Chapter Seven.

Chapter Seven.A Tramp in the Snow.“There is no dearth of kindnessIn this world of ours,Only in our blindnessWe gather thorns for flowers!”Gerald Massey.A very cold winter morning, colder than is often the case before Christmas, and Christmas was still some days off. Snow had fallen in the night; and while some weather optimists were maintaining that on this account it would feel warmer now, others, more experienced, if less hopeful, were prophesying a much heavier fall before night—what lay on the ground was but the precursor of much more.The family party round the breakfast table in the pretty Rectory of Thorncroft were discussing the question from various points of view.“If it would stop snowing now, and go on freezinghardtill the end of the holidays, so that we could have skating all the time, then I don’t care what it does after,” said Tom, a typical youth of fourteen, to be met with, it seems to me, in at least six of every seven English country families.“No,” said Ralph, his younger brother, “I’d rather it’d go on snowing for about a week, so that we could have lots of snow-balling. I like that better than skating.”“There wouldn’t be much of you or Tom left to skate or snowball either, if it went on snowing for a week. We’d be snowed up bodily,” remarked their father. “Have you forgotten grandpapa’s stories?” For Thorncroft was in an out-of-the-way part of the country, all hills and valleys, where snowings-up were not altogether legend. “But, independently of that, I don’t like you to talk quite so thoughtlessly. Either heavy snow or hard frost long prolonged brings terrible suffering.” And the kind-hearted clergyman sighed, as he rose from the table and walked over to the window, where he stood looking out for a few moments without speaking.“I must tell cook to begin the winter soup at once,” said the mother, speaking to her eldest daughter. For in this family there was a sort of private soup kitchen in severe weather—independently of charity to their own parishioners—for the benefit of poor, storm-driven waifs and strays, many of whom passed this way on their tramp to the northern towns, which they were too poor to attain by the railway. It was an old custom, and had never been found productive of abuse.“Yes,” replied the young girl; “for I am sure the weather is going to be dreadful. Shall I go and speak about it, mamma?”“Do, dear; your father may want me for a few minutes.”Daisy left the room, but only to reappear again very shortly with a troubled face.“Papa, mamma,” she said, “there is a tramp at the door now. He seems nearly fainting, and cook says he must have been out in the snow all night. There is no soup ready; might I have a cup of tea for him?”“Certainly,” said her mother. “Run, one of you boys, for a kitchen cup; it will taste just as good, and I don’t like to risk one of my dear old china ones.”“Mamma,” said Daisy, in a low voice—she was always a little afraid of the boys laughing at her—“I don’t think it would have mattered about the cup. Do you know, he looks quite like a gentleman?”Her father, who was standing near, overheard the last words. He had been reading a letter, which he threw aside.“There is nothing from Ingram,” he remarked to his wife. “I had hoped for a letter. I am so sorry for him, just at Christmas time again the old disappointment. But what is Daisy saying?” The young girl repeated what she had told her mother, and Ralph just then appearing with a substantial cup and saucer, Mrs Winthrop poured out the tea, and Daisy, carrying it, went off with her father to the kitchen door.“Agentleman, you say, Daisy?” he repeated.“Yes, papa, and quite young. Cook says she is sure he is a gentleman.”“Andbegging?” added her father.“Oh no—at least, I don’t think so. He just knocked at the door and asked if he might warm himself at the fire. And she said he looks so ill. I did not quite see him. I just peeped in.”“Well, wait a moment, I’ll speak to him first,” said her father; for by this time they had traversed the long passage which led to the kitchen and offices—the Rectory at Thorncroft was a large roomy old house, and the Winthrops were rich—and so saying the clergyman went in to have a look at the stranger.Almost immediately, Daisy, waiting at the door, heard herself called.“Quick, my child—the hot tea. He is nearly fainting, poor fellow!”And Daisy, hurrying in, saw her father half lifting on to a chair a tall thin figure with white face and closed eyes; while cook stood by looking very frightened, and perhaps not altogether pleased at this desecration of her spotless kitchen. For the snow, melted by the heat, was running off the stranger in little rivulets.He was only half-fainting, however. They made him swallow the tea, and sent for another cup, into which Mrs Winthrop put a spoonful of brandy. Then the young man sat up and looked about him confusedly. Recognising that he was among strangers, he thanked them earnestly for their kindness, and struggling to his feet said that he must be going on.“Going on, my good fellow!” said Mr Winthrop. “You are not fit for it. You must stay here an hour or two at least, and get dried and have something to eat. Have you far to go to-day?”The young man coloured.“I wanted to get to Clough,” he said. “It is ten days since I started. I got on well enough, though it has been horribly cold,” and he shivered as he thought of it, “till last night.”“Were you out in the snow?” asked the rector compassionately.“Not all night. Oh no; I sheltered in a barn till early this morning. Then it looked as if it were clearing, and I set off again. I was anxious to get on as far as I could before it came on again; but I lost my way, I think; there was moonlight at first, but since daylight I have been wandering about, not able to find the road. Am I far from the high-road to Clough?”“Not very; you must have taken the wrong turn a couple of miles off. We are accustomed to—people,”—“tramps,” he was going to have said, but he changed the word in time—“making that mistake. Now you had better take off your wet things and get them dried, and have something to eat; and, if you must go on, we will set you on your way. And,”—here the good rector hesitated—“you seem very young,” he went on; “if I can give you any counsel, remember, it is my business to do so.”The young fellow coloured up again painfully. “You are very kind, sir,” he said.“Think it over. I will see you again. Peters,” he called, and a man-servant, brimful of curiosity appeared, “this,”—again an instant’s almost imperceptible hesitation—“this young gentleman has lost his way. Take him to Master Tom’s old room and help him to change his things. We must find you a change while they are drying,” he went on. But the young fellow held up a small bag he had been carrying. “I have other things, thank you,” he said. “But I should be most thankful to have these dried.”Mr Winthrop rejoined Daisy and her mother.“He is a gentleman, is he not, papa?” said the former eagerly.“He strikes me as more of a schoolboy than anything else. I hope he has not run away in any sort of disgrace. Still, whatever it is, one must be kind to him, poor boy. He is evidently not accustomed to roughing it, and as far as one could see through the plight he was in, he seemed well dressed. I hope he will tell me something about himself.”The worst of the weather-prophets’ predictions were realised. Before noon the snow came down again, this time in most sober earnest, and long before dark Mr Winthrop, becoming convinced that they “were in for it,” began to take some necessary precautions. It was out of the question for the young stranger to pursue his foot-journey. His kind host insisted on his remaining where he was for the night, though somewhat embarrassed as to how to treat him.“I cannot bring a complete stranger in among our own children,” he said to his wife, “and yet it seems impossible to tell him to sit with the servants.”But the difficulty was solved by the young man’s unfitness to leave his room. He had caught a chill, and was, besides, suffering from exhaustion, both nervous and physical.“Seems to me to have had a shock of some kind, and evidently very little food for some days past,” said the doctor whom Mr Winthrop was obliged to send for the next morning. “It may go on to rheumatic fever, or he may—being young and healthy enough—fight it off. But any way, you’ve got him on your hands for two or three days, unless you like to get a vehicle of some kind and send him to the hospital at Clough,” said the doctor, pitying the inconvenience to Mrs Winthrop.“It would be a great risk, would it not?” said the rector.“Yes, certainly it would be a risk. Still you are not obliged to give house-room to every benighted wanderer,” said the doctor, smiling.But Mr Winthrop felt certain this was no common case, and his kindness was rewarded. Thanks to the care and nursing he received, the dreaded illness was warded off, and by the fourth day the young stranger was well enough to pursue his journey.“I can never thank you enough for your goodness to me, an utter stranger,” he said to his host, with the tears in his eyes. “And I feel so ashamed, so—” But here he broke down altogether.“My poor boy,” said the rector, “can you not give me your confidence? Why are you wandering about the world alone like this? I cannot believe you have done anything wrong—at least, seriously wrong. If you have left your friends hastily for some half-considered reason, it may not be too late to return. Can I do anything to help you? Can I write to your father so as to put things straight again?”“I have no father and no mother,” said the lad.“No, I have done nothing wrong; nothing disgraceful, in the usual sense, I mean. But I have done wrong in another way. I have disappointed every hope and effort that had been made for me, and I cannot face the result I cannot tell you all, for if I did, you would probably think it your duty to interfere—it is all so complicated and confused. All I can tell you is that I am going off like Whittington,” he added with a faint smile, “to seek my fortune. And if I find it, it will not be mine. I owe it to others, that is the worst of it.”“And where do you think of going in the first place?” asked Mr Winthrop.“To Hexton,” said the young man, naming the town he had been making for, before his misadventure, “and from there to Liverpool. I thought I would try in Liverpool to get something to do, and if I did not succeed, I thought perhaps I would go to America.”“And how would you get there? Have you money?”“I have a little that I left behind me in the charge of a friend to send after me with my clothes when I get to Liverpool. I thought it better not to carry it with me; I might have been robbed, or,”—and here he smiled again the same wintry little smile that seemed so pathetic on his thin young face—“tempted to spend it, perhaps.”“And have you any one to go to at Liverpool—any introductions of any kind?”“No one—none, whatever,” answered the poor boy sadly.Mr Winthrop reflected a moment.“I may be able to be of a little use to you in that way; at least, I might be if I knew even a little more about you. You cannot tell me your name?”The young man coloured and looked down.“I cannot,” he said. “I thought it all over, and I determined that my only chance was to tell nothing. No, sir, you cannot help me; but I thank you as much as if you had.”And thus Mr Winthrop was forced to let him go. At the last moment an idea struck him. He gave the boy a few words of introduction to an old friend of his in Liverpool—a friend, though in a different rank of life—the son of a farmer in the neighbourhood, now holding a respectable position in a business house there, telling him all, or rather the exceedingly little, he knew of the stranger who had been three days his guest, and asking him if under the circumstances he could do anything to help, to do it.“At the same time,” he said to the young man, “I really do not know that this will be of any service. I cannot ask Mr Simcox to take any responsibility in the matter. You have not even told me your name.”“I know that,” replied the youth dejectedly, “but I cannot help it. I cannot expect others to take me on trust as generously as you have done.” And so saying he set off on his lonely journey, with kindly words from Daisy and her mother, the two boys accompanying him to the high-road.The snow still lay on the ground, and Tom’s wish for a prolonged frost seemed likely to be fulfilled.“We shall have splendid skating in a day or two,” he remarked to “the gentleman tramp,” as he and Ralph had dubbed the stranger. “Our pond isn’t very big, but it’s very good ice generally. You should see the lake at Uncle Ingram’s;that’sthe best place, I know, for skating in England.”The young man started at the name Tom mentioned.“Wheredid you say?” he asked.“At my uncle Ingram’s—Mr Morison’s,” said Tom. “It’s a long way from here.”“But your name isn’t Morison. How can he be your uncle?”“Why, his wife is our aunt. He married mamma’s sister. Uncles are often uncles that way,” said Tom with an air of superior wisdom.“Of course,” said the young man; “how stupid of me.”“Well, don’t be stupid about losing your way again,” said the boy patronisingly. “Look here now, here’s the high-road; you’ve nothing to do but go straight on for some hours—two or three—and when you come to a place where four roads meet, you’ll see ‘Clough’ marked on a finger-post. You can easily get there to-night.”“Thank you; thank youverymuch,” said the stranger; and, as the boys turned from him, “Please thank your father and mother again for me,” he called out after them.“He must be a gentleman,” said Ralph. “He speaks quite like one.”“Of course he is,” said Tom. “But he’s rather queer. He was so stupid about Uncle Ingram. I wonder what he’s left his friends for.”“P’raps,” said Ralph sagely, “he’d got a cruel stepmother that starved and beat him, like Hop-o’-my-Thumb, you know.”“Nonsense,” reproved Tom. “That’s all fairy story rubbish; and you know papa says it’s very wrong to talk about cruel stepmothers, and that you’re not to read any more fairy stories if you mix them up with real.”“Or,” pursued Ralph, sublimely indifferent to this elder-brotherly reproof, “it might have been a cruel uncle, like the babes in the wood’s uncle. Andthat’snot a fairy story—there,” he threw at Tom triumphantly.Many a true word is spoken in jest!Little thought the two light-hearted boys as they made their way back over the crisp, glittering snow to the happy, cheerful Rectory, how the words “uncle,” “my uncle Ingram,” kept ringing in the ears of the solitary traveller, but little older than they, as he pursued his weary journey. For in a sense it was truly from an uncle, or the distorted image of one, that he was fleeing.“Uncle Ingram to betheiruncle. How extraordinary!” he kept saying to himself. “And how near I was more than once to telling my name. If I had—supposing I had got very ill and delirious and had told it—it would all have come out. It would not have been my faultthen. Lettice could not have reproached me, or written me any more of those dreadful letters;” and a sigh, almost a shiver, of suffering went through him as he thought of them. “If I had died, they would have had to hunt among my things, and they would have found my name. I think it would have been better. Perhaps Lettice would have been sorry; any way, it would have come to an end, and poor Nina would have been happier. Lettice could not speak to her as she has done to me. But I must not begin thinking. I must go on with it now.”He had no misadventures that day, and reached the town he was bound for by the evening. There he looked about till he saw a modest little inn, where he put up for the night, remembering Mr Winthrop’s advice to play no tricks with himself in such severe weather, and when still not fully recovered from his exposure to the snowstorm.It was the day but one before Christmas. Poor Arthur’s eyes filled with tears as he sat trying to warm himself on a bench at some little distance from the fire in the rough room of the inn, where a motley enough company of passers-by—small farmers from the neighbourhood, some of the inferior grades of commercial travellers, one or two nondescript figures, looking like wandering showmen, and a few others, were assembled, some talking, some silent, mostly smoking, and all getting as near the fire as they could, for it was again bitterly cold. What a contrast from last Christmas! Then, ill though their mother was, she had not seemed much worse than she had been for long, and had done her utmost to be cheerful for her children’s sake. Arthur recalled the pleasant little drawing-room at the Villa Martine, the bright sunshine and lovely blue sky—for the short, though often even in those climates sharp, winter had not set in till January—which almost seemed to laugh at the usual associations of Christmas. His brighter hopes, too, for he had not yet realised his distaste and unfitness for his chosen profession, and even if misgiving had now and then crossed his mind, there was his mother to confide in, should it ever take form.“Ican’tbelieve mamma would have been so hard on me,” he said to himself. “She might have been disappointed, but she wouldn’t have thought me disgraced for life. Oh, why did she not live till this was past? She would have been sorry for me; she would not have blamed me so—but then, she did not know all about the money. To think, as Lettice says, that all my education,everything, has in reality been paid for by the man we can’t—or won’t—be even commonly civil to! It is the most miserable complication. Not that it matters now tome. He wouldn’t be so ready to treat me as his son now that I’ve turned out such a fool, and worse than a fool. Lots of fools get on well enough, and nobody finds out they are fools; butImust needs go and make an exhibition of myself and my folly;” and he positively writhed at the remembrance. “However, that part of it is at an end. I’ll use no more of his money, and, if I live to make any of my own, the first thing I’ll do will be to repay what I have used, though without the least idea of all this.”Then his thoughts wandered off again to the happy family he had just left. How kind they had been to him! How gladly, had they had the slightest notion of who he was, would they have made him welcome to pass his Christmas among them! Mrs Winthrop especially, whom, as his aunt’s sister, he thought of with a peculiar interest. How gentle and motherly she was, and, doubtless, his aunt was just the same.“Ah!” sighed Arthur again, “if Lettice could but have seen things differently, I would not have been where I am to-day. I might have given up the attempt in time, before I had disgraced myself. I might—”But his further reflections were cut short by a voice beside him. It came from a burly personage who had, without Arthur’s noticing, so absorbed had he been in his reflections, installed himself on the bench at his side, puffing away busily and contentedly at a clay pipe. He had not hitherto spoken, but had sat still, looking about him with a pair of shrewd but not unkindly eyes.“And whur,”—with a broad accent—“may you be boun’, young man?” he inquired good-naturedly. “Better bide at home, say I, by such weather, if so be as one’s not forced to be on the roads.”

