
 sister felt, after their three months' labour to correct one un- 
 fortunate mistake, when they saw a dim needle of light in the 
 west, which was not a star. 
 
 If one had to find fault with Captain Stmt's proceedings, one 
 would he forced to say that it would have been better, on the 
 discovery of this great river, to have gone back at once, to have 
 brought on his depot, to have communicated with his base of 
 operations at Sydney, and to have done the whole thing with a 
 Fluellen-like attention to the rules of war. I am happy to say 
 such a thing never entered into his head. Sir Galahad saw his 
 horse, armour, and sword, and recognised it as the mean- of 
 
THE MARCH OF CHARLES STURT. 277 
 
 reaching the Sangreal. Start saw his boat lull of convicts, and 
 recognised it as the means of solving the great prohlem of the 
 out-fall of the western waters. I say I am glad that Sturt com- 
 mitted himself to this strange, wild adventure without one 
 moment's hesitation, like a knight-errant ; if for no other reason, 
 because one is glad to see the spirit of the sixteenth century so 
 remarkably revived in the nineteenth. Charles Sturt, the Dorset- 
 shire squire's son, turned his boat's head westward, down the 
 swift current of the great new river, knowing well that each 
 stroke of the oar carried him further from help and hope, but 
 knowing also that a great prohlem was before him, and be- 
 grudging any other man the honour of solving it. It is not well 
 for us to sneer at motives such as these. We must recognise 
 personal ambition as a good and necessary thing, or half our 
 great works would he left undone. He disconnected himself 
 from his base, and began to move his little flying column. 
 Whither? 
 
 It seems, from a later passage in his journal, that he had 
 some notion of reaching the Southern Ocean, and coasting back 
 in his whale-boat. I cannot hut think that he (who afterwards 
 -bowed himself so patient and so sagacious in his unparalleled 
 journey to the centre of the continent) had, on this occasion, 
 calculated, to some extent, the chances against him ; yet by his 
 journal one finds no trace of any calculation whatever. Here was 
 the great river, flowing swiftly westward, and he turned his boat's 
 head down it " vogue Ik galereJ" 
 
 The Murray, where he joined it, was 120 yards broad : say, 
 roughly, one-third broader than Henley reach. The Murray, 
 however, above its junction with the Morumbidgee, is both 
 swifter and deeper, as well as broader, than the Thames at 
 Henley. Captain Sturt speaks of it as being perfectly clear. It 
 doubtless was so in January ; but later on in the summer I think 
 he would have found it assume a brown, peaty colour. At least, 
 such is my impression. I used to notice this fact about nearly 
 all the rivers I knew in Australia Felix. While the vegetable 
 matter was thoroughly washed out of them and diluted by the 
 winter tloods, they wen — instance the Yarra, (loulbourn, and 
 Ovens — very clear. But later on in the summer, towards 
 February, they began, as the water got lower, to get stained and 
 biown, although not foul ; and the little Thymallus of the Yarra, 
 the only one of the salmonidae which, as far as I am aware, exists 
 to any extent in Australia, seems only to rise to the fly while the 
 waters are (dear and green, but to go to the bottom during the 
 summer. 
 
278 THE MARCH OF CHARLES ST CRT. 
 
 On the lower part of the Morumbidgee they had seen no 
 natives ; Tmt on the very first day on the Murray, as we now call 
 this great river, natives reappeared. In the evening a large band 
 of them, painted and prepared for war, advanced on Sturt and his 
 few companions, through the forest. The sight was really mag- 
 nificent. They halted and broke out into their war-cry. They 
 threatened and gesticulated ; but at last, when they had lost their 
 breath, they grew calm, nay, began to get rather alarmed, for no 
 one took the slightest notice of them — which was very alarming 
 indeed. Sturt got them to come down to him, and gave them 
 presents ; then put them in a row, and fired his gun in the air. 
 The result was an instant and frantic " stampede." However, 
 after a time, they were induced to return, and sixteen of them, 
 finding no one was the worse for the gun, stayed with them all 
 night. Next day they followed them, and entreated them to 
 stay with them. Their astonishment at the gun shows that Sturt 
 and his party were the first white men they had seen. 
 
 It was, in all human probability, these were the very blacks, at 
 least the children and young men among them, who gave some 
 curious trouble to the police at Swanhill, as late as 1854. I say, 
 in all human probability, for Sturt was at this time barely sixty 
 miles from the town we now call Swanhill, though then close upon 
 four hundred miles from human habitation. The story about 
 these blacks, as it was told me at the time, was this : — A China- 
 man, one of those wretched Amoy emigrants that were poured in 
 on us so plentifully at that time, wandered ; and he wandered to 
 Swanhill. Why lie went there nobody knows, for the simple 
 reason that he had no earthly cause for going there. But he 
 followed his nose, did this Chinaman, and he got to Swanhill ; 
 and, when he got there, there were a tribe of river blacks hanging 
 about the town who found him walking in a wood near that place ; 
 and these blacks instantly possessed themselves of his person and 
 carried him off into the bush on the other side of the river. The 
 Chinaman did not care a button. He had come on his travels, 
 and during those travels he had come on a tribe of savages, who 
 carried him away into a forest — an ordinary piece of business 
 enough to a man whose knowledge of the world was confined to a 
 back street in Whampoa. You cannot astonish a Sindee or a 
 Chinaman — the wonders they do meet with fall so far below their 
 ignorant anticipations. 
 
 So the Chinaman was marched off, perfectly contented, by the 
 black fellows, into the bush. The black fellows removed from 
 the neighbourhood of the settlement, that they might enjoy their 
 prize without interruption. They fed him with the rarest dainties. 
 
THE MARCH OF CHARLES STUBT. 279 
 
 Grubs, opossum (originally, and with careful cooking, nasty, but 
 which, when chucked on the fire unskinned, ungutted, unprepared, 
 is a good deal nastier), snake, lizard, cockatoo, centipede, her- 
 metically sealed meat from the station which had been unfortunate, 
 lob-worms, and every other inconceivable beastliness which black 
 fellows devour before their wives come and beg Epsom salts of 
 you, did this Chinaman enjoy. And they sat and looked at him 
 all day long. The thing was kept a profound secret. It was 
 a wonderful catch for them. 
 
 Why "? dust for the same reason that you, my dear reader, 
 no! so very long ago, used to be so proud when you caught a 
 mouse or a squirrel, and let your sisters peep into the box where 
 you keep it, as a very particular favour. Nothing else than that — 
 just the childish instinct of keeping something they had caught, 
 as they kept Buckley the convict. But, unluckily, the thing 
 leaked out. 
 
 One of those old men (" flour-bag cobblers," as they are 
 irreverently called by the young men), who are allowed to visit 
 three or four of the tribes neighbouring their own without 
 molestation, happened to visit this particular tribe. They could 
 not keep their counsel. In a weak moment, with looks of ex- 
 ultation, they showed him their tame Chinaman. Fired with rage 
 and envy at such an inestimable prize having fallen into the 
 clutches of a rival tribe, this wicked and envious old man went 
 away and informed the police. 
 
 The thing got wind ; philanthropists took it up ; they were 
 determined "to benefit this Chinaman, nill-he will-he. That he 
 was comfortable in his present quarters was nothing ; he had no 
 business to be, if he was. Public opinion was brought to hear, 
 and a policeman was sent into the bush, to fetch him back. 
 
 But they wouldn't give him up. They put their case in this 
 way. They said, " He is not a white man, as you yourselves will 
 allow ; therefore he can't belong to you. He is not a black man, 
 for he is yellow; therefore we set up no claim that he is ours. 
 But we, on the other hand, found him walking in a wood, and 
 caught him. Consequently, by all laws, human and divine, he 
 must belong to us." Their case was strong, but it would not do ; 
 the trooper was sent hack again and fetched the Chinaman away 
 from among the sulky blacks. I do not know what became of 
 him ; he may have followed his nose— a thing that may bo done 
 without the slightest personal hardship in Australia — to this day ; 
 hut I rather think I can guess what happened to the old black 
 man who "split" to the police. I rather fancy that he found 
 himself laid on his stomach on the grass one moonshiny night, 
 
280 THE MARCH OF CHARLES STURT. 
 
 getting himself beaten raw sienna and pale yellow madder about 
 the hack ; which is the same thing as being beaten black and 
 blue is to a white man. 
 
 Such were these poor children of the wilderness in 1854, who 
 were frightened by Sturt's gun in 1829. Poor wretches ! It 
 unluckily happened, by mismanagement on both sides, that it 
 came to be a struggle for bare existence between them and the 
 first squatters. Horrible atrocities were committed on both sides ; 
 Glenelg poisonings and seven stockmen massacres on the part of 
 tlic whites, and innumerable butcheries of lonely shepherds on the 
 part of the blacks. Having heard the case argued so very often 
 as I have, I cannot pronounce any sweeping condemnation on 
 either blacks or whites. If you deny the squatters the right to 
 defend their lives and property, you come inexorably to the con- 
 clusion that we have no business in Australia at all. Have we, 
 or have we not, a right to waste lands occupied by savage tribes? 
 If we have not, the occupation of Australia is an act of piracy. 
 If we have, then the confiscation of the Waikato lands ought to 
 have been done thirty years ago, before we supplied the Maories 
 with guns. This is the sort of result you come to, if you apply 
 any general rule to our colonial policy. The law of purchase, 
 which makes us legal owners in New Zealand, proves us to be 
 pirates in Australia. 
 
 Meanwhile Sturt sleeps his first night on the Murray. It is 
 time that he, Macleay, and his boatful of soldiers and convicts 
 should awaken and go on. 
 
 The river improved with them mile after mile. The current, 
 fed by innumerable springs, grew stronger, and its course was 
 often impeded by bars of rock, which formed rapids, and which 
 showed, also, that they were near to high, water-producing 
 ground ; elevations of sandstone, seventy or eighty feet in height, 
 began to appear also ; still, however, the river held towards the 
 north of west, and the country appeared unpromising in that direction. 
 
 For six days, passing over a distance of say 190 miles, they 
 swept onwards down the river without adventure. On the sixth 
 day they fell in with a great tribe of natives, who at first 
 threatened them, but, after being encouraged, made friends with 
 them ; for in Mr. Macleay they recognised a dead man, named 
 Rundi, who had been killed by a spear-wound in his side, and 
 had come back to them in his shape. The poor fools ran with 
 the boats which contained their beloved Rundi for two days, and 
 on the morning of the third day Sturt saw them clustering eagerly 
 on a lofty bank ahead of them, watching their movements with 
 intense anxiety. 
 
THE MAKCH OF CHARLES STTTRT. 281 
 
 .' He soon saw why. Sweeping round a sharp turn in the river, 
 he, without a moment's preparation, found himself on the glassy 
 lip of a rapid, which instantly helow hurst into a roaring cataract. 
 There was just time for him to stand up in the stern sheets and 
 decide. There seemed to he two channels, and he rammed his 
 boat at the left one. In the midst of the rapid she struck on a 
 rock. Tlie skiff which they were towing swept past them and 
 hung in the torrent, hut the whale-boat remained firmly fixed. 
 At the terrible risk of her being so lightened as to sweep down 
 the cataract broadside on, two men got out and swung her into 
 the comparatively still water helow the rock. After this, having 
 got her head to the stream, they lowered her into safety — thus 
 passing, with incredible good fortune, an ohstacle which would 
 have to he passed again on their return. Again the behaviour of 
 the convicts was splendid. One need say nothing of the others. 
 of course. 
 
 So passed one adventure : we now approach another and a 
 more ten'ible one. 
 
 The river still perversely held to the north of west, hut the 
 friendly natives, in describing its course, always pointed a little 
 to the' south of west. But, besides this, they made a curious 
 diagram by placing sticks across one another, which no one 
 could understand. Frazer, the Scot, played with them ; he sat 
 up with them all night, to his and their infinite contentment ; hut 
 in the morning they were gone. 
 
 The reason was soon apparent, they were approaching another 
 tribe. The next morning, the river being so much wider, they 
 hoisted a sail, and sailed pleasantly on. They saw vast flocks of 
 wild-fowl overhead ; and, after nine miles, looking forward, saw 
 that they were approaching a hand of magnificent trees, of dense, 
 dark foliage ; and beneath them was a vast board of natives, in full 
 war-paint, chanting their war songs, and standing line behind 
 line, quivering their spears. The passage of the river was about 
 to he disputed at last. 
 
 At first Start thought nothing of it. The river was so broad 
 that he could easily pas> them. But the blacks knew what they 
 were about. The river suddenly shoaled ; the current was swift : 
 and Sturt saw that a great sandbank stretched suddenly one- 
 third across the river helow. This the natives took possession of, 
 and this Sturt had to pass. 
 
 It seemed a perfectly hopeless business. The expedition was 
 within five minutes of its conclusion. The people at home in 
 Dorsetshire yonder, praying for those travelling by land or by 
 water that Sunday, would have prayed a little more eagerly, I 
 
282 THE MARCH OF CHARLES STURT. 
 
 take it, if they had known to what puss tall young Squire Charley 
 had brought himself at eleven o'clock that morning. Maeleay 
 and two of the men were to defend the boat with the bayonet ; 
 Captain Start, Hopkinson, and Harris were to keep up the fire. 
 There would not have been much firing or bayoneting either, after 
 the first flight of a couple of hundred spears or so, each one 
 thrown by a man who could probably hit a magpie at ten yards. 
 
 The boat drifted on, the men again behaving nobly. Shirt 
 fixed on a savage, and said be must die ; his gun was at his 
 shoulder, but it was never fired. Before he pulled the trigger, 
 Maeleay called his attention to the left bank. A native, running 
 at the top of his speed, dashed into the water, swam and splashed 
 across, seized the native at whom Sturt was aiming by the throat, 
 and forced him back ; and then driving in the natives, who were 
 wading towards the boat, back on to the sand-bank by the mere 
 strength of his fury, the noble fellow stood alone before the whole 
 tribe of maddened savages, before three hundred quivering spears, 
 stamping, gesticulating, threatening, almost inarticulate in his 
 rage. 
 
 They were saved. They were just drifting past their preserver 
 when the boat touched on a sand-bank ; in an instant they had 
 her off. For a minute or two they floated like men in a dream, 
 incredulous of their safety ; and, while they were preparing to go 
 back to the assistance of the gallant savage, they looked to their 
 right, and saw the Darling — saw it come rolling its vast volume 
 of water in from the northward. The Darling — the river they 
 had tried to follow the year before, five hundred miles to the north, 
 in the miserable desert — found once more, at this terrible time, 
 when each man sat on his thwart, paralysed with the fear of the 
 terrible danger just overpast ! 
 
 They saw about seventy natives on the bank of the new river, 
 and landed among them. Seeing this, the others, on the tongue 
 of land between the two rivers, began to swim across, unarmed, 
 in curiosity. Now they saw the extent of their danger. Captain 
 Sturt, a soldier, used to calculate numbers of men, puts the num- 
 ber of hostile natives at no less than six hundred. They soon 
 became quiet. Sturt rewarded his friend with every expression of 
 good will, but refused to give anything to the hostile chiefs. After 
 rowing a few miles up the Darling, which he found a more beauti- 
 ful stream than the Murray, and perfectly fresh, he turned his 
 boat's head and renewed his voyage, running up the Union Jack 
 and giving three cheers. They hoisted their sail, and went onwards 
 with their strange adventure. 
 
 The channel grew to be much obstructed with large fallen logs 
 
THE MARCH OF CHARLES STURT. 283 
 
 of timber, and sand-banks began to appear. Stmt considers that, 
 just after the junction of the Darling, they were not more than 
 fifty feet above the level of the sea. Enormous flocks of wild-fowl 
 flew high overhead. The blacks were friendly enough and curious 
 enough. They broke up the skiff they had towed so far, and 
 found the river, since the junction, holding, as the black fellows 
 had shown them, slightly south of west on the whole. They had 
 now been rowing rapidly down stream for eighteen days. 
 
 Day succeeded day, and they still rowed on. After they had 
 passed the junction of the Darling, no farther hostility was ex- 
 hibited by the natives. Their valiant friend, who had risked his 
 life to save tbeirs, had done bis work well. They now found them- 
 selves passed on from tribe to tribe, by ambassadors, and treated 
 in the most friendly way. Seldom do we get an instance of the 
 action of one powerful mind producing such remarkable results. 
 The poor savage was a typical person. In reading the history of 
 the encroachments of the white race on the coloured race, one 
 always finds a Montezuma, a man in advance of the thoughts of 
 his countrymen — a man who believes in us and our professions, 
 and thinks that the great hereafter will be a millennium of toma- 
 hawks, looking-glasses, and Jews'-harps. This poor fellow coidd 
 hardly have succeeded in keeping the blacks quiet without some 
 degree of eloquence. That, when he, single-handed, drove back 
 two or three hundred of them on the sand-bank, he merely 
 frightened them by his fury into believing that the whites were a 
 sacred and terrible race I can quite believe. But after this he 
 must have gone into particulars, and, showing the tomahawks 
 Sturt had given them, have begun to lie horribly. There is no 
 other way of accounting for the singular change in the behaviour 
 of the natives. Captain Sturt's great gun trick fell perfectly dead 
 on the audience at this part of the river. They had heard of it, 
 and never so much as winked an eye at the explosion, but sat 
 defiantly still. The temper of the natives must have been at this 
 time neutral. They were determined to give these men — these 
 white nun — these men who came from the land of looking-glasses 
 — these distributors of tenpenny nails— these fathers of Jews'- 
 harps — a fair trial, on condition of their acting up to the character 
 given of them by those natives who already had received tomahawks 
 — on condition in short of being each one furnished with a looking- 
 glass, a string of beads, and a tomahawk. This being impossible, 
 Sturt was treated very much like an impostor on his way back, 
 being made answerable tor the wild representation of bis friends. 
 If the blacks had any cause for their behaviour, it must have been 
 this. 
 
284 THE MAECH OF CHARLES STUET. 
 
 They let them pass on from tribe to tribe, undergoing the most 
 loathsome examination from the poor diseased savages. And now 
 a new feature showed itself upon the river. The left bank became 
 lofty, above a hundred feet high, of fantastically water-worn clay, 
 apparently like the domes of the Mississippi or the cliffs near 
 Bournemouth. The natives as yet gave no information about 
 the sea. 
 
 Now, after twenty-two days on the river, and when they had 
 come some three hundred miles on it, it came on to rain heavily 
 and steadily. They noticed the height of the flood-marks, and 
 saw that a flood would be their destruction ; for the men were 
 beginning to fail rapidly. 
 
 The river turned hopelessly north again, thrown in that direc- 
 tion by cliffs, apparently, from Start's description, of pleiocene or 
 post-pleiocene formation. The river ran in a hue glen between 
 them. Still for another hundred miles the river held north-west, 
 and there was no change. 
 
 At last there came a message from the sea. A very, very old 
 man, whom they met walking through a wood, fell in love with 
 Hopkinson, and followed them. Ho got into the boat with them, 
 ami spoke to Sturt by signs. He pointed to the north-west, and 
 laid his head upon his hand ; that was intelligibly — they would 
 sleep that night at a point to the north-west. But Avhat did the 
 old fellow mean by insisting on sleeping due south the night after, 
 and why did he roar like the sea, and imitate waves with his hand? 
 What strange change was coming ? 
 
 The great change of all. They had come to the Great Bend, 
 which lies exactly on the thirty-fourth parallel of south latitude. 
 From this point the character of the river changes, and it runs 
 due south towards the sea. The scenery becomes magnificent, the 
 water deeper, the reaches longer, its breadth about a quarter of a 
 mile ; and so it goes on, increasing in beauty and magnificence, 
 for the next hundred miles. 
 
 Here for the first time the gulls came overhead, and Frazer 
 would have shot one, only Sturt forbade him to kill the messengers 
 of glad tidings. Here, too, the south wind, which saved their 
 lives, began to blow, and the whale-boat began to leap and plunge 
 upon the waves which rolled up the long windy reaches. Some- 
 times the river would strike tall cliti's, beautifully ornamented 
 with trees ; in other places would sough among great beds of 
 reeds. 
 
 When this weary hundred miles was nearly passed they found 
 that there was a tide in the river of nearly eight inches ; and next 
 day Sturt got out of the boat and climbed a hill, and saw that the 
 
THE MARCB OF CHARLES STURT. 285 
 
 end of it all was to come. Thalatta ! Thalatta ! There it was 
 at last, in the distance, with one great Military headland, wrapped 
 in a mist of driving sea-spray. 
 
