initial commit of ebook 2497HEADmain

2 files changed, 26251 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/phyip10.txt b/old/phyip10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..07f284c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/phyip10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,26251 @@
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Put Yourself in His Place
+by Charles Reade
+#4 in our series by Charles Reade
+
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
+the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!
+
+Please take a look at the important information in this header.
+We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
+electronic path open for the next readers.  Do not remove this.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
+further information is included below.  We need your donations.
+
+
+Put Yourself in His Place
+
+by Charles Reade
+
+February, 2001  [Etext #2497]
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Put Yourself in His Place
+by Charles Reade
+******This file should be named pyihp10.txt or pyihp10.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, pyihp11.txt.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, pyihp10a.txt.
+
+
+This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, charlie@idirect.com.
+
+
+We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance
+of the official release dates, for time for better editing.
+
+Please note:  neither this list nor its contents are final till
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.  To be sure you have an
+up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes
+in the first week of the next month.  Since our ftp program has
+a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a
+look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a
+new copy has at least one byte more or less.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.  This
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If our value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text
+files per month, or 384 more Etexts in 1997 for a total of 1000+
+If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the
+total should reach over 100 billion Etexts given away.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by the December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000=Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only 10% of the present number of computer users.  2001
+should have at least twice as many computer users as that, so it
+will require us reaching less than 5% of the users in 2001.
+
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+
+All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are
+tax deductible to the extent allowable by law.  (CMU = Carnegie-
+Mellon University).
+
+For these and other matters, please mail to:
+
+Project Gutenberg
+P. O. Box  2782
+Champaign, IL 61825
+
+When all other email fails try our Executive Director:
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+We would prefer to send you this information by email
+(Internet, Bitnet, Compuserve, ATTMAIL or MCImail).
+
+******
+If you have an FTP program (or emulator), please
+FTP directly to the Project Gutenberg archives:
+[Mac users, do NOT point and click. . .type]
+
+ftp uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu
+login:  anonymous
+password:  your@login
+cd etext/etext90 through /etext96
+or cd etext/articles [get suggest gut for more information]
+dir [to see files]
+get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
+GET INDEX?00.GUT
+for a list of books
+and
+GET NEW GUT for general information
+and
+MGET GUT* for newsletters.
+
+**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**
+(Three Pages)
+
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here?  You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault.  So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you.  It also tells you how
+you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement.  If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from.  If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-
+tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor
+Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at
+Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project").  Among other
+things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works.  Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects".  Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this
+etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from.  If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy.  If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS".  NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
+officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
+and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
+indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
+[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
+or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-
+     cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
+     net profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon
+     University" within the 60 days following each
+     date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)
+     your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,
+scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty
+free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution
+you can think of.  Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg
+Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".
+
+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE
+
+by
+
+Charles Reade
+
+
+I will frame a work of fiction upon notorious fact, so that anybody
+shall think he can do the same; shall labor and toil attempting the
+same, and fail--such is the power of sequence and connection in
+writing."--HORACE: Art of Poetry.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Hillsborough and its outlying suburbs make bricks by the million,
+spin and weave both wool and cotton, forge in steel from the finest
+needle up to a ship's armor, and so add considerably to the
+kingdom's wealth.
+
+But industry so vast, working by steam on a limited space, has been
+fatal to beauty: Hillsborough, though built on one of the loveliest
+sites in England, is perhaps the most hideous town in creation.  All
+ups and down and back slums.  Not one of its wriggling, broken-
+backed streets has handsome shops in an unbroken row.  Houses seem
+to have battled in the air, and stuck wherever they tumbled down
+dead out of the melee.  But worst of all, the city is pockmarked
+with public-houses, and bristles with high round chimneys.  These
+are not confined to a locality, but stuck all over the place like
+cloves in an orange.  They defy the law, and belch forth massy
+volumes of black smoke, that hang like acres of crape over the
+place, and veil the sun and the blue sky even in the brightest day.
+But in a fog--why, the air of Hillsborough looks a thing to plow, if
+you want a dirty job.
+
+More than one crystal stream runs sparkling down the valleys, and
+enters the town; but they soon get defiled, and creep through it
+heavily charged with dyes, clogged with putridity, and bubbling with
+poisonous gases, till at last they turn to mere ink, stink, and
+malaria, and people the churchyards as they crawl.
+
+This infernal city, whose water is blacking, and whose air is coal,
+lies in a basin of delight and beauty: noble slopes, broad valleys,
+watered by rivers and brooks of singular beauty, and fringed by fair
+woods in places; and, eastward, the hills rise into mountains, and
+amongst them towers Cairnhope, striped with silver rills, and violet
+in the setting sun.
+
+Cairnhope is a forked mountain, with a bosom of purple heather and a
+craggy head.  Between its forks stood, at the period of my story, a
+great curiosity; which merits description on its own account, and
+also as the scene of curious incidents to come.
+
+It was a deserted church.  The walls were pierced with arrow-slits,
+through which the original worshipers had sent many a deadly shaft
+in defense of their women and cattle, collected within the sacred
+edifice at the first news of marauders coming.
+
+Built up among the heathery hills in times of war and trouble, it
+had outlived its uses.  Its people had long ago gone down into the
+fruitful valley, and raised another church in their midst, and left
+this old house of God alone, and silent as the tombs of their
+forefathers that lay around it.
+
+It was no ruin, though on the road to decay.  One of the side walls
+was much lower than the other, and the roof had two great waves, and
+was heavily clothed, in natural patterns, with velvet moss, and
+sprinkled all over with bright amber lichen: a few tiles had slipped
+off in two places, and showed the rafters brown with time and
+weather: but the structure was solid and sound; the fallen tiles lay
+undisturbed beneath the eaves; not a brick, not a beam, not a
+gravestone had been stolen, not even to build the new church: of the
+diamond panes full half remained; the stone font was still in its
+place, with its Gothic cover, richly carved; and four brasses
+reposed in the chancel, one of them loose in its bed.
+
+What had caused the church to be deserted had kept it from being
+desecrated; it was clean out of the way.  No gypsy, nor vagrant,
+ever slept there, and even the boys of the village kept their
+distance.  Nothing would have pleased them better than to break the
+sacred windows time had spared, and defile the graves of their
+forefathers with pitch-farthing and other arts; but it was three
+miles off, and there was a lion in the way: they must pass in sight
+of Squire Raby's house; and, whenever they had tried it, he and his
+groom had followed them on swift horses that could jump as well as
+gallop, had caught them in the churchyard, and lashed them heartily;
+and the same night notice to quit had been given to their parents,
+who were all Mr. Raby's weekly tenants: and this had led to a
+compromise and flagellation.
+
+Once or twice every summer a more insidious foe approached.  Some
+little party of tourists, including a lady, who sketched in water
+and never finished anything, would hear of the old church, and
+wander up to it.  But Mr. Raby's trusty groom was sure to be after
+them, with orders to keep by them, under guise of friendship, and
+tell them outrageous figments, and see that they demolished not,
+stole not, sculptured not.
+
+All this was odd enough in itself, but it astonished nobody who knew
+Mr. Raby.  His father and predecessor had guarded the old church
+religiously in his day, and was buried in it, by his own orders;
+and, as for Guy Raby himself, what wonder he respected it, since his
+own mind, like that old church, was out of date, and a relic of the
+past?
+
+An antique Tory squire, nursed in expiring Jacobitism, and cradled
+in the pride of race; educated at Oxford, well read in books, versed
+in county business, and acquainted with trade and commerce; yet
+puffed up with aristocratic notions, and hugging the very prejudices
+our nobility are getting rid of as fast as the vulgar will let them.
+
+He had a sovereign contempt for tradespeople, and especially for
+manufacturers.  Any one of those numerous disputes between masters
+and mechanics, which distinguish British industry, might have been
+safely referred to him, for he abhorred and despised them both with
+strict impartiality.
+
+
+The lingering beams of a bright December day still gilded the moss-
+clad roof of that deserted church, and flamed on its broken panes,
+when a young man came galloping toward it, from Hillsborough, on one
+of those powerful horses common in that district.
+
+He came so swiftly and so direct, that, ere the sun had been down
+twenty minutes, he and his smoking horse had reached a winding gorge
+about three furlongs from the church.  Here, however, the bridle-
+road, which had hitherto served his turn across the moor, turned off
+sharply toward the village of Cairnhope, and the horse had to pick
+his way over heather, and bog, and great loose stones.  He lowered
+his nose, and hesitated more than once.  But the rein was loose upon
+his neck, and he was left to take his time.  He had also his own
+tracks to guide him in places, for this was by no means his first
+visit; and he managed so well, that at last he got safe to a
+mountain stream which gurgled past the north side of the churchyard:
+he went cautiously through the water, and then his rider gathered up
+the reins, stuck in the spurs, and put him at a part of the wall
+where the moonlight showed a considerable breach.  The good horse
+rose to it, and cleared it, with a foot to spare; and the invader
+landed in the sacred precincts unobserved, for the road he had come
+by was not visible from Raby House, nor indeed was the church itself.
+
+He was of swarthy complexion, dressed in a plain suit of tweed, well
+made, and neither new nor old.  His hat was of the newest fashion,
+and glossy.  He had no gloves on.
+
+He dismounted, and led his horse to the porch.  He took from his
+pocket a large glittering key and unlocked the church-door; then
+gave his horse a smack on the quarter.  That sagacious animal walked
+into the church directly, and his iron hoofs rang strangely as he
+paced over the brick floor of the aisle, and made his way under the
+echoing vault, up to the very altar; for near it was the vestry-
+chest, and in that chest his corn.
+
+The young man also entered the church; but soon came out again with
+a leathern bucket in his hand.  He then went round the church, and
+was busily employed for a considerable time.
+
+He returned to the porch, carried his bucket in, and locked the
+door, leaving the key inside.
+
+
+That night Abel Eaves, a shepherd, was led by his dog, in search of
+a strayed sheep, to a place rarely trodden by the foot of man or
+beast, viz., the west side of Cairnhope Peak.  He came home pale and
+disturbed, and sat by the fireside in dead silence.  "What ails
+thee, my man?" said Janet, his wife; "and there's the very dog keeps
+a whimpering."
+
+"What ails us, wife?  Pincher and me?  We have seen summat."
+
+"What was it?" inquired the woman, suddenly lowering her voice.
+
+"Cairnhope old church all o' fire inside."
+
+"Bless us and save us!" said Janet, in a whisper.
+
+"And the fire it did come and go as if hell was a blowing at it.
+One while the windows was a dull red like, and the next they did
+flare so, I thought it would all burst out in a blaze.  And so
+'twould, but, bless your heart, their heads ha'n't ached this
+hundred year and more, as lighted that there devilish fire."
+
+He paused a moment, then said, with sudden gravity and resignation
+and even a sort of half business-like air, "Wife, ye may make my
+shroud, and sew it and all; but I wouldn't buy the stuff of Bess
+Crummles; she is an ill-tongued woman, and came near making mischief
+between you and me last Lammermas as ever was."
+
+"Shroud!" cried Mrs. Eaves, getting seriously alarmed.  "Why, Abel,
+what is Cairnhope old church to you?  You were born in an other
+parish."
+
+Abel slapped his thigh.  "Ay, lass, and another county, if ye go to
+that."  And his countenance brightened suddenly.
+
+"And as for me," continued Janet, "I'm Cairnhope; but my mother came
+from Morpeth, a widdy: and she lies within a hundred yards of where
+I sit a talking to thee.  There's none of my kin laid in old
+Cairnhope churchyard.  Warning's not for thee, nor me, nor yet for
+our Jock.  Eh, lad, it will be for Squire Raby.  His father lies up
+there, and so do all his folk.  Put on thy hat this minute, and I'll
+hood myself, and we'll go up to Raby Hall, and tell Squire."
+
+Abel objected to that, and intimated that his own fireside was
+particularly inviting to a man who had seen diabolical fires that
+came and went, and shone through the very stones and mortar of a
+dead church.
+
+"Nay, but," said Janet, "they sort o' warnings are not to be
+slighted neither.  We must put it off on to Squire, or I shall sleep
+none this night."
+
+They went up, hand in hand, and often looked askant upon the road.
+
+When they got to the Hall, they asked to see Mr. Raby.  After some
+demur they were admitted to his presence, and found him alone, so
+far as they could judge by the naked eye; but, as they arrived there
+charged to the muzzle with superstition, the room presented to their
+minds some appearances at variance with this seeming solitude.
+Several plates were set as if for guests, and the table groaned, and
+the huge sideboard blazed, with old silver.  The Squire himself was
+in full costume, and on his bosom gleamed two orders bestowed upon
+his ancestors by James III. and Charles III.  In other respects he
+was rather innocuous, being confined to his chair by an attack of
+gout, and in the act of sipping the superannuated compound that had
+given it him--port.  Nevertheless, his light hair, dark eyebrows,
+and black eyes, awed them, and co-operated with his brilliant
+costume and the other signs of company, to make them wish themselves
+at the top of Cairnhope Peak.  However, they were in for it, and
+told their tale, but in tremulous tones and a low deprecating voice,
+so that if the room SHOULD happen to be infested with invisible
+grandees from the other world, their attention might not be roused
+unnecessarily.
+
+Mr. Raby listened with admirable gravity; then fixed his eyes on the
+pair, in silence; and then said in a tone so solemn it was almost
+sepulchral, "This very day, nearly a century and a half ago, Sir
+Richard Raby was beheaded for being true to his rightful king--"
+
+"Eh, dear poor gentleman! so now a walks."  It was Janet who edged
+in this--
+
+"And," continued the gentleman, loftily ignoring the comment, "they
+say that on this night such of the Rabys as died Catholics hold high
+mass in the church, and the ladies walk three times round the
+churchyard; twice with their veils down, once with bare faces, and
+great eyes that glitter like stars."
+
+"I wouldn't like to see the jades," quavered Abel: "their ladyships
+I mean, axing their pardon."
+
+"Nor I!" said Janet, with a great shudder.
+
+"It would not be good for you," suggested the Squire; "for the first
+glance from those dead and glittering eyes strikes any person of the
+lower orders dumb, the second, blind; the third, dead.  So I'm
+INFORMED.  Therefore--LET ME ADVISE YOU NEVER TO GO NEAR CAIRNHOPE
+OLD CHURCH AT NIGHT."
+
+"Not I, sir," said the simple woman.
+
+"Nor your children: unless you are very tired of them."
+
+"Heaven forbid, sir!  But oh, sir, we thought it might be a warning
+like."
+
+"To whom?"
+
+"Why, sir, th' old Squire lies there; and heaps more of your folk:
+and so Abel here was afear'd--but you are the best judge; we be no
+scholars.  Th' old church warn't red-hot from eend to eend for
+naught: that's certain."
+
+"Oh it is me you came to warn?" said Raby, and his lip curled.
+
+"Well, sir," (mellifluously), "we thought you had the best right to
+know."
+
+"My good woman," said the warned, "I shall die when my time comes.
+But I shall not hurry myself, for all the gentlemen in Paradise, nor
+all the blackguards upon earth."
+
+He spake, and sipped his port with one hand, and waved them superbly
+back to their village with the other.
+
+But, when they were gone, he pondered.
+
+And the more he pondered, the further he got from the prosaic but
+singular fact.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+In the old oak dining-room, where the above colloquy took place,
+hung a series of family portraits.  One was of a lovely girl with
+oval face, olive complexion, and large dark tender eyes: and this
+was the gem of the whole collection; but it conferred little
+pleasure on the spectator, owing to a trivial circumstance--it was
+turned with its face to the wall; and all that met the inquiring eye
+was an inscription on the canvas, not intended to be laudatory.
+
+This beauty, with her back to creation, was Edith Raby, Guy's
+sister.
+
+During their father's lifetime she was petted and allowed her own
+way.  Hillsborough, odious to her brother, was, naturally, very
+attractive to her, and she often rode into the town to shop and chat
+with her friends, and often stayed a day or two in it, especially
+with a Mrs. Manton, wife of a wealthy manufacturer.
+
+Guy merely sneered at her, her friends, and her tastes, till he
+suddenly discovered that she had formed an attachment to one of the
+obnoxious class, Mr. James Little, a great contract builder.  He was
+too shocked at first to vent his anger.  He turned pale, and could
+hardly speak; and the poor girl's bosom began to quake.
+
+But Guy's opposition went no further than cold aversion to the
+intimacy--until his father died.  Then, though but a year older than
+Edith, he assumed authority and, as head of the house, forbade the
+connection.  At the same time he told her he should not object,
+under the circumstances, to her marrying Dr. Amboyne, a rising
+physician, and a man of good family, who loved her sincerely, and
+had shown his love plainly before ever Mr. Little was heard of.
+
+Edith tried to soften her brother; but he was resolute, and said
+Raby Hall should never be an appendage to a workshop.  Sooner than
+that, he would settle it on his cousin Richard, a gentleman he
+abhorred, and never called, either to his face or behind his back,
+by any other name than "Dissolute Dick."
+
+Then Edith became very unhappy, and temporized more or less, till
+her lover, who had shown considerable forbearance, lost patience at
+last, and said she must either have no spirit, or no true affection
+for him.
+
+Then came a month or two of misery, the tender clinging nature of
+the girl being averse to detach itself from either of these two
+persons.  She loved them both with an affection she could have so
+easily reconciled, if they would only have allowed her.
+
+And it all ended according to Nature.  She came of age, plucked up a
+spirit, and married Mr. James Little.
+
+Her brother declined to be present at the wedding; but, as soon as
+she returned from her tour, and settled in Hillsborough, he sent his
+groom with a cold, civil note, reminding her that their father had
+settled nineteen hundred pounds on her, for her separate use, with
+remainder to her children, if any; that he and Mr. Graham were the
+trustees of this small fund; that they had invested it, according to
+the provisions of the settlement, in a first mortgage on land; and
+informing her that half a year's interest at 4 1/2 per cent was due,
+which it was his duty to pay into her own hand and no other
+person's; she would therefore oblige him by receiving the inclosed
+check, and signing the inclosed receipt.
+
+The receipt came back signed, and with it a few gentle lines,
+"hoping that, in time, he would forgive her, and bestow on her what
+she needed and valued more than money; her own brother's, her only
+brother's affection."
+
+On receiving this, his eyes were suddenly moist, and he actually
+groaned.  "A lady, every inch!" he said; "yet she has gone and
+married a bricklayer."
+
+Well, blood is thicker than water, and in a few years they were
+pretty good friends again, though they saw but little of one
+another, meeting only in Hillsborough, which Guy hated, and never
+drove into now without what he called his antidotes: a Bible and a
+bottle of lavender-water.  It was his humor to read the one, and
+sprinkle the other, as soon as ever he got within the circle of the
+smoky trades.
+
+When Edith's little boy was nine years old, and much admired for his
+quickness and love of learning, and of making walking-stick heads
+and ladies' work-boxes, Mr. Little's prosperity received a severe
+check, and through his own fault.  He speculated largely in building
+villas, overdid the market, and got crippled.  He had contracts
+uncompleted, and was liable to penalties; and at last saw himself
+the nominal possessor of a brick wilderness, but on the verge of
+ruin for want of cash.
+
+He tried every other resource first; but at last he came to his
+wife, to borrow her L1900.  The security he offered was a mortgage
+on twelve carcasses, or houses the bare walls and roofs of which
+were built.
+
+Mrs. Little wrote at once to Mr. Raby for her money.
+
+Instead of lending the trust-money hastily, Raby submitted the
+proposal to his solicitor, and that gentleman soon discovered the
+vaunted security was a second mortgage, with interest overdue on the
+first; and so he told Guy, who then merely remarked, "I expected as
+much.  When had a tradesman any sense of honor in money matters?
+This one would cheat his very wife and child."
+
+He declined the proposal, in two words, "Rotten security!"
+
+Then Mr. James Little found another security that looked very
+plausible, and primed his wife with arguments, and she implored Guy
+to call and talk it over with them both.
+
+He came that very afternoon, and brought his father's will.
+
+Then Edith offered the security, and tried to convey to the trustee
+her full belief that it was undeniable.
+
+Guy picked terrible holes in it, and read their father's will,
+confining the funds to consols, or a first mortgage on land.  "You
+take the money on these conditions: it is almost as improper of you
+to wish to evade them, as it would be of me to assist you.  And then
+there is your child; I am hound in honor not to risk his little
+fortune.  See, here's my signature to that."
+
+"My child!" cried Edith.  "When he comes of age, I'll go on my knees
+to him and say, 'My darling, I borrowed your money to save your
+father's credit.'  And my darling will throw his arms round me, and
+forgive me."
+
+"Simpleton!" said Guy.  "And how about your daughters and their
+husbands?  And their husbands' solicitors?  Will they throw their
+arms round your neck, and break forth into twaddle?  No!  I have
+made inquiries.  Your husband's affairs are desperate.  I won't
+throw your money into his well; and you will both live to thank me
+for seeing clearer than you do, and saving this L1900 for you and
+yours."
+
+James Little had writhed in his chair for some time: he now cried
+out wildly,
+
+"Edith, you shall demean yourself no more.  He always hated me: and
+now let him have his will, and seal my dishonor and my ruin.  Oblige
+me by leaving my house, Mr. Raby."
+
+"Oh, no, James!" cried Edith, trembling, and shocked at this
+affront.  But Guy rose like a tower.  "I've noticed this trait in
+all tradespeople," said he grimly.  "They are obsequious to a
+gentleman so long as they hope to get the better of him; but, the
+moment they find it is impossible to overreach him, they insult
+him."  And with this he stalked out of the house.
+
+"Oh, my poor James, how could you?" said Edith.
+
+"Forgive me," said he, quietly.  "It is all over.  That was our last
+chance."
+
+Guy Raby walked down the street, stung to the quick.  He went
+straight to his solicitor and arranged to borrow L1900 on his own
+property.  "For," said he, "I'll show them both how little a snob
+can understand a gentleman.  I won't tamper with her son's money,
+but I'll give her my own to throw into his well.  Confound him! why
+did she ever marry him?"
+
+When the business was virtually settled, he came back to the house
+in great haste.
+
+
+Meantime Mr. James Little went up to his dressing-room, as usual, to
+dress for dinner; but he remained there so long that, at last, Mrs.
+Little sent her maid to tell him dinner was ready.
+
+The girl had hardly reached the top of the stairs, when she gave a
+terrible scream that rang through the whole house.
+
+Mrs. Little rushed upstairs, and found her clinging to the
+balusters, and pointing at the floor, with eyes protruding and full
+of horror.  Her candle-stick had fallen from her benumbed hand; but
+the hall-lamp revealed what her finger was quivering and pointing
+at: a dark fluid trickling slowly out into the lobby from beneath
+the bedroom door.
+
+It was blood.
+
+The room was burst into, and the wretched, tottering wife, hanging
+upon her sobbing servants, found her lover, her husband, her child's
+father, lying on the floor, dead by his own hand; stone dead.  A
+terrible sight for strangers to see; but for her, what words can
+even shadow the horror of it!
+
+I drop the veil on her wild bursts of agony, and piteous appeals to
+him who could not hear her cries.
+
+The gaping wound that let out that precious life, her eye never
+ceased to see it, nor her own heart to bleed with it, while she
+lived.
+
+She was gently dragged away, and supported down to another room.
+Doctor Amboyne came and did what he could for her; and that was--
+nothing.
+
+At this time she seemed stupefied.  But when Guy came beaming into
+the room to tell her he had got her the money, a terrible scene
+occurred.  The bereaved wife uttered a miserable scream at sight of
+him, and swooned away directly.
+
+The maids gathered round her, laid her down, and cut her stays, and
+told Guy the terrible tidings, in broken whispers, over her
+insensible body.
+
+He rose to his feet horrified.  He began to gasp and sob.  And he
+yearned to say something to comfort her.  At that moment his house,
+his heart, and all he had, were hers.
+
+But, as soon as she came to herself, and caught sight of him, she
+screamed out, "Oh, the sight of him! the sight of him!" and swooned
+away again.
+
+Then the women pushed him out of the room, and he went away with
+uneven steps, and sick at heart.
+
+He shut himself up in Raby Hall, and felt very sad and remorseful.
+He directed his solicitor to render Mrs. Little every assistance,
+and supply her with funds.  But these good offices were respectfully
+declined by Mr. Joseph Little, the brother of the deceased, who had
+come from Birmingham to conduct the funeral and settle other matters.
+
+Mr. Joseph Little was known to be a small master-cutler, who had
+risen from a workman, and even now put blades and handles together
+with his own hands, at odd times, though he had long ceased to forge
+or grind.
+
+Mr. Raby drew in haughtily at this interference.
+
+It soon transpired that Mr. James Little had died hopelessly
+insolvent, and the L1900 would really have been ingulfed.
+
+Raby waited for this fact to sink into his sister's mind; and then
+one day nature tugged so at his heart-strings, that he dashed off a
+warm letter beginning--"My poor Edith, let bygones be bygones," and
+inviting her and her boy to live with him at Raby Hall.
+
+The heart-broken widow sent back a reply, in a handwriting scarcely
+recognizable as hers.  Instead of her usual precise and delicate
+hand, the letters were large, tremulous, and straggling, and the
+lines slanted downward.
+
+
+"Write to me, speak to me, no more.  For pity's sake let me forget
+there is a man in the world who is my brother and his murderer.
+
+"EDITH."
+
+
+Guy opened this letter with a hopeful face, and turned pale as ashes
+at the contents.
+
+But his conscience was clear, and his spirit high.  "Unjust idiot!"
+he muttered, and locked her letter up in his desk.
+
+Next morning he received a letter from Joseph Little, in a clear,
+stiff, perpendicular writing:
+
+
+"SIR,--I find my sister-in-law wrote you, yesterday, a harsh letter,
+which I do not approve; and have told her as much.  Deceased's
+affairs were irretrievable, and I blame no other man for his rash
+act, which may God forgive!  As to your kind and generous
+invitation, it deserves her gratitude; but Mrs. Little and myself
+have mingled our tears together over my poor brother's grave, and
+now we do not care to part.  Before your esteemed favor came to
+hand, it had been settled she should leave this sad neighborhood and
+keep my house at Birmingham, where she will meet with due respect.
+I am only a small tradesman; but I can pay my debts, and keep the
+pot boiling.  Will teach the boy some good trade, and make him a
+useful member of society, if I am spared.
+
+"I am, sir, yours respectfully,
+
+"JOSEPH LITTLE."
+
+
+"Sir,--I beg to acknowledge, with thanks, your respectable letter.
+
+"As all direct communication between Mrs. James Little and myself is
+at an end, oblige me with your address in Birmingham, that I may
+remit to you, half-yearly, as her agent, the small sum that has
+escaped bricks and mortar.
+
+"When her son comes of age, she will probably forgive me for
+declining to defraud him of his patrimony.
+
+"But it will be too late; for I shall never forgive her, alive or
+dead.
+
+"I am, sir, your obedient servant,
+
+"GUY RABY."
+
+
+When he had posted this letter he turned Edith's picture to the
+wall, and wrote on the canvas--
+
+
+       "GONE INTO TRADE."
+
+
+He sent for his attorney, made a new will, and bequeathed his land,
+houses, goods, and chattels, to Dissolute Dick and his heirs
+forever.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+The sorrowful widow was so fond of her little Henry, and the
+uncertainty of life was so burnt into her now, that she could hardly
+bear him out of her sight.  Yet her love was of the true maternal
+stamp; not childish and self-indulgent.  She kept him from school,
+for fear he should be brought home dead to her; but she gave her own
+mind with zeal to educate him.  Nor was she unqualified.  If she had
+less learning than school-masters, she knew better how to communicate
+what she did know to a budding mind.  She taught him to read
+fluently, and to write beautifully; and she coaxed him, as only a
+woman can, over the dry elements of music and arithmetic.  She also
+taught him dancing and deportment, and to sew on a button.  He was a
+quick boy at nearly everything, but, when he was fourteen, his true
+genius went ahead of his mere talents; he showed a heaven-born gift
+for--carving in wood.  This pleased Joseph Little hugely, and he
+fostered it judiciously.
+
+The boy worked, and thought, and in time arrived at such delicacies
+of execution, he became discontented with the humdrum tools then
+current.  "Then learn to make your own, boy," cried Joseph Little,
+joyfully; and so initiated him into the whole mystery of hardening,
+forging, grinding, handle-making, and cutlery: and Henry, young and
+enthusiastic, took his turn at them all in right down earnest.
+
+At twenty, he had sold many a piece of delicate carving, and could
+make graving-tools incomparably superior to any he could buy; and,
+for his age, was an accomplished mechanic.
+
+Joseph Little went the way of all flesh.
+
+They mourned and missed him; and, at Henry's earnest request, his
+mother disposed of the plant, and went with him to London.
+
+Then the battle of life began.  He was a long time out of
+employment, and they both lived on his mother's little fortune.
+
+But Henry was never idle.  He set up a little forge hard by, and
+worked at it by day, and at night he would often sit carving, while
+his mother read to him, and said he, "Mother, I'll never rest till I
+can carve the bloom upon a plum."
+
+Not to dwell on the process, the final result was this.  He rose at
+last to eminence as a carver: but as an inventor and forger of
+carving tools he had no rival in England.
+
+Having with great labor, patience, and skill, completed a
+masterpiece of carving (there were plums with the bloom on, and
+other incredibles), and also a set of carving-tools equally
+exquisite in their way, he got a popular tradesman to exhibit both
+the work and the tools in his window, on a huge silver salver.
+
+The thing made a good deal of noise in the trade, and drew many
+spectators to the shop window.
+
+One day Mr. Cheetham, a master-cutler, stood in admiration before
+the tools, and saw his way to coin the workman.
+
+This Cheetham was an able man, and said to himself, "I'll nail him
+for Hillsborough, directly.  London mustn't have a hand that can
+beat us at anything in our line."
+
+He found Henry out, and offered him constant employment, as a forger
+and cutler of carving-tools, at L4 per week.
+
+Henry's black eyes sparkled, but he restrained himself.  "That's to
+be thought of.  I must speak to my old lady.  She is not at home
+just now."
+
+He did speak to her, and she put her two hands together and said,
+"Hillsborough!  Oh Henry!" and the tears stood in her eyes directly.
+
+"Well, don't fret," said he: "it is only saying no."
+
+So when Mr. Cheetham called again for the reply, Henry declined,
+with thanks.  On this, Mr. Cheetham never moved, but smiled, and
+offered him L6 per week, and his journey free.
+
+Henry went into another room, and argued the matter.  "Come, mother,
+he is up to L6 a week now; and that is every shilling I'm worth;
+and, when I get an apprentice, it will be L9 clear to us."
+
+"The sight of the place!" objected Mrs. Little, hiding her face in
+her hands instinctively.
+
+He kissed her, and talked good manly sense to her, and begged her to
+have more courage.
+
+She was little able to deny him, and she consented; but cried, out
+of his sight, a good many times about it.
+
+As for Henry, strong in the consciousness of power and skill, he
+felt glad he was going to Hillsborough.  "Many a workman has risen
+to the top of the tree in that place," said he.  "Why, this very
+Cheetham was grinding saws in a water-wheel ten years ago, I've
+heard uncle Joe say.  Come, mother, don't you be a baby!  I'll
+settle you in a cottage outside the smoke; you shall make a palace
+of it; and we'll rise in the very town where we fell, and friends
+and foes shall see us."
+
+Mr. Cheetham purchased both the carving and the tools to exhibit in
+Hillsborough; and the purchase-money, less a heavy commission, was
+paid to Henry.  He showed Mrs. Little thirty pounds, and helped her
+pack up; and next day they reached Hillsborough by train.
+
+Henry took a close cab, and carried his mother off to the suburbs in
+search of a lodging.  She wore a thick veil, and laid her head on
+her son's shoulder, and held his brown though elegant hand with her
+white fingers, that quivered a little as she passed through the
+well-known streets.
+
+As for Henry, he felt quite triumphant and grand, and consoled her
+in an off-hand, hearty way.  "Come, cheer up, and face the music.
+They have all forgotten you by this time, and, when they do see you
+again, you shall be as good as the best of them.  I don't drink, and
+I've got a trade all to myself here, and I'd rather make my fortune
+in this town than any other; and, mother, you have been a good
+friend to me; I won't ever marry till I have done you justice, and
+made you the queen of this very town."
+
+And so he rattled on, in such high spirits, that the great soft
+thing began to smile with motherly love and pride through her tears,
+ere they found a lodging.
+
+Next day to the works, and there the foreman showed him a small
+forge on the ground floor, and a vacant room above to make his
+handles in and put the tools together; the blades were to be ground,
+whetted, and finished by cheaper hands.
+
+A quick-eared grinder soon came up to them, and said roughly, "Ain't
+we to wet new forge?"
+
+"They want their drink out of you," said the foreman; and whispered,
+in great anxiety, "Don't say no, or you might as well work in a
+wasp's nest as here."
+
+"All right," said Henry, cheerfully.  "I'm no drinker myself, but
+I'll stand what is customary."
+
+"That is right," said Foreman Bayne.  "'Twill cost you fifteen
+shillings.  But Peace is cheap at as many guineas."
+
+The word was given, and every man who worked on the same floor with
+Henry turned out to drink at his expense, and left off work for a
+good hour.  With some exceptions they were a rough lot, and showed
+little friendliness or good-humor over it.  One even threw out a
+hint that no cockney forges were wanted in Hillsborough.  But
+another took him up, and said, "Maybe not; but you are not much of a
+man to drink his liquor and grudge him his bread."
+
+After this waste of time and money, Henry went back to the works,
+and a workman told him rather sulkily, he was wanted in the
+foreman's office.
+
+He went in, and there was a lovely girl of eighteen, who looked at
+him with undisguised curiosity, and addressed him thus: "Sir, is it
+you that carve wood so beautifully?"
+
+Henry blushed, and hesitated; and that made the young lady blush
+herself a very little, and she said, "I wished to take lessons in
+carving."  Then, as he did not reply, she turned to Mr. Bayne.  "But
+perhaps he objects to teach other people?"
+
+"WE should object to his teaching other workmen," said the foreman;
+"but," turning to Henry, "there is no harm in your giving her a
+lesson or two, after hours.  You will want a set of the tools,
+miss?"
+
+"Of course I shall.  Please put them into the carriage; and--when
+will he come and teach me, I wonder? for I am wild to begin."
+
+Henry said he could come Saturday afternoon, or Monday morning
+early.
+
+"Whichever you please," said the lady, and put down her card on the
+desk; then tripped away to her carriage, leaving Henry charmed with
+her beauty and ease.
+
+He went home to his mother, and told her he was to give lessons to
+the handsomest young lady he had ever seen.  "She has bought the
+specimen tools too; so I must forge some more, and lose no time
+about it."
+
+"Who is she, I wonder?"
+
+"Here is her card.  'Miss Carden, Woodbine Villa, Heath Hill.'"
+
+"Carden!" said the widow.  Then, after a moment's thought, "Oh,
+Henry, don't go near them.  Ah, I knew how it would be.
+Hillsborough is not like London.  You can't be long hid in it."
+
+"Why, what is the matter?  Do you know the lady?"
+
+"Oh, yes.  Her papa is director of an insurance company in London.
+I remember her being born very well.  The very day she was
+christened--her name is Grace--you were six years old, and I took
+you to her christening; and oh, Harry, my brother is her godfather.
+Don't you go near that Grace Carden; don't visit any one that knew
+us in better days."
+
+"Why, what have we to be ashamed of?" said Henry.  "'Tisn't as if we
+sat twiddling our thumbs and howling, 'We have seen better days.'
+And 'tisn't as if we asked favors of anybody.  For my part I don't
+care who knows I am here, and can make three hundred a year with my
+own hands and wrong no man.  I'd rather be a good workman in wood
+and steel than an arrogant old fool like your b--.  No, I won't own
+him for yours or mine either--call him Raby.  Well, I wouldn't
+change places with him, nor any of his sort: I'm a British workman,
+and worth a dozen Rabys--useless scum!"
+
+"That you are, dear; so don't demean yourself to give any of them
+lessons.  Her godfather would be sure to hear of it."
+
+"Well, I won't, to please you.  But you have no more pluck than a
+chicken--begging your pardon, mother."
+
+"No, dear," said Mrs. Little, humbly, quite content to gain her
+point and lose her reputation for pluck; if any.
+
+Henry worked regularly, and fast, and well, and in less than a
+fortnight a new set of his carving-tools were on view in
+Hillsborough, and another in London; for it was part of Mr.
+Cheetham's strategy to get all the London orders, and even make
+London believe that these superior instruments had originated in
+Hillsborough.
+
+One day Miss Carden called and saw Bayne in the office.  Her vivid
+features wore an expression of vexation, and she complained to him
+that the wood-carver had never been near her.
+
+Bayne was surprised at that; but he was a man who always allayed
+irritation on the spot.  "Rely on it, there's some reason," said he.
+"Perhaps he has not got settled.  I'll go for him directly."
+
+"Thank you," said the young lady.  Then in the same breath, "No,
+take me to him, and perhaps we may catch him carving--cross thing!"
+
+Bayne assented cheerfully, and led the way across a yard, and up a
+dirty stone stair, which, solid as it was, vibrated with the
+powerful machinery that steam was driving on every side of it.  He
+opened a door suddenly, and Henry looked up from his work, and saw
+the invaders.
+
+He stared a little at first, and then got up and looked embarrassed
+and confused.
+
+"You did not keep your word, sir," said Grace, quietly.
+
+"No," he muttered, and hung his head.
+
+He seemed so confused and ashamed, that Bayne came to his
+assistance.  "The fact is, no workman likes to do a hand's-turn on
+Saturday afternoon.  I think they would rather break Sunday than
+Saturday."
+
+"It is not that," said Henry, in a low voice.
+
+Grace heard him, but answered Mr. Bayne: "Oh dear, I wish I had
+known.  I fear I have made an unreasonable request: for, of course,
+after working so hard all the week--but then why did you let me
+purchase the tools to carve with?  Papa says they are very dear, Mr.
+Bayne.  But that is what gentlemen always say if one buys anything
+that is really good.  But of course they WILL be dear, if I am not
+to be taught how to use them."  She then looked in Mr. Bayne's face
+with an air of infantine simplicity: "Would Mr. Cheetham take them
+back, I wonder, under the circumstances?"
+
+At this sly thrust, Bayne began to look anxious; but Henry relieved
+him the next moment by saying, in a sort of dogged way, "There,
+there; I'll come."  He added, after a pause, "I will give you six
+lessons, if you like."
+
+"I shall be so much obliged.  When will you come, sir?"
+
+"Next Saturday, at three o'clock."
+
+"I shall be sure to be at home, sir."
+
+She then said something polite about not disturbing him further, and
+vanished with an arch smile of pleasure and victory, that disclosed
+a row of exquisite white teeth, and haunted Henry Little for many a
+day after.
+
+He told his mother what had happened, and showed so much mortified
+pride that she no longer dissuaded him from keeping his word.  "Only
+pray don't tell her your name," said she.
+
+"Well, but what am I to do if she asks it?"
+
+"Say Thompson, or Johnson, or anything you like, except Little."
+
+This request roused Henry's bile.  "What, am I a criminal to deny my
+name?  And how shall I look, if I go and give her a false name, and
+then she comes to Bayne and learns my right one?  No, I'll keep my
+name back, if I can; but I'll never disown it.  I'm not ashamed of
+it, if you are."
+
+This reduced poor Mrs. Little to silence; followed, in due course,
+by a few meek, clandestine tears.
+
+Henry put on his new tweed suit and hat, and went up to the villa.
+He announced himself as the workman from Cheetham's; and the
+footman, who had probably his orders, ushered him into the drawing-
+room at once.  There he found Grace Carden seated, reading, and a
+young woman sewing at a respectful distance.  This pair were types;
+Grace, of a young English gentlewoman, and Jael Dence of a villager
+by unbroken descent.  Grace was tall, supple, and serpentine, yet
+not thin; Jael was robust and ample, without being fat; she was of
+the same height, though Grace looked the taller.  Grace had dark
+brown eyes and light brown hair; and her blooming cheek and
+bewitching mouth shone with expression so varied, yet vivid, and
+always appropriate to the occasion, grave or gay, playful or
+dignified, that her countenance made artificial faces, and giggling
+in-the-wrong-place faces, painfully ridiculous.  As for such faces
+as Jael's, it killed them on the spot, but that was all.  Jael's
+hair was reddish, and her full eyes were gray; she was freckled a
+little under the eyes, but the rest of her cheek full of rich pure
+color, healthy, but not the least coarse: and her neck an alabaster
+column.  Hers was a meek, monotonous countenance; but with a certain
+look of concentration.  Altogether, a humble beauty of the old rural
+type; healthy, cleanly, simple, candid, yet demure.
+
+Henry came in, and the young lady received him with a manner very
+different from that she had worn down at the works.  She was polite,
+but rather stiff and dignified.
+
+He sat down at her request, and, wondering at himself, entered on
+the office of preceptor.  He took up the carving-tools, and
+explained the use of several; then offered, by way of illustration,
+to work on something.
+
+"That will be the best way, much," said Grace quietly, but her eye
+sparkled.
+
+"I dare say there's some lumber to be found in a great house like
+this?"
+
+"Lumber? why, there's a large garret devoted to it.  Jael, please
+take him to the lumber-room."
+
+Jael fixed her needle in her work, and laid it down gently on a
+table near her, then rose and led the way to the lumber-room.
+
+In that invaluable repository Henry soon found two old knobs lying
+on the ground (a four-poster had been wrecked hard by) and a piece
+of deal plank jutting out of a mass of things.  He pulled hard at
+the plank; but it was long, and so jammed in by miscellaneous
+articles, that he could not get it clear.
+
+Jael looked on demurely at his efforts for some time; then she
+suddenly seized the plank a little higher up.  "Now, pull," said
+she, and gave a tug like a young elephant: out came the plank
+directly, with a great rattle of dislocated lumber.
+
+"Well, you are a strong one," said Henry.
+
+"Oh, one and one makes two, sir," replied the vigorous damsel,
+modestly.
+
+"That is true, but you threw your weight into it like a workman.
+Now hand me that rusty old saw, and I'll cut off as much as we
+want."
+
+While he was sawing off a piece of the plank, Jael stood and eyed
+him silently a while.  But presently her curiosity oozed out.  "If
+you please, sir, be you really a working man?"
+
+"Why, what else should I be?" was the answer, given rather brusquely.
+
+"A great many gentlefolks comes here as is no better dressed nor you
+be."
+
+"Dress is no rule.  Don't you go and take me for a gentleman, or we
+sha'n't agree.  Wait till I'm as arrogant, and empty, and lazy as
+they are.  I am a workman, and proud of it."
+
+"It's naught to be ashamed on, that's certain," said Jael.  "I've
+carried many a sack of grain up into our granary, and made a few
+hundred-weight of cheese and butter, besides house-work and farm-
+work.  Bless your heart, I bayn't idle when I be at home."
+
+"And pray where is your home?" asked Henry, looking up a moment, not
+that he cared one straw.
+
+"If you please, sir, I do come from Cairnhope village.  I'm old Nat
+Dence's daughter.  There's two of us, and I'm the youngest.  Squire
+sent me in here, because miss said Hillsborough girls wasn't
+altogether honest.  She is a dear kind young lady; but I do pine for
+home and the farm at times; and frets about the young calves: they
+want so much looking after.  And sister, she's a-courting, and can't
+give her mind to 'em as should be.  I'll carry the board for you,
+sir."
+
+"All right," said Henry carelessly; but, as they went along, he
+thought to himself, "So a skilled workman passes for a gentleman
+with rustics: fancy that!"
+
+On their return to the drawing-room, Henry asked for a high wooden
+stool, or chair, and said it would be as well to pin some newspapers
+over the carpet.  A high stool was soon got from the kitchen, and
+Jael went promptly down on her knees, and crawled about, pinning the
+newspapers in a large square.
+
+Henry stood apart, superior, and thought to himself, "So much for
+domestic servitude.  What a position for a handsome girl--creeping
+about on all fours!"
+
+When all was ready, he drew some arabesque forms with his pencil on
+the board.  He then took an exquisite little saw he had invented for
+this work, and fell upon the board with a rapidity that, contrasted
+with his previous nonchalance, looked like fury.  But he was one of
+your fast workmen.  The lithe saw seemed to twist in his hand like a
+serpent, and in a very short time he had turned four feet of the
+board into open-work.  He finished the edges off with his cutting
+tools, and there was a transformation as complete as of linen cloth
+turned lace.
+
+Grace was delighted.  "Shall I ever be able to do that?"
+
+"In half a day.  That's not carving; that's trickery.  The tool does
+it all.  Before I invented this saw, a good workman would have been
+a day over that; but now YOU can do it in half an hour, when you are
+master of the instrument.  And now I'll show you honest work."  He
+took one of the knobs and examined it; then sawed off a piece, and
+worked on the rest so cunningly with his various cutters, that it
+grew into a human face toward their very eyes.  He even indicated
+Jael Dence's little flat cap by a means at once simple and
+ingenious.  All the time he was working the women's eyes literally
+absorbed him; only those of Grace flashed vivid curiosity, Jael's
+open orbs were fixed with admiration and awe upon his supernatural
+cleverness.
+
+He now drew some more arabesques on the remaining part of the board,
+and told Miss Carden she must follow those outlines with the saw,
+and he would examine her work on Monday morning.  He then went off
+with a quick, independent air, as one whose every minute was gold.
+
+"If you please, miss," said Jael, "is he a real working man, or only
+a gentleman as makes it his pastime?"
+
+"A gentleman!  What an idea!  Of course he is a working man.  But a
+very superior person."
+
+"To be sure," continued Jael, not quite convinced, "he don't come up
+to Squire Raby; but, dear heart, he have a grander way with him than
+most of the Hillsborough gentlefolks as calls here."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Grace, authoritatively.  "Look at his nails."
+
+Henry came twice a week, and his pupil made remarkable progress.
+She was deferential, attentive, enthusiastic.
+
+By degrees the work led to a little conversation; and that, in due
+course, expanded into a variety of subjects; and the young lady, to
+her surprise, found her carver well-read in History and Sciences,
+and severely accurate in his information, whereas her own, though
+abundant, was rather loose.
+
+One day she expressed her surprise that he could have found time to
+be so clever with his fingers and yet cultivate his mind.
+
+"Well," said he, "I was lucky enough to have a good mother.  She
+taught me all she knew, and she gave me a taste for reading; and
+that has been the making of me; kept me out of the public-house, for
+one thing."
+
+"Ah! you WERE fortunate.  I lost my mother, sir, when I was but
+eight years old."
+
+"Oh dear, that was a bad job," said Henry brusquely but kindly.
+
+"A very bad job," said Grace, smiling; but the next moment she
+suddenly turned her fair head away and tears stole down her cheeks.
+
+Henry looked very sorry, and Jael, without moving, looked at Grace,
+and opened those sluices, her eyes, and two big drops of sympathy
+rolled down her comely face in a moment.
+
+That day, when young Little shut the street-door of "Woodbine Villa"
+and stepped into the road, a sort of dull pain seemed to traverse
+his chest.  It made his heart ache a little, this contrast of the
+sweet society he had left and the smoky town toward which he now
+turned his face.  He seemed to be ejected from Paradise for the next
+five days.  It was Monday yet he wished the next day was Saturday,
+and the intervening period could be swept away, so that he might be
+entering that soft Paradise instead of leaving it.
+
+And this sentiment, once rooted, grew rapidly in an aspiring nature,
+and a heart that had never yet entertained a serious passion.  Now
+the fair head that bowed over the work so near him, the lovely hand
+he had so often to direct, and almost to guide, and all the other
+perfections of mind and body this enchanting girl possessed, crept
+in at his admiring eyes, and began to steal into his very veins, and
+fill him with soft complacency.  His brusque manner dissolved away,
+and his voice became low and soft, whenever he was in her delicious
+presence.  He spoke softly to Jael even, if Grace was there.  The
+sturdy workman was enthralled.
+
+Often he wondered at himself.  Sometimes he felt alarmed at the
+strength of his passion and the direction it had taken.
+
+"What," said he, "have I flirted with so many girls in my own way of
+life, and come away heart-whole, and now to fall in love with a
+gentlewoman, who would bid her footman show me the door if she knew
+of my presumption!"
+
+But these misgivings could neither cure him nor cow him.  Let him
+only make money, and become a master instead of a workman, and then
+he would say to her, "I don't value birth myself, but if you do,
+why, I am not come of workpeople."
+
+He traced a plan with workmanlike precision:--Profound discretion
+and self-restraint at "Woodbine Villa:" restless industry and stern
+self-denial in Hillsborough.
+
+After his day's work he used to go straight to his mother.  She gave
+him a cup of tea, and then they had their chat; and after that the
+sexes were inverted, so to speak: the man carved fruit, and flowers,
+and dead woodcocks, the woman read the news and polities of the day,
+and the essays on labor and capital, and any other articles not too
+flimsy to bear reading aloud to a man whose time was coin.  (There
+was a free library in Hillsborough, and a mechanic could take out
+standard books and reviews.)  Thus they passed the evening hours
+agreeably, and usefully too, for Henry sucked in knowledge like a
+leech, and at the same time carved things that sold well in London.
+He had a strong inclination to open his heart about Miss Carden.
+Accordingly, one evening he said, "She lost her mother when she was
+a child."
+
+"Who lost her mother?" asked Mrs. Little.
+
+"Miss Carden," said Henry, very softly.
+
+The tone was not lost on Mrs. Little's fine and watchful ear; at
+least her mind seized it a few seconds afterward.
+
+"That is true," said she.  "Poor girl!  I remember hearing of it.
+Henry, what is that to you?  Don't you trouble your head about that
+young lady, or she will trouble your heart.  I wish you did not go
+near her."
+
+And then came question upon question, and vague maternal misgivings.
+Henry parried them as adroitly as he could: but never mentioned Miss
+Carden's name again.
+
+He thought of her all the more, and counted his gains every week,
+and began to inquire of experienced persons how much money was
+wanted to set up a wheel with steam power, and be a master instead
+of a man.  He gathered that a stranger could hardly start fair
+without L500.
+
+"That is a good lump!" thought Henry: "but I'll have it, if I work
+night as well as day."
+
+Thus inspired, his life became a sweet delirium.  When he walked, he
+seemed to tread on air: when he forged, his hammer felt a feather in
+his hand.  The mountains in the way looked molehills, and the
+rainbow tangible, to Youth, and Health, and Hope, and mighty Love.
+
+
+One afternoon, as he put on his coat and crossed the yard, after a
+day's work that had passed like a pleasant hour, being gilded with
+such delightful anticipations, the foreman of the works made him a
+mysterious signal.  Henry saw it, and followed him into his office.
+Bayne looked carefully out of all the doors, then closed them
+softly, and his face betrayed anxiety, and even fear.
+
+"Little," said he, almost in a whisper, "you know me: I'm a man of
+peace, and so for love of peace I'm going to do something that might
+get me into a wrangle.  But you are the civillest chap ever worked
+under me and the best workman, take you altogether, and I can't bear
+to see you kept in the dark, when you are the man whose skin--only--
+if I act like a man to you, will you act like one to me?"
+
+"I will," said Henry; "there's my hand on it."
+
+Then Bayne stepped to his desk, opened it, and took out some
+letters.
+
+"You must never tell a soul I showed them you, or you will get me
+into a row with Cheetham; and I want to be at peace in-doors as well
+as out."
+
+"I give you my word."
+
+"Then read that, to begin."
+
+And he handed him a letter addressed to Mr. Cheetham.
+
+
+"SIR,--We beg respectfully to draw your attention to a matter, which
+is of a nature to cause unpleasantness between you and the Trades.
+We allude to your bringing a workman in from another town to do work
+that we are informed can be done on the premises by your own hands.
+
+"We assure you it would be more to your interest to work in harmony
+with the smiths and the handle-makers in your employ, and the trade
+generally.  Yours respectfully,
+
+"THE COMMITTEE OF THE EDGE-TOOL FORGERS' UNION."
+
+
+Henry colored up at this, and looked grieved; but he said, "I am
+sorry to be the cause of any unpleasantness.  But what can I do?"
+
+"Oh," said Bayne, with a sardonic grin, "they are sure to tell you
+that, soon or late.  Read this:"
+
+No. 2 was dated a week later, and ran thus:
+
+
+"MR. CHEETHAM: SIR,--I think you do very ill to annoy a many
+craftsmen for one.  Remember, you have suffered loss and
+inconvenience whenever you have gone against Trades.  We had to
+visit you last year, and when we came your bands went and your
+bellows gaped.  We have no wish to come again this year, if you will
+be reasonable.  But, sir, you must part with London hand, or take
+consequences.
+
+"BALAAM."
+
+
+Henry looked grave.  "Can I see a copy of Mr. Cheetham's reply?"
+
+Bayne stared at him, and then laughed in his face, but without the
+gayety that should accompany a laugh.  "Cheetham's reply to Balaam!
+And where would he send it?  To Mr. Beor's lodgings, No. 1 Prophet
+Place, Old Testament Square.  My poor chap, nobody writes replies to
+these letters.  When you get one, you go that minute to the
+secretary of whatever Union you are wrong with, and you don't argue,
+or he bids you good-morning; you give in to whatever he asks, and
+then you get civility; and justice too, according to Trade lights.
+If you don't do that, and haven't learned what a blessing Peace is,
+why, you make up your mind to fight the Trade; and if you do, you
+have to fight them all; and you are safe to get the worst of it,
+soon or late.  Cheetham has taken no notice of these letters.  All
+the worse for him and you too.  Read that."
+
+No. 3 ran thus:
+
+
+"DEAR SIR,--I take the liberty of addressing you on the subject of
+your keeping on this knobstick, in defiance of them that has the
+power to make stones of Hillsborough too hot for you and him.  Are
+you deaf, or blind, or a fool, Jack Cheatem?  You may cheat the
+world, but you don't cheat the devil, nor me.  Turn cockney up, with
+no more ado, or you'll both get kicked to hell some dark night by
+
+"BALAAM'S ASS."
+
+
+Henry was silent; quite silent.  When he did speak, it was to ask
+why Mr. Cheetham had kept all this from him.
+
+"Because you shouldn't take fright and leave him," was the
+unhesitating reply.
+
+"For that matter they threaten him more than they do me."
+
+"They warn the master first; but the workman's turn is sure to come,
+and he gets it hottest, because they have so many ways of doing him.
+Cheetham, he lives miles from here, and rides in across country, and
+out again, in daylight.  But the days are drawing in, and you have
+got to pass through these dark streets, where the Trades have a
+thousand friends, and you not one.  Don't you make any mistake: you
+are in their power; so pray don't copy any hot-headed, wrong-headed
+gentleman like Cheetham, but speak them fair.  Come to terms--if you
+can--and let us be at peace; sweet, balmy peace."
+
+"Peace is a good thing, no doubt," said Henry, "but" (rather
+bitterly) "I don't thank Cheetham for letting me run blindfold into
+trouble, and me a stranger."
+
+"Oh," said Bayne, "he is no worse than the rest, believe me.  What
+does any master care for a man's life?  Profit and loss go down in
+figures; but life--that's a cipher in all their ledgers."
+
+"Oh, come," said Harry, "it is unphilosophical and narrow-minded to
+fasten on a class the faults of a few individuals, that form a very
+moderate portion of that class."
+
+Bayne seemed staggered by a blow so polysyllabic; and Henry, to
+finish him, added, "Where there's a multitude, there's a mixture."
+Now the first sentence he had culled from the Edinburgh Review, and
+the second he had caught from a fellow-workman's lips in a public-
+house; and probably this was the first time the pair of phrases had
+ever walked out of any man's mouth arm in arm.  He went on to say,
+"And as for Cheetham, he is not a bad fellow, take him altogether.
+But you are a better for telling me the truth.  Forewarned,
+forearmed."
+
+He went home thoughtful, and not so triumphant and airy as
+yesterday; but still not dejected, for his young and manly mind
+summoned its energy and spirit to combat this new obstacle, and his
+wits went to work.
+
+Being unable to sleep for thinking of what he should do he was the
+first to reach the works in the morning.  He lighted his furnace,
+and then went and unlocked the room where he worked as a handle
+maker, and also as a cutler.  He entered briskly and opened the
+window.  The gray light of the morning came in, and showed him
+something on the inside of the door that was not there when he
+locked it overnight.  It was a very long knife, broad toward the
+handle, but keenly pointed, and double-edged.  It was fast in the
+door, and impaled a letter addressed, in a vile hand--
+
+
+     "TO JAK THRE TRADES."
+
+
+Henry took hold of the handle to draw the knife out; but the
+formidable weapon had been driven clean through the door with a
+single blow.
+
+Then Henry drew back, and, as the confusion of surprise cleared
+away, the whole thing began to grow on him, and reveal distinct and
+alarming features.
+
+The knife was not one which the town manufactured in the way of
+business, it was a long, glittering blade, double-edged, finely
+pointed, and exquisitely tempered.  It was not a tool, but a weapon.
+
+Why was it there, and, above all, how did it come there?
+
+He distinctly remembered locking the door overnight.  Indeed, he had
+found it locked, and the window-shutters bolted; yet there was this
+deadly weapon, and on its point a letter, the superscription of
+which looked hostile and sinister.
+
+He drew the note gently across the edge of the keen knife, and the
+paper parted like a cobweb.  He took it to the window and read it.
+It ran thus:
+
+
+"This knifs wun of too made ekspres t'other is for thy hart if thou
+doesnt harken Trade and leve Chetm.  Is thy skin thicks dore thinks
+thou if not turn up and back to Lundon or I cum again and rip thy ----
+carkiss with feloe blade to this thou ---- cokny
+
+"SLIPER JACK."
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Any one who reads it by the fireside may smile at the incongruous
+mixture of a sanguinary menace with bad spelling.  But deeds of
+blood had often followed these scrawls in Hillsborough, and Henry
+knew it: and, indeed, he who can not spell his own name correctly is
+the very man to take his neighbor's life without compunction; since
+mercy is a fruit of knowledge, and cruelty of ignorance.
+
+And then there was something truly chilling in the mysterious
+entrance of this threat on a dagger's point into a room he had
+locked overnight.  It implied supernatural craft and power.  After
+this, where could a man be safe from these all-penetrating and
+remorseless agents of a secret and irresponsible tribunal.
+
+Henry sat down awhile, and pored over the sanguinary scrawl, and
+glanced from it with a shudder at the glittering knife.  And, while
+he was in this state of temporary collapse, the works filled, the
+Power moved, the sonorous grindstones revolved, and every man worked
+at his ease, except one, the best of them all beyond comparison.
+
+He went to his friend Bayne, and said in a broken voice, "They have
+put me in heart for work; given me a morning dram.  Look here."
+Bayne was shocked, but not surprised.  "It is the regular routine,"
+said he.  "They begin civil; but if you don't obey, they turn it
+over to the scum."
+
+"Do you think my life is really in danger?"
+
+"No, not yet; I never knew a man molested on one warning.  This is
+just to frighten you.  If you were to take no notice, you'd likely
+get another warning, or two, at most; and then they'd do you, as
+sure as a gun."
+
+"Do me?"
+
+"Oh, that is the Hillsborough word.  It means to disable a man from
+work.  Sometimes they lie in wait in these dark streets, and
+fracture his skull with life-preservers; or break his arm, or cut
+the sinew of his wrist; and that they call DOING him.  Or, if it is
+a grinder, they'll put powder in his trough, and then the sparks of
+his own making fire it, and scorch him, and perhaps blind him for
+life; that's DOING him.  They have gone as far as shooting men with
+shot, and even with a bullet, but never so as to kill the man dead
+on the spot.  They DO him.  They are skilled workmen, you know;
+well, they are skilled workmen at violence and all, and it is
+astonishing how they contrive to stop within an inch of murder.
+They'll chance it though sometimes with their favorite gunpowder.
+If you're very wrong with the trade, and they can't DO you any other
+way, they'll blow your house up from the cellar, or let a can of
+powder down the chimney, with a lighted fuse, or fling a petard in
+at the window, and they take the chance of killing a houseful of
+innocent people, to get at the one that's on the black books of the
+trade, and has to be DONE."
+
+"The beasts!  I'll buy a six-shooter.  I'll meet craft with craft,
+and force with force."
+
+"What can you do against ten thousand?  No; go you at once to the
+Secretary of the Edge-Tool Grinders, and get your trade into his
+Union.  You will have to pay; but don't mind that.  Cheetham will go
+halves."
+
+"I'll go at dinner-time."
+
+"And why not now?"
+
+"Because," said Henry, with a candor all his own, "I'm getting over
+my fright a bit, and my blood is beginning to boil at being
+threatened by a sneak, who wouldn't stand before me one moment in
+that yard, knife or no knife."
+
+Bayne smiled a friendly but faint smile, and shook his head with
+grave disapprobation, and said, with wonder, "Fancy postponing
+Peace!"
+
+Henry went to his forge and worked till dinner-time.  Nay, more, was
+a beautiful whistler, and always whistled a little at his work: so
+to-day he whistled a great deal: in fact, he over-whistled.
+
+At dinner-time he washed his face and hands and put on his coat to
+go out.
+
+But he had soon some reason to regret that he had not acted on
+Bayne's advice to the letter.  There had been a large trade's
+meeting overnight, and the hostility to the London craftsman had
+spread more widely, in consequence of remarks that had been there
+made.  This emboldened the lower class of workmen, who already
+disliked him out of pure envy, and had often scowled at him in
+silence; and, now, as he passed them, they spoke at him, in their
+peculiar language, which the great friend and supporter of mechanics
+in general, The Hillsborough Liberal, subsequently christened "THE
+DASH DIALECT."
+
+"We want no ---- cockneys here, to steal our work."
+
+"Did ever a ---- anvil-man handle his own blades in Hillsborough?"
+
+"Not till this ---- knobstick came," said another.
+
+Henry turned sharp round upon them haughtily, and such was the power
+of his prompt defiant attitude, and his eye, which flashed black
+lightning, that there was a slight movement of recoil among the
+actual speakers.  They recovered it immediately, strong in numbers;
+but in that same moment Little also recovered his discretion, and he
+had the address to step briskly toward the gate and call out the
+porter; he said to him in rather a loud voice, for all to hear, "if
+anybody asks for Henry Little, say he has gone to the Secretary of
+the Edge-Tool Forgers' Union."  He then went out of the works; but,
+as he went, he heard some respectable workman say to the scum,
+"Come, shut up now.  It is in better hands than yours."
+
+Mr. Jobson, the Secretary of the Edge-Tool Forgers, was not at home,
+but his servant-girl advised Little to try the "Rising Sun;" and in
+the parlor of that orb he found Mr. Jobson, in company with other
+magnates of the same class, discussing a powerful leader of The
+Hillsborough Liberal, in which was advocated the extension of the
+franchise, a measure calculated to throw prodigious power into the
+hands of Hillsborough operatives, because of their great number, and
+their habit of living each workman in a tenement of his own, however
+small.
+
+Little waited till The Liberal had received its meed of approbation,
+and then asked respectfully if he might speak to Mr. Jobson on a
+trade matter.  "Certainly," said Mr. Jobson.  "Who are you?"
+
+"My name is Little.  I make the carving-tools at Cheetham's."
+
+"I'll go home with you; my house is hard by."
+
+When they got to the house, Jobson told him to sit down, and asked
+him, in a smooth and well-modulated voice, what was the nature of
+the business.  This query, coming from him, who had set the stone
+rolling that bade fair to crush him, rather surprised Henry.  He put
+his hand into his pocket, and produced the threatening note, but
+said nothing as to the time or manner of its arrival.
+
+Mr. Jobson perused it carefully, and then returned it to Henry.
+"What have we to do with this?" and he looked quite puzzled.
+
+"Why, sir, it is the act of your Union."
+
+"You are sadly misinformed, Mr. Little.  WE NEVER THREATEN.  All we
+do is to remind the master that, if he does not do certain things,
+certain other things will probably be done by us; and this we wrap
+up in the kindest way."
+
+"But, sir, you wrote to Cheetham against me."
+
+"Did we?  Then it will be in my letter-book."  He took down a book,
+examined it, and said, "You are quite right.  Here's a copy of the
+letter.  Now surely, sir, comparing the language, the manners, and
+the spelling, with that of the ruffian whose scrawl you received
+this morning--"
+
+"Then you disown the ruffian's threat?"
+
+"Most emphatically.  And if you can trace it home, he shall smart
+for interfering in our business."
+
+"Oh, if the trade disowns the blackguard, I can despise him.  But
+you can't wonder at my thinking all these letters were steps of the
+same--yes, and Mr. Bayne thought so too; for he said this was the
+regular routine, and ends in DOING a poor fellow for gaining his
+bread."
+
+Mr. Jobson begged to explain.
+
+"Many complaints are brought to us, who advise the trades.  When
+they are frivolous, we are unwilling to disturb the harmony of
+employers and workmen; we reason with the complainant, and the thing
+dies away.  When the grievance is substantial, we take it out of the
+individual's hands and lay it before the working committee.  A civil
+note is sent to the master; or a respectable member of the committee
+calls on him, and urges him to redress the grievance, but always in
+kind and civil terms.  The master generally assents: experience has
+taught him it is his wisest course.  But if he refuses, we are bound
+to report the refusal to a larger committee, and sometimes a letter
+emanates from them, reminding the master that he has been a loser
+before by acts of injustice, and hinting that he may be a loser
+again.  I do not quite approve this form of communication.  But
+certainly it has often prevented the mischief from spreading
+further.  Well, but perhaps he continues rebellious.  What follows?
+We can't lock up facts that affect the trade; we are bound to report
+the case at the next general meeting.  It excites comments, some of
+them perhaps a little intemperate; the lower kind of workmen get
+inflamed with passion, and often, I am sorry to say, write ruffianly
+letters, and now and then do ruffianly acts, which disgrace the
+town, and are strongly reprobated by us.  Why, Mr. Little, it has
+been my lot to send a civil remonstrance, written with my own hand,
+in pretty fair English--for a man who plied bellows and hammer
+twenty years of my life--and be treated with silent contempt; and
+two months after to be offering a reward of twenty or thirty pounds,
+for the discovery of some misguided man, that had taken on himself
+to right this very matter with a can of gunpowder, or some such
+coarse expedient."
+
+"Yes, but, sir, what hurts me is, you don't consider me to be worth
+a civil note.  You only remonstrated with Cheetham."
+
+"You can't wonder at that.  Our trade hasn't been together many
+years: and what drove us together?  The tyranny of our employers.
+What has kept us together?  The bitter experience of hard work and
+little pay, whenever we were out of union.  Those who now direct the
+trades are old enough to remember when we were all ground down to
+the dust by the greedy masters; and therefore it is natural, when a
+grievance arises, we should be inclined to look to those old
+offenders for redress in the first instance.  Sometimes the masters
+convince us the fault lies with workmen; and then we trouble the
+master no more than we are forced to do in order to act upon the
+offenders.  But, to come to the point: what is your proposal?"
+
+"I beg to be admitted into the union."
+
+"What union?"
+
+"Why, of course, the one I have offended, through ignorance.  The
+edge-tool forgers."
+
+Jobson shook his head, and said he feared there were one or two
+objections.
+
+Henry saw it was no use bidding low.  "I'll pay L15 down," said he,
+"and I'll engage not to draw relief from your fund, unless disabled
+by accident or violence."
+
+"I will submit your offer to the trade," said Jobson.  He added,
+"Then there, I conclude, the matter rests for the present."
+
+Henry interpreted this to mean that he had nothing to apprehend,
+unless his proposal should be rejected.  He put the L15 down on the
+table, though Mr. Jobson told him that was premature, and went off
+as light as a feather.  Being nice and clean, and his afternoon's
+work spoiled, he could not resist the temptation; he went to
+"Woodbine Villa."  He found Miss Carden at home, and she looked
+quietly pleased at his unexpected arrival: but Jael's color came and
+went, and her tranquil bosom rose and fell slowly, but grandly, for
+a minute, as she lowered her head over her work.
+
+This was a heavenly change to Henry Little.  Away from the deafening
+workshop, and the mean jealousies and brutality of his inferiors,
+who despised him, to the presence of a beautiful and refined girl,
+who was his superior, yet did not despise him.  From sin to purity,
+from din to cleanliness, from war to peace, from vilest passions to
+Paradise.
+
+Her smile had never appeared so fascinating, her manner never so
+polite yet placid.  How softly and comfortably she and her ample
+dress nestled into the corner of the sofa and fitted it!  How white
+her nimble hand! how bright her delicious face!  How he longed to
+kiss her exquisite hand, or her little foot, or her hem, or the
+ground she walked on, or something she had touched, or her eye had
+dwelt on.
+
+But he must not even think too much of such delights, lest he should
+show his heart too soon.  So, after a short lesson, he proposed to
+go into the lumber-room and find something to work upon.  "Yes, do,"
+said Grace.  "I would go too; but no; it was my palace of delight
+for years, and its treasures inexhaustible.  I will not go to be
+robbed of one more illusion, it is just possible I might find it
+really is what the profane in this house call it--a lumber-room--and
+not what memory paints it, a temple of divine curiosities."  And so
+she sent them off, and she set herself to feel old--"oh, so old!"
+
+And presently Henry came back, laden with a great wooden bust of
+Erin, that had been the figure-head of a wrecked schooner; and set
+it down, and told her he should carve that into a likeness of
+herself, and she must do her share of the work.
+
+Straightway she forgot she was worn out; and clapped her hands, and
+her eyes sparkled.  And the floor was prepared, and Henry went to
+work like one inspired, and the chips flew in every direction, and
+the paint was chiseled away in no time, and the wood proved soft and
+kindly, and just the color of a delicate skin, and Henry said, "The
+Greek Statues, begging their pardons, have all got hair like mops;
+but this shall have real hair, like your own: and the silk dress,
+with the gloss on; and the lace; but the face, the expression, how
+can I ever--?"
+
+"Oh, never mind THEM," cried Grace.  "Jael, this is too exciting.
+Please go and tell them 'not at home' to anybody."
+
+Then came a pretty picture: the workman, with his superb hand, brown
+and sinewy, yet elegant and shapely as a duchess's, and the fingers
+almost as taper, and his black eye that glowed like a coal over the
+model, which grew under his masterly strokes, now hard, now light:
+the enchanting girl who sat to him, and seemed on fire with
+curiosity and innocent admiration: and the simple rural beauty, that
+plied the needle, and beamed mildly with demure happiness, and shot
+a shy glance upward now and then.
+
+Yes, Love was at his old mischievous game.
+
+Henry now lived in secret for Grace Carden, and Jael was garnering
+Henry into her devoted heart, unobserved by the object of her simple
+devotion.  Yet, of the three, these two, that loved with so little
+encouragement, were the happiest.  To them the world was Heaven this
+glorious afternoon.  Time, strewing roses as he went, glided so
+sweetly and so swiftly, that they started with surprise when the
+horizontal beams glorified the windows, and told them the brightest
+day of their lives was drawing to its end.
+
+Ah, stay a little while longer for them, Western Sun.  Stand still,
+not as in the cruel days of old, to glare upon poor, beaten,
+wounded, panting warriors, and rob them of their last chance, the
+shelter of the night: but to prolong these holy rapturous hours of
+youth, and hope, and first love in bosoms unsullied by the world--
+the golden hours of life, that glow so warm, and shine so bright,
+and flee so soon; and return in this world--  Never more!
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Henry Little began this bust in a fervid hour, and made great
+progress the first day; but as the work grew on him, it went slower
+and slower; for his ambitious love drove him to attempt beauties of
+execution that were without precedent in this kind of wood-carving;
+and, on the other hand, the fastidiousness of a true craftsman made
+him correct his attempts again and again.  As to those mechanical
+parts, which he intrusted at first to his pupil, she fell so far
+short of his ideal even in these, that he told her bluntly she must
+strike work for the present: he could not have THIS spoiled.
+
+Grace thought it hard she might not be allowed to spoil her own
+image; however, she submitted, and henceforth her lesson was
+confined to looking on.  And she did look on with interest, and, at
+last, with profound admiration.  Hitherto she had thought, with many
+other persons, that, if a man's hand was the stronger, a woman's was
+the neater; but now she saw the same hand, which had begun by hewing
+away the coarse outlines of the model, bestow touches of the chisel
+so unerring and effective, yet so exquisitely delicate, that she
+said to herself, "No woman's hand could be so firm, yet so feather-
+like, as all this."
+
+And the result was as admirable as the process.  The very texture of
+the ivory forehead began to come under those master-touches,
+executed with perfect and various instruments: and, for the first
+time perhaps in the history of this art, a bloom, more delicate far
+than that of a plum, crept over the dimpled cheek.  But, indeed,
+when love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.
+
+Henry worked on it four afternoons, the happiest he had ever known.
+There was the natural pleasure of creating, and the distinct glory
+and delight of reproducing features so beloved; and to these joys
+were added the pleasure of larger conversation.  The model gave
+Grace many opportunities of making remarks, or asking questions, and
+Henry contrived to say so many things in answer to one.  Sculptor
+and sitter made acquaintance with each other's minds over the
+growing bust.
+
+And then the young ladies and gentlemen dropped in, and gazed, and
+said such wonderfully silly things, and thereby left their
+characters behind them as fruitful themes for conversation.  In
+short, topics were never wanting now.
+
+As for Jael, she worked, and beamed, and pondered every word her
+idol uttered, but seldom ventured to say anything, till he was gone,
+and then she prattled fast enough about him.
+
+The work drew near completion.  The hair, not in ropes, as
+heretofore, but its silken threads boldly and accurately shown, yet
+not so as to cord the mass, and unsatin it quite.  The silk dress;
+the lace collar; the blooming cheek, with its every dimple and
+incident; all these were completed, and one eyebrow, a masterpiece
+in itself.  This carved eyebrow was a revelation, and made everybody
+who saw it wonder at the conventional substitutes they had hitherto
+put up with in statuary of all sorts, when the eyebrow itself was so
+beautiful, and might it seems have been imitated, instead of
+libeled, all these centuries.
+
+But beautiful works, and pleasant habits, seem particularly liable
+to interruption.  Just when the one eyebrow was finished, and when
+Jael Dence had come to look on Saturday and Monday as the only real
+days in the week, and when even Grace Carden was brighter on those
+days, and gliding into a gentle complacent custom, suddenly a
+Saturday came and went, but Little did not appear.
+
+Jaet was restless.
+
+Grace was disappointed, but contented to wait till Monday.
+
+Monday came and went, but no Henry Little.
+
+Jael began to fret and sigh; and, after two more blank weeks, she
+could bear the mystery no longer.  "If you please, miss," said she,
+"shall I go to that place where he works?"
+
+"Where who works?" inquired Grace, rather disingenuously.
+
+"Why, the dark young man, miss," said Jael, blushing deeply.
+
+Grace reflected and curiosity struggled with discretion; but
+discretion got the better, being aided by self-respect.  "No, Jael,"
+said she; "he is charming, when he is here; but, when he gets away,
+he is not always so civil as he might be.  I had to go twice after
+him.  I shall not go nor send a third time.  It really is too bad of
+him."
+
+"Dear heart," pleaded Jael, "mayhap he is not well."
+
+"Then he ought to write and say so.  No, no; he is a radical, and
+full of conceit; and he has done this one eyebrow, and then gone off
+laughing and saying, 'Now, let us see if the gentry can do the other
+amongst them.'  If he doesn't come soon, I'll do the other eyebrow
+myself."
+
+"Mayhap he will never come again," said Jael.
+
+"Oh, yes, he will," said Grace, mighty cunningly; "he is as fond of
+coming here as we are of having him.  Not that I'm at all surprised;
+for the fact is, you are very pretty, extremely pretty, abominably
+pretty."
+
+"I might pass in Cairnhope town," said Jael, modestly, "but not
+here.  The moon goes for naught when the sun is there.  He don't
+come here for me."
+
+This sudden elegance of language, and Jael's tone of dignified
+despondency, silenced Grace, somehow, and made her thoughtful.  She
+avoided the subject for several days.  Indeed, when Saturday came,
+not a word was said about the defaulter: it was only by her sending
+for Jael to sit with her, and by certain looks, and occasional
+restlessness, she betrayed the slightest curiosity or expectation.
+
+Jael sat and sewed, and often looked quickly up at the window, as
+some footstep passed, and then looked down again and sighed.
+
+Young Little never came.  He seemed to have disappeared from both
+their lives; quietly disappeared.
+
+Next day, Sunday, Jael came to Miss Carden, after morning church,
+and said, meekly, "if you please, miss, may I go home?"
+
+"Oh, certainly," said Grace, a little haughtily.  "What for?"
+
+Jael hung her head, and said she was not used to be long away.  Then
+she lifted her head, and her great candid eyes, and spoke more
+frankly.  "I feel to be drawed home.  Something have been at me all
+the night to that degree as I couldn't close my eyes.  I could
+almost feel it, like a child's hand, a pulling me East.  I'm afeared
+father's ill, or may be the calves are bleating for me, that is
+better acquaint with them than sister Patty is.  And Hillsborough
+air don't seem to 'gree with me now not altogether as it did at
+first.  If you please, miss, to let me go; and then I'll come back
+when I'm better company than I be now.  Oh dear! oh dear!"
+
+"Why, Jael, my poor girl, what IS the matter?"
+
+"I don't know, miss.  But I feel very unked."
+
+"Are you not happy with me?"
+
+"'Tis no fault of yourn, miss," said Jael, rustic, but womanly.
+
+"Then you are NOT happy here."
+
+No reply, but two clear eyes began to fill to the very brim.
+
+Grace coaxed her, and said, "Speak to me like a friend.  You know,
+after all, you are not my servant.  I can't possibly part with you
+altogether; I have got to like you so: but, of course, you shall go
+home for a little while, if you wish it very, very much."
+
+"Indeed I do, miss," said Jael.  "Please forgive me, but my heart
+feels like lead in my bosom."  And, with these words, the big tears
+ran over, and chased one another down her cheeks.
+
+Then Grace, who was very kind-hearted, begged her, in a very tearful
+voice, not to cry: she should go home for a week, a fortnight, a
+month even.  "There, there, you shall go to-morrow, poor thing."
+
+
+Now it is a curious fact, and looks like animal magnetism or
+something, but the farm-house, to which Jael had felt so
+mysteriously drawn all night, contained, at that moment, besides its
+usual inmates, one Henry Little: and how he came there is an
+important part of this tale, which I must deal with at once.
+
+
+While Henry was still visiting Woodbine Villa, as related above,
+events of a very different character from those soft scenes were
+taking place at the works.  His liberal offer to the Edge-Tool
+Forgers had been made about a week, when, coming back one day from
+dinner to his forge, he found the smoky wall written upon with
+chalk, in large letters, neatly executed:--
+
+
+     "Why overlook the handlers?
+
+     "MARY."
+
+
+He was not alarmed this time, but vexed.  He went and complained to
+Bayne; and that worthy came directly and contemplated the writing,
+in silence, for about a minute.  Then he gave a weary sigh, and
+said, with doleful resignation, "Take the chalk, and write.  There
+it is."
+
+Henry took the chalk, and prepared to write Bayne's mind underneath
+Mary's.  Bayne dictated:
+
+
+     "I have offered the Handlers the same as the Forgers."
+
+
+"But that is not true," objected Henry, turning round, with the
+chalk in his hand.
+
+"It will be true, in half an hour.  We are going to Parkin, the
+Handlers' Secretary."
+
+"What, another L15!  This is an infernal swindle."
+
+"What isn't?" said Bayne, cynically.
+
+Henry then wrote as desired; and they went together to Mr. Parkin.
+
+Mr. Parkin was not at home.  But they hunted him from pillar to
+post, and caught him, at last, in the bar-parlor of "The
+Packsaddle."  He knew Bayne well, and received him kindly, and, on
+his asking for a private interview, gave a wink to two persons who
+were with him: they got up directly, and went out.
+
+"What, is there any thing amiss between you and the trade?" inquired
+Mr. Parkin, with an air of friendly interest.
+
+Bayne smiled, not graciously, but sourly.  "Come, come, sir, that is
+a farce you and I have worn out this ten years.  This is the London
+workman himself, come to excuse himself to Mary and Co., for not
+applying to them before: and the long and the short is, he offers
+the Handlers the same as he has the Smiths, fifteen down, and to pay
+his natty money, but draw no scale, unless disabled.  What d'y say?
+Yes, or no?"
+
+"I'll lay Mr. Little's proposal before the committee."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Little.  "And, meantime, I suppose I may feel
+safe against violence, from the members of your union?"
+
+"Violence!" said Mr. Parkin, turning his eye inward, as if he was
+interrogating the centuries.  Then to Mr. Bayne, "Pray, sir, do you
+remember any deed of darkness that our Union has ever committed,
+since we have been together; and that is twelve years?"
+
+"WELL, Mr. Parkin," said Bayne, "if you mean deeds of blood, and
+deeds of gunpowder, et cetera--why, no, not one: and it is greatly
+to your honor.  But, mind you, if a master wants his tanks tapped
+and his hardening-liquor run into the shore or his bellows to be
+ripped, his axle-nuts to vanish, his wheel-bands to go and hide in a
+drain or a church belfry, and his scythe-blades to dive into a
+wheel-dam, he has only to be wrong with your Union, and he'll be
+accommodated as above.  I speak from experience."
+
+"Oh, rattening!" said Mr Parkin.  "That's is a mighty small matter."
+
+"It is small to you, that are not in the oven, where the bread is
+baked, or cooled, or burnt.  But whatever parts the grindstones from
+the power, and the bellows from the air, and the air from the fire,
+makes a hole in the master's business to-day, and a hole in the
+workman's pocket that day six months.  So, for heaven's sake, let us
+be right with you.  Little's is the most friendly and liberal offer
+that any workman ever made to any Union.  Do, pray, close with it,
+and let us be at peace; sweet--balmy--peace."
+
+Parkin declared he shared that desire: but was not the committee.
+Then, to Henry: "I shall put your case as favorably as my conscience
+will let me.  Meantime, of course, the matter rests as it is."
+
+They then parted; and Henry, as he returned home, thanked Bayne
+heartily.  He said this second L15 had been a bitter pill at first;
+but now he was glad he had offered it.  "I would not leave
+Hillsborough for fifteen hundred pounds."
+
+Two days after this promising interview with Mr. Parkin, Henry
+received a note, the envelope of which showed him it came from Mr.
+Jobson.  He opened it eagerly, and with a good hope that its object
+was to tell him he was now a member of the Edge-Tool Forgers' Union.
+
+The letter, however, ran thus:
+
+
+"DEAR SIR,--I hear, with considerable surprise, that you continue to
+forge blades and make handles for Mr. Cheetham.  On receipt of this
+information I went immediately to Mr. Parkin, and he assured me that
+he came to the same terms with you as I did.  He says he intimated
+politely, but plainly, that he should expect you not to make any
+more carving-tool handles for Mr. Cheetham, till his committee had
+received your proposal.  He now joins me in advising you to strike
+work for the present.  Hillsborough is surrounded by beautiful
+scenes, which it might gratify an educated workman to inspect,
+during the unavoidable delay caused by the new and very important
+questions your case has raised.
+
+"Yours obediently,
+
+"SAML. JOBSON.
+
+"P.S.--A respectable workman was with me yesterday, and objected
+that you receive from Mr. Cheetham a higher payment than the list
+price.  Can you furnish me with a reply to this, as it is sure to be
+urged at the trade meeting."
+
+
+When he read this, Little's blood boiled, especially at the cool
+advice to lay down his livelihood, and take up scenery: and he
+dashed off a letter of defiance.  He showed it to Bayne, and it went
+into the fire directly.  "That is all right," said this worthy.
+"You have written your mind, like a man.  Now sit down, and give
+them treacle for their honey--or you'll catch pepper."
+
+Henry groaned, and writhed, but obeyed.
+
+He had written his defiance in three minutes.  It took him an hour
+to produce the following:
+
+
+"DEAR SIR,--I am sorry for the misunderstanding.  I did not, for a
+moment, attach that meaning to any thing that fell either from you
+or Mr. Parkin.
+
+"I must now remind you that, were I to strike work entirely, Mr.
+Cheetham could discharge me, and even punish me, for breach of
+contract.  All I can do is to work fewer hours than I have done: and
+I am sure you will be satisfied with that, if you consider that the
+delay in the settlement of this matter rests with you, and not with
+me,
+
+"I am yours respectfully, HENRY LITTLE.
+
+"I furnish you, as requested, with two replies to the objection of a
+respectable workman that I am paid above the list price.
+
+"1.--To sell skilled labor below the statement price is a just
+offense, and injury to trade.  But to obtain above the statement
+price is to benefit trade.  The high price, that stands alone to-
+day, will not stand alone forever.  It gets quoted in bargains, and
+draws prices up to it.  That has been proved a thousand times.
+
+"2.--It is not under any master's skin to pay a man more than he is
+worth.  It I get a high price, it is because I make a first-rate
+article.  If a man has got superior knowledge, he is not going to
+give it away to gratify envious ignorance."
+
+
+To this, in due course, he received from Jobson the following:
+
+
+"DEAR SIR,--I advised you according to my judgment and experience:
+but, doubtless, you are the best judge of your own affairs."
+
+
+And that closed the correspondence with the Secretaries.
+
+
+The gentle Jobson and the polite Parkin had retired from the
+correspondence with their air of mild regret and placid resignation
+just three days, when young Little found a dirty crumpled letter on
+his anvil, written in pencil.  It ran thus:
+
+
+"Turn up or youl wish you had droped it.  Youl be made so as youl
+never do hands turn agin, an never know what hurt you.
+
+(Signed)  "MOONRAKER."
+
+
+Henry swore.
+
+When he had sworn (and, as a Briton, I think he had denied himself
+that satisfaction long enough), he caught up a strip of steel with
+his pincers, shoved it into the coals, heated it, and, in half a
+minute, forged two long steel nails.  He then nailed this letter to
+his wall, and wrote under it in chalk, "I offer L10 reward to any
+one who will show me the coward who wrote this, but was afraid to
+sign it.  The writing is peculiar, and can easily be identified."
+
+He also took the knife that had been so ostentatiously fixed in his
+door, and carried it about him night and day, with a firm resolve to
+use it in self-defense, if necessary.
+
+And now the plot thickened: the decent workmen in Cheetham's works
+were passive; they said nothing offensive, but had no longer the
+inclination, even if they had the power, to interfere and restrain
+the lower workmen from venting their envy and malice.  Scarcely a
+day passed without growls and scowls.  But Little went his way
+haughtily, and affected not to see, nor hear them.
+
+However, one day, at dinner-time, he happened, unluckily, to be
+detained by Bayne in the yard, when the men came out: and two or
+three of the roughs took this opportunity and began on him at once,
+in the Dash Dialect, of course; they knew no other.
+
+A great burly forger, whose red matted hair was powdered with coal-
+dust, and his face bloated with habitual intemperance, planted
+himself insolently before Henry, and said, in a very loud voice,
+"How many more trade meetings are we to have for one ---- knobstick?"
+
+Henry replied, in a moment, "Is it my fault if your shilly-shallying
+committees can't say yes or no to L15?  You'd say yes to it,
+wouldn't you, sooner than go to bed sober?"
+
+This sally raised a loud laugh at the notorious drunkard's expense,
+and checked the storm, as a laugh generally does.
+
+But men were gathering round, and a workman who had heard the raised
+voices, and divined the row, ran out of the works, with his apron
+full of blades, and his heart full of mischief.  It was a grinder of
+a certain low type, peculiar to Hillsborough, but quite common
+there, where grinders are often the grandchildren of grinders.  This
+degenerate face was more canine than human; sharp as a hatchet, and
+with forehead villainously low; hardly any chin; and--most
+characteristic trait of all--the eyes, pale in color, and tiny in
+size, appeared to have come close together, to consult, and then to
+have run back into the very skull, to get away from the sparks,
+which their owner, and his sire, and his grandsire, had been
+eternally creating.
+
+This greyhound of a grinder flung down a lot of dull bluish blades,
+warm from the forge, upon a condemned grindstone that was lying in
+the yard; and they tinkled.
+
+"---- me, if I grind cockney blades!" said he.
+
+This challenge fired a sympathetic handle-maker.  "Grinders are
+right," said he.  "We must be a ---- mean lot and all, to handle
+his ---- work."
+
+"He has been warned enough; but he heeds noane."
+
+"Hustle him out o' works."
+
+"Nay, hit him o'er th' head and fling him into shore."
+
+With these menacing words, three or four roughs advanced on him,
+with wicked eyes; and the respectable workmen stood, like stone
+statues, in cold and terrible neutrality; and Henry, looking round,
+in great anxiety, found that Bayne had withdrawn.
+
+He ground his teeth, and stepped back to the wall, to have all the
+assailants in the front.  He was sternly resolute, though very pale,
+and, by a natural impulse, put his hand into his side-pocket, to
+feel if he had a weapon.  The knife was there, the deadly blade with
+which his enemies themselves had armed him; and, to those who could
+read faces, there was death in the pale cheek and gleaming eye of
+this young man, so sorely tried.
+
+At this moment, a burly gentleman walked into the midst of them, as
+smartly as Van Amburgh amongst his tigers, and said steadily, "What
+is to do now, lads?"  It was Cheetham himself, Bayne knew he was in
+the office, and had run for him in mortal terror, and sent him to
+keep the peace.  "They insult me, sir," said Henry; "though I am
+always civil to them; and that grinder refuses to grind my blades,
+there."
+
+"Is that so?  Step out, my lad.  Did you refuse to grind those
+blades?"
+
+"Ay," said the greyhound-man sullenly.
+
+"Then put on your coat, and leave my premises this minute."
+
+"He is entitled to a week's warning, Mr. Cheetham," said one of the
+decent workmen, respectfully, but resolutely; speaking now for the
+first time.
+
+"You are mistaken, sir," replied Mr. Cheetham, in exactly the same
+tone.  (No stranger could have divined the speakers were master and
+man.)  "He has vitiated his contract by publicly refusing to do his
+work.  He'll get nothing from me but his wages up to noon this day.
+But YOU can have a week's warning, if you want it."
+
+"Nay, sir.  I've naught against you, for my part.  But they say it
+will come to that, if you don't turn Little up."
+
+"Why, what's his fault?  Come now; you are a man.  Speak up."
+
+"Nay, I've no quarrel with the man.  But he isn't straight with the
+trade."
+
+"That is the secretaries' fault, not mine," said Henry.  "They can't
+see I've brought a new trade in, that hurts no old trade, and will
+spread, and bring money into the town."
+
+"We are not so ---- soft as swallow that," said the bloated smith.
+"Thou's just come t' Hillsborough to learn forging, and when thou'st
+mastered that, off to London, and take thy ---- trade with thee."
+
+Henry colored to the brow at the inferior workman's vanity and its
+concomitant, detraction.  But he governed himself, by a mighty
+effort, and said, "Oh, that's your grievance now, is it?  Mr.
+Cheetham--sir--will you ask some respectable grinder to examine
+these blades of mine?"
+
+"Certainly.  You are right, Little.  The man to judge a forger's
+work is a grinder, and not another forger.  Reynolds, just take a
+look at them, will ye?"
+
+A wet grinder of a thoroughly different type and race from the
+greyhound, stepped forward.  He was thick-set in body, fresh-
+colored, and of a square manly countenance.  He examined the blades
+carefully, and with great interest.
+
+"Well," said Henry, "were they forged by a smith, or a novice that
+is come here to learn anvil work?"
+
+Reynolds did not reply to him, nor to Mr. Cheetham: he turned to the
+men.  "Mates, I'm noane good at lying.  Hand that forged these has
+naught to learn in Hillsbro', nor any other shop."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Reynolds," said Henry, in a choking voice.  "That is
+the first gleam of justice that I--"  He could say no more.
+
+"Come, don't you turn soft for a word or two," said Cheetham.
+"You'll wear all this out in time.  Go to the office.  I have
+something to say to you."
+
+The something was said.  It amounted to this--"Stand by me and I'll
+stand by you."
+
+"Well, sir," said Henry, "I think I must leave you if the committees
+refuse my offer.  It is hard for one man to fight a couple of trades
+in such a place as this.  But I'm firm in one thing: until those
+that govern the unions say 'no' to my offer, I shall go on working,
+and the scum of the trades sha'n't frighten me away from my forge."
+
+"That's right; let the blackguards bluster.  Bayne tells me you have
+had another anonymous."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, look here: you must take care of yourself, outside the works;
+but, I'll take care of you inside.  Here, Bayne, write a notice
+that, if any man molests, intimidates, or affronts Mr. Little, in my
+works, I'll take him myself to the town-hall, and get him two months
+directly.  Have somebody at the gate to put a printed copy of that
+into every man's hand as he leaves."
+
+"Thank you, sir!" said Henry, warmly.  "But ought not the police to
+afford me protection, outside?"
+
+"The police!  You might as well go to the beadle.  No; change your
+lodging, if you think they know it.  Don't let them track you home.
+Buy a brace of pistols, and, if they catch you in a dark place, and
+try to do you, give them a barrel or two before they can strike a
+blow.  No one of THEM will ever tell the police, not if you shot his
+own brother dead at that game.  The law is a dead letter here, sir.
+You've nothing to expect from it, and nothing to fear."
+
+"Good heavens!  Am I in England?"
+
+"In England?  No.  You are in Hillsborough."
+
+This epigram put Cheetham in good humor with himself, and, when
+Henry told him he did not feel quite safe, even in his own forge,
+nor in his handling-room, and gave his reasons, "Oh," said cheerful
+Cheetham, "that is nothing.  Yours is a box-lock; the blackguard
+will have hid in the works at night, and taken the lock off, left
+his writing, and then screwed the lock on again: that is nothing to
+any Hillsborough hand.  But I'll soon stop that game.  Go you to
+Chestnut Street, and get two first-class Bramah locks.  There's a
+pocket knife forge upstairs, close to your handling-room.  I'll send
+the pocket-knife hand down-stairs, and you fasten the Bramah locks
+on both doors, and keep the keys yourself.  See to that now at once:
+then your mind will be easy.  And I shall be in the works all day
+now, and every day: come to me directly, if there is any thing
+fresh."
+
+Henry's forge was cold, by this time; so he struck work, and spent
+the afternoon in securing his two rooms with the Bramah locks.  He
+also took Cheetham's advice in another particular.  Instead of
+walking home, he took a cab, and got the man to drive rapidly to a
+certain alley.  There he left the cab, ran down the alley, and
+turned a corner, and went home round about.  He doubled like a hare,
+and dodged like a criminal evading justice.
+
+But the next morning he felt a pleasing sense of security when he
+opened his forge-room with the Bramah key, and found no letters nor
+threats of any kind had been able to penetrate.
+
+Moreover, all this time you will understand he was visiting
+"Woodbine Cottage" twice a week, and carving Grace Carden's bust.
+
+Those delightful hours did much to compensate him for his troubles
+in the town, and were even of some service to him in training him to
+fence with the trades of Hillsborough: for at "Woodbine Villa" he
+had to keep an ardent passion within the strict bounds of reverence,
+and in the town he had constantly to curb another passion, wrath,
+and keep it within the bounds of prudence.  These were kindred
+exercises of self-restraint, and taught him self-government beyond
+his years.  But what he benefited most by, after all, was the direct
+and calming effect upon his agitated heart, and irritated nerves,
+that preceded, and accompanied, and followed these sweet,
+tranquilizing visits.  They were soft, solacing, and soothing; they
+were periodical and certain, he could count on leaving his cares and
+worries, twice every week, at the door of that dear villa; and, when
+he took them up again, they were no longer the same; heavenly balm
+had been shed over them, and over his boiling blood.
+
+One Saturday he heard, by a side-wind, that the Unions at a general
+meeting had debated his case, and there had been some violent
+speeches, and no decision come to; but the majority adverse to him.
+This discouraged him sadly, and his yearning heart turned all the
+more toward his haven of rest, and the hours, few but blissful, that
+awaited him.
+
+About 11 o'clock, that same day, the postman brought him a letter,
+so vilely addressed, that it had been taken to two or three places,
+on speculation, before it reached its destination.
+
+Little saw at once it was another anonymous communication.  But he
+was getting callous to these missives, and he even took it with a
+certain degree of satisfaction.  "Well done, Bramah!  Obliged to
+send their venom by post now."  This was the feeling uppermost in
+his mind.  In short, he opened the letter with as much contempt as
+anger.
+
+But he had no sooner read the foul scrawl, than his heart died
+within him.
+
+
+"Thou's sharp but not sharp enow.  We know where thou goes courting
+up hill.  Window is all glass and ripe for a Peter shall blow the
+house tatums.  There's the stuff in Hillsbro and the men that have
+done others so, and will do her job as wells thine.  Powders a good
+servant but a bad master.
+
+"ONE WHO MEANS DOING WHAT HE SAYS."
+
+
+At this diabolical threat, young Little leaned sick and broken over
+the handle of his bellows.
+
+Then he got up, and went to Mr. Cheetham, and said, patiently, "Sir,
+I am sorry to say I must leave you this very day."
+
+"Don't say that, Little, don't say that."
+
+"Oh it is with a heavy heart, sir; and I shall always remember your
+kindness.  But a man knows when he is beat.  And I'm beat now."  He
+hung his head in silence awhile.  Then he said, in a faint voice,
+"This is what has done it, sir," and handed him the letter.
+
+Mr. Cheetham examined it, and said, "I am not surprised at your
+being taken aback by this.  But it's nothing new to us; we have all
+been threatened in this form.  Why, the very last time I fought the
+trades, my wife was threatened I should be brought home on a
+shutter, with my intestines sweeping the ground.  That was the
+purport, only it was put vernacular and stronger.  And they reminded
+me that the old gal's clothes (that is Mrs. Cheetham: she is only
+twenty-six, and the prettiest lass in Coventry, and has a row of
+ivories that would do your heart good: now these Hillsborough hags
+haven't got a set of front teeth among 'em, young or old).  Well,
+they told me the old gal's clothes could easily be spoiled, and her
+doll's face and all, with a penn'orth of vitriol."
+
+"The monsters!"
+
+"But it was all brag.  These things are threatened fifty times, for
+once they are done."
+
+"I shall not risk it.  My own skin, if you like.  But not hers:
+never, Mr. Cheetham: oh, never; never!"
+
+"Well, but," said Mr. Cheetham, "she is in no danger so long as you
+keep away from her.  They might fling one of their petards in at the
+window, if you were there; but otherwise, never, in this world.  No,
+no, Little, they are not so bad as that.  They have blown up a whole
+household, to get at the obnoxious party; but they always make sure
+he is there first."
+
+Bayne was appealed to, and confirmed this; and, with great
+difficulty, they prevailed on Little to remain with them, until the
+Unions should decide; and to discontinue his visits to the house on
+the hill in the meantime.  I need hardly say they had no idea the
+house on the hill was "Woodbine Villa."
+
+He left them, and, sick at heart, turned away from Heath Hill, and
+strolled out of the lower part of the town, and wandered almost at
+random, and sad as death.
+
+He soon left the main road, and crossed a stile; it took him by the
+side of a babbling brook, and at the edge of a picturesque wood.
+Ever and anon he came to a water-wheel, and above the water-wheel a
+dam made originally by art, but now looking like a sweet little
+lake.  They were beautiful places; the wheels and their attendant
+works were old and rugged, but picturesque and countrified; and the
+little lakes behind, fringed by the master-grinder's garden, were
+strangely peaceful and pretty.  Here the vulgar labor of the
+grindstone was made beautiful and incredibly poetic.
+
+"Ah!" thought poor Little, "how happy a workman must be that plies
+his trade here in the fresh air.  And how unfortunate I am to be
+tied to a power-wheel, in that filthy town, instead of being here,
+where Nature turns the wheel, and the birds chirp at hand, and the
+scene and the air are all purity and peace."
+
+One place of the kind was particularly charming.  The dam was larger
+than most, and sloping grass on one side, cropped short by the
+grinder's sheep: on the other his strip of garden: and bushes and
+flowers hung over the edge and glassed themselves in the clear
+water.  Below the wheel, and at one side, was the master-grinder's
+cottage, covered with creepers.
+
+But Henry's mind was in no state to enjoy these beauties.  He envied
+them; and, at last, they oppressed him, and he turned his back on
+them, and wandered, disconsolate, home.
+
+He sat down on a stool by his mother, and laid his beating temples
+on her knees.
+
+"What is it, my darling?" said she softly.
+
+"Well, mother, for one thing, the Unions are against me, and I see I
+shall have to leave Hillsborough, soon or late."
+
+"Never mind, dear; happiness does not depend upon the place we live
+in; and oh, Henry, whatever you do, never quarrel with those
+terrible grinders and people.  The world is wide.  Let us go back to
+London; the sooner the better.  I have long seen there was something
+worrying you.  But Saturday and Monday--they used to be your bright
+days."
+
+"It will come to that, I suppose," said Henry, evading her last
+observation.  "Yes," said he, wearily, "it will come to that."  And
+he sighed so piteously that she forbore to press him.  She had not
+the heart to cross-examine her suffering child.
+
+That evening, mother and son sat silent by the fire: Henry had his
+own sad and bitter thoughts; and Mrs. Little was now brooding over
+the words Henry had spoken in the afternoon; and presently her
+maternal anxieties found a copious vent.  She related to him, one
+after another, all the outrages that had been perpetrated in
+Hillsborough, while he was a child, and had been, each in its turn,
+the town talk.
+
+It was a subject on which, if her son had been older, and more
+experienced in her sex, he would have closed her mouth promptly, she
+being a woman whose own nerves had received so frightful a shock by
+the manner of her husband's death.  But, inadvertently, he let her
+run on, till she told him how a poor grinder had been carried home
+to his wife, blinded and scorched with gunpowder, and another had
+been taken home, all bleeding, to his mother, so beaten and bruised
+with life-preservers, that he had laid between life and death for
+nine days, and never uttered one word all that time, in reply to all
+her prayers and tears.
+
+Now Mrs. Little began these horrible narratives with a forced and
+unnatural calmness; but, by the time she got to the last; she had
+worked herself up to a paroxysm of sympathy with other wretched
+women in Hillsborough, and trembled all over, like one in an ague,
+for herself: and at last stretched out her shaking hands, and
+screamed to him, "Oh, Harry, Harry, have pity on your miserable
+mother!  Think what these eyes of mine have seen--bleeding at my
+feet--there--there--I see it now"--(her eyes dilated terribly at the
+word)--"oh, promise me, for pity's sake, that these--same--eyes--
+shall never see YOU brought and laid down bleeding like HIM!"  With
+this she went into violent hysterics, and frightened her son more
+than all the ruffians in the town had ever frightened him.
+
+She was a long time in this pitiable condition, and he nursed her:
+but at last her convulsion ceased, and her head rested on her son's
+shoulder in a pitiable languor.
+
+Henry was always a good son: but he never loved his mother so
+tenderly as he did this night.  His heart yearned over this poor
+panting soul, so stately in form, yet so weak, so womanly, and
+lovable; his playmate in childhood; his sweet preceptor in boyhood;
+the best friend and most unselfish lover he had, or could ever hope
+to have, on earth; dear to him by her long life of loving sacrifice,
+and sacred by that their great calamity, which had fallen so much
+heavier on her than on him.
+
+He soothed her, he fondled her, he kneeled at her feet, and promised
+her most faithfully he would never be brought home to her bruised or
+bleeding.  No; if the Unions rejected his offer he would go back to
+London with her at once.
+
+And so, thrust from Hillsborough by the trades, and by his fears for
+Miss Carden, and also drawn from it by his mother's terrors, he felt
+himself a feather on the stream of Destiny; and left off struggling:
+beaten, heart-sick, and benumbed, he let the current carry him like
+any other dead thing that drifts.
+
+He still plied the hammer, but in a dead-alive way.
+
+He wrote a few cold lines to Mr. Jobson, to say that he thought it
+was time for a plain answer to be given to a business proposal.
+But, as he had no great hope the reply would be favorable, he
+awaited it in a state bordering on apathy.  And so passed a
+miserable week.
+
+And all this time she, for whose sake he denied himself the joy and
+consolation of her company, though his heart ached and pined for it,
+had hard thoughts of him, and vented them too to Jael Dence.
+
+The young are so hasty in all their judgments.
+
+While matters were in this condition, Henry found, one morning, two
+fresh panes of glass broken in his window.
+
+In these hardware works the windows seldom or never open: air is
+procured in all the rooms by the primitive method of breaking a pane
+here and a pane there; and the general effect is as unsightly as a
+human mouth where teeth and holes alternate.  The incident therefore
+was nothing, if it had occurred in any other room; but it was not a
+thing to pass over in this room, secured by a Bramah lock, the key
+of which was in Henry's pocket: the panes must have been broken from
+the outside.  It occurred to him directly that a stone had been
+thrown in with another threatening scrawl.
+
+But, casting his eye all round, he saw nothing of the kind about.
+
+Then, for a moment, a graver suspicion crossed his mind: might not
+some detonating substance of a nature to explode when trodden upon,
+have been flung in?  Hillsborough excelled in deviltries of this
+kind.
+
+Henry thought of his mother, and would not treat the matter lightly
+or unsuspiciously.  He stood still till he had lighted a lucifer
+match, and examined the floor of his room.  Nothing.
+
+He lighted a candle, and examined all the premises.  Nothing.
+
+But, when he brought his candle to the window, he made a discovery:
+the window had two vertical iron uprights, about three-quarters of
+an inch in circumference: and one of these revealed to his quick eye
+a bright horizontal line.  It had been sawed with a fine saw.
+
+Apparently an attempt had been made to enter his room from outside.
+
+The next question was, had that attempt succeeded.
+
+He tried the bar; it was not quite cut through.
+
+He locked the forge up directly, and went to his handling room.
+There he remained till Mr. Cheetham entered the works; then he went
+to him, and begged him to visit his forge.
+
+Mr. Cheetham came directly, and examined the place carefully.
+
+He negatived, at once, the notion that any Hillsborough hand had
+been unable to saw through a bar of that moderate thickness.  "No,"
+said he, "they were disturbed, or else some other idea struck them
+all of a sudden; or else they hadn't given themselves time, and are
+coming again to-morrow.  I hope they are.  By six o'clock to-night,
+I'll have a common wooden shutter hung with six good hinges on each
+side, easy to open at the center; only, across the center, I'll fix
+a Waterloo cracker inside."
+
+"A Waterloo cracker!"
+
+"Ay, but such a one as you never saw.  I shall make it myself.  It
+shall be only four inches long, but as broad as my hand, and enough
+detonating powder in it to blow the shutter fifty feet into the air:
+and if there should be one of Jobson's lads behind the shutter at
+the time, why he'll learn flying, and naught to pay for wings."
+
+"Why, sir, you are planning the man's death!"
+
+"And what is HE planning?  Light your forge, and leave the job to
+me.  I'm Hillsborough too, and they've put my blood up at last."
+
+While Henry lighted his forge, Mr. Cheetham whipped out a rule, and
+measured the window exactly.  This done, he went down the stairs,
+and crossed the yard to go to his office.
+
+But, before he could enter it, a horrible thing occurred in the room
+he had just left; so horrible, it made him, brave as he was, turn
+and scream like a woman.
+
+Some miscreant, by a simple but ingenious means, which afterward
+transpired, had mixed a quantity of gunpowder with the smithy-slack
+or fine cinders of Henry's forge.  The moment the forge was hot, the
+powder ignited with a tremendous thud, a huge mass of flame rushed
+out, driving the coals with it, like shot from a gun; Henry,
+scorched, blackened, and blinded, was swept, as by a flaming wind,
+against the opposite wall; then, yelling, and stark mad with fright
+(for nothing drives men out of their wits like an explosion in a
+narrow space), he sprang at the window, head foremost, and with such
+velocity that the sawed iron snapped like a stick of barley-sugar,
+and out he went head foremost; and this it was made Cheetham scream,
+to see him head downward, and the paving-stones below.
+
+But the aperture was narrow: his body flew through, but his tight
+arm went round the unbroken upright, and caught it in the bend of
+the elbow.
+
+Then Cheetham roared, "Hold on, Little!  Hold on, I tell you!"
+
+The scared brain of a man accustomed to obey received the command
+almost without the mind; and the grinders and forgers, running
+wildly into the yard, saw the obnoxious workman, black as a cinder
+from head to foot, bleeding at the face from broken glass, hanging
+up there by one hand, moaning with terror, and looking down with
+dilating eye, while thick white smoke rushed curling out, as if his
+body was burning.  Death by suffocation was at his back, and broken
+bones awaited him below.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+At sight of this human cinder, hanging by one hand between two
+deaths, every sentiment but humanity vanished from the ruggedest
+bosom, and the skilled workmen set themselves to save their
+unpopular comrade with admirable quickness and judgment: two new
+wheel-bands, that had just come into the works, were caught up in a
+moment, and four workmen ran with them and got below the suspended
+figure: they then turned back to back, and, getting the bands over
+their shoulders, pulled hard against each other.  This was necessary
+to straighten the bands: they weighed half a hundred weight each.
+Others stood at the center of the bands, and directed Little where
+to drop, and stood ready to catch him should he bound off them.
+
+But now matters took an unexpected turn.  Little, to all appearance,
+was blind and deaf.  He hung there, moaning, and glaring, and his
+one sinewy arm supported his muscular but light frame almost
+incredibly.  He was out of his senses, or nearly.
+
+"Let thyself come, lad," cried a workman, "we are all right to catch
+thee."
+
+He made no answer, but hung there glaring and moaning.
+
+"The man will drop noane, till he swouns," said another, watching
+him keenly.
+
+"Then get you closer to the wall, men," cried Cheetham, in great
+anxiety.  "He'll come like a stone, when he does come."  This
+injunction was given none too soon; the men had hardly shifted their
+positions, when Little's hand opened, and he came down like lead,
+with his hands all abroad, and his body straight; but his knees were
+slightly bent, and he caught the bands just below the knee, and
+bounded off them into the air, like a cricket-ball.  But many hands
+grabbed at him, and the grinder Reynolds caught him by the shoulder,
+and they rolled on the ground together, very little the worse for
+that tumble.  "Well done! well done!" cried Cheetham.  "Let him lie,
+lads, he is best there for a while; and run for a doctor, one of
+you."
+
+"Ay, run for Jack Doubleface," cried several voices at once.
+
+"Now, make a circle, and give him air, men."  Then they all stood in
+a circle, and eyed the blackened and quivering figure with pity and
+sympathy, while the canopy of white smoke bellied overhead.  Nor
+were those humane sentiments silent; and the rough seemed to be even
+more overcome than the others: no brains were required to pity this
+poor fellow now; and so strong an appeal to their hearts, through
+their senses, roused their good impulses and rare sensibilities.
+Oh, it was strange to hear good and kindly sentiments come out in
+the Dash dialect.
+
+"It's a ---- shame!"
+
+"There lies a good workman done for by some ---- thief, that wasn't
+fit to blow his bellows, ---- him!"
+
+"Say he WAS a cockney, he was always ---- civil."
+
+"And life's as sweet to him as to any man in Hillsborough."
+
+"Hold your ---- tongue, he's coming to."
+
+Henry did recover his wits enough to speak; and what do you think
+was his first word?
+
+He clasped his hands together, and said,--"MY MOTHER! OH, DON'T LET
+HER KNOW!"
+
+This simple cry went through many a rough heart; a loud gulp or two
+were heard soon after, and more than one hard and coaly cheek was
+channeled by sudden tears.  But now a burly figure came rolling in;
+they drew back and silenced each other.--"The Doctor!"  This was the
+remarkable person they called Jack Doubleface.  Nature had stuck a
+philosophic head, with finely-cut features, and a mouth brimful of
+finesse, on to a corpulent and ungraceful body, that yawed from side
+to side as he walked.
+
+The man of art opened with two words.  He looked up at the white
+cloud, which was now floating away; sniffed the air, and said,
+"Gunpowder!"  Then he looked down at Little, and said, "Ah!" half
+dryly, half sadly.  Indeed several sentences of meaning condensed
+themselves into that simple interjection.  At this moment, some men,
+whom curiosity had drawn to Henry's forge, came back to say the
+forge had been blown up, and "the bellows torn limb from jacket, and
+the room strewed with ashes."
+
+The doctor laid a podgy hand on the prisoner's wrist: the touch was
+light, though the fingers were thick and heavy.  The pulse, which
+had been very low, was now galloping and bounding frightfully.
+"Fetch him a glass of brandy-and-water," said Dr. Amboyne.  (There
+were still doctors in Hillsborough, though not in London, who would
+have had him bled on the spot.)
+
+"Now, then, a surgeon!  Which of you lads operates on the eye, in
+these works?"
+
+A lanky file-cutter took a step forward.  "I am the one that takes
+the motes out of their eyes."
+
+"Then be good enough to show me his eye."
+
+The file-cutter put out a hand with fingers prodigiously long and
+thin, and deftly parted both Little's eyelids with his finger and
+thumb, so as to show the whole eye.
+
+"Hum!" said the doctor, and shook his head.
+
+He then patted the sufferer all over, and the result of that
+examination was satisfactory.  Then came the brandy-and-water; and
+while Henry's teeth were clattering at the glass and he was trying
+to sip the liquid, Dr. Amboyne suddenly lifted his head, and took a
+keen survey of the countenances round him.  He saw the general
+expression of pity on the rugged faces.  He also observed one rough
+fellow who wore a strange wild look: the man seemed puzzled, scared,
+confused like one half awakened from some hideous dream.  This was
+the grinder who had come into the works in place of the hand
+Cheetham had discharged for refusing to grind cockney blades.
+
+"Hum!" said Dr. Amboyne, and appeared to be going into a brown
+study.
+
+But he shook that off, and said briskly, "Now, then, what was his
+crime?  Did he owe some mutual aid society six-and-four-pence?"
+
+"That's right," said Reynolds, sullenly, "throw every thing on the
+Union.  If we knew who it was, he'd lie by the side of this one in
+less than a minute, and, happen, not get up again so soon."  A growl
+of assent confirmed the speaker's words.  Cheetham interposed and
+drew Amboyne aside, and began to tell him who the man was and what
+the dispute; but Amboyne cut the latter explanation short.  "What,"
+said he, "is this the carver whose work I saw up at Mr. Carden's?"
+
+"This is the very man, no doubt."
+
+"Why, he's a sculptor: Praxiteles in wood.  A fine choice they have
+made for their gunpowder, a workman that did honor to the town."
+
+A faint flush of gratified pride colored the ghastly cheek a moment.
+
+"Doctor, shall I live to finish the bust?" said Henry, piteously.
+
+"That and hundreds more, if you obey me.  The fact is, Mr. Cheetham,
+this young man is not hurt, but his nerves have received a severe
+shock; and the sooner he is out of this place the better.  Ah, there
+is my brougham at the gate.  Come, put him into it, and I'll take
+him to the infirmary."
