CHRISTMAS STORIES 
 
 OTHER STOEIES.
 
 CHARLES DICKENS'S WORKS. 
 
 CROWN EDITION. Price 5s. each Volume. 
 
 1. Till': PICKWICK PAPEKS. With 43 Illustratious by 
 
 Sevmour and Piiiz. 
 2. NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. With -10 Illustrations by Piiiz. 
 a. DOMBEY AND SON. With -10 Illustrations by Piiiz. 
 1. DAVID COPPEKFIELD. With 10 Illustrations by Piiiz. 
 
 6. SKETCHES BY " BOZ." With 40 Illustrations by Geo. 
 Ckuikshakk. 
 
 ). MAUTIN CIIUZZLKWIT. With lO Illustrations by Piiiz. 
 
 7. THE OLD CUKIOSITY SHOP. With 75 Illustrations by 
 Geokoe Ca iTEKMoLi; and II. K. Buowne. 
 
 8. BAKNABY KUDGE : A Tale o the Kiots of 'Ei^dity. With 
 70 Illustrations by Geougk Catiei{Mole and II. K. Bitowjii:. 
 
 J. OLIVER TWIST and TALE OF T\\'0 CITIES. Willi 
 21 Illustrations by Cuuikshakk and 16 by I'liiz. 
 
 10. BLEAK HOUSE. AVith 40 Illustrations by Pinz. 
 
 11. LITTLE DOKKIT. With 40 Illustrations by Piiiz. 
 
 12. OUR MUTUAL FPJEND. With 40 Illustrations by 
 
 Maucus Stone. 
 13. AMEPvlCAN NOTES; PICTURES FROM ITALY; and 
 
 A CHILD'S HISTOKV OF ENGLAND. \Vitb 1(J Illiii-tratlons 
 
 by Marcus Stone. 
 
 11. CIIRISTIMAS BOOKS and HARD TIMES. Willi Illus- 
 trations by Lanuseek, Maclise, Stakfield, Leech, I^oi'Le, 
 . Walkek, &c. 
 
 15. CHRISTMAS STORIES AND OTHER STORIES, in- 
 cluding IIUMPHRKY'S CLOCK. AVith Illustrations by Charles 
 Green, IMaiionkv, I'liiz, Cattkhmolk, &c, 
 
 1(;.-GRK.VT EXPECTATIONS. UNCOMMERCIAL TRA- 
 
 Vf^LLEU. AVitli 16 Illustrations by Marccs Stoke. 
 
 17. EDWIN DROOD and REPRINTED PIECES. With 16 
 Illustration-^ by LfKE Eij.dks and F. Wai.kei;. 
 
 Unij'vrm with ahove in !zi and hhiding. 
 
 THE LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS. By John Foksti-u. 
 
 With Portraits and llhistratlons. Addwl at the request of numerous 
 
 Subscrlljcr.-!. 
 THE DICKENS DICTIONARY: a Key to the Characters and 
 
 Prlncljial Incidents In the Tales of Churlcs Dickens. 
 THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES ; 
 
 NO THOUOUGIIFAKE; THE I'EKIES OKCEUTAIX EN(;TdSIl 
 
 I'KISONKRS. Hy Chaki.ks Dickens and Wilkie Coi.i.in.s. With 
 
 Illustrations.
 
 THli SKVEN I'UUK TKAV1< I.I.KKS.
 
 CHRISTMAS STORIES 
 
 "HOUSEHOLD WORDS" and "ALL THE YEAR ROUND" 
 
 OTHER STORIES 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 WITH THIRTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 LONDON: CIIAPMxVN eV HALL, ld. 
 
 1894.
 
 PRINTED EY WILLIAM CLOWES AN'I) SONS, I.TMITEU, 
 LONDON AND I3HCCLES.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHRISTMAS STORIES :-- 
 
 I'AC K 
 
 The Seven- Pook Travellers .,..,,. 1 
 The Holly-Tree ......... 24 
 
 The Wreck of the Golden Mary ...... 51 
 
 The Peiuls of Certain Kngllsu Piilsoxer;; . . ,74 
 
 (jloixt; into Society . . . . . . .111 
 
 The IIax xted Hotse ...... 121 
 
 A ^Iessage fro:m the Sea ....... 144 
 
 Tom Tiddler's Gijound . . . . , . . 170 
 
 Somebody's? LuGGA(iE . . . . . .191 
 
 JIrs. Lirriper's Lodgings ...... . 2.31 
 
 Yiiir-. Lirriper's Lki;acv ......... 2")^ 
 
 Doctor Marig(h,d .......... 281 
 
 Two Ghost Stories .... . . , . '>0!! 
 
 IMuGP.Y .TrxcTioN ......,, 3215 
 
 No Thorovghfarf ......... iiG4 
 
 ."\h\STER nu:\rPlTREY'S CLOCK . . . ,. . 4c:{ 
 OTHER STORIES : 
 
 Hl'NTEI) DOM-X .....,, t fiCl 
 
 Holiday Romance ...... ^ > . 581 
 
 Vteorge Silver:man's E-xtlanation . , , j -. 61.S
 
 SRLf- 
 
 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 CHRISTMAS STORIES, 
 
 l-AGH 
 
 The Seven Poor Travellers Frontiqnccc 
 
 The IIolly-Tree ......... 24 
 
 Tin: Wreck of the Golden Mary . , . , . .51 
 
 The Perils of Certain English Pri.soners . . , , . 74 
 
 Going into Society . . . . . . . , .111 
 
 The Havnteu House . . . . . . . . 121 
 
 Tom Tiddler's Ground . , . . . .170 
 
 Somebody's Luggage , , 191 
 
 Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings . . . - . 2ai 
 
 iMllS. LiRRIPER .... .... 2jS 
 
 Doctor JIarigolp ......... 281 
 
 The Signal-man . . . . . . , . in 2 
 
 MuGBY Junction ..... .... 823 
 
 Xo Thoroughfare ...... .... 3G4 
 
 I\L\STER TIUMPIIREY'S CLOCK. 
 
 The Dead Citizen ...... ... 48G 
 
 IfuNTED Down ....... = , . .^)01 
 
 The Midnight Funeral in St. Dunstan's Church . . .')22 
 
 The Clud in Conclave ^ . , . 532 
 
 Mr. Welleii's Watch . . ..,,.. 531) 
 
 The Deserted Chamber . . , , c o . ^GO
 
 CHRISTMAS STORIES.
 
 THE 
 
 SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. 
 
 IN THKEE CHAPTERS. 
 
 [1854.] 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IN THE OLD CITY OF KOCHKSl'EU. 
 
 Stuictlv speakiug, tliero were only six Poor Travellers ; but, being a 
 Traveller myself, tbougb au idle one, and being withal as poor as I 
 Lope to be, I brought the number up to seven. This word of ex- 
 jjlanation is due at once, for what says tlie inscri2)tion over the q^uaint 
 old door ? 
 
 Richard Watts, Esq. 
 
 by his AVill, dated 22 Aug. 1579, 
 
 founded this Charity 
 
 for Six poor Travellers, 
 
 who not being Rogues, or Pkoctoiis, 
 
 May receive gratis for one Niglit, 
 
 Lodging, Entertainment, 
 
 and Fourpence each. 
 
 It was in tlie ancient little city of Rochester in Kent, of all the 
 good days in the year upon a Christmas-eve, that I stood reading this 
 inscription over the quaint old door in question. I had been wander- 
 ing about the neighbouring Cathedral, and had scon the tomb of 
 Richard Watts, with the effigy of ^vorthy Master Richard starting out 
 of it like a ship's figure-head ; and I had felt that I could do no less, as 
 I gave the Verger his fee, than inquire the way to Watts's Charity. 
 The -way being very short and very plain, I had come prosperously to 
 the inscription and the quaint old door. 
 
 " Xow,'" said I to myself, as I looked at the knocker, " I know I am 
 not a Proctor ; I wonder whether I am a Rogue ! "' 
 
 Upon the whole, though Conscience reproduced Uvo or tlireo pretty 
 faces vrbich might have had smaller attraction for a moral Goliath
 
 4 The Seven Poor Travellers. 
 
 thau they Lad had for mc, who am but a Tom Thumb iu that way, I 
 camo to tho conclusion that I was not a Ilogue. So, beginning to 
 regard the establishment as in some sort my property, bequeathed to 
 mo and divers co-legatees, share and share alike, by the Worshi2)ful 
 Master Kichard Watts, I stej^ped backward into the road to survey 
 my inheritance. 
 
 I found it to be a clean white house, of a staid and venerable air, 
 with the quaint old door already three times mentioned (an arched 
 door), choice little long low lattice-windows, and a roof of three gables. 
 The silent Iligli Street of Rochester is fidl of gables, with old beams 
 and timbers carved into strange faces. It is oddly garnished with a 
 ({ucer old clock that projects over the pavement out of a grave red- 
 brick building, as if Time carried on business there, and hung out 
 his sign. Sooth to say, he did an active stroke of work in R(jchester, 
 in tho old days of tho Romans, and the Saxons, and the Normans ; 
 and down to the times of King John, wlicu the rugged castle I will 
 not undertake to say how many hundreds of years old then Avas 
 abandoned to the centuries of weather whicli have so defaced tho 
 dark apertures in its walls, that the ruin looks as if the rooks and 
 daws had pecked its eyes out. 
 
 I was very well pleased, both with my property and its situation. 
 While I was yet surveying it with growing content, I espied, at one of 
 tho upi^er lattices which stood 02)en, a decent body, of a wliolesomo 
 matronly appearance, whoso eyes I caught inquiringly addressed to 
 mine. They said so j^lainly, " Do yt)u wish to see the house ? " that I 
 answered aloud, " Yes, if you please." And within a minute the old 
 door opened, and I bout my liead, and went down two steps into 
 tlie entry. 
 
 " Tliis," said the matronly presence, ushering me into a low room 
 on the riglit, " is where the Travellers sit by tlie lire, and cook what 
 bits of suppers they buy with their fourjiences." 
 
 " ! Then they liavc no Entertainment '? " said I. For the in- 
 scription over the outer door was still running in my liead, and I was 
 mentally repeating, in a kind of tunc, " Lodging, entertainment, and 
 fourpcnco oacli." 
 
 '' They liavo a fire provided for 'em,'' returned the matron a 
 mighty civil person, not, as I could make out, overpai<l ; " and tliese 
 cooking utensils. And this what's painted on a board is the rules 
 for tlieir l)yhaviour. They have their fourpences when tliey get tlieir 
 tickets from tlie st(!ward over tho way, for I don't admit 'em myself, 
 they must get their tickets first, and sometimes one buys a rasher of 
 bac:)n, and anotlusr a herring, and another a pound of potatoes, or 
 what not. Soiiictimos two or three of 'em will club their fourj)enccs 
 together, and make a supper that way. But not much of anything is 
 to be g;)t t')r fourpence, at present, when provisions is so dear." 
 
 " True indeed,'' I remarked. I had been looking about the room. 
 atlmiring its snug fireside at the U])per end, its glimpse of the street
 
 Richard Watis's Charity. 5 
 
 tlirougli tlie low mullioned window, and its beams overlicad. " It is 
 very comfortable," said I. 
 
 " Ill-con wenient," observed the matronly presence. 
 
 I liked to hear her say so ; for it showed a commendable anxiety to 
 execute in no niggardly spirit the intentions of Master Richard Watts. 
 But the room was really so well adapted to its purpose that I protested, 
 quite enthusiastically, against her disparagement. 
 
 " Nay, ma'am," said I, " I am sure it is warm in winter and cool in 
 summer. It has a look of homely welcome and soothing rest. It has 
 a remarkably cosey fireside, the very blink of which, gleaming 
 out into the street upon a winter night, is enough to warm all 
 Rochester's heart. And as to the convenience of the six Poor 
 Travellers " 
 
 " I don't mean them," returned the presence. " I speak of its being 
 an ill-conwenicnce to myself and my daughter, having no other room 
 to sit in of a night." 
 
 This was true enough, but there was another quaint room of corre- 
 sponding dimensions on the opposite side of the entry : so I stcpi^ed 
 across to it, through the oj)eu doors of both rooms, and asked what 
 this chamber was for. 
 
 " This," returned the presence, " is the Board Room. Where the 
 gentlemen meet when they come here." 
 
 Let mo see. I had counted from the street six upper windows 
 besides these on the ground-story. Making a perplexed calculation 
 in my mind, I rejoined, " Then the six Poor Travellers sleep 
 upstairs ? " 
 
 My new friend shook her head. " They sleep," she answered, " in 
 two little outer galleries at tlie back, where their beds has always 
 been, ever since the Charity was founded. It being so very ill-cou- 
 wenient to me as things is at jH'csent, tlic gentlemen are going to take 
 off a bit of the back-yard, and make a slip of a room for 'em there, to 
 sit in before they go to bed." 
 
 " And then the six Poor Travellers," said I, " will be entirely out 
 (.f the house ? " 
 
 ' Entirely out of the house," assented the presence, comfortably 
 smoothing her hands. " Which is considered much better for all 
 parties, and much more conwenient." 
 
 I had been a little startled, in the Cathedral, by the emphasis with 
 which the effigy of Master Richard Watts was bursting out of his 
 tomb ; but I began to think, now, that it might be expected to come 
 across the High Street some stormy night, and make a disturbance 
 here. 
 
 Howbeit, I kept my thoughts to myself, and accompanied tlie 
 presence to the little galleries at the back. I found them on a tiny 
 scale, like the galleries in old inn-yards ; and they were very clean. 
 While I was looking at them, the matron gave me to understand that 
 tlic prescribed number of Poor Travellers were forthcoming every
 
 6 The Seven Poor Travellers. 
 
 niglit from year's end to year's end ; aiul that the beds were always 
 occiipied. My qiiestious upon this, and her replies, brought us back 
 lo tlio Board lioom so essential to the dignity of " the gentlemen," 
 whore she sliowed me the printed accounts of the Charity hanging up 
 by the window. From them I gathered that tlic greater part of the 
 property bequeathed by the Worshipful Master liichard Watts for 
 the maintenance of this foundation was, at the period of his death, 
 mere marsh-land ; but that, in course of time, it had been reclaimed 
 and built upon, and was very considerably increased in value. I 
 found, too, tliat about a tlurtieth part of the annual revenue was now 
 expended on the purposes commemorated in the inscription over the 
 door ; the rest being liandsomcly laid out in Chancery, law expenses, 
 collectorsliip, receivership, poundage, and otlier appendages of 
 management, highly complimentary to the importance of the six Poor 
 Travellers. In short, I made the not entirely new discovery that it 
 may bo said of an establishment like this, in dear old England, as of 
 the fat oyster in the American story, that it takes a good many men 
 to swallow it whole. 
 
 " And pray, ma'am," said I, sensible that the blankncss of my face 
 began to brighten as the thought occurred to me, " could one see these 
 Travellers ? " 
 
 " Well ! " she returned dubiously, " no ! " 
 
 " Not to-night, for instance ! " said T. 
 
 " Well ! " she returned more positively, " no. Nobody ever asked 
 to see them, and nobody ever did see them." 
 
 As I am not easily balked in a design when I am set upon it, I 
 urged to the good lady that tliis was Christmas-eve ; that Christmas 
 comes but once a year,- which is unhappily too true, for when it 
 begins to stay with us the wliole year round we shall make tliis earth 
 a very diffort.'nt place ; that I was possessed by tlie desire to treat tlio 
 Travellers to a supper and a temperate glass of liot Wassail ; tliat tlie 
 voice of Fame had been lieard in that land, declaring my ability to 
 make hot Wassail ; that if I were permitted to hold the feast, I should 
 be found conformable to reason, sobriety, and good hours ; in a word, 
 that I could be merry and wise myself, and had been even known at a 
 j)in(;h to keoi") others so, although I was decorated with no badge or 
 medal, a)id was not a Brother, Orator, Apostle, Saint, or Projjhet of 
 any denomination whatever. In the end I prevailed, to my great joy. 
 It was sotthul that at nine o'clock that night a Turkey and a piece of 
 Iloast Beef should smoke upon the board ; and tliat I, faint and 
 unworthy minister for once of INlaster llichard Watts, should i)reside 
 as the (Miristmas-supper host of the six Poor Travellers. 
 
 1 went back to my inn to give the necessary directions for the 
 Turkey and Iloast Beef, and, during the remainder of the day, could 
 scittle to nothing for thinking of the Poor Travellers. When the wind 
 blew hard against the windows. it was a enld day, with dark gusts of 
 sleet alt"rnating with periods of wild ])rightn(ss, as if the year were
 
 Supper and Wassail. 7 
 
 dying fitfully, I pictured them advancing towards their resting-place 
 along various cold roads, and felt delighted to think how little they 
 foresaw the supper that awaited them. I painted their portraits in 
 my mindj and indulged in little heightening touches. I made them 
 footsore ; I made them weary ; I made them carry packs and bundles ; 
 I made them stop by finger-posts and milestones, leaning on their 
 bent sticks, and looking wistfully at what was written there ; I made 
 them lose their way ; and filled their five wits with apprehensions of 
 lying out all night, and being frozen to death. I took up my hat, 
 and went out, climbed to the top of the Old Castle, and looked over 
 the windy hills that slope down to the Medway, almost believing that 
 I could descry som.e of my Travellers in the distance. After it fell 
 dark, and the Cathedral bell was heard in the invisible steeple quite 
 a bower of frosty rim^e when I had last seen it striking five, six, 
 seven, I became so full of my Travellers that I could eat no dinner, 
 and felt constrained to watch them still in the red ccals of my fire. 
 They were all arrived by this time, I thought, had got their tickets, 
 and were gone in. There my pleasure was dashed by the reflection 
 that probably some Travellers had come too late and were shut out. 
 
 After the Cathedral bell had struck eight, I could smell a delicious 
 savour of Turkey and Eoast Beef rising to the window of my adjoin- 
 ing bedroom, which looked down into the inn-yard just where the 
 lights of tlie kitchen reddened a massive fragment of the Castle Wall. 
 It was high time to make the Wassail now ; therefore I had up the 
 materials (which, together with their proportions and combinations, I 
 must decline to impart, as the only secret of my own I was ever 
 known to keep), and made a glorious jorum. Not in a bowl ; for a 
 bowl anywhere but on a shelf is a low superstition, fraught with cool- 
 ing and slopping ; but in a brown earthenware pitcher, tenderly 
 suffocated, when full, with a coarse cloth. It being now upon the 
 stroke of nine, I set out for Watts's Charity, carrying my brown 
 beauty in my arms. I would trust Ben, the waiter, with untold gold ; 
 but there are strings in the human heart which must never be 
 sounded by another, and drinks that I make myself arc those strings 
 in mine. 
 
 The Travellers were all assembled, the cloth Vvas laid, and Ben had 
 brought a great billet of wood, and had laid it artfully on the top of 
 the fire, so that a touch or two of the poker after supper should make 
 a roaring blaze. Having deposited my brown beaiity in a red nook of 
 the hearth, inside the fender, where she soon began to sing like an 
 ethereal cricket, diffusing at the same time odours as of ripe vine- 
 yards, spice forests, and orange groves, I say, having stationed my 
 beauty in a place of security and improvement, I introduced myself 
 to my guests by shaking hands all round, and giving them a hearty 
 welcome. 
 
 I found the party to be thus composed. Firstly, myself. Secondly, 
 a very decent man indeed, with his right arm in a sling, vrho had a
 
 8 Tlie Seven Poor Travellers. 
 
 certain clean agreeable smell of wood about him, from wLicb I judged 
 Lim to have sometbiug to do witb sbipbuilding. Thirdly, a little 
 sailor-boy, a mere child, with a profusion of rich dark brown hair, and 
 deep womanly-looking eyes. Fourthly, a shabby-genteel personage 
 in a threadbare black suit, and apparently in very bad circumstances, 
 with a dry suspicious look ; the absent buttons on his waistcoat eked 
 out with red tape ; and a bundle of extraordinarily tattered papers 
 sticking out of an inner breast-pocket. Fifthly, a foreigner by birth, 
 but an Englishman in speech, wlio carried his pipe in the band of 
 his hat, and lost no time in telling me, in an easy, simple, 
 engaging way, that ho was a watchmaker from Geneva, and travelled 
 all about the Continent, mostly on foot, working as a journeyman, and 
 seeing new countries, possibly (I thought) also smuggling a watch 
 or so, now and then. Sixtlily, a little widow, who had been very 
 pretty and was still very young, but whose beauty had been wrecked 
 in some great misfortune, and wliosc manner was remarkably timid, 
 scared, and solitary. Seventhly and lastly, a Traveller of a kind 
 familiar to my boyhood, but now almost obsolete, a Book-Pedlor, 
 who had a quantity of Pampliluts and Numbers with him, and who 
 prosently boasted that he could repeat more verses in an evening than 
 he could sell in a twelvemonth. 
 
 All these 1 have mentioned in the order in which they sat at table. 
 I presided, and the matronly presence faced me. We were not long 
 in taking our places, for the supper had arrived with me, in the 
 following procession : 
 
 Myself with the pitcher. 
 
 Ben with Beer. 
 
 Inattentive Boy with hot plates. Inattentive Boy with hot plates. 
 
 THE TUKKEY. 
 
 Female carrying sauces to be heated on the spot. 
 
 THE BEEF. 
 
 jNIan with Tray on his head, containing Vegetables and Sundries. 
 
 Volunteer Hostler from Hotel, grinning, 
 
 And rendering no assistance. 
 
 As we passed along the High Street, comet-like, we left a long tail 
 of fragrance behind us which caused the public to stoj), sniffing in 
 wonder. \Vc had previously left at the corner f)f tlie inn-yard a Avall- 
 cyed young man connected with the Fly de])artineiit, and well 
 accustomed to tlie sound of a railway wliistlc which Ben always carries 
 in liis j)ocket, whoso instructions were, so soon as lie should licar the 
 whistle blown, to dash into the kitchen, seize the hot plnm-pndding 
 and mince-pies, and speed with them to Watts's Charity, where they 
 would be received (he was further instructed) by the sauee-female, who 
 Would 1)0 provided with brandy in a blue state of combustion. 
 
 All these arrangements were executed in the most exact and jdinetual 
 manner. I never saw a finer turkey, finer beef, or greater prodigsility
 
 The Toast. g 
 
 of sauce and gravy; and my Travellers did wonderful justice to 
 everything set before tliem. It made my heart rejoice to observe how 
 their wind and frost hardened faces softened in the clatter of plates 
 and knives and forks, and mellowed in the fire and supper heat. 
 While their hats and caps and wrappers, hanging up, a few small 
 bundles on the ground in a corner, and in another corner three or four 
 old walking-sticks, worn down at the end to mere fringe, linked this 
 snug interior with the bleak outside in a golden chain. 
 
 When supper was done, and my brown beauty had been elevated on 
 the table, there was a general requisition to me to " take the corner ; " 
 which suggested to me comfortably enough how much my friends here 
 made of a fire, for when had I ever thought so highly of the corner, 
 since the days when I connected it with Jack Horner ? However, as 
 I declined, Ben, whose touch on all convivial instruments is perfect, 
 drew the table apart, and instructing my Travellers to open right and 
 left on either side of me, and form round the fire, closed up the centre 
 with myself and my chair, and preserved the order we had kejit at 
 table. He had already, in a tranquil manner, boxed the ears of tlie 
 inattentive boys until they had been by imj^erceptible degrees boxed 
 out of the room ; and he now rapidly skirmished the sauce-female 
 into the High Street, disappeared, and softly closed the door. 
 
 This was the time for bringing the poker to bear on the billet of 
 wood. I tapped it three times, like an enchanted talisman, and a 
 brilliant host of merry-makers burst out of it, and sported off by the 
 chimney, rushing up the middle in a fiery country dance, and never 
 coming down again. Meanwhile, by their sparkling light, which 
 threw our lamp into tlic shade, I filled the glasses, and gave my 
 Travellers, Chiustmas ! CfiKiSTMAs-KVE, my friends, when the 
 shepherds, who were Poor Travellers, too, in their way, heard the 
 Angels sing, " On earth, peace. Good-will towards men I " 
 
 I don't know who was the first among us to think that we ought to 
 take hands as we sat, in deference to the toast, or whether any one of 
 us anticii)ated the others, but at any rate we all did it. We then drank 
 to the memory of the good Master Eichard Watts. And I wish liis 
 Ghost may never have had worse usage under that roof than it had 
 from us. 
 
 It was the witching time for Story-telling. " Our whole life, 
 Travellers," said I, " is a story more or less intelligible, generally 
 less ; but we shall read it by a clearer light v^dien it is ended. I, for 
 one, am so divided this night between fact and fiction, that I scarce 
 know which is which. Shall I beguile the time by telling you a story 
 as we sit here ? " 
 
 They all answered, yes. I had little to tell them, but I was bound 
 by my own i")roposal. Therefore, after looking for awhile at the S2)iral 
 column of snicdve wreathing up from my brown beauty, through which 
 I could liave almost sworn I saw the effigy of Master liicluird Watts 
 less startled than usual, I fired away.
 
 CHAPTER IT. 
 
 THR STOUY OF lUCIIAUD DOUBLKDIOK. 
 
 In tlic year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-nine, a relative of 
 mine cainc limjiing down, on foot, to this town of Chatliam. I call it 
 this town, bccauso if anybody present knows to a nicety where 
 Iiochester ends and Cliatham begins, it is more than I do. He was a 
 poor travellei", with not a farthing in his pocket. He sat by the fire 
 in tliis very room, and ho slept one night in a bed that will be occupied 
 to-night by some one hero. 
 
 My relative came down to Chatham to enlist in a cavalry regiment, 
 if a cavalry regiment would have him ; if not, to take King George's 
 sliilling from any corporal or sergeant wlio would put a bunch of 
 ribbons in liis hat. His object was to get shot ; Imt ho thought he 
 might as well ride to death as bo at the trouble of walking. 
 
 My relative's Christian name was Richard, but lie was bettor known as 
 Dick. Ho dropped liis own surname on the road down, and took up 
 that of Doubledick. Ho was passed as Richard Doublediclc ; ago, 
 twenty-two ; height, five foot ten ; native place, Exmoutli, which ho 
 had never been near in his life. There was no cavalry in Chatliam 
 wlien he limped over the bridge here witli half a shoe to liis dusty 
 feet, BO ho enlisted into a regiment of the lino, and was glad to get 
 drunk and forget all about it. 
 
 You arc to know that tliis relativoof mine liad gono wrong, and run 
 wild. His heart was in tlie riglit place, but it was scaled up. Ho 
 had liccn betrothed to a good and beautiful girl, whom he had loved 
 })eticr than she or perhaps even he believed ; but in an evil hour 
 lie had given her cause to say to him solemnly, " Ricliard, I will 
 never marry another man, T will live single for your sake, but Mary 
 Marshall's lips " licr name was Mary IVlarshull -" never address 
 anotlior word to you o7i earth. Go, Richiird ! Heaven forgive 
 you I " Tliis finished him. Tliis brought liim down to Chatliam. 
 This made him Private Richard IJoubledick, Avitli a uotenniiiation 
 to bo sliot. 
 
 There was not a moro dissijiated and reckless S(ldi('r ii^ Chatham 
 barracks, in the year one thousand s<>vcn hundred and iiinoty-nine. 
 than Private Richard Doubledick. He associat(;d with the dregs of 
 every regiment ; lie was as seldom sober as he could be, and was con- 
 stantly under ])unishment. It bccanu! clear to the Avlude barracks 
 that Private Ricliard Doubledick would very soon be fioggod. 
 
 Now tho Ca]>tain of Richard Doubledick's company was a young 
 gentleman not a]>ove ilve years his senior, whose; eyes had an expres- 
 sion in th'in which aifected Private Richard Doiabledick in a very 
 remarkable wav. Thev were brii(ht, liandsome, dark eves, what
 
 Private RicJiard Douhledich. II 
 
 are called laughing eyes generally, and, when serious, ratlicr steady 
 than severe, but they were the only eyes now left in his narrov/ed 
 world that Private Eichard Doublcdick could not stand. Unabashed 
 by evil report and punishment, defiant of everything else and every- 
 body else, he had but to know that those eyes looked at him for a 
 moment, and ho felt ashamed. He could not so much as salute 
 Captain Taunton in the street like any other officer. He was re- 
 proached and confused, troubled by the mere possibility of the 
 captain's looking at him. In his worst moments, he would rather 
 turn back, and go any distance out of his way, than encounter those 
 two handsome, dark, bright eyes. 
 
 One day, when Private Eichard Doublcdick came out of the Black 
 hole, where he had been passing the last eight-and-forty hours, and in 
 which retreat he spent a good deal of his time, he was ordered to 
 betake himself to Captain Taunton's quarters. In the stale and 
 squalid state of a man just out of tlie Black hole, he had less fancy 
 than ever for being seen by the captain ; but he was not so mad yet as 
 to disobey orders, and consequently went up to the terrace overlooking 
 the parade-ground, where the officers' quarters were ; twisting and 
 breaking in liis hands, as ho went aloug, a bit of the straw that 
 had formed the decorative furniture of the Black hole. 
 
 " Come in ! " cried the Captain, when he had knocked with his 
 knuckles at the door. Private Eichard Doublcdick pulled off liis 
 cap, took a stride forward, and felt very conscious that lie stood in 
 the light of the dark, bright eyes. 
 
 There was a silent jiause. Private Eichard Doublcdick had put 
 the straw in his mouth, and was gradually doubling it up into his 
 windpipe and choking himself. 
 
 " Doublcdick," said the Cajitain, " do you know where you are 
 going to ? " 
 
 To the Devil, sir ? " faltered Doublcdick. 
 
 " Yes," returned the Captain. " And very fast." 
 
 Private Eichard Doublcdick turned the straw of the Bhiclc hole in 
 his mouth, and made a miserable salute of acquiescence. 
 
 " Doublcdick," said the Captain, " since I entered liis j\rajcsty's 
 service, a boy of seventeen, I have been pained to see many men of 
 promise going that road ; but I have never been so 2)aincd to sec a 
 man make the shameful journey as I have been, ever since you joined 
 the regiment, to see you." 
 
 Private Eichard Doublcdick began to find a film stealing over the 
 floor at which he looked ; also to find tlic legs of the Captain's break- 
 fast-table turning crooked, as if he saw them tlirough water. 
 
 " I am only a common soldier, sir," said lie. ^- It signifies very little 
 what such a poor brute comes to." 
 
 " You are a man," returned the Captain, with gi'ave indignation, 
 " of education and superior advantages ; and if you say that, meaning 
 what von sav, vou have sunk lower than I had ])elioved. ITow low
 
 12 The Seven Poor Travellers. 
 
 that must be, I leave you to consider, knowing what I know of 
 your disgrace, and seeing what I see." 
 
 " I hope to get shot soon, sir," said Private Richard Doubledick ; 
 " and then the regiment and the world together will bo rid of mc." 
 
 The legs of the table were becoming very crooked. Doubledick, 
 looking up to steady liis vision, met the eyes that had so strong an 
 influence over him. He put his hand before his own eyes, and the 
 breast of his disgrace-jacket swelled as if it would fly asunder. 
 
 ' I would rather," said the young Captain, " sec this in you, Double- 
 dick, than I would see five thousand guineas counted out upon this 
 ta])le for a gift to my good mother. Have you a mother? 
 
 " I am thankful to say she is dead, sir." 
 
 " If your praises," returned the Captain, " were sounded from nioutli 
 to mouth through the whole regiment, through the whole army, 
 through the whole country, you would wish she had lived to say, with 
 pride and joy, ' He is my son ! ' " 
 
 " Sparc me, sir," said Doubledick. " Slie would never have licard 
 any good of me. She would never have had any jiride and joy in 
 owning herself my mother. Love and compassion she might have 
 had, and would have always had, I know; but not Spare mc, sir! 
 T am a broken wretch, quite at your mercy ! " And l:c turned his face 
 to the wall, and stretclicd out his imploring hand. 
 
 " jVIy friend " began the Captain. 
 
 " God bless you, sir ! " sobbed Private Pichard Doubledick. 
 
 " You are at the crisis of your fate. Hold your course unchanged a 
 little longer, and you know what must hajipen. / know even better 
 tlian you can imagine, that, after that lias happened, you are lost. No 
 man who could shed those tears could bear those marks." 
 
 " I fully believe it, sir," in a lovr, shivering voice said Private 
 Pichard Doubledick. 
 
 " But a man in any station can do liis duty,"' said the young Captain, 
 ' and, in doing it, can earn his own respect, even if his case should be 
 so very unfortunate and so very rare that he can earn no otlicr man's. 
 A common soldier, poor brute though you called liim just now, lias 
 this advantage in the stormy times wo live in, that he always does his 
 duty before a host of symi)at]iising witnesses. Do you doubt that lie 
 may so do it as to be extolled tlirougli a wliole regiment, through a 
 wliole army, tlirough a whole country '? Turn while you may yet 
 retrit;ve the past, and try." 
 
 ' I will ! I ask for only one witness, sir,"' cried Pichard, with a 
 Imrstiiig heart. 
 
 " I understand you. I will be a watchful and a faitliful one." 
 
 I have heard from Private Pichard Doubledick's own li])s, that lie 
 ilroppcd down upon liis knee, kissed that officer's hand, ar^se, and 
 went out of the light of tlie dark, briglit eyes, an altered man. 
 
 Til that year, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-niiu-. the 
 French were in Egypt, in Italy, in (Jermany, where not? Xiipjdeuu
 
 Bereavement. 13 
 
 Bouaparte Lad likewise begun to stir against us in India, and most men 
 could read the signs of the great troubles that were coming on. In 
 llic veiy next year, when we formed an alliance with Austria against 
 him. Captain Taunton's regiment was on service in India. And there 
 was not a finer non-commissioned officer in it, no, nor in the whole 
 line than Corporal Eichard Doubledick. 
 
 In eighteen Imndred and one, the Indian army were on the ccast of 
 Egypt. Next year was the year of the proclamation of the short 
 peace, and they were recalled. It had then become well known to 
 thousands of men, that wherever Captain Taunton, with the dark, 
 bright eyes, led, there, close to him, ever at his side, firm as a rock, 
 true as the sun, and brave as Mars, would be certain to be found, 
 while life beat in their hearts, that famous soldier, Sergeant Eicliard 
 Doubledick. 
 
 Eighteen hundred and five, besides being the great year of Tra- 
 falgar, was a year of hard fighting in India. That year saw such 
 wonders done by a Sergeant-Major, who cut his way single-handed 
 through a solid mass of men, recovered the colours of his regiment, 
 which had been seized from the hand of a poor boy shot through the 
 heart, and rescued his wounded Captain, who was down, and in a very 
 jungle of horses' hoofs and sabres, saw such wonders done, I say, by 
 this brave Sergeant-Major, that he was specially made the bearer of 
 the colours he had won ; and Ensign Eichard Doubledick had risen 
 from the ranks. 
 
 Sorely cut up in every battle, but always reinforced by the bravest 
 of men, for the fame of following the old colours, shot through and 
 through, which Ensign Eichard Doubledick had saved, inspired all 
 breasts, tliis regiment fought its way through the Peninsular Avar, 
 up to the investment of Badajos in eighteen hundred and twelve. 
 Again and again it had been cheered through the British ranks until 
 the tears had sprung into men's eyes at the mere hearing of the 
 mighty British voice, so exultant in their valour; and there was not 
 a drummer-boy but knew the legend, that wherever the two friends, 
 Major Taunton, with the dark, bright eyes, and Ensign Eichard 
 Doubledick, who was devoted to him, were seen to go, there the 
 boldest spirits in the English army became wild to follow. 
 
 One day, at Badajos, not in the great storming, but in repelling 
 a hot sally of the besieged upon our men at work in the trenches, 
 who had given way, the two officers found tliemselves Iiurrying 
 forward, face to face, against a party of French infantry, who made 
 a stand. There was an officer at their head, encouraging his men, 
 a courageous, handsome, gallant officer of five-and-thirty, whom 
 Doubledick saw hurriedly, almost momentarily, but saw v.ell. He 
 particularly noticed this officer waving his sword, and rallying his 
 men with an eager and excited cry, -when they fired in obedience to 
 his gesture, and Major Taunton dropped. 
 
 It was over in ten minutes more, and Doubledick returned to the
 
 14 TJie Seven Poor Travellers. 
 
 spot where lie had laid the best friend man ever had on a coat spread 
 upon tlio wet clay. Major Taunton's uniform was opened at the 
 breast, and on his sliirt were three little spots of blood. 
 
 " Dear Doublcdick," said he, " I am dying." 
 
 " For the love of Heaven, no ! " exclaimed the other, kneeling down 
 beside him, and passing his arm round his neck to raise his head. 
 " Taunton ! My preserver, my guardian angel, my witness ! Dearest, 
 truest, kindest of human beings ! Taunton ! For God's sake ! " 
 
 Tlic bright, dark eyes so very, very dark now, in the pale face 
 smiled ui)C)n him ; and the hand he had kissed thirteen years ago laid 
 itself fondly on his breast. 
 
 " Write to my mother. You v,'ill see Home again. Tell her how 
 we became friends. It will comfort her, as it comforts me." 
 
 He spoke no more, but faintly signed for a moment towards his 
 hair as it fluttered in the wind. The Ensign understood him. Ho 
 smiled again when he saw that, and, gently turning his face over on 
 the supporting arm as if for rest, died, with his hand upon the breast 
 in which he liad revived a soul. 
 
 No dry eye looked on Ensign Richard Doublcdick that melancholy 
 day. He buried his friend on the field, and became a lone, bereaved 
 man. Beyond his duty he appeared to have but two remaining cares 
 in life, one, to preserve tlie little packet of hair he was to give to 
 Taunton's mother ; the other, to encounter that Frencli officer who 
 had rallied the moji under whose fire Taunton fell. A new legend 
 now began to circulate among our troops ; and it was, that when ho 
 and the French officer came face to face once more, there would bo 
 weeping in France. 
 
 The war went on and through it went the exact picture of the 
 French officer on the one side, and the bodily reality upon tlio other 
 until the Battle of Touloiise was fought. In the returns sent home 
 appeared these words : " Severely wounded, but not dangerously, 
 Lieutenant Bichard Doublcdick." 
 
 At Midsummer-time, in the year eighteen hundred and fourteen, 
 Lieutenant Richard Doublcdick, now a browned soldier, seven-and- 
 thirty years of age, came home to England invalided. He brought 
 the hair with him, near his heart. Many a French officer had he seen 
 since that day ; many a dreadful night, in searching witli men and 
 lanterns for his wounded, had he relieved French officers lying 
 disabled ; but the mental picture and tlie reality had never come 
 together. 
 
 Though he v."as weak and suiTured i)ain, he lost not an hour in 
 getting d(nv]i to Fromc in Somersetshire, where Taunton's mother 
 lived. In tlio sweet, compassionate words that naturally pi'csent 
 themselves t(j the mind to-night, ' he was tlie only son of his mother, 
 and she was a wido\v." 
 
 It vius a Sunday evening, and the lady sat at her quiet garden- 
 window, reading the IJibL.; ; reading to herself, in a trenibiing voice,
 
 Struck down at Waterloo, 15 
 
 that very passage in it, as I liave heard him tell. He heard the 
 words : " Young man, I say unto thee, arise ! " 
 
 He liad to pass the window ; and the bright, dark eyes of his debased 
 time seemed to look at him. Her heart told her who he was; sho 
 came to the door quickly, and fell upon his neck. 
 
 " He saved me from ruin, made me a human creature, won me from 
 infamy and shame. 0, God for ever bless him ! As He will, He 
 will ! " 
 
 " He will ! " the lady answered. " I know he is in Heaven ! " Then 
 she piteously cried, " But 0, my darling boy, my darling boy ! " 
 
 Never from the hour when Private Richard Doubledick enlisted at 
 Chatham had the Private, Corporal, Sergeant, Sergeant-Major, Ensign, 
 or Lieutenant breathed his right name, or the name of Mary Marshall, 
 or a word of the story of his life, into any ear except his reclaimer's. 
 That previous scene in his existence was closed. He had firmly 
 resolved that his expiation should be to live imknown ; to disturb no 
 more the peace that had long grown over his old offences ; to let it be 
 revealed, when he v/as dead, that he had striven and suffered, and had 
 never forgotten ; and then, if they could forgive him and believe him 
 well, it would be time enough time enough ! 
 
 But that night, remembering the words he had cherished for two 
 years, " Tell her how we became friends. It will comfort her, as it 
 comforts mo," ho related everything. It gradually seemed to him as 
 if in his maturity he had recovered a mother ; it gradually seemed to 
 her as if in her bereavement she had found a son. During his stay 
 in England, the quiet garden into which he had slowly and painfully 
 crept, a stranger, became the boiindary of his home ; when he was able 
 to rejoin his regiment in the spring, he left the garden, thinking was 
 this indeed the first time he had ever turned his face towards the old 
 colours with a woman's blessing ! 
 
 He followed them so ragged, so scarred and pierced now, that 
 they would scarcely hold together to Quatre Bras and Ligny. He 
 stood beside them, in an awful stillness of many men, sliadowy 
 through the mist and drizzle of a wet June forenoon, on the field of 
 Waterloo. And down to that hour the picture in his mind of the 
 French ofiicer had never been compared with the reality. 
 
 The famous regiment was in action early in the battle, and received 
 its first check in many an eventful year, when he was seen to fall. 
 But it swept on to avenge him, and left behind it no such creature in 
 the world of consciousness as Lieutenant Richard Doubledick. 
 
 Through pits of mire, and pools of rain ; along deep ditchcB, once 
 roads, that were pounded and ploughed to pieces by artillery, heavy 
 'vvaggons, tramp of men and horses, and the struggle of every wheeled 
 thing that could carry wounded soldiers ; jolted among the dying and 
 l!:c dead, so disfigured by blood and mud as to be hardly recognisable 
 i\;r humanity ; undisturbed by the moaning of men and the shrieking 
 of horses, which, newly taken from the peaceful pursuits of life,
 
 1 6 The Seven Poor Travellers. 
 
 could not endure the sight of the stragglers lying by the wayside, 
 never to resume their toilsome journey ; dead, as to any sentient life 
 tliat was in it, and yet alive, the form that had been Lieutenant 
 Richard Donbledick, with whose praises England rang, was conveyed 
 to Brussels. There it was tenderly laid down in liosi)ital ; and there 
 it lay, week after week, through the long bright summer days, until 
 the harvest, spared by war, had ripened and was gathered in. 
 
 Over and over again the sun rose and set upon the crowded city ; 
 over and over again the moonlight nights were quiet on the plains of 
 Waterloo : and all that time was a blank to what had been Lieutenant 
 Richard Doublcdick. Rejoicing troops marched into Brussels, and 
 marched out ; brothers and fathers, sisters, mothers, and wives, came 
 thronging thither, drew their lots of joy or agony, and departed ; so 
 many times a day the bells rang ; so many times the shadows of the 
 great buildings changed ; so many lights sprang up at dusk ; so many 
 feet passed here and there upon tho pavements ; so many hours of 
 sleep and cooler air of night succeeded : indifferent to all, a marble 
 face lay on a bed, like the face of a recumbent statue on the tomb of 
 Lieutenant Richard Doublcdick. 
 
 Slowly labouring, at last, through a long heavy dream of confused 
 time and place, presenting faint glimpses of army surgeons whom he 
 knew, and of faces that had been familiar to his youth, dearest and 
 kindest among them, Mary Marshall's, with a solicitude upon it more 
 like reality than anything he could discern, Lieutenant Richard 
 Doublcdick came back to life. To the beautiful life of a calm autumn 
 evening sunset, to tlie peaceful life of a fresh quiet room with a large 
 wind(jw standing open ; a balcony beyond, in which were moving 
 leaves and swcct-snielliug flowers ; beyond, again, the clear sky, with 
 tlie sun full in his sight, pouring its golden radiance on his bed. 
 
 It was so tranquil and so lovely that he thought he liad passed into 
 another world. And ho said in a faint voice, " Taunton, are you 
 near me ? " 
 
 A face bent over him. Not his, his mother's. 
 
 " I came to nurse you. We have nursed you many weeks. You 
 were moved liere long ago. Do you remember nothing V " 
 
 " Notliing." 
 
 The lady kissed his cheek, and held his hand, soothing him. 
 
 " Where is the regiment V Wliat lias happened ? Let me call you 
 mother. What has hapi^encd, mother? " 
 
 " A great victory, dear. The war is over, and the regiment was 
 the bravest in the field." 
 
 His eyes kindled, his lips trembled, he sobbed, and tlie tears ran 
 down liis face, lie was very weak, too weak to move his hand. 
 
 " Was it dark just now?" he asked presently. 
 
 " Xc>." 
 
 " Tt w.is only dark to me? Si)niet]iiiig passed away, lilce a blaek 
 shadjw. But as it went, and the kuu -- O tlie blessed sun, liow
 
 Reunited. 17 
 
 beautiful it is ! touched my face, I tliouglit I saw a liglit wliitc 
 cloud pass out at the door. Was there uothiug that went out ? " 
 
 She shook her head, and in a little while he fell asleep, she still 
 holding his hand, and soothing him. 
 
 From that time, he recovered. Slowly, for he had been desperately 
 wounded in the head, and had been shot in the body, but making some 
 little advance every day. When he had gained sufficient strength to 
 converse as he lay in bed, lie soon began to remark that Mrs. Taunton 
 always brought him back to his own history. Then he recalled his 
 preserver's dying words, and thouglit, " It comforts lier." 
 
 One day he awoke out of a sleej), refreshed, and asked her to read 
 to him. But the curtain of the bed, softening the light, which she 
 always drew back when he awoke, that she might see him from her 
 table at the bedside where she sat at work, was held undrawn ; and a 
 woman's voice spoke, which was not hers. 
 
 " Can you bear to see a stranger? " it said softly. " Will you like 
 to see a stranger ? " 
 
 " Stranger ! " he repeated. The voice awoke old memories, before 
 tlie days of Private Eichard Doubledick. 
 
 " A stranger now, but not a stranger once," it said in tones that 
 thrilled him. " Richard, dear Richard, lost through so many years, 
 my name " 
 
 He cried out her name, " Mary," and she held him in her arms, and 
 his head lay on her bosom. 
 
 " I am not breaking a rash vow, Richard. These are not Mary 
 Marshall's lips that speak. I have another name." 
 
 She was married. 
 
 " I have another name, Richard. Did you ever hear it ? " 
 
 " Never ! " 
 
 He looked into her face, so pensively beautiful, and v/ondered at 
 the smile upon it through her tears. 
 
 " Think again, Richard. Are you sure you never heard my altered 
 name ? " 
 
 " Never ! " 
 
 " Don't move your head to look at me, dear Richard. Let it lie 
 here, while I tell my story. I loved a generous, noble man ; loved 
 him with my whole heart ; loved him for years and years ; loved him 
 faithfully, devotedly ; loved him with no hope of return ; loved him, 
 knowing nothing of his highest qualities not even knowing that he 
 was alive. He was a brave soldier. He was honoured and beloved 
 by thousands of thousands, when the mother of his dear friend found 
 me, and showed me that in all his triumphs he had never forgotten 
 me. He was wounded in a great battle. He was brought, dying, 
 here, into Brussels. I came to watch and tend him, as I would have 
 joyfully gone, with such a purpose, to the dreariest ends of the earth. 
 When he knew no one else, he knew me. When ho sufiercd most, 
 he bore his sufferings barely murmuring, content to rest his head 
 
 c
 
 1 8 The Seven Poor Travellers. 
 
 where yours rests now. When he lay at the point of death, he married 
 mo, that ho might call mo Wife before he died. And the name, my 
 dear love, that I took on that forgotten night " 
 
 " I know it now ! " he sobbed. " The shadowy remembrance 
 strengthens. It is come back. I thank Heaven that my mind is 
 quite restored ! My Mary, kiss me ; lull this weary head to rest, or 
 1 shall die of gratitude. His parting words were fulfilled. I see 
 Homo again ! " 
 
 Well ! They were happy. It was a long recovery, but they were 
 happy through it all. The snow had melted on the ground, and the 
 birds were singing in tlio leafless thickets of the early spi'ing, when 
 thosG tliree were first able to ride out together, and when people 
 flocked about the open carriage to cheer and congratulate Captain 
 Richard Doublcdick. 
 
 But even then it became necessary for the Captain, instead of 
 returning to England, to complete his recovery in the climate of 
 Southern Franco. They fouud a spot upon the Ehone, within a ride 
 of the old town of Avignon, and within view of its broken bridge, 
 whicli was all they could desire ; they lived there, together, six 
 months ; then returned to England. Mrs. Taunton, growing old after 
 three years though not so old as that her bright, dark eyes were 
 dimmed and remembering that her strength had been benefited by 
 the change, resolved to go back for a year to those parts. So she 
 went with a faitlifiil servant, who had often carried her son in his 
 arms ; and she was to bo rejoined and escorted home, at the year's 
 end, by (,'aptain Richard Doubledick. 
 
 She wrote regularly to her children (as she called them now), and 
 they to her. She went to the neighbourhood of Aix ; and there, in 
 their own chi'iteau near the farmer's house she rented, she grew into 
 intimacy with a fimily belonging to that part of France. Tlie 
 intimacy began in her often meeting among the vineyards a pretty 
 child, a girl with a most compassionate heart, who was never tired of 
 listening to tlio solitary English lady's stories of her poor son and the 
 cruel wars. The family were as gentle as the child, and at length slie 
 came to know tliem so well that she accepted their invitation to pass 
 the last montli of lier residence abroad under their roof. All tliis 
 intelligence slie wrote home, piecemeal as it came about, from time to 
 time ; and at last enclosed a polite note, from the head of the chateau, 
 soliciting, on tlio occasion of his approacliing mission to that neigh- 
 bourliood, the lionour of the company of cct liomme si justement 
 colebrc, Monsieur le Capitainc Ricliard Doublcdick. 
 
 Captain Doublcdick, now a hardy, liandsomo man in the full vigour 
 of life, broader across the chest and shoulders than lie had ever been 
 liefore, dispatched a courteous rcjily, and followed it in j^erson. 
 Travelling tlirough all that extent of country after three years of 
 Peace, he blessed tlic better days on which the world had fallen. The 
 corn was g(d(lcn, not drenched in unnatural red : was bound in sheaves
 
 The French Officer at last. 19 
 
 for food, not trodden underfoot by men in mortal fight. The smoke 
 rose up from peaceful hearths, not blazing ruins. The carts were 
 laden with the fair fruits of the earth, not with wounds and death. 
 To him who had so often seen the terrible reverse, these things were 
 beautiful indeed ; and they brought him in a softened spirit to the old 
 chateau near Aix upon a deep blue evening. 
 
 It was a large chateau of the genuine old ghostly kind, with round 
 towers, and extinguishers, and a high leaden roof, and more windows 
 than Aladdin's Palace. The lattice blinds were all thrown open after 
 the heat of the day, and there were glimpses of rambling walls and 
 corridors within. Then there were immense out-buildings fallen into 
 partial decay, masses of dark trees, terrace-gardens, balustrades; 
 tanks of water, too weak to play and too dirty to work ; statues, weeds, 
 and thickets of iron railing that seemed to have overgrown themselves 
 like the shrubberies, and to have branched out in all manner of wild 
 shapes. The entrance doors stood open, as doors often do in that 
 country when the heat of the day is past ; and the Captain saw no 
 bell or knocker, and walked in. 
 
 He walked into a lofty stone hall, refreshingly cool and gloomy 
 after the glare of a Southern day's travel. Extending along the four 
 sides of this hall was a gallery, leading to suites of rooms ; and it was 
 lighted from the top. Still no bell was to be seen. 
 
 " Faith," said the Captain halting, ashamed of the clanking of his 
 boots, " this is a ghostly beginning ! " 
 
 He started back, and felt his face turn white. In the gallery, 
 looking down at him, stood the French officer the officer whose 
 picture he had carried in his mind so long and so fiir. Compared 
 with the original, at last in every lineament how like it was ! 
 
 He moved, and disappeared, and Captain Richard Doubledick heard 
 his steps coming quickly down into the hall. He entered through an 
 archway. There was a bright, sudden look upon his face, much such 
 a look as it had worn in that fatal moment. 
 
 Monsieur lo Capitaine Richard Doubledick ? Enchanted to receive 
 him ! A thousand apologies ! The servants were all out in the air. 
 There was a little fete among them in the garden. In eflect, it was 
 the fete day of my daughter, the little cherished and j^rotected of 
 Madame Taunton. 
 
 He was so gracious and so frank that Monsieur Ic Capitaine Richard 
 Doubledick could not withhold his hand. " It is the liand of a brave 
 Englishman," said the French officer, retaining it Avhile he spoke. 
 " I could respect a brave Englishman, even as my foe, how miich more 
 as my friend ! I also am a soldier." 
 
 " Ho has not remembered me, as I have remembered him ; he did 
 not take such note of my face, that day, as I took of his," thought 
 Captain Richard Doubledick. " How shall I tell him ? " 
 
 Tlie French officer conducted his guest into a garden and presented 
 him to his wife, an engaging and beautiful woman, sitting with Mrs.
 
 20 The Seven Poor Travellers. 
 
 Taunton in a whimsical old-fasliioued pavilion. His dangliter, her 
 fair young face beaming with joy, came running to embrace him ; and 
 there was a boy-baby to tumble down among the orange trees on the 
 broad steps, in making for his father's legs. A multitude of children 
 visitors were dancing to sprightly music ; and all the servants and 
 peasants about the chateau were dancing too. It was a scene of 
 innocent hai^piness that might have been invented for the climax of 
 the scenes of peace which had soothed the Captain's journey. 
 
 He looked on, greatly troubled in his mind, until a resounding bell 
 rang, and tlie French officer begged to show him his rooms. They 
 went upstairs into the gallery from which the officer had looked 
 down ; and Monsieur le Capitaine Richard Doubledick was cordially 
 welcomed to a grand outer chamber, and a smaller one within, all 
 clocks aud dx'aperies, and hearths, and brazen dogs, and tiles, and cool 
 devices, and elegance, and vastuess. 
 
 " You were at Waterloo," said the French officer. 
 
 " I was," said Captain Richard Doublcdck. " And at Badajos." 
 
 Left alone with the sound of his own stern voice in his ears, lie sat 
 down to consider, What shall I do, and how shall I tell him? At 
 that time, unhappily, many deplorable duels had been fought between 
 English and French officers, arising out of the recent war ; and these 
 duels, and how to avoid this officer's liospitality, were tlie uppermost 
 thought in Captain Richard Doubledick's mind. 
 
 He was thinking, and lettiu;^ the time run out in which he should 
 have dressed for dinner, when Mrs. Taunton spoke to him outside the 
 door, aslcing if he could give her the letter he had brought from 
 Mary. " Ilis mother, above all," the Captain thought. " How shall 
 I tell ha- .? " 
 
 " You will form a friendship with your host, I hope," said Mrs. 
 Taunton, whom he hurriedly admitted, " tliat will last for life. Ho is 
 so true-hearted and so generous, Richard, that you can hardly fail to 
 esteem one another. If He had been spared," she kissed (not without 
 tears) the locket in which she wore his hair, "he woxildhavo aj^pre- 
 ciat(id liini with his own magnanimity, and would have been truly 
 hai)py that the evil days were past which made such a man his 
 enemy." 
 
 Slie left the room ; and the Ca2)tain walked, first to one window, 
 wlience he could see the dancing in the garden, then to another 
 window, whence he could sec the smiling jn'ospect and the peaceful 
 vineyards. 
 
 " Spirit of my departed friend," said he, ' is it through thee these 
 better tlioughts are rising in my niindV Is it thou who liast shown 
 mo, all tli(! way I liave been drawn to meet this man, the l)lcssings of 
 thi; altered tiint; ? Is it thou who luist sent thy stricken motlier to me, 
 to stay my angry hand 'i Is it from thee the wliisper comes, that this 
 man did liis duty as tliou didst, and as I did, through tliy guidance, 
 which has wholly saved me here on eartli, and that he did uo more V "
 
 The Waits. 2\ 
 
 He sat down, with his liead buried in his hands, and, when he rose 
 up, made the second strong resolution of his life, that neither to the 
 French officer, nor to the mother of his departed friend, nor to any 
 soul, while either of the two was living, would ho breathe what only- 
 he knew. And when he touched that French officer's glass with his 
 own, that day at dinner, he secretly forgave him in the name of the 
 Divine Forgiver of injuries. 
 
 Here I ended my story as the first Poor Traveller. But, if I had 
 told it now, I could have added that the time has since come when 
 tlie son of Major Richard Doubledick, and the son of that French 
 officer, friends as their fathers were before them, fought side by side 
 in one cause, with their respective nations, like long-divided brothers 
 whom the better times have brought together, fast united. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE ROAD. 
 
 3[y story being finished, and tlie Wassail too, we broke up as the 
 Cathedral bell struck Twelve. I did not take leave of ray travellers 
 that night ; for it had come into my head to reappear, in conjunction 
 with some hot coffee, at seven in the morning. 
 
 As I passed along the High Street, I heard the "Waits at a distance, 
 and struck off to find them. They were playing near one of the old 
 gates of the City, at the corner of a wonderfully o[uaint row of red- 
 brick tenements, which the clarionet obligingly informed me w^erc 
 inhabited by the Minor-Canons. They had odd little porches over 
 the doors, like sounding-boards over old pulpits ; and I thought I 
 isliould like to see one of the Minor-Canons come out upon his top 
 step, and favour us with a little Christmas discourse about the poor 
 scliolars of Rocliester ; taking for his text the words of his Master 
 relative to the devouring of Widows' houses. 
 
 The clarionet was so communicative, and my inclinations were (as 
 they generally arc) of so vagabond a tendency, tliat I accompanied the 
 "\\'aits across an open green called tlie Vines, and assisted in the 
 French sense at tlje performance of two waltzes, two polkas, and 
 three Irish melodies, before I tliought of my inn any more. However, 
 I returned to it then, and foimd a fiddle in the kitchen, and Ben, the 
 wall-eyed young man, and two chambermaids, circling round the great 
 deal table witli the utmost animation. 
 
 I had a very bad niglit. It cannot have been owing to the turkey 
 or the beef, and the Wassail is out of the c[ucstion but in every 
 endeavour that I made to get to sleep I failed most dismally. I was
 
 22 The Seven Poor Travellers. 
 
 never asleep ; and in whatsoever unreasonable direction my mind 
 rambled, the effigy of Master Eichard Watts perpetually embarrassed it. 
 
 In a word, I only got out of the Worshipful Master Eichard Watts's 
 way by getting out of bed in the dark at six o'clock, and tumbling, as 
 my custom is, into all the cold water that could bo accumulated for 
 the purpose. The outer air was dull and cold enough in the street, 
 when I came down there ; and the one candle in our supper-room at 
 Watts's Charity looked as pale in the burning as if it had had a bad 
 night too. But my Travellers had all slept soundly, and they took to 
 the hot coffee, and the piles of bread-and-butter, which Ben had 
 arranged like deals in a timber-yard, as kindly as I could desire. 
 
 While it was yet scarcely daylight, we all came out into the street 
 together, and there shook hands. The widow took the little sailor 
 towards Chatham, where he was to find a steamboat for Sheerness ; 
 the lawyer, with an extremely knowing look, went his own way, 
 without committing himself by announcing his intentions ; two more 
 struck off by the cathedral and old castle for Maidstone ; and the 
 book-pedler accompanied me over the bridge. As for mc, I was going 
 to walk by Cobham Woods, as far iipon my way to London as I 
 fancied. " 
 
 When I came to the stile and footpath by whicli I was to diverge 
 from the main road, I bade farewell to my last remaining Poor 
 Traveller, and pursued my way alone. And now the mists began to 
 rise in the most beautiful manner, and the sun to shine ; and as I 
 went on through the bracing air, seeing the hoar-frost sj^arklc every- 
 where, I folt as if all Nature shared in the joy of the great Birthday. 
 
 Going through the woods, the softness of my tread upon the mossy 
 ground and among the brown leaves enhanced the Christmas sacrcd- 
 ness by wliich I felt surrounded. As the whitened stems environed 
 me, I tliouglit how the Founder of the time had never raised his 
 benignant hand, save to bless and heal, except in the case of one un- 
 conscious tree. By Cobliam Hall, I came to the village, and the 
 cliurchyard where the dead had been quietly buried, " in the sure and 
 certain liopo " which Christmas time inspired. What children could 
 I see at play, and not be loving of, recalling who had loved them ! 
 No garden that I passed was out of unison with the day, for I 
 remembered that tlie tomb was in a garden, and that ' she, Bup])0siug 
 hiiu to bo the gardener," ]iiul said, " Sir, if thou have borne liini Iience, 
 tell mc where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away." In 
 time, the distant river with the slii2)s came full in view, and with it 
 pictures of the jioor fishermen, mending their nets, who arose and 
 followed him,- of the teaching of the people from a ship pushed off 
 a little way from shore, by reason of the multitude, of a majestic 
 figure walking on the water, in the loneliness of night. My very 
 shadow on the ground was eloquent of ( 'hristmas ; for did not the 
 pco2)lo lay their sick where the mere sliadows of the men who had 
 heard and seen him might full as they passed along ?
 
 The Lights of London. 23 
 
 Thus Christmas begirt mo, far and near, until I had come to Black- 
 heath, and had walked down the long vista of gnarled old trees in 
 Greenwich Park, and was being steam-rattled through the mists now 
 closing in once more, towards the lights of London. Brightly they 
 shone, but not so brightly as my own fire, and the brighter faces 
 around it, when we came together to celebrate the day. And there I 
 told of worthy Master Richard Watts, and of my supper with the Six 
 Poor Travellers who were neither Rogues nor Proctors, and from that 
 hour to this I have never seen one of them again.
 
 THE HOLLY-TREE. 
 
 TIIKEE BPiAXCIIES. 
 
 [1855.] 
 
 FIRST BRANCH 
 
 MYSELF. 
 
 I HAVi; kt:|)t Olio secret in the course of my life. I am a basLfiil man. 
 Nobody would sui)pose it, nobody ever docs suppose it, nobody ever 
 did Kujipose it, but I am naturally a basliful man. This is the secret 
 which I have never breathed until now, 
 
 I might greatly move the reader by some account of the innumerable 
 pbices I have not been to, tlio innumerable people I have not called 
 upon or received, the innumerable social evasions I have been guilty 
 (jf, solely because I am by original constitution and character a bashful 
 luiin. But I will leave the reader unmoved, and proceed with the 
 obj( et before me. 
 
 That ol)ject is to give a j^laiii account of my travels antl discoveries 
 in the Holly-Tree Inn ; in which place of good entertainment for man 
 i'.nd b(;ast I v/as once snowed uj). 
 
 It liappened in tlie memorable year when I parted for ever from 
 Angela Leatli, whom I was shortly to have married, on making tlie 
 (lisc;)very that she jireferred my bosom friend. From our school-days 
 1 liad freely admitted Edwin, in my own mind, to be far superior to 
 myself; and, though I was grievously wounded at heart, I felt the 
 preference to be natural, and tried to forgive them both. It was 
 under these cireiimstances that I resolved to go to America on my 
 way to tlio Devil. 
 
 ( 'oiiminiiicating my discovery neither to Angela nor to Edwin, but 
 vf.'solviiig to write each of them an afleeting letter conveying my 
 blessing and forgiveness, v.lueh the steam-tender for shore should 
 carry to tlic post wlien I myself should be bound for tlie New World, 
 far l)eyond recall, T say, locking up my grief in my own lu'oast, and 
 consoling myself as I eould with the prospect of being generous, I
 
 THE HOILV-TREK.
 
 Starting on a Jonrney. 25 
 
 quietly left all I lield dear, and started on the desolate journey I have 
 mentioned. 
 
 The dead winter-time was in full dreariness when I left my 
 chambers for ever, at five o'clock in the morning. I had shaved by 
 candle-light, of course, and was miserably cold, and experienced that 
 general all-pervading sensation of getting up to be hanged v.hich I 
 have usually found inseparable from untimely rising under such 
 circumstances. 
 
 How well I remember the forlorn aspect of Fleet Street when I 
 came out of the Temple ! The street-lamps flickering in the gusty 
 north-east v>dnd, as if the very gas were contorted with cold ; the 
 white-topped houses ; the bleak, star-lighted sky ; the market people 
 and other early stragglers, trotting to circulate their almost frozen 
 blood ; the hospitable light and warmth of the few cofFee-shops and 
 public-houses that were open for such customers ; the hard, dry, 
 frosty rime with which the air was charged (the wind had already 
 beaten it into every crevice), and which lashed my face like a steel 
 whip. 
 
 It wanted nine days to the end of the month, and end of the year. 
 The Post-office packet for the United States was to depart from 
 Liverpool, weather permitting, on the first of the ensuing month, and 
 I had the intervening time on my hands. I had taken this into con- 
 sideration, and had resolved to make a visit to a certain spot (which 
 I need not name) on the farther borders of Yorkshire. It was endeared 
 to me by my having first seen Angela at a farmhouse in that place, 
 and my melancholy was gratified by the idea of taking a wintry leave 
 of it before my expatriation. I ought to explain, that, to avoid being 
 sought out before my resolution should have been rendered irrevocable 
 by being carried into full eff'ect, I had written to Angela overnight, 
 in my usual manner, lamenting that urgent business, of which she 
 should know all particulars by-and-by took mo unexpectedly away 
 from her for a week or ten days. 
 
 There was no Northern Railway at that time, and in its place there 
 were stage-coaches ; which I occasionally find myself, in common 
 with some other people, affecting to lament now, but which everybody 
 dreaded as a very serious penance then. I had secured the box-seat 
 on the fastest of these, and my business in Fleet Street was to get into 
 a cab v/ith my portmanteau, so to make the best of my way to the 
 Peacock at Islington, where I was to join this coach. But when one 
 of our Temple watchmen, who carried my portmanteau into Fleet 
 Street for me, told mc about the huge blocks of ice that had for some 
 days past been floating 'in the river, having closed up in the night, 
 and made a walk from the Temple Gardens over to the Surrey shore, 
 I began to ask myself the question, whether the box-seat would not 
 be likely to put a sudden and a frosty end to my unhappiness. I 
 was heart-broken, it is true, and yet I was not quite so far gone as to 
 wish to be frozen to death,
 
 26 The Holly-Tree, 
 
 When I got up to the Peacock, where I fouucl everybody drinking 
 hot purl, in self-preservation, I asked if there were an inside seat to 
 spare. I then discovered that, inside or out, I was the only passenger. 
 This gave me a still livelier idea of the great inclemency of tho 
 weather, since that coach always loaded particularly well. However, 
 I took a little purl (which I found uncommonly good), and got into 
 the coach. When I was seated, they built me uj) with straw to the 
 waist, and, conscious of making a rather ridiculous appearance, I 
 began my journey. 
 
 It was still dark when we left the Peacock. For a little while, 
 pale, uncertain ghosts of houses and trees aj>peared and vanished, 
 and then it was hard, black, frozen day. People were lighting their 
 fires ; smoke was mounting straight up high into the rarificd air ; and 
 we were rattling for High gate Archway over the hardest ground I 
 have ever heard the ring of iron shoes on. As we got into the 
 couutry, everything seemed to have grown old and gray. The roads, 
 the trees, thatched roofs of cottages and homesteads, the ricks in 
 farmers' yards. Out-door work was abandoned, horse-troughs at road- 
 side inns wore frozen hard, no stragglers lounged about, doors were 
 close shut, little turnpike houses had blazing fires inside, and children 
 (even turnpike people have children, and seem to like them) rubbed 
 the frost from the little panes of glass with their chubby arms, that 
 their bright eyes might catch a glimpse of tho solitary coach going 
 by. I don't know when the snow began to set in ; but I know that 
 we were changing horses somewhere when I heard the guard remark, 
 " That tlie old lady up in the sky was picking her geese pretty hard 
 to-day." Then, indeed, I found the white down fiilling fast and thick. 
 
 Tho lonely day wore on, and I dozed it out, as a lonely traveller 
 does. I was warm and valiant after eating and drinking, particularly 
 after dinner ; cold and depressed at all other times. I was always 
 bewildered as to time and place, and always more or less out of my 
 senses. Tho coach and horses seemed to execute in chorus Auld 
 Lang Syne, without a moment's intermission. They kept the time 
 and tune with the greatest regularity, and rose into the swell at the 
 beginning of the ll(;frain, with a iirecision that worried me to death. 
 While we changed horses, the guard and coachman went stumping uj) 
 and down tlie road, printing otf tlieir shoes in tlie snow, and poured 
 so niucli li(|uid consolation into themselves without being any the 
 worse for it, that I began to confound them, as it darkened again, 
 Avith two great white casks standing on end. Our horses tumbled 
 down in solitary places, and we got them up, which Avas tho 
 ploasantest variety I had, for it warmed me. And it snowed and 
 snowed, and still it snoweil, and never left oft" snowing. All night 
 long we went on in this manner. Tims we came round the clock, 
 upon tho (Jreat Nortli lioad, to the j)crformance of Auld Lang Syne 
 by day again. And it snowed and suowedj and still it suowcd, and 
 never left oil" snowinj:'-
 
 0)1 the Great North Road in a Snowstorm. 27 
 
 I forget now where we were at noon on the second day, and where 
 we ought to have been ; but I know that we were scores of miles 
 behindhand, and that our case was growing worse every hour. The 
 drift was becoming prodigiously deep ; landmarks were getting 
 snowed out ; the road and the fields were all one ; instead of having 
 fences and hedge-rows to guide us, we went crunching on over an 
 unbroken surface of ghastly white that might sink beneath us at any 
 moment and drop us down a whole hillside. Still the coachman and 
 guard who kept together on the box, always in council, and looking 
 well about them made out the track with astonishing sagacity. 
 
 When we came in sight of a town, it looked, to my fancy, like a 
 large drawing on a slate, with abundance of slate-pencil expended on 
 the churches and houses where the snow lay thickest. When we 
 came within a town, and found the church clocks all stopped, the 
 dial-faces choked with snow, and the inn-signs blotted out, it seemed 
 as if the whole place were overgrown with white moss. As to the 
 coach, it was a mere snowball ; similarly, the men and boys who ran 
 along beside us to the town's end, turning our clogged wheels and 
 encouraging our horses, were men and boys of snow ; and the bleak 
 wild solitude to which they at last dismissed us was a snowy Sahara. 
 One would have thought this enough : notwithstanding which, I 
 pledge my word that it snowed and snowed, and still it snowed, and 
 never left off snowing. 
 
 We performed Auld Lang Syno the whole day ; seeing nothing, out 
 of towns and villages, but the track of stoats, hares, and foxes, and 
 sometimes of birds. At nine o'clock at night, on a Yorkshire moor, 
 a cheerful burst from our horn, and a welcome sound of talking, 
 with a glimmering and moving about of lanterns, roused me from my 
 drowsy state. I found that we were going to change. 
 
 They helped me out, and I said to a waiter, whose bare head 
 became as white as King Lear's in a single minute, " What Inn is 
 this ? " 
 
 " The Holly-Tree, sir," said he. 
 
 " Upon my v."ord, T believe," said I, apologetically, to the guard 
 and coachman, " that I must stop here." 
 
 Now the landlord, and the landlady, and the ostler, and the post- 
 boy, and all the stable authorities, liad already asked the coachman, 
 to the wide-eyed interest of all the rest of the establishment, if he 
 meant to go on. The coachman had already rej^lied, ' Yes, he'd take 
 her through it,"- meaning by Her the coach, " if so be as George 
 would stand by him." George was the guard, and he had already 
 sworn that he icould stand by him. So the helpers were already 
 getting the horses out. 
 
 My declaring myself beaten, after this jwrley, was not an announce- 
 ment without preparation. Indeed, bitt for the way to the announce- 
 ment being smoothed by the parley, I more than doubt v.'hether, as 
 an innately bashful man, I should have had the confidence to make it.
 
 28 TJie Holly -Tree. 
 
 As it was, it received the approval cvon of the guard and coachman. 
 Tiierefore, with many coutirmations of my inclining, and many 
 remarks from one bystander to anothci", that the gentleman could go 
 for'ard by tlic mail to-morrow, whereas to-night he would only be 
 froze, and where was the good of a gentleman being froze ah, let 
 alone buried alive (which latter clause was added by a liumorous helper 
 as a joke at my expense, and was extremely well received), I saw my 
 portmanteau got out stiff, like a frozen body ; did the handsome thing 
 l)y tlic guard and coachman ; wished them good-night and a prospercms 
 journey ; and, a little ashamed of myself, after all, for leaving them 
 to fight it out alone, followed the landlord, landlady, and waiter of 
 the Ilolly-Trcc up-stairs. 
 
 I thought I had never seen such a large room as that into which 
 they showed me. It had five windows, with dark red curtains that 
 Avould have absorbed the light of a general illumination ; and there 
 were complications of drapery at the top of the curtains, that went 
 wandering about the wall in a most extraordinary manner. I asked 
 for a smaller room, and they told me there was no smaller room. 
 They could screen me in, however, the landlord said. Tliey brought 
 a great old japanned screen, with natives (Japanese, I suppose) 
 engaged in a variety of idiotic pursuits all over it ; and left me roast- 
 ing whole before an immense fire. 
 
 My bedroom was some quarter of a mile oft", up a great staircase at 
 the end of a long gallery ; and nobody knows what a misery tliis is to 
 a bashful man wlio would rather not meet people on tlic stairs. It 
 was tlio grimmest room I have ever had tlie nightmare in ; and all the 
 furniture, from the four 2)osts of tlie bed to the two old silver candle- 
 sticks, was tall, high-sliouldered, and spindle-waisted. Below, in my 
 sitting-room, if I looked round my screen, the wind rushed at me like 
 a mad bull ; if I stuck to my arm-cliair, the fire scorclied me to tlio 
 colour of a new brick. The chimney-piece was very high, and tlierc 
 was a bud glass wliat I may call a wavy glass above it, which, 
 wlii^n I stood up, just showed me my anterior plirenological develop- 
 ments, and these never look well, in any subject, cut short off at tlu; 
 eyebrow. If I stood with my back to the fire, a gloomy vault of 
 darkness above and Ijoyond tlie screen insisted on being looked at ; 
 and, in its dim remot(;ncss, the drapery of tlio ten curtains of the five 
 windows went twisting and creeping about, like a nest of gigantic 
 worms. 
 
 I suppose that what I observe in myself must bo observed by some 
 other men of similar cliara(;t(ir in ihrmyfli'rs ; therefore I am 
 embfildened to mention, that, when I travel, I never arrive at a place 
 but I immediately want to go away from it. Before I had finished my 
 supper of liroiled fowl and mulled port. T had imprcssod upon tin; 
 waiter in detail my arrangements for departure in the morning. 
 I'roakfast and bill at eight. Fly at nine. Two horses, or, if needful, 
 even four,
 
 First Impressions of an Inn. 29 
 
 Tired tliougli I was, the niglit appeared about a week long. In 
 oases of nightmare, I thought of Angela, and felt more depressed than 
 ever by the reflection that I was on the shortest road to Gretna Green. 
 What had 1 to do with Gretna Green ? I was not going iliat way to 
 the Devil, but by the American route, I remarked in my bitterness. 
 
 In the morning I found that it was snowing still, that it had snowed 
 all night, and that I was snowed up. Nothing could get out of that 
 spot on the moor, or could come at it, until the road had been cut out 
 by labourers from the market-town. When they might cut their way 
 to the Holly-Tree nobody could tell me. 
 
 It was now Christmas-eve. I should have had a dismal Christmas- 
 time of it anywhere, and consequently that did not so much matter ; 
 still, being snowed up was like dying of frost, a thing I had not 
 bargained for. I felt very lonely. Yet I could no m(jre have pro- 
 posed to the landlord and landlady to admit me to their society 
 (though I should have liked it very much) than I could have asked 
 thcin to present me with a piece of plate. Here my great secret, the 
 real bashfulncss of my character, is to be observed. Like most 
 bashful men, I jiidge of other people as if they were bashful too. 
 Besides being far too shamefaced to make the proj^osal myself, I 
 really had a delicate misgiving that it would be in the last degree 
 disconcerting to them. 
 
 Trying to settle down, therefore, in my solitude, I first of all asked 
 what books there were in the house. The waiter brought me a Hooh 
 of lioads, two or three old Newspapers, a little Song-Book, terminating 
 in a collection of Toasts and Sentiments, a little Jest-Book, an odd 
 volume of Peregrine Pickle, and the Sentimental Journey. I knew 
 every word of the two last already, but I read them through again, 
 then tried to hum all the songs (Auld Lang Syne was among them) ; 
 went entirely through the jokes, in which I found a fund of 
 melancholy adapted to my state of mind ; proposed all the toasts, 
 enunciated all the sentiments, and mastered the pajjcrs. The latter 
 had nothing in them but stock advertisements, a meeting about a 
 county rate, and a highway robbery. As I am a greedy reader, I 
 could not make this siipply hold out until night ; it was exhausted by 
 tea-time. Being then entirely cast ujion my own resources, I got 
 through an hour in considering what to do next. Ultimately, it came 
 into my head (from which I was anxious by any means to exclude 
 Angela and Edwin), that I would endeavour to recall my experience 
 of Inns, and would try how long it lasted me. I stirred the fire, 
 moved my chair a little to one side of the screen, not daring to go 
 far, for I knew the wind was waiting to make a rush at me, I could 
 hear it growling, and began. 
 
 My first impressions of an Inn dated from the Nursery ; conse- 
 (j^uently I went back to the Nursery for a starting-point, and found 
 myself at the knee of a sallow woman with a fishy eye, an aquiline nose, 
 and a green gown, whose specialty was a dismal narrative of a land-
 
 30 Tlie Holly-Tree! 
 
 lord by tlie roadside, whose visitors unaccountably disappeared for 
 many years, until it was discovered that the pursuit of his life had 
 been to convert them into pies. For the better devotion of himself 
 to this branch of industry, he had constructed a secret door behind 
 the head of the bed ; and when the visitor (oppressed with pie) had 
 fallen asleep, this wicked landlord would look softly in with a lamp 
 in one hand and a knife in the other, would cut his throat, and would 
 make him into pios ; for which pui'pose he had coppers, underneath 
 a trap-door, always boiling ; and rolled out liis pastry in the dead of 
 the night. Yet even he was not insensible to the stings of conscience, 
 for he never went to sleep without being heard to mutter, " Too much 
 pepper ! " which was eventually the cause of his being brought to 
 justice. I had no sooner disposed of this criminal than there started 
 up another of the same period, whose profession was originally house- 
 breaking ; in the pursuit of which art ho had had his right ear 
 chopped off one night, as ho was burglariously getting in at a window, 
 by a brave and lovely servant-maid (whom the aquiline-nosed woman, 
 though not at all answering the description, always mysteriously 
 implied to be herself). After several years, this brave and lovely 
 servant-maid was married to the landlord of a country Inn ; which 
 landlord had this remarkable characteristic, that he always wore a 
 silk nightcap, and never would on any consideration take it off. At 
 last, one night, when he was fast asleep, the brave and lovely woman 
 lifted up his silk nightcap on the right side, and found that he had 
 no ear there ; w^on which she sagaciously perceived tliat he was the 
 clipped housebreaker, who had married her with the intention of 
 putting her to death. Slie immediately heated the poker and 
 terminated his career, for which she was taken to King George upon 
 his throne, and received the compliments of royalty on her great 
 discretion and valour. This same narrator, who had a Ghoulish 
 pleasure, I have long been persuaded, in terrifying mo to the utmost 
 confines of my reason, had another authentic anecdote within her own 
 experience, founded, I now believe, upon JRaiimond and Agnes, or the 
 Bleeding Nun. She said it happened to her brotlicr-in-law, who was 
 immensely rich, which my father was not ; and immensely tall, 
 which my father was not. It was always a jwint with this Ghoul to 
 present my dearest relations and friends to my youthful mind under 
 circumstances of disparaging contrast. The brother-in-law was riding 
 once through a forest on a magnificent horse (wc liad no magnificent 
 horse at our house), attended by a favourite and valuable Newfound- 
 land dog (we had no dog), wlien he found himself benighted, and 
 came to an Inn. A dark woman opened tlie door, and lie asked her 
 if lie could have a bed there. She answered yes, and put his horse 
 in the stable, and took him into a room where there were two dark 
 men. While he was at sujiper, a parrot in the room began to talk, 
 saying, " Blood, blood ! Wipe up the blood ! " Upon which one of 
 the darlv men v,'rung the parrot's neck, and sail he was fond of ivKisted
 
 The Roadside Inn. 31 
 
 parrots, and he meant to have this one for breakfast in the morning. 
 After eating and drinking heartily, the immensely rich, tall brother- 
 in-law went up to bed ; but he was rather vexed, because they had 
 shut his dog in the stable, saying that they never allowed dogs in the 
 house. He sat very quiet for more than an hour, thinking and think- 
 ing, when, just as his candle was burning out, he heard a scratch at 
 the door. He opened the door, and there was the Newfoundland dog ! 
 The dog came softly in, smelt about him, went straight to some straw 
 in the corner which the dark men had said covered apples, tore the 
 straw away, and disclosed two sheets steeped in blood. Just at that 
 moment the candle went out, and the brother-in-law, looking through 
 a chink in the door, saw the two dark men stealing up-stairs ; one 
 armed with a dagger that long (about five feet) ; the other carrying a 
 chopper, a sack, and a spade. Having no remembrance of the close 
 of this adventure, I suppose my faculties to have been always so 
 frozen with terror at this stage of it, that the power of listening 
 stagnated within me for some quarter of an hour. 
 
 These barbarous stories carried me, sitting there on the Holly- 
 Tree hearth, to the Eoadside Inn, renowned in my time in a sixpenny 
 book with a folding plate, representing in a central compartment of 
 oval form the portrait of Jonathan Bradford, and in four corner com- 
 partments four incidents of the tragedy with which the name is 
 associated, coloured with a hand at once so free and economical, that 
 the bloom of Jonathan's complexion passed without any pai^so into 
 the breeches of the ostler, and, smearing itself off into the next divi- 
 sion, became rum in a bottle. Then I remembered how the landlord 
 was found at the murdered traveller's bedside, with his own knife at 
 his feet, and blood upon his hand ; how he was hanged for the 
 murder, notwithstanding his protestation that he had indeed come 
 there to kill the traveller for his saddle-bags, but had been stricken 
 motionless on finding him already slain ; and how the ostler, years 
 afterwards, owned the deed. By this time I had made myself quite 
 uncomfortable. I stirred the tire, and stood with my back to it as 
 long as I could bear the heat, looking up at the darkness beyond the 
 screen, and at the wormy curtains creeping in and creeping out, like 
 the worms in tlie ballad of Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene. 
 
 There was an Inn in the cathedral town where I went to school, 
 which had plcasanter recollections about it than any of these. I took 
 it next. It was the Inn where friends used to put up, and where we 
 used to go to sec parents, and to have salmon and fowls, and be 
 tipped. It had an ecclesiastical sign, the Mitre, and a bar that 
 seemed to bo the next best thing to a bishopric, it was so snug. I 
 loved the landlord's youngest daughter to distraction, but let that 
 pass. It was in this Inn that I was cried over by my rosy little sister, 
 because I had acquired a black eye in a fight. And though she had 
 been, that Holly-Tree night, for many a long year where all tears are 
 dried, the Mitre softened me yet.
 
 32 The Holly -Tree. 
 
 " To be continued to-morrow," said I, when I took my caudle to go 
 to bed. But my bed took it upou itself to continue the train of 
 thought that night. It carried me away, like the enchanted carpet, to 
 a distant place (though still in England), and there, aliglitiug from a 
 stage-coach at another Inn in the snow, as I had actually done some 
 years before, I repeated in my sleej) a curious experience 1 had really 
 had there. More than a year before I made the journey in the course 
 of which I put uj) at that Inn, I had lost a very near and dear friend 
 by death. Every night since, at home or away from home, I had 
 dreamed of that friend ; sometimes as still living ; sometimes as 
 returning from the world of shadows to comfort me ; always as being 
 beautiful, placid, and hapj^y, never in association with any approacli 
 to fear or distress. It was at a lonely Inn in a wide moorland i)lace, 
 that I halted to jjass the night. When I liad looked from my bed- 
 room window over the waste of snow on which tlie moon was shining, 
 I sat down by my fire to write a letter. I had always, until that 
 hour, kej)t it within my own breast that I dreamed every night of the 
 dear lost one. But in the letter tliat I wrote I recorded the circum- 
 stance, and added that I felt much interested in proving whether the 
 subject of my dream would still be faitliful to me, travel-tired, and 
 in that remote place. No. 1 lost the beloved figure of my vision in 
 parting with the secret. My sleep has never looked upon it since, in 
 sixteen years, but once. I was in Italy, and awoke (or seemed to 
 awake), the well-romembered voice distinctly in my ears, conversing 
 with it. I entreated it, as it rose above my bed and soared up to the 
 vaulted roof of the old I'oom, to answer me a question I had asked 
 touching the Future Life. My hands were still outstretched towards 
 it as it vanished, when I heard a bell ringing by the garden wall, and 
 a voice in the decji stillness of the night ealling on all good Christians 
 to pray for the souls of the dead ; it being All Souls' Eve. 
 
 To return to the Holly-Tree. "When I awoke next day, it was 
 freezing hard, and the lowering sky threatened more snow. My 
 breakfast cleared away, I drew my cliair into its former place, and, 
 with the fire getting so mucli the better of the landscape tliat I sat iu 
 twilight, resumed my Inn remembrances. 
 
 That was a good Inn down in Wiltshire where I put uj) once, in 
 the days of the liard Wiltshire ale, and before all beer was bitterness. 
 It was on the skirts of Salisbury Plain, and the midnight wind that 
 rattled my lattice window came moaning at me from Stonohonge. 
 There was a hanger-on at that cstablislnucnt (a eupernuturally pro- 
 served Druid I believe him to have been, and to be still), witli long 
 whito hair, and a flinty blue eye always looking afar (jff; who claiinod 
 to have been a shei)herd, and who seemed to be ever watehing for the 
 reappearance, on the verge of the liorizon, of some ghostly flock of 
 sheej) that liad been mutton for many ages. He was a man with a 
 weird belief in him that no one could count the stont^s of Stonehcnge 
 twice, and make the same number of them ; like\\iso5 that any one
 
 A Swiss Inn. 33 
 
 wlio counted them tliree times nine times, and tlien stood in tlic centre 
 and said, " I dare ! " would behold a tremendous apparition, and he 
 stricken dead. He pretended to have seen a bustard (I suspect him 
 to have been familiar with the dodo), in manner following : He was 
 out upon the plain at the close of a late autumn day, when he dimly 
 discerned, going on before him at a curious fitfully bounding pace, 
 what he at first supposed to be a gig-umbrella that had been blown 
 from some conveyance, hut what he presently believed to be a lean 
 dwarf man upon a little pony. Having followed this object for some 
 distance without gaining on it, and having called to it many times 
 without receiving any answer, he pursued it for miles and miles, 
 when, at length coming up with it, he discovered it to be the last 
 bustard in Great Britain, degenerated into a wingless state, and 
 running along the ground. Resolved to cai)ture him or joerish in the 
 attempt, he closed with the bustard ; but the bustard, who had formed 
 a counter-resolution that he should do neither, threw him, stunned 
 him, and v/as last seen making off due west. This weird man, at that 
 stage of metempsychosis, may have been a sleep-walker or an 
 enthusiast or a robber ; but I awoke one night to find him in the 
 dark at my bedside, repeating the Athanasian Creed in a terrific voice. 
 I paid my bill next day, and retired from the county with all possible 
 precipitation. 
 
 That was not a commonplace story which worked itself out at a 
 little Inn in Switzerland, while I was staying there. It was a very 
 homely jilace, in a village of one narrow zigzag street, among moun- 
 tains, and you went in at the main door through the cow-house, and 
 among the mules and the dogs and the fowls, before ascending a great 
 bare staircase to the rooms ; which were all of unpainted wood, with- 
 out plastering or papering, like rough packing-cases. Outside there 
 was nothing biit the straggling street, a little toy church with a 
 copper-coloured steeple, a pine forest, a torrent, mists, and mountain- 
 sides. A young man belonging to this Inn had disapj^eared eight 
 weeks before (it was winter-time), and was supposed to have had some 
 undiscovered love affair, and to have gone for a soldier. He had got 
 \\\) in the night, and dropped into the village street from the loft in 
 which he slept with another man ; and he had done it so quietly, that 
 his com])anion and fellow-labourer had heard no movement when he 
 was awakened in the morning, and they said, " Louis, where is Henri ? " 
 They looked for him high and low, in vain, and gave him up. Now, 
 outside this Inn, there stood, as there stood outside every dwelling in 
 the village, a stack of firewood ; but the stack belonging to the Inn 
 was higher than any of the rest, because the Inn was the richest 
 house, and burnt the most fuel. It began to be noticed, while they 
 were looking high and low, that a Bantam cock, jiart of the live stock 
 of the Inn, put himself wonderfully out of his way to get to the top of 
 this wood-stack ; and that he would stay there for hours and hours, 
 crowing, until he appeared in danger of splitting himself. Five 
 
 D
 
 34 The Holly-Trcc. 
 
 weeks went on, six weeks, and still this terrible Bantam, neglecting 
 Lis domestic aftairs, was always on the top of the wood-stack, crowing 
 tlio very eyes ont of liis head. By this time it was perceived that 
 Lonis had become inspired with a violent animosity towards the 
 terrible Bantam, and one morning ho was seen by a woman, who sat 
 nnrsing lier goitre at a little window in a gleam of sun, to catch up a 
 rough billet of wood, with a great oath, hurl it at the terrible Bantam 
 crowing on tlie wood-stack, and bring him down dead. Hereupon 
 the Avoman, with a sudden light in her mind, stole round to the back 
 of the wood-stack, and, being a good climber, as all those women are, 
 climbed up, and soon was seen upon the summit, screaming, looking 
 down the hollow within, and crying, " Seize Louis, the nmrdcrer ! 
 Ring the church bell ! Hero is the body ! " I saw the murderer 
 that day, and I saw him as I sat by my fire at the Holly-Tree Inn, 
 and I see him now, lying shackled with cords on the stable litter, 
 among the mild eyes and the smoking breath of the cows, waiting to 
 be taken away by the police, and stared at by the fearful village. A 
 heavy animal, the dullest animal in the stables, with a stupid head, 
 and a lumpish face devoid of any trace of insensibility, who had been, 
 within the knowledge of the murdered youth, an embezzler of certain 
 small moneys bcloiiging to his master, and wlio liad taken tliis liopcful 
 mode of putting a possible accuser out of his way. All of wliicli he 
 confessed next day, like a sulky wretch who couldn't bo troubled any 
 more, now that they had got hold of him, and meant to make an end 
 of him. I saw liim once again, on the day of my departure from the 
 Inn. In that C'anton the headsman still docs his office witli a sword ; 
 and I came upon this murderer sitting bound, to a chair, with his 
 eyes bandaged, on a scaffold in a little market-jdace. In that instant, 
 a great sword (loaded with quicksilver in the thick part of the blade) 
 fiwejit round him like a gust of wind or fire, and there was no such 
 creature in the v/orld. My wonder was, not that he was so suddenlA^ 
 dispatched, but that any head was left unreai)ed, within a radius of 
 fifty yards of that tremendous sickle. 
 
 Tliat was a good Inn, too, with the kind, cheerful landlady and tlic 
 honest landlord, where I lived in the shadow of Mont Blanc, and where 
 one of the apartments has a zoological i")apering on tlie walls, not so 
 accurately joined but that the elephant occasionally rejoices in a tiger's 
 hind legs and tail, while the li(jn puts on a trunk and tusks, and the 
 bear, moulting as it were, ajipears as to portions of liimself like a 
 leopard. I made several American friends at that Inn, wlio all called 
 Mont Blanc ^fount Blank, except one good-humoured gentleman, of 
 a very sociable nature, who became on such intimate terms with it tliat 
 he spoke of it fiimiliarly as " Blank ; " observing, at l)reakfast, ' Blank 
 looks pretty tall Ihis morning ; " or considerably doubting in tlie court- 
 yard in the evening, whether there warn't some go-ahead natcrs in our 
 country, sir, that would make out the toji of Blank in a couple of hours 
 from first start now !
 
 TJie Ghost of a Pie. 35 
 
 Once I passed a fortniglit at an Inn in the North of England, where 
 I was haunted by the ghost of a tremendous pie. It was a Yorkshire 
 pie, like a fort, an abandoned fort with nothing in it ; but the waiter 
 had a fixed idea that it was a point of ceremony at every meal to put 
 the pie on the table. After some days I tried to hint, in several 
 delicate ways, that I considered the pie done with ; as, for example, by 
 emptying fag-ends of glasses of wine into it ; putting cheese-plates 
 and spoons into it, as into a basket ; putting wine-bottles into it, as 
 into a cooler ; but always in vain, the pie being invariably cleaned 
 out again and brought up as before. At last, beginning to be doubtful 
 whether I was not the victim of a spectral illusion, and whether my 
 health and spirits might not sinlc under the horrors of an imaginary 
 pie, I ci;t a triangle out of it, fully as large as the musical instrument 
 of that name in a powerful orchestra. Human prevision could not 
 have foreseen the result but the waiter mended the pie. With some 
 effectual species of cement, he adroitly fitted the triangle in again, 
 and I paid my reckoning and fled. 
 
 The Holly-Tree was getting rather dismal. I made an overland 
 expedition beyond the screen, and penetrated as far as the fourth 
 window. Here I was driven back by stress of weather. Arrived at 
 ray winter- quarters once more, I made uj the fire, and took another 
 Inn. 
 
 It was in the remotest part of Cornwall. A great annual Miners' 
 Feast was being holden at the Inn, when I and my travelling 
 companions presented ourselves at night among the wild crowd that 
 were dancing before it by torchlight. Wc had had a break-down in 
 the dark, on a stony morass some miles away ; and I had the honour 
 of leading one of the unharnessed post-horses. If any lady or 
 gentleman, on j-icrusal of the present lines, will take any very tall 
 post-horse with his traces hanging about his legs, and will conduct 
 him by the bearing-rein into the heart of a country dance of a liundrcd 
 and fifty couples, that lady or gentleman will then, and only then, 
 form an adequate idea of the extent to which that post-horse will 
 tread on his conductor's toes. Over and above which, the post-horse, 
 finding three hundred peoj^lo whirling about him, will probably rear, 
 and also lash out with his hind legs, in a manner incompatible vi'ith 
 dignity or self-respect on his conductor's part. With such little 
 drawbacks on my usually impressive aspect, I appeared at this Cornish 
 Inn, to the unutterable wonder of the Cornish Miners. It was full, 
 and twenty times full, and nobody could be received but the post-liorse, 
 - though to get rid of that noble animal was something. While my 
 fello\v-travcllers and I were discussing how to pass the night and so 
 much of the next day as must intervene before the jovial blacksmith 
 and the jovial wheelwright would be in a condition to go out on the 
 morass and mend the coach, an honest man stei)]:)ed fortli from the 
 crowd and jiroposed his unlet floor of two rooms, with supper of eggs 
 and bacon, ale and punch. We joyfully accompanied him home to the
 
 36 The Holty-Tred. 
 
 strangest of clean houses, where we were well ctitcrtaiucd to tlio 
 satisfaction of all i)arties. But tlie novel feature of the entertainment 
 was, that our host was a chair-maker, and that the chairs assigned to 
 lis were mere frames, altogether without hottoms of any sort ; so that 
 we passed the evening on perches. Nor was this the absurdest 
 consequence ; for when v/e unbent at supper, and any one of us gave 
 way to laughter, he forgot the peculiarity of his position, and instantly 
 disaj^peared. I myself, doubled up into an attitude from which self- 
 extricatiou was impossible, was taken out of my frame, like a clown 
 in a comic 2)antomime who has tumbled into a tub, five times by the 
 taper's light during tlie eggs and bacon. 
 
 The Holly-Tree was fast reviving within me a sense of loneliness. 
 I began to feel conscious that my subject would never carry on until 
 I was dug out. I might be a week hci'c, weeks ! 
 
 There was a story with a singular idea in it, connected with an Inn 
 I once passed a night at in a picturesque old town on the "Welsh 
 border. In a largo double-bedded room of tliis Inn tliere had been a 
 suicide committed by i)oison, in one bed, while a tired traveller sl(!2)t 
 unconscious in the other. After that time, the suicide bed was never 
 used, but the other constantly was ; the disused bedstead remaining 
 in the room empty, though as to all other respects in its old state. 
 The story ran, that whosoever slept in this room, though never so 
 entire a stranger, from never so far off, was invariably observed to 
 come down in the morning with an imjn-ession that he smelt Laudanum, 
 and that his mind always turned upon the subject of suicide ; to wdiich, 
 whatever kind of man he niiglit be, he was certain to make some 
 reference if he conversed witli any one. This went on for years, until 
 it at length induced the landloi'd to take the disused bedstead down, 
 and bodily burn it, bed, hangings, and all. The strange influence 
 (this was the story) now changed to a faiiiter one, but never changed 
 afterwards. The occupant of that room, witli occasional but very 
 rare exceptions, would come down in tlie morning, trying to recall a 
 forgotten dream he had had in the niglit. The landlord, on his 
 mentioning his per2)lexity, would suggest various commonplace 
 subjects, not one of wliicli, as he very well knew, was the true subject. 
 But tlie moment the landlord suggested ' Poison," the traveller started, 
 and cried, " Yes ! " He nciver failed to acccjjt that suggestion, and he 
 never recalled any more of tlio dnnini. 
 
 This reminiscence l)roug]it tlio Welsli Inns in general before mo ; 
 witli the women in tlieir round hats, and tlie harpers uitli tlicir whit(; 
 beards (venerable, Imt humbugs, I am afraid ), playing (jutsidc^ the door 
 while I took my dinner. The transition was natural to the Highland 
 Inns, with the oatmeal bannocks, the honey, the venison steaks, the 
 trout from the loch, tho whisky, and 2)erliaps (having the materials so 
 tem})tingly at hand) the Athol l)rosc. Once was I coming south from 
 the Scottish Miglilands in hot liaste, hoping to change (piickly at the 
 stati'ju at the bottom of a certain wild historical \Ac\\, when these
 
 A Medley of Inns. n 
 
 eyes did with iiioitilication sec the landlord ccine cut witli a telescope 
 aud sweei^ the wLolc prospect for tlie horses ; wliicli horses were away 
 picking np their own living, and did not heave in sight under four 
 hours. Having thought of the Icch-trout, I was taken by quick 
 association to the Anglers' Inns of England (I have assisted at 
 innumerable feats of angling by lying in the bottom of the boat, 
 whole summer days, doing nothing with the greatest perseverance ; 
 which I have generally found to be as effectual towards the taking of 
 lish as the finest tackle and the utmost science), and to the pleasant 
 white, clean, flower-pot-decorated bedrooms of those inns, overlooking 
 the river, and the ferry, and the green ait, and the church-spire, and 
 the country bridge ; and to the pearless Emma with the bright eyes 
 and the pretty smile, who waited, bless her ! with a natural grace that 
 would have converted Blue-Beard. Casting my eyes upon my Holly- 
 Tree fire, I next discerned among the glowing coals the pictures of a 
 score or more of those wonderful English pcsting-inns which we are 
 all so sorry to have lost, which were so large and so comfortable, and 
 v/hicli were such monuments of British submission to rapacity and 
 extortion. He who would see these houses pining away, let him 
 walk from Basingstoke, or even Windsor, to London, by way of 
 IIoujislow, and moralise on their perishing remains; the stables 
 crumbling to dust ; unsettled labourers and wanderers bivouacking in 
 the outhouses ; grass growing in the yards ; the rooms, where erst so 
 many hundred beds of down were made uj), let off to Irish lodgers at 
 eigliteenpence a v/eck ; a little ill-lookiug beer-shop shrinking in the 
 tap of f(nTaer days, burning coach-house gates for firewood, having 
 ouo of its two windows bunged up, as if it had received i^unishment 
 in a fight with the Railroad ; a low, bandy-legged, brick-making 
 bulldog standing in the doorway. "What could I next see in my fire 
 so naturally as the new railway-house of these times near the dismal 
 country station; with nothing particular on draught but cold air and 
 damp, notliing worth mentioning in the larder but new mortar, and no 
 l)usiness doing beyond a conceited ai^'eetaticn of luggage in the hall? 
 Tlicn I came to the Inns of Paris, with the pretty ajiarlment of four 
 licces up one hundred and seventy -five v.axed stairs, the jirivilcge of 
 ringing the bell all day long withoiit influencing anybody's mind or body 
 but your own, and tlio jiot-ton-mueh-ibr-dinner, considering the price. 
 Xoxt to the provincial Inns of France, with the great church-tower 
 rising above the coiirtyard, the horse-bells jingling merrily up and 
 down the street beyond, and the clocks of all descrijitions in all the 
 rooms, which are never right, unless taken at the precise minute when, 
 I'y getting exactly twelve hours too fast or too slow, they unintentionally 
 l)ccomc so. Away I went, next, to the lesser roadside Inns of Italy ; 
 where all the dirty clothes in the house (not in wear) are always lying 
 iu your anteroom ; where the mosquitoes make a raisin pudding of 
 your face in summer, and the cold bites it blue in winter ; where you 
 get what you can, aud forget what you can't : -sphere I should again
 
 38 The Holly-Tree. 
 
 like to be boiling my tea in a poclcet-bandkcrcbief dum2)ling, for want of 
 a teapot. So to tbo old palace Inns aud old monastery Inns, in towns 
 and cities of tbe same brigbt country ; witb tbcir massive quadrangular 
 staircases, wbenco you may look from among clustering pillars bigb 
 into tbo blue vault of beaveu ; witb tbeir stately bauqueting-rooms, 
 and vast refectories ; witli tbeir labyrinths of gbostly bedcbambers, 
 and tbeir glimpses into gorgeous streets tbat bavc no ai)pearancc of 
 reality or possibility. So to tbe close little Inns of tlic Malaria 
 districts, with tbeir pale attendants, and tbeir peculiar smell of never 
 letting in tbo air. So to tbo immense fantastic Inns of Venice, witb 
 tbe cry of tbo gondolier below, as bo skims tbo corner ; tbe grip of 
 tbo watery odours on one particular little bit of tbo bridge of your 
 uoso (wbicli is never released wbile you stay tbere) ; and tbo great 
 boll of St. Mark's Catbedral tolling midnigbt. Next I jiut up for a 
 minute at tbe restless Inns upon tbe libino, wbere your going to bed, 
 no matter at wbat bour, appears to be tbe tocsin for everybody else's 
 getting up ; and wbere, in tbo table-d'botc room at tbo end of tbo 
 long table (witb several Towers of Babel on it at tbo otber end, all 
 made of wbite plates), one knot of stoutisb men, entirely dressed in 
 jewels and dirt, and liaving notbing else upon tliem, xnll remain all 
 nigbt, clinking glasses, and singing about tbe river tbat flows, and tbe 
 grape tbat grows, and Rbinc wine tbat beguiles, and libiiie woman 
 tbat smiles and bi drink drink my friend and bo drink drink my 
 brotber, and all tlie rest of it. I departed tbence, as a matter of 
 course, to otber German Inns, wbere all tbo eatables are soddened 
 down to tbe same flavour, aud wbere tbo mind is disturbed by tbo 
 apparition of bot puddings, and boiled cherries, sweet and slab, at 
 awfully unexjicctcd periods of tbe repast. After a draught of s])arkling 
 beer from a foaming glass jug, and a glance of recognition through 
 tbe windows of the student beer-houses at Heidelberg and elsewhere, 
 i put out to sea for tbo Inns of America, witb their four hundred 
 beds ajjiece, and tbeir eight or nine hundred ladies aud gentlemen at 
 dinner every day. Again I stood in tlio bar-rooms tliercof, taking my 
 evening cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail. Again I listened to my 
 friend the General, whom I had known for five minutes, in the 
 course of which period be had made me intimate for life witli two 
 Majors, who again bad made mc intimate for life with three Colonels, 
 wlio again bad made me brother to twenty-two civilians, again, I say, 
 I listened to my friend tbe (general, leisurely expounding the resources 
 of tlio establishment, as to gentlemen's morning-room, sir ; ladies' 
 morning-room, sir ; gentlemen's evening-room, sir ; ladies' cvouing- 
 rooni, sir ; ladies' and gentlemen's evening reuniting-room, sir ; music- 
 room, sir ; reading-room, sir ; over four hundred slee])ing-r()(nns, sir; 
 and tbe entire planned and finited within twelve calendar montlis from 
 tlio first clearing oil" of the old encumbrances on tbe jdot, at a cost of 
 five liundred tliousand dollars, sir. Again I found, as to my individual 
 way of th.inlving. that tlie greater, tbe more gorgeous, and the moro
 
 A Desperate Idea. 39 
 
 dollarous the establisliment was, the less desirable it was. Nevertheless, 
 again I drank my cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail, in all good-will, 
 to my friend the General, and my friends the Majors, Colonels, and 
 civilians all ; full well knowing that, whatever little motes my beamy 
 eyes may have descried in theirs, they belong to a kind, generous, 
 large-hearted, and great people. 
 
 I had been going on lately at a quick pace to keep my solitude out 
 of my mind ; but here I broke down for good, and gave up the subject. 
 What was I to do ? What was to become of me ? Into what 
 extremity was I submissively to sink ? Supposing that, like Baron 
 Treuck, I looked out for a mouse or spider, and found one, and 
 beguiled my imprisonment by training it ? Even that might be 
 dangerous with a vioAV to the future. I might be so far gone when 
 the road did come to be cut through the snow, that, on my way forth, 
 I might burst into tears, and beseech, like the prisoner v/ho Avas 
 released in his old age from the Bastille, to be taken back again to 
 the five windows, the ten curtains, and the sinuous drapery. 
 
 A desperate idea came into my head. Under any other circum- 
 stances I should have rejected it ; but, in the strait at wliich I was, I 
 held it fast. Could I so far overcome the inherent bashfulucss which 
 withheld me from the landlord's table and the company I might find 
 there, as to call up the Boots, and ask him to take a chair, and 
 something in a liquid form, and talk to me ? I could, I would. 
 I did. 
 
 SECOND BRANCH. 
 
 THE 1300TS. 
 
 Where had he been in his time ? ho repeated, when I asked him the 
 question. Lord, he had been everywhere! And what had he been? 
 Bless you, he had been everything you could mention a'most ! 
 
 Seen a good deal ? Why, of course he had. I should say so, ho 
 could assure mo, if I only knew about a twentieth part of what had 
 come in liis way. Why, it would be easier for hiiii, he expected, to 
 tell wliut he hadn't seen than what he had. Ah ! A deal, it would. 
 
 What was the curiousest thing he had seen ? Well ! He didn't 
 know. He couldn't momently name what was the curiousest thing 
 he liad seen, unless it was a Unicorn, and he sec li'im once at a Fair. 
 But supposing a j'oung gentleman not eight year old was to run away 
 with a fine young woman of seven, might I think tliat a queer start? 
 Certainly. Then that was a start as he himself had had his blessed 
 eyes on, and he had cleaned the shoes they run away in and they 
 was so little that he couldn't get his hand into 'em,
 
 40 The Holly -Tree. 
 
 Master Harry "Walmers' father, you see, he lived at the Elmses, 
 down away by Shooter's Hill there, six or seven miles from Lnnuon. 
 He was a gentleman of spirit, and good-looking, and held his head 
 up when he walked, and had what you may call Fire about him. Ho 
 wrote poetry, and ho rode, and ho ran, and he cricketed, and he 
 danced, and he acted, and he done it all equally beautiful. Ho was 
 uncommon proud of Master Harry as was liis only child ; but lie 
 didn't spoil him neither. He was a gciitlemun tliat had a will of liis 
 own and a eye of his own, and that would be minded. Consequently, 
 though he made quite a companion of the fine bright boy, and was 
 delighted to sec him so fond of reading his fairy books, and was never 
 tired of hearing him say my name is Nerval, or hearing him sing his 
 songs about Young l\Iay IMoous is beaming love, and When lie as 
 adores thee has left but tlio name, and that ; still he kept the command 
 over the child, and the child xcas a child, and it's to be wished more 
 of 'em was ! 
 
 How did Boots happen to know all this ? Wliy, through being 
 under-gardcner. Of course he couldn't bo under-gardoncr, and bo 
 always about, in the summer-time, near the windows on the lawn, a 
 mowing, and sweeping, and weeding, and pruning, and this and that, 
 without getting acquainted with the ways of the family. Even sup- 
 posing IVlastcr Harry liadn't come to him one morning early, and said, 
 " Cobbs, liow should you spell Norah, if you was asked ? " and then 
 began cutting it in print all over the fence. 
 
 He couldn't say he liad taken particular notice of children before 
 that ; but really it was pretty to sec them two mites a going about 
 the place together, deeji in love. And the courage of the boy ! Bless 
 your soul, lio'd liave throwed off liis little hat, and tucked up his 
 little sleeves, and gi)no in at a Lion, ho would, if they had happened 
 to meet one, and she had been frightened of him. One day he stops, 
 along with her, where Boots was hoeing weeds in the gravel, and says, 
 speaking up, " Cobbs," he says, " I like //oh." " Do you, sir ? I'm 
 I)roud to hear it." " Yes, I do, Cobbs. Why do I like you, do you 
 think, Cobbs ? " " Don't know, Master Harry, I am sure." " Because 
 Xorah likes you, Cobbs." "Indeed, sir? That's very gratifying." 
 "Gratifying, Cobbs? It's better than millions of the brightest 
 diamonds to bo liked by Norah." " ( 'crtainly, sir." " You're going 
 away, ain't you, Cobbs ? " " Yes, sir." " Would you like another 
 situation, ( 'obbs ? " " Well, sir, I shouldn't object, if it v/as a good 
 'un." "Then, Co])])s," says he, " you shall be our Head (iardcner 
 when we are married." And he tucks her, in her little sky-blue 
 mantle, under his arm, and walks away. 
 
 Boots could assure me that it was better than a i)ictcr, and e(|ual to 
 ft play, to see them babies, with their long, bright, curling hair, their 
 sparkling eyes, and their beautiful light tread, a rambling about tlic 
 garden, decj) in love. Boots was of opinion tliat the bii'ds Ixlieved 
 they was birds, and k(q)t u^) with 'em, singing to j'lease 'em. S;)nic-
 
 A Precocious Couple. 41 
 
 times tliey would creep under tlio Tulip-tree, and would sit there 
 with their arms round one another's necks, and their soft cheeks 
 touching, a reading about the Prince and the Dragon, and the good and 
 bad enchanters, and the king's fair daughter. Sometimes he would 
 hear them planning about having a house in a forest, keeping bees 
 and a cow, and living entirely on milk and honey. Once he came 
 upon them by the pond, and heard Master Harry say, " Adorable 
 Xorah, kiss me, and say you love me to distraction, or 111 jump in 
 hcad-forcmost." And Boots made no question he would have done it 
 if fihe hadn't complied. On the whole, Boots said it had a tendency 
 to make him fool as if he was in love himself only he didn't exactly 
 know who with. 
 
 " Cobbs," said Master Harry, one evening, when Cobbs was watering 
 the flowers, " I am going on a visit, this present Midsummer, to my 
 grandmamma's at York," 
 
 "Arc you indeed, sir? I hope you'll have a pleasant time. I am 
 going into Yorkshire, myself, when I leave here." 
 
 " Aro you going to your grandmamma's, Cobbs ? " 
 
 " No, sir. I haven't got such a tiling." 
 
 " Not as a grandmamma, Cobbs ? " 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 The boy looked on at the watering of the flowers for a little while, 
 and then baid, "I shall bevery glad indeed to go, Cobbs, Norah's 
 going." 
 
 ' You'll be all right then, sir," says Cobbs, " with your beautiful 
 sweetheart by your side." 
 
 " Cobbs," returned the boy, flushing, " I never let anybody joke 
 about it, when I can prevent them." 
 
 " It wasn't a joke, sir," says Cobbs, with humility, " wasn't so 
 meant." 
 
 " I am glad of that, Cobbs, because I like you, you know, and you're 
 going to live with us. Cobbs! " 
 
 "Sir." 
 
 " What do you tliiuk my grandmamma gives mo when I go down 
 tiiere '? " 
 
 " I couldn't so much as make a guess, sir." 
 
 " A Bank of England five-pound note, Cobbs." 
 
 " AVhew ! " says Cobbs, " that's a spanking sum of money, Master 
 Harry." 
 
 " A person could do a good deal witli such a sum of money as that, 
 couldn't a person, Cobbs V " 
 
 " I believe you, sir ! " 
 
 " Cobbs," said the boy, " I'll tell you a secret. At Norah's house, 
 i:;oy have been joking her about me, and protending to laugh at our 
 1 I'iug engaged, pretending to make game of it, Cobbs!" 
 
 " Such, sir," says Cobbs, " is the depravity of human natur." 
 
 The boy, looking exactly like his father, stood for a few jniuutes
 
 42 Tlie Holly-Tree. 
 
 with bis glowiug fuco towards the sunset, aud then departed with, 
 " Good-uight, Cobbs. I'm going in." 
 
 If I was to ask 13oots how it happened that he was a-going to leave 
 that place just at that present time, well, he couldn't rightly answer 
 me. He did suppose ho might have stayed there till now if he had 
 been anyways inclined. But, you see, he was younger then, and he 
 wanted change. That's what he wanted, change. Mr. Walmers, 
 he said to him when he gave him notice of his intentions to leave, 
 " Cobbs," he says, " have you anythink to complain of ? " I make the 
 inquiry because if I find that any of my people really has anythink 
 to complain of, I wish to make it right if I can." " No, sir," says 
 Cobbs ; " thanking you, sir, I find myself as well sitiwated here as I 
 could liopc to bo anywheres. The truth is, sir, that I'm a-going to 
 seek my fortun'." " O, indeed, Cobbs ! " he says ; " I hope you may 
 find it." And Boots could assure me which he did, touching his 
 hair with his bootjack, as a salute iu the way of his jH'esent calling 
 that he hadn't found it yet. 
 
 Well, sir ! Boots left the Elnises when his time was up, and 
 Master Harry, he went down to the old lady's at York, which old lady 
 woiild have given that child the teeth out of her head (if she had 
 had any), she was so wrapped up in him. What does that Infant do, 
 for Infant you may call him and be within the mark, but cut 
 away from that old lady's with his Norah, on a expedition to go to 
 Gretna Green aud be married ! 
 
 Sir, Boots was at this identical Holly-Tree Inn (having left it 
 several times since to better himself, but always come back through 
 one thing or another), when, one summer afternoon, the coach drives 
 up, aud out of the coach gets them two children. The Guard says to 
 our Governor, " I don't quite make out these little passengers, but the 
 young gentleman's words was, that they was to be brought hero." 
 The young gentleman gets out ; hands his lady out ; gives the Giiard 
 something for himself; says to our Governor, " We're to stop here 
 to-night, please. Sitting-room and two bedrooms will be required. 
 Chops and cherry-pudding for two ! " and tucks her, in her sky-blue 
 mantle, under his arm, and walks into the house much bolder than 
 Brass. 
 
 Boots leaves me to judge what the amazeriient of that establishment 
 was, when these two tiny creatures all alone by themselves was 
 marched into the Angel, much more so, wlien lie, who luul seen tliem 
 without their seeing him, give the Governor his views of the expedition 
 they was upon. '" Cobbs," says the Governor, " if this is so, I must 
 set off myself to York, and quiet their friends' minds. In which case 
 you must keep your eye iip(m 'em, and humour 'em, till I come back. 
 But before I take these measures, Cobbs, I should wish you to find 
 from themselves whether your opinion is correct." " Sir, to you," 
 says Cobbs, " tliat shall be done directly." 
 
 So Boots gees up-stairs to the Angel, and there ho finds Master
 
 0)1 the Road to Gretna Green. 43 
 
 Harry on a c-normous sofa, immense at any time, but looking like 
 the Great Bed of Ware, compared \\iih. Lim, a drying the eyes of 
 Miss Norah with his pockct-hankcchcr. Their little legs -was 
 entirely off the ground, of course, and it really is not possible for 
 Boots to exj^ress to me how small them chihlren looked. 
 
 " It's Cobbs ! It's Cobbs ! " cries Master Harry, and comes running 
 to him, and catching hold of his hand. Miss Norah comes running 
 to him on t'other side and catching hold of his t'other hand, and they 
 both jump for joy. 
 
 " 1 see you a getting out, sir," says Cobbs. " I thought it was you. 
 I thought I couldn't be mistaken in your height and figure. "What's 
 Iho object of your journey, sir ? Matrimonial ? " 
 
 " We are going to be married, Cobbs, at Gretna Green," returned 
 the boy. " "We have run away on purpose. Norah has been in rather 
 low spirits, Cobbs ; but she'll be happy, now we have found you to be 
 our friend." 
 
 " Thank you, sir, and thank you, miss," soys Cobbs, "for your good 
 ojjiniou. iJid you bring any luggage with you, sir?" 
 
 If I will believe Boots when he gives me his word and honour 
 upon it, tlie lady had got a parasol, a smelling-bottle, a round and a 
 half of cold buttered toast, eight peppermint drops, and a hair-brush, 
 seemingly a doll's. The gentleman had got about half a dozen 
 yards of string, a knife, three or four sheets of writing-jiaper folded 
 up sur2)rising small, a orange, and a Chancy mug with his name 
 upon it. 
 
 " What may be the exact natur of your plans, sir ? " says Cobbs. 
 
 ' ' To go on," replied the boy, which the courage of that boy 
 Mas something wonderful ! " in the morning, and be married 
 to-morrow." 
 
 "Just so, sir," says Cobbs. "Would it meet your views, sir, if I 
 was to accomjjany you ? " 
 
 When Cobbs said this, they both jumped for joy again, and cried 
 out, " Oh, yes, yes, Cobbs ! Yes ! " 
 
 " Well, sir," says Cobbs. " If you will excuse my having the 
 freedom to give an opinion, what I should recommend M'ould be this. 
 I'm acquainted with a pony, sir, which, put in a pheayton that I could 
 borrow, would take you and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, (myself 
 driving, if you approved.) to the end of your journey in a very sliort 
 space of time. I am not altogether sure, sir, that this pony will be 
 at liberty to-morrow, but even if you had to wait over to-morrow 
 for him, it might bo worth your while. As to the small account here, 
 sir, in case you was to find yourself running at all short, that don"t 
 signify ; because I'm a part proprietor of this inn, and it could stand 
 over." 
 
 Boots assures me that when they elap2)ed their hands, and jumped 
 for joy again, and called him " Good Cobbs ! " and " Dear Cobbs ! '' 
 and bent across him to kiss one another in the delight of their coii'
 
 44 ^i^i^' Holly -Tree. 
 
 fiding lieaits, liu felt himsolf the meanest rascal fur decoiving 'cm 
 that over was born. 
 
 " Is there anything you want just at present, sir ? " says CubbK, 
 mortally ashamed of himself. 
 
 " Wo should lilce some cakes after dinner," answered Master Harry, 
 folding his arms, putting out one leg, and looking straight at him, 
 " and two apples, and jam. With dinner we should like to have 
 toast-and-water. But Norah has always been accustomed to half a 
 glass of currant wine at dessert. And so have I." 
 
 " It shall be ordered at the bar, sir," says Cobbs ; and away he went. 
 
 Boots has the fooling as fresh upon him at this minute of speaking 
 as ho had then, that he would far rather have had it out in half-a- 
 dozen rounds with the Governor than have combined with him ; and 
 that he wished with all his heart there was any impossible place 
 where those two babies could make an impossible marriage, and live 
 impossibly hai:)py ever afterwards. However, as it couldn't be, he 
 went into the Governor's plans, and the Governor set off for York in 
 half an hour. 
 
 The way in which the women of that house without exception 
 every one of 'em married and single took to that boy when they 
 heard the story. Boots considers surprising. It was as much as he 
 could do to keep 'em from dashing into the room and kissing him. 
 They climbed up all sorts of places, at the risk of their lives, to look 
 at him through a pane of glass. They was seven deep at the keyhole. 
 They was out of their minds about him and his bold spirit. 
 
 In the evening, Boots wont into the room to see how the runaAvay 
 couple was g(,'tting on. The gentleman was on the window-seat, 
 supporting the lady in his arms. She had tears upon her face, and 
 was lying, very tired and half asleep, witli her head \ipon his 
 shoulder. 
 
 "Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, fatigued, sir?" says Cobbs. 
 
 " Yes, she is tired, Cobbs ; but she is n<jt used to be away from home, 
 and she has been in low spirits again. Cobbs, do you think you 
 could bring a biffin, please '? " 
 
 " I aslv your pardon, sir," says ( 'obbs. " What was it you ? " 
 
 " I think a Norfolk biffin would rouse her, Cobbs. She is very 
 fond of tliem." 
 
 Boots withdrew in search of the required restorative, and v>hen he 
 brouglit it in, the gentleman handed it to tlie lady, and fed her with 
 a spoon, and took a little himself; the lady being heavy witli sleep, 
 and rather cross. "What should you think, sir," says Cobbs, "of a 
 chaiiil)cr candlestick ? " Tlie gcuitlcman approved ; the chambermaid 
 went first, up the great staircase ; the lady, in her sky-blue mantle, 
 fV.llowod, gallantly escorted by the gentleman ; the gentleman em- 
 braced h'.M- at her door, and retired to his own apartment, wlicre Boots 
 softly locked liim up. 
 
 Boots couldn't but feel with increased acutencss wliat a base
 
 A Temporary Delay. 45 
 
 deceiver to was, when they consulted him at breakfast (they had 
 ordered sweet milk-and-water, and toast and currant jelly, over-night) 
 about the i)ony. It really was as much as he could do, he don't mind 
 confessing to mo, to look them two young things in the face, and 
 think what a wicked old father of lies he had grown up to be. How- 
 somever, he went on a lying like a Trojan about the pony. Ho told 
 'em that it did so unfort'nately happen that the pony was half clipped, 
 you see, and that he couldn't be taken out in that state, for fear it 
 should strike to his inside. But that he'd be finished clipping in tlie 
 course of the day, and that to-morrow morning at eight o'clock the 
 pheayton would be ready. Boots's view of the whole case, looking 
 back on it in my room, is, that Mrs. Harry Walniers, Junior, was 
 beginning to give in. She hadn't had her hair curled when she went 
 to bed, and she didn't seem quite up to brushing it herself, and its 
 getting in her eyes put her out. But nothing put out Master Harry. 
 He sat behind liis breakfast-cup, a tearing away at the jelly, as if he 
 had been his o^^n father. 
 
 After breakfast. Boots is inclined to consider that they draAved 
 soldiers, at least, ho knows tliat many such was found in the fire- 
 place, all on horseback. In the course of tlie morning. Muster Harry 
 rang the bell, it was surprising how that there b(jy did carry on, 
 and said, in a sprightly way, " Cobbs, is there any good walks in this 
 neighbourhood '? " 
 
 " Yes, sir," says Cobbs. " There's Love Lane." 
 
 " Get out with you, Cobbs ! " that was that there boy's cxjn-ession, 
 " you're joking." 
 
 " Begging your pardon, sir," says Cobbs, ' there really is Love Lane. 
 And a pleasant walk it is, and proud shall I be to show it to yourself 
 and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Jianior." 
 
 " Noruh, dear," said Master Harry, '' this is curious. Yv'o really 
 ought to see Love Lane. Put on your bonnet, my sweetest darling, 
 and we will go there with Cobbs." 
 
 Boots leaves me to judge what a Beast he felt himself to be, when 
 that young pair told him, as they all three jogged along together, that 
 they had made up their minds to give him two thousand guineas a 
 year as head-gardener, on accounts of his being so true a friend to 
 'cm. Boots could have wished at the moment that the earth would 
 have opened and swallowed him up, he felt so mean, with their beam- 
 ing eyes a looking at him, and believing him. "Well, sir, he turned 
 tlie conversation as well as he could, and he took 'em down Love Lane 
 to tlie water-meadows, and there Master Harry would have drowned 
 himself in half a moment more, a getting out a water-lily for her, 
 but nothing daunted that boy. Well, sir, they was tired out. All 
 being so new and strange to 'em, they was tired as tired could be. 
 And tlicy laid down on a bank of daisies, like the children in the 
 wood, leastways meadows, and fell asleep. 
 
 Boots don't know perhaps I do, but never mind, it don't signify
 
 46 Tlic Holly-Tree. 
 
 either way wLy it made a man fit to make a fool of himself to see 
 them two pretty babies a lying there in tlie clear still sunny day, not 
 dreaming lialf so hard when they was aslcci^ as they done when they 
 was awake. But, Lord ! when you come to think of yourself, you 
 know, and what a game you have been up to ever since you was in 
 your own cradle, and what a poor sort of a chap you are, and how it's 
 always eitlier Yesterday with you, or else To-morrow, and never 
 To-day, tl\at's where it is ! 
 
 Well, sir, they woke uj) at last, and then one thing was getting 
 pretty clear to Boots, namely, that Mrs. Harry Walmciscs, Junior's, 
 temper was on the move. "When Master Harry took her round the 
 waist, she said he " teased her so ; " and when he says, " Norah, my 
 young May Moon, your Harry tease' you ? " she tells him, " Yes ; and 
 I want to go home ! " 
 
 A bilcd fowl, and baked bread-and-butter pudding, brought l^Irs. 
 Walmers up a little ; but Boots could have wished, he must privately 
 own to me, to have seen her more sensible of the woice of love, and 
 less abandoning of herself to currants. However, Master Harry, he 
 Ivcpt Tip, and ]ns noble licart was as fond as ever. Mrs. Walmers 
 turned rery sleepy about dusk, and began to cry. Therefore, Mrs. 
 Walmers went off to bed as per yesterday ; and Master Harry ditto 
 repeated. 
 
 About eleven or twelve at night comes back the Governor in a 
 chaise, along with Mr. Walmers and a elderly lady. Mr. Walmers 
 looks amused and very serious, both at once, and says to our missis, 
 " We arc much indebted to you, ma'am, for your kind care of our 
 little children, which we can never sufliciently acknowledge. Pray, 
 ma'am, M-here is my boy ? " Our missis says, " Cobbs has the d( ar 
 child in charge, sir. Cobbs, show Forty ! " Then he says to Cobbs, 
 "Ah, Cobbs, I am glad to sec you! I understood you was here!" 
 And Cobbs says, " Yes, sir. Your most obedient, sir." 
 
 I may Ijc surprised to hear Boots say it, perhaps ; but Boots assures 
 me that his heart beat like a hammer, going up-stairs. " I beg your 
 pardon, sir," says he, while unlocking the door ; " I hope you are not 
 angry with Master Harry. For Muster Harry is a fine boy, sir, and 
 will do you credit and honour." And Boots signifies to me, that, if the 
 line boy's father had contradicted him in the daring state of mind in 
 which he then was, he thinks he should have ' fetched him a craclc." 
 and taken the consequences. 
 
 But Mr. Walmers only says, " No, Cobbs. No, my good fellow. 
 Thank you ! " And, the door being opened, goes in. 
 
 Boots goes in too, holding the light, and he sees Mr. Walmers go up 
 to the bedside, bend gently down, and kiss tlio little sleeping face. 
 Then he stands looking at it for a minute, looking wonderfully like 
 it (they do say he ran away with Mrs. Walmers) ; and then he gently 
 shakes the little shoulder. 
 
 " Harry, my dear boy ! Harry ! "
 
 Parted. 47 
 
 Master Harry starts up and looks at bim. Looks at Cobbs too. 
 Such is tbe bonour of tbat mite, tbat be looks at Cobbs, to see wbetber 
 be bas brougbt bim into trouble. 
 
 " I am not angry, my cbilcl. I only want you to dress yourself and 
 come bome." 
 
 " Yes, pa." 
 
 Master Harry dresses bimself quickly. His breast begins to swell 
 wbcn bo bas nearly finisbcd, and it swells more and more as be 
 stands, at last, a looking at bis fatber : bis fatber standing a looking 
 at bim, tbe quiet image of bim. 
 
 " Please may I " tbe spirit of tbat little creatur, and tbe way he 
 kept bis rising tears down ! " please, dear pa may I kiss Norab 
 before I go ? " 
 
 " You may, my child." 
 
 So he takes Master Harry in his band, and Boots leads tbe way 
 with the candle, and they come to that other bedroom, where the elderly 
 lady is seated by the bed, and poor little Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, 
 is fast asleep. Tliere the fatber lifts tbe child up to the pillow, and 
 he lays his little face down for an instant by the little warm face of 
 poor unconscious little Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, and gently 
 draws it to him, a sight so touching to the chambermaids who are 
 peeping through the door, that one of them calls out, " It's a shame 
 to part 'em ! " But this chambermaid was always, as Boots informs 
 me, a soft-hearted one. Not that there was any barm in tbat girl. 
 Far from it. 
 
 Finally, Boots says, that's all about it. Mr. Walmers drove away 
 in the chaise, having bold of Master Harry's band. The elderly lady 
 and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, that was never to be (she married 
 a Captain long afterwards, and died in India), went off next day. In 
 conclusion. Boots put it to me whether I bold with him in two 
 opinions : firstly, tbat tlicre are not many coujiles on their way to be 
 married who are lialf as innocent of guile as those two children ; 
 secondly, that it v/ould be a jolly good thing for a great many couples 
 on their way to be married, if they could only be stopped in time, 
 and brought bade separately. 
 
 THIRD BRANCH. 
 
 TIIK BILL. 
 
 I HAD been snowed up a whole week. The time bad bung so lightly 
 on my liands, that I should have been in great doubt of tlie fact but 
 for a piece of documentary evidence that lay upon my table. 
 
 Tlie road bad been dug out of the snow on the previous day, and
 
 48 The Holly -Tree. 
 
 tlio (locuraout in question was my bill. It testificLl empLatlcally to 
 my liaviug eaten and drunk, and warmed myself, and slept among tlio 
 sheltering brauelies of the Holly-Tree, seven days and niglits. 
 
 I had yesterday allowed the road twenty-four hours to im2)rovo 
 itself, finding that I required that additional margin of time for the 
 completion of my task. I had ordered my Bill to be tipou the table, 
 and a chaise to be at the door, "at eight o'clock to-morrow evening." 
 It was eight o'clock to-morrow evening when I buclclcd up my 
 travelling writing-desk in its leather case, paid my Bill, and got on 
 my warm coats and wraj^pors. Of course, no time now remained for 
 my travelling on to add a frozen tear to the icicles which were doubt- 
 less hanging plentifully about the farmhouse where I had first seen 
 Angela. What I had to do was to get across to Liverpool by the 
 shortest open road, there to meet my heavy baggage and embark. It 
 was quite enougii to do, and I had not an hour too much time to do 
 it in. 
 
 I liad taken leave of all my Holly-Tree friends almost, for the 
 time being, of my bashfulness too and was standing for half a 
 minute at the Inn door watching the ostler as he took another turn at 
 the cord which tied my portmanteau on the chaise, when I saw lamps 
 coming down towards the Holly-Tree. The road was so padded with 
 snow that no wheels were audible ; but all of us who wej'c standing 
 at the Inn door saw lamps coming on, and at a lively rate too, between 
 the walls of snow that had been heaped uj) on either side of the track. 
 The chambermaid instantly divined how the case stood, and called to 
 the ostler, " Tom, tliis is a Gretna job ! " The ostler, knowing tliat 
 her sex instinctively scented a marriage, or anything in that direction, 
 rushed up the yard bawling, " Next four out ! " and in a moment the 
 whole establishment was thrown into commotion. 
 
 I had a melancholy interest in seeing the happy man who loved 
 and was beloved ; and therefore, instead of driving off at once, I 
 remained at the Inn door when the fugitives drove up. A briglit- 
 eycd fellow, nuifilcd in a mantle, jumped out so briskly that he almost 
 overthrew me. He turned to apologise, and, by Heaven, it was 
 Edwin ! 
 
 " ( 'barley ! " said he, recoiling. " Gracious powers, what do you do 
 here ? " 
 
 "Edwin," said I, recoiling, "gracious powers, what do non do 
 here?" I struck my forehead as I said it, and an iusu] portable 
 blaze of light seemed to shoot before my eyes. 
 
 He hurried me into the little parlour (always kept witli a slow fire 
 in it and no i)oker), where i)osting com^jany waited while their horses 
 were putting to, and, shutting the door, said : 
 
 " riiarloy, forgive me ! " 
 
 "Edwin!" I returned. "Was this well? When T loved her so 
 dearly ! AVhen I Iiad garnered up my heart so long I " I cijuld say 
 uo more.
 
 An Explanation. 49 
 
 He was shocked when he saw how moved I was, and made the cruel 
 observation, that he had not thought I should have taken it so much 
 to heart. 
 
 I looked at him. I reproached him no more. But I looked at him. 
 
 " My dear, dear Charley," said he, " don't think ill of me, I beseech 
 you ! I know you have a right to my utmost confidence, and, believe 
 me, you have ever had it until now. I abhor secrecy. Its meanness 
 is intolerable to me. But I and my dear girl have observed it for 
 your sake." 
 
 He and his dear girl ! It steeled me. 
 
 " You have observed it for my sake, sir ? " said I, wondering how 
 his frank face could face it out so. 
 
 " Yes ! and Angola's," said he. 
 
 I found the room reeling round in an uncertain way, like a labour- 
 ing humming-top. " Explain yourself," said I, holding on by one 
 hand to an arm-cliair. 
 
 " Dear old darling Charley ! " returned Edwin, in his cordial 
 manner, "consider! When you were going on so happily with 
 Angola, why should I compromise you with the old gentleman by 
 making you a party to our engagement, and (after he had declined my 
 projoosals) to our secret intention? Surely it was better that you 
 should be able honourably to say, ' He never took counsel with me, 
 never told me, never breathed a word of it.' If Angela suspected it, 
 and showed me all the favour and support she could God bless her 
 for a precious creature and a priceless wife ! I couldn't help that. 
 Neither I nor Emmoline ever told her, any more than we told you. 
 And for the same good reason, ('barley ; trust me, for the same good 
 reason, and no other upon earth I " 
 
 Emmeline was Angela's cousin. Lived with her. Had been 
 brought xtp with her. Was her father's ward. Had property. 
 
 " Emmeline is in the chaise, my dear Edwin ! " said I, embracing 
 him with the greatest affection. 
 
 ' My good fellow ! " said he, " do you suppose I should be going to 
 Gretna Green without her '? " 
 
 I ran out with Edwin, I opened tlic chaise doer, I took Emmeline 
 in my arms, I folded her to my heart. She \^as wrapped in soft 
 white fur, like the snowy landscape : but was warm, and yoimg, and 
 lovely. I put their leaders to with my own hands, I gave the boys a 
 five-pound note apiece, I cheered them as they drove away, I drove 
 the other way myself as hard as I could pelt. 
 
 I never wont to Liverpool, I never went to America, I went straight 
 l)ack to London, and I married Angela. I have never until this time, 
 even to her, disclosed the secret of my character, and the mistrust 
 and the mistaken journey into which it led mc. When she, and they, 
 and our eight children and their seven I mean Edwin's and 
 I'^mmcline's, whose eldest girl is old enough now to wear white for 
 herself, and to look very like her mother in it - cume to read these 
 
 E
 
 50 The Holly-Tree. 
 
 pages, as of course they will, I shall hardly fail to bo found out at 
 last. Never niiud ! I can bear it, I began at the Holly-Tree, by 
 idle accident, to associate the Christmas time of year with human 
 interest, and with some inquiry into, and some care for, the lives of 
 those by Avhom I find myself surrounded. I hope that I am none the 
 worse for it, and that no one near me or afar otf is the worse for it. 
 And I say, May the green Holly-Tree flourish, striking its roots deep 
 into our Englisli ground, and having its germinating qualities carried 
 by the birds of Heaven all over the world !
 
 THK WRKCK OK THIC " COI.DKN MARV."
 
 THE 
 
 WKEOK OF THE GOLDEN MARY. 
 
 [18560 
 
 THE WRECK. 
 
 I WAS apprenticed to the Sea wlicn I v/as t^velve years old, and I Lave 
 encountered a great deal of rougli weatlaer, botli literal and meta- 
 phorical. It has always been my opinion since I first possessed such 
 a thing as an opinion, that the man who knows only one subject is 
 next tiresome to the man who knows no subject. Therefore, in the 
 course of my life I have taught myself whatever I could, and although 
 I am not an educated man, I am able, I am thankful to say, to have 
 an intelligent interest in most things, 
 
 A person might supjiosc, from reading the above, tLat I am in the 
 habit of holding forth about number one. That is not the case. Just 
 as if I was to come into a room among strangers, and must either be 
 introduced or introduce myself, so I have taken the liberty of passing 
 these few remarks, simply and plainly that it may be known who and 
 what I am. I will add no more of the sort than that my name is 
 William George liavender, that I was born at Penrith half a year 
 after my own father was drov/ncd, and that I am on the second day of 
 this present blessed Christmas week of one thousand eight hundred and 
 fifty-six, fifty-six years of age. 
 
 When the rumour first v/eut flying up and down that there was 
 gold in California which, as most people know, was before it was 
 discovered in the British colony of Australia I was in the "West 
 Indies, trading among the Islands. Being in command and likewise 
 part-owner of a smart schooner, I had my work cut out for me, and I 
 was doing it. Cousef[ueutly, gold in California was no business of 
 mine. 
 
 But, by the time v^hen I came hvomc to England again, the thing 
 was as clear as your hand held up before you at noon-day. There 
 was Californian gold in the museums and in the goldsmiths' shoj)s, 
 and the very first time I v/ent upon 'Change, I met a friend of mine (a 
 seafaring man like myself), with a Californian nugget hanging to his
 
 52 Tlic Wreck of the Golden Mary. 
 
 watcli-cliftin. I liandlcd it. It was as like a peeled waluut with bits 
 unevenly broken oiF here and there, and then clcctrotyped all over, 
 as over I saw anything in my life. 
 
 I am a single man (she was too good for this world and for me, 
 and she died six weeks before our marriage-day), so when I am 
 asliore, I live in my house at Poplar. My liouse at Poplar is taken 
 care of and Iccpt sliip-shape by an old lady who was my mother's 
 maid before I was born. She is as handsome and as upright as any 
 old lady in the world. She is as fond of mo as if she had ever had 
 an only son, and I was he. "Well do I know wherever I sail that she 
 never lays down her liead at night without having said, "Merciful 
 Lord ! bless and preserve William George Ravcnder, and send him 
 safe home, tlirough Christ our Saviour ! " I liave thought of it in 
 many a dangerous moment, wlien it lias done me no harm, I am sure. 
 
 In my house at Poplar, along with this old lady, I lived quiet for 
 best part of a year : having had a long sjicll of it among the Islands, 
 and liaving (which was very uncommon in me) taken the fever rather 
 badl}'. At last, being strong and hearty, and having read every book 
 I could lay liold of, right out, I was walking down Loadenhall Street 
 in tlie City of London, tliinking of turning-to again, when I met what 
 I call Smithiclc and Watcrsby of Liverpool. I chanced to lift up my 
 eyes from loolcing in at a ship's chronometer in a window, and I saw 
 him bearing down upon me, head on. 
 
 It is, personally, neither Sniithick, nor AA'atersby, that I lierc 
 mention, nor was I ever acquainted with any man of cither of those 
 names, nor do I think that there has been any one of either of those 
 names in tliat Liverpool House for years back. But, it is in reality 
 the House itself that I refer to ; and a wiser merchant or a truer 
 gentleman never stcp])cd. 
 
 " INIy dear Captain Kavender," says he. " Of all the men on eartli, 
 I wanted to see you most. I was on my way to you." 
 
 " Well ! " says I. " That looks as if you iccre to sec me, don't it ? " 
 With tliat I put my arm in liis, and we walked on towards tlie IJoyal 
 Exchange, and when we got there, wallvcd uj) and down at the back of 
 it where the Clock-Tower is. We walk'cd an liour and more, for he 
 had mucli to say to mo. lie had a scheme for chartering a new ship 
 of tlieir own to take out cargo to the diggers and emigrants in (^ili- 
 fornia, and to buy and bring back gold. Into tlie jjarticulars of that 
 scheme I will not enter, and I have no right to enter. All I say of 
 it is, that it was a very original one, a very Inie one, a vei-y sound one, 
 and a very lucrative one beyond doubt. 
 
 lie imparted it to mo as freely as if I had })Oon a part of himself. 
 After doing so, he made me the handsomest sliaiing dllbr that ever 
 was made to nae, boy or man or I believe to any other ciqitain in the 
 Merchant Navy and he took this round turn to finish with : 
 
 "li'ivender, you are well aware that the lawlessness of that ce.ast 
 and country at present, is as special as the circumstances iu Avliich it
 
 Discussing Plans. $3 
 
 is placed. Crews of vessels out\yard-boiincl, desert as soon as they 
 make the land ; crews of vessels liomoward-bound, ship at enormous 
 Avages, with the express intention of murdering the captain and 
 seizing the gold freight ; no man can trust anotlier, and the devil 
 seems let loose. Now," says he, " you know my opinion of you, and 
 you know I am only expressing it, and with no singularity, when I 
 tell you that you are almost the only man on whose integrity, dis- 
 cretion, and energy " &c., &c. For, I don't want to repeat what 
 
 he said, though I was and am sensible of it. 
 
 Notwithstanding my being, as I have mentioned, quite ready for a 
 voyage, still I had some doubts of this voyage. Of course I knew, 
 without being told, that there were peculiar difficulties and dangers 
 in it, a long way over and above those which attend all voyages. It 
 must not bo supposed that I was afraid to face them ; but, in my 
 opinion a man has no manly motive or sustainment in his own breast 
 for facing dangers, unless he has well considered what they are, and 
 is able quietly to say to himself, "None of these perils can now take 
 me by surprise ; I shall know what to do for the best in any of them ; 
 all the rest lies in the higher and greater hands to which I humbly 
 commit myself." On this principle I have so attentively considered 
 (regarding it as my duty) all the hazards I have ever been able to 
 think of, in the ordinary way of storm, shiinvreck, and fire at sea, that 
 I hope I should bo prepared to do, in any of those cases, whatever 
 could be done, to save the lives intrusted to my cbarge. 
 
 As I was thoughtful, my good friend proposed that he should leave 
 me to walk there as long as I liked, and that I should dine with him 
 by-aud-by at his club in Pall Mall. I accepted the invitation and I 
 walked up and down there, quarter-deck fashion, a matter of a couj^le 
 of hours ; now and then looking up at the weathercock as I might 
 have looked up aloft ; and now and then taking a look into Cornbill, 
 as I might have taken a look over the side. 
 
 All dinner-time, and all after dinner-time, we talked it over again. 
 I gave him my views of liis plan, and he very much approved of the 
 same. I told him 1 had nearly decided, but not qiiite. " Well, well," 
 says he, " come down to Liverpool to-morrow with me, and see the 
 Golden Mary." I liked the name (her name was Mary, and she was 
 golden, if golden stands for good), so I began to feel that it w'as 
 almost done when I said I would go to Liverpool. On the next 
 morning but one we were on board the Golden Mary. I might have 
 known, from his asking me to come down and see her, what she was. 
 I declare her to have been tlie completest and most exquisite Beauty 
 that ever I set my eyes upon. 
 
 We had inspected every timber in her, and had come back to the 
 gangway to go ashore from the dock-basin, when I put out my hand 
 to my friend. " Touch U2)on it," says I, " and touch heartily. I take 
 command of this ship, and I am hers and yours, if I can get John 
 Steadiraan for my chief mate."
 
 54 The Wreck of the Golden Mary. 
 
 John Stc<a(liinan bad sailed witli mc four voyages. The first voyage 
 John vras third mate out to China, and camo home second. Tho 
 other tliree voyages he was my first officer. At this time of cliarter- 
 ing tho Golden Mary, he was aged thirty-two. A brisk, bright, blue- 
 eyed fellow, a very neat figure and rather under the middle size, 
 never out of the way and never in it, a face that pleased everybody 
 and that all cliildren took to, a habit of going about singing as cheerily 
 as a blackbird, and a perfect sailor. 
 
 Wo were in one of those Liverpool hackney-coaches in less than 
 a minute, and we cruised about in her upwards of three hours, looking 
 for John. John had come home from Van Dicmen's Land barely a 
 month before, and I had heard of him as taking a frisk iu Liverpool. 
 We asked after liim, among many other places, at the two boarding- 
 houses he wa;! fondest of, and we found ho had had a week's spell at 
 oacli of them ; but, he liad gone hero and gone tlierc, and had set oii' 
 " to lay out on the main-to'-gallant-yard of the higliest Welsh moun- 
 tain " (so he had told the people of the house), and where he might 
 bo then, or when he might come back, nobody could tell us. But it 
 Avas surprising, to be sure, to see how every face brightened the 
 moment there was mention made of the name of Mr. Steadiman. 
 
 Wo were taken aback at meeting with no better luck, and we had 
 wore shij) and jnit her head for my friends, when as we were jogging 
 through tho streets, I clap my eyes on John himself coming out of a 
 toyshop ! He was carrying a little boy, and conducting two uncommon 
 pretty women to their coach, and ho told mc afterwards that lie had 
 never in his life seen one of Hie thrcjc before, but tliat he was so 
 taken with them on looliing in at the toyshop wliile they were buying 
 the eliild a cranky Noah's Ark, very mucli down by tlio head, that he 
 had gone in and asked tho ladies' permission to treat him to a t(jloral,'ly 
 correct Cutter there was in the windo^v, in order that sucli a hand- 
 f^orno boy miglit not grow up witli a lubberly idea of naval architec- 
 turo. 
 
 Vv'e stood off and on until the hulios' coachman liogan to give way, 
 and then avo hailed John, On liis coming aboard of us, I told him, 
 very gravely, what I had said to my friend. It struck liini.as he said 
 himself, amidship.,. TIo was quite shaken by it. '-Captain IJavcnder,'' 
 Avorc John Steadiman's words, " sucli an ojiinion from you is true 
 commendation, and I'll sail round the world Avitli you for twenty 
 y(!ars if j'on lioist the signal, and stand liy you f )r ever I "' And 
 now indeed I felt that it AA'as done, and that the (loldcn Tilary Avas 
 all )at. 
 
 (has;-; never grew yet under iho IVol of Sinilhick and ^Villersby. 
 The riggers Avere fiut of lliat ship in a fortnight's time, and we had 
 begun taking iu cargo. John Avas always aboard, seeing (;v(>r;>-t]iing 
 stowed wiili liis own eyes; and Avhenev( r I went aboard myself early 
 or late, Avhetlier he was below in tlie hold, or on deck at thr; hatchway, 
 or overhauling his cabin, nailing ui) jiictures in it of the Blusli Jfrises
 
 The Passengers. 55 
 
 of Eugland, the Blue Belles of Scotland, and the female Shamrock of 
 Ireland : of a certainty I heard John singing like a blackbird. 
 
 We had room for twenty passengers. Our sailing advertisement 
 was no sooner out, than we might have taken these twenty times over. 
 In entering our men, I and John (both together) i:)icked them, and we 
 entered none but good hands as good as were to be found in that 
 port. And so, in a good ship of the best build, v/ell owned, well 
 arranged, well officered, well manned, vv'ell found in all respects, we 
 parted with our pilot at a quarter past four o'clock in the afternoon 
 of the seventh of IMarch, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-one, 
 and stood with a fair wind out to sea. 
 
 It may be easily believed that up to that time I had had no leisure 
 to be intimate with my passengers. The most of them were then in 
 their berths sea-sick ; however, in going among them, telling them 
 what was good for them, persuading them not to be there, but to come 
 up on deck and feel the breeze, and in rousing them with a joke, or a 
 comfortable word, I made acquaintance with them, perhaps, in a more 
 friendly and confidential way from the first, than I might have done 
 at tJio cabin table. 
 
 Of my passengers, I need only particularise, just at present, a 
 bright-eyed blooming young wife who was going out to join her 
 husband in California, taking with her their only child, a little girl of 
 three years old, whom he had never seen ; a sedate young woman in 
 black, some five years older (about tliirty as I sliould say), who was 
 going out to join a brother ; and an old gentleman, a good deal like a 
 hawk if his eyes had been better and not so red, who was always talk- 
 ing, morning, noon, and niglit, about the gold discovery. But, 
 whether he was making the voyage, thinking his old arms could dig 
 for gold, or wlicthcr his speculation was to buy it, or to barter for it, 
 or to clieat for it, or to snatch it anyhow from other peojile, was his 
 secret. He kept liis secret. 
 
 These three and the child were the soonest well. The cliild was a 
 most engaging child, to be sure, and very fond of me : though I am 
 bound to admit that John Steadiman and I were borne on her pretty 
 little books in reverse order, and tliat he was captain there, and I Avas 
 mate. It was beautiful to watch her with John, and it was beautiful to 
 watch John with her. Few would have thought it possible, to sec 
 John playing at bo-pccp round the mast, that he was the man who 
 had caught up an iron bar and struck a Malay and a Maltese dead, as 
 they were gliding with their knives down tlie cabin stair aboard the 
 barque Old England, when the captain lay ill in his cot, oft' Saugar 
 Point. But he was ; and give him his back against a bulwark, he 
 would have done the same by half a dozen of them. The name of the 
 young mother was Mrs. Atherfield, the name of tlic young lady in 
 black was Miss Coleshaw, and the mane of the old gentleman was Mr. 
 B'lrx. 
 
 As the child had a quantity of shining fair hair, clustering in curls
 
 56 The Wreck of the Golden Mary. 
 
 all about her face, and as her name was Lncy, Stcadlman gave bcr tlie 
 name of iho Golden Lucy. So, wo Lad the Goklcn Lucy and the 
 Golden Mary ; and John kept up the idea to that extent as he and 
 the child Aveut playing about the decks, that I believe she used to 
 think the ship was alive somehow a sister or companion, going to 
 the same ])lace as herself. She liked to be by the wheel, and in line 
 weather, I have often stood by the man whose trick it was at tlie 
 wheel, only to hear her, sitting near my feet, talking to the ship. 
 Never had a child such a doll before, I suppose ; but she made a doll 
 of the Golden Mary, and used to dress her up by tying ribbons and 
 little bits of finery to the belaying-pins ; and nobody ever moved 
 them, unless it was to save them from being blown away. 
 
 Of course I took charge of the two young women, and I called them 
 "my dear," and they never mindotl, knowing that whatever I said was 
 said in a fatherly and protecting spirit. I gave them their places on 
 each side of me at dinner, Mrs. Athorficld on my right and Miss 
 Coleshaw on my left ; and I directed the unmarried lady to serve out 
 the breakfast, and the married lady to serve out the tea. Likewise 
 I said to my black steward in tlieir presence, " Tom Snow, these two 
 ladies are equally the mistresses of this house, and do you obey tlieir 
 orders equally ; " at which Tom laughed, and they all laughed. 
 
 Old Mr. liarx was not a pleasant man to look at, nor yet to talk to, 
 or to be with, for no one could help seeing that he was a sordid and 
 selfish character, and that he had warjied farther and further out of 
 the straight with time. Not but what he was on his best behaviour 
 with us, as everybody was ; fijr we liad no bickering among us, for'ard 
 or aft. I only mean to say, he was not the man one would have 
 chosen for a messmate. If choice there had been, one might even 
 have gone a few points out of one's course, to say, " No ! Not him ! "' 
 But, there was one curious inconsistency in Mr. Earx. That Wiss. 
 that he took an astonishing interest in the cliild. He looked, and 
 I may add, he was, one of the last of men to care at all for a child, or 
 to care much for any human creature. Still, he went so far as to 
 be liabituully uneasy, if the child was long on deck, out of his 
 sight. lie was always afraid of her falling ovci'Ijoard, or tailing 
 down a hatchway, or of a block or what n(!t coming down upon 
 her fi'oni the rigging in the working of the sliij), or of her getting 
 some hurt or other. He used to look at her and touch her, as 
 if she was something i)recious to him. He was always solicitous 
 about her not injuring licr health, and constantly entreated her 
 mother to be careful of it. This was so ]uueh llu; niorc' curious, 
 because the child did not like him, but ustd to shrink away from liiiu, 
 and would not even put oi;t her hand to him without coaxing from 
 (thers. 1 believe that every soul on board fre(juently noticed tliis, 
 and not one of us understood it. However, it was such a jdain fact, 
 that John Steadiman said more than once when old ?.lr. Ifarx was not 
 within earshot, thiif if tlie Giddeu Marv felt a tenderness for the dear
 
 Icebergs and Extreme Darkness, 57 
 
 old gentleman slie carried in lior lap, slie must be bitterly jealous of 
 the Golden Lucy. 
 
 Before I go any further with this narrative, I will state that our 
 ship was a barque of three hundred tons, carrying a crew of eighteen 
 men, a second mate in addition to John, a carpenter, an armourer or 
 smith, and two apprentices (one a Scotch boy, jwor little follow). We 
 had three boats ; the Long-boat, cajiable of carrying twenty-five men ; 
 tlie Cutter, cai)able of carrying fifteen ; and the Surf-boat, capable of 
 carrying ten. I put down the capacity of these boats according to 
 the numbers they were really meant to hold. 
 
 We had tastes of bad weather and head-winds, of course ; but, on 
 the whole we had as fine a rim as any reasonable man coiild expect, 
 for sixty days. 1 then began to enter two remarks in the ship's Log 
 and in my Journal ; first, that there was an unusual and amazing 
 quantity of ice ; second, that the nights were most wonderfully dark, 
 in spite of the ice. 
 
 For five days and a half, it seemed quite useless and hopeless to 
 alter the shiji's course so as to stand out of the way of this ice. I 
 made what southing I could ; but, all that time, we were beset by it. 
 Mrs. Atherfield after standing by me on deck once, looking for some 
 time in an awed manner at the great bergs that surrounded us, said in 
 a whisper, " ! Captain Ravender, it looks as if the whole solid earth 
 had changed into ice, and broken up ! " I said to her, laughing, " I 
 don't wonder that it does, to your incxi^erienced eyes, my dear." 
 But I liad never seen a twentieth part of the quantity, and, in reality, 
 I was pretty much of her opinion. 
 
 However, at two p.m. on the afternoon of the sixth day, that is to 
 say, when we were sixty-six days out, John Steadiman who had gone 
 aloft, sang out from the top, that the sea Avas clear ahead. Before 
 four P.M. a strong breeze springing uj) right astern, we vrere in open 
 water at sunset. The breeze then freshening into half a gale of wind, 
 and the Golden Mary being a very fast sailer, we went before the 
 wind merrily, all night. 
 
 I had thought it impossible tliat it could be darker than it had been, 
 until the sun, moon, and stars should fall out of the Heavens, and 
 Time should be destroyed ; but, it had been next to light, in com- 
 parison with what it was now. The darkness was so profound, that 
 looking into it was painful and oppressive like looking, without 
 a ray of light, into a dense black bandage put as close before the 
 eyes as it could be, without toiicliing them. I doubled the look-out, 
 and John and I stood in the bow side-by-side, never leaving it all 
 night. Yet I sliould no more Ijave kuoA^n that lie was near me when 
 he was silent, without putting out my arm and touching liim, than 
 I should if he had turned in and been fast asleep below. We were 
 not so much looking out, all of us, as listening to the utmost, both 
 with our eyes and ears. 
 
 Next day, I found that the mercury in the barometer, v/hich had
 
 58 T]ic Wreck of the Golden Mary. 
 
 risou steadily siuco wc cleared tbc ice, remained Kteady. I liad had 
 very good oLscrvatious, witli now and then the interruption of a day 
 or 80, since our departure. I got the sun at noon, and found that wo 
 were in Lat. iJ8" S., Long. GO" W., otf New South Shetland ; in the 
 neiglihourhood of Capo Horn. We were sixty-seven days out, that 
 day. Tlic ship's reckoning was accurately worked and made up. 
 The ship did her duty admirably, all on board were Avell, and all 
 hands were as smart, efficient, and contented, as it was possible to be. 
 
 Wiicn tlio night came on again as dark as before, it was the eighth 
 night I had boon on declc. Nor had I taken more than a very little 
 slecj) in the day-time, my station being always near the helm, and 
 often at it, while wo were among the ice. Few but those who have 
 tried it can imagine the difficulty and pain of only keeping tlic eyes 
 open pliysically open under such circumstances, in such darkness. 
 They get struck by the darkness, and blinded by the darkness. Tliey 
 make patterns in it, and they flash in it, as if they had gone out of 
 your head to look at you. On the turn of midnight, .John Steadiman, 
 'who was alert and fresh (for I had always made him turn in by day), said 
 to me, " Captain Kavender, I entreat of you to go below. I am sure 
 you can hardly stand, and your voice is getting weak, sir. (io below, 
 and take a little rest. I'll call you if a block chafes.'' I said to 
 Jolm in answer, " Well, well, John ! Let ns wait till tlic turn of one 
 o'clock, before we talk about that." I had just had one of the shiji's 
 lanterns held up, that I might see how the night went by my watch, 
 and it was then twenty minutes after twelve. 
 
 At iive minute.-; before one, John sang out to the boy to bring tho 
 lantern again, and when 1 told him once more what the time was, 
 entreated and prayed of me to go below. " Captain liavendei',"' says 
 he, " all's well ; we can't ailbrd to have you laid up for a single hour ; 
 and T respectfully and earnestly beg of you to gt) below." Tlie end 
 of it was, that I agreed to do so, on tlie understanding that if I failed 
 1o come up of my own accord within three hours, I was to be })nii('- 
 tnally caih.'d. Having settled that, I left Jolm in charge, lint 1 
 called him to me once afterwards, to ask him a question. I had been 
 to look at tho barometer, and had seen tlie mercury still perfectly 
 steady, and had come up the comjianion again to take a last look 
 a1)out me - if I can use such a word in reference to such darkness 
 Avhen I thought tliat the waves, as tlie Golden Mary parted tliem and 
 shook them oiF. liud a hollow sound in them ; something that I fancied 
 was a rather unnsntil reverberation. I was standing by the; ([uarter- 
 deck rail on tlie starboai'd side, whc'ii 1 caHed John aft to me, and 
 biide liim list(!n. He did so with the greatest attention. Turning to 
 ni(! he then said, ' I'ely upon it, (yuptain iJavender, you have been 
 witlionl, rest too long, and the novelty is only in the state of your 
 sense of liearing." 1 tliought so too by that time, and 1 tliink so now, 
 tliough I can never know for absolute certain in this world, whether 
 it was or not.
 
 The Ship strikes an Iceberg. 59 
 
 When I left JoLn Steadiman in charge, the ship was still going at 
 a great rate tlirongh the water. The wdncl still blew right astern. 
 Though she was making great way, she was under shortened sail, and 
 had no more than she could easily carry. All was snug, and nothing 
 complained. There was a pretty sea running, but not a very high 
 sea neither, nor at all a confused one. 
 
 I turned in, as we seamen say, all standing. The meaning of that 
 is, I did not pull my clothes olf no, not even so much as my coat : 
 though I did my shoes, for my feet were badly swelled with the deck. 
 There was a little swing-lamp alight in my cabin. I thought, as I 
 looked at it before shutting my eyes, that I was so tired of darkness, 
 and troubled by darkness, that I could have gone to sleci") best in the 
 midst of a million of flaming gas-lights. That was the last thought 
 I had before I went off, except the prevailing thought that I should 
 not be able to get to sleep at all. 
 
 I dreamed that I was back at Penrith again, and was trying to get 
 round tlie churcli, which had altered its shape very much since I last 
 saw it, and was cloven all down the middle of the steeple in a most 
 singular manner. Wliy I wanted to get round the church I don't 
 know ; but I was as anxious to do it as if my life depended on it. 
 Indeed, I believe it did in the dream. For all that, I could not get 
 round the cliureh. I was still trying, when I came against it with a 
 violent shock, and was flung out of my cot against the ship's side. 
 Shrieks and a terrific outcry struck me far harder tlian the bruising 
 limbers, and amidst sounds of grinding and crashing, and a heavy 
 rushing and breaking of water sounds I understood too well I 
 made my way on deck. It was not an easy thing to do, for the ship 
 lioeled over fiightfnlly, and M'as beating in a furious manner. 
 
 I could not see the men as I went forward, but I could hear that 
 they vv'cre hauling in sail, in disorder. I had my trumpet in my 
 hand, and, after directing and encouraging tliem in tliis till it was 
 done, I hailed first John Steadiman, and then my second mate, Mr. 
 William liames. Both answered clearly and steadily. Nov/, I had 
 practised them and all my crew, as I have ever made it a custom to 
 practise all who sail with me, to take cerlain stations and wait my 
 orders, in case of any unexpected crisis. When my voice was heard 
 l.nniug^ and their voices v\-ere heard answering, I was aware, through 
 ill] the noises of the ship and sea, and all the crying of the passengers 
 l)elow, that tliere was a pause. " Are you ready, EamcsV" "Ay, 
 ay, sir ! '" " Then liglit up, for God's sake ! " In a moment he and 
 anotlicr wore burning bliic-liglits, and tlie ship and all on board 
 seemed to be enclosed in a mist of light, under a great black dome. 
 
 The light shone up so high that I could see the huge Iceberg xijwn 
 which we had struck, cloven at the top and down the middle, exactly 
 lil-ie Penrith Glmreli in my dream. At the same moment I could see 
 the watch last relieved, crowding up and down on deck ; I could see 
 Sirs. Atherfield and Miss Coleshaw thrown about on the top of the
 
 6o TJie Wreck of the Golden Mary. 
 
 companion as tliey struggled to bring the cLilJ up from below ; I 
 could see that the masts were going with the shock and the beating 
 of the ship ; I could soo the frightful breach stove in on the starboard 
 side, half the length of the vessel, and the sheatliing and timbers 
 spirting up ; I could sec that the Cutter was disabled, in a wreck of 
 broken fragments; and I could see every eye turned upon me. It is 
 my belief that if there had been ten thousand eyes there, I should 
 have seen them all, with their different looks. And all this in a 
 moment. But you must consider what a moment. 
 
 I saw the men, as they looked at me, fall towards their appointed 
 stations, like good men and true. If she had not righted, they could 
 have done very little there or anywhere but die not that it is little 
 for a man to die at his post I mean tliey could have done nothing to 
 save the jmssengcrs and themselves. Ha2)pily, however, the violence 
 of the shock with which we had so determinedly borne down direct on 
 that fatal Iceberg, as if it had been our destination instead of our 
 destruction, had so smaslicd and pounded the ship that she got off in 
 tliis same instant and righted. I did not want the car2)enter to tell 
 me she was filling and going down ; I could see and licar that. I 
 gave Rames the word to lower the Long-boat and the Surf-boat, and 
 I myself told oft" the men for each duty. Not one hung back, or came 
 before the other. I now whispered to John Steadiman, " John, I 
 stand at the gangway here, to see every soul on board safe over the 
 side. You shall have the next i)Ost of honour, and shall be the last 
 but one to leave the ship. Bring up the passengers, and range them 
 behind me ; and put what provision and water you can got at, in the 
 boats. Cast your eye for'ard, John, and you'll see you luive not a 
 moment to lose." 
 
 My noble fellows got the boats over the side as orderly as I ever 
 saw boats lowered with any sea running, and, when they were launched, 
 two or three of the nearest men in them as they held on, rising and 
 falling with the swell, called out, looking u^) at me, " Ca2)tain 
 Kavender, if anything goes wrong with us, and you are saved, 
 remember we stood by you ! " " ^Ye'll all stand by one another 
 ashore, yet, please God, my lads ! " says I. ' Hold on bravely, and be 
 tender with the women." 
 
 Tlie women were an example to us. They trembled very much, 
 but they were quiet and j)erfectly collected. " Kiss me, Captain 
 Ilavender," says Mrs. Atlierlield, ' and (Jod in heaven bless you, you 
 good man ! " " My dear," says I, " tliose words are better f(n' me than 
 a life-boat." I held her child in my arms till she was in tlu; boat, 
 and tlien kissed the child and lianded her safe down. I now said to 
 the 2)eo2)le in her, " You have got your freight, my huls, all but me. 
 and I am not coming yet awhile. Pull away from the ship, and 
 keep oft"! " 
 
 That was the Long-boat. Old Mr. liarx was one of her comple- 
 ment, and he was the only passenger wlio had greiilly misbehaved since
 
 Launching the Boats. 6 1 
 
 the ship struck. Others had been a little wild, which was not to be 
 wondered at, and not very blamable ; but, he had made a lamentation 
 aud uproar which it was dangerous for the people to hear, as there is 
 always contagion in weakness and selfishness. Plis incessant cry had 
 been that he must not be separated from the child, that he couldn't 
 see the child, and that he and the child must go together. He had 
 even tried to wrest the child out of my arms, that he might keep her 
 in his. " Mr. Earx," said I to him when it came to that, " I have a 
 loaded pistol in my pocket ; and if you don't stand out of the gang- 
 way, and keep perfectly quiet, I shall shoot you through the heart, 
 if you have got one." Says he, " You won't do murder, Captain 
 Eavender!" "No, sir," says I, "I won't murder forty-four people 
 to humour you, but I'll shoot you to save them." After that he was 
 quiet, and stood shivering a little way off, until I named him to go 
 over the side. 
 
 The Long-boat being cast off, the Surf-boat was soon filled. There 
 only remained aboard the Golden Mary, John Mullion the man who 
 had kept on burning the blue-lights (and who had lighted every now 
 one at every old one before it went out, as quietly as if he had been 
 at an illumination) ; John Steadiman ; and myself. I hurried those 
 two into the Surf-boat, called to them to keep ofi", and waited with a 
 grateful and relieved heart for the Long-boat to come and take me in, 
 if slio could. I looked at my watch, and it showed me, by the blue- 
 light, ten minutes past two. They lost no time. As soon as she was 
 near enough, I s\vung myself into her, and called to the men, " With 
 a will, lads ! She's reeling ! " We were not an inch too far out of 
 the inner vortex of her going down, when, by the blue-light which 
 John Mullion still burnt in the bow of the Surf-boat, we saw her 
 lurch, and plunge to the bottom head-foremost. The child cried, 
 weeping wildly, " the dear Golden Mary ! O look at her ! Save 
 her ! Save the poor Golden Mary ! " And then the liglit burnt out, 
 and the black dome seemed to come down upon us. 
 
 I sup2)oso if we had all stood a-top of a mountain, and seen the 
 whole remainder of the world sink away from under us, we could 
 liardly have felt more shocked and solitary than we did when we 
 knew we were alone on the wide ocean, and that the beautiful ship in 
 which most of us had been securely asleep within half an hour was 
 gone for ever. There was an awful silence in our boat, aud such a 
 kind of palsy on the rowers and the man at the rudder, that I felt 
 they were scarcely keeping her before the sea. I spoke out then, 
 and said, ' Let every one here thank tlie Lord for our preservation ! " 
 All the voices answered (even the child's), " We thank the Lord ! " 
 I tlien said the Lord's Prayer, aud all hands said it after me with a 
 solemn murmuring. Then I gave the word " ( heerily, men, 
 (.'heerily ! " and I felt that they were handling the boat again as a 
 boat ought to be handled. 
 
 The Surf-boat now burnt another blue-light to show us v.'here they
 
 6.2 TJie Wreck of the Golden Mary. 
 
 were, and we made for lier, and laid ourselves as nearly alongside of 
 her as we dared. I had always kept my boats with a coil or two of 
 good stout stuff in each of them, so both boats had a rope at hand. 
 We made a shift, with much labour and trouble, to got near enough to 
 one another to divide the blue-lights (they were no use after that 
 night, for the sea-water soon got at them), and to get a tow-rope out 
 between us. All night long we kept together, sometimes obliged to 
 cast off the rope, and sometimes getting it out again, and all of us 
 wearying for the morning wliich appeared so long in coming that 
 old Mr. Karx screamed out, in spite of his fears of mo, " The world is 
 drawing to an end, and the sun will never rise any more ! " 
 
 When the day broke, I found that we were all huddled together in 
 a miserable manner. We were deep in the water ; being, as I found 
 on mustering, thirty-one in number, or at least six too many. In the 
 Surf-boat tliey were fourteen in number, being at least four too many. 
 The first thing I did, was to get myself passed to the rudder wliich 
 I took from that time and to get Mrs. Atherfield, her child, and Miss 
 Colesliaw, passed on to sit next mo, . As to old Mr. Earx, I put liim 
 in the bow, as far from us as I could. And I put some of the best 
 men near us in order that if I should drop there might bo a skilful 
 hand ready to take the helm. 
 
 The sea modcratiug as the sun came up, though the sky was cloudy 
 and wild, we spoke the other boat, to know what stores they had, and 
 to overliaul what we had. I had a compass in my jiocket, a small 
 telescope, a double-barrelled pistol, a knife, and a fire-box and matches. 
 Most of my men had knives, and some had a little tobacco : some, a 
 pipe as well. We had a mug among us, and an iron spoon. As to 
 provisions, there were in my boat two bags of biscuit, one piece of raw 
 beef, one piece of raw pork, a bag of coffee, roasted but not ground 
 (thrown in, I imagine, by mistake, for something else), two small 
 casks of water, and about half-a-gallon of rum in a keg. The Surf- 
 boat, having rather more rum than we, and fewer to drink it, gave us, 
 as I estimated, another quart into our Iceg. In return, we gave tlieni 
 three double handfuls of coffee, tied up in a piece of a liandker- 
 chief ; they reported that they bad aboard besides, a bag of bi.seuit, a 
 piece of beef, a small cask of water, a small box of lemons, and a 
 Dutch cheese. It took a long time to make these exchanges, and they 
 were not made without risk to both parties ; the sea running <piite 
 high enough to make our approaching near to one anotlier very 
 hazardous. In the bundle with the coffee, I conveyed to John 
 Steadiman (who had a ship's compass with liim), ii paj)cr written in 
 pencil, and torn from my pocket-book, containing the course I meant 
 to steer, in the hope of making land, or being picked up liy some 
 vessel I say in tlie hope, though I had little liopc of either 
 deliverance. I then sang out to him, so as all might hoar, that if we 
 two b fats could live or die together, v.'e would : but, that if we should 
 bo parted by the weather, and join company uo luoic, thoy should
 
 0)1 Short Allozvance. 6^ 
 
 have our prayers and blessings, and we asked for theirs. Wo then 
 gave them three cheers, which they returned, and I saw the men's 
 heads droop in both boats as they fell to their oars again. 
 
 These arrangements had occupied the general attention advan- 
 tageously for all, though (as I expressed in the last sentence) they 
 ended in a sorrowful feeling. I now said a few words to my fellow- 
 voyagers on the subject of the small stock of food on which our lives 
 depended if they were preserved from the great deep, and on the rigid 
 necessity of our eking it out in the most frugal manner. One and all 
 replied that whatever allowance I thought best to lay down should bo 
 strictly kept to. We made a pair of scales out of a thin scrap of 
 iron-plating and some twine, and I got together for weights such of 
 the heaviest buttons among us as I calculated made up some fraction 
 over two oiances. This was the allowance of solid food served out 
 once a-day to each, from that time to the end ; with the addition of a 
 coffee-berry, or sometimes half a one, when the weather was very fair, 
 for breakfast. We had nothing else whatever, but half a j)int of 
 water each per day, and sometimes, vvhen we Avere coldest and weakest, 
 a teaspoonful of rum each, served out as a dram. I know how 
 learnedly it can be shown that rum is poison, but I also know that 
 in this case, as in all similar cases I have ever read of which arc 
 numerous no words can express the comfort and support derived 
 from it. Nor have I the least doubt that it saved the lives of far 
 more than half our number. Having mentioned half a pint of water 
 as our daily allowance, I ought to observe that sometimes v/c had 
 less, and sometimes we had more ; for much rain fell, and we caught 
 it in a canvas stretched for the purpose. 
 
 Thus, at that tempestuous time of the year, and in that temiicstuou 
 part of the world, we shipwrecked people rose aud fell with the waves. 
 It is not my intention to relate (if I can avoid it) such circumstances 
 appertaining to our doleful condition as have been better told in 
 many otlier narratives of the kind than I can be exj^ected to toll 
 them. I will only note, in so many passing words, that day after day 
 and night after night, we received the sea upon our backs to prevent 
 it from swamping the boat ; that one party was always kept baling, 
 and that every hat and cap among us soon got worn out, though 
 patched up fifty times, as the only vessels we had for that service ; 
 that another party lay down in the bottom of the boat, while a third 
 rowed ; and that wo wore soon all in boils and blisters and rags. 
 
 The other boat was a source of such anxious interest to all of us 
 that I used to wonder whether, if we Avcre saved, the time could ever 
 come when the survivors in this boat of ours could bo at all indiilerent 
 to the fortunes of the survivors in that. We got out a tow-rope 
 whenever the weather permitted, but that did not often happen, and 
 how wo two parties kept Vi'ithiu the same horizon, as we did, He, who 
 mercifully permitted it to be so for our consolation, only knows. I 
 never shall forgot the looks vrith which, when the morniug light
 
 64 The Wreck of the Golden Mai-y. 
 
 came, wc used to gaze about us over the stormy waters, for the other 
 boat. We once parted company for seventy-two hours, and we 
 believed them to have gone down, as they did us. The joy on both 
 sides wlien we came within view of one another again, had something 
 in a manner Divine in it ; each was so forgetful of individual suffer- 
 ing, in tears of delight and sympathy for the people in the other boat. 
 
 I have been wanting to get round to the individual or personal 
 part of my subject, as I call it, and the foregoing incident puts me in 
 the right way. The patience and good disposition aboard of us, was 
 wonderful. I was not surjirised by it in the women ; for all men 
 born of women know what great qualities they will show when men 
 will fail ; but, I own I was a little surprised by it in some of the 
 men. Among one-and-thirty people assembled at the best of times, 
 tlicre will usually, I should say, be two or three uncertain tempers. 
 I knew that I had more than one rough temper with me among my 
 own people, for I had chosen those for the Long-boat that I might 
 have them iindor my eye. But, they softened under their misery, 
 and were as considerate of the ladies, and as compassionate of the 
 child, as the best among us, or among men they could not liave been 
 more so. I heard scarcely any complaining. The party lying down 
 would moan a good deal in tlieir sleej), and I would often notice a 
 man not always the same man, it is to be understood, but nearly all 
 of them at one time or other sitting moaning at his oar, or in his 
 place, as he looked mistily over tlic sea. When it happened to be 
 long before I could catch his eye, lie would go on moaning all tlio 
 time in the dismallest manner ; but, when our looks met, he would 
 brigliten and leave off. I almost always got the impression that he 
 did not know what sound lie had been making, but tliat he thought 
 he liad been humming a tune. 
 
 Our sufferings from cold and wet were far greater than our suffer- 
 ings from hunger. We managed to keei) tlio child warm ; but, I 
 doubt if any one else among us ever Avas ^^arm for five minutes 
 togetlier ; and tlie shivering, and the chattering of teeth, were sad to 
 hear. The cliild cried a little at first for lier lost playfellow, the 
 Golden Mary ; but hardly ever whimpered afterwards ; and wlien tlio 
 state of the weather made it jiossible, she used now and then to be 
 held w]) in tlic arms of some of us, to look over the sea for John 
 Steadiman's boat. I see the golden hair and the innocent face now, 
 between me and the driving clouds, like an angel going to fly away. 
 
 It liad happened on the second day, towards niglit, that IMrs. 
 Atlierfield, in getting Little Lucy to sleep, sang hor a song. She had 
 a soft, melodious voice, and, when she had finislied it, our peo])lo up 
 and Ix'ggcd for another. Hlie sang them anotlicr, and after it had 
 fallen (l.irlc ended with the Evening Hymn. From tliat fimc, when- 
 ever anytliing could be heard above the sea and wind, and while slic 
 had any voice left, notliing would serve the peojjle but that she sliould 
 sing at sunset. Slie always did, and always ended with the Evening
 
 Death of the Child. 6$ 
 
 Hymn. We mostly took up the last line, and shed tears when it was 
 done, but not miserably. Wo had a prayer night and morning, also, 
 when the weather allowed of it. 
 
 Twelve nights and eleven days we had been driving in the boat, 
 when old Mr. Earx began to be delirious, and to cry out to me to 
 throw the gold overboard or it would sink us, and we should all be 
 lost. For days past the child had been declining, and that was the 
 great cause of his wildness. He had been over and over again shriek- 
 ing out to me to give her all the remaining meat, to give her all the 
 remaining rum, to save her at any cost, or we should all be ruined. 
 At this time, she lay in her mother's arms at my feet. One of her 
 little hands was almost always creeping about her mother's neck or 
 chin. I had watched the wasting of the little hand, and I knew it 
 was nearly over. 
 
 The old man's cries were so discordant with the mother's love and 
 submission, that I called out to him in an angry voice, unless he held 
 his peace on the instant, I would order him to be knocked on the 
 head and thrown overboard. He was mute then, until the child died, 
 very peacefully, an hour afterwards : which was known to all in the 
 boat by the mother's breaking out into lamentations for the first time 
 since the wreck for, she had great fortitude and constancy, though 
 she was a little gentle woman. Old IMr. Rarx then became quite 
 uugovernable, tearing what rags he had on him, raging in impreca- 
 tions, and culling to me that if I had thrown the gold overboard 
 (always the gold with him !) I might have saved the child. " And 
 now," says he, in a terrible voice, " we shall founder, and all go to 
 the Devil, for our sins will sink us, when we have no innocent child 
 to bear us up ! " We so discovered with amazement, that this old 
 wretch had only cared for the life of the pretty little creature dear to 
 all of us, because of the influence he supcrstitiously hojicd she might 
 have in lu-escrving him ! Altogether it was too much for the smith 
 or armourer, who was sitting next the old man, to bear. He took him 
 by the throat and rolled him under the thwarts, where he lay still 
 enough for liours afterwards. 
 
 All tliat thirteenth night, Miss Coleshaw, lying across my knees as 
 I kept the lielm, comforted and supported the poor mother. Her 
 child, covered with a pea-jacket of mine, lay in her lap. It troubled 
 me all night to think that there was no Prayer-Book among us, and 
 that I could remember but very few of the exact words of the burial 
 service. When I stood up at broad day, all knew what was going to 
 be done, and I noticed that my poor fellows made the motion of 
 uncovering their heads, though their heads had been stark bare to the 
 sky and sea for many a weary hour. There was a long heavy swell 
 on, but otherwise it was a fair morning, and there were broad fields 
 of suuliglit on the waves in the east. I said no more than this : " I 
 am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord. He raised the 
 daughter of Jairus the ruler, and said she was not dead but slept. 
 
 1'^
 
 66 TJic Wnxk of the Golden Mary, 
 
 Ho raised tbo widow's son. He arose Himself, and was seen of many. 
 He loved little ehildreu, saying, Sutler them to come nuto Mo and 
 rebuke them not, for of sueh is the kingdom of heaven. In His name, 
 my friends, and committed to His mereiful goodness ! " With those 
 woi'ds I laid my rough face softly on the placid littlo forehead, and 
 buried the Golden Lucy in the grave of the Golden Mary. 
 
 Having had it on my mind to relate the end of tliis dear littlo child, 
 I have omitted something from its exact place, which I will supply 
 here. It will come quite as well here as anywhere else. 
 
 Foreseeing that if the boat lived througli the stormy weather, the 
 time must come, and soon come, when we should have absolutely no 
 morsel to eat, I had one momentous point often in my thoughts. 
 Although I had, years before that, fully satislicd myself that the 
 instances in which human beings in the last distress liave fed upon 
 each other, are exceedingly few, and have very seldom indeed (if ever) 
 occurred when the peoplo in distress, however dreadful their 
 extremity, have been accustomed to moderate forbearance and 
 restraint ; I say, though I had long before quite satisfied my mind on 
 this topic, I felt doubtful whether there might not have been in 
 former eases some harm and danger from keeping it out of siglit and 
 pretending not to think of it. ] felt doubtful whether some minds, 
 growing weak with fasting and exposure and having sueh a terrific 
 idea to dwell upon in secret, might not magnify it until it got to have 
 an awful attraction about it. This was not a new thought of mine, 
 for it had grown out of my reading. However, it came over me 
 stronger than it had ever done befurc as it had reason for doing in 
 the boat, and on the fourtli day I decided that I would bring out into 
 the light tliat unformed fear wliieh must have been more or less darkly 
 in every brain among us. Therefore, as r, means of beguiling tho 
 time and insjjiring hope, I gave them the best sunnnary in my i)ower 
 of lUigh's voyage of more than throe thousand miles, in an open boat, 
 after the Mutiny of tlio ]>ounty, and of the wonderful j>rcservation of 
 that boat's crew. Tlicy listened througliout with great interest, and 
 I concluded by telling them, that, in my opinion, tlio happiest cir- 
 cumstance in the whole narrative was, that IJligh, wlio was no delicate 
 man either, liad solemnly placed it on record therein that lie was sure 
 and certain that under no conceivable circumstances wliatever would 
 that emaciated party, who had gone tlirough all tlu; pains of faniine, 
 liave preyed on one anotlu^r. 1 cannot describe the; visilih; relief 
 wliich this spread tlirough the boat, and how the tears stoitd in every 
 eye. From that time I was as well convinced as liligh himself that 
 then; was no danger, and that this phantom, at any rate, did not 
 haunt us. 
 
 Now, it was a }art of Bligh's experience that Vilieii tlie peo]>le in 
 his boat were most cast down, nothing did them so nnieh gn'.d as 
 lieariug a sfory told by one of their imnilei'. NVlif-n T nieiitinncd 
 that, 1 saw that it struck the general uttvutiou us nineh as it did my
 
 After Twenty-three Days. 6y 
 
 own, for I had not thought of it until I came to it in my summary. 
 This was on the clay after Mrs. Atherfield first sang to us. I proposed 
 that, whenever the weather woukl permit, we shoukl have a story two 
 hours after dinner (I always issued the allowance I have mentioned at 
 one o'clock, and called it by that name), as well as our song at sunset. 
 The proposal was received with a cheerful satisfaction that warmed 
 my heart within me ; and I do not say too much when I say that those 
 tv<'o periods in the four-and-twenty hours were expected with positive 
 pleasure, and were really enjoyed by all hands. Spectres as w^e soon 
 were in our bodily wasting, our imaginations did not perish like the 
 gross flesh upon our bones. Music and Adventure, two of the great 
 gifts of Providence to mankind, could charm us long after that was 
 lost. 
 
 The wind was almost always against us after the second day ; and 
 for many days together we could not nearly hold our own. AVc had 
 all varieties of bad weather. We had rain, hail, snow, wind, mist, 
 thunder and lightning. Still the boats lived through the heavy seas, 
 and still we perishing people rose and fell with the great waves. 
 
 Sixteen nights and fifteen days, twenty nights and nineteen days, 
 twenty-four nights and twenty- three days. So the time went on. 
 Disheartening as I knew that our progress, or want of progress, must 
 be, I never deceived them as to my calculations of it. In the first 
 place, I felt that we were all too near eternity for deceit ; in the 
 second place, I knew that if I failed, or died, the man who followed 
 mo must have a knowledge of the true state of things to begin upon. 
 When I told them at noon, what I reckoned we had made or lost, they 
 generally received what I said in a tranquil and resigned manner, antl 
 always gratefully towards me. It was not unusual at any time of the 
 day for some one to burst out weeping loudly without any new cause ; 
 and, when the burst was over, to calm down a little better than 
 before. I had seen exactly the same thing in a house of mourning. 
 
 During the whole of this time, old Mr. Earx had had his fits of 
 calling out to me to throw the gold (always the gold !) overboard, and 
 of heaping violent reproaches upon me for not having saved the child ; 
 but now, the food being all gone, and I having nothing left to serve 
 out but a bit of coffee-berry now and then, ho began to be too weak 
 to do this, and consequently fell silent. Mrs. Atherfield and Miss 
 Coleshaw generally lay, each with an arm across one of my knees, and 
 her head upon it. They never complained at all. Up to the time of 
 her child's death, Mrs. Atherfield had bound up her own beautiful 
 hair every day ; and I took particular notice that this was always 
 before she sang her song at night, when every one looked at her. But 
 she never did it after the loss of her darling ; and it would have been 
 now all tangled with dirt and wet, but that Miss Coleshaw was careful 
 of it long after she was herself, and would somotimes smooth it down 
 with her weak thin hands. 
 
 "We were past mustering a story now ; but one day, at about this
 
 68 The Wreck of the Golden Mary. 
 
 period, I reverted to the superstition of old Mr. Earx, conccruiug the 
 Golden Lucy, and told them that nothing vanished from the eye of 
 God, though much might pass away from the eyes of men. " Wo 
 were all of us," says I, " children once ; and our baby feet have strolled 
 in green woods ashore ; and our baby hands have gathered flowers in 
 gardens, where the birds were singing. The children that we were, 
 arc not lost to the great knowledge of our Creator. Those innocent 
 creatures will appear with us before Him, and plead for us. What wo 
 were in the best time of our generous youth will arise and go with us 
 too. The purest part of our lives will not desert us at the pass to 
 which all of us hero present are gliding. What we were then, will 
 be as much in existence before Him, as what we are now." They 
 were no less comforted by this consideration, than I was myself; and 
 Miss ( "oleshaw, drawing my ear nearer to her lips, said, " Captain 
 Ravender, I was on my way to marry a disgraced and broken man, 
 whom I dearly loved when he was honourable and good. Your words 
 seem to have come out of my own poor heart." She pressed my hand 
 upon it, smiling. 
 
 Twenty-seven nights and twenty-six days. We were in no want of 
 rain-water, but wo had nothing else. And yet, even now, I never 
 turned my eyes upon a waking face but it tried to brighten before 
 mine. 0, what a thing it is, in a time of danger and in the presence 
 of death, the shining of a face upon a face ! I have heard it broached 
 that orders should be given in great new ships by electric telegraph. 
 I admire machinery as much as any man, and am as thankful to it as 
 any man can be for what it does for us. But it will never be a sub- 
 stitute for the face of a man, with his soul in it, encouraging another 
 man to be brave and true. Never try it for that. It will break down 
 like a straw. 
 
 I now began to remark certain changes in myself which I did not 
 like. They caused me much disquiet, I often saw the Golden Lucy 
 in the air above the boat. I often saw her I liave spoken of before, 
 sitting beside me. I saw the Golden Mary go down, as slie really 
 had gouo down, twenty times in a day. And yet the sea was mostly, 
 to my thinking, not sea neitlier, but moving country and extraordinary 
 mountainous regions, the like of which liave never been beheld. 1 
 felt it time to leave my last words regarding Jolm Steadinian, in case 
 any lips should last out to repeat them to any living ears. I said tliat 
 John had told me (as lie had on deck) that lie had sung out " Breakers 
 ahead ! " the instant tliey were audible, and had tried to wear shi]), 
 but she struck before it coidd be done. (His cry, I dare say, had 
 made my dream.) I said that the circumstances were altogether 
 without warning, and out of any course that could have been guarded 
 against ; that tlie same loss would liave liappened if I had been in 
 charge ; and that John was not to blame, but from lirst to last had 
 done his dniy nobly, like the man lie was. I tritd to wi'ite it down 
 in my pocket-book, but could make no words, though I knew what
 
 A Signal of Distress. 69 
 
 the words were that I wanted to make. When it Lad come to that, 
 her hands though she was dead so long Laid me down gently in the 
 bottom of the boat, and she and the Golden Lucy swung me to sleep. 
 
 All tliat follows, teas ivritten hy John Steadiman, Chief Mate : 
 
 On the twenty-sixth day after the foundering of the Golden Mary 
 at sea, I, John Steadiman, was sitting in my place in the stern-sheets 
 of the Surf-boat, with just sense enough left in me to steer that is 
 to say, with my eyes strained, wide-awake, over the bows of the boat, 
 and my brains fast asleep and dreaming when I was roused upon a 
 sudden by our second mate, Mr. William Eames. 
 
 " Let me take a spell in your place," says he. " And look you out 
 for the Long-boat astern. The last time she rose on the crest of a 
 wave, I thought I made out a signal flying aboard her." 
 
 We shifted our places, clumsily and slowly enough, for we were 
 both of us weak and dazed with wet, cold, and hunger, I waited 
 some time, watching the heavy rollers astern, before tlie Long-boat 
 rose a-top of one of them at the same time with us. At last, she was 
 heaved up for a moment well in view, and there, sure enough, was the 
 signal flying aboard of her a strip of rag of some sort, rigged to an 
 oar, and hoisted in her bows. 
 
 " What does it mean ? " says Rames to me in a quavering, trembling 
 sort of voice. " Do they signal a sail in sight ? " 
 
 "Hush, for God's sake!" says I, clappiug my hand over his 
 mouth. "Don't let the people hear you, They'll all go mad 
 together if we mislead them about that signal. Wait a bit, till I 
 have another look at it," 
 
 I held on by him, for he had set me all of a tremble with his 
 notion of a sail in sight, and watched for the Long-boat again. Up 
 she rose on the top of another roller. I made out the signal clearly, 
 that second time, and saw that it was rigged half-mast high. 
 
 " Eames," says I, " it's a signal of distress. Pass tlie word forward 
 to keep her before the sea, and no more. We must get the Long- 
 boat within hailing distance of us, as soon as possible." 
 
 I dropped down into my old place at the tiller witliout another 
 word for the thought went through me like a knife that something 
 had happened to Captain Ravender. I should consider myself un- 
 worthy to write anotlier line of this statement, if I had not made up 
 my mind to sj^cak the truth, tlie whole truth, and nothing but tlie 
 truth and I must, therefore, confess plainly that now, for the first 
 time, my heart sank within me. This weakness on my part was 
 produced in some degree, as I take it, by the exhausting effects of 
 previous anxiety and grief. 
 
 Our provisions if I may give that name to what we had left 
 were reduced to the rind of one lemon and about a couple of handsfuU 
 of coffee-berries. Besides these great distresses, caused by the death, 
 the danger, and the suffering among my crew and passengers, I had
 
 JO The Wreck of the Golden Mary. 
 
 had a little distress of my own to shalvo me still more, in the death 
 of the child whom I had got to he very fond of on tlie voyage out so 
 fond that I was secretly a little jealous of her heing taken in tlio Long- 
 boat instead of mine wlicn the ship foundered. It used to be a great 
 comfort to me, and I think to those with me also, after we had seen 
 the last of the Golden Mary, to see the Golden Lucy, held up by the 
 men in the Long-boat, when the weather allowed it, as the best and 
 brightest sight they had to show. She looked, at the distance we saw 
 her from, almost like a little white bird in the air. To miss her for 
 the first time, when the weather lulled a little agaiu, and we all 
 looked out for our white bird and looked in vain, was a sore dis- 
 appointment. To see the men's heads bowed down and the captain's 
 hand pointing into the sea when we liailed the Long-boat, a few days 
 after, gave me as heavy a shock and as sharp a pang of heartache to 
 bear as ever I remember siiffering in all my life, I only mention 
 those things to show tliat if I did give way a little at first, under the 
 dread that our captain was lost to us, it was not without having been 
 a good deal shaken beforehand by more trials of one sort or anotiicr 
 tliau often fall to one man's sliare. 
 
 I had got over the choking in my throat with the help of a drop 
 of water, and liad steadied my mind again so as to be prepared agaicst 
 the worst, when I heard tlie hail (Lord lielp tiie poor fellows, how 
 weak it sounded !) 
 
 " Surf-boat, ahoy ! " 
 
 I looked \x]), and there were our comjianions in misfortune tossing 
 abreast of us ; not so near tliat we could make out the features of 
 any of tliem, but near cnougli, with some exertion for people iji our 
 condition, to make tlieir voices heard in tlie intervals when the wind 
 was weakest. 
 
 I answered the liail, and waited a bit, and licard nothing, and 
 flicn suiig out the captain's name. Tlie voice that replied did not 
 sound like his ; the words that reached us wore : 
 
 " ( 'hief-inate wanted on board ! " 
 
 Every man of my crew knew wliat tliat meant as well as I did. 
 As second officer in command, there could be but one reason for 
 wanting me on board the Long-boat, A groan went all round us. 
 and my men looked darkly in each other's faces, and whispered under 
 their lu'catlis : 
 
 " The captain is dead ! " 
 
 I commanded them to be silent, and not to make too sure of bad 
 news, at such a pass as things had now come to with us. Then, 
 liailing the Long-boat, I siguiiied that I was ready to go on board 
 when the weather would let me stopped a bit to draw a good 
 long breath and tlien called out as loud as I could the dreadful 
 question : 
 
 " Is the captain dead V " 
 
 The black liirurcs of three or four rnon in the a^tpv-part of Ihc
 
 The Captain succumbs. 71 
 
 Long-boat all stooped down togetlier as my voice readied them. 
 Tliey were lost to view for about a minute ; then appeared again 
 one man among them was held up on his feet by the rest, and he 
 hailed back the blessed words (a very faint hope went a very long 
 way with people in our desperate situation) : " Not yet ! " 
 
 The relief felt by me, and by all with me, when we knew that our 
 captain, though unfitted for duty, was not lost to us, it is not in words 
 at least, not in such words as a man like me can command to 
 express. I did my best to cheer the men by telling them what a good 
 sign it was that we were not as badly off yet as we had feared ; and 
 then communicated what instructions I had to give, to "William Rames, 
 who was to be left in command in my place when I took charge of 
 the Long-boat. After that, there was nothing to be done, but to wait 
 for the chance of the wind dropping at sunset, and the sea going 
 down afterwards, so as to enable our weak crews to lay the two boats 
 alongside of each other, without undue risk or, to put it plainer, 
 without saddling ourselves with the necessity for any extraordinary 
 exertion of strength or skill. Both the one and the other had now 
 been starved out of us for days and days together. 
 
 At sunset the wind suddenly dropped, but the sea, which had been 
 running high for so long a time past, took hours after that before it 
 showed any signs of getting to rest. The moon was shining, the sky 
 was wonderfully clear, and it could not have been, according to my 
 calculations, far off midnight, when tlie long, slow, regular swell of 
 the calming ocean fairly set in, and I took the responsibility of 
 lessening the distance between the Long-boat and ourselves. 
 
 It was, I dare say, a delusion of mine ; but I thought I had never 
 seen the moon shine so white and ghastly anywhere, either on sea or 
 on land, as she shone that night while we were approaching our 
 companions in misery. When there was not much more tlian a boat's 
 length between us, and the white light streamed cold and clear 
 over all our faces, both crews rested on their oars with one great 
 shudder, and stared over the gunwale of either boat, panic-stricken 
 at the first sight of each other. 
 
 "Any lives lost among you?" I asked, in the midst of that 
 frightful silence. 
 
 The men in the Long-boat huddled together like sheep at the soimd 
 of my voice. 
 
 " None yet, but the child, thanks bo to God ! " answered one 
 among them. 
 
 And at the sound of his voice, all my men shrank together like 
 the men in the Long-boat. I was afraid to let the horror produced 
 by our first meeting at close quarters after the dreadful changes that 
 wet, cold, and famine had produced, last one moment longer than 
 could be helped ; so, without giving time for any more questions and 
 answers, I commanded the men to lay the two boats close alongside of 
 rach other. Wlien I rose up and committed the tiller to tlic liands of
 
 72 The Wreck of the Golden Mary. 
 
 Ramos, all my poor fellows raised their white faces imploringly to 
 mine. " Don't leave us, sir," they said, " don't leave us," " I leave 
 you," says I, " under the command and the guidance of Mr. William 
 Ramos, as good a sailor as I am, and as trusty and kind a man as ever 
 stepped. Do your duty by him, as you have done it by me ; and 
 remember to the last, that while there is life there is hope. God bless 
 and help you all ! " With those words I collected wliat strength I 
 had left, and caught at two arras that wore held out to mo, and 
 so got from the stern-sheets of one boat into the storn-shoets of 
 the other. 
 
 " Mind where you step, sir," whispered one of the men who had 
 helped me into the Long-boat. I looked down as ho spoke. Three 
 figures were huddled up below mo, with the moonshine fiilling on 
 them in ragged streaks through the gaps between the men standing 
 or sitting above them. The first face 1 made out was the fiice of Miss 
 Coleshaw, her eyes were wide open and fixed on me. She seemed still 
 to keep her senses, and, by the alternate parting and closing of her 
 lips, to be trying to speak, but I could not hear that she uttered a 
 single word. On her shoulder rested the head of Mrs. Atherficld. 
 The mother of our poor little Golden Lucy must, I tliink, have been 
 dreaming of the child she had lost ; for there was a faint smile just 
 rufiling the white stillness of her face, when I first saw it turned 
 upward, with peaceful closed eyes towards the heavens. From her, 
 I looked down a little, and there, with his head on her lap, and witli 
 one of her hands resting tenderly on his cheek there lay the Captain, 
 to whoso help and guidance, up to this miserable time, we had never 
 looked in vain, there, worn out at last in our service, and fiir our 
 sakes, lay the best and bravest man of all our company. I stole my 
 hand in gently through his clothes and laid it on his heart, and felt 
 a little feeble warmth over it, though my cold dulled touch could not 
 detect even the faintest boating. The two men in the stcrn-shcots 
 with mo, noticing what I was doing knowing I loved him like a 
 Itrothcr and seeing, I suppose, more distress in my face tlian T 
 myself was conscious of its showing, lost command over themselves 
 ultogetlicr, and burst into a piteous moaning, sobbing lamcntatii)ii 
 over him. One of the two drew aside a jacket from his feet, and 
 showed me that they wore bare, except wliere a wot, ragged stri]) of 
 stocking still clung to one of them. When tlio ship struck ilio Ico- 
 l)crg, he had run on deck leaving his shoes in his cabin. All tlirougli 
 llie voyage in tlie boat his feet had been unprotected ; and not a soul 
 had discovered it until he dropjied ! As long as ho could k(!cp liis 
 eyes open, the very look of tliom had cheered the men, and comforted 
 and uplield the women. Not one living creature in the boat, Avilli 
 any sense about him, but had felt the good influence of that brave man 
 in one way or anotlier. Not one but liad heard him. over and over 
 again, give the credit to others whicli was due only to himself; 
 praising this man for patience, and tlianking that niaii for helj), when
 
 JoJin Steadiman takes charge. 73 
 
 the patience and the help had really and truly, as to the best part of 
 both, come only from him. All this, and much more, I heard pouring 
 confusedly from the men's lips while they crouched down, sobbing 
 and crying over their commander, and ^Tapping the jacket as warmly 
 and tenderly as they could over his cold feet. It went to my heart 
 to check them ; but I knew that if this lamenting spirit spread any 
 further, all chance of keeping alight any last sparks of hope and 
 resolution among the boat's company would be lost for ever. Accord- 
 ingly I sent them to their places, spoke a few encouraging words to 
 the men forward, promising to serve out, when the morning came, as 
 much as I dared, of any eatable thing left in the lockers ; called to 
 Rames, in my old boat, to keep as near us as he safely could ; drew 
 the garments and coverings of the two poor suffering women more 
 closely about them ; and, with a secret prayer to be directed for the 
 best in bearing the awful responsibility now laid on my shoulders, 
 took my Captain's vacant place at the helm of the Long-boat. 
 
 This, as well as I can tell it, is the full and true account of how 
 I came to be placed in charge of the lost passengers and crew of the 
 Golden Mary, on the morning of the twenty-seventh day after the 
 ship struck tlie Iceberg, and foundered at sea.
 
 THE PERILS OF 
 CEliTAIN ENGLISH PIIISONERS. 
 
 IN TWO CHAPTERS. 
 
 [1857.] 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ISLAND OF SILYKR-STOUE. 
 
 It was in tlic year of our Lord ono thousand seven liundred and forty- 
 four, tliat I, Gill Davis to command, His Mark, having tlicn tlic 
 honour to be a private in the Royal Marines, stood a-leauing over tlio 
 hulwarks of the armed sloop Cliristo2)her Columbus, in tlie South 
 American waters otf the Mosquito shore. 
 
 My lady remarks to me, before I go any further, that there is no 
 such christian-namc as Gill, and that her confident opinion is, tliat 
 the name given to me in the baptism wherein I was made, Sec, was 
 Gilbert. She is certain to be right, but I never heard of it. I was a 
 foundling child, picked up somewhere or another, and I alwaj^s 
 understood my christian-name to be (iill. It is true tliat I was called 
 drills when employed at Snorridge Bottom betwixt Cliatham and 
 ]\Iaidstone to frighten birds ; but tliat had nothing to do witli the 
 Baptism wherein I was made, etc., and wherein a number of things 
 Avere promised for me by somebody, who let me alone ever afterwards 
 as to performing any of them, and wlio, I consider, must have been 
 the Beadle. Such name of Gills was entirely owing to my cheeks, or 
 gills, v/hich at that time of my life were of a raspy description. 
 
 My lady stops me again, before I go any further, by laugliing 
 exactly in her old way aiid waving the fcatlier of lier pen at mc. 
 That action on her part, calls to my mind as I look at her band with 
 tlie rings on it Well ! I won't ! To be sure it will come in, in its 
 own place. lUit it's always strange to me, noticing the quiet hand, 
 and noticing it (as I have done, you know, so many times) a-fondling 
 children aiid grandchildren asleep, to think that Avhcn blood and 
 honour were up there! I won't ! not at present I Scratch it out.
 
 Gill Davis introduces himself. 75 
 
 She won't Bcratcli it out, and quite honourable ; because wo have 
 made an understanding that everything is to be taken down, and that 
 nothing that is once taken down shall be scratched out. I have the 
 great misfortune not to be able to read and write, and I am speaking 
 my true and faithful account of those Adventures, and my lady is 
 writing it, word for word. 
 
 I say, there I was, a-leaning over the bulwarks of the sloop 
 Christopher Columbus in the South American waters off the Mosquito 
 shore: a subject of Lis Gracious Majesty King George of England, 
 and a private in the Royal Marines. 
 
 In those climates, yoii don't want to do much. I was doing nothing. 
 I was thinking of the shepherd (my father, I wonder ?) on the hill- 
 sides by Snorridge Bottom, with a long staff, and with a rough white 
 coat in all weathers all the year round, who used to let me lie in a 
 corner of his hut by night, and who used to let me go about with him 
 and his sheep by day when I could get nothing else to do, and who 
 used to give me so little of his victuals and so much of his staff', that 
 I ran away from him which was what he wanted all along, I expect 
 to be knocked about the world in preference to Snorridge Bottom. 
 I had been knocked about the world for nine-and-twenty years in all, 
 when I stood looking along those bright blue South American 
 Waters. Looking after tlie shejiherd, I may say. Watcliing him in 
 a half-waking dream, with my eyes half-shut, as he, and his flock of 
 sheep, and his two dogs, seemed to move away from the sliip's side, 
 far away over the blue water, and go right down into the sky. 
 
 " It's rising out of the water, steady," a voice said close to me. I 
 ]iad been thinking on so, that it like woke me with a start, though 
 it was no stranger voice than the voice of Harry Charker. my own 
 comrade. 
 
 " What's rising out of tlie water, steady? " I asked my comrade. 
 
 " What ? " says he. " The Island." 
 
 " ! The Island ! " says I, turning my eyes towards it. " True. 
 I forgot the Island." 
 
 " Forgot the port you're going to ? That's odd, ain't it '? " 
 
 " It is odd," says I. 
 
 "And odd," he said, slowly considering with himself, '' ain't even. 
 Is it. Gill?" 
 
 He had always a remark just like that to make, and seldom anotlier. 
 As soon as lie had brought a thing round to Avhat it was not, he was 
 satisfied. He was one of the best of men, and, in a certain sort of a 
 way, one with the least to say for himself. I qualify it, because, 
 besides being able to read and write like a Quarter-master, he liad 
 always one most excellent idea in his mind. That was, Duty. Upon 
 my soul, I don't believe, though I admire learning beyond everything, 
 that he could liave got a better idea out of all tbe books in the v.orld, 
 if he had learnt tliem every word, and been the cleverest of scholars. 
 
 IMy comrade and I liad been quartered in Jamaica, and from tli'ore
 
 y6 TJie Perils of Certain English Prisoners. 
 
 we had been drafted off to the British settlement of Belize, lying 
 away West and North of the Mosquito coast. At Belize there had 
 been great alarm of one cruel gang of pirates (there were always more 
 pirates tlian enough in those Caribbean Seas), and as they got the 
 better of our English cruisers by running into out-of-the-way creeks 
 and shallows, and taking the land when tliey were hotly pressed, the 
 governor of Belize had received orders from home to keep a sharp 
 look-out for them along shore. Now, there was an armed sloop came 
 once a-year from Port Eoyal, Jamaica, to the Island, laden with all 
 manner of necessaries, to eat, and to drink, and to wear, and to use in 
 various ways ; and it was aboard of that sloop which had to\;ched at 
 Belize, that I was a-standing, leaning over the bulwarks. 
 
 The Island was occupied by a very small English colony. It had 
 been given the name of Silver-Store. The reason of its being so 
 called, was, that tlie English colony owned and worked a silver-mine 
 over on the mainland, in Honduras, and used this Island as a safe and 
 convenient place to store their silver in, until it was annually fetched 
 away by the sloop. It was brought down from the mine to tlie coast 
 on the backs of mules, attended by friendly Indians and guarded by 
 wliite men; from thence it was conveyed over to Silver-Store, when 
 tlie weather was fair, in the canoes of that country ; from Silver-Store, 
 it was carried to Jamaica by the armed sloop once a-year, as I have 
 already mentioned ; from Jamaica, it M'ent, of course, all over the 
 world. 
 
 IIow I came to be aboard the armed sloop, is easily told. Four- 
 und-twenty marines under command of a lieutenant that officer's 
 name was Linderwood had been told off at Belize, to proceed to 
 Silver-Store, in aid of boats and seamen stationed there for the chase 
 of the Pirates. The Island was considered a good post of observation 
 against the pirates, both by land and sea ; neither the pirate ship nor 
 yet lier boats had been seen by any of us, but they had been so mucli 
 licard of, that the reinforcement was sent. Of tliat party, 1 was one. 
 It included a corporal and a sergeant. Charker was corporal, au'l tlie 
 sergeant's name was Drooce. He was the most tyrannical non-com- 
 missioned officer in His IVIajesty's service. 
 
 The night came on, soon after I had had the foregoing words with 
 Charker. All the wonderful bright colours went out of the sea and 
 sky in a few minutes, and all the stars in the Heavens seemed to 
 shine out together, and to look down at themselves in the sea, over 
 one another's shoulders, millions deep. Next morning, we cast anchor 
 off the Island. There was a snug harbour within a little reef; thcj-e 
 was a sandy beach ; there were cocoa-nut trees with high straight 
 stems, quite bare, and foliage at the top like plumes of magnificent 
 green feathers ; there were all the objects that are usually seen in 
 those parts, and /am not going to describe them, having something 
 else to tell about. 
 
 Groat rejoicings, to be sure, were made on our arrival. All the
 
 Arrival at Silver- Store Island. yy 
 
 flags in the place were hoisted, all the guns in the place were fired, 
 and all the people in the place came down to look at ns. One of 
 those Sambo fellows they call those natives Sambos, when they arc 
 half-negro and half-Indian had come off outside the reef, to pilot us 
 in, and remained on board after we had let go our anchor. He was 
 called Christian George King, and was fonder of all hands than 
 anybody else was. Now, I confess, for myself, that on that first day, 
 if I had been captain of the Christopher Columbus, instead of private 
 in the Eoyal Marines, I should have kicked Christian George King 
 who was no more a Christian than he was a King or a George over 
 the side, without exactly knowing why, except that it was the right 
 thing to do. 
 
 But, I must likewise confess, that I was not in a particularly 
 pleasant humour, when I stood under arms that morning, aboard the 
 Christopher Columbus in the harbour of the Island of Silver-Store. 
 I had liad a hard life, and the life of the English on the Island seemed 
 too easy and too gay to please mc. " Here you are," I thought to 
 myself, " good scholars and good livers ; able to read what you like, 
 able to write what you like, able to eat and drink what you like, and 
 spend what you like, and do what you like ; and much you care for a 
 poor, ignorant Private in the Eoyal Marines ! Yet it's hard, too, 
 I think, that you should have all the half-pence, and I all the kicks ; 
 you all the smooth, and I all the rough ; you all the oil, and I all 
 the vinegar." It was as envious a thing to think as might be, let 
 alone its being nonsensical ; but, I thought it. I took it so much 
 amiss, that, when a very beautiful young English lady came aboard, 
 I grunted to myself, " Ah 1 you have got a lovei-, I'll be bound ! " As 
 if there was any new offence to me in that, if she had ! 
 
