CHAPTER XV.

CHAPTER XV.That night the man of violence enjoyed the first sweet dreamless sleep that had spread its velvet shield between him and his guilt and sorrow. Pearl, who had sat up late with Bob, comforting and crying with him, listened at her fatherʼs door, and heard his quiet breathing. Through many months of trouble, now, she had watched him kindly, tenderly, fearing ever some wild outbreak upon others or himself, hiding in her empty heart all its desolation.The very next day, Bull Garnet resolved to have it out with his son; not to surprise him by emotion to a hasty issue, but now to learn what he thought and felt, after taking his time about it. All this we need not try to tell, only so much as bears upon the staple of the story.“Father, I know that you had—you had good reason for doing it.”“There could be no good reason. There mightbe, and were, many bad ones. Of this I will not speak to you. I did it in violence and fury, and under a false impression. When I saw him, with his arm cast round my pure and darling Pearl, Satanʼs rage is but a smile compared to the fury of my heart. He had his gun, and I had mine; I had taken it to shoot a squirrel which meddled with our firework nonsense. I tore her from him before I could speak, thrust her aside, stepped back two paces, gave him ‘one, two, three,’ and fired. He had time to fire in self–defence, and his muzzle was at my head, and his finger on the trigger; but there it crooked, and he could not pull. Want of nerve, I suppose. I saw his finger shaking, and then I saw him fall. Now, my son, you know everything.”“Why, father, after all then, it was nothing worse than a duel. He had just the same chance of killing you, and would have done it, only you were too quick for him.”“Even to retain your love, I will have no lie in the matter, Bob, although a duel, in my opinion, is only murder made game of. But this was no duel, no manslaughter even, but an act of downright murder. No English jury could help convicting me, and I will never plead insanity. It was the inevitable result of inborn violence and self–will, growing and growing from year to year, and strengthened by wrongs of which you know nothing. God knows that I have fought against it; but my weapon was pride, not humility. Nowlet this miserable subject never be recurred to by us, at least in words, till the end comes. As soon as I hear that poor innocent Cradock is apprehended, and brought to England, I shall surrender myself and confess. But for your sake and poor Pearlyʼs, I should have done so at the very outset. Now it is very likely that I may not have the option. Two persons know that I did it, although they have no evidence, so far as I am aware; a third person more than suspects it, and is seeking about for the evidence. Moreover, Sir Cradock Nowell, to whom, as I told you, I owned my deed, although he could not then understand me, may have done so since, or may hereafter do so, at any lucid interval.”“Oh, father, father, he never would be so mean——”“He is bound by his duty to do it—and for his living sonʼs sake he must. I only tell you these things, my son, to spare you a part of the shock. One month now is all I crave, to do my best for you two darlings. I will not ruin the chance by going again to Sir Cradock. God saved me from my own rash words, doubtless for your pure sake. Now, knowing all, and reflecting upon it, can you call me still your father, Bob?”This was one of the times that tell whether a father has through life thought more of himself or of his children. If of himself, they fall away, like Southern ivies in a storm, parasites which cannot cling, but glide on the marble surface. But if hehas made his future of them, closer they cling, and clasp more firmly, like our British ivy engrailed into the house wall.So the Garnet family clung together, although no longer blossoming, but flagging sorely with blight and canker, and daily fear of the woodman. Bob, of course, avoided Eoa, to her great indignation, though he could not quite make up his mind to tell her that all was over, without showing reason for it. In the forcing temperature of trouble, he was suddenly become a man, growing daily more like his father, in all except the violence. He roamed no more through the wilds of the forest, but let the birds nest comfortably, the butterflies hover in happiness, and the wireworm cast his shard unchallenged. He would care for all those things again, if he ever recovered his comfort.Now Eoa, as everybody knew, did not by any means embody the spirit of toleration. She would hardly allow any will but her own in anything that concerned her. In a word, she was a child, a very warm–hearted and lovely one, but therefore all the more requiring a strong will founded on common sense to lead her into the life–brunt. And so, if she must have Bob some day, she had better have him consolidated, though reduced to three per cent.Not discerning her own interests, she would have been wild as a hare ought to be at the vernal equinox, but for one little fact. There was nobody tobe jealous of. Darling Amy, whom she loved as all young ladies love one another—until they see cause to the contrary—sweet thing, she was gone to Oxford with her dear, good father. They had slipped off without any fuss at all (except from Biddy OʼGaghan, who came and threw an old shoe at them), because Mr. Rosedew, in the first place, felt that he could not bear it, and thought, in the second place, that it would be an uncourteous act towards Sir Cradock Nowell to allow any demonstration. And yet it was notorious that even Job Hogstaff had arranged to totter down on Mark Stoteʼs arm, followed by a dozen tenants (all of whom had leases), and the rank and file of Nowelhurst, who had paid their house–rent; and then there would be a marshalling outside the parsonage–gate; and upon the appearance of the fly, Job with his crutch would testify, whereupon a shout would arise pronouncing everlasting divorce between Church and State in Nowelhurst, undying gratitude to the former, and defiance to the latter power.Yet all this programme was nullified by the departure of John and his household gods at five oʼclock one May morning. Already he had received assurance from some of his ancient co–mates at Oriel (most cohesive of colleges) that they would gladly welcome him, and find him plenty of work to do. In less than six weeks’ time, of course, the long vacation would begin. What of that? Let him come at once, and with his widespreadreputation he must have the pick of all the men who would stay up to read for honours. For now the fruit of a lifetime lore was ripening over his honoured head, not (like that of Tantalus) wafted into the cloud–land, not even waiting to be plucked at, but falling unawares into his broad and simple bosom, where it might lie uncared for, except for the sake of Amy. So large a mind had long outlived the little itch for fame, quite untruly called “the last infirmity of noble minds.” Their first it is, beyond all doubt; and wisely nature orders it. Their last is far more apt to be—at least in this generation—contempt of fame, and man, and God, except for practical purposes.Mr. Rosedewʼs careful treatises upon the Sabellian and Sabello–Oscan elements had stirred up pleasant controversy in the narrow world of scholars; and now at the trito–megistic blow of the Roseo–rorine hammer, ringing upon no less a theme than the tables of Iguvium, the wise men who sit round the board of classical education, even Jupiter Grabovius (the original of John Bull), had clapped their hands and cried, “Hear, hear! He knows what he is talking of; and he is one of us.”That, after all, is the essence of it—to know what one is talking of. And the grand advantage of the ancient universities is, not the tone of manners, not the knowledge of life—rather a hat–box thing with them—not even the high ideal, the manliness, and the chivalry, which the better classof men win; but the curt knowledge, whether or not they are talking of what they know.Scire quod nesciasis taught, if they teach us nothing else. And though we are all still apt to talk, especially among ladies, of things beyond our acquaintance—else haply we talk but little—we do so with a qualm, and quasi, and fluttering sense that effrontery is not—but leads to—”pluck.”Nevertheless, who am I to talk, proving myself, by every word, false to Alma Mater, having ventured all along to talk of things beyond me?As they rose the hill towards Carfax, Amy (tired as she was) trembled with excitement. Her father had won a cure in St. Oles—derived no doubt fromoleo—and all were to lodge in Pembroke Lane, pending mature arrangements. Though they might have turned off near the jail, and saved a little cab fare, John would go by the broader way, as his fashion always was; except in a little posthumous matter, wherein perhaps we have over–defined with brimstone the direction–posts.Be that as it may,—not to press thescire quod nescias(potential in such a case, I hope, rather than conjunctive)—there they must be left, all three, with Jenny and Jemima outside, and Jem Pottles on the pavement, amazed at the cheek of everything. Only let one thing be said. Though prettier girl than Amy Rosedew had never stepped on the stones of Oxford since the time of Amy Robsart, if even then,—never once, was she insulted.Lowest of all low calumnies. There are blackguards among university men, as everybody knows, and as there must be among all men. But even those blackguards can see the difference between a lady, or rather between a pure girl and—another. And even those blackguards have an intensified reverence for the one;—but let the matter pass; for now we hide in gold these subjects, and sham not to see their flaunting.Be it, however, confessed that Amy (whose father soon had rooms in college, not to live, but to lecture in), being a very shy young maiden, never could be brought to come and call him to his tea,—oh no. So many young men in gorgeous trappings, charms, and dangles, and hooks of gold, and eye–glasses very knowing—not to mention volunteer stuff, and knickerbockers demonstrant of calf—oddly enough theywouldhappen to feel so interested in the architecture of the porterʼs lodge whenever Amy came by, never gazing too warmly at her, but contriving to convey their regret at the suppression of their sentiments, and their yearning to be the stones she trod on, and their despair at the possibility of her not caring if they were so—really all this was so trying, that Amy would never go into college without Aunt Doxy before her, gazing four–gunned cupolas even at scouts and manciples. And this was very provoking of her, not only to the hearts that beat under waistcoats ordered for her sake, but also to the domestic kettle a–boil in Pembroke Lane.For, over and over again, Uncle John, great as he was in chronology and every kind of “marmora,” and able to detect a flaw upon Potamogeitonʼs tombstone, lost all sense of time and place,meandte, andhocceand Doxy, and calmly went home some two hours late, and complacently received Doxology.But alas, we must abandon Amy to the insidious designs of Hebdomadal Board, the velvet approaches of Proctor and Pro, and the brass of the gentlemen Bedels, while we regard more rugged scenes, from which she was happily absent.Rufus Hutton had found the missing link, and at the same time the strongest staple, of the desired evidence. The battered gun–barrels had been identified, and even the number deciphered, by the foreman of Messrs. L—— and Co. And the entry in their books of the sale of that very gun (number, gauge, and other particulars beyond all doubt corresponding) was—”to Bull Garnet, &c., Nowelhurst Dell Cottage,” whom also they could identify from his “strongly–marked physiognomy,” and his quick, decisive manner. And the cartridge–case, which had lain so long in Dr. Huttonʼs pocket, of course they could not depose to its sale, together with the gun; but this they could show, that it fitted the gauge, was not at all of a common gauge, but two sizes larger—No. 10, in fact—and must have been sold during the month in which they sold the gun, because it was one of a sample which they had taken uponapproval, and soon discarded for a case of better manufacture.Then as to motive, Rufus Hutton himself could depose to that, or the probability of it, from what he had seen, but not understood, at the fixing of the fireworks; neither had he forgotten the furious mood of Bull Garnet, both then and in his garden.While he was doubting how to act—for, clearly as he knew his power to hang the man who had outraged him, the very fact of his injury made him loth to use that power; for he was not at all a vindictive man, now the heat of the thing was past, and he saw that the sudden attack had been made in self–defence—while he was hesitating between his sense of duty and pity for Cradock on one hand, and his ideas of magnanimity and horror of hanging a man on the other, he was thrown, without any choice or chance, across the track of Simon Chope.Perhaps there is no more vulgar error, no stronger proof of ignorance and slavery to catchwords, than to abuse or think ill of any particular class of men, solely on account of their profession—although, perhaps, we might justly throw theonus probanditheir merit upon hangmen, body–snatchers, informers, and a few others—yet may I think (deprecating most humbly the omen of this conjunction) that solicitors, tailors, and Methodist parsons fight at some disadvantage both in fact and in fiction? Yet can they hold theirown; and sympathy, if owing, is sure to have to pay them—notwithstanding, goose, and amen.Away with all feeble flippancy! Heavy tidings came to Nowelhurst Hall, Dell Cottage, and Geopharmacy Lodge, simultaneously, as might be, on the 20th of June. TheTaprobanehad been lost, with every soul on board; and this is the record of it, enshrined in many journals:—“By recent advices from Capetown, per the screw–steamerSutler, we sincerely regret to learn that the magnificent clipper–built shipTaprobane, of 2200 tons (new system), A 1 at Lloydʼs for 15 years, and bound from the Thames to Colombo, with a cargo valued by competent judges at 120,000l., took the shore in Benguela Bay during a typhoon of unprecedented destructiveness. It is our melancholy duty to add that the entirety of the valuable cargo was entirely lost, although very amply assured in unexceptionable quarters, and that every soul on board was consigned to a watery grave. A Portuguese gentleman of good family and large fortune, who happened to be in the neighbourhood, was an eye–witness to the catastrophe, and made superhuman exertions to rescue the unfortunate mariners, but, alas! in vain. Senhor José de Calcavello has arrived at the conclusion that some of her copper may be saved. The ill–fated bark broke up so rapidly, from the powerful action of the billows, that her identity could only be established from a portion of hersternpost, which was discovered half buried in sand three nautical miles to the southward. We have been informed, upon good authority, although we are not at liberty to mention our source of information, that Her Britannic Majestyʼs steamcorvetteMumbo Jumbo, pierced for twenty–eight guns, and carrying two, is under orders to depart, as soon as ever she can be coaled, for the scene of the recent catastrophe. Meanwhile, the tugGrowlerhas arrived with all the memorials of the calamity, after affording the rites of sepulture to the poor shipwrecked mariners cast up by the treacherous billows. The set of the current being so adverse, we have reason to fear that the rest of the bodies must have fallen a prey to the monsters of the deep. There are said to be some hopes of recovering a portion of the specie.”Mrs. Corklemore happened to be calling at Geopharmacy Lodge, when the London papers arrived in the early afternoon. Rufus begged pardon, and broke the cover, to see something in which he was interested. Presently he cried, “Good God!” and let the paper fall; and, seasoned as he was, and shallowed by the shifting of his life, it was not in his power to keep two little tears from twinkling.“Too late all my work,” he said; “Heaven has settled it without me.”“How very sad!” cried Mrs. Corklemore, dashing aside an unbidden tear, when she cameto the end of the story; “to think of all those brave men lost! And perhaps you knew some of them, Dr. Hutton? Oh, I am so sorry!”“Why, surely you know that theTaprobanewas the ship in which poor Cradock Nowell sailed, under Mr. Rosedewʼs auspices.”“Oh, I hope not. Please not to say so. It would be so very horrible! That he should go without repenting——”“You must have forgotten, Mrs. Corklemore; for I heard Rosa tell you the name of the ship, and her destination.”“Oh, very likely. Ah, now I remember. For the moment it quite escaped me. How truly, truly grieved—it has quite overcome me. Oh, please not to notice me—please not. I am so stupidly soft–hearted. Oh—ea, isha, ea!”No woman in the world could cry more beautifully than poor Georgie. And now she cried her very best. It would have gone to the heart of the driest and bitterest sceptic that ever doubted all men and women because they would doubt him. But Rufus, whose form of self–assertion was not universal negation, in what manner then do you suppose that Rufus Hutton was liquefied? A simple sort of fellow he was (notwithstanding all his shrewdness), although, or perhaps I should say because, he thought himself so knowing; and his observation was more the result of experience than the cause of it. So away he ran to fetch Rosa, andRosa wiped dear, sensitive Georgieʼs eyes, and coaxed her very pleasantly, and admired her more than ever.Bull Garnet rode home at twelve oʼclock from a long morningʼs work. He never could eat any breakfast now, and his manner was to leave home at six (except when he went to Winchester), gallop fiercely from work to work, or sometimes walk his horse and think, often with glistening eyes (when any little thing touched him), and return to his cottage and rest there during the workmenʼs dinner–time. Then he had some sort of a meal himself, which Pearl began to call “dinner,” and away with a fresh horse in half an hour, spending his body if only so he might earn rest of mind. All this was telling upon him fearfully; even his muscular force was going, and his quickness of eye and hand failing him. He knew it, and was glad.Only none should ever say, though every crime was heaped upon him, that he had neglected his masterʼs interests.He tore the paper open in his sudden turbulent fashion, as if all paper was rags, and no more; and with one glance at each column knew all that was in the ‘tween–ways. Suddenly he came to a place at the corner of a page which made him cease from eating. He glanced at Pearl, but she was busy, peeling new potatoes for him. Bob was not come in yet.“Darling, I must go to London. If possible I shall return to–night, if I catch the one oʼclock up express.”Then he opened the window, and ordered a horse, his loud voice ringing and echoing round every corner of the cottage, and in five minutes he was off at full gallop, for the express would not stop at Brockenhurst.At 3.15 he was in London, and at 3.40 in the counting–house of Messrs. Brown and Smithson, owners, or at any rate charterers, of theTaprobane, Striped–ball Chambers, Fenchurch Street. There he would learn, if he could, what their private advices were.The clerks received him very politely, and told him that they had little doubt of the truth of the evil tidings. Of course the fatality might have been considerably exaggerated, &c. &c., but as to the loss of the ship, they had taken measures to replace her. Would he mind waiting only ten minutes, though they saw that he was in a hurry? The Cape mail–ship had been telegraphed from Falmouth; they had sent to the office already, and expected to get the reply within a quarter of an hour. Every information in their power, &c.—we all know the form, though we donʼt always get the civility.Bull Garnet waited heavily with his great back against a stout brass rail, having declined the chair they offered him; and in less than five minutes he received authentic detail of everything. He listenedto nothing except one statement, “every soul on board was lost, sir.”Then he went out, in a lumpish manner, from the noble room, and was glad to get hold of the iron rail in the bend of the dark stone staircase.So now he was a double murderer. Finding it not enough to have killed one brother in his fury, he had slain the other twin through his cowardly concealment. Floating about in tropical slime, without a shark to eat him, leaving behind him the fair repute of a money–grabbing fratricide. And he, the man who had done it all, who had loved the boy and ruined him, miserably plotting for his own far inferior children. No, no! Not that at any rate,—good and noble children: and how they had borne his villainy! God in mercy only make him, try to make him, over again, and how different his life would be. All his better part brought out; all his lower kicked away to the devil, the responsible father of it. “Good God, how my heart goes! Death is upon me, well I know, but let me die with my children by—unless I turn hymn–writer——”Quick as he was in his turns of thought—all of them subjective—he was scarcely a match for the situation, when Mr. Chope and Bailey Kettledrum brushed by the sleeves of his light overcoat, and entered the doors with “push—pull” on them, but, being both of the pushing order rather than the pulling, employed indiscriminate propulsion, and were out of sight in a moment. Still, retaining some little of his circumspective powers, Bull Garnetknew them both from a corner flash of his sad tear–laden eyes. There was no mistaking that great legal head, like the breech–end of a cannon. Mr. Kettledrum might have been overlooked, for little men of a fussy nature are common enough in London, or for that matter everywhere else. But Garnetʼs attention being drawn, he knew them both of course, and the errand they were come upon, and how soon they were likely to return, and what they would think of his being there, if they should happen to see him. Nevertheless, he would not budge. Nothing could matter much now. He must think out his thoughts.When this puff of air was past which many breathe almost long enough to learn that it was “life,” some so long as to weary of it, none so long as to understand all its littleness and greatness—when that should be gone from him, and absorbed into a boundless region even more unknown, would not the wrong go with it, if unexpiated here, and abide there evermore? And not to think of himself alone—what an example now to leave to his innocent injured children! The fury hidden by treachery, the cowardice sheathed in penitence! D——n it all, he would have no more of it. His cursed mind was made up. A man can die in the flesh but once. His spirit had been dying daily, going to the devil daily, every day for months; and he found no place for repentance. As for his children, they must abide it. No man of any mind would blame them for their fatherʼs crime.If it was more than they could bear, let them bolt to America. Anywhither, anywhere, so long as they came home in heaven—if he could only get there—to the father who had injured, ruined, bullied, cursed, and loved them so.After burning out this hell of thought in his miserable brain, he betook himself to natureʼs remedy,—instant, headlong action. He rushed down the stairs, forgetting all about Chope and Bailey Kettledrum, shouted to the driver of a hansom cab so that he sawed his horseʼs mouth raw, leaped in, and gave him half a sovereign through the pigeon–hole, to get to D——ʼs bank before the closing time. But at Temple Bar, of course, there was a regular Chubbʼs lock, after a minor Bramah one at the bottom of Ludgate Hill. Cabby was forced to cut it, and slash up Chancery Lane, and across by Kingʼs College Hospital, and back into the Strand by Wych Street. It is easy to imagine Bull Garnetʼs state of mind; yet the imagination would be that, and nothing more. He sat quite calmly, without a word, knowing that man and horse were doing their utmost of skill and speed, and having dealt enough with both to know that to worry them then is waste.The Bank had been closed, the day–porter said, as he girded himself for his walk to Brixton, exactly—let him see—yes, exactly one minute and thirty–five seconds ago. Most of the gentlemen were still inside, of course, and if the gentlemanʼs business was of a confidential——Here he intimated,not by words, that there were considerations——“Bow Street police–office,” Mr. Garnet cried to the driver, not even glancing again at the disappointed doorkeeper. In five minutes he was there. Man and horse seemed strung and nerved with his own excitement.A stolid policeman stood at the door, as Bull Garnet leaped out anyhow, with his high colour gone away as in death, and his wiry legs cramped with vehemence. Then Bobby saw that he had met his master, the perception being a mental feat far beyond the average leap of police agility. Accordingly he touched his hat, and crinkled his eyes in a manner discovered by policemen, in consequence of the suggestion afforded by the pegging of their hats.“Mr. Bennings gone?” asked Bull Garnet, pushing towards the entrance.“His wusship is gone arf an hour, sir; or may be at most fifty minutes. Can we do anything for you, sir? His wusship always go according to the business as is on.”“Thank you,” replied Mr. Garnet; “that is quite enough. What time do they leave at Marlborough Street?”“According to the business, sir, but gone afore us aʼmost always. We sits as long as anybody, and gets through twice the business. But any message you like to leave, or anything to be entered, I can take the responsibility.”“No. It does not matter. I will only leavemy card. Mr. Bennings knows me. Be kind enough to give him this, when he comes to–morrow morning. Perhaps I may call to–morrow. At present I cannot say.”The policeman lifted his hat again, like a cup taken up from a saucer, and Bull Garnet sat heavily down in the cab, and banged the door–shutters before him. “Strand,” he called out to the driver; “D—— and C——ʼs, the watchmakers.” There he bought a beautiful watch and gold chain for his daughter Pearl, giving a cheque for nearly all his balance at the bankerʼs. The cheque was so large that in common prudence the foreman declined to cash it without some confirmation; but Mr. Garnet gave him a reference, which in ten minutes was established, and in ten more he was off again with his very handsome trinkets, and a large sum in bank–notes and gold, the balance of his draft.“Where now, sir?” shouted the driver, delighted with his fare, and foreseeing another half–sovereign.“I will tell you in thirty seconds.”“Well, if he ainʼt a rum ‘un,” Cabby muttered to himself, while amid volleys of strong language he kept his horse gyrating, like a twin–screw ship trying circles; “but rum customers is our windfalls. Should have thought it a reward case, only for the Bobby. Keep a look–out, anyhow; unless he orders me back to Bedlam.”“Not Bedlam. Waterloo Station, main line!” said Bull Garnet, standing up in front, and lookingat him over the roof. “Five minutes is all I give you, mind.”“What a blessed fool I am,” said the cabman below his breath, but lashing his horse explosively—”to throw away half a sovereign sooner than hold my tongue! He must be the devil himself to have heard me—and as for eyes—good Lord, I shouldnʼt like to drive him much.”“You are wrong,” replied Mr. Garnet through the pigeon–hole, handing him twopence for the tollman; “I am not the devil, sir; as you may some day know. Have no fear of ever driving me again. You shall have your half–sovereign when I have got my ticket. Follow me in, and you shall know for what place I take it.”The cabman was too dumb–foundered to do anything but resolve that he would go straight home when he got his money, and tell his old woman about it. Then he applied himself to the whip in earnest, for he could not too soon be rid of this job; and so Bull Garnet won his train, and gave the driver the other half–sovereign, with a peculiar nod, having noticed that he feared to approach while the ticket was applied for.Bull Garnet took a second–class ticket. His extravagance towards the cabman was the last he would ever exhibit. He felt a call upon him now to save for his family every farthing. All was lost to them but money, and alas, too much of that. Now if he cut his throat in the train, could he be attainted of felony? And would God be any theharder on him? No, he did not think He would. It might be some sort of atonement even. But then the shock to Pearl and Bob, to see him brought home with his head hanging back, and hopeless red stitches under it. It would make the poor girl a maniac, after all the shocks and anguish he had benumbed her with already. What a fool he had been not to buy strychnine, prussic acid, or laudanum! And yet—and yet—and yet——He would like to see them just once more—blessed hearts—once more.He sat in the last compartment of the last carriage in the train, which had been added, in a hurry, immediately behind the break van, and the swinging and the jerking very soon became tremendous. He knew not, neither cared to know, that Simon Chope and Bailey Kettledrum were in a first–class carriage near the centre of the train. Presently the violent motion began to tell upon him, and he felt a heavy dullness creeping over his excited mind; and all the senses, which had been during several hours of tension as prompt and acute as ever they were in his prime of power, began to flag, and daze, and wane, and he fell into a waking dream, a “second person” of sorrow. But first—whether for suicide, or for self–defence, he had tried both doors and found them locked; and he was far too large a man to force his way through the window.He dreamed, with a loose sense of identity, about the innocent childhood, the boyhoodʼs aspiration,the young manʼs sense of ability endorsing the right to aspire. Even his bodily power and vigour revived in the dream before him, and he knitted his muscles, and clenched his fists, and was ready to fight fools and liars. Who had fought more hard and hotly against the hard cold ways of the age, the despite done to the poor and lowly, the sarcasm bred by self–conscious serfdom in clever men of the world, the preference of gold to love, and of position to happiness? All the weak gregarious tricks, shifts of coat, and pupa–ism, whereby we noble Christians reduce our social history to a passage in entomology, and quench the faith of thinking men in Him whose name we take in vain—the great Originator—all these feminine contradictions, and fond things foully invented, fables Atellan (if they be not actually Fescennine) had roused the combatism of young Bull, ere he learned his own disgrace.And when he learned it, such as it was—a proof by its false incidence how infantile our civilization is—all his motherʼs bitter wrong, her lifelong sense of shame and crushing (because she had trusted a liar, and the hollow elder–stick “institution” was held up against her, and none would take her part without money, even if she had wished it), then he had chosen his motherʼs course, inheriting her strong nature, let the shame lie where it fell by right and not by rule, and carried all his energies into Neo–Christian largeness.All that time of angry trial now had passedbefore him, and the five years of his married life (which had not been very happy, for his wife never understood him, but met his quick moodiness with soft sulks); and then in his dream–review he smiled, as his children began to toddle about, and sit on his knees, and look at him.Once he awoke, and gazed about him. The train had stopped at Winchester. He was all alone in the carriage still, and all his cash was safe. He had stowed it away very carefully in a hidden pocket. To his languid surprise, he fell back on the seat. How unlike himself, to be sure; and with so much yet to do! He strove to arise and rouse himself. He felt for the little flask of wine, which Pearl had thrust into his pocket, but he could not pull it out and drink; such a languor lay upon him. He had felt it before, but never before been so overcome by it. Once or twice, an hour or so before the sun came back again, this strange cold deadness (like a mammoth nightmare frozen) had lain on him, in his lonely bed, and then he knew what death was, and only came back to life again through cold sweat and long fainting.He had never consulted any doctor about the meaning of this. With his bold way of thinking, and judging only by his own experience and feeling, he had long ago decided that all medical men were quacks. What one disorder could they cure? All they had learned, and that by a fluke, was a way to anticipateone: and even that way seemed worn out now.Now he fell away, and feared, and tried to squeeze his breast, and tried to pray to God; but no words came, nor any thoughts, only sense of dying, and horror at having prayed for it. A coldness fell upon his heart, and on his brain an ignorance; he was falling into a great blank depth, and nothing belonged to him any more—only utter, utter loss, and not a dream of God.Happy and religious folk, who have only died in theory, contemplating distant death, knowing him only as opportune among kinsfolk owning Consols, these may hope for a Prayer–book end, sacrament administered, weeping friends, the heavenward soul glad to fly through the golden door,animula,vagula,blandula, yet assured of its reception with a heavenly smile of foretaste—this may be; no doubt it may be, after the life of a Christian Bayard; though it need not always be, even then. All we who from our age know death, and have taken little trips into him, through fits, paralysis, or such–like, are quite aware that he has at first call as much variety as life has. But the death of the violent man is not likely to be placid, unless it come unawares, or has been graduated through years of remorse, and weakness, weariness, and repentance.Then he tried to rise, and fought once more, with agony inconceivable, against the heavy yet hollow numbness in the hold of his deep, wide chest, against the dark, cold stealth of death, and the black, narrow depth of the grave.The train ran lightly and merrily into Brockenhurst Station, while the midsummer twilight floated like universal gossamer. In the yard stood the Kettledrum “rattletrap,” and the owner was right glad to see it. In his eyes it was worth a dozen of the lord mayorʼs coach.“None of the children come, dear?” asked Bailey, having kissed his wife, as behoves a man from London.“No, darling, not one. That——” here she used an adjective which sounded too much like “odious” for me to trust my senses—”Georgie would not allow them. Now, darling, did you do exactly what I told you?”“Yes, darling Anna, I did the best I could. I had a basin of mulligatawny at Waterloo going up, and one of mock–turtle coming back, and at Basingstoke ham–sandwiches, a glass of cold cognac and water, and some lemon–chips. Since that, nothing at all, because there has been no time.”“You are a dear,” said Mrs. Kettledrum, “to do exactly as I told you. Now come round the corner a moment, and take two glasses of sherry; I can see quite well to pour it out. I am so glad of her new crinoline. She wonʼt get out. Donʼt be afraid, dear.”Oh, Georgie, Georgie! To think that her own sister should be so low, so unfeeling, and treacherous! Mr. Kettledrum smacked his lips, for the sake of euphony, after the second glass of sherry; but his wife would not give him any more,for fear of spoiling his supper. Then they came back, and both got in, and squeezed themselves up together in the front seat of the old carriage, for Mrs. Corklemore occupied the whole of the seat of honour.“You are very polite, to keep me so long. Innocent turtles; sweet childish anxiety! The last survivor of a wrecked train! So you took advantage, Anna dear, of my not being dressed quite so vulgarly as you are, to discuss this little matter with him, keeping me in ignorance.”The carriage was off by this time, and open as it was, they had no fear of old coachey hearing, for it took a loud hail to reach him.“Take the honour of a Kettledrum,” cried Bailey, smiting his bosom, “that the subject has not even been broached between my wiser part and myself. Ladies, in this pure aerial—no, I mean ethereal—air, with the shades of night around us, and the breezes wafting, would an exceedingly choice and delicately aromatic cigar——”“Oh, I should so like it, Bailey; and perhaps we shall have the nightingales.”“I fear we must not think of it,” interposed Mrs. Corklemore, gently; “my dress is of a fabric quite newly introduced, very beautiful, but (like myself) too retentive of impressions. If Mr. Kettledrum smokes, I shall have to throw it away.”“There goes the cigar instead,” cried Bailey;“the paramount rights of ladies ever have been, and ever shall be, sacred with Bailey Kettledrum.”But Mrs. Kettledrum was so vexed that she jumped up, as if to watch the cigar spinning into the darkness, and contrived with sisterly accuracy to throw all her weight upon a certain portion of a certain lovely foot, whereupon there ensued the neatest little passes, into which we need not enter. Enough that Mrs. Corklemore, having higher intellectual gifts, “won,” in the language of the ring, “both events”—first tear, and first hysterical symptom.“Come,” cried Mr. Kettledrum, at the very first opportunity, to wit, when both were crying; “we all know what sisters are: how they mingle the—the sweetness of their affection with a certain—ah, yes—a piquancy of expression, most pleasant, most improving, because so highly conducive to self–examination!” Here he stood up, having made a hit, worthy of the House of Commons. “All these little breezes, ladies, may be called the trade–winds of affection. They blow from pole to pole.”“The trade–winds never do that,” said Georgie.“They pass us by as the idle wind, when the clouds are like a whale, ladies, having overcome us for a moment, like a summer dream. Hark to that thrush, sitting perhaps on his eggs”—”Oh, Oh!” from the gallery of nature—”can there be,I pause for a reply, anything but harmony, where the voices of the night pervade, and the music of the spheres?”“You—you do speak so splendidly, dear,” sobbed Mrs. Kettledrum from the corner; “but it is a nasty, wicked, cruel story, about dear papa saying that of me, and he in his grave, poor dear, quite unable to vindicate himself. I have always thought it so unchristian to malign the dead!”“Whatʼs that?” cried Georgie, starting up, in fear and hot earnest; “you are chattering so, you hear nothing.”A horse dashed by them at full gallop, with his rider on his neck, shouting and yelling, and clinging and lashing.“Missed the wheel by an inch,” cried Kettledrum, drawing his head in faster than he had thrust it out; “a fire, man, or a French invasion?” But the man was out of hearing, while the Kettledrum horses, scared, and jumping as from an equine thunderbolt, tried the strength of leather and the courage of ladies.Meanwhile at the station behind them there was a sad ado. A man was lifted out of the train, being found in the last compartment by the guard who knew his destination—a big man, and a heavy one; and they bore him to the wretched shed which served there as a waiting–room.“Dead, I believe,” said the guard, having sent a boy for brandy, “dead as a door–nail, whoever he be.”“Not thee knaw whohebe?” cried a forester, coming in. “Whoy, marn, there be no mistakinghe. He be our Muster Garnet.”“Whew!” And the train whistled on, as it must do, whether we live or die, or when Cyclops has made mince of us.CHAPTER XVI.That night there had been great excitement in the village of Nowelhurst. A rumour had reached it that Cradock Nowell, loved in every cottage there, partly as their own production, partly as their future owner, partly for his own sake, and most of all for his misfortunes, was thrown into prison to stand his trial for the murder of his brother. Another rumour was that, to prevent any scandal to the nobility, he had been sent to sea alone in a seventy–four gun ship, with corks in her bottom tied with wire arranged so as to fly all at once, same as if it was ginger–beer bottles, on the seventh day, when the salt–water had turned the wires rusty.It is hard to say of these two reports which roused the greater indignation; perhaps on the whole the former did, because the latter was supposed to be according to institution. Anyhow, allthe village was out in the street that night; and the folding of arms, and the self–importance, the confidential winks, and the power to say more (but for hyper–Nestorean prudence) were at their acme in a knot of gaffers gathered around Rufus Hutton, and affording him good sport.Nothing now could be done in Nowelhurst without Rufus Hutton. He had that especial knack (mistaken sometimes in a statesman for really high qualities) which becomes in a woman true capacity for gossip. By virtue thereof Rufus Hutton was now prime–minister of Nowelhurst; and Sir Cradock, the king, being nothing more now than the shadow of a name, his deputyʼs power was absolute. He knew the history by this time of every cottage, and pigsty, and tombstone in the churchyard; how much every man got every week, and how much he gave his wife out of it, what he had for dinner on Sundays, and how long he made his waistcoat last. Suddenly the double–barrelled noise which foreruns a horse at full gallop came from the bridge, and old folk hobbled, and young got ready to run.