+
+"No," said Little, "I won't go there; my mother would hear of it."
+
+"Oh, then your mother is not to know?"
+
+"Not for all the world!  She has had trouble enough.  I'll just wash
+my face and buy a clean shirt, and she'll never know what has
+happened.  It would kill her.  Oh, yes, it would kill her!"
+
+The doctor eyed him with warm approval.  "You are a fine young
+fellow.  I'll see you safe through this, and help you throw dust in
+your mother's eyes.  If you go to her with that scratched face, we
+are lost.  Come, get into my carriage, and home with me."
+
+"Mayn't I wash my face first?  And look at my shirt: as black as a
+cinder."
+
+"Wash your face, by all means: but you can button your coat over
+your shirt."
+
+The coat was soon brought, and so was a pail of water and a piece of
+yellow soap.  Little dashed his head and face into the bucket, and
+soon inked all the water.  The explosion had filled his hair with
+black dust, and grimed his face and neck like a sweep's.  This
+ablution made him clean, but did not bring back his ruddy color.  He
+looked pale and scratched.
+
+The men helped him officiously into the carriage, though he could
+have walked very well alone.
+
+Henry asked leave to buy a clean shirt.  The doctor said he would
+lend him one at home.
+
+While Henry was putting it on Dr. Amboyne ordered his dog-cart
+instead of his brougham, and mixed some medicines.  And soon Henry
+found himself seated in the dog-cart, with a warm cloak over him,
+and whisking over the stones of Hillsborough.
+
+All this had been done so rapidly and unhesitatingly that Henry,
+injured and shaken as he was, had yielded passive obedience.  But
+now he began to demur a little.  "But where are we going, sir?" he
+asked.
+
+"To change the air and the scene.  I'll be frank with you--you are
+man enough to bear the truth--you have received a shock that will
+very likely bring on brain-fever, unless you get some sleep tonight.
+But you would not sleep in Hillsborough.  You'd wake a dozen times
+in the night, trembling like an aspen leaf, and fancying you were
+blown up again."
+
+"Yes, but my mother, sir!  If I don't go home at seven o'clock,
+she'll find me out."
+
+"If you went crazy wouldn't she find you out?  Come, my young
+friend, trust to my experience, and to the interest this attempt to
+murder you, and your narrow escape, have inspired in me.  When I
+have landed you in the Temple of Health, and just wasted a little
+advice on a pig-headed patient in the neighborhood (he is the squire
+of the place), I'll drive back to Hillsborough, and tell your mother
+some story or other: you and I will concoct that together as we go."
+
+At this Henry was all obedience, and indeed thanked him, with the
+tears in his eyes, for his kindness to a poor stranger.
+
+Dr. Amboyne smiled.  "If you were not a stranger, you would know
+that saving cutlers' lives is my hobby, and one in which I am
+steadily resisted and defeated, especially by the cutlers
+themselves: why, I look upon you as a most considerate and obliging
+young man for indulging me in this way.  If you had been a
+Hillsborough hand, you would insist upon a brain-fever, and a trip
+to the lunatic asylum, just to vex me, and hinder me of my hobby."
+
+Henry stared.  This was too eccentric for him to take it all in at
+once.  "What!" said Dr. Amboyne, observing his amazement, "Did you
+never hear of Dr. Doubleface?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Never hear of the corpulent lunatic, who goes about the city
+chanting, like a cuckoo, 'Put yourself in his place--put yourself in
+her place--in their place?'
+
+"No, sir, I never did."
+
+"Then such is fame.  Well, never mind that just now; there's a time
+for every thing.  Please observe that ruined house: the ancient
+family to whom it belongs are a remarkable example of the
+vicissitude of human affairs."  He then told him the curious ups and
+downs of that family, which, at two distant periods, had held vast
+possessions in the county; but were now represented by the shell of
+one manor house, and its dovecote, the size of a modern villa.  Next
+he showed him an obscure battlefield, and told him that story, and
+who were the parties engaged; and so on.  Every mile furnished its
+legend, and Dr. Amboyne related them all so graphically that the
+patient's mind was literally stolen away from himself.  At last,
+after a rapid drive of eleven miles through the pure invigorating
+air, they made a sudden turn, and entered a pleasant and singularly
+rural village: they drew up at a rustic farmhouse, clad with ivy;
+and Dr. Amboyne said, "This is the temple: here you can sleep as
+safe from gunpowder as a field-marshal born."
+
+The farmer's daughter came out, and beamed pleasure at sight of the
+doctor: he got down, and told her the case, privately, and gave her
+precise instructions.  She often interrupted the narrative with
+"Lawkadaisies," and other rural interjections, and simple
+exclamations of pity.  She promised faithful compliance with his
+orders.
+
+He then beckoned Henry in, and said, "This picture of health was a
+patient of mine once, as you are now; there's encouragement for you.
+I put you under her charge.  Get a letter written to your mother,
+and I'll come back for it in half an hour.  You had a headache, and
+were feverish, so you consulted a doctor.  He advised immediate rest
+and change of air, and he drove you at once to this village.  Write
+you that, and leave the rest to me.  We doctors are dissembling
+dogs.  We have still something to learn in curing diseases; but at
+making light of them to the dying, and other branches of amiable
+mendacity, we are masters.
+
+As soon as he was gone, the comely young hostess began on her
+patient.  "Dear heart, sir, was it really you as was blowed up with
+gunpowder?"
+
+"Indeed it was, and not many hours ago.  It seems like a dream."
+
+"Well, now, who'd think that, to look at you?  Why, you are none the
+worse for, by a scratch or two, and dear heart, I've seen a young
+chap bring as bad home, from courting, in these parts; and wed the
+lass as marked him--within the year."
+
+"Oh, it is not the scratches; but feel my hand, how it trembles.
+And it used to be as firm as a rock; for I never drink."
+
+"So it do, I declare.  Why, you do tremble all over; and no wonder,
+poor soul.  Come you in this minut, and sit down a bit by the fire,
+while I go and make the room ready for you."
+
+But, as soon as he was seated by the fire, the current began to flow
+again.  "Well, I never liked Hillsborough folk much--poor, mean-
+visaged tykes they be--but now I do hate 'em.  What, blow up a
+decent young man like you, and a well-favored, and hair like jet,
+and eyes in your head like sloes!  But that's their ground of spite,
+I warrant me; the nasty, ugly, dirty dogs.  Well, you may just snap
+your fingers at 'em all now.  They don't come out so far as this;
+and, if they did, stouter men grows in this village than any in
+Hillsborough: and I've only to hold up my finger, for as little as I
+be, and they'd all be well ducked in father's horsepond, and then
+flogged home again with a good cart-whip well laid on.  And, another
+thing, whatever we do, Squire, he will make it good in law: he is
+gentle, and we are simple; but our folk and his has stood by each
+other this hundred year and more.  But, la, I run on so, and you was
+to write a letter again the doctor came back.  I'll fetch you some
+paper this minut."
+
+She brought him writing materials, and stood by him with this
+apology, "If 'twas to your sweetheart I'd be off.  But 'tis to your
+mother."  (With a side glance), "She have been a handsome woman in
+her day, I'll go bail."
+
+"She is as beautiful as ever in my eyes," said Henry, tenderly.
+"And, oh, heaven! give me the sense to write to her without
+frightening her."
+
+"Then I won't hinder you no more with my chat," said his hostess,
+with kindly good humor, and slipped away upstairs.  She lighted a
+great wood fire in the bedroom, and laid the bed and the blankets
+all round it, and opened the window, and took the homespun linen
+sheets out of a press, and made the room very tidy.  Then she went
+down again, and the moment Henry saw her, he said "I feel your
+kindness, miss, but I don't know your name, nor where in the world I
+am."  His hostess smiled.  "That is no secret.  I'm Martha Dence--at
+your service: and this is Cairnhope town."
+
+"Cairnhope!" cried Henry, and started back, so that his wooden chair
+made a loud creak upon the stones of the farmer's kitchen.
+
+Martha Dence stared, but said nothing; for almost at that moment the
+doctor returned, all in a hurry, for the letter.
+
+Henry begged him to look at it, and see if it would do.
+
+The doctor read it.  "Hum!" said he, "it is a very pretty, filial
+letter, and increases my interest in you; give me your hand: there.
+Well, it won't do: too shaky.  If your mother once sees this, I may
+talk till doomsday, she'll not believe a word.  You must put off
+writing till to-morrow night.  Now give me her address, for I really
+must get home."
+
+"She lives on the second floor, No. 13 Chettle Street."
+
+"Her name?"
+
+"Sir, if you ask for the lady that lodges on the second floor, you
+will be sure to see her."
+
+Dr. Amboyne looked a little surprised, and not very well pleased, at
+what seemed a want of confidence.  But he was a man singularly
+cautious and candid in forming his judgments; so he forbore all
+comment, and delivered his final instructions.  "Here is a bottle
+containing only a few drops of faba Ignatii in water, it is an
+innocent medicine, and has sometimes a magical effect in soothing
+the mind and nerves.  A table-spoonful three times a day.  And THIS
+is a sedative, which you can take if you find yourself quite unable
+to sleep.  But I wouldn't have recourse to it unnecessarily; for
+these sedatives are uncertain in their operation; and, when a man is
+turned upside down, as you have been, they sometimes excite.  Have a
+faint light in your bedroom.  Tie a cord to the bell-rope, and hold
+it in your hand all night.  Fix your mind on that cord, and keep
+thinking, 'This is to remind me that I am eleven miles from
+Hillsborough, in a peaceful village, safe from all harm.'  To-
+morrow, walk up to the top of Cairnhope Peak, and inhale the
+glorious breeze, and look over four counties.  Write to your mother
+at night, and, meantime, I'll do my best to relieve her anxiety.
+Good-by."
+
+
+Memory sometimes acts like an old flint-gun: it hangs fire, yet ends
+by going off.  While Dr. Amboyne was driving home, the swarthy, but
+handsome, features of the workman he had befriended seemed to enter
+his mind more deeply than during the hurry, and be said to himself,
+"Jet black hair; great black eyes; and olive skin; they are rare in
+these parts; and, somehow, they remind me a little of HER."
+
+Then his mind went back, in a moment, over many years, to the days
+when he was stalwart, but not unwieldy, and loved a dark but
+peerless beauty, loved her deeply, and told his love, and was
+esteemed and pitied, but another was beloved.
+
+And so sad, yet absorbing, was the retrospect of his love, his
+sorrow, and her own unhappy lot, that it blotted out of his mind,
+for a time, the very youth whose features and complexion had
+launched him into the past.
+
+But the moment his horse's feet rang on the stones, this burly
+philosopher shook off the past, and set himself to recover lost
+time.  He drove rapidly to several patients, and, at six o'clock,
+was at 13 Chettle Street, and asked for the lady on the second
+floor, "Yes, sir: she is at home," was the reply.  "But I don't
+know; she lives very retired.  She hasn't received any visits since
+they came.  However, they rent the whole floor, and the sitting-room
+fronts you."
+
+Dr. Amboyne mounted the stair and knocked at the door.  A soft and
+mellow voice bade him enter.  He went in, and a tall lady in black,
+with plain linen collar and wristbands, rose to receive him.  They
+confronted each other.  Time and trouble had left their trace, but
+there were the glorious eyes, and jet black hair, and the face, worn
+and pensive, but still beautiful.  It was the woman he had loved,
+the only one.
+
+"Mrs. Little!" said he, in an indescribable tone.
+
+"Dr. Amboyne!"
+
+For a few moments he forgot the task he had undertaken; and could
+only express his astonishment and pleasure at seeing her once more.
+
+Then he remembered why he was there; and the office he had
+undertaken so lightly alarmed him now.
+
+His first instinct was to gain time.  Accordingly, he began to chide
+her gently for having resided in the town and concealed it from him;
+then, seeing her confused and uncomfortable at that reproach, and in
+the mood to be relieved by any change of topic, he glided off, with
+no little address, as follows:--"Observe the consequences: here have
+I been most despotically rusticating a youth who turns out to be
+your son."
+
+"My son! is there any thing the matter with my son?  Oh, Dr. Amboyne!"
+
+"He must have been out of sorts, you know, or he would not have
+consulted me," replied the doctor, affecting candor.
+
+"Consult!  Why, what has happened?  He was quite well when he left
+me this morning."
+
+"I doubt that.  He complained of headache and fever.  But I soon
+found his MIND was worried.  A misunderstanding with the trades!  I
+was very much pleased with his face and manner; my carriage was at
+the door; his pulse was high, but there was nothing that country air
+and quiet will not restore.  So I just drove him away, and landed
+him in a farm-house."
+
+Mrs. Little's brow flushed at this.  She was angry.  But, in a
+nature so gentle as hers, anger soon gave way.  She turned a glance
+of tearful and eloquent reproach on Dr. Amboyne.  "The first time we
+have ever been separated since he was born," said she, with a sigh.
+
+Dr. Amboyne's preconceived plan broke down that moment.  He said,
+hurriedly,
+
+"Take my carriage, and drive to him.  Better do that than torment
+yourself."
+
+"Where is he?" asked the widow, brightening up at the proposal.
+
+"At Cairnhope."
+
+At this word, Mrs. Little's face betrayed a series of emotions:
+first confusion, then astonishment, and at last a sort of
+superstitious alarm.  "At Cairnhope?" she faltered at last, "My son
+at Cairnhope?"
+
+"Pray do not torment yourself with fancies," said the doctor.  "All
+this is the merest accident--the simplest thing in the world.  I
+cured Patty Dence of diphtheria, when it decimated the village.  She
+and her family are grateful; the air of Cairnhope has a magic effect
+on people who live in smoke, and Martha and Jael let me send them
+out an invalid now and then to be reinvigorated.  I took this young
+man there, not knowing who he was.  Go to him, if you like.  But,
+frankly, as his physician, I would rather you did not.  Never do a
+wise thing by halves.  He ought to be entirely separated from all
+his cares, even from yourself (who are doubtless one of them), for
+five or six days.  He needs no other medicine but that and the fine
+air of Cairnhope."
+
+"Then somebody must see him every day, and tell me.  Oh! Dr. Amboyne,
+this is the beginning: what will the end be?  I am miserable."
+
+"My man shall ride there every day, and see him, and bring you back
+a letter from him."
+
+"Your man!" said Mrs. Little, a little haughtily.
+
+Dr. Amboyne met her glance.  "If there was any ground for alarm,
+should I not go myself every day?" said he, gravely, and even
+tenderly.
+
+"Forgive me," said the widow, and gave him her hand with a sweet and
+womanly gesture.
+
+The main difficulty was now got over; and Dr. Amboyne was careful
+not to say too much, for he knew that his tongue moved among
+pitfalls.
+
+As Dr. Amboyne descended the stairs, the landlady held a door ajar,
+and peeped at him, according to a custom of such delicate-minded
+females as can neither restrain their curiosity nor indulge it
+openly.  Dr. Amboyne beckoned to her, and asked for a private
+interview.  This was promptly accorded.
+
+"Would ten guineas be of any service to you, madam?"
+
+"Eh, dear, that it would, sir.  Why, my rent is just coming due."
+
+Under these circumstances, the bargain was soon struck.  Not a
+syllable about the explosion at Cheetham's was to reach the second
+floor lodger's ears, and no Hillsborough journal was to mount the
+stairs until the young man's return.  If inquired for, they were to
+be reported all sold out, and a London journal purchased instead.
+
+Having secured a keen and watchful ally in this good woman, who, to
+do her justice, showed a hearty determination to earn her ten
+guineas, Dr. Amboyne returned home, his own philosophic pulse
+beating faster than it had done for some years.
+
+He had left Mrs. Little grateful, and, apparently, in good spirits;
+but, ere he had been gone an hour, the bare separation from her son
+overpowered her, and a host of vague misgivings tortured her, and
+she slept but little that night.  By noon next day she was
+thoroughly miserable; but Dr. Amboyne's man rode up to the door in
+the afternoon with a cheerful line from Henry.
+
+
+"All right, dear mother.  Better already.  Letter by post.
+
+"Henry."
+
+
+She detained the man, and made up a packet of things for Cairnhope,
+and gave him five shillings to be sure and take them.
+
+This was followed by a correspondence, a portion of which will
+suffice to eke out the narrative.
+
+
+"DEAREST MOTHER,--I slept ill last night, and got up aching from
+head to foot, as if I had been well hided.  But they sent me to the
+top of Cairnhope Peak, and, what with the keen air and the glorious
+view, I came home and ate like a hog.  That pleased Martha Dence,
+and she kept putting me slices off her own plate, till I had to cry
+quarter.  As soon as I have addressed this letter, I'm off to bed,
+for it is all I can do not to fall asleep sitting.
+
+"I am safe to be all right to-morrow, so pray don't fret.  I am,
+dear mother," etc., etc.
+
+
+"DEAREST MOTHER,--I hope you are not fretting about me.  Dr. Amboyne
+promised to stop all that.  But do write, and say you are not
+fretting and fancying all manner of things at my cutting away so
+suddenly.  It was the doctor's doing.  And, mother, I shall not stay
+long away from you, for I slept twelve hours at a stretch last
+night, and now I'm another man.  But really, I think the air of that
+Cairnhope Peak would cure a fellow at his last gasp.
+
+"Thank you for the linen, and the brushes, and things.  But you are
+not the sort to forget anything a fellow might want," etc.
+
+
+"No, my darling son.  Be in no hurry to leave Cairnhope.  Of course,
+love, I was alarmed at first; for I know doctors make the best of
+every thing; and then the first parting!--that is always a sorrowful
+thing.  But, now you are there, I beg you will stay till you are
+quite recovered.  Your letters are a delight, and one I could not
+have, and you as well, you know.
+
+"Since you are at Cairnhope--how strange that seems--pray go and see
+the old church, where your forefathers are buried.  There are
+curious inscriptions, and some brasses nobody could decipher when I
+was a girl; but perhaps you might, you are so clever.  Your
+grandfather's monument is in the chancel: I want you to see it.  Am
+I getting very old, that my heart turns back to these scenes of my
+youth?
+
+"P.S.--Who is this Martha Dence?"
+
+
+"DEAR MOTHER,--Martha Dence is the farmer's daughter I lodge with.
+She is not so pretty as her sister Jael that is with Miss Carden;
+but she is a comely girl, and as good as gold, and bespoke by the
+butcher.  And her putting slices from her plate to mine is a village
+custom, I find.
+
+"Mother, the people here are wonderfully good and simple.  First of
+all, there's farmer Dence, with his high bald head, like a patriarch
+of old; and he sits and beams with benevolence, but does not talk
+much.  But he lets me see I can stay with him six years, if I
+choose.  Then, there's Martha, hospitality itself, and ready to fly
+at my enemies like a mastiff.  She is a little hot in the temper,
+feathers up in a moment; but, at a soft word, they go down again as
+quick.  Then, there's the village blacksmith.  I call him 'The
+gentle giant.'  He is a tremendous fellow in height, and size, and
+sinew; but such a kind, sweet-tempered chap.  He could knock down an
+ox, yet he wouldn't harm a fly.  I am his idol: I sauntered in to
+his smithy, and forged him one or two knives; and of course he had
+never seen the hammer used with that nicety; but instead of hating
+me, as the bad forgers in Hillsborough do, he regularly worships me,
+and comes blushing up to the farm-house after hours, to ask after me
+and get a word with me.  He is the best whistler in the parish, and
+sometimes we march down the village at night, arm-in-arm, whistling
+a duet.  This charms the natives so that we could take the whole
+village out at our heels, and put them down in another parish.  But
+the droll thing is, they will not take me for what I am.  My gentle
+giant would say 'Sir' till I pretended to be affronted; the women
+and girls will bob me courtesies, and the men and white headed boys
+will take off their hats and pull their front hair to me.  If a
+skilled workman wants to burst with vanity, let him settle in
+Cairnhope."
+
+[EXTRACT]
+
+"Martha Dence and I have had words, and what do you think it was
+about?  I happened to let out my opinion of Mr. Raby.  Mother, it
+was like setting a match to a barrel of gunpowder.  She turned as
+red as fire, and said, 'Who be you that speaks against Raby to
+Dence?'
+
+"I tried to pacify her, but it was no use.  'Don't speak to me,'
+said she.  'I thought better of you.  You and I are out.'  I bowed
+before the storm, and, to give her time to cool, I obeyed your
+wishes, and walked to Cairnhope old church.  What a curious place!
+But I could not get in; and, on my return, I found Mr. Raby keeps
+the key.  Now, you can't do a thing here, or say a word, but what it
+is known all over the village.  So Martha Dence meets me at the
+door, and says, very stiffly, she thought I might have told her I
+wanted to see the old church.  I pulled a long, penitent face, and
+said, 'Yes; but unfortunately, I was out of her good books, and had
+orders not to speak to her.'  'Nay,' says she, 'life is too short
+for long quarrels.  You are a stranger, and knew no better.'  Then
+she told me to wait five minutes while she put on her bonnet, as she
+calls it.  Well, I waited the five and-forty minutes, and she put on
+her bonnet, and so many other smart things, that we couldn't
+possibly walk straight up to the old church.  We had to go round by
+the butcher's shop, and order half a pound of suet; no less.  'And
+bring it yourself, this evening,' said I, 'or it might get lost on
+the road.'  Says the butcher, 'Well, sir, that is the first piece of
+friendly advice any good Christian has bestowed--'  But I heard no
+more, owing to Martha chasing me out of the shop.
+
+"To reach the old church we had to pass the old ruffian's door.
+Martha went in; I sauntered on, and she soon came after me, with the
+key in her hand.  'But,' said she, 'he told me if my name hadn't
+been Dence he wouldn't trust me with it, though I went on my bended
+knees.'
+
+"We opened the church-door, and I spent an hour inside, examining
+and copying inscriptions for you.  But, when I came to take up a
+loose brass, to try and decipher it, Martha came screaming at me,
+'Oh, put it down! put it down!  I pledged my word to Squire you
+should not touch them brasses.'  What could I do, mother?  The poor
+girl was in an agony.  This old ruffian has, somehow, bewitched her,
+and her father too, into a sort of superstitious devotion that I
+can't help respecting, unreasonable as it is.  So I dropped the
+brass, and took to reflecting.  And I give you my thoughts.
+
+"What a pity and a shame that a building of this size should lie
+idle!  If it was mine I would carefully remove all the monuments,
+and the dead bones, et cetera, to the new church, and turn this old
+building into a factory, or a set of granaries, or something useful.
+It is as great a sin to waste bricks and mortar as it is bread,"
+etc.
+
+
+"MY DEAR HARRY,--Your dear sprightly letters delight me, and
+reconcile me to the separation; for I see that your health is
+improving every day, by your gayety; and this makes me happy, though
+I can not quite be gay.
+
+"Your last letter was very amusing, yet, somehow, it set me
+thinking, long and sadly; and some gentle remarks from Dr. Amboyne
+(he called yesterday) have also turned my mind the same way.  Time
+has softened the terrible blow that estranged my brother and myself,
+and I begin to ask myself, was my own conduct perfect? was my
+brother's quite without excuse?  I may have seen but one side, and
+been too hasty in judging him.  At all events, I would have you, who
+are a man, think for yourself, and not rush into too harsh a view of
+that unhappy quarrel.  Dearest, family quarrels are family
+misfortunes: why should they go down to another generation?  You
+frighten me, when you wonder that Nathan and his family (I had
+forgotten his name was Dence) are attached to Mr. Raby.  Why, with
+all his faults, my brother is a chivalrous, high-minded gentleman;
+his word is his bond, and he never deserts a friend, however humble;
+and I have heard our dear father say that, for many generations,
+uncommon acts of kindness had passed between that family of yeomen
+and the knights and squires of Raby.
+
+"And now, dear, I am going to be very foolish.  But, if these Dences
+are as great favorites with him as they were with my father, she
+could easily get you into the house some day, when he is out
+hunting; and I do want you to see one thing more before you come
+back from Cairnhope--your mother's picture.  It hangs, or used to
+hang, in the great dining-room, nearly opposite the fire-place.
+
+"I blush at my childishness, but I SHOULD like my child to see what
+his mother was when she brought him into the world, that sad world
+in which he has been her only joy and consolation.
+
+P. S.--What an idea!  Turn that dear old church into a factory!  But
+you are a young man of the day.  And a wonderful day it is; I can
+not quite keep up with it."
+
+
+"DEAR MOTHER,--I have been there.  Mr. Raby is a borough magistrate,
+as well as a county justice; and was in Hillsborough all day to-day.
+Martha Dence took me to Raby Hall, and her name was a passport.
+When I got to the door, I felt as if something pulled me, and said,
+'It's an enemy's house; don't go in.'  I wish I had obeyed the
+warning; but I did not.
+
+"Well, I have seen your portrait.  It is lovely, it surpasses any
+woman I ever saw.  And it must have been your image, for it is very
+like you now, only in the bloom of your youth.
+
+"And now, dear mother, having done something for you, quite against
+my own judgment, and my feelings too, please do something for me.
+Promise me never to mention Mr. Raby's name to me again, by letter,
+or by word of mouth either.  He is not a gentleman: he is not a man;
+he is a mean, spiteful, cowardly cur.  I'll keep out of his way, if
+I can; but if he gets in mine, I shall give him a devilish good
+hiding, then and there, and I'll tell HIM the reason why; and I will
+not tell YOU.
+
+"Dear mother, I did intend to stay till Saturday, but, after this, I
+shall come back to you to-morrow.  My own sweet dove of a mammy; who
+but a beast could hurt or affront you?
+
+"So no more letters from your dutiful and affectionate son,
+
+"Harry."
+
+
+Next day young Little took leave of his friends in Cairnhope, with a
+promise to come over some Sunday, and see them all.  He borrowed a
+hooked stick of his devotee, the blacksmith, and walked off with his
+little bundle over his shoulder, in high health and spirits, and
+ripe for any thing.
+
+Some successful men are so stout-hearted, their minds seem never to
+flinch.  Others are elastic; they give way, and appear crushed; but,
+let the immediate pressure be removed, they fly back again, and
+their enemy finds he has not gained an inch.  Henry's was of this
+sort; and, as he swung along through the clear brisk air, the world
+seemed his football once more.
+
+This same morning Jael Dence was to go to Cairnhope, at her own
+request.
+
+She packed her box, and corded it, and brought it down herself, and
+put it in the passage, and the carrier was to call for it at one.
+As for herself, four miles of omnibus, and the other seven on foot,
+was child's play to her, whose body was as lusty and active as her
+heart was tender and clinging.
+
+She came in to the drawing-room, with her bonnet and shawl on, and
+the tear in her eye, to bid Miss Carden good-bye.  Two male friends
+would have parted in five minutes; but this pair were a wonderful
+time separating, and still there was always something to say, that
+kept Grace detaining, or Jael lingering; and, when she had been
+going, going, going, for more than half an hour, all of a sudden she
+cried, out, "Oh! There he is!" and flushed all over.
+
+"Who?" asked Grace, eagerly.
+
+"The dark young man.  He is at the door now, miss.  And me going
+away," she faltered.
+
+"Well then, why go till he has paid his visit?  Sit down.  You
+needn't take off your bonnet."
+
+Miss Carden then settled herself, took up her work, and prepared to
+receive her preceptor as he deserved, an intention she conveyed to
+Jael by a glance, just as Henry entered blooming with exercise and
+the keen air, and looking extremely handsome and happy.
+
+His reception was a chilling bow from Miss Carden, and from Jael a
+cheek blushing with pleasure at the bare sight of him, but an
+earnest look of mild reproach.  It seemed cruel of him to stay away
+so long, and then come just as she was going.
+
+This reception surprised Henry, and disappointed him; however he
+constrained himself, and said politely, but rather coldly, that
+some unpleasant circumstances had kept him away; but he hoped now to
+keep his time better.
+
+"Oh, pray consult your own convenience entirely," said Miss Carden.
+"Come when you have nothing better to do; that is the
+understanding."
+
+"I should be always coming, at that rate."
+
+Grace took no notice.  "Would you like to see how I look with my one
+eyebrow?" said she.  "Jael, please fetch it."
+
+While Jael was gone for the bust, Henry took a humbler tone, and in
+a low voice began to excuse his absence; and I think he would have
+told the real truth, if he had been encouraged a little; but he was
+met with a cold and withering assurance that it was a matter of no
+consequence.  Henry thought this unfair, and, knowing in his own
+heart it was ungrateful, he rebelled.  He bit his lip, sat down as
+gloomy as the grave, and resumed his work, silent and sullen.
+
+As for Jael, she brought in the bust, and then sat down with her
+bonnet on, quaking; for she felt sure that, in such a dismal dearth
+of conversation, Miss Carden would be certain to turn round very
+soon, and say, "Well, Jael, you can go now."
+
+But this Quaker's meeting was interrupted by a doctor looking in to
+prescribe for Miss Carden's cold.  The said cold was imperceptible
+to vulgar eyes, but Grace had detected it, and had written to her
+friend, Dr. Amboyne, to come and make it as imperceptible to herself
+as to the spectator.
+
+In rolled the doctor, and was not a little startled at sight of
+Little.
+
+"Hallo!" cried be.  "What, cured already?  Cairnhope forever!"  He
+then proceeded to feel his pulse instead of Miss Carden's, and
+inspect his eye, at which Grace Carden stared.
+
+"What, is he unwell?"
+
+"Why, a man does not get blown up with gunpowder without some little
+disturbance of the system."
+
+"Blown up with gunpowder!  What DO you mean?"
+
+"What, have you not heard about it?  Don't you read the newspapers?"
+
+"No; never."
+
+"Merciful powers!  But has he not told you?"
+
+"No; he tells us nothing."
+
+"Then I'll tell you, it is of no use your making faces at me.  There
+is no earthly reason why she should be kept in the dark.  These
+Hillsborough trades want to drive this young man out of town: why--
+is too long and intricate for you to follow.  He resists this
+tyranny, gently, but firmly."
+
+"I'd resist it furiously," said Grace.
+
+"The consequence is, they wrote him several threatening letters;
+and, at last, some caitiff put gunpowder into his forge; it
+exploded, and blew him out of a second-floor window."
+
+"Oh! oh!" screamed Grace Carden and Jael; and by one womanly impulse
+they both put their hands before their faces, as if to shut out the
+horrible picture.
+
+"What is that for?" said the doctor.  "You see he is all right now.
+But, I promise you, he cut a very different figure when I saw him
+directly afterward; he was scorched as black as a coal--"
+
+"Oh, doctor, don't; pray don't.  Oh, sir, why did you not tell me?"
+
+"And his face bleeding," continued the merciless doctor.
+
+"Oh dear! oh dear!"  And the sweet eyes were turned, all swimming in
+water upon Henry, with a look of angelic pity.
+
+"His nerves were terribly shaken, but there were no bones broken.  I
+said to myself, 'He must sleep or go mad, and he will not sleep in
+the town that has blown him up.'  I just drove the patient off to
+peace and pure air, and confided him to one of the best creatures in
+England--Martha Dence."
+
+Jael uttered an exclamation of wonder, which drew attention to her
+and her glowing cheeks.
+
+"Oh yes, Miss Jael," said Henry, "I was going to tell you.  I have
+been a fortnight with your people, and, if I live a hundred years, I
+shall not forget their goodness to me.  God bless them."
+
+"'Twas the least they could do," said Jael, softly.
+
+"What a pity you are going out.  I should have liked to talk to you
+about your father, and Martha, and George the blacksmith.  Doctor,
+who would live in a town after Cairnhope?"
+
+Jael's fingers trembled at her bonnet-strings, and, turning a look
+of piteous supplication on Grace, she faltered out, "If you please,
+miss, might I stay over to-day?"
+
+"Of course.  And then he will tell you all about your people, and
+that will do just as well as you going to see them; and better."
+
+Off came Jael's bonnet with wonderful celerity.
+
+"Get the whole story out of him," said Dr. Amboyne.  "It is well
+worth your attention.  As for me, I must go as soon as I have
+prescribed for you.  What is the matter?"
+
+"The matter is that there's nothing the matter; prescribe for that.
+And that I'm a goose--prescribe for that--and don't read the
+newspapers; prescribe for that."
+
+"Well, then, I prescribe the Hillsborough Liberal.  It has drawn a
+strong picture of this outrage, and shown its teeth to the Trades.
+And, if I might advise a lady of your age and experience, I would
+say, in future always read the newspapers.  They are, compared with
+books, what machinery is compared with hand-labor.  But, in this one
+instance, go to the fountain-head, and ask Mr. Henry Little there,
+to tell you his own tragedy, with all the ins and outs."
+
+"Ah! if he would," said Grace, turning her eyes on Henry.  "But he
+is not so communicative to poor us.  Is he, Jael?"
+
+"No, miss."
+
+"He never even told us his name.  Did he, Jael?"
+
+"No, miss.  He is very close."
+
+"Open him then," said the doctor.  "Come, come, there are a pair of
+you; and evidently disposed to act in concert; if you can not turn a
+man inside out, I disown you; you are a discredit to your sex."  He
+then shook hands with all three of them, and rolled away.
+
+"Jael," said Miss Carden, "oblige me by ringing the bell."
+
+A servant entered.
+
+"Not at home to any human creature," said the young lady.
+
+The servant retired.
+
+"And, if they see me at the window, all the worse--for THEM.  Now,
+Mr. Little?"
+
+Henry complied, and told the whole story, with the exception of the
+threat to his sweetheart; and passed two delightful hours.  Who is
+so devoid of egotism as not to like to tell his own adventures to
+sympathizing beauty?  He told it in detail, and even read them
+portions of the threatening letters; and, as he told it, their
+lovely eyes seemed on fire; and they were red, and pale, by turns.
+He told it, like a man, with dignity, and sobriety, and never used
+an epithet.  It was Miss Carden who supplied the "Monsters!"
+"Villains!" "Cowards!" "Wretches!" at due intervals.  And once she
+started from her seat, and said she could not bear it.  "I see
+through it all," she cried.  "That Jobson is a hypocrite; and he is
+at the bottom of it all.  I hate him; and Parkin worse.  As for the
+assassin, I hope God, who saw him, will punish him.  What I want to
+do is to kill Jobson and Parkin, one after another; kill them--kill
+them--kill them--I'll tell papa."
+
+As for Jael, she could not speak her mind, but she panted heavily,
+and her fingers worked convulsively, and clutched themselves very
+tight at last.
+
+When he had done his narrative, he said sadly, "I despise these
+fellows as much as you do; but they are too many for me.  I am
+obliged to leave Hillsborough."
+
+"What, let the wretches drive you away?  I would never do that--if I
+was a man."
+
+"What would you do, then?" asked Henry, his eye sparkling.
+
+"Do?  Why fight them; and beat them; and kill them, it is not as if
+they were brave men.  They are only cunning cowards.  I'd meet
+cunning with cunning.  I'd outwit them somehow.  I'd change my
+lodging every week, and live at little inns and places.  I'd lock up
+every thing I used, as well as the rooms.  I'd consult wiser heads,
+the editor of the Liberal, and the Head of the police.  I'd carry
+fire-arms, and have a bodyguard, night and day; but they should
+never say they had frightened me out of Hillsborough--if I was a
+man."
+
+"You are all right," cried Henry.  "I'll do all you advise me, and I
+won't be driven out of this place.  I love it.  I'll live in it or
+I'll die in it.  I'll never leave it."
+
+This was almost the last word that passed this delightful afternoon,
+when the sense of her own past injustice, the thrilling nature of
+the story told by the very sufferer, and, above all, the presence
+and the undisguised emotion of another sympathizing woman, thawed
+Grace Carden's reserve, warmed her courage, and carried her, quite
+unconsciously, over certain conventional bounds, which had,
+hitherto, been strictly observed in her intercourse with this young
+workman.
+
+Henry himself felt that this day was an era in his love.  When he
+left the door, he seemed to tread on air.  He walked to the first
+cab-stand, took a conveyance to his mother's door, and soon he was
+locked in her arms.
+
+She had been fretting for hours at his delay; but she never let him
+know it.  The whole place was full of preparations for his comfort,
+and certain delicacies he liked were laid out on a little side
+board, and the tea-things set, including the silver teapot, used now
+on high occasions only.
+
+She had a thousand questions to ask, and he to answer.  And, while
+he ate, the poor woman leaned back, and enjoyed seeing him eat; and,
+while he talked, her fine eyes beamed with maternal joy.  She
+reveled deliciously in his health, his beauty, and his safe return
+to her; and thought, with gentle complacency, they would soon return
+to London together.
+
+In the morning, she got out a large, light box, and said.  "Harry,
+dear, I suppose I may as well begin to pack up.  You know I take
+longer than you do."
+
+Henry blushed.  "Pack up?" said he, hesitatingly.  "We are not going
+away."
+
+"Not going away, love?  Why you agreed to leave, on account of those
+dreadful Unions."
+
+"Oh, I was ill, and nervous, and out of spirits; but the air of
+Cairnhope has made a man of me.  I shall stay here, and make our
+fortune."
+
+"But the air of Cairnhope has not made you friends with the unions."
+She seemed to reflect a moment, then asked him at what time he had
+left Cairnhope.
+
+"Eleven o'clock."
+
+"Ah!  And whom did you visit before you came to me?"
+
+"You question me like a child, mother."
+
+"Forgive me, dear.  I will answer my own question.  You called on
+some one who gave you bad advice."
+
+"Oh, did I?"
+
+"On some woman."
+
+"Say, a lady"
+
+"What does it matter to me?" cried Mrs. Little, wildly.  "They are
+all my enemies.  And this one is yours.  It is a woman, who is not
+your mother, for she thinks more of herself than of you."
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Henry had now to choose between his mother's advice, and Miss
+Carden's commands; and this made him rather sullen and irritable.
+He was glad to get out of his mother's house, and went direct to the
+works.  Bayne welcomed him warmly, and, after some friendly
+congratulations and inquiries, pulled out two files of journals, and
+told him he had promised to introduce him to the editor of the
+Liberal.  He then begged Henry to wait in the office, and read the
+files--he would not be gone many minutes.
+
+The Constitutional gave a dry narrative of the outrage, and mourned
+the frequency of such incidents.
+
+The Liberal gave a dramatic narrative, and said the miscreant must
+have lowered himself by a rope from the parapet, and passed the
+powder inside without entering.  "He periled his life to perpetrate
+this crime; and he also risked penal servitude for ten years.  That
+he was not deterred by the double risk, proves the influence of some
+powerful motive; and that motive must have been either a personal
+feud of a very virulent kind, or else trade fanaticism.  From this
+alternative there is no escape."
+
+Next day, both journals recorded a trade-meeting at "The Rising
+Sun."  Delegates from the Edge-Tool Forgers' Union, and the Edge-
+Tool Handlers' Union, and some other representatives of Hillsborough
+Unions, were present, and passed a resolution repudiating, with
+disgust, the outrage that had been recently committed, and directed
+their secretaries to offer a reward of twenty pounds, the same to be
+paid to any person who would give such information as should lead to
+the discovery of the culprit.
+
+On this the Constitutional commented as follows:--"Although we never
+for a moment suspected these respectable Unions of conniving at this
+enormity, yet it is satisfactory to find them not merely passive
+spectators, but exerting their energy, and spending their money, in
+a praiseworthy endeavor to discover and punish the offenders."
+
+Henry laid down the paper, and his heart felt very warm to Jobson
+and Parkin.  "Come," said he, "I am glad of that.  They are not half
+a bad sort, those two, after all."
+
+Then he took up the Liberal, and being young and generous, felt
+disgusted at its comment:
+
+"This appears to be creditable to the two Unions in question.  But,
+unfortunately, long experience proves that these small rewards never
+lead to any discovery.  They fail so invariably, that the Unions do
+not risk a shilling by proffering them.  In dramatic entertainments
+the tragedy is followed by a farce: and so it is with these
+sanguinary crimes in Hillsborough; they are always followed by a
+repudiation, and offers of a trumpery reward quite disproportionate
+to the offense, and the only result of the farce is to divert
+attention from the true line of inquiry as to who enacted the
+tragedy.  The mind craves novelty, and perhaps these delegates will
+indulge that desire by informing us for once, what was the personal
+and Corsican feud which led--as they would have us believe--to this
+outrage; and will, at the same time, explain to us why these
+outrages with gunpowder have never, either in this or in any
+preceding case, attacked any but non-union men."
+
+When Henry had read thus far, the writer of the leader entered the
+room with Mr. Bayne.
+
+A gentleman not above the middle height, but with a remarkable
+chest, both broad and deep; yet he was not unwieldy, like Dr.
+Amboyne, but clean-built, and symmetrical.  An agreeable face, with
+one remarkable feature, a mouth full of iron resolution, and a
+slight humorous dimple at the corners.
+
+He shook hands with Henry, and said, "I wish to ask you a question
+or two, in the way of business: but first let me express my
+sympathy, as a man, and my detestation of the ruffians that have so
+nearly victimized you."
+
+This was very hearty, and Henry thanked him with some emotion.
+"But, sir," said he, "if I am to reply to your questions, you must
+promise me you will never publish my name."
+
+"It is on account of his mother," whispered Bayne.
+
+"Yes, sir.  It was her misfortune to lose my father by a violent
+death, and of course you may imagine--"
+
+"Say no more," said Mr. Holdfast: "your name shall not appear.  And--
+let me see--does your mother know you work here?"
+
+"Yes, she does."
+
+"Then we had better keep Cheetham's name out as well."
+
+"Oh, thank you, sir, thank you.  Now I'll answer any questions you
+like."
+
+"Well, then, I hear this outrage was preceded by several letters.
+Could I see them?"
+
+"Certainly.  I carry mine always in my pocket, for fear my poor
+mother should see them: and, Mr. Bayne, you have got Cheetham's."
+
+In another minute the whole correspondence was on the table, and Mr.
+Holdfast laid it out in order, like a map, and went through it,
+taking notes.  "What a comedy," said he.  "All but the denouement.
+Now, Mr. Bayne, can any other manufacturers show me a correspondence
+of this kind?"
+
+"Is there one that can't?  There isn't a power-wheel, or a water-
+wheel, within eight miles of Hillsborough, that can't show you just
+such a correspondence as this; and rattening, or worse, at the tail
+of it."
+
+Mr. Holdfast's eye sparkled like a diamond.  "I'll make the round,"
+said he.  "And, Mr. Little, perhaps you will be kind enough to go
+with me, and let me question you, on the road.  I have no sub-
+editor; no staff; I carry the whole journal on my head.  Every day
+is a hard race between Time and me, and not a minute to spare."
+
+Mr. Cheetham was expected at the works this afternoon: so Henry, on
+leaving Mr. Holdfast, returned to them, and found him there with
+Bayne, looking, disconsolately, over a dozen orders for carving-
+tools.
+
+"Glad to see you again, my lad," said Cheetham.  "Why, you look all
+the better."
+
+"I'm none the worse, sir."
+
+"Come to take your balance and leave me?"  This was said half
+plaintively, half crossly.
+
+"If you wish it, sir."
+
+"Not I.  How is it to be?"
+
+"Well, sir, I say to you what you said to me the other day, Stick to
+me, and I'll stick to you."
+
+"I'll stick to you."
+
+Bayne held up his hands piteously to them both.
+
+"What sir?" faltered he, turning to Cheetham.  "after all your
+experience!" then to Henry, "What, fight the Trades, after the
+lesson they have given you?"
+
+"I'll fight them all the more for that," said Henry, grinding his
+teeth; "fight them till all is blue."
+
+"So will I.  That for the Trades!"
+
+"Heaven help you both!" groaned Bayne, and looked the picture of
+despair.
+
+"You promised me shutters, with a detonator, sir."
+
+"Ay, but you objected."
+
+"That was before they blew me up."
+
+"Just so.  Shutters shall be hung to-morrow; and the detonators I'll
+fix myself."
+
+"Thank you, sir.  Would you mind engaging a watchman?"
+
+Hum?  Not--if you will share the expense."
+
+"I'll pay one-third."
+
+"Why should I pay two thirds?  It is not like shutters and Bramah
+locks: they are property.  However, he'll be good against rattening;
+and you have lost a fortnight, and there are a good many orders.
+Give me a good day's work, and we won't quarrel over the watchman."
+He then inquired, rather nervously, whether there was anything more.
+
+"No, sir: we are agreed.  And I'll give you good work, and full
+time."
+
+
+The die was cast, and now he must go home and face his mother.  For
+the first time this many years he was half afraid to go near her.
+He dreaded remonstrances and tears: tears that he could not dry;
+remonstrances that would worry him, but could not shake him.
+
+This young man, who had just screwed his physical courage up to defy
+the redoubtable Unions had a fit of moral cowardice, and was so
+reluctant to encounter the gentlest woman in England, that he dined
+at a chop-house, and then sauntered into a music hall, and did not
+get home till past ten, meaning to say a few kind, hurried words,
+then yawn, and slip to bed.
+
+But, meantime, Mrs. Little's mind had not been idle.  She had long
+divined a young rival in her son's heart, and many a little pang of
+jealousy had traversed her own.  This morning, with a quickness
+which may seem remarkable to those who have not observed the
+watchful keenness of maternal love, she had seen that her rival had
+worked upon Henry to resign his declared intention of leaving
+Hillsborough.  Then she felt her way, and, in a moment, she had
+found the younger woman was the stronger.
+
+She assumed as a matter of course, that this girl was in love with
+Henry (who would not be in love with him?), and had hung, weeping,
+round his neck, when he called from Cairnhope to bid her farewell,
+and had made him promise to stay.  This was the mother's theory;
+wrong, but rational.
+
+Then came the question, What should she do?  Fight against youth and
+nature?  Fight, unlikely to succeed, sure to irritate and disturb.
+Risk any of that rare affection and confidence her son had always
+given her?
+
+While her thoughts ran this way, seven o'clock came, and no Henry.
+Eight o'clock, and no Henry.  "Ah!" thought the mother, "that one
+word of mine has had this effect already."
+
+She prepared an exquisite little supper.  She made her own toilet
+with particular care; and, when all was ready, she sat down and
+comforted herself by reading his letters, and comparing his love
+with the cavalier behavior of so many sons in this island, the most
+unfilial country in Europe.
+
+At half past ten Henry came up the stairs, not with the usual light
+elastic tread, but with slow, hesitating foot.  Her quick ear caught
+that too, and her gentle bosom yearned.  What, had she frightened
+him?  He opened the door, and she rose to receive him all smiles.
+"You are rather late, dear," she said; "but all the better.  It has
+given me an excuse for reading your dear letters all over again; and
+I have a thousand questions to ask you about Cairnhope.  But sit
+down first, and have your supper."
+
+Henry brightened up, and ate a good supper, and his mother plied him
+with questions, all about Cairnhope.
+
+Here was an unexpected relief.  Henry took a superficial view of all
+this.  Sharp young men of twenty-four understand a great many
+things; but they can't quite measure their mothers yet.
+
+Henry was selfishly pleased, but not ungrateful, and they passed a
+pleasant and affectionate time: and, as for leaving Hillsborough,
+the topic was avoided by tacit consent.
+
+Next morning, after this easy victory, Henry took a cab and got to
+"Woodbine Villa" by a circuitous route.  His heart beat high as he
+entered the room where Grace was seated.  After the extraordinary
+warmth and familiarity she had shown him at the last interview, he
+took for granted he had made a lasting progress in her regard.
+
+But she received him with a cold and distant manner, that quite
+benumbed him.  Grace Carden's face and manner were so much more
+expressive than other people's, that you would never mistake or
+doubt the mood she was in; and this morning she was freezing.
+
+The fact is, Miss Carden had been tormenting herself: and when
+beauty suffers, it is very apt to make others suffer as well.
+
+"I am glad you are come, Mr. Little," said she, "for I have been
+taking myself to task ever since, and I blame myself very much for
+some things I said.  In the first place, it was not for me" (here
+the fair speaker colored up to the temples) "to interfere in your
+affairs at all: and then, if I must take such a liberty, I ought to
+have advised you sensibly, and for your good.  I have been asking
+people, and they all tell me it is madness for one person to fight
+against these Unions.  Everybody gets crushed.  So now let me hope
+you will carry out your wise intention, and leave Hillsborough; and
+then my conscience will be at ease."
+
+Every word fell like an icicle on her hearer's heart.  To please
+this cold, changeful creature, he had settled to defy the
+unchangeable Unions, and had been ready to resist his mother, and
+slight her immortal and unchanging love.
+
+"You don't answer me, sir!" said Miss Carden, with an air of lofty
+surprise.
+
+"I answered you yesterday," said he sullenly.  "A man can't chop and
+change like a weathercock."
+
+"But it is not changing, it's only going back to your own intention.
+You know you were going to leave Hillsborough, before I talked all
+that nonsense.  Your story had set me on fire, and that's my only
+excuse.  Well, now, the same person takes the liberty to give you
+wise and considerate advice, instead of hot, and hasty, romantic
+nonsense.  Which ought you to respect most--folly or reason--from
+the same lips?"
+
+Henry seemed to reflect.  "That sounds reasonable," said he: "but,
+when you advised me not to show the white feather, you spoke your
+heart; now, you are only talking from your head.  Then, your
+beautiful eyes flashed fire, and your soul was in your words: who
+could resist them?  And you spoke to me like a friend; now you speak
+to me like an enemy."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Little, that is ridiculous."
+
+"You do, though.  And I'm sure I don't know why."
+
+"Nor I.  Perhaps because I am cross with myself; certainly not with
+you."
+
+"I am glad of that.  Well, then, the long and the short is, you
+showed me you thought it cowardly to fly from the Trades.  You
+wouldn't, said you, if you were a man.  Well, I'm a man; and I'll do
+as you would do in my place.  I'll not throw my life away, I'll meet
+craft with craft, and force with force; but fly I never will.  I'll
+fight while I've a leg to stand on."
+
+With these words he began to work on the bust, in a quiet dogged way
+that was, nevertheless, sufficiently expressive.
+
+Grace looked at him silently for half a minute, and then rose from
+her chair.
+
+"Then," said she, "I must go for somebody of more authority than I
+am."  She sailed out of the room.
+
+Henry asked Jael who she was gone for.
+
+"It will be her papa," said Jael.
+
+"As if I care for what he says."
+
+"I wouldn't show HER that, if I was you," said Jael, quietly, but
+with a good deal of weight.
+
+"You are right," said Henry.  "You are a good girl.  I don't know
+which is the best, you or Martha.  I say, I promised to go to
+Cairnhope some Sunday, and see them all.  Shall I drive you over?"
+
+"And bring me back at night?"
+
+"If you like.  I must come back."
+
+"I'll ask Miss Carden."
+
+The words were quiet and composed, but the blushing face beamed with
+unreasonable happiness; and Grace, who entered at that moment with
+her father, was quite struck with its eloquence; she half started,
+but took no further notice just then.  "There, papa," said she,
+"this is Mr. Little."
+
+
+Mr. Carden was a tall gentleman, with somewhat iron features, but a
+fine head of gray hair; rather an imposing personage; not the least
+pompous though; quite a man of the world, and took a business view
+of everything, matrimony, of course, included.
+
+"Oh, this is Mr. Little, is it, whose work we all admire so much?"
+
+"Yes, papa."
+
+"And whose adventure has made so much noise?"
+
+"Yes, papa."
+
+"By-the-bye, there is an article to-day on you: have you seen it?
+No?  But you should see it; it is very smart.  My dear" (to Jael),
+"will you go to my study, and bring the Liberal here?"
+
+"Yes, but meantime, I want you to advise him not to subject himself
+to more gunpowder and things, but to leave the town; that is all the
+wretches demand."
+
+"And that," said Henry, with a sly, deferential tone, "is a good
+deal to demand in a free country, is it not, sir?"
+
+"Indeed it is.  Ah, here comes the Liberal.  Somebody read the
+article to us, while he works.  I want to see how he does it."
+
+Curiosity overpowered Grace's impatience, for a moment, and she read
+the notice out with undisguised interest.
+
+
+       "'THE LAST OUTRAGE.
+
+"'In our first remarks upon this matter, we merely laid down an
+alternative which admits of no dispute; and, abstaining from idle
+conjectures, undertook to collect evidence.  We have now had an
+interview with the victim of that abominable outrage.  Mr.---- is
+one of those superior workmen who embellish that class for a few
+years, but invariably rise above it, and leave it' (there--Mr.
+Little!)--'He has informed us that he is a stranger in Hillsborough,
+lives retired, never sits down in a public-house, and has not a
+single enemy in Hillsborough, great or small.  He says that his life
+was saved by his fellow-workmen, and that as he lay scorched--'(Oh,
+dear!')
+
+"Well, go on, Grace."
+
+"It is all very well to say go on, papa--'scorched and bleeding on
+the ground and unable to distinguish faces' (poor, poor Mr. Little!)
+'he heard, on all sides of him, expressions of rugged sympathy and
+sobs, and tears, from rough, but--manly fellows, who--'(oh! oh!
+oh!")
+
+Grace could not go on for whimpering, and Jael cried, for company.
+Henry left off carving, and turned away his head, touched to the
+heart by this sweet and sudden sympathy.
+
+"How badly you read," said Mr. Carden, and took the journal from
+her.  He read in a loud business-like monotone, that, like some
+blessed balm, dried every tear.  "'Manly fellows who never shed a
+tear before: this disposed of one alternative, and narrowed the
+inquiry.  It was not a personal feud; therefore it was a Trade
+outrage, or it was nothing.  We now took evidence bearing on the
+inquiry thus narrowed; and we found the assault had been preceded by
+a great many letters, all of them breathing the spirit of Unionism,
+and none of them intimating a private wrong.  These letters, taken
+in connection, are a literary curiosity; and we find there is
+scarcely a manufacturer in the place who has not endured a similar
+correspondence, and violence at the end of it.  This curious chapter
+of the human mind really deserves a separate heading, and we
+introduce it to our readers as
+
+       "THE LITERATURE OF OUTRAGE."
+
+"'First of all comes a letter to the master intimating that he is
+doing something objectionable to some one of the many Unions that go
+to make a single implement of hardware.  This letter has three
+features.  It is signed with a real name.  It is polite.  It is
+grammatical.
+
+"'If disregarded, it is speedily followed by another.  No. 2 is
+grammatical, or thereabouts; but, under a feigned politeness, the
+insolence of a vulgar mind shows itself pretty plainly, and the
+master is reminded what he suffered on some former occasion when he
+rebelled against the trades.  This letter is sometimes anonymous,
+generally pseudonymous.
+
+"'If this reminder of the past and intimation of the future is
+disregarded, the refractory master gets a missive, which begins with
+an affectation of coarse familiarity, and then rises, with a
+ludicrous bound, into brutal and contemptuous insolence.  In this
+letter, grammar is flung to the winds, along with good manners; but
+spelling survives, by a miracle.  Next comes a short letter, full of
+sanguinary threats, and written in, what we beg leave to christen,
+the Dash dialect, because, though used by at least three million
+people in England, and three thousand in Hillsborough, it can only
+be printed with blanks, the reason being simply this, that every
+sentence is measled with oaths and indecencies.  These letters are
+also written phonetically, and, as the pronunciation, which directs
+the spelling, is all wrong, the double result is prodigious.
+Nevertheless, many of these pronunciations are ancient, and were
+once universal.  An antiquarian friend assures us the orthography of
+these blackguards, the scum of the nineteenth century, is
+wonderfully like that of a mediaeval monk or baron.
+
+"'When the correspondence has once descended to the Dash dialect,
+written phonetically, it never remounts toward grammar, spelling or
+civilization; and the next in the business is rattening, or else
+beating, or shooting, or blowing-up the obnoxious individual by
+himself, or along with a houseful of people quite strange to the
+quarrel.  Now, it is manifest to common sense, that all this is one
+piece of mosaic, and that the criminal act it all ends in is no more
+to be disconnected from the last letter, than the last letter from
+its predecessor, or letter three from letter two.  Here is a crime
+first gently foreshadowed, then grimly intimated, then directly
+threatened, then threatened in words that smell of blood and
+gunpowder, and then--done.  The correspondence and the act reveal--
+
+     "The various talents, but the single mind."
+
+"'In face of this evidence, furnished by themselves, the trades
+Unions, some member of which has committed this crime, will do well
+to drop the worn-out farce of offering a trumpery reward and to take
+a direct and manly course.  They ought to accept Mr.----'s
+preposterously liberal offer, and admit him to the two Unions, and
+thereby disown the criminal act in the form most consolatory to the
+sufferer: or else they should face the situation, and say, "This act
+was done under our banner, though not by our order, and we stand by
+it."  The Liberal will continue to watch the case.'"
+
+
+"This will be a pill," said Mr. Carden, laying down the paper.
+"Why, they call the Liberal the workman's advocate."
+
+"Yes, papa," said Grace; "but how plainly he shows--  But Mr. Little
+is a stranger, and even this terrible lesson has not--  So do pray
+advise him."
+
+"I shall be very happy; but, when you are my age, you will know it
+is of little use intruding advice upon people."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Little will treat it with proper respect, coming from one
+so much older than himself, and better acquainted with this wretched
+town.  Will you not, Mr. Little?" said she, with so cunning a
+sweetness that the young fellow was entrapped, and assented, before
+he knew what he was about; then colored high at finding himself
+committed.
+
+Mr. Carden reflected a moment.  He then said, "I can't take upon
+myself to tell any man to give up his livelihood.  But one piece of
+advice I can conscientiously give Mr. Little."
+
+"Yes, papa."
+
+"And that is--TO INSURE HIS LIFE."
+
+"Oh, papa!" cried Grace.
+
+As for Henry he was rather amused, and his lip curled satirically.
+But the next moment he happened to catch sight of Jael Dence's face;
+her gray eyes were expanded with a look of uneasiness; and, directly
+she caught his eye she fixed it, and made him a quick movement of
+the head, directing him to assent.
+
+There was something so clear and decided in the girl's manner that
+it overpowered Henry who had no very clear idea to oppose to it, and
+he actually obeyed the nod of this girl, whom he had hitherto looked
+on as an amiable simpleton.
+
+"I have no objection to that," said he, turning to Mr. Carden.
+Then, after another look at Jael, he said, demurely, "Is there any
+insurance office you could recommend?"
+
+Mr. Carden smiled.  "There is only one I have a right to recommend,
+and that is the 'Gosshawk.'  I am a director.  But," said he, with
+sudden stiffness, "I could furnish you with the names of many
+others."
+
+Henry saw his way clear by this time.  "No, sir, if I profit by your
+advice, the least I can do is to choose the one you are a director
+of."
+
+Grace, who had latterly betrayed uneasiness and irritation, now
+rose, red as fire.  "The conversation is taking a turn I did not at
+all intend," said she, and swept out of the room with royal disdain.
+
+Her father apologized carelessly for her tragical exit.  "That is a
+young lady who detests business; but she does not object to its
+fruits--dresses, lace, footmen, diamonds, and a carriage to drive
+about in.  On the contrary, she would be miserable without them."
+
+"I should hope she never will be without them, sir."
+
+"I'll take care of that."
+
+Mr. Carden said this rather dryly, and then retired for a minute;
+and Grace who was not far off, with an ear like a hare, came back
+soon after.
+
+But in the meantime Henry left his seat and went to Jael, and,
+leaning over her as she worked, said, "There is more in that head of
+yours than I thought."
+
+"Oh, they all talk before me," said Jael, blushing faintly, and
+avoiding his eye.
+
+"Jael Dence," said the young man, warmly, "I'm truly obliged to
+you."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"For your good advice.  I didn't see how good it was till after I
+had taken it."
+
+"I'm afeard Miss Grace gave you better."
+
+"She advised me against my heart.  What is the use of that?"
+
+"Ay, young men are willful."
+
+"Come, come, don't you go back.  You are my friend and counselor."
+
+"That is something," said Jael, in a low voice; and her hands
+trembled at her side.
+
+"Why, my dear girl, what's the matter?"
+
+"Hush! hush?"
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Grace came in, that moment, with a superb air.  She settled herself
+on the sofa.
+
+"Now, it is my turn, if you please.  Pray, sir, do you think your
+life will be any safer for your insuring it?  Insuring does not mean
+that you are not to be killed; but that, when you ARE, for your
+obstinacy, somebody else will get paid some money, to dance with
+over your grave."
+
+"I beg your pardon, Grace," said Mr. Carden, entering with some
+printed papers in his hand.  "That is not the only use of an
+insurance.  He may want to marry, or to borrow a sum of money to
+begin business; and then a policy of insurance, with two or three
+premiums paid, smooths the difficulty.  Everybody should make a
+will, and everybody should insure his life."
+
+"Well then, sir, I will do both."
+
+"Stop!" said Mr. Carden, who could now afford to be candid.  "First
+of all, you ought to satisfy yourself of the flourishing condition
+of the company.  He handed him a prospectus.  "This will show you
+our capital, and our disbursements last year, and the balance of
+profit declared.  And this gives the balance sheet of the 'Vulture'
+and the 'Falcon,' which have assigned their business to us, and are
+now incorporated in the 'Gosshawk.'"
+
+"Oh, what a voracious bird!" observed Grace.  "I hope these other
+chickabiddies will not prove indigestible.  Were they plucked first,
+papa? or did the 'Gosshawk' swallow them feathers and all?"
+
+Little laughed heartily at this pert sally, but Mr. Carden winced
+under it.
+
+Then Grace saw she was not quite weaponless, and added, "After such
+a meal, as that, Mr. Little, you will go down like a crumb."
+
+"Grace, that is enough," said Mr. Carden, rather severely.
+
+Grace held her tongue directly, and the water came into her eyes.
+Anything like serious remonstrance was a novelty to her.
+
+When Henry had read the papers, Mr. Carden asked him, rather
+carelessly, what sum he wished to be insured for.
+
+Now Henry had so little wish about the matter, that he had not given
+it a thought, and the question took him quite aback.  He looked
+helplessly at Jael.  To his surprise, she decided on the sum for
+him, without a moment's hesitation, and conveyed the figure with
+that dexterity which the simplest of her sex can command whenever
+telegraphy is wanted.  She did it with two unbroken movements; she
+put up all the fingers of her right hand to her brow, and that meant
+five: then she turned her hand rapidly, so as to hide her mouth from
+the others, who were both on her right hand, and she made the word
+thousand clear, with her lips and tongue, especially the "th."
+
+But the sum staggered Henry; and made him think he must be
+misinterpreting her.
+
+He hesitated, to gain time.  "Hum!" said he, "the sum?"
+
+Jael repeated her pantomime as before.
+
+Still Henry doubted, and, to feel his way, said, half interrogatively,
+"Five--thou--sand?"
+
+Jael nodded.
+
+"Five thousand pounds," said Henry, as bold as brass.
+
+"Five thousand pounds!" cried Mr. Carden.  "A workman insure his
+life for five thousand pounds!"
+
+"Well, a man's life is worth five thousand pounds, or it is worth
+nothing.  And, sir, how long do you think I shall be a workman,
+especially in Hillsborough, where from workman to master is no more
+than hopping across a gutter?"
+
+Mr. Carden smiled approval.  "But five thousand pounds!  The annual
+premium will be considerable.  May I ask about how much you make a
+year?"
+
+"Oh, papa!"
+
+"Well, sir, Mr. Cheetham pays me L300 a year, at the rate of, and I
+can make another L100 by carving at odd times.  But, if you doubt my
+ability, let us stay as we are, sir.  It was your proposal, not
+mine, you know."
+
+"Young man," said Mr. Carden, "never be peppery in business."  He
+said this so solemnly and paternally, it sounded like the eleventh
+commandment.
+
+To conclude, it was arranged Henry should take the higher class of
+insurance, which provided for accidents, voyages, everything, and
+should be insured for L5000, provided the physician appointed by the
+company should pronounce him free from disease.
+
+Henry then rose, and said, sorrowfully, to Grace, "You will not see
+me here very often now; and never on Saturday afternoon or Monday
+morning.  I am not going to have some blackguard tracking me, and
+flinging a can of gunpowder in at your window.  When I do come, it
+will be in the morning, and on a working day; and I shall perhaps go
+ten miles round to get here.  It must be diamond cut diamond, for
+many a month to come, between the Trades and me."  He uttered these
+words with manly gravity, as one who did not underrate the peril he
+was resolved to face; and left them with a respectful bow.
+
+"That's a rising man," said Mr. Carden; "and may draw a hundred of
+his class to the 'Gosshawk.'  It was a good stroke of business,
+quite out of the common."
+
+Grace said not a word, but she shook her head and looked pained and
+ill at ease.  Jael watched her fixedly.
+
+Henry called at the works that night, and examined the new defenses,
+with Mr. Cheetham.  He also bought a powerful magnifying-glass; and
+next morning he came to the factory, examined the cinders, and
+everything else, with the magnifier, lighted his forge, and resumed
+his work.
+
+At dinner-time he went out and had his chop, and read the Liberal;
+it contained a letter from Jobson, in reply to the editor.
+
+Jobson deplored the criminal act, admitted that the two Unions had
+decided no individual could be a forger, a handler, and a cutler;
+such an example was subversive of all the Unions in the city, based,
+as they were, on subdivision of crafts.  "But," said Mr Jobson, "we
+were dealing with the matter in a spirit quite inconsistent with
+outrages, and I am so anxious to convince the public of this, that I
+have asked a very experienced gentleman to examine our minute-books,
+and report accordingly."
+
+This letter was supplemented by one from Mr. Grotait, secretary of
+the Saw-Grinders, which ran thus:--"Messrs. Parkin and Jobson have
+appealed to me to testify to certain facts.  I was very reluctant to
+interfere, for obvious reasons; but was, at last, prevailed on to
+examine the minute-books of those two Unions, and they certainly do
+prove that on the very evening before the explosion, those trades
+had fully discussed Mr. ----'s case" (the real name was put, but
+altered by the editor), "and had disposed of it as follows.  They
+agreed, and this is entered accordingly, to offer him his traveling
+expenses (first class) to London, and one pound per week, from their
+funds, until such time as he should obtain employment.  I will only
+add, that both these secretaries spoke kindly to me of Mr. ----;
+and, believing them to be sincere, I ventured to advise them to mark
+their disapproval of the criminal act, by offering him two pounds
+per week, instead of one pound; which advice they have accepted very
+readily."
+
+Henry was utterly confounded by these letters.
+
+Holdfast commented on them thus:
+
+"Messrs. Jobson and Parkin virtually say that if A, for certain
+reasons, pushes a man violently out of Hillsborough, and B draws him
+gently out of Hillsborough for the same reasons, A and B can not
+possibly be co-operating.  Messrs. Parkin and Jobson had so little
+confidence in this argument, which is equivalent to saying there is
+no such thing as cunning in trade, that they employed a third party
+to advance it with all the weight of his popularity and seeming
+impartiality.  But who is this candid person that objects to assume
+the judge, and assumes the judge?  He is the treasurer and secretary
+of an Union that does not number three hundred persons; yet in that
+small Union, of which he is dictator, there has been as much
+rattening, and more shooting, and blowing-up wholesale and retail,
+with the farcical accompaniment of public repudiation, than in all
+the other Unions put together.  We consider the entrance of this
+ingenuous personage on the scene a bad omen, and shall watch all
+future proceedings with increased suspicion."
+
+Henry had hardly done reading this, when a man came into the works,
+and brought him his fifteen pounds back from Mr. Jobson, and a line,
+offering him his expenses to London, and two pounds per week, from
+the Edge-Tool Forgers' box, till he should find employment.  Henry
+took his money, and sent back word that the proposal came too late;
+after the dastardly attempt to assassinate him, he should defy the
+Unions, until they accepted his terms.  Jobson made no reply.  And
+Henry defied the Unions.
+
+The Unions lay still, like some great fish at the bottom of a pool,
+and gave no sign of life or animosity.  This did not lull Henry into
+a false security.  He never relaxed a single precaution.  He avoided
+"Woodbine Villa;" he dodged and doubled like a hare, to hide his own
+abode.  But he forged, handled, and finished, in spite of the
+Unions.
+
+The men were civil to him in the yard, and he had it all his own
+way, apparently.
+
+He was examined by a surgeon, and reported healthy.  He paid the
+insurance premium, and obtained the policy.  So now he felt secure,
+under the aegis of the Press, and the wing of the" Gosshawk."  By-
+and-by, that great fish I have mentioned gave a turn of its tail,
+and made his placid waters bubble a little.
+
+A woman came into the yard, with a can of tea for her husband, and a
+full apron.  As she went out, she emptied a set of tools out of her
+apron on to an old grindstone, and slipped out.
+
+The news of this soon traveled into the office, and both Cheetham
+and Bayne came out to look at them.
+
+They were a set of carving-tools, well made, and highly polished;
+and there was a scrap of paper with this distich:
+
+
+     "We are Hillsborough made,
+      Both haft and blade."
+
+
+Cheetham examined them, and said, "Well, they are clever fellows.  I
+declare these come very near Little's: call him down and let us draw
+him."
+
+Bayne called to Henry, and that brought him down, and several more,
+who winded something.
+
+"Just look at these," said Cheetham.
+
+Little colored: he saw the finger of the Unions at once, and
+bristled all over with caution and hostility.
+
+"I see them, sir.  They are very fair specimens of cutlery; and
+there are only about twenty tools wanting to make a complete set;
+but there is one defect in them as carving-tools."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"They are useless.  You can't carve wood with them.  None but a
+practical carver can design these tools, and then he must invent and
+make the steel molds first.  Try and sell them in London or Paris,
+you'll soon find the difference.  Mr. Bayne, I wonder you should
+call me from my forge to examine 'prentice-work."  And, with this,
+he walked off disdainfully, but not quite easy in his mind, for he
+had noticed a greedy twinkle in Cheetham's eye.
+
+The next day all the grinders in Mr. Cheetham's employ, except the
+scissors-grinders, rose, all of a sudden, like a flock of
+partridges, and went out into the road.
+
+"What is up now?" inquired Bayne.  The answer was, their secretaries
+had sent for them.
+
+They buzzed in the road, for a few minutes, and then came back to
+work.
+
+At night there was a great meeting at the "Cutlers' Arms," kept by
+Mr. Grotait.
+
+At noon the next day, all the grinders aforesaid in Mr. Cheetham's
+employ walked into the office, and left, each of them, a signed
+paper to this effect:
+
+"This is to give you notice that I will leave your service a week
+after the date thereof."  (Meaning "hereof," I presume.)
+
+Cheetham asked several of them what was up.  Some replied civilly,
+it was a trade matter.  Others suggested Mr. Cheetham knew as much
+about it as they did.
+
+Not a single hot or uncivil word was spoken on either side.  The
+game had been played too often for that, and with results too
+various.
+
+One or two even expressed a sort of dogged regret.  The grinder
+Reynolds, a very honest fellow, admitted, to Mr. Cheetham, that he
+thought it a sorry trick, for a hundred men to strike against one
+that had had a squeak for his life.  "But no matter what I think or
+what I say, I must do what the Union bids me, sir."
+
+"I know that, my poor fellow," said Cheetham.  "I quarrel with none
+of you.  I fight you all.  The other masters, in this town, are
+mice, but I'm a man."
+
+This sentiment he repeated very often during the next six days.
+
+The seventh came and the grinders never entered the works.
+
+Cheetham looked grave.  However, he said to Bayne, "Go and find out
+where they are.  Do it cleverly now.  Don't be noticed."
+
+Bayne soon ascertained they were all in the neighboring public-
+houses.
+
+"I thought so," said Cheetham.  "They will come in, before night.
+They sha'n't beat me, the vagabonds.  I'm a man, I'm not a mouse."
+
+"Orders pouring in, sir," sighed Bayne.  "And the grinders are
+rather behind the others in their work already."
+
+"They must have known that: or why draw out the grinders?  How could
+they know it?"
+
+"Sir," said Bayne, "they say old Smitem is in this one.  Wherever he
+is, the master's business is known, or guessed, heaven knows how;
+and, if there is a hole in his coat, that hole is hit.  Just look at
+the cleverness of it, sir.  Here we are, wrong with the forgers and
+handlers.  Yet they come into the works and take their day's wages.
+But they draw out the grinders, and mutilate the business.  They
+hurt you as much as if they struck, and lost their wages.  But no,
+they want their wages to help pay the grinders on strike.  Your only
+chance was to discharge every man in the works, the moment the
+grinders gave notice."
+
+"Why didn't you tell me so, then?"
+
+"Because I'm not old Smitem.  He can see a thing beforehand.  I can
+see it afterward.  I'm like the weatherwise man's pupil; as good as
+my master, give me time.  The master could tell you, at sunrise,
+whether the day would be wet or dry, and the pupil he could tell you
+at sunset: and that is just the odds between old Smitem and me."
+
+"Well, if he is old Smitem, I'm old Fightem."
+
+At night, he told Bayne he had private information, that the
+grinders were grumbling at being made a cat's-paw of by the forgers
+and the handlers.  "Hold on," said he; "they will break up before
+morning."
+
+At ten o'clock next day he came down to the works, and some
+peremptory orders had poured in.  "They must wait," said he,
+peevishly.
+
+At twelve he said, "How queer the place seems, and not a grindstone
+going.  It seems as still as the grave.  I'm a man; I'm not a
+mouse."
+
+Mr. Cheetham repeated this last fact in zoology three times, to
+leave no doubt of it in his own mind, I suppose.
+
+At 1.00, he said he would shut up the works rather than be a slave.
+
+At 1.15 he blustered.
+
+At 1.20 he gave in: collapsed in a moment, like a punctured bladder.
+"Bayne," said he, with a groan, "go to Jobson, and ask him to come
+and talk this foolish business over."
+
+"Excuse me, sir," said Bayne.  "Don't be offended; but you are vexed
+and worried, and whoever the Union sends to you will be as cool as
+marble.  I have just heard it is Redcar carries the conditions."
+
+"What, the foreman of my own forgers!  Is he to dictate to me?"
+cried Cheetham, grinding his teeth with indignation.
+
+"Well, sir, what does it matter?" said Bayne, soothingly.  "He is no
+more than a mouthpiece."
+
+"Go for him," said Cheetham, sullenly.
+
+"But, sir, I can't bear that your own workman should see you so
+agitated."
+
+"Oh, I shall be all right the moment I see my man before me."
+
+Bayne went off, and soon returned with Redcar.  The man had his coat
+on, but had not removed his leathern apron.
+
+Cheetham received him as the representative of the Unions.  "Sit
+down, Redcar, and let us put an end to this little bother.  What do
+you require?"
+
+"Mr. Little's discharge, sir."
+
+"Are you aware he is with me on a month's notice?"
+
+"They make a point of his leaving the works at once, sir; and I was
+to beg you to put other hands into his room."
+
+"It is taking a great liberty to propose that."
+
+"Nay.  They only want to be satisfied.  He has given a vast o'
+trouble."
+
+"I'll give him a month's warning.  If I discharge him on the spot,
+he can sue me."
+
+"That has been thought on.  If he sues you, you can talk to the
+Unions, and they will act with you.  But the grinders are not to
+come in till Little is out."
+
+"Well, so be it, then."
+
+"And his rooms occupied by Union men?"
+
+"If I swallow the bolus, I may as well swallow the pills.  Anything
+more?"
+
+"The grinders are not to lose their time; a day and a half."
+
+"What! am I to pay them for not working?"
+
+"Well, sir, if we had come to you, of course the forgers and
+handlers would have paid the grinders for lost time; but, as you
+have come to us, you will have to pay them."
+
+Cheetham made a wry face; but acquiesced.
+
+"And then, sir," said Redcar, "there's another little matter.  The
+incidental expenses of the strike."
+
+"I don't know what you mean."
+
+"The expenses incurred by the secretaries, and a little present to
+another gentleman, who advised us.  It comes to thirty pounds
+altogether."
+
+"What!" cried Cheetham, struggling with his rising choler.  "You
+want me to pay men thirty pounds for organizing a strike, that will
+cost me so dear, and rob me of a whole trade that was worth L300 a
+year?  Why not charge me for the gunpowder you blew up Little with,
+and spoiled my forge?  No, Bayne, no; this is too unjust and too
+tyrannical.  Flesh and blood won't bear it.  I'll shut up the works,
+and go back to my grindstone.  Better live on bread and water than
+live like a slave."
+
+Redcar took a written paper out of his pocket.  "There are the terms
+written down," said he, "if you sign them, the strike ends; if you
+don't, it continues--till you do."
+
+Cheetham writhed under the pressure.  Orders were pouring in; trade
+brisk; hands scarce.  Each day would add a further loss of many
+pounds for wages, and doubtless raise fresh exactions.  He gulped
+down something very like a sob, and both his hand and his voice
+shook with strong passion as he took the pen.  "I'll sign it; but if
+ever my turn comes, I'll remember this against you.  This shows what
+they really are, Bayne.  Oh, if ever you workmen get power, GOD HELP
+THE WORLD!"
+
+These words seemed to come in a great prophetic agony out of a
+bursting heart.
+
+But the representative of the Unions was neither moved by them nor
+irritated.
+
+"All right," said he, phlegmatically; "the winner takes his bite:
+the loser gets his bark: that's reason."
+
+
+Henry Little was in his handling-room, working away, with a bright
+perspective before him, when Bayne knocked at the door, and entered
+with Redcar.  Bayne's face wore an expression so piteous, that Henry
+divined mischief at once.
+
+"Little, my poor fellow, it is all over.  We are obliged to part
+with you."
+
+"Cheetham has thrown me over?"
+
+"What could he do?  I am to ask you to vacate these rooms, that we
+may get our half-day out of the grinders."
+
+Henry turned pale, but there was no help for it.
+
+He got up in a very leisurely way; and, while he was putting on his
+coat, he told Bayne, doggedly, he should expect his month's salary.
+
+As he was leaving, Redcar spoke to him in rather a sheepish way.
+"Shake hands, old lad," said he; "thou knows one or t'other must
+win; and there's not a grain of spite against thee.  It's just a
+trade matter."
+
+Henry stood with his arms akimbo, and looked at Redcar.  "I was in
+hopes," said he, grinding his teeth, "you were going to ask me to
+take a turn with you in the yard, man to man.  But I can't refuse my
+hand to one of my own sort that asks it.  There 'tis.  After all,
+you deserve to win, for you are true to each other; but a master
+can't be true to a man, nor to anything on earth, but his pocket."
+
+He then strolled out into the yard, with his hands in his pockets,
+and whistled "The Harmonious Blacksmith" very sick at heart.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+The strike was over, the grinders poured into the works, and the
+grindstones revolved.  Henry Little leaned against an angle of the
+building, and listened with aching heart to their remorseless
+thunder.  He stood there disconsolate--the one workman out of work--
+and sipped the bitter cup, defeat.  Then he walked out at the gates,
+and wandered languidly into the streets.  He was miserable, and had
+nobody to mourn to, for the main cause of his grief lay beneath the
+surface of this defeat; and how could he reveal it, now that his
+ambitious love looked utter madness?  Young as he was, he had seen
+there is no sympathy in the world for any man who loves out of his
+sphere.  Indeed, whatever cures or crushes such a passion, is hailed
+by the by-standers as a sharp but wholesome medicine.
+
+He sauntered about, and examined all the shops with lack-luster eye.
+He looked in at everything, but observed nothing, scarcely saw
+anything.  All his senses were turned inward.  It was such a
+pitiable and galling result of a gallant fight.  Even the insurance
+office had got the better of him.  It had taken one-third of his
+savings, and the very next day his trade was gone, and his life in
+no danger.  The "Gosshawk" had plucked him, and the trade had tied
+his hands.  Rack his invention how he would, he could see no way of
+becoming a master in Hillsborough, except by leaving Hillsborough,
+and working hard and long in some other town.  He felt in his own
+heart the love and constancy to do this; but his reason told him
+such constancy would be wasted; for while he was working at a
+distance, the impression, if any, he had made on her would wear
+away, and some man born with money, would step in and carry her
+gayly off.  This thought returned to him again and again, and
+exasperated him so at last, that he resolved to go to "Woodbine
+Villa," and tell her his heart before he left the place.  Then he
+should be rejected, no doubt, but perhaps pitied, and not so easily
+forgotten as if he had melted silently away.
+
+He walked up the hill, first rapidly, then slowly.  He called at
+"Woodbine Villa."
+
+The answer was "Not at home."
+
+"Everything is against me," said he.
+
+He wandered wearily down again, and just at the entrance of the town
+he met a gentleman with a lady on each arm, and one of those ladies
+was Miss Carden.  The fortunate cavalier was Mr. Coventry, whom
+Henry would have seen long before this, but he had been in Paris for
+the last four months.  He had come back fuller than ever of
+agreeable gossip, and Grace was chatting away to him, and beaming
+with pleasure, as innocent girls do, when out on a walk with a
+companion they like.  She was so absorbed she did not even see Henry
+Little.  He went off the pavement to make room for their tyrannical
+crinolines, and passed unnoticed.
+
+He had flushed with joy at first sight of her, but now a deadly
+qualm seized him.  The gentleman was handsome and commanding; Miss
+Carden seemed very happy, hanging on his arm; none the less bright
+and happy that he, her humble worshiper, was downcast and wretched.
+
+It did not positively prove much; yet it indicated how little he
+must be to her: and somehow it made him realize more clearly the
+great disadvantage at which he lay, compared with an admirer
+belonging to her own class.  Hitherto his senses had always been
+against his reason: but now for once they co-operated with his
+judgment, and made him feel that, were he to toil for years in
+London, or Birmingham, and amass a fortune, he should only be where
+that gentleman was already; and while the workman, far away, was
+slaving, that gentleman and others would be courting her.  She might
+refuse one or two.  But she would not refuse them all.
+
+Then, in his despair, he murmured, "Would to God I had never seen
+her!"
+
+He made a fierce resolve he would go home, and tell his mother she
+could pack up.
+
+He quickened his steps, for fear his poor sorrowful heart should
+falter.
+
+But, when he had settled on this course, lo! a fountain of universal
+hatred seemed to bubble in his heart.  He burned to inflict some
+mortal injury upon Jobson, Parkin, Grotait, Cheetham, and all who
+had taken a part, either active or passive, in goading him to
+despair.  Now Mr. Cheetham's works lay right in his way; and it
+struck him he could make Cheetham smart a little.  Cheetham's god
+was money.  Cheetham had thrown him over for money.  He would go to
+Cheetham, and drive a dagger into his pocket.
+
+He walked into the office.  Mr. Cheetham was not there: but he found
+Bayne and Dr. Amboyne.
+
+"Mr. Bayne," said he, abruptly, "I am come for my month's wages."
+
+The tone was so aggressive, Bayne looked alarmed.  "Why, Little,
+poor Mr. Cheetham is gone home with a bad headache, and a sore
+heart."
+
+"All the better.  I don't want to tell him to his face he is a
+bragging cur; all I want out of him now is my money; and you can pay
+me that."
+
+The pacific Bayne cast a piteous glance at Dr. Amboyne.  "I have
+told you the whole business, sir.  Oughtn't Mr. Little to wait till
+to-morrow, and talk it over with Mr. Cheetham?  I'm only a servant:
+and a man of peace."
+
+"Whether he ought or not, I think I can answer for him that he
+will."
+
+"I can't, sir," said Henry, sturdily.  "I leave the town to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, that alters the case.  But must you leave us so soon?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I am very sorry for that.  Tell me your reason.  I don't ask out of
+mere curiosity."
+
+Henry replied with less than his usual candor; "Is it not reason
+enough for leaving a place, that my life has been attempted in it,
+and now my livelihood is taken?"
+
+"Those are strong reasons.  But, on the other hand, your life is no
+longer in danger; and your livelihood is not gone; for, to speak
+plainly, I came over here the moment I heard you were discharged, to
+ask if you would enter my service on the same terms as Mr. Cheetham
+gave you, only guineas instead of pounds."
+
+"What, turn doctor?"
+
+"Oh dear, no; the doctors' Union would forbid that.  No, Mr. Little,
+I am going to ask you to pay me a compliment; to try my service
+blindfold for one week.  You can leave it if you don't like it; but
+give me one week's trial."
+
+"How can I refuse you that?" said Henry, hanging his head.  "You
+have been a good friend to me.  But, sir, mark my words, this place
+will be my destruction.  Well, when am I to begin work?"
+
+"To-morrow, at ten."
+
+"So be it," said Henry, wearily, then left the works and went home;
+but, as he went, he said to himself.  "It is not my doing."  And his
+double-faced heart glowed and exulted secretly.
+
+He told his mother how the Trades had beaten him, and he was out of
+work.
+
+Mrs. Little consoled him hypocritically.  She was delighted.  Then
+he told her his departure had been delayed by Dr. Amboyne: that made
+her look a little anxious.
+
+"One question, dear: now the Union has beaten you, they will not be
+so spiteful, will they?"
+
+"Oh, no.  That is all over.  The conquerors can afford to be good-
+natured.  Confound them!"
+
+"Then that is all I care about.  Then do not leave Hillsborough.
+Why should you?  Wait here patiently.  You do not know what may turn
+up."
+
+"What, mother, do YOU want to stay here now?" said Henry, opening
+his eyes with astonishment.
+
+"Wherever my son is happy and safe from harm, there I wish to stay--
+of course."
+
+Next morning Henry called on Dr. Amboyne, and found him in his
+study, teaching what looked a boy of sixteen, but was twenty-two, to
+read monosyllables.  On Little's entrance the pupil retired front
+his uphill work, and glowered with vacillating eyes.  The lad had a
+fair feminine face, with three ill things in it: a want, a wildness,
+and a weakness.  To be sure Henry saw it at a disadvantage: for
+vivid intelligence would come now and then across this mild, wild,
+vacant face, like the breeze that sweeps a farm-yard pond.
+
+"Good-morning, Little.  This is your fellow-workman."
+
+"He does not look up to much," said Henry, with all a workman's
+bluntness.
+
+"What, you have found him out!  Never mind; he can beat the town at
+one or two things, and it is for these we will use him.  Some call
+him an idiot.  The expression is neat and vigorous, but not precise;
+so I have christened him the Anomaly.  Anomaly, this is Mr. Little;
+go and shake hands with him, and admire him."
+
+The Anomaly went directly, and gazed into Little's face for some
+time.
+
+He then made his report.  "He is beautiful and black."
+
+"I've seen him blacker.  Now leave off admiring him, and look at
+these pictures while I prose.  Two thousand philosophers are writing
+us dead with 'Labor and Capital.'  But I vary the bore.  'Life,
+Labor, and Capital,' is my chant: and, whereas Life has hitherto
+been banished from the discussion, I put Life in its true place, at
+the head of the trio.  (And Life I divide into long Life, and happy
+Life.)  The subject is too vast to be dealt with all at once; but
+I'll give you a peep of it.  The rustic laborer in the South sells
+his labor for too little money to support life comfortably.  That is
+a foul wrong.  The rustic laborer in the North has small wages,
+compared with a pitman, or a cutler; but he has enough for health,
+and he lives longer and more happily than either the pitman or the
+cutler; so that account is square, in my view of things.  But now
+dive into the Hillsborough trades, and you will find this just
+balance of Life, Labor, and Capital regarded in some, but defied in
+others: a forger is paid as much or more than a dry-grinder, though
+forging is a hard but tolerably healthy trade, and dry-grinding
+means an early death after fifteen years of disease and misery.  The
+file-cutters are even more killed and less paid.  What is to be done
+then?  Raise the wages of the more homicidal trades!  But this could
+only be done by all the Unions acting in concert.  Now the rival
+philosophers, who direct the Unions, are all against Democritus--
+that's myself; they set no value on life.  And indeed the most
+intelligent one, Grotait, smiles blandly on Death, and would grind
+his scythe for him--AT THE STATEMENT PRICE--because that scythe
+thins the labor market, and so helps keep up prices."
+
+"Then what can we do?  I'm a proof one can't fight the Unions."
+
+"Do?  Why, lay hold of the stick at the other end.  Let Pseudo-
+Philosophy set the means above the end, and fix its shortsighted
+eyes on Labor and Capital, omitting Life.  (What does it profit a
+file-cutter if he gains his master's whole capital and loses his own
+life?)  But you and I, Mr. Little, are true philosophers and the
+work we are about to enter on is--saving cutlers' lives."
+
+"I'd rather help take them."
+
+"Of course; and that is why I made the pounds guineas."
+
+"All right, sir," said Henry, coloring.  "I don't expect to get six
+guineas a week for whistling my own tune.  How are we to do the
+job?"
+
+"By putting our heads together.  You have, on the side of your
+temple, a protuberance, which I have noticed in the crania of
+inventors.  So I want you to go round the works, and observe for
+yourself how Life is thrown gayly away, in a moment, by needless
+accident, and painfully gnawed away by steel-dust, stone grit,
+sulphuret of lead, etc.; and then cudgel your brain for remedies."
+
+"Sir," said Henry, "I am afraid I shall not earn my money.  My heart
+is not in the job."
+
+"Revenge is what you would like to be at, not Philanthropy--eh?"
+
+"Ay, doctor."  And his black eye flashed fire.
+
+"Well, well, that is natural.  Humor my crotchet just now, and
+perhaps I may humor yours a month or two hence.  I think I could lay
+my hand on the fellow who blew you up."
+
+"What, sir!  Ah! tell me that, and I'll do as much philanthropy as
+you like--after--"
+
+"After you have punched your fellow-creature's head."
+
+"But it is impossible, sir.  How can you know?  These acts are kept
+as secret as the grave."
+
+"And how often has the grave revealed its secrets to observant men?
+Dr. Donne sauntered about among graves, and saw a sexton turn up a
+skull.  He examined it, found a nail in it, identified the skull,
+and had the murderess hung.  She was safe from the sexton and the
+rest of the parish, but not from a stray observer.  Well, the day
+you were blown up, I observed something, and arrived at a
+conclusion, by my art."
+
+"What, physic?"
+
+"Oh, dear, no; my other art, my art of arts, that I don't get paid
+for; the art of putting myself in other people's places.  I'll tell
+you.  While you lay on the ground, in Mr. Cheetham's yard, I scanned
+the workmen's faces.  They were full of pity and regret, and were
+much alike in expression--all but one.  That one looked a man
+awakened from a dream.  His face was wild, stupid, confused,
+astonished.  'Hallo!' said I, 'why are your looks so unlike the
+looks of your fellows?'  Instantly I put myself in his place.  I
+ceased to be the Democritus, or laughing philosopher of
+Hillsborough, and became a low uneducated brute of a workman.  Then
+I asked this brute, viz, myself, why I was staring and glaring in
+that way, stupidly astonished, at the injured man?  'Were you
+concerned in the criminal act, ye blackguard?' said I to myself.
+The next step was to put myself in the place of the criminal.  I did
+so; and I realized that I, the criminal, had done the act to please
+the Unions, and expecting the sympathy of all Union workmen to be
+with me.  Also that I, being an ignorant brute, had never pictured
+to myself what suffering I should inflict.  But what was the result?
+I now saw the sufferer, and did not like my own act; and I found all
+the sympathy of my fellows went with him, and that I was loathed and
+execrated, and should be lynched on the spot were I to own my act.
+I now whipped back to Dr. Amboyne with the theory thus obtained, and
+compared it with that face; the two fitted each other, and I saw the
+criminal before me."
+
+"Good heavens!  This is very deep."
+
+"No slop-basin was ever deeper.  So leave it for the present, and go
+to work.  Here are cards admitting you, as my commissioner, to all
+the principal works.  Begin with--  Stop a moment, while I put
+myself in your place.  Let me see, 'Cheetham's grinders think they
+have turned me out of Hillsborough.  That mortifies a young man of
+merit like me.  Confound 'em!  I should like to show them they have
+not the power to drive me out.  Combine how they will, I rise
+superior.  I forge as they could not forge: that was my real crime.
+Well, I'll be their superior still.  I'm their inspector, and their
+benefactor, at higher wages than they, poor devils, will ever earn
+at inspecting and benefiting, or any thing else.'  Ah! your color
+rises.  I've hit the right nail, isn't it an excellent and most
+transmigratory art?  Then begin with Cheetham.  By-the-bye, the
+Anomaly has spotted a defective grindstone there.  Scrutinize all
+his departments severely; for no man values his people's lives less
+than my good friend John Cheetham.  Away with you both; and God
+speed you.
+
+Henry walked down the street with the Anomaly, and tried to gauge
+his intellects.
+
+"What's your real name, my man?"
+
+"Silly Billy."
+
+"Oh, then I'm afraid you can't do much to help me."
+
+"Oh yes, I can, because--"
+
+"Because what?"
+
+"Because I like you."
+
+"Well, that's lucky, any way."
+
+"Billy can catch trout when nobody else can," said the youngster,
+turning his eyes proudly up to Henry's.
+
+"Oh, indeed!  But you see that is not exactly what the doctor wants
+us for."
+
+"Nay; he's wrapped up in trout.  If it wasn't for Billy and the
+trout, he'd die right off."
+
+Henry turned a look of silent pity on the boy, and left him in his
+pleasing illusion.  He wondered that Dr. Amboyne should have tacked
+this biped on to him.
+
+They entered Cheetham's works, and Henry marched grimly into the
+office, and showed Mr. Bayne his credentials.
+
+"Why, Little, you had no need of that."
+
+"Oh, it is as well to have no misunderstanding with your employer's
+masters.  I visit these works for my present employer, Dr. Amboyne,
+with the consent of Mr. Cheetham, here written."
+
+"Very well, sir," said Bayne, obsequiously; "and I respectfully
+solicit the honor of conducting our esteemed visitor."
+
+A young man's ill-humor could not stand against this.  "Come along,
+old fellow," said Henry.  "I'm a bear, with a sore heart; but who
+could be such a brute as quarrel with you?  Let us begin with the
+chaps who drove me out--the grinders.  I'm hired to philanthropize
+'em--d--n 'em."
+
+They went among the dry-grinders first; and Henry made the following
+observations.  The workman's hair and clothes were powdered with
+grit and dust from the grindstones.  The very air was impregnated
+with it, and soon irritated his own lungs perceptibly.  Here was
+early death, by bronchitis and lung diseases, reduced to a
+certainty.  But he also learned from the men that the quantity of
+metal ground off was prodigious, and entered their bodies they
+scarce knew how.  A razor-grinder showed him his shirt: it was a
+deep buff-color.  "There, sir," said he, "that was clean on
+yesterday.  All the washerwomen in Hillsbro' can't make a shirt of
+mine any other color but that."  The effect on life, health, and
+happiness was visible; a single glance revealed rounded shoulders
+and narrow chests, caused partly by the grinder's position on his
+horsing, a position very injurious to the organs of breathing, and
+partly by the two devil's dusts that filled the air; cadaverous
+faces, the muscles of which betrayed habitual suffering, coughs
+short and dry, or with a frothy expectoration peculiar to the trade.
+In answer to questions, many complained of a fearful tightness
+across the chest, of inability to eat or to digest.  One said it
+took him five minutes to get up the factory stairs, and he had to
+lean against the wall several times.
+
+A razor-grinder of twenty-two, with death in his face, told Henry he
+had come into that room when he was eleven.  "It soon takes hold of
+boys," said he.  "I've got what I shall never get shut on."
+
+Another, who looked ill, but not dying, received Henry's sympathy
+with a terrible apathy.  "I'm twenty-eight," said he; "and a fork-
+grinder is an old cock at thirty.  I must look to drop off my perch
+in a year or two, like the rest."
+
+Only one, of all these victims, seemed to trouble his head about
+whether death and disease could be averted.  This one complained
+that some employers provided fans to drive the dust from the
+grinder, but Cheetham would not go to the expense.
+
+The rest that Henry spoke to accepted their fate doggedly.  They
+were ready to complain, but not to move a finger in self-defense.
+Their fathers had been ground out young, and why not they?
+
+Indifferent to life, health, and happiness, they could nevertheless
+be inflamed about sixpence a week.  In other words, the money-price
+of their labor was every thing to them, the blood-price nothing.
+
+Henry found this out, and it gave him a glimpse into the mind of
+Amboyne.
+
+He felt quite confused, and began to waver between hate, contempt,
+and pity.  Was it really these poor doomed wretches who had robbed
+him of his livelihood?  Could men so miscalculate the size of
+things, as to strike because an inoffensive individual was making
+complete caring-tools all by himself, and yet not strike, nor even
+stipulate for fans, to carry disease and death away from their own
+vitals?  Why it seemed wasting hate, to bestow it on these blind
+idiots.
+
+He went on to the wet-grinders, and he found their trade much
+healthier than dry-grinding: yet there were drawbacks.  They
+suffered from the grit whenever a new stone was hung and raced.
+They were also subject to a canker of the hands, and to colds,
+coughs, and inflammations, from perspiration checked by cold
+draughts and drenched floors.  These floors were often of mud, and
+so the wet stagnated and chilled their feet, while their bodies were
+very hot.  Excellent recipe for filling graves.
+
+Here Bayne retired to his books, and Henry proceeded to the saw-
+grinders, and entered their rooms with no little interest, for they
+were an envied trade.  They had been for many years governed by
+Grotait, than whom no man in England saw clearer; though such men as
+Amboyne saw further.  Grotait, by a system of Machiavellian policy,
+ingeniously devised and carried out, nobly, basely, craftily,
+forcibly, benevolently, ruthlessly, whichever way best suited the
+particular occasion, had built a model Union; and still, with
+unremitting zeal and vigilance, contrived to keep numbers down and
+prices up--which is the great Union problem.
+
+The work was hard, but it was done in a position favorable to the
+lungs, and the men were healthy, brawny fellows; one or two were of
+remarkable stature.
+
+Up to this moment Silly Billy had fully justified that title.  He
+had stuck to Henry's side like a dog, but with no more interest in
+the inquiry than a calf, indeed, his wandering eye and vacant face
+had indicated that his scanty wits were wool-gathering miles from
+the place that contained his body.
+
+But, as soon as he entered the saw-grinders' room, his features
+lighted up, and his eye kindled.  He now took up a commanding
+position in the center, and appeared to be listening keenly.  And he
+had not listened many seconds before he cried out, "There's the bad
+music! there! there!"  And he pointed to a grindstone that was
+turning and doing its work exactly like the others.  "Oh, the bad
+music!" cried Billy.  "It is out of tune.  It says, 'Murder! murder!
+Out of tune!'"
+
+Henry thought it his duty to inspect the grindstone so vigorously
+denounced, and, naturally enough, went in front of the grinder.  But
+Billy pulled him violently to the side.  "You musn't stand there,"
+said he.  "That is the way they fly when they break, and kill the
+poor father, and then the mother lets down her hair, and the boy
+goes crazed."
+
+By this time the men were attracted by the Anomaly's gestures and
+exclamations, and several left their work, and came round him.
+"What is amiss, Billy? a flawed stone, eh? which is it?"
+
+"Here! here!" said the boy.  "This is the wheel of death.  Kill it,
+break it, smash it, before it kills another father."
+
+Henry spoke to the grinder, and asked him if there was anything
+amiss with the stone.
+
+The man seemed singularly uneasy at being spoken to: however he made
+answer sullenly that he had seen better ones, and worse ones, and
+all.
+
+Henry was, however, aware, that the breaking of a large grindstone,
+while revolving by steam power, was a serious, and often a fatal
+thing; he therefore made a private mark upon the wall opposite the
+grindstone, and took his excited companion to Bayne.  "This poor lad
+says he has found a defective grindstone.  It is impossible for me
+to test it while it is running.  Will you let us into the works when
+the saw-grinders have left?"
+
+Bayne hem'd and haw'd a little, but consented.  He would remain
+behind half an-hour to oblige Little.
+
+Henry gave the Anomaly his dinner, and then inspected the file-
+cutters in two great works.  Here he found suicide reduced to a
+system.  Whereof anon.
+
+Returning, to keep his appointment with Bayne he met a well-dressed
+man, who stopped Billy, and accosted him kindly.
+
+Henry strolled on.
+
+He heard their voices behind him all the way, and the man stopped at
+Cheetham's gate, which rather surprised him.  "Has Billy told you
+what we are at?" said he.
+
+"Yes.  But the very look of him was enough.  I know Billy and his
+ways, better than you do."
+
+"Very likely.  What, are you coming in with us?"
+
+"If you have no objection."
+
+The door was opened by Bayne in person.  He started at the sight of
+the companion his friend had picked up, and asked him, with marked
+civility, if there was anything amiss.  "Not that I know of," was
+the reply.  "I merely thought that my experience might be of some
+little service to you in an inquiry of this kind."
+
+"Not a doubt of it, sir," said Bayne, and led the way with his
+lantern, for it was past sunset.  On the road, the visitor asked if
+anybody had marked the accused stone.  Henry said he should know it
+again.  "That is right," said the other.
+
+On entering the room, this personage took Billy by the arm, and held
+him.  "Let us have no false alarms," he said, and blindfolded the
+boy with his handkerchief in a moment.
+
+And now an examination commenced, which the time and the place
+rendered curious and striking.
+
+It was a long, lofty room; the back part mainly occupied by the
+drums that were turned by the driving-power.  The power was on the
+floor above, and acted by means of huge bands that came down through
+holes in the ceiling and turned the drums.  From each of these drums
+came two leather bands, each of which turned a pulley-wheel, and
+each pulley-wheel a grindstone, to whose axle it was attached; but
+now the grindstones rested in the troughs, and the great wheel-bands
+hung limp, and the other bands lay along loose and serpentine.  In
+the dim light of a single lamp, it all looked like a gigantic
+polypus with its limbs extended lazily, and its fingers holding
+semi-circular claws: for of the grindstones less than half is
+visible.
+
+Billy was a timid creature, and this blindfolding business rather
+scared him: he had almost to be dragged within reach of these gaunt
+antennae.  But each time they got him to touch a grindstone, his
+body changed its character from shrinking and doubtful, to erect and
+energetic, and he applied his test.  This boy carried with him,
+night and day, a little wooden hammer, like an auctioneer's, and
+with this he now tapped each stone several times, searching for the
+one he had denounced: and, at each experiment, he begged the others
+to keep away from him and leave him alone with the subject of his
+experiment; which they did, and held up the lamp and threw the light
+on him.
+
+Six heavy grindstones he tapped, and approved, three he even praised
+and called "good music."
+
+"The seventh he struck twice, first gently, then hard and drew back
+from it, screaming "Oh, the bad music!  Oh, the wheel of death!" and
+tried to tear the handkerchief from his eyes.
+
+"Be quiet, Billy," said the visitor, calmly; and, putting his arm
+round the boy's neck, drew him to his side, and detached the
+handkerchief, all in a certain paternal way that seemed to betoken a
+kindly disposition.  But, whilst he was doing this, he said to
+Henry, "Now--you marked a stone in daylight; which was it?"
+
+"No, no, I didn't mark the stone, but I wrote on the wall just
+opposite.  Lend us the light, Bayne.  By George! here is my mark
+right opposite this stone."
+
+"Then Billy's right.  Well done, Billy."  He put his hand in his
+pocket and gave him a new shilling.  He then inquired of Bayne, with
+the air of a pupil seeking advice from a master, whether this
+discovery ought not to be acted upon.
+
+"What would you suggest, sir?" asked Bayne, with equal deference.
+
+"Oh, if I was sure I should not be considered presumptuous in
+offering my advice, I would say, Turn the stone into the yard, and
+bang a new one.  You have got three excellent ones outside; from
+Buckhurst quarry, by the look of them."
+
+"It shall be done, sir."
+
+This effective co-operation, on the part of a stranger, was
+naturally gratifying to Henry, and he said to him: "I should be glad
+to ask you a question.  You seem to know a good deal about this
+trade--"
+
+A low chuckle burst out of Bayne, but he instantly suppressed it,
+for fear of giving offense--"
+
+"Are serious accidents really common with these grindstones?"
+
+"No, no," said Bayne, "not common.  Heaven forbid."
+
+"They are not common--in the newspapers," replied the other.  "But"
+(to Bayne), "will you permit me to light these two gaslights for a
+moment?"
+
+"Well, sir, it is contrary to our rules,--but--"
+
+"All the more obliging of you," said the visitor, coolly, and
+lighted them, with his own match, in a twinkling.  He then drew out
+of his waistcoat pocket a double eyeglass, gold-mounted, and
+examining the ceiling with it, soon directed Henry's attention to
+two deep dents and a brown splash.  "Every one of those marks," said
+he, "is a history, and was written by a flying grindstone.  Where
+you see the dents the stone struck the ceiling;" he added very
+gravely, "and, when it came down again, ask yourself, did it ALWAYS
+fall right?  These histories are written only on the ceiling and the
+walls.  The floor could tell its tales too; but a crushed workman is
+soon swept off it, and the wheels go on again."
+
+"That is too true," said Henry.  "And it does a chap's heart good to
+hear a gentleman like you--"
+
+"I'm not a gentleman.  I'm an old Saw."
+
+"Excuse me, sir, you look like a gentleman, and talk like one."
+
+"And I try to conduct myself like one: but I AM an old Saw."
+
+"What! and carry a gold eyeglass?"
+
+"The Trade gave it me.  I'm an old Saw."
+
+"Well, then, all the better, for you can tell me, and please do:
+have you ever actually known fatal accidents from this cause?"
+
+"I have known the light grinders very much shaken by a breaking
+stone, and away from work a month after it.  And, working among saw-
+grinders, who use heavy stones, and stand over them in working, I've
+seen--  Billy, go and look at thy shilling, in the yard, and see
+which is brightest, it or the moon.  Is he gone?  I've seen three
+men die within a few yards of me.  One, the stone flew in two
+pieces; a fragment, weighing about four hundredweight I should say,
+struck him on the breast, and killed him on place; he never spoke.
+I've forgotten his very name.  Another; the stone went clean out of
+window, but it kicked the grinder backward among the machinery, and
+his head was crushed like an eggshell.  But the worst of all was
+poor Billy's father.  He had been warned against his stone; but he
+said he would run it out.  Well, his little boy, that is Billy, had
+just brought him in his tea, and was standing beside him, when the
+stone went like a pistol-shot, and snapped the horsing chains like a
+thread; a piece struck the wall, and did no harm, only made a hole;
+but the bigger half went clean up to the ceiling, and then fell
+plump down again; the grinder he was knocked stupid like, and had
+fallen forward on his broken horsing; the grindstone fell right on
+him, and, ah--I saw the son covered with the father's blood."
+
+He shuddered visibly, at the recollection.  "Ay," said he, "the man
+a corpse, and the lad an idiot.  One faulty stone did that, within
+four yards of me, in a moment of time."
+
+"Good heavens!"
+
+"I was grinding at the next stone but one.  He was taken, and I was
+left.  It might just as well have been the other way.  No saw-
+grinder can make sure, when he gets on his horsing, that he will
+come off it alive."
+
+The visitor left Henry to think of this while he drew Bayne aside,
+and spoke on another matter.
+
+Afterward, all three left the works together; and Henry was so
+pleased with his new ally, that he told him, at the gate, he should
+be glad if he might be allowed to make his acquaintance.
+
+"By all means," said the other.  "I am quite at your service.  You
+will find me at the 'Cutlers' Arms.'"
+
+"Who shall I ask for?"
+
+"George Grotait."
+
+"Grotait.  The devil!"
+
+"No, no.  Not quite so bad as that."
+
+"What," said Henry, roughly, "do you mean to say you are old
+Smitem?"
+
+"That is a name FOOLS give me."
+
+Henry had no reply ready, and so the sturdy old secretary got the
+better of him again, and went his way unruffled.
+
+Henry scolded Bayne for not telling him.  Bayne excused himself on
+the ground that he thought everybody knew Grotait.  He added, "He
+knew you, and told me if he could serve you, without being unjust to
+the Trades, I was to tell him."
+
+Henry replied to this only by a snort of defiance, and bade him
+good-night.
+
+The next day and the next were spent in other works, and then Henry,
+having no more facts to learn, fell into deep dejection again.  He
+saw he must either cheat Dr. Amboyne, by shamming work, or else must
+leave Hillsborough.
+
+He had the honesty to go to the doctor and say that he had mastered
+the whole matter, and didn't see his way to take any more wages from
+a friend.
+
+"You mean you have mastered the broad facts."
+
+"I have, sir, and they are beyond belief; especially the file-
+cutters.  They are the most numerous of all the Trades, and die like
+sheep.  If your notion about Life, Labor, and Capital is right, the
+Trades are upside down; for the deadliest are the worst paid."
+
+"And are you prepared with the remedies?"
+
+"Not I."
+
+"Yet you fancy you are at the end of your work.  Why, you are only
+beginning.  Now comes the real brain work; invention.  Now are
+craniology and you upon your trial.  But you are quite right about
+weekly salary.  Invention must not be so degraded, but paid by the
+piece.  Life, Labor, and Capital are upside down in this place, are
+they?  Then you shall be the man to set them on their legs."
+
+Henry shook his head.  "Never, sir, unless I could give the masters
+bowels, and the men brains."
+
+"Well, and why not?  To invention all things are possible.  You
+carry a note-book?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Got it in your pocket?"
+
+"No; on my shoulders."
+
+"Haw! haw! haw!  Then write this down in it--'THERE'S A KEY TO EVERY
+LOCK'"
+
+"It's down, sir."
+
+"Now you must go out trout-fishing with Billy.  He will take you on
+the hills, where the air is pure, and favorable to invention.  You
+will divert your mind from all external subjects, especially Billy,
+who is a fool, and his trout-killing inhumane, and I a merciless
+glutton for eating them; and you will think, and think, and think,
+and forge the required key to this lock with three wards--Life,
+Labor, Capital.  And, when forged, the Philanthropic Society shall
+pay you a good price for it.  Meantime, don't dream of leaving
+Hillsborough, or I shall give you a stirrup-cup that will waft you
+much further than London; for it shall be 'of prussic acid all
+composed,' or 'juice of cursed Hebenon in a vial.'  Come, away with
+you."
+
+"Good-by, doctor.  God bless you.  You have found 'the key to my
+heart' somehow.  I come to you a miserable broken-hearted dog, and
+you put life and hope into me directly.  I declare talking with you
+it's like drinking sunshine.  I'll try all I know to please you."
+
+He went down the street with his old elastic tread, and muttered to
+himself, "There's no lock without a key."
+
+Next day he went out on the hills with Billy, and saw him tickle
+trout, and catch them under stones, and do many strange things, and
+all the time he thought of Grace Carden, and bemoaned his sad fate.
+He could not command his mind, and direct it to philanthropy.  His
+heart would not let him, and his personal wrongs were too recent.
+After a short struggle, these got so thoroughly the better, that he
+found himself stealing the doctor's words for his own purposes.  "No
+lock without a key."  Then there must be some way of outwitting
+these cursed Trades, and so making money enough to set up as a
+master, and then court her, and woo her, and marry her.  Heaven
+seemed to open on him at this prospect, and he fell into a deep
+reverie.  By-and-by, as he pondered, it seemed to him as if the
+shadow of a coming idea was projected in advance of the idea itself.
+He knew somehow there was a way to baffle his enemies, and resume
+his business, and yet he could not see the way; but still he was
+absolutely conscious it existed.
+
+This conviction took such hold of him, that he became restless, and
+asked Billy to leave off and come away.  The youth consented, and
+they returned to the town with a basket of trout.  Henry sent Billy
+on to the doctor with half of them, and took the other half to his
+friend Bayne.
+
+On what a trifle things turn.  Bayne was very much pleased with his
+little attention, and asked him to take them to his lodging, and beg
+the landlady to cook them for dinner.  "Tell her you dine with me,
+old fellow."
+
+"Oh, hang it, I wasn't fishing for a dinner."
+
+"As if I didn't know that.  But you must.  Then I shall enjoy your
+company in peace.  I shall be there in an hour."
+
+And so he was: but in that one hour events had occurred that I shall
+leave Mr. Bayne to relate.
+
+During dinner neither of the friends wasted much time in talk; but
+after dinner, Bayne produced a bottle of port, notwithstanding
+Henry's remonstrances at being treated like a stranger, and it soon
+became apparent that the host himself was not in the habit of
+drinking that generous mixture every day.  At the second glass he so
+far forgot himself as to utter the phrase "Eternal friendship," and,
+soon after, he began to writhe in his chair, and, at last, could no
+longer refrain himself, but told Henry that Miss Carden had been
+canvassing customers.  She had just sent in six orders for sets of
+carving-tools, all for friends of her own.
+
+Henry colored to the temples at this unexpected proof that she he
+loved thought of him too.
+
+"Oh, Bayne," cried the poor young man, almost choking, "I little
+thought--God bless her!"
+
+"Let us drink her health," said Bayne, excitedly.
+
+"Ah, that I will!" and this was the first glass Henry drank honestly.
+
+"Now, Little, I'm not doing quite right, you know; but I MUST tell
+you.  When we lost you--you know that set of tools the Union dropped
+in our yard--well, he sent them to London for yours."
+
+"That is just like him," said Henry, bitterly.
+
+"And I'll tell you a good joke; they were in the place when you
+called, only not unpacked till just before I came away.  Returned,
+sir! with a severe reprimand.  'Wonder you should send us such
+things as these for carving-tools by Little.  If the error is not
+repaired shall consider ourselves at liberty to communicate direct
+with that workman.'  A regular sugar-plum."
+
+"Oh, thank you, my kind friend, for telling me.  The world isn't all
+bitterness, after all: a poor fellow gets a sweet drop of friendship
+now and then."
+
+"Yes, and a good drop of port now and then, though I say it that
+shouldn't.  Fill up.  Well, my boy, Cheetham is in a fine way.  I
+left him walking about the office like a hyena.  So now is your
+time.  You can't fight the Trades; but, if Cheetham will go in with
+you, and I know he will, for he is sorer than you are, you can trick
+the Trades yet."
+
+"Ah! tell me how, that is all."
+
+"Oh, I can't tell you exactly.  I'll try, though.  I say, what a
+glorious thing the Ruby is: it inspires us, and fires us, et cetera,
+and gives us ideas beyond our sphere.  Did you ever see one of these
+new portable forges?"
+
+"No; never heard of them."
+
+"No wonder; they are just out.  Well, buy one of them--they were
+invented here--and carry it to some dismal cavern, where the foot of
+man never treads: make Cheetham grind your blades in another county:
+and who will ever know?  Go to him, and don't say a word, but just
+ask him for your month's salary.  Then he will open the door of
+business himself--safe.  I'll drink his health.  He's not a bad
+sort, Cheetham: only he'd sell his soul for money.  I hate such
+rubbish.  Here's 'Perdition to the lot; and no heel-taps.'"