 She was sister to the captain of our sloop, who had been in a poor 
 v/ay for some time, and who was so ill then that he was obliged to bo 
 carried ashore. She was the child of a military officer, and had come 
 (jut there with her sister, who was married to one of the owners of 
 the silver-mine, and who had three children with her. It was easy to 
 sec that she was the light and spirit of the Island. After I had gdt 
 a good look at her, I grunted to myself again, in an even Avorse state 
 of mind than before, " I'll be damned, if I don't hate him, whoever 
 he is ! " 
 
 My officer, Lieutenant Linderwood, was as ill as the captain of the 
 sloop, and was carried ashore, too. They were both young men of 
 about my ago, who had been delicate in the West India climate. I 
 even took tliat in bad part. I thought I was much fitter for the work 
 tlian they were, and that if all of us had our deserts, I should be both 
 of them rolled into one. (It may be imagined what sort of an officer 
 of marines I should have made, without the power of reading a 
 written order. And as to any knowledge how to command the sloop 
 Lord ! I should have sunk her in a quarter of an hour !) 
 
 Ilowevcrj such were my refiectious ; and when m'c men were ashore
 
 yS The Perils of Certain English Prisoners. 
 
 aud dismissed, I strolled about the place along with Cbarker, making 
 my obscrvatious in a similar spirit. 
 
 It was a pretty place : in all its arrangements partly Soutli 
 American and partly English, and very agreeable to look at on that 
 account, being like a bit of home that had got chipped otf and had 
 floated away to that spot, accommodating itself to circum.stances as it 
 drifted along. The huts of the Sambos, to the number of five-and- 
 twenty, perhaps, were down by the beach to the left of the anchorage. 
 On the right was a sort of barrack, with a South American Flag and 
 tlie Union Jack, flying from the same staff, where the little English 
 colony could all come together, if tliey saw occasion. It was a walled 
 K(juare of building, with a sort of pleasure-ground inside, and inside 
 that again a sunken block like a powder magazine, with a little square 
 trench round it, and steps down to the door. Cbarker and I were 
 looking in at the gate, which was not guarded ; and I had said to 
 Cbarker, in reference to the bit like a powder magazine, " That's 
 where they keep the silver you see ; " and Charker had said to me, 
 after thinking it over, " And silver ain't gold. Is it, (rill ? " when the 
 beautiful young English lady I had been so bilious about, looked out 
 of a door, or a window at all events looked out, from under a bright 
 awning. She no sooner saw us two in uniform, than she came out so 
 (piickly tliat she \vas still putting on her broad Mexican hat of plaited 
 straw wlien we saluted. 
 
 " AVould you like to come in," she said, " and see the place ? It is 
 rather a curious place." 
 
 "NVe thanked the young lady, and said we didn't wish to l^c trouble- 
 some ; but, slie said it could be no trouble to an English soldier's 
 daughter, to show English soldiers how tlieir countrymen and country- 
 women fared, so far away from England; and eonset^uently we 
 saluted again, and wont in. Then, as we stood in the shade, she 
 showed us (being as aifable as beautiful), how the ditlerent families 
 lived in their separate houses, and how there was a general house for 
 stores, and a general reading-room, and a general room for music 
 and dancing, and a room for Church ; and liow there were other 
 bouses on the rising grountl called the Signal Hill, vvliere they lived 
 in the hotter weather. 
 
 " Your ofticer has been carried up there,'' she said, " and my brother, 
 too, for the better air. At ])resent, our few residents are dis])orsed 
 over both spots: deducting, that is to say, such of our number us are 
 always going to, or coming from, or staying at, the Mine." 
 
 (' He is among one of those })arties," 1 tlioiight, " and I wish some- 
 body would knock his head olf.") 
 
 "Some of our married ladies live here," she siiid, '-during at least 
 hiilf the year, as lonely as widows, with their children." 
 
 ' 3Iany children here, nia'am V " 
 
 " S^ivcntceii. There are thirteen married ladies, uiid there are 
 cii'ht like nie."
 
 Mrs. Belltott. 79 
 
 There were not eight like her there was not one like her in the 
 world. She meant single. 
 
 " Which, with about thirty Englishmen of various degrees," said 
 the young lady, " form the little colony now on the Island. I don't 
 count the sailors, for they don't belong to us. Nor the soldiers," she 
 gave us a gracious smile when she spoke of the soldiers, " for the same 
 reason." 
 
 " Nor the Sambos, ma'am," said I. 
 
 No." 
 
 " Under your ftivour, and v.'ith your leave, ma'am," said I, " are 
 they trustworthy ? " 
 
 " Perfectly ! We are all very kind to them, and they are very 
 grateful to us." 
 
 " Indeed, ma'am ? Now Christian George King ? " 
 
 " Very much attached to us all. Would die for us." 
 
 She was, as in my uneducated way I have observed, very beautiful 
 women almost always to be, so composed, that her composure gave 
 great weight to what she said, aud I believed it. 
 
 Then, she pointed out to us the building like a 2:)owder magazine, 
 and explained to us in what manner tlie silver was brought from the 
 mine, and was brought over from the mainland, and was stored here. 
 The Christopher Columbus would have a rich lading, she said, for 
 there had been a great yield that year, a much richer yield than 
 usual, aud there was a chest of jewels besides the silver. 
 
 When we had looked about us, and were getting sheepish, through 
 fearing we were troublesome, she turned us over to a young womau, 
 English born but AVest India bred, who served her as her maid. 
 This young woman was the widow of a non-commissioned officer in a 
 regiment of the line. She had got mai'ried and widowed at St. 
 Vincent, with only a few months between the two events. She was a 
 little saucy woman, with a bright pair of eyes, rather a neat little 
 ftjot aud figure, and rather a neat little turned-up nose. The sort of 
 young woman, I considered at the time, who appeared to invite you 
 to give her a kiss, and wlio would liavo slapj^ed your face if you 
 accepted the invitation. 
 
 I couldn't make out her name at first ; for, when slie gave it in 
 iiuswer to my inquiry, it sounded like Bcltot, which didn't sound 
 right. But, when we became better acquainted which ^\us while 
 ('barker aud I were drinking sugar-cane sangaree, which she made in 
 A most excellent manner I fuund that her Cliristiau name was 
 Fsabolla, which they shortened into Bell, and that tlie name of the 
 deceased non-commissioned officer was Tott. Being the kind of neat 
 little woman it was natural to make a toy of I never saw a woman 
 s!j like a toy in my life she had got the plaything name of Belltott. 
 In short, she had no other name on the island. Even Mr. Com- 
 missioner Pordago (and lie was a grave one I) formally addressed 
 her as IMrs. Delltott. But, I shall come to Mr. Commissioner Pord.ige 
 prcsaitly.
 
 8o TJie Perils of Certain English Prisoners. 
 
 The name of the captain of the sloop was Captain Maryon, and 
 therefore it was no news to hear from Mrs. Belltott, that his sister, 
 the beautiful unmarried young English lady, was Miss Maryon. 
 The novelty was, that her christian-name was Marion too. Marion 
 Maryon. Many a time I have run off those two names in my 
 thoughts, like a bit of verse. Oh many, and many, and many u 
 time ! 
 
 We saw out all the drink that was produced, like good men and 
 true, and then took our leaves, and wont down to the beach. The 
 weather was beautiful ; the wind steady, low, and gentle ; the island, 
 a picture ; the sea, a picture ; the sky, a picture. In that country 
 tliere are two rainy seasons in the year. One sets in at about our 
 English Midsummer ; the other, about a fortnight after our English 
 Michaelmas. It was the beginning of August at that time ; the first 
 of these rainy seasons was well over ; and evorytliing was in its most 
 beautiful growth, and had its loveliest look upon it. 
 
 " They enjoy themselves here," I says to Charker, turning surly 
 again. " This is better than private-soldiering." 
 
 We had come down to the beach, to be friendly with the boat's- 
 crew who were camped and hutted there ; and we were ai^proacliing 
 towards their quarters over the sand, when Christian George King 
 comes up from the landing-place at a wolf s-trot, crying, " Yuji, So- 
 Jeer ! " wliicli was that Sambo Pilot's barbarous way of saying. 
 Hallo, Soldier ! I have stated myself to be a man of no learning, and, 
 if 1 entertain prejudices, I hope allowance may be made. I will now 
 confess to one. It may be a right one or it maybe a wrong one ; but, 
 I never did like Natives, except in the form of oysters. 
 
 So, when Christian George King, who was individually unpleasant 
 to me besides, comes a trotting along the sand, clucking, " Yup, 
 So-Jeer ! " I had a thundering good mind to let fly at him with my 
 right. I certainly should have done it, but that it would have 
 exposed me to reprimand. 
 
 " Yup, So-Jeer ! " says he. " Bad job." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " says I. 
 
 " Yup, So-Jeer ! " says he, " Ship Leakee." 
 
 " Ship leaky ? " says I. 
 
 " Iss," says ho, with a nod that looked as if it was jerked out of 
 him by a most violent hiccup wliich is the way with those savages. 
 
 I cast my eyes at Charker, an<l we both heard the pumps going 
 aboard the sloop, and saw the signal run up, " Come on board ; hands 
 wanted from the shore." In no time some of the sloo])'s liberty-men 
 were already running down to the water's edge, and the party of 
 seamen, under orders against the Pirates, were jutting off to the 
 Columbus in two boats. 
 
 ' O Christian George King sar berry sorry ! " says that Sambo 
 vagabond, then. " Cliristian George King cry, English fasliion ! " 
 liii; English fa.sliion of crying was to screw his black knuckles into
 
 Mr. Cojnmissioner Pordage. 8i 
 
 his eyes, howl like a dog, and roll himself on his back on the sand. 
 It was trying not to kick him, but I gave Charker the word, " Double- 
 quick, Harry 1 " and we got down to the water's edge, and got on 
 board the sloop. 
 
 By some means or other, she had sprung such a leak, that no 
 pumping would keep her free ; and what between the two fears that 
 she would go down in the harbour, and that, even if she did not, all 
 the supplies she had brought for the little colony w^ould be destroyed 
 by the sea-water as it rose in her, there was great confusion. In the 
 midst of it, Captain Maryon was heard hailing from the beach. He 
 had been carried down in his hammock, and looked very bad ; but he 
 insisted on being stood there on his feet ; and I saw him, mj'self, 
 come off in the boat, sitting upright in the stern-sheets, as if nothing 
 was wrong with him. 
 
 A quick sort of council was held, and Captain Maryon soon resolved 
 that we must all fall to work to get the cargo out, and that when that 
 was done, the guns and heavy matters must be got out, and that the 
 sloop must be hauled ashore, and careened, and the leak stoj^ped. "We 
 were all mustered (the Pirate-Chace party volunteering), and told off 
 into parties, with so m.any hours of spell and so many hours of relief, 
 and we all went at it witli a will. Christian George King was 
 entered one of the party in which I worked, at his own request, and 
 he went at it with as good a will as any of the rest. He went at it 
 with so much heartiness, to say the truth, that he rose in my good 
 opinion almost as fast as the water rose in the ship. "Which was fast 
 enough, and faster. 
 
 Mr. Commissioner Pordage kept in a rcd-and-black japanned box, 
 like a family lump-sugar box, some document or other, which some 
 Sambo chief or other had got drunk and si)ilt some ink over (as well 
 as I could understand the matter), and by that means had given up 
 lawful possession of the Island. Through having hold of this box, 
 Mr. Pordage got his title of Commissioner. He was styled Consul 
 too, and spoke of himself as " Government." 
 
 He was a stiff-jointed, high-nosed old gentleman, without an ounce 
 of fat on him, of a very angry temper and a very yellow complexion. 
 Mrs. Commissioner Pordage, making allowance for difference of sex, 
 was much the same. Mr. Kitten, a small, youngish, bald, botanical 
 and mineralogical gentleman, also connected with the mine but 
 everybody there was that, more or less was sometimes called by Mr. 
 Commissioner Pordage, his Vice-commissioner, and sometimes his 
 Deputy-consul. Or sometimes he spoke of Mr. Kitten, merely as 
 being " under Government." 
 
 The beach was beginning to be a lively scene with the preparations 
 for careening the sloop, and, with cargo, and spars, and rigging, and 
 water-casks, dotted about it, and with temporary quarters for the men 
 rising iip there out of such sails and odds and ends as could be best 
 sgt on one side to make them, when Mr. Commissioner Pordage comes 
 
 G
 
 82 TJie Perils of Certain Engiish PrisoudrL 
 
 do^^l in a liigli fluster, and asks for Captain Maryon. The Captain, 
 ill as lie was, was slung in his hammock bctv.ixt two trees, that he 
 might direct ; and ho raised his head, and answered for himself. 
 
 "Captain Maryon,'*' cries Mr. Commissioner Pordage, "this is not 
 official. This is not regular," 
 
 " Sir," says the Captain, " it hath been arranged with the clerk and 
 supercargo, that you shonld be commnnicated with, and requested to 
 render any little assistance that may lie in your power. I am quite 
 certain that hath been duly done." 
 
 " Captain Maryon," replied Mr. Commissioner Pordage, " there 
 hath been no written correspondence. No documents have passed, 
 no memoranda have been made, no minutes liave been made, no 
 entries and counter-entries apj^ear in the official muniments. This 
 is indecent. I call upon you, sir, to desist, until all is regular, or 
 Government will take tliis up." 
 
 " Sir," says Captain Maryon, chafing a little, as he looked out of 
 jiis hammock ; " between tlie chances of Government taking this up, 
 and my ship taking herself down, I much prefer to trust myself to the 
 former." 
 
 " You do, sir ? " cries Mr. Commissioner Pordage, 
 
 " I do, sir," says ( 'aptain Maryon, lying down again. 
 
 " Then, Mr. Kitten," says the Commissionci', " send up instantly 
 for my Diplomatic coat." 
 
 Tie was dressed in a linen suit at that moment ; but, Mr. Kitten 
 started oft' himself and brought down the Diplomatic coat, which was 
 a blue cloth one, gold-laced, and with a crown on the button. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Kitten," says Pordage, " I instruct you, as Vice-com- 
 missioner, and Deputy-consul of this place, to demand of Captain 
 Maryon, of the sloop Christopher Culumbus, whether he drives me to 
 the act of putting this coat on ? " 
 
 " Mr. Pordage," says Captain Maryon, looking out of his hammock 
 again, " as I can licar wliat you say, I can answer it witliout troubling 
 tlie gentleman. I should bo sorry that you should be at the pains of 
 putting on too hot a coat on my account ; but, otherwise, you may put 
 it on hind-side before, or inside-out, or witli your legs in tlie sleeves, 
 or your liead in the skirts, fen- any objection that I have to oftbr to 
 your thorouglily pleasing yourself." 
 
 "Very good. Captain Muryon," says Pordage, in a tremendous 
 passion. " Very good, sir, ]5c tlie conse(iuencos on your own liead I 
 I\[r. Kitten, as it lias come to this, lielp me on witli it." 
 
 Wlien he liad given that order, ho walked oiT in tlie coat, and all 
 our names were taken, and I was afterwards told that Mr. Kitten wr(;t<^ 
 fi-om his dictation more than a bushel of large paper on the sultjeet. 
 which cost mf)re before it was done with, than ever could be calculated, 
 and which only got done with after all, by being lost. 
 
 Our work went on merrily, nevertheless, and the Christopher 
 Colunilras, liauled up, lay ]!cl]dess (m lier side lil;.- a groat iisii out of
 
 Out of Sorts. 83 
 
 Water. "Wliilc slio was in that state, there Avas a feast, or a ball, or 
 an entertainment, or more properly all three together, given ns in 
 honour of the ship, and the ship's company, and the other visitors. 
 At that assembly, I believe, I saw all the inhabitants then upon the 
 Island, without any exception. I took no particular notice of more 
 than a few, but I found it very agreeable in that little corner of the 
 world to see the children, who were of all ages, and mostly very pretty 
 as they mostly aro. There was one handsome elderly lady, with very 
 dark eyes and gray hair, that I inquired about. I was told that her 
 name was Mrs. Yenning ; and her married daughter, a fair slight 
 thing, was pointed out to mo by the name of Fanny Fisher. Quite a 
 child she looked, with a little copy of herself holding to her dress ; 
 and her husband, just come back from the mine, exceeding proud of 
 her. They were a good-looking set of people on the whole, but I 
 didn't like them. I was out of sorts ; in conversation with Charkcr, 
 I found fault with all of them. I said of Mrs. Venning, she was 
 proud ; of Mrs. Fisher, she was a delicate little baby- fool. What did 
 I think of this one? Why, he was a fine gentleman. What did 
 I say to that one ? Why, sho was a fino lady. What could yoii 
 expect them to be (I asked Cliarker), nui'sod in that climate, with 
 the tropical night shining for them, musical instruments playing to 
 them, great trees bending over them, soft lamps lighting them, fire- 
 flies sparkling in among them, bright flowers and birds brought into 
 existence to please their eyes, delicious drinks to be had for the pour- 
 ing out, delicious fruits to be got for the picking, and every one 
 dancing and murmuring happily in the scented air, with the sea 
 breaking lo\v on the reef for a j^leasant chorus. 
 
 "Fine gentlemen and fine ladies, Harry?" I says to C'harker. 
 " Yes, I think so ! Dolls ! Dolls ! Not the sort of stuff for wear, 
 that comes of poor private soldiering in tlie Eoyal Marines ! " 
 
 However, I could not gainsay that they were very hospitable peoj)le, 
 and that they treated us uncommonly well. Every man of us was at 
 the entertainment, and Mrs. Belltott had more partners than she 
 could dance with : though she danced all night, too. As to Jack 
 (whether of the Christopher Columbus, or of the Pirate pursuit party, 
 it made no difference), he danced with his brother Jack, danced with 
 himself, danced with the moon, the stars, the trees, the prospect, any- 
 thing. I didn't greatly take to the chief-officer of that party, with 
 his bright eyes, brown face, and easy figure. I didn't much like his 
 way when he first happened to come where we were, with Miss 
 Maryon on his arm. " 0, Captain Carton," she says, " here arc two 
 friends of mine ! " He says, " Indeed ? These two Marines ? " 
 meaning Charker and self. " Yes," says she, " I showed these two 
 friends of mine when they first came, all the wonders of Silver-Store." 
 He gave us a laughing look, and says ho, " You arc in luck, men. I 
 would be disrated and go before the mast to-morrow, to be shown the 
 way up",yard again l)y such a guide. You are in luck, men." When
 
 84 I'h^ Perils of Certain English Prisoners. 
 
 we had saluted, and ho and the lady had waltzed away, I said, " You 
 are a pretty fellow, too, to talk of luck. You may go to the Devil ! " 
 
 Mr. Commissioner Pordage and Mrs. Commissioner, showed among 
 the company on that occasion like the King and Queen of a much 
 Greater Britain than Great Britain. Only two other circumstances 
 in that jovial night made much separate impression on me. One was 
 this. A man in our draft of marines, named Tom Packer, a wild un- 
 steady young fellow, but the son of a respectable shipwright in 
 Portsmouth Yard, and a good scholar who had been well brought up, 
 comes to me after a spell of dancing, and takes me aside by the 
 elbow, and says, swearing angrily : 
 
 " Gill Davis, I hope I may not be the death of Sergeant Drooce 
 one day ! " 
 
 Now, I knew Drooce had always borne particularly hard on this 
 man, and I knew this man to be of a very hot temper : so, I said : 
 
 " Tut, nonsense ! don't talk so to me ! If there's a man in the 
 corps who scorns the name of an assassin, that man and Tom Packer 
 are one." 
 
 Tom wipes his head, being in a mortal sweat, and says he : 
 
 " I hope so, but I can't answer for myself when he lords it over 
 me, as he has just now done, before a woman. I tell you what, Gill ! 
 Mark my words ! Tt will go hard with Sergeant Drooce, if ever we 
 are in an engagement together, and he has to look to me to save him. 
 Let him say a prayer then, if he know^s one, for it's all over with him, 
 and he is on his Death-bed. Mark my words ! " 
 
 I did mark his words, and very soon afterwards, too, as will shortly 
 be taken down. 
 
 The other circumstance that I noticed at tliat ball, was, the gaiety 
 and attachment of Christian George King. The innocent spirits that 
 Sambo Pilot was in, and the impossibility he found himself under of 
 showing all the little colony, but especially the ladies and children, 
 how fond he was of them, how devoted to them, and how faithful to 
 them for life and death, for present, future, and everlasting, made a 
 great impression on me. If ever a man, Sambo or no Sambo, was 
 trustful and trusted, to what may be called quite an infantine and 
 sweetly beautiful extent, surely, I thought that morning when I did 
 at last lie down to rest, it was that Sambo Pilot, Christian George 
 King. 
 
 This may account for my dreaming of liim. He stuck in my sleep, 
 cornerwise, and I couldn't got him out. He was always flitting about 
 me, dancing round me, and peeping in over my haniinock, though I 
 Avoke and dozed off again fifty times. At last, wlion I opened my 
 eyes, there lie really was, looking in at the open side of the little 
 dark liut ; which was made of leaves, and had CLarkcr's hammock 
 elung in it as well as mine. 
 
 " So-Jecr ! " says he, in a sort of a low croak. '* Ynp ! " 
 
 " Hallo I " says I, starting up. ' What V You arc there, are you ? "
 
 Christian George King brings Neius. 85 
 
 " Ise," says he. *' Christian George King got news," 
 
 " What news has he got ? " 
 
 Pirates out ! " 
 
 I was on my feet in a second. So was Charker. We were both 
 aware that Captain Carton, in command of the boats, constantly 
 watched the mainland for a secret signal, though, of course, it was 
 not known to such as us what the signal was. 
 
 Christian George King had vanished before we touched the ground. 
 But, the word was already passing from hut to hut to turn out quietly, 
 and we knew that the nimble barbarian had got hold of the truth, or 
 something near it. 
 
 In a space among tlie trees behind the encampment of us visitors, 
 naval and military, was a snugly-screened spot, where we kept the 
 stores that were in use, and did our cookery. The word Avas passed 
 to assemble here. It was very quickly given, and was given (so far 
 as we were concerned) by Sergeant Drooce, who was as good in a 
 soldier point of view, as he was bad in a tyrannical one. Wo were 
 ordered to drop into this space, quietly, behind the trees, one by one. 
 As we assembled here, the seamen assembled too. Within ten 
 minutes, as I should estimate, we were all hero, except the usual 
 guard upon the beach. The beach (we could see it through the wood) 
 looked as it always had done in the hottest time of the day. The 
 guard were in the shadow of the sloop's hull, and nothing -was moving 
 but the sea, and that moved very faintly. Work had always been 
 knocked off at that hour, until the sun grew less fierce, and the sea- 
 breeze rose ; so that its being holiday with us, made no difference, 
 just then, in the look of the place. But I may mention that it was 
 a holiday, and the first we had had since our hard work began. Last 
 night's ball had been given, on the leak's being repaired, and the 
 careening done. The worst of the work was over, and to-morrow wo 
 were to begin to get the sloop afloat again. 
 
 We marines were now drawn uj) here under arms. The chace-party 
 were drawn up separate. The men of the Columbus were drawn up 
 separate. The officers stepped out into the midst of the three parties, 
 and spoke so as all might hear. Captain Carton was the officer in 
 command, and he had a spy-glass in his hand. His coxswain stood 
 by him with another spy-glass, and with a slate on which he seemed 
 to have been taking down signals. 
 
 " Now, men ! " says Captain Carton ; " I have to let you know, for 
 your satisfaction : Firstly, that there are ten pirate-boats, strongly 
 manned and armed, lying hidden up a creek yonder on the coast, 
 under tlie overhanging branches of the dense trees. Secondly, that 
 they will certainly come out this night when the moon rises, on a 
 pillaging and murdering expedition, of which some part of the main- 
 land is the object. Thirdly don't cheer, men ! that we will give 
 chace, and, if we can get at them, rid the world of them, please God ! " 
 
 Nobody spoke, that I heard, and nobody moved, that I saw. Yet
 
 86 The Perils of Certain English Prisoners, 
 
 tlicre was a kind of ring, as if every man answered and approved with 
 the best blood that was inside of him. 
 
 " Sir," says Captain Maryon, " I beg to volunteer on this service, 
 with my boats. Sly people volunteer, to the ship'u boys." 
 
 " In His Majesty's name and service," the other answers, touching 
 his hat, " I accept your aid with pleasure. Lieutenant Linderwocd, 
 how will you divide your men? " 
 
 I was ashamed I give it out to bo written down as large and plain 
 as possible I was heart and soul ashamed of my thoughts of those 
 two sick officers, Captain Maryon and Lieutenant Linderwood, when 
 I saw them, then and there. The spirit in those two gentlemen beat 
 down their illness (and very ill I knev/ them to be) like Saint George 
 beating down the l)ragon. Pain and weakness, want cf ease and want 
 of rest, had no more place in their minus tlian fear itself. Meaning 
 now to express for my lady to write down, exactly what I felt then and 
 there, I felt this : " You two bravo fellows that I had been so grudgeful 
 f, I know that if you v/ere dying you would put it ofi' to get up and do 
 your best, and then you would be so modest that in lying down again 
 to die, you would hardly say, ' I did it ! ' " 
 
 It did me good. It really did me good. 
 
 But, to go back to where I broke off. Says Captain Carton to 
 Lieutenant Linderwood, " Sir, how will you divide your men ? There 
 is not room fur all ; and a few men should, in any case, be left here." 
 
 There was some debate about it. Kt last, it was resolved to leave 
 eight Marines and four seamen on the Island, besides the sloop's two 
 boys. And because it was considered that the friendly Sambos would 
 only want to bo commanded in case of any danger (thougli none 
 at all was apprehended there), the officers were in favour of leaving 
 the two non-commissioned officers, Drooco and Charker. It was 
 a heavy disappointment to them, just as my being one of the left was 
 a heavy disappointment to me then, but not soon afterwards. Wo 
 men drew lots for it, and I drew " Island." So did Tom Packer. So 
 of course, did four more of our rank and file. 
 
 When this was settled, verbal instructions were given to all hands 
 to keep the intended expedition seci'et, in order that the women and 
 children might not bo alarmed, or the expedition put in a difficulty 
 by moro volunteers. The assembly wa;^ to bo on that same spot at 
 sunset. Every man was to keep up an appearance, meanwhile, of 
 occupying himself in his usual way. That is to say, every nuin 
 excepting four old trusty seamen, who were appointed, with an oflicer, 
 to see to the arms and ammunition, and to muffle the rullocks of the 
 boats, and to make everything as trim and swift and silent jis it could 
 be made. 
 
 The Sambo Pilot had been present all the while, in case of his being 
 wanted, and had said to the officer in command, live hundred times 
 over if he had said it once, tliat Christian George King would stay 
 with the So-Jccrs, w\u\ take care of the booft'er ladies and the booffcr
 
 A '/I Expedition against Pirates. 8y 
 
 cliikls booficr beiug that native's expression for beautiful. He was 
 now asked a few questions concerning the putting off of the boats, and 
 in particuhir whether there was any way of embarking at the back of 
 the Island : which Captain Carton would have half liked to do, and 
 then have droj^ped round in its shadow and slanted across to the main. 
 But, " No," says Christian George King. " No, no, no ! Told yon 
 so, ten time. No, no, no ! All reef, all rock, all swim, all drown ! " 
 Striking out as he said it, like a swimmer gone mad, and turning over 
 on his back on dry land, and spluttering himself to death, in a manner 
 that made him quite an exhibition. 
 
 The sun went down, after appearing to bo a long time about it, and 
 the assembly was called. Every man answered to his name, of course, 
 and was at his post. It was not yet black dark, and the roll was only 
 just gone through, when up comes Mr. Commissioner Pordage with 
 his Diplomatic coat on. 
 
 " Captain Carton," says ho, " Sir, what is this "? " 
 
 " This, Mr. Commissioner " (he was very short with him), " is an 
 expedition against the Pirates. It is a secret exi)edition, so please to 
 keep it a secret." 
 
 " Sir," says Commissioner Pordage, " I trust there is going to bo 
 no unnecessary cruelty committed V " 
 
 " Sir," returns the officer, " I trust not." 
 
 " That is not enough, sir," cries Commissioner Pordage, getting 
 wroth. " Captain Carton, I give you notice. Government requires 
 you to treat the enemy with great delicacy, consideration, clemency, 
 and forbearance." 
 
 " Sir," says Captain Carton, " I am an English officer, commanding 
 English Men, and I hope I am not likely to disappoint the Govern- 
 ment's just expectations. But, I presume you know that these villains 
 tnidcr their black flag have despoiled our countrymen of their property, 
 burnt their homes, barbarously murdered them and their little children, 
 and worse than murdered their wives and daughters ? " 
 
 " Perhaps I do, Captain Carton," answers Pordage, waving his hand, 
 with dignity ; " perhaps I do not. It is not customary, sir, for Govern- 
 ment to commit itself." 
 
 " It matters very little, Mr. Pordage, wliether or no. Believing 
 that I hold my commission by tlio allowance of God, and not that I 
 have received it direct from tho Uevil, I shall certainly use it, with 
 all avoidance of unnecessary suffering and with all merciful swiftness 
 of execution, to exterminate these people from the face of the earth. 
 Let me recommend you to go liome, sir, and to keep out of the night- 
 air." 
 
 Never another syllable did that officer say to tho Commissioner, but 
 turned away to his men. Tlie Commissioner buttoned liis Diplomatic 
 coat to the chin, said, " Mr. Kitten, attend mo I " gasped, half choked 
 himself, and took himself oif. 
 
 It now fell very dark, indeed, I hayc seldom, if cverj seen it
 
 88 The Perils of Certain English Prisoners. 
 
 darker, nor yet so dark. The moon was not duo until one in the 
 moruiug, and it was but a little after nine when onr men lay down 
 where they were mustered. It was pretended that they were to take 
 ft naj), but everybody knew that no nap was to be got under the 
 circumstances. Though all were very quiet, there was a restlessness 
 among tlie people ; much what I have seen among the peojile on a 
 race-course, when the bell has rung for the saddling for a great race 
 with large stakes on it. 
 
 At ten, they put off ; only one boat putting off at a time ; another 
 foUowing in hvo minutes ; botli then lying on their oars until another 
 followed. Ahead of all, paddling his own outlandish little canoe 
 without a sound, went the Sambo pilot, to take them safely outside 
 the reef. No light was shown but once, and that was in the com- 
 manding officer's own hand. I lighted the dark lantern for liim, and 
 he took it from mo when he embarked. They had blue lights and 
 such like with them, but kept themselves as dark as Murder. 
 
 The expedition got away with wonderful (][uietness, and Christian 
 George King soon came back dancing with joy. 
 
 " Yup, So-Jeer," says he to myself in a very objectionable kind of 
 convulsions, " Christian George King sar berry glad. Pirates all be 
 blown a-pieces. Yup ! Yup ! " 
 
 My reply to that cannibal was, " However glad you may be, hold 
 your noise, and don't dance jigs and slap your knees about it, for I 
 can't abear to see you do it." 
 
 I was on duty then ; we twelve who were left being divided into 
 four watches of three each, three hours' spell. I was relieved at 
 twelve. A little before that time, I had challenged, and Miss 
 Maryon and Mrs. Belltott had come in. 
 
 " Good Davis," says Miss Maryon, " Avhat is the matter ? Where is 
 my brother ? " 
 
 I told her what was the matter, and where her brother was. 
 
 " O Heaven help him ! " says she, clasping her hands and looking 
 up she was close in front of me, and she looked most lovely to be 
 sure ; " he is not sufficiently recovered, not strong enough for such 
 strife ! " 
 
 " If you had seen him, miss," I told her, " as I saw him when lie 
 volunteered, you would have known that his si)irit is strong enough 
 for any strife. It will bear his body, miss, to wherever duty calls 
 him. It will always bear him to an lumourable life, or a brave death." 
 
 " Heaven bless you ! " says she, touching my arm. " I know it. 
 Heaven bless you ! " 
 
 Mrs. Belltott surprised me by trembling and saying iKithiiig. They 
 were still standing looking towards the sea and listening, after the 
 relief had come round. It continuing very dark, I asked to be 
 allowed to take them back. Miss Maryon thanked me, and she put 
 her arm in mine, and 1 did take them back. I have now got to make 
 a confession that will appear singular. After I had left theni, I laid
 
 TreacJiery. 89 
 
 myself down on my face on the beach, and cried for the first time 
 since I had frightened birds as a boy at Snorridge Bottom, to think 
 what a poor, ignorant, low-23laced, private soldier I was. 
 
 It was only for half a minute or so. A man can't at all times be 
 quite master of himself, and it was only for half a minute or so. 
 Then I up and went to my hut, and turned into my hammock, and 
 fell asleep with wet eyelashes, and a sore, sore heart. Just as I had 
 often done when I was a child, and had been worse used than usual. 
 
 I slept (as a child under those circumstances might) very sound, and 
 yet very sore at heart all through my slccj). I was awoke by tlio 
 words, " He is a determined man." 1 had sprung out of my hammock, 
 and had seized my firelock, and was standing on the ground, saying 
 the words myself. " He is a determined man." But, the curiosity of 
 my state was, that I seemed to be repeating them after somebody, and 
 to have been wonderfully startled by hearing them. 
 
 As soon as I came to myself, I went out of the hut, and away to 
 where the guard was. Charker challenged : 
 
 " Who goes there ? " 
 
 " A friend." 
 
 " Not Gill ? " says he, as he shouldered his piece. 
 
 " Gill, ' says T. 
 
 " Why, what the deuce do you do out of your hammock ? " says he. 
 
 " Too hot for sleep," says I ; "is all right ? " 
 
 " Right ! " says Charker, " yes, yes ; all's right enough here ; what 
 should be wrong here V It's the boats that we want to know of. 
 Except for fire-fiies twinkling about, and the lonesome splashes of 
 great creatures as they drop into the water, there's nothing going on 
 here to case a man's mind from the boats." 
 
 The moon vras above the sea, and had risen, I should say, some 
 half-an-hour. As Charker spoke, with his face towards the sea, I, 
 looking landward, suddenly laid my right hand on his breast, and 
 said, " Don't move. Don't turn. Don't raise your voice ! You never 
 saw a Maltese face here ? " 
 
 " No. What do you mean ? " he asks, staring at me. 
 
 " Nor yet an English face, with one eye and a patch across the 
 nose ? " 
 
 " No. What ails you "? What do you mean ? " 
 
 I had seen both, looking at us round the stem of a cocoa-nut tree, 
 wliere the moon struck them. I had seen that Sambo Pilot, with one 
 hand laid on the stem of the tree, drawing them back into the heavy 
 shadow. I had seen their naked cutlasses twinkle and shine, like 
 bits of the moonshine in the water that had got blown ashore among 
 the trees by the light wind. I had seen it all, in a moment. And I 
 saw in a moment (as any man would), that the signalled move of the 
 ])irates on the mainland was a plot and a feint ; that the leak had 
 been made to disable tlie sloop ; tluit the boats had been tempted 
 away, to leave the Island unprotected ; that the pirates had landed by
 
 90 The Perils of Certain EuglisJi Prisoners. 
 
 some secreted way at the back ; and that Christiau George Kiug was 
 a double-dyed traitor, and a most infernal villain. 
 
 I considered, still all in one and the same moment, tliat Charker 
 Avas a brave man, but not quick witli bis bead ; and tbat Sergeant 
 Drooce, with a much better bead, was close by. All I said to Charker 
 was, " I am afraid wo are betrayed. Turn your back full to the 
 moonlight on the sea, and cover the stem of the cocoa-nut tree which 
 Avill then bo right before you, at the height of a man's heart. Aro 
 you right ? " 
 
 " I am right," says Charker, turning instantly, and falling into the 
 position with a ncrvo of iron ; " and right ain't left. Is it, Gill ? " 
 
 A few seconds brought mo to Sergeant Drooce's hut. Ho was fast 
 asleep, and being a heavy sleeper, I had to lay my hand upon him to 
 rouse him. The instant I toucliod him ho came rolling out of his 
 hammock, and upon mo liko a tiger. And a tiger he was, except 
 that he knew what ho was up to, in his utmost heat, as well as 
 any man. 
 
 I had to struggle with him pretty hard to bring him to his senses, 
 panting all the while (for he gave me a breather), " Sergeant, I am Gill 
 Uavis ! Treachery ! Pirates on the Island 1 " 
 
 The last words brought him round, and he took his hands off. " I 
 have seen two of them within this minute," said I. And so I told 
 him what I had told Harry Charker. 
 
 His soldierly, though tyrannical, head was clear in an instant. Ho 
 didn't waste one word, even of surprise. " Order the guard," says 
 ho, " to draw ofl:' quietly into tlie Fort." (They called the enclosure 
 I have before mentioned, the Fort, though it was not much of that.) 
 " Then got you to the Fort as quick as you can, rouse up every soul 
 there, and fasten the gate. I will bring in all those who are at the 
 Signal Hill. If we are surrounded befuro we can join you, you must 
 make a sally and cut us out if you can. The word among our men 
 is, ' Women and children ! ' " 
 
 He burst away, liko fire going before the wind over dry reeds. Ho 
 roused up tlio seven men who v/ere off duty, and had them bursting 
 away with liim, before they knew tliey were not asleep. I rej)orted 
 orders to Charker, and ran to the Fort, as I have never run at any 
 otlior time in all my life : no, not even in a dream. 
 
 The gate was not fast, and had no good fastening : only a double 
 wooden bar, a poor chain, and a bad lock. Those, I secured as well 
 as they could be secured in a few seconds by one pair of hands, and 
 so ran to that part of the building where Miss Maryon lived. I calbul 
 to her loudly by her name until she answered. I then called loudly 
 all the names I knew Mrs. Macey (Miss Maryon's married sister), 
 Mr. ]\[accy, Mrs. Venning, Mr. and Mrs. Fisher, even Mr. and Mrs. 
 I'ordage. Then I called out, " All you gentlemen hen;, get up and 
 defend the jdaco ! We arc cauglit in a traj). I'irates have landed, 
 AVe are attacked ! "
 
 Preparations for Defence. 9 1 
 
 At tliG terriblo v/ord "Pirates!" for, those villaius Latl done sucli 
 deeds in those seas as uavcr can be told in writing, and can scarcely 
 be so much as thought of cries and screams rose up from every part 
 of the place. Quickly lights moved about from window to window, 
 and the cries moved about with them, and men, women, and children 
 came flying down into the square. I remarked to myself, even then, 
 what a number of things I seemed to see at once. I noticed Mrs. 
 Macoy coming towards me, carrying all her three children together. 
 I noticed Mr. Pordage in the greatest terror, in vain trying to get on 
 his Diplomatic coat ; and Mr. Kitten resjiectfully tying his po( hot- 
 handkerchief over Mrs. Pordage's nightcap. I noticed Mrs. BcUtott 
 run out screaming, and shrink upon the ground near mo, and cover 
 her face in her hands, and lie all of a bundle, shivering. But, what 
 I noticed with the greatest pleasure v;as, the determined eyes v/ith 
 which those men of the Mine that I had tliought fine gentlemen, came 
 round me with what arms they had : to the full as cool and resolute; 
 as I could be, for my life ay, and for my soul, too, into the bargain ! 
 
 The chief person being Mr. Macey, I told him how the three men 
 of the guard would be at the gate directly, if they were not already 
 there, and how Sergeant Drooce and the other seven Avere gone to 
 bring in the outlying part of the people of Silver-Store. I next 
 urged him, for the love of all who were dear to him, to trust no Sambo, 
 and, above all, if he could get any good chance at Christian George 
 King, not to lose it, but to put him out of the world. 
 
 " I v.ill follow vour advice to the letter, Davis," says he ; " what 
 next ? " 
 
 My answer was, " I think, sir, I would recommend you next, to 
 order down such heavy furniture and lumber as can be moved, and 
 make a barricade within the gate." 
 
 ' That's good again," says he : ' v.-ill you see it done ? " 
 
 " I'll willingly help to do it," says I, " unless or until my superior, 
 Sergeant Drooce, gives me other orders." 
 
 He shook me by the hand, and having told oif some of his com- 
 panions to help me, bestirred himself to look to the arms and 
 ammunition. A pro])er quick, brave, steady, ready gentleman ! 
 
 One of tlieir three little children was deaf and dumb, Miss Maryou 
 had been from tho first with all the children, soothing them, and 
 dressing them (poor little tilings, they had been brought out of their 
 beds), and making them believe that it was a game of play, so that 
 some of them were now even laughing. I had been working hard 
 with the others at the barricade, and had got up a jjrctty good breast- 
 work v.ithin tho gate. Drooce and tho seven men had come back, 
 bringing in tho people from tlie Signal Hill, and had worked along 
 v.-ith us : but, I had not so much as spoken a word to Drooce, nor had 
 Drooce so much as spoken a word to mo, for we were both too bus}'. 
 Tlie breastwork was now finished, and I found Miss Maryon at my 
 side, with a child in her arms. Her dark hair was fastened round her
 
 92 The Perils of Certain English Prisoners. 
 
 head with a band. She had a quantity of it, and it looked even 
 richer and more precious, put up hastily out of her way, than I had 
 seen it look when it was carefully arranged. She was very pale, but 
 extraordinarily quiet and still, 
 
 " Dear good Davis," said she, " I have been waiting to speak one 
 word to you." 
 
 I turned to her directly. If I had received a musket-ball in the 
 licart, and she had stood there, I almost believe I should have turned 
 to her before I dropped. 
 
 " This pretty little creature," said she, kissing the child in her 
 arms, who was playing with her liair and trying to pull it down, 
 " cannot hear what wo say can hear nothing. I trust you so much, 
 and have such great coulidenco in you, that I want you to make me a 
 promise." 
 
 "What is it, Miss?" 
 
 " That if we are defeated, and you are absolutely sure of my being 
 taken, you will kill me." 
 
 " I shall not be alive to do it. Miss. I shall have died in your 
 defence before it comes to that. They must step across my body to 
 lay a hand on you." 
 
 " But, if you are alive, you brave soldier." How she looked at mc ! 
 " And if you cannot save me from the Pirates, living, you will save 
 me, dead. Tell me so." 
 
 Well ! I told her I would do that at the last, if all else failed. Slic 
 took my hand my rough, coarse hand and put it to her lips. She 
 put it to the child's lij^s, and the child kissed it. I believe I had tlio 
 strength of half a dozen men in mo, from that moment, until the fight 
 was over. 
 
 All this time, Mr. Commissioner Pordago had been wanting to 
 make a Proclamation to the Pirates to lay down their arms and go 
 aw.iy ; and everybody had been hustling him about and tumbling over 
 liini, while he was calling for pen and ink to write it with. Mrs. 
 Pordage, too, had some curious ideas about the British respectability 
 of her nightcap (which had as many frills to it, growing in layers one 
 inside another, as if it was a white vegetable of tlio artichoke sort), 
 and she wouldn't take the nightcap off, and would be angry when it 
 got crushed by the otlicr ladies wlio wore lianding things about, and, 
 in short, she gave as much trouble as her husband did. But, as wo 
 were now forming for the defence of tlio place, they were both poked 
 out of the way with no ceremony. The children and ladies were got 
 into the little trench which surrounded the silver-house (wo were 
 afraid of leaving them in any of the light buildings, lest they should 
 bo set on fire), and we made the best disposition we could. There 
 was a pretty good store, in point of amount, of tolerable swords and 
 cutlasses. Those were issued. There were, also, perhaps a score or 
 so (if spare iimskcts. Those were brought out. To my astonishment, 
 little Mrs. Fisher that I had taken for a doll and a baby, was not
 
 The Signal. 93 
 
 only very active in that service, but volunteered to load tlie spare 
 arms. 
 
 " For, I understand it well," says she, cheerfully, without a shake 
 in her voice. 
 
 " I am a soldier's daughter and a sailor's sister, and I understand 
 it too," says Miss Maryon, just in the same way. 
 
 Steady and busy behind where I stood, those two beautiful and 
 delicate young women fell to handling the guns, hammering the flints, 
 looking to the locks, and quietly directing others to pass up powder 
 and bullets from hand to hand, as unflinching as the best of tried 
 soldiers. 
 
 Sergeant Drooce had brought in word that the pirates were very 
 strong in numbers over a hundred was his estimate and that they 
 were not, even then, all landed ; for, he had seen them in a very good 
 position on the further side of the Signal Hill, evidently waiting for 
 the rest of their men to come up. In the present pause, the first we 
 had had since the alarm, he was telling this over again to Mr. Macey, 
 when Mr. Macey suddenly cried out : " The signal ! Nobody has 
 thought of the signal ! " 
 
 We knew of no signal, so we could not have thought cf it. 
 
 " What signal may you mean, sir ? " says Sergeant Drooce, looking 
 sharp at him. 
 
 " There is a pile of wood upon the Signal Hill. If it could be 
 lighted which never has been done yet it would be a signal of 
 distress to the mainland." 
 
 Charker cries, directly : " Sergeant Drooce, dispatch me on that 
 duty. Give me the two men who were on guard with me to-night, 
 and I'll light the fire, if it can be done." 
 
 " And if it can't, Corporal " Mr. Macey strikes in. 
 
 " Look at these ladies and children, sir ! " says Charker. " I'd 
 sooner ligld myself, than not try any chance to save them," 
 
 We gave him a Hurrah ! it burst from us, come of it what might 
 and he got his two men, and was let out at the gate, and crept away. 
 I had no sooner come back to my place from being one of the party 
 to handle the gate, than Miss Maryon said in a low voice behind me : 
 
 "Davis, will you look at this powder? This is not right." 
 
 I turned my head. Christian George King again, and treachery 
 again ! Sea-water had been conveyed into the magazine, and every 
 grain of powder was spoiled ! 
 
 " Stay a moment," said Sergeant Drooce, when I had told him, 
 witliout causing a movement in a muscle of his face : " look to your 
 pouch, my lad. You Tom Packer, look to your pouch, confound you ! 
 Look to your pouches, all you Marines." 
 
 The same artful savage had got at them, somehow or another, and 
 the cartridges were all unserviceable. " Hum ! " says the Sergeant. 
 'Look to your loading, men. You are right so far?" 
 
 Yes; we were right so far.
 
 94 ^/^t^' Perils of Certain English Prisoners. 
 
 " Well, my lads, .iiicl gentlomcu all," says the Sorgoant, " tliis will 
 bo a hand-to-liand aliair, aud so macli tlic better." 
 
 Ho treated bimself to a pinch of snuff, and stood up, sqnarc- 
 sliotildcred and broad-clicsted, in tlic light of the moon which was 
 now very bright as cool as if he was waiting for a play to begin. 
 He stood qnict, and we all stood quiet, for a matter of something like 
 half-an-hour, I took notice from such whispered talk as tliere was, 
 liow little wo that tlie silver did not belong to, thought about it, and 
 how much the people that it did belong to, thouglit about it. At the 
 end of the half-liour, it was reported from tlic gate that Charker and 
 the two were falling back on us, pursued by about a dozen. 
 
 " Sally ! Gate-party, under Gill Davis," says the Sergeant, " and 
 bring 'cm in ! Like men, now ! " 
 
 We were not long aboiit it, and we brought them in. " Don't take 
 me," says Charker, holding mo round the nock, aud stumbling down 
 at my feet when the gate was flxst, " don't take me near the ladies or 
 the children. Gill, They had better not see Death, till it can't bo 
 helped. They'll see it soon enough." 
 
 " Harry ! " I answered, holding up his head. " Comrade ! " 
 
 He was cut to pieces. The signal had been secured by the first 
 pirate party tliat landed ; his hair was all singed off, and his face was 
 blackened with the running pitch from a torcli. 
 
 He made no complaint of pain, or of anything. " Good-bye, old 
 chap," was all he said, with a smile. " I've got my death. And 
 Deatli ain't life. Is it, Gill ? " 
 
 Having helped to lay his poor body on one side, I went back to my 
 post. Sergeant Drooce looked at me, with his eyebrows a little lifted. 
 I nodded. " Close up here men, and gentlemen all ! " said tlie 
 Sergeant. " A place too many, in the lino." 
 
 TJie Pirates were so close upon us at this time, that the foremost of 
 them were already before the gate. More and more came up with a 
 great noise, and shouting loudly. When we believed from tlie soiTud 
 that they were all there, we gave three English cheers. The poor 
 little children joined, and were so fully convinced of our being at 
 play, that they enjoyed the noise, and were heard clapping their hands 
 in tlie silence that followed. 
 
 Our disposition was this, beginning with the rear. Mrs. Venning, 
 holding her daughter's child in her arms, sat on the stops of tlie little 
 square trench surrounding the silvor-liouse, encouraging and directing 
 tliose women and children as she might have done in the happiest and 
 easiest time of her life. Then, there was an armed line, under Mr, 
 IMacey, across tlie width of the enclosure, facing tliat way and liaving 
 tlicir backs towards tlie gate, in order that they might wat(.'h tlic walls 
 and prevent our being taken by surpriso. Then tliere was a space of 
 eight or ten feet deep, in which the spare arms were, and in which 
 ]\Iiss Miiryon and ]\rrs. Fisher, their hands and dresses blackened with 
 the spoilt guiipov>'dcr. worked on their knees, tying such things as
 
 The Attach. 95 
 
 knives, old bayonets, aud spear-lieads, to tlic muzzles of tLe useless 
 muskets. Then, there was a second armed lino, under Sergeant 
 Drooce, also across tlie width of the enclosure, but facing to the gate. 
 Then came the breastwork we had made, with a zigzag way through 
 it for me and my little party to hold good in retreating, as long as we 
 could, when we were driven from tlie gate. We all knew tliat it was 
 impossible to hold the place long, and that our only hope was in the 
 timely discovery of the plot by the boats, and in their coming back. 
 
 I and my men were now thrown forward to the gate. From a spy- 
 liole, I could see the whole crowd of Pirates. Tlicre were Malays 
 among them, Dutch, Maltese, Greeks, Sambos, Negroes, and Convict 
 Englishmen from the West India Islands ; among tlie last, him with 
 the one eye and the patch across the nose. There were some Portu- 
 guese, too, and a fev/ Spaniards. The captain was a Portuguese ; a 
 little man with very large ear-rings imder a very l)road hat, and 
 a great bright shawl twisted about his shoulders. They were all 
 strongly armed, but like a boarding party, with pikes, swords, 
 cutlasses, and axes. I noticed a good many pistols, but not a gun of 
 any kind among them. This gave me to understand that they liad 
 considered that a continued roll of musketry might perhaps have 
 been heard on the mainland ; also, that for the reason that fire would 
 be seen from the mainland they would not set the Fort in flames and 
 roast us alive ; which was one of their favoiirite ways of carrying on. 
 I looked about for Christian George King, and if I had seen him I 
 am much mistaken if he would not have received my one round of 
 ball-cartridge in his head. But, no Christian George King was 
 visible. 
 
 A sort of a wild Portuguese demon, who seemed either fierce-mad 
 or fierce-drunk but, they all seemed one or the otlier came forward 
 witli the black flag, and gave it a wave or two. After that, the 
 Portuguese captain called out in shrill English, " I say you ! English 
 fools ! Open the gate ! Surrender ! " 
 
 As we kept close and quiet, he said something to his men which I 
 didn't understand, and when he had said it, the one-eyed English 
 rascal with tlic patch (who had stepped out when he began), said it 
 again in English. It was only this. " Boys of the black flag, this is 
 to 1)0 quickly done. Take all the prisoners you can. If they don't 
 yield, kill the children to make them. Forward ! '' Then, they all 
 came on at the gate, and in another half-minute were smashing and 
 splitting it in. 
 
 We struck at them througli the gaps and shivers, and we dropped 
 many of them, too ; but, tlieir very v.eight vrould have carried such a 
 gate, if tliey had been unarmed. I soon found Sergeant Drooce at 
 my side, forming us six remaining marines in line Tom Packer next 
 to me and ordering us to fall back three paces, and, as they broke 
 in, to give them our one little volley at short distance. " Then," 
 says he, " receive them behind your breastwork on the bayonet, and
 
 g6 The Perils of Certain English Prisoners. 
 
 at least let every man of you pin one of the cursed cockcliafers 
 through the body." 
 
 We checked them by our fire, slight as it was, and we checked them 
 at the breastwork. However, they broke over it like swarms of 
 devils they were, really and truly, more devils than men and then 
 it was hand to hand, indeed. 
 
 We clubbed our muskets and laid about us ; even then, those two 
 ladies always behind me were steady and ready with the arms, I 
 liad a lot of Maltese and Malays upon me, and, but for a broadsword 
 that Miss Maryon's own hand put in mine, should have got my end 
 from them. But, was that all ? No. I saw a heap of banded dark 
 hair and a white dress come thrice between me and them, under my 
 own raised right arm, which each time might liave destroyed the 
 wearer of the white dross ; and each time one of the lot went down, 
 struck dead. 
 
 Drooce was armed with a broadsword, too, and did such things 
 with it, that there was a cry, in half-a-dozen languages, of " Kill 
 that sergeant ! " as I knew, by the cry being raised in English, and 
 taken up in other tongues. 1 Jiad received a severe cut across the left 
 arm a few moments before, and should have known nothing of it, 
 except supposing that somebody had struck me a smart blow, if I 
 had not felt weak, and seen myself covered with spouting blood, and, 
 at the same instant of time, seen Miss Mavyon tearing her dress and 
 binding it with Mrs. Fisher's help round the wound. They called to 
 Tom Packer, who was scouring by, to stop and guard me for one 
 minute, while I was bound, or I should bleed to death in trying to 
 defend myself. Tom stopped directly, with a good sabre in his liand. 
 
 In that same moment all things seem to happen in that same 
 moment, at such a time half-a-dozen had rushed howling at Sergeant 
 Drooce. The Sergeant, stepping back against the wall, stopped one 
 howl for ever with such a terrible blow, and waited for the rest to 
 come on, with such a wonderfully unmoved face, that they stopped 
 and looked at him. 
 
 " See him now ! " cried Tom Packer. " Now, when I could cut him 
 out ! Gill ! Did I tell you to mark my words '? " 
 
 I implored Tom Packer in the Lord's name, as well as I could in 
 my faintness, to go to tlie Sergeant's aid. 
 
 " I hate and detest liini," says Tom, moodily wavering. " Still, lie 
 is a brave man." Then he calls out, "Sergeant Drooce, St'rgcunt 
 Drooce ! Toll me you liavo driven me too liard, and arc sorry for it." 
 
 Tlie Sergeant, without turning his eyes from liis assnilants. wliich 
 would have been instant death to him, answers : 
 
 " No. I won't." 
 
 " Sergeant Drooce ! " cries Tom, in a kind of an agony. " 1 have 
 passed my word tliat I would never save you from Death, if I could, 
 but would leave yon to die. Tell me you have driven me too liard 
 and are sorry for it, and that shall go for nothing."
 
 Taken Prisoners. 97 
 
 One of the group laid tlie Sergeant's bald bare bead open. The 
 Sergeant laid him dead. 
 
 " I tell you," says the Sergeant, breathing a little short, and waiting 
 for the next attack, " no. I won't. If you are not man enough to 
 strike for a fellow-soldier because he wants helji, and because of 
 nothing else, I'll go into the other world and look for a better man." 
 
 Tom swept upon them, and cut him out. Tom and he fought their 
 way through another knot of them, and sent them flying, and came 
 over to where I was beginning again to feel, with inexj)rcssible joy, 
 that I had got a sword in my hand. 
 
 They had hardly come to us, when I heard, above all the other 
 noises, a tremendous cry of women's voices. I also saw Miss Maryon, 
 with quite a new face, suddenly claj) her two hands over Mrs. Fisher's 
 eyes. I looked towards the silver-house, and saw Mrs. Venning 
 standing upright on the top of the steps of the trench, with her gray 
 hair and her dark eyes hide her daughter's child behind her, among 
 the folds of her dress, strike a pirate with her other hand, and fall, 
 shot by his pistol. 
 
 The cry arose again, and there was a terrible and confusing rush 
 of the women into the midst of the struggle. In another moment, 
 something came tumbling down upon me that I thought was the wall. 
 It was a heap of Sambos who had come over the wall ; and of four 
 men who clung to my legs like serpents, one who clung to my right 
 leg was Christian George King. 
 
 " Yup, So-Jeer," says he, " Christian George King sar berry glad 
 So-Jeer a prisoner. Christian George King been waiting for So-Jeer 
 sech long time. Yup, yup ! " 
 
 What could I do, with five-and-twenty of them on me, but be tied 
 liand and foot ? So, I was tied hand and foot. It was all over now 
 boats not come back all lost ! "When I was fast bound and was put 
 up against the wall, the one-eyed English convict came up with the 
 Portuguese Captain, to have a look at me. 
 
 " See ! " says he. " Here's the determined man ! If you had slept 
 sounder, last night, you'd have slept your soundest last night, my 
 determined man." 
 
 The Portuguese Captain laughed in a cool way, and with the flat of 
 his cutlass, hit me crosswise, as if I was the bough of a tree that ho 
 played with : first on tlio face, and then across the chest and the 
 wounded arm. I looked him steady in the face without tumbling 
 while he looked at me, I am happy to say ; but, when they went 
 away, I fell, and lay there. 
 
 The sun was up, when I was roused and told to come down to the 
 beach and be embarked. I was full of aches and j)ains, and could not 
 at first remember ; but, I remembered quite soon enough. The 
 killed were lying about all over the place, and the Pirates were 
 burying their dead, and taking away their wounded on hastily-made 
 litters, to the back of the Island, As for us prisoners, some of their
 
 98 TJic Perils of Certain English Prisoners, 
 
 boats Lad come round to the usual harbour, to carry us off. We 
 looked a wretched few, I thought, when I got down there ; still, it 
 was another sign that wo had fought well, and made the enemy suffer. 
 The Portuguese Captain had all the women already embarked in 
 tlic boat he himself commanded, which was just putting off* when I 
 got down. Miss Maryon sat on one side of him, and gave me a 
 moment's look, as full of quiet courage, and pity, and confidence, as if 
 it had been an hour long. On the other side of him was poor little 
 Mrs. Fisher, weeping for her child and her mother. I was shoved 
 into the same boat with Drooce and Packer, and the remainder of our 
 party of marines : of whom we had lost two privates, besides Charker, 
 my ])oor, bravo comrade. We all made a melancholy passage, under 
 the hot sun over to the mainland. There, we landed in a solitary 
 place, and were mustered on the sea sand. Mr. and Mrs. Macey and 
 their children were amongst us, Mr. and Mrs. Pordagc, Mr. Kitten, 
 Mr. Fisher, and Mrs. Bclltott. We mustered only fourteen men, 
 fifteen women, and seven children. Those were all that remained of 
 the English who had lain down to sleep last night, unsuspecting and 
 hapi)y, on the Island of Silver-Store. 
 
 ' [The second cha2)tcr, which was not written by Mr. Dickons, 
 describes the Prisoners (twenty-two women and children) taken into 
 the interior by the Pirate Captain, who makes them the material 
 guarantee for the precious metal and jewels left on the island ; 
 declaring that, if the latter bo wrested by English ships from the 
 pirates in charge, ho will murder the captives. From their " Prison 
 in the Woods," however (this being the title of the second chapter), 
 they escape by means of rafts down the river ; and the sequel is told 
 in a third and concluding chaiiter by Mr. Dickens.] 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THK KAFT3 ON THE KIVER, 
 
 Will contrived to keep afloat all tliat night, and, the stream i'unninfj; 
 strong with us, to glide a long way down tlio river. But, wc found 
 the night to ])c a dangerous time for such navigation, on account of 
 the eddies and rapidn, and it was thcrcfoi-c settled next day that in 
 future wc would bring-to at sunset, and encamp on the shore. As 
 wc knew of no boats that the Pirates possessed, up at the Prison in 
 the Woods, wo settled always to encamp on the o})positc side of the 
 Rtream, so as to have the breadth of the river between our slcei) and 
 tlieiii. Our oj)iiiion was, that if they were acquainted with any near 
 way I'y land to the mouth of this river, they would come up it in
 
 Gliding witJi the Stream. 99 
 
 force, and retake us or kill us, according as they could ; but that if 
 that was not the case, and if the river ran by none of their secret 
 stations, we might escape. 
 
 When I say we settled this or that, I do not mean that we planned 
 anything with any confidence as to what might happen an hour hence. 
 So much had happened in one night, and such great changes had 
 been violently and suddenly made in the fortunes of many among us, 
 that we had got better used to uncertainty, in a little while, than 
 I dare say most people do in the course of their lives. 
 
 The difficulties we soon got into, through the off-settings and point- 
 currents of the stream, made the likelihood of our being drowned, 
 alone, to say nothing of our being retaken as broad and plain as 
 the sun at noonday to all of us. But, we all worked hard at managing 
 the rafts, under the direction of the seamen (of our own skill, I think 
 we never could have prevented them from oversetting), and we also 
 worked hard at making good the defects in their first hasty con- 
 struction which the water soon found out. While we humbly 
 resigned ourselves to going down, if it was the will of Our Father 
 tliat was in Heaven, we humbly made up our minds, that we would all 
 do the best that was in us. 
 
 And so we held on, gliding with the stream. It drove us to this 
 bank, and it drove us to that bank, and it turned us, and whirled us ; 
 but yet it carried us on. Sometimes much too slowly ; sometimes 
 much too fast, but yet it carried us on. 
 
 My little deaf and dumb boy slumbered a good deal now, and that 
 was the case with all the children. They caused very little trouble 
 to any one. They seemed, in my eyes, to get more like one another, 
 not only in quiet manner, but in the face, too. The motion of the 
 raft was usually so much the same, the scene was usually so much the 
 same, the sound of the soft wash and ripple of the water was usually 
 so much the same, that they were made drowsy, as they might have 
 been by tlie constant playing of one tunc. Even on the grown people, 
 who worked hard and felt anxiety, the same things produced some- 
 thing of the same effect. Every day was so like the other, that I 
 soon lost count of the days, myself, and had to ask Miss Maryon, for 
 instance, whether this was the third or fourth? Miss Maryon had 
 a pocket-book and pencil, and she kept the log ; that is to say, she 
 entered up a clear little journal of the time, and of the distances our 
 seamen thought we had made, each night. 
 
 So, as 1 say, we kept afloat and glided on. All day long, and every 
 day, the water, and the woods, and sky ; all day long, and every day, 
 the constant watching of botli sides of tlie river, and far a-head at 
 every bold turn and sweep it made, for any signs of Pirate-boats, or 
 Pirate-dwellings. So, as I say, we kept afloat and glided on. The 
 days melting themselves together to that degree, that I could hardly 
 believe my ears when I asked '' How many now, Miss ? " and sho 
 answered " Seven."
 
 too The Perils of Certain English Prisoney$. 
 
 To bo sure, poor Mr. Pordage had, by about now, got bis Diplo- 
 matic coat into such a state as never was seen. What with the mud 
 of the river, what with the water of the river, what with the sun, and 
 the dews, and the tearing boughs, and the thickets, it hung about him 
 in discoloured shreds like a mop. The sun had touched him a bit. 
 He had taken to always polishing one particular button, which just 
 hold on to his left wrist, and to always calling for stationery. I 
 suppose that man called for pens, ink, and paper, tape, and sealing- 
 wax, upwards of one thousand times in four-and-twenty hours. He 
 had an idea that we should never get out of that river unless we were 
 written out of it in a formal Memorandum ; and the more we laboured 
 at navigating the rafts, the more he ordered us not to touch them at 
 our peril, and the more he sat and roared for stationery. 
 
 Mrs. Pordage, similarly, persisted in wearing her nightcaii. I 
 doubt if any one but ourselves who had seen the progress of that 
 article of dress, could by this time have told what it was meant for. 
 It had got so limp and ragged that she couldn't see out of her eyes 
 for it. It was so dirty, that whether it was vegetable matter out of a 
 swamp, or weeds out of the river, or an old porter's-kuot from England, 
 I don't think any new spectator could have said. Yet, this unfortu- 
 nate old woman had a notion that it was not only vastly genteel, but 
 that it was the correct thing as to propriety. And she really did 
 carry herself over the other ladies who had no nightcaps, and who 
 were forced to tie up their hair how they could, in a superior manner 
 that was perfectly amazing. 
 
 I don't know what she looked like, sitting in that blessed nightcaj"), 
 on a log of wood, outside the hut or cabin ujion our raft. She would 
 have rather resembled a fortune-teller in one of the picture-books 
 that used to be in the shop windows in my boyhood, excei)t for her 
 stateliness. But, Lord bless my heart, the dignity with wliich she sat 
 and moped, with her head in that bundle of tatters, was like notliing 
 else in the world ! She was not on speaking terms with more than 
 three of the ladies. Some of them had, what she called, " taken 
 precedence " of her in getting into, or out of, that miserable little 
 shelter ! and others had not called to pay their respects, or some- 
 thing of that kind. So, tliere she sat, in lier own state and cercmonj^ 
 while her husband sat on the same log of wood, ordering us one and 
 all to let the raft go to the bottom, and to bring him stationery. 
 
 What witli this noise on the i)art of Mr. (/onimissioner Pordage, 
 and what with the cries of Sergeant Drooce on tlic raft astern (wliich 
 were sometimes more tlian Tom Packer could silence), we often made 
 our slow way down tlie river, anything but quietly. Yet, that it was 
 of great importance that no ears should be able to hear us from tlie 
 woods on the banks, could not be doubted. AVe vt-ere looked for, to a 
 cortainty, and we miglit be retaken at any moment. It was an 
 anxious time ; it was, indeed, indeed, an anxious time. 
 
 On the seventh niglit of our voyage on the rafts, we made fast, as
 
 TJie Seventh Night of the Voyage. lOi 
 
 usual, on the oppoBite side of tlie river to that from ^vhicll we bad 
 started, in as dark a place as we could pick cut. Our little encamp- 
 ment was soon made, and supper was eaten, and the children fell 
 asleep. The watch was set, and everything made orderly for the 
 night. Such a starlight night, with such blue in the sky, and such 
 black in the places of heavy shade on the banks of the great stream ! 
 
 Those two ladies, Miss Maryon and Mrs. Fisher, had always kept 
 near mc since the night of the attack. Mr. Fisher, who was untiring 
 in the work of our raft, had said to me : 
 
 " My dear little childless wife has grown so attached to you, 
 Davis, and you are such a gentle fellow, as well as such a determined 
 one ; " our party had adopted that last expression frcm the one-eyed 
 English pirate, and I repeat what Mr. Fisher said, only because be 
 said it ; " that it takes a load off my mind to leaA'e her in ycur 
 charge." 
 
 I said to him : " Your lady is in far better charge than mine, sir, 
 having Miss Maryon to take care of her ; but, you may rely upon it, 
 that I will guard them botli faithful and true." 
 
 Says he : " I do rely upon it, Davis, and I heartily wish all the 
 silver on our old Island was yours." 
 
 That seventh starlight night, as I have said, we made our camp, 
 and got our supper, and set our watch, and the children fell asleep. 
 It was solemn and beautiful in those wild and solitary parts, to see 
 them, every night before they lay down, kneeling under the bright 
 sky, saying their littlo prayers at women's laps. At that time we 
 men all uncovered, and mostly kept at a distance. When the inno- 
 cent creatures rose up, we murmured " Amen ! " all together. For, 
 though wo had not heard what they f:aid, we knew it must be good 
 for us. 
 
 At that time, too, as was only natural, those poor mothers in our 
 company, whoso children had been killed, shed many tears. I 
 thought the sight seemed to console them while it n^ade them cry ; 
 but, whether I was right or wrong in that, they wept very much. On 
 this seventh night, Mrs. Fisher had cried for her lost darling until 
 she cried herself asleep. She was lying on a little couch of leaves 
 and such-like (I made the best little couch I could for them every 
 night), and Miss Maryon had covered her, and sat by her, holding 
 her hand. The stars looked down upon them. As for me, I guarded 
 them. 
 
 " Davis ! ** says Miss Maryon. (I am not going to say wliat a voice 
 she had. I couldn't if I tried.) 
 
 " I am here, Miss." 
 
 " The river sounds as if it were swollen to-night." 
 
 " Wo all think, Miss, that we are coming near the sea." 
 
 ' Do you believe now, we shall escape ? " 
 
 " I do now, Miss, really believe it." I had always said I did ; but, 
 I had in my own mind been doubtful.
 
 103 The Perils of Certain Eiigiish Prisoners. 
 
 " How glad you will bo, my good Davis, to see England again ! " 
 
 I havo another confession to make that will appear singular. 
 When she said these words, something rose in my throat ; and the 
 stars I looked away at, seemed to break into sparkles that fell dowu 
 my fiice and burnt it. 
 
 " England is not much to me, Miss, except as a name." 
 
 " O, so true an Englishman should not say that ! Arc you not well 
 to-night, Davis? " Very kindly, and with a quick change. 
 
 " Quito well, Miss." 
 
 " Are you sure ? Your voice sounds altered in my hearing." 
 
 " No, Miss, I am a stronger man than ever. But, England is 
 nothing to me." 
 
 Miss Maryon sat silent for so long a while, that I believed she had 
 done speaking to me for one time. However, she had not ; for by- 
 and-by she said in a distinct clear tone : 
 
 " No, good friend ; you must not say that England is nothing to 
 you. It is to bo much to you, yet everything to you. You have to 
 take back to England the good name you have earned here, and the 
 gratitude and attachment and resi:)ect yoxx have won here : and you 
 liavo to make some good English girl very happy and proud, by 
 marrying her ; and I shall one day see her, I hoi^e, and make her 
 happier and prouder still, by telling her what noble services her 
 husband's were in South America, and what a noble friend ho was to 
 me there." 
 
 Tliough she spoke these kind words in a cheering manner, she 
 spoke them compassionately. I said nothing. It will appear to bo 
 another strange confession, that I paced to and fro, witliin call, all 
 that night, a most unhappy man, reproaching myself all the night 
 long. " You are as ignorant as any man alive ; you are as obscure as 
 any man alive ; you are as poor as any man alive ; you are no better 
 than tho mud under your foot." That was the way in which I went 
 on against myself imtil the morning. 
 
 "With tho day, came the day's labour. What I should havo done 
 without the labour, I don't know. Wo were afloat again at the usual 
 hour, and were again making our way down the river. It was 
 broader, and clearer of obstructions than it had been, and it seemed 
 to flow faster. This was one of Droocc's quiet days ; Mr. Pordage, 
 besides being sulky, had almost lost his voice ; and we made good 
 way, and with little noise. 
 
 There was always a seaman forward on the raft, keejjing a bright 
 look-out. Suddenly, in the full heat of the day, when the children 
 were slumbering, and the very trees and reeds appeared to bo 
 slunibcring, this man it was Sliort holds up his band, and cries 
 with great caution : " Avast ! Voices ahead ! " 
 
 We held on against the stream as soon as wo could bring her up, 
 and tlio (itlier raft followed suit. At first, Mr. Macey, Mr. Fisher, 
 and niysolfj could licar nothing ; though both tlic seauieu aboai'd of us
 
 " Voices ahead ! 103 
 
 agreed that they coukl hear voices aud oars. After a little pause, 
 however, wo united in thinking that we could hear the sound of voices, 
 and the dip of oars. But, you can hear a long way in those countries, 
 and there was a bend of the river before us, and nothing was to bo 
 seen except such waters and such banks as we were now in the eighth 
 day (and might, for the matter of our feelings, have been in the 
 eightieth), of having seen with anxious eyes. 
 
 It was soon decided to put a man ashore, w ho should creep through 
 the wood, see what was coming, and warn the rafts. The rafts in 
 the meantime to keep the middle of the stream. The man to be put 
 ashore, and not to swim ashore, as the first thing could be more quickly 
 done than the second. The raft conveying him, to got back into 
 mid-stream, and to hold on along with the other, as w-ell as it could, 
 until signalled by the man. In case of danger, the man to shift for 
 himself until it should bo safe to take him on board again, I 
 volunteered to be the man. 
 
 We knew that the voices and oars must come up slowly against the 
 stream ; and our seamen knew, by the set of the stream, under which 
 bank tliey would come, I was put ashoi'e accordingly. The raft got 
 oif well, aud I broke into the wood. 
 
 Steaming hot it was, and a tearing place to get through. So much 
 the better for me, since it was something to contend against and do. 
 I cut off the bend of the river, at a great saving of space, came to the 
 ^yater's edge again, and hid myself, and waited. I conld now hear 
 the dip of the oars very distinctly ; the voices had ceased. 
 
 The sound came on in a regular tune, and as I lay hidden, I 
 fancied the tune so played to be, " ( hris'en George King ! 
 Chris'cn George King! Chris'cn George King!" over and 
 over again, always the same, with the j)auscs always at the same 
 places. I had likewise time to malcc up my mind that if these were 
 the Pirates, I could and would (barring my being shot) swim off to 
 my raft, in spite of my wound, the moment I had given the alarm, 
 and hold my old post by Miss Maryon. 
 
 " Chris'cn George King ! Chris'cn George King ! Chris'cn 
 George King ! " coming up, now, very near. 
 
 I took a look at the branches about me, to see where a shower of 
 bullets would bo most likely to do me least hurt.; and I took a 
 look back at the track I had made in forcing my way in ; aud now I 
 was wholly prej)arcd and fully ready for them. 
 
 " Chris'cn George King ! Chris'cn George King ! Chris'eu 
 George King ! " Hero they are ! 
 
 Who were they? Tlie barbarous Pirates, scum of all nations, 
 headed by such men as the hideous little Portuguese monkey, and 
 the one-eyed Entrlish convict witli the gasli across his face, that ought 
 to have gashed his wicked head off? The worst men in the world 
 picked out fronr the worst, to do the cruellest and most atrocious 
 deeds that ever stained it? Tho howling, murdering, black-flag
 
 104 ^^'^ Perils of Certain English Priso)iers. 
 
 waving, mad, and drunken crowd of devils that had overcome us by 
 numbers and by treachery? No. These were English men in 
 English boats good blue-jackets and red-coats marines that I 
 knew myself, and sailors that knew our seamen ! At the helm of 
 the first boat, Captain Carton, eager and steady. At the helm of tho 
 second boat. Captain Maryon, brave and bold. At the holm of the 
 third boat, an old seaman, with determination carved into his watch- 
 ful face, like the figure-head of a ship. Every man doubly and 
 trebly armed from head to foot. Every man lying-to at his work, with 
 a will that had all his heart and soul in it. Every man looking out for 
 any trace of friend or enemy, and burning to bo the first to do good 
 or avenge evil. Every man with his face on fire when ho saw mc, his 
 countryman who had been taken prisoner, and hailed me with a 
 cheer, as Captain Carton's boat ran in and took me on board. 
 
 I reported, " All escaped, sir ! All well, all safe, all here ! " 
 
 God bless mc and God bless them what a cheer ! It turned me 
 weak, as I was passed on from hand to hand to the stern of the boat : 
 every hand patting mo or grasping me in some way or other, in tho 
 moment of my going by. 
 
 " Hold u}), my brave fellow," says Captain Carton, clapping me on 
 the shoulder like a friend, and giving me a flask. " Put your lips to 
 that, and they'll be red again. Now, boys, give way ! " 
 
 The banks flew by us as if the mightiest stream that ever ran was 
 with us ; and so it was, I am sure, meaning the stream to those men's 
 ardour and spirit. The banks flew by us, and wo came in sight of 
 the rafts tho banks flew by us, and wo came alongside of the rafts 
 tlio banks stopped ; and there was a tumult of laughing and crying, 
 and kissing and shaking of hands, and catching up of children and 
 setting of them down again, and a wild hurry of thankfulness and joy 
 that melted every one and softened all hearts. 
 
 I had taken notice, in Captain Carton's boat, that there was a 
 curious and quite new sort of fitting on board. It was a kind of a 
 little bower made of flowers, and it was set \\\) behind the captain, 
 and betwixt him and the rudder. Not only was this arbour, so to call 
 it, neatly made of flo^vers, but it was ornamented in a singular way. 
 Some of the men had taken the ribbons and buckles oft" their hats, and 
 hung them among tho flowers ; others had made festoons and 
 streamers of their handkercliiefs, and hung them there ; others had 
 intermixed such trifles as bits of glass and shining fragments of 
 lockets and tobacco-boxes with the flowers ; so that altogctlicr it was 
 a very bright and lively object in the sunshine. But wliy there, or 
 what for, I did not understand. 
 
 Now, as soon as the first bewilderment was over, Captain Cart(ju 
 gave the order to land for the present. But this boat of his, with 
 two hands left in her, immediately put off again when the men were 
 oiit of her, and kept off, some yards from the shore. As she floated 
 there, with the two hands gently backing water to keep her from
 
 A Scene of Joy. 105 
 
 going down the stream, this pretty little arbour attracted many eyes. 
 None of the boat's crew, however, had anything to say about it, except 
 that it was the captain's fancy. 
 
 The captain with the women and children clustering round him, 
 and the men of all ranks grouped outside them, and all listening 
 stood telling how the Expedition, deceived by its bad intelligence, 
 had chased the light Pirate boats all that fatal night, and had still 
 followed in their wake next day, and had never suspected until 
 many hours too late that the great Pirate body had drawn oil" in the 
 darkness when the chase began, and shot over to the Island. Ho 
 stood telling how the Expedition, supposing the whole array of armed 
 boats to bo ahead of it, got tempted into shallows and went aground ; 
 but not without having its revenge upon the two decoy-boats, both of 
 which it had come up with, overhand, and sent to the bottom wdth all 
 on board. He stood telling how the Expedition, fearing then that 
 the case stood as it did, got afloat again, by great exertion, after the 
 loss of four more tides, and returned to tlie Island, where they found 
 the slooji scuttled and the treasure gone. He stood telling how my 
 officer. Lieutenant Linderwood, was left upon the Island, with as 
 strong a force as could be got togctlier hurriedly from tlie mainland, 
 and how the three boats we saw before us were manned and armed 
 and had come away, exi)loring the coast and inlets, in search of any 
 tidings of us. He stood telling all this, with his face to the river ; 
 and, as he stood telling it, tlie little arbour of flowers floated in the 
 sunshine before all the faces there. 
 
 Leaning on Captain Carton's shoxdder, between him and !Rliss 
 Miiryon, was Mrs. Fisher, her licad drooping on her arm. She aslajd 
 liini, without raising it, when he had told so much, whether he had 
 found her mother ? 
 
 " Be comforted ! She lies," said the Captain gently, " under the 
 cocoa-nut trees on tlie beach." 
 
 " And my child, Captain Carton, did you find my child, too ? Does 
 my darling rest with my mother ? " 
 
 " No. Your pretty child sleeps," said the Captain, " under a shade 
 of flowers." 
 
 His voice shook ; but tlierc was sometliing in it that struck all the 
 hearers. At that moment there sprung from the arbour in his boat a 
 little creature, clajiping her hands and stretching out her arms, and 
 crying, " Dear papa ! Dear mamma ! I am not killed. I am saved. 
 I am coming to kiss you. Take mo to them, take me to them, good, 
 kind sailors ! " 
 
 Nobody wlio saw that scene has ever forgotten it, I am sure, or ever 
 will forget it. The child had kept quite still, where her bravo 
 grandmamma had put her (first whispering in her ear, " Whatever 
 happens to me, do not stir, my dear ! "), and had remained quiet until 
 the fort was deserted ; she had then crept out of the trench, and gone 
 into lier mother's house ; and there, alone on the solitary Island, in
 
 I06 The Perils of Certain English Prisoners. 
 
 her mother's room, and asleep ou her mother's bed, the Captain had 
 found her. Nothing coukl induce her to bo parted from him after he 
 took her up in his arms, and he had brought her away with him, and 
 the men had made the bower for her. To see those men now, was a 
 sight. The joy of the women was beautiful ; the joy of those women 
 who had lost their own children, was quite eacrcd and divine ; but, 
 the ecstasies of Captain Carton's boat's crew, when their pet was 
 restored to her parents, were wonderful for the tenderness they showed 
 in the midst of roughness. As the Captain stood with the child in 
 his arms, and the child's own little arms now clinging round his 
 neck, now round her father's, now round her mother's, now round 
 some one who pressed up to kiss her, the boat's crew shook hands 
 with one another, waved their hats over their heads, laughed, sang, 
 cried, danced and all among themselves, without wanting to inter- 
 fere with anybody in a manner never to bo represented. At last, I 
 saw the coxswain and another, two very hard-faced men, with grizzled 
 heads, wlio had been the heartiest of tlie hearty all along, close with 
 one another, get each of them the other's head under his arm, 
 and pommel away at it with his fist as hard as he could, in his 
 excess of joy. 
 
 When we had well rested and refreshed ourselves-- and very glad 
 we were to have somo of the heartening things to eat and drink that 
 had come up in the boats we recommenced our voyage down the 
 river : rafts, and boats, and all. I said to myself, it was a very 
 different kind of voyage now, from -what it had been ; and I fell into 
 my proper place and station among my fellow-soldiers. 
 
 But, when wo halted for the night, I found that Miss Maryon had 
 spoken to Captain Carton concerning me. For, the ('aj)tain came 
 straight up to me, and says lie, " My bravo fellow, you have been 
 Miss Maryon's body-guard all along, and you shall remain so. 
 Nobody shall supersede you in the distinction and pleasure of protect- 
 ing that young lady." I thanked his honour in the fitt(!st words I 
 could find, and tliat night I was placed on my old post of watching 
 the place where she slept. More than once in the niglit, I saw 
 Captain ( *arton come out into tlie air, and stroll about there, to see 
 that all was well. I have now this otlier singular confession to make, 
 that I saw him with a heavy heart. Yes ; I sa\v him with a heavy, 
 heavy heart. 
 
 In the day-time, I had the like post in Captain Carton's boat. I 
 had a sj^ccial station of my own, beliind Miss IMaryon, and no hands 
 but hers ever touclied my wound. (It has been healed these many 
 long years ; but, no other hands have ever touched it. Mr. Pordage 
 was kept tolerably (piiet now, with jien and ink, and began to pick up 
 his senses a little. Seated in the second boat, he made documents 
 with Mr. Kitten, pretty well all day ; and he generally handed in a 
 Protest about something whenever we stopped. Tlio Captain, Imw- 
 everj made so very light of these papers,. that it grew into a saying
 
 Captain Car ton's Gnu. 107 
 
 among tlio men, when one of tlicm wanted a matcli for bis pipe, 
 " Hand us over a Protest, Jack ! " As to Mrs. Pordage, she still wore 
 the nightcap, and she now had cut all the ladies on accoimt of her 
 not having been formally and separately rescued by Captain Carton 
 before anybody else. The end of Mr. Pordage, to bring to an end all 
 I know about him, was, that he got great compliments at home for his 
 conduct on these trying occasions, and that he died of yellow jaundice, 
 ft Governor and a K.C.B. 
 
 Sergeant Drooce had fallen from a high fever into a low one. Tom 
 Packer the only man who could have pulled the Sergeant thi'ough it 
 kept hospital aboard the old raft, and Mrs. Belltott, as brisk as 
 ever again (but the spirit of that little woman, when things tried it, 
 was not equal to appearances), was head-nurse under his directions. 
 Before we got down to the Mosquito coast, the joke had been made by 
 one of our men, that wo should see her gazetted Mrs. Tom Packer, 
 vice Belltott exchanged. 
 
 When we reached the coast, we got native boats as substitutes for 
 the rafts ; and we rowed along under the land ; and in that beautiful 
 climate, and upon that beautiful water, the blooming days were like 
 enchantment. Ah ! They were running away, faster than any sea 
 or river, and there was no tide to bring them back. We were coming 
 very near the settlement whore the people of Silver-Store were to be 
 left, and from which we Marines were under orders to return to 
 Belize. 
 
 Captain Carton had, in the boat by him, a curious long-barrelled 
 Spanish gun, and he had said to Miss Maryon one day that it was the 
 best of guns, and had turned his head to me, and said : 
 
 " Gill Davis, load her fresh with a couple of slugs, against a chance 
 of showing how good she is." 
 
 So, I had discharged the gun over the sea, and had loaded her, 
 according to orders, and there it had lain at the Captain's feet, con- 
 venient to the Captain's hand. 
 
 The last day but one of our journey was an uncommonly hot du}'. 
 We started very early ; but, there was no cool air on the sea as the 
 day got on, and by noon the hea': was really hard to bear, considering 
 that there were women and children to bear it. Now, we hajtponed 
 to open, just at that time, a very pleasant little cove or bay, where 
 there was a deep shade from a great growth of trees. Now, tlie 
 Captain, therefore, made the signal to the other boats to follow him in 
 and lie by a while. 
 
 The men who were off duty went ashore, and lay down, but were 
 ordered, for caution's sake, not to stray, and to keep within vie^-. 
 The others rested on their oars, and dozed. Awnings had been made 
 of one thing and another, in all the boats, and the passengers found 
 it cooler to be imder them in the shade, when there was room enough, 
 than to be in the thick woods. So, the passengers were all afloat, 
 and mostly sleeping. I kept my post behind Miss Maryon, and she
 
 io8 Tlie Perils of Certain English Prisoners. 
 
 was on Captain Carton's rigbt in the boat, and Mrs. Fisher sat on her 
 right again. The Captain had Mrs. Fisher's daughter on his knee. 
 He and the two ladies were talking about the Pirates, and were talk- 
 ing softly ; partly, because people do talk softly under such indolent 
 circumstances, and partly because the little girl had gone off asleep. 
 
 I think I have before given it out for my Lady to write down, that 
 Captain Carton had a fine bright eye of his own. All at once, ho 
 darted me a side look, as much as to say, " Steady don't take on 
 I see something ! " and gave the cliild into her mother's arms. That 
 eye of his was so easy to understand, that I obeyed it by not so much 
 as looking either to the right or to the left out of a corner of my own, 
 or changing my attitude the least trifle. The Captain went on talking 
 in the same mild and easy w'ay ; but began with his arms resting 
 across his knees, and his head a little hanging forward, as if the heat 
 were rather too mucli for him began to play with the Spanish gun. 
 
 " They had laid their plans, you see," says the Captain, taking up 
 the Spanish gun across his knees, and looking, lazily, at the inlaying 
 on the stock, " with a great deal of art ; and the corrupt or blunder- 
 ing local authorities were so easily deceived ; " he ran his left hand 
 idly along the barrel, but I saw, with my breath held, that he covered 
 the action of cocking the gun witli his right " so easily deceived, 
 that they summoned us out to come into the trap. But my intention 
 
 as to future operations " In a flash the Spanish gun was at his 
 
 bright eye, and he fired. 
 
 All started up ; innumerable echoes repeated the soimd of tlie 
 discharge ; a cloud of bright-coloured birds flew out of tlie woods 
 screaming ; a liandful of leaves were scattered in the place wliere the 
 shot Imd struck ; a crackling of branches was heard ; and some lithe 
 but heavy creature sprang into the air, and fell forward, head down, 
 over the muddy bank. 
 
 " What is it ? " cries Captain Maryon from his boat. All silent 
 tlien, but the echoes rolling away. 
 
 " It is a Traitor and a Spy," said Captain Carton, handing me the 
 gun to load again. " And I think the other name of the animal is 
 Christian George King ! " 
 
 Sliot through the heart. Some of the people ran round to the spot, 
 and drew him out, with the slime and wet trickling down his face ; 
 but liis face itself would never stir any more to the end of time. 
 
 "Leave liim hanging to that tree," cried Captain Carton ; liis boat's 
 crew giving way, and lio lea])iiig ashore. " But first into this wood, 
 every man in liis place. And boats ! Out of gunsliot ! " 
 
 It was a (juick change, well meant and well made, though it ended 
 in disappointment. IS'o Pirates were there ; no one but the Sjjy was 
 found. It was supposed that tlie Pirates, unable to retake us, and 
 expecting a great attack upon them to be tlie consequence of our 
 escape, had made from tlie ruins in tlie Forest, taken to their ship 
 along with the Treasure, and left the Spy to pick up what intclligenco
 
 (jill Davis s Reward. 109 
 
 te could. In the evening we went away, and lie was left hanging to 
 the tree, all alone, with the red sun making a kind of a dead sunset 
 on his black face. 
 
 Next day, we gained the settlement on tlie Mosquito coast for which 
 we were bound. Having stayed there to refresh seven days, and 
 having been much commended, and highly spoken of, and finely 
 entertained, we Marines stood under orders to march from the Town- 
 Gate (it was neither much of a town nor much of a gate), at five iu 
 the morning. 
 
 My oflicer had joined us before then. When we turned out at tlie 
 gate, all the people were there ; in the front of them all those who 
 had been our fellow-prisoners, and all the seamen. 
 
 " Davis," says Lieutenant Linderwood. " Stand out, my friend ! " 
 
 I stood out from the ranks, and Miss Maryon and Captain Carton 
 came up to me. 
 
 "Dear Davis," says Miss Maryon, while the tears fell fast down 
 her face, " your grateful friends, in most unwillingly taking leave of 
 you, ask the favour that, while you bear away with you their affec- 
 tionate remembrance, which nothing can ever impair, you will also take 
 this purse of money fur more valuable to you, we all know, for the 
 deep attachment and thankfulness with which it is offered, than for 
 its own contents, though we hope those may j^rove useful to you, too, 
 in after life." 
 
 I got out, in answer, that I thankfully accepted the attachment and 
 afiection, but not the money. Captain Carton looked at me very 
 attentively, and stepped back; and moved away. I made him my bow 
 as he stepped back, to thank him for being so delicate. 
 
 " No, miss," said I, " I think it would break my heart to accept of 
 money. But, if you could condescend to give to a man sO ignorant 
 and common as myself, any little thing you have worn such as a bit 
 of ribbon " 
 
 She took a ring from her finger, and jiut it in my hand. And she 
 rested her hand in mine, while she said these words : 
 
 " The brave gentlemen of old but not one of them was braver, or 
 had a nobler nature than you took such gifts from ladies, and did 
 all tlieir good actions for the giveis' sakes. If you will do yours for 
 mine, I shall think with pride that I continue to have some share iu 
 the life of a gallant and generous man." 
 
 For the second time in my life she kissed my hand. I made so 
 Ixjld, for the first time, as to kiss hers ; and I tied the ring at my 
 breast, and I fell back to my place. 
 
 Then, the horse-litter went out at the gate with Sergeant Droocc 
 in it ; and the horse-litter went out at the gate with Mrs. Belltott in 
 it ; and Lieutenant Linderwood gave the word of command, " (Juick 
 march ! " and, cheered and cried for, we went out of the gate too, 
 marching along the level plain towards the serene blue sky, as if wo 
 were marching straight to Heaven.
 
 no TJie Perils of Cei'tain English Prisoners. 
 
 When I have added liere that the Pirate scheme was blown i<S 
 shivers, by the Pirate-ship which had the Treasure on board being so 
 vigorously attacked by one of His Majesty's cruisers, among the West 
 India Keys, and being so swiftly boarded and carried, that nobody 
 suspected anything about the scheme until three-fourths of the Pirates 
 were killed, and the other fourth were in irons, and the Treasure was 
 recovered ; I come to the last singular confession I have got to make. 
 
 It is this. I well knew what an immense and hopeless distance 
 there was between me and Miss Maryon ; I well knew that I was no 
 litter company for her than I was for the angels ; I well knew that 
 she was as high above my reach as the sky over my head ; and yet 
 I loved her. What put it in my low heart to be so daring, or whether 
 such a thing ever happened before or since, as that a man so un- 
 instructed and obscure as myself got his unhappy thoughts lifted up 
 to such a height, while knowing very well how presumptuous and 
 impossible to be realised they were, I am unable to say ; still, the 
 suffering to me was just as great as if I had been a gentleman. I 
 suffered agony agony. I suffered hard, and I suffered long. I 
 thought of her last words to me, however, and I never disgraced them. 
 If it had not been for those dear words, I think I should have lost 
 myself in despair and recklessness. 
 
 The ring will be found lying on my heart, of course, and will bo 
 laid witli me wherever I am laid. I am getting on in years now, 
 though I am able and hearty. I was recommended for promotion, 
 and everytliing was done to reward me that could be done ; but my 
 totil want of all learning stood in my -way, and I found myself so 
 completely out of tlie road to it that I could not conquer any learning, 
 though I tried. I was long in tlie service, and I respected it, and 
 was respected in it, and tlie servir;c is dear to me at this jircsent hour. 
 
 At this jn'csent hour, when I give this out to my Lady to be written 
 down, all my old pain has softened away, and I am as happy as a man 
 can be, at this present fine old country-house of Admiral Sir George 
 Carton, Baronet. It was my Lady Carton who herself sought me out. 
 over a great many miles of the vv'ide world, and found me in Ilosintal 
 wounded, and brought me here. It is my Lady Carton wlio writes 
 down my words. My Lady was Miss Maryon. An i now, tliat I con- 
 clude wliat I liad to tell, I see my Lady's honoured gray hair droop over 
 her face, as she leans a little lower at her desk; and T fervently 
 thank her for being so tender as I sec she is, towards the pant paiii 
 and trouble of her poor, old, failliful, humble s;'.ldici'.
 
 C.OINC. IMO se)(;iKT\
 
 GOING INTO SOCIETY. 
 
 [From A House to Let, Christmas I808.J 
 
 At one period of its reverses, tlie House fell into the occupation of a 
 Showman. He was found registered as its occupier, on the parish 
 books of the time when he rented the House, and there was therefore 
 no need of any clue to his name. But, he himself was less easy to 
 be found ; for, he had led a wandering life, and settled people had 
 lost sight of him, and people who plumed themselves on being resj)ect- 
 able were shy of admitting that they had ever known anything of 
 him. At last, among the marsh lands near the river's level, that lie 
 about Deptford and the neighbouring market-gardens, a Grizzled 
 Personage in velveteen, with a face so cut up by varieties of weather 
 that he looked as if he had been tattooed, was found smoking a pipe 
 at the door of a wooden house on wheels. The wooden house was 
 laid up in ordinary for the winter, near the mouth of a muddy creek ; 
 and everything near it, the foggy river, the misty marshes, and the 
 steaming market-gardens, smoked in company with the grizzled man. 
 In the midst of this smoking party, the funnel-chimney of the wooden 
 house on wheels was not remiss, but took its pij^e with the rest in a 
 companionable manner. 
 
 On being asked if it were he who had once rented the House to 
 Let, Grizzled Velveteen looked surprised, and said yes. Then his 
 name was Magsman ? That was it, Toby Magsman whicli lawfully 
 christened Robert ; but called in the line, from a infant, Toby. There 
 was nothing agin Toby Magsman. he believed ? If there was suspicion 
 of such mention it ! 
 
 There was no suspicion of such, he might rest assured. But, some 
 inquiries were making about that House, and would lie object to say 
 why lie left it ? 
 
 Not at all ; ^hy should he V He left it, aloijg of a Dwarf. 
 
 Along of a Dwarf? 
 
 Mr. Magsman repeated, deliberately and emphatically. Along of a 
 Dwarf. 
 
 Might it be compatible with ]\tr. Magsman's inclination and 
 convenience to enter, as a favour, into a few particulars?
 
 112 Going into Society. 
 
 Mr. Magsman entered into the following particnlars. 
 
 It was a long time ago, to begin with ; afore lotteries and a deal 
 more was done away with. Mr. Magsman was looking about for a 
 good pitch, and he see that house, and he says to himself, " I'll have 
 you, if you're to be had. If money'll get you, I'll have you." 
 
 The neighbours cut up rough, and made complaints ; but Mr. 
 Magsman don't know what they would have had. It was a lovely 
 thing. First of all, there was the canvass, representin the picter of 
 the Giant, in Spanish trunks and a ruff, who was himself half tlie 
 hcighth of the house, and was run uj) with a line and pulley to a pole 
 on the roof, so that his Ed was coeval with the parapet. Then, there 
 was the canvass, representin the picter of the Albina lady, showing 
 her white air to the Army and Navy in correct uniform. Then, there 
 was the canvass, representin the picter of the Wild Indian a scaljiin 
 a member of some foreign nation. Then, there was the canvass, 
 representin the picter of a child of a British Planter, seized ))y two 
 Boa Constrictors not that ive never had no child, nor no Constrictors 
 neither. Similarly, there was the canvass, representin the picter of 
 the Wild Ass of the Prairies not that we never had no wild asses, 
 nor wouldn't have had 'em at a gift. Last, there was the canvass, 
 representin the picter of the Dwarf, and like him too (considerin), 
 with George the Fourth in such a state of astonisliment at him as His 
 Majesty couldn't with his utmost politeness and stoutness express. 
 The front of the House was so covered with canvasses, that there 
 wasn't a spark of daylight ever visible on that side. " Magsman's 
 Amusements," fifteen foot long by two foot higli, ran over the front 
 door and parlour winders. The passage was a Arbour of green baizci 
 and gardeustuff. A barrel-organ performed there unceasing. And 
 as to respectability, if threepence ain't respectable, what is ? 
 
 But, the Dn'arf is the principal article at present, and lie was worth 
 the money. He was wrote up as Majou Tpschoffki, of the Impepjal 
 BuLGUADEUiAN BRIGADE. Nobody couldn't pronounce the name, and 
 it never was intended anybody should. The public always turned it, 
 as a regular rule, into Chopski. In the line he was called Chops ; 
 partly on that account, and partly because his real name, if he ever 
 had any real name (which was very dubious), was Stakes. 
 
 He was a un-common small man, he really was. Certainly not so 
 small as ho was made out to be, but where is your Dwarf as is? Ho 
 was a most uncommon small man, with a most unconnnou large Ed ; 
 and what ho had inside that Ed, nobody ever knowed but himself: 
 even sui)2)osin himself to have ever took stock of it, which it would 
 liave been a stiff job for even him to do. 
 
 The kindest little man as never growcd ! S])iritcd, but not proud. 
 When he travelled with the Si)otted Baby though he knowed himself 
 to be a nat'ral Dwarf, and knowed the Baby's spots to be put \\i>on 
 him artificial, he nursed that Baby like a mother. Yon never hcerd 
 him give a ill-name to a Giant. Ho did allow himself to break out
 
 Tlie Dwarfs Ambition. 113 
 
 into strong language respectin the Fat Lady from Norfolk ; but that 
 was an affair of the 'art ; and when a man's 'art has been trifled 
 with by a lady, and the preference giv to a Indian, he ain't master 
 of his actions. 
 
 He was always in love, of course ; every human nat'ral phenomenon 
 is. And he was always in love with a large woman ; I never knowed 
 the Dwarf as could be got to love a small one. Which helps to keep 
 'em the Curiosities they are. 
 
 One sing'ler idea he had in that Ed of his, which must have meant 
 something, or it wouldn't have been there. It was always his opinion 
 that he was entitled to property. He never would put his name to 
 anything. He had been taught to write, by the young man without 
 arms, who got his living with his toes (quite a writing master he was, 
 and taught scores in the line), but Chops would have starved to death, 
 afore he'd have gained a bit of bread by putting his hand to a paper. 
 This is the more curious to bear in mind, because he had no property, 
 nor hope of property, except his house and a sarser. When I say his 
 house, I mean the box, painted and got up outside like a reg'lar six- 
 roomer, that he xisod to creep into, with a diamond ring (or quite as 
 good to look at) on his forefinger, and ring a little bell out of what 
 the Public believed to be the Drawing-room winder. And when I say 
 a sarser, I mean a Chancy sarser in which he made a collection for 
 himself at the end of every Entertainment. His cue for that, he took 
 from me : " Ladies and gentlemen, the little man will now walk three 
 times round the Cairawan, and retire behind the curtain." When he 
 said anything important, in private life, he mostly wound it up with 
 this form of words, and they was generally the last thing he said to 
 mc at night afore he went to bed. 
 
 Ho had what I consider a fine mind a poetic mind. His ideas 
 respectin his property never come upon him so strong as when he sat 
 upon a barrel-organ and had the handle turned. Arter the wibration 
 had run through him a little time, he vv'ould screech out, " Toby, I feel 
 my property coming grind away ! I'm counting my guineas by 
 thousands, Toby grind away ! Toby, I shall be a man of fortun ! 
 I feci the Mint a jingling in me, Toby, and I'm swelling out into the 
 Bank of England ! " Such is the influence of music on a poetic mind. 
 Xot tliat he was partial to any other music but a barrel-organ ; on 
 the contrairy, hated it. 
 
 He had a kind of a everlasting grudge agin the Public : which is a 
 thing you may notice in many phcnomenons that get their living out 
 of it. What riled him most in the natcr of his occupation was, that 
 it kep him out of Society. He was continiwally saying, " Toby, my 
 ambition is, to go into Society. The curse of my position towards 
 the Public is, that it keeps mo hout of Society. This don't 
 signify to a low beast of a Indian ; he an't formed for Society. This 
 don't signify to a Spotted Baby ; he an't formed for Society. I am." 
 
 Nobody never could make out what Chops done with his money. 
 
 I
 
 114 Going into Society. 
 
 Ho bad a good salary, down on the drum every Saturday as tlie day 
 came round, besides baving tbe run of bis teetb and be was a Wood- 
 pecker to eat but all Dwarfs are. Tbe sarser was a littlo income, 
 bringing bim in so many balfpence tbat be'd carry 'em for a week 
 together, tied up in a pocket-bandkercher. And yet be never bad 
 money. And it couldn't be the Fat Lady from Norfolk, as was once 
 supposed ; because it stands to reason that when you have a animosity 
 towards a Indian, which makes you grind your teeth at him to bis 
 face, and wliicb can hardly hold you from Goosing him audible when 
 he's going through his War-Dance it stands to reason you wouldn't 
 under them circumstances deprive yourself, to support that Indian iu 
 the laj) of luxury. 
 
 Most unexijccted, tho mystery come out one day at Egbam liaces. 
 The Public was shy of bein pulled in, and Chops was ringin his littlo 
 bell out of bis drawing-room winder, and was snarl in to me over bis 
 shoulder as ho kneeled down with his legs out at tho back-door for 
 bo couldn't be shoved into bis bouse without kneeling down, and the 
 prcniisos wouldn't accommodate his legs was snarliu, " Here's a 
 precious Public for you; why tbe Devil don't they tumble up?" 
 when a man iu tho crowd holds up a carrier-pigeon, and cries out, " If 
 there's any person licre as has got a ticket, the Lottery's just drawed, 
 and tho number as has come up for tho great prize is three, seven, 
 forty-two ! Three, seven, forty-two ! " I was giviu the man to tho 
 Furies myself, for calling off the Public's attention for tbe Public 
 will turn away, at any time, to look at anything in preference to the 
 tiling showed 'em ; and if you doubt it, get 'em together for any indi- 
 widual purpose on tbe face of tho earth, and send only two people in 
 late, and see if the whole company an't far more interested in takiu 
 particular notice of them two than of you I say, I wasn't best pleased 
 with tlie man for callin out, and wasn't blessin him in my own mind, 
 when I see Chops's little bell fly out of winder at a old lady, and 
 he gets up and kicks bis box over, exposin tbe whole secret, and 
 he catches hold of the calves of my legs and he says to me, " Carry 
 me into the wan, Toby, and throw a pail of water over me or I'm a 
 dead man, for I've come into my property ! " 
 
 Twelve thousand odd hundred pound, was Chops's winning. Ho 
 had bought a half-ticket for the twenty-five thousand prize, and it bad 
 como up. Tlie first use be made of his projjerty, was, to ofi'er to fight 
 tlie Wild Indian for five hundred pound a side, him with a ])()isoned 
 darnin-necdle and the Indian with a club ; but the Indian being in 
 want of backers to that amount, it went no farther. 
 
 Arter bo had been mad for a week in a state of mind, in short, iu 
 which, if I had let bim sit on the organ for only two minutes, I bclievo 
 ho would have bust but we kej) tho organ from him i\Ir. Chops 
 come round, and behaved liberal and beautiful to all. lie then sent 
 for a young niiin be knowed, as bad a wery genteel appearance and 
 was a Bonnet at a ganiing-booth (most respectable brought up, father
 
 M}-. Chops goes into Society. 115 
 
 havin been imminent in tae livery stable lino but unfoi't'uate in a 
 commercial crisis, through paintin a old gray, ginger-bay, and scllin 
 him with a Pedigree), and Mr. Chops said to this Bonnet, who said his 
 name was Normandy, which it wasn't : 
 
 " Normandy, I'm a goin into Society. Will you go wdth me ? " 
 
 Says Normandy : " Do I understand you, Mr. Chops, to hintimate 
 that the 'ole of the expenses of that raovo will bo borne by 
 yourself? " 
 
 " Correct," says Mr. Chops. " And you shall have a Princely 
 allowance too." 
 
 The Bonnet lifted Mr. Chops upon a chair, to shake hands with 
 him, and replied in poetry, with his eyes seemingly full of tears : 
 
 " My boat is on the shore, 
 And my bark is on the sea, 
 And I do not ask for more, 
 But I'll Go : along with thee." 
 
 They went into Society, in a chay and four grays with silk jackets. 
 They took lodgings in Pall Mall, London, and they blazed away. 
 
 In consequence of a note that was brought to Bartlcmy Fair in tho 
 autumn of next year by a servant, most wonderful got up in milk- 
 w'hite cords and tops, I cleaned myself and went to Pall Mall, one 
 evening appinted. Tlie gentlemen was at their wine arter dinner, and 
 Mr. Chojis's eyes was more fixed in that Ed of his than I thought 
 good for him. There was three of 'em (in company, I mean), and I 
 knowed the third well. When last met, he had on a white Roman 
 shirt, and a bishop's mitre covered Avith leopard-skin, and played tho 
 clarionet all wrong, in a band at a Wild Beast Show. 
 
 This gent took on not to know me, and Mr. Chops said : " Gentle- 
 men, this is a old friend of former days : " and Normandy looked at 
 me through a eye-glass, and said, " Magsman, glad to see you ! " 
 which I'll take my oath he wasn't. Mr. Chops, to git him convenient 
 to the table, had his chair on a throne (much of tho form of George 
 the Fourth's in the canvass), but he hardly ap^jcared to me to be King 
 there in any other pint of view, for his two gentlemen ordered about 
 like Emperors. They was all dressed like May-Day gorgeous ! and 
 as to Wine, they swam in all sorts. 
 
 I made the round of tlic bottles, first separate (to say I had done 
 it), and then mixed 'em all togetlter (to say I had done it), and then 
 tried two of 'em as half-and-lialf, and then t'otlicr two. Altogethei', 
 I passed a pleasin cvenin, but with a tendency to feel muddled, until 
 I considered it good manners to get up and say, " Mr. Chops, the best 
 of friends must part, I thank you for the wariety of foreign drains 
 you have stood so 'ausorae, I looks towards you in red wine, and I 
 takes my leave." Mr. Chops rei)lied, " If you'll just hitch me out of 
 this over your right arm, Magsman, and carry me down-stairs, I'll see 
 you out." I said I couldn't think of such a thing, but he would have 
 it, so I lifted him off his throne. He smelt strong of Maideary, and
 
 Il6 Going into Society. 
 
 I couldu't bel}) thiukiug as I carried him down that it was like carry- 
 ing a large bottle full of wine, with a rayther ugly stopper, a good 
 deal out of proportion. 
 
 When I set him on the door-mat in the hall, he kep me close to 
 him by holding on to my coat-collar, and he whispers ; 
 
 " I ain't 'appy, Magsman." 
 ' " What's on your mind, Mr. Chops ? " 
 
 " They don't use me well. They an't grateful to me. They puts 
 me on the mantel-piece when I won't have in more Champagne- 
 wine, and tliey locks me in the sideboard when I won't give up my 
 property." 
 
 " Get rid of 'em, Mr. Chops." 
 
 " I can't. We're in Society together, and what would Society say ? " 
 
 " Come out of Society ! " says I. 
 
 " I can't. You don't know what you're talking about. When you 
 have once gone into Society, you mustn't come out of it." 
 
 " Then if yoia'll excuse the freedom, Mr. Choi)S," were my remark, 
 shaking my head grave, " I think it's a pity you ever went in." 
 
 Mr. Chops shook that deep Ed of his, to a surprisin extent, and 
 slapped it half a dozen times with his hand, and with more Wice than 
 I thought were in him. Then, he says, " You're a good fellow, but 
 you don't understand. Good-night, go along. Magsman, the little 
 man will now walk three times round the Cairawan, and retire beliind 
 the curtain." The last I see of him on that occasion was his tryin, on 
 the extreniest worge of insensibility, to climb up the stairs, one by 
 one, with liis hands and knees. They'd have been much too steep for 
 him, if he liad been sober ; but he wouldn't be helped. 
 
 It warn't long after that, that I read in the newsjiapcr of Mr. 
 Chops's being presented at court. It was printed, " It will be 
 recollected" and I've noticed in my life, that it is suro to be printed 
 tliat it icill be recollected, whenever it won't " that Mr. Chops is the 
 individual of small stature, whose brilliant success in the last State 
 Lottery attracted so much attention." AVell, I says to myself, Such 
 is Life ! He has been and done it in earnest at last. He lias 
 astonislied George the Fourth ! 
 
 (On account of which, I had that canvass new-painted, him with a 
 bag of money in his liand, a jjreseutin it to George the Fourth, and a 
 lady in Ostrich Feathers fallin in love with him in a bag-wig, sword, 
 and buckles correct.) 
 
 I took tlie Ilcmse as is the subject of prcsont inquiries though not 
 the honour of bcin acquainted and I run jMagsnian's Amusements in 
 it thirteen months sometimes one tiling, sometimes anotlier, some- 
 times nothin particular, but always all the canvasses outside. One 
 night, when we liad played tlio last company out, wliieli was a sliy 
 company, tlirough its raining Heavens hard, I was takin a i)ipe in 
 the one pair back along witli the young man witli the toes, wliicli I 
 had taken on for a mouth (tliougli he never drawed- except on paper).
 
 Sold out of Society. WJ 
 
 and I heard a kickin at the street door. " Halloa ! " I says to the 
 young man, " what's up ! " He rubs his eyebrows with his toes, and 
 he says, " I can't imagine, Mr, Magsman " which he never could 
 imagine nothin, and was monotonous comj^any. 
 
 The noise not leavin off, I laid down my pipe, and I took up a 
 candle, and I went down and opened the door. I looked out into the 
 street ; but nothin could I see, and nothin was I aware of, until I 
 turned round quick, because some creetur run between my legs into 
 the passage. There was Mr. Choj^s ! 
 
 " Magsman," he says, " take me, on the old terms, and you've got 
 me ; if it's done, say done ! " 
 
 I was all of a maze, but I said, " Done, sir." 
 
 " Done to your done, and double done 1 " says he. " Have you got 
 a bit of supper in the house ? " 
 
 Bearin in mind them sparklin warieties of foreign drains as we'd 
 guzzled away at in Pall Mall, I was ashamed to offer him cold sas- 
 sages and gin-and- water ; but he took 'em both and took 'cm free ; 
 havin a chair for his table, and sittin down at it on a stool, like hold 
 times. I, all of a maze all the while. 
 
 It was arter he had made a clean sweep of the sassages (beef, and to 
 the best of my calculations two pound and a quarter), that the wisdom 
 as was in that little man began to come out of him like prcspiration. 
 
 " Magsman," he says, " look upon me ! You see afore you, One as 
 has both gone into Society and come out." 
 
 " O ! You are out of it, Mr. Chops ? How did you get out, sir ? " 
 
 " Sold out ! " says he. You never saw the like of the wisdom as 
 his Ed expressed, when he made use of them two words. 
 
 " My friend Magsman, I'll impart to you a discovery I've made. 
 It's wallable ; it's cost twelve thousand five hundred pound ; it may 
 do you good in life The secret of this matter is, that it ain't so much 
 tliat a person goes into Society, as that Society goes into a person." 
 
 Not exactly keepin up with his meanin, I shook my head, '\)\\i on a 
 deep look, and said, " You're right there, Mr. Chops." 
 
 " Magsman," he says, twitchin me by the leg, " Society has gone 
 into me, to the tune of every penny of my propertj^" 
 
 I felt that I went pale, and though nat'rally a bold siicakcr, I 
 couldn't hardly say, " Where's Normandy ? " 
 
 " Bolted. With the plate," said Mr. Chops. 
 
 " And t'other one ? " meaning him as formerly wore the bishop's 
 mitre. 
 
 " Bolted. With the jewels," said Mr. Chops. 
 
 I sat down and looked at him, and he stood up and looked at me. 
 
 " Magsman," ho says, and he seemed to myself to get wiser as he 
 got hoarser ; " Society, taken in the lumji, is all dwarfs. At the court 
 of St. James's, they was all a doing my old business all a goin three 
 times round the Cairawan, in the hold court-suits and properties. 
 Elsewheres, thev was most of 'em ringin their little bells out of make-
 
 ii8 Going into Society. 
 
 believes, Everywlieres, the sarser was a goin round. Magsman, the 
 sarsor is the uniwersal Institution ! " 
 
 I perceived, you understand, that he was soured by his misfortunes, 
 and I felt for Mr. Chops. 
 
 " As to Fat Ladies," he says, giving his head a tremendious one 
 agin the wall, ' there's lots of them in Society, and worse than the 
 original. Hers was a outrage upon Taste simply a outrage upon 
 Taste awakenin contempt carryin its own punishment in the form 
 of a Indian." Here he giv himself another tremendious one. " But 
 theirs, Magsman, theirs is mercenary outrages. Lay in Cashmcer 
 shawls, buy bracelets, strew 'cm and a lot of 'andsome fans and things 
 about your rooms, let it be known that you give away like water to all 
 as come to admire, and the Fat Ladies that don't exhibit for so much 
 down upon the drum, will come from all the pints of tlie compass to 
 flock about you, whatever you are. They'll drill holes in your 'art, 
 Magsman, like a Cullender. And when you've no more left to give, 
 they'll laugh at you to your face, and leave you to have your bones 
 picked dry by Wulturs, like the dead Wild Ass of the Prairies that 
 you deserve to bo ! " Here he giv himself the most tremendious one 
 of all, and dropped. 
 
 I thought he was gone. His Ed was so heavy, and he knocked it so 
 hard, and he fell so stoney, and the sassagerial disturbance in him 
 must have been so immense, that I thouglit he was gone. But, he 
 soon come round with care, and lie sat up on the floor, and he said to 
 me, with wisdom eomin cut of his eyes, if ever it come : 
 
 " jNIagsman ! The most material difference between the two states 
 of existence through whicli your unhappy friend has passed ; " he 
 reached out his poor little hand, and liis tears droi)])ed down on the 
 moustachio vv'hich it was a credit to him to have done his best to grow, 
 but it is not in mortals to command success, " tlie difference is tliis. 
 When I was out of Society, I was paid liglit for being seen. When I 
 went into Society, I paid lieavy for being seen. I ])refer the former, 
 even if I wasn't forced npon it. Give me out through the trumpet, in 
 the liold way, to-morrow." 
 
 Arter that, he slid into the line again as easy as if he had been iled 
 all over. But the organ was kep from him, and no allusions was 
 ever made, when a company was in, to his property. He got wiser 
 every day ; his views of Society and tlie Public was luminous, bc- 
 wilderiii, awful ; and his Ed got bigger and bigger as his Wisdom 
 (xpanded it. 
 
 He took well, and pulled 'em in most excellent for nine; weeks. At 
 the expiration of that period, when his Ed was a sight, lie expressed 
 one evenin, tlie last ('onipany liavin been turned out. and the door 
 shut, a wish to have a little music. 
 
 " j\rr. Chops," I said (I never dro])ped the " atlr." with him ; the 
 world might do it, but not nie) ; "Mr. Chops, are you sure as you are 
 in a state of mir.d and ])ody to sit U])on the organ V "
 
 The Divarfs Last Tour. lip 
 
 His answer was this : " Toby, when next met witli on the tramp, I 
 forgive her and the Indian. And I am." 
 
 It was with fear and trembling that I began to turn the handle ; 
 but he sat like a lamb. I will bo my belief to my dying day, that I 
 see his Ed expand as he sat ; you may therefore judge how great his 
 thoughts was. He sat out all the changes, and then he come off. 
 
 " Toby," he says, with a quiet smile, " the little man will now walk 
 three times round the Cairawan, and retire behind the curtain." 
 
 "When we called him in the morning, we found him gone into a 
 much bettor Society than mine or Pall Mall's. I giv Mr. Chops as 
 comfortable a funeral as lay in my power, followed myself as Chief, 
 and had the George the Fourth canvass carried first, in the form of a 
 banner. But, the House was so dismal arterwards, that I giv it up, 
 and took to the Wan again. 
 
 " I don't triumph," said Jarber, folding up the second manuscript, 
 and looking hard at Trottle. " I don't triumph over this worthy 
 creature. I. merely ask him if he is satisfied now ? " 
 
 " How can he bo anything else ? " I said, answering for Trottle, who 
 sat obstinately silent. " This time, Jarber, you have not only read us 
 a delightfully amusing story, but you have alsu answered tlie question 
 about the House. Of course it stands empty now. Who woi:ld think 
 of taking it after it had been turned into a caravan ? " I looked at 
 Trottle, as I said those last words, and Jarber vaved his hand 
 indulgently in the same direction. 
 
 " Let this excellent person speak," said Jarber. " You were about 
 to say, my good man ? " 
 
 " I only wished to ask, sir," said Trottle doggedly, " if you could 
 kindly oblige me with a date or two in connection witli that last 
 story ? " 
 
 " A date I " repeated Jarber. " What docs the man Avant v.-ith 
 dates ! " 
 
 " I should be glad to know, with great respect," persisted Trottle, 
 " if the person named Magsnian was the last tenant who lived in tlie 
 House. It's my opinion if I may be excused for giving it that lie 
 most decidedly was not." 
 
 With those words, Trottle made a low bow, and quietly left the 
 room. 
 
 There is no denying that Jarber, when we were left together, 
 looked sadly discomposed. He had evidently forgotten to inquire 
 about dates ; and, in spite of his magnificent talk about his scries of 
 discoveries, it was quite as plain that the two stories he had just read, 
 liad really and truly exhausted his present stock. I thought myself 
 bound, in common gratitude, to help him out of his embarrassment 
 by a timely suggestion. So I proposed tliat he should come to tea 
 again, on the next Monday evening, tlie thirteent]>, and .'^liould make
 
 120 Going into Society. 
 
 such inquiries in the meantime, as might enable him to dispose 
 triumphantly of Trottle's objection. 
 
 He gallantly kissed my hand, made a neat little speech of aclcnow- 
 ledgment, and took his leave. For the rest of the week I would not 
 encourage Trottle by allowing him to refer to the House at all, I 
 suspected he was making his own inquiries about dates, but I put no 
 questions to him. 
 
 On Monday evening, the thirteenth, that dear xmfortunate Jarbcr 
 came, punctual to the appointed time. He looked so terribly 
 liarassed, that he was really quite a spectacle of feebleness and 
 fatigue, I saw, at a glance, that the question of dates had gone 
 against him, that Mr. Magsman had not been the last tenant of tlie 
 House, and that the reason of its emptiness was still to seek. 
 
 " What I have gone through," said Jarber, " words are not eloquent 
 enough to tell, O Sophonisba, I have begun another series of dis- 
 coveries ! Accej)t the last two as stories laid on your shrine ; and 
 M'ait to blame me for leaving your curiosity unappeascd, until you 
 liave heard Number Three." 
 
 Number Three looked like a very short manuscript, and I said as 
 much, Jarber explained to mc that we were to have some i)oetry tliis 
 time. In the course of his investigations he had stei)ped into the 
 Circulating Library, to seek for information on the one important 
 subject. All the Library-people knew about the House was, tliat a 
 female relative of the last tenant, as they believed, had, just after that 
 tcniant left, sent a little manuscri2)t poem to them which she described 
 as referring to events tliat luul actually passed in tlie House ; and 
 wliich slie wanted the pro2)rictor of the Library to publisli. She liad 
 written no address on her letter ; and the proprietor had Icept the 
 manuscript ready to be given back to her (the publishing of jjoems 
 not being in his line) when she might call for it. 8he had never 
 called for it ; and the poem had been lent to Jarber, at his express 
 request, to read to me. 
 
 Before he began, I rang the bell for Trottle ; being dcterniiiuHl to 
 liave liim present at tlie new reading, as a wholesome check on his 
 obstinacy. To my surprise Peggy answered the bell, and told mc. 
 that Trottle liad ste])ped out without saying where. I instantly f('lt 
 tlie strongest possible conviction tliat he was at his old tricks : and 
 tliat his stepping out in the evening, without have, meant - 
 Philandering. 
 
 Controlling myself on my visitor's account, I dismissed I'eggy. 
 stifled my indignation, and prepared, as jiolitely as might be, to listen 
 to Jarber.
 
 THF. HAUNTKD UOUSK.
 
 THE HAUNTED HOUSE. 
 
 IN TWO CHAPTERS.* 
 
 [1859.] 
 
 THE MOETALS IN THE HOUSE. 
 
 Under none of the accredited gliostly circumstances, and environed 
 by none of the conventional gliostly surroundings, did I first make 
 acquaintance with the house which is the subject of this Christmas 
 piece. I saw it in the daylight, with the sun upon it. There was 
 no wind, no rain, no lightning, no thunder, no awful or unwonted cir- 
 cumstance, of any kind, to heighten its effect. More than that : I 
 had come to it direct from a railway station : it was not more than a mile 
 distant from the railway station ; and, as I stood outside the house, 
 looking back upon the way I had come, I could see tlie goods train 
 running smoothly along the embankment in the valley. I will not 
 say that everything was utterly commonidace, because I doubt if any- 
 thing can bo that, except to utterly commonjilace people and there 
 my vanity steps in ; but, I will take it on myself to say that anybody 
 might see the house as I saw it, any fine autumn morning. 
 
 The manner of my lighting on it was this. 
 
 I was travelling towards London out of the North, ijitcndiug to 
 stop by the way, to look at the house. My health required a temporary 
 residence in the country ; and a friend of mine who knew that, and 
 who had hapj^ened to drive past the house, had written to me to 
 suggest it as a likely place. I had got into the train at midnight, and 
 liad fallen aslcei:), and had woko up and had sat looking out of 
 window at the brilliant Northern Lights in the sky, and had fallen 
 asleep again, and had woke up again to find the night gone, with the 
 usual discontented conviction on me that I hadn't been to sleep at all ; 
 upon which question, in the first imbecility of that condition, I am 
 ashamed to believe that I would have done wager by battle with the 
 
 * The original has eight chapters, which -will be found in All the Year Hound, vol. ii., 
 old series ; but those not printed here, excepting a page at the close, were not written 
 bv Mr, Uickens.
 
 122 Tlie Haunted House. 
 
 man who sat opposite rae. That opposite man had had, through the 
 night as that opposite man always has several legs too many, and 
 all of them too long. In addition to this Tinreasonable conduct (which 
 was only to bo expected of him), ho had had a pencil and a pocket- 
 book, and had been perpetually listening and taking notes. It had 
 appeared to me that these aggravating notes related to the jolts and 
 bumps of the carriage, and I should have resigned myself to his 
 taking them, under a general supposition that he was in the civil- 
 engineering way of life, if he had not sat staring straight over my 
 head whenever he listened. He was a goggle-eyed gentleman of a 
 perplexed aspect, and his demeanour became unbearable. 
 
 It was a cold, dead morning (the sun not being up yet), and when 
 I had out-watched the paling light of the fires of the iron country, 
 and the curtain of heavy smoke that hung at once between me and 
 the stars and between me and the day, I turned to my fellow-traveller 
 and said : 
 
 " I herj your pardon, sir, but do you observe anything particular in 
 me ? '' For, really, he appeared to be taking down, cither my 
 travelling-caj} or my hair, with a minuteness that was a liberty. 
 
 The goggle-eyed gentleman withdrew his eyes from behind me, 
 as if the back of the carriage were a liuudred miles off, and said, with 
 a lofty look of compassion for my insignificance : 
 
 " In you, sir ? B." 
 
 " B, sir ? " said I, growing warm.. 
 
 " I liave nothing to do with you, sir," returned the gentleman ; 
 " pray let me listen O." 
 
 He enunciated this vowel after a pause, and noted it down. 
 
 At first I was alarmed, for an Express lunatic and no communication 
 with the guard, is a serious position. The thought came to my relief 
 tliat the gentleman might be what is popularly called a Rapper : one 
 of a sect for (some of) whom I have the highest respect, but whom I 
 don't believe in. I was going to ask him tbe question, when he took 
 the bread out of my mouth. 
 
 " You will excuse mo," said tlie gentleman contemptuously, " if I 
 am too much in advance of common Jiumanity to trouble myself at all 
 aboxit it. I have passed tlio niglit as indeed I pass tlie whole of my 
 time now in spiritual intercourse." 
 
 " O ! " said I, somewhat snappishly. 
 
 " Tlie conferences of tlie night began," continued tlie gentleman, 
 turning several leaves of his note-book, "with tliis message: 'Evil 
 communications corrupt good manners.' " 
 
 ' Sound," said I ; " but, absolutely new ? " 
 
 " New from spirits," returned the gentleman. 
 
 T could only repeat my rather snajjpish "0!" and ask if I miglit 
 be favoured with tlio last communication. 
 
 "'A bird in the liand,' " said tlic gcntloinan, rraling liis lust entry 
 with great solemnity, "'is wortli two in tlie Bosh.'""
 
 First View of the House. 123 
 
 " Trnly I am of tlie same opinion," said I ; " but slaouldn't it be 
 Bust ? " 
 
 " It came to me, Bosli," returned the gentleman. 
 
 The gentleman then informed me that the spirit of Socrates had 
 delivered this special revelation iu tlie course of the night. "My 
 friend, I hope you are pretty well. There are two in this railway 
 carriage. How do you do? There are seventeen thousand four 
 Imndred and seventy-nine spirits here, but you cannot see them. 
 Pythagoras is here. He is not at liberty to mention it, but hopes you 
 like travelling." Galileo likewise had dropped in, with this scientific 
 intelligence. " I am glad to see you, amico. Come sta ? Water 
 will freeze when it is cold enough. Addio ! " In the course of the 
 night, also, the following phenomena had occurred. Bishop Butler 
 had insisted on spelling his name, " Bubler," for which offence against 
 orthography and good manners he had been dismissed as out of 
 temjjer. John Milton (suspected of wilful mystification) had re- 
 pudiated the authorship of Paradise Lost, and had introduced, as 
 joint authors of that poem, two Unknown gentlemen, respectively 
 named Grungers and Scadgingtone. And Prince Arthur, nephew of 
 King John of England, had described himself as tolerably comfortable 
 in the seventh circle, where he was learning to paint on velvet, under 
 the direction of Mrs. Trimmer and Mary Queen of Scots. 
 
 If this should meet the eye of the gentleman who favoured me 
 with these disclosures, I trust he will excuse my confessing that the 
 siglit of the rising sun, and the contemplation of the magnificent 
 Order of the vast Universe, made me impatient of them. In a word, 
 I was so impatient of them, that I was mightily glad to get out at 
 the next station, and to exchange these clouds and vapours for the free 
 air of Heaven. 
 
 By that time it was a beautiful morning. As I vralked away 
 among such leaves as had already fallen from the golden, brown, and 
 russet trees ; and as I looked around me on tlie Avonders of Creation, 
 and tliought of the steady, \mchauging, and harmonious laws by 
 which they are sustained ; the gentleman's si)iritual intercourse 
 seemed to me as poor a piece of journey-work as ever this Avorld saw. 
 In which heathen state of mind, I came within view of the liouse, and 
 stopped to examine it attentively. 
 
 It was a solitary house, standing in a sadly neglected garden : a 
 pretty even square of some two acres. It was a house of about the 
 time of George the Second ; as stifi", as cold, as formal, and in as bad 
 taste, as could possibly be desired by the most loyal admirer of the 
 whole quartett of (Tcorges. It was uninhabited, but had, within a 
 year or two, been cheaply repaired to render it habitable ; I say 
 clieaply, because the work h.ad been done in a surface maimer, and 
 was already decaying as to the paint and plaster, though the colours 
 Averc fresh. A lop-sided board drooped over the garden wall, 
 announcing that it was " to let on very reasonable terms, well
 
 124 The Haunted House. 
 
 furnished." It was much too closely and heavily shadowed by trees, 
 and, in particular, there were six tall poplars before the front 
 windows, which were excessively melancholy, and the site of which 
 liad been extremely ill chosen. 
 
 It was easy to see that it was an avoided house a house that was 
 shunned by the village, to which my eye was guided by a church 
 spire some half a mile oif a house that nobody would take. And 
 the natural inference was, that it had the reputation of being a 
 haunted house. 
 
 No period within the four-and-twenty hours of day and night is so 
 solemn to me, as the early morning. In the summer-time, I often 
 rise very early, and repair to my room to do a day's work before 
 breakfast, and I am always on those occasions deeply impressed by 
 the stillness and solitude around me. Besides that there is some- 
 tliing awful in the being surrounded by familiar faces asleep in the 
 Icnowledgo that those who are dearest to us and to whom we are 
 dearest, are profoundly unconscious of us, in an impassive state, 
 anticijiative of that mysterious condition to whicli we are all tending 
 the stopped life, the broken threads of yesterday, the deserted seat, 
 the closed book, tlie unfinished but abandoned occupation, all are 
 images of Death. The tranquillity of the hour is the tranquillity of 
 Death. The colour and tlie chill have the same association. Even a 
 certain air that familiar household objects take upon them when they 
 first emerge from the shadows of the night into tho morning, of 
 being newer, and as they used to be long ago, has its counterpart in 
 tho subsidence of tlio worn face of maturity or age, in death, into the 
 old youthful look. Moreover, I once saw the apparition of my fatlier, 
 at this hour. Ho was alive and well, and nothing ever came of it, 
 but I saw him in tho daylight, sitting with his back towards mo, on a 
 seat that stood beside my bed. His head was resting on his hand, 
 and whether he was slumbering or grieving, I could not discern. 
 Amazed to see him there, I sat up, moved my position, leaned out of 
 bed, and watched him. As he did not move, I spoke to liim more 
 than once. As he did not move then, I became alarmed and laid my 
 hand upon liis shoulder, as I thought and there was no such thing. 
 
 For all these reasons, and for others less easily and briefly statable, 
 I find the early morning to bo my most ghostly time. Any house 
 would be more or less haunted, to mo, in the early morning ; and a 
 haunted house could scarcely address me to greater advantage 
 than tlien. 
 
 I walked on into the village, with the desertion of this house upon 
 my mind, and I found tho landlord of the little inn, sanding his door- 
 step. I bespoke breakfast, and broached the subject of tlie liousc. 
 
 " Is it haunted ? " I asked. 
 
 The landlord looked at mo, shook his head, and auBV/crod, " I say 
 nothing." 
 
 " Then it is haunted '? "
 
 Ikefs Summary of the Facts. 125 
 
 " Well ! " cried the landlord, in an outburst of frankness that had 
 the appearance of desperation " I wouldn't sleep in it." 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 
 " If I wanted to have all the bells in a house ring, with nobody to 
 ring 'em ; and all the doors in a house bang, with nobody to bang 
 'em ; and all sorts of feet treading about, with no feet there ; why, 
 then," said the landlord, " I'd sleep in that house." 
 
 " Is anything seen there ? " 
 
 The landlord looked at me again, and then, with his former 
 ai^pearance of desperation, called down his stable-yard for " Ikey ! " 
 
 The call produced a high-shouldered young fellow, with a round 
 red face, a short crop of sandy hair, a very broad humorous mouth, 
 a turned-up nose, and a great sleeved waistcoat of purple bars, with 
 mother-of-pearl buttons, that seemed to be growing upon him, and to 
 be in a fair way if it were not pruned of covering his head and 
 overrunning his boots. 
 
 " This gentleman wants to know," said the landlord, " if anything's 
 seen at the Poplars." 
 
 " 'Oodcd woman with a howl," said Ikey, in a state of great 
 freshness. 
 
 " Do you mean a cry ? " 
 
 " I mean a bird, sir." 
 
 "A hooded woman with an owl. Dear me! Did you ever see 
 her ? " 
 
 " I seen the howl." 
 
 " Never the woman ? " 
 
 " Not so plain as the howl, but they always keeps together." 
 
 " Has anybody ever seen the woman as plainly as the owl ? " 
 
 " Lord bless you, sir ! Lots." 
 
 " AVho ? " 
 
 " Lord bless you, sir ! Lots," 
 
 " The general-dealer opposite, for instance, who is opening his 
 shop ? " 
 
 " Perkins ? Bless you, Perkins wouldn't go a-nigh the place. 
 No ! " observed the yoiiug man, with considerable feeling ; " he an't 
 overwise, an't Perkins, but he an't such a fool as tlud.''' 
 
 (Here, the landlord murmured his confidence in Perkins's knowing 
 belter.) 
 
 " Who is or who was the hooded woman with the owl ? Do you 
 know ? " 
 
 " Well ! " said Ikey, holding up his cap with one hand while he 
 scratched his liead with the other, " they say, in general, that she was 
 murdered, and the howl he 'ooted the while.' ' 
 
 Tliis very concise summary of the facts was all I could learn, except 
 that a young man, as hearty and likely a young man as ever I see, 
 had been took with fits and held down in 'em, after seeing the hooded 
 woman. Also, that a personage, dimly described as " a hold cha^), a
 
 126 TJie Haunted House. 
 
 Bort of oue-eyed tramp, answering to the name of Joby, unless you 
 challenged him as Greenwood, and then he said, ' Why not ? and 
 even if so, mind your own business,' " had encountered the hooded 
 woman, a matter of five or six times. But, I was not materially 
 assisted by these witnesses : inasmuch as the first was in California, 
 and the last was, as Ikey said (and he was confirmed by the land- 
 lord), Anywheres. 
 
 Now, although I regard with a hushed and solemn fear, the mysteries, 
 between which and this state of existence is interposed the barrier of 
 the great trial and change that fall on all the things that live ; and 
 although I have not the audacity to pretend that I know anything of 
 them ; I can no more reconcile the mere banging of doors, ringing of 
 bells, creaking of boards, and such-like insignificances, with the 
 majestic beauty and pervading analogy of all the Divine rules that I 
 am permitted to understand, than I had been able, a little while 
 before, to yoke the spiritual intercourse of my fellow-traveller to the 
 chariot of the rising sun. Moreover, I had lived in two haunted 
 liouscs both abroad. In one of these, an old Italian palace, which 
 bore the reputation of being very badly haunted indeed, and which 
 liad recently been twice abandoned on that account, I lived eight 
 months, most tran(|uilly and pleasantly : notwithstanding that the 
 house had a score of mysterious bedrooms, which were never used, and 
 possessed, in one large room in which I sat reading, times out of 
 number at all hours, and next to which I slept, a haunted chamber of 
 the first pretensions. I gently hinted 'these considerations to the 
 landlord. And as to this particular house having a bad name, I 
 reasoned with him, Why, how many things liad bad names un- 
 deservedly, and how easy it was to give bad names, and did he not 
 think that if he and I were persistently to whisper in the village that 
 any weird-looking old drunken tinker of the neighbourhood had sold 
 liimself to the Devil, ho would come in time to be suspected of that 
 conmiercial venture ! All this wise talk was perfectly inefi'ectivo with 
 the landlord, I am bound to confess, and was as dead a failure as ever 
 I made in my life. 
 
 To cut tliis part of the story short, I was piqued about the haunted 
 house, and was already half resolved to take it. So, after brealifast, 
 I got the keys from I'erkins's brother-in-law (a whip and harness 
 maker, wlio keeps the Post Office, and is under submission to a most 
 rigorous wife of the Doubly Seceding Little Emmanuel persuasion), 
 and went up to tlie house, attended by my landlord and by Ikey. 
 
 Within, I found it, as I had expected, transcendently dismal. Tlio 
 slowly changing shadows waved on it from the heavy trees, were 
 doleful in tlie last degree ; the liouso was ill-placed, ill-built, ill- 
 planned, and ill-fitted. It was damj), it was not free from dry rot, 
 there was a fiavour of rats in it, and it was the gloomy victim of that 
 indescribable decay which settles on all the work of man's hands 
 whenever it is not turned to man's account. The kitchens and offices
 
 Master B. 177 
 
 were too large, and too remote from eacli otlier. Above stairs and 
 below, waste tracts of passage intervened between patches of fertility 
 represented by rooms ; and there was a mouldy old well with a green 
 growth upon it, hiding like a murderous trap, near the bottom of the 
 back-stairs, under the double row of bells. One of these bells was 
 labelled, on a black ground in faded white letters. Master B. This, 
 they told me, was the bell that rang the most. 
 
 " Who was Master B. ? " I asked. " Is it known what he did while 
 the owl hooted ? " 
 
 " Rang the bell," said Ikey. 
 
 I was rather struck by the prompt dexterity with which this young 
 man pitched his fur cap at the bell, and rang it himself. It was a 
 loud, unpleasant bell, and made a very disagreeable sound. Tho 
 other bells were inscribed according to the names of the rooms to 
 which their wires were conducted : as " Picture lloom," " Dcjuble 
 Room," " Clock Room," and the like. Following Master B.'s bell to 
 its source I found that young gentleman to have had but indiiferent 
 third-class accommodation in a triangular cabin under the cock-loft, 
 with a corner fireplace which Master B. must have been exceedingly 
 small if he were ever able to warm Ijimself at, and a corner chimney- 
 piece like a pyramidal staircase to the ceiling for Tom Thumb. The 
 l)aperiug of one side of the room had dropped down bodily, with 
 fragments of plaster adliering to it, and almost blocked up tho door. 
 It appeared that Master B., in his spiritual condition, always made a 
 point of pulling the paper down. Neither the landlord nor Ikey 
 could suggest why he made such a fool of himself. 
 
 Except that the house had an immensely large rambling loft at top, 
 I made no other discoveries. It was moderately well furnished, but 
 sparely. Some of the furniture say, a third was as old as the 
 liouse ; the rest was of various periods within the last half-century. 
 I was referred to a corn-chandler in the market-place of the coimty 
 town to treat for the house. I went that day, and I took it for six 
 months. 
 
 It was just the middle of October when I moved in with my maiden 
 sister (I venture to call her eight-aud-thirty, she is so very handsome, 
 sensible, and engaging). We took with us, a deaf stable-man, my 
 bloodhound Turk, two women servants, and a young person called an 
 Odd Girl. I have reason to record of the attendant last enumerated, 
 who was one of tho Saint Lawrence's Union Female Orjjhans, that 
 she was a fatal mistake and a disastrous engagement. 
 
 The year was dying early, the leaves were falling fast, it was a raw 
 cold day when we took possession, and the gloom of the nouse was 
 most depressing. The cook (an amiable woman, but of a weak turn 
 of intellect) burst into tears on beholding the kitchen, and requested 
 that her silver watch might be delivered over to her sister (2 Tuppin- 
 tock's Gardens, Liggs's Walk, Clapham Rise), in the event of anything 
 happening to her from the damp. Streaker, the housemaid, feigned
 
 128 The Haunted House. 
 
 cheerfulness, but was the greater martyr. The Odd Girl, who had 
 never been in the country, alone was pleased, and made arrangements 
 for sowing an acorn in the garden outside the scullery window, and 
 rearing an oak. 
 
 We went, before dark, through all the natural as opposed to 
 siipernatural miseries incidental to our state. Dispiriting reports 
 ascended (like the smoke) from the basement in volumes, antl de- 
 scended from the upper rooms. There was no rolling-pin, there was 
 no salamander (which failed to surprise me, for I don't know what it 
 is), there was nothing in the house, what there was, was broken, the 
 last people must have lived like pigs, what could the meaning of the 
 landlord be ? Through these distresses, the Odd Girl was cheerful 
 and exemplary. But within four hours after dark we had got into a 
 supernatural groove, and the Odd Girl had seen " Eyes," and was in 
 hysterics. 
 
 My sister and I had agreed to keep the haunting strictly to our- 
 selves, and my impression was, and still is, that I had not left Ikey, 
 when he helped to unload the cart, alone with the women, or any one 
 of them, for one minute. Nevertheless, as I say, tlie Odd Girl had 
 " seen Eyes " (no other explanation could ever be drawn from her), 
 before nine, and by ten o'clock had had as much vinegar applied to 
 her as would pickle a handsome salmon. 
 
 I leave a discerning public to judge of my feelings, when, under 
 these untoward circumstances, at about half-past ten o'clock Master 
 B.'s bell began to ring in a most infuriated manner, and Turk howled 
 until the house resounded with his lamentations ! 
 
 I hope I may never again be in a state of mind so unchristian as the 
 mental frame in which I lived for some weeks, resi)ecting the memory 
 of Master B. Whether his bell was rung by rats, or mice, or bats, or 
 wind, or what other accidental vibration, or sometimes by one cause, 
 sometimes another, and sometimes by collusion, I don't know ; but, 
 certain it is, that it did ring two nights out of three, until I conceived 
 the happy idea of twisting Master B.'s neck in other words, breaking 
 his bell short off and silencing that young gentleman, as to my 
 ex])crience and belief, for ever. 
 
 But, by that time, the Odd (iirl had developed such improving 
 2)0wers of catalepsy, that slie had become a shining example of that 
 very inconvenient disorder. She would stiften, like a Guy Fawkes 
 endowed \\it\\ unreason, on the most irrelevant occasions. I would 
 address the servants in a lucid manner, ])()iuting out to them that 
 I liad painted Master B.'s room and balked the paper, and taken 
 Master B.'s bell away and balked the ringing, and if they could 
 suppose tliat that confounded boy liad livcid and died, to clotlie 
 liimself with no better beliaviour than would most unquestionably 
 have brought liini ami the sliarpest particles of a birch-broom into 
 close ac<[uaintanee in the present imperfect state of existence, could 
 they also suppose a mere poor human being, such as I was. capable by
 
 Suspicion and Fear. 129 
 
 those contemptible means of counteracting and limiting the powers 
 of the disembodied spirits of the dead, or of any spirits ? I say I 
 would become emphatic and cogent, not to say rather complacent, in 
 such an address, when it would all go for nothing by reason of tho 
 Odd Girl's suddenly stiffening from the toes upward, and glaring 
 among us like a parochial petrifaction. 
 
 Streaker, the housemaid, too, had an attribute of a most discom- 
 fiting nature. I am unable to say whether she was of an usually 
 lymphatic temperament, or what else was the matter with her, but 
 this young woman became a mere Distillery for the production of the 
 largest and most transparent tears I ever met with. Combined with 
 these characteristics, was a peculiar tenacity of hold in those specimens, 
 60 that they didn't fall, but hung upon her face and nose. In this 
 condition, and mildly and deplorably shaking her head, her silence 
 would throw me more heavily than the Admirable Crichton could 
 have done in a verbal disputation for a purse of money. Cook, like- 
 wise, always covered me with confusion as with a garment, by neatly 
 winding uj) the session with the protest that the Ouse was wearing 
 her out, and by meekly repeating her last wishes regarding her silver 
 watch. 
 
 As to our nightly life, the contagion of suspicion and fear was 
 among us, and there is no such contagion under the sky. Hooded 
 woman ? According to the accounts, we were in a perfect Convent of 
 hooded women. Noises ? With that contagion down-stairs, I myself 
 liave sat in the dismal parlour, listening, until I have heard so many 
 and such strange noises, that they would have chilled my blood if 
 I had not warmed it by dashing out to make discoveries. Try this in 
 bed, in tho dead of the night : try this at your own comfortable fire- 
 side, in the life of tlie night. You can fill any house with noises, if 
 you will, until you have a noise for every nerve in your nervous 
 system. 
 
 I repeat ; the contagion of suspicion and fear was among us, and 
 there is no such contagion under the sky. The women (their noses 
 in a chronic state of excoriation from smelling-salts) were always 
 primed and loaded for a swoon, and ready to go ofi" with hair-triggers. 
 The two elder detached the Odd Girl on all expeditions that Avero 
 considered doubly hazardous, and she always established the rcjouta- 
 tion of such adventures by coming back cataleptic. If Cook or 
 Streaker went overhead after dark, we knew we should presently hear 
 a bump on the ceiling ; and this took place so constantly, that it was 
 as if a fighting man were engaged to go about the house, administer- 
 ing a touch of his art which I believe is called The Auctioneer, to 
 every domestic he met with. 
 
 It was in vain to do anything. It was in vain to be frightened, for 
 the moment in one's own person, by a real owl, and then to show tho 
 owl. It was in vain to discover, by striking an accidental discord on 
 the piano, that Turk always howled at particular notes and combina-
 
 130 The Haunted House, 
 
 tions. It was in vain to bo a Ehadamantlius with the bells, and if an 
 unfortunate bell rang without leave, to have it down inexorably and 
 silence it. It was in vain to fire up chimneys, let torches down the 
 well, charge furiously into suspected rooms and recesses. We changed 
 servants, and it was no better. The new set ran away, and a third 
 set came, and it was no better. At last, our comfortable housekeeping 
 got to bo so disorganised and wretched, that I one night dejectedly 
 said to my sister : " Patty, I begin to despair of our getting people 
 to go on with us hero, and I think wo must give this up." 
 
 My sister, who is a woman of immense spirit, replied, " No, John, 
 don't give it up. Don't bo beaten, John. There is another way." 
 
 " And what is that ? " said I. 
 
 " John," returned my sister, "if we are not to bo driven out of tliis 
 house, and that for no reason whatever, that is apparent to you or me, 
 we must help ourselves and take the house wholly and solely into our 
 own hands." 
 
 " But, tho servants," said I. 
 
 " Have no servants," said my sister, boldly. 
 
 Like most people in my grade of life, I had never thought of tho 
 possibility of going on without those faithful obstructions. Tho 
 notion was so new to mo v/hen suggested, that I looked very doubtful. 
 
 " We know they come hero to bo frightened and infect one another, 
 and we know they aro frightened and do infect one another," said my 
 sister. 
 
 " With the exception of Bottles," I observed, in a meditative tone. 
 
 (Tho deaf stable-man. I kept him in my service, and still keep 
 him, as a phenomenon of morosoness not to be matched in England.) 
 
 " To be sure, John," assented my sister ; " excci)t Bottles. And 
 what does that go to prove ? Bottles talks to nobody, and hears 
 nobody unless he is absolutely roared at, and what alarm has Bottles 
 ever given, or taken ! None." 
 
 This -was perfectly true ; tho individual in question having retired, 
 every night at ten o'clock, to his bed over the coach-house, with no 
 other company than a pitchfork and a pail of water. That tho pail 
 of water would liavo been over me, and the pitchfork througli me, if 
 I had put myself without announcement in Bottles's way after that 
 minute, I had deposited in my own mind as a fact worth remembering. 
 Neither had Bottles ever taken the least notice of any of our many 
 uproars. An imperturbable and speechless man, he had sat at hiy, 
 supper, with Streaker present in a swoon, and the Odd Girl marble, 
 and had only put anotlicr potato in liis cheek, or prolltcd by tho 
 general misery to help himself to beefsteak pie. 
 
 " And so," continued my'sistcr, " I exempt Bottles. And considering, 
 John, that the house is too large, and perhaps too lonely, to be kept 
 well in hand by Bottles, yon, and me, I propos:e that we cast ab lut 
 among our friends for a certain selected number of the most reliable 
 and willing form a Society here for three mouths wait upon our-
 
 I key receives a Warning; 131 
 
 selves and one another live cheerfully and socially and see what 
 happens." 
 
 I was so charmed with my sister, that I embraced her on the spot, 
 and went into her plan with the greatest ardour. 
 
 Wc were then in the third week of November ; but, we took our 
 measures so vigorously, and were so well seconded by the friends in 
 v.'hom we confided, that there was still a week of the month unexpired, 
 when our party all camo down together merrily, and mustered in tho 
 haunted house. 
 
 I will mention, in this place, two small changes that I made while 
 my sister and I were yet alone. It occurring to mo as not improbable 
 that Turk howled in the house at night, partly because ho wanted to 
 get out of it, I stationed him in his kennel outside, but unchained ; 
 and I seriously warned the village that any man who came in his way 
 must not expect to leave him without a rip in his own throat. I then 
 casually asked Ikey if he were a judge of a gun ? On his saying, " Yes, 
 sir, I knows a good gun when I sees her," I begged the favour of his 
 stepping up to the house and looking at mine. 
 
 " She's a true one, sir," said Ikey, after inspecting a double-barrelled 
 rifle that I bought in Now York a few years ago. " No mistake about 
 lier, sir." 
 
 " Ikey," said I, " don't mention it ; I have seen something in this 
 house." 
 
 " No, sir ? " ho whispered, greedily opening his eyes. " 'Ooded 
 lady, sir ? " 
 
 " Don't be frightened," said I. " It was a figure rather like you." 
 
 " Lord, sir ? " 
 
 " Ikey ! " said I, shaking hands with him warmly : I may say 
 affectionately ; " if there is any truth in these ghost-stories, tho 
 greatest service I can do you, is, to fire at that figure. And I jiromiso 
 you, by Heaven and earth, I will do it with this gun if I see it again ! " 
 
 The young man thanked mo, and took his leave with seme little 
 precipitation, after declining a glass of liquor. I imparted my secret 
 to him, because I had never quite forgotten his throwing his cap at 
 the bell ; because I had, on another occasion, noticed something very 
 like a fur cap, lying not far from the bell, one night when it had 
 burst out ringing ; and because I had remarked that we were at our 
 ghostliest whenever he came up in the evening to comfort the servants. 
 Let mo do Ikey no injustice. He was afraid of the house, and believed 
 in its being haimted ; and yet he would play false on tho haunting 
 side, so surely as ho got an opportunity. The Odd Girl's case was 
 exactly similar. She went about the hour.c in a state of real terror, 
 and yet lied monstroiisly and wilfully, and invented many of tho 
 alarms she spread, and made many of the sounds we heard. I had had 
 my eye on the two, and I knov/ it. It is not necessary for mo, here, to 
 account for this prepoeterous state of mind ; I content myself v/ith 
 remarking that it is familiarly known to every intelligent man who
 
 132 The Haunted House. 
 
 has had fair medical, legal, or other watchful experience ; that it is as 
 well established and as common a state of mind as any with which 
 observers are acquainted ; and that it is one of the first elements, 
 above all others, rationally to bo suspected in, and strictly looked for, 
 and separated from, any question of this kind. 
 
 To return to our party. The first thing we did when wo were all 
 assembled, was, to draw lots for bedrooms. That done, and every 
 bedroom, and, indeed, the whole house, having been rhinutely 
 examined by the whole body, we allotted the various household duties, 
 as if wo had been on a gipsy party, or a yachting party, or a Imnting 
 party, or were shipwrecked. I tlaen recounted the floating rumours 
 concerning the hooded lady, the owl, and Master B. : with others, 
 still more filmy, which had floated about during our occupation, rela- 
 tive to some ridiculous old ghost of the female gender who went up 
 and down, carrying the ghost of a round table ; and also to an 
 impalpable Jackass, whom nobody was ever able to catch. Some of 
 these ideas I really believe our people below had communicated to 
 one another in some diseased way, without conveying them in words. 
 Wo then gravely called one another to witness, that wo were not 
 tliere to be deceived, or to deceive which we considered pretty mucli 
 the same thing and that, with a serious sense of responsibility, wo 
 would bo strictly true to one another, and would strictly follow out 
 the truth. The understanding was established, that any one who 
 heard imusual noises in the night, and who wished to trace them, 
 should knock at my door ; lastly, that on Twelfth Night, the last 
 night of holy Christmas, all our individual experiences since that 
 then present hour of our coming together in the haunted house, 
 should be brouglit to light for the good of all; and that we woxild 
 hold our peace on the subject till then, unless on some remarkable 
 provocation to break silence. 
 
 We were, in number and in character, as follows : 
 
 First to get my sister and myself out of the way there were we 
 two. In the drawing of lots, my sister drew her own room, and I 
 drew Master B.'s. Next, there was our first cousin John Herschel, so 
 called after the great astronomer : than whom I suppose a better man 
 at a telescope docs not breathe. With him, was his wife : a charming 
 creature to wliom he had been married in the previous spring. I 
 thought it (under tlie circumstances) rather imj^rudent to bring her, 
 because there is no knowing what even a false alarm may do at such 
 a time ; but I suppose he knew his own business best, and J must 
 say that if she had been my wife, I never could have l(;ft her endour- 
 ing and briglit face behind. Tliey drew the Clock Kooni. Alfred 
 Starling, an uncommonly agreeable young fellow of eight-and-twenty 
 for wliom T liave tlic greatest liking, was in the Double Ilooni ; mine, 
 usually, and designated by that name from liaving a dressing-room 
 within it, witli two large and cumbersome windows, wliich no wedges 
 I was ever able to make, would keep from shaking, in any weather,
 
 An Experimental Society. 133 
 
 wind or no wind. Alfred is a young fellow who pretends to be " fast " 
 (another word for loose, as I understand tlie term), but wbo is much 
 too good and sensible for that nonsense, and who would have dis- 
 tinguished himself before now, if his father had not unfortunately left 
 him a small independence of two hundred a year, on the strength of 
 which his only occupation in life has been to spend six. I am in 
 hopes, however, that his Banker may break, or that he may enter into 
 some speculation guaranteed to pay twenty per cent. ; for, I am con- 
 vinced that if he could only be ruined, his fortune is made. Belinda 
 Bates, bosom friend of my sister, and a most intellectual, amiable, and 
 delightful girl, got the Picture Eoom. She has a fine genius for 
 poetry, combiued with real business earnestness, and " goes in " to 
 use an expression of Alfred's for Woman's mission, Woman's rights, 
 Woman's wrongs, and everything that is Avoman's with a capital W, or 
 is not and ought to be, or is and ought not to be. "Most praise- 
 worthy, my dear, and Heaven prosper you ! " I whispered to her on 
 the first night of my taking leave of her at the Picture-Eoom door, 
 " but don't overdo it. And in respect of the great neccssitj' there is, 
 my darling, for more emj^loyments being within the reach cf Woman 
 than our civilisation has as yet assigned to her, don't fly at the 
 unfortunate men, even those men who are at first sight in your way, 
 as if they were the natural oppressors of your sex ; for, trust me, 
 Belinda, they do sometimes spend their wages among wives and 
 daughters, sisters, mothers, aunts, and grandmothers ; and the play is, 
 really, not all Wolf and Red Eiding-Hood, but has otlier jiarts in it." 
 However, I digress. 
 
 Belinda, as I have mentioned, occupied the Picture Eoom. We 
 had but three other chambers : the Corner Eoom, the Cupboard 
 Eoom, and the Garden Eoom. My old friend, Jack Governor, " slung 
 his hammock," as ho called it, in the Corner Eoom. I have always 
 regarded Jack as the finest-looking sailor that ever sailed. He is 
 gray now, but as handsome as he was a quarter of a century ago 
 nay, handsomer. A portly, cheery, well-built figure of a broad- 
 sliouldercd man, with a frank smile, a brilliant dark eye, and a rich 
 dark eyebrow. I remember those under darker hair, and they look 
 all the better for their silver setting. He has boon wherever his 
 Union namesake flies, has Jack, and I have met old shipmates of his, 
 away in the Mediterranean and on the other side of the Atlantic, wlio 
 have beamed and brightened at the casual mention of his name, and 
 have cried, " You know Jack Governor ? Then you know a prince of 
 men ! " TJiat ho is ! And so unmistakably a naval ofiicer, that if 
 you were to meet him coming out of an Esquimaux snow-hut in seal's 
 skin, you would be vaguely persuaded ho was in full naval uniform. 
 
 Jack once had that bright clear eye of his on my sister ; but, it fell 
 out that he married another lady and took her to South America, 
 where she died. This was a dozen years ago or more. He brought 
 down with him to our haunted house a little cask of salt beef ; for, ho
 
 134 ^^^'-' ^^^it'tted House, 
 
 is always convinced that all salt beef not of his own pickling, is mere 
 carrion, and invariably, wben he goes to London, packs a piece in his 
 portmanteau. lie had also volunteered to bring with him one " Nat 
 Beaver," an old comrade of his, captain of a merchantman. Mr. 
 Beaver, with a thick-set wooden face and figure, and apparently as 
 hard as a block all over, proved to be an intelligent man, with a world 
 of watery experiences in him, .and great practical knowledge. At 
 times, there was a curious nervousness about him, apparently the 
 lingering result of some old illness ; but, it seldom lasted many 
 minutes. lie got the ( 'uj)board Room, and lay there next to Mr. 
 Undery, my friend and solicitor : who came down, in an amateur 
 capacity, " to go through with it," as he said, and who plays whist 
 l^ettcr than the whole Law List, from the red cover at the beginning 
 to the red cover at the end. 
 
 I never was happier in my life, and I believe it was the iiniversal 
 feeling among us. Jack Governor, always a man of wonderful re- 
 nources, was Chief (Jook, and made some of the best dishes I ever ate, 
 including unapproachable curries. My sister was pastrycook and 
 confectioner. Starling and I were Cook's Mate, turn and turn about, 
 and on special occasions the chief cook " pressed " Mr. Beaver, "We 
 had a great deal of out-door sport and exercise, but notliing was 
 neglected wdtliin, and there was no ill-liumour or misunderstanding 
 among us, and our evenings were so delightful that we had at least 
 one good reason for being reluctant to go to bed. 
 
 We had a few night alarms in the beginning. On tlie first night, I 
 was knoclced up by Jack with a most wonderful ship's lantern in his 
 hand, like the gills of some monster of the deep, wlio inf(jrmed me 
 that he " was going aloft to the main truck," to liavc the weatliercock 
 down. It was a stormy night and I remonstrated ; but Jack called 
 my attention to its making a sound like a cry of despair, and said 
 somebody would be "hailing a ghost" presently, if it Avasn't done. 
 So, up to the top of the house, where I could liardly stand fcjr the 
 "wind, we went, accompanied by Mr. Beaver ; and there Jack, lantern 
 and all, witli Mr. Beaver after liim, swarmed up to tlie top of a cujjola, 
 some two dozen feet above the cldmiieys, and stood upon nothing par- 
 ticular, coolly knocking the weathercock oil", until tliey both gf)t into 
 such good spirits with tlie wind and tlie licight, that I tliouglit they 
 would never come down. Another night, tliey turned out again, and 
 had a chimney-cowl off. Another night, they cut a sobbing and 
 gulping wat(;r-])ipc away. Another niglit, tlicy found out somotliing 
 else. On several occasions, they both, in the coolest manner, simul- 
 taneoTisly dropped out of tlieir respective bedroom windows, liand 
 over hand Ijy their counterpanes, to " overliaul " something mysterious 
 in the garden. 
 
 The engagement among us was faitlifully kept, and nobody re- 
 vealed anytliing. All we know -was, if any one's rooiii v\-crc haunted, 
 no one loolced tlie v>"orsc for it.
 
 THE GHOST IN MASTER B.'S ROOM. 
 
 When I established myself in tlic triangular garret which had gained 
 so distinguished a reputation, my thoughts naturally turned to Master 
 B. My speculations about him were uneasy and manifold. "Whether 
 his Christian name was Benjamin, Bissextile (from his having been 
 born in Leap Year), Bartholomew, or Bill. Whether the initial letter 
 belonged to his family name, and that was Baxter, Black, Brown, 
 Barker, Bugging, Baker, or Bird. Whether he was a foundling, and 
 had been baptized B. Whether he was a lion-hearted boy, and B. 
 was short for Briton, or for Bull. Whether he could possibly have 
 been kith and kin to an illustrious lady who brightened my own 
 childhood, and had come of the blood of the brilliant Mother Bunch ? 
 
 With these profitless meditations I tormented myself much. I also 
 carried the mysterious letter into the api)earauce and j^ursuits of the 
 deceased ; wondering whether he dressed in Blue, wore Boots (he 
 couldn't have been Bald), was a boy of Brains, liked Books, was good 
 at Bowling, had any skill as a Boxer, even in his Buoyant Boyhood 
 Bathed from a Bathing-machine at Bognor, Bangor, Bournemouth, 
 Brighton, or Broadstairs, like a Bounding Billiard Ball ? 
 
 So, from the first, I was haunted by the letter B. 
 
 It was not long before I remarked that I never by any hazard had a 
 dream of Master B., or of anything belonging to him. But, the 
 instant I awoke from sleejo, at whatever hour of tlie night, my thoughts 
 took him up, and roamed away, trying to attach his initial letter to 
 something that would fit it and keej) it quiet. 
 
 For six nights, I had been worried thus in Master B.'s room, when 
 I began to perceive that things were going wrong. 
 
 The first appearance that presented itself was early in the morning 
 when it was but just daylight and no more. I was standing shaving 
 at my glass, when I suddenly discovered, to my consternation and 
 amazement, that I was shaving not myself I am fifty but a boy. 
 Apparently Master B. ! 
 
 I trembled and looked over my shoulder ; nothing there. I looked 
 again in the glass, and distinctly saw the features and expression of a 
 boy, who was shaving, not to get rid of a beard, but to get one. Ex- 
 tremely troubled in my mind, I took a few turns in the room, and 
 went back to the looking-glass, resolved to steady my hand and 
 complete the operation in which I had been disturbed. Opening my 
 eyes, v,-hich I had shut while recovering my firmness, I now met in the 
 glass, looking straight at mo, the eyes of a young man of four or five 
 and twenty. Terrified by this new ghost, I closed my eyes, and made 
 a strong effort to recover myself. Opening them again, I saw, shaving 
 his check in the glass, my father, who lias long been dead. Nay, I 
 even saw my grandfather too, whom I never did see in my life.
 
 136 The Haunted House. 
 
 AUliougL naturally mucli aflfuctcd by these remarkable visitations, 
 I determiued to keep iiiy secret, until the time agreed upon for tbe 
 present general disclosure. Agitated by a multitude of curious 
 tbouglits, I retired to my room, tbat night, prepared to encounter 
 some new experience of a spectral character. Nor was my prepara- 
 tion needless, for, waking from an uneasy sleep at exactly two o'clock 
 in the morning, what were my feelings to find that I was sharing my 
 bed with tho slieleton of Master B. ! 
 
 I sprang up, and the skeleton sprang up also. I then heard a 
 plaintive voice saying, " Where am I ? What is become of mo ? " and, 
 looking hard in that direction, perceived the ghost of Master B. 
 
 Tho young spectre was dressed in an obsolete fashion : or rather, 
 was not so much dressed as put into a case of inferior pepper-and- 
 salt cloth, made horrible by means of shining buttons. I observed 
 that these btittons went, in a double row, over each shoulder of tho 
 young ghost, and appeared to descend his back. He wore a frill 
 round his neck. His right hand (which I distinctly noticed to bo 
 inky) was laid upon his stomach ; connecting this action with somo 
 feeble pimples on his countenance, and his general air of nausea, 
 I concluded this ghost to be the ghost of a boy who had habitually 
 taken a great deal too much medicine. 
 
 " Whore am I ? " said the little spectre, in a pathetic voice. " And 
 v>liy was I born in tho Calomel days, and why did I have all that 
 Calomel given me ? " 
 
 I replied, with sincere earnestness, that upon my soul I couldn't 
 tell him. 
 
 " Where is my little sister," said the ghost, " and where my angelic 
 little wife, and where is tho boy I went to school with ? " 
 
 I entreated tho phantom to be comforted, and above all things to 
 take heart respecting the loss of the boy he went to school with. I 
 represented to him that probably that boy never did, within human 
 experience, come out well, when discovered. I urged that I myself 
 had, in later life, turned up several boys whom I went to school with, 
 and none of them had at all answered. I expressed my hiunble belief 
 that that boy never did answer. I represented that he was a mytliic 
 character, a delusion, and a snare. I recounted how, tlie last time I 
 found liini, I found him at a dinner party beliind a wall of white cravat, 
 with an inconclusive opinion on every possible subject, and a power of 
 silent boredom absolutely Titanic. I related liow, on tlie strengtli of 
 our liaving been together at " Old Doylance's," he had uskcd himself 
 to breakfast M'itli me (a social offence of tlie largest magnitude) ; liow, 
 fanning my weak embers of belief in Doylance's boys, I liad let him 
 in ; and how, lie had proved to be a fearful wanderer about the eartli, 
 pursuing the race of Adam with in(!X])licable notions e<niccrning the 
 currency, and witli a proposition tliat tlie Bank of Ijigland sliould, on 
 pain of being abolished, instantly strike off and circulate, (Jod knows 
 how many thousand millions of ten-and-sixpcnny notes.
 
 The Ghost of Master B. 137 
 
 The gliost heard me in silence, and with a fixed stare, " Barber ! " 
 it apostrophised me when I had finished. 
 
 " Barber ? " I repeated for I am not of that profession. 
 
 " Condemned," said the ghost, " to shave a constant change of 
 customers now, me now, a young man now, thyself as thou art 
 now, thy father now, thy grandfather ; condemned, too, to lie down 
 with a skeleton every night, and to rise with it every morning " 
 
 (I shuddered on hearing this dismal announcement.) 
 
 " Barber ! Pursue me ! " 
 
 I had felt, even before the words were uttered, that I was under a 
 siiell to pursue the phantom. I immediately did so, and was in Master 
 B.'s room no longer. 
 
 Most people know what long and fatiguing night journeys had been 
 forced upon the witches who used to confess, and who, no doubt, told 
 the exact truth particularly as they were always assisted with leading 
 questions, and the Torture was always ready. I asseverate that, 
 during my occupation of Master B.'s room, I was taken by the ghost 
 that haunted it, on expeditions fully as long and wild as any of those. 
 Assuredly, I was presented to no shabby old man with a goat's horns 
 and tail (something between Pan and an old clothesman), holdiug 
 conventional receptions, as stupid as those of real life and less decent ; 
 but, I came upon other things which appeared to me to have more 
 meaning. 
 
 Confident that I speak the truth and shall be believed, I declare 
 without hesitation that I followed the ghost, in the first instance on a 
 broom-stick, and afterwards on a rocking-horse. The very smell of 
 the animal's paint especially when I brought it out, by making him 
 warm I am ready to swear to. I followed the ghost, afterwards, in 
 a hackney coach ; an institution with the peculiar smell of which, the 
 present generation is unacquainted, but to which I am again ready to 
 swear as a combination of stable, dog with the mange, and very old 
 bellows. (In this, I appeal to previous generations to confirm or refute 
 me.) I pursued the phantom, on a headless donkey : at least, upon a 
 donkey who was so interested in the state of his stomach that his head 
 was always down there, investigating it ; on ponies, expressly born to 
 kick up behind ; on roundabouts and swings, from fairs ; in the first 
 cab another forgotten institution where the fare regularly got into 
 bed, and was tucked iqi with the driver. 
 
 Not to trouble you with a detailed account of all my travels in 
 pursuit of the ghost of Master B., which were longer and more wonderful 
 tlian those of Sinbad the Sailor, I will confine myself to one experience 
 from which you may judge of many. 
 
 I was marvellously changed. I was myself, yet not myself. I was 
 conscious of something within me, which has been tlic same all through 
 my life, and which I have always recognised under all its jihases and 
 varieties as never altering, and yet I was not the I who had gone to 
 bed in Master B.'s room. I had the smoothest of faces and the
 
 138 Tlie Haunted House. 
 
 shortest of legs, and I Lad taken another creature like myself, also 
 with the smoothest of ftices and the shortest of legs, behind a door, 
 and was confiding to him a proposition of the most astoimding 
 nature. 
 
 This proposition was, that we should have a Seraglio. 
 
 The other creature assented warmly. He had no notion of respecta- 
 bility, neither had I. It was the custom of the East, it was thu way 
 of the good Calijih Ilaroun Alraschid (let me have the corrupted 
 name again for once, it is so scented with sweet memories !), the 
 usage was liighly laudable, and most worthy of imitation. "0, yes! 
 Lot us," said the other creature with a jump, " have a Seraglio." 
 
 It was not because we entertained the faintest doubts of the 
 meritorious character of the Oriental establishment we proposed to 
 import, that we perceived it must be kept a secret from Miss Griffin. 
 It was because we knew Miss Griffin to bo bereft of human sympathies, 
 and incapable of appreciating the greatness of tlie great Haroun. 
 Mystery impenetrably shrouded from Miss GriflSn then, let us entrust 
 it to Miss Bale. 
 
 "\V'e were ten in Miss Griffin's establishment by TIampstcad Ponds ; 
 eight ladies and two gentlemen. Miss IJule, whom I judge to have 
 attained the ripe ago of eight or nine, took the lead in society. I 
 opened the subject to her in the course of the day, and proposed tliat 
 she should become the Favourite. 
 
 Miss Bale, after struggling with the diffidence so natural to, and 
 charming in, her adoi'able sox, expressed herself as flattered by the 
 idea, but wished to know how it was proposed to provide for Miss 
 I'ipson ? Miss Bule who was imderstood to have vowed towards 
 that young lady, a friendship, halves, and no secrets, until death, on 
 tlie Church Service and Lessons complete in two volumes with case 
 and lock Miss Bule said she could not, as the friend of Pipson, 
 disguise from herself, or me, that Pipson was not one of the 
 common. 
 
 Now, Miss Pipson, having curly hair and blue eyes (which was 
 my idea of anything mortal and feminine that was called i'air), I 
 promptly replied that 1 regarded Miss Pipson in the light of a I'air 
 (,'ircassian. 
 
 " And what tlien ? " IMiss Bule })onsively asked. 
 
 I replied that she must 1)0 inveigled by a Merchant, brought to mo 
 veiled, and purchased as a slave. 
 
 [The other creature had already fallen into the second male jdaco 
 in tlic State, and was set apart for Grand Vi/icr. lie afterwards 
 resisted this disposal of events, but had liis hair pulled until he 
 yielded.] 
 
 "Shall I not be jealous?" Miss Bule inquired, casting down her 
 oye3. 
 
 " Z')boi:le, no," I re]>lied ; " you will ever be tlio favourite Suliana ; 
 the ffr.-;t j)1ac'- in my lieart, and on my tlironc, will bo ever vonr,-.*'
 
 Organization of the Seraglio. 1 39 
 
 Miss Bule, tipon that apsuruKCC, consented to propound tlie idea to 
 her seven beautiful companions. It occurring to me, in the course of 
 the same day, that we knew we could trust a grinning and good- 
 natured soul called Tabby, who was the serving drudge of the house, 
 and had no more figure than one of the beds, and upon whose face 
 there was always more or less black-lead, I slipped into Miss Bule's 
 hand after su])per, a little note to that effect ; dwelling on the black- 
 lead as being in a manner deposited by the finger of Providence, 
 pointing Tabby out for JMesrour, the celebrated chief of the Blacks 
 of the Hareem. 
 
 There were difficulties in the formation of the desired institution, 
 as there are in all combinations. The otlier creature shovred himself 
 of a low character, and, when defeated in aspiring to the throne, 
 pretended to have conscientious scruples about prostrating himself 
 b( fore the Caliph ; wouldn't call liim Commander of the Faithful ; 
 spoke of him slightingly and inconsistently as a mere " chap ; " said 
 lie, the other creature, "wouldn't play" Play! and was otherwise 
 coarse and oflensive. This meanness of disposition was, however, 
 put down by the general indignation of an imited Seraglio, and I 
 lccame blessed in the smiles of eight of the fairest of the daughters 
 of men. 
 
 The smiles could only be bestowed when Miss Griffin was looking 
 another way, and only then in a very wary manner, for there was a 
 legend among the followers of the Prophet that she saw with a little 
 round ornament in the middle of the pattern on the back of her 
 sliawl. But every day after dinner, for an hour, we were all together, 
 and then tlie Favourite and the rest of tlio Royal Ilareem competed 
 who sliould most beguile tlie leisure of the Serene Haroun reposing 
 from the cares of State v>hich were generally, as in most affairs of 
 State, of an arithmetical character, the Commander of the Faithful 
 being a fearful boggier at a sum. 
 
 On these occasions, the devoted Mesrour, chief of the Blacks of the 
 Hareem, was always in attendance (Miss Griffin usually ringing for 
 that officer, at tlie same time, Mith great vehemence), but never 
 acquitted himself in a manner worthy of his historical reiratation. 
 In the first jilace, his bringing a broom into the Divan of the Calijjh, 
 (;ven when Haroun wore on his shoulders the red robe of anger (Miss 
 Pipson's pelisse), though it might be got over for the moment, was 
 never to be quite satisfactorily accounted for. In the second place, 
 his breaking out into grinning exclamations of " Lork you pretties!" 
 Avas neither Eastern nor respectful. In the third place, when 
 specially instructed to say " Bismillah ! " he always said " Hallelujah!" 
 This officer, unlike his class, was too good-humoured altogether, kept 
 his mouth open far too wide, expressed approbation to an incongruous 
 (xtent, and even once it was (m the occasion of the purchase of the 
 Fair Circassian for five hundred thousand purses of gold, and cheap, 
 too embraced the Slave, the Favourite, and the Caliph, all round.
 
 140 The Haunted House, 
 
 (Parontlietically let mo say God bless Mesrour, and may tliere have 
 been sous aud daughters on that tender bosom, softening many a hard 
 day since !) 
 
 Miss Griffin was a model of propriety, and I am at a loss to imagine 
 what the feelings of the virtuous woman would have been, if she had 
 known, when she paraded us down the Hampstead Road two and two, 
 tliat she was walking with a stately step at the head of Polygamy and 
 Mahomcdauism. I believe that a mysterious and terrible joy with 
 which the contemplation of Miss Griffin, in this unconscious state, 
 inspired us, and a grim sense prevalent among us that there was a 
 dreadful power in our knowledge of what Miss Griffin (who knew all 
 things that could be learnt out of book) didn't know, were the main- 
 spring of the preservation of our secret. It was wonderfully kept, 
 but was once upon the verge of self-betrayal. The danger and 
 escai)c occurred upon a Sunday. We wore all ten ranged in a con- 
 spicuous part of tlie gallery at church, with Miss Griffin at our head 
 as we were every Sunday advertising the establishment in an 
 uusecular sort of way when the description of Solomon in his 
 domestic glory happened to be read. The moment that monarch was 
 thus referred to, conscience whispered me, " Thou, too, Ilaroun ! " 
 The officiating minister had a cast in his eye, and it assisted con- 
 science by giving him the appearance of reading personally at me. A 
 crimson blush, attended by a fearful perspiration, suffused my 
 features. The Grand Vizier became more dead than alive, and the 
 whole Seraglio reddened as if the sunset of Bagdad shone direct upon 
 their lovely faces. At this j^ortcntous time the awful Griffin rose, 
 and balcfully surveyed the children of Islam. My own impression 
 was, that Church aud State had entered into a conspiracy with Miss 
 (rriffin to expose us, and tliat we should all be put into white sheets, 
 and exhibited in the centre aisle. Rut, so Westerly if I may bo 
 allowed the expression as opposite to Eastern associations was Miss 
 Griffin's sense of rectitude, that she merely suspected Apples, and wo 
 were saved. 
 
 I liavo called the Seraglio, united. Upon the question, solely, 
 whether the Commander of the Faithful durst exercise a right of 
 kissing in that sanctuary of the palace, were its peerless inmates 
 divided. Zobeidc asserted a countcr-riglit in the Favourite to scratcli, 
 aud the fair Circassian put her face, for refuge, into a green baize 
 bag, originally designed for books. On the otlier hand, a young ante- 
 lope of transcendent beauty from the fruitful plains of Camden Town 
 (whence she had been brought, by traders, in tlic lialf-ycarly caravan 
 tliat crossed the intermediate desert after the holidays), lield more 
 liberal opinions, but stipulated for limiting the benefit of them to 
 that dog, and son of a dog, the Grand A'izier who had no riglits, and 
 Avas not in question. At length, tlie dif'ticulty was compromised l)y 
 tlie installation of a very youthful slave as lJe})uty. She, raised upon 
 a stool, officially received upon her cheeks the salutes intended by
 
 The State in Disgrace. 141 
 
 the gracious Haroun for otlier Sultanas, and was privately rewarded 
 from the coffers of the Ladies of the Hareem. 
 
 And now it was, at the full height of enjoyment of my bliss, that I 
 became heavily troubled. I began to think of my mother, and what 
 she would say to my taking home at Midsummer eight of the most 
 beautiful of the daughters of men, but all unexpected. I thought of 
 the number of beds we made up at our house, of my father's income, 
 and of the bakex', and my despondency redoubled. The Seraglio and 
 malicious Vizier, divining the cause of their Lord's unhappiness, did 
 their utmost to augment it. They professed unbounded fidelity, and 
 declared that they would live and die with him. Reduced to the 
 iitmost wretchedness by these protestations of attachment, I lay 
 awake, for hours at a time, ruminating on my frightful lot. In my 
 despair, I think I might have taken an early opportunity of falling 
 on my knees before Miss Grifiin, avowing my resemblance to Solomon, 
 and praying to be dealt with according to the outraged laws of my 
 country, if an unthought-of means of escape had not opened before me. 
 
 One day, we were out walking, two and two on which occasion the 
 Vizier had his usual instructions to take note of the boy at the turn- 
 pike, and if he profanely gazed (which he always did) at the beauties 
 of the Hareem, to have him bowstrang in the course of the night 
 and it happened that our hearts were veiled in gloom. An unaccoimt- 
 able action on the part of the antelope had plunged the State into 
 disgrace. That charmer, on the representation that the j)rcvious day 
 was her birthday, and that vast treasures had been sent in a hamper 
 for its celebration (both baseless assertions), had secretly but most 
 pressingly invited tliirty-five neighbouring princes and princesses to 
 a ball and supper : with a special stii)ulation that they were " not to 
 be fttchcd till twelve." This wandering of the antelope's fancy, led 
 to the surprising arrival at Miss Grifiin's door, in divers equipages 
 and under various escorts, of a great company in full dress, who were 
 deposited on the top step in a flush of high expectancy, and who 
 were dismissed in tears. At the beginning of the double knocks 
 attendant on these ceremonies, the antelope had retired to a back 
 attic, and bolted herself in ; and at every new arrival, Miss Grifiin had 
 gone so much more and more distracted, that at last she had been 
 seen to tear her front. Ultimate capitulation on the part of the 
 offender, had been followed by solitude in the linen-closet, bread and 
 water and a lecture to all, of vindictive length, in which Miss Griffin 
 had used ex])rcsBions : Firstly, " I believe you all of you knew of it;" 
 Secondly, " Every one of you is as wicked as another ; " Thirdly, 
 " A pack of little wretches." 
 
 Under these circumstances, we were walking drearily along ; and I 
 especially, with my IMoosulmaun responsibilities heavy on me, was in 
 a very low state of mind ; when a strange man accosted ]\Iiss Grifiin, 
 and, after walking on at her side for a little while and talking with 
 her, looked at me. Supposing him to bo a minion of the law, and that
 
 142 TJie Haunted House. 
 
 my hour was corao, I instantly ran away, witli tlio general purpose of 
 making for Egypt. 
 
 The whole Seraglio cried out, when they saw me making off as fast 
 as my logs would carry mo (I had an impression that the first turning 
 on the left, and round hy the public-house, would bo the shortest way 
 to the Pyramids), Miss Griffin screamed after me, the faithless Vizier 
 ran after me, and tho boy at the turnpiko dodged me into a corner, 
 like a sheep, and cut me off. Nobody scolded mo when I was taken 
 and brought back ; Miss Griffin only said, with a stunning gentleness, 
 This was very curious ! "Why had I run away when the gentleman 
 looked at me ? 
 
 If I had had any breath to answer with, I daro say I should have 
 made no answer ; having no breath, I certainly made none. Miss 
 Griffin and the strange man took mo between them, and walked mo 
 back to tho palace in a sort of state ; but not at all (as I couldn't help 
 feeling, with astonishment) in culprit state. 
 
 When we got there, we went into a room by ourselves, and Miss 
 Griffin called in to her assistance, Mosrour, chief of the dusky guards 
 of tho llareem. Mosrour, on being whispered to, began to shed tears. 
 
 " Bless you, my precious ! " said that officei*, turning to me ; " your 
 Pa's took bitter bad ! " 
 
 I asked, with a fluttered heart, " Is ho very ill '? " 
 
 " Lord temper tho wind to you, my lamb ! " said tho good Mesrour, 
 kneeling down, that I might have a comforting shoulder for my head 
 to rest on, " your Pa's dead ! " 
 
 Haroun Alraschid took to flight at tho words ; tho Seraglio 
 vanished ; from that moment, I never again saw ono of tho eight of 
 the fairest of the daughters of men. 
 
 I was taken homo, and there was Debt at home as well as Death, 
 and we had a sale there. My own little bed was so superciliously 
 looked upon by a Power unknown to me, hazily called " The Trade," 
 that a brass coal-scuttle, a roasting-jack, and a birdcage, were obliged 
 to bo put into it to make a Lot of it, and then it went for a song. So 
 I heard mentioned, and I wondered what song, and thouglit what a 
 dismal song it must have been to sing ! 
 
 Then, I was sent to a great, cold, bare, scliool of big boys ; wlicro 
 everything to eat and wear was thick and clumpy, without being 
 enough ; where everybody, largo and small, was cruel ; where the 
 ])oys knew all about the sale, before I got there, and asked me what I 
 had fetched, and wlio had bought me, and hooted at me, " Going, going, 
 gone ! " I never wliispercd in that wretched place tliat I had been 
 JIaroun, or had liad a Seraglio: for, I knew that if I mentioned my 
 reverses, I should bo so worried, that I should liave to drown myself 
 in the muddy pond near the playground, which looked like the beer. 
 
 All me, ah mo ! No other ghost has haunted the boy's room, my 
 friends, since I have occupied it, tlian tho ghost of my own childliood, 
 the ghost of my own innoccncCj tlie ghost of my own airy belief.
 
 The Mystery solved. 143 
 
 Many a time Lave I pursued the phantom : never with this man's 
 stride of mine to come up with it, never witli these man's hands of 
 mine to touch it, never more to this man's heart of mine to hold it in 
 its ptirity. And here you see me working out, as cheerfully and 
 tliankfully as I may, my doom of shaving in the glass a constant 
 change of customers, and of lying down and rising up with the 
 skeleton allotted to me for my mortal companion.
 
 A MESSAGE FROM THE SEA. 
 
 [I860.] 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE VILLAGE. 
 
 "And ii mighty Bing'lar and pretty placo it is, as ever I saw iu all 
 tlic (lays of my life ! " said Captain Jorgan, looking up at it. 
 
 Captain Jorgan Lad to look high to look at it, for the village was built 
 sheer up the face of a steep and lofty cliff. There was no road iu it, 
 there was no wheeled vehicle in it, there was not a level yard in it. 
 From the sca-bcach to the cliff-top two irregular rows of white 
 houses, placed oj)2)Osite to one another, and twisting here and there, and 
 there and here, rose, like the sides of a long succession of stages of 
 crooked ladders, and you climbed up the village or climbed down tlio 
 village by the staves between, some six feet wide or so, and made of 
 sharp irregular stones. Tlie old jmck-saddle, long laid aside in most 
 parts of England as one of tlie appendages of its infancy, flourished 
 here intact. Strings of pack-horses and pack-donkeys toiled slowly 
 up the staves of the ladders, bearing fisli, and coal, and sucli other 
 cargo as was unshipping at tlie pier from the dancing fleet of village 
 boats, and from two or three little coasting traders. As the boasts of 
 burden ascended laden, or descended light, they got so lost at intervals 
 in the floating clouds of village smoke, that they seemed to dive down 
 some of the village cliirancys, and come to the surface again far off, 
 higli above others. No two houses in the village were alike, iu 
 chimney, size, sliapc, door, window, gable, roof-tree, anything. Tlio 
 sides of the ladders were musical witli water, running clear and briglit. 
 The staves were musical witli the clattering feet of tlie pack-horses 
 and pack-donkeys, and the voices of the flshermen urging tliem up, 
 mingled witli the voices of the fishermen's wives and their many 
 children. The ])ier was musical with the wash of the sea, the creak- 
 ing of capstans and windlasses, and the airy fluttering of little vanes 
 and sails. The rough, sea-bleached boulders of which the pier was
 
 A Pretty Place. 145 
 
 made, and the whiter boulders of the shore, were brown with drying 
 nets. The red-brown cliifs, richly wooded to their extremest verge, 
 had their softened and beautiful forms reflected in the bluest water, 
 under the clear North Devonshire sky of a November day without a 
 cloud. The village itself was so steeped in autumnal foliage, from 
 the houses lying on the pier to the topmost round of the topmost 
 ladder, that one might have fancied it was out a bird's-nesting, and 
 was (as indeed it was) a wonderful climber. And mentioning birds, 
 the place was not without some music from them too ; for the rook 
 was very busy on the higher levels, and the gull with his flapping 
 wings was fishing in the bay, and the lusty little robin was hopping 
 among the great stone blocks and iron rings of the breakwater, fear- 
 less in the faith of his ancestors, and the Children in the Wood. 
 
 Thus it came to pass that Captain Jorgan, sitting balancing himself 
 on the pier-wall, struck his leg with his open hand, as some men do 
 when they are pleased and as he always did when he was pleased 
 and said, 
 
 " A mighty sing'lar and pretty j)lace it is, as ever I saw in all the 
 days of my life ! " 
 
 Captain Jorgan had not been through the village, but had come 
 down to the pier by a winding side-road, to have a preliminary look 
 at it from the level of his own natural element. He had seen many 
 things and places, and had stowed them all away in a shrewd intellect 
 and a vigorous memory. He was an American born, was Captain 
 Jorgan, a New-Englander, but he was a citizen of the world, and 
 a combination of most of the best qualities of most of its best 
 countries. 
 
 For Captain Jorgan to sit anywhere in his long-skirted blue coat 
 and blue trousers, without holding converse with everybody within 
 speaking distance, was a sheer impossibility. So the captain fell to 
 talking with the fishermen, and to asking them knowing questions 
 about the fishery, and the tides, and the currents, and the race of 
 Avater off that point yonder, and what you kept in your eye, and got 
 into a line with what else when you ran into the little harbour ; 
 and other nautical profundities. Among the men who exchanged 
 ideas with the captain was a young fellow, who exactly hit his fancy, 
 a young fisherman of two or three and twenty, in the rough sea- 
 dress of his craft, with a brown face, dark curling hair, and bright, 
 modest eyes under his Sou'wester hat, and with a frank, but simple 
 and retiring manner, which the captain found uncommonly taking. 
 ' I'd bet a thousand dollars," said the captain to himself, " that your 
 father was an honest man ! " 
 
 " Miglit you be married now ? " asked the captain, when he liad had 
 some talk with this new acquaintance. 
 
 " Not yet." 
 
 " Going to be ? " said the captain. 
 
 " I hope so." 
 
 L
 
 145 A Message from the Sed. 
 
 The captain's keen glance followed tlio slightest possible turn of 
 the dark eye, and the slightest possible tilt of the Sou'wester hat. 
 The captain then slapped both his legs, and said to himself, 
 
 " Never knew such a good thing in all my life ! There's his 
 sweetheart looking over the wall ! " 
 
 There was a very pretty girl looking over the wall, from a little 
 platform of cottage, vine, and fuchsia ; and she certainly did not look 
 as if the presence of this young fisherman in the landscape made it 
 any tlie less sunny and hopeful for her. 
 
 Captain Jorgan, having doubled himself up to laugh witli that 
 liearty good-nature which is quite exultant in the innocent happiness 
 of other peoide, had uiidoubled himself, and was going to start a new 
 subject, when there appeared coming down the lower ladders of stones, 
 a man wliom he hailed as " Tom Pettifer, Ho ! " Tom Pettifer, IIo, 
 responded with alacrity, and in speedy course descended on the pier. 
 
 " Afraid of a sun-stroke in England in November, Tom, that you 
 wear your tropical hat, strongly paid outside and paper-lined inside, 
 here ? " said the captain, eyeing it. 
 
 " It's as well to be on the safe side, sir," replied Tom. 
 
 " Safe side ! " repeated the captain, laughing. " You'd guard 
 against a sun-stroke, with that old hat, in an Ice Pack. Wa'al ! 
 What have you made out at the Post-offico ? " 
 
 " It is tlie Post-ofTice, sir." 
 
 " What's the Post-office ? " said the captain. 
 
 " The name, sir. Tlie name keeps the Post-ofilce." 
 
 " A coincidence ! " said the captain. " A lucky hit ! Sliow mo 
 where it is. Good-bye, shipmates, fur the present! I shall come 
 and have anotlier look at you, afore I leave, this afternoon." 
 
 This was addressed to all there, but especially the young fislierman ; 
 so all there acknowledged it, but especially the young fisherman. 
 " Hks a sailor ! " said one to another, as they looked after tlie captain 
 moving away. That he Avas ; and so outs2)eaking was the sailor in 
 him, that altliough his dress had nothing nautical about it, with the 
 single excoptiou of its colour, but was a suit of a shore-going shape 
 and form, too long in the sleeves and too sluirt in tlie legs, and too 
 unaccommodating everywhere, terminating earthward in a pair of 
 Wellington Itoots, and surmounted by a tall, stiff hat, which no 
 mortal could have worn at sea in any wind imder heaven ; nevertlie- 
 less, a glimpse of his sagacious, wcatlicr-bcatcn face, or his strong, 
 brown hand, would have establislicd the captain's calling. Wliercas 
 Mr. Pettifer a man of a certain plump neatness, with a curly 
 wliisker, and elaborately nautical in a jacket, and sliocs, and all tilings 
 correspondent - looked no more like a seaman, beside Captain Jorgan, 
 than he looked like a sea-serpent. 
 
 The two climlKid higli up tlie village,- which had the most arbitrary 
 turns and twists in it, so tliat the cobbler's house came d<;ad across 
 the Lublcr, and to liave held a reasonable course, yo i must, have gone
 
 At the Post-office. 147 
 
 tlirougTi liis house, and tlirougli liim too, as he sat at his work between 
 two little windows, Avith one eye microscopically on the geological 
 formation of that part of Devonshire, and the other telescopically on 
 the open sea, the two climbed high up the village, and stopped before a 
 quaint little house, on which was painted, " Mks. Kaybrock, Dbaper ; " 
 and also " Post-office." Before it, ran a rill of murmuring water, 
 and access to it was gained by a little plank-bridge. 
 
 " Here's the name," said Captain Jorgan, " sure enough. You can 
 come in if you like, Tom." 
 
 The captain opened the door, and passed into an odd little shop, 
 about six feet high, with a great variety of beams and bumps in the 
 ceiling, and, besides the principal window giving on the ladder of 
 stones, a purblind little window of a single pane of glass, peeping out 
 of an abutting corner at the sun-lighted ocean, and winking at its 
 brightness. 
 
 " How do you do, ma'am ? " said the captain. " I am very glad to 
 see you. I have come a long way to see you." 
 
 " Ilave you, sir ? Then I am sure I am very glad to see you, 
 though I don't know you from Adam." 
 
 Thus a comely elderly woman, short of stature, plump of form, 
 sparkling and dark of eye, who, perfectly clean and neat herself, 
 stood in the midst of her perfectly clean and neat arrangements, and 
 surveyed Captain Jorgan with smiling curiosity. " Ah ! but you are 
 a sailor, sir," she added, almost immediately, and with a slight move- 
 ment of her hands, that was not very imlike wringing them ; " then 
 you are heartily welcome." 
 
 " Thank'ec, ma'am," said the captain, " I don't know what it is, 
 I am sure, that brings out the salt in me, but everybody seems to see 
 it on the crown of my liat and the collar of my coat. Yes, ma'am, I 
 am in tliat way of life." 
 
 " And the other gentleman, too," said Mrs. Eaybrock. 
 
 "Well now, ma'am," said the captain, glancing shrewdly at the 
 other gentleman, "you are that nigh right, that he goes i'^ sea, if 
 that makes him a sailor. This is my steward, ma'am, Tom Pettifer ; 
 he's been a'most all trades you could name, in the course of his life, 
 would have bought all your chairs and tables once, if you had 
 wished to sell 'em, but now he's my steward. My name's Jorgan, 
 and I'm a ship-owner, and I sail my own and my partners' ships, and 
 have done so this fivc-and-twcnty year. According to custom I am 
 called Captain Jorgan, but I am no more a ca])taiu, bless your heart, 
 than you arc." 
 
 " Perliaps you'll come into my parlour, sir, and take a chair? " said 
 Mrs. Paybrock. 
 
 " Ex-actly what I was going to propose myself, ma'am. After 
 
 you." 
 
 Thus replying, and enjoining Tom to give an eye to the shop, Cap- 
 tain Jorgiiu followed Mrs. Kaybrock into the little, low back-room,
 
 148 A Message from the Sea. 
 
 decorated witli divers plants in pots, tea-trays, old cliina teapots, and 
 punch-bowls, which was at once the private sitting-room of the 
 Raybrock family and the inner cabinet of the post-office of the 
 village of Steepways. 
 
 " Now, ma'am," said the captain, " it don't signify a cent to yon 
 
 where I was born, except " But hero the shadow of some one 
 
 entering fell upon the cai)taiu's figure, and he broke otf to double 
 himself up, slap both his legs, and ejaculate, " Never knew such a 
 thing in all my life ! Here he is again ! How are you ? " 
 
 These words referred to the young fellow who had so taken Cap- 
 tain Jorgan's fancy down at the pier. To make it all quite complete 
 lie came in accompanied by the sweetheart whom the captain had 
 detected looking over the wall. A prettier sweetheart the sun could 
 not have shone upon that shining day. As she stood before the 
 captain, with her rosy lips just parted in surprise, her brown eyes 
 a little wider open than was usual from the same cause, and her 
 breathing a little quickened by the ascent (and possibly by some 
 mysterious hurry and flurry at the parlour door, in which the captain 
 had observed hor face to be for a moment totally eclipsed by the 
 Sou'wester hat), she looked so charming, that the captain felt himself 
 under a moral obligation to slap both his legs again. She was very 
 simply dressed, with no other ornament than an autumnal flower in 
 her bosom. She wore neither hat nor bonnet, but merely a scarf or 
 kerchief, folded squarely back over the head, to keep the sun oif, 
 according to a fashion tliat may be sometimes seen in the more genial 
 l^arts of England as well as of Italy, and which is probably the first 
 fashion of head-dress that came into the world when grasses and 
 leaves went out. 
 
 " In my country," said the captain, rising to give her his chair, and 
 dexterously sliding it close to another chair on which the young 
 fisherman must necessarily establish himself, " in my country wo 
 should call Devonshire beauty first-rate ! " 
 
 Whenever a frank manner is ofi"ensivo, it is because it is strained or 
 feigned ; for there may be quite as much intolerable aticctation in 
 plainness as in mincing nicety. All that the captain said and did was 
 honestly according to his nature ; and his nature was open nature and 
 good nature ; therefore, when he paid this little compliment, and ex- 
 pressed witli a sparkle or two of his kuowing eye, " I see how it is, 
 and nothing could be better," lie had established a delicate confidence 
 on that subject with the family. 
 
 " I was saying to your worthy mother," said the captain to the 
 young man, after again introducing himself by name and occupation, 
 " I was saying to your mother (and you're very like her) that it 
 didn't signify wlierc I was born, except that I was raised on question- 
 asking ground, where the liabies as soon as ever they come into the 
 world, inquire of their motliers, ' Neow, how old may lion be, and 
 wa'at air yuu a goin' to name me?' which is a fact." Here he
 
 Captain J organ makes some Inquiries. i^g 
 
 slai)pecl his leg. " Sucli being tlie case, I may be excused for asking 
 you if your name's Alfred ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir, my name is Alfred," returned the young man. 
 
 " I am not a conjurer," jjursued the captain, " and don't think me so, 
 or I shall right soon undeceive you. Likewise don't think, if you 
 please, though I do come froni that country of the babies, that I am 
 asking questions for question-asking's sake, for I am not. Somebody 
 belonging to you went to sea ? " 
 
 " My elder brother, Hugh," returned the young man. He said it 
 in an altered and lower voice, and glanced at his mother, who raised 
 her hands hurriedly, and put them together across her black gown, 
 and looked eagerly at the visitor. 
 
 " No ! For God's sake, don't think that ! " said tho captain, in a 
 solemn way ; " I bring no good tidings of him." 
 
 There was a silence, and the mother turned her face to the firo and 
 put her hand between it and her eyes. The young fisherman slightly 
 motioned toward the window, and the caj)tain, looking in that direc- 
 tion, saw a young widow, sitting at a neighbouring window across 
 a little garden, engaged in needlework, with a young child sleeping 
 on her bosom. The silence continued until the captain asked of 
 Alfred, 
 
 " How long is it since it happened ? " 
 
 " He shipi^ed for his last voyage better than three years ago." 
 
 " Ship struck upon some reef or rock, as I take it," said tho captain, 
 " and all hands lost ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Wa'al ! " said tho captain, after a shorter silence, " Here I sit who 
 may come to the same end, like enough. He holds the seas in tho 
 hollow of His hand. We must all strike somewhere and go down. 
 Our comfort, then, for ourselves and one another is to have done our 
 duty. I'd wager your brother did his ! " 
 
 " He did ! " answered the young fisherman. " If ever man strove 
 faithfully on all occasions to do his duty, my brother did. My brother 
 was not a quick man (anything but that), but he was a faithful, true, 
 and just man. We were the sons of only a small tradesman in this 
 county, sir ; yet our father was as watchful of his good name as if ho 
 had been a king." 
 
 " A precious sight more so, I hope bearing in mind tho general 
 run of that class of crittur," said the captain. ' But I interrupt." 
 
 " My brother considered that our father left the good name to us, to 
 keep clear and true." 
 
 " Your brother considered right," said tho captain ; " and you 
 couldn't take care of a better legacy. But again I interrupt." 
 
 " No ; for I have nothing more to say. We know that Hugh lived 
 well for the good name, and we feel certain that he died well for the 
 good name. And now it has come into my keeping. And that's all." 
 
 "Well spoken!" cried tho captain. "Well spoken, young man!
 
 150 A Message from the Sea. 
 
 Concerning tho manner of your brother's deatL," by this time the 
 captain had released tho baud he had shaken, and sat with his own 
 broad, brown hands spread out on his knees, and spoke aside, " con- 
 cerning the manner of your brother's death, it may bo that I have 
 some information to give you ; though it may not bo, for I am far 
 from sure. Can wo have a littlo talk alono ? " 
 
 Tho young man rose ; but not before tho captain's quick eye had 
 noticed that, on tho pretty sweetheart's turning to the window to greet 
 the young widow with a nod and a wave of tho hand, the young widow 
 had held up to her tho needlework on which she was engaged, with 
 a patient and pleasant smile. So the captain said, being on his legs, 
 
 " What might she be making now ? " 
 
 " What is Margaret making, Kitty ? " asked the young fisherman, 
 with one of his arms apparently mislaid somewhere. 
 
 As Kitty only blushed in reply, the captain doubled himself up as 
 far as he could, standing, and said, with a slap of his leg, 
 
 " In my country wo should call it wedding-clothes. Fact ! Wo 
 should, I do assure you." 
 
 But it seemed to strike tho captain in another light too ; for his 
 laugh was not a long one, and he added, in quite a gentle tone, 
 
 " And it's very pretty, my dear, to see her poor young thing, with 
 her fatherless child upon her bosom giving up her thoughts to 
 your home and your happiness. It's very pretty, my dear, and it's 
 very good. May your marriage be more prosi^erous than hers, and bo 
 a comfort to her too. May the blessed sun see you all happy together, 
 in possession of the good name, long after I have dono ploughing the 
 great salt field that is never sown ! " 
 
 Kitty answered very earnestly, " ! Thank you, sir, with all my 
 heart ! " And, in her loving little way, kissed her hand to him, and 
 possibly by implication to tho young fisherman, too, as the latter held 
 the parlour-door open for the captain to pass out. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE MOXKY. 
 
 " Thk stairs arc very narrow, sir," said Alfred liaybrock to Captain 
 Jorgan. 
 
 " Like my cabin-stairs," returned the captain, ' on many a voyage." 
 
 " And they are rather inconvenient fijr th(j head." 
 
 " If my head can't take care of itself by this time, after all the knock- 
 ing about the world it has had," rei)lied tlie captain, as ur.conccrncdly as 
 if 1)0 liad no conncctinn witli it, "it's not worth looking after." 
 
 Thus they came into the young fisherman's bedroom, which was as
 
 TJie Story of a Bottle. 151 
 
 perfectly neat and clean as the shop and parlour below ; though it 
 was but a little place, with a sliding window, and a phrenological 
 ceiling expressive of all the peculiarities of the house-roof. Here the 
 captain sat down on the foot of the bed, and glancing at a dreadful 
 libel on Kitty which ornamented the wall, the production of some 
 wandering limner, whom the captain secretly admired as having 
 studied portraiture from the figure-heads of ships, motioned to the 
 young man to take the rush-chair on the other side of the small, 
 round table. That done, the captain put his hand in the deep 
 breast-pocket of his long-skirted blue coat, and took out of it 
 a strong square case-bottle, not a large bottle, but such as may bo 
 seen in any ordinary ship's medicine-chest. Setting this bottle on 
 the table without removing his hand from it, Captain Jorgan then 
 spake as follows : 
 
 " In my last voyage homeward-bound," said the captain, " and that's 
 the voyage off of which I now come straight, I encountered such 
 weather otf the Horn as is not very often met with, even there. I 
 have rounded tliat stormy Cape jjretty often, and I believe I first beat 
 about there in the identical storms that blew the Devil's horns and 
 tail oft", and led to the horns being worked up into tooth-jncks for 
 the plantation overseers in my country, who may be seen (if you travel 
 down South, or away West, fur enough) picking their teeth with 'em, 
 while the whips, made of the tail, flog hard. In this last voyage, 
 homeward-bound for Liverpool from South America, I say to you, my 
 young friend, it blew. Whole measures ! No half measures, nor 
 making believe to blow ; it blow ! Now I warn't blown clean out of 
 the water into the sky,^ though I expected to be even that, but I 
 was blown clean out of my course ; and when at last it fell calm, it 
 fell dead calm, and a strong current set one way, day and night, night 
 and day, and 1 drifted drifted drifted out of all the ordinary 
 tracks and courses of ships, and drifted yet, and yet drifted. It 
 behooves a man who takes charge of fellow-critturs' lives, never to rest 
 from making himself master of his calling. I never did rest, and 
 consequently I knew pretty well ('specially looking over the side in 
 the dead calm of that strong current) w^hat dangers to expect, and 
 what precautions to take against 'em. In short, we were driving head 
 on to an island. There w^as no island in the chart, and, therefore, 
 you may say it was ill-manners in the island to be tlicre ; I don't 
 dis2)uto its bad breeding, but there it was. Thanks be to Heaven, 
 I was as ready for the island as the island was ready for me. I made 
 it out myself from the masthead, and I got enough way upon her in 
 good time to keep her off". I ordered a boat to bo lowered and manned, 
 and went in that boat myself to explore the island. There was a reef 
 outside it, and, floating in a corner of the smooth water within the 
 reef, was a heap of sea-weed, and entangled in that sea-weed was this 
 bottle." 
 
 Here the captain took his hand from the bottle for a moment, that
 
 152 A Message from the Sea. 
 
 ihc young fisherman iijiglit direct a wondering glance at it ; and then 
 rephiced his hand and went on : 
 
 "If over yon come or even if ever you don't come to a desert 
 place, use you your eyes and your spy-glass well ; for the smallest 
 thing you see may prove of use to you, and may have some information 
 or some warning in it. That's the principle on which I came to see 
 this bottle. I picked up the bottle and ran the boat alongside the 
 island, and made fast and went ashoro armed, witli a part of my boat's 
 crew. We found that every scrap of vegetation on the island (I give 
 it you as my opinion, but scant and scrubby at the best of times) liad 
 been consumed by fire. As wo were making our way, cautiously and 
 toilsomely, over the pulverised embers, one of my people sank into 
 the earth breast-high. He turned pale, and ' Haul me out smart, 
 shipmates,' says he, ' for my feet are among bones.' We soon got 
 him on his legs again, and then we dug up the spot, and we found 
 that the man was right, and that his feet had been among bones. 
 More than that, they were liunian bones ; though whether the remains 
 of one man, or of two or three men, what witli calcination and ashes, 
 and what with a poor practical knowledge of anatomy, I can't under- 
 take to say. Wo examined the whole island and made out nothing 
 else, save and except that, from its opposite side, I sighted a consider- 
 able tract of land, which land I was able to identify, and according 
 to the bearings of which (not to trouble you with my log) I took 
 a fresh departure. When I got aboard again I opened the bottle, 
 which was oilskin-covered as you see, and glass-sto2)pcred as you sec. 
 Inside of it," jiursued the captain, suiting his action to his words, " I 
 found this little crumpled, folded paper, just as you see. Outside of 
 it was written, as you see, these words : ' Mlwevcr finds this, is 
 solemnhj entreated hij the dead to convey it unread to Alfred RayJtrocl-, 
 Steepicnijs, Noi-th Devon, England.'' A sacred charge," said tho 
 captain, concluding his narrative, " and, Alfred liaybrock, thero 
 it is!" 
 
 " This is my poor brother's writing ! " 
 
 " I suppose so," said Captain Jorgan. " I'll take a look out cf tliis 
 little window while you read it." 
 
 " Pray no, sir ! I should be hurt. My brother couldn't know it 
 would fall into such hands as yours." 
 
 Tho captain sat down again on the foot of the bed, and the young 
 man opened tlio folded paper with a trembling hand, and spread it on 
 tlio table. The ragged i)aper, evidently creased and torn both before 
 and after being written on, was mucli blotted and stained, and the 
 ink had faded and run, and many words were wanting. Wliat the 
 captain and llie young fisherman made out together, after much re- 
 reading aTid much Jiumouring of the folds of the paper, is given on 
 the next page. 
 
 Tlie yi'Uiig fisherman liad become more and more; agitated, as tlie 
 writing luul become clearer to }iim, He now left it lying before tho
 
 TJie Paper. 
 
 153 
 
 captain, over whose shoulder he had been reading it, and dropping 
 into his former seat, leaned forward on the table and laid his face in 
 his hands. 
 
 " What, man," nrged the captain, " don't give in ! Be up and doing 
 like a man ! " 
 
 " It is selfish, I know, but doing what, doing what ? " cried tho 
 young fisherman, in comj)lete despair, and stamping his sea-boot on 
 the groimd. 
 
 " Doing what ? " returned the captain. " Something ! I'd go down 
 to the little breakwater below yonder, and take a wrench at one of tho 
 
 salt-rusted iron rings there, and cither wrench it up by the roots or 
 wrench my teeth out of my head, sooner than I'd do nothing. 
 Nothing ! " ejaculated the captain. " Any fool or fainting heart can 
 do tlmt, and nothing can come of nothing, which was pretended to 
 be found out, I believe, by one of them Latin critters," said the captain 
 with the deepest disdain ; " as if Adam hadn't found it out, afore 
 ever he so much as named the beasts ! " 
 
 Yet the captain saw, in spite of his bold words, that there was some 
 greater reason than he yet understood for the young man's distress. 
 And ho eyed him with a sympathising curiosity. 
 
 " Come, come ! " continued the captain. " Speak out. Wiiat is it, 
 boy!"
 
 154 ^ Message from the Sea. 
 
 " You Lave seen how beautiful she is, sir," said the youug man, 
 looking up for the moment, with a flushed face and rumpled liair. 
 
 " Did any man ever say she warn't beautiful ? " retorted the captain. 
 " If so, go and lick him." 
 
 The young man laughed fretfully in spite of himself, and said 
 
 " It's not that, it's not that." 
 
 " Wa'al, then, what is it?" said the captain in a more soothing 
 tone. 
 
 The young fisherman mournfully composed himself to tell the 
 captain what it was, and began : " We were to have been married next 
 Monday week " 
 
 " Were to have been ! " interrupted Captain Jorgan. " And are to 
 be? Hey?" 
 
 Young Raybrock shook his head, and traced out with his fore- 
 finger the words, ^'^ poor father s five hundred pounds" in the written 
 paper. 
 
 " Go along," said the captain. " Five hundred pounds ? Yes ? " 
 
 " That sum of money," pursued the young fisherman, entering with 
 the greatest earnestness on his demonstration, while the captain eyed 
 him with equal earnestness, " was all my late father possessed. When 
 he died, he owed no man more than ho left means to pay, but he had 
 been able to lay by only five hundred pounds." 
 