 Between where be steed and the sea. the river expanded into a 
 large lake, and this lie determined to cross for the purpose of see- 
 ing whether there was a practicable channel into the sea. The 
 spot on which he stood is nearly identical with the Ferry, at 
 Wellington, a township on the Adelaide road. The nearest human 
 habitation to him at that time, 182SJ, must have been nearly seven 
 hundred miles away as the crow flies. Now, if he stood there, he 
 would be aide to take coach to the city of Adelaide, fifty miles 
 distant, containing 25,000 inhabitants and would pass through a 
 beautiful settled country all the way. Or he could get on board 
 one of the fleet of steamers which now ply on this river, and might 
 go up in her ahove a thousand miles into the network of river.-, 
 which spread out of the Murray and the Darling. 
 
 Lake Alexandrina was. the name he gave to this beautiful lake, 
 fifty miles in length, across which they sailed in one day, and at 
 sunset heard the surf bursting in on the sand. The next day they 
 went down to the shore, and bathed in the great Southern Ocean. 
 
 There was no available passage into the sea. Had there been, 
 Sturt thinks, he would have made for Van Dieman's Land. . As it 
 was, he was eight hundred miles from help, with failing provisions 
 and sickening men. a strong current, a danger of natives, who had 
 by this time repented allowing them to pass, and violent physical 
 pain of his own to contend with. A \'as ever man in such a 
 
 The men could not have rowed all the way, as became evident 
 afterwards. God, it seemed, would not have the expedition perish, 
 and most unexpectedly He sent a strong south wind, which lashed 
 the broad lake and the long reaches of the [Murray into wave-, 
 and before which they hoisted their sail and sped away homewards, 
 across the solitary lake, among the swift sea-fowl, as though their 
 whale-boat was seized with a panic as soon as they turned, and was 
 living for life. 
 
 At last the breeze died away and the weary rowing began ; but 
 the wind had just made the difference between safety and ruin. 
 They had a row before them of seven hundred miles, on bread and 
 water. They reached the Great Lend twenty days after they had 
 left it, and turned the boat's head eastward. From thence to the 
 junction with the Darling they were frequently in danger from the 
 natives, but no accident occurred. They rowed on with failing 
 strength, frequently sleeping while labouring at the oar, through 
 intensely hot weather, and with the growing terror of the rapid. 
 
286 THE MARCH OF CHARLES STURT. 
 
 which had nearly shipwrecked them before, getting only stronger 
 as they approached it. 
 
 At last they reached it. Their most desperate efforts were 
 utterly unavailing ; they were up to their armpits in water, hold- 
 ing their hoat in the lee of a rock, where they were suddenly 
 surrounded by hundreds of armed natives. They were utterly 
 defenceless, and the captain thought that the end of it all was 
 come in good earnest this time. But the natives remained silent, 
 resting on their spears, and Sturt heard the deep voice he knew so 
 well — the voice of the native who had saved them hefore. The 
 noble fellow was there again, just at their extremest need. 
 
 With the help of the natives they got their hoat through and 
 went on. Noticeahle at this point is this circumstance : — The 
 sugar had run short, and there was hut six pounds remaining. The 
 convicts and soldiers unanimously begged Sturt and Macleay to 
 keep it for their own use. Now what sort of convicts and soldiers 
 were those who did this ? And what sort of men were they who 
 brought them into this temper ? These extracts, too, are worth 
 keeping, as exhibiting character : — " We were not always equal to 
 a trial of temper (with the blacks) after our day's work." And 
 about the blacks again — " They lay down close to our tents, or 
 around our fire. When they were apparently asleep I watched 
 them narrowly. Macnamee was walking up and down with his 
 firelock, and every time he turned his back one of the natives rose 
 gently and poised his spear at him ; and, as soon as he thought 
 Macnamee was about to turn, he dropped as quietly into his place. 
 When I say the native got up, I do not mean that he stood up, 
 but that he raised himself sufficiently for the purpose he had in 
 view. His spear would not, therefore, have gone with much force ; 
 but I determined it should not quit his hand, for, had I observed 
 any actual attempt to throw it, I should unquestionably have shot 
 him dead upon the spot." 
 
 We return to him entering the Morumbidgee, since leaving 
 which they had rowed 1,500 miles, through an unknown desert 
 country. Pause and think of this an instant ; it is really worth 
 while to do so. On the fifty-fifth day from their leaving it, they 
 re-entered the narrow, gloomy channel of the tributary ; the navi- 
 gation was much obstructed, in consequence of the river having 
 fallen. On the seventy-seventh day, having reached the place 
 where the whale-boat had been launched, after a voyage of two 
 thousand miles, they met with their greatest disappointment. Their 
 companions were not there. The drays had failed to meet them, 
 and the depot was deserted. 
 
 The men lost heart now for the first time. The river suddenly 
 
THE MABCH OF CHARLES STURT. 287 
 
 rose, and for seventeen terrible days longer they rowed without 
 energy— almost without hope — against a swift current. They be- 
 came terribly haggard, and at last the first man went mad, and 
 showvd the others' the terrible fate in store for them, and forced 
 them in addition to their own gloomy thoughts, to listen to the 
 raving of a lunatic. The mind of the chief himself became a little 
 off its balance. With his noble simplicity he says : — " I became 
 captious, and found fault when there was no occasion, and lust the 
 equilibrium of my temper in contemplating the condition of my 
 companions. . . . Xo murmur, however, escaped them. Macleay 
 preserved his good humour to the last." 
 
 At Hamilton Plains, being still ninety miles from assistance In- 
 land, they abandoned the boat and took to the bush. It became 
 necessary to send the two strongest men for assistance. Hopkin- 
 son and Mulholland were honoured by the selection, and the others 
 remained camped. On the eighth day Sturt served out the last 
 ounce of flour, and prepared to move his foodless and exhausted 
 men on their way towards assistance. Suddenly there was a shout, 
 and they knew that aid was come one way or another. Hopkinson 
 and Mulholland had found the drays ; and then these noble fellows, 
 disregarding their fearful condition, had hastened back with a few 
 necessaries" to their chief, to fall utterly exhausted on the ground 
 before him, hut to tell him with smiling faces that he was saved. 
 
 The two great successful river-adventures of this century are 
 undoubtedly" Sturt' s discovery of the Murray and Speke's dis- 
 covery of the source of the Nile. But Sturt's discovery has of 
 course led to commercial results far greater than any which can 
 come from that of Speke. The Murray, draining a basin nearly 
 equal to that of the true Mississippi (omitting the Missouri and 
 Arkansas basins) is now covered with steamboats, and flows 
 through three splendid republics, whose presidents are nominated 
 by the British Crown. Xo city stands on the Murray, in con- 
 sequence of the unfortunate bar at the mouth, and so the dock- 
 yards required by the fleet of steamers are on Lake Victoria, liut 
 the beautiful city of Adelaide is but seventy miles off, and now, 
 unless I am mistaken, connected with it by the Goolwa railway. 
 And Charles Sturt has earned for himself the title of the father 
 of Australian exploration. 
 
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE VILLAGE OF 
 INVEBQUOIGH. 
 
 20 - SJ 
 
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE VILLAGE OE 
 INVERQUOICH. 
 
 After all, what is best worth seeing and studying in Scotland is, 
 not the Scotch scenery, but the Scotch people ; and the way 
 to make acquaintance with the people of any country is not to 
 go raging about in cars and coaches along route 794, and 
 stopping at station G5 two hours, so that you may see the 
 Druidical stones, and be in time to get to station Go' in time to 
 see the sun set behind Ben Dumbledore, and catch the steamer 
 on Loch Houlakin next morning, but to set yourself quietly down 
 for a month or so in some quiet interesting place (say Aberfeldy), 
 and make acquaintance with the people and the scenery together. 
 This is what we did at Inverquoich ; and we think that very 
 few people lenjoyed themselves in Scotland last year more than 
 ourselves. One advantage we gained, which is worth something. 
 We have left some faces behind us in Inverquoich which we hope 
 to see next year, but which, even if we never see them again, we 
 shall always hold in most affectionate remembrance. Answer us, 
 headlong tourist, How many friends did you make in Scotland 
 last year ? 
 
 THE SCENERY NEAR INVERQUOICH. 
 
 The best approach to Inverquoich is from Aberfeldy. And, in 
 mentioning Aberfeldy, I may say that all, or nearly all, which we 
 found at Inverquoich may be found there or at Rannoch, or at 
 fifty other places in Scotland, if people will only take the trouble 
 to find them out. 
 
 Leaving Aberfeldy, you cross Marshall Wade's bridge over the 
 Tay, the largest river in Scotland — here carrying about the same 
 flood of water as the Thames at Oxford. In the meadow to the 
 left the old Black Watch embodied itself into the Forty-second 
 Highlanders, and marched forth into the world conquering and to 
 conquer. And, while you are trying to recall some of the main 
 
 201 
 
29-2 SOME ACCOUNT OF THE VILLAGE OF INVEHQUOICH. 
 
 incidents of that regiment's glorious career, the driver stops, and 
 points out Menzies Castle, close to the road — Tully Veolan itself 
 — with 700 feet of towering wood rising sheer behind. Menzies 
 Castle, however, is not the original of Tully Veolan. The place 
 most like it is Grandtully Castle, five miles from this, rented this 
 year by Maharajah Dhuleep Sing (the black prince, as they call 
 him here), who has earned a reputation in these parts as a good 
 shot and a capital fisherman. He must find it rather cold. There 
 can be no harm in mentioning that the present owner of Menzies 
 Castle, Sir Eobert Menzies, and his brother Fletcher, rowed in 
 the Oxford boat at Henley years ago, Sir Eobert being ill, when 
 they beat Cambridge with seven oars against eight. 
 
 The valley of the Tay at this part is about two miles in width. 
 Looking westward, you see Ben Lawers, streaked with snow ; you 
 have one glimpse of the Towers of Taymouth and the lake. Then 
 you turn up the valley of the Lyon for two miles, and then leave 
 it, and begin climbing slowly aloft beside a roaring burn which 
 tumbles wildly about among its rocks hundreds of feet below. 
 
 This is the Keltnie burn. In old times there was a nunnery 
 on an island in Loch Tay, close to Kenmore. And the nuns' 
 chief steward was as the chief officer of Candace, Queen of 
 the Ethiopians — a dexterous man at foraging in winter time, a 
 Keltnie Caleb Balderstone. And he went foraging one winter's 
 day across to Tummel Side, and he got roaring fou with Alaster 
 Kennedy (that was forbear to Sandy Kennedy, that now is) in the 
 changediouse at Glen Goldnie, and he coupit his creels into the 
 burn, coming home, and was drowned, and the burn is called the 
 Keltnie burn to this day, in proof of the truth of the story ; 
 which seems to us to have such great elements of probability 
 about it as hardly to want confirmation of any kind. 
 
 Passing Garth Castle, an old robber tower, and a beautiful 
 waterfall, you creep on through the growing desolation of Glen 
 Goldnie, till cultivation ceases ; and, passing suddenly round a 
 scarp of rock, you cry, alia ! and come face to face with the top- 
 most soaring peak of Schchallion. 
 
 It springs up from the side of the road, in one vast cone of 
 grey stone and yellow grass, without a wrinkle — almost without 
 a shade — save where some happy wandering cloud throws a 
 purple shadow into the deep summer blue for a moment, and then 
 passes on again, leaving the mighty pyramid to repose in crystal 
 silence aloft in the summer air. 
 
 Such was Schchallion as we saw it, in June, on a day when it 
 was a happiness merely to breath and look. In winter, when the 
 accumulated fury of tempest gathered from the wild Atlantic is 
 
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE VILLAGE OF INYERQUOICH. 203 
 
 raging in every cranny — or worse, when the south-east lias poured 
 his hoards of snow, day after day, before the driving wind ; when 
 the rocks, now so lovely a pearl-grey, in contrast to the yellow 
 grass, show black as ink amidst the snow ; when the whole peak 
 hangs np, an angry, dark, snowless cone, above the drift — the 
 beautiful Schehallion, Hill of Storms, becomes a terrible demon, 
 a pitiless devourer of men, whose wives look out into the howling 
 night, listening in vain for the well-known footfall amidst the 
 storm. 
 
 For hush ! What place is this ? A little desolate lake at a 
 turn of the road, grown up with sedges and moss. And what are 
 these heaps of grey stones, lying about here and there ? This is 
 the worst bit of the road, and these cairns point where the corpses 
 were found of those who have at different times defied Schehallion 
 in his angry mood. The oldest cairn has been there about thirty 
 years, the newest, alas ! but six months. It was that of a young 
 man, going down to spend bis new year in Rannoch. " When 
 they found him, be was sitting by the bumside where you are 
 standing now. Yes, indeed, sir. And his poor body was laid 
 along sideways. And here, in this bit alder-bush, they found his 
 umbrella." One walks about cautiously after this, lest, lying 
 about, among the summer flowers, buckbeans, and white orchises, 
 one should see some more decided relic of the poor young fellow 
 who started for Rannoch, last new year, for his holiday, and was 
 lost in the snowdrift. 
 
 Cut now, passing round a knoll of limestone (all the base of 
 Schehallion is limestone, from the caves of which large streams, 
 almost big enough to turn a mill, come flushing out, crystal char, 
 into the sunshine), we come upon a sight which makes us forget 
 at once the grey cairns of the dead men. For below us is Strath 
 Tummel. Close to the left, Loch Rannoch stretches away for 
 eleven miles, and from it the mighty river starts into life, and 
 goes flashing and gleaming, a broad silver riband, in sweeping 
 curves, from one side of the valley to the other, till, to the right, 
 you lose sight of it among the woodland, under the towers of 
 Dnnalister. 
 
 The way down from the lonely, reedy little lake before men- 
 tioned, to Kinlock, passes through some of the most beautiful 
 scenery I have ever had the luck to sec — a succession of brilliant 
 green mountain lawns, fringed and broken by feathery birch, aud 
 everywhere the peak of Schehallion showing above the trees, 
 making some new and splendid combination with the broken given 
 braes ;it every turn of the road. After a sudden pitch down of 
 near a thousand feet, you drive along under the sycamore, birch, 
 
291 SOME ACCOUNT OF THE VILLAGE OF INVERQUOICH. 
 
 and chestnut woods, and come to Kinlocli, a little village at the 
 east end of Loch Rannoch, with a charming inn. And, if you are 
 a fisherman, and a wise man, you will go no further. 
 
 Inverquoich is further on. Not far. I consider Kinloch as 
 part of Inverquoich. I would as soon stay at Kinloch or Aber- 
 feldy as there. I really do not know which is the most delight- 
 ful of the three places. I do not go so far as to say that Kinloch 
 is the most charming place in Scotland, because I believe that 
 there are many others equally charming. But it is, in its way, 
 very nice. The lake fishing here on Loch Rannoch is very fine, 
 trout, salmo-ferox, and charr. The river fishing is very good 
 also, hut not perhaps equal to that of Aberfeldy, where you get 
 salmon, of which there are none in this part of the Tummel. But 
 neither in the Tummel at Rannoch, nor in the Tay at Aberfeldy, 
 is it any use for a man to fish, unless he knows the way how. 
 Having now pronounced judgment on these matters, we will go on 
 to Inverquoich. Perhaps we may find time to say a few more 
 words about Kinloch and Aberfeldy hereafter. 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF INVERQUOICH. 
 
 Inverquoich is situated about seven miles from Kinloch, in a 
 N.N.E. direction. At the lower end of Loch Darroch this great 
 loch fills a vast basin in the hills eleven miles by three with 
 crystal clear water. At the further end, among the mountains, 
 the deep, dark river Evan joins the lake through a wild pass in 
 the hills ; and, following up this river for five miles, you come 
 upon another lake, larger, wilder, and more desolate than the one 
 you have left. Passing up this lake again into the very heart of 
 the mountains, beyond human dwellings, you come at the last on a 
 deep river again, and beyond it the mighty Loch Glydoch, eleven 
 miles of water, covered with birchen islands, and whose shores 
 indented with intricate wooded bays, the one within the other, are 
 almost untrodden by the foot of man, and echo only to the cackle 
 of the breeding gull, and the sullen plunge of the great trout of 
 the lakes.* 
 
 You will perceive, therefore, that the drainage of an immense 
 tract of country, the gathering of ten thousand silver threads of 
 water from a thousand hills, all comes into these great lakes, and 
 ultimately into Loch Darroch. So when you stand on the hand- 
 some stone bridge at Inverquoich, about a quarter of a mile 
 from where the Darroch leaves the lake, you must not be 
 
 * The writer seems to be describing a chain of lakes similar to Lochs 
 Rannoch, Ericht, and Lydoch, but hardly so fine. 
 
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE VELLAGB OF [NVERQUOICH. 295 
 
 surprised to find that the brown, swift, boiling stream is as large 
 as the Thames at Sonning, or the Severn at Worcester. 
 
 This is the river Darroeh, which gives its name to Glen 
 Darroch, the whole of wbieh is the property of the Marquis of 
 Strathgrampian, though it forms but a very small part of it (for 
 his estate runs sixty miles due west from his house, and he is a 
 very great man, and is kind enough to let us fish ; so we will 
 speak respectfully of him, for there are dungeons in his castle, 
 and what a terrihle thing it would be if a tourist should happen 
 to get shut up in one of them, and it were to get into the papers). 
 
 But, although this accounts for the name of the Strath, it does 
 not for the name of the village, Inverquoich, which means the 
 place where the river Quoich debouches into some larger river. 
 There must be a river called the Quoich, then ? There is the 
 stream which comes down through dim, dark wood, passes under 
 the road, and turns the wheel of the sawmill. That is the Quoich. 
 It does not look very hysterical here in the village street. Wo 
 will go up the glen by the manse presently, and see what happens 
 to it up there. 
 
 Inverquoich is a large village ; there are two thousand in- 
 habitants in it. It is a very thriving place, and they are going 
 to bring a railway here. It consists of one street and a market- 
 square, over which market-square our rooms look. I should call 
 it an ngly village. The houses are all of grey stone, with slate 
 roofs, all of the same pattern, and that not at all a pretty one. 
 There is no attempt at a flower-garden in front of any of them. 
 It looks sadly dull, after a pretty English village ; but the houses 
 are better built than the majority of the cottages in the south of 
 England, and, I fancy, might be very clean and comfortable, if 
 the people chose to keep them so — which they don't. If the 
 cottagers in the warm, moist, dripping climate of Devon were 
 to venture on the same amount of dunghill and slops with the 
 people of Inverquoich, they would be in a chronic state of typhus. 
 They would if they dared, I don't doubt, for they like to do 
 a little in that way as well as their neighbours : but the instinct 
 of self-preservation keeps them from being quite as bad as the 
 Highlanders. 
 
 The people at Iuvenpioich consist entirely of shopkeepers and 
 labourers. Inverquoich is the largest place for many miles, and 
 the shops there supply a very large scattered population among the 
 hills around. Formerly the country round was cut up into a great 
 number of small farms, from ten to forty acres ; but at the time of 
 the Reform Bill, and afterwards, the present Marquis, then Lord 
 Glenbroa, threw a great many of the small farms into one, so as to 
 
296 SOME ACCOUNT OF THE VILLAGE OF INVERQUOICH. 
 
 make holdings of more than fifty acres apiece, and so create votes. 
 This was found to act well for the landlord ; firstly, because the 
 land was better fanned ; and, secondly, because there was but one 
 homestead to keep in repair, instead of half a dozen. It acted 
 well in another way too. Scotch sporting was becoming fashion- 
 able among the English, who came north and rented moors ; so 
 game was becoming valuable. Game was more easily preserved 
 by this suppression of the small holdings, which lay out in desolate 
 glens. It was better to rent the land for sheep-pasture to one 
 responsible man, whose homestead was miles away, to have no one 
 to travel over it but his shepherd and collies, than to have six or 
 seven outlying farms, and sixty or seventy long-legged Highland 
 lads, with nothing very particular to do that any one knows of. 
 It has certainly stopped poaching. There is no poaching now. 
 We had another way of stopping that though, which very soon did 
 it. If any member of a family was caught poaching, he was prose- 
 cuted, and his whole family were evicted from the estate. That 
 is why we have so many grouse. 
 
 And where, you ask us, are the small, suppressed farmers, and 
 the routed families of the poachers ? Well, they are in Canada 
 and Australia, and some in America. (The watchmaker in Inver- 
 quoich is called McClellan ; the daft callants call him Young Bony.) 
 All the better for them, you say. That may be so, but I wish 
 they were back in the Highlands. They were doing no great harm 
 there. Since the Forty-five, the Highlanders have been quiet 
 enough, and, until twenty years ago, the Highlands was one of 
 our best recruiting grounds. Where the late Marquis, in 1808, 
 raised a battalion, the present one just keeps a company together.* 
 It is hard to persuade one that it is politic to throw land out of 
 cultivation, and depopulate a country. We don't like to come 
 everywhere, in pleasant lonely glens, on unroofed cottages and 
 ruined homesteads — we are not used to it. If the reader wants 
 to hear the other side of the question fairly stated, he will find it 
 in " Vacation Tourist," for 18G0, article* " Sutherland." We 
 certainly detest poachers, and rejoice in the new Act ; but it would 
 be utterly unfair to confound the Highland poacher with the 
 murderous English ruffian, against whom the Act was framed — 
 the fellow who will murder an honest gamekeeper, if he is inter- 
 rupted in his task of stealing pheasants, which cost a guinea a 
 piece in rearing, to sell them to the London poulterers. Your 
 
 * Volunteers in Perthshire, 1803— Cavalry, 1G0 ; Rank and file, 3,807 ; 
 Artillery, G3 ; total, 4,036. What the total number are now I do not 
 know. Lord Breadalbane's volunteers, however, carry out what I have 
 asserted here. They are f>0 this year, against 300 in 1803. 
 