“There is no dearth of kindnessIn this world of ours,Only in our blindnessWe gather thorns for flowers!”Gerald Massey.

“There is no dearth of kindnessIn this world of ours,Only in our blindnessWe gather thorns for flowers!”Gerald Massey.

A very cold winter morning, colder than is often the case before Christmas, and Christmas was still some days off. Snow had fallen in the night; and while some weather optimists were maintaining that on this account it would feel warmer now, others, more experienced, if less hopeful, were prophesying a much heavier fall before night—what lay on the ground was but the precursor of much more.

The family party round the breakfast table in the pretty Rectory of Thorncroft were discussing the question from various points of view.

“If it would stop snowing now, and go on freezinghardtill the end of the holidays, so that we could have skating all the time, then I don’t care what it does after,” said Tom, a typical youth of fourteen, to be met with, it seems to me, in at least six of every seven English country families.

“No,” said Ralph, his younger brother, “I’d rather it’d go on snowing for about a week, so that we could have lots of snow-balling. I like that better than skating.”

“There wouldn’t be much of you or Tom left to skate or snowball either, if it went on snowing for a week. We’d be snowed up bodily,” remarked their father. “Have you forgotten grandpapa’s stories?” For Thorncroft was in an out-of-the-way part of the country, all hills and valleys, where snowings-up were not altogether legend. “But, independently of that, I don’t like you to talk quite so thoughtlessly. Either heavy snow or hard frost long prolonged brings terrible suffering.” And the kind-hearted clergyman sighed, as he rose from the table and walked over to the window, where he stood looking out for a few moments without speaking.

“I must tell cook to begin the winter soup at once,” said the mother, speaking to her eldest daughter. For in this family there was a sort of private soup kitchen in severe weather—independently of charity to their own parishioners—for the benefit of poor, storm-driven waifs and strays, many of whom passed this way on their tramp to the northern towns, which they were too poor to attain by the railway. It was an old custom, and had never been found productive of abuse.

“Yes,” replied the young girl; “for I am sure the weather is going to be dreadful. Shall I go and speak about it, mamma?”

“Do, dear; your father may want me for a few minutes.”

Daisy left the room, but only to reappear again very shortly with a troubled face.

“Papa, mamma,” she said, “there is a tramp at the door now. He seems nearly fainting, and cook says he must have been out in the snow all night. There is no soup ready; might I have a cup of tea for him?”

“Certainly,” said her mother. “Run, one of you boys, for a kitchen cup; it will taste just as good, and I don’t like to risk one of my dear old china ones.”

“Mamma,” said Daisy, in a low voice—she was always a little afraid of the boys laughing at her—“I don’t think it would have mattered about the cup. Do you know, he looks quite like a gentleman?”

Her father, who was standing near, overheard the last words. He had been reading a letter, which he threw aside.

“There is nothing from Ingram,” he remarked to his wife. “I had hoped for a letter. I am so sorry for him, just at Christmas time again the old disappointment. But what is Daisy saying?” The young girl repeated what she had told her mother, and Ralph just then appearing with a substantial cup and saucer, Mrs Winthrop poured out the tea, and Daisy, carrying it, went off with her father to the kitchen door.

“Agentleman, you say, Daisy?” he repeated.

“Yes, papa, and quite young. Cook says she is sure he is a gentleman.”

“Andbegging?” added her father.

“Oh no—at least, I don’t think so. He just knocked at the door and asked if he might warm himself at the fire. And she said he looks so ill. I did not quite see him. I just peeped in.”

“Well, wait a moment, I’ll speak to him first,” said her father; for by this time they had traversed the long passage which led to the kitchen and offices—the Rectory at Thorncroft was a large roomy old house, and the Winthrops were rich—and so saying the clergyman went in to have a look at the stranger.

Almost immediately, Daisy, waiting at the door, heard herself called.

“Quick, my child—the hot tea. He is nearly fainting, poor fellow!”

And Daisy, hurrying in, saw her father half lifting on to a chair a tall thin figure with white face and closed eyes; while cook stood by looking very frightened, and perhaps not altogether pleased at this desecration of her spotless kitchen. For the snow, melted by the heat, was running off the stranger in little rivulets.

He was only half-fainting, however. They made him swallow the tea, and sent for another cup, into which Mrs Winthrop put a spoonful of brandy. Then the young man sat up and looked about him confusedly. Recognising that he was among strangers, he thanked them earnestly for their kindness, and struggling to his feet said that he must be going on.

“Going on, my good fellow!” said Mr Winthrop. “You are not fit for it. You must stay here an hour or two at least, and get dried and have something to eat. Have you far to go to-day?”

The young man coloured.

“I wanted to get to Clough,” he said. “It is ten days since I started. I got on well enough, though it has been horribly cold,” and he shivered as he thought of it, “till last night.”

“Were you out in the snow?” asked the rector compassionately.

“Not all night. Oh no; I sheltered in a barn till early this morning. Then it looked as if it were clearing, and I set off again. I was anxious to get on as far as I could before it came on again; but I lost my way, I think; there was moonlight at first, but since daylight I have been wandering about, not able to find the road. Am I far from the high-road to Clough?”

“Not very; you must have taken the wrong turn a couple of miles off. We are accustomed to—people,”—“tramps,” he was going to have said, but he changed the word in time—“making that mistake. Now you had better take off your wet things and get them dried, and have something to eat; and, if you must go on, we will set you on your way. And,”—here the good rector hesitated—“you seem very young,” he went on; “if I can give you any counsel, remember, it is my business to do so.”

The young fellow coloured up again painfully. “You are very kind, sir,” he said.

“Think it over. I will see you again. Peters,” he called, and a man-servant, brimful of curiosity appeared, “this,”—again an instant’s almost imperceptible hesitation—“this young gentleman has lost his way. Take him to Master Tom’s old room and help him to change his things. We must find you a change while they are drying,” he went on. But the young fellow held up a small bag he had been carrying. “I have other things, thank you,” he said. “But I should be most thankful to have these dried.”

Mr Winthrop rejoined Daisy and her mother.

“He is a gentleman, is he not, papa?” said the former eagerly.

“He strikes me as more of a schoolboy than anything else. I hope he has not run away in any sort of disgrace. Still, whatever it is, one must be kind to him, poor boy. He is evidently not accustomed to roughing it, and as far as one could see through the plight he was in, he seemed well dressed. I hope he will tell me something about himself.”

The worst of the weather-prophets’ predictions were realised. Before noon the snow came down again, this time in most sober earnest, and long before dark Mr Winthrop, becoming convinced that they “were in for it,” began to take some necessary precautions. It was out of the question for the young stranger to pursue his foot-journey. His kind host insisted on his remaining where he was for the night, though somewhat embarrassed as to how to treat him.

“I cannot bring a complete stranger in among our own children,” he said to his wife, “and yet it seems impossible to tell him to sit with the servants.”

But the difficulty was solved by the young man’s unfitness to leave his room. He had caught a chill, and was, besides, suffering from exhaustion, both nervous and physical.

“Seems to me to have had a shock of some kind, and evidently very little food for some days past,” said the doctor whom Mr Winthrop was obliged to send for the next morning. “It may go on to rheumatic fever, or he may—being young and healthy enough—fight it off. But any way, you’ve got him on your hands for two or three days, unless you like to get a vehicle of some kind and send him to the hospital at Clough,” said the doctor, pitying the inconvenience to Mrs Winthrop.