 " Five hundred pounds," repeated the captain. " Yes ? " 
 
 " In his lifetime, years before, he had expressly laid the money 
 aside to leave to my mother, like to settle ^^pon her, if I make my- 
 self understood." 
 
 " Yes ? " 
 
 " Ho had risked it once my father put down in writing at that 
 time, respecting the money and was resolved never to risk it 
 again." 
 
 " Not a spec'lator," said the captain. " My country wouldn't have 
 suited him. Yes ? " 
 
 " My mother lias never touched tlio money till now. And now it 
 was to have been laid out, this very next week, in buying me a 
 handsome sliare in our neighbouring fishery lien;, to settle mo in life 
 with Kitty." 
 
 The captain's face fell, and he passed and repassed his sun- 
 browned right hand over liis thin hair, in a discomfited manner. 
 
 " Kitty's father has no more than enough to live on, even in the 
 sparing way in which we live about here. He is a kind of bailiff or 
 steward of manor rights here, and they are not niucli, and it is but a 
 poor little oifiee. He was better ofl' once, and Kitty must never marry 
 to mere drudgery and hard living." 
 
 The captain still sat stroking his thin hair, and looking at the 
 young iishorman. 
 
 " I am as ccrtuiii that my father liad no knowledge that any one 
 was ^vroiigcd as to tliis monoy, or that any restitution ought to bo
 
 Something to be done. 155 
 
 made, as I am certain that the Bun now sLinee. But, after this 
 solemn warning from my brother's grave in the sea, that the money is 
 Stolen Money," said Young Raybrock, forcing himself to the utterance 
 of the words, " can I doubt it ? Can I touch it ? " 
 
 " About not doubting, I ain't so sure," observed the captain ; " but 
 abont not touching no I don't think you can." 
 
 " See then," said Young Raybrock, " why I am so grieved. Think 
 of Kitty. Think what I have got to tell her ! " 
 
 His heart quite failed him again when he had come round to that, 
 and he once more beat his sea-boot softly on the floor. But not for 
 long ; he soon began again, in a quietly resolute tone. 
 
 "However! Enough of that! You spoke some brave words to 
 me just now. Captain Jorgan, and they shall not be spoken in vain. I 
 have got to do something. What I have got to do, before all other 
 things, is to trace out the meaning of this paper, for the sake of the 
 Good Name that has no one else to put it right. And still for the 
 sake of the Good Name, and my father's memory, not a word of this 
 writing must be breathed to my mother, or to Kitty, or to any human 
 creature. You agree in this ? " 
 
 "I don't know what they'll think of us below," said the captain, 
 " but for certain I can't oppose it. Now, as to tracing. How will 
 you do ? " 
 
 They both, as by consent, bent over the paper again, and again 
 carefully puzzled out the whole of the writing. 
 
 " I make out that this would stand, if all the writing was here, 
 ' Inquire among the old men living there, for ' som.e one. Most like, 
 you'll go to this village named here ? " said the captain, musing, with 
 his finger on the name. 
 
 " Yes ! And Mr. Tregarthen is a Cornishman, and to bo sure ! 
 comes from Lanrean." 
 
 " Does he ? " said the captain quietly. " As I ain't acquainted with 
 him, who may lie be ? " 
 
 " Mr. Tregarthen is Kitty's father.' 
 
 " Ay, ay ! " cried the captain. " Now you speak ! Tregarthen 
 knows this village of Lanrean, then ? " 
 
 " Beyond all doubt he does. I have often heard him mention it, as 
 being his native place. Ho knows it well." 
 
 " Stop half a moment," said the captain. " "\Ye want a name here. 
 You could ask Tregarthen (or if you couldn't I could) what names of 
 old men he remembers in his time in those diggings ? Hoy?" 
 
 " I can go straight to his cottage, and ask him now." 
 
 " Take me with you," said the captain, rising in a solid way that 
 had a most comfortable reliability in it, " and just a word more first. 
 [ have knocked about harder than you, and have got along further 
 than you. I have had, all my sea-going life long, to keep my wits 
 polished bright with acid and friction, like tlie brass cases of tlie ship's 
 instruments. I'll keep you company on this expedition. Now you
 
 156 A Message from the Sea. 
 
 don't live by talkiug any more than I do. Clench that hand of yours 
 in this liand of mine, and that's a speech on both sides." 
 
 Captain Jorgan took command of the expedition with that hearty 
 shako. He at once refolded the paper exactly as before, replaced it 
 in the bottle, put the stopper in, put the oilskin over the stopper, 
 confided tho whole to Young Raybrock's keeping, and led the way 
 down-stairs. 
 
 But it was harder navigation below-stairs than above. The instant 
 they set foot in the parlour tho quick, womanly eye detected that there 
 was something wrong. Kitty exclaimed, frightened, as she ran to her 
 lover's side, " Alfred ! Wliat's the matter ? " Mrs. Eaybrock cried 
 out to the captain, " Gracious ! what have you done to my son to 
 change liim like this all in a minute ? " And the young widow v.'ho 
 was there with her work upon her arm was at first so agitated that 
 she frightened the little girl slio held in her hand, who hid her faco 
 in her mother's skirts and screamed. The captain, conscious of being 
 held responsible for this domestic change, contemplated it with quite 
 a guilty expression of countenance, and looked to the young fisherman 
 to come to his rescue. 
 
 " Kitty, darling," said Young Eaybrock, " Kitty, dearest love, I 
 must go away to Lanrcan, and I don't know where else or how much 
 further, tliis very day. Worse than that^our marriage, Kitty, must 
 bo put 00", and I don't know for how long." 
 
 Kitty stared at him, in doubt and wonder and in anger, and pushed 
 him from her with her hand. 
 
 " Put off? " cried Mrs. Eaybrock. " Tho marriage put off? And 
 you going to Lanrean ! Why, in the name of the dear Lord ? " 
 
 " Mother dear, I can't say why ; I must not say why. It would bo 
 dishonourable and undutiful to say why." 
 
 " Dishonourable and undutiful ? " returned the dame. " And is 
 there nothing dishonourable or undutiful in tho boy's breaking the 
 heart of his own pliglited love, and his mother's heart too, for tho 
 sake of the dark secrets and counsels of a wicked stranger ? Why 
 did you ever come here ? " she apostrophised tlie innocent captaiu. 
 " Wlio wanted you? Where did you come from? Why couldn't you 
 rest in your own bad place, wlicrever it is, instead of disturbing the 
 peace of quiet unoli'cuding folk like us ? " 
 
 " And what," sobbed the poor little Kitty, " have I ever dono to 
 you, you hard and cruel captain, that you should come and servo 
 mo so ? " 
 
 And then they both began to weep most pitifully, while the cap- 
 tain could only look from the one to the other, and lay hold of him- 
 self by the coat collar. 
 
 " Margaret," said tho poor young fisherman, on his knees at Kitty's 
 feet, while Kitty kept both her hands before her tearful face, to shut 
 out the traitor from her view, but kept her fingers wide asunder and 
 looked at him all the time, " Margaret, you have suffered so much, so
 
 Mr. Pettifer in Office. 157 
 
 uncomplainingly, and are always so careful and considerate ! Do 
 take my 2)art, for poor Hugli's sake ! " 
 
 The quiet Margaret was not appealed to in vain. " I will, Alfred," 
 she returned, " and I do. I wish this gentleman had never come near 
 us ; " whereupon the captain laid hold of himself the tighter ; " but I 
 take your part for all that. I am sure you have some strong reason 
 and some sufficient reason for what you do, strange as it is, and even 
 for not saying why you do it, strange as that is. And, Kitty darling, 
 you are bound to think so more than any one, for true love believes 
 everything, and bears everything, and trusts everything. And, 
 mother dear, you are bound to think so too, for you know you have 
 been blest with good sons, whose Avord was always as good as their 
 oath, and who were brought up in as true a sense of honour as any 
 gentleman in this land. And I am sure you have no more call, 
 mother, to doubt your living son than to doubt your dead son ; and 
 for the sake of the dear dead, I stand up for the dear living." 
 
 " Wa'al now," the captain struck in, with enthusiasm, " this I say. 
 That whether your opinions flatter mo or not, you are a young woman 
 of sense, and spirit, and feeling ; and I'd sooner have you by my side 
 in the hour of danger, than a good half of the men I've ever fallen in 
 Avith or fallen out with, aytlicr." 
 
 Margaret did not return the captain's compliment, or appear fully to 
 reciprocate his good opinion, but she ajiplied herself to the consolation 
 of Kitty, and of Kitty's mojiher-in-law that was to have been next 
 Monday week, and soon restored the parlour to a quiet condition. 
 
 " Kitty, my darling," said the young fisherman, " I must go to your 
 father to entreat him still to trust me in spite of this wretched change 
 and mystery, and to ask him for some directions concerning Lanrcan. 
 Will you come home ? Will you come with me, Kitty ? " 
 
 Kitty answered not a word, but rose sobbing, with the end of her 
 simple head-dress at her eyes. Captain Jorgan followed the lovers 
 out, quite sheepishly, pausing in the shop to give an instruction to 
 Mr. Pettifer. 
 
 " Here, Tom ! " said the captain, in a low voice. " Here's some- 
 thing in your line. Here's an old lady poorly and low in her spirits. 
 Cheer her up a bit, Tom. Cheer 'em all up." 
 
 Mr. Pettifer, with a brisk nod of intelligence, immediately assumed 
 liis steward face, and went with his quiet, helpful, steward step into 
 the parlour, where the captain had the great satisfaction of seeing him, 
 through the glass door, take the child in his arms (who ofi^cred r.o 
 objection), and bend over Mrs. Eaybrock, administering soft words of 
 consolation. 
 
 " Though what he finds to say, unless he's telling her that 't'll soon 
 be over, or that most people is so at first, or that it'll do her good 
 afterward, I cannot imaginate ! " was the cai)tain's reflection as he 
 followed the lovers. 
 
 He had not far to follow them, since it was but a short descent
 
 158 A Message from the Sea. 
 
 down the stony ways to the cottage of Kitty's father. But short as 
 the distance was, it was long enough to enable the captain to observe 
 tliat ho was fast becoming the village Ogre ; for there was not a 
 woman standing working at her door, or a fisherman coming up or 
 going down, who saw Young Eaybrock unhappy and little Kitty in 
 tears, but he or she instantly darted a suspicious and indignant glance 
 at the captain, as the foreigner who must somehow be responsible for 
 this unusual spectacle. Consequently, when they came into Tregar- 
 then's little garden, which formed the platform from which the cap- 
 tain had seen Kitty peeping over the wall, the captain brought to, 
 and stood oflf and on at the gate, while Kitty hurried to hide her tears 
 in her own room, and Alfred spoke with her father, who was working 
 in the garden. He was a rather infirm man, but could scarcely bo 
 called old yet, with an agreeable face and a promising air of making 
 the best of things. The conversation began on his side with great 
 cheerfulness and good humour, but soon became distrustful, and soon 
 angry. That was the captain's cuo for striking both into the conver- 
 sation and the garden. 
 
 " i\Iorning, sir ! " said Captain Jorgan. " How do you do ? " 
 
 " The gentleman I am going away with," said the young fisherman 
 to Trcgarthen. 
 
 " ! " returned Kitty's father, surveying the unfortunate captain 
 with a look of extreme disfavour. " I confess that I can't say I am 
 glad to see you." 
 
 " No," said the captain, " and, to admit the truth, that seems to be 
 the general opinion in these parts. But don't be hasty ; you may 
 think better of me by-and-by." 
 
 " 1 hope so," observed Trcgarthen. 
 
 " Wa'al, I hope so," observed the captain, quite at liis case ; " more 
 than that, I believe so, though you don't. Now, Mr. Trcgarthen, 
 you don't want to exchange woi'ds of mistrust witli me ; and if you 
 did, you couldn't, because I wouldn't. You and I are old enough to 
 know better thaii to judge against experience from surfaces and 
 appearances ; and if you haven't lived to find out tlic evil and in- 
 justice of such judgments, you are a lucky man." 
 
 The other seemed to shrink under this remark, and replied, " Sir, I 
 liaxjc lived to feel it dcei^ly." 
 
 " Wa'al," said the captain, mollified, " then I've made a good cast 
 without knowing it. Now, Trcgarthen, there stands the lover of your 
 only child, and hero stand I who knf)W his secret. I warrant it a 
 righteous secret, and none of his making, tliougli bound to be of his 
 keeping. I want to help him out with it, and tewwards tliat end wc ask 
 you to fiivonr us witli the names of two or three old residents in the 
 village of Lanrean. As I am taking out my pocket-book and pencil 
 to put the names down, I may as well observe to you that tliis, wrote 
 atoj) of the first page here, is my name and address : ' Silas Jonas 
 Jorgan, Salem, Massachusetts, United States.' If ever you take it in
 
 The Expedition Commenced. 159 
 
 your head to run over any morning, I shall be glad to welcome you. 
 Now, what may be the spelling of these said names ? " 
 
 " There was an elderly man," said Tregarthen, " named David 
 Polreath. He may be dead." 
 
 " Wa'al," said the captain, cheerfully, " if Polreath's dead and 
 buried, and can be made of any service to us, Polreath won't object to 
 our digging of him up. Polreath's down, anyhow." 
 
 " There was another named Penrewen. I don't know his Christian 
 name." 
 
 " Never mind his Chris'en name," said the captain ; " Penrewen, 
 for short." 
 
 " There was another named John Tredgoar." 
 
 " And a pleasant-sounding name, too," said the captain ; " John 
 Tredgear's booked." 
 
 " I can recall no other except old Parvis." 
 
 " One of old Parvis's fam'ly I reckon," said the captain, " kept a 
 dry-goods store in New York city, and realised a handsome com- 
 petency by burning his house to ashes. Same name, anyhow. 
 David Polreath, Unchris'en Penrewen, John Tredgear, and old Arson 
 Parvis." 
 
 " I cannot recall any others at the moment." 
 
 "Thank'ee," said the captain. "And so, Tregarthen, hoping for 
 your good opinion yet, and likewise for the fair Devonshire Flower's, 
 your daughter's, I give you my hand, sir, and wish j^ou good day." 
 
 Young Eaybrock accompanied him discousolatoly ; for there was 
 no Kitty at the window when he looked up, no Kitty in the garden 
 when he shut the gate, no Kitty gazing after them along the stony ways 
 when they begin to climb back. 
 
 " Now I tell you what," said the captain. " Not being at present 
 calc'lated to promote harmony in your family, I won't come in. You 
 go and get your dinner at home, and I'll get mine at tlic little hotel. 
 Let our hour of meeting be two o'clock, and you'll find me smoking a 
 cigar in the sun afore the hotel door. Tell Tom Pettifer, my steward, 
 to consider himself on duty, and to look after your people till wo 
 come back ; you'll find he'll have made himself useful to 'em already, 
 and will be quite acceptable." 
 
 All v/as done as Captain Jorgan directed. Punctually at two 
 o'clock the young fisherman aj^peared with his kuajjsack at his back; 
 and punctually at two o'clock the captain jerked away the last 
 feather-end of his cigar. 
 
 " Let mc carry your baggage. Captain Jorgan ; I can easily take it 
 with mine." 
 
 " Thank'ee," said the captain. " I'll carry it myself. It's only a 
 comb." 
 
 They climbed out of the village, and paused among the trees and 
 fern on the summit of the hill above, to take breath, and to look 
 down at the beautiful sea. Suddenly the captain gave his leg a
 
 i6o A Message from the Sm. 
 
 resounding slap, and cried, " Never knew sucli a right thing in all 
 my life ! " and ran away. 
 
 The cause of this abrupt retirement on the part of the captain was 
 little Kitty among the trees. The captain went out of sight and 
 waited, and kcjit out of sight and waited, until it occurred to him to 
 beguile the time with another cigar. He lighted it, and smoked it 
 out, and still he was out of sight and waiting. He stole within sight 
 at last, and saw the lovers, with their arms entwined and their bent 
 heads touching, moving slowly among the trees. It was the golden 
 time of the afternoon then, and the captain said to himself, " Golden 
 sun, golden sea, golden sails, golden leaves, golden love, golden 
 youth, a golden state of tilings altogether ! " 
 
 Nevertheless the captain found it necessary to hail his young com- 
 panion before going out of sight again. In a few moments more he 
 came up and they began their journey. 
 
 " That still young woman with the fatherless child," said Captain 
 Jorgan, as they fell into step, " didn't throw lier words away ; but 
 good honest words are never thrown away. And now that I am con- 
 voying you off from that tender little thing that loves, and relies, and 
 hopes, I feel just as if I was the snarling crittur in the picters, with 
 the tight legs, the long nose, and the feather in his cap, the tips of 
 whoso moustaches get up nearer to his eyes the wickeder he gets." 
 
 The young fisherman knew nothing of Mephistopheles ; but he 
 smiled when the captain stopped to double himself up and slap his 
 leg, and they went along in right goodfellowship. 
 
 NoTK. Tlie third and fourth chapters of tliis Christmas number wore not by Mr. 
 Pickens. After the tirst and second lie did not resume the pen until the chapter 
 entitled the " Restitution," here numbered as the fifth. For the two intervening 
 chapters the reader is referred to the number as republislied in the volume of the 
 Nine Christmas numbers of All the Year Hound. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 T n E 11 E S T I T U TI O N. 
 
 Captain Johgan, up and out betimes, had put the whole village of 
 Lanrean under an amicable cross-examination, and was returning to 
 the King Arthur's Arms to breakfast, none the wiser for his trouble, 
 when he beheld tlie young fisherman advancing to meet him, accom- 
 panied by a stranger. A glance at this stranger assured the captain 
 that he could be no other than the Seafaring jVLui ; and the captain 
 was about to hail him as a fellow-craftsman, when the two stood still 
 and silent before the captain, and the captain stood still, silent, and 
 wondering before them. 
 
 " Why, what's this ? " cried the captain, when at last he broke the
 
 TJte Course of Action settled. 161 
 
 silence. " You two are alike. You two are mucli alike. What's 
 this ? " 
 
 Not a word was answered on the other side, until after the sea- 
 faring brother had got hold of the captain's right hand, and the 
 fisherman brother had got hold of the cajitain's left hand ; and if ever 
 the captain had had his fill of hand-shaking, from his birth to that 
 hour, he had it then. And presently up and spoke the two brothers, 
 one at a time, two at a time, two dozen at a time for the bewilderment 
 into which they plunged the captain, until he gradually had Hugh 
 Eaybrock's deliverance made clear to him, and also unravelled the 
 fact that the person referred to in the half-obliterated paper was 
 Tregarthen himself. 
 
 " Formerly, dear Captain Jorgan," said Alfred, " of Lanrean, you 
 recollect? Kitty and her father came to live at Steepways after 
 Hugh shipped on his last voyage." 
 
 " Ay, ay ! " cried the captain, fetching a breath. " "Now you have 
 me in tow. Then your brother here don't know his sister-in-law 
 that is to be so much as by name ? " 
 
 " Never saw her ; never heard of her ! " 
 
 " Ay, ay, ay ! " cried the captain. " Why then wo every one go 
 back together paper, writer, and all and take Tregarthen into tho 
 secret we kept from him ? " 
 
 " Surely," said Alfred, " we can't help it now. Wo must go 
 through with our duty." 
 
 " Not a doubt," returned the captain. " Give me an arm apiece, 
 and let us set this ship-shape." 
 
 So walking up and down in the shrill wind on the wild moor, while 
 the neglected breakfast cooled within, the captain and the brothers 
 settled their course of action. 
 
 It was that they should all proceed by the quickest means they 
 could secure to Barnstaple, and there look over the father's books and 
 papers in the lawyer's keeping ; as Hugh had proposed to himself to 
 do if ever he reached home. That, enlightened or unenlightened, 
 they should then return to Steepways and go straight to Mr. 
 Tregarthen, and tell him all they knew, and see what came of it, and 
 act accordingly. Lastly, that when they got there they should enter 
 the village with all precautions against Hugli's being recognised by 
 any chance ; and that to the captain should be consigned the task of 
 preparing his wife and mother for his restoration to this life. 
 
 " For you see," quoth Captain Jorgan, touching the last head, " it 
 requires caution any way, great joys being as dangerous as great griefs, 
 if not more dangerous, as being more uncommon (and therefore less 
 provided against) in this round world of ours. And besides, I should 
 like to free my name with the ladies, and take you home again at your 
 brightest and luckiest ; so don't let's throw away a chance of success." 
 
 The captain was highly lauded by the brothers for his kind interoet 
 and forcsiaiit.
 
 1 62 A Message from the Sea. 
 
 " And now stop ! " said the captain, coming to a standstill, and 
 looking from ono brother to tlio other, with quite a new rigging of 
 wrinkles about each eye ; " you arc of opinion," to the elder, " that 
 you are ra'ather slow ? " 
 
 " I assure you I am very slow," said the honest Hugh. 
 
 " Wa'al," rci)lied the caj)tain, " I assure you that to the best of my 
 belief I am ra'ather smart. Now a slow man ain't good at quick 
 business, is ho ? " 
 
 That was clear to both. 
 
 " You," said the captain, turning to the younger brother, " arc a 
 little in love ; ain't you ? " 
 
 " Not a little, Cajitain Jorgan." 
 
 " Much or little, you'ro sort preoccupied ; ain't you ? " 
 
 It was impossible to be denied. 
 
 " And a sort preoccupied man ain't good at quick business, is he ? " 
 said the captain. 
 
 Equally clear on all sides. 
 
 " Now," said the captain, " I ain't in love myself, and I've made 
 many a smart run across tlie ocean, and I should like to carry on and 
 go ahead with this affair of yours and make a run slick through it. 
 Sliall I try ? Will you hand it over to me ? " 
 
 They were both deliglited to do so, and thanked him heartily. 
 
 " Good," said the cajjtain, taking out his watch. " This is half-past 
 eight A.M., Friday morning. I'll jot that down, and we'll compute 
 how many hours we've been out when we run into your mother's post- 
 office. There ! The entry's made, and now we go ahead." 
 
 They went ahead so well that before the Barnstaple lawyer's office 
 v*-as open nest morning, the captain was sitting whistling on the step 
 of tlie door, waiting for the cleric to come down the street with his 
 key and open it. But instead of the clerk there came the master, 
 vv'ith whom the caj)tain fraternised on the spot to an extent that utterly 
 confounded liim. 
 
 As he personally knew both Hugh and Alfred, there was no diffi- 
 culty in obtaining immediate access to such of the father's papers as 
 were in his keeping. These were chiefly old letters and cash accuuints ; 
 from v\'liieh the captain, with a shrewdness and despatch that left the 
 lawyer far behind, established with perfect clearness, by noon, tlie 
 folhnving particulars : 
 
 Tli;it one Lawrence Clissold had borrowed of the deceased, at a 
 time when he was a thriving young tradesman in the town of Barn- 
 staple, the sum of five liundred pounds. Tliut he had borrowed it on 
 tlie written statement that it was to be laid ont in furtlieranee of a 
 !q)eculati()n which he ex])ected would raise him to indei)endenee ; he 
 being, at tlie time of writing tliat letter, no more than a clerk in tlio 
 house of Dringwortli Brotlicrs, America Scjuare, London. Tliat the 
 money was liorrowed fir a sti]-i;latcd jirriod ; \.\\t that, when the U)V\a 
 was oul, the tifure.s;'.id s|;ceulati()n fuiled, and Clissold Vi'as witliout
 
 Captain j organ goes ahead. 1 63 
 
 Bieans of repayment. That, hereupon, he had written to his creditor, 
 in no very persuasive terms, vaguely requesting further time. That 
 the creditor had refused this concession, declaring that he could not 
 afford delay. That Clissold then paid the debt, accompanying the 
 remittance of the money with an angry letter describing it as having 
 been advanced by a relative to save him from ruin. That, in acknow- 
 ledging the receipt, Eaybrock had cautioned Clissold to seek to borrow 
 money of him no more, as he would never so risk money again. 
 
 Before the lawyer the captain said never a word in reference to 
 these discoveries. But when the papers had been put back in their 
 box, and he and his two companions were well out of the office, his 
 right leg suffered for it, and he said, 
 
 " So far this run's begun with a fair wind and a prosperous ; for 
 don't you see that all this agrees with that dutiful trust in his father 
 maintained by the slow member of the Raybrock family ? " 
 
 Whether the brothers had seen it before or no, they saw it now. 
 Not that the captain gave them much time to contemplate the state of 
 things at their ease, for he instantly whipped them into a chaise again, 
 and bore them off to Steepways. Although the afternoon was but 
 just beginning to decline when they reached it, and it was broad day- 
 light, still they had no difficulty, by dint of mufHing the returned 
 sailor up, and ascending the village rather than descending it, in 
 reaching Tregarthen's cottage unobserved. Kitty was not visible, and 
 they surprised Tregarthen sitting writing in the small bay-window of 
 his little room. 
 
 "Sir," said the captain, instantly shaking hands with him, pen 
 and all, " I'm glad to sec you, sir. How do you do, sir ? I told you 
 you'd think better of me by-and-by, and I congratulate you on going 
 to do it." 
 
 Here the captain's eye fell on Tom Pettifer Ho, engaged in pre- 
 paring some cookery at the fire. 
 
 " That critter," said the captain, smiting his leg, " is a born steward, 
 and never ought to have been in any other way of life. Stoj) where 
 you are, Tom, and make yourself useful. Now, Trcgarllien, I'm 
 going to try a chair." 
 
 Accordingly the captain drew one close to liim, and went on : 
 
 *' This loving member of the Raybrock family you know, sir. This 
 slow member of the same family you don't know, sir. Wa'al, these 
 two arc brothers, fact 1 Hugh's come to life again, and here ho 
 stands. Now see here, my friend 1 You don't want to be told that 
 he was cast away, but you do v,-ant to be told (for there's a purjioso 
 in it) that he was cast away with another man. That man by name 
 was Lawrence Clissold." 
 
 At the mention of this name Tregarthen started and changed colour. 
 " What's the matter ? " said tlio captain. 
 
 "Ho was a fcllovr-clerk of miuo thirty five-and-thirty years 
 ago,"
 
 164 A Mesiage front the Sea. 
 
 *' True," said the captain, immediately catcliing at tlio clew : " Dring- 
 wortli Brothers, America Square, London City." 
 
 The other started again, nodded, and said, " That was the house." 
 
 " Now," pursued the captain, " between those two men cast away 
 there arose a mystery concerning the round sum of five hundred 
 pound." 
 
 Again Tregarthen started, changing colour. Again the caj)taiii 
 Bdd, " What's the matter ? " 
 
 As Tregarthen only answered, " Please to go on," the captain 
 recounted, very tersely and plainly, the nature of Clissold's wander- 
 ings on the barren island, as he had condensed them in his mind from 
 the seafaring man. Tregarthen became greatly agitated during this 
 recital, and at length exclaimed, 
 
 " Clissold was the man who ruined me ! I have suspected it for 
 many a long year, and now I know it." 
 
 " And how," said the captain, drawing his chair still closer to 
 Tregarthen, and clapping his hand upon his shoulder, " how may 
 you know it ? " 
 
 " When wo were fellow-clerks," replied Tregarthen, " in that 
 London house, it was one of my duties to enter daily in a certain book 
 an account of the sums received that day by the firm, and afterward 
 paid into the bankers'. One memorable day, a Wednesday, the black 
 day of my life, among the sums I so entered was one of five hundred 
 pounds." 
 
 " I begin to make it out," said the captain. " Yes ? " 
 
 " It was one of Clissold's duties to copy from this entry a memo- 
 randum of the sums which the clerk employed to go to the bankers' 
 paid in tliere. It was my duty to hand the money to Clissold ; it was 
 Clissold's to hand it to the clerk, with tliat memorandum of his 
 writing. On that Wednesday I entered a sum of five hundred pounds 
 received. I handed that sum, as I handed the other sums in the day's 
 entry, to Clissold. I was absolutely certain of it at the time ; I have 
 been absolutely certain of it ever since. A sum of five hundred 
 pounds was afterward found by the house to have been that day 
 Avautiug from the bag, from Clissold's memorandum, and from the 
 entries in my book. Clissold, being questioned, stood upon his 
 perfect clearness in the matter, and emphatically declared tliat he 
 asked no better than to be tested by ' Tregartlien's book.' My book 
 was examined, and the entry of five hundred pounds was not tlicre." 
 
 " How not there," said the captain, " when you made it yourself?" 
 
 Tregarthen contiuued : 
 
 " I was then questioned. Had I made the entry ? Certainly I had. 
 The house produced my book, and it was not tliere. I could not 
 deny my book ; I could not deny my writing. I kiunv tliere must bo 
 forgery by some one ; but the writing was wonderfully like mine, and 
 I could impeach no one if the house could not. I was required to 
 pay the money back. I did so ; and I left the house, almost broken-
 
 Mr. Tregarthen requires Proof. 165 
 
 hearted, rather than remain there, even if I could have done so, 
 with a dark shadow of suspicion always on me. I returned to my 
 native place, Lanrean, and remained there, clerk to a mine, until I 
 was appointed to ray little post here." 
 
 " I well remember," said the captain, " that I told you that if you 
 had no experience of ill judgments on deceiving appearances, you were 
 a lucky man. You went hurt at that, and I see why. I'm sorry." 
 
 " Thus it is," said Tregarthen. " Of my own innocence I have of 
 course been sure ; it has been at once my comfort and my trial. Of 
 Clissold I have always had suspicions almost amounting to certainty ; 
 but they have never been confirmed until now. For my daughter's 
 sake and for my own I have carried this subject in my own heart, as 
 the only secret of my life, and have long believed that it would die 
 with mo." 
 
 " Wa'al, my good sir," said the captain cordially, " the present 
 question is, and will be long, I hope, concerning living, and not 
 dying. Now, hero arc our two honest friends, the loving Eaybrock 
 and the slow. Hero they stand, agreed on one point, on which I'd 
 back 'era round the world, and right across it from north to south, 
 and then again from cast to west, and through it, from your deepest 
 Cornish mine to China. It is, that they Avill never use this samo 
 so-often-mentioned sum of money, and that restitution of it must 
 bo made to you. These two, the loving member and the slow, for 
 the sake of the right and of their father's memory, will have it ready 
 for you to-morrow. Take it, and ease their minds and mine, and end 
 a most unfort'nate transaction." 
 
 Tregarthen took the captain by the hand, and gave his hand to 
 each of the young men, but positively and finally answered No. IIo 
 said, they trusted to his word, and he was glad of it, and at rest in 
 his mind ; but there was no proof, and the money must remain as it 
 was. All wore very earnest over this ; and earnestness in men, when 
 they arc right and true, is so impressive, that Mr. Pettifer deserted 
 his cookery and looked on quite moved. 
 
 " And so," said the captain, " so we come as that lawyer-crittur 
 over yonder where we were this morning might to mere proof; do 
 we ? We must have it ; must we ? How ? From this Clissold's 
 wanderings, and from what you say, it ain't liard to make out that 
 tlicro was a neat forgery of your writing committed by the too smart 
 rowdy that was grease and ashes when I made his acquaintance, and 
 a substitution of a forged leaf in your book for a real and true leaf 
 torn out. Now was that real and true leaf then and there destroyetl ? 
 No, for says he, in his drunken way, he slipped it into a crack in 
 his own desk, because you came into the office before there was time 
 to burn it, and could never get back to it arterwards. Wait a bit. 
 Where is that desk now ? Do you consider it likely to bo in America 
 Square, London City ? " 
 
 Tregarthen shook his head.
 
 1 66 A Message from the Sea. 
 
 " Tho lionso lias not, for years, transacted business in tliat place. 
 I have hoard of it, and road of it, as removed, enlarged, every way 
 altered. Things alter so fast in these times." 
 
 " You tliink so," returned tho captain, with compassion ; " but you 
 should come over and see mc afore you talk about that. Wa'al, now. 
 This desk, this paper, this paper, this desk," said the captain, 
 ruminating and walking about, and looking, in his uneasy abstraction, 
 into Mr. Pettifer's hat on a table, among other things. " This desk, 
 this paper, this paper, this desk," the captain continued, musing and 
 roaming about the room, " I'd give " 
 
 However, ho gave nothing, but took up his steward's hat instead, 
 and stood looking into it, as if he had just come into church. After 
 that he roamed again, and again said, " This desk, belonging to this 
 house of Dringworth Brothers, America Square, London City " 
 
 Mr. Pettifer, still strangely moved, and now more moved than 
 before, cut the captain off as he backed across tho room, and bespako 
 him thus : 
 
 " Captain Jorgan, I have been wishful to engage your attention, 
 but I couldn't do it. I am unwilling to interrupt Captain Jorgan, 
 but I must do it. I know something about that house." 
 
 Tho captain stood stock-still and looked at him, with his (Mr. 
 Pettifer's) hat under his arm. 
 
 " You're aware," pursued his steward, " that I was once in tho 
 broking business, Captain Jorgan ? " 
 
 " 1 was aware," said the captain, " that you had failed in that calling, 
 and in half the businesses going, Tom." 
 
 " Not quito so. Captain Jorgan ; but I failed in the broking business. 
 I was partners with my brother, sir. There was a sale of old office 
 furniture at Dringworth Brothers' when the house was moved from 
 America Square, and mo and my brother made what we call in tho 
 trade a Deal there, sir. And I'll make bold to say, sir, that the only 
 thing I ever had from my brother, or from any relation, for my 
 relations have mostly taken property from mo instead of giving mo 
 any, was an old desk wo bought at that same sale, with a crack in 
 it. ]\Iy brother wouldn't liuve given me even that, when wo broke 
 partnership, if it had been worth anything." 
 
 " Where is tliat desk now ? " said the captain. 
 
 " Well, Captain Jorgan," replied tlie steward, " I couldn't say for 
 certain wliere it is now ; but when I saw it last, which was last 
 time wo were outward bound, it was at a very nice lady's at 
 Wapping, along with a little chest of mine which was detained for 
 a small matter of a bill owing." 
 
 Tho captain, instead of paying that rapt attention to his steward 
 which was rendered by tlio otlicr tliree persons present, went to 
 Church again, in respect of the steward's liat. And a most especially 
 agitated and memoniblo face tho captain produced from it, after c^ 
 short ]>ausc.
 
 How Mr. Pettifer guarded against Simsiroke. 167 
 
 " No'>y, Tom," said tlio captain, " I spoko to you, wlicu wo first 
 came here, respecting your constitutional weakness on the subject of 
 sunstroke." 
 
 " You did, sir." 
 
 " Will my slow friend," said the captain, " lend me his arm, or I 
 shall sink right back'ards into this blessed steward's cookery ? Now, 
 Tom, " pursued the captain, when the required assistance was given, 
 " on your oath as a steward, didn't you take that desk to pieces to make a 
 better one of it, and put it together fresh, or something of the kind ? " 
 
 " On my oath I did, sir," rej^lied the steward. 
 
 " And by the blessing of Heaven, my friends, one and all," cried 
 the captain, radiant Vvith joy, " of the Heaven that put it into tliis 
 Tom Pettifer's head to take so much care of his head against the 
 bright sun, he lined his hat with the original leaf in Tregarthcn's 
 writing, and here it is ! " 
 
 With that the captain, to the utter destruction f Mr. Pettifer's 
 favourite hat, produced the book-leaf, very much v/orn, but still 
 legible, and gave both his legs such tremendous slaps that they were 
 heard far off in the bay, and never accounted for. 
 
 " A quarter past five p.m.," said the captain, pulling out his watch, 
 ** and that's thirty-threo hours and a quarter in all, and a pritty run ! " 
 
 How they were ail overpowered with delight and triumph ; how tlio 
 money was restored, then and there, to Tregarthcn ; how Trcgarthcn, 
 then and there, gave it all to his daughter ; how the caj^taiu under- 
 took to go to Dringsvorth Brothers and reestablish the reputation of 
 their forgotten old clerk ; how Kitty came in, and was nearly torn to 
 pieces, and the marriage was reappointed, needs not to be told. Nor 
 how she and the young fisherman went homo to the post-office to 
 prepare the v.'ay for the captain's coming, by declaring him to be tho 
 mightiest of men, who had made all their fortunes, and then duti- 
 fully withdrew together, in order that he might have tho domestic 
 coast entirely to himself. How ho availed himself of it is all that 
 remains to tell. 
 
 Deeply delighted with his trust, and putting his heart into it, ho 
 raised the latch of tho post-office parlour where Mrs. Eaybrock and 
 the young widow sat, and said, 
 
 " May I come in ? " 
 
 " Sure you may, Captain Jorgan ! " replied tlie old lady. " x\nd 
 good reason you have to be free of the house, though yoii have not 
 been too well used in it by some v/ho ought to have known better. I 
 ask your pardon." 
 
 " No you don't, ma'am," said the captain, " for I won't let you. 
 Wa'al, to be sure ! " 
 
 By this time he had taken a chair on the hearth between them. 
 
 " Never felt such an evil spirit in the whole course of my life ! 
 There ! I tell you ! I could a'most have cut my ovvn connection. 
 Like tho dealer in my country, away West, vvho v.'hcn ho had lot
 
 1 68 A Message from the Sea. 
 
 himself bo outdone in a bargain, said to himself, ' Now I tell you 
 what ! I'll never speak to you again.' And ho never did, but joined 
 a settlement of oysters, and translated the multiplication table into 
 their language, which is a fact that can be proved. If you doubt it, 
 mention it to any oyster you come across, and see if he'll have the 
 face to contradict it." 
 
 Ho took the child from her mother's lap and set it on his knee. 
 
 " Not a bit afraid of me now, you see. Knows I am fond of small 
 people. I havo a child, and she's a girl, and I sing to her some- 
 times." 
 
 *' What do you sing ? " asked Margaret. 
 
 " Not a long song, my dear. 
 
 Silas Jorfjan 
 Played the organ. 
 
 That's about all. And sometimes I tell her stories, stories of sailors 
 Ru'^posed to be lost, and recovered after all hope was abandoned." 
 Here the captain musingly went back to his song, 
 
 Silas Jorgan 
 Played the organ ; 
 
 repeating it with his eyes on the fire, as he softly danced the child on 
 his knee. For he felt that Margaret had stopped working. 
 
 " Yes," said the captain, still looking at the fire, " I make xip stories 
 and tell 'em to that child. Stories of shipwreck on desert islands, 
 and long delay in getting back to civilised lands. It is to stories the 
 like of that, mostly, that 
 
 Silas Jorgan 
 I'lays the organ." 
 
 There was no light in the room but the light of the fire ; for the 
 sliades of night were on the village, and the stars had bcgnn to peep 
 out of tho sky one by one, as the houses of the village peeped out 
 from among the foliage when the night departed. The captain felt 
 that Margaret's eyes were upon him, and thought it discreetest to keep 
 his own eyes on the fire. 
 
 " Yes ; I make 'cm up," said tlie captain. " I make up stories of 
 brothers brought together by the good providence of God, of sons 
 brought back to motlicrs, husbands brought back to wives, fathers 
 raised from tho deep, for little children like herself." 
 
 Margaret's touch was on his arm, and he could not choose but look 
 round now. Next moment her hand moved imploringly to liis breast, 
 and she was on licr knees before him,^supporting the mother, who 
 was also kneeling. 
 
 " What's tlic matter ? " said tho captain. " What's the matter ? 
 
 Silas Jdrgan 
 Played tlic 
 
 Tlieir looks and tears were too much for him, and he could not 
 finish the son'', short as it was,
 
 Another Golden Picture, 169 
 
 " Mistress Margaret, you liave borne ill fortune well. Could you 
 bear good fortune equally well, if it was to come ? " 
 
 " I hope so. I thankfully and humbly and earnestly hope so ! " 
 
 " Wa'al, my dear," said the captain, ' p'rhaps it has come. He's 
 don't be frightened shall I say the word " 
 
 Alive ? " 
 
 Yes ! " 
 
 The thanks they fervently addressed to Heaven were again too 
 much for the captain, who openly took out his handkerchief and dried 
 his eyes. 
 
 " He's no further off," resumed the captain, *' than my country. 
 Indeed, he's no further off than his own native country. To tell you 
 the truth, he's no further off than Falmouth. Indeed, I doubt if he's 
 quite so fur. Indeed, if you was sure you could bear it nicely, and I 
 was to do no more than whistle for him " 
 
 The captain's trust was discharged. A rush came, and they were 
 all together again. 
 
 This was a fine opportunity for Tom Pettifer to appear with a 
 tumbler of cold water, and he presently appeared with it, and admin- 
 istered it to the ladies ; at the same time soothing them, and com- 
 posing their dresses, exactly as if they had been passengers crossing 
 the Channel. The extent to which the captain slajiped his legs, when 
 Mr. Pettifer acquitted himself of this act of stewardship, could have 
 been thoroughly appreciated by no one but himself ; inasmuch as ho 
 must have slapped them black and blue, and they must have smarted 
 tremendously. 
 
 He couldn't stay for the wedding, having a few appointments to keep 
 at the irreconcilable distance of about four thousand miles. So next 
 morning all the village cheered him up to the level ground above, 
 and there he shook hands with a complete Census of its population, 
 and invited the whole, without exception, to come and stay several 
 months with him at Salem, Mass., U.S. And there as he stood on 
 the sjiot where he had seen that little golden picture of love and 
 parting, and from which he could that morning contemplate another 
 golden picture with a vista of golden years in it, little Kitty jDut her 
 arms around his neck, and kissed him on both his bronzed cheeks, 
 and laid her pretty face upon his storm-beaten breast, in sight of all, 
 ashamed to have called such a noble captain names. And there the 
 captain waved his hat over his head three final times ; and there ho 
 vras last seen, going away accomj)anicd by Tom Pettifer Ho, and 
 carrying his hands in his pockets. And there, before that ground 
 was softened with the fallen leaves of three more summers, a rosy 
 little boy took his first unsteady run to a fair young mother's breast, 
 and the name of that infant fisherman was Jorgan Raybrock.
 
 TOM TTDDLER'S GROUND, 
 
 IN THREE CHAPTERS.* 
 
 [1861.] 
 
 PICKING UP SOOT AND CINDERS. 
 
 " And why Tom Tiddler's ground ? " said the Traveller. 
 
 " Becatiso he scatters halfpence to Tramps and such-like," returned 
 the Landlord, " and of course they pick 'em uj). And this being dono 
 on his own land (which it is liis own land, you observe, and wore his 
 family's before him), why it is but regarding the halfpence as gold and 
 silver, and turning the ownership of the property a bit round your 
 finger, and there you have the name of the children's game complete. 
 And it's aj^propriato too," said the Landlord, with his favourite action 
 of stooping a little, to look across the table out of window at 
 vacancy, under the window-blind which was half drawn down. 
 " Leastwise it has been so considered by many gentlemen whicli have 
 partook of chops and tea in the present liumble parlour." 
 
 The Traveller was partaking of chops and tea in the present 
 humble parlour, and the Landlord's shot was fired obliquely at him. 
 
 " And you call him a Hermit ? " said tlie Traveller. 
 
 " They call him such," returned the Landlord, evading personal 
 responsibility ; " he is in general so considered." 
 
 " What is a Hermit ? " asked the Traveller. 
 
 " What is it? " repeated the Landlord, drawing his hand across hia 
 chin. 
 
 " Yes, what is it ? " 
 
 The Landlord stooped again, to got a more comprehensive view 
 of vacancy under the window-blind, and witli an asphyxiated 
 appearance on him as ouo unaccustomed to definition made no 
 answer. 
 
 * Tlic nrii;iiial has scYca chapters ; but those not printcJ here were not \vrittcD by 
 Mr. Dickens.
 
 TOM tiddler's ground.
 
 The Traveller at the Peal of Bells. 171 
 
 " I'll tell you what I suppose it to be," Scaid the Traveller. " An 
 abominably dirty thing." 
 
 " Mr. Mopes is dirty, it cannot be denied," said the Landlord. 
 
 " Intolerably conceited." 
 
 " Mr. Mopes is vain of the life ho leads, some do say," replied the 
 Landlord, as another concession. 
 
 " A slothful, unsavoury, nasty reversal of the laws of human 
 nature," said the Traveller ; " and for the sake of God's working world 
 and its wholesomeness, both moral and physical, I would put the 
 thing on the treadmill (if I had my way) wherever I found it ; 
 whether on a pillar, or in a hole ; whether on Tom Tiddler's ground, 
 or the Pope of Rome's ground, or a Hindoo fakeer's ground, or any 
 other ground." 
 
 " I don't know about putting Mr. Mopes on the treadmill," said the 
 Landlord, shaking his head very seriously. " There ain't a doubt but 
 what he has got landed property." 
 
 "How far may it be to this said Tom Tiddler's ground?" asked 
 the Traveller. 
 
 " Put it at five mile," returned the Landlord, 
 
 " Well ! When I have done my breakfast," said the Traveller, 
 " I'll go there. I came over here this morning, to find it out and 
 see it." 
 
 " Many does," observed the Landlord. 
 
 The conversation j)assed, in the Midsummer weather of no remote 
 year of grace, down among the pleasant dales and trout-streams of a 
 green English county. No matter what county. Enougli that you 
 may hunt there, shoot there, fish there, traverse long grass-grown 
 Roman roads there, open ancient barrows there, see many a square mile 
 of richly cultivated land there, and hold Arcadian talk with a bold 
 peasantry, their country's pride, who will tell you (if you want to 
 know) how pastoral housekeeping is done on nine shillings a week. 
 
 Mr. Traveller sat at his breakfast in the little sanded parlour of the 
 Peal of Bells village alehouse, with the dew and dust of an early walk 
 upon his shoes an early walk by road and meadow and coppice, that 
 had sprinkled him bountifully with little blades of grass, and scraps 
 of new hay, and with leaves both young and old, and with other such 
 fragrant tokens of the freshness and wealth of summer. The window 
 through which the landlord had concentrated his gaze upon vacancy 
 was shaded, because the morning sun was hot and bright on the village 
 street. The village street was like most other village streets : wide 
 for its height, silent for its size, and drowsy in the dullest degree. 
 Tlie quietest little dwellings with the largest of window-shutters (to 
 shut up Nothing as cai'cfully as if it were tlie Mint, or the Bank of 
 England) had called in the Doctor's house so suddenly, that his brass 
 door-plato and three stories stood among them as conspicuous and 
 difterent as theDoctor himself in his broadcloth. among the smock-frocks 
 of his patients. The village residences seemed to have gone to lavv' with
 
 172 Tom Tiddler's Ground. 
 
 a similar absonco of consideration, for a score of weak little lath-and- 
 plastor cabins clung in confusion about tlio Attorney's red-brick bouse, 
 wbicb, with glaring door-steps and a most terrific scraper, seemed to 
 servo all manner of ejectments upon them. Tbey were as various 
 as labourers bigh-shouldcrcd, wry-necked, one-eyed, goggle-eyed, 
 squinting, bow-legged, knock-knee'd, rheumatic, crazy. Some of the 
 small tradesmen's houses, such as the crockery-shop and the harness- 
 maker, had a Cyclops window in the middle of the gable, within an 
 inch or two of its apex, suggesting that some forlorn rural Prentice 
 must wriggle himself into that aj)artment horizontally, when he retired 
 to rest, after the manner of the worm. So bountiful in its abundance 
 was the surrounding country, and so lean and scant the village, that 
 one might have thought the village had sown and planted everything 
 it once possessed, to convert the same into crops. This would accouut 
 for the bareness of the little shops, the bareness of the few boards 
 and trestles designed for market purposes in a corner of the street, 
 the bareness of the obsolete Inn and Inn Yard, with the ominous 
 inscription " Excise Ofiicc " not yet faded out from the gateway, as 
 indicating the very last thing that poverty could get rid of. Tliis 
 would also account for the determined abandonment of the village by 
 one stray dog, fast lessening in the perspective where the white posts 
 and the pond were, and would explain lais conduct on tlie hypothesis 
 that ho was going (through the act of suicide) to convert himself 
 into manure, and become a part proprietor in turnips or mangold- 
 wurzcl. 
 
 Mr. Traveller having finished his breakfast and paid his moderate 
 score, walked out to the threshold of the Peal of Bells, and, thence 
 directed by the pointing finger of his host, betook himself towards 
 the ruined hermitage of Mr. itopcs the hermit. 
 
 For, Mr. Mopes, by suiTering everything about him to go to ruin, 
 and by dressing himself in a blanket and skewer, and by steeping 
 himself in soot and grease and other nastiness, had acquired great 
 renown in all that country-side far greater rcnowiT than he could 
 ever have won for himself, if his career had been that of any ordinary 
 Christian, or decent Hottentot. lie had even blanketed and skewered 
 and sooted and greased liimsolf, into the London papers. And it was 
 curious to find, as Mr. Traveller found by stopping for a new direction 
 at tliis farm-liouse or at that cottage as he went along, with how much 
 accuracy the morbid Mopes had counted on the weakness of his 
 neighbours to embellish him. A mist of home-brewed marvel and 
 romance surrounded Mopes, in whicli (as in all fogs) tlio real pro- 
 portions of the real object were extravagantly heightened. He Iiad 
 nnirdcred his beautiful beloved in a fit of jealousy and was doing 
 penance ; he had made a vow imder the infiuencc of grief; he liad 
 made a vow under the influence of a fatal accident; he had made a 
 vow iiiidei- the influence; of religion ; ho had made a vow under tlio 
 infiuencc of drink ; he had made a vow xinder the infiuencc of dis-
 
 A Hermitage. 173 
 
 appointment ; he had never made any vow, but " had got led into it " 
 by the possession of a mighty and most awful secret ; he was 
 enormously rich, he was stupendously charitable, he was profoundly 
 learned, he saw si:)ectres, he knew and could do all kinds of wonders. 
 Some said he went out every night, and was met by terrified wayfarers 
 stalking along dark roads, others said ho never went out, some knew 
 his penance to be nearly expired, others had positive information that 
 his seclusion was not a penance at all, and would never expire but 
 with himself. Even, as to the easy facts of how old he was, or how 
 long he had held verminous occupation of his blanket and skewer, no 
 consistent information was to be got, from those who must know if 
 they would. He was represented as being all the ages between five- 
 and-twenty and sixty, and as having been a hermit seven years, 
 twelve, twenty, thirty, though twenty, on the whole, appeared the 
 favourite term. 
 
 " Well, well ! " said Mr. Traveller. " At any rate, let us sec what 
 a real live Hermit looks like." 
 
 So, Mr. Traveller went on, and on, and on, until he came to Tom 
 Tiddler's Ground. 
 
 It was a nook in a rustic by-road, which the genius of Mopes had 
 laid waste as completely, as if he had been born an Emperor and a 
 Conqueror. Its centre object was a dwelling-house, sufficiently sub- 
 stantial, all the window-glass of which had been long ago abolished 
 by the surprising genius of Mopes, and all the windows of which were 
 barred across with rough-split logs of trees nailed over them on the 
 outside. A rickyard, hip-high in vegetable rankness and ruin, con- 
 tained outbuildings, from which the thatch had lightly fluttered away, 
 on all the winds of all the seasons of the year, and from which the 
 planks and beams had heavily dropped and rotted. The frosts and 
 damps of winter, and the heats of summer, had Avarped what wreck 
 remained, so that not a post or a board retained the position it was 
 meant to hold, but everything was twisted from its pur2)ose, like its 
 owner, and degraded and debased. In this homestead of the sluggard, 
 behind the ruined hedge, and sinking away among the ruined grass 
 and the nettles, were the last perishing fragments of certain ricks : 
 which had gradually mildewed and collapsed, until they looked like 
 mounds of rotten honeycomb, or dirty sponge. Tom Tiddler's ground 
 could even show its ruined vrater ; for, there was a slimy pond into 
 which a tree or two had fallen one soppy trunk and branches lay 
 across it then which in its accumulation of stagnant weed, and in its 
 black decomposition, and in all its foulness and filth, was almost 
 comforting, regarded as the only water that could have reflected the 
 shameful place withoiit seeming polluted by that lov/ office. 
 
 Mr. Traveller looked all around him on Tom Tiddler's ground, and 
 his glance at last encountered a dusky Tinker lying among the weeds 
 and rank grass, in the shade of the dwelling-house. A rough 
 walkiug-statF lay on the ground by his side, and his head rested oe. a
 
 174 Tom Tiddler's Groinid. 
 
 small wallet. He met Mr. Traveller's eye without lifting up his head, 
 merely depressing his chin a little (for ho was lying on his back) .to 
 get a better view of him. 
 
 " Good day ! " said Mr. Traveller. 
 
 " Same to you, if you like it," returned the Tinker. 
 
 " Don't ijovi like it ? It s a very fine day." 
 
 "I ain't partickler in weather," returned the Tinker, Avith a 
 yawn. 
 
 Mr. Traveller had walked up to where he lay, and was looking 
 down at him. " This is a curious place," said Mr. Traveller. 
 
 " Ay, I suppose so ! " returned the Tinker. " Tom Tiddler's 
 ground, they call this." 
 
 " Are you well acquainted with it ? " 
 
 " Never saw it afore to-day," said the Tinker, with another yawn, 
 " and don't care if I never see it again. There was a man hero just 
 now, told mo what it was called. If you want to see Tom himself, 
 you must go in at that gate." He faintly indicated with his chin a 
 little mean ruin of a wooden gate at the side of the house. 
 
 " Have you seen Tom ? " 
 
 " No, and I ain't partickler to see him. I can see a dirty man 
 anywhere," 
 
 " He does not live in the house, then ? " said Mr. Traveller, casting 
 his eyes upon the house anew. 
 
 " Tlic man said," returned the Tinker, rather irritably, " him as 
 was here just now, ' this what you're a laying on, mate, is Tom 
 Tiddler's ground. And if you want to see Tom,' he says, ' you must 
 go in at that gate.' The man como out at that gate himself, and ho 
 ought to know." 
 
 " Certainly," said Mr. Traveller. 
 
 " Tliough, perhaps," exclaimed the Tinker, so struck by tiic bright- 
 ness of liis own idea, tliat it had the electric effect upon him of 
 causing him to lift up his head an inch or so, " perhaps ho was a liar! 
 He told some rum'uns him as was lioro just now, did about this place 
 of Tom's. Ho says liim as was liero just now 'When Tom shut up 
 tlie liousc, raatc, to go to rack, the beds v\'as left, all made, like as if 
 somebody was a-goiug to sleep in every bed. And if you was to walk 
 througli the bedrooms now, you'd see the ragged mouldy bedclothes a 
 heaving and a heaving like seas. And a heaving and a heaving witli 
 what ? ' ho says. ' Why, with the rats under 'em.' " 
 
 " I wisli I liad seen that man," Mr. Traveller remarked. 
 
 " You'd bave been welcome to see him instead of me seeing him," 
 growled the Tinker ; " for lio was a long-winded one." 
 
 Not without a sense of injury in the rumombranco, tlic Tinker 
 gloomily closed liis eyes. Mr. Traveller, deeming the Tinker a sliort- 
 windod one, fi-oin whom no furtiicr breath of inftjrmation was to be 
 derived, b(to;;k Jiimself t > tlio gale. 
 
 S\vu:.g upon its rusty hinge s, it admitted him into a yard in whicii
 
 TJie Owner of the Hermitage. iy$ 
 
 there was nothing to be seen but an outhouse attached to the ruined 
 building, with a barred window in it. As there were traces of many 
 recent footsteps under this window, and as it was a low window, and 
 unglazed, Mr. Traveller made bold to peep within the bars. And 
 there to be sure ho had a real live Hermit before him, and could 
 judge how the real dead Hermits used to look. 
 
 He was lying on a bank of soot and cinders, on the floor, in front of 
 a rusty fireplace. There was nothing else in the dark little kitchen, 
 or scullery, or whatever his den had been originally used as, but a 
 table with a litter of old bottles on it. A rat made a clatter among 
 these bottles, jumped down, and ran over the real live Hermit on his 
 way to his hole, or the man in his hole would not have been so easily 
 discernible. Tickled in the face by the rat's tail, the ov/ner of Tom 
 Tiddler's ground opened his eyes, saw Mr. Traveller, started up, and 
 spn-ang to the window. 
 
 " Humph ! " thought Mr. Traveller, retiring a pace or two from tho 
 bars. " A compound of Newgate, Bedlam, a Debtors' Prison in the 
 worst time, a chimney-sweep, a mudlark, and the Noble Savage ! A 
 nice old family, the Hermit family. Hah ! " 
 
 Mr. Traveller thought this, as he silently confronted the sooty 
 object in the blanket and skewer (in sober truth it wore nothing else), 
 with the matted hair and the staring eyes. Further, Mr. Traveller 
 thought, as the eye surveyed him with a very obvious curiosity in 
 ascertaining the effect they produced, " Vanity, vanity, vanity ! 
 Verily, all is vanity ! " 
 
 " What is your name, sir, and where do you come from ? " asked 
 Mr. Mopes the Hermit with an air of authority, but in the ordinary 
 human speech of one Avho has been to school. 
 
 Mr. Traveller answered the inquiries. 
 
 " Did you come here, sir, to see me ? " 
 
 " I did. I heard of you, and I came to see you. I know you like 
 to bo seen." Mr. Traveller coolly threw the last words in, as a 
 matter of course, to forestall an aiiectation of resentment or objection 
 that he saw rising beneath the grease and grime of the face. They 
 had their effect. 
 
 " So," said the Hermit, after a momentary silence, unclasping tho 
 bars by which he had previously held, and seating himself behind 
 them on the ledge of the window, with his bare legs and feet crouched 
 up, " you knovv I like to be seen ? " 
 
 Mr. Traveller looked about him for something to sit on, and, 
 observing a billet of wood in a corner, brought it near tlie window. 
 Deliboratoly seating himself upon it, he answered, " Just so." 
 
 Euch looked at the otlier, and each a2)peared to take some pains to 
 get tlic measure of the other. 
 
 " Then you have come to ask me why I lead this life," said the 
 Hermit, frowning in a stormy manner. "I never tell that to any 
 h-uuian bcinj^. I v,-ill not be asked that."
 
 iy6 Tom Tiddlei^s Ground, 
 
 " Certainly you will not bo asked that by rac," said Mr. Traveller, 
 "for I have not the slightest desire to know." 
 
 " You arc an uncouth man," said Mr. Mopes the Hermit. 
 
 " You are another," said Mr. Traveller. 
 
 The Hermit, who was plainly in the habit of overawing his visitors 
 with the novelty of his filth and his blanket and skewer, glared at his 
 present visitor in some discomfiture and surprise : as if he had taken 
 aim at him with a sure gun, and his piece had missed fire. 
 
 " Why do you come here at all ? " ho asked, after a pause. 
 
 " Upon my life," said Mr. Traveller, " I was made to ask myself 
 that very question only a few minutes ago by a Tinker too." 
 
 As he glanced towards the gate in saying it, the Hermit glanced in 
 that direction likewise. 
 
 " Yes. He is lying on his back in the sunlight outside," said Mr. 
 Traveller, as if he had been asked concerning the man, " and he won't 
 come in ; for he says and really very reasonably ' What should I 
 come in for ? I can see a dirty man anywhere.' " 
 
 " You are an insolent person. Go away from my premises. Go ! " 
 said the Hermit, in an imperious and angry tone. 
 
 " Come, come ! " returned Mr. Traveller, quite undisturbed. " This 
 is a little too much. You are not going to call yourself clean ? Look 
 at your legs. And as to these being your premises : they are in far 
 too disgraceful a condition to claim any privilege of ownership, or 
 anything else." 
 
 The Hermit bounced down from his window-ledge, and cast himself 
 on his bed of soot and cinders. 
 
 " I am not going," said Mr. Traveller, glancing in after him ; 
 " you won't get rid of me in that way. You had better come and 
 talk." 
 
 " I won't talk," said the Hermit, flouncing round to got his back 
 towards the window. 
 
 " Then I will," said Mr. Traveller. " Why should you take it ill 
 tliat I have no curiosity to know why you live this highly absurd and 
 highly indecent life ? When I contemplate a man in a state of 
 disease, surely there is no moral obligation on me to be anxious to 
 know how he took it." 
 
 After a short silence, the Hermit bounced \\\} again, and came back 
 to the barred window. 
 
 " What ? You are not gone ? " he said, aficctiug to have supposed 
 that he was. 
 
 " Nor going," Mr. Traveller rcjilied : " 1 design to pass this summer 
 day licro." 
 
 "How dare you come, sir, upon my premises " the Hermit was 
 
 returning, when Ids visitor interrupted him. 
 
 " Kcally, you know, you must not talk about your premises. I 
 cannot allow such u place as this to bo diguiiied with the name of 
 promises."
 
 Determined not to go away, 177 
 
 " How dare you," said the Hermit, shaking his bars, " come in at 
 my gate, to taunt me with being in a diseased state ? " 
 
 " Why, Lord bless my soul," returned the other, very composedly, 
 *' you have not the face to say that you are in a wholesome state ? 
 Do allow me again to call your attention to your legs. Scrape your- 
 self anywhere with anything and then tell me you are in a 
 wholesome state. The fact is, Mr. Mopes, that you are not only a 
 
 Nuisance " 
 
 " A Nuisance ? " repeated the Hermit, fiercely. 
 " "What is a place in this obscene state of dilapidation but a 
 Nuisance ? What is a man in your obscene state of dilapidation but a 
 Nuisance ? Then, as you very well know, you cannot do without an 
 audience, and your audience is a Nuisance. You attract all the dis- 
 reputable vagabonds and prowlers within ten miles around, by exhibit- 
 ing yourself to them in that objectionable blanket, and by throwing 
 copper money among them, and giving them drink out of those very 
 dirty jars and bottles that I see in there (their stomachs need bo 
 strong !) ; and in short," said Mr. Traveller, summing up in a quietly 
 and comfortably settled manner, " you are a Nuisance, and this kennel 
 is a Nuisance, and the audience that you cannot possibly dispense with 
 is a Nuisance, and the Nuisance is not merely a local Nuisance, 
 because it is a general Nuisance to know that there can he such a 
 Nuisance left in civilisation so very long after its time." 
 
 " Will you go away ? I have a gun in here," said the Hermit. 
 " Pooh ! " 
 " I have ! " 
 
 " Now, I put it to you. Did I say you had not ? And as to going 
 away, didn't I say I am not going away ? You have made me forget 
 where I was. I now remember tliafcl was remarking on your conduct 
 being a Nuisance. Moreover, it is in the last and lowest degree 
 inconsequent foolishness and weakness." 
 " Weakness ? " echoed the Hermit. 
 
 "Weakness," said Mr. Traveller, with his former comfortably 
 settled final air. 
 
 " I weak, you fool ? " cried the Hermit, " I, who have held to my 
 purpose, and my diet, and my only bed there, all these years ? " 
 
 " The more the years, the weaker you," returned Mr. Traveller. 
 " Though the years are not so many as folks say, and as you willingly 
 take credit for. The crust upon your face is thick and dark, Mr. 
 Mopes, but I can see enough of you through it, to see that you are 
 still a young man." 
 
 " Inconsequent foolishness is lunacy, I suppose ? " said the Hermit. 
 " I suppose it is very like it," answered Mr. Traveller. 
 " Do I converse like a lunatic?" 
 
 " One of us two must have a strong presumption against him of 
 being one, whether or no. Either tlio clean and decorously clad man, 
 or the dirty and indecorously chid man. I don't say which."
 
 1 78 Tom Tiddler's Ground. 
 
 " Why, you self-sufficient bear," said the Hermit, " not a day passes 
 but I am justified in my inirposo by tlio conversations I liold here ; 
 not a day passes but I am shown, by everything I hear and see here, 
 how right and strong I am in holding my purpose." 
 
 Mr. Traveller, lounging easily on his billet of wood, took out a 
 pocket pipe and began to fill it. " Now, that a man," he said, appeal- 
 ing to the summer sky as he did so, " that a man even behind bars, 
 in a blanket and skewer should tell mo that ho can see, from day to 
 day, any orders or conditions of men, women, or children, who can by 
 any possibility teach him that it is anything but the miserablest 
 drivelling for a human creature to quarrel with his social nature 
 not to go so far as to say, to renounce his common human decency, 
 for that is an extreme case ; or who can teach him that he can in any 
 wise separate himself from his kind and the habits of his kind, with- 
 out becoming a deteriorated spectacle calculated to give the Uevil 
 (and perhaps tho monkeys) pleasure, is something wonderful ! I 
 repeat," said Mr, Traveller, beginning to smoke, " tho unreasoning 
 hardihood of it is something wonderful even in a man with the dirt 
 upon him an inch or two thick behind bars in a blanket and 
 skewer ! " 
 
 The Hermit looked at him irresolutely, and retired to his soot and 
 cinders and lay down, and got up again and came to the bars, and 
 again looked at him irresolutely, and finally said with sharpness : " I 
 don't like tobacco." 
 
 " I don't liko dirt," rejoined Mr. Traveller ; " tobacco is an 
 excellent disinfectant. We shall both bo tlie better for my pipe. It 
 is my intention to sit liero through this summer day, until that 
 blessed sunnncr sun sinks low in tho west, and to show you wliat a 
 poor creature you are, through the lips of every chance wayfarer who 
 may come in at your gate." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " in(|uircd the Hermit, with a furious air. 
 
 " I meaTi tliat yonder is your gate, and tliero are you, and lierc am 
 I ; I mean tliat I know it to be a moral impossib'ility that any person 
 can stray in at that gate from any point of the compass, with any 
 sort of experience, gained at first hand, or derived from another, that 
 can confute mo and justify you." 
 
 " You arc an arrogant and boastful hero," said the Hermit. " You 
 think yourself profimndly wise." 
 
 'Bah!" returned IVIr. Traveller, quietly smoking. " Tlicre is 
 little wisdom in knowing tliat every man must be n] and doing, and 
 that all mankind are made de2)endent on (mo anotlicr." 
 
 " You liave companions outside," said the Hermit. " I am not to 
 be imj)oHed upon by your assumed confidence in the people who may 
 ent(!r." 
 
 " A depraved distrust," returned the visitor, comjiassionately 
 raising liis eyebrows, " of course belongs to your .state. I can't lielp 
 that."
 
 The Hermit submits. 179 
 
 " Do you mean to tell mo you have no confederates ? " 
 " I mean to tell you nothing but what I have told you. What I 
 have told you is, that it is a moral impossibility that any son or 
 daughter of Adam can stand on this ground that I put my foot on, or 
 on any ground tliat mortal treads, and gainsay tho healthy tenure on 
 which we hold our existence." 
 
 ' Which is," sneered the Hermit, " according to you " 
 
 " Which is," returned the other, *' according to Eternal Providence, 
 that wo must arise and wash our faces and do our gregarious work 
 and act and re-aet on ono another, leaving only the idiot and tho 
 palsied to sit blinking in the corner. Come ! " apostrophising tho 
 gate. " Open Sesame ! Show his eyes and grieve his heart ! I don't 
 care who comes, for I know what must come of it ! " 
 
 With that, he faced round a little on his billet of wood towards tho 
 gate ; and Mr. Mopes, tho Hermit, after two or three ridiculous 
 bounces of indecision at his bed and back again, submitted to what ho 
 could not help himself against, and coiled himself on his window- 
 ledge, holding to his bars and looking out rather anxiously. 
 
 VI. 
 
 PICKING UP MISS KDniEENS. 
 
 The day was by this time waning, when the gate again opened, and, 
 with tho brilliant golden light tliat streamed from the declining sun 
 and touched the very bars of the sooty creature's den, there passed in 
 a little child ; a little girl with beautiful bright hair. She wore a 
 plain straw hat, had a door-key in her liand, and tripped towards Mr. 
 Traveller as if she were pleased to see him and were going to reposo 
 some childish confidence in him, when sho caught sight of the figure 
 behind the bars, and started back in terror. 
 
 " Don't be alarmed, darling ! " said Mr. Traveller, taking her by the 
 hand. 
 
 " Oh, but I don't like it ! " urged the shrinking child ; " it's 
 drcadfxil." 
 
 " Well ! I don't like it either," said Mr. Traveller. 
 
 " Who has put it there ? " asked the little girl. " Docs it bite ? " 
 
 " No, only barks. But can't you make u]i your mind to see it, my 
 dear ? " For she was covering her eyes. 
 
 " no no no ! " returned the child. " I cannot bear to look at it ! " 
 
 Mr. Traveller turned his liead towards his friend in there, as much 
 as to ask liim how he liked that instance of his success, and then took 
 the child out at the still open gate, and stood talking to her for some 
 half an hour in tho mellow sunlight. At length he returned.
 
 i8o Tom Tiddlei's Ground. 
 
 cncourftglng her ns she held his arm with both her hands ; and laying 
 his jirotecting hand upon her head and smoothing her pretty hair, ho 
 addressed his friend behind the bars as follows : 
 
 Miss Pupford's establishment for six young ladies of tender years, 
 is an establishment of a compact nature, an establishment in minia- 
 ture, quite a pocket establishment. Miss Pupford, Miss Pupford's 
 assistant with the Parisian accent, Miss Pupford's cook, and Miss 
 Pupford's housemaid, complete what Miss Pupford calls the educa- 
 tional and domestic staff of her Lilliputian College. 
 
 Miss Pupford is one of the most amiable of her sex ; it necessarily 
 follows that she possesses a sweet temper, and would own to tho 
 possession of a great deal of sentiment if she considered it quite 
 reconcilable with her duty to parents. Deeming it not in the bond, 
 Miss Pupford keeps it as far out of sight as she can which (God 
 bless her !) is not very far. 
 
 Miss Pupford's assistant with the Parisian accent, may bo regarded 
 as in some sort an inspired lady, for she never conversed with a 
 Parisian, and was never out of England except once in the pleasure- 
 boat Lively, in the foreign waters that ebb and flow two miles oflf 
 Margate at high water. Even under those geographically favourable 
 circumstances for tho acquisition of the French language in its utmost 
 politcncss-and purity. Miss Pupford's assistant did not fully profit by 
 the opportunity ; for the pleasure-boat, Lively, so strongly asserted its 
 title to its name on that occasion, that she was reduced to the con- 
 dition of lying in the bottom of tho boat pickling in brine as if sho 
 were being salted down for tlie use of the Navy undergoing at tho 
 same time great mental alarm, corporeal distress, and clear-starching 
 derangement. 
 
 When Miss Pupford and her assistant first foregathered, is not 
 known to men, or pupils. But, it was long ago. A belief would 
 have cstablislied itself among pupils that the two once went to seliool 
 together, were it not for the difliculty and audacity of imagining Miss 
 Pupford l)orn without mittens, and without a front, and without a bit 
 of gold wire among lier front teeth, and without little dal)s of powder 
 on lier neat little face and nose. Indeed, wlienever Miss I'upford 
 gives a little lecture on the mytliology of the misguided licathens 
 (always carefully excluding Cupid from recognition), and tells how 
 Minerva sprang, perfectly e(|ui2)i)cd, from the brain of Jupiter, slie is 
 lialf supposed to hint, " So I myself came into the world, comidetely 
 up in Pinnock, Mangnall, Tal)l(;s, and the use of tlie (llobes." 
 
 llowbeit, jVriss Pupford and IVIiss Pupford's assistant are old old 
 friends. And it is thouglit by pupils that, after pupils are gone to 
 bed, they even call one another by tlioir christian names in tho quiet 
 little ])arlour. For, cmce upon a time on a tliundcrous afternoon, 
 when I\Iiss I'upfoi'd fainted away without notice, IVIiss Pujjford's 
 assistant (never heard, before or since, to address her otherwise than
 
 Miss Pupforcts Establishment for Young Ladies. i8l 
 
 as Miss Pupford) ran to her, crying out "My dearest Eupliemia!" 
 And Euphemia is Miss Pupford's christian name on the sampler (date 
 picked out) hanging uj) in the College-hall, where the two peacocks, 
 terrified to death by some German text that is waddling down-hill 
 after them out of a cottage, are scuttling away to hide their profiles in 
 two immense bean-stalks growing out of flower-pots. 
 
 Also, there is a notion latent among pupils, that Miss Pupford was 
 once in love, and that the beloved object still moves upon this ball. 
 Also, that he is a public character, and a personage of vast conse- 
 quence. Also, that Miss Pupford's assistant knows all about it. For, 
 sometimes of an afternoon when Miss Pupford has been reading the 
 paper through her little gold eye-glass (it is necessary to read it on 
 the spot, as the boy calls for it, with ill-conditioned punctuality, in an 
 hour), she has become agitated, and has said to her assistant " G ! " 
 Then Miss Pupford's assistant has gone to Miss Pupford, and Miss 
 Pupford has pointed out, with her eye-glass, G in the paper, and then 
 Miss Pupford's assistant has read about G, and has ehown sympathy. 
 So stimulated has the pupil-mind been in its time to curiosity on tho 
 subject of G, that once, under tempor ary circumstances favourable to 
 the bold sally, one fearless pupil did actually obtain possession of the 
 paper, and range all over it in search of G, who had been discovered 
 therein by Miss Pupford not ten minu tes before. But no G could be 
 identified, except one capital offender who had been executed in a 
 state of great hardihood, and it was not to be supposed that Miss 
 Pupford could ever have loved Mm. Besides, he couldn't be always 
 being executed. Besides, he got into the paper again, alive, within a 
 month. 
 
 On the whole, it is suspected by the pupil-mind that G is a short 
 chubby old gentleman, with little black sealing-wax boots up to his 
 knees, whom a sharply observant pupil. Miss Linx, when she once 
 went to Tunbridge Wells with Miss Pupford for the holidays, reported 
 on her return (privately and confidentially) to have seen come caper- 
 ing up to Miss Pupford on the Promenade, and to have detected in 
 the act of squeezing Miss Pupford's hand, and to have heard pro- 
 nounce the words, " Cruel Euphemia, ever thine ! " or something 
 like that. Miss Linx hazarded a guess that he might be House of 
 Commons, or Money Market, or Court Circular, or Fashionable Move- 
 ments ; which would account for his getting into the paper so often. 
 But, it was fatally objected by the pupil-mind, that none of those 
 notabilities could possibly be spelt with a G. 
 
 There are other occasions, closely watched and perfectly compre- 
 hended by the pupil-mind, when Miss Pupford imparts with mystery 
 to her assistant that there is special excitement in the morning paper. 
 These occasions are, when Miss Pupford finds an old pupil coming 
 out under the head of Births, or Marriages. Affectionate tears are 
 invariably seen in Miss Pupford's meek little eyes when this is the 
 case ; and the pupil-mind, perceiving that its order has distinguished
 
 1 82 Tom Tiddler's Ground. 
 
 itself tbougli the fact is never mentioned by Miss Pui)foi'd bccomfcS 
 elevated, and feels that it likewise is reserved for greatness. 
 
 Miss Pnpford's assistant with the Parisian accent has a little more 
 bone than Miss Pupford, but is of the same trim orderly diminutive 
 cast, and, from long contemplation, admiration, and imitation of Miss 
 Papford, has grown like her. Being entirely devoted to Miss 
 Pupford, and having a pretty talent for pencil-drawing, she once 
 made a portrait of that lady : which was so instantly identified and 
 hailed by the pupils, that it was done on stone at five shillings. 
 Surely the softest and milkiest stone that ever was quarried, received 
 that likeness of Miss Pupford ! The lines of her placid little noso 
 nrc so undecided in it that strangers to the work of art are observed 
 to be exceedingly perplexed as to where tlic nose goes to, and involun- 
 tarily feel their own noses in a disconcerted manner. Miss Papford 
 being represented in a state of dejection at an open wind )W, rumi- 
 nating over a bowl of gold fish, the pupil-mind lias settled that tlio 
 ])owl was presented by Gr, and that he wreathed the bowl witli flowers 
 of soul, and that Miss Pupford is depicted as waiting for him on a 
 memorable occasion \vhen lie was behind his time. 
 
 The approach of the last Midsummer holidays had a particular 
 interest for the pupil-mind, by reason of its knowing thab Miss 
 Pupford was bidden, on the second day of those holidays, to the 
 nuptials of a former pupil. As it was impossible to conceal tlio fact 
 so extensive were the dress-making prci)arations Miss Pupford 
 openly announced it. But, she held it due to parents to make the 
 announcement with an air of gentle melancholy, as if marriage were 
 (as indeed it exceptionally has been) ratlier a calamity. AVith an air 
 of softened resignation and pity, therefore. Miss Pupford went on with 
 her preparations : and meanwhile no pupil ever went up-stairs, or 
 came d own, Avithout peeping in at the door of MissPupford's bedroom 
 (when Miss Papford wasn't there), and bringing back some surj^risiug 
 intelligence concerning the bonnet. 
 
 The extensive prejiarations being completed on tlie day before tho 
 holidays, an unanimous entreaty was jn-eferred to Miss Pupford by tho 
 pupil-mind finding expression tlirough Miss Pupford's assistant 
 that slie would deign to appear in all her sj'lcndour. IMiss Pujjford 
 consenting, presented a lovely spectacle. And although the oldest 
 pupil was barely thirteen, every one of the six became in two minutes 
 perfect in the shape, cut, colour, price, and quality, of evtry article 
 Miss Pupford wove. 
 
 Thus delightfully ushered in, the holidays began. Five of tlio six 
 pupils kissod little Kitty Kimmcens twenty times over (round total, 
 one hundred times, for she was very popular), and so went liome. 
 Miss Kilty Kimuieens remained behind, for lier rehitions and friends 
 v/ere all in India, far away. A self-helpful steady little child is Miss 
 Kitty Ivimnieens : a dimpled child too, and a loving. 
 
 So, the great marriage-day came, and Miss PuiJiord, quite as much
 
 Poor Bella. 183 
 
 fluttered as any bride could be (G ! tbougbt Miss Kitty Kimmecns), 
 went away, splendid to behold, in the carriage that was sent for her. 
 But not Miss Pupford only went away ; for Miss Pupford's assistant 
 went away with her, on a dutiful visit to an aged uncle though 
 surely the venerable gentleman couldn't live in the gallery of the 
 church where the marriage was to be, thought Miss Kitty Kimmeens 
 and yet Miss Pupford's assistant had let out that she was going 
 there. Where the cook was going, didn't appear, but she generally 
 conveyed to Miss Kimmeens that she was bound, rather against her 
 will, on a pilgrimage to perform some pious office that rendered new 
 ribbons necessary to her best bonnet, and also sandals to her shoes. 
 
 " So you see," said tlie housemaid, when they were all gone, " there's 
 nobody left in the house but you and me. Miss Kimmeens." 
 
 " Nobody else," said Miss Kitty Kimmeens, shaking her curls a 
 little sadly. " Nobody ! " 
 
 " And you wouldn't like your Bella to go too ; would you. Miss 
 Kimmeens ? " said the housemaid. (She being Bella.) 
 
 " N no," answered little Miss Kimmeens. 
 
 " Your poor Bella is forced to stay with you, whether she likes it or 
 not ; ain't she, Miss Kimmeens ? " 
 
 " Dont you like it ? " inquired Kitty. 
 
 " Why, yoxi're such a darling. Miss, that it v\'ould be unkind of 
 your Bella to make objections. Yet my brother-in-law has been took 
 unexpected bad by this morning's post. And your poor Bella is 
 much attached to him, letting alone her favourite sister. Miss Kim- 
 meens." 
 
 " Is he very ill ? " asked little Kitty. 
 
 " Your poor Bella has her fears so, Miss Kimmeens," returned the 
 housemaid, with her apron at her eyes. " It v/as but his inside, it is 
 true, but it might mount, and the doctor said that if it mounted ho 
 wouldn't answer." Here the housemaid was so overcome that Kitty 
 administered the only comfort she had ready : vvhich wlas a kiss. 
 
 " If it hadn't been for disappointing Cook, dear Miss Kimmeens," 
 said the housemaid, " your Bella would have asked her to stay with 
 you. For Cook is sweet company. Miss Kimmeens, much more so 
 than your own poor Bella," 
 
 " But you are very nice, Bella." 
 
 " Your Bella could wish to be so, Miss Kimmeens," returned the 
 housemaid, " but she knows full v/ell that it do not lay in her power 
 this day." 
 
 With which despondent conviction, the housemaid drew a heavy 
 sigh, and shook her head, and dropped it on one side. 
 
 " If it had been anyways right to disappoint Cook," she pursued, in 
 a contemplative and abstracted manner, " it might have been so easy 
 done ! I could have got to my brother-in-law's, and had the best 
 part of tlie day there, and got back, long before our ladies come home 
 at night, and neither the one nor the other of them need never have
 
 184 Tom Tiddler's Ground. 
 
 known it. Not that Miss Pupford would at all object, but that it mip;lit 
 put her out, being tender-hearted. Hows'ever, your own poor Bella, 
 Miss Kirameens," said the housemaid, rousing herself, " is forced to 
 stay with you, and you're a precious love, if not a liberty." 
 
 " Bella," said little Kitty, after a short silence. 
 
 " Call your own poor Bella, your Bella, dear," the housemaid bo- 
 sought her. 
 
 " My Bella, then." 
 
 " Bless your considerate heart ! " said the housemaid. 
 
 " If you would not mind leaving me, I should not mind being left. 
 I am not afraid to stay in the house alone. And you need not bo 
 uneasy ou my account, for I would be very careful to do no harm." 
 
 " ! As to harm, you more thau sweetest, if not a liberty," ex- 
 claimed tlie housemaid, in a rapture, " your Bella could trust you any- 
 where, being so steady, and so answerable. The oldest head in this 
 house (me and Cook says), but for its bright hair, is Miss Kimmecus. 
 But no, I will not leave you ; for you would think your Bella un- 
 kind." 
 
 " But if you are my Bella, you must go," returned the child. 
 
 " Must I ? " said the housciuaid, rising, on the whole with alacrity. 
 " What must be, must be. Miss Kimmeens. Your own poor Bella acts 
 according, though unwilling. But go or stay, your own poor Bella 
 loves you. Miss Kimmeens." 
 
 It was certainly go, and not stay, for within five minutes Miss 
 Kimmeens's own poor Bella so much improved in point of spiiits as 
 to have grown almost sanguine on the subject of her brother-in-law 
 went her way, in a2:>parel that seemed to have been expressly prepared 
 for some festive occasion. Such are the changes of this fleeting world, 
 and so short-sighted are we poor mortals ! 
 
 When the house door closed with a bang and a shake, it seemed to 
 Miss Kimmeens to bo a very lieavy house door, shutting her up in a 
 Avilderness of a house. But, Miss Kimmeens being, as before stated, 
 of a self-reliant and methodical character, presently began to parcel 
 out the long summer-day before her. 
 
 And first she thought she would go all over the house, to mako 
 quite sure that nobody with a groat-coat on and a carving-knife in it, 
 had got under one of the beds or into one of the cujiboards. IS'ot 
 that she had ever before been troubled by the image of anybody 
 armed with a great-coat and a carving-knife, but tliat it seemed to 
 have been shaken into existence by the sliake and tlic bang of the 
 great street-door, reverberating through the solitary house. So, little 
 Miss Kimmeens looked under the five empty beds of the five dejjartod 
 pupils, and looked under her own bed, and looked under Miss I'liji- 
 ford's bed, and looked xnider Miss Pupford's assistant's bed. And 
 when she had done this, and was making the tour of tlio cujjboards, 
 till! disagr<u!able tliought came into her young liead, AVliat a very 
 alarming thing it would be to find somebody with a mask ou, like
 
 A Solitary Day. 1 85 
 
 Gny Fawkcs, hiding bolt upright in a corner and pretending not to be 
 alive ! However, Miss Kimmeens having finished her inspection 
 without making any such uncomfortable discovery, sat dovv^n in her 
 tidy little manner to needlework, and began stitching away at a great 
 rate. 
 
 The silence all about her soon grew very oppressive, and the more 
 BO because of the odd inconsistency that the more silent it was, the 
 more noises there were. The noise of her own needle and thread as 
 she stitched, was infinitely louder in her ears than the stitching of all 
 the six pupils, and of Miss Pupford, and of Miss Pujjford's assistant, 
 all stitching away at once on a highly emulative afternoon. Tlien, 
 the schoolroom clock conducted itself in a way in which it had never 
 conducted itself before fell lame, somehow, and yet persisted in 
 running on as hard and as loud as it could : the consequence of which 
 behaviour was, that it staggered among the minutes in a state of the 
 greatest confusion, and knocked them about in all directions without 
 appearing to get on with its regular work. Perhaps this alarmed the 
 stairs ; but be that as it might, they began to creak in a most unusual 
 manner, and then the furniture began to crack, and then poor little 
 Miss Kimmeens, not liking the furtive aspect of things in general, 
 began to sing as she stitched. But, it was not her own voice that she 
 heard it was somebody else making believe to be Kitty, and singing 
 excessively flat, without any heart so as that would never mend 
 matters, she left off again. 
 
 By-and-by, the stitching became so palpable a failure that Miss 
 Kitty Kimmeens folded her work neatly, and put it away in its box, 
 and gave it up. Then the question arose about reading. But no ; 
 the book that was so delightful when there was somebody she loved 
 for her eyes to fall on wlien they rose from the Jjage, had not more 
 heart in it than her own singing now. The book went to its shelf as 
 the needlework had gone to its box, and, since something must bo 
 done thought the child, " I'll go put my room to rights." 
 
 She shared her room Avith her dearest little friend among the other 
 five pupils, and why then should she now conceive a lurking dread of 
 the little friend's bedstead ? But she did. There was a stealthy air 
 about its innocent white curtains, and there were even dark hints of 
 a dead girl lying under the coverlet. The great want of human 
 company, tlie great need of a human face, began now to express itself 
 in the facility with which the furniture put on strange exaggerated 
 resemblances to human looks. A chair with a menacing frown was 
 horribly out of temper in a corner ; a most vicious chest of drawers 
 snarled at her from between the windows. It was no relief to escape 
 from those monsters to the looking-glass, for the reflection said, 
 " What ? Is that you all alone there ? How you stare ! " And the 
 background was all a groat void stare as well. 
 
 The day dragged on, dragging Kitty with it very slowly by the 
 hair of her head, until it was time to cat. There were good provisions
 
 1 86 Tom Tiddler's Ground. 
 
 in the pantry, but their right flavour and relish had evaporated with 
 the five pupils, and Miss Pupford, and Miss Pupford's assistant, and 
 the cook and housemaid. Where was the use of laying the cloth 
 symmetrically for one small guest, who had gone on ever since the 
 morning growing smaller and smaller, while the empty house had gone 
 on swelling larger and larger ? The very Grace came out wrong, for 
 who were " we " who were going to receive and be thankful ? So, Miss 
 Kimmeens was not thankful, and found herself taking her dinner in 
 very slovenly style gobbling it up, in short, rather after the manner 
 of the lower animals, not to particularise the pigs. 
 
 But, this was by no means the worst of the change wrought out in 
 the naturally loving and cheery little creature as tlio solitary day 
 woi'c on. She began to brood and be suspicious. She discovered that 
 Bhe was full of wrongs and injuries. All the people she knew, got 
 tainted by her lonely thoughts and turned bad. 
 
 It was all very well for Papa, a widower in India, to send her homo 
 to be educated, and to pay a handsome round sum every year for her 
 to Miss Pupford, and to write charming letters to his darling little 
 daughter ; but what did he care for her being left by herself, when ho 
 was (as uo doubt he always v/as) enjoying himself in couipauy from 
 morning till niglit ? Perhaps he only sent her here, after all, to get 
 her out of the ^vay. It looked like it looked like it to-day, that is, 
 for she had never dreamed of such a thing before. 
 
 And this old pupil who was being married. It was imsui)portably 
 conceited and sellish in the old pupil to bo married. She was very 
 vain, and very glad to show otF; but it was highly probable that sho 
 wasn't pi'etty ; and even if she were pretty (which Miss Kimmeens 
 now totally denied), she had no business to be married ; and, even if 
 marriage were concedod, she had uo business to ask Miss Pupford to 
 her wedding. As to Miss Pupford, she was too old to go to any wed- 
 ding. She ought to know that. She had much better attend to her 
 business. She had thought she looked nice in the morning, but sho 
 didn't look nice. Slie was a stupid old thing. G was another stupid 
 old tiling. Miss Pupford's assistant was another. They were all 
 Btuj)id old things together. 
 
 More than tliat : it began to be obvious that tliis was a plot. They 
 Iiad said to one anotlier, " Never mind Kitty ; you get olt, and I'll get 
 off; and we'll leave Kitty to look after herself. Who cares for her 1 " 
 To be sure they were right in that question ; for wlio did care for lier, 
 a poor little lonely tiling against whom they all planned and plotted ? 
 Nobody, nobody ! Here Kitty sobbed. 
 
 At all other times she was the pet of the whole house, and loved 
 her five companions in return with a child's tenderest and most 
 ingenuous attachment ; but now, the five companions put on ugly 
 colours, and appeared for the first time under a sullen cloud. There 
 they were, all at their homes that daj', being made mucli of, being 
 takeu out, being spoilt and made disagreeable, ;iud caring nothing for
 
 Envious Thoughts. 187 
 
 her. It was like their artful selfishness always to tell her when they 
 came back, under pretence of confidence and friendship, all those 
 details about where they had been, and what they had done and seen, 
 and how often they had said, " ! If we had only darling little 
 Kitty here ! " Here indeed ! I dare say ! When they came back 
 after the holidays, they were used to being received by Kitty, and to 
 saying that coming to Kitty was like coming to another home. Very 
 well then, why did they go away ? If they meant it, why did they go 
 away ? Let them answer that. But they didn't mean it, and couldn't 
 answer thatj and they didn't tell the truth, and people who didn't tell 
 the truth Avere hateful. When they came back next time, they 
 should be received in a new manner; they should be avoided and 
 shunned. 
 
 And there, the while she sat all alone revolving how ill she was 
 used, and how much better she was than the jjeople who were not alone, 
 the wedding breakfast was going on : no question of it ! With a 
 nasty great bride-cake, and with those ridiculous orange-flowers, and 
 with that conceited bride, and that hideous bridegroom, and those 
 heartless bridesmaids, and Miss Pupford stuck up at the table ! They 
 thought they were enjoying themselves, but it would come home to 
 them one day to have thought so. They would all be dead in a few 
 years, let them enjoy themselves ever so much. It was a religious 
 comfort to know that. 
 
 It was such a comfort to know it, that little Miss Kitty Kimmeens 
 suddenly sprang from the chair in which she had been musing in a 
 corner, and cried out, "0 those envious thoughts arc not mine, O this 
 wicked creature isn't me ! Help me, somebody ! I go wrong, alono 
 by my weak self ! Help me, anybody ! " 
 
 " Miss Kimmeens is not a professed philosopher, sir," said Mr, 
 Traveller, presenting licr at tlie barred window, and smoothing her 
 shining hair, " but I apprehend there was some tincture of philosopliy 
 in her words, and in the prompt action with which she followed them. 
 That action w'as, to emerge from her unnatural solitude, and look 
 abroad for wholesome symjmthy, to bestow and to receive. Her foot- 
 steps strayed to this gate, bringing her here by chance, as an apj)osite 
 contrast to you. The child came out, sir. If you have the wisdom 
 to learn from a child (but I doubt it, for that requires more wisdom 
 than one in your condition would seem to possess), you cannot do 
 better than imitate the child, and come out too from that very 
 demoralising hutch of yours."
 
 VII. 
 
 PICKING UP THE TINKER. 
 
 It was now sunset. The Hermit had betaken liimself to his bed of 
 cinders half an hour ago, and lying on it in liis blanket and skewer 
 with his back to the window, took not the smallest heed of the appeal 
 addressed to him. 
 
 All that had been said for the last two hours, had been said to a 
 tinkling accompaniment performed by the Tinker, who had got to 
 work upon some villager's pot or kettle, and was working briskly 
 outside. This music still continuing, seemed to put it into Mr. 
 Traveller's mind to have another word or two with the Tinker. So, 
 holding Miss Kimmeens (with whom ho was now on the most friendly 
 terms) by the hand, he went out at the gate to where the Tinker was 
 seated at his work on the patch of grass on the opposite side of the 
 road, with his wallet of tools open before him, and his little fire 
 smoking. 
 
 " I am glad to see you employed," said Mr. Traveller. 
 
 *' I am glad to he employed," returned the Tinker, looking up as ho 
 put the finishing touches to his job. " But why are you glad ? " 
 
 " I thought you were a lazy fellow when I saw you this morning." 
 
 " I was only disgusted," said the Tinker. 
 
 " Do you mean with the fine weather ? " 
 
 " With the fine weather ? " repeated tlie Tinker, staring. 
 
 " You told me you were not particular as to weather, and I 
 thought " 
 
 " Ha, ha ! How should such as me get on, if we teas particular as 
 to weather ? We must take it as it comes, and make the best of it. 
 There's something good in all weathers. If it don't happen to bo 
 good for my work to-day, it's good for some otlicr man's to-day, and 
 will come round to mo to-morrow. We must all live." 
 
 " Pray shake hands," said Mr. Traveller. 
 
 " Take care, sir," was tlie Tinker's caution, as he reached up his 
 hand in surprise ; " the black comes olf." 
 
 " I am glad of it," said Mr. Traveller. " I have been for several 
 hours among other black that docs not come ofi"." 
 
 " You are speaking of Tom in there ? " 
 
 Yes." 
 
 " Well now," said the Tinker, blowing the dust off his job : wliicli 
 was finished. " Ain't it enough to disgust a pig, if he could give his 
 mind to it ? " 
 
 " If ho could give his mind to it," returned the other, smiling, " tlie 
 probability is that he wouldn't bo a pig." 
 
 " There you clench the nail," returned the Tinker. " Then what's 
 to be said for Tom ? "
 
 Worse than the Tinker thought him, 189 
 
 Truly, very little." 
 
 " Truly nothing you mean, sir," said the Tinker, as he put away 
 his tools. 
 
 "A better answer, and (I freely acknowledge) my meaning. I 
 infer that ho was the cause of your disgust ? " 
 
 " Why, look'ee here, sir," said the Tinker, rising to his feet, and 
 wiping his face on the corner of his black apron energetically ; " I 
 leave you to judge ! I ask you ! Last night I has a job that needs to 
 be done in the night, and I works all night. Well, there's nothing in 
 that. But this morning I comes along this road here, looking for a 
 sunny and soft spot to sleep in, and I sees this desolation and ruina- 
 tion. I've lived myself in desolation and ruination ; I knows many a 
 fellow-creetur that's forced to live life long in desolation and ruina- 
 tion ; and I sits me down and takes pity on it, as I casts my eyes 
 about. Then comes up the long-winded one as I told you of, from 
 that gate, and spins himself out like a silkworm concerning the 
 Donkey (if my Donkey at home will excuse me) as has made it all 
 made it of his own choice ! And tells me, if you please, of his like- 
 wise choosing to go ragged and naked, and grimy maskerading, 
 mountebanking, in what is the real hard lot of thousands and 
 thousands ! Why, then I say it's a unbearable and nonsensical piece 
 of inconsistency, and I'm disgusted. I'm ashamed and disgusted ! " 
 
 " I wish you would come and look at him," said Mr. Traveller, 
 clapping the Tinker on the shoulder. 
 
 " Not I, sir," he rejoined. " / ain't a going to flatter him up by 
 looking at him ! " 
 
 " But he is asleep." 
 
 " Arc you sure he is asleep ? " asked the Tinker, with an unwilling 
 air, as he shouldered his wallet. 
 
 " Sure." 
 
 " Then I'll look at him for a quarter of a minute," said the Tinker, 
 " since you so much wish it ; but not a moment longer." 
 
 They all three went back across the road ; and, through the barred 
 window, by the dying glow of the sunset coming in at the gate 
 which the child held open for its admission he could be pretty 
 clearly discerned lying on his bed. 
 
 " You see him ? " asked Mr, Traveller. 
 
 " Yes," returned the Tinker, " and he's worse than I thought him." 
 
 Mr. Traveller then whispered in few v/ords what ho had clone since 
 morning ; and asked the Tinker what ho thought of that ? 
 
 " I think," returned the Tinker, as he turned from the window, 
 " that you've wasted a day on him." 
 
 " I think so too ; though not, I hope, upon myself. Do you happen 
 to be going anywhere near the Peal of Bolls ? " 
 
 " That's my direct way, sir," said the Tinker. 
 
 "I invite you to supper there. And as I learn from this young lady 
 that she goes some tlirce-quartcrs of a mile in the same direction, wo
 
 ipo Tom Tiddler's Ground. 
 
 will drop her on the road, and wo will sparo time to keep Lor 
 company at her garden gate until her own Bella comes home." 
 
 So, Mr. Traveller, and the child, and the Tinker, went along very 
 amicably in the sweet-scented evening ; and the moral with which the 
 Tinker dismissed the subject was, that he said in his trade that metal 
 that rotted for want of use, had better be left to rot, and couldn't rot 
 too soon, considering how much true metal rotted from over-use and 
 hard service.
 
 someuodn's luggac.k.
 
 SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE. 
 
 IN FOUE CHAPTERS. 
 
 [1862.] 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HIS LEAVING IT TILL CALLED FOR. 
 
 The writer of these humble lines being a Waiter, and having come of 
 a family of Waiters, and owning at the present time five brothers who 
 are all Waiters, and likewise an only sister who is a Waitress, would 
 wish to offer a few words respecting his calling ; first having the 
 pleasure of hereby in a friendly manner ofi'ering the Dedication of the 
 same unto Joseph, much respected Head Waiter at the Shimjara 
 Coflee-house, London, E.G., than which a individual more eminently 
 deserving of the name of man, or a more amenable honour to his own 
 head and heart, whether considered in tho light of a Waiter or 
 regarded as a human being, do not exist. 
 
 In case confusion should arise in the public mind (which it is open 
 to confusion on many subjects) respecting what is meant or implied 
 by tho term Waiter, the present humble lines would wish to offer an 
 explanation. It may not bo generally known that the person as goes 
 out to wait is not a Waiter. It may not be generally known that tho 
 hand as is called in extra, at the Freemasons' Tavern, or the London, 
 or the Albion, or otherwise, is not a Waiter. Such hands may be took 
 on for Public Dinners by the bushel (and you may know them by 
 their breathing with difficulty when in attendance, and taking away 
 the bottle ere yet it is half out) ; but such are not Waiters. For you 
 cannot lay down the tailoring, or the shoemaking, or the bi'okering, 
 or the green-grocering, or the pictorial-periodicalling, or the second- 
 hand wardrobe, or tlie small fancy businesses, you cannot lay down 
 those lines of life at your will and pleasure by the half-day or even- 
 ing, and take up Waitering. You may suppose you can, but you 
 cannot ; or you may go so far as to say you do, but you do not. Nor
 
 192 Somebody s Luggage. 
 
 yet can you lay down the gentlcman's-servico when stimulated by 
 prolonged incompatibility on the part of Cooks (and hero it may be 
 remarked that Cooking and Incompatibility will bo mostly found 
 united), and take up Waitering. It has been ascertained that what a 
 gentleman will sit meek under, at home, ho will not bear out of doors, 
 at the Slamjam or any similar establishment. Then, what is tho 
 inference to be drawn respecting true Waitering ? You must bo bred 
 to it. You must be born to it. 
 
 Would you know how born to it, Fair Eeader, if of tho adorable 
 female sex ? Then learn from the biographical experience of one that 
 is a Waiter in the sixty-first year of his ago. 
 
 You were conveyed, ere yet your dawning powers were otherwise 
 developed than to harbour vacancy in your inside, you were con- 
 veyed, by surreptitious means, into a pantry adjoining the Admiral 
 Nelson, Civic and General Diniug-Eooms, there to receive by stealth 
 that healthful sustenance which is the pride and boast of tho British 
 female constitution. Your motlier was married to your father (him- 
 self a distant Waiter) in the profoundest secrecy ; for a Waitress 
 known to be married would ruin the best of businesses, it is tho 
 same as on tho stage. Hence your being smuggled into the pantry, 
 and that to add to the infliction by an unwilling grandmother. 
 Under the combined influence of tho smells of roast and boiled, and 
 soup, and gas, and malt liquors, you partook of your earliest nourish- 
 ment ; your unwilling grandmother sitting jircpared to catch you 
 when your mother was called and dropped you ; your grandmother's 
 shawl ever ready to stifle your natural complainings ; your innocent 
 mind surrounded by uncongenial cruets, dirty plates, dish-covers, and 
 cold gravy ; your mother calling down the pipe for veals and jiorks, 
 instead of sootliing you witli nursery rhymes. Under these untoward 
 circumstances you were early weaned. Your imwilling grandmothei', 
 ever growing more unwilling as your food assimilated less, then con- 
 tracted habits of shaking you till your system curdled, and your food 
 would not assimilate at all. At length she was no longer spared, and 
 could have been thankfully spared much sooner. When your brothers 
 began to appear in succession, your mother retired, left off her smart 
 dressing (she had previously been a smart dresser), and her dark 
 ringlets (wliicli liad previously been flowing), and haunted your fatlicr 
 late of nights, lying in wait for liim, through all weathers, up tlie 
 shabby court which led to the back door of the Royal Old Dust-IJin 
 (said to have been so named by (Icorge the Fourth), where your 
 fatlicr was Head. But the Dust-Bin was going down then, and your 
 father took but little, excepting from a licpiid point of view. Your 
 mother's object in tliose visits was of a house-keeping character, and 
 you was sot on to whistle your father out. Sometimes he came out, 
 but generally Jiot. Come or not come, however, all that part of his 
 existence wliicli was unconnected with ojjcn Waitering was k(tpt a 
 close secret, and was acknowledged by your mother to bo a close
 
 Preliminary Remarks on Waiters. 193 
 
 secret, and you and your mother flitted about the court, close secrets 
 both of you, and would scarcely have confessed under torture that you 
 knew your father, or that your father had any name than Dick (which 
 wasn't his name, though ho was never known by any other), or that 
 he had kith or kin or chick or child. Perhaps the attraction of this 
 mystery, combined with your father's having a damp compartment, 
 to himself, behind a leaky cistern, at the Dust-Bin, a sort of a cellar 
 compartment, with a sink in it, and a smell, and a plate-rack, and a 
 bottle-rack, and three windows that didn't match each other or any- 
 thing else, and no daylight, caused your young mind to feel con- 
 vinced that you must grow up to be a Waiter too ; but you did feel 
 convinced of it, and so did all your brothers, down to your sister. 
 Every one of you felt convinced that you was born to the Waitering. 
 At this stage of your career, what was your feelings one day when 
 your father came home to your mother in open broad daylight, of 
 itself an act of Madness on the part of a Waiter, and took to his bed 
 (leastwise, your mother and family's bed), with the statement that his 
 eyes were devilled kidneys. Physicians being in vain, your father 
 expired, after repeating at intervals for a day and a night, when 
 gleams of reason and old business fitfully illuminated his being, " Two 
 and two is five. And three is sixpence." Interred in the parochial 
 department of the neighbouring churchyard, and accompanied to the 
 grave by as many W^aiters of long standing as could spare the morn- 
 ing time from their soiled glasses (namely, one), your bereaved form 
 was attired in a white neckankecher, and you was took on from 
 motives of benevolence at The George and Gridiron, theatrical and 
 supper. Here, supporting nature on what you found in the platcH 
 (which was as it happened, and but too often thoughtlessly, immersed 
 in mustard), and on what you found in the glasses (which rarely went 
 beyond driblets and lemon), by night you dropped asleep standing, 
 till you was cuficd awake, and by day was set to polishing every indi- 
 vidual article in the cofFec-room. Your couch being sawdust ; your 
 counterpane being ashes of cigars. Here, frequently hiding a heavy 
 heart under tho smart tie of your white neckankecher (or correctly 
 speaking lower down and more to tho left), you picked up the rudi- 
 ments of knowledge from an extra, by the name of Bishops, and by 
 calling plate-washer, and gradually elevating your mind with chalk 
 on the back of the corner-box partition, until such time as you used 
 the inkstand when it was out of hand, attained to manhood, and to be 
 tho Waiter that you find yourself. 
 
 I could wish here to offer a few respectful words on behalf of the 
 calling so long the calling of myself and family, and the public 
 interest in which is but too often very limited. We are not generally 
 understood. No, we are not. Allowance enough is not made for us. 
 For, say that Ave ever show a little drooping listlessness of spirits, or 
 what might be termed indifference or apathy. Put it to yourself 
 what would your own state of mind be, if you was one of an enormous 
 
 o
 
 194 Somebody's Liiggage. 
 
 family every member of wliicli except you was always greedy, and in 
 a hurry. Put it to yourself that you was regularly replete with 
 animal food at the slack hours of one in the day and again at nine p.m., 
 and that the repleter you was, the more voracious all your fellow- 
 creatures came in. Put it to youi'self that it was your business, 
 when your digestion was well on, to take a personal interest and 
 sympathy in a hundred gentlemen fresh and fresh (say, for the 
 sake of argument, only a hundred), whose imaginations was given up 
 to grease and fat and gravy and melted butter, and abandoned to 
 questioning you about cuts of this, and dishes of that, each of 'em 
 going on as if him and you and the bill of fare was alone in the world. 
 Then look what you are expected to know. You are never out, but 
 they seem to think you regularly attend everywhere. " What's this, 
 Christopher, that I hear about the smashed Excursion Train ? " 
 " How are they doing at the Italian Opera, Christopher ? " 
 " Christopher, what are the real particulars of this business at the 
 Yorkshire Bank ? " Similarly a ministiy gives me more trouble than 
 it gives the Queen. As to Lord Palmerstou, the constant and wear- 
 ing connection into which I havo ])oen brought with liis lordship 
 during the last few years is deserving of a pension. Then look at 
 the Hypocrites wo are made, and the lies (white, I hope) that are 
 forced upon us! Why must a sedentary-pursuited Waiter be con- 
 sidered to be a judge of horseflesh, and to havo a most trcmcnjous 
 interest in horse-training and racing ? Yet it would be half our 
 little incomes out of our pockets if wo didn't take on to havo those 
 sporting tastes. It is the same (inconceivable why !) with Farming. 
 Shooting, equally so. I am sure that so regular as the months of 
 August, September, and October come round, I am ashamed of myself 
 in my own private bosom for the way in Avhich I mako believe to 
 care whether or not the grouse is strong on the wing (much their 
 wings, or drumsticks either, signifies to me, uncooked !), and whether 
 the partridges is plentiful among the turnijis, and whether the 
 pheasants is shy or bold, or anything else you please to mention. 
 Yet you may see me, or any other Waiter of my standing, holding on 
 by the back of the box, and leaning over a gentleman with liis purse 
 out and his bill before him, discussing tlicse points in a confidential 
 tone of voice, as if my hapjiiness in life entirely depended on 'em. 
 
 I have mentioned our little incomes. Loolc at tlie most unreason- 
 able point of all, and tlie point on which the greatest injustice is 
 done us! Whether it is ov.ing to our always carrying so much 
 change in our right-liand trousers-jiockct, and so many halfpence in 
 our coat-tails, or whether it is human nature (wliicli I were loth to 
 believe), what is meant by the everlasting fable that Head Waiters 
 is rich? How did that fable get into circulation? Who first put it 
 about, and what are the facts to establish the unblushing statement? 
 Come forth, tliou slanderer, and refer tlie public to the Waiter's will 
 in Doctors' Commons supporting tliy nialiguant liiss ! Yet tliis is so
 
 A Misrepresentation. 195 
 
 commonly dwelt upon especially by the screws who give Waiters 
 the least that denial is vain ; and we are obliged, for our credit's 
 sake, to carry our heads as if we were going into a business, when of 
 the two we are much more likely to go into a imion. There was 
 formerly a screw as frequented the Slamjam ere yet the present writer 
 had quitted that establishment on a question of tea-ing his assistant 
 staff out of his own pocket, which screw carried the taunt to its 
 bitterest height. Never soaring above threepence, and as often as not 
 grovelling on the earth a penny lower, he yet represented the present 
 writer as a large holder of Consols, a lender of money on mortgage, 
 a Capitalist. Ho has been overheard to dilate to other customers 
 on the allegation that the present writer put out thousands of 
 pounds at interest in Distilleries and Breweries. " Well, Christopher," 
 he would say (having grovelled his lowest on the earth, half a 
 moment before), " looking out for a House to open, eh ? Can't find 
 a business to be disposed of on a scale as is up to your resources, 
 humph ? " To such a dizzy precipice of falsehood has this mis- 
 reprcscutation taken wing, that the well-known and highly-respected 
 Old Ciiaules, long eminent at the West Country Hotel, and by somo 
 considered the Father of the Waitering, found himself under the 
 obligation to fall into it through so many years that his own wife (for 
 he had an unbeknown old lady in that cai)acity towards himself) 
 believed it ! And what was the consequence ? When he was borne 
 to his grave on the shoulders of six picked Waiters, with six more for 
 change, six more acting as pall-bcarers, all keeping step in a pouring 
 shower without a dry eye visible, and a concourse only inferior to 
 Eoyalty, his pantry and lodgings was equally ransacked high and 
 low for property, and none was found ! Plow could it be found, 
 when, beyond his last monthly collection of walking-sticks, umbrellas, 
 and pocket-handkerchiefs (which hajipencd to have been not yet 
 disposed of, though he had ever been through life punctual in clear- 
 ing off his collections by the month), there was no property existing? 
 Such, however, is the force of this universal libel, that the widow of 
 Old Charles, at the present hour an inmate of the Almshouses of the 
 Cork-Cutters' Company, in Blue Anchor lioad (identified sitting at 
 the door of one of 'em, in a clean cap and a Windsor arm-chair, only 
 last Monday), expects John's hoarded wealth to be foimd hourly ! 
 Nay, ere yet he had succumbed to the grisly dart, and when his 
 portrait was painted in oils life-size, by subscription of the frequenters 
 of the West Country, to hang over the coffee-room chimney-jDicce, 
 there were not wanting those who contended that what is termed the 
 accessories of such a portrait ought to be the Bank of England out 
 of window, and a strong-box on the table. And but for better- 
 regulated minds contending for a bottle and screw and the attitude of 
 drawing, and carrying their point, it would have been so handed 
 down to posterity. 
 
 I am now brought to the title of the present remarks. Having, I
 
 196 Somebody's Luggage. 
 
 hope without offence to any quarter, offered such observations as I 
 felt it my duty to offer, in a free country which has ever dominated 
 the seas, on the general subject, I will now proceed to wait on the 
 particular question. 
 
 At a momentous period of my life, when I was off, so far as con- 
 cerned notice given, with a House that shall be nameless, for the 
 question on which I took my departing stand was a fixed charge for 
 waiters, and no House as commits itself to that eminently Un- 
 English act of more than foolishness and baseness shall bo advertised 
 by me, I repeat, at a momentous crisis, when I was off with a House 
 too mean for mention, and not yet on with that to which I have ever 
 since had the honour of being attached in the capacity of Head,* I 
 was casting about what to do next. Then it were that proposals were 
 made to me on behalf of my present establishment. Stipulations 
 were necessary on my part, emendations were necessary on my part : 
 in the end, ratifications ensued on both sides, and I entered on a new 
 career. 
 
 We are a bed business, and a coffee-room business. Wo are not 
 a general dining business, nor do we wish it. In consequence, when 
 diners drop in, we know what to give 'em as will keep 'em away 
 another time. We are a Private Eoom or Family business also ; but 
 Coffee-room principal. Me and the Directory and the Writing 
 Materials and cetrcr occupy a place to ourselves a place fended olf 
 up a step or two at the end of tlie Coffee-room, in what I call the good 
 old-fashioned style. The good old-fashioned style is, that whatever 
 you want, down to a wafer, you must be olely and solely dependent 
 on tlio Head Waiter for. You must put yourself a new-born Child 
 into his hands. There is no other way in which a business untiuged 
 with Continental Vice can be conducted. (It were bootless to add, 
 that if languages is required to be jabbered and English is not good 
 enough, both families and gentlemen had better go somcwlicre else.) 
 
 When I began to settle down in this right-principled and well- 
 conducted House, I noticed, under the bed in No. 24 B (which it is 
 up a angle off the staircase, and usually put off upon the lowly-minded), 
 a heap of things in a corner. I asked our Head Chambermaid in tho 
 course of tho day, 
 
 " What are them things in 2-4 V> ? " 
 
 To which she answered with a careless air, 
 
 " Somebody's Luggage." 
 
 liogardiug her with a eye not free from severity, I says, 
 
 " Whose Luggage ? " 
 
 Evading my eye, she replied, 
 
 " Lor ! How should 1 know ! " 
 
 Being, it may be right to mention, a female of some pertucss, 
 though acquainted with her business. 
 
 * Its name and address at length, witli other full particuhir?, all editorially struck 
 out.
 
 Head or Tail. 197 
 
 A Head Waiter must be either Head or Tail. He must be at one 
 extremity or the other of the social scale. He cannot be at the waist 
 of it, or anywhere else but the extremities. It is for him to decide 
 which of the extremities. 
 
 On the eventful occasion under consideration, I give Mrs. Pratchett 
 so distinctly to understand my decision, that I broke her spirit as 
 towards myself, then and there, and for good. Let not inconsistency 
 be suspected on account of my mentioning Mrs. Pratchett as " Mrs.," 
 and having formerly remarked that a waitress must not be married. 
 Eeaders are respectfully requested to notice that Mrs. Pratchett was 
 not a waitress, but a chambermaid. Now a chambermaid may be 
 married ; if Head, generally is married, or says so. It comes to the 
 same thing as expressing what is customary. (N.B. Mr. Pratchett is 
 in Australia, and his address there is " the Bush.") 
 
 Having took Mrs. Pratchett down as many pegs as was essential 
 to the future happiness of all parties, I requested her to explain 
 herself. 
 
 " For instance," I says, to give her a little encouragement, " who is 
 Somebody ? " 
 
 " I give you my sacred honour, Mr. Christopher," answers Pratchett, 
 " that I haven't the faintest notion." 
 
 But for the manner in which she settled her cap-strings, I should 
 have doubted this ; but in respect of positiveness it was hardly to be 
 discriminated from an affidavit. 
 
 " Then you never saw him ? " I followed her up with. 
 
 " Nor yet, " said Mrs. Pratchett, shutting her eyes and making as 
 if she had just took a pill of unusual circumference, which gave 
 a remarkable force to her denial," nor yet any servant in this house. 
 All have been changed, Mr. Christopher, within five year, and Some- 
 body left his Luggage here before then." 
 
 Inquiry of Miss Martin yielded (in the language of the Bard of A. i.) 
 " conlirmation strong." So it had really and truly happened. Miss 
 Martin is the young lady at the bar as makes out our bills ; and though 
 higher than I could wish considering her station, is j^erfectly well- 
 behaved. 
 
 Farther investigations led to the disclosure that there was a bill 
 against this Luggage to the amount of two sixteen six. The Luggage 
 had been lying under the bedstead of 24 B over six year. The bed- 
 stead is a four-poster, with a deal of old hanging and valance, and is, 
 as I once said, probably connected with more than 24 Bs, which 
 I remember my hearers was j)leased to laugh at, at the time. 
 
 I don't know why, when no we know why ? but tliis Luggage 
 laid heavy on my mind. I fell a wondering about Somebody, and 
 what he had got and been up to. I couldn't satisfy my thoughts why 
 he should leave so much Luggage against so small a bill. For I had 
 the Luggage out within a day or two and turned it over, and the 
 following were the items : A black portmanteau, a black bag, a desk,
 
 198 
 
 Somebody's Luggage. 
 
 a dressing-case, a brown-paper parcel, a Lat-box, and an umbrella 
 strapped to a walking-stick. It was all very dusty and fluey. I bad 
 our porter up to get under the bed and fetch it out ; and though ho 
 habitually wallows in dust, swims in it from morning to night, and 
 wears a close-fitting waistcoat with black calimanco sleeves for the 
 purposc,^ it made him sneeze again, and his tliroat was that hot with 
 it that it was obliged to be cooled with a drink of Allsopp's draft. 
 
 The Luggage so got the better of me, that instead of having it put 
 back when it was well dusted and washed with a wet cloth, previous 
 to which it was so covered with feathers that you might have thought 
 it was turning into poultry, and would by-and-by begin to Lay, I 
 say, instead of having it put back, I had it carried into one of my 
 places down-stairs. There from time to time I stared at it and stared 
 at it, till it seemed to grow big and grow little, and come forward at 
 mo and retreat again, and go tlirough all manner of performances 
 resembling intoxication. When this had lasted weeks, I may say 
 months, and not be far out, I one day thought of asking Miss 
 Martin for the particulars of the Two sixteen six total. She was so 
 obliging as to extract it from the books, it dating before her time, 
 and here follows a true copy : 
 
 Coftce-Room. 
 
 1856. No. 4. 
 
 Fob. 2d, Pen and Paper 
 Port Negus . 
 Ditto .... 
 Pen nnd paper 
 Tumbler broken . 
 Brandy .... 
 Pen and paper 
 Anchovy toast 
 Pen and paper 
 Bed .... 
 Feb. .'5d, Pen and paper 
 lircakfiist 
 
 Broiled liam . 
 
 Eggs . 
 
 Watercresses . 
 
 Slirinqis 
 
 Pen and paper 
 BI(jtting-paper 
 Messenger to Paternoster liow and 
 
 back .... 
 Again, when No Answer 
 Bnindy 2.<!., Devilled Pork chop 2fc" 
 
 Carried forward . . .112 
 
 
 
 
 ^. 
 
 d 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 . 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 () 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 (5 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 (1 
 
 
 
 () 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 G 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 () 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 (! 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1) 
 
 G 
 
 
 u 
 
 
 
 G 
 
 w" ant 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 
 
 op Is. 
 
 
 
 4 
 

 
 1 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 A Handsome Offef, 199 
 
 Brought forward 
 Pens and paper .... 
 Messenger to Albemarle Street and 
 
 back 
 
 Again (detained), when No Answer 
 Salt-cellar broken .... 
 Large Liqueur-glass Orange Brandy 
 Dinner, Soup, Fish, Joint, and bird 
 Bottle old East India Brown . 
 Pen and paper .... 
 
 2 16 6 
 Mem.: January 1st, 1857. He went out after dinner, directing 
 Luggage to bo ready when be called for it. Never called. 
 
 So far from throwing a light upon the subject, this bill appeared to 
 me, if I may so express my doubts, to involve it in a yet more lurid 
 halo. Speculating it over with the Mistress, she informed me that 
 the luggage had been advertised in the Master's time as being to be 
 sold after such and such a day to pay expenses, but no farther steps 
 had been taken. (I may here remark, that the Mistress is a widow 
 in her fourth year. The Master was possessed of one of those 
 imfortunate constitutions in which Spirits turns to Water, and rises 
 in the ill-starred Victim.) 
 
 My speculating it over, not then only, but repeatedly, sometimes 
 with the Mistress, sometimes with one, sometimes with another, led 
 up to the Mistress's saying to me, whether at first in joke or in 
 earnest, or half joke and half earnest, it matters not: 
 
 " Christopher, I am going to make you a handsome offer." 
 
 (If this should meet her eye, a lovely blue, may she not take it 
 ill my mentioning that if I had been eight or ten year younger, I 
 would have done as much by her ! That is, I would have made her a 
 offer. It is for others than me to denominate it a handsome one.) 
 
 " Christopher, I am going to make you a handsome offer." 
 
 " Put a name to it, ma'am." 
 
 " Look here, Christopher. Run over the articles of Somebody's 
 Luggage. You've got it all by heart, I know." 
 
 " A black portmanteau, ma'am, a black bag, a desk, a dressing-case, 
 a browu-papor parcel, a hat-box, and an umbrella strajjped to a 
 walking-stick." 
 
 " All just as they were left. Nothing opened, nothing tampered 
 with." 
 
 " You arc right, ma'am. All locked but the brown-paper parcel, 
 and that scaled." 
 
 The Mistress was leaning on Miss Martin's desk at the bar-window, 
 and she taps the open book that lays upon the desk, she has a 
 pretty-made hand to be sure, and bobs her head over it and laughs.
 
 500 Somebody's Luggage. 
 
 *' Come," says sLe, " Christopher. Pay me Somebocly's bill, and you 
 shall have Somebody's Luggage." 
 
 I rather took to the idea from the first moment ; but, 
 
 " It mayn't be worth the money," I objected, seeming to hold back. 
 ~ " That's a Lottery," says the Mistress, folding her arms upon the 
 book, it ain't her hands alone that's pretty made, the observation 
 extends right up her arms. " Won't you venture two pound sixteen 
 shillings and sixpence in the Lottery ? Why, there's no blanks ! " 
 says the Mistress, laughing and bobbing her head again, " you nmsl 
 win. If you lose, you must win ! All prizes in this Lottery ! Draw 
 a blank, and remember, Gentlemen-Sportsmen, you'll still be entitled 
 to a black portmanteau, a black bag, a desk, a dressing-case, a sheet 
 of brown paper, a hat-box, and an umbrella strapped to a walking- 
 stick ! " 
 
 To make short of it. Miss Martin come round mo, and Mrs. 
 Pratchett come round me, and the Mistress she was completely round 
 me already, and all the women in the house come round me, and if it 
 liad been Sixteen two instead of Two sixteen, I should have thought 
 myself well out "of it. For what can you do when they do come round 
 you ? 
 
 So I paid the money down and such a laughing as there was 
 among 'em ! But I turned the tables on 'em regularly, when I said : 
 
 " My family-name is Blue-Beard. I'm going to open Somebody's 
 Luggage all alone in the Secret Chamber, and not a female eye 
 catclies sight of the contents ! " 
 
 Whether I thought proper to have the firmness to keej) to tliis, 
 don't signify, or whether any female eye, and if any, how many, was 
 really present when the opening of the Luggage came ott". Some- 
 body's Luggage is the question at present : Nobody's eyes, nor yet 
 noses. 
 
 What I still look at most, in connection with that Luggage, is the 
 extraordinary quantity of writing-paper, and all written on ! And 
 not our paj)er neither, not the paper charged in the bill, for we know 
 our paper, so he must have been always at it. And he had crumpled 
 up this Avriting of his, everywhere, in every part and parcel of his 
 luggage. There was writing in his dressing-case, writing in his 
 boots, writing among his shaving-tackle, writing in his hat-box, 
 Avriting folded away down among the very whalebones of his 
 imibrella. 
 
 llis clothes wasn't bad, what there was of 'cm. His dressing-case 
 was poor, not a particle of silver stopper, bottle apertures with 
 nothing in 'em, like empty little dog-konnels, and a most searching 
 description of tooth-powder difl'using itself around, as under a deluded 
 mistake that all tlie chinks in the fittings was divisions in teeth. His 
 clothes I parted with, well enough, to a secondhand dealer not far 
 from St. Clement's Danes, in ihe Strand, him as the ofiicers in the 
 Army mostly disjiose of their uniforms to, when hard pressed with
 
 TJie Writings. 201 
 
 debts of hononr, if I may judge from tlieir coats and epaulets diver- 
 sifying the window with their backs towards the public. The same 
 party bought in one lot the portmanteau, the bag, the desk, tho 
 dressing-case, the hat-box, the umbrella, strap, and walking-stick. 
 On my remarking that I should have thought those articles not quite 
 in liis line, he said : " No more ith a man'th grandmother, Mithter 
 Chrithtopher ; but if any man will bring hith grandmother here, and 
 offer her at a fair trifle below what the'll feth with good luck when 
 the'th thcoured and turned I'll buy her ! " 
 
 These transactions brought me home, and, indeed, more than home, 
 for they left a goodish profit on the original investment. And now 
 there remained the writings ; and the writings I particular wish to 
 bring under the candid attention of the reader. 
 
 I wish to do so without postponement, for this reason. That is to 
 say, namely, viz. i.e., as follows, thus : Before I proceed to recount 
 the mental sufferings of which I became the prey in consequence of 
 the writings, and before following up that harrowing tale with a 
 statement of the wonderful and impressive catastrophe, as thrilling 
 in its nature as unlooked for in any other capacity, which crowned 
 the ole and filled the cup of unexpectedness to overflowing, the 
 writings themselves ought to stand forth to view. Therefore it is 
 that they now come next. One v/ord to introduce them, and I lay 
 down my pen (I hope, my unassuming pen) until I take it up to trace 
 the gloomy sequel of a mind with something on it. 
 
 He was a smeary writer, and wrote a dreadful bad hand. Utterly 
 regardless of ink, he lavished it on every undeserving object on liis 
 clothes, his desk, his hat, the handle of his tooth-brush, his umbrella, 
 luk was f(jund freely on the coffee-room carpet by No. 4 table, and 
 two blots was on his restless couch. A reference to the document I 
 have given entire will show that on the morning of tlio third of 
 February, eighteen fifty-six, he procured his no less than fifth pen 
 and paper. To whatever deplorable act of ungovernable composition 
 he immolated those materials obtained from the bar, there is no doubt 
 that the fatal deed v^-as committed in bed, and tliat it left its evidences 
 but too plainly, long afterwards, upon the pillow-case. 
 
 He had put no Heading to any of his writings. Alas ! "Was he 
 likely to have a Heading without a Head, and where was Ms Head 
 when he took such things into it ? In some cases, such as his Boots, 
 he would appear to have hid the writings ; thereby involving his stylo 
 in greater obscurity. But his Boots was at least pairs, and no two 
 of his writings can put in any claim to be so regarded. Here follows 
 ('lot to give more specimens) what was found m
 
 CHAPTER TI. 
 
 HIS BOOTS. 
 
 " En ! well tlien, Monsieur Mutuel ! What do I know, what can I 
 say ? I assure you that lie calls himself Monsieur The Englishman." 
 
 " Pardon. But I think it is impossible," said Monsieur Mutuel, 
 a spectacled, snuffy, stooping old gentleman in carpet shoes and a 
 cloth cap with a peaked shade, a loose blue frock-coat reaching to his 
 heels, a largo limp white shirt-frill, and cravat to correspond, that is 
 to say, white was the natural colour of his linen on Sundays, but it 
 toned down with tlie week. 
 
 " It is," repeated Monsieur Mutuel, his amiable old walnut-shell 
 countenance very walnut-shelly indeed as he smiled and blinked in 
 the bright morning sunlight, " it is, my cherished Madame Bouclet, 
 I think, impossible ! " 
 
 " Iley ! " (with a little vexed cry and a great many tosses of her 
 liead.) " But it is not impossible that you arc a Pig ! " retorted 
 Madame Bouclet, a compact little woman of thirty-five or so. " See 
 then, look there, read ! ' On the second floor Monsieur L' Anglais.' 
 Is it not so ? " 
 
 " It is so," said Monsieur Mutuel. 
 
 " Good. Continue your morning walk. Get out ! " Madame 
 Bouclet dismissed him with a lively snap of her fingers. 
 
 Tlic morning walk of Monsieur Mutuel was in the brightest patch 
 that the sun made in the Grande Place of a dull old fortified French 
 town. The maimer of liis morning walk was with his hands crossed 
 behind him ; an umbrella, in figure tlie express image of himself, 
 always in one liand ; a snuiT-box in the other. Thus, with the 
 shufiling gait of the Elephant (who really does deal with the very 
 worst trousers-maker employed by the Zoological world, and wlio 
 appeared to liavo recommended liim to Monsieur Mutuel), the old 
 gentleman sunned himself daily wlien sun was to be had of course, 
 at the same time sunning a red ribbon at his button-hole ; for was ho 
 not an ancient Frenchman ? 
 
 Being told by one of tlie angelic sex to continue his morning walk 
 and get out, Monsieur Mutuel lauglied a walnut-sliell laugli, pulled 
 ofi" his cap at arm's lengtli with tlie hand that contained liis snufi'-box, 
 kept it ofi" for a considerable period after he had parted from Madame 
 Bouclet, and continued his morning walk and g(;t out, like a man of 
 gallantry as he was. 
 
 The dociimcntaiy evidence to which jMadamc Bouclet had referred 
 Monsieur IMutucl was the list of lier lodgers, sweetlj^ written forth by 
 lier own Nephew and Bookkeeper, wlio held the pen of an Angcd, and 
 posted uj) ut the side of her gateway, for tlie information of the
 
 Mr. The Englishman. 203 
 
 Police : " All second, M. L'Anglais, Proprietaire." On the second 
 floor, Mr. The Englishman, man of property. So it stood ; nothing 
 could be plainer. 
 
 Madame Bouclet now traced tlie line with her forefinger, as it were 
 to confirm and settle herself in her parting snap at Monsieur Mutnel, 
 and so placing her right hand on her hip with a defiant air, as if 
 nothing should ever tempt her to unsnap that snap, strolled out into 
 the Place to glance up at the windows of Mr. The Englishman. 
 That worthy happening to be looking out of window at the moment, 
 Madame Bouclet gave him a graceful salutation with her head, looked 
 to the right and looked to the left to account to him for her being 
 there, considered for a moment, like one who accounted to herself for 
 somebody she had expected not being there, and reentered her own 
 gateway. Madame Bouclet let all her house giving on the Place in 
 furnished flats or floors, and lived up the yard behind in company 
 with Monsieur Bouclet her husband (great at billiards), an inherited 
 brewing business, several fowls, two carts, a nephew, a little dog in a 
 big kennel, a grape-vine, a counting-house, four horses, a married 
 sister (with a share in the brewing business), the husband and two 
 children of the married sister, a parrot, a drum (performed on by the 
 little boy of the married sister), two billeted soldiers, a quantity of 
 pigeons, a fife (played by the nephew in a ravishing manner), several 
 domestics and supernumeraries, a perpetual flavour of cofi'ee and soup, 
 a terrific range of artificial rocks and wooden precipices at least four 
 feet high, a small fountain, and half-a-dozcn large sunflowers. 
 i Now the Englishman, in taking his Appartement, or, as one 
 might say on our side of the Channel, his set of chambers, had 
 given his name, correct to the letter, Laxgley. But as he had a 
 British way of not opening his mouth very wide on foreign soil, 
 except at meals, the Brewery had been able to make nothing of it but 
 L'Anglais. So Mr. The Englishman he had become and he re- 
 mained. 
 
 " Never saw such a people ! " muttered Mr. The Englishman, as ho 
 now looked out of window. " Never did, in my life ! " 
 
 This was true enough, for he had never before been out of his own 
 country, a right little island, a tight little island, a bright little 
 island, a show-fight little island, and full of merit of all sorts ; but 
 not .the whole round world. 
 
 " These chaps," said Mr. The Englishman to himself, as his eye 
 rolled over the Place, sprinkled with military here and there, " are 
 no more like soldiers " Nothing being sufficiently strong for the 
 end of his sentence, he left it uuendcd. 
 
 This again (from the point of view of his experience) was strictly 
 correct ; for though there was a great agglomeration of soldiers in 
 the town and neighbouring country, you might have held a grand 
 Ileview and Field-day of them every one, and looked in vain among 
 them all for a soldier choking behind his foolish stock, or a soldier
 
 204 Somebody^ s Luggage. 
 
 lamed by Lis ill-fitting shoes, or a soldier deprived of tbe use of bis 
 limbs by straps and buttons, or a soldier elaborately forced to be self- 
 helpless in all the small affairs of life. A swarm of brisk, bright, 
 active, bustling, handy, odd, skirmishing fellows, able to turn cleverly 
 at anything, from a siege to soup, from great guns to needles and 
 thread, from the broadsword exercise to slicing an onion, from making 
 war to making omelets, was all you would have found. 
 
 What a swarm ! From the Great Place under the eye of Mr. The 
 Englishman, where a few awkward squads from the last conscription 
 were doing the goose-step some members of those squads still as to 
 their bodies, in the chrysalis peasant-state of Blouse, and only military 
 butterflies as to their regimentally-clothed legs from the Great 
 Place, away outside the fortifications, and away for miles along the 
 dusty roads, soldiers swarmed. All day long, upon the grass-grown 
 ramparts of the town, practising soldiers trumpeted and bugled ; all 
 day long, down in angles of dry trenches, practising soldiers drummed 
 and drummed. Every forenoon, soldiers burst out of the great 
 barracks into the sandy gymnasium-ground hard by, and flew over the 
 wooden horse, and hung on to flying ropes, and dangled upside-down 
 between parallel bars, and shot themselves oft' wooden platforms, 
 splashes, sparks, coruscations, showers of soldiers. At every corner 
 of tlie town-wall, every guard-house, every gateway, every sentry- 
 box, every drawbridge, every reedy ditcli, and rushy dike, soldiers, 
 soldiers, soldiers. And the town being pretty well all wall, guavd- 
 liouse, gateway, sentry-box, drawbridge, reedy ditch, and rushy dike, 
 tlie town was pretty well all soldiers. 
 
 What would the sleepy old town have been without the soldiers, 
 seeing that even with them it had so overslept itself as to liave slept 
 its echoes hoarse, its defensive bars and locks and bolts and chains 
 all rusty, and its ditches stagnant ! From the days when Vaubax 
 engineered it to that perjilcxing extent that to look at it was like being 
 kncjcked on the head ^Yith it, the stranger becoming stunned and 
 stertorous under the sliock of its incomprehensibility, from the days 
 wlien Vauban made it the express incorporation of every substantive 
 and adjective in tlic art of military engineering, and not only twisted 
 you into it and twisted you out of it, to the right, to the left, opposite, 
 under here, over there, in the dark, in the dirt, by tlie gateway, archway, 
 covered way, dry way, wet way, fosse, portcullis, drawbridge, sluice, 
 squat tower, pierced wall, and heavy battery, but likcnvise took a 
 fortifying dive under the neiglibouring country, and came to the surface 
 three or four miles oft', blowing out incoin])reliensil;le mounds and 
 batteries among the quiet crops of chicory and beet-root, from those 
 days to these the town had been asleep, and dust and rust and must 
 had settled on its drowsy Arsenals and Magazines, and grass had 
 grown up in its silent streets. 
 
 On market-days alone, its Great Place suddenly leaped out of bed. 
 On market-days, some fi-iendly enchanter struck his staff u])on the
 
 The Great Place on Market-days. 205 
 
 stones of the Great Place, and instantly arose the liveliest booths and 
 stalls, and sittings and standings, and a pleasant hum of chaffering 
 and huckstering from many himdreds of tongues, and a pleasant, 
 though peculiar, blending of colours, white caps, blue blouses, and 
 green vegetables, and at last the Knight destined for the adventure 
 seemed to have come in earnest, and all the Vaubanois sprang up 
 awake. And now, by long, low-lying avenues of trees, jolting in 
 white-hooded donkey-cart, and on donkey-back, and in tumbril and 
 wagon, and cart and cabriolet, and afoot with barrow and burden, 
 and along the dikes and ditches and canals, in little peak-prowed 
 country boats, came peasant-men and women in flocks and crowds, 
 bringing articles for sale. And here you had boots and shoes, and 
 sweetmeats and stuffs to wear, and here (in the cool shade of the 
 Town-hall) you had milk and cream and butter and cheese, and hero 
 you had fruits and onions and carrots, and all things needful for your 
 soup, and here you had poultry and flowers and protesting pigs, and 
 here new shovels, axes, spades, and bill-hooks for your farming work, 
 and here huge mounds of bread, and here your unground grain in 
 sackss, and here your children's dolls, and here the cake-seller, 
 announcing his wares by beat and roll of drum. And hark ! fanfa- 
 ronade of trumpets, and here into the Great Place, resplendent in an 
 open carriage, with four gorgeously-attired servitors up behind, play- 
 ing horns, drums, and cymbals, rolled " the Daughter of a Physician " 
 in massive golden chains and ear-rings, and blue-feathered hat, shaded 
 from the admiring sun by two immense umbrellas of artificial roses, 
 to dispense (from motives of philanthropy) that small and pleasant 
 dose which had cured so many thousands ! Toothache, earache, head- 
 ache, heartache, stomachache, debility, nervousness, fits, fainting, fever, 
 ague, all equally cured by the small and pleasant dose of the great 
 Physician's great daughter ! The process was this, she, the Daughter 
 of a Physician, proprietress of the superb equipage you now admired 
 with its confirmatory blasts of trumpet, drum, and cymbal, told you 
 so : On the first day after taking the small and pleasant dose, you 
 would feel no particular influence beyond a most harmonious sensa- 
 tion of indescribable and irresistible joy ; on the second day you 
 would be so astonishingly better that you would think yourself 
 changed into somebody else ; on the tLird day you would be entirely 
 free from your disorder, whatever its nature and however long you 
 had had it, and would seek out the Physician's Daughter to throw 
 yourself at her feet, kiss the Lem of her garment, and buy as many 
 more of the small and pleasant doses as by the sale of all your few 
 effects you could obtain ; but she would be inaccessible, gone for 
 herbs to the Pyramids of Egypt, and you would be (though cured) 
 reduced to despair ! Thus would the Physician's Daughter drive her 
 trade (and briskly too), and thus would the buying and selling and 
 mingling of tongues and colours continue, until the changing sunlight, 
 leaving the Physician's Daughter in the shadow of high roofs,
 
 2o6 Somebody s Luggage. 
 
 admonished hor to jolt out westward, with a departing oflfect of gleam 
 and glitter on the splendid equipage and brazen blast. And now the 
 enchanter struck his staff upon the stones of the Great Place once 
 more, and down went the booths, the sittings and standings, and 
 vanished the merchandise, and with it the barrows, donkeys, donkey- 
 carts, and tumbrils, and all other things on wheels and feet, except 
 the slow scavengers with unwieldy carts and meagre horses clearing 
 up tlio rubbish, assisted by the sleek town pigeons, better plumped 
 out than on non-market days. While there was yet an hour or two 
 to wane before the autumn sunset, the loiterer outside town-gate and 
 drawbridge, and postern and double-ditch, would see the last white- 
 hooded cart lessening in the avenue of lengthening shadows of trees, 
 or the last country boat, paddled by the last market-woman on her 
 way home, showing black upon the reddening, long, low, narrow dike 
 between him and the mill ; and as the paddle-parted scum and weed 
 closed over tlio boat's track, ho might bo comfortably sure that its 
 sluggish rest would bo troubled no more until next market-day. 
 
 As it was not one of the Great Place's days for getting out of bed, 
 when Mr. The Englishman looked down at the young soldiers 
 practising the goose-step there, his mind was left at liberty to take a 
 military turn. 
 
 " These fellows are billeted everywhere about," said he ; " and to 
 see them lighting the people's fires, boilin_g the people's pots, minding 
 the people's babies, rocking the people's cradles, washing the people's 
 greens, and making themselves generally useful, in every sort of 
 unmilitary way, is most ridiculous ! Never saw such a set of fellows, 
 never did in my life ! " 
 
 All perfectly true again. Was there not Private Valentine in that 
 very house, acting as sole housemaid, valet, cook, steward, and nurse, 
 in the family of his captain, Monsieur le Capitaine dc la Cour, - 
 cleaning the floors, making tho beds, doing the marketing, dressing 
 the captain, dressing the dinners, dressing tlie salads, and dressing tlio 
 baby, all witli equal readiness? Or, to put liim aside, he l)eiug in 
 loyal attendance on liis Chief, was there not Private llyppulite, 
 billeted at tlio Perfumer's two hundred yards oil', wlio, when not on 
 duty, volunteered to keep shop while the fair Perfumercss stepped 
 out to S2)oak to a neighbour or so, and laughingly sold soap with liis 
 war-sword girded on him? Was there not Eiinle, billeted at tlio 
 Clock-maker's, perpetually turniug to of an evening, with his coat oil", 
 winding up tho stock ? Was tliere not Eugene, billeted at the 
 Tinman's, cultivating, pipe in moutli, a garden four feet sipiare, for the 
 Tinman, in the little court, behind the shop, and extorting the fruits of 
 the earth from the same, on his knees, witli the sweat of his brow ? 
 Not to multiply examples, was there not Baptiste, billeted on the poor 
 Water-carrier, at that very instant sitting on tlio pavement in tho 
 Kuiiliglit, with his martial lep;s asunder, and one of the Watcir-carvicr's 
 spare i)ails between them, wliieh (to the delight and glory of tho lieart
 
 TJie Corporal. 207 
 
 of the Water-carrier coming across the Place from the fotintaiu, yoked 
 and burdened) he was painting bright-green outside and bright-red 
 within ? Or, to go no farther than the Barber's at the very nest door, 
 was there not Corporal Theophile 
 
 " No," said Mr, The Englishman, glancing down at the Barber's, 
 " he is not there at present. There's the child, though." 
 
 A mere mite of a girl stood on the steps of the Barber's shop, look- 
 ing across the Place. A mere baby, one might call her, dressed in 
 the close white linen cap which small French country children wear 
 (like the children in Dutch pictures), and in a frock of homespun 
 blue, that had no shape except where it was tied round her little fat 
 throat. So that, being naturally short and round all over, she looked, 
 behind, as if she had been cut off at her natural waist, and had had 
 her head neatly fitted on it. 
 
 " There's the child, though." 
 
 To judge from the way in which the dimpled hand was rubbing 
 the eyes, the eyes had been closed in a nap, and were newly opened. 
 But they seemed to be looking so intently across the Place, that the 
 Englishman looked in the same direction. 
 
 " ! " said he presently. " I thought as much. The Corporal's 
 there." 
 
 The Corporal, a smart figure of a man of thirty, perhaps a thought 
 under the middle size, but very neatly made, a sunburnt Corporal 
 with a brown peaked beard, faced about at the moment, addressing 
 voluble words of instruction to the squad in hand. Nothing was 
 amiss or awry about the Corporal. A lithe and nimble Cori^oral, 
 quite complete, from the sparkling dark eyes under his knowing 
 uniform cap to his sparkling white gaiters. The very imago and 
 presentment of a Corporal of his country's army, in the lino of his 
 shoulders, the line of his waist, the broadest line of his Bloomer 
 trousers, and their narrowest line at the calf of his leg. 
 
 Mr. The Englishman looked on, and the child looked on, and the 
 Corporal looked on (but the last-named at his men), imtil the drill 
 ended a few minutes afterwards, and the military sprinkling dried uj) 
 directly, and was gone. Tlien said Mr. The Englishman to himself, 
 " Look here ! By George ! " And the Corporal, dancing towards the 
 Barber's with his arms wide open, caught uj) the child, held her over 
 his head in a flying attitude, caught her down again, kissed her, and 
 made off with her into the Barber's house. 
 
 Now Mr. The Englishman liad had a quarrel with his erring and 
 disobedient and disowned daughter, and there was a child in that 
 case too. Had not his daughter been a child, and had she not taken 
 angel-flights above his head as this child had flown above the 
 Corporal's ? 
 
 " He's a " National Participlcd " f^)ol ! " said the Englishman, 
 and shut his window. 
 
 But the windows of the house of Memory, and the windows of the
 
 208 Somebody's Luggage. 
 
 house of Mercy, aro not so easily closed as windows of glass and 
 wood. They fly open unexpectedly ; they rattle in the night ; they 
 must bo nailed up. Mr. The Englishman had tried nailing them, 
 but had not driven the nails quite home. So he passed but a dis- 
 turber evening and a worse night. 
 
 By nature a good-tempered man ? No ; very little gentleness, 
 confounding the quality with weakness. Fierce and wrathful when 
 crosse -T ? Very, and stupendously unreasonable. Moody ? Exceed- 
 ingly so. Vindictive ? Well ; he had had scowling thoughts that 
 he would formally curse his daughter, as he had seen it done on the 
 stage. But ?emcmbering that the real Heaven is some paces 
 removed from the mock one in the great chandelier of the Theatre, 
 he had given that up. 
 
 And he had come abroad to be rid of his repudiated daughter for 
 the rest of his life. And here he was. 
 
 At bottom, it was for this reason, more than for any other, tliat 
 Mr. The Englishman took it extremely ill that Corporal Theophilo 
 should be so devoted to little Bebelle, the child at the Barber's shop. 
 lu an unlucky moment he had chanced to say to himself, " Why, con- 
 found the fellow, he is not her father ! " There was a sharj) sting iu 
 the speech which ran into him suddenly, and put him in a worso 
 mood. So he had National Participled the unconscious Corporal with 
 most hearty emphasis, and had made up his mind to think no more 
 about such a mountebank. 
 
 But it came to pass that the Corporal was not to be dismissed. If 
 he had known the most delicate fibres of the Englishman's mind, 
 instead of knowing nothing on earth about him, and if he had boon 
 the most obstinate Corporal in tho Grand Army of Franco, instead of 
 being the most obliging, ho could not have planted himself with more 
 determined immovability plump in tlie midst of all the Englishman's 
 tlioughts. Not only so, but he seemed to be always in his view. Mr. 
 The Euglishman had but to look out of window, to look upon tho 
 Corporal with little Bebelle. He liad but to go for a walk, and there 
 was tho Corporal walking with Bebelle. Pie had but to come liomo 
 again, disgusted, and the Corporal and Bebelle were at home before 
 him. If he looked out at liis back windows early in tlic morning, tho 
 Corporal was in the Barber's back yard, washing and dressing and 
 brushing Bebelle. If he took refuge at his front windows, tlio 
 (Jorporal brought liis breakfast out into tlie Place, and sliared it tliero 
 with Bebelle. Always Corporal and always Bebelle. Never Corj)()ral 
 without Bebelle. Never Bebelle witliout Corporal. 
 
 Mr. The Englishman was not particularly strong in the French 
 language as a means of oral communication, though he read it very 
 well. It is with languages as with people, -when you only know 
 them by sight, you aro apt to mistake tliein ; you must be on speaking 
 tei'ms before you caii be said to liavc cstablislied an acquaintance. 
 
 For this reason, Mr. The Englishman hud to gird up his loins con-
 
 Mr. The Englishman inquires about Bebelle. 209 
 
 sidorably before he could bring himself to the point of exchanging 
 ideas with Madame Bouclet on the subject of this Corporal and this 
 Bebelle. But Madame Bouclet looking in apologetically one morning 
 to remark, that, O Heaven ! she was in a state of desolation because 
 the lamp-maker had not sent home that lamp confided to him to repair, 
 but that truly he was a lamp-maker against whom the whole world 
 shrieked out, Mr. The Englishman seized the occasion. 
 
 " Madame, that baby " 
 
 " Pardon, monsieur. That lamp." 
 
 " No, no, that little girl." 
 
 " But, pardon ! " said Madame Bouclet, angling for a clew, " one 
 cannot light a little girl, or send her to be repaired ? " 
 
 " The little girl at the house of the barber." 
 
 " Ah-h-h ! " cried Madame Bouclet, suddenly catching the idea with 
 her delicate little line and rod. " Little Bebelle ? Yes, yes, yes ! 
 And her friend the Corporal ? Yes, yes, yes, yes ! So genteel of 
 him, 'is it not ? " 
 
 " He is not ? " 
 
 " Not at all ; not at all ! He is not one of her relations. Not at 
 all!" 
 
 " Why, then, he " 
 
 " Perfectly!" cried Madame Bouclet, "you are right, monsieur. It is 
 so genteel of him. The less relation, the more genteel. As you say." 
 
 " Is she ? " 
 
 " The child of the barber ? " Madame Bouclet whisked up her 
 skilful little line and rod again. " Not at all, not at all ! She is the 
 child of in a word, of no one." 
 
 " The wife of the barber, then ? " 
 
 " Indubitably. As you say. The wife of the barber receives a 
 small stipend to take care of her. So much by the month. Eh, 
 then ! It is without doubt very little, for we are all poor here." 
 
 " You are not poor, madame." 
 
 " As to my lodgers," replied Madame Bouclet, with a smiling and a 
 gracious bend of her head, " no. As to all things else, so-so." 
 
 " You flatter me, madame." 
 
 " Monsieur, it is you who flatter me in living here." 
 
 Certain fishy gasps on Mr. The Englishman's part, denoting that 
 he was about to resume his subject under difiiculties, Madame Bouclet 
 observed him closely, and whisked up her delicate line and rod again 
 with triumphant success. 
 
 " no, monsieur, certainly not. The wife of the barber is not cruel 
 to the poor child, but she is careless. Her health is delicate, and she 
 sits all day, looking out at window. Consequently, when the Corporal 
 first came, the poor little Bebelle was much neglected." 
 
 " It is a curious " began Mr. The Englishman. 
 
 " Name ? That Bebelle ? Again you are riglit, monsieur. But it 
 is a playful name for Gabrielle."
 
 210 Somebody's LuggagL 
 
 " And so the child is a mere fancy of the Corporal's ? *' said Mr. 
 The Englishman, in a gruffly disparaging tone of voice. 
 
 " Eh, well ! " returned Madame Bouclet, with a pleading shrug : 
 " one must love something. Human nature is weak." 
 
 (" Devilish weak," muttered the Englishman, in his own language.) 
 
 " And the Corporal," pursued Madame Bouclot, " being billeted at 
 the barber's, where he will probably remain a long time, for he is 
 attached to the General, and finding the poor unowned child in 
 need of being loved, and finding himself in need of loving, why, 
 there you have it all, you see ! " 
 
 Mr. The Englishman accepted this interpretation of the matter 
 with an indifferent jyace, and observed to himself, in an injured 
 manner, when ho was u^^ain alone : " I shouldn't mind it so much, if 
 these people were not such a " National Participled " sentimental 
 people ! " 
 
 There was a Cemetery outside the town, and it happened ill for the 
 reputation of tho Vaubanois, in tliis sentimental connection, that ho 
 took a walk there that same afternoon. To be sure there were some 
 wonderful things in it (from the Englishman's point of view), and of 
 a certainty in all Britain you would liave found nothing like it. Not 
 to mention the fanciful flourishes of hearts and crosses in wood and 
 iron, that were planted all over the place, making it look very like a 
 Firework-ground, where a most splendid pyrotechnic disjilay might 
 be expected after dark, there were so many wreaths upon the graves, 
 embroidered, as it might be, " To my mother," " To my daughter," 
 " To my father," " To my brother," " To my sister," " To my friend," 
 and those many wreaths were in so many stages of elaboration and 
 decay, from the wreath of yesterday, all fresh colour and bright 
 beads, to the wreath of last year, a poor mouldering wisp of straw ! 
 There were so many little gardens and grottos made upon graves, in 
 so many tastes, with plants and shells and plaster figures and porcelain 
 pitclicrs, and so many odds and ends ! Thei'c were so many tributes 
 of remembrance hanging up, not to be discriminated by the closest 
 inspection from little round waiters, whereon were depicted in glowing 
 hues either a lady or a gentleman with a white pocket-handkerchief 
 out of all proportion, leaning, in a state of the most faultless mourning 
 and most profound afliiction, on the most architectural and gorgeous 
 urn ! The-re were so many surviving wives Avho had put tlioir names 
 on tlie tombs of their deceased husbands, with a blank for the date of 
 tlicir own departure from tliis weary world ; and there were so many 
 surviving husbands who had rendered tlie same liomage to their 
 deceased wives ; and out of tlie numlier there must have been so many 
 wlio liad long ago married again ! In line, there was so much in the 
 I)laee tliat would liave seemed mere frippery to a stranger, save for 
 the consideration that the lightest paper llowor tliat lay upon tho 
 poorest licaj) of oartli was never touched by a rude hand, but perished 
 there, a sacred thing I
 
 The Corporal and Behelle. 211 
 
 " Nothing of the solemnity of Death here," Mr. The Englishman 
 Lad been going to say, when this last consideration touched him w'ith 
 a mild appeal, and on the whole he walked out without saying it. 
 " But these people are," he insisted, by way of compensation, when he 
 was well outside the gate, "they are so" Participled "senti- 
 ' mental ! " 
 
 His way back lay by the military gymnasium-ground. And there 
 he passed the Corporal glibly instructing young soldiers how to 
 swing themselves over raj)id and deep watercourses on their way to 
 Glory, by means of a rope, and himself deftly plunging off a platform, 
 and flying a hundred feet or two, as an encouragement to them to 
 begin. And there he also passed, perched on a crowning eminence 
 (probably by the Corporal's careful hands), the small Bebelle, with 
 her round eyes wide open, surveying the proceeding like a wondering 
 sort of blue and white bird. 
 
 " If that child was to die," this M-as his reflection as he turned his 
 back and went his way, " and it would almost serve the fellow right 
 for making such a fool of himself, I suppose we should have 
 liim sticking up a wreath and a w^aiter in that fantastic burying- 
 ground." 
 
 Nevertheless, after another early morning or two of looking out of 
 window, he strolled down into the Place, when the Corporal and 
 Bebelle were walking there, and touching his hat to the Corporal (an 
 immense achievement), wished him Good-day. 
 
 " Good-day, monsieur." 
 
 " This is a rather pretty child you have here," said Mr. The 
 Englishman, taking her chin in his hand, and looking down into her 
 astonished blue eyes. 
 
 " Monsieur, she is a very pretty child," returned the Corporal, with 
 a stress on his polite correction of the phrase. 
 
 " And good ? " said the Englishman. 
 
 " And very good. Poor little thing ! " 
 
 " Plah ! " The Englishman stooped down and patted her cheek, 
 not without awkwardness, as if he were going too far in his concilia- 
 tion. " And what is this medal round your neck, my litfclc one ? " 
 
 Bebelle having no other reply on her lips than her chubby right 
 fist, the Corporal offered his services as interi^rcter. 
 
 " Monsieur demands, what is this, Bebelle ? " 
 
 " It is the Holy Virgin," said Bebelle. 
 
 " And who gave it you ? " asked the Englishman. 
 
 Theophile." 
 
 " And who is Theophile ? " 
 
 Bebelle broke into a laugh, laughed merrily and heartily, clapped 
 her chubby hands, and beat her little feet on the stone pavement of 
 the Place. 
 
 " He doesn't know Theophile 1 Why, he doesn't know any one ! 
 He doesn't know anything ! " Then, sensible of a small solecism in
 
 212 Somebody s Luggage. 
 
 her manners, Bebelle twisted lier right hand in a leg of the Corporal's 
 Bloomer trousers, and, laying her cheek against the place, kissed it. 
 
 " Monsieur Theophile, I believe ? " said the Englishman to the 
 Corporal. 
 
 " It is I, monsieur." 
 
 "Permit me." Mr. The Englishman shook him heartily by the 
 Land and turned away. But he took it mighty ill that old Monsieur 
 Mutuel in his patch of sunlight, upon whom he came as he turned, 
 should pull off his cap to him with a look of pleased approval. And 
 he muttered, in his own tongue, as he returned the salutation, " Well, 
 walnut-shell ! And what business is it of yours ? " 
 
 Mr. The Englishman went on for many weeks passing but disturbed 
 evenings and worse nights, and constantly exi)eriencing that those 
 aforesaid windows in the houses of Memory and Mercy rattled after 
 dark, and that he had very imperfectly nailed them up. Likewise, he 
 went on for many weeks daily improving the acquaintance of the 
 Corporal and Bebelle. That is to say, he took Bebelle by the chin, 
 and the Corporal by the hand, and offered Bebelle sous and the 
 Corporal cigars, and even got the length of changing pipes with the 
 Corporal and kissing Bebelle. But he did it all in a shamefaced way, 
 and always took it extremely ill that Monsieur Mutuel in his patch 
 of sunlight should note what ho did. Whenever that seemed to bo 
 the case, he always growled in his own tongue, " There you arc again, 
 walnut-shell ! What business is it of yours'? " 
 
 In a word, it had become the occupation of Mr. The Englishman's 
 life to look after the Corporal and little Bebelle, and to resent old 
 Monsieur Mutucl's looking after li'im. An occupation only varied by 
 a fire in tlie town one windy night, and much passing of water-buckets 
 from liand to hand (in which the Englishman rendered good service), 
 and much beating of drums, when all of a sudden the Corporal 
 disappeared. 
 
 Next, all of a sudden, Bebelle disappeared. 
 
 She had been visible a few days later than the Corporal, sadly 
 deteriorated as to washing and brushing, but she had not spoken 
 when addressed by IMr. Tlie Eiiglislnuan, and had looked scared and 
 had run away. And now it would seem that she bad run away for 
 good. And there lay the Great Place under the windows, bare and 
 barren. 
 
 In his shamefaced and constrained way, IMr. Tlic Englislnnan asked 
 no qu(!8tion of any one, but watched from his front windows and 
 watched fnnn his back windows, and lingered about the l*lace, and 
 peeped in at the Barber's sho]), and did all tliis and much more witli 
 a wliistling and tune-liunnuing pretence of not missing anytliing, 
 until one afternoon wlien IMonsieur IMutuel's ])atch of sunlight was in 
 shadow, and Avlien, according to all rule and ])rcccdcnt, he liad no 
 right wluitever to l)ring his red ribbon out of doors, behold here he 
 was, advancing with his cap already in his hand twelve paces otf !
 
 TJie Corporal's Grave. 213 
 
 Mr, Tho Englishman Lad. got as far into Lis usual objurgation as, 
 *' What Lu si " when he checked himself. 
 
 " Ah, it is sad, it is sad ! Helas, it is unhappy, it is sad ! " Thus 
 old Monsieur Mutuel, shaking his gray head. 
 
 " What busin at least, I would say, what do you mean. Monsieur 
 Mutuel ? " 
 
 " Our Corporal. Helas, our dear Corporal ! " 
 
 " What has happened to him ? " 
 
 " You have not heard ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " At tho fire. But he was so brave, so ready. Ah, too brave, too 
 ready ! " 
 
 " May the Devil carry you away ! " the Englishman broke in im- 
 jjatiently ; " I beg your pardon, I mean me, I am not accustomed 
 to speak French, go on, will you ? " 
 
 " And a falling beam " 
 
 " Good God ! " exclaimed tho Englishman. " It was a private 
 soldier who was killed ? " 
 
 " No. A Corporal, the same Corporal, our dear Corporal. Beloved 
 by all his comrades. The funeral ceremony was touching, pene- 
 trating. Monsieur The Englishman, your eyes fill with tears." 
 
 "What bu si " 
 
 " Monsieur The Englishman, I honour those emotions. I salute 
 you with profound respect, I will not obtrude myself ujion your 
 noble heart." 
 
 Monsieur Mutuel, a gentleman in every thread of his cloudy linen, 
 under whose wrinkled liand every grain in the quarter of an ounce of 
 poor snuft" in his poor little tin box became a gentleman's property, 
 Monsieur Mutuel passed on, with his cap in his hand. 
 
 " I little thought," said tho Englishman, after walking for several 
 minutes, and more than once blowing his nose, " when I was looking 
 round, that cemetery I'll go there ! " 
 
 Straight he went there, and when he came within the gate he paused, 
 considering whether ho should ask at the lodge for some direction to 
 the grave. But lie was less than ever in a mood for asking questions, 
 and he thought, " I shall see something on it to know it by." 
 
 In search of the Corporal's grave he went softly on, up this walk 
 and down that, peering in, among the crosses and hearts and columns 
 and obelisks and tombstones, for a recently disturbed spot. It troubled 
 him now to tlunk how many dead there were in the cemetery, he 
 had not thought them a tenth part so numerous before, and after ho 
 had walked and sought for some time, he said to himself, as he struck 
 down a new vista of tombs, " I might suppose that every one was dead 
 but I." 
 
 Not every one. A live child was lying on the ground asleep. 
 Truly he had found something on the Corporal's grave to know it by, 
 and the something was Bebellc.
 
 214 Somebody's Luggage. 
 
 With such a loving will had the dead soldier's comrades worked at 
 his resting-place, that it was already a neat garden. On tlic green 
 turf of the garden Bebcllo lay sleeping, with her cheek touching it. 
 A plain, unpainted littlo wooden Cross was jilanted in the tnrf, and 
 her short arm embraced this littlo Cross, as it had many a time 
 embraced the Corporal's neck. They had put a tiny flag (the flag of 
 France) at his head, and a laurel garland. 
 
 Mr. The Englishman took off his hat, and stood for a while silent. 
 Then, covering his head again, he bent down on one knee, and softly 
 roused the child. 
 
 " Bebelle ! My littlo one ! " 
 
 Opening her eyes, on which the tears were still wet, Bebollc was at 
 first frightened ; but seeing wlio it was, she suffered him to take her 
 in his arms, looking steadfastly at him. 
 
 " You must not lie hero, my littlo one. You must come with me." 
 
 "No, no. I can't leavo Thoophilc. I want the good dear 
 Theophilc." 
 
 " We will go and seek him, Bebelle. We will go and look for 
 him in England. Wo will go and look for him at my daughter's, 
 Bebelle." 
 
 " Shall we find him there ? " 
 
 " Wo shall find the best part of him there. Como with me, poor 
 forlorn little one. Heaven is my witness," said the Englishman, in a 
 low voice, as, before he rose, he touched the turf above the gentle 
 Corporal's breast, " that I thankfully accept this trust ! " 
 
 It was a long way for the cliild to have come unaided. Sho was 
 soon asleep again, with her embrace transferred to the Englishman's 
 neck. He looked at her worn shoes, and her galled feet, and her 
 tired face, and believed that she had come there every day. 
 
 Ho was leaving the grave with the slumbering Bebelle in his arms, 
 when ho stopped, looked wistfully down at it, and looked wistfully at 
 tho other graves around. " It is the innocent custom of the people," 
 said Mr. The Englishman, with hesitation. " I think I should like to 
 do it. No one sees." 
 
 Careful not to wake Bebelle as he went, he repaired to tho lodge 
 wlicre such littlo tokens of remembrance were sold, and bought two 
 wreaths. One, blue and white and glistening silver, " To my friend ; " 
 one of a soberer red and black and yellow, " To my friend." With 
 these ho went back to tho grave, and so down on one knee again. 
 Touching tho child's lips with the brighter wreath, he guided her 
 hand to hang it on tho Cross ; then hung his own wreath there. 
 After all, tho wreaths were not far out of keeping Avith tho littlo 
 garden. To my friend. To my friend. 
 
 Mr. The Englishman took it very ill when ho looked round a street 
 corner into tho Great Place, carrying Bcljollo in his arms, that old 
 Mutuel should be there airing his rod ril)l)on. He took a world of 
 pains to dodge the worthy Mutuel, and devoted a surprising amount
 
 Hoiv Mr. The Englishmati left France. 215 
 
 of time and trouble to skulking into his own lodging like a man 
 pursued by Justice. Safely arrived there at last, he made Bebelle's 
 toilet with as accurate a remembrance as he could bring to bear upon 
 that w^ork of the way in which he had often seen the poor Corporal 
 make it, and having given her to eat and drink, laid her down on his 
 own bed. Then he slipped out into the barber's shop, and after a 
 brief interview wdth the barber's wife, and a brief recourse to his 
 purse and card-case, came back again "vvith the whole of Bebelle's 
 personal i)roperty in such a very little bundle that it was quite lost 
 under his arm. 
 
 As it w'as irreconcilable with his whole course and character that 
 he should carry Bebelle off in state, or receive any compliments or con- 
 gratulations on that feat, he devoted the next day to getting his two 
 portmanteaus out of the house by artfulness and stealth, and to com- 
 porting himself in every particular as if he were going to run away, 
 except, indeed, that he paid his few debts in the town, and prepared 
 a letter to leave for Madame Bouclet, enclosing a sufficient sum of 
 money in lieu of notice. A railway train would come through at 
 midnight, and by that train he would take away Bebelle to look for 
 Theophile in England and at his forgiven daughter's. 
 
 At midnight, on a moonlight night, Mr. The Englishman came 
 creeping forth like a harmless assassin, with Bebelle on his breast 
 instead of a dagger. Quiet the Great Place, and quiet tlie never- 
 stirring streets ; closed the cafes ; huddled together motionless their 
 billiard-balls ; drowsy the guard or sentinel on duty here and there ; 
 lulled for the time, by sleep, even the insatiate a2)petite of the Office 
 of Town-dues. 
 
 Mr. The Englishman left the Place behind, and left the streets 
 behind, and left the civilian-inhabited town behind, and descended 
 down among the military works of Vauban, hemming all in. As tho 
 shadow of the first heavy arch and postern fell upon him and was left 
 behind, as the shadow of the second heavy arch and postern fell upon 
 him and was left behind, as his hollow tramp over the first drawbridge 
 was succeeded by a gentler sound, as his hollow tramj) over the second 
 drawbridge was succeeded by a gentler sound, as he overcame tho 
 stagnant ditches one by one, and passed out where the flowing waters 
 were and where the moonlight, so the dark shades and the hollow 
 sounds and the unwholesomely locked currents of his soul were 
 vanquished and set free. See to it, Vaubans of your own hearts, who 
 gird them in with triple walls and ditches, and with bolt and chain 
 and bar and lifted bridge, raze those fortifications, and lay them 
 level with the all-absorbing dust, before the night cometh when no 
 hand can work ! 
 
 All went prosperously, and he got into an empty carriage in the 
 train, where he could lay Bebelle on the scat over against him, as on 
 a couch, and cover her from head to foot with his mantle, pie had 
 Just drawn himself up from perfecting this arrangement, and had
 
 2i6 Somebody's Luggage. 
 
 just leaned back in Lis own scat contemplating it with great satisfac- 
 tion, when he became aware of a curious appearance at the open 
 carriage window, a ghostly little tin box floating iip in the moon- 
 light, and hovering there. 
 
 lie loaned forward, and put out his head. Down among the 
 rails and wheels and ashes, Monsieur Mutucl, red ribbon and all ! 
 
 " Excuse me. Monsieur The Englishman," said Monsieur Mutuel, 
 holding up his box at arm's length, the carriage being so high and he 
 so low ; " but I shall reverence the little box for ever, if your so 
 generous liand will take a pinch from it at parting." 
 
 Mr. The Englishman reached out of the window before complying, 
 and without asking the old fellow what business it was of his 
 shook hands and said, " Adieu ! God bless you ! " 
 
 " And, Mr. The Englishman, God bless yon ! " cried Madame 
 Bouclet, who was also there among the rails and wheels and ashes. 
 " And God will bless you in the hajipiness of the protected child now 
 with you. And God will bless you in your own child at home. And 
 God will bless you in your own remombrauces. And this from me ! " 
 
 Ho had barely time to catch a bouquet from her liand, when tlie 
 train was flying through the night. Round the paper that enfolded 
 it was bravely written (doubtless by the nephew who held the i)en of 
 an Angel), " Homage to the friend of the friendless." 
 
 " Not bad people, Bobelle ! " said Mr. The Englishman, softly 
 drawing the mantle a little from her sleeping face, that he might kiss 
 it, " though they are so " 
 
 Too " sentimental " himself at the moment to be able to get out 
 tliat word, lie added nothing but a sob, and travelled for some miles, 
 through the moonlight, with his hand before his eyes. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 HIS BllOWN-rAI'EK PAUCKL. 
 
 My works arc well known. I am a young man in tlio Art line. You 
 have seen my works many a time, though it's fifty thousand to one if 
 you have seen me. You say you don't want to see me ? You say 
 your interest is in my works, and not in me ? Don't be too sure 
 about that. Stop a bit. 
 
 Let us have it down in black and white at tlie first go ofl", so that 
 tlusre may be no unpleasantness or wrangling afterwards. And this 
 is looked over by a friend of mine, a ticket writer, tliat is up to litera- 
 ture. I am a young man in tlie Art line in the Fine-Art line. Y'^ou 
 have seen my works over and over again, and you have been curious 
 about mo, and you tliiuk you have scco nic. Nov,-, as a safe rule, you
 
 A Blighted Public Character. 217 
 
 never have seen me, and you never do see me, and you never will see 
 me. I think that's plainly put and it's what knocks me over. 
 
 If there's a blighted public character going, I am the party. 
 It has been remarked by a certain (or an uncertain) philosopher, 
 that the world knows nothing of its greatest men. He might have 
 put it plainer if he had thrown his eye in my direction. He might 
 have put it, that while the world knows something of them that 
 apparently go in and win, it knows nothing of them that really go in 
 and don't win. There it is again in another form and that's what 
 knocks me over. 
 
 Not that it's only myself that suffers from injustice, but that I am 
 more alive to my own injuries than to any other man's. Being, as I 
 have mentioned, in the Fine-Art lino, and not the Philanthropic line, 
 I openly admit it. As to company in injury, I have company enough. 
 Who are you passing every day at your Competitive Excruciations ? 
 The fortunate candidates whose heads and livers you have turned 
 upside down for life ? Not you. You are really passing the 
 Crammers and Coaches. If your principle is right, why don't you 
 turn out to-morrow morning with the keys of your cities on velvet 
 cushions, your musicians playing, and your flags flying, and read 
 addresses to the Crammers and Coaches on your bended knees, 
 beseeching them to come out and govern you ? Then, again, as to 
 your public business of all sorts, your Financial statements and your 
 Budgets ; the Public knows much, truly, about the real doers of all 
 that ! Your Nobles and llight Houourables are first-rate men ? Yes, 
 and so is a goose a first-rate bird. But I'll tell you this about 
 the goose ; you'll find his natural flavour disappointing, without 
 stuifing. 
 
 Perhaps I am soured by not being popular ? But suppose I am 
 popular. Suppose my works never fixil to attract. Suppose that, 
 whether they are exhibited by natural light or by artificial, they 
 invariably draw the public. Then no doubt they are preserved iu 
 some Collection ? No, they are not ; they are not preserved in any 
 Collection. Copyright ? No, nor yet copyright. Anyhow they must 
 be somewhere '? Wrong again, for they are often nowhere. 
 
 Says you, " At all events, you are in a moody state of mind, my 
 friend." My answer is, I have described myself as a public character 
 with a blight upon him which fully accounts for the curdling of the 
 milk in that cocoa-nut. 
 
 Those that are acquainted with London are aAvare of a locality on 
 the Surrey side of the river Thames, called the Obelisk, or, more 
 generally, the Obstacle. Those that are not acquainted wdth Loudon 
 will also be aware of it, now that I have named it. My lodging is not 
 far from that locality. I am a young man of that easy disposition, 
 that I lie abed till it's absolutely necessary to get uji and earn some- 
 thing, and then I lie abed again till I have spent it. 
 
 It was on an occasion when I had had to turn to with a view to
 
 2i8 Somebody's Luggage, 
 
 victuals, that I fouud myself walking along tlio Waterloo Road, one 
 cvouing after dark, accompanied by an acquaintance and fellow-lodger 
 in the gas-fitting way of life. He is very good company, having 
 worked at the theatres, and, indeed, he has a theatrical turn himself, 
 and wishes to be brought out in the character of Othello ; but whether 
 on account of his regular work always blacking his face and hands 
 more or less, I cannot say. 
 
 " Tom," ho says, " what a mystery hangs over you ! " 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Click " the rest of the house generally give him his 
 name, as being first, front, carpeted all over, his own furniture, and if 
 not mahogany, an out-and-out imitation " yes, Mr. Click, a mystery 
 does hang over me." 
 
 " Makes you low, you sec, don't it ? " says he, eyeing me sideways. 
 
 " Why, yes, Mr. Click, there are circumstances connected with it 
 that have," I yielded to a sigh, " a lowering effect." 
 
 " Gives you a touch of the misanthrope too, don't it ? " says he. 
 " Well, I'll tell you what. If I was you, I'd shake it off." 
 
 " If I was you, I would, Mr. Click ; but, if you was mc, you 
 wouldn't." 
 
 " Ah ! " says ho, " there's something in that." 
 
 When wo had walked a little further, he took it up again by 
 touching mo on the chest. 
 
 " You see, Tom, it seems to me as if, in the words of tho poet who 
 wrote the domestic drama of The Stranger, you had a silent sorrow 
 there." 
 
 " I have, Mr. Click." 
 
 " I hope, Tom," lowering his voice in a friendly Avay, " it isn't 
 coining, or smashing ? " 
 
 " No, Mr. Click. Don't be imeasy." 
 
 " Nor yet forg " Mr. Click checked himself, and added, 
 
 " counterfeiting anything, for instance ? " 
 
 "No, Mr. Click. I am lawfully in the Art line Fine-Art line 
 but I can say no more." 
 
 " Ah ! Under a species of star ? A kind of malignant spell ? A 
 sort of a gloomy destiny ? A cankcrworm pegging away at your 
 vitals in secret, as well as I make it out ? " said Mr. Click, eyeing mc 
 with some admiration. 
 
 I told Mr. Click that was about it, if wc came to particulars ; and 
 I thouglit he appeared rather proud of mc. 
 
 Our conversation had brought us to a crowd of people, tlic greater 
 part struggling for a front place from wliicli to see somotliing on tho 
 pavement, wliicli proved to be various designs executed in coloured 
 chalks on tlie pavement stones, lighted l)y two candles stuck in mud 
 sconces. Tlie subjects consisted of a fine frosli salmon's lioad and 
 slioulders, supposed to liavc been recently sent liome from the fisli' 
 niongor's ; a niiXHilight night at sea (in a circle) ; dead game ; scroll- 
 work ; the head of a hoary hcrn)it engaged in devout contemplation ;
 
 The Paveniettt Artist. 219 
 
 tlic bead of a pointer smoking a pijic ; and a cherubim, bis flesli 
 creased as in infancy, going on a borizontal errand against tbe wind. 
 All tbese subjects appeared to me to be exquisitely done. 
 
 On bis knees on one side of tbis gallery, a shabby person of modest 
 appearance who shivered dreadfully (though it wasn't at all cold), was 
 engaged in blowing the chalk-dust off the moon, toning the outline of 
 the back of the hermit's bead with a bit of leather, and fattening the 
 down-stroke of a letter or two in the writing. I have forgotten to 
 mention that writing formed a part of the composition, and that it 
 also as it appeared to mo was exquisitely done. It ran as follows, 
 in fine roimd characters : " An honest man is the noblest work of God. 
 12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0. s. d. Employment in an office is humbly 
 requested. Honour the Queen. Hunger is a0987G54321 
 sharp thorn. Chip chop, cherry chop, fol do rol de ri do. Astronomy 
 and mathematics. I do this to support my family." 
 
 Murmurs of admiration at the exceeding beauty of this performance 
 went about among the crowd. The artist, having finished his touch- 
 ing (and having sjwilt those i)laccs), took his seat on the pavement, 
 with his knees crouched up very nigh his chin ; and halfpence began 
 to rattle in. 
 
 " A pity to see a man of that talent brought so low ; ain't it ? " said 
 one of tbe crowd to me. 
 
 " Wliat ho might have done in the coach-painting, or house- 
 decorating ! " said another man, who took up the first speaker because 
 I did not. 
 
 " "Why, ho writes alone like the Lord Chancellor ! " said another 
 man, 
 
 " Better," said another. "I know liis writing. He couldn't support 
 bis family this way." 
 
 Then, a woman noticed the natural fluffiness of tlic hermit's hair, 
 and another woman, her friend, mentioned of tlie salmon's gills that 
 you could almost see him gasp. Then, an elderly country gentleman 
 stepped forward and asked the modest man how he executed his work V 
 And the modest man took some scraps of brown paper with colours 
 in 'em out of bis pockets, and showed them. Then a fair-complexioned 
 donkey, with sandy hair and spectacles, asked if the hermit was a 
 portrait ? To which the modest man, casting a sorrowful glance upon 
 it, replied that it was, to a certain extent, a recollection of his father. 
 Tbis caused a boy to yelp out, " Is the Pinter a smoking the pipe your 
 mother ? " who was immediately shoved out of view by a sympathetic 
 carpenter with his basket of tools at bis back. 
 
 At every fresh question or remark tlie crowd leaned forward more 
 eagerly, and dropped the halfpence more freely, and the modest man 
 gathered them uji more meekly. At last, another elderly gentleman 
 came to the front, and gave the artist his card, to come to bis office 
 to-morrow, and get some copying to do. The card was accompanied 
 by sixpence, and the artist was profoundly grateful, and, before he
 
 220 Somebody's Luggage. 
 
 put the card in Lis hat, read it several times by the light of his 
 caudles to fix the address well in his mind, in case he should lose it. 
 The crowd was deeply interested by this last incident, and a man in 
 the second row Avith a gruff voice growled to the artist, " You've got a 
 chance in life now, ain't you ? " The artist answered (snifiing in a 
 very low-spirited way, however), " I'm thankful to hope so." Upon 
 which there was a general chorus of " You arc all right," and the 
 half2)ence slackened very decidedly. 
 
 I felt myself pulled away by the arm, and Mr. Click and I stood 
 alone at the corner of the next crossing. 
 
 " Why, Tom," said Mr. Click, " what a horrid expression of face 
 you've got ! " 
 
 " Have I ? " says I. 
 
 " Have you ? " says Mr. Click. " Why, you looked as if you would 
 have liis blood." 
 
 " Whoso blood ? " 
 
 " The artist's." 
 
 " Tlie artist's ? " I rejieated. And I laughed, frantically, wildly, 
 gloomily, incoherently, disagreeably. I am sensible that I did. I 
 know I did. 
 
 Mr. Click stared at mo in a scared sort of a way, but said nothing 
 until we had walked a street's length. lie then stopped short, and 
 said, with excitement on the part of liis forefinger : 
 
 " Thomas, I find it necessary to be plain with you. I don't like the 
 envious man. I have identified the cankerworm that's pegging away 
 at your vitals, and it's envy, Thomas." 
 
 '"' Is it ? " says I. 
 
 "Yes, it is," says he. " Tliomas, beware of envy. It is the green- 
 eyed monster which never did and never will imi:)rove each shining 
 liour, but quite the reverse. I dread the envious man, Thomas. I 
 confess that I am afraid of the envious man, when he is so envious as 
 you arc. Whilst you contemplated the works of a gifted rival, and 
 Avliilst you heard that rival's praises, and especially whilst you met 
 Ids humble glance as he jnit that card away, your countenance was so 
 malevolent as to be terrific. Tliomas, I have heard of tlic envy of 
 them that follows the Fine-Art line, but I never believed it could be 
 wliat yours is. I wish you well, but I take my leave of you. And if 
 you should ever get into trouble through knifeing or say, garotting 
 a brother artist, as I believe you will, don't call me to character, 
 Tliomas, or I shall be forced to injure your case." 
 
 iMr. Click parted from me with those words, and we broke off our 
 aC(iuaiutanco. 
 
 I became enamoured. Her name was Henrietta. Contending with 
 my easy disposition, I frecpiently got up to go after her. She also 
 dwelt in the neighbourhood of the Obstacle, and I did fondly hope 
 that no other would interpose in the way of our union. 
 
 To say that Henrietta was volatile is but to say that she was
 
 Henrietta. 221 
 
 woman. To say ttat she was in tlio bonnet-trimming is feebly to 
 express the taste wbicb reigned predominant in her own. 
 
 She consented to walk with me. Let me do her the justice to say 
 that she did so upon trial. " I am not," said Henrietta, " as yet 
 prepared to regard you, Thomas, in any other light than as a friend ; 
 but as a friend I am willing to walk with you, on the understanding 
 that softer sentiments may flow." 
 
 We walked. 
 
 Under the influence of Henrietta's beguilements, I now got out of 
 bed daily. I pursued my calling with an industry before unknown, 
 and it cannot fail to have been observed at that period, by those most 
 familiar with the streets of London, that there was a larger supply. 
 But hold ! The time is not yet come ! 
 
 One evening in October I was walking with Henrietta, enjoying the 
 cool breezes wafted over Vauxhall Bridge. After several slow turns, 
 Henrietta gaped frequently (so inseparable from woman is the love of 
 excitement), and said, " Let's go home by Grosvenor Place, Piccadilly, 
 and Waterloo " localities, I may state for the information of the 
 stranger and the foreigner, well known in London, and the last a 
 Bridge. 
 
 " No. Not by Piccadilly, Henrietta," said I. 
 
 " And why not Piccadilly, for goodness' sake ? " said Henrietta. 
 
 Could I tell her ? Could I confess to the gloomy presentiment that 
 overshadowed me ? Could I make myself intelligible to her ? No. 
 
 " I don't like Piccadilly, Henrietta." 
 
 " But I do," said she. " It's dark now, and the long rows of lamps 
 in Piccadilly after dark are beautiful. I will go to Piccadilly ! " 
 
 Of course we went. It was a pleasant night, and there were 
 numbers of people in the streets. It was a brisk night, but not too 
 cold, and not damp. Let me darkly observe, it M-as the best of all 
 
 nights FOR THE PURPOSE. 
 
 As we passed the garden wall of the Royal Palace, going up 
 Grosvenor Place, Henrietta murmured : 
 
 " I wish I was a Queen ! " 
 
 " Why so, Henrietta ? " 
 
 " I would make you Something," said she, and crossed her two 
 hands on my arm, and turned away her head. 
 
 Judging from this that the softer sentiments alluded to above had 
 begun to flow, I adai)ted my conduct to that belief. Thus happily we 
 passed on into the detested thoroughfare of Piccadilly. On the right 
 of that thoroughfare is a row of trees, the railing of the Green Park, 
 and a fine broad eligible piece of pavement. 
 
 " Oh my ! " cried Henrietta presently. " There's been an accident ! " 
 
 I looked to the left, and said, " Where, Henrietta ? " 
 
 " Not there, stupid ! " said she. " Over by the Park railings. 
 Where the crowd is. Oh no, it's not an accident, it's something else 
 to look at ! What's them lights ? "
 
 222 Somebody's LiiggagS. 
 
 She referred to two lights twinkling low amongst the legs of the 
 assemblage : two caudles on the pavement. 
 
 " Oh, do come along ! " cried Henrietta, skipping across the road 
 with me. I hung back, but in vain. " Do let's look ! " 
 
 Again, designs xipon the pavement. Centre compartment. Mount 
 Vesuvius going it (in a circle), supported by four oval compartments, 
 severally representing a ship in heavy weather, a shoulder of mutton 
 attended by two cucumbers, a golden harvest with distant cottage of 
 proprietor, and a knife and fork after nature ; above the centre com- 
 partment a bunch of grapes, and over the whole a rainbow. The 
 whole, as it appeared to me, exquisitely done. 
 
 The j^erson in attendance on these works of art was in all respects, 
 shabbincss excepted, unlike the former personage. His whole appear- 
 ance and manner denoted briskness. Though threadbare, he exj^ressed 
 to the crowd that poverty had not subdued his spirit, or tinged with 
 any sense of shame this honest effort to turn his talents to some 
 account. The writing which formed a part of his composition was 
 conceived in a similarly cheerful tone. It breathed the following 
 sentiments : " The writer is poor, but not despondent. To a British 
 12345G7890 Public he s. d. appeals. Honour to our brave 
 Army ! And also 0987G54321to our gallant Navy. Buitoxs 
 Stuike the A B C D E r G writer in common chalks would be 
 grateful for any suitable employment Home ! Huuraji ! " The whole 
 of this writing appeared to mo to be exquisitely done. 
 
 But this man, in one respect like the last, though seemingly hard 
 at it with a great show of brown paper and rubbers, Avas only really 
 fattening the down-stroke of a letter hero and there, or blowing the 
 loose chalk off the rainbow, or toning the outside edge of the shoulder 
 of nmtton. Though he did this with the greatest confidence, he did 
 it (as it struck me) in so ignorant a manner, and so spoilt everything 
 he touched, that wlien he begun upon the purple smoke from the 
 chimney of the distant cottage of the proprietor of the golden harvest 
 (which smolvc was beautifully soft), I found myself saying aloud, 
 W'ilhout considering of it : 
 
 " Let that alone, will you V " 
 
 " Halloa ! " said the man next me in the crowd, jerking me roughly 
 from him with his elbow, " why didn't you send a telegram? If we 
 had knowii you was coming, we'd have provided somctliing belter for 
 you. You understand the man's work bcttc^r than he docs himself, 
 don't youV Have you made your will? You're too clever to live 
 
 "Don't be hard ujxjti the goiitleman, sir," sjiid the person in 
 attendance on the works of art, with a twinkle in his (iye as he looked 
 at ijie ; "he may chance to bo an artist liiniself. If so, sir, he will 
 have a fellow-feeling with me, sir, when I " he adapted his action to 
 his words as he Avent on, and gave a smart slap of his hands between 
 each touch, working himself all the time about and about the comi)0-
 
 Another Impostor. 223 
 
 feltion "when I lighten the bloom of my grapes shade off the 
 orange in my rainbow dot the i of my Britons throw a yellow light 
 into my cow-cum-&er insinuate another morsel of fat into my 
 shoulder of mutton dart another zigzag flash of lightning at my shij^ 
 in disti'ess ! " 
 
 He seemed to do this so neatly, and was so nimble about it, that 
 the halfpence came flying in. 
 
 " Thanks, generous public, thanks I " said the professor. " You 
 will stimulate me to further exertions. My name will be found in the 
 list of British Painters yet. I shall do better than this, with en- 
 couragement. I shall indeed." 
 
 " You never can do better than that bunch of grapes," said 
 Henrietta. " Oh, Thomas, them grapes ! " 
 
 " Not better than that, lady ? I hope for the time when I shall 
 paint anything but your own bright eyes and lips equal to life." 
 
 " (Thomas, did you ever ?) But it must take a loug time, sir," said 
 Henrietta, blushing, " to paint equal to that." 
 
 " I was prenticed to it, miss," said the young man, smartly touching 
 up the composition " prenticed to it in the caves of Sj)ain and 
 Portingale, ever so long and two year over." 
 
 There was a laugh from the crowd ; and a new man who had 
 worked himself in next me, said, " He's a smart chap, too ; ain't 
 he?" 
 
 " And what a eye ! " exclaimed Henrietta softly. 
 
 " Ah ! He need have a eye," said the man. 
 
 "Ah ! He just need," was murmured among the crowd. 
 
 " He couldn't come that 'ere burning mountain without a eye," said 
 the man. He had got himself accepted as an authority, somehow, 
 and everybody looked at his finger as it pointed out Vesuvius. " To 
 come that effect in a general illumination would require a eye ; but 
 to come it with two dips why, it's enough to blind him ! " 
 
 That imjjostor, pretending not to have heard what was said, now 
 winked to any extent with both eyes at once, as if the strain upon his 
 sight was too much, and threw back his long hair it was very long 
 as if to cool his fevered brow. I was watching him doing it, when 
 Henrietta suddenly whispered, " Oh, Thomas, how horrid you look ! " 
 and pulled, me out by the arm, 
 
 Eemembering Mr. Click's words, I was confused when I retorted, 
 " What do you mean by horrid ? " 
 
 " Oh gracious ! AVhy, you looked," said Henrietta, " as if you 
 would have his blood." 
 
 I was going to answer, " So I would, for twopence from his 
 
 nose," when I checked myself and remained silent. 
 
 We returned home in silence. Every step of the way, the softer 
 sentiments that had flowed, ebbed twenty mile an hour. Adapting 
 my conduct to the ebbing, as I had done to the flowing, I let my arm 
 drop limp, so as she could scarcely keep hold of it, and I wished her
 
 224 Somebody's Luggage. 
 
 Bucli a cold good-night at parting, that I keep within the bounds of 
 truth when I characterise it as a Rasper. 
 
 In the course of the next day I received the following document : 
 
 " Henrietta informs Thomas that my eyes are open to you. I must 
 ever wish you well, but walking and us is separated by an uufarmable 
 abyss. One so malignant to superiority Oh that look at him ! can 
 never never conduct 
 
 Henrietta. 
 
 P.S. To the altar." 
 
 Yielding to the easiness of my disposition, I went to bed for a 
 week, after receiving this letter. During the whole of such time, 
 London was bereft of the usual fruits of my labour. When I resumed 
 it, I found that Henrietta was married to the ax'tist of Piccadilly, 
 
 Did I say to the artist ? What fell words were those, expressive of 
 what a galling hollowness, of what a bitter mockery ! I I I am 
 the artist. I was the real artist of Piccadilly, I was the real artist of 
 the Waterloo Road, I am the only artist of all those pavement-subjects 
 which daily and nightly arouse your admiration. I do 'em, and I let 
 'em out. The man you behold with the papers of chalks and the 
 rubbers, touching up the down-strokes of the writing and shading off 
 the salmon, the man you give the credit to, the man you give the 
 money to, hires yes ! and I live to tell it ! hires those works of art 
 of me, and brings nothing to 'em but the candles. 
 
 Such is genius in a commercial country. I am not up to the 
 shivering, I am not up to the liveliness, I am not up to the wanting- 
 employment-in-an-office move ; I am only up to originating and 
 executing the work. In consequence of which you never see me ; you 
 think you see me when you see somebody else, and that somebody else 
 is a mere Commercial character. The one seen by self and Mr. 
 Click in the Waterloo Road can only write a single word, and that I 
 tauglit him, and it's Multiplication which you may see him execute 
 upside down, because he can't do it the natural way. The one seen 
 by self and Henrietta by the Green Park railings can just smear into 
 existence the two ends of a rainbow, with his cuff and a rubber if 
 very hard put upon making a show but he could no more come the 
 arch of the rainbow, to save his life, than he could come the moon- 
 light, iisli, volcano, shipwreck, mutton, hermit, or any of my most 
 celebrated effects. 
 
 To conclude as I began : if there's a blighted public character 
 going, 1 am the party. And often as you have seen, do see, and will 
 sec, my Works, it's fifty thousand to one if you'll ever see mo, unless, 
 when the candles are burnt down and the Commercial character is 
 gone, you should happen to notice a neglected young man pcrscver- 
 ingly rubbing out the last traces of the i)ictures, so that nobody can 
 renew the same. That's mc.
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 HIS WONDEEFUL END. 
 
 It will have been, ere now, perceived that I sold the foregoing 
 writings. From the fact of their being printed in these pages, the 
 inference will, ere now, have been drawn by the reader (may I add, 
 the gentle reader ?) that I sold them to One who never yet * 
 
 Having parted with the writings on most satisfactory terms, for, 
 in opening negotiations with the present Journal, was I not placing 
 myself in the hands of One of whom it may be said, in the words of 
 Another,* I resumed my usual functions. But I too soon dis- 
 covered that peace of mind had fled from a brow which, up to that 
 time, Time had merely took the hair off, leaving an unruffled expanse 
 within. 
 
 It were superfluous to veil it, the brow to which I allude is my 
 own. 
 
 Yes, over that brow uneasiness gathered like the sable wing of tho 
 fabled bird, as as no doubt will be easily identified by all right- 
 minded individuals. If not, I am unable, on the spur of the moment, 
 to enter into particulars of him. The reflection that the writings 
 must now inevitably get into print, and that Ho might yet live and 
 meet with them, sat like the Hag of Night upon my jaded form. Tho 
 elasticity of my spirits departed. Fruitless was the Bottle, whether 
 Wine or Medicine. I had recourse to both, and the effect of both 
 upon my system was witheringly lowering. 
 
 In this state of depression, into which I subsided when I first began 
 to revolve what could I ever say if He the unknown was to appear 
 in the Coffee-room and demand reparation, I one forenoon in this 
 last November received a turn that appeared to be given me by 
 the finger of Fate and Conscience, hand in hand. I was alone in 
 the Coffee-room, and had just poked the fire into a blaze, and was 
 standing with my back to it, trying whether heat would i^enetrate 
 with soothing influence to the Voice within, when a young man in 
 a cap, of an intelligent countenance, though requiring his hair cut, 
 stood before me. 
 
 " I\rr. Christopher, the Head Waiter ? " 
 
 " The same." 
 
 The young man shook his hair out of his vision, which it im- 
 peded, to a packet from his breast, and handing it over to me, said, 
 with his eye (or did I dream ?) fixed with a lambent meaning on me, 
 "The Pkoofs." 
 
 Although I smelt my coat-tails singeing at the fire, I had not the 
 power to withdraw them. The young man put the packet in my 
 
 * The remainder of this complimentary sentence editorially struck out. 
 
 Q
 
 226 Somebody's Luggage. 
 
 faltering grasp, and repeated, let me do him the justice to add, with 
 civility : 
 
 " The PiiooFs. A. Y. R." 
 
 "With those words ho departed. 
 
 A. Y. E. ? And You Remember. Was that his meaning? At 
 Your Risk. Were the letters short for tliat reminder ? Anticipate 
 Your Retribution. Did they stand for tlial warning ? Out-dacious 
 Youth Repent ? But no ; for that, a was happily wanting, and the 
 vowel here was a A. 
 
 I opened the packet, and found that its contents were the fore- 
 going writings printed just as the reader (may I add the discerning 
 reader ?) peruses them. In vain was the reassuring whisper, A. Y. R., 
 All the Year Round, it could not cancel the Proofs. Too appro- 
 priate name. The Proofs of my having sold the Writings. 
 
 My wretchedness daily increased. I had not thought of the risk I 
 ran, and the defying publicity I put my head into, until all was done, 
 and all was in print. Give up the money to be off the bargain and 
 prevent the publication, I could not. My family was down in the 
 world, Christmas was coming on, a brother in the hospital and a 
 sister in the rheumatics could not be entirely neglected. And it was 
 not only ins in the family that had told on the resources of one un- 
 aided Waitering ; outs were not wanting. A brother out of a situation, 
 and another brother out of money to meet an acceptance, and another 
 brother out of his mind, and another brother out at New York (not 
 the same, though it might appear so), had really and truly brought 
 me to a stand till I could turn myself round, I got worse and worse 
 in my meditations, constantly reflecting " The Proofs," and reflecting 
 that when Christmas drew nearer, and the Proofs were published, 
 there could be no safety from hour to hour but that He might con- 
 front me in the Coffee-room, and in the face of day and his country 
 demand his rights. 
 
 The impressive and unlooked-for catastrophe towards which I 
 dimly pointed the reader (shall I add, the highly intellectual reader ?) 
 in my first remarks now rapidly approaches. 
 
 It was November still, but the last echoes of the Guy Foxes had 
 long ceased to reverberate. We was slack, several joints under our 
 average mark, and wine, of course, proportionate. So slack had we 
 become at last, that Beds Nos. 2G, 27, 28, and 31, having took tlicir 
 six o'clock dinners, and dozed over their resjiective i)iiits, had drove 
 away in tlicir respective Ilausoms for their respective Night Mail- 
 trains and left us empty. 
 
 I had took the evening paper to No. G table, which is warm and 
 most to be i)referrcd, and, lost in the all-absorbing topics of the day, 
 had drop})ed into a slumber. I was recalled to consciousness by the 
 well-known intimation, " Waiter ! " and rejdying, " Sir ! " found a 
 gentleman standing at No. 4 table. The risader (shall I add, the 
 observant reader?) will please to notice the locality of the gentleman, 
 ^at No. 4 table.
 
 Himself. 227 
 
 He Lad one of the new-faugled iiucollapsaWe bags in Lis Land 
 (wLicL I am against, for I don't see AvLy you shouldn't collapse, wLile 
 you are about it, as your fatLers collapsed before you), and he said : 
 
 " I want to dine, waiter. I shall sleep here to-night." 
 
 " Very good, sir. What will you take for dinner, sir ? " 
 
 " Soup, bit of codfish, oyster sauce, and the joint." 
 
 " Thank you, sir." 
 
 I rang the chambermaid's bell ; and Mrs. Pratchett marched in, 
 according to custom, demurely carrying a lighted flat candle before 
 her, as if she was one of a long public procession, all the other 
 members of which was invisible. 
 
 In the meanwhile the gentleman had gone up to the mantelpiece, 
 right in front of the fire, and had laid his forehead against the mantel- 
 piece (which it is a low one, and brought him into the attitude of 
 leap-frog), and had heaved a tremenjous sigh. His hair was long and 
 lightish ; and when ho laid his forehead against the mantelpiece, his 
 hair all fell in a dusty fluff together over his eyes ; and when he now 
 turned round and lifted up his head again, it all fell in a dusty fluff 
 together over his ears. This give him a wild appearance, similar to 
 a blasted heath. 
 
 " ! The chambermaid. Ah ! " He was turning something in 
 his mind. " To be sure. Yes. I won't go up-stairs now, if you will 
 take my bag. It will be enough for the present to know my number. 
 Can you give me 24 B ? " 
 
 (0 Conscience, what a Adder art thou !^ 
 
 Mrs. Pratchett allotted him the room, and took his bag to it. Ho 
 then went back before the fire, and fell a biting his nails. 
 
 " Waiter ! " biting between the words, " give me," bite, " pen and 
 paper ; and in five minutes," bite, " let me have, if you please," bite, 
 ' a," bite, " Mcsscngei'." 
 
 Unmindful of his waning soup, he wrote and sent off six notes 
 before he touched his dinner. Three were City ; three West-End. 
 The City letters were to Cornhill, Ludgatc-hill, and Farringdon 
 Street. The West-End letters were to Great Marlborough Street, 
 New Burlington Street, and Piccadilly. Everybody was systematically 
 denied at every one of the six places, and there was not a vestige of 
 any answer. Our light porter whispered to me, when he came back 
 with that report, " All Booksellers." 
 
 But before then he had cleared off his dinner, and his bottle of 
 wine. He now mark the concurrence witli the document formerly 
 given in full ! knocked a plate of biscuits oft' the table with his 
 agitated elber (but without breakage), and demanded boiling brandy- 
 aud-water. 
 
 Now fully convinced that it was Himself, I perspired with the 
 utmost freedom. When he became flushed with the heated stimulant 
 referred to, he again demanded pen and paper, and passed tlie suc- 
 ceeding two hours in producing a manuscri^^t which ho put in the fire
 
 228 Somebody's Luggage. 
 
 when completed. lie then went up to Led, attencleil by Mrs. 
 Pratchett. Mrs. Prutchctt (who was aware of tny emotions) told me, 
 on coming down, that she had noticed his eye rolling into every 
 corner of the passages and staircase, as if in search of his Luggage, 
 and that, looking back as she shut the door of 24 B, she perceived 
 him with his coat already thrown off immersing himself bodily 
 imder the bedstead, like a chimley-sweep before the application of 
 machinery. 
 
 The next day I forbear the horrors of that night was a very 
 foggy day in our part of London, insomuch that it was necessary to 
 light the Coffee-room gas. We was still alone, and no feverish words 
 of mine can do justice to the fitfulness of his appearance as he sat at 
 No. 4 table, increased by there being something wrong with the 
 meter. 
 
 Having again ordered his dinner, he went out, and was out for the 
 best part of two hours. Inquiring on his return whether any of the 
 answers had arrived, and receiving an unqualified negative, his instant 
 call was for mulligatawny, the cayenne pejiper, and orange brandy. 
 
 Feeling that the mortal straggle was now at hand, I also felt that 
 I must be equal to him, and with that view resolved that whatever he 
 took I would take. Behind my partition, but keeping my eye on him 
 over the curtain, I therefore oj)erated on Mulligatawny, Cayenne 
 Pepper, and Orange Brandy. And at a later period of the day, when 
 ho again said, " Orange Brandy," I said so too, in a lower tone, to 
 George, my Second Lieutenant (my First was absent on leave), who 
 acts between me and the bar. 
 
 Throughout that awful day he walked about the Coffee-room con- 
 tinually. Often he came close up to my partition, and then his eye 
 rolled within, too evidently in search of any signs of his Luggage. 
 Half-past six came, and I laid his cloth. He ordered a bottle of old 
 Brown. I likewise ordered a bottle of old Brown. He drank his. I 
 drank mine (as nearly as my duties would permit) glass for glass 
 against his. Ho to2)ped with coffee and a small glass. I topped with 
 coffee and a small glass. He dozed. I dozed. At last, " ^yaiter ! " 
 and he ordered his bill. Tlic moment was now at hand when we 
 two must be locked in tlie deadly graj)ple. 
 
 Swift as the arrow from the bow, I had formed my resolution ; in 
 other words, I had hammered it out between nine and nine. It was, 
 that I would be the first to open up tlie subject with a full acknow- 
 ledgment, and would ofter any gradual settlement within my ])ower. 
 He paid liis bill (doing what was riglit l)y attendance) witli his eye 
 rolling about him to tlie last for any tokens of liis I>uggago. One 
 only time our gaze then met, with the lustrous fixedness (I l)elieve I 
 am correct in imputing tliat character to itV) of the Avcll-known 
 Basilisk. The decisive moment had arrived. 
 
 With a tolerable steady hand, though with humility, I laid Tho 
 Proofs before him.
 
 Somebody in Print. 229 
 
 " Gracious Heavens ! " lie cries out, leaping up, and catching hold 
 of his hair. " What's this ? Print ! " 
 
 " Sir," I replied, in a calming voice, and bending forward, " I 
 humbly acknowledge to being the unfortunate cause of it. But I 
 hope, sir, that when you have heard the circumstances explained, and 
 the innocence of my intentions " 
 
 To my amazement, I was stopped short by his catching me in both 
 his arms, and pressing me to his breast-bone ; where I must confess 
 to my face (and particular, nose) having xmdergone some temporary 
 vexation from his wearing his coat buttoned high up, and his buttons 
 being uncommon hard. 
 
 " Ha, ha, ha ! " he cries, releasing me with a wild laugh, and 
 grasping my hand. " What is your name, my Benefactor ? " 
 
 "My name, sir " (I was crumpled, and puzzled to make him out), 
 " is Christopher ; and I hope, sir, that, as such, when you've heard 
 my ex " 
 
 " In print ! " he exclaims again, dashing the proofs over and over 
 as if he was bathing in them. " In print ! ! O Christopher ! Philan- 
 thropist ! Nothing can recompense you, but what sum of money 
 would be acceptable to you ? " 
 
 I had drawn a step b.ack from him, or I should have suffered from 
 his buttons again. 
 
 " Sir, I assure you, I have been already well paid, and " 
 
 " No, no, Christopher ! Don't talk like that ! What sum of money 
 would be acceptable to you, Christopher ? Would you find twenty 
 pounds acceptable, Christopher ? " 
 
 However great my surprise, I naturally found words to say, " Sir, 
 I am not aware that the man was ever yet born without more than the 
 average amount of water on the brain as would not find twenty pounds 
 acceptable. But extremely obliged to you, sir, I'm sure ; " for he 
 had tumbled it out of his purse and crammed it in my hand in two 
 bank-notes ; " but I could wish to know, sir, if not intruding, how I 
 have merited this liberality ? " 
 
 " Know then, my Christopher," he says, " that from boyhood's hour 
 I have unremittingly and unavailingly endeavoured to get into print. 
 Know, Christopher, that all the Booksellers alive and several dead 
 have refused to put me into print. Know, Christopher, that I have 
 written unprinted Reams. But they shall be read to you, my friend 
 and brother. You sometimes have a holiday ? " 
 
 Seeing the great danger I was in, I had the presence of mind to 
 answer, " Never ! " To make it more final, I added, " Never ! Not 
 from the cradle to the grave." 
 
 " Well," says he, thinking no more about that, and chuckling at 
 his proofs again. " But I am in print ! The first flight of ambition 
 emanating from my father's lowly cot is realised at length ! The golden 
 bow " he was getting on, " struck by the magic hand, has emitted a 
 complete and perfect sound ! When did this happen, my Chrirstophcr ? "
 
 230 Somebody's Ltiggage. 
 
 " Whicli happen, sir ? " 
 
 " This," ho licld it out at arms length to admire it, " this 
 Per-rint." 
 
 When I had given him my detailed accoxmt of it, he grasped mc by 
 the hand again, and said : 
 
 " Dear Christopher, it should be gratifying to you to know that 
 you arc an instrument in the hands of Destiny, Because you are." 
 
 A passing Sometliing of a melancholy cast put it into my head to 
 shako it, and to say, " Perhaps wo all arc." 
 
 " I don't mean that," ho answered ; " I don't take that wide range ; 
 I confine myself to the special case. Observe mo well, my Chris- 
 topher ! Hopeless of getting rid, through any effort of my own, of 
 any of the manuscripts among my Luggage, all of which, send them 
 where I would, were always coming back to me, it is now some seven 
 years since I left that Luggage here, on the desperate chance, either 
 that the too, too faithful manuscripts would como back to me no more, 
 or that somo one less accursed than I might give them to the world. 
 You follow me, my Christopher ? " 
 
 " Pretty well, sir." I followed him so far as to judge that ho had 
 a weak head, and that the Orange, the Boiling, and Old Brown com- 
 bined was beginning to tell. (Tho Old Brown, being heady, is best 
 adapted to seasoned cases.) 
 
 " Years elapsed, and tlioso compositions slumbered in dust. At 
 length. Destiny, choosing her agent from all mankind, sent You here, 
 Christopher, and lo ! the Casket was burst asunder, and the Giant was 
 free ! " 
 
 He made hay of his hair after ho said this, and he stood a-tiptoe. 
 
 " But," ho reminded himself in a state of excitement, " wo must sit 
 up all night, my Christopher. I must correct these Proofs for tho 
 press. Fill all the inkstands, and bring me several new pens." 
 
 Ho smeared himself and ho smeared the Proofs, tlic night through, 
 to that degree that when Sol gave him warning to depart (in a four- 
 wlieelor), few could have said which was them, and which was him, 
 and which Avas blots. His last instructions was, that I should in- 
 stantly run and take his corrections to the office of the present Journal. 
 I did so. They most lilvcly will not appear in print, for I noticed a 
 message being brought round from Beauford I'rinting House, while 
 I was a tlirowing this concluding statement on pajjor, that tlic olo 
 resources of that cstablislimcnt was unable to make oiit what tlu.'y 
 meant. LTpon whicli a certain gentleman in company, as I will not 
 more particularly name, but of whom it will be sufficient to remark, 
 standing on tho broad ])asis of a wave-girt isle, that whether we regard 
 him in the light of, * laughed, and put tho corrections in the fire. 
 * Tlie rcmnindor nf tlii.s complimentary parcntliesi.s cditorlall}- struck out. 
 
 XoTio. Mr. Dickon's partly contributed to another of tlio chapterfs, entitled " Ilig 
 T'mhrelL'i;" but for this the reader is referred to the number as republished in (i 
 collected volunic the-^Vme Christinas numl}ers of All the Year Jicxind,
 
 MRS. I.lKRII'l'.K > I,<>l)i.l.\(
 
 MRS. LIRRIPER'S LODGINGS. 
 
 IN TWO CHAPTERS. 
 
 [1863.] 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HOW MRS. LIREirER CARRIED ON THE BUSINESS. 
 
 Whoever would begin to bo worried with letting Lodgings that 
 wasn't a lone woman with a living to get is a thing inconceivable to 
 me, my dear ; excuse the familiarity, but it comes natural to me in 
 my own little room, when wishing to open my mind to those that I 
 can trust, and I should be truly thankful if they were all mankind, 
 but such is not so, for have but a Furnished bill in the window and 
 your watcli on the mantelpiece, and farewell to it if you turn your 
 back for but a second, however gentlemanly the manners ; nor is being 
 of your own sex any safeguard, as I have reason, in the form of sugar- 
 tongs to know, for that lady (and a fine woman she was) got me to 
 run for a glass of water, on the plea of going to be confined, which 
 certainly turned out true, but it was in the Station-house. 
 
 Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street, Strand situated midway 
 between the City and St. James's, and within five minutes' walk of 
 the principal places of public amusement is my address. I have 
 rented this house many years, as the parish rate-books Avill testify ; 
 and I could wish my landlord was as alive to the fact as I am myself; 
 but no, bless you, not a half a pound of paint to save his life, nor so 
 much, my dear, as a tile ujion the roof, though on your bended knees. 
 
 My dear, you never have found Number Eighty-one Norfolk Street 
 Strand advertised in Bradshaw's Railway Guide, and with the blessing 
 of Heaven you never will or shall so find it. Some there are who do 
 not think it lowering themselves to make their names that cheap, and 
 even going the lengths of a portrait of the house not like it with a 
 blot in every window and a coach and four at the door, but what will 
 suit Wozonham's lower down on the other side of the way will not 
 suit me, Miss Wozenhivm having her opinions and me having mine,
 
 232 Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings. 
 
 thongli whcu it comes to systematic underbidding capable of being 
 proved on oatli in a court of justice and taking the form of " If Mrs. 
 Lirripcr names eighteen shillings a week, I name fifteen and six," it 
 then comes to a settlement between yourself and your conscience, 
 supposing for the sake of argument your name to be Wozcnliam, 
 which I am well aware it is not or my opinion of you would be greatly 
 lowered, and as to airy bedrooms and a night-porter in constant 
 attendance the less said the better, the bedrooms being stuffy and tho 
 porter stuff. 
 
 It is forty years ago since me and my poor Lirripcr got married at 
 St. Clement's Danes, where I now have a sitting in a very jiloasaut 
 pew with genteel company and my own hassock, and being partial to 
 evening service not too crowded. My poor Lirripcr was a handsomo 
 figure of a man, with a beaming eye and a voice as moUow as a 
 musical instrument made of honey and steel, but he liad ever been a 
 free liver being in the commercial travelling line and travelling what 
 lie called' a limekiln road "a dry road, Emma my dear," my poor 
 Lirripcr says to me, " where I have to lay tlie dust with one drink or 
 unotlier all day long and half tho night, and it wears me Emma " 
 and this led to his running througli a good deal and might have run 
 through the turnpike too when that dreadful horse that never would 
 stand still for a single instant set off", but for its being night and tlio 
 gate shut and consequently took his Avhecl, my poor Lirriper and tho 
 gig smashed to atoms and never spoke afterwards. He was a hand- 
 some figure of a man, and a man with a jovial heart and a sweet 
 temper ; but if they had come up then they never could have given 
 you tlie mellowness of his voice, and indeed I consider photographs 
 -wanting in mellowness as a general rule and making you look like a 
 new-ploughed field. 
 