+
+These words of fire set Henry pondering deeply; and, as he pondered,
+Bayne stuck to the port, and so effectually, that, at last, after an
+interval of silence, he came out in a new character.  He disturbed
+his companion's reverie by informing him, in a loud, aggressive
+tone, that it had long been his secret wish to encounter the
+Hillsborough Trades, in the persons of their secretaries, under the
+following conditions: a twenty-four feet ring, an experienced
+referee, and a kingdom looking on.  As to the order of the
+pugilistic events, he was not unreasonably fastidious; must
+stipulate to begin with old Smitem; but, after that, they might
+encounter their fate in any order they chose, one down t'other come
+on.  He let him know that this ardent desire for single combats, in
+an interminable series, arose from their treatment of his friend--
+"the best friend--the best heart--oh!--the best company--oh! oh!--
+the best--oh! oh! oh!"  Whereupon he wept, the bellicose Bayne.
+And, after weeping the usual quantity, he twaddled, and, after
+twaddling, he became as pacific as ever, for he went to sleep in his
+chair.
+
+And, while he snoozed, the words he had uttered set his friend's
+brain boiling and bubbling.
+
+When the time came at which Bayne ought to return to the works,
+Henry called the landlady, and said, "Mr. Bayne is not very well.  I
+am going to make his excuses.  I wouldn't disturb him till five, if
+I was you, and then I'd give him a strong cup of tea."
+
+Henry then went direct to the office, and found Mr. Cheetham there.
+
+"Well?" said Mr. Cheetham, rather surlily.
+
+"I am come to ask for my month, sir."
+
+"So I guessed.  Do you really mean to exact that?"
+
+"Why not, sir?"
+
+"Haven't you heard how they ground me down?"
+
+"Yes, sir.  But why did you give in?  I was true to you, but you
+failed me.  I'd have shut up the works for three months, rather than
+be made a slave of, and go from my word."
+
+"Ay, ay; that's bachelor's talk.  I've got a wife and children, and
+they make a man a mouse."
+
+"Well, sir, I forgive you: but as to my month's wages--now all I say
+is--PUT YOURSELF IN MY PLACE!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"You are me.  You are brought from London, under an agreement, a
+month's notice on either side.  You work, and give satisfaction.
+You are threatened, but you don't run from your employer.  You are
+blown up, and nearly killed.  You lose a fortnight, but you don't
+charge for it; 'twasn't your employer's fault.  You come back to
+him, and face the music again.  You work with the sword hanging over
+you.  But your employer gives in, and sacks you in a minute.
+Oughtn't you to have your month?  Come now, man to man, oughtn't
+you?"
+
+"I ought, and that's the truth.  I didn't look at it that way.  I
+saw my own side.  There--no more about it--I'll draw the check--with
+a good heart."
+
+He drew his check-book to him, with a face as if vultures were
+tearing his vitals.
+
+When Henry found him Amboynable, and saw his piteous look, he felt a
+little softened toward him, and he said, very impressively, "Wait
+one moment, sir, I've got an idea.  I'm not the sort that likes to
+be beat.  Are YOU?"  The men looked steadily at each other.
+
+Cheetham lowered his voice. "I've had hell inside me ever since.  I
+thought I was a man, but they made a mouse of me.  If you know any
+way to beat them, I'll go in with you."
+
+"Well, sir, there is a key to every lock."
+
+"That is well said, and I believe it; but one can't always find the
+key."
+
+"I almost think I have, sir."
+
+"See nobody is listening.  Where is Bayne?  He is due."
+
+"Oh, he is not very well, sir; and I was to ask you for an hour's
+absence."
+
+"Let him have the whole afternoon.  I'll not have a soul in this but
+us two.  Now come close, and tell me."
+
+They sat opposite each other, and put their heads together over the
+table, and the following dialogue passed almost in a whisper.  To
+see them, you would have thought they were conspiring against the
+law, instead of combining to hide a lawful act from the violaters of
+the law.
+
+"I can forge the blades a dozen miles from Hillsborough."
+
+"Not you; you will be told of.  That won't do."
+
+"I shall not be told of; for nobody will know but you.  I shall only
+forge at night; and the building is out of the world, and wedged in,
+out of sight, between two bleak hills.  Sir, it is a deserted
+church."
+
+"What, forge blades in a church?"
+
+"A deserted church; why not?"
+
+"Little, you are A 1.  Go on."
+
+"I can get the blades ground by a friend at Birmingham; and my
+mother and I can put them together at home.  The complete articles
+will come to you in parcels of a certain colored paper, invoiced in
+cipher outside, so that they need not be opened; you can trust the
+invoice, and dispatch them to your London agent."
+
+"All right."
+
+"The steel you must supply me at the current price, and charge it
+against me."
+
+"Certainly.  But your price per gross?  For this work can't be done
+by time."
+
+"Of course not."  And Henry named a price per gross at which
+Cheetham lifted up his hands.  "Why, you'll take nine pounds a week
+at that!"
+
+"Ay, and more," said Henry, coolly.  "But I sha'n't make it.  Why,
+this scheme entails no end of expenses.  A house, and stables with
+back entrance.  A swift horse, to gallop to the forge at sunset, and
+back by noon.  A cart to take the things to the railway and back,
+and to the parcel delivery for you.  And, besides that, I must risk
+my neck, riding over broken ground at night: and working night and
+day shortens life.  You can't reduce these things to Labor and
+Capital.  It's Life, Labor, and Capital."
+
+"Hallo!  There's a new cry.  I tell ye what; you know too much for
+me.  You read the Beehive.  I take you at your price."
+
+Then he had a misgiving.  "That old Smitem's as crafty as a fox.  If
+he finds you stay here, with no visible employment, he will soon be
+down on us."
+
+"Ay; but in the day-time I shall appear as a carver of wood, and
+also an inspector of factories for Dr. Amboyne.  Who will suspect me
+of a night trade, as well as two day trades?"
+
+Cheetham slapped the table triumphantly: but, recovering his
+caution, he whispered, "It's planned first-rate."
+
+"And now, sir, there is one difficulty you must help me in, if you
+please.  It is to set up the forge unobserved."
+
+"What, am I to find the forge?"
+
+"There's a question, sir!  Of course you are.  One of these new
+portable forges."
+
+Cheetham reflected for some little time.  He then said it was a
+ticklish thing, and he saw but one way.  "The forge must come here,
+after closing hours, and you and I must fetch it away in the dead of
+night, and take it down to the old church, and set it up."
+
+"Well, but, sir, we shall want assistance."
+
+"Nay, nay.  I've got the last suit of moleskin I ever worked in laid
+away.  I'll air 'em, and put 'em on again; and, when I've got em on
+once more, I shall feel a man again.  I'll have neither fool nor spy
+in it: the thing is too serious.  I might bring some country fellow,
+that can't read or write; but no, these portables are small things,
+and I'm one of the strongest men in Hillsborough.  Best keep it to
+ourselves.  When is it to be?"
+
+"Say next Wednesday, two hours after midnight."
+
+"Then that is settled.  And now I'll square the old account agreed."
+He drew his check-book toward him again.
+
+But Henry slopped him.  "Fair play's a jewel," said he smiling.
+"The moment you sacked me--"
+
+"Say the Trades, not me."
+
+"Dr. Amboyne hired me, at six guineas a week, to inspect the works.
+So you owe me nothing; but to be true to me."
+
+This trait, though it was one of simple probity, astonished and
+gratified Mr. Cheetham.  He looked on the young man with marked
+respect.  "You are hard; but you are very square.  I'll be true as
+steel to you, and we'll outwit our tyrants together, till I get a
+chance to put my foot on them.  Yes, I'll be open with you; there
+are plenty of orders from London and the Continent, and one for six
+sets from swells in Hillsborough."
+
+"Might I see that order?"
+
+"Why not?  There, run your eye over it.  I want to go into the
+packing-room for a minute."
+
+He then tossed Henry the order, as if it was nothing more than an
+order.
+
+But it was a great deal more than that to Henry.  It was Grace
+Carden's handwriting, the first specimen he had ever seen.
+
+He took the paper in his hand, and a slight perfume came from it
+that went to his heart.  He devoured the delicately formed letters,
+and they went to his heart too: he thrilled all over.  And the words
+were as like her as the perfume.  She gave the order, and the
+addresses of her friends, with a pretty little attempt at the
+businesslike; but, this done, she burst out, "and we all entreat you
+to be good to poor Mr. Little, and protect him against the wicked,
+cruel, abominable Unions."
+
+These sweet words made his heart beat violently, and brought the
+tears of tenderness into his eyes.  He kissed the words again and
+again.  He put them into his bosom, and took them out again, and
+gloated over them till they danced before his manly eyes.  Then his
+love took another turn: he started up, and marched and strutted,
+like a young stag, about the room, with one hand pressing the paper
+to his bosom.  Why had he said Wednesday?  It could all have been
+got ready on Tuesday.  No matter, he would make up for that lost
+day.  He was on the road, once more, the road to fortune, and to
+her.
+
+Cheetham came in, and found him walking excitedly, with the paper in
+his hand, and of course took the vulgar view of his emotion.
+
+"Ay, lad," said he, "and they are all swells, I promise you.
+There's Miss Laura Craske.  That's the mayor's daughter.  Lady Betty
+Tyrone.  She's a visitor.  Miss Castleton!  Her father is the county
+member."
+
+"And who is this Mr. Coventry?" asked Henry.
+
+"Oh, he is a landed gentleman, but spends his tin in Hillsborough;
+and you can't blame him.  Mr. Coventry?  Why, that is Miss Carden's
+intended."
+
+"Her intended!" gasped Henry.
+
+"I mean her beau.  The gentleman she is going to marry, they say."
+
+Henry Little turned cold, and a tremor ran through him; but he did
+not speak a word; and, with Spartan fortitude, suppressed all
+outward sign of emotion.  He laid the paper down patiently, and went
+slowly away.
+
+Loyal to his friend even in this bitter moment, he called at Bayne's
+place and left word with the landlady that Mr. Bayne was not wanted
+at the works any more that day.
+
+But he could not bear to talk to Bayne about his plans.  They had
+lost their relish.  He walked listlessly away, and thought it all
+over.
+
+For the first time he saw his infatuation clearly.  Was ever folly
+like his?  If she had been a girl in humble life, would he not have
+asked whether she had a sweetheart?  Yet he must go and give his
+heart to a lady without inquiry.  There, where wisdom and prudence
+were most needed, he had speculated like an idiot.  He saw it, and
+said to himself, "I have acted like a boy playing at pitch-farthing,
+not like a man who knew the value of his heart."
+
+And so he passed a miserable time, bemoaning the treasure that was
+now quite inaccessible instead of nearly, and the treasure of his
+own heart he had thrown away.
+
+He awoke with a sense of misery and deep depression, and could not
+eat; and that was a novelty in his young and healthy life.  He drank
+a cup of tea, however, and then went out, to avoid his mother's
+tender looks of anxious inquiry.  He meant to tell her all one day;
+but to-day he was not strong enough.  He must wait till he was
+cured; for cured he must be, cured he would be.
+
+He now tried to give his mind to the task Amboyne had set him; but
+it was too hard: he gave it up, with rage and despair.
+
+Then he made a desperate resolve, which will not surprise those who
+know the human heart.  He would harden himself.  He would see more
+of Miss Carden than ever; only it should be in quite a new light.
+He would look at her, and keep saying to himself all the time, "You
+are another man's wife."
+
+With this determination, he called at "Woodbine Villa."
+
+Miss Carden was not at home.
+
+"Are you sure she is not at home?"
+
+"Not at home," replied the man stiffly.
+
+"But you needn't to keep him at the door," said a mellow female
+voice.
+
+"No, miss," said the man, with a sudden change of manner, for he was
+a desperate and forlorn admirer of the last speaker.  "Come in,
+sir."  And he ushered him in to Jael Dence.  She was in her bonnet,
+and just going out.  They shook hands, and she told him Miss Carden
+was out walking.
+
+"Walking with her beau?" said Henry, affecting a jaunty air, but
+sick within.
+
+"That's more than I can say," replied Jael.
+
+"You know nothing about it, of course," said Henry, roughly.
+
+Jael looked surprised at the uncalled-for tone, and turned a mild
+glance of inquiry and reproach upon him.
+
+The young man was ashamed of himself, and at that moment, too, he
+remembered he had already been rather ungrateful to her.  So, to
+make amends, he said, "Didn't I promise to take you to Cairnhope?"
+
+"Ay," said Jael; and she beamed and blushed in a moment.
+
+"Well, I must go there, Sunday at the latest.  So I will come for
+you, if you like.  Will you be ready at ten o'clock?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'll bring a gig, and take you like a lady."
+
+"Anyway you please.  I'd as lieve walk as ride."
+
+"I prefer riding.  Ten o'clock, the day after to-morrow.  Good-by."
+
+And he hurried away, provoked, not pleased, at the manifest pleasure
+he had given.  The woman he loved--inaccessible!  The woman he only
+liked--he could spend the whole day with her.  So the reasonable
+youth was cross with her for that, and for being so pleased, when he
+was wretched.
+
+That feeling soon wore off, however, and, being a man of business,
+he wrote a line to Martha Dence, and told her he should visit her on
+Sunday.  He added, with a gleam of good-humor, "and look out, for I
+shall bring my lass," intending to give them all an agreeable
+surprise; for Jael, he knew, was an immense favorite.
+
+Next day he went on the hills with Billy, and, instead of thinking
+for the benefit of his enemies, as agreed with Amboyne, he set
+himself to hate every body, especially Miss Carden's lover, and the
+Hillsborough Unions.  The grinders and file-cutters might die like
+sheep.  What did he care?  As much as they cared for him.  Dr.
+Amboyne was too good for this world, and should keep his money to
+himself.  He (Henry Little) would earn none of it, would take none
+of it.  What invention he had should all go to outwit the Trades,
+and turn that old ruffian's church into his own smithy.  This double
+master-stroke, by which he was to defeat one enemy, and secretly
+affront another, did make him chuckle one or twice, not with joy,
+but with bitterness.
+
+He awoke in a similar mood next morning: but there was eight o'clock
+service near, and the silver-toned bell awakened better thoughts.
+He dressed hurriedly, and went to church.
+
+He came back sadder, but rather less hot, less bitter: he had his
+breakfast, improved his toilet, went to the livery stable, and drove
+to "Woodbine Villa."
+
+Mr. and Miss Carden had just finished breakfast, when he drove up to
+the door.
+
+"Who is this?" said Mr. Carden.
+
+"What, have you forgotten Mr. Little?"
+
+"Indeed!  Why, how he is dressed.  I took him for a gentleman."
+
+"You were not very far wrong, papa.  He is a gentleman at heart."
+
+Jael came in equipped for the ride.  She was neatly dressed, and had
+a plain shepherd's-plaid shawl, that suited her noble bust.  She
+looked a picture of health and happiness.
+
+"If you please, miss, he is come to take me to Cairnhope."
+
+"Oh! is it for that?  And I declare you expected him, too."
+
+"Yes," said Jael, and blushed.
+
+"You never told me," said Grace, with a light touch of asperity.
+
+"I didn't feel very sure he would keep his word."
+
+"Then you don't know him as well as I do."
+
+"I haven't the chance.  He speaks a deal more to you than he do to
+me."
+
+"Well, Jael, you needn't snub me, because you are going with Mr.
+Little."
+
+As a bone, put between two friendly dogs, causes a growl, so when a
+handsome young man enters on the scene, I have seen young women lose
+a little of that unmitigated sweetness which marked them a moment
+before.
+
+With Grace, however, to snap and to repent generally followed in a
+breath.  "I hope you will have a happy day, dear, as happy as you
+deserve."  She then went to kiss her, but gave her cheek, instead of
+her lips.  "There," said she, in rather a flurried way, "don't keep
+Mr. Little waiting."
+
+Just as they drove off, Grace came to the window, after a slight
+irresolution, and kissed her hand to them enchantingly; at which a
+sudden flood of rapture rushed through Little's heart, and flushed
+his cheek, and fired his dark eye; Grace caught its flash full in
+hers, and instinctively retired a step.  They were off.
+
+"How bright and happy they look," said she to her father.  And no
+wonder.
+
+She sat down, and, somehow, she felt singularly dull and lonely.
+
+Then she dressed for church, languidly.  Then she went to church.
+By-and-by she came back from church.
+
+Then she sat down, in her bonnet, and felt alone in the world, and
+sad; and at last she found herself quietly crying, as young ladies
+will sometimes, without any visible cause.
+
+Then she asked herself what on earth she was crying about, and
+herself told her she was a little hysterical fool, and wanted a good
+beating.
+
+Then she plucked up spirit, and dried her eyes.  Then she took to
+yawning, and said Sunday was a dull day, and life itself rather a
+wearisome thing.
+
+Then a servant came to inquire if she was at home.
+
+"What, on Sunday?  Of course not.  Who is it?"
+
+"Mr. Coventry, miss."
+
+"I am at home."
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+People that met Jael Dence and Henry Little driving to Cairnhope
+were struck with their faces; his so dark, hers so fair, and both so
+handsome: but the woman's lit up with lively delight, the man's
+clouded and sorrowful, and his brow knit with care.  This very day
+he must take the lock off Cairnhope old church, in spite of his
+Uncle Raby.  He had got the requisite tools with him hidden in the
+gig; but, even should he succeed, it was but the first step of a
+difficult and, perhaps, dangerous enterprise; and he was entering on
+it all with a heart no longer buoyed by hopeful love.  But for his
+pledge to Mr. Cheetham he could hardly have persisted in the
+struggle.
+
+As for Jael Dence, she had no great reason to be happy either: the
+man she loved loved another.  Still he was kind to HER, and they
+belonged to the same class; she had a chance, and gleams of hope.
+And, after all, the future was uncertain, but the present certain:
+she had him to herself for the day.  She was close to him--so close,
+that she could feel him--and he was driving her out, and to those
+who loved her: she basked in the present delight, and looked as if
+she was being taken to heaven by an angel, instead of driving to
+Cairnhope by a gloomy young man, whom the passers-by envied, and
+wondered at his good luck in having such a companion.  She talked to
+him, and got the short answers of an absent man.  But she continued
+to make her little remarks occasionally, and, ere they reached
+Cairnhope, he found himself somehow soothed by her sex, her beauty,
+and her mellow, kindly voice.
+
+As they drove up to the farm-house, he told her to hide her face a
+moment, for they didn't know who it was.
+
+Martha ran out.  "Y'are welcome, y'are welcome; and so is your--
+Eh!  Why it's our Jael.  'Tis no avail to hide thy face, thou jade;
+I know every bit o' thee."  And Patty had her out of the gig in a
+moment, and there was a cuddling match it did one good to see.
+
+Henry perked up for a moment and offered a suggestion.  "Some of
+that ought to come my way, for bringing her here."
+
+"Oh, you'll get enough o' that fun before you die," said Patty.
+"Now come you in; the carter's boy will take the horse."
+
+They went in and greeted the old farmer; and soon the bell began to
+ring for church, and Nathan Dence told Martha to put on her bonnet.
+
+"La, father!" said she, piteously.
+
+"She prefers to stay at home and chat with Jael," said Henry.  The
+fact is, he wanted to be rid of them both.
+
+Old Dence shook his head.  He was one of those simple, grand, old
+rustic Christians, who have somehow picked out the marrow of
+religion, and left the devil the bone, yclept theology.  "What?"
+said he, "my lasses! can't ye spare God a slice out of his own day?"
+
+"Nay, it is not that, father."
+
+The old man continued his remonstrance.  "To be sure our Jael is a
+cordial.  But she'll dine and sup with us.  Take my word for 't, all
+lawful pleasures are sweeter on the Lord's day after a bit o'
+church."
+
+"And so they are, father; but dear heart! to think of you
+forgetting.  Will nobody tell him?  They're sworn to give me a red
+face, Jael and all."
+
+This piteous appeal set Jael's wits working.  "Eh, father, it will
+be the first of her bans!"
+
+"Is it me you are asking such a question?" cried Patty, and turned
+her head away with absurd mock-modesty.
+
+"And so 'tis," said Dence; "ah, that is a different thing."
+
+Henry thought that was no reason for Patty's staying at home; she
+ought rather to go and hear the bans were cried all right.
+
+At this proposal both sisters lifted up their hands, and he was
+remonstrated with, and lectured, and at last informed that, if a
+girl was in church when her bans were cried, her children would be
+all born deaf and dumb.
+
+"Oh, indeed!" said Little, satirically.  "That's a fact in natural
+history I was not aware of.  Well, farmer, then let's you and I go
+by ourselves."
+
+So Patty stayed at home, in obedience to rural superstition, and
+Jael stayed to keep her company, and Farmer Dence went to church out
+of piety; and as for Henry, to tell the truth, he went to church to
+escape the girls' tongues, and to be in a quiet, somniferous place,
+where he could think out his plans undisturbed.
+
+The men were no sooner gone than the sisters began to gossip hard.
+
+"Eh, Jael, thou's gotten a prize."
+
+"Not as I know of."
+
+"I do adore a dark young man."
+
+"So do I; but this one is not mine."
+
+"I'll take his word before thine.  Why, he calls thee his lass in
+his very letter."
+
+"Not he.  Show me his letter."
+
+"What will ye give me?"
+
+"Nay, Patty, pray show it me."
+
+"Well, and so I will."
+
+She brought her the letter.  Jael read it and changed color, and was
+delighted for a moment or two; but soon her good sense and humility
+prevailed.  "'Twas to surprise you, like.  I do know he looks higher
+than me."
+
+"More fool he.  But I don't believe it."
+
+"You may," said Jael, and turned the conversation to Patty's
+approaching marriage; once launched in that direction, it flowed
+without intermission till the men returned, and dinner smoked upon
+the board.
+
+After dinner Henry watched an opportunity, and slipped out into the
+yard, got the tools out, put his great-coat over them, and away to
+Cairnhope Church.  He knew better than go past Raby Hall to it: he
+went back toward Hillsborough, full three miles, and then turned off
+the road and got on the heather.  He skirted the base of a heathery
+mound, and at last saw the church on an elevation before him, made
+for it incautiously over some boggy ground, and sank in up to his
+waist.
+
+He extricated himself with considerable difficulty, and cast a woful
+look at his clothes.
+
+Then he turned to, and piled up a heap of stones to mark the
+dangerous spot; for he foresaw he must often travel that way in all
+weathers.  At last he reached the church, removed the lock, and
+fastened the door with screws.  He then went back to the farm as
+fast as he could.  But all this had taken a long time, and the sun
+was sinking as he got into the yard.  He was in the very act of
+concealing the lock in the gig, when Martha Dence came out at him,
+as red as a turkey-cock.
+
+"You thought but little of my sister, young man, to leave her all
+these hours, and you come out to spend the day with her."
+
+"Stuff and nonsense!  I came out on my own business."
+
+"So it seems.  And it have taken you into worse company.  A fine
+figure she has made you."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The hussy you have been after this while."
+
+"That's so like you girls.  You think a man has nothing to do but to
+run after women."
+
+"What business can you have on the Sabbath-day, I'd like to know."
+
+"Would you?  Well, I'll tell you--when I tell the bellman."
+
+"You are quite right, Mr. Little.  Trust none but your friends."
+
+This was a bitter remark.  Henry could not reply to it, and that
+moved his bile.  Patty pursued her advantage, and let him know that,
+when a young man brought a young woman out for the day, he did not
+leave her for three hours at a stretch, unless he meant to affront
+her.  She raised her voice in saying this, and so did he in
+replying, "Tell you I came out on my own business, not Jael's; but I
+am a good-natured fellow, considering all I endure, so I took that
+opportunity to bring your sister out to see you.  Could I guess you
+two couldn't make yourselves happy for one afternoon without
+flirting?  So much for sisterly affection!  Well, next time I'll
+come alone--if I come at all."
+
+Jael came out at the raised voices, and received this last sentence
+full in the face.  She turned pale.
+
+"Oh, Patty, Patty, what have you been saying?"
+
+"I've been speaking my mind, that is all."
+
+"Ay, and you've made him say the only unkind word I ever heard from
+his lips."
+
+"I'm very sorry, Jael," said the young man, penitently.
+
+"Oh, then I'm to blame, because he is so ill-tempered."  And Patty
+bridled.
+
+"Partly.  You should not interfere between friends."  Having
+delivered this admonition, Jael softened it by kissing her, and
+whispered, "Father's asking for his tea."
+
+Patty went in as meek as Moses.
+
+Then Jael turned to Henry, and laid her hand on his arm, while her
+gray eyes searched his face.
+
+"There's something amiss.  You are never cross, except when you are
+unhappy.  What is it?"
+
+"Oh, Jael, my heart is broken.  She is going to be married."
+
+"Who says so?"
+
+"Mr. Cheetham told me she was engaged to a Mr. Coventry."
+
+"What can Mr. Cheetham know?  To be sure the gentleman is a good
+deal with her, and I hear he has courted her this two years; and she
+likes his company, that's certain.  But she is used to be admired,
+and she is very hard to please."
+
+"What, then, you think it is not quite hopeless?"
+
+"While there's life there's hope."
+
+"What had I better do?"
+
+"Nay, you shouldn't ask me."
+
+"Oh, yes: you advised me so wisely about the insurance."
+
+"Ay, but then I saw it clear.  He is purse-proud, and I knew he'd
+think a deal more of you if you insured your life for a vast o'
+money.  But now I don't see clear; and I'm loath to advise.  Happen
+you'd hate me afterward if it went wrong."
+
+"No, no, I wouldn't be so ungrateful."
+
+Jael shook her head, doubtfully.
+
+"Well, then," said Henry, "don't advise me; but put yourself in my
+place.  (I'll tell you a secret I daren't trust to Patty.  I have
+found a way to beat the Trades, and make my fortune in a year or
+two.)  Now what would you do, if you were me?"
+
+This question raised a tumult in Jael's heart.  But her strong will,
+her loyalty, and, above all, her patience, conquered, though not
+without signs of the struggle, a bosom that heaved somewhat higher,
+and a low voice that trembled a little.  "If I was a young man, I
+wouldn't shilly-shally, nor wait till I was rich, before I spoke.
+I'd have it out with her.  I'd get her alone, and tell her all.
+Then, if she showed any sign of liking, I'd beg her to wait a bit,
+and say I'd soon be a gentleman for her sake.  And if she cares
+naught for you, better know it, and leave her, than fare in heaven
+one hour and in hell the next, as I have seen thee do this while, my
+poor lad."
+
+"It is wise and good advice, and I'll take it.  I've kept all my
+courage for the Trades; I'd better have shown her a little.  But
+there's one thing more I want to ask you."
+
+This was too much.  Jael's courage and patience failed her for once.
+"Keep it," she cried almost wildly.  "I can't bear no more.  There's
+not one lass in a hundred would do what I have done for you: yet you
+want more.  D'ye think I'm not flesh and blood, as well as her?"
+
+And she began to cry bitterly.
+
+This took Henry quite by surprise, and grieved him.  He consoled
+her, and coaxed her, in vague terms, that did not produce any
+effect.  So then he kissed her cheek, and dried her eyes with his
+own handkerchief, and that was not quite so ineffectual.  She gave a
+final sob, and said, with some slight remains of passion, "There,
+there; never heed me.  It takes a deal of patience to go through the
+world."  And so she left him.
+
+He was not sorry to be alone a minute, and think.  This short
+dialogue with Jael gave him some insight into female character.  It
+made him suspect that he had been too timid with Grace Carden, and
+also that there were two women in the game instead of one.
+
+When the time came to return he asked leave to borrow a horse-cloth.
+
+He aired it by the fire, and remarked that it had turned very cold.
+
+"Why," said Patty, "you have got your top-coat.  Well, you are a
+soft one."
+
+"And you are a sharp one," said Henry, ironically.
+
+When Jael came to the gig, Henry put the cloth over her shoulders.
+"'Twasn't for me, ye see," said he: "'twas for my betters."
+
+"I like you for that," said Patty.
+
+Then there was much kissing, and shaking of hands, and promising to
+come again, and away they drove to Hillsborough.
+
+On the road Henry, for the first time, was very respectful, as well
+as kind, to Jael.  She was soft and gentle, but rather silent and
+reserved.  They parted at the door of "Woodbine Villa."
+
+Next day, Henry called early, and found Miss Carden alone.  His
+heart beat tumultuously.  She was very gracious, and hoped he had
+spent a pleasant day yesterday.
+
+"Pretty well."
+
+"Is that all?  Why I quite envied you your ride, and your companion."
+
+"She is a very good girl."
+
+"She is something more than that: but one does not find her out all
+at once."
+
+Now it was Henry's turn.  But he was flustered, and thinking how he
+should begin.  And, while he hesitated, the lady asked him was he
+come to finish the bust.
+
+"No.  I didn't come for that.  I will finish it though."  And thus
+he was diverted from his purpose, for the moment.
+
+He took a carving tool, and eyed his model, but soon laid down the
+tool, and said: "I haven't thanked you yet.  And I don't know how to
+thank you."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"For what you sent to Mr. Cheetham."
+
+"Oh!" said Grace, and blushed.  Then she turned it off, and said she
+thought if any body ought to thank her for that, it was Mr. Cheetham.
+
+"Ay, for the order.  But the sweet words that came with it?  Do you
+think I don't prize them above all the orders in the world?"
+
+She colored high again.  "What! did he show you my note?"
+
+"He did: and that has made me his friend.  Shall I tell you the
+effect of those words on me?"
+
+"No; never mind.  But I'm glad I put them in, if they did you any
+good."
+
+"Any good?  They made me a new man.  I was defeated by the Trades: I
+was broken-hearted: and I hated every body.  Good Dr. Amboyne had
+set me work to do; to save the lives of my fellow-creatures.  But I
+couldn't; I hated them so.  The world had been too unjust to me, I
+could not return it good for evil.  My heart was full of rage and
+bitterness."
+
+"That's a great pity--at your age.  But really it is no wonder.
+Yes; you have been cruelly used."  And the water stood in Grace's
+eyes.
+
+"Ay, but it is all over; those sweet words of yours made a man of me
+again.  They showed me you cared a little for me.  Now I have found
+a way to outwit the Trades.  Now I'm on the road to fortune.  I
+won't be a workman this time next year.  I'll be a master, and a
+thriving one."
+
+"Ay, do, do.  Beat them, defeat them; make them scream with envy.
+But I am afraid you are too sanguine."
+
+"No; I can do it, if you will only give me another word of hope to
+keep me going; and oh, I need it, if you knew all."
+
+Grace began to look uneasy.  "Mr. Little, can you doubt that you
+have my best wishes?" said she, guardedly, and much less warmly than
+she had spoken just before.
+
+"No, I don't doubt that; but what I fear is, that, when I have
+gained the hard battle, and risen in the world, it will be too late.
+Too late."
+
+Grace turned more and more uncomfortable.
+
+"Oh, pray wait a few months, and see what I can do, before you--"
+
+Will it be believed that Mr. Carden, who seldom came into this room
+at all, must walk in just at this moment, and interrupt them.  He
+was too occupied with his own affairs, to pay much attention to
+their faces, or perhaps he might have asked himself why the young
+man was so pale, and his daughter so red.
+
+"I heard you were here, Little, and I want to speak to you on a
+matter of some importance."
+
+Grace took this opportunity, and made her escape from the room
+promptly.
+
+Henry, burning inwardly, had to listen politely to a matter he
+thought pitiably unimportant compared with that which had been
+broken off.  But the "Gosshawk" had got him in its clutches; and was
+resolved to make him a decoy duck.  He was to open a new vein of
+Insurances.  Workmen had hitherto acted with great folly and
+imprudence in this respect, and he was to cure them, by precept as
+well as example.
+
+Henry assented, to gratify a person whose good-will he might
+require, and to get rid of a bore.  But that was not so easy; the
+"Gosshawk" was full of this new project, and had a great deal to
+say, before he came to the point, and offered Henry a percentage on
+the yearly premium of every workman that should be insured in the
+"Gosshawk."
+
+This little bargain struck, Henry was left alone; and waited for the
+return of Miss Carden.
+
+He was simple enough to hope she would come back, and have it out
+with him.
+
+She kept carefully out of his way, and, at last, he went sadly home.
+
+"Ah," said he, "Jael gave me bad advice.  I have been premature, and
+frightened her."
+
+He would go to work his own way again.
+
+In forty-eight hours he moved into his new house, furnished it
+partly: bought a quantity of mediocre wood-carving, and improved it;
+put specimens in his window, and painted his name over the door.
+This, at his mother's request and tearful entreaties, he painted out
+again, and substituted "Rowbotham."
+
+Nor was Rowbotham a mere nom de plume.  It was the real name of
+Silly Billy.  The boy had some turn for carving, but was quite
+uncultivated: Henry took him into his employ, fed him, and made free
+with his name.  With all this he found time to get a key made to fit
+the lock of Cairnhope old Church.
+
+At one o'clock on Thursday morning he came to Cheetham's works, and
+scratched at the gate.  A big workman opened it.  It turned out to
+be Cheetham himself, in a moleskin suit, and a long beard.
+
+The forge on wheels was all ready, also a cart containing anvil,
+bellows, hammers, pincers, leathern buckets, and a quantity of steel
+laths.  They attached the forge to the tail of the cart, and went on
+their silent expedition.  Cheetham drove the cart.  Henry followed
+afar off until they had cleared the suburbs.
+
+They passed "Woodbine Villa."  A single light was burning.  Henry
+eyed it wistfully, and loitered long to look at it.  Something told
+him that light was in her bedroom.  He could hardly tear himself
+away from contemplating it: it was his pole-star.
+
+There was only one great difficulty in their way; a man on a horse
+might cross the moor, but a cart must go by "Raby Hall" to reach the
+church: and, before they got within a furlong of the Hall, a watch-
+dog began to bark.
+
+"Stop, sir," whispered Henry.  "I expected this."  He then produced
+some pieces of thick felt, and tied them with strings round the
+wheels.
+
+They then drove by the house as fast as they could.  They did not
+deceive the dogs; but no man heard them, nor saw them.
+
+They got to the church, opened the door, and drew the forge into the
+deserted building.
+
+As soon as they got inside, Cheetham cast his eyes round and gave a
+shudder.  "You must have a stout heart: no money should tempt me to
+work here by myself.  Lord!  What's that?"
+
+For a low musical moan was heard.
+
+Cheetham darted back, and got to the church-door.
+
+Henry's heart beast faster: but he lighted his lantern, and went up
+the aisle.  The place was solemn, grim, gaunt, and moldering, and
+echoed strangely; but it was empty.  He halloed to his companion
+that it was all right.  Then they set the forge up near a pillar at
+the entrance into the chancel.  When they had done this, and brought
+in the steel laths, the sacks of coals, etc., Cheetham produced a
+flask, and took a pull of neat brandy.  This gave him courage, and
+he proposed to have a look round before they went.  Accordingly they
+inspected the building.
+
+When they came round to the chancel, suddenly there was a rattle,
+and a tremendous rush of some huge thing that made a cold wind, and
+blew out the light.
+
+Henry was appalled, and Cheetham dropped the lantern, and ran,
+yelling.  And soon Henry heard his voice in the churchyard calling
+on him to come out.
+
+He did go out, and felt very much puzzled and alarmed.  However, he
+got matches from Cheetham, and went back, and lighted the lantern,
+quaking a little, and then he found that the great moldering picture
+over the altar had rotted away from some of its supports, and one
+half of it was now drooping, like a monstrous wing, over the altar.
+
+He returned with the lantern, and told Cheetham what it was.  Then
+he screwed on the lock, locked the church, and they went back to
+Hillsborough in good spirits.
+
+But, as he lay in bed, Henry thought the matter over, and, for the
+first time in his life, felt superstitious.
+
+"It is very odd," he said, "that old picture my forefathers have
+worshiped under, and prayed to, no doubt, should flap out in my face
+like that, the moment I offered to set up my forge among their dead
+bones."
+
+Daylight dispersed these superstitious feelings, and the battle
+began.
+
+As usual, the first step toward making money was to part with it.
+He could do nothing without a horse and a light cart.  In
+Hillsborough they drive magnificent horses in public cabs: Henry
+knew one in particular, that had often spun up the steepest hills
+with him; a brute of prodigious bone and spirit.  He bought this
+animal for a moderate price, considering his value: and then the
+next thing was--and indeed with some of us it precedes the purchase
+of the animal--to learn to ride.
+
+He had only two days to acquire this accomplishment in: so he took a
+compendious method.  He went to the circus, at noon, and asked to
+see the clown.  A gloomy fellow was fished out of the nearest
+public, and inquired what he wanted.
+
+"The clown."
+
+"Well, I am the clown."
+
+"What! you the merry chap that makes the fun?" said Henry,
+incredulously.
+
+"I make the fun at night," replied the man, dolefully.  "If you want
+fun out of me, come and pay your shilling, like a man."
+
+"But it isn't fun I'm come for.  I want to learn to ride."
+
+"Then you are too old.  Why, we begin as soon as we can stand on a
+horse's back."
+
+"Oh, I don't mean to ride standing.  I want to sit a horse, rearing,
+or plunging, or blundering over rough ground."
+
+"What will you stand?"
+
+"A sovereign."
+
+The clown dived into the public-house, and told a dark seedy man,
+with his black hair plastered and rolled effeminately, that he had
+got a bloke who would stand a quid for a mount.  The two came out,
+and the plastered Italian went to the stables: the melancholy
+punster conducted Henry into the arena, and stood beside him like
+Patience on a monument.  Presently a quiet mare ran in, and stuck.
+
+Henry was mounted, and cantered her round, the two men instinctively
+following in a smaller circle, with jaws as long as your arm.
+
+"This is delightful," said Henry; "but I might as well be sitting in
+a chair.  What I want is a Prancer."
+
+Then they brought him another horse, just as docile as the mare.
+The obedient creature, at a signal, reared suddenly, and seated Mr.
+Little on the sawdust behind him.  A similar result was attained
+several times, by various means.  But Henry showed himself so tough,
+courageous, and persistent, that he made great progress, and his
+good-humor won his preceptors.  They invited him to come tomorrow,
+at an earlier hour, and bring half a quid with him.  He did so, and
+this time there was an American rider rehearsing, who showed Henry
+what to do, and what not to do; and gave him a most humorous and
+instructive lesson.  Indeed, his imitations of bad riding were so
+truthful and funny, that even the clown was surprised into one
+laugh; he who rarely smiled, unless in the way of business.
+
+"Well, sir," said Henry, "you have given me a good lesson; now take
+a hint from me; just you go and do all this before the public; for I
+never saw you do any thing half as droll."
+
+They all three shook their heads with one accord.  Go out of the
+beaten track, before an audience?  Never.  Such vagaries were only
+admissible in private.
+
+After this second day the fee was reduced to a gallon of ale.
+
+But, on the third day, the pupil combined theory with practice.  He
+told his mother he was going to Cairnhope for the night.  He then
+rode off to Cairnhope Church.  He had two large saddle-bags,
+containing provisions, and tools of all sorts.  He got safe across
+the moor just before sunset.  He entered the church, led the horse
+in with him, and put him into the Squire's pew.  He then struck a
+light, went into the chancel, and looked at the picture.  It was as
+he had left it; half on the wall, half drooping over the altar-
+place.  The walls were dank, and streaked here and there with green.
+His footsteps echoed, and the edifice was all dark, except within
+the rays of his lantern; it also sang and moaned in a way to be
+accounted for by the action of the wind on a number of small
+apertures; but, nevertheless, it was a most weird and ghostly sound.
+He was glad of the companionship of his very horse.
+
+He took his buckets to the mountain stream, and, in due course,
+filled his trough, and left one bucket full for other uses.  He then
+prepared and lighted his forge.  As he plied the bellows, and the
+coals gleamed brighter and brighter, monumental figures came out and
+glared at him; mutilated inscriptions wavered on the walls; portions
+of the dark walls themselves gleamed in the full light, and showed
+the streaks and stains of age and weather, and the shadow of a
+gigantic horse's head; and, as the illuminated part seemed on fire
+by contrast, so the dark part of the church was horribly black and
+mysterious, and a place out of which a ghost or phantom might be
+expected, at any moment, to come forth into that brilliant patch of
+light.
+
+Young Little, who had entered on this business in all the skepticism
+of the nineteenth century, felt awed, and began to wish he had
+selected any other building in the world but this.  He seemed to be
+desecrating a tomb.
+
+However, he mustered up his manly resolution.  He looked up at a
+small aperture in the roof, and saw a star glittering above: it
+seemed close, and a type of that omniscient eye "from which no
+secrets are hid."
+
+He clasped his hands together, and said, "I hope God, who has seen
+me driven from the haunts of men, will forgive me for taking refuge
+here; and, if he does, I don't care who else is offended, alive or
+dead."  And, with this, he drew the white-hot strip of steel from
+the forge on to the anvil, and down came his hammer with a blow that
+sent the fiery steel flying all round, and rang and echoed through
+the desolate building, instantly there was a tremendous plunge and
+clatter, followed by a shaking sound, and, whiz, the church was
+fanned by black wings going zigzag.
+
+"Ten thousand devils!" yelled Henry, and heaved the hammer high, in
+his own defense.
+
+But it was only the horse plunging and quivering with fear, and a
+score of bats the blow of the hammer had frightened out of the
+rotten pulpit.
+
+He resumed work with a beating heart, and the building rang and
+echoed and re-echoed with the rapid blows; and no more interruption
+came.  The nineteenth century conquered.
+
+After four hours of earnest work, he fed his horse, ate a slice of
+bread and meat, drank water from the bucket, gave his horse some,
+and went to sleep in a pew beside that useful animal.
+
+Back to Hillsborough, at peep of day, with the blades he had forged.
+
+He now took his mother, in a great measure, into his confidence,
+under a strict promise to tell nobody, not even Dr. Amboyne.  Mrs.
+Little received the communication in a way that both surprised and
+encouraged him.  She was as willing to outwit the Unions, as she was
+willing to resist them openly; and Henry found her an admirable
+coadjutor.
+
+Had she known where Henry had set up his forge, she would have been
+very unhappy.  But he merely told her it was in a secluded place,
+near Cairnhope, where he could never be detected.
+
+The carving business, being merely a blind, was not pushed.  But
+Henry gave his apprentice, Billy, instruction, and the youth began
+to show an aptitude which contrasted remarkably with his general
+incapacity.
+
+Mrs. Little paid one or two visits to factories, to see what women
+could do in this sort of work; and, one day, she told Henry she was
+sure she could sharpen and finish the blades.
+
+"No, mother," said Henry.  "You are a lady.  I can't have you made a
+slave of, and your beautiful white hands spoiled."
+
+"I shall be happier, helping you, dear; and I won't spoil my hands,
+since you care about them."
+
+She insisted on a trial, and soon acquired a remarkable knack: she
+had a fine light hand: and it is an art easily learned by an
+attentive and careful woman.  Indeed they can beat the men at it, if
+they will only make up their minds.
+
+And so the enterprise was launched, and conducted thus: in the day
+time, Henry showed himself in the town, and talked big about
+carving; and, in the afternoon, he rode out, and did the real work
+of his life, over the dead bodies of his ancestors.
+
+His saddle-bags were always full, and, gradually, he collected some
+comforts about him in the deserted church.
+
+He called, more than once, at "Woodbine Villa," but Miss Carden was
+on a visit.
+
+He was in the full career of fortune again, and sanguine of success,
+before they met.  One day, having ascertained from Jael what day she
+would be at home, he called and was admitted.  The room was empty,
+but Miss Carden soon came into it, accompanied by Jael carrying the
+bust.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Little," said she, before he could possibly utter a word,
+"this is fortunate.  There is a party here on Thursday, and I want
+to show the bust complete, if you don't mind."
+
+Henry said he would finish it for her.  He accordingly set to work,
+and waited quietly till Jael should leave the room, to have it out
+with Grace.
+
+She, for her part, seemed to have forgotten his strange manner to
+her the other day; perhaps she chose to forget it, or overlook it.
+But Henry observed that Jael was not allowed to quit the room.
+Whatever Miss Carden wanted she fetched herself, and came back
+softly, and rather suddenly, as if she had a mind to surprise Jeel
+and the other too.  Female subtlety was clearly at work.
+
+"What do you advise me?" said Henry to Jael, during one of these
+intervals.
+
+Jael never lifted her eyes from her work, and spoke under her
+breath, "I think I'd be patient to-day.  She must give you a chance
+to speak some day.  Talk to me, when she comes back--about the
+Cairnhope folk, or anything."
+
+Henry followed this advice, and Grace, for the first time, found
+herself a little ignored in the conversation.  She was astonished at
+this and I don't think she quite liked it.
+
+Henry was still going on with warmth and volubility about the
+Cairnhope folk, their good hearts, and their superstitions, when a
+visitor was announced.
+
+"Mr. Coventry."
+
+Henry stopped in the middle of a sentence.
+
+Grace brightened up, and said she was at home.
+
+Mr. Coventry entered the room; a tall, well-made man, with an
+aquiline nose, and handsome face, only perhaps there were more lines
+in it than he was entitled to at his age, for he was barely thirty.
+He greeted Miss Carden with easy grace, and took no more notice of
+the other two, than if they were chairs and tables.
+
+Mr. Frederick Coventry had studied the great art of pleasing, and
+had mastered it wonderfully; but he was not the man to waste it
+indiscriminately.
+
+He was there to please a young lady, to whom he was attached, not to
+diffuse his sunshine indiscriminately.
+
+He courted her openly, not indelicately, but with a happy air of
+respect and self-assurance.
+
+Henry sat, sick with jealousy, and tried to work and watch; but he
+could only watch: his hand trembled too much to work.
+
+What may be called oblique flattery is very pleasing to those quick-
+witted girls, who have had a surfeit of direct compliments: and it
+is oblique flattery, when a man is supercilious and distant to
+others, as well as tender and a little obsequious to her he would
+please.
+
+Grace Carden enjoyed this oblique flattery of Mr. Coventry's all the
+more that it came to her just at a moment when her companions seemed
+disposed to ignore her.  She rewarded Mr. Coventry accordingly, and
+made Henry Little's heart die within him.  His agony became
+intolerable.  What a position was his!  Set there, with a chisel in
+his hand, to copy the woman he loved, while another wooed her before
+his face, and she smiled at his wooing!
+
+At last his chisel fell out of his hand, and startled everybody: and
+then he rose up with pale cheek, and glittering eyes, and Heaven
+only knows what he was going to do or say.  But at that moment
+another visitor was announced, to whom indeed the door was never
+closed.  He entered the next moment, and Grace ran to meet him,
+crying, "Oh, Mr. Raby! this IS a surprise."
+
+Mr. Raby kissed her, and shook hands with Mr. Coventry.  He then
+said a kind word to Jael Dence, who got up and courtesied to him.
+He cast a careless glance on Henry and the bust, but said nothing.
+He was in a hurry, and soon came to the object of his visit.
+
+"My dear," said he, "the last time I saw you, you said you were
+sorry that Christmas was no longer kept in Hillsborough as it used
+to be."
+
+"And so I am."
+
+"Well, it is kept in Cairnhope, thank Heaven, pretty much as it was
+three centuries ago.  Your father will be in London, I hear; will
+you honor my place and me with a visit during the Christmas
+holidays?"
+
+Grace opened her eyes with astonishment.  "Oh, that I will," said
+she, warmly.
+
+"You will take your chance of being snowed up?"
+
+"I am afraid I shall not be so fortunate," was the charming reply.
+
+The Squire turned to Coventry, and said slyly, "I would ask you to
+join us, sir; but it is rather a dull place for a gentleman who
+keeps such good company."
+
+"I never heard it spoken of as a dull place before," said the young
+man; "and, if it was, you have taken a sure means to make it
+attractive."
+
+"That is true.  Well, then, I have no scruple in asking you to join
+us;" and he gave Grace a look, as much as to say, "Am I not a
+considerate person?"
+
+"I am infinitely obliged to you, Mr. Raby," said Coventry,
+seriously; "I will come."
+
+"You will stay to luncheon, godpapa?"
+
+"Never touch it.  Good-by.  Well, then, Christmas-eve I shall expect
+you both.  Dinner at six.  But come an hour or two before it, if you
+can: and Jael, my girl, you know you must dine at the hall on
+Christmas-eve, and old Christmas-eve as usual, you and your sister
+and the old man."
+
+Jael courtesied, and said with homely cordiality, "We shall be
+there, sir, please God we are alive."
+
+"Bring your gun, Coventry.  There's a good sprinkling of pheasants
+left.  By-the-bye, what about that pedigree of yours; does it prove
+the point?"
+
+"Completely.  Dorothy Raby, Sir Richard's youngest sister, married
+Thomas Coventry, who was out in the forty-five.  I'm having the
+pedigree copied for you, at a stationer's near."
+
+"I should like to see it."
+
+"I'll go with you, and show it to you, if you like."
+
+Mr. Raby was evidently pleased at this attention, and they went off
+together.
+
+Grace accompanied them to the door.  On her return she was startled
+by the condition of young Little.
+
+This sudden appearance of his uncle, whom he hated, had agitated him
+not a little, and that uncle's interference had blasted his last
+hope.  He recognized this lover, and had sided with him: was going
+to shut the pair up, in a country house, together.  It was too much.
+He groaned, and sank back in his chair, almost fainting, and his
+hands began to shake in the air, as if he was in an ague.
+
+Both the women darted simultaneously toward him.  "Oh! he's
+fainting!" cried Grace.  "Wine! wine!  Fly."  Jael ran out to fetch
+some, in spite of a despairing gesture, by which the young man tried
+to convey to her it was no use.
+
+"Wine can do me no good, nor death no harm.  Why did I ever enter
+this house?"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Little, don't look so; don't talk so," said Grace, turning
+pale, in her turn.  "Are you ill?  What is the matter?"
+
+"Oh, nothing.  What should ail me?  I'm only a workman.  What
+business have I with a heart?  I loved you dearly.  I was working
+for you, fighting for you, thinking for you, living for you.  And
+you love that Coventry, and never showed it."
+
+Jael came in with a glass of wine for him, but he waved her off with
+all the grandeur of despair.
+
+"You tell me this to my face!" said Grace, haughtily; but her bosom
+panted.
+
+"Yes; I tell you so to your face.  I love you, with all my soul."
+
+"How dare you?  What have I ever done, to justify--  Oh, if you
+weren't so pale, I'd give you a lesson.  What could possess you?
+It's not my fault, thank heaven.  You have insulted me, sir.  No;
+why should I?  You must be unhappy enough.  There, I'll say but one
+word, and that, of course, is 'good morning.'"
+
+And she marched out of the room, trembling secretly in every limb.
+
+Henry sat down, and hid his face, and all his frame shook.
+
+Then Jael was all pity.  She threw herself on her knees, and kissed
+his trembling hands with canine fidelity, and wept on his shoulder.
+
+He took her hand, and tried hard to thank her, but the words were
+choked.
+
+Grace Carden opened the door, and put her head cautiously in, for
+she wanted to say a word to Jael without attracting Henry's
+attention.  But, when she saw Jael and Henry in so loving an
+attitude, she started, and then turned as red as fire; and presently
+burst out laughing.
+
+Jael and Henry separated directly.
+
+Grace laughed again, an unpleasant laugh.  "I beg pardon, good
+people.  I only wanted Mr. Little's address.  I thought you could
+get it for me, Jael.  And now I'm sure you can.  Ha! ha! ha!"
+
+And she was heard laughing after the door closed.
+
+Now there was a world of contempt and insolence in this laugh.  It
+conveyed, as plainly as words, "I was going to be so absurd as to
+believe in your love, and pity it, at all events, though I can't
+approve it: but now you have just set my mind at ease.  Ha! ha! ha!"
+
+"Let me go," cried Henry, wildly.
+
+"Nay, tell me your address."
+
+"What for?  To tell that cruel--laughing--"
+
+"Nay then, for myself."
+
+"That's a different thing.  I respect you.  But her, I mean to hate,
+as much as I loved her."
+
+He gave Jael his address, and then got out of the house as fast as
+he could.
+
+
+That evening Grace Carden surprised her father, by coming into his
+study.  "Papa, " said she, "I am come to ask a favor.  You must not
+refuse me.  But I don't know that you ever did.  Dearest, I want
+L50."
+
+"Well, my child; just tell me what it is for."
+
+"It is for Mr. Little; for his lessons."
+
+"Well, but L50!"
+
+"He has given me a good many.  And to tell you the truth, papa, I
+dismissed him rather unceremoniously; and now I should be glad to
+soften the blow a little, if I can.  Do be very good and obedient,
+dear papa, and write what I shall dictate.  PLEASE."
+
+"Well, spoiled child: who can resist you?"
+
+Then Grace dictated, and Mr. Carden wrote:
+
+
+"DEAR SIR,--My daughter informs me that, as yet, you have received
+no remuneration for the lessons you have given her.  I beg your
+acceptance of the inclosed check, and, at the same time, should be
+glad if you would put a price on the admirable bust you have
+executed of her.
+
+"Yours obediently,
+
+"WALTER CARDEN."
+
+
+The reply to this letter surprised Mr. Carden, so that he brought it
+to Grace, and showed it her.
+
+
+"DEAR SIR,--The lessons are not worth speaking of.  I have learned
+more in your house than I taught.  I beg to return the check with
+thanks.  Price of the bust, five hundred guineas.
+
+"Yours obediently,
+
+"HENRY LITTLE."
+
+
+Grace colored up, and her eyes sparkled.  "That young man wants
+humbling."
+
+"I don't see that, really.  He is very civil, and I presume this
+five hundred guineas is just a polite way of saying that he means to
+keep it.  Wants it for an advertisement, eh?"
+
+Grace smiled and bit her lip.  "Oh, what a man of business you are!"
+And a little while after the tears came into her eyes.  "Madman!"
+said she to herself.  "He won't let me be his friend.  Well, I can't
+help it."
+
+After the brief excitement of this correspondence, Little soon
+relapsed into dull misery.  His mother was alarmed, and could
+restrain herself no longer.  She implored his confidence.  "Make me
+the partner of your grief, dear," she said; "not that you can tell
+me anything I have not guessed already; but, dearest, it will do you
+good to open your heart; and, who knows, I may assist you.  I know
+my sex much better than you do."
+
+Henry kissed her sadly, and said it was too late now.  "It is all
+over.  She is going to marry another man."
+
+"Has she told you so?"
+
+"Not in words; but I have seen it.  She has burned it into my
+heart."
+
+"I wish I knew her," said Mrs. Little, very earnestly, and almost in
+a whisper.
+
+"Some day, mother, some day; but not now.  Oh, the tortures one
+heart can suffer, and yet not break."
+
+Mrs. Little sighed.  "What, not even tell me her name?"
+
+"I can't, I can't.  Oh, mother, you mean well, but you will drive me
+mad."
+
+Mrs. Little forebore to press him further just then.  She sat silent
+at her work, and he at his, till they were aroused by a fly drawing
+up at the door.
+
+A fine young woman got out with something heavy, and holding it like
+a child in one arm, rapped at the door with the hand that was
+disengaged.
+
+Mrs. Little opened the door to her, and she and Jael Dence surveyed
+each other with calm but searching eyes.
+
+"If you please, ma'am, does Mr. Little bide here?"
+
+Mrs. Little said yes, with a smile: for Jael's face and modesty
+pleased her at first sight.
+
+"I have something for him."
+
+"I'll give it to him."
+
+"If you please, ma'am, I was to give it him myself."
+
+Henry recognized the voice, opened the door, and invited her in.
+
+Mrs. Little followed her, full of suppressed curiosity.
+
+This put Jael out, but she was too patient to show it.
+
+"It is the bust," said she; and put it softly down on the table with
+her strong arms.
+
+Henry groaned.  "She despises even that; she flings it at my head
+without a word."
+
+"Nay; I have got a note for you."
+
+"Then why didn't you give it me at once?" cried Henry impatiently.
+
+She handed him the note without a word.
+
+It ran thus:
+
+
+"Miss Carden presents her compliments to Mr. Little, and sends him
+his beautiful bust.  She is grieved that he will accept no
+remuneration for his lessons; and begs permission to offer her best
+wishes for his happiness and prosperity."
+
+
+The gentleness of this disarmed Henry, and at the same time the
+firmness crushed him.  "It is all over!" he cried, despairingly:
+"and yet I can't hate her."
+
+He ran from the room, unable to restrain his tears, and too proud
+and fiery to endure two spectators of his grief.
+
+Mrs. Little felt as mothers feel toward those who wound their young.
+
+"Is it the woman's likeness?" said she bitterly, and then trembled
+with emotion.
+
+"Ay."
+
+"May I see it?"
+
+"Surely, ma'am."  And Jael began to undo the paper.
+
+But Mrs. Little stopped her.  "No, not yet.  I couldn't bear the
+sight of a face that has brought misery upon him.  I would rather
+look at yours.  It is a very honest one.  May I inquire your name?"
+
+"Jael Dence--at your service."
+
+"Dence! ah, then no wonder you have a good face: a Cairnhope face.
+My child, you remind me of days gone by.  Come and see me again,
+will you?  Then I shall be more able to talk to you quietly."
+
+"Ay, that I will, ma'am."  And Jael colored all over with surprise,
+and such undisguised pleasure that Mrs. Little kissed her at
+parting.
+
+She had been gone a considerable time, when Henry came back; he
+found his mother seated at the table, eying his masterpiece with
+stern and bitter scrutiny.
+
+It was a picture, those two rare faces in such close opposition.
+The carved face seemed alive; but the living face seemed inspired,
+and to explore the other to the bottom with merciless severity.  At
+such work the great female eye is almost terrible in its power.
+
+"It is lovely," said she.  "It seems noble.  I can not find what I
+know must be there.  Oh, why does God give such a face as this to a
+fool?"
+
+"Not a word against her," said Henry.  "She is as wise, and as
+noble, and as good, as she is beautiful.  She has but one fault; she
+loves another man.  Put her sweet face away; hide it from me till I
+am an old man, and can bring it out to show young folks why I lived
+and die a bachelor.  Good-by, dear mother, I must saddle Black
+Harry, and away to my night's work."
+
+
+The days were very short now, and Henry spent two-thirds of his time
+in Cairnhope Church.  The joyous stimulus of his labor was gone but
+the habit remained, and carried him on in a sort of leaden way.
+Sometimes he wondered at himself for the hardships he underwent
+merely to make money, since money had no longer the same charm for
+him; but a good workman is a patient, enduring creature, and self-
+indulgence, our habit, is after all, his exception.  Henry worked
+heavily on, with his sore, sad heart, as many a workman had done
+before him.  Unfortunately his sleep began to be broken a good deal.
+I am not quite clear whether it was the after-clap of the explosion,
+or the prolonged agitation of his young heart, but at this time,
+instead of the profound sleep that generally rewards the sons of
+toil, he had fitful slumbers, and used to dream strange dreams, in
+that old church, so full of gaunt sights and strange sounds.  And,
+generally speaking, however these dreams began, the figure of Grace
+Carden would steal in ere he awoke.  His senses, being only half
+asleep, colored his dreams; he heard her light footstep in the
+pattering rain, and her sweet voice in the musical moan of the
+desolate building; desolate as his heart when he awoke, and behold
+it was a dream.
+
+The day after Christmas-day began brightly, but was dark and
+lowering toward afternoon.  Mrs. Little advised Henry to stay at
+home.  But he shook his head.  "How could I get through the night?
+Work is my salvation.  But for my forge, I should perhaps end like--"
+he was going to say "my poor father."  But he had the sense to
+stop.
+
+Unable to keep him at home, the tender mother got his saddlebags,
+and filled his flask with brandy, and packed up a huge piece of
+Yorkshire pie, and even stuffed in a plaid shawl.  And she strained
+her anxious eyes after him as he rode off.
+
+When he got among the hills, he found it was snowing there very
+hard; and then, somehow, notwithstanding all the speed he made, it
+was nearly dark when he got on the moor, and the tracks he used to
+go by, over the dangerous ground, were effaced.
+
+He went a snail's pace, and at last dismounted, and groped his way.
+He got more than one fall in the snow, and thought himself very
+fortunate, when, at last, something black towered before him, and it
+was the old church.
+
+The scene was truly dismal: the church was already overburdened with
+snow, and still the huge flakes fell fast and silently, and the
+little mountain stream, now swollen to a broad and foaming torrent,
+went roaring by, behind the churchyard wall.
+
+Henry shivered, and made for the shelter.
+
+The horse, to whom this church was merely a well-ventilated stable,
+went in and clattered up the aisle, saddle-bags and all.
+
+Henry locked the door inside, and soon blew the coals to a white
+heat.  The bellows seemed to pant unnaturally loud, all was so
+deadly still.
+
+The windows were curtained with snow, that increased the general
+gloom, though some of the layers shone ghostly white and
+crystalline, in the light of the forge, and of two little grates he
+had set in a monument.
+
+Two heaps of snow lay in the center aisle, just under two open
+places in the roof, and, on these, flakes as big as a pennypiece
+kept falling through the air, and glittered like diamonds as they
+passed through the weird light of the white coals.
+
+Oh! it was an appalling place, that night; youth and life seemed
+intruders.  Henry found it more than he could bear.  He took a
+couple of candles, placed them in bottles, and carried them to the
+western window, and there lighted them.  This one window was
+protected by the remains of iron-work outside, and the whole figure
+of one female saint in colored glass survived.
+
+This expedient broke the devilish blackness, and the saint shone out
+glorious.
+
+The horrid spell thus broken in some degree, Henry plied his hammer,
+and made the church ring, and the flaming metal fly.
+
+But by-and-by, as often happened to him now, a drowsiness overcame
+him at the wrong time.  In vain he battled against it.  It conquered
+him even as he worked; and, at last, he leaned with his arms against
+the handle of the bellows, and dozed as he stood.
+
+He had a dream of that kind which we call a vision, because the
+dream seems to come to the dreamer where he is.
+
+He dreamed he was there at his forge, and a soft voice called to
+him.  He turned, and lo! between him and the western window stood
+six female figures, all dressed in beautiful dresses, but of another
+age, and of many colors, yet transparent; and their faces fair, but
+white as snow: and the ladies courtesied to him, with a certain
+respectful majesty beyond description: and, somehow, by their faces,
+and their way of courtesying to him, he knew they were women of his
+own race, and themselves aware of the relationship.
+
+Then several more such figures came rustling softly through the wall
+from the churchyard, and others rose from the vaults and took their
+places quietly, till there was an avenue of dead beauties; and they
+stood in an ascending line up to the west window.  Some stood on the
+ground, some on the air; that made no difference to them.
+
+Another moment, and then a figure more lovely than them all shone in
+the window, at the end of that vista of fair white faces.
+
+It was Grace Carden.  She smiled on him and said, "I am going where
+I can love you.  There the world will not divide us.  Follow me:
+follow; follow!"
+
+Then she melted away; then all melted: and he awoke with a loud cry
+that echoed through the edifice, now dark and cold as the grave; and
+a great white owl went whirling, and with his wings made the only
+air that stirred.
+
+The fire was out, and the place a grave.  Yet, cold as it was, the
+dreamer was bathed in perspiration, so clear had been that unearthly
+vision, so ghostly was now that flitting owl.
+
+Shuddering all over, he lighted his fire again, and plied his
+bellows with fury, till the fire glowed brighter than ever; and even
+then he prayed aloud that he might never see the like again, even in
+a dream.
+
+He worked like mad, and his hand trembled as he struck.  Ere he had
+thoroughly recovered the shock, a wild cry arose outside.
+
+He started back, awe-struck.
+
+What with the time, the place, and that strange vision, the
+boundaries of the natural and the supernatural were a little
+confused in his mind.
+
+"Help, help!" cried a voice; and now the familiar tone of that voice
+made him utter a loud cry in return.
+
+He searched for the key, and made his way to the door; but, just as
+he began to insert the key, the voice was at the door outside.
+
+"Oh, save me!  A dying girl!  Save me!"
+
+The cry was now a moan, and the next moment an inert mass fell like
+lead against the door in a vain attempt to knock at it.
+
+The voice was Grace Carden's, and it was Grace Carden's body that
+fell so inert and powerless against the church-door, within a yard
+of Henry Little's hand.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+On the twenty-fourth of December Miss Carden and Jael Dence drove to
+Cairnhope village, and stopped at the farm: but Nathan and his
+eldest daughter had already gone up to the Hall; so they waited
+there but a minute or two to light the carriage lamps, and then went
+on up the hill.  It was pitch dark when they reached the house.
+Inside, one of Mr. Raby's servants was on the look-out for the sound
+of wheels, and the visitors had no need to knock or ring; this was a
+point of honor with the master of the mansion; when he did invite
+people, the house opened its arms; even as they drove up, open flew
+the great hall-door, and an enormous fire inside blazed in their
+faces, and shot its flame beyond them out into the night.
+
+Grace alighted, and was about to enter the house, when Jael stopped
+her, and said, "Oh, miss, you will be going in left foot foremost.
+Pray don't do that: it is so unlucky."
+
+Grace laughed, but changed her foot, and entered a lofty hall, hung
+with helmets, pikes, breast-plates, bows, cross-bows, antlers etc.,
+etc.  Opposite her was the ancient chimneypiece and ingle-nook, with
+no grate but two huge iron dogs, set five feet apart; and on them
+lay a birch log and root, the size of a man, with a dozen beech
+billets burning briskly and crackling underneath and aside it.  This
+genial furnace warmed the staircase and passages, and cast a fiery
+glow out on the carriage, and glorified the steep helmets and
+breast-plates of the dead Rabys on the wall, and the sparkling eyes
+of the two beautiful women who now stood opposite it in the pride of
+their youth, and were warmed to the heart by its crackle and glow.
+"Oh! what a glorious fire, this bitter night.  Why, I never saw such
+a--"
+
+"It is the yule log, miss.  Ay, and you might go all round England,
+and not find its fellow, I trow.  But our Squire he don't go to the
+chandler's shop for his yule log, but to his own woods, and fells a
+great tree."
+
+A housemaid now came forward with bed candles, to show Miss Carden
+to her room.  Grace was going up, as a matter of course, when Jael,
+busy helping the footman with her boxes, called after her: "The
+stocking, miss! the stocking!"
+
+Grace looked down at her feet in surprise.
+
+"There it is, hung up by the door.  We must put our presents into it
+before we go upstairs."
+
+"Must we? what on earth am I to give?"
+
+"Oh, any thing will do.  See, I shall put in this crooked sixpence."
+
+Grace examined her purse, and complained that all her stupid
+sixpences were straight.
+
+"Never mind, miss; put in a hairpin, sooner than pass the stocking
+o' Christmas Eve."
+
+Grace had come prepared to encounter old customs.  She offered her
+shawl-pin: and Jael, who had modestly inserted her own gift, pinned
+Grace's offering on the outside of the stocking with a flush of
+pride.  Then they went upstairs with the servant, and Grace was
+ushered into a bedroom of vast size, with two huge fires burning at
+each end; each fireplace was flanked with a coal-scuttle full of
+kennel coal in large lumps, and also with an enormous basket of
+beech billets.  She admired the old-fashioned furniture, and said,
+"Oh, what a palace of a bedroom!  This will spoil me for my little
+poky room.  Here one can roam about and have great thoughts.
+Hillsborough, good-by!  I end my days in the country."
+
+Presently her quick ears caught the rattle of swift wheels upon the
+hard road: she ran to the window, and peeped behind the curtain.
+Two brilliant lamps were in sight, and drew nearer and nearer, like
+great goggling eyes, and soon a neat dog-cart came up to the door.
+Before it had well-stopped, the hospitable door flew open, and the
+yule fire shone on Mr. Coventry, and his natty groom, and his dog
+cart with plated axles; it illumined the silver harness, and the
+roan horse himself, and the breath that poured into the keen air
+from his nostrils red inside.
+
+Mr. Coventry dropped from his shoulders, with easy grace, something
+between a coat and a cloak, lined throughout with foxes' skin; and,
+alighting, left his groom to do the rest.  The fur was reddish,
+relieved with occasional white; and Grace gloated over it, as it lay
+glowing in the fire-light.  "Ah," said she, "I should never do for a
+poor man's wife: I'm so fond of soft furs and things, and I don't
+like poky rooms."  With that she fell into a reverie, which was only
+interrupted by the arrival of Jael and her boxes.
+
+Jael helped her unpack, and dress.  There was no lack of conversation
+between these two, but most of it turned upon nothings.  One topic,
+that might have been interesting to the readers of this tale, was
+avoided by them both.  They had now come to have a high opinion of
+each other's penetration, and it made them rather timid and reserved
+on that subject.
+
+Grace was dressed, and just going down, when she found she wanted a
+pin.  She asked Jael for one.
+
+Jael looked aghast.  "Oh, miss, I'd rather you would take one, in
+spite of me."
+
+"Well, so I will.  There!"  And she whipped one away from the bosom
+of Jael's dress.
+
+"Mind, I never gave it you."
+
+"No.  I took it by brute force."
+
+"I like you too well to give you a pin."
+
+"May I venture to inquire what would be the consequence?"
+
+"Ill luck, you may be sure.  Heart-trouble, they do say."
+
+"Well, I'm glad to escape that so easily.  Why, this is the temple
+of superstition, and you are the high-Priestess.  How shall I ever
+get on at dinner, without you?  I know I shall do something to shock
+Mr. Raby.  Perhaps spill the very salt.  I generally do."
+
+"Ay, miss, at home.  But, dear heart, you won't see any of them
+nasty little salt-cellars here, that some crazy creature have
+invented to bring down bad luck.  You won't spill the salt here, no
+fear: but don't ye let any body help you to it neither, if he helps
+you to salt, he helps you to sorrow."
+
+"Oh, does he?  Then it is fortunate nobody ever does help anybody to
+salt.  Well, yours is a nice creed.  Why, we are all at the mercy of
+other people, according to you.  Say I have a rival: she smiles in
+my face, and says, 'My sweet friend, accept this tribute of my
+esteem;' and gives me a pinch of salt, before I know where I am.  I
+wither on the spot; and she sails off with the prize.  Or, if there
+is no salt about, she comes behind me with a pin, and pins it to my
+skirt, and that pierces my heart.  Don't you see what abominable
+nonsense it all is?"
+
+The argument was cut short by the ringing of a tremendous bell.
+
+Grace gave the last, swift, searching, all-comprehensive look of her
+sex into the glass, and went down to the drawing-room.  There she
+found Mr. Raby and Mr. Coventry, who both greeted her cordially; and
+the next moment dinner was announced.
+
+"Raby Hall" was a square house, with two large low wings.  The left
+wing contained the kitchen, pantry, scullery, bakehouse, brew-house,
+etc.; and servants' bedrooms above.  The right wing the stables,
+coach-houses, cattle-sheds, and several bedrooms.  The main building
+of the hall, the best bedrooms, and the double staircase, leading up
+to them in horse-shoe form from the hall: and, behind the hall, on
+the ground-floor, there was a morning-room, in which several of the
+Squire's small tenants were even now preparing for supper by
+drinking tea, and eating cakes made in rude imitation of the infant
+Saviour.  On the right of the hall were the two drawing-rooms en
+suite, and on the left was the remarkable room into which the host
+now handed Miss Carden, and Mr. Coventry followed.  This room had
+been, originally, the banqueting-hall.  It was about twenty feet
+high, twenty-eight feet wide, and fifty feet long, and ended in an
+enormous bay window, that opened upon the lawn.  It was entirely
+paneled with oak, carved by old Flemish workmen, and adorned here
+and there with bold devices.  The oak, having grown old in a pure
+atmosphere, and in a district where wood and roots were generally
+burned in dining-rooms, had acquired a very rich and beautiful
+color, a pure and healthy reddish brown, with no tinge whatever of
+black; a mighty different hue from any you can find in Wardour
+Street.  Plaster ceiling there was none, and never had been.  The
+original joists, and beams, and boards, were still there, only not
+quite so rudely fashioned as of old; for Mr. Raby's grandfather had
+caused them to be planed and varnished, and gilded a little in
+serpentine lines.  This woodwork above gave nobility to the room,
+and its gilding, though worn, relieved the eye agreeably.
+
+The further end was used as a study, and one side of it graced with
+books, all handsomely bound: the other side, with a very beautiful
+organ that had an oval mirror in the midst of its gilt dummy-pipes.
+All this made a cozy nook in the grand room.
+
+What might be called the dining-room part, though rich, was rather
+somber on ordinary occasions; but this night it was decorated
+gloriously.  The materials were simple--wax-candles and holly; the
+effect was produced by a magnificent use of these materials.  There
+were eighty candles, of the largest size sold in shops, and twelve
+wax pillars, five feet high, and the size of a man's calf; of these,
+four only were lighted at present.  The holly was not in sprigs, but
+in enormous branches, that filled the eye with glistening green and
+red: and, in the embrasure of the front window stood a young holly-
+tree entire, eighteen feet high, and gorgeous with five hundred
+branches of red berries.  The tree had been dug up, and planted here
+in an enormous bucket, used for that purpose, and filled with mold.
+
+Close behind this tree were placed two of the wax pillars, lighted,
+and their flame shone through the leaves and berries magically.
+
+As Miss Carden entered, on Mr. Raby's arm, her eye swept the room
+with complacency, and settled on the holly-tree.  At sight of that
+she pinched Mr. Raby's arm, and cried "Oh!" three times.  Then,
+ignoring the dinner-table altogether, she pulled her host away to
+the tree, and stood before it, with clasped hands.  "Oh, how
+beautiful!"
+
+Mr. Raby was gratified.  "So then our forefathers were not quite
+such fools as some people say."
+
+"They were angels, they were ducks.  It is beautiful, it is divine."
+
+Mr. Raby looked at the glowing cheek, and deep, sparkling, sapphire
+eye.  "Come," said he; "after all, there's nothing here so beautiful
+as the young lady who now honors the place with her presence."
+
+With this he handed her ceremoniously to a place at his right hand;
+said a short grace, and sat down between his two guests.
+
+"But, Mr. Raby," said Grace, ruefully, "I'm with my back to the
+holly-tree."
+
+"You can ask Coventry to change places."
+
+Mr. Coventry rose, and the change was effected.
+
+"Well, it is your doing, Coventry.  Now she'll overlook YOU."
+
+"All the better for me, perhaps.  I'm content: Miss Carden will look
+at the holly, and I shall look at Miss Carden."
+
+"Faute de mieux."
+
+"C'est mechant."
+
+"And I shall fine you both a bumper of champagne, for going out of
+the English language."
+
+"I shall take my punishment like a man."
+
+"Then take mine as well.  Champagne with me means frenzy."
+
+But, in the midst of the easy banter and jocose airy nothings of the
+modern dining-room, an object attracted Grace's eye.  It was a
+picture, with its face turned to the wall, and some large letters on
+the back of the canvas.
+
+This excited Grace's curiosity directly, and, whenever she could,
+without being observed, she peeped, and tried to read the
+inscription; but, what with Mr. Raby's head, and a monster candle
+that stood before it, she could not decipher it unobserved.  She was
+inclined to ask Mr. Raby; but she was very quick, and, observing
+that the other portraits were of his family, she suspected at once
+that the original of this picture had offended her host, and that it
+would be in bad taste, and might be offensive, to question him.
+Still the subject took possession of her.
+
+At about eight o'clock a servant announced candles in the drawing-
+room.
+
+Upon this Mr. Raby rose, and, without giving her any option on the
+matter, handed her to the door with obsolete deference.
+
+In the drawing-room she found a harpsichord, a spinet, and a piano,
+all tuned expressly for her.  This amused her, as she had never seen
+either of the two older instruments in her life.  She played on them
+all three.
+
+Mr. Raby had the doors thrown open to hear her.
+
+She played some pretty little things from Mendelssohn, Spohr, and
+Schubert.
+
+The gentlemen smoked and praised.
+
+Then she found an old music-book, and played Hamlet's overture to
+Otho, and the minuet.
+
+The gentlemen left off praising directly, and came silently into the
+room to hear the immortal melodist.  But this is the rule in music;
+the lips praise the delicate gelatinous, the heart beats in silence
+at the mighty melodious.
+
+Tea and coffee came directly afterward, and ere they were disposed
+of, a servant announced "The Wassailers."
+
+"Well, let them come in," said Mr. Raby.
+
+The school-children and young people of the village trooped in, and
+made their obeisances, and sang the Christmas Carol--
+
+
+     "God rest you, merry gentlemen,
+      Let nothing you dismay."
+
+
+Then one of the party produced an image of the Virgin and Child, and
+another offered comfits in a box; a third presented the wassail-cup,
+into which Raby immediately poured some silver, and Coventry
+followed his example.  Grace fumbled for her purse, and, when she
+had found it, began to fumble in it for her silver.
+
+But Raby lost all patience, and said, "There, I give this for the
+lady, and she'll pay me NEXT CHRISTMAS."
+
+The wassailers departed, and the Squire went to say a kind word to
+his humbler guests.
+
+Miss Carden took that opportunity to ask Mr. Coventry if he had
+noticed the picture with its face to the wall.  He said he had.
+
+"Do you know who it is?"
+
+"No idea."
+
+"Did you read the inscription?"
+
+"No.  But, if you are curious, I'll go back to the dining-room, and
+read it."
+
+"I'm afraid he might be angry.  There is no excuse for going there
+now."
+
+"Send me for your pocket-handkerchief."
+
+"Please see whether I have left my pocket-handkerchief in the
+dining-room, Mr. Coventry," said Grace, demurely.
+
+Mr. Coventry smiled, and hurried away.  But he soon came back to say
+that the candles were all out, the windows open, and the servants
+laying the cloth for supper.
+
+"Oh, never mind, then," said Grace; "when we go in to supper I'll
+look myself."
+
+But a considerable time elapsed before supper, and Mr. Coventry
+spent this time in making love rather ardently, and Grace in
+defending herself rather feebly.
+
+It was nearly eleven o'clock when Mr. Raby rejoined them, and they
+all went in to supper.  There were candles lighted on the table and
+a few here and there upon the walls; but the room was very somber:
+and Mr. Raby informed them this was to remind them of the moral
+darkness, in which the world lay before that great event they were
+about to celebrate.
+
+He then helped each of them to a ladleful of frumety, remarking at
+the same time, with a grim smile, that they were not obliged to eat
+it; there would be a very different supper after midnight.  Then a
+black-letter Bible was brought him, and he read it all to himself at
+a side-table.
+
+After an interval of silence so passed there was a gentle tap at the
+bay window.  Mr. Raby went and threw it open, and immediately a
+woman's voice, full, clear, and ringing, sang outside:
+
+
+     "The first Noel the angels did say,
+      Was to three poor shepherds, in fields as they lay,
+      In fields where they were keeping their sheep,
+      On a cold winter's night that was so deep.
+            Chorus.--Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel,
+                     Born is the King of Israel."
+
+
+The chorus also was sung outside.
+
+During the chorus one of the doors opened, and Jael Dence came in by
+it; and the treble singer, who was the blacksmith's sister, came in
+at the window, and so the two women met in the room, and sang the
+second verse in sweetest harmony.  These two did not sing like
+invalids, as their more refined sisters too often do; from their
+broad chests, and healthy lungs, and noble throats, and above all,
+their musical hearts, they poured out the harmony so clear and full,
+that every glass in the room rang like a harp, and a bolt of ice
+seemed to shoot down Grace Carden's backbone; and, in the chorus,
+gentle George's bass was like a diapason.
+
+
+     "They looked up and saw a star
+      That shone in the East beyond them far,
+      And unto the earth it gave a great light,
+      And so it continued both day and night.
+            Chorus--Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel,
+                    Born is the King of Israel."
+
+
+As the Noel proceeded, some came in at the window, others at the
+doors, and the lower part of the room began to fill with singers and
+auditors.
+
+The Noel ended: there was a silence, during which the organ was
+opened, the bellows blown, and a number of servants and others came
+into the room with little lighted tapers, and stood, in a long row,
+awaiting a signal from the Squire.
+
+He took out his watch, and, finding it was close on twelve o'clock,
+directed the doors to be flung open, that he might hear the great
+clock in the hall strike the quarters.
+
+There was a solemn hush of expectation, that made the sensitive
+heart of Grace Carden thrill with anticipation.
+
+The clock struck the first quarter--dead silence; the second--the
+third--dead silence.
+
+But, at the fourth, and with the first stroke of midnight, out burst
+the full organ and fifty voices, with the "Gloria in excelsis Deo;"
+and, as that divine hymn surged on, the lighters ran along the walls
+and lighted the eighty candles, and, for the first time, the twelve
+waxen pillars, so that, as the hymn concluded, the room was in a
+blaze, and it was Christmas Day.
+
+Instantly an enormous punch-bowl was brought to the host.  He put
+his lips to it, and said, "Friends, neighbors, I wish you all a
+merry Christmas."  Then there was a cheer that made the whole house
+echo; and, by this time, the tears were running down Grace Carden's
+cheeks.
+
+She turned aside, to hide her pious emotion, and found herself right
+opposite the picture, with this inscription, large and plain, in the
+blaze of light--
+
+
+     "GONE INTO TRADE"
+
+
+If, in the middle of the pious harmony that had stirred her soul,
+some blaring trumpet had played a polka, in another key, it could
+hardly have jarred more upon her devotional frame, than did this
+earthly line, that glared out between two gigantic yule candles,
+just lighted in honor of Him, whose mother was in trade when he was
+born.
+
+She turned from it with deep repugnance, and seated herself in
+silence at the table.
+
+Very early in the supper she made an excuse, and retired to her
+room: and, as she went out, her last glance was at the mysterious
+picture.
+
+She saw it again next morning at breakfast-time; but, it must be
+owned, with different eyes.  It was no longer contrasted with a
+religious ceremony, and with the sentiments of gratitude and
+humility proper to that great occasion, when we commemorate His
+birth, whose mother had gone into trade.  The world, and society,
+whose child she was, seemed now to speak with authority from the
+canvas, and to warn her how vain and hopeless were certain regrets,
+which lay secretly, I might say clandestinely, at her heart.
+
+She revered her godfather, and it was no small nor irrelevant
+discovery to find that he had actually turned a picture in disgrace
+to the wall, because its owner had descended to the level, or
+probably not quite to the level, of Henry Little.
+
+Jael Dence came up from the farm on Christmas afternoon, and almost
+the first word Grace spoke was to ask her if she knew whose picture
+that was in the dining-room.  This vague description was enough for
+Jael.  She said she could not tell for certain, but she had once
+heard her father say it was the Squire's own sister; but, when she
+had pressed him on the subject, the old man had rebuked her--told
+her not to meddle too much with other folks' business.  "And, to be
+sure, Squire has his reasons, no doubt," said Jael, rather dryly.
+
+"The reason that is written on the back?"
+
+"Ay: and a very poor reason too, to my mind."
+
+"You are not the best judge of that--excuse me for saying so.  Oh
+dear, I wish I could see it."
+
+"Don't think of such a thing, miss.  You can't, however, for it's
+padlocked down that way you could never loose it without being found
+out.  No longer agone than last Yule-time 'twas only turned, and not
+fastened.  But they say in the kitchen, that one day last month
+Squire had them all up, and said the picture had been tampered with
+while he was at Hillsboro'; and he scolded, and had it strapped and
+padlocked down as 'tis."
+
+The reader can imagine the effect of these fresh revelations.  And a
+lover was at hand, of good birth, good manners, and approved by her
+godfather.  That lover saw her inclining toward him, and omitted
+nothing to compliment and please her.  To be sure, that was no
+uphill work, for he loved her better than he had ever loved a woman
+in his life, which was a good deal to say, in his case.
+
+They spent Christmas Day very happily together.  Church in the
+morning; then luncheon; then thick boots, a warmer shawl, and a
+little walk all together; for Mr. Raby took a middle course; since
+no positive engagement existed, he would not allow his fair guest to
+go about with Mr. Coventry alone, and so he compromised, even in
+village eyes; but, on the other hand, by stopping now and then to
+give an order, or exchange a word, he gave Coventry many
+opportunities, and that gentleman availed himself of them with his
+usual tact.
+
+In the evening they sat round the great fire, and Mr. Raby mulled
+and spiced red wine by a family receipt, in a large silver saucepan;
+and they sipped the hot and generous beverage, and told stories and
+legends, the custom of the house on Christmas night.  Mr. Raby was
+an inexhaustible repertory of ghost-stories and popular legends.
+But I select one that was told by Mr. Coventry, and told with a
+certain easy grace that gave it no little interest.
+
+
+MR. COVENTRY'S TALE.
+
+
+"When I was quite a child, there was a very old woman living in our
+village, that used to frighten me with her goggle eyes, and
+muttering.  She passed for a witch, I think; and when she died--I
+was eight years old then--old people put their heads together, and
+told strange stories about her early life.  It seems that this Molly
+Slater was away in service at Bollington, a village half way between
+our place and Hillsborough, and her fellow-servants used to quiz her
+because she had no sweetheart.  At last, she told them to wait till
+next Hilisboro' fair, and they should see.  And just before the
+fair, she reminded them of their sneers, and said she would not come
+home without a sweetheart, though she took the Evil one himself.
+For all that, she did leave the fair alone.  But, as she trudged
+home in the dark, a man overtook her, and made acquaintance with
+her.  He was a pleasant fellow, and told her his name was William
+Easton.  Of course she could not see his face very well, but he had
+a wonderfully sweet voice.  After that night, he used to court her,
+and sing to her, but always in the dark.  He never would face a
+candle, though he was challenged to more than once.  One night there
+was a terrible noise heard--it is described as if a number of men
+were threshing out corn upon the roof--and Molly Slater was found
+wedged in between the bed and the wall, in a place where there was
+scarcely room to put your hand.  Several strong men tried to
+extricate her by force; but both the bed and the woman's body
+resisted so strangely that, at last, they thought it best to send
+for the parson.  He was a great scholar, and himself under some
+suspicion of knowing more than it would be good for any less pious
+person to know.  Well, the parson came, and took a candle that was
+burning, and held it to the place where poor Molly was imprisoned,
+and moaning; and they say he turned pale, and shivered, for all his
+learning.  I forget what he said or did next; but by-and-by there
+was a colloquy in a whisper between him and some person unseen, and
+they say that this unseen whisper was very sweet, and something like
+the chords of a harp, only low and very articulate.  The parson
+whispered, 'God gives a sinner time.'  The sweet voice answered, 'He
+can afford to; he is the stronger.'  Then the parson adjured the
+unseen one to wait a year and a day.  But he refused, still in the
+gentlest voice.  Then the parson said these words: 'By all we love
+and fear, by all you fear and hate, I adjure you to loose her, or
+wait till next Christmas Eve.'
+
+"I suppose the Evil Spirit saw some trap in that proposal, for he is
+said to have laughed most musically.  He answered, 'By all I fear
+and hate, I'll loose her never; but, but I'll wait for her--till the
+candle's burnt out;' and he chuckled most musically again.
+
+"'Then wait to all eternity,' the parson roared; and blew the candle
+out directly, and held it, with his hands crossed over it."
+
+Grace Carden's eyes sparkled in the firelight.  "Go on," she cried,
+excitedly.
+
+"The girl was loosed easily enough after that; but she was found to
+be in a swoon; and not the least bruised, though ten villagers had
+been pulling at her one after another."
+
+"And what became of her afterward?"
+
+"She lived to be ninety-six, and died in my time.  I think she had
+money left her.  But she never married; and when she was old she
+wandered about the lanes, muttering, and frightening little boys,
+myself among the number.  But now my little story follows another
+actor of the tale."
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad it is not over."
+
+"No.  The parson took the candle away, and it was never seen again.
+But, somehow, it got wind that he had built it into the wall of the
+church; perhaps he didn't say so, but was only understood to say so.
+However, people used to look round the church for the place.  And
+now comes the most remarkable thing of all; three years ago the
+present rector repaired the floor of the chancel, intending to put
+down encaustic tiles.  Much to his surprise, the workmen found
+plenty of old encaustic tiles; they had been interred as rubbish at
+some period, when antiquity and beauty were less respected than they
+are now, I suppose."
+
+Mr. Raby broke in, "The Puritans.  Barbarians! beasts!  It was just
+like them.  Well, sir--?"
+
+"When the rector found that, he excavated more than was absolutely
+necessary for his purpose, and the deeper he went the more encaustic
+tiles.  In one place they got down to the foundation, and they found
+an oak chest fast in the rock--a sort of channel had been cut in the
+rock for this chest, or rather box (for it was only about eighteen
+inches long), to lie in.  The master mason was there luckily, and
+would not move it till the rector had seen it.  He was sent for, but
+half the parish was there before him; and he tells me there were
+three theories firmly established and proved, before he could finish
+his breakfast and get to the spot.  Theory of Wilder, the village
+grocer: 'It is treasure hidden by them there sly old monks.'  Mr.
+Wilder is a miser, and is known to lay up money.  He is, I believe,
+the only man left in the North Country who can show you a hundred
+spade guineas."
+
+Mr. Raby replied, energetically, "I respect him.  Wilder forever!
+What was the next theory?"
+
+"The skeleton of a child.  I forget who propounded this; but I
+believe it carried the majority.  But the old sexton gave it a blow.
+'Nay, nay,' said he; 'them's the notions of strangers.  I was born
+here, and my father afore me.  It will be Molly Slater's candle, and
+naught else.'  Then poor Molly's whole story came up again over the
+suspected box.  But I am very tedious."
+
+"Tedious!  You are delightful, and thrilling, and pray go on.  The
+rector had the box opened?"
+
+"On the spot."
+
+"Well!"
+
+"The box went to pieces, in spite of all their care.  But there was
+no doubt as to its contents."
+
+Grace exclaimed, enthusiastically, "A candle.  Oh, do say a candle!"
+
+Mr. Coventry responded, "It's awfully tempting; but I suspect the
+traditional part of my story is SLIGHTLY EMBELLISHED, so the
+historical part must be accurate.  What the box did really contain,
+to my knowledge, was a rush-wick, much thicker than they are made
+nowadays: and this rush-wick was impregnated with grease, and even
+lightly coated with a sort of brown wafer-like paste.  The rector
+thinks it was a combination of fine dust from the box with the
+original grease.  He shall show it you, if you are curious to see
+it."
+
+"Of course we are curious.  Oh, Mr. Raby, what a strange story.  And
+how well he told it."
+
+"Admirably.  We must drink his health."
+
+"I'll wish it him instead, because I require all my reason just now
+to understand his story.  And I don't understand it, after all.
+There: you found the candle, and so it is all true.  But what does
+the rector think?"
+
+"Well, he says there is no connection whatever between the rush-wick
+and--"
+
+"Don't tell her what HE says," cried Raby, with a sudden fury that
+made Grace start and open her eyes.  "I know the puppy.  He is what
+is called a divine nowadays; but used to be called a skeptic.  There
+never was so infidel an age.  Socinus was content to prove Jesus
+Christ a man; but Renan has gone and proved him a Frenchman.
+Nothing is so gullible as an unbeliever.  The right reverend father
+in God, Cocker, has gnawed away the Old Testament: the Oxford
+doctors are nibbling away the New: nothing escapes but the
+apocrypha: yet these same skeptics believe the impudent lies, and
+monstrous arithmetic of geology, which babbles about a million
+years, a period actually beyond the comprehension of the human
+intellect; and takes up a jaw-bone, that some sly navvy has
+transplanted over-night from the churchyard into Lord knows what
+stratum, fees the navvy, gloats over the bone, and knocks the Bible
+down with it.  No, Mr. Coventry, your story is a good one, and well
+told; don't let us defile it with the comments of a skeptical
+credulous pedant.  Fill your glass, sir.  Here's to old religion,
+old stories, old songs, old houses, old wine, old friends, or"
+(recovering himself with admirable grace) "to new friends that are
+to be old ones ere we die.  Come, let the stronger vessel drink, and
+the weaker vessel sip, and all say together, after me--
+
+
+     "Well may we all be,
+      Ill may we never see,
+      That make good company,
+      Beneath the roof of Raby."
+
+
+When this rude rhyme had been repeated in chorus, there was a little
+silence, and the conversation took a somewhat deeper tone.  It began
+through Grace asking Mr. Raby, with all the simplicity of youth,
+whether he had ever seen anything supernatural with his own eyes.
+"For instance," said she, "this deserted church of yours, that you
+say the shepherd said he saw on fire--did YOU see that?"
+
+"Not I.  Indeed, the church is not in sight from here.  No, Grace, I
+never saw any thing supernatural: and I am sorry for it, for I laugh
+at people's notion that a dead man has any power to injure the
+living; how can a cold wind come from a disembodied spirit?  I am
+all that a ghost is, and something more; and I only wish I COULD
+call the dead from their graves; I'd soon have a dozen gentlemen and
+ladies out of that old church-yard into this very room.  And, if
+they would only come, you would see me converse with them as civilly
+and as calmly as I am doing with you.  The fact is, I have some
+questions to put, which only the dead can answer--passages in the
+family correspondence, referring to things I can't make out for the
+life of me."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Raby, pray don't talk in this dreadful way, for fear they
+should be angry and come."  And Grace looked fearfully round over
+her shoulder.
+
+Mr. Raby shook his head; and there was a dead silence.
+
+Mr. Raby broke it rather unexpectedly.  "But," said he, gravely, "if
+I have seen nothing, I've heard something.  Whether it was
+supernatural, I can't say; but, at least, it was unaccountable and
+terrible.  I have heard THE GABRIEL HOUNDS."
+
+Mr. Coventry and Grace looked at one another, and then inquired,
+almost in a breath, what the Gabriel hounds were.
+
+"A strange thing in the air that is said, in these parts, to
+foretell calamity."
+
+"Oh dear!" said Grace, "this is thrilling again; pray tell us."
+
+"Well, one night I was at Hillsborough on business, and, as I walked
+by the old parish church, a great pack of beagles, in full cry,
+passed close over my head."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Yes; they startled me, as I never was startled in my life before.
+I had never heard of the Gabriel hounds then, and I was stupefied.
+I think I leaned against the wall there full five minutes, before I
+recovered myself, and went on."
+
+"Oh dear!  But did any thing come of it?"
+
+"You shall judge for yourself.  I had left a certain house about an
+hour and a half: there was trouble in that house, but only of a
+pecuniary kind.  To tell the truth, I came back with some money for
+them, or rather, I should say, with the promise of it.  I found the
+wife in a swoon: and, upstairs, her husband lay dead by his own
+hand."
+
+"Oh, my poor godpapa!" cried Grace, flinging her arm tenderly round
+his neck.
+
+"Ay, my child, and the trouble did not end there.  Insult followed;
+ingratitude; and a family feud, which is not healed yet, and never
+will be--till she and her brat come on their knees to me."
+
+Mr. Raby had no sooner uttered these last words with great heat,
+than he was angry with himself.  "Ah!" said he, "the older a man
+gets, the weaker.  To think of my mentioning that to you young
+people!"  And he rose and walked about the room in considerable
+agitation and vexation.  "Curse the Gabriel hounds!  It is the first
+time I have spoken of them since that awful night; it is the last I
+ever will speak of them.  What they are, God, who made them, knows.
+Only I pray I may never hear them again, nor any friend of mine."
+
+Next morning Jael Dence came up to the hall, and almost the first
+question Grace asked her was, whether she had ever heard of the
+Gabriel hounds.
+
+Jael looked rather puzzled.  Grace described them after Mr. Raby.
+
+"Why, that will be Gabble Retchet," said Jael.  "I wouldn't talk
+much about the like, if I was you, miss."
+
+But Grace persisted, and, at last, extracted from her that sounds
+had repeatedly been heard in the air at night, as of a pack of
+hounds in full cry, and that these hounds ran before trouble.
+"But," said Jael, solemnly, "they are not hounds at all; they are
+the souls of unbaptized children, wandering in the air till the day
+of judgment."
+
+This description, however probable, had the effect of making Grace
+disbelieve the phenomenon altogether, and she showed her incredulity
+by humming a little air.
+
+But Jael soon stopped that.  "Oh, miss, pray don't do so.  If you
+sing before breakfast, you'll cry before supper."
+
+At breakfast, Mr. Coventry invited Miss Carden to go to the top of
+Cairnhope Peak, and look over four counties.  He also told her she
+could see Bollinghope house, his own place, very well from the Peak.
+
+Grace assented: and, immediately after breakfast, begged Jael to be
+in the way to accompany her.  She divined, with feminine quickness,
+that Mr. Coventry would be very apt, if he pointed out Bollinghope
+House to her from the top of a mountain, to say, "Will you be its
+mistress?" but, possibly, she did not wish to be hurried, or it may
+have been only a mere instinct, an irrational impulse of self-
+defense, with which the judgment had nothing to do; or perhaps it
+was simple modesty.  Any way, she engaged Jael to be of the party.
+
+It was talked of again at luncheon, and then Mr. Raby put in a word.
+"I have one stipulation to make, young people, and that is that you
+go up the east side, and down the same way.  It is all safe walking
+on that side.  I shall send you in my four-wheel to the foot of the
+hill, and George will wait for you there at the 'Colley Dog' public-
+house, and bring you home again."
+
+This was, of course, accepted with thanks, and the four-wheel came
+round at two o'clock.  Jael was seated in front by the side of
+George, who drove; Mr. Coventry and Grace, behind.  He had his fur-
+cloak to keep his companion warm on returning from the hill; but Mr.
+Raby, who did nothing by halves, threw in some more wraps, and gave
+a warm one to Jael; she was a favorite with him, as indeed were all
+the Dences.
+
+They started gayly, and rattled off at a good pace.  Before they had
+got many yards on the high-road, they passed a fir-plantation,
+belonging to Mr. Raby, and a magpie fluttered out of this, and flew
+across the road before them.
+
+Jael seized the reins, and pulled them so powerfully, she stopped
+the pony directly.  "Oh, the foul bird!" she cried, "turn back! turn
+back!"
+
+"What for?" inquired Mr. Coventry.
+
+"We shall meet with trouble else.  One magpie! and right athwart us
+too."
+
+"What nonsense!" said Grace.
+
+"Nay, nay, it is not; Squire knows better.  Wait just one minute,
+till I speak to Squire."  She sprang from the carriage with one
+bound, and, holding up her dress with one hand, ran into the house
+like a lapwing.
+
+"The good, kind, silly thing!" said Grace Carden.
+
+Jael soon found Mr. Raby, and told him about the magpie, and begged
+him to come out and order them back.
+
+But Mr. Raby smiled, and shook his head.  "That won't do.  Young
+ladies and gentlemen of the present day don't believe in omens."
+
+"But you do know better, sir.  I have heard father say you were
+going into Hillsborough with him one day, and a magpie flew across,
+and father persuaded you to turn back."
+
+"That is true; he was going in to buy some merino sheep, and I to
+deposit my rents in Carrington's bank.  Next day the bank broke.
+And the merino sheep all died within the year.  But how many
+thousand times does a magpie cross us and nothing come of it?  Come,
+run away, my good girl, and don't keep them waiting."
+
+Jael obeyed, with a sigh.  She went back to her party--they were
+gone.  The carriage was just disappearing round a turn in the road.
+She looked at it with amazement, and even with anger.  It seemed to
+her a brazen act of bad faith.
+
+"I wouldn't have believed it of her," said she, and went back to the
+house, mortified and grieved.  She did not go to Mr. Raby again; but
+he happened to catch sight of her about an hour afterward, and
+called to her--"How is this, Jael?  Have you let them go alone,
+because of a magpie?"  And he looked displeased.
+
+"Nay, sir: she gave me the slip, while I went to speak to you for
+her good; and I call it a dirty trick, saving your presence.  I told
+her I'd be back in a moment."
+
+"Oh, it is not her doing, you may be sure; it is the young
+gentleman.  He saw a chance to get her alone, and of course he took
+it.  I am not very well pleased; but I suppose she knows her own
+mind.  It is to be a marriage, no doubt."  He smoothed it over, but
+was a little put out, and stalked away without another word: he had
+said enough to put Jael's bosom in a flutter, and open a bright
+prospect to her heart; Miss Carden once disposed of in marriage,
+what might she not hope?  She now reflected, with honest pride, that
+she had merited Henry's love by rare unselfishness.  She had advised
+him loyally, had even co-operated with him as far as any poor girl,
+with her feelings for him, could do; and now Mr. Coventry was going
+to propose marriage to her rival, and she believed Miss Carden would
+say "yes," though she could not in her heart believe that even Miss
+Carden did not prefer the other.  "Ay, lad," said she, "if I am to
+win thee, I'll be able to say I won thee fair."
+
+These sweet thoughts and hopes soon removed her temporary anger, and
+nothing remained to dash the hopeful joy that warmed that large and
+loyal heart this afternoon, except a gentle misgiving that Mr.
+Coventry might make Grace a worse husband than she deserved.  It was
+thus she read the magpie, from three o'clock till six that afternoon.
+
+When a man and a woman do any thing wrong, it is amusing to hear the
+judgments of other men and women thereupon.  The men all blame the
+man, and the women all the woman.  That is judgment, is it not?
+
+But in some cases our pitch-farthing judgments must be either heads
+or tails; so Mr. Raby, who had cried heads, when a Mrs. Raby would
+have cried "woman," was right; it WAS Mr. Coventry, and not Miss
+Carden, who leaned over to George, and whispered, "A sovereign, to
+drive on without her!  Make some excuse."
+
+The cunning Yorkshire groom's eye twinkled at this, and he remained
+passive a minute or two: then, said suddenly, with well-acted
+fervor, "I can't keep the pony waiting in the cold, like this;"
+applied the whip, and rattled off with such decision, that Grace did
+not like to interfere, especially as George was known to be one of
+those hard masters, an old servant.
+
+So, by this little ruse, Mr. Coventry had got her all to himself for
+the afternoon.  And now she felt sure he would propose that very
+day.
+
+She made no movement whatever either to advance or to avoid the
+declaration.
+
+It is five miles from Raby Hall, through Cairnhope village, to the
+eastern foot of Cairnhope; and while George rattles them over the
+hard and frosty road, I will tell the reader something about this
+young gentleman, who holds the winning cards.
+
+Mr. Frederick Coventry was a man of the world.  He began life with a
+good estate, and a large fund accumulated during his minority.
+
+He spent all the money in learning the world at home and abroad;
+and, when it was all gone, he opened one eye.
+
+But, as a man cannot see very clear with a single orb, he exchanged
+rouge-et-noir, etc., for the share-market, and, in other respects,
+lived as fast as ever, till he had mortgaged his estate rather
+heavily.  Then he began to open both eyes.
+
+Next, he fell in love with Grace Carden; and upon that he opened
+both eyes very wide, and wished very much he had his time to live
+over again.
+
+Nevertheless, he was not much to be pitied.  He had still an estate
+which, with due care, could pay off its incumbrances; and he had
+gathered some valuable knowledge.  He knew women better than most
+men, and he knew whist profoundly.  Above all, he had acquired what
+Voltaire justly calls "le grand art de plaire;" he had studied this
+art, as many women study it, and few men.  Why, he even watched the
+countenance, and smoothed the rising bristles of those he wished to
+please, or did not wish to displease.  This was the easier to him
+that he had no strong convictions on any great topic.  It is your
+plaguy convictions that make men stubborn and disagreeable.
+
+A character of this kind is very susceptible, either of good or evil
+influences; and his attachment to Grace Carden was turning him the
+right way.
+
+Add to this a good figure and a distinguished air, and you have some
+superficial idea of the gentleman toward whom Grace Carden found
+herself drawn by circumstances, and not unwillingly, though not with
+that sacred joy and thrill which marks a genuine passion.
+
+
+They left George and the trap at the "Colley Dog," and ascended the
+mountain.  There were no serious difficulties on this side; but
+still there were little occasional asperities, that gave the lover
+an opportunity to offer his arm; and Mr. Coventry threw a graceful
+devotion even into this slight act of homage.  He wooed her with
+perfect moderation at first; it was not his business to alarm her at
+starting; he proceeded gradually; and, by the time they had reached
+the summit, he had felt his way, and had every reason to hope she
+would accept him.
+
+At the summit the remarkable beauty of the view threw her into
+raptures, and interrupted the more interesting topic on which he was
+bent.
+
+But the man of the world showed no impatience (I don't say he felt
+none); he answered all Grace's questions, and told her what all the
+places were.
+
+But, by-and-by, the atmosphere thickened suddenly in that quarter,
+and he then told her gently he had something to show her on the
+other side of the knob.
+
+He conducted her to a shed the shepherds had erected, and seated her
+on a rude bench.  "You must be a little tired," he said.
+
+Then he showed her, in the valley, one of those delightful old red
+brick houses, with white stone facings.  "That is Bollinghope."
+
+She looked at it with polite interest.
+
+"Do you like it?"
+
+"Very much.  It warms the landscape so."
+
+He expected a more prosaic answer; but he took her cue.  "I wish it
+was a great deal prettier than it is, and its owner a much better
+man; richer--wiser--"
+
+"You are hard to please, Mr. Coventry."
+
+"Miss Carden--Grace--may I call you Grace?"
+
+"It seems to me you have done it."
+
+"But I had no right."
+
+"Then, of course, you will never do it again."
+
+"I should be very unhappy if I thought that.  Miss Carden, I think
+you know how dear you are to me, and have been ever since I first
+met you.  I wish I had ten times more to offer you than I have.  But
+I am only a poor gentleman, of good descent, but moderate means, as
+you see."  Comedie!  (Bollinghope was the sort of house that
+generally goes with L5000 a year at least.)
+
+"I don't care about your means, Mr. Coventry," said Grace, with a
+lofty smile.  "It is your amiable character that I esteem."
+
+"You forgive me for loving you; for hoping that you will let me lead
+you to my poor house there, as my adored wife?"
+
+It had come; and, although she knew it was coming, yet her face was
+dyed with blushes.
+
+"I esteem you very much," she faltered.  "I thank you for the honor
+you do me; but I--oh, pray, let me think what I am doing."  She
+covered her face with her hands, and her bosom panted visibly.
+
+Mr. Coventry loved her sincerely, and his own heart beat high at
+this moment.  He augured well from her agitation; but presently he
+saw something that puzzled him, and gave a man of his experience a
+qualm.
+
+A tear forced its way between her fingers; another, and another,
+soon followed.
+
+Coventry said to himself, "There's some other man."   And he sighed
+heavily; but even in this moment of true and strong feeling he was
+on his guard, and said nothing.
+
+It was his wisest course.  She was left to herself, and an amazing
+piece of female logic came to Mr. Coventry's aid.  She found herself
+crying, and got frightened at herself.  That, which would have made
+a man pause, had just the opposite effect on her.  She felt that no
+good could come to any body of those wild and weak regrets that made
+her weep.  She saw she had a weakness and a folly to cure herself
+of; and the cure was at hand.  There was a magic in marriage; a
+gentleman could, somehow, MAKE a girl love him when once she had
+married him.  Mr. Coventry should be enabled to make her love him;
+he should cure her of this trick of crying; it would be the best
+thing for every body--for HIM, for Jael, for Mr. Coventry, and even
+for herself.
+
+She dried her eyes, and said, in a low, tremulous voice: "Have you
+spoken to papa of--of this?"
+
+"No.  I waited to be authorized by you.  May I speak to him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"May I tell him--?"
+
+"Oh I can't tell you what to tell him.  How dark it is getting.
+Please take me home."  Another tear or two.
+
+Then, if Coventry had not loved her sincerely, and also been a man
+of the world, he would have lost his temper; and if he had lost his
+temper, he would have lost the lady, for she would have seized the
+first fair opportunity to quarrel.  But no, he took her hand gently,
+and set himself to comfort her.  He poured out his love to her, and
+promised her a life of wedded happiness.  He drew so delightful a
+picture of their wedded life, and in a voice so winning, that she
+began to be consoled, and her tears ceased.
+
+"I believe you love me," she murmured; "and I esteem you sincerely."
+
+Mr. Coventry drew a family ring from his pocket.  It was a sapphire
+of uncommon beauty.
+
+"This was my mother's," said he.  "Will you do me the honor to wear
+it, as a pledge?"
+
+But the actual fetter startled her, I think.  She started up, and
+said, "Oh, please take me home first!  IT IS GOING TO SNOW."
+
+Call her slippery, if you don't like her; call her unhappy and
+wavering, if you do like her.
+
+Mr. Coventry smiled now at this attempt to put off the inevitable,
+and complied at once.
+
+But, before they had gone a hundred yards, the snow did really fall,
+and so heavily that the air was darkened.
+
+"We had better go back to the shed till it is over," said Mr.
+Coventry.
+
+"Do you think so?" said Grace, doubtfully.  "Well."
+
+And they went back.
+
+But the snow did not abate, and the air got darker.  So, by-and-by,
+Grace suggested that Mr. Coventry should run down the hill, and send
+George up to her with an umbrella.
+
+"What, and leave you alone?" said he.
+
+"Well, then, we had better go together."
+
+They started together.
+
+By this time the whole ground was covered about three inches deep;
+not enough to impede their progress; but it had the unfortunate
+effect of effacing the distinct features of the ground; and, as the
+declining sun could no longer struggle successfully through the
+atmosphere, which was half air, half snow, they were almost in
+darkness, and soon lost their way.  They kept slanting unconsciously
+to the left, till they got over one of the forks of the mountain and
+into a ravine: they managed to get out of that, and continued to
+descend; for the great thing they had to do was to reach the valley,
+no matter where.
+
+But, after a long laborious, and even dangerous descent, they found
+themselves beginning to ascend.  Another mountain or hill barred
+their progress.  Then they knew they must be all wrong, and began to
+feel rather anxious.  They wished they had stayed up on the hill.
+
+They consulted together, and agreed to go on for the present; it
+might be only a small rise in the ground.
+
+And so it proved.  After a while they found themselves descending
+again.
+
+But now the path was full of pitfalls, hidden by the snow and the
+darkness.
+
+Mr. Coventry insisted on going first.
+
+In this order they moved cautiously on, often stumbling.
+
+Suddenly Mr. Coventry disappeared with a sudden plunge, and rolled
+down a ravine, with a loud cry.
+
+Grace stood transfixed with terror.
+
+Then she called to him.
+
+There was no answer.
+
+She called again.
+
+A faint voice replied that he was not much hurt, and would try to
+get back to her.
+
+This, however, was impossible, and all he could do was to scramble
+along the bottom of the ravine.
+
+Grace kept on the high ground, and they called to each other every
+moment.  They seemed to be a long way from each other; yet they were
+never sixty yards apart.  At last the descent moderated, and Grace
+rejoined him.
+
+Then they kept in the hollow for some time, but at last found
+another acclivity to mount: they toiled up it, laden with snow, yet
+perspiring profusely with the exertion of toiling uphill through
+heather clogged with heavy snow.
+
+They reached the summit, and began to descend again.  But now their
+hearts began to quake.  Men had been lost on Cairnhope before to-
+day, and never found alive: and they were lost on Cairnhope; buried
+in the sinuosities of the mountain, and in a tremendous snowstorm.
+
+They wandered and staggered, sick at heart; since each step might be
+for the worse.
+
+They wandered and staggered, miserably; and the man began to sigh,
+and the woman to cry.
+
+At last they were so exhausted, they sat down in despair: and, in a
+few minutes, they were a couple of snow-heaps.
+
+Mr. Coventry was the first to see all the danger they ran by this
+course.
+
+"For God's sake, let us go on!" he said; "if we once get benumbed,
+we are lost.  We MUST keep moving, till help comes to us."
+
+Then they staggered, and stumbled on again, till they both sank into
+a deep snow-drift.
+
+They extricated themselves, but, oh, when they felt that deep cold
+snow all round them, it was a foretaste of the grave.
+
+The sun had set, it was bitterly cold, and still the enormous flakes
+fell, and doubled the darkness of the night.
+
+They staggered and stumbled on, not now with any hope of extricating
+themselves from the fatal mountain, but merely to keep the blood
+alive in their veins.  And, when they were exhausted, they sat down,
+and soon were heaps of snow.
+
+While they sat thus, side by side, thinking no more of love, or any
+other thing but this: should they ever see the sun rise, or sit by a
+fireside again? suddenly they heard a sound in the air behind them,
+and, in a moment, what seemed a pack of hounds in full cry passed
+close over their heads.
+
+They uttered a loud cry.
+
+"We are saved!" cried Grace.  "Mr. Raby is hunting us with his dogs.
+That was the echo."
+
+Coventry groaned.  "What scent would lie?" said he.  "Those hounds
+were in the air; a hundred strong."
+
+Neither spoke for a moment, and then it was Grace who broke the
+terrible silence.
+
+"THE GABRIEL HOUNDS!"
+
+"The Gabriel hounds; that run before calamity!  Mr. Coventry,
+there's nothing to be done now, but to make our peace with God.  For
+you are a dead man, and I'm a dead woman.  My poor papa! poor Mr.
+Little!"
+
+She kneeled down on the snow, and prayed patiently, and prepared to
+deliver up her innocent soul to Him who gave it.
+
+Not so her companion.  He writhed away from death.  He groaned, he
+sighed, he cursed, he complained.  What was Raby thinking of, to let
+them perish?
+
+Presently he shouted out--"I'll not die this dog's death, I will
+not.  I'll save myself, and come back for you."
+
+The girl prayed on, and never heeded him.
+
+But he was already on his feet, and set off to run: and he actually
+did go blundering on for a furlong and more, and fell into a
+mountain-stream, swollen by floods, which whirled him along with it
+like a feather, it was not deep enough to drown him by submersion,
+but it rolled him over and over again, and knocked him against rocks
+and stones, and would infallibly have destroyed him, but that a
+sudden sharp turn in the current drove him, at last, against a
+projecting tree, which he clutched, and drew himself out with
+infinite difficulty.  But when he tried to walk, his limbs gave way;
+and he sank fainting on the ground, and the remorseless snow soon
+covered his prostrate body.
+
+All this time, Grace Carden was kneeling on the snow, and was,
+literally a heap of snow.  She was patient and composed now, and
+felt a gentle sleep stealing over.
+
+That sleep would have been her death.
+
+But, all of a sudden something heavy touched her clothes, and
+startled her, and two dark objects passed her.
+
+They were animals.
+
+In a moment it darted through her mind that animals are wiser than
+man in some things.  She got up with difficulty, for her limbs were
+stiffened, and followed them.
+
+The dark forms struggled on before.  They knew the ground, and soon
+took her to the edge of that very stream into which Coventry had
+fallen.
+
+They all three went within a yard of Mr. Coventry, and still they
+pursued their way; and Grace hoped they were making for some
+shelter.  She now called aloud to Mr. Coventry, thinking he must be
+on before her.  But he had not recovered his senses.
+
+Unfortunately, the cry startled the sheep, and they made a rush, and
+she could not keep up with them: she toiled, she called, she prayed
+for strength; but they left her behind, and she could see their very
+forms no more.  Then she cried out in agony, and still, with that
+power of self-excitement, which her sex possess in an eminent
+degree, she struggled on and on, beyond her strength till, at last,
+she fell down from sheer exhaustion, and the snow fell fast upon her
+body.
+
+But, even as she lay, she heard a tinkling.  She took it for sheep-
+bells, and started up once more, and once more cried to Mr.
+Coventry; and this time he heard her, and shook off his deadly
+lethargy, and tried to hobble toward her voice.