“It would be a great risk, would it not?” said the rector.

“Yes, certainly it would be a risk. Still you are not obliged to give house-room to every benighted wanderer,” said the doctor, smiling.

But Mr Winthrop felt certain this was no common case, and his kindness was rewarded. Thanks to the care and nursing he received, the dreaded illness was warded off, and by the fourth day the young stranger was well enough to pursue his journey.

“I can never thank you enough for your goodness to me, an utter stranger,” he said to his host, with the tears in his eyes. “And I feel so ashamed, so—” But here he broke down altogether.

“My poor boy,” said the rector, “can you not give me your confidence? Why are you wandering about the world alone like this? I cannot believe you have done anything wrong—at least, seriously wrong. If you have left your friends hastily for some half-considered reason, it may not be too late to return. Can I do anything to help you? Can I write to your father so as to put things straight again?”

“I have no father and no mother,” said the lad.

“No, I have done nothing wrong; nothing disgraceful, in the usual sense, I mean. But I have done wrong in another way. I have disappointed every hope and effort that had been made for me, and I cannot face the result I cannot tell you all, for if I did, you would probably think it your duty to interfere—it is all so complicated and confused. All I can tell you is that I am going off like Whittington,” he added with a faint smile, “to seek my fortune. And if I find it, it will not be mine. I owe it to others, that is the worst of it.”

“And where do you think of going in the first place?” asked Mr Winthrop.

“To Hexton,” said the young man, naming the town he had been making for, before his misadventure, “and from there to Liverpool. I thought I would try in Liverpool to get something to do, and if I did not succeed, I thought perhaps I would go to America.”

“And how would you get there? Have you money?”

“I have a little that I left behind me in the charge of a friend to send after me with my clothes when I get to Liverpool. I thought it better not to carry it with me; I might have been robbed, or,”—and here he smiled again the same wintry little smile that seemed so pathetic on his thin young face—“tempted to spend it, perhaps.”

“And have you any one to go to at Liverpool—any introductions of any kind?”

“No one—none, whatever,” answered the poor boy sadly.

Mr Winthrop reflected a moment.

“I may be able to be of a little use to you in that way; at least, I might be if I knew even a little more about you. You cannot tell me your name?”

The young man coloured and looked down.

“I cannot,” he said. “I thought it all over, and I determined that my only chance was to tell nothing. No, sir, you cannot help me; but I thank you as much as if you had.”

And thus Mr Winthrop was forced to let him go. At the last moment an idea struck him. He gave the boy a few words of introduction to an old friend of his in Liverpool—a friend, though in a different rank of life—the son of a farmer in the neighbourhood, now holding a respectable position in a business house there, telling him all, or rather the exceedingly little, he knew of the stranger who had been three days his guest, and asking him if under the circumstances he could do anything to help, to do it.

“At the same time,” he said to the young man, “I really do not know that this will be of any service. I cannot ask Mr Simcox to take any responsibility in the matter. You have not even told me your name.”

“I know that,” replied the youth dejectedly, “but I cannot help it. I cannot expect others to take me on trust as generously as you have done.” And so saying he set off on his lonely journey, with kindly words from Daisy and her mother, the two boys accompanying him to the high-road.

The snow still lay on the ground, and Tom’s wish for a prolonged frost seemed likely to be fulfilled.

“We shall have splendid skating in a day or two,” he remarked to “the gentleman tramp,” as he and Ralph had dubbed the stranger. “Our pond isn’t very big, but it’s very good ice generally. You should see the lake at Uncle Ingram’s;that’sthe best place, I know, for skating in England.”

The young man started at the name Tom mentioned.

“Wheredid you say?” he asked.

“At my uncle Ingram’s—Mr Morison’s,” said Tom. “It’s a long way from here.”

“But your name isn’t Morison. How can he be your uncle?”

“Why, his wife is our aunt. He married mamma’s sister. Uncles are often uncles that way,” said Tom with an air of superior wisdom.

“Of course,” said the young man; “how stupid of me.”

“Well, don’t be stupid about losing your way again,” said the boy patronisingly. “Look here now, here’s the high-road; you’ve nothing to do but go straight on for some hours—two or three—and when you come to a place where four roads meet, you’ll see ‘Clough’ marked on a finger-post. You can easily get there to-night.”

“Thank you; thank youverymuch,” said the stranger; and, as the boys turned from him, “Please thank your father and mother again for me,” he called out after them.

“He must be a gentleman,” said Ralph. “He speaks quite like one.”

“Of course he is,” said Tom. “But he’s rather queer. He was so stupid about Uncle Ingram. I wonder what he’s left his friends for.”

“P’raps,” said Ralph sagely, “he’d got a cruel stepmother that starved and beat him, like Hop-o’-my-Thumb, you know.”

“Nonsense,” reproved Tom. “That’s all fairy story rubbish; and you know papa says it’s very wrong to talk about cruel stepmothers, and that you’re not to read any more fairy stories if you mix them up with real.”

“Or,” pursued Ralph, sublimely indifferent to this elder-brotherly reproof, “it might have been a cruel uncle, like the babes in the wood’s uncle. Andthat’snot a fairy story—there,” he threw at Tom triumphantly.

Many a true word is spoken in jest!

Little thought the two light-hearted boys as they made their way back over the crisp, glittering snow to the happy, cheerful Rectory, how the words “uncle,” “my uncle Ingram,” kept ringing in the ears of the solitary traveller, but little older than they, as he pursued his weary journey. For in a sense it was truly from an uncle, or the distorted image of one, that he was fleeing.

“Uncle Ingram to betheiruncle. How extraordinary!” he kept saying to himself. “And how near I was more than once to telling my name. If I had—supposing I had got very ill and delirious and had told it—it would all have come out. It would not have been my faultthen. Lettice could not have reproached me, or written me any more of those dreadful letters;” and a sigh, almost a shiver, of suffering went through him as he thought of them. “If I had died, they would have had to hunt among my things, and they would have found my name. I think it would have been better. Perhaps Lettice would have been sorry; any way, it would have come to an end, and poor Nina would have been happier. Lettice could not speak to her as she has done to me. But I must not begin thinking. I must go on with it now.”

He had no misadventures that day, and reached the town he was bound for by the evening. There he looked about till he saw a modest little inn, where he put up for the night, remembering Mr Winthrop’s advice to play no tricks with himself in such severe weather, and when still not fully recovered from his exposure to the snowstorm.

It was the day but one before Christmas. Poor Arthur’s eyes filled with tears as he sat trying to warm himself on a bench at some little distance from the fire in the rough room of the inn, where a motley enough company of passers-by—small farmers from the neighbourhood, some of the inferior grades of commercial travellers, one or two nondescript figures, looking like wandering showmen, and a few others, were assembled, some talking, some silent, mostly smoking, and all getting as near the fire as they could, for it was again bitterly cold. What a contrast from last Christmas! Then, ill though their mother was, she had not seemed much worse than she had been for long, and had done her utmost to be cheerful for her children’s sake. Arthur recalled the pleasant little drawing-room at the Villa Martine, the bright sunshine and lovely blue sky—for the short, though often even in those climates sharp, winter had not set in till January—which almost seemed to laugh at the usual associations of Christmas. His brighter hopes, too, for he had not yet realised his distaste and unfitness for his chosen profession, and even if misgiving had now and then crossed his mind, there was his mother to confide in, should it ever take form.

“Ican’tbelieve mamma would have been so hard on me,” he said to himself. “She might have been disappointed, but she wouldn’t have thought me disgraced for life. Oh, why did she not live till this was past? She would have been sorry for me; she would not have blamed me so—but then, she did not know all about the money. To think, as Lettice says, that all my education,everything, has in reality been paid for by the man we can’t—or won’t—be even commonly civil to! It is the most miserable complication. Not that it matters now tome. He wouldn’t be so ready to treat me as his son now that I’ve turned out such a fool, and worse than a fool. Lots of fools get on well enough, and nobody finds out they are fools; butImust needs go and make an exhibition of myself and my folly;” and he positively writhed at the remembrance. “However, that part of it is at an end. I’ll use no more of his money, and, if I live to make any of my own, the first thing I’ll do will be to repay what I have used, though without the least idea of all this.”

Then his thoughts wandered off again to the happy family he had just left. How kind they had been to him! How gladly, had they had the slightest notion of who he was, would they have made him welcome to pass his Christmas among them! Mrs Winthrop especially, whom, as his aunt’s sister, he thought of with a peculiar interest. How gentle and motherly she was, and, doubtless, his aunt was just the same.

“Ah!” sighed Arthur again, “if Lettice could but have seen things differently, I would not have been where I am to-day. I might have given up the attempt in time, before I had disgraced myself. I might—”

But his further reflections were cut short by a voice beside him. It came from a burly personage who had, without Arthur’s noticing, so absorbed had he been in his reflections, installed himself on the bench at his side, puffing away busily and contentedly at a clay pipe. He had not hitherto spoken, but had sat still, looking about him with a pair of shrewd but not unkindly eyes.

“And whur,”—with a broad accent—“may you be boun’, young man?” he inquired good-naturedly. “Better bide at home, say I, by such weather, if so be as one’s not forced to be on the roads.”