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE VILLAGE OF INVEEQUOICH. 297 
 
 Highland poacher, where he exists, is a sad fellow of course, but 
 not, from any account we have heard, such a brute as your Lanca- 
 shire or Middlesex game thief. 
 
 We knew at Inverquoich a certain eminent poacher, Mr. Alex- 
 ander, Mister, Sandy, Alick, or Saunders MacTavish. He was 
 the best hill-runner of his day; now he is a respectable butcher, 
 doing a good business. A middle-sized man, almost a little man, 
 about ten stone, or hardly that. Slow in his movements, almost 
 vacant in look, till something catches his attention, and then as 
 bright and keen as a hawk. He is a good husband, a good father, 
 capital man oi business, a pious man enough, but he whs an awful 
 poacher. He never fired a gun on Lord Strathgrampian's property ; 
 he kept his attentions for his lordship's neighbour, the Duke of 
 Tullygoroundabout. Coll Grant, the fleetest of the Duke's keepers, 
 was Vet on to him. He started one day, expedites, with nothing 
 on but his kilt, shirt, and bonnet, and, by stalking, came suddenly 
 within a hundred yards of MacTavish, who was loaded with a 
 heavy double -barrelled gun and five brace of grouse. Without 
 throwing away either one or the other, he started on his race. 
 For five long miles of heather and hog, he easily headed the keeper, 
 who saw, with utter astonishment, that MacTavish had, from the 
 very first, been running straight as a line towards the Duke's own 
 castle. And now he was fairly in the lion's jaws, for there was 
 only a gentle rise between him and the castle grounds. The 
 poacher topped it sixty yards in front. The keeper followed in 
 twenty seconds. The ground beyond was clear open birchwood, 
 without a place big enough to hide a rabbit. He could see the 
 Duchess walking in the garden, reading her book ; he could see 
 the little ones, Lord Ronald and Lady Constance, making tliem- 
 s 'Ives in a confounded mess with a watering-pot. But Alister 
 MacTavish had disappeared. His disappearance had a sobering 
 effect <>n Cell Grant. He was always very civil to MacTavish. 
 He believed in odd things after this. In fact, if the story as it 
 was told me is true, it amounts to the most wonderful instance of 
 sleight of person I ever heard of. Three hours after, he walked 
 into the market-place at Inverquoich, gun, grouse, and all. 
 
 THE DOGS AND CHILDREN AT INVERQUOICH. 
 
 We must put the dogs first, because we respect the dignity of 
 labour, for the dogs work (at least the collies), and the children 
 do not. Besides, the children retain, to a certain extent, the 
 unci, lit Egyptian dog-worship. Whether, as asserted by Hero- 
 dotus, in Euterpe, of the Egyptians, they shave their heads on the 
 
298 SOME ACCOUNT OF THE VILLAGE OF INVEKQUOICII. 
 
 death of a dog, we do not know — no dog died whilst wo were at 
 Inverquoich. Their almost religions reverence for them is un- 
 donhted, however. No child will eat its supper unless the dog 
 has part of it. And the most fractious child, be he ever so 
 naughty, may be lulled into quiescence in an instant, by giving 
 him to Rover ; that is to say, by putting him on the floor, and 
 letting him put his arms round the dog's neck, and nestle his 
 little cheek against the dog's honest face. 
 
 Father, you know, is on the hill, or in the field all day ; and 
 mother is washing, or cooking, or mending ; Rob and Elsie are 
 at school ; so what is there better for us to do than to lie the 
 livelong, happy summer's day in the dust before the door, whole 
 heaps of us, bare-legged, bare-headed, bare-footed, kilted, little 
 rascals, with the old bitch and the puppies. Let us throw the 
 sand on one another's heads, and dust ourselves like partridges 
 or chickens, to kill the vermin. 
 
 Stay, though ; there is better fun than this. Here's auld Gil 
 Sanderson going out with his barrow to cut grass by the toll-pool 
 for his cow that has calved in the loaning. Let us go with him. 
 All the twenty or thirty of us. Three can ride in his barrow, and 
 three in his bareleggit lassie Mary's. The rest can walk. Ronald 
 and Donald can be carried pickaback by their sisters. Yes ; let 
 us all go. The gipsies are away at Kenmore tryst, at the review 
 of my lord's volunteers ; therefore let us go forth under the cloud- 
 less sky, and take the old dog and her puppies with us, and lie all 
 day among the long summer grass by the river side, while auld 
 Gil cuts his grass. And baby shall lie asleep among the golden 
 fern, with the purple shadows playing over his face. 
 
 " Kings have no such conch as thine." 
 
 And we will weave garlands of purple geranium, and globe ranun- 
 culus, and geum, and white orchis, and wild rose. And we will 
 wade into the golden shallow, and see the parr scud away from 
 under our feet. And the old bitch shall hunt for mice ; for Jock 
 Gourlay's grey terrier killed a mouse one day, and why should not 
 she ? And here comes the English gentleman with the gold 
 watch-chain and brown shoes, that goes fishing with John Hossack. 
 "Are ye going fishing the day, sir? Have you got a trout to 
 give us the day, sir ? D'ye think it will thunner the day, Mr. 
 Hossack, for we're going down to the toll-pool, and its unco far 
 from home, ye ken? " And so wo will spend the long summer 
 afternoon, and clap our hands, and shout, and scream with joy, 
 when we hear the mighty salmon splash sullenly in the dark black 
 
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE VILLAGE OF IXYEItQUOICH. 299 
 
 pool, where the wicked laird's daughter drowned herself lang syne : 
 until the woods of Craig-Arth grow black, and the highest rocks 
 of Craig-Oil begin to blaze their farewell to the dying day. And 
 then we will go straggling home along the turnpike road, for father 
 will be back from the hill. And, when we have kissed him, and 
 said our prayers, we will fall fast asleep as we stand, or sit, or lie, 
 and mother shall lift us into bed, like so many happy dead dogs. 
 
 How much woidd you give to be one of them, reader, just for a 
 day or two. All you are worth? Why, no ; but it must be very 
 pleasant. 
 
 ax evening's WALK at invebquoich. 
 
 A man who has been hard at work fishing all day, knocking 
 himself about at the river- side, earns a right to a good dinner ; 
 but, at Inverquoich, whether he earns it or not, he will get it. 
 and, if he is so disposed, a good glass of wine after it. We dined 
 comfortably together one night, and after dinner we asked the 
 waiter for the key of the glen. Armed with this, we went across 
 to the other side of the stri et. 
 
 The volunteers were still lounging about ; a pleasant sight for 
 any man who cares about "the movement." A most capital 
 sample of men, not equal to the Londoners in size and strength 
 we should say (who are?), but, probably, equal in courage (the 
 highest compliment we can pay any men on the face of the earth), 
 and, probably, superior in enduring fatigue — a sample of men, 
 which could be readily equalled in any part of England, hut which 
 it would be hard to improve upon. They looked splendid in their 
 Highland dress, and were, like the rest of volunteers, quiet, 
 courteous, and obliging ; anxious, like the rest of us, by these 
 means, to make the dress they wore popular and respected. When 
 the Chinese invade England, and the great decisive battle is fought 
 on Farnham heights (while our fleet is engaged with his Imperial 
 Majesty's junks), we shall feel very comfortable if we have the 
 South Middlesex or Queen's Westminster on the one flank, and 
 the Inverquoich Rifle Volunteers on the other. We would not 
 wish to be in better company. 
 
 And, while we sat together beside the bowling-green, smoking, 
 the conversation turned on a fiction which some Scotchmen have 
 persuaded themselves to be a truth, " that Scotchmen are physically 
 superior to Englishmen." One of us, fresh from Hythe, remarked 
 that the two finest men there were members of the Honourable 
 Artillery Company, "cockneys," pur sang. Another remarked 
 how odd it was that the Scotch were always so ready to apply the 
 
300 SOME ACCOUNT OF THE VILLAGE OF INVERQUOICH. 
 
 term " cockney " to an Englishman — apparently unconscious of 
 the extreme oftensiveness of the word, constituting, as it does, in 
 some companies, a casus belli. Another mentioned Northumber- 
 land, Cumberland, Westmoreland, Yorkshire, Devon, Cornwall, 
 and Kent, in which counties every man, or nearly so, was a giant, 
 and which contained a larger population than Scotland. A third 
 noticed that almost every rower, runner, boxer, or cricketer came 
 from south of the Tweed, and said that, although the trade of an 
 athlete was a despicable one, yet it was hard to believe that, if the 
 Scotch possessed that superiority in athletic exercises claimed for 
 them by Christopher North, none of them would ever have tried 
 for the magnificent prizes given in England for such worthless 
 accomplishments. And a fourth quoted, from the author before 
 mentioned, a passage, describing a Scotchman airing his brawny 
 limbs on an island after a long swim, while a cockney (by which 
 his school seem to mean an Englishman) was spewing (to use his 
 own language) on the bank. Then he went on to notice that from 
 Perth, all up Tay side, he could hardly find a man who could swim ; 
 that, asking one of the best informed men in Aberfeldy, he had 
 told him that he believed he was the only man in the town who 
 could ; that Scotch boys in the Highlands seldom or never bathe 
 at all ; and then wound up by mentioning, as a ridiculous per 
 contra, that every boy of fourteen along Thames side could swim 
 like a duck. After wondering among ourselves that such a nation 
 as the Scotch condescended to such ridiculous self-assertion, we 
 left the bowlers, and unlocked the gate of the glen. 
 
 Thanks to you, my Lord Strathgrampian, for your permission 
 to walk up this glen on a summer's evening after dinner, with our 
 cigars ! May the towers of your castle stand till the crack of doom, 
 and may its long corridors echo always to the babble of your grand- 
 children, and great-grandchildren, down to the fortieth generation ! 
 till young Whigs be as thick as Scotch firs on Craig-y-Barn ! 
 May your larches take root in every cranny among the rocks, until 
 they are worth, at an average, from 39s. to £2 4s. apiece ! May 
 your salmon increase and multiply, under the new Act ! May the 
 owners of. stake-nets, cruives, and dykes, on the lower waters, be 
 utterly confounded and put to shame for stopping your lordship's 
 fish ! May their whiskers grow inside till they bite them off, and 
 their shoes go down at heel ! May your factor be ordered to take 
 down the palings which prevent any one catching a glimpse of 
 Loch Darrach ! May your deer and grouse multiply to the n t]l , 
 and may there be no confounded row, if one tries to stalk a stag 
 for the purpose of drawing him ! May your potatoes — ! If there 
 is any other wish your lordship would like one to express, we will 
 
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE VILLAGE OF INVEP.QUOICH. 301 
 
 express it, for the sake of the walk you have allowed us up this 
 glen, this evening. 
 
 For, passing through the gate, we came into the blessed valley 
 of Avalon. All of us had been in fairyland before, on many 
 occasions, but never in so fair a portion of it as this. The path 
 leads on, for a mile or more, through a dark wood, under larch, 
 and beech, and oak, and all the way comes, leaping and pausing, 
 and leaping again, a loud brawling brook. The timber is some of 
 the largest we have ever seen ; and here and there, between the 
 boughs, we can see great scarps of rock, rising on either hand, 
 densely wooded, hundreds and hundreds of feet aloft, and thus, 
 and thus only, know that we are following the brook up a great 
 cleft in the hills ; and all about us, under the shadow of the trees, 
 there is a tangled jungle of fern and flowers. 
 
 And so we pass on a mile or more. What is that? A roe doe, 
 heavy with young, looking about for a place to lie by in. She is 
 close* to us, and walks slowly away towards the brook, and we 
 follow to see what she will do. We get a long vista of hanging 
 woods, with the stream brawling down between them, and in the 
 foreground — the eye-piece to the picture — the deer, standing 
 elegantly in mid-stream, looking wearily about her. "As the 
 hart panteth for the water-brooks," says one of us, and is not 
 corrected. Poetical quotations are allowed lure, for we are 
 wandering among " the Turks of Aberfeldy ; " walking along the 
 same — the very same — path, along which Bums walked, when 
 the wondrous beauty of the place inspired him with that, almost 
 his best, lyric. 
 
 So we pass along till the path begins to rise, and there is a 
 corner of rock before us, which shuts out further view. And the 
 foremost of us goes round it, and cries out, " God bless me ! 
 Come and look at this!" And we hurry round. And, lo ! the 
 black glen, the darkening wood, and the towering cliffs, are all 
 lit up and illuminated by a mighty, shivering waterfall. And 
 hundreds of feet aloft, and half a mile away, in the dim recesses 
 of the feathering woodlands, we can see cascade beyond cascade', 
 one above another, streaming diligently away for ever — a broad, 
 waving riband of light. 
 
 And at last, climbing aloft, we stood upon a frail bridge, and 
 saw the stream beneath our feet leap down sixty feet into a black 
 chasm, and, far below again, begin to crawl lazily away in long 
 dark pools. From here, too, we could see back to the earth we 
 had left— actually, miles away and below, could sec the world, 
 with cornfields and farmhouses, the homes of our brother-men: 
 and we aloft in Avalon ! And then we came swiftly down out of 
 
302 SOME ACCOUNT OF THE VILLAGE OF INVEKQUOICII. 
 
 the dark wood into the bright green mountain meadow, into the 
 village street, and told what wc had seen. And they told us that, 
 in winter-time, when the frost had laid his hand on that water- 
 fall, every little spouting jet, and every wreath of spray upon the 
 hazel-twigs, was changed to frosted silver work ; and that, as the 
 winter went on, the waterfall by degrees formed itself into a 
 crystal hollow temple of ice, supported by many columns, and 
 adorned with a thousand fantastic minarets, through which the 
 stream finds its way to outer air. Fairy-land is not a safe place 
 in winter-time ; but a few adventurous spirits climb up each year 
 to see the ice-temple. After a few days' thaw, some one comes 
 and looks into the linn, and finds it all gone, and the stream 
 spouting away in his own familiar channels once more. And 
 every year, as soon as the ice-temple in the linn is ready for his 
 reception, a little old man — some say a Pict, some say something 
 worse — comes down and inhabits it. When the spring has brought 
 his ice-house crashing about his ears, he goes up to Loch Houlakin, 
 and lives with the breeding gulls. No one has ever seen him ; 
 but if, on a bright summer's day, you stand in front of Crag Arth, 
 and call to him, he will answer with a shout which sends the gulls 
 barking over the hill-side, and awakes a thousand shattering echoes 
 throughout the lonely eorrie. 
 
 AN EXCURSION TO GLEN LYON. 
 
 It is not very far from Invcrquoich to Fortingal ; and Fortingal 
 is at the mouth of Glen Lyon ; and Glen Lyon belongs to many 
 people now, but once it belonged to the Macgregors, who were 
 hunted out langsyne by the Campbells. We do not say unde- 
 servedly ; we only say, that the consolidation of those various 
 clans of Highland gentlemen under one great responsible head 
 (like MacCallum More of Argyle) was, on the whole, beneficial to 
 the progress of the country, and to the great doctrine of the 
 greatest happiness of the greatest number. Our opinion about 
 the extermination of the clan Macgregor is, that it is an act 
 against which we should have protested at the time (provided we 
 had not been engaged in some other employment), but would 
 afterwards have sulkily acquiesced in, as being an unavoidable, 
 though somewhat harsh, measure. We are not sure that we 
 should have cared to live in Strath Tay, while the Macgregors 
 held Glen Lyon. Of course our personal courage is beyond 
 suspicion ; but still we should have preferred living a little nearer 
 the big gallows at Crieff (if we had the choice), in those times 
 before they sang, 
 
HOME ACCOUNT OF THE VILLAGE OF INVERQUOICH. 303 
 " Gleu Strae and Glen Lyou no longer are ours." 
 
 And, while we are on this theme, let us say that we shall be 
 
 glad to hear of a young poet who can write us two such lines as 
 those which follow : — 
 
 " They deprive us of name and pursue us with beagles, 
 Give our roofs to the flame and our flesh to the eagles ; 
 Then vengeance, vengeance, vengeance, Gregarach." 
 
 Suppose, now, your name had happened to be Campbell; that, 
 some two hundred years ago, you had lived in Strath Tay, in a 
 lonely house; and that you were awakened in the night by a 
 do/en or fourteen honest gentlemen of the Macgregor persuasion, 
 singing that song under your windows ; what would you have 
 done? We should have sent the servant-girl for the constable! 
 
 Also, before we start for Fortingal, we will remind you that 
 Campbell of Glen Lyon, the leader of the massacre of Glencoe, 
 was connected by marriage with poor Macdonald. (" Macaulay's 
 History," vol. iv. p. 208.) 
 
 When I came to Fortingal, I found myself in Glen Lyon, 
 which is here an open and most uninteresting strath, apparently 
 stretching open and bare for miles to the westward. We had 
 heard so much of the scenery of Glen Lyon, as being, without 
 exception, the very finest in its way in Scotland, that I felt very 
 much disappointed. I could see three or four miles up what I 
 thought was the strath, hut there was no appearance of even 
 decent scenery. 
 
 But, soon after I left Fortingal, I began to be astonished. On 
 the left was the mighty, broad river, sweeping brown among the 
 meadows and cornfields ; and on the right, close to the road, a 
 great bank of waterworn boulders, as like the pebble ridge at 
 Xortham, in Devonshire, as need be. I turned to John Hossack, 
 the Aberfeldy fisherman, who was on the hack of the dog-cart 
 with the rods, whistling a psalm-tune under his breath, and putting 
 up a cast of flies, and asked him to explain the extraordinary 
 bank of boulders. Strange to say, even he, intelligent and well- 
 informed as he was, had been that way a hundred times, and had 
 never noticed the composition of that bank before. It caught my 
 eye in one instant ; it would catch the eye of any alluvial gold- 
 miuer. It was the deposit of centuries of the flux and reflux of 
 ice at the mouth of some great estuary, as the land rose from the 
 sea. But where was the estuary narrow enough to form a current 
 to move such boulders as these '? The strath was broad and flat. 
 The difficulty was soon explained. The road wound round the 
 
304 SOME ACCOUNT OF THE VILLAGE OF INVEKQUOICH. 
 
 end of the great Moraine. I had time to see that it was Mat at 
 the top, and was from ten to fifteen acres in extent, when I found 
 myself before the gates of Glen Lyon. 
 
 I seized the driver by the arm. " Man ! man ! " I said, " do 
 you mean to tell me that that river comes down through there .' " 
 
 John Hossack hurst into a fit of laughter at my discomfiture, 
 and nearly swallowed a salmon-fly. I may or may not have been 
 saving a little too much about Caernarvonshire and Madeira before 
 this. By my exclamation, I quite lost the whip-hand of him on 
 the subject of scenery. 
 
 The broad, open strath which I had mistaken for Glen Lyon, 
 was merely a blind valley leading, behind Drummond Hill, back 
 to Loch Tay. The real Glen Lyon was before us. There was a 
 great rift in the everlasting rocks, and beyond, in purple distance, 
 fold beyond fold, a vista of jagged mountain and feathering wood- 
 land. 
 
 I humbly confess that I have never in my life seen anything so 
 beautiful as Gleu Lyon. It lies between Schehallion and Ben 
 Lawers ; and the wonderfully picturesque spurs of those two 
 mountains, running down and throwing the great river from side to 
 side of the well-wooded strath, give some new and beautiful combi- 
 nation every quarter of a mile. Other people, I do not doubt, will 
 laugh at me for saying that I have seen nothing more beautiful, 
 and naturally. I have seen so much of the surface of this earth 
 that, if any one were to assert to me that this or that was the 
 finest thing in nature, I, in my turn, might laugh at him ; for 
 there is no harm in laughing. Glen Lyon is the most beautiful 
 thing I have ever seen ; and so laugh away. 
 
 Many of the readers of this sketch have seen the pass of 
 Llanberis. Glen Lyon is something like the finest part of that 
 pass ; but the hills on either side are loftier : the level space of 
 the valley is, perhaps, six hundred yards broad. There is great 
 abundance of timber. The glen is thirty miles long, and down 
 through it comes a great river, as big as the Conway at Llanrwst. 
 
 The gates of the glen, at which you enter, are the most abrupt 
 part of it that I saw. There is only room for the river, none for 
 the road ; that is cut artificially in the side of the hill. The 
 river here is a shoreless linn of alternate pools and rapids, with 
 very large beech and maple timber growing in every cranny. 
 