“Hooraw—hooraw!” cried a dozen and a half of boys, “here be Hempror o’ Roosia coming.”Boys will believe almost anything, when they get excited (having taken the trick from their fathers), but even the women were disappointed, when the galloping horse stopped short in the crowd, and from his withers shot forward, and fell with both hands full of mane, a personage notmore august than the porter at Brockenhurst Station.“Catch the horse, you fool!” cried Rufus.“Cuss the horse,” said the porter, trying to draw breath; “better been under a train I had. Donʼt stand gaping, chawbacons. Is ever a sawbones, surgeon, doctor, or what the devil you call them in these outlandish parts, to be got for love or money?”“I am a sawbones,” said Rufus Hutton, coming forward with his utmost dignity; “and itʼs a mercy I donʼt saw yours, young man, if thatʼs all you know of riding.”The porter touched his hair instead of his hat (which was gone long ago), while the “chawbacons” rallied, and laughed at him, and one offered him a “zide–zaddle,” and all the women of the village felt that Dr. Hutton had quenched the porter, and vindicated Nowelhurst.“When you have recovered your breath, young man,” continued Rufus, pushing, as he always did, his advantage; “and thanked God for your escape from the first horse you ever mounted, perhaps you will tell us your errand, and we chawbacons will consider it.”A gruff haw–haw and some treble he–heʼs added to the porterʼs discomfiture, for he could not come to time yet, being now in the second tense of exhaustion, which is even worse than the first, being rather of the heart than lungs.“Station—Mr. Garnet—dead!” was all theman could utter, and that only in spasms, and with great chest–heavings.Rufus Hutton leaped on the horse in a moment, caught up old Channingʼs stick, and was out of sight in the summer dusk ere any one else in the crowd had done more than gape, and say, “Oh Lor!” By dint of skill he sped the old horse nearly as quickly to the station as the fury of Jehu had brought him thence, and landed him at the door with far less sign of exhaustion. Then walking into the little room, in the manner of a man who thoroughly knows his work, he saw a sight which never in this world will leave him.Upon a hard sofa, shored up with an ash–log where the mahogany was sprung, and poked up into a corner as if to get a bearing there, with blankets piled upon him heavily and tucked round the collar of his coat, and his great head hanging over the rise where the beading of the brass ends, lay the ill–fated Bull Garnet,—a man from birth to death a subject for pity more than terror. Fifty years old—more than fifty years—and scarce a twelvemonth of happiness since the shakings of the world began, and childhoodʼs dream was over. Toiling ever for the future, toiling for his children, ever since he had them, labouring to make peace with God, if only he might have his own, where passion is not, but love abides. The room smelled strongly of bad brandy, some of which was oozing now down his broad square chin, and dripping from the great blue jaw. Of coursehe could not swallow it; and now one of the women (for three had rushed in) was performing that duty for him.“Turn out that drunken hag!” cried Dr. Hutton, feeling he had no idea how. “Up with the window. Bring the sofa here; and take all but one of those blankets off.”“But, master,” objected another woman, “heʼll take his death of cold.”“Turn out that woman also!” He was instantly obeyed. “Now roll up one of those blankets, and put it under his head here—this side, canʼt you see? Good God, what a set of fellows you are to let a manʼs head hang down like that! Hot water and a sponge this instant. Nearly boiling, mind you. Plenty of it, and a foot–tub. Now donʼt stare at me.”With a quick light hand he released the blue and turgid throat from the narrow necktie, then laid his forefinger upon the heart and watched the eyelids intently.“Appleplexy, no doubt, master,” said the most intelligent of the men; “I have ‘eared that if you can bleed them——”“Hold your tongue, or Iʼll phlebotomise you.” That big word inspired universal confidence, because no one understood it. “Now, support him in that position, while I pull his boots off. One of you run to the inn for a bottle of French cognac—not this filthy stuff, mind—and a corkscrew and a teaspoon. Now the hot water here!In with his feet, and bathe his legs, while I sponge his face and chest—as hot as you can bear your hands in it. His heart is all but stopped, and his skin as cold as ice. Thatʼs it; quicker yet! Donʼt be afraid of scalding him. There, he begins to feel it.”The dying manʼs great heavy eyelids slowly and feebly quivered, and a long deep sigh arose, but there was not strength to fetch it. Dr. Hutton took advantage of the faint impulse of life to give him a little brandy, and then a little more again, and by that time he could sigh.“Bo,” he whispered very softly, and trying to lift his hand for something, and Rufus Hutton knew somehow (perhaps by means of his own child) that he was trying to say, “Bob.”“Bob will be here directly. Cheer up, cheer up, till he comes, my friend.”He called him his friend, and the very next day he would have denounced him as murderer to the magistrates at Lymington. Now his only thought was of saving the poor manʼs life.The fatherʼs dull eyes gleamed again when he heard those words, and a little smile came flickering over the stern lines of his face. They gave him more brandy on the strength of it, while he kept on looking at the door.“Rub, rub, rub, men; very lightly, but very quickly. Keep your thumbs up, donʼt you see? Mustnʼt get cold again for the world. There now, heʼll keep his heart up until his dear son arrives.And then his children shall nurse him, much better than any one else could; and how glad they will be, John Thomas, to see him looking so well and so strong again!”All this time, Rue Hutton himself, with a womanʼs skill and tenderness, was encouraging, by gentle friction over the stagnant heart, each feeble impulse yet to live, each little bubble faintly rising from the well of hope, every clinging of the soul to the things so hard to leave behind. “While there is life, there is hope.” True and genial saying! And we hope there is hope beyond it.Poor Bull Garnet was taken home, even that very night. For Dr. Hutton saw how much he was longing for his children, who (until he was carried in) knew nothing of his danger. “Please God,” said Rufus to himself, as he crouched in the fly by the narrow mattress, even foregoing his loved cheroot, and keeping his hand on his patientʼs pulse; “please God, the poor fellow shall breathe his last with a child at either side of him.”Meanwhile, an urgent message from Sir Cradock Nowell was awaiting the sick man at his cottage. Eoa herself had brought word to Pearl (of whom she longed to make a friend) that her uncle was walking about the house, perpetually walking, calling aloud in every room for Mr. Garnet and John Rosedew. He had heard of no disaster, any more than she had, for he seldom read the papers now; but Mr. Brockwood had been with him a very long time that morning, and Dr.Buller came in accidentally; and Eoa could almost vow that there was some infamous scheme on foot, and she knew whose doing it was; and oh that Uncle John would come back! But now they wanted Mr. Garnet, and he must hurry up to the Hall the moment he came home.Mr. Garnet, of course, they could not have: his strength was wrecked, his heart benumbed, his mind incapable of effort, except to know his children, if that could ever be one. And in this paralytic state, never sleeping, never waking, never wholly conscious, he lay for weeks; and time for him had neither night nor morning.But Mr. Rosedew could be brought to help his ancient friend, if only it was in his power to overlook the injury. He did not overlook it. For that he was too great a man. He utterly forgot it. To his mind it was thenceforth a thing that had never happened:“To–morrow either with black cloudLet the Father fill the heaven,Or with sun full–blazing:Yet shall He not erase the past,Nor beat abroad, and make undone,What once the fleeting hour hath borne.”Truly so our Horace saith. And yet that Father gives, sometimes, to the noblest of his children, power to revoke the evil, or at least annul it,—grandeur to undo the wrong done by others to them. Not with any sense of greatness, neither hope of self–reward, simply from the loving–kindness of the deep humanity.In truth it was a noble thing, such as not even the driest man, sapped and carked with care and evil, worn with undeserved rebuff, and dwelling ever underground, in the undermining of his faith, could behold and not be glad with a joy unbidden, could turn away from without wet eyes, and a glimpse of the God who loves us,—and yet the simplest, mildest scene that a child could describe to its mother. So will I tell it, if may be, casting all long words away, leaning on an old manʼs staff, looking over the stile of the world.It was the height of the summer–time, and the quiet mood of the setting sun touched with calm and happy sadness all he was forsaking. Men were going home from work; wives were looking for them; maidens by the gate or paling longed for some protection; children must be put to bed, and what a shame, so early! Puce and purple pillows lay, holding golden locks of sun, piled and lifted by light breezes, the painted eider–down of sunset. In the air a feeling was—those who breathe it cannot tell—only this, that it does them good; God knows how, and why, and whence—but it makes them love their brethren.The poor old man, more tried and troubled than a lucky labourer, wretched in his wealth, worse hampered by his rank and placement, sat upon a high oak chair—for now he feared to lean his head back—and prayed for some one to help him. Oh, for any one who loved him; oh, for any sight ofGod, whom in his pride he had forgotten! Eoa was a darling, his only comfort now; but what could such a girl do? Who was she to meet the world? And the son he had used so shamefully. Good God, his only son! And now he knew, with some strange knowledge, loose, and wide, and wandering, that his son was innocent after all, and lost to him for ever, through his own vile cruelty. And now they meant to prove him mad—what use to disguise it?—him who once had the clearest head, chairman of the Quarter Sessions——Here he broke down, and lay back, with his white hair poured against the carved black oak of the chair, and his wasted hands flung downward, only praying God to help him, anyhow to help him.Then John Rosedew came in softly, half ashamed of himself, half nervous lest he were presuming, overdrawing the chords of youth, the bond of the days when they went about with arm round the neck of each other. In his heart was pity, very deep and holy; and yet, of all that filled his eyes, the very last to show itself.Over against the ancient friend, the loved one of his boyhood, he stopped and sadly gazed a moment, and then drew back with a shock and sorrow, as of death brought nearer. At the sound, Sir Cradock Nowell lifted his weary eyes and sighed; and then he looked intently; and then he knew the honest face, the smile, the gentle forehead. Quietlyhe arose, with colour flowing over his pallid cheeks, and in his eyes strong welcome, and ready with his lips to speak, yet in his heart unable. Thereupon he held the chair, and bowed with the deepest reverence, such as king or queen receives not till a life has earned it. Even the hand which he was raising he let fall again, drawn back by a bitter memory, and a nervous shame.But his friend of olden time would not have him so disgraced, wanted no repentance. With years of kindness in his eyes and the history of friendship, he came, without a bow, and took the hand that now was shy of him.“Cradock, oh, I am so glad.”“John, thank God for this, John!”Then they turned to other subjects, with a sort of nervousness—the one for fear of presuming on pardon, the other for fear of offering it. Only both knew, once for all, that nothing more could come between them till the hour of death.The rector accepted once again his well–beloved home and cares, for the vacancy had not been filled, only Mr. Pell had lived a short time at the Rectory. The joy of all the parish equalled, if not transcended, that of parson and of patron.And, over and above the ease of conscience, and the sense of comfort, it was a truly happy thing for poor Sir Cradock Nowell, when the loss of theTaprobanecould no longer be concealed from him, that now he had the proven friend tofall back upon once more. He had spent whole days in writing letters—humble, loving, imploring letters to the son in unknown latitudes—directing them as fancy took him to the Cape, to Port Natal, Mozambique, or even Bombay (in case of stress of weather), Point de Galle, Colombo, &c. &c., in all cases to be called for, and invariably marked “urgent.” Then from this labour of love he awoke to a vague form of conviction that his letters ought to have been addressed to the bottom of the sea.CHAPTER XVII.Autumn in the Forest now, once again the autumn. All things turning to their rest, bird, and beast, and vegetable. Solemn and most noble season, speaking to the soul of man, as spring speaks to his body. The harvest of the ample woods spreading every tint of ripeness, waiting for the Makerʼs sickle, when His breath is frost. Trees beyond trees, in depth and height, roundings and massive juttings, some admitting flaws of light to enhance their mellowness, some very bright of their own accord, when the sun thought well of them, others scarcely bronzed with age, and meaning to abide the spring. It was the same in Epping Forest, Richmond Park, and the woods round London, only on a smaller scale, and with less variety. And so upon his northern road, every coppice, near or far, even“Knockholt Beeches” (which reminded him of the “beechen hats”), every little winding wood of Sussex or of Surrey brought before Cradock Nowellʼs eyes the prospect of his boyhood. He had begged to be put ashore at Newhaven, from the American trader, which had rescued him from Pomona Island, and his lonely but healthful sojourn, and then borne him to New York. Now, with his little store of dollars, earned from the noble Yankee skipper by the service he had rendered him, freely given and freely taken, as behoves two gentlemen, and with his great store of health recovered, and recovered mind, he must walk all the way to London, forty miles or more; so great a desire entered into him of his native land, that stable versatility, those free and ever–changing skies, which all her sons abuse and love.Cradock looked, I do assure you, as well, and strong, and stout, and lusty, as may consist with elegance at the age of two–and–twenty. And his dress, though smacking of Broadway, “could not conceal,” as our best writers say, “his symmetrical proportions.” His pantaloons were of a fine bright tan colour, with pockets fit for a thousand dollars, and his boots full of eyelets, like big lampreys, and his coat was a thing to be proud of, and a pleasing surprise for Regent–street. His hat, moreover, was umbratile, as of the Pilgrim Fathers, with a measure of liquid capacity (betwixt the cone and the turned–up rim) superior to that of the ordinary cisterns of the London water–companies. Neverthelesshe had not acquired the delightful hydropultic art, distinctive of the mighty nation which had been so kind to him. And, in spite of little external stuff (only worthy of two glances—one to note, and the other to smile at it), the youth was improved in every point worth a manʼs observation. Three months in New York had done him an enormous deal of good; not that the place is by any means heavenly (perhaps there are few more hellish), only that he fell in with men of extraordinary energy and of marvellous decision, the very two hinges of life whereupon he (being rather too “philosophical”) had several screws loose, and some rust in the joints.As for Wena, she (the beauty) had cocked her tail with great arrogance at smelling English ground again. To her straight came several dogs, who had never travelled far (except when they were tail–piped), and one and all cried, “Hail, my dear! Have you seen any dogs to compare with us? Set of mongrel parley–woos, canʼt bark or bite like a Christian. Just look round the corner, pretty, while we kill that poodle.”To whom Wena—leniter atterens caudam—”Cordially I thank you. So much now I have seen of the world that my faith is gone in tail–wags. If you wish to benefit by my society, bring me a bit from the hock of bacon, or a very young marrowbone. Then will I tell you something.” They could not comply with her requisitions, because they had eaten all that themselves. And so shetrotted along the beach, like the dog of Polyphemus, or the terrier of Hercules, who tinged his nose with murex.‘Tis a very easy thing to talk of walking fifty miles, but quite another pair of shoes to do it; especially with pack on back, and feet that have lost habitual sense of Macadamʼs tender mercies. Moreover, the day had been very warm for the beginning of October—the dying glance of Summer, in the year 1860, at her hitherto foregone and forgotten England. The highest temperature of the year had been 72° (in the month of May); in June and July, 66° and 68° were the maxima, and in August things were no better. Persistent rain, perpetual chill, and ever–present sense of icebergs, and longing for logs of dry wood. But towards the end of September some glorious weather set in; and people left off fires at the time when they generally begin them. Therefore, Cradock Nowell was hot, footsore, and slightly jaded, as he came to the foot of Sydenham Hill, on the second day of his journey. The Crystal Palace, which long had been his landmark through country crossroads, shone with blue and airy light, as the sun was sinking. Cradock admired more and more, as the shadows sloped along it, the fleeting gleams, the pellucid depth, the brightness of reflection framed by the softness of refraction.He had always loved that building, and now, at the top of the hill, he resolved (weary as he was) to enter and take his food there. AccordinglyWena was left to sup and rest at the stables; he paid the shilling that turns the wheel, and went first to the refreshment court. After doing his duty there, he felt a great deal better; then buttoned his coat like a Briton, and sauntered into the transept. It had been a high and mighty day, for the Ancient Order of Mountaineers (who had never seen a mountain) were come to look for one at Penge, with sweethearts, wives, contingencies, and continuations. It boots not now to tell their games; enough that they had been very happy, and were gathering back in nave and transept for a last parade. To Cradock, so long accustomed to sadness, solitude, and bad luck, the scene, instead of being ludicrous (as a youth of fashion would have found it), was interesting and impressive, and even took a solemn aspect as the red rays of the sun retired, and the mellow shades were deepening. He leaned against the iron rail in front of the grand orchestra, and seeing many pretty faces, thought about his Amy, and wondered what she now was like, and whether she were true to him. From Pomona Island he could not write; from New York he had never written; not knowing the loss of theTaprobane, and fearing lest he should seem once more to be trying the depth of John Rosedewʼs purse. But now he was come to England, with letters from Captain Recklesome Young, to his London correspondents, which ensured him a good situation, and the power to earn his own bread, and perhaps in a little while Amyʼs.As he leaned and watched the crowd go by, like a dream of faces, the events of the bygone year passed also in dark parade before him. Sad, mysterious, undeserved—at least so far as he knew—how had they told upon him? Had they left him in better, or had they left him in bitter, case with his God and his fellow–man? That question might be solved at once, to any but himself, by the glistening of his eyes, the gentleness of his gaze around, the smile with which he drew back his foot when a knickerbocked child trod on it. He loved his fellow–creatures still; and love is law and gospel.While he thought these heavy things, feeling weary of the road, of his life half weary, shrinking from the bustling world again to be encountered, suddenly a grand vibration thrilled his heart, and mind, and soul. From the great concave above him, melody was spreading wide, with shadowy resistless power, like the wings of angels. The noble organ was pealing forth, rolling to every nook of the building, sweeping over the heads of the people and into their hearts (with one soft passport), “Home, sweet home!” The men who had come because tired of home, the wives to give them a change of it, the maidens perhaps to get homes of their own, the children to cry to go home again;—all with one accord stood still, all listened very quietly, and said nothing at all about it. Only they were the better for it, with many a kind old memory rising, at least among the elder ones,and many a large unselfish hope making the young people look, with trust, at one another.And what did Cradock Nowell feel? His home was not a sweet one; bitter things had been done against him; bitter things he himself had done. None the less, he turned away and wept beneath a music–stand, as if his heart would never give remission to his eyes. None could see him in the dark there, only the God whose will it was, and whose will it often is, that tears should bring us home to Him.“I will arise, and go home to my father. I will cry, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven, and against thee.’”And so he had. Not heavily, not wilfully, not wittingly, not a hundredth part so badly as that father had sinned against him. Yet it was wrong in him not to allow the old man to recover himself, but, forgetting a sonʼs love–duty, so to leave him—hotly, hastily, with a proud defiance. Till now he had never felt, or at least confessed to himself, that wrong. Now, as generous natures do, he summed up sternly against himself, leniently against others. And then he asked, with yearning and bitter self–reproach, “Is the old man yet alive?”✸✸✸✸✸The woods were still as rich and sweet, and the grass as soft as in May month; the windings of the pleasant dells were looped with shining waters; but she who used to love them so and brighten at their freshness, to follow the steps of each wanderingbreeze, and call to the sun as a flower does—now she came through her favourite places, and hardly cared to look at them. Only three short months ago she had returned to her woodland home, and the folk that knew and loved her, in the highest and brightest spirits of youth, conscious beauty, and hopefulness. All her old friends were rejoicing in her, and she in their joy delighted, when her father thought it his sorrowful duty, in this world of sorrow, to tell her the bad news about her ever unlucky Cradock. At first she received it with scorn—as the high manner of her mind was—utter unbelief, because God could not have done it. Being simple, and very young, she had half as much faith in her heavenly Father as she had in the earthly and fallible parent; neither was she quite aware that we do not buy, but accept from God.But, as week upon back of week, and month after tardy month, went by, Amyʼs faith began to wane, and herself to languish. She watched the arrival of every mail from the Cape, from India, from anywhere; her heart leaped up as each steamer came in, and sank at each empty letterbag. Meanwhile her father was growing very unhappy about her, and so was good Aunt Doxy. At first John had said, when she took it so calmly, “Thank God! How glad I am! But her mother cared for me more than that.” Like many another loving father, he had studied, but never learned his child.Now it was the fifth day of October, the weather bright and beautiful, the English earth and trees and herbage trying back for the summer of which they had been so cheated. Poor pale Amy asked leave to go out. She had long been under Rue Huttonʼs care, not professionally, but paternally (for Rufus would have his own way when he was truly fond of any one), and she asked so quietly, so submissively, without a bit of joke about it, that when she was gone her father set to and shook his head, till a heavy tear came and blotted out a reference which had taken all the morning. As for Aunt Doxy, she turned aside, and took off her spectacles quickly, because the optician had told her to keep them perfectly dry.Where the footpath wanders to and fro, preferring pleasure to duty, and meeting all remonstrance by quoting the course of the brook, Amy Rosedew slowly walked, or heavily stopped every now and then, caring for nothing around her. She had made up her mind to cry no more, only to long for the time and place when and where no crying is. Perhaps in a year or so, if she lived, she might be able to see things again, and attend to her work as usual. Till then she would try to please her father, and keep up her spirits for his sake. Every one had been so kind to her, especially dear Eoa, who had really cried quite steadily; and the least thing that girl Amy could do was to try and deserve it. Thinking thus, and doing her best to feel as well as think it, yet growing tiredalready, she sat down in a chair as soft as weary mortal may rest in. A noble beech, with a head of glory overlooking the forest, had not neglected to slipper his feet with the richest of natureʼs velvet. From the dove–coloured columnʼs base, two yards above the ground–spread, drifts of darker bulk began, gnarled crooks of grapple, clutching wide at mother earth, deeply fanged into her breast, sureties against every wind. Ridged and ramped with many a hummock, rift, and twisted sinew, forth these mighty tendons stretched, some fathoms from the bole itself. Betwixt them nestled, all in moss, corniced with the golden, and cushioned with the greenest, nooks of cool, delicious rest, wherein to forget the world, and dream upon the breezes. “As You Like It,” in your lap, Theocritus tossed over the elbow, because he is too foreign,—what sweet depth of enjoyment for a hard–working man who has earned it!But, in spite of all this voluptuousness, the “moss more soft than slumber,” and the rippling leafy murmur, there is little doubt that Miss Amy Rosedew managed to have another cry ere ever she fell asleep. To cry among those arms of moss, fleecing, tufting, pillowing, an absorbent even for Niobe! Can the worn–out human nature find no comfort in the vegetable, though it does in the mineral, kingdom?Back, and back, and further back into the old relapse of sleep, the falling thither whence we came, the interest on the debt of death. Yet asthe old Stagyrite hints, some of dayʼs emotions filter through the strain of sleep; it is not true that good and bad are, for half of life, the same. Alike their wits go roving haply after the true Owner, but some may find Him, others fail—Father, who shall limit thus Thine infinite amnesty?It would not be an easy thing to find a fairer sight. Her white arms on the twisted plumage of the deep green moss, the snowy arch of her neck revealed as the clustering hair fell from it, and the frank and playful forehead resting on the soft grey bark. She smiled in her sleep every now and then, for her pleasant young humour must have its own way when the schoolmaster, sorrow, was dozing; and then the sad dreaming of trouble returned, and the hands were put up to pray, and the red lips opened, whispering, “Come home! Only come to Amy!”And then, in her dream, he was come—raining tears upon her cheek, holding her from all the world, fearing to thank God yet. She was smiling up at him; oh, it was so delicious! Suddenly she opened her eyes. What made her face so wet? Why, Wena!Wena, as sure as dogs are dogs; mounted on the mossy arm, lick–lick–licking, mewing like a cat almost, even offering taste of her tongue, while every bit of the Wena dog shook with ecstatic rapture.“Oh, Wena, Wena! what are you come to tell me, Wena? Oh that you could speak!”Wena immediately proved that she could. She galloped round Amy, barking and yelling, until the great wood echoed again; the rabbits, a mile away, pricked their ears, and the yaffingales stopped from tapping. Then off set the little dog down the footpath. Oh, could it be to fetch somebody?The mere idea of such a thing made Amy shake so, and feel so odd, she was forced to put one hand against the tree, and the other upon her heart. She could not look, she was in such a state; she could not look down the footpath. It seemed, at least, a century, and it may have been half a minute, before she heard through the bushes a voice—tush, she meansthevoice.“Wena, you bad dog, come in to heel. Is this all you have learned by travelling?”But Wena broke fence and everything, set off full gallop again to Amy, tugged at her dress, and retrieved her.What happened after that Amy knows not, neither knows Cradock Nowell. So anything I could tell would be a fond thing vainly invented. All they remember is—looking back upon it, as both of them may, to the zenith of their lives—that neither of them could say a word except “darling, darling, darling!” all pronounced as superlatives, with “my own,” once or twice between, and an exclusive sense of ownership, illiberaland unphilosophical. What business have we with such minor details? Who has sworn us accountants of kisses? All we have any right to say is, that after a long spell of inarticulate tautology, Amy looked up when Cradock proposed to add another cipher; very gravely, indeed, she looked up; except in the deepest depth of her eyes.“Oh no, Cradock. You must not think of it. Seriously now, you mustnot, love.”“Why? I should like to know, indeed! After all the time I have been away!”“I have so little presence of mind. I forgot to tell you in time, dear. Why, because Wenahas licked my face all over, darling. Darling, yes, shehas, I say. You are too bad not to care about it. Now come to my own best father, dear. Offer your arm like a gentleman.”So they—as Milton concisely says. Homer would have written “they two.” How sadly our language wants a dual! We, the domestic race, have we rejected it because the use would have seemed a truism?✸✸✸✸✸That same afternoon Bull Garnet lay dying, calmly and peacefully going off, taking his accounts to a larger world. He knew that there were some heavy items underscored against him; but he also knew that the mercy of God can even outdo the hope He gives us for token and for keepsake. A greater and a grander end, after alife of mark and power, might, to his early aspirations and self–conscious strength, have seemed the bourne intended. If it had befallen him—as but for himself it would have done—to appear where men are moved by passion, vigour, and bold decision, his name would have been historical, and better known to the devil. As it was, he lay there dying, and was well content. The turbulence of life was past, the torrent and the eddy, the attempt at fore–reaching upon his age, and sense of impossibility, the strain of his mental muscles to stir the great dead trunks of “orthodoxy,” and then the self–doubt, the chill, the depression, which follow such attempts, as surely as ague tracks the pioneer.Thank God, all this was over now, and the violence gone, and the dark despair. Of all the good and evil things which so had branded him distinct, two yet dwelled in his feeble heart, only two still showed their presence in his dying eyes. Each of those two was good, if two indeed they were—faith in the heavenly Father, and love of the earthly children.Pearl was sitting on a white chair at the side of the bed away from the window, with one hand in his failing palm, and the other trying now and then to enable her eyes to see things. She was thinking, poor little thing, of what she should do without him, and how he had been a good father to her, though she never could understand him. That was her own fault, no doubt. She hadalways fancied that he loved her as a bit of his property, as a thing to be managed; now she knew that it was not so; and he was going away for ever, and who would love or manage her? And the fault of all this was her own.Rufus Hutton had been there lately, trying still to keep up some little show of comfort, and a large one of encouragement; for he was not the man to say die till a patient came to the preterite. Throughout the whole, and knowing all, he had behaved in the noblest manner, partly from his own quick kindness, partly from that protective and fiduciary feeling which springs self–sown in the hearts of women when showers of sorrow descend, and crops up in the manly bosom at the fee of golden sunshine. Not that he took any fees; but that his professional habits revived, with a generosity added, because he knew that he would take nothing, though all were in his power.Suddenly Mr. Pell came in, our old friend Octavius, sent for in an urgent manner, and looking as a man looks who feels but cannot open on the hinge of his existence. Like a thorough gentleman, he had been shy of the cottage, although aware of their distress; eager at once and reluctant, partly because it stood not in his but his rectorʼs parish, partly for deeper reasons.Though Pell came in so quietly, Bull Garnet rose at his entry, or tried to rise on the pillow, swept his daughter back by a little motion of his thumb, which she quite understood, and cast his eyes on the parsonʼs with a languid yet strong intelligence.He had made up his mind that the man was good, and yet he could not help probing him.The last characteristic act of poor Bull Garnetʼs life, a life which had been all character, all difference, from other people.“Will you take my daughterʼs hand, Pell?”“Only too gladly,” answered Pell; but she shrank away, and sobbed at him.“Pearl, come forward this moment. It is no time for shilly–shallying.”The poor thing timidly gave her hand, standing a long way back from Pell, and with her large eyes streaming, yet fixed upon her father, and no chance at all of wiping them.“Now, Pell, do you love my daughter? I am dying, and I ask you.”“That I do, with all my heart,” said Pell, like a downright Englishman. “I shall never love any other.”“Now, Pearl, do you love Mr. Pell?” Her fatherʼs eyes were upon her in a way that commanded truth. She remembered how she had told a lie, at the age of seven or eight, and that gaze had forced it out of her, and she had never dared to tell one since, until no lie dared come near her.“Father, I like him very much. Very soon I should love him, if—if he loved me.”“Now, Pell, you hear that!”“Beyond all doubt I do,” said Octave, whosedryness never deserted him in the heaviest rain of tears; “and it is the very best thing for me I have heard in all my life.”Bull Garnet looked from one to the other, with the rally of his life come hot, and a depth of joyful sadness. Yet must he go a little further, because he had always been a tyrant till people understood him.“Do you want to know how much money, sir, I intend to leave her, when I die to–night or to–morrow morning?”Cut–and–dry Pell was taken aback. A thoroughly upright and noble fellow, but of wholly different and less rugged road of thought. Meanwhile Pearl had slipped away; it was more than she could bear, and she was so sorry for Octavius. Then Pell up and spake bravely:“Sir, I would be loth to think of you, my dear oneʼs father, as anything but a gentleman; a strange one, perhaps, but a true one. And so I trust you have only put such a question to me in irony.”“Pell, there is good stuff in you. I know a man by this time. What would you think of finding your dear oneʼs father a murderer?”Octavius Pell was not altogether used to this sort of thing. He turned away with some doubt whether Pearl would be a desirable mother of children (for he, after all, was a practical man), and hereditary insanity—— Then he turnedback, remembering that all mankind are mad. Meanwhile Bull Garnet watched him, with extraordinary wrinkles, and a savage sort of pleasure. He felt himself outside the world, and looking at the stitches of it. But he would not say a word. He had always been a bully, and he meant to keep it up.“Sir,” said Octave Pell, at last, “you are the very oddest man I ever saw in all my life.”“Ah, you think so, do you, Pell? Possibly you are right; possibly you are right, Pell. I have no time to think about it. It never struck me in that light. If I am so very odd, perhaps you would rather not have my daughter?”“If you intend to refuse her to me, you had better say so at once, sir. I donʼt understand all this.”“I wish you to understand nothing at all beyond the simple fact. I shot Clayton Nowell, and did it on purpose, because I found him insulting her.”“Good God! You donʼt mean to say it?”“I never yet said a thing, Pell, which I did not mean to say.”“You did it in haste? You have repented? For Godʼs sake, tell me that.”“Treat this as a question of business. Look at the deed and nothing else. Do you still wish to marry my daughter?”Pell turned away from the great wild eyes now solemnly fixed upon him. His manly heart wasfull of wonder, anguish, and giddy turbulence. The promptest of us cannot always “come to time,” like a prizefighter.Pearl came in, with her chest well forward, and then drew back very suddenly. She thought her fate must be settled now, and would like to know how they had settled it. Then, like a genuine English lady, she gave a short sigh and went away. Pride makes the difference between us and all other nations.But the dignified glance she had cast on Pell settled his fate and hers for life. He saw her noble self–respect, her stately reservation, her deep sense of her own pure value (which never would assert itself), and her passing contempt of his hesitation.“At all risks I will have her,” he said to himself, for his manly strength gloried in her strong womanhood; “if she can be won I will have her. Oh, how I am degrading her! What a fool–bound fellow I am!”Then he spoke to her father, who had fallen back, and was faintly gazing, wondering what the stoppage was.“Sir, I am not worthy of her. God knows how I love her. She is too good for me.”Bull Garnet gathered his fleeting life, and looked at Pell with a love so deep that it banished admiration. Then his failing heart supplied, for the last, last time of all, the woe–worn fountain of his eyes. Strong and violent as he was, a little thing hadoften touched him to the turn of tears. What impulse is there but has this end? Even comic laughter.Pell lifted from the counterpane the broad but shrunken hand, which was on the way to be offered to him, until sad memory stopped it. Then he looked down at the poor grey face, where the forehead, from the fall of the rest, appeared almost a monstrosity, and the waning of strong emotions left a quivering of hollowness. The young parson looked down with noble pity. Much he knew of his father–in–law! Bull Garnet would never be pitied. He drew his hand back with a little jerk, and placed it against his broad, square chin.“I canʼt bear to die like this, Pell.I wish to God you could shave me.”Pell went suddenly down on his knees, put his strong brown hands up, and said nothing except the Lordʼs Prayer. Bull Garnet tried to raise his palms, but the power of his wrists was gone, and so he let them fall together. Then at every grand petition he nodded at the ceiling, as if he saw it going upward, and thought of the lath and plaster.He had said he should die at four oʼclock, for the paroxysms of heart–complaint returned at measured intervals, and he felt that he could not outlast another. So with his usual mastery and economy of labour, he had sent a man to get the keys and begin to toll the great church bell, as soon as ever the clock struck four. “Not too long apart,” he said, “steadily, and be done with it.” When the boom of the sluggish bell came in at the open window, Bull Garnet smiled, because the man was doing it as he had ordered him.“Right,” he whispered, “yes, quite right. I have always been before my time. Just let me see my children.” And then he had no more pain.✸✸✸✸✸Amy came in very softly, to know if he was dead. They had told her she ought to leave it alone, but she could not see it so. Knowing all and feeling all, she felt beyond her knowledge. If it would—oh, if it would help him with a spark of hope in his parting, help him in the judgment–day, to have the glad forgiveness of the brother with the deeper wrong—there it was, and he was welcome.A little whispering went on, pale lips into trembling ears, and then Cradock, with his shoes off, was brought to the side of the bed.“He wonʼt know you,” Pearl sobbed softly; “but how kind of you to come!” She was surprised at nothing now.Her father raised his languid eyes, until they met Cradockʼs eager ones; there they dwelt with doubt, and wonder, and a slow rejoicing, and a last attempt at expression.John Rosedew took the wan stiffening hand, lying on the sheet like a cast–off glove, and placed it in Cradockʼs sunburnt palm.“He knows all,” the parson whispered; “he hasread the letter you left for him; and, knowing all, he forgives you.”“That I do, with all my heart,” Cradock answered firmly. “May God forgive me as I do you. Wholly, purely, for once and for all!”“Kind—noble—Godlike——” the dying man said very slowly, but with his old decision.Bull Garnet could not speak again. The great expansion of heart had been too much for its weakness. Only now and then he looked at Cradock with his Amy, and every look was a prayer for them, and perhaps a recorded blessing.Then they slipped away, in tears, and left him, as he ought to be, with his children only. And the telegraph of death was that God would never part them.Now, think you not this man was dying a great deal better than he deserved? No doubt he was. And, for that matter, so perhaps do most of us. But does our Father think so?