Chapter Eight.A Friend in Need.“I’m sure it’s winter fairly.”Burns.Arthur started. He brushed hastily away the tears that lingered in his eyes, hoping that the new-comer had not observed them.“I—I—” he began, then hesitated a little, “I’m on my way to Liverpool. I want to go to America.”“Ameriky,” said the old man; “that’s a long way. Have ye friends there?”Arthur shook his head. He did not care about this cross-questioning, and, had he reflected a little, he would not perhaps have answered so openly. But he was inexperienced, and unaccustomed to be on his guard. He tried to think of some observation to make which would turn the conversation, but nothing came into his head except the subject which never fails—the weather.“Do you think it is going to snow again?” he said timidly, glancing up at his companion. He looked something like a farmer of the humbler class—farmers were always interested in the weather.The man raised his head quickly, as if to look up, forgetting seemingly that he was not in the open air. Then he smiled a little.“Can’t say,” he replied. “But I rather think we’ve had the worst of it for a while. And so ye’re off to Ameriky, young man? You don’t look so fit for it nayther.”“I’m going to Liverpool first,” said Arthur. “Perhaps I’ll stay there. I have—” “an introduction there,” he was going on to say, but the words stopped on his lips. They sounded far too important under the circumstances. Besides, and for the first time this new difficulty struck him, he dare not avail himself of Mr Winthrop’s letter, which he had been so glad of! The person to whom it was addressed was pretty sure to be in some way connected, directly or indirectly, with his uncle’s business, and, even if not so, when Mr Winthrop came to hear of his, Arthur’s, disappearance, he might identify him with the traveller they had so kindly received, and trace him through this very introduction. And as all this went through his mind, his face fell. His companion, who was watching him, saw the change of expression.“You have, you were saying, you have friends at Liverpool?” he said.Arthur began to feel irritated at his pertinacity; he had not had much experience of the curiosity of many whose quiet uneventful lives force them into gossip as their only attainable excitement; but, looking up at the good-humoured face beside him, his annoyance disappeared, and in its place came a sudden impulse of confidence.“No,” he said bluntly; “I have no friends there, nor indeed anywhere, whom I can ask for help. I have neither father nor mother. I want to earn my living, and in time, if I can, to do more than that. And I’m not proud. I’d do anything, and I’d be more grateful than I can say to any one who’d put me in the way of something.”The farmer sat silent. He puffed away at his pipe, and between the puffs he took a good look now and again at his companion. The rather thin young face was flushed now; the beautiful brown eyes sparkled with excitement. It was a very attractive face.“Very genteel-looking; no doubt of that. And James and Eliza think a deal o’ that,” he murmured to himself.But Arthur did not catch the words. He sat without speaking. He had no idea of help coming from his present companion; he had no notion of what was passing in his mind. His thoughts were wandering far away, and he started when the farmer, with a preliminary cough to attract his attention, again spoke to him.“You’re set on Liverpool, I’m thinking?” he began.Arthur did not at once understand his meaning.“I’m going to Liverpool. I intend to go there,” he said.“And you’reseton it?” the farmer repeated. “No other place’d be to your fancy, I suppose?”“Oh,” said Arthur, taking in his meaning.“No; I don’t particularly care about Liverpool. Indeed, I rather think I should like anywhere else better.” For he realised that through the information which might not improbably be got sooner or later from Mr Winthrop, Liverpool would be the first place in which he would be sought.“Indeed,” said the farmer.“I had no reason for choosing Liverpool,” Arthur went on. “It was on the way to America; I suppose that was why I thought of it,” he added innocently.“Just so,” ejaculated his companion. Then, after a few more puffs at his pipe and a few more scrutinising glances at Arthur between times, he proceeded with what he had to say. He had a daughter, it appeared, married to a draper,thedraper of the little town of Greenwell, not many miles off. She, or her husband, or both of them, were in search of a young man to help in the shop, and they had confided their anxieties to their father, knowing that he had a journey of some days to make, and there was no saying but what he might come across the person they were looking for.“Eliza, she won’t have none of the lads thereabouts,” he explained. “They’re roughish-like, and Eliza she thinks a deal o’ genteelness, does Eliza. It strikes me, young man, you’d please her for that. And it’d be a good home, if you were honest and industrious.” Here he stopped and looked at his companion.Arthur’s face was still redder than before.“A shop-boy,” he said to himself—“a shop-boy!” But aloud he only said quietly—“I don’t know anything whatever of the sort of work it would be. Does not your son-in-law need some one who knows something about it?” The farmer scratched his head.“You can write a good hand, I’m thinking,” he said; “and you can soon learn how to make out the accounts. It’s not that; it’s who’s to speak for you;” and he looked up again more scrutinisingly than heretofore in Arthur’s face. It did not grow the less red on that account. “I have no one to speak for me,” he replied haughtily; “so there’s no use thinking about it. All the same,” he went on, recollecting himself, I thank you very much, very much indeed. I’m very tired, and I think I’ll go to bed and, rising, he held out his hand, with the gentle courtesy innate in him, to the farmer, who grasped it heartily in his horny palm, with a friendly “Good night.”“I’ll see ye in the mornin’, mebbe,” he said.“It’s not the weather, nor yet the time o’ year, for too early a start.”“It’s something to have any one to say: ‘Good night’ to,” thought Arthur, as he mounted the narrow staircase to the stuffy little bedroom he had with some difficulty secured to himself for the night, and the tears again welled up, though he tried hard to ignore them.He slept soundly for some hours, for he was thoroughly tired; but he woke early, and lay anxiously turning over things in his mind. Should he try for the situation the farmer had spoken of? True, there was the difficulty of “no references;” but Arthur’s practical sense had thought of a way out of that. He had some money—very little with him—but a few pounds he had left with his clothes and other small possessions in the safe keeping of a young man, whom he knew he could depend upon to keep secret. This was a former servant in the family of Arthur’s tutor; and when obliged through an accident to leave his place, some kindness young Morison had shown him had completely gained his heart.“I could write to Dawson to send my box on to Greenwell, or whatever’s the name of the place,” he said to himself. “Then I could give the genteel Eliza some money to keep as a sort of guaranty, to be given back to me when they were satisfied I was not a thief;” and Arthur laughed, perhaps because it was better than crying. “I believe that would do away with all difficulties. And once I am settled, it would be something to be able to write to Lettice, and tell her that, disgraced as I am, I have still found something to do, and that Iamearning my own livelihood already.”His face flushed, though with honest pride this time.“I should have preferred her to think me in America,” his thoughts went on; “but it would be wrong to leave them in anxiety so long. At least, if they still think me worth being anxious about! Any way, they will be glad to know I am alive and well.”He had already since his flight written twice to his sisters, twice since the terrible day when, morally convinced of his failure, he had altogether lost heart and fainted in his place among the candidates, though the examination was but half over. He had written, confessing the whole—his nervous terror of the ordeal, his utter incapacity to face more, his thorough unfitness for the profession he had no wish to enter, and announcing, at the same time, his determination henceforth to depend on himself alone, and to work till he could repay the obligation to their uncle, of which Lettice, in her mistaken idea of keeping up his spirit, had so often reminded him.“I am not a coward,” he had said in one of these letters, “though Lettice may say I am. I have only been a coward in one thing—in my fear of telling the truth, which I thought would so horribly distress her. I dreaded her reproaches, and I still dread them; but I shall no longer deserve them. I, at least, will make my own way, and some day I may be able to do something for all of you, and, in the meantime, you will all be better and happier without the brother who has disappointed you so sadly.”And these letters he had sent through the same agency, that of poor Dawson, so that there was no post-mark or mark of any kind to betray his present quarters.And so his thoughts went on that dreary morning in the little stuffy bedroom. If he did not accept the chance so unexpectedly thrown in his way, what was he to do? He dared not make use of his letter to Mr Winthrop’s friend; he dared hardly go to Liverpool. For he was beginning to gain experience. He saw that without references of any kind he might get into awkward predicaments, might be suspected of having run away in disgrace of some very different kind from the failure which he himself judged so severely.“And that would betoohorrible,” thought the poor boy; “to be taken up as a suspicious character, and a scandal about it, and to have to go home and go on living on Uncle Ingram’s money after all, and feel that every one connected with me was ashamed of me! No; I must see what that old fellow has to say, if he hasn’t thought better of it. He’s a good old chap, I’m sure.”His resolution had not time to cool, for the farmer had “slept upon it” to some purpose. He greeted Arthur with friendly good nature, and, without his needing to broach the subject, started it himself again. He was on his way home, and had promised to “stop with Eliza and James over Christmas,” as Greenwell was only a few hours from his own village, and he proposed to Arthur to accompany him, “to take a look at the place like, so being as he had naught better to do with hisself.”“And to let them take a look at me,” added Arthur, smiling. “It’s very good of you indeed. It’s more than good of you,” he added, “to trust a perfect stranger, and one that can’t tell you all about himself either. It was family troubles that have made me leave my home, but that’s all I can say.”“There’s no lack o’ troubles nowheer,” said the farmer; “and there’s no need o’ telling what’s no one’s business but one’s own.”“But,” continued Arthur, “if your son-in-law, Mr—I don’t think you told me his name?”“Lamb, James Lamb,” replied the old man.“If Mr Lamb engages me, I can give him a sort of a pledge for my honesty, any way. I have a little money I can send for, and I could give it into his keeping for a while.”The farmer’s face cleared.“That’s not a bad idea,” he said. “Not but what I knows an honest face when I sees one, but James—he might think me soft-like. I had a lad o’ my own onst,” he went on, with an unusual gentleness in his voice, “and I lost him many years ago now—Eliza she were the daughter o’ my wife that is—just about thy age, my lad,” relapsing into the second person singular as he grew more at ease, “seems to me he favoured thee a bit. But Eliza and James they’d mebbe laugh at me for an old fool, so I’m mighty glad about the money.”“I won’t write for it yet,” said Arthur. “I’d better wait till we get to Greenwell, and see how things turn out I left it with my clothes and other things with a friend to send after me.”“Just so,” said the farmer. “Oh, as for that, it’ll be time enough.”An hour or two later saw Arthur, in company with his new friend, mounted in the light box-cart of the latter, and driving, though at a sober pace, for the roads were very slippery, in the direction of the little town of Greenwell. It was a long drive. They stopped towards midday at a little roadside inn for some refreshment in the shape of bread-and-cheese and beer, and then jogged on again. It was not a luxurious mode of travelling; still, it was much better than tramping through the snow, and Arthur’s days of roughing it had taught him the useful lesson of being thankful for small boons. But as the early winter dusk fell it grew colder and colder, and Arthur shivered, though he had a good thick coat, and the farmer had given him a plentiful share of the rough horse-cloth, which did duty for a carriage rug.“Christmas Eve,” he said, after a long silence, hardly aware that he was speaking aloud.“Ay so,” said his companion, “the years they comes, and the years they goes. ’Tis many a Christmas Eve and Christmas Day as I mind. ‘Peace on earth, goodwill to men,’ parson tells us. They’ve been a-tellin’ it a sight o’ Christmases, seems to me, but we’re a long way off it still, I’m afeard.”“I’m afraid so,” said Arthur with a sigh.And then his thoughts wandered off again to his home. Lettice would hear those same words to-morrow morning. How would they strike her? Was she not wrong,quitewrong? was the question that came over and over again for the thousandth time in his mind. Could it be showing true honour to their dead parents to persist in the course she was doing—a course setting at defiance the Divine injunction? Nay, even allowing they, or their father rather, had been injured, unfairly treated, was there not Divine command for such cases, too? “Forgive, as ye would be forgiven,” “unto seventy times seven,” were the words that floated about before the boy’s eyes, illuminated, as it were, on the ever-darkening sky in front of him. And who was it they were refusing to forgive? One who had never injured them, one who had generously taken upon him responsibilities and risks he was in no way called upon to trouble himself with.“Ah, yes,” thought Arthur sadly, “that has been his crime in her eyes—his very goodness.” And somehow he felt less unhappy and perplexed when he allowed himself to recognise this than when he strove, as he had thought himself bound to do, against his better judgment, to think Lettice right, to accept the arguments she had so plausibly brought to bear upon him.“She must be wrong,” he thought. “And if I had been older and wiser, or, at least, more courageous, I might have made her care to see it. But what right have I to speak, miserable failure that I am? I can only do what I am doing—be faithful and loyal to her, even if she is mistaken, and do my utmost to lessen the burden;” and, with another sigh, Arthur shook himself out of his reverie.Howcold it was growing!“Are we near there?” he inquired.“Not so far now,” said the old man cheerily. “’Twill be good seeing a bright fire and a bite of supper. The old woman—that’s my wife, none so very old nayther—will be lookin’ out for us. She were to come to Eliza’s to-day like, so as we might have our Christmas together. The plum-pudding will have been ready this three weeks, I make no doubt. She’s a rare housekeeper, is my Eliza, though I says it as shouldn’t.”And Arthur was boy enough to feel considerable satisfaction in the prospect of plum-pudding, even though served in homely guise. It was a long way better than Christmas Day on the road, or in some poor lodging in loneliness and dreariness!In a few minutes more the farmer turned off the road they had for some time been following, and shortly after this, twinkling lights began to be visible in the distance. There were not many travellers of any kind about; it was too cold for all not forced to do so to expose themselves to the open air; and when at last, after rattling over the stones of an old-fashioned street, the farmer drew up at a door, evidently the private entrance to a shuttered shop next it, Arthur really felt that he could hardly have endured a quarter of an hour more of it. The mere thought of a fire was felicity, and he did not need twice bidding to jump down and knock lustily at the door. But before it was opened a misgiving seized him.“Had I not better go somewhere else for the night?” he asked his old friend. “They’re not expecting me. I dare say I can get a bed somewhere near; and then, by the morning you will have told them about me.”The farmer ejaculated something, which was evidently meant as an equivalent to “nonsense.”“D’ye think now, James or Eliza’d turn a dog to the door such a night as this, much less a Christian?” he replied reassuringly. “Seein’, too, that it’smeas brings you,” he added, just as the door opened.For the next minute or two there was a chatter of rather noisy welcome, questions made and asked, women’s voices, and men’s laughter. Then Arthur, feeling himself confused and dazed, conscious of almost nothing but the numbing cold—for he was not yet as strong as usual—found himself in a large, comfortable, though plainly furnished room, with a great old-fashioned fireplace at one end, in which a great old-fashioned fire was burning. He still heard the voices going on about him, though at a little distance, and he had an instinctive feeling that they were talking about him. He stood irresolute, uncertain whether to turn back or go forward, when a kindly voice caught his ear.“Come near the fire. I’m sure you’re freezing cold. Eliza’s that pleased to see her father again, she sees no one else. James, you’ve not shook hands with—but, to be sure, my old man’s not told us your name yet.”Arthur smiled. It would not have been easy for the farmer to tell his name when he had never heard it himself. He tried to collect his thoughts, but he still felt very light-headed and strange.“My name,” he began, “is John—John Morris,” which, so far as it went, was true. “I wish you would call me John.”“Surely,” replied “James,” as in response to his mother-in-law’s hint he shook hands, so heartily as to make him wince, with the young stranger. “You’re kindly welcome, and, if so be as it suits you to stay on with us, I don’t doubt but as we’ll pull together.”But he confided to his Eliza afterwards that, though there was no doubt as to his having a very “genteel” appearance, he was by no means sure that this young fellow whom her father had picked up would be strong enough for the place.“Nevertheless, we’ll give him a good Christmas dinner, and cheer him up a bit. He looks sadly pulled down like, poor fellow!”