+
+Meantime, Grace struggled toward the sound, and lo, a light was
+before her, a light gleaming red and dullish in the laden
+atmosphere.  With her remnant of life and strength, she dashed at
+it, and found a wall in her way.  She got over it somehow, and saw
+the light quite close, and heard the ringing of steel on steel.
+
+She cried out for help, for she felt herself failing.  She tottered
+along the wall of the building, searching for a door.  She found the
+porch.  She found the church door.  But by this time she was quite
+spent; her senses reeled; her cry was a moan.
+
+She knocked once with her hands.  She tried to knock again; but the
+door flew suddenly open, and, in the vain endeavor to knock again,
+her helpless body, like a pillar of snow, fell forward; but Henry
+Little caught her directly, and then she clutched him feebly, by
+mere instinct.
+
+He uttered a cry of love and alarm.  She opened her filmy eyes, and
+stared at him.  Her cold neck and white cheek rested on his bare and
+glowing arm.
+
+
+The moment he saw it was really Grace Carden that had fallen
+inanimate into his arms, Henry Little uttered a loud cry of love and
+terror, and, putting his other sinewy arm under her, carried her
+swiftly off to his fires, uttering little moans of fear and pity as
+he went; he laid her down by the fire, and darted to the forge, and
+blew it to a white heat; and then darted back to her, and kissed her
+cold hands with pretty moans of love; and then blew up the other
+fires; and then back to her, and patted her hands, and kissed them
+with all his soul, and drew them to his bosom to warm them; and drew
+her head to his heart to warm her; and all with pretty moans of
+love, and fear, and pity; and the tears rained out of his eyes at
+sight of her helpless condition, and the tears fell upon her brow
+and her hands; and all this vitality and love soon electrified her;
+she opened her eyes, and smiled faintly, but such a smile, and
+murmured, "It's you," and closed her eyes again.
+
+Then he panted out, "Yes, it is I,--a friend.  I won't hurt you--I
+won't tell you how I love you any more--only live!  Don't give way.
+You shall marry who you like.  You shall never be thwarted, nor
+worried, nor made love to again; only be brave and live; don't rob
+the world of the only angel that is in it.  Have mercy, and live!
+I'll never ask more of you than that.  Oh, how pale!  I am
+frightened.  Cursed fires, have you no warmth IN you?"  And he was
+at the bellows again.  And the next moment back to her, imploring
+her, and sighing over her, and saying the wildest, sweetest,
+drollest things, such as only those who love can say, in moments
+when hearts are bursting.
+
+How now?  Her cheek that was so white is pink--pinker--red--scarlet.
+She is blushing.
+
+She had closed her eyes at love's cries.  Perhaps she was not
+altogether unwilling to hear that divine music of the heart, so long
+as she was not bound to reply and remonstrate--being insensible.
+
+But now she speaks, faintly, but clearly, "Don't he frightened.  I
+promise not to die.  Pray don't cry so."  Then she put out her hand
+to him, and turned her head away, and cried herself, gently, but
+plenteously.
+
+Henry, kneeling by her, clasped the hand she lent him with both his,
+and drew it to his panting heart in ecstasy.
+
+Grace's cheeks were rosy red.
+
+They remained so a little while in silence.
+
+Henry's heart was too full of beatitude to speak.  He drew her a
+little nearer to the glowing fires, to revive her quite; but still
+kneeled by her, and clasped her hand to his heart.  She felt it
+beat, and turned her blushing brow away, but made no resistance: she
+was too weak.
+
+"Halloo!" cried a new voice, that jarred with the whole scene; and
+Mr. Coventry hobbled in sight.  He gazed in utter amazement on the
+picture before him.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+Grace snatched her hand from Henry, and raised herself with a vigor
+that contrasted with her late weakness.  "Oh, it is Mr. Coventry.
+How wicked of me to forget him for a moment.  Thank Heaven you are
+alive.  Where have you been?"
+
+"I fell into the mountain stream, and it rolled me down, nearly to
+here.  I think I must have fainted on the bank.  I found myself
+lying covered with snow; it was your beloved voice that recalled me
+to life."
+
+Henry turned yellow, and rose to his feet.
+
+Grace observed him, and replied, "Oh, Mr. Coventry, this is too
+high-flown.  Let us both return thanks to the Almighty, who has
+preserved us, and, in the next place, to Mr. Little: we should both
+be dead but for him."  Then, before he could reply, she turned to
+Little, and said, beseechingly, "Mr. Coventry has been the companion
+of my danger."
+
+"Oh, I'll do the best I can for him," said Henry, doggedly.  "Draw
+nearer the fire, sir."  He then put some coal on the forge, and blew
+up an amazing fire: he also gave the hand-bellows to Mr. Coventry,
+and set him to blow at the small grates in the mausoleum.  He then
+produced a pair of woolen stockings.  "Now, Miss Carden," said he,
+"just step into that pew, if you please, and make a dressing-room of
+it."
+
+She demurred, faintly, but he insisted, and put her into the great
+pew, and shut her in.
+
+"And now, please take off your shoes and stockings, and hand them
+over the pew to me."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Little: you are giving yourself so much trouble."
+
+"Nonsense.  Do what you are bid."  He said this a little roughly.
+
+"I'll do whatever YOU bid me," said she, meekly: and instantly took
+off her dripping shoes, and stockings, and handed them over the pew.
+She received, in return, a nice warm pair of worsted stockings.
+
+"Put on these directly," said he, "while I warm your shoes."
+
+He dashed all the wet he could out of the shoes, and, taking them to
+the forge, put hot cinders in: he shook the cinders up and down the
+shoes so quickly, they had not time to burn, but only to warm and
+dry them.  He advised Coventry to do the same, and said he was sorry
+he had only one pair of stockings to lend.  And that was a lie: for
+he was glad he had only one pair to lend.  When he had quite dried
+the shoes, he turned round, and found Grace was peeping over the
+pew, and looking intolerably lovely in the firelight.  He kissed the
+shoes furtively, and gave them to her.  She shook her head in a
+remonstrating way, but her eyes filled.
+
+He turned away, and, rousing all his generous manhood, said, "Now
+you must both eat something, before you go."  He produced a
+Yorkshire pie, and some bread, and a bottle of wine.  He gave Mr.
+Coventry a saucepan, and set him to heat the wine; then turned up
+his sleeves to the shoulder, blew his bellows, and, with his
+pincers, took a lath of steel and placed it in the white embers.  "I
+have only got one knife, and you won't like to eat with that.  I
+must forge you one apiece."
+
+Then Grace came out, and stood looking on, while he forged knives,
+like magic, before the eyes of his astonished guests.  Her feet were
+now as warm as a toast, and her healthy young body could resist all
+the rest.  She stood, with her back to the nearest pew, and her
+hands against the pew too, and looked with amazement, and dreamy
+complacency, at the strange scene before her: a scene well worthy of
+Salvator Rosa; though, in fact, that painter never had the luck to
+hit on so variegated a subject.
+
+Three broad bands of light shot from the fires, expanding in size,
+but weakening in intensity.  These lights, and the candles at the
+west end, revealed in a strange combination the middle ages, the
+nineteenth century, and eternal nature.
+
+Nature first.  Snow gleaming on the windows.  Oh, it was cozy to see
+it gleam and sparkle, and to think "Aha! you all but killed me; now
+King Fire warms both thee and me."  Snow-flakes, of enormous size,
+softly descending, and each appearing a diamond brooch, as it passed
+through the channels of fiery light.
+
+The middle ages.  Massive old arches, chipped, and stained; a
+moldering altar-piece, dog's-eared (Henry had nailed it up again all
+but the top corner, and in it still faintly gleamed the Virgin's
+golden crown).  Pulpit, richly carved, but moldering: gaunt walls,
+streaked and stained by time.  At the west end, one saint--the last
+of many--lit by two candles, and glowing ruby red across the
+intervening gulf of blackness: on the nearest wall an inscription,
+that still told, in rusty letters, how Giles de la Beche had charged
+his lands with six merks a year forever, to buy bread and white
+watered herrings, the same to be brought into Cairnhope Church every
+Sunday in Lent, and given to two poor men and four women; and the
+same on Good Friday with a penny dole, and, on that day, the clerk
+to toll the bell at three of the clock after noon, and read the
+lamentation of a sinner, and receive one groat.
+
+Ancient monuments, sculptures with here an arm gone, and here a
+head, that yet looked half-alive in the weird and partial light.
+
+And between one of those mediaeval sculptures, and that moldering
+picture of the Virgin, stood a living horse, munching his corn; and
+in the foreground was a portable forge, a mausoleum turned into
+fires and hot plate, and a young man, type of his century, forging
+table-knives amidst the wrecks of another age.
+
+When Grace had taken in the whole scene with wonder, her eye was
+absorbed by this one figure, a model of manly strength, and skill,
+and grace.  How lightly he stepped: how easily his left arm blew the
+coals to a white heat, with blue flames rising from them.  How
+deftly he drew out the white steel.  With what tremendous force his
+first blows fell, and scattered hot steel around.  Yet all that
+force was regulated to a hair--he beat, he molded, he never broke.
+Then came the lighter blows; and not one left the steel as it found
+it.  In less than a minute the bar was a blade, it was work
+incredibly unlike his method in carving; yet, at a glance, Grace saw
+it was also perfection, but in an opposite style.  In carving, the
+hand of a countess; in forging, a blacksmith's arm.
+
+She gazed with secret wonder and admiration; and the comparison was
+to the disadvantage of Mr. Coventry; for he sat shivering, and the
+other seemed all power.  And women adore power.
+
+When Little had forged the knives and forks, and two deep saucers,
+with magical celerity, he plunged them into water a minute, and they
+hissed; he sawed off the rim of a pew, and fitted handles.
+
+Then he washed his face and hands, and made himself dry and glowing;
+let down his sleeves, and served them some Yorkshire pie, and bread,
+and salt, and stirred a little sugar into the wine, and poured it
+into the saucers.
+
+"Now eat a bit, both of you, before you go."
+
+Mr. Coventry responded at once to the invitation.
+
+But Grace said, timidly, "Yes, if you will eat with us."
+
+"No, no," said he.  "I've not been perished with snow, nor rolled in
+a river."
+
+Grace hesitated still; but Coventry attacked the pie directly.  It
+was delicious.  "By Jove, sir," said he, "you are the prince of
+blacksmiths."
+
+"Blacksmiths!" said Grace, coloring high.  But Little only smiled
+satirically.
+
+Grace, who was really faint with hunger, now ate a little; and then
+the host made her sip some wine.
+
+The food and wine did Mr. Coventry so much good, that he began to
+recover his superiority, and expressed his obligations to Henry in a
+tone which was natural, and not meant to be offensive; but yet, it
+was so, under all the circumstances: there was an underlying tone of
+condescension, it made Grace fear he would offer Henry his purse at
+leaving.
+
+Henry himself writhed under it; but said nothing.  Grace, however,
+saw his ire, his mortification, and his jealousy in his face, and
+that irritated her; but she did not choose to show either of the men
+how much it angered her.
+
+She was in a most trying situation, and all the woman's wit and tact
+were keenly on their guard.
+
+What she did was this; she did not utter one word of remonstrance,
+but she addressed most of her remarks to Mr. Little; and, though the
+remarks were nothing in themselves, she contrived to throw profound
+respect into them.  Indeed, she went beyond respect.  She took the
+tone of an inferior addressing a superior.
+
+This was nicely calculated to soothe Henry, and also to make
+Coventry, who was a man of tact, change his own manner.
+
+Nor was it altogether without that effect.  But then it annoyed
+Coventry, and made him wish to end it.
+
+After a while he said, "My dear Grace, it can't be far from Raby
+Hall.  I think you had better let me take you home at once."
+
+Grace colored high, and bit her lip.
+
+Henry was green with jealous anguish.
+
+"Are you quite recovered yourself?" said Grace, demurely, to Mr.
+Coventry.
+
+"Quite; thanks to this good fellow's hospitality."
+
+"Then WOULD you mind going to Raby, and sending some people for me?
+I really feel hardly equal to fresh exertion just yet."
+
+This proposal brought a flush of pleasure to Henry's cheek, and
+mortified Mr. Coventry cruelly in his turn.
+
+"What, go and leave you here?  Surely you can not be serious."
+
+"Oh, I don't wish you to leave me.  Only you seemed in a hurry."
+
+Henry was miserable again.
+
+Coventry did not let well alone, he alluded delicately but tenderly
+to what had passed between them, and said he could not bear her out
+of his sight until she was safe at Raby.  The words and the tone
+were those of a lover, and Henry was in agony: thereupon Grace
+laughed it off, "Not bear me out of your sight!" said she.  "Why,
+you ran away from me, and tumbled into the river.  Ha! ha! ha!  And"
+(very seriously) "we should both be in another world but for Mr.
+Little."
+
+"You are very cruel," said Mr. Coventry.  "When you gave up in
+despair, I ran for help.  You punish me for failure; punish me
+savagely."
+
+"Yes, I was ungenerous," said Grace.  "Forgive me."  But she said it
+rather coolly, and not with a very penitent air.
+
+She added an explanation more calculated to please Henry than him.
+"Your gallantry is always graceful; and it is charming, in a
+drawing-room; but in this wild place, and just after escaping the
+grave, let us talk like sensible people.  If you and I set out for
+Raby Hall alone, we shall lose our way again, and perish, to a
+certainty.  But I think Mr. Little must know the way to Raby Hall."
+
+"Oh, then," said Coventry, catching at her idea, "perhaps Mr. Little
+would add to the great obligation, under which he has laid us both,
+by going to Raby Hall and sending assistance hither."
+
+"I can't do that," said Henry, roughly.
+
+"And that is not at all what I was going to propose," said Grace,
+quietly.  "But perhaps you would be so good as to go with us to Raby
+Hall?  Then I should feel safe; and I want Mr. Raby to thank you,
+for I feel how cold and unmeaning all I have said to you is; I seem
+to have no words."  Her voice faltered, and her sweet eyes filled.
+
+"Miss Carden," said the young man, gravely, "I can't do that.  Mr.
+Raby is no friend of mine, and he is a bigoted old man, who would
+turn me out of this place if he knew.  Come, now, when you talk
+about gratitude to me for not letting you be starved to death, you
+make me blush.  Is there a man in the world that wouldn't?  But this
+I do say; it would be rather hard if you two were to go away, and
+cut my throat in return; and, if you open your mouths ever so
+little, either of you, you WILL cut my throat.  Why, ask yourselves,
+have I set up my workshop in such a place as this--by choice?  It
+takes a stout heart to work here, I can tell you, and a stout heart
+to sleep here over dead bones."
+
+"I see it all.  The Trades Unions!"
+
+"That is it.  So, now, there are only two ways.  You must promise me
+never to breathe a word to any living soul, or I must give up my
+livelihood, and leave the country."
+
+"What can not you trust me?  Oh, Mr. Little!"
+
+"No, no; it's this gentleman.  He is a stranger to me, you know;
+and, you see, my life may be at stake, as well as my means."
+
+"Mr. Coventry is a gentleman, and a man of honor.  He is incapable
+of betraying you."
+
+"I should hope so," said Coventry.  "I pledge you the word of a
+gentleman I will never let any human creature know that you are
+working here."
+
+"Give me your hand on that, if you please."
+
+Coventry gave him his hand with warmth and evident sincerity.
+
+Young Little was reassured.  "Come," said he, "I feel I can trust
+you both.  And, sir, Miss Carden will tell you what happened to me
+in Cheetham's works; and then you will understand what I risk upon
+your honor."
+
+"I accept the responsibility; and I thank you for giving me this
+opportunity to show you how deeply I feel indebted to you."
+
+"That is square enough.  Well, now my mind is at ease about that,
+I'll tell you what I'll do; I won't take you quite to Raby Hall; but
+I'll take you so near to it, you can't miss it; and then I'll go
+back to my work."
+
+He sighed deeply at the lonely prospect, and Grace heard him.
+
+"Come," said he, almost violently, and led the way out of church.
+But he stayed behind to lock the door, and then joined them.
+
+They all three went together, Grace in the middle.
+
+There was now but little snow falling, and the air was not so thick;
+but it was most laborious walking, and soon Mr. Coventry, who was
+stiff and in pain, fell a little behind, and groaned as he hobbled
+on.
+
+Grace whispered to Henry: "Be generous.  He has hurt himself so."
+
+This made Henry groan in return.  But he said nothing.  He just
+turned back to Coventry--"You can't get on without help, sir; lean
+on me."
+
+The act was friendly, the tone surly.  Coventry accepted the act,
+and noted the tone in his memory.
+
+When Grace had done this, she saw Henry misunderstood it, and she
+was sorry, and waited an opportunity to restore the balance; but,
+ere one came, a bell was heard in the air; the great alarm-bell of
+Raby Hall.
+
+Then faint voices were heard of people calling to each other here
+and there in the distance.
+
+"What is it?" asked Grace.
+
+Henry replied, "What should it be?  The whole country is out after
+you.  Mr Raby has sense enough for that."
+
+"Oh, I hope they will not see the light in the church, and find you
+out."
+
+"You are very good to think of that.  Ah!  There's a bonfire: and
+here comes a torch.  I must go and quench my fires.  Good-by, Miss
+Carden.  Good-evening, sir."
+
+With this, he retired: but, as he went, he sighed.
+
+Grace said to Coventry, "Oh, I forgot to ask him a question;" and
+ran after him.  "Mr. Little!"
+
+He heard and came back to her.
+
+She was violently agitated.  "I can't leave you so," she said.
+"Give me your hand."
+
+He gave it to her.
+
+"I mortified you; and you have saved me."  She took his hand, and,
+holding it gently in both her little palms, sobbed out,--"Oh, think
+of something I can do, to show my gratitude, my esteem.  Pray, pray,
+pray."
+
+"Wait two years for me."
+
+"Oh, not that.  I don't mean that."
+
+"That or nothing.  In two years, I'll be as good a gentleman as HE
+is.  I'm not risking my life in that church, for nothing.  If you
+have one grain of pity or esteem for me, wait two years."
+
+"Incurable!" she murmured: but he was gone.
+
+Coventry heard the prayer.  That was loud and earnest enough.  Her
+reply he could not bear.
+
+She rejoined him, and the torch came rapidly forward.
+
+It was carried by a lass, with her gown pinned nearly to her knees,
+and displaying grand and powerful limbs; she was crying, like the
+tenderest woman, and striding through the snow, like a young giant.
+
+
+When the snow first came down, Mr. Raby merely ordered large fires
+to be lighted and fed in his guests' bedrooms; he feared nothing
+worse for them than a good wetting.
+
+When dinner-time came, without them, he began to be anxious, and
+sent a servant to the little public-house, to inquire if they were
+there.
+
+The servant had to walk through the snow, and had been gone about an
+hour, and Mr. Raby was walking nervously up and down the hall, when
+Jael Dence burst in at the front door, as white as a sheet, and
+gasped out in his face: "THE GABRIEL HOUNDS!!"
+
+Raby ran out directly, and sure enough, that strange pack were
+passing in full cry over the very house.  It was appalling.  He was
+dumb with awe for a moment.  Then he darted into the kitchen and
+ordered them to ring the great alarm-bell incessantly; then into the
+yard, and sent messengers to the village, and to all his tenants,
+and in about an hour there were fifty torches, and as many sheep-
+bells, directed upon Cairnhope hill; and, as men and boys came in
+from every quarter, to know why Raby's great alarm-bell was ringing,
+they were armed with torches and sent up Cairnhope.
+
+At last the servant returned from "The Colley Dog," with the
+alarming tidings that Miss Carden and Mr. Coventry had gone up the
+hill, and never returned.  This, however, was hardly news.  The
+Gabriel hounds always ran before calamity.
+
+At about eleven o'clock, there being still no news of them, Jael
+Dence came to Mr. Raby wringing her hands.  "Why do all the men go
+east for them?"
+
+"Because they are on the east side."
+
+"How can ye tell that?  They have lost their way."
+
+"I am afraid so," groaned Raby.
+
+"Then why do you send all the men as if they hadn't lost their way?
+East side of Cairnhope! why that is where they ought to be, but it
+is not where they are, man."
+
+"You are a good girl, and I'm a fool," cried Raby.  "Whoever comes
+in after this, I'll send them up by the old church."
+
+"Give me a torch, and I'll run myself."
+
+"Ay, do, and I'll put on my boots, and after you."
+
+Then Jael got a torch, and kilted her gown to her knees, and went
+striding through the snow with desperate vigor, crying as she went,
+for her fear was great and her hope was small, from the moment she
+heard the Gabriel hounds."
+
+Owing to the torch, Grace saw her first, and uttered a little
+scream; a loud scream of rapture replied: the torch went anywhere,
+and gentle and simple were locked in each other's arms, Jael sobbing
+for very joy after terror, and Grace for sympathy, and also because
+she wanted to cry, on more accounts than one.
+
+Another torch came on, and Jael cried triumphantly, "This way,
+Squire.  She is here!" and kissed her violently again.
+
+Mr. Raby came up, and took her in his arms, without a word, being
+broken with emotion: and, after he had shaken Coventry by both
+hands, they all turned homeward, and went so fast that Coventry gave
+in with a groan.
+
+Then Grace told Jael what had befallen him, and just then another
+torch came in, held by George the blacksmith, who, at sight of the
+party, uttered a stentorian cheer, and danced upon the snow.
+
+"Behave, now," said Jael, "and here's the gentleman sore hurt in the
+river; Geordie, come and make a chair with me."
+
+George obeyed and put out his hands, with the fingers upward, Jael
+did the same, with the fingers downward: they took hands, and,
+putting their stalwart arms under Coventry, told him to fling an arm
+round each of their necks: he did so, and up he went; he was no more
+than a feather to this pair, the strongest man and woman in
+Cairnhope.
+
+As they went along, he told them his adventure in the stream, and,
+when they heard it, they ejaculated to each other, and condoled with
+him kindly, and assured him he was alive by a miracle.
+
+They reached Raby, and, in the great hall, the Squire collected his
+people and gave his orders.  "Stop the bell.  Broach a barrel of
+ale, and keep open house, so long as malt, and bacon, and cheese
+last.  Turn neither body nor beast from my door this night, or may
+God shut His gate in your faces.  Here are two guineas, George, to
+ring the church-bells, you and your fellows; but sup here first.
+Cans of hot water upstairs, for us.  Lay supper, instead of dinner;
+brew a bowl of punch.  Light all the Yule candles, as if it was
+Christmas eve.  But first down on your knees, all of ye, whilst I
+thank God, who has baffled those Gabriel Hell-hounds for once, and
+saved a good man and a bonny lass from a dog's death."
+
+They all went down on their knees, on the marble floor, directly,
+and the Squire uttered a few words of hearty thanksgiving, and there
+was scarcely a dry eye.
+
+Then the guests went upstairs, and had their hot baths, and changed
+their clothes, and came down to supper in the blazing room.
+
+Whilst they were at supper, the old servant who waited on them said
+something in a low voice to his master.  He replied that he would
+speak to the man in the hall.
+
+As soon as he was gone, Miss Carden said in French, "Did you hear
+that?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, I did.  Now, mind your promise.  We shall have to fib.  You
+had better say nothing.  Let me speak for you; ladies fib so much
+better than gentlemen."
+
+Mr. Raby came back, and Grace waited to see if he would tell her.  I
+don't think he intended to, at first: but he observed her eyes
+inquiring, and said, "One of the men, who was out after you tonight,
+has brought in word there is a light in Cairnhope old church."
+
+"Do you believe it?"
+
+"No.  But it is a curious thing; a fortnight ago (I think, I told
+you) a shepherd brought me the same story.  He had seen the church
+on fire; at least he said so.  But mark the paralyzing effect of
+superstition.  My present informant no sooner saw this light--
+probably a reflection from one of the distant torches--than he
+coolly gave up searching for you.  'They are dead,' says he, 'and
+the spirits in the old church are saying mass for their souls.  I'll
+go to supper.'  So he came here to drink my ale, and tell his cock-
+and-bull story."
+
+Grace put in her word with a sweet, candid face.  "Sir, if there had
+been a light in that church, should we not have seen it?"
+
+"Why, of course you would: you must have been within a hundred yards
+of it in your wanderings.  I never thought of that."
+
+Grace breathed again.
+
+"However, we shall soon know.  I have sent George and another man
+right up to the church to look.  It is quite clear now."
+
+Grace felt very anxious, but she forced on a careless air.  "And
+suppose, after all, there should be a light?"
+
+"Then George has his orders to come back and tell me; if there is a
+light, it is no ghost nor spirit, but some smuggler, or poacher, or
+vagrant, who is desecrating that sacred place; and I shall turn out
+with fifty men, and surround the church, and capture the scoundrel,
+and make an example of him."
+
+Grace turned cold and looked at Mr. Coventry.  She surprised a
+twinkle of satisfaction in his eye.  She never forgot it.
+
+She sat on thorns, and was so distraite she could hardly answer the
+simplest question.
+
+At last, after an hour of cruel suspense, the servant came in, and
+said, "George is come back, sir."
+
+"Oh, please let him come in here, and tell us."
+
+"By all means.  Send him in."
+
+George appeared, the next moment, in the doorway.  "Well?" said Mr.
+Raby.
+
+"Well?" said Grace, pale, but self-possessed.
+
+"Well," said George, sulkily, "it is all a lie.  Th' old church is
+as black as my hat."
+
+"I thought as much," said Mr. Raby.  "There, go and get your
+supper."
+
+Soon after this Grace went up to bed, and Jael came to her, and they
+talked by the fire while she was curling her hair.  She was in high
+spirits, and Jael eyed her with wonder and curiosity.
+
+"But, miss," said Jael, "the magpie was right.  Oh, the foul bird!
+That's the only bird that wouldn't go into the ark with Noah and his
+folk."
+
+"Indeed!  I was not aware of the circumstance."
+
+"'Twas so, miss; and I know the reason.  A very old woman told me."
+
+"She must have been very old indeed, to be an authority on that
+subject.  Well, what was the reason?"
+
+"She liked better to perch on the roof of th' ark, and jabber over
+the drowning world; that was why.  So, ever after that, when a
+magpie flies across, turn back, or look to meet ill-luck."
+
+"That is to say the worst creatures are stronger than their Creator,
+and can bring us bad luck against His will.  And you call yourself a
+Christian?  Why this is Paganism.  They were frightened at ravens,
+and you at magpies.  A fig for your magpies! and another for your
+Gabriel hounds!  God is high above them all."
+
+"Ay, sure; but these are signs of His will.  Trouble and all comes
+from God.  And so, whenever you see a magpie, or hear those terrible
+hounds--"
+
+"Then tremble! for it is all to end in a bowl of punch, and a
+roaring fire; and Mr. Raby, that passes for a Tartar, being so kind
+to me; and me being in better spirits than I have been for ever so
+long."
+
+"Oh, miss!"
+
+"And oh, miss, to you.  Why, what is the matter?  I have been in
+danger!  Very well; am I the first?  I have had an adventure!  All
+the better.  Besides, it has shown me what good hearts there are in
+the world, yours amongst the rest."  (Kissing her.)  "Now don't
+interrupt, but listen to the words of the wise and their dark
+sayings.  Excitement is a blessing.  Young ladies need it more than
+anybody.  Half the foolish things we do, it is because the old
+people are so stupid and don't provide us enough innocent
+excitement.  Dancing till five is a good thing now and then; only
+that is too bodily, and ends in a headache, and feeling stupider
+than before.  But to-night, what glorious excitement!  Too late for
+dinner--drenched with snow--lost on a mountain--anxiety--fear--the
+Gabriel hounds--terror--despair--resignation--sudden relief--warm
+stockings--delightful sympathy--petted on every side--hungry--happy--
+fires--punch!  I never lived till to-night--I never relished life
+till now.  How could I?  I never saw Death nor Danger near enough to
+be worth a straw."
+
+Jael made no attempt to arrest this flow of spirits.  She waited
+quietly for a single pause, and then she laid her hand on the young
+lady's, and, fastening her eyes on her, she said quietly,--
+
+"You have seen HIM."
+
+Grace Carden's face was scarlet in a moment, and she looked with a
+rueful imploring glance, into those great gray searching eyes of
+Jael Dence.
+
+Her fine silvery tones of eloquence went off into a little piteous
+whine "You are very cunning--to believe in a magpie."  And she hid
+her blushing face in her hands.  She took an early opportunity of
+sending this too sagacious rustic to bed.
+
+
+Next day Mr. Coventry was so stiff and sore he did not come down to
+breakfast.  But Grace Carden, though very sleepy, made her
+appearance, and had a most affectionate conversation with Mr. Raby.
+She asked leave to christen him again.  I must call you something,
+you know, after all this.  Mr. Raby is cold.  Godpapa is childish.
+What do you say to--'Uncle'?"
+
+He said he should be delighted.  Then she dipped her forefinger in
+water.  He drew back with horror.
+
+"Come, young lady," said he, "I know it is an age of burlesque.  But
+let us spare the sacraments, and the altar, and such trifles."
+
+"I am not half so wicked as you think," said Grace.  Then she wrote
+"Uncle" on his brow, and so settled that matter.
+
+Mr. Coventry came down about noon, and resumed his courtship.  He
+was very tender, spoke of the perils they had endured together as an
+additional tie, and pressed his suit with ardor.
+
+But he found a great change in the lady.
+
+Yesterday, on Cairnhope Peak, she was passive, but soft and
+complying.  To-day she was polite, but cool, and as slippery as an
+eel.  There was no pinning her.
+
+And, at last, she said, "The fact is I'm thinking of our great
+preservation, and more inclined to pray than flirt, for once."
+
+"And so am I," said the man of tact; "but what I offer is a sacred
+and life-long affection."
+
+"Oh, of course."
+
+"A few hours ago you did me the honor to listen to me.  You even
+hinted I might speak to your father."
+
+"No, no.  I only asked if you HAD spoken to him."
+
+"I will not contradict you.  I will trust to your own candor.  Dear
+Grace, tell me, have I been so unfortunate as to offend you since
+then?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Have I lost your respect?"
+
+"Oh, no."
+
+"Have I forfeited your good opinion?"
+
+"Dear me, no."  (A little pettishly.)
+
+"Then how is it that I love you better, if possible, than yesterday,
+and you seem not to like me so well as yesterday?"
+
+"One is not always in the same humor."
+
+"Then you don't like me to-day?"
+
+"Oh yes, but I do.  And I shall always like you: if you don't tease
+me, and urge me too much.  It is hardly fair to hurry me so; I am
+only a girl, and girls make such mistakes sometimes."
+
+"That is true; they marry on too short an acquaintance.  But you
+have known me more than two years, and, in all that time, have I
+once given you reason to think that you had a rival in my
+admiration, my love?"
+
+"I never watched you to see.  But all that time you have certainly
+honored me with your attention, and I do believe you love me more
+than I deserve.  Please do not be angry: do not be mortified.  There
+is no occasion; I am resolved not to marry until I am of age; that
+is all; and where's the harm of that?"
+
+"I will wait your pleasure; all I ask you, at present, is to relieve
+me of my fears, by engaging yourself to me."
+
+"Ah! but I have always been warned against long engagements."
+
+"Long engagements!  Why, how old are you, may I ask?"
+
+"Only nineteen.  Give me a little time to think."
+
+"If I wait till you are of age, THAT WILL BE TWO YEARS."
+
+"Just about.  I was nineteen on the 12th of December.  What is the
+matter?"
+
+"Oh, nothing.  A sudden twinge.  A man does not get rolled over
+sharp rocks, by a mountain torrent, for nothing."
+
+"No, indeed."
+
+"Never mind that, if I'm not to be punished in my heart as well.
+This resolution, not to marry for two years, is it your own idea? or
+has somebody put it into your head since we stood on Cairnhope, and
+looked at Bollinghope?"
+
+"Please give me credit for it," said Grace, turning very red: "it is
+the only sensible one I have had for a long time."
+
+Mr. Coventry groaned aloud, and turned very pale.
+
+Grace said she wanted to go upstairs for her work, and so got away
+from him.
+
+She turned at the door, and saw him sink into a chair, with an agony
+in his face that was quite new to him.
+
+She fled to her own room, to think it all over, and she entered it
+so rapidly that she caught Jael crying, and rocking herself before
+the fire.
+
+The moment she came in Jael got up, and affected to be very busy,
+arranging things; but always kept her back turned to Grace.
+
+The young lady sat down, and leaned her cheek on her hand, and
+reflected very sadly and seriously on the misery she had left in the
+drawing-room, and the tears she had found here.
+
+Accustomed to make others bright and happy by her bare presence,
+this beautiful and unselfish young creature was shocked at the
+misery she was sowing around her, and all for something her judgment
+told her would prove a chimera.  And again she asked herself was she
+brave enough, and selfish enough, to defy her father and her
+godfather, whose mind was written so clearly in that terrible
+inscription.
+
+She sat there, cold at heart, a long time, and at last came to a
+desperate resolution.
+
+"Give me my writing-desk."
+
+Jael brought it her.
+
+"Sit down there where I can see you; and don't hide your tears from
+me.  I want to see you cry.  I want every help.  I wasn't born to
+make everybody miserable: I am going to end it."
+
+She wrote a little, and then she stopped, and sighed; then she wrote
+a little more, and stopped, and sighed.  Then she burned the letter,
+and began again; and as she wrote, she sighed; and as she wrote on,
+she moaned.
+
+And, as she wrote on, the tears began to fall upon the paper.
+
+It was piteous to see the struggle of this lovely girl, and the
+patient fortitude that could sigh, and moan, and weep, yet go on
+doing the brave act that made her sigh, and moan, and weep.
+
+At last, the letter was finished, and directed; and Grace put it in
+her bosom, and dismissed Jael abruptly, almost harshly, and sat
+down, cold and miserable, before the fire.
+
+At dinner-time her eyes were so red she would not appear.  She
+pleaded headache, and dined in her own room.
+
+Meantime Mr. Coventry passed a bitter time.
+
+He had heard young Little say, "Wait two years."  And now Grace was
+evading and procrastinating, and so, literally, obeying that young
+man, with all manner of false pretenses.  This was a revelation, and
+cast back a bright light on many suspicious things he had observed
+in the church.
+
+He was tortured with jealous agony.  And it added to his misery that
+he could not see his way to any hostilities.
+
+Little could easily be driven out of the country, for that matter;
+he had himself told them both how certainly that would befall him if
+he was betrayed to the Unions.  But honor and gratitude forbade this
+line; and Coventry, in the midst of his jealous agony, resisted that
+temptation fiercely, would not allow his mind even to dwell upon it
+for a moment.
+
+He recalled all his experiences; and, after a sore struggle of
+passion, he came to some such conclusion as this: that Grace would
+have married him if she had not unexpectedly fallen in with Little,
+under very peculiar and moving circumstances; that an accident of
+this kind would never occur again, and he must patiently wear out
+the effect of it.
+
+He had observed that in playing an uphill game of love the lover
+must constantly ask himself, "What should I do, were I to listen to
+my heart?" and having ascertained that, must do the opposite.  So
+now Mr. Coventry grimly resolved to control his wishes for a time,
+to hide his jealousy, to hide his knowledge of her deceit, to hide
+his own anger.  He would wait some months before he again asked her
+to marry him, unless he saw a change in her; and, meantime, he would
+lay himself out to please her, trusting to this, that there could be
+no intercourse by letter between her and a workman, and they were
+not likely to meet again in a hurry.
+
+It required considerable fortitude to curb his love and jealousy,
+and settle on this course.  But he did conquer after a hard
+struggle, and prepared to meet Miss Carden at dinner with artificial
+gayety.
+
+But she did not appear; and that set Mr. Coventry thinking again.
+Why should she have a headache?  He had a rooted disbelief in
+women's headaches.  His own head had far more reason to ache, and
+his heart too.  He puzzled himself all dinner-time about this
+headache, and was very bad company.
+
+Soon after dinner he took a leaf out of her book, pretended
+headache, and said he should like to take a turn by himself in the
+air.
+
+What he really wanted to do was to watch Miss Carden's windows, for
+he had all manner of ugly suspicions.
+
+There seemed to be a strong light in the room.  He could see no
+more.
+
+He walked moodily up and down, very little satisfied with himself,
+and at last he got ashamed of his own thoughts.
+
+"Oh, no!" he said, "she is in her room, sure enough."
+
+He turned his back, and strolled out into the road.
+
+Presently he heard the rustle of a woman's dress.  He stepped into
+the shade of the firs directly, and his heart began to beat hard.
+
+But it was only Jael Dence.  She came out within a few yards of him.
+She had something white in her hand, which, however, she
+instinctively conveyed into her bosom the moment she found herself
+in the moonlight.  Coventry saw her do it though.
+
+She turned to the left, and walked swiftly up the road.
+
+Now Coventry knew nothing about this girl, except that she belonged
+to a class with whom money generally goes a long way.  And he now
+asked himself whether it might not be well worth his while to enlist
+her sympathies on his side.
+
+While he was coming to this conclusion, Jael, who was gliding along
+at a great pace, reached a turn in the road, and Mr. Coventry had to
+run after her to catch her.
+
+When he got to the turn in the road, she was just going round
+another turn, having quickened her pace.
+
+Coventry followed more leisurely.  She might be going to meet her
+sweetheart; and, if so, he had better talk to her on her return.
+
+He walked on till he saw at some distance a building, with light
+shining though it in a peculiar way; and now the path became very
+rugged and difficult.  He came to a standstill, and eyed the place
+where his rival was working at that moment.  He eyed it with a
+strange mixture of feelings.  It had saved his life and hers, after
+all.  He fell into another mood, and began to laugh at himself for
+allowing himself to be disturbed by such a rival.
+
+But what is this?  Jael Dence comes in sight again: she is making
+for the old church.
+
+Coventry watched her unseen.  She went to the porch, and, after she
+had been there some time, the door was opened just a little, then
+wide, and she entered the building.  He saw it all in a moment: the
+girl was already bought by the other side, and had carried his rival
+a letter before his eyes.
+
+A clandestine correspondence!
+
+All his plans and his resolutions melted away before this discovery.
+There was nothing to be done but to save the poor girl from this
+miserable and degrading attachment, and its inevitable consequences.
+
+He went home, pale with fury, and never once closed his eyes all
+night.
+
+Next day he ordered his dog-cart early; and told Mr. Raby and Grace
+he was going to Hillsborough for medical advice: had a pain in his
+back he could not get rid of.
+
+He called on the chief constable of Hillsborough, and asked him,
+confidentially, if he knew any thing about a workman called Little.
+
+"What; a Londoner, sir? the young man that is at odds with the
+Trades?"
+
+"I shouldn't wonder.  Yes; I think he is.  A friend of mine takes an
+interest in him."
+
+"And so do I.  His case was a disgrace to the country, and to the
+constabulary of the place.  It occurred just ten days before I came
+here, and it seems to me that nothing was done which ought to have
+been done."
+
+Mr. Coventry put in a question or two, which elicited from Mr.
+Ransome all he knew about the matter.
+
+"Where does this Little live?" was the next inquiry.
+
+"I don't know; but I think you could learn at Mr. Cheetham's.  The
+only time I ever saw Little, he was walking with the foreman of
+those works.  He was pointed out to me.  A dark young man; carries
+himself remarkably well--doesn't look like a workman.  If they don't
+know at Cheetham's, I'll find him out for you in twenty-four hours."
+
+"But this Grotait.  Do you know him?"
+
+"Oh, he is a public character.  Keeps 'The Cutlers' Arms,' in Black
+Street."
+
+"I understand he repudiates all these outrages."
+
+"He does.  But the workmen themselves are behind the scenes; and
+what do they call him?  Why, 'Old Smitem.'"
+
+"Ah!  You are one of those who look below the surface," said the
+courtier.
+
+He then turned the conversation, and, soon after, went away.  He had
+been adroit enough to put his questions in the languid way of a man
+who had no personal curiosity, and was merely discharging a
+commission.
+
+Mr. Ransome, as a matter of form, took a short note of the
+conversation; but attached no importance to it.  However, he used
+the means at his command to find out Little's abode.  Not that Mr.
+Coventry had positively asked him to do it; but, his attention being
+thus unexpectedly called to the subject, he felt desirous to talk to
+Little on his own account.
+
+Mr. Coventry went straight to "The Cutlers' Arms," but he went
+slowly.  A powerful contest was now going on within him; jealousy
+and rage urged him onward, honor and gratitude held him back.  Then
+came his self-deceiving heart, and suggested that Miss Carden had
+been the first to break her promise (she had let Jael Dence into
+Little's secret), and that he himself was being undermined by
+cunning and deceit: strict notions of honor would be out of place in
+such a combat.  Lastly, he felt it his DUTY to save Miss Carden from
+a degrading connection.
+
+All these considerations, taken together, proved too strong for his
+good faith; and so stifled the voice of conscience, that it could
+only keep whispering against the deed, but not prevent it.
+
+He went direct to "The Cutlers' Arms."  He walked into the parlor
+and ordered a glass of brandy-and-water, and asked if he could see
+Mr. Grotait, privately.  Mr. Grotait came in.
+
+"Sit down, Mr. Grotait.  Will you have any thing?"
+
+"A glass of ale, sir, if you please."
+
+When this had been brought, and left, and the parties were alone,
+Coventry asked him whether he could receive a communication under a
+strict promise of secrecy.
+
+"If it is a trade matter, sir, you can trust me.  A good many have."
+
+"Well then, I can tell you something about a workman called Little.
+But before I say a word, I must make two express conditions.  One
+is, that no violence shall be used toward him; the other, that you
+never reveal to any human creature, it was I who told you."
+
+"What, is he working still?"
+
+"My conditions, Mr. Grotait?"
+
+"I promise you absolute secrecy, sir, as far as you are concerned.
+As to your other condition, the matter will work thus: if your
+communication should be as important as you think, I can do nothing--
+the man is not in the saw-trade--I shall carry the information to
+two other secretaries, and shall not tell them I had it from Mr.
+Coventry, of Bollinghope."  (Mr. Coventry started at finding himself
+known.)  "Those gentlemen will be sure to advise with me, and I
+shall suggest to them to take effectual measures, but to keep it, if
+possible, from the knowledge of all those persons who discredit us
+by their violent acts."
+
+"Well then, on that understanding--the man works all night in a
+deserted church at Cairnhope; it is all up among the hills."
+
+Grotait turned red.  "Are you sure of this?"
+
+"Quite sure?"
+
+"You have seen him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Has he a forge?"
+
+"Yes; and bellows, and quantities of molds, and strips of steel.  He
+is working on a large scale."
+
+"It shall be looked into, sir, by the proper persons.  Indeed, the
+sooner they are informed, the better."
+
+"Yes, but mind, no violence.  You are strong enough to drive him out
+of the country without that."
+
+"I should hope so."
+
+Coventry then rose, and left the place; but he had no sooner got
+into the street, than a sort of horror fell on him; horror of
+himself, distrust and dread of the consequences, to his rival but
+benefactor.
+
+Almost at the door he was met by Mr. Ransome, who stopped him and
+gave him Little's address; he had obtained it without difficulty
+from Bayne.
+
+"I am glad you reminded me, sir," said he; "I shall call on him
+myself, one of these days."
+
+These words rang in Coventry's ears, and put him in a cold
+perspiration.  "Fool!" thought he, "to go and ask a public officer,
+a man who hears every body in turn."
+
+What he had done disinclined him to return to Cairnhope.  He made a
+call or two first, and loitered about, and then at last back to
+Raby, gnawed with misgivings and incipient remorse.
+
+Mr. Grotait sent immediately for Mr. Parkin, Mr. Jobson, and Mr.
+Potter, and told them the secret information he had just received.
+
+They could hardly believe it at first; Jobson, especially, was
+incredulous.  He said he had kept his eye on Little, and assured
+them the man had gone into woodcarving, and was to be seen in the
+town all day.
+
+"Ay," said Parkin, "but this is at night; and, now I think of it, I
+met him t'other day, about dusk, galloping east, as hard as he could
+go."
+
+"My information is from a sure source," said Grotait, stiffly.
+
+Parkin.--"What is to be done?"
+
+Jobson.--"Is he worth another strike?"
+
+Potter.--"The time is unfavorable: here's a slap of dull trade."
+
+The three then put their heads together, and various plans were
+suggested and discussed, and, as the parties were not now before the
+public, that horror of gunpowder, vitriol, and life-preservers,
+which figured in their notices and resolutions, did not appear in
+their conversation.  Grotait alone was silent and doubtful.  This
+Grotait was the greatest fanatic of the four, and, like all
+fanatics, capable of vast cruelty: but his cruelty lay in his head,
+rather than in his heart.  Out of Trade questions, the man, though
+vain and arrogant, was of a genial and rather a kindly nature; and,
+even in Trade questions, being more intelligent than his fellows, he
+was sometimes infested with a gleam of humanity.
+
+His bigotry was, at this moment, disturbed by a visitation of that
+kind.
+
+"I'm perplexed," said he: "I don't often hesitate on a Trade
+question neither.  But the men we have done were always low-lived
+blackguards, who would have destroyed us, if we had not disabled
+them.  Now this Little is a decent young chap.  He struck at the
+root of our Trades, so long as he wrought openly.  But on the sly,
+and nobody knowing but ourselves, mightn't it be as well to shut our
+eyes a bit?  My informant is not in trade."
+
+The other three took a more personal view of the matter.  Little was
+outwitting, and resisting them.  They saw nothing for it but to stop
+him, by hook or by crook.
+
+While they sat debating his case in whispers, and with their heads
+so close you might have covered them all with a tea-tray, a clear
+musical voice was heard to speak to the barmaid, and, by her
+direction, in walked into the council-chamber--Mr. Henry Little.
+
+This visit greatly surprised Messrs. Parkin, Jobson, and Potter, and
+made them stare, and look at one another uneasily.  But it did not
+surprise Grotait so much, and it came about in the simplest way.
+That morning, at about eleven o'clock, Dr. Amboyne had called on
+Mrs. Little, and had asked Henry, rather stiffly, whether he was
+quite forgetting Life, Labor and Capital.  Now the young man could
+not but feel that, for some time past, he had used the good doctor
+ill; had neglected and almost forgotten his benevolent hobby; so the
+doctor's gentle reproach went to his heart, and he said, "Give me a
+day or two, sir, and I'll show you how ashamed I am of my selfish
+behavior."  True to his pledge, he collected all his notes together,
+and prepared a report, to be illustrated with drawings.  He then
+went to Cheetham's, more as a matter of form than any thing, to see
+if the condemned grindstone had been changed.  To his infinite
+surprise he found it had not, and Bayne told him the reason.  Henry
+was angry, and went direct to Grotait about it.
+
+But as soon as he saw Jobson, and Parkin, and Potter, he started,
+and they started.  "Oh!" said he, "I didn't expect to find so much
+good company.  Why, here's the whole quorum."
+
+"We will retire, sir, if you wish it."
+
+"Not at all.  My orders are to convert you all to Life, Labor, and
+Capital (Grotait pricked up his ears directly); and, if I succeed,
+the Devil will be the next to come round, no doubt.  Well, Mr.
+Grotait, Simmons is on that same grindstone you and I condemned.
+And all for a matter of four shillings.  I find that, in your trade,
+the master provides the stone, but the grinder hangs and races it,
+which, in one sense, is time lost.  Well, Simmons declines the new
+stone, unless Cheetham will pay him by time for hanging and racing
+it; Cheetham refuses; and so, between them, that idiot works on a
+faulty stone.  Will you use your influence with the grinder?"
+
+"Well, Mr. Little, now, between ourselves don't you think it rather
+hard that the poor workman should have to hang and race the master's
+grindstone for nothing?"
+
+"Why, they share the loss between them.  The stone costs the master
+three pounds; and hanging it costs the workman only four or five
+shillings.  Where's the grievance?"
+
+"Hanging and racing a stone shortens the grinder's life; fills his
+lungs with grit.  Is the workman to give Life and Labor for a
+forenoon, and is Capital to contribute nothing?  Is that your view
+of Life, Labor, and Capital, young man?"
+
+Henry was staggered a moment.  "That is smart," said he. "But a rule
+of trade is a rule, till it is altered by consent of the parties
+that made it.  Now, right or wrong, it is the rule of trade here
+that the small grinders find their own stones, and pay for power;
+but the saw-grinders are better off, for they have not to find
+stones, nor power, and their only drawback is that they must hang
+and race a new stone, which costs the master sixty shillings.
+Cheetham is smarting under your rules, and you can't expect him to
+go against any rule, that saves him a shilling."
+
+"What does the grinder think?"
+
+"You might as well ask what the grindstone thinks."
+
+"Well, what does the grinder say, then?"
+
+"Says he'd rather run the stone out, than lose a forenoon."
+
+"Well, sir, it is his business."
+
+"It may be a man's business to hang himself; but it is the
+bystanders' to hinder him."
+
+"You mistake me.  I mean that the grinder is the only man who knows
+whether a stone is safe."
+
+"Well, but this grinder does not pretend his stone is safe.  All he
+says is, safe or not, he'll run it out.  So now the question is,
+will you pay four shillings from your box for this blockhead's loss
+of time in hanging and racing a new stone?"
+
+All the four secretaries opened their eyes with surprise at this.
+But Grotait merely said he had no authority to do that; the funds of
+the Union were set apart for specified purposes.
+
+"Very likely," said Henry, getting warm: "but, when there's life to
+be TAKEN, your Union can find money irregularly; so why grudge it,
+when there's life to be saved perhaps, and ten times cheaper than
+you pay for blood?"
+
+"Young man," said Grotait, severely, "did you come here to insult us
+with these worn-out slanders?"
+
+"No, but I came to see whether you secretaries, who can find pounds
+to assassinate men, and blow up women and children with gunpowder,
+can find shillings to secure the life of one of your own members; he
+risks it every time he mounts his horsing."
+
+"Well, sir, the application is without precedent, and I must decline
+it; but this I beg to do as courteously, as the application has been
+made uncourteously."
+
+"Oh, it is easy to be polite, when you've got no heart."
+
+"You are the first ever brought that charge against me."
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Potter, warmly.  "No
+heart!  Mr. Grotait is known for a good husband, a tender father,
+and the truest friend in Hillsborough."
+
+The others echoed these sentiments warmly and sincerely; for, as
+strange as it may appear to those who have not studied human nature
+at first hand, every word of this eulogy was strictly true.
+
+"Thank you, gentlemen," said Grotait.  "But we must make allowances.
+Mr. Little is smarting under a gross and dastardly outrage, and also
+under a fair defeat; and thinks his opponents must be monsters.  Now
+I should like to show him the contrary.  Let Simmons take care of
+himself.  You have given him good advice, and much to your credit:
+now have you nothing to say to us, on your own account?"
+
+"Not a word," said Henry, steadily
+
+"But suppose I could suggest a way by which you could carry on your
+trade in Hillsborough, and offend nobody?"
+
+"I should decline to hear it even.  You and I are at war on that.
+You have done your worst, and I shall do my best to make you all
+smart for it, the moment I get a chance."
+
+Grotait's cheek reddened with anger at this rebuff, and it cost him
+an effort to retain his friendly intentions.  "Come, come," said he,
+rather surlily, "don't be in a hurry till you have heard the nature
+of my proposal.  Here, Jess, a quart of the best ale.  Now, to
+begin, let us drink and be comfortable together."
+
+He passed the glass to Little first.  But the young man's blood was
+boiling with his wrongs, and this patronizing air irritated him to
+boot.  He took the glass in his hand, "Here's quick exposure--sudden
+death--and sure damnation--to all hypocrites and assassins!"  He
+drained the glass to this toast, flung sixpence on the table, and
+strode out, white with passion himself, and leaving startled faces
+behind him.
+
+"So be it," said Grotait; and his wicked little eye glittered
+dangerously.
+
+
+That same evening, a signal, well known to certain workmen in
+Hillsborough, peeped in the window of "The Cutlers' Arms."  And, in
+consequence, six or seven ill-conditioned fellows gathered about the
+doors and waited patiently for further information.
+
+Amongst these was a sturdy fellow of about nine-and-twenty, whose
+existence was a puzzle to his neighbors.  During the last seven
+years he had worked only eighteen months all together.  The rest of
+the time he had been on the Saw-Grinders' box, receiving relief,
+viz.: seven shillings and sixpence for his wife, and two shillings
+for each child; and every now and then he would be seen with three
+or four sovereigns in his possession.
+
+The name of this masterful beggar, of this invalid in theory, who,
+in fact, could eat three pounds of steak at a sitting, was Biggs;
+but it is a peculiarity of Hillsborough to defy baptismal names, and
+substitute others deemed spicier.  Out of the parish register and
+the records of the police courts, the scamp was only known as Dan
+Tucker.
+
+This Dan stood, with others, loitering about "The Cutlers' Arms."
+
+Presently out came Grotait, and surveyed the rascally lot.  He
+beckoned to Dan, and retired.
+
+Dan went in after him.
+
+"Drat his luck!" said one of the rejected candidates, "he always
+gets the job."  The rest then dispersed.
+
+Tucker was shown into a pitch-dark room, and there a bargain was
+struck between him and men unseen.  He and two more were to go to
+Cairnhope, and DO Little.  He was to avoid all those men who had
+lately stood at the door with him, and was to choose for his
+companions Simmons the grinder, and one Sam Cole, a smooth,
+plausible fellow, that had been in many a dark job, unsuspected even
+by his wife and family, who were respectable.
+
+Thus instructed, Tucker went to the other men, and soon reported to
+Grotait that he had got Cole all right, but that Simmons looked
+coldly on the job.  He was in full work, for one thing, and said
+Little had had his squeak already, and he didn't see following him
+eleven miles off; he had, however, asked him whether Little had a
+wife and children, which question he, Tucker, could not answer.
+
+"But I can," said Grotait.  "He is a bachelor.  You can tell Simmons
+so.  There are reasons why Ned Simmons must be in this.  Try him to-
+morrow at dinner-time.  Bid two pounds more; and--his wife is near
+her time--tell him this job will help him buy her wine and things,"
+said the kind, parental, diabolical Grotait.
+
+
+Next morning Henry worked with the pen for Dr. Amboyne till twelve
+o'clock.  He then, still carrying out his friend's views, went down
+to Mr Cheetham's words to talk to Simmons.
+
+But he found an ill-looking fellow standing by the man's side, and
+close at his ear.  This was no other than Dan Tucker, who by a neat
+coincidence was tempting him to DO Little.
+
+Yesterday's conversation had unsettled Simmons, and he did not come
+to work till twelve o'clock.  He then fixed a small pulley-wheel to
+his grindstone, to make up for lost time.
+
+He was still resisting the tempter, but more faintly than yesterday,
+when Little came in, and spoke to him.  Both he and Dan were amazed
+at his appearance on the scene at that particular moment.  They
+glared stupidly but said nothing.
+
+"Look here, Simmons," said Little.  "I have been to your friend
+Grotait, and asked him to pay you for what you call time lost in
+hanging and racing a new stone.  He won't do it.  That's your
+FRIEND.  Now I'm your ENEMY; so the Union says.  Well, enemy or not,
+I'll do what Grotait won't.  I'll pay you the four shillings for
+lost time, if you will stop that stone at once, and hang another."
+
+"Why, what's wrong with the stone?"
+
+"The best judge in Hillsborough condemned it; and now, if you are
+not running it with an undersized pulley-wheel, to try it worse!"
+
+Simmons got stupid and irritated between the two.  His bit of
+manhood revolted against Little's offer, made whilst he was half
+lending his ear to Tucker's proposal; and, on the other hand, that
+very offer irritated him with Tucker, for coming and tempting him to
+DO this very Little, who was a good sort.
+
+"---- you both!" said the rough fellow.  "I wish you'd let me alone.
+Here I've lost my morning's work already."  Then to Little, "Mind
+thyself, old lad.  Happen thou's in more danger than I am."
+
+"What d'ye mean by that?" said Little, very sharply.
+
+But Simmons saw he had gone too far, and now maintained a sullen
+silence.
+
+Henry turned to Tucker.  "I don't know who you are, but I call you
+witness that I have done all I can for this idiot.  Now, if he comes
+to harm, his blood be upon his own head."
+
+Then Henry went off in dudgeon, and, meeting Bayne in the yard, had
+a long discussion with him on the subject.
+
+The tempter took advantage of Little's angry departure, and steadily
+resumed his temptation.
+
+But he was interrupted in his turn.
+
+The defect in this grindstone was not so serious but that the stone
+might perhaps have been ground out with fair treatment: but, by
+fixing a small pulley-wheel, Simmons had caused it to rotate at
+furious speed.  This tried it too hard, and it flew in two pieces,
+just as the grinder was pressing down a heavy saw on it with all his
+force.
+
+One piece, weighing about five hundredweight, tore the horsing
+chains out of the floor, and went clean through the window (smashing
+the wood-work), out into the yard, and was descending on Little's
+head; but he heard the crash and saw it coming; he ran yelling out
+of the way, and dragged Bayne with him.  The other fragment went
+straight up to the ceiling, and broke a heavy joist as if it had
+been a cane; then fell down again plump, and would have destroyed
+the grinder on the spot, had he been there; but the tremendous shock
+had sent him flying clean over the squatter board, and he fell on
+his stomach on the wheel-band of the next grindstone, and so close
+to the drum, that, before any one could recover the shock and seize
+him, the band drew him on to the drum, and the drum, which was
+drawing away from the window, pounded him against the wall with
+cruel thuds.
+
+One ran and screamed to stop the power, another to cut the big
+wheel-bands.  All this took several seconds; and here seconds were
+torn flesh and broken bones.  Just as Little darted into the room,
+pale with his own narrow escape, and awe-stricken at the cries of
+horror within, the other grinders succeeded in dragging out, from
+between the wall and the drum, a bag of broken bones and blood and
+grease, which a minute before was Ned Simmons, and was talking over
+a deed of violence to be done.
+
+The others carried him and laid him on a horsing; and there they
+still supported his head and his broken limbs, sick with horror.
+
+The man's face was white, and his eyes stared, and his body
+quivered.  They sprinkled him with water.
+
+Then he muttered, "All right.  I am not much hurt.--Ay, but I am
+though.  I'm done for."
+
+After the first terror of the scene had passed, the men were for
+taking him to the infirmary.  But Little interposed, eagerly, "No,
+no.  I'll pay the doctor myself sooner.  He shall be nursed at home,
+and have all that skill can do to save him.  Oh, why, why would he
+not listen to me?"
+
+A stretcher was got, and a mattress put on it, and they carried him
+through the streets, while one ran before to tell the unhappy wife,
+and Little took her address, and ran to Dr. Amboyne.  The doctor
+went instantly to the sufferer.
+
+Tucker assisted to carry the victim home.  He then returned to
+Grotait, and told him the news.  Dan was not so hardened but what he
+blubbered in telling it, and Grotait's eyes were moist with
+sympathy.
+
+They neither of them spoke out, and said, "This upsets our design on
+Little."  Each waited to see whether that job was to go on.  Each
+was ashamed to mention it now.  So it came to a standstill.
+
+As for Little, he was so shocked by this tragedy and so anxious
+about its victim, that he would not go out to Cairnhope.  He came,
+in the evening to Dr. Amboyne, to inquire, "Can he live?"
+
+"I can't say yet.  He will never work again."
+
+Then, after a silence, he fixed his eyes on young Little, and said,
+"I am going to make a trial of your disposition.  This is the man I
+suspected of blowing you up; and I'm of the same opinion still."
+
+"Then he has got his deserts," were Henry's first words, after a
+pause of astonishment.
+
+"Does that mean you forgive him, or you don't forgive him?"
+
+"I dare say I should forgive the poor wretch, if he was to ask me."
+
+"And not without?"
+
+"No.  I might try and put it out of my head; but that is all I could
+do."
+
+"Is it true that you are the cause of his not being taken to the
+infirmary?"
+
+"Yes, I said I'd pay out of my own pocket sooner; and I'm not the
+sort to go from my word.  The man shall want for nothing, sir.  But
+please don't ask me to love my enemies, and all that Rot.  I scorn
+hypocrisy.  Every man hates his enemies; he may hate 'em out like a
+man, or palaver 'em, and beg God to forgive 'em (and that means damn
+'em), and hate 'em like a sneak; but he always hates 'em."
+
+The doctor laughed heartily.  "Oh, how refreshing a thing it is to
+fall in with a fellow who speaks his real mind.  However, I am not
+your enemy, am I?"
+
+"No.  You are the best friend I ever had--except my mother."
+
+"I am glad you think so; because I have a favor to ask you."
+
+"Granted, before ever you speak."
+
+"I want to know, for certain, whether Simmons was the man who blew
+you up; and I see but one way of learning it.  You must visit him
+and be kind to him; and then my art tells me, he won't leave the
+world without telling you.  Oblige me by taking him this bottle of
+wine, at once, and also this sedative, which you can administer if
+he is in violent pain, but not otherwise."
+
+"Doctor," said the young man, "you always get your own way with me.
+And so you ought."
+
+Little stood by Simmons's bedside.
+
+The man's eye was set, his cheek streaked with red, and his head was
+bandaged.  He labored in breathing.
+
+Young Little looked at him gravely, and wondered whether this
+battered figure was really the man who had so nearly destroyed him.
+
+After some minutes of this contemplation, he said gravely "Simmons,
+I have brought you some wine."
+
+The man stared at him, and seemed confused.  He made no reply.
+
+"Give me a spoon," said Henry.
+
+Mrs. Simmons sat by the bedside rocking herself; she was stupefied
+with grief; but her sister, a handy girl, had come to her in her
+trouble: she brought Henry a spoon directly.
+
+He poured out a little wine, and put it to the sufferer's lips.  He
+drank it, and said it was rare good stuff.  Henry gave him a little
+more.
+
+Simmons then looked at him more intelligently and attentively, and
+gave a sort of shiver.  "Who be you?"
+
+"Henry Little; who advised you not to run that stone."
+
+"Ah!" said Simmons, "I thought it was you."  He seemed puzzled.
+But, after a while, he said, "I wish I had hearkened thee, lad.
+Give me some more of yonder stuff.  What is it?"
+
+"Port wine."  Then he turned to the girl, and gave her a sovereign,
+and sent her out for some mutton-chops.  "Meat and wine are all the
+physic you are to have, my poor fellow."
+
+"It won't be for long, lad.  And a good job too.  For I'm a bad 'un.
+I'm a bad 'un."
+
+Henry then turned to the poor woman, and tried to say something to
+console her, but the words stuck in his throat.  She was evidently
+near her confinement; and there lay her husband, worse than in his
+grave.  Little broke down himself, while trying to comfort her.
+
+The sufferer heard him, and said, all of a sudden, "Hold a light
+here."
+
+Henry took the candle, and held it over him.
+
+"Nay, nay, it is thy face I want to see."
+
+Henry was puzzled at the request, but did as he was asked.
+
+Simmons gave a groan.  "Ay," said he, "thou'st all right.  And I lie
+here.  That seems queer."
+
+The sister now returned, and Henry wrote her his address, and
+conversed with her, and told her the whole story of the grindstone,
+and said that, as he had hindered Simmons from being taken to the
+infirmary, he felt bound to see he did not suffer by that
+interference.  He gave her his address, and said, if anything was
+wanted, she must come to him, or to his mother if he should be out.
+
+No doubt the women talked of his kindness by the sick bed, and
+Simmons heard it.
+
+Early in the morning Eliza Watney called at Little's house, with her
+eyes very red, and said her brother-in-law wanted to speak to him.
+
+He went with her directly; and, on the road, asked her what it was
+about.
+
+"I'm ashamed to tell you," said she, and burst out crying.  "But I
+hope God will reward you; and forgive him: he is a very ignorant
+man."
+
+"Here I am, Simmons."
+
+"So I see."
+
+"Anything I can do for you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You sent for me."
+
+"Did I?  Well, I dare say I did.  But gi' me time.  Gi' me time.
+It's noane so easy to look a man in the face, and tell him what I'm
+to tell thee.  But I can't die with it on me.  It chokes me, ever
+since you brought me yonder stuff, and the women set a-talking.  I
+say--old lad--'twas I did thee yon little job at Cheetham's.  But I
+knew no better."
+
+There was a dead silence.  And then Henry spoke.
+
+"Who set you on?"
+
+"Nay, that's their business."
+
+"How did you do it?"
+
+At this question--will it be believed?--the penitent's eye twinkled
+with momentary vanity.  "I fastened a tea-cup to an iron rake, and
+filled the cup with powder; then I passed it in, and spilt the
+powder out of cup, and raked it in to the smithy slack, and so on,
+filling and raking in.  But I did thee one good turn, lad; I put
+powder as far from bellows as I could.  Eh, but I was a bad 'un to
+do the like to thee; and thou's a good 'un to come here.  When I saw
+thee lie there, all scorched and shaking, I didn't like my work; and
+now I hate it.  But I knew no better at the time.  And, you see,
+I've got it worse myself.  And cheap served too."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Little," said Eliza Watney; "TRY and forgive him."
+
+"My girl," said Henry, solemnly, "I thought I never could forgive
+the man who did that cruel deed to me, and I had never injured any
+one.  But it is hard to know one's own mind, let alone another
+man's.  Now I look at him lying pale and battered there, it seems
+all wiped out.  I forgive you, my poor fellow, and I hope God will
+forgive you too."
+
+"Nay.  He is not so soft as thou.  This is how He forgives me.  But
+I knew no better.  Old gal, learn the young 'un to read, that's
+coming just as I'm going; it is sore against a chap if he can't
+read.  Right and wrong d--n 'em, they are locked up in books, I
+think: locked away from a chap like me.  I know a little better now.
+But, eh, dear, dear, it is come too late."  And now the poor wretch
+began to cry at a gleam of knowledge of right and wrong having come
+to him only just when he could no longer profit by it.
+
+Henry left him at last, with the tears in his eyes.  He promised
+them all to come every day.
+
+He called on Dr. Amboyne, and said, "You are always right, doctor.
+Simmons was the man, he has owned it, and I forgave him."
+
+He then went and told Mr. Holdfast.  That gentleman was much pleased
+at the discovery, and said, "Ah, but who employed him?  That is what
+you must discover."
+
+"I will try," said Henry.  "The poor fellow had half a mind to make
+a clean breast; but I didn't like to worry him over it."
+
+Returning home he fell in with Grotait and Parkin.  They were
+talking earnestly at the door of a public-house, and the question
+they were discussing was whether or not Little's affair should be
+revived.
+
+They were both a good deal staggered by the fate of Simmons, Parkin
+especially, who was rather superstitious.  He had changed sides, and
+was now inclined to connive, or, at all events to temporize; to
+abandon the matter till a more convenient time.  Grotait, on the
+other hand, whose vanity the young man had irritated, was bent on
+dismounting his forge.  But even he had cooled a little, and was now
+disinclined to violence.  He suggested that it must be easy to drive
+a smith out of a church, by going to the parochial authorities; and
+they could also send Little an anonymous letter, to tell him the
+Trades had their eyes on him; by this double stroke, they would
+probably bring him to some reasonable terms.
+
+It certainly was a most unfortunate thing that Little passed that
+way just then; unfortunate that Youth is so impetuous.
+
+He crossed the street to speak to these two potentates, whom it was
+his interest to let alone--if he could only have known it.
+
+"Well, gentlemen, have you seen Simmons?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Parkin.
+
+"What, not been to see the poor fellow who owes his death to you?"
+
+"He is not dead yet."
+
+"No, thank Heaven!  He has got a good work to do first; some
+hypocrites, assassins, and cowards to expose."
+
+Parkin turned pale; Grotait's eye glistened like a snake's: he made
+Parkin a rapid signal to say nothing, but only listen.
+
+"He has begun by telling me who it was that put gunpowder into my
+forge, and how it was done.  I have forgiven him.  He was only the
+tool of much worse villains; base, cowardly, sneaking villains.
+Those I shall not forgive.  Oh, I shall know all about it before
+long.  Good-morning."
+
+This information and threat, and the vindictive bitterness and
+resolution with which the young man had delivered it, struck terror
+into the gentle Parkin, and shook even Grotait.  The latter,
+however, soon recovered himself, and it became a battle for life or
+death between him and Little.
+
+He invited Parkin to his own place, and there the pair sat closeted.
+
+Dan Tucker and Sam Cole were sent for.
+
+Tucker came first.  He was instantly dispatched to Simmons, with
+money from the Saw Grinders' box.  He was to ascertain how much
+Simmons had let out, and to adjure him to be true to the Trade, and
+split on no man but himself.  When he had been gone about twenty
+minutes, Sam Cole came in, and was instructed to get two other men
+in place of Simmons, and be in readiness to do Little.
+
+By-and-by Tucker returned with news.  Simmons had at present split
+only on himself; but the women were evidently in love with Little;
+said he was their only friend; and he, Tucker, foresaw that, with
+their co-operation, Simmons would be turned inside out by Little
+before he died.
+
+Grotait struck his hand on the table.  "The Unions are in danger,"
+said he.  "There is but one way, Little must be made so that he
+can't leave Cairnhope while Simmons is alive."
+
+So important did the crisis appear to him, that he insisted on
+Parkin going with him at once to Cairnhope, to reconnoiter the
+ground.
+
+Parkin had a gig and a fast horse: so, in ten minutes more, they
+were on the road.
+
+They reached Cairnhope, put up at the village inn, and soon
+extracted some particulars about the church.  They went up to it,
+and examined it, and Grotait gave Parkin a leg up, to peer through
+the window.
+
+In this position they were nailed by old George.
+
+"What be you at?"
+
+"What is that to you?" said Grotait.
+
+"It is plenty.  You mustn't come trespassing here.  Squire won't
+have it."
+
+"Trespassing in a churchyard!  Why it belongs to all the world."
+
+"Nay, this one belongs to the Lord o' the manor."
+
+"Well, we won't hurt your church.  Who keeps the key?"
+
+"Squire Raby."
+
+Old George from this moment followed them about everywhere,
+grumbling at their heels, like a mastiff.
+
+Grotait, however, treated him with cool contempt, and proceeded to
+make a sketch of the door, and a little map showing how the church
+could be approached from Hillsborough on foot without passing
+through Cairnhope village.  This done, he went back with Parkin to
+the inn, and thence to Hillsborough.
+
+It was old Christmas Eve.  Henry was working at his forge, little
+dreaming of danger.  Yet it was close at hand, and from two distinct
+quarters.
+
+Four men, with crape masks, and provided with all manner of tools,
+and armed with bludgeons, were creeping about the churchyard,
+examining and listening.  Their orders were to make Little so that
+he should not leave Cairnhope for a month.  And that, in plain
+English, meant to beat him within an inch of his life, if not kill
+him.
+
+At the same time, a body of nine men were stealing up the road, with
+designs scarcely less hostile to Little.
+
+These assailants were as yet at a considerable distance, but more
+formidable in appearance than the others being most of them armed
+with swords, and led by a man with a double-barreled gun.
+
+Grotait's men, having well surveyed the ground, now crept softly up
+to the porch, and examined the lock.
+
+The key was inside, and they saw no means of forcing the lock
+without making a noise, and putting their victim on his guard.
+
+After a long whispered consultation, they resolved to unscrew the
+hinges.
+
+These hinges were of great length, and were nailed upon the door,
+but screwed into the door-post with four screws each.
+
+Two men, with excellent tools, and masters of the business, went
+softly to work.  One stood, and worked on the upper screws; the
+other kneeled, and unfastened the lower screws.
+
+They made no more noise than a rat gnawing; yet, such was their
+caution, and determination to surprise their victim, that they timed
+all their work by Little's.  Whenever the blows of his hammer
+intermitted, they left off; and began again when he did.
+
+When all the screws were out but two, one above, one below, they
+beckoned the other two men, and these two drove large gimlets into
+the door, and so held it that it might not fall forward when the
+last screw should come out.
+
+"Are all screws out?" whispered Cole, who was the leader.
+
+"Ay," was the whispered reply.
+
+"Then put in two more gimlets."
+
+That was done.
+
+"Now, men," whispered Cole.  "Lay the door softly down outside:
+then, up sticks--into church--and DO HIM!"
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+If Mr. Coventry, before he set all this mischief moving, could have
+seen the INSIDE of Grace Carden's letter to Henry Little!
+
+
+"DEAR MR. LITTLE,--I do not know whether I ought to write to you at
+all, nor whether it is delicate of me to say what I am going; but
+you have saved my life, and I do so want to do all I can to atone
+for the pain I have given you, who have been so good to me.  I am
+afraid you will never know happiness, if you waste your invaluable
+life longing after what is impossible.  There is an impassable
+barrier between you and me.  But you might be happy if you would
+condescend to take my advice, and let yourself see the beauty and
+the goodness of another.  The person who bears this letter comes
+nearer to perfection than any other woman I ever saw.  If you would
+trust my judgment (and, believe me, I am not to be mistaken in one
+of my own sex), if you could turn your heart toward her, she would
+make you very happy.  I am sure she could love you devotedly, if she
+only heard those words from your lips, which every woman requires to
+hear before she surrenders her affections.  Pray do not be angry
+with me; pray do not think it cost me little to give this strange
+but honest advice to one I admire so.  But I feel it would be so
+weak and selfish in me to cling to that, which, sooner or later, I
+must resign, and to make so many persons unhappy, when all might be
+happy, except perhaps myself.
+
+"Once more, forgive me.  Do not think me blind; do not think me
+heartless; but say, this is a poor girl, who is sadly perplexed, and
+is trying very hard to be good and wise, and not selfish.
+
+"One line, to say you will consider my advice, and never hate nor
+despise your grateful and unhappy friend.
+
+"GRACE CARDEN."
+
+
+When she had dispatched this letter, she felt heroic.
+
+The next day, she wished she had not written it, and awaited the
+reply with anxiety.
+
+The next day, she began to wonder at Little's silence: and by-and-by
+she was offended at it.  Surely what she had written with so great
+an effort was worth a reply.
+
+Finally, she got it into her head that Little despised her.  Upon
+this she was angry with him for not seeing what a sacrifice she had
+made, and for despising her, instead of admiring her a little, and
+pitying her ever so much.  The old story in short--a girl vexed with
+a man for letting her throw dust in his eyes.
+
+And, if she was vexed with Little for not appreciating her
+sacrifice, she was quite as angry with Coventry and Jael for being
+the causes of that unappreciated sacrifice.  So then she was
+irritable and cross.  But she could not be that long: so she fell
+into a languid, listless state: and then she let herself drift.  She
+never sent Jael to the church again.
+
+Mr. Coventry watched all her moods; and when she reached the
+listless stage, he came softly on again, and began to recover his
+lost ground.
+
+
+On the fifth of January occurred a rather curious coincidence.  In
+Hillsborough Dr. Amboyne offered his services to Mrs. Little to
+reconcile her and her brother.  Mrs. Little feared the proposal came
+too late: but showed an inclination to be reconciled for Henry's
+sake.  But Henry said he would never be reconciled to a man who had
+insulted his mother.  He then reminded her she had sent him
+clandestinely into Raby Hall to see her picture.  "And what did I
+see?  Your picture was turned with its face to the wall, and
+insulting words written on the back--'Gone into trade.'  I didn't
+mean to tell yell, mother; but you see I have.  And, after that, you
+may be reconciled to the old scoundrel if you like; but don't ask
+me."  Mrs. Little was deeply wounded by this revelation.  She tried
+to make light of it, but failed.  She had been a beauty, and the
+affront was too bitter.  Said she, "You mustn't judge him like other
+people: he was always so very eccentric.  Turn my picture to the
+wall!  My poor picture!  Oh, Guy, Guy, could one mother have borne
+you and me?"  Amboyne had not a word more to say; he was indignant
+himself.
+
+Now that very afternoon, as if by the influence of what they call a
+brain-wave, Grace Carden, who felt herself much stronger with Mr.
+Raby than when she first came, was moved to ask him, with many
+apologies, and no little inward tremor, whether she might see the
+other side of that very picture before she went.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Don't be angry, uncle dear.  Curiosity."
+
+"I do not like to refuse you anything, Grace.  But--  Well, if I
+lend you the key, will you satisfy your curiosity, and then replace
+the picture as it is?"
+
+"Yes, I will."
+
+"And you shall do it when I am not in the room.  It would only open
+wounds that time has skinned.  I'll bring you down the key at
+dinner-time."  Then, assuming a lighter tone, "Your curiosity will
+be punished; you will see your rival in beauty.  That will be new to
+you."
+
+Grace was half frightened at her own success, and I doubt whether
+she would ever have asked for the key again; but Raby's word was his
+bond; he handed her the key at dinner-time.
+
+Her eyes sparkled when she got it; but she was not to open it before
+him; so she fell thinking: and she determined to get the gentlemen
+into the drawing-room as soon as she could, and then slip back and
+see this famous picture.
+
+Accordingly she left the table rather earlier than usual, and sat
+down to her piano in the drawing-room.
+
+But, alas, her little maneuver was defeated.  Instead of the
+gentlemen leaving the dining-room, a servant was sent to recall her.
+
+It was old Christmas Eve, and the Mummers were come.
+
+Now, of all the old customs Mr. Raby had promised her, this was the
+pearl.
+
+Accordingly, her curiosity took for the time another turn, and she
+was soon seated in the dining-room, with Mr. Raby and Mr. Coventry,
+awaiting the Mummers.
+
+The servants then came in, and, when all was ready, the sound of a
+fiddle was heard, and a fiddler, grotesquely dressed, entered along
+with two clowns, one called the Tommy, dressed in chintz and a fox's
+skin over his shoulders and a fox's head for a cap; and one, called
+the Bessy, in a woman's gown and beaver hat.
+
+This pair introduced the true dramatis personae, to the drollest
+violin accompaniment, consisting of chords till the end of each
+verse, and then a few notes of melody.
+
+
+     "Now the first that I call on
+        Is George, our noble king,
+      Long time he has been at war,
+        Good tidings back he'll bring.
+                           Too-ral-loo."
+
+
+Thereupon in came a man, with black breeches and red stripes at the
+side, a white shirt decked with ribbons over his waistcoat, and a
+little hat with streamers, and a sword.
+
+The clown walked round in a ring, and King George followed him,
+holding his sword upright.
+
+Meantime the female clown chanted,--
+
+
+     "The next that we call on,
+        He is a squire's son;
+      He's like to lose his love,
+        Because he is so young.
+                           Too-ral-loo."
+
+
+The Squire's Son followed King George round the ring; and the
+clowns, marching and singing at the head, introduced another, and
+then another sword-dancer, all attired like the first, until there
+were five marching round and round, each with his sword upright.
+
+Then Foxey sang, to a violin accompaniment,
+
+
+     "Now, fiddler, then, take up thy fiddle,
+        Play the lads their hearts' desire,
+      Or else we'll break thy fiddle,
+        And fling thee a-back o' the fire."
+
+
+On this the fiddler instantly played a dance-tune peculiar to this
+occasion, and the five sword-dancers danced by themselves in a ring,
+holding their swords out so as to form a cone.
+
+Then a knot, prepared beforehand, was slipped over the swords, and
+all the swords so knotted were held aloft by the first dancer; he
+danced in the center awhile, under the connected swords, then deftly
+drew his own sword out and handed it to the second dancer; the
+second gave the third dancer his sword, and so on, in rotation, till
+all the swords were resumed.
+
+Raby's eyes sparkled with delight at all this, and he whispered his
+comments on the verses and the dance.
+
+"King George!" said he.  "Bosh!  This is the old story of St. George
+and the Dragon, overburdened with modern additions."  As to the
+dance, he assured her that, though danced in honor of old Christmas,
+it was older than Christianity, and came from the ancient Goths and
+Swedes.
+
+These comments were interrupted by a man, with a white face, who
+burst into the assembly crying, "Will ye believe me now?  Cairnhope
+old church is all afire!"
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+"Ay, Squire," said Abel Eaves, for he was the bearer of this strange
+news, "ye wouldn't believe ME, now come and see for yourself."
+
+This announcement set all staring; and George the blacksmith did but
+utter the general sentiment when, suddenly dropping his assumed
+character of King George, he said, "Bless us and save us!  True
+Christmas Eve; and Cairnhope old church alight!"
+
+Then there was a furious buzz of tongues, and, in the midst of it
+Mr. Raby disappeared, and the sword-dancers returned to the kitchen,
+talking over this strange matter as they went.
+
+Grace retired to the drawing-room followed by Coventry.
+
+She sat silent some time, and he watched her keenly.
+
+"I wonder what has become of Mr. Raby?"
+
+Mr. Coventry did not know.
+
+"I hope he is not going out."
+
+"I should think not, it is a very cold night; clear, but frosty."
+
+"Surely he would never go to see."
+
+"Shall I inquire?"
+
+"No; but that might put it into his head.  But I wish I knew where
+he was."
+
+Presently a servant brought the tea in.
+
+Miss Carden inquired after Mr. Raby.
+
+"He is gone out, miss; but he won't be long, I was to tell you."
+
+Grace felt terribly uneasy and restless! rang the bell and asked for
+Jael Dence.  The reply was that she had not been to the hall that
+day.
+
+But, soon afterward, Jael came up from the village, and went into
+the kitchen of Raby.  There she heard news, which soon took her into
+the drawing-room.
+
+"Oh, miss," said she, "do you know where the squire is?"
+
+"Gone to the church?" asked Grace, trembling.
+
+"Ay, and all the sword-dancers at his back."  And she stood there
+and wrung her hands with dismay.
+
+
+The ancients had a proverb, "Better is an army of stags with a lion
+for their leader, than an army of lions with a stag for their
+leader."  The Cairnhope sword-dancers, though stout fellows and
+strong against a mortal foe, were but stags against the
+supernatural; yet, led by Guy Raby, they advanced upon the old
+church with a pretty bold front, only they kept twenty yards in
+their leader's rear.  The order was to march in dead silence.
+
+At the last turn in the road their leader suddenly halted, and,
+kneeling on one knee, waved to his men to keep quiet: he had seen
+several dark figures busy about the porch.
+
+After many minutes of thrilling, yet chilling, expectation, he rose
+and told his men, in a whisper, to follow him again.
+
+The pace was now expedited greatly, and still Mr. Raby, with his
+double-barreled gun in his hand, maintained a lead of some yards and
+his men followed as noiselessly as they could, and made for the
+church: sure enough it was lighted inside.
+
+
+The young man who was thus beset by two distinct bands of enemies,
+deserved a very different fate at the hands of his fellow-creatures.
+
+For, at this moment, though any thing but happy himself, he was
+working some hours every day for the good of mankind; and was every
+day visiting as a friend the battered saw-grinder who had once put
+his own life in mortal peril.
+
+He had not fathomed the letter Grace had sent him.  He was a young
+man and a straightforward; he did not understand the amiable defects
+of the female character.  He studied every line of this letter, and
+it angered and almost disgusted him.  It was the letter of a lady;
+but beneath the surface of gentleness and politeness lay a proposal
+which he considered mean and cold-blooded.  It lowered his esteem
+for her.
+
+His pride and indignation were roused, and battled with his love,
+and they were aided by the healthy invigorating habits into which
+Dr. Amboyne had at last inveigled him, and so he resisted: he wrote
+more than one letter in reply to Grace Carden; but, when he came to
+read them over and compare them with her gentle effusion, he was
+ashamed of his harshness, and would not send the letter.
+
+He fought on; philanthropy in Hillsborough, forging in Cairnhope
+Church; and still he dreamed strange dreams now and then: for who
+can work, both night and day, as this man did--with impunity?
+
+One night he dreamed that he was working at his forge, when suddenly
+the floor of the aisle burst, and a dead knight sprang from the
+grave with a single bound, and stood erect before him, in rusty
+armor: out of his helmet looked two eyes like black diamonds, and a
+nose like a falcon's.  Yet, by one of the droll contradictions of a
+dream, this impetuous, warlike form no sooner opened its lips, than
+out issued a lackadaisical whine.  "See my breastplate, good sir,"
+said he.  "It was bright as silver when I made it--I was like you, I
+forged my own weapons, forged them with these hands.  But now the
+damps of the grave have rusted it.  Odsbodikins! is this a thing for
+a good knight to appear in before his judge?  And to-morrow is
+doomsday, so they all say."
+
+Then Henry pitied the poor simple knight (in his dream), and offered
+his services to polish the corslet up a bit against that great
+occasion.  He pointed toward his forge, and the knight marched to
+it, in three wide steps that savored strongly of theatrical
+burlesque.  But the moment he saw the specimens of Henry's work
+lying about, he drew back, and wheeled upon the man of the day with
+huge disdain.  "What," said he, "do you forge toys!  Learn that a
+gentleman can only forge those weapons of war that gentlemen do use.
+And I took you for a Raby!"
+
+With these bitter words he vanished, with flashing eyes and a look
+of magnificent scorn, and left his fiery, haughty features imprinted
+clearly on Henry's memory.
+
+One evening, as he plied his hammer, he heard a light sound at a
+window, in an interval of his own noise.  He looked hastily up, and
+caught a momentary sight of a face disappearing from the window.  It
+was gone like a flash even as he caught sight of it.
+
+Transient as the glance was, it shook him greatly.  He heated a bar
+of iron white hot at one end, and sallied out into the night.  But
+there was not a creature to be seen.
+
+Then he called aloud, "Who's there?"  No reply.  "Jael, was it you?"
+Dead silence.
+
+He returned to his work, and set the appearance down to an ocular
+illusion.  But his dreams had been so vivid, that this really seemed
+only one step more into the realm of hallucination.
+
+This was an unfortunate view of the matter.
+
+On old Christmas Eve he lighted the fires in his mausoleum first,
+and at last succeeded in writing a letter to Grace Carden.  He got
+out of the difficulty in the best way, by making it very short.  He
+put it in an envelope, and addressed it, intending to give it to
+Jael Dence, from whom he was always expecting a second visit.
+
+He then lighted his forge, and soon the old walls were ringing again
+with the blows of his hammer.
+
+It was ten o'clock at night; a clear frosty night; but he was heated
+and perspiring with his ardent work, when, all of a sudden, a cold
+air seemed to come in upon him from a new quarter--the door.  He
+left his forge, and took a few steps to where he could see the door.
+Instead of the door, he saw the blue sky.
+
+He uttered an exclamation, and rubbed his eyes.
+
+It was no hallucination.  The door lay flat on the ground, and the
+stars glittered in the horizon.
+
+Young Little ran toward the door; but, when he got near it, he
+paused, and a dire misgiving quelled him.  A workman soon recognizes
+a workman's hand; and he saw Hillsborough cunning and skill in this
+feat, and Hillsborough cunning and cruelty lurking in ambush at the
+door.
+
+He went back to his forge, and, the truth must be told, his knees
+felt weak under him with fears of what was to come.
+
+He searched about for weapons, and could find nothing to protect him
+against numbers.  Pistols he had: but, from a wretched over-
+security, he had never brought them to Cairnhope Church.
+
+Oh, it was an era of agony that minute, in which, after avoiding the
+ambuscade that he felt sure awaited him at the door, he had nothing
+on earth he could do but wait and see what was to come next.
+
+He knew that however small his chance of escape by fighting, it was
+his only one; and he resolved to receive the attack where he was.
+He blew his bellows and, cold at heart, affected to forge.
+
+Dusky forms stole into the old church.
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+Little blew his coals to a white heat: then took his hammer into his
+left hand, and his little iron shovel, a weapon about two feet long,
+into his right.
+
+Three assailants crept toward him, and his position was such that
+two at least could assail him front and rear.  He counted on that,
+and measured their approach with pale cheek but glittering eye, and
+thrust his shovel deep into the white coals.
+
+They crept nearer and nearer, and, at last, made an almost
+simultaneous rush on him back and front.
+
+The man in the rear was a shade in advance of the other.  Little,
+whose whole soul was in arms, had calculated on this, and turning as
+they came at him, sent a shovelful of fiery coals into that nearest
+assailant's face, then stepped swiftly out of the way of the other,
+who struck at him too immediately for him to parry; ere he could
+recover the wasted blow, Little's hot shovel came down in his head
+with tremendous force, and laid him senseless and bleeding on the
+hearth, with blood running from his ears.
+
+Little ladled the coals right and left on the other two assailants,
+one of whom was already yelling with the pain of the first
+shovelful; then, vaulting suddenly over a pew, he ran for the door.
+
+There he was encountered by Sam Cole, an accomplished cudgel-player,
+who parried his blows coolly, and gave him a severe rap on the head
+that dazzled him.  But he fought on, till he heard footsteps coming
+behind him, and then rage and despair seized him, he drew back,
+shifted his hammer into his right hand and hurled it with all his
+force at Cole's breast, for he feared to miss his head.  Had it
+struck him on the breast, delivered as it was, it would probably
+have smashed his breastbone, and killed him; but it struck him on
+his throat, which was, in some degree, protected by a muffler: it
+struck him and sent him flying like a feather: he fell on his back
+in the porch, yards from where he received that prodigious blow.
+
+Henry was bounding out after him, when he was seized from behind,
+and the next moment another seized him too, and his right hand was
+now disarmed by throwing away the hammer.
+
+He struggled furiously with them, and twice he shook them off, and
+struck them with his fist, and jobbed them with his shovel quick and
+short, as a horse kicking.
+
+But one was cunning enough to make a feint at his face, and then
+fell down and lay hold of his knees: he was about to pulverize this
+fellow with one blow of his shovel, when the other flung his arms
+round him.  It became a mere struggle.  Such was his fury and his
+vigor, however, that they could not master him.  He played his head
+like a snake, so that they could not seize him disadvantageously;
+and at last he dropped his shovel and got them both by the throat,
+and grasped them so fiercely that their faces were purple, and their
+eyes beginning to fix, when to his dismay, he received a violent
+blow on the right arm that nearly broke it: he let go, with a cry of
+pain, and with his left hand twisted the other man round so quickly,
+that he received the next blow of Cole's cudgel.  Then he dashed his
+left fist into Cole's eye, who staggered, but still barred the way;
+so Little rushed upon him, and got him by the throat, and would soon
+have settled him: but the others recovered themselves ere he could
+squeeze all the wind out of Cole, and it became a struggle of three
+to one.
+
+He dragged them all three about with him; he kicked, he hit, he did
+every thing that a man with one hand, and a lion's heart, could do.
+
+But gradually they got the better of him; and at last it came to
+this, that two were struggling on the ground with him, and Cole
+standing over them all three, ready to strike.
+
+"Now, hold him so, while I settle him," cried Cole, and raised his
+murderous cudgel.
+
+It came down on Little's shoulder, and only just missed his head.
+
+Again it came down, and with terrible force.
+
+Up to this time he had fought as mute as a fox.  But now that it had
+come to mere butchery, he cried out, in his agony, "They'll kill me.
+My mother!  Help!  Murder!  Help!"
+
+"Ay! thou'lt never forge no more!" roared Cole, and thwack came down
+the crushing bludgeon.
+
+"Help!  Murder!  Help!" screamed the victim, more faintly; and at
+the next blow more faintly still.
+
+But again the murderous cudgel was lifted high, to descend upon his
+young head.
+
+As the confederates held the now breathless and despairing victim to
+receive the blow, and the butcher, with one eye closed by Henry's
+fist, but the other gleaming savagely, raised the cudgel to finish
+him, Henry saw a huge tongue of flame pour out at them all, from
+outside the church, and a report, that sounded like a cannon, was
+accompanied by the vicious ping of shot.  Cole screamed and yelled,
+and dropped his cudgel, and his face was covered with blood in a
+moment; he yelled, and covered his face with his hands; and
+instantly came another flash, another report, another cruel ping of
+shot, and this time his hands were covered with blood.
+
+The others rolled yelling out of the line of fire, and ran up the
+aisle for their lives.
+
+Cole, yelling, tried to follow; but Henry, though sick and weak with
+the blows, caught him, and clung to his knees, and the next moment
+the place was filled with men carrying torches and gleaming swords,
+and led by a gentleman, who stood over Henry, in evening dress, but
+with the haughty expanded nostrils, the brilliant black eyes, and
+all the features of that knight in rusty armor who had come to him
+in his dream and left him with scorn.
+
+At this moment a crash was heard: two of the culprits, with
+desperate agility, had leaped on to the vestry chest, and from that
+on to the horse, and from him headlong out of the window.
+
+Mr. Raby dispatched all his men but one in pursuit, with this brief
+order--"Take them, alive or dead--doesn't matter which--they are
+only cutlers; and cowards."
+
+His next word was to Cole.  "What, three blackguards to one!--that's
+how Hillsborough fights, eh?"
+
+"I'm not a blackguard," said Henry, faintly.
+
+"That remains to be proved, sir," said Raby, grimly.
+
+Henry made answer by fainting away.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+When Henry Little came to himself, he was seated on men's hands, and
+being carried through the keen refreshing air.  Mr. Raby was
+striding on in front; the horse's hoofs were clamping along on the
+hard road behind; and he himself was surrounded by swordsmen in
+fantastic dresses.
+
+He opened his eyes, and thought, of course, it was another vision.
+But no, the man, with whose blows his body was sore, and his right
+arm utterly numbed, walked close to him between two sword-dancers
+with Raby-marks and Little-marks upon him, viz., a face spotted with
+blood, and a black eye.
+
+Little sighed.
+
+"Eh, that's music to me," said a friendly voice close to him.  It
+was the King George of the lyrical drama, and, out of poetry, George
+the blacksmith.
+
+"What, it is you, is it?" said Little.
+
+"Ay, sir, and a joyful man to hear you speak again.  The cowardly
+varmint!  And to think they have all got clear but this one!  Are ye
+sore hurt, sir?"
+
+"I'm in awful pain, but no bones broken."  Then, in a whisper--
+"Where are you taking me, George?"
+
+"To Raby Hall," was the whispered reply.
+
+"Not for all the world! if you are my friend, put me down, and let
+me slip away."
+
+"Don't ask me, don't ask me," said George, in great distress.  "How
+could I look Squire in the face?  He did put you in my charge."
+
+"Then I'm a prisoner!" said Henry, sternly.
+
+George hung his head, but made no reply.
+
+Henry also maintained a sullen silence after that.
+
+
+The lights of Raby came in sight.
+
+That house contained two women, who awaited the result of the
+nocturnal expedition with terrible anxiety.
+
+Its fate, they both felt, had been determined before they even knew
+that the expedition had started.
+
+They had nothing to do but to wait, and pray that Henry had made his
+escape, or else had not been so mad as to attempt resistance.
+
+In this view of things, the number and even the arms of his
+assailants were some comfort to them, as rendering resistance
+impossible.
+
+As for Mr. Coventry, he was secretly delighted.  His conscience was
+relieved.  Raby would now drive his rival out of the church and out
+of the country without the help of the Trades, and his act of
+treachery and bad faith would be harmless.  Things had taken the
+happiest possible turn for him.
+
+For all that, this courtier affected sympathy, and even some
+anxiety, to please Miss Carden, and divert all suspicion from
+himself.  But the true ring was wanting to his words, and both the
+women felt them jar, and got away from him, and laid their heads
+together, in agitated whispers.  And the result was, they put shawls
+over their heads, and went together out into the night.
+
+They ran up the road, sighing and clasping their hands, but no
+longer speaking.
+
+At the first turn they saw the whole body coming toward them.
+
+"I'll soon know," said Jael, struggling with her agitation.  "Don't
+you be seen, miss; that might anger the Squire; and, oh, he will be
+a wrathful man this night, if he caught him working in yonder
+church."
+
+Grace then slipped back, and Jael ran on.  But no sooner did she
+come up with the party, than Raby ordered her back, in a tone she
+dared not resist.
+
+She ran back, and told Grace they were carrying him in, hurt, and
+the Squire's eyes were like hot coals.
+
+Grace slipped into the drawing-room and kept the door ajar.
+
+Soon afterward, Raby, his men, and his prisoners, entered the hall,
+and Grace heard Raby say, "Bring the prisoners into the dining-
+room."
+
+Grace Carden sat down, and leaned her head upon her hand, and her
+little foot beat the ground, all in a flutter.
+
+But this ended in a spirited resolve.  She rose, pale, but firm, and
+said, "Come with me, Jael;" and she walked straight into the dining-
+room.  Coventry strolled in after her.
+
+The room was still brilliantly lighted.  Mr. Raby was seated at his
+writing-table at the far end, and the prisoners, well guarded, stood
+ready to be examined.
+
+"You can't come in here," was Mr. Raby's first word to Grace.
+
+But she was prepared for this, and stood her ground.  "Excuse me,
+dear uncle, but I wish to see you administer justice; and, besides,
+I believe I can tell you something about one of the prisoners."
+
+"Indeed! that alters the case.  Somebody give Miss Carden a chair."
+
+She sat down, and fixed her eyes upon Henry Little--eyes that said
+plainly, "I shall defend you, if necessary:" his pale cheek was
+flushing at sight of her.
+
+Mr. Raby arranged his papers to make notes, and turned to Cole.
+"The charge against you is, that you were seen this night by several
+persons engaged in an assault of a cruel and aggravated character.
+You, and two other men, attacked and overpowered an individual here
+present; and, while he was helpless, and on the ground, you were
+seen to raise a heavy cudgel (Got the cudgel, George?)--"
+
+"Ay, your worship, here 'tis."
+
+"--And to strike him several times on the head and limbs, with all
+your force."
+
+"Oh, cruel! cruel!"
+
+"This won't do, Miss Carden; no observations, please.  In
+consequence of which blows he soon after swooned away, and was for
+some time unconscious, and--"
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"--For aught I know, may have received some permanent injury."
+
+"Not he," said Cole; "he's all right.  I'm the only man that is
+hurt; and I've got it hot; he hit me with his hammer, and knocked me
+down like a bullock.  He's given me this black eye too."
+
+"In self-defense, apparently.  Which party attacked the other
+first?"
+
+"Why they attacked me, of course," said Henry.  "Four of them."
+
+"Four!  I saw but three."
+
+"Oh, I settled one at starting, up near the forge.  Didn't you find
+him?"  (This to George.)
+
+"Nay, we found none of the trash but this," indicating Cole, with a
+contemptuous jerk of the thumb.
+
+"Now, don't all speak at once," said Mr. Raby.  "My advice to you is
+to say nothing, or you'll probably make bad worse.  But if you
+choose to say anything, I'm bound to hear it."
+
+"Well, sir," said Cole, in a carneying voice, "what I say is this:
+what need we go to law over this?  If you go against me for hitting
+him with a stick, after he had hit me with a blacksmith's hammer, I
+shall have to go against you for shooting me with a gun."
+
+"That is between you and me, sir.  You will find a bystander may
+shoot a malefactor to save the life of a citizen.  Confine your
+defense, at present, to the point at issue.  Have you any excuse, as
+against this young man?"  (To Henry.)--"You look pale.  You can sit
+down till your turn comes."
+
+"Not in this house."
+
+"And why not in this house, pray?  Is your own house a better?"
+
+No answer from Henry.  A look of amazement and alarm from Grace.
+But she was afraid to utter a word, after the admonition she had
+received.
+
+"Well, sir," said Cole, "he was desecrating a church."
+
+"So he was, and I shall talk to him in his turn.  But you desecrated
+it worse.  He turned it into a blacksmith shop; you turned it into a
+shambles.  I shall commit you.  You will be taken to Hillsborough
+to-morrow; to-night you will remain in my strong-room.  Fling him
+down a mattress and some blankets, and give him plenty to eat and
+drink; I wouldn't starve the devil on old Christmas Eve.  There,
+take him away.  Stop; search his pockets before you leave him
+alone."
+
+Cole was taken away, and Henry's turn came.
+
+Just before this examination commenced, Grace clasped her hands, and
+cast a deprecating look on Henry, as much as to say, "Be moderate."
+And then her eyes roved to and fro, and the whole woman was in arms,
+and on the watch.
+
+Mr. Raby began on him.  "As for you, your offense is not so criminal
+in the eye of the law; but it is bad enough; you have broken into a
+church by unlawful means; you have turned it into a smithy, defiled
+the graves of the dead, and turned the tomb of a good knight into an
+oven, to the scandal of men and the dishonor of god.  Have you any
+excuse to offer?"
+
+"Plenty.  I was plying an honest trade, in a country where freedom
+is the law.  The Hillsborough Unions combined against me, and
+restrained my freedom, and threatened my life, ay, and attempted my
+life too, before to-day: and so the injustice and cruelty of men
+drove me to a sanctuary, me and my livelihood.  Blame the Trades,
+blame the public laws, blame the useless police: but you can't blame
+me; a man must live."
+
+"Why not set up your shop in the village?  Why wantonly desecrate a
+church?"
+
+"The church was more secret, and more safe: and nobody worships in
+it.  The wind and the weather are allowed to destroy it; you care so
+little for it you let it molder; then why howl if a fellow uses it
+and keeps it warm?"
+
+At this sally there was a broad rustic laugh, which, however, Mr.
+Raby quelled with one glance of his eye.
+
+"Come, don't be impertinent," said he to Little.
+
+"Then don't you provoke a fellow," cried Henry, raising his voice.
+
+Grace clasped her hands in dismay.
+
+Jael Dence said, in her gravest and most mellow voice, "You do
+forget the good Squire saved your life this very night."
+
+This was like oil on all the waters.
+
+"Well, certainly I oughtn't to forget that," said Henry,
+apologetically.  Then he appealed piteously to Jael, whose power
+over him struck every body directly, including Grace Carden.  "Look
+here, you mustn't think, because I don't keep howling, I'm all
+right.  My arm is disabled: my back is almost broken: my thigh is
+cut.  I'm in sharp pain, all this time: and that makes a fellow
+impatient of being lectured on the back of it all.  Why doesn't he
+let me go?  I don't want to affront him now.  All I want is to go
+and get nursed a bit somewhere."
+
+"Now that is the first word of reason and common sense you have
+uttered, young man.  It decides me not to detain you.  All I shall
+do, under the circumstances, is to clear your rubbish out of that
+holy building, and watch it by night as well as day.  Your property,
+however, shall be collected, and delivered to you uninjured: so
+oblige me with your name and address."
+
+Henry made no reply.
+
+Raby turned his eye full upon him.
+
+"Surely you do not object to tell me your name."
+
+"I do."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Excuse me."
+
+"What are you afraid of?  Do you doubt my word, when I tell you I
+shall not proceed against you?"
+
+"No: it is not that at all.  But this is no place for me to utter my
+father's name.  We all have our secrets, sir.  You have got yours.
+There's a picture, with its face to the wall.  Suppose I was to ask
+you to tell all the world whose face it is you insult and hide from
+the world?"
+
+Raby turned red with wrath and surprise, at this sudden thrust.
+"You insolent young scoundrel!" he cried.  "What is that to you, and
+what connection can there be between that portrait and a man in your
+way of life?"
+
+"There's a close connection," said Henry, trembling with anger, in
+his turn: "and the proof is that, when that picture is turned to the
+light, I'll tell you my name: and, till that picture is turned to
+the light, I'll not tell you my name; and if any body here knows my
+name, and tells it you, may that person's tongue be blistered at the
+root!"
+
+"Oh, how fearful!" cried Grace, turning very pale.  "But I'll put an
+end to it all.  I've got the key, and I've his permission, and I'll--
+oh, Mr. Raby, there's something more in this than we know."  She
+darted to the picture, and unlocked the padlock, and, with Jael's
+assistance, began to turn the picture.  Then Mr. Raby rose and
+seemed to bend his mind inward, but he neither forbade, nor
+encouraged, this impulsive act of Grace Carden's.
+
+Now there was not a man nor a woman in the room whose curiosity had
+not been more or less excited about this picture; so there was a
+general movement toward it, of all but Mr. Raby, who stood quite
+still, turning his eye inward, and evidently much moved, though
+passive.
+
+There happened to be a strong light upon the picture, and the lovely
+olive face, the vivid features, and glorious black eyes and
+eyebrows, seemed to flash out of the canvas into life.
+
+Even the living faces, being blondes, paled before it, in the one
+particular of color.  They seemed fair glittering moons, and this a
+glowing sun.
+
+Grace's first feelings were those of simple surprise and admiration.
+But, as she gazed, Henry's words returned to her, and all manner of
+ideas struck her pell-mell.  "Oh, beautiful! beautiful!" she cried.
+Then, turning to Henry, "You are right; it was not a face to hide
+from the world--oh! the likeness! just look at HIM, and then at her!
+can I be mistaken?"
+
+This appeal was made to the company, and roused curiosity to a high
+pitch; every eye began to compare the dark-skinned beauty on the
+wall with the swarthy young man, who now stood there, and submitted
+in haughty silence to the comparison.
+
+The words caught Mr. Raby's attention.  He made a start, and
+elbowing them all out of his way, strode up to the picture.
+
+"What do you say, Miss Carden?  What likeness can there be between
+my sister and a smith?" and he turned and frowned haughtily on Henry
+Little.
+
+Henry returned his look of defiance directly.
+
+But that very exchange of defiance brought out another likeness,
+which Grace's quick eye seized directly.
+
+"Why, he is still liker you," she cried.  "Look, good people!  Look
+at all three.  Look at their great black eyes, and their brown hair.
+Look at their dark skins, and their haughty noses.  Oh, you needn't
+blow your nostrils out at me, gentlemen; I am not a bit afraid of
+either of you.--And then look at this lovely creature.  She is a
+Raby too, only softened down by her sweet womanliness.  Look at them
+all three, if they are not one flesh and blood, I have no eyes."
+
+"Oh yes, miss; and this lady is his mother.  For I have SEEN her;
+and she is a sweet lady; and she told me I had a Cairnhope face, and
+kissed me for it."
+
+Upon this from Jael, the general conviction rose into a hum that
+buzzed round the room.
+
+Mr. Raby was struck with amazement.  At last he turned slowly upon
+Henry, and said, with stiff politeness, "Is your name Little, sir?"
+
+"Little is my name, and I'm proud of it."
+
+"Your name may be Little, but your face is Raby.  All the better for
+you, sir."
+
+He then turned his back to the young man, and walked right in front
+of the picture, and looked at it steadily and sadly.
+
+It was a simple and natural action, yet somehow done in so imposing
+a way, that the bystanders held their breath, to see what would
+follow.
+
+He gazed long and steadily on the picture, and his features worked
+visibly.
+
+"Ay!" he said.  "Nature makes no such faces nowadays.  Poor
+unfortunate girl!"  And his voice faltered a moment.
+
+He then began to utter, in a low grave voice, some things that took
+every body by surprise, by the manner as well as the matter; for,
+with his never once taking his eyes off the picture, and speaking in
+a voice softened by the sudden presence of that womanly beauty, the
+companion of his youth, it was just like a man speaking softly in a
+dream.
+
+"Thomas, this picture will remain as it is while I live."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I find I can bear the sight of you.  As we get older we get
+tougher.  You look as if you didn't want me to quarrel with your
+son?  Well, I will not: there has been quarreling enough.  Any of
+the loyal Dences here?"  But he never even turned his head from the
+picture to look for them.
+
+"Only me, sir; Jael Dence, at your service.  Father's not very
+well."
+
+"Nathan, or Jael, it is all one, so that it is Dence.  You'll take
+that young gentleman home with you, and send him to bed.  He'll want
+nursing: for he got some ugly blows, and took them like a gentleman.
+The young gentleman has a fancy for forging things--the Lord knows
+what.  He shall not forge things in a church, and defile the tombs
+of his own forefathers; but" (with a groan) "he can forge in your
+yard.  All the snobs in Hillsborough sha'n't hinder him, if that is
+his cursed hobby.  Gentlemen are not to be dictated to by snobs.
+Arm three men every night with guns; load the guns with ball, not
+small shot, as I did; and if those ruffians molest him again, kill
+them, and then come to me and complain of them.  But, mind you kill
+them first--complain afterward.  And now take half-a-dozen of these
+men with you, to carry him to the farm, if he needs it.  THERE,
+EDITH!"
+
+And still he never moved his eyes from the picture, and the words
+seemed to drop out of him.
+
+Henry stood bewildered, and, ere he could say anything that might
+revive the dormant irritation of Mr. Raby against him, female tact
+interposed.  Grace clasped her hands to him, with tears in her eyes;
+and as for Jael Dence, she assumed the authority with which she had
+been invested and hurried him bodily away; and the sword-dancers all
+gathered round him, and they carried him in triumphant procession,
+with the fiddler playing, and George whistling, the favorite tune of
+"Raby come home again," while every sturdy foot beat the hard and
+ringing road in admirable keeping with that spirit-stirring march.
+
+When he was gone, Grace crept up to Mr. Raby, who still stood before
+the picture, and eyed it and thought of his youth.  She took his arm
+wondrous softly with her two hands, rested her sweet head against
+his shoulder, and gazed at it along with him.
+
+When she had nestled to him some time in this delicate attitude, she
+turned her eyes up to him, and murmured, "how good, how noble you
+are: and how I love you."  Then, all in a moment, she curled round
+his neck, and kissed him with a tender violence, that took him quite
+by surprise.
+
+As for Mr. Coventry, he had been reduced to a nullity, and escaped
+attention all this time: he sat in gloomy silence, and watched with
+chilled and foreboding heart the strange turn events had taken, and
+were taking; events which he, and no other man, had set rolling.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+Frederick Coventry, being still unacquainted with the contents of
+Grace's letter, was now almost desperate.  Grace Carden,
+inaccessible to an unknown workman, would she be inaccessible to a
+workman whom Mr. Raby, proud as he was, had publicly recognized as
+his nephew?  This was not to be expected.  But something was to be
+expected, viz., that in a few days the door would be closed with
+scorn in the face of Frederick Coventry, the miserable traitor, who
+had broken his solemn pledge, and betrayed his benefactor to those
+who had all but assassinated him.  Little would be sure to suspect
+him, and the prisoner, when he came to be examined, would furnish
+some clew.
+
+A cold perspiration bedewed his very back, when he recollected that
+the chief constable would be present at Cole's examination, and
+supply the link, even if there should be one missing.  He had
+serious thoughts of leaving the country at once.
+
+Finding himself unobserved, he walked out of the room, and paced up
+and down the hall.
+
+His thoughts now took a practical form.  He must bribe the prisoner
+to hold his tongue.
+
+But how? and when? and where?
+
+After to-night there might be no opportunity of saying a word to
+him.
+
+While he was debating this in his mind, Knight the butler crossed
+the hall.
+
+Coventry stopped him, and asked where the prisoner was.
+
+"Where Squire told us to put him, sir."
+
+"No chance of his escaping--I hope?"
+
+"Not he, sir.
+
+"I should like to take a look at him."
+
+Knight demurred.  "Well, sir, you see the orders are--but, of
+course, master won't mind you.  I'll speak to him."
+
+"No, it is not worth while.  I am only anxious the villain should be
+secure."  This of course was a feeler.
+
+"Oh, there's no fear of that.  Why, he is in the strong room.  It's
+right above yours.  If you'll come with me, sir, I'll show you the
+door."  Coventry accompanied him, and Thomas Knight showed him a
+strong door with two enormous bolts outside, both shot.
+
+Coventry felt despair, and affected satisfaction.
+
+Then, after a pause, he said, "But is the window equally secure?"
+
+"Two iron bars almost as thick as these bolts: and, if it stood
+open, what could he do but break his neck, and cheat the gallows?
+He is all right, sir; never you fear.  We sarched him from head to
+foot, and found no eend o' tools in his pockets.  He is a deep 'un.
+But we are Yorkshire too, as the saying is.  He goes to Hillsbro'
+town-hall to-morrow; and glad to be shut on him."
+
+Coventry complimented him, and agreed with him that escape was
+impossible.
+
+He then got a light, and went to his own bedroom, and sat down, cold
+at heart, before the fire.
+
+He sat in that state, till two o'clock in the morning, distracting
+his brain with schemes, that were invented only to be dismissed as
+idle.
+
+At last an idea came to him.  He took his fishing-rod, and put the
+thinner joints together, and laid them on the bed.  He then opened
+his window very cautiously.  But as that made some noise, he
+remained quite quiet for full ten minutes.  Then he got upon the
+window-seat, and passed the fishing rod out.  After one or two
+attempts he struck the window above, with the fine end.
+
+Instantly he heard a movement above, and a window cautiously opened.
+
+He gave a low "Hem!"
+
+"Who's that?" whispered the prisoner, from above.
+
+"A man who wants you to escape."
+
+"Nay; but I have no tools."
+
+"What do you require?"
+
+"I think I could do summut with a screw-driver."
+
+"I'll send you one up."
+
+The next minute a couple of small screw-drivers were passed up--part
+of the furniture of his gun.
+
+Cole worked hard, but silently, for about an hour, and then he
+whispered down that he should be able to get a bar out.  But how
+high was it from the ground?
+
+"About forty feet."
+
+Coventry heard the man actually groan at the intelligence.
+
+"Let yourself down on my window-sill.  I can find you rope enough
+for that."
+
+"What, d'ye take me for a bird, that can light of a gate?"
+
+"But the sill is solid stone, and full a foot wide."
+
+"Say ye so, lad?  Then luck is o' my side.  Send up rope."
+
+The rope was sent up, and presently was fast to something above and
+dangled down a little past the window-sill.
+
+"Put out a light on sill," whispered the voice above.
+
+"I will."
+
+Then there was a long silence, during which Coventry's blood ran
+cold.
+
+As nothing further occurred, he whispered, "What is the matter?"
+
+"My stomach fails me.  Send me up a drop of brandy, will ye?  Eh,
+man, but this is queer work."
+
+"I can't get it up to you; you must drink it here.  Come, think!  It
+will be five years' penal servitude if you don't."
+
+"Is the rope long enough?"
+
+"Plenty for that."
+
+Then there was another awful silence.
+
+By-and-by a man's legs came dangling down, and Cole landed on the
+sill, still holding tight by the rope.  He swung down on the sill,
+and slid into the room, perspiring and white with fear.
+
+Coventry gave him some brandy directly,--Cole's trembling hand sent
+it flying down his throat, and the two men stared at each ether.
+
+"Why, it is a gentleman!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And do you really mean to see me clear?"
+
+"Drink a little more brandy, and recover yourself, and then I'll
+tell you."
+
+When the man was fortified and ready for fresh exertions, Coventry
+told him he must try and slip out of the house at the front door: he
+would lend him a feather and some oil to apply to the bolts if
+necessary.
+
+When the plan of operation was settled, Coventry asked him how long
+it would take him to get to Hillsborough.
+
+"I can run it in two hours."
+
+"Then if I give the alarm in an hour and a half, it won't hurt."
+
+"Give me that start and you may send bloodhounds on my heels,
+they'll never catch me."
+
+"Now take off your shoes."
+
+While he was taking them off, Cole eyed his unexpected friend very
+keenly, and took stock of all his features.
+
+When he was ready, Coventry opened his door very carefully, and
+placed a light so as to be of some use to the fugitive.  Cole
+descended the stairs like a cat, and soon found the heavy bolts and
+drew them; then slipped out into the night, and away, with fleet
+foot and wondering heart, to Hillsborough.