 My poor Tarriper being behindhand witli the world and being 
 buried at Hatfield church in Hertfordshire, not that it was his native 
 l)lace but that he had a liking for the Salislniry Arms wliere we went 
 upon our wedding-day and passed as happy a fortniglit as ever hajipy 
 was, I went nmnd to the creditors and I says " Gentlemen I am 
 acquainted with tlie fact that I am not answerable for my late 
 husband's debts but I wish to pay them for I am his lawful wife and 
 his good name is dear to me. I am going into the Lodgings gentle- 
 men as a business and if I prosper every fartliing tliat my late 
 liusband owed sliall be paid for the sake of the love I bore liim, by 
 this riglit hand." It took a long time to do but it was done, and tlio 
 silver cream-jug which is between onrsclves and the bed and tho 
 mattress in my room up-stairs (or it would liave found legs so sure as 
 over tlie Eurnisliod bill was u])) being presented by tlie gentlemen 
 engraved " To ]\[rs. Lirriper a mark of grateful respect for her 
 hononrablf! conduct " gave me a turn which was too much for my 
 feelings, till ]Mr. lietlcy wliicli at that time had the jnirlours aiid loved 
 his joko says ' Cheer up Mr. Lirripcr, you slunild feel as if it was
 
 Wandering CJiristians. 233 
 
 only your christening and they wcro your godfathers and godmothers 
 which did promise for you." And it hrought me round, and 1 don't 
 mind confessing to you my dear that I then put a sandwich and a 
 drop of sherry in a little basket and went down to Hatfield cliurch- 
 yard outside the coach and kissed my hand and laid it with a kind of 
 proud and swelling love on my husband's grave, though hlcss you it 
 had taken me so long to clear his name that my wedding-ring was 
 worn quite fine and smooth when I laid it on the green green waving 
 grass. 
 
 I am an old woman now and my good looks arc gone but that's mo 
 my dear over the plate-warmer and considered like in the times when 
 you used to pay two guineas on ivory and took j'our chance pretty 
 much how you came out, which made you very careful how you left it 
 about afterwards because people were turned so red and uncomfortable 
 by mostly guessing it was somebody else quite different, and there 
 was once a certain person that had put his money in a hop business 
 that came in one morning to pay his rent and his respects being the 
 second floor that would have taken it down from its hook and put it 
 in his breast-pocket you understand my dear for the L, lie says of 
 the original only there was no mellowness in liis voice and I wouldn't 
 let him, but his opinion of it you may gather from his saying to it 
 " Speak to me Emma ! " which was far from a rational observation no 
 doubt but still a tribute to its being a likeness, and I think myself it 
 was like me when I was young and wore that sort of stays. 
 
 But it was about the Lodgings that I was intending to hold forth 
 and certainly I ought to know something of the business having been 
 in it so long, for it was early in the second year of my married life 
 that I lost my poor Lirriper and I set up at Islington directly after- 
 wards and afterwards came here, being two houses and cight-and- 
 thirty years and some losses and a deal of exjK'rience. 
 
 Girls are your first trial after fixtures and they try you even worse 
 than what 1 call the Wandering Christians, though wliy Oiey should 
 roam the earth looking for bills and then coming in and viewing the 
 apartments and stickling about terms and never at all wanting thorn 
 or dreaming of taking them being already provided, is a mystery I 
 should be thankful to have explained if by any miracle it could be. 
 It's wonderful they live so long and thrive so on it but I supjiose the 
 exercise makes it healthy, knocking so much and going from house to 
 house and up and down-stairs all day, and then their pretending to 
 be so particular and punctual is a most astonishing thing, looking at 
 their watches and saying " Could you give me the refusal of the rooms 
 till twenty minutes past eleven the day after to-morrow in the fore- 
 noon, and supposing it to be considered essential by my friend from 
 tlie country could there be a small iron bedstead put in the little 
 room upon the stairs ? " Why when I was new to it my dear I used 
 to consider before I promised and to make my mind anxious -with 
 calculations and to got quite wearied out with disappointments, but
 
 234 M)-s. Lirriper's Lodgings. 
 
 now I says " Certainly by all means " well knowing it's a Wandering 
 Christian and I shall hear no more about it, indeed by this time I 
 know most of the Wandering Christians by sight as well as they 
 know rao, it being the habit of each individual revolving round 
 London in that capacity to come back about twice a year, and it's 
 very remarkable that it runs in families and the children grow up to 
 it, but even were it otherwise I should no sooner hear of the friend 
 from the country which is a certain sign than I sliould nod and say to 
 myself You're a Wandering Christian, thougli whether they arc (as 
 I have heard) persons of small property with a taste for regular employ- 
 ment and frequent change of scene I cannot undertake to tell you. 
 
 Girls as I was beginning to remark are one of your first and your 
 lasting troubles, being like your teeth which begin with convulsions 
 and never cease tormenting you from the time you cut them till they 
 cut you, and then you don't want to part with them which seems hard 
 but we must all succumb or buy artificial, and even where you get a 
 will nine times out of ten you'll get a dirty ftico with it and naturally 
 lodgers do not like good society to bo shown in with a smear of black 
 across the nose or a smudgy eyebrow. Where they pick the black up 
 is a mystery I cannot solve, as in tho case of the willingcst girl that 
 ever came into a house half-starved poor thing, a girl so willing that 
 I called her Willing Sophy down ujion her knees scrubbing early and 
 late and ever cheerful but always smiling with a black face. And I 
 says to Sophy, " Now Sophy my good girl have a regular day for your 
 stoves and keep the width of the Airy between yourself and tho 
 blacking and do not brush your hair with the bottoms of the sauce- 
 pans and do not meddle with the sniiffs of the candles and it stands 
 to reason that it can no longer bo " yet there it was and always on her 
 nose, which turning up and being broad at the end seemed to boast of 
 it and caused warning from a steady gentleman and excellent lodger 
 with breakfast by the week but a little irritable and use of a sitting- 
 room wlien required, his words being " Mrs. Lirriper I have arrived 
 at tlic point of admitting that the Black is a man and a brother, but 
 only in a natural form and when it can't bo got off." Well conse- 
 quently I put poor Sophy on to other work and forbid her answering 
 the door or answering a bell on any account but she was so unfor- 
 tunately willing that nothing would stoj) her flying up the kitclicn- 
 stairs whenever a bell was heard to tingle. I put it to licr " O Sophy 
 Sopliy for goodness' goodness' sake where does it come from ? " To 
 wliicli that i)oor unlucky willing mortal bursting out crying to sec mo 
 so vexed replied " I took a deal of black into mo ma'am when I was 
 a small child being much neglected and I think it must bo, that it 
 works out," so it continuing to work out of tliat poor thing and not 
 having aiiotlior fault to find with her I says " Sojjliy wliat do you 
 seriously think of my liclping yon away to Now South Wales wlicre 
 it miglit not bo noticed?" Nor did I ever repent tlio money which 
 was well spent, for she married tho ship's cook on the voyage (him-
 
 Caroline Maxeys Temper. 235 
 
 self a Mulottcr) and did well and lived happy, and so far as ever I 
 heard it was not noticed in a new state of society to her dying day. 
 
 In what way Miss Wozenham lower down on the other side of the 
 way reconciled it to her feelings as a lady (which she is not) to entice 
 Mary Anne Pcrkinsop from ray service is best known to herself, I do 
 not know and I do not wish to know how opinions are formed at 
 Wozcnham's on any point. But Mary Anne Perkinsop although I 
 behaved handsomely to her and she behaved unhandsomely to me was 
 worth her weight in gold as overawing lodgers without driving them 
 away, for lodgers would be far more si)aring of their bells with Mary 
 Anne than I ever knew them to be with Maid or Mistress, which is a 
 great triumph especially when accompanied with a cast in the eyo 
 and a bag of bones, but it was the steadiness of her way with them 
 through her father's having failed in Pork. It was Mary Anne's 
 looking so respectable in her person and being so strict in her sj^irits 
 that conquered the tea-and-sngarcst gentleman (for he weighed them 
 both in a pair of scales every morning) that I have ever had to deal 
 with and no lamb grew meeker, still it afterwards came round to mo 
 that Miss Wozenham happening to pass and seeing Mary Anne tako 
 in the milk of a milkman that made free in a rosy-faced way (I think 
 no worse of him) with every girl in the street but was quite frozen up 
 like the statue at Charing-cross by her, saw Mary Anne's value in the 
 lodging business and went as high as one pound per quarter more, 
 consequently Mary Anne with not a word betwixt us says " If you 
 will provide yourself Mrs. Lirriper in a month from this day I have 
 already done the same," which hurt me and I said so, and she then 
 hurt mo more by insinuating that her father having failed in Pork 
 had laid her open to it. 
 
 My dear I do assure you it's a harassing thing to know M'hat kind 
 of girls to give the preference to, for if they are lively they get bell'd 
 off their legs and if they are sluggish you suffer from it yourself in 
 complaints and if they are sparkling-eyed they get made love to, and 
 if they arc smart in their persons they try on your Lodgers' bonnets 
 and if they are musical I defy you to kcej) them away from bands and 
 organs, and allowing for any difference you like in their heads their 
 heads will bo always out of window just the same. And then what 
 tlic gentlemen like in girls the ladies don't, which is fruitful hot 
 water for all parties, and then there's temper though such a temper 
 as Caroline Maxey's I hope not often. A good-looking black-eyed 
 girl was Caroline and a comely-made girl to your cost when she did 
 lircak out and laid about her, as took place first and last through a 
 now-married couple come to see London in the first floor and the lady 
 very high and it was sujiposed not liking tlie good looks of Caroline 
 liaving none of her own to spare, but anyhow she did try Caroline 
 though that was no excuse. So one afternoon Caroline comes down 
 into the kitchen flushed and flashing, and she says to me " Mrs. 
 i irripcr that woman in the first has aggravated me past bearing," I
 
 236 3[rs. Lir viper's Lcilgings. 
 
 says " Caroline keep your temper," Caroline says with a curdling 
 laugh " Keep my temper ? You're right Mrs. Lirriper, so I will. 
 Capital D her ! " bursts out Caroline (you might have struck me into 
 the centre of the earth with a feather when she said it) " I'll give her 
 a touch of the temper that J keep ! " Caroline downs with her hair 
 my dear, screeches and rushes up-stairs, I following as fast as my 
 trembling legs could bear me, but before I got into the room the 
 dinner-cloth and pink-and-white service all dragged off upon the floor 
 with a crash and the new-married couple on their backs in the firegrate, 
 him with the shovel and tongs and a dish of cucumber across him and 
 a mercy it was summer-time. " Caroline " I says " be calm," but sho 
 catches off my cap and tears it in her teeth as she passes me, tlieu 
 pounces on the new-married lady makes her a bundle of ribbons takes 
 her by the two cars and knocks the back of her head upon the carpet 
 Murder screaming all the time Policemen running down the street 
 and Wozenham's windows (jvidge of my feelings when I came to know 
 it) thrown up and Miss Wozenham calling out from the balcony with 
 crocodile's tears " It's Mrs. Lirriper been overcharging somebody to 
 madness she'll be murdered I always thought so Pleeseman savo 
 her ! " My dear four of them and Caroline behind the chiffoniero 
 attacking with the poker and when disarmed prize-fighting with her 
 double fists, and down and up and up and down and dreadful ! But 
 I couldn't bear to sec the poor young creature roughly handled and 
 licr hair torn when they got the better of her, and I says " Gentlemen 
 Pol icemen pray remember that her sex is the sex of your mothers and 
 sisters and your sweethearts, and God bless them and you ! " And 
 there she was sitting down on the ground handcufted, taking breath 
 against tlie skirting-board and them cool with their coats in strips, 
 and all she says was " Mrs. Lirriper I'm sorry as ever I touched you, 
 f(jr you're a kind motherly old thing," and it made me tliink that I 
 liad often wished I had been a mother indeed and how would my heart 
 have felt if I had been the mother of that girl ! Well you know 
 it turned out at the Policc-otfice that she had done it before, and slio 
 had her clothes away and was sent to prison, and when slio was to 
 come out I trotted off to the gate in the evening with just a morsel 
 of jelly in that little basket of mine to give her a mite of strengtli to 
 face the world again, and there I met with a very decent motlicr 
 waiting for her son through bad company and a stubborn one he was 
 with his half-boots not laced. So out came Caroline and I says 
 " Caroline come along witli me and sit down under the wall where it's 
 retired and oat a little trifle tliat I have brought witli me to do you 
 good," and she throws her arms round my neck and says so])biiig ' O 
 wliy were you never a motlicr wlien there are such mothers as tliero 
 arc ! " sho says, and in half a minute more she begins to laugh and 
 says " Did I really tear your cap to shreds?" and when I told her 
 "You certaiidy did so (Caroline" she lauglicd again and said while 
 she patted my face " Then wliy do you wear such (juecr old caps you
 
 Major Jachnan. 237 
 
 dear old tLing ? If you hadn't worn such queer old caps I don*t think 
 I should have done it even then." Fancy the girl ! Nothing could 
 get out of her what she was going to do except O she would do well 
 enough, and we parted she being very thankful and kissing my hands, 
 and I nevermore saw or heard of that girl, except that I shall always 
 believe that a very genteel cap which was brought anonymous to me 
 one Saturday night in an oilskin basket by a most impertinent young 
 sparrow of a monkey whistling with dirty shoes on the clean steps 
 and playing the harp on the Airy railings with a hoop-stick came 
 from Caroline. 
 
 What you lay yourself open to my dear in the way of being the 
 object of uncharitable suspicions when you go into the Lodging 
 business I have not the words to tell you, but never was I so dis- 
 honourable as to have two keys nor would I willingly think it even 
 of Miss Wozenham lower down on the other side of the way sincerely 
 hoping that it may not be, though doubtless at the same time money 
 cannot come from nowhere and it is not reason to suppose that Brad- 
 shaws put it in for love be it blotty as it may. It is a hardship 
 hurting to the feelings that Lodgers open their minds so wide to tlie 
 idea that you are trying to get the better of them and shut their minds 
 BO close to the idea that they are trying to get the better of you, but 
 as Major Jackman says to me " I know the ways of this circular 
 Avorld Mrs. Lirriper, and that's one of 'em all round it " and many is 
 the little ruffle in my mind that the Major has smoothed, for he is a 
 clever man who has seen much. Dear dear, thirteen years have 
 passed though it seems but yesterday since I was sitting with my 
 glasses on at the open front parlour window one evening in August 
 (the parlours being then vacant) reading yesterday's paper my eyes 
 for print being poor though still I am thankful to say a long sight at 
 a distance, when I hear a gentleman come posting across the road and 
 up the street in a dreadful rage talking to himself in a fury and d'ing 
 and c'ing somebody. " By George ! " says he out loud and clutching 
 his walking-stick, " I'll go to Mrs. Lirriper's. "Which is Mrs. 
 Lirriper's ? " Then looking round and seeing me he flourishes his 
 liat right off his head as if I had been the queen and he says, " Excuse 
 the intrusion Madam, but pray Madam can you tell me at what 
 number in this street there resides a well-known and much-respected 
 lady by the name of Lirrii)er ? " A little flustered though I nii:st 
 say gratified I took off my glasses and courtesied and said " Sir, Mrs. 
 Lirriper is your humble servant." " Astonishing ! " says he. " A 
 million pardons ! Madam, may I ask you to have the kindness to 
 direct one of your domestics to open the door to a gentleman in 
 search of apartments, by the name of Jackman ? " I had never heard 
 the name but a politer gentleman I never hope to see, for says ho 
 " IMadam I am shocked at your opening the door yourself to no 
 worthier a follow than Jemmy Jackman, After you Madam. I never 
 precede a lady," Then he comes into the parlours and he sniffs, and
 
 238 Mrs. Lirriper's Lodging^. 
 
 ho says " Hali ! These are parlours ! Not musty cupboards " he 
 says " but parlours, and no smell of coal-sacks." Now my dear it 
 having been remarked by some inimical to the whole neighbourhood 
 that it always smells of coal-sacks which might prove a drawback to 
 Lodgers if encouraged, I says to the Major gently though firmly that 
 I think ho is referring to Arundel or Surrey or Howard but not 
 Norfolk. " Madam " says he " I refer to Wozenham's lower down 
 over the way Madam you can form no notion what Wozenham's is 
 Madam it is a vast coal-sack, and Miss Wozenham has the 
 principles and manners of a female heaver Madam from the manner 
 in which I have heard her mention you I know she has no apprecia- 
 tion of a lady, and from the manner in which she has conducted her- 
 self towards mo I know she has no appreciation of a gentleman 
 Madam my name is Jackman should you require any other reference 
 than what I have already said, I name tlie Bank of England 
 perhaps you know it!" Such was the beginning of the Major's 
 occupying the parlours and from that hour to this the same and a 
 most obliging Lodger and punctual in all respects except one irregular 
 which I need not particularly specify, but made up for by his being 
 a protection and at all times ready to fill in the papers of the Assessed 
 Taxes and Juries and that, and once collared a young man with the 
 drawing-room clock under his coat, and once on the parapets with his 
 own hands and blankets put out the kitchen chimney and afterwards 
 attending the summons made a most eloquent speech against the 
 Parish before the magistrates and saved the engine, and ever quite 
 the gentleman though passionate. And certainly Miss Wozenham's 
 detaining the trunks and umbrella was not in a liberal spirit though it 
 may have been according to her rights in law or an act I would 
 myself have stooped to, the Major being so much the gentleman that 
 though ho is far from tall he seems almost so when he has his shirt- 
 frill out and his frock-coat on and his hat with the curly brims, and 
 in what service he was I cannot truly tell you my dear whether 
 Militia or Foreign, for I never heard him even name himself as Major 
 but always simple " Jemmy Jackman " and once soon after he camo 
 when I felt it my duty to let him know that Miss Wozenham had put 
 it about that he was no Major and I took the liberty of adding " wliich 
 you are sir " his words Avere " Madam at any rate I am not a Minor, 
 and sufficient for tlie day is the evil tliereof " whicli cannot ])e denied 
 to be the sacred truth, nor yet his military ways of having his boots 
 Avith only the dirt bruslicd off taken to liim in the front ])arlour every 
 morning on a clean jilate and varnishing them liimsclf with a little 
 sponge iind a saucer and a whistle in a whisper so sure as ever his 
 breakfast is ended, and so neat his ways that it never soils his linen 
 whicli is scrupulous though more in quality tlian quantity, neither 
 that nor his niustachios whicli to the best of my belicsf are done at the 
 same time and which are as black and shining as his boots, his head 
 of hair being a lovely white.
 
 A Good Let. 239 
 
 It was the third year nearly up of the Major's being in the parlours 
 that early one morning in the month of February when Parliament 
 was coming on and you may therefore suppose a number of impostors 
 were about ready to take hold of anything they could get, a gentleman 
 and a lady from the country came in to view the Second, and I well 
 remember that I had been looking out of window and had watched 
 them and the heavy sleet driving down the street together looking 
 for bills. I did not quite take to the face of the gentleman though 
 he was good-looking too but the lady was a very pretty young thing 
 and delicate, and it seemed too rough for her to be out at all though 
 she had only come from the Adelphi Hotel which would not have 
 been much above a quarter of a mile if the weather had been less 
 severe. Now it did so happen my dear that I had been forced to put 
 five shillings weekly additional on the second in consequence of a loss 
 from running away full dressed as if going out to a dinner-party, 
 which was very artful and had made me rather suspicious taking it 
 along with Parliament, so when the gentleman proposed three months 
 certain and the money in advance and leave then reserved to renew on 
 the same terms for six months more, I says I was not quite certain 
 but that I might have engaged myself to another party but would 
 step down-stairs and look into it if they would take a seat. They 
 took a seat and I went down to the handle of the Major's door that I 
 had already began to consult finding it a great blessing, and I knew 
 by his whistling in a w^hisper that he was varnishing his boots which 
 was generally considered private, however he kindly calls out " If it's 
 you. Madam, come in," and I went in and told him. 
 
 " Well, Madam," says the Major rubbing his nose as I did fear at 
 the moment with the black sponge but it was only his knuckle, he 
 being always neat and dexterous with his fingers " well, Madam, I 
 suppose you would be glad of the money ? " 
 
 I was delicate of saying " Yes " too out, for a little extra colour 
 rose into the Major's cheeks and there was irregularity which I will 
 not particularly specify in a quarter which I will not name. 
 
 " I am of opinion, Madam," says the Major, " that when money is 
 ready for you when it is ready for you, Mrs. Lirriper you ouglit to 
 take it. What is there against it, Madam, in this case xip-stairs V " 
 
 " I really cannot say there is anything against it, sir, still I thought 
 I would consult you." 
 
 "You said a newly-married couple, I think, Madam?" says the 
 Major. 
 
 I says " Ye-es. Evidently. And indeed the young lady mentioned 
 to me in a casual way that she had not been married many months.' 
 
 The Major rubbed his nose again and stirred the varnisli round 
 and round in its little saucer with his piece of sponge and took to his 
 whistling in a whisper for, a few moments. Then he says " You n'ould 
 call it a Good Let, Madam ? " 
 
 '' certainly a Good Let sir."
 
 240 Mrs. L ir riper s Lodgings. 
 
 " Say they renew for the additional six months. Would it put you 
 about veiy much Madam if if the worst was to come to the worst ? " 
 said the Major. 
 
 " Well I hardly know," I says to the Major. " It depends upon 
 circumstances. Would you object Sir for instance ? " 
 
 " I ? " says the Major. " Object ? Jemmy Jackman ? Mrs. 
 Lirripor close with the proposal." 
 
 So I went up-stairs and accepted, and they came in next day which 
 was Saturday and the Major was so good as to draw up a Memorandum 
 of an agreement in a beautiful round hand and expressions that 
 sounded to me equally legal and military, and Mr. Edson signed it on 
 tlie Monday morning and the Major called upon Mr. Edson on the 
 Tuesday and Mr. Edson called upon the Major on the Wednesday 
 and the Second and the parlours were as friendly as could be wished. 
 
 The three months paid for had run out and we had got without any 
 fresh overtures as to payment into May my dear, when there came an 
 obligation upon Mr. Edson to go a business expedition right across 
 the Isle of Man, which fell quite unexpected upon that pretty little 
 thing and is not a place that according to my views is particularly in 
 the way to anywhere at any time but that may be a matter of opinion. 
 So short a notice was it that ho was to go next day, and dreadfully she 
 cried poor pretty, and I am sure I cried too when I saw her on the 
 cold pavement in the sharp east wind it being a very backward 
 spring that year taking a last leave of him with her pretty bright 
 hair blowing this way and that and her arms clinging round his neck 
 and him saying " There there there. Now let mo go Peggy." And 
 by that time it was plain that what tlie Major had been so accommo- 
 dating as to say he would not object to happening in the house, would 
 happen in it, and I told her as much when lie was gone while I 
 comforted her with my arm up the staircase, for I says " You will 
 soon have others to keep up for my pretty and you must think of 
 that." 
 
 Ills letter never came when it ought to have come and what she 
 wont througli morning after morning when the postman brought iione 
 for her the very postman himself compassionated when she ran down 
 to the door, and yet we cannot wonder at its being calculated to blunt 
 the feelings to have all the trouble of other people's letters and none 
 of tlie pleasure and doing it oftcner in the mud and mizzle than not 
 and at a rate of wages more resembling Little liritain than CJrcat. 
 But at last one morning when she was too poorly to come running 
 down-stairs he says to me with a pleased look in his face that made 
 me next to love the man in his uniform coat though ho was dripping 
 wet " I have taken you first in the street this morning Mrs. Lirripcr, 
 for here's the one for Mrs. Edson." I went uj) to her bedroom with 
 it as fast as ever I could go, and she sat uj) in bed when slie saw it 
 and kissed it and tore it open and then a blank stare came upon her. 
 " It's very short ! " she says lifting her large eyes to my face. "
 
 A Dreadful Let ten 241 
 
 Mrs. Lirriper it's very short ! " I says " My dear Mrs. Edson no 
 doubt that's because your husband hadn't time to write more just at 
 that time." " No doubt, no doubt," says she, and puts her two hands 
 on her face and turns round in her bed. 
 
 I shut her softly in and I crept down-stairs and I tapped at the 
 Major's door, and when the Major having his thin slices of bacon in 
 his own Dutch oven saw me he came out of his chair and put mo 
 down on the sofa. " Hush ! " says he, " I see something's the matter. 
 Don't speak take time." I says " Major I'm afraid there's cruel 
 work up-stairs." " Yes yes " says he " I had begun to be afraid of it 
 take time." And then in opposition to his own words he rages out 
 frightfully, and says " I shall never forgive myself Madam, that I, 
 Jemmy Jackman, didn't see it all that morning didn't go straight 
 iip-stairs when my boot-sponge was in my hand didn't force it down 
 his throat and choke him dead with it on the spot ! " 
 
 The Major and mo agreed when we came to ourselves that just at 
 present we could do no more than take on to suspect nothing and uso 
 our best endeavours to keep that poor young creature quiet, and what 
 I ever should have done without the Major when it got about among 
 the organ-men that quiet was our object is unknown, for he made lion 
 and tiger war upon them to that degree that without seeing it I could 
 not have believed it was in any gentleman to have such a power of 
 bursting out with fire-irons walking-sticks water-jugs coals potatoes 
 off his table the very hat off his head, and at the same time so furious 
 in foreign languages that they would stand with their handles half- 
 turned fixed like the Sleeping Ugly for I cannot say Beauty. 
 
 Ever to see the postman come near the house now gave me such a 
 fear that it was a reprieve when he went by, but in about another ten 
 days or a fortniglit ho says again, " Here's one for Mrs. Edson. Is 
 she pretty well ? " " She is pretty well postman, but not well enough 
 to rise so early as she used " which was so far gospel-truth. 
 
 I carried the letter in to the Major at his breakfast and I says 
 tottering " Major I have not the courage to take it up to her." 
 
 " It's an ill-looking villain of a letter," says the Major. 
 
 " I have not the courage Major " I says again in a tremble " to take 
 it up to her." 
 
 After seeming lost in consideration for some moments the Major 
 says, raising his head as if something new and useful had occurred to 
 his mind " Mrs. Lirri^ier, I shall never forgive myself that I, Jemmy 
 Jackman, didn't go straight up-stairs tliat morning when my boot- 
 sponge was in my hand and force it down his tliroat and choke him 
 dead with it." 
 
 " Major " I says a little hasty " you didn't do it which is a blessing, 
 for it would have done no good and I think your sponge was better 
 employed on your own lionourablc boots." 
 
 So we got to bo rational, and 2)lanncd that I should tap at her bed- 
 room door and lay the letter on the mat outside and wait on the upper 
 
 K
 
 242 Mrs. Lirripcr's Lodgings. 
 
 landing for what miglit happen, and never was gunpowder cannon- 
 balls or sliclls or rockets more dreaded than that dreadful letter was 
 by me as I took it to the second floor. 
 
 A terrible loud scream sounded through the house the minute after 
 she had opened it, and I found her on the floor lying as if her life 
 was gone. My dear I never looked at the face of the letter which 
 was lying open by her, for there was no occasion. 
 
 Everything I needed to bring her round tlie Major brought up with 
 his own hands, besides running out to the chemist's for what was not 
 in the house and likewise having the fiercest of all his many skirmishes 
 with a musical instrument representing a ball-room I do not know in 
 what particular country and company waltzing in and out at folding- 
 doors with rolling eyes. When after a long time I saw her coming 
 to, I slipped on the landing till I hoard her cry, and then I went in 
 and says cheerily " Mrs. Edson you're not well my dear and it's not 
 to bo wondered at," as if I had not been in before. Whether she 
 believed or disbelieved I cannot say and it would signify nothing if I 
 could, but I stayed by her for hours and then she (lod ever blesses 
 me ! and says she will try to rest for her head is bad. 
 
 " Major," I whispers, looking in at tho parlours, " I beg and pray 
 of you don't go out." 
 
 Tho Major whispers, " Madam, trust mo I will do no such a thing. 
 How is she ? " 
 
 I says " Major tho good Lord above us only knows what burns and 
 rages in her poor mind. I left her sitting at her window. I am 
 going to sit at mine." 
 
 It came on afternoon and it came on evening. Norfolk is a deliglit- 
 ful street to lodge in provided you don't go lower down but of a 
 Slimmer evening when the dust and wasto paper lie in it and stray 
 children play in it and a kind of a gritty calm and bake settles on it 
 and a peal of churcli-bells is practising in tho ncighbourliood it is a 
 triilo dull, and never have I seen it since at such a time and never 
 shall I sec it evermore at sucli a time witliout seeing the dull Juno 
 evening when that forlorn y*ning creature sat at \\(\v open corner 
 window on the second and me at my open corner window (the other 
 corner) on tlie tliird. Sometliing merciful, something wiser and 
 better far than my own self, had moved me while it was yet light to 
 sit in my bonnet and shawl, and as the shadows fell and the tide roso 
 I could sometimes when I put out my head aiid looked at her 
 window below see that she leaned out a little looking down tho 
 street. It was just settli'.ig dark when I saw lier in the street. 
 
 So fearful of losing sight of her that it almost stops my breath 
 while I tell it, I went down-stairs faster than T ever moved in all my 
 life and only tapped with my hand at the Major's door in passing it 
 and slipping ont. She was gone already. I made the same speed 
 down the street and when I came to tlie corner of Howard Street I 
 saw tliat she had turned it and was there plain before me going
 
 Saved! 243 
 
 towards the west. with what a thankful heart I saw her going 
 along ! 
 
 She was quite unacquainted with London and had very seldom 
 been out for more than an airing in our own street where she knew 
 two or three little children belonging to neighbours and had some- 
 times stood among them at the street looking at the water. She must 
 be going at hazard I knew, still she kept the by-strects quite 
 correctly as long as they would serve her, and then turned up into the 
 Strand, But at every corner I could see her head turned one way, 
 and that way was always the river way. 
 
 It may have been only the darkness and quiet of the Adelphi that 
 caused her to strike into it but she struck into it much as readily as 
 if she had set out to go there, which perhaps was the case. She went 
 straight down to the Terrace and along it and looked over the iron 
 rail, and I often woke afterwards in my own bed with the horror of 
 seeing her do it. The desertion of the wharf below and the flowing 
 of the high water there seemed to settle her purpose. She looked 
 about as if to make out the way down, and she struck out the right 
 way or the wrong way I don't know which, for I don't know the 
 place before or since and I followed her the way she went. 
 
 It was noticeable that all this time she never once looked back. 
 But there was now a great change in the manner of her going, and 
 instead of going at a steady quick walk with her arms folded before 
 her, among tlie dark dismal arches she went in a wild way with her 
 arms opened wide, as if they wore wings and she was flying to her 
 death. 
 
 We were on the wharf and she stopped. I stopped. I saw 
 her hands at her bonnet-strings, and I rushed between her and tho 
 brink and took her round the waist with both my arms. She might 
 have drowned me, I felt then, but she could never have got quit 
 of mo. 
 
 Down to that moment my mind had been all in a maze and not 
 half an idea had I had in it what I shoukl say to her, but the instant 
 I touched her it came to me like magic and I had my natural voice 
 and my senses and even almost my breath. 
 
 " Mrs. Edson ! " I says " My dear ! Take care. How ever did you 
 lose your way and stumble on a dangei'ous place like this ? Why 
 you must have come here by the most jierplexing streets in all 
 London. No wonder you are lost, I'm sure. And this place too ! 
 Why I thought nobody ever got here, except me to order my coals 
 and the Major in the parlours to smoke his cigar ! " for I saw that 
 blessed man close by, pretending to it. 
 
 " Hah Hah Hum ! " coughs the Major. 
 
 " And good gracious me " I says, " why here he is ! " 
 
 " Halloa ! who goes there ? " says the Major in a military manner. 
 
 " Well ! " I says, " if this don't beat everything ! Don't you know 
 us Major Jackman ? "
 
 244 Mrs. Lirripers Lodgings. 
 
 " Halloa ! " says tlio Major. " "Who calls on Jemmy Jackman ? " 
 (and more out of breath ho was, and did it less like life than I should 
 have expected.) 
 
 " Why liere's Mrs. Edson Major " I says, " strolling ont to cool her 
 poor head which has been very bad, has missed her way and got lost, 
 and Goodness knows where she might have got to but for me coming 
 hero to drop an order into my coal merchant's letter-box and you 
 coming here to smoke your cigar ! And you really are not well 
 cnougli my dear " I says to her " to bo half so far from homo without 
 mo. And your arm will bo very acceptable I am sure Major " I says 
 to him " and I know she may lean upon it as heavy as she likes." 
 And now we had both got her thanks be Above ! one on each side. 
 
 She was all in a cold shiver and she so continued till I laid her on 
 her own borl, and up to the early morning she held mo by tlie hand 
 and moaned and moaned " wicked, wicked, wicked ! " But wlicn at 
 last I made believe to droop my head and bo overpowered with a dead 
 sleep, I lieard that poor young creature give such touching and such 
 humble thanks for being preserved from taking her own life in her 
 madness that I thought I should have cried my eyes out on the 
 counterpane and I knew she was safe. 
 
 Being well enough to do and able to afford it, me and the Major 
 laid our little i)lans next day wliilc she was asleep worn ont, and so 
 I says to her as soon as I could do it nicely : 
 
 " Mrs. Edson my dear, when Mr. Edson paid mo the rent for these 
 farther six months " 
 
 She gave a start and I felt her large eyes look at mc, but I went on 
 with it and with my needlework. 
 
 " I can't say that I am r[uitc sure I dated the receipt riglit, 
 CoTild you let me look at it '? " 
 
 She laid her frozen cold hand upon mine and she looked through 
 me when I was forced to look up from my needlework, but I had 
 taken tlie precaution of having on my spectacles. 
 
 " I liave no receipt " says she. 
 
 " Ah ! TJien lie has got it " I says in a careless way. " It's of no 
 great consequence. A receipt's a receipt." 
 
 From that time slie always had liold of my hand when I could 
 spare it wliicli was generally only when I read to her, for of course 
 she and me had our bits of needlework to plod at and neither of us 
 was very handy at those little things, tliough I am still rather proud 
 of my share in them too considering. And thrmgh slie took to nil 1 
 read to her, I used to fancy tliat next to what \vas tauglit upon the 
 Mount slio took most of all to Jlis gentle compassion for us ])Oor 
 women and to Ilis young life and to h(nv llis motlior was proud of 
 llim and treasured His sayings in her licart. Slio had a grateful look 
 in her eyes that never never lUiver M'ill bo out of mine until they are 
 closed in my last sleep, aiid when I eliancod to look at licr witliout 
 thinking of it I would al'.vays meet that look, and slic would (jftcu
 
 A Birt/i and a Death. 245 
 
 offer me lier trembling lip to kiss, much more like a little affectionate 
 half broken-hearted child than ever I can imagine any grown person. 
 
 One time the trembling of this poor lip was so strong and her tears 
 ran dow^n so fast that I thought she was going to tell me all her woe, 
 60 I takes her two hands in mine and I says : 
 
 " No my dear not now, you had best not try to do it now. Wait 
 for better times when you have got over this and are strong, and then 
 you shall tell me whatever you will. Shall it be agreed ? " 
 
 With our hands still joined she nodded her head many times, and 
 she lifted my hands and jnit them to her lips and to her bosom. 
 
 " Only one word now my dear " I says. " Is there any one ? " 
 
 She looked inquiringly " Any one ? " 
 
 " That I can go to ? " 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " No one that I can bring ? " 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " No one is wanted by me my dear. Now that may be considered 
 past and gone." 
 
 Not much more than a week afterwards for this was far on in the 
 time of our being so together I was bending over at her bedside with 
 my ear down to her lips, by turns listening for her breath and looking 
 for a sign of life in her face. At last it came in a solemn way not 
 in a flash but like a kind of pale faint light brought very slow to the 
 face. 
 
 She said something to me that had no sound in it, but I saw she 
 asked me : 
 
 " Is this death ? '" 
 
 And I says : 
 
 " Poor dear poor dear, I think it is." 
 
 Knowing somehow that she wanted me to move her weak right 
 hand, I took it and laid it on her breast and then folded her other 
 hand upon it, and she prayed a good good prayer and I joined in it 
 poor me though there were no words spoke. Then I brought the 
 baby in its wrappers from where it lay, and I says : 
 
 " My dear this is sent to a childless old woman. This is for me to 
 take care of." 
 
 The trembling lip was put up towards my face for the last time, 
 and I dearly kissed it. 
 
 " Yes my dear," I says. " Please God ! Me and the Major." 
 
 I don't know how to tell it right, but I saw her soul brighten and 
 leap up, and get free and fly away in the grateful look. 
 
 So this is the why and wherefore of its coming to pass my dear 
 tliat we called him Jemmy, being after the Major his own godfather 
 with Lirriper for a surname being after myself, and never was a dear 
 child such a brightening thing in a Lodgings or such a playmate to 
 his grandmother as Jemmy to this house and me, and always good
 
 246 Mrs. Lir viper's Lodgings. 
 
 and minding what he was told (upon the whole) and soothing for the 
 temper and making everything ploasanter except when he grew old 
 enough to drop his cap down Wozenham's Airy and they wouldn't 
 hand it up to him, and being worked into a state I put on my best 
 bonnet and gloves and parasol with the child in my baud and I says 
 " Miss Wozenham I little thought ever to have entered your house 
 but unless my grandson's cap is instantly restored, the laws of this 
 country regulating the property of the Subject shall at length decide 
 betwixt yourself and me, cost what it may." With a sneer upon her 
 face which did strike me I must say as being expressive of two keys 
 but it may have been a mistake and if there is any doubt let Miss 
 Wozenham have the full benefit of it as is but right, she rang the bell 
 and she says " Jane, is there a street-child's old c;ip down our Airy ? " 
 I says " Miss Wozenham before your housemaid answers that question 
 you must allow mo to inform you to your face that my grandson is 
 not a street-child and is not in the habit of wearing old caps. In 
 fact " I says " Miss Wozenham I am far from sure that my grandson's 
 cap may not be newer than your own " which was perfectly savage in 
 me, her lace being the commonest machine-make washed and torn 
 besides, but I had been put into a state to begin with fomented by 
 impertinence. Miss Wozenham says red in the face "Jane you heard 
 my question, is there any child's cap down our Airy ? " " Yes 
 Ma'am " says Jane " I think I did see some such rubbish a-lying 
 there." " Then " says Miss Wozenham " let these visitors out, and 
 then throw up that worthless article out of my premises." But here 
 the child who had been staring at Miss Wozenham with all his eyes 
 and more, frowns down his little eyebrows purses uj) his little moutli 
 puts his chubby legs far apart turns his little dimpled fists round and 
 round slowly over one another like a little coffee-mill, and says to her 
 " Oo impdent to mi Gran, me tut oor hi ! " " O ! " says Miss Wozen- 
 ham looking down scornfully at tlio Mite " this is not a street-child 
 is it not ! lioally ! " I bursts out laugliing and I says " Miss Wozen- 
 ham if this ain't a pretty sight to you I don't envy your feelings and 
 I wish you good-day. Jemmy come along with Gran." And I was 
 still in the best of humours though his cap came flying up into the 
 street as if it had been just turned on out of the water-plug, and I 
 went home laughing all tlie way, all owing to that dear boy. 
 
 The miles and miles that mo and the Major have travelled witli 
 Jemmy in the dusk between the lights are not to bo calculatetl, Jemmy 
 driving on the coach-box which is the Major's brass-bound writing 
 desk on the table, me inside in tlie easy-chair and the I\rajor Guard 
 up behind witli a brown-paper horn doing it really wonderful. I d(j 
 assui'o you my dear tliat sometimes when I have taken a few winks in 
 my place inside the coacli and liavc come lialf awake by the flasliing 
 liglit of tlie fire and have heard that ])rccious pet driving and tlie 
 Major Ijlowing up behind to have the change of horses ready when we 
 got to the Inn, T have half believed v/e were on the old North lioad
 
 Master Jemmy is lost. 247 
 
 that my poor Lirriper knew so well. Then to see that child and the 
 Major both wrapped up getting down to warm their feet and going 
 stamping about and having glasses of ale out of the paper matchboxes 
 on the chimney-piece is to see the Major enjoying it fully as much as 
 the child I am very sure, and it's equal to any play when Coachee 
 opens the coach-door to look in at me inside and say " Wery 'past 
 that 'tage. 'Frightened old lady ? " 
 
 But what my inexpressible feelings were when we lost that child 
 can only be compared to the Major's which v<'ere not a shade better, 
 through his straying out at five years old and eleven o'clock in the 
 forenoon and never heard of by word or sign or deed till half-past 
 nine at night, when the Major had gone to the Editor of the Times 
 newspaper to put in an advertisement, which came out next day four- 
 and-twenty hours after he was found, and which I mean always care- 
 fully to keep in my lavender drawer as the first printed account of 
 him. The more the day got on, the more I got distracted and the 
 Major too and both of us made worse by the composed ways of the 
 I)olice though very civil and obliging and what I must call their 
 obstinacy in not entertaining the idea that he was stolen. " Wo 
 mostly find Mum " says the sergeant who came round to comfort me, 
 which he didn't at all and he had been one of the private constables 
 in Caroline's time to which he referred in his opening words when 
 he said " Don't give way to uneasiness in your mind Mum, it'll all 
 come as right as my nose did when I got the same barked by that 
 young woman in your second floor " says this sergeant " we mostly 
 find Mum as people ain't over-anxious to have what I may call second- 
 hand children. You'll get him back Mum." ' but my dear good 
 sir " I says clasping my hands and wringing them and clasping them 
 again " he is such an uncommon child ! " " Yes Mum " says the 
 sergeant, " we mostly find that too Mum. The question is what his 
 clothes were worth." " His clothes " I says " were not worth much 
 sir for he had only got his playing-dress on, but the dear child ! " 
 " All right Mum " says the sergeant. " Yoxi'Vl get him back Mum. 
 And even if he'd had his best clothes on, it wouldn't come to worse 
 than his being found wrapped up in a cabbage-leaf, a shivering in a 
 lane." His words jHerced my heart like daggers and daggers, and 
 me and the Major ran in and out like wild things all day long till the 
 Major returning from his interview with the Editor of the Times at 
 night rushes into my little room hysterical and squeezes my hand and 
 wipes his eyes and says " Joy joy officer in jdaiu clothes came up on 
 the steps as I was letting myself in compose your feelings Jemmy's 
 found." Consequently I fainted away and when I came to, embraced 
 the legs of the ofticer in plain clothes who seemed to be taking a kind 
 of a quiet inventory in his mind of the property in my little room 
 with brown whiskers, and I says " Blessings on you sir where is the 
 Darling!" and ho says "In Kcnnington Station House." I was 
 dropping at his feet Stone at tlic image of that Innocence in cells with
 
 248 ATrs. Lirriper's Lodgings. 
 
 murderers wlaen he adds " Ho followed the Monkey." I says deeming 
 it slang language " O sir explain for a loving grandmother what 
 Monkey ! " He says " Him in the spangled cap with the strap under 
 the chin, as won't keep on him as sweeps the crossings on a round 
 tahle and don't want to draw his sabre more than he can help." 
 Then I xiaderstood it all and most thankfully thanked him, and me 
 and the Major and him drove over to Kennington and there we found 
 our boy lying quite comfortable before a blazing fire having sweetly 
 played himself to sleep upon a small accordion nothing like so big as 
 a flat-iron which they had been so kind as to lend him for the purpose 
 and which it appeared had been stopped upon a very young person. 
 
 My dear the system upon which the Major commenced and as I 
 may say perfected Jemmy's learning when he was so small that if tho 
 dear was on the other side of the table you had to look under it 
 instead of over it to see him with his mother's own bright hair in 
 beautiful cuids, is a thing that ought to be known to the Throne and 
 Lords and Commons and then might obtain some promotion for the 
 Major which he well deserves and would be none the worse for 
 (sjieaking between friends) L. S. D.-ically. When the Major fust 
 undertook his learning ho says to me : 
 
 " I'm going Madam," he says " to make our child a Calculating 
 Boy." 
 
 " Major," I says, " you terrify me and may do the j)et a iiermaucut 
 injury you would never forgive yourself." 
 
 " Madam," says the Major, " next to my regret that when I had my 
 boot-sponge in my hand, I didn't choke that scoundrel with it^on 
 the spot - " 
 
 " There ! For Gracious' sake," I interrupts, " let his couscicneo 
 find him without sponges." 
 
 " I say next to that regret. Madam," says the Major " would bo 
 the regret with which my breast," which he tapped, " would be sur- 
 charged if this fine mind was not early cultivated. But mark me 
 IVIadam," says tho Major holding up his forefinger " cultivated on a 
 lirineiple that will make it a deliglit." 
 
 " Major " I says " I will bo candid with you and tell you openly 
 that if ever I find tlie dear child fall ofl' in his appetite I shall know 
 it is his calculations and shall put a stop to tliem at two minutes' 
 notice. Or if I find thom mounting to his head " I says, " or striking 
 anyways cold to his stomach or leading to anything apjn-oaching 
 fiabbiness in liis legs, the result will be tlie same, but Major you arc 
 a clever man and have seen much and you love tlie child and are his 
 own godfather, and if you feel a confidence in trying try." 
 
 " S2)okeu Madam " says the Major " like Ennna Lirrijier. All I 
 liave to ask, Madam, is that you will leave my godson and myself to 
 make a week or two's preparations for siirprising you, and that you 
 will give nie leave toliave up and down any small articles not actually 
 in use that I may require from the kitchen."
 
 TJie Major and his Pupil. 249 
 
 " From tlie kitchen Major ? " I says half feeling as if Le Lad a 
 mind to cook tlic cliild. 
 
 " From the kitchen " says the Major, and smiles and swells, and at 
 the same time looks taller. 
 
 So I passed my word and the Major and the dear boy were shut np 
 together for half an hour at a time through a certain while, and never 
 could I hear anything going on betwixt them but talking and laughing 
 and Jemmy clapping his hands and screaming out numbers, so I says 
 to myself " it has not harmed him yet " nor could I on examining the 
 dear find any signs of it anywhere about him whicli was likewise a 
 great relief. At last one day Jemmy brings me a card in joke in the 
 Major's neat writing " The Messrs. Jemmy Jackman " for we Lad 
 given him the Major's other name too " request the honour of Mrs. 
 Lirrij^er's company at the Jackman Institution in the front parlour 
 this evening at five, military time, to witness a few sligLt feats of 
 elementary aritLmetic." And if you'll believe me tLere in tlio front 
 parlour at five punctual to tLe moment was tLe Major beLind tLe 
 Pembroke table with both leaves up and a lot of things from the 
 kitchen tidily set out on old newsj^apers spread atop of it, and tliero 
 was the Mite stood upon a chair with his rosy cheeks flushing and his 
 eyes sparkling clusters of diamonds. 
 
 " Now Gran " says ho, " 00 tit down and don't 00 toucL ler people " 
 for Le saw with every one of tliosc diamonds of his that I was going 
 to give him a squeeze. 
 
 " Very well sir " I says " I am obedient in this good comj^any I am 
 sure." And I sits down in the easy-chair that was put for me, shaking 
 my sides. 
 
 But i)icturc my admiration when the Major going on almost as 
 quick as if he was conjuring sets out all the articles he names, and 
 says " Three saucepans, an Italian iron, a hand-bell, a toasting-fork, a 
 nutmeg-grater, four potlids, a spice-box, two egg-cups, and a chopinug- 
 board how many ? " and when that Mite instantly cries " Tifteen, 
 tut down tive and carry ler 'toppin-board " and then claps his hands 
 draws up his legs and dances on Lis cLair. 
 
 My dear witL tLe same astonisLing ease and correctness Lim and 
 the Major added up the tables chairs and sofy, the picters fenders and 
 fire-irons their own selves me and the cat and the eyes in Miss 
 AVozeuham's head, and whenever the sum was done Young Hoses and 
 Diamonds claps his hands and draws up his legs and dances on his 
 chair. 
 
 TLe pride of tLe Major ! (' Here's a miud Ma'am ! " Le says to mo 
 beLind Lis Land.) 
 
 TLen Le says aloud, " We now come to tLe next elementary rule, 
 wLicL is called " 
 
 " Umtraction ! " cries Jemmy. 
 
 " RigLt," says tLe Major. " We Lave Lore a toasting-fork, a potato 
 in its natural state, two potlids, one egg-cup, a wooden spoon, and two
 
 250 Mrs. Lir viper's Lodgmgs. 
 
 Bkewers, from wliicli it is necessary for commercial purposes to sub- 
 tract a sprat-gridiron, a small pickle-jar, two lemons, one pepper- 
 castor, a blackbeetle-trap, and a knob of tbe dresser-drawer what 
 
 remains ? " 
 
 *' Toatin-fork ! " cries Jemmy. 
 
 " In numbers how many ? " says the Major. 
 
 " One ! " cries Jemmy. 
 
 (" Here's a boy. Ma'am ! " says the Major to me behind his hand.) 
 
 Then the Major goes on : 
 
 " Wo now approach the next elementary rule, which is en- 
 titled " 
 
 " Tickleication " cries Jemmy. 
 
 " Correct " says the Major. 
 
 But my dear to relate to you in detail the way in which they 
 multiplied fourteen sticks of fii-ewood by two bits of ginger and a 
 larding needle, or divided pretty well everything else there was on 
 the table by the heater of the Italian iron and a chamber candlestick, 
 and got a lemon over, would make my head spin round and round and 
 round as it did at the time. So I says " if you'll excuse my addressing 
 the chair Professor Jackman I think the period of the lecture has 
 now arrived when it becomes necessary that I should take a good hug 
 of this young scholar." Upon which Jemmy calls out from his 
 station on the chair, " Gran 00 open oor arms and me'll make a 'priug 
 into 'em." So I opened my arms to him as I had opened my sorrow- 
 ful heart when his poor young mother lay a dying, and he had his 
 jump and we had a good long hug together and the Major prouder 
 than any ])eacock aaya to mo behind his hand, " You need not let liim 
 know it Madam " (which I certainly need not for the Major was quite 
 audible) " but he is a boy ! " 
 
 In this way Jemmy grew and grew and went to day-scliool and 
 continued xTuder the Major too, and in summer we were as happy as 
 the days were long, and in winter we were as hajipy as the days were 
 short and there seemed to rest a Blessing on the Lodgings for they as 
 good as Let tliemselvcs and would liave done it if there had been 
 twice the accommodation, when sore and hard against my will I one 
 day says to the Major 
 
 "Major you know wliat I am going to break to you. Oar boy 
 must go to boarding-school." 
 
 It was a sad sight to see the Major's countenance drop, niu\ I j'itied 
 the good soul witli all my heart. 
 
 " Yes Major " I says, " tliougli lie is as po])ular with the Lodgcsrs 
 as you arc yourself and though he is to you and me v.liat only you 
 and me kuow, still it is in the course of things and Life is made of 
 partings and we must part with our Pet." 
 
 BoLl as I S2)oke, I saw two Majors and half-a-dozen fireplaces, 
 and wlicu the poor ^Major put one of his neat briglit-vurnislied 
 boots upon the fender and his elbow on his kuee and his head ujion
 
 Jemmy is sent to School. 25 1 
 
 his hand and rocked himself a little to and fro, I was dreadfully 
 cut up. 
 
 " But " says I clearing my throat " you have so well prepared him 
 Major he has had such a Tutor in you that he will have none of 
 the first drudgery to go through. And he is so clever besides that 
 he'll soon make his way to the front rank." 
 
 " He is a boy " says the Major having sniffed " that has not his 
 like on the face of the earth." 
 
 " True as you say Major, and it is not for us merely for our own 
 Bakes to do anything to keep him back from being a credit and an 
 ornament wherever he goes and perhaps even rising to be a great 
 man, is it Major ? He will liave all my little savings when my work 
 is done (being all the world to me) and we must try to make him a 
 wise man and a good man, mustn't wc Major ? " 
 
 " Madam " says the Major rising " Jemmy Jackman is becoming an 
 older file than I was aware of, and you put him to shame. You arc 
 thoroughly right Madam. You are simply and undeniably right. 
 And if you'll excuse me, I'll take a walk." 
 
 So the Major being gone out and Jemmy being at home, I got the 
 child into my little room here and I stood him by my chair and I 
 took his mother's own curls in my hand and I spoke to hiin loving 
 and serious. And when I had reminded the darling how that he was 
 now in his tenth year and when I had said to him about his getting 
 on in life pretty much what I had said to the Major I broke to him 
 how that we must have this same parting, and there I was forced to 
 stop for there I saw of a sudden the well-remembered lip with its 
 tremble, and it so brought back that time! But with the spirit tliat 
 was in him he controlled it soon and he says gravely nodding tlirougli 
 his tears, "I understand Gran I know it must be. Gran go on 
 Gran, don't be afraid of me." And when I had said all that ever I 
 could think of, he turned his bright steady face to mine and ho says 
 just a little broken here and there " You shall see Gran that I can bo 
 a man and that I can do anything that is grateful and loving to you 
 and if I don't grow up to be what you would like to have me I 
 hope it will be because I shall die." And with that he sat down 
 by me and I went on to toll him of the school of which I had excellent 
 recommendations and where it was and how many scholars and what 
 games they played as I had heard and what length of holidays, to all 
 of which he listened bright and clear. And so it came that at last ho 
 says " And now dear Gran lot me kneel down here where I have been 
 used to say my prayers and let me fold my face for just a minute in 
 your gown and let me cry, for you have been more than father more 
 than mother more than brothers sisters friends to me ! " And so 
 he did cry and I too and we were both much the better for it. 
 
 From tliat time forth he was true to his word and ever blithe and 
 ready, and even when me and the Major took liim down into Lincoln- 
 shire lie Avas far the gayest of the party though for sure and certain
 
 253 Mrs. Lirriper^s Lodgings. 
 
 he miglit easily have been that, hut he really was and-put life into us 
 only when it came to the last Good-bye, he says with a wistful look, 
 *' You wouldn't have mo not really sorry would you Gran ? " and 
 when I says " No dear, Lord forbid ! " ho says " I am glad of that ! " 
 and ran in out of sight. 
 
 But now that the child was gone out of the Lodgings the Major fell 
 into a regularly moping state. It was taken notice of by all tlio 
 Lodgers that the Major moped. He hadn't even the same air of being 
 rather tall than he used to have, and if he varnished his boots with a 
 single gleam of interest it was as much as he did. 
 
 One evening the Major came into my little room to take a cup of 
 tea and a morsel of buttered toast and to read Jemmy's newest letter 
 which had arrived that afternoon (by the very same postman more 
 than middle-aged upon the Beat now), and the letter raising him uj) 
 a little I says to the Major : 
 
 " Major you mustn't get into a moping way." 
 
 The Major shook his head. " Jemmy Jackman Madam," he says 
 with a deep sigh, " is an older file than I thought him." 
 
 " Moping is not the way to grow younger Major." 
 
 " My dear Madam," says the Major, " is there any way of growing 
 younger ? " 
 
 Feeling that the Major was getting rather the best of that i^oint I 
 made a diversion to another. 
 
 " Thirteen years ! Thir-teou years ! Many Lodgers have come 
 and gone, in the thirteen years that you have lived in the parlours 
 Major." 
 
 " Ilah ! " says the Major warming. " Many Madam, many." 
 
 " And I should say you have been familiar with them all V " 
 
 " As a rule (with its exceptions like all rules) my dear Madam " 
 says the Major, " they have honoured me with their aciiuaiutauce, and 
 not uufrequently with their confidence." 
 
 Watching the Major as he drooped his white head and stroked his 
 black mustachios and moped again, a thought which I think must 
 have been going about looking for an owner scjmewherc dro2)ped into 
 my old noddle if you will excuse the expression. 
 
 " The walls of my Lodgings " I says in a casual way for my dear 
 it is of no use going straight at a man who mopes " niiglit liave 
 HDiiictliing to tell if thoy could tell it." 
 
 The Major neither moved nor said anything but I saw he was 
 attending with his shoulders my dear attending with his shoulders 
 to what I said. In fact I saw that Ids shoulders were struck by it. 
 
 " The dear boy was always fond of story-books " I went on, like as 
 if I was talking to myself. " I am sure this house his own liome 
 might write a story or two for his reading one day or another." 
 
 The Major's shoulders gave a dip and a curve and his head came 
 up in his sliirt-collar. The Major's head came up in his shirt-collar 
 as I hadn't seen it come up since Jeumiy went to school.
 
 A Cure for Moping. 253 
 
 " It is unquestionaWe that in intervals of cribbage and a friendly 
 rubber, my dear Madam," says the Major, " and also over what used 
 to bo called in my young times in the salad days of Jemmy Jackman 
 the social glass, I have exchanged many a reminiscence with your 
 Lodgers." 
 
 My remark was I confess I made it with the deepest and artfullesfc 
 of intentions " I wish our dear boy had heard them ! " 
 
 " Are you serious Madam ? " asked the Major starting and turning 
 full round. 
 
 " Why not Major ? " 
 
 " Madam " says the Major, turning up one of his cuffs, " they shall 
 be written for him." 
 
 " Ah ! Now you speak " I says giving my hands a pleased clap. 
 " Now you arc in a way out of moping Major ! " 
 
 " Between this and my holidays I mean the dear boy's " says 
 the Major turning up his other cuff, "a good deal may be done 
 towards it." 
 
 " Major you arc a clever man and you have seen much and not a 
 doubt of it." 
 
 " I'll begin," says the Major looking as tall as ever he did, " to- 
 morrow." 
 
 My dear the Major was another man in three days and ho was 
 himself again in a week and he wrote and wrote and wrote with his 
 pen scratching like rats behind the wainscot, and whether he had 
 many grounds to go upon or whether he did at all romance I cannot 
 tell you, but what ho has written is in the left-hand glass closet of 
 the little bookcase close behind you. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HOW THE PARLOURS ADDED A FEW WORDS. 
 
 I HAVE the honour of presenting myself by the name of Jackman. I 
 esteem it a proud privilege to go down to posterity through the 
 instrumentality of the most remarkable boy that ever lived, by the 
 name of Jemmy Jackman Liuripek, and of my most worthy and 
 most highly respected friend, Mrs. Emma Lirriper, of Eighty-one, 
 Norfolk Street, Strand, in the County of Middlesex, in the United 
 Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. 
 
 It is not for me to express the rapture with which we received that 
 dear and eminently remarkable boy, on the occurrence of his first 
 Christmas holidays. SuiSce it to observe that when he came flying 
 into the house with two si')lendid prizes (Arithmetic, and Exemplary 
 Conduct), Mrs. Lirriper and myself embraced with emotion, and
 
 254 Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings. 
 
 instantly took him to the Play, where wo wcro all three admirably 
 entertained. 
 
 Nor is it to render homage to the virtues of the best of her good 
 and honoured sex whom, in deference to her unassuming worth, I 
 Avill only here designate by the initials E. L. that I add this record to 
 the bundle of papers witli which our, in a most distinguished degree, 
 remarkable boy has expressed himself delighted, before re-consigning 
 the same to the left-hand glass closet of Mrs. Lirriper's little bookcase. 
 
 Neither is it to obtrude the name of the old original superannuated 
 obscure Jemmy Jackman, once (to his degradation) of Wozenham's, 
 long (to his elevation) of Lirriper's. If I could bo consciously guilty 
 of that piece of bad taste, it would indeed be a work of supererogation, 
 now that the name is borne by Jemmy Jackman Liuuipek. 
 
 No, I take up my humble jjcn to register a little record of our 
 strikingly remarkable boy, which my poor capacity regards as present- 
 ing a pleasant little picture of the dear boy's mind. The picture may 
 be interesting to himself when he is a man. 
 
 Our first reunited Christmas-day was the most delightful one we 
 have ever passed together. Jemmy was never silent for five minutes, 
 except in church-time. He talked as we sat by the fire, he talked 
 when wo were out walking, he talked as we sat by the fire again, he 
 talked incessantly at dinner, though ho made a dinner almost as 
 remarkable as himself. It was the spring of happiness in his fresh 
 young heart flowing and flowing, and it fertilised (if I may be allowed 
 so bold a figure) my much-esteemed friend, and J. J. the present 
 writer. 
 
 There were only wo three. We dined in my esteemed friend's little 
 room, and our entertainment was perfect. But everything in the 
 establishment is, in neatness, order, and comfort, always perfect. 
 After dinner our boy slipped away to his old stool at my esteemed 
 friend's knee, and there, with his hot chestnuts and his glass of brown 
 sherry (really, a most excellent wine !) on a chair for a table, his face 
 outshone the apples in the dish. 
 
 We talked of these jottings of mine, which Jemmy had read through 
 and through by that time ; and so it came about that my esteemed 
 friend remarked, as she sat smoothing Jemmy's curls : 
 
 " And as you belong to the house too, Jemmy, and so much more 
 than the Lodgers, having been born in it, why, your story ought to 
 be added to the rest, I think, one of tliese days." 
 
 Jemmy's eyes sparkled at this, and he said, "So /think, Gran." 
 
 Then he sat looking at the fire, and then he began to laugh in a 
 sort of confidence witli the fire, and then he said, folding liis arms 
 across my esteemed friend's lap, and raii^ing liis bright face to hers: 
 " Would you like to hear a boy's story, Gran ? " 
 
 " Of all tilings," replied my esteemed friend. 
 
 "Would you, godfather?" 
 
 " Of all things," I too rcjilied.
 
 The RemarJcahle Boy tells a Story, 255 
 
 "Well, then," said Jemmy, "I'll tell you one."] 
 
 Here our indisputably remarkable boy gave liimsclf a hug, and 
 laughed again, musically, at the idea of his coming out in that new 
 line. Then he once more took the fire into the same sort of confidence 
 as before, and began : 
 
 " Once upon a time. When pigs drank wine, And monkej^s chewed 
 tobaccer, 'Twas neither in your time nor mine, But that's no 
 macker " 
 
 " Bless the child ! " cried my esteemed friend, " what's amiss with 
 his brain ? " 
 
 " It's poetry. Gran," returned Jemmy, shouting with laughter. 
 " We always begin stories that way at school." 
 
 " Gave me quite a turn, Major," said my esteemed friend, fanning 
 herself with a plate. " Thought he was light-headed ! " 
 
 " In those remarkable times, Gran and godfather, there was once a 
 boy, not me, you know." 
 
 " No, no," says my respected friend, " not you. Not him, Major, 
 you understand ? " 
 
 " No, no," says I. 
 
 " And he went to school in Rutlandshire " 
 
 " Why not Lincolnshire ? " says my respected friend. 
 
 " Why not, you dear old Gran ? Because 1 go to school in 
 Lincolnshire, don't I ? " 
 
 " Ah, to bo sure ! " says my respected friend. " And it's not 
 Jemmy, you understand, Slajor ? " 
 
 " No, no," says I. 
 
 " Well ! " our boy proceeded, hugging himself comfortably, and 
 laughing merrily (again in confidence with the fire), before ho again 
 looked up in Mrs. Lirriper's face, " and so ho was tremendously in 
 love with his schoolmaster's daughter, and she was the most beautiful 
 creature that ever was seen, and she had brown eyes, and slie liad 
 brown hair all curling beautifully, and she had a delicious voice, and 
 she was delicious altogether, and her name was Scrajihina." 
 
 "What's the name of your schoolmaster's daughter, Jemmy?" asks 
 my respected friend. 
 
 " Polly ! " replied Jemmy, pointing his forefinger at her. " Thero 
 now ! Caught you ! Ha, ha, ha ! " 
 
 When he and my respected friend had had a laugh and a hug 
 together, our admittedly remarkable boy resumed with a great relish : 
 
 " Well ! And so he loved her. And so ho thought about her, and 
 dreamed about her, and made her presents of oranges and nuts, and 
 would have made her presents of pearls and diamonds if he could 
 have afforded it out of his pocket-money, but he couldn't. And so 
 her father 0, he was a Tartar ! Keeping the boys up to the mark, 
 holding examinations once a month, lecturing upon all sorts of 
 subjects at all sorts of times, and knowing everything in the world 
 out of book. And so this boy "
 
 256 Mrs. Lir viper's Lodgings. 
 
 " Had bo any name ? " asks my respected friend. 
 
 " No, ho hadn't, Gran. Ha, ha ! There now ! Caught you again ! " 
 
 After this, they had another laugh and another hug, and then our 
 boy went on. 
 
 " Well ! And so this boy, he had a friend about as old as himself 
 at the same school, and his name (for Ho had a name, as it happened) 
 was let me remember was Bobbo." 
 
 " Not Bob," says my respected friend, 
 
 " Of course not," says Jemmy. " What made you think it was, 
 Gran ? Well ! And so this friend was tho cleverest and bravest and 
 best-looking and most generous of all the friends that ever were, and 
 so ho was in love wdth Soraphina's sister, and so Seraphina's sister 
 was in love with him, and so they all grew up." 
 
 " Bless us ! " says my repectod friend. " They were very sudden 
 about it." 
 
 " So they all grew up," our boy repeated, laughing heartily, " and 
 Bobbo and this boy went away together on horseback to seek their 
 fortunes, and they partly got their horses by favour, and partly in a 
 bargain ; that is to say, they had saved up between them seven and 
 four2)cnco, and the two horses, being Arabs, were worth more, only 
 tho man said he would take that, to favour them. Well ! And so 
 they made their fortunes and came prancing back to the school, with 
 tlicir pockets full of gold, enough to last for ever. And so they rang 
 at the parents' and visitors' bell (not tho back gate), and when tho 
 bell was answered they proclaimed ' The same as if it was scarlet 
 fever ! Every boy goes home for an indefinite period ! ' And then 
 there was great liurrahing, and then they kissed Serapliina and her 
 sister, each his own love, and not tlio otlier's on any account,- and 
 tlien tliey ordered tho Tartar into instant confinement." 
 
 " Poor man ! " said my respected friend. 
 
 " Into instant confinement, Gran," repeated Jemmy, trying to look 
 severe and roaring with laugliter ; " and lie was to have notliing to 
 cat but the boys' dinners, and was to drink half a cask of their beer 
 every day. And so then the preparations were made for tlie two wed- 
 dings, and tliere were liampcrs, and potted tilings, and sweet things, 
 and nuts, and postage-stamps, and all manner of things. And so taey 
 were s;) jolly, that they let the Tartar out, and he was jolly too." 
 
 " I am glad they let him out," says my respected friend, " because 
 he had only done liis duty." 
 
 " O, but hadn't he overdone it, though ! " cricid Jemmy. " \\c\\ ! 
 And so then this boy mounted bis horse, with his bride in his arms, 
 and cantered away, and cantered on and on till he came to a certain 
 place where he had a certain Gran and a certain godfather, not you 
 two, you know." 
 
 " No, no, we both said. 
 
 " And there ho was received with groat rejoicings, and he filled tho 
 cupboard and the bookcase with gold, and he showered it out on his
 
 A Houseful of Happiness. 257 
 
 Gran and his godfather because they were the two kindest and dearest 
 peojile that ever lived in this world. And so while they were sitting 
 up to their knees in gold, a knocking was heard at the street door, and 
 who should it be but Bobbo, also on horseback with his bride in his 
 arms, and what liad he come to say but that he would take (at double 
 rent) all the Lodgings for ever, that were not wanted by this boy and 
 this Gran and this godfather, and that they would all live together, 
 and all be happy ! And so they were, and so it never ended ! " 
 
 " And was there no quarrelling ? " asked my respected friend, as 
 Jemmy sat upon her lap and hugged her. 
 
 " No ! Nobody ever quarrelled." 
 
 " And did the money never melt away ? " 
 
 " No ! Nobody could ever spend it all." 
 
 " And did none of them ever grow older ? " 
 
 " No ! Nobody ever grew older after that." 
 
 " And did none of them ever die ? " 
 
 " O, no, no, no. Gran ! " exclaimed our dear boy, laying his cheek 
 upon her breast, and drawing her closer to him. " Nobody ever 
 died." 
 
 " Ah, Major, Major ! " says my respected friend, smiling benignly 
 upon me, " this beats our stories. Let ns end with the Boy's story, 
 Major, for the Boy's story is the best tliat is ever told ! " 
 
 In submission to which request on the part of the best of women, I 
 liave here noted it down as faithfully as my best abilities, coupled 
 with my best intentions, would admit, subscribing it with my name, 
 
 J. JACKMAN. 
 The Parlours. 
 
 Mas. LiRRirEu's Lodgings.
 
 MRS, LIRRIPER'S LEGACY. 
 
 IN TWO CHAPTERS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 MKS. LIRIUI'EU r.ELATKS HOW SHK WENT ON, AND WENT OYEIi. 
 
 All ! It's pleasant to drop iuto my own easy-cliair iny dear tliougli a 
 little palpitating what with trotting up-stairs and what with trotting 
 down, and why kitchen stairs should all be corner stairs is for the 
 builders to justify though I do not think they fully understand their 
 trado and never did, else why the sameness and why not more con- 
 veniences and fewer draughts and likewise making a practice of laying 
 the plaster on too thick I am well convinced which holds the damp, 
 and as to chimney-pots putting them on by guess-work like hats at a 
 party and no more knowing what their effect will be upon the smoke 
 bless you than I do if so much, exce2)t that it will mostly be either to 
 send it down your throat in a straight form or give it a twist before 
 it goes there. And what I says speaking as I fnid of those new metal 
 chimneys all manner of shapes (there's a row of 'cm at Miss Wozien- 
 ham's lodging-house lower down on the other side of the way) is that 
 they only work your smoke into artificial patterns for you before you 
 swallow it and that I'd quite as soon swallow mine i)laiu, the flavour 
 being the same, not to mention the conceit of putting up signs on the 
 top of your houso to show the forms in whicli yon take your smoke 
 into your inside. 
 
 Being hero before your eyes my dear in my own easy-chair in my 
 own quiet room in my own Lodging-House Number Eiglity-one 
 Norfolk Street Strand London situated midway between the City and 
 St. James's if anything is where it used to be witli these liotels 
 calliug themselves Limited but called uiiliiiiitc<l by Major Jackmau 
 rising up everywhere and rising up into flagstafis where they can't go 
 any liigher, but my mind of those monsters is give me a landlord's or 
 laudUuly's wholesome face when I come oil' a journey and not a bruKH
 
 The United Grand Jtmct'.on Parlour Line. 259 
 
 plate with an electrified number clicking out of it whicli it's not in 
 nature can be glad to see me and to whicb I don't want to be hoisted 
 like molasses at the Docks and left there telegraphiDg for help with 
 the most ingenious instruments but quite in vain being here my 
 dear I have no call to mention that I am still in the Lodgings as a 
 business hoping to die in the same and if agreeable to the clergy 
 partly read over at Saint Clement's Danes and concluded in Hatfield 
 churchyard when lying once again by my poor Lirriper ashes to 
 ashes and dust to dust. 
 
 Neither should I tell you any news my dear in telling you that the 
 Major is still a fixture in the Parlours quite as much so as the roof of 
 the house, and that Jemmy is of boys the best and brightest and has 
 ever had kept from him the cruel story of his poor pretty young 
 mother Mrs. Edson being deserted in the second floor and dying in 
 my arms, fully belio ving that I am his born Gran and him an orphan, 
 though Avhat with engineering since he took a taste for it and him 
 and the Major making Locomotives out of parasols broken iron pots 
 and cotton-reels and them absolutely a getting off the line and falling 
 over the table and injuring the passengers almost equal to the 
 originals it really is quite wonderful. And when I says to the Major, 
 " Major can't you by amj means give us a communication with the 
 guard?" the Major says quite hufly, "No madam it's not to be done," 
 and when I says " Why not ? " the Major says, " That is between us 
 who are in the Kailway Interest madam and our friend the Eight 
 Honourable Vice-President of tho Board of Trade" and if you'll 
 believe mo my dear the Major wrote to Jemmy at school to consult 
 him on tho answer I should have before I could get even that amoimt 
 of uusatisfactoriness out of the man, tho reason being that when wo 
 first began with the little model and tho working signals beautiful 
 and perfect (being in general as wrong as the real) and when I says 
 laughing " What ap})ointmcnt am I to hold in this undertaking 
 gentlemen ? " Jemmy hugs me round the neck and tells me dancing, 
 " You shall be the Public Gran " and consequently they put upon mo 
 just as much as ever they like and I sit a growling in my easy-chair. 
 
 My dear whether it is that a grown man as clever as the IMajor 
 cannot give half his lieart and mind to anything even a plaything 
 but must get into right down earnest with it, whether it is so or 
 whether it is not so I do not undertake to say, but Jemmy is far out- 
 done by the serious and believing ways of the Major in the manage- 
 ment of the United Grand Junction Lirriper and Jackman Great 
 Norfollc Parlour Line, " For " says my Jemmy with the sparkling 
 eyes when it was christened, " we must have a whole mouthful of name 
 Gran or our dear old Public " and there the young rogue kissed me, 
 " won't stump up." So the Public took the shares ten at ninepence, 
 and immediately when that was spent twelve Preference at one and 
 sixpence and they were all signed by Jcnimy and countersigned by 
 the Major, and between ourselves much better vv'orth the money than
 
 26o Airs. Lirriper's Legacy, 
 
 somo shares I Lave paid for in my time. In the same holidays the 
 line was made and worked and opened and ran excursions and had 
 collisions and burst its boilers and all sorts of accidents and offences 
 all most regular correct and pretty. The sense of responsibility 
 entertained by the Major as a military style of station-master my 
 dear starting the down train behind time and ringing one of those 
 little bells that you buy with the little coal-scuttles oif the tray round 
 the man's neck in the street did him honour, but noticing the Major 
 of a night when ho is writing out his monthly report to Jemmy at 
 school of the state of the Rolling Stock and the Permanent Way and 
 all the rest of it (the whole kept upon the Major's sideboard and 
 dusted with his own hands every morning before varnishing his 
 boots) I notice him as full of thought and care as full can be and 
 frowning in a fearful manner, but indeed the Major does nothing by 
 lialves as witness his great delight in going out surveying with 
 Jemmy when he has Jemmy to go with, carrying a chain and a 
 mcasuring-tapo and driving I don't know what improvements right 
 througli Westminster Abbey and fully believed in the streets to bo 
 Ivnocking everything uj^side down by Act of Parliament. As please 
 Heaven will come to pass when Jemmy takes to that as a profession ! 
 Mentioning my poor Lirriper brings into my head his own youngest 
 brother the Doctor though Doctor of what I am sure it would bo hard 
 to say iinlcss Liquor, for neither Physic nor Music nor yet Law does 
 Joshua Lirriper know a morsel of except continually being summoned 
 to the County Court and having orders made upon liim which he runs 
 away from, and once was taken in the passage of this very house with 
 an umbrella up and the Major's hat on, giving his name with the door- 
 mat round liim as Sir Johnson Jones, K.C.B. in spectacles residing at 
 the Horse Guards. On which occasion he had got into the house not 
 a minute before, through the girl letting him on the mat wlicn he sent 
 in a piece of paper twisted more like one of those spills for lighting 
 candles than a note, offering me the choice between thirty shillings 
 in hand and his brains on the premises marked immediate and waiting 
 for an answer. My dear it gave me such a dreadful turn to think of 
 tlie brains of my poor dear Lirriper's own flesh and blood flying about 
 tlio new oilcloth however unworthy to be so assisted, that I went out 
 of my room here to ask him what he would take once for all not to 
 do it for life when I found him in the custody of two gentlemen that 
 I should liavc judged to be in tl)e feather-bed trade if tliey had not 
 ainiouiiced the law, so fluffy were tlieir personal appearance. " Bring 
 your cliains, sir," says Joshua to the littlest of the two in the biggest 
 hat, " rivet on my fetters ! " Imagine my ffjelings when I pictered 
 him clanking up Norfolk Street in irons and Miss Wozcnham looking 
 out of window ! " Gentlemen," I says all of a tremble and ready to 
 drop " please to bring him into Major Jackman's apartments." So 
 tliey brouglit Irim into the Parlours, and wlicn t]io IMiijor spifs ]iis 
 own cui'ly-lniiniiied l;at on him which Jc^slma Linipcr had wliipped
 
 Mr. Lirripcrs Youngest Broihcr. 261 
 
 off its i)eg in the passage for a military disguise Le f ocs into siicli a 
 tearing passiou that he tips it off his head v/ith his hand and kicks it 
 up to the ceiling with his foot where it grazed long afterwards. 
 " Major " I says " be cool and advise me what to do with Joshua my 
 dead and gone Lirriper's own youngest brother." " Madam " says 
 the Major " my advice is that you board and lodge him in a Powder 
 Mill, with a handsome gratuity to the proprietor when exploded." 
 " Major " I says " as a Christian you cannot mean your words." 
 '' Madam " says the Major " by the Lord I do ! " and indeed the Major 
 besides being with all his merits a very passionate man for his size 
 had a bad opinion of Joshua on account of former troubles oven un- 
 attended by liberties taken with his apparel. When Joshua Lirriper 
 hears this conversation betwixt us he turns upon the littlest one with 
 the biggest hat and says " Come sir ! Remove mo to my vile dungeon. 
 Where is my mouldy straw ? " My dear at the picter of him rising 
 in my mind dressed almost entirely in padlocks like Baron Trenck iu 
 Jemmy's book I was so overcome that I burst into tears and I says to 
 the Major, " Major take my keys and settle with these gentlemen or 
 I shall never know a happy minute more," which was done several 
 times both before and since, but still I must remember that Joshua 
 Lirriper has his good feelings and shows them in being always so 
 troubled in his mind when he cannot wear mourning for Ids brother. 
 Many a long year have I left off my widow's mourning not being 
 wishful to intrude, but the tender point in Joshua that I cannot help 
 a little yielding to is when he writes " One single sovereign would 
 enable me to wear a decent suit of mourning for my much -loved 
 brother. I vowed at the time of his lamented death that I would ever 
 wear sables in memory of him but Alas how short-sighted is man. 
 How keep that vow when penniless ! " It says a good deal for the 
 strength of his feelings that he couldn't have been seven year old 
 wlien my poor Lirriper died and to have kept to it ever since is highly 
 creditable. But we know there's good iu all of us, if we only knew 
 where it was in some of us, and though it was far from delicate in 
 Joshua to work upon tlic dear child's feelings when first sent to school 
 and write dov/n into Lincolnshire for his pocket-money by return of 
 post and got it, still he is my poor Lirriper's own youngest brother 
 and mightn't liave meant not i)aying his bill at the Salisbury Arms 
 when his affection took him down to stay a fortnight at Hatfield 
 clmrchyard and might Jiave meant to keep sober but for bad company. 
 Consequently if the Major liad played on him witli the garden-engine 
 which ho got privately into his room without my knowing of it, I 
 think that much as I should have regretted it there would liave been 
 words betwixt the Major and me. Therefore my dear though he 
 played on Mr. Baffle by mistake being hot in his head, and though it 
 might have been misrepresented down at Wozenliam's into not being 
 ready for Mr. Baffle iu other respects he being the Assessed Taxes, 
 still I do not so much regret it as perhaps I ought. And whetlier
 
 262 Airs. iJrnper^s Legacy. 
 
 Josliua Lirrlpcr will yet do well in life I cannot say, Imt I flicl lioar 
 of liis coming out at a Private Theatre in tlie cliaracter of a Bandit 
 without receiving any offers afterwards from the regular managers. 
 
 Mentioning Mr. Buffle gives an instance of there being good in 
 persons where good is not expected, for it cannot be denied that Mr. 
 Bufflo's manners when engaged in his business were not agreeable. 
 To collect is one thing, and to look about as if suspicious of the goods 
 being gradually removing in the dead of the night by a back door is 
 another, over taxing you have no control but suspecting is voluntary. 
 Allowances too must ever bo made for a gentleman of the Major's 
 warmth not relishing being spoke to with a pen in the mouth, and 
 while I do not know that it is more irritable to my own feelings to 
 have a low-crowned hat with a broad brim kept on in doors than any 
 other hat still I can appreciate the Major's, besides v/hich without 
 bearing malice or vengeance tlic Major is a man that scores up arrears 
 as his liabit always was with Joshua Lirripcr. So at last my dear the 
 Major lay in wait for Mr. Bufflo and it worrited me a good deal. Mr. 
 Butilo gives his rap of two sharp knocks one day and the Major 
 bounces to the door. " Collector has called for two quarters' Assessed 
 Taxes" says Mr. Bufflo. "They are ready for him" says the Major 
 and brings him in here. But on the way Mr. Bufflo looks about him 
 in his usual suspicious manner and tlie ^Lijor fires and asks him " Do 
 you see a Ghost sir ? " " No sir " says Mr. Buffle. " Because I have 
 before noticed you " says the Major " apparently looking for a spectre 
 very hard beneath the roof of my respected friend. Wlicn you find 
 that supsrnatural agent, be so good as point him out sir." Mr. Bufflo 
 stares at tlio Major and then nods at me. " Mrs. Lirripcr sir " says 
 the ]\Eajor going off into a perfect steam and introducing me with his 
 hand. " Pleasure of knowing lier " says Mr. BufHe. " A hum ! 
 Jemmy Jackman sir ! " says the Major introducing himself. " Honour 
 of Icnowing you by sight " says Mr. Buffle. " Jemmy Jackman sir " 
 Bays tiie Major wagging his head sideways in a sort of obstinate fury 
 " presents to you his esteemed friend that lady Mrs. Emma Lirripcr 
 of Eigiity-one Norfolk Street Strand London in the County of 
 IMiddlescx in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and IrcLuul. 
 Upon which occasion sir," says the Major, " Jemmy Jackman takes 
 your hat off." JMr. Bufflo looks at liis liat where the Major drops it 
 on the floor, and lie picks it up and puts it on again. " Sir " saj's the 
 Major very red and looking liim full in tlie face " there are two 
 quarters of the Gallantry Taxes duo and tlie Collector has called." 
 Up^n which if you can believe my words my d(\^r the Major droj)s 
 
 Mr. Baffle's hat off again. " This " IRFr. Ikifilc begins very angry 
 
 with liis ]ien in liis mouth, when the IVlujor steaming more and moro 
 says " Take your bit out sir ! Or by the whole infernal system of 
 Taxation of this country and every individual figure in the National 
 Debt, I'll get upon your back and ride you like a horse ! " which it's 
 my belief he v,'ould have done and even actually j(n'king his neat little
 
 TJie Major and Mr. Bufle. 26^ 
 
 legs ready for a spring as it was. " This," says Mr. BufSe v.itliout 
 liis pen " is an assault and I'll liave the law of you." " Sir " rejjlies 
 the Major " if you are a man of honour, your Collector of whatever 
 may be due on the Honourable Assessment by applying to Major 
 Jackman at the Parlours Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings, may obtain what 
 he wants in full at any moment." 
 
 When the Major glared at Mr. Buffle with those meaning words 
 my dear I literally gasped for a teasj^oonful of salvolatile in a wine- 
 glass of water, and I says " Pray let it go no farther gentlemen I beg 
 and beseech of you ! " Biit the Major could be got to do nothing else 
 but snort long after Mr. Buffle was gone, and the effect it had upon 
 my whole mass of blood when on the next day of Mr. Bufifle's rounds 
 the Major spruced himself up and went humming a tune up and down 
 the street with one eye almost obliterated by his hat there are not 
 expressions in Johnson's Dictionary to state. But I safely put the 
 street door on the jar and got behind the Major's blinds with my 
 shawl on and my mind made up the moment I saw danger to rush 
 out screeching till my voice failed me and catch the Major round the 
 neck till my strength Avent and have all parties bound. I had not 
 been behind the blinds a quarter of an hour when I saw Mr. Buffle 
 approaching with his Collecting-books in his hand. The Major like- 
 wise saw him approaching and hummed louder and himself approached. 
 They met before the Airy railings. The Major takes ofi' his hat at 
 arm's length and says " Mr. Buffle I believe ? " Mr. Bufile takes off 
 his hat at arm's length and says "That is my name sir." Says the 
 Major " Have you any commands for me, Mr. Buffle ? " Says Mr. 
 Buffle " Not any sir." Then ray dear both of 'em bowed very low 
 and hauglity and parted, and whenever Mr. Buffle made his rounds in 
 future him and the Major always met and bowed before the Airy 
 railings, putting me much in mind of Hamlet and the other gentleman 
 in mourning before killing one another, thougli I could liave wished 
 the other gentleman had done it fairer and even if less polite no 
 poison. 
 
 Mr. Bufflc's fiimily were not liked in this neighbourhood, for when 
 you are a houseliolder my dear you'll find it does not come by nature 
 to like the Assessed, and it was considered besides that a one-horse 
 phcayton ought not to have elevated Mrs. Buffle to that height 
 esiiGcially when purloined from the Taxes which I myself did con- 
 sider uncliaritablc. But they were not liked and there was that 
 domestic unliappiness in the family in consequence of their both 
 being very hard with iVIiss Buffle and one another on account of Miss 
 Buffle's favouring Mr. Bufflc's articled young gentleman, that it was 
 whispered that Miss Buffle would go cither into a consumption or a 
 convent slie being so very thin and off her appetite and two close- 
 shaved geiitlemen with white bands round their necks peeping round 
 the corner wlicnover she went out in waistcoats resembling black 
 pinafores. So tilings stood towards Mr. Buffle when one night I was
 
 264 Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy. 
 
 woke by a friglitful noise and a smell of burning, and going to my 
 bedroom window saw tlie whole street in a glow. Fortunately we 
 had two sets empty just then and before I could hurry on some clothes 
 I heard the Major hammering at the attics' doors and calling out 
 " Dress yourselves ! Fire ! Don't be frightened ! Fire ! Collect 
 your presence of mind ! Fire ! All right Fire ! " most tremenjously. 
 As I opened my bedroom door the Major came tumbling in over 
 liimself and me, and caught me in his arms. " Major " I says breath- 
 less " where is it ? " "I don't know dearest madam " says the Major 
 " Fire ! Jemmy Jackman will defend you to the last drop of his 
 1)lood Fire ! If the dear boy was at home what a treat this would 
 be for him Fire ! " and altogether very collected and bold except 
 that he couldn't say a single sentence without shaking me to the very 
 centre with roaring Fire. AVe ran down to the drawing-room and 
 2)ut our heads out of window, and the Major calls to an unfeeling 
 young monkey, scampering by bo joyful and ready to split " Where is 
 it ? Fire ! " The monkey answers without stopping " here's a 
 lark ! Old Buffle's been setting his house alight to prevent its being 
 found out that he boned the Taxes. Hurrah ! Fire ! " And then 
 the sparks came flying up and the smoke came pouring down and the 
 crackling of flames and spatting of water and banging of engines and 
 hacking of axes and breaking of glass and knocking at doors and the 
 shouting and crying and hurrying and the heat and altogether gave 
 me a dreadful pali)itation. " Don't be frightened dearest madam," 
 says the IMajor, " Fire! There's nothing to be alarmed at Fire! 
 Don't open the street door till I come back Fire ! I'll go and see if 
 I can be of any service Fire ! You're quite composed and comfortable 
 ain't you ? Fire, Fire, Fire ! " It was in vain for me to hold the 
 man and tell liini he'd be galloped to death by the CTigincs j)umpcd 
 to death l)y his over-exertions wet-feetcd to death by the slop and 
 m 3ss flattened t) deatli when the roofs fell in his spirit was up and 
 b'j went scampering oft" after tlie young monkey with all the bn^ath 
 ]io liad and none to spare, and me and the girls Imddled togetlier at 
 tlio parlour windows looking at the dreadful flames a])ove tlie liouses 
 over the way, Mr. Buftie's being round the corner. Presently what 
 should we see but some people running down the street straight to 
 our door, and then the Major directing operations in tlie biisiest way, 
 and then some more peo])le and then carried in a chair similar to 
 (Juy Fawk(!S Mr. Bufiie in a blanket ! 
 
 I\[y dear the Major has Mr. Bulflc brought up our stejis and whisked 
 into the parlour and carted out on the sofv, and then lie and all the 
 rest of them without so much as a word burst away again full speed, 
 lf3aving the impression of a vision except for Mr. Butfle awful in his 
 blanket with his eyes a rolling. In a twinkling they all burst back 
 again with Mrs. BufHe in another blanket, which whisked in and carted 
 out on the sofy they all burst off again and all burst back again with 
 Miss BufHe in another blanket, which again vrhiskcd in and carted
 
 TJie Biiffle Family becomes united. 265 
 
 out tlicy all burst ofif again and all burst back again witb Mr. Buffle's 
 articled young gentleman in anotLcr blanket him a bolding round 
 the necks of two men carrying bim by the legs, similar to the picter 
 of the disgraceful creetur wbo has lost the fight (but where the chair 
 I do not know) and his hair having the appearance of newly played 
 upon. When all four of a row, the Major rubs his hands and whispers 
 me with what little hoarseness he can get togetlier, " If our dear 
 remarkable boy was only at homo what a delightful treat this would 
 be for him ! " 
 
 My dear we made them some hot tea and toast and some hot brandy- 
 and-water with a little comfortable nutmeg in it, and at first they 
 were scared and low in their spirits but being fully insured got 
 sociable. And the first use Mr. Buflle made of his tongue was to call 
 the Major his Preserver and his best of friends and to say " My for 
 ever dearest sir let me make you known to Mrs. Buiflo " which also 
 addressed him as her Preserver and her best of friends and was fully 
 as cordial as the blanket w'ould admit of. Also Miss Buffle. Tlio 
 articled young gentleman's head was a little light and he sat a 
 moaning " Robina is reduced to cinders, Robina is reduced to 
 cinders ! " Which went more to the heart on account of his having 
 got wrapped in his blanket as if he was looking out of a violinccller 
 case, until Mr. Bufilo says " Robina speak to him ! " Miss Bufilc says 
 " Dear George I " and but for the Major's pouring down brandy-and- 
 water on the instant which caused a catching in his throat owing to 
 the nutmeg and a violent fit of coughing it miglit have proved too 
 much for his strength. When the articled young gentleman got the 
 better of it Mr. Buffle leaned iip against Mrs. Buffle being two 
 bundles, a little v.-hile in confidence, and then says with tears in his 
 eyes which the Major noticing wiped, " We have not been an united 
 family, let us after this danger become so, take her George." The 
 young gentleman could not put his arm out far to do it, but his spoken 
 expressions were very beautiful though of a wandering class. And I 
 do not know that I ever had a much pleasanter meal than the break- 
 fast we took together after we had all dozed, when Miss Buffle made 
 tea very sweetly in quite the Roman style as depicted formerly at 
 ( 'event Garden Theatre and when the whole family was most agree- 
 able, as they have ever proved since that night v'hen the Major stood 
 at the foot of the Fire-Escape and claimed them as they came down 
 the young gentleman head-foremost, which accounts. And thougli I 
 do not say tliat we should be less liable to think ill of one another if 
 strictly limited to blankets, still I do say tliat we might most of us 
 come to a better understanding if we kept one anotlier less at a 
 distance. 
 
 Why there's Wozenham's lower down on the other side of the 
 street, I had a feeling of much soreness several years respecting 
 what I must still ever call Miss Wozenham's systematic underbidding 
 and the likeness of the house in Bradshaw baying far too many
 
 266 Mrs. Lim'pey's Legacy. 
 
 windows find a rnost uinbragcous and outrageous Oiili vrliicu never yet 
 was seen in Norfolk Street nor yet a carriage and four at Wozenbam's 
 door, wLicli it would have been far more to Bradsbaw's credit to have 
 drawn a cab. Tbis frame of mind continued bitter down to tbc very 
 afternoon in January last wben one of my girls, Sally Rairyganoo 
 wbicb I still suspect of Irish extraction though iiimily represented 
 Cambridge, else why abscond with a bricklayer of the Limerick 
 persuasion and be married in pattens not waiting till his black eye 
 was decently got round with all the company fourteen in number and 
 one horse fighting outside on the roof of the voliicle, I repeat my 
 dear my ill-regulated state of mind towards Miss Wozenham continued 
 down to the very afternoon of January last past when Sally 
 Rairyganoo came banging (I can use no milder expression) into my 
 room with a jump wliich may be Cambridge and may not, and said 
 " Hurroo Missis ! Miss Wozenham's sold up ! " My dear when I had 
 it tbrown in my face and conscience that the girl Sally had reason to 
 think I could be glad of the ruin of a fellow-crefeter, I burst into 
 tears and droj)ped back in my chair and I says " I am ashamed of 
 myself!" 
 
 Well ! I tried to settle to my tea but I could not do it what with 
 thinking of Miss Wozenham and her distresses. It was a wretched 
 night and I went up to a front window and looked over at Wozen- 
 ham's and as well as I could make it out down the street in tlie fog it 
 was the dismallcst of the dismal and not a light to be seen. So at 
 last I says to myself " This will not do," and I jnits on my oldest 
 })onnet and sliawl not wishing Miss Wozenham to be reminded of my 
 best at such a time, and lo and behold you I goes over to Wozenham's 
 and knocks. " Miss Wozenham at home ? " I says turning my head 
 when I heard tlic door go. And then I saw it was Miss Wozenham 
 herself who liad opened it and sadly worn she was poor thing and her 
 eyes all swelled and swelled Avitli crying. " Miss Wozenham " I says " it 
 is several years since there was a little unplcasaiitness l)ct\vixt us on the 
 subject of my grandson's cap being down your Airy. I have overloolccd 
 it and I hope you have done the same." " Yes Mrs. Lirripor " she says 
 in a surprise "I have." " Tlien my dear" I says "I slionld be glad 
 to come in and speak a word to you." Upon my calling licr my dear 
 ]\Iiss AVozcnliam l)rcaks out a crying most pitiful, and a not unfeeling 
 elderly person that might have been better shaved in a nightcap witli 
 a hat over it oll'uring a jiolite apology for the nnmips having worked 
 themselves into his constitution, and also for sending homo to bis 
 wife on tlie bellows which was in his hand as a writing-desk, looks 
 out of the back parlour and says " The lady wants a word of comfort " 
 and goes in again. So I was able to say quite natural " Wants a word 
 of comfort does she sir? Tlien please the pigs slie shall have it! " 
 And Miss Wozenham and mo we go into the front room witli a 
 wretched light that seemed to have been crying too and was sputtering 
 out, and I says " Now my dear, tell me all," and slic wrings her hands
 
 A Word of Comfort to an Old Enemy. 2G7 
 
 and says " Mrs. Lirriper tbat man is in possession Lore, and 
 I liave not a friend in the world who is able to help rce with a 
 shilling." 
 
 It doesn't signify a bit what a talkative old body like me said to 
 Miss Wozenham when she said that, and so I'll tell you instead my 
 dear that I'd have given thirty shillings to have taken her over to tea, 
 only I durstn't on account of the Major. Not you see but what I 
 knew I could draw the Major out like thread and wind him round my 
 finger on most subjects and perhaps even on that if I was to set myself 
 to it, but him and me had so often belied Miss Wozenham to one 
 another that I was shamefaced, and I knew she had offended his pride 
 and never mine, and likewise I felt timid that that Rairyganoo girl 
 might make things awkward. So I says "My dear if you could give 
 me a cup of tea to clear my muddle of a head I should better midcr- 
 stand your affairs." And we had the tea and the affairs too and after 
 
 all it was but forty pound, and There ! she's as industrious and 
 
 straight a creeter as ever lived and has paid back half of it already, 
 and where's the use of saying more, particularly when it ain't the 
 point? For the point is that when she was a kissing my hands and 
 holding them in hers and kissing them again and blessing blessing 
 blessing, I cheered up at last and I says " Why what a waddling old 
 goose I have been my dear to take you for something so vcrj- 
 different ! " " Ah but I too " says she " how have I mistaken ynu ! " 
 " Come for goodness' sake tell me " I says " what you thought of 
 me ? " " O " says she " I thought you had no feeling for such a hard 
 hand-to-mouth life as mine, and were rolling in aHlnencc." I says 
 shaking my sides (and very glad to do it for I had been a choking 
 quite long enough) " Only look at my figure my dear and give me 
 your opinion whether :T I was in afilnence I should be likely to roll 
 in it ? " That did it l We got as merry as grigs (whatever tJicj/ are, 
 if you happen to know my dear J don't) and I went home to my 
 blessed home as happy and as thankful as could be. But before I 
 make an end of it, tliiuk even of my having misunderstood tlie Major! 
 Yes ! For next forenoon the Major came into my little room witli 
 his brushed ho,t in his hand and he begins " My dearest madam " 
 and then put his face in his hat as if lie had just come into churcli. 
 As I sat all in a maze he came out of his hat and began again. " My 
 
 esteemed and beloved friend " and tlien vrcnt into his hat again. 
 
 " Major," I cries out frightened " has anything happened to our 
 darling boy ? " " No, no, no " says the Major " but Miss Wozenham 
 has l)ocn here this morning to make licr excuses to me, and by the 
 Lord I can't get over what she told rne." " Hoity toity. Major," I sayB 
 " you don't know yet that I was afraid of you last night and didn't 
 think half as well of you as I ought ! So come out of church T^Iajor 
 and forgive me like a dear old friend and I'll never do so any more." 
 And I leave you to judge my dear whether I ever did or will. And 
 how affecting to think of Miss Wozcnliam out of her small income
 
 268 Mrs. Lirripey^s Legacy. 
 
 and her losses doing so mucli for her poor old father, and keeping a 
 brother that had had the misfortune to soften his brain against the 
 hard mathematics as neat as a new pin in the three back represented 
 to lodgers as a lumber-room and consuming a whole shoulder of 
 mutton whenever provided ! 
 
 And now my dear I really am a going to tell yoTi about my Legacy 
 if you're inclined to favour me with your attention, and I did fully 
 intend to have come straight to it only one thing does so bring up 
 another. It was the month of June and the day before Midsummer 
 Day when my girl Winifred Madgors she was what is termed a 
 Plymouth Sister, and the Plymouth Brother that made away with her 
 was quite right, for a tidier young woman for a wife never came into 
 a house and afterwards called with the beautifullest Plymouth Twins 
 it was the day before Midsummer Day when Winifred Madgers 
 comes and says to me " A gentleman from the Consul's wishes par- 
 ticular to speak to Mrs. Lirriper." If you'll believe me my dear the 
 Consols at the bank where I have a little matter for Jemmy got into 
 my head, and I says " Good gracious I hope he ain't had any dreadful 
 full ! " Says Winifred " He don't look as if he had ma'am." And I 
 says " Show him in." 
 
 The gentleman came in dark and with his liair cropped v.hat I 
 should consider too close, and ho says very polite " Madame Lir- 
 rwiper ! " I says " Yes sir. Take a chair." " I come," says ho 
 " frrwom the Frrwcuch Consul's." So I saw at once that it wasn't 
 the Bank of England. " Wo have rrweceived," says the gentleman 
 turning his r's very curious and skilful, " fiTwora the Mairrwie at 
 Sens, a communication which I will have tlie honour to rrwead. 
 Madame Lirrwiper understands Frrwench ? " "0 dear no sir ! " says 
 I. " Madame Lirriper don't understand anything of the sort." " It 
 matters not," says the gentleman, " I will trrwanslatc." 
 
 Witli that my dear the gentleman after reading something about a 
 Department and a Marie (which Lord forgive me I supposed till the 
 Major came liome was Mary, and never was I more puzzled than to 
 think how that young woman came to liave so much to do with it) 
 translated a lot with the most obliging pains, and it came to this : 
 Tliat in the town of Sens in France an unknown Englishman lay a 
 dying. That he was speechless and without motion. That in his 
 lodging tliore was a gold watch and a purse containing sucli and sucli 
 money and a trunk containing such and such clothes, but no passpcn't 
 and no papers, except tliat on his table was a pack of cards and that 
 lie had written in pencil on the back of tho ace of hearts : " To the 
 authorities. When I am dead, pray send wliat is left, as a last 
 L"gacy, to Mrs. LIrri2)er Eighty-one Norfolk Street Strand London." 
 "NVnien the gentleman had explained all this, whicli seemed to be 
 drawn up much more methodical than I should have given the French 
 credit for, not at that time knowing the nation, he put the document 
 into my haml. And much the wiser I was for that you may be sure,
 
 A Visitor from the French Consulate. 269 
 
 except that it had the look of being made out upon grocery paper and 
 was stamped all over with eagles. 
 
 " Does Madame Lirrwiper " says the gentleman " believo she 
 rrwecognises her unfortunate compatrrwiot ? " 
 
 You may imagine the flurry it put me into my dear to be talked to 
 about my compatriots. 
 
 I says " Excuse me. Would you have the kindness sir to make 
 your language as simi)le as you can ? " 
 
 " This Englishman unhappy, at the point of death. This com- 
 patrrwiot afflicted," says the gentleman. 
 
 " Thank you sir " I says " I understand you now. No sir I have 
 not the least idea who this can be." 
 
 " Has Madame Lirrwiper no son, no nephew, no godson, no frrwiendj 
 no acquaintance of any kind in Frrwance ? " 
 
 " To my certain knowledge " says I " no relation or friend, and to 
 the best of my belief no acquaintance." 
 
 " Pardon me. You take Locataires ? " says the gentleman. 
 
 My dear fully believing he was offering me something with his 
 obliging foreign manners, snuff for anything I knew, I gave a little 
 bend of my head and I says if you'll credit it, "No I thank you. I 
 have not contracted the habit." 
 
 Tlie gentleman looks perplexed and says " Lodgers ! " 
 
 " Oh ! " says I laughing. " Bless the man ! Why yes to be sure ! " 
 
 " May it not be a former lodger ? " says the gentleman. " Some 
 lodger that yoii pardoned some rrwcnt ? You have pardoned lodgers 
 some rrwent ? " 
 
 " Hem ! It has happened sir " says I, " but I assure you I can call to 
 mind no gentleman of that description that this is at all likely to bo." 
 
 In short my dear, we could make nothing of it, and the gentleman 
 noted down what I said and went away. But lie left me the paper r.f 
 which he had two with him, and when the Major came in I says to 
 the Major as I put it in his hand " Major here's Old Moore's Almanac 
 with the hieroglyphic complete, for your opinion." 
 
 It took the Major a little longer to read than I should have thought, 
 judging from the copious flow with which ho seemed to bo gifted 
 when attacking the organ-men, but at last he got through it, and stood 
 a gazing at me in amazement. 
 
 " Major " I says " you're paralysed." 
 
 " Madam " says the Major, " Jemmy Jackman is doubled up." 
 
 Now it did so happen that the Major had been out to get a little 
 information about railroads and steamboats, as our boy was coming 
 home for his Midsummer holidays next day and we were going to take 
 him somewhere for a treat and a change. So while the Major stood a 
 gazing it came into my head to say to him " Major I wish you'd go 
 and look at some of your books and maps, and see whereabouts this 
 same town of Sons is in Framcc." 
 
 Tlie Major lie roused himself and he went into the Parlours and ho
 
 2/0 Mrs. Lirripers Legacy. 
 
 poked about a little, and lio camo back to me aud bo says, " Sens my 
 dcai*est madam is seventy-odd miles south of Paris." 
 
 With what I may truly call a desperate effort " Major," I says 
 " we'll go there with our blessed boy." 
 
 If ever tho Major was beside himself it was at the thoughts of that 
 journey. All day long ho was like tlui wild man of the woods after 
 meeting with an advertisement in the papers telling him something to 
 his advantage, and early next morning hours before Jemmy could 
 possibly come home he was outside in tho street ready to call out to 
 him that we was all a going to France. Young liosycheeks you may 
 believe was as wild as tho Major, and they did carry on to that degroo 
 that I says " If you two children ain't more orderly I'll pack you both 
 off to bed." And then they fell to cleaning up tho Major's telescope 
 to see Franco with, and went out aud bought a leather bag with a 
 snajj to hang round Jemmy, and him to carry the money like a littlo 
 Fortunatus with his purse. 
 
 If I hadn't passed my word aud raised their hopes, I doubt if I 
 could have gone through with tho undertaking but it was too late to 
 go back now. So on the second day after Midsummer Day wo went 
 olf by the morning mail. And when we came to tho sea which I had 
 never seen but once in my life and that when my poor Lirriper was 
 courting me, the freshness of it and the deepness aud tho airiness and 
 to think that it had been rolling ever since and that it was always a 
 rolling and so few of us minding, made me feel quite serious. Uut I 
 felt hap])y too aud so did Jemmy aud the Major and not much motion 
 on tho whole, though me with a swimming in the head aud a sinking 
 but able to take notice that tho foreign iusides appear to bo con- 
 structed hollower than tho English, leading to much more tremenjous 
 noises when bad sailors. 
 
 But my dear tho blueness and tho lightness and the coloured look 
 of everything aud tlie very sentry-boxes striped and the shining 
 rattling drums and the littlo soldiers with their waists aud tidy 
 gaiters, when we got across to the Coulinont it made me feel as if I 
 don't know what as if tho atmosphere had been lifted off me. And 
 as to lunch why bless you if I kept a man-cook aud two Icitchcn-maids 
 I couldn't get it done for twice tho money, aud no injured young 
 woman a glaring at you and griulgiug you and acknowledging ycnir 
 patronage by wishing that ycmr food might cliokc you, but so civil 
 and so liot and attentive aud every way comfortable except Jeiuiny 
 pouring wiue down his throat by tumblers-full aud me expecting to 
 SCO him drop under the table. 
 
 Aud tlie v,ay in wliich Jemmy spoke his French was a real charm. 
 It was often wanted of him, for whenever anybody spoke a syllable to 
 mo I says " Non-comprenny, you're very kind, but it's no use Now 
 Jemmy 1 " and then Jemmy he fires away at 'em lovely, tlie only 
 t!ii:i'4 waiitiiig in ,J;;mniy's Fi'cnch ])oing as it appcai'cd t^) ino that lio 
 hardly ever understood a word of what tliey said to him which lUwdo
 
 Mrs. Lir riper in Paris. 271 
 
 it scarcely of tlie use it miglit have been thougli iu oilier respects a 
 perfect Native, and regarding tlie Major's fluency I should have been 
 of the opinion judging French by English that there might have been 
 a greater choice of words in the language though still I must admit 
 that if I hadn't known him when he asked a military gentleman in a 
 gray cloak what o'clock it was I should have took him for a French- 
 man born. 
 
 Before going on to look after my Legacy we were to make one 
 regular day in Paris, and I leave you to judge my dear what a day 
 iliat was with Jemmy and the Major and the telescope and me and 
 the prowling young man at the inn door (but very civil too) that went 
 along with us to show the sights. All along the railway to Paris 
 Jemmy and the Major had been frightening me to death by stooping 
 dov/n on the platforms at stations to inspect the engines underneath 
 their mechanical stomachs, and by creeping iu and out I don't know 
 whero all, to find improvements for the United Grand Junction 
 Parlour, but when we got out into the brilliant streets on a bright 
 morning they gave up all their London improvements as a bad job 
 and gave their minds to Paris. Says the prowling young man to me 
 'Will I speak Inglis No?" So I saj's "If you can young num I 
 shall take it as a favour," but after half-an-hour of it when I fully 
 believed the man had gone mad and mo too I says " Bo so good as 
 fall back on your French sir," knowing that then I shouldn't have the 
 agonies of trying to understand him, w]iich was a hapjjy release. Not 
 that I lost much more than the rest either, for I generally noticed 
 that when he had described something very long indeed and I says 
 to Jemmy "What does ho say Jemmy?" Jemmy says looking with 
 vengeance in his eye " lie is so jolly indistinct ! " and that when ho 
 had described it longer all over again and I says to Jemmy "Well 
 Jemmy what's it all about ? " Jemmy says " He says the building was 
 rc])aircd in seventeen hundred and four, Gran." 
 
 Wherever tliat prowling young man formed his prowling habits I 
 cannot be expected to know, but the way in which he went round tho 
 corner while we had our breakfasts and was there again when ^^o 
 swallowed the last crumb was most marvellous, and just the same at 
 dinner and at night, prowling equally at tho theatre and the inn gate- 
 way and the shop doors when we bought a trifle or two and every- 
 where else but troubled with a tendency to spit. And of Paris I can 
 tell you no more my dear than that it's town and country both in one, 
 and carved stone and long streets of high houses and gardens and 
 fountains and statues and trees and gold, and immensely big soldiers 
 and immensely littlo soldiers and the jjleasantcst nurses with the 
 Avhitest caps a inlaying at skipping-rope with tho bunchiest babies iu 
 tho flattest" caps, and clean table-cloths spread everywhere for dinner 
 :iMd people sitting out of doors smoking and sipping all day long and 
 littlo plays being acted iu the open air for little people and every 
 iihop a complete and elegant room, and everybody seeming to play at
 
 2/3 Mrs. Lirripcrs Legacy. 
 
 everything in this world. And as to the sparkling lights my dear 
 after dark, glittering high up and low down and on before and on 
 behind aud all round, and the crowd of theatres and the crowd of 
 people and the crowd of all sorts, it's pure enchantment. And pretty 
 well the only thing that grated on me was that whether you pay your 
 fare at the railway or whether you change your money at a money- 
 dealer's or whether you take your ticket at the theatre, the lady or 
 gentleman is caged up (I suppose by government) behind the strongest 
 iron bars having more of a Zoological appearance than a free country. 
 
 Well to bo sure when I did after all get my precious bones to bed 
 that night, and my Young Rogue came in to kiss me and asks " What 
 do you think of this lovely lovely Paris, Gran ? " I says " Jemmy I 
 feel as if it was beautiful fireworks being let off in my head." And 
 very cool and refreshing the pleasant country was next day when wo 
 went on to look after my Legacy, and rested mo much and did me a 
 deal of good. 
 
 So at length and at last my dear we come to Sens, a pretty little 
 town with a great two-towered cathedral and the rooks flying in and 
 out of the loopholes and another tower atop of one of the towers like 
 a sort of a stone pulpit. In which pulpit with the birds skimming 
 below him if you'll believe me, I saw a speck while I was resting at 
 the inn before dinner which they made signs to mo was Jemmy and 
 which really was. I had been a fancying as I sat in the balcony of 
 the hotel that an Angel might light there and call down to the people 
 to be good, but I little thought what Jemmy all unknown to himself 
 was a calling down from that high place to some one in the town. 
 
 The pleasan test-situated inn my dear ! Right under the two 
 towers, with their shadows a changing upon it all day like a kind of 
 a sundial, and country people driving in and out of the courtyard in 
 carts and hooded cabriolets and such like, and a market outside in 
 front of the cathedral, and all so quaint and like a picter. The Major 
 and me agreed that whatever came of my Legacy this was tlio place 
 to stay in for our holiday, and we also agreed that our dear boy had 
 best not be checked in his joy tliat night by the sight of the English- 
 man if ho was still alive, but that we would go together and alone. 
 For you are to understand that the Major not feeling himself quit(3 
 equal in his wind to the height to which Jemmy had climbed, had 
 come back to me and left him with the Guide. 
 
 So after dinner when Jemmy had set off to see the river, the Major 
 wont down to the Mairio, and presently came bacjc with a military 
 cliaracter in a sword and spurs and a cocked hat and a yellow 
 shoulder-belt and long tags about him that ho must have found in- 
 convenient. And the Major says " Tlie Englisliman still lies in tho 
 same state dearest madam. This gentleman will conduct us to his 
 lodging." Upon whiclx tlie military cli!i,raet(!r pulled off his cocked 
 hat to mc, nnd 1 took notice that he liad shaved his forehead in 
 iraitatiou of Napoleon Donaparto but not like.
 
 TJie Dying Englishman. 273 
 
 We went out at tlie court-yard gate and past tlie great doors of 
 the cathedral and down a narrow High Street where the people were 
 sitting chatting at their shop doors and the children were at play. 
 The military character went in front and he stopped at a pork-shop 
 with a little statue of a pig sitting up, in the window, and a private 
 door that a donkey was looking out of. 
 
 When the donkey saw the military character he came slipping out 
 on the pavement to turn round and then clattered along the passage 
 into a back yard. So the coast being clear, the Major and me were 
 conducted up the common stair and into the front room on the second, 
 a bare room with a red tiled floor and the outside lattice blinds pulled 
 close to darken it. As the military character opened the blinds I saw 
 the tower where 1 had seen Jemmy, darkening as the sun got low, and 
 I turned to the bed by the wall and saw the Englishman. 
 
 It was some kind of brain fever he had had, and his hair was all 
 gone, and some wetted folded linen lay upon his head. 1 looked at 
 him very attentive as lie lay there all wasted away with his eyes 
 closed, and I says to the Major 
 
 " I never saw this ftico before." 
 
 The Major looked at him very attentive too, and he says 
 
 " 1 never saw this face before." 
 
 When the Major explained our words to the military character, 
 that gentleman shrugged his shoulders and sliowed the Major the card 
 on which it was written about the Legacy for me. It had been written 
 with a weak and trembling hand in bed, and I knew no more of the 
 writing than of the face. Neither did the Major, 
 
 Though lying there alone, the poor crectur was as well taken care 
 of as could be hoped, and would have been quite unconscious of any 
 one's sitting by him then. I got the Major to say that we were not 
 going away at present and tliat I would come back to-morrow and 
 Avatch a bit by the bedside. But I got him to add and I shook my 
 liead hard to make it stronger " We agree that we never saw this 
 face before." 
 
 Our boy was greatly surprised when we told him sitting out in tlie 
 balcony in tlie starlight, and he ran over some of those stories of 
 ftjrmer Lodgers, of the Major's putting dov/n, and asked wasn't it 
 possible tliat it might be this lodger or that lodger. It was not 
 possible, and we went to bed. 
 
 In the morning just at breakfast-time the military character came 
 jingling round, and said that the doctor thought from tlie signs ho 
 saw there might be some rally before the end. So I says to the 
 I\Iajor and Jemmy, " You two boys go and enjoy yourselves, and I'll 
 fake my Prayer I3ook and go sit by the bed." So I went, and I sat 
 tliorc some hours, reading a prayer for him poor soul now and then, 
 and it was quite on in the day when he moved his hand. 
 
 lie had been so still, that the moment ho moved I knew of it, and 
 I pulled oil' my spcclaclcs and laid down my book and rose and locked 
 
 T
 
 274 Mrs. Lirrtper's Legacy. 
 
 nt liim. From moving one hand ho began to move both, and then his 
 action was the action of a person groping in the dark. Long after his 
 eyes liad opened, there was a film over them and he still felt for 
 his way out into light. But by slow degrees his sight cleared and 
 his hands stopped. He saw the ceiling, lie saw the wall, he saw me. 
 As his sight cleared, mine cleared too, and when at last we looked in 
 one another's faces, I started back and I cries passionately : 
 
 " you wicked wicked man ! Your sin has found you out ! " 
 
 For I knew him, the moment life looked out of his eyes, to he Mr. 
 Edson, Jemmy's father who had so cruelly deserted Jemmy's young 
 unmarried mother who had died in my arms, poor tender creetur, and 
 left Jemmy to me. 
 
 " You cruel wicked man ! You bad black traitor ! " 
 
 "With the little strength he had, he made an attempt to turn over 
 on his wretched face to hide it. His arm dropped out of the bed and 
 his head with it, and there he lay before me crushed in body and in 
 mind. Surely the miserablest sight under the summer sun ! 
 
 " O blessed Heaven," I says a crying, " teach me what to say to tliis 
 broken mortal ! I am a poor sinful creetur, and the Judgment is not 
 mine." 
 
 As I lifted my eyes up to the clear brig.ht sky, I saw the high 
 tower where Jemmy had stood above the birds, seeing that very 
 window ; and the last look of that poor pretty young mother when 
 her soul brightened and got free, seemed to shine down from it. 
 
 " man, man, man ! " I says, and I went on my knees beside the 
 l)ed ; " if your heart is rent asunder and you are truly penitent for 
 what you did. Our Saviour will have mercy on you yet ! " 
 
 As I leaned my face against the bed, his feeble hand could just 
 move itself enough to touch me. I hojie the touch was penitent. It 
 tried to hold my dress and keep hold, but the fingers were too weak 
 to close. 
 
 I lifted him back upon the pillows and T says to him : 
 
 " Can you hear me ? " 
 
 He looked yes. 
 
 " Do you know me ? "' 
 
 He looked yes, even yet more plainly, 
 
 " I am not here alone. Tlic Major is with mo. You recollect the 
 Ttrajor ? " 
 
 Yes. That is to say he made out ycR. in the same 'NVay as before. 
 
 "And even the Major and I are not alone. My grandson his god-- 
 s )n is with us. Do you hear ? My grandson." 
 
 Tlie fingers made another trial to catch at my bIgcVC) but could 
 only creep near it and full, 
 
 " Do you know who my grandson is ? " 
 
 Yes. 
 
 " I pitied and loved liis lonely iiiotjicrj WJicn his inoUiel' lay a 
 dying I said to her, 'My dear, this bftby is sent to a fliildlesR old
 
 Father and Son. 2^5 
 
 woman.' Ho Las been my pride and joy ever since. I love him as 
 dearly as if lie had drunk from my breast. Do you ask to see my 
 grandson before you die ? " 
 
 Yes. 
 
 " Show me, when I leave off speaking, if you correctly understand 
 what I say. He has been kept unacquainted with the story of his 
 birth. He has no knowledge of it. No suspicion of it. If I bring 
 him hero to the side of this bed, he will suppose you to be a perfect 
 stranger. It is more than I can do to keep from him the knowledge 
 that there is such wrong and misery in the world ; but that it was 
 ever so near him in his innocent cradle I have kept from him, and I 
 do keep from him, and I ever will keep from him, for his mother's 
 Bake, and for his own." 
 
 He showed me that ho distinctly understood, and the tears fell from 
 his eyes. 
 
 " Now rest, and you shall see him." 
 
 So I got him a little wine and some brandy, and I put things 
 straight about his bed. But I began to be troubled in my mind lest 
 Jemmy and the Major might be too long of coming back. What with 
 this occupation for my tlioughts and hands, I didn't hear a foot \\\)on 
 the stairs, and was startled when I saw the Major stopped short in 
 the middle of the room by the eyes of the man upon the bed, and 
 kuowing him then, as I had known him a little while ago. 
 
 There was anger in the Major's face, and there was horror and 
 repugnance and I don't know what. So I went up to him and I led 
 him to the bedside, and when I clasped my hands and lifted of them 
 up, the Major did the like, 
 
 " Lord " I says " Tlioii knowest what we two saw together of the 
 suiferings and sorrows of that young creetnr now with Thee. If this 
 dying man is truly penitent, we two together humbly pray Thee to 
 have mercy on him ! " 
 
 The Major says " Amen ! " and then after a little stop I whispers 
 him, " Dear old friend fetch our beloved boy." And the Major, so 
 clever as to have got to understand it all without being told a word, 
 went away and brought him. 
 
 Never never never shall I forget the fiiir bright face of our boy 
 when he stood at the foot of the bed, looking at his unknown father. 
 And so like his dear young mother then ! 
 
 " Jemmy " I says, " I liavc found out all about this poor gentleman 
 who is so ill, and he did lodge in the old house once. And as ho 
 wants to see all belonging to it, now that he is passing away, I sent 
 for you." 
 
 " Ah poor man ! " says Jemmy fetepping forward and touching one 
 of liis hands with great gentleness^ " My heart melts for him. Poor, 
 poor man ! " 
 
 The eyes that wore so f:;oon to close for eVer turned to mo, and I wad 
 not that strong in the pride of my strength that I could resist them.
 
 2/6 Mis. Lir riper'' s Legacy. 
 
 "My darling boy, tliero is a reason in tlic secret history of this 
 fellow-creetur lying as the best and worst of ns must all lie one day, 
 which I think would ease his spirit in his last hour if you would lay 
 your cheek against his forehead and say, ' May God forgive you ! ' " 
 
 " O Gran," says Jemmy with a full heart " I am not worthy ! " 
 But he loaned down and did it. Then the faltering fingers made out 
 to catch hold of my sleeve at last, and I believe ho was a-trying to 
 kiss me when he died. 
 
 * * * * # 
 
 There my dear ! There yoxi have the story of my Legacy in full, 
 and it's worth ten times the trouble I have spent upon it if you are 
 pleased to like it. 
 
 You might suppose that it set us against the little French town of 
 Sens, but no we didn't find that. I found myself that I never looked 
 up at the high tower atop of the other tower, but the days came back 
 again wlien that fair yoimg creetur with her pretty bright hair trusted 
 in me like a mother, and the recollection made tlie place so peaceful 
 to me as I can't express. And every soul about the hotel down to the 
 pigeons in the courtyard made friends with Jemmy and the Major, 
 and went lumbering away with them on all sorts of expeditions in all 
 sorts of vehicles drawn by rampagioiis cart-horses, with heads and 
 without, mud for paint and ropes for harness, and every new friend 
 dressed in blue like a butcher, and every new horse standing on his 
 hind legs wanting to devour and consume every other horse, and every 
 man that had a whip to crack crack-crack-crack-crack-cracking it as 
 if it was a schoolboy with his first. As to the Major my dear that 
 man lived the greater part of his time with a little tumbler in one 
 hand and a bottle of small wine in the other, and wheucver he saw 
 anybody else with a little tumbler, no matter who it was, the 
 military character with the tags, or the inn-servants at their supper 
 in tlie courtyard, or townspeoide a chatting on a bench, or country 
 people a starting liome after market, down rushes the Major to 
 clink his glass against their glasses and cry, Hola ! Vive Some- 
 body ! or Vive Something ! as if he was beside himself. And thougli 
 I could not quite approve of the Major's doing it, still tlie ways of 
 tlie world are the ways of the world varying according to the difl'ercnt 
 parts of it, and dancing at all in the ojien Square Avith a lady that 
 kept a barber's shop my opinion is that the Miijcu' was right to dance 
 his best and to lead off with a power that I did not think was in him, 
 though I was a little uneasy at the Barricading sound of the cries 
 that were set up by the other dancers and the rest of the company, 
 until when I says " What are they ever calling out Jemmy ? " 
 Jemmy says, " They're calling out Gran, Bravo the Military English ! 
 Bravo the Military English ! " which was very gratifying to my 
 feelings as a Briton and became the name the IMajor was known by. 
 
 But cv(;rv evening at a regular time we all three sat out in the 
 Lalcjny of the hotel at the end of the courtyard, looking up at the
 
 TJie Last Night of the Holiday. 277 
 
 golden and rosy light as it changed on the great towers, and looking 
 at the shadows of the towers as they changed on all ahout us ourselves 
 included, and what do you think we did there ? My dear, if Jemmy 
 hadn't hrought some other of those stories of the Major's taking down 
 from the telling of former lodgers at Eighty-one Norfolk Street, and 
 if he didn't bring 'em out with this speech : 
 
 " Hero you are Gran ! Here you are godfather ! More of 'em ! 
 I'll read. And though you wrote 'em for me, godfothcr, I know 
 you won't disapprove of my making 'em over to Gran ; will 
 you?" 
 
 " No, my dear boy," says the Major. " Everything we have is hers, 
 and we are hers." 
 
 " Hers ever affectionately and devotedly J. Jackman, and J. Jack- 
 man Lirriper," cries the Young Rogue giving me a close hug. " Very 
 well then godfather. Look here. As Gran is in the Legacy way 
 just now, I shall make these stories a part of Gran's Legacy. I'll 
 leave 'em to her. What do you say godfather ? " 
 
 " Hip hip Hurrah ! " says the Major. 
 
 " Very well then," cries Jemmy all in a bustle. " Vive the Military 
 English ! Vive the Lady Lirriper ! Vive the Jemmy Jackman 
 Ditto ! Vive the Legacy ! Now, you look out, Gran. And you look 
 out, godfather. T\\ read ! And I'll tell you what I'll do besides. 
 On the last night of our holiday here when we are all packed and 
 going away, I'll top up with something of my own." 
 
 " Mind you do sir " says I. 
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 
 MRS. LIUllIPKU RELATES HOW JEMMY TOPPED UP. 
 
 Well my dear and so the evening readings of those jottings of the 
 Major's brought us round at last to the evening when we were all 
 packed and going away next day, and I do assure you that by that 
 time though it was deliciously comfortable to look forward to the 
 dear old house in Norfolk Street again, I had formed quite a high 
 opinion of the French nation and had noticed them to be much more 
 homely and domestic in their families and far more simple and 
 amiable in their lives than I had ever been led to expect, and it did 
 strike me between ourselves that in one particular they might bo 
 imitated to advantage by another nation which I will not mention, and 
 that is in the courage with which they take tbeir little enjoyments on 
 little means and with little things and don't let solemn big- wigs stare 
 them out of countenance or speechify them dull, of which said solemn 
 big-w'igs I have ever had the one opiaion that I wish they were all
 
 2/8 Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy. 
 
 made coinfortablo separately in coppers with tho lids on and never let 
 out any more. 
 
 "Now young man," I says to Jommy wlien we brought our chairs 
 into tho balcony that last evening, " you plcaso to remember who was 
 to ' top up.' " 
 
 " All right Gran " says Jemmy. " I am the illustrious personage." 
 
 But ho loolcod so serious after he had made mo that light answer, 
 that tho Major raised his eyebrows at me and I raised mine at tho 
 Major. 
 
 " Gran and godfather," says Jemmy, " you can hardly think how 
 much my mind has run on Mr. Edson's death." 
 
 It gavo mo a littlo check. " Ah ! it was a sad scene my love " I 
 Bays, " and sad remembrances como back stronger than merry. But 
 this " I says after a little silence, to rouse myself and the Major and 
 Jommy all together, " is not toppiug up. Tell us your story my 
 dear." 
 
 " I will " says Jemmy. 
 
 " What is the date sir ? " says I. " Onco upon a time uhon pigs 
 drank wine ? " 
 
 " No Gran," says Jemmy, still serious ; " onco upon a time when 
 tho French drank wine." 
 
 Again I glanced at the Major, and the Major glanced at me. 
 
 " In short. Gran and godfather," says Jemmy, looking up, " tho 
 date is this time, and I'm going to tell you Mr, Edson's story." 
 
 The flutter that it threw me into. The chaugo of colour on the 
 part of the Major ! 
 
 " That is to say, you understand," our bright-eyed boy says, " I am 
 going to give you my version of it. I shall not ask whether it's right 
 or not, firstly because you said you know very little about it, Gran, 
 and secondly because what little you did know was a secret." 
 
 I folded my hands in my lap and I never took my eyes ofi' Jemmy 
 as he went running on. 
 
 " Tho unfortunate gentleman " Jemmy commences, " v/ho is the 
 subject of our j^reseut narrative was tho son of Somebody, and was 
 born Somewhere, and chose a profession Somehow. It is not with 
 those parts cf his career that we have to deal ; but with his early 
 attachment to a young and beautiful lady." 
 
 I thought I ehould have dropped. I durstn't look at the Major ; 
 but I knew ^vhat his state was, without looking at him. 
 
 " The father of our ill-starred hero " says Jemmy, coi)ying as it 
 seemed to me the style of some of his stcn-y-books, ' was a worldly 
 man who entertained ambitious views for liis only son and who firmly 
 set his face against the contcmjilated alliance witli a virtuous but 
 penniless orfjlian. Indeed he went so far as roundly to assure our 
 hero that unless he weaned his thouglits from tlio object of his devoted 
 afieetion, lie would disinherit him. At the same time, he j)roposed as 
 a suitable match the daughter of a Jieitrhbouring yentlemau of a good
 
 feuiiiiy tells 3Tr. EdsoiUs Story. 279 
 
 estate, who was neither ill-favoured nor iinamiablo, and whoso 
 eligibility in a pecuniary point of view could not be disputed. But 
 young Mr. Edsou, true to the first and only love that had inflamed his 
 breast, rejected all considerations of self-advancement, and, deprecating 
 his father's anger in a respectful letter, ran away with her." 
 
 My dear I had begun to take a turn for the better, but when it 
 come to running away I began to take another turn for the worse. 
 
 " The lovers " says Jemmy " fled to London and were united at the 
 altar of Saint Clement's Danes. And it is at this period of their 
 simple but touching story that we find them inmates of the dwelling 
 of a higlily-respected and beloved lady of the name of Gran, residing 
 within a hundred miles of Norfolk Street," 
 
 I felt that wo were almost safe now, I felt that the dear boy had 
 no suspicion of the bitter trutli, and I looked at the Major for the first 
 time and drew a long breath. The Major gave me a nod. 
 
 " Our hero's father " Jemmy goes on " proving implacable and 
 carrying his threat into imrelenting execution, the struggles of the 
 young couple in London were severe, and would have been far more 
 so, but for their good angel's having conducted them to the abode of 
 Mrs. Gran ; who, divining their poverty (in spite of their endeavours 
 to conceal it from her), by a tliousand delicate arts smootlicd their 
 rough ^vay, and alleviated tlie sharpness of their first distress." 
 
 Here Jemmy took one of my hands in one of his, and began a 
 marking the turns of his story by making me give a beat from time to 
 time upon his other hand. 
 
 " After a while, they left the house of Mrs. Gran, and i)ursued th.eir 
 fortunes through a variety of successes and failures elsewhere. But 
 in all reverses, whether for good or evil, the words of Mr. Edson to 
 the fair young partner of his life wore, ' Unchanging Love and Truth 
 will carry us through all ! ' " 
 
 My hand trembled in the dear boy's, those words were so wofully 
 unlike the fact. 
 
 " Unchanging Love and Truth " says Jemmy over again, as if ho 
 had a proud kind of a noble pleasure in it, " will carry us through 
 all ! Those were his words. And so they fought tlieir way, poor but 
 gallant and happy, until Mrs. Edsou gave birth to a child." 
 
 " A daughter," I says. 
 
 ' Xo," says Jemmy, " a son. And the father was so proiid of it tliat 
 he could hardly bear it out of his siglit. But a dark cloud overspread 
 the scene. Mrs. Edson sickened, drooped, and died." 
 
 " Ah ! Sickened, drooped, and died ! " I says. 
 
 " And so Mr. Edson's only comfort, only hope on earth, and only 
 stimulus to action, was his darling boy. As the child grew older, he 
 grew so like his mother that he was her living 2)icturc. It used to 
 make him wonder why his fatlier cried when he kissed him. But 
 unb.appily he was lilce his motlier in constitution as well as in fsico, 
 ajid ho died too before ho had grown out of childhood, Then Mr,
 
 28o Mrs. Lirripers Legacy 
 
 Edson, who had good abilities, in his forlornnoss and despair, threw 
 them all to the winds. He became apathetic, reckless, lost. Little 
 by little ho sank down, down, down, down, until at last he almost 
 lived (I tliink) by gaming. And so sickness overtook him in the 
 town of Sens in France, and he lay down to die. But now that he 
 laid him down when all was done, and looked back upon the green 
 Past beyond the time when lie had covered it with ashes, he thought 
 gratefully of the good Mrs. Gran long lost sight of, who had been so 
 kind to him and his young wife in tlio early days of their marriage, 
 and he left tlic little that he had as a last Legacy to her. And she, 
 being broiight to see him, at first no more knew him than she would 
 know from seeing the ruin of a Greek or Eoman Temple, what it used 
 to be before it full ; but at length she remembered him. And then 
 he told her, with tears, of his regret for the misspent part of his life, 
 and besought her to think as mildly of it as she could, because it was 
 the poor fallen Angel of his unchanging Love and Constancy after all. 
 And because she had her grandson with lier, and he fancied that his 
 own boy, if he had lived, might have grown to be something like him, 
 he asked her to let him touch his forehead with his cheek and say 
 certain jiarting words." 
 
 Jemmy's voice sank low when it got to that, and tears filled my 
 eyes, and filled the Major's. 
 
 "You little Conjurer" I says, "how did you ever make it all out? 
 Go in and write it every word down, for it's a wonder." 
 
 Which Jemmy did, and I have repeated it to you my dear from his 
 writing. 
 
 Then the Major took my hand and kissed it, and said, " Dearest 
 madam all has jn-ospered with us." 
 
 "Ah Major" I says drying my eyes, " we needn't have been afraid. 
 \Jq. might have known it. Treachery don't come natural to beaming 
 youth ; but trust and pity, love and constancy, they do, thank 
 God ! "
 
 DOCTOR MARKiOl.n.
 
 DOCTOR MARIGOLD. 
 
 [1865.] 
 
 I AM a Cheap Jack, and my own father's name was Willnm Marigold. 
 It was in his lifetime supposed by some that his name was William, 
 but my own father always consistently said. No, it was Willum. On 
 which point I content myself with looking at the argument this way : 
 If a man is not allowed to know his own name in a free country, how 
 much is he allowed to know in a land of slavery '? As to looking at 
 the argument through the medium of the Register, "Willum Marigold 
 come into the world before Registers come w^) much, and went out 
 of it too. They wouldn't have been greatly in his line neither, if 
 they had chanced to come up before him. 
 
 I was born on the Queen's highway, but it was the King's at that 
 time. A doctor was fetched to my own mother by my own father, 
 when it took place on a common ; and in consequence of his being 
 a very kind gentleman, and accepting no fee but a tea-tray, I was 
 named Doctor, out of gratitude and compliment to him. There you 
 have me. Doctor Marigold. 
 
 I am at present a middle-aged man of a broadish build, in cords, 
 leggings, and a sleeved waistcoat the strings of which is always gone 
 behind. Repair them how you w'ill, they go like fiddle-strings. You 
 have been to the theatre, and you have seen one of the wiolin-players 
 screw up his wiolin, after listening to it as if it had been whispering 
 the secret to him that it feared it w'as out of order, and then you have 
 heard it snap. That's as exactly similar to my waistcoat as a waist- 
 coat and a wiolin can be like one another. 
 
 I am partial to a white hat, and I like a shawl round my neck wore 
 loose and easy. Sitting down is my favourite posture. If I have a 
 taste in point of personal jewelry, it is mother-of-pearl buttons. There 
 you have mo again, as largo as life. 
 
 The doctor having accepted a tea-tray, you'll guess that my father 
 was a Cheap Jack before me. You are right. He was. It was a 
 pretty tray. It represented a large lady going along a serpentining 
 up-hill gi-avcl-v.-alk, to attend a little church. Two swans had like-
 
 232 Doctor Marigold. 
 
 wise coino astray with tlio same intentions. When I call hor a largo 
 lady, I don't mean in point of breadth, for there she fell below my 
 views, but she more than made it up in heighth ; hor heighth and 
 slimness was in short the heighth of both. 
 
 I often saw that tray, after I was the innocently smiling cause (or 
 more likely screeching one) of the doctor's standing it up on a table 
 against the wall in his consulting-room. Whenever my own father 
 and mother were in that part of the country, I used to put my head 
 (I have heard my own mother say it was flaxen curls at that time, 
 though you wouldn't know an old hoarth-broom from it now till you 
 come to the handle, and found it wasn't mc) in at the doctor's door, 
 and the doctor was always glad to see me, and said, " Aha, my 
 brother practitioner ! Come in, littlo M.D. How are your inclina- 
 tions as to sixpence ? " 
 
 You can't go on for ever, you'll find, nor yet could my father nor 
 yet my mother. If you don't go olf as a whole when you are about 
 due, you're liable to go off in part, and two to one your head's the 
 part. Gradually my father wont oft" his, and my mother went off hers. 
 It was in a harmless way, but it put oiit the family where I boarded 
 tliem. The old couple, though retired, got to be wholly and solely 
 devoted to the Cheap Jack business, and were always selling the 
 family off. Whenever the cloth was laid for dinner, my father began 
 rattling the plates and dishes, as we do in our lino when we put up 
 crockery for a bid, only he had lost the trick of it, and mostly let 'em 
 drop and broke 'em. As the old lady had boon used to sit in the cart, 
 and hand the articles out one by one to the old gentleman on the 
 footboard to sell, just in the same way she handed him every item of 
 tlie family's property, anel they disposed of it in their own imaginations 
 from morning to night. At last the old gentleman, lying bedridden 
 in the same room with the old lady, cries out in the old patter, fluent, 
 after having been silent for two days and nights : " Now here, my 
 jolly companions every one, which the Nightingale club in a village 
 v.-as held. At the sign of the Cabbage and Shears, Where the singers 
 no doubt would have greatly excelled. But for want of taste, voices, 
 and ears, now, here, my jolly companions, every one, is a workiug 
 model of a used-iip old Cheap Jack, witliout a tooth in his head, and 
 with a pain in every bone : so like life that it would be just as good 
 if it wasn't better, just as bad if it wasn't w(jrse, and just as new if it 
 wasn't worn out. Bid for the working model of the old Cheap Jack, 
 wlio lias drunk more gunj^owder-tea with the ladies in his time than 
 would blow the lid off a washerwoman's co])pc!r, and carry it as many 
 thousands of miles higher than the moon as naught nix nauglit, 
 divided ljy the national debt, carry nothing to the i)Oor-ratcs, three 
 under, and two over. Now, my hearts of oak and men of straw, wliat 
 do you say for the lot? Two shillings, a shilling, tenpcnce, eight- 
 pence, sixpence, fourpence. Twopence ? Who said t\vo})encc ? The 
 gentleuiau in the scarecrow's hat? I am asliamed of the gcntlemuu
 
 His Father s Last Lot. 283 
 
 in tLe scarecrow's hat, I really am asliamed of him for his want of 
 public spirit. Now I'll tell you what I'll do with you. Come ! I'll 
 throw you in a working model of a old woman that was married to 
 the old Cheap Jack so long ago that upon my word and honour it 
 took place in Noah's Ark, before the Unicorn could get in to forbid 
 the banns by blowing a tune upon his horn. There now ! Come ! 
 What do you say for both ? I'll tell you what I'll do with you. I 
 don't bear you malice for being so backward. Here! If you make 
 me a bid that'll only reflect a little credit on your town, I'll throw 
 you in a warming-pan for nothing, and lend you a toasting-fork for 
 life. Now come ; w-hat do you say after that splendid offer ? ISay 
 two pound, say thirty shillings, say a j^ouud, say ten shillings, say 
 five, say two and six. You don't say even two and six ? You say 
 two and three ? No. You shan't have the lot for two and three. I'd 
 sooner give it to you, if you was good-looking enough. Here ! 
 Missis ! Chuck the old man and woman into the cart, put the horse 
 to, and drive 'cm away and bury 'em ! " Such were the last words of 
 "Willum Marigold, iwy own father, and they were carried out, by him 
 and by his wife, my own mother, on one and the same day, as I ought 
 to know, having followed as mourner. 
 
 My father had been a lovely one in his time at the Cheap Jack 
 work, as his dying observations went to prove. But I top him. I 
 don't say it because it's myself, but because it has been universally 
 acknowledged by all that hao had the means of comi^arison. I have 
 worked at it. I have measured myself against other public sjicakers, 
 Members of Parliament, Platforms, Pulpits, Counsel learned in the 
 law, and where I have found 'em good, I have took a bit of imagina- 
 tion from 'em, and where I have found 'em bad, I have let 'em alone. 
 Now I'll tell you what. I mean to go down into my grave declaring 
 that of all the callings ill used in Great Britain, the Cheap Jack 
 calling is the worst used. Why ain't we a profession ? Why ain't 
 wo endowed with privileges ? Why are we forced to take out a 
 hawker's license, when no such thing is expected of the political 
 hawkers ? Where's the difference betwixt us '? Except that we are 
 Cheap Jacks and they arc Dear Jacks, I don't see any difference but 
 what's in our favour. 
 
 For look here ! Say it's election time. I am on the footboard of 
 my cart in the market-place, on a Saturday night. I put up a 
 general miscellaneous lot. I say : " Now here, my free and inde- 
 pendent woters, I'm a going to give you such a chance as you never 
 had in all your born days, nor yet the days preceding. Now I'll 
 show you what I am a going to do with you. Here's a pair of razors 
 that'll shave you closer than the Board of Guardians ; here's a flat- 
 iron worth its weight in gold ; here's a frying-pan artificially flavoured 
 vrith essence of beefsteaks to that degree that you've only got for the 
 rest of your lives to fry bread and dripping in it and there you are 
 replete v.ith animal food ; here's a genuine chronometer Viatch in
 
 284 Doctor Marigold. 
 
 such a solid silver case that you may knock at tlio door with it when 
 you come homo lato from a social meeting, and rouse your wife and 
 family, and save up your kuocker for the postman ; and here's half-a- 
 dozen dinner plates that you may play the cymbals with to charm the 
 baby when it's fractious. Stop ! I'll throw you in another article, and 
 I'll give you that, and it's a rolling-pin ; and if the baby can only get 
 it well into its mouth when its teeth is coming and rub the gums once 
 with it, they'll come through double, in a fit of laughter equal to 
 being tickled. Stop again ! I'll throw you in another article, because 
 I don't like the looks of you, for you haven't tlie appearance of buyers 
 unless I lose by you, and because I'd rather lose than not take money 
 to-night, and that's a looking-glass in which you may see how ugly 
 you look when you don't bid. What do you say now ? Come ! Do 
 you say a pound ? Not you, for you haven't got it. Do you say ten 
 shillings ? Not you, for you owe more to the tallyman. Well then, 
 I'll tell you what I'll do with you. I'll heap 'em all on the footboard 
 of the cart, there they are ! razors, flat-iron, frying-pan, chronometer 
 watch, dinner plates, rolling-pin, and looking-glass, take 'cm all 
 away for four shillings, and I'll give you sixpence for your trouble ! " 
 Tliis is me, the Cheap Jack. But on the Monday morning, in the 
 same market-place, comes the Dear Jack on the hustings )ns cart 
 and what does lie say '? " Now my free and independent woters, I am 
 a going to give you such a chance " (ho begins just like me) " as you 
 never had in all your born days, and that's tJie chance of sending 
 Myself to Parliament. Now I'll tell you what I am a going to do for 
 you. Here's the interests of this magnificent town promoted above 
 all the rest of the civilised and uncivilised earth. Here's your rail- 
 v.ays carried, and your neighbours' railways jockeyed. Here's all 
 your sons in the Post-office. Here's Britannia smiling on you. Here's 
 the eyes of Europe on you. Here's uniwcrsal prosperity for you, 
 repletion of animal food, golden cornfields, gladsome homesteads, and 
 rounds of applause from your own hearts, all in one lot, and tbat's 
 n)yself. Will you take me as I stand ? You won't ? Well, then, I'll 
 tell you what I'll do with you. Come now ! I'll throw you in any- 
 thing you ask for. There ! Church-rates, abolition of church-rates, 
 more malt tax, no malt tax, uniwersal education to tlie highest mark, 
 or imiwersal ignorance to the lowest, total abolition of flogging in tlic 
 army or a dozen for every private once a montli all round. Wrongs of 
 I\Ien or Bights of Women only say wliich it sliall bo, take 'em or 
 leave 'em, and I'm of your opinion altogether, and tlie lot's your own 
 on your own terms. There! You won't take it yet! Well, tlien, 
 I'll tell you what I'll do with you. Ct)me ! You are such free and 
 ind(^poiulont woters, and I am so proud of you, you are such a noldo 
 and enlightened constituency, and I am so ambitious of tlie honour 
 and dignity of being your member, which is by far the highest level 
 to which the wings of the human mind can soar, that I'll tell you 
 what I'll do with you. I'll throw you iu all the public-houses iri
 
 Cneap Jacks and Dear Jacks. 285 
 
 your magnificent town for nothing. Will that content yon? It 
 won't ? You won't take the lot yet ? Well, then, before I put the 
 horse in and drive away, and make the offer to the next most magnifi- 
 cent town that can be discovered, I'll tell you what I'll do. Take the 
 lot, and I'll drop two thousand pound in the streets of your magnificent 
 town for them to pick up that can. Not enough ? Now look here. 
 This is the very furthest that I'm a going to. I'll make it two 
 thousand five hundred. And still you won't ? Here, missis ! Put 
 the horse no, stop half a moment, I shouldn't like to turn my back 
 upon you neither for a trifle, I'll make it two thousand seven hundred 
 and fifty pound. There ! Take the lot on your own terms, and I'll 
 count out two thousand seven hundred and fifty pound on the foot- 
 board of the cart, to be dropped in the streets of your magnificent 
 town for them to pick up that can. What do you say ? Come now ! 
 You won't do better, and you may do worse. You take it ? Hooray ! 
 Sold again, and got the seat ! " 
 
 These Dear Jacks soap the people shameful, but we Cheap Jacks 
 don't. We tell 'em the truth about themselves to their faces, and 
 scorn to court 'em. As to wenturesomeness in the way of puffing uj) 
 the lots, the Dear Jacks beat us hollow. It is considered in the Cheap 
 Jack calling, that better patter can be made out of a gun than any 
 article we put up from the cart, except a pair of si^ectacles. I often 
 hold forth about a gun for a quarter of an hotir, and feel as if I need 
 never leave off. But when I tell 'em what the gun can do, and what 
 the gun has brought down, I never go half so far as the Dear Jacks 
 do when they make speeches in praise of tlieir guns their great guns 
 that set 'em on to do it. Besides, I'm in business for myself : I ain't 
 sent down into the market-place to order, as they are. Besides, again, 
 my guns don't know what I say in their laudation, and their guns do, 
 and the whole concci'n of 'em have reason to be sick and ashamed all 
 round. These ai"e some of my arguments for declaring that the 
 Cheap Jack calling is treated ill in Great Britain, and for turning 
 warm when I think of the other Jacks in question setting themselves 
 up to pretend to look down upon it. 
 
 I courted my wife from the footboard of the cart. I did indeed. 
 She was a Suffolk young woman, and it was in Iiiswich market-place 
 right opposite the corn-chandler's shop. I had noticed her u]) at a 
 window last Saturday that was, appreciating highly. I had took to 
 her, and I had said to myself, "If not already disposed of, I'll have 
 that lot." Next Saturday that come, I pitclied the cart on the same 
 pitch, and I was in very high feather indeed, keeping 'em laughing 
 tlie whole of the time, and gettiug off the goods briskly. At last I 
 took out of my waistcoat -pocket a small lot wrapped in soft paper, 
 and I put it this way (looking up at the window where she was). 
 "Now here, my blooming English maidens, is an article, the last 
 article of the present evening's sale, wliich I offer to only you, tlie 
 lovely Suffolk Dumplings biling over with beauty, and I v>ou't take a
 
 286 Doctor Marigold. 
 
 bid of a tliousand pounds for from any man alive. Kow wliat is it ? 
 WJiy, I'll tell you what it is. It's made of fine gold, and it's not 
 broke, though there's a hole in the middle of it, and it's stronger than 
 any fetter tliat ever was forged, though it's smaller than any finger in 
 my set of ten. Why ten ? Because, when my parents made over my 
 property to me, I tell you true, there was twelve sheets, twelve towels, 
 twelve table-cloths, twelve knives, twelve forks, twelve tablespoons, 
 and twelve teaspoons, but my set of fingers was two short of a dozen, 
 and could never since be matched. Now what else is it ? Come, I'll 
 tell you. It's a hoop of solid gold, wrapped in a silver curl-paper, 
 that I myself took off tlie shining locks of tlie ever beautiful old lady 
 in Threadneedle Street, London city ; I wouldn't tell you so if I hadn't 
 the paper to show, or you mightn't believe it even of me. Now what 
 else is it ? It's a man-trap and a handcuff, the parish stocks and a 
 leg-lock, all in gold and all in one. Now what else is it ? It's a 
 wedding-ring. Now I'll tell you what I'm a going to do with it, I'm 
 not a going to offer this lot for money ; but I mean to give it to the 
 next of you beauties that laughs, and I'll pay her a visit to-morrow 
 morning at exactly half after nine o'clock as the chimes go, and I'll 
 take her out for a walk to put up the banns." Site laughed, and got 
 the ring handed up to her. When I called in the morning, she says, 
 '' O dear ! It's never you, and you never mean it ? " " It's ever me," 
 says I, " and I am ever yours, and I ever mean it." So we got 
 married, after being put up three times which, by the bye, is quite 
 in tlie (Jheap Jack way again, and shows once more how the Cheap 
 Jack customs pervade society. 
 
 She wasn't a bad wife, but she had a temper. If she could have 
 parted with that one article at a sacrifice, I wouldn't have swopped 
 her away in exchange for any other woman in England. Not that I 
 ever did swop her away, for we lived together till she died, and tlmt 
 was thirteen year. Now, my lords and ladies and gentlefolks all, I'll 
 let you into a secret, though you won't believe it. Tliirteen year of 
 temper in a Palace would try the worst of you, but thirteen year of 
 temper in a Cart would try the best of you. You are kept so very 
 close to it in a cart, you sec. There's thousands of couples among 
 you getting on like sweet ile upon a vrhctstonc in houses five and six 
 pairs of stairs high, that would go to tlie Divorce Court in a cart. 
 Whether tlie jolting makes it worse, I don't undertake to decide ; but 
 in a cart it docs come home to you, and stick to you. Wiolence in a 
 cart is so wiolent, and aggrawation in a cart is ^o aggrawatijig. 
 
 We might have liad such a pleasant life ! A roomy cart, with the 
 large goods hung outside, and tlie bod slung undcrnoath it when on 
 the road, an iron pot and a kettle, a fire])Lice for the cold wcatlier, a 
 chimney for tlie smoke, a lianging-shclf and a cupboard, a dog and a 
 horse. What more do you want ? You draw off upon a bit of turf in 
 a green lane or by the roadside, you hobble your old liorsc and turn 
 Lim grazing, you light your fire upon the ashes of the last visitors,
 
 Bad Temper m a Cart, 287 
 
 jroti cook your stew, anil you wouldn't call tbe Emperor of Franco 
 your father. But Lave a temper in the cart, flinging language and 
 the hardest goods in stock at you, and where are you then ? Put a 
 name to your feelings. 
 
 My dog knew as well when she was on the turn as I did. Before 
 she broke out, he would give a howl, and bolt. How he knew it, was 
 a mystery to mo ; but the sure and certain knowledge of it would 
 wake him up out of his soundest sleep, and he would give a howl, and 
 bolt. At such times I wished I was him. 
 
 The worst of it was, we had a daughter born to us, and I love 
 children with all my heart. When she was in her furies she beat the 
 child. This got to be so shocking, as the child got to be four or five 
 year old, that I have many a time gone on with my whip over my 
 shoulder, at the old horse's head, sobbing and crying worse than ever 
 little Sopliy did. For how could I prevent it ? Such a thing is not 
 to be tried with such a temper in a cart without coming to a fight. 
 It's in the natural size and formation of a cart to bring it to a fight. 
 And then the poor child got worse terrified than before, as well as 
 worse hurt generally, and her mother made complaints to the next 
 people we lighted on, and the word went round, " Here's a wretch of 
 a Cheap Jack been a beating his wife." 
 
 Little Sophy was such a brave child ! She grew to be r[uite devoted 
 to her poor father, though lie could do so little to help her. She had 
 a wonderful quantity of shining dark hair, all curling natural about 
 her. It is quite astonishing to me now, that I didn't go tearing mad 
 when I used to see her run from her mother before the cart, and her 
 mother catch her by this hair, and pull her down by it, and beat 
 her. 
 
 Such a brave child I said she was ! Ah ! with reason. 
 
 " Don't you mind next time, father dear," she would whisper to mc, 
 with her little face still flushed, and her bright eyes still wet ; " if I 
 don't cry out, you may know I am not much hurt. And even if I do 
 cry out, it will only be to got mother to let go and leave off." What 
 I have seen the little spirit bear for me without crying out ! 
 
 Yet in other respects licr mother took great care of her. Her 
 clothes were always clean and neat, and her mother was never tired 
 of working at 'em. Such is the inconsistency in things. Our being 
 down in the marsh country in unhealthy weather, I consider the 
 cause of Sophy's taking bad low fever ; but however she tok it, once 
 she got it she turned away from her mother for evermore, and nothing 
 would persuade her to be touched by her mother's hand. She would 
 shiver and say, " No, no, no," when it was offered at, and would hide 
 her face on my shoulder, and hold me tigliter round the neck. 
 
 The Cheap Jack business had been worse than ever I had known 
 it, what with one thing and v;hat with another (and not least with 
 railroads, which will cut it all to pieces, I expect, at last), and I was 
 run dry of money. For which reason, one night at that period of
 
 288 Doctor Mangold. 
 
 little Sophy's being so bad, eitlier we must have come to a dead-lock 
 for victuals and drink, or I must have pitched the cart as I did. 
 
 I couldn't got the dear child to lie down or leave go of me, and 
 indeed I hadn't the heart to try, so I stepped out on the footboard 
 with her holding round my neck. They all set up a laugh when they 
 sec us, and one chuckle-headed Joskin (that I hated for it) made the 
 bidding, " Tuppence for her ! " 
 
 " Now, you country boobies," says I, feeling as if my heart was a 
 heavy weight at the end of a broken sashline, " I give you notice that 
 I am a going to charm the money out of your pockets, and to give 
 you so much more than your money's worth that you'll only persuade 
 yourselves to draw your Saturday night's wages ever again arterwards 
 by the hopes of meeting me to lay 'em out with, which you never 
 will, and why not? Because I've made my fortune by selling my 
 goods on a large scale for seventy-five per cent, less than I give for 
 'em, and I am consequently to be elevated to the House of Peers next 
 week, by the title of the Duke of Cheap and Markis Jackaloorul. 
 Now let's know what you want to-night, and you shall have it. Bat 
 first of all, shall I tell you wliy I have got this little girl round my 
 neck? You don't want to know? Tlieu you shall. She belongs to 
 tlie Fairies. She's a fortune-teller. She can tell me all about you in 
 a whisper, and can put me up to whether you're going to buy a lot or 
 leave it. Now do you want a saw ? No, she says you don't, because 
 you're too clumsy to use one. Else here's a saw wiiich would be a 
 lifelong blessing to a handy man, at four sliillings, at three and six, at 
 three, at two and six, at two, at eighteen-pence. But none of you 
 shall have it at any price, on account of your well-known awkwardness, 
 ^vhich would make it manslaughter. Tlie same objection apjilies to 
 this set of three planes which I won't let you have neither, so don't 
 bid for 'em. Now I am a going to ask her what you do want." 
 (Then I whispered, " Your head burns so, that I am afraid it hurts 
 you bad, my pet," and she answered, without opening her heavy eyes, 
 " Just a little, father.") " O ! This little fortune-teller says it's a 
 meniorandnm-book you want. Then wliy didn't you mention it ? 
 Here it is. Look at it. Two hundred superfine hot-pressed wire- 
 wove pages if you don't believe me, count 'em ready ruled for your 
 expenses, an everlastingly pointed pencil to put 'em down with, a 
 double-bladod penknife to scratch 'em out with, a book of printed 
 tables to calculate your income with, and a camp-stool to sit down 
 upon while you give your mind to it! Stop! And an umbrelhi to 
 keep the moon off when you give your mind to it on a pitch-dark 
 night. Now I won't ask you how much for the lot, but how little ? 
 How little are yoxi thinking of? Don't be asliamed to mention it, 
 because my fortune-teller knows already." (Then making believe to 
 whisper, I kissed lier, and she kissed me.) " Why, she says you are 
 thinking of as little as three and threepence! I couldn't liave 
 believed it, even of you, unless she told me. Tliree and threepence !
 
 Flown away. 289 
 
 And a set of printed tables in the lot that'll calculate your income up 
 to forty thousand a year ! With an income of forty thousand a year, 
 you grudge three and sixpence. Well then, I'll tell you my opinion. 
 I so despise the threepence, that I'd sooner take three shillings. 
 There. For three shillings, three shillings, three shillings ! Gone. 
 Hand 'em over to the lucky man." 
 
 As there had been no bid at all, everybody looked about and 
 grinned at everybody, while I touched little Sojjhy's face and asked 
 lier if she felt faint, or giddy. " Not very, father. It will soon be 
 over." Then turning from the pretty patient eyes, which were ojjencd 
 now, and seeing nothing but grins across my lighted grease-pot, I 
 went on again in my Cheap Jack style. " Where's the butcher ? " 
 (My sorrowful eye had just caught sight of a fat young butcher on 
 the outside of the crowd.) " She says the good luck is the butcher's. 
 Where is he?" Everybody handed on the blushing butcher to the 
 front, and there was a roar, and the butclier felt himself obliged to 
 put his hand in his pocket, and take the lot. The party so picked 
 out, in general, docs feel obliged to take the lot good four times out 
 of six. Then we had another lot, the counterjiart of that one, and 
 sold it sixpence cheaper, which is always wery much enjoyed. Then 
 we had tlie spectacles. It ain't a special profitable lot, but I put 'em 
 on, and I see what the Chancellor of the Exchequer is going to take 
 off the taxes, and I see what the sweetheart of tlie young woman iu 
 the shawl is doing at homo, and I see what the Bishops has got for 
 dinner, and a deal more that seldom fails to fetch em \\\> in their 
 spirits ; and the better their spirits, tlie better their bids. Then we 
 had the ladies' lot the teapot, tea-caddy, glass sugar-basin, half-a- 
 dozen spoons, and caudle-cup and all the time I was making similar 
 excuses to give a look or two and say a word or two to my poor child. 
 It was while the second ladies' lot was holding 'em enchained that I 
 felt her lift herself a little on my shoulder, to look across the dark 
 street. " What troubles you, darling ? " " Nothing troubles me, 
 father. I am not at all troubled. But don't I see a pretty church- 
 yard over there?" "Yes, my dear." "Kiss me twice, dear father, 
 and lay me down to rest upon tliat churchyard grass so soft and 
 green." I staggered back into the cart with her head dropped on my 
 shoulder, and 1 says to her mother, " Quick. Shut the door ! Don't 
 let those laugliing people see!" "What's the matter?" she cries. 
 " woman, woman," I tells her, " you'll never catch my little Sophy 
 by her hair again, for she has flown away from you ! " 
 
 Maybe those were harder words tlian I meant 'em ; but from that 
 time forth my wife took to brooding, and would sit in the cart or 
 walk beside it, hours at a stretch, with her arms crossed, and her eyes 
 looking on the groixnd. When her furies took her (wliich was rather 
 seldomer than before) they took her in a new way, and she banged 
 herself about to that extent that I was forced to hold her. She got 
 none the better for a little drink now and then, and throiigli some 
 
 u
 
 290 Doctor Marigold. 
 
 years I used to wonder, as I plodded along at the old Lorse's head, 
 wbctlier there was many carts upon the road that held so much 
 dreariness as mine, for all my being looked up to as the King of the 
 Cheap Jacks. So sad our lives went on till one summer evening, 
 when, as we were coming into Exeter, out of the farther West of 
 3i]ngland, we saw a woman beating a child in a cruel manner, who 
 screamed, " Don't boat me ! O mother, mother, mother ! " Then my 
 wife stopped her ears, and ran away like a v/ild thing, and next day 
 she was found in the river. 
 
 Me and my dog were all the company left in the cart now ; and the 
 dog learned to give a short bark when they wouldn't bid, and to give 
 another and a nod of his head when I asked him, " Who said half a 
 crown ? Aro you the gentleman, sir, that offered half a crown ? " 
 He attained to an immense height of popularity, and I shall always 
 believe taught himself entirely out of his own head to growl at any 
 I)erson in the crowd that bid as low as sixpence. But he got to be 
 well on in years, and one night when I was conwulsing York with the 
 spectacles, he took a conwulsion on his own account upon the very 
 footboard by me, and it finished him. 
 
 Being naturally of a tender turn, I had dreadful lonely feelings on 
 me arter this. I conquered 'cm at selling times, having a reputation 
 to keep (not to mention keeping myself), but they got me down in 
 private, and rolled upon me. That's often the way with us public 
 characters. Sec us on the footboard, and you'd give ju'etty well 
 anything you possess to be us. See us off the footboard, and you'd 
 add a trifle to be oif your bargain. It was under those circumstances 
 that I come acquainted with a giant. I might have been too high to 
 fall into conversation with him, had it not been for my lonely feelings. 
 For the general rule is, going round the country, to draw tlie line at 
 dressing up. When a man can't trust his getting a living to his 
 undisguised abilities, you consider him below your sort. And this 
 giant when on view figured as a Roman. 
 
 He was a languid young man, which I attribute to the distance 
 betwixt his extremities. He had a little head and less in it, he had 
 weak eyes and weak knees, and altogctlicr you couldn't look at him 
 without feeling tliat there was greatly too much of him botli for his 
 joints and his mind. But he was an amiable though timid young 
 man (liis mother let him out, and spent the money), and we como 
 acquainted when he was walking to ease the horse betwixt two fairs. 
 He was called Rinaldo di Velasco, liis name being Pickleson. 
 
 This giant, otherwise Pickleson, mentioned to me under the seal of 
 confidence that, beyond his being a burden to himself, his life was 
 made a biirdeu to him by the cruelty of liis master towards a step- 
 daughter wiio was deaf and dumb. Her mother was dead, and sho 
 had no living soul to take her part, and was used most hard. She 
 travelled with his master's caravan only because there was nowhere 
 to leave her, and this giant, otherwise Pickleson, did go so far as
 
 Mint's Step-daughter. 291 
 
 to ijoliove that his master often tried to lose her. He was such a 
 very languid young man, that I don't know how long it didn't tako 
 him to get this story out, but it passed through his defective circula- 
 tion to his top extremity in course of time. 
 
 "When I heard this account from the giant, otherwise Pickleson, 
 and likewise that the poor girl had beautiful long dark hair, and was 
 often pulled down by it and beaten, I couldn't see the giant through 
 what stood in my eyes. Having wiped 'em, I give him sixpence (for 
 lie was kept as short as he was long), and he laid it out in two three- 
 penn'orths of gin-and-water, which so brisked him up, that he sang 
 the Favourite Comic of Shivery Shakey, ain't it cold ? a popular 
 effect which his master had tried every other means to get out of him 
 as a Roman wholly in vain. 
 
 His master's name was Mim, a wery hoarse man, and I knew him to 
 speak to. I went to that Fair as a mere civilian, leaving the cart 
 outside the town, and I looked about the back of the Vans while the 
 performing was going on, and at last, sitting dozing against a muddy 
 cart-wheel, I come upon the poor girl who was deaf and dumb. At 
 the first look I might almost have judged that she had escaped from 
 the Wild Beast Show ; but at the second I thought better of her, and 
 tliought that if she was more cared for and more kindly used she 
 would be like my child. She was just the same age that my own 
 daughter would have been, if her pretty head had not fell down upon 
 my shoTilder that imfortunatc night. 
 
 To cut it short, I spoke confidential to Mim while he was beating 
 the gong outside betwixt two lots of Pickleson's publics, and I put it 
 to him, " She lies heavy on your own hands ; what'll you take for 
 her ? " Mim was a most ferocious swearer. Su2)prcssing that part of 
 his reply which was much the longest part, his rej^ly was, ' A pair of 
 braces." " Now I'll tell you," says I, " what I'm a going to do with 
 you. I'm a going to fetch you half-a-dozen pair of the primcst braces 
 in the cart, and then to tako her away witli me." Says Mim (again 
 ferocious), " I'll believe it when I've got the goods, and no sooner." 
 I made all the haste I could, lest he should think twice of it, and the 
 bargain was completed, which Pickleson he was thereby so relieved 
 iu his mind tliat ho come out at his little back door, longways like a 
 serpent, and give us Shivery Sbakcy in a whisper among tlio wheels 
 at parting. 
 
 It was happy days f(n' both of us when Sopliy and me began to 
 travel iu the cart. I at once give her the name of Supliy, to put her 
 {!vcr towards me in the attitude of my own daughter. We soon made 
 out to begin to understand one another, through tlie goodness of tho 
 Heavens, when she knowcd that I meant true and kind l)y her. In a 
 very little time she was wonderful fond of me. You have no idea 
 what it is to have anybody wonderful fond of you, unless you have 
 been got down and rolled upon by tiie lonely feelings that I have 
 mentioned as having once got tho better of me.
 
 292 Doctor Marigold. 
 
 You'd have liiuglied or tlie rowerse it's according to your dis-' 
 position if you could have seen me trying to teacli Sopliy. At first 
 I was helped you'd never guess by what milestones. I got some 
 large alphabets in a box, all the letters separate on bits of bone, and 
 saying we was going to Windsor, 1 give her those letters in that 
 order, and then at every milestone I showed her those same letters in 
 that same order again, and pointed towards the abode of royalty. 
 Another time I give her CAET, and then chalked the same upon the 
 cart. Another time I give her DOCTOR MARIGOLD, and hung a 
 corresponding inscription outside my waistcoat. People that met us 
 might staro a bit and laugh, but what did I care, if she caught the 
 idea ? She caught it after long patience and trouble, and then we did 
 begin to get on swimmingly, I believe you ! At first she was a little 
 given to consider me the cart, and the cart the abode of royalty, but 
 that soon wore off. 
 
 We had our signs, too, and they was hundreds in number. Some- 
 times she would sit looking at me and considering hard how to 
 communicate with me about something fresh,- how to ask me what 
 she wanted explained, and then she was (or I thought she was ; 
 what does it signify ?) so like my child with those years added to her, 
 that I half-belicvcd it was herself, trying to tell mo where she had 
 been to up in the skies, and what she had seen since that unhappy 
 night when she flied away. She had a pretty face, and now that there 
 was no one to drag at her bright dark hair, and it was all in order, 
 there was a something touching in her looks that made the cart most 
 peaceful and most quiet, though not at all melancholy. [N.B. In 
 the Cheap Jack patter, we generally sound it Icmonjolly, and it gets 
 u laugh.] 
 
 The way she learnt to understand any look of mine was truly 
 surprising. When I sold of a night, she would sit in the cart unseen 
 by them outside, and would give a eager look into my eyes when I 
 looked in, and would hand me straight the precise article or articles 
 1 wanted. And then she would clap her hands, and laugh for joy. 
 And as for mo, seeing her so bright, and remembering what she was 
 wlien I first lighted on her, starved and beaten and ragged, leaning 
 aslcei^ against the muddy cart-wheel, it give me such heart tluit 1 
 gained a greater hcighth of reputation tlian ever, and I put Pickleson 
 down (by the name of Mini's Travelling Giant otherwise Pickleson) 
 for a fypunnote in my will. 
 
 This liappincss went on in the cart till she was sixteen year old. 
 By whieh time I began to feel not satisfied that T liad done my Avhole 
 duty by her, and to consider that she ought to have better teaching 
 than I could give her. It drew a many tears on bolli sides when I 
 (!omnienced explaining my views to her ; but what's riglit is right, and 
 you can't noitlier by tears nor laughter do away Avith its character. 
 
 So I took her hand in mine, and I went with her one day to tlie 
 Deaf and Dumb Establishment in London, and when the gentlemau
 
 At the Denf and Diunb Estahlishuient. 293 
 
 come to sj)eak to us, I says to him : " Now I'll tell you wliat I'll do 
 with you, sir. I am nothing but a Cheap Jack, but of late years I 
 have laid by for a rainy day notwithstanding. This is my only 
 daughter (adopted), and you can't produce a deafer nor a dumber. 
 Teach her the most that can bo taught her in the shortest separation 
 that can be named, state the figure for it, and I am game to put 
 the money down. I won't bate you a single farthing, sir, but I'll put 
 down the money hero and now, and I'll thankfully throw you in a 
 pound to take it. There ! " The gentleman smiled, and then, " Well, 
 well," says he, " I must first know what she has learned already. 
 IIow do you communicate with her ? " Then I showed him, and she 
 wrote in printed writing many names of things and so forth ; and wo 
 held some sprightly conversation, Sophy and me, about a little story 
 in a book which the gentleman showed her, and which she was able 
 to read. " This is most extraordinary," says the gentleman ; " is it 
 possible that you have been her only teacher ? " "I have been her 
 only teacher, sir," I says, " besides herself." " Then," says the 
 gentleman, and more acceptable words was never spoke to me, " you're 
 a clever fellow, and a good fellow." This he makes known to Sophy, 
 who kisses his hands, claps her own, and laughs and cries uj)on it. 
 
 We saw the gentleman four times in all, and when he took down 
 my name and asked how in the world it ever chanced to be Doctor, it 
 come out that he was own nephew by the sister's side, if you'll believe 
 me, to the very Doctor that I was called after. This made our footing 
 still easier, and he says to me : 
 
 " Now, Marigold, toll me what more do you want your adopted 
 daughter to know ? " 
 
 " I want her, sir, to bo cut off from the world as little as can be, 
 considering her deprivations, and therefore to be able to read whatever 
 is wrote with perfect ease and pleasure." 
 
 " My good fellow," urges the gentleman, opening his eyes wide, 
 " why 1 can't do that myself ! " 
 
 I took his jolce, and gave liim a laugh (knowing by experience how 
 flat you fall without it), and I mended my words accordingly. 
 
 " What do you mean to do with her afterwards ? " asks the gentle- 
 man, with a sort of a doubtful eye. " To take her about the 
 country ? " 
 
 " In the cart, sir, but only in the cart. She will live a private life, 
 you i;nderstand, in the cart. I should never think of bringing her 
 infirmities before the public. I wouldn't make a show of her for any 
 money." 
 
 The gentleman nodded, and seemed to approve, 
 
 " Well," says he, " can you part with her for two years ? " 
 
 " To do her that good, yes, sir." 
 
 " Tliero's another question," says the gentleman, looking towards 
 her, " can she part with you for two years ? " 
 
 I don't know that it was q, hjirder matter of itself (for the other was
 
 294 Doctor Marigold. 
 
 Lard enough to me), but it was harder to get over. However, she was 
 pacified to it at last, and the separation betwixt us was settled. How 
 it cut up both of us when it took place, and when I left her at the 
 door in the dark of an evening, I don't tell. But I know this; 
 remembering that night, I shall never pass that samo establishment 
 without a heartache and a swelling in the throat ; and I couldn't put 
 you u]) the best of lots in sight of it with my usual spirit, no, not 
 even the gun, nor the pair of spectacles, for five hundred pound 
 reward from tho Secretary of State for tho Home Department, and 
 throw in tho honour of putting my legs under his mahogany arter- 
 wards. 
 
 Still, the loneliness that followed in the cart was not the old 
 loneliness, because there was a term put to it, however long to look 
 forward to ; and because I could think, when I was anyways down, 
 that she belonged to mc and I belonged to her. Always planning fur 
 her coming back, I bouglit in a few moutlis' time another cart, an<l 
 what do you think I planned to do v>'ith it ? I'll tell you. I 2)lanned 
 to tit it up with shelves and books for her reading, and to have a seat 
 in it where I could sit and see her read, and think that I had been 
 her first teacher. Not hurrying over tho job, I had tho fittings 
 knocked together in contriving ways under my own inspection, and 
 here was her bed in a berth with curtains, and there was her reading- 
 table, and hero was her writing-desk, and elsewhere was her books in 
 rows upon rows, picters and no picters, bindings and no bindings, 
 gilt-edged and plain, just as I could pick 'em up for her in lots up 
 and down the country, North and South and West and East, Winds 
 liked best and winds liked least, Here and there and gone astray, Over 
 the hills and far away. And when I had got together pretty well as 
 many books as tho cart would neatly hold, a new schomo come into 
 my head, which, as it turned out, kept my time and attention a good 
 deal employed, and helped me over the two years' stile. 
 
 Without being of an awaricious temper, I like to be tlic owner of 
 things. I shouldn't wish, for instance, to go partners with yourself 
 in tho Cheap Jack cart. It's not that I mistrust you, but that I'd 
 rather know it was mine. Similarly, very likely you'd ratlicr know it 
 was yours. Well ! A kind of a jealousy began to creep into my 
 mind wlien I reflected that all those boolvS would have been read by 
 other peo2)lo long before they was read by her. It seemed to take 
 away from her being tlie owner of 'em like. In this way, the quc^stiuu 
 got into my head : Couldn't I have a book new-made express for her, 
 w}iieli she should be the first to read '? 
 
 It pleased n)0, that thought did ; and as I never was a man to let a 
 thouglit sleep (you must wake up all the whole family of thouglits 
 you've got and burn tlicir nightcaps, or you won't do in the (Jlica]) 
 Jack line), I set to work at it. Considering tliat I was in the habit 
 of cltiin'ziiig so luncli about tlie country, and that I should liave to iiiid 
 out a literary character here to make a deal with, and another literary
 
 A Happy Thouglit. 295 
 
 character tliero to make a deal with, as opportuuitles presented, I hit 
 on the plan that this same book should bo a general miscellaneous 
 lot, like the razors, flat-iron, chronometer watch, dinner plates, 
 rolling-pin, and looking-glass, and shouldn't be offered as a single 
 indiwidual article, like the spectacles or the gun. When I had come 
 to that conclusion, I come to another, which shall likewise be yours. 
 
 Often had I regretted that she never had heard me on the footboard, 
 and that she never could hear me. It ain't that I am vain, but that 
 yoih don't like to put your own light under a bushel. What's tho 
 worth of your reputation, if you can't convey the reason for it to tho 
 person you most wish to value it ? Now I'll i)ut it to you. Is it 
 worth sixpence, fippenco, fourpence, threepence, twopence, a penny, a 
 halfpenny, a farthing ? No, it ain't. Not worth a farthing. Very 
 well, then. My conclusion was that I would begin her book with 
 somo account of myself. So that, through reading a specimen or two 
 of me on the footboard, she might form an idea of my merits there. 
 I was aware that I couldn't do myself justice. A man can't write his 
 eye (at least 1 don't know how to), nor yet can a man write his voice, 
 nor tho rato of his talk, nor the quickness of his action, nor his 
 general spicy way. But he can write his turns of speech, when ho is 
 a public speaker, and indeed I have heard that he very often does, 
 before he speaks 'em. 
 
 Well ! Having formed that resolution, then come the question of 
 a name. How did I hammer tliat hot iron into shape ? This way. 
 The most difficult explanation I had ever had with her was, how I 
 come to be called Doctor, and yet was no Doctor. After all, I felt 
 that I had failed of getting it correctly into her mind, with my utmost 
 pains. But trusting to her improvement in the two years, I thought 
 that I might trust to her imderstanding it when she should ccme to 
 read it as put down by my own hand. Then I thought I would try a 
 joko with her and watch how it took, by v.hich of itself I might fully 
 judge of her understanding it. W^e had first discovered the mistake 
 wo had dropped into, through her having asked me to prescribe for 
 her when she had supposed me to be a Doctor in a medical point of 
 view ; so thinks I, " Now, if I give this book the name of my Pre- 
 scriptions, and if she catches tho idea that my only Prescriptions arc 
 for her amusement and interest,- to make her laugh in a i:)ka8ant 
 way, or to make her cry in a pleasant way, it v.ill be a delightful 
 proof to both of us that we have got over our difficulty." It fell out 
 to absolute perfection. For when she saw tho bock, as I had it got 
 up, tho printed and pressed book, lying on her desk in her cart, 
 and saw the title. Doctor Mauigold's Pkesckiptions, she locked at 
 me for a moment with astonishment, then fluttered the leaves, then 
 broke out a laughing in the charmingcst way, then felt her pulse and 
 shook her head, then turned the pages pretending to read them most 
 attentive, then kissed tho book to me, and put it to her bosom with 
 both her hands. I never was better pleased in all my life !
 
 296 Doctor Marigold. 
 
 But let mo not auticipato. (I take tliat expression out of a lot of 
 romaucGS I bought for her. I never opened a single one of 'em and 
 I have opened many but I found the romancer saying "lot me not 
 anticipate." Which being so, I wonder why he did anticipate, or who 
 asked him to it.) Let me not, I say, anticipate. This same book took 
 up all my spare time. It was no play to get the other articles togctlicr 
 in the general miscellaneous lot, but when it come to my own article ! 
 There ! I couldn't have believed the blotting, nor yet the buckling 
 to at it, nor the patience over it. Which again is like the footboard. 
 The public have no idea. 
 
 At last it was done, and the two years' time was gone after all the 
 other time before it, and where it's all gone to, Avho knows ? The 
 new cart was finished, yellow outside, relieved with wermilion and 
 brass fittings, the old horse was put in it, a new 'un and a boy being 
 laid on for the Clicaj) Jack cart, and I cleaned myself up to go and 
 fetch her. Bright cold weather it was, cart-chimneys smoking, carts 
 pitched private on a piece of waste ground over at Wandsworth, where 
 you may see 'em from the Sou' western Eailway when not upon the 
 road. (Look out of the right-hand window going down.) 
 
 " Marigold," says the gentleman, giving his hand hearty, " I am 
 very glad to see you." 
 
 " Yet I have my doubts, sir," says I, " if you can be half as glad to 
 see me as I am to see you." 
 
 " The time has appeared so long, has it, Marigold ? " 
 
 " I won't say that, sir, considering its real length ; but " 
 
 " What a start, my good fellow ! " 
 
 Ah I I should think it was ! Grown such a woman, so pretty, so 
 intelligent, so expressive ! I knew then that she must bo really li](o 
 my child, or I could never have known her, standing quiet by the 
 door. 
 
 " You arc affected," says the gentleman in a kindly manner. 
 
 " I feel, sir," says I, " that I am but a rough chap in a sleeved 
 v/aisLcoat." 
 
 " I feel," says tlie gentleman, " that it was you who raised her from 
 misery and degradation, and brought her into communication with her 
 kind. But why do we converse alone together, wlicn we can converse 
 so well with her? Address her in your own way." 
 
 " I am such a rough chap in a sleeved waistcoat, sir," says T, 
 " and she is such a graceful woman, and she stands so (piiet at the 
 door ! " 
 
 " Try if slie moves at the old sign," says the gentleman. 
 
 Tliey had got it up together o' purpose to i)lcasc me ! For when I 
 give her tlie old sign, slie rushed to my feet, and dropped upon ]u>r 
 knees, holding up her liands to mo with pouring tears of love aiid 
 joy; and v.lien I took her hands and lifted lier. she clasped me round 
 the neck, and lay tluire ; and I don't know what a fool I didn't mako 
 of myself, until v,e all three settled down into talking without sound,
 
 All Omission in the Calculations. 297 
 
 as if there was a something soft and pleasant spread over the wholo 
 world for us. 
 
 [A portion is here omitted from the text, having reference to the 
 sketches contributed by other writers ; but the reader will be pleased 
 to have what follows retained in a note : 
 
 "Now I'll tell you what I am a-going to do Avith you. I am 
 a-going to ofier you the general miscellaneous lot, her own book, 
 never read by anybody else but me, added to and completed by mo 
 after her first reading of it, eight-and-forty printed pages, six-and- 
 niuety columns, Whiting's own work, Beaufort House to wit, thrown 
 off by the steam-inginc, best of paper, beautiful green wrapper, folded 
 like clean linen come home from the clcar-starcher's, and so ex- 
 quisitely stitched that, regarded as a piece of needlework alone, it's 
 better than the sampler of a seamstress undergoing a Competitive 
 examination for Starvation before the Civil Service Commissioners 
 and I offer the lot for what ? For eight pound ? Not so much. For 
 six pound ? Less. For four pound. Why, I hardly cxjiect you to 
 believe me, but that's the sum. Four pound ! The stitching alono 
 cost half as much again. Here's forty-eight original pages, ninety-six 
 original columns, for four poimd. You want more for the money? 
 Take it. Three whole pages of advertisements of tlirilling interest 
 thrown in for nothing. Read 'em and believe 'em. More ? My best 
 of wishes for your merry Christmases and your happy New Years, 
 your long lives and your true prosperities. Worth twenty pound 
 good if they arc delivered as I send them. Remember ! Here's a 
 final prescription added, " To be taken for life," which will tell you 
 liow the cart broke down, and where the journey ended. You tliink 
 Four Pound too much ? And still you think so ? Come ! I'll tell 
 you what then. Say Four Pence, and keep the secret."] 
 
 So every item of my plan was crowned with success. Our re- 
 united life was more tlian all that we liad looked for\Yard to. Content 
 and joy went with us as the wheels of the two carts went roimd, and 
 the same stopped with us when the two carts str.pped. I was as 
 pleased and as proud as a Pug-Dog with his muzzle black-leaded for 
 a evening party, and his tail extra curled by machinery. 
 
 But I had left something out of my calculations. Now, what had 
 I left out ? To help you to guess I'll say, a figure. Come. Make a 
 guess and guess right. Nought? No. Nine? No. Eight? No. 
 Seven? No. Six? No. Five? No. Four? No. Three? No. 
 Two? No. One? No. Now I'll tell y(m what I'll do with you. 
 I'll say it's another sort of figure altogether. There. Why then, 
 says you, it's a mortal figure. No, nor yet a mortal figure. By sucli 
 means you get yourself penned into a corner, and you can't help 
 guessing a n/unortal figure. That's about it. Why didn't you say so 
 sooner ?
 
 298 Doctor Marigold. 
 
 Yes. It was a immortal figure tliat I liad altogether left out of my 
 calculations. Neither man's, nor woman's, but a child's. Girl's or 
 boy's ? Boy's. " I, says the sparrow, with my bow and arrow." Now 
 you have got it. 
 
 We were down at Lancaster, and I had done two nights more than 
 fair average business (though I cannot in honour recommend them as 
 a quick audience) in the open square there, near the end of the street 
 where Mr. Sly's King's Arms and Royal Hotel stands. Mini's 
 travelling giant, otherwise Pickleson, happened at the self-same time 
 to bo trying it on in the town. The genteel lay was adopted with 
 him. No hint of a van. Green baize alcove leading up to Pickleson 
 in a Auction Room. Printed poster, " Free list suspended, with the 
 exception of that proud boast of an enlightened country, a free press. 
 Schools admitted by private arrangement. Nothing to raise a blush 
 in the cheek of youth or shock the most fastidious." Mim swearing 
 most horrible and terrific, in a pink calico pay-place, at the slackness 
 of the public. Serious handbill in the shops, importing tliat it was 
 all but impossible to come to a right understanding of the history of 
 David without seeing Pickleson. 
 
 I went to the Auction Room in question, and I found it entirely 
 empty of everything but echoes and mouldiness, with the single 
 exception of Pickleson on a piece of red drugget. This suited my 
 purpose, as I wanted a private and confidential word with him, which 
 was: "Pickleson. Owing much happiness to you, I put you in my 
 Avill for a fypunnote ; but, to save trouble, here's fourpuuten down, 
 which may ecj^ually suit your views, and let us so conclude the trans- 
 action." Pickleson, who up to that remark had had the dejected 
 appearance of a long Roman rushlight that couldn't anyhow get 
 lighted, brightened up at his top extremity, and made his acknowledg- 
 ments in a way which (for him) was parliamentary eloquence, lie 
 likewise did add, that, having ceased to draw as a Roman, Mim had 
 made proposals for his going in as a conwerted Indian Giant worked 
 upon by The Dairyman's Daughter. This, Pickleson, having no 
 accpiaiutance with the tract named after that young woman, and not 
 being willing to couplo gag with his serious views, had declined to 
 do, thereby leading to words and the total Bto2)page of the unfortunate 
 young man's beer. All of which, during the whole of the interview, 
 was confirmed by the ferocious growling of Mim down below in the 
 pay-place, which shook the giant like a leaf. 
 
 15ut what was to the present point in the remarks of the travelling 
 giant, otherwise Pickleson, was this : " Doctor Marigold,"' I give his 
 words without a hope of conweying their feebleness, " who is the 
 strange young man that hangs about your carts?" "The strange 
 young man? " I gives him back, thinking that he meant her, and his 
 languid circulation liad dro2)ped a syllable. " Doctor," ho returns, 
 with a pathos calculated to draw a tear from even a manly eye, " I 
 am weak, but not so weak yet as that I don't know my words. I
 
 A Moving Meeting. 299 
 
 repeat them, Doctor. The strange young man." It then appeared 
 that PicklesoD, being forced to stretch his legs (not that they wanted 
 it) only at times when he couldn't be seen for nothing, to wit in the 
 dead of the night and towards daybreak, had twice seen hanging about 
 my carts, in that same town of Lancaster where I had been only two 
 nights, this same unknown young man. 
 
 It put me rather out of sorts. What it meant as to particulars I 
 no more foreboded then than you forebode now, but it put me rather 
 out of sorts. Howsoever, I made light of it to Pickloson, and I took 
 leave of Pickleson, advising him to spend his legacy in getting up his 
 stamina, and to continue to stand by his religion. Towards morning 
 I kept a look out for the strange young man, and what was more 
 I saw the strange young man. He was well dressed and well loolc- 
 iug. He loitered very nigh my carts, watching them like as if ho 
 was taking care of them, and soon after daybreak turned and went 
 away. I sent a hail after him, bnt he never started or looked round, 
 or took the smallest notice. 
 
 We left Lancaster within an hour or two, on our way towards 
 Carlisle. Next morning, at daybreak, I looked out again for the 
 strange young man. I did not see him. But next morning 1 looked 
 out again, and there he was once more. I sent another hail after him, 
 but as before he gave not the slightest sign of being anyways dis- 
 turbed. This put a thought into my head. Acting on it I watched 
 him in ditferent manners and at different times not necessary to enter 
 into, till I found that this strange young man was deaf and dumb. 
 
 The discovery turned me over, because I knew that a part of that 
 establishment where she had been was allotted to young men (some 
 of them well off), and I thought to myself, " If she favours him, where 
 am I V and where is all that I have worked and planned for V " 
 Hoping I must confess to the selfishness tliat she might not favour 
 him, I set myself to find out. At last I was by accident present at a 
 meeting between them in the open air, looking on leaning behind a 
 fir-tree without their knowing of it. It was a moving meeting for all 
 the tlirce parties concerned. I knew every syllable that passed 
 between them as well as they did. I listened with my ej'es, which 
 had come to be as quick and true with deaf and dumb conversation as 
 my ears with the talk of people that can speak. He was a-going out 
 to China as clerk in a merchant's house, which his father had been 
 before him. He was in circumstances to keep a wife, and he wanted 
 her to marry him and go along with liim. She persisted, no. Ho 
 asked if she didn't love him. Yes, she loved him dearly, dearly ; but 
 she could never disappoint her beloved, good, noble, generous, and 
 I-don't-know-wLat-all father (meaning me, the Cheap Jack in the 
 nleeved waistcoat) and she would stay with him, Heaven bless him ! 
 though it was to break her heart. Then she cried most bitterly, and 
 tliat made up ray mind. 
 
 While my mind had been in an unsettled state about her favouring
 
 300 Doctor Marigold. 
 
 tills young man, I had felt that unreasonable towards Pickleson, that 
 it was well for him he had got his legacy down. For I often thought, 
 " If it hadn't been for this same weak-minded giant, I might never 
 have come to trouble my head and wex my soul about the young 
 man." But, once that I know she loved him, once that I had seen 
 her weep for him, it was a different thing. I made it right in my 
 mind with Pickleson on the spot, and I shook myself together to do 
 what was right by all. 
 
 She had left the young man by that time (for it took a few minutes 
 to got me thorouglily well shook togetlier), and the young man was 
 leaning against an(jthor of the fir-trees, of which there was a cluster, 
 with his face upon his arm. I touched him on the back. Looking 
 up and seeing me, ho says, in our deaf-and-dumb talk, " Do not be 
 angry." 
 
 " I am not angry, good boy. I am your friend. Come with mo." 
 
 I left him at the foot of the steps of the Library Cart, aud I went 
 up alone. She was drying her eyes. 
 
 " You have been crying, my dear." 
 
 "Yes, father." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " A headache." 
 
 " Not a heartache ? " 
 
 " I said a headache, father." 
 
 " Doctor Marigold must prescribe for that headache." 
 
 She took up the book of my Proscriptions, and held it up with a 
 forced smile ; but seeing me keep still and look earnest, she softly 
 laid it down again, and her eyes were very attentive. 
 
 " Tlie Prescription is not there, Sophy." 
 
 " Where is it '? " 
 
 " Here, my dear." 
 
 I brought her young husband in, aud I put her hand in liis, and my 
 only fartlier words to both of them were these : " Doctor ^Marigold's 
 last Prescription. To bo taken for life." After which I bolted. 
 
 When the Avedding come off, I mounted a coat (blue, and bright 
 buttons), for the first and last time in all my days, and I give Sophy 
 away with my own hand. There were only us three and the gentle- 
 man iwho had had charge of her for those two years. I give the 
 wedding dinner of four in the Library Cart. Pigeon- pie, a leg of 
 pickled pork, a pair of fowls, and suitable garden stuff. The best of 
 drinks. I give them a speech, and the gentleman give us a speech, 
 and all our jokes told, and the wliolo wont off like a sky-rocket. In 
 tlic course of the entertainment I explained to Sophy tliat I should 
 keep tlie I>ibrary Cart as my living-cart when not upon tlie road, and 
 that I should keep all her books for her just as they stood, till she 
 come back to claim them. So she went to China with her young 
 hns'l)and, and it was a parting sorrowful and heavy, and I got tlie boy 
 I had another service ; and so as of old, v/hcn my child and wife wcro
 
 Vision and Reality. 301 
 
 gone, I went plodding along alone, witli my wliip over my sLoulder, 
 at the old horse's head. 
 
 Sophy wrote me many letters, and I wrote her many letters. About 
 the end of the first year she sent me one in an unsteady hand : 
 " Dearest father, not a week ago I had a darling little daughter, but 
 I am so well that they let me write these words to yon. Dearest and 
 best father, 1 hope my child may not be deaf and dumb, but I do not yet 
 know." When I wrote back, I hinted the question ; but as Sophy 
 never answered that question, I felt it to be a sad one, and I never 
 repeated it. For a long time our letters were regular, but then they 
 got irregular, through Sophy's husband being moved to another 
 station, and through my being always on the move. But we were in 
 one another's thoughts, I was equally sure, letters or no letters. 
 
 Five years, odd months, had gone since Sophy went away. I was 
 still the King of the Cheap Jacks, and at a greater height of pojiu- 
 larity than ever. I had had a first-rate autumn of it, and on the 
 twenty-third of December, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, 
 I found myself at Uxbridge, Middlesex, clean sold out. So I jogged 
 up to London with the old horse, light and easy, to have my (hrist- 
 mas-eve and Christmas-day alone by the fire in the Library Cart, and 
 then to buy a regular new stock of goods all round, to sell 'em again 
 and get the money. 
 
 I am a neat hand at cookery, and I'll tell you what I knocked up 
 for my Christmas-eve dinner in the Library Cart. I knocked uj) a 
 beefsteak-pudding for one, with two kidneys, a dozen oysters, and 
 a couple of mushrooms thrown in. It's a pudding to put a man in 
 good humour with everything, except the two bottom buttons of his 
 waistcoat. Having relished that pudding ajid cleared away, I turned 
 the lamj) low, and sat down by the light of the fire, watching it as it 
 shone upon the backs of Sophy's books. 
 
 Sophy's books so brought up Sophy's self, that I saw her touching 
 face quite plainly, before I dropped off dozing by the fire. This may 
 be a reason why Sophy, with her deaf-and-dumb child in her arniB, 
 seemed to stand silent by me all through my naji. I was on the road, 
 off the road, in all sorts of j^laccs. North and South and West and 
 East, Winds liked best and winds liked least. Here and there and 
 gone astray, Over the hills and far away, and still she stood silent by 
 me, with her silent child in her arms. Even when I wolie witli a 
 start, she seemed to vanish, as if she had stood by me in that very 
 place only a single instant before. 
 
 I had started at a real sound, and the sound was on the steps cf the 
 cart. It was the light hurried tread of a child, coming clambering 
 nj). That tread of a child had once been so familiar to me, that for 
 half a moment I believed I was a-going to see a little ghost. 
 
 But tlic touch of a real cliild was laid upon the outer handle of the 
 door, and the handle turned, and the door opened a little way, and a 
 real child peeped in. A bright little comely girl with largo dark eyes.
 
 303 Doctor Marigold. 
 
 Looking full at mo, the tiny creature took off her mite of a 9,iv^vi 
 hat, and a quantity of dark curls fell about her face. Then she opened 
 her lips, and said in a pretty voice, 
 
 " Grandfttther ! " 
 
 " Ah, my God ! " I cries out. " She can speak ! " 
 
 " Yes, dear grandfather. And I am to ask you whether there was 
 over any one that I remind you of ? " 
 
 In a moment Sophy was ronnd my neck, as well as the child, and 
 her husband was a-wringing my hrf,nd with his face hid, and we all 
 liad to shake ourselves together before wo could get over it. And 
 when we did begin to get over it, and I saw the pretty child a-talking, 
 pleased and quick and eager and /busy, to her mother, in the signs 
 that I had first taught her mother, the happy and yet pitying tears 
 fell rolling down my face.
 
 TWO GHOST STORIES. 
 
 [1865-186G.] 
 
 I. 
 
 THE TRIAL FOR MURDER* 
 
 I HAVE always noticed a prevalent want of courage, even among 
 jiersous of superior intelligence and culture, as to imparting their 
 own psychological experiences when those have been of a strange 
 sort. Almost all men are afraid that what they could relate in such 
 wise would find no parallel or response in a listener's internal life, 
 and might be suspected or laughed at. A truthful traveller, who 
 should have seen some extraordinary creature in the likeness of a sea- 
 serpent, would have no fear of mentioning it ; but the same traveller, 
 liaving liad some singular presentiment, impulse, vagary of thought, 
 vision (so-called), dream, or other remarkable mental impression, 
 would hesitate considerably before he woidd own to it. To tliis 
 reticence I attribute much of the obscurity in whicli such subjects are 
 involved. We do not habitually communicate our exjieriences of these 
 subjective things as we do our experiences of objective creation. The 
 consequence is, that the general stock of exi)erienco in this regard 
 appears exceptional, and really is so, in respect of being miserably 
 imperfect. 
 
 In what I am going to relate, I have no intention of setting up, 
 opjiosing, or supporting, any theory whatever. I know the history of 
 the Bookseller of Berlin, I have studied the case of the wife of a late 
 Astronomer Royal as related by Sir David Brewster, and I have 
 followed the minutest details of a much more remarkable case of 
 Spectral Illusion occurring within my private circle of friends. It 
 ir:ay bo necessary to state as to this last, that tlic sufferer (a lady) was 
 in no degree, however distant, related to me. A mistaken assimiption 
 on that head might suggest an exj^lanation of a part of my own case, 
 
 * Tliis pnper appeared as a chapter ' To be taken with a Graia of Salt," in Doctor 
 Marigold's Prescriptions,
 
 3^4 Two Ghost Stories. 
 
 but only a part, which would bo wholly without founclation. It 
 cannot bo referred to my inheritance of any developed peculiarity, nor 
 had I ever before any at all similar experience, nor have I ever had 
 any at all similar experience since. 
 
 It does not signify how many years ago, or how few, a certain 
 murder was committed in England, which attracted great attention. 
 Wo hear more than enough of murderers as they rise in succession to 
 their atrocious eminence, and I would bury the memory of this 
 particular brute, if I could, as his body was buried, in Newgate Jail. 
 I purposely abstain from giving any direct clue to the criminal's 
 individuality. 
 
 When the murder was first discovci'ed, no suspicion fell or I 
 ought rather to say, for I cannot be too precise iu my facts, it was 
 nowhere publicly hinted that any suspicion fell on the man who was 
 afterwards brought to trial. As no reference was at that time made 
 to liim iu the newspapers, it is obviously impossible that any description 
 of him can at that time have been given in the newspapers. It is 
 essential that this fact bo remembered. 
 
 Unfolding at breakfast my morning paper, containing the account 
 of that first discovery, I found it to be deeply interesting, and I read 
 it with close attention. I read it twice, if not three times. The dis- 
 covery had been made in a bedroom, and, when I laid down the paper, 
 I was aware of a flash rush flow I do not know what to call it, 
 no word I can find is satisfactorily descriptive, in wliich I seemed 
 to see that bedroom passing through my room, like a picture impossibly 
 l^ainted on a running river. Though almost instantaneous in its 
 l)assing, it was perfectly clear ; so clear that I distinctly, and with a 
 sense of relief, observed the absence of the dead body from tlie bed. 
 
 It was in no romantic place that I had this curious sensation, but 
 in chambers in Piccadilly, very near to the corner of St. James's 
 Street. It was entirely new to me. I was in my easy-chair at the 
 moment, and tlie sensation was accompanied witli a jicculiar shiver 
 which started the chair from its position. (But it is to l)e noted that 
 tlie cliair ran easily on castors.) I went to one of tlie windows (there 
 are two in the room, and the room is on the second floor) to refresh 
 iny eyes with tlio moving objects down in Piccadilly. It was a bright 
 autumn morning, and the street was sparkling and cheerful. The 
 wind was high. As I looked out, it brought down from tlie Park a 
 quantity of fallen leaves, which a gust took, and whirled into a spiral 
 l)illar. As the pillar fell and the leaves dispersed, I saw two men on 
 the opposite side of the way, going from West to East. They wore 
 one behind the other. The foremost man often looked back over his 
 shoulder. The socimd man followed lum, at a distance of some thirty 
 paces, with his right hand menuciiigly raised. First, the singnhirity 
 and steadiness of this threatening gesture in so public a thoroughfiire 
 attracted my attention ; and next, the more remarkable circumstance 
 that nobody heeded it. Both men threaded their way among the
 
 An Apparition. 305 
 
 other passengers witli a smoothness hardly consistent even with the 
 action of walking on a pavement ; and no single creature, that I could 
 see, gave them place, touched them, or looked after them. In passing 
 before my windows, they both stared up at me. I saw their two faces 
 very distinctly, and I knew that I could recognise them anywhere. 
 Not that I had consciously noticed anything very remarkable in either 
 face, except that the man who went first had an unusually lowering 
 appearance, and that the face of the man Avho followed him was of 
 the colour of impure wax. 
 
 I am a bachelor, and my valet and his wife constitute my whole 
 establishment. My occupation is in a certain Branch Bank, and I 
 wish that my duties as head of a Department were as light as they 
 are popularly supposed to be. They kept me in town that autumn, 
 when I stood in need of change. I was not ill, but I was not well. 
 ?Iy reader is to make the most that can bo reasonably made of my 
 feeling jaded, having a depressing sense upon me of a monotonous 
 life, and being " slightly dyspeptic." I am assured by my renowned 
 doctor that my real state of health at that time justifies no stronger 
 description, and I quote his own from his written answer to my 
 request for it. 
 
 As the circumstances of the murder, gradually unravelling, took 
 stronger and stronger possession of tlie public mind, I kept them 
 away from mine by knowing as little about them as was possible in 
 the midst of tlio universal excitement. But I knew that a verdict of 
 "Wilful Murder had been found against the suspected murderer, and 
 tluit ho had been committed to Newgate for trial. I also knew that 
 Ids trial had been postjxmed over one Sessions of the Central Criminal 
 Court, on the ground of general prejudice and want of time for the 
 preparation of the defence. I may further have known, but I believcj 
 I did not, when, or about when, the Sessions to which his trial stood 
 postponed would come on. 
 
 My sitting-room, bedroom, and dressing-room, are all on one floor. 
 With the last there is no communication but through the bedroom. 
 True, there is a door in it, once communicating with the staircase ; but 
 a part of the fitting of my bath has been and had then been for some 
 years fixed across it. At the same period, and as a part of the same 
 arrangement, the door had been nailed ui) and cauvased over. 
 
 I was standing in my bedroom late one night, giving some directions 
 to my servant before he went to bed. My face was towards the only 
 available door of communication with the dressing-room, and it was 
 closed. My servant's back was towards that door. While I was 
 speaking to him, I saw it open, and a man look in, who very earnestly 
 and mysteriously beckoned to me. That man was the man who iiad 
 g()7ie second of the two along Piccadilly, and whose face was of the 
 colour of impure wax. 
 
 The figure, having beckoned, drew back, and closed tlie door. 
 With no longer pause than was made by my crossing the bedroom, I
 
 3o6 Two Ghost Stones. 
 
 openeil tho dressing-room door, and looked in. I had a lighted 
 candle already iu my hand. I felfc no inward expectation of seeing 
 tho figure iu tho dressing-room, and I did not see it there. 
 
 (Conscious that my servant stood amazed, I turned round to him, 
 and said : " Derrick, could you helieve that iu my cool senses I fixncied 
 
 I saw a " As I there laid my hand upon his breast, with a sudden 
 
 start he trembled violently, and said, " Lord, yes, sir ! A dead 
 mau beckoning ! " 
 
 Now I do not believe that this John Derrick, my trusty and attached 
 servant for more than twenty years, had any impression whatever of 
 having seen any such figure, until I touched him. The change in 
 him was so startling, when I touched him, that I fully believe ho 
 derived his impression in some occult manner from me at that instant. 
 
 I bade John Derrick bring some brandy, and I gave him a dram, 
 and was glad to take one myself. Of what had preceded that night's 
 phenomenon, I told him not a single word. Heflecting on it, I was 
 absolutely certain that I had never seen that face before, except on 
 the one occasion iu Piccadilly. Comparing its expression when 
 beckoning at tlic door with its expression when it had stared uj) at 
 me as I stood at my window, I came to the conclusion that on tho 
 first occasion it had sought to fasten itself upon my memory, and that 
 on the second occasion it had made sure of being immediately 
 remembered. 
 
 I was not very comfortable that night, though I felt a certainty, 
 difiicult to explain, that the figure would not return. At daylight I 
 fell into a heavy sleep, from which I was awakened by John Derrick's 
 coming to my bedside with a paper in his liand. 
 
 This paper, it a2)pcared, had been the subject of an altercation at 
 the door V)etween its beai'er and my servant. It was a summons to 
 me to serve U2)on a Jury at tlie forthcoming Sessions of the Central 
 Criminal Court at the Old Bailcsy. I liad never before been summoned 
 on such a Jury, as Jolm Derrick well knew. He believed I am not 
 certiiin at this hour whether with reason or otherwise that that class 
 of Jurors were customarily chosen en a lower (]ualification than mine, 
 and lie had at first refused to accept tlie summons. The man who 
 served it had taken the matter very coolly, lie had said that my 
 attendance or non-attendaTieo was nothing to him ; there the summons 
 was ; and I should deal with it at my own peril, and not at his. 
 
 For a day or two I was undecided whetluu" to respond to this call, 
 f)r take no notice of it. 1 was not consei(ms of the slightest mysterious 
 bias, influence, or attraction, one way or other. Of that I am as 
 strictly sure as of every other statement that I make here. I'ltimately 
 I decided, as a break in the monotony of my life, that I would go. 
 
 The ajipointed morning was a raw morning in the montli of 
 Novemljer. There was a dense brown fog in Piccadilly, and it 
 became positively black and in the last degree oppressive East of 
 Temple Par. I found the passages and staircases of tho Court-House
 
 On tJie Jury. 307 
 
 flaringly liglited with gas, <and the Court itself similarly illumicated. 
 I tli'mli that, until I -was conducted by officers into the Old Court and 
 saw its crowded state, I did not know that the Murderer was to be 
 tried that day. I tlimli that, until I was so helped into the Old Court 
 with considerable difficulty, I did not know into which of the two 
 Courts sitting my summons would take me. But this must not bo 
 received as a positive assertion, for I am not completely satisfied in 
 my mind on either point. 
 
 I took my seat in the place appropriated to Jurors in waiting, and 
 I looked about the Court as well as I could thrcugh the cloud of fog 
 and breath that was heavy in it. I noticed the black vapour hanging 
 like a murky curtain outside the great windows, and I noticed tho 
 stifled sound of wheels on the straw or tan that was littered in the 
 street ; also, the hum of the people gathered there, which a shrill 
 whistle, or a louder song or hail than the rest, occasionally pierced. 
 Soon afterwards the Judges, two in number, entered, and took their 
 seats. The buzz in the Court was awfully hushed. The direction 
 was given to put the Murderer to the bar. He appeared there. And 
 in that same instant I recognised in him the first of the two men who 
 had gone down Piccadilly. 
 
 If my name had been called then, I doubt if I could have answered 
 to it audibly. But it was called about sixth or eighth in the panel, 
 and I was by that time able to say, " Here I " Now, observe. As I 
 stepped into the box, the prisoner, who bad been looking on attentively, 
 but with no sign of concern, became violently agitated, and beckoned 
 to his attorney. Tho prisoner's wish to challenge me was so manifest, 
 that it occasioned a pause, during which the attorney, with his hand 
 upon the dock, whispered with his client, and shook his head. I 
 afterwards had it from tbat gentleman, that tho prisoner's first 
 affrighted words to him were, '^ Ai all hazards, cliallcvcje ilat man!" 
 But that, as ho would give no reason ft r it, and admitted that he had 
 not even known my name until he heard it called and I appeared, it 
 was not done. 
 
 Both on the ground already explained, that I wish to avoid reviving 
 the unwholesome memory of that Murderer, and also because a 
 detailed account of his long trial is by no means indispensable to my 
 narrative, 1 shall confine myself closely to such incidents in the ten 
 days and nights during which we, the Jury, were kept together, as 
 directly bear on my own curious personal experience. It is in that, 
 and not in the Murderer, that I seek to interest niy reader. It is to 
 that, and not to a page of the Newgate Calendar, that I beg attention. 
 
 I was chosen Foreman of the Jury. On the second morning of the 
 trial, after evidence had been taken for two hours (I heard the church 
 clocks strike), happening to cast my eyes over my brother jurymen, I 
 found an inexplicable difficulty in counting them. I counted them 
 several times, yet always with the same difficulty. In short, I made 
 them one too niauy.
 
 3o8 Two Ghost Stories. 
 
 I tcLclicd tlio brother jurymen whoso place was next me, and I 
 whispered to him, " Oblige me by counting us." He looked surprised 
 by the request, but turned his head and counted. " Why," says he, 
 suddenly, " we arc Thirt ; but no, it's not possible. No. We arc 
 twelve." 
 
 According to my counting that day, wc were always right in detail, 
 but in the gi-oss we were always one too many. There was no appear- 
 ance no figure to account for it ; but I had now an inward fore- 
 shadowing of the figure that was surely coming. 
 
 Tlie Jury were housed at the London Tavern. We all slept in one 
 large room on separate tables, and wo were constantly in the charge 
 and under the eye of the officer sworn to hold us in safe-keeping. I 
 see no reason for suppressing the real name of that officer, lie was 
 intelligent, highly polite, and obliging, and (I was glad to hear) much 
 respected in the City. He had an agreeable presence, good eyes, 
 enviable black whiskers, and a fine sonorous voice. His name was 
 Mr. Harker. 
 
 When we turned into our twelve beds at night, Mr. Barker's bed 
 was drawn across the door. On the night of the second day, not being 
 disposed to lie down, and seeing Mr. Harker sitting on his bed, I 
 went and sat beside him, and offered him a pinch of snuff. As Mr. 
 Harker's hand touched mine in taking it from my box, a peculiar 
 shiver crossed him, and he said, " Who is this ? " 
 
 Following Mr. Harker's eyes, and looking along the room, I saw 
 again the figure I expected, the second of the two men who had 
 gone down Piccadilly. I rose, and advaiicod a few steps ; then 
 stopped, and looked round at Mr. Harker. He was quite unconcerned, 
 laughed, and said in a pleasant way, " I thought for a moment we had 
 a thirteenth juryman, without a bed. But I see it is the moonlight." 
 
 Making no revelation to Mr. Harker, but inviting liim to take a 
 walk with me to the end of the room, I watched wliat the figure did. 
 It stood for a few moments by the bedside of eacli of my eleven 
 brother jurymen, close to tlio pillow. It always went to the right- 
 hand side of the bed, and always passed out crossing the foot of the 
 next bed. It seemed, from the action of the head, merely to look 
 down pensively at each recumbent figure. It took no notice of nie, (tr 
 of my bed, which was that nearest to Mr. Harker's. It seemed to go 
 out where the moonlight came in, througli a high window, as by au 
 aerial flight of stairs. 
 
 Next morning at breakfast, it appeared that everybody present liad 
 dreamed of the murdered man last night, except myself and Mr. 
 I liirker. 
 
 I now fislt as convinced tliat the second ma!i who liad gone down 
 I'ieeadilly was tlie murdered man (so to speak), as if it liad been 
 borne into n\y comprehension by his immediate testimony. But even 
 this took ))l!ico. and in a manner for wliicli I was not at all prepared. 
 