CHAPTER XV.That night the man of violence enjoyed the first sweet dreamless sleep that had spread its velvet shield between him and his guilt and sorrow. Pearl, who had sat up late with Bob, comforting and crying with him, listened at her fatherʼs door, and heard his quiet breathing. Through many months of trouble, now, she had watched him kindly, tenderly, fearing ever some wild outbreak upon others or himself, hiding in her empty heart all its desolation.The very next day, Bull Garnet resolved to have it out with his son; not to surprise him by emotion to a hasty issue, but now to learn what he thought and felt, after taking his time about it. All this we need not try to tell, only so much as bears upon the staple of the story.“Father, I know that you had—you had good reason for doing it.”“There could be no good reason. There mightbe, and were, many bad ones. Of this I will not speak to you. I did it in violence and fury, and under a false impression. When I saw him, with his arm cast round my pure and darling Pearl, Satanʼs rage is but a smile compared to the fury of my heart. He had his gun, and I had mine; I had taken it to shoot a squirrel which meddled with our firework nonsense. I tore her from him before I could speak, thrust her aside, stepped back two paces, gave him ‘one, two, three,’ and fired. He had time to fire in self–defence, and his muzzle was at my head, and his finger on the trigger; but there it crooked, and he could not pull. Want of nerve, I suppose. I saw his finger shaking, and then I saw him fall. Now, my son, you know everything.”“Why, father, after all then, it was nothing worse than a duel. He had just the same chance of killing you, and would have done it, only you were too quick for him.”“Even to retain your love, I will have no lie in the matter, Bob, although a duel, in my opinion, is only murder made game of. But this was no duel, no manslaughter even, but an act of downright murder. No English jury could help convicting me, and I will never plead insanity. It was the inevitable result of inborn violence and self–will, growing and growing from year to year, and strengthened by wrongs of which you know nothing. God knows that I have fought against it; but my weapon was pride, not humility. Nowlet this miserable subject never be recurred to by us, at least in words, till the end comes. As soon as I hear that poor innocent Cradock is apprehended, and brought to England, I shall surrender myself and confess. But for your sake and poor Pearlyʼs, I should have done so at the very outset. Now it is very likely that I may not have the option. Two persons know that I did it, although they have no evidence, so far as I am aware; a third person more than suspects it, and is seeking about for the evidence. Moreover, Sir Cradock Nowell, to whom, as I told you, I owned my deed, although he could not then understand me, may have done so since, or may hereafter do so, at any lucid interval.”“Oh, father, father, he never would be so mean——”“He is bound by his duty to do it—and for his living sonʼs sake he must. I only tell you these things, my son, to spare you a part of the shock. One month now is all I crave, to do my best for you two darlings. I will not ruin the chance by going again to Sir Cradock. God saved me from my own rash words, doubtless for your pure sake. Now, knowing all, and reflecting upon it, can you call me still your father, Bob?”This was one of the times that tell whether a father has through life thought more of himself or of his children. If of himself, they fall away, like Southern ivies in a storm, parasites which cannot cling, but glide on the marble surface. But if hehas made his future of them, closer they cling, and clasp more firmly, like our British ivy engrailed into the house wall.So the Garnet family clung together, although no longer blossoming, but flagging sorely with blight and canker, and daily fear of the woodman. Bob, of course, avoided Eoa, to her great indignation, though he could not quite make up his mind to tell her that all was over, without showing reason for it. In the forcing temperature of trouble, he was suddenly become a man, growing daily more like his father, in all except the violence. He roamed no more through the wilds of the forest, but let the birds nest comfortably, the butterflies hover in happiness, and the wireworm cast his shard unchallenged. He would care for all those things again, if he ever recovered his comfort.Now Eoa, as everybody knew, did not by any means embody the spirit of toleration. She would hardly allow any will but her own in anything that concerned her. In a word, she was a child, a very warm–hearted and lovely one, but therefore all the more requiring a strong will founded on common sense to lead her into the life–brunt. And so, if she must have Bob some day, she had better have him consolidated, though reduced to three per cent.Not discerning her own interests, she would have been wild as a hare ought to be at the vernal equinox, but for one little fact. There was nobody tobe jealous of. Darling Amy, whom she loved as all young ladies love one another—until they see cause to the contrary—sweet thing, she was gone to Oxford with her dear, good father. They had slipped off without any fuss at all (except from Biddy OʼGaghan, who came and threw an old shoe at them), because Mr. Rosedew, in the first place, felt that he could not bear it, and thought, in the second place, that it would be an uncourteous act towards Sir Cradock Nowell to allow any demonstration. And yet it was notorious that even Job Hogstaff had arranged to totter down on Mark Stoteʼs arm, followed by a dozen tenants (all of whom had leases), and the rank and file of Nowelhurst, who had paid their house–rent; and then there would be a marshalling outside the parsonage–gate; and upon the appearance of the fly, Job with his crutch would testify, whereupon a shout would arise pronouncing everlasting divorce between Church and State in Nowelhurst, undying gratitude to the former, and defiance to the latter power.Yet all this programme was nullified by the departure of John and his household gods at five oʼclock one May morning. Already he had received assurance from some of his ancient co–mates at Oriel (most cohesive of colleges) that they would gladly welcome him, and find him plenty of work to do. In less than six weeks’ time, of course, the long vacation would begin. What of that? Let him come at once, and with his widespreadreputation he must have the pick of all the men who would stay up to read for honours. For now the fruit of a lifetime lore was ripening over his honoured head, not (like that of Tantalus) wafted into the cloud–land, not even waiting to be plucked at, but falling unawares into his broad and simple bosom, where it might lie uncared for, except for the sake of Amy. So large a mind had long outlived the little itch for fame, quite untruly called “the last infirmity of noble minds.” Their first it is, beyond all doubt; and wisely nature orders it. Their last is far more apt to be—at least in this generation—contempt of fame, and man, and God, except for practical purposes.Mr. Rosedewʼs careful treatises upon the Sabellian and Sabello–Oscan elements had stirred up pleasant controversy in the narrow world of scholars; and now at the trito–megistic blow of the Roseo–rorine hammer, ringing upon no less a theme than the tables of Iguvium, the wise men who sit round the board of classical education, even Jupiter Grabovius (the original of John Bull), had clapped their hands and cried, “Hear, hear! He knows what he is talking of; and he is one of us.”That, after all, is the essence of it—to know what one is talking of. And the grand advantage of the ancient universities is, not the tone of manners, not the knowledge of life—rather a hat–box thing with them—not even the high ideal, the manliness, and the chivalry, which the better classof men win; but the curt knowledge, whether or not they are talking of what they know.Scire quod nesciasis taught, if they teach us nothing else. And though we are all still apt to talk, especially among ladies, of things beyond our acquaintance—else haply we talk but little—we do so with a qualm, and quasi, and fluttering sense that effrontery is not—but leads to—”pluck.”Nevertheless, who am I to talk, proving myself, by every word, false to Alma Mater, having ventured all along to talk of things beyond me?As they rose the hill towards Carfax, Amy (tired as she was) trembled with excitement. Her father had won a cure in St. Oles—derived no doubt fromoleo—and all were to lodge in Pembroke Lane, pending mature arrangements. Though they might have turned off near the jail, and saved a little cab fare, John would go by the broader way, as his fashion always was; except in a little posthumous matter, wherein perhaps we have over–defined with brimstone the direction–posts.Be that as it may,—not to press thescire quod nescias(potential in such a case, I hope, rather than conjunctive)—there they must be left, all three, with Jenny and Jemima outside, and Jem Pottles on the pavement, amazed at the cheek of everything. Only let one thing be said. Though prettier girl than Amy Rosedew had never stepped on the stones of Oxford since the time of Amy Robsart, if even then,—never once, was she insulted.Lowest of all low calumnies. There are blackguards among university men, as everybody knows, and as there must be among all men. But even those blackguards can see the difference between a lady, or rather between a pure girl and—another. And even those blackguards have an intensified reverence for the one;—but let the matter pass; for now we hide in gold these subjects, and sham not to see their flaunting.Be it, however, confessed that Amy (whose father soon had rooms in college, not to live, but to lecture in), being a very shy young maiden, never could be brought to come and call him to his tea,—oh no. So many young men in gorgeous trappings, charms, and dangles, and hooks of gold, and eye–glasses very knowing—not to mention volunteer stuff, and knickerbockers demonstrant of calf—oddly enough theywouldhappen to feel so interested in the architecture of the porterʼs lodge whenever Amy came by, never gazing too warmly at her, but contriving to convey their regret at the suppression of their sentiments, and their yearning to be the stones she trod on, and their despair at the possibility of her not caring if they were so—really all this was so trying, that Amy would never go into college without Aunt Doxy before her, gazing four–gunned cupolas even at scouts and manciples. And this was very provoking of her, not only to the hearts that beat under waistcoats ordered for her sake, but also to the domestic kettle a–boil in Pembroke Lane.For, over and over again, Uncle John, great as he was in chronology and every kind of “marmora,” and able to detect a flaw upon Potamogeitonʼs tombstone, lost all sense of time and place,meandte, andhocceand Doxy, and calmly went home some two hours late, and complacently received Doxology.But alas, we must abandon Amy to the insidious designs of Hebdomadal Board, the velvet approaches of Proctor and Pro, and the brass of the gentlemen Bedels, while we regard more rugged scenes, from which she was happily absent.Rufus Hutton had found the missing link, and at the same time the strongest staple, of the desired evidence. The battered gun–barrels had been identified, and even the number deciphered, by the foreman of Messrs. L—— and Co. And the entry in their books of the sale of that very gun (number, gauge, and other particulars beyond all doubt corresponding) was—”to Bull Garnet, &c., Nowelhurst Dell Cottage,” whom also they could identify from his “strongly–marked physiognomy,” and his quick, decisive manner. And the cartridge–case, which had lain so long in Dr. Huttonʼs pocket, of course they could not depose to its sale, together with the gun; but this they could show, that it fitted the gauge, was not at all of a common gauge, but two sizes larger—No. 10, in fact—and must have been sold during the month in which they sold the gun, because it was one of a sample which they had taken uponapproval, and soon discarded for a case of better manufacture.Then as to motive, Rufus Hutton himself could depose to that, or the probability of it, from what he had seen, but not understood, at the fixing of the fireworks; neither had he forgotten the furious mood of Bull Garnet, both then and in his garden.While he was doubting how to act—for, clearly as he knew his power to hang the man who had outraged him, the very fact of his injury made him loth to use that power; for he was not at all a vindictive man, now the heat of the thing was past, and he saw that the sudden attack had been made in self–defence—while he was hesitating between his sense of duty and pity for Cradock on one hand, and his ideas of magnanimity and horror of hanging a man on the other, he was thrown, without any choice or chance, across the track of Simon Chope.Perhaps there is no more vulgar error, no stronger proof of ignorance and slavery to catchwords, than to abuse or think ill of any particular class of men, solely on account of their profession—although, perhaps, we might justly throw theonus probanditheir merit upon hangmen, body–snatchers, informers, and a few others—yet may I think (deprecating most humbly the omen of this conjunction) that solicitors, tailors, and Methodist parsons fight at some disadvantage both in fact and in fiction? Yet can they hold theirown; and sympathy, if owing, is sure to have to pay them—notwithstanding, goose, and amen.Away with all feeble flippancy! Heavy tidings came to Nowelhurst Hall, Dell Cottage, and Geopharmacy Lodge, simultaneously, as might be, on the 20th of June. TheTaprobanehad been lost, with every soul on board; and this is the record of it, enshrined in many journals:—“By recent advices from Capetown, per the screw–steamerSutler, we sincerely regret to learn that the magnificent clipper–built shipTaprobane, of 2200 tons (new system), A 1 at Lloydʼs for 15 years, and bound from the Thames to Colombo, with a cargo valued by competent judges at 120,000l., took the shore in Benguela Bay during a typhoon of unprecedented destructiveness. It is our melancholy duty to add that the entirety of the valuable cargo was entirely lost, although very amply assured in unexceptionable quarters, and that every soul on board was consigned to a watery grave. A Portuguese gentleman of good family and large fortune, who happened to be in the neighbourhood, was an eye–witness to the catastrophe, and made superhuman exertions to rescue the unfortunate mariners, but, alas! in vain. Senhor José de Calcavello has arrived at the conclusion that some of her copper may be saved. The ill–fated bark broke up so rapidly, from the powerful action of the billows, that her identity could only be established from a portion of hersternpost, which was discovered half buried in sand three nautical miles to the southward. We have been informed, upon good authority, although we are not at liberty to mention our source of information, that Her Britannic Majestyʼs steamcorvetteMumbo Jumbo, pierced for twenty–eight guns, and carrying two, is under orders to depart, as soon as ever she can be coaled, for the scene of the recent catastrophe. Meanwhile, the tugGrowlerhas arrived with all the memorials of the calamity, after affording the rites of sepulture to the poor shipwrecked mariners cast up by the treacherous billows. The set of the current being so adverse, we have reason to fear that the rest of the bodies must have fallen a prey to the monsters of the deep. There are said to be some hopes of recovering a portion of the specie.”Mrs. Corklemore happened to be calling at Geopharmacy Lodge, when the London papers arrived in the early afternoon. Rufus begged pardon, and broke the cover, to see something in which he was interested. Presently he cried, “Good God!” and let the paper fall; and, seasoned as he was, and shallowed by the shifting of his life, it was not in his power to keep two little tears from twinkling.“Too late all my work,” he said; “Heaven has settled it without me.”“How very sad!” cried Mrs. Corklemore, dashing aside an unbidden tear, when she cameto the end of the story; “to think of all those brave men lost! And perhaps you knew some of them, Dr. Hutton? Oh, I am so sorry!”“Why, surely you know that theTaprobanewas the ship in which poor Cradock Nowell sailed, under Mr. Rosedewʼs auspices.”“Oh, I hope not. Please not to say so. It would be so very horrible! That he should go without repenting——”“You must have forgotten, Mrs. Corklemore; for I heard Rosa tell you the name of the ship, and her destination.”“Oh, very likely. Ah, now I remember. For the moment it quite escaped me. How truly, truly grieved—it has quite overcome me. Oh, please not to notice me—please not. I am so stupidly soft–hearted. Oh—ea, isha, ea!”No woman in the world could cry more beautifully than poor Georgie. And now she cried her very best. It would have gone to the heart of the driest and bitterest sceptic that ever doubted all men and women because they would doubt him. But Rufus, whose form of self–assertion was not universal negation, in what manner then do you suppose that Rufus Hutton was liquefied? A simple sort of fellow he was (notwithstanding all his shrewdness), although, or perhaps I should say because, he thought himself so knowing; and his observation was more the result of experience than the cause of it. So away he ran to fetch Rosa, andRosa wiped dear, sensitive Georgieʼs eyes, and coaxed her very pleasantly, and admired her more than ever.Bull Garnet rode home at twelve oʼclock from a long morningʼs work. He never could eat any breakfast now, and his manner was to leave home at six (except when he went to Winchester), gallop fiercely from work to work, or sometimes walk his horse and think, often with glistening eyes (when any little thing touched him), and return to his cottage and rest there during the workmenʼs dinner–time. Then he had some sort of a meal himself, which Pearl began to call “dinner,” and away with a fresh horse in half an hour, spending his body if only so he might earn rest of mind. All this was telling upon him fearfully; even his muscular force was going, and his quickness of eye and hand failing him. He knew it, and was glad.Only none should ever say, though every crime was heaped upon him, that he had neglected his masterʼs interests.He tore the paper open in his sudden turbulent fashion, as if all paper was rags, and no more; and with one glance at each column knew all that was in the ‘tween–ways. Suddenly he came to a place at the corner of a page which made him cease from eating. He glanced at Pearl, but she was busy, peeling new potatoes for him. Bob was not come in yet.“Darling, I must go to London. If possible I shall return to–night, if I catch the one oʼclock up express.”Then he opened the window, and ordered a horse, his loud voice ringing and echoing round every corner of the cottage, and in five minutes he was off at full gallop, for the express would not stop at Brockenhurst.At 3.15 he was in London, and at 3.40 in the counting–house of Messrs. Brown and Smithson, owners, or at any rate charterers, of theTaprobane, Striped–ball Chambers, Fenchurch Street. There he would learn, if he could, what their private advices were.The clerks received him very politely, and told him that they had little doubt of the truth of the evil tidings. Of course the fatality might have been considerably exaggerated, &c. &c., but as to the loss of the ship, they had taken measures to replace her. Would he mind waiting only ten minutes, though they saw that he was in a hurry? The Cape mail–ship had been telegraphed from Falmouth; they had sent to the office already, and expected to get the reply within a quarter of an hour. Every information in their power, &c.—we all know the form, though we donʼt always get the civility.Bull Garnet waited heavily with his great back against a stout brass rail, having declined the chair they offered him; and in less than five minutes he received authentic detail of everything. He listenedto nothing except one statement, “every soul on board was lost, sir.”Then he went out, in a lumpish manner, from the noble room, and was glad to get hold of the iron rail in the bend of the dark stone staircase.So now he was a double murderer. Finding it not enough to have killed one brother in his fury, he had slain the other twin through his cowardly concealment. Floating about in tropical slime, without a shark to eat him, leaving behind him the fair repute of a money–grabbing fratricide. And he, the man who had done it all, who had loved the boy and ruined him, miserably plotting for his own far inferior children. No, no! Not that at any rate,—good and noble children: and how they had borne his villainy! God in mercy only make him, try to make him, over again, and how different his life would be. All his better part brought out; all his lower kicked away to the devil, the responsible father of it. “Good God, how my heart goes! Death is upon me, well I know, but let me die with my children by—unless I turn hymn–writer——”Quick as he was in his turns of thought—all of them subjective—he was scarcely a match for the situation, when Mr. Chope and Bailey Kettledrum brushed by the sleeves of his light overcoat, and entered the doors with “push—pull” on them, but, being both of the pushing order rather than the pulling, employed indiscriminate propulsion, and were out of sight in a moment. Still, retaining some little of his circumspective powers, Bull Garnetknew them both from a corner flash of his sad tear–laden eyes. There was no mistaking that great legal head, like the breech–end of a cannon. Mr. Kettledrum might have been overlooked, for little men of a fussy nature are common enough in London, or for that matter everywhere else. But Garnetʼs attention being drawn, he knew them both of course, and the errand they were come upon, and how soon they were likely to return, and what they would think of his being there, if they should happen to see him. Nevertheless, he would not budge. Nothing could matter much now. He must think out his thoughts.When this puff of air was past which many breathe almost long enough to learn that it was “life,” some so long as to weary of it, none so long as to understand all its littleness and greatness—when that should be gone from him, and absorbed into a boundless region even more unknown, would not the wrong go with it, if unexpiated here, and abide there evermore? And not to think of himself alone—what an example now to leave to his innocent injured children! The fury hidden by treachery, the cowardice sheathed in penitence! D——n it all, he would have no more of it. His cursed mind was made up. A man can die in the flesh but once. His spirit had been dying daily, going to the devil daily, every day for months; and he found no place for repentance. As for his children, they must abide it. No man of any mind would blame them for their fatherʼs crime.If it was more than they could bear, let them bolt to America. Anywhither, anywhere, so long as they came home in heaven—if he could only get there—to the father who had injured, ruined, bullied, cursed, and loved them so.After burning out this hell of thought in his miserable brain, he betook himself to natureʼs remedy,—instant, headlong action. He rushed down the stairs, forgetting all about Chope and Bailey Kettledrum, shouted to the driver of a hansom cab so that he sawed his horseʼs mouth raw, leaped in, and gave him half a sovereign through the pigeon–hole, to get to D——ʼs bank before the closing time. But at Temple Bar, of course, there was a regular Chubbʼs lock, after a minor Bramah one at the bottom of Ludgate Hill. Cabby was forced to cut it, and slash up Chancery Lane, and across by Kingʼs College Hospital, and back into the Strand by Wych Street. It is easy to imagine Bull Garnetʼs state of mind; yet the imagination would be that, and nothing more. He sat quite calmly, without a word, knowing that man and horse were doing their utmost of skill and speed, and having dealt enough with both to know that to worry them then is waste.The Bank had been closed, the day–porter said, as he girded himself for his walk to Brixton, exactly—let him see—yes, exactly one minute and thirty–five seconds ago. Most of the gentlemen were still inside, of course, and if the gentlemanʼs business was of a confidential——Here he intimated,not by words, that there were considerations——“Bow Street police–office,” Mr. Garnet cried to the driver, not even glancing again at the disappointed doorkeeper. In five minutes he was there. Man and horse seemed strung and nerved with his own excitement.A stolid policeman stood at the door, as Bull Garnet leaped out anyhow, with his high colour gone away as in death, and his wiry legs cramped with vehemence. Then Bobby saw that he had met his master, the perception being a mental feat far beyond the average leap of police agility. Accordingly he touched his hat, and crinkled his eyes in a manner discovered by policemen, in consequence of the suggestion afforded by the pegging of their hats.“Mr. Bennings gone?” asked Bull Garnet, pushing towards the entrance.“His wusship is gone arf an hour, sir; or may be at most fifty minutes. Can we do anything for you, sir? His wusship always go according to the business as is on.”“Thank you,” replied Mr. Garnet; “that is quite enough. What time do they leave at Marlborough Street?”“According to the business, sir, but gone afore us aʼmost always. We sits as long as anybody, and gets through twice the business. But any message you like to leave, or anything to be entered, I can take the responsibility.”“No. It does not matter. I will only leavemy card. Mr. Bennings knows me. Be kind enough to give him this, when he comes to–morrow morning. Perhaps I may call to–morrow. At present I cannot say.”The policeman lifted his hat again, like a cup taken up from a saucer, and Bull Garnet sat heavily down in the cab, and banged the door–shutters before him. “Strand,” he called out to the driver; “D—— and C——ʼs, the watchmakers.” There he bought a beautiful watch and gold chain for his daughter Pearl, giving a cheque for nearly all his balance at the bankerʼs. The cheque was so large that in common prudence the foreman declined to cash it without some confirmation; but Mr. Garnet gave him a reference, which in ten minutes was established, and in ten more he was off again with his very handsome trinkets, and a large sum in bank–notes and gold, the balance of his draft.“Where now, sir?” shouted the driver, delighted with his fare, and foreseeing another half–sovereign.“I will tell you in thirty seconds.”“Well, if he ainʼt a rum ‘un,” Cabby muttered to himself, while amid volleys of strong language he kept his horse gyrating, like a twin–screw ship trying circles; “but rum customers is our windfalls. Should have thought it a reward case, only for the Bobby. Keep a look–out, anyhow; unless he orders me back to Bedlam.”“Not Bedlam. Waterloo Station, main line!” said Bull Garnet, standing up in front, and lookingat him over the roof. “Five minutes is all I give you, mind.”“What a blessed fool I am,” said the cabman below his breath, but lashing his horse explosively—”to throw away half a sovereign sooner than hold my tongue! He must be the devil himself to have heard me—and as for eyes—good Lord, I shouldnʼt like to drive him much.”“You are wrong,” replied Mr. Garnet through the pigeon–hole, handing him twopence for the tollman; “I am not the devil, sir; as you may some day know. Have no fear of ever driving me again. You shall have your half–sovereign when I have got my ticket. Follow me in, and you shall know for what place I take it.”The cabman was too dumb–foundered to do anything but resolve that he would go straight home when he got his money, and tell his old woman about it. Then he applied himself to the whip in earnest, for he could not too soon be rid of this job; and so Bull Garnet won his train, and gave the driver the other half–sovereign, with a peculiar nod, having noticed that he feared to approach while the ticket was applied for.Bull Garnet took a second–class ticket. His extravagance towards the cabman was the last he would ever exhibit. He felt a call upon him now to save for his family every farthing. All was lost to them but money, and alas, too much of that. Now if he cut his throat in the train, could he be attainted of felony? And would God be any theharder on him? No, he did not think He would. It might be some sort of atonement even. But then the shock to Pearl and Bob, to see him brought home with his head hanging back, and hopeless red stitches under it. It would make the poor girl a maniac, after all the shocks and anguish he had benumbed her with already. What a fool he had been not to buy strychnine, prussic acid, or laudanum! And yet—and yet—and yet——He would like to see them just once more—blessed hearts—once more.He sat in the last compartment of the last carriage in the train, which had been added, in a hurry, immediately behind the break van, and the swinging and the jerking very soon became tremendous. He knew not, neither cared to know, that Simon Chope and Bailey Kettledrum were in a first–class carriage near the centre of the train. Presently the violent motion began to tell upon him, and he felt a heavy dullness creeping over his excited mind; and all the senses, which had been during several hours of tension as prompt and acute as ever they were in his prime of power, began to flag, and daze, and wane, and he fell into a waking dream, a “second person” of sorrow. But first—whether for suicide, or for self–defence, he had tried both doors and found them locked; and he was far too large a man to force his way through the window.He dreamed, with a loose sense of identity, about the innocent childhood, the boyhoodʼs aspiration,the young manʼs sense of ability endorsing the right to aspire. Even his bodily power and vigour revived in the dream before him, and he knitted his muscles, and clenched his fists, and was ready to fight fools and liars. Who had fought more hard and hotly against the hard cold ways of the age, the despite done to the poor and lowly, the sarcasm bred by self–conscious serfdom in clever men of the world, the preference of gold to love, and of position to happiness? All the weak gregarious tricks, shifts of coat, and pupa–ism, whereby we noble Christians reduce our social history to a passage in entomology, and quench the faith of thinking men in Him whose name we take in vain—the great Originator—all these feminine contradictions, and fond things foully invented, fables Atellan (if they be not actually Fescennine) had roused the combatism of young Bull, ere he learned his own disgrace.And when he learned it, such as it was—a proof by its false incidence how infantile our civilization is—all his motherʼs bitter wrong, her lifelong sense of shame and crushing (because she had trusted a liar, and the hollow elder–stick “institution” was held up against her, and none would take her part without money, even if she had wished it), then he had chosen his motherʼs course, inheriting her strong nature, let the shame lie where it fell by right and not by rule, and carried all his energies into Neo–Christian largeness.All that time of angry trial now had passedbefore him, and the five years of his married life (which had not been very happy, for his wife never understood him, but met his quick moodiness with soft sulks); and then in his dream–review he smiled, as his children began to toddle about, and sit on his knees, and look at him.Once he awoke, and gazed about him. The train had stopped at Winchester. He was all alone in the carriage still, and all his cash was safe. He had stowed it away very carefully in a hidden pocket. To his languid surprise, he fell back on the seat. How unlike himself, to be sure; and with so much yet to do! He strove to arise and rouse himself. He felt for the little flask of wine, which Pearl had thrust into his pocket, but he could not pull it out and drink; such a languor lay upon him. He had felt it before, but never before been so overcome by it. Once or twice, an hour or so before the sun came back again, this strange cold deadness (like a mammoth nightmare frozen) had lain on him, in his lonely bed, and then he knew what death was, and only came back to life again through cold sweat and long fainting.He had never consulted any doctor about the meaning of this. With his bold way of thinking, and judging only by his own experience and feeling, he had long ago decided that all medical men were quacks. What one disorder could they cure? All they had learned, and that by a fluke, was a way to anticipateone: and even that way seemed worn out now.Now he fell away, and feared, and tried to squeeze his breast, and tried to pray to God; but no words came, nor any thoughts, only sense of dying, and horror at having prayed for it. A coldness fell upon his heart, and on his brain an ignorance; he was falling into a great blank depth, and nothing belonged to him any more—only utter, utter loss, and not a dream of God.Happy and religious folk, who have only died in theory, contemplating distant death, knowing him only as opportune among kinsfolk owning Consols, these may hope for a Prayer–book end, sacrament administered, weeping friends, the heavenward soul glad to fly through the golden door,animula,vagula,blandula, yet assured of its reception with a heavenly smile of foretaste—this may be; no doubt it may be, after the life of a Christian Bayard; though it need not always be, even then. All we who from our age know death, and have taken little trips into him, through fits, paralysis, or such–like, are quite aware that he has at first call as much variety as life has. But the death of the violent man is not likely to be placid, unless it come unawares, or has been graduated through years of remorse, and weakness, weariness, and repentance.Then he tried to rise, and fought once more, with agony inconceivable, against the heavy yet hollow numbness in the hold of his deep, wide chest, against the dark, cold stealth of death, and the black, narrow depth of the grave.The train ran lightly and merrily into Brockenhurst Station, while the midsummer twilight floated like universal gossamer. In the yard stood the Kettledrum “rattletrap,” and the owner was right glad to see it. In his eyes it was worth a dozen of the lord mayorʼs coach.“None of the children come, dear?” asked Bailey, having kissed his wife, as behoves a man from London.“No, darling, not one. That——” here she used an adjective which sounded too much like “odious” for me to trust my senses—”Georgie would not allow them. Now, darling, did you do exactly what I told you?”“Yes, darling Anna, I did the best I could. I had a basin of mulligatawny at Waterloo going up, and one of mock–turtle coming back, and at Basingstoke ham–sandwiches, a glass of cold cognac and water, and some lemon–chips. Since that, nothing at all, because there has been no time.”“You are a dear,” said Mrs. Kettledrum, “to do exactly as I told you. Now come round the corner a moment, and take two glasses of sherry; I can see quite well to pour it out. I am so glad of her new crinoline. She wonʼt get out. Donʼt be afraid, dear.”Oh, Georgie, Georgie! To think that her own sister should be so low, so unfeeling, and treacherous! Mr. Kettledrum smacked his lips, for the sake of euphony, after the second glass of sherry; but his wife would not give him any more,for fear of spoiling his supper. Then they came back, and both got in, and squeezed themselves up together in the front seat of the old carriage, for Mrs. Corklemore occupied the whole of the seat of honour.“You are very polite, to keep me so long. Innocent turtles; sweet childish anxiety! The last survivor of a wrecked train! So you took advantage, Anna dear, of my not being dressed quite so vulgarly as you are, to discuss this little matter with him, keeping me in ignorance.”The carriage was off by this time, and open as it was, they had no fear of old coachey hearing, for it took a loud hail to reach him.“Take the honour of a Kettledrum,” cried Bailey, smiting his bosom, “that the subject has not even been broached between my wiser part and myself. Ladies, in this pure aerial—no, I mean ethereal—air, with the shades of night around us, and the breezes wafting, would an exceedingly choice and delicately aromatic cigar——”“Oh, I should so like it, Bailey; and perhaps we shall have the nightingales.”“I fear we must not think of it,” interposed Mrs. Corklemore, gently; “my dress is of a fabric quite newly introduced, very beautiful, but (like myself) too retentive of impressions. If Mr. Kettledrum smokes, I shall have to throw it away.”“There goes the cigar instead,” cried Bailey;“the paramount rights of ladies ever have been, and ever shall be, sacred with Bailey Kettledrum.”But Mrs. Kettledrum was so vexed that she jumped up, as if to watch the cigar spinning into the darkness, and contrived with sisterly accuracy to throw all her weight upon a certain portion of a certain lovely foot, whereupon there ensued the neatest little passes, into which we need not enter. Enough that Mrs. Corklemore, having higher intellectual gifts, “won,” in the language of the ring, “both events”—first tear, and first hysterical symptom.“Come,” cried Mr. Kettledrum, at the very first opportunity, to wit, when both were crying; “we all know what sisters are: how they mingle the—the sweetness of their affection with a certain—ah, yes—a piquancy of expression, most pleasant, most improving, because so highly conducive to self–examination!” Here he stood up, having made a hit, worthy of the House of Commons. “All these little breezes, ladies, may be called the trade–winds of affection. They blow from pole to pole.”“The trade–winds never do that,” said Georgie.“They pass us by as the idle wind, when the clouds are like a whale, ladies, having overcome us for a moment, like a summer dream. Hark to that thrush, sitting perhaps on his eggs”—”Oh, Oh!” from the gallery of nature—”can there be,I pause for a reply, anything but harmony, where the voices of the night pervade, and the music of the spheres?”“You—you do speak so splendidly, dear,” sobbed Mrs. Kettledrum from the corner; “but it is a nasty, wicked, cruel story, about dear papa saying that of me, and he in his grave, poor dear, quite unable to vindicate himself. I have always thought it so unchristian to malign the dead!”“Whatʼs that?” cried Georgie, starting up, in fear and hot earnest; “you are chattering so, you hear nothing.”A horse dashed by them at full gallop, with his rider on his neck, shouting and yelling, and clinging and lashing.“Missed the wheel by an inch,” cried Kettledrum, drawing his head in faster than he had thrust it out; “a fire, man, or a French invasion?” But the man was out of hearing, while the Kettledrum horses, scared, and jumping as from an equine thunderbolt, tried the strength of leather and the courage of ladies.Meanwhile at the station behind them there was a sad ado. A man was lifted out of the train, being found in the last compartment by the guard who knew his destination—a big man, and a heavy one; and they bore him to the wretched shed which served there as a waiting–room.“Dead, I believe,” said the guard, having sent a boy for brandy, “dead as a door–nail, whoever he be.”“Not thee knaw whohebe?” cried a forester, coming in. “Whoy, marn, there be no mistakinghe. He be our Muster Garnet.”“Whew!” And the train whistled on, as it must do, whether we live or die, or when Cyclops has made mince of us.