+
+Coventry put out his light and slipped into bed.
+
+About four o'clock in the morning the whole house was alarmed with
+loud cries, followed by two pistol-shots: and all those who ran out
+of their bedrooms at all promptly, found Coventry in his nightgown
+and trowsers, with a smoking pistol in his hand, which he said he
+had discharged at a robber.  The account he gave was, that he had
+been suddenly awakened by hearing his door shut, and found his
+window open; had slipped on his trowsers, got to his pistols, and
+run out just in time to see a man opening the great front door: had
+fired twice at him, and thought he must have hit him the second
+time.
+
+On examining the window the rope was found dangling.
+
+Instantly there was a rush to the strong-room.
+
+The bird was flown.
+
+"Ah!" said Coventry.  "I felt there ought to be some one with him,
+but I didn't like to interfere."
+
+George the groom and another were mounted on swift horses, and took
+the road to Hillsborough.
+
+But Cole, with his start of a hundred minutes, was safe in a back
+slum before they got half way.
+
+What puzzled the servants most was how Cole could have unscrewed the
+bar, and where he could have obtained the cord.  And while they were
+twisting this matter every way in hot discussion, Coventry quaked,
+for he feared his little gunscrews would be discovered.  But no,
+they were not in the room.
+
+It was a great mystery; but Raby said they ought to have searched
+the man's body as well as his pockets.
+
+He locked the cord up, however, and remarked it was a new one, and
+had probably been bought in Hillsborough.  He would try and learn
+where.
+
+At breakfast-time a bullet was found in the door.  Coventry
+apologized.
+
+"Your mistake was missing the man, not hitting the door," said Raby.
+"One comfort, I tickled the fellow with small shot.  It shall be
+slugs next time.  All we can do now is to lay the matter before the
+police.  I must go into Hillsborough, I suppose."
+
+He went into Hillsborough accordingly, and told the chief constable
+the whole story, and deposited the piece of cord with him.  He found
+that zealous officer already acquainted with the outline of the
+business, and on his mettle to discover the authors and agents of
+the outrage, if possible.  And it occurred to his sagacity that
+there was at this moment a workman in Hillsborough, who must know
+many secrets of the Trades, and had now nothing to gain by
+concealing them.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+Thus the attempt to do Little was more successful than it looks.
+Its object was to keep Little and Simmons apart, and sure enough
+those two men never met again in life.
+
+But, on the other hand, this new crime imbittered two able men
+against the Union, and put Grotait in immediate peril.  Mr. Ransome
+conferred with Mr. Holdfast and they both visited Simmons, and urged
+him to make a clean breast before he left the world.
+
+Simmons hesitated.  He said repeatedly, "Gi' me time! gi' me time!"
+
+Grotait heard of these visits, and was greatly alarmed.  He set Dan
+Tucker and another to watch by turns and report
+
+Messrs. Holdfast and Ransome had an ally inside the house.  Eliza
+Watney had come in from another town, and had no Hillsborough
+prejudices.  She was furious at this new outrage on Little, who had
+won her regard, and she hoped her brother-in-law would reveal all he
+knew.  Such a confession, she thought, might remove the stigma from
+himself to those better-educated persons, who had made a tool of her
+poor ignorant relative.
+
+Accordingly no sooner did the nurse Little had provided inform her,
+in a low voice, that there was A CHANGE, than she put on her bonnet,
+and went in all haste to Mr. Holdfast, and also to the chief
+constable, as she had promised them to do.
+
+But of course she could not go without talking.  She met an
+acquaintance not far from the door, and told her Ned was near his
+end, and she was going to tell the gentlemen.
+
+Dan Tucker stepped up to this woman, and she was as open-mouthed to
+him as Eliza had been to her.  Dan went directly with the news to
+Grotait.
+
+Grotait came all in a hurry, but Holdfast was there before him, and
+was actually exhorting Simmons to do a good action in his last
+moments, and reveal those greater culprits who had employed him,
+when Grotait, ill at ease, walked in, sat down at the foot of the
+bed, and fixed his eye on Simmons.
+
+Simmons caught sight of him and stared, but said nothing to him.
+Yet, when Holdfast had done, Simmons was observed to look at
+Grotait, though he replied to the other.  "If you was a Hillsbro'
+man, you'd know we tell on dead folk, but not on quick.  I told on
+Ned Simmons, because he was as good as dead; but to tell on Trade,
+that's different."
+
+"And I think, my poor fellow," suggested Grotait, smoothly, "you
+might spend your last moments better in telling US what you would
+wish the Trade to do for your wife, and the child if it lives."
+
+"Well, I think ye might make the old gal an allowance till she
+marries again."
+
+"Oh, Ned! Ned!" cried the poor woman.  "I'll have no man after thee."
+And a violent burst of grief followed.
+
+"Thou'll do like the rest," said the dying man.  "Hold thy
+bellering, and let me speak, that's got no time to lose.  How much
+will ye allow her, old lad?"
+
+"Six shillings a week, Ned."
+
+"And what is to come of young 'un?"
+
+"We'll apprentice him."
+
+"To my trade?"
+
+"You know better than that, Ned.  You are a freeman; but he won't be
+a freeman's son by our law, thou knowst.  But there's plenty of
+outside trades in Hillsbro'.  We'll bind him to one of those, and
+keep an eye on him, for thy sake."
+
+"Well, I must take what I can get."
+
+"And little enough too," said Eliza Watney.  "Now do you know that
+they have set upon Mr. Little and beaten him within an inch of his
+life?  Oh, Ned, you can't approve that, and him our best friend."
+
+"Who says I approve it, thou fool?"
+
+"Then tell the gentleman who the villain was; for I believe you
+know."
+
+"I'll tell 'em summut about it."
+
+Grotait turned pale; but still kept his glittering eye fixed on the
+sick man.
+
+"The job was offered to me; but I wouldn't be in it.  I know that
+much.  Says I, 'He has had his squeak.'"
+
+"Who offered you the job?" asked Mr. Holdfast.  And at this moment
+Ransome came in.
+
+"What, another black coat!" said Simmons.  "----, if you are not
+like so many crows over a dead horse."  He then began to wander, and
+Holdfast's question remained unanswered.
+
+This aberration continued so long, and accompanied with such
+interruptions of the breathing, that both Holdfast and Ransome
+despaired of ever hearing another rational word from the man's lips.
+
+They lingered on, however, and still Grotait sat at the foot of the
+bed, with his glittering eye fixed on the dying man.
+
+Presently Simmons became silent, and reflected.
+
+"Who offered me the job to do Little?" said he, in a clear rational
+voice.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Holdfast.  "And who paid you to blow up the forge?"
+Simmons made no reply.  His fast fleeting powers appeared unable now
+to hold an idea for above a second or two.
+
+Yet, after another short interval, he seemed to go back a second
+time to the subject as intelligibly as ever.
+
+"Master Editor!" said he, with a sort of start.
+
+"Yes."  And Holdfast stepped close to his bedside.
+
+"Can you keep a secret?"
+
+Grotait started up.
+
+"Yes!" said Holdfast, eagerly.
+
+"THEN SO CAN I."
+
+These were the last words of Ned Simmons.  He died, false to
+himself, but true to his fellows, and faithful to a terrible
+confederacy, which, in England and the nineteenth century, was
+Venice and the middle ages over again.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+Mr. Coventry, relieved of a great and immediate anxiety, could now
+turn his whole attention to Grace Carden; and she puzzled him.  He
+expected to see her come down beaming with satisfaction at the great
+event of last night.  Instead of that she appeared late, with cheeks
+rather pale, and signs of trouble under her fair eyes.
+
+As the day wore on, she showed positive distress of mind, irritable
+and dejected by turns, and quite unable to settle to anything.
+
+Mr. Coventry, with all his skill, was quite at fault.  He could
+understand her being in anxiety for news about Little; but why not
+relieve her anxiety by sending a servant to inquire?  Above all, why
+this irritation? this positive suffering?
+
+A mystery to him, there is no reason why it should be one to my
+readers.  Grace Carden, for the first time in her life, was in the
+clutches of a fiend, a torturing fiend, called jealousy.
+
+The thought that another woman was nursing Henry Little all this
+time distracted her.  It would have been such heaven to her to tend
+him, after those cruel men had hurt him so; but that pure joy was
+given to another, and that other loved him, and could now indulge
+and show her love.  Show it?  Why, she had herself opened his eyes
+to Jael's love, and advised him to reward it.
+
+And now she could do nothing to defend herself.  The very
+improvement in Henry's circumstances held her back.  She could not
+write to him and say, "Now I know you are Mr. Raby's nephew, that
+makes all the difference."  That would only give him fresh offense,
+and misrepresent herself; for in truth she had repented her letter
+long before the relationship was discovered.
+
+No; all she could do was to wait till Jael Dence came up, and then
+charge her with some subtle message, that might make Henry Little
+pause if he still loved her.
+
+She detected Coventry watching her.  She fled directly to her own
+room, and there sat on thorns, waiting for her rival to come and
+give her an opportunity.
+
+But afternoon came, and no Jael; evening came, and no Jael.
+
+"Ah!" thought Grace, bitterly, "she is better employed than to come
+near me.  She is not a self-sacrificing fool like me.  When I had
+the advantage, I gave it up; now she has got it, she uses it without
+mercy, decency, or gratitude.  And that is the way to love.  Oh! if
+my turn could but come again.  But it never will."
+
+Having arrived at this conclusion, she lay on the couch in her own
+room, and was thoroughly miserable.
+
+She came down to dinner, and managed to take a share in the
+conversation, but was very languid; and Coventry detected that she
+had been crying.
+
+After dinner, Knight brought in a verbal message from Jael to Mr.
+Raby, to the effect that the young gentleman was stiff and sore, and
+she had sent into Hillsborough for Dr. Amboyne.
+
+"Quite right of her," said the squire.  "You needn't look so
+alarmed, Grace; there are no bones broken; and he is in capital
+hands: he couldn't have a tenderer nurse than that great strapping
+lass, nor a better doctor than my friend and maniac, Amboyne."
+
+Next morning, soon after breakfast, Raby addressed his guests as
+follows:--"I was obliged to go into Hillsborough yesterday, and
+postpone the purification of that sacred building.  But I set a
+watch on it; and this day I devote to a pious purpose; I'm going to
+un-Little the church of my forefathers; and you can come with me, if
+you choose."  This invitation, however, was given in a tone so
+gloomy, and so little cordial, that Coventry, courtier-like, said in
+reply, he felt it would be a painful sight to his host, and the
+fewer witnesses the better.  Raby nodded assent, and seemed pleased.
+Not so Miss Carden.  She said: "If that is your feeling, you had
+better stay at home.  I shall go.  I have something to tell Mr. Raby
+when we get there; and I'm vain enough to think it will make him not
+quite so angry about the poor dear old church."
+
+"Then come, by all means," said Raby; "for I'm angry enough at
+present."
+
+Before they got half way to the church, they were hailed from
+behind: and turning round, saw the burly figure of Dr. Amboyne
+coming after them.
+
+They waited for him, and he came up with them.  He had heard the
+whole business from Little, and was warm in the praises of his
+patient.
+
+To a dry inquiry from Raby, whether he approved of his patient
+desecrating a church, he said, with delicious coolness, he thought
+there was not much harm in that, the church not being used for
+divine service.
+
+At this, Raby uttered an inarticulate but savage growl; and Grace,
+to avert a hot discussion, begged the doctor not to go into that
+question, but to tell her how Mr. Little was.
+
+"Oh, he has received some severe contusions, but there is nothing
+serious.  He is in good hands, I assure you.  I met him out walking
+with his nurse; and I must say I never saw a handsomer couple.  He
+is dark; she is fair.  She is like the ancient statues of Venus,
+massive and grand, but not clumsy; he is lean and sinewy, as a man
+ought to be."
+
+"Oh, doctor, this from you?" said Grace, with undisguised spite.
+
+"Well, it WAS a concession.  He was leaning on her shoulder, and her
+face and downcast eyes were turned toward him so sweetly--said I to
+myself--Hum!"
+
+"What!" said Raby.  "Would you marry him to a farmer's daughter?"
+
+"No; I'd let him marry whom he likes; only, having seen him and his
+nurse together, it struck me that, between two such fine creatures
+of the same age, the tender relation of patient and nurse,
+sanctioned, as I hear it is, by a benevolent uncle--"
+
+"Confound your impudence!"
+
+"--Would hardly stop there.  What do you think, Miss Carden?"
+
+"I'll tell you, if you will promise, on your honor, never to repeat
+what I say."  And she slackened her pace, and lingered behind Mr.
+Raby.
+
+He promised her.
+
+"Then," she whispered in his ear, "I HATE YOU!"
+
+And her eyes flashed blue fire at him, and startled him.
+
+Then she darted forward, and took Mr. Raby's arm, with a scarlet
+face, and a piteous deprecating glance shot back at the sagacious
+personage she had defied.
+
+Dr. Amboyne proceeded instantly to put himself in this young lady's
+place, and so divine what was the matter.  The familiar process soon
+brought a knowing smile to his sly lip.
+
+They entered the church, and went straight to the forge.
+
+Raby stood with folded arms, and contemplated the various acts of
+sacrilege with a silent distress that was really touching.
+
+Amboyne took more interest in the traces of the combat.  "Ah!" said
+he, "this is where he threw the hot coals in their faces--he has
+told me all about it.  And look at this pool of blood on the floor!
+Here he felled one of them with his shovel.  What is this? traces of
+blood leading up to this chest!"
+
+He opened the chest, and found plain proofs inside that the wounded
+man had hid himself in it for some time.  He pointed this out to
+Raby; and gave it as his opinion that the man's confederates had
+come back for him, and carried him away.  "These fellows are very
+true to one another.  I have often admired them for that."
+
+Raby examined the blood-stained interior of the chest, and could not
+help agreeing with the sagacious doctor.
+
+"Yes," said he, sadly; "if we had been sharp, we might have caught
+the blackguard.  But I was in a hurry to leave the scene of
+sacrilege.  Look here; the tomb of a good knight defiled into an
+oven, and the pews mutilated--and all for the base uses of trade."
+And in this strain he continued for a long time so eloquently that,
+at last, he roused Grace Carden's ire.
+
+"Mr. Raby," said she, firmly, "please add to those base uses one
+more.  One dismal night, two poor creatures, a man and a woman, lost
+their way in the snow; and, after many a hard struggle, the cold and
+the snow overpowered them, and death was upon them.  But, just at
+her last gasp, the girl saw a light, and heard the tinkling of a
+hammer.  She tottered toward it; and it was a church.  She just
+managed to strike the door with her benumbed hands, and then fell
+insensible.  When she came to herself, gentle hands had laid her
+before two glorious fires in that cold tomb there.  Then the same
+gentle hands gave her food and wine, and words of comfort, and did
+everything for her that brave men do for poor weak suffering women.
+Yes, sir, it was my life he saved, and Mr. Coventry's too; and I
+can't bear to hear a word against him, especially while I stand
+looking at his poor forge, and his grates, that you abuse; but I
+adore them, and bless them; and so would you, if they had saved your
+life, as they did mine.  You don't love me one bit; and it is very
+cruel."
+
+Raby stood astonished and silent.  At last he said, in a very
+altered tone, quite mild and deprecating, "Why did you not tell me
+this before?"
+
+"Because he made us promise not.  Would you have had me betray my
+benefactor?"
+
+"No.  You are a brave girl, an honest girl.  I love you more than a
+bit, and, for your sake, I forgive him the whole thing.  I will
+never call it sacrilege again, since its effect was to save an
+angel's life.  Come, now, you have shown a proper spirit, and stood
+up for the absent, and brought me to submission by your impetuosity,
+so don't spoil it all by crying."
+
+"No, I won't," said Grace, with a gulp.  But her tears would not
+cease all in a moment.  She had evoked that tender scene, in which
+words and tears of true and passionate love had rained upon her.
+They were an era in her life; had swept forever out of her heart all
+the puny voices that had prattled what they called love to her; and
+that divine music, should she ever hear it again?  She had resigned
+it, had bidden it shine upon another.  For this, in reality, her
+tears were trickling.
+
+Mr. Raby took a much lighter view of it, and, to divert attention
+from her, he said, "Hallo! why this inscription has become legible.
+It used to be only legible in parts.  Is that his doing?"
+
+"Not a doubt of it," said Amboyne.
+
+"Set that against his sacrilege."
+
+"Miss Carden and I are both agreed it was not sacrilege.  What is
+here in this pew?  A brass!  Why this is the brass we could none of
+us decipher.  Hang me, if he has not read it, and restored it!"
+
+"So he has.  And where's the wonder?  We live in a glorious age"
+(Raby smiled) "that has read the written mountains of the East, and
+the Abyssinian monuments: and he is a man of the age, and your
+mediaeval brasses are no more to him than cuneiform letters to
+Rawlinson.  Let me read this resuscitated record.  'Edith Little,
+daughter of Robert Raby, by Leah Dence his wife:' why here's a
+hodge-podge!  What! have the noble Rabys intermarried with the
+humble Dences?"
+
+"So it seems.  A younger son."
+
+"And a Raby, daughter of Dence, married a Little three hundred years
+ago?"
+
+"So it seems."
+
+"Then what a pity this brass was not deciphered thirty years ago!
+But never mind that.  All I demand is tardy justice to my protege.
+Is not this a remarkable man?  By day he carves wood, and carries
+out a philanthropic scheme (which I mean to communicate to you this
+very day, together with this young man's report); at night he forges
+tools that all Hillsborough can't rival; in an interval of his work
+he saves a valuable life or two; in another odd moment he fights
+like a lion, one to four; even in his moments of downright leisure,
+when he is neither saving life nor taking it, he practices honorable
+arts, restores the fading letters of a charitable bequest, and
+deciphers brasses, and vastly improves his uncle's genealogical
+knowledge, who, nevertheless, passed for an authority, till my
+Crichton stepped upon the scene."
+
+Raby bore all this admirably.  "You may add," said he, "that he
+nevertheless finds time to correspond with his friends.  Here is a
+letter, addressed to Miss Carden, I declare!"
+
+"A letter to me!" said Grace, faintly.
+
+Raby handed it over the pew to her, and turned the address, so that
+she could judge for herself.
+
+She took it very slowly and feebly, and her color came and went.
+
+"You seemed surprised; and so am I.  It must have been written two
+days ago."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why, what on earth could he have to say to you?"
+
+"I suppose it is the reply to mine," stammered Grace.
+
+Mr. Raby looked amazement, and something more.
+
+Grace faltered out an explanation.  "When he had saved my life, I
+was so grateful I wanted to make him a return.  I believed Jael
+Dence and he--I have so high an opinion of her--I ventured to give
+him a hint that he might find happiness there."
+
+Raby bit his lip.  "A most singular interference on the part of a
+young lady," said he, stiffly.  "You are right, doctor; this age
+resembles no other.  I suppose you meant it kindly; but I am very
+sorry you felt called upon, at your age, to put any such idea into
+the young man's head."
+
+"So am I," said poor Grace.  "Oh, pray forgive me.  I am so
+unhappy."  And she hid her face in her hands.
+
+"Of course I forgive you," said Raby.  "But, unfortunately, I knew
+nothing of all this, and went and put him under her charge; and here
+he has found a precedent for marrying a Dence--found it on this
+confounded brass!  Well, no matter.  Life is one long disappointment.
+What does he say?  Where is the letter gone to?  It has vanished."
+
+"I have got it safe," said Grace, deprecatingly.
+
+"Then please let me know what he says."
+
+"What, read his letter to you?"
+
+"Why not, pray?  I'm his uncle.  He is my heir-at-law.  I agree with
+Amboyne, he has some fine qualities.  It is foolish of me, no doubt,
+but I am very anxious to know what he says about marrying my
+tenant's daughter."  Then, with amazing dignity, "Can I be mistaken
+in thinking I have a right to know who my nephew intends to marry?"
+And he began to get very red.
+
+Grace hung her head, and, trembling a little, drew the letter very
+slowly out of her bosom.
+
+It just flashed through her mind how cruel it was to make her read
+out the death-warrant of her heart before two men; but she summoned
+all a woman's fortitude and self-defense, prepared to hide her
+anguish under a marble demeanor, and quietly opened the letter.
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+"You advise me to marry one, when I love another; and this, you
+think, is the way to be happy.  It has seldom proved so, and I
+should despise happiness if I could only get it in that way.
+
+"Yours, sadly but devotedly,
+
+"H. LITTLE.
+
+"Will you wait two years?"
+
+
+Grace, being on her defense, read this letter very slowly, and as if
+she had to decipher it.  That gave her time to say, "Yours, et
+cetera," instead of "sadly and devotedly."  (Why be needlessly
+precise?)  As for the postscript, she didn't trouble them with that
+at all.
+
+She then hurried the letter into her pocket, that it might not be
+asked for, and said, with all the nonchalance she could manage to
+assume, "Oh, if he loves somebody else!"
+
+"No; that is worse still," said Mr. Raby.  "In his own rank of life,
+it is ten to one if he finds anything as modest, as good, and as
+loyal as Dence's daughter.  It's some factory-girl, I suppose."
+
+"Let us hope not," said Grace, demurely; but Amboyne noticed that
+her cheek was now flushed, and her eyes sparkling like diamonds.
+
+Soon afterward she strolled apart, and took a wonderful interest in
+the monuments and things, until she found an opportunity to slip out
+into the church-yard.  There she took the letter out, and kissed it
+again and again, as if she would devour it; and all the way home she
+was as gay as a lark.  Amboyne put himself in her place.
+
+When they got home, he said to her, "My dear Miss Carden, I have a
+favor to ask you.  I want an hour's conversation with Mr. Raby.
+Will you be so very kind as to see that I am not interrupted?"
+
+"Oh yes.  No; you must tell me, first, what you are going to talk
+about.  I can't have gentlemen talking nonsense together
+UNINTERRUPTEDLY."
+
+"You ladies claim to monopolize nonsense, eh?  Well, I am going to
+talk about my friend, Mr. Little.  Is he nonsense?"
+
+"That depends.  What are you going to say about him?"
+
+"Going to advance his interests--and my own hobby.  Such is man."
+
+"Never mind what is man; what is your hobby?"
+
+"Saving idiotic ruffians' lives."
+
+"Well, that is a hobby.  But, if Mr. Little is to profit by it,
+never mind; you shall not be interrupted, if I can keep 'les
+facheux' away."
+
+Accordingly she got her work, and sat in the hall.  Here, as she
+expected, she was soon joined by Mr. Coventry, and he found her in a
+gracious mood, and in excellent spirits.
+
+After some very pleasant conversation, she told him she was keeping
+sentinel over Dr. Amboyne and his hobby.
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"Saving idiotic ruffians' lives.  Ha! ha! ha!"
+
+Her merry laugh rang through the hall like a peal of bells.
+
+Coventry stared, and then gave up trying to understand her and her
+eternal changes.  He just set himself to please her, and he never
+found it easier than that afternoon.
+
+Meantime Dr. Amboyne got Raby alone, and begged leave, in the first
+place, to premise that his (Raby's) nephew was a remarkable man.  To
+prove it, he related Little's whole battle with the Hillsborough
+Trades; and then produced a report the young man had handed him that
+very day.  It was actually in his pocket during the fight, mute
+protest against that barbarous act.
+
+The Report was entitled--"LIFE, LABOR AND CAPITAL IN HILLSBOROUGH,"
+and was divided into two parts.
+
+Part 1 was entitled--"PECULIARITIES OF CUTLERY HURTFUL TO LIFE AND
+HEALTH."
+
+And part 2 was entitled--"The REMEDIES TO THE ABOVE."
+
+Part 2 was divided thus:--
+
+A. What the masters could do.
+
+B. What the workmen could do.
+
+C. What the Legislature could do.
+
+Part 1 dealt first with the diseases of the grinders; but instead of
+quoting it, I ask leave to refer to Chapter VIII., where the main
+facts lie recorded.
+
+
+Having thus curtailed the Report, I print the remainder in an
+Appendix, for the use of those few readers who can endure useful
+knowledge in works of this class.
+
+Raby read the report without moving a muscle.
+
+
+"Well, what do you think of him?" asked Amboyne.
+
+"I think he is a fool to trouble his head whether these animals live
+or die."
+
+"Oh, that is my folly; not his.  At bottom, he cares no more than
+you do."
+
+"Then I retract my observation."
+
+"As to its being folly, or as to Little being the fool?"
+
+"Whichever you like best."
+
+"Thank you.  Well, but to be serious, this young man is very anxious
+to be a master, instead of a man.  What do you say?  Will you help
+his ambition, and my sacred hobby?"
+
+"What, plunge you deeper in folly, and him in trade?  Not I.  I
+don't approve folly, I hate trade.  But I tell you what I'll do.  If
+he and his mother can see my conduct in its proper light, and say
+so, they can come to Raby, and he can turn gentleman, take the name
+of Raby, as he has got the face, and be my heir."
+
+"Are you serious, Raby?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"Then you had better write it, and I'll take it to him."
+
+"Certainly."  He sat down and wrote as follows:
+
+
+"SIR,--What has recently occurred appears calculated to soften one
+of those animosities which, between persons allied in blood, are
+always to be regretted.  I take the opportunity to say, that if your
+mother, under your advice, will now reconsider the duties of a
+trustee, and my conduct in that character, and her remarks on that
+conduct, I think she will do me justice, and honor me once more with
+her esteem.  Should this be the result, I further hope that she and
+yourself will come to Raby, and that you will change that way of
+life which you have found so full of thorns, and prepare yourself to
+succeed to my name and place.  I am, your obedient servant,
+
+"GUY RABY."
+
+
+"There read that."
+
+Amboyne read it, and approved it.  Then he gave a sigh, and said,
+"And so down goes my poor hobby."
+
+"Oh, never mind," said Raby; "you've got one or two left in your
+stable."
+
+Dr. Amboyne went out, and passed through the hall.  There he found
+Mr. Coventry and Miss Carden: the latter asked him, rather keenly,
+if the conference was over.
+
+"Yes, and not without a result: I'll read it to you."  He did so,
+and Grace's cheek was dyed with blushes, and her eyes beamed with
+joy.
+
+"Oh, how noble is, and how good you are.  Run!  Fly!"
+
+"Such movements are undignified, and unsuited to my figure.  Shall I
+roll down the hill?  That would be my quickest way."
+
+This discussion was cut short by a servant, who came to tell the
+doctor that a carriage was ordered for him, and would be round in a
+minute.  Dr. Amboyne drove off, and Miss Carden now avoided
+Coventry: she retired to her room.  But, it seems, she was on the
+watch; for, on the doctor's return, she was the person who met him
+in the hall.
+
+"Well?" said she, eagerly.
+
+"Well, would you believe it? he declines.  He objects to leave his
+way of life, and to wait for dead men's shoes."
+
+"Oh, Dr. Amboyne!  And you were there to advise him!"
+
+"I did not venture to advise him.  There was so much to be said on
+both sides."  Then he went off to Raby with the note; but, as he
+went, he heard Grace say, in a low voice, "Ah, you never thought of
+me."
+
+Little's note ran thus:
+
+
+"SIR,--I thank you for your proposal; and as to the first part of
+it, I quite agree, and should be glad to see my mother and you
+friends again.  But, as to my way of life, I have chosen my path,
+and mean to stick to it.  I hope soon to be a master, instead of a
+workman, and I shall try and behave like a gentleman, so that you
+may not have to blush for me.  Should blush for myself if I were to
+give up industry and independence, and take to waiting for dead
+men's shoes; that is a baser occupation than any trade in
+Hillsborough, I think.  This is not as politely written as I could
+wish; but I am a blunt fellow, and I hope you will excuse it.  I am
+not ungrateful to you for shooting those vermin, nor for your offer,
+though I can not accept it.  Yours respectfully,
+
+"HENRY LITTLE."
+
+
+Raby read this, and turned white with rage.
+
+He locked the letter up along with poor Mrs. Little's letters, and
+merely said, "I have only one request to make.  Never mention the
+name of Little to me again."
+
+Dr. Amboyne went home very thoughtful.
+
+That same day Mr. Carden wrote from London to his daughter informing
+her he should be at Hillsborough next day to dinner.  She got the
+letter next morning, and showed it to Mr. Raby.  He ordered his
+carriage after breakfast for Hillsborough.
+
+This was a blow to Grace.  She had been hoping all this time a fair
+opportunity might occur for saying something to young Little.
+
+She longed to write to him, and set his heart and her own at rest.
+But a great shyness and timidity paralyzed her, and she gave up the
+idea of writing, and had hitherto been hoping they might meet, and
+she might reinstate herself by some one cunning word.  And now the
+end of it all was, that she was driven away from Raby Hall without
+doing any thing but wish, and sigh, and resolve, and give up her
+resolutions with a blush.
+
+The carriage passed the farm on its way to Hillsborough.  This was
+Grace's last chance.
+
+Little was standing at the porch.
+
+A thrill of delight traversed Grace's bosom.
+
+It was followed, however, by a keen pang.  Jael Dence sat beside
+him, sewing; and Grace saw, in a moment, she was sewing
+complacently.  It was more than Grace could bear.  She pulled the
+check-string, and the carriage stopped.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+Henry Little, at this moment, was in very low spirits.  His forge
+was in the yard, and a faithful body-guard at his service; but his
+right arm was in a sling, and so he was brought to a stand-still;
+and Coventry was with Grace at the house; and he, like her, was
+tortured with jealousies; and neither knew what the other suffered.
+
+But everything vanished in a flood of joy when the carriage stopped
+and that enchanting face looked out at him, covered with blushes,
+that told him he could not be indifferent to her.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Little, are you better?"
+
+"I'm all right.  But, you see, I can't work."
+
+"Ah, poor arm.  But why should you work?  Why not accept Mr. Raby's
+offer?  How proud you are!"
+
+"Should you have thought any better of me if I had?"
+
+"No.  I don't want you altered.  It would spoil you.  You will come
+and see us at Woodbine Villa!  Only think how many things we have to
+talk of now."
+
+"May I?"
+
+"Why, of course."
+
+"And will you wait two years for me?"
+
+"Two years!" (blushing like a rose.)  "Why, I hope it will not be
+two days before you come and see us."
+
+"Ah, you mock me."
+
+"No; no.  But suppose you should take the advice I gave you in my
+mad letter?"
+
+"There's no fear of that."
+
+"Are you sure?" (with a glance at Jael.)
+
+"Quite sure."
+
+"Then--good-by.  Please drive on."
+
+She wouldn't answer his question; but her blushes and her radiant
+satisfaction, and her modest but eloquent looks of love, fully
+compensated her silence on that head, and the carriage left him
+standing there, a figure of rapture.
+
+Next day Dr. Amboyne rode up to the farm with a long envelope, and
+waved it over his head in triumph.  It contained a communication
+from the Secretary of the Philanthropic Society.  The committee were
+much struck with Mr. Little's report, but feared that no
+manufacturer would act on his suggestions.  They were willing to
+advance L500 toward setting Mr. Little himself up as a manufacturer,
+if he would bind himself to adopt and carry out the improvements
+suggested in his report.  The loan to bear no interest, and the
+return of the capital to depend upon the success of the scheme.  Dr.
+Amboyne for the society, to have the right of inspecting Mr.
+Little's books, if any doubt should arise on that head.  An
+agreement was inclosed, and this was more full, particular, and
+stringent in form than the above, but the purport substantially the
+same.
+
+Little could not believe his good fortune at first.  But there was
+no disbelieving it; the terms were so cold, precise, and business-
+like.
+
+"Ah, doctor," said he, "you have made a man of me; for this is your
+doing, I know."
+
+"Of course I used my influence.  I was stimulated by two spurs,
+friendship and my hobby.  Now shake hands over it, and no fine
+speeches, but tell me when you can begin.  'My soul's in arms, and
+eager for the fray.'"
+
+"Begin?  Why as soon as I get the money."
+
+"That will come down directly, if I telegraph that you accept the
+terms.  Call in a witness, and sign the agreement."
+
+Jael Dence was called in, and the agreement signed and witnessed,
+and away went the doctor in high spirits, after making an
+appointment with Henry in Hillsborough for the next day.
+
+Henry and Jael Dence talked eagerly over his new prospects.  But
+though they were great friends, there was nothing to excite Grace's
+jealousy.  No sooner was Little proved to be Raby's nephew than Jael
+Dence, in her humility, shrank back, and was inwardly ashamed of
+herself.  She became respectful as well as kind; called him "the
+young master" behind his back, and tried to call him "Sir" to his
+face, only he would not let her.
+
+Next day Little went to his mother and told her all.  She was deeply
+interested, but bitterly disappointed at Henry's refusal of Raby's
+offer.  "He will never forgive us now," she said.  "And oh, Henry,
+if you love Grace Carden, that was the way to marry her."  This
+staggered him; but he said he had every reason to hope she would
+marry him without his sacrificing his independence, and waiting with
+his hands in his pockets for dead men's shoes.
+
+Then he went to Dr. Amboyne, and there were the five hundred pounds
+waiting for him; but, never having possessed such a sum before, he
+begged the doctor to give him only L100 at a time.  To finish for
+the present with this branch of the story, he was lucky enough to
+make an excellent bargain, bought the plant and stock of a small
+master-grinder recently deceased.  He then confined the grinding to
+saws and razors; and this enabled him to set up his own forge on the
+premises, and to employ a few file-cutters.  It was all he could do
+at starting.  Then came the important question, What would the
+Trades say?  He was not long in suspense; Grotait called on him,
+expressed his regret at the attack that had been made on him, and
+his satisfaction that now the matter could be happily arranged.
+"This," said he, "is the very proposal I was going to make to you
+(but you wouldn't hear me), to set up as a small master, and sell
+your carving-tools to London instead of to Hillsboro'."
+
+"What! will that make me right with the trade?"
+
+"Pretty near.  We protect the workmen from unfair competition, not
+the masters.  However, if you wish to cure the sore altogether, let
+your own hands grind the tools, and send them out to be handled by
+Parkin: he has got men on the box; trade is dull."
+
+"Well, I don't object to that."
+
+"Then, I say, let by-gones be gone-byes."
+
+They shook hands over this, and in a very few hours it was known
+that Mr. Little was right with the trade.
+
+His early experiences as a philanthropic master were rather curious;
+but I shall ask leave to relate them in a series of their own, and
+to deal at present with matters of more common interest.
+
+He called twice on Grace Carden; but she was out.  The third time he
+found her at home; but there was a lady with her, talking about the
+ball Mr. and Miss Carden were about to give.  It was a subject
+calculated to excite volubility, and Henry could not get in a word
+edgewise.  But he received some kind glances that made his heart
+beat.
+
+The young lady sat there and gabbled; for she felt sure that no
+topic imported by a male creature could compete in interest with
+"the ball."  So, at last, Henry rose in despair.  But Grace, to whom
+her own ball had been a bore for the last half hour, went with him
+to the door; and he seized the opportunity to tell her he was a
+workmen no longer, but a master, having workmen under him.
+
+Grace saw he was jubilant, so she was glad directly, and said so.
+
+But then she shook her pretty head, and hoped he would not have to
+regret Mr. Raby's offer.
+
+"Never," said he, firmly; "unless I lose you.  Now I'm a master,
+instead of a man, won't you wait two years for me?"
+
+"No," said Grace, archly.  Then, with a look that sent him to
+heaven, "Not two, but TWENTY, sooner than you should be unhappy,
+after all you and I--"
+
+The sentence was never completed.  She clapped one hand swiftly
+before her scarlet face, and ran away to hide, and think of what she
+had done.  It was full five minutes before she would bring her face
+under the eye of that young gossip in the drawing-room.
+
+As for Henry, he received the blow full in his heart, and it quite
+staggered him.  He couldn't believe it at first; but when he
+realized it, waves and waves of joy seemed to rise inside him, and
+he went off in such a rapture he hardly trod the earth.
+
+He went home, and kissed his mother, and told her, and she
+sympathized with him perforce, though she was jealous at bottom,
+poor thing.
+
+
+The next day Grace received an unexpected visitor--Jael Dence.
+
+Grace stared at sight of her, and received her very coldly.
+
+"Oh, miss," said Jael, "don't look so at me that love you dearly;"
+and with this threw her arms round her neck, and kissed her.
+
+Grace was moved by this; but felt uncomfortable, and even struggled
+a little, but in vain.  Jael was gentle, but mighty.  "It's about
+your letter, miss."
+
+"Then let me go," cried Grace.  "I wish I had never written it."
+
+"Nay; don't say so.  I should never have known how good you are."
+
+"What a fool I am, you mean.  How dare you read my letter?  Oh! did
+he show it you?  That was very cruel, if he did."
+
+"No, miss, he never showed it me; and I never read it.  I call it
+mean to read another body's letter.  But, you know, 'tisn't every
+woman thinks so: and a poor lass that is very fond of me--and I
+scold her bitterly--she took the letter out of his pocket, and told
+me what was in it."
+
+"Very well, then," said Grace, coldly, "it is right you should also
+read his answer.  I'll bring it you."
+
+"Not to-day, miss, if you please.  There is no need.  I know him: he
+is too much of a man to marry one girl when he loves another; and
+'tis you he loves, and I hope you will be happy together."
+
+A few quiet tears followed these brave words, and Grace looked at
+her askant, and began to do her justice.
+
+"Ah!" said she, with a twinge of jealousy.  "you know him better
+than I.  You have answered for him, in his very words.  Yet you
+can't love him as I do.  I hope you are not come to ask me to give
+him up again, for I can't."  Then she said, with quick defiance,
+"Take him from me, if you can."  Then, piteously, "And if you do,
+you will kill me."
+
+"Dear heart, I came of no such errand.  I came to tell you I know
+how generous you have been to me, and made me your friend till
+death; and, when a Dence says that, she means it.  I have been a
+little imprudent: but not so very.  First word I said to him, in
+this very house, was, 'Are you really a workman?'  I had the sense
+to put that question; for, the first moment I clapped eyes on him, I
+saw my danger like.  Well, he might have answered me true; but you
+see he didn't.  I think I am not so much to blame.  Well, he is the
+young squire now, and no mate for me; and he loves you, that are of
+his own sort.  That is sure to cure me--after a while.  Simple folk
+like me aren't used to get their way, like the gentry.  It takes a
+deal of patience to go through the world.  If you think I'll let my
+heart cling to another woman's sweetheart--nay, but I'd tear it out
+of my breast first.  Yes, I dare say, it will be a year or two
+before I can listen to another man's voice without hating him for
+wooing of me; but time cures all that don't fight against the cure.
+And YOU'LL love me a little, miss, now, won't you?  You used to do,
+before I deserved it half as well as I do to-day."
+
+"Of course I shall love you, my poor Jael.  But what is my love,
+compared with that you are now giving up so nobly?"
+
+"It is not much," said Jael, frankly; "but 'a little breaks a high
+fall.'  And I'm one that can only enjoy my own.  Better a penny roll
+with a clear conscience, than my neighbor's loaf.  I'd liever take
+your love, and deserve it, than try to steal his."
+
+All this time Grace was silently watching her, to see if there was
+any deceit, or self-deceit, in all this; and, had there been, it
+could not have escaped so keen and jealous an eye.  But no, the
+limpid eye, the modest, sober voice, that trembled now and then, but
+always recovered its resolution, repelled doubt or suspicion.
+
+Grace started to her feet, and said, with great enthusiasm.  "I give
+you the love and respect you deserve so well; and I thank God for
+creating such a character now and then--to embellish this vile
+world."
+
+Then she flung herself upon Jael, with wonderful abandon and grace,
+and kissed her so eagerly that she made poor Jael's tears flow very
+fast indeed.
+
+She would not let her go back to Cairnhope.
+
+
+Henry remembered about the ball, and made up his mind to go and
+stand in the road: he might catch a glimpse of her somehow.  He told
+his mother he should not be home to supper; and to get rid of the
+time before the ball, he went to the theater: thence, at ten
+o'clock, to "Woodbine Villa," and soon found himself one of a motley
+group.  Men, women, and children were there to see the company
+arrive; and as, among working-people, the idle and the curious are
+seldom well-to-do, they were rather a scurvy lot, and each satin or
+muslin belle, brave with flowers and sparkling with gems, had to
+pass through a little avenue of human beings in soiled fustian,
+dislocated bonnets, rags, and unwashed faces.
+
+Henry got away from this class of spectators, and took up his
+station right across the road.  He leaned against the lamp-post, and
+watched the drawing-room windows for Grace.
+
+The windows were large, and, being French, came down to the balcony.
+Little saw many a lady's head and white shoulders, but not the one
+he sought.
+
+Presently a bedroom window was opened, and a fair face looked out
+into the night for a moment.  It was Jael Dence.
+
+She had assisted Miss Carden to dress, and had then, at her request,
+prepared the room, and decked it with flowers, to receive a few of
+the young lady's more favored friends.  This done, she opened the
+window, and Henry Little saw her.
+
+Nor was it long before she saw him; for the light of the lamp was
+full on him.
+
+But he was now looking intently in at the drawing-room windows, and
+with a ghastly expression.
+
+The fact is, that in the short interval between his seeing Jael and
+her seeing him, the quadrilles had been succeeded by a waltz, and
+Grace Carden's head and shoulders were now flitting at intervals,
+past the window in close proximity to the head of her partner.  What
+with her snowy, glossy shoulders, her lovely face, and her exquisite
+head and brow encircled with a coronet of pearls, her beauty seemed
+half-regal, half-angelic; yet that very beauty, after the first
+thrill of joy which the sudden appearance of a beloved one always
+causes, was now passing cold iron through her lover's heart.  For
+why?  A man's arm was round the supple waist, a man's hand held that
+delicate palm, a man's head seemed wedded to that lovely head, so
+close were the two together.  And the encircling arm, the passing
+hand, the head that came and went, and rose and sank, with her, like
+twin cherries on a stalk, were the arm, the hand, and the head of
+Mr. Frederick Coventry.
+
+Every time those two heads flitted past the window together, they
+inflicted a spasm of agony on Henry Little, and, between the spasms,
+his thoughts were bitter beyond expression.  An icy barrier still
+between them, and none between his rival and her!  Coventry could
+dance voluptuously with her before all the world; but he could only
+stand at the door of that Paradise, and groan and sicken with
+jealous anguish at the sight.
+
+Now and then he looked up, and saw Jael Dence.  She was alone.  Like
+him, she was excluded from that brilliant crowd.  He and she were
+born to work; these butterflies on the first floor, to enjoy.
+
+Their eyes met; he saw soft pity in hers.  He cast a mute, but
+touching appeal.  She nodded, and withdrew from the window.  Then he
+knew the faithful girl would try and do something or other for him.
+
+But he never moved from his pillar of torture.  Jealous agony is the
+one torment men can not fly from; it fascinates, it holds, it
+maddens.
+
+Jael came to the drawing-room door just as the waltz ended, and
+tried to get to Miss Carden; but there were too many ladies and
+gentlemen, especially about the door.
+
+At last she caught Grace's eye, but only for a moment; and the young
+lady was in the very act of going out on the balcony for air, with
+her partner.
+
+She did go out, accompanied by Mr. Coventry, and took two or three
+turns.  Her cheek was flushed, her eye kindled, and the poor jealous
+wretch over the way saw it, and ascribed all that to the company of
+his rival.
+
+While she walked to and fro with fawn-like grace, conversing with
+Mr. Coventry, yet secretly wondering what that strange look Jael had
+given her could mean, Henry leaned, sick at heart, against the lamp-
+post over the way; and, at last, a groan forced its way out of him.
+
+Faint as the sound was, Grace's quick ear caught it, and she turned
+her head.  She saw him directly, and blushed high, and turned pale,
+all in a moment; for, in that single moment, her swift woman's heart
+told her why he was so ghastly, and why that sigh of distress.
+
+She stopped short in her walk, and began to quiver from head to
+foot.
+
+But, after a few moments of alarm, distress, and perplexity, love
+and high spirit supplied the place of tact, and she did the best and
+most characteristic thing she could.  Just as Mr. Coventry, who had
+observed her shiver, was asking her if she found it too cold, she
+drew herself up to her full height, and, turning round, kissed her
+hand over the balcony to Henry Little with a sort of princely
+grandeur, and an ardor of recognition and esteem that set his heart
+leaping, and his pale cheek blushing, and made Coventry jealous in
+his turn.  Yes, one eloquent gesture did that in a moment.
+
+But the brave girl was too sensitive to prolong such a situation:
+the music recommenced at that moment, and she seized the
+opportunity, and retired to the room; she courtesied to Little at
+the window, and this time he had the sense to lift his hat to her.
+
+The moment she entered the room Grace Carden slipped away from Mr.
+Coventry, and wound her way like a serpent through the crowd, and
+found Jael Dence at the door.  She caught her by the arm, and
+pinched her.  She was all trembling.  Jael drew her up the stairs a
+little way.
+
+"You have seen him out there?"
+
+"Yes; and I--oh!"
+
+"There! there.  Think of the folk.  Fight it down."
+
+"I will.  Go to him, and say I can't bear it.  Him to stand there--
+while those I don't care a pin for--oh, Jael, for pity's sake get
+him home to his mother."
+
+"There, don't you fret.  I know what to say."
+
+Jael went down; borrowed the first shawl she could lay her hand on;
+hooded herself with it, and was across the road in a moment.
+
+"You are to go home directly."
+
+"Who says so?"
+
+"She does."
+
+"What, does she tell me to go away, and leave her to him?"
+
+"What does that matter? her heart goes with you."
+
+"No, no."
+
+"Won't you take my word for it?  I'm not given to lying."
+
+"I know that.  Oh, Jael, sweet, pretty, good-hearted Jael, have pity
+on me, and tell me the truth: is it me she loves, or that Coventry?"
+
+"It is you."
+
+"Oh, bless you! bless you!  Ah, if I could only be sure of that,
+what wouldn't I do for her?  But, if she loves me, why, why send me
+away?  It is very cruel that so many should be in the same room with
+her, and HE should dance with her, and I must not even look on and
+catch a glimpse of her now and then.  I won't go home."
+
+"Ah!" said Jael, "you are like all the young men: you think only of
+yourself.  And you call yourself a scholar of the good doctor's."
+
+"And so I am."
+
+"Then why don't you go by his rule, and put yourself in a body's
+place?  Suppose you was in her place, master of this house like, and
+dancing with a pack of girls you didn't care for, and SHE stood out
+here, pale and sighing; and suppose things were so that you couldn't
+come out to her, nor she come in to you, wouldn't it cut you to the
+heart to see her stand in the street and look so unhappy--poor lad?
+Be good, now, and go home to thy mother.  Why stand here and poison
+the poor young lady's pleasure--such as 'tis--and torment thyself."
+Jael's own eyes filled, and that proof of sympathy inclined Henry
+all the more to listen to her reason.
+
+"You are wise, and good, and kind," he said.  "But oh, Jael, I adore
+her so, I'd rather be in hell with her than in heaven without her.
+Half a loaf is better than no bread.  I can't go home and turn my
+back on the place where she is.  Yes, I'm in torments; but I see.
+They can't rob my EYES of her."
+
+"To oblige HER!"
+
+"Yes; I'll do anything to oblige HER.  If I could only believe she
+loves me."
+
+"Put it to the proof, if you don't believe me."
+
+"I will.  Tell her I'd much rather stay all night, and catch a
+glimpse of her now and then; but yet, tell her I'll go home, if she
+will promise me not to dance with that Coventry again."
+
+"There is a condition!" said Jael.
+
+"It is a fair one," said Henry, doggedly, "and I won't go from it."
+
+Jael looked at him, and saw it was no use arguing the matter.  So
+she went in to the house with his ultimatum.
+
+She soon returned, and told him that Miss Grace, instead of being
+angry, as she expected, had smiled and looked pleased, and promised
+not to dance with Mr. Coventry nor any body else any more that
+night, "if he would go straight home and consult his beautiful
+mother."  "Those were her words," said the loyal Dence.  "She did
+say them twice over to make sure."
+
+"God bless her!" cried Henry, warmly; "and bless you too, my best
+friend.  I'll go this moment."
+
+He cast a long, lingering look at the window, and went slowly down
+the street.
+
+When he got home, his mother was still up and secretly anxious.
+
+He sat down beside her, and told her where he had been and how it
+had all ended.  "I'm to consult my beautiful mother," said he,
+kissing her.
+
+"What, does she think I am like my picture now?"
+
+"I suppose so.  And you are as beautiful as ever in my eyes, mother.
+And I do consult you."
+
+Mrs. Little's black eyes flashed; but she said, calmly,
+
+"What about, dearest?"
+
+"I really don't know.  I suppose it was about what happened tonight.
+Perhaps about it all."
+
+Mrs. Little leaned her head upon her hand and thought.
+
+After a moment's reflection, she said to Henry, rather coldly, "If
+she is not a very good girl, she must be a very clever one."
+
+"She is both," said Henry, warmly.
+
+"Of that I shall be the best judge," said Mrs. Little, very coldly
+indeed.
+
+Poor Henry felt quite chilled.  He said no more; nor did his mother
+return to the subject till they parted for the night, and then it
+was only to ask him what church Miss Carden went to--a question that
+seemed to be rather frivolous, but he said he thought St. Margaret's.
+
+Next Sunday evening, Mrs. Little and he being at tea together, she
+said to him quietly--"Well, Harry, I have seen her."
+
+"Oh mother! where?"
+
+"At St. Margaret's Church."
+
+"But how did you know her?  By her beauty?"
+
+Mrs. Little smiled, and took a roll of paper out of her muff, that
+lay on the sofa.  She unfolded it, and displayed a drawing.  It
+represented Grace Carden in her bonnet, and was a very good
+likeness.
+
+The lover bounced on it, and devoured it with astonishment and
+delight.
+
+"Taken from the bust, and retouched from nature," said Mrs. Little.
+"Yes, dear, I went to St. Margaret's, and asked a pew-opener where
+she sat.  I placed myself where I could command her features; and
+you may be sure, I read her very closely.  Well, dear, she bears
+examination.  It is a bright face, a handsome face, and a good face;
+and almost as much in love as you are."
+
+"What makes you fancy that?  Oh, you spoke to her?"
+
+"Certainly not.  But I observed her.  Restless and listless by
+turns--her body in one place, her mind in another.  She was so taken
+up with her own thoughts she could not follow the service.  I saw
+the poor girl try very hard several times, but at last she gave it
+up in despair.  Sometimes she knitted her brow and a young girl
+seldom does that unless she is thwarted in her love.  And I'll tell
+you a surer sign still: sometimes tears came for no visible reason,
+and stood in her eyes.  She is in love; and it can not be with Mr.
+Coventry of Bollinghope; for, if she loved him, she would have
+nothing to brood on but her wedding-dress; and they never knit their
+brows, nor bedew their eyes, thinking of that; that's a smiling
+subject.  No, it is true love on both sides, I do believe; and that
+makes my woman's heart yearn.  Harry, dear, I'll make you a
+confession.  You have heard that a mother's love is purer and more
+unselfish than any other love: and so it is.  But even mothers are
+not quite angels always.  Sometimes they are just a little jealous:
+not, I think, where they are blessed with many children; but you are
+my one child, my playmate, my companion, my friend, my only love.
+That sweet girl has come, and I must be dethroned.  I felt this,
+and--no, nothing could ever make me downright thwart your happiness;
+but a mother's jealousy made me passive, where I might have assisted
+you if I had been all a mother should be."
+
+"No, no, mother; I am the one to blame.  You see, it looked so
+hopeless at first, I used to be ashamed to talk freely to you.  It's
+only of late I have opened my heart to you as I ought."
+
+"Well, dear, I am glad you think the blame is not all with me.  But
+what I see is my own fault, and mean to correct it.  She gave you
+good advice, dear--to consult your mother.  But you shall have my
+assistance as well; and I shall begin at once, like a zealous ally.
+When I say at once--this is Sunday--I shall begin to-morrow at one
+o'clock."
+
+Then Henry sat down at her knee, and took her white hand in his
+brown ones.
+
+"And what shall you do at one o'clock, my beautiful mother?"
+
+"I shall return to society."
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+Next morning Mrs. Little gave her son the benefit of her night's
+reflections.
+
+"You must let me have some money--all you can spare from your
+business; and whilst I am doing something with it for you, you must
+go to London, and do exactly what I tell you to do."
+
+"Exactly?  Then please write it down."
+
+"A very good plan.  Can you go by the express this morning?"
+
+"Why, yes, I could; only then I must run down to the works this
+minute and speak to the foreman."
+
+"Well, dear, when you come back, your instructions shall be written,
+and your bag packed."
+
+"I say, mother, you are going into it in earnest.  All the better
+for me."
+
+At twelve he started for London, with a beautiful set of carving-
+tools in his bag, and his mother's instructions in his pocket: those
+instructions sent him to a fashionable tailor that very afternoon.
+With some difficulty he prevailed on this worthy to make him a
+dress-suit in twenty-four hours.  Next day he introduced himself to
+the London trade, showed his carving-tools, and, after a hard day's
+work, succeeded in obtaining several orders.
+
+Then he bought some white ties and gloves and an opera hat, and had
+his hair cut in Bond Street.
+
+At seven he got his clothes at the tailor's, and at eight he was in
+the stalls of the opera.  His mother had sent him there, to note the
+dress and public deportment of gentlemen and ladies, and use his own
+judgment.  He found his attention terribly distracted by the music
+and the raptures it caused him; but still he made some observations;
+and, consequently, next day he bought some fashionable shirts and
+sleeve studs and ribbon ties; ordered a morning suit of the same
+tailor, to be sent to him at Hillsborough; and after canvassing for
+customers all day, telegraphed his mother, and reached Hillsborough
+at eleven P.M.
+
+At first sight of him Mrs. Little exclaimed:
+
+"Oh!  What have you done with your beautiful hair?"
+
+He laughed, and said this was the fashion.
+
+"But it is like a private soldier."
+
+"Exactly.  Part of the Volunteer movement, perhaps."
+
+"Are you sure it is the fashion, dear?"
+
+"Quite sure.  All the swells in the opera were bullet-headed just
+like this."
+
+"Oh, if it is the fashion!" said Mrs. Little; and her mind succumbed
+under that potent word.
+
+She asked him about the dresses of the ladies in the opera.
+
+His description was very lame.  He said he didn't know he was
+expected to make notes of them.
+
+"Well, but you might be sure I should like to know.  Were there no
+ladies dressed as you would like to see your mother dressed?"
+
+"Good heavens, no! I couldn't fancy you in a lot of colors; and your
+beautiful head deformed into the shape of a gourd, with a beast of a
+chignon stuck out behind, made of dead hair."
+
+"No matter.  Mr. Henry; I wish I had been with you at the opera.  I
+should have seen something or other that would have become me.  She
+gave a little sigh.
+
+He was not to come home to dinner that day, but stay at the works,
+till she sent for him.
+
+At six o'clock, Jael Dence came for him in a fly, and told him he
+was to go home with her.
+
+"All right," said he; "but how did you come there?"
+
+"She bade me come and see her again--that day I brought the bust.
+So I went to see her, and I found her so busy, and doing more than
+she was fit, poor thing, so I made bold to give her a hand.  That
+was yesterday; and I shall come every day--if 'tis only for an hour--
+till the curtains are all up."
+
+"The curtains! what curtains?"
+
+"Ask no questions, and you will hear no lies."
+
+Henry remonstrated; Jael recommended patience; and at last they
+reached a little villa half way up Heath Hill.  "You are at home
+now," said Jael, dryly.  The new villa looked very gay that evening,
+for gas and fires were burning in every room.
+
+The dining-room and drawing room were both on the ground-floor; had
+each one enormous window with plate glass, and were rooms of very
+fair size, divided by large folding-doors.  These were now open, and
+Henry found his mother seated in the dining-room, with two
+workwomen, making curtains, and in the drawing-room were two more,
+sewing a carpet.
+
+The carpet was down in the dining-room.  The tea-table was set, and
+gave an air of comfort and housewifely foresight, in the midst of
+all the surrounding confusion.
+
+Young Little stared.  Mrs. Little smiled.
+
+"Sit down, and never mind us: give him his tea, my good Jael."
+
+Henry sat down, and, while Jael was making the tea, ventured on a
+feeble expostulation.  "It's all very fine, mother, but I don't like
+to see you make a slave of yourself."
+
+"Slaving!" said Jael, with a lofty air of pity.  "Why, she is
+working for her own."  Rural logic!
+
+"Oh," said Mrs. Little to her, "these clever creatures we look up to
+so are rather stupid in some things.  Slave!  Why, I am a general
+leading my Amazons to victory."  And she waved her needle gracefully
+in the air.
+
+"Well, but why not let the shop do them, where you bought the
+curtains?'
+
+"Because, my dear, the shop would do them very badly, very dearly,
+and very slowly.  Do you remember reading to me about Caesar, and
+what he said--'that a general should not say to his troops "GO and
+attack the enemy," "but COME and attack the enemy"?'  Well, that
+applies to needle-work.  I say to these ladies, 'COME sew these
+curtains with me;' and the consequence is, we have done in three
+days what no shop in Hillsborough would have done for us in a
+fortnight; but, as for slaves, the only one has been my good Jael
+there.  She insisted on moving all the heavy boxes herself.  She
+dismissed the porter; she said he had no pith in his arms--that was
+your expression, I think?"
+
+"Ay, ma'am; that was my word: and I never spoke a truer; the useless
+body.  Why, ma'am, the girls in Cairnhope are most of them well-
+grown hussies, and used to work in the fields, and carry full sacks
+of grain up steps.  Many's the time I have RUN with a sack of barley
+on my back: so let us hear no more about your bits of boxes.  I wish
+my mind was as strong."
+
+"Heaven forbid!" said Mrs. Little, with comic fervor.  Henry
+laughed.  But Jael only stared, rather stupidly.  By-and-by she said
+she must go now.
+
+"Henry shall take you home, dear."
+
+"Nay, I can go by myself."
+
+"It is raining a little, he will take you home in the cab."
+
+"Nay, I've got legs of my own," said the rustic.
+
+"Henry, dear," said the lady, quietly, "take her home in the cab,
+and then come back to me."
+
+At the gate of Woodbine Villa, Jael said "it was not good-night this
+time; it was good-by: she was going home for Patty's marriage."
+
+"But you will come back again?" said Henry.
+
+"Nay, father would be all alone.  You'll not see me here again,
+unless you were in sorrow or sickness."
+
+"Ah, that's like you, Jael.  Good-by then, and God bless you
+wherever you go."
+
+Jael summoned all her fortitude, and shook hands with him in
+silence.  They parted, and she fought down her tears, and he went
+gayly home to his mother.  She told him she had made several visits,
+and been cordially received.  "And this is how I paved the way for
+you.  So, mind!  I said my brother Raby wished you to take his name,
+and be his heir; but you had such a love of manufactures and things,
+you could not be persuaded to sit down as a country gentleman.
+'Indeed,' I said, his 'love of the thing is so great that, in order
+to master it in all its branches, nothing less would serve him than
+disguising himself, and going as a workman.  But now,' I said, 'he
+has had enough of that, so he has set up a small factory, and will,
+no doubt, soon achieve a success.'  Then I told them about you and
+Dr. Amboyne.  Your philanthropic views did not interest them for a
+single moment; but I could see the poor dear doctor's friendship was
+a letter of introduction.  There will be no difficulty, dear.  There
+shall be none.  What society Hillsborough boasts, shall open its
+arms to you."
+
+"But I'm afraid I shall make mistakes."
+
+"Our first little parties shall be given in this house.  Your free
+and easy way will be excused in a host; the master of the house has
+a latitude; and, besides, you and I will rehearse.  By the way,
+please be more careful about your nails; and you must always wear
+gloves when you are not working; and every afternoon you will take a
+lesson in dancing with me."
+
+"I say, mother, do you remember teaching me to dance a minuet, when
+I was little?"
+
+"Perfectly.  We took great pains; and, at last, you danced it like
+an angel.  And, shall I tell you, you carry yourself very
+gracefully?--well, that is partly owing to the minuet.  But a more
+learned professor will now take you in hand.  He will be here
+tomorrow at five o'clock."
+
+Mrs. Little's rooms being nearly square, she set up a round table,
+at which eight could dine.  But she began with five or six.
+
+Henry used to commit a solecism or two.  Mrs. Little always noticed
+them, and told him.  He never wanted telling twice.  He was a genial
+young fellow, well read in the topics of the day, and had a natural
+wit; Mrs. Little was one of those women who can fascinate when they
+choose; and she chose now; her little parties rose to eight; and as,
+at her table, everybody could speak without rudeness to everybody
+else, this round table soon began to eclipse the long tables of
+Hillsborough in attraction.
+
+She and Henry went out a good deal; and, at last, that which Mrs.
+Little's good sense had told her must happen, sooner or later, took
+place.  They met.
+
+He was standing talking with one of the male guests, when the
+servant announced Miss Carden; and, whilst his heart was beating
+high, she glided into the room, and was received by the mistress of
+the house with all that superabundant warmth which ladies put on and
+men don't: guess why?
+
+When she turned round from this exuberant affection, she encountered
+Henry's black eye full of love and delight, and his tongue tied, and
+his swarthy cheek glowing red.  She half started, and blushed in
+turn; and with one glance drank in every article of dress he had on.
+Her eyes beamed pleasure and admiration for a moment, then she made
+a little courtesy, then she took a step toward him, and held out her
+hand a little coyly.
+
+Their hands and eyes encountered; and, after that delightful
+collision, they were both as demure as cats approaching cream.
+
+Before they could say a word of any consequence, a cruel servant
+announced dinner, to the great satisfaction of every other soul in
+the room.
+
+Of course they were parted at dinner-time; but they sat exactly
+opposite each other, and Henry gazed at her so, instead of minding
+his business, that she was troubled a little, and fain to look
+another way.  For all that, she found opportunity once or twice to
+exchange thoughts with him.  Indeed, in the course of the two hours,
+she gave him quite a lesson how to speak with the eye--an art in
+which he was a mere child compared with her.
+
+She conveyed to him that she saw his mother and recognized her; and
+also she hoped to know her.
+
+But some of her telegrams puzzled him.
+
+When the gentlemen came up after dinner, she asked him if he would
+not present her to his mother.
+
+"Oh, thank you!" said he, naively; and introduced them to each
+other.
+
+The ladies courtesied with grace, but a certain formality, for they
+both felt the importance of the proceeding, and were a little on
+their guard.
+
+But they had too many safe, yet interesting topics, to be very long
+at a loss.
+
+"I should have known you by your picture, Mrs. Little."
+
+"Ah, then I fear it must be faded since I saw it last."
+
+"I think not.  But I hope you will soon judge for yourself."
+
+Mrs. Little shook her head.  Then she said, graciously, "I hear it
+is to you I am indebted that people can see I was once--what I am
+not now."
+
+Grace smiled, well pleased.  "Ah," said she, "I wish you could have
+seen that extraordinary scene, and heard dear Mr. Raby.  Oh, madam,
+let nothing make you believe you have no place in his great heart!"
+
+"Pray, pray, do not speak of that.  This is no place.  How could I
+bear it?" and Mrs. Little began to tremble.
+
+Grace apologized.  "How indiscreet I am; I blurt out every thing
+that is in my heart."
+
+"And so do I," said Henry, coming to her aid.
+
+"Ah, YOU," said Grace, a little saucily.
+
+"We do not accept you for our pattern, you see.  Pray excuse our bad
+taste, Harry."
+
+"Oh, excuse ME, Mrs. Little.  In some things I should indeed be
+proud if I could imitate him; but in others--of course--you know!"
+
+"Yes, I know.  My dear, there is your friend Mr. Applethwaite."
+
+"I see him," said Henry, carelessly.
+
+"Yes; but you don't see every thing," said Grace, slyly.
+
+"Not all at once, like you ladies.  Bother my friend Applethwaite.
+Well, if I must, I must.  Here goes--from Paradise to Applethwaite."
+
+He went off, and both ladies smiled, and one blushed; and, to cover
+her blush, said, "it is not every son that has the grace to
+appreciate his mother so."
+
+Mrs. Little opened her eyes at first, and then made her nearest
+approach to a laugh, which was a very broad smile, displaying all
+her white teeth.  "That is a turn I was very far from expecting,"
+said she.
+
+The ice was now broken, and, when Henry returned, he found them
+conversing so rapidly and so charmingly, that he could do little
+more than listen.
+
+At last Mr. Carden came in from some other party, and carried his
+daughter off, and the bright evening came too soon to a close; but a
+great point had been gained: Mrs. Little and Grace Carden were
+acquaintances now, and cordially disposed to be friends.
+
+The next time these lovers met, matters did not go quite so
+smoothly.  It was a large party, and Mr. Coventry was there.  The
+lady of the house was a friend of his, and assigned Miss Carden to
+him.  He took her down to dinner, and Henry sat a long way off but
+on the opposite side of the table.
+
+He was once more doomed to look on at the assiduities of his rival,
+and it spoiled his dinner for him.
+
+But he was beginning to learn that these things must be in society;
+and his mother, on the other side of the table, shrugged her
+shoulders to him, and conveyed by that and a look that it was a
+thing to make light of.
+
+In the evening the rivals came into contact.
+
+Little, being now near her he loved, was in high spirits, and talked
+freely and agreeably.  He made quite a little circle round him; and
+as Grace was one of the party, and cast bright and approving eyes on
+him, it stimulated him still more, and he became quite brilliant.
+
+Then Coventry, who was smarting with jealousy, set himself to cool
+all this down by a subtle cold sort of jocoseness, which, without
+being downright rude, operates on conversation of the higher kind
+like frost on expanding buds.  It had its effect, and Grace chafed
+secretly, but could not interfere.  It was done very cleverly.
+Henry was bitterly annoyed; but his mother, who saw his rising ire
+in his eye, carried him off to see a flowering cactus in a hot-house
+that was accessible from the drawing-room.  When she had got him
+there, she soothed him and lectured him.  "You are not a match for
+that man in these petty acts of annoyance, to which a true gentleman
+and a noble rival would hardly descend, I think; at all events, a
+wise one would not; for, believe me, Mr. Coventry will gain nothing
+by this."
+
+"Isn't driving us off the field something?  Oh, for the good old
+days when men settled these things in five minutes, like men; the
+girl to one, and the grave to t'other."
+
+"Heaven forbid those savage days should ever return.  We will defeat
+this gentleman quietly, if you please."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Well, whenever he does this sort of thing, hide your anger; be
+polite and dignified; but gradually drop the conversation, and
+manage to convey to the rest that it is useless contending against a
+wet blanket.  Why, you foolish boy, do you think Grace Carden likes
+him any the better?  Whilst you and I talk, she is snubbing him
+finely.  So you must stay here with me, and give them time to
+quarrel.  There, to lessen the penance, we will talk about her.
+Last time we met her, she told me you were the best-dressed
+gentleman in the room."
+
+"And did she like me any better for that?"
+
+"Don't you be ungracious, dear.  She was proud of you.  It gratified
+her that you should look well in every way.  Oh, if you think that
+we are going to change our very natures for you, and make light of
+dress--why did I send you to a London tailor? and why am I always at
+you about your gloves?"
+
+"Mother, I am on thorns."
+
+"Well, we will go back.  Stop; let me take a peep first."
+
+She took a peep, and reported,
+
+"The little circle is broken up.  Mr. Coventry could not amuse them
+as you did.  Ah! she is in the sulks, and he is mortified.  I know
+there's a French proverb 'Les absens ont toujours tort.'  But it is
+quite untrue; judicious absence is a weapon, and I must show you how
+and when to use it."
+
+"Mother, you are my best friend.  What shall we do next?"
+
+"Why, go back to the room with me, and put on an imperturbable good
+humor, and ignore him; only mind you do that politely, or you will
+give him an advantage he is too wise to give you."
+
+Henry was about to obey these orders, but Miss Carden took the word
+out of his mouth.
+
+"Well! the cactus?"
+
+Then, as it is not easy to reply to a question so vague, Henry
+hesitated.
+
+"There, I thought so," said Grace.
+
+"What did you think?" inquired Mrs. Little.
+
+"Oh, people don't go into hot-houses to see a cactus; they go to
+flirt or else gossip.  I'll tell Mrs. White to set a short-hand
+writer in the great aloe, next party she gives.  Confess, Mrs.
+Little, you went to criticise poor us, and there is no cactus at
+all."
+
+"Miss Carden, I'm affronted.  You shall smart for this.  Henry, take
+her directly and show her the cactus, and clear your mother's
+character."
+
+Henry offered his arm directly, and they went gayly off.
+
+"Is she gone to flirt, or to gossip?" asked a young lady.
+
+"Our watches must tell us that," said Mrs. Little.  "If they stay
+five minutes--gossip."
+
+"And how many--flirtation?"
+
+"Ah, my dear, YOU know better than I do.  What do you say?  Five-
+and-twenty?"
+
+The young ladies giggled.
+
+Then Mr. Coventry came out strong.  He was mortified, he was
+jealous; he saw a formidable enemy had entered the field, and had
+just outwitted and out-maneuvered him.  So what does he do but step
+up to her, and say to her, with the most respectful grace, "May I be
+permitted to welcome you back to this part of the world?  I am
+afraid I can not exactly claim your acquaintance; but I have often
+heard my father speak of you with the highest admiration.  My name
+is Coventry."
+
+"Mr. Coventry, of Bollinghope?"  (He bowed.)  "Yes; I had the
+pleasure of knowing your mother in former days."
+
+"You, have deserted us too long."
+
+"I do not flatter myself I have been missed."
+
+"Is anybody ever missed, Mrs. Little?  Believe me, few persons are
+welcomed back so cordially as you are."
+
+"That is very flattering, Mr. Coventry.  It is for my son's sake I
+have returned to society."
+
+"No doubt; but you will remain there for your own.  Society is your
+place.  You are at home in it, and were born to shine in it."
+
+"What makes you think that, pray?" and the widow's cheek flushed a
+little.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Little, I have seen something of the world.  Count me
+amongst your most respectful admirers.  It is a sentiment I have a
+right to, since I inherit it."
+
+"Well, Mr. Coventry, then I give you leave to admire me--if you can.
+Ah, here they come.  Two minutes!  I am afraid it was neither gossip
+nor flirtation, but only botany."
+
+Grace and Henry came back, looking very radiant.
+
+"What do you think?" said Grace, "I never was more surprised in my
+life, there really is a cactus, and a night cereus into the bargain.
+Mrs. Little, behold a penitent.  I bring you my apology, and a
+jardenia."
+
+"Oh, how sweet!  Never mind the apology.  Quarrel with me often, and
+bring me a jardenia.  I'll always make it up on those terms."
+
+"Miss White," said Grace, pompously, "I shall require a few dozen
+cuttings from your tree, please tell the gardener.  Arrangements are
+such, I shall have to grow jardenias on a scale hitherto
+unprecedented."
+
+There was a laugh, and, in the, middle of it, a servant announced
+Miss Carden's carriage.
+
+"What attentive servants you have, Miss White.  I requested that man
+to be on the watch, and, if I said a good thing, to announce my
+carriage directly; and he did it pat.  Now see what an effective
+exit that gives me.  Good-by, Miss White, good-by, Mrs. Little; may
+you all disappear as neatly."
+
+Mr. Coventry stepped smartly forward, and offered her his arm with
+courteous deference; she took it, and went down with him, but shot
+over his shoulder a side-glance of reproach at Little, for not being
+so prompt as his rival.
+
+"What spirits!" said a young lady.
+
+"Yes," said another; "but she was as dull as the grave last time I
+met her."
+
+So ended that evening, with its little ups and downs.
+
+
+Soon after this, Henry called on Miss Carden, and spent a heavenly
+hour with her.  He told her his plans for getting on in the world,
+and she listened with a demure complacency, that seemed to imply she
+acknowledged a personal interest in his success.  She told him she
+had always ADMIRED his independence in declining his uncle's offer,
+and now she was beginning to APPROVE it: "It becomes a man," said
+she.
+
+From the future they went to the past, and she reminded him of the
+snow-storm and the scene in the church; and, in speaking of it, her
+eye deepened in color, her voice was low and soft, and she was all
+tenderness.
+
+If love was not directly spoken, it was constantly implied, and, in
+fact, that is how true love generally speaks.  The eternal "Je vous
+aime" of the French novelist is false to nature, let me tell you.
+
+"And, when I come back from London, I hope your dear mother will
+give me opportunities of knowing her better."
+
+"She will be delighted; but, going to London!"
+
+"Oh, we spend six weeks in London every year; and this is our time.
+I was always glad to go, before--London is very gay now you know--
+but I am not glad now."
+
+"No more am I, I can assure you.  I am very sorry."
+
+"Six weeks will soon pass."
+
+"Six weeks of pain is a good long time.  You are the sunshine of my
+life.  And you are going to shine on others, and leave me dark and
+solitary."
+
+"But how do you know I shall shine on others?  Perhaps I shall be
+duller than you will, and think all the more of Hillsborough, for
+being in London."
+
+The melting tone in which this was said, and the coy and tender
+side-glance that accompanied it, were balm of Gilead to the lover.
+
+He took comfort, and asked her, cheerfully, if he might write to
+her.
+
+She hesitated a single moment, and then said "Yes."
+
+She added, however, after a pause, "But you can't; for you don't
+know my address."
+
+"But you will tell me."
+
+"Never! never!  Fifty-eight Clarges Street."
+
+"When do you go?"
+
+"The day after to-morrow: at twelve o'clock."
+
+"May I see you off at the train?"
+
+She hesitated.  "If--you--like," said she, slowly: "but I think you
+had better not."
+
+"Oh, let me see the last of you."
+
+"Use your own judgment, dear."
+
+The monosyllable slipped out, unintentionally: she was thinking of
+something else.  Yet, as soon as she had uttered it, she said "Oh!"
+and blushed all, over.  "I forgot I was not speaking to a lady,"
+said she, innocently: then, right archly, "please forgive me."
+
+He caught her hand, and kissed it devotedly.
+
+Then she quivered all over.  "You mustn't," said she with the
+gentlest possible tone of reproach.  "Oh dear, I am so sorry I am
+going."  And she turned her sweet eyes on him, with tears in them.
+
+Then a visitor was announced, and they parted.
+
+
+He was deep in love.  He was also, by nature, rather obstinate.
+Although she had said she thought it would be better for him not to
+see her off, yet he would go to the station, and see the last of
+her.
+
+
+He came straight from the station to his mother.  She was upstairs.
+He threw himself into a chair, and there she found him, looking
+ghastly.
+
+"Oh, mother! what shall I do?"
+
+"What is the matter, love?"
+
+"She is false; she is false.  She has gone up to London with that
+Coventry."
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+EXTRACT FROM HENRY LITTLE'S REPORT.
+
+
+The File-cutters.
+
+"This is the largest trade, containing about three thousand men, and
+several hundred women and boys.  Their diseases and deaths arise
+from poisoning by lead.  The file rests on a bed of lead during the
+process of cutting, which might more correctly be called stamping;
+and, as the stamping-chisel can only be guided to the required
+nicety by the finger-nail, the lead is constantly handled and
+fingered, and enters the system through the pores.
+
+"Besides this, fine dust of lead is set in motion by the blows that
+drive the cutting-chisel, and the insidious poison settles on the
+hair and the face, and is believed to go direct to the lungs, some
+of it.
+
+"The file-cutter never lives the span of life allotted to man.
+After many small warnings his thumb weakens.  He neglects that; and
+he gets touches of paralysis in the thumb, the arm, and the nerves
+of the stomach; can't digest; can't sweat; at last, can't work; goes
+to the hospital: there they galvanize him, which does him no harm;
+and boil him, which does him a deal of good.  He comes back to work,
+resumes his dirty habits, takes in fresh doses of lead, turns dirty
+white or sallow, gets a blue line round his teeth, a dropped wrist,
+and to the hospital again or on to the file-cutter's box; and so he
+goes miserably on and off, till he drops into a premature grave,
+with as much lead in his body as would lap a hundredweight of tea."
+
+THE REMEDIES.
+
+A.  What the masters might do.
+
+"1.  Provide every forge with two small fires, eighteen inches from
+the ground.  This would warm the lower limbs of the smiths.  At
+present their bodies suffer by uneven temperature; they perspire
+down to the waist, and then freeze to the toe.
+
+"2.  For the wet-grinders they might supply fires in every wheel,
+abolish mud floors, and pave with a proper fall and drain.
+
+"To prevent the breaking of heavy grinding-stones, fit them with the
+large strong circular steel plate--of which I subjoin a drawing--
+instead of with wedges or insufficient plates.  They might have an
+eye to life, as well as capital, in buying heavy grindstones.  I
+have traced the death of one grinder to the master's avarice: he
+went to the quarry and bought a stone for thirty-five shillings the
+quarry-master had set aside as imperfect; its price would have been
+sixty shillings if it had been fit to trust a man's life to.  This
+master goes to church twice a Sunday, and is much respected by his
+own sort: yet he committed a murder for twenty-five shillings.
+Being Hillsborough, let us hope it was a murderer he murdered.
+
+"For the dry-grinders they might all supply fans and boxes.  Some
+do, and the good effect is very remarkable.  Moreover the present
+fans and boxes could be much improved.
+
+"One trade--the steel-fork grinders--is considerably worse than the
+rest; and although the fan does much for it, I'm told it must still
+remain an unhealthy trade.  If so, and Dr. Amboyne is right about
+Life, Labor, and Capital, let the masters co-operate with the
+Legislature, and extinguish the handicraft.
+
+"For the file-cutters, the masters might--
+
+1st.  Try a substitute for lead.  It is all very well to say a file
+must rest on lead to be cut.  Who has ever employed brains on that
+question?  Who has tried iron, wood, and gutta-percha in layers?
+Who has ever tried any thing, least of all the thing called Thought?
+
+"2d.  If lead is the only bed--which I doubt, and the lead must be
+bare--which I dispute, then the master ought to supply every gang of
+file-cutters with hooks--taps, and basins and soap, in some place
+adjoining their work-rooms.  Lead is a subtle, but not a swift,
+poison; and soap and water every two hours is an antidote.
+
+"3d.  They ought to forbid the introduction of food into file-
+cutting rooms.  Workmen are a reckless set, and a dirty set; food
+has no business in any place of theirs, where poison is going.
+
+"B.  What the workmen might do.
+
+"1st.  Demand from the masters these improvements I have suggested,
+and, if the demand came through the secretaries of their Unions, the
+masters would comply.
+
+"2d.  They might drink less and wash their bodies with a small part
+of the money so saved: the price of a gill of gin and a hot bath are
+exactly the same; only the bath is health to a dry-grinder, or tile-
+cutter; the gin is worse poison to him than to healthy men.
+
+"3d.  The small wet-grinders, who have to buy their grindstones,
+might buy sound ones, instead of making bargains at the quarry,
+which prove double bad bargains when the stone breaks, since then a
+new stone is required, and sometimes a new man, too.
+
+"4th.  They might be more careful not to leave the grindstone in
+water.  I have traced three broken stones in one wheel to that
+abominable piece of carelessness.
+
+"5th.  They ought never to fix an undersized pulley wheel.  Simmons
+killed himself by that, and by grudging the few hours of labor
+required to hang and race a sound stone.
+
+6th.  If files can only be cut on lead, the file-cutters might
+anoint the lead over night with a hard-drying ointment, soluble in
+turps, and this ointment might even be medicated with an antidote to
+the salt of lead.
+
+7th.  If files can only be cut on BARE lead, the men ought to cut
+their hair close, and wear a light cap at work.  They ought to have
+a canvas suit in the adjoining place (see above); don it when they
+come, and doff it when they go.  They ought to leave off their
+insane habit of licking the thumb and finger of the left hand--which
+is the leaded hand--with their tongues.  This beastly trick takes
+the poison direct to the stomach.  They might surely leave it to get
+there through the pores; it is slow, but sure.  I have also
+repeatedly seen a file-cutter eat his dinner with his filthy
+poisoned fingers, and so send the poison home by way of salt to a
+fool's bacon.  Finally, they ought to wash off the poison every two
+hours at the taps.
+
+"8th.  Since they abuse the masters and justly, for their
+greediness, they ought not to imitate their greediness by driving
+their poor little children into unhealthy trades, and so destroying
+them body and soul.  This practice robs the children of education at
+the very seed-time of life, and literally murders many of them; for
+their soft and porous skins, and growing organs, take in all poisons
+and disorders quicker than an adult.
+
+C.  What the Legislature might do.
+
+"It might issue a commission to examine the Hillsborough trades,
+and, when accurately informed, might put some practical restraints
+both on the murder and the suicide that are going on at present.  A
+few of the suggestions I have thrown out might, I think, be made
+law.
+
+"For instance, the master who should set a dry-grinder to a trough
+without a fan, or put his wet-grinders on a mud floor and no fire,
+or his file-cutters in a room without taps and basins, or who should
+be convicted of willfully buying a faulty grindstone, might be made
+subject to a severe penalty; and the municipal authorities invested
+with rights of inspection, and encouraged to report.
+
+"In restraint of the workmen, the Legislature ought to extend the
+Factory Acts to Hillsborough trades, and so check the heartless
+avarice of the parents.  At present, no class of her Majesty's
+subjects cries so loud, and so vainly, to her motherly bosom, and
+the humanity of Parliament as these poor little children; their
+parents, the lowest and most degraded set of brutes in England,
+teach them swearing and indecency at home, and rob them of all
+decent education, and drive them to their death, in order to squeeze
+a few shillings out of their young lives; for what?--to waste in
+drink and debauchery.  Count the public houses in this town.
+
+"As to the fork-grinding trade, the Legislature might assist the
+masters to extinguish it.  It numbers only about one hundred and
+fifty persons, all much poisoned, and little paid.  The work could
+all be done by fifteen machines and thirty hands, and, in my
+opinion, without the expense of grindstones.  The thirty men would
+get double wages: the odd hundred and twenty would, of course, be
+driven into other trades, after suffering much distress.  And, on
+this account, I would call in Parliament, because then there would
+be a temporary compensation offered to the temporary sufferers by a
+far-sighted and, beneficent measure.  Besides, without Parliament, I
+am afraid the masters could not do it.  The fork-grinders would blow
+up the machines, and the men who worked them, and their wives and
+their children, and their lodgers, and their lodgers' visitors.
+
+"For all that, if your theory of Life, Labor, and Capital is true,
+all incurably destructive handicrafts ought to give way to
+machinery, and will, as Man advances."
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+"What! eloped?"
+
+"Heaven forbid!  Why, mother, I didn't say she was alone with him;
+her father was of the party."
+
+"Then surely you are distressing yourself more than you need.  She
+goes to London with her papa, and Mr. Coventry happens to go up the
+same day; that is really all."
+
+"Oh, but, mother, it was no accident.  I watched his face, and there
+was no surprise when he came up with his luggage and saw her."
+
+Mrs. Little pondered for a minute, and then said, "I dare say all
+her friends knew she was going up to London to-day; and Mr. Coventry
+determined to go up the same day.  Why, he is courting her: my dear
+Henry, you knew before to-day that you had a rival, and a determined
+one.  If you go and blame her for his acts, it will be apt to end in
+his defeating you."
+
+"Will it?  Then I won't blame her at all."
+
+"You had better not till you are quite sure: it is one way of losing
+a high-spirited girl."
+
+"I tell you I won't.  Mother!"
+
+"Well, dear?"
+
+"When I asked leave to come to the station and see her off, she
+seemed put out."
+
+"Did she forbid you?"
+
+"No; but she did not like it somehow.  Ah, she knew beforehand that
+Coventry would be there."
+
+"Gently, gently!  She might think it possible, and yet not know it.
+More likely it was on account of her father.  You have never told
+him that you love his daughter?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And he is rather mercenary: perhaps that is too strong a word; but,
+in short, a mere man of the world.  Might it not be that Grace
+Carden would wish him to learn your attachment either from your lips
+or from her own, and not detect it in an impetuous young man's
+conduct on the platform of a railway, at the tender hour of
+parting?"
+
+"Oh, how wise you are, and what an insight you have got!  Your words
+are balm.  But, there--he is with her for ever so long, and I am
+here all alone."
+
+"Not quite alone, love; your counselor is by your side, and may,
+perhaps, show you how to turn this to your advantage.  You write to
+her every day, and then the postman will be a powerful rival to Mr.
+Coventry, perhaps a more powerful one than Mr. Coventry to you."
+
+Acting on this advice, Henry wrote every day to Grace Carden.  She
+was not so constant in her replies; but she did write to him now and
+then, and her letters breathed a gentle affection that allayed his
+jealousy, and made this period of separation the happiest six weeks
+he had ever known.  As for Grace, about three o'clock she used to
+look out for the postman, and be uneasy and restless if he was late,
+and, when his knock came, her heart would bound, and she generally
+flew upstairs with the prize, to devour it in secret.  She fed her
+heart full with these letters, and loved the writer better and
+better.  For once the present suitor lost ground, and the absent
+suitor gained it.  Mrs. Little divined as much from Grace's letters
+and messages to herself; and she said, with a smile, "You see 'Les
+absents n'ont pas toujours tort.'"
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+I must now deal briefly with a distinct vein of incidents, that
+occurred between young Little's first becoming a master and the
+return of the Cardens from London.
+
+Little, as a master, acted up to the philanthropic theories he had
+put forth when a workman.
+
+The wet-grinders in his employ submitted to his improved plates, his
+paved and drained floor, and cozy fires, without a murmur or a word
+of thanks.  By degrees they even found out they were more
+comfortable than other persons in their condition, and congratulated
+themselves upon it.
+
+The dry-grinders consented, some of them, to profit by his improved
+fans.  Others would not take the trouble to put the fans in gear,
+and would rather go on inhaling metal-dust and stone-grit.
+
+Henry reasoned, but in vain; remonstrated, but with little success.
+Then he discharged a couple: they retired with mien of martyrs; and
+their successors were admitted on a written agreement that left them
+no option.  The fan triumphed.
+
+The file-cutters were more troublesome; they clung to death and
+disease, like limpets to established rocks; they would not try any
+other bed than bare lead, and they would not wash at the taps Little
+had provided, and they would smuggle in dinners and eat with
+poisoned hands.
+
+Little reasoned, and remonstrated, but with such very trifling
+success, that, at last, he had to put down the iron heel; he gave
+the file-cutters a printed card, with warning to leave on one side,
+and his reasons on the other.
+
+In twenty-four hours he received a polite remonstrance from the
+secretary of the File-Cutters' Union.
+
+He replied that the men could remain, if they would sign an
+agreement to forego certain suicidal practices, and to pay fines in
+case of disobedience; said fines to be deducted from their earnings.
+
+Then the secretary suggested a conference at the "Cutlers' Arms."
+Little assented: and there was a hot argument.  The father of all
+file-cutters objected to tyranny and innovation: Little maintained
+that Innovation was nearly always Improvement--the world being
+silly--and was manifestly improvement in the case under
+consideration.  He said also he was merely doing what the Union
+itself ought to do: protecting the life of Union men who were too
+childish and wrong-headed to protect it themselves.
+
+"We prefer a short life and a merry one, Mr. Little," said the
+father of all file-cutters.
+
+"A life of disease is not a merry one: slow poisoning is not a
+pleasant way of living, but a miserable way of dying.  None but the
+healthy are happy.  Many a Croesus would give half his fortune for a
+poor man's stomach; yet you want your cutlers to be sick men all
+their days, and not gain a shilling by it.  Man alive, I am not
+trying to lower their wages."
+
+"Ay, but you are going the way to do it."
+
+"How do you make that out?"
+
+"The trade is full already; and, if you force the men to live to
+threescore and ten, you will overcrowd it so, they will come to
+starvation wages."
+
+Little was staggered at this thunderbolt of logic, and digested the
+matter in silence for a moment.  Then he remembered something that
+had fallen from Dr. Amboyne; and he turned to Grotait.  "What do you
+say to that, sir? would you grind Death's scythe for him (at the
+list price) to thin the labor market?"
+
+Grotait hesitated for once.  In his heart he went with the file-
+cutter: but his understanding encumbered him.
+
+"Starvation," said he, "is as miserable a death as poisoning.  But
+why make a large question out of a small one, with rushing into
+generalities?  I really think you might let Mr. Little settle this
+matter with the individual workmen.  He has got a little factory,
+and a little crochet; he chooses to lengthen the lives of six file-
+cutters.  He says to them, 'My money is my own, and I'll give you so
+much of it, in return for so much work plus so much washing and
+other novelties.'  The question is, does his pay cover the new labor
+of washing, etc., as well as the old?"
+
+"Mr. Grotait, I pay the highest price that is going."
+
+"In that case, I think the Unions are not bound to recognize the
+discussion.  Mr. Little, I have some other reasons to lay before my
+good friend here, and I hope to convince him.  Now, there's a little
+party of us going to dine to-morrow at 'Savage's Hotel,' up by the
+new reservoir; give us the pleasure of your company, will you? and,
+by that time, perhaps I may have smoothed this little matter for
+you."  Little thanked him, accepted the invitation, and left the
+pair of secretaries together.
+
+When he was gone, Grotait represented that public opinion would go
+with Little on this question; and the outrages he had sustained
+would be all ripped up by the Hillsborough Liberal, and the two
+topics combined in an ugly way; and all for what?--to thwart a good-
+hearted young fellow in a philanthropical crotchet, which, after
+all, did him honor, and would never be imitated by any other master
+in Hillsborough.  And so, for once, this Machiavel sided with Henry,
+not from the purest motives, yet, mind you, not without a certain
+mixture of right feeling and humanity.
+
+On the Sunday Henry dined with him and his party, at "Savage's
+Hotel," and the said dinner rather surprised Henry; the meats were
+simple, but of good quality, and the wines, which were all brought
+out by Grotait, were excellent.  That Old Saw, who retailed ale and
+spirits to his customers, would serve nothing less to his guests
+than champagne and burgundy.  And, if the cheer was generous, the
+host was admirable; he showed, at the head of his genial board,
+those qualities which, coupled with his fanaticism, had made him the
+Doge of the Hillsborough trades.  He was primed on every subject
+that could interest his guests, and knew something about nearly
+everything else.  He kept the ball always going, but did not
+monologuize, except when he was appealed to as a judge, and then did
+it with a mellow grace that no man can learn without Nature's aid.
+There is no society, however distinguished, in which Grotait would
+not have been accepted as a polished and admirable converser.
+
+Add to this that he had an art, which was never quite common, but is
+now becoming rare, of making his guests feel his friends--for the
+time, at all events.
+
+Young Little sat amazed, and drank in his words with delight, and
+could not realize that this genial philosopher was the person who
+had launched a band of ruffians at him.  Yet, in his secret heart,
+he could not doubt it: and so he looked and listened with a
+marvelous mixture of feelings, on which one could easily write pages
+of analysis, very curious, and equally tedious.
+
+They dined at three; and, at five, they got up, as agreed
+beforehand, and went to inspect the reservoir in course of
+construction.  A more compendious work of art was never projected:
+the contractors had taken for their basis a mountain gorge, with a
+stream flowing through it down toward Hillsborough; all they had to
+do was to throw an embankment across the lower end of the gorge, and
+turn it to a mighty basin open to receive the stream, and the
+drainage from four thousand acres of hill.  From this lake a sixty-
+foot wear was to deal out the water-supply to the mill-owners below,
+and the surplus to the people of Hillsborough, distant about eight
+miles on an easy decline.
+
+Now, as the reservoir must be full at starting, and would then be
+eighty feet deep in the center, and a mile long, and a quarter of a
+mile broad, on the average, an embankment of uncommon strength was
+required to restrain so great a mass of water; and this was what the
+Hillsborough worthies were curious about.  They strolled out to the
+works, and then tea was to come out after them, the weather being
+warm and soft.  Close to the works they found a foreman of engineers
+smoking his pipe, and interrogated him.  He showed them a rising
+wall, five hundred feet wide at the base, and told them it was to be
+ninety feet high, narrowing, gradually, to a summit twelve feet
+broad.  As the whole embankment was to be twelve hundred feet long
+at the top, this gave some idea of the bulk of the materials to be
+used: those materials were clay, shale, mill-stone, and sandstone of
+looser texture.  The engineer knew Grotait, and brought him a
+drawing of the mighty cone to be erected.  "Why, it will be a
+mountain!" said Little.
+
+"Not far from that, sir: and yet you'll never see half the work.
+Why, we had an army of navvies on it last autumn, and laid a
+foundation sixty feet deep and these first courses are all bonded in
+to the foundation, and bonded together, as you see.  We are down to
+solid rock, and no water can get to undermine us.  The puddle wall
+is sixteen feet wide at starting, and diminishes to four feet at the
+top: so no water can creep in through our jacket."
+
+"But what are these apertures?" inquired Grotait.
+
+"Oh, those are the waste-pipes.  They pass through the embankment
+obliquely, to the wear-dam: they can be opened, or shut, by valves,
+and run off ten thousand cubic feet of water a minute."
+
+"But won't that prove a hole in your armor?  Why, these pipes must
+be in twenty joints, at least."
+
+"Say fifty-five; you'll be nearer the mark."
+
+"And suppose one or two of these fifty-five joints should leak?
+You'll have an everlasting solvent in the heart of your pile, and
+you can't get at them, you know, to mend them."
+
+"Of course not; but they are double as thick as ever were used
+before; and have been severely tested before laying 'em down:
+besides, don't you see each of them has got his great-coat on?
+eighteen inches of puddle all the way."
+
+"Ah," said Grotait, "all the better.  But it is astonishing what big
+embankments will sometimes burst if a leaky pipe runs through them.
+I don't think it is the water, altogether; the water seems to make
+air inside them, and that proves as bad for them as wind in a man's
+stomach."
+
+"Governor," said the engineer, "don't you let bees swarm in your
+bonnet.  Ousely reservoir will last as long as them hills there."
+
+"No, doubt, lad, since thou's had a hand in making it."
+
+The laugh this dry rejoinder caused was interrupted by the waitress
+bringing out tea; and these Hillsborough worthies felt bound to
+chaff her; but she, being Yorkshire too, gave them as good as they
+brought, and a trifle to spare.
+
+Tea was followed by brandy-and-water and pipes: and these came out
+in such rapid succession, that when Grotait drove Little and two
+others home, his utterance was thick, and his speech sententious.
+
+Little found Bayne waiting for him, with the news that he had left
+Mr. Cheetham.
+
+"How was that?"
+
+"Oh, fell between two stools.  Tried to smooth matters between
+Cheetham and the hands: but Cheetham, he wants a manager to side
+with him through thick and thin; and the men want one to side with
+them.  He has sacked me, and the men are glad I'm going: and this
+comes of loving peace, when the world hates it."
+
+"And I am glad of it, for now you are my foreman.  I know what you
+are worth, if those fools don't."
+
+"Are you in earnest, Little?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I hear you have been dining with Grotait, and he always makes the
+liquor fly.  Wait till tomorrow.  Talk it over with Mrs. Little
+here.  I'm afraid I'm not the right sort for a servant.  Too fond of
+'the balmy,' and averse to the whole hog."  (The poor fellow was
+quite discouraged.)
+
+"The very man I want to soothe me at odd times: they rile me so with
+their suicidal folly.  Now, look here, old fellow, if you don't come
+to me, I'll give you a good hiding."
+
+"Oh! well, sooner than you should break the peace--.  Mrs. Little,
+I'd rather be with him at two guineas a week, than with any other
+master at three."
+
+When he had got this honest fellow to look after his interests,
+young Little gave more way than ever to his natural bent for
+invention, and he was often locked up for twelve hours at a stretch,
+in a room he called his studio.  Indeed, such was his ardor, that he
+sometimes left home after dinner, and came back to the works, and
+then the fitful fire of his forge might be seen, and the blows of
+his hammer heard, long after midnight.
+
+Dr. Amboyne encouraged him in this, and was, indeed, the only person
+admitted to his said studio.  There the Democritus of Hillsborough
+often sat and smoked his cigar, and watched the progress toward
+perfection of projected inventions great and small.
+
+One day the doctor called and asked Bayne whether Henry was in his
+studio.  Bayne said no; he thought he had seen him in the saw-
+grinders' hull.  "And that struck me; for it is not often his
+lordship condescends to go there now."
+
+"Let us see what 'his lordship' is at."
+
+They approached stealthily, and, looking through a window, saw the
+inventor standing with his arms folded, and his eyes bent on a
+grinder at his work: the man was pressing down a six-feet saw on a
+grindstone with all his might and Little was looking on, with a face
+compounded of pity, contempt, and lofty contemplation.
+
+"That is the game now, sir," whispered Bayne: "always in the clouds,
+or else above 'em.  A penny for your thoughts, sir!"
+
+Henry started, as men do who are roused from deep contemplation;
+however, he soon recovered himself, and, with a sort of rude wit of
+his own, he held out his hand for the penny.
+
+Amboyne fumbled in his pocket, and gave him a stamp.
+
+Little seized it, and delivered himself as follows: "My thoughts,
+gentlemen, were general and particular.  I was making a reflection
+how contented people are to go bungling on, doing a thing the wrong
+way, when the right way is obvious: and my particular observation
+was--that these long saws are ground in a way which offends the
+grammar of mechanics.  Here's a piece of steel six feet long, but
+not so wide as the grindstone:--what can be plainer than that such a
+strip ought to be ground lengthwise? then the whole saw would
+receive the grindstone in a few seconds.  Instead of that, on they
+go, year after year, grinding them obliquely, and with a violent
+exertion that horrifies a fellow like me, who goes in for economy of
+labor, and have done all my life.  Look at that fellow working.
+What a waste of muscle!  Now, if you will come to my studio, I think
+I can show you how long saws WILL be ground in the days of
+civilization."
+
+His eye, which had been turned inward during his reverie, dullish
+and somewhat fish-like, now sparkled like a hot coal, and he led the
+way eagerly.
+
+"Pray humor him, sir," said Bayne, compassionately.
+
+They followed him up a horrid stair, and entered his studio and a
+marvelous place it was: a forge on one side, a carpenter's bench and
+turning-lathe on the other and the floor so crowded with models,
+castings, and that profusion of new ideas in material form which
+housewives call litter, that the artist had been obliged to cut
+three little ramified paths, a foot wide, and so meander about the
+room, as struggles a wasp over spilt glue.
+
+He gave the doctor the one chair, and wriggled down a path after
+pencil and paper: he jumped with them, like a cat with a mouse, on
+to the carpenter's bench, and was soon absorbed in drawing.
+
+When he had drawn a bit, he tore up the paper, and said, "Let me
+think."
+
+"The request is unusual," said Dr. Amboyne; "however, if you will
+let us smoke, we will let you think."
+
+No reply from the inventor, whose eye was already turned inward, and
+fish-like again.
+
+Dr. Amboyne and Bayne smoked peaceably awhile.  But presently the
+inventor uttered a kind of shout.
+
+"Eureka," said the doctor calmly, and emitted a curly cloud.
+
+Little dashed at the paper, and soon produced a drawing.  It
+represented two grindstones set apparently to grind each other, a
+large one below, a small one above.
+
+"There--the large stone shall revolve rapidly, say from north to
+south; the small one from south to north: that is the idea which has
+just struck me, and completes the invention.  It is to be worked,
+not by one grinder, but two.  A stands south, and passes the saw
+northward between the two grindstones to B.  The stones must be hung
+so as just to allow the passage of the saw.  B draws it out, and
+reverses it, and passes it back to A.  Those two journeys of the saw
+will grind the whole length of it for a breath of two or three
+inches, and all in forty seconds.  Now do you see what I meant by
+the grammar of mechanics?  It was the false grammar of those
+duffers, grinding a long thing sideways instead of lengthways, that
+struck my mind first.  And now see what one gets to at last if one
+starts from grammar.  By this machine two men can easily grind as
+many big saws as twenty men could grind on single stones: and
+instead of all that heavy, coarse labor, and dirt, and splashing, my
+two men shall do the work as quietly and as easily as two printers,
+one feeding a machine with paper, and his mate drawing out the
+printed sheet at the other end."
+
+"By Jove," said Dr. Amboyne, "I believe this is a great idea.  What
+do you say, Mr. Bayne?"
+
+"Well, sir, a servant mustn't always say his mind."
+
+"Servant be hanged!" said Little.  "THAT for a friend who does not
+speak his mind."
+
+"Well, then, gentlemen, it is the most simple and beautiful
+contrivance I ever saw.  And there's only one thing to be done with
+it."
+
+"Patent it?"
+
+"No; hide it; lock it up in your own breast, and try and forget it.
+Your life won't be worth a week's purchase, if you set up that
+machine in Hillsborough."
+
+"Hillsborough is not all the world.  I can take it to some free
+country--America or--Russia; there's a fortune in it.  Stop; suppose
+I was to patent it at home and abroad, and then work it in the
+United States and the Canadas.  That would force the invention upon
+this country, by degrees."
+
+"Yes, and then, if you sell the English patent and insure the
+purchaser's life, you may turn a few thousands, and keep a whole
+skin yourself."
+
+Little assured Bayne he had no intention of running his head against
+the Saw-grinders' Union.  "We are very comfortable as it is, and I
+value my life more than I used to do."
+
+"I think I know why," said Dr. Amboyne.  "But, whatever you do,
+patent your invention.  Patent them all."
+
+Henry promised he would; but soon forgot his promise, and, having
+tasted blood, so to speak, was soon deep in a far more intricate
+puzzle, viz., how to grind large circular saws by machinery.  This
+problem, and his steel railway clip, which was to displace the
+present system of fastening down the rails, absorbed him so, that he
+became abstracted in the very streets, and did not see his friends
+when they passed.
+
+One day, when he was deeply engaged in his studio, Bayne tapped at
+the door, and asked to speak to him.
+
+"Well, what is it?" said the inventor, rather peevishly.
+
+"Oh, nothing," said Bayne, with a bitter air of mock resignation.
+"Only a cloud on the peaceful horizon; that is all.  A letter from
+Mary Anne."
+
+
+"SIR,--Four of your saws are behindhand with their contributions,
+and, being deaf to remonstrance, I am obliged to apply to you, to
+use your influence.
+
+"MARY ANNE."
+
+
+"Well," said Henry, "Mary Anne is in the right.  Confound their
+dishonesty: they take the immense advantages the Saw-grinders' Union
+gives them, yet they won't pay the weekly contribution, without
+which the Union can't exist.  Go and find out who they are, and blow
+them up."
+
+"What! me disturb the balmy?"
+
+"Bother the balmy!  I can't be worried with such trifles.  I'm
+inventing."
+
+"But, Mr. Little, would not the best way be for YOU just to stop it
+quietly and peaceably out of their pay, and send it to Grotait?"
+
+Little, after a moment's reflection, said he had no legal right to
+do that.  Besides, it was not his business to work the Saw-grinders'
+Union for Grotait.  "Who is this Mary Anne?"
+
+"The saw-grinders, to be sure."
+
+"What, all of them?  Poor Mary Anne!"
+
+He then inquired how he was to write back to her.
+
+"Oh, write under cover to Grotait.  He is Mary Anne, to all intents
+and purposes."
+
+"Well, write the jade a curt note, in both our names, and say we
+disapprove the conduct of the defaulters, and will signify our
+disapproval to them; but that is all we can do."
+
+This letter was written, and Bayne made it as oleaginous as language
+permits; and there the matter rested apparently.
+
+But, as usual, after the polite came the phonetic.  Next week Henry
+got a letter thus worded:--
+
+
+"MISTER LITL,--If them grinders of yores dosent send their money i
+shall com an' fech strings if the devil stans i' t' road.
+
+MOONRAKER."
+
+
+Mr. Little tossed this epistle contemptuously into the fire, and
+invented on.
+
+Two days after that he came to the works, and found the saw grinders
+standing in a group, with their hands in their pockets.
+
+"Well, lads, what's up?"
+
+"Mary Anne has been here."
+
+"And two pair of wheel-bands gone."
+
+"Well, men, you know whose fault it is."
+
+"Nay, but it is ---- hard my work should be stopped because another
+man is in arrears with trade.  What d'ye think to do, Governor? buy
+some more bands?"
+
+"Certainly not.  I won't pay for your fault.  It is a just claim,
+you know.  Settle it among yourselves."
+
+With this he retired to his studio.
+
+When the men saw he did not care a button whether his grindstones
+revolved or not, they soon brought the defaulters to book.  Bayne
+was sent upstairs, to beg Mr. Little to advance the trade
+contributions, and step the amount from the defaulters' wages.
+
+This being settled, Little and Bayne went to the "Cutlers' Arms,"
+and Bayne addressed the barmaid thus, "Can we see Mary Anne?"
+
+"He is shaving."
+
+"Well, when she is shaved, we shall be in the parlor, tell her."
+
+In a moment or two Grotait bustled in, wiping his face with a towel
+as he came, and welcomed his visitors cordially.  "Fine weather,
+gentlemen."
+
+Bayne cut that short.  "Mr. Grotait, we have lost our bands."
+
+"You surprise me."
+
+"And perhaps you can tell us how to get them back."
+
+"Experience teaches that they always come back when the men pay
+their arrears."
+
+"Well, it is agreed to stop the sum due, out of wages."
+
+"A very proper course."
+
+"What is it we have got to pay?"
+
+"How can I tell you without book?  Pray, Mr. Little, don't imagine
+that I set these matters agate.  All I do is to mediate afterward.
+I'll go and look at the contribution-book."
+
+He went out, and soon returned, and told them it was one sovereign
+contribution from each man, and five shillings each for Mary Anne.
+
+"What, for her services in rattening us?" said Little, dryly.
+
+"And her risk," suggested Grotait, in dulcet tones.
+
+Little paid the five pounds, and then asked Grotait for the bands.
+
+"Good heavens, Mr. Little, do you think I have got your bands?"
+
+"You must excuse Mr. Little, sir," said Bayne.  "He is a stranger,
+and doesn't know the comedy.  Perhaps you will oblige us with a note
+where we can find them."
+
+"Hum!" said Grotait, with the air of one suddenly illuminated.
+"What did I hear somebody say about these bands?  Hum!  Give me an
+hour or two to make inquiries."
+
+"Don't say an hour or two, sir, when the men have got to make up
+lost time.  We will give you a little grace; we will take a walk
+down street, and perhaps it will come to your recollection."
+
+"Hum!" said Grotait; and as that was clearly all they were to get
+out of him just then they left and took a turn.
+
+In half an hour they came back again, and sat down in the parlor.
+
+Grotait soon joined them.  "I've been thinking," said he, "what a
+pity it is we can't come to some friendly arrangement with
+intelligent masters, like Mr. Little, to deduct the natty money
+every week from the men's wages."
+
+"Excuse me," said Bayne, "we are not here for discussion.  We want
+our bands."
+
+"Do you doubt that you will get them, sir?  Did ever I break faith
+with master or man?"
+
+"No, no," said the pacific Bayne, alarmed at the sudden sternness of
+his tone.  "You are as square as a die--when you get it all your own
+way.  Why, Mr. Little, Cheetham's bands were taken one day, and,
+when he had made the men pay their arrears, he was directed where to
+find the bands; but, meantime, somebody out of trade had found them,
+and stolen them.  Down came bran-new bands to the wheel directly,
+and better than we had lost.  And my cousin Godby, that has a water-
+wheel, was rattened, by his scythe-blades being flung in the dam.
+He squared with Mary Anne, and then he got a letter to say where the
+blades were.  But one was missing.  He complained to Mr. Grotait
+here, and Mr. Grotait put his hand in his pocket directly, and paid
+the trade-price of the blade--three shillings, I think it was."
+
+"Yes," said Grotait; "'but,' I remember I said at the time, 'you
+must not construe this that I was any way connected with the
+rattening.'  But some are deaf to reason.  Hallo!"
+
+"What is the matter, sir?"
+
+"Why, what is that in the fender?  Your eyes are younger than mine."
+
+And Mr. Grotait put up his gold double eyeglass, and looked with
+marked surprise and curiosity, at a note that lay in the fender.
+
+Mr. Bayne had been present at similar comedies, and was not polite
+enough to indorse Mr. Grotait's surprise.  He said, coolly, "It will
+be the identical note we are waiting for."  He stooped down and took
+it out of the fender, and read it.
+
+
+"'To Mr. LITTLE, or MR. BAYNE.
+
+"'GENTLEMEN,--In the bottom hull turn up the horsing, and in the
+trough all the missing bands will be found.  Apologizing for the
+little interruption, it is satisfactory things are all arranged
+without damage, and hope all will go agreeably when the rough edge
+is worn off.  Trusting these nocturnal visits will be no longer
+necessary, I remain,
+
+"'THE SHY MAIDEN.'"
+
+
+As soon as he had obtained this information, Bayne bustled off; but
+Mary Anne detained Henry Little, to moralize.
+
+Said she, "This rattening for trade contributions is the result of
+bad and partial laws.  If A contracts with B, and breaks his
+contract, B has no need to ratten A: he can sue him.  But if A,
+being a workman, contracts with B and all the other letters, and
+breaks his contract, B and all the other letters have no legal
+remedy.  This bad and partial law, occurring in a country that has
+tasted impartial laws, revolts common sense and the consciences of
+men.  Whenever this sort of thing occurs in any civilized country,
+up starts that pioneer judge we call Judge Lynch; in other words,
+private men combine, and make their own laws, to cure the folly of
+legislatures.  And, mark me, if these irregular laws are unjust,
+they fail; if they are just, they stand.  Rattening could never have
+stood its ground so many years in Hillsborough, if it had not been
+just, and necessary to the place, under the partial and iniquitous
+laws of Great Britain."
+
+"And pray," inquired Little, "where is the justice of taking a
+master's gear because his paid workman is in your debt?"
+
+"And where is the justice of taking a lodger's goods in execution
+for the house-tenant's debt, which debt the said lodger is helping
+the said tenant to pay?  We must do the best we can.  No master is
+rattened for a workman's fault without several warnings.  But the
+masters will never co-operate with justice till their bands and
+screws go.  That wakes them up directly."
+
+"Well, Mr. Grotait, I never knew you worsted in an argument: and
+this nut is too hard for my teeth, so I'm off to my work.  Ratten me
+now and then for your own people's fault, if you are QUITE sure
+justice and public opinion demand it; but no more gunpowder,
+please."
+
+"Heaven forbid, Mr. Little.  Gunpowder!  I abhor it."
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+There came a delightful letter from Grace Carden, announcing her
+return on a certain evening, and hoping to see Henry next morning.
+
+He called accordingly, and was received with outstretched hands and
+sparkling eyes, and words that repaid him for her absence.
+
+After the first joyful burst, she inquired tenderly why he was so
+pale: had he been ill?
+
+"No."
+
+"No trouble nor anxiety, dear?"
+
+"A little, at first, till your sweet letters made me happy.  No; I
+did not even know that I was pale.  Overstudy, I suppose.  Inventing
+is hard work."
+
+"What are you inventing?"
+
+"All manner of things.  Machine to forge large axes; another to
+grind circular saws; a railway clip: but you don't care about such
+things."
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir.  I care about whatever interests you."
+
+"Well, these inventions interest me very much.  One way or other,
+they are roads to fortune; and you know why I desire fortune."
+
+"Ah, that I do.  But excuse me, you value independence more.  Oh, I
+respect you for it.  Only don't make yourself pale, or you will make
+me unhappy, and a foe to invention."
+
+On this Mr. Little made himself red instead of pale, and beamed with
+happiness.
+
+They spent a delightful hour together, and, even when they parted,
+their eyes lingered on each other.
+
+Soon after this the Cardens gave a dinner-party, and Grace asked if
+she might invite Mrs. Little and Mr. Little.
+
+"What, is he presentable?"
+
+"More than that," said Grace, coloring.  "They are both very
+superior to most of our Hillsborough friends."
+
+"Well, but did you not tell me he had quarreled with Mr. Raby?"
+
+"No, not quarreled.  Mr. Raby offered to make him his heir: but he
+chooses to be independent, and make his own fortune, that's all."
+
+"Well, if you think our old friend would not take it amiss, invite
+them by all means.  I remember her a lovely woman."
+
+So the Littles were invited; and the young ladies admired Mr. Little
+on the whole, but sneered at him a little for gazing on Miss Carden,
+as if she was a divinity: the secret, which escaped the father,
+girls of seventeen detected in a minute, and sat whispering over it
+in the drawing-room.
+
+After this invitation, Henry and his mother called, and then Grace
+called on Mrs. Little; and this was a great step for Henry, the more
+so as the ladies really took to each other.
+
+The course of true love was beginning to run smooth, when it was
+disturbed by Mr. Coventry.
+
+That gentleman's hopes had revived in London; Grace Carden had been
+very kind and friendly to him, and always in such good spirits, that
+he thought absence had cured her of Little, and his turn was come
+again.  The most experienced men sometimes mistake a woman in this
+way.  The real fact was that Grace, being happy herself, thanks to a
+daily letter from the man she adored, had not the heart to be unkind
+to another, whose only fault was loving her, and to whom she feared
+she had not behaved very well.  However, Mr. Coventry did mistake
+her.  He was detained in town by business, but he wrote Mr. Carden a
+charming letter, and proposed formally for his daughter's hand.
+
+Mr. Carden had seen the proposal coming this year and more; so he
+was not surprised; but he was gratified.  The letter was put into
+his hand while he was dressing for dinner.  Of course he did not
+open the subject before the servants: but, as soon as they had
+retired, he said, "Grace, I want your attention on a matter of
+importance."
+
+Grace stared a little, but said faintly, "Yes, papa," and all manner
+of vague maidenly misgivings crowded through her brain.
+
+"My child, you are my only one, and the joy of the house; and need I
+say I shall feel your loss bitterly whenever your time comes to
+leave me?"
+
+"Then I never will leave you," cried Grace, and came and wreathed
+her arms round his neck.
+
+He kissed her, and parting her hair, looked with parental fondness
+at her white brow, and her deep clear eyes.
+
+"You shall never leave me, for the worse," said he: "but you are
+sure to marry some day, and therefore it is my duty to look
+favorably on a downright good match.  Well, my dear, such a match
+offers itself.  I have a proposal for you."
+
+"I am sorry to hear it."
+
+"Wait till you hear who it is.  It is Mr. Coventry, of Bollinghope."
+
+Grace sighed, and looked very uncomfortable.
+
+"Why, what is the matter? you always used to like him."
+
+"So I do now; but not for a husband."
+
+"I see no one to whom I could resign you so willingly.  He is well
+born and connected, has a good estate, not too far from your poor
+father."
+
+"Dear papa!"
+
+"He speaks pure English: now these Hillsborough manufacturers, with
+their provincial twang, are hardly presentable in London society."
+
+"Dear papa, Mr. Coventry is an accomplished gentleman, who has done
+me the highest honor he can.  You must decline him very politely:
+but, between ourselves, I am a little angry with him, because he
+knows I do not love him; and I am afraid he has made this offer to
+YOU, thinking you might be tempted to constrain my affections: but
+you won't do that, my own papa, will you? you will not make your
+child unhappy, who loves you?"