“I’m sure it’s winter fairly.”Burns.

“I’m sure it’s winter fairly.”Burns.

Arthur started. He brushed hastily away the tears that lingered in his eyes, hoping that the new-comer had not observed them.

“I—I—” he began, then hesitated a little, “I’m on my way to Liverpool. I want to go to America.”

“Ameriky,” said the old man; “that’s a long way. Have ye friends there?”

Arthur shook his head. He did not care about this cross-questioning, and, had he reflected a little, he would not perhaps have answered so openly. But he was inexperienced, and unaccustomed to be on his guard. He tried to think of some observation to make which would turn the conversation, but nothing came into his head except the subject which never fails—the weather.

“Do you think it is going to snow again?” he said timidly, glancing up at his companion. He looked something like a farmer of the humbler class—farmers were always interested in the weather.

The man raised his head quickly, as if to look up, forgetting seemingly that he was not in the open air. Then he smiled a little.

“Can’t say,” he replied. “But I rather think we’ve had the worst of it for a while. And so ye’re off to Ameriky, young man? You don’t look so fit for it nayther.”

“I’m going to Liverpool first,” said Arthur. “Perhaps I’ll stay there. I have—” “an introduction there,” he was going on to say, but the words stopped on his lips. They sounded far too important under the circumstances. Besides, and for the first time this new difficulty struck him, he dare not avail himself of Mr Winthrop’s letter, which he had been so glad of! The person to whom it was addressed was pretty sure to be in some way connected, directly or indirectly, with his uncle’s business, and, even if not so, when Mr Winthrop came to hear of his, Arthur’s, disappearance, he might identify him with the traveller they had so kindly received, and trace him through this very introduction. And as all this went through his mind, his face fell. His companion, who was watching him, saw the change of expression.

“You have, you were saying, you have friends at Liverpool?” he said.

Arthur began to feel irritated at his pertinacity; he had not had much experience of the curiosity of many whose quiet uneventful lives force them into gossip as their only attainable excitement; but, looking up at the good-humoured face beside him, his annoyance disappeared, and in its place came a sudden impulse of confidence.

“No,” he said bluntly; “I have no friends there, nor indeed anywhere, whom I can ask for help. I have neither father nor mother. I want to earn my living, and in time, if I can, to do more than that. And I’m not proud. I’d do anything, and I’d be more grateful than I can say to any one who’d put me in the way of something.”

The farmer sat silent. He puffed away at his pipe, and between the puffs he took a good look now and again at his companion. The rather thin young face was flushed now; the beautiful brown eyes sparkled with excitement. It was a very attractive face.

“Very genteel-looking; no doubt of that. And James and Eliza think a deal o’ that,” he murmured to himself.

But Arthur did not catch the words. He sat without speaking. He had no idea of help coming from his present companion; he had no notion of what was passing in his mind. His thoughts were wandering far away, and he started when the farmer, with a preliminary cough to attract his attention, again spoke to him.

“You’re set on Liverpool, I’m thinking?” he began.

Arthur did not at once understand his meaning.

“I’m going to Liverpool. I intend to go there,” he said.

“And you’reseton it?” the farmer repeated. “No other place’d be to your fancy, I suppose?”

“Oh,” said Arthur, taking in his meaning.

“No; I don’t particularly care about Liverpool. Indeed, I rather think I should like anywhere else better.” For he realised that through the information which might not improbably be got sooner or later from Mr Winthrop, Liverpool would be the first place in which he would be sought.

“Indeed,” said the farmer.

“I had no reason for choosing Liverpool,” Arthur went on. “It was on the way to America; I suppose that was why I thought of it,” he added innocently.

“Just so,” ejaculated his companion. Then, after a few more puffs at his pipe and a few more scrutinising glances at Arthur between times, he proceeded with what he had to say. He had a daughter, it appeared, married to a draper,thedraper of the little town of Greenwell, not many miles off. She, or her husband, or both of them, were in search of a young man to help in the shop, and they had confided their anxieties to their father, knowing that he had a journey of some days to make, and there was no saying but what he might come across the person they were looking for.

“Eliza, she won’t have none of the lads thereabouts,” he explained. “They’re roughish-like, and Eliza she thinks a deal o’ genteelness, does Eliza. It strikes me, young man, you’d please her for that. And it’d be a good home, if you were honest and industrious.” Here he stopped and looked at his companion.

Arthur’s face was still redder than before.

“A shop-boy,” he said to himself—“a shop-boy!” But aloud he only said quietly—

“I don’t know anything whatever of the sort of work it would be. Does not your son-in-law need some one who knows something about it?” The farmer scratched his head.

“You can write a good hand, I’m thinking,” he said; “and you can soon learn how to make out the accounts. It’s not that; it’s who’s to speak for you;” and he looked up again more scrutinisingly than heretofore in Arthur’s face. It did not grow the less red on that account. “I have no one to speak for me,” he replied haughtily; “so there’s no use thinking about it. All the same,” he went on, recollecting himself, I thank you very much, very much indeed. I’m very tired, and I think I’ll go to bed and, rising, he held out his hand, with the gentle courtesy innate in him, to the farmer, who grasped it heartily in his horny palm, with a friendly “Good night.”

“I’ll see ye in the mornin’, mebbe,” he said.

“It’s not the weather, nor yet the time o’ year, for too early a start.”

“It’s something to have any one to say: ‘Good night’ to,” thought Arthur, as he mounted the narrow staircase to the stuffy little bedroom he had with some difficulty secured to himself for the night, and the tears again welled up, though he tried hard to ignore them.

He slept soundly for some hours, for he was thoroughly tired; but he woke early, and lay anxiously turning over things in his mind. Should he try for the situation the farmer had spoken of? True, there was the difficulty of “no references;” but Arthur’s practical sense had thought of a way out of that. He had some money—very little with him—but a few pounds he had left with his clothes and other small possessions in the safe keeping of a young man, whom he knew he could depend upon to keep secret. This was a former servant in the family of Arthur’s tutor; and when obliged through an accident to leave his place, some kindness young Morison had shown him had completely gained his heart.

“I could write to Dawson to send my box on to Greenwell, or whatever’s the name of the place,” he said to himself. “Then I could give the genteel Eliza some money to keep as a sort of guaranty, to be given back to me when they were satisfied I was not a thief;” and Arthur laughed, perhaps because it was better than crying. “I believe that would do away with all difficulties. And once I am settled, it would be something to be able to write to Lettice, and tell her that, disgraced as I am, I have still found something to do, and that Iamearning my own livelihood already.”

His face flushed, though with honest pride this time.

“I should have preferred her to think me in America,” his thoughts went on; “but it would be wrong to leave them in anxiety so long. At least, if they still think me worth being anxious about! Any way, they will be glad to know I am alive and well.”

He had already since his flight written twice to his sisters, twice since the terrible day when, morally convinced of his failure, he had altogether lost heart and fainted in his place among the candidates, though the examination was but half over. He had written, confessing the whole—his nervous terror of the ordeal, his utter incapacity to face more, his thorough unfitness for the profession he had no wish to enter, and announcing, at the same time, his determination henceforth to depend on himself alone, and to work till he could repay the obligation to their uncle, of which Lettice, in her mistaken idea of keeping up his spirit, had so often reminded him.

“I am not a coward,” he had said in one of these letters, “though Lettice may say I am. I have only been a coward in one thing—in my fear of telling the truth, which I thought would so horribly distress her. I dreaded her reproaches, and I still dread them; but I shall no longer deserve them. I, at least, will make my own way, and some day I may be able to do something for all of you, and, in the meantime, you will all be better and happier without the brother who has disappointed you so sadly.”

And these letters he had sent through the same agency, that of poor Dawson, so that there was no post-mark or mark of any kind to betray his present quarters.

And so his thoughts went on that dreary morning in the little stuffy bedroom. If he did not accept the chance so unexpectedly thrown in his way, what was he to do? He dared not make use of his letter to Mr Winthrop’s friend; he dared hardly go to Liverpool. For he was beginning to gain experience. He saw that without references of any kind he might get into awkward predicaments, might be suspected of having run away in disgrace of some very different kind from the failure which he himself judged so severely.

“And that would betoohorrible,” thought the poor boy; “to be taken up as a suspicious character, and a scandal about it, and to have to go home and go on living on Uncle Ingram’s money after all, and feel that every one connected with me was ashamed of me! No; I must see what that old fellow has to say, if he hasn’t thought better of it. He’s a good old chap, I’m sure.”

His resolution had not time to cool, for the farmer had “slept upon it” to some purpose. He greeted Arthur with friendly good nature, and, without his needing to broach the subject, started it himself again. He was on his way home, and had promised to “stop with Eliza and James over Christmas,” as Greenwell was only a few hours from his own village, and he proposed to Arthur to accompany him, “to take a look at the place like, so being as he had naught better to do with hisself.”

“And to let them take a look at me,” added Arthur, smiling. “It’s very good of you indeed. It’s more than good of you,” he added, “to trust a perfect stranger, and one that can’t tell you all about himself either. It was family troubles that have made me leave my home, but that’s all I can say.”

“There’s no lack o’ troubles nowheer,” said the farmer; “and there’s no need o’ telling what’s no one’s business but one’s own.”

“But,” continued Arthur, “if your son-in-law, Mr—I don’t think you told me his name?”

“Lamb, James Lamb,” replied the old man.

“If Mr Lamb engages me, I can give him a sort of a pledge for my honesty, any way. I have a little money I can send for, and I could give it into his keeping for a while.”

The farmer’s face cleared.

“That’s not a bad idea,” he said. “Not but what I knows an honest face when I sees one, but James—he might think me soft-like. I had a lad o’ my own onst,” he went on, with an unusual gentleness in his voice, “and I lost him many years ago now—Eliza she were the daughter o’ my wife that is—just about thy age, my lad,” relapsing into the second person singular as he grew more at ease, “seems to me he favoured thee a bit. But Eliza and James they’d mebbe laugh at me for an old fool, so I’m mighty glad about the money.”

“I won’t write for it yet,” said Arthur. “I’d better wait till we get to Greenwell, and see how things turn out I left it with my clothes and other things with a friend to send after me.”

“Just so,” said the farmer. “Oh, as for that, it’ll be time enough.”