That night the man of violence enjoyed the first sweet dreamless sleep that had spread its velvet shield between him and his guilt and sorrow. Pearl, who had sat up late with Bob, comforting and crying with him, listened at her fatherʼs door, and heard his quiet breathing. Through many months of trouble, now, she had watched him kindly, tenderly, fearing ever some wild outbreak upon others or himself, hiding in her empty heart all its desolation.

The very next day, Bull Garnet resolved to have it out with his son; not to surprise him by emotion to a hasty issue, but now to learn what he thought and felt, after taking his time about it. All this we need not try to tell, only so much as bears upon the staple of the story.

“Father, I know that you had—you had good reason for doing it.”

“There could be no good reason. There mightbe, and were, many bad ones. Of this I will not speak to you. I did it in violence and fury, and under a false impression. When I saw him, with his arm cast round my pure and darling Pearl, Satanʼs rage is but a smile compared to the fury of my heart. He had his gun, and I had mine; I had taken it to shoot a squirrel which meddled with our firework nonsense. I tore her from him before I could speak, thrust her aside, stepped back two paces, gave him ‘one, two, three,’ and fired. He had time to fire in self–defence, and his muzzle was at my head, and his finger on the trigger; but there it crooked, and he could not pull. Want of nerve, I suppose. I saw his finger shaking, and then I saw him fall. Now, my son, you know everything.”

“Why, father, after all then, it was nothing worse than a duel. He had just the same chance of killing you, and would have done it, only you were too quick for him.”