 Soon after this the glen opens out. I had asked people where 
 lived Captain Campbell, of Glencoe. Nobody knew. But, passing 
 a long, low white house', standing hack from the road, with a row 
 of maples before it, the driver, who had not so very much to say 
 for himself, poked me in the ribs, and said — 
 
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE VILLAGE OF INVEKQUOICH. 305 
 
 " Ye have heard of the massacre of Glencoc, sir? " 
 
 We rather thought we had. 
 
 " And of Campbell that did it, maybe ? " 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " Yen's his house, sir. Did ye ken, John Hossack (to the 
 fisherman), that Chesthill had biggit a nmekle new wa' between," 
 Sec. 
 
 We, however, had seen the house where Campbell of Glen Lyon 
 lived. And the only remarkable thing about it is that it is white- 
 washed ; as is not Campbell himself. 
 
 At least not yet. But so many men have been daubed with 
 untempered mortar lately, that it is quite possible that that most 
 eminent cut-throat scoundrel may come in for his turn in time. 
 We hope, wherever he is, that it may benefit him. But it will be 
 a nasty job. Campbell of Glen Lyon, Nero, :;; and the Devil, 
 seem to be the only three men waiting for their turn of the brush. 
 
 What more about Glen Lyon ? Nothing, except a never-to-be- 
 forgotten day, among feathering woodlands, dark purple cloud 
 shadows, gleaming bands of golden meadow grass, and everywhere 
 the great river sweeping from side to side of the glen over his 
 amber-coloured pebbles. And in one place a reft in the south 
 side of the glen, with Ben Lawers blocking it up, rising from the 
 river side in terrace after terrace of dark rock, towards the zenith, 
 aud down his side a gleaming torrent leaping and pausing and 
 leaping on again, among the mountain lawns. 
 
 In the evening, as we were going home, John Hossack dropped 
 his fly-book, and I sent him back in the dog-cart to look for it, 
 and walked on. And, as I walked amidst the gathering gloom, 
 all alone, I came to a darksome wood ; and in the middle of the 
 wood was a wicked old castle. 
 
 Evidently a haunt of the Macgregors in old times — now, I am 
 happy to say, roofless and windowless, or I should hardly have 
 whistled in approaching it, with two pounds ten and an Albert 
 watch-chain on me, and I, too, coming from the direction of 
 Inverary. I had a look at the castle, and the place where it was 
 built, and I came to the conclusion that the man who built it 
 meant no particular good to some one, who might be expected to 
 come up the glen from the east ; and also, that the man who 
 built it knew perfectly well what he was about. Put me two 
 companies of the Strathgrampian Rifle Volunteers between these 
 four walls, surrounded by their dense thicket of timber ; erect me 
 
 * Since this was written, Nero has been done in the Fortnightly Review, 
 by a professor. Perhaps the same hand will undertake Campbell and 
 the Devil. Then we shall be square. 
 
 21 
 
30G SOME ACCOUNT OF THE VILLAGE OF INVERQUOICH. 
 
 a small sconce on the hill called Drumsnab, and put ine another 
 two companies in it ; and then I rather think that, if the Emperor 
 of China found himself profoundly penetrated with a generous 
 enthusiasm for taking his whole army up to show them the 
 scenery at the head of Glen Lyon, then, in that case, consistently 
 adhering to his great idea of a bloodless solution of European 
 difficulties, he would find himself compelled to go all the way 
 round by Kinloch, and come in at the west end of the glen 
 after all. 
 
 Ah ! they were rough old times in Glen Lyon, when the 
 Macgregors had their backs to the wall, and were fighting, inch 
 by inch, against the Campbells for the possession of this glorious 
 Glen Lyon : the Campbells coming over the hills from the west ; 
 the Macgregors retreating from one bend in the river to another 
 eastward, still eastward, towards those other Campbells, who 
 possessed Strath Tay, who were also their deadly enemies, but 
 had never dared to penetrate beyond the awful rock-walls at 
 Fortingal. Rough times, indeed. One would thai some one was 
 alive to tell us what these clan fights were like. 
 
 No need. There are some mounds of earth in yon hollow by 
 the bridge which spans the foaming waterfall, and above which 
 Ben Lawers begins to roll in lofty steep downs, one above the 
 other, until he tilts up his last mighty slab into the sky. That is 
 the remains of a Highland village. Let us people it once more. 
 
 Easily done. A few grey stone huts ; a dim, dark, autumn 
 morning, and the eastern scarp of Ben Lawers dimly lit up by 
 the October dawn ; a hundred green-kilted men brushing swiftly 
 through the dewy heather ; a surprise, and a running to and fro ; 
 a rattle of broad swords and targets for a time ; a few dropping 
 shots ; and then naught save the smoke of burning hovels mixing 
 with the morning mist, and rising up the hollow of the mountains, 
 and the wild wail of widows and orphans rising possibly higher 
 even than that. 
 
 Says Humboldt, " In places where nature is terrible and power- 
 ful," so and so occurs. Nature is terrible and powerful in Glen 
 Lyon, and the passions of men rise in proportion to the sublimity 
 of the scenery which surrounds them. Who can wonder, then, at 
 any deeds of blood and violence which may have been committed 
 under the shadow of these awful mountain walls ? The black 
 horror of Glencoe suggested the blackest deed ever done beneath 
 the face of heaven. 
 
 The above paragraph is rather pretty. It has only one fault — 
 that of being intolerably nonsensical and false. Nature is as 
 powerful and terrible in Glen Lyon as ever she was ; but there 
 
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE VILLAGE OF INVEEQUOICH. 307 
 
 are no deeds of blood douc there nowadays. A man may walk 
 down Glen Lyon on the darkest night. Lord help him it' he dares 
 to walk across Hyde Park! A more gentle, affectionate set of 
 people than the inhabitants of Glen Lyon don't exist, I take it, 
 on the face of the earth. There is just so much wildness about 
 them as gives them a game flavour, no more. I like a partridge 
 better than a chicken. 
 
 Yon is the kirk, and next it is the manse. The minister who 
 lives there is a bold hill-walker ; and however wild and terrible 
 the winter's night, that minister will away through the snow to 
 the failing pilgrim just entering on his rest, to see if perchance 
 some ray of the Divine glory which is to be his portion hereafter 
 may light upon his face from the eyes of the dying man. 
 
 Such is Glen Lyon now. A place where freedom, honour, 
 truth, and justice lie firmly fixed among the everlasting hills. 
 
 ON KILTS AXD OX AXGLIXG. 
 
 While I, John Bull, was at Inverquoich, there was held, by 
 some of my Highland admirers, a Durbar, Palaver, Big Talk, 
 Cabinet Council, Corrobbory, or whatever they call it in the High- 
 lands, in which it was unanimously voted that I must wear a kilt. 
 So Gill Duff found the material, Coll Grant made it up, and I 
 paid for it. 
 
 The evening it came home it was determined that I was to go 
 out fishing in it. A committee waited upon me in my bedroom, 
 and showed me how to put it on. It was pronounced to set well. 
 I was declared unanimously to have a good leg for an Englishman. 
 I dismissed the committee on some trifling excuse, and imme- 
 diately afterwards walked downstairs in my trousers amidst the 
 groans of the assembled spectators. 
 
 I couldn't do it. I couldn't really. There was an airiness 
 about the legs, and a general dread of some horrible disaster, 
 which rendered it impossible. Good heavens ! I said, suppose I 
 Were to meet the ladu - ? 
 
 I suspect that my popularity was on the wane that night for 
 half an hour or so, in consequence of my rebellion against the 
 kdt ; but it was all forgotten by the time I came home, and had 
 parsed into a merry joke. For the Inverquoich fellows are good 
 fellows, and don't hear malice long. 
 
 But at last on a very dark night, I, going out fishing, put on 
 the kilt for the first time, and slipped down to the river side. I 
 rather liked it now, that no one could see me, and I worked hard 
 anion 1 ' the rocks and stones till one in the rnoming. 
 
308 SOME ACCOUNT OF THE VILLAGE OF INVEEQUOICH. 
 
 Young Alistcr, the fisherman, had gone away from me, and I 
 could hear him rattling upon a great, long shingle hed, a quarter 
 of a mile off. I was dead beat with a noble basketful of trout ; 
 as happy as a king, and very sleepy. I thought I would go home 
 to bed ; so I sat down, and began " coo'eeing " (I like an old 
 Australian) for Alister. 
 
 And as I " coo'eed " I fell asleep in my kilt, under the winking 
 stars. I slept perhaps five minutes, but it was long enough to 
 unseat reason from her throne. I awoke, with a sensation of 
 cold about the legs. I felt them, and found they were bare. I 
 looked round and saw mountains and woods. And then I became 
 possessed with the horrible idea that I had gone to bed at home, 
 had risen in my sleep, and wandered out an unknown distance 
 from help, in my shirt. 
 
 I have been troubled, from boyhood, with a cyclical dream ; to 
 wit, that I have awaked, and found myself in broad day, in the 
 King's lioad, Chelsea, opposite the Asylum wall, without any 
 trousers on. When I awoke this night, I thought I had gone and 
 done it at last. 
 
 I brought my kilt to England with me. When my servant 
 found it among my other clothes, on my arrival home, he brushed 
 it, and took it for granted, as a Hampshire man should. Soon 
 after I found that he, by some involution of ideas — by some 
 process of mind which I confess myself unable to follow — thought 
 that it was a garment, which it was " de rigueur " to wear when 
 you played croquet. I had to tell him that it was worn when 
 salmon-fishing. But he no more contemplates the possibility of 
 his master's having worn it without any trousers underneath it 
 than he believes it possible that the Bishop of the diocese would 
 attend a prize fight. I have not dared to break the fact to 
 him yet. 
 
 And now about the fishing at Inverquoich. I must not say too 
 much about it, I fear ; because many of our readers do not care 
 about fishing, and because the pages of the Field are always open 
 to descriptions of sport of all kind. 
 
 There are no salmon at Inverquoich ; but the trout fishing is 
 the best I ever had in my life, and is equal, I think, to most 
 unpreserved fishing in England. 
 
 I am aware that this statement will be received with profound 
 astonishment, if not incredulity, by most English trout fishers, 
 who have tried Scotland, and have come away with the idea that 
 there is no (what we call) trout fishing there : but Inverquoich is 
 an exception. The burn trout at Inverquoich have been killed as 
 high as eight pounds. I myself killed, with a little whip of an 
 
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE VILLAGE OF IXVERQUOICH. 309 
 
 English trout rod, and twenty yards of line, a fish of 3 lbs., which 
 took me forty minutes to land. I killed bigger than that, but 
 with a bigger rod, and with a parr. In the lake, the sahno ferox 
 is abundant, running up to 14 lbs., or larger. I consider that 
 the trout fishing at Aberfeidv, also, is nearly equal to that in the 
 Thames. 
 
 This is a hold assertion ; hut any good fisherman who goes and 
 stays at the Breadalbane Anns. Aberfeldy, and waits for the 
 troubling of the waters, will find that I am right. One night, 
 last June, while I was away at Bannoch, a gentleman at Aberfeldy 
 fished through the night in the Tay with a spoon, and did the 
 most wonderful stroke of business among the hum trout I almost 
 ever heard of. 
 
 People read Stoddart's "Angler," and books relating principally 
 to the South of Scotland, and fancy there are no great trout in 
 Scotland, as in England. I have before me now a clever little 
 book, called, " Hints to Anglers," by Adam Dryden, which relates 
 to the fishing in the South of Scotland. He gives the results. 
 His greatest day is 36 lbs. weight, averaging a quarter of a pound 
 each, and so making twelve dozen. A very good day for those 
 who care about the sort of thing, but, if the fish ran all of a size, 
 rather a tiresome one ! Mr. Dryden, provokingly, won't give us 
 the size of his biggest fish. One three-pounder is worth fishing 
 all day for, but one dozen quarter-pounders most certainly are not. 
 From Mr. Dryden's book, the fishing in the parts he writes of 
 seems similar to that in Devonshire— not to he compared to that 
 in Hants and Wilts, which I suppose is almost the best in the world. 
 
 But, in some of the big Perthshire rivers, when you can get 
 leave to put a line in them, you run Hants very hard indeed. Of 
 course you cannot expect, in a poor country bike that, to get trout 
 equal in size to those of the Thames ; but in certain linns yon 
 may expect anything up to eight pounds ; and the biggest trout 
 caught in the Thames last year was, I think, not quite 15 lbs. 
 But, as in Thames, so in Perthshire. You must be a fisherman, 
 and a good one, to catch them. If you are not a good fisherman, 
 go out on the loch in a boat and you may catch trout till you are 
 tired. 
 
 But, whether you are a fisherman or not, take a rod out with 
 you, and make believe. For so shall you he tempted to the river- 
 side on summer's evenings ; ay, and be tempted to stay out all 
 through the summer's nights, which are never dark, but through 
 which the Crepusculum creeps round from N.N.W. to X.X.E., 
 and then begins to brighten once more, till the loftiest ribs of 
 Schehallion begin to glow like molten gold — 
 
310 SOME ACCOUNT OF THE VILLAGE OF INVERQUOICII. 
 
 ' ' Eve that the moon from his cold crown 
 In crystal silence creeping down." 
 
 Or, earlier in May, you may quote, if you are out late or early 
 
 enough — 
 
 " Far off the torrent called me from the cleft, 
 Far up the solitary morning smote 
 The streaks of virgin snow." 
 
 Or else — 
 
 " Beyond the darkness and the cataract, 
 God made himself an awful rose of dawn." 
 
 I have seen many awful and beautiful things ; but the calm, 
 quiet glory of the summer's dawn, flushing up among the moun- 
 tains, is the most solemn and beautiful thing I have ever looked on. 
 And so let us brush swiftly homeward through the quiet graveyard 
 at Invcrquoich, and hear the whispering voice of awakening nature 
 say to us, " Once more, my child, once more." 
 
MEERSCHAUM 
 
MEERSCHAUM. 
 
 " The foam of the sea," or if you choose, tlio "scum" of sea, 
 is the meaning of the name which poetical Germans gave to this 
 singular substance before English science stepped in and called it 
 " soapstone." 
 
 Forty years ago it was not much known in England ; now, 
 combined with amber, it is in the mouth of half the lawyers' 
 clerks of London. It is a wondrous vehicle for tobacco ; better 
 even than the root of the bruyere or wooden pipe, which is made 
 of the root of the Mediterranean heath, but the name of which 
 has been vulgarised into "briar-root," and is derived, after all, 
 from the Welsh " brwg," heather. We repeat that meerschaum 
 is the best vehicle for tobacco : and now the question arises, 
 what is the best tobacco to put in it ? The milder, we should 
 say, the better ; such tobacco as we have just lit will hurt no 
 one : puff ! there goes the cloud. How it rolls up and obscures 
 the prints which hang before me ! the dead emperor, with the 
 crucifix on his breast, is no longer visible ; the woman looking 
 for the piece of silver has her lamp put out. Lord Dufferin, 
 Bishop Wilberforce, Sir Bartle Frere, Sir Gilbert Scott, have 
 disappeared ; Anne Boleyn was being arrested just now, we sup- 
 pose they have carried her off. The smoke swells like storm 
 clouds, and rolls about like ocean waves, with no obvious figure 
 at first. Stay, there is one forming, growing more real every 
 instant : now distinct as he was years ago. 
 
 A boy, large for his age, say about twelve, with very bold, 
 fearless, courageous, handsome features, and most remarkable 
 eyes ; head well shaped, and well set on, a curly crop of fine 
 hair in want of the barber ; dress, two garments only, a ragged 
 shirt, with no buttons, and an old pair of footman's breeches with 
 but few buttons. 
 
 There he stands at the end of the bench, just come in, holding 
 his breeches and shfrt together by a clutch with his left hand on 
 }u's left hip. We have never seen him before. On the tramp ? 
 
 313 
 
314 MEERSCHAUM. 
 
 no, his well-shaped feet show no signs of it. A thief ? no, he would 
 he better dressed. Tried with a hymn-book upside down, he 
 knows no difference, but says he came there to see if the gentle- 
 men would teach him something to get his living by. This 
 demand for technical education being pretermitted until the 
 proper time, the boy is asked if he knows anything ; he replies 
 that he learnt some of the Catechism once : here is an opening. 
 
 " What is your name ? " 
 
 " Meerschaum." 
 
 " Who gave you that name ? " 
 
 " Judas Iscariot." 
 
 This would not do by any means. There was a burst of 
 laughter from the more boisterous of the Field Lane boys, and 
 the interrogator was about to suggest a more private interview, 
 when Meerschaum explained further, with the most perfect 
 amiability — ■ 
 
 "It ain't his name, but they (jive him that name because it 
 was wrote up similar over his shop, after the gentleman give my 
 mother her trouble, because Akers wouldn't give his evidence. 
 Which I could have given the same evidence as what he did, but 
 the magistrate wouldn't let me, 'cause he said I didn't know the 
 nature of a oath. I ought to, for I have heard as many swore as 
 ever he has. Know the nature of a oath, why I could swear as 
 many as a clever gentleman like you. But I don't do it because 
 Judas says that God will be angry with you for it — and " 
 
 Meerschaum was proceeding into the theological regions, far 
 beyond the farthest flight of his questioners, when the Evening 
 Hymn was started, previous to the closing prayer ; which was 
 fortunate for one of the two parties in conversation, at all events. 
 Before the boys were sent to bed, the original interrogator of 
 Meerschaum and the manager had an interview with the boy. 
 
 Father had been a sailor, drowned. Mother had been very 
 kind to him, until the judge gave her seven years about a bad 
 half-crown : they were always giving his mother bad money. 
 Any relations ? An aunt, married, at Gravesend, but no good, 
 at least not to him. He wanted to learn a trade. Would he be 
 good ? If he hadn't wanted to be good, he would not have come 
 here ; if he had wanted to be bad, he might have gone to heaps 
 of places. Wanted to be like his father : wanted to be like the 
 good gentleman that old Judas told him about, Jesus Christ. 
 What did he know about Him ? Nothing except that he was a 
 good gentlemen without any money : though ho would have 
 helped him to learn a trade if he had been alive, but he was dead 
 now, though Judas said that he was coming alive again. Wished 
 
MEERSCHAUM. 315 
 
 ho would como soon : thought he was very much wanted. Asked 
 as to the character whom he had so often mentioned as Judas, he 
 replied that he was a general cove who lived in Gravel Lane with 
 a young girl the same age as he, Meerschaum, was. The boy 
 was dismissed to bed. 
 
 The original interlocutor and the manager merely nodded their 
 heads at one another. The former said " Great Queen's Street, 
 of course," and the latter said, " Of course." Then the inter- 
 locutor took his hymn-book, and departed up Farringdon Stint, 
 past Coldbath Field Prison, towards his home at High,- ate 
 praying for compulsory education, denominational or other, at any 
 price. 
 
 Before he was well past King's Cross, looking for an omnibus, 
 the manager had gone in with his lamp, to see if the boys were 
 asleep. Meerschaum emphatically was ; he had put on a clean 
 shirt provided for him, and was lying on his back, a picture of 
 innocence and beauty among the more squalid and meaner faces 
 around him. The shirt he wore was too small for him, and he 
 had pulled it up until his left fore-arm was bared. On it, done 
 in gunpowder, probably by his sailor father, were the initials 
 M. 1). 
 
 Shortly after the manager slept the sleep of the just, and the 
 next day Field Lane knew Meerschaum no more ; he was ab- 
 sorbed into Great Queen Street, into the home for houseless boys, 
 an institution which honours itself, while it disgraces the State 
 which so feebly supports it. 
 
 After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the French Pro- 
 testants fled away like storm-birds in a gale of wind in spring 
 time, to find the nearest place in which they could make their 
 nests. The nearest place for many of them was the east of 
 London, and in Spitalfields, where we find them still, or, to be 
 more correct, their descendants. 
 
 The Couriers came there at the Revocation ; they were Dieppe 
 people, and worked at ivory. Long after the revocation of the 
 Edict, even after the Great Pievolution itself had been forgotten, 
 the name Courier stood over the shop in the east, and in a part 
 which was then a suburb. They were in their way what the 
 Childs are in the banking way. 
 
 It was never known, and will never be known, exactly what 
 money they made, but at the end of the first half of this century 
 their business had utterly declined. There was a little dusty 
 ivory work still in the window, but no one went in to buy it, and 
 if any one had, old Jerome Coulier would have asked him six 
 times its price, and then have made faces at him. Jerome Coulier 
 
316 MEERSCHAUM. 
 
 was supposed to be the last of the whole family : he was very old 
 and morose : he lived wholly alone in Ids house, doing even his 
 own house work. He was deeply pitied by his neighbours, for 
 the story of his life was too well known by repute about there, 
 and had been more than once confirmed from his own mouth. In 
 an evil hour, when pressed for money, he had, for the sake of ten 
 years more life, sold his soul to the devil in consideration of ten 
 silver forks and a fish-slice, which he afterwards discovered to bo 
 plated. 
 