An hour or two later saw Arthur, in company with his new friend, mounted in the light box-cart of the latter, and driving, though at a sober pace, for the roads were very slippery, in the direction of the little town of Greenwell. It was a long drive. They stopped towards midday at a little roadside inn for some refreshment in the shape of bread-and-cheese and beer, and then jogged on again. It was not a luxurious mode of travelling; still, it was much better than tramping through the snow, and Arthur’s days of roughing it had taught him the useful lesson of being thankful for small boons. But as the early winter dusk fell it grew colder and colder, and Arthur shivered, though he had a good thick coat, and the farmer had given him a plentiful share of the rough horse-cloth, which did duty for a carriage rug.

“Christmas Eve,” he said, after a long silence, hardly aware that he was speaking aloud.

“Ay so,” said his companion, “the years they comes, and the years they goes. ’Tis many a Christmas Eve and Christmas Day as I mind. ‘Peace on earth, goodwill to men,’ parson tells us. They’ve been a-tellin’ it a sight o’ Christmases, seems to me, but we’re a long way off it still, I’m afeard.”

“I’m afraid so,” said Arthur with a sigh.

And then his thoughts wandered off again to his home. Lettice would hear those same words to-morrow morning. How would they strike her? Was she not wrong,quitewrong? was the question that came over and over again for the thousandth time in his mind. Could it be showing true honour to their dead parents to persist in the course she was doing—a course setting at defiance the Divine injunction? Nay, even allowing they, or their father rather, had been injured, unfairly treated, was there not Divine command for such cases, too? “Forgive, as ye would be forgiven,” “unto seventy times seven,” were the words that floated about before the boy’s eyes, illuminated, as it were, on the ever-darkening sky in front of him. And who was it they were refusing to forgive? One who had never injured them, one who had generously taken upon him responsibilities and risks he was in no way called upon to trouble himself with.

“Ah, yes,” thought Arthur sadly, “that has been his crime in her eyes—his very goodness.” And somehow he felt less unhappy and perplexed when he allowed himself to recognise this than when he strove, as he had thought himself bound to do, against his better judgment, to think Lettice right, to accept the arguments she had so plausibly brought to bear upon him.

“She must be wrong,” he thought. “And if I had been older and wiser, or, at least, more courageous, I might have made her care to see it. But what right have I to speak, miserable failure that I am? I can only do what I am doing—be faithful and loyal to her, even if she is mistaken, and do my utmost to lessen the burden;” and, with another sigh, Arthur shook himself out of his reverie.

Howcold it was growing!

“Are we near there?” he inquired.

“Not so far now,” said the old man cheerily. “’Twill be good seeing a bright fire and a bite of supper. The old woman—that’s my wife, none so very old nayther—will be lookin’ out for us. She were to come to Eliza’s to-day like, so as we might have our Christmas together. The plum-pudding will have been ready this three weeks, I make no doubt. She’s a rare housekeeper, is my Eliza, though I says it as shouldn’t.”

And Arthur was boy enough to feel considerable satisfaction in the prospect of plum-pudding, even though served in homely guise. It was a long way better than Christmas Day on the road, or in some poor lodging in loneliness and dreariness!

In a few minutes more the farmer turned off the road they had for some time been following, and shortly after this, twinkling lights began to be visible in the distance. There were not many travellers of any kind about; it was too cold for all not forced to do so to expose themselves to the open air; and when at last, after rattling over the stones of an old-fashioned street, the farmer drew up at a door, evidently the private entrance to a shuttered shop next it, Arthur really felt that he could hardly have endured a quarter of an hour more of it. The mere thought of a fire was felicity, and he did not need twice bidding to jump down and knock lustily at the door. But before it was opened a misgiving seized him.

“Had I not better go somewhere else for the night?” he asked his old friend. “They’re not expecting me. I dare say I can get a bed somewhere near; and then, by the morning you will have told them about me.”

The farmer ejaculated something, which was evidently meant as an equivalent to “nonsense.”

“D’ye think now, James or Eliza’d turn a dog to the door such a night as this, much less a Christian?” he replied reassuringly. “Seein’, too, that it’smeas brings you,” he added, just as the door opened.

For the next minute or two there was a chatter of rather noisy welcome, questions made and asked, women’s voices, and men’s laughter. Then Arthur, feeling himself confused and dazed, conscious of almost nothing but the numbing cold—for he was not yet as strong as usual—found himself in a large, comfortable, though plainly furnished room, with a great old-fashioned fireplace at one end, in which a great old-fashioned fire was burning. He still heard the voices going on about him, though at a little distance, and he had an instinctive feeling that they were talking about him. He stood irresolute, uncertain whether to turn back or go forward, when a kindly voice caught his ear.

“Come near the fire. I’m sure you’re freezing cold. Eliza’s that pleased to see her father again, she sees no one else. James, you’ve not shook hands with—but, to be sure, my old man’s not told us your name yet.”

Arthur smiled. It would not have been easy for the farmer to tell his name when he had never heard it himself. He tried to collect his thoughts, but he still felt very light-headed and strange.

“My name,” he began, “is John—John Morris,” which, so far as it went, was true. “I wish you would call me John.”

“Surely,” replied “James,” as in response to his mother-in-law’s hint he shook hands, so heartily as to make him wince, with the young stranger. “You’re kindly welcome, and, if so be as it suits you to stay on with us, I don’t doubt but as we’ll pull together.”

But he confided to his Eliza afterwards that, though there was no doubt as to his having a very “genteel” appearance, he was by no means sure that this young fellow whom her father had picked up would be strong enough for the place.

“Nevertheless, we’ll give him a good Christmas dinner, and cheer him up a bit. He looks sadly pulled down like, poor fellow!”