“Even to retain your love, I will have no lie in the matter, Bob, although a duel, in my opinion, is only murder made game of. But this was no duel, no manslaughter even, but an act of downright murder. No English jury could help convicting me, and I will never plead insanity. It was the inevitable result of inborn violence and self–will, growing and growing from year to year, and strengthened by wrongs of which you know nothing. God knows that I have fought against it; but my weapon was pride, not humility. Nowlet this miserable subject never be recurred to by us, at least in words, till the end comes. As soon as I hear that poor innocent Cradock is apprehended, and brought to England, I shall surrender myself and confess. But for your sake and poor Pearlyʼs, I should have done so at the very outset. Now it is very likely that I may not have the option. Two persons know that I did it, although they have no evidence, so far as I am aware; a third person more than suspects it, and is seeking about for the evidence. Moreover, Sir Cradock Nowell, to whom, as I told you, I owned my deed, although he could not then understand me, may have done so since, or may hereafter do so, at any lucid interval.”

“Oh, father, father, he never would be so mean——”

“He is bound by his duty to do it—and for his living sonʼs sake he must. I only tell you these things, my son, to spare you a part of the shock. One month now is all I crave, to do my best for you two darlings. I will not ruin the chance by going again to Sir Cradock. God saved me from my own rash words, doubtless for your pure sake. Now, knowing all, and reflecting upon it, can you call me still your father, Bob?”

This was one of the times that tell whether a father has through life thought more of himself or of his children. If of himself, they fall away, like Southern ivies in a storm, parasites which cannot cling, but glide on the marble surface. But if hehas made his future of them, closer they cling, and clasp more firmly, like our British ivy engrailed into the house wall.

So the Garnet family clung together, although no longer blossoming, but flagging sorely with blight and canker, and daily fear of the woodman. Bob, of course, avoided Eoa, to her great indignation, though he could not quite make up his mind to tell her that all was over, without showing reason for it. In the forcing temperature of trouble, he was suddenly become a man, growing daily more like his father, in all except the violence. He roamed no more through the wilds of the forest, but let the birds nest comfortably, the butterflies hover in happiness, and the wireworm cast his shard unchallenged. He would care for all those things again, if he ever recovered his comfort.

Now Eoa, as everybody knew, did not by any means embody the spirit of toleration. She would hardly allow any will but her own in anything that concerned her. In a word, she was a child, a very warm–hearted and lovely one, but therefore all the more requiring a strong will founded on common sense to lead her into the life–brunt. And so, if she must have Bob some day, she had better have him consolidated, though reduced to three per cent.

Not discerning her own interests, she would have been wild as a hare ought to be at the vernal equinox, but for one little fact. There was nobody tobe jealous of. Darling Amy, whom she loved as all young ladies love one another—until they see cause to the contrary—sweet thing, she was gone to Oxford with her dear, good father. They had slipped off without any fuss at all (except from Biddy OʼGaghan, who came and threw an old shoe at them), because Mr. Rosedew, in the first place, felt that he could not bear it, and thought, in the second place, that it would be an uncourteous act towards Sir Cradock Nowell to allow any demonstration. And yet it was notorious that even Job Hogstaff had arranged to totter down on Mark Stoteʼs arm, followed by a dozen tenants (all of whom had leases), and the rank and file of Nowelhurst, who had paid their house–rent; and then there would be a marshalling outside the parsonage–gate; and upon the appearance of the fly, Job with his crutch would testify, whereupon a shout would arise pronouncing everlasting divorce between Church and State in Nowelhurst, undying gratitude to the former, and defiance to the latter power.

Yet all this programme was nullified by the departure of John and his household gods at five oʼclock one May morning. Already he had received assurance from some of his ancient co–mates at Oriel (most cohesive of colleges) that they would gladly welcome him, and find him plenty of work to do. In less than six weeks’ time, of course, the long vacation would begin. What of that? Let him come at once, and with his widespreadreputation he must have the pick of all the men who would stay up to read for honours. For now the fruit of a lifetime lore was ripening over his honoured head, not (like that of Tantalus) wafted into the cloud–land, not even waiting to be plucked at, but falling unawares into his broad and simple bosom, where it might lie uncared for, except for the sake of Amy. So large a mind had long outlived the little itch for fame, quite untruly called “the last infirmity of noble minds.” Their first it is, beyond all doubt; and wisely nature orders it. Their last is far more apt to be—at least in this generation—contempt of fame, and man, and God, except for practical purposes.

Mr. Rosedewʼs careful treatises upon the Sabellian and Sabello–Oscan elements had stirred up pleasant controversy in the narrow world of scholars; and now at the trito–megistic blow of the Roseo–rorine hammer, ringing upon no less a theme than the tables of Iguvium, the wise men who sit round the board of classical education, even Jupiter Grabovius (the original of John Bull), had clapped their hands and cried, “Hear, hear! He knows what he is talking of; and he is one of us.”

That, after all, is the essence of it—to know what one is talking of. And the grand advantage of the ancient universities is, not the tone of manners, not the knowledge of life—rather a hat–box thing with them—not even the high ideal, the manliness, and the chivalry, which the better classof men win; but the curt knowledge, whether or not they are talking of what they know.Scire quod nesciasis taught, if they teach us nothing else. And though we are all still apt to talk, especially among ladies, of things beyond our acquaintance—else haply we talk but little—we do so with a qualm, and quasi, and fluttering sense that effrontery is not—but leads to—”pluck.”

Nevertheless, who am I to talk, proving myself, by every word, false to Alma Mater, having ventured all along to talk of things beyond me?

As they rose the hill towards Carfax, Amy (tired as she was) trembled with excitement. Her father had won a cure in St. Oles—derived no doubt fromoleo—and all were to lodge in Pembroke Lane, pending mature arrangements. Though they might have turned off near the jail, and saved a little cab fare, John would go by the broader way, as his fashion always was; except in a little posthumous matter, wherein perhaps we have over–defined with brimstone the direction–posts.

Be that as it may,—not to press thescire quod nescias(potential in such a case, I hope, rather than conjunctive)—there they must be left, all three, with Jenny and Jemima outside, and Jem Pottles on the pavement, amazed at the cheek of everything. Only let one thing be said. Though prettier girl than Amy Rosedew had never stepped on the stones of Oxford since the time of Amy Robsart, if even then,—never once, was she insulted.

Lowest of all low calumnies. There are blackguards among university men, as everybody knows, and as there must be among all men. But even those blackguards can see the difference between a lady, or rather between a pure girl and—another. And even those blackguards have an intensified reverence for the one;—but let the matter pass; for now we hide in gold these subjects, and sham not to see their flaunting.

Be it, however, confessed that Amy (whose father soon had rooms in college, not to live, but to lecture in), being a very shy young maiden, never could be brought to come and call him to his tea,—oh no. So many young men in gorgeous trappings, charms, and dangles, and hooks of gold, and eye–glasses very knowing—not to mention volunteer stuff, and knickerbockers demonstrant of calf—oddly enough theywouldhappen to feel so interested in the architecture of the porterʼs lodge whenever Amy came by, never gazing too warmly at her, but contriving to convey their regret at the suppression of their sentiments, and their yearning to be the stones she trod on, and their despair at the possibility of her not caring if they were so—really all this was so trying, that Amy would never go into college without Aunt Doxy before her, gazing four–gunned cupolas even at scouts and manciples. And this was very provoking of her, not only to the hearts that beat under waistcoats ordered for her sake, but also to the domestic kettle a–boil in Pembroke Lane.For, over and over again, Uncle John, great as he was in chronology and every kind of “marmora,” and able to detect a flaw upon Potamogeitonʼs tombstone, lost all sense of time and place,meandte, andhocceand Doxy, and calmly went home some two hours late, and complacently received Doxology.

But alas, we must abandon Amy to the insidious designs of Hebdomadal Board, the velvet approaches of Proctor and Pro, and the brass of the gentlemen Bedels, while we regard more rugged scenes, from which she was happily absent.

Rufus Hutton had found the missing link, and at the same time the strongest staple, of the desired evidence. The battered gun–barrels had been identified, and even the number deciphered, by the foreman of Messrs. L—— and Co. And the entry in their books of the sale of that very gun (number, gauge, and other particulars beyond all doubt corresponding) was—”to Bull Garnet, &c., Nowelhurst Dell Cottage,” whom also they could identify from his “strongly–marked physiognomy,” and his quick, decisive manner. And the cartridge–case, which had lain so long in Dr. Huttonʼs pocket, of course they could not depose to its sale, together with the gun; but this they could show, that it fitted the gauge, was not at all of a common gauge, but two sizes larger—No. 10, in fact—and must have been sold during the month in which they sold the gun, because it was one of a sample which they had taken uponapproval, and soon discarded for a case of better manufacture.

Then as to motive, Rufus Hutton himself could depose to that, or the probability of it, from what he had seen, but not understood, at the fixing of the fireworks; neither had he forgotten the furious mood of Bull Garnet, both then and in his garden.

While he was doubting how to act—for, clearly as he knew his power to hang the man who had outraged him, the very fact of his injury made him loth to use that power; for he was not at all a vindictive man, now the heat of the thing was past, and he saw that the sudden attack had been made in self–defence—while he was hesitating between his sense of duty and pity for Cradock on one hand, and his ideas of magnanimity and horror of hanging a man on the other, he was thrown, without any choice or chance, across the track of Simon Chope.

Perhaps there is no more vulgar error, no stronger proof of ignorance and slavery to catchwords, than to abuse or think ill of any particular class of men, solely on account of their profession—although, perhaps, we might justly throw theonus probanditheir merit upon hangmen, body–snatchers, informers, and a few others—yet may I think (deprecating most humbly the omen of this conjunction) that solicitors, tailors, and Methodist parsons fight at some disadvantage both in fact and in fiction? Yet can they hold theirown; and sympathy, if owing, is sure to have to pay them—notwithstanding, goose, and amen.

Away with all feeble flippancy! Heavy tidings came to Nowelhurst Hall, Dell Cottage, and Geopharmacy Lodge, simultaneously, as might be, on the 20th of June. TheTaprobanehad been lost, with every soul on board; and this is the record of it, enshrined in many journals:—

“By recent advices from Capetown, per the screw–steamerSutler, we sincerely regret to learn that the magnificent clipper–built shipTaprobane, of 2200 tons (new system), A 1 at Lloydʼs for 15 years, and bound from the Thames to Colombo, with a cargo valued by competent judges at 120,000l., took the shore in Benguela Bay during a typhoon of unprecedented destructiveness. It is our melancholy duty to add that the entirety of the valuable cargo was entirely lost, although very amply assured in unexceptionable quarters, and that every soul on board was consigned to a watery grave. A Portuguese gentleman of good family and large fortune, who happened to be in the neighbourhood, was an eye–witness to the catastrophe, and made superhuman exertions to rescue the unfortunate mariners, but, alas! in vain. Senhor José de Calcavello has arrived at the conclusion that some of her copper may be saved. The ill–fated bark broke up so rapidly, from the powerful action of the billows, that her identity could only be established from a portion of hersternpost, which was discovered half buried in sand three nautical miles to the southward. We have been informed, upon good authority, although we are not at liberty to mention our source of information, that Her Britannic Majestyʼs steamcorvetteMumbo Jumbo, pierced for twenty–eight guns, and carrying two, is under orders to depart, as soon as ever she can be coaled, for the scene of the recent catastrophe. Meanwhile, the tugGrowlerhas arrived with all the memorials of the calamity, after affording the rites of sepulture to the poor shipwrecked mariners cast up by the treacherous billows. The set of the current being so adverse, we have reason to fear that the rest of the bodies must have fallen a prey to the monsters of the deep. There are said to be some hopes of recovering a portion of the specie.”

Mrs. Corklemore happened to be calling at Geopharmacy Lodge, when the London papers arrived in the early afternoon. Rufus begged pardon, and broke the cover, to see something in which he was interested. Presently he cried, “Good God!” and let the paper fall; and, seasoned as he was, and shallowed by the shifting of his life, it was not in his power to keep two little tears from twinkling.

“Too late all my work,” he said; “Heaven has settled it without me.”

“How very sad!” cried Mrs. Corklemore, dashing aside an unbidden tear, when she cameto the end of the story; “to think of all those brave men lost! And perhaps you knew some of them, Dr. Hutton? Oh, I am so sorry!”

“Why, surely you know that theTaprobanewas the ship in which poor Cradock Nowell sailed, under Mr. Rosedewʼs auspices.”

“Oh, I hope not. Please not to say so. It would be so very horrible! That he should go without repenting——”

“You must have forgotten, Mrs. Corklemore; for I heard Rosa tell you the name of the ship, and her destination.”

“Oh, very likely. Ah, now I remember. For the moment it quite escaped me. How truly, truly grieved—it has quite overcome me. Oh, please not to notice me—please not. I am so stupidly soft–hearted. Oh—ea, isha, ea!”

No woman in the world could cry more beautifully than poor Georgie. And now she cried her very best. It would have gone to the heart of the driest and bitterest sceptic that ever doubted all men and women because they would doubt him. But Rufus, whose form of self–assertion was not universal negation, in what manner then do you suppose that Rufus Hutton was liquefied? A simple sort of fellow he was (notwithstanding all his shrewdness), although, or perhaps I should say because, he thought himself so knowing; and his observation was more the result of experience than the cause of it. So away he ran to fetch Rosa, andRosa wiped dear, sensitive Georgieʼs eyes, and coaxed her very pleasantly, and admired her more than ever.

Bull Garnet rode home at twelve oʼclock from a long morningʼs work. He never could eat any breakfast now, and his manner was to leave home at six (except when he went to Winchester), gallop fiercely from work to work, or sometimes walk his horse and think, often with glistening eyes (when any little thing touched him), and return to his cottage and rest there during the workmenʼs dinner–time. Then he had some sort of a meal himself, which Pearl began to call “dinner,” and away with a fresh horse in half an hour, spending his body if only so he might earn rest of mind. All this was telling upon him fearfully; even his muscular force was going, and his quickness of eye and hand failing him. He knew it, and was glad.

Only none should ever say, though every crime was heaped upon him, that he had neglected his masterʼs interests.

He tore the paper open in his sudden turbulent fashion, as if all paper was rags, and no more; and with one glance at each column knew all that was in the ‘tween–ways. Suddenly he came to a place at the corner of a page which made him cease from eating. He glanced at Pearl, but she was busy, peeling new potatoes for him. Bob was not come in yet.

“Darling, I must go to London. If possible I shall return to–night, if I catch the one oʼclock up express.”

Then he opened the window, and ordered a horse, his loud voice ringing and echoing round every corner of the cottage, and in five minutes he was off at full gallop, for the express would not stop at Brockenhurst.

At 3.15 he was in London, and at 3.40 in the counting–house of Messrs. Brown and Smithson, owners, or at any rate charterers, of theTaprobane, Striped–ball Chambers, Fenchurch Street. There he would learn, if he could, what their private advices were.

The clerks received him very politely, and told him that they had little doubt of the truth of the evil tidings. Of course the fatality might have been considerably exaggerated, &c. &c., but as to the loss of the ship, they had taken measures to replace her. Would he mind waiting only ten minutes, though they saw that he was in a hurry? The Cape mail–ship had been telegraphed from Falmouth; they had sent to the office already, and expected to get the reply within a quarter of an hour. Every information in their power, &c.—we all know the form, though we donʼt always get the civility.

Bull Garnet waited heavily with his great back against a stout brass rail, having declined the chair they offered him; and in less than five minutes he received authentic detail of everything. He listenedto nothing except one statement, “every soul on board was lost, sir.”

Then he went out, in a lumpish manner, from the noble room, and was glad to get hold of the iron rail in the bend of the dark stone staircase.

So now he was a double murderer. Finding it not enough to have killed one brother in his fury, he had slain the other twin through his cowardly concealment. Floating about in tropical slime, without a shark to eat him, leaving behind him the fair repute of a money–grabbing fratricide. And he, the man who had done it all, who had loved the boy and ruined him, miserably plotting for his own far inferior children. No, no! Not that at any rate,—good and noble children: and how they had borne his villainy! God in mercy only make him, try to make him, over again, and how different his life would be. All his better part brought out; all his lower kicked away to the devil, the responsible father of it. “Good God, how my heart goes! Death is upon me, well I know, but let me die with my children by—unless I turn hymn–writer——”

Quick as he was in his turns of thought—all of them subjective—he was scarcely a match for the situation, when Mr. Chope and Bailey Kettledrum brushed by the sleeves of his light overcoat, and entered the doors with “push—pull” on them, but, being both of the pushing order rather than the pulling, employed indiscriminate propulsion, and were out of sight in a moment. Still, retaining some little of his circumspective powers, Bull Garnetknew them both from a corner flash of his sad tear–laden eyes. There was no mistaking that great legal head, like the breech–end of a cannon. Mr. Kettledrum might have been overlooked, for little men of a fussy nature are common enough in London, or for that matter everywhere else. But Garnetʼs attention being drawn, he knew them both of course, and the errand they were come upon, and how soon they were likely to return, and what they would think of his being there, if they should happen to see him. Nevertheless, he would not budge. Nothing could matter much now. He must think out his thoughts.

When this puff of air was past which many breathe almost long enough to learn that it was “life,” some so long as to weary of it, none so long as to understand all its littleness and greatness—when that should be gone from him, and absorbed into a boundless region even more unknown, would not the wrong go with it, if unexpiated here, and abide there evermore? And not to think of himself alone—what an example now to leave to his innocent injured children! The fury hidden by treachery, the cowardice sheathed in penitence! D——n it all, he would have no more of it. His cursed mind was made up. A man can die in the flesh but once. His spirit had been dying daily, going to the devil daily, every day for months; and he found no place for repentance. As for his children, they must abide it. No man of any mind would blame them for their fatherʼs crime.If it was more than they could bear, let them bolt to America. Anywhither, anywhere, so long as they came home in heaven—if he could only get there—to the father who had injured, ruined, bullied, cursed, and loved them so.

After burning out this hell of thought in his miserable brain, he betook himself to natureʼs remedy,—instant, headlong action. He rushed down the stairs, forgetting all about Chope and Bailey Kettledrum, shouted to the driver of a hansom cab so that he sawed his horseʼs mouth raw, leaped in, and gave him half a sovereign through the pigeon–hole, to get to D——ʼs bank before the closing time. But at Temple Bar, of course, there was a regular Chubbʼs lock, after a minor Bramah one at the bottom of Ludgate Hill. Cabby was forced to cut it, and slash up Chancery Lane, and across by Kingʼs College Hospital, and back into the Strand by Wych Street. It is easy to imagine Bull Garnetʼs state of mind; yet the imagination would be that, and nothing more. He sat quite calmly, without a word, knowing that man and horse were doing their utmost of skill and speed, and having dealt enough with both to know that to worry them then is waste.

The Bank had been closed, the day–porter said, as he girded himself for his walk to Brixton, exactly—let him see—yes, exactly one minute and thirty–five seconds ago. Most of the gentlemen were still inside, of course, and if the gentlemanʼs business was of a confidential——Here he intimated,not by words, that there were considerations——

“Bow Street police–office,” Mr. Garnet cried to the driver, not even glancing again at the disappointed doorkeeper. In five minutes he was there. Man and horse seemed strung and nerved with his own excitement.

A stolid policeman stood at the door, as Bull Garnet leaped out anyhow, with his high colour gone away as in death, and his wiry legs cramped with vehemence. Then Bobby saw that he had met his master, the perception being a mental feat far beyond the average leap of police agility. Accordingly he touched his hat, and crinkled his eyes in a manner discovered by policemen, in consequence of the suggestion afforded by the pegging of their hats.

“Mr. Bennings gone?” asked Bull Garnet, pushing towards the entrance.

“His wusship is gone arf an hour, sir; or may be at most fifty minutes. Can we do anything for you, sir? His wusship always go according to the business as is on.”

“Thank you,” replied Mr. Garnet; “that is quite enough. What time do they leave at Marlborough Street?”

“According to the business, sir, but gone afore us aʼmost always. We sits as long as anybody, and gets through twice the business. But any message you like to leave, or anything to be entered, I can take the responsibility.”

“No. It does not matter. I will only leavemy card. Mr. Bennings knows me. Be kind enough to give him this, when he comes to–morrow morning. Perhaps I may call to–morrow. At present I cannot say.”

The policeman lifted his hat again, like a cup taken up from a saucer, and Bull Garnet sat heavily down in the cab, and banged the door–shutters before him. “Strand,” he called out to the driver; “D—— and C——ʼs, the watchmakers.” There he bought a beautiful watch and gold chain for his daughter Pearl, giving a cheque for nearly all his balance at the bankerʼs. The cheque was so large that in common prudence the foreman declined to cash it without some confirmation; but Mr. Garnet gave him a reference, which in ten minutes was established, and in ten more he was off again with his very handsome trinkets, and a large sum in bank–notes and gold, the balance of his draft.

“Where now, sir?” shouted the driver, delighted with his fare, and foreseeing another half–sovereign.

“I will tell you in thirty seconds.”

“Well, if he ainʼt a rum ‘un,” Cabby muttered to himself, while amid volleys of strong language he kept his horse gyrating, like a twin–screw ship trying circles; “but rum customers is our windfalls. Should have thought it a reward case, only for the Bobby. Keep a look–out, anyhow; unless he orders me back to Bedlam.”

“Not Bedlam. Waterloo Station, main line!” said Bull Garnet, standing up in front, and lookingat him over the roof. “Five minutes is all I give you, mind.”

“What a blessed fool I am,” said the cabman below his breath, but lashing his horse explosively—”to throw away half a sovereign sooner than hold my tongue! He must be the devil himself to have heard me—and as for eyes—good Lord, I shouldnʼt like to drive him much.”

“You are wrong,” replied Mr. Garnet through the pigeon–hole, handing him twopence for the tollman; “I am not the devil, sir; as you may some day know. Have no fear of ever driving me again. You shall have your half–sovereign when I have got my ticket. Follow me in, and you shall know for what place I take it.”

The cabman was too dumb–foundered to do anything but resolve that he would go straight home when he got his money, and tell his old woman about it. Then he applied himself to the whip in earnest, for he could not too soon be rid of this job; and so Bull Garnet won his train, and gave the driver the other half–sovereign, with a peculiar nod, having noticed that he feared to approach while the ticket was applied for.

Bull Garnet took a second–class ticket. His extravagance towards the cabman was the last he would ever exhibit. He felt a call upon him now to save for his family every farthing. All was lost to them but money, and alas, too much of that. Now if he cut his throat in the train, could he be attainted of felony? And would God be any theharder on him? No, he did not think He would. It might be some sort of atonement even. But then the shock to Pearl and Bob, to see him brought home with his head hanging back, and hopeless red stitches under it. It would make the poor girl a maniac, after all the shocks and anguish he had benumbed her with already. What a fool he had been not to buy strychnine, prussic acid, or laudanum! And yet—and yet—and yet——He would like to see them just once more—blessed hearts—once more.

He sat in the last compartment of the last carriage in the train, which had been added, in a hurry, immediately behind the break van, and the swinging and the jerking very soon became tremendous. He knew not, neither cared to know, that Simon Chope and Bailey Kettledrum were in a first–class carriage near the centre of the train. Presently the violent motion began to tell upon him, and he felt a heavy dullness creeping over his excited mind; and all the senses, which had been during several hours of tension as prompt and acute as ever they were in his prime of power, began to flag, and daze, and wane, and he fell into a waking dream, a “second person” of sorrow. But first—whether for suicide, or for self–defence, he had tried both doors and found them locked; and he was far too large a man to force his way through the window.

He dreamed, with a loose sense of identity, about the innocent childhood, the boyhoodʼs aspiration,the young manʼs sense of ability endorsing the right to aspire. Even his bodily power and vigour revived in the dream before him, and he knitted his muscles, and clenched his fists, and was ready to fight fools and liars. Who had fought more hard and hotly against the hard cold ways of the age, the despite done to the poor and lowly, the sarcasm bred by self–conscious serfdom in clever men of the world, the preference of gold to love, and of position to happiness? All the weak gregarious tricks, shifts of coat, and pupa–ism, whereby we noble Christians reduce our social history to a passage in entomology, and quench the faith of thinking men in Him whose name we take in vain—the great Originator—all these feminine contradictions, and fond things foully invented, fables Atellan (if they be not actually Fescennine) had roused the combatism of young Bull, ere he learned his own disgrace.

And when he learned it, such as it was—a proof by its false incidence how infantile our civilization is—all his motherʼs bitter wrong, her lifelong sense of shame and crushing (because she had trusted a liar, and the hollow elder–stick “institution” was held up against her, and none would take her part without money, even if she had wished it), then he had chosen his motherʼs course, inheriting her strong nature, let the shame lie where it fell by right and not by rule, and carried all his energies into Neo–Christian largeness.

All that time of angry trial now had passedbefore him, and the five years of his married life (which had not been very happy, for his wife never understood him, but met his quick moodiness with soft sulks); and then in his dream–review he smiled, as his children began to toddle about, and sit on his knees, and look at him.

Once he awoke, and gazed about him. The train had stopped at Winchester. He was all alone in the carriage still, and all his cash was safe. He had stowed it away very carefully in a hidden pocket. To his languid surprise, he fell back on the seat. How unlike himself, to be sure; and with so much yet to do! He strove to arise and rouse himself. He felt for the little flask of wine, which Pearl had thrust into his pocket, but he could not pull it out and drink; such a languor lay upon him. He had felt it before, but never before been so overcome by it. Once or twice, an hour or so before the sun came back again, this strange cold deadness (like a mammoth nightmare frozen) had lain on him, in his lonely bed, and then he knew what death was, and only came back to life again through cold sweat and long fainting.

He had never consulted any doctor about the meaning of this. With his bold way of thinking, and judging only by his own experience and feeling, he had long ago decided that all medical men were quacks. What one disorder could they cure? All they had learned, and that by a fluke, was a way to anticipateone: and even that way seemed worn out now.

Now he fell away, and feared, and tried to squeeze his breast, and tried to pray to God; but no words came, nor any thoughts, only sense of dying, and horror at having prayed for it. A coldness fell upon his heart, and on his brain an ignorance; he was falling into a great blank depth, and nothing belonged to him any more—only utter, utter loss, and not a dream of God.

Happy and religious folk, who have only died in theory, contemplating distant death, knowing him only as opportune among kinsfolk owning Consols, these may hope for a Prayer–book end, sacrament administered, weeping friends, the heavenward soul glad to fly through the golden door,animula,vagula,blandula, yet assured of its reception with a heavenly smile of foretaste—this may be; no doubt it may be, after the life of a Christian Bayard; though it need not always be, even then. All we who from our age know death, and have taken little trips into him, through fits, paralysis, or such–like, are quite aware that he has at first call as much variety as life has. But the death of the violent man is not likely to be placid, unless it come unawares, or has been graduated through years of remorse, and weakness, weariness, and repentance.