 On tlie liftli d:ty of the trial, when the case for tiic; i)rosccution was
 
 TJie Fifth Day V]f the Trial. 309 
 
 drawing to a close, a miniature of tlie murdered man, missing from his 
 bedroom uj)on the discovery of the deed, and afterwards found in a 
 hiding-place where the Murderer had been seen digging, was put in 
 evidence. Having been identified by the witness under examination, 
 it was handed np to the Bench, and thence handed down to be 
 inspected by the Jury. As an officer in a black gown was making his 
 way with it across to me, the figure of the second man who had gone 
 down Piccadilly impetuously started from the crowd, caught the 
 miniature from the officer, and gave it to me with his own hands, at 
 tlie same time saying, in a low and hollow tone,- before I saw the 
 miniature, which was in a locket, " I was younger then, and my face 
 iras not then drained of blood." It also came between me and the 
 brother juryman to whom I would have given the miniature, and 
 between him and the brother juryman to whom he would have given 
 it, and so passed it on through tlie whole of our number, and back 
 into my possession. Not one of them, however, detected this. 
 
 At table, and generally when we were shut wp together in Mr. 
 Harker's custody, we had from the first naturally discussed the day's 
 j)roceedings a good deal. On that fifth day, the case for the prosecu- 
 tion being closed, and we having that side of the question in a 
 completed shaj)e before us, our discussion was more animated and 
 serious. Among our number was a vestryman, the densest idiot I 
 liave ever seen at large, who met the plainest evidence with the most 
 preposterous objections, and who was sided with by two flabby 
 parochial parasites ; all the three impanelled from a district so 
 delivered over to Fever that they ought to have been upon their own 
 trial for five hundred Murders. When these mischievous blockheads 
 were at their loudest, which was towards midnight, while some of us 
 were already preparing for bed, I again saw the murdered man. Ho 
 stood grimly behind them, beckoning to me. On my going towards 
 them, and striking into the conversation, he immediately retired. 
 This was the beginning of a separate series of appearances, confined 
 to that long room in which ice were confined. Whenever a knot of 
 iiiy brother jurymen laid their heads together, I saw the head of tlio 
 murdered man among theirs. Whenever their comparison of notes 
 was going against him, he woiild solemnly and irresistibly beckon 
 to me. 
 
 It will be borne in mind that down to the production of the 
 miniature, on the fifth day of the trial, I liad never seen the Appear- 
 ance in Court. Three changes occurred now that we entered on the 
 case for the defence. Two of them I will mention togetlier, first. 
 Tlic figure was now in Court continually, and it never there addressed 
 iiself to me, but always to the person who was sj^ealcing at the time. 
 For instance : the throat of the murdered man had been cut 
 straight across. In the opening si^eech for the defence, it was 
 suggested that the deceased might have cut his own throat. At that 
 very moment, the figure, with its throat in the dreadful condition
 
 310 Tzvo Ghost Stories. 
 
 referred to (this it had concealed before), stood at the speaker's elbow, 
 motioning across and across its windpipe, now with the right hand, 
 now with the left, vigorously suggesting to the speaker himself the 
 impossibility of such a woimd having been self-inflicted by either 
 hand. For another instance : a witness to character, a woman, 
 deposed to the prisoner's being the most amiable of mankind. The 
 figure at that instant stood on the floor before her, looking her full in 
 the face, and pointing out the prisoner's evil countenance with an 
 extended arm and an outstretched finger. 
 
 The third change now to be added impressed me strongly as the 
 most marked and striking of all. I do not theorise upon it ; I 
 accurately state it, and there leave it. Although the Appearance was 
 not itself perceived by those whom it addressed, its coming close to 
 such persons was invariably attended by some trepidation or disturb- 
 ance on their part. It seemed to me as if it were prevented, by laws 
 to which I was not amenable, from fully revealing itself to others, 
 and yet as if it could invisibly, dumbly, and darkly overshadow their 
 :ninds. When the leading counsel for the defence suggested that 
 hypothesis of suicide, and the figure stood at the learned gentleman's 
 elbow, frightfully sawing at its severed throat, it is undeniable that 
 the counsel faltered in his speech, lost for a few seconds the thread of 
 his ingenious discourse, wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, 
 and turned extremely pale. When the witness to character was con- 
 fronted by the Appearance, her eyes most certainly did follow the 
 direction of its pointed finger, and rest in great hesitation and trouble 
 upon the prisoner's face. Two additional illustrations will suffice. 
 On the eighth day of the trial, after the pause which v>\as every day 
 made early in the afternoon for a few minutes' rest and refresliment, I 
 came back into Court with the rest of the Jury some little time before 
 tlie return of tlio Judges. Standing up in tlie box and looking about 
 me, I thouglit the figure was not there, until, chancing to raise my 
 eyes to the gallery, I saw it bending forward, and leaning over a very 
 decent woman, as if to assure itself whctlicr the Judges liad rcsimicd 
 their scats or not. Immediately afterwai'ds that woman screamed, 
 fainted, and Vv'as carried out. So with the venerable, sagacious, and 
 patient Judge wlio conducted the trial. When the case Avas over, and 
 lie settled himself and his papers to sum up, the murdered man, 
 entering by tlie Judges' door, advanced to his Lordship's desk, and 
 lookel eagerly over his shoulder at the pages of his notes which ho 
 Avas turning. A change came over his Lordship's face ; Iiis hand 
 fit:ipped ; the peculiar shiver, tliat I knew so well, passed over liim ; 
 lie faltered, " Excuse me, gentlemen, for a few moments. I am some- 
 Avhat oppressed by tlie vitiated air; " and did not recover until he liad 
 drunk a glass of water. 
 
 Through all the monotony of six of those interminable ten days, 
 the same Judges and others on the bench, the same Murderer in the 
 dock, the same lawyers at the table, the same tones of question and
 
 Remarkable Confession of tJie Mjirdercr. 3 1 1 
 
 answer rising to tlie roof of tlie court, tlie same scratcliiug of tlic 
 Judge's pen, the same ushers going in and out, the same lights 
 kindled at the same hour when there had been any natural light of 
 day, the same foggy curtain outside the great windows when it was 
 foggy, the same rain pattering and dripping when it was rainy, the 
 same footmarks of turnkeys and jorisoner day after day on the same 
 sawdust, the same keys locking and unlocking the same heavy doors, 
 through all the wearisome monotony which made me feel as if I 
 had been Foreman of the Jury for a vast period of time, and Piccadilly 
 had flourished coevally with Babylon, the murdered man never lost 
 one trace of his distinctness in my eyes, nor was he at any moment 
 less distinct than anybody else. I must not omit, as a matter of fact, 
 that I never once saw the Appearance which I call by the name of 
 the murdered man look at the Murderer. Again and again I 
 wondered, "Why does he not? " But he never did. 
 
 Nor did he look at me, after the production of the miniature, until 
 the last closing minutes of the trial arrived. We retired to consider, 
 at seven minutes before ten at niglit. The idiotic vestryman and his 
 two parochial parasites gave us so much trouble that we twice returned 
 into Court to beg to have certain extracts from the Judge's notes re- 
 read. Nine of us had not the smallest doubt about tliose passages, 
 neither, I believe, had any one in the Court ; the dunder-headed 
 triumvirate, having no idea but obstruction, disputed them for tliat 
 very reason. At length we prevailed, and finally the Jury returned 
 into Court at ten minutes j^ast twelve. 
 
 The murdered man at that time stood directly opposite the Jury- 
 ])0X, on the other side of tlie Court. As I took my place, his eyes 
 rested on me witli great attention ; he seemed satisfied, and slowly 
 shook a great gray veil, which he carried on liis arm for the first time, 
 over liis head and whole form. As I gave in our verdict, " Guilty," 
 tlie veil collapsed, all was gone, and his place was empty. 
 
 The Murderer, being asked by the Judge, according to usage, 
 whether he liad anything to say before sentence of Death should be 
 passed upon him, indistinctly muttered something wliicli was described 
 in the leading newspapers of the following day as " a few rambling, 
 incoherent, and half-audible words, in which he was understood to 
 complain that he had not had a fair trial, because tlie Foreman of the 
 Jury was prepossessed against him," The remarkable declaration that 
 lie really made was this: " iJ/?/ Lord, I knew I icns a doomed man, 
 ichen the Foreman of my Jury came into the hox. My Lord, I hnew he 
 icoiild nrver let me off, hecause, hefore L was taken, lie somehoio got to my 
 bedside in the night, icoke me, and jmt a rope rov.nd my nrck.'''
 
 ir. 
 
 THE SIGNAL-MAN.* 
 
 " Halloa ! Below tliere ! " 
 
 When he beard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the 
 door of liis box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short pole. 
 One would have thought, considering the nature of the ground, that 
 lie could not have doubted from what quarter the voice came ; but 
 instead of looking up to where I stood on the top of the steep cutting 
 nearly over his head, he turned himself about, and looked down the 
 Line. There was something remarkable in his manner of doing so, 
 though I could not have said for my life what. But I know it was 
 remarkable enough to attract my notice, even though his figure was 
 foresliortcned and shadowed, down in the deep trench, and mine was 
 high above him, so stecjicd in tlic glow of an angry sunset, that I had 
 shaded my eyes with my hand before I saw him at all. 
 
 " Halloa ! Below ! " 
 
 From looking down the Line, he turned himself about again, and, 
 raising his eyes, saw my figure liigli above him, 
 
 " Is there any path by which I can come down and speak to you ? " 
 
 He looked up at me without replying, and I looked down at him 
 without pressing him too soon with a repetition of my idle question. 
 Just then there came a vague vibration in the eartli and air, quickly 
 changing into a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush that caused 
 me to start back, as though it had force to draw mc down. When 
 such vapour as rose to my heiglit from this rapid train liad jiasscd mc, 
 and was skimming away over the landscape, I looked down again, and 
 saw him refurling tlie flag ho had shown wliile the train wont by. 
 
 I repeated ray inquiry. After a pause, during wliich he seemed to 
 regard me with fixed attention, he motioned with liis rolled-up flag 
 towards a point on my level, some two or three hundred yards distant. 
 I called down to him, " All right ! " and made for that point. Tlierc, 
 by dint of looking closely about me, I found a rougli zigzag descend- 
 ing path notclied out, which I followed. 
 
 The cutting was extremely deep, and unusually precipitate. It was 
 made througli a clammy stone, tliat Ix^came oozier and wetter as I 
 wont down. For tlieso reasons, I found tlie way long enough to giv(! 
 me time to recall a singular air of reluctance or compulsion witli 
 wliich he liad pointed out tlie path. 
 
 AN'Iion I caiue down low enough upon the zigzag descent to see him 
 again, 1 saw that he was standing between the rails on the way by 
 
 ' Tliis ^liiry apjioarod as .1 portion of the Clirisdtias iiiiiiilxT for IShll. " Miif,'Iiy 
 Jimi-linii." ol which dlhur iiorlioriH follow in '" Uarliox llrotlicrs " ami "The Hov at 
 Mujrhv."
 
 THE SIGNAL-MAN.
 
 W/t/i the Signal-man on Ditty. 313 
 
 wlucli tlio train bad lately passed, in an attitude as if he were waiting 
 for me to appear. He had his left hand at his chin, and that left 
 elbow rested on his right hand, crossed over his breast. Ilis attitude 
 was one of such expectation and watchfulness that I stopped a moment, 
 wondering at it. 
 
 I resumed my downward way, and stepping out upon the level of 
 the railroad, and drawing nearer to him, saw that he was a dark sallow 
 man, with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows. His post was 
 in as solitary and dismal a place as ever I saw. On either side, a 
 drii)i)ing-wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of 
 sky ; the perspective one way only a crooked prolongation of this 
 great dungeon ; the shorter perspective in the other direction termi- 
 nating in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a black 
 tunnel, in whose massive architecture there was a barbarous, dci^ress- 
 ing, and forbidding air. So little sunlight ever found its way to this 
 sjwt, that it had an earthy, deadly smell ; and so much cold wind 
 rushed through it, that it struck chill to me, as if I had left the 
 natural world. 
 
 Before he stirred, I was near enough to him to have toiichcd him. 
 Not even then removing his eyes from mine, he stepped back one step, 
 and lifted his hand. 
 
 This was a lonesome post to occupy (I said), and it had riveted my 
 attention Avhen I looked down from up yonder A visitor M'as a 
 rarity, I should su^ipose ; not an unwelcome rarity, I hoi:)cd ? In me, 
 lie merely saw a man who had been shut up within narrow limits all 
 liis life, and who, being at last set free, had a newly-awakened interest 
 in these great v.'orks. To such purjiose I spoke to him ; but I am far 
 iVom sure of tlie terms I used ; for, besides that I am not hajijiy in 
 opening any conversation, there was something in the man that 
 daunted me. 
 
 He directed a most curious look towards the red light near the 
 tunnel's mouth, and looked all about it, as if something were missing 
 from it, and then looked at me. 
 
 That light was part of his charge ? Was it not ? 
 
 He answered in a low voice, " Don't you know it is ? " 
 
 The monstrous thought came into my mind, as I perused the fixed 
 <yes and the saturnine face, that this was a spirit, not a man. I have 
 speculated since, whether there may have been infection in his 
 mind. 
 
 In my turn, I stepped back. But in making the action, I detected 
 in his eyes some latent fear of me. This jnit the monstrous tliouglit 
 to flight. 
 
 " You look at me," I said, forcing a smile, " as if you liad a dread 
 of me." 
 
 ' I was doubtful," he returned, " whether I had seen vou before." 
 
 " Where ? " 
 
 He pointed to the red light he had looked at.
 
 314 Tzvo Ghost Stories. 
 
 " There ? " I said. 
 
 Intently Avatcliful of me, Lc replied (but witliout sound), " Yes." 
 
 " My good fellow, what should I do tliere ? However, be that as it 
 may, I never was there, you may swear." 
 
 " I think I may," he rejoined. " Yes ; I am sure I may." 
 
 His manner cleared, like my own. He replied to my remarks with 
 readiness, and in well-chosen words. Had ho much to do there? 
 Yes ; that was to say, he had enough responsibility to bear ; but 
 exactness and watchfulness were what was required of him, and of 
 actual work manual labour he had next to none. To change that 
 signal, to trim those lights, and to turn this iron handle now and then, 
 was all he had to do under that head, llegarding those many long and 
 lonely hours of which I seemed to make so much, he could only say 
 that the routine of his life had shaped itself into that form, and he 
 had grown used to it. He had taught himself a language down here, 
 if only to know it by sight, and to have formed his own crude ideas 
 of its pronunciation, could be called learning it. He had also worked 
 at fractions and decimals, and tried a little algebra ; but he was, and 
 had been as a boy, a poor hand at figures. Was it necessary for him 
 when on duty always to remain in that channel of damp air, and could 
 he never rise into the sunshine from between those high stone walls ? 
 Why, that depended upon times and circumstances. Under some con- 
 ditions there would be less upon the Line than under others, and the 
 same held good as to certain hours of the day and night. In bright 
 weather, he did choose occasi(ms for getting a little above tliese lower 
 shadows ; but, being at all times liable to be called by his elcctri(! 
 bell, and at such times listening for it with redoubled anxiety, the 
 relief was less tlian I would suppose. 
 
 He took me into his box, where there was a fire, a desk for an 
 official book in which he had to make certain entries, a telcgrai,]iie 
 instrument with its dial, fixcc, and needles, and the little bell of wliicli 
 he had spoken. On my trusting that he would excuse the remark 
 that he had been well educated, and (I hoped I might say witliout 
 otfence) perhaps educated above that station, he observed that 
 instances of sliglit incongruity in such wise would rarely be fomid 
 wanting among large ])odies of men ; that he had licard it was so in 
 workliouscs, in the police force, even in that last d(;spcrate resource, 
 tlie army ; and that he knew it was so, more or less, in any great 
 railway staff. He had been, when young (if I could believe it, sitting 
 in tliat liut, he scarcely could), a student of natural pliilosopliy. and 
 had attended lectures; l)ut lie had run wild, misused his opportunities, 
 gone down, and never risen again. He had no complaint to offer 
 about that. He had made his bed, and lie lay upon it. It was far too 
 late to make another. 
 
 All that I have here condensed he said in a quit^t manner, witli hih 
 grave dark regards divided between me and tlie fire. He tlircw in 
 the word, " Sir," from time to time, and especially wlien he referred
 
 A Parting Question. 315 
 
 to his yon til, as though to request me to understand that he claimed 
 to be nothing hut what I found him. He was several times interrupted 
 by the little bell, and had to read off messages, and send replies. 
 Once he had to stand without the door, and display a flag as a train 
 passed, and make some verbal communication to the driver. In the 
 discharge of his duties, I observed him to be remarkably exact and 
 vigilant, breaking off his discourse at a syllable, and remaining silent 
 until what he had to do was done. 
 
 In a word, I should have set this man down as one of the safest of 
 men to be employed in that capacity, but for the circumstance that 
 while he was speaking to me he twice broke off with a fallen colour, 
 turned his face towards the little bell when it did not ring, opened 
 the door of the hut (which M'as kept shut to exclude the imhealthy 
 damp), and looked out towards the red light near the mouth of the 
 tunnel. On both of those occasions, he came back to the fire with 
 the inexplicable air upon him which I had remarked, without being 
 able to define, when we were so far asunder. 
 
 Said I, when I rose to leave him, " You almost make me think that 
 I have met with a contented man." 
 
 (I am afraid I must acknowledge that I said it to lead him on.) 
 
 " I believe I used to be so," he rejoined, in the low voice in which 
 he had first spoken ; " but I am troubled, sir, I am troubled." 
 
 ITc would have recalled the words if he could. lie liad said them, 
 however, and I took them up quickly. 
 
 " With what ? What is your trouble ? " 
 
 " It is very difBcult to impart, sir. It is vcrj'-, very difficult 
 to speak of. If ever you make me anotlicr visit, I will try to 
 tell you." 
 
 " But I expressly intend to make you anotlicr visit. Say, when 
 shall it be ? " 
 
 " I go off early in the morning, and I shall bo on again at ten 
 to-morrow night, sir." 
 
 " I will come at eleven." 
 
 He thanked mo, and v/cnt out at the door with me. " I'll show my 
 white light, sir," he said, in his peculiar low voice, "till you have 
 found the way up. When you have found it, don't call out ! And 
 when you are at the top, don't call out ! " 
 
 His manner seemed to make the place strike colder to me, but I 
 said no more than, " Very well." 
 
 " And wlicn you come down to-morrow night, don't call out ! Let 
 me ask you a parting question. What made you cry, ' Halloa ! 
 Below there ! ' to-night ? " 
 
 " Heaven knows," said I. "I cried something to that effect " 
 
 " Not to that effect, sir. Those were tlie very words. I know them 
 well." 
 
 " Admit those were the very words. I said them, no doubt, because 
 I saw you below."
 
 3i6 Tivo Ghost Stories. 
 
 " For no other reason ? " 
 
 *' What other reason could I possibly have ? " 
 
 " You had no feeling that they were conveyed to yon in any super- 
 natural way ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 lie wished mc good-night, and held up his light. I walked by tlic 
 side of the down Line of rails (with a very disagreeable sensation 
 of a train coming behind me) until I found the patli. It was easier 
 to mount than to descend, and I got back to my inn without aiiy 
 adventure. 
 
 Punctual to my appointment, I placed my foot on the first notch of 
 the zigzag next night, as the distant clocks were striking eleven. Ho 
 was waiting for me at the bottom, with his white light on. " I have 
 not called out," I said, when wo came close together ; " may I speak 
 now ? " " By all means, sir," " Good-night, then, and here's my 
 hand." " Good-night, sir, and hero's mine." Witli that wo walked 
 side by side to his box, entered it, closed the door, and sat down by 
 tlie fire. 
 
 " I have made up my mind, sir," he began, bending forward as soon 
 as we were seated, and speaking in a tone but a little above a wliisper, 
 " tliat you shall not have to ask me twice what troubles mc. I took 
 you for some one else yesterday evening. That troubles me." 
 
 " That mistake ? " 
 
 ' No. Tliat some one else." 
 
 " Wlio i:s it ? " 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " Like me ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I never saw the face. Tlic loft arm is across tlic 
 face, and the right arm is waved, violently waved. Tliis way." 
 
 I followed his action with my eyes, and it was the action of an arm 
 gesticulating, with the utmost passion and vehemence, " For God's 
 sake, clear the way I " 
 
 "One moonlight night," said the man, "I was sitting here, when I 
 hwird a voice cry, ' Halloa ! Below there ! ' I started up, looked 
 from that door, and saw this Some one else standing by tlie red liglit 
 near the tunnel, waving as I just now showed you. The voice seemed 
 lioarse with shouting, and it cried, ' Look out 1 Lf)ok out ! ' And tlien 
 again, ' Halloa ! Behjw there ! Look out I ' I caught up my lamp, 
 turned it on red, and ran towards tlie figure, calling, ' Wliat's wrong ? 
 "What has hai)pened? "Wliere V ' It stood just outside tlio blackness 
 of the tunnel. I advanced so close upon it that 1 wonder(;d at its 
 keeping the shjove across its eyes. I ran right up at it, and had my 
 hand stretched out to jmll the sleeve away, when it was gone." 
 
 " Into tlie tuiniel '? " said I. 
 
 ' No. I ran on into the tunnel, five hundred yards. I sto])ped, 
 and held my lamj) above my head, and saw tin; figures of the measured 
 distance, and saw the wet stains stealin"!; down the walls and trickliii'^
 
 A Remarkable Coincidence. 317 
 
 tlirougb tLe arcL. I ran out again faster than I had run in (for I had 
 a mortal abhorrence of the place upon me), and I looked all round 
 the red light ^vith my own red light, and I went up the iron ladder to 
 tlie gallery atop of it, and I came down again, and ran back here. I 
 telegraphed both ways, ' An alarm has been given. Is anything 
 wrong ? ' The answer came back, both ways, ' All well.' " 
 
 Resisting the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing out my spine, I 
 showed him how that this figure must be a deception of his sense of 
 sight ; and how that figures, originating in disease of the delicate 
 nerves that minister to the functions of the eye, were known to have 
 often troubled patients, some of whom had become conscious of the 
 nature of their affliction, and had even proved it by experiments upon 
 themselves. " As to an imaginary cry," said I, " do but listen for a 
 moment to the wind in this unnatural valley while wc speak so low, 
 and to the wild harp it makes of the telegraph wires." 
 
 That was all very well, he returned, after \ve had sat listening for 
 a while, and he ought to know something of the wind and the wires, 
 - he who so often passed long winter nights there, alone and watch- 
 ing. But he would beg to remark that he had not finished. 
 
 I asked his pardon, and ho slowly added these words, touching my 
 arm, 
 
 " Within six hours after the Appearance, the memorable accident 
 on this Line happened, and within ten hours the dead and wounded 
 were brought along through the tunnel over the spot where the figure 
 had stood." 
 
 A disagreeable shudder crept over me, but I did my best against it. 
 It was not to bo denied, I rejoined, that this was a remarkable 
 coincidence, calculated deeply to impress his mind. But it was un- 
 questionable that remarkable coincidences did continually occur, and 
 tliey must be taken into account in dealing with such a subject. 
 Though to be sure I must admit, I added (for I thought I saw that ho 
 was going to bring the objection to bear upon me), men of common 
 sense did not allow much for coincidences in making the ordinary 
 calculations of life. 
 
 He again begged to remark that lie had not finished. 
 
 I again begged his pardon for being betrayed into interruptions. 
 
 " This," he said, again laying his hand upon my arm, and glancing 
 over his shoulder with hollow eyes, " was just a year ago. Six or seven 
 months passed, and I had recovered from the sur])rise and shock, 
 when one morning, as tlie day was brealcing, I, standing at the door, 
 looked towards the red light, and saw the spectre again." He stopped, 
 witli a fixed look at inc. 
 
 " Did it cry out '.* " 
 
 " Xo. It was silent." 
 
 " Did it wave its arm ? " 
 
 " No. It leaned against the shaft of the light, Avith both hands 
 before the face. Like this."
 
 3i8 Tivo Ghost Stories. 
 
 Ouco moro I followed Lis action with my eyes. It was an action 
 of mourning. I have seen such an attitude in stone figures on 
 tombs. 
 
 " Did you go up to it ? " 
 
 " I camo in and sat down, partly to collect my thoughts, partly 
 because it had turned me faint. When I went to the door again, day- 
 light was above mo, and the ghost was gone." 
 
 " But nothing followed ? Nothing camo of this ? " 
 
 lie touched mo on the arm with his forefinger twice or thrice 
 giving a ghastly nod each time : 
 
 " That very day, as a train came out of the tunnel, I noticed, at a 
 carriage window on my side, what looked like a confusion of hands 
 and heads, and something waved. I saw it just in time to signal the 
 driver, Stop ! He shut otf, and put his brake on, but the train drifted 
 past here a Jiundred and fifty yards or more. I ran after it, and, as I 
 went along, heard terrible screams and cries. A beautiful young lady 
 had died instantaneously in one of the compartments, and was brought 
 in licre, and laid down on this floor between us." 
 
 Involuntarily I pushed my chair back, as I looked from the boards 
 at which he pointed to himself. 
 
 *' True, sir. True. Precisely as it happened, so I tell it you." 
 
 I could tliink of nothing to say, to any purpose, and my mouth was 
 very dry. Tlie wind and the wires took up the story with a long 
 lamenting wail. 
 
 lie resumed. " Now, sii', mark this, and judge how my mind is 
 troubled. The spectre came back a week ago. Ever since, it has 
 been tliere, now and again, by fits and starts." 
 
 " At the light ? " 
 
 "At the Danger-light." 
 
 " What does it seem to do ? " 
 
 He repeated, if possible with increased passion and vehemence, that 
 former gesticulation of, " For God's sake, clear the way ! " 
 
 Then he went on. " I have no peace or rest for it. It calls to 
 me, for many minutes together, in an agonised manner, ' Below 
 there ! Look out ! Look out ! ' It stands waving to me. It rings 
 my little boll " 
 
 I canglit at tliat. " Did it ring your boll yesterday evening when 
 I was liere, and you went to the door ? " 
 
 " Twice." 
 
 " Why, see," said I, " how your imagination misleads you. My 
 eyes were on the bell, and my ears wert^ open to tlie bell, and if I am 
 a living man, it did not ring at those times. No, nor at any other 
 tinni, except when it was rung in tlie natural course of pliysical tilings 
 by the station communicating with you." 
 
 He sho(;k his licad. "I liuve never made a mistake as to tliat yet, 
 sir. I liave never confused the spectre's ring witli the man's. The 
 ghost's ring is a strange vibration in the bell that it derives from
 
 TJie Signal-man perplexed. 319 
 
 notliing else, and I have not asserted that the bell stirs to the eye. I 
 don't wonder that you failed to hear it. Bnt 1 heard it." 
 
 " And did the spectre seem to be there, when you looked out ? " 
 
 It WAS there.'" 
 
 " Both times ? " 
 
 He repeated firmly : " Both times." 
 
 " Will yoii eome to the door with me, and look for it now ? " 
 
 He bit his under lip as though he were somewhat unwilling, but 
 arose. I opened the door, and stood on the step, while he stood iu the 
 doorway. There was tlie Danger-light. There was the dismal mouth 
 of the tunnel. There were the high, wet stone walls of the cutting. 
 There were the stars above them. 
 
 " Do you see it ? " I asked him, taking particular note of his face. 
 His eyes were prominent and strained, but not very much more so, 
 perhaps, than my own had been when I had directed them earnestly 
 towards tlie same si)ot. 
 
 " No," he answered. " It is not there." 
 
 " Agreed," said I. 
 
 Wo went in again, shut the door, and resumed our scats. I was 
 thinking how best to impji'ove this advantage, if it might be called one, 
 when he took up the conversation in such a matter-of-course way, so 
 assuming that there could be no serious question of fact between us, 
 that I felt myself placed in the weakest of positions. 
 
 " By this time yon will fully understand, sir," he said, " that what 
 troubles me so dreadfully is the question, Wliat does the spectre 
 mean ? " 
 
 I was not sure, I told him, that I did fully understand. 
 
 " What is its warning against?" he said, ruminating, with his eyes 
 on the fire, and only by times turning them on me. " What is the 
 daijger? Where is the danger? There is danger overhanging sonic- 
 v.here on tlie Line. Some dreadful calamity will happen. It is not 
 to be doubted this third time, after what has gone before. But surely 
 thi.s is a cruel haunting of rac. Wliat can I do ? " 
 
 Ho 2)ullcd out his handkerchief, and wij^ed the dro2)s from his 
 heated forehead. 
 
 " If I telegraph Danger, on either side of me, or on both, I can give 
 no reason for it," he went on, wiping the j)alms of his hands. " I 
 should get into trouble, and do no good. They would think I was 
 mad. This is the way it would work, Message : ' Danger ! Take 
 care ! ' Answer : ' What Danger ? Where ? ' Message : ' Don't 
 know. But, for God's sake, take care ! ' They would dis2)lace me. 
 What else could they do ? " 
 
 His pain of mind was most pitiable to see. It was the mental 
 torture of a conscientious man, oj)prosscd beyond endurance by an 
 unintelligible responsibility involving life. 
 
 ' When it first stood under the Danger-light," he went on, putting 
 Lis dark hair back from his head, and drawing his hands outward
 
 320 Two Ghost Stories. 
 
 across and across his temples in an extremity of feverish distress, 
 " why not toll mo where that accident was to happen, if it must 
 hai)i)cn ? AVhy not tell me how it could bo averted, if it could have 
 been averted ? When on its second coming it hid its face, why not 
 tell me, instead, ' She is going to die. Let them keep her at home ' ? 
 If it came, on those two occasions, only to show mo that its warnings 
 were true, and so to prepare me for the third, why not warn me plainly 
 now '? And T, Lord help me ! A mere poor signal-man on this 
 solitary station ! Why not go to somebody with credit to be believed, 
 and power to act ? " 
 
 When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor man's sake, 
 as well as for the public safety, wliat I had to do for the time was to 
 compose his mind. Therefore, setting aside all question of reality or 
 unreality between us, I represented to him that whoever thoroughly 
 discliarged his duty must do well, and that at least it was his comfort 
 that he understood his duty, though he did not understand these con- 
 fcmndiiig Appearances. In this effort I succeeded far better than in 
 the attempt to reason him out of his conviction. He became calm ; 
 the occupations incidental to his post as the night advanced began to 
 make larger demands on his attention : and I left him at two in the 
 morning. I had offered to stay through the night, but he would not 
 hear of it. 
 
 Tliat I more tlian once looked back at the red liglit as I ascended 
 tlic patliway, that I did not like tlio red light, and that I sliould have 
 slept but poorly if my bed had been under it, I see no reason to con- 
 ceal. Nor did I like tlie two sequences of the accident and the dead 
 girl. I sen no reason to conceal that either. 
 
 But what ran most in my thouglits was the consideration how ouglit 
 I to act, having ])ecome the recipient of tliis disclosiTre ? I had proved 
 the man to be intelligent, vigilant, painstaking, and exact ; but how 
 long might ho remain so, in his state of mind ? Tliough in a sub- 
 ordinate position, still he held a most imjwrtant trust, and would I 
 (for instance) like to stake my own life on the chances of his con- 
 tinuing to execute it with precision? 
 
 Unable to overcome a fooling that there would be something 
 trcaclierous in my communicating wliat he had told me to his 
 su^jcriors in the Company, witliout iirst being plain with himself and 
 proposing a middle course to him, I ultimatiily resolved to olYcr to 
 accompany him (otherwise keejung his secret for tlie present) to tlie 
 wisest medical practitioner we could hear of in tlioso parts, and to 
 take liis opinion. A change in his time of duty would come round 
 noxt niglit, lie had apprised me, and lie would be otf an hour or two 
 aftcsr sunrise, and on again soon after sunset. I liad ajipointed to 
 return accordingly. 
 
 Next evening was a lovely evening, and I walked out early to eiij'ny 
 it. The sun was not yet quite down when I traversed the tield-palh 
 near the top of the deej) cutting. I would extend my walk for an
 
 Fulfilment of the Warning. 321 
 
 hour, I said to myself, half an hour on and half an hour back, and it 
 would then be time to go to my signal-man's box. 
 
 Before pursuing my stroll, I stepped to the brink, and mechanically 
 looked down, from the point from which I had first seen him. I 
 cannot describe the thrill that seized upon mc, when, close at tlio 
 mouth of the tunnel, I saw the appearance of a man, with his left 
 sleeve across his eyes, passionately waving his right arm. 
 
 The nameless horror that oppressed me passed in a moment, for in 
 a moment I saw that this appearance of a man was a man indeed, and 
 that there was a little group of other men, standing at a short distance, 
 to whom he seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he made. The 
 Danger-light was not yet lighted. Against its shaft, a little low hut, 
 entirely new to me, had been made of some wooden supports and 
 tarpaulin. It looked no bigger than a bed. 
 
 With an irresistible sense that something was wrong, with a flash- 
 ing self-reproachful fear that fatal mischief had come of my leaving 
 tlie man there, and causing no one to be sent to overlook or correct 
 what he did, I descended the notched path with all the speed I could 
 make. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " I asked the men. 
 
 " Signal-man killed this morning, sir." 
 
 " Not the man belonging to that box '? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " Not the man I know ? " 
 
 ' You will recognise him, sir, if you knew him," said the man who 
 spoke for tlie others, solemnly uncovering his own head, and raising 
 an end of the tarpaulin, " for his face is quite composed." 
 
 " 0, how did this happen, how did this happen V " I asked, turning 
 from one to another as the hut closed in again. 
 
 " He was cut down by an engine, sir. No man in England knew 
 liis work better. But somehow he was not clear of the outer rail. It 
 was just at broad day. He had struck the light, and had the lamp in 
 his hand. As the engine came out of the tunnel, his back was towards 
 licr, and she cut him down. That man drove her, and was showing 
 how it happened. Show the gentleman, Tom." 
 
 The man, who wore a rough dark dress, stepped back to his former 
 jilace at the mouth of the tunnel. 
 
 '' Coming round tlic curve in the tunnel, sir," he said, " I saw him 
 lit the end, like as if I saw him down a perspective-glass. There was 
 no time to check speed, and I knew him to be very careful. As he 
 didn't seem to take heed of the whistle, I shut it oft' when wo wero 
 running down upon him, and called to him as loud as I could call." 
 
 " What did you say ? " 
 
 " I said, ' Below there ! Look out ! Look out ! For God's sake, 
 clear the way ! ' " 
 
 I started. 
 
 " Ah ! it was a dreadful time, sir. I never left off calling to him. 
 
 y
 
 322 Tivo GJiost Stories. 
 
 I put this arm before my eyes not to see, and I waved this arm to the 
 last ; but it was no use." 
 
 Without i)rolonging tho narrative to dwell on any one of its curious 
 circumstances more than on any other, I may, in closing it, point out 
 tho coincidence that the warning of tho Engine-Driver included, not 
 only the words which tho unfortunate Signal-man had repeated to mo 
 US haunting him, but also the words which I myself ^not he had 
 Rttachcd. and that only in my own mind, to tho gesticulation he had 
 imitated.
 
 MUGBV JUNCTION.
 
 MTTGBY JUNCTION, 
 
 IN THREE CHAPTERS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 BARBOX BROTHERS. 
 
 " Guard ! What place is this ? " 
 
 "Miigby Junction, sir." 
 
 " A windy place ! " 
 
 " Yes, it mostly is, sir." 
 
 " Aucl looks comfortless indeed ! " 
 
 " Yes, it generally does, sir." 
 
 " Is it a rainy night still ? " 
 
 " Pours, sir." 
 
 " Open the door. I'll get out." 
 
 " You'll have, sir," said the guard, glistening with drops of wet, 
 and looking at the tearful face of his watch by the light of his lantern 
 as the traveller descended, " three minutes here." 
 
 " More, I think. For I am not going on." 
 
 " Thought you had a through ticket, sir V " 
 
 " So I have, but I shall sacrifice the rest of it. I want my 
 luggage." 
 
 " Please to come to the van and point it out, sir. Be good enough 
 to look very sharp, sir. Not a moment to spare." 
 
 The guard hurried to the luggage van, and the traveller hurried 
 after him. The guard got into it, and the traveller looked into it. 
 
 " Those two largo black portmanteaus in the corner where your 
 light shines. Those are mine." 
 
 "Name UY>on 'em, sir?" 
 
 " Barbox Brothers." 
 
 " Stand clear, sir, if you please. One. Two. Right ! " 
 
 Lamp waved. Signal lights ahead already changing. Shrielc from 
 engine. Train gone.
 
 324 j\Iugby Jtmctioii. 
 
 " Mugby Junction I " said the traveller, pulling up the woollen 
 muffler round his throat with both hands. " At past three o'clock of 
 a tempestuous morning ! So ! " 
 
 He spoke to himself. There was no one else to speak to. Perhaps, 
 though there had been any one else to speak to, he would have pre- 
 ferred to speak to himself. Speaking to himself he spoke to a man 
 within five years of fifty either way, who had turned grey too soon, 
 like a neglected fire ; a man of pondering habit, brooding carriage of 
 the head, and suppressed internal voice ; a man with many indications 
 on him of having been much alone. 
 
 He stood unnoticed on the dreary platform, except by the rain and 
 by the wind. Those two vigilant assailants made a rush at him. 
 " Very well," said he, yielding. " It signifies nothing to me to what 
 (j[nartcr I turn my face." 
 
 TJius, at Mugby Junction, at past three o'clock of a tempestuous 
 morning, the traveller went where tlie weatlier drove him. 
 
 Not but what he could make a stand when he was so minded, for, 
 coming to the end of the roofed shelter (it is of considerable extent at 
 Mugby Junction), and looking out ujiou the dark night, with a yet 
 darker spirit-wing of storm beating its wild way through it, he faced 
 about, and held his own as ruggedly in the difficult direction as he 
 had held it in the easier one. Thus, with a steady step, the traveller 
 went up and down, up and down, up and down, seeking nothing and 
 finding it. 
 
 A place replete with shadowy shapes, this Mugby Junction in the 
 black hours of the four-and-twenty. INIysterious goods trains, covered 
 with palls and gliding on like vast weird funerals, conveying them- 
 selves guiltily away from the presence of the few lighted lamps, as if 
 their freight had come to a secret and unlawful end. Half-miles of 
 coal pursuing in a Detective manner, following when they lead, 
 stopping when they stop, backing when they back. Eed-hot embers 
 showering out upon the ground, down this dark avenue, and down the 
 other, as if torturing fires were being raked clear ; concurrently, 
 slirieks and groans and grinds invading tlie ear, as if the tortured Avero 
 at tlio lieight of their sufi'ering. Iron-barred cages full of cattle 
 jiuigling by midway, the drooping beasts v.ith horns entangled, eyes 
 frozen with terror, and mouths too : at least they have long icicles 
 (or what seem so) lianging from their lijis. Unknown languages in 
 the air, conspiring in red, green, and wliitc characters. An earth- 
 ([uake, accompanied with thunder and lightning, going up express 
 to London. Now, all quiet, all rusty, wind and rain in jwsscssion, 
 hunps extinguished, Mugby Junction dead and indistinct, with its 
 robe drawn over its head, like Ctcsxr. 
 
 Now, too, as the belated traveller plodded up and down, a shadowy 
 train went by him in tlie gloona wliich was no other than the train of 
 a life. From whatsoever intangible deep cutting or dark tunnel it 
 emerged, here it came, unsummoned and unannounced, stealing upon
 
 Lamps. 325 
 
 Lim, and passing away into obscurity. Here mournfully went by a 
 child wbo had never had a childhood or known a parent, inseparable 
 from a youth with a bitter sense of his namelessness, coupled to a 
 man the enforced business of whose best years had been distasteful 
 and oppressive, linked to an ungrateful friend, dragging after him a 
 woman once beloved. Attendant, with many a clank and wrench, 
 were lumbering cares, dark meditations, huge dim disappointments, 
 monotonous years, a long jarring line of the discords of a solitary and 
 unhappy existence. 
 
 " Yours, sir V " 
 
 The traveller recalled his eyes from the waste into which they had 
 been staring, and fell back a step or so under the abruptness, and 
 perhaps the chance appropriateness, of the question. 
 
 " Oh ! My thoughts were not hero for the moment. Yes. Yes. 
 Those two portmanteaus are mine. Are you a Porter ? " 
 
 " On Porter's wages, sir. But I am Lamps." 
 
 The traveller looked a little confused. 
 
 " Who did you say you are ? " 
 
 "Lamps, sir," showing an oily cloth in his hand, as further 
 explanation. 
 
 " Surely, surely. Is there any hotel or tavern here ? " 
 
 "Not exactly here, sir. There is a Refreshment Room here, 
 
 but " Lamps, with a mighty serious look, gave his head a 
 
 warning roll that plainly added " but it's a blessed circumstance for 
 you that it's not open." 
 
 " You couldn't recommend it, I see, if it was available ? " 
 
 " Ask your pardon, sir. If it was ? " 
 
 " Open ? " 
 
 " It ain't my jilace, as a paid servant of the company, to give my 
 opinion on any of the company's toepics,"- he pronounced it more 
 like toothpicks, " beyond lamp-ile and cottons," returned Lamps in 
 a confidential tone ; " but, speaking as a man, I wouldn't recommend 
 my father (if he was to come to life again) to go and try how lie'd be 
 treated at tlie Refreslmiont Room. Not speaking as a man, no, I 
 would notr 
 
 The traveller nodded conviction. " I suppose I can put up in the 
 town ? There is a town here ? " For the traveller (though a stay- 
 at-home compared with most travellers) had Ijcen, like many others, 
 carried on the steam winds and the iron tides through that Junction 
 before, without having ever, as one might say, gone ashore there. 
 
 " Oh yes, there's a town, sir ! Anyways, there's town enough to 
 put up in. But," following the glance of the other at his luggage, 
 " this is a very dead time of the night with us, sir. Tlie deadest 
 time. I might a'most call it our deadest and buriedest time." 
 
 " No porters about ? " 
 
 " Well, sir, you see," returned Lamps, confidential again, " they in 
 general goes off" with the gas. That's how it is. And tlicy seem to
 
 326 Mugby Junction. 
 
 have overlooked you, through your walking to tbo furdcr end of the 
 platform. But, in about twelve minutes or so, she may be uj)." 
 
 " Who may bo up ? " 
 
 " The three forty-two, sir. She goes off in a sidin' till the Up X 
 passes, and then she " hero an air of hopeful vagueness pervaded 
 Lamps " does all as lays in her power." 
 
 " I doubt if I comprehend the arrangement." 
 
 " I doubt if anybody do, sir. She's a Parliamentary, sir. And, 
 you sec, a Parliamentary, or a Skirmishun " 
 
 " Do you moan an Excursion ? " 
 
 *' That's it, sir. A Parliamentary or a Skirmishuu, she mostly doos, 
 go off into a sidin'. But, when she can get a chance, she's whistled 
 out of it, and she's whistled up into doin' all as," Lamps again wore 
 the air of a highly sanguine man who hoped for the best, " all as 
 lays in her power." 
 
 lie then explained that the porters on duty, being required to be 
 in attendance on the Parliamentary matron in question, would doubtless 
 turn up with the gas. In the meantime, if the gentleman would not 
 very much object to the smell of lamp-oil, and would accept the 
 
 warmth of his little room The gentleman, being by this time 
 
 very cold, instantly closed with the proposal. 
 
 A greasy little cabin it was, suggestive, to the sense of smell, of a 
 cabin in a Whaler. But there was a bright fire burning in its rusty 
 grate, and on the floor there stood a wooden stand of newly trimmed 
 and lighted lamps, ready for carriage service. They made a bright 
 show, and their light, and the warmth, accounted for the popularity 
 of the room, as borne witness to by many impressions of velveteen 
 trousers on a form by the fire, and many rounded smears and smudges 
 of stooping velveteen shoulders on the adjacent wall. Various untidy 
 shelves accommodated a quantity of lamps and oil-cans, and also a 
 fragrant collection of what looked like tlie pocket-handkerchiefs of 
 the whole lamp family. 
 
 As Bar])ox Brothers (so to call the traveller on tlic warranty of his 
 luggage) took his scat upon the form, and warmed his now ungloved 
 Jiands at the fire, he glanced aside at a little deal desk, much blotched 
 Avitli ink, wldch liis elbow touched. LTpon it were some scrai)s of 
 coarse paper, and a superannuated steel pen in very reduced and 
 gritty circumstances. 
 
 From glancing at tlie scrajis of j)apcr, he turned involuntarily to 
 his host, and said, v.ith some rouglmciis : 
 
 " Why, you are never a poet, nian ? " 
 
 Lamps had certainly not the conventional appearance of one, as lio 
 stood modestly rubbing his squab nose witli a liandlicrcliiof so exceed- 
 ingly oily, that he might have been in the act of mistaking himself 
 for one of his charges, llo was a spare man of about the Barbox 
 Brothers time of life, with his features whimsically drawn upward as 
 if they were attracted })y tlie roots of his liair, He liad a peculiarly
 
 A Poet. 327 
 
 shining transparent complexion, probably occasioned by constant 
 oleaginous application ; and Lis attractive bair, being cut sbort, and 
 being grizzled, and standing straight up on end as if it in its turn 
 were attracted by some invisible magnet above it, the top of his head 
 was not very unlike a lamp-wick. 
 
 " But, to be sure, it's no business of mine," said Barbox Brothers. 
 " That was an impertinent observation on my part. Be what you like." 
 
 " Some people, sir," remarked Lamps in a tone of apology, " arc 
 sometimes what they don't like." 
 
 " Nobody knows that better than I do," sighed the other. " I have 
 been Avhat I don't like, all my life." 
 
 " When I first took, sir," resumed Lamps, " to composing little 
 Comic-Songs-like " 
 
 Barbox Brothers eyed him with great disfavour. 
 
 " To composing little Comic-Songs-like and what was more 
 hard to singing 'em afterwards," said Lamps, " it went against the 
 grain at that time, it did indeed." 
 
 Something that was not all oil here shining in Lamps's eye, Barbox 
 Brothers withdrew his own a little disconcerted, looked at the fire, 
 and put a foot on the top bar. " Why did you do it, then ? " he asked 
 after a short pause ; abruptly enough, but in a softer tone. " If you 
 didn't want to do it, why did you do it ? Where did you sing them ? 
 Public-house ? " 
 
 To which Mr. Lamps returned the curious reply : " Bedside." 
 
 At this moment, while the traveller looked at him for elucidation, 
 Mugby Junction started suddenly, trembled violently, and opened its 
 gas eyes. " She's got up ! " Lamps announced, excited. " What lays 
 in her power is sometimes more, and sometimes less ; but it's laid in 
 her power to get up to-night, by George ! " 
 
 The legend " Barbox Brothers," in large white letters on two black 
 surfaces, was very soon afterwards trundling on a truck through a 
 silent street, and, when the owner of the legend had shivered on tho 
 pavement half an hour, what time the porter's knocks at the Inn Door 
 knocked up the whole town first, and the Inn last, he groped his way 
 into the close air of a shut-up house, and so groped between the sheets 
 of a shut-up bed that seemed to have been expressly refrigerated for 
 him when last made. 
 
 XL 
 
 " You remember me. Young Jackson ? " 
 
 " What do I remember if not you ? You arc my first remembrance. 
 It was you who told me that was my name. It was you who told mo 
 that on every twentieth of December my life had a penitential 
 anniversary in it called a birthday. I suppose the last communication 
 was truer than the first ! "
 
 328 Mugby Junction. 
 
 " What am I like, Young Jackson ? " 
 
 " You arc like a blight all through the year to mo. You hard- 
 lined, thin-lipped, repressive, changeless woman with a wax mask on. 
 You are like the Devil to me ; most of all when you teach me religious 
 things, for you make me abhor them." 
 
 " You remember me, Mr. Young Jackson ? " In another voice from 
 another quarter. 
 
 " Most gratefully, sir. You were the ray of hope and prospering 
 ambition in my life. When I attended your coiirsc, I believed that I 
 should come to be a great healer, and I felt almost happy even 
 though I was still the one boarder in the house with that horrible 
 mask, and ate and drank in silence and constraint with the mask 
 before me, every day. As I had done every, every, every day, through 
 my school-time and from my earliest recollection." 
 
 " What am I like, Mr. Young Jackson ? " 
 
 " You are like a Superior Being to me. You are like Nature 
 beginning to reveal herself to me. I hear you again, as one of the 
 hushed crowd of young men kindling under the power of your 
 l)resence and knowledge, and you bring into my eyes the only exultant 
 tears that ever stood in them." 
 
 " You remember Mo, Mr. Young Jackson ? " In a grating voice 
 from quite another quarter. 
 
 " Too well. You made your ghostly appearance in my life ono 
 day, and announced that its course was to bo suddenly and wholly 
 changed. You showed me which was my wearisome seat in the Galley 
 of Barbox Brothers. (When i\icy were, if they ever were, is unknown 
 to me ; there was nothing of them but the name when I bent to the 
 oar.) You told me what I was to do, and what to be paid ; you told 
 mo afterwards, at intervals of years, when I was to sign for the Firm, 
 when I became a partner, when I became the Firm. I know no more 
 of it, or of myself." 
 
 " What am I like, Mr. Young Jackson ? " 
 
 " You are like my father, I sometimes think. You are hard enough 
 and cold enough so to have brought up an acknowledged sou. I see 
 your scanty figure, your close brown suit, and your tight brown wig ; 
 but you, too, wear a wax mask to your death. You never by a chance 
 remove it it never by a chance falls (ift' and I know no more of 
 you." 
 
 Tlirougliout this dialogue, the traveller spoke to himself at his 
 window in tlic morning, as he had spoken to himself at the Junction 
 overnight. And as he liad then looked in tlie darkness, a man who 
 had tuiU'id grey too soon, like a neglected fire : so he now looked in 
 tlio sun-light, an asliier grey, like a fire which the brightness of the 
 sun put out. 
 
 The firm of Barbox Brothers had been some ofishoot or irregular 
 branch of the Public Notary and bill-broking tree. It had gained for 
 itself a griping reputation before the days of Young Jackson, and the
 
 T]ie Firm of Barb ox Brothers. 329 
 
 reinitation Lad stuck to it and to tim. As be had imperceptibly come 
 into possession of tbe dim den up in tbe corner of a court off Lombard 
 Street, on whose grimy windows the inscription Barbox Brothers had 
 for many long years daily interposed itself between him and the sky, 
 so he had insensibly found himself a personage held in chronic dis- 
 trust, whom it was essential to screw tight to every transaction in 
 which he engaged, whose word was never to be taken without liis 
 attested bond, whom all dealers with openly set up guards and wards 
 against. This character had come upon him through no act of his 
 own. It was as if the original Barbox had stretched himself down 
 upon the office floor, and had thither caused to be conveyed Young 
 Jackson in his sleep, and had there effected a metempsychosis and 
 exchange of j^ersons with him. The discovery aided in its turn by 
 the deceit of the only woman he had ever loved, and the deceit of the 
 only friend he had ever made : who eloped from him to be married 
 together the discovery, so followed up, completed what his earliest 
 rearing had begun. He shrank, abashed, within the form of Barbox, 
 and lifted up his head and heart no more. 
 
 But he did at last effect one great release in his condition. He 
 broke the oar he had plied so long, and he scuttled and sank the 
 galley. He prevented the gradual retirement of an old conventional 
 business from him, by taking the initiative and retiring from it. 
 With enough to live on (though, after all, with not too much), he 
 obliterated the firm of Barbox Brothers from the pages of the Post- 
 Office Directory and the face of the earth, leaving nothing of it but 
 its name on two portmanteaus. 
 
 " For one must have some name in going about, for people to pick 
 up," he explained to Mugby High Street, through the Inn window, 
 " and that name at least was real once. Whereas, Young Jackson ! 
 Not to mention its being a sadly satirical misnomer for Old Jackson." 
 
 He took up his hat and walked out, just in time to see, passing 
 along on the opposite side of the way, a velveteen man, carrying liis 
 (lay's dinner in a small bundle that might have been larger without 
 suspicion of gluttony, and pelting away towards the Junction at a 
 great pace. 
 
 " There's Lamps ! " said Barbox Brothers. " And by the bye " 
 
 Ridiculous, surely, that a man so serious, so self-contained, and 
 not yet three days emancipated from a routine of drudgery, should 
 stand rubbing his chin in the street, in a brown study about Comic 
 Songs. 
 
 " Bedside ? " said Barbox Brothers testily. " Sings them at the 
 bedside ? Why at the bedside, unless lie goes to bed drunk ? Does, 
 I shouldn't wonder. But it's no business of mine. Let mo sec. 
 Mugby Junction, Mugby Junction. Where shall I go next ? As it 
 came into my head last night when I woke from an uneasy sleep in 
 the carriage and found myself here, I can go anywhere from here. 
 Where shall I go ? I'll go and look at the Junction by daylight.
 
 3-30 Mughy Junction. 
 
 There's no Luny, and I may like the look of one Lino better than 
 another." 
 
 But there were so many Lines. Gazing down upon thorn from a 
 bridge at tho Junction, it was as if the concentrating Companies 
 formed a great Industrial Exhibition of tho works of extraordinary 
 ground spiders that spun iron. And then so many of tlio Lines went 
 such wonderful ways, so crossing and curving among one another, that 
 the eye lost them. And then some of them appeared to start with 
 the fixed intention of going five hundred miles, and all of a sudden 
 gave it up at an insignificant barrier, or turned off into a workshop. 
 And then others, like intoxicated men, M'cnt a little way very straight, 
 and suri)risingly slued round and camo back again. And then others 
 were so chock-full of trucks of coal, others wore so blocked with trucks 
 of casks, others were so gorged with trucks of ballast, others were so 
 set apart for wheeled objects like immense iron cotton-reels : while 
 others were so bright and clear, and others were so delivered over 
 to rust and ashes and idle wlieelbarrows out of work, witli their legs 
 in the air (looking much like their masters on strike), that there was 
 no beginning, middle, or end to the bewilderment. 
 
 Barbox Brothers stood puzzled on the bridge, passing his right 
 hand across tho lines on his forehead, which multiplied while he 
 looked down, as if tho railway Lines wore getting themselves photo- 
 graphed on that sensitive plate. Then was heard a distant ringing of 
 bells and blowing of whistles. Then, pTippot-looking heads of men 
 popped out of boxes in perspective, and popped in again. Then, 
 prodigious wooden razors, set up on end, began shaving tho atmo- 
 sphere. Then, several locomotive engines in several directions began 
 to scream and be agitated. Then, along one avenue a train came in. 
 Then, along another two trains ajipeared that didn't come in, but 
 Rtop2)ed without. Tlion, bits of trains broke off. Then, a struggling 
 horse became involved with them. Tlien, the locomotives shared the 
 bits of trains, and ran away with tho whole. 
 
 " I Jiave not made my next move much clearer by this. No Imrry. 
 No need to make up my mind to-day, or to-morrow, nor yet tho day 
 after. I'll take a walk." 
 
 It fell out somehow (perhaps ho meant it should) that tho walk 
 tended to the platform at wliich he liad alighted, and to Lamps's room. 
 But Lamps was not in his room. A pair of velveteen shoulders wore 
 adapting tliemselves to one of the impressions on the wall by Lamps's 
 fireplace, but otherwise the room was void. In passing back to get 
 out of tlie station again, he learnt the cause of tliis vacancy, by catch- 
 ing sight of Lamps on the opposite line of railway, skipping along 
 tlic top of a train, from carriage to carriage, and catching lighted 
 namcsakcB thrown up to him by a coadjutor, 
 
 " IIo is busy. lie has not much time for composing or singing 
 Comic Songs this morning, I take it." 
 
 T)ie direction lie pursued now was into tlie country, kcei)ing very
 
 TJie Face at the Window. 33 1 
 
 near to the side of one great Lino of railway, and within easy view of 
 others. " I have half a mind,'" ho said, glancing around, " to settle 
 the question from this point, by saying, ' I'll take this set of rails, or 
 that, or t'other, and stick to it.' They separate themselves from the 
 confusion, out here, and go their ways." 
 
 Ascending a gentle hill of some extent, ho came to a few cottages. 
 There, looking about him as a very reserved man might who had 
 never looked about him in his life before, he saw some six or eight 
 yoimg children come merrily trooping and whooping from one of the 
 cottages, and disperse. But not until they had all turned at the little 
 garden-gate, and kissed their hands to a face at the upper window : a 
 low window enough, although the upper, for the cottage had but a 
 story of one room above the ground. 
 
 Now, that the children should do this was nothing ; but that they 
 should do this to a face lying on the sill of the open window, turned 
 towards them in a horizontal position, and apparently only a face, was 
 something noticeable. He looked up at the window again. Could 
 only sec a very fragile, though a very bright face, lying on one cheek 
 on the window-sill. The delicate smiling face of a girl or woman. 
 Framed in long bright brown hair, round which was tied a light blue 
 band or fillet, passing under the chin. 
 
 He walked on, turned back, passed the window again, shyly glanced 
 up again. No change. He struck off by a winding branch-road at 
 the top of the hill which he must otherwise have descended kept 
 the cottages in view, worked his way round at a distance so as to como 
 out once more into the main road, and be obliged to pass the cottages 
 again. The face still lay on the window-sill, but not so much inclined 
 towards him. And nov/ there were a pair of delicate hands too. They 
 had the action of performing on some musical instrument, and yet it 
 produced no sound that reached his cars, 
 
 " Mugby Junction must be the maddest place in England," said 
 Barbox Brothers, pursuing his way down the hill. " The first thing 
 I find here is a Railway Porter who composes comic songs to sing at 
 his bedside. The second thing I find here is a face, and a pair of 
 hands playing a musical instrument that don't play ! " 
 
 The day was a fine bright day in the early beginning of November, 
 the air w^as clear and inspiriting, and the landscape was rich in 
 beautiful colours. The prevailing colours in the court off Lombard 
 Street, London city, had been few and sombre. Sometimes, when tho 
 weather elsewhere was very bright indeed, the dwellers in those tents 
 enjoyed a pepper-and-salt-coloured day or two, but their atmosphere's 
 usual wear was slate or snuff coloured. 
 
 He relished his walk so well that he repeated it next day. He v/as 
 a little earlier at the cottage than on the day before, and he could 
 hear the children upstaii's singing to a regular measure, and clapping 
 out the time w'ith their hands, 
 
 ' Still, tlierc is no sound of any musical instrument," he said, listen-
 
 332 Mugby Junction. 
 
 ing at tho corner, " and yet I saw the performing liands again as I 
 came by. What are tlic children singing ? Why, good Lord, they 
 can never bo singing the multiplication table ? " 
 
 They were, though, and with infinite enjoyment. The mysterious 
 face had a voice attached to it, which occasionally led or set the 
 children right. Its musical cheerfulness was delightful. Tho 
 measure at length stopped, and was succeeded by a murmuring of 
 young voices, and then by a short song which he made out to be about 
 the current month of the year, and about what work it yielded to tho 
 labourers in tho fields and farmyards. Then there was a stir of little 
 feet, and tlie children came trooping and Avhooi>ing out, as on tho 
 l>revious day. And again, as on the previous day, they all turned at 
 the garden-gate, and kissed their hands evidently to tlie face on the 
 window-sill, though Barbox Brothers from his retired post of dis- 
 advantage at tlie corner could not see it. 
 
 But, as tlio children dispersed, he cut oft' one small straggler a 
 brown-faced boy with flaxen liair and said to him : 
 
 " Come hero, little one. Tell me, whose house is that "? " 
 
 Tho child, with one swarthy arm held up across his eyes, half in 
 shyness, and half ready for defence, said from behind tho inside of his 
 elbow : 
 
 " Pha3bc's." 
 
 " And who," said Barbox Brothers, quite as much embarrassed by 
 his part in tho dialogue as the child could possibly be by his, " is 
 Pha'be ? " 
 
 To whicli the child made answer : " Why, Phcebe, of course." 
 
 The small but sharp observer had eyed his questioner closely, and 
 had taken his moral measure. Ho lowered his guard, and rather 
 assumed a tone with him : as having discovered him to bo an un- 
 accustomed person in the art of polite conversation. 
 
 "PhoL'be," said the child, " can't be anybobby else but Phcebe. Can 
 she ? " 
 
 " No, I suppose not." 
 
 " Well," returned tlie child, " tlien why did you ask mc ? " 
 
 Deeming it prudent to sliift his ground, Barbox Brotliers took up a 
 new position. 
 
 " What do you do tliere V Up there in that room where the open 
 window is. AVhat do you do there ? " 
 
 ' Cool." said the cliild. 
 
 " Eh '? " 
 
 " Co-o-ol," the child repeated in a louder voice, lengthening out the 
 word with a fixed look and great emphasis, as mucli as to say : 
 " What's the use of your having grown u]), if you're such a donkey as 
 not to understand me ? " 
 
 "Ah! Scliool, school," said Barbox Brothers. '"Yes, yes, yos, 
 And Phcebe teaclios you?" 
 
 The cliild nodded.
 
 Barbox Brothers decides to stay on at the Junction. 333 
 
 " Good boy." 
 
 " Tound it out, have you ? " said the child. 
 
 ' Yes, I have found it out. What would you do with twopence, if 
 I gave it you ? " 
 
 " Pend it." 
 
 The knock-down promptitude of this reply leaving him not a leg to 
 stand upon, Barbox Brothers produced the twopence with great lame- 
 ness, and withdrew in a state of humiliation. 
 
 But, seeing the face on the window-sill as he passed the cottage, ho 
 acknowledged its presence there with a gesture, which was not a nod, 
 not a bow, not a removal of his hat from his head, but was a diffident 
 compromise between or struggle with all three. The eyes in the face 
 seemed amused, or cheered, or both, and the li^^s modestly said : 
 " Good-day to you, sir." 
 
 " I find I must stick for a time to Mugby Junction," said Barbox 
 Brothers with much gravity, after once more stopping on his return 
 road to look at the Lines where they went their several ways so 
 quietly. " I can't make up my mind yet which iron road to take. 
 In fact, I must get a little accustomed to the Junction before I can 
 decide." 
 
 So, he announced at the Inn that he was " going to stay on for the 
 j)resent," and improved his acquaintance with the Junction that night, 
 and again next morning, and again next night and morning : going 
 down to the station, mingling with the people there, looking about 
 him down all the avenues of railway, and beginning to take an 
 interest in the incomings and outgoings of the trains. At first, he 
 often put his head into Lamps's little room, but he never found Lamps 
 there. A pair or two of velveteen shoulders he usually found there, 
 stooping over the fire, sometimes in connection with a clasped knife 
 and a piece of bread and meat ; but the answer to his inquiry, 
 " Where's Lamps V " was, either that he was " t'other side the line," 
 or, that it was his off-time, or (in the latter case) his own personal 
 introduction to another Lamps who was not his Lamps. However, he 
 was not so desi)erately set upon seeing Lamps now, but he bore the 
 disappointment. Nor did he so wholly devote himself to his severe 
 application to the study of Mugby Junction as to neglect exercise. 
 On the contrary, he took a walk every day, and always the same 
 walk. But the weather turned cold and wet again, and the window 
 was never open. 
 
 III. 
 
 At length, after a lapse of some days, there came another streak of 
 iiue bright hardy autumn weather. It was a Saturday. The window 
 was open, and the children were gone. Not surprising, this, for ho 
 had patiently watched and waited at the corner until they were gone.
 
 334 Mtigby Junction. 
 
 " Good-day," Lo said to the face ; absolutely getting liis liat clear 
 off bis bead tbis time. 
 
 " Good-day to you, sir." 
 
 " I am glad you bavc a fmc sky again to look at." 
 
 " Tbank you, sir. It is kind of you." 
 
 " You arc an invalid, I fear ? " 
 
 " No, sir. I bave very good bealtb." 
 
 " But arc 3^011 not always lying down ? 
 
 " Ob yes, I am always lying down, because I cannot sit up ! But I 
 am not an invalid." 
 
 Tbe laughing eyes seemed highly to enjoy his great mistake. 
 
 " Would you mind taking the trouble to come in, sir ? Tliere is a 
 beautiful view from this window. And you would sec that I am not 
 at all ill being so good as to care." 
 
 It was said to help him, as ho stood irresolute, but evidently 
 desiring to enter, with his diffident band on the latch of the garden- 
 gate. It did help him, and be went in. 
 
 The room up-stairs was a very clean white room with a low roof. 
 Its only inmate lay on a couch that brought her face to a level with 
 tlio window. The couch was white too ; and her simple dress or 
 wrapper being light blue, like the band around her hair, she had an 
 ethereal look, and a fanciful appearance of lying among clouds. lie 
 felt that she instinctively perceived him to be by habit a dov/ncast 
 taciturn man ; it was another help to him to bave established that 
 understanding so easily, and got it over. 
 
 There was un awkv/ard constraint upon liim, nevertheless, as ho 
 touched her hand, and took a chair at the side of her coucli. 
 
 " I see now," he began, not at all fluently, " bow you occupy your 
 liand. Only seeing you from the path outside, I thought you were 
 playing i;pon something." 
 
 She was engaged in very nimbly and dexterously making lace. A 
 lacc-inllow lay upon her breast ; and the quick movements and 
 changes of her liauds upon it, as she 'svorked, had given them the 
 action he liad misinterpreted. 
 
 " That is curious," she answered with a bright smile. " For I often 
 fancy, myself, that I play tunes while I am at wor]-:." 
 
 " Have you any musical knowledge ? " 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " I think I could pick out tunes, if I had any iii.strument, wliicli 
 iMuld be made as bandy to me as my lacc-pilluw. But I dave say I 
 deceive myself. At all events, I sliall never know." 
 
 " You liavo a musical voice. Excuse me ; I liave heard you sing." 
 
 " Witli the children ? " slio answered, sliglitly c()louriIlf,^ " Oil yes. 
 I sing with tlic dear chihlren, if it can be calked sijiging." 
 
 Barbox Brothers glanced at tlie two sniull forms in the room, and 
 liazarded tlio speculaticm that slie was fond of children, and tliat slie 
 was learned in new systems of teaching tiieni i
 
 A Happy Disposition. 335 
 
 " Very fond of them," she said, shaking her head again ; " but I 
 know nothing of teaching, beyond the interest I have in it, and the 
 pleasure it gives me when they learn. Perhaps your overhearing my 
 little scholars sing some of their lessons has led you so far astray as 
 to think mo a grand teacher ? Ah ! I thought so ! No, I have only 
 i-ead and been told about that system. It seemed so pretty and 
 pleasant, and to treat them so like the merry Eobins they are, that I 
 took up with it in my little way. You don't need to bo told what a 
 very little way mine is, sir," she added with a glance at the small 
 forms and round the room. 
 
 All this time her hands were busy at her lace-pillow. As they 
 still continued so, and as there was a kind of substitute for conversa- 
 tion in the click and play of its pegs, Barbox Brothers took the 
 opportunity of observing her. He guessed her to be thirty. The 
 charm of her transparent face and large bright brown eyes was, not 
 that they were passively resigned, but that they were actively and 
 thoroughly cheerful. Even her busy hands, which of their own thin- 
 ness alone might have besought compassion, plied their task with a 
 gay courage that made mere compassion an unjustifiable assumption 
 of superiority, and an impertinence. 
 
 He saw her eyes in the act of rising towards his, and he directed 
 his towards the prospect, saying : " Beautiful, indeed ! " 
 
 " Most beautiful, sir. I have sometimes had a fancy that I would 
 like to sit up, for once, only to try how it looks to an erect head. But 
 what a foolish fancy that would be to encourage ! It cannot look 
 more lovely to any one than it does to me." 
 
 Her eyes wore turned to it, as she sj)oke, with most delighted 
 admiration and enjoyment. There was not a trace in it of any sense 
 of deprivation. 
 
 " And those threads of railway, with their puffs of smoke and stcani 
 changing places so fast, make it so lively for mc," she went on. " I 
 think of the nixmbcr of people who can go where they wish, on their 
 business, or their pleasure ; I remember that the puffs make signs to 
 mo that they are actually going while I look ; and that enlivens the 
 l^rospect v>-ith abundance of company, if I want comj^any. There is 
 the great Junction, too. I don't see it under the foot of the hill, but 
 I can very often hear it, and I always know it is there. It seems to 
 join me, in a way, to I don't know how many places and things that I 
 shall never sec." 
 
 With an abashed kind of idea that it might have already joined 
 himself to something ho liad never scon, he said constrainedly: 
 " Just so." 
 
 " And so you see, sir," pursued Phoebe, " I am not the invalid you 
 tJiought me, and I am very well off indeed." 
 
 " You have a happy disposition," said Barbox Brothers : perhaps 
 with a slight excusatory touch for his own disposition. 
 
 " yVb I But you should know my f;ither," she replied. His is the
 
 336 Mugby Junction. 
 
 happy disposition ! Don't mind, sir ! " For his reserve took the 
 alarm at a step upon the stairs, and ho distrusted that he would be 
 set down for a troublesome intruder. " This is my father coming." 
 
 The door opened, and the father paused there. 
 
 " Why, Lamjis ! " exclaimed Barbox Brothers, starting from his 
 chair. " How do you do. Lamps ? " 
 
 To which Lamps responded : " The gentleman for Nowhere ! How 
 do you DO, sir ? " 
 
 And they shook hands, to the greatest admiration and surprise of 
 Lamp's daughter. 
 
 " I have looked you up lialf-a-dozen times since that night," said 
 Barbox Brothers, " but liave never found you." 
 
 " So I've hecrd on, sir, so I've heerd on," returned Lamps. " It's 
 your being noticed so often down at the Junction, without taking any 
 train, that has begun to got you tho name among us of the gentleman 
 for Nowhere. No offence in my having called you by it when took by 
 surprise, I hope, sir ? " 
 
 " None at all. It's as good a name for mo as any other you could 
 call me by. But may I ask you a question in the corner here ? " 
 
 Lamps suffered himself to bo led aside from his daughter's coucli 
 by one of the buttons of his velveteen jacket. 
 
 " Is this the bedside where you sing your songs ? " 
 
 Lamps nodded. 
 
 The gentleman for Nowhere claj^ped him on the shoulder, and they 
 faced about again. 
 
 " Upon my word, my dear," said Lamps then to his daughter, look- 
 ing from her to her visitor, "it is such an amaze to me, to find you 
 ])rought acquainted with this gentleman, that I must (if tliis gentle- 
 man will excuse me) take a rounder." 
 
 Mr. Lamps demonstrated in action what this meant, by pulling out 
 liis oily handkerchief rolled up in the form of a ball, and giving him- 
 self an elaborate smear, from behind the right car, up the cheek, 
 across the forehead, and down the other cheek to beliind his left ear. 
 After this operation he shone exceedingly. 
 
 " It's according to my custom when particular warmed \ip by any 
 agitation, sir," he offered by way of ajx^ogy. " And really, I am 
 tlirowod into tliat state of amaze by finding you brought acquainted 
 with Phcebe, that I that I think I will, if you'll excuse me, take 
 another rounder." Which he did, seeming to be greatly restored 
 by it. 
 
 They were now both standing l)y tlio side of her couch, and she was 
 working at lier lace-i)illow. " Your daughter tells me," said Barbox 
 Brothers, still in a half-reluctant shamefaced way, "that slio never 
 sits up." 
 
 " No, sir, nor never has done. You see, her niotlier (who died 
 when she Avas a year and two months old) was subject to very bad fits, 
 and as she had never mentioned to me that she vms subject to fits.
 
 Patke)' and Daughter. X'xy 
 
 they couldn't be guarded against. Consequently, she dropped the 
 baby when took, and this happened." 
 
 " It was very wrong of her," said Barbox Brothers with a knitted 
 brow, " to marry you, making a secret of her infirmity." 
 
 " Well, sir ! " pleaded Lamps in behalf of the long-deceased. 
 " You see, Phoebe and me, we have talked that over too. And Lord 
 bless us ! Such a number on us has our infirmities, what with fits, 
 and what with misfits, of one sort and another, that if we confessed to 
 'em all before we got married, most of us might never get married." 
 
 " Might not that be for the better ? " 
 
 "Not in this case, sir," said Phoebe, giving her hand to her 
 father. 
 
 " No, not in this case, sir," said her father, patting it between his 
 own. 
 
 " You correct me," returned Barbox Brothers with a blush ; " and 
 I must look so like a Brute, that at all events it would be superfluous 
 in me to confess to that infirmity. I wish you would tell me a little 
 more about yourselves. I hardly knew how to ask it of you, for I am 
 conscious that I have a bad stiff manner, a dull discouraging way 
 with me, but I wish yo\i would." 
 
 " With all our hearts, sir," returned Lamps gaily for both. " And 
 first of all, that you may know my name- " 
 
 " Stay! " interposed the visitor with a slight flush. " What signifies 
 your name ? Lamps is name enough for me. I like it. It is bright 
 and expressive. What do I want more ? " 
 
 " Why, to be sure, sir," returned Lamps. " I have in general no 
 other name down at the Junction ; but I thought, on account of your 
 being here as a first-class single, in a private character, that you 
 might " 
 
 The visitor waved the thought away with his hand, and Lamps 
 acknowledged the mark of confidence by taking another rounder. 
 
 " You are hard- worked, I take for granted ? " said Barbox Brothers, 
 when the subject of the rounder came out of it much dirtier than ho 
 went into it. 
 
 Lamps was beginning, "Not particular so" when his daughter 
 took him up. 
 
 " Oh yes, sir, he is very hard-worked. Fourteen, fifteen, eighteen 
 hours a day. Sometimes twenty-four hours at a time." 
 
 " And you," said Barbox Brothers, " what with your school, Pha>bo, 
 and what with yoiir lace-making " 
 
 " But my school is a pleasure to me," she interrupted, opening her 
 brown eyes wider, as if surprised to find him so obtuse. " I began it 
 Avhen I was but a child, because it brought me and other children into 
 company, don't you see ? That was not work. I carry it on still, 
 because it keeps children about me. That is not work. I do it as 
 love, not as work. Then my lace-pillow ; " her busy hands had 
 stopped, as if her argument required all her cheerful earnestness, but
 
 338 Mngby Junction. 
 
 now went on again at the name ; " it goes with ray thoughts when I 
 think, and it goes with my tunes when I hum any, and that's not 
 work. Why, you yourself thought it was music, you know, sir. And 
 BO it is to mo." 
 
 " Everything is ! " cried Lamps radiantly, " Everything is music 
 to her, sir." 
 
 " My father is, at any rate," said Phrebe, exultingly pointing her 
 thin forefinger at him. " There is more music in my father than 
 there is in a brass baud." 
 
 "I say! My dear! It's very fillyillially done, you know; but 
 you are flattering your father," he protested, sparkling. 
 
 " No, I am not, sir, I assure you. No, I am not. If you could 
 hear my father sing, you would know I am not. But you never will 
 hear him sing, because ho never sings to any one but mc. However 
 tired ho is, ho always sings to mc when he comes home. When I lay 
 hero long ago, quite a poor little broken doll, ho used to sing to mc. 
 More than that, he used to make songs, bringing in whatever little 
 jokes we had between us. More than that, he often does so to this 
 day. Oh ! I'll tell of you, father, as the gentleman has asked about 
 you. lie is a poet, sir." 
 
 " I shouldn't wish the gentleman, my dear," observed Lamps, for 
 the moment turning grave, " to carry away that opinion of your 
 father, because it might look as if I was given to asking the stars in 
 a molloncolly manner what they was up to. Which I wouldn't at 
 once waste the time, and take the liberty, my dear." 
 
 " My fathei"," resumed Phoobe, amending lier text, " is always on 
 the bright side, and the good side. You told me, just now, I had a 
 happy disposition. How can I help it ? " 
 
 " Well ; but, my dear," returned Lamps argumentatively, " how can 
 I help it ? Put it to yourself sir. Look at her. Always as you see 
 her now. Always working and after all, sir, for but a very few 
 shillings a week always contented, always lively, always interested 
 in others, of all sorts. I said, this moment, she was always as you 
 see her now. So she is, with a dill'erence that comes to much the 
 same. For, when it is my Sunday off and the morning bells have 
 done ringing, I hear the prayers and thanks read in the touchingcst 
 way, and I have tlie hymns sung to me so soft, sir, that you couldn't 
 liear 'em out of tliis room in notes that seem to me, I am sure, to 
 come from Ilciiveu and go back to it." 
 
 It might have been merely tlirough tlie association of tliesc words 
 Vvith their sacredly quiet time, or it miglit have been througli tlio 
 larger association of the words with the Kedccmer's presence beside 
 the bedridden ; but here lier dexterous iiiigors came to a stop on tlu; 
 lace-pillow, and clasped tliemsolves around Iiis neck as he bent down. 
 Tliere was great natural sensibility in both father and daughter, the 
 visitor could easily see ; but cacli made it, for the otlier's sake, 
 retiring, not demonstrative ; and perfect clieerfulness, intuitive or
 
 PJiccbe's Neivsinan. 339 
 
 acquired, was either the first or second nature of both. In a very few 
 moments Lamps was taking another rounder with his comical features 
 beaming, while Phoebe's laughing eyes (just a glistening speck or so 
 upon their lashes) were again directed by turns to him, and to her 
 work, and to Barbox Brothers. 
 
 " When my father, sir," she said brightly, " tells you about my 
 being interested in other people, even though they knov/ nothing 
 about me which, by the bye, I told you myself you ought to know 
 how that comes about. That's my father's doing." 
 
 " No, it isn't ! " he protested. 
 
 "Don't you believe him, sir ; yes, it is. He tells me of everything 
 he sees down at his work. You would be surprised what a quantity 
 ho gets together for me every day, lie looks into the carriages, and 
 tells me how the ladies are dressed so that I know all the fashions ! 
 He looks into the carriages, and tells me what pairs of lovers he sees, 
 and what new-married couj)les on their wedding trip so that I know 
 all about that ! He collects chance newspapers and books so that I 
 have plenty to read ! He tells me about the sick people who are 
 travelling to try to get better so that I know all about them ! lu 
 short, as I began by saying, he tells me everything he sees and makes 
 out down at his work, and you can't think what a quantity he does 
 sec and make out." 
 
 " As to collecting newspapers and books, my dear," said Lamps, 
 " it's clear I can have no merit in that, because they're not my 
 perquisites. You see, sir, it's this way : A Guard, he'll say to me, 
 ' Hallo, hero you arc. Lamps. I've saved this paper for your 
 daughter. How is she a-going on?' A Head-Porter, he'll say to 
 me, 'Here! Catch hold. Lamps. Here's a couple of wollumes for 
 your daughter. Is she pretty much where she were ? ' And that's 
 what makes it double welcome, you sec. If she had a thousand 
 pound in a box, they wouldn't trouble themselves about her ; but 
 being what she is that is, you understand," Lamps added, somewhat 
 hurriedly, " not having a thousand pound in a box they take thought 
 for lier. And as concerning the young j)airs, married and unmarried, 
 it's only natural I should bring home what little I can about tliem, 
 seeing that there's not a Couple of cither sort in the neighbourliood 
 that don't come of their own accord to confide in Phoebe." 
 
 She raised her ej^es triumphantly to Barbox Brothers as she said : 
 
 " Indeed, sir, that is true. If I could have got uj) and gone to 
 church, I don't know how often I should have been a bridesmaid. 
 But, if I could have done that, some girls in love might have been 
 jealous of me, and, as it is, no girl is jealous of me. And my pillow 
 would not have been half as ready to put the piece of cake uuder, as 
 I always find it," she added, turning her face on it witli a liglit sigh, 
 and a smile at her father. 
 
 The arrival of a little girl, the biggest of tlie scholars, now led to 
 uu understiinding on the part of Barbox Brotliers, tliat slio was tho
 
 340 Mugby Junction. 
 
 domestic of tlio cottage, and had come to take active measures in it, 
 attended by a pail that might have extinguished her, and a broom 
 three times her height. Ho therefore rose to take his leave, and took 
 it ; saying that, if Pha'be had no objection, ho would come again. 
 
 He had muttered that he would como " in the course of his walks." 
 The course of his walks must have been highly favourable to his 
 return, for he returned after an interval of a single day. 
 
 " You thought you would never sec mc any more, I suppose ? " he 
 said to Pluxibe as he touched her hand, and sat down by her couch. 
 
 " Why should I think so ? " was her surprised rcioinder. 
 
 " I took it for granted you would mistrust me." 
 
 " For granted, sir ? Have you been so much mistrusted ? " 
 
 " I think I am justified in answering yes. But I may have mis- 
 trusted, too, on my part. No matter just now. We were speaking of 
 the Junction last time. I have passed hours there since the day 
 before yesterday." 
 
 " Are you now the gentleman for Somewhere ? " she asked with a 
 smile. 
 
 " Certainly for Somewhere ; but I don't yet know Where. You 
 would never guess what I am travelling from. Shall I tell you ? I 
 am travelling from my birthday." 
 
 Her hands stopped in her work, and she looked at him with 
 incredulous astonishment. 
 
 " Yes," said Barbox Brothers, not quite easy in his chair, " from 
 my birthday. I am, to myself, an unintelligible book with the earlier 
 chapters all torn out, and thrown away. My childhood liad no grace 
 of childhood, my youth had no charm of youtli, and wliat can be 
 expected from such a lost beginning?" His eyes meeting hers as 
 they were addressed intently to him, something seemed to stir witliin 
 his breast, whispering : " Was t})is bed a place for the graces of 
 childhood and the charms of youth to take to kindly? Oh, shame, 
 shame ! "' 
 
 " It is a disease with me," said Barbox Brothers, checking himself, 
 and making as though ho had a difficulty in swallowing something, 
 " to go wrong about that. I don't know how I came to speak of that. 
 I hojjc it is because of an old misplaced confidence in one of your sex 
 involving an old bitter trcacliery. I don't know. I am all wrong 
 together." 
 
 Her liands quietly and slowly resumed tlioir work. Glancing at 
 her, lie saw tliat her eyes were thouglilfnlly following them. 
 
 ' I am travelling from my birthday," he resumed, " because it has 
 always been a dreary day to me. My first free birthday coming 
 round some five or six weeks hence, I am travelling to put its 
 predecessors far behind mc, and to try to crush the day or, at all 
 events, put it out (jf my sight by heaping new objects on it," 
 
 As he paused, she looked at him ; but only shook her head as being 
 quite at a loss.
 
 Barbox Brothers solicits a Favour. 341 
 
 "This is unintelligible to your happy disposition," ho pursued, 
 abiding by his former phrase as if there were some lingering virtue 
 of self-defence in it. " I knew it would be, and am glad it is. 
 However, on this travel of mine (in which I mean to pass the rest of 
 my days, having abandoned all thought of a fixed home), I stopped, 
 as you have heard from your father, at the Junction here. The 
 extent of its ramifications quite confused mc as to whither I should 
 go, from here. I have not yet settled, being still perplexed among 
 so many roads. What do you think I mean to do ? How many of 
 the branching roads can you see from your window ? " 
 
 Looking out, full of interest, she answered, " Seven. 
 
 " Seven," said Barbox Brothers, watching her with a grave smile. 
 " Well ! I propose to myself at once to reduce the gross number to 
 those very seven, and gradually to fine them down to one the most 
 promising for me and to take that." 
 
 " But how will you know, sir, which is the most promising ? " she 
 asked, with her brightened eyes roving over the view. 
 
 " Ah ! " said Barbox Brothers with another grave smile, and con- 
 siderably improving in his ease of speech. " To be sure. In this 
 way. Where your father can pick up so much every day for a good 
 purpose, I may once and again pick up a little for an indiiferent 
 purpose. The gentleman for Nowhere must become still better 
 known at the Junction. He shall continue to explore it, until he 
 attaches something that he has seen, heard, or found out, at the head 
 of each of the seven roads, to the road itself. And so his choice of 
 a road shall be determined by his choice among his discoveries." 
 
 Her hands still busy, she again glanced at tlio prospect, as if it 
 comprehended something that had not been in it before, and laughed 
 as if it yielded her new pleasure. 
 
 " But I must not forget," said Barbox Brothers, " (having got so 
 far) to ask a favour. I want your help in tliis expedient of mine. I 
 want to bring you what I pick up at the heads of the seven roads that 
 you lie here looking out at, and to compare notes with you about it. 
 May I ? They say two heads are better than one. I should say 
 myself that probably depends upon the heads concerned. But I am 
 quite sure, though we are so newly acquainted, that your head and 
 your father's have found out better things, Phoebe, than ever mine of 
 itself discovered." 
 
 She gave him her sympathetic right hand, in perfect rapture with 
 his jiroposal, and eagerly and gratefully thanked him. 
 
 " That's well ! " said Barbox Brothers. " Again I must not forget 
 (having got so far) to ask a favour. Will you shut your eyes V " 
 
 Laughing playfully at the strange nature of the request, she did so. 
 
 " Keep tliem shut," said Barbox Brotliers, going softly to the door, 
 and coming back. " You are on your honour, mind, not to open your 
 eyes imtil I tell you that you may ? " 
 
 " Yes ! On mv honour."
 
 342 Mugby Junction. 
 
 " Good. May I take your lace-pillow from you for a minute ? " 
 
 Still laughing and wondering, she removed her hands from it, and 
 ho i)ut it aside. 
 
 " Toll me. Did you sec the puffs of smoke and steam made by the 
 morning fast-train yesterday on road number seven from here ? " 
 
 " Behind the elm-trees and the spire ? " 
 
 " That's the road," said Barbox Brothers, directing his eyes 
 towards it. 
 
 " Yes. I watched them melt away." 
 
 " Anything unusual in what they expressed ? " 
 
 " No ! " she answered merrily. 
 
 " Not complimentary to mo, for I was in that train. I went don't 
 open your eyes to fetch you this, from the great ingenious town. It 
 is not half so largo as your lace-pillow, and lies easily and lightly in 
 its place. These little keys are like the keys of a miniature piano, 
 and you supply the air required with your left hand. May you j)ick 
 out delightful music from it, my dear I For the present yoxx can 
 ojien your eyes now good-bye ! " 
 
 In his embarrassed way, he closed the door upon himself, and only 
 saw, in doing so, that she ecstatically took the present to her bosom 
 and caressed it. The glimpse gladdened his heart, and yet saddened 
 it ; for so might she, if her youth had flourished in its natural course, 
 having taken to her breast that day the slumbering music of her own 
 child's voice. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 BARBOX BROTHERS AND CO. 
 
 With good-will and earnest purpose, the gentleman for Nowhere 
 began, on the very next day, his researches at tlic heads of the seven 
 roads. The results of his researches, as he and Phoebe afterwards set 
 them down in fair writing, hold their duo plivces in this veracious 
 chronicle. But they occupied a much longer time in the getting 
 together tlian they ever will in the pcinisal. And this is probably 
 the case witli most reading matter, except when it is of that liighly 
 beneficial kind (for Posterity) which is " thrown off in a few moments 
 of leisure " by the superior poetic geniuses who scorn to take prose 
 pains. 
 
 It must be admitted, however, tliat Barbox by no means hurried 
 himself. Ilis heart being in his work of good-nature, he revelled in 
 it. There was the joy, too (it was a true joy to him), of sometimes 
 sitting by, listening to Phoebe as she picked out more and more dis- 
 course from lier musical instrument, and as her natural taste and ear
 
 The Gentleman foy Nowhere takes a Ticket for Somezvhere. 343 
 
 refined daily upon lier first discoveries. Besides being a pleasure, 
 this was an occupation, and in the course of weeks it consumed hours. 
 It resulted that his dreaded birthday was close upon him before ho 
 had troubled himself any more about it. 
 
 The matter was made more pressing by the unforeseen circumstance 
 that the councils held (at which Mr. Lamps, beaming most bi'illiantly, 
 on a few rare occasions assisted) respecting the road to be selected 
 were, after all, in nowise assisted by his investigations. For, he had 
 connected this interest with this road, or that interest with the other, 
 but could deduce no reason from it for giving any road the preference. 
 Consequently, when the last council was holden, that part of the 
 business stood, in the end, exactly where it had stood in the beginning. 
 
 " But, sir," remarked Phoebe, " we have only six roads after all. Is 
 the seventh road dumb ? " 
 
 " The seventh road ? Oh ! " said Barbox Brothers, rubbing his 
 chin. " That is the road I took, you know, when I went to get your 
 little present. That is its story, Phoebe." 
 
 "Would you mind taking that road again, sir?" she asked with 
 hesitation. 
 
 " Not in the least ; it is a great high-road after all." 
 
 " I should like you to take it," returned Phoebe with a persuasive 
 smile, " for the love of that little present which must ever be so dear 
 to me. I should like you to take it, because that road can never bo 
 again like any other road to me. I should like you to take it, in 
 remembrance of your having done me so much good : of your having 
 made me so much happier ! If you leave me by the road you travelled 
 when you went to do me this groat kindness," sounding a faint chord as 
 she spoke, " I shall feel, lying here watching at my window, as if it 
 must conduct you to a prosperous end, and bring you back some day." 
 
 " It shall be done, my dear ; it shall be done." 
 
 So at last the gentleman for Nowhere took a ticket for Somewhere, 
 and his destination was the great ingenious town. 
 
 He had loitered so long about the Junction that it was the 
 eighteenth of December when he left it. " High time," ho reflected, 
 as he seated himself in the train, " that I started in earnest ! Only 
 one clear day remains between me and the day I am running away 
 from. I'll push onward for the hill-country to-morrow. I'll go to 
 Wales." 
 
 It was with some pains that he placed before himself the undeniable 
 advantages to be gained in the way of novel occupation for his senses 
 from misty mountains, swollen streams, rain, cold, a wild seashore, 
 and rugged roads. And yet ho scarcely made them out as distinctly 
 as he could have wished. Whether the poor girl, in spite of her new 
 resource, her music, would have any feeling of loneliness upon her 
 now ^just at first that she had not had before ; whether she saw 
 those very pufis of steam and smoke that he saw, as he sat in tha 
 train thinking of her; whether her face would have any penei?o
 
 344 Miighy Junction. 
 
 shadow on it as they died out of the distant view from her window ; 
 whether, in telling him ho had done her so much good, she had not 
 unconsciously corrected his old moody bemoaning of his station in 
 life, by setting him thinking that a man might be a great healer, if ho 
 would, and yet not be a great doctor ; these and other similar medita- 
 tions got between him and his Welsh picture. There was within 
 him, too, that dull sense of vacuity which follows separation from an 
 object of interest, and cessation of a pleasant pursuit ; and this sense, 
 being quite new to him, made him restless. Further, in losing Mugby 
 Junction, he had found himself again ; and he was not the more 
 enamoured of himself for having lately passed his time in better 
 company. 
 
 But surely here, not fivr ahead, must be the great ingenious town. 
 This crashing and clasliing tliat the train was undergoing, and this 
 coupling on to it of a multitude of new echoes, could mean nothing 
 less than approach to the great station. It did mean nothing less. 
 After some stormy flashes of town lightning, in the Avay of swift 
 revelations of red brick blocks of houses, high red brick chimney- 
 shafts, vistas of red brick railway arches, tongues of fire, blocks of 
 smoke, valleys of canal, and hills of coal, there came the thundering in 
 at the journey's end. 
 
 Having seen his portmanteaus safely housed in the hotel he chose, 
 and having appointed his dinner hour, Barbox Brothers went out for 
 a walk in the busy streets. And now it began to be suspected by him 
 that Mugby Junction was a Junction of many branches, invisible as 
 well as visible, and had joined him to an endless number of by-ways. 
 For, Avhercas ho would, but a little while ago, have walked these 
 streets blindly brooding, he now had eyes and thoughts for a new 
 external world. How the many toiling peoj)le lived, and loved, and 
 died ; how wonderful it was to consider the various trainings of eye 
 and hand, the nice distinctions of sight and touch, that separated 
 tliem into classes of workers, and even into classes of workers at sub- 
 divisions of one complete whole which combined their many intelli- 
 gences and forces, tliough of itself but some cheap object of use or 
 ornament in common life ; how good it was to know that such 
 assembling in a multitude on their ]art, and such contribution of 
 tlieir several dexterities towards a civilising end, did not deteriorate 
 them as it was the fasliion of the supercilious IVIayflies of liumanit}'^ to 
 pretend, but engendered among them a self-respect, and yet a modest 
 desire to be mucli wiser than they were (the first evinced in tlicir 
 well-])alanced bearing and manner of speeeli when he stopjicd to ask 
 a (question ; tlie second, in tlic announcements of tlieir popular studies 
 and amusements on the ])ublic walls) ; these considerations, and a 
 host of such, made his walk a memorable one. " I too am but a little 
 part of a great whole," he began to think ; " and to be serviceable to 
 myself and others, or to be happy, I must cast my interest into, and 
 draw it out of, the common stock,"
 
 An Adventure. 345 
 
 Althoiigli he had arrived at his journey's end for the day by noon, 
 he had since insensibly walked about the town so far and so long that 
 the lamp-lighters were now at their work in the streets, and the shops 
 were sparkling up brilliantly. Thus reminded to turn towards his 
 quarters, he was in the act of doing so, when a very little hand crept 
 into his, and a very little voice said : 
 
 " Oh ! if you please, I am lost ! " 
 
 He looked down, and saw a very little fair-haired girl. 
 
 " Yes," she said, confirming her words with a serious nod. " I am 
 indeed. I am lost ! " 
 
 Greatly perplexed, he stopped, looked about him for help, descried 
 none, and said, bending low : 
 
 " Where do you live, my child ? " 
 
 " I don't know where I live," she returned. " I am lost." 
 
 " What is your name ? " 
 
 " Polly." 
 
 " What is your other name ? " 
 
 The reply was prompt, but unintelligible. 
 
 Imitating the sound as he caught it, he hazarded the guess, 
 " Trivits." 
 
 " Oh no ! " said the child, shaking her head. " Nothing like that." 
 
 " Say it again, little one." 
 
 An unj)romising business. For this time it had quite a dificrcnt 
 sound. 
 
 He made the venture, " Paddens ? " 
 
 Oh no ! " said the child. " Nothing like that." 
 
 *' Once more. Let us try it again, dear." 
 
 A most hopeless business. This time it swelled into four syllables. 
 " It can't be Tappitarver? " said Barbox Brothers, rubbing his head 
 with his hat in discomfiture. 
 
 " No ! It ain't," the child quietly assented. 
 
 On her trying this unfortunate name once more, with extraordinary 
 efforts at distinctness, it swelled into eight syllables at least. 
 
 " Ah ! I think," said Barbox Brothers with a dcsjjcrate air of 
 resignation, " that we had better give it up." 
 
 " But I am lost," said the child, nestling her little hand more 
 closely in his, " and you'll take care of me, won't you ? " 
 
 If ever a man were disconcerted by division between compassion 
 on the one hand, and the very imbecility of irresolution on the other, 
 liere the man was, " Lost ! " he repeated, looking down at the child. 
 '' I am sure I am. What is to be done ? " 
 
 " Wliere do you live '.* " asked the child, looking uji at him 
 wistfully. 
 
 " Over there," he answered, pointing vaguely in the direction of 
 his hotel. 
 
 " Hadn't wo better go there ? " said the child. 
 
 " Peally," he replied, " I don't know but what wo hud."
 
 346 Mjigby Junction. 
 
 So tliey set off, Laud-iu-haucl. Ho, through comparison of himself 
 agaiust his littlo companion, with a clumsy feeling on him as if ho 
 had just developed into a foolish giant. She, clearly elevated in hcv 
 own tiny opinion by having got him bo neatly out of his embarrass- 
 ment. 
 
 " We arc going to have dinner when wc got there, I suppose ? " 
 said Polly. 
 
 " Well," ho rejoined, " I Yes, I suppose we arc." 
 
 " Do you like your dinner ? " asked the child. 
 
 " Why, on the whole," said Barbox Brothers, " yes, I think I do." 
 
 " I do mine," said Polly. " Have you any brothers and sisters V ' 
 
 " No. Have you ? " 
 
 " Mine are dead." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Barbox Brothers. With that absurd sense of unwieldi- 
 ness of mind and body weighing him down, he would have not known 
 how to pursue the conversation beyond this curt rejoinder, but that 
 tlic child was always ready for him. 
 
 "What," she asked, turning her soft hand coaxingly in his, "aro 
 you going to do to amuse me after dinner ? " 
 
 " Ui^on my soul, Polly," exclaimed Barbox Brothers, very much at 
 a loss, " I have not the slightest idea ! " 
 
 " Then I tell you what," said Polly. " Have you got any cards at 
 your house ? " 
 
 " Plenty," said Barbox Brothers in a boastful vein. 
 
 " Very well. Then I'll build houses, and you shall look at me. 
 You mustn't blow, you know." 
 
 " Oh no," said Barbox Brothers. " No, no, no. No blowing. 
 Blowing's not fair." 
 
 He flattered himself that he had said this pretty well for an idiotic 
 monster ; but the child, instantly perceiving the awkwardness of his 
 attempt to adapt himself to her level, utterly destroyed his hoj^eful 
 opinion of himself by saying compassionately : " What a funny man 
 you arc ! " 
 
 Feeling, after this melancholy failure, as if he every minute grew 
 bigger and heavier in person, and weaker in mind, Barbox gave him- 
 self up for a bad job. No giant ever submitted more meekly to bo 
 led in triumph by all-conquering Jack than he to be bound in slavery 
 to Polly. 
 
 " Do you know any stories ? " she asked him. 
 
 lie was reduced to the liumiliating confession : " No." 
 
 " What a dunce you must be, mustn't you ? " said Polly. 
 
 IIo was reduced to the humiliating confession : ' Yes." 
 
 " Would you like me to teach you a story ? But you must re- 
 member it, you ]cnow, and bo able to tell it right to somebody clso 
 afterwards." 
 
 He professed tliat it would afford him the liighest mental gratifica- 
 lion to be taught a story, and that ho would humbly endeavour to
 
 Barhox Brothers receives a Lesson in Romance. 347 
 
 retain it in his mind. Whereiipon Polly, giving her hand a new little 
 turn in his, expressive of settling down for enjoyment, commenced a 
 long romance, of which every relishing clause began with the words : 
 "So this," or, "And so this." As, "So this boy;" or, "So this 
 fairy ; " or, " And so this pie was four yards round, and two yards 
 and a qiiarter deep." The interest of the romance was derived from 
 the intervention of this fairy to punish this boy for having a greedy 
 appetite. To achieve which purpose, this fairy made this pie, and 
 this boy ate and ate and ate, and his cheeks swelled and swelled and 
 swelled. There were many tributary circumstances, but the forcible 
 interest culminated in the total consumption of this pie, and the 
 bursting of this boy. Truly he was a fine sight, Barbox Brothers, 
 Avith serious attentive face, and ear bent down, much jostled on tho 
 pavements of the busy town, but afraid of losing a single incident of 
 the epic, lest ho should be examined in it by-and-by, and found 
 deficient. 
 
 Thus they arrived at the hotel. And there he had to say at tho 
 bar, and said awkwardly enough : " I have found a little girl ! 
 
 The whole establishment turned out to look at the little girl. 
 Nobody knew her ; nobody could make out her name, as she set it 
 forth except one chamber-maid, who said it was Constantinople 
 which it wasn't. 
 
 " I will dine with my young friend in a private room," said Barbox 
 Brothers to the hotel authorities, " and perhaps you will be so good 
 as to let the police know that the pretty baby is here. I suppose she 
 is sure to be inquired for soon, if she has not been already. Come 
 along, Polly." 
 
 Perfectly at ease and peace, Polly came along, but, finding the stairs 
 rather stiff work, was carried up by Barbox Brothers. The dinner 
 was a most transcendant success, and the Barbox sheepishness, under 
 Polly's directions how to mince her meat for her, and how to diffuse 
 gravy over the plate wdth a liberal and equal hand, was another fine 
 sight. 
 
 " And now," said Polly, " while we are at dinner, you be good, and 
 tell me that story I taught you." 
 
 With the tremors of a Civil Service examination ujion him, and 
 very uncertain indeed, not only as to the epoch at which the pie 
 appeared in history, but also as to the measurements of that indis- 
 pensable fact, Barbox Brothers made a shaky beginning, but under 
 encouragement did very fairl3\ There v/as a want of breadth 
 observable in his rendering of the cheeks, as Avell as tho appetite, of 
 tlie boy ; and there was a certain tamencss in his fairy, referable to 
 an under-current of desire to account for her. Still, as the first 
 lumbering performance of a good-liumoured monster, it passed 
 muster. 
 
 " I told you to be good," said Polly, " and you are good, ain't 
 you? "
 
 348 Mughy Junction. 
 
 " I hope so," rci)lied Barbox Brothers. 
 
 Such was his deference that Polly, elevated on a platform of sofa 
 cushions in a chair at his right hand, encouraged him with a pat or 
 two on the face from the greasy bowl of her spoon, and even with a 
 gracious kiss. In getting on her feet upon her chair, however, to 
 give him this last reward, she toppled forward among the dishes, and 
 caused him to exclaim, as he effected her rescue : " Gracious Angels ! 
 Whew ! I thouglit we were in the fire, Polly ! " 
 
 " What a coward you are, ain't you ? " said Polly when replaced. 
 
 " Yes, I am rather nervous," he replied. " Whew ! Don't, Polly ! 
 Don't flourish your spoon, or you'll go over sideways. Don't tilt up 
 your legs when you laugh, Polly, or you'll go over backwards. 
 Whew ! Polly, Polly, Polly," said Barbox Brothers, nearly succumb- 
 ing to despair, ' we are environed Avith dangers ! " 
 
 Indeed, he could descry no security from the pitfalls that were 
 yawning for Polly, but in proposing to her, after dinner, to sit upon a 
 low stool. " I will, if you will," said Polly. So, as peace of mind 
 should go before all, he begged the waiter to wheel aside the table, 
 bring a pack of cards, a couple of footstools, and a screen, and close in 
 Polly and himself before the fire, as it were in a snug room within 
 the room. Then, finest sight of all, was Barbox Brothers on his 
 footstool, with a pint decanter on the rug, contemplating Polly as she 
 built successfully, and growing blue in the face with holding his 
 breath, lest he should blow the house down. 
 
 " How you stare, don't you ? " said Polly in a houseless pause. 
 
 Detected in the ignoble fact, he felt obliged to admit, apologetically : 
 " I am afraid I was looking rather hard at you, Polly." 
 
 " Why do you stare ? " asked Polly. 
 
 " I cannot," he murmured to himself, " recall why. I don't know, 
 Polly." 
 
 " You must be a simpleton to do things and not know why, mustn't 
 you V " said Polly. 
 
 In spite of which reproof, he looked at tlic child again intently, as 
 she bent her head over her card structure, her rich curls shading her 
 face. " It is impossible," lie tliought, " that I can ever have seen this 
 pretty baby before. Can I have dreamed of her ? In some sorrowful 
 dream ?" 
 
 He could make nothing of it. So he went into the building trade 
 as a journeyman under Polly, and they built three stories high, four 
 stories high ; even five. 
 
 " I say ! Who do you think is coming ? " asked Polly, rubbing her 
 eyes after tea. 
 
 He guessed : " TIic waiter ? " 
 
 " No," said Polly, " the dustman. I am getting sleepy." 
 
 A new embarrassment for Barbox Brothers ! 
 
 " I don't think I am going to be fetched to-niglit," said Polly. 
 "What do YOU think?"
 
 Polly's Mother. 349 
 
 He thought not, either. After another quarter of an hour, the 
 flustman not merely impending, but actually arriving, recourse was 
 had to the Constantinopolitan chamber-maid : nho cheerily undertook 
 that the child should sleep in a comfortable and wholesome room, 
 which she herself would share. 
 
 " And I know you will bo careful, won't you," said Barbox Brothers, 
 as a new fear dawned upon him, " that she don't fall out of bed ? " 
 
 Polly found this so highly entertaining that she was under the 
 necessity of clutching him round the neck with both arms as he sat 
 on his footstool picking up the cards, and rocking him to and fro, 
 with her dimpled chin on his shoulder. 
 
 " Oh, what a coward you are, ain't you ? " said Polly. " Do yon 
 fall out of bed ?" 
 
 '' N not generally, Polly." 
 
 " No more do I." 
 
 With that, Polly gave him a reassuring hug or two to keep him 
 going, and then giving that confiding mite of a hand of hers to be 
 swallowed up in the hand of the Constantinopolitan chamber-maid, 
 trotted off, chattering, without a vestige of anxiety. 
 
 He looked after her, had the screen removed and the table and 
 chairs replaced, and still looked after her. He paced the room for 
 half an hour. " A most engaging little creature, but it's not that. A 
 most winning little voice, but it's not that. That has much to do 
 with it, but there is something more. How can it be that I seem to 
 know this child ? What was it she imperfectly recalled to mo when 
 I felt her touch in the street, and, looking down at her, saw her 
 looking up at me ? " 
 
 " Mr. Jackson ! " 
 
 With a start he turned towards the sound of the subdued voice, and 
 saw his answer standing at the door. 
 
 " Oil, Mr. Jackson, do not be severe with me 1 Speak a word of 
 encouragement to mc, I beseech you." 
 
 " You are Polly's mother." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Yes. Polly herself might come to this, one day. As you see 
 what the rose was in its faded leaves ; as you see what the summer 
 growth of the woods was in their wintry branches ; so Polly miglit be 
 traced, one day, in a careworn woman like this, with lier hair turned 
 grey. Before him were the ashes of a dead fire that had once burned 
 bright. This was the woman he had loved. This was the woman he 
 liad lost. Such had been the constancy of his imagination to her, so 
 had Time spared her under its withholding, that now, seeing how 
 roughly the inexorable hand had struck her, his soul was filled with 
 pity and amazement. 
 
 Ho led her to a chair, and stood leaning on a corner of the 
 chimney-piece, with his head resting on his hand, and his face half 
 averted.
 
 350 Miighy Junction. 
 
 *' Did you see mc in tlio Btreet, and sliow mo to your child ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Is the little creature, then, a party to deceit ? " 
 
 " I hope there is no deceit. I said to her, ' We have lost our way, 
 and I must try to find mine by myself. Go to that gentleman, and 
 tell him you are lost. You shall bo fetched by-and-by.' Perhaps 
 you have not thought how very young she is ? " 
 
 ' She is very self-reliant." 
 
 " Perhaps because she is so young." 
 
 ITe asked, after a short pause, " Why did you do this ? " 
 
 *' Oh, Mr. Jackson, do you ask me ? In the hope tliat you might 
 Geo something in my innocent child to soften your heart towards me. 
 Not only towards mo, but towards my husband." 
 
 He suddenly turned about, and walked to the opposite end of the 
 room. He came back again with a slower step, and resumed his 
 former attitude, saying : 
 
 " I thought you had emigrated to America ? " 
 
 " We did. But life went ill with us there, and we came back." 
 
 " Do you live in this town ? " 
 
 " Yes. I am a daily teacher of music here. My husband is a book- 
 keeper." 
 
 " Are you forgive my asking poor ? " 
 
 " We earn enough for our wants. That is not our distress. My 
 husband is very, very ill of a lingering disorder. He will never 
 recover " 
 
 "You check yourself. If it is for want of the encouraging 
 word you spoke of, take it from mc. I cannot forget the old time, 
 Beatrice." 
 
 " God bless you ! " she replied with a burst of tears, and gave him 
 her trembling hand. 
 
 " Compose yourself. I cannot bo composed if you are not, for to 
 see you Mxep distresses mo beyond expression. Speak freely to me. 
 Trust me." 
 
 She shaded her fiicc v>'ith her veil, and after a little while spoke 
 calmly. Iler voice had the ring of Polly's. 
 
 " It is not that my ]iusband's mind is at all impaired by his bodily 
 suffering, for I assure yoxi that is not the case. But in his weakness, 
 iiiid in his knowledge that lie is incurably ill, he cannot overcome the 
 ascendancy of one idea. It presys upon liim, embitters every moment 
 of iiis painful life, and will shorten it." 
 
 She stopping, he said again : " Speak freelj^ to mc. Trust me." 
 "We have liad five children before tliis darling, and they all lie in 
 their little graves. He believes that they liave withered away under 
 a cur,s(!, and that it v/ill blight this child like tlie rest." 
 " Under Avhat curse? " 
 "Both T and he liavc it on our conscience that wo tried yon vc-ry
 
 Forgiveness. 351 
 
 heavily, and I do not know but that, if I were as ill as he, I might 
 suffer in my mind as he does. This is the constant burden : ' I 
 believe, Beatrice, I was the only friend that Mr. Jackson ever cared 
 to make, though I was so much his junior. The more influence he 
 acquired in the business, the higher he advanced me, and I was alone 
 in his private confidence. I came between him and you, and I took 
 you from him. We were both secret, and the blow fell when he was 
 wholly unprepared. The anguish it caused a man so comj)rcssed 
 must have been terrible ; the wrath it awakened inappeasable. So, a 
 curse came to be invoked on our poor j^i'ctty little flowers, and they 
 fall.' " 
 
 " And you, Beatrice," he asked, when she had ceased to speak, and 
 there had been a silence afterwards, " how say you ? " 
 
 " Until within these few weeks I was afraid of you, and I believed 
 that you would never, never forgive." 
 
 " Until within these few weeks," he repeated. " Have you changed 
 your opinion of me within these few weeks ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " For what reason ? " 
 
 " I was getting some pieces of music in a shop in this town, when, 
 to my terror, you came in. As I veiled my face and stood in the 
 dark end of the shop, I heard you explain that you wanted a musical 
 instrument for a bedridden girl. Your voice and manner were so 
 softened, you showed such interest in its selection, you took it away 
 yourself with so much tenderness of care and pleasure, that I knew 
 you were a man witli a most gentle heart. Oh, Mr. Jackson, Mr. 
 Jackson, if you could have felt the refreshing rain of tears that 
 followed for mc ! " 
 
 "Was Phoebe playing at that moment on her distant coucli? lie 
 seemed to hear her. 
 
 " I inquired in the shop where you lived, but could get uo infor- 
 mation. As I had heard you say that you were going back by the 
 next train (but you did not say where), 1 resolved to visit the station 
 at about that time of day, as often as I could, between my lessons, oji 
 tlie chance of seeing you again. I have been there very often, but 
 saw you no more until to-day. You were meditating as you walked 
 the street, but the calm expression of your face emboldened me to 
 send my child to you. And when I sav/ you bend your head to speak 
 tenderly to her, I prayed to God to forgive me for having ever 
 ])rought a sorrow on it. I noAV pray to you to forgive me, and to 
 forgive my husband. I was very young, he was young too, and, in 
 the ignorant hardihood of such a time of life, we don't know Avhat we 
 do to those who have midergonc more discipline. You generous man ! 
 You good man ! So to raise me up and make nothing of my crime 
 against you ! " for he would not see her on her knees, and soothed 
 her as a kind father might have sootlied an erring daughter " tliaiik 
 you. bless you, thank ymi ! "'
 
 352 Mugby Junction. 
 
 When he next spoke, it was after having drawn aside the window 
 curtain and looked out awhile. Then he only said : 
 ^ " Is Polly asleep ? " 
 
 " Yes, As I came in, I met her going away upstairs, and put her 
 to bed myself." 
 
 " Leave her with me for to-morrow, Beatrice, and write me your 
 address on this leaf of my pocket-book. In the evening I will bring 
 her home to you and to her father." 
 
 ^- 'H! Id * ^ * It: 
 
 " Hallo ! " cried Polly, putting her saucy sunny face in at the door 
 next morning when breakfast was ready : " I thought I was fetched 
 last night ? " 
 
 " So you were, Polly, but I asked leave to keep you here for the 
 day, and to take you home in the evening." 
 
 " Upon my word ! " said Polly. " You are very cool, ain't you ? " 
 
 However, Polly seemed to think it a good idea, and added : 
 
 " I suppose I must give you a kiss, thoiigh you are cool." 
 
 The kiss given and taken, they sat down to breakfast in a highly 
 conversational tone. 
 
 " Of course, you are going to amuse me ? " said Polly. 
 
 " Oh, of course ! " said Barbox Brothers. 
 
 In the pleasurable height of her anticipations, Polly found it indis- 
 pensable to put down her piece of toast, cross one of her little fat 
 knees over the other, and bring her little fat right hand down into 
 her left hand with a business-like slap. After this gathering of 
 herself together, Polly, by that time a mere heap of dimples, asked in 
 a wheedling manner : 
 
 " What are we going to do, you dear old thing? " 
 
 " Why, I was thinking," said Barbox Brothers, " but are you fond 
 of horses, Polly ? " 
 
 " Ponies, I am," said Polly, " especially when their tails are long. 
 But horses n no too big, you know." 
 
 " Well," pursued Barbox Brothers, in a spirit of grave mysterious 
 confidonce adapted to the importance of the consultation, " I did sec 
 yesterday, Polly, on the walls, pictures of two long-tailed ponies, 
 speckled all over " 
 
 " No, no, NO ! " cried Polly, in an ecstatic desire to linger on the 
 charming details. " Not speckled all over ! " 
 
 " Speckled all over. Which ponies jump tlirough hoops " 
 
 " No, no, NO ! " cried Polly as before. " They never jump through 
 hoops ! " 
 
 " Yes, they do. Oh, I assure you they do ! And eat pie in piua- 
 forcs " 
 
 " Ponies eating pie in pinafores ! " said Polly. " Wliat a story- 
 teller you are, ain't yoii ? " 
 
 " Upon my honour. And fire off guns." 
 
 (Polly liardly seemed to see the force of the ponies resorting to 
 fire-arniK.)
 
 A Resplendent Programme. 353 
 
 '' And I was thinking," pursued the exemplary Barbox, " that if you 
 and I were to go to the Circus where these ponies are, it would do our 
 constitutions good." 
 
 " Does that mean amuse us ? " inquired Polly. " "What long words 
 you do use, don't you ? " 
 
 Apologetic for having wandered out of his depth, he replied : 
 
 " That means amuse us. That is exactly what it means. There 
 are many other wonders besides the ponies, and we shall see them all. 
 Ladies and gentlemen in spangled dresses, and elephants and lions 
 and tigers." 
 
 Polly became observant of the teajiot, Avith a curled-up nose in- 
 dicating some uneasiness of mind. 
 
 " They never get out, of course," she remarked as a mere truism. 
 
 " The elephants and lions and tigers ? Oh, dear no ! " 
 
 " Oh, dear no ! " said Polly. " And of course nobody's afraid of 
 the ponies shooting anybody." 
 
 " Not the least in the world." 
 
 " No, no, not the least in the world," said Polly. 
 
 " I was also thinking," proceeded Barbox, " that if we were to look 
 in at the toy-shop, to choose a doll " 
 
 " Not dressed ! " cried Polly with a clap of her hands. " No, no, 
 NO, not dressed ! " 
 
 " Full-dressed. Together with a house, and all things necessary 
 for housekeeping " 
 
 Polly gave a little scream, and seemed in danger of falling into a 
 swoon of bliss. 
 
 " What a darling you are ! " she languidly exclaimed, leaning back 
 in her chair. " Come and bo hugged, or I must come and hug you." 
 
 This resplendent programme was carried into execution with the 
 utmost rigour of the law. It being essential to make the purchase of 
 the doll its first feature or that lady would have lost the ponies 
 the toy-shop expedition took precedence. Polly in the magic ware- 
 house, with a doll as large as herself under each arm, and a neat 
 assortment of some twenty more on view upon the counter, did indeed 
 present a spectacle of indecision not quite compatible with imalloyed 
 happiness, but the liglit cloud passed. The lovely specimen oftenest 
 chosen, oftenest rejected, and finally abided by, was of ( 'ircassiau 
 descent, possessing as much boldness of beauty as was reconcilable with 
 extreme feebleness of mouth, and combining a sky-blue silk pelisso 
 with rose-coloured satin trousers, and a Ijlack velvet hat : which this 
 fair stranger to our northern shores would seem to have founded on 
 the portraits of the late Duchess of Kent. The name this distin- 
 guished foreigner brought with her from beneath the glowing skies 
 of a sunny clime was (on Polly's authority) Miss Melluka, and the 
 costly nature of her outfit as a housekeeper, from the Barbox coffers, 
 may be inferred from the two facts that her silver tea-spoons were as 
 large as her kitchen poker, and that the proportions of her watch 
 
 2 A
 
 354 Mtigby Junction. 
 
 oxceeded those of her frying-pan. Miss Melluka was graciously 
 pleased to express her entire approbation of the Circus, and so was 
 Polly ; for the ponies were speckled, and brought down nobody when 
 they fired, and the savagery of the wild beasts appeared to be mere 
 smoke which article, in fact, they did produce in largo quantities 
 from their insides. Tho Barbox absorption in the general subject 
 throughout tho realisation of those delights was again a sight to sec, 
 nor was it less worthy to behold at dinner, when he drank to Miss 
 Melluka, tied stiff in a chair opposite to Polly (the fair Circassian 
 possessing an unbendable spine), and even .induced the waiter to assist 
 in carrying out with due decorum tho prevailing glorious idea. To 
 wind up, there came the agreeable fever of getting Miss Melluka and 
 all her wardrobe and rich possessions into a fly with Polly, to be 
 taken home. But, by that time, Polly had become unable to look 
 upon such accumulated joys with waking eyes, and had withdrawn 
 her consciousness into tho wonderful Paradise of a child's sleep. 
 " Sleep, Polly, sleep," said Barbox Brothers, as her head dropped on 
 his shoulder ; " you shall not fall out of this bed easily, at any rate ! " 
 
 What rustling piece of paj^er he took from his pocket, and carefully 
 folded into the bosom of Polly's frock, shall not be mentioned. Ho 
 said nothing about it, and nothing shall be said about it. They drove 
 to a modest suburb of the great ingenious town, and stopped at tho 
 fore-court of a small house. " Do not wake tho child," said Barbox 
 Brothers softly to the driver ; " I will carry her in as she is." 
 
 Greeting the light at the opened door which was held by Polly's 
 motlicr, Polly's bearer passed on with mother and child into a ground- 
 floor room. There, stretched on a sofa, lay a sick man, sorely Avasted, 
 who covered his eyes with his emaciated hand. 
 
 " Tresham," said Barbox in a kindly voice, " I have brought you 
 back your Polly, fast asleep. Give me your hand, and tell me you 
 arc better." 
 
 The sick man reached forth his right hand, and bowed his head 
 over the hand into Vi'liich it was taken, and kissed it. " Thank you, 
 thank you 1 I may say that I am well and happy." 
 
 ""That's brave," said Barbox. "Tresham, I have a fancy 
 
 Can you make room for me beside you here ? " 
 
 Ho sat down on the sofa as he said the words, cherishing the plump 
 pcacliey cheek that lay uppermost en his shoulder. 
 
 " I have a fancy, Tresham (I am getting quite an old fellow now, 
 you knov.', and old follows may take fancies into their heads some- 
 times), to give up Polly, having found her, to no one but you. Will 
 you take her from me ? " 
 
 As tho futiu r hold out liiu arms for the child, each of tho two men 
 looked steadily at the other. 
 
 " She is very dear to you, Tresham V " 
 
 " Unull(;rably dear." 
 
 " God bless her ! It is not much, Polly," lie continued, turning Lis
 
 Barhox Brothers settles at the Junction. 355 
 
 eyes ujion her peaceful face as he apostrophized her, " it is not much, 
 Polly, for a blind and' sinful man to invoke a blessing on something 
 60 far better than himself as a little child is ; but it v/ould be much 
 much upon his cruel head, and much upon his guilty soul if ho 
 could be so wicked as to invoke a curse. He had bettor have a mill- 
 stone round his neck, and be cast into the deepest sea. Live and 
 thrive, my pretty baby ! " Here he kissed her. " Live and prosper, 
 and become in time the mother of other little children, like the 
 Angels who behold The Father's face ! " 
 
 He kissed her again, gave her up gently to both her parents, and 
 went out. 
 
 But he went not to Wales. No, he never went to Wales. Ho 
 went straightway for another stroll about the town, and he looked in 
 upon the peoj)le at their work, and at their play, here, there, cvery- 
 there, and where not. For he was Barbox Brothers and Co. now, 
 and had taken thousands of partners into the solitary firm. 
 
 He had at length got back to his hotel room, and was standing beforo 
 his fire refreshing himself with a glass of hot drink which he had 
 stood upon the chimney-piece, when he heard the town clocks striking, 
 and, referring to his v/ateh, found the evening to have so slipped 
 away, that they were striking twelve. As he put up his watch again, 
 his eyes met those of his reflection in the chimnej'--glass. 
 
 " Why, it's your birthday already," he said, smiling. " You aro 
 looking very well. \ wish you many happy returns of the day." 
 
 He had never before bestowed that wish upon himself. " By 
 Jupiter ! " he discovered, " it alters the whole case of running away 
 from one's birthday ! It's a thing to explain to Phoebe. Besides, 
 here is quite a long story to tell her, that Las sprung out of the road 
 with no story. I'll go back, instead of going on. I'll go back by my 
 friend Lamps's Up X presently." 
 
 He went back to Tvlugby Junction, and, in point of fact, he established 
 himself at Mugby Junction. It was the convenient place to live in, 
 for brightening Phoebe's life. It was the convenient place to live in, 
 for having her taught music by Beatrice. It was the convenient 
 place to live in, for occasionally borrowing Polly. It was tho con- 
 venient place to live in, for being joined at will to all sorts of agreeable 
 places and persons. So, ho became settled there, and, his house 
 standing in an elevated situation, it is noteworthy of him in con- 
 clusion, as Polly herself might (not irreverently) have put it : 
 
 "There was an Old Barbox who lived on a h.ill, 
 And if he ain't f^one, he lives there still." 
 
 Here follows the substance of what was seen, heard, or 
 
 OTHERWISE PICKED UP, BY THE GeNTLEMAN FOR NoWHERE, IN HIS 
 CAREFUL STUDY OF THE JUNOTIO:;.
 
 CHAPTEK III. 
 
 THE BOY AT MUGBY. 
 
 I AM the boy at Mngby. That's about what I am. 
 
 You don't know wliat I mean'? Wliat a pity! But I think you 
 do. I thinlc you must. Look here. I am the boy at what is called 
 The Refreshment lloom at Mugby Junction, and what's proiulest 
 boast is, that it never yet refreshed a mortal being. 
 
 Up in a corner of the Down Eefreslimeut Koom at Mugby Junction, 
 in the height of twenty-seven cross draughts (I've often counted 'em 
 while they brush the First-Class hair twenty-seven ways), behind tlio 
 bottles, among the glasses, bounded on tlie nor' west by the beer, stood 
 pretty far to the right of a metallic object that's at times the tea-urn 
 and at times the soup-tureen, according to the nature of the last 
 twang imparted to its contents which are the same groundwork, fended 
 off from the traveller by a barrier of stale sponge-cakes erected atop 
 of the counter, and lastly exposed sideways to the glare of Our 
 Missis's eye you ask a Boy so sitiwated, next time you stoj) in a 
 hurry at Mugby, for anything to drink ; you take particular notice 
 that he'll try to seem not to hear you, that he'll appear in a absent 
 manner to survey the Line through a transparent medium composed 
 of your head and body, and that ho won't serve you as long as you 
 can possibly bear it. That's me. 
 
 What a lark it is ! We are the Model Establishment, we are, at 
 Mugby. Other Eefreshment llooms send their imperfect young ladies 
 up to be finished off by our Missis. For some of the young ladies, 
 when they're new to the business, come into it mild ! Ah ! Our 
 Missis, she soon takes tliat out of 'em. Why, I originally come into 
 the business meek myself. But Our Missis, she soon took that out 
 of me. 
 
 W^hat a delightful lark it is ! I loolc upon us Rcfreshmcnters as 
 ockipying the only proudly independent footing on the Line. There's 
 Papers, for instance, my honourable friend, if he will allow mo to 
 call him so, liim as belongs to Smith's bookstall. Why, he no more 
 dares to bo up to our liefreshmenting games than he dares to jump a 
 top of a locomotive with her steam at full pressure, and cut away 
 upon her alone, driving himself, at limited-mail speed. Papers, 
 he'd get his head punched at every compartment, first, second, and 
 third, the whole length of a train, if he was to ventur to imitate 
 my demeanour. It's the same with the porters, the same with the 
 guards, the same with the ticket clerks, tlio same the whole way up 
 to the secretarj', traffic-manager, or very chairman. There ain't a 
 one among 'em on tho nobly independent footing wo are. Did you 
 ever catch one of th'-m. when you wanted anything of him, making a
 
 TJie Model Refreshment Room. 357 
 
 system of surveying the Line through a transparent medium composed 
 of your head and body ? I should hope not. 
 
 You should see our Bandolining Room at Mugby Junction. It's 
 led to by the door behind the counter, which you'll notice usually 
 stands ajar, and it's the room where Our Missis and our young ladies 
 Bandolines their hair. You should see 'em at it, betwixt trains, 
 Bandolining away, as if they was anointing themselves for the 
 combat. When you're telegraphed, you should see their noses all 
 a-going up with scorn, as if it was a part of the working of the same 
 Cooke and Wheatstone electrical machinery. You should hear Our 
 Missis give the word, " Here comes the Beast to be Fed ! " and then 
 you should see 'em indignantly skipping across tlie Line, from tho 
 Up to the Down, or Wicer Warsaw, and begin to pitch tho stale 
 j)astry into the plates, and chuck the sawdust sangwiches under the 
 glass covers, and get out the ha, ha, ha ! the sherry, my eye, 
 my eye !^for your Refreshment. 
 
 It's only in the Isle of the Brave and Land of the Free (by which, 
 of course, I mean to say Britannia) that Refreshmenting is so effective, 
 so 'olesome, so constitutional a check upon the public. There was a 
 Foreigner, which having politely, with his hat off, beseeched our 
 young ladies and Our Missis for " a leetcl gloss lioff prarndec," and 
 having had the Line surveyed through him by all and no other 
 acknowledgment, was a-proceeding at last to help himself, as seems 
 to be the custom in his own country, when Our Missis, with her hair 
 almost a-coming un-Bandolined with rage, and her eyes omitting 
 sparks, flew at him, cotched the decanter out of his hand, and said, 
 " Put it down ! I won't allow that ! " The foreigner turned pale, 
 stepped back with his arms stretched out in front of him, his hands 
 clasped, and his shoulders riz, and exclaimed : " Ah ! Is it possible, 
 this ! That these disdaineous females and this ferocious old woman 
 are placed here by the administration, not only to empoison the 
 voyagers, but to affront tlicm ! Great Heaven ! How arrives it ? 
 The English people. Or is he then a slave? Or idiot?" Another 
 time, a merry, wideawake American gent had tried the sawdust and 
 spit it out, and had tried the Sherry and sjnt that out, and had tried 
 in vain to sustain exhausted natur tipon Butter-Scotch, and had been 
 rather extra Bandolined and Lino-surveyed through, when, as the bell 
 was ringing and he paid Our Missis, he says, very loud and good- 
 tempered : "I tell Yew what 'tis, ma'arm. I la'af. Theer ! I la'af. 
 I Dew. I oughter ha' seen most tilings, for I hail from the Onlimited 
 side of the Atlantic Ocean, and I haive travelled right slick over the 
 Limited, head on through Jeerusalemm and tho East, and likeways 
 France and Italy, Europe Old World, and am now upon the track to 
 the Chief Europian Village ; but such an Institution as Yew, and 
 Yewer young ladies, and Yewer fixin's solid and liquid, afore the 
 glorious Tarnal I never did see yet ! And if I hain't found the eighth 
 wonder of monarchical Creation, in finding Yew and Yewer young
 
 358 Mughy Junction. 
 
 ladies, and Yewer fixin's solid and liquidj all as aforesaid, established 
 in a country wlicro the peoj^lo aix* not ahsolnto Loo-naticks, I am 
 Extra Double Darned with a Nip and Frizzle to the innermostest 
 grit! Wheerfur Thecr ! I la'af! I Dew, ma'arm. I la'af!" 
 And so he went, stani2)ing and shaking his sides, along the platform 
 all the Avay to his own compartment. 
 
 I think it was her standing up agin the Foreigner as giv' Our 
 Missis the idea of going over to France, and droring a comparison 
 betwixt Ecfreshmenting as followed among the frog-eaters, and 
 liefreshmenting as triumphant in the Isle of the Bravo and Land of 
 th Free (by which, of course, I mean to say agin, Britannia). Our 
 young ladies. Miss "VYhifF, Miss Piff, and Mrs. Sniff, was unanimous 
 opj)osed to her going ; for, as they says to Our Missis one and all, it 
 is well beknown to the hends of the berth as no other nation except 
 Britain has a idea of anythink, but above all of business. Why then 
 should you tire yourself to prove what is already proved ? Our 
 Missis, however (being a teazer at all pints) stood out grim obstinate, 
 and got a return pass by Southeastern Tidal, to go right through, if 
 such should be her dispositions, to Marseilles. 
 
 Sniff is husband to Mrs. Sniff, and is a regular insignificant cove. 
 He looks arter the sawdust department in a back room, and is some- 
 times, when we are very hard put to it, let behind the counter with 
 a corkscrew ; but never when it can be helped, his demeanour towards 
 the public being disgusting servile. How IVIrs. Sniff ever come so 
 far to lower herself as to marry him, I don't know ; but I suppose lia 
 does, and I should think ho wished ho didn't, for he leads a awful 
 life. Mrs. Sniff couldn't be much harder with him if ho was public. 
 Similarly, Miss Whifl' and Miss Piff, taking the tone of Mrs. Sniff, 
 they shoulder Sniff' about when he u let in with a corkscrew, and 
 they whisk things out of his hands when in his servility ho is a-going 
 to let the public have 'em, and they snaj^ him up when in the crawling 
 baseness of his spirit he is a-going to answer a public question, and 
 they droro more tears into his eyes than ever the mustard does which 
 ho all day long lays on to the sawdust. (But it ain't strong.) Once, 
 when Sniff had the repulsivoness to reach across to get the milk-pot 
 to hand over for a baby, I see Our Missis in her rage catch him by 
 both his shoulders, and spin him out into the Bandolining Boom. 
 
 But Mrs. Sniff", how different ! She's the one ! She's tlic one as 
 3'ou'll notice to be always looking another way from you, when j'^ou 
 look at lier. She's the one with the small waist buclcled in tight in 
 front, and with the lace cuffs at her wrists, which she puts on tho 
 edge of the counter before her, and stands a smoothing while tlic 
 public foams. Tliis smoothing the cuffs and looking another way 
 v/hilo tlic public foams is the last accomplislimcnt taught to tlie young 
 ladies as come to Mug])y to be finisliod by Our Missis ; and it's always 
 taught by Mrs. Sniff. 
 
 Wlion Our Missis went away upon her journey, Mrs, Sniff was left
 
 Our Missis's Views of Foreign RefresJunenting. 359 
 
 in charge. She did hold the public in check most beaiitiful ! In all 
 my time, I never see half so many cups of tea given without milk to 
 people as wanted it with, nor half so many cups of tea with milk 
 given to people as wanted it without. When foaming ensued, Mrs. 
 Sniff would say : " Then you'd better settle it among yourselves, and 
 change with one another." It was a most highly delicious lark. I 
 enjoyed the Eefreshmenting business more than ever, and was so glad 
 I had took to it when young. 
 
 Our Missis returned. It got circulated among the young ladies, 
 and it as it might be penetrated to me through the crevices of the 
 Bandolining Room, that she had Orrors to reveal, if revelations so 
 contemptible could be dignified ^vith the name. Agitation become 
 awakened. Excitement was uj) in the stirrups. Expectation stood 
 a-tiptoe. At length it was put forth that on our slacked evening in 
 the week, and at our slackest time of that evening betwixt trains, Our 
 Missis would give her views of foreign Eefreshmenting, in the Ban- 
 dolining Room. 
 
 It was arranged tasteful for the purpose. The Bandolining table 
 and glass was hid in a corner, a arm-chair was elevated on a packing- 
 case for Our Missis's ockypation, a table and a tumbler of water (no 
 sherry in it, thankee) was placed beside it. Two of the pupils, the 
 season being autumn, and hollyhocks and dahlias being in, ornamented 
 the wall with three devices in those flowers. On one might be read, 
 *' May Albion nevee Learn ; " on another " Keep the Public Down ; " 
 on another, " Our Refreshmenting Charter." The whole had a 
 beautiful appearance, with which the beauty of the sentiments 
 corresponded. 
 
 On Our Missis's brow was wrote Severity, as she ascended the fatal 
 platform. (Not that that was auythink new.) Miss Whiff and Miss 
 Piff sat at her feet. Three chairs from the Waiting Room might 
 have been perceived by a average eye, in front of her, on which the 
 pupils was accommodated. Behind them a very close observer might 
 have discerned a Boy. Myself. 
 
 " Where," said Our Missis, glancing gloomily around, "is Sniff?" 
 
 " I thought it better," answered Mrs. Sniff, " that he should not bo 
 let to come in. He is such an Ass." 
 
 " No doubt," assented Our Missis. " But for that reason is it not 
 desirable to improve his mind ? " 
 
 " Oh, nothing will ever improve A/m," said Mrs. Sniff. 
 
 " However," pursued Our Missis, " call him in, Ezoldol." 
 
 I called him in. The appearance of the low-minded cove was 
 hailed with disapprobation from all sides, on account of his having 
 brought his corkscrew with him. Ho pleaded " the force of habit." 
 
 " The force ! " said Mrs. Sniff. " Don't let us have you talking 
 about force, for Gracious' sake. There ! Do stand still where you 
 are, with your back against the wall." 
 
 Ho is a smiling piece of vacancy, and he smiled in the mean way in
 
 360 Mugby Jjmction. 
 
 which he will even smile at the public if he gets a chance (language 
 can say no meaner of him), and he stood upright near tlie door with 
 the back of his head agin the wall, as if lie was a waiting for some- 
 body to come and measure his heighth for the Army. 
 
 "I should not cuter, ladies," says Our Missis, "on the revolting 
 disclosures I am about to make, if it was not in the hope that they 
 will cause you to be yet more implacable in the exercise of the power 
 you wield in a constitutional country, and yet more devoted to the 
 constitutional motto which I see before me," it was behind her, but 
 the words sounded better so, " ' May Albion never learn !' " 
 
 Hero the pujuls as had made the motto admired it, and cried, 
 " Hear ! Hear ! Hear ! " Sniff, showing an inclination to join in 
 chorus, got himself frowned down by every brow. 
 
 " The baseness of the Froncli," pursued Our Missis, "as displayed 
 in the fawning nature of their Rcfreshmenting, equals, if not sur- 
 passes, any think as was ever heard of the baseness of the celebrated 
 Bonaparte." 
 
 Miss WhifF, Miss Piflf, and me, we drorcd. a heavy breath, equal to 
 saying, " We thought as much ! " Miss Whiff and Miss Piff seeming 
 to object to ray droriug mine along with theirs, I drored another to 
 aggravate 'em. 
 
 " Shall I be believed," says Our Missis, with flashing eyes, " when 
 I tell you that no sooner had I set my foot upon that treacherous 
 shore " 
 
 Here Sniff, either bursting out mad, or thinking aloud, says, in a 
 low voice : " Feet. Plural, you know." 
 
 The cowering that come upon him when he was spurned by all 
 eyes, added to his being beneath contempt, was sufficient punishment 
 for a cove so grovelling. In the midst of a silence rendered more 
 impressive by the turned-up female noses with which it was pervaded, 
 Our Missis went on : 
 
 " Shall I be believed when I tell you, that no sooner had I landed," 
 this word with a killing look at Snifl", " on that treacherous shore, 
 than I was ushered into a Kcfrcshment Room Avlierc there v/erc I do 
 not exaggerate actually eatable things to eat ? " 
 
 A groan burst from the ladies. I not only did myself the honour 
 of jining, but also of lengthening it out. 
 
 " Whore there were," Our Missis added, " not only eatable things to 
 eat, but also drinkable things to drink V " 
 
 A murmur, swelling almost into a scream, ariz. Miss Piff, trcm]ling 
 with indignation, called out. " Name V " 
 
 "I will name," said Our Missis. " There was roast fowls, hot and 
 cold ; thcro was smoking roast veal surrounded with browned j^otatoes ; 
 there was hot souj) with (again I ask shall I be credited ?) nothing 
 bitter in it, and no flour to choke off the consumer ; there was a variety 
 of cold dislies set ofl" with jelly ; there was salad ; there was mark 
 rao ! /r<?67( pastry, and that of a light construction ; there was a luseious
 
 Unconstitutional Proceedings in France. 361 
 
 show of fruit ; there was bottles and decanters of sound small wine, 
 of every size, and adapted to every pocket ; the same odious statement 
 will apply to brandy ; and these were set out upon the counter so that 
 all could help themselves." 
 
 Our Missis's lips so quivered, that Mrs. Sniff, though scarcely less 
 convulsed than she were, got up and held the tumbler to them. 
 
 " This," proceeds Our Missis, " was my first unconstitutional expe- 
 rience. Well would it have been if it had been my last and worst. 
 But no. As I proceeded farther into that enslaved and ignorant land, 
 its aspect became more hideous. I need not explain to this assembly 
 the ingredients and formation of the British Refreshment sangwich ? " 
 
 Universal laughter, except from Sniff, who, as saugwich-cutter, 
 shook his head in a state of the utmost dejection as he stood with it 
 agin the wall. 
 
 " Well ! " said Our Missis, with dilated nostrils. " Take a fresh, 
 crisp, long, crusty penny loaf made of the whitest and best flour. Cut 
 it longwise through the middle. Insert a fair and nicely fitting slice 
 of ham. Tic a smart piece of ribbon round the middle of the whole 
 to bind it together. Add at one end a neat wrapper of clean white 
 paper by which to hold it. And the universal French Refreshment 
 sangwich busts on your disgusted vision." 
 
 A cry of " Shame ! " from all except Sniff, which rubbed his 
 stomach with a soothing hand. 
 
 " I need not," said Our Missis, " explain to this assembly the usual 
 formation and fitting of the British Refreshment Room ? " 
 
 No, no, and laughter. Sniff agin shaking his head in low spirits 
 agin the wall. 
 
 " Well," said Our Missis, " what would you say to a general decora- 
 tion of cvcrythink, to hangings (sometimes elegant), to easy velvet 
 furniture, to abundance of little tables, to abundance of little seats, to 
 l)risk bright waiters, to great convenience, to a pervading cleanliness 
 !ind tastefulness positively addressing the public, and making the 
 l>cast thinking itself worth the pains ? " 
 
 Contemptuous fury on the part of all the ladies. Mrs. Sniff looking 
 us if she wanted somebody to hold her, and everbody else looking as 
 if they'd rayther not. 
 
 " Three times," said Our Missis, working herself into a truly 
 terrimenjious state, " three times did I see these shameful things, 
 only between the coast and Paris, and not counting citlier : at Hazc- 
 broucke, at Arras, at Amiens. But worse remains. Tell me, what 
 Avould you call a person who should propose in England that there 
 sliould be kept, say at our own model Mugby Junction, pretty baskets, 
 each holding an assorted cold lunch and dessert for one, each at a 
 certain fixed price, and each within a passenger's power to take away, 
 to empty in the carriage at perfect leisure, and to return at another 
 station fifty or a hundred miles farther on ? " 
 
 There was disagreement what such a person should be called.
 
 362 Mtighy Junction. 
 
 Whether revolutionist, atheist, Bright (I said him), or Un-English. 
 Miss Piff screeched her shrill opinion last, in the words : " A 
 malignant maniac ! " 
 
 " I adopt," says Our Missis, " the brand set upon such a person by 
 the righteous indignation of my friend Miss Piff. A malignant maniac. 
 Know, then, that that malignant maniac has sprung from the congenial 
 soil of France, and that his malignant madness was in unchecked 
 action on this same part of my joiirney." 
 
 I noticed that Sniff was a-rubbing his hands, and that Mrs. Sniff 
 had got her eye upon him. But I did not take more particular notice, 
 owing to the excited state in which the young ladies was, and to 
 feeling myself called upon to keep it up with a howl. 
 
 " On my experience south of Paris," said Our Missis, in a deep 
 tone, " I will not expatiate. Too loathsome were the task ! But 
 fancy this. Fancy a guard coming round, with the train at full 6i)eed, 
 to inquire how many for dinner. Fancy his telegraphing forward the 
 number of dinners. Fancy every one expected, and the table elegantly 
 laid for the complete party. Fancy a charming dinner, in a charming 
 room, and the head-cook, concerned for the honour of every dish, 
 Buperinteudiug in his clean white jacket and cap. Fancy the Beast 
 travelling six hundred miles on end, very fast, and with great 
 pxmctuality, yet being taught to expect all this to be done for it ! " 
 
 A spirited chorus of " The Beast ! " 
 
 I noticed that Sniff was agin a-rubbing his stomach with a sootliing 
 liand, and that he had drorod up one leg. But agin I didn't take par- 
 ticular notice, looking on myself as called upon to stimulate public 
 feeling. It being a lark besides. 
 
 " Putting everything together," said Our Missis, " French Eefresh- 
 montiug comes to this, and oh, it comes to a nice total ! First : 
 eatable things to eat, and drinkable things to drink." 
 
 A groan from the young ladies, kop' uj) by mo. 
 
 " Second : convenience, and even elegance." 
 
 Another groan from the yoixng ladies, kcp' up by nie. 
 
 " Third : moderate charges." 
 
 This time a groan from me, kep' up by the young ladies. 
 
 " Fourth : and here," says Our Missis, " I claim your angriest 
 sympathy, attention, common civility, nay, even politeness ! " 
 
 Me and the young ladies regularly raging mad all together. 
 
 " And I cannot in conclusion," says Our Missis, witli her spitcfullcst 
 sneer, " give you a completer pictur of that despicable nation (after 
 what I have related), than assuring you that they wouldn't bear our 
 constitutional ways and noble independence at Mugby Junction, for a 
 single month, and that tlicy would turn us to the right-about and put 
 anotlier system in our places, as soon as look at xis ; perhaps sooner, 
 for I do not believe they have the good taste to care to look at us 
 twice." 
 
 The swelling tumult was arrested in its rise. Sniff, bore away by
 
 Disappearance of Sniff. 363 
 
 his servile disposition, had drorcd up his leg with a higher and a 
 higher relish, and was now discovered to bo waving his corkscrew 
 over his head. It was at this moment that Mrs. Sniff, who had kcp' 
 her eye upon him like the fabled obelisk, descended on her victim. 
 Our Missis followed them both ont, and cries was heard in the sawdust 
 department. 
 
 You come into the Down Eefreshment Eoom, at the Junction, 
 making believe you don't know me, and I'll pint you out with my 
 right thumb over my shoulder which is Our Missis, and which is Miss 
 Whiff, and which is Miss Piff, and which is Mrs. Sniff. But you 
 won't get a chance to see Sniff, because he disappeared that night. 
 Whether he perished, tore to pieces, I cannot say ; but his corkscrew 
 alone remains, to bear witness to the servility of his disposition.
 
 NO THOROUGHFARE. 
 
 [1867.] 
 
 [This v.-as written by INIr. Wilkic Collins conjointly with Mr. Dickens ; the only 
 ]i()rtions furnished exclusively bj' Mr. Dickens being the " Overture " and the " Third 
 Act ; " Mr. Collins contributing to acts first and fourth, and writing the whole of the 
 second.] 
 
 THE OVERTURE. 
 
 Day of tho month and year, November tlie tliirtietb, one tliousaiul 
 eight hundred and thirty-five. London Time by the great clock of 
 Saint Paul's, ten at night. All the lesser London churches strain their 
 metallic throats. Some, flippantly begin before the heavy bell of the 
 great cathedral ; some, tardily begin three, four, half a dozen, strokes 
 behind it ; all are in sufficiently near accord, to leave a resonance in 
 the air, as if the winged father who devours his children, had made a 
 sounding sweep with his gigantic scythe in flying over the city. 
 
 What is this clock lower than most of the rest, and nearer to the 
 ear, tliat lags so far behind to-night as to strike into the vibration 
 iilone ? This is the clock of the Hospital for Foundling Children. 
 Time was, when the Foundlings were received without question in 
 a cradle at tho gate. Time is, when inquiries are made respecting 
 them, and they are taken as by favour from the mothers who relin- 
 quisli all natural knowledge of tlicm and claini to them for evermore. 
 
 Tlie moon is at the full, and tho night is fixir with liglit clouds. 
 The day has been otherwise than fair, for slush and mud, tliickcned 
 with tlie droppings of heavy fog, lie black in tlie streets. Tlie veiled 
 lady who flutters up and down near the postern-gate of tho Hospital 
 for Foundling Children has need to be well shod to-night. 
 
 She flutters to and fro, avoiding the stand of hackney-coaches, aiid 
 often pausing in the sliadow of the western end of the great quad- 
 rangle wall, with her face turned towards tlie gate. As above lier 
 there is the purity of tho moonlit sky, and behnv her there are tlie 
 defilements of the pavement, so may she, haply, bo divided in her 
 mind between two vistas of reflection or experience. As her foot-
 
 NO THOROUGHFARE.
 
 Sally a7id the Veiled Lady. 365 
 
 prints crossing and recrossing one another have made a labyrinth in 
 the mire, so may her track in life have involved itself in an intricate 
 and nnravellable tangle. 
 
 The postern-gato of the Hospital for Foundling Children opens, 
 and a young woman comes out. The lady stands aside, observes 
 closely, sees that the gate is quietly closed again from within, and 
 follows the young woman. 
 
 Two or three streets have been traversed in silence before she, 
 following close behind the object of her attention, stretches out her 
 hand and touches her. Then the young woman stops and looks round, 
 startled. 
 
 " You touched mc last night, and, when I turned my head, you 
 would not sjjeak. Why do you follow me like a silent ghost ? " 
 
 " It was not," returned the lady, in a low voice, " that I would not 
 speak, but that I could not when I tried." 
 
 " What do you want of me ? I have never done you any harm ? " 
 
 " Never." 
 
 " Do I know you ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Then what can you want of me ? " 
 
 " Here are two guineas in this pai)cr. Take my i^oor little present, 
 and I will tell you." 
 
 Into the young woman's face, which is honest and comely, comes a 
 flush as she replies : " There is neither grown person nor child in all 
 the large establishment that I belong to, who hasn't a good word for 
 Sally. I am Sally. Could I bo so well thought of, if I was to bo 
 bought ? " 
 
 " I do not mean to buy you \ I mean only to reward you very 
 slightly." 
 
 Sally firmly, but not ungently, closes and puts back the oftering 
 hand. " If there is anything I can do for you, ma'am, that I will not 
 do for its own sake, you are much mistaken in me if you think that I 
 will do it for money. What is it you v.ant ? " 
 
 " You are one of the nurses or attendants at the Hospital ; I saw 
 you leave to-night and last night." 
 
 'Y'^es, I am. I am Sally." 
 
 " There is a pleasant patience in your face which makes mo believe 
 that very young children would take readily to you." 
 
 " God bless 'em ! So they do." 
 
 The lady lifts her veil, and shows a face no older than the nurse's. 
 A face far more refined and capable than hers, but wild and worn 
 with sorrow. 
 
 " I am the miserable mother of a baby lately received under your 
 care. I have a prayer to make to you." 
 
 Instinctively respecting the confidence which has drawn aside tho 
 veil, Sally whose ways are all ways of simplicity and spontaneity 
 replaces it, and begins to cry.
 
 366 No Thoroughfare. 
 
 "You will listen to my prayer? " the lady urges. " You will not 
 be deaf to tlie agonised entreaty of sucli a broken sujipliant as 
 I am ? " 
 
 " O dear, dear, dear ! " cries Sally. " What shall I say, or can I 
 say ! Don't talk of prayers. Prayers are to be put up to the Good 
 Father of All, and not to nurses and such. And there ! I am only to 
 liold my place for half a year longer, till another young woman can 
 bo trained up to it. I am going to bo married. I shouldn't have 
 been out last night, and I shouldn't have been out to-night, but that 
 ray Dick (he is the young man I am going to be married to) lies ill, 
 and I help his mother and sister to watch him. Don't take on so, 
 don't take on so ! " 
 
 " good Sally, dear Sally," moans the lady, catching at her dress 
 entreatingly. " As you are hopeful, and I am hopeless ; as a fair 
 way in life is before you, which can never, never, be before mo ; as you 
 can aspire to become a respected wife, and as you can aspire to become 
 a proud mother, as you are a living loving woman, and must die ; for 
 God's sake hear my distracted petition ! " 
 
 '\Deary, deary, deary me 1 " cries Sally, her desperation culminating 
 in the pronoun, " what am I ever to do '? And there ! See how you 
 turn my own words back upon me. I tell you I am going to be 
 married, on purpose to make it clearer to you that I am going to 
 leave, and therefore couldn't help you If I would, Poor Thing, and 
 you make it seem to my own self as if I was cruel in going to be 
 married and not helping you. It ain't kind. Now, is it kind, Poor 
 Thing ? " 
 
 " Sally ! Hear mo, my dear. My entreaty is for no help in the 
 future. It applies to what is past. It is only to bo told in two 
 words." 
 
 " There! This is worse and worse," cries Sally, " sui^posing that I 
 understand what two words you mean." 
 
 " You do understand. What are the names they have given my 
 poor baby ? I ask no moro than that. I have read of tlie customs of 
 the place. He has been clirlstened in the chapel, and registered by 
 some surname in the book. He was received last Monday evening, 
 Wliat have they called him ? " 
 
 Down upon her knees in the foul mud of the by-way into wliicli 
 they have strayed an empty street without a thoroughfare giving on 
 the dark gardens of the Hospital the lady would drop in her pas- 
 Kionate entreaty, but that Sally prevents her. 
 
 ' Don't ! Don't ! You make me fool as if I -^vas setting myself up 
 to bo good. Let me look in your pretty face again. Put your two 
 liands in mine. Now, promise. You will never ask me anything 
 more than the two words ? " 
 
 " Never ! Never ! " 
 
 " You will never put them to a bad use, if I say them V " 
 
 "Nover! Never 1"
 
 The Veiled Lady at the Foundling. 367 
 
 Walter Wilding." 
 
 The lady lays lier face ui)on tlie nurse's breast, draws her close in 
 her embrace with both arms, murmurs a blessing and the words, 
 " Kiss him for me ! " and is gone. 
 
 Day of the month and year, the first Sunday in October, one thou- 
 sand eight hundred and forty-seven. London Time by the great 
 clock of Saint Paul's, half-past one in the afternoon. The clock of 
 the Hospital for Foundling Children is well up with the Cathedral 
 to-day. Service in the chapel is over, and the Foundling children 
 are at dinner. 
 
 There are numerous lookers-on at the dinner, as the custom is. 
 There are two or three governors, whole families from the congrega- 
 tion, smaller groups of both sexes, individual stragglers of various 
 degrees. The bright autumnal sun strikes freshly into the wards ; 
 and the heavy-framed windows through which it shines, and the 
 panelled walls on which it strikes, are such windows and such walls 
 as pervade Hogarth's pictures. The girls' refectory (including that 
 of the younger children) is the principal attraction. Neat attendants 
 silently glide about the orderly and silent tables; the lookers-on 
 move or stop as the fancy takes them ; comments in whispers on face 
 such a number from such a window are not unfrequent ; many of the 
 faces are of a character to fix attention. Some of the visitors from 
 the outside public arc accustomed visitors. They have established a 
 speaking acquaintance with the occupants of particular scats at the 
 tables, and halt at those points to bend down and say a word or two. 
 It is no disparagement to their kindness that those points are generally 
 points where personal attractions arc. The monotony of the long 
 spacious rooms and the double lines of faces is agreeably relieved by 
 these incidents, although so slight. 
 
 A veiled lady, who has no companion, goes among the company. 
 It would seem that curiosity and opportunity have never brought her 
 there before. She has the air of being a little troubled by the sight, 
 and, as she goes the length of the tables, it is with a hesitating step 
 and an uneasy manner. At length she comes to the refectory of the 
 boys. They are so much less popular than the girls that it is bare of 
 visitors when she looks in at the doorway. 
 
 But just within the doorway, chances to stand, inspecting, an 
 elderly female attendant : some order of matron or housekeeper. To 
 W'hom tlie lady addresses natural questions : As, how many boys ? At 
 what age arc they usually put out in life? Do they often take a 
 fancy to the sea ? So, lower and lower in tone until the lady puts 
 the question : " Which is Walter Wilding ? " 
 
 Attendant's head shaken. Against the rules. 
 
 " You know which is Walter Wilding ? " 
 
 So keenly does the attendant feel the closeness with which the 
 lady's eyes examine her face, that she keeps her ovrn eyes fast upon
 
 368 No Thoroughfare. 
 
 the floor, lest by wandering in tho right direction they should betray 
 her. 
 
 " I know which is Walter Wilding, but it is not my place, ma'am, 
 to tell names to visitors." 
 
 " But you can show mc without telling me." 
 
 The lady's hand moves quietly to the attendant's hand. Pause and 
 silence. 
 
 " I am going to i)ass round tho tables," says the lady's interlocutor, 
 without seeming to address her. " Follow me with your eyes. Tho 
 boy tliat I stop at and speak to, will not matter to you. But the boy 
 that I touch, will be Walter Wilding. Say nothing more to me, and 
 move a little away." 
 
 Quickly acting on the hint, the lady passes on into the room, and 
 looks about her. After a few moments, tho attendant, in a staid 
 oflftcial way, walks down outside the line of tables commencing on her 
 left hand. Sho goes tho whole length of the line, turns, and comes 
 back on the inside. Very slightly glancing in the lady's direction, 
 she stops, bends forward, and speaks. The boy whom she addresses, 
 lifts his head and replies. Good humouredly and easily, as sho 
 listens to what he says, she lays her hand upon the shoulder of tho 
 next boy on his right. That the action may bo well noted, she keeps 
 her hand on the slioulder while speaking in return, and pats it twice 
 or thrice before moving away. Sho completes her tour of tho tables, 
 touching no one else, and passes out by a door at the opposite end of 
 the long room. 
 
 Dinner is done, and the lady, too, walks down outside tho line of 
 tables commencing on her left hand, goes tlio whole length of tho 
 line, turns, and comes back on the inside. Other people- have strolled 
 in, fortunately for her, and stand sjirinkled about. She lifts her veil, 
 and, stopping at the touched boy, asks how old ho is ? 
 
 " I am twelve, ma'am," he answers, with his bright eyes fixed on 
 hers. 
 
 " Are you well and happy ? " 
 
 " Yes, ma'am." 
 
 ' jNEay you take these sweetmeats from my hand V " 
 
 *' If you please to give them to me." 
 
 In stooping low for tlie purpose, the lady touclies tho boy's face 
 with her forehead and with her hair. Then, lowering her veil again, 
 the passes on, and 2>asses out without looking back.
 
 ACT I. 
 
 THE CURTAIN RISES. 
 
 Ln a court-yard in the City of London, which was No Thoroughfare 
 either for vehicles or foot-passengers ; a court-yard diverging from a 
 steep, a slippery, and a winding street connecting Tower Street with the 
 Middlesex shore of the Thames ; stood the place of business of 
 Wilding & Co., Wine Merchants. Probably as a jocose acknowledg- 
 ment of the obstructive character of this main approach, the point 
 nearest to its base at which one could take the river (if so inodorously 
 minded) bore the appellation Break-Neck-Stairs. The court-yard 
 itself had likewise been descrii)tively entitled in old time, Crii^plo 
 Corner. 
 
 Years before the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, 
 people had left off taking boat at Break-Neck-Stairs, and watermen 
 had ceased to ply there. The slimy little causeway had dropped into 
 the river by a slow process of suicide, and two or three stumps of 
 piles and a rusty iron mooring-ring were all that remained of the 
 departed Break-Neck glories. Sometimes, indeed, a laden coal barge 
 would bump itself into the place, and certain laborious heavers, 
 seemingly mud-engendered, would arise, deliver the cargo in the 
 neighbourhood, shove off, and vanish ; but at most times the only 
 commerce of Break-Neck-Stairs arose out of the conveyance of casks 
 and bottles, both full and empty, botli to and from the cellars of 
 Wilding & Co., Wine Merchants. Even that commerce was but 
 occasional, and through three-fourths of its rising tides the dirty 
 indecorous drab of a river would come solitarily oozing and lapping at 
 the rusty ring, as if it had heard of the Doge and the Adriatic, and 
 wanted to be married to the great conserver of its filthiness, the Eight 
 Honourable the Lord Mayor. 
 
 Some two hundred and fifty yards on the right, up the opposite hill 
 (approaching it from the low^ ground of Break-Neck-Stairs) was Cripple 
 Corner. There was a pump in Crij^ple Corner, there was a tree in 
 Cripple Corner. All Crij^plo Corner belonged to W^ildiug and Co., 
 Wine Merchants. Their ccllai's burrowed under it, their mansion 
 towered over it. It really had been a mansion in the days when 
 merchants inhabited the City, and had a ceremonious shelter to the 
 doorway without visible supi:)ort, like tlie sounding-board over an 
 old pulpit. It had also a number of long narrow strij^s of window, so 
 disposed in its grave brick front as to render it symmetrically ugly. 
 It had also, on its roof, a cupola with a bell in it, 
 
 " When a man at five-and-twenty can put his liat on, and can say 
 ' this hat covers the owner of this property and of the business which 
 is transacted on this property,' I consider, Mr. Bintrey, that, witliout 
 
 2 b
 
 370 No Thoroughfare. 
 
 being boastful, ho may be allowed to be deeply thankful. I don't 
 know how it may appear to you, but so it appears to mo." 
 
 Thus Mr. Walter Wilding to his man of law, in his own counting- 
 house ; taking his hat down from its peg to suit the action to the 
 word, and hanging it up again when ho had done so, not to overstep 
 the modesty of nature. 
 
 An innocent, open-speaking, unused-looking man, Mr. Walter 
 Wilding, with a remarkably pink and white complexion, and a figuro 
 much too bulky for so young a man, though of a good stature. With 
 crispy curling brown hair, and amiable bright blue eyes. An ex- 
 tremely communicative man : a man with whom loquacity was the 
 irrcstrainablo outpouring of contentment and gratitude. Mr. Bintrey, 
 on the other hand, a cautious man, with tmnkliiig. beads of eyes in a 
 large overhanging bald head, who inwardly but intensely enjoyed the 
 comicality of openness of speech, or hand, or heart. 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Bintrey. " Yes. Ha, ha ! " 
 
 A decanter, two wine-glasses, and a plate of biscuits, stood on tho 
 desk. 
 
 " You like this forty-five year old port-wine ? " said Mr. Wilding. 
 
 " Like it ? " repeated Mr. Bintrey. " Kather, sir ! " 
 
 " It's from tlio best corner of our best forty-five year old bin," said 
 Mr. Wilding. 
 
 " Thank you, sir," said Mr. Bintrey. " It's most excellent." 
 
 Ho laughed again, as ho held up his glass and ogled it, at the 
 highly ludicrous idea of giving away such wine. 
 
 "And now," said Wilding, with a childish enjoyment in the 
 discussion of afi'airs, " I think wc have got everything straight, Mr. 
 Bintrey." 
 
 " Everything straight," said Bintrey. 
 
 " A partner secured " 
 
 " Partner secured," said Bintrey. 
 
 " A liousokeoper advertised for " 
 
 " Housekeeper advertised for," said liintrey, " ' a})ply personally at 
 Cripple Corner, Great Tower Street, from ten to twelve ' to-morrow, 
 by the bye." 
 
 "IMy late dear mother's aft'airs wound up " 
 
 " Wound up," said Bintrey. 
 
 " And all charges paid." 
 
 " And all cliargcs paid," said Bintrey, with a elinckle : probably 
 eccasioncd by the droll circumstance that tlicy had been paid witliout 
 a haggle. 
 
 " The mention of my late dear mother,"" Mr. Wilding continued, his 
 eyes filling with tears and his pockot-liandkercliicf drying them, 
 " unmans me still, Mr. Bintrey. You know liow I loved her ; you 
 (licr lawyer) know how she loved me. Tlie utmost love of motJier 
 and child was cherished between us, and we never exjicrienced one 
 moment's division or unhupjuness from the time when she took me
 
 The Man of Property and the Man of Law. 371 
 
 under Jher care. Thirteen years in all ! Thirteen years under my 
 late dear mother's care, Mr. Bintrey, and eight of them her con- 
 fidentially acknowledged son ! You know the story, Mr. Bintrey, 
 who but you, sir ! " Mr. Wilding sobbed and dried his eyes, without 
 attempt at concealment, during these remarks. 
 
 Mr. Bintrey enjoyed his comical port, and said, after rolling it in 
 his mouth : " I know the story." 
 
 " My late dear mother, Mr. Bintrey," pursued the wine-merchant, 
 " had been deei)ly deceived, and had cruelly suffered. But on that 
 subject my late dear mother's lips were for ever sealed. By whom 
 deceived, or under what circumstances. Heaven only knows. My 
 late dear mother never betrayed her betrayer." 
 
 " She had made up her mind," said Mr. Bintrey, again turning his 
 wino on his palate, " and she could hold her peace." An amused 
 twinkle in his eyes pretty plainly added " A devilish deal better 
 than you ever will !" 
 
 " ' Honour,' " said Mr. Wilding, sobbing as he quoted from the 
 Commandments, " ' thy father and thy mother, that thy days may bo 
 long in the land.' When I was in the Foundling, Mr. Bintrey, I was 
 at such a loss how to do it, that I apprehended my days would bo 
 short in the land. But I afterwards came to honour my mother 
 deeply, profoundly. And I honour and revere her memory. For 
 seven hajipy years, Mr. Bintrey," pursued Wilding, still with the 
 same innocent catching in his breath, and the same unabashed tears, 
 " did my excellent mother article me to my predecessors in this 
 business, Pebbleson Nephew. Her affectionate forethought likewise 
 apprenticed me to the Vintners' Company, and made me in time a 
 free Vintner, and and everything else that the best of mothers 
 could desire. When I came of age, she bestowed her inherited share 
 in this business upon me ; it v,'as her money tliat afterwards bought 
 out Pebbleson Nojihow, and painted in Wilding and Co. ; it was she 
 who left me everything she possessed, but the mourning ring you 
 wear. And yet, Mr. Bintrey," with a fresh burst of honest affection, 
 " she is no more. It is little over half a year since she came into tho 
 Corner to road on that door-post with her own eyes, W^ilding and 
 Co., WiXE Mekciiants. And yet she is no more ! " 
 
 " Sad. But tlie common lot, Mr. Wilding," observed Bintrey. 
 " iVt some time or other we must all be no more." He placed tho 
 forty-five year old port-wine in tho universal condition, with a 
 relishing sigh. 
 
 " So now, Mr. Bintrey," pursued W^ilding, putting away his pocket- 
 liandkcrchiof, and smoothing his eyelids with his fingers, " now that 
 I can no longer show my love and honour for the dear parent to 
 whom my heart was mysteriously turned by Nature when she first 
 spoke to rae, a strange lady, I sitting at our Sunday dinner-table in 
 the Foundling, I can at least show that I am not ashamed of having 
 been a Foundling, and that I, who never knew a father of my own,
 
 3/2 No TJiorougJifarc. 
 
 wish to be a father to all in my employment. Therefore," continued 
 Wilding, becoming enthusiastic in his loquacity, " therefore, I want 
 a thoroughly good housekeeper to undertake this dwelling-house of 
 Wilding and Co., Wine Merchants, Cripple Corner, so that I may 
 restore in it some of the old relations betwixt employer and employed ! 
 So that I may live in it on tho sj^ot whore my money is made ! So 
 that I may daily sit at the head of tho table at which tho people in 
 my emidoyment eat together, and may eat of tho same roast and 
 boiled, and drink of tlio same beer ! So that the people in my 
 employment may lodge under the same roof with me ! So that we 
 
 may one and all -I beg your pardon, Mr. IJintrey, but that old 
 
 singing in my head has suddenly como on, and I shall foci obliged if 
 you will lead me to the pump." 
 
 Alarmed by the excessive pinkuoss of his client, Mr. Bintrcy lost 
 not a moment in leading him forth into the court-yard. It was easily 
 done ; for the counting-liouso in which tlicy talked together opened 
 on to it, at one side of tho dwelling-house. There the attorney 
 pumped with a will, obedient to a sign from the client, and the client 
 laved his head and face with both hands, and took a hearty drink. 
 After these remedies, ho declared himself much better. 
 
 " Don't let your good feelings excite you," said Bintrcy, as they 
 returned to the counting-house, and Mr. Wilding dried liinisolf on a 
 jack-towel behind an inner door. 
 
 " No, no. I won't," ho returned, looking out of tho towel. " I 
 won't. I have not been confused, have I ? " 
 
 " Not at all. Perfectly clear." 
 
 " Where did I leave oft', Mr. Bintrey ? " 
 
 " AVoll, you left off but I wouldn't excite myself, if I was you, by 
 taking it up again just yet." 
 
 " I'll take care. I'll take care. Tlic singing in my head came on 
 at where, Mr. Bintrey ? " 
 
 " At roast, and boiled, and beer," answered the lawyer, prompting 
 " lodging under tho same roof and one and all " 
 
 " Ah ! And one and all singing in the head together " 
 
 " Do you know, I really tcould not let my good feelings excite me, 
 if I was you," hinted the lawyer again, anxiously. " Try some more 
 pump." 
 
 " No occasion, no occasion. All right, IMr. Bintrey. And one and 
 all forming a kind of family ! You see, J\Ir. Bintrey, I was not used 
 in my childhood to that sort of individual existence Avliich most 
 individuals have led, more or less, in tlicir cliildhood. After that 
 time I became absorbed in ray late dear mother. Having lost her, I 
 find tliat I am more fit for being one of a body than one l)y myself 
 one. To be that, and at tlio same time to do my duty to those 
 dependent on mo, and attach them to me, has a patriarchal and 
 pleasant air about it. I don't know how it nuiy appear to you, Mr. 
 Bintrcy, but so it appears to me."
 
 A Patriarchal Idea. 373 
 
 " It Is not I who am all-important in tlie case, but you," returned 
 Bintrey. " Consequently, how it may appear to me is of very small 
 importance." 
 
 " It appears to me" said Mr. Wilding, in a glow, " hopeful, useful, 
 delightful ! " 
 
 " Do you know," hinted the lawyer again, " I really v/ould not 
 ex " 
 
 " I am not going to. Tlien there's Handel." 
 
 " There's who ? " asked Bintrey. 
 
 " Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Kent, Purcell, Doctor Arne, Greene, 
 Mendelssohn. I know the choruses to those anthems by heart. 
 Foundling Chapel Collection. Why shouldn't we learn them 
 together ? " 
 
 " Who learn them together ? " asked the lawyer, rather shortly. 
 
 " Employer and employed." 
 
 " Ay, ay," returned Bintrey, mollified ; as if he had half expected 
 the answer to be, Lawyer and client. " That's another thing." 
 
 " Not another thing, Mr. Bintrey ! The same thing. A part of 
 the bond among us. W"e will form a Choir in some quiet church 
 near the Corner here, and, having sung together of a Sunday with a 
 relish, we will come home and take an early dinner together with a 
 relish. The object that I have at heart now is, to get this system 
 well in action without delay, so that my new partner may find it 
 foimded when he enters on his partnershij)." 
 
 " All good be with it ! " exclaimed Bintrey, rising. " May it 
 prosper ! Is Joey Ladle to take a share in Handel, Mozart, Haydn, 
 Kent, Purcell, Doctor Arne, Greene, and Mendelssohn ? " 
 
 " I hope so." 
 
 " I wish them all well out of it," returned Bintrey, with much 
 heartiness. " Good-bye, sir." 
 
 They shook hands and parted. Then (first knocking with his 
 knuckles for leave) entered to Mr. Wilding from a door of com- 
 munication between his private counting-house and that in which his 
 clerks sat, the Head Cellarman of the cellars of Wilding and Co., 
 Wine Merchants, and erst Head Cellarman of the cellars of Pebbleson 
 Ne2:)hew. The Joey Ladle in question. A slow and ponderous man, 
 of the drayman order of human architecture, dressed in a corrugated 
 suit and bibbed apron, apparently a composite of door-mat and 
 rhinoceros-hide. 
 
 " Respecting this same boarding and lodging, Young Master 
 AVilding," said he. 
 
 " Yes, Joey ? " 
 
 " Speaking for myself. Young Master Wilding and I never did 
 speak and I never do speak for no one else I don't want no boarding 
 nor yet no lodging. But if you wish to board me and to lodge me, 
 take me. I can peck as well as most men. Where I peck ain't so 
 high a object with me as What I peck. Nor even so high a object
 
 374 ^'^ TJioroiighfare. 
 
 with mo as How Much I peck. Is all to live in the house, Young 
 Master Wilding ? The two other cellarmen, the three porters, the 
 two 'prentices, and the odd men ? " 
 
 '^ Yes. I hope we shall all be an united family, Joey." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Joey. " I hope they may be." 
 
 *' They ? Rather say we, Joey." 
 
 Joey Ladle shook his head. " Don't look to me to make we on it, 
 Young Master Wilding, not at my time of life and under the circum- 
 starnces v/hich has formed my disposition. I have said to Pebbleson 
 Ne];)hew many a time, wlien they have said to n:o, ' Put a livelier face 
 upon it, Joey ' I have said to them, ' Gentlemen, it is all wery well 
 for you that has been accustomed to take your wine into your systems 
 by the conwivial channel of your throttles, to put a lively face upon 
 it ; but,' I says, ' I have been accustomed to take my wine in at the 
 pores of the skin, and, took that way, it acts diifercnt. It acts 
 depressing. It's one thing, gentlemen,' I says to Pebbleson Nephew, 
 ' to cliarge your glasses in a dining-room with a Hip Hurrah and a 
 Jolly Companions Every One, and it's another thing to be charged 
 yoiirself, through the pores, in a low dark collar and a mouldy 
 atmosi)here. It makes all the difference betwixt bubbles and wapours,' 
 I tells Pebbleson Nephew. And so it do. I've been a collarman my 
 life through, with my mind fully given to the business. What's the 
 consequence? I'm as muddled a man as lives you v.'on't find a 
 muddleder man than me nor yet you won't find my equal in 
 molloncolly. Sing of Filling tlie bumper fair. Every drop you 
 sprinkle, O'er the brow of care, Smooths away a wrinkle? Yes. 
 P'raps so. But try filling yourself through the pores, underground, 
 when you don't want to it ! " 
 
 " I am sorry to hear this, Joey. I had oven thought that you might 
 join a singing-class in the house." 
 
 " ]\Ie, sir ? No, no. Young Master Wilding, you won't catch Joey 
 Ladle muddling the Armony. A pecking-machine, sir, is all that I 
 am capable of proving myself, out of my cellars ; but that you're 
 welcome to, if you think it's worth your while to keep such a thing 
 on your premises." 
 
 " I do, Joey." 
 
 " Say no more, sir. Tlio Busincss's word is my law. And you're 
 a going to take Young Master George Vendale partner into the old 
 Business? " 
 
 " I am, Joey." 
 
 " j\Iore changes, you see ! But don't change the name of tlic Finn 
 again. Don't do it, Young Master Wilding. It mus bad luck enough 
 to make it Yourself and Co. Better by far have left it l-'ebblesoa 
 Nephew that good luck always stuck lo. You should never cliange 
 luck when it's good, sir." 
 
 " At ."dl events, I liave no intentio]i of eliiingiiig tlie name of (he 
 House again, Joey."
 
 Wanted, a Housekeeper. 375 
 
 " Glad to hear it, and wish you good-day, Yoting Master Wilding. 
 But you had better by half," muttered Joey Ladle iuaudibly, as he 
 closed the door and shook his head, " have let the name alone from 
 the first. You had better by half have followed the luck instead of 
 crossing it." 
 
 ENTER THE HOUSEKEEPER. 
 
 The wine merchant sat in his dining-room nest morning, to receive 
 the personal applicants for the vacant post in his establishment. It 
 was an old-fashioned wainscoted room ; the panels ornamented with 
 festoons of flowers carved in wood ; with an oaken floor, a well-worn 
 Turkey carpet, and dark mahogany furniture, all of which had seen 
 service and polish under Pebbleson Nephew. The great sideboard 
 had assisted at many business-dinners given by Pebbleson Nephew to 
 their connection, on the principle of throwing sprats overboard to 
 catch whales ; and Pebbleson Nephew's comprehensive three-sided 
 l)late-warmer, made to fit the whole front of the large fireplace, kept 
 watch beneath it over a sarcophagus-shaped cellaret that had in its 
 time held many a dozen of Pebbleson Nephew's wine. But the little 
 rubicund old bachelor with a pigtail, whose portrait was over the 
 sideboard (and who could easily be identified as decidedly Pebbleson 
 and decidedly not Nephew), had retired into another sarcoi^hagns, and 
 the plate-warmer had grown as cold as he. So, the golden and black 
 grifiins that supported the candelabra, with black balls in their mouths 
 at the end of gilded chains, looked as if in their old age they had lost 
 all heart for ])laying at ball, and were dolefully exhibiting their 
 chains in the Missionary line of inquiry, whether they had not earned 
 emancipation by tliis time, and were not grifiins and brothers. 
 
 Such a Columbus of a morning was the summer morning, that it 
 discovered Cripple Corner. The light and warmtli pierced in at tlio 
 open windows, and irradiated the picture of a lady hanging over the 
 chimney-piece, the only otlier decoration of the A\alls. 
 
 " My mother at fivc-and-twenty," said Mr. "Wilding to himself, as 
 his eyes enthusiastically followed the light to tlie portrait's face, " I 
 hang up here, in order that visitors may admire my mother in the 
 bloom of her youth and beauty. My mother at fifty I hang in tlio 
 seclusion of my own chamber, as a remembrance sacred to me. O ! 
 It's you, Jarvis ! " 
 
 These latter words ho addressed to a clerk who had tapped at the 
 door, and now looked in. 
 
 " Yes, sir. I merely wished to mention that it's gone ten, sir, and 
 that there are several females in the Counting-house." 
 
 " Dear me ! " said the wine-merchant, deepening in the pink of his 
 complexion and whitening in tlie white, "arc there several? So 
 many as several ? I had better begin before there are more, I'll see 
 tliom one by one, Jarvis, in the order of their arrival." 
 
 Hastily entrenching himself iu his eaey-chair at the table behind a
 
 37^ ^0 Thoroughfare. 
 
 great iukstaud, liaviug first placed a cliair ou the other side of the 
 table opposite Lis own seat, Mr. Wilding entered on his task with 
 considerable trepidation. 
 
 He ran the gauntlet that must be run on nny such occasion. There 
 were the usual species of profoundly unsympathetic women, and the 
 usual species of much too sympathetic women. There were buccaneer- 
 ing widows who came to seize him, and who griped umbrellas under 
 their arms, as if each umbrella were he, and each griper had got him. 
 There were towering maiden ladies who had seen better days, and 
 who came armed with clerical testimonials to their theology, as if he 
 were Saint Peter with his keys. There were gentle maiden ladies 
 who came to marry him. There were professional housekeepers, like 
 non-commissioned officers, who put him through his domestic exercise, 
 instead of submitting themselves to catechism. There were languid 
 invalids, to whom salary was not so much an object as the comforts of 
 a private hospital. There were sensitive creatures who burst into 
 tears on being addressed, and had to bo restored with glasses of cold 
 water. There were some respondents who came two together, a highly 
 promising one and a wholly unpromising one : of whom the promising 
 one answered all questions charmingly, until it would at last appear 
 that she was not a candidate at all, but only the friend of tlie un- 
 promising one, who had glowered in absolute silence and apparent 
 injury. 
 
 At last, when the good wine-merchant's simple heart was failing 
 him, there entered an applicant quite different from all the rest. A 
 woman, perhaps fifty, but looking younger, with a face remarkable for 
 placid cheerfulness, and a manner no less remarkable for its (piiet 
 expression of equability of temper. Nothing in her dress could have 
 been changed to her advantage. Nothing in the noiseless self- 
 possession of lier manner could have been changed to her advantage. 
 Nothing could have been in better unison with both, than ]ier voice 
 when she answered the question : " What name shall I have tlie 
 pleasure of noting down? " witli the words, " My name is Sarah Gold- 
 straw. Mrs. Goldstraw. My liusband has been dead many years, 
 and we had no family." 
 
 Half-a-dozen questions had scarcely extracted as much to the 
 purpose from any one else. The voice dwelt so agreeably on Mr. 
 Wilding's ear as he made his note, that he was rather long about it. 
 When he looked up again, Mrs. Goldstraw's glance had naturally 
 gone round the room, and now returned to him from the cliimney- 
 pieco. Its expression was one of frank readiness to be questioned, 
 and to answer straight. 
 
 " You will excuse my asking you a few questions ? " said the modest 
 wine-merchant. 
 
 " 0, surely, sir. Or 1 should liave no business here." 
 
 " Have you filled the station of housekeeper befifre V " 
 
 " Only once. I have lived with the same widow lady for twelve
 
 The Hoiisekeeper installed, yj'j 
 
 years. Ever since I lost my husband. She was an invalid, and is 
 lately dead : which is the occasion of my now wearing black." 
 
 " I do not doubt that she has left you the best credentials ? " said 
 Mr. Wilding. 
 
 " I hope I may say, the very best. I thought it would save trouble, 
 sir, if I wrote down the name and address of her representatives, and 
 brought it with inc." Laying a card on the table. 
 
 "You singularly remind me, Mrs. Goldstraw," said Wilding, taking 
 the card beside him, " of a manner and tone of voice that I was once 
 acquainted with. Not of an individual I feel sure of that, though I 
 cannot recall what it is I have in my mind but of a general bearing. 
 I ought to add, it was a kind and pleasant one." 
 
 She smiled, as she rejoined : " At least, I am very glad of that, sir." 
 
 " Yes," said the wine-merchant, thoughtfully repeating his last 
 phrase, with a momentary glance at his future housekcej^er, " it was 
 a kind and pleasant one. But that is the most I can make of it. 
 Memory is sometimes like a half-forgotten dream. I don't know how 
 it may aj^pear to you, Mrs. Goldstraw, but so it appears to me." 
 
 Probably it appeared to Mrs. Goldstraw in a similar light, for she 
 quietly assented to the proposition. Mr. W^ilding then ofiercd to i)ut 
 liimself at once in communication with the gentlemen named upon the 
 card : a firm of proctors in Doctors' Commons. To this, Mrs. Gold- 
 straw thankfully assented. Doctors' Commons not being far off, Mr. 
 Wilding suggested the feasibility of Mrs. Goldstraw's looking in 
 again, say in three hours' time. Mrs. Goldstraw readily uudertoolc 
 to do so. In fine, the result of Mr. Wilding's inquiries being 
 eminently satisfactory, Mrs. Goldstraw was that afternoon engaged 
 (on her own perfectly fair terms) to come to-morrow and set up her 
 rest as housekeeper in Cripple Corner, 
 
 TIIK HODSEKEEPEn SPEAKS. 
 
 On the next day Mrs. Goldstraw arrived, to enter on her domestic 
 duties. 
 
 Having settled herself in her own room, without troubling the 
 servants, and without wasting time, the new housekeeper announced 
 herself as waiting to be favoured with any instructions which her 
 master might wish to give her. The wine-merchant received Mrs. 
 Goldstraw in the dining-room, in which he had seen her on the previous 
 day ; and, the usual preliminary civilities having passed on either 
 side, the two sat down to take counsel together on the affairs of the 
 house. 
 
 " About the meals, sir ? " said Mrs. Goldstraw. " Have I a large, 
 or a small, number to provide for ? " 
 
 ' If I can carry out a certain old-fashioned plan of mine," replied 
 Mr. Wilding, " you will have a large number to provide for. I am a 
 lonely single man, Mrs. Goldstraw ; and I hope to live with all the
 
 3/8 No Thoroughfare. 
 
 persons in my employment as if they were members of my family. 
 Until that time comes, you will only have me, and the new partner 
 whom I expect immediately, to provide for. What my partner's 
 habits may bo, I cannot yet say. But I may describe myself as a 
 man of regular hours, with an invariable appetite that you may 
 depend upon to an ounce." 
 
 " About breakfast, sir ? " asked Mrs. Goldstraw. " Is there 
 anything particular ? " 
 
 She hesitated, and left the sentence unfinished. Her eyes turned 
 slowly away from her master, and looked towards tlie chimney-piece. 
 If she had been a less excellent and experienced housekeeper, Mr, 
 Wilding might have fancied that her attention -was beginning to 
 wander at the very outset of the interview. 
 
 " Eight o'clock is my breakfast-hour," he resumed. " It is one of 
 my virtues to be never tired of broiled bacon, and it is one of my 
 vices to be habitually susjucious of the freshness of eggs." Mrs. 
 Goldstraw looked back at him, still a little divided between her 
 master's chimney-piece and her master. " I take tea," Mr. Wilding 
 went on ; " and I am perhaps rather nervous and fidgety about drink- 
 ing it, within a certain time after it is made. If my tea stands too 
 
 long ; 
 
 lie hesitated, on his side, and left the sentence unfinished. If he 
 had not been engaged in discussing a subject of such paramount 
 interest to himself as his breakfast, Mrs. Goldstraw might have fancied 
 that his attention was beginning to wander at the very outset of the 
 interview. 
 
 " If your tea stands too long, sir ? " said the housekeeper, 
 
 politely taking up her master's lost thread. 
 
 " If my tea stands too long," repeated the wine-merchant mechani- 
 cally, his mind getting farther and farther away from his breakfast, 
 and liis eyes fixing themselves more and more inquiringly on his 
 
 housekeeper's face. " If my tea Dear, dear me, ]\[rs. Goldstraw ! 
 
 what is the manner and tone of voice that you remind mc of? It 
 strikes me even more strongly to-day, than it did wlien I saw" you 
 yesterday. What can it be ? " 
 
 "What can it be?" repeated Mrs. Goldstraw. 
 
 She said the words, evidently thinking wliilc she spoke them (;f 
 something else. Tlio wine-merchant, still looking at her inquiringly, 
 observed that her eyes wandered towards tlie chimnoy-pieec once 
 more. They fixed on the portrait of his motlier, wliich liung there, 
 and looked at it witli that slight contraction of tlie brow whicli 
 accompanies a scarcely conscious efibrt of memory, Mr. \\'ilding 
 iH.niarked : 
 
 '' IMy late dear mother, when she was five-and-twenty." 
 
 Mrs. Goldstraw thanked him with a movement of the luiid for 
 being at the pains to exjjlain the picture, and said, with a I'lciU'cd 
 brow, that it was tlie portrait of a vei'y beautiful lady.
 
 Concerning Walter Wilding. 379 
 
 Mr. Wilding, falling back into his former perplexity, tried once 
 more to recover that lost recollection, associated so closely, and yet 
 so undiscoverably, with his new housekeeper's voice and manner. 
 
 " Excuse my asking you a question which has nothing to do with 
 mo or my breakfast," ho said. "May I inquire if you have ever 
 occupied any other situation than the situation of housekeeper ? " 
 
 " O yes, sir. I began life as one of the nurses at the Foundling." 
 
 " Why, that's it ! " cried the wine-merchant, pushing back his chair. 
 " By heaven ! Their manner is the manner yoii remind me of! " 
 
 In an astonished look at him, Mrs. Goldstraw changed colour, checked 
 herself, turned her eyes upon the ground, and sat still and silent. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " asked Mr. Wilding. 
 
 " Do I understand that you were in the Foundling, sir ? " 
 
 " Certainly. I am not ashamed to ov/u it." 
 
 " Under the name you now bear ? " 
 
 " Under the name of Walter Wilding." 
 
 "And the lady ?" Mrs. Goldstrasv stopped short with a look 
 
 at the portrait which was now unmistakably a look of alarm. 
 
 " You mean my mother," interrupted Mr. Wilding. 
 
 " Your mother," repeated the housekeeper, a little constrainedly, 
 " removed you from the Foundling ? At what age, sir ? " 
 
 " At between eleven and twelve years old. It's quite a romantic 
 adventure, Mrs. Goldstraw." 
 
 He told the story of the lady having spoken to him, while he sat at 
 dinner with the other boys in the Foundling, and of all that had 
 followed in his innocently communicative way. " My poor mother 
 could never have discovered me," he added, " if she had not met with 
 one of the matrons who pitied her. Tlie matron consented to touch 
 the boy whose name was ' Walter Wilding ' as she went round the 
 dinner-tables and so my mother discovered me again, after having 
 parted from mo as an infant at the Foundling doors." 
 
 At those words Mrs. Goldstraw's hand, resting on the table, drojiped 
 liolplessly into her lap. She sat, looking at her new master, with a 
 face that had turned deadly pale, and with eyes that cxj^resscd an 
 unutterable dismay. 
 
 " What does this mean ? " asked the wine-merchant. " Stop ! " he 
 cried. " Is there something else in the past time which I ought to 
 associate with you ? I remember my mother telling me of another 
 person at the Foiandling, to whose kindness she owed a debt of 
 gratitude. When she tirst parted with me, as an infant, one of the 
 nurses informed her of the name that had been given to me in the 
 institution. You were that nurse ? " 
 
 " God forgive me, sir I was that nurse ! " 
 
 " God forgive you ? " 
 
 " We had better get back, sir (if I may make so bold as to say so), 
 to my duties in the house," said Mrs. Goldstraw. "Your breakfast- 
 hour is eight. l)o you lunch, or dine, in the middle of the day V "
 
 380 A^o Thoroughfare. 
 
 Tlie excessive piukncss which Mr. Biutrcy had noticed in his client's 
 face began to appear there once more. Mr. Wikling put his hand to 
 liis head, and mastered some momentary confusion in that quarter, 
 before he spoke again. 
 
 " Mrs. Goklstraw," ho said, "you arc concealing something from 
 me ! " 
 
 The housekeeper obstinately rci)eatoi], " Please to favour mo, 
 sir, by saying whether you lunch, or dine, in the middle of the 
 day?" 
 
 " I don't know what I do in the middle of the day. I can't enter 
 into my household affairs, ]\Irs. Goldstraw, till I know why you regret 
 an act of kindness to my mother, which she always spoke of gratefully 
 to the end of her life. You are not doing mo a service by your 
 silence. You arc agitating me, you are alarming me, you are bringing 
 on tlie singing in my head." 
 
 His hand went up to his head again, and the pink in his face 
 deepened by a shade or two. 
 
 " It's hard, sir, on just entering your service," said the housekeeper, 
 " to say what may cost me the loss of your good will. Please to 
 remember, end how it may, tliat I only speak because you havo 
 insisted on my speaking, and becauso I see that I am alarming you by 
 my silence. AVhen I told the poor lady, whose portrait you have got 
 there, the name by wliicli her infant was christened in the Foundling, 
 I allowed myself to forget my duty, and dreadful consequences, I am 
 afraid, have followed from it. I'll tell you the truth, as plainly us I 
 can. A few months from the time when I liad informed tlic lady of 
 lier baby's name, there came to oiir institution in the country anotlior 
 lady (a stranger), whose object was to adopt one of our children. 
 She brought tlie needful permission witli her, and after looking at a 
 great many of the children, witliout being able to make up her mind, 
 slie toolc a sudden fancy to one of the babies a boy tmder my care. 
 Try, pray try, to compose yourself, sir ! It's no use disguising it any 
 longer. The child the stranger took away was the child of that lady 
 whose portrait hangs there ! " 
 
 Mr. Wilding started to liis feet. " Impossible I " he cried out, 
 vehemently. "What arc you talking about? What absurd story are 
 you telling me now ? There's her portrait ! Haven't I told you so 
 already ? The portrait of my mother ! " 
 
 " When that unhappy lady removed you from the Foundling, in 
 after years," said IMrs. G(ddstraw, gently, " she was the victim, and 
 you \v'ere the victim, sir, of a dreadful mistake." 
 
 lie drop})ed back into his chair. " The room goes round with me," 
 lie said. " My head ! my liead ! " The housekeeper rose in alarm, 
 and oi)ened tlio windows, liefore she could get to tlie door to call 
 for help, a sudden burst of tears relieved the oppression which had at 
 first almost appeared to threaten his life. He signed entrcatiugly to 
 Mrs. Goldstraw not to leave him. She waited until the paroxysm of
 
 A Dreadful Mistake. 381 
 
 weeping had worn itself out. He raised liie head as he recovered 
 himself, and looked at her with the angry unreasoning susi^ieion of a 
 weak man. 
 
 " Mistake ? " ho said, wildly repeating her last word. " How do I 
 know you are not mistaken yourself? " 
 
 "There is no hope that I am mistaken, sir, I will tell you why, 
 when you are better fit to hear it." 
 
 " Now ! now ! " 
 
 The tone in which he spoke warned Mrs. Goldstraw that it would 
 he cruel kindness to let him comfort himself a moment longer Avith 
 the vain hope that she might be wrong. A few words more would 
 end it, and those few words she determined to speak. 
 
 " I have told you," she said, " that the child of the lady whoso 
 ])ortrait hangs there, was adojited in its infancy, and taken away by a 
 stranger. I am as certain of what I say as that I am now sitting 
 here, obliged to distress you, sir, sorely against my will. Please to 
 carry your mind on, now, to about three months after tliat time. I 
 was then at the Foundling, in London, waitiug to take some children 
 to our institution in the country. There Avas a qiiestion that day 
 about naming an infant a boy who had just been received. We 
 generally named them out of the Directory. On this occasion, one of 
 tlie gentlemen who managed the Hospital happened to be looking over 
 the Eegister. He noticed that the name of the baby who had been 
 adopted (' Walter Wilding ') was scratched out for the reason, of 
 course, that the child had been removed for good from our care. 
 ' Here's a name to let,' he said. ' Give it to the new foundling who 
 has been received to-day.' The name was given, and the child was 
 christened. You, sir, were that child." 
 
 Tiie wine-merchant's head dropped on his breast. " I was that 
 child ! " he said to himself, trying helplessly to fix the idea in his 
 mind. " I was that child ! " 
 
 " Not very long after you had been received into the Institution, 
 sir," pursued Mrs. Goldstraw, " I left my situation there, to be 
 married. If you will remember that, and if you can give your mind 
 to it, you will see for yourself how the mistake hapj^ened. Between 
 eleven and twelve years passed before the lady, whom you have 
 believed to bo your mother, returned to the Foundling, to find her 
 son, and to remove him to her own home. The lady only knew that 
 her infant had been called ' Walter Wilding.' The matron who took 
 pity on her, could but point out the only ' Walter Wilding ' known in 
 the Institution. I, who might have set the matter right, was far 
 away from the Foundling and all that belonged to it. There was 
 nothing there was really nothing that could prevent this terrible 
 mistake from taking place. I feel for you I do indeed, sir ! You 
 must think and with reason that it was in an evil hour that I came 
 here (innocently enough, I'm sure), to apply for your housekeeper's 
 place. I feel as if I was to blame I feel as if I ought to have had
 
 382 No TJioroughfare. 
 
 more sclf-commaud. If I Lad only boon ablo to keep my face from 
 sliowing yon what that portrait and what yonr own words put into 
 my mind, you need never, to your dying day, have known what you 
 know now." 
 
 Mr. Wikling looked up suddenly. The inbred honesty of the man 
 rose in protest against the housekeeper's last words. His mind 
 seemed to steady itself, for the moment, under the shock that had 
 fallen on it. 
 
 " Do yon mean to say that you would have concealed this from nio 
 if you could ? " he exclaimed. 
 
 " I hope I should always toll the trntli, sir, if I was asked," said 
 Mrs. Goldstraw. " And I know it is better for me that I should not 
 have a secret of this sort weighing on my mind. But is it better for 
 you ? What use can it servo now ? " 
 
 " What use ? Why, good Lord ! if your story is true " 
 
 " Should I have told it, sir, as I am now situated, if it had not boon 
 true ? " 
 
 " I beg your pardon," said the winc-morchant. " You must make 
 allowance for me. This dreadful discovery is something I can't 
 realise even yet. We loved each otiicr so dearly I felt so fondly 
 that I Avas her son. She died, Mrs. Goldstraw, in my arms she died 
 blessing me as only a mother coidd have blessed me. And now, after 
 all tliese years, to be told she was not my mother ! me, O me ! I 
 don't know what I am saying ! " he cried, as the impulse of self- 
 control imder which ho had spoken a moment since, flickered, and 
 died out. ' It was not this dreadful grief it was something else that 
 I had it in my mind to speak of. Yes, yes. You surprised me you 
 wounded mo just now. You talked as if you would have hidden this 
 from me, if y(ju could. Don't talk in that way again. It would have 
 been a crime to have hidden it. You mean well, I Jaiow. I don't 
 want to distress you you are a kind-hearted v/oman. But you don't 
 remember what my position is. She loft me all that I jiosscss, in the 
 firm persuasion that I was her son, I am not her son. I have taken 
 the place, I have innocently got the inheritance of another man. Ho 
 must be found ! How do I know he is not at this moment in misery, 
 witliout bread to eat ? He must be found ! My only hope of bearing 
 up against the shock that has fallen on mo, is the l'.oi)e of doing some- 
 tliing which slie would have approved. You must know more, IMrs. 
 Goldstraw, tlian you have told me yet. Who was the stranger wlio 
 adopted the child ? You must have heard the lady's name ? " 
 
 " I never heard it, sir. I liave never seen her, or heard of Iier, 
 since." 
 
 " Did she say nothing when she took tin; child away ? Search your 
 memory. Slio must have said something." 
 
 " Only one thing, sir, that I can remeinbcr. It was a miserably 
 bad season, that year; and many of the children were suffering from 
 it. When she took tlie baby away, the lady said to me, huigliing,
 
 A Faint Clue, 383 
 
 "Don't be alarmed about his health. Ho will be brought up in a 
 better climate than this I am going to take him to Switzerland.' " 
 
 " To Switzerland ? What part of Switzerland ? " 
 
 " She didn't say, sir." 
 
 " Only that faint clue ! " said Mr. Wilding. " And a quarter of a 
 century has passed since the child was taken away! What am I 
 to do ? " 
 
 "I hope you won't take offence at my freedom, sir," said Mrs. 
 Goldstraw ; " but why should you distresss yourself about what is to 
 be done ? He may not be alive now, for anything you know. And, 
 if he is alive, it's not likely he can bo in any distress. The lady who 
 adoi)tcd him was a bred and born lady it was easy to see that. And 
 she must liave satisfied them at the Foundling that she could provide 
 for the child, or they would never have let her take him away. If I 
 was in your place, sir please to excuse my saying so I should 
 comfort myself with remembering that I had loved that poor lady 
 whose portrait you have got there truly loved her as my mother, 
 and that she had truly loved me as her son. All she gave to you, she 
 gave for the sake of that love. It never altered while she lived ; and 
 it won't alter, I'm sure, as long as yon, live. How can you have a 
 better right, sir, to keep what you have got than that ? " 
 
 Mr. Wilding's immovable honesty saw the iiillacy in his house- 
 keeper's point of view at a glance. 
 
 " You don't understand me," lie said. " It's because I loved her 
 that I feel it a duty a sacred duty to do justice to her son. If he 
 is a living man, I must find him : for my own sake, as well as for his. 
 I shall break down under this dreadful trial, unless I employ myself 
 actively, instantly employ myself in doing what my conscience 
 tells me ought to bo done. I must speak to my lawyer ; I must set 
 my lawyer at work before I sleep to-night." He api^roached a tube 
 in the wall of the room, and called down through it to the office 
 below. " Leave me for a little, Mrs. Goldstraw," he resumed ; " I 
 shall be more composed, I shall be better able to speak to you later 
 in the day. We shall get on well I hope we shall get on well 
 together in spite of what has happened. It isn't joxiv fault ; I know 
 it isn't your fault. There ! there ! shake hands ; and and do the 
 best joxi can in the house I can't talk about it now." 
 
 The door opened as Mrs. GoldstraAV advanced towards it ; and Mr. 
 Jarvis appeared. 
 
 " Send for Mr. Bintroy," said the wine-merchant. " Say I want to 
 sec him directly." 
 
 The clerk unconsciously suspended the execution of the order, by 
 announcing " Mr. Vendalc," and showing in the new partner in the 
 firm of Wilding and Co. 
 
 " Pray excuse me for one moment, George Vendale," said Wilding. 
 " I have a word to say to Jarvis. Send for Mr. Bintrey," he re- 
 peated " send at once."
 
 384 ^0 Thorough/are. 
 
 Mr. Jarvis laid a letter on the table before be left the room. 
 " From our corresjiondents at NeucLatol, I think, sir. The letter 
 has got the Swiss postmark." 
 
 NEW CMAIIACTERS ON THK SCENE. 
 
 The words, " The Swiss Postmark," fallowing so soon npon the 
 liousekeeper's reference to Switzerland, wrought Mr. Wilding's agita- 
 tion to such a remarkable height, that his new j^artner could not 
 decently make a pretence of letting it pass unnoticed. 
 
 " Wilding," lie asked hurriedly, and yet stopping short and glancing 
 around as if for some visible cause of his state of mind : " what is 
 tlio matter?" 
 
 " My good George Vendale," returned the wine-merchant, giving 
 liis hand with an appealing look, rather as if lie wanted lielp to get 
 over some obstacle, than as if he gave it in welcome or salutation : 
 " my good George Vendale, so much is the matter, that I shall never 
 bo myself again. It is impossible that I can ever be myself again. 
 For, in fact, I am not myself." 
 
 The new partner, a brown-cheeked handsome fellow, of about his 
 own age, with a quick determined eye and an impulsive manner, 
 retorted with natural astonishment : " Not yourself ? " 
 
 " Not what I supposed myself to be," said Wilding. 
 
 " What, in the name of wonder, did you suppose yourself to be that 
 you are not?" was the rejoinder, delivered with a cheerful frankness, 
 inviting confidence from a more reticent man. " I may ask without 
 impertinence, now that we are partners." 
 
 " There again ! " cried Wilding, leaning back in his chair, with a lost 
 look at the other. " Partners ! I had no right to come into this busi- 
 ness. It was never meant for me. My mother never meant it should 
 be mine. I mean, his mother meant it should be his if I mean any- 
 thing^or if I am anybody." 
 
 " Come, come," urged his partner, after a moment's pause, and 
 taking possession of him with that calm confidence which inspires a 
 strong nature when it honestly desires to aid a weak one. " What- 
 ever has gone wrong, has gone wrong through no fault of yours, I um 
 very sure. I was not in this counting-house with you, under the old 
 rrgimc, for three years, to doubt you, Wilding. We were not younf:;er 
 men than wo are, together, for that. Let me begin our partnersliij) 
 by being a serviceable partner, and setting right whatever is wrong. 
 Has thiit letter anytliing to do with it?" 
 
 "Hah!" said Wilding, with his hand to his temple. "There 
 again ! My head ! I was forgetting the coincidence. The Swiss 
 jtostmark." 
 
 " At a second glance I see that the hitter is unopened, so it is not 
 very likely to have much to do with the matter," said Vendale, with 
 comforting com2)Osure. " Is it for you, or for us ? "
 
 George Vendale gives his Opinion. 385 
 
 " For us," said Wilding. 
 
 " Suppose I open it and read it aloud, to get it out of our way ? " 
 
 " Thank you, thank you." 
 
 " The letter is only from our champagne-making friends, the house 
 at Neuchatel. ' Dear Sir. We are in receipt of yours of the 28th 
 ult., informing us that you have taken your Mr. Vendale into partner- 
 ship, whereon we beg you to receive the assurance of our felicitations. 
 Permit us to embrace the occasion of specially commending to you 
 M. Jules Obenreizer.' Impossible ! " 
 
 Wilding looked up in quick apprehension, and cried, " Eh ? " 
 
 " Impossible sort of name," returned his partner, slightly " Oben- 
 reizer. ' Of specially commending to you M. Jules Obenreizer, of 
 Soho Square, London (north side), henceforth fully accredited as our 
 agent, and who has already had the honour of making the acquaint- 
 ance of your Mr. Vendale, in his (said M. Obenreizer's) native country, 
 Switzerland.' To be sure ! pooh pooh, what have I been thinking 
 of ! I remember now ; ' when travelling with his niece.' " 
 
 "With his ?" Vendale had so slurred the last word, that 
 
 Wilding had not heard it. 
 
 " When travelling with his Niece. Obenreizer's Niece," said 
 Vendale, in a somewhat superfluously lucid manner. " Niece of 
 Obenreizer. (I met them in my first Swiss tour, travelled a little 
 with them, and lost them for two years ; met them again, my Swiss 
 tour before last, and have lost them ever since.) Obenreizer. Niece 
 of Obenreizer. To be sure ! Possible sort of name, after all ! 
 ' M, Obenreizer is in possession of our absolute confidence, and wo 
 do not doubt you will esteem his merits.' Duly signed by the House, 
 ' Defresnier et C'' .' Very well. I undertake to see M. Obenreizer 
 presently, and clear him out of the way. That clears the Swiss post- 
 mark out of the way. So now, my dear Wilding, tell me what I can 
 clear out of xjoxir way, and I'll find a way to clear it." 
 
 More than ready and grateful to be thus taken charge of, the honest 
 wine-merchant wrung his partner's hand, and, beginning his tale by 
 pathetically declaring himself an Impostor, told it. 
 
 " It was on this matter, no doubt, that you were sending for Bintrey 
 when I came in ? " said his partner, after reflecting. 
 
 " It was." 
 
 " He has experience and a shrewd head ; I shall be anxious to know 
 his opinion. It is bold and hazardous in me to give you mine before 
 I know his, but I am not good at holding back. Plainly, then, I do 
 not see these circumstances as you see them. I do not see your 
 position as you see it. As to your being an Impostor, my dear Wild- 
 ing, that is simply absurd, because no man can be that without being 
 a consenting party to an imposition. Clearly you never were so. As 
 to your enrichment by the lady who believed you to be her son, and 
 whom you were forced to believe, on her showing, to be your mother, 
 consider whether that did not arise out of the personal relations 
 
 2
 
 386 No Thoroughfare 
 
 between you. You gradually bocamo much attached to her; she 
 gradually bocamo much attached to you. It was on you, personally 
 you, as I soo tho case, that she conferred these worldly advantages ; 
 it was from her, personally her, that you took them." 
 
 " She supposed me," objected Wilding, shaking his head, " to have 
 a natural claim upon her, which I had not." 
 
 " I must admit that," replied his partner, " to be true. But if she 
 had made the discovery that you have made, six months before sho 
 died, do you think it would have cancelled tho years you were together, 
 and the tenderness that each of you had conceived for the other, each 
 on increasing knowledge of the other ? " 
 
 " What I think," said Wilding, simply but stoutly holding to tho 
 bare fact, " can no more change the truth than it can bring down tho 
 sky. Tho truth is that I stand possessed of what was meant for 
 another man." 
 
 " He may bo dead," said Vendale. 
 
 " He may bo alive," said Wildiug. " And if he is alive, have I not 
 innocently, I grant you innocently robbed him of enough ? Havo 
 I not robbed him of all tho happy time that I enjoyed in his stead ? 
 Havo I not robbed him of tlio exquisite delight tliat filled my soul 
 when that dear lady," Btretcliing his hand towards the picture, " told 
 me sho was my mother ? Havo I not robbed him of all the care sho 
 lavislied on mo ? Havo I not oven robbed him of all the devotion 
 and duty that I so proudly gave to her ? Thoroforo it is that I ask 
 myself, George Veudalc, and I ask you, where is ho ? What has 
 become of him ? " 
 
 " Who can tell ! " 
 
 " I must try to find out who can tell. I must institute inquiries. 
 I must never desist from prosecuting inquiries. I will live upon tho 
 interest of my share I ought to say his share in this business, and 
 will lay up the rest for him. When I find him, I may perhai)s throw 
 myself upon his generosity ; but I will yield up all to him. I will, 
 I swear. As I loved and honoured her," said Wilding, reverently 
 Icissing his hand towards the picture, and then covering liis eyes with 
 it. " As I loved and honoured her, and have a world of reasons to bo 
 grateful to her I " And so broke down again. 
 
 His partner rose from tlie chair he had occui)ied, and stood beside 
 him witli a hand softly laid upon his shoulder. " W'alter, I knew you 
 l)efore to-day to bo an uju'ight man, with a pure conscience and a fine 
 heart. It is very fortunate for mo tliat I have the privilege to travel 
 <m in life so near to so trustworthy a man. I am thankful for it. Use 
 mo as your right hand, and rely upon me to the dcatli. Don't think 
 tlio worse of mo if I protest to you tliat my uppermost feeling at 
 present is a confused, you may call it an luireasonablc, one, I feel far 
 more pity for the lady and for you, because you did not stand in your 
 supposed rohiiions, than I can fool for tlio unknowii man (if he ever 
 became a man), because he was unconsciously displaced. You have
 
 Soho Square. 387 
 
 dono well in sencliiig for Mr. Bintrey. What I think will be a part 
 of his advice, I know is the whole of mine. Do not move a step in 
 this serious matter precipitately. The secret must be kept among us 
 with great strictness, for to part with it lightly would be to invito 
 fraudulent claims, to encourage a host of knaves, to let loose a flood 
 of perjury and plotting. I have no more to say now, Walter, than to 
 remind you that you sold mo a share in your business, expressly to 
 save yourself from more work than your present health is fit for, and 
 that I bought it expressly to do work, and mean to do it," 
 
 With these words, and a parting grip of his partner's shoulder that 
 gave them the best emphasis they could have had, George Vendalo 
 betook himself presently to the counting-house, and presently after- 
 Avards to the address of M. Jules Obenreizer. 
 
 As he turned into Soho Square, and directed his steps towards its 
 north side, a deepened colour shot across his sun-browned face, which 
 Wilding, if he had been a better observer, or had been less occupied 
 with his own trouble, might have noticed when his partner read aloud 
 a certain passage in their Swiss correspondent's letter, which he had 
 not read so distinctly as the rest. 
 
 A curious colony of mountaineers has long been enclosed within 
 that small flat London district of Soho. Swiss watchmakers, Swiss 
 silver-chasers, Swiss jewellers, Swiss importers of Swiss musical boxes 
 and Swiss toys of various kinds, draw close together there. Swiss 
 professors of music, painting, and languages ; Swiss artificers in 
 steady work ; Swiss couriers, and other Swiss servants chronically 
 out of place ; industrious Swiss laundresses and clear-starchers ; 
 mysteriously existing Swiss of both sexes ; Swiss creditable and Swiss 
 discreditable ; Swiss to be trusted by all means, and Swiss to be trusted 
 by no means ; these diverse Swiss particles are attracted to a centre in 
 the district of Soho. Shabby Swiss eating-houses, coffee-houses, and 
 lodging-houses, Swiss drinks and dishes, Swiss service for Sundays, and 
 Swiss schools for week-days, are all to be found there. Even the native- 
 born English taverns drive a sort of broken-English trade ; announc- 
 ing in their windows Swiss whets and drams, and sheltering in their 
 bars Swiss skirmishes of love and animosity on most nights in the year. 
 
 When the new partner in Wilding and Co. rang the bell of a door 
 bearing the blunt inscription Obenreizer on a brass plate the inner 
 door of a svibstantial house, whose groimd story was devoted to the 
 sale of Swiss clocks he passed at once into domestic Switzerland. A 
 white-tiled stove for Aviuter-time filled the fireplace of tlie room into 
 which he was shown, the room's bare floor was laid together in a neat 
 pattern of several ordinary woods, tlic room had a prevalent air of 
 i-;urface bareness and much scrubbing ; and the little squai'o of flowery 
 carjict by the sofa, and the velvet chimney-board with its capacious 
 clock and vases of artificial flowers, contended with that tone, as if, in 
 bringing out tlio whole effect, a Parisian had adapted a dairy to 
 domestic purposes.
 
 388 No Thoroughfare. 
 
 Mimic water was dropping off a mill-wheel under the clock. The 
 visitor had not stood before it, following it with his eyes, a minute, 
 when M. Obenreizer, at his elbow, startled him by saying, in very 
 good English, very slightly clipped : " How do you do ? So glad ! " 
 
 " I beg your pardon. I didn't hear you come in." 
 
 " Not at all ! Sit, please." 
 
 Releasing his visitor's two arms, which he had lightly pinioned at 
 the elbows by way of embrace, M. Obenreizer also sat, remarking, 
 with a smile : " You are well ? So glad ! " and touching his elbows 
 again. 
 
 " I don't know," said Vendale, after exchange of salutations, 
 " whether you may yet have heard of me from your House at 
 Neuchatcl ? " 
 
 " Ah, yes ! " 
 
 " In connection with Wilding and Co. ? " 
 
 " Ah, surely ! " 
 
 " Is it not odd that I should come to you, in London here, as one 
 of the Firm of Wilding and Co., to pay the Firm's respects ? " 
 
 " Not at all ! What did I always observe when wo were on the 
 mountains ? We call them vast ; but the world is so little. So little 
 is the world, that one cannot keep away from persons. There are so 
 few persons in the world, that they continually cross and re-cross. So 
 very little is the world, that one cannot get rid of a person. Not," 
 touching his elbows again, with an ingratiatory smile, " that one 
 would desire to get rid of you." 
 