+
+"No, no.  I will never let you make an imprudent match; but I won't
+force you into a good one."
+
+"And you know I shall never marry without your consent, papa.  But
+I'm only nineteen, and I don't want to be driven away to
+Bollinghope."
+
+"And I'm sure I don't want to drive you away anywhere.  Mine will be
+a dull, miserable home without you.  Only please tell me what to say
+to him."
+
+"Oh, I leave that to you.  I have often admired the way you soften
+your refusals.  'Le seigneur Jupiter sait dorer la pillule'--there,
+that's Moliere."
+
+"Well, I suppose I must say--"
+
+"Let me see what HE says first."
+
+She scanned the letter closely, to see whether there was any thing
+that could point to Henry Little.  But there was not a word to
+indicate he feared a rival, though the letter was any thing but
+presumptuous.
+
+Then Grace coaxed her father, and told him she feared her
+inexperience had made her indiscreet.  She had liked Mr. Coventry's
+conversation, and perhaps had, inadvertently, given him more
+encouragement than she intended: would he be a good, kind papa, and
+get her out of the scrape, as creditably as he could?  She relied on
+his superior wisdom.  So then he kissed her, and said he would do
+his best.
+
+He wrote a kind, smooth letter, gilding and double-gilding the pill.
+He said, amongst the rest, that there appeared to be no ground of
+refusal, except a strong disinclination to enter the wedded state.
+"I believe there is no one she likes as well as you; and, as for
+myself, I know no gentleman to whom I would so gladly confide my
+daughter's happiness," etc., etc.
+
+He handed this letter to his daughter to read, but she refused.  "I
+have implicit confidence in you," said she.
+
+Mr. Coventry acknowledged receipt of the letter, thanked Mr. Carden
+for the kind and feeling way in which he had inflicted the wound,
+and said that he had a verbal communication to make before he could
+quite drop the matter; would be down in about a fort-night.
+
+Soon after this Grace dined with Mrs. Little: and, the week after
+that, Henry contrived to meet her at a ball, and, after waiting
+patiently some time, he waltzed with her.
+
+This waltz was another era in their love.  It was an inspired whirl
+of two lovers, whose feet hardly felt the ground, and whose hearts
+bounded and thrilled, and their cheeks glowed, and their eyes shot
+fire; and when Grace was obliged to stop, because the others
+stopped, her elastic and tense frame turned supple and soft
+directly, and she still let her eyes linger on his, and her hand
+nestle in his a moment: this, and a faint sigh of pleasure and
+tenderness, revealed how sweet her partner was to her.
+
+Need I say the first waltz was not the last? and that evening they
+were more in love than ever, if possible.
+
+Mr. Coventry came down from London, and, late that evening, he and
+Mr. Carden met at the Club.
+
+Mr. Carden found him in an arm-chair, looking careworn and unhappy,
+and felt quite sorry for him.  He hardly knew what to say to him;
+but Coventry with his usual grace relieved him; he rose, and shook
+hands, and even pressed Mr. Carden's hand, and held it.
+
+Mr. Carden was so touched, that he pressed his hand in return, and
+said, "Courage! my poor fellow; the case is not desperate, you
+know."
+
+Mr. Coventry shook his head, and sat down.  Mr. Carden sat down
+beside him.
+
+"Why, Coventry, it is not as if there was another attachment."
+
+"There IS another attachment; at least I have too much reason to
+fear so.  But you shall judge for yourself.  I have long paid my
+respectful addresses to Miss Carden, and I may say without vanity
+that she used to distinguish me beyond her other admirers; I was not
+the only one who thought so; Mr. Raby has seen us together, and he
+asked me to meet her at Raby Hall.  There I became more particular
+in my attentions, and those attentions, sir, were well received."
+
+"But were they UNDERSTOOD? that is the question."
+
+"Understood and received, upon my honor."
+
+"Then she will marry you, soon or late: for I'm sure there is no
+other man.  Grace was never deceitful."
+
+"All women are deceitful."
+
+"Oh, come!"
+
+"Let me explain: all women, worthy of the name, are cowards; and
+cowardice drives them to deceit, even against their will.  Pray bear
+me to an end.  On the fifth of last December, I took Miss Carden to
+the top of Cairnhope hill.  I showed her Bollinghope in the valley,
+and asked her to be its mistress."
+
+"And what did she say?  Yes, or no?"
+
+"She made certain faint objections, such as a sweet, modest girl
+like her makes as a matter of course, and then she yielded."
+
+"What! consented to be your wife?"
+
+"Not in those very words; but she said she esteemed me, and she knew
+I loved her; and, when I asked her whether I might speak to you, she
+said 'Yes.'"
+
+"But that was as good as accepting you."
+
+"I am glad you agree with me.  You know, Mr. Carden, thousands have
+been accepted in that very form.  Well, sir, the next thing was we
+were caught in that cursed snow-storm."
+
+"Yes, she has told me all about that."
+
+"Not all, I suspect.  We got separated for a few minutes, and I
+found her in an old ruined church, where a sort of blacksmith was
+working at his forge.  I found her, sir, I might say almost in the
+blacksmith's arms.  I thought little of that at first: any man has a
+right to succor any woman in distress: but, sir, I discovered that
+Miss Carden and this man were acquaintances: and, by degrees, I
+found, to my horror, that he had a terrible power over her."
+
+"What do you mean, sir?  Do you intend to affront us?"
+
+"No.  And, if the truth gives you pain, pray remember it gives me
+agony.  However, I must tell you the man was not what he looked, a
+mere blacksmith; he is a sort of Proteus, who can take all manner of
+shapes: at the time I'm speaking of, he was a maker of carving
+tools.  Well, sir, you could hardly believe the effect of this
+accidental interview with that man: the next day, when I renewed my
+addresses, Miss Carden evaded me, and was as cold as she had been
+kind: she insisted on it she was not engaged to me, and said she
+would not marry anybody for two years; and this, I am sorry to say,
+was not her own idea, but this Little's; for I overheard him ask her
+to wait two years for him."
+
+"Little!  What, Raby's new nephew?"
+
+"That is the man."
+
+Mr. Carden was visibly discomposed by this communication.  He did
+not choose to tell Coventry how shocked he was at his own daughter's
+conduct; but, after a considerable pause, he said, "If what you have
+told me is the exact truth, I shall interpose parental authority,
+and she shall keep her engagement with you, in spite of all the
+Littles in the world."
+
+"Pray do not be harsh," said Coventry.
+
+"No, but I shall be firm."
+
+"Insanity in his family, for one thing," suggested Coventry,
+scarcely above a whisper.
+
+"That is true; his father committed suicide.  But really that
+consideration is not needed.  My daughter must keep her engagements,
+as I keep mine."
+
+With this understanding the friends parted.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+Grace happened to have a headache next morning, and did not come
+down to breakfast: but it was Saturday, and Mr. Carden always
+lunched at home on that day.  So did Grace, because it was one of
+Little's days.  This gave Mr. Carden the opportunity he wanted.
+When they were alone he fixed his eyes on his daughter, and said
+quietly, "What is your opinion of--a jilt?"
+
+"A heartless, abominable creature," replied Grace, as glibly as if
+she was repeating some familiar catechism.
+
+"Would you like to be called one?"
+
+"Oh, papa!"
+
+"Is there nobody who has the right to apply the term to you?"
+
+"I hope not."  (Red.)
+
+"You encouraged Mr. Coventry's addresses?"
+
+"I am afraid I did not discourage them, as I wish I had.  It is so
+hard to foresee every thing."
+
+"Pray do you remember the fifth day of last December?"
+
+"Can I ever forget it?"  (Redder.)
+
+"Is it true that Mr. Coventry proposed for you, that day?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you accepted him."
+
+"No; no.  Then he has told you so?  How ungenerous!  All I did was,
+I hesitated, and cried, and didn't say 'no,' downright--like a fool.
+Oh, papa, have pity on me, and save me."  And now she was pale.
+
+Mr. Carden's paternal heart was touched by this appeal, but he was
+determined to know the whole truth.  "You could love him, in time, I
+suppose?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because--"
+
+"Now tell me the truth.  Have you another attachment?"
+
+"Yes, dear papa."  (In a whisper and as red as fire.)
+
+"Somebody of whom you are not proud."
+
+"I AM proud of him.  He is Mr. Coventry's superior.  He is
+everybody's superior in everything in the world."
+
+"No, Grace, you can hardly be proud of your attachment; if you had
+been, you would not have hidden it all this time from your father."
+And Mr. Carden sighed.
+
+Grace burst out crying, and flung herself on her knees and clung,
+sobbing, to him.
+
+"There, there," said he, "I don't want to reproach you; but to
+advise you."
+
+"Oh, papa!  Take and kill me.  Do: I want to die."
+
+"Foolish child!  Be calm now; and let us talk sense."
+
+At this moment there was a peculiar ring at the door, a ring not
+violent, but vigorous.
+
+Grace started and looked terrified: "Papa!" said she, "say what you
+like to me, but do not affront HIM; for you might just as well take
+that knife and stab your daughter to the heart.  I love him so.
+Have pity on me."
+
+The servant announced "Mr. Little!"
+
+Grace started up, and stood with her hand gripping the chair; her
+cheek was pale, and her eyes glittered; she looked wild, and
+evidently strained up to defend her lover.
+
+All this did not escape Mr. Carden.  He said gently, "Show him into
+the library."  Then to Grace as soon as the servant had retired,
+"Come here, my child."
+
+She knelt at his knees again, and turned her imploring, streaming
+eyes up to him.
+
+"Is it really so serious as all this?"
+
+"Papa, words cannot tell you how I love.  But if you affront him,
+and he leaves me, you will see how I love him; you will know, by my
+grave-side, how I love him."
+
+"Then I suppose I must swallow my disappointment how I can."
+
+"It shall be no disappointment; he will do you honor and me too."
+
+"But he can't make a settlement on his wife, and no man shall marry
+my daughter till he can do that."
+
+"We can wait," said Grace, humbly.
+
+"Yes, wait--till you and your love are both worn out."
+
+"I shall wear out before my love."
+
+Mr. Carden looked at her, as she knelt before him, and his heart was
+very much softened.  "Will you listen to reason at all?" said he.
+
+"From you, I will, dear papa."  She added, swiftly, "and then you
+will listen to affection, will you not?"
+
+"Yes.  Promise me there shall be no formal engagement, and I will
+let him come now and then."
+
+This proposal, though not very pleasant, relieved Grace of such
+terrible fears, that she consented eagerly.
+
+Mr. Carden then kissed her, and rose, to go to young Little; but,
+before he had taken three steps, she caught him by the arm, and
+said, imploringly, "Pray remember while you are speaking to him that
+you would not have me to bestow on any man but for him; for he saved
+my life, and Mr. Coventry's too.  Mr. Coventry forgets that: but
+don't you: and, if you wound him, you wound me; he carries my heart
+in his bosom."
+
+Mr. Carden promised he would do his duty as kindly as possible; and
+with that Grace was obliged to content herself.
+
+When he opened the library door, young Little started up, his face
+irradiated with joy.  Mr. Carden smiled a little satirically, but he
+was not altogether untouched by the eloquent love for his daughter,
+thus showing itself in a very handsome and amiable face.  He said,
+"It is not the daughter this time, sir, it is only the father."
+
+Little colored up and looked very uneasy.
+
+"Mr. Little, I am told you pay your addresses to Miss Carden.  Is
+that so?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You have never given me any intimation."
+
+Little colored still more.  He replied, with some hesitation, "Why,
+sir, you see I was brought up amongst workmen, and they court the
+girl first, and make sure of her, before they trouble the parents;
+and, besides, it was not ripe for your eye yet."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I'm no match for Miss Carden.  But I hope to be, some day."
+
+"And she is to wait for you till then?"
+
+"She says she will."
+
+"Well, Mr. Little, this is a delicate matter; but you are a
+straightforward man, I see, and it is the best way.  Now I must do
+my duty as a parent, and I am afraid I shall not be able to do that
+without mortifying you a little; but believe me, it is not from any
+dislike or disrespect to you, but only because it IS my duty."
+
+"I am much obliged to you, sir; and I'll bear more from you than I
+would from any other man.  You are her father, and I hope you'll be
+mine one day."
+
+"Well, then, Mr. Little, I always thought my daughter would marry a
+gentleman in this neighborhood, who has paid her great attention for
+years, and is a very suitable match for her.  You are the cause of
+that match being broken off, and I am disappointed.  But although I
+am disappointed, I will not be harsh nor unreasonable to you.  All I
+say is this: my daughter shall never marry any man, nor engage
+herself to any man, who cannot make a proper settlement on her.  Can
+YOU make a proper settlement on her?"
+
+"Not at present," said Little, with a sigh.
+
+"Then I put it to you, as a man, is it fair of you to pay her open
+attentions, and compromise her?  You must not think me very
+mercenary; I am not the man to give my daughter to the highest
+bidder.  But there is a medium."
+
+"I understand you, sir, so far.  But what am I to do?  Am I to leave
+off loving, and hoping, and working, and inventing?  You might as
+well tell me to leave off living."
+
+"No, my poor boy; I don't say that, neither.  If it is really for
+her you work, and invent, and struggle with fortune so nobly as I
+know you do, persevere, and may God speed you.  But, meantime, be
+generous, and don't throw yourself in her way to compromise her."
+
+The young man was overpowered by the kindness and firmness of his
+senior, who was also Grace's father.  He said, in a choking voice,
+there was no self-denial he would not submit to, if it was
+understood that he might still love Grace, and might marry her as
+soon as he could make a proper settlement on her.
+
+Then Mr. Carden, on his part, went further than he had intended, and
+assented distinctly to all this, provided the delay was not
+unreasonable in point of time.  "I can't have her whole life
+wasted."
+
+"Give me two years: I'll win her or lose her in that time."  He then
+asked, piteously, if he might see her.
+
+"I am sorry to say No to that," was the reply; "but she has been
+already very much agitated, and I should be glad to spare her
+further emotion.  You need not doubt her attachment to you, nor my
+esteem.  You are a very worthy, honest young man, and your conduct
+does much to reconcile me to what I own is a disappointment."
+
+Having thus gilded the pill, Mr. Carden shook hands with Henry
+Little, and conducted him politely to the street door.
+
+The young man went away slowly; for he was disconsolate at not
+seeing Grace.
+
+But, when he got home, his stout Anglo-Saxon heart reacted, and he
+faced the situation.
+
+He went to his mother and told her what had passed.  She colored
+with indignation, but said nothing.
+
+"Well, mother, of course it might be better; but then it might be
+worse.  It's my own fault now if I lose her.  Cutlery won't do it in
+the time, but Invention will: so, from this hour, I'm a practical
+inventor, and nothing but death shall stop me."
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+Grace Carden ran to the window, and saw Henry Little go away slowly,
+and hanging his head.  This visible dejection in her manly lover
+made her heart rise to her throat, and she burst out sobbing and
+weeping with alarming violence.
+
+Mr. Carden found her in this state, and set himself to soothe her.
+He told her the understanding he had come to with Mr. Little, and
+begged her to be as reasonable and as patient as her lover was.  But
+the appeal was not successful.  "He came to see me," she cried, "and
+he has gone away without seeing me.  You have begun to break both
+our hearts, with your reason and your prudence.  One comfort, mine
+will break first; I have not his fortitude.  Oh, my poor Henry!  He
+has gone away, hanging his head, broken-hearted: that is what you
+have DONE for me.  After that, what are words?  Air--air--and you
+can't feed hungry hearts with air."
+
+"Well, my child, I am sorry now I did not bring him in here.  But I
+really did it for the best.  I wished to spare you further agitation."
+
+Agitation!"  And she opened her eyes with astonishment.  "Why, it is
+you who agitate me.  He would have soothed me in a moment.  One kind
+and hopeful word from him, one tender glance of his dear eye, one
+pressure of his dear hard hand, and I could have borne anything; but
+that drop of comfort you denied us both.  Oh, cruel! cruel!"
+
+"Calm yourself, Grace, and remember whom you are speaking to.  It
+was an error in judgment, perhaps--nothing more."
+
+"But, then, if you know nothing about love, and its soothing power,
+why meddle with it at all?"
+
+"Grace," said Mr. Carden, sadly, but firmly, "we poor parents are
+all prepared for this.  After many years of love and tenderness
+bestowed on our offspring, the day is sure to come when the young
+thing we have reared with so much care and tenderness will meet a
+person of her own age, a STRANGER; and, in a month or two, all our
+love, our care, our anxiety, our hopes, will be nothing in the
+balance.  This wound is in store for us all.  We foresee it; we
+receive it; we groan under it; we forgive it.  We go patiently on,
+and still give our ungrateful children the benefit of our love and
+our experience.  I have seen in my own family that horrible mixture,
+Gentility and Poverty.  In our class of life, poverty is not only
+poverty, it is misery, and meanness as well.  My income dies with
+me.  My daughter and her children shall not go back to the misery
+and meanness out of which I have struggled.  They shall be secured
+against it by law, before she marries, or she shall marry under her
+father's curse."
+
+Then Grace was frightened, and said she should never marry under her
+father's curse; but (with a fresh burst of weeping) what need was
+there to send Henry away without seeing her, and letting them
+comfort each other under this sudden affliction?  "Ah, I was too
+happy this morning," said the poor girl.  "I was singing before
+breakfast.  Jael always told me not to do that.  Oh! oh! oh!"
+
+Mr. Carden kept silence; but his fortitude was sorely tried.
+
+That day Grace pleaded headache, and did not appear to dinner.  Mr.
+Carden dined alone, and missed her bright face sadly.  He sent his
+love to her, and went off to the club, not very happy.  At the club
+he met Mr. Coventry, and told him frankly what he had done.  Mr.
+Coventry, to his surprise, thanked him warmly.  "She will be mine in
+two years," said he.  "Little will never be able to make a
+settlement on her."  This remark set Mr. Carden thinking.
+
+Grace watched the window day after day, but Henry never came nor
+passed.  She went a great deal more than usual into the town, in
+hopes of meeting him by the purest accident.  She longed to call on
+Mrs. Little, but feminine instinct withheld her; she divined that
+Mrs. Little must be deeply offended.
+
+She fretted for a sight of Henry, and for an explanation, in which
+she might clear herself, and show her love, without being in the
+least disobedient to her father.  Now all this was too subtle to be
+written.  So she fretted and pined for a meeting.
+
+While she was in this condition, and losing color every day, who
+should call one day--to reconnoiter, I suppose--but Mr. Coventry.
+
+Grace was lying on the sofa, languid and distraite, when he was
+announced.  She sat up directly, and her eye kindled.
+
+Mr. Coventry came in with his usual grace and cat-like step.  "Ah,
+Miss Carden!"
+
+Miss Carden rose majestically to her feet, made him a formal
+courtesy, and swept out of the room, without deigning him a word.
+She went to the study, and said, "Papa, here's a friend of yours--
+Mr. Coventry."
+
+"Dear me, I am very busy.  I wish you would amuse him for a few
+minutes till I have finished this letter."
+
+"Excuse me, papa; I cannot stay in the same room with Mr. Coventry."
+
+"Why not, pray?"
+
+"He is a dangerous man: he compromises one.  He offered me an
+engagement-ring, and I refused it; yet he made you believe we were
+engaged.  You have taken care I shall not be compromised with the
+man I love; and shall I be compromised with the man I don't care
+for?  No, thank you."
+
+"Very well, Grace," said Mr. Carden, coldly.
+
+Shortly after this Mr. Carden requested Dr. Amboyne to call; he
+received the doctor in his study, and told him that he was beginning
+to be uneasy about Grace; she was losing her appetite, her color,
+and her spirits.  Should he send her to the seaside?
+
+"The seaside!  I distrust conventional remedies.  Let me see the
+patient."
+
+He entered the room and found her coloring a figure she had drawn:
+it was a beautiful woman, with an anchor at her feet.  The door was
+open, and the doctor, entering softly, saw a tear fall on the work
+from a face so pale and worn with pining, that he could hardly
+repress a start; he did repress it though, for starts are
+unprofessional; he shook hands with her in his usual way.  "Sorry to
+hear you are indisposed, my dear Miss Grace."  He then examined her
+tongue, and felt her pulse; and then he sat down, right before her,
+and fixed his eyes on her.  "How long have you been unwell?"
+
+"I am not unwell that I know of," said Grace, a little sullenly.
+
+"One reason I ask, I have another patient, who has been attacked
+somewhat in the same way."
+
+Grace colored, and fixed a searching eye on the doctor.  "Do I know
+the lady?"
+
+"No.  For it happens to be a male patient."
+
+"Perhaps it is going about."
+
+"Possibly; this is the age of competition.  Still it is hard you
+can't have a little malady of this kind all to yourself; don't you
+think so?"
+
+At this Grace laughed hysterically.
+
+"Come, none of that before me," said the doctor sternly.
+
+She stopped directly, frightened.  The doctor smiled.
+
+Mr. Carden peeped in from his study.  "When you have done with her,
+come and prescribe for me.  I am a little out of sorts too."  With
+this, he retired.  "That means you are to go and tell him what is
+the matter with me," said Grace bitterly.
+
+"Is his curiosity unjustifiable?"
+
+"Oh no.  Poor papa!"  Then she asked him dryly if he knew what was
+the matter with her.
+
+"I think I do."
+
+"Then cure me."  This with haughty incredulity.
+
+"I'll try; and a man can but do his best.  I'll tell you one thing:
+if I can't cure you, no doctor in the world can: see how modest I
+am.  Now for papa."
+
+She let him go to the very door: and then a meek little timid voice
+said, in a scarce audible murmur, "Doctor!"
+
+Now when this meek murmur issued from a young lady who had, up to
+this period of the interview, been rather cold and cutting, the
+sagacious doctor smiled.  "My dear?" said he, in a very gentle
+voice.
+
+"Doctor! about your other patient!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Is he as bad as I am?  For indeed, my dear friend, I feel--my food
+has no taste--life itself no savor.  I used to go singing, now I sit
+sighing.  Is he as bad as I am?"
+
+"I'll tell you the truth; his malady is as strong as yours; but he
+has the great advantage of being a man; and, again, of being a man
+of brains.  He is a worker, and an inventor; and now, instead of
+succumbing tamely to his disorder, he is working double tides, and
+inventing with all his might, in order to remove an obstacle between
+him and one he loves with all his manly soul.  A contest so noble
+and so perpetual sustains and fortifies the mind.  He is
+indomitable; only, at times, his heart of steel will soften, and
+then he has fits of deep dejection and depression, which I mourn to
+see; for his manly virtues, and his likeness to one I loved deeply
+in my youth, have made him dear to me."
+
+During this Grace turned her head away, and, ere the doctor ended,
+her tears were flowing freely; for to her, being a woman, this
+portrait of a male struggle with sorrow was far more touching than
+any description of feminine and unresisted grief could be: and, when
+the doctor said he loved his patient, she stole her little hand into
+his in a way to melt Old Nick, if he is a male.  Ladies, forgive the
+unchivalrous doubt.
+
+"Doctor," said she, affecting all of a sudden a little air of small
+sprightliness, very small, "now, do--you--think--it would do your
+patient--the least good in the world--if you were to take him this?"
+
+She handed him her work, and then she blushed divinely.
+
+"Why, it is a figure of Hope."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I think it might do him a great deal of good."
+
+"You could say I painted it for him."
+
+"So I will.  That will do him no harm neither.  Shall I say I found
+you crying over it?"
+
+"Oh, no! no!  That would make him cry too, perhaps."
+
+"Ah, I forgot that.  Grace, you are an angel."
+
+"Ah, no.  But you can tell him I am--if you think so.  That will do
+him no great harm--will it?"
+
+"Not an atom to him; but it will subject me to a pinch for stale
+news.  There, give me my patient's picture, and let me go."
+
+She kissed the little picture half-furtively, and gave it him, and
+let him go; only, as he went out at the door, she murmured, "Come
+often."
+
+Now, when this artful doctor got outside the door, his face became
+grave all of a sudden, for he had seen enough to give him a degree
+of anxiety he had not betrayed to his interesting patient herself.
+
+"Well, doctor?" said Mr. Carden, affecting more cheerfulness than he
+felt.  "Nothing there beyond your skill, I suppose?"
+
+"Her health is declining rapidly.  Pale, hollow-eyed, listless,
+languid--not the same girl."
+
+"Is it bodily do you think, or only mental?"
+
+"Mental as to its cause; but bodily in the result.  The two things
+are connected in all of us, and very closely in Miss Carden.  Her
+organization is fine, and, therefore, subtle.  She is tuned in a
+high key.  Her sensibility is great; and tough folk, like you and
+me, must begin by putting ourselves in her place before we prescribe
+for her, otherwise our harsh hands may crush a beautiful, but too
+tender, flower."
+
+"Good heavens!" said Carden, beginning to be seriously alarmed, "do
+you mean to say you think, if this goes on, she will be in any
+danger?"
+
+"Why, if it were to go on at the same rate, it would be very
+serious.  She must have lost a stone in weight already."
+
+"What, my child! my sweet Grace!  Is it possible her life--"
+
+"And do you think your daughter is not mortal like other people?
+The young girls that are carried past your door to the churchyard
+one after another, had they no fathers?"
+
+At this blunt speech the father trembled from head to foot.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+
+"Doctor," said Mr. Carden, "you are an old friend, and a discreet
+man; I will confide the truth to you."
+
+"You may save yourself the trouble.  I have watched the whole
+progress of this amour up to the moment when you gave them the
+advantage of your paternal wisdom, and made them both miserable."
+
+"It is very unreasonable of them, to be miserable."
+
+"Oh, lovers parted could never yet make themselves happy with
+reason."
+
+"But why do you say parted?  All I said was, 'No engagement till you
+can make a settlement: and don't compromise her in the meanwhile.'
+I did not mean to interdict occasional visits."
+
+"Then why not say so?  That is so like people.  You made your
+unfavorable stipulation plain enough; but the little bit of comfort,
+you left that in doubt.  This comes of not putting yourself in his
+place.  I have had a talk with him about it, and he thinks he is not
+to show his face here till he is rich enough to purchase your
+daughter of you."
+
+"But I tell you he has misunderstood me."
+
+"Then write to him and say so."
+
+"No, no; you take an opportunity to let him know he has really
+rather overrated my severity, and that I trust to his honor, and do
+not object to a visit--say once a week."
+
+"It is a commission I will undertake with pleasure."
+
+"And do you really think that will do her bodily health any good?"
+
+Before Doctor Amboyne could reply, the piano was suddenly touched in
+the next room, and a sweet voice began to sing a cheerful melody.
+"Hush!" said Doctor Amboyne.  "Surely I know that tune.  Yes, I have
+heard THE OTHER whistle it."
+
+"She has not sung for ever so long," remarked Mr. Carden.
+
+"And I think I can tell you why she is singing now: look at this
+picture of Hope; I just told her I had a male patient afflicted with
+her complaint, and the quick-witted creature asked me directly if I
+thought this picture would do him any good.  I said yes, and I'd
+take it to him."
+
+"Come, doctor, that couldn't make her SING."
+
+"Why not?  Heart can speak to heart, even by a flower or a picture.
+The separation was complete; sending this symbol has broken it a
+little, and so she is singing.  This is a lesson for us ruder and
+less subtle spirits.  Now mind, thwarted love seldom kills a busy
+man; but it often kills an idle woman, and your daughter is an idle
+woman.  He is an iron pot, she is a china vase.  Please don't hit
+them too hard with the hammer of paternal wisdom, or you will dent
+my iron pot, and break your china vase to atoms."
+
+Having administered this warning, Dr. Amboyne went straight from
+Woodbine Villa to Little's factory; but Little was still in London;
+he had gone there to take out patents.  Bayne promised to send the
+doctor a line immediately on his return.  Nevertheless, a fortnight
+elapsed, and then Dr. Amboyne received a short, mysterious line to
+tell him Mr. Little had come home, and would be all the better of a
+visit.  On receipt of this the doctor went at once to the works, and
+found young Little lying on his carpenter's bench in a sort of
+gloomy apathy.  "Hallo!" said the doctor, in his cheerful way, "why
+what's the matter now?"
+
+"I'm fairly crushed," groaned the inventor.
+
+"And what has crushed you?"
+
+"The roundabout swindle."
+
+"There, now, he invents words as well as things.  Come, tell me all
+about the roundabout swindle."
+
+"No, no; I haven't the heart left to go through it all again, even
+in words.  One would think an inventor was the enemy of the human
+race.  Yes, I will tell you; the sight of you has revived me a bit;
+it always does.  Well, then, you know I am driven to invention now;
+it is my only chance; and, ever since Mr. Carden spoke to me, I have
+given my whole soul to the best way of saw-grinding by machinery.
+The circular saws beat me for a while, but I mastered them; see,
+there's the model.  I'm going to burn it this very afternoon.  Well,
+a month ago, I took the other model--the long-saw grinder--up to
+London, to patent the invention, as you advised me.  I thought I'd
+just have to exhibit the model, and lodge the description in some
+Government office, and pay a fee, of course, to some swell, and so
+be quit of it.  Lord bless you--first I had to lay the specification
+before the Court of Chancery, and write a petition to the Queen, and
+pay, and, what is worse, wait.  When I had paid and waited, I got my
+petition signed, not by the Queen, but by some go-between, and then
+I must take it to the Attorney-general.  He made me pay--and wait.
+When I had waited ever so long, I was sent back to where I had come
+from--the Home Office.  But even then I could not get to the Queen.
+Another of her go-betweens nailed me, and made me pay, and wait:
+these locusts steal your time as well as your money.  At last, a
+copy of a copy of a copy of my patent got to the Queen, and she
+signed it like a lady at once, and I got it back.  Then I thought I
+was all right.  Not a bit of it: the Queen's signature wasn't good
+till another of her go-betweens had signed it.  I think it was the
+Home Secretary this time.  This go-between bled me again, and sent
+me with my hard-earned signatures to the Patent Office.  There they
+drafted, and copied, and docketed, and robbed me of more time and
+money.  And, when all was done, I had to take the document back to
+one of the old go-betweens that I hoped I had worn out, the
+Attorney-general.  He signed, and bled me out of some more money.
+From him to the other go-betweens at Whitehall.  From them to the
+Stamp Office, if I remember right, and oh Lord, didn't I fall among
+leeches there?  They drafted, they copied, they engrossed, they
+juggled me out of time and money without end.  The first leech was
+called the Lord Keeper of the Seal; the second leech was called the
+Lord Chancellor; it was some go-between that acted in his name; the
+third leech was the Clerk of the Patents.  They demanded more
+copies, and then employed more go-betweens to charge ten times the
+value of a copy, and nailed the balance, no doubt.  'Stand and
+deliver thirty pounds for this stamp.'  'Stand and deliver to me
+that call myself the Chancellor's purse-bearer--and there's no such
+creature--two guineas.'  'Stand and deliver seven, thirteen, to the
+clerk of the Hanaper'--and there's no such thing as a Hanaper.
+'Stand and deliver three, five,' to a go-between that calls himself
+the Lord Chancellor again, and isn't.  'Stand and deliver six,
+naught, to a go-between that acts for the deputy, that ought to put
+a bit of sealing-wax on the patent, but hasn't the brains to do it
+himself, so you must pay ME a fancy price for doing it, and then I
+won't do it; it will be done by a clerk at twenty-five shillings a
+week.'  And, all this time, mind you, no disposition to soften all
+this official peculation by civility; no misgiving that the next
+wave of civilization may sweep nil these go-betweens and leeches out
+of the path of progress; no, the deputy-vice-go-betweens all
+scowled, as well as swindled: they broke my heart so, often I sat
+down in their antechambers and the scalding tears ran down my
+cheeks, at being pillaged of my time as well as my money, and
+treated like a criminal--for what?  For being, in my small way, a
+national benefactor."
+
+"Ay," said the doctor, "you had committed the crime of brains; and
+the worse crime of declining to be starved in return for them.  I
+don't rebel against the fees so much: their only fault is that they
+are too heavy, since the monopoly they profess to secure is short-
+lived, and yet not very secure; the Lord Chancellor, as a judge, has
+often to upset the patent which he has sold in another character.
+But that system of go-betweens, and deputy-go-betweens, and deputy-
+lieutenant-go-betweens and nobody doing his own business in matters
+of State, it really is a national curse, and a great blot upon the
+national intellect.  It is a disease; so let us name it.  We doctors
+are great at naming diseases; greater than at curing them.
+
+
+     "'Let us call it VICARIA,
+       This English malaria.'
+
+
+Of this Vicaria, the loss of time and money you have suffered is
+only one of the fruits, I think."
+
+"All I know is, they made my life hell for more than a month; and if
+I have ever the misfortune to invent any thing more, I'll keep it to
+myself.  I'll hide it, like any other crime.  But no; I never will
+invent another thing: never, never."
+
+"Stuff!  Methinks I hear a duck abjure natation.  You can't help
+inventing."
+
+"I will help it.  What, do you think I'll be such an ass as to have
+Brains in a country where Brains are a crime?  Doctor, I'm in
+despair."
+
+"Then it is time to cast your eyes over this little picture."
+
+The inventor turned the little picture listlessly about.  "It is a
+woman, with an anchor.  It's a figure of Hope."
+
+"Beautifully painted, is it not?"
+
+"The tints are well laid on: but, if you'll excuse me, it is rather
+flat."  He laid the picture down, and turned away from it.  "Ah,
+Hope, my lass, you've come to the wrong shop."
+
+"Not she.  She was painted expressly for you, and by a very
+beautiful girl."
+
+"Oh, doctor, not by--"
+
+"Yes; she sends it you."
+
+"Ah!"  And he caught Hope up, and began to devour her with kisses,
+and his eyes sparkled finely.
+
+"I have some good news, too, for you.  Mr. Carden tells me he never
+intended to separate you entirely from his daughter.  If you can be
+moderate, discreet, old before your time, etc., and come only about
+once a week, and not compromise her publicly, you will be as welcome
+as ever."
+
+"That IS good news, indeed.  I'll go there this very day; and I'll
+patent the circular saw."
+
+"There's a non-sequitur for you!"
+
+"Nothing of the kind, sir.  Why, even the Queen's go-betweens will
+never daunt me, now I can go and drink love and courage direct from
+HER eyes; and nothing can chill nor discourage me now.  I'll light
+my forge again and go to work, and make a few sets of carving-tools,
+and that will pay the go-betweens for patenting my circular-saw
+grinder.  But first I'll put on my coat and go to heaven."
+
+"Had you not better postpone that till the end of your brilliant
+career as an inventor and a lover?"
+
+"No; I thirst for heaven, and I'll drink it."  So he made his
+toilet, thanked and blessed the good doctor, and off to Woodbine
+Villa.
+
+Grace Carden saw him coming, and opened the door to him herself, red
+as scarlet, and her eyes swimming.  She scarcely made an effort to
+contain herself by this time, and when she got him into the drawing-
+room all to herself, she cried, for joy and tenderness, on his
+shoulder; and, it cost him a gulp or two, I can tell you: and they
+sat hand in hand, and were never tired of gazing at each other; and
+the hours flew by unheeded.  All their trouble was as though it had
+never been.  Love brightened the present, the future, and even the
+past.  He did not tell Grace one word of what he had suffered from
+Vicaria--I thank thee, doctor, for teaching me that word--it had
+lost all interest to him.  Love and happiness had annihilated its
+true character--like the afternoon sun gilding a far-off pig-sty.
+He did mention the subject, however, but it was in these terms:
+"And, dearest, I'm hard at work inventing, and I patent all my
+inventions; so I hope to satisfy your father before two years."
+
+And Grace said, "Yes; but don't overwork your poor brain and worry
+yourself.  I am yours in heart, and that is something, I hope.  I
+know it is to me; I wouldn't change with any wife in Christendom."
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+
+At the end of two months the situation of affairs was as follows:
+
+Grace Carden received a visit every week from Henry, and met him now
+and then at other houses: she recovered her health and spirits, and,
+being of a patient sex, was quite contented, and even happy.
+Frederick Coventry visited her often, and she received his visits
+quite graciously, now that the man she loved was no longer driven
+from her.  She even pitied him, and was kind to him and had
+misgivings that she had used him ill.  This feeling he fostered, by
+a tender, dejected, and inoffensive manner.  Boiling with rage
+inside, this consummate actor had the art to feign resignation;
+whereas, in reality, he was secretly watching for an opportunity to
+injure his rival.  But no such opportunity came.
+
+Little, in humble imitation of his sovereign, had employed a go-
+between to employ a go-between, to deal with the State go-betweens,
+and deputy-go-betweens, that hampered the purchase--the word "grant"
+is out of place, bleeding is no boon--of a patent from the crown,
+and by this means he had done, in sixty days, what a true inventor
+will do in twenty-four hours, whenever the various metallic ages
+shall be succeeded by the age of reason; he had secured his two saw-
+grinding inventions, by patent, in Great Britain, the Canadas, and
+the United States of America.  He had another invention perfected;
+it was for forging axes and hatchets by machinery: but this he did
+not patent: he hoped to find his remuneration in the prior use of it
+for a few months.  Mere priority is sometimes a great advantage in
+this class of invention, and there are no fees to pay for it nor
+deputy-lieutenant-vice-go-betweens' antechambers for genius to cool
+its heels and heart in.
+
+But one thing soon became evident.  He could not work his inventions
+without a much larger capital.
+
+Dr. Amboyne and he put their heads together over this difficulty,
+and the doctor advised him in a more erudite style than usual.
+
+"True invention," said he, "whether literary or mechanical, is the
+highest and hardest effort of the mind.  It is an operation so
+absorbing that it often weakens those pettier talents which make
+what we call the clever man.  Therefore the inventor should ally
+himself with some person of talent and energy, but no invention.
+Thus supported, he can have his fits of abstraction, his headaches,
+his heartaches, his exultations, his depressions, and no harm done;
+his dogged associate will plow steadily on all the time.  So, after
+all, your requiring capital is no great misfortune; you must look
+out for a working capitalist.  No sleeping partner will serve your
+turn; what you want is a good rich, vulgar, energetic man, the
+pachydermatouser the better."
+
+Henry acted on this advice, and went to London in search of a
+moneyed partner.  Oh, then it was he learned--
+
+
+     "The hell it is in suing long to bide."
+
+
+He found capitalists particularly averse to speculate in a patent.
+It took him many days to find out what moneyed men were open to that
+sort of thing at all; and, when he got to them, they were cold.
+
+They had all been recently bitten by harebrained inventors.
+
+Then he represented that it was a matter of judgment, and offered to
+prove by figures that his saw-grinding machines must return three
+hundred per cent.  These he applied to would not take the trouble to
+study his figures.  In another words, he came at the wrong time.
+And the wrong time is as bad as the wrong thing, or worse.
+
+Take a note of that, please: and then forget it.
+
+At last he gave up London in despair, and started for Birmingham.
+
+The train stepped at Tring, and, as it was going on again, a man ran
+toward the third-class carriage Little was seated in.  One of the
+servants of the company tried to stop him, very properly.  He
+struggled with that official, and eventually shook him off.
+Meantime the train was accelerating its pace.  In spite of that,
+this personage made a run and a bound, and, half leaping, half
+scrambling, got his head and shoulders over the door, and there
+oscillated, till Little grabbed him with both hands, and drew him
+powerfully in, and admonished him.  "That is a foolhardy trick, sir,
+begging your pardon."
+
+"Young man," panted the invader, "do you know who you're a-speaking
+to?"
+
+"No.  The Emperor of China?"
+
+"No such trash; it's Ben Bolt, a man that's bad to beat."
+
+"Well, you'll get beat some day, if you go jumping in and out of
+trains in motion."
+
+"A many have been killed that way," suggested a huge woman in the
+corner with the meekest and most timid voice imaginable.
+
+Mr. Bolt eyed the speaker with a humorous voice.  "Well, if I'm ever
+killed that way, I'll send you a letter by the post.  Got a
+sweetheart, ma'am?"
+
+"I've got a good husband, sir," said she, with mild dignity, and
+pointed to a thin, sour personage opposite, with his nose in a
+newspaper.  Deep in some public question, he ignored this little
+private inquiry.
+
+"That's unlucky," said Bolt, "for here am I, just landed from
+Victoria, and money in both pockets.  And where do you think I am
+going now? to Chester, to see my father and mother, and show them I
+was right after all.  They wanted me to go to school; I wouldn't.
+Leathered me; I howled, but wouldn't spell; I was always bad to
+beat.  Next thing was, they wanted to make a tanner of me.  I
+wouldn't.  'Give me fifty pounds and let me try the world,' says I.
+THEY wouldn't.  We quarreled.  My uncle interfered one day, and gave
+me fifty pounds.  'Go to the devil,' said he, 'if you like; so as
+you don't come back.'  I went to Sydney, and doubled my fifty; got a
+sheep-run, and turned my hundred into a thousand.  Then they found
+gold, and that brought up a dozen ways of making money, all of 'em
+better than digging.  Why, ma'am, I made ten thousand pounds by
+selling the beastliest lemonade you ever tasted for gold-dust at the
+mines.  That was a good swop, wasn't it?  So now I'm come home to
+see if I can stand the Old Country and its ways; and I'm going to
+see the old folk.  I haven't heard a word about them this twenty
+years."
+
+"Oh, dear, sir," said the meek woman, "twenty years is a long time.
+I hope you won't find them dead an' buried."
+
+"Don't say that; don't say that!"  And the tough, rough man showed a
+grain of feeling.  He soon recovered himself, though, and said more
+obstreperously than ever, "If they are, I disown 'em.  None of your
+faint-hearted people for me.  I despise a chap that gives in before
+eighty.  I'm Ben Bolt, that is bad to beat.  Death himself isn't
+going to bowl me out till I've had my innings."
+
+"La, sir; pray don't talk so, or you'll anger them above, and, ten
+to one, upset the train."
+
+"That's one for me, and two for yourself, ma'am."
+
+"Yes, sir," said the mild soul.  "I have got my husband with me, and
+you are only a bachelor, sir."
+
+"How d'ye know that?"
+
+"I think you'd ha' been softened down a bit, if you'd ever had a
+good wife."
+
+"Oh, it is because I speak loud.  That is with bawling to my
+shepherds half a mile off.  Why, if I'm loud, I'm civil.  Now, young
+man, what is YOUR trouble?"
+
+Henry started from his reverie, and looked astonished.
+
+"Out with it," shouted Mr. Bolt; "don't sit grizzling there.  What
+with this lady's husband, dead and buried in that there newspaper,
+and you, that sets brooding like a hen over one egg, it's a Quaker's
+meeting, or nearly.  If you've been and murdered anybody, tell us
+all about it.  Once off your mind, you'll be more sociable."
+
+"A man's thoughts are his own, Mr. Bolt.  I'm not so fond of talking
+about myself as you seem to be."
+
+"Oh, I can talk, or I can listen.  But you won't do neither.  Pretty
+company YOU are, a-hatching of your egg."
+
+"Well, sir," said the meek woman to Henry, "the rough gentleman he
+is right.  If you are in trouble, the best way is to let your tongue
+put it off your heart."
+
+"I'm sure you are very kind," said Henry, "but really my trouble is
+one of those out-of-the-way things that do not interest people.
+However, the long and the short is, I'm an inventor.  I have
+invented several things, and kept them dark, and they have paid me.
+I live at Hillsborough.  But now I have found a way of grinding long
+saws and circular saws by machinery, at a saving of five hundred per
+cent labor.  That saving of labor represents an enormous profit--a
+large fortune; so I have patented the invention at my own expense.
+But I can't work it without a capitalist.  Well, I have ransacked
+London, and all the moneyed men shy me.  The fools will go into
+railways, and bubbles, and a lot of things that are blind chance,
+but they won't even study my drawings and figures, and I made it
+clear enough too."
+
+"I'm not of their mind then," said Bolt.  "My rule is never to let
+another man work my money.  No railway shares nor gold mines for Ben
+Bolt.  My money goes with me, and I goes with my money."
+
+"Then you are a man of sense; and I only wish you had money enough
+to go into this with me."
+
+"How do you know how much money I've got?  You show me how to turn
+twenty thousand into forty thousand, or forty thousand into eighty
+thousand, and I'll soon find the money."
+
+"Oh, I could show you how to turn fifteen thousand into fifty
+thousand."  He then unlocked his black bag, and showed Bolt some
+drawings that represented the grinders by hand at work on long saws
+and circular saws.  "This," said he, "is the present system."  He
+then pointed out its defects.  "And this," said he, "is what I
+propose to substitute."  Then he showed him drawings of his machines
+at work.  "And these figures represent the saving in labor.  Now, in
+this branch of cutlery, the labor is the manufacturer's main
+expense.  Make ten men grind what fifty used, you put forty
+workmen's wages in your pocket."
+
+"That's tall talk."
+
+"Not an inch taller than the truth."
+
+Mr. Bolt studied the drawings, and, from obstreperous, became quite
+quiet and absorbed.  Presently he asked Henry to change places with
+him; and, on this being complied with, he asked the meek woman to
+read him Henry's figures, slowly.  She stared, but complied.  Mr.
+Bolt pondered the figures, and examined the drawings again.  He then
+put a number of questions to Henry, some of them very shrewd; and,
+at last, got so interested in the affair that he would talk of
+nothing else.
+
+As the train slackened for Birmingham, he said to Henry, "I'm no
+great scholar; I like to see things in the body.  On we go to
+Hillsborough."
+
+"But I want to talk to a capitalist or two at Birmingham."
+
+"That is not fair; I've got the refusal."
+
+"The deuce you have!"
+
+"Yes, I've gone into it with you; and the others wouldn't listen.
+Said so yourself."
+
+"Well, but, Mr. Bolt, are you really in earnest?  Surely this is
+quite out of your line?"
+
+"How can it be out of my line if it pays?  I've bought and sold
+sheep, and wool, and land, and water, and houses, and tents, and old
+clothes, and coffee, and tobacco, and cabs.  And swopped--my eye,
+how I have swopped!  I've swopped a housemaid under articles for a
+pew in the church, and a milch cow for a whale that wasn't even
+killed yet; I paid for the chance.  I'm at all in the ring, and
+devilish bad to beat.  Here goes--high, low, Jack, and the game."
+
+"Did you ever deal in small beer?" asked Henry, satirically.
+
+"No," said Bolt, innocently.  "But I would in a minute if I saw
+clear to the nimble shilling.  Well, will you come on to
+Hillsborough and settle this?  I've got the refusal for twenty-four
+hours, I consider."
+
+"Oh, if you think so, I will go on to Hillsborough.  But you said
+you were going to see your parents, after twenty years' absence and
+silence."
+
+"So I am; but they can keep; what signifies a day or two more after
+twenty years?"  He added, rather severely, as one whose superior age
+entitled him to play the monitor, "Young man, I never make a toil of
+a pleasure."
+
+"No more do I.  But how does that apply to visiting your parents?"
+
+"If I was to neglect business to gratify my feelings, I should be
+grizzling all the time; and wouldn't that be making a toil of a
+pleasure?"
+
+Henry could only grin in reply to this beautiful piece of reasoning;
+and that same afternoon the pair were in Hillsborough, and Mr. Bolt,
+under Henry's guidance, inspected the grinding of heavy saws, both
+long and circular.  He noted, at Henry's request, the heavy, dirty
+labor.  He then mounted to the studio, and there Henry lectured on
+his models, and showed them working.  Bolt took it all in, his eye
+flashed, and then he put on, for the first time, the coldness of the
+practiced dealer.  "It would take a good deal of money to work this
+properly," said he, shaking his head.
+
+"It has taken a good deal of brains to invent it."
+
+"No doubt, no doubt.  Well, if you want me to join you, it must be
+on suitable terms.  Money is tight."
+
+"Well, propose your own terms."
+
+"That's not my way.  I'll think it over before I put my hand to
+paper.  Give me till to-morrow."
+
+"Certainly."
+
+On this Mr. Bolt went off as if he had been shot.
+
+He returned next day, and laid before Henry an agreement drawn by
+the sharpest attorney in Hillsborough, and written in a clerk's
+hand.  "There," said he, briskly, "you sign that, and I'll make my
+mark, and at it we go."
+
+"Stop a bit," said Henry.  "You've been to a lawyer, have you?  Then
+I must go to one, too; fair play's a jewel."
+
+Bolt looked disappointed; but the next moment he affected
+cheerfulness, and said, "That is fair.  Take it to your lawyer
+directly."
+
+"I will," said Henry; but, instead of a lawyer, he took it to his
+friend Dr. Amboyne, told him all about Ben Bolt, and begged his
+advice on the agreement.  "Ought he to have the lion's share like
+this?"
+
+"The moneyed man generally takes that.  No commodity is sold so far
+beyond its value as money.  Let me read it."
+
+The purport of the agreement was as follows:--New premises to be
+built by Bolt, a portion of the building to be constructed so that
+it could be easily watched night and day, and in that part the
+patent saw-grinding machines to be worked.  The expenses of this
+building to be paid off by degrees out of the gross receipts, and
+meanwhile Mr. Bolt was to receive five per cent. interest for his
+outlay and two-thirds of the profits, if any.  Mr. Little to dispose
+of his present factory, and confine his patents to the joint
+operation.
+
+Dr. Amboyne, on mature consideration, advised Little to submit to
+all the conditions, except the clause confining his operations and
+his patents.  They just drew their pen through that clause, and sent
+the amended agreement to Bolt's hotel.  He demurred to the
+amendment; but Henry stood firm, and proposed a conference of four.
+This took place at Dr. Amboyne's house, and at last the agreement
+was thus modified: the use of the patents in Hillsborough to be
+confined to the firm of Bolt and Little: but Little to be free to
+sell them, or work them in any other town, and also free, in
+Hillsborough, to grind saws by hand, or do any other established
+operation of cutlery.
+
+The parties signed; and Bolt went to work in earnest.  With all his
+resolution, he did not lack prudence.  He went into the suburbs for
+his site and bought a large piece of ground.  He advertised for
+contracts and plans, and brought them all to Henry, and profited by
+his practical remarks.
+
+He warned the builders it must be a fortress, as well as a factory:
+but, at Henry's particular request, he withheld the precise reason.
+"I'm not to be rattened," said he.  I mean to stop that little game.
+I'm Ben Bolt, that's bad to beat."
+
+At last the tender of Mr. White was accepted, and as Mr. Bolt,
+experienced in the delays of builders, tied him tight as to time,
+he, on his part, made a prompt and stringent contract with Messrs.
+Whitbread, the brickmakers, and began to dig the foundations.
+
+All this Henry communicated to Grace, and was in high spirits over
+it, and then so was she.  He had a beautiful frame made for the
+little picture she had given him, and hung it up in his studio.  It
+became the presiding genius, and indeed the animating spirit, of his
+life.
+
+Both to him and Grace the bright and hopeful period of their love
+had come at last.  Even Bolt contributed something to Little's
+happiness.  The man, hard as he was in business, was not without a
+certain rough geniality; and then he was so brisk and bustling.  His
+exuberant energy pleased the inventor, and formed an agreeable
+relief to his reveries and deep fits of study.
+
+The prospect was bright, and the air sunny.  In the midst of all
+which there rose in the horizon a cloud, like that seen by Elijah's
+servant, a cloud no bigger than a man's hand.
+
+Bolt burst into the studio one day, like a shell, and, like a shell,
+exploded.
+
+"Here's a pretty go!  We're all at a standstill.  The brickmakers
+have struck."
+
+"Why, what is the matter?"
+
+"Fourpence.  Young Whitbread, our brickmaker's son, is like you--a
+bit of an inventor; he altered the shape of the bricks, to fit a
+small hand-machine, and Whitbreads reckoned to save tenpence a
+thousand.  The brickmakers objected directly.  Whitbreads didn't
+want a row, so they offered to share the profit.  The men sent two
+of their orators to parley; I was standing by Whithread when they
+came up; you should have heard 'em; anybody would have sworn the
+servants were masters, and the masters negro slaves.  When the
+servants had hectored a bit, the masters, meek and mild, said they
+would give them sixpence out of the tenpence sooner than they should
+feel dissatisfied.  No; that wouldn't do.  'Well, then,' says young
+Whitbread, 'are you agreed what will do?'  'Well,' said one of the
+servants, 'we WILL ALLOW YOU TO MAKE THE BRICKS, if you give us the
+tenpence.'"
+
+"That was cool," said Henry.  "To be sure, all brainless beggars try
+to starve invention."
+
+"Yes, my man: and you grumbled at my taking two-thirds.  Labor is
+harder on you inventors than capital is, you see.  Well, I told 'em
+I wondered at their cheek; but the old man stopped me, and spoke
+quite mild: says he, 'You are too hard on us; we ought to gain a
+trifle by our own improvement; if it had come from you, we should
+pay you for it;' and he should stand by his offer of sixpence.  So
+then the men told them it would be the worse for them, and the old
+gentleman gave a bit of sigh, and said he couldn't help that, he
+must live in the trade, or leave it, he didn't much care which.
+Next morning they all struck work; and there we are--stopped."
+
+"Well," said Henry, "it is provoking; but you mustn't ask me to
+meddle.  It's your business."
+
+"It is, and I'll show you I'm bad to beat."  With this doughty
+resolve he went off and drove the contractors; they drove the
+brickmakers, and the brickmakers got fresh hands from a distance,
+and the promise of some more.
+
+Bolt rubbed his hands, and kept popping into the yard to see how
+they got on.  By this means he witnessed an incident familiar to
+brickmakers in that district, but new to him.  Suddenly loud cries
+of pain were heard, and two of the brickmakers held up hands covered
+with blood, and transfixed by needles.  Some ruffian had filled the
+clay with needles.  The sufferers were both disabled, and one went
+to the hospital.  Tempered clay enough to make two hundred thousand
+bricks had been needled, and had to be cleared away at a loss of
+time and material.
+
+Bolt went and told Henry, and it only worried him; he could do
+nothing.  Bolt went and hired a watchman and a dog, at his own
+expense.  The dog was shot dead one dark night, and the watchman's
+box turned over and sat upon, watchman included, while the
+confederates trampled fifty thousand raw bricks into a shapeless
+mass.
+
+The brickmasters, however, stood firm, and at last four of the old
+hands returned to him, and accepted the sixpence profit due to the
+master's invention.  These four were contribution-men, that is to
+say, they paid the Union a shilling per week for permission to make
+bricks; but this weekly payment was merely a sort of blackmail, it
+entitled them to no relief from the Union when out of work: so a
+three-weeks' strike brought them to starvation, and they could
+cooperate no longer with the genuine Union men, who were relieved
+from the box all this time.  Nevertheless, though their poverty, and
+not their will, brought them back to work, they were all threatened,
+and found themselves in a position that merits the sympathy of all
+men, especially of the very poor.  Starvation on one side,
+sanguinary threats on the other, from an Union which abandoned them
+in their need, yet expected them to stick by it and starve.  In
+short, the said Union was no pupil of Amboyne; could not put itself
+in the place of these hungry men, and realize their dilemma; it
+could only see the situation from its own point of view.  From that
+intellectual defect sprang a crime.  On a certain dark night, Thomas
+Wilde, one of these contribution-men, was burning bricks all by
+himself, when a body of seven men came crawling up to within a
+little distance.  These men were what they call "victims," i.e., men
+on strike, and receiving pay from the box.
+
+Now, when a man stands against the fire of a kiln, he cannot see
+many yards from him: so five of the "victims" stood waiting, and
+sent two forward.  These two came up to Wilde, and asked him a
+favor.  "Eh, mister, can you let me and my mate lie down for an hour
+by your fire?"
+
+"You are welcome," said honest Wilde.  He then turned to break a
+piece of coal, and instantly one of those who had accepted his
+hospitality struck him on the back of the head, and the other five
+rushed in, and they all set on him, and hit him with cartlegs, and
+kicked him with their heavy shoes.  Overpowered as he was, he
+struggled away from them, groaning and bleeding, and got to a shed
+about thirty yards off.  But these relentless men, after a moment's
+hesitation, followed him, and rained blows and kicks on him again,
+till he gave himself up for dead.  He cried out in his despair,
+"Lord, have mercy on me; they have finished me!" and fainted away in
+a pool of his own blood.  But, just before he became insensible, he
+heard a voice say, "Thou'll burn no more bricks."  Then the
+"victims" retired, leaving this great criminal for dead.
+
+After a long while he came to himself, and found his arm was broken,
+and his body covered with cuts and bruises.  His house was scarcely
+a furlong distant, yet he was an hour crawling to it.  His room was
+up a short stair of ten steps.  The steps beat him; he leaned on the
+rail at the bottom, and called out piteously, "My wife! my wife! my
+wife!" three times.
+
+Mrs. Wilde ran down to him, and caught hold of his hand, and said,
+"Whatever is to do?"
+
+When she took his hand the pain made him groan, and she felt
+something drip on to her hand.  It was blood from his wounded arm.
+Then she was terrified, and, strong with excitement, she managed to
+get him into the house and lay him on the floor.  She asked him, had
+he fallen off the kiln?  He tried to reply, but could not, and
+fainted again.  This time he was insensible for several hours.  In
+the morning he came to, and told his cruel story to Whitbread, Bolt,
+and others.  Bolt and Whitbread took it most to heart.  Bolt went to
+Mr. Ransome, and put the case in his hands.
+
+Ransome made this remark:--"Ah, you are a stranger, sir.  The folk
+hereabouts never come to us in these Union cases.  I'll attend to
+it, trust me."
+
+Bolt went with this tragedy to Henry, and it worried him; but he
+could do nothing.  "Mr. Bolt," said he, "I think you are making your
+own difficulties.  Why quarrel with the Brickmakers' Union?  Surely
+that is superfluous."
+
+"Why, it is them that quarreled with me; and I'm Ben Bolt, that is
+bad to beat."  He armed himself with gun and revolver, and watched
+the Whitbreads' yard himself at night.
+
+Two days after this, young Whitbread's wife received an anonymous
+letter, advising her, as a friend, to avert the impending fate of
+her husband, by persuading him to dismiss the police and take back
+his Hands.  The letter concluded with this sentence, "He is
+generally respected; but we have come to a determination to shoot
+him."
+
+Young Whitbread took no apparent notice of this, and soon afterward
+the secretary of the Union proposed a conference.  Bolt got wind of
+this, and was there when the orators came.  The deputation arrived,
+and, after a very short preamble, offered to take the six-pence.
+
+"Why," said Bolt, "you must be joking.  Those are the terms poor
+Wilde came back on, and you have hashed him for it."
+
+Old Whitbread looked the men in the face, and said, gravely, "You
+are too late.  You have shed that poor man's blood; and you have
+sent an anonymous letter to my son's wife.  That lady has gone on
+her knees to us to leave the trade, and we have consented.  Fifteen
+years ago, your Union wrote letters of this kind to my wife (she was
+pregnant at the time), and drove her into her grave, with fright and
+anxiety for her husband.  You shall not kill Tom's wife as well.
+The trade is a poor one at best, thanks to the way you have ground
+your employers down, and, when you add to that needling our clay,
+and burning our gear, and beating our servants to death's door, and
+driving our wives into the grave, we bid you good-by.  Mr. Bolt, I'm
+the sixth brickmaster this Union has driven out of the trade by
+outrages during the last ten years."
+
+"Thou's a wrong-headed old chap," said the brickmakers' spokesman;
+"but thou canst not run away with place.  Them as takes to it will
+have to take us on."
+
+"Not so.  We have sold our plant to the Barton Machine Brickmaking
+Company; and you maltreated them so at starting that now they won't
+let a single Union man set his foot on their premises."
+
+The company in question made bricks better and cheaper than any
+other brickmaster; but, making them by machinery, were ALWAYS at war
+with the Brickmakers' Union, and, whenever a good chance occurred
+for destroying their property, it was done.  They, on their part,
+diminished those chances greatly by setting up their works five
+miles from the town, and by keeping armed watchmen and police.  Only
+these ran away with their profits.
+
+Now, when this company came so near the town, and proceeded to work
+up Whitbread's clay, in execution of the contract with which their
+purchase saddled them, the Brickmakers' Union held a great meeting,
+in which full a hundred brickmakers took part, and passed
+extraordinary resolutions, and voted extraordinary sums of money,
+and recorded both in their books.  These books were subsequently
+destroyed, for a reason the reader can easily divine who has read
+this narrative with his understanding.
+
+Soon after that meeting, one Kay, a brickmaker, who was never seen
+to make a brick--for the best of all reasons, he lived by blood
+alone--was observed reconnoitering the premises, and that very night
+a quantity of barrows, utensils, and tools were heaped together,
+naphtha poured over them, and the whole set on fire.
+
+Another dark night, twenty thousand bricks were trampled so
+noiselessly that the perpetrators were neither seen nor heard.
+
+But Bolt hired more men, put up a notice he would shoot any intruder
+dead, and so frightened them by his blustering that they kept away,
+being cowards at bottom, and the bricks were rapidly made, and
+burnt, and some were even delivered; these bricks were carted from
+the yard to the building site by one Harris, who had nothing to do
+with the quarrel; he was a carter by profession, and wheeled bricks
+for all the world.
+
+One night this poor man's haystack and stable were all in flames in
+a moment, and unearthly screams issued from the latter.
+
+The man ran out, half-naked, and his first thought was to save his
+good gray mare from the fire.  But this act of humanity had been
+foreseen and provided against.  The miscreants had crept into the
+stable, and tied the poor docile beast fast by the head to the rack;
+then fired the straw.  Her screams were such as no man knew a horse
+could utter.  They pierced all hearts, however hard, till her burnt
+body burst the burnt cords, and all fell together.  Man could not
+aid her.  But God can avenge her.
+
+As if the poor thing could tell whether she was drawing machine-made
+bricks, or hand-made bricks!
+
+The incident is painful to relate; but it would be unjust to omit
+it.  It was characteristic of that particular Union; and, indeed,
+without it my reader could not possibly appreciate the brickmaking
+mind.
+
+Bolt went off with this to Little; but Amboyne was there, and cut
+his tales short.  "I hope," said he, "that the common Creator of the
+four-legged animal and the two-legged beasts will see justice done
+between them; but you must not come here tormenting my inventor with
+these horrors.  Your business is to relieve him of all such worries,
+and let him invent in peace."
+
+"Yes," said Little, "and I have told Mr. Bolt we can't avoid a
+difficulty with the cutlers.  But the brickmakers--what madness to
+go and quarrel with them!  I will have nothing to do with it, Mr.
+Bolt."
+
+"The cutlers!  Oh, I don't mind them," said Bolt.  "They are angels
+compared with the brickmakers.  The cutlers don't poison cows, and
+hamstring horses, and tie them to fire; the cutlers don't fling
+little boys into water-pits, and knock down little girls with their
+fists, just because their fathers are non-Union men; the cutlers
+don't strew poisoned apples and oranges about, to destroy whole
+families like rats.  Why, sir, I have talked with a man the
+brickmakers tried to throw into boiling lime; and another they tried
+to poison with beer, and, when he wouldn't drink it, threw vitriol
+in his eyes, and he's blind of an eye to this day.  There's full
+half a dozen have had bottles of gunpowder and old nails flung into
+their rooms, with lighted fuses, where they were sleeping with their
+families; they call that 'bottling a man;' it's a familiar phrase.
+I've seen three cripples crawling about that have been set on by
+numbers and spoiled for life, and as many fired at in the dark; one
+has got a slug in his head to this day.  And, with all that, the
+greatest cowards in the world--daren't face a man in daylight, any
+two of them; but I've seen the woman they knocked down with their
+fists, and her daughter too, a mere child at the time.  No, the
+cutlers are men, but the brickmakers are beasts."
+
+All the more reason for avoiding silly quarrels with the
+brickmakers," said Little.
+
+Thus snubbed, Mr. Bolt retired, muttering something about "bad to
+beat."  He found Harris crying over the ashes of his mare, and the
+man refused to wheel any more machine-made bricks.  Other carters,
+being applied to, refused also.  They had received written warning,
+and dared not wheel one of those bricks for their lives.
+
+The invincible Bolt bought a cart and a horse, hired two strangers,
+armed them and himself with revolvers, and carted the bricks
+himself.  Five brickmakers waylaid him in a narrow lane; he took out
+his revolver, and told them he'd send them all to hell if one laid a
+finger on him; at this rude observation they fled like sheep.
+
+The invincible carted his bricks by day, and at night rode the horse
+away to an obscure inn, and slept beside him, armed to the teeth.
+
+The result of all which was that one day he burst into Little's
+studio shouting "Victory!" and told him two hundred thousand bricks
+were on the premises, and twenty bricklayers would be at work on the
+foundations that afternoon.
+
+Henry Little was much pleased at that, and when Bolt told him how he
+had carted the bricks in person, said, "You are the man for me; you
+really are bad to beat."
+
+While they were congratulating each other on this hard-earned
+victory, Mr. Bayne entered softly, and said, "Mr. White--to speak to
+Mr. Bolt."
+
+"That is the builder," said Bolt.  "Show him up."
+
+Mr. White came in with a long face.
+
+"Bad news, gentlemen; the Machine Brickmaking Company retires from
+business, driven out of trade by their repeated losses from
+violence."
+
+"All the worse for the nation," said Bolt; "houses are a fancy
+article--got to be.  But it doesn't matter to us.  We have got
+bricks enough to go on with."
+
+"Plenty, sir; but that is not where the shoe pinches now.  The
+Brickmakers' Union has made it right with the Bricklayers' Union,
+and the Bricklayers' Union orders us to cart back every one of those
+machine-made bricks to the yard."
+
+"See them ---- first," said Bolt.
+
+"Well, sir, have you considered the alternative?"
+
+"Not I.  What is it?"
+
+"Not a bricklayer in Hillsboro', or for fifty miles round, will set
+a brick for us; and if we get men from a distance they will be
+talked away, or driven away, directly.  The place is picketed on
+every side at this moment."
+
+Even Bolt was staggered now.  "What is to be done, I wonder?"
+
+"There's nothing to be done but submit.  When two such powerful
+Unions amalgamate, resistance is useless, and the law of the land a
+dead letter.  Mr. Bolt, I'm not a rich man; I've got a large family;
+let me beg of you to release me from the contract."
+
+"White, you are a cur.  Release you? never!"
+
+"Then, sir, I'll go through the court and release myself."
+
+
+Henry Little was much dejected by this monstrous and unforeseen
+obstacle arising at the very threshold of his hopes.  He felt so
+sad, that he determined to revive himself with a sight of Grace
+Carden.  He pined for her face and voice.  So he went up to Woodbine
+Villa, though it was not his day.  As he drew near that Paradise,
+the door opened, and Mr. Frederick Coventry came out.  The two men
+nearly met at the gate.  The rejected lover came out looking bright
+and happy, and saw the accepted lover arrive, looking depressed and
+careworn; he saw in a moment something was going wrong, and turned
+on his heel with a glance of triumph.
+
+Henry Little caught that glance, and stood at the gate black with
+rage.  he stood there about a minute, and then walked slowly home
+again: he felt he should quarrel with Grace if he went in, and, by a
+violent effort of self-restraint, he retraced his steps; but he went
+home sick at heart.
+
+The mother's eye read his worn face in a moment, and soon she had it
+all out of him.  It cost her a struggle not to vent her maternal
+spleen on Grace; but she knew that would only make her son more
+unhappy.  She advised him minutely what to say to the young lady
+about Mr. Coventry: and, as to the other matters she said, "You have
+found Mr. Bolt not so bad to beat as he tells you: for he is beaten,
+and there's an end of him.  Now let ME try."
+
+"Why, what on earth can you do in a case of this kind?"
+
+"Have I ever failed when you have accepted my assistance?"
+
+"No: that's true.  Well, I shall be glad of your assistance now,
+heaven knows; only I can't imagine--"
+
+"Never mind: will you take Grace Carden if I throw her into your
+arms?"
+
+"Oh, mother, can you ask me?"
+
+Mrs. Little rang the bell, and ordered a fly.  Henry offered to
+accompany her.  She declined.  "Go to bed early," said she, "and
+trust to your mother.  We are harder to beat sometimes than a good
+many Mr. Bolts."
+
+She drove to Dr. Amboyne's house, and sent in her name.  She was
+ushered into the doctor's study, and found him shivering over an
+enormous fire.  "Influenza."
+
+"Oh dear," said she, "I'm afraid you are very ill."
+
+"Never mind that.  Sit down.  You will not make me any worse, you
+may be sure of that."  And he smiled affectionately on her.
+
+"But I came to intrude my own troubles on you."
+
+"All the better.  That will help me forget mine."
+
+Mrs. Little seated herself, and, after a slight hesitation, opened
+her battery thus:--"Well, my good friend, I am come to ask you a
+favor.  It is to try and reconcile my brother and me.  If any one
+can do it, you can."
+
+"Praise the method, not the man.  If one could only persuade you to
+put yourself in his place, and him to put himself in yours, you
+would be both reconciled in five minutes."
+
+"You forget we have been estranged this five-and-twenty years."
+
+"No I don't.  The only question is, whether you can and will deviate
+from the practice of the world into an obese lunatic's system, both
+of you."
+
+"Try ME, to begin."
+
+The doctor's eyes sparkled with satisfaction.  "Well, then," said
+he, "first you must recollect all the differences you have seen
+between the male and female mind, and imagine yourself a man."
+
+"Oh, dear! that is so hard.  But I have studied Henry.  Well, there--
+I have unsexed myself--in imagination."
+
+"You are not only a man but a single-minded man, with a high and
+clear sense of obligation.  You are a trustee, bound by honor to
+protect the interests of a certain woman and a certain child.  The
+lady, under influence, wishes to borrow her son's money, and risk it
+on rotten security.  You decline, and the lady's husband affronts
+you.  In spite of that affront, being a high-minded man not to be
+warped by petty irritation, you hurry to your lawyers to get two
+thousand pounds of your own, for the man who had affronted you."
+
+"Is that so?" said Mrs. Little.  "I was not aware of that."
+
+"I have just learned it, accidentally, from the son of the solicitor
+Raby went to that fatal night."
+
+A tear stole down Mrs. Little's cheek.
+
+"Now, remember, you are not a woman, but a brave, high-minded man.
+In that character you pity poor Mr. Little, but you blame him a
+little because he fled from trouble, and left his wife and child in
+it.  To you, who are Guy Raby--mind that, please--it seems
+egotistical and weak to desert your wife and child even for the
+grave."  (The widow buried her face and wept.  Twenty-five years do
+something to withdraw the veil the heart has cast over the
+judgment.)  "But, whatever you feel, you utter only regret, and open
+your arms to your sister.  She writes back in an agony, for which,
+being a man, you can not make all the allowance you would if you
+were a woman, and denounces you as her husband's murderer, and bids
+you speak to her and write to her no more, and with that she goes to
+the Littles.  Can you blame yourself that, after all this, you wait
+for her to review your conduct more soberly, and to invite a
+reconciliation."
+
+Mrs. Little gave Dr. Amboyne her hand, "Bitter, but wholesome
+medicine!" she murmured, and then was too overcome to speak for a
+little while.
+
+"Ah, my good, wise friend!" said she at last, "thick clouds seem
+clearing from my mind; I begin to see I was the one to blame."
+
+"Yes; and if Raby will be as docile as you, and put himself in your
+place, he will tell me he was the one to blame.  There's no such
+thing as 'the one to blame;' there very seldom is.  You judged him
+as if he was a woman, he judged you as if you were a man.  Enter an
+obese maniac, and applies the art of arts; the misunderstanding
+dissolves under it, and you are in each other's arms.  But, stop"--
+and his countenance fell again a little: "I am afraid there is a new
+difficulty.  Henry's refusal to take the name of Raby and be his
+heir.  Raby was bitterly mortified, and I fear he blames me and my
+crotchets; for he has never been near me since.  To be sure you are
+not responsible for Henry's act."
+
+"No, indeed; for, between you and me, it mortified me cruelly.  And
+now things have taken a turn--in short, what with his love, and his
+jealousy, and this hopeless failure to make a fortune by inventing,
+I feel I can bring him to his senses.  I am not pleased with Grace
+Carden about something; but no matter, I shall call on her and show
+her she must side with me in earnest.  You will let my brother know
+I was always on his side in THAT matter, whatever other offense I
+may have given him years ago."
+
+"And I am on your side, too.  Your son has achieved a small
+independence.  Bayne can carry on the little factory, and Henry can
+sell or lease his patents; he can never sink to a mere dependent.
+There, I throw my crotchets to the wind, and we will Raby your son,
+and marry him to Grace Carden."
+
+"God bless you, my good and true friend!  How can I ever thank you?"
+Her cheek flushed, and her great maternal eye sparkled, and half the
+beauty of her youth came back.  Her gratitude gave a turn to the
+conversation which she neither expected nor desired.
+
+"Mrs. Little," said Dr. Amboyne, "this is the first time you have
+entered my den, and the place seems transformed by your presence.
+My youth comes back to me with the feelings I thought time had
+blunted; but no, I feel that, when you leave my den again, it will
+be darker than ever, if you do not leave me a hope that you will one
+day enter it for good."
+
+"For shame!  At our age!--" said the widow.
+
+But she spoilt the remonstrance by blushing like a girl of eighteen.
+
+"You are not old in my eyes; and, as for me, let my years plead for
+me, since all those years I have lived single for your sake."
+
+This last appeal shook Mrs. Little.  She said she could not
+entertain any such thoughts whilst her son was unhappy.  "But marry
+him to his Grace, and then--I don't know what folly I might not be
+persuaded into."
+
+The doctor was quite content with that.  He said he would go to
+Raby, as soon as he could make the journey with safety, and her
+troubles and her son's should end.
+
+Mrs. Little drove home, a happy mother.  As for the promise she had
+made her old friend, it vexed her a little, she was so used to look
+at him in another light; but she shrugged her maternal shoulders, as
+much as to say, "When once my Henry leaves me--why not?"
+
+She knew she must play the politician a little with Henry, so she
+opened the battery cautiously.  "My dear," said she, at breakfast,
+"good news!  Dr. Amboyne undertakes to reconcile us both to your
+uncle."
+
+"All the better.  Mr. Raby is a wrong-headed man, but he is a noble-
+minded one, that is certain."
+
+"Yes, and I have done him injustice.  Dr. Amboyne has shown me
+that."
+
+She said no more.  One step at a time.
+
+Henry went up to Woodbine Villa and Grace received him a little
+coldly.  He asked what was the matter.  She said, "They tell me you
+were at the very door the other day, and did not come in."
+
+"It is true," said he.  "Another had just come out--Mr. Coventry."
+
+"And you punished ME because that poor man had called on me.  Have
+you not faith in me? or what is it?  I shall be angry one of these
+days."
+
+"No, you will not, if I can make you understand my feelings.  Put
+yourself in my place, dearest.  Here am I, fighting the good fight
+for you, against long odds; and, at last, the brickmakers and
+bricklayers have beat us.  Now you know that is a bitter cup for me
+to drink.  Well, I come up here for my one drop of comfort; and out
+walks my declared rival, looks into my face, sees my trouble there,
+and turns off with a glance of insolent triumph."  (Grace flushed.)
+"And then consider: I am your choice, yet I am only allowed to visit
+you once a week."
+
+"That is papa's doing."
+
+"No matter; so it is.  Yet my rival can come when he pleases: and no
+doubt he does come every other day."
+
+"You fancy that."
+
+"It is not all fancy; for--by heaven! there he is at the gate.  Two
+visits to my one; there.  Well, all the better, I'll talk to HIM."
+
+He rose from his seat black with wrath.
+
+Grace turned pale, and rang the bell in a moment.
+
+The servant entered the room, just as Mr. Coventry knocked at the
+door.
+
+"Not at home to anybody," said she.
+
+Mr. Coventry's voice was heard to say incredulously, "Not at home?"
+Then he retired slowly, and did not leave the neighborhood.  He had
+called at an hour when Grace was always at home.
+
+Henry sat down, and said, "Thank you, Grace."  But he looked very
+gloomy and disturbed.
+
+She sat down too, and then they looked at each other.
+
+Henry was the first to speak.  "We are both pupils of the good
+doctor.  Put yourself in my place.  That man troubles our love, and
+makes my heavy heart a sore heart."
+
+The tears were in Grace's eyes.  "Dearest," said she, "I will not
+put myself in your place; you would lose by that, for I love you
+better than myself.  Yes, it is unjust that you should be allowed to
+visit me but once a week, and he should visit me when he chooses.  I
+assure you I have permitted his visits out of pure good-nature; and
+now I will put an end to them."
+
+She drew her desk toward her, and wrote to Mr. Coventry.  It took
+her some little time.  She handed Henry the letter to read.  He took
+it in his hand; but hesitated.  He inquired what would be the effect
+of it?
+
+"That he will never visit me again till you and I are married, or
+engaged, and that is the same thing.  Why don't you read it?"
+
+"I don't know: it goes against me, somehow.  Seems unmanly.  I'll
+take your word for it."
+
+This charmed Grace.  "Ah," said she, "I have chosen right."
+
+Then he kissed her hands, and blessed her: and then she told him it
+was nothing; he was a goose, and had no idea what she would do for
+him; "more than you would do for me, I know," said she.
+
+That he denied, and then she said she might perhaps put him to the
+proof some day.
+
+They were so happy together, time slipped away unheeded.  It was
+full three hours before Henry could tear himself away, though he
+knew he was wanted at the works; and he went out at the gate,
+glowing with happiness: and Coventry, who was ready to drop with the
+fatigue of walking and watching just above, saw him come out
+triumphant.
+
+Then it was his turn to feel a deadly qualm.  However, he waited a
+little longer, and then made his call.
+
+"Not at home."
+
+
+Henry, on his way to the works, looked in on his mother, and told
+her how nobly Grace had behaved.
+
+Mrs. Little was pleased, and it smoothed down her maternal bristles,
+and made it much easier for her to carry out her design.  For the
+first time since Mr. Carden had offended her by his cold-blooded
+treatment of her son, she called at Woodbine Villa.
+
+Grace was at home to see her, and met her with a blushing timidity,
+and piteous, wistful looks, not easy to misunderstand nor to resist.
+
+They soon came to an understanding, and Mrs. Little told Grace what
+Dr. Amboyne had promised to do, and represented to her how much
+better it would be for Henry to fall into his uncle Raby's views,
+than to engage in hopeless struggles like that in which Mr. Bolt and
+he had just been so signally defeated.  "And then, you know, my
+dear, you could marry next month--you two; that is to say, if YOU
+felt disposed: I will answer for Henry."
+
+Grace's red face and swimming eyes told how this shaft went home.
+In short, she made a coy promise that she would co-operate with Mrs.
+Little "and," said she, "how lucky! he has almost promised to grant
+me the first favor I ask him.  Well, I shall entreat him to be a
+good nephew, and do whatever dear Mr. Raby asks him.  But of course
+I shall not say, and then if you do, you and I"--here the young lady
+cut her sentence very short.
+
+"Of course not," said Mrs. Little.  "THAT will follow as a matter of
+course.  Now, my dear, you and I are conspirators--for his good: and
+we must write often and let each other know all we do."
+
+With this understanding, and a good many pretty speeches and kisses,
+they parted.
+
+Dr. Amboyne did not recover so quickly as they could have wished;
+but they employed the interval.  Feelers were adroitly applied to
+Henry by both ladies, and they were pleased to find that he rather
+admired his wrong-headed uncle, and had been deeply touched by the
+old gentleman's address to his mother's picture.
+
+Bolt never came near him, and the grass was beginning to grow on the
+condemned bricks.  In short, every thing seemed to incline in one
+direction.
+
+There was, however, something very serious going on out of their
+sight.
+
+"Not at home!"  That white lie made Mr. Coventry feel sick at heart.
+He went home disconsolate.  The same evening he received Miss
+Carden's letter.
+
+The writer treated him like a gentleman, said a few words about her
+own peculiar position, and begged him to consider that position, and
+to be very generous; to cease his visits entirely for the present,
+and so give himself one more title to her esteem, which was all she
+had to give him.  This was the purport, and the manner was simply
+perfect, so gentle yet firm; and then she flattered his amour propre
+by asking that from his generosity which she could have taken as a
+right: she did all she could to soften the blow.  But she failed.
+The letter was posted too soon after Henry's visit.  Behind the
+velvet paw that struck him, Coventry saw the claws of the jealous
+lover.  He boiled with rage and agony, and cursed them both in his
+fury.
+
+After an hour or two of frenzy, he sat down and wrote back a letter
+full of bitter reproaches and sneers.  He reflected.  He lighted a
+cigar and smoked it, biting it almost through, now and then.  He
+burned his letter.  He lay awake all night, raging and reflecting
+alternately, as passion or judgment got the upper hand.
+
+In the morning he saw clearer.  "Don't quarrel with HER.  Destroy
+HIM."  He saw this as plainly as if it was written.
+
+He wrote Grace a few sad lines, to say that of course he submitted
+to her will.  The letter ended thus: "Since I can do nothing to
+please you, let me suffer to please you: even that is something."
+
+(This letter brought the tears to Grace's eyes, and she pitied and
+esteemed the writer.)
+
+He put on a plain suit, and drove into Hillsborough, burning with
+wild ideas of vengeance.  He had no idea what he should do; but he
+was resolved to do something.  He felt capable of assassinating
+Little with his own hand.
+
+I should be sorry to gain any sympathy for him; but it is only fair
+the reader should understand that he felt deeply aggrieved, and that
+we should all feel aggrieved under similar circumstances.  Priority
+is a title, all the world over; and he had been the lady's lover
+first, had been encouraged, and supplanted.
+
+Longing to wound, but not knowing how to strike, he wandered about
+the town, and went into several factories, and talked to some of the
+men, and contrived to bring the conversation round to Little, and
+learn what he was doing.  But he gathered no information of any use
+to him.  Then he went to Grotait's place, and tried to pump him.
+That sagacious man thought this odd, and immediately coupled this
+with his previous denunciation of Little, and drew him on.
+
+Coventry was too much under the influence of passion to be quite
+master of himself that day; and he betrayed to this other Machiavel
+that he wished ill to Henry Little.  As soon as he had thoroughly
+ascertained this, Grotrait turned coolly on him, and said, "I am
+sorry Mr. Little has got enemies; for he and his partner talk of
+building a new factory, and that will be a good thing for us: take a
+score of saw-grinders off the box."  Then Coventry saw he had made a
+mistake, and left "The Cutlers' Arms" abruptly.
+
+Next day he took a lodging in the town, and went about groping for
+information, and hunting for a man whose face he knew, but not his
+name.  He learned all about Bolt and Little's vain endeavor to
+build, and went and saw the place, and the condemned bricks.  The
+sight gratified him.  He visited every saw-grinder's place he could
+hear of; and, at last, he fell in with Sam Cole, and recognized him
+at once.  That worthy affected not to know him, and went on grinding
+a big saw.  Coventry stepped up to him, and said in his ear, "I want
+to speak with you.  Make an appointment."
+
+Cole looked rather sulky and reluctant at being drawn from his
+obscurity.  However, he named a low public-house in a back slum, and
+there these two met that night, and for greater privacy were soon
+seated in a place bigger than a box and smaller than a room with
+discolored walls, and a rough wooden table before them splashed with
+beer.  It looked the very den to hatch villainy in, and drink poison
+to its success.
+
+Coventry, pale and red alternately, as fear and shame predominated,
+began to beat about the bush.
+
+"You and I have reason to hate the same man.  You know who I mean."
+
+"I can guess.  Begins with a Hel."
+
+"He has wronged me deeply; and he hurt you."
+
+"That is true, sir.  I think he broke my windpipe, for I'm as hoarse
+as a raven ever since: and I've got one or two of the shot in my
+cheek still."
+
+"Well, then, now is your time to be revenged."
+
+"Well, I don't know about that.  What he done was in self-defense;
+and if I play bowls I must look for rubs."
+
+Coventry bit his lip with impatience.  After a pause, he said, "What
+were you paid for that job?"
+
+"Not half enough."
+
+"Twenty pounds?"
+
+"Nor nothing like it."
+
+"I'll give you a hundred to do it again, only more effectually."  He
+turned very pale when he had made this offer.
+
+"Ah," said Cole, "anybody could tell you was a gentleman."
+
+"You accept my offer, then?"
+
+"Nay, I mean it is easy to see you don't know trades.  I musn't
+meddle with Mr. Little now; he is right with the Trade."
+
+"What, not if I pay you five times as much? say ten times then; two
+hundred pounds."
+
+"Nay, we Union chaps are not malefactors.  You can't buy us to
+injure an unoffending man.  We have got our laws, and they are just
+ones, and, if a man will break them, after due warning, the order is
+given to 'do' him, and the men are named for the job, and get paid a
+trifle for their risk; and the risk is not much, the Trade stand by
+one another too true, and in so many ways.  But if a man is right
+with the Trade, it is treason to harm him.  No, I mustn't move a
+finger against Little."
+
+"You have set up a conscience!" said Coventry bitterly.
+
+"You dropped yours, and I picked it up," was the Yorkshireman's
+ready reply.  He was nettled now.
+
+At this moment the door was opened and shut very swiftly, and a
+whisper came in through the momentary aperture, "Mind your eye, Sam
+Cole."
+
+Coventry rushed to the door and looked out; there was nobody to be
+seen.
+
+"You needn't trouble yourself," said Cole.  "You might as well run
+after the wind.  That was a friendly warning.  I know the voice, and
+Grotait must be on to us.  Now, sir, if you offered me a thousand
+pounds, I wouldn't touch a hair of Mr. Little: he is right with the
+Trade, and we should have Grotait and all the Trade as bitter as
+death against us.  I'll tell you a secret, sir, that I've kept from
+my wife"--(he lowered his voice to a whisper)--"Grotait could hang
+me any day he chose.  You must chink your brass in some other ear,
+as the saying is: only mind, you did me a good turn once, and I'll
+do you one now; you have been talking to somebody else besides me,
+and blown yourself: so now drop your little game, and let Little
+alone, or the Trade will make it their job to LAY YOU."
+
+Coventry's face betrayed so much alarm, that the man added, "And
+penal servitude wouldn't suit the likes of you.  Keep out of it."
+
+With this rough advice the conference ended, and Mr. Coventry went
+home thoroughly shaken in his purpose, and indeed not a little
+anxious on his own account.  Suppose he had been overheard! his
+offer to Cole was an offense within reach of the criminal law.  What
+a mysterious labyrinth was this Trade confederacy, into which he had
+put his foot so rashly, and shown his game, like a novice, to the
+subtle and crafty Grotait.  He now collected all his powers, not to
+injure Little, but to slip out of his own blunder.
+
+He seized this opportunity to carry out a coup he had long
+meditated: he went round to a dozen timber-merchants, and contracted
+with them for the sale of every tree, old or young, on his estate;
+and, while the trees were falling like grain, and the agents on both
+sides measuring the fallen, he vanished entirely from Hillsborough
+and Bollinghope.
+
+
+Dr. Amboyne's influenza was obstinate, and it was nearly a fortnight
+before he was strong enough to go to Cairnhope; but at last Mrs.
+Little received a line from him, to say he was just starting, and
+would come straight to her on his return: perhaps she would give him
+a cup of tea.
+
+This letter came very opportunely.  Bolt had never shown his face
+again; and Henry had given up all hopes of working his patents, and
+had said more than once he should have to cross the water and sell
+them.
+
+As for Mrs. Little, she had for some time maintained a politic
+silence.  But now she prepared for the doctor's visit as follows:
+"So, then, you have no more hopes from the invincible Mr. Bolt?"
+
+"None whatever.  He must have left the town in disgust."
+
+"He is a wise man.  I want you to imitate his example.  Henry, my
+dear, what is the great object of your life at present?  Is it not
+to marry Grace Carden?"
+
+"You know it is."
+
+"Then take her from my hands.  Why do you look so astonished?  Have
+you forgotten my little boast?"  Then, in a very different tone,
+"You will love your poor mother still, when you are married?  You
+will say, 'I owe her my wife,' will you not?"
+
+Henry was so puzzled he could not reply even to this touching
+appeal, made with eyes full of tears at the thought of parting with
+him.
+
+Mrs. Little proceeded to explain: "Let me begin at the beginning.
+Dr. Amboyne has shown me I was more to blame than your uncle, was.
+Would you believe it? although he refused your poor father the
+trust-money, he went that moment to get L2000 of his own, and lend
+it to us.  Oh, Henry, when Dr Amboyne told me that, and opened my
+eyes, I could have thrown myself at poor Guy's feet.  I have been
+the most to blame in our unhappy quarrel; and I have sent Dr.
+Amboyne to say so.  Now, Henry, my brother will forgive me, the
+doctor says; and, oh, my heart yearns to be reconciled.  You will
+not stand in my way, dearest?"
+
+"Not likely.  Why, I am under obligations to him, for my part."
+
+"Yes, but Dr. Amboyne says dear Guy is deeply mortified by your
+refusal to be his heir.  For my sake, for your own sake, and for
+Grace Carden's sake; change your mind now."
+
+"What, go into his house, and wait for dead men's shoes!  Find
+myself some day wishing in my heart that noble old fellow would die!
+Such a life turns a man's stomach even to think of it."
+
+"No, no.  Dr. Amboyne says that Mr. Bayne can conduct your business
+here, and hand you a little income, without your meddling."
+
+"That is true."
+
+"And, as for your patents, gentlemen can sell them to traders, or
+lease them out.  My brother would make a settlement on Grace and
+you--she is his goddaughter--now that is all Mr. Carden demands.
+Then you could marry, and, on your small present income, make a
+little tour together; and dispose of your patents in other places."
+
+"I could do great things with them in the United States."
+
+"That is a long way."
+
+"Why, it is only twelve days."
+
+"Well, marry first," said the politic mother.
+
+Henry flushed all over.  "Ah!" said he, "you tempt me.  Heaven seems
+to open its gates as you speak.  But you can not be in earnest; he
+made it an express condition I should drop my father's name, and
+take his.  Disown my poor dead father?  No, no, no!"
+
+Now in reality this condition was wormwood to Mrs. Little; but she
+knew that if she let her son see her feeling, all was over.  She was
+all the mother now, and fighting for her son's happiness: so she
+sacrificed truth to love with an effort, but without a scruple.  "It
+is not as if it was a strange name.  Henry, you compel me to say
+things that tear my heart to say, but--which has been your best
+friend, your mother, or your poor dear father?"
+
+Henry was grieved at the question: but he was a man who turned his
+back on nothing.  "My father loved me," said he: "I can remember
+that; but he deserted me, and you, in trouble; but you--you have
+been friend, parent, lover, and guardian angel to me.  And, oh, how
+little I have done to deserve it all!"
+
+"Well, dear, the mother you value so highly, her name was Raby.
+Yes, love; and, forgive me, I honor and love my mother's name even
+more than I do the name of Little"--(the tears ran out of her eyes
+at this falsehood)--"pray take it, to oblige me, and reconcile me to
+my dear brother, and end our troubles forever."  Then she wept on
+his neck, and he cried with her.
+
+After a while, he said, "I feel my manhood all melting away
+together.  I am quite confused.  It is hard to give up a noble game.
+It is hard to refuse such a mother as you.  Don't cry any more, for
+mercy's sake!  I'm like to choke.  Mind, crying is work I'm not used
+to.  What does SHE say?  I am afraid I shall win her, but lose her
+respect."
+
+"She says she admires your pride; but you have shown enough.  If you
+refuse any longer, she will begin to fear you don't love her as well
+as she loves you."
+
+This master-stroke virtually ended the battle.  Henry said nothing,
+but the signs of giving way were manifest in him, so manifest that
+Mrs. Little became quite impatient for the doctor's arrival to crown
+all.
+
+He drove up to the door at last, and Henry ran out and brought him
+in.  He looked pale, and sat down exhausted.
+
+Mrs. Little restrained her impatience, and said, "We are selfish
+creatures to send you on our business before you are half well."
+
+"I am well enough in health," said he, "but I am quite upset."
+
+"What is the matter?  Surely you have not failed?  Guy does not
+refuse his forgiveness?"
+
+"No, it is not that.  Perhaps, if I had been in time--but the fact
+is, Guy Raby has left England."
+
+"What, for good?  Impossible!"
+
+"Who can tell?  All I know is that he has sold his horses,
+discharged his servants all but one, and gone abroad without a word.
+I was the friend of his youth--his college chum; be must be bitterly
+wounded to go away like that, and not even let me know."
+
+Mrs. Little lifted up her hands.  "What have we done? what have we
+done?  Wounded! no wonder.  Oh, my poor, wronged, insulted brother!"
+
+She wept bitterly, and took it to heart so, it preyed on her health
+and spirits.  She was never the same woman from that hour.
+
+While her son and her friend were saying all they could to console
+her, there appeared at the gate the last man any of them ever
+expected to see--Mr. Bolt.
+
+Henry saw him first, and said so.
+
+"Keep him out," cried the doctor, directly.  "Don't let that
+bragging fool in to disturb our sorrow."  He opened the door and
+told the servant-girl to say "Not at home."
+
+"Not at home," said the girl.
+
+"That's a lie!" shouted Bolt, and shoved her aside and burst into
+the room.  "None of your tricks on travelers," said he, in his
+obstreperous way.  "I saw your heads through the window.  Good news,
+my boy!  I've done the trick.  I wouldn't say a word till it was all
+settled, for Brag's a good dog, but Holdfast's a better.  I've sold
+my building-site to some gents that want to speculate in a church,
+and I've made five hundred pounds profit by the sale.  I'm always
+right, soon or late.  And I've bought a factory ready made--the Star
+Works; bought 'em, sir, with all the gear and plant, and working
+hands."
+
+"The Star Works?  The largest but one in Hillsborough!"
+
+"Ay, lad.  Money and pluck together, they'll beat the world.  We
+have got a noble place, with every convenience.  All we have got to
+do now is to go in and win."
+
+Young Little's eyes sparkled.  "All right," said he, "I like this
+way the best."
+
+Mrs. Little sighed.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+
+In that part of London called "the City" are shady little streets,
+that look like pleasant retreats from the busy, noisy world; yet are
+strongholds of business.
+
+One of these contained, and perhaps still contains, a public office
+full of secrets, some droll, some sad, some terrible.  The building
+had a narrow, insignificant front, but was of great depth, and its
+south side lighted by large bay windows all stone and plate-glass;
+and these were open to the sun and air, thanks to a singular
+neighbor.  Here, in the heart of the City, was wedged a little
+rustic church, with its church-yard, whose bright-green grass first
+startled, then soothed and refreshed the eye, in that wilderness of
+stone--an emerald set in granite.  The grass flowed up to the south
+wall of the "office;" those massive stone windows hung over the
+graves; the plumed clerks could not look out of window and doubt
+that all men are mortal: and the article the office sold was
+immortality.
+
+It was the Gosshawk Life Insurance.
+
+On a certain afternoon anterior to the Hillsborough scenes last
+presented, the plumed clerks were all at the south windows, looking
+at a funeral in the little church-yard, and passing some curious
+remarks; for know that the deceased was insured in the Gosshawk for
+nine hundred pounds, and had paid but one premium.
+
+The facts, as far as known, were these.  Mr. Richard Martin, a
+Londoner by birth, but residing in Wales, went up to London to visit
+his brother.  Toward the end of the visit the two Martins went up
+the river in a boat, with three more friends, and dined at Richmond.
+They rowed back in the cool of the evening.  At starting they were
+merely jovial; but they stopped at nearly all the public-houses by
+the water-side, and, by visible gradations, became jolly--
+uproarious--sang songs--caught crabs.  At Vauxhall they got a
+friendly warning, and laughed at it: under Southwark bridge they ran
+against an abutment, and were upset in a moment: it was now dusk,
+and, according to their own account, they all lost sight of each
+other in the water.  One swam ashore in Middlesex, another in
+Surrey, a third got to the chains of a barge, and was taken up much
+exhausted, and Robert Martin laid hold of the buttress itself, and
+cried loudly for assistance.  They asked anxiously after each other,
+but their anxiety appeared to subside in an hour or two, when they
+found there was nobody missing but Richard Martin.  Robert told the
+police it was all right, Dick could swim like a cork.  However, next
+morning he came with a sorrowful face to say his brother had not
+reappeared, and begged them to drag the river.  This was done, and a
+body found, which the survivors and Mrs. Richard Martin disowned.
+
+The insurance office was informed, and looked into the matter; and
+Mrs. Martin told their agent, with a flood of tears, she believed
+her husband had taken that opportunity to desert her, and was not
+drowned at all.  Of course this went to the office directly.
+
+But a fortnight afterward a body was found in the water down at
+Woolwich, entangled in some rushes by the water-side.
+
+Notice was given to all the survivors.
+
+The friends of Robert Martin came, and said the clothes resembled
+those worn by Richard Martin; but beyond that they could not be
+positive.
+
+But, when the wife came, she recognized the body at once.
+
+The brother agreed with her, but, on account of the bloated and
+discolored condition of the face, asked to have the teeth examined:
+his poor brother, he said, had a front tooth broken short in two.
+This broken tooth was soon found; also a pencil-case, and a key, in
+the pocket of the deceased.  These completed the identification.
+
+Up to this moment the conduct of Richard Martin's relatives and
+friends had been singularly apathetic; but now all was changed; they
+broke into loud lamentations, and he became the best of husbands,
+best of men: his lightest words were sacred.  Robert Martin now
+remembered that "poor Dick" had stood and looked into that little
+church-yard and said, "If you outlive me, Bob, bury me in this spot;
+father lies here."  So Robert Martin went to the church-warden, for
+leave to do this last sad office.  The church-warden refused, very
+properly, but the brother's entreaties, the widow's tears, the
+tragedy itself, and other influences, extorted at last a reluctant
+consent, coupled with certain sanatory conditions.
+
+The funeral was conducted unobtrusively, and the grave dug out of
+sight of Gosshawk.  But of course it could not long escape
+observation; that is to say, it was seen by the clerks; but the
+directors and manager were all seated round a great table upstairs
+absorbed in a vital question, viz., whether or not the Gosshawk
+should imitate some other companies, and insure against fire as well
+as death.  It was the third and last discussion; the minority
+against this new operation was small, but obstinate and warm, and
+the majority so absorbed in bringing them to reason, that nobody
+went to the window until the vote had passed, and the Gosshawk was a
+Life and Fire Insurance.  Then some of the gentlemen rose and
+stretched their legs, and detected the lugubrious enormity.
+"Hallo!" cried Mr. Carden, and rang a bell.  Edwards, an old clerk,
+appeared, and, in reply to Mr. Carden, told him it was one of their
+losses being buried--Richard Martin.
+
+Mr. Carden said this was an insult to the office, and sent Edwards
+out to remonstrate.
+
+Edwards soon reappeared with Robert Martin, who represented, with
+the utmost humility, that it was the wish of the deceased, and they
+had buried him, as ordered, in three feet of charcoal.
+
+"What, is the ceremony performed?"
+
+"Yes, sir, all but filling in the grave.  Come and see the
+charcoal."
+
+"Hang the charcoal!"
+
+"Well," said the humane but somewhat pompous director, "if the
+ceremony has gone so far--but, Mr. Martin, this must never recur,
+charcoal or no charcoal."
+
+Mr. Martin promised it never should: and was soon after observed in
+the church-yard urging expedition.
+
+The sad company speedily dispersed, and left nothing to offend nor
+disgust the Life and Fire Insurance, except a new grave, and a debt
+of nine hundred pounds to the heirs or assigns of Richard Martin.
+
+Not very far from this church-yard was a public-house; and in that
+public-house a small parlor upstairs, and in that parlor a man, who
+watched the funeral rites with great interest; but not in a becoming
+spirit; for his eyes twinkled with the intensest merriment all the
+time, and at each fresh stage of the mournful business he burst into
+peals of laughter.  Never was any man so thoroughly amused in the
+City before, at all events in business hours.
+
+Richard Martin's executor waited a decent time, and then presented
+his claim to the Gosshawk.  His brother proved a lien on it for L300
+and the rest went by will to his wife.  The Gosshawk paid the money
+after the delay accorded by law.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+
+Messrs. Bolt and Little put their heads together, and played a
+prudent game.  They kept the works going for a month, without doing
+anything novel, except what tended to the health and comfort of
+their workmen.
+
+But, meantime, they cleared out two adjacent rooms: one was called
+the studio, the other the experiment-room.
+
+In due course they hired a couple of single men from Birmingham to
+work the machine under lock and key.
+
+Little with his own hands, affected an aperture in the party-wall,
+and thus conveyed long saws from his studio to the machine, and
+received them back ground.
+
+Then men were lodged three miles off, were always kept at work half
+an hour later than the others, and received six pounds per week
+apiece, on pain of instant dismissal should they breathe a syllable.
+They did the work of twenty-four men; so even at that high rate of
+wages, the profit was surprising.  It actually went beyond the
+inventor's calculation, and he saw himself at last on the road to
+rapid fortune, and, above all, to Grace Carden.
+
+This success excited Bolt's cupidity, and he refused to contract the
+operation any longer.
+
+Then the partners had a quarrel, and nearly dissolved.  However, it
+ended in Little dismissing his Birmingham hands and locking up his
+"experiment-room," and in Bolt openly devoting another room to the
+machines: two long, two circular.
+
+These machines coined money, and Bolt chuckled and laughed at his
+partner's apprehensions for the space of twenty-one days.
+
+On the twenty-second day, the Saw-grinders' Union, which had been
+stupefied at first, but had now realized the situation, sent Messrs.
+Bolt and Little a letter, civil and even humble; it spoke of the new
+invention as one that, if adopted, would destroy their handicraft,
+and starve the craftsmen and their families, and expressed an
+earnest hope that a firm which had shown so much regard for the
+health and comfort of the workmen would not persist in a fatal
+course, on which they had entered innocently and for want of
+practical advice.
+
+The partners read this note differently.  Bolt saw timidity in it.
+Little saw a conviction, and a quiet resolution, that foreboded a
+stern contest.
+
+No reply was sent, and the machines went on coining.
+
+Then came a warning to Little, not violent, but short, and rather
+grim.  Little took it to Bolt, and he treated it with contempt.
+
+Two days afterward the wheel-bands vanished, and the obnoxious
+machines stood still.
+
+Little was for going to Grotait, to try and come to terms.  Bolt
+declined.  He bought new bands, and next day the machines went on
+again.
+
+This pertinacity soon elicited a curious epistle:
+
+
+"MESSRS. BOLT AND LITTLE,--When the blood is in an impure state,
+brimstone and treacle is applied as a mild purgative; our taking the
+bands was the mild remedy; but, should the seat of disease not be
+reached, we shall take away the treacle, and add to the brimstone a
+necessary quantity of saltpetre and charcoal.
+
+"TANTIA TOPEE."
+
+
+On receipt of this, Little, who had tasted the last-mentioned drugs,
+showed such undisguised anxiety that Bolt sent for Ransome.  He came
+directly, and was closeted with the firm.  Bolt handed him the
+letters, told him the case, and begged leave to put him a question.
+"Is the police worth any thing, or nothing, in this here town?"
+
+"It is worth something, I hope, gentlemen."
+
+"How much, I wonder?  Of all the bands that have been stolen, and
+all the people that have been blown up, and scorched and vitrioled,
+and shot at, and shot, by Union men, did ever you and your bobbies
+nail a single malefactor?"
+
+Now Mr. Ransome was a very tall man, with a handsome, dignified
+head, a long black beard, and pleasant, dignified manners.  When
+short, round, vulgar Mr. Bolt addressed him thus, it really was like
+a terrier snapping at a Newfoundland dog.  Little felt ashamed, and
+said Mr. Ransome had been only a few months in office in the place.
+"Thank you, Mr. Little," said the chief constable.  "Mr Bolt, I'll
+ask you a favor.  Meet me at a certain place this evening, and let
+me reply to your question then and there."
+
+This singular proposal excited some curiosity, and the partners
+accepted the rendezvous.  Ransome came to the minute, and took the
+partners into the most squalid part of this foul city.  At the
+corner of a narrow street he stepped and gave a low whistle.  A
+policeman in plain clothes came to him directly.
+
+"They are both in the 'Spotted Dog,' sir, with half a dozen more."
+
+"Follow me, and guard the door.  Will you come, too, gentlemen?"
+
+The "Spotted Dog" was a low public, with one large room and a sanded
+floor.  Mr. Ransome walked in and left the door open, so that his
+three companions heard and saw all that passed.
+
+"Holland and Cheetham, you are wanted."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Wilde's affair.  He has come to himself, and given us your names."
+
+On this the two men started up and were making for the door.
+Ransome whipped before it.  "That won't do."
+
+Then there was a loud clatter of rising feet, oaths, threats, and
+even a knife or two drawn; and, in the midst of it all, the ominous
+click of a pistol, and then dead silence; for it was Ransome who had
+produced that weapon.  "Come, no nonsense," said he.  "Door's
+guarded, street's guarded, and I'm not to be trifled with."
+
+He then handed his pistol to the officer outside with an order, and,
+stepping back suddenly, collared Messrs. Holland and Cheetham with
+one movement, and, with a powerful rush, carried them out of the
+house in his clutches.  Meantime the policeman had whistled, there
+was a conflux of bobbies, and the culprits were handcuffed and
+marched off to the Town Hall.
+
+"Five years' penal servitude for that little lot," said Ransome.
+
+"And now, Mr. Bolt, I have answered your question to the best of my
+ability."
+
+"You have answered it like a man.  Will you do as much for us?"
+
+"I'll do my best.  Let me examine the place now that none of them
+are about."
+
+Bolt and Ransome went together, but Little went home: he had an
+anxiety even more pressing, his mother's declining health.  She had
+taken to pining and fretting ever since Dr. Amboyne brought the bad
+news from Cairnhope; and now, instead of soothing and consoling her
+son, she needed those kind offices from him; and, I am happy to say,
+she received them.  He never spent an evening away from her.
+Unfortunately he did not succeed in keeping up her spirits, and the
+sight of her lowered his own.
+
+At this period Grace Carden was unmixed comfort to him; she
+encouraged him to encroach a little, and visit her twice a week
+instead of once, and she coaxed him to confide all his troubles to
+her.  He did so; he concealed from his mother that he was at war
+with the trade again, but he told Grace everything, and her tender
+sympathy was the balm of his life.  She used to put on cheerfulness
+for his sake, even when she felt it least.
+
+One day, however, he found her less bright than usual, and she
+showed him an advertisement--Bollinghope house and park for sale;
+and she was not old enough nor wise enough to disguise from him that
+this pained her.  Some expressions of regret and pity fell from her;
+that annoyed Henry, and he said, "What is that to us?"
+
+"Nothing to you: but I feel I am the cause.  I have not used him
+well, that's certain."
+
+Henry said, rather cavalierly, that Mr. Coventry was probably
+selling his house for money, not for love, and (getting angry) that
+he hoped never to hear the man's name mentioned again.
+
+Grace Carden was a little mortified by his tone, but she governed
+herself and said sadly, "My idea of love was to be able to tell you
+every thought of my heart, even where my conscience reproaches me a
+little.  But if you prefer to exclude one topic--and have no fear
+that it may lead to the exclusion of others--"
+
+They were on the borders of a tiff; but Henry recovered himself and
+said firmly, "I hope we shall not have a thought unshared one day;
+but, just for the present, it will be kinder to spare me that one
+topic."
+
+"Very well, dearest," said Grace.  "And, if it had not been for the
+advertisement--" she said no more, and the thing passed like a dark
+cloud between the lovers.
+
+Bollinghope house and park were actually sold that very week; they
+were purchased, at more than their value, by a wealthy manufacturer:
+and the proceeds of this sale and the timber cleared off all
+Coventry's mortgages, and left him with a few hundred pounds in
+cash, and an estate which had not a tree on it, but also had not a
+debt upon it.
+
+Of course he forfeited, by this stroke, his position as a country
+gentleman; but that he did not care about, since it was all done
+with one view, to live comfortably in Paris far from the intolerable
+sight of his rival's happiness with the lady he loved.
+
+He bought in at the sale a few heirlooms and articles of furniture--
+who does not cling, at the last moment, to something of this kind?--
+and rented a couple of unfurnished rooms in Hillsborough to keep
+them in.  He fixed the day of his departure, arranged his goods, and
+packed his clothes.  Then he got a letter of credit on Paris, and
+went about the town buying numerous articles of cutlery.
+
+But this last simple act led to strange consequences.  He was seen
+and followed; and in the dead of the evening, as he was cording with
+his own hands a box containing a few valuables, a heavy step mounted
+the stair, and there was a rude knock at the door.
+
+Mr. Coventry felt rather uncomfortable, but he said, "Come in."
+
+The door was opened, and there stood Sam Cole.
+
+Coventry received him ill.  He looked up from his packing and said,
+"What on earth do you want, sir?"
+
+But it was not Cole's business to be offended.  "Well, sir," said
+he, "I've been looking out for you some time, and I saw you at our
+place; so I thought I'd come and tell you a bit o' news."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"It is about him you know of; begins with a hel."
+
+"Curse him!  I don't want to hear about him.  I'm leaving the
+country.  Well, what is it?"
+
+"He is wrong with the trade again."
+
+"What is that to me?--Ah! sit down, Cole, and tell me."
+
+Cole let him know the case, and assured him that, sooner or later,
+if threats did not prevail, the Union would go any length.
+
+"Should you be employed?"
+
+"If it was a dangerous job, they'd prefer me."
+
+Mr. Coventry looked at his trunks, and then at Sam Cole.  A small
+voice whispered "Fly."  He stifled that warning voice, and told Cole
+he would stay and watch this affair, and Cole was to report to him
+whenever any thing fresh occurred.  From that hour this gentleman
+led the life of a malefactor, dressed like a workman, and never went
+out except at night.
+
+Messrs. Bolt and Little were rattened again, and never knew it till
+morning.  This time it was not the bands, but certain axle-nuts and
+screws that vanished.  The obnoxious machines came to a standstill,
+and Bolt fumed and cursed.  However, at ten o'clock, he and the
+foreman were invited to the Town hall, and there they found the
+missing gear, and the culprit, one of the very workmen employed at
+high wages on the obnoxious machines.
+
+Ransome had bored a small hole in the ceiling, by means of which
+this room was watched from above; the man was observed, followed,
+and nabbed.  The property found on him was identified and the
+magistrate offered the prisoner a jury, which he declined; then the
+magistrate dealt with the case summarily, refused to recognize
+rattening, called the offense "petty larceny," and gave the man six
+months' prison.
+
+Now as Ransome, for obvious reasons, concealed the means by which
+this man had been detected, a conviction so mysterious shook that
+sense of security which ratteners had enjoyed for many years, and
+the trades began to find that craft had entered the lists with
+craft.
+
+Unfortunately, those who directed the Saw-grinders' Union thought
+the existence of the trade at stake, and this minor defeat merely
+exasperated them.
+
+Little received a letter telling him he was acting worse than
+Brinsley, who had been shot in the Briggate; and asking him, as a
+practical man, which he thought was likely to die first, he or the
+Union?  "You won't let us live; why should we let you?"
+
+Bolt was threatened in similar style, but he merely handed the
+missives to Ransome; he never flinched.
+
+Not so Little.  He got nervous; and, in a weak moment, let his
+mother worm out of him that he was at war with the trades again.
+
+This added anxiety to her grief, and she became worse every day.
+
+Then Dr. Amboyne interfered, and, after a certain degree of fencing--
+which seems inseparable from the practice of medicine--told Henry
+plainly he feared the very worst if this went on; Mrs. Little was on
+the brink of jaundice.  By his advice Henry took her to Aberystwith
+in Wales, and, when he had settled her there, went back to his
+troubles.
+
+To those was now added a desolate home; gone was the noble face, the
+maternal eye, the soothing voice, the unfathomable love.  He never
+knew all her value till now.
+
+One night, as he sat by himself sad and disconsolate, his servant
+came to tell him there was a young woman inquiring for Mrs. Little.
+Henry went out to her, and it was Jael Dence.  He invited her in,
+and told her what had happened.  Jael saw his distress, and gave him
+her womanly sympathy.  "And I came to tell her my own trouble," said
+she; "fie on me!"
+
+"Then tell it me, Jael.  There, take off your shawl and sit down.
+They shall make you a cup of tea."
+
+Jael complied, with a slight blush; but as to her trouble, she said
+it was not worth speaking of in that house.
+
+Henry insisted, however, and she said, "Mine all comes of my sister
+marrying that Phil Davis.  To tell you the truth, I went to church
+with a heavy heart on account of their both beginning with a D--
+Dence and Davis; for 'tis an old saying--
+
+
+     "'If you change the name, and not the letter,
+       You change for the worse, and not for the better.'
+
+
+Well, sir, it all went wrong somehow.  Parson, he was South country;
+and when his time came to kiss the bride, he stood and looked ever
+so helpless, and I had to tell him he must kiss her; and even then
+he stared foolish-like a bit before he kissed her, and the poor
+lass's face getting up and the tear in her eye at being slighted.
+And that put Patty out for one thing: and then she wouldn't give
+away the ribbon to the fastest runner--the lads run a hundred yards
+to the bride, for ribbon and kiss, you know;--wasn't the ribbon she
+grudged, poor wench; but the fastest runner in Cairnhope town is
+that Will Gibbon, a nasty, ugly, slobbering chap, that was always
+after her, and Philip jealous of him; so she did for the best, and
+Will Gibbon safe to win it.  But the village lads they didn't see
+the reason, and took it all to themselves.  Was she better than
+their granddam? and were they worse than their grandsires?  They ran
+on before, and fired the anvil when she passed: just fancy! an
+affront close to her own door: and, sir, she walked in a doors
+crying.  There was a wedding for you!  George the blacksmith was
+that hurt at their making free with his smithy to affront her, he
+lifted his arm for the first time, and pretty near killed a couple
+of them, poor thoughtless bodies.  Well, sir, Phil Davis always took
+a drop, you know, and, instead of mending, he got worse; they live
+with father, and of course he has only to go to the barrel; old-
+fashioned farmers like us don't think to spy on the ale.  He was so
+often in liquor, I checked him; but Patty indulged him in every
+thing.  By-and-by my lord gets ever so civil to me; 'What next?'
+said I to myself.  One fine evening we are set upstairs at our tea;
+in he comes drunk, and says many things we had to look at one
+another and excuse.  Presently he tells us all that he has made a
+mistake; he has wedded Patty, and I'm the one he likes the best.
+But I thought the fool was in jest; but Patty she gave a cry as if a
+knife had gone through her heart.  Then my blood got up in a moment.
+'That's an affront to all three,' said I: 'and take your answer, ye
+drunken sow,' said I.  I took him by the scruff of the neck and just
+turned him out of the room and sent him to the bottom of the stairs
+headforemost.  Then Patty she quarreled with me, and father he sided
+with her.  And so I gave them my blessing, and told them to send for
+me in trouble; and I left the house I was born in.  It all comes of
+her changing her name, and not her letter."  Here a few tears
+interrupted further comment.