Then he tried to rise, and fought once more, with agony inconceivable, against the heavy yet hollow numbness in the hold of his deep, wide chest, against the dark, cold stealth of death, and the black, narrow depth of the grave.

The train ran lightly and merrily into Brockenhurst Station, while the midsummer twilight floated like universal gossamer. In the yard stood the Kettledrum “rattletrap,” and the owner was right glad to see it. In his eyes it was worth a dozen of the lord mayorʼs coach.

“None of the children come, dear?” asked Bailey, having kissed his wife, as behoves a man from London.

“No, darling, not one. That——” here she used an adjective which sounded too much like “odious” for me to trust my senses—”Georgie would not allow them. Now, darling, did you do exactly what I told you?”

“Yes, darling Anna, I did the best I could. I had a basin of mulligatawny at Waterloo going up, and one of mock–turtle coming back, and at Basingstoke ham–sandwiches, a glass of cold cognac and water, and some lemon–chips. Since that, nothing at all, because there has been no time.”

“You are a dear,” said Mrs. Kettledrum, “to do exactly as I told you. Now come round the corner a moment, and take two glasses of sherry; I can see quite well to pour it out. I am so glad of her new crinoline. She wonʼt get out. Donʼt be afraid, dear.”

Oh, Georgie, Georgie! To think that her own sister should be so low, so unfeeling, and treacherous! Mr. Kettledrum smacked his lips, for the sake of euphony, after the second glass of sherry; but his wife would not give him any more,for fear of spoiling his supper. Then they came back, and both got in, and squeezed themselves up together in the front seat of the old carriage, for Mrs. Corklemore occupied the whole of the seat of honour.

“You are very polite, to keep me so long. Innocent turtles; sweet childish anxiety! The last survivor of a wrecked train! So you took advantage, Anna dear, of my not being dressed quite so vulgarly as you are, to discuss this little matter with him, keeping me in ignorance.”

The carriage was off by this time, and open as it was, they had no fear of old coachey hearing, for it took a loud hail to reach him.

“Take the honour of a Kettledrum,” cried Bailey, smiting his bosom, “that the subject has not even been broached between my wiser part and myself. Ladies, in this pure aerial—no, I mean ethereal—air, with the shades of night around us, and the breezes wafting, would an exceedingly choice and delicately aromatic cigar——”

“Oh, I should so like it, Bailey; and perhaps we shall have the nightingales.”

“I fear we must not think of it,” interposed Mrs. Corklemore, gently; “my dress is of a fabric quite newly introduced, very beautiful, but (like myself) too retentive of impressions. If Mr. Kettledrum smokes, I shall have to throw it away.”

“There goes the cigar instead,” cried Bailey;“the paramount rights of ladies ever have been, and ever shall be, sacred with Bailey Kettledrum.”

But Mrs. Kettledrum was so vexed that she jumped up, as if to watch the cigar spinning into the darkness, and contrived with sisterly accuracy to throw all her weight upon a certain portion of a certain lovely foot, whereupon there ensued the neatest little passes, into which we need not enter. Enough that Mrs. Corklemore, having higher intellectual gifts, “won,” in the language of the ring, “both events”—first tear, and first hysterical symptom.

“Come,” cried Mr. Kettledrum, at the very first opportunity, to wit, when both were crying; “we all know what sisters are: how they mingle the—the sweetness of their affection with a certain—ah, yes—a piquancy of expression, most pleasant, most improving, because so highly conducive to self–examination!” Here he stood up, having made a hit, worthy of the House of Commons. “All these little breezes, ladies, may be called the trade–winds of affection. They blow from pole to pole.”

“The trade–winds never do that,” said Georgie.

“They pass us by as the idle wind, when the clouds are like a whale, ladies, having overcome us for a moment, like a summer dream. Hark to that thrush, sitting perhaps on his eggs”—”Oh, Oh!” from the gallery of nature—”can there be,I pause for a reply, anything but harmony, where the voices of the night pervade, and the music of the spheres?”

“You—you do speak so splendidly, dear,” sobbed Mrs. Kettledrum from the corner; “but it is a nasty, wicked, cruel story, about dear papa saying that of me, and he in his grave, poor dear, quite unable to vindicate himself. I have always thought it so unchristian to malign the dead!”

“Whatʼs that?” cried Georgie, starting up, in fear and hot earnest; “you are chattering so, you hear nothing.”

A horse dashed by them at full gallop, with his rider on his neck, shouting and yelling, and clinging and lashing.

“Missed the wheel by an inch,” cried Kettledrum, drawing his head in faster than he had thrust it out; “a fire, man, or a French invasion?” But the man was out of hearing, while the Kettledrum horses, scared, and jumping as from an equine thunderbolt, tried the strength of leather and the courage of ladies.

Meanwhile at the station behind them there was a sad ado. A man was lifted out of the train, being found in the last compartment by the guard who knew his destination—a big man, and a heavy one; and they bore him to the wretched shed which served there as a waiting–room.

“Dead, I believe,” said the guard, having sent a boy for brandy, “dead as a door–nail, whoever he be.”

“Not thee knaw whohebe?” cried a forester, coming in. “Whoy, marn, there be no mistakinghe. He be our Muster Garnet.”

“Whew!” And the train whistled on, as it must do, whether we live or die, or when Cyclops has made mince of us.

CHAPTER XVI.That night there had been great excitement in the village of Nowelhurst. A rumour had reached it that Cradock Nowell, loved in every cottage there, partly as their own production, partly as their future owner, partly for his own sake, and most of all for his misfortunes, was thrown into prison to stand his trial for the murder of his brother. Another rumour was that, to prevent any scandal to the nobility, he had been sent to sea alone in a seventy–four gun ship, with corks in her bottom tied with wire arranged so as to fly all at once, same as if it was ginger–beer bottles, on the seventh day, when the salt–water had turned the wires rusty.It is hard to say of these two reports which roused the greater indignation; perhaps on the whole the former did, because the latter was supposed to be according to institution. Anyhow, allthe village was out in the street that night; and the folding of arms, and the self–importance, the confidential winks, and the power to say more (but for hyper–Nestorean prudence) were at their acme in a knot of gaffers gathered around Rufus Hutton, and affording him good sport.Nothing now could be done in Nowelhurst without Rufus Hutton. He had that especial knack (mistaken sometimes in a statesman for really high qualities) which becomes in a woman true capacity for gossip. By virtue thereof Rufus Hutton was now prime–minister of Nowelhurst; and Sir Cradock, the king, being nothing more now than the shadow of a name, his deputyʼs power was absolute. He knew the history by this time of every cottage, and pigsty, and tombstone in the churchyard; how much every man got every week, and how much he gave his wife out of it, what he had for dinner on Sundays, and how long he made his waistcoat last. Suddenly the double–barrelled noise which foreruns a horse at full gallop came from the bridge, and old folk hobbled, and young got ready to run.“Hooraw—hooraw!” cried a dozen and a half of boys, “here be Hempror o’ Roosia coming.”Boys will believe almost anything, when they get excited (having taken the trick from their fathers), but even the women were disappointed, when the galloping horse stopped short in the crowd, and from his withers shot forward, and fell with both hands full of mane, a personage notmore august than the porter at Brockenhurst Station.“Catch the horse, you fool!” cried Rufus.“Cuss the horse,” said the porter, trying to draw breath; “better been under a train I had. Donʼt stand gaping, chawbacons. Is ever a sawbones, surgeon, doctor, or what the devil you call them in these outlandish parts, to be got for love or money?”“I am a sawbones,” said Rufus Hutton, coming forward with his utmost dignity; “and itʼs a mercy I donʼt saw yours, young man, if thatʼs all you know of riding.”The porter touched his hair instead of his hat (which was gone long ago), while the “chawbacons” rallied, and laughed at him, and one offered him a “zide–zaddle,” and all the women of the village felt that Dr. Hutton had quenched the porter, and vindicated Nowelhurst.“When you have recovered your breath, young man,” continued Rufus, pushing, as he always did, his advantage; “and thanked God for your escape from the first horse you ever mounted, perhaps you will tell us your errand, and we chawbacons will consider it.”A gruff haw–haw and some treble he–heʼs added to the porterʼs discomfiture, for he could not come to time yet, being now in the second tense of exhaustion, which is even worse than the first, being rather of the heart than lungs.“Station—Mr. Garnet—dead!” was all theman could utter, and that only in spasms, and with great chest–heavings.Rufus Hutton leaped on the horse in a moment, caught up old Channingʼs stick, and was out of sight in the summer dusk ere any one else in the crowd had done more than gape, and say, “Oh Lor!” By dint of skill he sped the old horse nearly as quickly to the station as the fury of Jehu had brought him thence, and landed him at the door with far less sign of exhaustion. Then walking into the little room, in the manner of a man who thoroughly knows his work, he saw a sight which never in this world will leave him.Upon a hard sofa, shored up with an ash–log where the mahogany was sprung, and poked up into a corner as if to get a bearing there, with blankets piled upon him heavily and tucked round the collar of his coat, and his great head hanging over the rise where the beading of the brass ends, lay the ill–fated Bull Garnet,—a man from birth to death a subject for pity more than terror. Fifty years old—more than fifty years—and scarce a twelvemonth of happiness since the shakings of the world began, and childhoodʼs dream was over. Toiling ever for the future, toiling for his children, ever since he had them, labouring to make peace with God, if only he might have his own, where passion is not, but love abides. The room smelled strongly of bad brandy, some of which was oozing now down his broad square chin, and dripping from the great blue jaw. Of coursehe could not swallow it; and now one of the women (for three had rushed in) was performing that duty for him.“Turn out that drunken hag!” cried Dr. Hutton, feeling he had no idea how. “Up with the window. Bring the sofa here; and take all but one of those blankets off.”“But, master,” objected another woman, “heʼll take his death of cold.”“Turn out that woman also!” He was instantly obeyed. “Now roll up one of those blankets, and put it under his head here—this side, canʼt you see? Good God, what a set of fellows you are to let a manʼs head hang down like that! Hot water and a sponge this instant. Nearly boiling, mind you. Plenty of it, and a foot–tub. Now donʼt stare at me.”With a quick light hand he released the blue and turgid throat from the narrow necktie, then laid his forefinger upon the heart and watched the eyelids intently.“Appleplexy, no doubt, master,” said the most intelligent of the men; “I have ‘eared that if you can bleed them——”“Hold your tongue, or Iʼll phlebotomise you.” That big word inspired universal confidence, because no one understood it. “Now, support him in that position, while I pull his boots off. One of you run to the inn for a bottle of French cognac—not this filthy stuff, mind—and a corkscrew and a teaspoon. Now the hot water here!In with his feet, and bathe his legs, while I sponge his face and chest—as hot as you can bear your hands in it. His heart is all but stopped, and his skin as cold as ice. Thatʼs it; quicker yet! Donʼt be afraid of scalding him. There, he begins to feel it.”The dying manʼs great heavy eyelids slowly and feebly quivered, and a long deep sigh arose, but there was not strength to fetch it. Dr. Hutton took advantage of the faint impulse of life to give him a little brandy, and then a little more again, and by that time he could sigh.“Bo,” he whispered very softly, and trying to lift his hand for something, and Rufus Hutton knew somehow (perhaps by means of his own child) that he was trying to say, “Bob.”“Bob will be here directly. Cheer up, cheer up, till he comes, my friend.”He called him his friend, and the very next day he would have denounced him as murderer to the magistrates at Lymington. Now his only thought was of saving the poor manʼs life.The fatherʼs dull eyes gleamed again when he heard those words, and a little smile came flickering over the stern lines of his face. They gave him more brandy on the strength of it, while he kept on looking at the door.“Rub, rub, rub, men; very lightly, but very quickly. Keep your thumbs up, donʼt you see? Mustnʼt get cold again for the world. There now, heʼll keep his heart up until his dear son arrives.And then his children shall nurse him, much better than any one else could; and how glad they will be, John Thomas, to see him looking so well and so strong again!”All this time, Rue Hutton himself, with a womanʼs skill and tenderness, was encouraging, by gentle friction over the stagnant heart, each feeble impulse yet to live, each little bubble faintly rising from the well of hope, every clinging of the soul to the things so hard to leave behind. “While there is life, there is hope.” True and genial saying! And we hope there is hope beyond it.Poor Bull Garnet was taken home, even that very night. For Dr. Hutton saw how much he was longing for his children, who (until he was carried in) knew nothing of his danger. “Please God,” said Rufus to himself, as he crouched in the fly by the narrow mattress, even foregoing his loved cheroot, and keeping his hand on his patientʼs pulse; “please God, the poor fellow shall breathe his last with a child at either side of him.”Meanwhile, an urgent message from Sir Cradock Nowell was awaiting the sick man at his cottage. Eoa herself had brought word to Pearl (of whom she longed to make a friend) that her uncle was walking about the house, perpetually walking, calling aloud in every room for Mr. Garnet and John Rosedew. He had heard of no disaster, any more than she had, for he seldom read the papers now; but Mr. Brockwood had been with him a very long time that morning, and Dr.Buller came in accidentally; and Eoa could almost vow that there was some infamous scheme on foot, and she knew whose doing it was; and oh that Uncle John would come back! But now they wanted Mr. Garnet, and he must hurry up to the Hall the moment he came home.Mr. Garnet, of course, they could not have: his strength was wrecked, his heart benumbed, his mind incapable of effort, except to know his children, if that could ever be one. And in this paralytic state, never sleeping, never waking, never wholly conscious, he lay for weeks; and time for him had neither night nor morning.But Mr. Rosedew could be brought to help his ancient friend, if only it was in his power to overlook the injury. He did not overlook it. For that he was too great a man. He utterly forgot it. To his mind it was thenceforth a thing that had never happened:“To–morrow either with black cloudLet the Father fill the heaven,Or with sun full–blazing:Yet shall He not erase the past,Nor beat abroad, and make undone,What once the fleeting hour hath borne.”Truly so our Horace saith. And yet that Father gives, sometimes, to the noblest of his children, power to revoke the evil, or at least annul it,—grandeur to undo the wrong done by others to them. Not with any sense of greatness, neither hope of self–reward, simply from the loving–kindness of the deep humanity.In truth it was a noble thing, such as not even the driest man, sapped and carked with care and evil, worn with undeserved rebuff, and dwelling ever underground, in the undermining of his faith, could behold and not be glad with a joy unbidden, could turn away from without wet eyes, and a glimpse of the God who loves us,—and yet the simplest, mildest scene that a child could describe to its mother. So will I tell it, if may be, casting all long words away, leaning on an old manʼs staff, looking over the stile of the world.It was the height of the summer–time, and the quiet mood of the setting sun touched with calm and happy sadness all he was forsaking. Men were going home from work; wives were looking for them; maidens by the gate or paling longed for some protection; children must be put to bed, and what a shame, so early! Puce and purple pillows lay, holding golden locks of sun, piled and lifted by light breezes, the painted eider–down of sunset. In the air a feeling was—those who breathe it cannot tell—only this, that it does them good; God knows how, and why, and whence—but it makes them love their brethren.The poor old man, more tried and troubled than a lucky labourer, wretched in his wealth, worse hampered by his rank and placement, sat upon a high oak chair—for now he feared to lean his head back—and prayed for some one to help him. Oh, for any one who loved him; oh, for any sight ofGod, whom in his pride he had forgotten! Eoa was a darling, his only comfort now; but what could such a girl do? Who was she to meet the world? And the son he had used so shamefully. Good God, his only son! And now he knew, with some strange knowledge, loose, and wide, and wandering, that his son was innocent after all, and lost to him for ever, through his own vile cruelty. And now they meant to prove him mad—what use to disguise it?—him who once had the clearest head, chairman of the Quarter Sessions——Here he broke down, and lay back, with his white hair poured against the carved black oak of the chair, and his wasted hands flung downward, only praying God to help him, anyhow to help him.Then John Rosedew came in softly, half ashamed of himself, half nervous lest he were presuming, overdrawing the chords of youth, the bond of the days when they went about with arm round the neck of each other. In his heart was pity, very deep and holy; and yet, of all that filled his eyes, the very last to show itself.Over against the ancient friend, the loved one of his boyhood, he stopped and sadly gazed a moment, and then drew back with a shock and sorrow, as of death brought nearer. At the sound, Sir Cradock Nowell lifted his weary eyes and sighed; and then he looked intently; and then he knew the honest face, the smile, the gentle forehead. Quietlyhe arose, with colour flowing over his pallid cheeks, and in his eyes strong welcome, and ready with his lips to speak, yet in his heart unable. Thereupon he held the chair, and bowed with the deepest reverence, such as king or queen receives not till a life has earned it. Even the hand which he was raising he let fall again, drawn back by a bitter memory, and a nervous shame.But his friend of olden time would not have him so disgraced, wanted no repentance. With years of kindness in his eyes and the history of friendship, he came, without a bow, and took the hand that now was shy of him.“Cradock, oh, I am so glad.”“John, thank God for this, John!”Then they turned to other subjects, with a sort of nervousness—the one for fear of presuming on pardon, the other for fear of offering it. Only both knew, once for all, that nothing more could come between them till the hour of death.The rector accepted once again his well–beloved home and cares, for the vacancy had not been filled, only Mr. Pell had lived a short time at the Rectory. The joy of all the parish equalled, if not transcended, that of parson and of patron.And, over and above the ease of conscience, and the sense of comfort, it was a truly happy thing for poor Sir Cradock Nowell, when the loss of theTaprobanecould no longer be concealed from him, that now he had the proven friend tofall back upon once more. He had spent whole days in writing letters—humble, loving, imploring letters to the son in unknown latitudes—directing them as fancy took him to the Cape, to Port Natal, Mozambique, or even Bombay (in case of stress of weather), Point de Galle, Colombo, &c. &c., in all cases to be called for, and invariably marked “urgent.” Then from this labour of love he awoke to a vague form of conviction that his letters ought to have been addressed to the bottom of the sea.CHAPTER XVII.Autumn in the Forest now, once again the autumn. All things turning to their rest, bird, and beast, and vegetable. Solemn and most noble season, speaking to the soul of man, as spring speaks to his body. The harvest of the ample woods spreading every tint of ripeness, waiting for the Makerʼs sickle, when His breath is frost. Trees beyond trees, in depth and height, roundings and massive juttings, some admitting flaws of light to enhance their mellowness, some very bright of their own accord, when the sun thought well of them, others scarcely bronzed with age, and meaning to abide the spring. It was the same in Epping Forest, Richmond Park, and the woods round London, only on a smaller scale, and with less variety. And so upon his northern road, every coppice, near or far, even“Knockholt Beeches” (which reminded him of the “beechen hats”), every little winding wood of Sussex or of Surrey brought before Cradock Nowellʼs eyes the prospect of his boyhood. He had begged to be put ashore at Newhaven, from the American trader, which had rescued him from Pomona Island, and his lonely but healthful sojourn, and then borne him to New York. Now, with his little store of dollars, earned from the noble Yankee skipper by the service he had rendered him, freely given and freely taken, as behoves two gentlemen, and with his great store of health recovered, and recovered mind, he must walk all the way to London, forty miles or more; so great a desire entered into him of his native land, that stable versatility, those free and ever–changing skies, which all her sons abuse and love.Cradock looked, I do assure you, as well, and strong, and stout, and lusty, as may consist with elegance at the age of two–and–twenty. And his dress, though smacking of Broadway, “could not conceal,” as our best writers say, “his symmetrical proportions.” His pantaloons were of a fine bright tan colour, with pockets fit for a thousand dollars, and his boots full of eyelets, like big lampreys, and his coat was a thing to be proud of, and a pleasing surprise for Regent–street. His hat, moreover, was umbratile, as of the Pilgrim Fathers, with a measure of liquid capacity (betwixt the cone and the turned–up rim) superior to that of the ordinary cisterns of the London water–companies. Neverthelesshe had not acquired the delightful hydropultic art, distinctive of the mighty nation which had been so kind to him. And, in spite of little external stuff (only worthy of two glances—one to note, and the other to smile at it), the youth was improved in every point worth a manʼs observation. Three months in New York had done him an enormous deal of good; not that the place is by any means heavenly (perhaps there are few more hellish), only that he fell in with men of extraordinary energy and of marvellous decision, the very two hinges of life whereupon he (being rather too “philosophical”) had several screws loose, and some rust in the joints.As for Wena, she (the beauty) had cocked her tail with great arrogance at smelling English ground again. To her straight came several dogs, who had never travelled far (except when they were tail–piped), and one and all cried, “Hail, my dear! Have you seen any dogs to compare with us? Set of mongrel parley–woos, canʼt bark or bite like a Christian. Just look round the corner, pretty, while we kill that poodle.”To whom Wena—leniter atterens caudam—”Cordially I thank you. So much now I have seen of the world that my faith is gone in tail–wags. If you wish to benefit by my society, bring me a bit from the hock of bacon, or a very young marrowbone. Then will I tell you something.” They could not comply with her requisitions, because they had eaten all that themselves. And so shetrotted along the beach, like the dog of Polyphemus, or the terrier of Hercules, who tinged his nose with murex.‘Tis a very easy thing to talk of walking fifty miles, but quite another pair of shoes to do it; especially with pack on back, and feet that have lost habitual sense of Macadamʼs tender mercies. Moreover, the day had been very warm for the beginning of October—the dying glance of Summer, in the year 1860, at her hitherto foregone and forgotten England. The highest temperature of the year had been 72° (in the month of May); in June and July, 66° and 68° were the maxima, and in August things were no better. Persistent rain, perpetual chill, and ever–present sense of icebergs, and longing for logs of dry wood. But towards the end of September some glorious weather set in; and people left off fires at the time when they generally begin them. Therefore, Cradock Nowell was hot, footsore, and slightly jaded, as he came to the foot of Sydenham Hill, on the second day of his journey. The Crystal Palace, which long had been his landmark through country crossroads, shone with blue and airy light, as the sun was sinking. Cradock admired more and more, as the shadows sloped along it, the fleeting gleams, the pellucid depth, the brightness of reflection framed by the softness of refraction.He had always loved that building, and now, at the top of the hill, he resolved (weary as he was) to enter and take his food there. AccordinglyWena was left to sup and rest at the stables; he paid the shilling that turns the wheel, and went first to the refreshment court. After doing his duty there, he felt a great deal better; then buttoned his coat like a Briton, and sauntered into the transept. It had been a high and mighty day, for the Ancient Order of Mountaineers (who had never seen a mountain) were come to look for one at Penge, with sweethearts, wives, contingencies, and continuations. It boots not now to tell their games; enough that they had been very happy, and were gathering back in nave and transept for a last parade. To Cradock, so long accustomed to sadness, solitude, and bad luck, the scene, instead of being ludicrous (as a youth of fashion would have found it), was interesting and impressive, and even took a solemn aspect as the red rays of the sun retired, and the mellow shades were deepening. He leaned against the iron rail in front of the grand orchestra, and seeing many pretty faces, thought about his Amy, and wondered what she now was like, and whether she were true to him. From Pomona Island he could not write; from New York he had never written; not knowing the loss of theTaprobane, and fearing lest he should seem once more to be trying the depth of John Rosedewʼs purse. But now he was come to England, with letters from Captain Recklesome Young, to his London correspondents, which ensured him a good situation, and the power to earn his own bread, and perhaps in a little while Amyʼs.As he leaned and watched the crowd go by, like a dream of faces, the events of the bygone year passed also in dark parade before him. Sad, mysterious, undeserved—at least so far as he knew—how had they told upon him? Had they left him in better, or had they left him in bitter, case with his God and his fellow–man? That question might be solved at once, to any but himself, by the glistening of his eyes, the gentleness of his gaze around, the smile with which he drew back his foot when a knickerbocked child trod on it. He loved his fellow–creatures still; and love is law and gospel.While he thought these heavy things, feeling weary of the road, of his life half weary, shrinking from the bustling world again to be encountered, suddenly a grand vibration thrilled his heart, and mind, and soul. From the great concave above him, melody was spreading wide, with shadowy resistless power, like the wings of angels. The noble organ was pealing forth, rolling to every nook of the building, sweeping over the heads of the people and into their hearts (with one soft passport), “Home, sweet home!” The men who had come because tired of home, the wives to give them a change of it, the maidens perhaps to get homes of their own, the children to cry to go home again;—all with one accord stood still, all listened very quietly, and said nothing at all about it. Only they were the better for it, with many a kind old memory rising, at least among the elder ones,and many a large unselfish hope making the young people look, with trust, at one another.And what did Cradock Nowell feel? His home was not a sweet one; bitter things had been done against him; bitter things he himself had done. None the less, he turned away and wept beneath a music–stand, as if his heart would never give remission to his eyes. None could see him in the dark there, only the God whose will it was, and whose will it often is, that tears should bring us home to Him.“I will arise, and go home to my father. I will cry, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven, and against thee.’”And so he had. Not heavily, not wilfully, not wittingly, not a hundredth part so badly as that father had sinned against him. Yet it was wrong in him not to allow the old man to recover himself, but, forgetting a sonʼs love–duty, so to leave him—hotly, hastily, with a proud defiance. Till now he had never felt, or at least confessed to himself, that wrong. Now, as generous natures do, he summed up sternly against himself, leniently against others. And then he asked, with yearning and bitter self–reproach, “Is the old man yet alive?”✸✸✸✸✸The woods were still as rich and sweet, and the grass as soft as in May month; the windings of the pleasant dells were looped with shining waters; but she who used to love them so and brighten at their freshness, to follow the steps of each wanderingbreeze, and call to the sun as a flower does—now she came through her favourite places, and hardly cared to look at them. Only three short months ago she had returned to her woodland home, and the folk that knew and loved her, in the highest and brightest spirits of youth, conscious beauty, and hopefulness. All her old friends were rejoicing in her, and she in their joy delighted, when her father thought it his sorrowful duty, in this world of sorrow, to tell her the bad news about her ever unlucky Cradock. At first she received it with scorn—as the high manner of her mind was—utter unbelief, because God could not have done it. Being simple, and very young, she had half as much faith in her heavenly Father as she had in the earthly and fallible parent; neither was she quite aware that we do not buy, but accept from God.But, as week upon back of week, and month after tardy month, went by, Amyʼs faith began to wane, and herself to languish. She watched the arrival of every mail from the Cape, from India, from anywhere; her heart leaped up as each steamer came in, and sank at each empty letterbag. Meanwhile her father was growing very unhappy about her, and so was good Aunt Doxy. At first John had said, when she took it so calmly, “Thank God! How glad I am! But her mother cared for me more than that.” Like many another loving father, he had studied, but never learned his child.Now it was the fifth day of October, the weather bright and beautiful, the English earth and trees and herbage trying back for the summer of which they had been so cheated. Poor pale Amy asked leave to go out. She had long been under Rue Huttonʼs care, not professionally, but paternally (for Rufus would have his own way when he was truly fond of any one), and she asked so quietly, so submissively, without a bit of joke about it, that when she was gone her father set to and shook his head, till a heavy tear came and blotted out a reference which had taken all the morning. As for Aunt Doxy, she turned aside, and took off her spectacles quickly, because the optician had told her to keep them perfectly dry.Where the footpath wanders to and fro, preferring pleasure to duty, and meeting all remonstrance by quoting the course of the brook, Amy Rosedew slowly walked, or heavily stopped every now and then, caring for nothing around her. She had made up her mind to cry no more, only to long for the time and place when and where no crying is. Perhaps in a year or so, if she lived, she might be able to see things again, and attend to her work as usual. Till then she would try to please her father, and keep up her spirits for his sake. Every one had been so kind to her, especially dear Eoa, who had really cried quite steadily; and the least thing that girl Amy could do was to try and deserve it. Thinking thus, and doing her best to feel as well as think it, yet growing tiredalready, she sat down in a chair as soft as weary mortal may rest in. A noble beech, with a head of glory overlooking the forest, had not neglected to slipper his feet with the richest of natureʼs velvet. From the dove–coloured columnʼs base, two yards above the ground–spread, drifts of darker bulk began, gnarled crooks of grapple, clutching wide at mother earth, deeply fanged into her breast, sureties against every wind. Ridged and ramped with many a hummock, rift, and twisted sinew, forth these mighty tendons stretched, some fathoms from the bole itself. Betwixt them nestled, all in moss, corniced with the golden, and cushioned with the greenest, nooks of cool, delicious rest, wherein to forget the world, and dream upon the breezes. “As You Like It,” in your lap, Theocritus tossed over the elbow, because he is too foreign,—what sweet depth of enjoyment for a hard–working man who has earned it!But, in spite of all this voluptuousness, the “moss more soft than slumber,” and the rippling leafy murmur, there is little doubt that Miss Amy Rosedew managed to have another cry ere ever she fell asleep. To cry among those arms of moss, fleecing, tufting, pillowing, an absorbent even for Niobe! Can the worn–out human nature find no comfort in the vegetable, though it does in the mineral, kingdom?Back, and back, and further back into the old relapse of sleep, the falling thither whence we came, the interest on the debt of death. Yet asthe old Stagyrite hints, some of dayʼs emotions filter through the strain of sleep; it is not true that good and bad are, for half of life, the same. Alike their wits go roving haply after the true Owner, but some may find Him, others fail—Father, who shall limit thus Thine infinite amnesty?It would not be an easy thing to find a fairer sight. Her white arms on the twisted plumage of the deep green moss, the snowy arch of her neck revealed as the clustering hair fell from it, and the frank and playful forehead resting on the soft grey bark. She smiled in her sleep every now and then, for her pleasant young humour must have its own way when the schoolmaster, sorrow, was dozing; and then the sad dreaming of trouble returned, and the hands were put up to pray, and the red lips opened, whispering, “Come home! Only come to Amy!”And then, in her dream, he was come—raining tears upon her cheek, holding her from all the world, fearing to thank God yet. She was smiling up at him; oh, it was so delicious! Suddenly she opened her eyes. What made her face so wet? Why, Wena!Wena, as sure as dogs are dogs; mounted on the mossy arm, lick–lick–licking, mewing like a cat almost, even offering taste of her tongue, while every bit of the Wena dog shook with ecstatic rapture.“Oh, Wena, Wena! what are you come to tell me, Wena? Oh that you could speak!”Wena immediately proved that she could. She galloped round Amy, barking and yelling, until the great wood echoed again; the rabbits, a mile away, pricked their ears, and the yaffingales stopped from tapping. Then off set the little dog down the footpath. Oh, could it be to fetch somebody?The mere idea of such a thing made Amy shake so, and feel so odd, she was forced to put one hand against the tree, and the other upon her heart. She could not look, she was in such a state; she could not look down the footpath. It seemed, at least, a century, and it may have been half a minute, before she heard through the bushes a voice—tush, she meansthevoice.“Wena, you bad dog, come in to heel. Is this all you have learned by travelling?”But Wena broke fence and everything, set off full gallop again to Amy, tugged at her dress, and retrieved her.What happened after that Amy knows not, neither knows Cradock Nowell. So anything I could tell would be a fond thing vainly invented. All they remember is—looking back upon it, as both of them may, to the zenith of their lives—that neither of them could say a word except “darling, darling, darling!” all pronounced as superlatives, with “my own,” once or twice between, and an exclusive sense of ownership, illiberaland unphilosophical. What business have we with such minor details? Who has sworn us accountants of kisses? All we have any right to say is, that after a long spell of inarticulate tautology, Amy looked up when Cradock proposed to add another cipher; very gravely, indeed, she looked up; except in the deepest depth of her eyes.“Oh no, Cradock. You must not think of it. Seriously now, you mustnot, love.”“Why? I should like to know, indeed! After all the time I have been away!”“I have so little presence of mind. I forgot to tell you in time, dear. Why, because Wenahas licked my face all over, darling. Darling, yes, shehas, I say. You are too bad not to care about it. Now come to my own best father, dear. Offer your arm like a gentleman.”So they—as Milton concisely says. Homer would have written “they two.” How sadly our language wants a dual! We, the domestic race, have we rejected it because the use would have seemed a truism?✸✸✸✸✸That same afternoon Bull Garnet lay dying, calmly and peacefully going off, taking his accounts to a larger world. He knew that there were some heavy items underscored against him; but he also knew that the mercy of God can even outdo the hope He gives us for token and for keepsake. A greater and a grander end, after alife of mark and power, might, to his early aspirations and self–conscious strength, have seemed the bourne intended. If it had befallen him—as but for himself it would have done—to appear where men are moved by passion, vigour, and bold decision, his name would have been historical, and better known to the devil. As it was, he lay there dying, and was well content. The turbulence of life was past, the torrent and the eddy, the attempt at fore–reaching upon his age, and sense of impossibility, the strain of his mental muscles to stir the great dead trunks of “orthodoxy,” and then the self–doubt, the chill, the depression, which follow such attempts, as surely as ague tracks the pioneer.Thank God, all this was over now, and the violence gone, and the dark despair. Of all the good and evil things which so had branded him distinct, two yet dwelled in his feeble heart, only two still showed their presence in his dying eyes. Each of those two was good, if two indeed they were—faith in the heavenly Father, and love of the earthly children.Pearl was sitting on a white chair at the side of the bed away from the window, with one hand in his failing palm, and the other trying now and then to enable her eyes to see things. She was thinking, poor little thing, of what she should do without him, and how he had been a good father to her, though she never could understand him. That was her own fault, no doubt. She hadalways fancied that he loved her as a bit of his property, as a thing to be managed; now she knew that it was not so; and he was going away for ever, and who would love or manage her? And the fault of all this was her own.Rufus Hutton had been there lately, trying still to keep up some little show of comfort, and a large one of encouragement; for he was not the man to say die till a patient came to the preterite. Throughout the whole, and knowing all, he had behaved in the noblest manner, partly from his own quick kindness, partly from that protective and fiduciary feeling which springs self–sown in the hearts of women when showers of sorrow descend, and crops up in the manly bosom at the fee of golden sunshine. Not that he took any fees; but that his professional habits revived, with a generosity added, because he knew that he would take nothing, though all were in his power.Suddenly Mr. Pell came in, our old friend Octavius, sent for in an urgent manner, and looking as a man looks who feels but cannot open on the hinge of his existence. Like a thorough gentleman, he had been shy of the cottage, although aware of their distress; eager at once and reluctant, partly because it stood not in his but his rectorʼs parish, partly for deeper reasons.Though Pell came in so quietly, Bull Garnet rose at his entry, or tried to rise on the pillow, swept his daughter back by a little motion of his thumb, which she quite understood, and cast his eyes on the parsonʼs with a languid yet strong intelligence.He had made up his mind that the man was good, and yet he could not help probing him.The last characteristic act of poor Bull Garnetʼs life, a life which had been all character, all difference, from other people.“Will you take my daughterʼs hand, Pell?”“Only too gladly,” answered Pell; but she shrank away, and sobbed at him.“Pearl, come forward this moment. It is no time for shilly–shallying.”The poor thing timidly gave her hand, standing a long way back from Pell, and with her large eyes streaming, yet fixed upon her father, and no chance at all of wiping them.“Now, Pell, do you love my daughter? I am dying, and I ask you.”“That I do, with all my heart,” said Pell, like a downright Englishman. “I shall never love any other.”“Now, Pearl, do you love Mr. Pell?” Her fatherʼs eyes were upon her in a way that commanded truth. She remembered how she had told a lie, at the age of seven or eight, and that gaze had forced it out of her, and she had never dared to tell one since, until no lie dared come near her.“Father, I like him very much. Very soon I should love him, if—if he loved me.”“Now, Pell, you hear that!”“Beyond all doubt I do,” said Octave, whosedryness never deserted him in the heaviest rain of tears; “and it is the very best thing for me I have heard in all my life.”Bull Garnet looked from one to the other, with the rally of his life come hot, and a depth of joyful sadness. Yet must he go a little further, because he had always been a tyrant till people understood him.“Do you want to know how much money, sir, I intend to leave her, when I die to–night or to–morrow morning?”Cut–and–dry Pell was taken aback. A thoroughly upright and noble fellow, but of wholly different and less rugged road of thought. Meanwhile Pearl had slipped away; it was more than she could bear, and she was so sorry for Octavius. Then Pell up and spake bravely:“Sir, I would be loth to think of you, my dear oneʼs father, as anything but a gentleman; a strange one, perhaps, but a true one. And so I trust you have only put such a question to me in irony.”“Pell, there is good stuff in you. I know a man by this time. What would you think of finding your dear oneʼs father a murderer?”Octavius Pell was not altogether used to this sort of thing. He turned away with some doubt whether Pearl would be a desirable mother of children (for he, after all, was a practical man), and hereditary insanity—— Then he turnedback, remembering that all mankind are mad. Meanwhile Bull Garnet watched him, with extraordinary wrinkles, and a savage sort of pleasure. He felt himself outside the world, and looking at the stitches of it. But he would not say a word. He had always been a bully, and he meant to keep it up.“Sir,” said Octave Pell, at last, “you are the very oddest man I ever saw in all my life.”“Ah, you think so, do you, Pell? Possibly you are right; possibly you are right, Pell. I have no time to think about it. It never struck me in that light. If I am so very odd, perhaps you would rather not have my daughter?”“If you intend to refuse her to me, you had better say so at once, sir. I donʼt understand all this.”“I wish you to understand nothing at all beyond the simple fact. I shot Clayton Nowell, and did it on purpose, because I found him insulting her.”“Good God! You donʼt mean to say it?”“I never yet said a thing, Pell, which I did not mean to say.”“You did it in haste? You have repented? For Godʼs sake, tell me that.”“Treat this as a question of business. Look at the deed and nothing else. Do you still wish to marry my daughter?”Pell turned away from the great wild eyes now solemnly fixed upon him. His manly heart wasfull of wonder, anguish, and giddy turbulence. The promptest of us cannot always “come to time,” like a prizefighter.Pearl came in, with her chest well forward, and then drew back very suddenly. She thought her fate must be settled now, and would like to know how they had settled it. Then, like a genuine English lady, she gave a short sigh and went away. Pride makes the difference between us and all other nations.But the dignified glance she had cast on Pell settled his fate and hers for life. He saw her noble self–respect, her stately reservation, her deep sense of her own pure value (which never would assert itself), and her passing contempt of his hesitation.“At all risks I will have her,” he said to himself, for his manly strength gloried in her strong womanhood; “if she can be won I will have her. Oh, how I am degrading her! What a fool–bound fellow I am!”Then he spoke to her father, who had fallen back, and was faintly gazing, wondering what the stoppage was.“Sir, I am not worthy of her. God knows how I love her. She is too good for me.”Bull Garnet gathered his fleeting life, and looked at Pell with a love so deep that it banished admiration. Then his failing heart supplied, for the last, last time of all, the woe–worn fountain of his eyes. Strong and violent as he was, a little thing hadoften touched him to the turn of tears. What impulse is there but has this end? Even comic laughter.Pell lifted from the counterpane the broad but shrunken hand, which was on the way to be offered to him, until sad memory stopped it. Then he looked down at the poor grey face, where the forehead, from the fall of the rest, appeared almost a monstrosity, and the waning of strong emotions left a quivering of hollowness. The young parson looked down with noble pity. Much he knew of his father–in–law! Bull Garnet would never be pitied. He drew his hand back with a little jerk, and placed it against his broad, square chin.“I canʼt bear to die like this, Pell.I wish to God you could shave me.”Pell went suddenly down on his knees, put his strong brown hands up, and said nothing except the Lordʼs Prayer. Bull Garnet tried to raise his palms, but the power of his wrists was gone, and so he let them fall together. Then at every grand petition he nodded at the ceiling, as if he saw it going upward, and thought of the lath and plaster.He had said he should die at four oʼclock, for the paroxysms of heart–complaint returned at measured intervals, and he felt that he could not outlast another. So with his usual mastery and economy of labour, he had sent a man to get the keys and begin to toll the great church bell, as soon as ever the clock struck four. “Not too long apart,” he said, “steadily, and be done with it.” When the boom of the sluggish bell came in at the open window, Bull Garnet smiled, because the man was doing it as he had ordered him.“Right,” he whispered, “yes, quite right. I have always been before my time. Just let me see my children.” And then he had no more pain.✸✸✸✸✸Amy came in very softly, to know if he was dead. They had told her she ought to leave it alone, but she could not see it so. Knowing all and feeling all, she felt beyond her knowledge. If it would—oh, if it would help him with a spark of hope in his parting, help him in the judgment–day, to have the glad forgiveness of the brother with the deeper wrong—there it was, and he was welcome.A little whispering went on, pale lips into trembling ears, and then Cradock, with his shoes off, was brought to the side of the bed.“He wonʼt know you,” Pearl sobbed softly; “but how kind of you to come!” She was surprised at nothing now.Her father raised his languid eyes, until they met Cradockʼs eager ones; there they dwelt with doubt, and wonder, and a slow rejoicing, and a last attempt at expression.John Rosedew took the wan stiffening hand, lying on the sheet like a cast–off glove, and placed it in Cradockʼs sunburnt palm.“He knows all,” the parson whispered; “he hasread the letter you left for him; and, knowing all, he forgives you.”“That I do, with all my heart,” Cradock answered firmly. “May God forgive me as I do you. Wholly, purely, for once and for all!”“Kind—noble—Godlike——” the dying man said very slowly, but with his old decision.Bull Garnet could not speak again. The great expansion of heart had been too much for its weakness. Only now and then he looked at Cradock with his Amy, and every look was a prayer for them, and perhaps a recorded blessing.Then they slipped away, in tears, and left him, as he ought to be, with his children only. And the telegraph of death was that God would never part them.Now, think you not this man was dying a great deal better than he deserved? No doubt he was. And, for that matter, so perhaps do most of us. But does our Father think so?