 " I hope not, M. Obenreizer." 
 
 " Please call me, in your country, Mr. I call myself so, for I love 
 your country. If I could be English ! But I am born. And you ? 
 Though descended from so fine a family, you have had the con- 
 descension to come into trade ? Stop though. Wines ? Is it trade 
 in England or profession ? Not fine art ? " 
 
 " Mr. Obenreizer," returned Vendale, somewhat out of countenance, 
 " I was but a silly young fellow, just of age, when I first had the 
 pleasure of travelling with you, and when you and I and Mademoiselle 
 your niece who is well ? " 
 
 " Thank you. Who is well." 
 
 " Shared some slight glacier dangers together. If, with a boy's 
 vanity, I rather vaimted my family, I hope I did so as a kind of intro- 
 duction of myself. It was very weak, and in very bad taste ; but 
 perhaps you know our English i)rovcrb, ' Live and Learn.' " 
 
 " You make too much of it," returned tlie Swiss. " And what the 
 devil ! After all, yours icas a fine family." 
 
 George Vcndale's laugh betrayed a little vexation as he rejoined : 
 " Well ! I was strongly attached to my parents, and when we first 
 travelled together, Mr. Obenreizer, I was in the first flush of coming 
 into wliat my father and mother left mo. So I liopc it may have been, 
 after all, more youthful oi^cuness of speech and heart than boastfulncss."
 
 Mr, Obenrekei'. 389 
 
 " All openness of speech and heart ! No boastfulness ! " cried 
 Obenreizer. " Yon tax yourself too heavily. You tax yourself, my 
 faith ! as if you was your Government taxing you ! Besides, it com- 
 menced with me. I remember, that evening in the boat upon the 
 lake, floating among the reflections of the mountains and valleys, the 
 crags and pine woods, which were my earliest remembrance, I drew 
 a word-picture of my sordid childhood. Of our poor hut, by the 
 waterfall which my mother showed to travellers ; of the cow-shed 
 where I slept with the cow ; of my idiot half-brother always sitting 
 at the door, or limping down the Pass to beg ; of my half-sister always 
 spinning, and resting her enormous goitre on a great stone ; of my 
 being a famished naked little wretch of two or three years, when they 
 were men and women with hard hands to beat me, I, the only child of 
 my father's second marriage if it even was a marriage. What more 
 natural than for you to compare notes with me, and say, ' We are as 
 one by age ; at that same time I sat upon my mother's lap in my 
 father's carriage, rolling through the rich English streets, all luxury 
 surrounding me, all squalid poverty kept far from me. Such is my 
 earliest remembrance as opposed to yours ! ' " 
 
 Mr. Obenreizer was a black-haired young man of a dark complexion, 
 through whose swarthy skin no red glow ever shone. W^hen colour 
 would have come into another cheek, a hardly discernible beat would 
 come into his, as if the machinery for bringing up the ardent blood 
 were there, but the machinery were dry. He was robustly made, well 
 proportioned, and had handsome features. Many would have per- 
 ceived that some surface change in him would have set them mere at 
 their ease with him, without being able to define what change. If 
 his lips could have been made much thicker, and his neck much 
 thinner, they would have found their want supplied. 
 
 But the great Obenreizer peculiarity was, that a certain nameless 
 film would come over his eyes apparently by the action of his own 
 will which would impenetrably veil, not only from those tellers of 
 tales, but from his face at large, every expression save one of attention. 
 It by no means followed that his attention should be wholly given to 
 the person with whom he spoke, or even wholly bestowed on present 
 sounds and objects. Eathei", it was a comprehensive watchfulness of 
 everything he had in his own mind, and everything that he knew to 
 be, or suspected to be, in the minds of other men. 
 
 At this stage of the conversation, Mr. Obenreizer's film came over 
 him. 
 
 " The object of my present visit," said Vendale, " is, I need hardly 
 say, to assure you of the friendliness of Wilding and Co., and of tlio 
 goodness of your credit with us, and of our desire to be of service to 
 yon. Wc hope shortly to offer you our hospitality. Tilings are not 
 quite in train with us yet, for my partner, Mr. Wilding, is reorganising 
 the domestic part of our establishment, and is interrupted by some 
 private affairs. You don't know Mr. Wilding, I believe ? "
 
 390 No Thoroughfare, 
 
 Mr. Obonrcizcr did not. 
 
 " You must come together soon. Ho will be glad to have made 
 your acquaintance, and I think I may predict tliat you will bo glad 
 to have made his. You have not boon long established in London, 
 X suppose, Mr. Obenreizer ? " 
 
 " It is only now that I have undertaken this agency." 
 
 " Mademoiselle your niece is not married ? " 
 
 " Not married." 
 
 George Vendale glanced abont him, as if for any tokens of her. 
 
 " She has been in London ? " 
 
 " She is in London." 
 
 " When, and where, might I have the honour of recalling myself to 
 her remembrance ? " 
 
 Mr. Obenreizer, discarding his film and touching his visitor's elbows 
 as before, said lightly : " Come up-stairs." 
 
 Fluttered enough by the suddenness with which the interview ho 
 liad sought was coming upon him after all, George Vendale followed 
 np-stairs. In a room over the chamber he had just quitted a room 
 also Swiss-appointed a young lady sat near one of three windows, 
 working at an embroidery-frame ; and an older lady sat with her face 
 turned close to another white-tiled stove (though it was summer, and 
 the stove was not lighted), cleaning gloves. The young lady wore an 
 unusual quantity of fair bright hair, very prettily braided about a 
 rather rounder white forehead than the average English type, and so 
 her face might have been a shade or say a light rounder than the 
 average English face, and her figure slightly rounder than the figure 
 of the average English girl at nineteen. A remarkable indication of 
 freedom and grace of limb, in her quiet attitude, and a wonderful 
 purity and freshness of colour in her dimpled face and bright gray 
 eyes, seemed fraught with mountain air. Switzerland too, though 
 the general fashion of her dress was English, pcei)ed out of the 
 fanciful bodice she wore, and lurked in the curious clocked red stock- 
 ing, and in its little silver-buckled shoe. As to the elder lady, sitting 
 with her feet apart upon the lower brass ledge of the stove, supporting 
 a lap-full of gloves while she cleaned one stretched on her loft hand, 
 she was a true Swiss impersonation of another kind ; from the breadth 
 of her cushion-like back, and the ponderosity of her respectable legs 
 (if the word be admissible), to the black velvet band tied tiglitly 
 round her tliroat for the repression of a rising tendency to goitre ; or, 
 liigher still, to her great copper-coloured gold ear-rings; or, higher 
 still, to her head-dress of black gauze stretched on wire. 
 
 " Miss Marguerite," said Obenreizer to the young lady, " do you 
 recollect this gentleman ? " 
 
 " I tliink," she answered, rising from her scat, surprised and a little 
 confused : " it is Mr. Vendale ? " 
 
 " I think it is," said Obenreizer, dryly. " Permit me, Mr. Vendale. 
 Madame Dor."
 
 Madame Dor. 39 1 
 
 The elder lady by the stove, with the glove stretched on her left 
 hand, like a glover's sign, half got up, half looked over her broad 
 shoulder, and wholly plumped down again and rubbed away. 
 
 " Madame Dor," said Obenreizer, smiling, " is so kind as to keep 
 me free from stain or tear. Madame Dor humours my weakness for 
 being always neat, and devotes her time to removing every one of my 
 specks and spots." 
 
 Madame Dor, with the stretched glove in the air, and her eyes 
 closely scrutinizing its palm, discovered a tough spot in Mr. Oben- 
 reizer at that instant, and rubbed hard at him. George Vcndale took 
 his seat by the embroidery-frame (having first taken the fair right 
 hand that his entrance had checked), and glanced at the gold cross that 
 dipped into the bodice, with something of the devotion of a pilgrim who 
 had reached his shrine at last. Obenreizer stood in the middle of the 
 room with his thumbs in his waistcoat-pockets, and became filmy. 
 
 " He was saying down-stairs. Miss Obenreizer," observed Vendale, 
 " that the world is so small a place, that people cannot escape one 
 another. I have found it much too large for me since I saw you last." 
 
 " Have you travelled so far, then ? " she inquired. 
 
 " Not so far, for I have only gone back to Switzerland each year ; 
 but I could have wished and indeed I have wished very often that 
 the little world did not afi'ord such opportunities for long escapes as 
 it does. If it had been less, I might have found my fellow-travellers 
 sooner, you know." 
 
 The pretty Marguerite coloured, and very slightly glanced in the 
 direction of Madame Dor. 
 
 " You find us at length, Mr. Vendale. Perhaps you may lose us 
 again." 
 
 " I trust not. The curious coincidence that has enabled mc to find 
 you, encourages me to hope not," 
 
 " What is that coincidence, sir, if you please ? " A dainty little 
 native touch in this turn of speech, and in its tone, made it perfectly 
 captivating, thought George Vendale, when again he noticed an 
 instantaneous glance towards Madame Dor. A caution seemed to bo 
 conveyed in it, rapid flash though it vi'as ; so he quietly took heed of 
 Madame Dor from that time forth. 
 
 " It is that I happen to have become a partner in a House of 
 business in Loudon, to v/hich Mr. Obenreizer happens this very day 
 to be expressly rccommonded : and that, too, by another liouso of 
 business in Switzerland, in which (as it turns out) we both have a 
 commercial interest. He has not told you ? " 
 
 '' Ah I " cried Obenreizer, striking in, filmlcss. " No. I had not 
 told Miss Marguerite. The world is so small and so monotonous that 
 a surprise is worth having in such a little jog-trot place. It is as he 
 tells you, Miss Marguerite. He, of so fine a family, and so proudly 
 bred, has condescended to trade. To trade ! Like us poor peasants 
 who have risen from ditches 1 "
 
 392 No Thorotighfarc. 
 
 A cloud crept over the fair brow, and she cast down her eyes. 
 
 " Why, it is good for trade ! " pursued Obenreizer, enthusiastically. 
 " It ennobles trade ! It is the misfortune of trade, it is its vulgarity, 
 that any low people for example, we poor peasants- may take to it 
 and climb by it. See you, my dear Vcndale ! " He spoke with great 
 energy. " The father of Miss Marguerite, my eldest half-brother, 
 more than two times your age or mine, if living now, wandered 
 without shoes, almost without rags, from that wretched Pass 
 wandered wandered got to be fed with the mules and dogs at an 
 Inn in the main valley far away got to be Boy there got to be 
 Ostlex" got to bo Waiter got to be Cook got to be Landlord. As 
 Landlord, ho took me (could he take the idiot beggar his brother, or 
 tho spinning monstrosity his sister ?) to put as pupil to the famous 
 watchmaker, his neighbour and friend. His wife dies when Miss 
 Marguerite is born. What is his will, and what are his words to 
 me, when lie dies, she being between girl and woman ? ' All for 
 Marguerite, except so much by tho year for you. You are young, 
 but I make lier your ward, for you were of the obscurest and tho 
 poorest peasantry, and so was I, and so was her mother ; we were 
 abject peasants all, and you will remember it.' The thing is equally 
 true of most of my countrymen, now in trade in this your London 
 quarter of Soho. Peasants once ; low-born drudging Swiss Peasants. 
 Then how good and great for trade : " here, from having been warm, 
 ho became playfully jubilant, and touched tho yoimg wine-merchant's 
 elbows again with his light embrace : " to be exalted by gentlemen." 
 
 " I do not think so," said Marguerite, witli a flushed cheek, and a 
 look away from the visitor, that was almost defiant. " I think it is as 
 much exalted by us peasants." 
 
 " Fie, fie. Miss Marguerite," said Obenreizer. " You speak in 
 proud England." 
 
 "I sjieak in proud earnest," she answered, quietly resuming her 
 work, " and I am not English, but a Swiss peasant's daughter." 
 
 There was a dismissal of the subject in her words, v.iiich Vendalo 
 could not contend against. He only said in an earnest manner, " I 
 most heartily agree with you. Miss Obenreizer, and I have already 
 said so, as Mr. Obenreizer will bear witness," which he by no means 
 did, " in this house." 
 
 Now, Vendale's eyes were quick eyes, and sharply watching 
 IMadamc Dor by times, noted something in the broad liack view of 
 that lady. There was considerable pantomimic expression in licr 
 glove-cleaning. It liad been very softly dono when he spoko with 
 IVEarguerito, or it liad altogether stopped, like the action of a listener. 
 When 0})enreizor's peasant-speech came to an end, she rubbed most 
 vigorously, as if applauding it. And once or twice, as the glove 
 (which slie always held liefore lier a little above her face) turned in 
 the air, or as this finger went down, or that went up, ho oven fancied 
 that it made some tclegrapliic communication to Obenreizer : whose
 
 Down in the Vaults. 393 
 
 back was certainly never turned upon it, though ho did not seem at 
 all to heed it. 
 
 Vendale observed too, that in Marguerite's dismissal of the subject 
 twice forced upon him to his misrepresentation, there was an indignant 
 treatment of her guardian which she tried to check : as though she 
 would have flamed out against him, but for the influence of fear. He 
 also observed though this was not much that he never advanced 
 within the distance of her at which he first placed himself: as though 
 there were limits fixed between them. Neither had he ever spoken of 
 her without the prefix " Miss," though whenever he uttered it, it was 
 with the faintest trace of an air of mockery. And now it occurred to 
 Vendale for the first time that something curious in the man, which 
 he had never before been able to define, was definable as a certain 
 subtle essence of mockery that eluded touch or analysis. He felt 
 convinced that Marguerite was in some sort a prisoner as to her free- 
 will though she held her own against those two combined, by the 
 force of her character, which was nevertheless inadequate to her 
 release. To feel convinced of this, was not to feel less disposed to 
 love her than he had always been. In a word, he was desperately in 
 love with her, and thoroughly determined to pursue the opportunity 
 which had opened at last. 
 
 For the present, he merely touched upon the pleasure that Wilding 
 and Co. would soon have in entreating Miss Obenreizer to honour 
 their establishment with her presence a curious old place, though a 
 bachelor house withal and so did not protract his visit beyond sncli 
 a visit's ordinary length. Going down-stairs, conducted by his host, 
 lie found the Obenreizer counting-house at the back of the entrance- 
 hall, and several shabby men in outlandish garments hanging about, 
 whom Obenreizer put aside that he might pass, with a few words in 
 liatois. 
 
 " Countrymen," he explained, as he attended Vendale to the door. 
 "Poor compatriots. Grateful and attached, like dogs! Good-bye. 
 To meet again. So glad ! " 
 
 Two more light touches on his elbows dismissed him into the street. 
 
 Sweet Marguerite at her frame, and Madame Dor's broad back at 
 her telegraph, floated before him to Cripple Corner. On his arrival 
 there. Wilding was closeted with Bintrey. The cellar doors happening 
 to be open, Vendale lighted a candle in a cleft stick, and went down 
 for a cellarous stroll. Graceful Marguerite floated before him faith- 
 fully, but Madame Dor's broad back remained outside. 
 
 The vaults were very spacious, and very old. There had been a 
 stone crypt down there, when bygones were not bygones ; some 
 said, part of a monkish refectory ; some said, of a chapel ; some 
 8aid, of a Pagan temple. It was all one now. Let who would 
 make what he liked of a crumbled pillar and a broken arch or so. 
 Old Time had made what lie liked of it, and was quite indifferent 
 t(j contradiction.
 
 394 ^0 Thoroughfare. 
 
 Tho close air, tlio musty smell, and the thunderous rumbling In 
 tlio streets above, as being out of the routine of ordinary life, went 
 well enough with tho picture of pretty Marguerite holding her own 
 against those two. So Vendalo went on until, at a turning in tho 
 vaults, ho saw a light like tho light ho carried. 
 
 " O ! You are here, are you, Joey ? " 
 
 "Oughtn't it rather to go, '0! Tou're here, arc you. Master 
 George ? ' For it's ray business to bo here. But It ain't yourn." 
 
 " Don't grumble, Joey," 
 
 " O ! I don't grumble," returned the Cellarman. " If anything 
 grumbles, it's what I've took in through the pores ; it ain't me. 
 Ilave a care as something in yov. don't begin a grumbling. Master 
 George. Stop hero long enough for tho wapours to work, and they'll 
 bo at it." 
 
 His present occupation consisted of poking his head into the bins, 
 making measurements and mental calculations, and entering them in 
 a rhinoceros-hido-looking note-book, like a piece of himself. 
 
 " They'll bo at It," he resumed, laying tho wooden rod that ho 
 measured with across two casks, entering his last calculation, and 
 straightening his back, " trust 'em ! And so you've regularly come 
 into tho business. Master George ? " 
 , " Regularly. I hope you don't object, Joey ? " 
 
 " I don't, bless you. But Wapours objects that you're too young. 
 You're both on you too young." 
 
 " We shall got over that objection day by day, Joey." 
 
 " Ay, Master George ; but I shall day by day get over the objection 
 that I'm too old, and so I shan't bo capable of seeing much improve- 
 ment in you." 
 
 The retort so tickled Joey Ladle that he grunted forth a laugh 
 and delivered It again, grunting forth another laugh after the second 
 edition of " improvement in you." 
 
 ' " But what's no laughing matter. Master George," he resumed, 
 straightening his back once more, " is, that young Master Wilding 
 has gone and changed the luck. Mark my words. He has changed 
 the luck, and he'll find it out. I ain't been down here all my life for 
 nothing ! J know by what I notices down here, when it's a-going to 
 rain, Avhen it's a-going to hold up, when it's a-going to blow, when 
 it's a-going to bo calm. J know, by what I notices down here, when 
 tlio luck's changed, quite as well." 
 
 ' Has this growth on the roof anytliing to do with your divination ? " 
 asked Vcudalo, liolding liis light towards a gloomy ragged growth of 
 dark fungus, pendent from the arches with a very disagreeable and 
 rcpollcut efi'ect. " We aro famous for this growth in this vault, aren't 
 we ? " 
 
 " Wo arc, Master George," replied Joey Ladle, moving a step or 
 two away, " and if you'll bo advised by mc, you'll let it alone." 
 
 Taking \x\t tho rod just now laid across tlio two casks, and faintly
 
 TJie Wine Fungus. 395 
 
 moving tlie languid fungus with it, Vendale asked, "Ay, indeed? 
 Why so?" 
 
 " Why, not so much because it rises from the casks of wine, and 
 may leave you to judge what sort of stuff a Cellarman takes into 
 himself when he walks in the same all the days of his life, nor yet so 
 much because at a stage of its growth it's maggots, and you'll fetch 
 'em down upon you," returned Joey Ladle, still keeping away, " as 
 for another reason, Master George." 
 
 " What other reason ? " 
 
 " (I wouldn't keep on touchin' it, if I was you, sir.) I'll tell you if 
 you'll come out of the place. First, take a look at its colour, Master 
 George." 
 
 " I am doing so." 
 
 " Done, sir. Now, come out of the place." 
 
 Ho moved away with his light, and Vendale followed with his. 
 When Vendale came up with him, and they were going back together, 
 Vendale, eyeing him as they walked through the arches, said : " Well, 
 Joey ? The colour." 
 
 "'is it like clotted blood, Master George ? " 
 
 " Like enough, perhaps." 
 
 " More than enough, I think," muttered Joey Ladle, shaking liis 
 head solemnly. 
 
 " Well, say it is like ; say it is exactly like. What then ? " 
 
 " Master George, they do say " 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 " How should I know who ? " rejoined the Cellarman, apparently 
 jiiuch exasperated by the unreasonable nature of the question. " Them ! 
 I'hem as says pretty well everything, you know. How should I know 
 ^vho They are, if you don't ?" 
 
 " True. Go on." 
 
 " They do say that the man that gets by any accident a piece of 
 that dark growth right upon his breast, will, for sure and certain, 
 (lie by murder." 
 
 As Vendale laughingly stopped to meet the Cellarman's eyes, which 
 lio had fastened on his light while dreamily saying those words, he 
 snddenly became conscious of being struck upon his own breast by a 
 ]i<;avy hand. Instantly following with his eyes the action of the hand 
 tliat struck him which was his companion's he saw that it had 
 1; 'aten off his breast a web or clot of the fungus even then floating to 
 tlio ground. 
 
 For a moment ho turned upon the Cellarman almost as scared a 
 look as the Cellarman turned upon him. But in another moment they 
 liiid reached the daylight at the foot of the collar-steps, and before ho 
 clieerfully sprang up them, he blew out his candle and tho superstition 
 together.
 
 39^ ^0 Thoroughfare. 
 
 EXIT WILDING. 
 
 On the morning of the next day, Wilding went out alone, after 
 leaving a message with his clerk. " If Mr. Vendale should ask for 
 me," he said, " or if Mr. Bintrey should call, tell them I am gone to 
 the Foundling." All that his partner had said to him, all that his 
 lawyer, following on the same side, could urge, had left him persist- 
 ing unshaken in his own point of view. To find the lost man, whoso 
 place he had usurped, was now the paramount interest of his life, and 
 to inquire at the Foundling was plainly to take the first step in the 
 direction of discovery. To the Foundling, accordingly, tho wine- 
 merchant now went. 
 
 The once familiar aspect of the building was altered to him, as the 
 look of the portrait over the chimney-pieco was altered to him. His 
 one dearest association with the place which had sheltered his child- 
 hood had been broken away from it for ever. A strange reluctance 
 possessed him, when he stated his business at the door. His heart 
 ached as he sat alone in tho waiting-room while the Treasurer of the 
 institution was being sent for to see him. When the interview began, 
 it was only by a painful effort that he could compose himself suffi- 
 ciently to mention the nature of his errand. 
 
 The Treasurer listened with a face which promised all needful 
 attention, and promised nothing more. 
 
 " We are obliged to be cautious," he said, wlicn it came to his turn 
 to speak, " about all inquiries which are made by strangers." 
 
 "You can hardly consider me a stranger," answered Wilding, 
 simply. " I was one of your poor lost children here, in tho bygone 
 time." 
 
 The Treasurer politely rejoined that this circumstance inspired 
 him with a special interest in his visitor. But he pressed, neverthe- 
 less; for that visitor's motive in making his inquiry. Without furtlier 
 preface, Wilding told him his motive, suppressing nothing. The 
 Treasurer rose, and led tho way into the room in vhich tho registers 
 of the institution were kept. " All tho information which our 
 books can give is heartily at your service," he said. " After the 
 time that has elapsed, I am afraid it is the only information we have 
 to offer you." 
 
 Tho books were consulted, and the entry was found expressed as 
 follows : 
 
 "3d March, 183G. Adopted, and removed from the Foundling 
 Hospital, a male infant, named Walter Wilding, Name and condition 
 of tho person adojiting the cliild Mrs. Jane Ann Miller, widow. 
 Address -Lime-Tree Lodge, Groombridgo Wells. References the 
 llovercnd John Harker, Groombridgo "Wells; and Messrs. Giles, 
 Jeremie, and Giles, bankers, Lombard Street." 
 
 " Is that all ? " asked tlic winc-mcrchaut. " Had you no after- 
 communication with Mrs. IMiller ? "
 
 Tivo Stages of a Jotirney of Investigation. 397 
 
 " None or some reference to it must have appeared in tliis book." 
 
 " May I take a copy of the entry ? " 
 
 " Certainly ! You are a little agitated. Let me make a copy for 
 you." 
 
 " My only chance, I suppose," said Wilding, looking sadly at the 
 copy, " is to inquire at Mrs. Miller's residence, and to try if her 
 references can help me ? " 
 
 " That is the only chance I see at present," answered the Treasurer. 
 " I heartily wish I could have been of some further assistance to you." 
 
 With those farewell words to comfort him Wilding set forth on 
 the journey of investigation which began from the Foundling doors. 
 The first stage to make for, was plainly the house of business of the 
 bankers in Lombard Street. Two of the partners in the firm were 
 inaccessible to chance-visitors when he asked for them. The third, 
 after raising certain inevitable difficulties, consented to let a clerk 
 examine the Ledger marked with the initial letter " M." The account 
 of Mrs. Miller, widow, of Groombridge W^ells, was found. Two long 
 lines, in faded ink, were drawn across it ; and at the bottom of the 
 page there appeared this note : " Account closed, September 30th, 
 1837." 
 
 So the first stage of the journey was reached and so it ended in 
 No Thoroughfare ! After sending a note to Cripple Corner to inform 
 his partner that his absence might be prolonged for some hours. 
 Wilding took his place in the train, and started for the second stage 
 on the journey Mrs. Miller's residence at Groombridge Wells. 
 
 Mothers and children travelled with him ; mothers and children 
 met each other at the station ; mothers and children were in the shops 
 when he entered them to inquire for Lime-Tree Lodge. Everywhere, 
 the nearest and dearest of human relations showed itself haj^pily in 
 the happy light of day. Everywhere, he was reminded of the 
 treasured delusion from which he had been awakened so cruelly of 
 the lost memory which had passed from him like a reflection from a 
 glass. 
 
 Inquiring here, inquiring there, he could hear of no such place as 
 Lime-Tree Lodge. Passing a house-agent's ofiice, he went in wearily, 
 and put the question for the last time. The house-agent pointed 
 across the street to a dreary mansion of many windows, which might 
 have been a manufactory, but which was an liotel. " That's where 
 Lime-Tree Lodge stood, sir," said the man, " ten years ago." 
 
 The second stage reached, and No Tlioroughfare again ! 
 
 But one chance was left. The clerical reference, Mr. Ilarker, still 
 remained to be found. Customers coming in at the moment to occupy 
 the house-agent's attention. Wilding went down the street, and enter- 
 ing a bookseller's shop, asked if he could be informed of the Eeverend 
 John Marker's present address. 
 
 The bookseller looked unaffectedly shocked and astonished, and 
 made no answer.
 
 398 No Thoroughfare 
 
 Wilding repeated his question. 
 
 The bookseller took up from his counter a prim little volume in a 
 binding of sober gray. He handed it to his visitor, open at the title- 
 page. Wilding read : 
 
 " The martyrdom of the Reverend John Harkcr in Now Zealand. 
 Eclated by a former member of his flock." 
 
 Wilding put the book down on the counter. " I beg your pardon," 
 ho said, thinking a little, perhaps, of his own present martyrdom 
 while he spoke. The silent bookseller acknowledged the apology by 
 a bow. Wilding wont out. 
 
 Third and last stage, and No Thoroughfare for tho third and last 
 time. 
 
 Thero was nothing more to be done ; there was absolutely no 
 choice but to go back to London, defeated at all points. From time 
 to time on tho return journey, tho wine-merchant looked at his copy 
 of tho entry in the Foimdling Register. There is one among tho 
 many forms of despair perhaps the most pitiable of all -which per- 
 sists in disguising itself as Hope. Wilding checked himself in tho 
 act of throwing the useless morsel of paper out of the carriage window. 
 " It may lead to something yet," he thought. " While I live, I won't 
 part with it. When I die, my executors shall find it sealed up with 
 my will." 
 
 Now, the mention of his will set the good wine-mercbant on a new 
 track of thought, without diverting his mind from its engrossing 
 subject. Ho must make his will immediately. 
 
 The application of the phrase No Thoroughfare to the case had 
 originated with Mr. Bintrey. In their first long conference following 
 the discovery, that sagacious personage had a hundred times repeated, 
 with an obstructive shake of the head, " No Thoroughfiire, Sir, No 
 Thoroughfare. My belief is that there is no way out of this at tliis 
 time of day, and my advice is, make yourself comfortable where 
 you are." 
 
 In the course of the protracted consultation, a magnum of tlie 
 forty-five year old port-wine had been produced for the wetting of 
 Mr. Bintrey's legal wliistle ; but the more clearly he saw his way 
 through the wine, the more emphatically ho did not see his way 
 throiigli the case ; repeating as often as he set his glass down empty, 
 " Mr. Wilding, No Thoroughfare. Rest and be thankful." 
 
 It is certain that the honest winc-morehant's anxiety to make a will 
 originated in profound conscientiousness ; though it is possible (and 
 quite consistent with his rectitude) that he may unconsciously have 
 derived some feeling of relief from the proBpect of delegating his own 
 difficulty to two other men who were to come after him. Be that as 
 it may, lie pursued his new track of tliouglit with great ardour, and 
 lost no time in begging George Vendale and Mr. Bintrey to }neet 
 him in ( 'ri2)])le Corner and share his ccmfidence. 
 
 "Beint' all three assembled with closed doors," said Mr. Bintrev,
 
 Mr. Bintrey states the Case plainly. 399 
 
 addressing the now partner on the occasion, " I wish to observe, 
 before our friend (and my client) entrusts us with his further views, 
 that I have endorsed what I understand from him to have been your 
 advice, Mr. Vendale, and what would be the advice of every sensible 
 man. I have told him that he positively must keep his secret. I 
 have spoken with Mrs. Goldstraw, both in his presence and in his 
 absence ; and if anybody is to be trusted (which is a very large IF), 
 I think she is to be trusted to that extent. I have pointed out to our 
 friend (and my client), that to set on foot random inquiries would not 
 only be to raise the Devil, in the likeness of all the swindlers in tlie 
 kingdom, but would also bo to waste the estate. Now, you see, Mr. 
 Vendale, our friend (and my client) does not desire to waste the estate, 
 but, on the contrary, desires to husband it for what he considers but 
 I can't say 1 do the rightful owner, if such riglitful owner should 
 ever be found. I am very much mistaken if he ever will be, but 
 never mind that. Mr. Wilding and I are, at least, agreed th.at the 
 estate is not to be wasted. Now, I have yielded to Mr. Wilding's 
 desire to keep an advertisement at intervals flowing through the 
 newspapers, cautiously inviting any person who may know anything 
 about that adopted infant, taken from the Foundling Hospital, to 
 come to my office ; and I have pledged myself that such advertise- 
 ment shall regularly appear. I have gathered from our friend (and 
 my client) that I meet you here to-day to take his instructions, not to 
 give him advice. I am prepared to receive his instructions, and to 
 ]'espcct his wishes ; but you will please observe that this docs not 
 imply my approval of either as a matter of professional opinion," 
 
 Thus Mr. Bintrey ; talking quite as much at Wilding as to Vendale. 
 And yet, in spite of his care for his client, he was so amused by his 
 client's Quixotic conduct, as to eye him from time to time with 
 twinkling eyes, in the light of a highly comical curiosity. 
 
 " Nothing," observed Wilding, " can be clearer. I only wish my 
 head were as clear as yours, Mr. Bintrey." 
 
 " If you feel that singing in it coming on," hinted the lawyer, with 
 an alarmed glance, " put it off. I mean the interview." 
 
 " Not at all, I thank you," said Wilding. " What was I going 
 to " 
 
 " Don't excite yourself, Mr. Wilding," urged the lawyer. 
 
 " No ; I wasn't going to," said tlio wine-merchant. " Mr. Bintrey 
 and George Vendale, v/ould you have any hesitation or objection to 
 become my joint trustees and executors, or can you at once consent ? " 
 
 " I consent," replied George Vendale, readily. 
 
 " I consent," said Bintrey, not so readily. 
 
 " Thank you both. Mr. Bintrey, my instructions for my last will 
 and testament are short and plain. Perhaps you will now have tho 
 goodness to take them down. I leave tho whole of my real and 
 personal estate, without any exception or reservation whatsoever, to 
 )0U two, my joint trustees and executors, in trust to pay over the
 
 400 No TJioroughfare. 
 
 whole to the true Walter Wilding, if he shall be found and identified 
 within two years after the day of my death. Failing that, in trust to 
 you two to pay over the whole as a benefaction and legacy to the 
 Foundling Hospital." 
 
 " Those are all your instructions, are they, Mr. Wilding ? " de- 
 manded Bintrey, after a blank silencCp during which nobody had 
 looked at anybody. 
 
 " The whole." 
 
 " And as to those instructions, you have absolutely made up your 
 mind, Mr. Wilding ? " 
 
 " Absolutely, decidedly, finally." 
 
 " It only remains," said the lawyer, with one shrug of his shoulders, 
 " to get them into technical and binding form, and to execute and 
 attest. Now, does that press ? Is there any hurry about it ? You 
 arc not going to die yet, sir." 
 
 " Mr. Bintrey," answered Wilding, gravely, " when I am going to 
 die is within other knowledge than yours or mine. I shall be glad 
 to have this matter off my mind, if you please." 
 
 " We are lawyer and client again," rejoined Bintrey, who, for the 
 nonce, had become almost sympathetic. " If this day week here, at 
 the same hour will suit Mr. Vendale and yourself, I will enter in 
 my Diary that I attend you accordingly." 
 
 The appointment was made, and in due sequence kept. The will 
 was formally signed, sealed, delivered, and v.'itnessed, and was carried 
 off by Mr. Bintrey for safe storage among the jiapers of his clients, 
 ranged in their respective iron boxes, with their respective owners' 
 names outside, on iron tiers in his consulting-room, as if that legal 
 sanctuary were a condensed Family Vault of Clients. 
 
 With more heart than he had lately had for former subjects of 
 interest. Wilding then set about completing his patriarchal establish- 
 ment, being much assisted not only by Mrs. Goldstraw but by Vendale 
 too : who, perhaps, had in his mind the giving of an Obenreizer 
 dinner as soon as possible. Anyhow, the establishment being 
 reported in sound working order, the Obenreizers, Guardian and 
 Ward, were asked to dinner, and Madame Dor was included in the 
 invitation. If Vendale liad been over head and cars in love before 
 a phrase not to be taken as implying the faintest doubt about it this 
 dinner plunged him down in love ten thousand fathoms deep. Yet, 
 for the life of him, he could not get one word alone with charming 
 Marguerite. So surely as a blessed moment seemed to come, 
 Obenreizer, in liis filmy state, would stand at Vendale's elbow, or the 
 broad back of Madame Dor would appear before his eyes. That 
 speechless matron was never seen in a front view, from the moment 
 of lier arrival to that of her departure except at dinner. And from 
 the instant of her retirement to the drawing-room, after a hearty 
 particijoation in that meal, she turned her face to the wall again. 
 
 Yet, througli four or five delightful though distracting liDiirs, Mar-
 
 A Proposition in Physiognomy. 40 1 
 
 guei'ite was to be seen, Marguerite was to be beard, Marguerite was 
 to be occasionally toucbed. Wben tbey made tbe round of tbe old 
 dark cellars, Vendale led ber by tbe band ; wben sbe sang to bim in 
 tbe ligbted room at nigbt, Vendale, standing by ber, beld ber relin- 
 quisbed gloves, and would bave bartered against tbem every drop of 
 tbe forty-five year old, tbougb it bad been forty-five times forty-five 
 years old, and its nett price forty-five times forty-five pounds per 
 dozen. And still, wben sbe was gone, and a great gap of an extin- 
 guisber was clapped on Cripple Corner, be tormented bimself by 
 wondering, Did sbe tbink tbat be admired ber ! Did sbe tbink tbat 
 be adored ber ! Did sbe suspect tbat sbe bad won bim, bcart and 
 soul ! Did sbe care to tbink at all about it ! And so. Did sbe and 
 Didn't sbe, i;p and down tbe gamut, and above tbe line and below tbe 
 line, dear, dear ! Poor restless beart of bumanity ! To tbink tbat 
 tbe men wbo were mummies tbousands of years ago, did tbe same, 
 and ever found tbe secret bow to be quiet after it ! 
 
 " Wbat do you tbink, George," "Wilding asked bim next day, " of 
 Mr. Obenreizer ? (I won't ask you wbat you tbink of Miss Oben- 
 reizer.)" 
 
 " I don't know," said Vendale, " and I never did know, wbat to 
 tbink of bim." 
 
 " He is well informed and clover," said Wilding. 
 
 " Certainly clever." 
 
 " A good musician." (He bad i)layed very well, and sung very 
 well, overnigbt.) 
 
 " Unquestionably a good musician." 
 
 " And talks well." 
 
 " Yes," said George Vendale, ruminating, " and talks well. Do you 
 know. Wilding, it oddly occurs to me, as I tbink about bim, tbat be 
 doesn't keep silence well ! " 
 
 " How do you mean ? Ho is not obtrusively talkative." 
 
 " No, and I don't mean tbat. But wben be is silent, you can bardly 
 belp vaguely, tbougb perbaps most unjustly, mistrusting bim. Take 
 people wbom you know and like. Tako any one you know and 
 like." 
 
 " Soon done, my good fellow," said Wilding. " I take you." 
 
 " I didn't bargain for tbat, or foresee it," returned Vendale, laugb- 
 ing. " However, take me. Eeflcct for a moment. Is your approving 
 knowledge of my interesting face mainly founded (bow^ever various 
 tbe momentary expressions it may include) on my face wben I am 
 silent ? " 
 
 " I think it is," said Wilding. 
 
 " I tbink so too. NoW; you sec, wben Obenreizer speaks in otber 
 words, wben be is allowed to explain bimself away be comes out 
 right enough; but wben be bas not the opportunity of explaining 
 himself away, be comes out rather wrong. Therefore it is, tbat I say 
 ho does not keep silence well. And passing hastily in review such 
 
 2d
 
 402 No Thoroughfare. 
 
 faces as I know, and don't trust, I am inclined to think, now 1 give 
 my mind to it, that none of them keep silence well." 
 
 This proposition in Physiognomy being new to Wilding, he was at 
 first slow to admit it, until asking himself the question whether Mrs. 
 Goldstraw kept silence well, and remembering tlaat her face in reposo 
 decidedly invited trustfulness, ho was as glad as men usually are to 
 believe what they desire to believe. 
 
 But, as he was very slow to regain his spirits or his health, his 
 partner, as another means of setting him up and perhaps also with 
 contingent Obenreizer views reminded him of those musical schemes 
 of his in connection with his family, and how a singing-class was to 
 be formed in the house, and a Choir in a neighbouring church. The 
 class was established speedily, and, two or three of the people having 
 already some musical knowledge, and singing tolerably, the Choir 
 soon followed. The latter was led, and chiefly taught, by Wilding 
 himself: who had hopes of converting his dependents into so many 
 Foundlings, in respect of their capacity to sing sacred choruses. 
 
 Now, the Obenreizers being skilled musicians, it was easily brought 
 to pass that they should be asked to join these musical unions. 
 Guardian and Ward consenting, or (jruardian consenting for both, it 
 was necessarily brought to pass that Vendalc's life became a life of 
 absolute thraldom and enchantment. For, in the mouldy Cliristopher- 
 Wren church on Sundays, with its dearly beloved brethren assembled 
 and met together, five-and-twenty strong, was not that Ilcr voice that 
 shot like light into the darkest places, thrilling the walls and pillars 
 as though they were pieces of his heart ! What time, too, Madame 
 Dor in a corner of the high pew, turning her back upon everybody 
 and everything, could not fail to be Ritualistically right at somo 
 moment of the service ; like the man whom the doctors recommended 
 to get drunk once a month, and who, tliat he might not overlook it, 
 got drunk every day. 
 
 But, even those serapliic Sundays were surpassed by the Wednesday 
 concerts establislied for the patriarchal family. At those concerts 
 she would sit down to the piano and sing them, in her own tongue, 
 songs of her own land, songs calling from the mountain-tops to 
 Vendalc, "Rise above tlie grovelling level country; come far away 
 from the crowd ; pursue mo as I mount liiglier ; higher, higher, 
 melting into tlic a/urc distance; rise to my supremcst liciglit of all, 
 and love me licre ! " Tlicn woiild tho pretty bodice, the clocked 
 stocking, and tlie silver-buckled shoe be, lilce the broad forehead ami 
 tho briglit eyes, fraught with the spring of a very chamois, until tho 
 strain was over. 
 
 Not even over Vendale himself did these songs of hers cast a more 
 potent spell tliau over Joey Ladle in his different way. Steadily 
 refusing to nmddle the harmony by taking any share in it, and 
 evincing the suprcmest contempt for scales and such-like rudiments 
 of music which, indeed, seldom captivate mere listeners Joey did
 
 Joey Ladle bestows a Coviplivicnt. 403 
 
 at first give up tLo whole business for a bad job, and the wbole of tbe 
 performers for a set of bowling Dervisbes. But, descrying traces of 
 unmuddled harmony in a part-song one day, be gave bis two under 
 ccUarmen faint bopes of getting on towards something in course of 
 time. An anthem of Handel's led to further encouragement from 
 him : though be objected that that great musician must have been 
 down in some of them foreign cellars pretty mucli, for to go and say 
 the same thing so many times over ; which, took it in bow you might, 
 bo considered a certain sign of your having took it in somehow. On 
 a third occasion, the public appearance of Mr. Jarvis with a flute, and 
 of an odd man with a violin, and the performance of a duct by the 
 two, did so astonish him that, solely of bis own impulse and motion, 
 be became inspired with the words, " Ann Koar ! " repeatedly pro- 
 nouncing them as if calling in a familiar manner for some lady who 
 bad distinguished herself in the orchestra. But this was his final 
 testimony to the merits of his mates, for, the instrumental duet being 
 performed at the first Wednesday concert, and being presently followed 
 by the voice of Marguerite Obcnreizcr, he sat with his mouth wide 
 open, entranced, until she had finished ; when, rising in his place with 
 much solemnity, and prefacing what he was about to say with a bow 
 that specially included Mr. "Wilding in it, be delivered himself of tlio 
 gratifying sentiment : " Arter that, ye may all on ye get 'to bed ! " 
 And ever afterwards declined to render homage in any other words to 
 the musical powers of the family. 
 
 Thus began a separate personal acquaintance between Marguerite 
 Obenreizer and Joey Ladle. She laughed so heartily at his com- 
 pliment, and yet was so abashed by it, that Joey made bold to say to 
 her, after the concert was over, he hoped he wasn't so muddled in his 
 iiead as to ha,ve took a liberty ? She made him a gracious reply, and 
 Joey ducked in return. 
 
 " You'll change the luck time about, Miss," said Joey, ducking 
 again. " It's such as you in the place that can bring round the luck 
 of the place." 
 
 " Can I ? Eound the luck? " she answered, in her pretty English, and 
 with a pretty wonder. " I fear I do not understand. I am so stujiid." 
 
 " Young Master Wilding, Miss," Joey explained confidentially, 
 Ibougli not much to her enlightenment, " changed the luck, afore be 
 took in young Master George. So I say, and so they'll find. Lord ! 
 Only come into the place and sing over the luck a few times, Miss, 
 and it won't be able to help itself ! " 
 
 With this, and with a whole brood of ducks, Joey backed out of 
 the presence. But Joey being a privileged person, and even an in- 
 voluntary conquest being pleasant to youth and beauty, Marguerite 
 inorrily looked out for him next time. 
 
 " Where is my Mr. Joey, please ? " she asked Vendalo. 
 
 So Joey was produced, and shaken hands with, and that became au 
 Institution.
 
 404 ^0 Thoroughfare. 
 
 Another Institution arose in this wise. Joey was a little hard of 
 hearing. He himself said it was " Wapours," and perhaps it might 
 have been ; but whatever the cause of the effect, there the effect was, 
 upon him. On this first occasion he had been seen to sidle along the 
 wall, with his left hand to his left ear, until he had sidled himself 
 into a seat pretty near the singer, in which place and position he had 
 remained, until addressing to his friends the amateurs the compliment 
 before mentioned. It was observed on the following Wednesday that 
 Joey's action as a Pecking Machine was impaired at dinner, and it 
 was rumoured about the table that this was explainable by his high- 
 strung expectations of Miss Obenreizer's singing, and his fears of not 
 getting a jilaco where ho could hear every note and syllable. The 
 rumour reaching Wilding's cars, he in his good nature called Joey to 
 the front at night before Marguerite began. Thus the Institution 
 came into being that on succeeding nights, Marguerite, running her 
 hands over the keys before singing, always said to Vendale, " Where 
 is my Mr. Joey, please ? " and that Vendale always brought him 
 forth, and stationed him near by. That he should then, when all 
 eyes were upon him, express in his face the utmost contempt for the 
 exertions of his friends and confidence in Marguerite alone, Avhom he 
 would stand contemplating, not unlike the rhinocerous out of the 
 spelling-book, tamed and on his hind legs, was a part of the Institu- 
 tion. Also that when he remained after the singing in his most 
 ecstatic state, some bold spirit from tlie back should say, " What do 
 you think of it, Joey ? " and ho should be goaded to reply, as having 
 that instant conceived the retort, " Arter that ye may all on ye get to 
 bed ! " These were other parts of the Institution. 
 
 But, the simple pleasures and small jests of Cripple Corner were 
 not destined to have a long life. Underlying them from the first was 
 a serious matter, which every member of the patriarchal family knew 
 of, but which, by tacit agreement, all forbore to speak of. Mr. Wild- 
 ing's health was in a bad way. 
 
 He might have overcome the shock ho had sustained in the one 
 great affection of his life, or he might have overcome his con- 
 sciousness of being in the enjoyment of another man's property ; 
 but the two together were too much for him. A man haunted 
 by twin ghosts, he became deeply depressed. The inseparable 
 spectres sat at tlie board Avith him, ate from his platter, drank 
 from his cup, and stood by his bedside at night. Wlicn he re- 
 called his supposed motlier's love, he felt as tliough he had stolen 
 it. When ho rallied a little under tJic resjicct and attachment of 
 his dependants, he felt as though he were even fraudulent in 
 making them happy, for that should have been the unknown man's 
 duty and gratification. 
 
 Gradually, under the pressure of his brooding mind, his body 
 Btooped, liis step lost its elasticity, his eyes were seldom lifted from 
 the gr(nind. He knew he could not help t'hc deplorable mistake that
 
 Walter Wilding's Time is come. 405 
 
 Lad been made, but he knew he could not mend it ; for the days and 
 weeks went by, and no one claimed his name or his possessions. And 
 now there began to creep over him a cloudy consciousness of often- 
 recurring confusion in his head. He would unaccountably lose, some- 
 times whole hours, sometimes a whole day and night. Once, his 
 remembrance stopped as he sat at the head of the dinner-table, and 
 was blank until daybreak. Another time, it stopped as he was beating 
 time to their singing, and went on again when he and his partner 
 were walking in the courtyard by the light of the moon, ho,lf the night 
 later. He asked Vendale (always full of consideration, work, and 
 help) how this was ? Vendale only replied, " You have not been quite 
 well ; that's all." He looked for explanation into the faces of his 
 people. But they would put it off with " Glad to see you looking so 
 much better, sir ; " or " Hope you're doing nicely now, sir ; " in which 
 was no information at all. 
 
 At length, when the partnership was but five months old, Walter 
 Wilding took to his bed, and his housekeeper became his nurse. 
 
 "Lying here, perhaps you will not mind my calling you Sally, 
 Mrs. Goldstraw ? " said the poor wine-merchant. 
 
 " It sounds more natural to me, sir, than any other name, and I 
 like it better." 
 
 " Thank you, Sally. I think, Sally, I must of late have been 
 subject to fits. Is that so, Sally ? Don't mind telling mc now." 
 
 " It has happened, sir." 
 
 " Ah ! That is the explanation ! " he quietly remarked. " Mr. 
 Obcnreizer, Sally, talks of the world being so small that it is not 
 strange how often the same people come together, and come together 
 at various places, and in various stages of life. But it does seem 
 strange, Sally, that I should, as I may say, come round to the 
 Foundling to die." 
 
 He extended his hand to her, and she gently took it. 
 
 " You are not going to die, dear Mr. Wilding." 
 
 " So Mr. Bintrey said, but I think he was wrong. The old child- 
 feeling is coming back upon me, Sally. The old hush and rest, as I 
 used to fall asleep." 
 
 After an interval he said, in a placid voice, "Please kiss me, 
 Nurse," and, it was evident, believed himself to be lying in the old 
 Dormitory. 
 
 As she had been used to bend over the fatherless and motherless 
 children, Sally bent over the fatherless and motherless man, and put 
 her lips to his forehead, miirmuriug : 
 
 " God bless you ! " 
 
 " God bless you ! " he replied, in the same tone. 
 
 After another interval, he opened his eyes in his own character, and 
 said : " Don't move mc, Sally, because of what I am going to say ; I 
 lie quite easily. I think my time is come. I don't know how it may 
 fippcar to you, Sally, but "
 
 4o6 No Thoroughfare. 
 
 Insensibility fell upon him for a few minutes ; ho cmergccl from \i 
 onco more. 
 
 " I don't know how it may appear to you, Sally, but so it appears 
 to me." 
 
 When he had thus conscientiously finished his favourite sentence, 
 his time came, and ho died. 
 
 ACT II. 
 
 VENDALE MAKES LOVE, 
 
 TiiK summer and the autumn passed. Christmas and the Now Year 
 wcro at hand. 
 
 As oxocutoi"S honestly bent on performing their duty towards the 
 dead, Vcndalo and Bintrcy had hold moro than one anxious consulta- 
 tion on the subject of Wilding's will. Tho lawyer had declared, from 
 the first, that it was simply impossible to take any useful action in tho 
 matter at all. Tho only obvious inquiries to make, in relation to tho 
 lost man, had been made already by Wilding himself ; with this result, 
 that time and death together had not loft a trace of him discoverable. 
 To advcrtiso for tho claimant to tho property, it would bo necessary 
 to mention particulars a course of proceeding which would invito 
 half the impostors in England to present themselves in tho character 
 of tho true Wiilter Wilding. " If wo find a chance of tracing the lost 
 man, wo will take it. If wo don't, let us meet for another consultation 
 on tho first anniversary of Wilding's death." So Bintrcy advised. 
 And so, with tho most earnest desire to fulfil his dead friend's wishes, 
 Vendalo was fain to let tho matter rest for the present. 
 
 Turning from his interest in tho past to his interest in the future, 
 Vcndale still found himself confronting a doubtful prospect. Months 
 on months had passed since his first visit to Soho Square and through 
 all that time, tho ono language in which he had told Marguerite that 
 ho loved her was tho language of the eyes, assisted, at convenient 
 opportunities, by the language of tlio hand. 
 
 What was tho obstacle in his way ? Tho ono immovable obstacle 
 Avhich Iiad been in his way from the first. No matter how fairly the 
 opportunities loolced, Vcndale's eftorts to speak with Marguerite alone 
 ended invariably in ono and the same result. Under tho most 
 accidental circumstances, in the most innocent manner possible, 
 Obonrcizer was always in tho way. 
 
 With tlio last days of tho old year c;imo an unexpected chance of 
 spending an evening with Marguerite, which Vendale resolved should 
 bo a chance of speaking privately to her as well. A cordial note from 
 Obcnrcizor invited liini, on New Year's Day, to a little family dinner
 
 New Year's Day. 407 
 
 in Soho Square. " We shall be only four," the note said. " We shall 
 be only two," Vendale determined, " before the evening is out ! " 
 
 New Year's Day, among the English, is associated with the giving 
 and receiving of dinners, and with nothing more. New Year's Day, 
 among the foreigners, is the grand opportunity of the year for the 
 giving and receiving of presents. It is occasionally possible to 
 acclimatise a foreign custom. In this instance Vendale felt no hesita- 
 tion about making the attempt. His one difficulty was to decide what 
 Lis Now Year's gift to Marguerite should be. The defensive pride of 
 the peasant's daughter morbidly sensitive to the inequality between 
 her social position and his would bo secretly roused against him if 
 he ventured on a rich offering. A gift, which a poor man's purse 
 might purchase, was the one gift that could be trusted to find its way 
 to her heart, for the giver's sake. Stoutly resisting temptation, in the 
 form of diamonds and rubies, Vendale bought a brooch of the filagree- 
 work of Genoa the simplest and most unpretending ornament that 
 he could find in the jeweller's shop. 
 
 He slipped his gift into Marguerite's hand as she held it out to 
 welcome him on the day of the dinner. 
 
 " This is your first New Year's Day in England," he said. " Will 
 you let mo help to make it like a Now Year's Day at home ? " 
 
 She thanked him, a little constrainedly, as she looked at tlio 
 j(.'weller's box, uncertain what it might contain. Opening the box, 
 and discovering the studiously simple form under which Vendalc's 
 little keepsake offered itself to her, she penetrated his motive on the 
 spot. Her face turned on him brightly, with a look which said, " I 
 own you have pleased and flattered me." Never had she been so 
 charming, in Vendale's eyes, as she was at that moment. Her winter 
 dress a petticoat of dark silk, v/ith a bodice of black velvet rising 
 to her neck, and enclosing it softly in a little circle of swansdown 
 heightened, by all the force of contrast, the dazzling fairness of her 
 hair and her complexion. It was only when she turned aside from him 
 to the glass, and, taking out the brooch that she wore, put his New 
 Year's gift in its place, that Vendale's attention wandered far enougli 
 away from her to discover the presence of other persons in the room. 
 He now became conscious that the hands of Obenreizer were aficc- 
 tionately in possession of his elbows. He now heard the voice of 
 Obenreizer thanking him for his attention to Marguerite, with the 
 faintest possible ring of mockery in its tone. (" Such a simj^le 
 present, dear sir ! and showing such nice tact ! ") Ho now discovered, 
 for the first time, that there was one other guest, and but one, besides 
 himself, whom Obenreizer presented as a compatriot and fi'iend. The 
 friend's face was mouldy, and the friend's figure was fat. His ago 
 was suggestive of the autumnal period of human life. In the course 
 of the evening he developed two extraordinary capacities. One 
 was a capacity for silence ; the other was a capacity for emptying 
 bottles.
 
 4o8 No Thoroughfare. 
 
 Madame Dor was not in tlie room. Neither was ttere any visible 
 place reserved for lier ^yllen they sat down to table. Obenreizer 
 explained that it was " the good Dor's simple habit to dine always in 
 the middle of the day. She would make her excuses later in the 
 evening." Vendale wondered whether the good Dor had, on this 
 occasion, varied her domestic employment from cleaning Obenreizer's 
 gloves to cooking Obenreizer's dinner. This at least was certain 
 the dishes served were, one and all, as achievements in cookery, high 
 above the reach of the rude elementary art of England. The dinner 
 was unobtrusively perfect. As for the wine, the eyes of the speechless 
 friend rolled over it, as in solemn ecstasy. Sometimes he said 
 " Good ! " when a bottle came in full ; and sometimes he said " Ah ! " 
 when a bottle wont out empty and there his contributions to the 
 gaiety of the evening ended. 
 
 Silence is occasionally infectious. Opi)ressed by private anxieties 
 of their own, Marguerite and Vendale appeared to feel the influence 
 of the speechless friend. The whole responsibility of keeping the 
 talk going rested on Obenreizer's shoulders, and manfully did Oben- 
 reizer sustain it. He opened his heart in the character of an en- 
 lightened foreigner, and sang the praises of England. When other 
 topics ran dry, ho returned to this inexhaustible source, and always 
 set the stream running again as copiously as ever. Obenreizer would 
 liave given an arm, an eye, or a leg to have been born an Englishman. 
 Out of England there was no such institution as a home, no such thing 
 as a fireside, no such object as a beautiful woman. His dear Miss 
 Marguerite would excuse him, if he accounted for lier attractions on 
 the theory that English blood must have mixed at some former time 
 with their obscure and unknown ancestry. Survey this English 
 nation, and behold a tall, clean, plump, and solid people ! Look at 
 their cities ! What magnificence in their public buildings ! What 
 admirable order and propriety in their streets ! Admire their laws, 
 combining the eternal principle of justice with the other eternal 
 lu'inciplo of pounds, sliillings, and pence ; and aj)plying the product 
 to all civil injuries, from an injury to a man's honour, to an injury to 
 a man's nose ! You have ruined my daughter pounds, shillings, and 
 pence ! You have knocked me down with a blow in my face pounds, 
 shillings, and pence ! Where was the material prosperity of such a 
 country as that to stop ? Obenreizer, projecting himself into the 
 future, failed to see tlie end of it. Obenreizer's enthusiasm entreated 
 permission to exhale itself, English fashion, in a toast. Here is our 
 modest little dinner over, here is our frugal dessert on the table, and 
 lierc is the admirer of England conforming to national customs, and 
 making a si)0cch ! A toast to your white cliffs of Albion, Mr. Vendale ! 
 to your national virtues, your charming climate, and your fascinating 
 women ! to your Hearths, to your Homes, to your Habeas Corpus, and 
 to all your other institutions! In one word to England! Heep- 
 heep-hcep ! liooray !
 
 Diamond cut Diamond. 409 
 
 Obcnreizer's voice had barely cbantcd the last note of tbe English 
 cheer, the speechless friend had barely drained the last drop out of 
 his glass, when the festive proceedings were interrupted by a modest 
 tap at the door. A woman-servant came in, and approached her 
 master with a little note in her hand. Obenreizer opened the note 
 with a frown ; and, after reading it with an expression of genuine 
 annoyance, passed it on to his compatriot and friend. Vendale's 
 spirits rose as he watched these jiroceedings. Had he found an ally 
 in the annoying little note ? Was the long-lookcd-for chance actually 
 coming at last ? 
 
 " I am afraid there is no help for it ? " said Obenreizer, addressing 
 his fellow-countryman. " I am afraid we must go." 
 
 The speechless friend handed back the letter, shrugged his heavy 
 shoulders, and poured himself out a last glass of wine. His fat 
 fingers lingered fondly round the neck of the bottle. They pressed 
 it with a little amatory squeeze at parting. His globular eyes looked 
 dimly, as through an intervening haze, at Yendale and Marguerite. 
 His heavy articulation laboured, and brought forth a whole sentence 
 at a birth. " I think," he said, " I should have liked a little more 
 wine." His breath failed him after that eflfort ; he gasped, and walked 
 to the door. 
 
 Obenreizer addressed himself to Vcndale with an appearance of the 
 dcejiest distress. 
 
 " I am so shocked, so confused, so distressed," ho began. " A mis- 
 fortune has happened to one of my compatriots. He is alone, ho is 
 ignorant of your language I and my good friend, here, have no 
 choice l)ut to 'go and help him. What can I say in my excuse ? How 
 can I describe my affliction at depriving myself in this way of the 
 honour of your company ? " 
 
 He paused, evidently expecting to see Vcndale take up his hat and 
 retire. Discerning his opportunity at last, Vcndale determined to do 
 nothing of the kind. He met Obenreizer dexterously, with Oben- 
 rcizor's own weapons. 
 
 " Pray don't distress yourself," ho said. " I'll wait here with the 
 greatest pleasure till you come back." 
 
 Marguerite blushed deeply, and turned away to her embroidery- 
 frame in a corner by tlic window. The film sllo^^ed itself in Obcn- 
 reizer's eyes, and the smile came something sourly to Obcnreizer's 
 lips. To have told Vendale that there was no reasonable prospect of 
 liis coming back in good time, would have been to risk offending a 
 man whose favouraljle opinion was of solid commercial importance to 
 him. Accepting his defeat with the best possible grace, he declared 
 liimsclf to be equally honoured and delighted by Vendale's proposal. 
 " So frank, so friendly, so English I " He bustled about, apparently 
 looking for something he wanted, disappeared for a moment through 
 the folding-doors communicating with the next room, came back with 
 liis hat and coat, and T)r()testing tliat lie would return at the earliest
 
 410 No Thoroughfare. 
 
 possible moment, embraced Vcndalo's elbows, and vanislied from tbo 
 scene in company with the speechless friend. 
 
 Vendalc turned to the corner by the window, in which Marguerite 
 had placed herself with her work. There, as if she had dropped from 
 the ceiling, or come up through the floor there, in the old attitude, 
 with her face to the stove sat an Obstacle that had not been foreseen, 
 in the person of Madame Dor ! She half got up, half looked over her 
 broad shoulder at Vendale, and plumped down again. Was she at 
 work ? Yes. Cleaning Obenreizer's gloves, as before ? No ; darning 
 Obenreizer's stockings. 
 
 Tlie case was now desj^erate. Two serious considerations presented 
 themselves to Vendale. Was it possible to put Madame Dor into the 
 stove ? The stove wouldn't hold her. Was it possible to treat 
 Madame Dor, not as a living woman, but as an article of furniture ? 
 Could the mind bo brought to contemplate this respectable matron 
 purely in the light of a chest of drawers, with a black gauze head- 
 dress accidentally left on the top of it? Yes, the mind could bo 
 brought to do that. With a comparatively trifling effort, Vendale's 
 mind did it. As ho took his place on the old-fashioned window-seat, 
 close by Marguerite and her embroidery, a slight movement a2)pearcd 
 in the chest of drawers, but no remark issued from it. Let it bo 
 remembered that solid furniture is not easy to move, and that it has 
 this advantage in consequence there is no fear of upsetting it. 
 
 Unusually silent and unusually constrained with the bright colour 
 fast fading from her face, with a feverish energy possessing her fingers 
 the pretty Marguerite bent over her embroidery, and worked as if 
 lier life depended on it. Hardly less agitated himself, Vendale felt 
 the importance of leading her very gently to the avowal which he was 
 eager to make to the other sweeter avowal still, which he was longing 
 to hear. A woman's love is never to be taken by storm ; it yields 
 insensibly to a system of gradual approach. It ventures by the round- 
 about way, and listens to the low voice. Vendale led her memory 
 back to their past meetings when they were travelling together in 
 Switzerland. They revived the impressions, they recalled the events, 
 of the hap2)y bygone time. Little by little, Marguerite's constraijit 
 vanislied. She smiled, she was interested, she looked at Vendale, she 
 grew idle witli her needle, she made false stitclics in her work. Their 
 voices sank lower and lower ; their faces bent nearer and nearer to 
 each other as they spoke. And Madame Dor ? ]\Iadamc Dor behaved 
 like an angel. She never looked round ; she never said a word ; slio 
 went on with Obenreizer's stockings. Pulling eacli stocking up tight 
 over her left arm, and holding that arm aloft from time to time, to 
 catch the liglit on her work, there were moments delicate and in- 
 describable moments when Madame Dor appeared to be sitting upside 
 down, and contemplating one of her own respectable legs, elevated in 
 the air. As the minutes wore on, these elevations followed each other 
 at longer and longer intervals. Now and again, tlie black gauze
 
 George Vendale improves Ids Opportunity. 411 
 
 head-dress nodded, dropped forward, recovered itself. A little heap 
 of stockings slid softly from Madame Dor's lap, and remained un- 
 noticed on the floor. A prodigious ball of worsted followed the 
 stockings, and rolled lazily under the table. The black gauze head- 
 dress nodded, dropped forward, recovered itself, nodded again, dropped 
 forward again, and recovered itself no more. A composite sound, 
 partly as of the purring of an immense cat, partly as of the planing 
 of a soft board, rose over the hushed voices of the lovers, and hummed 
 at regular intervals through the room. Nature and Madame Dor had 
 combined together in Vendale's interests. The best of women was 
 asleep. 
 
 Marguerite rose to stop not the snoring let us say, the audible 
 repose of Madame Dor. Vendale laid his hand on her arm, and 
 pressed her back gently into her chair. 
 
 " Don't disturb her," he whispered. " I have been waiting to tell 
 you a secret. Let me toll it now." 
 
 Marguerite resumed her seat. She tried to resume her needle. It 
 was useless ; her eyes failed her ; her hand failed her ; she could find 
 nothing. 
 
 " We have been talking," said Vendale, " of the happy time when 
 we first met, and first travelled together. I have a confession to 
 make. I have been concealing something. Vv^hcn wo spoke of my 
 first visit to Switzerland, I told you of all the impressions I had 
 brought back with me to England except one. Can you guess what 
 that one is ? " 
 
 Her eyes looked stedfastly at the embroidery, and her face turned 
 a little away from him. Signs of disturbance began to appear in her 
 neat velvet bodice, round the region of the brooch. She made no 
 reply. Vendale pressed the question without mercy. 
 
 " Can you guess what the ono Swiss impression is, Avhich I have 
 not told you yet ? " 
 
 Her face turned back towards him, and a faint smile trembled on 
 her lips. 
 
 " An impression of the mountains, perhaps ? " she said slyly. 
 
 " No ; a much more precious impression than that." 
 
 " Of the lakes ? " 
 
 " No. The lakes have not grown dearer and dearer in remembrance 
 to me every day. The lakes are not associated with my happiness in 
 the present, and my hopes in the future. Marguerite ! all that makes 
 life worth having hangs, for me, on a word from your lips. Marguerite ! 
 I love you ! " 
 
 Her head drooped as he took her hand. He drew her to him, and 
 looked at her. The tears escaped from her downcast eyes, and fell 
 slowly over her checks, 
 
 " O, Mr. Vendale," she said sadly, " it would have been kinder to 
 have kept your secret. Have you forgotten the distance between us V 
 It can never, never bo ! "
 
 412 No TJioroughfarc. 
 
 " TLoro can be but one distance between us, Marguerite a distance 
 of your making. My love, my darling, tbere is no higlior rank in 
 goodness, there is no liigber rank in beauty, than yours ! Come ! 
 whisper the one little word which tells me you will be my wife ! " 
 
 She sighed bitterly. " Think of your family," she murmured ; 
 " and think of mine ! " 
 
 Vcndale drew her a little nearer to him. 
 
 " If you dwell on such an obstacle as that," ho said, " I shall 
 think but one thought I shall think I have offended you." 
 
 She started, and looked up. " 0, no ! " she exclaimed innocently. 
 The instant the words passed her lips, she saw the construction that 
 might be placed on them. Her confession had escaped her in spite 
 of herself. A lovely flush of colour overspread her face. She made 
 a momentary effort to disengage herself from her lovor's embrace. 
 She looked up at him entreatingly. She tried to speak. The words 
 died on her lips in the kiss that Vondale pressed on them. " Let mo 
 go, Mr. Vcndale ! " she said faintly. 
 
 " Call me George." 
 
 She laid her head on his bosom. All her heart wont out to him at 
 last. " George ! " she whispered. 
 
 " Say you love me ! " 
 
 Her arms twined themselves gently round his neck. Her lips, 
 timidly touching his cheek, murmured the delicious words "I love 
 you ! " _ 
 
 la the moment of silence that followed, the sound of the opening 
 and closing of the house-door came clear to them through the wintry 
 stillness of the street. 
 
 Marguerite started to her feet. 
 
 " Let mo go ! " she said. " He has come back ! " 
 
 She hurried from the room, and touched Madame Dor's shoulder in 
 passing. Madame Dor woke up with a loud snort, looked first over 
 one shoulder and then over the other, peered down into her lap, and 
 discovered neither stockings, worsted, nor daruing-nccdlo in it. At 
 the same moment, footsteps became audible ascending the stairs. 
 " Mon Dieu ! " said Madame Dor, addressing herself to the stove, and 
 trembling violently. Vendale picked up the stockings and the ball, 
 and liuddled them all back in a heap over her shoulder. " Mon 
 Dieu ! " said Madame Dor, for the second time, as the avalanche of 
 worsted poured into her capacious lap. 
 
 The door opened, and Obeurcizer came in. His first glance round 
 the room showed him tliat Marguerite was absent. 
 
 " What ! " he exclaimed, " my niece is away V My niece is not hero 
 to entertain you in my absence ? This is unpardonable. I shall 
 bring her back instantly." 
 
 Vondale stopped him. 
 
 " I beg you will not disturb Miss Obcnrcizer," he said. " You 
 I'.avc roturnod, I soo, without ycur friend ? "
 
 A Word ill Private. 413 
 
 *'My friend remains, and consoles our afflicted compatriot. A 
 heart-rending scene, Mr. Vendale ! The household gods at the 
 pawnbroker's the family immersed in tears. We all embraced in 
 silence. My admirable friend alone possessed his composure. Ho 
 Bent out, on the spot, for a bottle of wine," 
 
 " Can I say a word to you in private, Mr. Obenreizer ? " 
 
 " Assuredly." He turned to Madame Dor. " My good creature, 
 you are sinking for want of repose. Mr. Vendale will excuse 
 you." 
 
 Madame Dor rose, and set forth sideways on her journey from the 
 stove to bed. She dropped a stocking. Vendale picked it up for her, 
 and opened one of the folding-doors. She advanced a step, and 
 dropped three more stockings. Vendale stooping to recover them as 
 before, Obenreizer interfered with profuse apologies, and with a 
 warning look at Madame Dor. Madame Dor acknowledged the look 
 by dropping the whole of the stockings in a heap, and then shuffling 
 away panic-stricken from the scene of disaster. Obenreizer swept 
 up the complete collection fiercely in both hands. " Go ! " he cried, 
 giving his prodigious handful a preparatory swing in the air. 
 Madame Dor said, " Mon Dieu," and vanished into the next room, 
 pursued by a shower of stockings. 
 
 " What must you think, Mr. Vendale," said Obenreizer, closing the 
 door, " of this deplorable intrusion of domestic details ? For myself, 
 I blush at it. We are beginning the New Year as badly as possible ; 
 everything has gone wrong to-night. Be seated, pray and say, what 
 may I offer you ? Shall we pay our best respects to another of your 
 noble English institutions ? It is my study to be, what you call, 
 jolly. I propose a grog." 
 
 Vendale declined the grog with all needful resj)ect for that noble 
 institution. 
 
 " I wish to speak to you on a subject in which I am deeply 
 interested," he said. " You must have observed, Mr. Obenreizer, tluit 
 I have, from the first, felt no ordinary admiration for your charming 
 niece ? " 
 
 " You are very good. In my niece's name, T thank you." 
 
 "Perhaps you may have noticed, latterly, that my admiration for 
 Miss Obenreizer has grown into a tenderer and deeper feeling V " 
 
 " Shall we say friendship, Mr. Vendale ? " 
 
 " Say love and we shall bo nearer to the truth." 
 
 Obenreizer started out of his chair. The faintly discernible beat, 
 which was his nearest approach to a change of colour, showed itself 
 suddenly in his cheeks. 
 
 " You are Miss Obenreizer's guardian," pursued Vendale. " I ask 
 you to confer upon me the greatest of all favours I ask you to give 
 me her hand in marriage." 
 
 Obenreizer dropped back into his chair. " Mr. Vendale," he said, 
 " you petrify me."
 
 414 ^(^ TJioroughfare. 
 
 "I will wait," rejoined Vendalc, "until you have recovered 
 yourself." 
 
 " One word before I recover myself. You have said notliing about 
 tliis to my niece ? " 
 
 " I have opened my whole heart to your niece. And I have reason 
 to hope " 
 
 " What ! " interposed Obonreizer. " You have made a proposal to 
 my niece, without first asking for my authority to pay your addresses 
 to her ? " He struck his hand on the table, and lost his hold over 
 himself for the first time in Vendale's experience of him. " Sir ! " he 
 exclaimed, indignantly, " what sort of conduct is this ? As a man of 
 honoi^r, speaking to a man of honour, how can you justify it ? " 
 
 "I can only justify it as one of our English institutions," said 
 Vendale quietly. "You admire our English institutions. I can't 
 honestly tell you, Mr. Obenreizer, that I regret what I have done. I 
 can only assure you that I have not acted in the matter with any 
 intentional disrespect towards yourself. This said, may I ask you to 
 toll me plainly what objection you see to favouring my suit ? " 
 
 " I see this immense objection," answered Obenreizer, " that my 
 niece and you are not on a social equality together. My niece is the 
 daughter of a poor peasant ; and you are the son of a gentleman. 
 You do us an honour," ho added, lowering himself again gradually to 
 his customary polite level, " which deserves, and has, our most 
 grateful acknowledgments. But the inequality is too glaring ; the 
 sacrifice is too great. You English are a proud people, Mr. Vendalc. 
 I have observed enough of this country to see that such a marriage as 
 you propose would be a scandal here. Not a hand would be held out 
 to your peasant-wife ; and all your best friends would desert you." 
 
 " One moment," said Vendale, interposing on his side. " I may 
 claim, without any great arrogance, to know more of my country 
 people in general, and of my own friends in particular, than you do. 
 In the estimation of everybody whose opinion is v/orth liaving, my wife 
 lierself would be the one sufficient justification of my marriage. If I 
 did not feel certain observe, I say certain that I am ofi'ering her a 
 l^osition which she can accept without so much as the shadow of a 
 humiliation I would never (cost me what it might) liave asked her to 
 bo my wife. Is there any other obstacle that you see ? Have you 
 any personal objection to me ? " 
 
 Obenreizer spread out both his hands in courteous protest. "Pcr- 
 Konal objection ! " he exclaimed, " Dear sir, the bare question is 
 painful to me." 
 
 " We are both men of business," pursued Vendale, " and you 
 naturally expect me to satisfy you that I have the means of support- 
 ing a wife. I can explain my pecuniary position in two words. I 
 inherit from my parents a fortune of twenty tliousand pounds. In 
 half of tliat sum I liave only a life-interest, to wliich, if I die, leaving 
 a widow, my widow succeeds. If I die, leaving children, the money
 
 Mr. Obenreizer objects. 415 
 
 itself is divided among them, as they come of age. The other half of 
 my fortune is at my own disposal, and is invested in the wine-business. 
 I see my way to greatly improving that business. As it stands at 
 present, I cannot state my return from my capital embarked at more 
 than twelve hundred a year. Add the yearly value of my life-interest 
 and the total reaches a present annual income of fifteen hundred 
 pounds. I have the fairest prospect of soon making it more. In the 
 meantime, do you object to me on pecuniary groimds ? " 
 
 Driven back to his last entrenchment, Obenreizer rose, and took a 
 turn backwards and forwards in the room. For the moment, he was 
 plainly at a loss what to say or do next. 
 
 " Before I answer that last question," ho said, after a little close 
 consideration with himself, " I beg leave to revert for a moment to 
 Miss Marguerite. You said something just now which seemed to 
 imply that she returns the sentiment with which you arc i^leased 
 to regard her?" 
 
 " I have the inestimable happiness," said Vcndalc, " of knowing 
 that she loves me." 
 
 Obenreizer stood silent for a moment, with the film over his eyes, 
 and the faintly perceptible beat becoming visible again in his cheeks. 
 
 " If you will excuse me for a few minutes," he said, with ceremonious 
 politeness, " I should like to have the opportunity of speaking to my 
 niece." With those words, he bowed, and quitted the room. 
 
 Left by himself, Vendale's thoughts (as a necessary result of tho 
 interview, thus far) turned instinctively to the consideration of Obcn- 
 reizer's motives. He had put obstacles in the way of the courtship ; 
 he was now putting obstacles in the way of the marriage a marriage 
 offering advantages which even his ingenuity could not dispute. On 
 the face of it, his conduct was incomprehensible. "What did it mean ? 
 
 Seeking, under tho surface, for the answer to that question and 
 remembering that Obenreizer was a man of about his own age ; also, 
 tliat Marguerite was, strictly speaking, his half-niece only Vendalo 
 asked himself, with a lover's ready jealousy, whether lie had a rival 
 to fear, as well as a guardian to conciliate. The thought just crossed 
 liis mind, and no more. The sense of Marguerite's kiss still linger- 
 ing on his check reminded him gently that even the jealousy of a 
 moment v^^as now a treason to lier. 
 
 On reflection, it seemed most likely that a personal motive of 
 another kind might suggest tho true explanation of Obcnreizer's 
 conduct. Marguerite's grace and beauty were j^rccious ornaments in 
 that little household. They gave it a special social attraction and a 
 special social importance. They armed Obenreizer with a certain 
 influence in reserve, which he could always depend upon to make his 
 house attractive, and which he might always bring more or less to 
 bear on the forwarding of his own private ends. Was ho the sort of 
 man to resign such advantages as were here implied, without obtain- 
 ing the fullest possible compensation for tho loss ? A connection by
 
 4i6 No Thoroughfare. 
 
 marriage witli Vendale offered him solid advantages, beyond all doubt. 
 But there were hundreds of men in London with far greater power 
 and far wider influence than Vendale possessed. Was it possible that 
 this man's ambition secretly looked higher than the highest prospects 
 that could bo offered to him by the alliance now proposed for his 
 niece? As the question passed through Vendale's mind, the man 
 himself reappeared to answer it, or not to answer it, as the event 
 might prove. 
 
 A marked change was visible in Obcnreizcr when he resumed his 
 place. Ilis manner was less assured, and there were j)lain traces 
 about his mouth of recent agitation which had not been successfully 
 composed. Had he said something, referring either to Vendale or to 
 himself, which had raised Marguerite's spirit, and which had placed 
 him, for the first time, face to face with a resolute assertion of his 
 niece's will ? It might or miglit not be. This only was certain ho 
 looked like a man who had met with a repulse. 
 
 " I have spoken to my niece," he began. " I find, Mr. Vendale, 
 that even your influence has not entirely blinded her to the social 
 objections to your proposal," 
 
 " May I ask," returned Vendale, " if that is the only result of your 
 interview with Miss Obenreizer ? " 
 
 A momentary flash leapt out through the Obenreizer film. 
 ' " You are master of the situation," he answered, in a tone of 
 sardonic submission. " If you insist on my admitting it, I do admit 
 it in those words. My niece's will and mine used to bo one, Mr. 
 Vendale. You have come between its, and her will is now yours. 
 In my country, wo know when we are beaten, and we submit with our 
 best grace. I submit, with my best grace, on certain conditions. Let 
 lis revert to the statement of your pecuniary position. I have an 
 objection to you, my dear sir a most amazing, a most audacious 
 objection, from a man in my position to a man in yours." 
 
 " What is it ? " 
 
 " You have honoured me by making a proposal for my niece's hand. 
 For the present (with best thanks and respects), I beg to decline it." 
 
 "Why?" 
 ' " Because you are not rich enough." 
 
 The objection, as the speaker had foreseen, took Vendale completely 
 by surprise. For the moment he was speechless. 
 
 " Your income is fifteen hundred a year," pursued Obenreizer. 
 " In my miserable country I should fall on my knees before your 
 income, and say, ' Y\niat a princely fortune ! ' In wealthy I]ngland, I 
 sit as I am, and say, ' A modest independence, dear sir ; nothing 
 more. Enough, perhaps, for a wife in your own rank of life who has 
 no social prejudices to conqtier. Not more than half enough for a 
 wife wlio is a meanly born foreigner, and who has all your social ju'c- 
 judices against her.' Sir ! if my niece is ever to marry you, she will 
 have what you call uphill work of it in taking her place at starting.
 
 Marguerites Giiardian states his Terms. 4 1 7 
 
 Yes, yfes ; this is not your view, but it remains, immovably remains, 
 my view for all that. For my niece's sake, I claim that this uphill 
 work shall be made as smooth as possible. Whatever material ad- 
 vantages she can have to help her, ought, in common justice, to be 
 hers. Now, tell me, Mr. Vendale, on your fifteen hundred a year can 
 your wife have a house in a fashionable quarter, a footman to open 
 her door, a butler to wait at her table, and a carriage and horses to 
 drive about in ? I see the answer in your face your face says, No. 
 Very good. Tell me one more thing, and I have done. Take tho 
 mass of your educated, accomplished, and lovely country-women, is it, 
 or is it not, the fact that a lady who has a house in a fashionable 
 quarter, a footman to open her door, a butler to wait at her table, and 
 a carriage and horses to drive about in, is a lady who has gained four 
 steps, in female estimation, at starting ? Yes ? or No ? " 
 
 " Come to the point," said Yendale. " You view this question as a 
 question of terms. What are your terms ? " 
 
 " The lowest terms, dear sir, on which you can provide your wife 
 with those four steps at starting. Double your present income tho 
 most rigid economy cannot do it in England on less. You said just 
 now that you expected greatly to increase the value of your business. 
 To work and increase it ! I am a good devil after all ! On tho 
 day when you satisfy me, by plain proofs, that your income has 
 risen to three thousand a year, ask me for my niece's hand, and it is 
 yours." 
 
 " May I inquire if you have mentioned this arrangement to Miss 
 Obenreizer ?" 
 
 " Certainly. She has a last little morsel of regard still loft for mo, 
 Mr. Vendale, which is not yours yet ; and she accepts my terms. In 
 other words, she submits to be giaided by her guardian's regard for 
 her welfare, and by her guardian's superior knowledge of the world." 
 He threw himself back in his chair, in firm reliance on his position, 
 and in full possession of his excellent temper. 
 
 Any open assertion of his own interests, in the situation in whicJi 
 Vendale was now placed, seemed to be (for the present at least) hope- 
 less. He found himself literally left with no ground to stand on. 
 Whether Obenreizer's objections were the genuine product of Oben- 
 reizer's own view of the case, or whether be was simply delaying tho 
 marriage in the hope of ultimately breaking it off altogether in either 
 of these events, any present resistance on Vendale's part would bo 
 equally useless. There was no help for it but to yield, making the 
 best terms that he could on his own side. 
 
 " I protest against the conditions you impose on me," he began. 
 
 " Naturally," said Obenreizer ; " I dare say I should protest, myself, 
 in your place." 
 
 " Say, however," pursued Vendale, " that I accept your terms. In 
 that case, I must bo permitted to make two stipulations on my part. 
 In the first place, I shall expect to be allowed to see your niece." 
 
 2 B
 
 418 No ThorougJifare. 
 
 "^Aha \ to see my niece? and to make her in as great a hurry to 
 be married as you are yourself ? Suppose I say, No ? you would see 
 her perhaps without my permission ? " 
 
 " Decidedly ! " 
 
 " How delightfully frank ! How exquisitely English ! Yoit shall 
 see her, Mr. Vendale, on certain days, which we will appoint together. 
 What next?" 
 
 " Your objection to my income," proceeded Vendale, " has taken 
 mo compleiely by surprise. I wish to be assured against any repe- 
 tition of that surprise. Your present views of my qualification for 
 marriage require mo to have an income of three thousand a year. Can 
 I bo certain, in the future, as your experience of England enlarges, 
 that your estimate will rise no higher ? " 
 
 " In plain English," said Obenreizer, " you doubt my word ? 
 
 " Do you purpose to take my word for it when I inform you that 
 I have doubled my income ? " asked Vendale. " If my memory 
 does not deceive me, you stipulated, a minute since, for plain 
 proofs ? " 
 
 " Well played, Mr. Vendale! You combine the foreign quickness 
 with the English solidity. Accept my best congratulations. Accept, 
 also, my written guarantee." 
 
 Ho rose ; seated himself at a writing-desk at a side-table, wrote a 
 few lines, and presented them to Vendale with a low bow. The 
 engagement was perfectly explicit, and was signed and dated with 
 scrupulous care. 
 
 " Are you satisfied with your guarantee ? " 
 
 " I am satisfied." 
 
 " Charmed to hear it, I am sure. We have had our little skirmish 
 we have really been wonderfully clever on both sides. For tho 
 present our aifairs are settled. I bear no malice. You bear no 
 malice. Come, Mr. Vendale, a good English shake hands." 
 
 Vendale gave his hand, a little bewildered by Obenreizer's sudden 
 transitions from one humour to another. 
 
 " When may I expect to see Miss Obenreizer again ? " he asked, as 
 he rose to go. 
 
 " Honour me with a visit to-morrow," said Obenreizer, " and we 
 will settle it then. Do have a grog before you go ! No ? Well ! 
 well ! we will reseiwe the grog till you have your three thousand a 
 year, and are ready to be married. Aha ! When will that be ? " 
 
 " I made an estimate, some months since, of the capacities of my 
 business," said Vendale. " If that estimate is correct, I shall double 
 my i^resent income " 
 
 " And be married ! " added Obenreizer. 
 
 " And bo married," repeated Vendale, '' within a year from tliis 
 time. Good-night."
 
 Joey Ladle* s Prophecy realised. 419 
 
 VENDALE MAKES MISCHIEF. 
 
 When Vcndale entered his office the next morning, the dull 
 commercial routine at Cripple Corner met him with a new face. 
 Marguerite had an interest in it now ! The whole machinery which 
 "Wilding's death had set in motion, to realise the value of the busi- 
 ness the balancing of ledgers, the estimating of debts, the taking of 
 stock, and the rest of it was now transformed into machinery which 
 indicated the chances for and against a speedy marriage. After 
 looking over results, as presented by his accountant, and checking 
 additions and subtractions, as rendered by the clerks, Yendale turned 
 his attention to the stock-taking department next, and sent a message 
 to the cellars, desiring to see the report. 
 
 The Cellarman's appearance, the moment he put his head in at 
 the door of his master's private room, suggested that something 
 very extraordinary must have happened that morning. There was 
 an approach to alacrity in Joey Ladle's movements ! There was 
 something which actually simulated cheerfulness in Joey Ladle's 
 face ! 
 
 " What's the matter ? " asked Vendalo. " Anything wrong ? " 
 
 " I should wish to mention one thing," answered Joey. " Young 
 Mr. Vendale, I have never set myself uj) for a prophet. 
 
 " Who over said you did ? " 
 
 " No prophet, as far as I've hoard tell of that profession," proceeded 
 Joey, " ever lived principally underground. No prophet, whatever 
 else he might take in at the pores, ever took in wine from morning to 
 night, for a number of years together. When I said to young Master 
 Wilding, respecting his changing the name of the firm, that one of 
 these days he might find he'd changed the luck of the firm did I put 
 myself forward as a prophet ? No, I didn't. Has what I said to him 
 come true ? Yes, it has. In the time of I'ebbleson Nephew, Young 
 Mr. Vendale, no such thing was ever known as a mistake made in a 
 consignment delivered at these doore. There's a mistake been made 
 now. Please to remark that it happened before Miss Margaret came 
 here. For which reason it don't go against what I've said respecting 
 Miss Margaret singing round the luck. Read that, sir," concluded 
 Joey, pointing attention to a special passage in the report, with a 
 forefinger which appeared to be in process of taking in through the 
 pores nothing more remarkable than dirt. " It's foreign to my nature 
 to crow over the house I serve, but I feel it a kind of solemn duty to 
 ask you to read that." 
 
 Yendale read as follows : " Note, respecting the Swiss champagne. 
 An irregularity has been discovered in the last consignment 
 received from the firm of Defresnicr and Co." Yendale stopped, and 
 referred to a memorandum-book by his side. " That was in Mr. 
 Wilding's time," he said. " The vintage was a particularly good one,
 
 420 N'o Thoroughfare. 
 
 and he took tho wliole of it. The Swiss champagne has done tery 
 well, hasn't it ? " 
 
 - " I don't say it's done badly," answered tho Cellarman. " It may 
 have got sick in oni" customers' bins, or it may have bust in our 
 customers' hands. But I don't say it's done badly with us." 
 
 Vendale resumed the reading of the note : " We find the number of 
 the cases to be quite correct by the books. But six of them, which 
 present a slight difference from the rest in the brand, have been 
 opened, and have been found to contain a red wine instead of 
 champagne. The similarity in the brands, we suppose, caused a 
 mistake to be made in sending the consignment from Neuchatel. 
 The error has not been found to extend beyond six cases." 
 
 " Is that all ! " exclaimed Vendale, tossing the note away from him. 
 
 Joey Ladle's eye followed the flying morsel of paper drearily. 
 
 " I'm glad to see you take it easy, sir," he said. " Whatever 
 happens, it will be always a comfort to you to remember that you 
 took it easy at first. Sometimes one mistake leads to another. A 
 man drops a bit of orange-peel on the pavement by mistake, and 
 another man treads on it by mistake, and there's a job at the hospital, 
 and a party crippled for life. I'm glad you take it easy, sir. In 
 Pebbleson Nephew's time we shouldn't have taken it easy till we had 
 seen the end of it. Without desiring to crow over the house, young 
 Mr. Vendale, I wish you well through it. No offence, sir," said the 
 Cellarman, opening the door to go out, and looking in again ominously 
 before he shut it. " I'm muddled and molloncolly, I grant you. But 
 I'm an old servant of Pebbleson Nephew, and I wish you well through 
 them six cases of red wine." 
 
 Left by himself, Vendale laughed, and took up his pen. " I may 
 as well send a line to Defresnicr and Company," he thought, " before 
 I forget it." He wrote at once in these terms : 
 
 " Dear Sirs. We are taking stock, and a trifling mistake has been 
 discovered in tho last consignment of cliampagne sent by your house 
 to ours. Six of the cases contain red wine which we hereby return 
 to you. The matter can easily be set right, either by your sending 
 us six cases of the champagne, if they can be produced, or, if not, by 
 your crediting us Avith the value of six cases on the amount last paid 
 (five hundred pounds) by our firm to yours. Your faithful servants, 
 
 " Wilding and Co." 
 
 This letter despatched to the post, the subject dropped at once out 
 of Vcndale's mind. He had other and far more interesting matters 
 to think of. Later in the day he paid the visit to Obcnrcizer whicli 
 had been agreed on between them. Certain evenings in the week 
 were set apart which he was privileged to spend with Marguerite 
 always, however, in the presence of a third person. On this stipula- 
 tion Obenreizer politely but positively insisted. The one concession
 
 Bad Neivs 421 
 
 he made was to give Vendale his choice of who the third person 
 should bo. Confiding in past experience, his choice fell unhesitatingly 
 upon the excellent woman who mended Obenreizer's stockings. On 
 hearing of the responsibility entrusted to her, Madame Dor's intel- 
 lectual nature burst suddenly into a new stage of development. She 
 waited till Obenreizer's eye was off her and then she looked at 
 Vendale, and dimly winked. 
 
 The time passed the happy evenings with Marguerite came and 
 went. It was the tenth morning since Vendale had written to the 
 Swiss firm, when the answer appeared on his desk, with the other 
 letters of the day : 
 
 "Dear Sirs. We beg to offer our excuses for the little mistake 
 which has happened. At the same time, we regret to add that the 
 statement of our error, with which you have favoured us, has led to a 
 very unexpected discovery. The affair is a most serious one for you 
 and for us. The particulars are as follows : 
 
 " Having no more champagne of the vintage last sent to you, we 
 made arrangements to credit your firm with the value of the six cases, 
 as suggested by yourself. On taking this step, certain forms observed 
 in our mode of doing business necessitated a reference to our bankers' 
 book, as well as to our ledger. The result is a moral certainty that 
 no such remittance as you mention can have reached our house, and a 
 literal certainty that no such remittance has been paid to our account 
 at the bank. 
 
 " It is needless, at this stage of the proceedings, to trouble you with 
 details. The money has unquestionably been stolen in the course of 
 its transit from you to us. Certain peculiarities which we observe, 
 relating to the manner in which the fraud has been perpetrated, lead 
 us to conclude that the thief may have calculated on being able to pay 
 the missing sum to our bankers, before an inevitable discovery 
 followed the annual striking of our balance. This would not have 
 happened, in the usual course, for another three months. During 
 that period, but for your letter, we might have remained perfectly 
 unconscious of the robbery that has been committed. 
 
 " We mention this last circumstance, as it may helj) to show you 
 that we have to do, in this case, with no ordinary tliief. Thus far we 
 have not even a suspicion of who that thief is. But we believe you 
 will assist us in making some advance towards discovery, by ex- 
 amining the receipt (forged, of course) which has no doubt purported 
 to come to you from our house. Be pleased to look and see whether 
 it is a receipt entirely in manuscript, or whether it is a numbered and 
 printed form which merely requires the filling in of the amount. 
 The settlement of this apparently trivial question is, we assure you, 
 a matter of vital importance. Anxiously awaiting your reply, we 
 remain, with high esteem and consideration, 
 
 ^'Defresnier 5; C'^"
 
 422 No Thoroughfare. 
 
 Vendalo bad the letter on his desk, and waited a moment to steady 
 Lis mind under the shock that had fallen on it. At the time of all 
 others when it was most important to him to increase the value of his 
 business, that business was threatened with a loss of five hundred 
 pounds. Ho thought of Marguerite, as ho took the key from his 
 pocket and opened the iron chamber in the wall in which the books 
 and papers of the firm were kept. 
 
 He was still in the chamber, searching for the forged receipt, when 
 he was startled by a voice speaking close behind him. 
 
 " A thousand pardons," said the voice ; " I am afraid I disturb 
 you." 
 
 He turned, and found himself face to face with Marguerite's 
 guardian. 
 
 " I have called," pursued Obenreizer, " to know if I can be of any 
 use. Business of my own takes me away for some days to Manchester 
 and Liverpool. Can I combine any business of yours with it ? I am 
 entirely at your disposal, in the character of commercial traveller for 
 the firm of Wilding and Co." 
 
 " Excuse me for one moment," said Vendale ; " I will speak to you 
 directly." He turned round again, and continued his search among 
 the papers. " You come at a time when friendly offers are more than 
 usually precious to me," he resumed. " I have had very bad news 
 tliis morning from Neuchatel." 
 
 " Bad news," exclaimed Obenreizer. " From Defresnier and 
 Company ? " 
 
 "Yes. A remittance we sent to them has been stolen. I am 
 threatened with a loss of five hundred pounds. What's that ? " 
 
 Turning sharply, and looking into the room for the second time, 
 Vendalo discovered his envelope case overthrown on the floor, and 
 Obenreizer on his knees picking up the contents. 
 
 " All my awkwardness," said Obenreizer. " This dreadful news of 
 
 yours startled me ; I stepped back " He became too deeply 
 
 interested in collecting the scattered envelopes to finish the sentence. 
 
 " Don't trouble yourself," said Vendale. " The clerk will pick tho 
 things up." 
 
 " This dreadful news ! " repeated Obenreizer, persisting in collect- 
 ing the envelopes. " This dreadful news ! " 
 
 " If you will read the letter," said Vendale, " you will find I havo 
 exaggerated nothiug. There it is, oj)en on my desk." 
 
 He resumed his search, and in a moment more discovered tlie forged 
 receipt. It was on the numbered and i)rinted form, described by tlic 
 Swiss firm. Vendale made a memorauduni of the number and tlio 
 date. Having re2)Liced the receipt and locked Tip tlie iron chamber, 
 he had leisure to notice Obenreizer, reading the letter in the recess 
 of a window at the far end of the room. 
 
 " Come to the fire," said Vendale. " You look perished with the 
 cold out there. I will ring for some more coals."
 
 The Forged Receipt. 423 
 
 Obenreizer rose, and came slowly back to the desk. " Marguerite 
 %yill be as sorry to hear of this as I am," he said, kindly. " What do 
 you mean to do ? " 
 
 " I am in the hands of Defresnier and Company," answered Vendale. 
 " In my total ignorance of the circumstances, I can only do what they 
 recommend. The receipt which I have just found, turns out to be the 
 niunbered and printed form. They seem to attach some special 
 importance to its discovery. You have had experience, when you 
 were in the Swiss house, of their way of doing business. Can you 
 guess what object they have in view ? " 
 
 Obenreizer offered a suggestion. 
 
 " Suppose I examine the receipt ? " he said. 
 
 " Are you ill ? " asked Vendale, startled by the change in his face, 
 which now showed itself plainly for the first time. " Pray go to tlio 
 fire. You seem to be shivering I hope you are not going to bo 
 ill?" 
 
 " Not I ! " said Obenreizer. " Perhaps I have caught cold. Your 
 English climate might have spared an admirer of your English 
 institutions. Let me look at the receipt." 
 
 Vendale opened the iron chamber. Obenreizer took a chair, and 
 drew it close to the fire. He held both hands over the flames. " Let 
 mo look at the receipt," he repeated, eagerly, as Vendale reappeared 
 with the paper in his hand. At the same moment a porter entered 
 the room with a fresh supply of coals. Vendale told him to make a 
 good fire. The man obeyed the order with a disastrous alacrity. As 
 he stepped forward and raised the scuttle, his foot caught in a fold of 
 the rug, and he discharged his entire cargo of coals into the grate. 
 The result was an instant smotliering of the flame, and the production 
 of a stream of yellow smoke, without a visible morsel of fire to 
 account for it. 
 
 " Imbecile ! " whispered Obenreizer to himself, with a look at the 
 man which the man remembered for many a long day afterwards. 
 
 ""Will you come into the clerks' room ?" asked Vendale. " They 
 have a stove there." 
 
 " No, no. No matter." 
 
 Vendale handed him the receipt. Obenreizcr's interest in examining 
 it appeared to have been quenched as suddenly and as effectually as 
 the fire itself. He just glanced over the document, and said, " No ; I 
 don't understand it ! I am sorry to be of no use." 
 
 " I will write to Neuchatel by to-night's post," said Vendale, 
 putting away the receipt for the second time. " We must wait, and 
 see what comes of it." 
 
 " By to-night's post," repeated Obenreizer. " Let me see. You 
 will get the answer in eight or nine days' time. I shall be back 
 before that. If I can be of any service, as commercial traveller, 
 perhaps you will let me know between this and then. You will send 
 me written instructions ? My best thanks, I sliall be most anxious
 
 424 ^^0 Thoroughfare. 
 
 for your answer from Neuchatel. Who knows ? It may be a mis- 
 take, my dear friend, after all. Courage ! courage ! courage ! " He 
 Iiad entered the room with no appearance of being pressed for time. 
 He now snatched up his hat, and took his leave with the air of a man 
 who had not another moment to lose. 
 
 Left by himself, Vendale took a turn thoughtfully in the room. 
 His previous impression of Obenreizer was shaken by what lie had 
 heard and seen at the interview which had just taken place. He was 
 disposed, for the first time, to doubt whether, in this case, he had not 
 been a little hasty and hard in his judgment on another man. Oben- 
 rcizer's surprise and regret, on hearing the news from Neucbsitol, bore 
 the plainest marks of bein^ honestly felt not politely assumed for 
 the occasion. With troubles of his own to encounter, suflfering, to 
 all appearance, from the first insidious attack of a serious illness, he 
 had looked and spoken like a man who really deplored the disaster 
 that had fallen on his friend. Hitherto Vendale had tried vainly to 
 alter his first opinion of Marguerite's guardian, for Marguerite's sake. 
 All the generous instincts in his nature now combined together and 
 shook the evidence which had seemed unanswerable up to this time. 
 " Who knows ? " he thought. " I may have read that man's face 
 wrongly, after all." 
 
 The time passed the happy evenings with Marguerite came and 
 went. It was again the tenth morning since Vendale had written to 
 the Swiss firm ; and again the answer appeared on his desk with the 
 other letters of the day 
 
 " Dear Sir. My senior partner, M. Defrcsnier, has been called 
 away, by urgent business, to Milan, In his absence (and with his full 
 concurrence and authority), I now write to you again on the subject 
 of the missing five hundred pounds. 
 
 " Your discovery that the forged receij^t is executed upon one of 
 our numbered and printed forms has caused inexpressible surprise 
 and distress to my partner and to myself. At the time when your 
 remittance was stolen, but three kej^s were in existence opening the 
 strong-box in which our receipt-forms are invariably kept. My 
 partner had one key ; I had the other. The third was in the 
 I)ossession of a gentleman who, at that period, occcnpied a position of 
 trust in our house. We should as soon have thought of suspecting 
 one of ourselves as of suspecting this person. Suspicion now points 
 at him, nevertlieless. I cannot prevail on myself to inform you who 
 the person is, so long as there is the shadow of a chance that he may 
 come innocently out of the inquiry whicli nuist now be instituted. 
 Forgive my silence ; the motive of it is good. 
 
 " The form our investigation must now talce is simple enough. 
 The handwriting of your receijit must be compared, by competent 
 persons whom we have at our disposal, with certain specimens of 
 handwriting in our possession. I cannot send you the specimens
 
 :i More Bad News. 425 
 
 for business reasons, which, when you hear them, you are sure to 
 approve. I must beg you to send me the receipt to Neuchatel and, 
 in making this request, I must accompany it by a word of necessary 
 warning. 
 
 " If the person, at whom suspicion now points, really proves to be 
 the person who has committed this forgery and theft, I have reason 
 to fear that circumstances may have already put him on his guard. 
 The only evidence against him is the evidence in your hands, and he 
 will move heaven and earth to obtain and destroy it. I strongly urge 
 you not to trust the receipt to the post. Send it to me, without loss 
 of time, by a private hand, and choose nobody for your messenger but 
 a person long established in your own employment, accustomed to 
 travelling, capable of speaking French ; a man of courage, a man of 
 honesty, and, above all things, a man who can be trusted to let no 
 stranger scrape acquaintance witli him on the route. Tell no one 
 absolutely no one but your messenger of the turn this matter has 
 now taken. The safe transit of the receipt may depend on your 
 interpreting literally the advice which I give you at the end of this 
 letter. 
 
 *' I have only to add that every possible saving of time is now of 
 the last importance. More than one of our receipt-forms is missing 
 and it is impossible to say what new frauds may not be committed 
 if we fail to lay our hands on the thief. 
 
 " Your faithful servant, " Holland, 
 
 " (Signing for Defresnier and C'') " 
 
 Who was the suspected man? In Vendale's position, it seemed 
 useless to inquire. 
 
 Who was to be sent to Neuchatel with the receipt? Men of 
 courage and men of honesty were to be had at Cripple Corner for the 
 asking. But where was the man who was accustomed to foreign 
 travelling, who could speak the French language, and who could bo 
 really relied on to let no stranger scrape acquaintance with him on 
 his route ? There was but one man at hand who combined all those 
 requisites in his own person, and that man was Vendale himself. 
 
 It was a sacrifice to leave his business ; it was a greater sacrifice to 
 leave Marguerite. But a matter of five hundred pounds was involved 
 in the pending inquiry ; and a literal interpretation of M. Rolland's 
 advice was insisted on in terms which there was no trifling with. 
 The more Vendale thought of it, the more plainly the necessity faced 
 him, and said, " Go ! " 
 
 As he locked up the letter with the receipt, the association of ideas 
 reminded him of Obeureizer. A guess at the identity of the suspected 
 man looked more possible now. Obenreizer might know. 
 
 The thought had barely passed through his mind, when the door 
 opened, and Obenreizer entered the room. 
 
 '' They told me at Soho Square you were expected back last nightj"
 
 426 No Thoroughfare. 
 
 said Vendalc, greeting him. " Have you done well in the country ? 
 Are you better ? " 
 
 A thousand thanks. Obenreizer had done admirably well ; Oben- 
 rcizer was infinitely better. And now, what news ? Any letter from 
 Neuchatel ? 
 
 " A very strange letter," answered Vendale. " The matter has 
 taken a now turn, and the letter insists without excepting anybody 
 on my keeping our next proceedings a profound secret." 
 
 " Without excepting anybody ? " repeated Obenreizer. As he said 
 the words, he walked away again, thoughtfully, to the window at the 
 other end of the room, looked out for a moment, and suddenly came 
 back to Vendale. " Surely they must have forgotten ? " he resumed, 
 " or they would have excepted me ? " 
 
 " It is Monsieur Rolland who writes," said Vendalc. " And, as 
 you say, he must certainly have forgotten. That view of the matter 
 quite escaped me. I was just wishing I had you to consult, when 
 you came into the room. And here I am tried by a formal prohibition, 
 which cannot possibly have been intended to include you. How very 
 annoying 1 " 
 
 Obenreizer's filmy eyes fixed on Vendale attentively. 
 
 " Perhaps it is more than annoying ! " he said. " I came this 
 morning not only to hear the news, but to offer myself as messenger, 
 negotiator what you will. Would you believe it? I have letters 
 which oblige me to go to Switzerland immediately. Messages, 
 documents, anything I could have taken them all to Dcfresuier 
 and Rolland for you." 
 
 "You are the very man I wanted," returned Vendale. "I had 
 decided, most unwillingly, on going to Neuchatel myself, not five 
 minutes since, because I could find no one here capable of taking my 
 place. Let me look at the letter again." 
 
 He opened the strong room to get at the letter. Obenreizer, after 
 first glancing round him to make sure that they were alone, followed 
 a step or two and waited, measuring Vendale with his eye. Vendale 
 was the tallest man, and unmistakably the strongest man also of the 
 two. Obenreizer turned away, and warmed himself at the fire. 
 
 Meanwhile, Vendale read the last paragraph in the letter for tlic 
 third time. There was the plain warning there was the closing 
 sentence, which insisted on a literal interpretation of it. The hand, 
 which was leading Vendale in the dark, led him on that condition 
 only. A large sum was at stake : a terrible suspicion remained to 
 be verified. If he acted on his own responsibility, and if anything 
 happened to defeat the object in view, who would be blamed ? As a 
 man of business, Vendale had but one course to follow. He locked 
 the letter up again. 
 
 " It is most annoying," he said to Obenreizer " it is a piece of 
 foriL^etfnlncRR on IVIonsieur Rolland's part whicli puts me to serious 
 iuconvenionce, and places xno in an absurdly false position towardiS
 
 George Vendale receives a Caution. ^27 
 
 you. What am I to do ? I am acting in a very serious matter, and 
 acting entirely in the dark. I have no choice but to be guided, not 
 by the spirit, but by the letter of my instructions. You understand 
 me, I am sure ? You know, if I had not been fettered in this way, 
 how gladly I should have accepted your services ? " 
 
 " Say no more ! " returned Obenreizer. " In your place I should 
 have done the same. My good friend, I take no offence. I thank 
 you for your compliment. We shall be travelling companions, at any 
 rate," added Obenreizer. " You go, as I go, at once ? " 
 
 " At once. I must speak to Marguerite first, of course ! " 
 
 " Surely ! surely I Speak to her this evening. Come, and pick mc 
 up on the way to the station. We go together by the mail train 
 to-night ? " 
 
 " By the mail train to-night." 
 
 It was later than Vendale had anticipated when he drove up to the 
 house in Soho Square. Business difficulties, occasioned by his sudden 
 departure, had presented themselves by dozens. A cruelly large share 
 of the time which he had hoped to devote to Marguerite had becu 
 claimed by duties at his office which it was impossible to neglect. 
 
 To his surprise and delight, she was alone in the drawing-room 
 when he entered it. 
 
 " We have only a few minutes, George," she said. " But Madame 
 Dor has been good to me and wo can have those few minutes alone." 
 She threw her arms round his neck, and whispered eagerly, " Havo 
 you done anything to offend Mr. Obenreizer ? " 
 
 " I ! " exclaimed Vendale, in amazement. 
 
 " Hush ! " she said, " I want to whisper it. You know the little 
 photograph I have got of you. This afternoon it happened to be on 
 the chimney-piece. Ho took it up and looked at it and I saw his 
 face in the glass. I know you have offended him ! He is merciless ; 
 he is revengeful ; ho is as secret as the grave. Don't go with him, 
 George don't go with him ! " 
 
 "My own love," returned Vendale, "you are letting your fancy 
 frighten you ! Obenreizer and I were never better friends than v-c 
 are at this moment." 
 
 Before a word more could be said, the sudden movement of some 
 ponderous body shook the floor of the next room. The shock was 
 followed by the appearance of Madame Dor. " Obenreizer ! " ex- 
 claimed this excellent person in a whisper, and plumj)ed dov/n 
 instantly in her regular place by the stove. 
 
 Obenreizer came in with a courier's bag strapped over his shoulder. 
 
 "Are you ready? "ho asked, addressing Vendale. "Can I take 
 anything for you? You havo no travelling-bag. I have got one. 
 Here is the compartment for papers, open at your service." 
 
 " Thank you," said Vendale, " I havo only one paper of import- 
 ance with me ; and that paper I am bound to take charge of myself.
 
 428 -.. No Thoroughfare. * 
 
 Here it is," ho added, touching the breast-pocket of his coat, '* and 
 here it must remain till we get to Neuchatel." 
 
 As he said those words, Marguerite's hand caught his, and pressed 
 it significantly. She was looking towards Obenreizer. Before 
 Vendale could look, in his turn, Obenreizer had wheeled round, and 
 was taking leave of Madame Dor. 
 
 " Adieu, my charming niece ! " ho said, turning to Marguerite next. 
 " En route, my friend, for Neuchatel ! " He tapped Vendale lightly 
 over the breast-pocket of his coat and led the way to the door. 
 
 Vendale's last look was for Marguei'itc. Marguerite's last words 
 to him were, " Don't go ! " 
 
 ACT in. 
 
 IN THE VALLEY. 
 
 It was about the middle of the month of February when Vendale and 
 Obenreizer set forth on their expedition. The winter being a hard 
 one, the time was bad for travellers. So bad was it that these two 
 travellers, coming to Strasbourg, found its great inns almost empty. 
 And even the few people they did encounter in that city, who had 
 started from England or from Paris on business journeys towards the 
 interior of Switzerland, were turning back. 
 
 Many of the railroads in Switzerland that tourists pass easily 
 enough now, were almost or quite impracticable then. Some were not 
 begun ; more were not completed. On such as were open, there were 
 still large gaps of old road where communication in the winter season 
 was often stopped ; on others, there were weak jioints where the new 
 work was not safe, either under conditions of severe frost, or of rapid 
 thaw. The running of trains on this last class was not to be counted 
 on in the worst time of the year, was contingent upon weather, or Avas 
 wholly abandoned through the months considered the most dangerous. 
 
 At Strasbourg there were more travellers' stories afloat, respecting 
 the difficulties of the way further on, than there were travellers to 
 relate them. Many of these talcs were as wild as usual ; biit the more 
 modestly marvellous did derive some cohmr from the circumstance 
 that people were indisputably turning back. However, as the read to 
 Basle was open, Vendale's resolution to push on was in no wise dis- 
 turbed. Obenreizer's resolution was necessarily Vendale's, seeing 
 that he stood at bay thus desperately: He must be ruined, or must 
 destroy tlio evidence that Vendale carried about him, even if he 
 destroyed Vendale with it. 
 
 The state of mind of each of these two fellow-travellers towards the 
 other was tliis. Obenreizer, encircled by impending ruin through
 
 The Burden of the Rhine. 429 
 
 Veiidale's qtickness of action, and seeing the circle narrowed every 
 hour by Vendale's energy, hated him with the animosity of a fierce 
 cunning lower animal. He had always had instinctive movements in 
 his breast against him ; perhaps, because of that old sore of gentleman 
 and peasant ; perhaps, because of the openness of his nature j perhaps, 
 because of his better looks ; perhaps, because of his success with 
 Marguerite ; perhaps, on all those grounds, the two last not the least. 
 And now he saw in him, besides, the hunter who was tracking him 
 down. Vendale, on the other hand, always contending generously 
 against his first vague mistrust, now felt bound to contend against it 
 more than ever: reminding himself, " He is Marguerite's guardian. 
 We are on perfectly friendly terms ; he is my companion of his own 
 proposal, and can have no interested motive in sharing this undesirable 
 journey." To which pleas in behalf of Obenreizer, chance added one 
 consideration more, when they came to Basle after a journey of more 
 than twice the average duration. 
 
 They had had a late dinner, and were alone in an inn room there, 
 overhanging the Ehine : at that place rapid and deep, swollen and 
 loud. Vendale lounged upon a couch, and Obenreizer walked to and 
 fro : now, stopping at the window, looking at the crooked reflection of 
 the town lights in the dark water (and peradventure thinking, ' If I 
 could fling him into it ! ") ; now, resuming his walk with his eyes 
 upon the floor. 
 
 " Where shall I rob him, if I can ? Where shall I murder him, if 
 I must ? " So, as he paced the room, ran the river, ran the river, ran 
 the river. 
 
 The burden seemed to him, at last, to be growing so plain, that ho 
 stopped ; thinking it as well to suggest another burden to his com- 
 panion. 
 
 " The Rhine sounds to-night," he said with a smile, " like the old 
 waterfall at home. That waterfall which my mother showed to 
 travellers (I told you of it once). The sound of it changed with tlie 
 weather, as does the sound of all falling waters and flowing waters. 
 When I was pupil of the watchmaker, I remembered it as sometimes 
 saying to me for whole days, ' Who arc you, my little wretch '? Who 
 are you, my little wretch '? ' I remembered it as saying, other times, 
 when its sound was hollow, and storm was coming up the Pass : 
 ' Boom, boom, boom. Beat him, beat him, beat him.' Like my 
 mother enraged if she was my mother." 
 
 " If she was ? " said Vendale, gradually changing his attitude to a 
 sitting one. " If she was ? Why do you say 'if V " 
 
 " What do I know ? " replied the other negligently, throwing up his 
 hands and letting them fall as they would. " What would you have ? 
 I am so obscurely born, that how can I say ? I was very young, and 
 all the rest of the family were men and women, and my so-called 
 parents were old. Anything is possible of a case like that." 
 
 " Did you ever doubt "
 
 430 N'o Thoroughfare. 
 
 " I told you once, I doubt the marriage of those two,'* he replied, 
 throwing up his hands again, as if he were throwing the unprofitable 
 subject away. " But here I am in Creation. J come of no fine family. 
 V/hat docs it matter ? " 
 
 " At least you are Swiss," said Vendale, after following him with 
 liis eyes to and fro. 
 
 " How do I know ? " he retorted abruptly, and stopping to look 
 back over his shoulder. " I say to you, at least you are English. 
 How do you know ? " 
 
 " By what I have been told from infancy." 
 
 " Ah ! I know of myself that way." 
 
 "And," added Vendale, pursuing the thought that he could not 
 drive back, " by my earliest recollections." 
 
 " I also. I know of myself tliat way if that way satisfies." 
 
 " Does it not satisfy you ? " 
 
 " It must. There is nothing like ' it must ' in this little world. It 
 must. Two short words those, but stronger than long proof or 
 reasoning." 
 
 " You and poor Wilding were born in the same year. You were 
 nearly of an age," said Vendale, again thoughtfully looking after him 
 as he resumed his pacing up and down. 
 
 " Yes. Very nearly." 
 
 Could Obenreizer bo the missing man ? In the unknown associa- 
 tions of things, was there a subtler meaning than he himself thought, 
 in that theory so often on his lips about the smallness of the world ? 
 Had the Swiss letter presenting him followed so close on Mrs. Gold- 
 straw's revelation concerning the infant who had been taken away to 
 Switzerland, because he was that infant grown a man ? In a world 
 where so many depths lie uusounded, it might be. The chances, or 
 the laws call them either that had wrought out the revival of 
 Vendale's own acquaintance with Obenreizer, and had ripened it into 
 intimacy, and had brought them hero together this present winter 
 night, were hardly less curious ; while read by such a light, they 
 were seen to cohere towards the furtherance of a continuous and an 
 intelligible purpose. 
 
 Vendale's awakened thoughts ran high while his eyes musingly 
 followed Obenreizer pacing up and down the room, the river ever 
 running to the tune : " Whore shall I rob him, if I can ? Where 
 sliall I murder him, if I must ? " The secret of his dead friend was 
 in no hazard from Vendale's lips; but just as his friend had died of 
 its weight, so did he in his lighter succession feel the burden of tho 
 trust, and the obligation to follow any clue, however obscure. Ho 
 rapidly asked himself, would he like this man to be the real Wilding ? 
 No. Argue down his mistrxist as ho might, he was unwilling to put 
 puch a substitute in the place of his late guileless, outspoken childlike 
 partner. He rapidly asked himself, would lie like this man to bo 
 rich ? No. He had more power than enough over Marguerite as it
 
 Obenreizer proffers Advice. 431 
 
 waSj and wealth might invest him with more. Would he like this 
 man to be Marguerite's Guardian, and yet proved to stand in no 
 degree of relationship towards her, however disconnected and distant ? 
 No. But these were not considerations to come between him and 
 fidelity to the dead. Let him see to it that they passed him with no 
 other notice than the knowledge that they liad passed him, and left 
 him bent on the discharge of a solemn duty. And he did see to it, so 
 soon that he followed his companion with ungrudging eyes, while he 
 still paced the room ; that companion, whom he supposed to bo moodily 
 reflecting on his own birth, and not on another man's least of all 
 what man's violent Death. 
 
 The road in advance from Basle to Neuchatel was better than had 
 been represented. The latest weather had done it good. Drivers, 
 both of horses and mules, had come in that evening after dark, and 
 had reported nothing more difficult to be overcome than trials of 
 patience, harness, wheels, axles, and whipcord. A bargain was soon 
 struck for a carriage and horses, to take them on in the morning, and 
 to start before daylight. 
 
 " Do you lock your door at night when travelling ? " asked Oben- 
 reizer, standing warming his hands by the wood fire in Vendalo's 
 chamber, before going to his own. 
 
 " Not I. I sleep too soundly." 
 
 " You are so sound a sleeper ? " he retorted, with an admiring look. 
 " What a blessing ! " 
 
 "Anything but a blessing to the rest of the house," rejoined 
 Vendale, " if I had to be knocked up in the morning from the outside 
 of my bedroom door." 
 
 " I, too," said Obenreizer, " leave open my room. But let me adviso 
 you, as a Swiss who knows : always, when you travel in my country, 
 put your papers and, of course, your money under your pillow. 
 Always the same place." 
 
 " You are not complimentary to your countrymen," laughed Vendale. 
 
 " My countrymen," said Obenreizer, with that light touch of his 
 friend's elbows by way of Good-Night and benediction, " I suppose 
 are like tho majority of men. And the majority of men will take 
 what they can get. Adieu ! At four in the morning." 
 
 " Adieu ! At four." 
 
 Left to himself, Vendale raked tho logs together, sprinkled over 
 them the white wood-ashes lying on tho hearth, and sa,t down to 
 compose his thoughts. But they still ran high on their latest theme, 
 and the running of tho river tended to agitate rather than to quiet 
 them. As ho sat thinking, what little disposition he had had to sleep 
 departed. He felt it hopeless to lie down yet, and sat dressed by tho 
 fire. Marguerite, Wilding, Obenreizer, the business he was then upon, 
 and a thousand hopes and doubts that had nothing to do with it, 
 occupied his mind at once. Everything seemed to have power over 
 him but slumber. The departed disposition to sleep kept far away.
 
 43 5 No Thoroughfare. 
 
 He had sat for a long time thinking, on the hearth, when hifi candle 
 burned down and its light went out. It was of little moment ; there 
 was light enough in the fire. He changed his attitude, and, leaning 
 his arm on the chair-back, and his chin upon that hand, sat thinking 
 still. 
 
 But he sat between the fire and the bed, and, as the fire flickered 
 in the play of air from the fast-flowing river, his enlarged shadow 
 fluttered on the white wall by the bedside. His attitude gave it an 
 air, half of mourning and half of bending over the bed imploring. 
 His eyes were observant of it, when he became troubled by the dis- 
 agreeable fancy that it was like Wilding's shadow, and not his own. 
 
 A slight change of place would cause it to disappear. He made the 
 change, and the apparition of his disturbed fancy vanished. He now 
 sat in the shade of a little nook beside the fire, and the door of tho 
 room was before him. 
 
 It had a long cumbrous iron latch. He saw the latch slowly and 
 softly rise. The door opened a very little, and came to again, as 
 though only tho air had moved it. But he saw that the latch was out 
 of the hasp. 
 
 The door opened again very slowly, until it opened wide enough to 
 admit some one. It afterwards remained still for a while, as though 
 cautiously held oi)en on the other side. Tho figure of a man then 
 entered, with its face turned towards the bed, and stood quiet just 
 within the door. Until it said, in a low half- whisper, at the same 
 time taking one step forward : " Vendale ! " 
 
 " What now ? " he answered, springing from his seat ; " who 
 is it ? " 
 
 It was Obenrcizer, and ho uttered a cry of surprise as Vendale 
 came upon him from that unexpected direction. " Not in bed ? " ho 
 said, catching him by both shoulders with an instinctive tendency to 
 a struggle, " Then something is wrong ! " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " said Vendale, releasing himself. 
 
 " First tell me ; you are not ill ? " 
 
 "111? No." 
 
 " I have had a bad dream about you- How is it that I see you up 
 and dressed ? " 
 
 " My good follow, I may as well ask you how it is that I see you 
 up and undressed ? " 
 
 " I have told you why. I have had a bad dream about you. I 
 tried to rest after it, but it was impossible. I could not make up my 
 mind to stay where I was without knowing you were safe ; and yet I 
 could not make up my mind to come in here. I have been minutes 
 hesitating at the door. It is so easy to laugh at a dream that you 
 have not dreamed. Where is your caudle ? " 
 
 " Burnt out." 
 
 " I have a whole one in my room. Shall I fetch it ? " 
 
 ' Do so."
 
 Mr. Obenreizer has a Bad Dream, 433 
 
 His rcom was very near, and he was absent for but a few seconds. 
 Coming back with the candle in his hand, he kneeled down on the 
 liearth and lighted it. As he blew with his breath a charred billet 
 into flame for the purpose, Vendale, looking down at him, saw that 
 his lips were white and not easy of control. 
 
 " Yes ! " said Obenreizer, setting the lighted candle on the table, 
 " it was a bad dream. Only look at me ! " 
 
 His feet were bare ; his red-flannel shirt was thrown back at the 
 throat, and its sleeves were rolled above the elbows ; his only other 
 garment, a pair of under pantaloons or drawers, reaching to the 
 ankles, fitted him close and tight. A certain lithe and savage appear- 
 ance was on his figure, and his eyes were very bright. 
 
 " If there had been a wrestle with a robber, as I dreamed," said 
 Obenreizer, " you see, I was stripped for it." 
 
 " And armed too," said Vendale, glancing at his girdle. 
 
 " A traveller's dagger, that I always carry on the road," ho 
 answered carelessly, half drawing it from its sheath with his left 
 hand, and putting it back again. " Do you carry no such thing ? " 
 
 " Nothing of the kind." 
 
 " No pistols ? " said Obenreizer, glancing at the table, and from it 
 to the untouched pillow. 
 
 " Nothing of the sort." 
 
 " You Englishmen are so confident ! You wish to sleep ? " 
 
 " I have wished to sleep this long time, but I can't do it." 
 
 " I neither, after the bad dream. My fire lias gone the way of 
 your candle. May I come and sit by yours ? Two o'clock ! It will 
 so soon be four, that it is not worth the trouble to go to bed again." 
 
 " I shall not take the trouble to go to bed at all, now," said Ven- 
 dale ; " sit here and keep me company, and welcome." 
 
 Going back to his room to arrange his dress, Obenreizer soon 
 returned in a loose cloak and slippers, and they sat down on opposite 
 sides of the hearth. In the interval Vendale had replenished the fire 
 from the wood-basket in his room, and Obenreizer had put upon the 
 table a flask and cup from his. 
 
 " Common calxirot brandy, I am afraid," he said, pouring out ; 
 " bought upon the road, and not like yours from Cripple Corner. 
 But yours is exhausted ; so much the worse. A cold night, a cold 
 time of night, a cold country, and a cold house. This may be better 
 than nothing ; try it." 
 
 Vendale took the cup, and did so. 
 
 " How do you find it ? " 
 
 " It has a coarse after-flavour," said Vendale, giving back the cup 
 with a slight shudder, " and I don't like it." 
 
 " You are right," said Obenreizer, tasting, and smacking his lips ; 
 " it lias a coarse after- flavour, and J don't like it. Booh ! It burns, 
 though ! " He had flung what remained in the cup upon the fire. 
 
 Each of them leaned an elbow on the table, reclined his head upon 
 
 2i^
 
 434 ^(^ Thoroughfare. 
 
 his hand, and sat looking at the flaring logs. Obenreizor remained 
 watchful and still ; but Vendale, after certain nervous twitches and 
 starts, in one of which he rose to his feet and looked wildly about 
 him, fell into the strangest confusion of dreams. He carried his 
 papers in a leather case or pocket-book, in an inner breast-pocket of 
 his buttoned travelling-coat; and whatever he dreamed of, in the 
 lethargy that got possession of him, something importunate in those 
 papers called him out of that dream, though he could not wake from 
 it. Ho was belated on tlie steppes of Russia (some shadowy person 
 gave that name to the place) with Marguerite ; and yet the sensation 
 of a hand at his breast, softly feeling the outline of the pocket-book 
 as he lay asleei) before the fire, was present to him. He was ship- 
 wrecked in an open boat at sea, and having lost his clothes, had no 
 other covering than an old sail ; and yet a creeping hand, tracing out- 
 side all the other pockets of the dross he actually wore, for papers, 
 and finding none answer its touch, warned him to rouse himself. Ho 
 was in the ancient vault at Cripple Corner, to which was transferred 
 the very bed substantial and present in that very room at Basle ; and 
 Wilding (not dead, as he had supposed, and yet he did not wonder 
 much) shook him, and whispered, " Look at that man ! Don't you see 
 he has risen, and is turning the pillow ? Why should ho turn the 
 pillow, if not to seek those papers that are in your breast ? Awake ! " 
 And yet he slej^t, and wandered off into other dreams. 
 
 Watchful and still, with his elbow on the table, and his head upon 
 that hand, his companion at length said : " Vendale ! We are called. 
 Past Four ! " Then, opening his eyes, ho saw, turned sideways on 
 him, the filmy face of Obenrcizer. 
 
 " You have been in a heavy sleep," ho said. " The fatigue of 
 constant travelling and the cold ! " 
 
 " I am broad awake now," cried Vendale, springing up, but with an 
 unsteady footing. " Haven't you slept at all ? " 
 
 " I may liave dozed, but I seem to liave been patiently looking at 
 the fire. Vv^liether or no, we must wash, and breakfast, and turn out. 
 Past four, Vendale ; past four ! " 
 
 It was said in a tone to rouse him, for already he was half asleep 
 again. In his jireparation for the day, too, and at his breakfast, ho 
 was often virtually asleep while in mechanical action. It was not 
 until tho cold dark day was closing in, that ho had any distincter 
 impressions of tho ride than jingling bells, bitter weather, sli])ping 
 horses, frowning hill-sidos, bleak woods, and a stoppage at some way- 
 side house of entertainment, whore they had passed through a co^v- 
 housc to reach tho travellers' room above. He liad been conscious of 
 little more, excci)t of Obenreizor sitting tliouglitfiil at his side; all day, 
 and eyeing him much. 
 
 But when he shook off his stupor, Obenreizor was not at his side. 
 The carriage was stopping to bait at another wayside house ; and a 
 Inie of long narrow carts, laden with casks of wiuo, and drawn ])y
 
 The Jotirney resolutely pursued. 435 
 
 horses with a quantity of blue collar and head-gear, were baiting too. 
 These came from the direction in which the travellers were going, 
 and Obenreizer (not thoughtful now, but cheerful and alert) was talk- 
 ing with the foremost driver. As Vendale stretched his limbs, circu- 
 lated his blood, and cleared off the lees of his lethargy, with a sharp 
 run to and fro in the bracing air, the line of carts moved on : the 
 drivers all saluting Obenreizer as they passed him. 
 
 " Who are those ? " asked Vendale. 
 
 " They are our carriers Defresnier and Company's," replied 
 Obenreizer. " Those are our casks of wine." Ho was singing to 
 himself, and lighting a cigar. 
 
 " I have been drearily dull company to-day," said Vendale. " I 
 don't know what has been the matter with me." 
 
 " You had no sleep last night ; and a kind of brain-congestion 
 frequently comes, at first, of such cold," said Obenreizer. " I have 
 seen it often. After all, we shall have our journey for nothing, it 
 seems." 
 
 " How for nothing ? " 
 
 " The House is at Milan. You know, we are a Wine House at 
 Neuchatel, and a Silk House at Milan? Well, Silk happening to 
 press of a sudden, more than Wine, Defresnier was summoned to 
 Milan. Eolland, the other partner, has been taken ill since his 
 departure, and the doctors will allow him to see no one. A letter 
 awaits you at Neuchatel to tell you so. I have it from our chief 
 carrier whom you saw me talking with. He was surprised to see rac, 
 and said he had that word for you if ho met you. What do you do ? 
 Go back?" 
 
 " Go on," said Vendale. 
 
 " On ? " 
 
 " On ? Yes. Across the Alps, and down to Milan," 
 
 Obenreizer stopped in his smoking to look at Vendale, and then 
 smoked heavily, looked up the road, looked down the road, looked 
 down at the stones in the road at his feet, 
 
 " I have a very serious matter in charge," said Vendale ; " more of 
 these missing forms may be turned to as bad account, or worse : I am 
 urged to lose no time in helping the House to take the thief; and 
 nothing shall turn me back," 
 
 "No ?" cried Obenreizer, taking out his cigar to smile, and giving 
 his hand to his fellow-traveller, " Then nothing shall turn me back. 
 Ho, driver! Despatch. Quick there ! Let us jnjsh on ! " 
 
 They travelled through the night. There had been snow, and 
 there was a partial thaw, and they mostly travelled at a foot-pace, and 
 always with many stoppages to breathe tlic splashed and floundering 
 horses. After an hour'n broad daylight, tljfsy drew rein at the inn- 
 door at Neuchatel, having been some eight-and-twenty hours iu con- 
 (juering some eighty English miles. 
 
 When they had hurriedly refreshed and changed, they wciit
 
 436 No Thorotighfare. 
 
 together to the house of business of Defresnier and Company. There 
 they found the letter which the wine-carrier had described, enclosing 
 the tests and comparisons of hand-writing essential to the discovery 
 of the Forger. Vendale's determination to press forward, without 
 resting, being already taken, the only question to delay them was by 
 what Pass could they cross the Alps ? Respecting the state of the 
 two Passes of the St. Gotthard and the Simplon, the guides and mule- 
 drivers ditfcred greatly ; and both passes wore still far enough off, to 
 prevent the travellers from having the benefit of any recent experience 
 of either. Besides which, they well knew that a fall of snow might 
 altogether change the described conditions in a single hour, even if 
 they were correctly stated. But, on the whole, the Simplon appear- 
 ing to be the hopcfuller route, Vendale decided to take it. Obenreizcr 
 bore little or no part in the discussion, and scarcely spoke. 
 
 To Geneva, to Lausanne, along the level margin of the lake to 
 Vevay, so into the winding valley between the spurs of the mountains, 
 and into the valley of the Rhone. The sound of the carriage- wheels, 
 us they rattled on, through the day, through the night, became as the 
 wheels of a great clock, recording tlie hours. No change of weather 
 varied the journey, after it had hardened into a sullen frost. In a 
 sombre-yellow sky, they saw the Alpine ranges ; and they saw enough 
 of snow on nearer and much lower hill-tops and hill-sides, to sully, 
 by contrast, the purity of lake, torrent, and waterfall, and make the 
 villages look discoloured and dirty. But no snow fell, nor was there 
 any snow-drift on the road. The stalking along the valley of more 
 or less of white mist, changing on their hair and dress into icicles, was 
 the only variety between them and the gloomy sky. And still by 
 day, and still by night, the wheels. And still they rolled, in the 
 hearing of one of them, to the burden, altered from the burden of the 
 Rhino : " The time is gone for robbing him alive, and I must murder 
 him." 
 
 They came, at length, to the poor little town of Brieg, at the foot 
 of the Simplon. They came there after dark, but yet could see how 
 dwarfed men's works and men became with the immense mountains 
 towering over them. Here they must lie for the night ; and here 
 was warmth of fire, and lamp, and dinner, and wine, and after-con- 
 ference resounding, with giiides and drivers. No human creature had 
 come across the T^ass for four days. The snow above the snow-lino 
 was too soft for wheeled carriage, and not hard enough for sledge. 
 There was snow in the sky. There had been snow in the sky for 
 days past, and the marvel was that it had not fallen, and the certainty 
 Avas that it must fall. No vehicle could cross;. The journey might 
 be tried on mules, or it might be tried on foot ; but the best guides 
 must be paid danger-price in either case, and that, too, whether they 
 Bucccedcd in taking the two travellers across, or turned for safety and 
 brought tlicni back. 
 
 In this discussion, Obenreizcr bore no part v/hatcvcr. He sat
 
 Ascending the Simplon. 437 
 
 feiientiy smoking by the fire until the room was cleared and Vendale 
 referred to him. 
 
 " Bah ! I am weary of these poor devils and their trade," he said, 
 in reply. " Always the same story. It is the story of their trade 
 to-day, as it was the story of their trade when I was a ragged boy. 
 What do you and I want ? We want a knapsack each, and a moun- 
 tain-staff each. We want no guide ; we should guide him ; he would 
 not guide us. We leave our portmanteaus here, and we cross 
 together. We have been on the mountains together before now, and 
 I am mountain-born, and I know this Pass Passl rather High 
 Road ! by heart. We will leave these poor devils, in pity, to trade 
 with others ; but they must not delay us to make a pretence ot 
 earning money. Which is all they mean." 
 
 Vendale, glad to be quit of the dispute, and to cut the knot : active, 
 adventurous, bent on getting forward, and therefore very susceptible 
 to the last hint : readily assented. Within two hours, they had 
 purchased what they wanted for the expedition, had packed their 
 knapsacks, and lay down to sleep. 
 
 At break of day, they found half the town collected in the narrow 
 street to see them depart. The j)eople talked together in groups ; the 
 guides and drivers whispered apart, and looked up at the sky ; no one 
 wished them a good journey. 
 
 As they began the ascent, a gleam of sun shone from the otherwise 
 unaltered sky, and for a moment turned the tin spires of the town to 
 silver. 
 
 " A good omen ! " said Vendale (though it died out while ho spoke). 
 " Perhaps our example will open the Pass on this side." 
 
 " No ; we shall not be followed," returned Obenreizer, looking up 
 at tlie sky and back at the valley. " We shall be alone up yonder." 
 
 ON THE MOUNTAIN. 
 
 The road was fair enough for stout walkers, and the air grew lighter 
 and easier to breathe as the two ascended. But the settled gloom 
 remained as it had remained for days back. Nature seemed to have 
 come to a pause. The sense of hearing, no less than the sense of 
 sight, was troubled by having to wait so long for the change, whatever 
 it might bo, that impended. The silence was as palpable and heavy 
 as the lowering clouds or rather cloud, for there seemed to be but 
 one in all the sky, and that one covering the whole of it. 
 
 Although the light was thus dismally shrouded, the prospect was 
 not obscured. Down in the valley of the Rhone behind them, the 
 stream could be traced through all its many windings, oppressively 
 sombre and solemn in its one leaden hue, a colourless waste. Far 
 and high above them, glaciers and suspended avalanches overhung 
 the spots where they must pass, by-and-by ; deep and dark below 
 them on their right, Avere awful precipice and roaring torrent ;
 
 438 No Thoroughfare. 
 
 trementlons mountains arose in every vista. The gigantic landscape, 
 imcheored by a touch of changing light or a solitary ray of sun, was 
 yet terribly distinct in its ferocity. The hearts of two lonely men 
 might shrink a little, if they had to win their way for miles and hours 
 among a legion of silent and motionless men mere men like them- 
 selves all looking at them with fixed and frowniag front. But how 
 much more, when the legion is of Nature's mightiest works, and the 
 frown may turn to fury in an instant ! 
 
 As they ascended, the road became gradually more rugged and 
 difficult. But the spirits of Vendale rose as they mounted higher, 
 leaving so much more of the road behind them conquered. Obenreizer 
 spoke little, and held on with a determined purpose. Both, in respect 
 of agility and endurance, were well qualified for the expedition. 
 Whatever the born mountaineer read in the weather-tokens that was 
 illegible to the other, he kept to himself. 
 
 " Shall we get across to-day ? " asked Vendale. 
 
 " No," replied the other. " You see how much deeper the snow 
 lies here than it lay half a league lower. The higher wo mount the 
 deeper the snow will lie. Walking is half wading even now. And 
 the tlays are so short ! If wo get as high as the fifth Eefugc, and lie 
 to-night at the Hospice, we shall do well." 
 
 " Is there no danger of the weather rising in the night," asked 
 Vendale, anxiously, " and snowing us up ? " 
 
 " There is danger enoiigh about us," said Obenreizer, with a 
 cautious glance onward and upward, " to render silence our best 
 policy. You have heard of the Bridge of the Gauthcr ? " 
 
 " I have crossed it once." 
 
 " In the summer ? " 
 
 " Yes ; in the travelling season." 
 
 " Yes ; but it is another thing at tliis season ; " with a sneer, as 
 though he wore out of temper. " This is not a time of year, or a state 
 of things, on an Alpine Pass, that you gentlemen holiday-travellers 
 know much about." 
 
 " You are my Guide," said Vendale, good humourcdly. " I trust 
 to you." 
 
 " I am your Guide," said Obenreizer, " and I will guide you to your 
 journoy'fi end. There is the Bridge before us." 
 
 Thoy had made a turn into a desohite and dismal ravine, where th(i 
 Know lay decj) below tliem, dcej) aljove tliem, deep on every side. 
 AVliilo spcitkin;^', Obenreizer stood pointing at the Bridge, and ob- 
 serving Vendalo's face, with a very singular expression on his own. 
 
 " If I, as Guide, had sent you over there, in advance, and encouraged 
 you to give a shout or two, you niiglit have brought down upon your- 
 self tons and tons and tons of snow, that v.'ould not only have struck 
 you dead, but buried you deep, at a blow." 
 
 " No doubt," said Vendale. 
 
 ' No doubt. J>ut that is not v,]i;it I luive to do, as Guide. Ho
 
 A Friendly Warning. 439 
 
 pass silently. Or, going as we go, our indiscreliou might else crush 
 and bury me. Let us get on ! " 
 
 There was a great accumulation of snow on the Bridge ; and such 
 enormous accumulations of snow overhung them from projecting 
 masses of rock, that they might have been making their way through 
 a stormy sky of white clouds. Using his staff skilfully, sounding as 
 he went, and looking upward, with bent shoulders, as it were to resist 
 the mere idea of a fall from above, Obenreizer softly led. Vcndale 
 closely followed. They were yet in the midst of their dangerous way, 
 when there came a mighty rush, followed by a sound as of thunder. 
 Obenreizer clapped his hand on Vendale's mouth and pointed to tho 
 track behind them. Its aspect had been wholly changed in a moment. 
 An avalanche had swept over it, and plunged into the torrent at tho 
 bottom of the gulf below. 
 
 Their appearance at the solitary Inn not far beyond this terrible 
 Bridge, elicited many expressions of astonishment from the people 
 shut up in the house. " We stay but to rest," said Obenreizer, shaking 
 the snow from his dress at the fire. " This gentleman has very 
 pressing occasion to get across ; tell them, Vendale." 
 
 " Assuredly, I have very pressing occasion. I must cross." 
 
 " You hear, all of you. My friend has very pressing occasion to 
 get across, and we want no advice and no heli>. I am as good a 
 guide, my fellow-countrymen, as any of you. Now, give us to eat 
 and drink." 
 
 In exactly the samo way, and in nearly tho same words, when it 
 was coming on dark and they had struggled through the greatly in- 
 creased difficulties of the road, and had at last readied their destina- 
 tion for the night, Obenreizer said to the astonished people of the 
 Hospice, gathering about them at tho fire, while they were yet in tho 
 act of getting their wet shoes off, and shaking tho snow from their 
 clothes : 
 
 " It is well to understand one another, friends all. This gentle- 
 man " 
 
 " Has," said Vendale, readily taking him up with a smile, "very 
 pressing occasion to get across. Must cross." 
 
 " You hear ? has very pressing occasion to get across, must cross. 
 Wo want no advice and no help. I am mountain-born, and act as 
 Guide. Do not worry us by talking about it, but let us Lave sup2:)cr, 
 and wine, and bed." 
 
 All through the intense cold of the night, tho same awful stillness. 
 Again at sunrise, no sunny tinge to gild or redden the snow. The 
 samo interminable waste of deathly wliitc ; the same immovable air ; 
 tho same monotonous gloom in the sky. 
 
 " Travellers ! " a friendly voice called to them from the door, after 
 tlicy were afoot, knapsack on back and staff in hand, as yesterday ; 
 " recollect ! There are five places of shelter, near together, on the 
 dangerous road before you ; and there is the wooden cross, and there
 
 440 Mo Thoroughfare. 
 
 is the next Hospice. Do not stray from the track. If the Tourmenie 
 comes on, take shelter instantly ! " 
 
 " The trade of these poor devils ! " said Ohenreizer to his friend, 
 with a contemptuous backward wave of his hand towards the voice. 
 " How they stick to their trade ! You Englishmen say we Swiss are 
 mercenary. Truly, it does look like it." 
 
 They had divided between the two knapsacks such refreshments as 
 they had been able to obtain that morning, and as they deemed it 
 prudent to take. Obenreizer carried the wine as his share of the 
 burden ; Vendale, the bread and meat and cheese, and the flask of 
 brandy. 
 
 They had for some time laboured upward and onward through the 
 snow which was now above their knees in the track, and of unknown 
 depth elsewhere and they were still labouring ui)ward and onward 
 through the most frightful part of that tremendous desolation, wlien 
 snow began to full. At first, but a few flakes descended slowly and 
 steadily. After a little while the fall grew much denser, and suddenly 
 it began without apparent cause to whirl itself into spiral shapes. 
 Instantly ensuing upon this last change, an icy blast came roaring at 
 them, and every sound and force imprisoned until now was let loose. 
 
 One of the dismal galleries through which the road is carried at 
 that perilous point, a cave eked out by arches of great strength, was 
 near at hand. They struggled into it, and the storm raged wildly. 
 Tlie noise of the wind, the noise of the water, the thundering down of 
 displaced masses of rock and snow, the awful voices with which not 
 only that gorge but every gorge in the whole monstrous range seemed 
 to be suddenly endowed, the darkness as of night, the violent revolving 
 of the snow which beat and broke it into sj^ray and blinded them, the 
 madness of everything around insatiate for destruction, the rapid sub- 
 stitution of furious violence for unnatural calm, and hosts of apjialliug 
 sounds for silence : these were things, on the edge of a deep abyss, to 
 chill the blood, though the fierce wind, made actually solid by ice and 
 snow, had failed to chill it. 
 
 Obenreizer, walking to and fro in the gallery without ceasing, 
 signed to Ycndale to help him unbuckle his knapsack. They could 
 see each other, but could not liave heard each other speak. Vendale 
 complying, Obenreizer produced liis bottle of wine, and poured some 
 out, motioning Vendale to take that for warmth's sake, and not brandy. 
 Vendale again complying, Obenreizer seemed to drink after liim, and 
 the two walked backwards and forwards side by side ; both well know- 
 ing that to rest or sleep would be to die. 
 
 The snow came driving heavily into the gallery by the uj^per end 
 at which they would pass out of it, if they ever passed out ; for 
 greater dangers lay on the road behind them tlian before. TIic snow 
 soon began to choke tlic arcli. An hour more, and it lay so high as 
 to block out half the returning dayliglit. But it froze hard now, as it 
 fell, and could be clambered through or over. The violence of tlie
 
 A Struggle for Life. 44 1 
 
 mountain storm was gradually yielding to a steady snowfall. Tlio 
 wind still raged at intervals, but not incessantly ; and when it paused, 
 the snow fell in heavy flakes. 
 
 They might have been two hours in their frightful prison, when 
 Obenreizer, now crunching into the mound, now creeping over it with 
 his head bowed down and his body touching the top of the arch, made 
 his way out. Vendale followed close upon him, but followed without 
 clear motive or calculation. For the lethargy of Basle was creeping 
 over him again, and mastering his senses. 
 
 How far he had followed out of the gallery, or with what obstacles 
 he had since contended, he knew not. He became roused to tho 
 knowledge that Obenreizer had set upon him, and that they were 
 struggling desperately in the snow. He became roused to the remem- 
 brance of what his assailant carried in a girdle. He felt for it, drew 
 it, struck at him, struggled again, struck at him again, cast him oft', 
 and stood face to face with him. 
 
 " I promised to guide you to your journey's end," said Obenreizer, 
 " and I have kept my promise. The journey of your life ends here. 
 Nothing can prolong it. You are sleeping as you stand." 
 
 " You are a villain. What have you done to me ? " 
 
 " You are a fool. I have drugged you. You are doubly a fool, for 
 I drugged you once before upon the journey, to try you. You are 
 trebly a fool, for I am the thief and forger, and in a few moments I 
 shall take those proofs against the thief and forger from your in- 
 sensible body." 
 
 The entrapped man tried to throw off the lethargy, but its fatal 
 hold upon liim was so sure that, even while he heard those words, he 
 stupidly wondered which of them had been wounded, and whose blood 
 it was that he saw sprinkled on the snow. 
 
 " What have I done to you," ho asked, heavily and thickly, " that 
 you should be so base a murderer? " 
 
 " Done to me ? You would have destroyed me, but that you have 
 come to your journey's end. Your cursed activity interposed between 
 me, and the time I had counted on in which I might have replaced 
 the money. Done to me ? You have come in my way not once, not 
 twice, but again and again and again. Did I try to shake you off in 
 the beginning, or no ? You were not to be shaken off. Therefore 
 you die here." 
 
 Vendale tried to think coherently, tried to speak coherently, tried 
 to pick up the iron-shod staff he had let fall ; failing to touch it, tried 
 to stagger on without its aid. All in vain, all in vain ! He stumbled, 
 and fell heavily forward on the brink of the deep chasm. 
 
 Stupefied, dozing, unable to stand upon his feet, a veil before his 
 eyes, his sense of hearing deadened, he made such a vigorous rally 
 that, supporting himself on his hands, he saw his enemy standing 
 calmly over him, and heard him speak. 
 
 "You call me murderer," said Obenreizer, with a grim laugh.
 
 442 No Thoroughfare. 
 
 " The name matters very little. But at least I have set my life 
 against yours, for I am surrounded by dangers, and may never make 
 my way out of this place. Tlie Tourmente is rising again. The snow 
 is on the whirl. I must have the papers now. Every moment has 
 my life in it." 
 
 " Stop ! " cried Vendale, in a terrible voice, staggering up with a 
 last flash of fire breaking out of hira, and clutching the thievish hands 
 at his breast, in both of his. " Stop ! Stand away from me ! God 
 bless my Marguerite ! Happily she will never know how I died. 
 Stand off from me, and let me look at your murderous face. Let it 
 remind mo of something left to say." 
 
 The sight of him fighting so hard for his senses, and the doubt 
 whether he might not for the instant bo possessed by the strength of 
 a dozen men, kept his opponent still. Wildly glaring at him, Vendalo 
 faltered out the broken words : 
 
 " It shall not be tlio trust of the dead betrayed by mo reputed 
 parents misinhorited fortune see to it ! " 
 
 As his head droj)ped on liis breast, and ho stumbled on the brink 
 of tlie chasm as before, the thievish hands went once more, quick and 
 busy, to his breast. He made a convulsive attempt to cry " No ! " 
 desperately rolled himself over into the gulf ; and sank away from his 
 enemy's touch, like a phantom in a dreadful dream. 
 
 The mountain storm raged again, and passed again. The awful 
 mountain-voices died away, the moon rose, and the soft and silent 
 snow fell. 
 
 Two men and two largo dogs came out at the door of the Hospice. 
 The men looked carefully around them, and up at the sky. The dogs 
 rolled in the snow, and took it into their mouths, and cast it up with 
 their paws. 
 
 One of the men said to the other : " We may venture now. Wo 
 may find them in one of tlio five Refuges." Each fastened on his back 
 :i basket ; each took in his hand a strong spiked pole ; each girded 
 under his arms a looped end of a stout rope, so that they were tied 
 togotlier. 
 
 Suddenly the dogs desisted from their gambols in the snow, stood 
 looking down the ascent, piit their noses up, put their noses down, 
 1)ccanie greatly excited, and broke into a deep loud bay together. 
 
 The two men looked in the faces of the two dogs. The two dogs 
 looked, with at least equal intelligence, in the faces of the two men. 
 
 " Au secours, then ! Help ! To the rescue ! " cried the two men. 
 The two dogs, with a glad, deep, generous bark, bounded aAvay. 
 
 " Two more mad ones ! " said the men, stricken motionless, and 
 looking away in the moonlight. "Is it possible in such weather! 
 And one of them a woman ! " 
 
 Each of tlie dogs had the corner of a woman's dress in its mouth, 
 and drew her along. She fondled their licads as she came up, and
 
 /;/ Search of the Travellers. 443 
 
 Blie came up through the snow with an accustomed tread. Not so the 
 large man with her, who was spent and winded. 
 
 " Dear guides, dear friends of travellers ! I am of your country. 
 We seek two gentlemen crossing the Pass, who should have reached 
 the Hospice this evening." 
 
 " They have reached it, ma'amselle." 
 
 " Thank Heaven ! thank Heaven ! " 
 
 " But, unhappily, they have gone on again. We are setting forth 
 to seek them even now. We had to wait until the Tourmente passed. 
 It has been fearful up here." 
 
 "Dear guides, dear friends of travellers! Let me go with you. 
 Let me go with you for the love of God ! One of those gentlemen is 
 to be my husband. I love him, 0, so dearly. O so dearly ! You 
 see I am not faint, you see I am not tired. I am born a peasant girl. 
 I will show you that I know well how to fasten myself to your ropes. 
 I will do it with my own hands. I will swear to bo brave and good. 
 But let me go with you, let me go with you ! If any mischance 
 should have befallen him, my love would find him, when nothing else 
 could. On my knees, dear friends of travellers ! By the love your 
 dear mothers had for your fathers ! " 
 
 The good rough fellows were moved. " After all," they murmured 
 to one another, " she speaks but the truth. She knows the ways of 
 the mountains. See how marvellously she has come here. But as to 
 Monsieur there, ma'amselle ? " 
 
 " Dear Mr. Joey," said Marguerite, addressing him in his own 
 tongue, " you will remain at the house, and wait for me ; will you 
 not ? " 
 
 " If I know'd which o' you two recommended it," growled Joey 
 Ladle, eyeing the two men with great indignation, " I'd fight you for 
 sixpence, and give you half-a-crown towards your expenses. No. 
 Miss. I'll stick by you as long as there's any sticking left in me, and 
 I'll die for you when I can't do better." 
 
 The state of the moon rendering it highly important that no time 
 should be lost, and the dogs showing signs of great uneasiness, the 
 two men quickly took their resolution. The rope that yoked them 
 together was exchanged for a longer one ; the party were secured. 
 Marguerite second, and the Cellarman last ; and they set out for the 
 Refuges. The actual distance of those places was nothing ; the whole 
 five, and the next Hospice to boot, being within two miles ; but the 
 ghastly way was whitened out and sheeted over. 
 
 They made no miss in reaching the Gallery where the two had 
 taken shelter. The second storm of wind and snow had so wildly 
 swept over it since, that their tracks wore gone. But the dogs went 
 to and fro with their noses down, and were confident. The party 
 stopping, hovs-ovcr, at the further arch, where the second storm had 
 been especially furious, and where the drift was deep, the dogs became 
 troubled, and went about and about, in quest of a lost puriJose.
 
 444 ^(^ TJior07ighfarc. 
 
 The great abyss being known to lie on tbe riglit, tliey wandered too 
 much to the left, and had to regain the way with infinite labour 
 through a deep field of snow. The leader of the line had stopped it, 
 and was taking note of the landmarks, when one of the dogs fell to 
 tearing \v^ the snow a little before them. Advancing and stooping to 
 look at it, thinking that some one might be overwhelmed there, they 
 saw that it was stained, and that the stain was red. 
 
 The other dog was now seen to look over the brink of the gulf, 
 with his fore legs straightened out, lest he should fall into it, and to 
 tremble in every limb. Then the dog who had found the stained 
 snow joined him, and then they ran to and fro, distressed and whining. 
 Finally, they both stopped on the brink together, and setting up their 
 heads, howled dolefully. 
 
 *' There is some one lying below," said Marguerite. 
 
 " I think so," said the foremost man. " Stand well inward, the two 
 last, and let us look over." 
 
 The last man kindled two torches from his basket, and handed 
 them forward. The leader taking one, and Marguerite the other, 
 they looked down ; now shading the torches, now moving them to tlio 
 right or left, now raising them, now depressing them, as moonlight 
 far below contended with black shadows. A piercing cry from 
 Marguerite broke a long silence. 
 
 " My God ! On a projecting point, where a wall of ice stretches 
 forward over the torrent, I see a human form I " 
 
 " Where, ma'amsello, where ? " 
 
 " See, there ! On the shelf of ice below the dogs ! " 
 
 The leader, with a sickened aspect, drew inward, and they were all 
 silent. But they were not all inactive, for Marguerite, with swift and 
 skilful fingers, had detached both herself and him from the rope in a 
 few seconds. 
 
 " Show me the baskets. These two are the only ropes ? " 
 
 " The only ropes here, ma'amsolle ; but at the Hos2)ice " 
 
 " If he is alive I know it is my lover he will be dead before you 
 can return. Dear Guides ! Blessed friends of travellers ! Look at 
 me. Watch my hands. If they fiilter or go wrong, make me your 
 prisoner by force. If they are steady and go right, help me to save 
 him ! " 
 
 She girded herself with a cord under the breast and arms, she 
 formed it into a kind of jacket, she drew it into knots, she laid its 
 end side by side with the end of the other cord, she twisted and 
 twined the two together, she knotted them together, she set her foot 
 upon the knots, slie strained them, she held them for the two men to 
 strain at. 
 
 " She is inspired," they said to one another. 
 
 " By tlie Almighty's mercy ! " she exclaimed. " You both know 
 that I am by fur tlie lightest here. Give mo tlie brandy and the 
 wine, and lower me down to him. Then go for assistance and a
 
 A Brave Woman. 
 
 445 
 
 stronger rope. You see that when it is lowered to me look at this 
 about me now I can make it fast and safe to his body. Alive or 
 dead, I will bring him up, or die with him. I love him passionately. 
 Can I say more ? " 
 
 They turned to her companion, but he was lying senseless on the 
 snow. 
 
 " Lower me down to him," she said, taking two little kegs they had 
 brought, and hanging them aboxit her, " or I will dash myself to 
 pieces ! I am a jjeasant, and I know no giddiness or fear ; and this 
 is nothing to me, and I passionately love him. Lov.-er me down ! " 
 
 " Ma'amselle, ma'amselle, he must be dying or dead." 
 
 " Dying or dead, my husband's head shall lie upon my breast, or I 
 will dash myself to pieces." 
 
 They yielded, overborne. With such precautions as their skill and 
 the circumstances admitted, they let her slip from the summit, guiding 
 herself down the precipitous icy wall with her hand, and they lowered 
 down, and lowered down, and lowered down, until the cry came up : 
 " Enough ! " 
 
 " Is it really he, and is he dead ? " they called down, looking over. 
 
 The cry came up : " He is insensible ; but his heart beats. It beats 
 against mine." 
 
 " How does he lie ? " 
 
 The cry came up : " Upon a ledge of ice. It has thawed beneath 
 him, and it will thaw beneath me. Hasten. If we die, I am content." 
 
 One of the two men hurried off with the dogs at such topmost speed 
 as he could make ; the other set up the lighted torches in the snow, 
 and applied himself to recovering the Englishman. Much snow- 
 chafing and some brandy got him on his legs, but delirious and quite 
 imconscious where he was. 
 
 The watch remained upon the brink, and his cry went down con- 
 tinually : " Courage ! They will soon bo here. How goes it ? " 
 And the cry came up : " His heart still beats against mine. I warm 
 him in my arms. I have cast off the rope, for the ice melts under us, 
 and the rope would separate me from him ; but I am not afraid." 
 
 The moon went down behind the mountain tops, and all the abyss 
 lay in darkness. The cry went down : " How goes it ? " The cry 
 came up : " We are sinking lower, but his heart still beats against 
 mine." 
 
 At length the eager barking of the dogs, and a flare of light upon 
 the snow, proclaimed that help was coming on. Twenty or thirty 
 men, lamps, torches, litters, ropes, blankets, wood to kindle a great 
 fire, restoratives and stimulants, came in fast. The dogs ran from 
 one man to another, and from this thing to that, and ran to the edge 
 of the abyss, duniblj'- entreating Speed, speed, speed ! 
 
 The cry went down : " Thanks to God, all is ready. How 
 goes it?" 
 
 The cry came up : " We are sinking still, and we are deadly cold.
 
 44'3 ^0 Thoroughfare. 
 
 His heart no longer beats against mine. Lot no one come down, to 
 add to our weight. Lower the rope only." 
 
 The fire was kindled high, a great glare of torches lighted the sides 
 of the prcciiiice, lamps were lowered, a strong rope was lowered. She 
 could bo seen passing it round him, and making it secure. 
 
 The cry came up into a deathly silence : " liaise ! Softly ! " They 
 could see her diminished figure shrink, as ho was swung into the air. 
 
 They gave no shout when some of tliem laid him on a litter, and 
 others lowered another strong rope. The cry again came up into a 
 deatlily silence : " liaise ! Softly ! " But when they caught her at 
 the brink, then they sliouted, then they wept, then they gave thanks 
 to Heaven, then they kissed her feet, then they kissed her dress, then 
 tlie dogs caressed her, licked her icy hands, and with their honest 
 faces warmed her frozen bosom ! 
 
 She broke from them all, and sank over him on his litter, with 
 both her loving hands upon the heart that stood still. 
 
 ACT IV. 
 
 THE CLOCK-LOCK. 
 
 The pleasant scene was Ncuchiltel ; the pleasant month was April ; 
 the pleasant jdace w^as a notary's office ; the pleasant person in it 
 Avas the notary : a rosy, hearty, handsome old man, chief notary of 
 Neuchtltel, known far and wide in the canton as Maitre Voigt. Pro- 
 fessionally and personally, the notary was a popular citizen. His 
 innumerable kindnesses and his innumerable oddities had for years 
 made him one of the recognised jmblic characters of the pleasant 
 Swiss town. His long brown frock-coat and his black skull-cap, were 
 among the institutions of the place : and lie carried a snuiF-box which, 
 in point of size, was jiopularly believed to be without a parallel in 
 Eurt)po. 
 
 There was another person in the notary's office, not so pleasant us 
 the notary. This was Obonreizer. 
 
 An oddly pastoral kind of office it was, and one tliat would n(!ver 
 have answered in England. It stood in a neat back yard, fenced off 
 from a pretty flower-garden. Goats browsed in the doorway, and a 
 cow was v.'ithin half-a-dozen feet of keeping company with the cleric. 
 Mattre Voigt's room was a bright and varnished little room, Avith 
 ])anellud walls, like a toy-chamber. According to tlie seasons of the 
 ynar, roses, sniiflowoi'Sjliollyhocks, peeped in at the windows. ]\raitre 
 V^)igt's bees liunimed through the oflice all the summer, in at this 
 window and out at that, taking it frequently in their day's work, as if 
 lion(;y were to be made from Maitre Voigt's sweet dis])osition. A
 
 Mattf'e Voigt and Mr. Obenreizer. 447 
 
 large musical box on the chimney-piece often trilled away at the 
 Overture to Fra Diavolo, or a Selection from William Tell, with a 
 chirruping liveliness that had to be stopped by force on the entrance 
 of a client, and irrepressibly broke out again the moment his back 
 was turned. 
 
 " Courage, courage, my good fellow ! " said Maitre Voigt, patting 
 Obenreizer on the knee, in a fatherly and comforting way. " You 
 will begin a new life to-morrow morning in my office here." 
 
 Obenreizer dressed in mourning, and subdued in manner lifted 
 his hand, with a white handkerchief in it, to the region of his heart. 
 " The gratitude is here," ho said. " But the words to express it arc 
 not here." 
 
 " Ta-ta-ta ! Don't talk to me about gratitude ! " said Maitre Voigt. 
 " I hate to sec a man oppressed. I see you oppressed, and I hold out 
 my hand to you by instinct. Besides, I am not too old yet, to 
 remember my young days. Your father sent me my first client. (It 
 was on a question of half an acre of vineyard that seldom bore any 
 grapes.) Do I owe nothing to your father's son ? I owe him a debt 
 of friendly obligation, and I pay it to you. That's rather neatly 
 expressed, I think," added Maitre Voigt, in high good humour with 
 himself. " Permit me to rev/ard my ov/n merit with a pinch of snuff! " 
 
 Obenreizer dropped his eyes to the ground, as though he were not 
 oven worthy to see the notary take snuff. 
 
 " Do me one last favour, sir," he said, when he raised his eyes. 
 " Do not act on impulse. Thus far, you have only a general know- 
 ledge of my position. Hear the case for and against me, in its 
 details, before you take me into your office. Let my claim on your 
 benevolence be recognised by your sound reason as well as by your 
 excellent heart. In Oiat case, I may hold up my head against the 
 bitterest of my enemies, and build myself a new reputation on the 
 ruins of the character I have lost." 
 
 " As you will," said Maitre Voigt. " You speak well, my son. 
 You will be a fine lawyer one of these days." 
 
 " The details are not many," pursued Obenreizer. " My troubles 
 begin with the accidental death of my late travelling comjianion, my 
 lost dear friend Mr. Vendale." 
 
 " Mr. Vendale," repeated the notary. " Just so. I have heard and 
 read of the name, several times within these two months. The name 
 of the unfortunate English gentleman who was killed on the Sim2)lon. 
 When you got that scar upon your cheek and neck." 
 
 " From my own knife," said Obenreizer, touching what must have 
 been an ugly gash at the time of its infliction. 
 
 "From your own knife," assented the notary, "and in trying lo 
 save bim. Good, good, good. Tliat was very good. Vendale. Yes. 
 I have several times, lately, thought it droll that I should once have 
 had a client of that name." 
 
 " But the world, sir," returned Obenreizer, " is so small I " Never-
 
 448 No Thoroughfare. 
 
 ihelcss he made a mental note that the notary had once had a client 
 of that name. 
 
 " As I was saying, sir, the death of that dear travelling comrade 
 begins my troubles. What follows ? I save myself. I go down to 
 Milan. I am received with coldness by Uefresnier and Company. 
 Shortly afterwards, I am discharged by Dcfrcsnier and Company. 
 Why ? They give no reason why. I ask, do they assail my honour V 
 No answer. I ask, what is the imputation against me ? No answer. 
 I ask, where are their proofs against me ? No answer. I ask, what 
 am I to think ? The reply is, ' M. Obcnreizer is free to think what 
 ho will. What M. Obcnreizer thinks, is of no importance to Dcfrcs- 
 nier and Company.' And that is all." 
 
 " Perfectly. That is all," assented the notary, taking a large pinch 
 of snuff. 
 
 " But is that enough, sir ? " 
 
 " That is not enough," said Mattre Voigt. " The House of 
 Dcfrcsnier are my fellow townsmen much respected, much esteemed 
 but the House of Defresnior must not silently destroy a man's 
 character. You can rebut assertion. But how can you rebut 
 silence ? " 
 
 " Your sense of justice, my dear patron," answered Obcnreizer, 
 " states in a word the cruelty of the case. Does it stop there ? No. 
 For, what follows upon that ? " 
 
 " True, my poor boy," said the notary, with a comforting nod or 
 two ; " your ward rebels upon that." 
 
 " Eebels is too soft a word," retorted Obcnreizer. " My ward 
 revolts from me with liorror. My ward defies me. My ward with- 
 draws herself from my authority, and takes shelter (Madame Dor 
 with her) in the house of that English lawyer, Mr. Bintrey, who 
 replies to your sunmions to her to submit herself to my authority, 
 tliat she will not do so." 
 
 " And wlio afterwards writes," said the notary, moving liis large 
 snuff-box to look among the papers underneath it for the letter, " that 
 he is coming to confer with me." 
 
 " Indeed ? " replied Obcnreizer, ratlier checked. " Well, sir. Have 
 I no legal rights ? " 
 
 " Assuredly, my poor boy," returned the notary. " All but felons 
 liavc tlicir legal rights." 
 
 " And who calls me felon ? " said Oberueizcr, fiercely. 
 
 " No one. Be calm under your wrongs. If the House of Defresuier 
 would call you felon, indeed, wc should know liow to deal with them." 
 
 While saying these words, ho had liandcd Biiitrey's very sliort 
 letter to Obcnreizer, who now read it and gave it back. 
 
 " In saying," observed Obcnreizer, with recovered com2)osure, " tliat 
 lie is eoming to confer with you, this Englisli lawyer means that ho 
 is coining to deny my autliority over my ward." 
 
 " You think so ? "
 
 Mr. Obenreizer meditates. 449 
 
 " I am sure of it. I know him. He is obstinate and contentious. 
 You will tell me, my dear sir, whether my authority is unassailable, 
 until my ward is of age ? " 
 
 " Absolutely unassailable." 
 
 " I will enforce it. I will make her submit herself to it. For," 
 said Obenreizer, changing his angry tone to one of grateful submis- 
 sion, " I owe it to you, sir ; to you, who have so confidingly taken an 
 injured man under your protection, and into your employment.' 
 
 " Make your mind easy," said Maitre Voigt. " No more of this 
 now, and no thanks ! Be here to-morrow morning, before the other 
 clerk comes between seven and eight. You will find me in this 
 room ; and I will myself initiate you in your work. Go away ! go 
 away ! I have letters to write. I won't hear a word more." 
 
 Dismissed with this generous abruptness, and satisfied with the 
 favourable impression he had left on the old man's mind, Obenreizer 
 was at leisure to revert to the mental note he had made that Maitre 
 Yoigt once had a client whose name was Vendale. 
 
 " I ought to know England well enough by this time ; " so his 
 meditations ran, as he sat on a bench in the yard ; " and it is not a 
 name I ever encountered there, except " he looked involuntarily 
 over his shoulder " as Ms name. Is the world so small that I 
 cannot get away ixfiva him, even now when he is dead ? He confessed 
 at the last that ho had betrayed the trust of the dead, and mis- 
 inherited a fortune. And I was to see to it. And I was to stand oif, 
 that my face might remind him of it. Why my fixco, unless it con- 
 cerned me ? I am sure of his words, for they have been in my ears 
 ever since. Can there be anything bearing on them, in tlrc keeping 
 of this old idiot ? Anything to repair my fortunes, and blacken his 
 memory ? He dwelt upon my earliest remembrances, that night at 
 Basle. Why, unless he had a purpose in it ? " 
 
 Maitre Yoigt's two largest hcrgoats were butting at him to butt 
 him out of the place, as if for that disrespectful mention of their 
 master. So he got up and left the place. But he walked alone for a 
 long tinie on the border of the lake, with his head drooped in deep 
 tliought. 
 
 Between seven and eight next morning, he presented himself again 
 at the office. He found the notary ready for him, at work on some 
 papers which had come in on the jjrevious evening. In a few clear 
 words, Maitre Yoigt explained the routine of the ofiice, and the duties 
 Obenreizer would be exi)ected to perform. It still wanted five minutes 
 to eight, when the preliminary instructions were declared to be 
 complete. 
 
 " I will show you over the house and the offices," said Maitre 
 Yoigt, " but I must put away these papers first. They come from the 
 municipal authorities, and they must be taken special care of." 
 
 Obenreizer saw his chance, here, of finding out the repository in 
 which his employer's private papers were kept.
 
 450 No Thorough/arc. 
 
 " Can't I save you tlio troublo, sir ? " bo asked. " Can't I put those 
 documents away under your directions ? " 
 
 Maitro Voigt laughed softly to liimsclf ; closed the portfolio in 
 which the pajjors had been sent to him ; handed it to Obenreizcr. 
 
 " Suppose you try," ho said. " All my papers of importance are 
 kept yonder." 
 
 lie i)ointed k) a heavy oaken door, thickly studded with nails, at 
 tlio lower end of the room. Approaching the door, with the portfolio, 
 Obcnreizer discovered, to his astonishment, that there were no means 
 wliatcver of opening it from the outside. There was no handle, no 
 bolt, no key, and (climax of passive obstruction !) no keyhole. 
 
 " There is a second door to this room V " said Obcnreizer, appealing 
 to the notary. 
 
 " No," said Maitro Voigt. " Guess again." 
 
 "There is a window?" 
 
 " Nothing of tlio sort. The window has been bricked up. The 
 oiify way in, is the way by that door. Do you give it up?" cried 
 Maitre Voigt, in high triumj)!). " Listen, my good fellow, and tell 
 me if you hear nothing inside ? " 
 
 Obcnreizer listened for a moment, and started back from the door. 
 
 " I know ! " he exclaimed. " I heard of this when I was apprenticed 
 here at the watchmaker's. Porrin Brothers have finished their 
 famous clock-lock at last and you have got it ? " 
 
 " Bravo ! " said Maitro Voigt. " The clock- lock it is ! There, my 
 son ! There you liave one more of what the good people of this town 
 call, ' Daddy Voigt's follies.' With all my heart ! Let those laugh 
 who win. No thief can steal m]i keys. No burglar can jiick mij lock. 
 No power on earth, sliort of a battering-ram or a barrel of gunpowder, 
 can move that door, till my little sentinel inside my worthy friend 
 wlio goes ' Tick, Tick,' as I tell him says, ' Open ! ' The big door 
 obeys the little Tick, Tick, and the littlo Tick, Tick, obeys me. 
 That ! " cried Daddy Voigt, snapping his fingers, " for all the thieves 
 in Christendom ! " 
 
 " May I see it in action ? " asked Obcnreizer. " Pardon my 
 curiosity, dear sir ! You know that I was once a tolerable worker in 
 the clock trade." 
 
 " Certainly you shall sec it in action," said Maitre Voigt. " Wliat 
 is the time now ? One minuto to eight. Watch, and in one minute 
 you will see the door open of itself." 
 
 In one minuto, smoothly and slowly and silently, as if invisible 
 liands had set it free, the heavy door opened inward, and disclosed a 
 (lark cliamber beyond. On tlirec sides, slielves filled the walls, from 
 iloor to ceiling. Arranged on the shelves, were rows ui)on rows of 
 boxes made in the 2)r(;tty inlaid woodwork of (Switzerland, and bearing 
 inscribed on their fronts (for the most part in fanciful coloured 
 letters) the names of tlie'notary's clients. 
 
 jV[;iitre Voigt liglited a taper, and led the way into tlio room.
 
 Hoij Maitre Voigt defied Thieves. 451 
 
 " You shall see tlie clock," he said proudly. " I possess the greatest 
 curiosity in Europe. It is only a privileged few whoso eyes can look 
 at it. I givo the i)rivilego to your good father's son you shall bo 
 one of the favoured few who enter the room with me. See ! here it 
 is, on the right-hand wall at the side of the door." 
 
 " An ordinary clock," exclaimed Obenreizer. " No ! Not an 
 ordinary clock. It has only one hand." 
 
 " Aha ! " said Maitre Voigt. " Not an ordinary clock, my friend. 
 No, no. That one hand goes round the dial. As I put it, so it 
 regulates the hour at which the door shall open. See ! The hand 
 points to eight. At eight the door opened, as you saw for yourself." 
 
 "Does it open more than once in the four-and-twenty hours?" 
 asked Obenreizer. 
 
 " More than once ? " repeated the notary, with great scorn. " You 
 don't know my' good friend, Tick-Tick ! He will ojien the door as 
 often as I ask him. All he wants is his directions, and ho gets them 
 here. Look below the dial. Here is a half-circle of steel let into 
 tho wall, and here is a hand (called the regulator) that travels round 
 it, just as my hand chooses. Notice, if you please, that there are 
 figures to guide me on tho half-circle of steel. Figure I. means: 
 02)en once in tho four-and-twenty hours. Figure II. means : Open 
 twice ; and so on to the end. I set the regulator every morning, after 
 I have read my letters, and when I know what my day's work is to 
 bo. Would you like to see mo sot it now ? What is to-day ? Wed- 
 nesday. Good ! This is the day of our rifle-club ; there is littlo 
 business to do ; I grant a half-h(diday. No work here to-day, after 
 three o'clock. Let us first put away this portfolio of municipal 
 papers. There ! No need to trouble Tick-Tick to open the door 
 until eight to-morrow. Good ! I leave the dial-hand at eight ; I 
 put back the regulator to I. ; I close the door ; and closed the door 
 remains, past all opening by anybody, till to-morrow morning at eight." 
 
 Obenreizer's quickness instantly saw the means by which he might 
 make the clock-lock betray its master's confidence, and place its 
 master's papers at his disposal. 
 
 ' Stop, sir ! " he cried, at the moment when the notary was closing 
 the door. " Don't I sec something moving among tho boxes on tho 
 floor there ? " 
 
 (Maitre Voigt turnal his back for a moment to look. In that 
 moment, Obenreizer's ready hand put the regulator on, from tho 
 figure " I. " to the figure " II." Unless the notary looked again at 
 the half-circle of steel, tho door would open at eight that evening, as 
 well as at eiglit next morning, and nobody but Obenreizer would 
 know it.) 
 
 " There is nothing ! " said Maitre Voigt. " Your troubles have 
 shaken your nerves, my son. Some shadow thrown by my taper ; or 
 some jioor little beetle, who lives among tho old lawyer's secrets, 
 running away from the light. TTark I I Iicar your fellovr-clcrk ia
 
 452 No Thoroughfare. 
 
 the office. To work ! to work ! and build to-day the first step that 
 leads to your new fortunes ! " 
 
 Ho good-humouredly pushed Obenrcizcr out before him ; extin- 
 guished the taper, with a last fond glance at his clock which passed 
 harmlessly over the regulator beneath ; and closed the oaken door. 
 
 At three, the office was shut up. The notary and everybody in the 
 notary's employment, with one exception, went to see the rifle-shooting. 
 Obenreizcr had pleaded that he was not in spirits for a public festival. 
 Nobody knew what had become of him. It was believed that he had 
 slipped away for a solitary walk. 
 
 The house and offices had been closed but a few minutes, when the 
 door of a shining wardrobe in the notary's shining room opened, and 
 Obenreizcr stepped out. He walked to a window, unclosed the 
 shutters, satisfied himself that he could escape unseen by way of the 
 garden, turned back into the room, and took his place in the notary's 
 (.^asy-chair. Ho was locked up in the house, and there were five 
 hours to wait before eight o'clock came. 
 
 He wore his way through the five hours : sometimes reading the 
 books and newspapers that lay on the table : sometimes thinking : 
 Kometimes walking to and fro. Sunset came on. Ho closed tlie 
 window-shutters before ho kindled a light. The candle lighted, and 
 the time drawing nearer and nearer, he sat, watch in hand, with his 
 eyes on the oaken door. 
 
 At eight, smoothly and softly and silently the door opened. 
 
 One after another, he read the names on the outer rows of boxes. 
 No such name as Vendale ! He removed the outer row, and looked 
 at the row behind. These were older boxes, and shabbier boxes. 
 The four first that he examined, were inscribed with French and 
 ( lerman names. The fifth bore a name which was almost illegible. 
 He brought it out into the room, and examined it closely. There, 
 covered thickly with time-stains and dust, was the name : " Vendale." 
 
 Tlie key hung to the box by a string. He unlocked the box, took 
 cmt four loose papers tliat were in it, spread them ojien on the table, 
 and began to read tliem. He had not so occupied a minute, when his 
 face fell from its expression of eagerness and avidity, to one of haggard 
 astonishment and disappointment. But, after a little consideration, 
 lie copied the i)apcrs. He then replaced the i)apers, replaced the box, 
 closed the door, extinguished the candle, and stole away. 
 
 As his murderous and thievish footfall passed out of the garden, 
 the steals of the notary and some one accompanying him stopped at 
 the front door of the house. The lamps were lighted in the little 
 street, and the notary had his door-key in his liand. 
 
 " Pray do not pass my house, Mr. Bintrey," he said. " T)o me the 
 honour to come in. It is one of our town half-holidays our Tir 
 but my people will be back directly. It is droll tliat you should ask 
 your way to tlie Hotel of me. Let us cat and drink before you go 
 there."
 
 Mr. Obenreizer objects to a Compromise. 453 
 
 " Thank you ; not to-night," said Bintrey. " Shall I come to you 
 at ten to-morrow ? " 
 
 " I shall be enchanted, sir, to take so early an opportunity of re- 
 dressing the wrongs of my injured client," returned the good notary. 
 
 " Yes," retorted Bintrey ; " your injured client is all very well- 
 but a word in your ear." 
 
 He whispered to the notary and walked off. When the notary's 
 housekeeper came home, she found him standing at his door motion- 
 less, with the key still in his hand, and the door unopened. 
 
 obeneeizer's victory. 
 
 The scene shifts again to the foot of the Simplon, on the Swiss side. 
 
 In one of the dreary rooms of the dreary little inn at Brieg, Mr. 
 Bintrey and Maitre Voigt sat together at a professional council of 
 two. Mr. Bintrey was searching in his despatch-box. Maitre Voigt 
 was looking towards a closed door, painted brown to imitate mahogany, 
 and communicating with an inner room. 
 
 " Isn't it time he was here ? " asked the notary, shifting his position, 
 and glancing at a second door at the other end of the room, painted 
 yellow to imitate deal. 
 
 " He is here," answered Bintrey, after listening for a moment. 
 
 The yellow door was opened by a waiter, and Obenreizer walked in. 
 
 After greeting Maitre Voigt with a cordiality which appeared to 
 cause the notary no little embarrassment, Obenreizer bowed witli 
 grave and distant politeness to Bintrey. " For what reason have I 
 been brouglit from Neuchatel to the foot of the mountain ? " ho in- 
 quired, taking the seat which the English lawyer had indicated to him. 
 
 " You shall be quite satisfied on that head before our interview is 
 over," returned Bintrey. " For the present, permit me to suggest 
 proceeding at once to business. There has been a correspondence, 
 Mr. Obenreizer, between you and your niece. I am here to represent 
 your niece." 
 
 " In other words, you, a lawyer, arc hero to rci^resent an infraction 
 of the law." 
 
 " Admirably put ! " said Bintrey. " If all the people I have to deal 
 with were only like you, what an easy profession mine would be ! I 
 am here to represent an infraction of the law that is your point of 
 view. I am here to make a compromise between you and your niece 
 that is my point of view." 
 
 " There must be two parties to a compromise," rejoined Obenreizer. 
 " I decline, in this case, to bo one of them. The law gives me 
 authority to control my niece's actions, until she comes of age. She 
 is not yet of age ; and I claim my authority." 
 
 At this point Maitre attempted to speak. Bintrey silenced him 
 with a compassionate indulgence of tone and manner, as if he was 
 silencing a favourite child.
 
 454 ^^ TJioro7ighfare. 
 
 "No, my worthy friend, not a word. Don't excite yonrsclf un- 
 ncccRRarily ; leave it to me." Ho turned, and addressed himself again 
 to Ohenreizer. " I can think of nothing comparable to yon, Mr. 
 (Jbenreizcr, but granite and even that wears out in course of time. 
 In the interests of peace and quietness for the sake of your own 
 dignity relax a little. If you will only delegate your authority to 
 nnother person whom I know of, that i)crson may be trusted never to 
 Lvse sight of your niece, night or day ! " 
 
 " You arc wasting your time and mine," returned Obcnreizer. " If 
 my niece is not rendered xij") to my autliority within one week from 
 this day, 1 invoke the law. If you resist the law, I take her by force." 
 
 Ho rose to his feet as he said the last word. IMaitre Voigt looked 
 round again towards the brown door which led into tlie inner room. 
 
 " Have some jtity on the poor girl," pleaded Bintrey. " Kemember 
 liow lately she lost her lover by a dreadful death ! Will nothing 
 move you ? " 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 Bintrey, in his turn, rose to his feet, and looked at Maitre Voigt. 
 ?<Iiutre Voigt's hand, resting on the table, began to tremble. Maitrc 
 Voigt's eyes remained fixed, as if by irresistible i\iscination, on tlio 
 brown door. Obcnreizer, suspiciously observing him, looked that 
 way too. 
 
 " Tlicrc is somebody listening in there ! " he exclaimed, with a 
 sliarp backward glance at T5intrey. 
 
 " Tliere are two people listening," answered Bintrey. 
 
 Who are they ? " 
 
 " You shall see." 
 
 With that answer, lie raised his voice and spoke tlic next words 
 the two common words which are on everybody's lips, at every hour 
 of tlie day : " Come in ! " 
 
 The brown door opened. Supported on IMarguerite's arm his sun- 
 burnt colour gone, his right arm l)andaged and slnng over his breast 
 Vcndalo stood before the murderer, a man risen from the dead. 
 
 In the moment of silence that followed, tlie singing of a caged bird 
 in tlie courtyard outside was the one sound stirring in the room. 
 Maitre Voigt touched Bintrey, and pointed to Obcnreizer. "Look at 
 him ! " said tlic notary, in a wliispcr. 
 
 The shock liad paralyzed every movement in tlie villain's body, but 
 the movement of tlie blood. His focc was like the face of a corpse. 
 The one vestige of colour left in it was a livid purple streak which 
 marked the ctmrse of the scar where his victim hud wound(!d liiiii dii 
 tlie cheek and neck. Speechless, breathless, motionless alike in eye 
 and limb, it seemed as if, at the sight of Vendale, the death to wliicli 
 lie had doonicMl Vendale had struck him where lie stood. 
 
 " Somebody ouglit to speak to him," said Maitre Voigt. " Sliall I '.' " 
 
 Even at that moment Bintrey persisted in silencing the notary, and 
 in keeping the lead in tlie proceedings to hinise'^. Checking Maitre
 
 3Ir. Bintrey gives an Account of his Proceedings. 455 
 
 Voigt by a gesture, he dismissed Marguerite and Vendale in tlieso 
 words : " The object of your appearance here is answered," he said. 
 " If you will withdraw for the present, it may help Mr. Obenrcizcr to 
 recover himself." 
 
 It did help him. As the two passed through the door and closed 
 it behind them, he drew a deep breath of relief. He looked round 
 him for the chair from which he had risen, and dropped into it. 
 
 " Give him time ! " pleaded Maitre Voigt. 
 
 " No," said Bintrey. " I don't know what use he may make of it if 
 I do." He turned once more to Obenreizcr, and went on. " I owe it 
 to myself," he said " I don't admit, mind, that I owe it to you to 
 account for my appearance in these proceedings, and to state what has 
 l)een done under my advice, and on my sole resj)onsibility. Can you 
 listen to me ? " 
 
 " I can listen to you." 
 
 " Eecal the time when you started for Switzerland with Mr. 
 Vendale," Bintrey began. "You had not left England four-and- 
 twenty hours before your niece committed an act of imprudence which 
 not even your penetration could foresee. She followed her promised 
 husband on his journey, without asking anybody's advice or permis- 
 sion, and without any better companion to protect her than a Cellar- 
 man in Mr. Vendale's employment." 
 
 " Why did she follow me on the journey ? and how came the 
 Ccllarman to be the person who accompanied her ? " 
 
 " She followed you on tlie journey," answered Bintrey, " because 
 she suspected there had been some serious collision between you and 
 Mr. Vendale, v.'hich had been kept secret from her ; and because 
 she rightly believed you to be capable of serving your interests, or 
 of satisfying your enmity, at the price of a crime. As for the Cellar- 
 man, he was one, among the other people in Mr, Vendale's establish- 
 ment, to whom she had applied (the moment your back was turned) 
 to know if anything had haj^pcned between their master and you. 
 The Ccllarman alone had something to tell her. A senseless super- 
 stition, and a common accident which had happened to his master, in 
 his master's cellar, had connected Mr. Vendale in this man's mind 
 with the idea of danger by murder. Your niece surprised him into 
 a confession, wliich aggravated tenfold the terrors that possessed her. 
 Aroused to a sense of the mischief he had done, the man, of his own 
 accord, made the one atonement in his power. ' If my master is in 
 danger, miss,' he said, * it's my duty to follow him, too ; and it's more 
 than my duty to take care of y(>u' The two set forth together and, 
 for once, a superstition has had its use. It decided your niece on 
 taking the journey ; and it led the way to saving a man's life. Do 
 you understand me, so far ? " 
 
 " I understand you, so far." 
 
 " My first knowledge of the crime that you had committed, pur- 
 sued Bintrey, '"' came to me in tlie form of a letter from your niece.
 
 45^ ^0 Thoroughfare. 
 
 All you nocd know is that ber love and her courage recovered tiio 
 body of your victim, and aided the after-efforts which brought him 
 back to life. While he lay helpless at Brieg, under her care, she 
 wrote to me to come out to him. Before starting, I informed Madame 
 Dor that I know Miss Obenreizer to be safe, and knew where she was. 
 Madame Dor informed me, in return, that a letter had come for your 
 niece, which she knew to be in your liandwriting. I took possession 
 of it, and arranged for the forwarding of any other letters which might 
 follow. Arrived at Brieg, I found Mr. Vcndalo out of danger, and 
 at once devoted myself to hastening the day of reckoning with you. 
 Defresnier and Company turned you off on suspicion ; acting on infor- 
 mation privately supplied by me. Having stripped you of your false 
 character, the next thing to do was to strip you of your authority over 
 your niece. To reach this end, I not only had no scruple in digging 
 the pitfall under your feet in the dark I felt a certain professional 
 pleasure in fighting you with your own weapons. By my advice the 
 truth has been carefully concealed from you up to this day. By my 
 advice the trap into Avhich you have walked was sot for you (you 
 know why, now, as well as I do) in this place. There was but one 
 certain way of shaking the devilisli self-control which lias hitherto 
 made you a formidable man. That way has been tried, and (look at 
 me as you may) that way has succeeded. The last thing that remains 
 to be done," concluded Biutrey, producing two little slips of manu- 
 script from his desjiatch-box, " is to set your niece free. You have 
 attempted murder, and you have committed forgery and theft. AVo 
 have the evidence ready against you in both cases. If you arc con- 
 victed as a felon, you know as well as I do what becomes of your 
 authority over your niece. Personally, I should have preferred taking 
 that way out of it. But considerations are pressed on me which I am 
 not able to resist, and this interview must end, as I have told you 
 already, in a compromise. Sign those lines, resigning all authority 
 over Miss Obenreizer, and jjledging yourself never to be seen in 
 England or in Switzerland again ; and I will sign an indenuiity which 
 secures you against further proceedings on our part." 
 
 Obenreizer took the j^en in silence, and signed his niece's release. 
 On receiving the indemnity in return, he rose, but made no movement 
 to leave the room. He stood looking at Maitrc Voigt with a strange 
 smile gathering at his lips, and a strange light flashing iu his filmy 
 eyes. 
 
 "What aro you waiting for?" asked Biutrey. 
 
 01)cnreizel' pointed to the brown door. " Call them back," 
 lie answered. " I have something to say in their presence before 
 
 " Say it iu my presence," retorted Bintrey. " I decline to call them 
 back." 
 
 Obenreizer turned to Maitre Yoigt. " Do you remember telling mo 
 that you once had an English client named Vendale ? " he asked.
 
 Mr. Obenreizer plays his Last Move. 457 
 
 " Well," answered the notary. " And what of that ? " 
 
 " Maitre Voigt, your clock-lock has betrayed you." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " 
 
 " I have read the letters and certificates in your client's box. I 
 have taken copies of them. I have got the copies here. Is there, or 
 is there not, a reason for calling them back ? " 
 
 For a moment the notary looked to and fro, between Obenreizer and 
 Bintrey, in helpless astonishment. Eecovering himself, he drew his 
 brother-lawyer aside, and hurriedly spoke a few words close at his ear. 
 The face of Bintrey after first faithfully reflecting the astonishment 
 on the face of Maitre Voigt suddenly altered its expression. He 
 sprang, with the activity of a young man, to the door of the inner 
 room, entered it, remained inside for a minute, and returned followed 
 by Marguerite and Vendale. " Now, Mr. Obenreizer," said Bintrey, 
 " the last move in the game is yours. Play it." 
 
 " Before I resign my position as that young lady's guardian," said 
 Obenreizer, " I have a secret to reveal in which she is interested. 
 In making my disclosure, I am not claiming her attention for a 
 narrative which she, or any other person present, is expected to take 
 on trust. I am possessed of written proofs, copies of originals, the 
 authenticity of which Maitre Voigt himself can attest. Bear that 
 in mind, and permit mo to refer you, at starting, to a date long past 
 tlie month of February, in the year one thousand eight hundred 
 and thirty-six." 
 
 " Mark the date, Mr. Vendale," said Bintrey. 
 
 " My first proof," said Obenreizer, taking a paper from his pocket- 
 book. " Copy of a letter, written by an English lady (married) to her 
 sister, a widow. The name of the person writing the letter I shall 
 keep supj^ressed until I have done. The name of the person to whom 
 the letter is written I am willing to reveal. It is addressed to ' Mrs. 
 Jane Anno Miller, of Groombridge Wells, England,' " 
 
 Vendale started, and opened his lips to speak. Bintrey instantly 
 stopped him, as ho had stopped Maitre Voigt. " No," said the 
 pertinacious lawyer. " Leave it to me." 
 
 Obenreizer went on : 
 
 " It is needless to trouble you with the first half of the letter," ho 
 said. " I can give the substance of it in two words. The writer's 
 position at the time is this. She has been long living in Switzerland 
 with her husband obliged to live there for the sake of her husband's 
 health. They are about to move to a now residence on the Lake of 
 Neuchatel in a week, and they will be ready to receive Mrs. Miller as 
 visitor in a fortnight from that time. This said, the writer next enters 
 into an important domestic detail. She has been childless for years 
 she and her husband have now no hope of children ; they are lonely ; 
 they want an interest in life ; they have decided on adopting a child. 
 Here the important part of the letter begins ; and here, therefore, I 
 read it to you word for word."
 
 458 No Thoroughfare. 
 
 Ho foltlcd back tlio first page of the letter aud read as follows : 
 
 c \^'i\\ you help us, my dear sister, to roaliso our new 
 project? As English people, we wish to adopt an Englisli child. 
 This may ho done, I believe, at the Foundling : my husband's lawyers 
 in London will tell you how. I leave the choice to you, with only 
 these conditions attached to it that the cliild is to be an infant under 
 a year old, and is to be a boy. Will you pardon the trouble I am 
 giving you, for my sake ; and will you bring our adopted child to us, 
 with your own children, when you come to Ncuchatel ? 
 
 " I must add a word as to my husband's wishes in this matter. Ho 
 is resolved to spare the child whom wo make our own any future 
 mortification and loss of self-respect which might be caused by a dis- 
 covery of his true origin. He will bear my husband's name, and ho 
 will bo brought up in the belief that he is really our son. Ilis 
 inheritance of what wo have to leave will be secured to liim not only 
 according to the laws of England in such cases, but according to the 
 laws of Switzerland also ; for we liave lived so long in this country, 
 that there is a doubt whether we may not be considered as ' domiciled ' 
 in Switzerland. The one precaution left to take is to prevent any 
 after-discovery at the Foundling. Now, our name is a very uncommon 
 one ; and if we appear on the licgistcr of tlic Institution as the persons 
 adopting the child, tliere is just a chance that something might result 
 from it. Your name, my dear, is the name of thousands of other 
 people ; and if you will consent to appear on the Register, there need 
 bo no fear of any discoveries in tliat quarter. We are moving, by the 
 doctor's orders, to a part of Switzerland in which our circumstances 
 arc quite unknown ; and you, as I understand, are about to engage a 
 new nurse for the journey when you come to see us. Under these 
 circumstances, the child may appear as my child, brought back to me 
 under my sister's care. Tlie only servant wo take witli us from our 
 old Iiomo is my own maid, who can be safely trusted. As for the 
 lawyers in England and in Switzerland, it is their profession to keep 
 secrets and we may feel quite easy in that direction. So there you 
 liavc our harmless little conspiracy ! Write by return of post, my 
 love, and toll me you will join it." * * * 
 
 " Do you still conceal the name of the writer of that letter ? " asked 
 Vend ale. 
 
 " I Icecp the name of the writer till the last," answered Ob(!nrcizor, 
 "and I proceed to my second proof a mere slip of paper tliis time, 
 as you sec. IMemoraudum given to the Swiss lawyer, who drew the 
 documents referred to in tho letter I liave just read, expressed as 
 follows: 'Adopted from the Foundling Hospital of Enfjland, 
 od IMarch, lH3t), a male infant, called, in the Institution, Walter 
 Wilding. Fcrson appearing on tlie register, as adopting the child, 
 Mrs. Jaiie Anne Miller, widow, acting in this matter for Jicr married
 
 TJie Mystery solved. 459 
 
 sister, domiciled in Switzerland.' Patience ! " resumed Obenreizer, 
 as Vendale, breaking loose from Bintrey, started to bis feet. "I 
 shall not keep the name concealed much longer. Two more little 
 slips of paper, and I have done. Third proof ! Certificate of Doctor 
 Ganz, still living in practice at Neuchntel, dated July, 1838. The 
 doctor certifies (you shall read it for yourselves directly), first, that 
 he attended the adopted child in its infant maladies ; second, that, 
 three months before the date of the certificate, the gentleman adopting 
 the child as his son died ; third, that on the date of the certificate, his 
 widow and her maid, taking the adopted child with them, left 
 Neuchatel on their return to England. One more link now added to 
 this, and my chain of evidence is complete. The maid remained with 
 her mistress till her mistress's death, only a few years since. The 
 maid can swear to the identity of the adopted infant, from his child- 
 liood to his youth from his youth to his manhood, as he is now. 
 There is her address in England and there, Mr. Vendale, is the 
 fourth, and final proof ! " 
 
 " Why do you address yourself to we ? " said Vendale, as Obenreizer 
 threw the written address on the table. 
 
 Obenreizer turned on him, in a sudden frenzy of triumph. 
 
 " Because you are the man ! If my niece marries you, she marries 
 a bastard, brought up by public charity. If my niece marries you, 
 she marries an impostor, without name or lineage, disguised in the 
 character of a gentleman of rank and family," 
 
 "Bravo!" cried Bintrey. "Admirably put, Mr. Obenreizer! It 
 only wants one word more to complete it. She marries thanks 
 entirely to your exertions a man who inherits a handsome fortune, 
 and a man whose origin will make him prouder than ever of liis 
 pcasant-wdfe. George Vendale, as brother-executors, let us con- 
 gratulate each other ! Our dear dead friend's last wish on earth is 
 accomplished. We have found the lost Walter Wilding. As Mr. 
 Obenreizer said just now you are the man ! " 
 
 The words passed by Vendale unheeded. For the moment he was 
 conscious of but one sensation ; he heard but one voice. Marguerite's 
 hand was clasping his. Marguerite's voice was whispering to him : 
 " I never loved you, George, as I love you now ! " 
 
 THE CURTAIN FALLS. 
 
 May-day. There is merry-making in Cripple Corner, the chimneys 
 smoke, the patriarchal dining-hall is hung with garlands, and Mrs. 
 Goldstraw, the respected housekeeper, is very busy. For, on this 
 bright morning the young master of Cripple Corner is married to its 
 young mistress, far away : to wit, in the little towm of Brieg, in 
 Switzerland, lying at the foot of the Simplon Pass where she saved 
 his life. 
 
 The bells ring gaily In the little town of Brieg, and flags arc
 
 460 No Thoroughfare. 
 
 stretched across the street, and rifle shots are heard, and sounding 
 music from brass instruments. Streamer-decorated casks of wiuo 
 have been rolled out under a gay awning in the public way before tlio 
 Inn, and there will bo free feasting and revelry. What with bells 
 and banners, draperies hanging from windows, explosion of gunpowder, 
 and reverberation of brass music, the little town of Brieg is all in a 
 fluttei*, like the hearts of its simple people. 
 
 It was a stormy night last night, and the mountains are covered 
 with snow. But the sun is bright to-day, the sweet air is fresh, tho 
 tin spires of the little town of Brieg are burnished silver, and tho 
 Alps are ranges of far-off white cloud in a deep blue sky. 
 
 The primitive people of the little town of Brieg have built a green- 
 wood arch across the street, under which the newly married pair shall 
 pass in triumph from the church. It is inscribed, on that side, 
 " Honour and Lovk to Marguerite Vendalk ! " for the people are 
 proud of her to enthusiasm. This greeting of the bride under her 
 new name is affectionately meant as a surprise, and therefore tho 
 arrangement has been made that she, unconscious why, shall bo taken 
 to the church by a tortuous back way. A scheme not difficult to 
 carry into execution in the crooked little town of Brieg. 
 
 So, all things are in readiness, and they are to go and come on foot. 
 Assembled in the Inn's best chamber, festively adorned, are tho brido 
 and bridegroom, the Neuchritel notary, the London lawyer, Madamo 
 Dor, and a certain largo mysterious Englishman, popularly known as 
 Monsieur Zhoo-Ladelle. And behold Madame Dor, arrayed in a 
 spotless pair of gloves of her own, with no hand in the air, but both 
 liands clasped round tho neck of the bride ; to embrace whom IMadaine 
 Dor has turned her broad back on the company, consistent to the last. 
 
 " Forgive mo, my beautiful," pleads Madame Dor, " for that I ever 
 was his she-cat ! " 
 
 " She-cat, Madame Dor ? " 
 
 " Engaged to sit watching my so charming mouse," are the 
 explanatory words of Madame Dor, delivered witli a penitential sob. 
 
 "Why, you were our best friend! George, dearest, tell Madame 
 Dor. Was she not our best friend ? " 
 
 " Undoubtedly, darling. Wliat should we have done without her ? " 
 
 " You are both so generous," cries Madamo Dor, accepting consola- 
 tion, and immediately relapsing. " But I commenced as a she-cat." 
 
 " Ah ! But like tlic cat in the fairy-story, good Madame Dor," 
 says Vendalc, saluting her cheek, " you were a true woman. And, 
 being a true woman, the sympathy of your lieart was with true love." 
 
 " I don't wish to deprive Madame Dor of her ^hare in the embraces 
 that are going on," Mr. Bintrcy puts in, watch '\\\ hand, " and I don't 
 presume to offer any objection to your having got yourselves mixed 
 togcjtlicr, in the corner there, like tlic three Graces. I merely remark 
 tliat I think it's time wo were moving. What are your sentiments on 
 that subject, Mr. Ladle ? "
 
 The Last of Mr. Obenreizer. 451 
 
 " Clear, sir," replies Joey, with a gracious grin. " I'm clearer 
 altogether, sir, for having lived so many weeks upon the surface. I 
 never was half so long upon the surface afore, and it's done me a 
 power of good. At Cripple Corner, I was too much helow it. Atop 
 of the Simpleton, I was a deal too high above it. I've found the 
 medium here, sir. And if ever I take it in convivial, in all the rest 
 of my days, I mean to do it this day, to the toast of ' Bless 'em both.' " 
 
 " I, too ! " says Bin trey. " And now. Monsieur Voigt, let you and 
 me be two men of Marseilles, and aliens, marchons, arm-in-arm ! " 
 
 They go down to the door, where others are waiting for them, and 
 they go quietly to the church, and the happy marriage takes place. 
 While the ceremony is yet in progress, the notary is called out. 
 When it is finished, he has returned, is standing behind Yendale, and 
 touches him on the shoulder. 
 
 " Go to the side door, one moment, Monsieur Vendale. Alone. 
 Leave Madame to me." 
 
 At the side door of the church, are the same two men from the 
 Hospice. They are snow-stained and travel-worn. They wish him 
 joy, and then each lays his broad hand upon Yendale's breast, and 
 one says in a low voice, while the other steadfastly regards him : 
 
 " It is here. Monsieur. Your litter. The very same." 
 
 " My litter is here ? Why ? " 
 
 " Hush ! For the sake of Madame. Your companion of that 
 day " 
 
 " What of him ? " 
 
 The man looks at his comrade, and his comrade takes him up. 
 Each keeps his hand laid earnestly on Yendale's breast. 
 
 " He had been living at the first Eefuge, monsieur, for some days. 
 The weather was now good, now bad." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " Ho arrived at our Hospice the day before yesterday, and, having 
 refreshed himself with sleep on the floor before the fire, wrai)ped in 
 his cloak, was resolute to go on, before dark, to the next Hospice. 
 He had a great fear of that part of the way, and thought it would be 
 worse to-morrow." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 " He went on alone. Ho had passed the gallery when an avalanche 
 like that which fell behind you near the Bridge of the Ganther " 
 
 " Killed him ? " 
 
 " We dug him out, suffocated and broken all to pieces ! But, 
 monsieur, as to Madame. We have brought him hero ou the litter, to 
 be buried. We must ascend the street outside. Madame must not 
 see. It would be an accursed thing to bring the litter through the 
 arch across the street, until Madame has passed through. As you 
 descend, we who accompany tlie litter will set it down on the stones 
 of the street the second to the right, and will stand before it. But do 
 not let Madame turn her head towards the street the second to the
 
 462 JVo TJiorougJifare. 
 
 right. There is no time to lose. Matlame will bo alarmed by your 
 absence. Adieu ! " 
 
 Vcndalo returns to his bride, and draws lier hand through his 
 unmaimed arm. A pretty procession awaits them at the main door 
 of the church. They take their station in it, and descend the street 
 amidst the ringing of the bells, the firing of the guns, the waving of 
 the flags, the playing of the music, the sliouts, the smiles, and tears, 
 of the excited town. Heads are imcovered as slio passes, hands are 
 Ivissed to her, all the people bless her. " Heaven's benediction on tho 
 dear girl ! See where she goes in her youth and beauty ; she who so 
 nobly saved liis life ! " 
 
 Near the corner of the street the second to the right, ho speaks to 
 her, and calls her attention to tho windows on tho opposite side. Tho 
 corner well passed, he says : " Do not look round, my darling, for a 
 reason that I liavo," and turns liis head. Tlien, looking back along 
 the street, he sees the litter and its bearers passing up alone under 
 tho arch, as lie and she and their marriage train go down towards tho 
 shining valley. 
 
 Tin-: END OF CIIRISTMAS STOUIKS.
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK.
 
 MASTEE HTJMPHEEY'S CLOCK. 
 
 MASTER HUMPHEEY, FROM HIS CLOCK-SIDE 
 IN THE CHIMNEY CORNER. 
 
 The reader must not expect to know where I live. At present, it is 
 true, my abode may be a question of little or no import to anybody ; 
 but if I should carry my readers with me, as I hope to do, and there 
 should spring up between them and me feelings of homely affection 
 and regard attaching something of interest to matters ever so slightly 
 connected with my fortunes or my speculations, even my place of 
 residence might one day have a kind of charm for them. Bearing 
 this possible contingency in mind, I wish them to understand, in the 
 outset, that they must never expect to know it. 
 
 2n
 
 466 Master Hwnphreyh Clock. 
 
 I am not a clmrlisli old man. Friendless I can never be, for' all 
 mankind are my kindred, and I am on ill terms with no one member 
 of my great family. But for many years I liavo led a lonely, solitary 
 life; what wound I sougbt to heal, wliat sorrow to forgot, originally, 
 matters not now ; it is sufficient that retirement has become a habit 
 with me, and that I am unwilling to break the spell which for so long 
 a time has shed its quiet influence upon my home and heart. 
 
 I live in a venerable suburb of London, in an old house which in 
 bygone days was a famous resort for merry roystcrors and peerless 
 ladies, long since departed. It is a silent, shady place, with a paved 
 courtyard so full of echoes, that sometimes I am tempted to believe 
 tliat faint responses to the noises of old times linger there yet, and 
 that these ghosts of sound haunt my footsteps as I pace it up and 
 down. I am the more confirmed in this belief, because, of late years, 
 the echoes that attend my walks have been less loud and marked 
 than they were vv'ont to bo ; and it is pleasantor to imagine in 
 them the rustling of silk brocade, and the light step of some lovely 
 girl, than to recognise in their altered note the failing tread of 
 an old man. 
 
 Tlioso who like to read of brilliant rooms and gorgeous furniture 
 would derive but little pleasure from a minute description of my 
 simi)le dwelling. It is dear to me for tlic same reason tliat they 
 Avould liold it in slight regard. Its worm-eaten doors, and low ceilings 
 crossed by clumsy beams ; its walls of wainscot, dark stairs, and 
 gaping closets ; its small chambers, connnunicating with each other 
 by winding passages or narrow steps ; its many nooks, scarce larger 
 than its cornor-cupboards ; its very dust and dulness, are all dear to 
 me. The moth and spider are my constant tenants ; for in my house 
 the one basks in liis long sleep, and the other plies his busy loom 
 Bocure and undisturbed. I have a pleasure in thinking on a summer's 
 day liow many butterflies have sprung for the first time into light and 
 sunshine from some dark corner of these old walls. 
 
 When I first came to live here, v.hich was man}' years ago, tlio 
 nciglibours were curious to know who I was, and wlienco I came, and 
 wliy I lived so much alone. As time went on, and they still remained 
 unsatisfied on those points, I became the centre of a popular ferment, 
 extending for half a mile round, and in one direction for a fall mile. 
 Various rumours were circulated to my projudice. I was a spy, an 
 iniidel, a conjurer, a kidnapjier of children, a refugee, a priest, a 
 monster. Motliers caught up their infants and ran into their lumscs 
 as I passed ; men eyed mo spitefully, and muttered tlireats and curses. 
 I was the object of suspicion and distrust ay, of downriglit hati'ed too. 
 
 But when in course of time they found I did no harm, but, on the 
 contrary, inclined towards tlicm despite tlieir unjust usage, they began 
 to relent. I found my f(jotsteps no longer dogged, as tliey had often 
 been before, and c)l).servcd that the vromen and children no longer 
 retreated, but would stand and gaze at mo as I 2)asscd their doors. I
 
 Master Humphrey introduces Jiimself, 
 
 467 
 
 took this for a good omen, and waited patiently for better times. By 
 degrees I began to make friends among these humble folks ; and though 
 they were yet shy of speaking, would give them " good-day," and so 
 pass on. In a little time, those whom I had thus accosted would 
 make a point of coming to their doors and windows at the usual hour, 
 and nod or courtesy to me ; children, too, came timidly within my 
 reach, and ran away quite scared when I patted their heads and bade 
 them be good at school. These little people soon grew more familiar. 
 From exchanging mere words of course with my older neighbours, I 
 gradually became their friend and adviser, the depositary of their 
 cares and sorrows, and sometimes, it may be, the reliever, in my small 
 way, of their distresses. And now I never walk abroad but pleasant 
 recognitions and smiling faces wait on Master Humphrey. 
 
 It was a whim of mine, perhaps as a whet to tlio curiosity of ray 
 neighbours, and a kind of retaliation upon them for their suspicious 
 it was, I say, a whim of mine, when I first took up my abode in this 
 2ilace, to acknowledge no other name than Humphrey. With my 
 d(itractors, I was Ugly Humphrey. When I began to convert them 
 into friends, I was Mr. Humphrey and Old Mr, Humphrey. At 
 length I settled down into i:>lain Master Humphrey, which was tinder- 
 stood to be the title most pleasant to my ear ; and so completely a 
 matter of course has it become, that sometimes when I am taking my 
 morning walk in my little courtyard, I overhear my barber who 
 has a profound respect for me, and would not, I am sure, abridge my 
 honours for the world holding forth on the other side of the wall, 
 touching the state of " Master Humphrey's " health, and communi- 
 catinfjc to some friend the substance cf the conversation that he and
 
 4(58 Master Humphrey's Clock. 
 
 Master Humphrey have had together in the course of the Bhaving 
 which he ^s just concluded. 
 
 That I may not make acquaintance with my readers under false 
 pretences, or give them cause to complain hereafter that I have with- 
 held any matter which it was essential for them to have learnt at first, 
 I wish them to know and I smile sorrowfully to think that the time 
 has been when the confession would have given me pain that I am 
 a misshapen, deformed old man. 
 
 I have never been made a misanthrope by this cause. I have never 
 been stung by any insult, nor wounded by any jest upon my crooked 
 figure. As a child I was melancholy and timid, but that was bccauso 
 the gentlo consideration paid to my misfortune sunk deep into my 
 spirit and made me sad, even in those early days. I was but a very 
 young creature when my poor mother died, and yet I remember that 
 often when I hung around her nock, and oftener still wlien I played 
 about the room before her, she would catch me to licr bosom, and 
 bursting into tears, would soothe me witli every term of fondness and 
 affection. God knows I was a happy child at those times, hajipy to 
 nestle in her breast, happy -to weep when she did, happy in not 
 knowing why. 
 
 These occasions are so strongly impressed upon my memory, that 
 they seem to have occupied whole years. I had numbered very, very 
 few when they ceased for ever, but before then their meaning had 
 been revealed to me. 
 
 I do not know whether all children are imbued with a quick per- 
 ception of childish grace and beauty, and a strong love for it, but I 
 was. I had no thought that I remember, either that I possessed it 
 myself or that I lacked it, but I admired it with an intensity tliat I 
 cannot describe. A little knot of playmates tliey must have been 
 beautiful, for I see them now were clustered one day round my 
 motlier's knee in eager admiration of some picture representing a 
 group of infant angels, which she held in her hand. Wiiose tlio 
 picture was, whether it was familiar to me or otherwise, or how all 
 the children came to be there, I forget ; I have some dim thought it 
 was my birthday, but the beginning of my recollection is that wo 
 were all together in a garden, and it was summer weatlicr, I am sure 
 of that, for one of tlie little girls had roses in her sash. There were 
 many lovely angels in this picture, and I remember the fancy coming 
 U2)on mo to point out which of them represented each child there, and 
 that when I had gone througli my companions, I stopped and hesitated, 
 wondering wliich was most like me. I remember the children looking 
 at each other, and my turning red and hot, and their crowding round 
 to kiss me, saying that they loved me all the same ; and tlien, and 
 wlieu tlie old sorrow came into my dear motlier's mild and tender look, 
 tho trutli broke upon me for the first time, and I knew, wliilc watching 
 my awlcward and ungainly s2)orts, how keenly she had felt for her 
 poor crip2)lcd boy.
 