 The neighbours were very sorry when the devil took him oft' 
 one windy night, because the devil's money is better than no- 
 body's money ; and in spite of his bad bargain about the silver 
 forks and the fish-slice, he had money out at interest somewhere, 
 and instead of keeping it to himself, he used to give it to his 
 neighbours when they had need of it. Mrs. Nym said that that 
 was to try and save his soul from his most unfortunate bargain. 
 Mrs. Brough would never believe a word about the whole story, 
 but insisted that, if old Jerome had sold himself to any one, it 
 was to God, and not to the devil. Neighbours, however, like to 
 talk about neighbours, and as what they say is never true, it all 
 comes to the same thing in the end. 
 
 Jerome died, and the next day a young gentleman from Albert 
 Gate appeared ; the solicitor of the French Embassy accompanied 
 him. Then the old man was buried, but the old house was only 
 shut up for a few days ; its new occupant was coming. He was 
 fully inducted, and put in possession ; no alteration was made in 
 the shop, except that over the window the name Jerome Coulier was 
 rudely painted out, and the name J. Escriot painted in its place. 
 Of this legend one of the wags of the neighbourhood at once made 
 Judas Iscariot, the more so as the newcomer was a dark man with 
 a large nose, consequently he was voted a Jew, though, if his 
 neighbours had looked a little more at his facial angle and his 
 splendid grey eyes, they might have seen that he was no Jew. 
 He was the nephew of Jerome Coulier by a sister; he was the last 
 of an Huguenot family in Lorraine, in a part where there was not 
 another Protestant family of his way of thinking. He was so 
 poor and so lonely that he was at once glad to receive his uncle's 
 money and to get some chance of attending the worship of his 
 forefathers held in his native tongue. His uncle's money was all 
 invested in London household property in the East End ; it would 
 not have suited him to sell it, had he been allowed by the will, 
 but he was debarred from doing so. He came and lived on it, 
 for the purpose of seeing after it. 
 
 He was over fifty years of age when he moved into the little 
 
MEERSCHAUM. 317 
 
 ivory shop with bis granddaughter Ninnette, his hist surviving 
 relation, then about ten years of age ; and the two had that 
 strange and overwhelming admiration and love for one another 
 which one seldom sees save between the very young and the 
 very old. Neither of them could speak a word of English 
 when they took possession of their wealth, with all its squalid 
 surroundings ; but before long their poorer neighbours found 
 that they had not made a bad exchange between the ec- 
 centric Jerome Coulier and the apparently equally eccentric 
 Judas Iscariot. And the French child too was such a source of 
 wonder and admiration among them all ; so clean, so bright, so 
 intrepid, so graceful. She could not understand a word of their 
 language, which was fortunate for her : they knew this perfectly 
 well, yet the worst of them would cease cursing when the 
 innocent, smiling, dauntless little face passed among thein. Con- 
 science made cowards of them all. 
 
 Time had been when M. Escriot was a small farmer, with a 
 large education, bent on raising the condition of the proletariat ; 
 but the Catholics disliked him because he was a Calvinist, the 
 Calvinists because he declined to believe in the infallibility of 
 Calvinism on eternal punishment, and the republicans of those 
 parts because he was a Christian. He had never had a single 
 stroke of good luck since he was born, until he came into this 
 property ; and had had but few opportunities of helping his 
 neighbours. His theories had died out long ago : he had stood 
 in need of assistance himself on more than one occasion, and 
 friends had violated every law of political economy by helping 
 him : now, therefore, that he was rich, he set to work to see 
 what he could do for the savages, and worse than savages, by 
 whom he was surrounded. To learn their language was the first 
 thing, and he and his granddaughter set to work at that, but 
 before they could make themselves clearly understood, they had 
 become sacred persons in those parts, in consequence of their 
 active though discriminating charity. We have nothing more to 
 say about that just now. We proceed with our story. 
 
 A sailor had been away for over two years, leaving his wife and 
 little boy behind him : when he came back he found that bis 
 house was shut up, his wife in prison, and his boy on the streets. 
 He had been a good husband, had remitted money regularly, and 
 had always believed his wife to be a model of respectability. Soon 
 after his departure she had started a lodging house, which, 
 whether through her ignorance, her folly, or her culpability, was 
 turned into a receptacle for stolen goods to a very large amount. 
 When the police broke up the establishment, her previous good 
 
318 MEERSCHAUM. 
 
 character was of loss than no use to her ; she was looked on as 
 a very artful and dangerous person, and sentenced to a very long 
 term, and her hoy was left to take care of himself. 
 
 How half of these children live without crime is a wonder : 
 this hoy ostensibly lived hy sweeping a crossing. When his 
 father came home and realised the disaster which had befallen 
 him, he found the hoy at this employment. He was too young 
 to take to sea just then, so he clothed him and took him to 
 Gravescnd, to the house of a married sister. She and her 
 husband took the money for the boy's keep, but they hated the 
 task and were cruel to him. No sooner was his father safe at 
 sea, than the boy ran away and came back to his old haunts, free 
 at all events. 
 
 M. Escriot had now been a year in his new home : among all 
 the thousands of faces which he saw every day, one of all others 
 began to attract his attention ; it was the face of our boy. He 
 got into conversation with him, and helped him. At last he took 
 him home one night, set him before the fire, and made him tell 
 his story. 
 
 The boy's story was straightforward, and most absolutely true. 
 He had seldom seen his father, he was always at sea, but his 
 father was a very good man. His mother was a very good 
 woman, no better woman in the world, but she had been im- 
 prisoned on false evidence : it was very much as we have previously 
 told it! M. Escriot asked him his name, the boy refused to tell 
 it ; he was no credit, he said, either to his father or mother, and 
 was not in any way likely to be, and so he woidd keep his name 
 to himself; he said that M. Escriot might give him a new one if 
 he liked, and M. Escriot said — 
 
 " Poor little piece of sea-foam, shall I call you Ros Marinum — 
 Rosemary ? ' ' 
 
 " No, that is a girl's name," said the boy. 
 
 "Then we will put it in Lorraine German for you; shall 
 Niunette and I call you Meerschaum ? " 
 
 That took the boy's fancy more readily, and he assumed the 
 name. The neighbours who had known him had forgotten his 
 real one, so M. Escriot never knew it, and really never cared to 
 inquire about it. 
 
 The boy came to him at intervals, sometimes of days, sometimes 
 of weeks ; he was always kindly received by them, and if he 
 wanted it, fed. M. Escriot was treating many boys so, but this 
 one seemed to him one far above the common herd ; and as he 
 seemed deteriorating, the old gentleman and his granddaughter 
 were determined to rescue him somehow, and were discussing the 
 
MEERSCHAUM. 319 
 
 best moans, when the boy came to them one winter afternoon to 
 say good-bye. 
 
 Where was he going? That he could not tell, but he had met 
 a boy who had met a " bloke " who had told him of a place where 
 you could get taught a trade, and he was going there. Then he 
 lifted up his voice and wept, not alone, for one of them at least 
 had got to love him very dearly, and then he was gone. 
 
 M. Escriot was sorely exercised in his mind immediately after 
 his departure. Where cotdd the boy have gone to? what trade 
 was he to leam ? Perhaps he was taken by some young thief to 
 a den, to learn some infamous traffic. The old man was very 
 auxious, but without reason ; the boy, as we have seen, had only 
 been seduced as far as Field Lane. 
 
 He had, however, completely disappeared ; nothing could be 
 heard of him ; he was absorbed into the State, but for good, or 
 for evil ? As time went on, it seemed as likely to M. Escriot 
 that he should recognise a brown leaf upon a swollen autumn 
 torrent, as that he should see and know again the poor waif 
 whom he had known as Meerschaum. 
 
 In the sea of misery which surrounded the Escriots — that sea 
 against which they always strove with small effect, so many 
 drowning hands were held up towards them, that it is no wonder 
 if one small pair were almost forgotten ; yet, after three years, 
 something occurred to bring their lost piece of sea-foam to their 
 minds. 
 
 One night a woman came to them, an extremely beautiful 
 woman, but apparently very poor. It had been raining, and the 
 rain-drops were in her long black hair. Ninnette put a chair 
 for her before the fire, and she cowered over it and warmed her 
 hands. 
 
 " Sir," she said, turning to Mr. Escriot, " you have a good 
 name in these parts for assisting the unfortunate." 
 
 ••Madam," said M. Escriot, "I have known poverty myself, 
 and so I know how to relieve it." 
 
 " Yes, with money. L'ut you see I do not exactly want money, 
 poor as I seem. My husband will send me all the money which 
 I do not earn. I want information." 
 
 "Money, madam," said M. Escriot, "I could give you, but 
 information ! I and my pretty Ninnette here are hermits." 
 
 " Still, I think that you can do what I want. I will tell you 
 the truth. I have been undergoing seven years' penal servitude 
 on a false accusation. I think that I can ultimately prove my 
 entire innocence ; God knows it, but I think that I can prove it 
 before man. "When I was taken away my husband was at sea, 
 
320 MEERSCHAUM. 
 
 and I had a boy who went on the streets. My husband and I 
 had one interview in prison, and he of course never doubted my 
 innocence, but he told me that he had provided for the boy. I 
 came out of prison and found that he is once more at sea, and 
 that the boy is not to be beard of. He was last seen with you. 
 Can you tell me anything about him ? " 
 
 " What was his name ? " 
 
 " Michael Durnford." 
 
 M. Escriot knew of no such name. All at once Ninnette 
 exclaimed, " Father, as sure as you are born, this is Meerschaum's 
 mother." 
 
 Of course it was. The likeness was too extraordinary not to be 
 remarked, now that the key to it was found. But what had 
 become of Meerschaum ? The three put their beads together to 
 find out, and they could find out nothing at all. 
 
 The inquiry was similar to the famous one of looking for a 
 needle in a bundle (or more correctly a bottle) of hay, and after 
 a time they gave it up. Meerschaum had gone away with 
 another boy, and had never been seen since. Meanwhile M. 
 Escriot and Ninnette found Mrs. Durnford a very remarkable 
 woman, and a very agreeable companion. 
 
 She was a woman of considerable diligence and ability. She 
 started herself in a small business, and did well. She was in con- 
 tinual communication with her husband, from all parts of the 
 world. He, still a young man, had now got a full certificate from 
 the Board, and was in command of a small ship ; his business 
 kept him in the Pacific entirely, and as time went on Mrs. 
 Durnford told the Escriots that it might be years before they nut, 
 but that she had bis confidence, and that perhaps it would be as 
 well for him to stay away until everything was forgotten. If she 
 could only prove her innocence to the world as she had to him, 
 she would care for nothing except the finding of the boy. 
 
 No one about Upper East Smithfield wanted it proved. In 
 those quarters the majority of a certain class of people disagree 
 with the law because it interferes with them. How the School 
 Board will get on there, we do not know ; badly we doubt. Mrs. 
 Durnford, however, was rather popular from having been in 
 prison, and was considered to be quite one of themselves. Re- 
 ligious she was, certainly — they all became religious when they 
 were shut up — but otherwise an excellent woman ; we all had 
 our faults, and if she was a little religious, she would doubtless, 
 with her good common sense, get over it in time. 
 
 Still she did not get over it, and Escriot, after the facts had 
 been told to him, more and more desired to prove her innocence. 
 
MEERSCHAUM. 321 
 
 She always said that she could live her accusation down, he 
 desired her to do more ; he was in the end right ; hut the telling 
 of the lives of Escriot, Ninnette, and Mrs. Durnford for the next 
 two years would try the patience of any reader. It is enough to 
 say that Mrs. Durnford got more and more intimate with the 
 Escriots, that she prospered in trade, and sent money to her 
 hushand, which he invested well. The ex-convict woman hecame 
 as well known in those parts for discriminate charity as the 
 Escriots ; but the husband wa J still in the Pacific, and could not 
 come home. 
 
 One night, a winter night, about seven o'clock, the Escriots, 
 grandfather and granddaughter, were sitting together, when there 
 came a ring at the bell, at once answered by Ninnette. She 
 admitted a fine-looking young sailor, in the dress of a man-of-war's 
 man, who hurriedly asked her if he could see M. Escriot. M. 
 Escriot was to the fore at once. 
 
 " You remember me, sir," said the young sailor. 
 
 " No." 
 
 "I remember you, though," said the young sailor; "you 
 were very kind to me when I was on the streets. My father 
 wants to see you, sir, and he is dying. 
 
 That was enough for M. Escriot ; he got his hat and went out 
 into the street with him. When they were alone together, M. 
 Escriot asked, " What is your father's name ? " 
 
 " Akers," said the sailor. " I expect he wants to tell you 
 about Mrs. Durnford's business. He wants to make an affidavit 
 that she was innocent, I think. She were, and he wants to 
 right the woman, as he says he can, before he dies." 
 
 " Where has your father been ? " asked M. Escriot. 
 
 "West Australia. He will do right now. I am afraid he is 
 going, and he has been a good father to me." 
 
 M. Escriot shook his head. Nothing could be done with these 
 English, they were such fools. Akers had been twice imprisoned 
 for starving and beating his children, and here was his son and 
 heir crying over the loss of an excellent parent ! 
 
 Yet it is so. A few pence, and a few kind words, now and 
 then, will in an English or American boy's heart atone for months 
 or years of cruelty and neglect. As for the French, we have 
 nothing to say. Their piety (in the old Latin sense; towards 
 their fathers is more like a craze than anything else. 
 
 It was late into the night before M. Escriot had done with 
 Akers. The man was dying and wished to make a clean breast 
 of it. To make u long story short, he entirely exonerated Mrs. 
 Durnford, and ultimately the judge who had tried her allowed that 
 
 22 
 
322 MEERSCHAUM. 
 
 there had been a miscarriage of justice. We rather anticipate 
 here, because the course of the story carries us away with M. 
 Escriot and young Akers. 
 
 He came soon after to M. Escriot and announced his father's 
 death. " I am glad," said M. Escriot, " that he eased his mind." 
 Young Akers the sailor, said, " Now I want to ease mine. Is 
 Mrs. Durnford handy? " 
 
 Mrs Durnford and Ninnette were produced. 
 
 " You mind me, ma'am," said young Akers. 
 
 " I remember you now, and I thank you for what you have 
 done for me," said Mrs. Durnford. 
 
 " You remember your boy, Meerschaum ? " 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 " Well, it was I that took him away out of this. He was too 
 good for it, and so was I, though I never was so good as him. I 
 took him away out of it, and I am proud on it. I took him to 
 Field Lane, and then he went to Great Queen Street, and we went 
 to the Chichester together, and we were both drafted into the 
 Royal Navy." 
 
 " And where is my boy now ? " said Mrs. Durnford eagerly. 
 
 " Burn me if I know, ma'am. There was only eight of us 
 drafted into the Queen's service that year, and he might be any- 
 where : I don't as much as know what ship he went into, because 
 I left the Chichester before he did. But don't you see what you 
 have got to do, ma'am ? You go to Field Lane, and they will 
 remember him by his name of Meerschaum, which he always 
 gave there as elsewhere, because he thought it would do him harm 
 to give his real one. Or you might go at once to Great Queen 
 Street ; they will track him for you at once." 
 
 The lad departed with an extremely grateful recollection of M. 
 Escriot's generosity. The clue was got at once : Field Lane 
 was the nearest place, and Mrs. Durnford went there at once. 
 The manager was at home, and she asked him if he remembered 
 a boy called Meerschaum. 
 
 " Yes. certainly, madam," he said, " I remember him well; a 
 fine, handsome lad, marked with M. D, on his left arm." 
 
 " That is my son, sir." 
 
 " Indeed, madam. But the boy, I well remember, told me that 
 his mother was in prison ; and when he came to us he was half 
 naked, and had been fearfully neglected for some time. I don't 
 understand it." 
 
 " His father was at sea, and I was in prison for six years on a 
 totally false charge ; the boy must have been two years on the 
 streets with no one but God to take care of him. Now his father 
 
MEERSCHAUM. 323 
 
 and I are prosperous, but our boy is gone. Can you belp 
 me ? " 
 
 " Let us come together at once." And so they went along 
 Holborn together, the manager silent and puzzled, wanting to say 
 what the manager at Great Queen Street said for him before they 
 bad been in conversation three minutes. 
 
 " If your life, madam, has been such as you describe," said 
 the latter, " is it wise for you to drag him back into contact with 
 such associates as you may have formed ? I only ask you to 
 speak as a mother for your boy's sake." 
 
 " I am an absolutely innocent woman," she replied. " Your 
 suspicions are natural, I allow ; but they are unfounded. Make 
 any inquiries about me that you like. You are not clever enough 
 to see one thing : if I had wished to trace my son for any evil 
 purpose, I should scarcely have acknowledged to you two gentle- 
 men that I had been a convict." 
 
 This was so indubitably true that the two managers looked at 
 one another. Great Queen Street smiled and spoke. " Well, 
 God deal with you as you deal with your son when you have 
 regained your influence over him." 
 
 " Amen," said Mrs. Durnford. " Then he is alive ? " 
 
 " He is alive, and he has done so much better than well, that 
 any antecedents of his will make little difference to him now. 
 You might have seen the absurd name by which we knew him in 
 print, had you looked for it. The boy distinguished himself 
 greatly at the Peiho forts." 
 
 '• And where is he now "? " 
 
 " Still on the China station. Address H.M.S. Blonde, Hong 
 Kong or elsewhere. Would you like to see one of bis letters ? " 
 
 She took one away with her. Perhaps the manager had for- 
 gotten which it was, but perhaps also he gave it to her on purpose ; 
 at the close of a well-written letter in a hue bold hand he wrote : 
 "In spite of what you say, I shall find my mother out when I 
 get to England, for I tell you that she is the best woman in the 
 world." 
 
 Mrs. Durnford wrote to her son, but before he got her letter 
 the turning-point in her life had passed. 
 
 She was sitting quietly one night in her little back parlour, 
 reading, but not understanding what she read. The lines and 
 words passed her eye, but she knew not what they meant ; it had 
 happened to her often before, and would most likely happen to 
 her again. She was reviewing her life while she was pretending 
 to read. 
 
 The time had been when she was a very beautiful girl : well 
 
324 MEERSCHAUM. 
 
 educated as times went, a ladies' -maid in a great family. A 
 handsome young sailor had made her acquaintance at the small 
 seaport near my lord's house. She had given up everything for 
 him, in spite of remonstrance from every one, and at last she had 
 married him. 
 
 He was a true and honest fellow, hut at that time uneducated. 
 He had heen much away from her, and she had to shift as hest 
 she might. When one of his long absences occurred she thought 
 that she had done for the best. She started that unhappy 
 lodging-house, and after a short time her great trouble came. 
 She was put into prison, and had to leave her boy on the streets. 
 
 Six years penal servitude ! At first her soul seemed to die 
 within her, and she was incapable of exertion ; but by degrees, 
 with her intense vitality she began to work. For the first two 
 years her husband knew nothing of what had happened to her, so 
 his letters were never forwarded to her. After two years were 
 passed, she was told one day that she had a visitor. 
 
 The visitor was put in one cage and she in another, with a 
 turnkey in the empty space between. They could say but little 
 to one another ; and, for our part, we think the arrangement 
 objectionable in some cases. He told her of his unalterable 
 confidence, and she begged him to see after the boy : with what 
 result we have heard. 
 
 Many letters passed between them, but he never saw her again, 
 save once, in a similar interview. He always wrote that he was 
 doing his best to make her happy once more, but he had never 
 come back. She knew, when she thought of it, that he was 
 making more money where he was ; but there was a sad spot in 
 her heart which only he could heal. 
 
 Did he love her still ? More, would he even know her if he 
 saw her ? She had been beautiful once ; was she so now ? 
 
 It was not the first night she had thought of these things. She 
 thought of them every night when the candle in the shop was 
 burning low, and the customers were fewer and fewer as the 
 night went on. To-night she wished to close earlier and get to 
 her bed, and, if possible, to forgetfulness ; but the wretched little 
 shop-bell clinked again, and she went out to serve a customer, a 
 seafaring man by his complexion, but dressed like a gentleman. 
 She looked straight at him, and he looked straight at her. As 
 their eyes met she thought that he was a kind-looking man, and 
 that was all. He, for his part, thought that she must have been 
 a handsome woman once, and was handsome still. There was no 
 shadow of recognition. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, madam," the man said. " There is a 
 
MEERSCHAUM. 325 
 
 Jftlrs. Durnford lives near here, in one of the shops right or left of 
 you. Can you tell me which it is '? " 
 
 " I am Mrs. Durnford," she said. "What did you wish with 
 me?" 
 
 He looked at her like a man awakening from a dream : then 
 he stretched out his arms towards her, and as he did so a light 
 seemed to grow upon his face. Then he said, " Mary." 
 