That night there had been great excitement in the village of Nowelhurst. A rumour had reached it that Cradock Nowell, loved in every cottage there, partly as their own production, partly as their future owner, partly for his own sake, and most of all for his misfortunes, was thrown into prison to stand his trial for the murder of his brother. Another rumour was that, to prevent any scandal to the nobility, he had been sent to sea alone in a seventy–four gun ship, with corks in her bottom tied with wire arranged so as to fly all at once, same as if it was ginger–beer bottles, on the seventh day, when the salt–water had turned the wires rusty.

It is hard to say of these two reports which roused the greater indignation; perhaps on the whole the former did, because the latter was supposed to be according to institution. Anyhow, allthe village was out in the street that night; and the folding of arms, and the self–importance, the confidential winks, and the power to say more (but for hyper–Nestorean prudence) were at their acme in a knot of gaffers gathered around Rufus Hutton, and affording him good sport.

Nothing now could be done in Nowelhurst without Rufus Hutton. He had that especial knack (mistaken sometimes in a statesman for really high qualities) which becomes in a woman true capacity for gossip. By virtue thereof Rufus Hutton was now prime–minister of Nowelhurst; and Sir Cradock, the king, being nothing more now than the shadow of a name, his deputyʼs power was absolute. He knew the history by this time of every cottage, and pigsty, and tombstone in the churchyard; how much every man got every week, and how much he gave his wife out of it, what he had for dinner on Sundays, and how long he made his waistcoat last. Suddenly the double–barrelled noise which foreruns a horse at full gallop came from the bridge, and old folk hobbled, and young got ready to run.

“Hooraw—hooraw!” cried a dozen and a half of boys, “here be Hempror o’ Roosia coming.”

Boys will believe almost anything, when they get excited (having taken the trick from their fathers), but even the women were disappointed, when the galloping horse stopped short in the crowd, and from his withers shot forward, and fell with both hands full of mane, a personage notmore august than the porter at Brockenhurst Station.

“Catch the horse, you fool!” cried Rufus.

“Cuss the horse,” said the porter, trying to draw breath; “better been under a train I had. Donʼt stand gaping, chawbacons. Is ever a sawbones, surgeon, doctor, or what the devil you call them in these outlandish parts, to be got for love or money?”

“I am a sawbones,” said Rufus Hutton, coming forward with his utmost dignity; “and itʼs a mercy I donʼt saw yours, young man, if thatʼs all you know of riding.”

The porter touched his hair instead of his hat (which was gone long ago), while the “chawbacons” rallied, and laughed at him, and one offered him a “zide–zaddle,” and all the women of the village felt that Dr. Hutton had quenched the porter, and vindicated Nowelhurst.

“When you have recovered your breath, young man,” continued Rufus, pushing, as he always did, his advantage; “and thanked God for your escape from the first horse you ever mounted, perhaps you will tell us your errand, and we chawbacons will consider it.”

A gruff haw–haw and some treble he–heʼs added to the porterʼs discomfiture, for he could not come to time yet, being now in the second tense of exhaustion, which is even worse than the first, being rather of the heart than lungs.

“Station—Mr. Garnet—dead!” was all theman could utter, and that only in spasms, and with great chest–heavings.

Rufus Hutton leaped on the horse in a moment, caught up old Channingʼs stick, and was out of sight in the summer dusk ere any one else in the crowd had done more than gape, and say, “Oh Lor!” By dint of skill he sped the old horse nearly as quickly to the station as the fury of Jehu had brought him thence, and landed him at the door with far less sign of exhaustion. Then walking into the little room, in the manner of a man who thoroughly knows his work, he saw a sight which never in this world will leave him.

Upon a hard sofa, shored up with an ash–log where the mahogany was sprung, and poked up into a corner as if to get a bearing there, with blankets piled upon him heavily and tucked round the collar of his coat, and his great head hanging over the rise where the beading of the brass ends, lay the ill–fated Bull Garnet,—a man from birth to death a subject for pity more than terror. Fifty years old—more than fifty years—and scarce a twelvemonth of happiness since the shakings of the world began, and childhoodʼs dream was over. Toiling ever for the future, toiling for his children, ever since he had them, labouring to make peace with God, if only he might have his own, where passion is not, but love abides. The room smelled strongly of bad brandy, some of which was oozing now down his broad square chin, and dripping from the great blue jaw. Of coursehe could not swallow it; and now one of the women (for three had rushed in) was performing that duty for him.

“Turn out that drunken hag!” cried Dr. Hutton, feeling he had no idea how. “Up with the window. Bring the sofa here; and take all but one of those blankets off.”

“But, master,” objected another woman, “heʼll take his death of cold.”

“Turn out that woman also!” He was instantly obeyed. “Now roll up one of those blankets, and put it under his head here—this side, canʼt you see? Good God, what a set of fellows you are to let a manʼs head hang down like that! Hot water and a sponge this instant. Nearly boiling, mind you. Plenty of it, and a foot–tub. Now donʼt stare at me.”

With a quick light hand he released the blue and turgid throat from the narrow necktie, then laid his forefinger upon the heart and watched the eyelids intently.

“Appleplexy, no doubt, master,” said the most intelligent of the men; “I have ‘eared that if you can bleed them——”

“Hold your tongue, or Iʼll phlebotomise you.” That big word inspired universal confidence, because no one understood it. “Now, support him in that position, while I pull his boots off. One of you run to the inn for a bottle of French cognac—not this filthy stuff, mind—and a corkscrew and a teaspoon. Now the hot water here!In with his feet, and bathe his legs, while I sponge his face and chest—as hot as you can bear your hands in it. His heart is all but stopped, and his skin as cold as ice. Thatʼs it; quicker yet! Donʼt be afraid of scalding him. There, he begins to feel it.”

The dying manʼs great heavy eyelids slowly and feebly quivered, and a long deep sigh arose, but there was not strength to fetch it. Dr. Hutton took advantage of the faint impulse of life to give him a little brandy, and then a little more again, and by that time he could sigh.

“Bo,” he whispered very softly, and trying to lift his hand for something, and Rufus Hutton knew somehow (perhaps by means of his own child) that he was trying to say, “Bob.”

“Bob will be here directly. Cheer up, cheer up, till he comes, my friend.”

He called him his friend, and the very next day he would have denounced him as murderer to the magistrates at Lymington. Now his only thought was of saving the poor manʼs life.

The fatherʼs dull eyes gleamed again when he heard those words, and a little smile came flickering over the stern lines of his face. They gave him more brandy on the strength of it, while he kept on looking at the door.

“Rub, rub, rub, men; very lightly, but very quickly. Keep your thumbs up, donʼt you see? Mustnʼt get cold again for the world. There now, heʼll keep his heart up until his dear son arrives.And then his children shall nurse him, much better than any one else could; and how glad they will be, John Thomas, to see him looking so well and so strong again!”

All this time, Rue Hutton himself, with a womanʼs skill and tenderness, was encouraging, by gentle friction over the stagnant heart, each feeble impulse yet to live, each little bubble faintly rising from the well of hope, every clinging of the soul to the things so hard to leave behind. “While there is life, there is hope.” True and genial saying! And we hope there is hope beyond it.

Poor Bull Garnet was taken home, even that very night. For Dr. Hutton saw how much he was longing for his children, who (until he was carried in) knew nothing of his danger. “Please God,” said Rufus to himself, as he crouched in the fly by the narrow mattress, even foregoing his loved cheroot, and keeping his hand on his patientʼs pulse; “please God, the poor fellow shall breathe his last with a child at either side of him.”

Meanwhile, an urgent message from Sir Cradock Nowell was awaiting the sick man at his cottage. Eoa herself had brought word to Pearl (of whom she longed to make a friend) that her uncle was walking about the house, perpetually walking, calling aloud in every room for Mr. Garnet and John Rosedew. He had heard of no disaster, any more than she had, for he seldom read the papers now; but Mr. Brockwood had been with him a very long time that morning, and Dr.Buller came in accidentally; and Eoa could almost vow that there was some infamous scheme on foot, and she knew whose doing it was; and oh that Uncle John would come back! But now they wanted Mr. Garnet, and he must hurry up to the Hall the moment he came home.

Mr. Garnet, of course, they could not have: his strength was wrecked, his heart benumbed, his mind incapable of effort, except to know his children, if that could ever be one. And in this paralytic state, never sleeping, never waking, never wholly conscious, he lay for weeks; and time for him had neither night nor morning.

But Mr. Rosedew could be brought to help his ancient friend, if only it was in his power to overlook the injury. He did not overlook it. For that he was too great a man. He utterly forgot it. To his mind it was thenceforth a thing that had never happened:

“To–morrow either with black cloudLet the Father fill the heaven,Or with sun full–blazing:Yet shall He not erase the past,Nor beat abroad, and make undone,What once the fleeting hour hath borne.”

Truly so our Horace saith. And yet that Father gives, sometimes, to the noblest of his children, power to revoke the evil, or at least annul it,—grandeur to undo the wrong done by others to them. Not with any sense of greatness, neither hope of self–reward, simply from the loving–kindness of the deep humanity.

In truth it was a noble thing, such as not even the driest man, sapped and carked with care and evil, worn with undeserved rebuff, and dwelling ever underground, in the undermining of his faith, could behold and not be glad with a joy unbidden, could turn away from without wet eyes, and a glimpse of the God who loves us,—and yet the simplest, mildest scene that a child could describe to its mother. So will I tell it, if may be, casting all long words away, leaning on an old manʼs staff, looking over the stile of the world.

It was the height of the summer–time, and the quiet mood of the setting sun touched with calm and happy sadness all he was forsaking. Men were going home from work; wives were looking for them; maidens by the gate or paling longed for some protection; children must be put to bed, and what a shame, so early! Puce and purple pillows lay, holding golden locks of sun, piled and lifted by light breezes, the painted eider–down of sunset. In the air a feeling was—those who breathe it cannot tell—only this, that it does them good; God knows how, and why, and whence—but it makes them love their brethren.

The poor old man, more tried and troubled than a lucky labourer, wretched in his wealth, worse hampered by his rank and placement, sat upon a high oak chair—for now he feared to lean his head back—and prayed for some one to help him. Oh, for any one who loved him; oh, for any sight ofGod, whom in his pride he had forgotten! Eoa was a darling, his only comfort now; but what could such a girl do? Who was she to meet the world? And the son he had used so shamefully. Good God, his only son! And now he knew, with some strange knowledge, loose, and wide, and wandering, that his son was innocent after all, and lost to him for ever, through his own vile cruelty. And now they meant to prove him mad—what use to disguise it?—him who once had the clearest head, chairman of the Quarter Sessions——

Here he broke down, and lay back, with his white hair poured against the carved black oak of the chair, and his wasted hands flung downward, only praying God to help him, anyhow to help him.