 Master Humphrey's Old Friend. 469 
 
 I used frequently to dream of it afterwards, and now my heart 
 aches for that child as if I had never been he, when I think how often 
 he awoke from some fairy change to his own old form, and s<?bbed 
 himself to sleep again. 
 
 Well, well, all these sorrows are past. My glancing at them may 
 not be without its use, for it may help in some measure to explain 
 why I have all my life been attached to the inanimate objects that 
 people my chamber, and how I have come to look upon them rather 
 in the light of old and constant friends, than as mere chairs and tables 
 which a little money could replace at Avill. 
 
 Chief and first among all these is my Clock, my old, cheerful, 
 companionable Clock. How can I ever convey to others an idea of 
 the comfort and consolation that this old Clock has been for yeal'S 
 to me ! 
 
 It is associated with my earliest recollections. It stood upon the 
 staircase at home (I call it home still mechanically), nigh sixty years 
 ago. I like it for that ; but it is not on that account, nor because it 
 is a quaint old thing in a huge oaken case curiously and richly carved, 
 that I prize it as I do. I incline to it as if it were alive, and could 
 understand and give me back the love I bear it. 
 
 And what other thing that has not life could cheer me as it does ? 
 what other thing that has not life (I will not say how few things that 
 have) could have proved the same patient, true, untiring friend ? 
 How often have I sat in the long winter evenings feeling such society 
 in its cricket-voice, that raising my eyes from my book and looking 
 gratefully towards it, the face reddened by the glow of the shining 
 fire has seemed to relax from its staid expression and to i-egard me 
 kindly ! how often in the summer twilight, when my thoughts have 
 wandered back to a melanclioly past, have its regular whisperings 
 recalled them to the calm and peaceful present ! how often in the 
 dead tranquillity of night has its boll broken the oppressive silence, 
 and seemed to give me assurance that the old clock was still a faithful 
 watcher at my chamber-door ! My easy-chair, my desk, my ancient 
 furniture, my vei*y books, I can scarcely bring myself to love even 
 these last like my old clock. 
 
 It stands in a snug corner, midway between the fireside and a low 
 arched door leading to my bedroom. Its fame is diffused so exten- 
 sively throughoiit the neighbourhood, that I have often the satisfaction 
 of hearing the publican, or the baker, and sometimes even the parish- 
 clerk, petitioning my housekeeper (of whom I shall have much to say 
 by-aud-by) to inform him the exact time by Master Humphrey's clock. 
 My barber, to whom I have referred, would sooner believe it than the 
 sun. Nor are these its only distinctions. It has acquired, I am 
 happy to say, another, inseparably connecting it not only with my 
 enjoyments and reflections, but with those of other men ; as I shall 
 now relate. 
 
 I lived alone here for a long time without any friend or acquaint-
 
 470 Master Humphreys Clock, 
 
 ancc. In tho course of my wanderings by niglit and day, at all hours 
 and seasons, in city streets and quiet country parts, I came to bo 
 familiar with certain faces, and to take it to heart as quite a heavy 
 di8a2)pointnient if they fiiiled to present tliemselves each at its accus- 
 tomed spot. But these were the only friends I knew, and beyond 
 them I had none. 
 
 It happened, however, when I had gone on thus for a long time, 
 that I formed an acquaintance with a deaf gentleman, which ripened 
 into intimacy and close companionship. To this hour, I am ignorant 
 of his name. It is his humour to conceal it, or he has a reason and 
 purpose for so doing. In either case, I feel that he has a right to 
 require a return of tho trust he has reposed ; and as he has never 
 sought to discover my secret, I have never sought to penetrate his. 
 There may have been something in this tacit confidence in each other 
 flattering and pleasant to lis both, and it may have imparted in tho 
 beginning an additional zest, perhaps, to our friendship. Be this as 
 it may, we have grown to bo like brothers, and still I only know him 
 us the deaf gentleman. 
 
 I have said that retirement has become a habit with me. When I 
 add, that the deaf gentleman and I have two friends, I communicate 
 nothing wliich is inconsistent with that declaration. I spend many 
 hours of every day in solitude and study, have no friends or change 
 of friends but these, only see them at stated periods, and am supposed 
 to be of a retired spirit by the very nature and object of our associa- 
 tion. 
 
 Wo arc men of secluded habits, with something of a cloud upon our 
 early fortunes, whoso entliusiasm, nevertheless, has not cooled with 
 age, whoso spirit of romance is not yet quenched, who are content 
 to ramblo througli tho world in a pleasant dream, rather than 
 ever waken again to its harsh realities. We are alchemists who 
 would extract the essence of perpetual youtli from dust and ashes, 
 tempt coy Trutli in many light and airy forms from the bottom of 
 lier well, and discover one crumb of comfort or one grain of good 
 in tho commonest and least-regarded matter that passes through 
 our crucible. Spirits of past times, creatures of imagination, and 
 peojde of to-day are alike the objects of our seeking, and, unlike tho 
 objects of search with most philosophers, we can insure their coming 
 at our couHuand. 
 
 The deaf gentleman and I first began to beguile our days with these 
 fancies, and our niglits in communicating tlieni to each other. Wo 
 are now four. But in my room there are six old chairs, and we have 
 decided that the two empty seats shall always be i)laced at our table 
 when wo meet, to remind us that we may yet increase our company 
 by that number, if we should find two men to our mind. When one 
 among us dies, his cliair will always be set in its usual place, but 
 never occupied again ; and I liave caused my will to be so drawn out, 
 that when we wva all dead the house shall be sliut up, and tlie vacant
 
 The Clock-case opened. 471 
 
 chairs still left in thoir accustomed places. It is pleasant to think 
 that even then our shades may, perhaps, assemble together as of yore 
 we did, and join in ghostly converse. 
 
 One night in every week, as the clock strikes ten, wo meet. At tho 
 second stroke of two, I am alone. 
 
 And now shall I tell how that my old servant, besides giving us 
 note of time, and ticking cheerful encouragement of our proceedings, 
 lends its name to our society, which for its punctuality and my lovo 
 is christened " Master Humphrey's Clock " ? Now shall I tell how 
 that in the bottom of tho old dark closet, where the steady penduliun 
 throbs and beats with healthy action, though the pulse of him who 
 made it stood still long ago, and never moved again, there arc piles of 
 dusty papers constantly placed there by our hands, that wo may link 
 our enjoyments with my old friend, and draw means to beguile timo 
 from the heart of time itself? Shall I, or can I, tell with what a 
 secret pride I open this repository when we meet at night, and still 
 find new store of pleasure in my dear old Cloclc ? 
 
 Friend and companion of my solitude ! mine is not a selfish love ; 
 I would not keep your merits to myself, but disperse something of 
 pleasant association with your image through the whole wide world ; 
 I would have men couple with your name cheerful and healthy 
 thoughts ; I would have them believe that you keep true and honest 
 timo ; and how it would gladden mo to know that they recognised 
 some hearty English work in Master Humj)hrey's clock ! 
 
 THE CLOCK CASE. 
 
 It is my intention constantly to address my readers from tho 
 chimney-corner, and I would fain hope that such accounts as I shall 
 give them of our histories and proceedings, our quiet sjjcculations or 
 more busy adventures, will never bo unwelcome. Lest, however, I 
 shoxild grow prolix in tho outset by lingering too long upon our little 
 association, confounding the enthusiasm with which I regard this chief 
 happiness of my lifo with that minor degree of interest which those to 
 whom I address myself may be supposed to feel for it, I have deemed 
 it expedient to break off as they have seen. 
 
 But, still clinging to my old friend, and naturally desirous that 
 all its merits should bo known, I am tempted to open (somewhat 
 irregularly and against our laws, I must admit) the clock-case. Tho 
 first roll of paper on which I lay my hand is in tho writiiig of tho 
 deaf gentleman. I shall have to speak of him in my next paper ; 
 and how can I better approach that welcome task than by prefacing 
 it with a production of his own pen, consigned to the safe keeping of 
 my honest Clock by his own hand ? 
 
 Tho manuscript runs thus :
 
 472 blaster Humphrey's Clock. 
 
 INTRODUCTION TO THE GIANT CnRONICLES. 
 
 Once upon a time, that is to say, in this our time, the exact year, 
 month, and day arc of no matter, there dwelt in the city of London 
 a substantial citizen, who united in his single person the dignities of 
 wholesale fruiterer, alderman, common-councilman, and member of 
 the worshipful Company of Patten-makers ; who had superadded to 
 these extraordinary distinctions the inn^ortant post and title of SherilT, 
 and who at length, and to crown all, stood next in rotation for the 
 high and honourable office of Lord Mayor. 
 
 He was a very substantial citizen indeed. His face was like the 
 full moon in a fog, with two little holes punched out for his eyes, a 
 very ripe pear stuck on for his nose, and a wide gash to servo for 
 a mouth. The girth of his waistcoat was hung up and lettered in his 
 tailor's shop as an extraordinary curiosity. He breathed like a heavy 
 snorer, and his voice in speaking came thickly forth, as if it wore 
 oppressed and stifled by feather-bods. He trod the ground like an 
 elephant, and eat and drank like like nothing but an alderman, as 
 lie was. 
 
 This worthy citizen had risen to his great eminence from small 
 beginnings. He had once been a very lean, weazen little boy, never 
 dreaming of carrying such a weight of flesh upon his bones or of 
 money in his pockets, and glad enough to take his dinner at a baker's 
 door, and his tea at a pump. But he had long ago forgotten fill this, 
 as it was proper that a wholesale fruiterer, alderman, common-council- 
 man, member of the worshipful Company of rattou-makcrs, past 
 sheriff", and, above all, a Lord Mayor that was to be, should ; and ho 
 never forgot it more completely in all his life than on the eighth of 
 November in the year of his election to the great golden civic chair, 
 Avliich was tlic day before his grand dinner at Guildhall. 
 
 It hapi)cned that as he sat that evening all alone in his counting- 
 house, looking over the bill of fare for next day, and checking off the 
 fat capons in fifties, and tlic turtle-sonp by the hundred quarts, for 
 liis private amusement, it hai^pcned that as he sat alone occupied in 
 these pleasant calculations, a strange man came in and asked him how 
 lie did, adding, " If I am half as much changed as you, sir, you have 
 no recollection of me, I am sure." 
 
 The strange man was not over and above well dressed, and was 
 very far from being fat or rich-looking in any sense of the word, yet 
 he spoke with a kind of modest confidence, and assumed an easy, 
 g(!ntlcmanly sort of an air, to which nobody but a rich man can law- 
 fully presume. Besides tliis, he internq^ted the good citizen just as 
 he had reckoned three hundred and seventy-two fat capons, and was 
 carrying tlicm over to the next column ; and as if that were not 
 aggravation enough, the learned recorder for tlie city of London liad 
 only ten minutes previously gone out at that very same door, and had 
 turned round and said, " Good-niglit, my lord," Yes, he had said,
 
 An Unwelcome Visitor. 473 
 
 * my lord ; " lie, a man of birth and education, of the Honourable 
 Society of tlie Middle Temple, Barrister-at-Law, he who had an 
 uncle in the House of Commons, and an aunt almost but not quite in 
 the House of Lords (for she had married a feeble peer, and made him 
 vote as she liked), he, this man, this learned recorder, had said, 
 " my lord." " I'll not wait till to-morrow to give you your title, my 
 Lord Mayor," says he, with a bow and a smile ; " you are Lord Mayor 
 de facto, if not de jure. Good-night, my lord." 
 
 The Lord Mayor elect thought of this, and turning to the stranger, 
 and sternly bidding him " go out of his private counting-house," 
 brought forward the three hundred and seventy-two fat capons, and 
 went on with his account. 
 
 " Do you remember," said the other, stepping forward, " do you 
 remember little Joe Toddyhigh ? " 
 
 The port wine fled for a moment from the fruiterer's nose as ho 
 muttered, " Joe Toddyhigh ! What about Joe Toddyhigh ? " 
 
 " I am Joe Toddyhigh,"' cried the visitor. " Look at me, look hard 
 at me, harder, harder. You know me now ? You know little Joe 
 again ? "What a happiness to us both, to meet the very night before 
 your grandeur ! O ! give me your hand, Jack, both hands, both, 
 for the sake of old times." 
 
 " You pinch me, sir. You've a-hurting of me," said the Lord Mayor 
 elect pettishly. " Don't, suppose anybody should come, Mr. Toddy- 
 high, sir." 
 
 " Mr. Toddyhigh ! " repeated the other ruefully. 
 
 " O, don't bother," said the Lord Mayor elect, scratching his head. 
 " Dear me ! Why, I thought you was dead. What a fellow you are ! " 
 
 Indeed, it was a pretty state of things, and worthy the tone of 
 vexation and disappointment in which the Lord Mayor spoke. Joe 
 Toddyhigh had been a j^oor boy with him at Hull, and had oftentimes 
 divided his last penny and parted his last crust to relieve his wants ; 
 for though Joe was a destitute child in those times, he was as faithful 
 and affectionate in his friendshiji as ever man of might could be. 
 They parted one day to seek their fortunes in different directions. 
 Joe went to sea, and the now wealthy citizen begged his way to 
 London. They separated with many tears, like foolish fellows as they 
 were, and agreed to remain fast friends, and if they lived, soon to 
 communicate again. 
 
 When he was an errand-boy, and even in the early days of his 
 ajiprenticcship, the citizen had many a time trudged to the Post-offico 
 to ask if there were any letter from poor little Joe, and had gone 
 homo again with tears in his eyes, when he found no news of his only 
 friend. The world is a wide place, and it was a long time before the 
 letter came ; when it did, the writer was forgotten. It turned from 
 white to yellow from lying in the Post-office with nobody to claim it, 
 and in course of time was torn up with five hundred others, and sold 
 for waste-paper, And now at last, and when it might least have been
 
 474 Master Humphrefs Clock. 
 
 expected, hero was tbia Joe Toddyliigli turning tip nncl claiming 
 acquaintauco with a great public character, who on the morrow would 
 bo cracking jokes with the Prime Minister of England, and who hatl 
 only, at any time during the next twelve months, to say the word, and 
 ho could shut up Temple Bar, and make it no thoroughfare for the 
 king himself! 
 
 " I am sure I don't know what to say, Mr. Toddyhigh," said th(> 
 Lord Mayor elect ; " I really don't. It's very inconvenient. I'd 
 sooner have given twenty pound, it's very inconvenient, really." 
 
 A thought had come into his mind, that pcrliaps his old friend 
 might say something passionate which would give him an excuse for 
 being angry himself. No sucli tiling. Joe looked at him steadily, 
 but very timidly, and did not open his lips. 
 
 " Of course I shall pay you what I owe you," said tlie Lord Mayor 
 elect, fidgeting in his chair. " Yoti lent me I think it was a shillinj'; 
 or some small coin when we parted company, and that of course I 
 shall 2)ay with good interest. I can pay my way with any man, and 
 always have done. If you look into the Mansion House tho day after 
 to-morrow, some time after dusk, and ask for my private clerk, 
 you'll find he has a draft for you, I haven't got time to say anything 
 more just now, unless," he hesitated, for, coupled with a strong 
 desire to glitter for once in all his glory in tho eyes of his former 
 comj)aniou, was a distrust of his appearance, which might be more 
 shabby than he could tell by that feeble light, "unless you'd like 
 to come to the dinner to-morrow. I don't mind your having this 
 ticket, if you like to take it. A great many people would give their 
 cars for it, I can tell you." 
 
 His old friend took the card without speaking a word, and instantly 
 departed. His simburnt face and gray hair were present to the 
 citizen's mind for a moment ; but by the time he reached three hundred 
 and eighty-one fat capons, he had quite forgotten him. 
 
 Joe Toddyhigh had never been in the capital of Europe before, and ho 
 wandered up and down the streets that night aniuzcd at the number of 
 churches and other public buildings, the splendour of the shojis, the 
 riches that wxto heaped up on every side, the glare of light in whicli 
 they were displayed, and the concourse of people who hurried to and 
 fro, indilferent, apparently, to all the wonders that surrounded them. 
 But in all the long streets and broad squares, there were none but 
 strangers ; it was quite a relief to turn down a by-way and hear liis 
 own fuotsteps on tho i)avement. He went home to his inn, thought 
 that London was a dreary, desolate place, and felt disposed to doubt 
 the existonce of one true-hearted man in the whole worshipful Com- 
 pany of I'atten-makcrs. Finally, he went to bed, and dreamed that ho 
 and the Lord Mayor elect were boys again. 
 
 He went next day to the dinner; and when in a burst of light 
 and music, and in the midst of splendid decorations and surrounded 
 by brilliant conq)any, lii.i former frieud appeared at the head of thu
 
 After the Lord Major's Dinner 475 
 
 Hall, and was hailed with shouts and cheering, he cheered and shouted 
 with the best, and for the moment could have cried. The next 
 moment he cursed his weakness in behalf of a man so changed and 
 selfish, and quite hated a jolly-looking old gentleman opposite for 
 declaring himself in the pride of his heart a Patten-maker. 
 
 As the banquet proceeded, he took more and more to heart the rich 
 citizen's unkindness ; and that, not from any envy, but because ho 
 felt that a man of his state and fortune could all the better afford to 
 recognise an old friend, even if ho were poor and obscure. The more 
 ho thought of this, the more lonely and sad he felt. When the com- 
 pany dispersed and adjourned to the ball-room, he paced the hall and 
 passages alone, ruminating in a very melancholy condition upon tho 
 disappointment he had experienced. 
 
 It chanced, while ho was lounging about in this moody state, that 
 he stumbled upon a flight of stairs, dark, steep, and narrow, which ho 
 ascended without any thought about the matter, and so camo into a 
 little music-gallery, empty and deserted. From this elevated post, 
 which commanded the whole hall, ho amused himself in looking down 
 upon the attendants who were clearing away tho fragments of tho 
 feast very lazily, and drinking out of all the bottles and glasses with 
 most commendable perseverance. 
 
 His attention gradually relaxed, and he fell fast asleep. 
 
 When ho awoke, he thought there must bo something the matter with 
 his eyes ; but, rubbing them a little, he soon found that tho moonlight 
 was really streaming through tho east window, that tho lamps were 
 all extinguished, and that ho was alone. He listened, but no distant 
 murmur in tho echoing passages, not even the shutting of a door, 
 broke tho deep silence ; he groped his way down tho stairs, and found 
 that the door at tho bottom was locked on the other side. Ho began 
 now to comprehend that ho must havo slept a long time, that ho had 
 been overlooked, and was shut up there for the night. 
 
 His first sensation, perhaps, was not altogether a comfortablo one, 
 for it was a dark, chilly, earthy-smelling place, and something too 
 large, for a man so situated, to feel at home in. However, when tLo 
 momentary consternation of his surprise was over, he made light of 
 the accident, and resolved to feel his way up tho stairs again, and 
 make himself as comfortable as he could in tho gallery until morning. 
 As he turned to execute this purpose, he heard the clocks strike three. 
 
 Any such invasion of a dead stillness as the striking of distant 
 clocks, causes it to appear the more intense and insui:)portablG when 
 the sound has ceased. He listened with strained attention in the hopo 
 that some clock, lagging behind its fellows, had yet to strike, 
 looking all the time into the profound darkness before him, until it 
 seemed to weave itself into a black tissue, patterned with a hundred 
 reflections of his own eyes. But tho bells had all pealed out their 
 warning for that once, and tho gust of wind that moaned through tho 
 place seemed cold and heavy with their iron breath.
 
 4/6 Master Humphreys Clock. 
 
 TLo time and circumstances were favourable to reflection. He tried 
 to keep Lis thoughts to the current, unpleasant though it was, in 
 which they had moved all day, and to think with what a romantic 
 feeling ho had looked forward to shaking his old friend by the hand 
 before he died, and what a wide and cruel difference there was between 
 the meeting they had had, and that which he had so often and so long 
 anticipated. Still, he was disordered by waking to such sudden lone- 
 liness, and could not prevent his mind from running upon odd tales 
 of people of undoubted courage, who, being shut up by night in vaults 
 or churches, or other dismal places, had scaled great heights to get 
 out, and fled from silence as they had never done from danger. This 
 brought to his mind the moonlight through the window, and bethink- 
 ing himself of it, ho groped his way back up the crooked stairs, but 
 very stealthily, as though he were fearful of being overheard. 
 
 Ho was very much astonished when ho approached the gallery again, 
 to see a light in the building : still more so, on advancing hastily and 
 looking round, to observe no visible source from which it could 
 proceed. But how much greater yet was his astonishment at the 
 sjicctacle which this light revealed. 
 
 The statues of the two giants, Gog and Magog, each above fourteen 
 feet in height, those which succeeded to still older and more barbarous 
 figures, after the Great Fire of London, and which stand in the 
 Guildhall to this day, were endowed with life and motion. These 
 guardian genii of the City had quitted their pedestals, and reclined 
 in easy attitudes in the great stained glass window. Between them 
 was an ancient cask, which seemed to be full of wine ; for the younger 
 Giant, clapping his huge hand ujion it, and throwing up his miglity 
 leg, burst into an exulting laugh, which reverberated through the 
 hall like thunder. 
 
 Joe Toddyhigh instinctively stooped down, and, more dead than 
 alive, felt his hair stand on end, his knees knock together, and a cold 
 damp break out iipon liis forehead. But even at that minute curiosity 
 prevailed over every other feeling, and somewhat reassured by the 
 good-humour of the Giants and their apparent unconsciousness of his 
 presence, he crouched in a corner of tlio gallery, in as small a space 
 as lie could, and, peeping between the rails, observed them closely. 
 
 It was then that the elder Giant, wlio had a flowing grey beard, 
 raised his thoughtful eyes to his companion's face, and in a grave and 
 solemn voice addressed him thus : 
 
 FIHST NIGHT OF THE GIANT CIIUONICLKS. 
 
 Turning towards his companion, the elder Giant uttered these 
 words in a grave, majestic tone : 
 
 " Magog, does boisterous mirth beseem the Giant Warder of tliis 
 ancient city ? Is this becoming demeanour for a watchful spirit over 
 whose bodiless head so many years have rolled, so many changes
 
 The Giants^ Gog and Magog. 
 
 477 
 
 swept like empty air in whose impalpable nostrils the scent of blood 
 and crime, pestilence, cruelty, and horror, has been familiar as breath 
 to mortals in whose sight Time has gathered in the harvest of 
 centuries, and garnered so many crops of human pride, affections, 
 hopes, and sorrows ? Bethink you of our compact. The night 
 
 wanes ; feasting, revelry, and music have encroached upon our usual 
 hours of solitude, and morning will be here apace. Ere we are 
 stricken mute again, bethink you of our compact." 
 
 Pronouncing these latter words with more of impatience than quite 
 accorded with his apparent age and gravity, the Giant raised a long
 
 47 8 Mastei' Humphrey s Clock. 
 
 polo (wLicli lie still bears in his hand) and tapped his brother Giant 
 rather smai-tly on the head; indeed, the blow was so smartly 
 administered, that the latter quickly withdrew his lips from the cask, 
 to which they had been applied, and, catcliing np his shield and 
 halberd, assumed an attitude of defence. His irritation was but 
 momentary, for ho laid these weapons aside as hastily as he had 
 assumed them, and said as he did so : 
 
 " You know, Gog, old friend, that when we animate these shapes 
 which tlie Londoners of old assigned (and not unworthily) to the 
 guardian genii of their city, wo are susceptible of some of the 
 sensations which belong to human kind. Thus when I taste wine, I 
 feel blows ; when I relish tho one, I disrelish the other. Therefore, 
 Gog, the more especially as your arm is none of the lightest, keep 
 your good staff by your side, else wo may chance to differ. Peace be 
 between us ! " 
 
 " Amen ! " said tlie other, leaning his staff in tho window-corner. 
 " Why did you laugh just now ? " 
 
 " To think," replied tho Giant Magog, laying his hand upon tho 
 cask, " of him who owned this wine, and kept it in a cellar hoarded 
 from tlie light of day, for thirty years, 'till it should be fit to drink,* 
 (|uoth he. Ho was twoscoro and ten years old when he buried it 
 beneath his house, and yet never thought that ho might be scarcely 
 ' fit to drink ' when the wine became so. I wonder it never occurred 
 to him to make himself unfit to be eaten. There is very little of him 
 left by this time." 
 
 " The night is waning," said Gog mournfully. 
 
 " I know it," replied his companion, " and I see you arc impatient. 
 But look. Through the eastern window placed opposite to us, that 
 the first beams of the rising sun may every morning gild our giant 
 faces tho moon-rays fall ujion the j^avemcnt in a stream of light that 
 to my fancy sinks through the cold stono and gushes into tho old 
 crypt below. The night is scarcely past its noon, and our great 
 charge is sleeping heavily." 
 
 TJiey ceased to speak, and looked upward at the moon. The sight 
 of their large, black, rolling eyes filled Joe Toddyhigh witli such 
 horror that ho could scarcely draw his breath. Still they took no 
 note of him, and appeared to believe themselves quite alone. 
 
 " Our compact," said Magog after a pause, " is, if I understand it, 
 tliat, instead of watching here in silence tlirough tlie dreary niglits, 
 we entertain cacli other with stories of our past experience ; with 
 talcs of tlic past, the present, and tlio future ; with legends of 
 London and her sturdy citizens from the old simple times. Tliat 
 (;very night at midnight, wlien St. Paiil's bell tolls out one, and we 
 may move and s^ieak, wo thus discourse, nor leave such tliemes till 
 tlie first gray gleam of day shall strike us dumb. Is that our bargain, 
 brother ? " 
 
 " Yes," said the Giant Gog, '' tliat is tlie league between us who
 
 The Yoimger Gianfs Story. 479 
 
 guard tliis city, by day in spirit, and by night in body also ; and 
 never on ancient holidays have its conduits run wine more merrily 
 than we will pour forth our legendary lore. We arc old chroniclers 
 from this time hence. The crumbled walls encircle us once more, 
 the postern-gates are closed, the drawbridge is uji, and jicnt in its 
 narrow den beneath, the water foams and struggles with the sunken 
 starlings. Jerkins and quarter-staves are in the streets again, the 
 nightly watch is set, the rebel, sad and lonely in his Tower dungeon, 
 tries to sleep and weei:)S for home and children. Aloft Vi^wx the gates 
 and walls are noble heads glaring fiercely down upon the dreaming 
 city, and vexing the hungry dogs that scent them in the air, and 
 tear the groimd beneath with dismal bowlings. The axe, the block, 
 the rack, in their dark chambers give signs of recent use. The 
 Tliamcs, floating past long lines of cheerful windows whence come 
 a burst of music and a stream of light, bears suddenly to the Palace 
 wall the last red stain brought on the tide from Traitor's Gate. 
 r>ut your pardon, brother. The night wears, and I am talking idly." 
 
 Tlie other Giant appeared to bo entirely of this opinion, for during 
 the foregoing rhapsody of his fellow-sentinel he had been scratching 
 Lis head with an air of comical uneasiness, or rather with an air that 
 would have been very comical if he had been a dwarf or an ordinary 
 sized man. lie winked too, and though it could not be doubted for a 
 moment that he winked to himself, still lie certainly cocked his enor- 
 mous eye towards the gallery where the listener was concealed. Nor 
 was this all, for he gaped ; and when he ga2)cd, Joe was horribly re- 
 minded of the popular i)rejudice on the subject of giants, and of their 
 fabled power of smelling out Englishmen, however closely concealed. 
 
 His alarm was such that he nearly swooned, and it was some little 
 time before his i)owcr of siglit or hearing was restored. "When he 
 recovered he found that the elder Giant was ju'essing the younger to 
 commence the Chronicles, and that the latter was endeavouring to 
 (:xcuso himself, on the ground that the night was far S2:)ent, and it 
 would be better to wait until the next. Well assured by this that he 
 was certainly about to begin directly, the listener collected liis faculties 
 l-y a great effort, and distinctly heard Magog express himself to the 
 following effect : 
 
 In the sixteenth century and in the reign of Queen Elizabeth of 
 G;lorious memory (albeit lier golden days are sadly rusted with ))lood), 
 til ere lived in the city of London a bold young 'prentice who loved 
 liis master's daughter. There were no doubt within the walls a great 
 many 'prentices in this condition, but I sj^eak of only one, and his 
 name was Hugh Graham. 
 
 Tliis Hugh was apprenticed to an honest Bowycr who dwelt in the 
 ward of Cheype, and was rumoured to possess great wealth. Kumour 
 was quite as infallible in those days as at the present time, but it 
 hajiponed tlien as now to be sometimes riglit by accident. It stumbled
 
 480 Master Huiiiphrefs Clock, 
 
 upon the truth when it gavo tlio old Bowyor a mint of money. His 
 trade had been a profitable one in the time of King Henry the Eighth, 
 who encouraged English archery to the utmost, and he had been 
 prudent and discreet. Thus it came to pass that Mistress Alice, his 
 only daughter, was the richest heiress in all his wealthy ward. Young 
 Hugh had often maintained with staff and cudgel that she was the 
 handsomest. To do him justice, I believe she was. 
 
 If ho could have gained the heart of pretty Mistress Alice by 
 knocking this conviction into stubborn people's heads, Hugh would 
 have had no cause to fear. But though the Bowyer's daughter smiled 
 in secret to hear of his doughty deeds for her sake, and though her 
 little waiting-woman reported all her smiles (and many more) to 
 Hugh, and though ho was at a vast expense in kisses and small coin 
 to recompense her fidelity, he made no progress in his love. He 
 durst not whisper it to Mistress Alice save on sure encouragement, 
 and that she never gave him. A glance of her dark eye as she sat at 
 the door on a summer's evening after prayer-time, while he and the 
 neighbouring 'prentices exercised themselves in the street with blunted 
 sword and buckler, would fire Hugh's blood so that none could stand 
 before him ; but then she glanced at others quite as kindly as on him, 
 and where was the use of cracking crowns if Mistress Alice smiled 
 upon the cracked as well as on the cracker ? 
 
 Still Hugh went on, and loved her more and more. He thought of 
 her all day, and dreamed of her all night long. He treasured up her 
 every word and gesture, and had a palpitation of the heart whenever 
 he heard her footstep on the stairs or her voice in an adjoining room. 
 To him, the old Bowyer's house was haunted by an angel ; there was 
 enchantment in the air and sj^ace in which she moved. It would 
 have been no miracle to Hugh if flowers had sjirung from the rush- 
 strewn floors benoatli the tread of lovely Mistress Alice. 
 
 Never did 'prentice long to distinguish himself in the eyes of his 
 lady-love so ardently as Hugh. Sometimes he pictured to himself the 
 house taking fire by night, and he, when all drew back in fear, rushing 
 through flame and smoke, and bearing her from the ruins in his arms. 
 At other times he thought of a rising of fierce rebels, an attack upon 
 the city, a strong assault upon the Bowyer's house in particular, and 
 he falling on the threshold pierced with numberless wounds in defence 
 of Mistress Alice. If ho could only enact some prodigy of valour, do 
 some wonderful deed, and let her know that she had inspired it, he 
 thought he could die contented. 
 
 Sometimes the Bowyer and his daught(U' would go out to supper 
 with a worthy citizen at the fashionable hour of six o'clock, and on 
 such occasions Hugh, wearing his blue 'prentice cloak as gallantly as 
 'prentice might, would attend with a lantern and liis trusty club to 
 escort them liome. These were the briglitest moments of liis life. 
 To hold the liglit while Mistress Alice picked lier steps, to touch 
 her hai!(J as ho helped her over broken ways, to have her leaning
 
 The l^owyer's Daughter. 4^t 
 
 on ibis aim, it sometimes even came to that, this was happiness 
 indeed ! 
 
 When the nights were fair, Hugh followed in the rear, his eyes 
 riveted on the graceful figure of the Bowyer's daughter as she and 
 the old man moved on before him. So they threaded the narrow 
 winding streets of the city, now passing beneath the overhanging 
 gables of old wooden houses wlience creaking signs projected into the 
 street, and now emerging from some dark and frowning gateway into 
 the clear moonlight. At such times, or when the shouts of straggling 
 brawlers met her ear, the Bowyer's daughter would look timidly back 
 at Hugh, beseeching him to draw nearer ; and then how he grasped 
 his club and longed to do battle with a dozen rufflers, for the love 
 of Mistress Alice ! 
 
 The old Bowyer was in the habit of lending money on interest to 
 the gallants of the Court, and thus it happened that many a richly- 
 dressed gentleman dismounted at his door. More waving plumes 
 and gallant steeds, indeed, were seen at the Bowyer's house, and more 
 embroidered silks and velvets sparkled in his dark shop and darker 
 private closet, than at any merchant's in the city. In those times no 
 less than iu the present it would seem that the richest-looking cavaliers 
 often wanted money the most. 
 
 Of these glittering clients there was one who always came alone. 
 He was nobly mounted, and, having no attendant, gave his horse in 
 charge to Hugh while he and the Bowyer were closeted within. Once 
 as he sprung into the saddle Mistress Alice was seated at an upper 
 window, and before she could withdraw he had doffed his jewelled 
 cap and kissed his hand. Hugh watched him caracoling down the 
 street, and burnt with indignation. But how much deeper was the 
 glow that reddened in his cheeks when, raising his eyes to the case- 
 ment, he saw that Alice watched tlie stranger too ! 
 
 He came again and often, each time arrayed more gaily than before, 
 and still the little casement showed him Mistress Alice. At length 
 one heavy day, she fled from home. It had cost her a hard struggle, 
 for all her old father's gifts were strewn about her chamber as if she 
 had parted from them one by one, and knew that the time must como 
 when these tokens of his love would wring her heart, yet she was 
 gone. 
 
 She left a letter commending her poor father to the care of Hugh, 
 and wishing he might be happier than ever he could have been witli 
 her, for he deserved the love of a better and a purer heart than she 
 had to bestow. The old man's forgiveness (she said) she had no 
 power to ask, but she prayed God to bless him, and so ended with 
 a blot upon the paper where her tears had fallen. 
 
 At first the old man's wrath was kindled, and he carried his wrong 
 to the Queen's throne itself; but there was no redress he learnt at 
 Court, for his daughter had been conveyed abroad. This afterwards 
 appeared to be the truth, as there came from Franco, after an interval 
 
 2i
 
 482 
 
 Master Humphrey s Clock. 
 
 of several years, a letter in her hand. It was written in trembling 
 characters, and almost illegible. Little could be made out save that 
 she often thought of home and her old dear pleasant room, and that 
 she had dreamt her father was dead and had not blessed her, and 
 that her heart was breaking. 
 
 The poor old Bowyer lingered on, never suffering Hugh to quit his 
 Bight, for ho knew now that he had loved his daughter, and that 
 was the only link that bound him to earth. It broke at length 
 
 and ho died, bequeathing liis old 'prentice liis trade and all his 
 wciiltli, and solemnly charging him with his last breath to revenge 
 liis chihl if ever he who had worked her misery crossed his path 
 in life again. 
 
 From the time of Alice's flight, the tilling-ground, the fields, tlic 
 fonciiif^'-scliool, the snninicr-cvcning sportK, knew llugli no more. 
 His spirit was dead witliin liim. He rose to great eminence and 
 rei)ute among tlie citizens, but was schhmi seen to smile, and never 
 mingled in tlioir revelries or rejoicinji^s. Brave, linmanc, and {:^encrou8, 
 lie was beh)ved by all. lie was pitied too Ity those who knew his 
 story, and tlieso were so many tliat when he walked ahmg tlie streets
 
 Return of the Wanderer. 483 
 
 alone at dusk, even the rude common people doffed tlieir caps and 
 mingled a rough air of sympathy with their respect. 
 
 One night in May it was her birthnight, and twenty years since 
 she had left her home Hugh Graham sat in the room she had 
 hallowed in his boyish days. He was now a gray-haired man, tliongh 
 still in the prime of life. Old thoughts had borne him company for 
 many hours, and the chamber had gradually grown quite dark, when 
 he was roused by a low knocking at the outer door. 
 
 He hastened down, and opening it saw by the light of a lamp which 
 he had seized upon the way, a female figure crouching in the portal. 
 It hurried swiftly past him and glided up the stairs. He looked for 
 pursuers. There were none in sight. No, not one. 
 
 He was inclined to think it a vision of his own brain, when sud- 
 denly a vague suspicion of the triith flashed upon his mind. Ho 
 barred the door, and hastened wildly back. Yes, there she was, 
 there, in the chamber he had quitted, there in her old innocent 
 happy home, so changed |that none but he could trace one gleam of 
 what she had been, there ui^on her knees, with her hands clasped 
 in agony and shame before her burning face. 
 
 " My God, my God ! " she cried, " now strike mo dead ! Though I 
 have brought death and shame and sorrow on this roof, O, let me die 
 at home in mercy ! " 
 
 There was no tear upon her face then, but she trembled and glanced 
 round the chamber. Everything was in its old place. Ilcr bed 
 looked as if she had risen from it but that morning. The sight of 
 tlicse familiar objects, marking the dear remembrance in which she 
 ]iad been held, and the blight she had brought upon liersclf, was more 
 than the woman's better nature that had carried her there could bear. 
 She wept and fell upon the ground. 
 
 A rumour was spread about, in a fev/ days' time, that the Bowyer's 
 cruel daughter liad come home, and that Master Graham liad given 
 her lodging in his house. It was lumoured too that he had resigned 
 lier fortune, in order that she might bestow it in acts of charity, and 
 that he had vowed to guard her in her solitude, bTit that they were 
 never to see each other more. These rumours greatly incensed all 
 virtuous wives and daughters in the ward, especially when they 
 appeared to receive some corroboration from the circumstance of 
 Master Graham taking up his abode in another tenement hard by. 
 The estimation in which he was held, however, forbade any question- 
 ing on the subject ; and as the Bowyer's house was close shut up, and 
 iiobody came forth when public shows and festivities were in progress, 
 or to flaunt in the public walks, or to buy new fashions at the mercers' 
 booths, all the well-conducted females agreed among themselves that 
 there could bo no woman there. 
 
 These reports had scarcely died away when the v/onder of every 
 good citizen, male and female, was utterly absorbed and swallowed 
 up by a Eoyal Proclamation, in which her Majesty, strongly censuring
 
 484 Master Hiunphyefs Clock. 
 
 the practice of wearing long Spanisli rapiers of preposterous lengtli 
 (as being a bullying and swaggering custom, tending to bloodshed and 
 public disorder), commanded that on a particular day tlierein named, 
 certain grave citizens should repair to the city gates, and there, in 
 public, break all rapiers worn or carried by persons claiming admis- 
 sion, that exceeded, though it were only by a quarter of an inch, three 
 standard feet in length. 
 
 lioyal Proclamations usually take their course, let the public 
 wonder never so much. On the appointed day two citizens of higli 
 repute took up their stations at each of the gates, attended by a party 
 of the city guard, the main body to enforce the Queen's will, and take 
 custody of all such rebels (if any) as might have the temerity to dis- 
 pute it : and a few to bear the standard measures and instruments for 
 reducing all unlawful sword-blades to the prescribed dimensions. Iii 
 pursuance of these arrangements, Master Graham and another were 
 posted at Lud Gate, on the hill before St. Paid's. 
 
 A pretty numerous company were gathered together at tliis spot ; 
 for, besides the officers in attendance to enforce the pi'oclamation, 
 there was a motley crowd of lookers-on of various degrees, who raised 
 from time to time such shouts and cries as the circumstances called 
 forth. A spruce young courtier was the fii'st who approached : ho 
 unsheathed a weapon of burnished steel that shone and glistened iu 
 the sun, and handed it with the newest air to the officer, who, finding 
 it exactly three feet long, rctiirned it with a bow. Thereupon tho 
 gallant raised his hat anol crying, " God save tlie Queen ! " passed on 
 amidst tlie plaudits of the mob. Then came another a better courtier 
 still who wore a blade but two feet long, whereat the people laughed, 
 mucli to the disparagement of his lionour's dignity. Then came a 
 third, a sturdy old officer of the army, girded witli a rapier at least a 
 foot and a half beyond her Majesty's pleasure ; at him they raised 
 a great shout, and most of the spectators (but especially tliose wlio 
 were armourers or cutlers) laughed very heartily at the breakage 
 which would ensue. But they were disai)pointed ; for the old 
 campaigner, coolly unbuckling his sword and bidding his servant 
 carry it liomo again, passed through unarmed, to the great indignation 
 of all the beholders. Tlicy relieved themselves in some degree ])y 
 hooting a tall blustering fellow with a prodigious weapon, who stopp( d 
 short on coming in sight of the preparations, and after a little con- 
 sideration turned back again. But all tliis time no rapier had been 
 broken, although it was high noon, and all cavaliers of any quality 
 or appearance were taking their way towards Saint Paul's church- 
 yard. 
 
 During these proceedings Master Graham had stood apart, strictly 
 confining himself to the duty imposed upon him, and taking little 
 heed of anything beyond. He ste])ped forward now as a richly- 
 dressed gentleman on foot, followed by a single attendant, was seen 
 advancing up the hill.
 
 Face to Face- 485 
 
 As this person drew nearer, the crowd stopped their clamour, and 
 bent forward with eager looks. Master Graham standing alone in the 
 gateway, and the stranger coming slowly towards him, they seemed, 
 as it were, set face to face. The nobleman (for he looked one) had a 
 hanghty and disdainful air, which bespoke the slight estimation in 
 which he held the citizen. The citizen, on the other hand, preserved 
 the resolute bearing of one who was not to be frowned down or 
 dai-.nted, and who cared very little for any nobility but that of worth 
 and manhood. It was perhaps some consciousness on the part of 
 each, of these feelings in the other, that infused a more stern expres- 
 sion into their regards as they came closer together. 
 
 " Your rapier, worthy sir ! " 
 
 At the instant that he pronounced these words Graham started, and 
 falling back some paces, laid his hand upon the dagger in his belt. 
 
 " You are the man whose horse I used to hold before the Bowyer's 
 door ? You are that man ? Speak ! " 
 
 " Out, you 'prentice hound ! " said the other. 
 
 " You are he ! I know you well now ! " cried Graham. " Let no 
 man step between us two, or I shall be his murderer." With that ho 
 drew his dagger, and rushed in upon him. 
 
 The stranger had drawn his weajion from the scabbard ready for 
 the scrutiny, before a word was spoken. He made a thrust at his 
 assailant, but the dagger which Graham clutched in his left hand 
 being the dirk in use at that time for parrying such blows, promptly 
 turned the point aside. They closed. The dagger fell rattling on 
 tlic ground, and Graham, wresting his adversary's sword from his 
 grasp, plunged it through his heart. As he drew it out it snajiped in 
 two, leaving a fragment in the dead man's body. 
 
 All this passed so swiftly that the bystanders looked on without an 
 effort to interfei'e ; but the man was no sooner down than an uproar 
 broke forth which rent the air. The attendant rushing through the 
 gate proclaimed that his master, a nobleman, had been set upon and 
 slain by a citizen ; the word quickly spread from mouth to mouth ; 
 Saint Paul's Cathedral, and every book-shoj^, ordinary, and smoking- 
 house in the churchyard poured out its stream of cavaliers and their 
 followers, who mingling together in a dense tumultuous body, 
 struggled, sword in hand, towards tlic spot. 
 
 With equal impetuosity, and stimulating each other by loud cries 
 and shouts, the citizens and common people took up the quarrel on 
 their side, and encircling Master Graham a hundred deep, forced him 
 from the gate. In vain he waved the broken sword above his head, 
 crying that he would die on London's tlireshold for their sacred 
 homes. They bore him on, and ever keeping him in the midst, so 
 that no man could attack liim, fought their way into the city. 
 
 The clash of swords and roar of voices, the dust and beat and 
 pressure, the trampling under foot of men, the distracted looks and 
 ehricks of women at the windows above as they recognised their
 
 486 Illastcr Humphrey's Clock. 
 
 relatives or lovers iu tho crowd, tlio rapid tolling of alarm-bolls, tlio 
 furious rage and jiassion of tho scene, wcro fearful. Those who, being 
 ou tho outskirts of eacli crowd, could use their weapons with eftcct, 
 fought desperately, while thoso behind, maddened with baffled rage, 
 struck at each other over tho heads of thoso before them, and crushed 
 their own follows. Wherever tho broken sword was seen above tho 
 people's heads, towards that spot tho cavaliers made a new rush. 
 Every one of these charges was marked by sudden gaps in the throng 
 Avhero men wero trodden down, but as fast as they were made, the tido 
 swept over them, and still tho multitude pressed on again, a confused 
 mass of swords, clubs, staves, broken plumes, fragments of rich cloaks 
 and doublets, and angry bleeding faces, all mixed up together iu 
 iucxti'icablc disorder. 
 
 Tho design of tho people was to forco Master Graham to tako 
 refugo in his dwelling, and to defend it until tho authorities could 
 iutcrforo, or they could gain time for parley. But either from 
 ignorance or in tlio confusion of tho moment they stopped at his old 
 house, which was closely shut. Some time was lost iu beating tho 
 doors open and passing him to tho front. About a scoro of tho 
 boldest of the other party threw themselves into tho torrent while 
 this was being done, and reaching tho door at tho samo moment with 
 himself cut him off from his defenders. 
 
 " I never will turn in such a righteous cause, so help mo Ileavcn ! " 
 cried Graham, in a voice that at last made itself heard, and confront- 
 ing them as he spoke. " Least of all will I turn upon this threshold 
 whicli owes its desolation to such men as ye. I give no ri^uarter, and I 
 will havo none ! Strike ! " 
 
 For a moment they stood at bay. At that moment a shot from an 
 unseen hand, apparently fired by some person who had gained access 
 to one of the oj)posito houses, struck (jrraham in tho brain, and he fell 
 dead. A low wail was lieard iu tho air, many pcoj^le iu the con- 
 course cried that they had seen a spirit glide across the little casement 
 window of the Bowyer's house 
 
 A dead silence succeeded. After a short time some of the flushed 
 and heated throng laid down their arms and softly carried the body 
 witliin doors. Otlicrs fell off or slunk away in knots of two or three, 
 others whispered togctlicr in groups, and before a numerous guard 
 wliich then rode up could muster in tlie street, it was nearly empty. 
 
 Tliose wlio carried Muster Griiham to tlie bed up-stairs wero shocked 
 to see a woman lying beneath tlie window with lier hands clas])ed 
 togetlier. After trying to recover her in vain, they laid her near tlio 
 citizen, who still retained, tightly gx\asped in liis right hand, the first 
 and last sword that was broken that day at Lud Gate. 
 
 Tho Giant uttered these concluding words with sudden precipita- 
 tion ; and on the instant tho strange light which had filled the hall 
 faded away. Joe Toddyhigli glanced involuntarily at tlio eastern
 
 Joe ToddyJiigJC s Resolve. 487 
 
 window, and saw tlio first pale gleam of morning. Ho turned his 
 bead again towards the other window in which the Giants bad been 
 seated. It was empty. The cask of wine was gone, and be could 
 dimly make out that the two great figures stood mute and motionless 
 upon their pedestals. 
 
 After rubbing bis eyes and wondering for full half an hour, during 
 which time be observed morning come creeping on apace, be yielded 
 to the drowsiness which overpowered him and fell into a refreshing 
 slumber. When be awoke it was broad day ; the building was open, 
 and workmen were busily engaged in removing the vestiges of last 
 night's feast. 
 
 Stealing gently down the little stairs, and assuming the air of some 
 early lounger who bad dropped in from the street, be walked up to 
 the foot of each pedestal in turn, and attentively examined the figure 
 it supported. There could be no doubt about the features of either ; 
 bo recollected the exact expression they had worn at different passages 
 of their conversation, and recognised in every line and lineament the 
 Giants of the night. Assured that it was no vision, but that he bad 
 heard and seen with bis own proper senses, be walked forth, deter- 
 mining at all hazards to conceal himself in the Guildhall again that 
 evening. Ho further resolved to sleep all day, so that he might bo 
 very wakeful and vigilant, and above all that he miglit take notice of 
 the figures at the precise moment of their becoming animated and 
 subsiding into their old state, which ho greatly reproached himself 
 for not having done already. 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 TO MASTER IIUMrHREY. 
 
 giRj Before you proceed any further in your account of your 
 friends and what you say and do when you meet together, excuse mo 
 if I proffer my claim to be elected to one of the vacant chairs in that 
 old room of yours. Don't reject me without full consideration ; for if 
 you do, you will be sorry for it afterwards you will, upon my life. 
 
 " I enclose my card, sir, in this letter. I never was ashamed of my 
 name, and I never shall be. I am considered a devilish gentlemanly 
 fellow, and I act up to the character. If you want a reference, ask 
 any of the men at our club. Ask any fellow who goes there to write 
 bis letters, what sort of conversation mine is. Ask him if he thinks 
 I have the sort of voice that will suit your deaf friend and make him 
 bear, if he can bear anything at all. Ask the servants what they 
 think of me. There's not a rascal among 'em, sir, but will tremble to 
 hear my name. That reminds me don't you say too much about thai, 
 housekeeper of yours ; it's a low subject, damned low.
 
 488 
 
 Master Humphreys Clock. 
 
 " I tell you what, sir. If you vote mo into ono of those empty 
 chairs, you'll have among you a man with a fund of gentlemanly 
 information that'll rather astonish you. I can let you into a few 
 anecdotes about some fine women of title, that arc quite high life, sir 
 the tiptop sort of thing, I know the name of every man who has 
 been out on an aftair of honour within the last five-and-twenty years ; 
 I know the private particulars of every cross and squabble that has 
 taken place upon tlie turf, at the gaming-table, or elsewhere, during 
 the whole of that time. I have boon called the gentlemanly clirouiclc. 
 
 You may consider yourself a lucky dog ; upon my soul, you may 
 congratulate yourself, though I say so. 
 
 " It's an uncommon good notion that of yours, not letting anybody 
 know where you live. 1 have tried it, but there has always been an 
 anxiety respecting me, whicli has found me out. Your deaf friend is 
 a cunning fellow to keep liis name so close. I have tried that too, 
 but have always failed. I shall be proud to make his acquaintance 
 tell liim so, with my compliments. 
 
 " You must have been a queer fellow when you were a child, con- 
 founded queer. It's odd, all that about the picture in your first paper
 
 A Charming Fellow. 489 
 
 prosy, but told in a devilish gentlemanly sort of way. In places 
 like that I could come in with great effect with a touch of life don't 
 you feel that ? 
 
 " I am anxiously waiting for your next paper to know whether your 
 friends live upon the premises, and at your expense, which I take it 
 for granted is the case. If I am right in this impression, I know a 
 charming fellow (an excellent companion and most delightful com- 
 pany) who will be proud to join you. Some years ago he seconded a 
 great many prize-fighters, and once fought an amateur match himself ; 
 since then he has driven several mails, broken at different periods all 
 the lamps on the right-hand side of Oxford Street, and six times carried 
 away every bell-handle in Bloomsbury Square, besides turning off the 
 gas in various thoroughfares. In point of gentlemanliness he is 
 unrivalled, and I should say that next to myself he is of all men the 
 best suited to your purpose. 
 
 ' Expecting your reply, 
 
 " I am, 
 
 " &o. &c." 
 
 Master Humphrey informs this gentleman that his application, both 
 as it concerns himself and his friend, is rejected, 
 
 II. 
 
 MASTER HUMPHEEY, FROM HIS CLOCK-SIDE IN THE 
 CHIMNEY-COENER. 
 
 My old companion tells me it is midnight. The fire glows brightly, 
 crackling with a sharp and cheerful sound, as if it loved to burn. The 
 merry cricket on the hearth (my constant visitor), this ruddy blaze, 
 my clock, and I, seem to share the world among us, and to be the 
 only things awake. The wind, high and boisterous but now, has died 
 away and hoarsely mutters in its sleep. I love all times and seasons 
 each in its turn, and am apt, perhaps, to think the present one the 
 best ; but past or coming I always love tliis peaceful time of night, 
 when long-buried thoughts, favoured by the gloom and silence, steal 
 from their graves, and haunt the scenes of faded happiness and hope. 
 The popular faith in ghosts has a remarkable affinity with the whole 
 current of our thoughts at such an hour as this, and seems to be their 
 necessary and natural consequence. For who can wonder that man 
 should feel a vague belief in tales of disembodied spirits wandering 
 through those places which they once dearly affected, when he himself, 
 scarcely less separated from his old world than they, is for ever 
 lingering upon past emotions and bygone times, and hovering, the
 
 490 Master Humphrey's Clock. 
 
 ghost of Ills former Solf, about tho places and people that warmed his 
 heart of old ? It is thus that at this quiet hour I haunt tho house 
 wlicro I was born, tho rooms I used to tread, tho scenes of my 
 infancy, my boyhood, and my youth ; it is thus that I prowl around 
 my buried treasure (thoiigh not of gold or silver), and mourn my 
 loss ; it is thus that I revisit the ashes of extinguished fires, and take 
 my silent stand at old bedsides. If my spirit should over glide back 
 to this chamber when my body is mingled with the dust, it will but 
 follow tho course it often took in the old man's lifetime, and add but 
 one more change to the subjects of its contemplation. 
 
 In all my idle speculations I am greatly assisted by various legends 
 connected with my venerable house, which are current in the neigh- 
 bourhood, and are so numerous that thcro is scarce a cupboard or 
 corner that has not some dismal story of its own. When I first enter- 
 tained thoughts of becoming its tenant, I was assured that it was 
 haunted from roof to cellar, and I believe that the bad opinion in 
 wliich my neighbours once held me, had its rise in my not being torn 
 to pieces, or at least distracted with terror, on tho night I took 
 possession ; in either of which cases I should doubtless have arrived 
 by a short cut at the very summit of popularity. 
 
 But traditions and rumours all taken into account, who so abets mo 
 in every fancy and chimes with my every thouglit, as my dear deaf 
 friend ? and how ofteji liave I cause to bless the day tliat brought us 
 two together ! Of all days in the year I rejoice to think that it 
 should have been Christmas Day, with which from childhood wo 
 associate something friendly, hearty, and sincere. 
 
 I liad walked out to cheer myself with tlie happiness of others, and, 
 in the little tokens of festivity and rejoicing, of which the streets and 
 houses present so many upon that day, had lest some hours. Now I 
 stopped to look at a merry party hurrying through tho snow on foot 
 to their place of meeting, and now turned back to see a whole coachful 
 of children safely deposited at tho welcome house. At one time, I 
 admired how carefully tho working man carried tho baby in its gaudy 
 liat and feathers, and how his wife, trudging patiently on behind, 
 forgot even lier care of her gay clothes, in exchanging gi-eetings with 
 tho child as it crowed and laughed over tlio father's shoulder ; at 
 another, I pleased myself with some passing scene of gallantry or 
 courtship, and was glad to believe that for a season half the world of 
 poverty was gay. 
 
 As tlic day closed in, I still rambled tlirough tho streets, feeling a 
 eoinpanionsliip in the bright fires tliat cast their warm reflection on 
 tlio windows as I passed, and losing all sense of my own loneliness in 
 imagining the sociality and kiud-fellowsliip tliat everywhere prevailed. 
 At length I Jiappciicd to stop before a Tavern, and, encountering a 
 Bill of Faro in the window, it all at once brouglit it into my liead to 
 wonder wliat kind of people dined alone in Taverns unon Christmas 
 Day.
 
 The Deaf Gentlematt. 491 
 
 Solitary men arc accustomed, I suppose, unconsciously to look upon 
 solitude as their own peculiar property. I had sat alone in my room 
 on many, many anniversaries of this great holiday, and had never 
 regarded it but as one of universal assemblage and rejoicing. I had 
 excepted, and with an aching heart, a crowd of prisoners and beggars ; 
 but these were not the men for whom the Tavern doors were open. 
 Had they any customers, or was it a mere form ? a form, no doubt. 
 
 Trying to feel quite sure of this, I walked away ; but before I had 
 gone many paces, I stopped and looked back. There was a provoking 
 air of business in the lamp above the door which I could not overcome. 
 I began to be afraid there might be many customers young men, 
 perhaps, struggling with the world, utter strangers in this great place, 
 whoso friends lived at a long distance off, and whoso means were too 
 slender to enable them to make the journey. The supposition gave 
 rise to so many distressing little pictures, that, in preference to carry- 
 ing them homo with me, I determined to encounter the realities. So 
 I turned and walked in. 
 
 I was at once glad and sorry to find that there was only ono 
 person in the diuiug-room ; glad to know that there were not more, 
 and sorry that ho should bo there by himself. He did not look so 
 old as I, but like mo ho was advanced in life, and his hair was nearly 
 white. Though I made moro noise in entering and seating myself 
 than was quite necessary, Avith the view of attracting his attention 
 and saluting him in the good old form of that time of year, he did not 
 raise his head, but sat with it resting on his hand, musing over his 
 half-finished meal. 
 
 I called for something which would give rnc an excuse for remain- 
 ing in the room (I liad dined early, as my housekeeper was engaged 
 at night to partake of some friend's good cheer), and sat where I could 
 observe without intruding on him. After a time he looked up. Ho 
 was aware that somebody had entered, but could see very little of 
 me, as I sat in tlio shade and ho in the light. Ho was sad and 
 thf)ughtful, and I forbore to trouble him by speaking. 
 
 Lot me believe it was something better than curiosity which riveted 
 my attention and impelled me strongly towards this gentleman. I 
 never saw so patient and kind a face. He should have been surrounded 
 by friends, and yet hero ho sat dejected and alone when all men had 
 their friends about them. As often as he roused himself from liis 
 reverie ho would full into it again, and it was plain that, whatever 
 were the subject of liis thoxights, they were of a melancholy kind, and 
 would not be controlled. 
 
 lie was not used to solitude. I was sure of that ; for I know by 
 myself that if he had been, his manner would have been different, and 
 ho would have taken some slight interest in tho arrival of another. I 
 could not fail to mark that he had no appetite ; that he tried to eat in 
 vain ; that time after time the plate was pushed away, and he relapsed 
 into his former posture.
 
 492 Master HuuipJircys Clock. 
 
 His mind was wandering among old Christmas days, I thouglat. 
 Many of tbom sprung up together, not with a long gap between each, 
 but in nnbrokou succession like days of the week. It was a great 
 change to find liiraself for the first time (I quite settled that it xcas the 
 first) in an emjity silent room with no soul to care for. I could not 
 help following him in imagination through crowds of pleasant faces, 
 and then coming back to that dull place with its bough of mistletoe 
 sickening in the gas, and sprigs of holly parched Tip already by a 
 Simoom of roast and boiled. The very waiter had gone home; and 
 his rsfprcsentativc, a poor, lean, hungry man, was keeping Christmas 
 in his jacket. 
 
 I grew still more interested in my friend. His dinner done, a 
 decanter of wine was placed before him. It remained untouched for 
 a long time, but at length with a quivering hand he filled a glass and 
 raised it to his lips. Some tender wish to which ho had been 
 accustomed to give utterance on that day, or some beloved name that 
 he had been used to i)ledgo, trembled upon them at the moment. 
 He put it down very hastily took it up once more again put it 
 down pressed his hand ujion his face yes and tears stole down 
 his cheeks, I am certain. 
 
 Without pausing to consider whether I did right or wrong, I stepped 
 across the room, and sitting down beside him laid my hand gently on 
 his arm. 
 
 " My friend," I said, " forgive mo if I beseech you to take comfort 
 and consolation from the lijis of an old man. I will not preach to 
 you what I have not practised, indeed. Whatever bo your grief, bo 
 of a good heart bo of a good heart, pray ! " 
 
 "I sec that you speak earnestly," ho replied, "and kindly I am 
 very sure, but " 
 
 I nodded my licad to sliow that I understood what ho would say ; 
 for I had already gathered, from a certain fixed expression in his face, 
 and from the attention with wliicli he watched me wliile I spoke, that 
 liis sense of hearing was destroyed. " There should be a freemasonry 
 between us," said I, iiointing from himself to me to explain my 
 meaning ; " if not in our gray hairs, at least in our misfortunes. You 
 see that 1 am but a poor cripple." 
 
 I never folt so happy under my aflliction since the trying moment 
 of my first becoming conscious of it, as when lie took my hand in liis 
 with a smile that lias lighted my path in life from tliat day, and wo 
 sat down side by side. 
 
 This was the beginning of my friendship with ihc deaf goiitleman ; 
 and when was ever the slight and easy stiviee of a kind word in 
 season repaid by such attachment and devution as he has shown 
 to me ! 
 
 lie produced a little set of taldcts and a pencil to facilitate our 
 conversation, on that our first acquaintance ; and I well remember 
 how awkward and constrained I was in writing down jny share of tho
 
 The Deaf Gmtletnaris Pipe. 493 
 
 dialogue, and liow easily lie guessed my meaning before 1 had written 
 half of what I had to say. Ho told me in a faltering voice that he 
 had not been accustomed to be alone on that day that it had always 
 been a little festival with him ; and seeing that I glanced at his dress 
 in the expectation that he wore mourning, he added hastily that it was 
 not that ; if it had been he thought he could have borne it better. 
 From that time to the present we have never touched upon this 
 theme. Upon every return of the same day we have been together ; 
 and although we make it our annual custom to drink to each other 
 hand in hand after dinner, and to recall with affectionate garrulity 
 every circumstance of our first meeting, we always avoid this one as 
 if by mutual consent. 
 
 Meantime wo have gone on strengthening in our friendship and 
 regard, and forming an attachment which, I trust and believe, will 
 only be interrupted by death, to be renewed in another existence. I 
 scarcely know how we communicate as we do ; but he has long since 
 ceased to be deaf to me. He is frequently my companion in my 
 walks, and even in crowded streets replies to my slightest look or 
 gesture, as though he could read my thoughts. From the vast number 
 of objects which pass in raj^id succession before our eyes, we frequently 
 select the same for some particular notice or remark ; and when one 
 of these little coincidences occurs, I cannot describe the pleasure 
 which animates my friend, or the beaming countenance he will preserve 
 for half-an-hour afterwards at least. 
 
 He is a great thinker from living so much within himself, and, 
 having a lively imagination, has a facility of conceiving and enlarging 
 upon odd ideas, which renders him invaluable to our little body, and 
 greatly astonishes our two friends. His powers in this respect are 
 much assisted by a largo pipe, which he assures us once belonged to 
 a German Student. Be this as it may, it has undoubtedly a very 
 ancient and mysterious ajipearance, and is of such capacity that it 
 takes three hours and a half to smoke it out. I have reason to believe 
 that my barber, who is the chief authority of a knot of gossii}s, who 
 congregate every evening at a small tobacconist's hard by, has related 
 anecdotes of this i)ipe and the grim figures that are carved upon its 
 bowl, at which all the smokers in the neighbourhood have stood 
 aghast ; and I know that my housekeeper, while she holds it in high 
 veneration, has a superstitious feeling connected with it which would 
 render her exceedingly unwilling to be left alone in its company after 
 dark. 
 
 Whatever sorrow my dear friend has known, and whatever grief 
 may linger in some secret corner of his heart, he is now a cheerful, 
 I)lacid, happy creature. Misfortune can never have fallen upon such 
 a man but for some good purpose ; and when I see its traces in liis 
 gentle nature and his earnest feeling, I am the less disposed to 
 murmur at such trials as I may have undergone myself. With regard 
 to the pipe, I have a theory of my o',Yn ; I cannot help thinking that
 
 494 
 
 Master Humphrey's Clock. 
 
 it is in some mitincr connected with the event that brought us 
 together; for I remorabor that it was a long time before he oven 
 talked about it ; that when he did, he grew reserved and melancholy ; 
 and that it was a long time yet before he brought it forth. I have 
 no curiosity, however, upon this subject ; for I know that it promotes 
 his tranquillity and comfort, and I need no other inducement to 
 regard it with my utmost favour. 
 
 
 Rach is tlic doaf gentleman. I can call up his fi_!;uic now, ehui in 
 sober gray, and seated in the chimnoy-coruer. As he imiY^ out llio 
 smoke from his favourite pipe, lie casts a look on me brimful of 
 cordiality and fri(!iulship, and says all manner of kind and genial 
 things in a cheerful smile ; then he raises his eyes to my clock, which 
 is just about to strike, and, glancing from it to mc and back again, 
 seems to divide his lioart between us. For myself, it is not too much
 
 Jack Redburn. 495 
 
 to say thiit I would gladly part tritli one of my pbdt* limbs, could lie 
 but hear tbe old clock's voice. 
 
 Of our two friends, the first has been all his life one of that easy, 
 wayward, truant class whom the world is accustomed to designate as 
 nobody's enemies but their o\\ti. Bred to a profession for which ho 
 never qualified himself, and reared in the expectation of a fortune he 
 has never inherited, he has undergone every vicissitude of which such 
 an existence is capable. He and his younger brother, both orphans 
 from their childhood, were educated by a wealthy relative, who taught 
 them to expect an equal division of his property ; but too indolent to 
 court, and too honest to flatter, the elder gradually lost ground in the 
 affections of a capricious old man, and the younger, who did not fail to 
 improve his opportunity, now triumphs in the possession of enormous 
 wealth. His triumph is to hoard it in solitary wretchedness, and 
 probably to feel with the expenditure of every shilling a greater pang 
 than the loss of his whole inheritance ever cost his brother. 
 
 Jack Eedburn ho was Jack Eedburn at the first little school he 
 went to, where every other child was mastered and surnamcd, and he 
 has been Jack Eedburn all his life, or ho would perhaps have been a 
 richer man by this time has been an inmate of my house these eight 
 years past. He is my librarian, secretary, steward, and first minister ; 
 director of all my affairs, and inspector-general of my household. Ho 
 is something of a musician, something of an author, something of an 
 actor, something of a i^aintcr, very much of a cari)entcr, and an cxtra- 
 (jrdinary gardener, having had all his life a wonderful aptitude for 
 learning everything that was of no use to him. He is remarkably 
 fond of children, and is the best and kindest nurse in sickness that 
 ever drew the breath of life. He has mixed with every grade of 
 society, and known the utmost distress ; but there never was a less 
 selfish, a more tender-hearted, a more enthusiastic, or a more guileless 
 man ; and I dare say, if few have done less good, fewer still have 
 done less harm in the world than he. By what chance Nature forms 
 such whimsical jumbles I don't know ; but I do know that she sends 
 them among us very often, and that the king of the whole race is Jack 
 Eedburn. 
 
 I should be ptizzled to say how old he is. His health is none of 
 the best, and ho wears a quantity of iron-gray hair, which shades his 
 face and gives it rather a worn appearance ; but we consider him 
 quite a young fellow notwithstanding ; and if a youthful spirit, 
 surviving the roughest contact with the world, confers upon its 
 ])ossessor any title to bo considered young, then he is a mere child. 
 The only interruptions to his careless cheerfulness are on a wet 
 Sunday, when he is apt to be unusually religious and solemn, and 
 sometimes of an evening, when he has been blowing a very slow tune 
 on the flute. On these last-named occasions he is ajit to incline 
 towards the mysterious or the terrible. As a si^ecimen of his powers 
 iu this mood, I refer my readers to the extract from the clock-case
 
 496 Master Htunphfcy s Clock. 
 
 which follows this paper : ho brought it to mo not long ago at mid- 
 night, and informed mo that the main incident had been suggested by 
 a dream of the night before. 
 
 His apartments are two cheerful rooms looking towards the garden, 
 and one of his great delights is to arrange and rearrange the furniture 
 in thcso chambers, and put it in every possible variety of position. 
 During the whole time ho has been here, I do not think he has slept 
 for two nights running with the head of his bed in the same place ; 
 and every time ho moves it, is to bo the last. My housekeeper was 
 at first well-nigh distracted by these frequent changes ; but she has 
 become quite reconciled to them by degrees, and has so fiillen in with 
 his humour, tliat they often consult together with great gravity upon 
 the next final alteration. Whatever liis arrangements are, however, 
 they are always a pattern of neatness ; and every one of the manifold 
 articles connected with his manifold occupations is to be found in its 
 own particular place. Until within the last two or three years he was 
 subject to an occasional fit (which usually came upon him in very fine 
 weather), under tho influence of which he would dress himself with 
 peculiar care, and, going out under pretence of taking a walk, dis- 
 appeared for several days together. At length, after the interval 
 between each outbreak of this disorder had gradually grown longer 
 and longer, it wholly disappeared ; and now he seldom stirs abroad, 
 except to stroll out a little way on a summer's evening. Whether lio 
 yet mistrusts his own constancy in this respect, and is therefore afraid 
 to wear a coat, I know not ; but we seldom see liim in any other 
 upper garment tlian an old S2)ectral-looking dressing-gown, with very 
 disproportionate pockets, full of a miscellaneous collection of odd 
 matters, which lie picks up wherever he can lay his hands upon them. 
 
 Everything that is a favourite witli our friend is a favourite witli 
 us ; and thus it happens that the fourth among us is Mr. Owen Miles, 
 a most worthy gentleman, wlio had treated Jack with great kindness 
 before my deaf friend and I encountered Iiim by an accident, to whicli 
 I may refer on some future occasion. Mr. Miles was once a very ricli 
 merchant ; but receiving a severe shock in the death of his wife, ho 
 retired from business, and devoted himself to a quiet, unostentatious 
 life. Ho is an excellent man, of thorouglily sterling character : not 
 of quick a2)prehensiou, and not without some amusing prejudices, 
 which I shall leave to their own development. lie holds us all in 
 l)rofound veneration ; but Jack licdburn he esteems as a kind of 
 pleasant wonder, that he may venture to approach familiarly, lie 
 believes, not only that no man ever lived who could do so many 
 things as Jack, but that no man ever lived who could do anything so 
 well ; and he never calls my attention to any of his ingenious pro- 
 ceedings, but he whispers in my ear, nudging me at tho same timo 
 with his elbow : " If lie had only made it his trade, sir if ho had 
 only made it his trade ! " 
 
 Tliey are insiqiarable companions ; one would almost suppose that,
 
 A Murderer's Confession. 497 
 
 although Mr. Miles never by any chance does anything in the way of 
 assistance, Jack could do nothing without him. Whether he is read- 
 ing, writing, painting, carpentering, gardening, flute-playing, or what 
 not, there is Mr. Miles beside him, buttoned up to the chin in his 
 blue coat, and looking on with a face of incredulous delight, as though 
 he could not credit the testimony of his own senses, and had a mis- 
 giving that no man could be so clever but in a dream. 
 
 These are my friends ; I have now introduced myself and them, 
 
 THE CLOCK-CASE. 
 
 A CONFESSION FOUND IN A PRISON IN THE TIME OF CHARLES THE 
 
 SECOND. 
 
 I held a lieutenant's commission in his Majesty's army, and served 
 abroad in the campaigns of 1677 and 1678. The treaty of Nimeguen 
 being concluded, I returned home, and retiring from the service, 
 withdrew to a small estate lying a few miles east of Loudon, which I 
 had recently acquired in right of my wife. 
 
 This is the last night I have to live, and I will set down the naked 
 truth without disguise. I was never a brave man, and had always 
 boon from my childliood of a secret, sullen, distrustful nature. I 
 speak of myself as if I had passed from the world ; for while I write 
 this, my grave is digging, and my name is written in the black-book 
 of death. 
 
 Soon after my return to England, my only brother was seized with 
 mortal illness. This circumstance gave me slight or no pain ; for 
 since we had been men, wo had associated but very little together. 
 He was open-hearted and generous, handsomer than I, more ac- 
 complished, and generally beloved. Those who sought my acquaint- 
 ance abroad or at home, because they were friends of his, seldom 
 attached themselves to me long, and would usually say, in our first 
 conversation, that they were surprised to find two brothers so unlike 
 in their manners and appearance. It was my habit to lead them on 
 to this avowal ; for I knew what comparisons they must draw between 
 us ; and having a rankling envy in my heart, I sought to justify it to 
 myself. 
 
 We had married two sisters. This additional tic between us, as it 
 may appear to some, only estranged us the more. His wife knew me 
 well. I never struggled with any secret jealousy or gall when she 
 was present but that woman knew it as well as I did. I never raised 
 my eyes at such times but I found hers fixed upon me ; I never bent 
 them on the ground or looked another way but I felt that she over- 
 looked me always. It was an inexpressible relief to me when we 
 quarrelled, and a greater relief still when I heard abroad that she was 
 
 2 k
 
 498 Master Humphreys Clock. 
 
 (lead. It seems to mo now as if some strange and terrible foreshadow- 
 ing of what has happened since must have hung over us then. I was 
 afraid of her ; she haunted me ; her fixed and steady look comes back 
 upon mo now, like the memory of a dark dream, and makes my blood 
 run cold. 
 
 She died shortly after giving birth to a child a boy. When my 
 brother know that all hope of his own recovery was past, ho called my 
 wife to his bedside, and confided this orphan, a child of four years old, 
 to her protection. IIo bequeathed to him all the property he had, and 
 willed that, in case of his child's death, it should pass to my wife, as 
 the only ackuowlodgmont he could make her for her care and love. 
 IIo exchanged a few brotherly words with me, deploring our long 
 separation ; and being exhausted, fell into a slumber, from which ho 
 never awoke. 
 
 We had no children ; and as there had been a strong affection 
 between the sisters, and my wife had almost supjdied the place of a 
 mother to this boy, she loved him as if he had been her own. The 
 child was ardently attached to her ; but he was his mother's imago in 
 face and spirit, and always mistrusted me. 
 
 I can scarcely fix the date when the fooling first camo upon me ; 
 but I soon began to bo uneasy when this child was by. I never 
 roused myself from some moody train of thought biit I marked \m\\ 
 looking at me ; not with more childish wonder, but with something of 
 the iiurposc and meaning that I had so often noted in his mother. It 
 was no effort of my fancy, founded on close resemblance of feature and 
 expression. I never could look tho boy down. Ho feared me, but 
 seemed by some instinct to despise me while he did so ; and even 
 when he drew back beneath my gaze as ho would when wo wero 
 alone, to get nearer to the door he would keep his bright eyes upon 
 mo still. 
 
 Perhajis I hide tho truth from myself, but I do not think that, 
 when this began, I meditated to do him any wrong. I may have 
 thought how servicoablo his inheritance would be to us, and may have 
 wished him dead ; but I believe I had no thought of compassing his 
 death. Neither did the idea come upon me at once, but by very slow 
 degrees, presenting itself at first in dim shapes at a very great 
 distance, us men may think of an carthij^uako or the last day ; theii 
 drawing nearer and nearer, and losing something of its horror and 
 improbability ; then coming to be part ami j)arcel nay nearly tho 
 whole sum and substance of my daily thoughts, and resolving itsolf 
 into a question of means and safety ; not of doing or abstaining from 
 tlio d(;od. 
 
 While tliis was going on within mo, I nr.vcr could bear that the 
 child sliould K(;(; me looking at him, and yet I was under a fascination 
 whicli nia(l(! it a kind of business witli me to contemplate his slight 
 and fragih; fi'juro und tliink how easily it might bo dt)ne. Sometimes 
 I would steal upstairs and watch him as he slcjit ; but usually I
 
 The Murder. 499 
 
 hovered in the garden near the window of the room in which he learnt 
 his little tasks ; and there, as he sat upon a low seat beside my wife, 
 I would peer at him for hours together from behind a tree ; starting, 
 like the guilty wretch I was, at every rustling of a leaf, and still 
 gliding back to look and start again. 
 
 Hard by our cottage, but quite out of sight, and (if there were any 
 wind astir) of hearing too, was a deep sheet of water. I spent days iu 
 shaping with my pocket-knife a rough model of a boat, which I 
 finished at last and dropped in the child's way. Then I withdrew to 
 a secret place, which he must pass if he stole away alone to swim this 
 bauble, and lurked there for his coming. He came neither that day 
 nor the next, though I waited from noon till nightfall. I was suro 
 that I had him in my not, for I had heard him prattling of the toy, 
 and knew that in his infant pleasure he kept it by his side in bed. I 
 felt no weariness or fatigue, but waited patiently, and on the third 
 day he passed me, running joyously along, with his silken hair 
 streaming in the wind, and he singing God have mercy upon me! 
 singiug a merry ballad, who could hardly lisp the words. 
 
 I stole down after him, creeping under certain shrubs which grow 
 in that place, and none but devils know with what terror I, a strong, 
 full-grown man, tracked the footsteps of that baby as he approached 
 the water's brink. I was close upon him, had sunk upon my kneo 
 and raised my hand to thrust him in, when lie saw my shadow in tho 
 stream and turned him round. 
 
 His mother's ghost was looking from his eyes. The sun burst forth 
 from behind a cloud ; it shone in tho bright sky, the glistening earth, 
 the clear water, the sparkling drops of rain upon the leaves. There 
 were eyes in everything. The whole great universe of light was 
 there to see the murder done. I knov/ not what he said ; he came of 
 bold and manly blood, and, child as he was, ho did not crouch or fawn 
 upon me. I heard him cry that he would try to love me, not that 
 he did, and then I saw him running back towards tho house. Tho 
 next I saw was my own sword naked in my hand, and he lying at my 
 feet stark dead, dabbled here and there with blood, but otherwise no 
 different from what I had seen him in his sleep, in the same attitude 
 too, with his cheek resting ui)on his little hand. 
 
 I took him in my arms and laid him very gently now that ho was 
 dead in a thicket. My wife was from homo that day, and would not 
 return until tho next. Our bedroom window, the only sleeping-room 
 on that side of tho house, was but a few feet from the ground, and I 
 resolved to descend from it at night and bury him in the garden. I 
 had no thought that I had failed in my design, no thought that the 
 water would be dragged and nothing found, that tho money must now 
 lie waste, since I must encourage the idea that the child was lost or 
 stolen. All my thoughts wore bound up and knotted together iu tho 
 one absorbing necessity of hiding what I had done. 
 
 How I felt when they came to tell mo that the child was missing,
 
 50O Master Humphreys Clock. 
 
 when I ordered scouts in all directions, when I gasped and trembled 
 at every one's approacli, no tongue can tell or mind of man conceive. 
 I buried him that night. When I parted the boughs and looked into 
 the dark thicket, there was a glow-worm shining like the visible 
 spirit of God upon the murdered child. I glanced down into his 
 grave when I had placed him there, and still it gleamed upon his 
 breast ; an eye of fire looking up to Heaven in supplication to tho 
 stars that watched me at my work. 
 
 I had to meet my wife, and break tlic news, and give her hope that 
 the child would soon be found. All this I did, with some appear- 
 ance, I suppose, of being sincere, for I was the object of no suspicion. 
 This done, I sat at tho bedroom window all day long, and watched 
 the spot where the dreadful secret lay. 
 
 It was in a piece of ground which had been dug up to bo newly 
 turfed, and which I had chosen on that account, as tho traces of my 
 spade were less likely to attract attention. The men who laid down 
 the grass must liave thought mo mad. I called to them continually 
 to expedite their work, ran out and worked beside them, trod down 
 tlio earth with my feet, and hurried them with frantic eagerness. 
 They had finished their task before night, and then I thought myself 
 comparatively safe. 
 
 I slept, not as men do who awake refreslicd and cheerful, but I 
 did slee2>, passing from vague and shadowy dreams of being hunted 
 down, to visions of the plot of grass, through which now a hand, and 
 now a foot, and now the head itself was starting out. At this point 
 I always woke and stole to the window, to make sure that it was not 
 really so. That done, I crept to bed again ; and thus I spent tho 
 night in fits and starts, getting up and lying down full twenty times, 
 and dreaming the same dream over and over again, which was far 
 worse than lying awake, for every dream had a whole night's sulFcring 
 of its own. Once I thought tlie child was alive, and that I had never 
 tried to kill him. To wake from that dream was the most dreadful 
 agony of all. 
 
 Tho next day I sat at tho window again, never once taking my eyes 
 from the place, which, although it was covered by the grass, was as 
 plain to me its shape, its size, its depth, its jagged sides, and all 
 as if it had been open to the light of day. When a servant walked 
 across it, I felt as if he must sink in ; wlicn lie had passed, I looked 
 to see that his foot had not worn the edges. If a bird liglitcd tliere, 
 I was in terror lest by some tremendous interj^osition it should bo 
 instrumental in the discovery ; if a breatli of air sighed across it, to 
 1110 it whispered murder. There was not a sight or a sound liow 
 ordinary, mean, or unimportant soever but was fraught with fear. 
 And in tliis state of ceaseless watching I spent three days. 
 
 On the fourtli there came to the gate one who had served with mo 
 abroiul, accoiupiiniod by a brotlicr officer of his whom I liad never 
 seen- I felt that I could not bear to be out of sight of the place. It
 
 Hunted dowfi. 5^1 
 
 was a summer evening, and I bade my people take a table and a flask 
 of wine into the garden. Then I sat down with my chair upon the 
 f/rave, and being assured that nobody could disturb it now without my 
 knowledge, tried to drink and talk. 
 
 They hoped that my wife was well, that she was not obliged to 
 keep her chamber, that they had not frightened her away. What 
 could I do but tell them with a faltering tongue about the child ? 
 The officer whom I did not know was a down-looking man, and kept 
 his eyes upon the ground while I was speaking. Even that terrified 
 me. I could not divest myself of the idea that he saw something 
 there which caused him to suspect the truth. I asked him hurriedly 
 if he supposed that and stopped. " That the child has been 
 murdered ? " said he, looking mildly at me : "0 no ! what could a 
 man gain by murdering a poor child ? " I could have told him what 
 a man gained by such a deed, no one better : but I held my peace and 
 shivered as with an ague. 
 
 Mistaking my emotion, they were endeavouring to cheer me with 
 the hope that the boy would certainly be found, great cheer that 
 was for me ! when we heard a low deep howl, and presently there 
 sprung over the wall two great dogs, who, bounding into the garden, 
 repeated the baying sound we had heard before. 
 
 " Bloodhounds ! " cried my visitors. 
 
 What need to tell me that ! I had never seen one of that kind in 
 all my life, but I knew what they were and for what purpose they had 
 come. I grasped the elbows of my chair, and neither spoke nor moved. 
 
 " They are of the genuine breed," said the man whom I had known 
 abroad, " and being out for exercise have no doubt escaped from their 
 keeper." 
 
 Both he and his friend turned to look at the dogs, who with their 
 noses to the ground moved restlessly about, running to and fro, and 
 up and down, and across, and round in circles, careering about like 
 wild things, and all this time taking no notice of us, but ever and 
 again repeating the yell we had heard already, then dropping their 
 noses to the ground again and tracking earnestly here and there. 
 They now began to snuif the earth more eagerly than they had done 
 yet, and although they were still very restless, no longer beat about 
 in such wide circuits, but kept near to one spot, and constantly 
 diminished the distance between themselves and me. 
 
 At last they came up close to the great chair on which I sat, and 
 raising their frightful howl once more, tried to tear away the wooden 
 rails that kept them from the ground beneath. I saw how I looked, 
 in the faces of the two who were with me. 
 
 " They scent some prey," said they, both together. 
 
 " They scent no prey ! " cried I. 
 
 " In Heaven's name, move ! " said the one I knew, very earnestly, 
 " or you will be torn to pieces." 
 
 " Let them tear me from limb to limb, I'll never leave this place I *
 
 502 Jlfastcr Humplu-ey s Clock. 
 
 cried I. " Are dogs to litirry men to shameful deaths ? Hew them 
 down, cut them in pieces." 
 
 " There is some foul mystery here ! " said the ofScer whom I did 
 not know, drawing his sword. " In King Charles's name, assist me 
 to secure this man." 
 
 They both set upon me and forced mc away, though I fought and 
 Lit and caught at them like a madman. After a struggle, they got me 
 quietly between them ; and then, my God ! I saw the angry dogs 
 tearing at the earth and throwing it up into the air like water. 
 
 What more liave I to tell ? That I fell upon my knees, and with 
 chattering teeth confessed the truth, and prayed to be forgiven. That 
 I have since denied, and now confess to it again. That I have been 
 tried for the crime, found guilty, and sentenced. That I have not the 
 courage to anticipate my doom, or to bear up manfully against it. 
 That I have no compassion, no consolation, no hope, no friend. That 
 my wife has haj)pily lost for the time those faculties which would 
 enable her to know my misery or hers. That I am alone in this stone 
 dungeon with my evil spirit, and that I die to-morrow.* 
 
 COrtRESPONDENCE. 
 
 Master numjihrey has ])een favoured witli the following letter 
 written on Ktroiigly-scented paper, and sealed in light-blue wax with 
 the representation of two very jjlunip doves interchanging beaks. It 
 does not commence with any of the usual forms of address, but begins 
 as is here set forth. 
 
 Ilalli, Wednesday night. 
 
 Heavens! into what an indiscretion do I suffer myself to bo 
 betrayed ! To address these faltering lines to a total stranger, and 
 tliat stranger one of a conflicting sex ! and yet I am precijntated into 
 tlie abyss, and have no power of self-snatchation (forgive me if I coin 
 tliat phrase) from the yawning gulf before me. 
 
 Yes, I am writing to a man ; but let me not think of that, for 
 madness is in the thought. You will understand my feelings'? O 
 yes, I am sure you will ; and you will respect them too, and not 
 despise tluiin, will you? 
 
 Let mo be calm. Tliat portrait, smiling as once he smiled on me ; 
 that cane, dangling as I have seen it dangle from liis hand I know 
 not how oft ; those legs that have glid(;d through my nightly dreams 
 and never stopped to speak ; the i)erfectly gentlemanly, though false 
 original, can I bo mistaken ? no, no, 
 
 Let me Ix) calmer yet ; I would bo calm as coffins. You have 
 
 * Old (^iriiisUy SIioj, iH-ins Iier;.
 
 A Fair Correspondent. 503 
 
 published a letter from one wlioso likeness is engraved, but whoso 
 name (and wherefore ?) is suppressed. Shall J breathe that name ! 
 Is it but why ask when my heart tells me too truly that it is ! 
 
 I would not upbraid him with his treachery ; I would not remind 
 him of those times when ho plighted the most eloquent of vows, and 
 jirocured from me a small pecuniary accommodation ; and yet I would 
 see him see him did I say Mm alas ! such is woman's nature. 
 For as the poet beautifully says but you will already have anticipated 
 the sentiment. Is it not sweet ? O yes ! 
 
 It was in this city (hallowed by the recollection) that I met him 
 first ; and assuredly if mortal happiness bo recorded anywhere, then 
 those rubbers with their three- and-sixpenny points are scored on 
 tablets of celestial brass. He always held an honour generally 
 two. On that eventful night we steed at eight. He raised his eyes 
 (luminous in their seductive sweetness) to my agitated face. " Can 
 you ? " said he, with peculiar meaning. I felt the gentle pressure of 
 his foot on mine ; our corns throbbed in unison. " Can you ? " he 
 said again ; and every lineam cut of his expressive countenance added 
 the words '' resist me ? " I murmured " No," ai;d fainted. 
 
 They said, when I recovered, it was the weather. I said it was the 
 nutmeg in the negus. How little did they suspect llie truth! How 
 little did they guess the deep mysterious meaning of that inquiry ! 
 He called next morning on his knees ; I do not nicr.n to say that he 
 actually came in that position to the hcusc-dcor, but that he went 
 down upon those joints directly the servant had retired. He brought 
 some verses in his liat, which he said were original, but wliich I have 
 since found were Milton's ; likewise a little bottle labelled laudanum ; 
 also a pistol and a sword-stick. He drew the latter, uncoilad llic 
 former, and clicked the trigger of the pocket fire-arm. He had come, 
 he said, to conquer or to die. He did not die. He wrested from me 
 an avowal of my love, and let off the pistol out of a back window 
 previous to partaking of a sliglit repast. 
 
 Faithless, inconstant man ! How many ages seem to have elapsed 
 since his unaccountable and perfidious disappearance ! Could I still 
 forgive him both that and the borrowed lucre that he promised to pay 
 next week! Could I spurn him from my feet if ho approached in 
 penitence, and with a matrimonial object ! Would the blandishing 
 enchanter still weave his spoils around me, or should I burst them all 
 and turn away in coldness ! I dare not trust my weakness with the 
 thouglit. 
 
 My brain is in a whirl again. You know his address, his occupa- 
 tions, his mode of life, are acqiiaintcd, perhaps, with his inmost 
 thoughts. You are a humane and philanthropic character ; reveal all 
 you know all ; but especially the street and inimber of his lodgings. 
 The post is departing, the bellman rings, pray Heaven it be not the 
 knell of love and hope to 
 
 Bklinda.
 
 5^4 Master Humphrey's Clock. 
 
 P.S. Pardon tho wanderings of a bad pen and a distracted mind. 
 Address to the Post-office. The bellman, rendered impatient by delay, 
 is ringing dreadfully in tlie passage. 
 
 P.P.S. I open this to say that the bellman is gone, and that you 
 must not expect it till tho next post ; so don't be surprised when you 
 don't get it. 
 
 Master Ilumphroy does not feel himself at liberty to furnish his 
 fair correspondent with the address of the gentleman in question, but 
 ho publishes her letter as a public appeal to his faith and gallantry. 
 
 III. 
 
 MASTER HUMPHREY'S VISITOR. 
 
 Whkn I am in a thoughtful mood, I often succeed in diverting tho 
 current of some mournful reflections, by conjuring u]) a number of 
 fanciful associations with the objects that surround me, and dwelling 
 upon tho scenes and characters they suggest. 
 
 I have been led by this habit to assign to every room in my houso 
 and every old staring portrait on its walls a se2)arate interest of its 
 own. Thus, I am persuaded that a stately dame, terrible to behold in 
 her rigid modesty, who hangs above the chimney-piece of my bed- 
 room, is the former lady of the mansion. In tlie courtyard below it4 
 a stone face of surpassing ugliness, which I have somehow in a kind 
 of jealousy, I am afraid associated with her husband. Above my 
 study is a little room with ivy i)ccpiug through the lattice, from 
 whicli I bring tlioir daughter, a lovely girl of eighteen or nineteen 
 years of age, and dutiful in all rcsj^ects save one, that one being her 
 devoted attaelnnent to a young gentleman on the stairs, wliosc grand- 
 mother (degraded to a disused laundry in the garden) piques herself 
 upon an old family quarrel, and is the implacable enemy of their love. 
 Witli sucli materials as these I work out many a little drama, whoso 
 chief merit is, that I can bring it to a happy end at will. I have so 
 many of them on hand, that if on my return home one of these even- 
 ings I were to find some bluff old wight of two centuries ago comfort- 
 ably seated in my easy-chair, and a lovelorn damsel vainly appealing 
 to liis heart, and leaning her white arm upon my clock itself, I verily 
 believe I should only express my surprise that they liad kept mo 
 waiting so long, and never honoured mo Avith a call before. 
 
 I was in such a mood as this, sitting in my gardon yesterilay morn- 
 ing under tlio shade of a favourite tree, revelling in all tho bloom and 
 brightness about me, and feeling every sense of ho^jc and enjoyment
 
 Mr. Pickivick is introdiiced. 505 
 
 qnickened by this most beautiful season of Spring, when my medita- 
 tions were interrupted by the unexpected appearance of my barber at 
 the end of the walk, who I immediately saw was coming towards me 
 with a hasty step that betokened something remarkable. 
 
 My barber is at all times a very brisk, bustling, active little man, 
 for he is, as it were, chubby all over, without being stout or un- 
 wieldy, but yesterday his alacrity was so very uncommon that it 
 quite took me by surprise. For could I fail to observe when he came 
 up to me that his gray eyes were twinkling in a most extraordinary 
 manner, that his little red nose was in an unusual glow, that every 
 line in his round bright face was twisted and curved into an exi^res- 
 sion of pleased surprise, and that his whole countenance was radiant 
 with glee ? I was still more surprised to see my housekeeper, who 
 usually preserves a very staid air, and stands somewhat upon her 
 dignity, peeping round the hedge at the bottom of the walk, and 
 exchanging nods and smiles with the barber, who twice or thrico 
 looked over his shoulder for that purpose. I could conceive no 
 announcement to which these appearances could be the prelude, unless 
 it wore that they had married each other that morning. 
 
 I was, consequently, a little disappointed when it only camo out 
 that there was a gentleman in the house who wished to speak with me, 
 
 " And who is it ? " said I. 
 
 The barber, with his face screwed up still tighter than before, 
 replied that the gentleman would not scud his name, but wished to 
 see me. I j)ondered for a moment, wondering who this visitor might 
 be, and I remarked that he embraced the opportunity of exchang- 
 ing another nod with the housekeei^er, who still lingered in the 
 distance. 
 
 " Well ! " said I, " bid the gentleman come here." 
 
 This seemed to be the consummation of the barber's hopes, for he 
 turned sharp roimd, and actually ran away. 
 
 Now, my sight is not very good at a distance, and therefore when 
 the gentleman first appeared in the wallf, I was not quite clear 
 whether he was a stranger to me or otherwise. He was an elderly 
 gentleman, but came tripping along in the pleasantest manner con- 
 ceivable, avoiding the garden-roller and the borders of the beds with 
 inimitable dexterity, picking his way among the flower-pots, and 
 smiling with xmspeakable good humour. Before he was half-way uj) 
 the walk he began to salute me ; then I thought I knew him ; but 
 when he came towards me with his hat in his hand, the sun shining 
 on his bald head, his bland face, his bright 62)ectaclc5, his fawn- 
 coloured tights, and his black gaiters, then my heart warmed towards 
 him, and I felt quite certain that it was Mr. Pickwick. 
 
 " My dear sir," said that gentleman as I rose to receive him, " pray 
 be seated. Pray sit down. Now, do not stand on my account. I 
 must insist upon it, really." With these words Mr. Pickwick gently 
 pressed me down into my seat, and tiiking my hand in his, shook it
 
 5o6 
 
 Master Hiiviphrey' s Clock. 
 
 again and again with a warmth of manner perfectly irresistible. I 
 endeavoured to express in my welcome something of that heartiness 
 and pleasure which the sight of him awakened, and made him sit down 
 beside me. All this time ho kept alternately releasing my hand and 
 
 f^'raspiiig it again, and surveying me tLrougli Lis spectacles with bucIi 
 a beaming countenance as I never till then beheld. 
 
 " You knew mo directly ! " said Mr. Pickwick. " What a i^lcasuro 
 it is to think tliat you knew mo directly ! " 
 
 I remarked that I liad read his adventures very often, and his 
 features were quite familiar to me from the publislicd portraits. As 
 I thought it a good opportunity of adverting to the circumstance, I 
 condoled with liim upon the various libels on his character v.liich h.ad 
 found their way into print. Mr. Pickwick shook his head, and for a 
 moment looked very indignant, but smiling again directly, added that 
 no doubt I was acquainted with Corvantcs's introduction to the second 
 ])art of Don Quixote, and that it fully expressed liis sentiments on tlic 
 Hubjf^(;t. 
 
 '' IJnt nowj" said Mr. Pickwick, " don't you wonder how I found 
 you out ? " 
 
 "I shall never wonder, and, witli your good leave, never Icnow," 
 Gaid I, smiling in my turn. " It is enough for me that you give mc
 
 The Purpose of Mr. Pickwick's Visit. 507 
 
 this gratification. I have not the least desire that yon should tell me 
 by what means I have obtained it." 
 
 " You are very kind," returned Mr. Pickwick, shaking me by the 
 hand again ; " you are so exactly what I expected I But for what 
 particular purpose do you think I sought you, my good sir ? Now 
 what do you think I have come for ? " 
 
 Mr. Pickwick put this question as though he were persuaded that it 
 was morally impossible that I could by any means divine the deep 
 purpose of his visit, and that it must be hidden from all human ken. 
 Therefore, although I was rejoiced to think that I had anticipated his 
 diift, I feigned to be quite ignorant of it, and after a brief considera- 
 tion shook my head despairingly. 
 
 " What should you say," said Mr. Pickwick, laying the forefinger of 
 his left hand upon my coat-sleeve, and looking at me with his head 
 thrown back, and a little on one side, " what should you say if I 
 confessed that after reading your account of yourself and your little 
 society, I had come here, a humble candidate for one of those emj)ty 
 chairs ? " 
 
 " I should say," I returned, " that I know of only one circumstance 
 which could still further endear that little society to me, and that 
 would bo the associating with it my old friend, for you must let nie 
 call you so, my old friend, Mr. Pickwick." 
 
 As I made him this answer every feature of Mr. Pickwick's face 
 fused itself into one all-pervading expression of delight. After 
 shaking mo heartily by both hands at once, he patted me gently on tlio 
 back, and then I well understood why coloured up to the eyes, and 
 liojied with great earnestness of manner that he had not hurt me. 
 
 If he had, I would have been content that he should have repeated 
 the offence a hundred times rather than suppose so ; but as he had 
 not, I had no difiiculty in changing the subject by making an inquiry 
 which had been upon my lips twenty times already, 
 
 " You have not told me," said I, " anything about Sam Weller." 
 
 " ! Sam," replied Mr, Pickwick, " is the same as ever. The same 
 true, faithful fellow that ho ever was. What should I tell you about 
 Sam, my dear sir, except that he is more indispensablp to my happi- 
 ness and comfort every day of my life ? '' 
 
 *' And Mr. Weller senior ? " said I. 
 
 " Old Mr. Weller," returned Mr. Pickwick, " is in no respect more 
 altered than Sam, unless it be that he is a little more opinionated 
 than he was formerly, and perhaps at times more talkative. lie 
 spends a good deal of his time now in our neighbourhood, and has so 
 constituted himself a part of my bodyguard, that when I ask permis- 
 sion for Sam to have a scat in your kitchen on clock nights (supposing 
 your three friends think me worthy to fill one of the chairs), I am 
 afraid I must often include Mr, Weller too," 
 
 I very readily pledged myself to give both Sam and his father a 
 free admission to my house at all hours and seasons, and this point
 
 5o8 Master Huniphycy s Clock. 
 
 settled, wo fell into a lengthy conversation which was carried on with 
 as little reserve on both sides as if we had been intimate friends from 
 our youth, and which conveyed to me the comfortable assurance that 
 Mr. Pickwick's buoyancy of spirit, and indeed all his old cheerful 
 characteristics, were wholly unimpaired. As he had spoken of tho 
 consent of my friends as being yet in abeyance, I repeatedly assured 
 him that his proposal was certain to receive their most joyful sanction, 
 and several times entreated that he would give me leave to introduce 
 him to Jack Eedburn and Mr. Miles (who were near at hand) without 
 further ceremony. 
 
 To this proposal, however. Mi*. Pickwick's delicacy would by no 
 means allow him to accede, for he urged that his eligibility must be 
 formally discussed, and that, until this had been done, he could not think 
 of obtruding himself further. The utmost I could obtain from him was 
 a promise that he would attend upon our next night of meeting, that I 
 miglit liave the pleasure of presenting him immediately on his election. 
 
 Mr. Pickwick, having with many bluslies placed in my hands a 
 small roll of paper, which ho termed his " qualification," put a great 
 many questions to me touching my friends, and particularly Jack 
 Iledburn, whom he repeatedly termed " a fine fellow," and in whoso 
 favour I could see he was strongly predisposed. When I had satisfied 
 him on these points, I took him up into my room, that he might make 
 acquaintance with tho old chamber which is our place of meeting. 
 
 " And this," said Mr. Pickwick, stopping short, " is the clock ! 
 Dear me ! And this is really the old clock ! " 
 
 I thoiight he would never have come away from it. After advancing 
 towards it softly, and laying his hand upon it with as much respect 
 and as many smiling looks as if it were alive, he set himself to con- 
 sider it in every possible direction, now mounting on a chair to look 
 at the top, now going down upon his knees to examine tho bottom, 
 now surveying tlie sides with his spectacles almost touching tlie case, 
 and now trying to peep between it and the wall to get a slight view 
 of the back. Then he would retire a pace or two and look up at tho 
 dial to see it go, and then draw Jiear again and stand with his head on 
 one side to hear it tick : never failing to glance towards me at inter- 
 vals of a few seconds each, and nod his head witli such complacent 
 gratification as I am quite unable to describe. Ilis admiration was 
 not confined to tho clock cither, but extended itself to every article in 
 the room ; and really, when he had gone through them every one, and 
 at lust sat liimsolf down in all the six chairs, one after another, to try 
 how they felt, I never saw such a picture of good-humour and happi- 
 ness as he presented, from the top of his shining head down to the 
 very last button of his gaiters. 
 
 I should have been well pleased, and should have had the utmost 
 enjoyment of liis company, if ho had remained with me all day, but 
 my favourite, striking the hour, reminded him that he must take liis 
 leave. I could not forbear telling liim once more how glad he had 
 made me, and we shook hands all tlie way downstairs.
 
 Mr. Pickwick's Tale. 509 
 
 We had no sooner arrived in the Hall than my housekeejier, gliding 
 out of her little room (she had changed her gown and cap, I observed), 
 greeted Mr. Pickwick with her best smile and courtesy ; and the 
 barber, feigning to be accidentally passing on his way out, made him 
 a vast number of bows. "When the housekeeper courtesied, Mr. Pick- 
 wick bowed with the utmost politeness, and when he bowed, the house- 
 keeper courtesied again ; between the housekeeper and the barber, I 
 should say that Mr. Pickwick faced about and bowed with un- 
 diminished affability fifty times at least. 
 
 I saw him to the door ; an omnibus was at the moment passing the 
 corner of the lane, which Mr. Pickwick hailed and ran after with 
 extraordinary nimbleness. When he had got about half-way, ho turned 
 his head, and seeing that I was still looking after him and that I 
 waved my hand, stopped, evidently irresolute whether to come back 
 and shake hands again, or to go on. The man behind the omnibus 
 shouted, and Mr. Pickwick ran a little way towards him : then ho 
 looked round at me, and ran a little way back again. Then there was 
 another shout, and he turned round once more and ran the other way. 
 After several of these vibrations, the man settled the question by 
 taking Mr. Pickwick by the arm and putting him into the carriage ; 
 but his last action was to let down tlie window and wave his hat to 
 me as it drove off. 
 
 I lost no time in opening the parcel ho had left with mo. The 
 following were its contents :- 
 
 MR. Pickwick's tale. 
 
 A good many years have passed away since old John Podgers lived 
 in the town of Windsor, where he was born, and where, in course of 
 time, he came to be comfortably and snugly buried. You may bo 
 sure that in the time of King James the First, Windsor was a very 
 quaint queer old town, and you may take it upon my authority that 
 John Podgers was a very quaint queer old fellow ; consequently he 
 and Windsor fitted each other to a nicety, and seldom parted company 
 even for half a day. 
 
 John Podgers was broad, sturdy, Dutch-built, short, and a very 
 hard eater, as men of his figure often arc. Being a hard sleeper like- 
 wise, he divided his time pretty equally between these two recreations, 
 always falling asleep when he had done eating, and always taking 
 another turn at the trencher when he had done sleeping, by wliich 
 means he grew more corpulent and more drowsy every day of his life. 
 Indeed it used to be currently reported that when he sauntered up 
 and down the sunny side of the street before dinner (as he never failed 
 to do in fair weather), he enjoyed his soundest nap ; but many people 
 held this to be a fiction, as he had several times been seen to look 
 after fat oxen on market-daj's, and had even been heard, by persons 
 of good credit and reputation, to chuckle at the siglit, and say to
 
 5IO Master Humphreys Clock. 
 
 himself with great glee, "Live beef, live beef! " It was upon this 
 evidence that the wisoet people in Windsor (beginning with the local 
 authorities of course) lield that John Podgers was a man of strong, 
 sound sense, not what is called smart, perhaps, and it might bo of a 
 rather lazy and apoplectic turn, but still a man of solid parts, and ono 
 who meant much more than he cared to show. This impression was 
 confirmed by a very dignified way ho had of shaking his head and 
 imparting, at the same time, a pendulous motion to his double chin ; 
 in short, lie passed for one of those people who, being plunged into 
 the Thames, would make no vain efforts to set it afire, but would 
 straightway flop down to the bottom with a deal of gravity, and bo 
 highly respected in consequence by all good men. 
 
 Being well to do in the world, and a peaceful widower, having a 
 great appetite, which, as ho could afford to gratify it, was a luxury 
 and no inconvenience, and a power of going to sleep, which, as ho had 
 no occasion to keep awake, was a most enviable faculty, you will 
 readily suppose that John Podgers was a happy man. But appear- 
 ances are often deceptive when they least seem so, and the truth is 
 that, notwithstanding his extreme sleekness, he was rendered uneasy 
 in his mind and exceedingly uncomfortable by a constant apprehension 
 that beset him night and day. 
 
 You know very well that in those times there flourished divers evil 
 old Avoraen wlio, under the name of Witches, spread great disorder 
 through the land, and inflicted various dismal tortures upon Christian 
 men ; sticking pins and needles into them when they least expected 
 it, and causing them to walk in the air with their feet upwards, to the 
 great terror of their wives and families, who were naturally very much 
 disconcerted when the master of the house unexpectedly came home, 
 knocking at the door with his heels and combing his hair on tho 
 scraper. These were their commonest pranks, but they every day 
 played a hundred others, of which none were less objectionable, and 
 many were much more so, being improper besides ; the result was that 
 vengeance was denounced against all old women, with whom even the 
 king himself had no sympathy (as he certainly ought to have had), for 
 with his own most Gracious liand he penned a most Gracious consign- 
 ment of them to everlasting wrath, and devised most Gracious means 
 for tlicir confusion and slaughter, in virtue whereof scarcely a day 
 passed but one witch at the least M'as most graciously hanged, drowned, 
 or roasted in some part of his dominions. Still the press teemed witli 
 strange and terrible news ivuiw the North or the South, or tho East 
 or t]ie West, relative to witches and their unliappy victims in soiiio 
 corner of the country, and the l*ublic's hair stood on end to that degree 
 that it lifted its hat off its head, and made its face jmlu with terror. 
 
 You may believe tliat the little town of Windsor did not escape tlio 
 gOTKiral contagion. The inliabitauts boiled a witch on the king's 
 birthday and S(;ut a bottle of tlie broth to court, with a dutifid address 
 oxjax'.ssive of their loyalty. The king, being rather friglitened by tho
 
 Infallible Witch-traps. 5 1 1 
 
 present, piously bestowed it upon the Archbishop of Canterbury, and 
 returned an answer to the address, wherein ho gave them golden rules 
 for discovering witches, and laid great stress upon certain protecting 
 charms, and especially horseshoes. Immediately the towns-peoplo 
 went to work nailing up horseshoes over every door, and so many 
 anxious parents apprenticed their children to farriers to keep them 
 out of harm's way, that it became quite a genteel trade, and flourished 
 exceedingly. 
 
 In the midst of all this bustle John Podgers ate and slept as usual, 
 but shook his head a great deal oftenor than was his custom, and was 
 observed to look at the oxen less, and at the old women more. He 
 had a little shelf put tip in his sitting-room, whereon was displayed, 
 in a row which grew longer every week, all the witchcraft literaturo 
 of the time ; he grew learned in charms and exorcisms, hinted at 
 certain questionable females on broomsticks whom ho had seen from 
 his chamber window, riding in the air at night, and was in constant 
 terror of being bewitched. At length, from perpetually dwelling 
 upon this one idea, which, being alone in his head, had all its own 
 way, tlie fear of witches became the single passion of his life. He, 
 who up to that time had never known what it was to dream, began to 
 have visions of witches whenever he fell asleep ; waking, they were 
 incessantly present to his imagination likewise ; and, sleeping or 
 waking, he had not a moment's peace. He began to set witch-traps 
 in the highway, and was often seen lying in wait round the corner for 
 hours together, to watch their eifect. These engines were of simple 
 construction, usually consisting of two straws disposed in the form of 
 a cross, or a piece of a Bible cover with a pinch of salt upon it ; but 
 they were infallible, and if an old woman chanced to stumble over 
 them (as not unfrequently happened, the chosen spot being a broken 
 and stony place), John started from a doze, pounced out upon her, 
 and hung round her neck till assistance arrived, when slio was im- 
 mediately carried away and drowned. By dint of constantly inveigling 
 old ladies and disposing of them in this summary manner, he acquired 
 the reputation of a great public character ; and as he received no 
 harm in these pursuits beyond a scratched face or so, he came, in 
 the course of time, to bo considered witch-proof. 
 
 There was but one person who entertained the least doubt of John 
 Podgcrs's gifts, and that person was his own uci^hew, a wild, roving 
 young fellow of twenty who had been brought up in his uncle's house 
 and lived there still,- that is to say, when ho was at homo, which was 
 not as often as it might have been. As he was an apt scliolar, it was 
 lie who read aloud every fresh piece of strange and terrible intelligence 
 that Jolm Podgers bought ; and this he always did of an evening in 
 the little i")orch in front of the house, round wliich the neighbours 
 would flock in crowds to hear the direful news, for 2)eople like to bo 
 frightened, and when they can bo frightened for nothing and at 
 another mau's exj)cnse, tli^y like it all the better.
 
 512 
 
 Master Humphrey's Clock. 
 
 One fine midsummer evening, a group of persons were gathered in 
 this i)lacc, listening intently to Will Marks (that was the nephew's 
 name), as Avith his cap very miich on one side, his arm coiled slyly 
 round the waist of a pretty girl who sat hcsidc him, and his face 
 Fcrewed into a comical expression intended to represent extreme 
 gravity, he read with Heaven huows how many embellishments of 
 his own a dismal account of a gentleman down in Northamptonphiro 
 under the influence of witchcraft and taken forcible possession of by 
 the Devil, who was playing his very self with him. John Podgers, 
 
 in a high sugar-loaf hat and short cloak, filled the opposite seat, and 
 surveyed the auditory with a look of mingled pride and horror very 
 edifying to see ; while tlie hearers, witli their heads thrust forward 
 und their mouths open, listened and trembled, and hoi)ed there was a 
 great deal more to come. Sometimes Will stopped for an instant to 
 look round upon liis eager audience, and then, with a more comical 
 expression of face than before and a settling of himself comfortably, 
 wliicli included a squeeze of the young lady before mentioned, ho 
 launched into some new wonder surpassing all the others. 
 
 The sotting sun shod his lust goldon rays upon this little party,
 
 A Message for JoJin Podgers. 5 1 3 
 
 who, absorbed in their present occupation, took no heed of the approach 
 of night, or the glory in which the day went down, when the sound of 
 a horse, approaching at a good round trot, invading the silence of the 
 hour, caused the reader to make a sudden stop, and the listeners to 
 raise their heads in wonder. Nor was their wonder diminished when 
 a horseman dashed up to the porch, and abruptly checking his steed, 
 inquired where one John Podgers dwelt. 
 
 " Here ! " cried a dozen voices, while a dozen hands pointed out 
 sturdy John, still basking in the terrors of the pamphlet. 
 
 The rider, giving his bridle to one of those who surrounded him, 
 dismounted, and approached John, hat in hand, but with great haste. 
 
 " Whence come ye ? " said John. 
 
 " From Kingston, master." 
 
 " And wherefore ? " 
 
 " On most pressing business." 
 
 " Of what nature ? " 
 
 " Witchcraft." 
 
 Witchcraft ! Everybody looked aghast at the breathless messenger, 
 and the breathless messenger looked equally aghast at everybody 
 except Will Marks, who, finding himself unobserved, not only squeezed 
 the young lady again, but kissed her twice. Surely he must have 
 been bewitched himself, or he never could have done it and the 
 young lady too, or she never would have let him. 
 
 " Witchcraft ! " cried Will, drowning the sound of his last kiss, 
 which was rather a loud one. 
 
 The messenger turned towards him, and with a frown repeated tho 
 word more solemnly than before ; then told his errand, which was, iw 
 brief, that the people of Kingston had been greatly terrified for some 
 nights past by hideous revels, held by witches beneath the gibbet 
 within a mile of the town, and related and deposed to by chauco 
 wayfarers who had passed within ear-shot of the spot ; that the sound 
 of their voices in their wild orgies had been plainly heard by many 
 persons ; that three old women laboured under strong suspicion, and 
 that precedents had been consulted and solemn council had, and it 
 was found that to identify tho hags some single person must watch 
 upon the spot alone ; that no single person had the courage to jierform 
 the task ; and that he had been dispatched express to solicit John 
 Podgers to undertake it that very night, as being a man of groat 
 renown, who bore a charmed life, and was proof against unholy spells. 
 
 John received this communication with much composure, and said 
 in a few words, that it would have aftordcd him inexpressible pleasure 
 to do the Kingston people so sliglit a service, if it were not for his 
 unfortunate propensity to fall asleep, which no man regretted more 
 than himself upon the present occasion, but which quite settled tho 
 question. Nevertheless, he said, there ivas a gentleman present (and 
 here he looked very hard at a tall farrier), who, having been engaged 
 all his life in the manufacture of horse-shoes, must bo quite in-
 
 514 Master Humphrey's Clock. 
 
 vulnorablo to the power of witches, and who, he had no doubt, from 
 his own reputation for bravery and good-nature, would readily accept 
 the commission. The farrier politely thanked him for his good 
 opinion, which it would always bo his study to deserve, but added 
 that, with regard to the present little matter, he couldn't think of it 
 on any account, as his departing on such an errand would certainly 
 occasion the instant death of his wife, to whom, as they all knew, he was 
 tenderly attached. Now, so far from this circumstance being notorious, 
 everybody had suspected the reverse, as the farrier was in the habit 
 of beating his lady rather more than tender husbands usually do ; all 
 the married men present, however, applauded his resolution with 
 great vehemence, and one and all declared that tlicy would stop at 
 home and die if needful (which happily it was not) in defence of their 
 lawful partners. 
 
 This burst of enthusiasm over, they began to look, as by oue 
 consent, toward Will Marks, who, with his cap more on one side than 
 over, sat watching the proceedings with extraordinary uucouceru. Ho 
 had never been heard openly to exjiress his disbelief in witches, but 
 had often cut such jokes at their expense as left it to be inferred ; 
 publicly stating on several occasions that he considered a broomstick 
 an inconvenient charger, and oue especially unsuited to the dignity of 
 the female charactei', and indulging in other free remarks of the same 
 tendency, to the great amusement of his wild companions. 
 
 As they looked at Will they began to whisper and murmur among 
 tlicmselves, and at length one man cried, " Why don't you ask Will 
 Marks?" 
 
 As this was what everybody had been thinking of, they all took up 
 tlio word, and cried in concert, " Ah ! why don't you ask Will ? " 
 
 " He don't care," said the farrier. 
 
 " Not he," added another voice in the crowd. 
 
 " He don't believe in it, you know," sneered a little man with a 
 yellow face and a taunting nose and chin, which he thrust out from 
 under the arm of a long man before him. 
 
 " Besides," said a red-faced gentleman with a gruff voice, " he's a 
 single man." 
 
 " TJiat's the point ! " said the farrier ; and all the married men 
 murmured, ah! that was it, and they only Avished thoy were single 
 themselves; they would show liim wliat spirit was, very soon. 
 
 The messenger looked towards Will IMarks beseechingly. 
 
 " It will be a wet night, friend, and my grey nag is tired after 
 yesterday's work " 
 
 n(;re tlicrc was a general titter. 
 
 " ]>ut," resumed AVill, looking about liim with a smile, " if nobody 
 else puts in a better elaiju to go, for the credit of the town I am your 
 man, and I would be, if I had to go afuot. In five minutes I shall be 
 ill tlio saddhi, uidess I am depriving any \\oi't]iy gentleman liere of 
 the liojiuur of llie alveuture, which I wouldn't do fur the world."'
 
 Co7tsiderate Husbands. 515 
 
 But hero arose a double diificulty, for not only did John Podgers 
 combat tho resolution with all the words ho had, which were not 
 many, but tho young lady combated it too with all the tears she had, 
 which were very many indeed. Will, however, being inflexible, 
 parried his uncle's objections with a joke, and coaxed the young lady 
 into a smile in three short whispers. As it was plain that he set his 
 mind upon it, and would go, John Podgers offered him a few first-rate 
 charms out of his own pocket, which ho dutifully declined to accept ; 
 and tho young lady gave him a kiss, which he also returned. 
 
 *' You see what a rare thing it is to be married," said Will, " and 
 how careful and considerate all these husbands are. There's not a 
 man among them but his heart is leaj)ing to forestall mo in this 
 adventure, and yet a strong sense of duty keeps him back. Tho 
 husbands in this one little town are a pattern to the world, and so 
 must the wives be too, for that matter, or they could never boast half 
 the influence they have ! " 
 
 Waiting for no reply to this sarcasm, ho snapped his fingers and 
 withdrew into the house, and thence into the stable, while some 
 busied themselves in refreshing the messenger, and others in baiting 
 his steed. In less than the specified time he returned by another 
 way, with a good cloak hanging over his arm, a good sword girded 
 by his side, and leading his good horse caparisoned for the journey. 
 
 " Now, " said Will, leaping into tho saddle at a bound, " up and 
 away. Upon your mettle, friend, and push on. Good-night ! " 
 
 He kissed his hand to the girl, nodded to his drowsy uncle, waved 
 his cap to the rest and off they flew pell-mell, as if all tho witclies 
 iu England were in their horses' legs. They were out of sight in a 
 minute. 
 
 The men who were left behind shook their heads doubtfully, stroked 
 their chins, and shook their heads again. The farrier said that cer- 
 tainly Will Marks was a good horseman, nobody should ever say ho 
 denied that : but he was rash, very rash, and there was no telling 
 what the end of it might be ; what did ho go for, that was what he 
 wanted to know ? Ho wished tho young fellow no harm, but why 
 did he go ? Everybody echoed these words, and shook their heads 
 again, having done which they wished John Po<lgors good-night, and 
 straggled home to bed. 
 
 The Kingston people were iu their first sleep when Will Marks 
 and his conductor rode through the town and up to the door of a 
 liouse where sundry grave functionaries were assembled, anxiously 
 expecting tho arrival of tho rcnov.Tied Podgers. They were a littlo 
 disappointed to find a gay young man in his place ; but they put the 
 best fixce upon tho matter, and gave him full instructions how ho was 
 to conceal himself behind the gibbet, and watch and listen to the 
 witches, and hoAV at a certain time he was to burst forth and cut and 
 slash among them vigorously, bo that tho suspected parties miglit bo 
 found bleeding in their beds next day, and thoroughly confounded.
 
 5i6 
 
 Master Humphreys Clock. 
 
 They gave hiiu a great quantity of wholesome advice besides, and 
 which was more to the purpose with Will a good supper. All theso 
 things being done, and midnight nearly come, they sallied forth to 
 show him the spot where ho was to keep his dreary vigil. 
 
 The night was by this time dark and threatening. There was a 
 rumbling of distant thunder, and a low sighing of wind among the 
 trees, which was very dismal. The potentates of the town kept so 
 imcommonly close to Will that they trod upon his toes, or stumbled 
 against his ankles, or nearly tripped up his heels at every step ho 
 took, and, besides theso annoyances, their teeth chattered so with 
 fear, that he seemed to be accompanied by a dirge of castanets. 
 
 At last they made a halt at the opening of a lonely, desolate space, 
 and, pointing to a black object at some distance, asked Will if ho saw 
 that, yonder. 
 
 " Yes," he replied. " What then ? " 
 
 Informing him abruptly that it was the gibbet where he was to 
 watch, they wished him good-night in an extremely friendly manner, 
 and ran back as fast as their feet would carry them. 
 
 Will walked boldly to tho gibbet, and, glancing upwards when ho 
 came under it, saw certainly with satisfaction that it was empty, 
 and that nothing dangled from the top but some iron chains, which 
 swung mournfully to and fro as they were moved by the breeze. 
 After a careful survey of every quarter he determined to take his 
 station with his face towards tho town ; both because that would place 
 him with his back to the wind, and because, if any trick or surprise 
 were attempted, it would probably come from that direction in tlie 
 first instance. Having taken these precautions, he wrajiped his cloak 
 about him so tliat it left the handle of his sword free, and ready to 
 his hand, and leaning against tho gallows-tree with his cap not qxiite 
 so much on one side as it had been before, took up his position for 
 the ni"ht.
 
 On the Look-out for Witches. 517 
 
 SECOND CHAPTER OF ME. PICKWICK's TALE. 
 
 We left Will Marks leaning nnder the gibbet with bis face towards 
 the town, scanning the distance with a keen eye, which sought to 
 pierce the darkness and catch the earliest glimpse of any person or 
 persons that might approach towards him. But all was quiet, and, 
 save the howling of the wind as it swept across the heath in gusts, 
 and the creaking of the chains that dangled above his head, there was 
 no sound to break the sullen stillness of the night. After half an 
 hour or so this monotony became more disconcerting to Will than the 
 most furious uproar would have been, and he heartily wished for some 
 one antagonist with whom he might have a fair stand-up fight, if it 
 were only to warm himself. 
 
 Truth to tell, it was a bitter wind, and seemed to blow to the very 
 heart of a man whose blood, heated but now with rapid riding, was 
 the more sensitive to the chilling blast. Will was a daring fellow, 
 and cared not a jot for hard knocks or sharp blades ; but he could not 
 persuade himself to move or walk about, having just that vague 
 expectation of a sudden assault which made it a comfortable thing to 
 have something at his back, even though that something were a 
 gallows-tree. He had no great faith in the superstitions of the age, 
 still such of them as occurred to him did not serve to lighten the 
 time, or to render his situation the more endurable. He remembered 
 how witches were said to repair at that ghostly hour to churchyards 
 and gibbets, and such-like dismal spots, to pluck the bleeding 
 mandrake or scrape the flesh from dead men's bones, as choice 
 ingredients for their spells ; how, stealing by night to lonely places, 
 they dug graves with their finger-nails, or anointed themselves before 
 riding in the air, with a delicate pomatum made of the fat of infants 
 newly boiled. These, and many other fabled practices of a no less 
 agreeable nature, and all having some reference to the circumstances 
 in which he was placed, passed and repassed in quick succession 
 through the mind of Will Marks, and adding a shadowy dread to that 
 distrust and watchfulness which his situation inspired, rendered it, 
 upon the whole, sufficiently uncomfortable. As he had foreseen, too, 
 the rain began to descend heavily, and driving before the wind in a 
 thick mist, obscured even those few objects which the darkness of the 
 night had before imperfectly revealed. 
 
 " Look ! " shrieked a voice. " Great Heaven, it has fallen down, 
 and stands erect as if it lived ! " 
 
 The speaker was close behind him ; the voice was almost at his car. 
 W^ill threw off his cloak, drew his sword, and darting swiftly round, 
 seized a woman by the wrist, who, recoiling from him with a dreadful 
 shriek, fell struggling upon her knees. Another woman, clad, like 
 her whom he had grasped, in mourning garments, stood rooted to the 
 spot on which they were, gazing upon his face with wild and glaring 
 eyes that quite appalled him.
 
 5l8 Master Humphrey's Cloek. 
 
 " Say," cried Will, when they had confronted each other thus for 
 some time, " what are ye ? " 
 
 " Say what are yow," returned the woman, " who trouhlo even this 
 obscene resting-place of the dead, and strip the gibbet of its honoured 
 burden ? Where is the body ? " 
 
 He looked in wonder and affright from the woman who questioned 
 him to the other whose arm he clutched. 
 
 " Where is the body ? " repeated his questioner more firmly tlian 
 before. " You wear no livery which marks you for the hireling of 
 the government. You arc no friend to us, or I should recognise you, 
 for the friends of such as we are few in number. What are you tlicn, 
 and wherefore are you here ? " 
 
 " I am no foe to tlie distressed and helpless," said Will. " Arc yo 
 among that number ? ye should bo by your looks." 
 
 " We are ! " was the answer. 
 
 " Is it ye who have been wailing and weeping hero under cover of 
 the night ? " said Will. 
 
 " It is," replied the woman sternly ; and pointing, as she spoke, 
 towards her companion, " she mourns a husband, and I a brother. 
 ICven the bloody law that wreaks its vengeance on the dead does not 
 make that a crime, and if it did 'twould bo alike to us who are past 
 its fear or favour." 
 
 Will glanced at the two females, and could barely discern that the 
 one whom he addressed was much the elder, and that the other was 
 young and of a slight figure. Both were deadly pale, their garments 
 wet and worn, their hair dishevelled and streaming in the wind, 
 themselves bowed down with grief and misery ; their whole appear- 
 ance most dejected, wretched, and forlorn. A sight so difierent from 
 any ho had expected to encounter touched him to the quick, and all 
 idea of anything but their pitiable condition vanished before it. 
 
 " I am a rough, blunt yeoman," said Will. " Why I came here is 
 told in a word ; you have been overheard at a distance in the silence 
 of the night, and I have undertaken a watch for hags or spirits. I 
 came here expecting an adventure, and prepared to go through with 
 any. If tliere be aught that I can do to help or aid you, name it, and 
 on the faith of a man who can be secret and trusty, I will stand by 
 you to the death." 
 
 " How comes this gibbet to be empty ? " asked the elder female. 
 
 ' I swear to you," replied Will, " that I know as little as yourself. 
 But this I know, that when I came here an hour ago or so, it was fu; 
 it is now ; and if, as I gather from your question, it was not so lust 
 night, sure I am that it has been secretly disturbed without the 
 knowledge of tlio folks in yonder town. Bethink you, therefore, 
 whetlier you have no friends in league with you or with him on whom 
 the law has done its worst, by whom these sad remains have been 
 removed for burial." 
 
 The women spoke together, and Will retired a pace or two while
 
 TJie Masked Cavalier. 519 
 
 they conversed apart. Ho could hear them sob and moan, and saw 
 that they wrung their hands in fruitless agony. Ho could make out 
 little that they said, but between whiles he gathered enough to assure 
 him that his suggestion was not very wide of the mark, and that they 
 not only suspected by whom tho body had been removed, but also 
 whither it had been conveyed. When they had been in conversation 
 a long time, they turned towards him once more. This time the 
 younger female spoke. 
 
 " You have offered us your help ? " 
 
 " I have." 
 
 " And given a pledge that you are still willing to redeem ? " 
 
 "Yes. So far as I may, keeping all plots and conspiracies at 
 arm's length." 
 
 Follow us, friend." 
 
 "Will, whoso self-possession was now quite restored, needed no 
 second bidding, but with his drawn sword in his hand, and his cloak 
 so muffled over his left arm as to serve for a kind of shield without 
 offering any impediment to its free action, suffered them to lead the 
 way. Through mud and mire, and wind and rain, they walked in 
 silence a full mile. At length they turned into a dark lane, where, 
 suddenly starting out from beneath some trees where he had taken 
 shelter, a man appeared, having in his charge three saddled horses. 
 One of these (his own apparently), in obedience to a whisper from tho 
 women, he consigned to Will, who, seeing that they mounted, mounted 
 also. Then, without a word spoken, they rode on together, leaving 
 the attendant behind. 
 
 They made no halt nor slackened their pace until they arrived near 
 Putney. At a large wooden house which stood apart from any other 
 they alighted, and giving their horses to one who was already waiting, 
 passed in by a side door, and so up some narrow creaking stairs into a 
 small panelled chamber, whore Will was left alone. He had not been 
 here very long, when the door was softly opened, and there entered to 
 him a cavalier whose face was concealed beneath a black mask. 
 
 Will stood upon his guard, and scrutinised this figure from head to 
 foot. The form was that of a man pretty far advanced in life, but of 
 a firm and stately carriage. His dress was of a rich and costly kind, 
 biit so soiled and disordered that it was scarcely to bo recognised for 
 one of those gorgeous suits which the expensive taste and fashion of 
 the time prescribed for men of any rank or station. Ho was booted 
 and spurred, and bore about him oven as many tokens of the state of 
 the roads as Will himself. All this he noted, while the eyes behind 
 tho mask regarded him with equal attention. This survey over, tho 
 cavalier broke silence. 
 
 " Thou'rt young and bold, and wouldst be richer than thou art ? " 
 
 " Tho two first I am," returned Will. " The last I have scarcely 
 thought of. But be it so. Say that I would be richer than I am; 
 what tb.en ? "
 
 520 Master Hioiiplireys Clock. 
 
 " The way lief5 before thee now," replied the Mask. 
 
 " Show it me." 
 
 " First let me iuform thee, that thou wert brought here to-night 
 lest thou shoulJst too soon have told thy tale to those who placed 
 thee on the watch." 
 
 " I thouglit as much when I followed," said Will. " But I am no 
 blab, not I." 
 
 " Good," returned the Mask. " Now listen. He who was to have 
 executed the enterprise of burying that body, which, as thou hast 
 suspectetl, was taken down to-night, has loft us in our need." 
 
 Will nodded, and thought within himself that if the Mask were to 
 attempt to play any tricks, the first eyelet-hole on the left-hand side 
 of his doublet, counting from the buttons up the front, would be a 
 very good place in which to j)ink him neatly. 
 
 " Thou art here, and the emergency is dcs2)crate. I propose his 
 task to thee. Convoy the body (now cofiined in this house), by means 
 that I shall show, to the cliurch of St. Duustan in Loudon to-morrow 
 night, and thy service shall be ricldy paid. Thou'rt about to ask 
 whose corpse it is. Seek not to know. I warn thee, seek not to 
 know. Felons hang in chains on every moor and heath. Believe, as 
 otlicrs do, that this was one, and ask no further. The murders of 
 state policy, its victims or avengers, had best remain unknown to such 
 as thee." 
 
 " The mystery of this service," said Will, " bespeaks its danger. 
 Wliat is tlie reward ? " 
 
 " One hundred golden unities," rei)licd the cavalier. " The danger 
 to one who cannot be recognised as the friend of a fallen cause is not 
 great, but there is some hazard to be run. Decide between that and 
 tlic reward." 
 
 " What if I refuse ? " said Will. 
 
 " Depart in peace, in God's name," returned tlie Mask in a 
 melanclioly tone, " and keep our secret, remembering that those who 
 brought thee here were cruslied and stricken women, and tliat those 
 who l)ado thee g(j free could have had thy life with one word, and no 
 man the wiser." 
 
 ]\Ien were readier to undertake dcsi)cratc adventures in those times 
 tlian tlicy are now. In this case the temptation Avas great, and the 
 punislnncnt, even in case of detection, was not likely to be very 
 severe, as Will came of a loyal stock, and his uncle was in good 
 repute, and a passable tale to account for his possession of the body 
 and liis ignorance of the identity might be easily devised. 
 
 Tlie cavalier exidiiined that a covered cart liad been prepared for 
 tlie purpose ; that the time of departure could be arranged so that lie 
 should reacli London Bridge at dusk, and proceed through the City 
 after the day had closed in ; that peoido would be ready at his 
 journey's end to place the coffin in a vault without a minute's delay ; 
 tliat ollieious inijuirers in the streets would be easily rtipelled by the
 
 A Alysterious Service undertaken. 521 
 
 tale that he was carrying for interment the corpse of one who had 
 died of the plague ; and in short showed him every reason why he 
 should succeed, and none why he should fail. After a time they were 
 joined by another gentleman, masked like the first, who added new 
 arguments to those which had been already urged ; the wretched wife, 
 too, added her tears and prayers to their calmer representations ; and 
 in the end, Will, moved by compassion and good-nature, by a love of 
 the marvellous, by a mischievous anticipation of the terrors of the 
 Kingston people when he should be missing next day, and finally, by 
 the prospect of gain, took upon himself the task, and devoted all his 
 energies to its successful execution. 
 
 The following night, when it was quite dark, the hollow echoes of 
 old London Bridge responded to the rumbling of the cart which con- 
 tained the ghastly load, the object of Will Marks' care. Sufficiently 
 disguised to attract no attention by his garb, Will walked at the 
 horse's head, as unconcerned as a man could be who was sensible that 
 he had now arrived at the most dangerous part of his undertaking, 
 but full of boldness and confidence. 
 
 It was now eight o'clock. After nine, none could walk the streets 
 without danger of their lives, and even at this hour, robberies and 
 murder Avere of no uncommon occurrence. The shops upon the 
 bridge were all closed ; the low wooden arches thrown across the 
 way were like so many black pits, in every one of which ill-favoured 
 fellows lurked in knots of three or four ; some standing upright 
 against the wall, lying in wait ; others skulking in gateways, and 
 thrusting out their uncombed heads and scowling eyes ; others 
 crossing and recrossing, and constantly jostling both horse and man 
 to provoke a quarrel ; others stealing away and summoning their 
 companions in a low whistle. Once, even in that short passage, there 
 was the noise of scuffling and the clash of swords behind him, but 
 W^ill, who knew the City and its ways, kept straight on and scarcely 
 turned his head. 
 
 The streets being unpaved, the rain of the night before had con- 
 verted them into a perfect quagmire, which the splashing water-spouts 
 from the gables, and the filth and offal cast from the different houses, 
 swelled in no small degree. These odious matters being left to 
 putrefy in the close and heavy air, emitted an insupportable stench, 
 to which every court and passage poured forth a contribution of its 
 own. Many parts, even of the main streets, with their projecting 
 stories tottering overhead and nearly shutting out the sky, were more 
 like huge chimneys than open ways. At the corners of some of these, 
 great bonfires were burning to prevent infection from the plagxie, of 
 which it was rumoured that some citizens had lately died ; and few, 
 who availing themselves of the light thus afforded paused for a 
 moment to look around them, would have been disposed to doubt the 
 existence of the disease, or wonder at its dreadful visitations. 
 
 But it was not in such scenes as these, or even in the deep and
 
 522 Master Humphrey's Clock. 
 
 miry road, that Will Marks found tho chief obstacles to his progress. 
 There wore kites and ravens feeding in tho streets (tho only scavengers 
 tho City kept), who, scenting what he carried, followed the cart or 
 fluttered on its top, and croakod their knowledge of its burden and 
 their ravenous appetite for prey. There were distant fires, where tho 
 poor wood and plaster tenements wasted fiercely, and whither crowds 
 made their way, clamouring eagerly for plunder, boating down all 
 who came within their reach, and yelling like devils let loose. There 
 were single-handed men flying from bands of ruffians, who pursued 
 them with naked weapons, and hunted them savagely ; there were 
 drunken, desperate robbers issuing from their dens and staggering 
 through tho open streets where no man dared molest them ; there 
 were vagabond servitors returning from tho Boar Garden, where had 
 been good sport that day, dragging after them their torn and bleeding 
 dogs, or leaving them to die and rot upon tho road. Nothing was 
 abroad but cruelty, violence, and disorder. 
 
 Many were the interruptions which Will Marks encountered from 
 these stragglers, and many the narrow escapes ho made. Now some 
 stout bully would take his seat upon tho cart, insisting to be driven 
 to his own homo, and now two or three men would como down upon 
 him together, and demand that on peril of his life he showed them 
 what ho had inside. Then a party of tho city v/atch, upon their 
 rounds, would draw across tho road, and not satisfied with his talo, 
 question him closely, and revenge themselves by a little cuffing and 
 hustling for maltreatment sustained at other hands that night. All 
 these assailants had to be rebutted, some by fair words, some by foul, 
 and somo by blows. But Will Marks was not tho man to be stopped 
 or turned back now ho had penetrated so far, and though ho got on 
 slowly, still ho made his way down Fleet Street and reached the 
 church at last. 
 
 As he had been forewarned, all was in readiness. Directly ho 
 stopped, the coffin was removed by four men, who appeared so 
 suddenly that they seemed to have started from tho earth. A fifth 
 mounted tho cart, and scarcely allowing Will time to snatch from it a 
 little bundle contaiiiing such of liis own clothes as ho had tlirown off 
 on assuming his disguise, drove briskly away. Will never saw cart 
 or man again. 
 
 He followed tho body into tho clmrch, and it was well ho lost no 
 time in doing so, for the door was immediately closed. Thcro was no 
 liglit in the building save that wliich came from a couplo of torches 
 borne by two men in cloaks, who stood upon tho brink of a 
 vault. Each supported a female figure, and all observed a profouiid 
 silence. 
 
 By tliis dim and solemn glare, wliicli made Will feel as though 
 light itself were dead, and its tomb the dreary arches that frowned 
 alwvo, they placed tho coffin in tho vault, with uncovered heads, and 
 closed it up. One of the torch-bearers then turned to Will, and
 
 The Mysterious Service performed. 523 
 
 stretched forth his hand, in which was a purse of gold. Something 
 told him directly that those were the same eyes which he had seen 
 beneath the mask. 
 
 " Take it," said the cavalier in a low voice, " and be happy. Though 
 these have been hasty obsequies, and no priest has blessed the work, 
 there will not be the less peace with thee thereafter, for having laid 
 his bones beside those of his little children. Keep thy own counsel, 
 for thy sake no less than ours, and God be with thee ! " 
 
 " The blessing of a widowed mother on thy head, good friend ! " 
 cried the younger lady through her tears ; " the blessing of one who 
 has now no hope or rest but in this grave ! " 
 
 "Will stood with the purse in his hand, and involuntarily made a 
 gesture as though he would return it, for though a thoughtless fellow, 
 he was of a frank and generous nature. But the two gentlemen, 
 extinguishing their torches, cautioned him to bo gone, as their 
 common safety would be endangered by a longer delay ; and at the 
 same time their retreating footsteps sounded through the church. Ho 
 turned, therefore, towards the point at which he had entered, and 
 seeing by a faint gleam in the distance that the door was again 
 partially open, groped his way towards it and so passed into the street. 
 
 Meantime the local authorities of Kingston had kept watch and 
 ward all the previous night, fancying every now and then that dismal 
 shrieks were borne towards them on the wind, and frequently winking 
 to each other, and drawing closer to the fire as they drank the health 
 of the lonely sentinel, upon whom a clerical gentleman present was 
 especially severe by reason of his levity and youthful folly. Two or 
 three of the gravest in company, who were of a theological turn, pro- 
 pounded to him the question, whether such a character was not but 
 poorly armed for single combat with the Devil, and whether ho 
 himself would not have been a stronger opponent ; but the clerical 
 gentleman, sharply reproving them for their jiresumption in discussing 
 such questions, clearly showed that a fitter champion than Will could 
 scarcely have been selected, not only for that being a child of Satan, 
 ho was the less likely to bo alarmed by the appearance of his own 
 father, but because Satan himself would be at his case in such company, 
 and would not scruple to kick up his heels to an extent which it was 
 quite certain ho would never venture before clerical eyes, under 
 whose influence (as was notorious) he became quite a tame and milk- 
 and-water character. 
 
 But when next morning arrived, and with it no Will Marks, and 
 when a strong party repairing to the spot, as a strong party ventured 
 to do in broad day, found Will gone and the gibbet empty, matters 
 grew serious indeed. The day passing away and no news arriving, 
 and the night going on also without any intelligence, the thing 
 grow more tremendous still ; in short, the neighbourhood worked 
 itself up to such a comfortable pitch of mystery and horror, that 
 it is a great question whether tlio general feeling was not one of
 
 5:?4 Master HjimpJiyey s Clock. 
 
 excessive disappointment, when, on the second morning, Will Marks 
 returned. 
 
 However this may be, back Will came in a very cool and collected 
 state, and appearing not to trouble himself much about anybody 
 except old John Podgers, who, having been sent for, was sitting in 
 the Town Hall crying slowly, and dozing between whiles. Having 
 embraced his uncle and assured him of his safety, Will mounted on a 
 table and told his story to the crowd. 
 
 And surely they would have been the most unreasonable crowd 
 that over assembled together, if they had been in the least respect 
 disappointed with the tale he told them ; for besides describing the 
 Witches' Dance to the minutest motion of their logs, and performing 
 it in character on the table, with the assistance of a broomstick, ho 
 related liow they had carried off the body in a copper caldron, and so 
 bewitched him, that he lost his senses until he found himself lying 
 under a hedge at least ten miles off, whence he had straiglitway 
 returned as they then beheld. The story gained such universal 
 applause that it soon afterwards brought down express from London 
 the great witch-finder of the age, the Heaven-born Hopkins, who 
 having examined Will closely on several points, pronounced it tho 
 most extraordinary and the best accredited witch story ever known, 
 under which title it was published at tlic Three Bibles on London 
 Bridge, in small quarto, witli a view of the caldron from an original 
 drawing, and a portrait of the clerical gentleman as he sat by the fire. 
 
 On one point Will was particularly careful : and that was to 
 describe for the witches he had seen, three impossible old females, 
 whose likenesses never were or will be. Thus he saved the lives of 
 the suspected parties, and of all other old women who were dragged 
 before him to be identified. 
 
 This circumstance occasioned John Podgers much grief and sorrow, 
 until liapponing one day to cast his eyes upon his liousekeepcr, and 
 observing her to be plainly afflicted witli rheumatism, he procured 
 her to be burnt as an undoubted witch. For tliis service to the state 
 he was immediately knighted, and became from that time Sir John 
 Podgers. 
 
 Will Marks never gained any clue to the mystery in whicli he had 
 been an actor, nor did any inscription in tlic churcli, which lie often 
 visited afterwards, nor any of the limited inquiries that he dared to 
 make, yield liim the least assistance. As he kejjt liis own secret, he was 
 compelled to spend tlie gold discreetly and sparingly. In tlic course 
 of time he married the young lady of whom I liave already told you, 
 whose maiden name is not recorded, with wliom he led a prosperous 
 and happy life. Years and years after this adventure, it was his wont 
 to tell lier upon a stormy night that it was a great comfort to him to 
 think those bones, to whomsoever tliey miglit liave once belonged, 
 were not bleaeliing in tlie troubled air, but were mouldering away 
 with the dust of their own kith and kindred in a quiet grave.
 
 Mr. Pickwick introduces Two Friends. 525 
 
 FURTHER PARTICULARS OF MASTER HUMPHREY'S VISITOR. 
 
 Being very full of Mr. Pickwick's application, and highly pleased 
 with the compliment he had paid me, it will be readily supposed that 
 long before our next night of meeting I communicated it to my three 
 friends, who unanimously voted his admission into our body. We all 
 looked forward with some impatience to the occasion which would 
 enroll him among us, but I am greatly mistaken if Jack Eedburn and 
 myself were not by many degrees the most impatient of the party. 
 
 At length the night came, and a few minutes after ten Mr. Pick- 
 wick's knock was heard at the street-door. He was shown into a 
 lower room, and I directly took my crooked stick and went to 
 accompany him np-stairs, in order that he might be presented with 
 all honour and formality. 
 
 " Mr. Pickwick," said I, on entering the room, " I am rejoiced to 
 see yon, rejoiced to believe that this is but the opening of a long 
 series of visits to this house, and but the beginning of a close and 
 lasting friendship." 
 
 That gentleman made a suitable reply with a cordiality and frank- 
 ness peculiarly his own, and glanced with a smile towards two persons 
 behind the door, whom I had not at first observed, and whom I 
 immediately recognised as Mr. Samnel Weller and his father. 
 
 It was a warm evening, but the elder Mr. Weller was attired, not- 
 withstanding, in a most capacious greatcoat, and his chin enveloped 
 in a large speckled shawl, such as is usually worn by stage coachmen 
 on active service. He looked very rosy and very stout, especially 
 about the legs, which appeared to have been compressed into his top- 
 boots with some difficulty. His broad-brimmed hat he held under 
 his left arm, and with the forefinger of his right hand he touched his 
 forehead a great many times in acknowledgment of my presence. 
 
 " I am very glad to see you in such good health, Mr. Weller," said I. 
 
 "Why, thankee, sir," returned Mr. Weller, "the axle an't broke 
 yet. We keeps up a steady pace, not too sewere, but vith a moderate 
 degree o' friction, and the consekens is that ve're still a mnnin' and 
 comes in to the time reg'lar. My son Samivel, sir, as you may have 
 read on in history," added Mr. Weller, introducing his first-born. 
 
 I received Sam very graciously, but before he could say a word his 
 father struck in again. 
 
 " Samivel Veller, sir," said the old gentleman, " has con-ferred 
 upon me the ancient title o' grandfather vich had long laid dormouse, 
 and wos s'posed to bo nearly hex-tinct in our family. Sammy, relate 
 a anecdote o' vun o' them boys, that 'ere little anecdote about young 
 Tony sayin' as he vould smoke a pipe unbeknown to his mother." 
 
 " Be quiet, can't you ? " said Sam ; " I never see such a old magpie 
 never ! " 
 
 " That 'ere Tony is the blessedest boy," said Mr. Weller, heedless 
 of this rebuff", " the blessedest boy as ever I see in my days ! of all the
 
 526 
 
 Master Humphrey s Clock. 
 
 charmin'est infants as ever I hocrd tell on, includin' them as was 
 kivcrod over by tlio robin-rcdbroasts arter they'd committed sooicido 
 with blackberries, there never wos any like that 'cro little Tony. 
 He's alvays a playin' vith a quart pot, that boy is ! To see him a 
 Kottin' down on the doorstep pretending to drink out of it, and 
 fetching a long breath artervards, and smoking a bit of firc-vood, and 
 
 0^ 
 
 
 MiSiSSl 
 
 sayin', ' Now I'm grandfather,' to see him a doin' that at two year 
 old is bettor than any play as wos ever wrote. ' Now I'm grand- 
 father!' IIo wouldn't take a j)int pot if you wos to make him a 
 present on it, but he gets his quart, and then lie says, ' Now I'm 
 grandfatlior ! ' " 
 
 l\[r. Wullor was so overpowered by tliis picture that he straiglitway 
 fell into a most alarming fit of coughing, which must certainly havo 
 been attended with some fatal result but for the dexterity and 
 ]iromptitudo of Sam, wlio, taking a firm grasp of tlie sliawl just umhT 
 Ills father's cliin, sliook liim to and fro with great violence, ut tlie 
 same time administering some smart blows between liis slioulders. 
 By tliis curious mode of treatment Mr. ^\\;ller was finally recovered, 
 but willi a vciry crimson face, and in a state of great exhaustion. 
 
 "He'll do now, Sam," said Mr. I'ickwick, who had been in some 
 alarm liiiusclf.
 
 Is the Housekeeper a Widow ? 527 
 
 " He'll do, sir ! " cried Sam, looking reproachfully at bis parent. 
 " Yes, he will do one o' these days, he'll do for his-self and then he'll 
 wish he hadn't. Did anybody ever see sich a inconsiderate old file, 
 laughing into conwulsions afore company, and stamping on the floor 
 as if he'd brought his own carpet vith him and wos under a wager to 
 punch the pattern out in a given time? He'll begin again in a 
 minute. There he's a-goin' off I said he would ! " 
 
 In fact, Mr. Weller, whose mind was still running upon his pre- 
 cocious grandson, was seen to shake his head from side to side, while 
 a laugh, working like an earthquake, below the surface, produced 
 various extraordinary appearances in his face, chest, and shoulders, 
 llie more alarming because unaccompanied by any noise whatever. 
 These emotions, however, gradually subsided, and after three or four 
 short relapses he wiped his eyes with the cuff of his coat, and looked 
 about him with tolerable composure. 
 
 " Afore the governor vith-draws," said Mr. Weller, " there is a 
 pint, respecting vich Sammy has a qvestion to ask. Vile that qvestion 
 is a perwadin this here conwersation, p'raps the gcnl'meu vill permit 
 mc to re-tire." 
 
 " Wot are you goin' away for ? " demanded Sam, seizing his fatlicr 
 by the coat-tail. 
 
 " I never see such a undootiful boy as you, Samivel," returned Mr. 
 Weller. " Didn't you make a solemn promise, amountin' almost to a 
 si^ccches o' wow, that you'd put that 'ere qvcstion on my account ? " 
 
 " Well, I'm agreeable to do it," said Sam, " but not if you go cuttin' 
 ftway like that, as the bull turned round and mildly observed to the 
 drover ven they wos a goadin' him into the butcher's door. The fact 
 is, sir," said Sam, addressing me, " that he wants to know somethiu' 
 respectin' that 'ere lady as is housekeeper here." 
 
 " Ay. What is that ? " 
 
 " Vy, sir," said Sam, grinning still more, " he wishes to know vcther 
 she " 
 
 " In short," interposed old Mr. Weller decisively, a perspiration 
 breaking out upon his forehead, " vether that 'ere old creetur is or is 
 not a widder." 
 
 Mr. Pickwick laughed heartily, and so did I, as I replied decisively, 
 lliat "my housekeeper was a spinster." 
 
 " There ! " cried Sam, " now you're satisfied. You hear she's a 
 spinster." 
 
 " A wot ? " said his father, with deep scorn. 
 
 " A spinster," replied Sara. 
 
 IMr. Weller looked very hard at his son for a minute or two, and 
 then said, 
 
 " Never mind vether she makes jokes or not, that's no matter. Wot 
 I say is, is that 'ere female a widder, or is she not ? " 
 
 " Wot do you mean by her making jokes ? " demanded Sam, quite 
 agluist at the obscurity of his parent's speecli
 
 528 Master Humphrey's Clock. 
 
 " Never you mind, Samivcl," returned Mr. Woller gravely ; " puns 
 may bo wery good things or they may be wcry bad 'uns, and a female 
 may be none the better or she may bo none the vurse for making of 
 'em ; that's got nothing to do vith widders." 
 
 " Wy now," said Sara, looking round, " would anybody believe as a 
 man at his time o' life could bo running his head agin spinsters and 
 punsters being the same thing ? " 
 
 " There an't a straw's difierence between 'em," said Mr. Weller. 
 " Your father didn't drive a coach for so many years, not to be ekal to 
 his own laiigvidge as far as that goes, Sammy." 
 
 Avoiding the question of etymology, upon which the old gentle- 
 man's mind was quite made up, lie was several times assured that the 
 housekeeper had never been married. lie expressed great satisfaction 
 on hearing this, and apologised for the question, remarking that he 
 had been greatly terrified by a widow not long before, and that his 
 natural timidity was increased in consequence. 
 
 " It wos on the rail," said Mr. Weller, witli strong emphasis ; " I 
 wos a goin' down to Birmingham by the rail, and I wos locked up in 
 a close carriage vith a living widdcr. Alone we wos ; the widder and 
 mo wos alone ; and I believe it wos only because we wos alone and 
 there wos no clergyman in the conwayance, that that 'ere widdcr 
 didn't marry me afore vo reached tlio half-way station. Ven I think 
 how she began a screaming as we wos a-goin' xindcr them tunnels in 
 tlie dark, how she kept on a faintin' and kctchin' hold o' me, and 
 how I tried to bust open the door as was tight-locked and pcrwcuted 
 all escape All ! It was a awful tiling, most awful ! " 
 
 Mr. Weller was so very much overcome by tliis retrospect that he 
 was unable, until he had wiped his brow several times, to return any 
 reply to the question whether he approved of railway communication, 
 notwithstanding that it would a])pcar from the answer which he 
 ultimately gave, that ho entertained strong opinions on the subject. 
 
 " I con-sider," said Mr. Weller, " tliat tlic rail is unconstitootional 
 and an inwascr o' priwilcgcs, and I should wcry much like to know 
 what that 'ere old Carter as once stood up for our liberties and wun 'cm 
 too, I should like to know wot he vould say, if he wos alive now, to 
 Englislimen being locked up vith widders, or with anybody again 
 their wills. Wot a old Carter would have said, a old Coachman may 
 say, and I as-sert that in that pint o' view alone, the rail is an 
 inwascr. As to tlio comfort, verc's tlie comfort o' sittin' in a harm- 
 cheer lookin' at brick walls or heaps o' mud, never comin' to a public- 
 house, never seein' a glass o' ale, never goin' through a pike, never 
 meetin' a cliange o' no kind (horses or othervisc), but alvays comin' 
 to a place, ven you come to one at all, the wcry pictcr o' the last, villi 
 the same j)'lcesenien standing about, the saiiu! blessed old bell a riiigin', 
 the same unfort'nate ])coplc standing bcliiud the bars, a waitiii' to ])C 
 let in ; and evorythin' the same cxcei)t tlu; name, vich is wrote up in 
 the same sized letters as the last name, and vith the same colours.
 
 Mr. Weller Senior on Railways. 529 
 
 As to the honour and dignity o' travellin', vere can that be vithout a 
 coachman ; and wot's the rail to sich coachmen and guards as is 
 sometimes forced to go by it, but a outrage and a insult ? As to the 
 pace, wot sort o' pace do you think I, Tony Veller, could have kept 
 a coach goin' at, for five hundred thousand pound a mile, paid in 
 adwance afore the coach was on the road ? And as to the ingein, a 
 nasty, wheezin', creakin', gaspin', puffin', bustin' monster, alvays out 
 o' breath, vith a shiny green-and-gold back, like a unpleasant beetle 
 in that 'ere gas magnifier, as to the ingein as is alvays a pourin' out 
 red-hot coals at night, and black smoke in the day, the sensiblcst 
 thing it does, in my opinion, is, ven there's somethin' in the vay, and 
 it sets up that 'ere friglitful scream vich seems to say, ' Now here's 
 two hundred and forty passengers in the wery greatest extremity o' 
 danger, and here's their two hundred and forty screams in vun ! ' " 
 
 By this time I began to fear that my friends would be rendered 
 impatient by my protracted absence. I therefore begged Mr. Pick- 
 wick to accompany me up-stairs, and left the two Mr. Wellers in the 
 care of the housekeeper, laying strict injunctions upon her to treat 
 them with all possible hospitality. 
 
 IV. 
 THE CLOCK. 
 
 As we were going up-stairs, Mr. Pickwick put on his spectacles, 
 which he had held in his hand hitherto ; arranged his neckerchief, 
 smoothed down his waistcoat, and made many other little preparations 
 of tliat kind which men are accustomed to be mindful of, when they 
 are going among strangers for the first time, and are anxious to 
 impress them pleasantly. Seeing that I smiled, he smiled too, and 
 said that if it had occurred to him before he left home, he would 
 certainly have presented himself in pumps and silk stockings. 
 
 " I would, indeed, my dear sir," he said very seriously ; " I would 
 have shown my respect for the society, by laying aside my gaiters." 
 
 " You may rest assured," said I, " that they would have regretted 
 your doing so very much, for they are quite attached to them." 
 
 " No, really ! " cried Mr. Pickwick, with manifest pleasure. " Do 
 you think they care about my gaiters ? Do you seriously think that 
 they identify me at all with my gaiters ? " 
 
 " I am sure they do," I replied. 
 
 " Well, now," said Mr. Pickwick, " that is one of the most charming 
 and agreeable circumstances that could possibly have occurred to 
 me!" 
 
 I should not have written down this short conversation, but that it 
 
 2m
 
 530 Master Humphrey s Clock. 
 
 developed a slight point in Mr. Pickwick's character, with which I 
 was not previously acquainted. Ho has a secret pride in his legs. 
 The manner in which he spoke, and the accompanying glance he 
 bestowed upon his tights, convince me that Mr. Pickwick regards his 
 legs with much innocent vanity. 
 
 " But here aro our friends," said I, opening the door and taking his 
 arm in mine ; " let them speak for themselves. Gentlemen, I pi'csent 
 to you Mr. Pickwick." 
 
 ^Ir. Pickwick and I must have been a good contrast just then. I, 
 leaning quietly on my crutch-stick, with something of a care-worn, 
 patient air ; he, having hold of my arm, and bowing in every direction 
 with the most elastic politeness, and an expression of face whoso 
 spriglitly cheerfulness and good-humour knew no bounds. The 
 difference between us must have been more striking yet, as we 
 advanced towards the table, and the amiable gentleman, adapting his 
 jocund stejj to my poor tread, had his attention divided between 
 treating my infirmities with the utmost consideration, and affecting to 
 be wholly unconscious that I required any. 
 
 I made him personally known to each of my friends in turn. First, 
 to the deaf gentleman, whom he regarded with much interest, and 
 accosted with great frankness and cordiality. He had evidently 
 some vague idea, at the moment, that my friend being deaf must be 
 dumb also ; for when the latter oiicncd his lips to express the 
 pleasure it afforded him to know a gentleman of whom lie liad heard 
 so much, Mr, Pickwick was so extremely disconcerted, tliat I was 
 obliged to step in to his relief. 
 
 His meeting with Jack liedburn was quite a treat to see. ]\Ir. 
 Pickwick smiled, and shook hands, and looked at him tlirough his 
 Bjieetacles, and under them, and over them, and nodded his head 
 apjirovingly, and then nodded to me, as much as to say, " Tliis is just 
 the man ; you were quite right ; " and then turned to Jack and said a 
 few hearty words, and then did and said everything over again witli 
 unimpaired vivacity. As to Jack himself, he was quite as much 
 delighted with Mr. Pickwick as Mr. Pickwick could possibly be with 
 liim. Two people never can liave met together since tlie world began, 
 who exchanged a warmer or more enthusiastic greeting. 
 
 It was amusing to observe the difference between tliis encounter and 
 that wliich succeeded, between IMr. I'ickwick and Mr. Miles. It was 
 clear that the latter gentleman viewed our new member as a kind of 
 rival in the affections of Jack liedburn, and besides this, he had moi-o 
 tlian once hinted to mo, in secret, that although he had no doubt Mr. 
 I'ickwiek was a very worthy man, still he did consider that some of 
 his exploits were unbecoming a gentleman of his years and gravity. 
 Over and above these grounds of distrust, it is one of his fixed 
 opinions, that the law never can by possibility do anything wrong ; 
 ho therefore looks upon IMr. Pickwick as one who bus justly sullcred 
 in purse nnd peace for a breach of his plighted faith to an unprotected
 
 Proceedings of the Club. 531 
 
 female, and holds that he is called upon to regard him with some 
 suspicion on that account. These causes led to a rather cold and 
 formal reception ; which Mr. Pickwick acknowledged with the same 
 stateliness and intense politeness as was displayed on the other side. 
 Indeed, he assumed an air of such majestic defiance, that I was fearful 
 ho might break out into some solemn protest or declaration, and 
 therefore inducted him into his chair without a moment's delay. 
 
 This piece of generalship was perfectly successful. The instant he 
 took his seat, Mr. Pickwick surveyed us all with a most benevolent 
 aspect, and was taken with a fit of smiling full five minutes long. 
 His interest in our ceremonies was immense. They are not very 
 numerous or complicated, and a description of them may be comprised 
 in very few words. As our transactions have already been, and must 
 necessarily continue to be, more or less anticipated by being presented 
 in these pages at difi'crent times, and under various forms, they do not 
 require a detailed account. 
 
 Our first proceeding when we are assembled is to shake hands all 
 round, and greet each other with cheerful and pleasant looks. Eemem- 
 bering that we assemble not only for the j)romotion of our haj)piness, 
 but with the view of adding something to the common stock,' an air of 
 languor or indifierenco in any member of our body would bo regarded 
 by the others as a kind of treason. We have never had an off"ender in 
 this respect ; but if we had, there is no doubt that he would be taken 
 to task pretty severely. 
 
 Our salutation over, the venerable piece of antiquity from which 
 we take our name is wound up in silence. This ceremony is always 
 performed by Master Humphrey himself (in treating of the club, I 
 may be permitted to assume the historical style, and speak of myself 
 in tho third person), who moimts u^ion a chair for the i)urposc, armed 
 with a large key. While it is in progress, Jack Eedburn is required 
 to keep at the farther end of the room under the guardianship of Mr. 
 Miles, for ho is known to entertain certain aspiring and unhallowed 
 thoughts connected with the clock, and has even gone so far as to 
 state that if he might take the works out for a day or two, he thinks 
 he could improve them. We pardon him his presumption in con- 
 sideration of his good intentions, and his kecpiug this respectful 
 distance, which last penalty is insisted on, lest by secretly wounding 
 tho object of our regard in some tender part, in the ardour of his zeal 
 for its improvement, he should fill us with dismay and consternation. 
 
 This regulation aiforded Mr. Pickwick the highest delight, and 
 seemed, if possible, to exalt Jack in his good opinion. 
 
 Tho next ceremony is the opening of the clock-caso (of which 
 IMaster Humphrey has likewise the key), the taking from it as many 
 papers as will furnish forth our evening's entertainment, and arranging 
 in the recess such new contributions as have been provided since our 
 last meeting. This is always done with peculiar solemnity. Tho 
 deaf gentleman then fills and lights his pipe, and we once more tako
 
 53- Master Humphrey s Clock. 
 
 our seats round the tabic before mentioned, Master Ilunipbrey acting 
 as president, -if we can bo said to bave any president, wbere all are 
 on tbo same social footing, and our friend Jack as secretary. Our 
 preliminaries being now concluded, we fall into any train of conversa- 
 tion tbat bappens to suggest itself, or proceed immediately to one of 
 our readings. In tbc latter case, tlio paper selected is consigned to 
 Master Humpbrey, wbo flattens it carefully on tbe table and makes 
 dog's ears in tbo corner of every page, ready for turning over easily ; 
 Jack Iledburn trims tbe lamp witb a small macbine of bis own inven- 
 tion, wbicb usually puts it out ; Mr. Miles looks on witli great 
 approval notwitbstanding ; tbo deaf gentleman draws in bis cbair, so 
 tliat be can follow tbe words on tbe paper or on Master Ilunipbrey's 
 lijjs as be pleases ; and Master Humpbrey bimself, looking round 
 witb migbty gratification, and glancing up at bis old clock, begins to 
 read aloud. 
 
 Mr. Pickwick's face, wbile bis tale was being read, would bave 
 attracted tbe attention of tbo dullest man alive. Tbe complacent 
 motion of bis bead and forefinger as be gently beat time, and corrected 
 tbe air witb imaginary punctuation, tbc smilo tbat mantled on bis 
 features at every jocose passage, and tbc sly look be stole around to 
 observe its eflect, tbe calm manner in wbicb be sbut bis eyes and 
 listened wbcu tbere was some little piece of description, tbe cbanging 
 expression witli wbicb bo acted tbe dialogue to bimself, bis agony 
 tbat tbe deaf gentleman sbould know wbat it was all about, and bis 
 extraordinary anxiety to correct tbe reader wben be bcsitated at a 
 word in tbe manuscript, or substituted a wrong one, were alike wortliy 
 of remark. And wbcu at last, endeavouring to communicate witb tbc 
 deaf gentleman by means of tbe finger alpbabet, witli wliicb bo con- 
 structed sucb words as are unknown in any civilised or savage 
 language, be took up a slate and wrote in large text, one word in a 
 line, tbo question, " IIow do you like it ? " wben be did tliis, 
 and liandiiig it over tbc table awaited tbo reply, witli a countenance 
 only brigbtened and imjn-ovcd by bis great excitement, even Mr. Miles 
 relaxed, and could not forbear looking at bim for tbo moment witb 
 interest and favour. 
 
 " It bas occurred to me," said tbc deaf gentleman, wbo bad watcbcd 
 Mr. Pickwick and everybody else witb silent satisfaction " it bas 
 occurred to me," said tbe deaf gentleman, taking bis pipe from bis 
 lips, " tbat now is our time for filling our only empty cbair." 
 
 As our conversation bad naturally turned upon tbc vacant seat, wc 
 lent a willing ear to tbis remark, and looked at our friend inquiringly. 
 
 " I feel sure," said be, " tbat Mr. Pickwick must be ac([uainted witb 
 somebody wbo would be an acquisition to us ; tbat be must know tbe 
 man w(; want. Pray let us not lose any time, but set tbis question at 
 rest. Is it so, Islv. Pickwick? " 
 
 Tim gentleman addressed was about to return a verbal reply, bnt 
 rcni'jiuberiiig our friend's infirmity, be substituted for tbis kind of
 
 A New Member proposed. 533 
 
 answer some fifty nods. Then taking up the slate and printing on it 
 a gigantic " Yes," he handed it across the table, and rubbing his 
 hands as he looked round upon our faces, protested that he and the 
 deaf gentleman quite understood each other, already. 
 
 " The person I have in my mind," said Mr. Pickwick, " and whom 
 I should not have presumed to mention to you until some time hence, 
 but for the opportunity you have given me, is a very strange old man. 
 His name is Bamber." 
 
 " Bamber ! " said Jack. " I have certainly heard the name before." 
 
 " I have no doubt, then," returned Mr. Pickwick, " that you remem- 
 ber him in those adventures of mine (the Posthumous Papers of our 
 old club, I mean), although he is only incidentally mentioned ; and, 
 if I remember rigbt, appears but once." 
 
 " That's it," said Jack. " Let me see. He is the person who has a 
 grave interest in old mouldy chambers and the Inns of Court, and 
 who relates some anecdotes having reference to his favourite theme, 
 and an odd ghost story, is that the man ? " 
 
 " The very same. Now," said Mr. Pickwick, lowering his voice to 
 a mysterious and confidential tone, " he is a very extraordinary and 
 remarkable person ; living, and talking, and looking, like some strange 
 spirit, whose delight is to haunt old buildings ; and absorbed in that 
 one subject which you have just mentioned, to an extent which is 
 quite wonderful. When I retired into private life, I sought him out, 
 and I do assure you that the more I see of him, the more strongly I 
 am impressed with the strange and dreamy character of his mind." 
 
 " Where does he live ? " I inquired. 
 
 " He lives," said Mr. Pickwick, " in one of those dull, lonely old 
 places with which his thoughts and stories are all connected ; quite 
 alone, and often shut up close for several W'ceks togotlier. In this 
 dusty solitude he broods upon the fancies he has so long indulged, 
 and when he goes into the world, or anybody from the world without 
 goes to see him, they are still present to his mind and still his 
 favourite topic. I may say, I believe, that he has brought himself to 
 entertain a regard for me, and an interest in my visits ; feelings which 
 I am certain he would extend to Master Humphrey's Clock if he were 
 once tempted to join us. All I wish you to understand is, that he is 
 a strange secluded visionary, in the world but not of it ; and as unlike 
 anybody here as he is unlike anybody elsewhere that I have ever met 
 or known." 
 
 Mr. Miles received this account of our proposed companion with 
 rather a wry face, and after murmuring that perhaps he was a little 
 mad, inquired if he were rich. 
 
 " I never asked him," said Mr. Pickwick. 
 
 " You might know, sir, for all that," retorted Mr. Miles, sharply. 
 
 "Perhaps so, sir," said Mr. Pickwick, no less sharply than the other, 
 " but I do not. Indeed," he added, relapsing into liis usual mildness, 
 " I have no means of judging. Ho lives poorly, but that would seem
 
 534 Master Humphreys Clock. 
 
 to bo in kcci^ing with bis character. I never beard him allude to bis 
 circumstanccB, and never fell into the society of any man who had tho 
 slightest acquaintance with them. I have really told you all I know 
 about him, and it rests with you to say whether you wish to know 
 more, or know quite enough already." 
 
 Wo were unanimously of opinion tliat wo would seek to know more ; 
 and as a sort of compromise with Mr. Miles (who, although he said 
 " Yes certainly be should like to know more about the gentleman 
 he bad no right to put himself in opposition to tho general wish," 
 and so forth, shook his bead doubtfully and hemmed several times 
 witli peculiar gravity), it was arranged that Mr. Pickwick should carry 
 me with liim on an evening visit to the subject of our discussion, for 
 which purpose an early appointment between that gentleman and 
 myself was immediately agreed upon ; it being understood that I was 
 to act upon my own responsibility, and to invite him to join us or 
 not, as I might think proper. This solemn question determined, wo 
 returned to the clock-case (where wo have been forestalled by tho 
 reader), and between its contents, and tho conversation they occasioned, 
 tho remainder of our time passed very quickly. 
 
 When wo broke up, Mr. Pickwick took me aside to tell me that ho 
 had spent a most charming and delightful evening. Having made 
 this communication with an air of the strictest secrecy, bo took Jack 
 Iled])urn into another corner to tell him the same, and then retired 
 into another corner with the deaf gentleman and the slate, to repeat 
 tlie assurance. It was amusing to observe tbo contest in his mind 
 whether ho should extend bis coutideuco to Mr. Miles, or treat him 
 with dignified reserve. Ilalf-a-dozen times he stepped up behind him 
 with a friendly air, and as often stepped back again without saying 
 a word ; at last, when ho was close at that gentleman's car and upon 
 the very point of whispering something conciliating and agreeable, 
 IMr. Miles happened suddenly to turn bis head, u2)on which Mr. 
 Pickwick skipped away, and said with some fierceness, " Good-night, 
 sir I was about to say good-night, sir, nothing more ; " and so 
 made a bow and left him. 
 
 " Now, Sam," said Llr. Pickwick, when be had got down-stairs. 
 
 " All right, sir," replied Mr. Weller. " Hold hard, sir. Eight arm 
 fust now the loft now one strong conwulsiou, and the great-coat's 
 on, sir." 
 
 Mr. Pickwick acted upon these directions, and being further assisted 
 i)y Sam, wlio pulled at one side of tlie collar, and Mr. Weller, wlio 
 ])ulled hard at tho other, was speedily enrobed. Mr. Weller, senior, 
 then produced a full-sized stable lantern, which lie bad carefully 
 deposited in a remote corner, on bis arrival, and inquired whether 
 Mr. Pickwick would have " the lamps alitzht." 
 
 " I think not to-night," said Mr. Pickwick. 
 
 " Then if tliis liere lady vill per-mit," rejoined Mr. Weller, " we'll 
 leave it here, ready for n(^xt journey. This hero lantern, mum," said
 
 Bill Blinder' s Last Will and Testament. 
 
 535 
 
 Mr. Weller, handing it to the housekeeper, " vunce belonged to the 
 celebrated Bill Blinder as is now at grass, as all on ns vill be in our 
 turns. Bill, mum, wos the hostler as had charge o' them two veil- 
 known piebald leaders that run in the Bristol fast coach, and vould 
 never go to no other tune but a sutherly vind and a cloudy sky, which 
 wos consekvently played incessant, by the guard, wenever they wos 
 on duty. He wos took wery bad one arternoon, arter having been off 
 his feed, and wery shaky on his legs for some veeks ; and he says to 
 his mate, ' Matey,' he says, ' I think I'm a-goin' the wrong side o' the 
 post, and that my foot's wery near the bucket. Don't say I an't,' ho 
 says, ' for I know I am, and don't let me be interrupted,' he says, ' for 
 I've saved a little money, and I'm a-goin' into the stable to make my 
 last vill and testymint.' ' I'll take care as nobody interrupts,' says 
 his mate, ' but you on'y hold up your head, and shake your ears a bit, 
 and you're good for twenty years to come.' Bill Blinder makes him 
 no answer, but he goes avay into the stable, and there he soon arter- 
 vards lays himself down a'tween the two piebalds, and dies, pre- 
 vously a writin' outside the corn-chest, ' This is the last vill and 
 testymint of Villiam Blinder.' Tliey wos nnt'rally wery much amazed 
 
 at this, and arter looking among the litter, and up in the loft, and 
 verc not, they opens the corn-chest, and finds that he'd been and 
 chalked his vill inside the lid ; so the lid wos obligated to be took 
 off the hinges, and sent up to Doctor Commons to be proved, and 
 under that 'ere wery instrument this here lantern was passed to 
 Tony Veller ; vich circumstaruce, mum, gives it a wally in my eyes, 
 and makes me rekvest, if you vill be so kind, as to take partickler 
 care on it." 
 
 The housekeeper graciously promised to keep the object of Mr. 
 "Wcller's regard in the safest possible custody, and Mr. Pickwick,
 
 53^ Master Humphreys Clock. 
 
 with a laughing face, took his leave. The body-guard followed, side 
 by side ; old Mr. Weller buttoned and wrapped up from his boots to 
 his chin ; and Sam with his hands in his pockets and his hat half off 
 liis head, remonstrating with his father, as ho went, on his extreme 
 loquacity. 
 
 I was not a little surprised, on turning to go up-stairs, to encounter 
 the barber in the passage at that late hour; for his attendance is 
 usually confined to some half-hour in the morning. But Jack Eod- 
 burn, who finds out (by instinct, I think) everytliing that happens in 
 the house, informed mo with great glee, that a society in imitation of 
 our own had been that night formed in the kitchen, under the title of 
 " Mr. Weller's Watch," of which the barber was a member ; and that 
 he could pledge himself to find means of making me acquainted with 
 the whole of its future proceedings, which I begged him, both on my 
 own account and that of my readers, by no moans to neglect doing.* 
 
 Mil. WELLEE'S WATCH. 
 
 It seems that the housekeeper and the two Mr. Wcllers were no 
 sooner left together on the occasion of their first becoming acquainted, 
 tlian the housekeeper called to her assistance Mr. Slithers the barber, 
 Avlio had been lurking in the kitchen in expectation of her summons ; 
 and with many smiles and much sweetness introduced him as one who 
 would assist her in the responsible office of entertaining her dis- 
 tinguished visitors. 
 
 " Indeed," said she, " without Mr. Slithers I should have been 
 placed in quite an awkward situation." 
 
 " Tliero is no call for any hock'erdncss, mum," said Mr. Weller 
 with the utmost politeness ; " no call wotsumever. A lady," added 
 the old gcutlcman, looking about him witli tlie air of one wlio estab- 
 lishes an incontrovertible position, " a lady can't be hock'erd. Natur' 
 has otherwise purwided." 
 
 The housekeeper inclined her head and smiled yet more sweetly. 
 Tlie barber, wlio had been fluttering al)Out Mr. Weller and Sam in a 
 state of great anxiety to improve tlieir acquaintance, rubbed his hands 
 and cried, " Hear, hear ! Very true, sir ; " whercujion Sam turned 
 about and steadily regarded him for some seconds in silence. 
 
 " I never knew," said Sam, fixing his eyes in a ruminative manner 
 upon the Ijlushing barber, " I never knew but vun o' your trade, but 
 lie wos worth a dozen, and wos indeed dewoted to his callin' ! " 
 * UM Curiosity SIiop is continued here, cimijiletini^' No. lY.
 
 An Enthusiastic Barber. 537 
 
 " Was he in tlie easy shaving way, sir," inquired Mr. Slithers ; 
 " or in the cutting and curling line ? " 
 
 " Both," replied Sam ; " easy shavin' was his natur', and cuttin' and 
 curlin' was his pride and glory. His whole delight wos in his trade. 
 He spent all his money in bears, and run in debt for 'em besides, and 
 there they wos a growling avay down in the front cellar all day long, 
 and ineffectooally gnashing their teeth, vile the grease o' their relations 
 and friends wos being re-tailed in gallipots in the shop above, and the 
 first-floor winder wos ornamented vith their heads ; not to speak o' the 
 dreadful aggrawation it must have been to 'em to see a man alvays a 
 walkin' up and down the pavement outside, vith the portrait of a bear 
 in his last agonies, and underneath in large letters, 'Another fine 
 animal wos slaughtered yesterday at Jinkinson's ! ' Hows'ever, there 
 they wos, and there Jinkinson wos, till he wos took wery ill with 
 some inn'ard disorder, lost the use of his legs, and wos confined to 
 his bed, vere he laid a wery long time, but sich wos his pride in his 
 profession, even then, that wenever he wos worse than usual the doctor 
 used to go down-stairs and say, ' Jinkinson's wery low this mornin' ; 
 we must give the bears a stir ; ' and as sure as ever they stirred 'em 
 up a bit and made 'em roar, Jinkinson opens his eyes if he wos ever 
 so bad, calls out, ' There's the bears ! ' and rewives agin." 
 
 " Astonishing ! " cried the barber. 
 
 " Not a bit," said Sam, " human natur' neat as imported. Vun day 
 the doctor happenin' to say, ' I shall look in as usual to-morrow 
 mornin',' Jinkinson catches hold of his hand and says, ' Doctor,' ho 
 says, ' will you grant me one favour ? ' 'I will, Jinkinson,' says the 
 doctor. ' Then, doctor,' says Jinkinson, ' vill you come unshaved, and 
 let me shave you ? ' 'I will,' says the doctor. ' God bless you,' says 
 Jinkinson. Next day the doctor came, and arter he'd been shaved all 
 skilful and reg'lar, he says, ' Jinkinson,' he says, ' it's wery plain this 
 does you good. Now,' he says, ' I've got a coachman as has got a 
 beard that it 'ud warm your heart to work on, and though the foot- 
 man,' he says, ' hasn't got much of a beard, still he's a trying it on 
 vith a pair o' viskers to that extent that razors is Christian charity. 
 If they take it in turns to mind the carriage when it's a waitin' below,' 
 he says, ' wot's to hinder you from operatin' on both of 'em ev'ry day 
 as well as upon me ? you've got six children,' he says, ' wot's to hinder 
 you from shavin' all their heads and kcepin' 'em shaved ? you've got 
 two assistants in the shop down-stairs, wot's to hinder you from cuttin' 
 and curlin' them as often as you like ? Do this,' he says, ' and you're 
 a man agin.' Jinkinson squeedged the doctor's hand and begun that 
 wery day ; he kept his tools upon the bed, and wenever he felt his-self 
 gettin' worse, he turned to at vun o' the children who wos a runnin' 
 about the house vith heads like clean Dutch cheeses, and shaved him 
 agin. Vun day the lawyer come to make his vill ; all tlie time he wos 
 a takin' it down, Jinkinson was secretly a clippin' avay at his Lair 
 vith a large pair of scissors, ' Wot's that 'ere snippiu' noise ? ' says
 
 53^ Master Humphrey's Clock. 
 
 tlio lawyer every now and then ; ' it's like a man havin' Lis hair cut.' 
 * It 18 wery like a man liavin' his hair cut,' says poor Jinkinson, hidiu' 
 the scissors, and lookiu' quite innocent. By the time the lawyer 
 found it out, he was wery nearly bald. Jinkinson wos kept alive in 
 this vay for a long time, but at last vun day he has in all the children 
 vuu artor another, shaves each on 'em wery clean, and gives him vun 
 kiss on the crown o' his head ; then he has in the two assistants, and 
 arter cuttin' and curlin' of 'em in tlio first style of elegance, says lie 
 should like to hoar the woico o' the greasiest bear, vich rekvest is 
 immedetly complied with ; then lie says that ho feels wery happy in 
 his mind and vishes to be left alone ; and then he dies, previously 
 cuttin' his own hair and makin' one flat curl in the wery middle of 
 his forehead." 
 
 This anecdote produced an extraordinary effect, not only upon Mr. 
 Slitliers, but upon the housekeeper also, -who evinced so much anxiety 
 to please and be pleased, that Mr. Weller, with a manner betokening 
 some alarm, conveyed a whispered inquiry to his sou whether ho had 
 gone " too fur." 
 
 " Wot do you mean by too fur ? " demanded Sam, 
 
 " In that 'ere little compliment rcspcctin' the want of hock'erduess 
 in ladies, Sammy," replied his father. 
 
 " You don't think she's fallen in love with you in consckens o' that, 
 do you ? " said Sam. 
 
 " More unlikelier tilings have come to pass, my boy," rci")lied Mr. 
 Weller in a hoarse wliisper ; " I'm always afeerd of inadwertent capti- 
 watioTi, Sammy. If I kuow'd how to make myself ugly or uui>leasant, 
 I'd do it, Samivel, raythcr than live in this hero state of pcrpetival 
 terror ! " 
 
 Mr. Weller had, at that time, no further opportunity of dwelling 
 upon tlie apprehensions which beset his mind, for the immediate oeca- 
 si(m of his fears proceeded to lead the way down-stairs, apologising 
 as they went for conducting him into the kitchen, which apartment, 
 however, she was induced to proffer for his accommodation in prefer- 
 ence to lier own little room, the rather as it afforded greater facilities 
 f>r smoking, and was immediately adjoining the ale-cellar. The 
 preparations which were already made sufficiently proved that these 
 were not mere words of course, for on the deal table were a sturdy 
 ale-jug and glasses, ilanked with clean pipes and a i)lentifnl supply 
 of tobacco for the old gentleman and his son, while on a dresser hard 
 by was goodly store of cold meat and other eatables. At sight of 
 these arrangements Mr. Weller was at first distracted between his 
 love of joviality and his doubts whether they were not to be considered 
 as so many evidences of captivation having already taken place ; l)ut 
 lie soon yielded to his natural impulse, and took his scat at the table 
 with a very jolly countenance. 
 
 "As to imbil)in' any o' this here flagrant vecd, mum, in the 
 presence of a lady," said Mr. Weller tiiking uji a pipe and laving
 
 A Rival Club. 539 
 
 it down again, " it couldn't be. Samivel, total abstinence, if you 
 please." 
 
 *' But I like it of all things," said the housekeeper. 
 
 " No," rejoined Mr. Weller, shaking his head, " no." 
 
 " Upon my word I do," said the housekeeper. " Mr. Slithers knows 
 I do." 
 
 Mr. Weller coughed, and notwithstanding the barber's confirmation 
 of the statement, said " No " again, but more feebly than before. Tho 
 housekeeper lighted a piece of paper, and insisted on applying it to 
 the bowl of the pipe with her own fair hands ; Mr. Weller resisted ; 
 the housekeeper cried that her fingers would be burnt ; Mr. Weller 
 gave way. The pipe was ignited, Mr. Weller drew a long puff of 
 smoke, and detecting himself in the very act of smiling on the house- 
 keeper, put a sudden constraint upon his countenance and looked 
 sternly at the candle, with a determination not to captivate, himself, 
 or encourage thoughts of captivation in others. From this iron framo 
 of mind he was roused by the voice of his son. 
 
 " I don't think," said Sam, who was smoking with great composure 
 and enjoyment, " that if the lady wos agreeable it 'ud be wery far out 
 o' the vay for us four to make up a club of our own like the governors 
 does up-stairs, and let him," Sam pointed with the stem of his pipe 
 towards his parent, " be the president." 
 
 The housekeeper affably declared that it was the very thing she 
 had been thinking of. The barber said tho same. Mr. Weller said 
 nothing, but he laid down his pipe as if in a fit of inspiration, and 
 performed the following manoeuvres. 
 
 Unbuttoning the three lower buttons of his waistcoat and pausing 
 for a moment to enjoy the easy flow of breath consequent upon this 
 process, he laid violent hands upon his watch-chain, and slowly and 
 with extreme difficulty drew from his fob an immense double-cased 
 silver watch, which brought the lining of the pocket with it, and Avas 
 not to be disentangled but by great exertions and an amazing redness 
 of face. Having fairly got it out at last, he detached the outer caso 
 and wound it up with a key of corresponding magnitude ; then put 
 tlie case on again, and having applied the watch to his car to ascertain 
 that it was still going, gave it some half-dozen hard knocks on the 
 table to improve its performance, 
 
 " That," said Mr. Weller, laying it on tho table with its face 
 upwards, " is tho title and emblem o' this hero society. Sammy, 
 reach them two stools this vay for the wacant cheers. Ladies and 
 gcn'lmen, Mr. Weller's Watch is vound up and now a-goin'. Order ! 
 
 By way of enforcing this proclamation, Mr. Weller, using the watch 
 after the manner of a president's hammer, and remarking with great 
 pride that nothing hurt it, and that falls and concussions of all kinds 
 materially enhanced the excellence of the works and assisted tho 
 regulator, knocked the table a great many times, and declared the 
 association formally constituted.
 
 540 Master Hiimphrey' s Clock. 
 
 " And don't lot's have no grinnin* at the cheer, Samivcl," said Mr. 
 Weller to his son, " or I shall be committin' you to the cellar, and 
 then p'r'ai^s we may get into what the 'Merrikins call a fix, and the 
 English a qvestion o' privileges." 
 
 Ilaving uttered this friendly caution, the President settled himself 
 in his chair with great dignity, and requested that Mr. Samuel would 
 relate an anecdote. 
 
 ' I've told one," said Sam. 
 
 " Wery good, sir ; tell another," returned the chair. 
 
 " We wos a talking jist now, sir," said Sam, turning to Slithers, 
 "about barbers. Pursuing that 'ere fruitful theme, sir, I'll tell you 
 in a wery few words a romantic little story about another barber as 
 p'r'aps you may never have heerd." 
 
 " Samivel ! " said Mr. Weller, again bringing his watch and the 
 table into smart collision, " address your obserwations to the cheer, 
 sir, and not to priwate indiwiduals ! " 
 
 " And if I might rise to order," said the barber in a soft voice, and 
 looking round him with a conciliatory smile as ho leant over the 
 table, with the knuckles of his left hand resting upon it, " if I might 
 rise to order, I would suggest that ' barbers ' is not exactly the kind 
 of language which is agreeable and soothing to our feelings. Yoii, 
 sir, will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there is such a word 
 in tlie dictionary as hairdressers." 
 
 " Well, but suppose he wasn't a hairdresser," suggested Sam. 
 
 " Wy then, sir, be jiarliamentary and call him vun all the more," 
 returned his father. " In the same vay as ev'ry gen'lman in another 
 place is a honourable, ev'ry barber in this jilace is a hairdresser. 
 Ven you read tho speeches in the papers, and sec as vun gen'lman 
 says of another, ' the honourable member, if he vill allow me to call 
 him so,' you vill understand, sir, that that means, ' if he vill allow me 
 to keep up that 'ere pleasant and uniwersal fiction.' " 
 
 It is a common remark, confirmed by history and experience, tliat 
 great men rise with the circumstances in which they are placed. Mr. 
 Weller came out so strong in his capacity of cliairman, that Sam was 
 for some time prevented from speaking by a grin of surprise, wliich 
 held his faculties enchained, and at last subsided in a long whistle of 
 a single note. Nay, the old gentleman appeared even to have astonished 
 himself, and tliat to no small extent, as was demonstrated by the vast 
 amount of chuckling in wliich he indulged, after the utterance of these 
 lucid remarks. 
 
 "Here's tlio story," said Sam. " Vunce upon a time there wos a 
 young hairdresser as opened a wery smart little shop vith four Avax 
 dummies in the winder, two gen'lmen and two ladies the gen'lmen 
 vith blue dots for their beards, wery large viskers, oudacious heads of 
 hair, tmcommon clear eyes, and nostrils of amazin' pinkness ; tho 
 ladies vith tlieir heads o' one side, their riglit forefingers on tlieir 
 lips, and their forms deweloped beautiful, in vicli lust respect tliey
 
 TJtc RouinnU of Hair dressing. 54 ^ 
 
 tad the adwantage over the gen'lmen, as wasn't allowed but wery 
 little shoulder, and terminated rayther abrupt in fancy drapery. He 
 had also a many hair-brushes and tooth-brushes bottled up in the 
 winder, neat glass-cases on the counter, a floor-clothed cuttin'-room 
 up-stairs, and a weighin'-macheen in the shop, right opposite tlie 
 door. But the great attraction and ornament wos the dummies, which 
 this here young hairdresser wos constantly a runnin' out in the road 
 to look at, and constantly a runnin' in agin to touch up and polish ; 
 in short, he wos so proud on 'em, that ven Sunday come, he wos always 
 wretched and mis'rable to think they wos behind the shutters, and 
 looked anxiously for Monday on that account. Vun o' these dummies 
 wos a fav'rite vith him beyond the others ; and ven any of his 
 acquaintance asked him wy he didn't get married as the young 
 ladies he know'd, in partickler, often did he used to say, ' Never ! 
 I never vill enter into the bonds of vedlock,' he says, ' until I meet 
 vith a young 'ooman as realises my idea o' that 'ere fairest dummy 
 vith the light hair. Then, and not till then,' he says, ' I vill approach 
 the altar.' All the young ladies he know'd as had got dark hair told 
 him this wos wery sinful, and that he wos wurshippin' a idle ; but 
 them as wos at all near the same shade as the dummy coloured 
 up wery much, and wos observed to think him a wery nice young 
 man." 
 
 " Samivel," said Mr. Wellcr, gravely, " a member o' this associashun 
 bein' one o' that 'ere tender sex which is now immedetly referred to, 
 1 have to rekvest that yon vill make no reflections." 
 
 " I ain't a makin' any, am I ? " inquired Sam. 
 
 " Order, sir ! " rejoined Mr. Weller, with severe dignity. Then, 
 sinking the chairman in the father, he added, in his usual tone of 
 voice : " Samivel, drive on ! " 
 
 Sam interchanged a smile with the housekeeper, and proceeded : 
 
 " The young hairdresser hadn't been in the habit o' makin' this 
 avowal above six months, ven he en-countered a young lady as wos 
 the wery picter o' the fairest dummy. ' Now,' he says, ' it's all up. 
 I am a slave ! ' The young lady wos not only the picter o' the fairest 
 dummy, but she was wery romantic, as the young hairdresser was, 
 too, and he says, ' ! ' he says, ' here's a community o' feelin', here's 
 a flow o' soul!' he says, 'here's a interchange o' sentiment!' The 
 young lady didn't say much, o' course, but she expressed herself 
 agreeable, and shortly artervards vent to see him vith a mutual friend. 
 The hairdresser rushes out to meet her, but d'rectly she sees the 
 dummies she changes colour and falls a tremblin' wiolently. ' Look 
 uj), my love,' says the hairdresser, ' behold your imige in my winder, 
 but not corrector than in my art ! ' ' My imige ! ' she says. ' Yourn ! ' 
 replies the hairdresser. ' But whose imige is that ? ' she says, a pinting 
 at vun o' the gen'lmen. ' No vun's, my love,' he says, ' it is but a 
 idea.' ' A idea ! ' she cries : ' it is a portrait, I feel it is a jiortrait, 
 and til at 'ore noble face must be in the millingtary ! ' 'Wot do I
 
 54^' Master Humphrey s Clock. 
 
 hear ! ' says ho, a crumplin' his curls. ' Villiam Gibbs,' she saye, 
 quite firm, ' never renoo the subject. I respect you as a friend,' she 
 says, ' but my affections is set upon that manly brow.' ' This,' says 
 the hairdresser, ' is a reg'lar blight, and in it I perceive the hand of 
 Fate. Farovell ! ' Vith these vords ho rushes into the shop, breaks 
 the dummy's nose vith a blow of his curlin'-irons, melts him down at 
 the parlour fire, and never smiles artervards." 
 
 " The young lady, Mr. Weller ? " said the housekeeper. 
 
 " Wliy, ma'am," said Sam, " finding that Fate had a spite agin her, 
 and everybody she come into contact vith, she never smiled neither, 
 but read a deal o' poetry and pined avay, by rayther slow degrees, 
 for she ain't dead yet. It took a deal o' poetry to kill the hairdresser, 
 and some people say arter all that it was more the gin and water as 
 caused him to be run over ; p'r'aps it was a little o' both, and came o' 
 mixing the two." 
 
 The barber declared that Mr. Weller had related one of the most 
 interesting stories that had ever come within his knowledge, in which 
 opinion the housekeeper entirely concurred. 
 
 " Are you a married man, sir ? " in(piired Sara. 
 
 The barber replied that ho had not that honour. 
 
 " I s'pose you mean to bo ? " said Sara. 
 
 " Well," replied tlio barber, rubbing his hands smirkingly, " I don't 
 ]{now, I don't think it's very likely." 
 
 " That's a bad sign," said Sam ; " if you'd said you meant to bo vun 
 o' these days, I should lia' looked upon you as bein' safe. You're in 
 a wery precarious state." 
 
 " I ara not conscious of any danger, at all events," returned the 
 barber. 
 
 " No moro wos I, sir," said tlio elder Mr. Weller, intcriioaing ; 
 " those vero my sym2)toms, exactly. I've been took that vay twice. 
 Keep your vcther eye open, my friend, or you're gone." 
 
 There was soraetliing so very solemn about this admonition, both 
 in its matter and manner, and also in the way in whicli Mr. Weller 
 still kept his eye fixed upon the unsusjiccting victim, that nobody 
 cared to speak for some little time, and miglit not have cared to do so 
 for some time longer, if the housekeeper liad not liappciied to sigh, 
 whicli called off the old gentleman's attention and gave rise to a 
 gallant incpiry whether " there wos anytliin' wery picrcin' in that 
 'ere little heart ? " 
 
 "Dear me, Mr. Weller! " said the housekeeper, laughing. 
 
 "No, but is there anytliin' as agitates it?" pursued the old gentle- 
 man. " lias it always been obderrate, always opposed to the happiness 
 o' human creeturs '? Eh ? Has it ? " 
 
 At this critical juncture for lier blushes and confusion, the house- 
 keeper discovered that more ale Avas wanted, and hastily withdrcuv 
 into the cellar to draw the same, followed by the harbor, who insistod 
 on carrying the candle. Having looked after her with a very com-
 
 Mr. VVeiler Settlor mistrust the l3arher. 543 
 
 placent expression of face, and after him witli some disdain, Mr. 
 Weller caused his glance to travel slowly round the kitchen, until at 
 length it rested on his son. 
 
 " Sammy," said Mr. Weller, " I mistrust that harber." 
 
 " Wot for ? " returned Sam ; " wot's he got to do with you ? You're 
 a nice man, you are, arter prctendiu' all kinds o' terror, to go a payin' 
 compliments and talkin' about hearts and piercers." 
 
 The imputation of gallantry appeared to afford Mr. Weller the 
 utmost delight, for he replied in a voice choked by suppressed laughter, 
 and with the tears in his eyes, 
 
 " Wos I a talkin' about hearts and piercers, wos I though, Sammy, 
 eh?" 
 
 " Wos you ? of course you wos." 
 
 " She don't know no better, Sammy, there ain't no harm in it, no 
 danger, Sammy ; she's only a punster. She seemed pleased, though, 
 didn't she ? 0' course, she wos pleased, it's nat'ral she should be, 
 wery nat'ral." 
 
 " He's wain of it ! " exclaimed Sam, joining in his father's mirth. 
 " He's actually wain ! " 
 
 " Hush ! " replied Mr. Weller, composing his features, " they're a 
 comin' back, the little heart's a comiu' back. But mark these wurdo 
 o' mine once more, and remember 'em ven your father says ho said 
 'em. Samivel, I mistrust that 'cro deceitful barber." 
 
 flC- ^c ^ ^jt 3)t )if ^ 
 
 [Old Curiosity Shop is continued to the end of tlio nunibor.] 
 
 VI. 
 
 MASTER HUMrnREY EROIM HIS CLOCK-SIDE IN THE 
 CHIMNEY-COliNEK. 
 
 Two or three evenings after the institution of Mr. Wellcr's Watch, I 
 thought I heard, as I walked in the garden, the voice of Mr. Weller 
 himself at no great distance ; and stojiping once or twice to listen 
 more attentively, I found that the sounds proceeded from my house- 
 keeper's little sitting-room, wliich is at the back of the house. I took 
 no further notice of the circumstance at tliat time, but it formed the 
 subject of a conversation between me and my friend Jack Eedburn 
 next morning, when I found that I had not been deceived in my 
 impression. Jack furnished me with the following particulars ; and 
 as he appeared to take extraordinary pleasure in relating them, I have 
 begged liim in future to jot down any sucli domestic scenes or 
 occurrences that may jilcasc liis luTmour, in order that they may bo 
 told in his own way. I must confess that, as Mr. Pickwick and ho
 
 544 Master Humphreys Clock. 
 
 are constantly together, I have been influenced, in making this request, 
 by a secret desire to know something of their proceedings. 
 
 On the evening in question, the housekeeper's room was arranged 
 with particular care, and the housekeeper herself was very smartly 
 dressed. The preparations, however, were not confined to mere showy 
 demonstrations, as tea was prepared for three persons, with a small 
 display of preserves and jams and sweet cakes, which heralded somo 
 uncommon occasion. Miss Benton (my housekeeper bears tliat name) 
 was in a state of great expectation, too, frequently going to the front 
 door and looking anxiously down the lane, and more than once 
 observing to the servant-girl that she expected company, and hoped 
 no accident had happened to delay them. 
 
 A modest ring at the bell at length allayed her fears, and Miss 
 Benton, hurrying into her own room and shutting herself up, in order 
 that she might preserve that appearance of being taken by surprise 
 which is so essential to the polite reception of visitors, awaited their 
 coming with a smiling connteuanco. 
 
 " Good ev'nin', mum," said the older Mr. Weller, looking in at the 
 door after a prefatory tap. " I'm afcerd we've come in rayther arter 
 the time, mum, but the young colt being full o' wice, has been a 
 boltin' and shyin' and gettin' his log over the traces to sich a extent 
 that if he an't wery soon broke in, he'll wex me into a broken heart, 
 and tlicn he'll never be brought out no more except to learn his letters 
 from the writin' on his grandfather's tombstone." 
 
 With these pathetic words, which were addressed to something out- 
 side the door about two feet six from the ground, Mr. Weller intro- 
 duced a very small boy firmly set upon a couj)lc of very sturdy legs, 
 who looked as if nothing could over knock him down. Besides having 
 a very round face strongly resembling Mr. Wcller's, and a stout little 
 body of exactly his build, this young gentleman, standing with his 
 little legs very wide apart, as if the top-boots were fiimiliar to them, 
 actually winked upon the housekeeper with his infant eye, in imita- 
 tion of his grandfatlicr. 
 
 " There's a naughty boy, mum," said Mr. Weller, bursting with 
 delight, " there's a immoral Tony. Wos there ever a little chap o' 
 four year and eight mouths old as vinked his eye at a strange lady 
 afore ? " 
 
 As little affected by this observation as by the former appeal to his 
 feelings, Master Weller elevated in the air a small model vi a coach 
 wliip which he carried in liis hand, and addressing tlic housekeeper 
 witli a shrill " ya liip ! " inquired if she was " going down the road ; " 
 at which lia])py adaptation of a h^sson ho liad been tauglit from 
 infancy, Mr. Weller could restrain his feelings no longer, but gave 
 him twopence on the spot. 
 
 "it's in wain to deny it, mum," said Mr. W^ellcr, " this here is a 
 boy arter his grandfather's own heart, and beats out all the boys as 
 ever wos or ^vill be. Though at the same time, mum," added Sir.
 
 A Chip of the Old Block. 
 
 S45 
 
 Weller, trying to look gravely down upon his favourite, " it was wery 
 wrong on him to want to over all the posts as we come along, and 
 wery cruel on him to force poor grandfather to lift him cross-legged 
 over every vun of 'em. He wouldn't pass vun single blessed post, 
 
 mum, and at the top o' the lane there's seveu-and-forty on 'em all ia 
 a row, and wery close together." 
 
 Here Mr. Weller, whoso feelings were in a perpetual conflict 
 between pride in his grandson's achievements and a sense of his own 
 responsibility, and the importance of impressing him with moral 
 truths, burst into a fit of laughter, and suddenly checking himself, 
 remarked in a severe tone that little boys as made their grandfathers 
 put 'em over posts never went to heaven at any price. 
 
 By this time the housekeeper had made tea, and little Tony, placed 
 on a chair beside her, with his eyes nearly on a level with the top of 
 the table, was provided with various delicacies which yielded him 
 extreme contentment. The housekeeper (who seemed rather afraid of 
 the child, notwithstanding her caresses) then patted him on the head, 
 and declared that he was the finest boy she had ever seen. 
 
 " Wy, mum," said Mr. Weller, " I don't think you'll see a many 
 eich, and that's the truth. But if my son Samivel vould give me my 
 
 2 N
 
 54^ Master Humphreys Clock. 
 
 vay, mum, aud only dis-ponse vith his migld I wcntcr to say tlio 
 vurd ? " 
 
 " What word, Mr. Woller ? " said the housekeeper, blushing slightly. 
 
 " Petticuts, mum," returned that gentleman, laying his hand upon 
 the garments of his grandson. " If my son Samivel, mum, vould only 
 dis-pense vith these here, you'd see such a alteration in his appear- 
 ance, as the imagination can't depicter." 
 
 " I3ut what would you have the child wear instead, Mr. Woller ? " 
 said the housekeeper. 
 
 " I've offered my son Samivel, mum, agen and agen," returned tho 
 old gentleman, " to purwido him at my own cost vith a suit o' clothes 
 as 'ud bo the makin' on him, and form his mind in infancy for those 
 pursuits as I hope the family o' tho Vellers vill alvays dewote them- 
 selves to. Tony, my boy, tell the lady wot them clothes are, as grand- 
 father says father ought to let you vcar." 
 
 " A littlo white hat and a little sprig weskut and little knee cords 
 and littlo top-boots and a little green coat with little bright buttons 
 and a littlo wclwet collar," replied Tony, with great readiness and no 
 stojis. 
 
 " That's the cos-toom, mum," said Mr, Wellcr, looking proudly at 
 tho housekeeper. " Once make sich a model on him as that, and you'd 
 say ho icos a angel I " 
 
 Perhaps the housekeeper thought that in such a guise young Tony 
 would look more liko tho angel at Islington than anything else of that 
 name, or perhaps she was disconcerted to find her previously-conceived 
 ideas disturbed, as angels are not commonly represented in top-boots 
 aud sprig waistcoats. She coughed doubtfully, but said nothing. 
 
 " How many brothers and sisters have you, my dear ? " she asked, 
 after a short silence. 
 
 " One brother and no sister at all," replied Tony. " Sam his name 
 is, and so's my father's. Do you know my father ? " 
 
 " O yes, I know him," said the housekeeper, graciously. 
 
 " Is my father fond of you ? " pursued Tony. 
 
 " I hopo so," rejoined the smiling housekeeper. 
 
 Tony considered a moment, and then said, " Is my grandfather fond 
 of you ? " 
 
 This would seem a very easy question to answer, but instead of 
 replying to it, tho housekeeper smiled in great confusion, and said 
 that really children did ask such extraordinary questions that it was 
 tho most difficult thing in tlie world to talk to tbcm. IVIr. Weller 
 took upon liimsolf to reply tliat he was very fond of the; lady ; but tlic 
 housekeeper entreating that lie would not put such tilings into tlio 
 child's head, Mr. Weller shook his own while she looked another way, 
 and seemed to be troubled with a misgiving that captivation was in 
 progress. It was, perhaps, on this account that he changed tho subject 
 precipitately. 
 
 " It's wery wrong in littlo boys to make game o' their grandfathers,
 
 Sad Doings of Master Tony. 547 
 
 an't it, mum ? " said Mr. Weller, shaking his head waggishly, until 
 Tony looked at him, when he counterfeited the deepest dejection and 
 sorrow. 
 
 " 0, very sad 1 " assented the housekeeper. " But I hope no little 
 boys do that ? ' ' 
 
 " There is vun young Turk, mum," said Mr. Wcllcr, " as havin' 
 seen his grandfather a little overcome vith drink on the occasion of a 
 friend's birthday, goes a reelin' and staggeriu' about the house, and 
 makin' believe that he's the old gen'lm'n." 
 
 " 0, quite shocking ! " cried the housekeeper. 
 
 " Yes, mum," said Mr. Woller ; " and previously to so doin', this 
 here young traitor that I'm a-speakin' of, pinches his little nose to 
 make it red, and then he gives a hiccup and says, ' I'm all right,' ho 
 says ; ' give us another song ! ' Ha, ha ! ' Give us another song,' ho 
 says. Ha, ha, ha ! " 
 
 In his excessive delight, Mr. Weller was quite unmindful of his 
 moral responsibility, until little Tony kicked up his legs, and laughing 
 immoderately, cried, " That was me, that was ; " whereupon the grand- 
 father, by a great effort, became extremely solemn. 
 
 " No, Tony, not you," said Mr. Weller. " I hope it warn't you, 
 Tony. It must ha' been that 'ere naughty little chap as comes some- 
 times out o' the empty watch-box round the corner, that same little 
 chap as wos found standing on the table afore the looking-glass, 
 pretending to shave himself vith a oyster-knife." 
 
 " He didn't hurt himself, I hope ? " observed the housekeeper, 
 
 " Not he, mum," said Mr. Weller proudly ; " bless your heart, you 
 might trust that 'ere boy vith a steam-engine a'most, he's such a 
 knowin' young " but suddenly recollecting himself and observing 
 that Tony perfectly understood and appreciated the compliment, the 
 old gentleman groaned and observed that " it wos all wery shockin' 
 wery." 
 
 " O, he's a bad 'un," said Mr. Weller, " is that 'ere watch-box boy, 
 makin' such a noise and litter in the back yard, he does, watcrin' 
 wooden horses and fecdiu' of 'em vith grass, and perpetivally spillin' 
 his little brother out of a veclbarrow and frighteniii' his mother out 
 of her vits, at the wery moment wen she's expectin' to increase his 
 stock of happiness vith another play-feller, O, he's a bad one ! He's 
 even gone so far as to put on a pair of paper spectacles as he got his 
 father to make for him, and walk up and down the garden vith his 
 liands behind him in imitation of Mr. Pickwick, but Tony don't do 
 sich things, O no ! " 
 
 " no ! " echoed Tony. 
 
 " He knows better, he does," said Mr, Weller. " He knows that if 
 he wos to come sich games as these nobody wouldn't love him, and 
 that his grandfather in partickler couldn't abear the sight on him ; 
 for vich reasons Tony's always good." 
 
 ' Always good," echoed Tony ; and his grandfather immediately took
 
 54^ Master Humphrey' s Clock. 
 
 him on his knee and kissed him, at the same time, with many nods 
 and winks, slyly pointing at the child's head with his thumb, in order 
 that the housekeeper, otherwise deceived by the admirable manner in 
 which ho (Mr. Weller) had sustained his character, might not suppose 
 that any other young gentleman was referred to, and might clearly 
 understand that the boy of the watch-box was but an imaginary 
 creation, and a fetch of Tony himself, invented for his improvement 
 and reformation. 
 
 Not confining himself to a mere verbal description of his grandson's 
 abilities, Mr. Weller, when tea was finished, invited him by various 
 gifts of pence and halfpence to smoke imaginary pipes, drink visionary 
 beer from real pots, imitate his grandfather without reserve, and in 
 particular to go tlirough the drunken scene, which threw the old 
 gentleman into ecstasies and filled the housekeeper with wonder. 
 Nor was Mr. Wcllor's pride satisfied with even this display, for 
 when ho took his leave he carried the child, like some rare and 
 astonishing curiosity, first to the barber's house and afterwards to the 
 tobacconist's, at each of which places ho repeated his performances 
 with tlio utmost effect to apjilauding and deliglited audiences. It 
 was half-past nine o'clock when Mr. Weller was last seen carrying 
 him homo upon his shoulder, and it has been whispered abroad that 
 at that time the infant Tony was rather intoxicated.* 
 
 [^raster Iliimplircy is revived thus at the close of the Old Curiosity Shop, merely 
 to introduce Baniaby Iludge.] 
 
 I was musing the other evening upon the characters and incidents 
 with which I had been so long engaged ; wondering how I could ever 
 have looked forward with pleasure to the completion of my tale, and 
 rei)roaching myself for having done so, as if it were a kind of cruelty 
 to those comjianions of my solitude whom I had now dismissed, and 
 could never again recall ; when my clock struck ten. Punctual to the 
 hour, my friends appeared. 
 
 On our last night of meeting, wo had finished the story which the 
 reader has just concluded. Our conversation took the same current 
 as the meditations which the entrance of my friends had interrupted, 
 and The Old Curiosity Shop was the sta])le of our discourse. 
 
 I may confide to the reader now, that in connection with this little 
 history I had something ujion my mind ; something to communicate 
 whieli I had all along with difficulty repressed ; something I had 
 deemed it, during tlie progress of tlie story, necessary to its interest 
 to disguise, and wliicli, now that it was over, I wished, and was yet 
 reluctant, to disclose. 
 
 To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in 
 my nature, I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart, 
 
 * Old Curiosity Shop is continued from here to the end without further break,
 
 Master Humphrey discloses a Secret. 549 
 
 Tliis temper, and the consciousness of Laving done some violence to 
 it in my narrative, laid me under a restraint which I should have had 
 great difficulty in overcoming, but for a timely remark from Mr. 
 Miles, who, as I hinted in a former paper, is a gentleman of business 
 habits, and of great exactness and propriety in all his transactions. 
 
 " I could have wished," my friend objected, " that we had been 
 made acquainted with the single gentleman's name. I don't like his 
 withholding his name. It made me look upon him at first with 
 suspicion, and caused me to doubt his moral character, I assure you. 
 I am fully satisfied by this time of his being a worthy creature ; but 
 in this respect he certainly would not appear to have acted at all like 
 a man of business." 
 
 " My friends," said I, drawing to the table, at which they were by 
 this time seated in their usual chairs, " do you remember that this 
 story bore another title besides that one we have so often heard of 
 late ? " 
 
 Mr. Miles had his pocket-book out in an instant, and referring to 
 an entry therein, rejoined, " Certainly. Personal Adventures of 
 Master Humphrey. Here it is. I made a note of it at the time." 
 
 I was about to resume what I had to tell them, when the same 
 Mr. Miles again interrupted me, observing that the narrative originated 
 in a personal adventure of my own, and that was no doubt the reason 
 for its being thus designated. 
 
 This led me to the point at once. 
 
 " You will one and all forgive me," I returned, " if, for the greater 
 convenience of the story, and for its better introduction, that adventure 
 was fictitious. I had my share, indeed, no light or trivial one, in 
 the pages we have read, but it was not the share I feigned to have at 
 first. The younger brother, the single gentleman, the nameless actor 
 in this little drama, stands before you now," 
 
 It was easy to see they had not expected this disclosure. 
 