+
+Henry consoled her, and asked her what she was going to do.
+
+She said she did not know; but she had a good bit of money put by,
+and was not afraid of work, and, in truth, she had come there to ask
+Mrs. Little's advice, "poor lady.  Now don't you mind me, Mr. Henry,
+your trouble is a deal worse than mine."
+
+"Jael," said he, "you must come here and keep my house till my poor
+mother is better."
+
+Jael colored and said, "Nay, that will not do.  But if you could
+find me something to do in your great factory--and I hear you have
+enemies there; you might as well have a friend right in the middle
+of them.  Eh, but I'd keep my eyes and ears open for you."
+
+Henry appreciated this proposal, and said there were plenty of
+things she could do; she could hone, she could pack, she could
+superintend, and keep the girls from gabbling; "That," said he, "is
+the real thing that keeps them behind the men at work."
+
+So Jael Dence lodged with a female cousin in Hillsborough, and
+filled a position of trust in the factory of Bolt and Little: she
+packed, and superintended, and the foreman paid her thirty shillings
+a week.  The first time this was tendered her she said severely, "Is
+this right, young man?" meaning, "Is it not too much?"
+
+"Oh, you will be raised if you stay with us three months."
+
+"Raised?" said the virtuous rustic!  Then, looking loftily round on
+the other women, "What ever do these factory folk find to grumble
+at?"
+
+Henry told Grace all about this, and she said, rather eagerly, "Ah,
+I am glad of that.  You'll have a good watch-dog."
+
+It was a shrewd speech.  The young woman soon found out that Little
+was really in danger, and she was all eyes and ears, and no tongue.
+
+Yet neither her watchfulness, nor Ransome's, prevailed entirely
+against the deviltries of the offended Union.  Machinery was always
+breaking down by pure accident; so everybody swore, and nobody
+believed: the water was all let out of the boiler, and the boiler
+burst.  Bands were no longer taken but they were cut.  And, in
+short, the works seemed to be under a curse.
+
+And, lest the true origin of all these mishaps should be doubted,
+each annoyance was followed by an anonymous letter.  These were
+generally sent to Little.  A single sentence will indicate the
+general tone of each.
+
+1.  "All these are but friendly warnings, to save your life if
+possible."
+
+2.  "I never give in.  I fight to death, and with more craft and
+duplicity than Bolt and Ransome.  They will never save you from me,
+if you persist.  Ask others whether I ever failed to keep my word."
+
+3.  "If I but move my finger, you are sent into eternity."
+
+Henry Little's nerve began to give way more and more.
+
+Meantime Cole met Mr. Coventry, and told him what was going on
+beneath the surface: at the same time he expressed his surprise at
+the extraordinary forbearance shown by the Union.  "Grotait is
+turning soft, I think.  He will not give the word to burn
+Sebastopol."
+
+"Then do it without him."
+
+Cole shook his head, and said he daren't.  But, after some
+reflection, he said there was a mate of his who was not so dependent
+on Grotait: he might be tempted perhaps to do something on his own
+hook, Little being wrong with the trade, and threatened.  "How much
+would you stand?"
+
+"How far would your friend go?"
+
+"I'll ask him."
+
+Next day Cole walked coolly into the factory at dinner-time and had
+a conversation with Hill, one of the workmen, who he knew was acting
+for the Union, and a traitor in his employers' camp.  He made Hill a
+proposal.  Hill said it was a very serious thing; he would think of
+it, and meet him at a certain safe place and tell him.
+
+Cole strolled out of the works, but not unobserved.  Jael Dence had
+made it her business to know every man in the factory by sight, and
+observing, from a window, a stranger in conversation with Hill, she
+came down and met Cole at the gate.  She started at sight of him: he
+did not exactly recognize her; but, seeing danger in her eye, took
+to his heels, and ran for it like a deer: but Jael called to some of
+the men to follow him, but nobody moved.  They guessed it was a
+Union matter.  Jael ran to Little, and told him that villain, who
+had escaped from Raby Hall, had been in the works colloguing with
+one of the men.
+
+Ransome was sent for, and Cole described to him.
+
+As for Hill, Jael watched him like a cat from that hour, since a man
+is known by his friends.  She went so far as to follow him home
+every evening.
+
+Cole got fifty pounds out of Coventry for Hill, and promised him
+twenty.  For this sum Hill agreed to do Little.  But he demanded
+some time to become proficient in the weapon he meant to use.
+
+During the interval events were not idle.  A policeman saw a cutter
+and a disguised gentleman talking together, and told Ransome.  He
+set spies to discover, if possible, what that might mean.
+
+One day the obnoxious machines were stopped by an ACCIDENT to the
+machinery, and Little told Jael this, and said, "Have you a mind to
+earn five pound a week?"
+
+"Ay, if I could do it honestly?"
+
+"Let us see the arm that flung Phil Davis down-stairs."
+
+Jael colored a little, but bared her left arm at command.
+
+"Good heavens!" cried Little. "What a limb!  Why mine is a shrimp
+compared with it."
+
+"Ay, mine has the bulk, but yours the pith."
+
+"Oh, come; if your left arm did that, what must your right be?"
+
+"Oh," said Jael, "you men do every thing with your right hand; but
+we lasses know no odds.  My left is as strong as my right, and both
+at your service."
+
+"Then come along with me."
+
+He took her into the "Experiment Room," explained the machine to
+her, gave her a lesson or two; and so simple was the business that
+she soon mastered her part of it; and Little with his coat off, and
+Jael, with her noble arms bare, ground long saws together secretly;
+and Little, with Bolt's consent, charged the firm by the gross.  He
+received twenty-four pounds per week, out of which he paid Jael six,
+in spite of her "How can a lass's work be worth all that?" and
+similar remonstrances.
+
+Being now once more a workman, and working with this loyal lass so
+many hours a day, his spirits rose a little, and his nerves began to
+recover their tone.
+
+But meantime Hill was maturing his dark design.
+
+In going home, Little passed through one place he never much liked,
+it was a longish close, with two sharp rectangular turns.
+
+Since he was threatened by the trade, he never entered this close
+without looking behind him.  He did not much fear an attack in
+front, being always armed with pistols now.
+
+On a certain night he came to this place as usual, went as far as
+the first turn, then looked sharply round to see if he was followed;
+but there was nobody behind except a woman, who was just entering
+the court.  So he went on.
+
+But a little way down this close was a small public-house, and the
+passage-door was ajar, and a man watching.  No sooner was Little out
+of sight than he emerged, and followed him swiftly on tiptoe.
+
+The man had in his hand a weapon that none but a Hillsborough cutler
+would have thought of; yet, as usual, it was very fit for the
+purpose, being noiseless and dangerous, though old-fashioned.  It
+was a long strong bow, all made of yew-tree.  The man fitted an
+arrow to this, and running lightly to the first turn, obtained a
+full view of Little's retiring figure, not fifteen yards distant.
+
+So well was the place chosen, that he had only to discharge his
+weapon and then run back.  His victim could never see him.
+
+He took a deliberate aim at Little's back, drew the arrow to the
+head, and was about to loose it, when a woman's arm was flung round
+his neck.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+
+Coventry and Cole met that night near a little church.
+
+Hill was to join them, and tell them the result.
+
+Now, as it happens, Little went home rather late that night; so
+these confederates waited, alternately hoping and fearing, a
+considerable time.
+
+Presently, something mysterious occurred that gave them a chill.  An
+arrow descended, as if from the clouds, and stuck quivering on a
+grave not ten yards from them.  The black and white feathers shone
+clear in the moonlight.
+
+To Coventry it seemed as if Heaven was retaliating on him.
+
+The more prosaic but quick-witted cutler, after the first
+stupefaction, suspected it was the very arrow destined for Little,
+and said so.
+
+"And Heaven flings it back to us," said Coventry, and trembled in
+every limb.
+
+"Heaven has naught to do in it.  The fool has got drunk, and shot it
+in the air.  Anyway, it mustn't stick there to tell tales."
+
+Cole vaulted over the church-yard wall, drew it out of the grave,
+and told Coventry to hide it.
+
+"Go you home," said he.  "I'll find out what this means."
+
+
+Hill's unexpected assailant dragged him back so suddenly and
+violently that the arrow went up at an angle of forty-five, and, as
+the man loosed the string to defend himself, flew up into the sky,
+and came down full a hundred yards from the place.
+
+Hill twisted violently round and, dropping the bow, struck the woman
+in the face with his fist; he had not room to use all his force; yet
+the blow covered her face with blood.  She cried out, but gripped
+him so tight by both shoulders that he could not strike again but he
+kicked her savagely.  She screamed, but slipped her arms down and
+got him tight round the waist.  Then he was done for; with one
+mighty whirl she tore him off his feet in a moment, then dashed
+herself and him under her to the ground with such ponderous violence
+that his head rang loud on the pavement and he was stunned for a few
+seconds.  Ere he quite recovered she had him turned on his face, and
+her weighty knee grinding down his shoulders, while her nimble hands
+whipped off her kerchief and tied his hands behind him in a
+twinkling.
+
+So quickly was it all done, that by the time Little heard the
+scrimmage, ascertained it was behind him, and came back to see, she
+was seated on her prisoner, trembling and crying after her athletic
+feat, and very little fit to cope with the man if he had not been
+tied.
+
+Little took her by the hands.  "Oh, my poor Jael!  What is the
+matter?  Has the blackguard been insulting you?"  And, not waiting
+for an answer, gave him a kick that made him howl again.
+
+"Yes, kill him, the villain! he wanted to murder you.  Oh, oh, oh!"
+
+She could say no more, but became hysterical.
+
+Henry supported her tenderly, and wiped the blood from her face; and
+as several people came up, and a policeman, he gave the man in
+charge, on Jael's authority, and he was conveyed to the station
+accordingly, he and his bow.
+
+They took Jael Dence to a chemist's shop, and gave her cold water
+and salts: the first thing she did, when she was quite herself, was
+to seize Henry Little's hand and kiss it with such a look of joy as
+brought tears into his eyes.
+
+Then she told her story, and was taken in a cab to the police-
+office, and repeated her story there.
+
+Then Henry took her to Woodbine Villa, and Grace Carden turned very
+pale at Henry's danger, though passed: she wept over Jael, and
+kissed her; and nobody could make enough of her.
+
+Grace Carden looked wistfully at Henry and said, "Oh that I had a
+strong arm to defend you!"
+
+"Oh, Miss Grace," said Jael, "don't you envy me.  Go away with him
+from this wicked, murdering place.  That will be a deal better than
+any thing I can do for him."
+
+"Ah, would to Heaven I could this minute!" said Grace, clinging
+tenderly to his shoulder.  She insisted on going home with him and
+sharing his peril for once.
+
+Hill was locked up for the night.
+
+In the morning a paper was slipped into his hand.  "Say there was no
+arrow."
+
+He took this hint, and said that he was innocent as a babe of any
+harm.  He had got a bow to repair for a friend, and he went home
+twanging it, was attacked by a woman, and, in his confusion, struck
+her once, but did not repeat the blow.
+
+Per contra, Jael Dence distinctly swore there was an arrow, with two
+white feathers and one black one, and that the prisoner was shooting
+at Mr. Little.  She also swore that she had seen him colloguing with
+another man, who had been concerned in a former attempt on Mr.
+Little, and captured, but had escaped from Raby Hall.
+
+On this the magistrate declined to discharge the prisoner; but, as
+no arrow could be found at present, admitted him to bail, two
+securities fifty pounds each, which was an indirect way of
+imprisoning him until the Assizes.
+
+This attempt, though unsuccessful in one way, was very effective in
+another.  It shook Henry Little terribly; and the effect was
+enhanced by an anonymous letter he received, reminding him there
+were plenty of noiseless weapons.  Brinsley had been shot twice, and
+no sound heard.  "When your time comes, you'll never know what hurt
+you."  The sense of a noiseless assassin eternally dogging him
+preyed on Little's mind and spirits, and at last this life on the
+brink of the grave became so intolerable that he resolved to leave
+Hillsborough, but not alone.
+
+He called on Grace Carden, pale and agitated.
+
+"Grace," said he, "do you really love me?"
+
+"Oh, Henry!  Do I love you?"
+
+"Then save me from this horrible existence.  Oh, my love, if you
+knew what it is to have been a brave man, and to find your courage
+all oozing away under freezing threats, that you know, by
+experience, will be followed by some dark, subtle, bloody deed or
+other.  There, they have brought me down to this, that I never go
+ten steps without looking behind me, and, when I go round a corner,
+I turn short and run back, and wait at the corner to see if an
+assassin is following me.  I tremble at the wind.  I start at my own
+shadow."
+
+Grace threw her arms round his neck, and stopped him with tears and
+kisses.
+
+"Ah, bless you, my love!" he cried, and kissed her fondly.  "You
+pity me--you will save me from this miserable, degrading life?"
+
+"Ah, that I will, if I can, my own."
+
+"You can."
+
+"Then tell me how."
+
+"Be my wife--let us go to the United States together.  Dearest, my
+patents are a great success.  We are making our fortune, though we
+risk our lives.  In America I could sell these inventions for a
+large sum, or work them myself at an enormous profit.  Be my wife,
+and let us fly this hellish place together."
+
+"And so I would in a moment; but" (with a deep sigh) "papa would
+never consent to that."
+
+"Dispense with his consent."
+
+"Oh, Henry; and marry under my father's curse!"
+
+"He could not curse you, if he love you half as well as I do; and if
+he does not, why sacrifice me, and perhaps my life, to him?"
+
+"Henry, for pity's sake, think of some other way.  Why this violent
+haste to get rich?  Have a little patience.  Mr. Raby will not
+always be abroad.  Oh, pray give up Mr. Bolt, and go quietly on at
+peace with these dreadful Trades.  You know I'll wait all my life
+for you.  I will implore papa to let you visit me oftener.  I will
+do all a faithful, loving girl can do to comfort you."
+
+"Ay," said Henry, bitterly, "you will do anything but the one thing
+I ask."
+
+"Yes, anything but defy my father.  He is father and mother both to
+me.  How unfortunate we both are!  If you knew what it costs me to
+deny you anything, if you knew how I long to follow you round the
+world--"
+
+She choked with emotion, and seemed on the point of yielding, after
+all.
+
+But he said, bitterly, "You long to follow me round the world, and
+you won't go a twelve-days' voyage with me to save my life.  Ah, it
+is always so.  You don't love me as poor Jael Dence loves me.  She
+saved my life without my asking her; but you won't do it when I
+implore you."
+
+"Henry, my own darling, if any woman on earth loves you better than
+I do, for God's sake marry her, and let me die to prove I loved you
+a little."
+
+"Very well," said he, grinding his teeth.  "Next week I leave this
+place with a wife.  I give you the first offer, because I love you.
+I shall give Jael the second, because she loves me."
+
+So then he flung out of the room, and left Grace Carden half
+fainting on the sofa, and drowned in tears.
+
+But before he got back to the works he repented his violence, and
+his heart yearned for her more than ever.
+
+With that fine sense of justice which belongs to love, he spoke
+roughly to Jael Dence.
+
+She stared, and said nothing, but watched him furtively, and saw his
+eyes fill with tears at the picture memory recalled of Grace's pale
+face and streaming eyes.
+
+She put a few shrewd questions, and his heart was so full he could
+not conceal the main facts, though he suppressed all that bore
+reference to Jael herself.  She took Grace's part, and told him he
+was all in the wrong; why could not he go to America alone, and sell
+his patents, and then come back and marry Grace with the money?
+"Why drag her across the water, to make her quarrel with her
+father?"
+
+"Why, indeed?" said Henry: "because I'm not the man I was.  I have
+no manhood left.  I have not the courage to fight the Trades, nor
+yet the courage to leave the girl I love so dearly."
+
+"Eh, poor lad," said Jael, "thou hast courage enough; but it has
+been too sore tried, first and last.  You have gone through enough
+to break a man of steel."
+
+She advised him to go and make his submission at once.
+
+He told her she was his guardian angel, and kissed her, in the
+warmth of his gratitude; and he went back to Woodbine Villa, and
+asked Grace's forgiveness, and said he would go alone to the States
+and come back with plenty of money to satisfy Mr. Carden's prudence,
+and--
+
+Grace clutched him gently with both hands, as if to hinder from
+leaving her.  She turned very pale, and said, "Oh my heart!"
+
+Then she laid her head on his shoulder, and wept piteously.
+
+He comforted her, and said, "What is it? a voyage of twelve days!
+And yet I shall never have the courage to bid you good-by."
+
+"Nor I you, my own darling."
+
+
+Having come to this resolution, he was now seized with a fear that
+he would be assassinated before he could carry it out; to diminish
+the chances, he took up his quarters at the factory, and never went
+out at night.  Attached to the works was a small building near the
+water-side.  Jael Dence occupied the second floor of it.  He had a
+camp-bed set up on the first floor, and established a wire
+communication with the police office.  At the slightest alarm he
+could ring a bell in Ransome's ear.  He also clandestinely unscrewed
+a little postern door that his predecessors had closed, and made a
+key to the lock, so that if he should ever be compelled to go out at
+night he might baffle his foes, who would naturally watch the great
+gate for his exit.
+
+With all this he became very depressed and moody, and alarmed Doctor
+Amboyne, who remembered his father's end.
+
+The doctor advised him to go and see his mother for a day or two;
+but he shook his head, and declined.
+
+A prisoner detained for want of bail is allowed to communicate with
+his friends, and Grotait soon let Hill know he was very angry with
+him for undertaking to do Little without orders.  Hill said that the
+job was given him by Cole, who was Grotait's right-hand man, and
+Grotait had better bail him, otherwise he might be induced to tell
+tales.
+
+Grotait let him stay in prison three days, and then sent two
+householders with the bail.
+
+Hill was discharged, and went home.  At dusk he turned out to find
+Cole, and tracing him from one public-house to another, at last
+lighted on him in company with Mr. Coventry.
+
+This set him thinking; however, he held aloof till they parted; and
+then following Cole, dunned him for his twenty pounds.
+
+Cole gave him five pounds on account.  Hill grumbled, and
+threatened.
+
+Grotait sent for both men, and went into a passion, and threatened
+to hang them both if they presumed to attack Little's person again
+in any way.  "It is the place I mean to destroy," said Grotait, "not
+the man."
+
+Cole conveyed this to Coventry, and it discouraged him mightily, and
+he told Cole he should give it up and go abroad.
+
+But soon after this some pressure or other was brought to bear on
+Grotait, and Cole, knowing this, went to him, and asked him whether
+Bolt and Little were to be done or not.
+
+"It is a painful subject," said Grotait.
+
+"It is a matter of life and death to us," said Cole.
+
+"That is true.  But mind--the place, and not the man."  Cole
+assented, and then Grotait took him on to a certain bridge, and
+pointed out the one weak side of Bob and Little's fortress, and
+showed him how the engine-chimney could be got at and blown down,
+and so the works stopped entirely: "And I'll tell you something,"
+said he; "that chimney is built on a bad foundation, and was never
+very safe; so you have every chance."
+
+Then they chaffered about the price, and at last Grotait agreed to
+give him L20.
+
+Cole went to Coventry, and told how far Grotait would allow him to
+go: "But," said he, "L20 is not enough.  I run an even chance of
+being hung or lagged."
+
+"Go a step beyond your instructions, and I'll give you a hundred
+pounds."
+
+"I daren't," said Cole: "unless there was a chance to blow up the
+place with the man in it."  Then, after a moment's reflection, he
+said: "I hear he sleeps in the works.  I must find out where."
+
+Accordingly, he talked over one of the women in the factory, and
+gained the following information, which he imparted to Mr. Coventry:
+
+Little lived and slept in a detached building recently erected, and
+the young woman who had overpowered Hill slept in a room above him.
+She passed in the works for his sweetheart, and the pair were often
+locked up together for hours at a time in a room called the
+"Experiment Room."
+
+This information took Coventry quite by surprise, and imbittered his
+hatred of Little.  While Cole was felicitating him on the situation
+of the building, he was meditating how to deal his hated rival a
+stab of another kind.
+
+Cole, however, was single-minded in the matter; and the next day he
+took a boat and drifted slowly down the river, and scanned the place
+very carefully.
+
+He came at night to Coventry, and told him he thought he might
+perhaps be able to do the trick without seeming to defy Grotait's
+instructions.  "But," said he, "it is a very dangerous job.
+Premises are watched: and, what do you think? they have got wires up
+now that run over the street to the police office, and Little can
+ring a bell in Ransome's room, and bring the bobbies across with a
+rush in a moment.  It isn't as it was under the old chief constable;
+this one's not to be bought nor blinded.  I must risk a halter."
+
+"You shall have fifty pounds more."
+
+"You are a gentleman, sir.  I should like to have it in hard
+sovereigns.  I'm afraid of notes.  They get traced somehow."
+
+"You shall have it all in sovereigns."
+
+"I want a little in advance, to buy the materials.  They are costly,
+especially the fulminating silver."
+
+Coventry gave him ten sovereigns, and they parted with the
+understanding that Cole should endeavor to blow up the premises on
+some night when Little was in them, and special arrangements were
+made to secure this.
+
+
+Henry Little and Grace Carden received each of them, an anonymous
+letter, on the same day.
+
+Grace Carden's ran thus:--
+
+
+"I can't abide to see a young lady made a fool of by a villain.  Mr.
+Little have got his miss here: they dote on each other.  She lives
+in the works, and so do he, ever since she came, which he usen't
+afore.  They are in one room, as many as eight hours at a stretch,
+and that room always locked.  It is the talk of all the girls.  It
+is nought to me, but I thought it right you should know, for it is
+quite a scandal.  She is a strapping country lass, with a queerish
+name.  This comes from a strange, but a well-wisher.
+
+"FAIR PLAY."
+
+
+The letter to Henry Little was as follows:--
+
+
+"The reason of so many warnings and ne'er a blow, you had friends in
+the trade.  But you have worn them out.  You are a doomed man.
+Prepare to meet your God.
+
+"[Drawing of coffin.]"
+
+
+This was the last straw on the camel's back, as the saying is.
+
+He just ground it in his hand, and then he began to act.
+
+He set to work, packed up models, and dispatched them by train;
+clothes ditto, and wrote a long letter to his mother.
+
+Next day he was busy writing and arranging papers till the
+afternoon.  Then he called on Grace, as related, and returned to the
+works about six o'clock: he ordered a cup of tea at seven, which
+Jael brought him.  She found him busy writing letters, and one of
+these was addressed to Grace Carden.
+
+That was all she saw of him that night; for she went to bed early,
+and she was a sound sleeper.
+
+It was nine o'clock of this same evening.
+
+Mr. Coventry, disguised in a beard, was walking up and down a
+certain street opposite the great door of the works.
+
+He had already walked and lounged about two hours.  At last Cole
+joined him for a moment and whispered in a tone full of meaning,
+"Will it do now?"
+
+Coventry's teeth chattered together as he replied, "Yes; now is the
+time."
+
+"Got the money ready?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Let us see it."
+
+"When you have done what you promised me."
+
+"That very moment?"
+
+"That very moment."
+
+"Then I'll tell you what you must do.  In about an hour go on the
+new bridge, and I'll come to you; and, before I've come to you many
+minutes, you'll see summut and hear summut that will make a noise in
+Hillsbro', and, perhaps, get us both into trouble."
+
+"Not if you are as dexterous as others have been."
+
+"Others!  I was in all those jobs.  But this is the queerest.  I go
+to it as if I was going to a halter.  No matter, a man can but die
+once."
+
+And, with these words, he left him and went softly down to the
+water-side.  There, in the shadow of the new bridge, lay a little
+boat, and in it a light-jointed ladder, a small hamper, and a basket
+of tools.  The rowlocks were covered with tow, and the oars made no
+noise whatever, except the scarce audible dip in the dark stream.
+It soon emerged below the bridge like a black spider crawling down
+the stream, and melted out of sight the more rapidly that a slight
+fog was rising.
+
+Cole rowed softly past the works, and observed a very faint light in
+Little's room.  He thought it prudent to wait till this should be
+extinguished, but it was not extinguished.  Here was an unexpected
+delay.
+
+However, the fog thickened a little, and this encouraged him to
+venture; he beached the boat very gently on the muddy shore, and
+began his work, looking up every now and then at that pale light,
+and ready to fly at the first alarm.
+
+He took out of the boat a large varnish-can, which he had filled
+with gunpowder, and wrapped tightly round with wire, and also with a
+sash-line; this can was perforated at the side, and a strong tube
+screwed tightly into it; the tube protruded twelve inches from the
+can in shape of an S: by means of this a slow-burning fuse was
+connected with the powder; some yards of this fuse were wrapt
+loosely round the can.
+
+Cole crept softly to the engine-chimney, and, groping about for the
+right place, laid the can in the engine bottom and uncoiled the
+fuse.  He took out of his pocket some small pieces of tile, and laid
+the fuse dry on these.
+
+Then he gave a sigh of relief, and crept back to the boat.
+
+Horrible as the action was, he had done all this without much fear,
+and with no remorse, for he was used to this sort of work; but now
+he had to commit a new crime, and with new and terrible materials,
+which he had never handled in the way of crime before.
+
+He had in his boat a substance so dangerous that he had made a nest
+of soft cotton for the receptacle which held it; and when the boat
+touched the shore, light as the contact was, he quaked lest his
+imprisoned giant-devil should go off and blow him to atoms.
+
+He put off touching it till the last moment.  He got his jointed
+ladder, set it very softly underneath the window where the feeble
+gas-light was, and felt about with his hands for the grating he had
+observed when he first reconnoitered the premises from the river.
+He found it, but it was so high that he had to reach a little, and
+the position was awkward for working.
+
+The problem was how to remove one of those bars, and so admit his
+infernal machine; it was about the shape and size of an ostrich's
+egg.
+
+It must be done without noise, for the room above him was Little's,
+and Little, he knew, had a wire by means of which he could summon
+Ransome and the police in the turn of a hand.
+
+The cold of the night, and the now present danger, made Cole shiver
+all over, and he paused.
+
+But he began again, and, taking out a fine steel saw highly
+tempered, proceeded to saw the iron slowly and gently, ready at the
+first alarm to spring from his ladder and run away.
+
+With all his caution, steel grated against steel, and made too much
+noise in the stilly night.  He desisted.  He felt about, and found
+the grating was let into wood, not stone; he oiled the saw, and it
+cut the wood like butter; he made two cuts like a capital V, and a
+bar of the grating came loose; he did the same thing above, and the
+bar came out.
+
+Cole now descended the ladder, and prepared for the greatest danger
+of all.  He took from its receptacle the little metal box lined with
+glazed paper, which contained the fulminating silver and its fuse;
+and, holding it as gently as possible, went and mounted the ladder
+again, putting his foot down as softly as a cat.
+
+But he was getting colder and colder, and at this unfortunate moment
+he remembered that, when he was a lad, a man had been destroyed by
+fulminating silver--quite a small quantity--in a plate over which he
+was leaning; yet the poor wretch's limbs had been found in different
+places, and he himself had seen the head; it had been torn from the
+trunk and hurled to an incredible distance.
+
+That trunkless head he now fancied he saw, in the middle of the fog;
+and his body began to sweat cold, and his hands to shake so that he
+could hardly told the box.  But if he let it fall--
+
+He came hastily down the ladder and sat down on the dirty ground,
+with the infernal engine beside him.
+
+By-and-by he got up and tried to warm his hands and feet by motion,
+and at last he recovered his fortitude, and went softly and cat-like
+up the steps again, in spite of the various dangers he incurred.
+
+Of what was this man's mind composed, whom neither a mere bribe
+could buy to do this deed, nor pure fanaticism without a bribe; but,
+where both inducements met, neither the risk of immediate death, nor
+of imprisonment for life, nor both dangers united, could divert him
+from his deadly purpose, though his limbs shook, and his body was
+bedewed with a cold perspiration?
+
+He reached the top of the ladder, he put his hand inside the grate;
+there was an aperture, but he could not find the bottom.  He
+hesitated.
+
+Here was a fresh danger: if he let the box fall it might explode at
+once and send him to eternity.
+
+Once more he came softly down, and collected all the tow and wool he
+could find.  He went up the ladder and put these things through the
+grating; they formed a bed.
+
+Then he went back for the fatal box, took it up the ladder with
+beating heart, laid it softly in its bed, uncoiled the fuse and let
+it hang down.
+
+So now these two fiendish things were placed, and their devilish
+tails hanging out behind them.  The fuses had been cut with the
+utmost nicety to burn the same length of time--twelve minutes.
+
+But Cole was too thoughtful and wary to light the fuses until
+everything was prepared for his escape.  He put the ladder on board
+the boat, disposed the oars so that he could use them at once; then
+crept to the engine-chimney, kneeled down beside the fuse, looked up
+at the faint light glimmering above, and took off his hat.
+
+With singular cunning and forethought he had pasted a piece of
+sandpaper into his hat.  By this means he lighted a lucifer at once,
+and kept it out of sight from the windows, and also safe from the
+weather; he drew the end of the fuse into the hat, applied the match
+to it out of sight, then blew the match out and darted to his other
+infernal machine.  In less than ten seconds he lighted that fuse
+too; then stepped into the boat, and left those two devilish sparks
+creeping each on its fatal errand.  He pulled away with exulting
+bosom, beating heart, and creeping flesh.  He pulled swiftly up
+stream, landed at the bridge, staggered up the steps, and found
+Coventry at his post, but almost frozen, and sick of waiting.
+
+He staggered up to him and gasped out, "I've done the trick, give me
+the brass, and let me go.  I see a halter in the air."  His teeth
+chattered.
+
+But Coventry, after hoping and fearing for two hours and a half, had
+lost all confidence in his associate, and he said, "How am I to know
+you've done anything?"
+
+"You'll see and you'll hear," said Cole.  "Give me the brass."
+
+"Wait till I see and hear," was the reply.
+
+"What, wait to be nabbed?  Another minute, and all the town will be
+out after me.  Give it me, or I'll take it."
+
+"Will you?"  And Coventry took out a pistol and cocked it.  Cole
+recoiled.
+
+"Look here," said Coventry; "there are one hundred and fifty
+sovereigns in this bag.  The moment I receive proof you have not
+deceived me, I give you the bag."
+
+"Here, where we stand?"
+
+"Here, on this spot."
+
+"Hush! not so loud.  Didn't I hear a step?"
+
+They both listened keenly.  The fog was thick by this time.
+
+Cole whispered, "Look down the river.  I wonder which will go off
+first?  It is very cold; very."  And he shook like a man in an ague.
+
+Both men listened, numbed with cold, and quivering with the
+expectation of crime.
+
+A clock struck twelve.
+
+At the first stroke the confederates started and uttered a cry.
+They were in that state when everything sudden shakes men like
+thunder.
+
+All still again, and they listened and shook again with fog and
+grime.
+
+Sudden a lurid flash, and a report, dull and heavy, and something
+tall seemed to lean toward them from the sky, and there was a mighty
+rushing sound, and a cold wind in their faces, and an awful fall of
+masonry on the water, and the water spurted under the stroke.  The
+great chimney had fallen in the river.  At this very moment came a
+sharp, tremendous report like a clap of thunder close at hand.  It
+was so awful, that both bag and pistol fell out of Coventry's hand
+and rung upon the pavement, and he fled, terror-stricken.
+
+Cole, though frightened, went down on his knees, and got the bag,
+and started to run the other way.
+
+But almost at the first step he ran against a man, who was running
+toward him.
+
+Both were staggered by the shock, and almost knocked down.
+
+But the man recovered himself first, and seized Cole with a grip of
+iron.
+
+
+When Coventry had run a few steps he recovered his judgment so far
+as to recollect that this would lay him open to suspicion.  He left
+off running, and walked briskly instead.
+
+Presently the great door of the works was opened, and the porter
+appeared crying wildly for help, and that the place was on fire.
+
+The few people that were about made a rush, and Coventry, driven by
+an awful curiosity, went in with them; for why should he be
+suspected any more than they?
+
+He had not gone in half a minute when Mr. Ransome arrived with
+several policemen, and closed the doors at once against all comers.
+
+Strange to say, the last explosion had rung the bell in the police-
+office; hence this prompt appearance of the police.
+
+The five or six persons who got in with Coventry knew nothing, and
+ran hither and thither.  Coventry, better informed, darted at once
+to Little's quarters, and there beheld an awful sight; the roof
+presented the appearance of a sieve: of the second floor little
+remained but a few of the joists, and these were most of them broken
+and stood on and across each other, like a hedgehog's bristles.
+
+In Little's room, a single beam in the center, with a fragment of
+board, kept its place, but the joists were all dislocated or broken
+in two, and sticking up here and there in all directions: huge holes
+had been blown in the walls of both rooms and much of the contents
+of the rooms blown out by them; so vast were these apertures, that
+it seemed wonderful how the structure hung together; the fog was as
+thick in the dismembered and torn building as outside, but a large
+gas-pipe in Little's room was wrenched into the form of a snake and
+broken, and the gas set on fire and flaring, so that the devastation
+was visible; the fireplace also hung on, heaven knows how.
+
+Coventry cast his eyes round, and recoiled with horror at what he
+had done: his foot struck something; it was the letter-box, full of
+letters, still attached to the broken door.  By some instinct of
+curiosity he stooped and peered.  There was one letter addressed
+"Grace Carden."
+
+"He tried to open the box: he could not: he gave it a wrench, it was
+a latticed box, and came to pieces.  He went down the stairs with
+the fragments and the letters in his hand; feet approached, and he
+heard a voice close to him say, "This way, Mr. Ransome, for God's
+sake!"  A sort of panic seized him; he ran back, and in his
+desperation jumped on to the one beam that was standing, and from
+that through the open wall, and fell on the soft mud by the river
+bank.  Though the ground was soft, the descent shook him and
+imbedded him so deeply he could not extricate himself for some time.
+But terror lends energy, and he was now thoroughly terrified: he
+thrust the letters in his pocket, and, being an excellent swimmer,
+dashed at once into the river; but he soon found it choked up with
+masonry and debris of every kind: he coasted this, got into the
+stream, and swam across to the other side.  Then taking the lowest
+and darkest streets, contrived at last to get home, wet and filthy,
+and quaking.
+
+Ransome and his men examined the shattered building within and
+without; but no trace could be found of any human being, alive or
+dead.
+
+Then they got to the river-side with lights, and here they found
+foot-marks.  Ransome set men to guard these from being walked over.
+
+Attention was soon diverted from these.  Several yards from the torn
+building, a woman was found lying all huddled together on a heap of
+broken masonry.  She was in her night-dress, and a counterpane half
+over her.  Her forehead and head were bleeding, and she was quite
+insensible.  The police recognized her directly.  It was Jael Dence.
+
+She was alive, though insensible, and Ransome had her conveyed at
+once to the infirmary.
+
+"Bring more lights to the water-side," said he: "the explosion has
+acted in that direction."
+
+Many torches were brought.  Keen eyes scanned the water.  One or two
+policemen got out upon the ruins of the chimney, and went ankle-deep
+in water.  But what they sought could not be found.  Ransome said he
+was glad of it.  Everybody knew what he meant.
+
+He went back to Little's room, and examined it minutely.  In the
+passage he found a card-case.  It was lying on the door.  Ransome
+took it up mechanically, and put it in his pocket.  He did not
+examine it at this time: he took for granted it was Little's.  He
+asked one of his men whether a man had not been seen in that room.
+The officer said, "Yes."
+
+"Did he come down?"
+
+"No; and I can't think how he got out."
+
+"It is plain how he got out; and that accounts for something I
+observed in the mud.  Now, Williams, you go to my place for that
+stuff I use to take the mold of footprints.  Bring plenty.  Four of
+you scour the town, and try and find out who has gone home with
+river-mud on his shoes or trousers.  Send me the porter."
+
+When the porter came, he asked him whether Mr. Little had slept in
+the works.
+
+The porter could not say for certain.
+
+"Well, but what was his habit?"
+
+"He always slept here of late."
+
+"Where did you see him last?"
+
+"I let him into the works."
+
+"When?"
+
+"I should think about seven o'clock."
+
+"Did you let him out again?"
+
+"No, Mr. Ransome."
+
+"Perhaps you might, and not recollect.  Pray think."
+
+The porter shook his head.
+
+"Are you sure you did not let him out?"
+
+"I am quite sure of that."
+
+"Then the Lord have mercy on his soul!"
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+
+That was Grace Carden's first anonymous letter.  Its contents
+curdled her veins with poison.  The poor girl sat pale and benumbed,
+turning the letter in her hand, and reading the fatal words over and
+over again.
+
+There was a time when she would have entirely disbelieved this
+slander; but now she remembered, with dismay, how many things had
+combined to attach Henry to Jael Dence.  And then the letter stated
+such hard facts; facts unknown to her, but advanced positively.
+
+But what terrified her most was that Henry had so lately told her
+Jael Dence loved him best.
+
+Yet her tossed and tortured mind laid hold of this comfort, that not
+the man only, but the woman too, were loyal, faithful spirits.
+Could they both have changed?  Appearances are deceitful, and might
+have deceived this anonymous writer.
+
+After hours of mere suffering, she began to ask herself what she
+should do?
+
+Her first feminine impulse was to try and find out the truth without
+Henry's aid.
+
+But no; on second thoughts she would be open and loyal, show Henry
+the letter, and ask him to tell her how much truth, if any, there
+was in it.
+
+The agony she endured was a lesson to her.  Now she knew what
+jealousy was; and saw at once she could not endure its torments.
+She thought to herself he was quite right to make her dismiss Mr.
+Coventry, and he must dismiss Jael; she should insist on it.
+
+This resolution formed, she lived on thorns, awaiting Henry Little's
+next visit.
+
+He came next day, but she was out.
+
+She asked the servant if he had said anything.
+
+The servant said, "He seemed a good deal put out at first, miss, but
+afterward he said, 'No, it was all for the best.'"
+
+This was another blow.  Grace connected these words of Henry in some
+mysterious way with the anonymous letter, and spent the night
+crying: but in the morning, being a brave, high-spirited girl, she
+resolved to take a direct course; she would go down to the works,
+and request an explanation on the premises.  She would see the room
+where Henry was said to pass so many hours with Jael, and she would
+show him that the man she loved, and lived for, must place himself
+above suspicion, or lose her forever.  "And if he quarrels with me
+for that," she thought, "why, I can die."  She actually carried out
+her resolution, and went early next morning to the works to demand
+an explanation.  She took the letter with her.  As she went along
+she discussed in her own mind how she should proceed, and at last
+she resolved to just hand him the letter and fix her eye on him.
+His face would tell her the truth.
+
+She drove up to the great gate; there were a good many people about,
+talking, in excited groups.
+
+The porter came out to her.  She said she wished to see Mr. Little.
+
+The porter stared: the people within hearing left off talking, and
+stared too, at her, and then at one another.
+
+At last the porter found his voice.  "Mr. Little! why, we can't find
+him anywhere, dead or alive."
+
+Just then Ransome came out, and, seeing Miss Carden, gave a start,
+and looked much concerned.
+
+Grace noticed this look, and her own face began to fill with
+surprise, and then with alarm.  "Not to be found!" she faltered.
+
+She did not know Mr. Ransome, but he knew her; and he came to the
+carriage-window and said, in a low voice, "Miss Carden, I am the
+chief-constable.  I would advise you to return home.  The fact is,
+there has been an explosion here, and a young woman nearly killed."
+
+"Poor creature!  But Mr. Little!  Oh, sir!  Oh, sir!"
+
+"We can't find him," said Ransome, solemnly: "and we fear--we sadly
+fear--"
+
+Grace uttered a low cry, and then sat trembling.
+
+Ransome tried to console her; said it was just possible he might
+have not slept in the works.
+
+The porter shook his head.
+
+Grace sprung from the carriage.  "Show me the place," said she,
+hoarsely.
+
+Ransome demurred.  "It is an ugly sight for any one to see."
+
+"Who has a better right to see it than I?  I shall find him if he is
+there.  Give me your arm: I have heard him speak of you."
+
+Then Ransome yielded reluctantly, and took her to the place.
+
+He showed her Henry's room, all rent and mutilated.
+
+She shuddered, and, covering her face with her hands, leaned half
+fainting against her conductor; but soon she shook this off, and
+became inspired with strange energy, though her face was like
+marble.
+
+She drew him, indeed almost dragged him, hither and thither,
+questioning him, and listening to everybody's conjectures; for there
+were loud groups here of work-people and towns-people.
+
+Some thought he was buried under the great chimney in the river,
+others intimated plainly their fear that he was blown to atoms.
+
+At each suggestion Grace Carden's whole body winced and quivered as
+if the words were sword cuts, but she would not be persuaded to
+retire.  "No, no," she cried, "amongst so many, some one will guess
+right.  I'll hear all they think, if I die on the spot: die!  What
+is life to me now?  Ah! what is that woman saying?"  And she hurried
+Ransome toward a work-woman who was haranguing several of her
+comrades.
+
+The woman saw Ransome coming toward her with a strange lady.
+
+"Ah!" said she, "here's the constable.  Mr. Ransome, will ye tell me
+where you found the lass, yesternight?"
+
+"She was lying on that heap of bricks: I marked the place with two
+pieces of chalk; ay, here they are; her head lay here, and her feet
+here."
+
+"Well, then," said the woman, "he will not be far from that place.
+You clear away those bricks and rubbish, and you will find him
+underneath.  She was his sweetheart, that is well known here; and he
+was safe to be beside her when the place was blown up."
+
+"No such thing," said Ransome, angrily, and casting a side-look at
+Grace.  "She lay on the second floor, and Mr. Little on the first
+floor."
+
+"Thou simple body," said the woman.  "What's a stair to a young man
+when a bonny lass lies awaiting him, and not a soul about?  They
+were a deal too close together all day, to be distant at night."
+
+A murmur of assent burst at once from all the women.
+
+Grace's body winced and quivered, but her marble face never stirred,
+nor did her lips utter a sound.
+
+"Come away from their scandalous tongues," said Ransome, eagerly.
+
+"No," said Grace; and such a "No."  It was like a statue uttering a
+chip of its own marble.
+
+Then she stood quivering a moment; then, leaving Ransome's arm, she
+darted up to the place where Jael Dence had been found.
+
+She stood like a bird on the broken masonry, and opened her
+beautiful eyes in a strange way, and demanded of all her senses
+whether the body of him she loved lay beneath her feet.
+
+After a minute, during which every eye was riveted on her, she said,
+"I don't believe it; I don't feel him near me.  But I will know."
+
+She took out her purse full of gold, and held it up to the women.
+"This for you, if you will help me."  Then, kneeling down, she began
+to tear up the bricks and throw them, one after another, as far as
+her strength permitted.  The effect on the work-women was
+electrical: they swarmed on the broken masonry, and began to clear
+it away brick by brick.  They worked with sympathetic fury, led by
+this fair creature, whose white hands were soon soiled and bloody,
+but never tired.  In less than an hour they had cleared away several
+wagon-loads of debris.
+
+The body of Henry Little was not there.
+
+Grace gave her purse to the women, and leaned heavily on Mr.
+Ransome's arm again.  He supported her out of the works.
+
+As soon as they were alone, she said, "Is Jael Dence alive or dead?"
+
+"She was alive half an hour ago."
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"At the hospital."
+
+"Take me to the hospital."
+
+He took her to the hospital, and soon they stood beside a clean
+little bed, in which lay the white but still comely face of Jael
+Dence: her luxuriant hair was cut close, and her head bandaged; but
+for her majestic form, she looked a fair, dying boy.
+
+"Stand back," said Grace, "and let me speak to her."  Then she
+leaned over Jael, where she lay.
+
+Gentle women are not all gentleness.  Watch them, especially in
+contact with their own sex, and you shall see now and then a trait
+of the wild animal.  Grace Carden at this moment was any thing but
+dove-like; it was more like a falcon the way she clutched the
+bedclothes, and towered over that prostrate figure, and then,
+descending slowly nearer and nearer, plunged her eyes into those
+fixed and staring orbs of Jael Dence.
+
+So she remained riveted.  Had Jael been conscious, and culpable,
+nothing could have escaped a scrutiny so penetrating.
+
+Even unconscious as she was, Jael's brain and body began to show
+some signs they were not quite impervious to the strange magnetic
+power which besieged them so closely.  When Grace's eyes had been
+close to hers about a minute, Jael Dence moved her head slightly to
+the left, as if those eyes scorched her.
+
+But Grace moved her own head to the right, rapid as a snake, and
+fixed her again directly.
+
+Jael Dence's bosom gave a heave.
+
+"Where--is--Henry Little?" said Grace, still holding her tight by
+the eye, and speaking very slowly, and in such a tone, low, but
+solemn and commanding; a tone that compelled reply.
+
+"Where--is--Henry Little?"
+
+When this was so repeated, Jael moved a little, and her lips began
+to quiver.
+
+"Where--is--Henry Little?"
+
+Jael's lips opened feebly, and some inarticulate sounds issued from
+them.
+
+"Where--is--Henry Little?"
+
+Jael Dence, though unconscious, writhed and moaned so that the head
+nurse interfered, and said she could not have the patient tormented.
+
+Ransome waved her aside, but taking Grace Carden's hand drew her
+gently away.
+
+She made no positive resistance; but, while her body yielded and
+retired, her eye remained riveted on Jael Dence, and her hand
+clutched the air like a hawk's talons, unwilling to lose her prey,
+and then she turned so weak, Ransome had to support her to her
+carriage.
+
+As Grace's head sunk on Ransome's shoulder, Jael Dence's eyes closed
+for the first time.
+
+
+As Ransome was lifting Grace Carden into the carriage, she said, in
+a sort of sleepy voice, "Is there no way out of these works but
+one?"
+
+"Not that I know of; but I will go at once and see.  Shall he drive
+you home?"
+
+"Yes.  No--to Dr. Amboyne."
+
+Dr. Amboyne was gone to Woodbine Villa.
+
+She waited in his study, moving about the room all the time, with
+her face of marble, and her poor restless hands.
+
+At last the doctor returned: they told him at the door Miss Carden
+was there; he came in to her with both hands extended, and his face
+working with emotion.
+
+She fell sobbing into his arms; sobbing, but not a tear.
+
+"Is there any hope?"
+
+"I have one.  May he not have left the country in a fit of despair?
+He often threatened.  He talked of going to the United States."
+
+"So he did.  Ah, he called on me yesterday afternoon.  Might not
+that have been to bid me good-by?"
+
+She looked so imploringly in Dr. Amboyne's face that he assented,
+though full of doubt.
+
+And now there was a ring at the bell, and Mr. Ransome came to say
+there was a little postern gate by which Mr. Little might possibly
+have gone out and the porter not seen him; and, what was more, this
+gate, by all accounts, had been recently opened: it was closed
+before Bolt and Little took the premises.
+
+Mr. Ransome added that he should now make it his business to learn,
+if possible, whether it had been opened by Mr. Little's orders.
+
+Grace thanked him earnestly, and looked hopeful; so did Dr. Amboyne.
+
+"But, doctor," said Grace, "if he has gone away at all, he must have
+told somebody.  Even if there was nobody he loved, he would tell--
+ah! Mr. Bolt!!"
+
+"You are right.  Let us go to him at once."
+
+They found Mr. Bolt in quite a different frame of mind from their
+own; he was breathing vengeance.  However, he showed some feeling
+for Grace, and told the doctor plainly he feared the worst.  Little
+had been downhearted for some time, and at last he (Bolt) had lost
+patience with him, and had proposed to him to take an annual payment
+of nine hundred pounds instead of a share, and leave the concern.
+Little had asked two days to consider this proposal.  "Now," argued
+Bolt, "if he meant to leave England, he could not do better than
+take my offer: and he would have taken it before he left.  He would
+have called, or else sent me a letter.  But no; not a word!  It's a
+bad job: I'm fond of money, but I'd give a few thousands to see him
+alive again.  But I don't think I ever shall.  There are five
+hundred thousand bricks of ours in that river, and a foot and a half
+of mud."
+
+While they were both shuddering at this dark allusion, he went off
+into idle threats, and Grace left him, sick and cold, and clinging
+to Dr. Amboyne like a drowning woman.
+
+"Have courage," said Dr. Amboyne.  "There is one chance left us.
+His mother!  I will telegraph to Aberystwith."
+
+They drove together to the telegraph-office, and sent a telegram.
+The doctor would not consent to frighten Mrs. Little to death.  He
+simply asked whether her son had just visited or written to her.
+The answer was paid for; but four hours elapsed, and no answer came.
+
+Then Grace implored the doctor to go with her to Aberystwith.  He
+looked grave, and said she was undertaking too much.  She replied,
+almost fiercely, that she must do all that could be done, or she
+should go mad.
+
+"But your father, my dear!"
+
+"He is in London.  I will tell him all when he returns.  He would
+let me go anywhere with you.  I must go; I will!"
+
+At four o'clock they were in the train.  They spoke to each other
+but little on the way; their hearts were too full of dire
+forebodings to talk about nothings.  But, when they were in the fly
+at Aberystwith, going from the station to Mrs. Little's lodgings,
+Grace laid her head on her friend's shoulder and said, "Oh, doctor,
+it has come to this; I hope he loved his mother better than me."
+Then came a flood of tears--the first.
+
+They went to Mrs. Little's lodgings.  The landlady had retired to
+bed, and, on hearing their errand, told them, out of the second-
+floor window, that Mrs. Little had left her some days ago, and gone
+to a neighboring village for change of air.
+
+Grace and Dr. Amboyne drove next morning to that village, and soon
+learned where Mrs. Little was.  Dr. Amboyne left Grace at the inn,
+for he knew the sight of her would at once alarm Mrs. Little; and in
+a matter so uncertain as this, he thought the greatest caution
+necessary.  Grace waited for him at the inn in an agony of suspense.
+She watched at the window for him, and at last she saw him coming
+toward her.  His head was down, and she could not read his face, or
+she could have told in a moment whether he brought good news or bad.
+
+She waited for him, erect but trembling.  He opened the door, and
+stood before her, pale and agitated--so pale and agitated she had
+never seen him before.
+
+He faltered out, "She knows nothing.  She must know nothing.  She is
+too ill and weak, and, indeed, in such a condition that to tell her
+the fatal news would probably have killed her on the spot.  All I
+dared do was to ask her with assumed indifference if she had heard
+from Henry lately.  No, Grace, not for these three days."
+
+He sat down and groaned aloud.
+
+"You love the son," said he, "but I love the mother: loved her years
+before you were born."
+
+At this unexpected revelation Grace Carden kissed him, and wept on
+his shoulder.  Then they went sadly home again.
+
+Doctor Amboyne now gave up all hopes of Henry, and his anxiety was
+concentrated on Mrs. Little.  How on earth was he to save her from a
+shock likely to prove fatal in her weak condition?  To bring her to
+Hillsborough in her present state would be fatal.  He was compelled
+to leave her in Wales, and that looked so like abandoning her.  He
+suffered torture, the torture that only noble minds can know.  At
+midnight, as he lay in bed, and revolved in his mind all the
+difficulties and perils of this pitiable situation, an idea struck
+him.  He would try and persuade Mrs. Little to marry him.  Should
+she consent, he could then take her on a wedding-tour, and that tour
+he could easily extend from place to place, putting off the evil
+time until, strong in health and conjugal affection, she might be
+able to endure the terrible, the inevitable blow.  The very next
+morning he wrote her an eloquent letter; he told her that Henry had
+gone suddenly off to Australia to sell his patents; that almost his
+last word had been, "My mother!  I leave her to you."  This, said
+the doctor, is a sacred commission; and how can I execute it?  I
+cannot invite you to Hillsborough, for the air is fatal to you.
+Think of your half-promise, and my many years of devotion, and give
+me the right to carry out your son's wishes to the full.
+
+Mrs. Little replied to this letter, and the result of the
+correspondence was this: she said she would marry him if she could
+recover her health, but THAT she feared she never should until she
+was reconciled to her brother.
+
+Meantime Grace Carden fell into a strange state: fits of feverish
+energy; fits of death-like stupor.  She could do nothing, yet it
+maddened her to be idle.  With Bolt's permission, she set workmen to
+remove all the remains of the chimney that could be got at--the
+water was high just then: she had a barge and workmen, and often
+watched them, and urged them by her presence.  Not that she ever
+spoke; but she hovered about with her marble face and staring eyes,
+and the sight of her touched their hearts and spurred them to
+exertion.
+
+Sometimes she used to stand on a heap of bricks hard by, and peer,
+with dilated eyes into the dark stream, and watch each bucket, or
+basket, as it came up with bricks, and rubbish, and mud, from the
+bottom.
+
+At other times she would stand on the bridge and lean over the
+battlements so far as if she would fly down and search for her dead
+lover.
+
+One day as she hung thus, glaring into the water, she heard a deep
+sigh.  She looked up, and there was a face almost as pale as her
+own, and even more haggard, looking at her with a strange mixture of
+pain and pity.  This ghastly spectator of her agony was himself a
+miserable man, it was Frederick Coventry.  His crime had brought him
+no happiness, no hope of happiness.
+
+At sight of him Grace Carden groaned, and covered her face with her
+hands.
+
+Coventry drew back dismayed.  His guilty conscience misinterpreted
+this.
+
+"You can forgive us now," said Grace, with a deep sob: then turned
+away with sullen listlessness, and continued her sad scrutiny.
+
+Coventry loved her, after his fashion, and her mute but eloquent
+misery moved him.
+
+He drew nearer to her, and said softly, "Do not look so; I can't
+bear it.  He is not there."
+
+"Ah!  How do you know?"
+
+Coventry was silent for a moment, and seemed uneasy; but at last he
+replied thus: "There were two explosions.  The chimney fell into the
+river a moment before the explosion that blew up the works.  So how
+can he be buried under the ruins of the chimney?  I know this from a
+workman who was standing on the bridge when the explosions took
+place."
+
+Bless the tongue that tells me that!  Oh, how much wiser you are
+than the rest of us!  Mr. Coventry, pity and forgive a poor girl who
+has used you ill.  Tell me--tell me--what can have become of him?"
+
+Coventry was much agitated, and could not speak for some time, and
+when he did, it was in a faint voice as of one exhausted by a mental
+struggle.  "Would you rather he was--dead--or--false?"
+
+"Oh false--a thousand times!  Prove to me he is not dead, but only
+false to his poor Grace, and I will bless you on my knees."
+
+Coventry's eye flashed.  "Well, then, he was the lover of Jael
+Dence, the girl who fought for him, and shed her blood for him, and
+saved his life.  The connection was open and notorious."
+
+Grace was silent.
+
+"Many a man has fled from two women, who could have been happy with
+either of them.  I believe that this man found himself unable to
+play the double game any longer, and that he has fled the country--"
+
+"I pray God it may be so," sobbed Grace.
+
+"--Through remorse, or from dread of exposure.  Have patience.  Do
+not kill yourself, and break all our hearts.  Take my word for it,
+you will hear from him in a few days, and he will give your reasons
+for his strange disappearance--excellent, business-like reasons, but
+not the true ones: there will not be a word about Jael Dence."  This
+last with a sneer.
+
+Grace turned on him with eyes that literally gleamed: "You hated him
+living, you slander him dead.  Falsehood was not in him: his
+affection for Jael Dence was no secret.  I knew it, and approved it.
+It was as pure as heaven.  His poor mutilated body will soon
+contradict these vile calumnies.  I hate you!  I hate you!"
+
+Coventry drew back at first from this burst of ire, but soon he met
+her glance with one of fiendish bitterness.  "You hate me for
+pitying you, and saying that man is not dead.  Well, have your own
+way, then; he is not false, but dead."
+
+He turned on his heel, and went away.
+
+As for Mr. Carden, he declined to admit that Little was dead, and
+said his conduct was unpardonable, and, indeed, so nearly resembled
+madness, that, considering the young man's father had committed
+suicide, he was determined never to admit him into his house again--
+at all events as a suitor to Grace.
+
+Mr. Coventry had now taken spacious apartments, and furnished them.
+He resumed his visits to the club.  Mr. Carden met him there, and
+spoke more confidentially to him than he did to his daughter, and
+admitted he had grave doubts, but said he was a director of the
+Gosshawk, and would never, either in public or private, allow that
+Little was dead unless his body should be found and properly
+identified.
+
+All this time there was a hot discussion in the journals, and the
+Saw-grinders' Union repudiated the outrage with horror, and offered
+a considerable reward.
+
+Outsiders were taken in by this, but not a single manufacturer or
+workman.
+
+Mr. Holdfast denounced it as a Trade outrage, and Ransome groped the
+town for evidence.
+
+The latter, however, was rather puzzled one day by an anonymous
+letter telling him he was all on the wrong tack; it was not a Trade
+job, but contrived by a gentleman for his private ends.  Advantage
+had been taken of Little being wrong with the Trade; "but," said the
+letter, "you should look to the head for the motive, not to the
+hands.  One or two saw them together a good many times before the
+deed was done, and the swell was seen on the very bridge when the
+explosion took place."
+
+This set Ransome thinking very seriously and comparing notes.
+
+Week after week went by and left the mystery unsolved.
+
+Mr. Coventry saw Mr. Carden nearly every day, and asked him was
+there no news of Little?  The answer was always in the negative, and
+this surprised Coventry more and more.
+
+When a whole month had elapsed, even he began to fancy strange
+things, and to nurse wild projects that had never entered his head
+before.  He studied books of medical jurisprudence, and made all
+manner of experiments.  He resumed his intimacy with Cole, and they
+were often closeted together.
+
+Five weeks had elapsed, and Grace Carden had lost all her feverish
+energy, and remained passive, lethargic, fearing every thing, hoping
+nothing, but quivering all day with expectation of the next blow;
+for what had she left to expect now but sorrow in some form or
+other?
+
+She often wished to visit Jael Dence again at the hospital; but for
+some time an invincible repugnance withheld her.
+
+She asked Dr. Amboyne to go instead, and question the unhappy girl.
+
+Dr. Amboyne did so; but Jael was now in a half-stupid condition, and
+her poor brain not clear enough to remember what she was wanted to
+remember.  Her memory was full of gaps, and, unluckily, one of these
+gaps embraced the whole period between her battle with Hill and the
+present time.
+
+At last Grace was irritated, and blamed the doctor for his failure.
+
+She reminded him she had herself magnetized Jael, and had almost
+made her speak.  She resolved to go to the hospital herself.  "I'll
+make her tell me one thing," said she, "though I tear her heart out,
+and my own too."
+
+She dressed plainly, and walked rapidly down toward the hospital.
+There were two ways to it, but she chose the one that was sure to
+give her pain.  She could not help it; her very feet dragged her to
+that fatal spot.
+
+When she drew near the fatal bridge, she observed a number of
+persons collected on it, looking down in the river at some distance.
+
+At the same time people began to hurry past her, making for the
+bridge.
+
+She asked one of them what it was.
+
+"Summut in the river," was the reply, but in a tone so full of
+meaning, that at these simple words she ran forward, though her
+knees almost gave way under her.
+
+The bridge was not so crowded yet, but that she contrived to push in
+between two women, and look.
+
+All the people were speaking in low murmurs.  The hot weather had
+dried the river up to a stream in the middle, and, in midstream,
+about fifty yards from the foot of the bridge, was a pile of broken
+masonry, which had once been the upper part of Bolt and Little's
+chimney.  It had fallen into water twelve feet deep; but now the
+water was not above five feet, and a portion of the broken bricks
+and tiles were visible, some just above, some just under the water.
+
+At one side of this wreck jutted out the object on which all eyes
+were now fastened.  At first sight it looked a crooked log of wood
+sticking out from among the bricks.  Thousands, indeed, had passed
+the bridge, and noticed nothing particular about it; but one, more
+observant or less hurried, had peered, and then pointed, and
+collected the crowd.
+
+It needed but a second look to show that this was not a log of wood
+but the sleeve of a man's coat.  A closer inspection revealed that
+the sleeve was not empty.
+
+There was an arm inside that sleeve, and a little more under the
+water one could see distinctly a hand white and sodden by the water.
+
+The dark stream just rippled over this hand, half veiling it at
+times, though never hiding it.
+
+"The body will be jammed among the bricks," said a by-stander; and
+all assented with awe.
+
+"Eh! to think of its sticking out an arm like that!" said a young
+girl.
+
+"Dead folk have done more than that, sooner than want Christian
+burial," replied an old woman.
+
+"I warrant ye they have.  I can't look at it."
+
+"Is it cloth, or what?" inquired another.
+
+"It's a kind of tweed, I think."
+
+"What's that glittering on its finger?"
+
+"It's a ring--a gold ring."
+
+At this last revelation there was a fearful scream, and Grace Carden
+fell senseless on the pavement.
+
+A gentleman who had been hanging about and listening to the comments
+now darted forward, with a face almost as white as her own, and
+raised her up, and implored the people to get her a carriage.
+
+It was Mr. Coventry.  Little had he counted on this meeting.
+Horror-stricken, he conveyed the insensible girl to her father's
+house.
+
+He handed her over to the women, and fled, and the women brought her
+round; but she had scarcely recovered her senses, when she uttered
+another piercing scream, and swooned again.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+
+Coventry passed a night of agony and remorse.  He got up broken and
+despondent, and went straight to Woodbine Villa to do a good action.
+
+He inquired for Miss Carden.  They told him she was very ill.  He
+expressed an earnest wish to see her.  The servants told him that
+was impossible.  Nobody was allowed to see her but Dr. Amboyne.  He
+went next day to Dr. Amboyne, and the doctor told him that Miss
+Carden was dangerously ill.  Brain fever appeared inevitable.
+
+"But, sir," said Coventry, eagerly, "if one could prove to her that
+those were not the remains of Henry Little?"
+
+"How could you prove that?  Besides, it would be no use now.  She is
+delirious.  Even should she live, I should forbid the subject for
+many a day.  Indeed, none but the man himself could make her believe
+those remains are not his; and even he could not save her now.  If
+he stood by her bedside, she would not know him."
+
+The doctor's lip trembled a little, and his words were so grave and
+solemn that they struck to the miserable man's marrow.  He staggered
+away, like a drunken man, to his lodgings, and there flung himself
+on the floor, and groveled in an agony of terror and remorse.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+
+One day it occurred to Raby he could play the misanthrope just as
+well at home as abroad, so he returned home.
+
+He found old Dence dead and buried, and Patty Dence gone to
+Australia with her husband.
+
+He heard Jael was in the hospital.  He called at Woodbine villa, and
+they told him Grace was lying between life and death.
+
+He called on Dr. Amboyne, and found him as sad as he used to be gay.
+The doctor told him all, and even took him to the town hall, and
+showed him an arm and part of the trunk of a man preserved in
+spirits, and a piece of tweed cloth, and a plain gold ring.
+
+"There," said he, "is all that remains to us of your nephew, and my
+friend.  Genius, beauty, courage--all come to this!"  He could say
+no more.
+
+The tears filled Raby's eyes, and all his bitterness melted away.
+With respect to his sister, he said he was quite willing to be
+reconciled, and even to own himself in the wrong, if Dr. Amboyne, on
+reading the correspondence, should think so.  Dr. Amboyne said he
+would come to Raby Hall for that purpose.  He communicated this at
+once to Mrs. Little.
+
+
+Grace had a favorable crisis, and in a few days more she was out of
+danger, but in a deplorable state of weakness.  Dr. Amboyne ordered
+her to the sea-side.  A carriage was prepared expressly for her, and
+her father took her there.
+
+Woodbine Villa was put up to let furnished, and it was taken by--Mr.
+Coventry.
+
+Jael Dence began to recover strength rapidly, but she wore at times
+a confused look.  The very day Grace left for Eastbank she was
+discharged as cured, and left the hospital.  This was in the
+morning.
+
+In the afternoon Dr. Amboyne, being now relieved of his anxiety as
+to Grace, remembered he had not been to see this poor girl for some
+time; so he went to the hospital.
+
+When he heard she was discharged, he felt annoyed with himself for
+not having paid her closer attention.  And besides, Grace had
+repeatedly told him Jael Dence could make a revelation if she chose.
+And now, occupied with Grace herself, he had neglected her wishes.
+
+"Where is she gone? do you know?"
+
+One of the nurses said she was gone home.
+
+Another said the patient had told her she should go down to the
+works first.
+
+"And that is the very last place you should have let her go to,"
+said the doctor.  "A fine shock the poor creature will get there.
+You want her back here again, I suppose!"  He felt uneasy, and drove
+down to the works.  There he made some inquiries among the women,
+and elicited that Jael Dence had turned faint at sight of the place,
+and they had shown her, at her request, where she had been picked
+up, and had told her about the discovery of Little's remains, and
+she had persuaded a little girl to go to the town hall with her.
+
+"Oh, the tongue! the tongue!" groaned Amboyne.
+
+He asked to see the little girl, and she came forward of her own
+accord, and told him she had gone to the town hall with the lass,
+"but" (regretfully) "that the man would not show them it without an
+order from the Mayor."
+
+"IT!"
+
+Dr. Amboyne said he was very glad that common sense had not quite
+deserted the earth.  "And where did you go next?"
+
+"I came back here."
+
+"So I see; but the lass?"
+
+"She said she should go home.  'My dear,' says she, 'there's nobody
+left me here; I'll go and die among my own folk.'  That was her
+word."
+
+"Poor thing! poor thing!  Why--"
+
+He stopped short, for that moment he remembered Raby had said old
+Dence was dead, and Patty gone to Australia.  If so, here was
+another blow in store for poor Jael, and she weakened by a long
+illness.
+
+He instantly resolved to drive after her, and see whether she was
+really in a fit state to encounter so many terrible shocks.  If not,
+he should take her back to the infirmary, or into his own house; for
+he had a great respect for her, and indeed for all her family.
+
+He drove fast, but he could see nothing of her on the road.  So then
+he went on to Cairnhope.
+
+He stopped at the farm-house.  It was sadly deteriorated in
+appearance.  Inside he found only an old carter and his daughter.
+The place was in their charge.
+
+The old man told him apathetically Jael had come home two hours ago
+and asked for her father and Patty, and they had told her the old
+farmer was dead and buried, and Patty gone to foreign parts.
+
+"What, you blurted it out like that!  You couldn't put yourself in
+that poor creature's place, and think what a blow it would be?  How,
+in Heaven's name, did she take it?"
+
+"Well, sir, she stared a bit, and looked stupid-like; and then she
+sat down.  She sat crowded all together like in yon corner best part
+of an hour, and then she got up and said she must go and see his
+grave."
+
+"You hadn't the sense to make her eat, of course?"
+
+"My girl here set meat afore her, but she couldn't taste it."
+
+Dr. Amboyne drove to Raby Hall and told Raby.  Raby said he would
+have Jael up to the hall.  It would be a better place for her now
+than the farm.  He ordered a room to be got ready for her, and a
+large fire lighted, and at the same time ordered the best bedroom
+for Dr. Amboyne.  "You must dine and sleep here," said he, "and talk
+of old times."
+
+Dr. Amboyne thanked him--it was dusk by this time--and was soon
+seated at that hospitable table, with a huge wood fire blazing
+genially.
+
+Meantime Jael Dence sat crouched upon her father's grave, stupefied
+with grief.  When she had crouched there a long time she got up, and
+muttered, "Dead and gone! dead and gone!"
+
+Then she crept up to the old church, and sat down in the porch,
+benumbed with grief, and still a little confused in her poor head.
+
+She sat there for nearly two hours, and then she got up, and
+muttered, "Dead and gone--he is dead and gone!" and wandered on the
+hill desolate.
+
+Her feet wandered, her brain wandered.  She found herself at last in
+a place she recognized.  It was Squire Raby's lawn.  The moon had
+just risen, and shone on the turf, and on the little river that went
+curling round with here and there a deep pool.
+
+She crept nearer, and saw the great bay-window, and a blaze of light
+behind it.
+
+There she had sung the great Noel with her father; and now he was
+dead and gone.
+
+There she had been with Henry Little, and seen him recognize his
+mother's picture; and now he was dead and gone.  She had saved his
+life in vain; he was dead and gone.  Every body was dead and gone.
+
+She looked up at the glowing window.  She looked down at the pool,
+with the moon kissing it.
+
+She flung her arms up with a scream of agony, and sunk into the deep
+pool, where the moon seemed most to smile on it.
+
+
+Directly after dinner Dr. Amboyne asked to see the unhappy
+correspondence of which he was to be the judge.
+
+Raby went for the letters, and laid them before him.  He took up the
+fatal letter.  "Why, this is not written by Mrs. Little.  I know her
+neat Italian hand too well.  See how the letters slant and straggle."
+
+"Oh! but you must allow for the writer's agitation."
+
+"Why should I allow for it?  YOU DIDN'T.  Who can look at this
+scrawl, and not see that the poor heart-broken creature was not
+herself when she wrote it?  This is not a letter, it is a mere
+scream of agony.  Put yourself in her place.  Imagine yourself a
+woman--a creature in whom the feelings overpower the judgment.
+Consider the shock, the wound, the frenzy; and, besides, she had no
+idea that you left this house to get her husband the money from your
+own funds."
+
+"She never shall know it either."
+
+"She does know it.  I have told her.  And, poor thing, she thinks
+she was the only one to blame.  She seeks your forgiveness.  She
+pines for it.  This is the true cause of her illness; and I believe,
+if you could forgive her and love her, it might yet save her life."
+
+"Then tell her I blame myself as much as her.  Tell her my house, my
+arms, and my heart are open to her.  Amboyne, you are a true friend,
+and a worthy man.  God bless you.  How shall we get her here, poor
+soul?  Will you go for her, or shall I?"
+
+"Let me sleep on that," said Dr. Amboyne.
+
+
+In the course of the evening, Dr. Amboyne told Raby all the reports
+about Jael Dence and Henry Little.
+
+"What does that matter now?" said Raby, with a sigh.
+
+Whenever a servant came into the room, Amboyne asked him if Jael had
+arrived.
+
+Raby shared his curiosity, but not his anxiety.  "The girl knows her
+friends," said he.  "She will have her cry out, you may depend; but
+after that she will find her way here, and, when she has got over it
+a little, I shall be sure to learn from her whether he was her
+lover, and where he was when the place was blown up.  A Dence never
+lies to a Raby."
+
+But when nine o'clock struck, and there were no tidings of her, Raby
+began to share the doctor's uneasiness, and also to be rather angry
+and impatient.
+
+"Confound the girl!" said he.  "Her grandfathers have stood by mine,
+in their danger and trouble, for two hundred years; and now, in her
+trouble, she slinks away from me."
+
+"Put yourself in her place," said Amboyne.  "Ten to one she thinks
+you are offended about her and Henry.  She is afraid to come near
+you."
+
+"What, when I ask her?"
+
+"Through your stupid lazy servants, who, to save themselves trouble,
+have very likely told somebody else to tell her; and we know what
+comes of that process.  Ten to one the invitation has either missed
+her altogether, or come to her divested of all that is kind and
+soothing.  And remember, she is not a man.  She is a poor girl, full
+of shame and apprehension, and needs a gentle encouraging hand to
+draw her here.  Do, for once, put yourself in a woman's place--you
+were born of a woman."
+
+"You are right," said Raby.  "I will send down a carriage for her,
+with a line in my own hand."
+
+He did so.
+
+At eleven the servant came back with the news that Jael Dence was
+not at home.  She had been seen wandering about the country, and was
+believed to be wrong in her head.  George, the blacksmith, and
+others, were gone up to the old church after her.
+
+"Turn out with torches, every man Jack of you, and find her," said
+Raby.
+
+As for Raby and Amboyne, they sat by the fireside and conversed
+together--principally about poor Mrs. Little; but the conversation
+was languid.
+
+A few minutes after midnight a terrible scream was heard.  It was
+uttered out of doors, yet it seemed to penetrate the very room where
+Raby and Amboyne were seated.  Both men started to their feet.  The
+scream was not repeated.  They looked at each other.
+
+"It was in my garden," said Raby; and, with some little difficulty,
+he opened the window and ran out, followed by Amboyne.
+
+They looked, but could see nothing.
+
+But, with that death-shriek ringing in their ears, they wasted no
+time.  Raby waved Amboyne to the left, and himself dashed off to the
+right, and they scoured the lawn in less than a minute.
+
+A cry of horror from Raby!  He had found the body of a woman
+floating in a pool of the river, head downward.
+
+He dashed into the water directly and drew it to the bank; Dr.
+Amboyne helped him, and they got it out on dry land.  The face was
+ghastly, the body still.
+
+"Turn her face downward," said Amboyne, "give her every chance.
+Carry her gently."
+
+One took the shoulders, the other the feet; they carried her slowly
+in and laid her gently down before the fire.
+
+She lay like dripping marble.
+
+Her clothes clinging tightly round her, revealed her marvelous form
+and limbs of antique mold--but all so deadly still.
+
+Amboyne kneeled over her, searching, in vain, for some sign of life.
+He groaned.
+
+"Oh!" said he, "is it possible that such a creature as this can be
+cut off in its prime?"
+
+"Dead!" cried Raby, trembling all over.  "Oh, God forbid!  One of
+her ancestors saved a Raby's life in battle, another saved a Raby in
+a foaming flood; and I couldn't save her in a dead pool!  She is the
+last of that loyal race, and I'm the last Raby.  Farewell, Dence!
+Farewell, Raby!"
+
+While he bemoaned her thus, and his tears actually dripped upon her
+pale face, Amboyne detected a slight quivering in the drowned
+woman's throat.
+
+"Hush?" said he to Raby.
+
+There was a pair of old-fashioned bellows by the side of the fire;
+Amboyne seized them, and opened Jael's mouth with more ease than he
+expected.  "That is a good sign," said he.
+
+He inflated the bellows, and inserted the tube very carefully; then
+he discharged the air, then gently sucked it back again.  When he
+had done this several times something like a sigh escaped from
+Jael's breast.  The doctor removed the bellows, and felt her heart
+and examined her eyes.  "Curious!" said he.  "Give me some brandy.
+It is more like syncope than drowning."
+
+Acting on this notion, he laid her flat on her back, and applied
+neat brandy to her nostrils and ears.
+
+After a while she moved her whole body like a wounded snake, and
+moaned feebly.
+
+Raby uttered a loud shout of joy.  "She is saved!" he cried. "She is
+saved!"  He jumped about the room like a boy, and, anxious to do
+something or other, was for ringing up the female servants.  But
+Amboyne would not hear of it.  "On the contrary," said he, "lock the
+door, and let only you and I see the poor girl's distress when she
+comes back to this bitter world.  Raby, don't you shut your eyes to
+the truth.  This was no accident."
+
+"I am afraid not," said Raby.  "She knows the water as well as I do,
+and she picked out the deepest hole: poor girl! poor girl"
+
+He then asked Amboyne in a whisper what he thought she would do when
+she came to her senses.
+
+"Impossible to say.  She may be violent, and if so we shall have
+enough to do to hold her.  They tell me she threw that workman like
+a sack."
+
+At this moment Jael stretched her great arms and sighed.  The
+movement, though gentle and feminine, had a grandeur and freedom
+that only goes with power.
+
+The doctor lowered his voice to a whisper.  "She is a good
+Christian, and most likely she will be penitent, and then she will
+cry her heart out.  Any way, she is pretty sure to be hysterical, so
+mind and be firm as well as kind.  There, her color is coming back.
+Now put yourself in her place.  You and I must call this an
+accident.  Stick to that through thick and thin.  Ah, she is coming
+round safe.  She shall see you first.  You take her right hand, and
+look at her with all the pity and kindness I am sure you feel."
+
+Mr. Raby took Jael's hand in both his, and fixed his eyes on her
+with pity and anxiety.
+
+She came to her senses, and stared at him a long time.
+
+Then she looked down at her wet clothes.  Then she snatched her hand
+away, and covered her face with both hands, and began to rock and
+moan, and finally turned round and hid her face against the very
+floor as if she would grovel and burrow into it.
+
+"Are you better, my dear?" said the doctor, quietly.
+
+No reply.  And the face still crushed against the floor.
+
+"The next time you faint away, don't let it be on the banks of a
+river.  You have been going too long without food; and you fainted
+away and fell into the river.  Luckily it was not very deep or it
+might have been serious.  You have given us a fine fright, I can
+tell you."
+
+While these words were being uttered, Jael, who did not miss a
+syllable, began to look very, very slowly round with scared and
+troubled eyes, and to defend herself.  "I remember naught," said
+she, doggedly.  Who took me out?"
+
+"Mr. Raby."
+
+She looked timidly at him, and saw his wet clothes.
+
+"Oh, squire, why did you spoil your clothes for me?" and she laid
+her head on his knee and began to cry.
+
+"My clothes!" said Raby.  "The girl wants to break my heart."
+
+"Eh, dear! and I've spoiled the beautiful carpet," said Jael,
+piteously.
+
+"D--n the carpet!" said Raby, nearly blubbering.
+
+All this time Amboyne was putting himself in Jael's Dence's place.
+
+"Is there a good fire in her room?" asked he, with a significant
+look.
+
+Raby took the hint, and said he would go and see.
+
+As soon as he was out of the room, the transmigrator began to talk
+very fast to Jael.  "Now look here, Jael, that poor man is alone in
+the world now, and very sad; he wants you to keep his house for him.
+He has been sending messages all day after you, and your room has
+been ready ever so long."
+
+"My room in this house?"
+
+"Yes.  But we could not find you.  However, here you are.  Now you
+must not go back to the farm.  The poor squire won't be quite so sad
+if he sees you about him.  You know he was always fond of you
+Dences.  You should have seen him cry over you just now when he
+thought you were dead."
+
+"I am more cared for than I thought," said Jael, softly.
+
+"Yes, but not more than you deserve, my dear."  He dipped a sponge-
+cake in wine.  "Oblige me by eating that."
+
+She took it submissively.
+
+"Now another."
+
+She ate another, and a third.
+
+"It's a very wicked lass you are so good to," said she, softly, and
+some gentle tears began to flow.
+
+"Stuff and nonsense!" said the doctor.  "What do you know about
+wickedness?  I'm a better judge of that than you, and I say you are
+the best girl and the most unselfish girl in the world; and the
+proof is that, instead of sitting down and nursing your own griefs,
+you are going to pluck up courage, and be a comfort to poor Mr. Raby
+in his lonely condition."
+
+These words appeared to sink into Jael's mind: she put her hands to
+her head, and pondered them.  Perhaps she might have replied to
+them, but Raby came down, and ordered her to her apartment.
+
+She took a step or two in that direction, but presently drew back
+and would not move.  "The women-folk!  They'll see me on the stair,
+this figure."
+
+"Not they.  They are all in bed."
+
+"Are they so?  Then please let me go to the kitchen for a dry cloth
+or two."
+
+"What to do?"
+
+"To dry the rug a bit.  Just look--what a mess I've made!"
+
+"I'll say it was the dog."
+
+"Will you, though?  Oh, but you are a good friend to me this night.
+Then I'll go.  Let me wring my gown a bit, not to mess the stairs as
+well."
+
+"No, no; I'll take all the blame.  Will you go, or must the doctor
+and I carry you?"
+
+"Nay, nay, there's no need.  Your will is my pleasure, sir."
+
+So Mr. Raby showed Jael to her room, and opened a great wardrobe,
+and took out several armfuls of antique female habiliments, and
+flung them on the floor; rich velvets, more or less faded, old
+brocades, lace scarves, chemises with lace borders; in short, an
+accumulation of centuries.  He soon erected a mound of these things
+in the middle of the floor, and told her to wear what she liked, but
+to be sure and air the things well first; "for," said he, "it is a
+hundred years or so since they went on any woman's back.  Now, say
+your prayers like a good girl, and go to bed."
+
+"Ay," said Jael, solemnly, "I shall say my prayers, you may be
+sure."
+
+As he left the room she said, in a sort of patient way, "Good
+squire, I am willing to live, since you are so lonely."
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+
+Early next morning Mr. Raby was disturbed by female voices in a high
+key.  He opened his window quietly, intending to throw in his bass
+with startling effect, when, to his surprise, he found the
+disputants were his dairymaid and Jael Dence.
+
+"And who are you that interferes with me in my work?  Where do you
+come from?  Did ye get in over the wall? for ye never came in at no
+door.  Who are you?"
+
+"I am one who won't see the good squire wronged.  Aren't ye ashamed?
+What, eat his bread, and take his wage, and then steal his butter!"
+
+"If ye call me a thief, I'll law ye.  Thief yourself! you don't
+belong to the house; whose gown have you got on your back?  Here,
+James! Tom! here's a strange woman making off with the squire's
+lady's clothes, and two pounds of butter to boot."
+
+Jael was taken aback for a moment by this audacious attack, and
+surveyed her borrowed habiliments with a blush of confusion.
+Several servants came about at the noise, and her situation bade
+fair to be a very unpleasant one: but Mr. Raby put in his word;
+"Hold your tongues, all of ye.  Now, Jael Dence, what is the
+matter?"
+
+Instantly all eyes were turned up to the window with a start, and
+Jael told her tale: "Sir," said she, "I did see this young woman
+take out something from under her apron and give it to a little
+girl.  I thought there was something amiss, and I stopped the girl
+at the gate, and questioned her what she was carrying off so sly.
+She gives a squeak and drops it directly, and takes to her heels.  I
+took it up and brought it in, and here it is, two beautiful pounds
+of butter, fresh churned; look else!"--here she undid a linen wrap,
+and displayed the butter--"so I challenged the dairymaid here.  She
+says I'm a thief--and that I leave to you, Squire; you know whether
+I come of thieves or honest folk; but what I want to know from her
+is, why her lass dropped the butter and took to her heels at a
+word?"
+
+"Now, my good Jael," said the Squire, "if you are going to interfere
+every time you catch my servants pilfering, you will have a hard
+time of it.  However, zeal is too rare a thing for me to discourage
+it.  I must make an example.  Hy, you young woman: I dare say you
+are no worse than the rest, but you are the one that is found out;
+so you must pack up your clothes and begone."
+
+"Not without a month's warning, or a month's wage, sir, it you
+please," said the dairymaid, pertly.
+
+"If I catch you in the house when I come down, I'll send you to
+prison on my own warrant, with the butter tied round your neck."
+
+At this direful threat the offender began to blubber, and speedily
+disappeared to pack her box.
+
+Mr. Raby then told the other servants that Jael Dence was the new
+housekeeper, and that a person of her character was evidently
+required in the house; they must all treat her with respect, or
+leave his service.  Thereupon two gave warning, and Mr. Raby, who
+never kept a servant a day after that servant had given him warning,
+had them up to his room, and paid them a month's wages.  "And now,"
+said he, "for the honor of the house, don't leave us fasting, but
+eat a good breakfast, and then go to the devil."
+
+At his own breakfast he related the incident to Dr. Amboyne, with a
+characteristic comment: "And the fools say there is nothing in race.
+So likely, that of all animals man alone should be exempt from the
+law of nature!  Take a drowning watch-dog out of the water and put
+him in a strange house, he is scarcely dry before he sets to work to
+protect it.  Take a drowning Dence into your house, and she is up
+with the lark to look after your interests.  That girl connive and
+let the man be robbed whose roof shelters her?  She COULDN'T; it is
+not in her blood.  I'm afraid there's to be a crusade against petty
+larceny in this house, and more row about it than it is worth.  No
+matter; I shall support the crusader, on principle.  It is not for
+me to check honest impulses, nor to fight against nature in almost
+the only thing where she commands my respect."
+
+"Very well," said the doctor, "that is settled: so now let us talk
+of something more important.  How are we to get your sister, in her
+delicate state, from Wales to this place?"
+
+"Why, I will go for her myself, to be sure."
+
+"Raby, your heart is in the right place, after all.  But when she is
+here, how are we to conceal her unhappy son's fate from her?  It
+will be more difficult than ever, now Jael Dence is in the house."
+
+"Why so?  We must take the girl into our confidence--that is all."
+
+"The sooner the better then.  Let us have her in here."
+
+Jael was sent for, and Mr. Raby requested her to take a seat, and
+give all her attention to something Dr. Amboyne had to say.
+
+Dr. Amboyne then told her, with quiet earnestness, that Mrs. Little
+was at present so ill and weak he felt sure the news of Henry's
+death would kill her.
+
+"Ay, poor soul!" said Jael, and began to cry bitterly.
+
+The doctor held his peace, and cast a disconsolate look on Raby, as
+much as to say, "We shall get no efficient aid in this quarter."
+
+After a little while Jael dried her eyes, and said, "Go on, sir.  I
+must needs cry before you now and then: 'tisn't to say I shall ever
+cry before HER."
+
+"Well, then, if we CAN get her safe to this place, and keep her in
+the dark for a few months, I think we may save her life.  Every
+thing else will be in her favor here: her native air, cherished
+memories, her brother's love--and, after all, it was fretting about
+her quarrel with him that first undermined her health and spirits.
+Well, we shall remove the cause, and then perhaps the effect may go.
+But how are we to keep the sad truth from her?"
+
+"Let me think," said Jael Dence.  "My head is a deal clearer since
+last night."
+
+She leaned her chin upon her hand, and her face and brow showed
+signs of intellectual power no one had ever observed in them before.
+
+"Who is to go for her?" said she at last.
+
+"I am going myself."
+
+"That is a mistake at starting, begging your worship's pardon.  Why,
+the very sight of you might startle her into her grave.  Nay, you'll
+give me the money--for mine is all in the savings bank--and I shall
+go for her myself.  I shall tell her squire is longing for her, and
+that I'm to be here for fear she might feel strange.  She always
+liked me, poor soul.  I shall get her safe here, you needn't fear
+for that.  But when she is here"--the chin rested on the hand again--
+"well, the doctor must forbid visitors.  Miss Grace must be told
+not to write.  Every newspaper must be read before she is allowed to
+see it.  And, squire, you will be very kind to her when you are in
+her company; but we must manage, somehow or other, so that you can
+keep out of her way."
+
+"What for, in heaven's name?"
+
+"Sir, we shall have to lie from morn to night; and you will be a
+bungler at that, saving your presence.  If there's a servant left in
+the house who knows, I'd give that servant a present, and part with
+her before Mrs. Little sets her foot in the house."
+
+"This sounds very sensible," said Raby.  "I am a novice at lying.
+But I shall cultivate the art for poor Edith's sake.  I'm not a
+fanatic: there is justifiable homicide, so why not justifiable
+facticide?"
+
+"Raby," said the doctor, "this young woman has said enough to show
+me that she is more fit to conduct this delicate undertaking than
+either you or I.  Let us profit by the discovery, put our vanity in
+our pocket, and give her the command.  My dear, you see the
+importance, you see the difficulty; now will you undertake it?"
+
+"I will, sir," said Jael, firmly; "and I look to succeed, God
+willing.  I shall be in Wales this afternoon."
+
+"Well, but would you not be the better yourself for one day's rest?"
+
+"No, sir.  I've learned, with a sad heart, what one day may bring
+forth.  After that, I'm sworn never to throw away a day.  And, as
+for sitting down and thinking, 'tis the worst thing I can do.  I do
+thank God that in this, my own heavy trouble, I'm not tied to my sad
+thoughts, but can get about, and do a little of good for Raby House.
+Do what I will, 'tis but giving them back one pig out of their own
+farrow; for we owe all we have to them."
+
+With this she retired to prepare for her journey, leaving both the
+gentlemen lost in admiration of her simple virtues, and the clear
+intelligence she had shown them in few words.
+
+She traveled into Wales that very day, and many a burst of bitter
+grief she had all by herself in the train.
+
+At six P.M. she stood before Mrs. Little with a smiling countenance.
+Mrs. Little welcomed her with some little pleasure and much
+surprise.
+
+"Good news, madam," said Jael.  "Squire Raby has sent me to bring
+you to Raby Hall.  He wanted to come himself, but I would not let
+him."
+
+"That is good news," said Mrs. Little languidly.  "Now I shall die
+at peace with my brother--at peace with all mankind, I hope."
+
+"You'll die when your time comes," said Jael.  But you have got a
+shorter journey before you at present, and that is to Raby Hall."
+
+"Raby Hall!  I shall never see it again.  I have no strength to
+move.  I am worn out with the battle of life.  Stay with me here,
+and close my eyes."
+
+"Of course I shall stay with you," said Jael, and began to gossip
+with every appearance of carelessness.
+
+Next morning, with infinite difficulty, she persuaded the poor
+jaundiced lady to show her Aberystwith.  She took the tickets
+herself, and got her patient half-way to Hillsborough; next day,
+with less difficulty, to Raby Hall.  All had been settled before.
+Edith little was shown into her old bedroom, adorned with pyramids
+of flowers in her honor; and there she found a loving line from Guy,
+begging her pardon for his past harshness, and telling her she was
+to send for him as soon as she felt strong enough to meet.
+
+That evening brother and sister were clasped in each other's arms,
+and wept tears of affection and regret over each other.
+
+Jael Dence slept on a camp-bed in Mrs. Little's room, which was very
+spacious, and watched her, and was always about her.  Under private
+advice from Dr. Amboyne, she superintended her patient's diet, and,
+by soft, indomitable perseverance, compelled her to walk every day,
+and fight against her fatal lassitude.
+
+Heaven rewarded her by giving her a warm and tender affection for
+her poor patient that did something to fill her own yearning and
+desolate heart.
+
+Here I must leave them both for the present, and show how these
+events affected the main characters of my story.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+
+Just outside the little sea-side town of Eastbank is a house which,
+being very old, contrasts agreeably with the pretentious villas
+fashion has raised.  It is gloomy inside, yet outside it looks like
+a cottage: low, rambling, gabled, and picturesque.  It stands on a
+slope just above the sea, and its front garden runs down almost to
+the sea-shore.  The aspect is southerly.  The placid sea looks like
+a beautiful lake; for, about two miles out, a great tongue of land
+runs across and keeps the tempests out.
+
+The cottage itself was now closed deep with green creepers, and its
+veranda with jessamine; and the low white walls of the garden were
+beautiful with vine-leaves and huge fig-leaves, that ran up them and
+about them, and waved over them in tropical luxuriance.  In short,
+the house was a very bower, and looked the abode of bliss; and this
+time last year a young couple had spent their honeymoon there, and
+left it with a sigh.  But one place sees many minds; and now this
+sweet place was the bed on which dropped the broken lily of this
+tale, Grace Carden.
+
+She lay in the warm air of the veranda, and turned her hollow eyes
+upon the sea; and every day life crept slowly back to her young
+body, but not to her desolate heart.
+
+A brain fever either kills or blunts, and Grace's agony was blunted.
+Her mind was in a strange state.  She was beginning to look two
+things in the face: that the man she loved was dead; that the man
+she loved, and had nearly died for, had loved another as well as
+herself: and this last grief, strange to say, was the saving of her.
+She forgave him with all her heart, for he was dead; she made
+excuses for him, for she loved him; but since his whole heart had
+not been hers, her pride and modesty rebelled against dying for him,
+and she resolved to live; she fought hard to live and get well.
+Finally, being a very woman, though a noble one, she hated Jael
+Dence.
+
+She was not alone in the world.  Her danger, her illness, and her
+misery had shown her the treasure of a father's love.  He had found
+this sweet bower for her; and here he sat for hours by her side, and
+his hand in hers, gazing on her with touching anxiety and affection.
+Business compelled him to run into Hillsborough now and then, but he
+dispatched it with feverish haste, and came back to her: it drove
+him to London; but he telegraphed to her twice a day, and was
+miserable till he got back.  She saw the man of business turned into
+a man of love for her, and she felt it.  "Ah, papa," she said one
+day, "I little thought you loved your poor Grace so much.  You don't
+love any other child but me, do you, papa?" and with this question
+she clung weeping round his neck.
+
+"My darling child, there's nothing on earth I love but you.  When
+shall I see you smile again?"
+
+"In a few hours, years.  God knows."
+
+
+One evening--he had been in Hillsborough that day--he said, "My
+dear, I have seen an old friend of yours to-day, Mr. Coventry.  He
+asked very kindly after you."
+
+Grace made no reply.
+
+"He is almost as pale as you are.  He has been very ill, he tells
+me.  And, really, I believe it was your illness upset him."
+
+"Poor Mr. Coventry!" said Grace, but with a leaden air of
+indifference.
+
+"I hope I didn't do wrong, but when he asked after you so anxiously,
+I said, 'Come, and see for yourself.'  Oh, you need not look
+frightened; he is not coming.  He says you are offended with him."
+
+"Not I.  What is Mr. Coventry to me?"
+
+"Well, he thinks so.  He says he was betrayed into speaking ill to
+you of some one who, he thought, was living; and now that weighs
+upon his conscience."
+
+"I can't understand that.  I am miserable, but let me try and be
+just.  Papa, Mr. Coventry was trying to comfort me, in his clumsy
+way; and what he said he did not invent--he heard it; and so many
+people say so that I--I--oh, papa! papa!"
+
+Mr. Carden dropped the whole subject directly.
+
+However, she returned to it herself, and said, listlessly, that Mr.
+Coventry, in her opinion, had shown more generosity than most people
+would in his case.  She had no feeling against him; he was of no
+more importance in her eyes than that stool, and he might visit her
+if he pleased, but on one condition--that he should forget all the
+past, and never presume to speak to her of love.  "Love!  Men are
+all incapable of it."  She was thinking of Henry, even while she was
+speaking of his rival.
+
+The permission, thus limited, was conveyed to Mr. Coventry by his
+friend Carden; but he showed no hurry to take advantage of it; and,
+as for Grace, she forgot she had given it.
+
+But this coolness of Coventry's was merely apparent.  He was only
+awaiting the arrival of Patrick Lally from Ireland.  This Lally was
+an old and confidential servant, who had served him formerly in many
+intrigues, and with whom he had parted reluctantly some months ago,
+and allowed him a small pension for past services.  He dared not
+leave the villa in charge of any person less devoted to him than
+this Lally.
+
+The man arrived at last, received minute instructions, and then Mr.
+Coventry went to Eastbank.
+
+He found what seemed the ghost of Grace Carden lying on the sofa,
+looking on the sea.
+
+At the sight of her he started back in dismay.
+
+"What have I done?"
+
+Those strange words fell from him before he knew what he was saying.
+
+Grace heard them, but did not take the trouble to inquire into their
+meaning.  She said, doggedly, "I am alive, you see.  Nothing kills.
+It is wonderful: we die of a fall, of a blow, of swallowing a pin;
+yet I am alive.  But never mind me; you look unwell yourself.  What
+is the matter?"
+
+"Can you ask me?"
+
+At this, which implied that her illness was the cause of his, she
+turned her head away from him with weariness and disgust, and looked
+at the sea, and thought of the dead.
+
+Coventry sat speechless, and eyed her silent figure with miserable
+devotion.  He was by her side once more, and no rival near.  He set
+himself to study all her moods, and began by being inoffensive to
+her; in time he might be something more.
+
+He spent four days in Eastbank, and never uttered a word of love;
+but his soft soothing voice was ever in her ear, and won her
+attention now and then; not often.
+
+When he left her, she did not ask him to come again.
+
+Her father did, though, and told him to be patient; better days were
+in store.  "Give her time," said he, "and, a month or two hence, if
+you have the same feeling for her you used to have--"
+
+"I love her more than ever.  I worship her--"
+
+"Then you will have me on your side, stronger than ever.  But you
+must give her time."
+
+And now Coventry had an ally far more powerful than himself--an ally
+at once zealous and judicious.  Mr. Carden contented himself at
+first with praising him in general terms; next he affected to laugh
+at him for renting the villa, merely to be in the place which Grace
+had occupied.  Then Grace defended him.  "Don't laugh at an honest
+love.  Pity it.  It is all we can do, and the least we can do."
+
+But when he advanced further, and began to remind his daughter she
+had once given this gentleman hopes, and all but engaged herself to
+him, she drew back with fear and repugnance, and said, "If he can
+not forget that, pray let him never come near me again."
+
+"Oh," said Mr. Carden, "I believe he has no hopes of the kind; it is
+of you I am thinking, not of him.  It has got about that poor Little
+had a connection with some girl in humble life, and that he was in
+love with her, and you in love with him.  That wounds a father's
+pride, and makes me grateful to Coventry for his unshaken devotion,
+whilst others are sneering at my poor child for her innocent love."
+
+Grace writhed, and the tears ran down her cheeks at this.  "Oh,
+spare the dead!" she faltered.
+
+Then her father kissed her, and begged her to forgive him; he would
+avoid all these topics in future: and so he did, for some time; but
+what he had said rankled.
+
+A few days after this Coventry came again, and did nothing but
+soothe Grace with words; only he managed so that Grace should detect
+him looking very sad when he was not actually employed in cheering
+her.
+
+She began to pity him a little, and wonder at his devotion.
+
+He had not been gone many hours when another visitor arrived quite
+unexpectedly--Mr. Raby.  He came to tell her his own news, and warn
+her of the difficult game they were now playing at Raby Hall, that
+she might not thwart it inadvertently.
+
+Grace was much agitated, and shed tears of sympathy.  She promised,
+with a sigh, to hold no communication with Mrs. Little.  She thought
+it very hard, but she promised.
+
+In the course of his narrative Mr. Raby spoke very highly of Jael
+Dence, and of her conduct in the matter.
+
+To this Grace did not respond.  She waited her opportunity, and
+said, keenly and coldly, "How did she come to be in your house?"
+
+"Well, that is a secret."
+
+"Can you not trust me with a secret?"
+
+"Oh yes," said Raby, "provided you will promise faithfully to tell
+no one."
+
+Grace promised, and he then told her that Jael Dence, in a moment of
+desperation, had thrown herself into the river at the back of his
+house.  "Poor girl!" said he, "her brain was not right at the time.
+Heaven keep us all from those moments of despair.  She has got over
+it now, and nurses and watches my poor sister more like a mother
+watching her child than a young woman taking care of an old one.
+She is the mainspring of the house."
+
+At all this Grace turned from pale to white, but said nothing; and
+Raby ran on in praise of Jael, little dreaming what pain his words
+inflicted.
+
+When he left her, she rose and walked down to the sea; for her
+tortured spirit gave her body energy.  Hitherto she found she had
+only suspected; now she was sure.  Hitherto she had feared Henry
+Little had loved Jael Dence a little; now she was sure he had loved
+her best.  Jael Dence would not have attempted self-destruction for
+any man unless he loved her.  The very act proved her claim to him
+more eloquently than words could do.  Now she believed all--the
+anonymous letter--Mr. Coventry's report--the woman's words who
+worked in the same factory, and could not be deceived.  And her
+godfather accepted Jael Dence and her claim to sympathy: she was
+taken into his house, and set to nurse Henry Little's mother: poor
+Grace was slighted on all sides; she must not even write to Mrs.
+Little, nor take part in the pious falsehood they were concocting
+together, Raby and his Jael Dence, whom everybody loved best--
+everybody except this poor faithful ill-used wretch, Frederick
+Coventry; and him she hated for loving her better than the man she
+loved had loved her.
+
+Tender, but very proud, this sensitive creature saw herself
+dethroned from her love.  Jael Dence had eclipsed her in every way;
+had saved his life with her strong arm, had almost perished with
+him; and had tried to kill herself when he was dead.  SHE was far
+behind this rival in every thing.  She had only loved, and suffered,
+and nearly died.  "No, no," she said to herself, "she could not love
+him better than I did: but HE loved HER best; and she knew it, and
+that made her arm strong to fight, and her heart strong to die for
+him.  I am nobody--nothing."  Then the scalding tears ran down her
+cheeks.  But soon her pride got the upper hand, and dried her
+cheeks, and nearly maddened her.
+
+She began to blush for her love, to blush for her illness.  She rose
+into that state of exasperation in which persons of her sex do
+things they look back upon with wonder, and, strange to say, all
+this without one unkind thought of him whose faults she saw, but
+excused--he was dead.
+
+She now began to struggle visibly, and violently, against her deadly
+sorrow.  She forced herself to take walks and rides, and to talk,
+with nothing to say.  She even tried to laugh now and then.  She
+made violent efforts to be gracious and pitiful to Mr. Coventry, and
+the next minute made him suffer for it by treating him like a
+troublesome hound.
+
+He loved her madly, yet sometimes he felt tempted to kill her, and
+end both her torture and his own.
+
+Such was the inner life of Grace Carden for many days; devoid of
+striking incident, yet well worthy of study by those who care to
+pierce below the surface, and see what passes in the hearts of the
+unhappy, and to learn how things come gradually about that sound
+incredible when not so traced, yet are natural and almost inevitable
+results of certain conflicting passions in a virgin heart.
+
+
+One day Mr. Carden telegraphed from London to Mr. Coventry at
+Hillsborough that he was coming down to Eastbank by the midday
+express, and would be glad to meet him there at four o'clock.  He
+also telegraphed to Grace, and said, "Dinner at five."
+
+Both gentlemen arrived about the same time, a little before dinner.
+
+Soon after dinner was over, Grace observed a restlessness in her
+father's manner, which convinced her he had something private to say
+to Mr. Coventry.  Her suspicions were aroused: she fancied he was
+going to encourage Mr. Coventry to court her.  Instantly the whole
+woman was in arms, and her love for the deceased came rushing back
+tenfold.  She rose, soon after dinner, and retired to the drawing-
+room; but, as soon as she got there, she slipped quietly into the
+veranda, and lay softly down upon her couch.  The dining-room window
+was open, and with her quick ears, she could hear nearly every word.
+
+She soon found that all her bitterness and her preparation for
+hostilities were wasted.  Her father was telling Mr. Coventry the
+story of Richard Martin; only he carried it a step further than I
+have done.
+
+"Well, sir," said he, "the money had not been paid more than a
+month, when an insurance office down at Liverpool communicated with
+us.  The same game had been played with them; but, somehow, their
+suspicions were excited.  We compared notes with them, and set
+detectives to work.  They traced Martin's confederates, and found
+one of them was in prison awaiting his trial for some minor offense.
+They worked on him to tell the truth (I am afraid they compounded),
+and he let out the whole truth.  Every one of those villains could
+swim like ducks, and Richard Martin like a fish.  Drowned? not he:
+he had floated down to Greenwich or somewhere--the blackguard! and
+hid himself.  And what do you think the miscreants did next?  Bought
+a dead marine; and took him down in a box to some low public-house
+by the water-side.  They had a supper, and dressed their marine in
+Richard Martin's clothes, and shaved its whiskers, and broke its
+tooth, and set it up in a chair, with a table before it, and a pot
+of ale, and fastened a pipe in its mouth; and they kept toasting
+this ghastly corpse as the thing that was to make all their
+fortunes."  At this grotesque and horrible picture, a sigh of horror
+was uttered in the veranda.  Mr. Carden, occupied with his
+narrative, did not hear it, but Coventry did.  "Then, when it was
+pitch dark, they staggered down to the water with it, and planted it
+in the weeds.  And, mark the cunning! when they had gone through
+their farce of recognizing it publicly for Richard Martin, they
+bribed a churchwarden and buried it under our very noses: it was all
+done in a way to take in the very devil.  There's no Richard Martin;
+there never was a Richard Martin; there never will be: all this was
+contrived and executed by a swindler well known to the police, only
+they can't catch him; he is here, and there and everywhere; they
+call him 'Shifty Dick.'  He and his myrmidons have bled the
+'Gosshawk' to the tune of nine hundred pounds."
+
+He drew his breath and proceeded more calmly.  "However, a lesson of
+this kind is never thrown away upon a public man, and it has given
+me some very curious ideas about another matter.  You know what I
+mean."
+
+Coventry stared, and looked quite taken aback by this sudden turn.
+
+However he stammered out, "I suppose you mean--but, really, I can't
+imagine what similarity--"he paused, and, inadvertently, his eye
+glanced uneasily toward the veranda.
+
+"Oh," said Mr. Carden, "these diabolical frauds are not done upon
+one pattern, or, of course, there would soon be an end of their
+success.  But come now, what proof have we got that what they found
+in the river at Hillsborough was the remains of Henry Little?"
+
+"I don't know, I am sure.  But nobody seems to doubt it.  The
+situation, the clothes, the ring--so many coincidences."
+
+"That is all very well, if there were no rogues in the world.  But
+there are; and I know it, to my cost.  The 'Gosshawk' has just lost
+nine hundred pounds by not suspecting.  It shall not lose five
+thousand by the same weakness; I'll take care of that."
+
+He paused a moment, and then proceeded to argue the matter:
+
+"The very idea of an imposture has never occurred to any body; in
+Little's case, it did not occur to me until this business of Shifty
+Dick enlightened me.  But, come now, just admit the idea of
+imposture into that honest, unsuspicious mind of yours, and you'll
+find the whole thing wears a very doubtful appearance directly.  A
+common workman--he was no more at the time--insures his life, for
+how much? three hundred pounds? no; five thousand.  Within one year
+after that he disappears, under cover of an explosion.  Some weeks
+afterward--about as many as the Martin swindle--there is found in
+the river a fragment of humanity; an arm, and a hand, and a piece of
+a human trunk; but no face, mind you: arms are pretty much alike,
+faces differ.  The fragment is clad in brown tweed, and Little wore
+brown tweed: that is all very well; but the marine was found dressed
+from head to foot in Shifty Dick's very clothes.  But let us go on.
+There was a plain gold ring found on the hand in Hillsborough river,
+and my poor daughter had given Little a plain gold ring.  But what
+was there to hinder an impostor from buying some pauper's body, and
+putting a plain gold ring on the hand?  Why, paupers' bodies are
+constantly sold, and the funeral services gabbled over a coffin full
+of stones.  If I had paper and ink here, and could put Little's case
+and Martin's in two columns, I should soon show you that Martin and
+his gang faced and overcame more and greater difficulties in the way
+of imposture than any that have been overcome in Little's case.  The
+Martin gang dealt with the face; here, that is shirked.  The Martin
+gang planted a body, not a fragment.  Does it not strike you as very
+odd that the rest of Henry Little is not to be found?  It may be all
+right; but, of the two, I incline to think it is a plan, and that
+some person, calling himself the heir or assign of Little, will soon
+apply to the 'Gosshawk' for five thousand pounds.  Well, let him.  I
+shall look on that person as the agent of a living man, not the heir
+of a dead one; and I shall tell him I don't believe in arms, and
+shoulders, and tweed suits, and plain gold rings--(why, wedding-
+rings are the very things conjurors take from the public at random
+to play hanky-panky with; they are so like one another).  I shall
+demand to see the man's face; and the mother who bore him must
+identify that face before I will pay one shilling to his heirs or
+assigns.  I am waiting to see who will come forward and claim.
+Nobody moves; and that is curious.  Well, when they do, I shall be
+ready for them.  You look pale!  But no wonder: it is really no
+subject for an after-dinner conversation."
+
+Coventry was pale indeed, and his mind all in a whirl as to what he
+should say; for Mr. Carden's sagacity terrified him, and the worst
+of it was, he felt sure that Grace Carden heard every word.
+
+At last, however, his natural cunning came to his aid, and he made a
+very artful speech, directed principally to his unseen hearer.
+
+"Mr. Carden," said he, "this seems to me very shrewd; but surely it
+fails in one respect: you leave the man's character out of the
+account.  Mr. Little came between me and one I love, and inflicted
+great misery on me; but I will try and be just to him.  I don't
+believe he was an impostor of that kind.  He was false in love; he
+had been reared amongst workmen, and every body says he loved a
+working-girl more than he did your daughter; but as for his cheating
+you or any other person out of five thousand pounds, I can't believe
+it.  They all say he was as honest a man in money matters as ever
+breathed."
+
+"You judge him by yourself.  Besides, men begin by deceiving women,
+but they go on to--  Why, Grace, my poor child--  Good heavens! have
+you--?"
+
+Grace was leaning against the open window, ghastly and terrible.
+
+"Yes," said she haughtily, "I have been guilty of the meanness of
+listening, and I suffer for it.  It is but one pang more to a broken
+heart.  Mr. Coventry, you are just, you are generous; and I will try
+and reward you for those words.  No, papa, no impostor, but a man
+sore tried, sore tempted.  If he is alive, we shall soon know."
+
+"How?"
+
+"He will write--TO JAEL DENCE."
+
+Having uttered this strange speech, she rushed away with a wild cry
+of agony, and nobody saw her face again that night.
+
+She did not come down-stairs next day.  Mr. Carden went up to her.
+He stayed with her an hour, and came down looking much dejected; he
+asked Mr. Coventry to take a turn in the garden with him.  When they
+were alone, he said, gravely, "Mr. Coventry, that unfortunate
+conversation of ours has quite upset my poor girl.  She tells me now
+she will not believe he is dead until months and months have passed
+without his writing to Jael Dence."
+
+"Well, but, sir," said Coventry, "could you not convince her?"
+
+"How can I, when I am myself convinced he is alive, and will give us
+a great deal of trouble yet? for it is clear to me the poor girl
+loves him more than she knows.  Look here, Coventry, there's no man
+I so desire for a son-in-law as yourself; you have shown a patience,
+a fidelity!--but as a just man, and a man of honor, I must now
+advise you to give up all thoughts of her.  You are not doing
+yourself justice; she will never marry you while that man is alive
+and unmarried.  I am provoked with her: she will not leave her room
+while you are in the house.  Shall I tell you what she said?  'I
+respect him, I admire him, but I can't bear the sight of him now.'
+That is all because I let out last night that I thought Little was
+alive.  I told her, alive or not, he was dead to her."
+
+"And what did she say to that?"
+
+"Not a word.  She wrung her hands, and burst out crying terribly.
+Ah! my friend, may you never know what it is to be a father, and see
+your child wring her hands, and cry her heart out, as I have seen
+mine."
+
+His own tears flowed, and his voice was choked.  He faltered out,
+"We are two miserable creatures; forgive us, and leave us to our
+fate."
+
+Coventry rose, sick at heart, and said, "Tell her I will not intrude
+upon her."
+
+He telegraphed to Lally, and went back to Hillsborough as miserable
+as those he left behind; but with this difference, he deserved his
+misery, deserved it richly.
+
+
+Ere he had been two days in Hillsborough a telegram came from him to
+Mr. Carden:
+
+"Re Little.  Important discovery.  Pray come here at once.
+
+Mr. Carden had the prudence to withhold from Grace the nature of
+this communication.  He merely told her business called him suddenly
+to Hillsborough.  He started by the next train and found Mr.
+Coventry awaiting him at "Woodbine Villa" with strange news: it was
+not conjecture, nor a matter of deduction, but a piece of undeniable
+evidence; and it knocked both Mr. Carden's theory and his daughter's
+to atoms at one blow.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+
+Meantime the history of Raby House was the history of what French
+dramatists call "a pious lie."
+
+Its indirect effect in keeping Grace Carden apart both from Mrs.
+Little and Jael Dence was unforeseen and disastrous; its immediate
+and direct effect on Mrs. Little was encouraging to those concerned;
+what with the reconciliation to her brother, the return to native
+air and beloved scenes, the tenderness and firmness of Jael Dence,
+and the conviction that her son was safe out of the clutches of the
+dreaded Unions, she picked up flesh and color and spirit weekly.
+
+By-and-by she turned round upon Jael Dence, and the nurse became the
+pupil.  Mrs. Little taught her grammar, pronunciation, dancing,
+carriage, and deportment.  Jael could already sing from notes; Mrs.
+Little taught her to accompany herself on the pianoforte.  The
+teacher was so vigilant, and the pupil so apt and attentive, that
+surprising progress was made.  To be sure, they were together night
+and day.
+
+This labor of love occupied Mrs. Little's mind agreeably, and, as
+the pupil was equally resolute in making the teacher walk or ride on
+horseback with her every day, the hours glided swiftly, and, to Mrs.
+Little, pleasantly.
+
+Her brother rather avoided her, by order of Jael Dence; but so many
+probable reasons were given for his absences that she suspected
+nothing.  Only she said one day, "What a gad-about he is now.  This
+comes of not marrying.  We must find him a wife."
+
+When he was at home they breakfasted together, all three, and then
+Mrs. Little sometimes spoke of Henry, and so hopefully and
+cheerfully that a great qualm ran through her hearers, and Raby, who
+could not command his features so well as Jael could, looked gloomy,
+and sometimes retired behind his newspaper.
+
+Mrs. Little observed this one day, and pointed it out to Jael.
+"Oh," said Jael, "take no notice.  You know he wanted Mr. Henry to
+stay quietly here and be his heir."
+
+"And so did I.  But his very name seems to--"
+
+"He likes him well, for all that, ma'am; only he won't own it yet.
+You know what Squire is."
+
+"THE Squire you should say, dear.  But, 'Mr. Raby' is better still.
+As a rule, avoid all small titles: the doctor, the squire, the
+baronet, the mayor."
+
+Jael seized this handle, and, by putting questions to her teacher,
+got her away from the dangerous topic.
+
+Ever on the watch, and occupied in many ways with Mrs. Little, Jael
+began to recover resignation; but this could not be without an
+occasional paroxysm of grief.
+
+These she managed to hide from Mrs. Little.
+
+But one day that lady surprised her crying.  She stood and looked at
+her a moment, then sat down quietly beside her and took her hand.
+Jael started, and feared discovery.
+
+"My child," said Mrs. Little, "if you have lost a father, you have
+gained a mother; and then, as to your sister, why my Henry is gone
+to the very same country; yet, you see, I do not give way to sorrow.
+As soon as he writes, I will beg him to make inquiries for Patty,
+and send them home if they are not doing well."  Then Mrs. Little
+kissed Jael, and coaxed her and rocked with her, and Jael's tears
+began to flow, no longer for her own great grief, but for this
+mother, who was innocently consoling her, unconscious of the blow
+that must one day fall upon herself.
+
+So matters went on pretty smoothly; only one morning, speaking of
+Henry, Mrs. Little surprised a look of secret intelligence between
+her brother and Jael Dence.  She made no remark at the time, but she
+puzzled in secret over it, and began at last to watch the pair.
+
+She asked Raby at dinner, one day, when she might hope to hear from
+Henry.
+
+"I don't know," said he, and looked at Jael Dence like a person
+watching for orders.
+
+Mrs. Little observed this, and turned keenly round to Jael.
+
+"Oh," said Jael, "the doctor--I beg pardon, Dr. Amboyne--can tell
+you that better than I can.  It is a long way to Australia."
+
+"How you send me from one to another," said Mrs. Little, speaking
+very slowly.
+
+They made no reply to that, and Mrs. Little said no more.  But she
+pondered all this.  She wrote to Dr. Amboyne, and asked him why no
+letter had come from Henry.
+
+Dr. Amboyne wrote back that, even if he had gone in a steamboat,
+there was hardly time for a letter to come back: but he had gone in
+a sailing-vessel.  "Give him three months and a half to get there,
+and two months for his letters to come back."
+
+In this same letter he told her he was glad to hear she was renewing
+her youth like an eagle, but reminded her it would entail some
+consequences more agreeable to him than to her.