Then John Rosedew came in softly, half ashamed of himself, half nervous lest he were presuming, overdrawing the chords of youth, the bond of the days when they went about with arm round the neck of each other. In his heart was pity, very deep and holy; and yet, of all that filled his eyes, the very last to show itself.

Over against the ancient friend, the loved one of his boyhood, he stopped and sadly gazed a moment, and then drew back with a shock and sorrow, as of death brought nearer. At the sound, Sir Cradock Nowell lifted his weary eyes and sighed; and then he looked intently; and then he knew the honest face, the smile, the gentle forehead. Quietlyhe arose, with colour flowing over his pallid cheeks, and in his eyes strong welcome, and ready with his lips to speak, yet in his heart unable. Thereupon he held the chair, and bowed with the deepest reverence, such as king or queen receives not till a life has earned it. Even the hand which he was raising he let fall again, drawn back by a bitter memory, and a nervous shame.

But his friend of olden time would not have him so disgraced, wanted no repentance. With years of kindness in his eyes and the history of friendship, he came, without a bow, and took the hand that now was shy of him.

“Cradock, oh, I am so glad.”

“John, thank God for this, John!”

Then they turned to other subjects, with a sort of nervousness—the one for fear of presuming on pardon, the other for fear of offering it. Only both knew, once for all, that nothing more could come between them till the hour of death.

The rector accepted once again his well–beloved home and cares, for the vacancy had not been filled, only Mr. Pell had lived a short time at the Rectory. The joy of all the parish equalled, if not transcended, that of parson and of patron.

And, over and above the ease of conscience, and the sense of comfort, it was a truly happy thing for poor Sir Cradock Nowell, when the loss of theTaprobanecould no longer be concealed from him, that now he had the proven friend tofall back upon once more. He had spent whole days in writing letters—humble, loving, imploring letters to the son in unknown latitudes—directing them as fancy took him to the Cape, to Port Natal, Mozambique, or even Bombay (in case of stress of weather), Point de Galle, Colombo, &c. &c., in all cases to be called for, and invariably marked “urgent.” Then from this labour of love he awoke to a vague form of conviction that his letters ought to have been addressed to the bottom of the sea.

Autumn in the Forest now, once again the autumn. All things turning to their rest, bird, and beast, and vegetable. Solemn and most noble season, speaking to the soul of man, as spring speaks to his body. The harvest of the ample woods spreading every tint of ripeness, waiting for the Makerʼs sickle, when His breath is frost. Trees beyond trees, in depth and height, roundings and massive juttings, some admitting flaws of light to enhance their mellowness, some very bright of their own accord, when the sun thought well of them, others scarcely bronzed with age, and meaning to abide the spring. It was the same in Epping Forest, Richmond Park, and the woods round London, only on a smaller scale, and with less variety. And so upon his northern road, every coppice, near or far, even“Knockholt Beeches” (which reminded him of the “beechen hats”), every little winding wood of Sussex or of Surrey brought before Cradock Nowellʼs eyes the prospect of his boyhood. He had begged to be put ashore at Newhaven, from the American trader, which had rescued him from Pomona Island, and his lonely but healthful sojourn, and then borne him to New York. Now, with his little store of dollars, earned from the noble Yankee skipper by the service he had rendered him, freely given and freely taken, as behoves two gentlemen, and with his great store of health recovered, and recovered mind, he must walk all the way to London, forty miles or more; so great a desire entered into him of his native land, that stable versatility, those free and ever–changing skies, which all her sons abuse and love.

Cradock looked, I do assure you, as well, and strong, and stout, and lusty, as may consist with elegance at the age of two–and–twenty. And his dress, though smacking of Broadway, “could not conceal,” as our best writers say, “his symmetrical proportions.” His pantaloons were of a fine bright tan colour, with pockets fit for a thousand dollars, and his boots full of eyelets, like big lampreys, and his coat was a thing to be proud of, and a pleasing surprise for Regent–street. His hat, moreover, was umbratile, as of the Pilgrim Fathers, with a measure of liquid capacity (betwixt the cone and the turned–up rim) superior to that of the ordinary cisterns of the London water–companies. Neverthelesshe had not acquired the delightful hydropultic art, distinctive of the mighty nation which had been so kind to him. And, in spite of little external stuff (only worthy of two glances—one to note, and the other to smile at it), the youth was improved in every point worth a manʼs observation. Three months in New York had done him an enormous deal of good; not that the place is by any means heavenly (perhaps there are few more hellish), only that he fell in with men of extraordinary energy and of marvellous decision, the very two hinges of life whereupon he (being rather too “philosophical”) had several screws loose, and some rust in the joints.

As for Wena, she (the beauty) had cocked her tail with great arrogance at smelling English ground again. To her straight came several dogs, who had never travelled far (except when they were tail–piped), and one and all cried, “Hail, my dear! Have you seen any dogs to compare with us? Set of mongrel parley–woos, canʼt bark or bite like a Christian. Just look round the corner, pretty, while we kill that poodle.”

To whom Wena—leniter atterens caudam—”Cordially I thank you. So much now I have seen of the world that my faith is gone in tail–wags. If you wish to benefit by my society, bring me a bit from the hock of bacon, or a very young marrowbone. Then will I tell you something.” They could not comply with her requisitions, because they had eaten all that themselves. And so shetrotted along the beach, like the dog of Polyphemus, or the terrier of Hercules, who tinged his nose with murex.

‘Tis a very easy thing to talk of walking fifty miles, but quite another pair of shoes to do it; especially with pack on back, and feet that have lost habitual sense of Macadamʼs tender mercies. Moreover, the day had been very warm for the beginning of October—the dying glance of Summer, in the year 1860, at her hitherto foregone and forgotten England. The highest temperature of the year had been 72° (in the month of May); in June and July, 66° and 68° were the maxima, and in August things were no better. Persistent rain, perpetual chill, and ever–present sense of icebergs, and longing for logs of dry wood. But towards the end of September some glorious weather set in; and people left off fires at the time when they generally begin them. Therefore, Cradock Nowell was hot, footsore, and slightly jaded, as he came to the foot of Sydenham Hill, on the second day of his journey. The Crystal Palace, which long had been his landmark through country crossroads, shone with blue and airy light, as the sun was sinking. Cradock admired more and more, as the shadows sloped along it, the fleeting gleams, the pellucid depth, the brightness of reflection framed by the softness of refraction.

He had always loved that building, and now, at the top of the hill, he resolved (weary as he was) to enter and take his food there. AccordinglyWena was left to sup and rest at the stables; he paid the shilling that turns the wheel, and went first to the refreshment court. After doing his duty there, he felt a great deal better; then buttoned his coat like a Briton, and sauntered into the transept. It had been a high and mighty day, for the Ancient Order of Mountaineers (who had never seen a mountain) were come to look for one at Penge, with sweethearts, wives, contingencies, and continuations. It boots not now to tell their games; enough that they had been very happy, and were gathering back in nave and transept for a last parade. To Cradock, so long accustomed to sadness, solitude, and bad luck, the scene, instead of being ludicrous (as a youth of fashion would have found it), was interesting and impressive, and even took a solemn aspect as the red rays of the sun retired, and the mellow shades were deepening. He leaned against the iron rail in front of the grand orchestra, and seeing many pretty faces, thought about his Amy, and wondered what she now was like, and whether she were true to him. From Pomona Island he could not write; from New York he had never written; not knowing the loss of theTaprobane, and fearing lest he should seem once more to be trying the depth of John Rosedewʼs purse. But now he was come to England, with letters from Captain Recklesome Young, to his London correspondents, which ensured him a good situation, and the power to earn his own bread, and perhaps in a little while Amyʼs.

As he leaned and watched the crowd go by, like a dream of faces, the events of the bygone year passed also in dark parade before him. Sad, mysterious, undeserved—at least so far as he knew—how had they told upon him? Had they left him in better, or had they left him in bitter, case with his God and his fellow–man? That question might be solved at once, to any but himself, by the glistening of his eyes, the gentleness of his gaze around, the smile with which he drew back his foot when a knickerbocked child trod on it. He loved his fellow–creatures still; and love is law and gospel.

While he thought these heavy things, feeling weary of the road, of his life half weary, shrinking from the bustling world again to be encountered, suddenly a grand vibration thrilled his heart, and mind, and soul. From the great concave above him, melody was spreading wide, with shadowy resistless power, like the wings of angels. The noble organ was pealing forth, rolling to every nook of the building, sweeping over the heads of the people and into their hearts (with one soft passport), “Home, sweet home!” The men who had come because tired of home, the wives to give them a change of it, the maidens perhaps to get homes of their own, the children to cry to go home again;—all with one accord stood still, all listened very quietly, and said nothing at all about it. Only they were the better for it, with many a kind old memory rising, at least among the elder ones,and many a large unselfish hope making the young people look, with trust, at one another.

And what did Cradock Nowell feel? His home was not a sweet one; bitter things had been done against him; bitter things he himself had done. None the less, he turned away and wept beneath a music–stand, as if his heart would never give remission to his eyes. None could see him in the dark there, only the God whose will it was, and whose will it often is, that tears should bring us home to Him.

“I will arise, and go home to my father. I will cry, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven, and against thee.’”

And so he had. Not heavily, not wilfully, not wittingly, not a hundredth part so badly as that father had sinned against him. Yet it was wrong in him not to allow the old man to recover himself, but, forgetting a sonʼs love–duty, so to leave him—hotly, hastily, with a proud defiance. Till now he had never felt, or at least confessed to himself, that wrong. Now, as generous natures do, he summed up sternly against himself, leniently against others. And then he asked, with yearning and bitter self–reproach, “Is the old man yet alive?”

The woods were still as rich and sweet, and the grass as soft as in May month; the windings of the pleasant dells were looped with shining waters; but she who used to love them so and brighten at their freshness, to follow the steps of each wanderingbreeze, and call to the sun as a flower does—now she came through her favourite places, and hardly cared to look at them. Only three short months ago she had returned to her woodland home, and the folk that knew and loved her, in the highest and brightest spirits of youth, conscious beauty, and hopefulness. All her old friends were rejoicing in her, and she in their joy delighted, when her father thought it his sorrowful duty, in this world of sorrow, to tell her the bad news about her ever unlucky Cradock. At first she received it with scorn—as the high manner of her mind was—utter unbelief, because God could not have done it. Being simple, and very young, she had half as much faith in her heavenly Father as she had in the earthly and fallible parent; neither was she quite aware that we do not buy, but accept from God.

But, as week upon back of week, and month after tardy month, went by, Amyʼs faith began to wane, and herself to languish. She watched the arrival of every mail from the Cape, from India, from anywhere; her heart leaped up as each steamer came in, and sank at each empty letterbag. Meanwhile her father was growing very unhappy about her, and so was good Aunt Doxy. At first John had said, when she took it so calmly, “Thank God! How glad I am! But her mother cared for me more than that.” Like many another loving father, he had studied, but never learned his child.

Now it was the fifth day of October, the weather bright and beautiful, the English earth and trees and herbage trying back for the summer of which they had been so cheated. Poor pale Amy asked leave to go out. She had long been under Rue Huttonʼs care, not professionally, but paternally (for Rufus would have his own way when he was truly fond of any one), and she asked so quietly, so submissively, without a bit of joke about it, that when she was gone her father set to and shook his head, till a heavy tear came and blotted out a reference which had taken all the morning. As for Aunt Doxy, she turned aside, and took off her spectacles quickly, because the optician had told her to keep them perfectly dry.

Where the footpath wanders to and fro, preferring pleasure to duty, and meeting all remonstrance by quoting the course of the brook, Amy Rosedew slowly walked, or heavily stopped every now and then, caring for nothing around her. She had made up her mind to cry no more, only to long for the time and place when and where no crying is. Perhaps in a year or so, if she lived, she might be able to see things again, and attend to her work as usual. Till then she would try to please her father, and keep up her spirits for his sake. Every one had been so kind to her, especially dear Eoa, who had really cried quite steadily; and the least thing that girl Amy could do was to try and deserve it. Thinking thus, and doing her best to feel as well as think it, yet growing tiredalready, she sat down in a chair as soft as weary mortal may rest in. A noble beech, with a head of glory overlooking the forest, had not neglected to slipper his feet with the richest of natureʼs velvet. From the dove–coloured columnʼs base, two yards above the ground–spread, drifts of darker bulk began, gnarled crooks of grapple, clutching wide at mother earth, deeply fanged into her breast, sureties against every wind. Ridged and ramped with many a hummock, rift, and twisted sinew, forth these mighty tendons stretched, some fathoms from the bole itself. Betwixt them nestled, all in moss, corniced with the golden, and cushioned with the greenest, nooks of cool, delicious rest, wherein to forget the world, and dream upon the breezes. “As You Like It,” in your lap, Theocritus tossed over the elbow, because he is too foreign,—what sweet depth of enjoyment for a hard–working man who has earned it!

But, in spite of all this voluptuousness, the “moss more soft than slumber,” and the rippling leafy murmur, there is little doubt that Miss Amy Rosedew managed to have another cry ere ever she fell asleep. To cry among those arms of moss, fleecing, tufting, pillowing, an absorbent even for Niobe! Can the worn–out human nature find no comfort in the vegetable, though it does in the mineral, kingdom?

Back, and back, and further back into the old relapse of sleep, the falling thither whence we came, the interest on the debt of death. Yet asthe old Stagyrite hints, some of dayʼs emotions filter through the strain of sleep; it is not true that good and bad are, for half of life, the same. Alike their wits go roving haply after the true Owner, but some may find Him, others fail—Father, who shall limit thus Thine infinite amnesty?

It would not be an easy thing to find a fairer sight. Her white arms on the twisted plumage of the deep green moss, the snowy arch of her neck revealed as the clustering hair fell from it, and the frank and playful forehead resting on the soft grey bark. She smiled in her sleep every now and then, for her pleasant young humour must have its own way when the schoolmaster, sorrow, was dozing; and then the sad dreaming of trouble returned, and the hands were put up to pray, and the red lips opened, whispering, “Come home! Only come to Amy!”

And then, in her dream, he was come—raining tears upon her cheek, holding her from all the world, fearing to thank God yet. She was smiling up at him; oh, it was so delicious! Suddenly she opened her eyes. What made her face so wet? Why, Wena!

Wena, as sure as dogs are dogs; mounted on the mossy arm, lick–lick–licking, mewing like a cat almost, even offering taste of her tongue, while every bit of the Wena dog shook with ecstatic rapture.

“Oh, Wena, Wena! what are you come to tell me, Wena? Oh that you could speak!”

Wena immediately proved that she could. She galloped round Amy, barking and yelling, until the great wood echoed again; the rabbits, a mile away, pricked their ears, and the yaffingales stopped from tapping. Then off set the little dog down the footpath. Oh, could it be to fetch somebody?

The mere idea of such a thing made Amy shake so, and feel so odd, she was forced to put one hand against the tree, and the other upon her heart. She could not look, she was in such a state; she could not look down the footpath. It seemed, at least, a century, and it may have been half a minute, before she heard through the bushes a voice—tush, she meansthevoice.

“Wena, you bad dog, come in to heel. Is this all you have learned by travelling?”

But Wena broke fence and everything, set off full gallop again to Amy, tugged at her dress, and retrieved her.

What happened after that Amy knows not, neither knows Cradock Nowell. So anything I could tell would be a fond thing vainly invented. All they remember is—looking back upon it, as both of them may, to the zenith of their lives—that neither of them could say a word except “darling, darling, darling!” all pronounced as superlatives, with “my own,” once or twice between, and an exclusive sense of ownership, illiberaland unphilosophical. What business have we with such minor details? Who has sworn us accountants of kisses? All we have any right to say is, that after a long spell of inarticulate tautology, Amy looked up when Cradock proposed to add another cipher; very gravely, indeed, she looked up; except in the deepest depth of her eyes.

“Oh no, Cradock. You must not think of it. Seriously now, you mustnot, love.”

“Why? I should like to know, indeed! After all the time I have been away!”

“I have so little presence of mind. I forgot to tell you in time, dear. Why, because Wenahas licked my face all over, darling. Darling, yes, shehas, I say. You are too bad not to care about it. Now come to my own best father, dear. Offer your arm like a gentleman.”

So they—as Milton concisely says. Homer would have written “they two.” How sadly our language wants a dual! We, the domestic race, have we rejected it because the use would have seemed a truism?

That same afternoon Bull Garnet lay dying, calmly and peacefully going off, taking his accounts to a larger world. He knew that there were some heavy items underscored against him; but he also knew that the mercy of God can even outdo the hope He gives us for token and for keepsake. A greater and a grander end, after alife of mark and power, might, to his early aspirations and self–conscious strength, have seemed the bourne intended. If it had befallen him—as but for himself it would have done—to appear where men are moved by passion, vigour, and bold decision, his name would have been historical, and better known to the devil. As it was, he lay there dying, and was well content. The turbulence of life was past, the torrent and the eddy, the attempt at fore–reaching upon his age, and sense of impossibility, the strain of his mental muscles to stir the great dead trunks of “orthodoxy,” and then the self–doubt, the chill, the depression, which follow such attempts, as surely as ague tracks the pioneer.

Thank God, all this was over now, and the violence gone, and the dark despair. Of all the good and evil things which so had branded him distinct, two yet dwelled in his feeble heart, only two still showed their presence in his dying eyes. Each of those two was good, if two indeed they were—faith in the heavenly Father, and love of the earthly children.

Pearl was sitting on a white chair at the side of the bed away from the window, with one hand in his failing palm, and the other trying now and then to enable her eyes to see things. She was thinking, poor little thing, of what she should do without him, and how he had been a good father to her, though she never could understand him. That was her own fault, no doubt. She hadalways fancied that he loved her as a bit of his property, as a thing to be managed; now she knew that it was not so; and he was going away for ever, and who would love or manage her? And the fault of all this was her own.

Rufus Hutton had been there lately, trying still to keep up some little show of comfort, and a large one of encouragement; for he was not the man to say die till a patient came to the preterite. Throughout the whole, and knowing all, he had behaved in the noblest manner, partly from his own quick kindness, partly from that protective and fiduciary feeling which springs self–sown in the hearts of women when showers of sorrow descend, and crops up in the manly bosom at the fee of golden sunshine. Not that he took any fees; but that his professional habits revived, with a generosity added, because he knew that he would take nothing, though all were in his power.

Suddenly Mr. Pell came in, our old friend Octavius, sent for in an urgent manner, and looking as a man looks who feels but cannot open on the hinge of his existence. Like a thorough gentleman, he had been shy of the cottage, although aware of their distress; eager at once and reluctant, partly because it stood not in his but his rectorʼs parish, partly for deeper reasons.

Though Pell came in so quietly, Bull Garnet rose at his entry, or tried to rise on the pillow, swept his daughter back by a little motion of his thumb, which she quite understood, and cast his eyes on the parsonʼs with a languid yet strong intelligence.He had made up his mind that the man was good, and yet he could not help probing him.

The last characteristic act of poor Bull Garnetʼs life, a life which had been all character, all difference, from other people.

“Will you take my daughterʼs hand, Pell?”

“Only too gladly,” answered Pell; but she shrank away, and sobbed at him.

“Pearl, come forward this moment. It is no time for shilly–shallying.”

The poor thing timidly gave her hand, standing a long way back from Pell, and with her large eyes streaming, yet fixed upon her father, and no chance at all of wiping them.

“Now, Pell, do you love my daughter? I am dying, and I ask you.”

“That I do, with all my heart,” said Pell, like a downright Englishman. “I shall never love any other.”

“Now, Pearl, do you love Mr. Pell?” Her fatherʼs eyes were upon her in a way that commanded truth. She remembered how she had told a lie, at the age of seven or eight, and that gaze had forced it out of her, and she had never dared to tell one since, until no lie dared come near her.

“Father, I like him very much. Very soon I should love him, if—if he loved me.”

“Now, Pell, you hear that!”

“Beyond all doubt I do,” said Octave, whosedryness never deserted him in the heaviest rain of tears; “and it is the very best thing for me I have heard in all my life.”

Bull Garnet looked from one to the other, with the rally of his life come hot, and a depth of joyful sadness. Yet must he go a little further, because he had always been a tyrant till people understood him.

“Do you want to know how much money, sir, I intend to leave her, when I die to–night or to–morrow morning?”

Cut–and–dry Pell was taken aback. A thoroughly upright and noble fellow, but of wholly different and less rugged road of thought. Meanwhile Pearl had slipped away; it was more than she could bear, and she was so sorry for Octavius. Then Pell up and spake bravely:

“Sir, I would be loth to think of you, my dear oneʼs father, as anything but a gentleman; a strange one, perhaps, but a true one. And so I trust you have only put such a question to me in irony.”

“Pell, there is good stuff in you. I know a man by this time. What would you think of finding your dear oneʼs father a murderer?”

Octavius Pell was not altogether used to this sort of thing. He turned away with some doubt whether Pearl would be a desirable mother of children (for he, after all, was a practical man), and hereditary insanity—— Then he turnedback, remembering that all mankind are mad. Meanwhile Bull Garnet watched him, with extraordinary wrinkles, and a savage sort of pleasure. He felt himself outside the world, and looking at the stitches of it. But he would not say a word. He had always been a bully, and he meant to keep it up.

“Sir,” said Octave Pell, at last, “you are the very oddest man I ever saw in all my life.”

“Ah, you think so, do you, Pell? Possibly you are right; possibly you are right, Pell. I have no time to think about it. It never struck me in that light. If I am so very odd, perhaps you would rather not have my daughter?”

“If you intend to refuse her to me, you had better say so at once, sir. I donʼt understand all this.”

“I wish you to understand nothing at all beyond the simple fact. I shot Clayton Nowell, and did it on purpose, because I found him insulting her.”

“Good God! You donʼt mean to say it?”

“I never yet said a thing, Pell, which I did not mean to say.”

“You did it in haste? You have repented? For Godʼs sake, tell me that.”

“Treat this as a question of business. Look at the deed and nothing else. Do you still wish to marry my daughter?”

Pell turned away from the great wild eyes now solemnly fixed upon him. His manly heart wasfull of wonder, anguish, and giddy turbulence. The promptest of us cannot always “come to time,” like a prizefighter.

Pearl came in, with her chest well forward, and then drew back very suddenly. She thought her fate must be settled now, and would like to know how they had settled it. Then, like a genuine English lady, she gave a short sigh and went away. Pride makes the difference between us and all other nations.

But the dignified glance she had cast on Pell settled his fate and hers for life. He saw her noble self–respect, her stately reservation, her deep sense of her own pure value (which never would assert itself), and her passing contempt of his hesitation.

“At all risks I will have her,” he said to himself, for his manly strength gloried in her strong womanhood; “if she can be won I will have her. Oh, how I am degrading her! What a fool–bound fellow I am!”

Then he spoke to her father, who had fallen back, and was faintly gazing, wondering what the stoppage was.

“Sir, I am not worthy of her. God knows how I love her. She is too good for me.”

Bull Garnet gathered his fleeting life, and looked at Pell with a love so deep that it banished admiration. Then his failing heart supplied, for the last, last time of all, the woe–worn fountain of his eyes. Strong and violent as he was, a little thing hadoften touched him to the turn of tears. What impulse is there but has this end? Even comic laughter.

Pell lifted from the counterpane the broad but shrunken hand, which was on the way to be offered to him, until sad memory stopped it. Then he looked down at the poor grey face, where the forehead, from the fall of the rest, appeared almost a monstrosity, and the waning of strong emotions left a quivering of hollowness. The young parson looked down with noble pity. Much he knew of his father–in–law! Bull Garnet would never be pitied. He drew his hand back with a little jerk, and placed it against his broad, square chin.

“I canʼt bear to die like this, Pell.I wish to God you could shave me.”

Pell went suddenly down on his knees, put his strong brown hands up, and said nothing except the Lordʼs Prayer. Bull Garnet tried to raise his palms, but the power of his wrists was gone, and so he let them fall together. Then at every grand petition he nodded at the ceiling, as if he saw it going upward, and thought of the lath and plaster.

He had said he should die at four oʼclock, for the paroxysms of heart–complaint returned at measured intervals, and he felt that he could not outlast another. So with his usual mastery and economy of labour, he had sent a man to get the keys and begin to toll the great church bell, as soon as ever the clock struck four. “Not too long apart,” he said, “steadily, and be done with it.” When the boom of the sluggish bell came in at the open window, Bull Garnet smiled, because the man was doing it as he had ordered him.

“Right,” he whispered, “yes, quite right. I have always been before my time. Just let me see my children.” And then he had no more pain.

Amy came in very softly, to know if he was dead. They had told her she ought to leave it alone, but she could not see it so. Knowing all and feeling all, she felt beyond her knowledge. If it would—oh, if it would help him with a spark of hope in his parting, help him in the judgment–day, to have the glad forgiveness of the brother with the deeper wrong—there it was, and he was welcome.

A little whispering went on, pale lips into trembling ears, and then Cradock, with his shoes off, was brought to the side of the bed.

“He wonʼt know you,” Pearl sobbed softly; “but how kind of you to come!” She was surprised at nothing now.

Her father raised his languid eyes, until they met Cradockʼs eager ones; there they dwelt with doubt, and wonder, and a slow rejoicing, and a last attempt at expression.

John Rosedew took the wan stiffening hand, lying on the sheet like a cast–off glove, and placed it in Cradockʼs sunburnt palm.

“He knows all,” the parson whispered; “he hasread the letter you left for him; and, knowing all, he forgives you.”

“That I do, with all my heart,” Cradock answered firmly. “May God forgive me as I do you. Wholly, purely, for once and for all!”

“Kind—noble—Godlike——” the dying man said very slowly, but with his old decision.

Bull Garnet could not speak again. The great expansion of heart had been too much for its weakness. Only now and then he looked at Cradock with his Amy, and every look was a prayer for them, and perhaps a recorded blessing.

Then they slipped away, in tears, and left him, as he ought to be, with his children only. And the telegraph of death was that God would never part them.

Now, think you not this man was dying a great deal better than he deserved? No doubt he was. And, for that matter, so perhaps do most of us. But does our Father think so?

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