 And then with a happy sigh, like that of a mother to her child, 
 she looked on him, and she knew him. 
 
 We will close Mrs. Durnford's shop-door for the night, and 
 serve no more customers. It was known amongst the neighbours 
 next morning that a gentleman had gone into her house im- 
 mediately before her closing, and had not come out again. It 
 was known later in the morning that M. Escriot had gone there 
 the first thing, and that Mrs. Durnford's husband had come back 
 from " the Indies " with a vast fortune. 
 
 That was by no means true : he had only come home with an 
 old ship, and had been appointed to a new one by a great firm 
 whose confidence he had gained. He came to fetch his wife at 
 last, and they sailed away with loving adieus from the Escriots ; 
 and Upper East Smithfield knew Mrs. Durnford no more. 
 
 The Escriots did, however. By every possible mail came 
 letters from the Dumfords about Meerschaum. The plan about 
 him was that he was to quit the Navy at once and come as mate 
 under his father. He might enter the X.R., but he must sail 
 under his father to learn navigation and take his proper place : he 
 would certainly come to M. Escriot, and M. Escriot was earnestly 
 prayed to help them in the matter. They would only be away a 
 year, and they wanted to end their lives all three together. 
 
 M. Escriot used to go out for walks on fine days with Ninnette, 
 far beyond the East End, far beyond the city, out into the 
 pleasant parks and squares of the West. He was in a quiet part 
 of Kensington Gardens one day, when his Ninnette left him and 
 wandered away along the Serpentine. It was the time when the 
 rhododendrons were in bloom, and as she stood looking at them 
 she found herself face to face with a young gentleman in civilian's 
 clothes, but somehow looking like a sailor. 
 
 " Mademoiselle Escriot, I believe," he said. 
 
 " Yes, surely." 
 
 " I am afraid you do not know me. I should have known you 
 anywhere." 
 
 " And I should have known you nowhere, monsieur." 
 
 "So I dare to say ; yet I know you so well that I have 
 followed you about for the whole afternoon, afraid to speak to you." 
 
32G MEERSCHAUM. 
 
 "Yet I am not difficult of address, monsieur. I have strange 
 confidants." 
 
 "May I be one of them? Do you remember a boy called 
 Meerschaum ? " 
 
 " Perfectly. Do you bring news of him ? " 
 
 "I do." 
 
 " I hope that it is good, because, sir, between us, I loved him 
 when, we were children together so very deeply. I think that if 
 he were to come before me now, the brave, patient little fellow 
 grown into a man, I could love him again. You try by your 
 dress to conceal from the world that you are a sailor. But a 
 sailor's eyes are too frank for a woman's scrutiny. You have 
 seen Meerschaum. Where did you see him last? " 
 
 " Do you not see him now ? " said the young man. 
 
 It was* Meerschaum, and, in trying to remember what she had 
 said to him before the recognition, she pretended to herself that 
 she had forgotten it all. They joined M. Escriot, and went home 
 with him. One thing only was certain to the old man, and that 
 was that his granddaughter and the son of the convict woman 
 were in love with one another, and that nothing which he could 
 ever do would separate them. 
 
 The simple fact was that he had no word to say against the 
 arrangement. He was getting very old. Michael Durnford was 
 everything he could desire. His father and mother were accumu- 
 lating money and doing well. Under the English law his grand- 
 daughter's money could be tied up on herself. He had asked 
 about the young man's character, and it was good. Why then 
 should they not "marry ? He determined to ask his granddaughter 
 if she had any objection. 
 
 She answered that she had none at all, and continued, like a 
 true daughter of France with money in her purse, that, if he 
 could not keep her, they, grandfather and granddaughter, would 
 be most certainly able to keep him. It was not an English way 
 of putting the case, but it was most certainly practical. 
 
 So golden days came for poor Meerschaum. M. Escriot sent 
 him to a college at Southsea to learn navigation. That science, 
 in its rudiments, is not difficult. We have learnt it three or four 
 times ourselves, and can say, with a safe conscience, that we know 
 nothing about it now. Meerschaum, however, assimilated navi- 
 gation, and Lieutenant Maury, of the U.S. Navy, having appeared 
 on the scene shortly before, Meerschaum followed his theories, 
 hanging on his words. 
 
 His examinations were passed splendidly. There was a slight 
 difficulty about his obligations to the Koyal Navy, but they were 
 
MEERSCHAUM. 327 
 
 easily got over. He went into the Reserve. Ninnette and lie 
 were to be married when his parents came home ; they were 
 expected every day. 
 
 The weather got dim and wild early that year. It stood at- 
 north, then at north-east, hacking steadily against the sun. 
 Meerschaum, full of Reid, Maury, and Fitzroy, told them that a 
 great storm was coming. Ninnette and he walked across the sands 
 to Broadstairs ; the boatmen were ready for anything there. 
 
 The great south-westerly storm of those days came on them 
 more suddenly than they had thought for ; it came on a rapidly- 
 rising barometer. From the ghastly position of 27*10, the 
 barometer went up to 2S - 0. At three o'clock the disaster was 
 upon them. There came a flying, almost green-coloured cloud 
 from the direction of Calais, and after that no one knew much 
 more until all was over. The wind drove the sea in masses of 
 foam towards the land. As darkness came on, it was evident 
 that all the lights in the Channel were useless on such a night 
 as this. Their own North Foreland was invisible, and the lights, 
 even in their own castle, were dim spots. 
 
 In the horrible roar and confusion, one young man kept his 
 head. Towards midnight Michael Durnford went out and tried 
 to rally the boatmen. They were at first disinclined to go with 
 him, for it was useless. 
 
 "I tell you," he said, "that there is a ship close to us. I 
 have heard the voices of the people on board of her." 
 
 A man came staggering through the surf, holding tight to a 
 woman. Then a woman came, holding a baby ; and then others 
 reeling in the wash, which was now beginning to slop up with the 
 ebb. 
 
 All Kingsgate were out at once, and up to their waists in water ; 
 Michael Durnford pulled a man on shore and asked him what ship 
 it was which had been wrecked. 
 
 " The Aurora," the man said. " Captain Durnford. She is 
 on her side on the reef there. He is going to stop to the last, 
 and his wife with him." 
 
 M. Escriot and Ninnette knew nothing of what was happening. 
 In the awful roar of the storm, they once or twice held the door 
 partly open, and peered out into the wild night. He faced it 
 bareheaded, but she wrapped up her head, because Michael always 
 kissed her hair before they separated. She raised her hands and 
 said, " Let us thank God that our boy is not at sea." 
 
 And M. Escriot said, "I will copy Lear. I'll pray and then 
 1 11 sleep." 
 
 When Michael heard the name of the ship, he knew what had 
 
328 MEERSCHAUM. 
 
 happened ; he was perfectly quiet ; lie said to two young men 
 who stood hy him : " My father is captain of that ship, and my 
 mother is with him. I must get off to them." 
 
 The two young fishermen to whom Michael spoke showed him, 
 that if the ship were where she was reported to be, he could get to 
 her along that reef which lies to the west of Kingsgate. So he 
 went out along it into the spin-drift, and was seen no more until 
 the next morning. 
 
 Blinded and bruised among the rocks, he made out the ship at 
 last. She was lying at the edge of the reef breaking her back ; 
 as he approached her he heard her cracking and ripping herself 
 to pieces. She was on her side, and a ruin of masts and rigging 
 was between himself and her. He saw his father and his mother 
 advancing together along the mainmast to get as far on the spar 
 as they could before launching themselves, and he called to them, 
 "Hold on, and I will be with you directly. Keep your arm 
 round my mother, and I will get you on shore." 
 
 Captain Durnford cried out, " We are the last ; go back and 
 bring us a rope." 
 
 " I can get my mother on shore, and you can follow," shouted 
 Michael. 
 
 He made towards them, and was clambering on the spar, 
 when a piece of the wreck surged against his chest and sent him 
 down. 
 
 When M. Escriot and Captain Durnford found him next 
 morning, the sand was in his hair, and the sea-scud was driving 
 over his face. Captain Durnford said, " God has been very cruel 
 to us in this matter." 
 
 M. Escriot said, " My friend, you have scarcely read the story 
 of Cleobis and Bito. Raise his head, and let me wipe the sea- 
 foam from his face. If there were no future, who would live ? In 
 the hands of God we are all as Meerschaum : as the foam of the 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHA3I PRESS, CHILWORTH AND LONDON. 
 
A LIST OF 
 
 STANDARD REFERENCE VOLUMES, 
 POPULAR USEFUL BOOKS, 
 
 AND 
 
 Illustrated §ift §qcks 5 §tc. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, Ltd. 
 
 Price 
 
 7/6 
 
 THE NEW EDITION OF 
 THE BEST COOKERY BOOK IN THE WORLD. 
 
 (Published November, 1888). 
 Enlarged, Re-composed, Revised, Improved. With New Menus, 
 
 New Modes, New Recipes, New Tables, New Illustrations. 
 
 580th Thousand, strongly bound, halt-roan, price 7a. 6d. ; cloth gilt, 
 
 bevelled boards, gilt edges, 8s. 6d.; half-calf or half-morocco, 12a. 6d.; 
 
 elegant full tree calf, 18a. 
 
 JV1RS. BEETON'S BOOK OF 
 JHOUSEHOLD JV1 AN AGEM ENT. 
 
 Entirely New and greatly Enlarged and Improved Edition, 
 
 INCLUDING 
 
 360 additional pages of New Recipes and Hew Engravings, or in all 
 
 about 1,700 pages, with Thousands of Recipes and Instructions, 
 
 Hundreds of Engravings and Hew Coloured Cookery Plates. 
 
 With Quantities, Time, Costs, and Seasons, Directions for Carving 
 and Trussing, Management of Children, Arrangement and Economy of 
 the Kitchen, Duties of Servants, the Doctor, Legal Memoranda, and 
 Bills of Fare and Menus of all kinds and for all Seasons. 
 
 In tins New Edition the size of the pages has been increased, 
 and 30O pages added, so that the ivorh now contains nearly 
 one half as much matter again as the old edition. 
 
 OPIHIOHS OF THE PRESS OH THE HEW EDITIOH. 
 " Perfect as it was before, it is much more so now."— Bristol Times. 
 " Should be one of the wedding presents of every bride." — The 
 Christian World. 
 
 " Hardly anything belonging to domestic life is wanting to this ency- 
 clopaedic volume." — Manchester Examiner. 
 
 V As a Wedding Gift, Birthday Book, or Presentation Volume at 
 any teriod of the year, Mrs. Beeton's " Household Management " is en- 
 titled to the very first place. The book will last a lifetime, and save 
 money every day. 
 
 tS" New Large Paper Edition now ready, handsomely printed and 
 bound, hf. paste grain, gilt edges, 21s. Specially adapted for Presentation. 
 
 WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, Limited. 
 
STANDARD COOKERY & HOUSEKEEPING BOOKS. 
 
 Price 
 
 5/- 
 
 3/6 
 
 2/6 
 
 V- 
 
 1/6 
 U. 
 
 7/6 
 
 7/6 
 
 MRS. BEETON'S FAMILY COOKERY AND HOUSE- 
 
 KEEPING BOOK. Embracing a Complete Dictionary of Cookery 
 and a Comprehensive and Practical Guide to Domestic Manage- 
 ment. Including Practical Instruction in Cookery, Various Modes 
 of Cooking, Cookery Abroad, High-class Cookery, the Kitchen and 
 its Requisites, Duties of Servants, New Menus for every Season, 
 written in French and English, Entertainment of Guests, How best 
 to Plan out and Arrange Dinners, Suppers and other Meals, New 
 and Valuable Illustrations and Coloured Plates and Recipes for the 
 Cooking of all Fresh and Tinned Provisions obtainable in England. 
 This thoroughly comprehensive Work comprises about 800 pages, 
 550 Engravings and Eight Coloured Cookery Plates. Crown 8vo, 
 strongly bound, half-roan, price 6s. 
 
 MRS. BEETON'S EVERY-DAY COOKERY AND HOUSE- 
 KEEPING BOOK. Re-written and Revised throughout, greatly 
 Enlarged and Improved ; containing 570 Pages, 1,800 Recipes, in- 
 cluding Instructions for Foreign and Vegetarian Cookery, New French 
 and English Menus for every Month in the Year, New Menus for 
 Breakfast, Luncheon, Tea, Supper and Picnics, New Tables of House- 
 keeping Accounts and Household Expenditure, New Coloured Plates 
 and 600 Engravings. Large crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3*. 6d. 
 
 MRS. BEETON'S ALL ABOUT COOKERY. Enlarged, 
 Revised, and thoroughly brought up to date, containing 2,000 Recipes 
 for every branch of Cookery, New Menus for all meals for all months 
 in the year, Valuable Coloured Plates and 500 Illustrations. 
 Crown 8vo, 450 Pages, cloth gilt, 2s. <id. 
 
 MRS. BEETON'S COOKERY BOOK. New and Enlarged 
 
 Edition, containing upwards of 1,000 Recipes, 350 Engravings, and 
 Four Coloured Plates. Marketing, Vegetarian Cookery, Menus, Table 
 Arrangements, Trussing, Carving, &c, &c. with Quantities, Time, 
 Cost and Seasons. Crown 8vo, cloth, Is. ; cloth gilt, Is. Gd. 
 
 MRS. BEETON'S ENGLISHWOMAN'S COOKERY BOOK 
 
 AND GUIDE TO HOUSEKEEPING. Containing Recipes for 
 every kind of Cookery, Hints and Advice on Home Management, 
 &c. 192 pages, 600 Recipes, 150 Illustrations. Crown 8vo, limp 
 cloth, 0<l. 
 
 A COMPANION VOLUME TO "MES. BEETON'S BOOK OF 
 HOUSEHOLD MANAGMENT." 
 
 MRS. BEETON'S HOUSEWIFE'S TREASURY OF 
 
 DOMESTIC INFORMATION. With numerous full-page Co- 
 loured and other Plates, and about 600 Illustrations In the Text. 
 Crown 8vo, half-roan, 7*. 6d. ; half-calf, lOs. 6d. 
 " In the one thousand and fifty-six pages in this marvellous ' Home 
 Book ' there is not one worthless or unnecessary item, not one 
 article we would ever wish to forget." — The Court Journal, 
 
 SYLVIA'S FAMILY MANAGEMENT. A Book of Thrift 
 and Cottage Economy. With numerous Coloured and other Plates 
 and 350 Illustrations 111 the Text. Medium 8vo, cloth gilt, bevelled 
 boards, 7s. 6d. 
 
 From the SATURDAY REVIEW: " The most important 
 publication, so far as variety of subjects is concerned, which tee have 
 yet seen for the benefit of families of small means." 
 
 WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, Limited. 
 
STANDARD COOKERY & HOUSEKEEPING BOOKS. 
 
 Price 
 
 V- 
 
 1/- 
 
 2/6 
 2/6 
 1/6 
 
 V- 
 
 1/- 
 6d. 
 
 6d. 
 6d. 
 
 6d. 
 Zd. 
 
 Id. 
 
 THE COOKERY INSTRUCTOR. By Edith A. Barnett, 
 Examiner to the National Training School for Cookery, &c. Illus- 
 trated. The reasons for Recipes, which are almost entirely omitted in 
 all Modern Cookery Books, are here clearly given. Crown 8vo, cloth 
 limp, Is. 
 
 GOOD PLAIN COOKERY. By Mary Hooper, Author of 
 
 " Little Dinners," " Every Day Meals," &c. This work, by an 
 acknowledged Mistress of the Cuisine, is specially devoted to what is 
 generally known as Plain Cookery. Crown Svo, cloth limp, Is. 
 
 THE ART OF PASTRY-MAKING: French and English; 
 including Cakes, Sweetmeats and Fancy Biscuits. By Emile 
 Herisse, late Chief Pastrycook- Confectioner. With 40 Illustra- 
 tions. Crown 8vo, linen boards, bevelled, 2s. 6d. 
 
 TINNED FOODS, AND HOW TO USE THEM. Con- 
 taining Complete Menus for all Meals, through all Seasons of the 
 Year, and Practical Recipes for all Dishes prepared from Tinned 
 and Preserved Provisions. Crown 8vo, cloth, 2s. 6d. 
 
 BONNES BOUCHES, AND RELISHABLE DISHES FOR 
 
 BREAKFAST AND LUNCHEON. By Mrs. Louisa E. Smith, 
 Author of " Home Washing," &c. Crown 8vo, c:oth gilt, elegantly 
 bound, Is. 6d. 
 
 OUR DAILY FARE AND HOW TO PROVIDE IT. A 
 
 Guide to the Provision of Good Food at the Smallest Cost at all 
 Seasons of the Year. With a Complete Series of Bills of Fare 
 showing the Cost in each case, and Recipes for Desirable Dishes; 
 also a Guide to Marketing: What to Buy and How to Choose It! 
 Crown Svo, cloth, Is. 
 
 THE PEOPLE'S HOUSEKEEPER. A Complete Guide to 
 Comfort, Economy and Health. Comprising Cookery, Household 
 Economy, the Family Health, Furnishing, Housework, Clothes, Mar- 
 keting, Food, &c. &c. Post 8vo, cloth, is. 
 
 THE ECONOMICAL COOKERY BOOK, for Housewives, 
 
 Cooks, and Maids-of-all-Work with Advice to Mistress and Servant. 
 By Mrs. Warren. New Edition, with additional pages and numerous 
 Illustrations. Post 8vo, limp cloth, 6d. 
 
 THE SIXPENNY PRACTICAL COOKERY AND ECONO. 
 
 MICAL RECIPES. Comprising Marketing, Relishes, Boiled Dishes, 
 Vegetables, Soups, Side Dishes, Salads, Stews, Fish, Joints, Sauces' 
 Cheap Dishes, Invalid Cookery, &c. 6d. 
 
 MRS. BEETONS SIXPENNY COOKERY BOOK for the 
 
 people and Housekeeper's Guide to Comfort, Economy and Health. 
 Crown 8vo, linen covers, 6d. 
 
 MRS. BEETQN'S COTTAGE COOKERY BOOK. Contain- 
 ing Simple Lessons in Cookery and Economical Home Management. 
 A Guide 10 economy in the Kitchen, and a valuable Handbook for 
 Young Housewives. Fcap. 8vo, cloth limp, 6d.; paper covers, 3d. 
 
 BEETONS PENNY COOKERY BOOK. Containing more 
 than 200 Recipes and Instructions. Price Id. ; post free, l\d. 
 
 WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, Limited. 
 
EDUCATIONAL AND USEFUL WORKS. 
 
 Price 
 
 7/6 
 
 51- 
 
 5/- 
 
 or 
 
 3/6 
 
 51- 
 
 THE BEST WORK FOR SELF-EDUCATORS. 
 THE UNIVERSAL INSTRUCTOR; or, Self-Culture for All. 
 
 A Complete Cyclopaedia of Learning and Self-Education ; meeting 
 the Requirements of all Classes of Students, and forming a Perfect 
 System of Intellectual Culture. With 2,000 Illustrations. In Three 
 Vols., royal 8vo, each 7s. 6d. ; half-calf or half-morocco, 12s. 
 " The tvork is excellent, and it is to be hoped it may meet 
 with the popularity it deserves." — Athenaeum. 
 
 THE DOCTOR AT HOME, AND NURSE'S GUIDE BOOK: 
 
 A Guide to the Nature, Causes and Treatment of Disease ; The Main- 
 tenance of Health and Strength, and the Prolongation of Life ; with 
 special Directions respecting the various Ailments and Disorders of 
 Childhood and Womanhood. Edited by George Black, M.B. Edin., 
 Author of " First Aid in Accident and Sudden Illness," &c. With 
 Hundreds of Illustrations. Demy 8vo, half-roan, 900'pages, 5s. 
 " Doctors will be the first to testify to the value of such a work as 
 this." — City Press. 
 
 "THE PRACTICAL MECHANIC SERIES" OF INDUS- 
 
 TRIAL HANDBOOKS. Profusely Illustrated. Demy 8vo, strongly 
 bound in cloth, price '3s. Gd. or Ss. each, 
 i The Stonemason and the Bricklayer. With Eleven Folding 
 Plates and 224 Illustrations in the Text. Ss. 
 
 2 The Domestic House Planner and the Sanitary Architect. 
 
 With Sixteen Plates and Sixty Illustrations in the Text. Ss. 
 
 3 The General Machinist. With Four Folding Plates and Seventy- 
 
 five Illustrations in the Text. Ss. 
 
 4 The Building and Machine Draughtsman. With Eighteen 
 
 Folding Plates and 155 Illustrations in the Text. Ss. 
 
 5 The Carpenter and Joiner. With Twenty-five Folding Plates 
 
 and 200 Illustrations in the Text. Ss. 
 