Chapter Nine.A Cab and a Carriage.“Life, believe, is not a dreamSo dark as sages say;Oft a little morning rainForetells a pleasant day.”Charlotte Brontë.About a week before the cold evening of Arthur’s drive with the old farmer in his cart to Greenwell, late one afternoon, a young lady in deep mourning might have been seen getting out of the train at a certain station in London. She was alone, and she had no luggage, except a little bag which she carried; and yet, as the train was an express one, not stopping at stations near at hand, it was clear that she had come from some distance. A porter, on the alert for embarrassed lady travellers, quickly called a cab for her, looking disappointed at no trunks being forthcoming, but needlessly so, as he received a liberal amount of coppers for the small service he had rendered. This rather unusual generosity made him give more attention than he generally had time to bestow on travellers, to the tall, slight, black-shrouded figure. The thick veil which she wore blew aside for an instant as she got into the cab, and he saw that she was very young, very pretty, and evidently in trouble, for her eyes showed traces of recent tears.“Poor thing!” said the porter to himself. “A suddint summins, no doubt—wired for—started at onst—no luggage—no time to think of nothink;” and being a rather tender-hearted porter, he could hardly refrain, as he stood with his hand on the cab door waiting for the address, from adding paternally, “Hope you won’t find things so bad as you anticerpate, miss;” but before he had time to make up his mind whether he should or should not express these kindly feelings, he was startled by her saying rapidly, though in a low voice—“Ask him to drive quickly, please, as quickly as possible;” and then she gave the address, which, rather to the porter’s surprise, was in that part of London where no one but lawyers, and lawyers in their official capacity solely, are to be heard of, which circumstance gave the porter matter for reflection for fully one minute and a half, till the next train came in or went out, and he relapsed into his normal condition.Whether the cabman drove quickly or not, it did not appear so to the unhappy girl seated in his cab. It seemed hours to her, till he at last drew up, in a dingy, smoke-dried, but respectable locality, where she had never been before in her life. She jumped out of the cab, hardly replying to the driver’s inquiry as to whether he was to wait—which, however, as she had not paid him, he naturally decided to do—and only stopping to read the lists of names inscribed at each side of the open doorway, leading to the staircase common to all the tenants of the house, she hurried in, and was lost to sight in its solemnly gloomy recesses. Five minutes later she was back again, extreme dejection visible in her whole bearing to any one observing her with attention, even without the sight of the pale, agitated face which her veil concealed. But the cabman was not observing her; he was tired, and inclined to be drowsy, in spite of the cold weather, and Lettice stood still for a moment or two before getting into the cab again.“Godfrey away, for a fortnight, at least. WhatshallI do?—oh, whatshallI do?” she said to herself, pressing her hands together in agony. “If I only knew where he was!” But at his chambers they had refused, though quite civilly, to give her his address, contenting themselves with assuring her that any letters would be forwarded to him at once. “He may be abroad; he may be ever so far away. Hemighthave let us know he was going;” but here her conscience reproached her. How could she expect him to have done anything of the sort when she remembered how they had last parted the cold contempt with which she had received his kind and reasonable remonstrances, till at last, stung into indignation, he had declared that henceforth he would leave her to herself, merely interfering with advice and direction when he saw it absolutely necessary to do so? And that was now three or four months ago. Since then he had only written on strictly business matters—about having taken on Faxleham Cottage for six months longer, directions about Auriol’s schooling, and so on. And these three or four months had been among the dreariest and most anxious Lettice had ever known. Nina was pale and drooping; Arthur’s letters were rare and unsatisfactory; the autumn had been an unusually rainy and depressing season, and they had absolutely no friends. But for Miss Branksome’s unfailing cheerfulness, Nina and the younger ones would, indeed, have been to be pitied, though less than Lettice herself.For, far as she was from owning herself to be the cause of all this unhappiness, her conscience was not at rest, and misgivings from time to time made themselves felt, though she stifled them by exaggerating to herself the soundness of her motives. And this very exaggeration made her write to poor Arthur the letters which, in his overstrained state, had had so disastrous a result.Towards Nina, too, she knew, at the bottom of her heart, that she had not acted fairly, though the reserve that had gradually grown up between them, had prevented her thoroughly understanding her younger sister. For what—for whom, rather—was poor Nina pining?“Doesshe care for Godfrey?” Lettice asked herself, feeling that if Nina had learnt to do so it was thanks toherinfluence, and no other. And as time went on, and Lettice began to own to herself that it didnotseem as if Godfrey were in love with Nina—“had it been so,” she reflected, “he is far too resolute to have been kept back by his quarrel withme,”—she almost came to hope that on both sides the dream had been the creation of her own fancy—her own self-will she would not call it.Though even in this hope she found small rest for her troubled spirit. If it were not about Godfrey that Nina was fretting away, though patiently and uncomplainingly, the brightness from her pretty eyes, the roses from her young cheeks, about whom and what was it? And a certain afternoon last August, and a certain conversation with a fair-faced, honest young gentleman, who had come to plead his cause with manly straightforwardness; who had gone away looking ten years older, though with courteous and grateful words to herself on his lips, rose up before Lettice’s remembrance with reproachful eyes.And all these memories—as in the so often quoted case of a drowning person—rushed through Lettice’s mind in the half-minute during which she stood there in her distress and desolation, while her lips repeated the same murmur—“What shall—oh, whatshallI do? Every moment of time that I am losing here may be of the most vital importance.”Once she turned and made a step or two towards the door again, in a half-formed resolution to inquire if Mr Auriol’s clerk could give her the address of Philip Dexter. But from this she shrank with the strongest feelings of her nature.“To go tohim—to appeal tohimto help me,” she reflected. “It would be like begging him on again for Nina. It would be owning that it was all nonsense about Godfrey’s caring for her—and for Arthur’s sake, too. Why should I publish his humiliation to any but those whomustknow it?”And again she stood irresolute and altogether wretched. And cabby, beginning to wake up and giving signs of being about to begin wondering what queer sort of a “fare, as didn’t know its own mind, he had got hold of,” doubled and trebled the girl’s embarrassment.“I must go to some hotel for the night, I suppose,” she said to herself. “And oh! the horror of sitting there all the evening doing nothing, and lying there all night doing nothing—and Arthur, my darling brother, setting sail for America, before we can stop him; or perhaps—worse and worse—tossing in some miserable place among strangers, in a brain fever, where he may die—die, without having forgiven me!”Nearly driven frantic by her own imaginings, she looked round her with a vague, altogether unreasonable appeal for help or guidance.“WhatshallI do?” she ejaculated for the twentieth time, when just at that moment a carriage drew up—cabby rousing himself to move on so as to make room for it, for it was an unmistakable carriage, a small but thoroughly well-appointed brougham, quite capable of commanding his respectful deference—before the door where Lettice was standing, and a gentleman got out and came slowly over the pavement towards the house. The pavement, or the space between the houses and the real pavement, was wide there. It looked as if in far-off times there might have been a grass-plot or a flowerbed or two in front; and as the new-comer approached, Lettice had time to see him clearly. She looked at him—at the first glance a wild idea had struck her that possibly he might be Godfrey Auriol returned unexpectedly—with a sort of half-bewildered curiosity, but gradually a vague feeling came over her that he was not altogether unknown to her, that somewhere she had seen him before, or else that he resembled some one she had once known. But as he passed by, she recollected herself and turned sharply away. What was it to her what or who this stranger was? What was she made of to be standing there losing the precious moments in idle conjecture? And again the whole force of her mind became concentrated on the absorbing question—whatwasshe to do?She was turning at last to the cab, in a desperate resolution to gosomewhere, when a quick step behind her made her look round. To her surprise there stood facing her the gentleman who a moment before had passed her to enter the house. He raised his hat, and she, looking at him, was again struck by his strange indefinite likeness tosome one. He was slightly above the middle height, his dark hair already a very little hazed with grey. He looked a man of about forty, though in reality he was some years younger; his expression was gentle but rather piercing. There was great power, moral and intellectual, in his well-shaped forehead.“Excuse me for addressing you,” he said. “But you seemed to me to be at a loss. Perhaps you are inquiring for some one you cannot find? I know this neighbourhood well. Can I help you?”Lettice looked at him again. The gentleman’s tone was so respectful as well as kind, that the most timorous of maidens could scarcely have failed to feel confidence in him. And Lettice was the reverse of timorous; she was fearless to a fault, and her inexperience suggested no misgiving.“Do you perhaps,” she began, “do you happen to know any one here—in this house? I am so disappointed at finding the friend, the gentleman I came to see, onmosturgent business, away from home. And they won’t even give me his address?” she added girlishly, the tears welling up again as she spoke.A curious look came into the kindly eyes that were regarding her, and the stranger made a very slight involuntary movement, almost as if he were going to lay his hand on her arm to console her as one would do to a troubled child. But he checked himself.“I know Mr Auriol, Mr Godfrey Auriol, whose office is in this house,” he said.“That is he,” exclaimed Lettice with delighted eagerness. “Oh, how fortunate that I should have met you! If you could, oh, if you could but get them to give me his address, I might telegraph to him. It would save ever so much time. Perhaps, I should tell you,” she went on, “I have a right to ask for his address; he is my—our guardian. My name is Morison.”There was no visible change of expression in the stranger’s face, but one knowing him well would have seen a light in his eyes that was not there before. And his lips moved, though no sound was heard. “Thank God for this,” were the inaudible words.“I can easily get you his address,” he said. “I was just going in to ask if they had any definite news of his return. I want to see him as soon as he comes back. Will you wait here a moment? It is very cold,” he added, looking round. “Is that your cab waiting?”“Yes,” said Lettice.The gentleman glanced at the cab, with its ill-fitting doors and windows, and the inevitable damp and chilly straw on the floor.“I doubt if you would be much warmer there,” he said with a smile. “Would you—will you do me the favour to get into my brougham while I go upstairs? There is a hot-water footstool—and rugs—for I have just taken my wife home. You don’t think me very presuming?” he added. “Remember, I am a friend of Godfrey’s.”There was something reassuring in the simple way in which he spoke of Mr Auriol by his Christian name, even had Lettice wanted reassuring, which she did not. She looked up again in the stranger’s face and said, with an abruptness that sometimes characterised her—“Are you a doctor?”He smiled. “No, I am not. I am sorry for it if it would have given you more confidence in me. Though I hope,” he added with real anxiety, “that it is not to hear of a doctor that you are here. None of you are ill?Thatisn’t the urgent business, I trust?”“No,” replied Lettice, surprised at his way of speaking. “He must have heard about us from Godfrey,” she decided. “At least, I hope not,” she added, as her terrible picture of Arthur in a brain fever came before her eyes. “Ihopenot. But I don’t know what I think or fear. You won’t be long?” she said appealingly, for by this time her new friend had handed her into the snug little carriage.“Two minutes at most,” he replied.And Lettice sat there, grateful in a sort of childish way for the cushioned warmth and comfort, though till then she had thought nothing about how cold she was, gazing before her in a vague, half-dazed way, feeling almost as if she would fall asleep if she were left there long, but in some indefinite way undoubtedly many degrees less miserable and desolate than before the apparition of the brougham.Its owner was as good as his word Two minutes had barely elapsed before he was back again.“I have his present address,” he said. “But he is a long way off. He is in Scotland, and is not expected back for a fortnight. He is away on professional business, but he had hoped not to have to go so far. He had hoped to be back to spend Christmas with us down in the country. Now,” he continued, “what is to be done? You can telegraph to him, but I doubt if it would bepossiblefor him to come back, and it is an out-of-the-way place where he is. You said there was no time to be lost? Have you no one else, no other friend or—or relative?” Here his voice faltered as he looked anxiously into the girl’s face, so pale and drawn and careworn as it had again become.She roused herself with a sort of effort.“I don’t know what to do,” she repeated.“Can you not, though I am a stranger, can you not make up your mind—we have been brought together so strangely—can you not tell me what is the matter?” he said, beseechingly almost.All this time he was standing with his hand on the carriage door.“If you would let me take you home—to my wife,” he continued, “you would see how kind and sympathising she is. Could you tellher, better?”“Oh no, thank you,” said Lettice. “I could tell you just as well. The trouble is about—my brother.”“Your brother—Arthur? God forbid!” he exclaimed. “Is it anything very serious?”“I fear so, but I don’t know,” she replied, shaking her head. And at the moment it did not strike her, so impressed was she with the magnitude of her overwhelming anxiety, how curious it was that a complete stranger should be so affected by her troubles! Yet his naming her brother by name caught her attention. “You know about us. I suppose from Mr Auriol?” she said.“Yes,” he replied, but in an absent way.And still Lettice sat gazing before her, as if she were half-stunned. Then suddenly, raising her eyes—“Arthur has run away,” she said. “At least, he hasgoneaway. He wrote that he would try to go to America, but we were afraid, Nina and I—we got his letter last night, and I came off by the first train this morning. Nina and Miss Branksome wanted me to wait and to telegraph first, so I came away without telling them. I could not bear waiting—we were afraid that he might have fallen ill somewhere. He has not been well lately, and the shock of his disgrace—”“Disgrace! What disgrace?” exclaimed the gentleman.“He has failed—at least, he saw that he was going to fail—in his examination, and he would not face the rest of it,” said Lettice, the crimson rising to her face.The stranger could hardly repress a smile.“But why use such terribly strong words about it? Failing in his examination a disgrace! You startled me,” he said with evident and immense relief.“Hetook it so,” said Lettice, a little nettled.“And I—I used to think I would feel it so too, but I don’t seem to mind now. I would mind nothing if we could find him.”“Have you any trace? Can you tell me all the particulars?”“Yes,” said Lettice, feeling in her pocket for Arthur’s letter. But the stranger interrupted her.“Now that you have told me so much, you will not refuse to let me tell you something—make some explanations to you. You will let me send away your cab, and take you home to my wife? I think I can promise to help you, but you must give me all particulars, and in a circumstantial manner. That will take time. But first, Lettice, it is not fair to you not to tell you who I am. I am not only Godfrey Auriol’s friend; I am—do not be startled, my child—I am your uncle, Ingram Morison.”He turned away after saying these words. He would not look at her face, half out of pity for her, half out of an almost childish terror of the deep disappointment to himself, should he see its expression turn into hard resentment. He walked up and down in the cold for a moment or two, then hearing, or fancying he heard, a low, half-stifled call—to his ears it took the sound of the words he had so often longed to hear, “Uncle Ingram”—he turned back again. She was looking out of the brougham window, the glass was down, her face was paler than one could almost believe it possible for a young, healthy face to be, her lips were quivering, there was a look of suffering and humiliation almost, but there was no hardness or resentment.“Lettice,” he said gently. “MayI send away your cab?”There was great tact in the tone and manner of the simple question. Lettice’s eyes filled with tears. She did not speak, but she bent her head in assent.

“Life, believe, is not a dreamSo dark as sages say;Oft a little morning rainForetells a pleasant day.”Charlotte Brontë.

“Life, believe, is not a dreamSo dark as sages say;Oft a little morning rainForetells a pleasant day.”Charlotte Brontë.

About a week before the cold evening of Arthur’s drive with the old farmer in his cart to Greenwell, late one afternoon, a young lady in deep mourning might have been seen getting out of the train at a certain station in London. She was alone, and she had no luggage, except a little bag which she carried; and yet, as the train was an express one, not stopping at stations near at hand, it was clear that she had come from some distance. A porter, on the alert for embarrassed lady travellers, quickly called a cab for her, looking disappointed at no trunks being forthcoming, but needlessly so, as he received a liberal amount of coppers for the small service he had rendered. This rather unusual generosity made him give more attention than he generally had time to bestow on travellers, to the tall, slight, black-shrouded figure. The thick veil which she wore blew aside for an instant as she got into the cab, and he saw that she was very young, very pretty, and evidently in trouble, for her eyes showed traces of recent tears.

“Poor thing!” said the porter to himself. “A suddint summins, no doubt—wired for—started at onst—no luggage—no time to think of nothink;” and being a rather tender-hearted porter, he could hardly refrain, as he stood with his hand on the cab door waiting for the address, from adding paternally, “Hope you won’t find things so bad as you anticerpate, miss;” but before he had time to make up his mind whether he should or should not express these kindly feelings, he was startled by her saying rapidly, though in a low voice—

“Ask him to drive quickly, please, as quickly as possible;” and then she gave the address, which, rather to the porter’s surprise, was in that part of London where no one but lawyers, and lawyers in their official capacity solely, are to be heard of, which circumstance gave the porter matter for reflection for fully one minute and a half, till the next train came in or went out, and he relapsed into his normal condition.

Whether the cabman drove quickly or not, it did not appear so to the unhappy girl seated in his cab. It seemed hours to her, till he at last drew up, in a dingy, smoke-dried, but respectable locality, where she had never been before in her life. She jumped out of the cab, hardly replying to the driver’s inquiry as to whether he was to wait—which, however, as she had not paid him, he naturally decided to do—and only stopping to read the lists of names inscribed at each side of the open doorway, leading to the staircase common to all the tenants of the house, she hurried in, and was lost to sight in its solemnly gloomy recesses. Five minutes later she was back again, extreme dejection visible in her whole bearing to any one observing her with attention, even without the sight of the pale, agitated face which her veil concealed. But the cabman was not observing her; he was tired, and inclined to be drowsy, in spite of the cold weather, and Lettice stood still for a moment or two before getting into the cab again.

“Godfrey away, for a fortnight, at least. WhatshallI do?—oh, whatshallI do?” she said to herself, pressing her hands together in agony. “If I only knew where he was!” But at his chambers they had refused, though quite civilly, to give her his address, contenting themselves with assuring her that any letters would be forwarded to him at once. “He may be abroad; he may be ever so far away. Hemighthave let us know he was going;” but here her conscience reproached her. How could she expect him to have done anything of the sort when she remembered how they had last parted the cold contempt with which she had received his kind and reasonable remonstrances, till at last, stung into indignation, he had declared that henceforth he would leave her to herself, merely interfering with advice and direction when he saw it absolutely necessary to do so? And that was now three or four months ago. Since then he had only written on strictly business matters—about having taken on Faxleham Cottage for six months longer, directions about Auriol’s schooling, and so on. And these three or four months had been among the dreariest and most anxious Lettice had ever known. Nina was pale and drooping; Arthur’s letters were rare and unsatisfactory; the autumn had been an unusually rainy and depressing season, and they had absolutely no friends. But for Miss Branksome’s unfailing cheerfulness, Nina and the younger ones would, indeed, have been to be pitied, though less than Lettice herself.