 " Yes," I pursued. " I can look back upon my part in it with a 
 calm, half-smiling pity for myself as for some other man. But I am 
 he, indeed ; and now the chief sorrows of my life arc yours." 
 
 I need not say what true gratification I derived from the sympathy 
 and kindness with which this acknowledgment was received ; nor how 
 often it had risen to my lips before ; nor how difficult I had found it 
 how impossible, when I came to those passages which touched me 
 most, and most nearly concerned me to sustain the character I had 
 assumed. It is enough to say that I replaced in the clock-case the 
 record of so many trials, sorrowfully, it is true, biit with a softened 
 sorrow which was almost pleasure ; and felt that in living through the 
 past again, and communicating to others the lesson it had helped to 
 teach mo, I had been a happier man. 
 
 We liugercd so long over the leaves from which I had read, that as 
 I consigned them to their former resting-place, the hand of my trusty 
 clock pointed to twelve, and there came towards us upon the wind the
 
 550 Master Humphrey's Clock. 
 
 voice of tlio deep and distant bell of St. Paul's as it struck the hour of 
 midnight. 
 
 " This," said I, returning with a manuscript I had taken at the 
 moment, from the same repository, " to bo opened to such music, 
 should be a tale where London's face by night is darkly seen, aud 
 where some deed of such a time as this is dimly shadowed out. 
 Wliich of us here has seen the working of that great machine whoso 
 voice has just now ceased ? " 
 
 Mr. Pickwick had, of course, and so had Mr. Miles. Jack and my 
 deaf friend were in the minority. 
 
 I had seen it but a few days before, and could not help telling 
 tliom of the ftmcy I had about it. 
 
 I paid my fee of twopence upon entering, to one of the money- 
 changers who sit within the Temple ; and falling, after a few turns 
 up and down, into the quiet train of thought which such a place 
 awakens, paced the echoing stones like some old monk whose present 
 world lay all within its walls. As I looked afar up into the lofty 
 dome, I could not help wondering what were his reflections whoso 
 genius reared that mighty pile, when, the last small wedge of timber 
 fixed, the last nail driven into its liome for many centuries, the clang 
 of hammers, and the hum of busy voices gone, and tlie Great Silence 
 whole years of noise had helped to make, reigning undisturbed around, 
 he mused, as I did now, upon his work, and lost himself amid its vaf.t 
 extent. I could not ({uite determine whether the contemplation of it 
 would impress him with a sense of greatness or of insignificance ; but 
 Avhen 1 remembered how long a time it had taken to erect, in liow 
 short a space it might be traversed even to its remotest parts, for liow 
 l)rief a term he, or any of those who cared to bear his name, would 
 live to see it, or know of its existence, I imagined him far more 
 melancholy than proud, and looking witli regret upon his labour done. 
 With these thoughts in my mind, I began to ascend, almost uncon- 
 sciously, the flight of stei)s leading to the several wonders of the 
 building, and found myself before a barrier where another money- 
 taker sat, who demanded which among them I would choose to see. 
 There were the stone gallery, he said, and the whispering gallery, 
 the geometrical staircase, the room of models, tlie clock the clock 
 being (^uite in my way, I stopped him there, and chose that sight from 
 all the rest. 
 
 I groped my way into the Turret which it occupies, and saw before 
 mo, in a kind of loft, what s'eemed to be a great, old oaken press \\ itii 
 folding doors. These being thrown back by the attendant (wlio was 
 sleeping when I came upon him, and looked a drowsy fellow, as 
 though his close comixmionship with Time had made him quite 
 indillerent to it), disclosed a comi)licated crowd of wheels and chains 
 in iron aud brass, great, sturdy, rattling engines, suggestive of 
 breaking a finger put in here or there, and grinding the bono to 
 powd'jr, -and these were the Clock ! Its very pulse, if I may use tho
 
 The Heart of London. 551 
 
 word, was like no other clock. It did not mark the flight of every 
 moment with a gentle second stroke, as though it would check old 
 Time, and have him stay his pace in pity, but measured it with one 
 sledge-hammer beat, as if its business were to crush the seconds as 
 they came trooping on, and remorselessly to clear a path before tho 
 Day of Judgment. 
 
 I sat down opposite to it, and hearing its regular and never- 
 changing voice, that one deep constant note, uppermost amongst all 
 tho noise and clatter in the streets below, marking that, let that 
 tumult rise or fall, go on or stop, let it be night or noon, to-morrow 
 or to-day, this year or next, it still performed its functions with the 
 same dull constancy, and regulated the progress of the life around, 
 the fancy came upon me that this was London's Heart, and that when 
 it should cease to beat, the City would be no more. 
 
 It is night. Calm and unmoved amidst the scenes that darkness 
 favours, the great heart of London throbs in its Giant breast. "Wealth 
 and beggary, vice and virtue, guilt and innocence, repletion and the 
 direst hunger, all treading on each other and crowding together, are 
 gathered round it. Draw but a little circle above the clustering 
 housetops, and you shall have within its space everything, with its 
 opposite extreme and contradiction, close beside. Where yonder 
 feeble light is shining, a man is but this moment dead. The taper at 
 a few yards' distance is seen by eyes that have this instant opened on 
 the world. There are two houses separated by but an inch or two of 
 wall. In one, there are quiet minds at rest ; in the other, a waking 
 conscience that one might think would trouble the. very air. In that 
 close corner where the roofs shrink down and cower together as if to 
 hide their secrets from the handsome street hard by, there are such 
 dark crimes, such miseries and horrors, as could be hardly told in 
 whispers. In the handsome street, there are folks asleep who have 
 dwelt there all their lives, and have no more knowledge of these 
 things than if they had never been, or were transacted at the remotest 
 limits of the world, who, if they were hinted at, would shake their 
 heads, look wise, and frown, and say they were impossible, and out 
 of Nature, as if all great towns were not. Does not this Heart of 
 London, that nothing moves, nor stops, nor quickens, that goes on 
 the same let what will be done, does it not express tho City's 
 character well ? 
 
 The day begins to break, and soon there is the hum and noise of 
 life. Those who have spent the night on doorsteps and cold stones 
 crawl off to beg ; they who have slept in beds come forth to their 
 occupation, too, and business is astir. The fog of sleep rolls slowly 
 off, and London shines awake. The streets are filled with carriages, 
 and people gaily clad. The jails are full, too, to the throat, nor have 
 the workhouses or hospitals much room to spare. The courts of law 
 are crowded. Taverns have their regular frequenters by this time, 
 and every mart of traffic has its throng. Each of these places is a
 
 552 Master Huniphrey s Clock. 
 
 world, aud has its own iubabitants ; cacli is distinct from, and almost 
 unconscious of the existence of any other. There are some few people 
 well to do, wlio remember to have heard it said, that numbers of men 
 and Avomen thousands, they think it was get up in London every 
 day, unknowing where to lay their heads at night ; and that there are 
 quarters of the town where misery and famine always are. They 
 (lon't believe it quite, there may bo some ti'uth in it, but it is 
 exaggerated, of course. So, each of these thousand worlds goes on, 
 intent ui>on itself, until night comes again, first with its lights and 
 pleasures, and its cheerful streets ; then with its guilt and darkness. 
 
 Heart of London, there is a moral in thy every stroke ! as I look 
 on at thy indomitable working, which neither death, nor press of life, 
 nor grief, nor gladness out of doors will influence one jot, I seem to 
 hear a voice within thee which sinks into my heart, bidding me, as I 
 elbow my way among the crowd, have some thought for the meanest 
 wretch that passes, and, being a man, to turn away with scorn aud 
 pride from none that bear the human shape. 
 
 I am by no means sure that I might not have been tempted to 
 enlarge upon the subject, had not the papers that lay before me on 
 the table been a silent reproach for even this digression. I took them 
 up again when I had got thus far, and seriously prepared to read. 
 
 The handwriting was strange to me, for the manuscript had been 
 fairly cojiied. As it is against our rules, in such a case, to inquire 
 into the authorship xmtil the reading is concluded, I could only 
 glance at tlic ditfcrent faces round me, in search of some expression 
 which should betray the writer. Whoever he might be, he was pre- 
 pared for this, and gave no sign for nay enlightenment. 
 
 I liad the papers in my hand, when my deaf friend interposed with 
 a suggestion. 
 
 " It has occurred to me," he said, " bearing in mind your sequel to 
 the tale we have finished, that if such of us as have anything to relate of 
 our own lives could interweave it with our contribution to the Clock, 
 it would bo well to do so. This need be no restraint upon us, either 
 as to time, or place, or incident, since any real passage of this kind 
 may be surrounded by fictitious circumstances, and rej)resentcd by 
 factitious cliaracters. What if we make this an article of agreement 
 among ourselves ? " 
 
 The proposition was cordially received, but the difficulty appeared 
 to be tliat lierj was a long story written before we liad thought of it. 
 
 " Unless," said I, " it should have liappened that the writer of this 
 tale which is not impossible, for men are apt to do so when they 
 write has actually mingled with it something of his own endurance 
 and exjierience." 
 
 Nobody sjMjko, but I thought I detected in one quarter tliat tliis 
 was really tlic ease. 
 
 " If I liuve no assurance to the contrary," I added, therefore, " \
 
 Mr. Welle/ s WatcJi invited in. 
 
 553 
 
 shall take it for granted that he has done so, and that even these 
 papers come within our new agreement. Everybody being mute, wo 
 hold that understanding, if you please." 
 
 And here I was about to begin again, when Jack informed us softly, 
 that during the progress of our last narrative, Mr. Weller's Watch 
 had adjourned its sittings from the kitchen, and regularly met outside 
 our door, where he had no doubt that august body would be found at 
 the present moment. As this was for the convenience of listening to 
 our stories, he submitted that they might be suffered to come in, and 
 liear them more pleasantly. 
 
 To this we one and all yielded a ready assent, and the party being 
 discovered, as Jack had supposed, and invited to walk in, entered 
 (though not without great confusion at having been detected), and 
 were accommodated with chairs at a little distance. 
 
 Then, the lamp being trimmed, the fire well stirred and burning 
 brightly, the hearth clean swej)t, the curtains closely drawn, the clock 
 wound up, we entered on our new story, Barnaby Eudge. 
 
 ^i^^
 
 554 Master- Humphrey s Clock. 
 
 [This is, as indicated, the final appearance of Master Humphrey's Clock. It forms 
 the conclusion of Barnaby Rudgc.] 
 
 It is again midniglit. My firo burns cheerfully ; the room is filled 
 with my old friend's sober voice ; and I am loft to muse upon tho 
 story wo have just now finished. 
 
 It makes mo smile, at such a time as this, to think if there wore 
 any ono to see me sitting in my easy-chair, my gray head hanging 
 down, my eyes bent thoughtfully upon tho glowing embers, and my 
 crutcli emblem of my helplessness lying upon tho hearth at my 
 feet, how solitary I should seem. Yet though I am tho sole tenant of 
 this chimney-corner, though I am childless and old, I have no scnso 
 of loneliness at this hour ; but am the centre of a silent group whoso 
 company I love. 
 
 Thus, even age and weakness have their consolations. If I were a 
 younger man, if I wore more active, more strongly bound and tied to 
 life, these visionary friends would shun me, or I should desire to fly 
 from them. Being what I am, I can court their society, and delight 
 in it ; and pass whole hours in picturing to myself tho shadows that 
 pcrchanco flock every night into this chamber, and in imagining with 
 pleasure what kind of interest they have in tho frail, feeble mortal 
 who is its sole inhabitant. 
 
 All the friends I Iiave ever lost I find again among these visitors. 
 I love to fancy their spirits hovering about me, feeling still some 
 earthly kindness for their old companion, and watching his decay. 
 " He is weaker, ho declines apace, he draws nearer and nearer to us, 
 and will soon be conscious of our existence." What is there to alarm 
 me in this ? It is encouragement and hope. 
 
 These thoughts have never crowded on me half so fast as tlicy have 
 done to-night. Faces I had long forgotten have become familiar to 
 mc once again ; traits I had endeavoured -to recall for years have 
 come before me in an instant ; nothing is changed but me ; and oven 
 I can be my former self at will. 
 
 liaising my eyes but now to tlie face of my old clock, I remember, 
 (piitc involuntarily, the veneration, not uimiixcd with a sort of childish 
 uwe, with which I used to sit and watch it as it ticked, unheeded in a 
 dark staircase corner. I recollect looking more grave and steady 
 wlien I met its dusty face, as if, having that strange kind of life 
 within it, and being free from all excess of vulgar appetite, and 
 \varning all the house by night and day, it were a sage. How often 
 have I listened to it as it told tlio beads of time, and wondered at its 
 constancy ! How often watched it slowly pointing round tlio dial, 
 and, while I panted for the eagerly expected hour to come, admired, 
 despite myself, its steadiness of purpose and lofty freedom from all 
 human strife, impatience, and desire ! 
 
 I thought it cruel once. It was very liard of heart, to my mind, I 
 remember. It was an old servant even then ; and I felt as though it 
 ought to sliow some sorrow ; as though it wanted sympathy with us
 
 Pleasant Fancies. 555 
 
 in onr distress, and were a dull, heartless, mercenary creature. Ah ! 
 how soon I learnt to know that in its ceaseless going on, and in its 
 being checked or stayed by nothing, lay its greatest kindness, and tho 
 only balm for grief and wounded peace of mind. 
 
 To-night, to-night, when this tranquillity and calm are on my 
 spirits, and memory presents so many shifting scenes before me, I 
 take my quiet stand at will by many a fire that has been long ex- 
 tinguished, and mingle with the cheerful grouj) that cluster round it. 
 If I could be sorrowful in such a mood, I should grow sad to think 
 what a poor blot I was upon their youth and beauty once, and now 
 how few remain to put mo to the blush ; I should grov/ sad to think 
 that such among them as I sometimes meet with in my daily walks 
 are scarcely less infirm than I ; that time has brought us to a level ; 
 and that all distinctions fade and vanish as we take our trembling 
 steps towards the grave. 
 
 I3ut memory was given us for better purposes than this, and mine 
 is not a torment, but a source of pleasure. To muse upon tho gaiety 
 and youth I have known suggests to me glad scenes of harmless 
 mirth that may be passing now. From contemplating them apart, I 
 soon become an actor in these little dramas, and humouring my fancy, 
 lose myself among tlic beings it invokes. 
 
 When my fire is bright and high, and a warm blush mantles in the 
 walls and ceiling of this ancient room ; when my clock makes cheer- 
 ful music, like one of those chirping insects who delight in the warm 
 lioarth, and are sometimes, by a good superstition, looked upon as tlic 
 liarbingers of fortune and plenty to that household in whose mercies 
 tliey put their humble trust ; when everything is in a ruddy genial 
 glow, and there are voices in the crackling flame, and smiles in its 
 Hashing light, other smiles and other voices congregate around me, 
 invading, with their pleasant harmony, the silence of tlio time. 
 
 For then a knot of youthful creatures gather round my fireside, and 
 tho room re-echoes to their merry voices. My solitary chair no 
 longer holds its ample place before the fire, but is wheeled into a 
 smaller corner, to leave more room for tho broad circle formed about 
 the cheerful hearth. I have sons, and daughters, and grandchildren, 
 and we are assembled on some occasion of rejoicing common to us all. 
 It is a birthday, perhaps, or perha])s it may be Christmas time ; but 
 be it what it may, there is rare holiday among us ; we are full of glee. 
 
 In the chimney-corner, opposite myself, sits one who has grown 
 old beside me. She is changed, of course ; much changed ; and yet I 
 recognise the girl even in that gray hair and wrinkled brow. Glancing 
 from the laughing child who half hides in her ample skirts, and half 
 peeps out, and from her to the little matron of twelve years old, 
 who sits so womanly and so demure at no great distance from me, 
 and from her again, to a fair girl in the full bloom of early woman- 
 hood, the centre of the group, who has glanced more than once 
 towards the opening door, and by whom tho children, whispering and
 
 556 Master Hiimplirey' s Clock. 
 
 tittering among themselves, will leave a vacant chair, although sho 
 bids them not, I see her image thrice repeated, and feel how long it 
 is before one form and set of features wholly pass away, if ever, from 
 among the living. While I am dwelling upon tliis, and tracing out 
 the gradual change from infancy to youth, from youth to perfect 
 growth, from that to age, and thinking, with an old man's i)ride, that 
 she is comely yet, I feel a slight thin hand upon my arm, and, looking 
 down, see seated at my feet a crippled boy, a gentle, patient child, 
 whose aspect I know well. He rests upon a little crutch, I know it 
 too, and leaning on it as he climbs my footstool, whispers in my 
 ear, " I am hardly one of these, dear grandfather, although I lovo 
 them dearly. They are very kind to me, but you will be kinder still, 
 I know." 
 
 I have my hand upon his neck, and stoop to kiss him, when my 
 clock strikes, my chair is in its old spot, and I am alone. 
 
 What if I be ? What if this liresido be tenantless, save for the 
 presence of one weak old man ? From my house-top I can look upon 
 a hundred homes, in every one of which these social companions are 
 matters of reality. In my daily walks I pass a thousand men whose 
 cares are all forgotten, whose labours are made light, whoso dull 
 routine of work from day to day is cheered and brightened by their 
 glimpses of domestic joy at home. Amid the struggles of this 
 struggling town what cheerful sacrifices are made ; what toil endured 
 with readiness ; what patience shown and fortitude displayed for the 
 mere sake of home and its aifectious ! Let me thank Heaven that I 
 can people my fireside with shadows such as these ; with shadows of 
 bright objects that exist in crowds about me ; and let me say, " I am 
 alone no more." 
 
 I never was less so I write it with a grateful heart than I am 
 to-night. Eecollections of the past and visions of the present come 
 to bear me company ; the meanest man to whom I have ever given 
 alms appears, to add his mite of peace and comfort to my stock ; and 
 whenever the fire within me sliall grow cold, to light my path uj^on 
 tliis earth no more, I juvay that it may be at such an hour as this, and 
 when I love the world as well as I do now. 
 
 THE DEAF GENTLEMAN FROM IIIS OWN APAUTMENT. 
 
 Our dear friend laid down his i)en at tlic end of the foregoing 
 jjiiragnipli, to take it up no more. I little thought ever to emi)l()y 
 mine upon so sorrowful a task as that wliicli he has left me, and to 
 wliich I now devote it. 
 
 As lie did not appear among us at liis usual hour next morning, wo 
 knocked gently at his door. No answer being given, it was softly 
 opened ; and then, to our surprise, Me saw him seated before the aslies 
 of his fire, witli a little table I was accustomed to set at his elbow 
 when I left him for the night at a short distance from him, as though
 
 Death of Master Humphrey. 557 
 
 he had pushed it away with the idea of rising and retiring to his bed. 
 His crutch and footstool lay at his feet as usual, and he was dressed 
 in his chamber-gown, which he had put on before I left him. Ho 
 was reclining in his chair, in his accustomed posture, with his face 
 towards the fire, and seemed absorbed in meditation, indeed, at first, 
 we almost hoj^ed lie was. 
 
 Going up to him, wo found him dead. I have often, very often, 
 seen him sleeping, and always peacefully, but I never saw him look 
 so calm and tranquil. His face wore a serene, benign expression, 
 which had impressed me very strongly when we last shook hands ; 
 not that he had ever had any other look, God knows ; but there was 
 something in this so very spiritual, so strangely and indefinably allied 
 to youth, although his head was gray and venerable, that it was new 
 even in him. It came upon me all at once when on some slight pre- 
 tence he called me back upon the previous night to take me by the 
 hand again, and once more say, " God bless you." 
 
 A boll-rope hung within his reach, but he had not moved towards 
 it ; nor had he stirred, we all agreed, except, as I have said, to push 
 away his table, which he could have done, and no doubt did, with a 
 very slight motion of his liand. He had relapsed for a moment into 
 his late train of meditation, and, with a thoughtful smile upon his 
 face, had died. 
 
 I had long known it to be his wish that whenever this event should 
 come to pass we might be all assembled in the house. I therefore 
 lost no time in sending for Mr. Pickwick and for Mr. Miles, both of 
 whom arrived before the messenger's return. 
 
 It is not my purpose to dilate upon the sorrow and affectionate 
 emotions of which I was at once the witness and the sharer. But I 
 may say, of the humbler mourners, that his faithful housekeeper was 
 fairly heart-broken ; that the poor barber would not be comforted ; 
 and that I shall respect the homely truth and warmth of heart of Mr. 
 Weller and his son to the last moment of my life. 
 
 " And the sweet old creetur, sir," said the elder Mr. Weller to me 
 in the afternoon, " has bolted. Him as had no wice, and was so free 
 from temper that a infant might ha' drove him, has been took at last 
 with that 'ere unawoidable fit o' staggers as we all must come to, and 
 gone off his feed for ever ! I see him," said the old gentleman, with 
 ft moisture in his eye, which could not be mistaken, " I see him 
 gettin', every journey, more and more groggy ; I says to Samivcl, 
 ' My boy ! the Grey's a goin' at the knees ; ' and now my predilictions 
 is fatally werified, and him as I could never do enough to serve or 
 show my likin' for, is up the great uniwersal spout o' natur." 
 
 I was not the less sensible of the old man's attachment because ho 
 expressed it in his peculiar manner. Indeed, I can truly assert of 
 both him and his son, that notwithstanding the extraordinary dialogues 
 they held together, and the strange commentaries and corrections 
 with which each of them illustrated the other's speech, I do not think
 
 55^ Master Humphrey's Clock. 
 
 it possible to exceed the sincerity of their regret ; and that I am sure 
 their thoughtfulncss and anxiety in anticipating the discharge of 
 many little offices of sympathy would have done honour to the most 
 delicate-minded persons. 
 
 Our friend had frequently told us that his will would be found in a 
 box in the Clock-case, the key of which was in his writing-desk. As 
 he had told us also that he desired it to bo opened immediately after 
 his death, whenever that should happen, we met together that niglit 
 for the fulfilment of his request. 
 
 Wo found it where ho had told us, wrapped in a sealed paper, and 
 with it a codicil of recent date, in which ho named Mr. Miles and 
 Mr. Pickwick his executors, as having no need of any greater benefit 
 from his estate than a generous token (which he bequeathed to them) 
 of his friendship and remembrance. 
 
 After pointing out the spot in which he wished his ashes to repose, 
 ho gave to " his dear old friends," Jack Ecdburn and myself, his 
 house, his books, his furniture, in short, all that his house contained ; 
 and with this legacy more ample means of maintaining it in its 
 present state than we, with our habits and at our terms of life, can 
 ever exhaust. Besides these gifts, ho left to us, in trust, an annual 
 sum of no insignificant amount, to be distributed in cliarity among 
 his accustomed pensioners they arc a long list and such other 
 claimants on his bounty as might, from time to time, present them- 
 selves. And as true charity not only covers a multitude of sins, but 
 includes a multitude of virtues, such as forgiveness, liberal con- 
 struction, gentleness and mercy to the faults of others, and the 
 remembrance of our own imperfections and advantages, he bade us 
 not inquire too closely into the venial errors of the poor, but finding 
 that they were poor, first to relieve and then endeavour at an 
 advantage to reclaim them. 
 
 To the housekeei^er he left an annuity, sufficient for her comfortable 
 maintenance and sujiport through life. For the barber, who liad 
 attended him many years, ho made a similar provision. And I may 
 make two remarks in this place : first, that I think this pair are very 
 likely to club tlieir means together and make a match of it ; and 
 secondly, that I think my friend had this result in his mind, for I 
 Iiave heard him say, more than once, that he could not concur witli 
 tlio generality of mankind in censuring equal marriages made in later 
 life, since tlicre were many cases in which such unions could not fail 
 to bo a wise and rational source of happiness to both parties. 
 
 Tlie elder Mr. Wcllcr is so far from viewing this prospect with any 
 feelings of jealousy, that he appears to be very much relieved by its 
 contemplation ; and his son, if I am not mistaken, participates in 
 tliis feeling. Wo are all of opinion, however, that tlie old gentle- 
 man's danger, even at its crisis, was very sliglit, and that he merely 
 laboured imder one of those transitory weaknesses to which i)ersons of 
 his temperament are now and then liable, and which become less and
 
 Conclusion. 559 
 
 less alarming at every return, until they wholly subside. I have no 
 doubt he will remain a jolly old widower for the rest of his life, as he 
 has already inquired of me, with much gravity, whether a writ of 
 habeas corpus would enable him to settle his property upon Tony 
 beyond the possibility of recall ; and has, in my presence, conjured 
 his son, with tears in his eyes, that in the event of his ever becoming 
 amorous again, he will put him in a strait-waistcoat until the fit is 
 past, and distinctly inform the lady that his property is " made over." 
 
 Although I have very little doubt that Sam would dutifully comply 
 with these injunctions in a case of extreme necessity, and that he 
 would do so with perfect composure and coolness, I do not apprehend 
 things will ever come to that pass, as the old gentleman seems per- 
 fectly happy in the society of his son, his pretty daughter-in-law, and 
 his grandchildren, and has solemnly announced his determination to 
 " take arter the old 'un in all respects ; " from which I infer that it is 
 his intention to regulate his conduct by the model of Mr. Pickwick, 
 who will certainly set him the example of a single life. 
 
 I have diverged for a moment from the subject with which I set 
 out, for I know that my friend was interested in these little matters, 
 and I have a natural tendency to linger upon any topic that occupied 
 his thoughts or gave him pleasure and amusement. His remaining 
 wishes are very briefly told. He desired that we would make him 
 the frequent subject of our conversation ; at the same time, that wo 
 would never speak of him with an air of gloom or restraint, but 
 frankly, and as one whom we still loved and hoped to meet again. 
 He trusted that the old house would wear no aspect of mourning, but 
 that it would be lively and cheerful ; and that we would not remove 
 or cover up his picture, which hangs in our dining-room, but make it 
 our companion as he had been. His own room, our place of meeting, 
 remains, at his desire, in its accustomed state ; our seats are placed 
 about the table as of old ; his easy-chair, his desk, his crutch, his 
 footstool, hold their accustomed places, and the clock stands in its 
 familiar corner. We go into the chamber at stated times to see that 
 all is as it should be, and to take care that the light and air are not 
 shut out, for on that point he expressed a strong solicitude. But it 
 was his fancy that the apartment should not bo inhabited; that it 
 should be religiously preserved in this condition, and that the voice 
 of his old companion should be heard no more. 
 
 My own history may be summed up in very few words ; and even 
 those I should have spared the reader but for my friend's allusion to 
 me some time since. I have no deeper sorrow than the loss of a child, 
 an only daughter, who is living, and who fled from her father's 
 house but a few weeks before our friend and I first met. I had never 
 spoken of this even to him, because I have always loved her, and I 
 could not bear to tell him of her error until I could tell him also of 
 her sorrow and regret. Happily I was enabled to do so some timo 
 ago. And it will not be long, with Heaven's leave, before she is
 
 560 Master Humphrey' s Clock. 
 
 restored to rac ; before I find in her and her husband the support of 
 my doclining years. 
 
 For my pipe, it is an ohl relic of home, a thing of no great worth, 
 a poor trifle, but sacred to mo for her sake. 
 
 Thus, since the death of our venerable friend. Jack Redburn and I 
 have been the solo tenants of the old house ; and, day by day, havo 
 lounged together in his favourite walks. Mindful of his injunctions, 
 we have long been able to speak of him with ease and cheerfulness, 
 and to remember him as he would bo remembered. From certain 
 allusions which Jack has dropped, to his having been deserted and 
 cast off in early life, I am inclined to believe that some passages of 
 his youth may possibly bo shadowed out in the history of Mr. Chester 
 and his sou, but seeing that ho avoids the subject, 1 havo not 
 pursued it. 
 
 My task is done. The chamber in which we havo whiled away so 
 many happy hours, not, 1 hope, without some pleasure and some profit, 
 is deserted ; our happy hour of meeting strikes no more ; the chimney- 
 corner has grown cold ; and Master IIumpiikky's Clock has stopped 
 for ever.
 
 HUNTED DOWN, 
 
 [I860.] 
 
 2o
 
 HUNTED DOWN. 
 
 I. 
 
 Most of us see some romances in life. In my capacity as Chief 
 Manager of a Life Assurance Office, I tliink I have within the last 
 thirty years seen more romances than the generality of men, however 
 unpromising the oi)portunity may, at first sight, seem. 
 
 As I have retired, and live at my ease, I possess the means that I 
 used to want, of considering what I have seen, at leisure. My ex- 
 periences have a more remarkable aspect, so reviewed, than they had 
 when they were in progress. I have come home from the Play 
 now, and can recall the scenes of the Drama upon which the 
 curtain has fallen, free from the glare, bewilderment, and bustle of 
 the Theatre. 
 
 Lot me recall one of these Romances of the real world. 
 
 There is nothing truer than j^hysiognomy, taken in connection with 
 manner. The art of reading that book of which Eternal Wisdom 
 obliges every human creature to present his or her own page with the 
 individual character written on it, is a difficult one, perhaps, and is 
 little studied. It may require some natural aptitude, and it must 
 require (for everything does) some patience and some pains. That 
 these are not usually given to it, that numbers of people accept a 
 few stock commonplace expressions of the face as the whole list of 
 characteristics, and neither seek nor know the refinements that are 
 truest, that You, for instance, give a great deal of time and attention 
 to the reading of music, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Hebrew, if you 
 please, and do not qualify yourself to read the face of the master or 
 mistress looking over your shoulder teaching it to you, I assume to 
 bo five hundred times more probable than improbable. Perhaps a 
 little self-sufficiency may be at the bottom of this ; facial expression 
 requires no study from you, you think ; it comes by nature to you to 
 know enough about it, and you are not to bo taken in. 
 
 I confess, for my part, that I have been taken in, over and over 
 again. I have boon taken in by acquaintances, and I have been taken
 
 564 Hunted Down. 
 
 in (of course) by friends ; far oftcner by friends than by any other 
 class of persons. How came I to bo so deceived ? Had I qnito 
 misread their faces ? 
 
 No. Belicvo me, my first impression of those people, founded on 
 face and manner alone, was invariably true. My mistake was in 
 eulTering them to come nearer to mo and explain themselves away. 
 
 II. 
 
 The partition which separated my own offico from our general outer 
 office in the City was of thick plate-glass. I could see tlirough it 
 wliat passed in the outer office, witliout hearing a word. I had it i)ut 
 up in jilacc of a wall that had been there for years, ever since the 
 house was built. It is no matter whether I did or did not make tlio 
 change in order that I might derive my first impression of strangers 
 who came to us on business, from their foces alone, witliout being 
 influenced by anything they said. Enoiigh to mention that I turned 
 my glass partition to that account, and that a Life Assurance Office is 
 at all times exposed to be practised upon by the most crafty and cruel 
 of the human race. 
 
 It was through my glass partition that I first saw the gentleman 
 whose story I am going to tell. 
 
 He had come in without my observing it, and had put his hat and 
 umbrella on the broad counter, and was bending over it to take some 
 papers from one of the clerks. He was about forty or so, dark, 
 exceedingly well dressed in black, being in mourning, and the 
 hand lie extended with a polite air, had a particularly well-fitting 
 black-kid glove upon it. His hair, which was elaborately brushed 
 and oiled, was parted straight uj) the middle ; and he presented this 
 parting to the clerk, exactly (to my thinking) as if he had said, in so 
 many words : " You must take me, if you please, my friend, just as I 
 show myself. Come straight up here, follow the gravel path, keep off" 
 the grass, I allow no trespassing." 
 
 I conceived a very great aversion to that man the moment I tlius 
 saw him. 
 
 He had asked for some of our printed forms, and tlie clerk was 
 giving them to him and explaining them. An obliged and agrc-eable 
 smile was on his face, and liis eyes met tliose of the clerk witli a 
 sprightly look. (I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked 
 about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conven- 
 tional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance, any 
 day in the week, if there is anything to bo got by it.) 
 
 I saw, in the corner of his eyelash, that he became aware of my 
 Icokiiii/ at liim. Tniniediiitolv lie turnod the parting in his liair toward
 
 Mr. Slinkton. 565 
 
 the glass partition, as if he said to me with a sweet Smile, " Straight 
 up here, if you please. Off the grass ! " 
 
 In a few moments he had put on his hat and taken up his umbrella, 
 and was gone. 
 
 I beckoned the clerk into my room, and asked, " Who was that ? " 
 
 He had the gentleman's card in his hand. " Mr. Julius Slinkton, 
 Middle Temple." 
 
 " A barrister, Mr. Adams ? " 
 
 " I think not, sir." 
 
 " I should have thought him a clergyman, but for his having no 
 Reverend here," said I. 
 
 " Probably, from his appearance," Mr. Adams replied, " he is 
 reading for orders." 
 
 I should mention that he wore a dainty white cravat, and dainty 
 linen altogether. 
 
 " What did he want, Mr. Adams ? " 
 
 " Merely a form of proposal, sir, and form of reference." 
 
 " Recommended here ? Did he say ? " 
 
 " Yes, he said ho was recommended here by a friend of yours. Ho 
 noticed you, but said that as he had not the pleasure of your personal 
 acquaintance he would not trouble you." 
 
 " Did he know my name ? " 
 
 " yes, sir ! He said, ' There is Mi*. Sampson, I see ! ' " 
 
 " A well-spoken gentleman, apparently ? " 
 
 " Remarkably so, sir." 
 
 " Insinuating manners, apparently ? " 
 
 " Very much so, indeed, sir." 
 
 " Hah ! " said I. " I want nothing at present, Mr. Adams." 
 
 Within a fortnight of that day I went to dine with a friend of mine, 
 a merchant, a man of taste, who buys i:)ictures and books ; and tho 
 first man I saw among the company was Mr. Julius Slinkton. There 
 he was, standing before the fire, with good large eyes and an open 
 expression of face ; but still (I thought) requiring everybody to come 
 at him by the prepared way he offered, and by no other. 
 
 I noticed him ask my friend to introduce him to Mr. Sampson, and 
 my friend did so. Mr. Slinkton was very happy to see me. Not too 
 happy ; there was no over-doing of the matter ; happy in a thoroughly 
 well-bred, perfectly unmeaning way. 
 
 " I thought you had met," our host observed. 
 
 " No," said iVIr. Slinkton. " I did look in at Mr. Sampson's office, 
 on your recommendation ; but I really did not feel justified in 
 troubling Mr. Sampson himself, on a point in the everyday routine of 
 an ordinary clerk." 
 
 I said I should have been glad to show him any attention on our 
 friend's introduction. 
 
 " I am sure of that," said he, " and am much obliged. At another 
 time, perhaps, I may be less delicate. Only, however, if I have real
 
 566 Hunted Down. 
 
 business ; for I know, Mr. Sampson, how precious business time is, 
 and wliat a vast number of impertinent people there are in the 
 world." 
 
 I acknowledged his consideration with a slight bow. " You were 
 thinking," said I, " of eflfecting a policy on your life." 
 
 " dear no ! I am afraid I am not so prudent as you pay me the 
 compliment of supposing me to be, Mr. Sampson. I merely inquired 
 for a friend. But you know what friends are in such matters. Nothing 
 may ever come of it. I have the greatest reluctance to trouble men 
 of business with inquiries for friends, knowing the probabilities to bo 
 a thousand to one that the friends will never follow them up. People 
 are so fickle, so selfish, so inconsiderate. Don't you, in your business, 
 find them so every day, Mr. Sampson ? " 
 
 I was going to give a qualified answer ; but he turned his smooth, 
 white parting on me with its " Straight up hero, if you please ! " and 
 I answered " Yes." 
 
 " I hear, Mr. Sampson," ho resumed presently, for our friend had a 
 new cook, and dinner was not so punctual as usual, " that your pro- 
 fession has recently sutFered a great loss." 
 
 " In money ? " said I. 
 
 Ho laughed at my ready association of loss with money, and 
 replied, " No, in talent and vigour." 
 
 Not at once following out his allusion, I considered for a moment. 
 " Has it sustained a loss of that kind ? " said I. " I was not aware 
 of it." 
 
 "Understand mo, Mr. Sampson. I don't imagine that you have 
 retired. It is not so bad as that. But Mr. Meltham " 
 
 " 0, to be sure ! " said I. " Yes ! Mr. Meltham, the young 
 actuary of tlio ' Inestimable.' " 
 
 " Just so," he returned in a consoling way. 
 
 " He is a great loss. IIo was at once the most profound, the most 
 original, and the most energetic man I have ever known connected 
 with Life Assurance." 
 
 I spoke strongly ; for I had a high esteem and admiration for 
 Moltliaiii ; and my gentleman had indefinitely conveyed to me some 
 suspicion that he wanted to sneer at him. lie recalled me to my 
 guard by presenting that trim patliway uj) liis head, with its infernal 
 " Not on the grass, if you please the gravel." 
 
 " You knew liim, Mr. Slinkton." 
 
 " Only l)y reputation. To have known him as an acquaintance, or 
 as a friend, is an honour I sliould liave sought if he liad remained in 
 soeicty, tliougli I might never have hud tlie good fortune to attain it, 
 l)eing a man of far inferior mark. He ^va8 scarcely above thirty, I 
 suppose ? " 
 
 " About thirty." 
 
 " Ah ! " lie sighed in his former consoling way. " What creaturcn 
 we arc ! To Itroak up, Mr. Sampson, luul become incaj)al)lc of
 
 Poor Mr. Meltham. 567 
 
 business at that time of life ! Any reason assigned for the melancholy 
 fact ? " 
 
 (" Humph ! " thought I, as I looked at him. " But I won't go up 
 the track, and I will go on the grass.") 
 
 " What reason have you heard assigned, Mr. Slinkton ? " I asked, 
 point-blank. 
 
 " Most likely a false one. You know what Eumour is, Mr. Sampson. 
 I never repeat what I hear ; it is the only way of paring the nails and 
 shaving the head of Eumour. But when you ask me what reason I 
 have heard assigned for Mr. Meltham's passing away from among 
 men, it is another thing. I am not gratifying idle gossip then. I 
 was told, Mr. Sampson, that Mr. Meltham had relinquished all his 
 avocations and all his prospects, because he was, in fact, broken- 
 hearted. A disappointed attachment I heard, though it hardly seems 
 probable, in the case of a man so distinguished and so attractive." 
 
 " Attractions and distinctions are no armour against death," said I. 
 
 " O, she died ? Pray pardon me. I did not hear that. That, 
 indeed, makes it very, very sad. Poor Mr. Meltham ! She died ? 
 Ah, dear me ! Lamentable, lamentable ! " 
 
 I still thought his pity was not quite genuine, and I still suspected 
 an unaccountable sneer under all this, until he said, as wo were 
 parted, like the other knots of talkers, by the announcement of dinner : 
 
 " Mr. Sampson, you are surprised to see me so moved on behalf of 
 a man whom I have never known. I am not so disinterested as you 
 may suppose. I have suffered, and recently too, from death myself. 
 I have lost one of two charming nieces, who were my constant com- 
 panions. She died young barely three-and-twenty ; and even her 
 remaining sister is far from strong. The world is a grave ! " 
 
 He said this with deep feeling, and I felt reproached for the cold- 
 ness of my manner. Coldness and distrust had been engendered in 
 me, I knew, by my bad experiences ; they wore not natural to me ; 
 and I often thought how much I had lost in life, losing trustfulness, 
 and how little I had gained, gaining hard caution. This state of 
 mind being habitual to me, I troubled myself more about this conver- 
 sation than I might have troubled myself about a greater matter. I 
 listened to his talk at dinner, and observed how readily other men 
 responded to it, and with what a graceful instinct he adaj^ted his 
 subjects to the knowledge and habits of those he talked with. As, in 
 talking with me, he had easily started the subject I might be supposed 
 to understand best, and to be the most interested in, so, in talking 
 with others, he guided himself by the same rule. The company was 
 of a varied character ; but he was not at fault, that I could discover, 
 with any member of it. He knew just as much of each man's pursuit 
 as made him agreeable to that man in reference to it, and just as little 
 as made it natural in him to seek modestly for information when the 
 theme was broached. 
 
 As he talked and talked but really not too much, for the rest of
 
 568 Hunted Down. 
 
 us seemed to force it upon him I became quite angry with myself. 
 I took his face to pieces in my mind, like a watch, and examined it 
 in detail. I could not say much against any of his features separately ; 
 I could say even less against them when they were put together. 
 " Then is it not monstrous," I asked myself, " that because a man 
 happens to part his hair straight up the middle of his head, I should 
 j)ermit myself to suspect, and even to detest him ? " 
 
 (I may stop to remark that this was no proof of my sense. An 
 observer of men who finds himself steadily repelled by some apparently 
 trifling thing in a stranger is right to give it great weight. It may 
 be the clue to the whole mystery. A hair or two will show where a 
 lion is hidden. A very little key will open a very heavy door.) 
 
 I took my part in the conversation with him after a time, and wo 
 got on remarkably well. In tlie drawing-room I asked the host how 
 long he had known Mr. Slinktun. Ho answered, not many months ; 
 he had met him at the house of a celebrated painter then present, who 
 had kuown him well when he was travelling with his nieces in Italy 
 for their health. His plans in life being broken by the death of ono 
 of them, ho was reading with the intention of going back to college as 
 a matter of foi-m, taking his degree, and going into orders. I could 
 not but argue with myself that here was the true explanation of his 
 interest in poor Meltham, and that I had been almost brutal in my 
 distrust on that simple head. 
 
 III. 
 
 On the very next day but one I was sitting behind my glass partition, 
 as before, when ho came into the outer office, as before. Tlio moment 
 I saw him again without hearing him, I hated him worse than ever. 
 
 It was only for a moment that I had this ojiportunity ; for he waved 
 his tight-fitting black glove the instant I looked at him, and came 
 straight in. 
 
 " Mr. Sampson, good-day ! I presume, you see, upon your kind 
 permission to intrude upon you. I don't keep my word in being 
 justified by business, for my business here if I may so abuse the 
 word is of the sliglitest nature." 
 
 I asked, was it anything I could assist him in ? 
 
 ' I thank you, no. I merely called to inquire outside whether my 
 dilatory friend had been so false to himself as to be practical and 
 sensible. But, of course, he has done nothing. I gave liim your 
 papers with my own hand, and lie was liot upon the intention, but of 
 course he has done nothing. Ajiart from tlie general human dis- 
 inclination to do anything that ought to be done, I dare say there is 
 a specialty about assuring one's life. You find it like will-making.
 
 An Early Visit. 569 
 
 People are so superstitious, and take it for granted they will die soon 
 afterwards." 
 
 " Up here, if you please ; straight up here, Mr. Sampson. Neither 
 to the right nor to the left." I almost fancied I could hear him 
 breathe the words as he sat smiling at me, with that intolerable 
 parting exactly opposite the bridge of my nose. 
 
 " There is such a feeling sometimes, no doubt," I replied ; " but I 
 don't think it obtains to any great extent." 
 
 " Well," said he, with a shrug and a smile, " I wish some good angel 
 would influence my friend in the right direction. I rashly promised 
 his mother and sister in Norfolk to see it done, and he promised them 
 that he would do it. But I suppose he never will." 
 
 He spoke for a minute or two on indiiferent topics, and went away. 
 
 I had scarcely unlocked the drawers of my writing-table next 
 morning, when he reappeared. I noticed that he came straight to the 
 door in the glass partition, and did not pause a single moment outside. 
 
 " Can you spare me two minutes, my dear Mr. Sampson ? " 
 
 " By all means." 
 
 " Much obliged," laying his hat and umbrella on the table ; " I 
 came early, not to interrupt you. The fact is, I am taken by surprise 
 in reference to this proposal my friend has made." 
 
 " Has he made one ? " said I. 
 
 " Ye-es," he answered, deliberately looking at me ; and then a bright 
 idea seemed to strike him " or he only tells me he has. Perhaps 
 that may be a new way of evading the matter. By Jupiter, I never 
 thought of that ! " 
 
 Mr. Adams was opening the morning's letters in the outer oflfico. 
 " What is the name, Mr. Slinkton ? " I asked. 
 
 Beckwith." 
 
 I looked out at the door and requested Mr. Adams, if there were a 
 proposal in that name, to bring it in. He had already laid it out of 
 his hand on the counter. It was easily selected from the rest, and ho 
 gave it me. Alfred Beckwith. Proposal to effect a policy with us 
 for two thousand pounds. Dated yesterday. 
 
 " From the Middle Temple, I see, Mr. Slinkton." 
 
 " Yes. He lives on the same staircase with me ; his door is opposite. 
 I never thought he would make me his reference though." 
 
 " It seems natural enough that he should." 
 
 " Quite so, Mr. Sampson ; but I never thought of it. Let me see." 
 He took the printed paper from his pocket. " How am I to answer 
 all these questions ? " 
 
 " According to the truth, of course," said I. 
 
 " 0, of course ! " he answered, looking up from the paper with a 
 smile ; " I meant they were so many. But you do right to be par- 
 ticular. It stands to reason that you must be particular. Will you 
 allow mo to use your pen and ink ? " 
 
 " Certainly."
 
 570 Hunted Down. 
 
 " And your desk ? " 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 lie bad been bovering about between his bat and bis umbrella for 
 a place to write on. He now sat down in my cbair, at my blotting- 
 pajicr and inkstand, witb the long walk uj) bis bead in accurate 
 perspective before mo, as I stood witb my back to tbe fire. 
 
 Before answering eacb question ho ran over it aloud, and discussed 
 it. How long bad be known Mr. Alfred Beckwitb ? That be liad to 
 calculate by years upon bis fingers. What were bis habits? No 
 difficulty about them ; temperate in tbe last degree, and took a littlo 
 too much exercise, if anything. All the answers were satisfactory. 
 When bo had written them all, be looked them over, and finally signed 
 them in a very pretty hand. He supposed he bad now done with tho 
 business. I told bira be was not likely to bo troubled any farther. 
 Should ho leave the papers there ? H he pleased. Much obliged. 
 Good-morning. 
 
 I had bud one other visitor before bin ; not at tbe office, but at my 
 own bonso. Tliat visitor had come to my bedside when it was not 
 yet daylight, and had been seen by no one else but by my faithful 
 confidential servant. 
 
 A second reference paper (for wo required always two) was sent 
 down into Norfolk, and was duly received back by post. This, like- 
 wise, was satisfactorily answered in every respect. Our forms wero 
 all complied witb ; wo accepted tho proposal, and the premium for 
 one year was paid. 
 
 IV. 
 
 For six or seven montlis I saw no more of Mr. Slinkton. He called 
 once at my house, but I was not at home ; and he once asked mo to 
 dine witli him in the Temple, but I was engaged. His frifnid's 
 assurance was effected in March. Late in September or early in 
 October I was down at Scarborough for a breath of sea-air, where I 
 met him on the beach. It was a hot evening ; he came toward mo 
 witb bis bat in bis band ; and there was tbe walk I bad felt so strongly 
 disinclined to take in perfect order again, exactly in front of the bridge 
 (;f my nose. 
 
 He was not alone, but bad a young lady on liis arm. 
 
 She was dressed in mourning, and I loolced at her with great 
 interest. She bad tbe appearance of being extremely delicate, and 
 her face was remarkably jmle and melanclioly ; but she was very 
 l^rotty. He introduced her as his niece, IMiss Niner. 
 
 " Are you strolling, IVIr. Sampson ? Is it possible you can bo idle ? " 
 
 It icas possible, and I was strolling.
 
 Miss Niner's Shadow. 571 
 
 Shall we stroll together ?" 
 
 " With pleasure." 
 
 The young lady walked between us, and we walked on the cool sea 
 sand, in the direction of Filey. 
 
 *' There have been wheels here," said Mr. Slinkton. " And now I 
 look again, the wheels of a hand-carriage I Margaret, my love, your 
 shadow without doubt ! " 
 
 "Miss Niner's shadow?" I repeated, looking down at it on the 
 sand. 
 
 " Not that one," Mr. Slinkton returned, laughing. " Margaret, my 
 dear, tell Mr. Sampson." 
 
 " Indeed," said the young lady, turning to mo, " there is nothing to 
 tell except that I constantly see the same invalid old gentleman at 
 all times, wherever I go. I have mentioned it to my uncle, and ho 
 calls the gentleman my shadow." 
 
 " Does he live in Scarborough ? " I asked. 
 
 " He is staying here." 
 
 " Do you live in Scarborough ? " 
 
 " No, I am staying here. My uncle has placed me with a family 
 here, for my health." 
 
 " And your shadow ? " said I, smiling. 
 
 " My shadow," she answered, smiling too, " is like myself not 
 very robust, I fear ; for I lose my shadow sometimes, as my shadow 
 loses me at other times. We both seem liable to confinement to the 
 house. I have not seen my shadow for days and days ; but it docs 
 oddly happen, occasionally, that wherever I go, for many days together, 
 this gentleman goes. We have come together in the most unfrequented 
 nooks on this shore."j 
 
 " Is this ho ? " said I, pointing before us. 
 
 The wheels had swept down to the water's edge, and described a 
 great loop on the sand in turning. Bringing the loop back towards 
 us, and spinning it out as it came, was a hand-carriage, drawn by a 
 man. 
 
 " Yes," said Miss Niner, " this really is my shadow, uncle." 
 
 As the carriage approached us and we approached the carriage, I 
 saw within it an old man, whose head was sunk on his breast, and who 
 was enveloped in a variety of wrappers. He was drawn by a very 
 quiet but very keen-looking man, with iron-gray hair, who was slightly 
 lame. They had passed us, when the carriage stopj^cd, and the old 
 gentleman within, putting out his arm, called to me by my name. I 
 went back, and was absent from Mr. Slinkton and his niece for about 
 five minutes. 
 
 When I rejoined them, Mr. Slinkton was the first to speak, Indeed, 
 he said to me in a raised voice before I came up with him : 
 
 " It is well you have not been longer, or my niece might have died 
 of curiosity to know who her shadow is, Mr. Sampson." 
 
 " An old East India Director," said I. " An intimate friend of our
 
 572 Hunted Doivn. 
 
 friend's, at whoso lionso I first had the pleasure of meeting you. A 
 certain Major Banks. You havo heard of him ? " 
 
 " Never." 
 
 " Very rich, Miss Niner ; but very old, and very crippled. An 
 amiable man, sensible much interested in you. He has just been 
 expatiating on the affection that ho has observed to exist between you 
 and your uncle." 
 
 Mr, Slinkton was holding his hat again, and he passed his hand up 
 the straight walk, as if he himself went up it serenely, after me. 
 
 " Mr. Sampson," ho said, tenderly pressing his niece's arm in his, 
 " our affection was always a strong one, for we have had but few near 
 ties. Wo havo still fewer now. Wo have associations to bring us 
 together, that are not of this world, Margaret." 
 
 " Dear uncle ! " murmured the young lady, and turned her face 
 aside to hide her tears. 
 
 " My niece and I havo such remembrances and regrets in common, 
 Mr. Sampson," he feelingly pursued, " that it would bo strange indeed 
 if the relations between us were cold or indifferent. If I remember 
 a conversation we once had together, you will understand the reference 
 I make. Cheer up, dear Margaret. Don't droop, don't droop. My 
 IMargaret \ I cannot bear to see you drooj) ! " 
 
 The poor young lady was very much affected, but controlled herself. 
 His feelings, too, were very acute. In a word, he found himself under 
 such great need of a restorative, that ho presently went away, to take 
 a batli of sea-water, leaving the young lady and me sitting by a point 
 of rock, and probably presuming but that you will say was a pardon- 
 able indulgence in a luxury that she would praise him with all her 
 lioart. 
 
 She did, poor thing ! With all her confiding heart, she praised him 
 to me, for his care of her dead sister, and for his untiring devotion in 
 her last illness. The sister had wasted away very slowly, and wild 
 and terrible fantasies had come over her toward the end, but he had 
 never been impatient with her, or at a loss ; had always been gentle, 
 watchful, and self-possessed. The sister had known him, as she had 
 known liim, to be the best of men, the kindest of men, and yet a man 
 of such admirable strength of character, as to be a very tower for the 
 support of their weak natures while their poor lives endured. 
 
 "I shall leave him, Mr. Sampson, very soon," said the young lady; 
 " I know my life is drawing to an end ; and when I am gone, I hoiic 
 ho will marry and be happy. I am sure he has lived single so long, 
 only for my sake, and for my poor, poor sister's." 
 
 The little hand-carriage had made another great looji on the damp 
 sand, and was coming back again, gradually sjiiuning out a slim figure 
 of eiglit, half a mile long. 
 
 " Young lady," said I, looking around, laying my hand upon her 
 arm, and Kpoakiug in a low voice, " time presses. You hear the gentlo 
 nmrmur of that sea V "
 
 Miss Niner goes with her Shadow. 573 
 
 She looked at me with the utmost wonder and alarm, saying, 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 " And yon know what a voice is in it when the storm comes ? " 
 
 " Yes ! " 
 
 " You see how quiet and peaceful it lies before us, and you know 
 what an awful sight of power without pity it might be, this very 
 night ! " 
 
 Yes ! " 
 
 " But if you had never heard or seen it, or hoard of it in its cruelty, 
 could you believe that it beats every inanimate thing in its way to 
 pieces, without mercy, and destroys life without remorse ? " 
 
 " You terrify me, sir, by these questions ! " 
 
 " To save you, young lady, to save you ! For God's sake, collect 
 your strength and collect your firmness ! If you were here alone, and 
 hemmed in by the rising tide on the flow to fifty feet above your head, 
 you could not bo in greater danger than the danger you are now to bo 
 saved from." 
 
 The figure on the sand was spun out, and straggled ofi" into a 
 crooked little jerk that ended at the cliff very near us. 
 
 " As I am, before Heaven and the Judge of all mankind, your friend, 
 and your dead sister's friend, I solemnly entreat you. Miss Niner, 
 without one moment's loss of time, to come to this gentleman with me !" 
 
 If the little carriage had been less near to us, I doubt if I could 
 have got her away ; but it was so near that we were there before she 
 had recovered the hurry of being urged from the rock. I did not 
 remain there with her two minutes. Certainly within five, I had tho 
 inexpressible satisfaction of seeing her from the point we had sat 
 on, and to which I had returned half supported and half carried up 
 some rude steps notched in the cliff, by the figure of an active man. 
 With that figure beside her, I knew she was safe anywhere. 
 
 I sat alone on the rock, awaiting Mr. Slinkton's return. Tho 
 twilight was deepening and the shadows were heavy, when he came 
 round the point, with his hat hanging at his button-hole, smoothing 
 his wet hair with one of his hands, and picking out the old path with 
 the other and a pocket-comb. 
 
 " My niece not here, Mr. Sampson ? " he said, looking about. 
 
 "Miss Nina seemed to feel a chill in the air after the sun was 
 down, and has gone home." 
 
 He looked surprised, as though she were not accustomed to do any- 
 thing without him ; even to originate so slight a proceeding. 
 
 " I persuaded Miss Niner," I explained. 
 
 " Ah ! " said he. " She is easily persuaded for her good. Thank 
 you, Mr. Sampson ; she is better within doors. The bathiug-placo 
 was farther than I thought, to say the truth." 
 
 " Miss Niner is very delicate," I observed. 
 
 Ho shook his head and drew a deep sigh. " Very, very, very. You 
 may recollect my saying so. The time that has since intervened has
 
 574 Hunted Down. 
 
 not strengthened her. The gloomy shadow that fell upon her sister 
 so early in life seems, in my anxious eyes, to gather over her, over 
 darker, over darker. Dear Margaret, dear Margaret ! But wo must 
 hope." 
 
 The hand-carriage was spinning away before us at a most indecorous 
 pace for an invalid vehicle, and was making most irregular curves 
 upon the sand. Mr. Slinkton, noticing it after he had put his hand- 
 kerchief to his eyes, said : 
 
 " If I may judge from appearances, your friend will be upset, Mr. 
 Sampson." 
 
 " It looks probable, certainly," said I. 
 
 " The servant must be drunk." 
 
 " The servants of old gentlemen will get drunk sometimes," said I. 
 
 " The major draws very light, Mr. Sampson." 
 
 " The major does draw light," said I. 
 
 By this time the carriage, much to my relief, was lost in the dark- 
 ness. We walked on for a little, side by side over the sand, in 
 silence. After a short while ho said, in a voice still affected by the 
 emotion that his niece's state of health had awakened in him, 
 
 " Do you stay here long, Mr. Sampson ? " 
 
 " Why, no. I am going away to-night." 
 
 " So soon ? But business always holds you in request. Men like 
 Mr. Sampson arc too important to others, to be spared to their own 
 need of relaxation and enjoyment." 
 
 " I don't know about that," said I. " However, I am going back." 
 
 " To London ? " 
 
 " To London." 
 
 " I shall be there too, soon after you." 
 
 I knew that as well as he did. But I did not toll him so. Any 
 more than I told him what defensive weapon my right hand rested 
 on in my pocket, as I walked by his side. Any more than I 
 told him why I did not walk on the sea side of him with tlic night 
 closing in. 
 
 We left the beach, and our ways diverged. We exchanged good- 
 night, and had parted indeed, wlien ho said, returning, 
 
 " Mr. Sampson, imuj I ask ? Poor Meltham, whom wo spoke of, 
 dead yet ? " 
 
 " Not v.hcn I last hoard of him ; but too broken a man to livo lonr, 
 iviid hopelessly lost to his old calling." 
 
 " Dear, dear, dear ! " said ho, with great feeling. " Sad, sad, sad ! 
 TJic w(jrld is a grave ! " And so went his vray. 
 
 It was not liis fault if tlic world were not a grave ; but I did not 
 call that observation after him, any more than I liad mentioned Wwm 
 otlier tilings jnst now enumerated. He went his way, and I went mine 
 with all expedition. This happened, as I have said, cither at tho end 
 of September or beginning of October. The next time I saw him, and 
 the littit time, wa;i lute in November.
 
 V. 
 
 I HAD a very particular engagomont to breakfast in the Temple. 
 It was a bitter nortli-eastorly morning, and the sleet and slush 
 lay inches deep in the streets. I could get no conveyance, and 
 was soon wet to the knees ; but I should have been true to that 
 appointment, though I had to wade to it up to my neck in the same 
 impediments. 
 
 The appointment took me to some chambers in the Temple. 
 Tlicy were at the top of a lonely corner house overlooking the river. 
 The name, Mu. Alfred Beckwitii, was painted on the outer door. 
 On the door opposite, on the same landing, the name Mr. Julius 
 Slinkton. The doors of both sets of chambers stood open, so that 
 anything said aloud in one set could be heard in the other. 
 
 I had never been in those chambers before. They were dismal, 
 close, unwholesome, and oppressive ; the furniture, originally good, 
 and not yet old, was faded and dirty, the rooms were in great dis- 
 order ; there was a strong prevailing smell of opium, brandy, and 
 tobacco ; the grate and fire-irons were splashed all over with unsightly 
 blotches of rust ; and on a sofa by the fire, in the room where break- 
 fast had been prepared, lay the host, Mr, Beckwith, a man with all 
 the appearances of the worst kind of drunkard, very far advanced upon 
 his shameful way to death. 
 
 " Slinkton is not come yet," said this creature, staggering up when 
 I went in ; " I'll call him. Halloa ! Julius Caesar ! Come and drink ! " 
 As he hoarsely roared this out, ho beat the poker and tongs together 
 in a mad way, as if that were his usual manner of summoning his 
 associate. 
 
 The voice of Mr. Slinkton was heard through the clatter from the 
 opposite side of the staircase, and he came in. He had not expected 
 the pleasure of meeting me. I have seen several artful men brought 
 to a stand, but I never saw a man so aghast as he was when his eyes 
 rested on mine. 
 
 " Julius Ca3sar," cried Beckwith, staggering between us, " Mist' 
 Sampson ! Mist' Sampson, Julius Cfcsar ! Julius, Mist' Sampson, is 
 the friend of my soul. Julius keeps me plied with liquor, morning, 
 noon, and night. Julius is a real benefactor. Julius threw the tea 
 and coffee out of window when I used to have any. Julius empties 
 all the water-jugs of their contents, and fills 'em with spirits. Julius 
 winds mo uj) and keeps mc goiug.^ Boil the Ijrandy, Julius ! " 
 
 There was a rusty and furred saucepan in tlie ashes, the ashes 
 looked like the accumulation of weeks, and Beckwith, rolling and 
 staggering between us as if he were going to plunge headlong into 
 the fire, got the saucepan out, and tried to force it into Slinktou's 
 hand.
 
 5/6 Hunted Down. 
 
 " Boil the brandy, Julius Crosar ! Come ! Do your usual office. 
 Boil the brandy ! " 
 
 lie became so fierce in liis gesticulations with the saucepan, that I 
 expected to see him lay open Slinkton's head with it. I therefore jmt 
 out my hand to check him. He reeled back to the sofa, and sat there 
 panting, shaking, and red-eyed, in his rags of dressing-gown, looking 
 at us both. I noticed then that there was nothing to drink on the 
 table but brandy, and nothing to oat but salted herrings, and a hot, 
 sickly, highly-peppered stew. 
 
 " At all events, Mr. Sampson," said Slinkton, offering mo the smooth 
 gravel path for the last time, " I thank you for interfering between 
 me and this unfortunate man's violence. However you came liero, 
 Mr, Sampson, or with whatever motive you came hero, at least I thank 
 you for that." 
 
 " Boil the brandy," muttered Beckwith. 
 
 Without gratifying his desire to know how I came there, I said, 
 quietly, " How is your niece, Mr. Slinkton ? " 
 
 He looked hard at me, and I looked hard at him. 
 
 " I am sorry to say, Mr. Sampson, that my niece has proved 
 treacherous and ungrateful to her best friend. She left me without a 
 word of notice or explanation. She was misled, no doubt, by some 
 designing rascal. Perhaps you may have heard of it ? " 
 
 " I did liear that she was misled by a designing rascal. In fact, I 
 have proof of it." 
 
 " Are you sure of that ? " said he. 
 
 " Quite." 
 
 " Boil the brandy," muttered Beckwith. " Company to breakfast, 
 Julius Cicsar. Do your usual office, provide the usual breakfast, 
 dinner, tea, and supper. Boil the brandy ! " 
 
 The eyes of Slinkton looked from him to me, and he said, after a 
 moment's consideration, 
 
 " Mr. Sampson, you are a man of the world, and so am I. I will 
 be plain with you." 
 
 " O no, you won't," said I, shaking my head. 
 
 " I tell you, sir, I will be plain with you." 
 
 " And I tell you you will not," said I. " I know all about you. 
 You plain witli any one ? Nonsense, nonsense ! " 
 
 " I plainly tell you, Mr. Sampson," he went on, with a manner 
 almost com2)osed, " that I imderstand your object. You want to save 
 your funds, and escape from your liabilities ; tliese are old tricks of 
 trade witli you Office-gentlemen. But you will not do it, sir ; you 
 will not succeed. You liave not an easy adversary to play against, 
 wlien you play against me. AVc shall have to inquire, in duo time, 
 when and how Mr. Beckwith fell into his present liabits. Witli that 
 remark, sir, I put tliis poor creature, and liis incolierent wanderings of 
 speech, aside, and wish you a good morning and a better case next time." 
 
 "While ho was saying tliis, Bcckwitli litul illlcd a lialf-pint glass
 
 Bi'ought to Bay. 577 
 
 with brandy. At this moment, he threw the brandy at his face, and 
 threw the glass after it, Slinkton put his hands up, half blinded with 
 the spirit, and cut with the glass across the forehead. At the sound 
 of the breakage, a fourth person came into the room, closed the door, 
 and stood at it ; he was a very quiet but very keen-looking man, with 
 iron-gray hair, and slightly lame. 
 
 Slinkton pulled out his handkerchief, assuaged the pain in his 
 smarting eyes, and dabbled the blood on his forehead. He was a 
 long time about it, and I saw that in the doing of it, a tremendous 
 change came over him, occasioned by the change in Beckwith, who 
 ceased to pant and tremble, sat upright, and never took his eyes off 
 him. I never in my life saw a face in which abhorrence and deter- 
 mination were so forcibly painted as in Beckwith's then. 
 
 " Look at me, you villain," said Beckwith, " and see me as I really 
 am. I took these rooms, to make them a trap for you. I came into 
 them as a drunkard, to bait the trap for you. You fell into the trap, 
 and you will never leave it alive. On the morning when you last 
 went to Mr. Sampson's office, I had seen him first. Your plot has 
 been known to both of us, all along, and you have been counterplotted 
 all along. What? Having been cajoled into putting that prize of 
 two thousand pounds in your power, I was to be done to death with 
 brandy, and, brandy not proving quick enough, with something 
 quicker ? Have I never seen you, when you thought my senses gone, 
 pouring from your little bottle into my glass ? Why, you Murderer 
 and Forger, alone here with you in the dead of night, as I have so 
 often been, I have had my hand upon the trigger of a pistol, twenty 
 times, to blow your brains out ! " 
 
 This sudden starting up of the thing that he had supposed to be 
 his imbecile victim into a determined man, with a settled resolution 
 to hunt him down and be the death of him, mercilessly expressed 
 from head to foot, was, in the first shock, too much for him. Without 
 any figure of speech, he staggered under it. But there is no greater 
 mistake than to suppose that a man who is a calculating criminal, is, 
 in any phase of his guilt, otherwise than true to himself, and per- 
 fectly consistent with his whole character. Such a man commits 
 murder, and murder is the natural culmination of his course ; such a 
 man has to outface murder, and will do it with hardihood and 
 effrontery. It is a sort of fashion to express surprise that any 
 notorious criminal, having such crime upon his conscience, can so 
 brave it out. Do you think that if he had it on his conscience at all, 
 or had a conscience to have it upon, he would ever have committed 
 the crime ? 
 
 Perfectly consistent with himself, as I believe all such monsters to 
 6e, this Slinkton recovered himself, and showed a defiance that was 
 sufficiently cold and quiet. He was white, he was haggard, ho was 
 changed ; but only as a sharper who had played for a great stake and 
 had been outwitted and had lost the game.
 
 578 Hunted Down. 
 
 " Listen to mo, you villain," said Beckwith, " and let every word 
 you hear me say be a stab in your wicked heart. When I took these 
 rooms, to throw myself in your way and lead you on to the scheme 
 that I knew my appearance and supposed character and habits would 
 suggest to Buch a devil, how did I know that ? Because you were no 
 stranger to mo. I knew you well. And I knew you to be the cruel 
 wretch who, for so much money, had killed one innocent girl while 
 she trusted him implicitly, and who was by inches killing another." 
 
 Slinkton took out a snufif-box, took a pinch of snuff, and laughed. 
 
 " But see here," said Beckwith, never looking away, never raising 
 his voice, never relaxing his face, never unclenching his hand. " See 
 what a dull wolf you have been, after all 1 The infatuated drunkard 
 who never drank a fiftieth part of the liquor you plied him with, but 
 poured it away, here, there, everywhere almost before your eyes ; 
 who bought over the fellow you set to watch him and to ply him, by 
 outbidding you in his bribe, before he had been at his work three 
 days M'ith whom you have observed no caution, yet who was so bent 
 on ridding the earth of you as a wild beast, that he would have defeated 
 you if you had been over so prudent that drimkard whom you have, 
 many a time, left on the floor of this room, and who has even let you 
 go out of it, alive and undeceived, when you have turned him over 
 with your foot has, almost as often, on the same night, within an 
 hour, within a few minutes, watched you awake. Lad his hand at your 
 pillow when you were asleep, turned over your papers, taken samples 
 from your bottles and packets of powder, changed their contents, rifled 
 every secret of your life ! " 
 
 He had had another pinch of snuff in his hand, but had gradually 
 let it drop from between his fingers to the floor ; where he now 
 smoothed it out with his foot, looking down at it the while. 
 
 " That drunkard," said Beckwith, " who had free access to your 
 rooms at all times, that he might drink tlie strong drinks that you 
 left in his v/ay and bo the sooner ended, holding no more terms with 
 you than he would hold with a tiger, has had his master-key for all 
 your locks, his test for all your poisons, his clue to your cii)her- 
 writing. He can toll you, as well as you can tell him, how long it 
 took to complete that deed, what doses there were, what intervals, 
 what signs of gradual decay upon mind and body ; what distempered 
 fancies were produced, ^\hat observable changes, what physical jiain. 
 He can tell you, as well as you can toll liim, that all this was recorded 
 day by day, as a lesson of experience for future service. He can tell 
 you, better than you can tell him, where that journal is at tliis 
 moment." 
 
 Slinkton stopped the action of his foot, and looked at Beckwith. 
 
 "No," said the latter, as if answering a question from him. "Not 
 in the drawer of the writiiig-Jcsk lliat opens with a spring ; it is not 
 there, and it never will be there ar/uin." 
 
 " Tiicn you are a thief! " said Slinkton,
 
 The Enemy collapses, 579 
 
 Without any change whatever in the inflexible purpose, which it 
 was quite terrific even to me to contemplate, and from the power of 
 which I had always felt convinced it was impossible for this wretch 
 to escape, Beckwith returned, 
 
 " And I am your niece's shadow, too." 
 
 With an imprecation Slinkton put his hand to his head, tore out 
 some hair, and flung it to the ground. It was the end of the smooth 
 walk ; he destroyed it in the action, and it will soon be seen that his 
 use for it was past. 
 
 Beckwith went on : " Whenever you left here, I left here. Although 
 I understood that you found it necessary to pause in the completion 
 of that purpose, to avert suspicion, still I watched you close, with the 
 poor confiding girl. When I had the diary, and could read it word 
 by word, it was only about the night before your last visit to Scar- 
 borough, you remember the night ? you slept with a small flat vial 
 tied to your wrist, I sent to Mr. Sampson, who was kept out of view. 
 This is Mr. Sampson's trusty servant standing by the door. Wo 
 three saved your niece among us." 
 
 Slinkton looked at us all, took an uncertain step or two from the 
 place where he had stood, returned to it, and glanced about him in a 
 very curious way, as one of the meaner reptiles might, looking for a 
 hole to hide in. I noticed at the same time, that a singular change 
 took place in the figure of the man, as if it collapsed within his 
 clothes, and they consequently became ill-shapen and ill-fitting. 
 
 " You shall know," said Beckwith, " for I hope the knowledge will 
 be bitter and terrible to you, why you have been pursued by one man, 
 and why, when the whole interest that Mr. Sampson represents would 
 have expended any money in hunting you down, you have been tracked 
 to death at a single individual's charge. I hear you have had the 
 name of Meltham on your lips sometimes ? " 
 
 I saw, in addition to those other changes, a sudden stoppage come 
 upon his breathing. 
 
 "When you sent the sweet girl whom you murdered (you know 
 with what artfully made-out surroundings and probabilities you sent 
 her) to Meltham's office, before taking her abroad to originate the 
 transaction that doomed her to the grave, it fell to Meltham's lot to 
 see her and to speak with her. It did not fall to his lot to save her, 
 though I know he would freely give his own life to have done it. 
 He admired her ; I would say he loved her deeply, if I thought it 
 possible that you could understand the word. When she was sacrificed, 
 ho was thoroughly assured of your guilt. Haviug lost her, he had 
 but one object left in life, and that was to avenge her and destroy 
 you." 
 
 I saw the villain's nostrils rise and fall convulsively ; but I saw no 
 moving at his mouth. 
 
 " That man Meltham," Beckwith steadily pursued, -'was as absolutely 
 certain that you coiild never elude him in this world, if ho devoted
 
 58o Hunted Down. 
 
 himself to your destruction with his utmost fidelity and earnestness, 
 and if ho divided the sacred duty with no other duty in life, as he 
 was certain that in achieving it he would be a poor instrument in the 
 hands of Providence, and would do well before Heaven in striking 
 you out from among living men. I am that man, and I thank God 
 that I have done my work ! " 
 
 If Slinkton had been running for his life from swift-footed savages, 
 a dozen miles, he could not have shown more emphatic signs of being 
 oppressed at heart and labouring for breath, than he showed now, 
 when he looked at the pursuer who had so relentlesly hunted him 
 down. 
 
 " You never saw me under my right name before ; you see me 
 under my right name now. You shall see me once again in the body, 
 when you are tried for your life. You shall see me once again in the 
 spirit, when the cord is round your neck, and the crowd are crying 
 against you ! " 
 
 When Moltham had spoken these last words, the miscreant suddenly 
 turned away his face, and seemed to strike his mouth with his open 
 hand. At the same instant, the room was filled with a new and 
 powerful odour, and, almost at the same instant, he broke into a 
 crooked run, leap, start, I have no name for the spasm, and fell, 
 with a dull weight that shook the heavy old doors and windows in 
 their frames. 
 
 That was the fitting end of him. 
 
 When we saw that he was dead, we drew away from the room, and 
 Meltham, giving me his liand, said, with a weary air, 
 
 " I have no more work on earth, my friend. But I shall see her 
 again elsewhere." 
 
 It was in vain that I tried to rally him. He might have saved her, 
 he said; ho had not saved her, and ho reproached himself; ho had 
 lost lier, and he was broken-liearted. 
 
 " The purpose that sustained mo is over, Sampson, and there is 
 nothing now to hold me to life. 1 am not fit for life ; I am weak and 
 spiritless ; I have no hope and no object ; iny day is done." 
 
 In truth, I could hardly have believed tliat the broken man who 
 tlien si)okc to me was the man who had so strongly and so differently 
 impressed me when his purpose was before him. I used such 
 entreaties with him, as I could ; but he still said, and always said, in 
 a patient, undemonstrative way, nothing could avail him, he was 
 broken-hearted. 
 
 He died early in the next spring. He was buried by the side of 
 tlie poor young lady for wliom he had cherished those tender and 
 unhapiiy regrets ; and he left all he had to her sister. She lived to 
 bo a happy wife and motlier ; she married my sister's son, who 
 succeeded poor Bleltham ; she is living now, and her children ride 
 about the garden on my walking-stick when I go to sec her.
 
 HOLIDAY ROMANCE.
 
 HOLIDAY EOMANCE. 
 
 IN FOUR PARTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 INTRODUOTOKY ROMANCE FROM THE PEN OF WILLIAM TINKLING, ESQ.* 
 
 This beginning-part is not made ont of anybody's head, you know. 
 It's real. You must believe this beginning-part more than what 
 comes after, else you won't understand how what comes after came to 
 be written. You must believe it all ; but you must believe this most, 
 please. I am the editor of it. Bob Redforth (he's my cousin, and 
 shaking the table on purpose) wanted to be the editor of it ; but I said 
 he shouldn't because he couldn't. He has no idea of being an editor. 
 
 Nettie Ashford is my bride. We were married in the right-hand 
 closet in the corner of the dancing-school, where first we met, with a 
 ring (a green one) from Wilkingwater's toy-shop. I owed for it ont 
 of my pocket-money. When the rapturous ceremony was over, we all 
 four went up the lane and let off a cannon (brought loaded in Bob 
 Redforth's waistcoat-pocket) to announce our nuptials. It flew right 
 up when it wont off, and turned over. Next day, Lieut.-Col. Robin 
 Redforth was united, with similar ceremonies, to Alice Rainbird. 
 This time the cannon burst with a most terrific explosion, and made a 
 puppy bark. 
 
 My peerless bride was, at the period of which we now treat, in 
 captivity at Miss Grimmer's. Drowvey and Grimmer is the partner- 
 ship, and opinion is divided which is the greatest beast. The lovely 
 bride of the colonel was also immured in the dungeons of the same 
 establishment. A vow was entered into, between the colonel and 
 myself, that we would cut them out on the following Wednesday 
 when walking two and two. 
 
 Under the desperate circumstances of the case, the active brain of 
 the colonel, combining with his lawless pursuit (ho is a pirate), 
 suggested an attack with fireworks. This, however, from motives of 
 humanity, was abandoned as too expensive. 
 
 * AecgcI eight.
 
 584 Holiday Romania. 
 
 Lightly armod with a paper-knife buttoned up under his jacket, 
 and waving the dreaded black flag at the end of a cane, the colonel 
 took command of me at two p.m. on the eventful and appointed day. 
 He had drawn out the plan of attack on a piece of paper, which was 
 rolled \\\) round a hoop-stick. He showed it to me. My position and 
 my full-length portrait (but my real ears don't stick out horizontal) 
 was beliind a corner lamp-post, with written orders to remain there 
 till I should see Miss Drowvey fall. The Drowvey who was to fall 
 was the one in spectacles, not the one with the large lavender bonnet. 
 At that signal I was to rush forth, seize my bride, and fight my way 
 to the lane. There a junction would be effected between myself and 
 the colonel ; and putting our brides behind us, between ourselves and 
 the palings, we were to conquer or die. 
 
 The enemy appeared, approached. Waving his black flag, the 
 colonel attacked. Confusion ensued. Anxiously I awaited my signal ; 
 but my signal came not. So far from falling, the hated Drowvey in 
 spectacles appeared to mo to have muffled the colonel's head in his 
 outlawed banner, and to be pitching into him with a parasol. The 
 one in the lavender bonnet also performed prodigies of valour with 
 her fists on his back. Seeing that all was for the moment lost, I 
 fought my desperate way hand to hand to the lane. Through taking 
 the back road, I was so fortunate as to meet nobody, and arrived there 
 uninterrui:)ted. 
 
 It seemed an age ere the colonel joined me. Ho had been to the 
 jobbing tailor's to be sewn up in several places, and attributed our 
 defeat to the refusal of the detested Drowvey to fall. Finding her so 
 obstinate, he had said to her " Die, recreant ! " but had found her no 
 more open to reason on that point than the other. 
 
 My bloomiug bride appeared, accompanied by tho colonel's bride, 
 at tlio dancing-school next day. What ? Was her face averted from 
 me? Hah? Even so. With a look of scorn, she put into my hand 
 a bit of paper, and took another partner. On tho paper was pencilled, 
 "Heavens ! Can I write the word? Is my liusband a cow?" 
 
 In tlie first bewilderment of my heated brain, I tried to think what 
 slanderer could have traced my family to the ignoble animal mentioned 
 above. Vain were my endeavours. At tho end of tliat dance I 
 whispered tho colonel to come into the cloak-room, and I showed him 
 the note. 
 
 " There is a syllable wanting," said he, with a gloomy brow. 
 
 " Hah ! What syllable ? " was my inquiry. 
 
 " She asks, can sho write tlie word ? And no ; you see she 
 couldn't," said the colonel, pointing out the passage. 
 
 " And tho word was ? " said I. 
 
 " Cow cow coward," hissed the pirate-colonel in my ear, and 
 gave me back the note. 
 
 Feeling that I must f^r ever tread the earth a branded boy^ person 
 I mean, or that I must cloar np my honour, I demanded to be \\'\o\
 
 A Court-martial. 585 
 
 by a Court-martial. The colonel admitted my right to be tried. 
 Some difficulty was found in composing the court, on account of the 
 Emperor of France's aunt refusing to let him come out. He was to 
 be the president. Ere yet we had appointed a substitute, he made his 
 escape over the back-wall, and stood among us, a free monarch. 
 
 The court was held on the grass by the pond. I recognised, in a 
 certain admiral among my judges, my deadliest foe. A cocoa-nut had 
 given rise to language that I could not brook ; but confiding in my 
 innocence, and also in the knowledge that the President of the United 
 States (who sat next him) owed me a knife, I braced myself for the 
 ordeal. 
 
 It was a solemn spectacle, that court. Two executioners with 
 pinafores reversed led me in. Under the shade of an umbrella I 
 perceived my bride, supported by the bride of the pirate-colonel. 
 The president, having reproved a little female ensign for tittering, on 
 a matter of life or death, called upon me to plead, " Coward or no 
 coward, guilty or not guilty?" I pleaded in a firm tone, "No 
 coward and not guilty." (The little female ensign being again 
 reproved by the president for misconduct, mutinied, left the court, 
 and threw stones.) 
 
 My implacable enemy, the admiral, conducted the case against me. 
 The colonel's bride was called to prove that I had remained behind 
 the corner lamp-post during the engagement. I might have been 
 spared the anguish of my own bride's being also made a witness to 
 the same point, but the admiral knew where to wound me. Be still, 
 my soul, no matter. The colonel was then brought forward with his 
 evidence. 
 
 It was for this point that I had saved myself up, as the turning- 
 point of my case. Shaking myself free of my guards, who had no 
 business to hold me, the stupids, unless I was found guilty, I asked 
 the colonel what ho considered the first duty of a soldier ? Ere ho 
 could reply, the President of the United States rose and informed the 
 court, that my foe, the admiral, had suggested " Bravery," and that 
 prompting a witness wasn't fair. The president of the court imme- 
 diately ordered the admiral's mouth to be filled with leaves, and tied 
 up with string. I had the satisfaction of seeing the sentence carried 
 into effect before the proceedings went further. 
 
 I then took a paper from my trousers-pocket, and asked, " What do 
 you consider. Col. Bedford, the first duty of a soldier? Is it 
 obedience ? " 
 
 " It is," said the colonel. 
 
 " Is that paper please to look at it in your hand ? " 
 
 " It is," said the colonel. 
 
 " Is it a military sketch ? " 
 
 " It is," said the colonel. 
 
 " Of an engagement ? " 
 
 " Quite so," said the colonel.
 
 586 Holiday Romance. 
 
 Of the lato engagement? " 
 
 " Of the late engagement." 
 
 "Please to describe it, and then hand it to the president of the 
 court." 
 
 From that triumphant moment my sufferings and my dangers were 
 at an end. The court rose up and jumped, on discovering that I had 
 strictly obeyed orders. My foe, the admiral, who though muzzled 
 was malignant yet, contrived to suggest that I was dishonoured by 
 having quitted the field. But the colonel himself had done as much, 
 and gave his opinion, upon his word and honour as a pirate, that when 
 all was lost the field might bo quitted mthout disgrace. I was going 
 to be found " No coward and not guilty," and my blooming bride was 
 going to be publicly restored to my arms in a procession, when an 
 unlooked-for event disturbed the general rejoicing. This was no 
 other than the Emperor of France's aunt catching hold of his hair. 
 The proceedings abruptly terminated, and the court tumultuously 
 dissolved. 
 
 It was when the shades of the next evening but one were beginning 
 to fall, ere yet the silver beams of Luna touched the earth, that four 
 forms might have boon descried slowly advancing towards the weeping 
 willow on the borders of the pond, the now deserted scene of the day 
 before yesterday's agonies and triumphs. On a nearer approach, and 
 by a practised eye, those might have been identified as the forms of 
 the pirate-colonel with his bride, and of the day before yesterday's 
 gallant prisoner with his bride. 
 
 On the beauteous faces of the Nymphs dejection sat enthroned. 
 All four reclined under the willow for some minutes without speaking, 
 till at length the bride of the colonel poutingly observed, " It's of no 
 use pretending any more, and we had better give it up." 
 
 " Hah ! " exclaimed the pirate. " Protending ? " 
 
 " Don't go on like that ; you worry mo," returned his bride. 
 
 Tlie lovely bride of Tinkling echoed the incredible declaration. 
 The two warriors exchanged stony glances. 
 
 " If," said the bride of the pirate-colonel, " grown-up people won't 
 do what tlioy ought to do, and will put us out, what comes of our 
 protonding ? " 
 
 " We only get into scrapes," said the bride of Tinkling. 
 
 " You know very well," pursued tlio colonel's bride, " that MisH 
 Drowvcy wouldn't fall. You complained of it yourself. And you 
 Jcnow how disgracefully tlio court-martial C7idcd. As to our marriage ; 
 would my people acknowledge it at homo ? " 
 
 "Or would my people acknowledge ours?" said the bride of Tinkling. 
 
 A<^aiu the two warriors exchanged stony glances. 
 
 " If you knocked at the door and claimed me, after you were told 
 to go away," said the colonel's bride, " you would only have your hair 
 pulled, or your ears, or your nose." 
 
 " If you perpistcd in ringinf^ at the bell and claiming me," said tlio
 
 Grown-up People are Tyrants. 587 
 
 bride of Tinkling to that gentleman, " you wonld Lave things dropped 
 on your head from the window over the handle, or yon would be 
 played upon by the garden-engine." 
 
 " And at your own homes," resumed the bride of the colonel, " it 
 would be just as bad. You would be sent to bed, or something 
 equally undignified. Again, how would you support us ? " 
 
 The pirate-colonel replied in a courageous voice, " By rapine ! " 
 But his bride retorted, " Suppose the grown-up people wouldn't be 
 rapined ? " " Then," said the colonel, " they should pay the penalty 
 in blood." " But suppose they should object," retorted his bride, 
 " and wouldn't pay the penalty in blood or anything else ? " 
 
 A mournful silence ensued. 
 
 " Then do you no longer love me, Alice ? " asked the colonel. 
 
 " Redforth ! I am ever thine," returned his bride. 
 
 " Then do you no longer love me, Nettie?" asked the present writer. 
 
 " Tinkling ! I am ever thine," returned my bride. 
 
 We all four embraced. Let me not be misunderstood by the giddy. 
 The colonel embraced his own bride, and I embraced mine. But two 
 times two make four. 
 
 " Nettie and I," said Alice mournfully, " have been considering our 
 position. The grown-up people are too strong for us. They make 
 us ridiculous. Besides, they have changed the times. William 
 Tinkling's baby brother was christened yesterday. What took place ? 
 Was any king present ? Answer, William." 
 
 I said No, unless disguised as Great-uncle Chopper. 
 
 " Any queen ? " 
 
 There had been no queen that I knew of at our house. There 
 might have been one in the kitchen : but I didn't think so, or the 
 servants would have mentioned it. 
 
 " Any fairies ? " 
 
 None that were visible. 
 
 " We had an idea among us, I think," said Alice, with a melancholy 
 smile, " we four, that Miss Grimmer would prove to be the wicked 
 fairy, and would come in at the christening with her crutch-stick, and 
 give the child a bad gift. Was there anything of that sort ? Answer, 
 William." 
 
 I said that ma had said afterwards (and so she had), that Great- 
 imcle Chopper's gift was a shabby one ; but she hadn't said a bad 
 one. She had called it shabby, electrotyped, second-hand, and below 
 his income. 
 
 " It must bo the grown-up people who have changed all this," said 
 Alice. " We couldn't have changed it, if we had been so inclined, 
 and we never should have been. Or perhaps Miss Grimmer is a 
 wicked fairy after all, and won't act up to it because the grown-up 
 people have persuaded her not to. Either way, they would make us 
 ridiculous if wo told them what we expected." 
 
 " Tyrants ! " muttered the pirate-colonel.
 
 588 Holiday Romance. 
 
 " Nay, my Rodforth," said Alice, " say not so. Call not names, my 
 Redforth, or they will apply to pa." 
 
 " Let 'cm," said the colonel. " I don't care. Who's he ? " 
 
 Tinkling hero undertook the perilous task of remonstrating with 
 his lawless friend, who consented to withdraw the moody expressions 
 above quoted. 
 
 " What remains for us to do ? " Alice went on in her mild, wise 
 way. " We must educate, we must pretend in a new manner, we must 
 wait." 
 
 The colonel clenched his teeth four out in front, and a piece of 
 another, and he had been twice dragged to the door of a dentist- 
 despot, but had escaped from his guards. " IIow educate ? How 
 pretend in a new manner ? How wait ? " 
 
 " Educate the grown-up people," replied Alice. " We part to- 
 night. Yes, Redforth," for the colonel tucked up his cuffs, " part 
 to-night ! Lot us in these next holidays, now going to begin, throw 
 our thoughts into something educational for the grown-up people, 
 hinting to them how things ought to be. Let us veil our meaning 
 under a mask of romance ; you, I, and Nettie. William Tinkling 
 being the plainest and quickest writer, shall copy out. Is it 
 agreed ? " 
 
 The colonel answered sulkily, " I don't mind." He then asked, 
 " How about pretending ? " 
 
 " We will pretend," said Alice, " that we are children ; not that wo 
 are those grown-up people wlio won't help us out as they ought, and 
 who understand us so badly." 
 
 The colonel, still much dissatisfied, growled, " How about waiting ? " 
 
 " We \\ ill wait," answered little Alice, taking Nettie's hand in hers, 
 and looking up to the sky, " we will wait ever constant and true 
 till tlie times have got so changed as that everything lieljis us out, and 
 nothing makes us ridiculous, and the fairies have come back. We will 
 wait ever constant and true till we are eighty, ninety, or one 
 hundred. And then the fairies will send us children, and we will 
 help them out, poor pretty little creatures, if they pretend over so 
 mucli." 
 
 "So we will, dear," said Nettie Asliford, taking her rotmd the waist 
 with both arms and kissing her. " And now if my liusband will go 
 and buy some cherries for us, I have got some money." 
 
 In tlie friendliest manner I invited the colonel to go with me ; but 
 he so far forgot liiinself as to acknowledge the invitation by kicking 
 out behind, and then lying down on his stomach on the grass, pulling 
 it up and chewing it. When I came back, liowever, Alice had nearly 
 brought him out of his vexation, and was soothing him by telling liini 
 how soon we should all be ninety. 
 
 As we sat under the willow-tree and ate tlio clierrics (fair, for Alice 
 shared tliem out), we played at being ninety. Nettie complained that 
 she had a bono in her old back, and it made her h.obble ; and Alice
 
 Dissatisfaction of the Colonel. 589 
 
 sang a song in an old woman's way, but it was very pretty, and we 
 were all merry. At least, I don't know about merry exactly, but all 
 comfortable. 
 
 There was a most tremendous lot of cherries ; and Alice always 
 had with her some neat little bag or box or case, to hold things. In 
 it that night was a tiny wine-glass. So Alice and Nettie said they 
 would make some cherry-wiue to drink our love at parting. 
 
 Each of us had a glassful, and it was delicious ; and each of us 
 drank the toast, " Our love at parting." The colonel drank his Avine 
 last ; and it got into my head directly that it got into his directly. 
 Anyhow, his eyes rolled immediately after he had turned the glass 
 upside down ; and he took me on one side and proposed in a hoarse 
 whisper, that we should " Cut 'em out still." 
 
 " How did he mean ? " I asked my lawless friend. 
 
 " Cut our brides out," said the colonel, " and then cut our way, 
 without going down a single turning, bang to the Spanish main ! " 
 
 We might have tried it, though I didn't think it would answer ; 
 only we looked round and saw that there was nothing but moonlight 
 under the willow-tree, and that our pretty, pretty wives were gone. 
 We burst out crying. The colonel gave in second, and came to first ; 
 but he gave in strong. 
 
 We were ashamed of our red eyes, and hung about for half-an-hour 
 to whiten them. Likewise a piece of chalk round the rims, I doing 
 the colonel's, and he mine, but afterwards found in the bedroom look- 
 ing-glass not natural, besides inflammation. Our conversation turned 
 on being ninety. The colonel told me he had a pair of boots that 
 wanted soling and heeling ; but he thought it hardly worth while to 
 mention it to his father, as he himself should so soon be ninety, when 
 he thought shoes would be more convenient. The colonel also told 
 me, with his hand upon his hip, that he felt himself already getting on 
 in life, and turning rheumatic. And I told him the same. And 
 when they said at our house at sujiper (they arc always bothering 
 about some tiling) that I stooped, I felt so glad ! 
 
 This is the end of the beginning-part that you were to believe most. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 ROMANCE. FROM THE PEN OF MISS ALICE RAINBIRD.* 
 
 There Avas once a king, and he had a queen ; and he was the manliest 
 of his sex, and she was the loveliest of hers. The king was, in his 
 private profession, under government. The queen's father had been a 
 UK dical man out of town. 
 
 * Aged seven.
 
 590 Holiday Romance. 
 
 They had nineteen children, and were always having more. Seven- 
 teen of those children took care of the baby ; and Alicia, the eldest, 
 took care of them all. Their ages varied from seven years to seven 
 months. 
 
 Let us now resume our story. 
 
 One day the king was going to the office, when he stopped at the 
 fishmonger's to buy a pound and a half of salmon not too near the 
 tail, which the queen (who was a careful housekeeper) had requested 
 him to send home. Mr. Pickles, the fishmonger, said, " Certainly, sir ; 
 is there any other article ? Good-morning." 
 
 The king went on towards the office in a melancholy mood ; for 
 quarter-day was such a long way off, and several of the dear children 
 wore growing out of their clothes. lie had not i)roceeded far, when 
 Mr. Picklos's errand-boy came running after him, and said, " Sir, you 
 didn't notice the old lady in our shop." 
 
 " What old lady ? " inquired the king. " I saw none." 
 
 Now the king had not seen any old lady, because this old lady had 
 been invisible to him, though visible to Mr. Pickles's boy. Probably 
 because ho messed and splashed the water about to that degree, and 
 flopped the pairs of soles down in that violent manner, that, if she had 
 not been visible to him, he would have spoilt her clothes. 
 
 Just then the old lady came trotting up. She was di-essod in shot- 
 silk of the richest quality, smelling of dried lavender. 
 
 " King Watkins the First, I believe ? " said the old lady. 
 
 " Watkins," replied the king, " is my name." 
 
 " Papa, if I am not mistaken, of the beautiful Princess Alicia ? " 
 said the old lady. 
 
 " And of eighteen other darlings," replied the king. 
 
 " Listen. You arc going to the office," said the old lady. 
 
 It instantly flashed upon the king that she must be a fairy, or how 
 could she know that ? 
 
 " You are right," said the old lady, answering his thouglits. " I am 
 the good Fairy Grandmariiia. Attend! When you return home to 
 dinner, politely invito the Princess Alicia to have some of the salmon 
 you bought just now." 
 
 " It may disagree with her," said the king. 
 
 The old lady became so very angry at this absurd idea, that the 
 liiiig was (juite alarmed, and humbly bogged her pardon. 
 
 " We lioar a great deal too much about this thing disagreeing, and 
 that thiug disagreeing," said tlio old lady, with the greatest contempt 
 it was possible to express. " Don't bo greedy. I think you ^vaut it 
 all yourself." 
 
 The king hung his head under this reproof, and said ho wouldn't 
 talk about things disagreeing any more. 
 
 " Bo good, then," said the Fairy Grandmarina, " and don't. When 
 the beautiful Princess Alicia consents to partake of the salmon, as 
 I think slic will, yoa Mill find she will Iciivc a iish-bouo ou her plate.
 
 The Good Fairy Grandmarina. 591 
 
 Tell her to dry it, and to rub it, and to polish it till it shines like 
 mother-of-pearl, and to take care of it as a present from me." 
 
 ' Is that all ? " asked the king. 
 
 " Don't be impatient, sir," returned the Fairy Grandmarina, scolding 
 him severely. "Don't catch people short, before they have done 
 speaking. Just the way with you grown-up persons. You are always 
 doing it." 
 
 The king again hung his head, and said he wouldn't do so any 
 more. 
 
 " Be good, then," said the Fairy Grandmarina, " and don't 1 Tell 
 the Princess Alicia, with my love, that the fish-bone is a magic present 
 which can only be used once ; but that it will bring her, that once, 
 whatever she wishes for, provided she wishes for it at the right 
 TIME. That is the message. Take care of it." 
 
 The king was beginning, " Might I ask the reason ? " when the 
 fairy became absolutely furious. 
 
 " Will you be good, sir ? " she exclaimed, stamping her foot on the 
 ground. " The reason for this, and the reason for that, indeed ! You 
 are always wanting the reason. No reason. There ! Hoity toity 
 me \ I am sick of your grown-up reasons." 
 
 The king was extremely frightened by the old lady's flying into 
 such a passion, and said he was very sorry to have offended her, and 
 he wouldn't ask for reasons any more. 
 
 " Be good, then," said the old lady, " and don't 1 " 
 
 With those words, Grandmarina vanished, and the king went on and 
 on and on, till he came to the office. There ho wrote and wrote and 
 wrote, till it was time to go home again. Then he politely invited 
 the Princess Alicia, as the fairy had directed him, to partake of the 
 salmon. And when she had enjoyed it very much, he saw the iish- 
 bone on her plate, as the faiiy had told him he would, and he delivered 
 the fairy's message, and the Princess Alicia took care to dry the bone, 
 and to rub it, and to polish it, till it shone like mother-of-pearl. 
 
 And so, when the queen was going to get up in the morning, she said, 
 " 0, dear me, dear me ; my head, my head ! " and then she fainted away. 
 
 The Princess Alicia, who happened to be looking in at the chamber- 
 door, asking about breakfast, was very much alarmed when she saw 
 her royal mamma in this state, and she rang the bell for Peggy, which 
 was the name of the lord chamberlain. But remembering where the 
 smelling-bottle was, she climbed on a chair and got it ; and after that 
 she climbed on another chair by the bedside, and held the smelling- 
 bottle to the queen's nose ; and after that she jumped down and got 
 some water ; and after that she jumped up again and wetted the 
 queen's forehead ; and, in short, when the lord chamberlain came in, 
 that dear old woman said to the little princess, " What a trot you arc ! 
 I couldn't have done it better myself I" 
 
 But that was not the worst of the good queen's illness. O, no ! 
 Slic ^vas very ill indeed, for a long time. The Princess Alicia kept
 
 592 Holiday Romance. 
 
 the seventeen young princes and princesses quiet, and dressed and 
 undressed and danced the baby, and made the kettle boil, and heated 
 the soup, and swept the hearth, and poured out the medicine, and 
 nursed the queen, and did all that over she could, and was as busy, 
 busy, busy as busy could be ; for there were not many servants at that 
 palace for throe reasons : because the king was short of money, because 
 a rise in his office never seemed to come, and because quarter-day was 
 60 far off that it looked almost as far off and as little as one of the stars. 
 
 But on the morning when the queen fainted away, where was the 
 magic fish-bone ? Why, there it was in the Princess Alicia's pocket 1 
 She had almost taken it out to bring the queen to life again, when she 
 put it back, and looked for the smelling-bottle. 
 
 After the queen had come out of her swoon that morning, and was 
 dozing, the Princess Alicia liurried up-stairs to tell a most particular 
 secret to a most particularly confidential friend of hers, who was a 
 duchess. Peo2)le did suj^pose lier to be a doll ; but she was really a 
 duchess, though nobody knew it except the princess. 
 
 This most particular secret was the secret about the magic fish- 
 bone, the history of which was well known to the duchess, because the 
 princess told her everything. The princess kneeled down by the bed 
 on which the duchess was lying, full-dressed and wide awake, and 
 whispered the secret to her. The duchess smiled and nodded. People 
 might have supposed that she never smiled and nodded ; but she often 
 did, though nobody knew it except the princess. 
 
 Then the Princess Alicia hurried down-stairs again, to keep watch 
 in the queen's room. She often kept watch by herself in the queen's 
 room ; but every evening, while the illness lasted, she sat there 
 watching with the king. And every evening the king sat looking at 
 her with a cross look, wondering why she never brought out the magic 
 fish-bone. As often as she noticed this, she ran up-stairs, whispered 
 tlie secret to the duchess over again, and said to the duchess besides, 
 " They tliink we children never liave a reason or a meaning ! " And 
 the duchess, though the most fashionable duchess tliat ever was heard 
 of, winked her eye. 
 
 " Alicia," said the king, one evening, wlicn she wished him good- 
 night. 
 
 " Yes, papa." 
 
 " What is become of the magic fish-bone ? " 
 
 " In ray pocket, papa ! " 
 
 " I thought you had lost it ? " 
 
 " O, no, papa ! " 
 
 " Or forgotten it ? " 
 
 " No, indeed, papa." 
 
 And so another time the dreadful little snapping pug-dog, next 
 door, nMide a rush at one of the young princes as he stood on the steps 
 coming liome from school, and terrified liini out of his wits ; and lie 
 put his hand tlirour^li a pane of glass, and bled, bled, bled. Wlieu the
 
 Snipping, stitching, cutting, and contriving. 593 
 
 Beventeen other young princes and princesses saw him bleed, bleed, 
 bleed, they were terrified out of their wits too, and screamed them- 
 selves black in their seventeen faces all at once. But the Princess 
 Alicia put her hands over all their seventeen mouths, one after 
 another, and persuaded them to be quiet because of the sick queen. 
 And then she put the wounded prince's hand in a basin of fresh cold 
 water, while they stared with their twice seventeen are thirty-four, 
 put down four and carry three, eyes, and then she looked in the hand 
 for bits of glass, and there were fortunately no bits of glass there. 
 And then she said to two chubby-legged princes, who were sturdy 
 though small, " Bring me in the royal rag-bag : I must snip and stitch 
 and cut and contrive." So these two young princes tugged at the 
 royal rag-bag, and lugged it in ; and the Princess Alicia sat down on 
 the floor, with a large pair of scissors and a needle and thread, and 
 snipped and stitched and cut and contrived, and made a bandage, and 
 put it on, and it fitted beautifully ; and so when it was all done, sho 
 saw the king her papa looking on by the door. 
 
 " Alicia." 
 
 " Yes, papa." 
 
 " What have you been doing ? " 
 
 " Snipping, stitching, cutting, and contriving, papa." 
 
 " Where is the magic fish-bone ? " 
 
 " In my pocket, papa." 
 
 " I thought you had lost it ? " 
 
 " O, no, papa." 
 
 " Or forgotten it ? " 
 
 " No, indeed, papa." 
 
 After that, she ran up-stairs to the duchess, and told her what had 
 passed, and told her the secret over again ; and the duchess shook her 
 flaxen curls, and laughed with her rosy lips. 
 
 Well ! and so another time the baby fell under the grate. Tho 
 seventeen young princes and princesses were used to it ; for they were 
 almost always falling under the grate or down the stairs ; but the baby 
 was not used to it yet, and it gave him a swelled face and a black eye. 
 The way tho poor little darling came to tumble was, that he was out 
 of tho Princess Alicia's lap just as she was sitting, in a great coarse 
 apron that quite smothered her, in front of the kitchen-fire, beginning 
 to peel the turnips for the broth for dinner ; and the way she came to 
 bo doing that was, that the king's cook had run away that morning 
 with her own true love, who was a very tall but very tipsy soldier. 
 Then the seventeen young princes and princesses, who cried at every- 
 tliing that happened, cried and roared. But the Princess Alicia (who 
 couldn't help crying a little herself) quietly called to them to be still, 
 on account of not throwing back the queen up-stairs, who was fast 
 getting well, and said, " Hold your tongues, you wicked little monkeys, 
 every one of you, while I examine baby ! " Then she examined baby, 
 and found that he hadn't broken anything ; and she held cold iron to
 
 594 Holiday Romance. 
 
 his poor dear eye, and smoothed his poor dear face, and he presently 
 fell asleep in her arms. Then she said to the seventeen princes and 
 princesses, " I am afraid to let him down yet, lest he should wake and 
 feel pain ; be good, and you shall all bo cooks." They jumped for joy 
 when they heard that, and began making themselves cooks' caps out 
 of old newspapers. So to one she gave the salt-box, and to one she 
 gave the barley, and to one she gave the herbs, and to one she gavo 
 the turnips, and to one she gave the carrots, and to one she gave the 
 onions, and to one she gave the spice-box, till they were all cooks, and 
 all running about at work, she sitting in the middle, smothered in the 
 great coarse apron, nursing baby. By-and-by the broth was done ; 
 and the baby woke up, smiling like an angel, and was trusted to the 
 sedatest princess to hold, while the other princes and princesses wcro 
 squeezed into a far-off corner to look at the Princess Alicia turning 
 out the sauccpanful of broth, for fear (as they were always getting 
 into trouble) they should get splashed and scalded. When the broth 
 came tumbling out, steaming beautifully, and smelling like a nosegay 
 good to eat, they clapped their hands. That made the baby clap liis 
 iiands ; and that, and his looking as if he had a comic toothache, mado 
 all the princes and princesses laugh. So the Princess Alicia said, 
 " Laugh and be good ; and after dinner wo will make him a nest on 
 the floor in a corner, and ho shall sit in his nest and see a dance of 
 eighteen cooks." That delighted the young princes and princesses, 
 and they ate up all the broth, and washed up all the plates and dishes, 
 and cleared away, and pushed the table into a comer ; and then they 
 in their cooks' caps, and the Princess Alicia in the smothering coarso 
 apron that belonged to the cook that had run away with her own true 
 love that was the very tall but very tipsy soldier, danced a dance of 
 eighteen cooks before the angelic baby, who forgot his swelled faco 
 and his black eye, and crowed with joy. 
 
 And so then, once more the Princess Alicia saw King Watkins the 
 First, her father, standing in the doorway looking on, and he said, 
 " What have you been doing, Alicia ? " 
 
 " Cooking and contriving, papa." 
 
 " What else have you been doing, Alicia ? " 
 
 " Keeping the children light-hearted, pa]>a." 
 
 " Where is the magic fish-bone, Alicia? " 
 
 " In my pocket, papa." 
 
 " I thought you had lost it ? " 
 
 " 0, no, papa ! " 
 
 " Or forgotten it ? " 
 
 " No, indeed, papa." 
 
 Tlic king then siglicd so heavily, and seemed so low-sjHrited, and 
 sat down so miserably, leaning his head ujion his hand, and liis elbow 
 upon the Icitchen-table puslied away in the corner, that the sevcntccin 
 princes and princesses crept softly out of tlie kitchen, and left him 
 alone witli the Princess Alicia and the angelic baby.
 
 The Magic Fish-hone. 595 
 
 " What is the matter, papa ? " 
 
 " I am dreadfully poor, my child." 
 
 " Have you no money at all, papa ? " 
 
 " None, my child." 
 
 " Is there no way of getting any, papa ? " 
 
 " No way," said the king. " I have tried very hard, and I havo 
 tried all ways." 
 
 When she heard those last words, the Princess Alicia began to put 
 her hand into the pocket where she kept the magic fish-bone. 
 
 " Papa," said she, " when we have tried very hard, and tried all 
 ways, we must have done our very, very best ? " 
 
 " No doubt, AHcia." 
 
 " When we havo done our very, very best, papa, and that is not 
 enough, then I think the right time must have come for asking help 
 of others." This was the very secret connected with the magic fish- 
 bone, which she had found out for herself from the good Fairy Grand- 
 marina's words, and which she had so often whispered to her beautiful 
 and fashionable friend, the duchess. 
 
 So she took out of her pocket the magic fish-bone, that had been 
 dried and rubbed and polished till it shone like mother-of-pearl ; and 
 she gave it one little kiss, and wished it was quarter-day. And imme- 
 diately it was quarter-day ; and the king's quarter's salary came 
 rattling down the chimney, and bounced into the middle of the floor. 
 
 But this was not half of what happened no, not a quarter ; for 
 immediately afterwards the good Fairy Grandmarina came riding in, 
 in a carriage and four (peacocks), with Mr. Pickles's boy up behind, 
 dressed in silver and gold, with a cocked hat, powdered hair, pink silk 
 stockings, a jewelled cane, and a nosegay. Down jumped Mr. Pickles's 
 boy, with his cocked hat in his hand, and wonderfully polite (being 
 entirely changed by enchantment), and handed Grandmarina out ; and 
 there she stood, in her rich shot-silk smelling of dried lavender, fanning 
 herself with a sparkling fan. 
 
 " Alicia, my dear," said this charming old fairy, " how do you do ? 
 I hope I see you pretty well ? Give mo a kiss." 
 
 The Princess Alicia embraced her ; and then Grandmarina turned 
 to the king, and said rather sharply, " Arc you good ? " 
 
 The king said he hoped so. 
 
 " I suppose you know the reason now, why my god-daughter here," 
 kissing the princess again, " did not apply to the fish-bone sooner ? " 
 said the fairy. 
 
 The king made a shy bow. 
 
 " Ah ! but you didn't then ? " said the fairy. 
 
 The king made a shyer bow. 
 
 " Any more reasons to ask for ? " said the fairy. 
 
 The king said, No, and ho was very sorry. 
 
 " Bo good, then," said the fairy, " and live happy evci* afterwards." 
 
 Then Grandmarina waved hor fan, and the queen came iu most
 
 $g6 Holiday Romance. 
 
 splendidly dressed ; and the seventeen young princes and princesses, 
 no longer grown out of their clothes, came in, newly fitted out from 
 top to toe, with tucks in everything to admit of its being let out. 
 After that, the fairy tapped the Princess Alicia with her fan ; and the 
 smothering coarse apron flew away, and she appeared exquisitely 
 dressed, like a little bride, with a wreath of orange-flowers and a 
 silver veil. After that, the kitchen dresser changed of itself into 
 a wardrobe, made of beautiful woods and gold and looking-glass, 
 which was full of dresses of all sorts, all for her and all exactly fitting 
 her. After that, the angelic baby came in, running alone, with his 
 face and eye not a bit the worse, but much the better. Then Grand- 
 marina begged to bo introduced to the duchess ; and when the duchess 
 was brought down, many compliments passed between them, 
 
 A little whispering took place between the fairy and the duchess ; 
 and then the fairy said out loud, " Yes, I tliought she would have told 
 yon." Grandmarina then turned to the king and queen, and said, 
 " We are going in search of Prince Certainpersonio. The pleasure of 
 your company is requested at church in half an hour precisely." So 
 she and the Princess Alicia got into the carriage ; and Mr. Pickles's 
 boy handed in the duchess, who sat by herself on the opposite seat ; 
 and then Mr. Pickles's boy put up the steps and got up behind, and 
 the peacocks flew away with their tails behind. 
 
 Prince Certainpersonio was sitting by himself, eating barley-sugar, 
 and waiting to be ninety. When he saw the peacocks, followed by 
 the carriage, coming in at the window, it immediately occurred to him 
 that something Tincommon was going to happen. 
 
 " Prince," said Grandmarina, " I bring you your bride." 
 
 The moment the fairy said those words, Prince Certainpersonio's 
 face left off being sticky, and his jacket and cordtiroys changed to 
 peach-bloom velvet, and his hair ciirled, and a cap and feather flew in 
 like a bird and settled on his head. He got into the carriage by the 
 fairy's invitation ; and there ho renewed his acquaintance with the 
 duchess, whom he had seen before. 
 
 In the church were the prince's relations and friends, and the 
 Princess Alicia's relations and friends, and the seventeen princes and 
 princesses, and the baby, and a crowd of the neighbours. The marriage 
 was beautiful beyond expression. The duchess was bridesmaid, and 
 beheld the ceremony from the pulpit, where she was supported by the 
 cushion of the desk. 
 
 Grandmarina gave a magnificent wedding-feast afterwards, in which 
 there was cverytliing and more to cat, and everything and more to 
 drink. The wedding-calcc was delicately ornamented with white satin 
 ribbons, frosted silver, and wliite lilies, and was forty-two yards round. 
 
 Wlien Grandmarina liad drunk lier love to the young coui)le, and 
 Prince (Jertainpcrsonio liad made a speech, and everybody had cried. 
 Hip, hi]), hij), liurrah ! Grandmarina announced to the king and queen 
 that in future there would be eight (juuiter-days in every year, excej)t
 
 Captain Boldheart. 597 
 
 in leap-year, when there would be ten. She then turned to Certain- 
 personio and Alicia, and said, " My dears, you will have thirty-five 
 children, and they will all be good and beautiful. Seventeen of your 
 children will be boys, and eighteen will be girls. The hair of the 
 whole of your children will curl naturally. They will never have the 
 measles, and will have recovered from the whooping-cough before 
 being born." 
 
 On hearing such good news, everybody cried out " Hip, hip, hip, 
 hurrah ! " again. 
 
 " It only remains," said Grandmarina in conclusion, " to make an 
 end of the fish-bone." 
 
 So she took it from the hand of the Princess Alicia, and it instantly 
 flew down the throat of the dreadful little snapping pug-dog, next door, 
 and choked him, and he expired in convulsions. 
 
 PAKT III. 
 
 ROMANCE. FEOM THE PEN OF LIEUT.-COL. BOBIN REDFORTH.* 
 
 The subject of our present narrative would appear to have devoted 
 himself to the pirate profession at a comparatively early age. We 
 find him in command of a splendid schooner of one hundred guns 
 loaded to the muzzle, ere yet he had had a party in honour of his 
 tenth birthday. 
 
 It seems that our horo, considering himself spited by a Latin- 
 grammar master, demanded the satisfaction due from one man of 
 honour to another. Not getting it, he privately withdrew his haughty 
 spirit from such low company, bought a second-hand pocket pistol, 
 folded up some sandwiches in a paper bag, and made a bottle of 
 Spanish liquorice-water, and entered on a career of valour. 
 
 It were tedious to follow Boldheart (for such was his name) through 
 the commencing stages of his story. Suffice it, that we find him bear- 
 ing the rank of Capt. Boldheart, reclining in full uniform on a crimson 
 hearth-rug spread out upon the quarter-deck of his schooner " The 
 Beauty," in the China seas. It was a lovely evening ; and, as his crew 
 lay grouped about him, he favoured them with the following melody : 
 
 O landsmen are folly ! 
 O pirates are jolly ! 
 diddleum Dolly, 
 
 Di. 
 Chorus. Heave yo. 
 
 The soothing effect of these animated sounds floating over the 
 waters, as the common sailors united their rough voices to take up 
 
 * Atred nine.
 
 598 Holiday Romance. 
 
 tho rich tonos of Boldhoart, may bo moro easily conceived than de- 
 scribed. 
 
 It was under these circumstances that tho look-out at tho mast-head 
 gave the word, " Whales ! " 
 
 All was now activity. 
 
 " Where away ? " cried Capt. Boldhoart, starting up. 
 
 " On the larboard bow, sir," replied the fellow at the mast-head, 
 touching his hat. For sucli was the height of discipline on board of 
 " The Beauty," that, even at that height, he was obliged to mind it, or 
 bo shot through the head. 
 
 " This adventure belongs to me," said Boldhoart. " Boy, my 
 harpoon. Let no man follow ; " and leaping alone into his boat, tho 
 captain rowed with admirable dexterity in tho direction of tho 
 monster. 
 
 All was now excitement. 
 
 " IIo noars him ! " said an elderly seaman, following tho captain 
 through his spy-glass. 
 
 " Ho strikes him ! " said another seaman, a more stripling, but also 
 with a spy-glass. 
 
 " IIo tows him towards us ! " said another seaman, a man in the full 
 vigour of life, but also with a spy-glass. 
 
 In fact tho captain was seen approaching, with the huge bulk 
 following. We will not dwell on the deafening cries of " Boldhearfc ! 
 Boldhoart ! " with which ho was received, when, carelessly leaping 
 on the quarter-deck, ho presented his prize to his men. They after- 
 wards made two thousand four hundred and seventeen pound ten and 
 sixpence by it. 
 
 Ordering the sails to be braced up, tho captain now stood W.N.W. 
 " The Beauty " flow rather than floated over tho dark blue waters. 
 Nothing particular occurred for a fortnight, except taking, with con- 
 Bidorablo slaughter, four S])anisli galleons, and a snow from South 
 America, all riclily laden. Inaction began to tell upon tho spirits of 
 the men. Capt. Boldhoart called all hands aft, and said, " My lads, I 
 lioar there aro discontented ones among ye. Lot any such stand 
 fortli." 
 
 After some murmuring, in which tho expressions, " Ay, ay, sir ! " 
 "Union Jack," "Avast," "Starboard," "Port," "Bowsprit," and 
 similar indications of a mutinous undercurrent, though subdued, were 
 audible, Bill Boozey, captuin of the forotop, came out from tho rest. 
 His form was tliat of a giant, but ho quailed under the captain's eye. 
 
 "What aro your wrongs?" said tho captain, 
 
 " Why, d'yo see, Capt. Boldhoart," rojdicd tho towering mariner, 
 " I've sailed, man and boy, for many a year, but I never yet know'd 
 tho milk served out for tho ship's company's teas to bo as sour as 'tis 
 aboard tliis craft." 
 
 At this moment tho tlirilling cry, " Man overboard ! " announced to 
 tho astonished crev/ tliat Boo7:oy,in stepping back, as the captain (in mere
 
 Fight between " The Beauty " and " The Scorpiony 599 
 
 tlionghtfulness) laid his hand upon the faithful pocket-pistol which he 
 wore in his belt, had lost his balance, and was struggling with the 
 foaming tide. 
 
 All was now stupefaction. 
 
 But with Capt. Boldheart, to throw off his uniform coat, regardless 
 of the various rich orders with which it was decorated, and to plunge 
 into the sea after the drowning giant, was the work of a moment. 
 Maddening was the excitement when boats were lowered ; intense the 
 joy when the captain was seen holding up the drowning man with his 
 teeth ; deafening the cheering M^hen both were restored to the main 
 deck of " The Beauty." And, from the instant of his changing his 
 wet clothes for dry ones, Capt. Boldheart had no such devoted though 
 humble friend as William Boozey. 
 
 Boldheart now pointed to the horizon, and called the attention of 
 his crew to the taper spars of a ship lying snug in harbour under the 
 guns of a fort. 
 
 "She shall be ours at sunrise," said he. "Serve out a double 
 allowance of grog, and prepare for action." 
 
 All was now preparation. 
 
 AVhen morning dawned, after a sleepless night, it was seen that the 
 stranger was crowding on all sail to come out of the harbour and offer 
 battle. As the two ships came nearer to each other, the stranger fired 
 a gun and hoisted Eoman colours. Boldheart then perceived her to 
 be the Latin-grammar master's bark. Such indeed she was, and had 
 been tacking about the world in unavailing pursuit, from the time of 
 his first taking to a roving life. 
 
 Boldheart now addressed his men, promising to blow them up if ho 
 should feel convinced that their reputation required it, and giving 
 orders that the Latin-grammar master should be taken alive. He then 
 dismissed them to their quarters, and the fight began with a broadside 
 from " The Beauty." She then veered around, and poured in another. 
 " The Scorpion " (so was the bark of the Latin-grammar master 
 appropriately called) was not slow to return her fire ; and a terrific 
 cannonading ensued, in which the guns of " The Beauty " did 
 tremendous execution. 
 
 The Latin-grammar master was seen upon the poop, in the midst of 
 the smoke and fire, encouraging his men. To do him justice, he was 
 no craven, though his white hat, his short gray ti'ousers, and his long 
 snuff-coloured surtout reaching to his heels (the self-same coat in 
 which he had spited Boldheart), contrasted most unfavourably with 
 the brilliant uniform of the latter. At this moment, Boldheart, seiz- 
 ing a pike and putting himself at the head of his men, gave the word 
 to board. 
 
 A desperate conflict ensued in the hammock-nettings, or some- 
 where in about that direction, until the Latin-grammar master, having 
 all his masts gone, his hull and rigging shot through, and seeing 
 Bokllicart slashing a path towards him, hauled down his flag himself.
 
 6oo Holiday Romance. 
 
 gave up his sword to Boldheart, and asked for quarter. Scarce had 
 he been put into the captain's boat, ere " The Scorpion " went down 
 with all on board. 
 
 On Capt. Boldheart's now assembling his men, a circumstance 
 occurred. He found it necessary with one blow of his cutlass, to kill 
 the cook, who, having lost his brother in the late action, was making 
 at the Latin-grammar master in an infuriated state, intent on his 
 destruction \vith a carving-knife. 
 
 Capt. Boldheart then turned to the Latin-grammar master, severely 
 reproaching him with his perfidy, and put it to his crew what they 
 considered that a master who spited a boy deserved. 
 They answered with one voice, " Death." 
 
 " It may be so," said the captain ; " but it shall never be said that 
 Boldheart stained his hour of triumph with the blood of his enemy. 
 Prepare the cutter." 
 
 The cutter was immediately prepared. 
 
 " Without taking your life," said the captain, " I must yet for ever 
 deprive you of the power of spiting other boys. I shall turn you 
 adrift in this boat. You will find in lier two oars, a compass, a bottle 
 of rum, a small cask of water, a piece of pork, a bag of biscuit, and 
 my Latin grammar. Go ! and spite the natives, if you can find 
 any." 
 
 Deeply conscious of this bitter sarcasm, the unhappy wretch was 
 put into the cutter, and was soon left far behind. He made no effort 
 to row, but was seen lying on his back with his legs up, when last 
 made out by the ship's telescojies. 
 
 A stiff breeze now beginning to blow, Capt. Boldheart gave orders 
 to keep her S.S.W., easing her a little during the night by falling off 
 a point or two W. by W., or even by W.S., if she complained much, 
 lie then retired for the night, having in truth much need of repose. 
 In addition to the fatigues he had undergone, this brave officer had 
 received sixteen wounds in the engagement, but had not mentioned it. 
 In the morning a white squall came on, and was succeeded by other 
 squalls of various colours. It thundered and lightened heavily for 
 six weeks. Hurricanes then set in for two mouths. Waterspouts and 
 tornadoes fjllowcd. The oldest sailor on board and he was a very 
 old one had never seen such weather. " The Beauty" lost all idea 
 where she was, and tlie carpenter reported six feet two of water in 
 the hold. Everybody fell senseless at the pumps every day. 
 
 Provisions now ran very low. Our hero put the crew on short 
 allowance, and put himself on shorter allowance than any man in the 
 ship. But liis spirit kept him fat. In this extremity, the gratitude 
 of I3oozoy, the captain of the foretop, whom our readers may remember, 
 was truly affecting. The loving though lowly William repeatedly 
 requested to be killed, and preserved for the captain's table. 
 We now approach a change of affairs. 
 One day during a gleam of sunshine, and when the weather had
 
 Preparations for a Native Feast interrupted. 60 1 
 
 moderated, the man at the mast-head^ too weak now to touch his 
 hat, besides its having been blown away called out, 
 
 " Savages ! " 
 
 All was now expectation. 
 
 Presently fifteen hundred canoes, each paddled by twenty savages, 
 were seen advancing in excellent order. They were of a light green 
 colour (the savages were), and sang, with great energy, the following 
 strain : 
 
 Choo a choo a choo tooth. 
 
 Muntch, muntch. Nycey! 
 Cboo a choo a cboo tooth, 
 
 Muntch, muntch. Nicej' ! 
 
 As the shades of night were by this time closing in, these expressions 
 were supposed to embody this simple people's views of the evening 
 hymn. But it too soon appeared that the song was a translation of 
 " For what we are going to receive," &c. 
 
 The chief, imposingly decorated with feathers of lively colours, and 
 having the majestic appearance of a fighting parrot, no sooner under- 
 stood (he understood English perfectly) that the ship was the " Tho 
 Beauty," Capt. Boldheart, than he fell upon his face on the deck, and 
 could not be persuaded to rise until the ca2)tain had lifted him up, 
 and told him he wouldn't hurt him. All tho rest of the savages also 
 fell on their faces with marks of terror, and had also to be lifted up 
 one by one. Thus the fame of the great Boldheart had gone before 
 him, even among these children of Nature. 
 
 Turtles and oysters were now produced in astonishing numbers ; 
 and on these and yams the people made a hearty meal. After dinner 
 the chief told Capt. Boldheart that there was better feeding up at tho 
 village, and that he would be glad to take him and his officers there. 
 Apprehensive of treachery, Boldheart ordered his boat's crew to attend 
 him completely armed. And well were it for other commanders if 
 their precautions but let us not anticipate. 
 
 When the canoes arrived at the beach, the darkness of the night 
 was illumined by the light of an immense fire. Ordering his boat's 
 crew (with the intrepid though illiterate William at their head) to 
 keep close and be upon their guard, Boldheart bravely went on, arm 
 in arm with the chief. 
 
 But how to depict the captain's surprise when he found a ring of 
 savages singing in chorus that barbarous translation of " For what 
 we are going to receive," &c., which has been given above, and 
 dancing hand in hand round the Latin-grammar master, in a hamper 
 with his head shaved, while two savages floured him, before putting 
 him to the fire to be cooked ! 
 
 Boldheart now took counsel with his ofiicers on the course to be 
 adopted. In the mean time, the miserable captive never ceased 
 begging pardon and imploring to be delivered. On the generous 
 Boldheart's proposal, it was at length resolved that he should not bo
 
 (5o2 Holiday Romance. 
 
 cooked, but shotild bo allowed to remain raw, on two conditions, 
 namely : 
 
 1. That ho should never, under any circumstances, presume to 
 teach any boy anything any more. 
 
 2. That, if taken back to England, ho should pass his life in 
 travelling to find out boys who wanted their exercises done, and should 
 do their exercises for those boys for nothing, and never say a word 
 about it. 
 
 Drawing the sword from its sheath, Boldheart swore him to these 
 conditions on its shining blade. Tlie prisoner wept bitterly, and 
 ai^poarod acutely to feel the errors of his past career. 
 
 Tlie captain then ordered his boat's crow to mako ready for a 
 volley, and after firing to re-load quickly. " And expect a score or 
 two on ye to go head over heels," murmured William Boozey ; " for 
 I'm a-looking at ye." "With those words, the derisive though deadly 
 William took a good aim. 
 
 " Fire ! " 
 
 The ringing voice of Boldheart was lost in the report of the guns 
 and tlie screeching of the savages. Volley after volley awakoned 
 the numerous echoes. Hundreds of savages were killed, hundreds 
 wounded, and thousands ran howling into the woods. The Latin- 
 grammar master had a spare night-cap lent him, and a long-tail coat, 
 which ho wore hind side before. He presented a ludicrous though 
 pitiable appearance, and serve him right. 
 
 Wo now find Capt. Boldheart, \\'ith this rescued wretch on board, 
 standing off for other islands. At one of these, not a cannibal island, 
 but a pork and vegetable one, ho married (only in fun on his part) the 
 king's daughter. Here he rested some time, receiving from the 
 natives great quantities of precious stones, gold dust, elephants' teeth, 
 and sandal wood, and getting very rich. This, too, though ho almost 
 ev(u-y day made presents of enormous value to his men. 
 
 The ship being at length as full as she could hold of all sorts of 
 valuable things, Boldheart gave orders to weigh the anchor, and turn 
 " Tlio Beauty's " head towards England. These orders were obeyed 
 v/ith three cheers ; and ere the sun went down full many a hornpipe 
 had been danced on deck by the uncouth though agile William. 
 
 We next find Capt. Boldheart about throe leagues off Madeira, sur- 
 veying through his spy-glass a stranger of suspicious appearance 
 making sail towards him. On his firing a gun ahead of her to bring 
 her to, she ran up a flag, which ho instantly recognised as the flag 
 from tho mast in tlic back-garden at homo. 
 
 Inferring from this, that his father had put to sea to seek his long- 
 lost son, the captain sent his own boat on board tho stranger to 
 inquire if this was so, and, if so, whether his father's intentions were 
 strictly honourable. The boat came back with a present of greens 
 and fresh meat, and reported that the stranger was " The Family," of 
 twelve hundred tons, and had not only the captain's father on boar;],
 
 Boldheart and the Mayor. 603 
 
 but also his mother, with the majority of his aunts and uncles, and all 
 his cousins. It was further reported to Boldheart that the whole of 
 these relations had expressed themselves in a becoming manner, and 
 were anxious to embrace him and thank him for the glorious credit 
 ho had done them. Boldheart at once invited them to breakfast next 
 morning on board " The Beauty," and gave orders for a brilliant ball 
 that should last all day. 
 
 It was in the course of the night that the captain discovered the 
 hopelessness of reclaiming the Latin-grammar master. That thankless 
 traitor was found out, as the two ships lay near each other, com- 
 municating with " The Family " by signals, and offering to give up 
 Boldheart. Ho was hanged at tho yard-arm the jBrst thing in the 
 morning, after having it impressively pointed out to him by Boldheart 
 that this was what spiters came to. 
 
 Tho meeting between the captain and his parents was attended 
 with tears. His uncles and aimts v/ould have attended their meeting 
 with tears too, but he wasn't going to stand that. His cousins wcro 
 very much astonished by the size of his ship and tho discipline of 
 his men, and were greatly overcome by the splendour of his uniform. 
 He kindly conducted them round the vessel, and pointed out every- 
 thing worthy of notice. He also fired his hundred guns, and found 
 it amusing to witness their alarm. 
 
 The entertainment surpassed everything ever seen on board ship, 
 and lasted from ten in the morning until seven the next morning. 
 Only one disagreeable incident occurred. Capt. Boldheart found 
 himself obliged to put his cousin Tom in irons, for being disrespect- 
 ful. On tho boy's promising amendment, however, he was humanely 
 released after a few hours' close confinement. 
 
 Boldheart now took his mother down into the great cabin, and 
 asked after the young lady with whom, it was well known to tho 
 world, he was in love. His mother replied that the object of his 
 affections was then at school at Margate, for tho benefit of sea-bathing 
 (it was the month of September), but that she feared the young lady's 
 friends were still opposed to the union. Boldheart at onco resolved, 
 if necessary, to bombard the town. 
 
 Taking the command of his ship v/ith this intention, and putting 
 all but fighting men on board " Tlie Family," with orders to that 
 vessel to keep in company, Boldheart soon anchored in Margate 
 Eoads. Here ho went ashore well-armed, and attended by his boat's 
 crew (at their head tho faithful though ferocious William), and 
 demanded to see the mayor, who came out of his office. 
 
 " Dost know the name of yon ship, mayor ? " asked Boldheart fiercely. 
 
 " No," said the mayor, rubbing his eyes, which ho could scarce 
 believe, when he saw the goodly vessel riding at anchor. 
 
 " She is named ' The Beauty,' " said the captain. 
 
 " Hah ! " exclaimed tho mayor, with a start. " And you, then, arc 
 Capt. Buldhoiirt ? "
 
 6o4 Holiday Romance. 
 
 ' Tho same." 
 
 A pause ensued. The mayor trembled. 
 
 " Now, mayor," said the captain, " choose ! Help me to my bride, 
 or bo bombarded." 
 
 The mayor begged for two hours' grace, in which to make inquiries 
 respecting tho young lady. Boldheart accorded him but one ; and 
 during that one placed William Boozey sentry over him, with a 
 drawn sword, and instructions to accompany him wherever he wont, 
 and to run him through the body if he showed a sign of playing false. 
 
 At the end of tho hour the mayor re-appeared more dead than alive, 
 closely waited on by Boozey more alive than dead. 
 
 " Captain," said the mayor, " I have ascertained that the young lady 
 is going to bathe. Even now she waits her turn for a machine. The 
 tide is low, though rising. I, in one of our town-boats, shall not bo 
 suspected. When she comes forth in her bathing-dress into the 
 shallow water from behind the hood of the machine, my boat shall 
 intercept her and prevent her return. Do you the rest." 
 
 " Mayor," returned Capt. Boldheart, " thou hast saved thy town." 
 
 The captain then signalled his boat to take him off, and, steering 
 her himself, ordered her crew to row towards tho bathing-ground, and 
 there to rest upon their oars. All happened as had been arranged. 
 His lovely bride came forth, the mayor glided in behind her, she 
 became confused, and had floated out of her depth, when, with one 
 skilful touch of the rudder and one quivering stroke from the boat's 
 crew, her adoring Boldheart held her in his strong arms. There her 
 shrieks of terror were changed to cries of joy. 
 
 Before " The Beauty " could get under way, the hoisting of all the 
 flags in tlie town and harbour, and the ringing of all the bells, 
 announced to the brave Boldheart that he had nothing to fear. He 
 therefore determined to bo married on the spot, and signalled for a 
 clergyman and clerk, who came off promptly in a sailing-boat named 
 " Tlie Skylark." Another great entertainment was then given on 
 board " Tho Beauty," in the midst of which the mayor was called out 
 by a messenger. He returned with the news that government had 
 sent down to know whether Capt. Boldheart, in acknowledgment of 
 the great services he liad done his country by being a pirate, would 
 consent to be made a lieutenant-colonel. For himself he would have 
 sj^urued the worthless boon ; but his bride wished it, and ho consented. 
 
 Only one thing further happened before the good ship " Family " 
 was dismissed, with rich presents to all on board. It is painful to 
 record (but such is human nature in some cousins) that Capt. Bold- 
 lieart's unmannerly Cousin Tom was actually tied up to receive three 
 dozen with a rope's end " for eheekiness and making game," when 
 Capt. Boldheart's lady bogged for him, and he was spared. " Tho 
 Beauty " then refitted, and the captain and his bride dop;irti,(l for tlic 
 Indian Ocean to enjoy themselves for evermore.
 
 PAKT lY. 
 
 ItOMANOE. FROM THE PEN OF MISS NETTIE ASHFORD.* 
 
 There is a country, which I will show you when I get into maps, 
 where the children have everything their own way. It is a most 
 delightful country to live in. The grown-up people are obliged 
 to obey the children, and are never allowed to sit up to supper, 
 except on their birthdays. The children order them to make jam 
 and jelly and marmalade, and tarts and pies and puddings, and 
 all manner of pastry. If they say they won't, they are put in the 
 corner till they do. They are sometimes allowed to have some ; 
 but when they have some, they generally have powders given them 
 afterwards. 
 
 One of the inhabitants of this country, a truly sweet young creature 
 of the name of Mrs. Orange, had the misfortune to be sadly plagued 
 by her numerous family. Her parents required a great deal of look- 
 ing after, and they had connections and companions who were scarcely 
 ever out of mischief. So Mrs. Orange said to herself, " I really 
 cannot be troubled with these torments any longer : I must put them 
 all to school." 
 
 Mrs. Orange took off her pinafore, and dressed herself very nicely, 
 and took up her baby, and went out to call upon another lady of the 
 name of Mrs. Lemon, who kept a preparatory establishment. Mrs. 
 Orange stood upon the scraper to pull at the bell, and give a ring- 
 ting-ting. 
 
 Mrs. Lemon's neat little housemaid, pulling up her socks as sho 
 came along the passage, answered the Ring- ting-ting. 
 
 " Good-morning," said Mrs. Orange. " Fine day. How do you 
 do ? Mrs. Lemon at home ? 
 
 " Yes, ma'am." 
 
 " Will you say Mrs. Orange and baby ? " 
 
 " Yes, ma'am. Walk in." 
 
 Mrs. Orange's baby was a very fine one, and real wax all over. 
 Mrs. Lemon's baby was leather and bran. However, when Mrs. 
 Lemon came into the drawing-room with her baby in her arms, Mrs. 
 Orange said politely, " Good-morning. Fine day. How do you do ? 
 And how is little Tootleum-boots ? " 
 
 " Well, she is but poorly. Cutting her teeth, ma'am," said Mrs. 
 Lemon. 
 
 " O, indeed, ma'am ! " said Mrs. Orange. " No fits, I hope ? " 
 
 " No, ma'am." 
 
 " How many teeth has sho, ma'am ? " 
 
 " Five, ma'am." 
 
 * Aged half-past six.
 
 6o6 Holiday Romance. 
 
 " My Emilia, ma'am, bas eight," said Mrs. Orange. " Shall we lay 
 them on the mantelpiece side by side, while we converse ? " 
 " By all means, ma'am," said Mrs. Lemon. " Hem I " 
 " The first question is, ma'am," said Mrs. Orange, " I don't bore 
 
 you?" 
 
 "Not in the least, ma'am," said Mrs. Lemon. "Far from it, I 
 assure you." 
 
 "Then pray liave you," said Mrs. Orange, '^Jiave you any 
 vacancies ? " 
 
 " Yes, ma'am. How many might you require ? " 
 
 " Why, the truth is, ma'am," said Mrs. Orange, " I have come to the 
 conclusion that my children," O, I forgot to say that they call the 
 grown-up people children in that country ! " that my children are 
 getting positively too much for me. Lot me see. Two parents, two 
 intimate friends of theirs, one godfather, two godmothers, and an 
 aunt. Have you as many as eight vacancies ? " 
 
 " I have just eight, ma'am," said Mrs. Lemon. 
 
 " Most fortunate I Terms moderate, I think ? " 
 
 " Very moderate, ma'am." 
 
 " Diet good, I believe ? " 
 
 " Excellent, ma'am." 
 
 " Unlimited ? " 
 
 " Unlimited." 
 
 " Most satisfactory ! Corporal punishment dispensed with ? " 
 
 " Why, wo do occasionally shake," said Mrs. Lemon, " and we have 
 slapped. But only in extreme cases." 
 
 " Could I, ma'am," said Mrs. Orange, " could I see the establish- 
 ment ? " 
 
 " With the greatest of pleasure, ma'am," said Mrs. Lemon. 
 
 Mrs. Lemon took Mrs. Orange into the schoolroom, wlioro there 
 were a number of pupils. " Stand up, children," said Mrs. Lemon ; 
 and they all stood up. 
 
 Mrs. Orange whispered to Mrs. Lemon, " There is a pale, bald 
 child, with red whiskers, in disgrace. Might I ask what ho has 
 done ? " 
 
 " Come hero, Wliite," said Mrs. Lemon, " and tell this lady what 
 you have been doing." 
 
 " Betting on horses," said White sulkily. 
 
 " Are you sorry for it, you naughty child ? " said Mrs. Lemon. 
 
 " No," said White. " Sorry to lose, but shouldn't be sorry to win." 
 
 " There's a vicious boy for you, ma'am," said Mrs. Lemon. " Go 
 along with you, sir. This is Brown, Mrs, Orange. O, a sad case, 
 Brown's ! Never knows when ho has had enough. Greedy. How is 
 your gout, sir ? " 
 
 " Bad," said Brown. 
 
 " What else can you expect ? " said Mrs. Lemon. " Your stomach 
 is tl)n size of two. Go and take exorcise directly. Mrs. T51ack, come
 
 Mrs. Orange and Mrs. Lenioii. 607 
 
 hero to me. Now, liere is a child, Mrs. Orange, ma'am, who is always 
 at play. She can't be kept at home a single day together ; always 
 gadding about and spoiling her clothes. Play, play, play, play, from 
 morning to night, and to morning again. How can she expect to 
 improve ? " 
 
 " Don't expect to improve," sulked Mrs. Black. " Don't want to." 
 
 " There is a specimen of her temper, ma'am," said Mrs. Lemon. 
 " To see her when she is tearing about, neglecting everything else, 
 you would suppose her to be at least good-humoured. But bless 
 you ! ma'am, she is as pert and flouncing a minx as ever you met 
 with in all your days ! " 
 
 " You must have a great deal of trouble with them, ma'am," said 
 Mrs. Orange. 
 
 "Ah, I have, indeed, ma'am 1 " said Mrs. Lemon. "What with 
 their tempers, what with their quarrels, what with their never, know- 
 ing what's good for them, and what with their always wanting to 
 domineer, deliver me from these unreasonable children ! " 
 
 " Well, I wish you good-morning, ma'am," said Mrs. Orange. 
 
 " Well, I wish you good-morning, ma'am," said Mrs. Lemon. 
 
 So Mrs.' Orange took up her baby and went home, and told the 
 family that plagued her so that they were all going to be sent to 
 school. They said they didn't want to go to school ; but she jJacked 
 up their boxes, and packed them oif. 
 
 " O dear me, dear me 1 Rest and be thankful ! " said Mrs. Orange, 
 throwing herself back in her little arm-chair. " Those troublesome 
 troubles are got rid of, please the pigs ! " 
 
 Just then another lady, named Mrs. Alicumpaino, came calling at 
 the street-door with a ring-ting-ting. 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Alicumpaine," said Mrs. Orange, " how do you do ? 
 Pray stay to dinner. We have but a simple joint of sweet-stuff, 
 followed by n plain dish of bread and treacle ; but, if you will take us 
 as you find us, it will bo sa kind I " 
 
 " Don't mention it," said Mrs. Alicumpaine. " I sliall bo too glad. 
 But what do you think I have come for, ma'am ? Guess, ma'am." 
 
 " I really cannot guess, ma'am," said Mrs. Orange. 
 
 " Why, I am going to have a small juvenile party to-night," said 
 Mrs. Alicumpaine ; " and if you and Mr. Orange and baby would 
 but join us, we should be complete." 
 
 " More than charmed, I am sure ! " said Mrs. Orange. 
 
 " So kind of you I " said Mrs. Alicumpaine. " But I hope the 
 children won't bore you ? " 
 
 " Dear things ! Not at all," said Mrs. Orange. " I dote upon 
 them." 
 
 Mr. Orange here came home from the city ; and he came, too, with 
 a ring-ting-ting. 
 
 " James love," said Mrs. Orange, " you look tired. What has been 
 doing in the city to-day ? "
 
 6o8 Holiday Romance. 
 
 " Trap, bat, and ball, my dear," said Mr. Orange ; " and it knocks 
 a man up." 
 
 " That dreadfully anxious city, ma'am," said Mrs. Orange to Mre. 
 Alicumpaino ; " so wearing, is it not ? " 
 
 "O, so trying!" said Mrs. Alicumpaino. " Jobn has lately been 
 specTilatiug in the peg-top ring ; and I often say to him at night, 
 ' John, is the result worth the wear and tear ? ' " 
 
 Dinner was ready by this time : so they sat down to dinner ; and 
 while Mr. Orange carved the joint of sweet-stuff, he said, " It's a poor 
 heart that never rejoices. Jane, go down to the cellar, and fetch a 
 bottle of the Ui^cst ginger-beer." 
 
 At tea-time, Mr. and Mrs. Orange, and baby, and Mrs. Alicumpaino 
 went off to Mrs. Alicumpaino's house. The children had not come 
 yet ; but the ball-room was ready for them, decorated with paper 
 flowers. 
 
 " How very sweet ! " said Mrs. Orange. " The dear things ! IIow 
 pleased they will be ! " 
 
 " I don't care for children myself," said Mr. Orange, gaping. 
 
 " Not for girls ? " said Mrs. Alicumpaine. " Come ! you care for 
 girls?" 
 
 Mr. Orange shook his head, and gaped again. "Frivolous and 
 vain, ma'am." 
 
 " My dear James," cried Mrs. Orange, who had been j^ceping about, 
 " do look here. Here's the supper for the darlings, ready laid in the 
 room behind the folding-doors. Here's their little pickled salmon, I 
 do declare ! And here's their little salad, and their little roast beef 
 and fowls, and their little pastry, and their wee, wee, wee champagne ! " 
 
 " Yes, I thought it best, ma'am," said Mrs. Alicumpaine, " that they 
 should have their supper by themselves. Our table is in the corner 
 here, where the gentlemen can have their wineglass of negus, and 
 their egg-sandwich, and their quiet game at bcggar-my-neighbour, and 
 look on. As for us, ma'am, we shall have quite enough to do to 
 manage the company." 
 
 " O, indeed, you may say so ! Quite enough, ma'am," said Mrs. 
 Orange. 
 
 The company began to come. Tlic first of them was a stout boy, 
 with a wliito top-knot and spectacles. The housemaid brought him 
 in and said, " CompliinontR, and at what time was lie to be fetclied ! " 
 Mrs. Alicumpaino said, "Not a moment later tlian ten. IIow do you 
 do, sir ? Oo and sit down." Tlion a number of otlior children came ; 
 boys by themselves, and girls by themselves, and boys and girls 
 together. Tlioy didn't behave at all well. Some of them looked 
 through quizzing-glasses at others, and said, " Who are tliose ? Don't 
 know tlioiii." Some of them looked througli quizzing-glasses at 
 others, and said, " How do ? " Some of them had cups of t(!a or coffee 
 handed to tliem by others, and said, " Thanks ; much ! " A good 
 many boys stood about, and felt their shirt collare. Four tiresome
 
 A Small Juvenile Party. 609 
 
 fat boys would stand in tlie doorway, and talk about the newspapers, 
 till Mrs, Alicumpaine went to tbem and said, " My dears, I really 
 cannot allow you to prevent people from coming in. I shall be truly 
 sorry to do it ; but, if you put yourselves in everybody's way, I must 
 positively send you home." One boy, with a beard and a large white 
 waistcoat, who stood straddling on the hearth-rug warming his coat- 
 tails, was sent home. " Highly incorrect, my dear," said Mrs. 
 Alicumpaine, handing him out of the room, " and I cannot permit it." 
 
 There was a children's band, harp, cornet, and piano, and Mrs. 
 Alicumpaine and Mrs. Orange bustled among the children to persuade 
 them to take partners and dance. But they were so obstinate ! For 
 quite a long time they would not be persuaded to take partners and 
 dance. Most of the boys said, " Thanks ; much ! But not at present." 
 And most of the rest of the boys said, " Thanks ; much ! But 
 never do." 
 
 " O, these children are very wearing ! " said Mrs. Alicumpaine to 
 Mrs. Orange. 
 
 " Dear things ! I dote upon them ; but they are wearing," said 
 Mrs. Orange to Mrs. Alicumpaine. 
 
 At last they did begin in a slow and melancholy way to slide about 
 to the music ; though even then they wouldn't mind what they were 
 told, but would have this partner, and wouldn't have that partner, and 
 showed temper about it. And they wouldn't smile, no, not on any 
 account they wouldn't ; but, when the music stopped, went roiand and 
 round the room in dismal twos, as if everybody else was dead. 
 
 " O, it's very hard indeed to get these vexing children to be enter- 
 tained ! " said Mrs. Alicumpaine to Mrs. Orange. 
 
 " I dote upon the darlings ; but it is hard," said Mrs. Orange to 
 Mrs. Alicumpaine. 
 
 They were trying children, that's the truth. First, they wouldn't 
 sing when they were asked ; and then, when everybody fully believed 
 they wouldn't, they would. " If you serve us so any more, my love," 
 said Mrs. Alicumpaine to a tall child, with a good deal of white back, 
 in mauve silk trimmed with lace, " it will be my painful privilege to 
 offer you a bed, and to send you to it immediately." 
 
 The girls were so ridiculously dressed, too, that they were in rags 
 before supper. How could the boys help treading on their trains ? 
 And yet when their trains were trodden on, they often showed temper 
 again, and looked as black, they did ! However, they all seemed to 
 be pleased when Mrs. Alicumpaine said, " Supper is ready, children ! " 
 And they went crowding and pushing in, as if they had had dry bread 
 for dinner. 
 
 " How are the children getting on ? " said Mr. Orange to Mrs. 
 Orange, when Mrs. Orange came to look after baby. Mrs. Orange 
 had left baby on a shelf near Mr. Orange while he played at beggar- 
 my-neighbour, and had asked him to keep his eye upon her now and 
 then. 
 
 2b
 
 6io Holiday Romance. 
 
 " Most charmingly, my dear I " said Mrs. Orange. " So droll to sco 
 their little flirtations and jealousies ! Do come and look ! " 
 
 " Much obliged to you, my dear," said Mr. Orange ; " but I don't 
 care about children myself." 
 
 So Mrs. Orange, having seen that baby was safe, went back without 
 Mr. Orange to the room where the children were having supper, 
 
 " What arc they doing now ? " said Mrs. Orange to Mrs. Alicum- 
 paine. 
 
 " They are making speeches, and playing at parliament," said Mrs. 
 Alicumpaino to Mrs. Orange. 
 
 On hearing this, Mrs. Orange set off once more back again to Mr. 
 Orange, and said, " James dear, do come. The children are playing 
 at parliament." 
 
 " Thank you, my dear," said Mr. Orange, " but I don't care about 
 parliament myself." 
 
 So Mrs. Orange went once again without Mr. Orange to the room 
 where the children were having supper, to sec them playing at parlia- 
 ment. And she found some of the boys crying, " Hear, hear, hear ! " 
 while other boys cried " No, no ! " and others, " Question I " " Spoke ! " 
 and all sorts of nonsense that ever you heard. Then one of those 
 tiresome fat boys who liad stopped the doorway told them he was on 
 his legs (as if they couldn't see that he wasn't on his head, or on his 
 anything else) to explain, and that, with the permission of his honour- 
 able friend, if ho would allow him to call him so (another tiresome 
 boy bowed), he would proceed to explain. Then he went on for a 
 long time in a sing-song (whatever he meant), did this troublesome 
 fat boy, about that he held in his hand a glass ; and about that ho 
 had come down to that house that night to discharge what he would 
 call a public duty ; and about that, on the present occasion, he would 
 lay his hand (his other hand) upon his heart, and would tell honour- 
 able gentlemen that he was about to open the door to general approval. 
 Then ho opened the door by saying, " To our hostess ! " and every- 
 body else said " To our hostess ! " and then tlicre were cheers. Then 
 another tiresome boy started up in sing-song, and then half-a-dozcn 
 noisy and nonsensical boys at once, liut at last Mrs. Alicurai)aine 
 said, " I cannot have this din. Now, children, you have played at 
 parliament very nicely ; but parliament gets tiresome after a little 
 wliile, and it's time you left off, for you will soon be fetched." 
 
 After another dance (with more tearing to rags than before supper), 
 they began to be fetched ; and you will be very glad to be told that 
 tlio tiresome fat boy who had been on his legs was walked oil' ilrst 
 without any ceremony. When thoy were all gone, poor Mrs. Alicnni- 
 paine dropped upon a sofa, and said to Mrs. Orange, " Tliese children 
 will be the death of me at last, ma'am, they will indeed ! " 
 
 " I quite adore tliem, ma'am," said Mrs. Orange ; " but they ix) 
 want variety." 
 
 Mr. Onuigi; got liis hut, and Mrs. Oj-augo got hor bonnet and her
 
 How to bring a Country to Perfection. 6il 
 
 baby, and they set out to walk home. They had to pass Mrs. Lemon's 
 preparatory establishment on their way. 
 
 " I wonder, James dear," said Mrs. Orange, looking up at the 
 window, " whether the precious children are asleep I " 
 
 " I don't care much whether they are or not, myself," said Mr. 
 Orange. 
 
 " James dear ! " 
 
 " You dote upon them, you know," said Mr, Orange. " That's 
 another thing." 
 
 " I'do," said Mrs. Orange rapturously. " 0, I do ! " 
 
 " I don't," said Mr. Orange. 
 
 " But I was thinking, James love," said Mrs. Orange, pressing his 
 arm, " whether our dear, good, kind Mrs. Lemon would like them to 
 etay the holidays with her." 
 
 " If she was paid for it, I daresay she would," said Mr. Orange. 
 
 "I adore them, James," said Mrs. Orange, "but suppose wo pay 
 her, then ! " 
 
 This was what brought that country to such perfection, and made 
 it such a delightful place to live in. The grown-up people (that 
 would be in other countries) soon loft off being allowed any holidays 
 after Mr. and Mrs. Orange tried the experiment ; and the children 
 (that would be in other countries) kept them at school as long as ever 
 they lived, and made them do whatever they were told.
 
 UEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION.
 
 GEOEGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. 
 
 FIEST CHAPTER. 
 
 It happened in this wise 
 
 But, sitting with my pen in my hand looking at those words again, 
 without descrying any hint in them of the words that should follow, 
 it comes into my mind that they have an abrupt appearance. They 
 may servo, however, if I let them remain, to suggest how very diffi- 
 cult I find it to begin to explain my explanation. An uncouth phrase ; 
 and yet I do not see my way to a better. 
 
 SECOND CHAPTER. 
 
 It happened in this wise 
 
 But, looking at those words, and comparing them with my former 
 opening, I find they are the self-same words repeated. This is the 
 more surprising to mo, because I employ them in quite a new connec- 
 tion. For indeed I declare that my intention was to discard the 
 commencement I first had in my thoughts, and to give the preference 
 to another of an entirely different nature, dating my explanation from 
 an anterior period of my life. I will make a third trial, without 
 erasing this second failure, protesting that it is not my design to con- 
 ceal any of my infirmities, whether they bo of head or heart. 
 
 THIRD CHAPTER. 
 
 Not as yet directly aiming at how it came to pass, I will come upon 
 it by degrees. The natural manner, after all, for God knows that is 
 how it came upon me. 
 
 My parents were in a miserable condition of life, and my infant
 
 6i6 George Silverman s Explanation. 
 
 homo was a cellar in Preston. I recollect tho sound of father's 
 Lancashire clogs on the street pavement above, as being different in 
 my yoimg hearing from tho sound of all other clogs ; and I recollect, 
 that, wlion mother came down the cellar-steps, I used tremblingly to 
 speculate on her feet having a good or an ill tempered look, on her 
 knees, on her waist, until finally her face came into view, and 
 settled the question. From this it will be seen that I was timid, and 
 that tlie cellar-steps were steep, and that the doorway was very low. 
 
 Mother had the gripe and clutch of poverty upon her face, upon her 
 figure, and not least of all upon her voice. Her sharp and high- 
 pitclied words were squeezed out of her, as by the compression of 
 bony fingers on a leathern bag ; and she had a way of rolling her eyes 
 about and about the cellar, as she scolded, that was gaunt and 
 hungry. Father, with his shoulders rounded, would sit quiet on a 
 three-legged stool, looking at tho empty grate, until she would pluck 
 tlic stool from under him, and bid him go bring some money home. 
 Then he would dismally ascend tho steps ; and I, holding my ragged 
 shirt and trousers together with a hand (my only braces), would feint 
 aud dodge from mother's pursuing grasp at my hair. 
 
 A worldly little devil was mother's usual name for me. Whether 1 
 cried for that I was in the dark, or for that it was cold, or for that 
 I was liungry, or whether I squeezed myself into a warm corner when 
 there was a fire, or ate voruciously when there was food, she would 
 still say, " O you worldly little devil ! " And tlie sting of it was, that 
 I (piite well knew myself to be a worldly little devil. Worldly as to 
 wanting to be housed and warmed, worldly as to wanting to be fed, 
 worldly as to the greed with which I inwardly compared how much I 
 got of those good things with how much father and mother got, when, 
 rarely, those good things were going. 
 
 Sometimes they both went away seeking work ; and then I would 
 be locked up in the cellar for a day or two at a time. I was at my 
 worldliest then. Left alone, I yielded myself up to a worldly yearn- 
 ing for enough of anything (except misery), and for the death of 
 mother's father, wlio was a machine-maker at Birmiugliam, and ou 
 whose decease, I had heard mother say, she would come into a whole 
 courtful of houses " if she had her rights." Worldly little devil, I 
 would stand about, musingly fitting my cold bare feet into cracked 
 l)rieks and crevices of tlie damp cellar-floor, Avalking over my grand- 
 father's body, so to speak, into the courtful of houses, and selling them 
 for meat and drink, and clothes to wear. 
 
 At last a change came down into our cellar. The universal change 
 came down oven as low as that, so will it mount to any height on 
 which a human creature can perch, -and brought other changes 
 witli it. 
 
 We had a heap of I don't know what foul litter in the darkest 
 corner, which we called " the Ixsd." For three days mother lay upon 
 it without getting up, and then began at times to laugh. If I had
 
 Worldliness. 617 
 
 ever heard her laugh before, it had been so seldom that the strange 
 sound frightened me. It frightened father too ; and we took it by 
 turns to give her water. Then she began to move her head from side 
 to side, and sing. After that, she getting no better, father fell 
 a-laughing aud a-singiug ; and then there was only I to give them 
 both water, and they both died. 
 
 FOURTH CHAPTER. 
 
 When I was lifted out of the cellar by two men, of whom one came 
 peeping down alone first, and ran away and brought the other, I could 
 hardly bear the light of the street. I was sitting in the road-way, 
 blinking at it, and at a ring of people collected around me, but not 
 close to me, when, true to my character of ,vorldly little devil, I broke 
 silence by saying, " I am hungry and thirsty ! " 
 
 " Does he know they are dead ? " asked one of another. 
 
 " Do you know your father and mother are both dead of fever ? " 
 asked a third of me severely. 
 
 " I don't know what it is to bo dead. I supposed it meant that, 
 when the cup rattled against their teeth, and the water spilt over 
 them. I am hungry and thirsty." That was all 1 had to say 
 about it. 
 
 The ring of people widened outward from the inner side as I looked 
 around me ; and I smelt vinegar, and what I know to be camphor, 
 thrown in towards where I sat. Presently some one put a great vessel 
 of smoking vinegar on the ground near me ; and then they all looked 
 at me in silent horror as I ate and drank of what v/as brought for me. 
 I knew at the time they had a horror of me, but I couldn't help it. 
 
 I was still eating and drinking, and a murmur of discussion had 
 begun to arise respecting what was to be done with me next, when I 
 heard a cracked voice somewhere in the ring say, " My name is Hawk- 
 yard, Mr. Verity Hawkyard, of West Bromwich." Then the ring split 
 in one place ; and a yellow-faced, peak-nosed gentleman, clad all in 
 iron-gray to his gaiters, pressed forward with a policeman and anotlier 
 official of some sort. He came forward close to the vessel of smokivg 
 vinegar ; from which he sprinkled himself carefully, and me copiously. 
 
 " He had a grandfather at Birmingham, this young boy, \>ho is 
 just dead too," said Mr. Hawkyard. 
 
 I turned my eyes upon the speaker, and said in a ravening manner, 
 " Where's his houses ? " 
 
 " Hah ! Horrible worldliness on the edge of the grave," said Mr. 
 Hawkyard, casting more of the vinegar over me, as if to get my devil 
 out of me. " I have undertaken a slight a ve-ry slight trust iu 
 behalf of this boy ; quite a voluntary trust ; a matter of mere honour,
 
 6i8 George Silverman's Explanation. 
 
 if not of mere sontimont : still I have taken it upon myself, and it 
 shall bo (O, yes, it shall bo !) discharged." 
 
 The bystanders seemed to form an opinion of this gentleman much 
 more favourable than their opinion of me. 
 
 " Ho shall be taught," said Mr. Hawkyard, " (O, yes, ho shall bo 
 tauglit !) but what is to bo done with him for the present ? He may 
 be infected. He may disseminate infection." The ring widened con- 
 siderably. " What is to be done with him ? " 
 
 Ho hold some talk with the two officials. I could distinguish no 
 word save " Farm-houso." There was another sound several times 
 repeated, which was wholly meaningless in my oars then, but which 
 I knew afterwards to bo " Hoghton Towers." 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Hawkyard. " I think that sounds promising ; I 
 think that sounds hopeful. And ho can bo put by himself in a ward, 
 for a night or two, you say ? " 
 
 It seemed to bo the police-officer who had said so ; for it was he 
 who replied, Yes ! It was he, too, who finally took mo by the arm, 
 and walked me before him through the streets, into a whitewashed 
 room in a bare building, where I had a chair to sit in, a table to sit 
 at, an iron bedstead and good mattress to lie upon, and a rug and 
 blanket to cover mo, "VVLero I had enough to eat too, and was shown 
 liow to clean the tin porringer in which it was conveyed to me, until 
 it was as good as a looking-glass. Here, likewise, I was put in a 
 bath, and had new clothes brought to me ; and my old rags were 
 burnt, and I was camphored and vinegarcd and disinfected in a variety 
 of ways. 
 
 When all this was done, I don't know in how many days or how 
 few, but it matters not, Mr. Hawkyard stepped in at the door, 
 remaining close to it, and said, " Go and stand against the opposite 
 wall, George Silvennan. As far off as you can. That'll do. How 
 do you feel ? " 
 
 I told him that I didn't feel cold, and didn't feel hungry, and didn't 
 feel thirsty. That was tho whole round of human feelings, as far as 
 I know, except tho pai'a oi being beaten. 
 
 " Well," said ho, "you are going, George, to a healthy farm-houso 
 to bo purified. Keep in the air there as much as you can. Live an 
 out-of-door life there, until you are fetched away. You had better 
 not say much in fact, you had better be very careful not to say any- 
 thing about what your parents died of, or they might not like to take 
 you in. Behavo well, and I'll put you to school ; 0, yes I I'll put 
 you to school, though I'm not obligated to do it. I am a servant of 
 the Lord, George ; and I have been a good servant to him, I have, 
 tlicso livo-and-thirty years. Tho Lord has had a good servant in me, 
 and lie knows it." 
 
 Wliat L then supposed him to mean by this, I cannot imagine. As 
 littlo do I know when I began to comprohend tliat ho was a prominent 
 mcirber of some obscure denomination or congregation, every member
 
 The Old Farm-house. 619 
 
 of which held forth to the rest when so inclined, and among whom ho 
 was called Brother Hawkyard. It was enough for me to know, on 
 that day in the ward, that the farmer's cart was waiting for me at the 
 street corner. I was not slow to get into it ; for it was the first ride 
 I ever had in my life. 
 
 It made me sleepy, and I slept. First, I stared at Preston streets 
 as long as they lasted ; and, meanwhile, I may have had some small 
 dumb wondering within me whereabouts our cellar was ; but I doubt 
 it. Such a worldly little devil was I, that I took no thought who 
 would bury father and mother, or where they would bo buried, or 
 when. The question whether the eating and drinking by day, and 
 the covering by night, would bo as good at the farm-house as at the 
 ward superseded those questions. 
 
 The jolting of the cart on a loose stony road awoke mo ; and I 
 found that we were mounting a steep hill, where the road was a rutty 
 by-road through a field. And so, by fragments of an ancient terrace, 
 and by some rugged outbuildings that had once been fortified, and 
 passing under a ruined gateway we came to the old farm-house in tho 
 thick stone wall outside tho old quadrangle of Hoghton Towers : 
 which I looked at like a stupid savage, seeing no specialty in, seeing 
 no antiquity in ; assuming all farm-houses to resemble it ; assigning 
 the decay I noticed to tho one potent cause of all ruin that I knew, 
 poverty ; eyeing the pigeons in their flights, the cattle in their stalls, 
 the ducks in the pond, and the fowls pecking about the yard, with a 
 hungry hope that plenty of them might bo killed for dinner while I 
 stayed there ; wondering whether the scrubbed dairy vessels, drying 
 in the sunlight, could be goodly porringers out of which tho master 
 ate his belly-filling food, and which he polished when he had done, 
 according to my ward experience ; shrinkingly doubtful whether tho 
 shadows, passing over that airy height on the bright spring day, were 
 not something in the nature of frowns, sordid, afraid, unadmiring, 
 a small brute to shudder at. 
 
 To that time I had never had the faintest impression of duty. I 
 had had no knowledge whatever that there v/as anything lovely in 
 this life. When I had occasionally slunk up the cellar-steps into the 
 street, and glared in at shop-windows, I had done so witli no higher 
 feelings than we may suppose to animate a mangy young dog or wolf- 
 cub. It is equally the fact that I had never been alone, in the sense 
 of holding unselfish converse with myself. I had been solitary often 
 enough, but nothing better. 
 
 Such was my condition when I sat down to my dinner that day, in 
 the kitchen of the old farm-house. Such was my condition when I 
 lay on my bed in the old farm-house that night, stretched out opposite 
 the narrow mullioncd window, in the cold light of the moon, like a 
 young vampire.
 
 FIFTH CHAPTER. 
 
 What do I know now of Hoghton Towers ? Very little ; for I have 
 been gratefully unwilling to disturb my first impressions. A house, 
 centuries old, on high ground a mile or so removed from the road 
 between Preston and Blackburn, where the first James of England, in 
 his hurry to make money by making baronets, perhaps made some of 
 those remunerative dignitaries. A house, centuries old, deserted and 
 falling to pieces, its woods and gardens long since gi'ass-land or 
 ploughed up, the Rivers Ribble and Darwen glancing below it, and 
 a vague haze of smoke, against which not oven the supernatural 
 prescience of the first Stuart could foresee a counterblast, hinting at 
 steam-power, powerful in two distances. 
 
 What did I know then of Hoghton Towers ? When I first peeped 
 j n at the gate of the lifeless quadrangle, and started from the moulder- 
 ing statue becoming visible to mo like its guardian ghost ; when I 
 stole round by the back of the farm-house, and got in among the 
 ancient rooms, many of them with their floors and ceilings falling, the 
 beams and rafters hanging dangerously down, the plaster dropping as 
 I trod, the oaken panels stripped away, the windows half walled up, 
 half broken ; when I discovered a gallery commanding the old kitchen, 
 and looked down between balustrades upon a massive old table and 
 benches, fearing to see I know not what dead-alive creatures come in 
 and seat themselves, and look up with I know not what dreadful eyes, 
 or lack of eyes, at me ; when all over the house I was awed by gaps 
 and chinks where the sky stared sorrowfully at me, where the birds 
 passed, and the ivy rustled, and the stains of winter weather blotched 
 the rotten floors ; when down at the bottom of dark pits of staircase, 
 into wliich the stairs had sunk, green leaves trembled, butterflies 
 fluttered, and bees hummed in and out through the broken doorways ; 
 when encircling the whole ruin were sweet scents, and sights of fresh 
 green growth, and cvor-renewing life, that I had never dreamed of, 
 I say, when I passed into such clouded perception of these things as 
 my dark soul could compass, what did I know then of Hoghton 
 Towers ? 
 
 I have written that the sky stared sorrowfully at me. Therein havo 
 I anticipated the answer. I knew that all tliese things looked sorrow- 
 fully at me ; that tlicy seemed to sigh or whisper, not without pity for 
 mo, " Alas ! poor worldly little devil ! " 
 
 Tluire wore two or tlireo rats at the bottom of one of tho smaller 
 pits of broken staircase wlien I craned over and looked in. They were 
 scuffling for sonic prey tliat was there ; and, when they started and 
 liid themselves close togotlier in the dark, I thought of the old life (it 
 had grown old already) in the cellar. 
 
 How not to be this worldly little devil ? how not to have a repug-
 
 Hoghton Towers. 62 1 
 
 bance towards myself as I had towards the rats ? I hid in a corner of 
 one of the smaller chambers, frightened at myself, and crying (it was 
 the first time I had ever cried for any cause not purely physical), and 
 I tried to think about it. One of the farm-ploughs came into my 
 range of view just then ; and it seemed to help me as it went on with 
 its two horses up and down the field so peacefully and quietly. 
 
 There was a girl of about my own age in the farm-house family, 
 and she sat opposite to me at the narrow table at meal-times. It had 
 come into my mind, at our first dinner, that she might take the fever 
 from me. The thought had not disquieted me then. I had only 
 speculated how she would look under the altered circumstances, and 
 whether she woxdd die. But it came into my mind now, that I might 
 try to prevent her taking the fever by keeping away from her. I 
 knew I should have but scrambling board if I did ; so much the less 
 worldly and less devilish the deed would be, I thought. 
 
 From that hour, I withdrew myself at early morning into secret 
 corners of the ruined house, and remained hidden there until she went 
 to bed. At first, when meals were ready, I used to hear them calling 
 me ; and then my resolution weakened. But I strengthened it again 
 by going farther ofi" into the ruin, and getting out of hearing. I often 
 watched for her at the dim windows ; and, when I saw that she was 
 fresh and rosy, felt much happier. 
 
 Out of this holding her in my thoughts, to the humanising of 
 myself, I suppose some childish love arose within me. I felt, in some 
 sort, dignified by the pride of protecting her, by the pride of making 
 the sacrifice for her. As my heart swelled with that new feeling, it 
 insensibly softened about mother and father. It seemed to have been 
 frozen before, and now to be thawed. The old ruin and all the lovely 
 things that haunted it were not sorrowful for me only, but sorrowful 
 for mother and father as well. Therefore did I cry again, and often 
 too. 
 
 The farm-house family conceived me to bo of a morose temper, and 
 were very short with me ; though they never stinted me in such broken 
 fare as was to be got out of regular hours. One night when I lifted 
 the kitchen latch at my usual time, Sylvia (that was her pretty name) 
 had but just gone out of the room. Seeing her ascending the opposite 
 stairs, I stood still at the door. She had heard the clink of the latch, 
 and looked round. 
 
 " George," she called to me in a pleased voice, " to-morrow is my 
 birthday ; and wo are to have a fiddler, and there's a party of boys and 
 girls coming in a cart, and we shall dance. I invite you. Be sociable 
 for once, George." 
 
 " I am very sorry, miss," I answered ; " but I^ but, no ; I can't 
 come." 
 
 " You are a disagreeable, ill-humoured lad," she returned disdain- 
 fully ; " and I ought not to have asked you. I shall never speak to 
 you again."
 
 622 George Silverman! s Explanation. 
 
 As I stood with my eyes fixed on the fire, after she was gone, I felt 
 that the farmer bent his brows upon me. 
 
 " Eh, lad ! " said ho ; " Sylvy's right. You're as moody and broody 
 a lad as never I sot eyes on yet." 
 
 I tried to assure him that I meant no harm ; but he only said coldly, 
 " Maybe not, maybe not ! There, get thy supper, get thy supper ; and 
 then thou canst sulk to thy heart's content again." 
 
 Ah ! if they could have seen me next day, in the ruin, watching for 
 the arrival of the cart full of merry young guests ; if they could have 
 seen me at night, gliding out from behind the ghostly statue, listening 
 to the music and the fall of dancing feet, and watching the lighted 
 farm-house windows from the quadrangle when all the ruin was dark ; 
 if they could have read my heart, as I crept up to bed by the back 
 way, comforting myself with the reflection, " They will take no hurt 
 from mo," they would not have thought mine a morose or an unsocial 
 nature. 
 
 It was in these ways that I began to form a shy disposition ; to bo 
 of a timidly silent character under misconstruction ; to have an in- 
 expressible, perhaps a morbid, dread of ever being sordid or worldly. 
 It was in these ways that my nature came to shape itself to such a 
 mould, oven before it was alfcctcd by the influences of the studious 
 and retired life of a poor scholar. 
 
 SIXTH CHAPTEK. 
 
 Brother Hawkyahd (as he insisted on my calling him) put mo to 
 school, and told mo to work my way. " You arc all right, George," 
 he said, " I have been the best servant the Lord has had in his 
 service for this five-and-thirty year (0, I have !) ; and he knows the 
 value of such a servant as I have been to him (O, yes, he docs !) ; and 
 he'll prosper your schooling as a part of my reward. That's v/hat 
 /te'll do, George. Ile'll do it for me." 
 
 From tlio first I could not like tliis familiar knowledge of the ways 
 of the sublime, inscrutable Almighty, on Brother Hawkyard's part. 
 As I grew a little wiser, and still a little wiser, I liked it less and less. 
 His manner, too, of confirming himself in a parenthesis, as if, know- 
 ing himself, he doubted liis own word, I found distasteful, I cannot 
 tell how mucli these dislikes cost me ; for I had a dread that they 
 were worldly. 
 
 As time went on, I became a Foundation-boy on a good foundation, 
 and I cost Brother Ilawkyard nothing. When I had worked my way 
 so far, I worked yet harder, in the hope of ultimately getting a 
 presentation to college and a fellowship. My health has never been 
 strong (R'.me vapour from the Preston cellar cleaves to me, I think) ;
 
 Brother Hawkyard. 623 
 
 and what with much work and some weakness, I came again to be 
 regarded that is, by my fellow-students as unsocial. 
 
 All through my time as a foundation-boy, I was within a few miles 
 of Brother Hawkyard's congregation ; and whenever I was what we 
 called a leave-boy on a Sunday, I went over there at his desire. Before 
 the knowledge became forced upon me that outside their place of 
 meeting these brothers and sisters were no better than the rest of the 
 human family, but on the whole were, to put the case mildly, as bad 
 as most, in respect of giving short weight in their shops, and not 
 speaking the truth, I say, before this knowledge became forced upon 
 me, their prolix addresses, their inordinate conceit, their daring 
 ignorance, their investment of the Supreme Euler of heaven and earth 
 with their own miserable meannesses and littlenesses, greatly shocked 
 me. Still, as their term for the frame of mind that could not perceive 
 them to be in an exalted state of grace was the " worldly " state, I did 
 for a time suffer tortures under my inquiries of myself whether that 
 young worldly-devilish spirit of mine could secretly be lingering at 
 the bottom of my non-appreciation. 
 
 Brother Hawkyard was the popular expoimder in this assembly, and 
 generally occupied the platform (there was a little platform with a 
 table on it, in lieu of a pulpit) first, on a Sunday afternoon. He was 
 by trade a drysalter. Brother Gimblet, an elderly man with a 
 crabbed face, a large dog's-eared shirt-collar, and a spotted blue 
 neckerchief reaching up behind to the crown of his head, was also 
 a drysalter and an expounder. Brother Gimblet professed the greatest 
 admiration for Brother Hawkyard, but (I had thought more than 
 once) bore him a jealous grudge. 
 
 Let whosoever may peruse these lines kindly take the pains here to 
 read twice my solemn pledge, that what I write of the language and 
 customs of the congregation in question I write scrupulously, literally, 
 exactly, from the life and the truth. 
 
 On the first Sunday after I had won what I had so long tried for, 
 and when it was certain that I was going up to college, Brother 
 Hawkyard concluded a long exhortation thus : 
 
 " Well, my friends and fellow-sinners, now I told you when I 
 began, that I didn't know a word of what I was going to say to you 
 (and no, I did not !), but that it was all one to me, because I knew the 
 Lord would put into my mouth the words I wanted." 
 
 ("That's it!" from Brother Gimblet.) 
 
 " And he did put into my mouth the words I wanted.*^ 
 
 (" So he did ! " from Brother Gimblet.) 
 
 " And why ? " 
 
 (" Ah, let's have that ! " from Brother Gimblet.) 
 
 " Because I have been his faithful servant for five-and-thirty years, 
 and because he knows it. For five-and-thirty years ! And he knows 
 it, mind you ! I got those words that I wanted on account of my 
 wages. I got 'em from the Lord,, my follovz-sinners. Down ! I
 
 624 George Silvennans Explanation. 
 
 Baid, ' Here's a heap of wages due ; let us have something down, on 
 account.' And I got it down, and I paid it over to you ; and you won't 
 wrap it up in a napkin, nor yet in a towel, nor yet pocketankercher, 
 but you'll put it out at good interest. Very well. Now, my brothers 
 and sisters and fellow-sinners, I am going to conclude with a question, 
 and I'll make it so plain (with the help of the Lord, after five-and- 
 thirty years, I should rather hope !) as that the Devil shall not be 
 able to confuse it in your heads, which he would be overjoyed 
 to do." 
 
 (" Just his way. Crafty old blackguard ! " from Brother Gimblet.) 
 " And the questioi^ is this, Are the angels learned ? " 
 (" Not they. Not a bit on it ! " from Brother Gimblet, with the 
 greatest confidence.) 
 
 "Not they. And where's the proof? sent ready-made by the hand 
 of the Lord. Why, there's one among us here now, that has got all 
 the learning that can bo crammed into him. 1 got him all the learn- 
 ing that could be crammed into him. IJis grandfather " (this I had 
 never heard before) " was a brother of ours. He was Brother Park- 
 sop. That's what he was. Parksop ; Brother Parksop. His worldly 
 name was Parksop, and he was a brother of this brotherhood. Then 
 wasn't he Brother Parksop ? " 
 
 (" Must be. Couldn't help hisself ! " from Brother Gimblet.) 
 " Well, he left that one now here present among us to the care of a 
 brother-sinner of his (and that brother-sinner, mind you, was a sinner 
 of a bigger size in his time than' any of you ; praise the Lord !), 
 Brother Hawkyard. Me. 1 got him without fee or reward, without 
 a morsel of myrrh, or frankincense, nor yet amber, letting alone the 
 honeycomb, all the learning that could be crammed into him. Has it 
 brought him into our temple, in the spirit ? No. Have we had any 
 ignorant brothers and sisters that didn't know round O from crooked 
 S, come in among us meanwhile ? Many. Then the angels are not 
 learned ; then they don't so much as know their alphabet. And 
 now, ray friends and follow-sinners, having brought it to that, jjor- 
 haps some brother present perhaps you. Brother Gimblet will pray 
 a bit for us ? " 
 
 Brotlicr Gimblet undertook the sacred function, after having drawn 
 his sloevo across his mouth, and muttered, " Well ! I don't know as I 
 SCO my way to hitting any of you quite in the riglit place neither." 
 He said this with a dark smile, and then began to bellow. What we 
 were specially to bo preserved from, according to his solicitations, 
 was, despoilment of the orphan, suppression of testamentary intentions 
 on the part of a father or (say) grandfather, ajjpropriation of tho 
 orphan's house-property, feigning to give in charity to the wronged 
 one from whom wo witliheld liis duo ; and that class of sins. Ho 
 ended with tlie petition, " Give us peace ! " which, speaking for myself, 
 was very much needed after twenty minutes of his bellowing. 
 
 ven though I had not seen him when he rose from his knees,
 
 An Implied Vindication. 625 
 
 steaming witli perspiration, glance at Brother Hawkyard, and even 
 though I had not heard Brother Hawkyard's tone of congratulating 
 him on the vigour with which he had roared, I should have detected 
 a malicious application in this prayer. Unformed suspicions to a 
 similar effect had sometimes passed through my mind in my earlier 
 school-days, and had alv^^ays caused me great distress ; for they were 
 worldly in their nature, and wide, very wide, of the spirit that had 
 drawn me from Sylvia. They were sordid suspicions, without a 
 shadow of proof. They were w'orthy to have originated in the un- 
 wholesome cellar. They were not only without proof, but against 
 proof ; for was I not myself a living proof of what Brother Hawkyard 
 had done ? and without him, how should I ever have seen the sky look 
 sorrowfully down upon that wretched boy at Hoghton Towers ? 
 
 Although the dread of a relapse into a stage of savage selfishness 
 was less strong upon me as I approached manhood, and could act in 
 an increased degree for myself, yet I was always on my guard against 
 any tendency to such relapse. After getting these suspicions under 
 my feet, I had been troubled by not being able to like Brother Hawk- 
 yard's manner, or his professed religion. So it came about, that, as I 
 Avalked back that Sunday evening, I thought it would be an act of 
 reparation for any such injury my struggling thoughts had unwillingly 
 done him, if I wrote, and placed in his hands, before going to college, 
 a full acknowledgment of his goodness to me, and an ample tribute of 
 thanks. It might serve as an implied vindication of him against any 
 dark scandal from a rival brother and expounder, or from any other 
 quarter. 
 
 Accordingly, I wrote the document with much care. I may add 
 with much feeling too ; for it affected me as I went on. Having no 
 set studies to pursue, in the brief interval between leaving the 
 Foundation and going to Cambridge, I determined to walk out to his 
 place of business, and give it into his own hands. 
 
 It was a winter afternoon, when I tapped at the door of his little 
 counting-house, which was at the farther end of his long, low shop. 
 As I did so (having entered by the back yard, where casks and boxes 
 were taken in, and where there was the inscription, " Private way 
 to the counting-house "), a shopman called to me from the counter 
 that he was engaged. 
 
 " Brother Gimblet " (said the shopman, who was one of the brother- 
 hood) " is with him." 
 
 I thought this all the better for my purpose, and made bold to tap 
 again. They were talking in a low tone, and money was passing ; for 
 I heard it being counted out. 
 
 " Who is it ? " said Brother Hawkyard, sharply. 
 
 " George Silverman," I answered, holding the door open. " May I 
 come in ? " 
 
 Both brothers seemed so astounded to see me that I felt shyer than 
 usual, But they looked quite cadaverous in the early gaslight, and 
 
 2, s
 
 626 George Silverman's Explanation. 
 
 perhaps that accidental circumstance exaggerated the expression of 
 their faces. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " asked Brother Hawkyard. 
 
 " Ay ! what is the matter ? " asked Brother Gimblet. 
 
 " Nothing at all," I said, diffidently producing my document : " I 
 am only the bearer of a letter from myself." 
 
 " From yourself, George ? " cried Brother Hawkyard. 
 
 " And to you," said I. 
 
 " And to mo, George ? " 
 
 Ho turned paler, and opened it hurriedly ; but looking over it, and 
 s.'cing generally wliat it was, became less hurried, recovered his 
 colour, and said, " Praise the Lord ! " 
 
 " That's it ! " cried Brother Gimblet. " Well put ! Amen." 
 
 Brother Hawkyard then said, in a livelier strain, " You must know, 
 George, that Brother Gimblet and I are going to make our two 
 businesses one, V/e are going into partnershiji. We are settling it 
 now. Brother Gimblet is to take one clear half of the profits (0, yes ! 
 ho shall have it ; ho shall have it to the last farthing)." 
 
 " D. V. ! " said Brother Gimblet, with his right fist firmly clinched 
 on his right leg. 
 
 " There is no objection," pursued Brother Hawkyard, " to my 
 reading this aloud, George ? " 
 
 As it was what I expressly desired should bo done, after yesterday's 
 prayer, I more than readily begged him to read it aloud. He did so ; 
 and Brother Gimblet listened with a crabbed smile. 
 
 " It was in a good hour that I came liere," he said, wrinkling up 
 his eyes. " It was in a good hour, likewise, that I was moved yester- 
 day to dei)ict for the terror of evil-doers a character the direct opposite 
 of Brother Hawkyard's. But it was the Lord that done it : I felt him 
 at it while I was perspiring." 
 
 After that it was proposed by both of them that I should attend 
 the congregation once more before my final departure. What my 
 shy reserve would undergo, from being expressly preached at and 
 prayed at, I knew boforeliand. But I reflected that it would be for 
 the last time, and that it might add to the weight of my letter. It 
 Avas well known to the brothers and sisters that there was no place 
 taken for mo in tlicir paradise ; and if I sliowcd this last token of 
 (Uf(!rencc to Brotlier Hawkyard, notoriously in despite of my own 
 ninful inclinations, it might go some little Avay in aid of my stat(!ment 
 tliat he had been good to me, and that I was grateful to him. Merely 
 stipulating, therefore, that no express endeavour should be made for 
 my conversion, which would involve tlie rolling of several brothers 
 and sisters on the floor, declaring that they felt all tlieir sins in a 
 heap on their left side, weighing so many pounds avoirdupois, as I 
 knew from what I had seen of those repulsive mysteries, I promised. 
 Since th(i reading of my letter. Brother Gimblet liad been at 
 intervals wiping one eye with an end of Ins spotted bine neckerchicfj
 
 At the Chapel. 627 
 
 and grinning to himself. It was, however, a habit that brother had, 
 to grin in an ugly manner even when expounding. I call to mind a 
 delighted snarl witli which he used to detail from the platform the 
 torments reserved for the wicked (meaning all human creation except 
 the brotherhood), as being remarkably hideous. 
 
 I left the two to settle their articles of partnership, and count 
 money ; and I never saw them again but on the following Sunday. 
 Brother Hawkyard died within two or three years, leaving all he 
 possessed to Brother Gimblet, in virtue of a will dated (as I have 
 been told) that very day. 
 
 Now I was so far at rest with myself, when Sunday came, knowing 
 that I had conquered my own mistrust, and righted Brother Hawkyard 
 in the jaundiced vision of a rival, that I went, even to that coarse 
 chapel, in a less sensitive state than usual. How could I foresee that 
 the delicate, perhaps the diseased, corner of my mind, where I winced 
 and shrunk when it was touched, or was even approached, would bo 
 handled as the theme of the whole proceedings ? 
 
 On this occasion it was assigned to Brother Hawkyard to pray, and 
 to Brother Gimblet to preach. The prayer was to open the ceremonies ; 
 the discourse was to come next. Brothers Hawkyard and Gimblet were 
 both on the platform ; Brother Hawkyard on his knees at the table, 
 unmusically ready to pray ; Brother Gimblet sitting against the wall, 
 grinningly ready to preach. 
 
 " Let us offer up the sacrifice of prayer, my brothers and sisters and 
 fellow-sinners." Yes ; but it was I who was the sacrifice. It was 
 our i)oor, sinful, worldly-minded brother here present who was wrestled 
 for. The now-opening career of this our uuawakcned brother might 
 lead to his becoming a minister of what was called "the church." 
 That was what lie looked to. The church. Not the chapel. Lord. 
 The church. No rectors, no vicars, no archdeacons, no bishops, no 
 archbishops, in the chapel, but, O Lord ! many such in the church. 
 Protect our sinful brother from his love of lucre. Cleanse from our 
 unawakened brother's breast his sin of worldly-mindedness. The 
 prayer said infinitely more in words, but nothing more to any 
 intelligible effect. 
 
 Then Brother Gimblet came forward, and took (as I knew he would) 
 the text, " My kingdom is not of this world." Ah ! but whoso was, 
 my fellow-sinners ? Whose ? Why, our brother's here present was. 
 The only kingdom he had an idea of was of this world (" That's it ! " 
 from several of the congregation). What did the woman do when 
 she lost the piece of money ? Went and looked for it. What should 
 our brotlier do when ho lost his way ? (" Go and look for it," from a 
 sister.) Go and look for it, true. But must he look for it in the 
 right direction, or in the wrong ? (" In tlic right," from a brother.) 
 There spake the prophets ! He must look for it in the right direction, 
 or he couldn't find it. But ho had turned his back upon the right 
 direction, and he wouldn't find it. Now, my fellow-sinners, to show
 
 628 George Silverman's Explanation. 
 
 you the difference betwixt worldly-mindeducss and unworldly-minded- 
 ness, betwixt kingdoms not of this world and kingdoms of tbis world, 
 bero was a letter wrote by even our worldly-minded brotber unto 
 Brotber Hawkyard. Judge, from bearing of it read, wbetber Brotber 
 Ilawkyard was tbe faitbful steward tbat tbe Lord bad in bis mind 
 only t'otlier day, wben, in tbis very place, be drew you tbe picter of 
 tbe unfaitbful one ; for it was bim tbat done it, not me. Don't doubt 
 that ! 
 
 Brotber Gimblet tben groaned and bellowed bis way tbrougb my 
 composition, and subsequently through an hour. The service closed 
 with a hymn, in which the brothers unanimously roared, and the 
 sisters unanimously shrieked at me, That I by wiles of worldly gain 
 was mocked, and they on waters of sweet love were rocked ; that I 
 with mammon struggled in tbe dark, while they were floating in a 
 second ark. 
 
 I wont out from all tbis with an aching heart and a weary 6])irit : 
 not because I war. quite so weak as to consider these narrow creatures 
 iuterpreters of the Divine Majesty and Wisdom, but because I v.'as 
 weak enough to feel as though it wore my bard fortune to bo mis- 
 represented and misunderstood, wben I most tried to subdue any 
 risings of more worldliness within me, and wben I most hoped that, 
 Vy dint of trying earnestly, I bad succeeded, 
 
 SEVENTH CHAPTER. 
 
 My timidity and my obscurity occasioned mo to live a secluded life at 
 college, and to be little known. ITo relative ever came to visit me, 
 for I had no relative. No intimate friends broke in upon my studies, 
 for I naade no intimate friends. I supported myself on my scholar- 
 ship, and read much. My college time was otherwise not so very 
 different from my time at Hoghton Towers. 
 
 Knowing myself to be unfit for the noisier stir of social existence, 
 but believing myself qualilied to do my duty in a moderate, though 
 earnest way, if I could obtain some small preferment in the Church, I 
 applied my mind to the clerical profession. In due sequence I took 
 orders, was ordained, and began to look about me for employment. I 
 must observe tliat I bad taken a good degree, tbat I bad succeeded in 
 winning a good fellowship, and that my mcaiis were ample for my 
 retired way of life. By tbis time I bad read with several young men ; 
 and the occupation increased my income, while it was biglily interest- 
 ing to me. I once accidentally overheard our greatest don say, to my 
 boundless joy, " Tbat be lieard it reported of Silverman tliat hi? gift 
 of quiet cxjdanation, liis patience, bis amiable temper, and liis 
 conscientiousness made bim tbe best of coiicbcs." May my " gift of
 
 At College. 629 
 
 quiei explanation " come more seasonably and powerfully to my aid 
 in this present explanation than I think it will i 
 
 It may be in a certain degree owing to the situation of my college- 
 rooms (in a corner where the daylight was sobered), but it is in a 
 much larger degree referable to the state of my own mind, that I 
 seem to myself, on looking back to this time of my life, to have been 
 always in the peaceful shade. 1 can see others in the sunlight ; I can 
 see our boats' crews and our athletic young men on the glistening 
 water, or speckled with the moving lights of sunlit leaves ; but I 
 myself am always in the shadow looking on. Not unsympathetically, 
 God forbid ! but looking on alone, much as I looked at Sylvia 
 from the shadows of the ruined house, or looked at the red gleam 
 shining through the farmer's windows, and listened to the fall of 
 dancing feet, when all the ruin was dark that night in the quadrangle. 
 
 I now come to the reason of my quoting that laudation of myself 
 above given. Without such reason, to repeat it would have been 
 mere boastfulness. 
 
 Among those who had read with me was Mr. Fareway, second son 
 of Lady Fareway, widow of Sir Gaston Fareway, baronet. This 
 young gentleman's abilities were much above the average ; but he 
 came of a rich family, and was idle and luxurious. He presented 
 himself to me too late, and afterwards came to me too irregularly, to 
 admit of my being of much service to him. In the end, I considered 
 it my duty to dissuade him from going up for an examination which 
 he could never pass ; and he left college without a degree. After his 
 departure. Lady Fareway wrote to me, representing the justice of my 
 returning half my fee, as I had been of so little use to her son. 
 Within my knowledge a similar demand had not been made in any 
 other case ; and I most freely admit that the justice of it had not 
 occurred to me until it was pointed out. But I at once perceived it, 
 yielded to it, and returned the money. 
 
 Mr. Fareway had been gone two years or more, and I had forgotten 
 him, when he one day walked into my rooms as I was sitting at 
 my books. 
 
 Said he, after the usual salutations had passed, " Mr. Silverman, 
 my mother is in town here, at the hotel, and wishes me to present 
 you to her." 
 
 I was not comfortable with strangers, and I daresay I betrayed that 
 I was a little nervous or unwilling. " For," said he, without my 
 having spoken, " I think the interview may tend to the advancement 
 of your prospects." 
 
 It put me to the blush to think that I should be tempted by a 
 worldly reason, and I rose immediately. 
 
 Said Mr. Fareway, as we went along, " Are you a good hand at 
 business ? " 
 
 " I think not," said I. 
 
 Said Mr. Fareway then, " My mother is,"
 
 630 George Silverman's Explanation. 
 
 " Truly 'i " said I. 
 
 "Yes; my mother is what is usually called a managing woman. 
 Doesn't make a bad tiling, for instance, oven out of the spendthrift 
 habits of my eldest brother abroad. In short, a managing woman. 
 TJiis is in confidence." 
 
 He had never spoken to mo in confidence, and I was surprised by 
 his doing so. I said I should respect his confidence, of course, and 
 said no more on the delicate subject. We had but a little way to 
 walk, and I was soon in liis mother's company. He presented mc, 
 shook hands with me, and left us two (as he said) to business. 
 
 I saw in my Lady Fare way a handsome, well-preserved lady of 
 somewhat large stature, with a steady glare in her great round dark 
 eyes that embarrassed me. 
 
 Said my lady, " I have heard from my son, Mr. Silverman, that you 
 would bo glad of some preferment in the church." 
 
 I gave my lady to understand that was so. 
 
 " I don't know whether you ai'o aware/' my lady proceeded, " that 
 we have a presentation to a living ? I say ?cc have ; but, in point of 
 fact, I have." 
 
 I gave my lady to understand that I had not been aware of this. 
 
 Said my lady, " So it is : indeed I have two presentations, one to 
 two hundred a year, one to six. Both livings are in our coxmty, 
 North Devonshire, as you probably know. The first is vacant. 
 Would you like it ? " 
 
 What with my lady's eyes, and what with the suddenness of this 
 proposed gift, I was much confused. 
 
 " I am sorry it is not the larger presentation," said my lady, rather 
 coldly ; " though I will not, Mr. Silverman, pay you the bad compli- 
 ment of supposing that you are, because that would bo mercenary, 
 and mercenary I am persuaded you arc not." 
 
 Said I, with my utmost earnestness, " Thank you. Lady Faraway, 
 thank you, thank you ! I should be deeply hurt if I thought I boro 
 the character." 
 
 " Naturally," said my lady. " Always detestable, but particularly in 
 n clergyman. You have not said whether you will like the living ? " 
 
 With apologies for my remissness or indistinctness, I assured my 
 lady that I acccj)ted it most readily and gratefully. I added that I 
 hoped she would not estimate my ajiprcciation of the generosity of her 
 clioice by my flow of words ; for I Avas not a ready man in that 
 respect wlien taken by surprise or touched at heart. 
 
 " The affiiir is concluded," said my lady ; " concluded. Yon will 
 find the duties very light, Mr. Silverman. Charming house ; cliarin- 
 ing little garden, orcluird, and all tliat. You v/ill be able to take 
 pupils. By the bye ! No : I will return to the word afterwards. 
 What was I going to mention, when it put mc out ? " 
 
 My lady Ptar('(l at mo, as if I knew. And T didn't know. And 
 that i)ei'plcxed mo afres]!.
 
 Adelina. 63 1 
 
 Said my lady, after some consideration, " 0, of course, Low very 
 dull of me ! The last incumbent, least mercenary man I ever saw, 
 in consideration of tlie duties being so light and the house so 
 delicious, couldn't rest, he said, unless I permitted him to help me 
 with my correspondence, accounts, and various little things of that 
 kind ; nothing in themselves, but which it worries a lady to cope with. 
 Would Mr. Silverman also like to ? Or shall I ? " 
 
 I hastened to say that my poor help would be always at her lady- 
 ship's service. 
 
 " I am absolutely blessed," said my lady, casting up her eyes (and 
 so taking them off of mo for one moment), "in having to do with 
 gentlemen who cannot endure an approach to the idea of being 
 mercenary ! " She shivered at the word. " And now as to the 
 pupil." 
 
 " The ? " I was quite at a loss. 
 
 " Mr. Silverman, you have no idea what she is. She is," said my 
 lady, laying her touch upon my coat-sleeve, " I do verily believe, the 
 most extraordinary girl in this world. Already knows more Greek 
 and Latin than Lady Jane Grey. And taught herself! Has not yet, 
 remember, derived a moment's advantage from Mr. Silverman's 
 classical acquirements. To say nothing of mathematics, which she is 
 bent upon becoming versed in, and in which (as I hear from my sou 
 and others) Mr. Silverman's reputation is so deservedly high ! " 
 
 Under my lady's eyes I must have lost the clue, I felt persuaded ; 
 and yet I did not know where I could have droj^ped it, 
 
 " Adelina," said my lady, " is my only daughter. If I did not feel 
 quite convinced that I am not blinded by a mother's partiality ; unless 
 1 was absolutely sure that when you know her, Mr. Silverman, you 
 will esteem it a high and unusual privilege to direct her studies, I 
 should introduce a mercenary element into this conversation, and ask 
 you on what terms " 
 
 I entreated my lady to go no further. My lady saw that I was 
 troubled, and did me the honour to comply with my request. 
 
 EIGHTH CHAPTER. 
 
 EvEnTTHiNG in mental acquisition that her brother might have been, 
 it' he would, and everything in all gracious charms and admirable 
 qualities that no one but herself could be, this was Adelina. 
 
 I will not expatiate upon her beauty ; I will not expatiate uj)on her 
 intelligence, her quickness of perception, her powers of memory, her 
 sweet consideration, from the first moment, for the slow-paced tutor 
 who ministered to her wonderful gifts. I was thirty then ; I am 
 over sixty now : she is ever present to me in these hours as she
 
 6^2 George Silvennan's Explanation. 
 
 was in those, bright and beantifnl and young, wise and fanciful and 
 good. 
 
 When I discovered that I loved her, how can I say ? In the first 
 day ? in the first week ? in the first month ? Impossible to trace. 
 If I be (as I am) unable to represent to myself any previous period 
 of my life as quite separable from her attracting power, how can I 
 answer for this one detail ? 
 
 Whensoever I made the discovery, it laid a heavy burden on me. 
 And yet, comparing it with the far heavier burden that I afterwards 
 took up, it does not seem to me now to have been very hard to bear. In 
 the knowledge that I did love her, and that I should love her while 
 my life lasted, and that I was ever to hide my secret deep in my own 
 breast, and she was never to find it, tlierc was a kind of sustaining joy 
 or pride, or comfort, mingled with my pain. 
 
 But later on, say, a year later on, when I made another dis- 
 covery, then indeed my sutferiug and my struggle were strong. That 
 other discovery was 
 
 These words will never see the light, if ever, until my heart is 
 dust ; until her bright spirit has returned to the regions of which, 
 when imprisoned here, it surely retained some unusual glimpse of 
 remembrance ; until all the pulses that ever beat around us shall 
 have long been quiet ; until all the fruits of all the tiny victories and 
 defeats achieved in our little breasts shall have withered away. That 
 discovery was that she loved me. 
 
 She may have enhanced my knowledge, and loved me for that ; she 
 may have over-valued my discharge of duty to her, and loved me for 
 that ; she may have refined upon a playful compassion which she 
 Avould sometimes show for what she called my want of wisdom, 
 according to the light of the world's dark lanterns, and loved me for 
 that ; she may she must have confused the borrowed light of what 
 I had only learned, with its brightness in its pure, original rays ; biit 
 she loved me at that time, and she made me know it. 
 
 Pride of family and pride of wealth put me as fur off from her in 
 my lady's eyes as if I had been some domesticated creature of another 
 'kind. But they could not put me farther from her than I put myself 
 when I set my merits against hers. More than tliat. They could 
 not put me, by millions of fathoms, half so low beneath her as I put 
 myself when in imagination I took advantage of licr noble trustfulness, 
 took the fortuiie that I knew she must possess in her own right, and 
 left her to find herself, in the zenitli of her beauty and genius, bound 
 to poor rusty, plodding me. 
 
 No ! Worldliness should not enter liere at any cost. If I liad 
 tried to keep it out of otlicr ground, how mucli harder was I bound to 
 try to keep it out from this sacred place ! 
 
 But tlierc was something daring in her broad, generous character, 
 that demanded at so delicate a crisis to bo delicately and patiently 
 addressed. After many and many a bitter niglit (0, I found I could
 
 A Scheme originated. 633 
 
 cry for reasons not purely physical, at this pass of my life !) I took 
 my course. 
 
 My lady had, in our first interview, unconsciously over-stated the 
 accommodation of my pretty house. There was room in it for only 
 one pupil. He was a young gentleman near coming of age, very well 
 connected, but what is called a poor relation. His parents were dead. 
 The charges of his living and reading with me were defrayed by an 
 uncle ; and he and I were to do our utmost together for three years 
 towards qualifying him to make his way. At this time he had entered 
 into his second year with me. He was well-looking, clever, energetic, 
 enthusiastic, bold ; in the best sense of the term, a thorough young 
 Anglo-Saxon. 
 
 I resolved to bring these two together. 
 
 NINTH CHAPTER. 
 
 Said I, one night, when I had conquered myself, " Mr. Granville," 
 Mr. Granville Wharton his name was, " I doubt if you have ever yet 
 so much as seen Miss Fareway." 
 
 " Well, sir," returned he, laughing, " you see her so much yourself, 
 that you hardly leave another fellow a chance of seeing her." 
 
 " I am her tutor, you know," said I. 
 
 And there the subject dropped for that time. But I so contrived 
 as that they should come together shortly afterwards. I had pre- 
 viously so contrived as to keej) them asunder ; for while I loved her, 
 I mean before I had determined on my sacrifice, a lurking jealousy 
 of Mr. Granville lay within my unworthy breast. 
 
 It was quite an ordinary interview in the Fareway Park ; but they 
 talked easily together for some time : like takes to like, and they had 
 many points of resemblance. Said Mr. Granville to me, when he and 
 I sat at our supper that night, " Miss Fareway is remarkably beauti- 
 ful, sir, remarkably engaging. Don't you think so ? " "I think so," 
 said I. And I stole a glance at him, and saw that he had reddened 
 and was thoughtful. I remember it most vividly, because the mixed 
 feeling of grave pleasure and acute jiain that the slight circumstance 
 caused me was the first of a long, long series of such mixed impressions 
 imder which my hair turned slowly gray. 
 
 I had not much need to feign to be subdued ; but I counterfeited to 
 be older than I was in all respects (Heaven knows ! my heart being 
 all too young the while), and feigned to be more of a recluse and 
 bookworm than I had really become, and gradually set up more and 
 more of a fatherly manner towards Adelina. Likewise I made my 
 tuition less imaginative than before ; separated myself from my poets 
 and philosophers ; was careful to present them in their own light, ar. j
 
 634 George Silverman's Explanation. 
 
 mo, their lowly servant, in my own shade. Moreover, in the matter 
 of apparel I was equally mindful ; not that I had ever boon daj)pcr 
 that way ; but that I was slovenly now. 
 
 As I doi>ressed myself with one hand, so did I labour to raise 
 Mr. Granville with the other ; directing liis attention to such subjects 
 as I too well knew most interested her, and fashioning him (do not 
 deride or misconstrue the expression, unlcnown reader of this writing ; 
 for I have suffered !) into a greater resemblance to myself in my 
 solitary one strong aspect. And gradually, gradually, as I saw him 
 take more and more to these thrown-out lures of mine, then did I 
 come to know better and better that love was drawing him on, and 
 was drawing her from me. 
 
 So passed more than another year ; every day a year in its number 
 of my mixed impressions of grave pleasure and acute pain ; and then 
 these two, being of ago and free to act legally for themselves, came 
 before me hand in hand (my hair being now quite white), and entreated 
 me that I would unite them together. " And indeed, dear tutor," said 
 Adeliua, " it is but consistent in yon that you should do this thing for 
 US, seeing that we should never have spoken together that first t!uio 
 but for you, and that but for you we conM never have met so often 
 afterwards." The whole of which was literally true ; for I had availed 
 myself of my many business attendances on, and conferences with, my 
 lady, to take Mr. Granville to the house, and leave him in the outer 
 room with Adelina. 
 
 I knew that my lady would object to such a marriage for her 
 dauglitcr, or to any marriage that was other than an exchange of her 
 for stipulated lands, goods, and moneys. But looking on the two, 
 and seeing with full eyes that they were both young and beautiful ; 
 and knowing tliat they were alike in the tastes and acquirements that 
 will outlive youth and beauty ; and considering that Adelina had a 
 fortune now, in her own keeping ; and considering further that Mr. 
 Granville, though for tho present poor, was of a good family tliat liad 
 never lived in a cellar in Preston ; and believing tliat their love would 
 endure, neither liaving any great discrepancy to find out in the other, 
 I told them of my readiness to do this tiling which Adelina asked 
 of her dear tutor, and to send them forth, luisbaTid and wife, into the 
 shining world with golden gates that awaited them. 
 
 It was on a smnmcr morning that I rose before the sun to compose 
 myself for the crowning of my work with this end ; and my dwelling 
 being near to the sea, I walked down to the rocks on the shore, in 
 order that I might behold the sun in his majesty. 
 
 The tranquillity upon the deep, and on the finnainont, the orderly 
 withdrawal of the stars, the calm promise of coming day, the rosy 
 sull'usion of the sky and waters, tlio ineffable splendour that then 
 ])urst forth, attuned my mind afresh after the discords of the night. 
 IMcthougut that all I looked on said to me, and that all I lieard in tho 
 so:i and in the uir said to mo, " ]1(^ comforted, mortal, that t!iv life is
 
 Interview with Lady Fareiuay. 635 
 
 so short. Our preparation for wliat is to follow has endured, and 
 shall endure, for unimaginable ages." 
 
 I married them. I knew that my hand was cold when I placed it 
 on their hands clasped together ; but the words with which I had to 
 accompany the action I could say without faltering, and I was at 
 peace. 
 
 They being well away from my house and from the place after our 
 simple breakfast, the time was come when I must do what I had 
 pledged myself to them that I would do, break the iutelligencc to 
 my lady. 
 
 I went up to the house, and found my lady in her ordinary business- 
 room. She happened to have an unusual amount of commissions to 
 intrust to me that day ; and she had filled my hands with papers before 
 I could originate a word. 
 
 " My lady," I then began, as I stood beside her table. 
 
 " Why, what's the matter ? " she said quickly, looking up. 
 
 "Not much, I would fain hope, after you shall have jn'opared 
 yourself, and considered a little." 
 
 " Prepared myself ; and considered a little! You appear to have 
 prepared ?/o?frself but indifferently, anyhov/, Mr. Silverman." Tliis 
 mighty scornfully, as I experienced my usual embarrassment under 
 her stare. 
 
 Said I, in self-extenuation once for all, " Lady Fareway, I have but 
 to say for myself that I have tried to do my duty." 
 
 "For yourself?" repeated my lady. "Then there are others cou- 
 cerned, I see. Who are they ? " 
 
 I was about to answer, when she made towards the bell with a dart 
 that stopped me, and said, " Why, where is Adclina ? " 
 
 " Forbear ! be calm, my lady. I married her this morning to Mr. 
 Granville Wharton." 
 
 She set her lij^s, looked more intently at me than ever, raised her 
 right hand, and smote me hard upon the cheek. 
 
 " Give me back those papers ! give me back those papers ! " She 
 tore them out of my hands, and tossed them on her table. Then 
 seating herself defiantly in her great chair, and folding her arms, she 
 stabbed mo to the heart with the unlooked-for reproach, " You worldly 
 wretch ! " 
 
 " Worldly ? " I cried. " Worldly ? " 
 
 " This, if you please," she went on with supreme scorn, pointing 
 me out as if there were some one there to see, " this, if you please;, 
 is the disinterested scholar, with not a design beyond his books ! 
 This, if you please, is the simple creature whom any one could over- 
 reach in a bargain ! This, if you please, is Mr. Silverman ! Not of 
 this world ; not he ! He has too much simplicity for this world's 
 cunning. He has too much singleness of 2)urpose to be a match for 
 this world's double-dealing. What did he give you for it ? " 
 
 " For wljat ? And who ? "
 
 6}6 George Silverman's Explanation. 
 
 " How much," bIio asked, bending forward in her great chair, and 
 insultingly tapping the fingers of her right hand on the palm of her 
 loft, "how much does Mr. Granville Wharton pay you for getting 
 him Adelina's money ? What is the amount of your percentage upon 
 Adolina's fortune ? What were the terms of the agreement that you 
 proposed to this boy when you, the Rev. George Silverman, licensed 
 to marry, engaged to put him in possession of this girl ? You mado 
 good terras for yourself, whatever they were. He would stand a poor 
 chance against your keenness." 
 
 Bewildered, horrified, stunned by this cruel perversion, I could not 
 speak. But I trust that I looked innocent, being so. 
 
 "Listen to me, shrewd hypocrite," said my lady, whose anger 
 increased as she gave it utterance ; " attend to my words, you cunning 
 schemer, who have carried this plot through with such a practised 
 double face that I have never suspected you. I had my projects for 
 my daughter ; projects for family connection ; projects for fortune. 
 You have thwarted them, and overreached me ; but I am not one to 
 be thwarted and overreached without retaliation. Do you mean to 
 hold this living another month ? " 
 
 " Do you deem it possible, Lady Fareway, that I can hold it another 
 hour, under your injurious words ? " 
 
 " Is it resigned, then ? " 
 
 " It was mentally resigned, my lady, some minutes ago." 
 
 " Don't equivocate, sir. Is it resigned ? " 
 
 " Unconditionally and entirely ; and I would that I had never, 
 never come near it ! " 
 
 " A cordial response from me to that wish, Mr. Silverman ! But 
 take this with you, sir. If you had not resigned it, I would have had 
 you deprived of it. And though you have resigned it, you will not 
 get quit of mo as easily as you think for. I will pursue you with 
 this story. I will make this nefarious conspiracy of yours, for money, 
 known. You have mado money by it, but you have at the same time 
 mado an enemy by it. Yon will take good care that the money 
 sticks to you ; I will take good care that the enemy sticks to you." 
 
 Then said I finally, " Lady Fareway, I think my heart is broken. 
 Until I came into this room just now, the possibility of such mean 
 wickedness as you have imputed to me never dawned upon my 
 thoughts. Your suspicions " 
 
 " Suspicions ! Pah ! " said she indignantly. " Certainties." 
 
 "Your certainties, my lady, as you call them, your suspicions as I 
 call them, are cruel, unjust, wholly devoid of foundation in fact. I 
 can declare no more ; except that I liave not acted for my own profit 
 or my own pleasure. I have not in this proceeding considered myself. 
 Once again, I think my heart is broken. If I have unwittingly done 
 any wrong with a righteous motive, that is some penalty to pay." 
 
 She received this with another and more indignant " Pali ! " and I 
 made my way out of her room (I think I felt my way out with my
 
 Result of the Scheme. 6^,7 
 
 hands, although my eyes were open), almost suspecting that my voice 
 had a repulsive sound, and that I was a repulsive object. 
 
 There was a great stir made, the bishop was appealed to, I received 
 a severe reprimand, and narrowly escaped suspension. For years a 
 cloud hung over me, and my name was tarnished. But my heart did 
 not break, if a broken heart involves death ; for T lived through it. 
 
 They stood by me, Adelina and her husband, through it all. Those 
 who had known me at college, and even most of those who had only 
 known me there by reputation, stood by me too. Little by little, the 
 belief widened that I was not capable of what was laid to my charge. 
 At length I was presented to a college-living in a sequestered place, 
 and there I now pen my explanation. I pen it at my open window in 
 the summer-time, before me lying the churchyard, equal resting- 
 place for sound hearts, wounded hearts, and broken hearts. I pen it 
 for the relief of my own mind, not foreseeing whether or no it will 
 ever have a reader. 
 
 'IKE END. 
 
 PRINTED BV WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND liECCLES.
 
 I I 
 
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