 6 The Ornamental Draughtsman; Including Form and Colour. 
 
 With Nineteen Folding Plates and Illusts. in the Text. 3s.6d. 
 
 7 The Iron and Steel Maker. With Five Folding Plates and Thirty- 
 
 two Illustrations in the Text. Ss. 
 
 8 The Cabinet Maker. With Ten Folding Plates and Sixty-Two 
 
 Illustrations in the Text. 3s. 6d. 
 g The Geometrical Draughtsman. With Seven Folding Plates and 
 
 126 Illustrations in the Text. 3s. 6d. 
 io The Student's Introduction to Mechanics. With 160 Illustra- 
 tions. Ss. 
 ii The Steam-Engine User. With about 130 Illustrations. Ss. 
 "The information has been supplied by men who are peculiarly well 
 qualified to speak on the subject ; and if our mechanics and artisans could 
 be induced to master books of this kind, their interest in their daily work 
 would be quickened, and, since skilled labour can always command the 
 Market, their advancement in life would be secured." — The Leeds 
 Mercury. 
 
 A DICTIONARY OF THE TECHNICAL AND TRADE 
 
 TERMS of Architectural Design and Building Construction. Being 
 Practical Descriptions, with Technical Details, of the Different Depart- 
 ments connected with the various Subjects ; with derivations of, and 
 French and German equivalents or synonyms for the various Terms. 
 With Explanatory Diagrams. Demy 8vo, cloth, Ss. 
 " The thoroughly explanatory character of the work gives it a high 
 value, both as a book of reference, and as a practical guide for the young 
 architect and builder. Technicality is shown to be no bar to a perfectly 
 clear description of every term." — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, Limited. 
 
HIGH-CLASS BOOKS OF REFERENCE. 
 
 Price 
 30/- 
 
 36/- 
 
 42/- 
 
 18/- 
 
 7/6 
 
 7/6 
 
 7/6 
 
 7/6 
 
 A Complete Encyclopedia for Thirty Shillings. 
 
 In Four Vols., royal 8vo, cloth, 30s. ; strongly bound, half- Persian, 42s. ; 
 
 half-russia, 60s. ; half-calf, 63s. ; Six Vols., cloth, 36s. ; half-calf, 54s. 
 
 BEETONS ILLUSTRATED ENCYCLOP/EDIA OF UNI- 
 VERSAL INFORMATION. Comprising Geography, History, 
 Biography, Chronology, Art, Science, Literature, Religion 
 and Philosophy, and containing 4,000 Pages, 50,000 Articles, and 
 Hundreds of Engravings and Coloured Maps. 
 *• We know of no book which in such small compass gives so 
 
 much information." — The Scotsman. 
 
 "A perfect mine of information." — Leeds Mercury, 
 
 HAYDN'S DICTIONARY OF DATES. Relating to all 
 
 Ages and Nations ; for Universal Reference. Containing about 12,000 
 distinct Articles, and 130,000 Dates and Facts. Twentieth 
 Edition, Enlarged, Corrected and Revised by Benjamin Vincent, 
 Librarian of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Medium 8vo, 
 cloth, price 18s. / half-calf, 24s. ; full or tree-calf, 31s. 6d. 
 THE TIMES on the i8th Edition :— " We see no reason to reverse 
 or qualify the judgment we expressed upon a former edition, that the 
 'Dictionary of Dates 'is the most Universal Book of Reference in 
 a moderate compass that we know of in the English Lan- 
 guage." 
 
 VINCENT'S DICTIONARY OF BIOGRAPHY, Past and 
 
 Present. Containing the Chief Events in the Lives of Eminent Persons 
 of all Ages and Nations, By Benjamin Vincent, Editor of "Haydn's 
 Dictionary of Dates." Medium 8vo, cloth, 7*. 6d. ; half-calf, 13s. ; 
 full or tree-calf, 18s. 
 
 "It has the merit of condensing into the smallest possible compass the 
 leading events in the career of every man and woman of 
 eminence. . . . Very carefully edited, and must evidently be the result 
 of constant industry, combined with good judgment and taste." — Times. 
 
 HAYDN'S DICTIONARY OF DOMESTIC MEDICINE. By 
 
 the late Edwin Lankester, M.D., F.R.S., assisted by Distinguished 
 Physicians and Surgeons. With an Appendix on Sick Nursing and 
 Mothers' Management. With full pages Of Engravings. In One 
 Vol., medium 8vo, cloth gilt, 7s. (id. ; half-calf, 12s. 
 "The best work of its kind." — Medical Press and Circular. 
 
 HAYDN'S BIBLE DICTIONARY. For the use of all Readers 
 and Students of the Old and New Testaments, and of the Apocrypha. 
 Edited by the late Rev. Charles Boutell, M.A. With many 
 pages Of Engravings, separately printed on tinted paper. In One 
 Vol., medium 8vo, cloth gilt, 7s. 6d. ; half-calf, 12s. 
 " Marked by great care and accuracy, clearness com- 
 bined irit/i brevity, and a vast amount of information which 
 will delight and benefit readers." — The Watchman. 
 
 HOUSEHOLD MEDICINE: A Guide to Good Health, Long 
 Life, and the Proper Treatment of all Diseases and Ailments. Edited 
 by George Black, M.B. Edin. Accurately Illustrated with 460 
 Engravings. Royal 8vo, cloth gilt, price 10s. 6d. ; half-calf, 16s. 
 "Considerable is the care which Dr. Black has bestowed upon his work 
 on Household Medicine. He has gone carefully and ably into all the sub- 
 jects that can be included in such a volume. . . . The work is worthy 
 of study and attention, and likely to produce real good." — 
 Athenaeum. 
 
 WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, Limited. 
 
HIGH-CLASS BOOKS OF REFERENCE. 
 
 Price 
 
 7/6 
 
 7/6 
 7/6 
 
 7/6 
 
 7/6 
 
 15/- 
 
 18/- 
 21/- 
 
 15/- 
 18/- 
 21/- 
 
 7/6 
 
 per Vol. 
 
 THE BOOK FOR AMATEURS IN CARPENTRY, &>c. 
 EVERY MAN HIS OWN MECHANIC. Being a Complete 
 Guide for Amateurs in Household Carpentry and Joinery, Orna- 
 mental and Constructional Carpentry and Joinery, and 
 Household Building, Art and' Practice. New, Revised and 
 Enlarged Edition, with about 900 Illustrations of Tools, Pro- 
 cesses, Buildings, &C. Demy 8vo, cloth gilt, 7*. 6d. ; half-calf, 12s. 
 " There is a fund of solid information of every kind in the work before 
 us, which entitles it to the proud distinction of being a complete ' vade- 
 mecum' of the subjects upon which it treats."— Thb Daily 
 Telegraph. 
 
 BEETON'S DICTIONARY OF THE PHYSICAL SCI- 
 
 ENCES ; Including Astronomy, Botany, Chemistry, Geology, Elec- 
 tricity, Sound, Light, Heat, &c. With explanatory Engravings. 
 Royal 8vo, cloth gilt, 7s. 6d. ; half-calf, 12s. 
 
 BEETON'S DICTIONARY OF RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 POLITICS, AND LAW. With explanatory Woodcuts. Royal 
 8vo, cloth gilt, 7*. 6d. ; half-calf, 12s. 
 
 BEETON'S DICTIONARY OF INDUSTRIES AND COM- 
 MERCE; Accounts, Agriculture, Building, Banking, Engineering, 
 Mechanism, Mining, Manufactures, Seamanship and Shipping, Steam 
 Engines, and many other Useful Articles. With 300 Explanatory 
 Woodcuts. Royal 8vo, cloth gilt, 7s. (id. 
 
 BEETON'S DICTIONARY OF LITERATURE, FINE ARTS 
 
 AND AMUSEMENTS ; Architecture, Books, Heraldry, Journalism, 
 Music, Painting, Sculpture, and many other Subjects pertaining to 
 Culture and general Information. With Explanatory Woodcuts. 
 Royal 8vo, cloth gilt, price 7*. 6d. 
 
 The care and labour bestowed on these works have rendered them com- 
 plete and trust-worthy Encyclopedias on the subjects which they include. 
 The latest discoveries, improvements, and changes have been noticed and 
 duly chronicled in the various articles, and no pains have been spared to 
 attain at once completeness, clearness, and accuracy in each book. 
 
 BEETON'S DICTIONARY OF UNIVERSAL INFORMA- 
 TION: Science, Art, Literature, Religion and Philosophy. 
 Comprising about 2,000 pages, 4,000 columns, 25,000 complete 
 Articles. In Two Vols., royal 8vo, with many Illustrations, IBs. ; 
 half- Persian, 2 Is. ; in One Vol., half-roan, without Illustrations, 18s. 
 "A. most valuable work of reference." — The Times. 
 
 BEETON'S DICTIONARY OF UNIVERSAL INFORMA- 
 TION, relating to Geography, History, Biography, &c. With Maps 
 In Two Vols., royal 8vo, cloth, with many Illustrations, 15s. ; half- 
 Persian, 21s. ; in One Vol., half-roan, without Illustrations, 18s. 
 "A combination of accuracy, compactness, compre- 
 hensiveness and cheapness." — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 THE INDUSTRIAL SELF-INSTRUCTOR in the leading 
 branches of Technical Science and Industrial Arts and Pro- 
 cesses. With Coloured Plates, and many Hundreds of Working 
 Drawings, Designs, and Diagrams. In Five Vols., demy 4to, cloth 
 gilt, 7s. 6d. each. 
 This work, devoted to the spread of Technical Education, appeals to 
 
 all who take an interest in Manufactures and Construction, and in the 
 
 progress and operation of practical Science. 
 
 "Promises to be one of the most useful books ever issued 
 
 from the British press." — Freeman's Journal. 
 
 WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, Limited. 
 
WARD & LOCK'S POPULAR DICTIONARIES. 
 
 Price 
 
 2/6 
 
 51- 
 
 5J- 
 6/- 
 3/6 
 
 2/6 
 
 6/- 
 
 51- 
 3/6 
 
 3/6 
 2/- 
 
 V- 
 
 2/6 
 1/- 
 
 1/- 
 2/- 
 
 V- 
 
 6d. 
 Id 
 
 THE STANDARD 
 DICTIONARIES OF LANGUAGE, 
 
 The Cheapest Derivative Dictionary Published. 2s. Gd. 
 The STANDARD ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY of the 
 ENGLISH LANGUAGE. By Francis Young. Large crown 8vo, 
 cloth gilt, marbled edges, 500 pp., 2s. Gd. ; half-russia, 5s. Illus- 
 trated Edition, cloth gilt, 3s. Gil. ; half-roan, Ss. 
 " The work is brought well up to date. . . . Altogether, for its 
 size, it tuill be found to be the most complete popular Diction- 
 ary of our language yet published."— The Athen\«um. 
 
 BREWER'S ETYMOLOGICAL & PRONOUNCING DIC- 
 TIONARY OF DIFFICULT WORDS. By the. Rev. E. Cobham 
 Brewer, LL.D. Large crown 8vo, 1,600 pp., cloth, 5s.; half-roan, Gs. 
 
 WEBSTER'S UNIVERSAL PRONOUNCING AND DE. 
 FINING DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 
 Condensed by C. A. Goodrich, D.D. Royal 8vo, half-roan, 5s.; 
 Illustrated Edition, cloth, 6s. ; ditto gilt, 7s. Gil.; half-morocco, 
 lOs. Gd.; Superior Edition, half-roan, lOs; 6d. ; half-calf, 12s. 
 Smaller Edition, demy 8vo, cloth, Ss. Gd. 
 
 WEBSTER'S IMPROVED PRONOUNCING DICTIONARY 
 OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Condensed and adapted by 
 Charles Robson. Super-royal i6mo, cloth, 2s. Gd. ; half-roan, 
 Ss. 6d. ; Illustrated Edition, half-morocco, Gs. 
 
 WALKER AND WEBSTER'S ENGLISH DICTIONARY. 
 
 With Key by Longmuir. Demy 8vo, cloth, 6s. ; half-roan, 6s. 
 
 AINSWORTH'S LATIN DICTIONARY, English-Latin and 
 Latin-English. Additions by J. Dymock, LL.D. Super-royal i6mo, 
 cloth, 3s. Gd. 
 
 NEW FRENCH-ENGLISH AND ENGLISH-FRENCH PRO- 
 NOUNCING DICTIONARY. On the Basis of Nugent. Super- 
 royal i6mo, cloth, 3*. Gd.; small fcap. 8vo, half-roan, 2s.; New Edi- 
 tion, fcap. 8vo, wrapper, Is.; cloth, Is. 6d. 
 
 WARD AND LOCK'S NEW PRONOUNCING DIC- 
 TIONARY of the ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Crown Svo, cloth, 300 
 pp., price Is. ; Thicker Edition, half-roan, 2s. 6d. 
 
 WEBSTER'S POCKET SHILLING DICTIONARY OF 
 
 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Condensed by Charles Robson. 
 Imp. 32mo, cloth, Is. 
 
 WARD AND LOCK'S SHILLING GERMAN DICTIONARY. 
 
 Containing German-English and English-German, Geographical Dic- 
 tionary, &c. Crown i6mo, cloth, Is.; demy 32mo, half-roan, 2s. 
 
 WALKER AND WEBSTER'S DICTIONARY. Containing 
 upwards of 35,000 Words. Small fcap. 8vo, cloth, Is.; half-roan, Is. Gd. 
 
 WEBSTER'S SIXPENNY POCKET PRONOUNCING 
 DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Revised 
 Edition, by W. G. Webster, Son of Noah Webster. Demy 32100, 
 cloth, Gd. 
 
 WEBSTER'S PENNY PRONOUNCING DICTIONARY. 
 
 Containing over 10,000 words. Price Id. ; or linen wrapper, 2d. 
 
 WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, Limited. 
 
GARDENING BOOKS. 
 
 Price 
 
 10/6 
 
 7/6 
 
 6/- 
 
 3/6 
 
 2/6 
 
 THE 
 
 Standard Gardening Books. 
 
 Enlarged and Revised Edition. 
 BEETON'S NEW BOOK OF GARDEN MANAGEMENT. 
 
 A New and Greatly Enlarged Edition, entirely Remodelled and 
 
 thoroughly Revised : forming a Compendium of the Theory and Practice 
 
 of Horticulture, and a Complete Guide to Gardening in all its Branches. 
 
 Profusely Illustrated, with Coloured Plates and 600 Engravings. 
 
 Royal 8vo, very handsomely bound, cloth gilt, bevelled boards, 
 
 10s. 6d. 
 
 Beeton's New Book of Garden Management is a complete and 
 exhaustive work on the Theory and Practice oe Gardening in all its 
 Branches, embodying Full and Detailed Information on every subject 
 that is directly or indirectly connected with tlie Art, leading up from the 
 preparation of any description of Ground, to render it fit and suitable 
 for Horticultural purposes, to the Culture of every kind of Flower, 
 Fruit, Vegetable, Herb and Tree that is or can be grown in it. 
 
 " The work is exceedingly comprehensive .... appears to 
 leave no detail of the subject without adequate treatment."— 
 The Daily Telegraph. 
 
 BEETON'S ILLUSTRATED GARDENING BOOK. A 
 
 Complete Guide to Gardening in all its Branches, and a reliable com- 
 pendium of the Theory and Practice of Horticulture. With Coloured 
 Plates and Hundreds of Engravings. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 7s. 6d. 
 This work is of a most comprehensive character, showing how to Lay 
 Out and Stock the Garden, and describing the Culture necessary for 
 every Fruit, Flower and Vegetable that is grown in it. The work also 
 treats exhaustively of Sites, Soils and Manures, Sequence of Crops, 
 Garden Carpentry, Tools and Appliance*, Greenhouses, Orchard 
 Houses, b°c. 
 
 BEETON'S BOOK OF GARDEN MANAGEMENT. The 
 
 Original Crown 8vo Edition. Embracing all kinds of information con- 
 nected with Fruit, Flower, and Kitchen Garden Cultivation, Orchid 
 Houses, &c. &c. Illustrated with a large number of EngravingB. 
 Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, price 6s. ; or in half-calf, 10s. 6d. 
 
 BEETON'S DICTIONARY OF EVERY-DAY GARDENING. 
 
 Constituting a Popular Cyclopaedia of the Theory and Practice of 
 Horticulture. Illustrated with Coloured Plates, made after Original 
 Water Colour Drawings, and Woodcuts in the Text. Crown 8vo, cloth 
 gilt, price 3s. 6d. 
 
 ALL ABOUT GARDENING. Being a Popular Dictionary of 
 
 Gardening, containing full and practical Instructions in the different 
 Branches of Horticultural Science. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 
 cloth gilt, price 2s. Gd. 
 
 WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, Limited. 
 
GARDENING BOOKS. 
 
 Price the Standard Gardening Books— continued. 
 
 2/(j THE GARDEN: Its Preparation and Arrangement. 
 
 Showing and Describing how Gardens are Laid Out ; the Tools and 
 Appliances wanted for Garden Work ; the Structures with which Gar- 
 dens are Furnished and Equipped. With many Illustrations. 
 Crown 8vo, cloth, 2s. Gd. 
 
 2/6 WORK IN GARDEN AND GREENHOUSE ALL THE 
 YEAR ROUND. Describing how Gardens are Kept, Stocked and 
 Renewed; Routine Work in Garden and Greenhouse all the year 
 round ; the Training, Culture, and Propagation of Trees, Shrubs, 
 Fruits, Flowers, and Vegetables. With many Illustrations. Crown 
 8vo, cloth, 2s. Gd. 
 
 If- BEETON S GARDENING BOOK. Containing full and prac- 
 
 1 in tical Instructions concerning general Gardening Operations, the Flower 
 
 I/O Garden, the Fruit Garden, the Kitchen Garden, Pests of the Garden, 
 
 with a Monthly Calendar of Work to be done in the Garden throughout 
 the Year With Illustrations. Post 8vo, cloth, price la. f or cloth 
 gilt, with Coloured Plates, price Is. 6d. 
 
 1/- HOW TO MAKE A GARDEN. Giving Complete Instruc- 
 
 tions on the Formation of a Garden. Describing every Operation that 
 is necessary for the Conversion of a piece of Land into a well-arranged 
 Garden. With many Illustrations. Crown 8vo, limp cloth, la. 
 
 ]/_ AIDS TO GARDENING: An Exhaustive and Reliable Sum- 
 mary of Articles of all kinds requisite for Garden Work in every 
 branch. With clear and practical Instructions for the Construction, 
 Heating and Ventilation of Glazed Appliances, Fixed and Movable. 
 With many Illustrations. Crown 8vo, limp cloth, la. 
 
 l/_ THE GARDEN AND ITS WORK FOR EVERY MONTH 
 
 IN THE YEAR. Setting forth the best Modes and Means of Re- 
 storing worn-out Garden Ground ; the Renovation and Regeneration 
 of Fruit Trees ; the Theory of Plant Life and Growth ; the Methods 
 of Propagation ; the Management of all kinds of Fruit Trees ; and the 
 Gardener's Out-door Work in every Season. With many Illustra- 
 tions. Crown 8vo, limp cloth, la. 
 
 1/- GREENHOUSE AND GARDEN. A Complete Summary of 
 
 the Treatment of Flowers, Fruits and Vegetables under Glass; Direc- 
 tions for Planting and Preserving Ornamental Shrubs and Trees ; the 
 Culture of all kinds of Plants used as Food; Cultural Notes on all 
 Varieties of Flowers ; and Instructions for Window Gardening and 
 Management of Ferns. With many Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 
 limp cloth, Is. 
 
 l/_ KITCHEN AND FLOWER GARDENING FOR PLEASURE 
 
 AND PROFIT. A Practical Guide to the Cultivation of Vegetables, 
 Fruits, and Flowers. With upwards of 100 Engravings. Crown 8vo, 
 limp cioth, Is. 
 
 \l- GLENNY'S ILLUSTRATED GARDEN ALMANAC AND 
 
 FLORISTS* DIRECTORY. Published Annually, with Engravings 
 of the Year's New Fruits, Flowers, and Vegetables, List of Novelties, 
 Special Tables for Gardeners, Wrinkles for Gardeners, Alphabetical 
 Lists of Florists, &c. &c. Demy 8vo, cloth, price la. 
 
 Id. | BEETONS PENNY GARDENING BOOK. Price Id. ; 
 
 post free, i l /id, 
 
 WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, Limited. 
 
NEEDLEWORK BOOKS. 
 
 Price 
 
 7/6 
 
 V- 
 
 6d. 
 1/- 
 
 10/6 
 
 51- 
 51- 
 
 II- 
 Qd. 
 
 V- 
 
 Standard Needlework Books. 
 
 BEETON'S BOOK OF NEEDLEWORK. Consisting of 670 
 
 Needlework Patterns, with full Descriptions and Instructions as to 
 working them. Every Stitch Described and Engraved with the 
 utmost accuracy, and the Quantity of Material requisite for each 
 Pattern stated. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt edges, price 7s, Od. 
 