For, far as she was from owning herself to be the cause of all this unhappiness, her conscience was not at rest, and misgivings from time to time made themselves felt, though she stifled them by exaggerating to herself the soundness of her motives. And this very exaggeration made her write to poor Arthur the letters which, in his overstrained state, had had so disastrous a result.

Towards Nina, too, she knew, at the bottom of her heart, that she had not acted fairly, though the reserve that had gradually grown up between them, had prevented her thoroughly understanding her younger sister. For what—for whom, rather—was poor Nina pining?

“Doesshe care for Godfrey?” Lettice asked herself, feeling that if Nina had learnt to do so it was thanks toherinfluence, and no other. And as time went on, and Lettice began to own to herself that it didnotseem as if Godfrey were in love with Nina—“had it been so,” she reflected, “he is far too resolute to have been kept back by his quarrel withme,”—she almost came to hope that on both sides the dream had been the creation of her own fancy—her own self-will she would not call it.

Though even in this hope she found small rest for her troubled spirit. If it were not about Godfrey that Nina was fretting away, though patiently and uncomplainingly, the brightness from her pretty eyes, the roses from her young cheeks, about whom and what was it? And a certain afternoon last August, and a certain conversation with a fair-faced, honest young gentleman, who had come to plead his cause with manly straightforwardness; who had gone away looking ten years older, though with courteous and grateful words to herself on his lips, rose up before Lettice’s remembrance with reproachful eyes.

And all these memories—as in the so often quoted case of a drowning person—rushed through Lettice’s mind in the half-minute during which she stood there in her distress and desolation, while her lips repeated the same murmur—“What shall—oh, whatshallI do? Every moment of time that I am losing here may be of the most vital importance.”

Once she turned and made a step or two towards the door again, in a half-formed resolution to inquire if Mr Auriol’s clerk could give her the address of Philip Dexter. But from this she shrank with the strongest feelings of her nature.

“To go tohim—to appeal tohimto help me,” she reflected. “It would be like begging him on again for Nina. It would be owning that it was all nonsense about Godfrey’s caring for her—and for Arthur’s sake, too. Why should I publish his humiliation to any but those whomustknow it?”

And again she stood irresolute and altogether wretched. And cabby, beginning to wake up and giving signs of being about to begin wondering what queer sort of a “fare, as didn’t know its own mind, he had got hold of,” doubled and trebled the girl’s embarrassment.

“I must go to some hotel for the night, I suppose,” she said to herself. “And oh! the horror of sitting there all the evening doing nothing, and lying there all night doing nothing—and Arthur, my darling brother, setting sail for America, before we can stop him; or perhaps—worse and worse—tossing in some miserable place among strangers, in a brain fever, where he may die—die, without having forgiven me!”

Nearly driven frantic by her own imaginings, she looked round her with a vague, altogether unreasonable appeal for help or guidance.

“WhatshallI do?” she ejaculated for the twentieth time, when just at that moment a carriage drew up—cabby rousing himself to move on so as to make room for it, for it was an unmistakable carriage, a small but thoroughly well-appointed brougham, quite capable of commanding his respectful deference—before the door where Lettice was standing, and a gentleman got out and came slowly over the pavement towards the house. The pavement, or the space between the houses and the real pavement, was wide there. It looked as if in far-off times there might have been a grass-plot or a flowerbed or two in front; and as the new-comer approached, Lettice had time to see him clearly. She looked at him—at the first glance a wild idea had struck her that possibly he might be Godfrey Auriol returned unexpectedly—with a sort of half-bewildered curiosity, but gradually a vague feeling came over her that he was not altogether unknown to her, that somewhere she had seen him before, or else that he resembled some one she had once known. But as he passed by, she recollected herself and turned sharply away. What was it to her what or who this stranger was? What was she made of to be standing there losing the precious moments in idle conjecture? And again the whole force of her mind became concentrated on the absorbing question—whatwasshe to do?

She was turning at last to the cab, in a desperate resolution to gosomewhere, when a quick step behind her made her look round. To her surprise there stood facing her the gentleman who a moment before had passed her to enter the house. He raised his hat, and she, looking at him, was again struck by his strange indefinite likeness tosome one. He was slightly above the middle height, his dark hair already a very little hazed with grey. He looked a man of about forty, though in reality he was some years younger; his expression was gentle but rather piercing. There was great power, moral and intellectual, in his well-shaped forehead.

“Excuse me for addressing you,” he said. “But you seemed to me to be at a loss. Perhaps you are inquiring for some one you cannot find? I know this neighbourhood well. Can I help you?”

Lettice looked at him again. The gentleman’s tone was so respectful as well as kind, that the most timorous of maidens could scarcely have failed to feel confidence in him. And Lettice was the reverse of timorous; she was fearless to a fault, and her inexperience suggested no misgiving.

“Do you perhaps,” she began, “do you happen to know any one here—in this house? I am so disappointed at finding the friend, the gentleman I came to see, onmosturgent business, away from home. And they won’t even give me his address?” she added girlishly, the tears welling up again as she spoke.

A curious look came into the kindly eyes that were regarding her, and the stranger made a very slight involuntary movement, almost as if he were going to lay his hand on her arm to console her as one would do to a troubled child. But he checked himself.

“I know Mr Auriol, Mr Godfrey Auriol, whose office is in this house,” he said.

“That is he,” exclaimed Lettice with delighted eagerness. “Oh, how fortunate that I should have met you! If you could, oh, if you could but get them to give me his address, I might telegraph to him. It would save ever so much time. Perhaps, I should tell you,” she went on, “I have a right to ask for his address; he is my—our guardian. My name is Morison.”

There was no visible change of expression in the stranger’s face, but one knowing him well would have seen a light in his eyes that was not there before. And his lips moved, though no sound was heard. “Thank God for this,” were the inaudible words.

“I can easily get you his address,” he said. “I was just going in to ask if they had any definite news of his return. I want to see him as soon as he comes back. Will you wait here a moment? It is very cold,” he added, looking round. “Is that your cab waiting?”

“Yes,” said Lettice.

The gentleman glanced at the cab, with its ill-fitting doors and windows, and the inevitable damp and chilly straw on the floor.

“I doubt if you would be much warmer there,” he said with a smile. “Would you—will you do me the favour to get into my brougham while I go upstairs? There is a hot-water footstool—and rugs—for I have just taken my wife home. You don’t think me very presuming?” he added. “Remember, I am a friend of Godfrey’s.”

There was something reassuring in the simple way in which he spoke of Mr Auriol by his Christian name, even had Lettice wanted reassuring, which she did not. She looked up again in the stranger’s face and said, with an abruptness that sometimes characterised her—

“Are you a doctor?”

He smiled. “No, I am not. I am sorry for it if it would have given you more confidence in me. Though I hope,” he added with real anxiety, “that it is not to hear of a doctor that you are here. None of you are ill?Thatisn’t the urgent business, I trust?”

“No,” replied Lettice, surprised at his way of speaking. “He must have heard about us from Godfrey,” she decided. “At least, I hope not,” she added, as her terrible picture of Arthur in a brain fever came before her eyes. “Ihopenot. But I don’t know what I think or fear. You won’t be long?” she said appealingly, for by this time her new friend had handed her into the snug little carriage.

“Two minutes at most,” he replied.

And Lettice sat there, grateful in a sort of childish way for the cushioned warmth and comfort, though till then she had thought nothing about how cold she was, gazing before her in a vague, half-dazed way, feeling almost as if she would fall asleep if she were left there long, but in some indefinite way undoubtedly many degrees less miserable and desolate than before the apparition of the brougham.

Its owner was as good as his word Two minutes had barely elapsed before he was back again.

“I have his present address,” he said. “But he is a long way off. He is in Scotland, and is not expected back for a fortnight. He is away on professional business, but he had hoped not to have to go so far. He had hoped to be back to spend Christmas with us down in the country. Now,” he continued, “what is to be done? You can telegraph to him, but I doubt if it would bepossiblefor him to come back, and it is an out-of-the-way place where he is. You said there was no time to be lost? Have you no one else, no other friend or—or relative?” Here his voice faltered as he looked anxiously into the girl’s face, so pale and drawn and careworn as it had again become.

She roused herself with a sort of effort.

“I don’t know what to do,” she repeated.

“Can you not, though I am a stranger, can you not make up your mind—we have been brought together so strangely—can you not tell me what is the matter?” he said, beseechingly almost.

All this time he was standing with his hand on the carriage door.

“If you would let me take you home—to my wife,” he continued, “you would see how kind and sympathising she is. Could you tellher, better?”

“Oh no, thank you,” said Lettice. “I could tell you just as well. The trouble is about—my brother.”

“Your brother—Arthur? God forbid!” he exclaimed. “Is it anything very serious?”

“I fear so, but I don’t know,” she replied, shaking her head. And at the moment it did not strike her, so impressed was she with the magnitude of her overwhelming anxiety, how curious it was that a complete stranger should be so affected by her troubles! Yet his naming her brother by name caught her attention. “You know about us. I suppose from Mr Auriol?” she said.

“Yes,” he replied, but in an absent way.

And still Lettice sat gazing before her, as if she were half-stunned. Then suddenly, raising her eyes—

“Arthur has run away,” she said. “At least, he hasgoneaway. He wrote that he would try to go to America, but we were afraid, Nina and I—we got his letter last night, and I came off by the first train this morning. Nina and Miss Branksome wanted me to wait and to telegraph first, so I came away without telling them. I could not bear waiting—we were afraid that he might have fallen ill somewhere. He has not been well lately, and the shock of his disgrace—”

“Disgrace! What disgrace?” exclaimed the gentleman.

“He has failed—at least, he saw that he was going to fail—in his examination, and he would not face the rest of it,” said Lettice, the crimson rising to her face.

The stranger could hardly repress a smile.

“But why use such terribly strong words about it? Failing in his examination a disgrace! You startled me,” he said with evident and immense relief.

“Hetook it so,” said Lettice, a little nettled.

“And I—I used to think I would feel it so too, but I don’t seem to mind now. I would mind nothing if we could find him.”

“Have you any trace? Can you tell me all the particulars?”

“Yes,” said Lettice, feeling in her pocket for Arthur’s letter. But the stranger interrupted her.

“Now that you have told me so much, you will not refuse to let me tell you something—make some explanations to you. You will let me send away your cab, and take you home to my wife? I think I can promise to help you, but you must give me all particulars, and in a circumstantial manner. That will take time. But first, Lettice, it is not fair to you not to tell you who I am. I am not only Godfrey Auriol’s friend; I am—do not be startled, my child—I am your uncle, Ingram Morison.”

He turned away after saying these words. He would not look at her face, half out of pity for her, half out of an almost childish terror of the deep disappointment to himself, should he see its expression turn into hard resentment. He walked up and down in the cold for a moment or two, then hearing, or fancying he heard, a low, half-stifled call—to his ears it took the sound of the words he had so often longed to hear, “Uncle Ingram”—he turned back again. She was looking out of the brougham window, the glass was down, her face was paler than one could almost believe it possible for a young, healthy face to be, her lips were quivering, there was a look of suffering and humiliation almost, but there was no hardness or resentment.

“Lettice,” he said gently. “MayI send away your cab?”

There was great tact in the tone and manner of the simple question. Lettice’s eyes filled with tears. She did not speak, but she bent her head in assent.

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