 SHILLING NEEDLEWORK BOOKS. 
 
 1 Tatting Patterns. 
 
 2 Embroidery Patterns. 
 
 3 Knitting and Netting. 
 
 4 Guipure Patterns. 
 
 5 Point Lace Book. 
 
 NEEDLEWORK INSTRUCTION BOOKS 
 
 Imperial i6mo, ornamental wrapper, price 6d. each. 
 
 1 Berlin Wool Instructions. With 18 Illustrations. 
 
 2 Embroidery Instructions. With 65 Illustrations. 
 
 3 Crochet Instructions. With 24 Illustrations. 
 
 Sylvia's Needlework Books. 
 
 Crown 8vo, fancy wrappers, profusely Illustrated, price Is. each. 
 
 The Child's Illustrated Fancy Work and Doll Book. 
 
 Sylv 
 Sylv 
 Sylv 
 Sylv 
 Sylv 
 
 7 Sylv 
 
 8 Sylv 
 
 a's Lady's Illustrated Lace Book, 
 a's Book of Ornamental Needlework, 
 a's Illustrated Macram§ Lace Book. 
 a's Art of Church Embroidery, 
 a's Book of Monograms, Initials, &c. 
 a's Illustrated Crochet Book, 
 a's Book of Drawn Linen Work. 
 
 ART NEEDLEWORK. With full Instructions. Demy 4to, 
 cloth gilt, 10s. 6d. With many Designs and Four Folding Supple- 
 ments. 
 
 THE LADY'S BAZAAR AND FANCY FAIR BOOK. With 
 
 364 Illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt edges, price Bs. 
 
 LADY'S HANDBOOK OF FANCY NEEDLEWORK. Uni- 
 form. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, gilt edges, price Ss. 
 
 THE KNITTER'S NOTE BOOK. By E. M. C, Author of 
 " The Lady's Knitting Book," &c. Is. ; limp, 6d. 
 
 Bazaar and Fancy-Pair Books. 
 
 Crown 8vo, fancy boards, price 1s. each. 
 
 i Sylvia's Book of Bazaars and Fancy-Fairs. 
 
 2 Sylvia's New Knitting, Netting, and Crochet Book. 
 
 3 Sylvias Illustrated Embroidery Book. 
 
 4 Sylvia's Illustrated Book of Artistic Knicknacks. 
 
 WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, Limited. 
 
REFERENCE BOOKS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 Price 
 
 1/- 
 
 6d. 
 
 BEETON'S 
 
 National Reference Books. 
 
 Strongly bound in cloth, price One Shilling each. 
 (Those marked thus • can be had cloth gilt , price Is. 6d.) 
 
 *I Beeton'8 British Gazetteer: A Topographical and 
 
 Historical Guide to the United Kingdom. 
 
 2 Beeton's British Biography: From the Earliest Times 
 
 to the Accession of George III. 
 
 3 Beeton's Modern Men and Women: A British Bio- 
 
 graphy, from the Accession of George III. 
 
 *4 Beeton's Bible Dictionary : A Cyclopaedia of the 
 
 Geography, Biography, Narratives, and Truths of Scripture. 
 
 *S Beeton's Classical Dictionary: A Cyclopaedia of 
 
 Greek and Roman Biography, Geography, Mythology, &c. 
 
 *6 Beeton's Medical Dictionary: A Guide to the Sym- 
 ptoms and Treatment of all Ailments, Illnesses and Diseases. 
 
 7 When Was It? A British Chronology ; io, coo Events in 
 
 English History. New Edition, brought down to 1891. 
 
 8 Beeton's Dictionary of Commerce. Containing Ex- 
 
 planations of the Terms used in, and Modes of Transacting Business. 
 
 9 Beeton's Celebrities of the Age: A Biography of 
 
 Men and Women of Note, 
 
 SIXPENNY MANUALS. 
 
 1 Beeton's Complete Letter- 
 
 Writer for Ladies. 
 
 2 Beeton's Complete Letter- 
 
 Writer for Gentlemen. 
 
 3 The Language of Flowers. 
 
 4 The Poetry of Flowers. 
 
 5 Webster's Ready Reckoner. 
 
 6 Mrs. Warren's Economical 
 
 Cookery. 
 
 7 Webster's Pocket Dictionary. 
 
 8 New Letter-Writer for Lovers 
 
 9 Practical Cookery and Eco- 
 
 nomical Recipes. 
 10 The Doctor. G. Black. M.B. 
 n Beeton's Washing Book. 
 
 12 Don't: A Manual of Mistakes. 
 
 13 CommonBlundera in Writing. 
 
 14 Common Blunders in Speak- 
 
 ing. 
 
 15 Stop! Uniform with " Don't. " 
 
 16 Discriminate! Uniform with 
 
 "Don't. 1 ' 
 
 17 English as she Is Wrote. 
 
 18 Ingglish az she iz Spelt. 
 
 19 Ward and Lock s PictureABC. 
 
 20 Teggs Readiest Reckoner. 
 
 21 Beeton's Sixpenny Cookery. 
 
 22 Beeton's Cottage Cookery. 
 
 23 Beeton's Popular Song Book. 
 
 24 Beeton's Favourite Song 
 
 Book. 
 
 25 How to Save Money. 
 
 26 Small Savings; and How to 
 
 make the Most of Them. 
 
 27 Beeton's Sixpenny Spelling. 
 
 28 Mercie Sunshine's Picture 
 
 ABC. 
 
 29 Intoxicating Drinks. 
 
 30 The Secret of a Happy Home. 
 
 31 To Those about to Marry. 
 
 32 Profitable and Economical 
 
 Poultry Keeping. 
 
 33 Mrs. Beeton's English- 
 
 woman's Cookery Book. 
 
 WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, Limited. 
 
POPULAR SHILLING MANUALS. 
 
 Price 
 
 V- 
 
 WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN'S UNIVERSAL SERIES OF 
 
 SHILLING USEFUL BOOKS. 
 
 i Beeton'8 Shilling Cookery Book. With Cold. Plates. 
 
 2 Beeton's Shilling Gardening Book. Fully Illustrated. 
 
 3 Beeton's Complete Letter Writer, for Ladies and 
 
 Gentlemen. 
 
 4 Webster's Pocket English Dictionary. 
 
 5 Beeton 8 Ready Reckoner. 
 
 6 Beeton's Pictorial Spelling Book. 
 
 7 Beeton's Family Washing Book. For Fifty-two Weeks. 
 
 8 Beeton's Investing Money with Safety and Profit. 
 
 9 Webster's Book-keeping. Single and Double Entry, 
 io The People's Shilling Housekeeper. 
 
 12 Ward and Lock's English and German Dictionary. 
 
 13 Complete Etiquette for Ladies. 
 
 14 Complete Etiquette for Gentlemen. 
 
 15 Complete Etiquette for Families. 
 
 16 Etiquette of Modern Society. 
 
 17 Guide to the Stock Exchange and Money Market. 
 
 18 Tegg's Readiest Reckoner ever Invented. 
 
 19 The Bible Student's Handbook. 
 
 20 The Complete Shilling Self-Instructor. 
 
 21 Speeches and Toasts : How to Make and Propose them. 
 
 22 Ward and Lock's New Pronouncing Dictionary. 
 
 23 Grammar Made Easy : The Child's Home Lesson Book. 
 
 24 Child's First Book of Natural History. Illustrated. 
 
 25 Webster's Dictionary of Quotations. With full Index. 
 
 26 The Pocket Map of London, and 32,000 Cab Fares. 
 
 27 Beeton's Recipe Book. Uniform with Beeton's Cookery. 
 
 28 Walker and Webster's English Dictionary. 
 
 29 The Holiday Companion, and Tourist's Guide. 
 
 30 Ward and Lock's Indestructible ABC. Illustrated. 
 
 31 Ward and Lock's Indestructible Alphabet. 
 
 32 Doubts, Difficulties, and Doctrines. Granville. 
 
 33 Beeton's Dictionary of Natural History. Illustrated. 
 
 34 The Dictionary of Every-day Difficulties. 
 
 35 Webster's Illustrated Spelling Book. 
 
 36 Beeton's Book of Songs. New and Improved Edition, 
 
 WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, Limited. 
 
POPULAR SHILLING MANUALS. 
 
 Price 
 
 V- 
 
 Universal Series of Useful Books — continued. 
 The Apt of Swimming. By Captain Webb. 
 Elementary Carpentry and Joinery. 257 Illusts. 
 Ornamental Carpentry and Joinery. 271 Illusts. 
 General Building, Art and Practice. 224 Illusts. 
 New South Wales and Queensland. Trollope. 
 Victoria and Tasmania By Anthony Trollope. 
 South and West Australia. By Anthony Trollope. 
 New Zealand. By Anthony Trollope. 
 Cobbett s English Grammar. Annotated Edition. 
 Cobbett s French Grammar. Annotated Edition. 
 How to Pass Examinations; or, The Candidate's Guide. 
 Professions and Occupations: A Guide for Youths. 
 Common Blunders in Speaking and Writing. 
 Ahn's First Lessons in German. 
 Westhall on Training. (Pocket size.) 
 Moody's Talks on Temperance. (Also cloth, is. 6d.) 
 Intoxicating Drinks: Their History and Mystery. 
 By Dr. Kirton. (Also in cloth gilt, la. 6d.) 
 
 The Poetry of Flowers. With Illustrations. 
 
 The Language of Flowers. With Illustrations. 
 
 Watts's Short View of Scripture History. 
 
 Sun, Moon and Stars: Elementary Astronomy. 
 
 Manners of the Aristocracy. By One of Themselves. 
 
 English Grammar for Self-Learners. L. T. Smith. 
 
 The Improvement of Modern Dress. 
 
 Shakespeare s Complete Works. 
 
 The Book of Recreation and Amusement. 
 
 The Magic Lantern : Its Construction and Management. 
 
 Carpenter s Dictionary of Synonyms. 
 
 Sound, Light and Heat. ByDuNMAN. 135 Illusts. 
 
 Electricity and Magnetism. By Dunman. 165 Illusts. 
 
 The Guide to Health. Ed. by Geo. Black, M.B. Illust. 
 
 The Household Doctor. Edited by Geo. Black, M.B. 
 
 Lessons in French. By Jules A. L. Kunz. 
 
 Lessons in German. By H. W. Dulcken, Ph.D. 
 
 Our Nurses, and the Work they Have to Do. By 
 
 H. C. O'Neill and E. A. Barnett. (Also cloth, 2s.) 
 
 Profitable Poultry Keeping. By Mrs. Eliot James. 
 Fret-Sawing and Marquetry Cutting. By D. B. 
 
 Adamson. Illustrated. (Also cloth, 2s.) 
 
 WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, Limited. 
 
POPULAR SHILLING MANUALS. 
 
 Price 
 1/- 
 
 2/- 
 1/6 
 
 2/~ 
 2/- 
 1/- 
 2/- 
 
 Universal Series of Useful Books — continued. 
 
 74 Plays for Home Performance. By J. Maddison 
 
 Morton, Author of " Box and Cox." 
 
 75 The Enquirer's Oracle: What to Do and How to Do It. 
 
 76 Good Plain Cookery. By Mary Hooper. 
 
 77 French and English Dictionary. 
 
 78 The Clerk's Instructor; or, How to Excel in Business. 
 
 79 The Good Housewife. With 160 Illustrations. 
 
 80 The Family Advice Book. With 200 Illustrations. 
 
 81 The Cookery Instructor. By Edith A. Barnett. 
 
 82 How to Make a Garden. Illustrated. 
 
 83 Aids to Gardening. Illustrated. 
 
 84 The Garden and Its Work. Illustrated. 
 
 85 Greenhouse and Garden. Illustrated. 
 
 86 How to Read Character in Handwriting. H.Frith. 
 
 87 Select Plays for Amateurs. Illustrated. 
 
 88 Original Plays forthe Drawing-Room. Illustrated. 
 
 89 Plays for Amateur Actors. Illustrated. 
 
 90 How to Read Character in Faces, Features and 
 
 Forms. By Henry Frith. 
 
 91 Our Boys and Girls, and What to Do with Them. 
 
 By Sir George Baden-Powell, Clementina Black, and others. 
 (Also cloth, 2s.) 
 
 92 Animal Life : Introduction to Zoology. G. T. Bettany. 
 
 93 Temperance Summer and Winter Drinks. By 
 
 Frederick Davies. 600 Recipes. 
 
 94 English Literature. H. W. Dulcken, Ph.D. must. 
 
 95 Etiquette of Party-Giving. By Mrs. Armstrong. 
 
 96 Our Daily Fare, and How to Provide It. 
 
 97 The Work-Table Companion. Illustrated. 
 
 EDUCATIONAL SERIES. 
 
 Specially adapted for Self- Instruction. Crown 8vo, neat cloth. 
 
 1 Lessons in French. By Jules A. L. Kunz, French Lec- 
 
 turer in the Heriot Watt College. 2s. 
 
 2 Key to ditto. Is. 6d. 
 
 3 Astronomy : A Simple Introduction to a Noble Science. 
 
 By E. Neison, F.R.A.S., Her Majesty's Astronomer for Natal. 2s. 
 
 4 Lessons in German Grammar and Pronunciation. 
 
 By H. W. Dulcken, Ph.D. 2s. 
 
 5 English Grammar, for Self- Learners. By L. Toulmin 
 
 Smith. Is. 
 
 6 The Kindergarten System: A Manual of the Healthy 
 
 and Happy Method of Teaching Young Children. 2s. 
 
 WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, Limited. 
 
POPULAR USEFUL BOOKS. 
 
 Price 
 
 1/- 
 
 3/6 
 
 3/6 
 
 2/6 
 2/6 
 
 THE LONG LIFE SERIES. 
 
 Edited by George Black, M.B. Edin., Author of " First Aid in Accident 
 and Sudden Illness," &c. Illustrated where necessary. 
 
 Price Is. per Volume, neatly bound in cloth, 
 
 i Long Life, and How to Reach It. 
 
 2 Eyesight, and How to Care for I*. 
 
 3 The Throat and the Voice. 
 
 4 The Mouth and the Teeth. 
 
 5 The Skin in Health and Diseaso. 
 
 6 Brain Work and Overwork. 
 
 7 Sick Nursing. 
 
 8 The Young Wife's Advice Book. 
 
 9 Sleep: How to Obtain It. 
 
 io Hearing, and How to Keep It. 
 ii Sea Air and Sea Bathing. 
 
 12 Health in Schools and Workshops. 
 
 13 The Human Body: Its Structure and Design. 
 
 The Saturday Review says: " It is not too much to say oj 
 them, as a series, that the shilling invested betimes in each 
 of them may be the means of saving many a guinea," 
 
 BEETON'S LEGAL HANDBOOKS. 
 
 Crown 8vo, in strong cloth boards, price Is. each. 
 1 Property. — 2 Women, Children, and Registration. — 3 Divorce 
 and Matrimonial Causes. — 4 Wills, Executors, and Trustees. — 
 5 Transactions in Trade, Securities, and Sureties. — 6 Partnership 
 and Joint-Stock Companies. — 7 Landlord and Tenant, Lodgers, 
 Rates and Taxes.— 3 Masters, Apprentices, Servants, and Working 
 Contracts. — 9 Auctions, Valuations, Agency, Games and Wagers. — 
 10 Conveyance, Travellers, and Innkeepers. — n Powers, Agree- 
 ments, Deeds and Arbitrations. — 12 The County Court Handbook. 
 — 13 The Householder's Law Book. — 14 The Licensing Laws. — 15 The 
 Married Women's Property Act, 1882. — 16 The Bankruptcy Act, 
 1883.— 17 The New Reform Act— iS The Parish Councils Act, 1894. 
 
 ORGAN BUILDING FOR AMATEURS. Containing Specifi- 
 cations, Designs and full Instructions for Making every portion of the 
 Instrument. By Mark Wicks. 200 Illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth 
 gilt, 3s. 6d. 
 ** We have seldom met with a more clear, concise and 
 
 exhaustive little treatise than this." — Manchester Guardian. 
 
 FISHING TACKLE: Its Materials and Manufacture. By J. 
 
 Harrington- Keene. With 254 Illustrations. Cr. 8vo, cloth, Ss.6d. 
 
 "All anglers tcho are wise will find a niche for it in 
 the sanctum. It is a positive pleasure to recommend so unassuming 
 and meritorious a book.'' — AtheNvKUM. 
 
 THE MAGIC LANTERN: Its Construction and Manage- 
 ment. With 80 Engravings. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 2s. 6d. 
 
 THE PRINTING ARTS: An Epitome of the Theory, Practice, 
 Processes and Mutual Relations of Engraving, Lithography and 
 Printing in Black and in Colours. By John Whitfield Harland. 
 With Illustrations. Crown 8vo, cloth, 2s. 6d. 
 
 WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, Limited. 
 
POPULAR USEFUL BOOKS. 
 
 Price 
 
 3/6 
 
 2/6 
 
 2/- 
 
 2/6 
 
 V- 
 2/6 
 
 V- 
 V- 
 
 V- 
 
 V- 
 1/- 
 
 6d. 
 U. 
 6d. 
 
 V- 
 
 Standar d Etiquett e Books. 
 
 THE MANNERS OF POLITE SOCIETY; or, Etiquette for 
 Ladies, Gentlemen, and Families. A Complete Guide to Visiting, Enter- 
 taining, and Travelling, Conversation, the Toilette, Courtship, &c. Cr. 
 8vo, elegantly bound, cl. gilt, 3s. 6d. ; cloth gilt, 2s. 6d. ; cloth, 2a. 
 
 THE MANNERS OF THE ARISTOCRACY. By One of 
 
 Themselves. A Complete and Modern Guide to the Etiquette of Dinners, 
 Weddings, At Homes, Hostess and Guest, Visiting, Precedence, &c. 
 Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, price 2s. 6d. ; Cheap Edition, wrapper, Is. 
 ALL ABOUT ETIQUETTE; or, The Manners of Polite 
 
 Society : for Ladies, Gentlemen, and Families ; Courtship, Correspon- 
 dence, Carving, Dining, Dress, Ball Room, Marriage, Parties, Riding, 
 Travelling, Visiting, &c. &c. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 2s. 6d. 
 
 THE COMPLETE ETIQUETTE FOR LADIES. Post 8vo, 
 cloth, Is. 
 
 THE COMPLETE ETIQUETTE FOR GENTLEMEN. 
 Post 8vo, cloth, Is. 
 
 THE COMPLETE ETIQUETTE FOR FAMILIES. Post 
 Svo, cloth, Is. 
 
 THE ETIQUETTE OF MODERN SOCIETY. A Guide to 
 
 Good Manners In every possible situation. Crown 8vo, cloth, price Is, 
 
 THE ETIQUETTE OF PARTY-GIVING. A Guide for 
 
 the Entertainer and the Guest. By Mrs. Armstrong. Cloth, Is. 
 DON'T : A Manual of Mistakes and Improprieties. 6d. 
 STOP ! A Handy Monitor and Pocket Conscience. Fcap. 8vo, 
 
 linen covers, 6d. 
 
 DISCRIMINATE ! Manual of Correct Words & Phrases. 6d. 
 
 THE AMATEURS' PRACTICAL AID SERIES 
 
 IN SCIENCE, ART AND HANDICRAFT. 
 Edited by Francis Chilton-Young, Author of " Every Man His 
 
 Own Mechanic." 
 Crown 8vo, strongly bound in cloth, Is, per Volume. Illustrated. 
 
 i Carpentry for River and Garden : Boat Building made 
 
 Easy, and Rustic Carpentry. 
 
 2 Mechanical Work in Garden and Greenhouse : Geo- 
 
 metry for Gardeners ; Sun-Dials; Greenhouse Building & Heating. 
 
 3 Ornamental Carpentry : Wood Carving, Decorative Car- 
 
 pentry, Ornamental Lattice- Work. 
 
 4 House Painting and Papering. Including the Decora- 
 
 tion of Floors and French Polishing. 
 
 5 Metal Working for Amateurs : Brazing and Soldering 
 
 Gas Fitting ; Brass Casting. 
 
 6 The Electrician at Home : Electric Bells, Making and 
 
 Fitting ; Electro-plating. 
 
 7 Electrical Apparatus for Amateurs: Telephones; 
 
 Domestic Electric Light ; Electrical Machinery. 
 
 WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, Limited, 
 
 lo 
 
 7 91 06 
 
JF 
 
 
 ,<? 
 
 r v 
 
 «» 
 
 ^BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 
 ±1 
 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 jl£ 
 
 r\ 
 
 ^>, 
 
 % 
 
 % 
 
 
 
 % 
 
 "r*****. 
 
 %9 
 
 
 
 <* 
 
 ^ 
 
 *• 
 
 v 
 
 
 .*