+
+She laid down the letter with a blush and fell into a reverie.
+
+Dr. Amboyne followed up this letter with a visit or two, and urged
+her to keep her promise and marry him.
+
+She had no excuse for declining, but she procrastinated: she did not
+like to marry without consulting Henry, or, at least, telling him by
+letter.
+
+And whilst she was thus temporizing, events took place at Eastbank
+which ended by rudely disturbing the pious falsehood at Raby Hall.
+
+That sequence of events began with the interview between Mr. Carden
+and Mr. Coventry at Woodbine Villa.
+
+"Little had made a will.  My own solicitor drew it, and holds it at
+this moment."  This was the intelligence Coventry had to communicate.
+
+"Very well; then now I shall know who is coming to the 'Gosshawk'
+for the five thousand pounds.  That will be the next act of the
+comedy, you will see."
+
+"Wait a moment.  He leaves to Mrs. Little his own reversion to a sum
+of nineteen hundred pounds, in which she has already the life
+interest; he gives a hundred pounds to his sweetheart Dence: all the
+rest of his estate, in possession or expectation, he bequeaths to--
+Miss Carden."
+
+"Good heavens!  Why then--"  Mr. Carden could say no more, for
+astonishment.
+
+"So," said Coventry, "If he is alive, she is the confederate who is
+to profit by the fraud; those five thousand pounds belong to her at
+this moment."
+
+"Are you sure?  Who is your authority?"
+
+"A communicative clerk, who happens to be the son of a tenant of
+mine.  The solicitor himself, I believe, chooses to doubt his
+client's decease.  It is at his private request that horrible object
+is refused Christian burial."
+
+"On what grounds, pray?"
+
+"Legal grounds, I suppose; the man did not die regularly, and
+according to precedent.  He omitted to provide himself with two
+witnesses previously to being blown up.  In a case of this kind we
+may safely put an old-fashioned attorney's opinion out of the
+question.  What do YOU think?  That is all I care to know."
+
+"I don't know what to think now.  But I foresee one thing: I shall
+be placed in rather an awkward position.  I ought to defend the
+'Gosshawk;' but I am not going to rob my own daughter of five
+thousand pounds, if it belongs to her honestly."
+
+"Will you permit me to advise you?"
+
+"Certainly, I shall be very much obliged: for really I don't see my
+way."
+
+"Well, then, I think you ought to look into the matter carefully,
+but without prejudice.  I have made some inquiries myself: I went
+down to the works, and begged the workmen, who knew Little, to
+examine the remains, and then come here and tell us their real
+opinion."
+
+"Oh, to my mind, it all depends on the will.  If that answers the
+description you give--hum!"  Next morning they breakfasted together,
+and during breakfast two workmen called, and, at Coventry's request,
+were ushered into the room.  They came to say they knew Mr. Little
+well, and felt sure that was his dead hand they had seen at the Town
+Hall.  Coventry cross-examined them severely, but they stuck to
+their conviction; and this will hardly surprise the reader when I
+tell him the workmen in question were Cole and another, suborned by
+Coventry himself to go through this performance.
+
+Mr. Carden received the testimony readily, for the best of all
+reasons--he wanted to believe it.
+
+But, when they were gone, he recurred to the difficulty of his
+position.  Director of the "Gosshawk," and father to a young lady
+who had a claim of five thousand pounds on it, and that claim
+debatable, though, to his own mind, no longer doubtful.
+
+Now Mr. Coventry had a great advantage over Mr. Carden here: he had
+studied this very situation profoundly for several hours, and at
+last had seen how much might be done with it.
+
+He began by artfully complimenting Mr. Carden on his delicacy, but
+said Miss Carden must not be a loser by it.  "Convince her, on other
+grounds, that the man is dead; encourage her to reward my devotion
+with her hand, and I will relieve you of everything disagreeable.
+Let us settle on Miss Carden, for her separate use, the five
+thousand pounds, and anything else derivable from Mr. Little's
+estate; but we must also settle my farm of Hindhope: for it shall
+never be said she took as much from that man as she did from me.
+Well, in due course I apply to the 'Gosshawk' for my wife's money.
+I am not bound to tell your Company it is not mine but hers; that is
+between you and me.  But you really ought to write to London at once
+and withdraw the charge of fraud; you owe that piece of justice to
+Miss Carden, and to the memory of the deceased."
+
+"That is true; and it will pave the way for the demand you propose
+to make on Mrs. Coventry's behalf.  Well, you really are a true
+friend, as well as a true lover."
+
+In short, he went back to Hillsborough resolved to marry his
+daughter to Coventry as soon as possible.  Still, following that
+gentleman's instructions, he withheld from Grace that Little had
+made a will in her favor.  He knew her to be quite capable of
+refusing to touch a farthing of it, or to act as executrix.  But he
+told her the workmen had identified the remains, and that other
+circumstances had also convinced him he had been unjust to a
+deceased person, which he regretted.
+
+When her father thus retracted his own words, away went Grace's last
+faint hope that Henry lived; and now she must die for him, or live
+for others.
+
+She thought of Jael Dance, and chose the latter.
+
+Another burst or two of agony, and then her great aim and study
+appeared to be to forget herself altogether.  She was full of
+attention for her father, and, whenever Mr. Coventry came, she
+labored to reward him with kind words, and even with smiles; but
+they were sad ones.
+
+As for Coventry, he saw, with secret exultation, that she was now
+too languid and hopeless to resist the joint efforts of her father
+and himself, and, that some day or other, she must fall lifeless
+into his arms.
+
+He said to himself, "It is only a question of time."
+
+He was now oftener at the villa than at Hillsborough, and, with
+remarkable self-denial, adhered steadily to the line of soothing and
+unobtrusive devotion.
+
+One morning at breakfast the post brought him a large envelope from
+Hillsborough.  He examined it, and found a capital "L" in the corner
+of the envelope, which "L" was written by his man Lally, in
+compliance with secret instructions from his master.
+
+Coventry instantly put the envelope into his pocket, and his hand
+began to shake so that he could hardly hold his cup to his lips.
+His agitation, however, was not noticed.
+
+Directly after breakfast he strolled, with affected composure, into
+the garden, and sat down in a bower where he was safe from surprise,
+as the tangled leaves were not so thick but he could peep through
+them.
+
+He undid his inclosure, and found three letters; two were of no
+importance; the third bore a foreign postmark, and was addressed to
+Miss Carden in a hand writing which he recognized at a glance as
+Henry Little's.
+
+But as this was not the first letter from Henry to Grace which he
+had intercepted and read, perhaps I had better begin by saying a few
+words about the first.
+
+Well, then, the letters with which Coventry swam the river on the
+night of the explosion were six, viz., to Mr. Bolt, to Doctor
+Amboyne, to Mr. Baynes, to Jael Dence, to Mrs. Little, and to Grace
+Carden.  The letter to Grace Carden was short but touching, full of
+devotion, hope, resolution, and grief at parting.  He told her he
+had come to take leave that afternoon, but she had been out,
+luckily; for he felt he ought to go, and must go, but how could he
+look at her and then leave her?  This was the general purport, and
+expressed with such anguish and fortitude as might have melted a
+heart of marble.
+
+The reader may have observed that, upon his rival's disappearance,
+Coventry was no happier.  This letter was the secret cause.  First
+it showed him his rival was alive, and he had wasted a crime;
+secondly, it struck him with remorse, yet not with penitence; and to
+be full of remorse, yet empty of that true penitence which confesses
+or undoes the wrong, this is to be miserable.
+
+But, as time rolled on, bringing the various events I have related,
+but no news of Little, Coventry began to think that young man must
+really have come to some untimely end.
+
+From this pleasant dream he was now awakened by the second
+intercepted letter.  It ran thus:
+
+
+"BOSTON, U. S., June 20th.
+
+MY OWN DEAR LOVE,--It is now nine weeks since I left England, and
+this will be a fortnight more getting to you; that is a long time
+for you to be without news from me, and I sadly fear I have caused
+you great anxiety.  Dearest, it all happened thus: Our train was
+delayed by an accident, and I reached Liverpool just in time to see
+the steam-packet move down the Mersey.  My first impulse, of course,
+was to go back to Hillsborough; but a seaman, who saw my vexation,
+told me a fast schooner was on the point of sailing for Boston, U.S.
+My heart told me if I went back to Hillsborough, I should never
+make the start again.  I summoned all my manhood to do the right
+thing for us both; and I got into the schooner, heaven knows how;
+and, when I got there, I hid my face for ever so many hours, till,
+by the pitching and tossing, I knew that I was at sea.  Then I began
+to cry and blubber.  I couldn't hold it any longer.
+
+"At such a time a kind word keeps the heart from breaking
+altogether; and I got some comfort from an old gentleman, a native
+of Boston: a grave old man he was, and pretty reserved with all the
+rest; but seeing me in the depths of misery, he talked to me like a
+father, and I told him all my own history, and a little about you
+too--at least, how I loved you, and why I had left England with a
+heavy heart.
+
+"We had a very long passage, not downright tempestuous, but contrary
+winds, and a stiff gale or two.  Instead of twenty days, as they
+promised, we were six weeks at sea, and what with all the fighting
+and the threats--I had another letter signed with a coffin just
+before I left that beautiful town--and the irritation at losing so
+much time on the ocean, it all brought on a fever, and I have no
+recollection of leaving the boat.  When I came to myself, I was in a
+house near Boston, belonging to the old gentleman I spoke of.  He
+and his nieces nursed me, and now I am as well as ever, only rather
+weak.
+
+"Mr. Ironside, that is his name, but it should be Mr. Goldheart, if
+I had the christening of him--he has been my good Samaritan.  Dear
+Grace, please pray for him and his family every night.  He tells me
+he comes of the pilgrim fathers, so he is bound to feel for pilgrims
+and wanderers from home.  Well, he has been in patents a little,
+and, before I lost my little wits with the fever, he and I had many
+a talk.  So now he is sketching out a plan of operation for me, and
+I shall have to travel many a hundred miles in this vast country.
+But they won't let me move till I am a little stronger, he and his
+nieces.  If he is gold, they are pearls.
+
+"Dearest, it has taken me two days to write this: but I am very
+happy and hopeful, and do not regret coming.  I am sure it was the
+right thing for us both.
+
+"Please say something kind for me to the good doctor, and tell him I
+have got over this one trouble already.
+
+"Dearest, I agreed to take so much a year from Bolt, and he must
+fight the trades alone.  Such a life is not worth having.  Bayne
+won't wrong me of a shilling.  Whatever he makes, over his salary
+and the men's wages, there it will be for me when I come home; so I
+write to no one at Hillsborough but you.  Indeed, you are my all in
+this world.  I travel, and fight, and work, and breathe, and live
+for you, my own beloved; and if any harm came to you, I wouldn't
+care to live another moment."
+
+
+At this point in the letter the reader stopped, and something cold
+seemed to pass all through his frame.  It struck him that all good
+men would pity the writer of this letter, and abhor him who kept it
+from that pale, heart-broken girl inside the cottage.
+
+He sat freezing, with the letter in his hand, and began to doubt
+whether he could wade any deeper in crime.
+
+After a minute or two he raised his head, and was about to finish
+reading the letter.
+
+But, in the meantime, Grace Carden had resumed her accustomed place
+in the veranda.  She lay upon the couch, and her pale face, and
+hollow, but still beautiful eyes, were turned seaward.  Out of those
+great sad eyes the sad soul looked across the waste of waters--
+gazed, and searched, and pined in vain.  Oh, it was a look to make
+angels weep, and hover close over her head with restless, loving
+pinions, longing to shadow, caress, and heal her!
+
+Coventry, with Henry Little's letter in his hand, peered through the
+leaves, and saw the woman he loved fix this look of despair upon the
+sea--despair of which he was the sole cause, and could dispel it
+with a gesture.
+
+
+"And this brings me back to what is my only great trouble now.  I
+told you, in the letter I left behind me, you would hear from me in
+a month at furthest.  It will be not a month, but eleven weeks.
+Good heavens! when I think what anxiety you may have suffered on my
+account!  You know I am a pupil of the good doctor, and so I put
+myself in your place, and I say to myself, 'If my Grace had promised
+to write in a month, and eleven weeks had passed without a word,
+what would my feelings be?'  Why, I think I should go mad; I should
+make sure you were ill; I should fear you were dead; I should fancy
+every terrible thing on earth, except that you were false to your
+poor Henry.  That I should never fear: I judge you by myself.  Fly,
+steamboat, with this letter to my love, and set her mind at ease.
+Fly back with a precious word from her dear hand, and with that in
+my bosom, nothing will ever daunt me.
+
+"God bless you! angel of my life, darling of my heart, star on which
+all my hopes are fixed!  Oh, what miserable bad tools words are!
+When I look at them, and compare them with how I love you, I seem to
+be writing that I love you no more than other people love.  What I
+feel is so much greater than words.
+
+"Must I say farewell?  Even on paper, it is like tearing myself away
+from heaven again.  But that was to be: and now this is to be.
+Good-by, my own beloved.
+
+"Yours till death, HENRY."
+
+
+Coventry read this sentence by sentence, still looking up, nearly
+every sentence, at her to whom it was addressed.
+
+The letter pleaded on his knee, the pale face pleaded a few yards
+off; he sat between the two bleeding lovers, their sole barrier and
+bane.
+
+His heart began to fail him.  The mountain of crime looked high.
+Now remorse stung him deeper than ever; jealousy spurred him harder
+than ever; a storm arose within his breast, a tempest of conflicting
+passion, as grand and wild as ever distracted the heart; as grand
+and wild as any poet has ever tried to describe, and, half
+succeeding, won immortal fame.
+
+"See what I can do?" whispered conscience.  "With one bound I can
+give her the letter, and bring the color back to that cheek and joy
+to that heart.  She will adore me for it, she will be my true and
+tender friend till death.  She will weep upon my neck and bless me."
+
+"Ay," whispered jealousy, "and then she will marry Henry Little."
+
+"And am I sure to succeed if I persist in crime?  Deserve her hatred
+and contempt, and is it certain they will not both fall on me?"
+
+"The fault began with them.  He supplanted me--she jilted me.  I
+hate him--I love her.  I can't give her up now; I have gone too far.
+What is intercepting a letter?  I have been too near murder to stop
+at that."
+
+"But her pale face! her pale face!"
+
+"Once married, supplant him as he has supplanted you.  Away to Italy
+with her.  Fresh scenes--constant love--the joys of wedlock!  What
+will this Henry Little be to her then?--a dream."
+
+"Eternal punishment; if it is not a fable, who has ever earned it
+better than I am earning it if I go on?"
+
+"It IS a fable; it must be.  Philosophers always said so, and now
+even divines have given it up."
+
+"Her pale face! her pale face!  Never mind HIM, look at her.  What
+sort of love is this that shows no pity?  Oh, my poor girl, don't
+look so sad--so pale!  What shall I do?  Would to God I had never
+been born, to torture myself and her!"
+
+His good angel fought hard for him that day; fought and struggled
+and hoped, until the miserable man, torn this way and that, ended
+the struggle with a blasphemous yell by tearing the letter to atoms.
+
+That fatal act turned the scale.
+
+The next moment he wished he had not done it.
+
+But it was too late.  He could not go to her with the fragments.
+She would see he had intercepted it purposely.
+
+Well, all the better.  It was decided.  He would not look at her
+face any more.  He could not bear it.
+
+He rushed away from the bower and made for the seaside; but he soon
+returned another way, gained his own room, and there burnt the
+fragments of the letter to ashes.
+
+But, though he was impenitent, remorse was not subdued.  He could
+not look Grace Carden in the face now.  So he sent word he must go
+back to Hillsborough directly.
+
+He packed his bag and went down-stairs with it.
+
+On the last landing he met Grace Carden.  She started a little.
+
+"What! going away?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Carden."
+
+"No bad news, I hope?" said she, kindly.
+
+The kindly tone coming from her, to whom he had shown no mercy, went
+through that obdurate heart.
+
+"No--no," he faltered; "but the sight of your unhappiness--  Let me
+go.  I am a miserable man!"
+
+And with this he actually burst out crying and ran past her.
+
+Grace told her father, and asked him to find out what was the matter
+with Mr. Coventry.
+
+Mr. Carden followed Coventry to the station, and Coventry, who had
+now recovered his self-possession and his cunning, told him that for
+some time Miss Carden had worn a cheerful air, which had given him
+hopes; but this morning, watching her from a bower in the garden, he
+had seen such misery in her face that it had quite upset him; and he
+was going away to try and recover that composure, without which he
+felt he would be no use to her in any way.
+
+This tale Carden brought back to his daughter, and she was touched
+by it.  "Poor Mr. Coventry!" said she.  "Why does he waste so much
+love on me?"
+
+Her father, finding her thus softened, pleaded hard for his friend,
+and reminded Grace that she had not used him well.  She admitted
+that at once, and went so far as to say that she felt bound never to
+marry any one but Mr. Coventry, unless time should cure him, as she
+hoped it would, of his unfortunate attachment.
+
+From this concession Mr. Carden urged her daily to another, viz.,
+that Mr. Coventry might be permitted to try and win her affection.
+
+Her answer was, "He had much better content himself with what I can
+and do give him--my esteem and gratitude and sincere pity."
+
+Mr. Carden, however, persisted, and the deep affection he had shown
+his daughter gave him great power.  It was two against one; and the
+two prevailed.
+
+Mr. Coventry began to spend his whole time at Eastbank Cottage.
+
+He followed Grace about with a devotion to which no female heart
+could be entirely insensible; and, at last, she got used to him, and
+rather liked to have him about her.  He broke her solitude as a dog
+does, and he fetched and carried for her, and talked when she was
+inclined to listen, and was silent when he saw his voice jarred upon
+her bereaved heart.
+
+Without her father, matters might have gone on so for years; but Mr.
+Carden had now so many motives for marrying his daughter to
+Coventry, that he used all his judgment and all his influence.  He
+worked on his daughter's pride, her affection, her sense of honor,
+and her sense of duty.
+
+She struggled, she sighed, she wept; but, by little and little, she
+submitted.  And, since three months more passed with no striking
+event, I will deviate from my usual custom and speak a little of
+what passed in her mind.
+
+First of all, then, she was so completely deceived by appearances,
+that she believed the exact opposite of the truth in each
+particular.  To her not only did black seem white, but white black.
+Her dead lover had given her but half his heart.  Her living lover
+was the soul of honor and true devotion.  It was her duty, though
+not her pleasure, to try and love him; to marry him would be a good
+and self-denying action.
+
+And what could she lose by it?  Her own chance of happiness was
+gone.  All she could hope for hereafter was the gentle satisfaction
+that arises from making others happy.  She had but a choice of
+evils: never to marry at all, or to marry Frederick Coventry.
+
+Thus far she was conscious of her own feelings, and could, perhaps,
+have put them into words; but here she drifted out of her depth.
+
+Nature implants in women a genuine love of offspring that governs
+them unconsciously.  It governs the unconscious child; it governs
+the half-conscious mother who comes home from the toyshop with a
+waxen child for her girl, and a drum for her boy.
+
+Men desire offspring---when they desire it at all--from vanity
+alone.  Women desire it from pure love of it.
+
+This instinct had probably its share in withholding Grace from
+making up her mind never to marry; and so operated negatively,
+though not positively, in Coventry's favor.
+
+And so, by degrees and in course of time, after saying "no" a dozen
+times, she said "yes" once in a moment of utter lassitude, and
+afterward she cried and wished to withdraw her consent, but they
+were two to one, and had right on their side, she thought.
+
+They got her to say she would marry him some day or other.
+
+
+Coventry intercepted several letters, but he took care not to read
+them with Grace's sad face in sight.  He would not give conscience
+such a power to torment him.  The earlier letters gave him a cruel
+satisfaction.  They were written each from a different city in the
+United States, and all tended to show that the writer had a year or
+two to travel yet, before he could hope to return home in triumph
+and marry his Grace.
+
+In all these letters she was requested to send her answers to New
+York (and, now I think of it, there was a postscript to that effect
+in the very letter I have given in extenso).
+
+But at last came a letter that disturbed this delightful dream.  It
+was written from the western extremity of the States, but the writer
+was in high spirits; he had sold his patents in two great cities,
+and had established them in two more on a royalty; he had also met
+with an unexpected piece of good fortune: his railway clip had been
+appreciated, a man of large capital and enterprise had taken it up
+with spirit, and was about to purchase the American and Canadian
+right for a large sum down and a percentage.  As soon as this
+contract should be signed he should come home and claim Mr. Carden's
+promise.  He complained a little that he got no letters, but
+concluded the post-office authorities were in fault, for he had
+written to New York to have them forwarded.  However, he soon should
+be in that city and revel in them.
+
+This troubled Coventry, and drove him to extremities.  He went on
+his knees to Grace, and implored her to name the day.
+
+She drew back with horror and repugnance; said, with a burst of
+tears, she was a widow, and would not marry till a decent time had
+elapsed since--; then, with sudden doggedness, "I will never marry
+at all."
+
+And so she left him to repent his precipitation.
+
+He was at his wits' end, and could do nothing but look unhappy, and
+temporize, and hope the wind might change.
+
+The wind did not change, and he passed a week or two of outward
+sorrow, but inward rage.
+
+He fell ill, and Mr. Carden pitied him openly.
+
+Grace maintained a sullen silence.
+
+One day, as he was in bed, an envelope was brought him, with a large
+"L."  He opened it slowly, fearing the worst.
+
+The letter was full of love, and joy, and triumph that made the
+reader's heart faint within him till he came to this sentence:
+
+
+"The gentleman who treats with me for the railway clip makes it an
+express stipulation that I shall spend a month in his works at
+Chicago, superintending the forging and perfecting of the clip.  As
+he intends to be there himself, and to buy it out-and-out if it
+answers his expectations, I shall certainly go, and wear a smith's
+apron once more for your sake.  He is even half inclined to go into
+another of my projects--the forging of large axes by machinery.  It
+was tried at Hillsborough two years ago, but the Union sent a bullet
+through the manufacturer's hat, and he dropped it."
+
+
+The letter from which I give this extract was a reprieve.  He had
+five or six weeks before him still.
+
+Soon after this, his faithful ally, Mr. Carden, worked on Grace's
+pity; and as Coventry never complained, nor irritated her in any
+way, she softened to him.  Then all the battery of imploring looks
+was brought to bear on her by Coventry, and of kind admonition and
+entreaty by her father; and so, between them, they gently thrust her
+down the slope.
+
+"Stop all their tongues," said Mr. Carden.  "Come back to
+Hillsborough a wife.  I gave up my choice to yours once.  Now give
+me my way.  I am touched to the heart by this young man's devotion:
+he invites me to live with him when you are married.  What other
+young fellow would show me so much mercy?"
+
+"Does he?" said Grace.  "I will try and reward him for that, and for
+speaking well of one who could not defend himself.  But give me a
+little time."
+
+Mr. Carden conveyed this to Coventry with delight, and told him he
+should only have another month or so to wait.  Coventry received
+this at first with unmixed exultation, but by-and-by he began to
+feel superstitious.  Matters were now drawing to such a point that
+Little might very well arrive before the wedding-day, and just
+before it.  Perhaps Heaven had that punishment in store for him; the
+cup was to be in his very grasp, and then struck out of it.
+
+Only a question of time!  But what is every race?  The space between
+winner and loser strikes the senses more obviously; but the race is
+just as much a question of time as of space.  Buridan runs second
+for the Derby, defeated by a length.  But give Buridan a start of
+one second, and he shall beat the winner--by two lengths.
+
+Little now wrote from Chicago that every thing was going on
+favorably, and he believed it would end in a sale of the patent clip
+in the United States and Canada for fifty thousand dollars, but no
+royalty.
+
+This letter was much shorter than any of the others; and, from that
+alone, his guilty reader could see that the writer intended to
+follow it in person almost immediately.
+
+Coventry began almost to watch the sun in his course.  When it was
+morning he wished it was evening, and when it was evening he wished
+it was morning.
+
+Sometimes he half wondered to see how calmly the sun rose and set,
+and Nature pursued her course, whilst he writhed in the agony of
+suspense, and would gladly have given a year out of his life for a
+day.
+
+At last, by Mr. Carden's influence, the wedding-day was fixed.  But
+soon after this great triumph came another intercepted letter.  He
+went to his room and his hands trembled violently as he opened it.
+
+His eye soon fixed on this passage:
+
+
+"I thought to be in New York by this time, and looking homeward; but
+I am detained by another piece of good-fortune, if any thing can be
+called good-fortune that keeps me a day from you.  Oh, my dear
+Grace, I am dying to see your handwriting at new York, and then fly
+home and see your dear self, and never, never quit you more.  I have
+been wonderfully lucky; I have made my fortune, our fortune.  But it
+hardly pays me for losing the sight of you so many months.  But what
+I was going to tell you is, that my method of forging large axes by
+machinery is wonderfully praised, and a great firm takes it up on
+fair terms.  This firm has branches in various parts of the world,
+and, once my machines are in full work, Hillsborough will never
+forge another ax.  Man can not suppress machinery; the world is too
+big.  That bullet sent through Mr. Tyler's hat loses Great Britain a
+whole trade.  I profit in money by their short-sighted violence, but
+I must pay the price; for this will keep me another week at Chicago,
+perhaps ten days.  Then home I come, with lots of money to please
+your father, and an ocean of love for you, who don't care about the
+filthy dross; no more do I, except as the paving-stones on the road
+to you and heaven, my adored one."
+
+
+The effect of this letter was prodigious.  So fearful had been the
+suspense, so great was now the relief, that Coventry felt exultant,
+buoyant.  He went down to the sea-side, and walked, light as air, by
+the sands, and his brain teemed with delightful schemes.  Little
+would come to Hillsborough soon after the marriage, but what of
+that?
+
+On the wedding-night he would be at Dover.  Next day at Paris, on
+his way to Rome, Athens, Constantinople.  The inevitable exposure
+should never reach his wife until he had so won her, soul and body,
+that she should adore him for the crimes he had committed to win
+her--he knew the female heart to be capable of that.
+
+He came back from his walk another man, color in his cheek and fire
+in his eye.
+
+He walked into the drawing-room, and found Mr. Raby, with his hat
+on, just leaving Grace, whose eyes showed signs of weeping.
+
+"I wish you joy, sir," said Raby.  "I am to have the honor of being
+at your wedding."
+
+"It will add to my happiness, if possible," said Coventry.
+
+To be as polite in deed as in word, he saw Mr. Raby into the fly.
+
+"Curious creatures, these girls," said Raby, shrugging his
+shoulders.
+
+"She was engaged to me long ago," said Coventry, parrying the blow.
+
+"Ah! I forgot that.  Still--well, well; I wish you joy."
+
+He went off, and Coventry returned to Grace.  She was seated by the
+window looking at the sea.
+
+"What did godpapa say to you?"
+
+"Oh, he congratulated me.  He reminded me you and I were first
+engaged at his house."
+
+"Did he tell you it is to be at Woodbine Villa?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"The wedding."  And Grace blushed to the forehead at having to
+mention it.
+
+"No, indeed, he did not mention any such thing, or I should have
+shown him how unadvisable--"
+
+"You mistake me.  It is I who wish to be married from my father's
+house by good old Dr. Fynes.  He married my parents, and he
+christened me, and now he shall marry me."
+
+"I approve that, of course, since you wish it; but, my own dearest
+Grace, Woodbine Villa is associated with so many painful memories--
+let me advise, let me earnestly entreat you, not to select it as the
+place to be married from.  Dr. Fynes can be invited here."
+
+"I have set my heart on it," said Grace.  "Pray do not thwart me in
+it."
+
+"I should be very sorry to thwart you in any thing.  But, before you
+finally decide, pray let me try and convince your better judgment."
+
+"I HAVE decided; and I have written to Dr. Fynes, and to the few
+persons I mean to invite.  They can't all come here; and I have
+asked Mr. Raby; and it is my own desire; and it is one of those
+things the lady and her family always decide.  I have no wish to be
+married at all.  I only marry to please my father and you.  There,
+let us say no more about it, please.  I will not be married at
+Woodbine Villa, nor anywhere else.  I wish papa and you would show
+your love by burying me instead."
+
+These words, and the wild panting way they were uttered in, brought
+Coventry to his knees in a moment.  He promised her, with abject
+submission, that she should have her own way in this and every
+thing.  He petted her, and soothed her, and she forgave him, but so
+little graciously, that he saw she would fly out in a moment again,
+if the least attempt were made to shake her resolution.
+
+Grace talked the matter over with Mr. Carden, and that same evening
+he begged Coventry to leave the Villa as soon as he conveniently
+could, for he and his daughter must be there a week before the
+wedding, and invite some relations, whom it was his interest to
+treat with respect.
+
+"You will spare me a corner," said Coventry, in his most insinuating
+tone.  "Dear Woodbine!  I could not bear to leave it."
+
+"Oh, of course you can stay there till we actually come; but we
+can't have the bride and bridegroom under one roof.  Why, my dear
+fellow, you know better than that."
+
+There was no help for it.  It sickened him with fears of what might
+happen in those few fatal days, during which Mr. Carden, Grace
+herself, and a household over which he had no control, would occupy
+the house, and would receive the Postman, whose very face showed him
+incorruptible.
+
+He stayed till the last moment; stopped a letter of five lines from
+Little, in which he said he should be in New York very soon, en
+route for England; and the very next day he received the Cardens,
+with a smiling countenance and a fainting heart, and then vacated
+the premises.  He ordered Lally to hang about the Villa at certain
+hours when the post came in, and do his best.  But his was catching
+at a straw.  His real hope was that neither Little himself, nor a
+letter in his handwriting, might come in that short interval.
+
+It wanted but five days to the wedding.
+
+Hitherto it had been a game of skill, now it was a game of chance;
+and every morning he wished it was evening, every evening he wished
+it was morning.
+
+The day Raby came back from Eastbank he dined at home, and, in an
+unguarded moment, said something or other, on which Mrs. Little
+cross-examined him so swiftly and so keenly that he stammered, and
+let out Grace Carden was on the point of marriage.
+
+"Marriage, while my son is alive!" said Mrs. Little, and looked from
+him to Jael Dence, at first with amazement, and afterward with a
+strange expression that showed her mind was working.
+
+A sort of vague alarm fell upon the other two, and they waited, in
+utter confusion, for what might follow.
+
+But the mother was not ready to suspect so horrible a thing as her
+son's death.  She took a more obvious view, and inveighed bitterly
+against Grace Carden.
+
+She questioned Raby as to the cause, but it was Jael who answered
+her.  "I believe nobody knows the rights of it but Miss Carden
+herself."
+
+"The cause is her utter fickleness; but she never really loved him.
+My poor Henry!"
+
+"Oh yes, she did," said Raby.  "She was at death's door a few months
+ago."
+
+"At death's door for one man, and now going to marry another!"
+
+"Why not?" said Raby, hard pushed; "she is a woman."
+
+"And why did you not tell me till now?" asked Mrs. Little, loftily
+ignoring her brother's pitiable attempt at a sneer.
+
+Raby's reply to this was happier.
+
+"Why, what the better are you for knowing it now?  We had orders not
+to worry you unnecessarily.  Had we not, Jael?"
+
+"That is all very well, in some things.  But, where my son is
+concerned, pray never keep the truth from me again.  When did she
+break off with Henry--or did he quarrel with her?"
+
+"I have no idea.  I was not in the country."
+
+"Do YOU know, dear?"
+
+"No, Mrs. Little.  But I am of your mind.  I think she could not
+have loved Mr. Henry as she ought."
+
+"When did you see her last?"
+
+"I could not say justly, but it was a long while ago."
+
+Mrs. Little interpreted this that Jael had quarreled with Grace for
+her fickleness, and gave her a look of beaming affection; then fell
+into a dead silence, and soon tears were seen stealing down her
+cheek.
+
+"But I shall write to her," said she, after a long and painful
+silence.
+
+Mr. Raby hoped she would do nothing of the kind.
+
+"Oh, I shall not say much.  I shall put her one question.  Of course
+SHE knows why they part."
+
+Next morning Jael Dence asked Mr. Raby whether the threatened letter
+must be allowed to go.
+
+"Of course it must," said Raby.  "I have gone as far off the
+straight path as a gentleman can.  And I wish we may not repent our
+ingenuity.  Deceive a mother about her son! what can justify it,
+after all?"
+
+Mrs. Little wrote her letter, and showed it to Jael:
+
+
+"DEAR MISS CARDEN,--They tell me you are about to be married.  Can
+this be true, and Henry Little alive?"
+
+
+An answer came back, in due course.
+
+
+"DEAR MRS. LITTLE,--It is true, and I am miserable.  Forgive me, and
+forget me."
+
+
+Mrs. Little discovered the marks of tears upon the paper, and was
+sorely puzzled.
+
+She sat silent a long time: then looking up, she saw Jael Dence
+gazing at her with moist eyes, and an angelic look of anxiety and
+affection.
+
+She caught her round the neck, and kissed her, almost passionately.
+
+"All the better," she cried, struggling with a sob.  "I shall have
+my own way for once.  You shall be my daughter instead."
+
+Jael returned her embrace with ardor, but in silence, and with
+averted head.
+
+
+When Jael Dence heard that Grace Carden was in Hillsborough, she
+felt very much drawn to go and see her: but she knew the meeting
+must be a sad one to them both; and that made her put it off till
+the very day before the wedding.  Then, thinking it would be too
+unkind if she held entirely aloof, and being, in truth, rather
+curious to know whether Grace had really been able to transfer her
+affections in so short a time, she asked Mr. Raby's leave, and drove
+one of the ponies in to Woodbine Villa.
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+
+The short interval previous to the wedding-day passed, to all
+appearance, as that period generally does.  Settlements were drawn,
+and only awaited signature.  The bride seemed occupied with dress,
+and receiving visits and presents, and reading and writing letters
+of that sort which ought to be done by machinery.
+
+The bridegroom hovered about the house, running in and out on this
+or that pretext.
+
+She received his presence graciously, read him the letters of her
+female friends, and forced herself to wear a look of languid
+complacency, especially before others.
+
+Under all this routine she had paroxysms of secret misery, and he
+was in tortures.
+
+These continued until the eve of the wedding, and then he breathed
+freely.  No letter had come from the United States, and to-morrow
+was the wedding-day.  The chances were six to one no letter came
+that day, and, even if one should, he had now an excuse ready for
+keeping Lally on the premises that particular morning.  At one
+o'clock he would be flying south with his bride.
+
+He left the villa to dress for dinner.  During this interval Jael
+Dence called.
+
+The housemaid knocked at Grace's door--she was dressing--and told
+her Jael wished to see her.
+
+Grace was surprised, and much disturbed.  It flashed on her in a
+moment that this true and constant lover of Henry Little had come to
+enjoy her superiority.  She herself had greatly desired this meeting
+once, but now it could only serve to mortify her.  The very thought
+that this young woman was near her set her trembling; but she forced
+herself to appear calm, and, turning to her maid, said, "Tell her I
+can see no one to-day."
+
+The lady's maid gave this message to the other servant, and she went
+down-stairs with it.
+
+The message, however, had not been gone long when the desire to put
+a question to Jael Dence returned strongly upon Grace Carden.
+
+She yielded to an uncontrollable impulse, and sent her maid down to
+say that she would speak to Jael Dence, in her bedroom, the last
+thing at night.
+
+"The last thing at night!" said Jael, coloring with indignation;
+"and where am I to find a bed after that?"
+
+"Oh," said the late footman, now butler, "you shall not leave the
+house.  I'll manage that for you with the housekeeper."
+
+At half-past eleven o'clock that night Grace dismissed her maid, and
+told her to bring Jael Dence to her.
+
+Jael came, and they confronted each other once more.
+
+"You can go," said Grace to the maid.
+
+They were alone, and eyed each other strangely.
+
+"Sit down," said Grace, coldly.
+
+"No, thank you," said Jael, firmly.  "I shall not stay long after
+the way I have been received."
+
+"And how do you expect to be received?"
+
+"As I used to be.  As a poor girl who once saved HIS life, and
+nearly lost her own, through being his true and faithful servant."
+
+"Faithful to him, but not to me."
+
+Jael's face showed she did not understand this.
+
+"Yes," said Grace, bitterly, "you are the real cause of my marrying
+Mr. Coventry, whom I don't love, and never can love.  There, read
+that.  I can't speak to you.  You look all candor and truth, but I
+know what you are: all the women in that factory knew about you and
+him--read that."  She handed her the anonymous letter, and watched
+her like an eagle.
+
+Jael read the poison, and colored a little, but was not confounded.
+
+"Do you believe this, Miss Carden?"
+
+"I did not believe it at first, but too many people have confirmed
+it.  Your own conduct has confirmed it, my poor girl.  This is cruel
+of me."
+
+"Never mind," said Jael, resolutely.  "We have gone too far to stop.
+My conduct!  What conduct, if you please?"
+
+"They all say that, when you found he was no more, you attempted
+self-destruction."
+
+"Ah," cried Jael, like a wounded hare; "they must tell you that!"
+and she buried her face in her hands.
+
+Now this was a young woman endowed by nature with great composure,
+and a certain sobriety and weight; so, when she gave way like that,
+it produced a great effect on those who knew her.
+
+Grace sighed, and was distressed.  But there was no help for it now.
+She awaited Jael's reply, and Jael could not speak for some time.
+She conquered her agitation, however, at last, and said, in a low
+voice, "Suppose you had a sister, whom you loved dearly--and then
+you had a quarrel with her, and neither of you much to blame, the
+fault lay with a third person; and suppose you came home suddenly
+and found that sister had left England in trouble, and gone to the
+other end of the world--would not that cut you to the heart?"
+
+"Indeed it would.  How correctly you speak.  Now who has been
+teaching you?"
+
+"Mrs. Little."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"You HAVE a father.  Suppose you left him for a month, and then came
+back and found him dead and buried--think of that--buried!"
+
+"Poor girl!"
+
+"And all this to fall on a poor creature just off a sick-bed, and
+scarcely right in her head.  When I found poor Mr. Henry was dead,
+and you at death's door, I crawled home for comfort, and there I
+found desolation: my sister gone across the sea, my father in the
+churchyard.  I wandered about all night, with my heavy heart and
+distraught brain, and at last they found me in the river.  They may
+say I threw myself in, but it is my belief I swooned away and fell
+in.  I wouldn't swear, though, for I remember nothing of it.  What
+does it prove against me?"
+
+"Not much, indeed, by itself.  But they all say you were shut up
+with him for hours."
+
+"And that is true; ten hours, every day.  He was at war with these
+trades, and his own workmen had betrayed him.  He knew I was as
+strong as a man at some kinds of work--of course I can't strike
+blows, and hurt people like a man--so he asked me, would I help him
+grind saws with his machine on the sly--clandestinely, I mean.
+Well, I did, and very easy work it was--child's play to me that had
+wrought on a farm.  He gave me six pounds a week for it.  That's all
+the harm we did together; and, as for what we said, let me tell you
+a first-rate workman, like poor Mr. Henry, works very silently; that
+is where they beat us women.  I am sure we often ground a dozen
+saws, and not a word, except upon the business.  When we did talk,
+it was sure to be about you.  Poor lad, the very last time we
+wrought together, I mind he said, 'Well done, Jael, that's good
+work; it brings me an inch nearer HER.'  And I said, All the better,
+and I'd give him another hour or two every day if he liked.  That
+very evening I took him his tea at seven o'clock.  He was writing
+letters; one was to you.  He was just addressing it.  'Good-night,
+Jael,' said he.  'You have been a good friend to her and me.'"
+
+"Oh! did he say that?  What became of that letter?"
+
+"Upon my soul, he did; ay, and it was his last word to me in this
+world.  But you are not of his mind, it seems.  The people in the
+factory!  I know they used to say we were sweethearts.  You can't
+wonder at that; they didn't know about you, nor any of our secrets;
+and, of course, vulgar folk like them could not guess the sort of
+affection I had for poor Mr. Henry; but a lady like you should not
+go by their lights.  Besides, I was always open with you.  Once I
+had a different feeling for him: did I hide it from you?  When I
+found he loved you, I set to work to cure myself.  I did cure myself
+before your very eyes; and, after that, you ought to be ashamed of
+yourself to go and doubt me.  There, now, I have made her cry."
+
+Her own voice faltered a moment, and she said, with gentle dignity,
+"Well, I forgive you, for old kindness past; but I shall not sleep
+under this roof now.  God bless you, and give you many happy days
+yet with this gentleman you are going to marry.  Farewell."
+
+She was actually going; but Grace caught her by the arm.  "No, no,
+you shall not leave me so."
+
+"Ay, but I will."  And Jael's eyes, so mild in general, began to
+sparkle with anger, at being detained against her will; but,
+generous to the last, she made no use of her great strength to get
+clear from Grace.
+
+"You will not go, if you are the woman you were.  I believe your
+words, I believe your honest face, I implore your forgiveness.  I am
+the most miserable creature in this world.  Pray do not abandon me."
+
+This appeal, made with piteous gestures and streaming eyes,
+overpowered Jael Dence, and soon they were seated, rocking together,
+and Grace pouring out her heart.
+
+Jael then learned, to her dismay, that Grace's belief in Henry's
+falsehood was a main cause of this sudden marriage.  Had she
+believed her Henry true, she would have mourned him, as a widow, two
+years at least.
+
+The unhappy young lady lamented her precipitation, and the idea of
+marrying Mr. Coventry to-morrow became odious to her.  She asked
+Jael wildly whether she should not be justified in putting an end to
+her life.
+
+Jael consoled her all she could; and, at her request, slept in the
+same bed with her.  Indeed she was afraid to leave her; for she was
+wild at times, and said she would prefer to be married to that dead
+hand people said was at the Town hall, and then thrown into one
+grave with it.  "That's the bridal I long for," said she.
+
+In the morning she was calmer, and told Jael she thought she was
+doing right.
+
+"I shall be neither more nor less wretched for marrying this poor
+man," said she: "and I shall make two people happy; two people that
+deserve the sacrifice I make."
+
+So, after all, the victim went calmly.
+
+Early in the morning came a letter from Dr. Fynes.  He was confined
+by gout, and sorry to say the ceremony he had hoped to perform must
+be done by his curate.
+
+Now this curate was quite a stranger to Grace, and indeed to most
+people in Hillsborough.  Dr. Fynes himself knew nothing about him
+except that he had come in answer to his inquiry for a curate, had
+brought good letters of recommendation, and had shown himself
+acquainted with the learned doctor's notes to Apollonius Rhodius; on
+which several grounds the doctor, who was himself a better scholar
+than a priest, had made him his curate, and had heard no complaints,
+except from a few puritanical souls.  These he looked on as
+barbarians, and had calmly ignored them and their prejudices ever
+since he transferred his library from St. John's College, Cambridge,
+to St. Peter's Rectory, and that was thirty years ago.
+
+This sudden substitute of an utter stranger for Dr. Fynes afflicted
+Grace Carden not a little, and her wedding-day began with a tear or
+two on that account.  But, strange as it may appear, she lived to
+alter her mind, and to thank and bless Mr. Beresford for taking her
+old friend's place on that great occasion.
+
+But while the bride dressed for church, and her bridemaids and
+friends drove up, events were taking place to deal with which I must
+retrograde a step.
+
+Jael Dence having gone to Woodbine Villa, Mrs. Little and her
+brother dined tete-a-tete; and the first question she asked was,
+"Why where is Jael?"
+
+"Don't you know? gone to Woodbine Villa.  The wedding is to-morrow."
+
+"What, my Jael gone to that girl's wedding!"  And her eyes flashed
+with fire.
+
+"Why not?  I am going to it myself."
+
+"I am sorry to hear you say so--very sorry."
+
+"Why, she is my godchild.  Would you have me affront her?"
+
+"If she is your godchild, Henry is your nephew."
+
+"Of course, and I did all I could to marry him to Grace; but, you
+see, he would he wiser than me."
+
+"Dear Guy, my poor Henry was to blame for not accepting your
+generous offer; but that does not excuse this heartless, fickle
+girl."
+
+Raby's sense of justice began to revolt.  "My dear Edith, I can't
+bear to hear you speak so contemptuously of this poor girl, who has
+so nearly died for love of your son.  She is one of the noblest,
+purest, most unselfish creatures I ever knew.  Why judge so hastily?
+But that is the way with you ladies; it must be the woman who is in
+the wrong.  Men are gods, and women devils; that is your creed."
+
+"Is HENRY going to marry another?"
+
+"Not that I know of."
+
+"Then what excuse can there be for her conduct?  Does wrong become
+right, when this young lady does it?  It is you who are prejudiced,
+not I.  Her conduct is without excuse.  I have written to her: she
+has replied, and has offered me no excuse.  'Forgive me,' she says,
+'and forget me.'  I shall never forgive her; and you must permit me
+to despise her for a few years before I forget her."
+
+"Well, don't excite yourself so.  My poor Edith, some day or other
+you will be sorry you ever said a word against that amiable and most
+unfortunate girl."
+
+He said this so sadly and solemnly that Mrs. Little's anger fell
+directly, and they both sat silent a long time.
+
+"Guy," said Mrs. Little, "tell me the truth.  Has my son done
+anything wrong--anything rash?  It was strange he should leave
+England without telling me.  He told Dr. Amboyne.  Oh, there is some
+mystery here.  If I did not know you so well, I should say there is
+some deceit going on in this house.  There IS--  You hang your head.
+I cannot bear to give you pain, so I will ask you no more questions.
+But--"
+
+There was a world of determination in that "but."
+
+
+She retired early to bed; to bed, but not to rest.
+
+In the silence of the night she recalled every thing, every look,
+every word that had seemed a little strange to her, and put them all
+together.  She could not sleep; vague misgivings crawled over her
+agitated mind.  At length she slumbered from sheer exhaustion.  She
+rose early; yet, when she came down-stairs, Raby was just starting
+for Woodbine Villa.
+
+Mrs. Little asked him to take her into Hillsborough.  He looked
+uneasy, but complied, and, at her desire, set her down in the
+market-place of Hillsborough.  As soon as he was out of sight she
+took a fly, and directed the driver to take her to Mr. Little's
+works.  "I mean," said she, "the works where Mr. Bayne is."
+
+She found Mr. Bayne in his counting-house, dressed in deep mourning.
+
+He started at sight of her, and then she saw his eye fall with
+surprise on her gray dress.
+
+"Mr. Bayne," said she, "I am come to ask you a question or two."
+
+"Be seated, madam," said Bayne, reverently.  "I expected a visit
+from you or from your agent, and the accounts are all ready for your
+inspection.  I keep them as clear as possible."
+
+"I do not come here about accounts.  My son has perfect confidence
+in you, and so have I."
+
+"Thank you, madam; thank you kindly.  He did indeed honor me with
+his confidence, and with his friendship.  I am sure he was more like
+a brother to me than an employer.  Ah, madam! I shall never, never,
+see his fellow again."  And honest Bayne turned away with his hand
+to his eyes.
+
+This seemed to Mrs. Little to be more than the occasion required,
+and did not tend to lessen her misgivings.  However, she said
+gravely, "Mr. Bayne, I suppose you have heard there is to be a
+wedding in the town to-day--Miss Carden?"
+
+"That is sudden!  No, madam, I didn't know it.  I can hardly believe
+it."
+
+"It is so.  She marries a Mr. Coventry.  Now I think you were in my
+son's confidence; can you tell me whether there was any quarrel
+between him and Miss Carden before he left us?"
+
+"Well, madam, I didn't see so much of him lately, he was always at
+the other works.  Would to heaven he had never seen them!  But I
+don't believe he ever gave that lady an unkind word.  He was not
+that sort.  He was ready of his hand against a man, but a very lamb
+with women he was.  And so she is going to marry?  Well, well; the
+world, it must go round.  She loved him dearly, too.  She was down
+at Bolt and Little's works day after day searching for him.  She
+spent money like water, poor thing!  I have seen her with her white
+face and great eyes watching the men drag the river for him; and,
+when that horrible thing was found at last, they say she was on the
+bridge and swooned dead away, and lay at death's door.  But you will
+know all this, madam; and it is sad for me to speak of, let alone
+you that are his mother."
+
+The color died out of Mrs. Little's cheek as he spoke; but, catching
+now a glimpse of the truth, she drew Bayne on with terrible cunning,
+and so learned that there had been a tremendous explosion, and Jael
+Dence taken up for dead; and that, some time after, an arm and a
+hand had been found in the river and recognized for the remains of
+Henry Little.
+
+When she had got this out of the unwary Bayne she uttered a piercing
+scream, and her head hung over the chair, and her limbs writhed, and
+the whole creature seemed to wither up.
+
+Then Bayne saw with dismay what he had done, and began to falter out
+expressions of regret.  She paid no attention.
+
+He begged her to let him fetch her some salts or a cordial.
+
+She shook her head and lay weak as water and white as a sheet.
+
+At last she rose, and, supporting herself for a moment by the back
+of the chair, she said, "you will take me to see my son's remains."
+
+"Oh, for heaven's sake, don't think of it!"
+
+"I must; I cannot keep away from them an instant.  And how else can
+I know they are his?  Do you think I will believe any eye but my
+own?  Come."
+
+He had no power to disobey her.  He trembled in every limb at what
+was coming, but he handed her into her carriage, and went with her
+to the Town Hall.
+
+When they brought her the tweed sleeves, she trembled like an aspen
+leaf.  When they brought her the glass receptacle, she seized Bayne
+by the shoulder and turned her head away.  By degrees she looked
+round, and seemed to stiffen all of a sudden.  "It is not my son,"
+said she.
+
+
+She rushed out of the place, bade Mr. Bayne good-morning, and drove
+directly to Dr. Amboyne.  She attacked him at once.  "You have been
+deceiving me all this time about my son; and what am I the better?
+What is anybody the better?  Now tell me the truth.  You think him
+dead?"
+
+(Dr. Amboyne hung his head in alarm and confusion.)
+
+"Why do you think so?  Do you go by those remains?  I have seen
+them.  My child was vaccinated on the left arm, and carried the
+mark.  He had specks on two of his finger-nails; he had a small wart
+on his little finger; and his fingers were not blunt and uncouth,
+like that; they were as taper as any lady's in England; that hand is
+nothing like my son's; you are all blind; yet you must go and blind
+the only one who had eyes, the only one who really loved him, and
+whose opinion is worth a straw."
+
+Dr. Amboyne was too delighted at the news to feel these reproaches
+very deeply.  "Thank God!" said he.  "Scold me, for I deserve it.
+But I did for the best; but, unfortunately, we have still to account
+for his writing to no one all this time.  No matter.  I begin to
+hope.  THAT was the worst evidence.  Edith, I must go to Woodbine
+Villa.  That poor girl must not marry in ignorance of this.  Believe
+me, she will never marry Coventry, if HE is alive.  Excuse my
+leaving you at such a time, but there is not a moment to be lost."
+
+He placed her on a sofa, and opened the window; for, by a natural
+reaction, she was beginning to feel rather faint.  He gave his
+housekeeper strict orders to take care of her, then snatching his
+hat, went hastily out.
+
+At the door he met the footman with several letters (he had a large
+correspondence), shoved them pell-mell into his breast-pocket,
+shouted to a cabman stationed near, and drove off to Woodbine Villa.
+
+It was rather up-hill, but he put his head out of the window and
+offered the driver a sovereign to go fast.  The man lashed his horse
+up the hill, and did go very fast, though it seemed slow to Dr.
+Amboyne, because his wishes flew so much faster.
+
+At last he got to the villa, and rang furiously.
+
+After a delay that set the doctor stamping, Lally appeared.
+
+"I must see Miss Carden directly."
+
+"Step in, sir; she won't be long now."
+
+Dr. Amboyne walked into the dining-room, and saw it adorned with a
+wealth of flowers, and the wedding-breakfast set out with the usual
+splendor; but there was nobody there; and immediately an uneasy
+suspicion crossed his mind.
+
+He came out into the passage, and found Lally there.
+
+"Are they gone to the church?"
+
+"They are," said Lally, with consummate coolness.
+
+"You Irish idiot!" roared the doctor, "why couldn't you tell me that
+before?"  And, notwithstanding his ungainly figure, he ran down the
+road, shouting, like a Stentor, to his receding cabman.
+
+"Bekase I saw that every minute was goold," said Lally, as soon as
+he was out of hearing.
+
+The cabman, like most of his race, was rather deaf and a little
+blind, and Dr. Amboyne was much heated and out of breath before he
+captured him.  He gasped out, "To St. Peter's Church, for your
+life!"
+
+It was rather down-hill this time, and about a mile off.
+
+In little more than five minutes the cab rattled up to the church
+door.
+
+Dr. Amboyne got out, told the man to wait, and entered the church
+with a rapid step.
+
+Before he had gone far up the center aisle, he stopped.
+
+Mr. Coventry and Grace Carden were coming down the aisle together in
+wedding costume, the lady in her bridal veil.
+
+They were followed by the bridemaids.
+
+Dr. Amboyne stared, and stepped aside into an open pew to let them
+pass.
+
+They swept by; he looked after them, and remained glued to his seat
+till the church was clear of the procession.
+
+He went into the vestry, and found the curate there.
+
+"Are that couple really married, sir?" said he.
+
+The curate looked amazed.  "As fast as I can make them," said he,
+rather flippantly.
+
+"Excuse me," said the doctor, faintly.  "It was a foolish question
+to ask."
+
+"I think I have the honor of speaking to Dr. Amboyne?"
+
+Dr. Amboyne bowed mechanically.
+
+"You will be at the wedding-breakfast, of course?"
+
+"Humph!"
+
+"Why, surely, you are invited?"
+
+"Yes" (with an equally absent air).
+
+Finding him thus confused, the sprightly curate laughed and bade him
+good-morning, jumped into a hansom, and away to Woodbine Villa.
+
+Dr. Amboyne followed him slowly.
+
+"Drive me to Woodbine Villa.  There's no hurry now."
+
+On the way, he turned the matter calmly over, and put this question
+to himself: Suppose he had reached the villa in time to tell Grace
+Carden the news!  Certainly he would have disturbed the wedding; but
+would it have been put off any the more?  The bride's friends and
+advisers would have replied, "But that is no positive proof that he
+is alive; and, if he is alive, he has clearly abandoned her.  Not a
+line for all these months."
+
+This view of the matter appeared to him unanswerable, and reconciled
+him, in a great degree, to what seemed inevitable.
+
+He uttered one deep sigh of regret, and proceeded now to read his
+letters; for he was not likely to have another opportunity for an
+hour or two at least, since he must be at the wedding breakfast.
+His absence would afflict the bride.
+
+The third letter he took out of his breast-pocket bore an American
+postmark.  At the first word of it he uttered an ejaculation, and
+his eye darted to the signature.
+
+Then he gave a roar of delight.  It was signed "Henry Little," and
+the date only twelve days old.
+
+His first thought was the poor lady who, at this moment, lay on a
+sofa in his house, a prey to doubts and fears he could now cure in a
+moment.
+
+But no sooner had he cast his eyes over the contents, than his very
+flesh began to creep with dire misgivings and suspicions.
+
+To these succeeded the gravest doubts as to the course he ought to
+pursue at Woodbine Villa.
+
+He felt pretty sure that Grace Carden had been entrapped into
+marrying a villain, and his first impulse was to denounce the
+bridegroom before the assembled guests.
+
+But his cooler judgment warned him against acting in hot blood, and
+suggested it would be better to try and tell her privately.
+
+And then he asked himself what would be the consequence of telling
+her.
+
+She was a lady of great spirit, fire, and nobility.  She would never
+live with this husband of hers.
+
+And then came the question, What would be her life?
+
+She might be maid, wife, and widow all her days.
+
+Horrible as it was, he began almost to fear her one miserable chance
+of happiness might lie in ignorance.
+
+But then how long could she be in ignorance?
+
+Little was coming home; he would certainly speak out.
+
+Dr. Amboyne was more tormented with doubts than a man of inferior
+intellect would have been.  His was an academic mind, accustomed to
+look at every side of a question; and, when he reached Woodbine
+Villa, he was almost distracted with doubt and perplexity.  However,
+there was one person from whom the news must not be kept a moment.
+He took an envelope out of his pocket-book, and sent the cabman to
+Mrs. Little with this line:
+
+
+"Thank God, I have a letter from Henry Little by this day's post.
+He is well.  Wait an hour or two for me.  I can not leave Woodbine
+Villa at present."
+
+
+He sent this off by his cabman, and went into the breakfast-room in
+a state of mind easier to imagine than to describe.
+
+The party were all seated, and his the only vacant place.
+
+It was like a hundred other weddings at which he had been; and,
+seeing the bride and bridegroom seated together as usual, and the
+pretty bridemaids tittering, as usual, and the gentle dullness
+lighted up with here and there a feeble jest, as usual, he could
+hardly realize that horrible things lay beneath the surface of all
+this snowy bride-cake, and flowers, and white veils, and weak
+jocoseness.
+
+He stared, bowed, and sunk into his place like a man in a dream.
+
+Bridemaids became magnetically conscious that an incongruous element
+had entered; so they tittered.  At what does sweet silly seventeen
+not titter?
+
+Knives and forks clattered, champagne popped, and Dr. Amboyne was
+more perplexed and miserable than he had ever been.  He had never
+encountered a more hopeless situation.
+
+Presently Lally came and touched the bridegroom.  He apologized, and
+left the room a moment.
+
+Lally then told him to be on his guard, for the fat doctor knew
+something.  He had come tearing up in a fly, and had been dreadfully
+put out when he found Miss Carden was gone to the church.
+
+"Well, but he might merely wish to accompany her to the church: he
+is an old friend."
+
+Lally shook his head and said there was much more in it than that;
+he could tell by the man's eye, and his uneasy way.  "Master, dear,
+get out of this, for heaven's sake, as fast as ye can."
+
+"You are right; go and order the carriage round, as soon as the
+horses can be put to."
+
+Coventry then went hastily back to the bridal guests, and Lally ran
+to the neighboring inn which furnished the four post-horses.
+
+Coventry had hardly settled down in his chair before he cast a keen
+but furtive glance at Dr. Amboyne's face.
+
+Then he saw directly that the doctor's mind was working, and that he
+was secretly and profoundly agitated.
+
+But, after all, he thought, what could the man know?  And if he had
+known any thing, would he have kept it to himself?
+
+Still he judged it prudent to propitiate Dr. Amboyne; so, when the
+time came for the usual folly of drinking healths, he leaned over to
+him, and, in the sweetest possible voice, asked him if he would do
+them both the honor to propose the bride's health.
+
+At this unexpected call from Mr. Coventry, Dr. Amboyne stared in the
+bridegroom's face.  He stared at him so that other people began to
+stare.  Recovering himself a little, he rose mechanically, and
+surprised every body who knew him.
+
+Instead of the easy gayety natural to himself and proper to the
+occasion, he delivered a few faltering words of affection for the
+bride; then suddenly stopped, and, after a pause, said, "But some
+younger man must foretell her the bright career she deserves.  I am
+unfit.  We don't know what an hour may bring forth."  With this he
+sunk into his chair.
+
+An uneasy grin, and then a gloom, fell on the bright company at
+these strange words, and all looked at one another uncomfortably.
+
+But this situation was unexpectedly relieved.  The young curate
+rose, and said, "I accept the honor Dr. Amboyne is generous enough
+to transfer to the younger gentlemen of the party--accept it with
+pride."
+
+Starting from this exordium, he pronounced, with easy volubility, a
+charming panegyric on the bride, congratulated her friends, and then
+congratulated himself on being the instrument to unite her in holy
+wedlock with a gentleman worthy of her affection.  Then, assuming
+for one moment the pastor, he pronounced a blessing on the pair, and
+sat down, casting glances all round out of a pair of singularly
+restless eyes.
+
+The loud applause that followed left him in no doubt as to the
+favorable effect he had produced.  Coventry, in particular, looked
+most expressively grateful.
+
+The bridegroom's health followed, and Coventry returned thanks in a
+speech so neat and well delivered that Grace felt proud of his
+performance.
+
+Then the carriage and four came round, and Coventry gave Grace an
+imploring glance on which she acted at once, being herself anxious
+to escape from so much publicity.  She made her courtesies, and
+retired to put on her traveling-dress.
+
+Then Dr. Amboyne cursed his own indecision, but still could not make
+up his mind, except to tell Raby, and make him the judge what course
+was best.
+
+The gayety, never very boisterous, began to flag altogether; when
+suddenly a noise was heard outside, and one or two young people, who
+darted unceremoniously to the window, were rewarded by the sight of
+a man and a woman struggling and quarreling at the gate.  The
+disturbance in question arose thus: Jael Dence, looking out of
+Grace's window, saw the postman coming, and ran to get Grace her
+letters (if any) before she went.
+
+The postman, knowing her well, gave her the one letter there was.
+
+Lally, returning from the inn, where he had stopped one unlucky
+minute to drain a glass, saw this, and ran after Jael and caught her
+just inside the gate.
+
+"That is for me," said he, rudely.
+
+"Nay, it's for thy betters, young man; 'tis for Miss Grace Carden."
+
+"She is Mrs. Coventry now, so give it me."
+
+"I'll take her orders first."
+
+On this Lally grabbed at it and caught Jael's right hand, which
+closed directly on the letter like a vise.
+
+"Are these your manners?" said she.  "Give over now."
+
+"I tell you I will have it!" said he, fiercely, for he had caught
+sight of the handwriting.
+
+He seized her hand and applied his knuckles to the back of it with
+all his force.  That hurt her, and she gave a cry, and twisted away
+from him and drew back; then, putting her left hand to his breast,
+she gave a great yaw, and then a forward rush with her mighty loins,
+and a contemporaneous shove with her amazing left arm, that would
+have pushed down some brick walls, and the weight and strength so
+suddenly applied sent Lally flying like a feather.  His head struck
+the stone gate-post, and he measured his length under it.
+
+Jael did not know how completely she had conquered him, and she ran
+in with a face as red as fire, and took the letter up to Grace, and
+was telling her, all in a heat, about the insolence of her new
+husband's Irish servant, when suddenly she half recognized the
+handwriting, and stood staring at it, and began to tremble.
+
+"Why, what is the matter?" said Grace.
+
+"Oh, nothing, miss.  I'm foolish.  The writing seems to me like a
+writing we shall never see again."  And she stood and trembled still
+more, for the handwriting struck her more and more.
+
+Grace ran to her, and at the very first glance uttered a shriek of
+recognition.  She caught it from Jael, tore it open, saw the
+signature, and sunk into a chair, half fainting, with the letter
+pressed convulsively to her breast
+
+Jael, trembling, but comparatively self-possessed, ran to the door
+directly and locked it.
+
+"My darling! my darling! he is alive!  The dear words, they swim
+before my eyes.  Read! read! tell me what he says.  Why has he
+abandoned me?  He has not abandoned me!  O God! what have I done?
+what have I done?"
+
+Before that letter was half read, or rather sobbed, out to her,
+Grace tore off all her bridal ornaments and trampled them under her
+feet, and moaned, and twisted, and writhed as if her body was being
+tortured as well as her heart; for Henry was true as ever, and she
+had married a villain.
+
+She took the letter from Jael, and devoured every word; though she
+was groaning and sobbing with the wildest agony all the time.
+
+
+"NEW YORK, July 18th.
+
+"MY OWN DEAREST GRACE,--I write you these few lines in wonder and
+pain.  I have sent you at least fifteen letters, and in most of them
+I have begged you to write to me at the Post-office, New York; yet
+not one line is here to greet me in your dear handwriting.  Yet my
+letters must have all reached Woodbine Villa, or why are they not
+sent back?  Of three letters I sent to my mother, two have been
+returned from Aberystwith, marked, 'Gone away, and not left her
+address.'
+
+"I have turned this horrible thing every way in my mind, and even
+prayed God to assist my understanding; and I come back always to the
+same idea that some scoundrel has intercepted my letters.
+
+"The first of these I wrote at the works on the evening I left
+Hillsborough; the next I wrote from Boston, after my long illness,
+in great distress of mind on your account; for I put myself in your
+place, and thought what agony it would be to me if nine weeks
+passed, and no word from you.  The rest were written from various
+cities, telling you I was making our fortune, and should soon be
+home.  Oh, I can not write of such trifles now!
+
+"My own darling, let me find you alive; that is all I ask.  I know I
+shall find you true to me, if you are alive.
+
+"Perhaps it would have been better if my heart had not been so
+entirely filled by you.  God has tried me hard in some things, but
+He has blessed me with true friends.  It was ungrateful of me not to
+write to such true friends as Dr. Amboyne and Jael Dence.  But,
+whenever I thought of England, I saw only you.
+
+"By this post I write to Dr. Amboyne, Mr. Bolt, Mr. Bayne, and Jael
+Dence.
+
+"This will surely baffle the enemy who has stopped all my letters to
+you, and will stop this one, I dare say.
+
+"I say no more, beloved one.  What is the use?  You will perhaps
+never see this letter, and you know more than I can say, for you
+know how I love you: and that is a great deal more than ever I can
+put on paper.
+
+"I sail for England in four days.  God help me to get over the
+interval.
+
+"I forget whether I told you I had made my fortune.  Your devoted
+and most unhappy lover,
+
+"Henry."
+
+
+Grace managed to read this, in spite of the sobs and moans that
+shook her, and the film that half blinded her; and, when she had
+read it, sank heavily down, and sat all crushed together, with hands
+working like frenzy.
+
+Jael kneeled beside her, and kissed and wept over her, unheeded.
+
+Then Jael prayed aloud beside her, unheeded.
+
+At last she spoke, looking straight before her, as if she was
+speaking to the wall.
+
+"Bring my godfather here."
+
+"Won't you see your father first?" said Jael, timidly.
+
+"I have no father.  I want something I can lean on over the gulf--a
+man of honor.  Fetch Mr. Raby to me."
+
+Jael kissed her tenderly, and wept over her once more a minute, then
+went softly down-stairs and straight into the breakfast-room.
+
+Here, in the meantime, considerable amusement had been created by
+the contest between Lally and Jael Dence, the more so on account of
+the triumph achieved by the weaker vessel.
+
+When Lally got up, and looked about him ruefully, great was the
+delight of the younger gentlemen.
+
+When he walked in-doors, they chaffed him through an open window,
+and none of them noticed that the man was paler than even the rough
+usage he had received could account for.
+
+This jocund spirit, however, was doomed to be short-lived.
+
+Lally came into the room, looking pale and troubled, and whispered a
+word in his master's ear; then retired, but left his master as pale
+as himself.
+
+Coventry, seated at a distance from the window, had not seen the
+scrimmage outside, and Lally's whispered information fell on him
+like a thunderbolt.
+
+Mr. Beresford saw at once that something was wrong, and hinted as
+much to his neighbor.  It went like magic round the table, and there
+was an uneasy silence.
+
+In the midst of this silence, mysterious sounds began to be heard in
+the bride's chamber: a faint scream; feet rushing across the floor;
+a sound as of some one sinking heavily on to a chair or couch.
+
+Presently came a swift stamping that told a tale of female passion;
+and after that confused sounds that could not be interpreted through
+the ceiling, yet somehow the listeners felt they were unusual.  One
+or two attempted conversation, out of politeness; but it died away--
+curiosity and uneasiness prevailed.
+
+Lally put his head in at the door, and asked if the carriage was to
+be packed.
+
+"Of course," said Coventry; and soon the servants, male and female,
+were seen taking boxes out from the hall to the carriage.
+
+Jael Dence walked into the room, and went to Mr. Raby.
+
+"The bride desires to see you immediately, sir."
+
+Raby rose, and followed Jael out.
+
+The next minute a lady's maid came, with a similar message to Dr.
+Amboyne.
+
+He rose with great alacrity, and followed her.
+
+There was nothing remarkable in the bride's taking private leave of
+these two valued friends.  But somehow the mysterious things that
+had preceded made the guests look with half-suspicious eyes into
+every thing; and Coventry's manifest discomfiture, when Dr. Amboyne
+was sent for, justified this vague sense that there was something
+strange going on beneath the surface.
+
+Neither Raby nor Amboyne came down again, and Mr. Beresford remarked
+aloud that the bride's room was like the lion's den in the fable,
+"'Vestigia nulla retrorsum.'"
+
+At last the situation became intolerable to Coventry.  He rose, in
+desperation, and said, with a ghastly attempt at a smile, that he
+must, nevertheless, face the dangers of the place himself, as the
+carriage was now packed, and Mrs. Coventry and he, though loath to
+leave their kind friends, had a longish journey before them.  "Do
+not move, I pray; I shall be back directly."
+
+As soon as he had got out of the room, he held a whispered
+consultation with Lally, and then, collecting all his courage, and
+summoning all his presence of mind, he went slowly up the stairs,
+determined to disown Lally's acts (Lally himself had suggested
+this), and pacify Grace's friends, if he could; but, failing that,
+to turn round, and stand haughtily on his legal rights, ay, and
+enforce them too.
+
+But, meantime, what had passed in the bride's chamber?
+
+Raby found Grace Carden, with her head buried on her toilet-table,
+and her hair all streaming down her back.
+
+The floor was strewn with pearls and broken ornaments, and fragments
+of the bridal veil.  On the table lay Henry Little's letter.
+
+Jael took it without a word, and gave it to Raby.
+
+He took it, and, after a loud ejaculation of surprise, began to read
+it.
+
+He had not quite finished it when Dr. Amboyne tapped at the door,
+and Jael let him in.
+
+The crushed figure with disheveled hair, and Raby's eye gleaming
+over the letter in his hand, told him at once what was going on.
+
+He ceased to doubt, or vacillate, directly; he whispered Jael Dence
+to stand near Grace, and watch her closely.
+
+He had seen a woman start up and throw herself, in one moment, out
+of a window, for less than this--a woman crushed apparently, and
+more dead than alive, as Grace Carden was.
+
+Then he took out his own letter, and read it in a low voice to Mr.
+Raby; but it afterward appeared the bride heard every word.
+
+
+"MY BEST FRIEND,--Forgive me for neglecting you so long, and writing
+only to her I love with all my soul.  Forgive me, for I smart for
+it.  I have written fifteen letters to my darling Grace, and
+received no reply.  I wrote her one yesterday, but have now no hope
+she will ever get it.  This is terrible, but there is worse behind.
+This very day I have learned that my premises were blown up within a
+few hours of my leaving, and poor, faithful Jael Dence nearly
+killed; and then a report of my own death was raised, and some
+remains found in the ruins that fools said were mine.  I suppose the
+letters I left in the box were all destroyed by the fire.
+
+"Now, mark my words, one and the same villain has put that dead
+man's hand and arm in the river, and has stopped my letters to
+Grace; I am sure of it.  So what I want you to do is, first of all,
+to see my darling, and tell her I am alive and well, and then put
+her on her guard against deceivers.
+
+"I suspect the postman has been tampered with.  I write to Mr.
+Ransome to look into that.  But what you might learn for me is,
+whether any body lately has had any opportunity to stop letters
+addressed to 'Woodbine Villa.'  That seems to point to Mr. Carden,
+and he was never a friend of mine.  But, somehow, I don't think he
+would do it.
+
+"You see, I ask myself two questions.  Is there any man in the world
+who has a motive strong enough to set him tampering with my letters?
+and, again, is there any man base enough to do such an act?  And the
+answer to both questions is the same.  I have a rival, and he is
+base enough for any thing.  Judge for yourself.  I as good as saved
+that Coventry's life one snowy night, and all I asked in return was
+that he wouldn't blow me to the Trades, and so put my life in
+jeopardy.  He gave his word of honor he wouldn't.  But he broke his
+word.  One day, when Grotait and I were fast friends, and never
+thought to differ again, Grotait told me this Coventry was the very
+man that came to him and told him where I was working.  Such a lump
+of human dirt as that--for you can't call him a man--must be capable
+of any thing."
+
+
+Here the reading of the letter was interrupted by an incident.
+
+
+There was on the toilet-table a stiletto, with a pearl handle.  It
+was a small thing, but the steel rather long, and very bright and
+pointed.
+
+The unfortunate bride, without lifting her head from the table, had
+reached out her hand, and was fingering this stiletto.  Jael Dence
+went and took it gently away, and put it out of reach.  The bride
+went on fingering, as if she had still got hold of it.
+
+Amboyne exchanged an approving glance with Jael, and Raby concluded
+the letter.
+
+
+"I shall be home in a few days after this; and, if I find my darling
+well and happy, there's no great harm done.  I don't mind my own
+trouble and anxiety, great as they are, but if any scoundrel has
+made her unhappy, or made her believe I am dead, or false to my
+darling, by God, I'll kill him, though I hang for it next day!"
+
+
+Crushed, benumbed, and broken as Grace Coventry was, this sentence
+seemed to act on her like an electric shock.
+
+She started wildly up.  "What! my Henry die like a felon--for a
+villain like him, and an idiot like me!  You won't allow that; nor
+you--nor I."
+
+A soft step came to the door, and a gentle tap.
+
+"Who is that?" said Dr. Amboyne.
+
+"The bridegroom," replied a soft voice.
+
+"You can't come in here," said Raby, roughly.
+
+"Open the door," said the bride.
+
+Jael went to the door, but looked uncertain.
+
+"Don't keep the bridegroom out," said Grace, reproachfully.  Then,
+in a voice as sweet as his own, "I want to see him; I want to speak
+to him."
+
+Jael opened the door slowly, for she felt uneasy.  Raby shrugged his
+shoulders contemptuously at Grace's condescending to speak to the
+man, and in so amiable a tone.
+
+Coventry entered, and began, "My dear Grace, the carriage is ready--"
+
+No sooner had she got him fairly into the room, than the bride
+snatched up the stiletto, and flew at the bridegroom with gleaming
+eyes, uplifted weapon, the yell of a furious wild beast, and hair
+flying out behind her head like a lion's mane.
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+
+Dr. Amboyne and Raby cried out, and tried to interfere; but Grace's
+movement was too swift, furious, and sudden; she was upon the man,
+with her stiletto high in the air, before they could get to her, and
+indeed the blow descended, and, inspired as it was by love, and
+hate, and fury, would doubtless have buried the weapon in a rascal's
+body; but Jael Dence caught Grace's arm: that weakened, and also
+diverted the blow; yet the slight, keen weapon pierced Coventry's
+cheek, and even inflicted a slight wound upon the tongue.  That very
+moment Jael Dence dragged her away, and held her round the waist,
+writhing and striking the air; her white hand and bridal sleeve
+sprinkled with her bridegroom's blood.
+
+As for him, his love, criminal as it was, supplied the place of
+heroism: he never put up a finger in defense.  "No," said he,
+despairingly, "let me die by her hand; it is all I hope for now."
+He even drew near her to enable her to carry out her wish: but, on
+that, Jael Dence wrenched her round directly, and Dr. Amboyne
+disarmed her, and Raby marched between the bride and the bridegroom,
+and kept them apart: then they all drew their breath, for the first
+time, and looked aghast at each other.
+
+Not a face in that room had an atom of color left in it; yet it was
+not until the worst was over that they realized the savage scene.
+
+The bridegroom leaned against the wardrobe, a picture of despair,
+with blood trickling from his cheek, and channeling his white waist-
+coat and linen; the bride, her white and bridal sleeve spotted with
+blood, writhed feebly in Jael Dence's arms, and her teeth clicked
+together, and her eyes shone wildly.  At that moment she was on the
+brink of frenzy.
+
+Raby, a man by nature, and equal to great situations, was the first
+to recover self-possession and see his way.  "Silence!" said he,
+sternly.  "Amboyne, here's a wounded man; attend to him."
+
+He had no need to say that twice; the doctor examined his patient
+zealously, and found him bleeding from the tongue as well as the
+cheek; he made him fill his mouth with a constant supply of cold
+water, and applied cold water to the nape of his neck.
+
+And now there was a knock at the door, and a voice inquired rather
+impatiently, what they were about all this time.  It was Mr. Carden's
+voice.
+
+They let him in, but instantly closed the door.  "Now, hush!" said
+Raby, "and let me tell him."  He then, in a very few hurried words,
+told him the matter.  Coventry hung his head lower and lower.
+
+Mr. Carden was terribly shaken.  He could hardly speak for some
+time.  When he did, it was in the way of feeble expostulation.  "Oh,
+my child! my child! what, would you commit murder?"
+
+"Don't you see I would," cried she, contemptuously, "sooner than HE
+should do it, and suffer for it like a felon?  You are all blind,
+and no friends of mine.  I should have rid the earth of a monster,
+and they would never have hanged ME.  I hate you all, you worst of
+all, that call yourself my father, and drove me to marry this
+villain.  One thing--you won't be always at hand to protect him."
+
+"I'll give you every opportunity," said Coventry, doggedly.  "You
+shall kill me for loving you so madly."
+
+"She shall do no such thing," said Mr. Carden.  "Opportunity? do you
+know her so little as to think she will ever live with you.  Get out
+of my house, and never presume to set foot in at again.  My good
+friends, have pity on a miserable father and help me to hide this
+monstrous thing from the world."
+
+This appeal was not lost: the gentlemen put their heads together and
+led Coventry into another room.  There Dr. Amboyne attended to him,
+while Mr. Carden went down and told his guests the bridegroom had
+been taken ill, so seriously indeed that anxiety and alarm had taken
+the place of joy.
+
+The guests took the hint and dispersed, wondering and curious.
+
+Meantime, on one side of a plaster wall Amboyne was attending the
+bridegroom, and stanching the effusion of blood; on the other, Raby
+and Jael Dence were bringing the bride to reason.
+
+She listened to nothing they could say until they promised her most
+solemnly that she should never be compelled to pass a night under
+the same roof as Frederick Coventry.  That pacified her not a
+little.
+
+Dr. Amboyne had also great trouble with his patient: the wound in
+the cheek was not serious; but, by a sort of physical retribution--
+of which, by-the-bye, I have encountered many curious examples--the
+tongue, that guilty part of Frederick Coventry, though slightly
+punctured, bled so persistently that Amboyne was obliged to fill his
+mouth with ice, and at last support him with stimulants.  He
+peremptorily refused to let him be moved from Woodbine Villa.
+
+When this was communicated to Grace, she instantly exacted Raby's
+promise; and as he was a man who never went from his word, he drove
+her and Jael to Raby Hall that very night, and they left Coventry in
+the villa, attended by a surgeon, under whose care Amboyne had left
+him with strict injunctions.  Mr. Carden was secretly mortified at
+his daughter's retreat, but raised no objection.
+
+Next morning, however, he told Coventry; and then Coventry insisted
+on leaving the house.  "I am unfortunate enough," said he: "do not
+let me separate my only friend from his daughter."
+
+Mr. Carden sent a carriage off to Raby Hall, with a note, telling
+Grace Mr. Coventry was gone of his own accord, and appeared truly
+penitent, and much shocked at having inadvertently driven her out of
+the house.  He promised also to protect her, should Coventry break
+his word and attempted to assume marital rights without her
+concurrence.
+
+This letter found Grace in a most uncomfortable position.  Mrs.
+Little had returned late to Raby Hall; but in the morning she heard
+from Jael Dence that Grace was in the house, and why.
+
+The mother's feathers were up, and she could neither pity nor
+excuse.  She would not give the unhappy girl a word of comfort.
+Indeed, she sternly refused to see her.  "No," said she: "Mrs.
+Coventry is unhappy; so this is no time to show her how thoroughly
+Henry Little's mother despises her."
+
+These bitter words never reached poor Grace, but the bare fact of
+Mrs. Little not coming down-stairs by one o'clock, nor sending a
+civil message, spoke volumes, and Grace was sighing over it when her
+father's letter came.  She went home directly, and so heartbroken,
+that Jael Dence pitied her deeply, and went with her, intending to
+stay a day or two only.
+
+But every day something or other occurred, which combined with
+Grace's prayers to keep her at Woodbine Villa.
+
+Mr. Coventry remained quiet for some days, by which means he
+pacified Grace's terrors.
+
+On the fourth day Mr. Beresford called at Woodbine Villa, and Grace
+received him, he being the curate of the parish.
+
+He spoke to her in a sympathetic tone, which let her know at once he
+was partly in the secret.  He said he had just visited a very
+guilty, but penitent man; that we all need forgiveness, and that a
+woman, once married, has no chance of happiness but with her
+husband.
+
+Grace maintained a dead silence, only her eye began to glitter.
+
+Mr. Beresford, who had learned to watch the countenance of all those
+he spoke to changed his tone immediately, from a spiritual to a
+secular adviser.
+
+"If I were you," said he, in rather an offhand way, "I would either
+forgive this man the sin into which his love has betrayed him, or I
+would try to get a divorce.  This would cost money: but, if you
+don't mind expense, I think I could suggest a way--"
+
+Grace interrupted him.  "From whom did you learn my misery, and his
+villainy?  I let you in, because I thought you came from God; but
+you come from a villain.  Go back, sir, and say that an angel, sent
+by him, becomes a devil in my eyes."  And she rang the bell with a
+look that spoke volumes.
+
+Mr. Beresford bowed, smiled bitterly, and went back to Coventry,
+with whom he had a curious interview, that ended in Coventry lending
+him two hundred pounds on his personal security.  To dispose of Mr.
+Beresford for the present I will add that, soon after this, his zeal
+for the poor subjected him to an affront.  He was a man of soup-
+kitchens and subscriptions.  One of the old fogies, who disliked
+him, wrote letters to The Liberal, and demanded an account of his
+receipts and expenditure in these worthy objects, and repeated the
+demand with a pertinacity that implied suspicion.  Then Mr.
+Beresford called upon Dr. Fynes, and showed him the letters, and
+confessed to him that he never kept any accounts, either of public
+or private expenditure.  "I can construe Apollonius Rhodius--with
+your assistance, sir," said he, "but I never could add up pounds,
+shillings, and pence; far less divide them except amongst the
+afflicted."  "Take no notice of the cads," said Dr. Fynes.  But
+Beresford represented meekly that a clergyman's value and usefulness
+were gone when once a slur was thrown upon him.  Then Dr. Fynes gave
+him high testimonials, and they parted with mutual regret.
+
+It took Grace a day to get over her interview with Mr. Beresford;
+and when with Jael's help she was calm again, she received a letter
+from Coventry, indited in tones of the deepest penitence, but
+reminding her that he had offered her his life, had made no
+resistance when she offered to take it, and never would.
+
+There was nothing in the letter that irritated her, but she saw in
+it an attempt to open a correspondence.  She wrote back:
+
+
+"If you really repent your crimes, and have any true pity for the
+poor creature whose happiness you have wrecked, show it by leaving
+this place, and ceasing all communication with her."
+
+
+This galled Coventry, and he wrote back:
+
+
+"What! leave the coast clear to Mr. Little?  No, Mrs. Coventry; no."
+
+
+Grace made no reply, but a great terror seized her, and from that
+hour preyed constantly on her mind--the fear that Coventry and
+Little would meet, and the man she loved would do some rash act, and
+perhaps perish on the scaffold for it.
+
+This was the dominant sentiment of her distracted heart, when one
+day, at eleven A.M., came a telegram from Liverpool:
+
+
+"Just landed.  Will be with you by four.
+
+"HENRY LITTLE."
+
+
+Jael found her shaking all over, with this telegram in her hand.
+
+"Thank God you are with me!" she gasped.  "Let me see him once more,
+and die."
+
+This was her first thought; but all that day she was never in the
+same mind for long together.  She would burst out into joy that he
+was really alive, and she should see his face once more.  Then she
+would cower with terror, and say she dared not look him in the face;
+she was not worthy.  Then she would ask wildly, who was to tell him?
+What would become of him?
+
+"It would break his heart, or destroy his reason.  After all he had
+done and suffered for her!"
+
+Oh! why could she not die before he came?  Seeing her dead body he
+would forgive her.  She should tell him she loved him still, should
+always love him.  She would withhold no comfort.  Perhaps he would
+kill her, if so, Jael must manage so that he should not be taken up
+or tormented any more, for such a wretch as she was.
+
+But I might as well try to dissect a storm, and write the gusts of a
+tempest, as to describe all the waves of passion in that fluctuating
+and agonized heart: the feelings and the agitation of a life were
+crowded into those few hours, during which she awaited the lover she
+had lost.
+
+At last, Jael Dence, though she was also much agitated and
+perplexed, decided on a course of action.  Just before four o'clock
+she took Grace upstairs and told her she might see him arrive, but
+she must not come down until she was sent for.  "I shall see him
+first, and tell him all; and, when he is fit to see you, I will let
+you know."
+
+Grace submitted, and even consented to lie down for half an hour.
+She was now, in truth, scarcely able to stand, being worn out with
+the mental struggle.  She lay passive, with Jael Dence's hand in
+hers.
+
+When she had lain so about an hour, she started up suddenly, and the
+next moment a fly stopped at the door.  Henry Little got out at the
+gate, and walked up the gravel to the house.
+
+Grace looked at him from behind the curtain, gazed at him till he
+disappeared, and then turned round, with seraphic joy on her
+countenance.  "My darling!" she murmured; "more beautiful than ever!
+Oh misery! misery!"
+
+One moment her heart was warm with rapture, the next it was cold
+with despair.  But the joy was blind love; the despair was reason.
+
+She waited, and waited, but no summons came.
+
+She could not deny herself the sound of his voice.  She crept down
+the stairs, and into her father's library, separated only by thin
+folding-doors from the room where Henry Little was with Jael Dence.
+
+
+Meantime Jael Dence opened the door to Henry Little, and, putting
+her fingers to her lips, led him into the dining-room and shut the
+door.
+
+Now, as his suspicions were already excited, this reception alarmed
+him seriously.  As soon as ever they were alone, he seized both
+Jael's hands, and, looking her full in the face, said:
+
+"One word--is she alive?"
+
+"She is."
+
+"Thank god!  Bless the tongue that tells me that.  My good Jael! my
+best friend!"  And, with that, kissed her heartily on both cheeks.
+
+She received this embrace like a woman of wood; a faint color rose,
+but retired directly, and left her cheek as pale as before.
+
+He noticed her strange coldness, and his heart began to quake.
+
+"There is something the matter?" he whispered.
+
+"There is."
+
+"Something you don't like to tell me?"
+
+"Like to tell you!  I need all my courage, and you yours."
+
+Say she is alive, once more."
+
+"She is alive, and not likely to die; but she does not care to live
+now.  They told her you were dead; they told her you were false;
+appearances were such she had no chance not to be deceived.  She
+held out for a long time; but they got the better of her--her father
+is much to blame--she is--married."
+
+"Married!"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Married!"  He leaned, sick as death, against the mantel-piece, and
+gasped so terribly that Jael's fortitude gave way, and she began to
+cry.
+
+After a long time he got a word or two out in a broken voice.
+
+"The false--inconstant--wretch!  Oh Heaven! what I have done and
+suffered for her--and now married!--married!  And the earth doesn't
+swallow her, nor the thunder strike her!  Curse her, curse her
+husband, curse her children! may her name be a by-word for shame and
+misery--"
+
+"Hush! hush! or you will curse your own mad tongue.  Hear all,
+before you judge her."
+
+"I have heard all; she is a wife; she shall soon be a widow.
+Thought I was false!  What business had she to think I was false?
+It is only false hearts that suspect true ones.  She thought me
+dead?  Why?  Because I was out of sight.  She heard there was a dead
+hand found in the river.  Why didn't she go and see it?  Could all
+creation pass another hand off on me for hers?  No; for I loved her.
+She never loved me."
+
+"She loved you, and loves you still.  When that dead hand was found,
+she fell swooning, and lay at death's door for you, and now she has
+stained her hands with blood for you.  She tried to kill her
+husband, the moment she found you were alive and true, and he had
+made a fool of her."
+
+"TRIED to kill him!  Why didn't she do it?  I should not have failed
+at such work.  I love her."
+
+"Blame me for that; I stopped her arm, and I am stronger than she
+is.  I say she is no more to blame than you.  You have acted like a
+madman, and she suffers for it.  Why did you slip away at night like
+that, and not tell me?"
+
+"I left letters to you and her, and other people besides."
+
+"Yes, left them, and hadn't the sense to post them.  Why didn't you
+TELL me?  Had ever any young man as faithful and true a friend in
+any young woman as you had in me?  Many a man has saved a woman's
+life, but it isn't often that a woman fights for a man, and gets the
+upper hand: yet you gave me nothing in return; not even your
+confidence.  Look the truth in the face, my lad; all your trouble,
+and all hers, comes of your sneaking out of Hillsborough in that
+daft way, without a word to me, the true friend, that was next door
+to you; which I nearly lost my life by your fault; for, if you had
+told me, I should have seen you off, and so escaped a month's
+hospital, and other troubles that almost drove me crazy.  Don't you
+abuse that poor young lady before me, or I sha'n't spare you.  She
+is more to be pitied than you are.  Folk should look at home for the
+cause of their troubles; her misery, and yours, it is all owing to
+your own folly and ingratitude; ay, you may look; I mean what I say--
+ingratitude."
+
+The attack was so sudden and powerful that Henry Little was
+staggered and silenced; but an unexpected defender appeared on the
+scene; one of the folding-doors was torn open, and Grace darted in.
+
+"How dare you say it is his fault, poor ill-used angel!  No, no, no,
+no, I am the only one to blame.  I didn't love you as you deserved.
+I tried to die for you, and FAILED.  I tried to kill that monster
+for you, and FAILED.  I am too weak and silly; I shall only make you
+more unhapppy.  Give me one kiss, my own darling, and then kill me
+out of the way."  With this she was over his knees and round his
+neck in a moment, weeping, and clutching him with a passionate
+despair that melted all his anger away, and soon his own tears tell
+on her like rain.
+
+"Ah, Grace! Grace!" he sobbed, "how could you? how could you?"
+
+"Don't speak unkindly to her," cried Jael, "or she won't be alive a
+day.  She is worse off than you are; and so is he too."
+
+"You mock me; he is her husband.  He can make her live with him.  He
+can--"  Here he broke out cursing and blaspheming, and called Grace
+a viper, and half thrust her away from him with horror, and his face
+filled with jealous anguish: he looked like a man dying of poison.
+
+Then he rose to his feet, and said, with a sort of deadly calm,
+"Where can I find the man?"
+
+"Not in this house, you may be sure," said Jael; "nor in any house
+where she is."
+
+Henry sank into his seat again, and looked amazed.
+
+"Tell him all," said Grace.  "Don't let him think I do not love him
+at all."
+
+"I will," said Jael.  "Well, the wedding was at eleven; your letter
+came at half-past twelve, and I took it her.  Soon after that the
+villain came to her, and she stabbed him directly with this
+stiletto.  Look at it; there's his blood up on it; I kept it to show
+you.  I caught her arm, or she would have killed him, I believe.  He
+lost so much blood, the doctor would not let him be moved.  Then she
+thought of you still, and would not pass a night under the same roof
+with him; at two o'clock she was on the way to Raby; but Mr.
+Coventry was too much of a man to stay in the house and drive her
+out; so he went off next morning, and, as soon as she heard that,
+she came home.  She is wife and no wife, as the saying is, and how
+it is all to end Heaven only knows."
+
+"It will end the moment I meet the man; and that won't be long."
+
+"There! there!" cried Grace, "that is what I feared.  Ah, Jael!
+Jael! why did you hold my hand?  They would not have hung ME.  I
+told you so at the time: I knew what I was about."
+
+"Jael," said the young man, "of all the kind things you have done
+for me, that was the kindest.  You saved my poor girl from worse
+trouble than she is now in.  No, Grace; you shall not dirty your
+hand with such scum as that: it is my business, and mine only."
+
+In vain did Jael expostulate, and Grace implore.  In vain did Jael
+assure him that Coventry was in a worse position than himself, and
+try to make him see that any rash act of his would make Grace even
+more miserable than she was at present.  He replied that he had no
+intention of running his neck into a halter; he should act warily,
+like the Hillsborough Trades, and strike his blow so cunningly that
+the criminal should never know whence it came.  "I've been in a good
+school for homicide," said he; "and I am an inventor. No man has
+ever played the executioner so ingeniously as I will play it.  Think
+of all this scoundrel has done to me: he owes me a dozen lives, and
+I'll take one.  Man shall never detect me: God knows all, and will
+forgive me, I hope.  If He doesn't, I can't help it."
+
+He kissed Grace again and again, and comforted her; said she was not
+to blame; honest people were no match for villains: if she had been
+twice as simple, he would have forgiven her at sight of the
+stiletto; that cleared her, in his mind, better than words.
+
+He was now soft and gentle as a lamb.  He begged Jael's pardon
+humbly for leaving Hillsborough without telling her.  He said he had
+gone up to her room; but all was still; and he was a working man,
+and the sleep of a working-woman was sacred to him--(he would have
+awakened a fine lady without ceremony).  Be assured her he had left
+a note for her in his box, thanking and blessing her for all her
+goodness.  He said that he hoped he might yet live to prove by acts,
+and not by idle words, how deeply he felt all she had done and
+suffered for him.
+
+Jael received these excuses in hard silence.  "That is enough about
+me," said she, coldly.  "If you are grateful to me, show it by
+taking my advice.  Leave vengeance to Him who has said that
+vengeance is His."
+
+The man's whole manner changed directly, and he said doggedly:
+
+"Well, I will be His instrument."
+
+"He will choose His own."
+
+"I'll lend my humble co-operation."
+
+"Oh, do not argue with him," said Grace, piteously.  "When did a man
+ever yield to our arguments?  Dearest, I can't argue: but I am full
+of misery, and full of fears.  You see my love; you forgive my
+folly.  Have pity on me; think of my condition: do not doom me to
+live in terror by night and day: have I not enough to endure, my own
+darling?  There, promise me you will do nothing rash to-night, and
+that you will come to me the first thing to-morrow.  Why, you have
+not seen your mother yet; she is at Raby Hall."
+
+"My dear mother!" said he: "it would be a poor return for all your
+love if I couldn't put off looking for that scum till I have taken
+you in my arms."
+
+And so Grace got a reprieve.
+
+They parted in deep sorrow, but almost as lovingly as ever, and
+Little went at once to Raby Hall, and Grace, exhausted by so many
+emotions, lay helpless on a couch in her own room all the rest of
+the day.
+
+For some time she lay in utter prostration, and only the tears that
+trickled at intervals down her pale cheeks showed that she was
+conscious of her miserable situation.
+
+Jael begged and coaxed her to take some nourishment: but she shook
+her head with disgust at the very idea.
+
+For all that at nine o'clock, her faithful friend almost forced a
+few spoonfuls of tea down her throat, feeding her like a child: and,
+when she had taken it, she tried to thank her, but choked in the
+middle, and, flinging her arm round Jael's neck, burst into a
+passion of weeping, and incoherent cries of love, and pity, and
+despair.  "Oh, my darling! so great! so noble! so brave! so gentle!
+And I have destroyed us both! he forgave me as soon as he SAW me!
+So terrible, so gentle!  What will be the next calamity?  Ah, Jael!
+save him from that rash act, and I shall never complain; for he was
+dead, and is alive again."
+
+"We will find some way to do that between us--you, and I, and his
+mother."
+
+"Ah, yes: she will be on my side in that.  But she will be hard upon
+me.  She will point out all my faults, my execrable folly.  Ah, if I
+could but live my time over again, I'd pray night and day for
+selfishness.  They teach us girls to pray for this and that virtue,
+which we have too much of already; and what we ought to pray for is
+selfishness.  But no! I must think of my father, and think of that
+hypocrite: but the one person whose feelings I was too mean, and
+base, and silly to consult, was myself.  I always abhorred this
+marriage.  I feared it, and loathed it; yet I yielded step by step,
+for want of a little selfishness; we are slaves without it--mean,
+pitiful, contemptible slaves.  O God, in mercy give me selfishness!
+Ah me, it is too late now.  I am a lost creature; nothing is left me
+but to die."
+
+
+Jael got her to bed, and sleep came at last to her exhausted body;
+but, even when her eyes were closed, tears found their way through
+the lids, and wetted her pillow.
+
+So can great hearts and loving natures suffer.
+
+Can they enjoy in proportion?
+
+Let us hope so.  But I have my doubts.
+
+
+Henry Little kept his word, and came early next morning.  He looked
+hopeful and excited: he said he had thought the matter over, and was
+quite content to let that scoundrel live, and even to dismiss all
+thought of him, if Grace really loved him.
+
+"If I love you!" said Grace.  "Oh, Henry, why did I ask you to do
+nothing rash, but that I love you?  Why did I attempt his life
+myself? because you said in your letter--  It was not to revenge
+myself, but to save you from more calamity.  Cruel, cruel!  Do I
+love him?"
+
+"I know you love me, Grace: but do you love me enough?  Will you
+give up the world for me, and let us be happy together, the only way
+we can?  My darling Grace, I have made our fortune; all the world
+lies before us; I left England alone, for you; now leave it with me,
+and let us roam the world together."
+
+"Henry!--what!--when I can not be your wife!"
+
+"You can be my wife; my wife in reality, as you are his in name and
+nothing else.  It is idle to talk as if we were in some ordinary
+situation.  There are plenty of countries that would disown such a
+marriage as yours, a mere ceremony obtained by fraud, and canceled
+by a stroke with a dagger and instant separation.  Oh, my darling,
+don't sacrifice both our lives to a scruple that is out of place
+here.  Don't hesitate; don't delay.  I have a carriage waiting
+outside; end all our misery by one act of courage, and trust
+yourself to me; did I ever fail you?"
+
+"For shame, Henry! for shame!"
+
+"It is the only way to happiness.  You were quite right; if I kill
+that wretch we shall be parted in another way, always parted; now we
+can be together for life.  Remember, dearest, how I begged you in
+this very room to go to the United States with me: you refused:
+well, have you never been sorry you refused?  Now I once more
+implore you to be wise and brave, and love me as I love you.  What
+is the world to us?  You are all the world to me."
+
+"Answer him, Jael; oh, answer him!"
+
+"Nay, these are things every woman must answer for herself."
+
+"And I'll take no answer but yours."  Then he threw himself at her
+feet, and clasping her in his arms implored her, with all the sighs
+and tears and eloquence of passion, to have pity on them both, and
+fly at once with him.
+
+She writhed and struggled faintly, and turned away from him, and
+fell tenderly toward him, by turns, and still he held her tight, and
+grew stronger, more passionate, more persuasive, as she got weaker
+and almost faint.  Her body seemed on the point of sinking, and her
+mind of yielding.
+
+But all of a sudden she made a desperate effort.  "Let me go!" she
+cried.  "So this is your love!  With all my faults and follies, I am
+truer than you.  Shame on your love, that would dishonor the
+creature you love!  Let me go, sir, I say, or I shall hate you worse
+than I do the wretch whose name I bear."
+
+He let her go directly, and then her fiery glance turned to one long
+lingering look of deep but tender reproach, and she fled sobbing.
+
+He sank into a chair, and buried his face in his hands.
+
+After a while he raised his head, and saw Jael Dence looking gravely
+at him.
+
+"Oh, speak your mind," said he, bitterly.
+
+"You are like the world.  You think only of yourself; that's all I
+have to say."
+
+"You are very unkind to say so.  I think for us both: and she will
+think with me, in time.  I shall come again to-morrow."
+
+He said this with an iron resolution that promised a long and steady
+struggle, to which Grace, even in this first encounter, had shown
+herself hardly equal.
+
+Jael went to her room, expecting to find her as much broken down as
+she was by Henry's first visit; but, instead of that, the young lady
+was walking rapidly to and fro.
+
+At sight of Jael, she caught her by the hand, and said, "Well!"
+
+"He is coming again to-morrow."
+
+"Is he sorry?"
+
+"Not he."
+
+"Who would have thought he was so wicked?"
+
+This seemed rather exaggerated to Jael; for with all Mrs. Little's
+teaching she was not quite a lady yet in all respects, though in
+many things she was always one by nature.  "Let it pass," said she.
+
+
+     "'It is a man's part to try,
+       And a woman's to deny.'"
+
+
+"And how often shall I have to deny him I love so dearly?"
+
+"As often as he asks you to be his mistress; for, call it what you
+like, that is all he has to offer you."
+
+Grace hid her face in her hands.
+
+Jael colored.  "Excuse my blunt speaking; but sometimes the worst
+word is the best; fine words are just words with a veil on."
+
+"Will he dare to tempt me again, after what I said?"
+
+"Of course he will: don't you know him? he never gives in.  But,
+suppose he does, you have your answer ready."
+
+"Jael," said Grace, "you are so strong, it blinds you to my
+weakness.  I resist him, day after day!  I, who pity him so, and
+blame myself!  Why, his very look, his touch, his voice, overpower
+me so that my whole frame seems dissolving: feel how I tremble at
+him, even now.  No, no; let those resist who are sure of their
+strength.  Virtue, weakened by love and pity, has but one resource--
+to fly.  Jael Dence, if you are a woman, help me to save the one
+thing I have got left to save."
+
+"I will," said Jael Dence.
+
+In one hour from that time they had packed a box and a carpetbag,
+and were on their way to a railway station.  They left Hillsborough.
+
+In three days Jael returned, but Grace Coventry did not come back
+with her.
+
+
+The day after that trying scene, Henry Little called, not to urge
+Grace again, as she presumed he would, but to ask pardon: at the
+same time we may be sure of this--that, after a day or two spent in
+obtaining pardon, the temptation would have been renewed, and so on
+forever.  Of this, however, Little was not conscious: he came to ask
+pardon, and offer a pure and patient love, till such time as Heaven
+should have pity on them both.  He was informed that Mrs. Coventry
+had quitted Hillsborough, and left a letter for him.  It was offered
+him; he snatched it and read it.
+
+
+"MY OWN DEAR HENRY,--You have given me something to forgive, and I
+forgive you without asking, as I hope you will one day forgive me.
+I have left Hillsborough to avoid a situation that was intolerable
+and solicitations which I blushed to hear, and for which you would
+one day have blushed too.  This parting is not forever, I hope; but
+that rests with yourself.  Forego your idea of vengeance on that
+man, whose chastisement you would best alleviate by ending his
+miserable existence; and learn to love me honorably and patiently,
+as I love you.  Should you obtain this great victory over yourself,
+you will see me again.  Meantime, think of her who loves you to
+distraction, and whose soul hovers about you unseen.  Pray for me,
+dear one, at midnight, and at eight o'clock every morning; for those
+are two of the hours I shall pray for you.  Do you remember the old
+church, and how you cried over me?  I can write no more: my tears
+blind me so.  Farewell.  Your unhappy
+
+"GRACE."
+
+
+Little read this piteous letter, and it was a heavy blow to him; a
+blow that all the tenderness shown in it could not at first soften.
+She had fled from him; she shunned him.  It was not from Coventry
+she fled; it was from him.
+
+He went home cold and sick at heart, and gave himself up to grief
+and deep regrets for several days.
+
+But soon his powerful and elastic mind, impatient of impotent
+sorrow, and burning for some kind of action, seized upon vengeance
+as the only thing left to do.
+
+At this period he looked on Coventry as a beast in human shape, whom
+he had a moral right to extinguish; only, as he had not a legal
+right, it must be done with consummate art.  He trusted nobody;
+spoke to nobody; but set himself quietly to find out where Coventry
+lived, and what were his habits.  He did this with little
+difficulty.  Coventry lodged in a principal street, but always dined
+at a club, and returned home late, walking through a retired street
+or two; one of these passed by the mouth of a narrow court that was
+little used.
+
+Little, disguised as a workman, made a complete reconnaissance of
+this locality, and soon saw that his enemy was at his mercy.
+
+But, while he debated within himself what measure of vengeance he
+should take, and what noiseless weapon he should use, an unseen
+antagonist baffled him.  That antagonist was Grace Carden.  Still
+foreboding mischief, she wrote to Mr. Coventry, from a town two
+hundred miles distant:
+
+
+"Whatever you are now, you were born a gentleman, and will, I think,
+respect a request from a lady you have wronged.  Mr. Little has
+returned, and I have left Hillsborough; if he encounters you in his
+despair, he will do you some mortal injury.  This will only make
+matters worse, and I dread the scandal that will follow, and to hear
+my sad story in a court of law as a justification for his violence.
+Oblige me, then, by leaving Hillsborough for a time, as I have
+done."
+
+
+On receipt of this, Coventry packed up his portmanteau directly,
+and, leaving Lally behind to watch the town, and see whether this
+was a ruse, he went directly to the town whence Grace's letter was
+dated, and to the very hotel.
+
+This she had foreseen and intended.
+
+He found she had been there, and had left for a neighboring
+watering-place: he followed her thither, and there she withdrew the
+clew; she left word she was gone to Stirling; but doubled on him,
+and soon put hundreds of miles between them.  He remained in
+Scotland, hunting her.
+
+Thus she played the gray plover with him she hated, and kept the
+beloved hands from crime.
+
+When Little found that Coventry had left Hillsborough, he pretended
+to himself that he was glad of it.  "My darling is right," said he.
+"I will obey her, and do nothing contrary to law.  I will throw him
+into prison, that is all."  With these moderated views, he called
+upon his friend Ransome, whom of course he had, as yet, carefully
+avoided, to ask his aid in collecting the materials for an
+indictment.  He felt sure that Coventry had earned penal servitude,
+if the facts could only be put in evidence.  He found Ransome in low
+spirits, and that excellent public servant being informed what he
+was wanted for, said dryly, "Well, but this will require some
+ability: don't you think your friend Silly Billy would be more
+likely to do it effectually than John Ransome?"
+
+"Why, Ransome, are you mad?"
+
+"No, I merely do myself justice.  Silly Billy smelt that faulty
+grindstone; and I can't smell a rat a yard from my nose, it seems.
+You shall judge for yourself.  There have been several burglaries in
+this town of late, and planned by a master.  This put me on my
+mettle, and I have done all I could, with my small force, and even
+pryed about in person, night after night, and that is not exactly my
+business, but I felt it my duty.  Well, sir, two nights ago, no
+more, I had the luck to come round a corner right upon a job:
+Alderman Dick's house, full of valuables, and the windows well
+guarded; but one of his cellars is only covered with a heavy wooden
+shutter, bolted within.  I found this open, and a board wedged in,
+to keep it ajar: down I went on my knees, saw a light inside, and
+heard two words of thieves' latin; that was enough, you know; I
+whipped out the board, jumped on the heavy shutter, and called for
+the police."
+
+"Did you expect them to come?"
+
+"Not much.  These jobs are timed so as not to secure the attendance
+of the police.  But assistance of another kind came; a gentleman
+full dressed, in a white tie and gloves, ran up, and asked me what
+it was.  'Thieves in the cellar,' said I, and shouted police, and
+gave my whistle.  The gentleman jumped on the shutter.  'I can keep
+that down,' said he.  'I'm sure I saw two policemen in acorn Street:
+run quick!' and he showed me his sword-cane, and seemed so hearty in
+it, and confident, I ran round the corner, and gave my whistle.  Two
+policemen came up; but, in that moment, the swell accomplice had
+pulled all his pals out of the cellar, and all I saw of the lot,
+when I came back, was the swell's swallow-tail coat flying like the
+wind toward a back slum, where I and my bobbies should have been
+knocked on the head, if we had tried to follow him; but indeed he
+was too fleet to give us the chance."
+
+"Well," said Henry, "that was provoking: but who can foresee every
+thing all in a moment?  I have been worse duped than that a good
+many times."
+
+Ransome shook his head.  "An old officer of police, like me, not to
+smell a swell accomplice.  I had only to handcuff that man, and set
+him down with me on the shutter, till, in the dispensation of
+Providence, a bobby came by."
+
+He added by way of corollary, "You should send to London for a
+detective."
+
+"Not I," said Henry.  "I know you for a sagacious man, and a worthy
+man, and my friend.  I'll have no one to help me in it but you."
+
+"Won't you?" said Ransome.  "Then I'll go in.  You have done me
+good, Mr. Little, by sticking to a defeated friend like this.  Now
+for your case; tell me all you know, and how you know it."
+
+Henry complied, and Ransome took his notes.  Then he said, he had
+got some old memoranda by him, that might prove valuable: he would
+call in two days.
+
+He did call, and showed Henry Coventry's card, and told him he had
+picked it up close by his letter-box, on the very night of the
+explosion.  "Mark my words, this will expand into something," said
+the experienced officer.
+
+Before he left, he told Henry that he had now every reason to
+believe the swell accomplice was Shifty Dick, the most successful
+and distinguished criminal in England.  "I have just got word from
+London that he has been working here, and has collared a heavy swag;
+he says he will go into trade: one of his old pals let that out in
+jail.  Trade! then heaven help his customers, that is all."
+
+"You may catch him yet."
+
+"When I catch Jack-a-lantern.  He is not so green as to stay a day
+in Hillsborough, now his face has been close to mine; they all know
+I never forget a face.  No, no; I shall never see him again, till I
+am telegraphed for, to inspect his mug and his wild-cat eyes in some
+jail or other.  I must try and not think of him; it disturbs my
+mind, and takes off my attention from my duties."
+
+Ransome adhered to this resolution for more than a month, during
+which time he followed out every indication with the patience of a
+beagle; and, at last, he called one day and told Little Hill had
+forfeited his bail, and gone to Canada at the expense of the trade;
+but had let out strange things before he left.  There was a swell
+concerned in his attempt with the bow and arrow: there was a swell
+concerned in the explosion, with some workman, whose name he
+concealed; he had seen them on the bridge, and had seen the workman
+receive a bag of gold, and had collared him, and demanded his share;
+this had been given him, but not until he threatened to call the
+bobbies.  "Now, if we could find Hill, and get him to turn Queen's
+evidence, this, coupled with what you and I could furnish, would
+secure your man ten years of penal servitude.  I know an able
+officer at Quebec.  Is it worth while going to the expense?"
+
+Little, who had received the whole communication in a sort of
+despondent, apathetic way, replied that he didn't think it was worth
+while.  "My good friend," said he, "I am miserable.  Vengeance, I
+find, will not fill a yearning heart.  And the truth is, that all
+this time I have been secretly hoping she would return, and that has
+enabled me to bear up, and chatter about revenge.  Who could believe
+a young creature like that would leave her father and all her
+friends for good?  I made sure she would come back in a week or two.
+And to think that it is I who have driven her away, and darkened my
+own life.  I thought I had sounded the depths of misery.  I was a
+fool to think so.  No, no; life would be endurable if I could only
+see her face once a day, and hear her voice, though it was not even
+speaking to me.  Oh! oh!"
+
+Now this was the first time Little had broken down before Ransome.
+Hitherto he had spoken of Coventry, but not of Grace; he had avoided
+speaking of her, partly from manly delicacy, partly because he
+foresaw his fortitude would give way if he mentioned her.
+
+But now the strong man's breast seemed as if it would burst, and his
+gasping breath, and restless body, betrayed what a price he must
+have paid for the dogged fortitude he had displayed for several
+weeks, love-sick all the time.
+
+Ransome was affected: he rose and walked about the room, ashamed to
+look at a Spartan broken down.
+
+When he had given Little time to recover some little composure, he
+said, "Mr. Little, you were always too much of a gentleman to gossip
+about the lady you love; and it was not my business to intrude upon
+that subject; it was too delicate.  But, of course, with what I have
+picked up here and there, and what you have let drop, without the
+least intending it, I know pretty well how the land lies.  And, sir,
+a man does not come to my time of life without a sore and heavy
+heart; if I was to tell you how I came to be a bachelor--but, no;
+even after ten years I could not answer for myself.  All I can say
+is that, if you should do me the honor to consult me on something
+that is nearer your heart than revenge, you would have all my
+sympathy and all my zeal."
+
+"Give me your hand, old fellow," said Little, and broke down again.
+
+But, this time, he shook it off quickly, and, to encourage him, Mr.
+Ransome said, "To begin, you may take my word Mr. Carden knows, by
+this time, where his daughter is.  Why not sound him on the matter?"
+
+Henry acted on this advice, and called on Mr. Carden.
+
+He was received very coldly by that gentleman.
+
+After some hesitation, he asked Mr. Carden if he had any news of his
+daughter.
+
+"I have."
+
+The young man's face was irradiated with joy directly.
+
+"Is she well, sir?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is she happier than she was?"
+
+"She is content."
+
+"Has she friends about her?  Kind, good people; any persons of her
+own sex, whom she can love?"
+
+"She is among people she takes for angels, at present.  She will
+find them to be petty, mean, malicious devils.  She is in a
+Protestant convent."
+
+"In a convent?  Where?"
+
+"Where?  Where neither the fool nor the villain, who have wrecked
+her happiness between them, and robbed me of her, will ever find
+her.  I expected this visit, sir; the only thing I doubted was which
+would come first, the villain or the fool.  The fool has come first,
+and being a fool, expects ME to tell him where to find his victim,
+and torture her again.  Begone, fool, from the house you have made
+desolate by your execrable folly in slipping away by night like a
+thief, or rather like that far more dangerous animal, a fool."
+
+The old man delivered these insults with a purple face, and a loud
+fury, that in former days would have awakened corresponding rage in
+the fiery young fellow.  But affliction had tempered him, and his
+insulter's hairs were gray.
+
+He said, quietly, "You are her father.  I forgive you these cruel
+words."  Then he took his hat and went away.
+
+Mr. Carden followed him to the passage, and cried after him, "The
+villain will meet a worse reception than the fool.  I promise you
+that much."
+
+Little went home despondent, and found a long letter from his
+mother, telling him he must dine and sleep at Raby Hall that day.
+
+She gave him such potent reasons, and showed him so plainly his
+refusal would infuriate his uncle, and make her miserable, that he
+had no choice.  He packed up his dress suit, and drove to Raby Hall,
+with a heavy heart and bitter reluctance.
+
+O caeca mens hominum.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+
+It was the great anniversary.  On that day Sir Richard Raby had lost
+for the Stuarts all the head he possessed.  His faithful descendent
+seized the present opportunity to celebrate the event with more pomp
+than ever.  A month before the fatal day he came in from
+Hillsborough with sixty yards of violet-colored velvet, the richest
+that could be got from Lyons; he put this down on a table, and told
+his sister that was for her and Jael to wear on the coming
+anniversary.  "Don't tell me there's not enough," said he; "for I
+inquired how much it would take to carpet two small rooms, and
+bought it; now what will carpet two little libraries will clothe two
+large ladies; and you are neither of you shrimps."
+
+While he was thus doing the cynical, nobody heeded him; quick and
+skillful fingers were undoing the parcel, and the ladies' cheeks
+flushed and their eyes glistened, and their fingers felt the stuff
+inside and out: in which occupation Raby left them, saying, "Full
+dress, mind!  We Rabys are not beheaded every day."
+
+Mrs. Little undertook to cut both dresses, and Jael was to help sew
+them.
+
+But, when they came to be tried on, Jael was dismayed.  "Why, I
+shall be half naked," said she.  "Oh, Mrs. Little, I couldn't: I
+should sink with shame."
+
+Mrs. Little pooh-poohed that, and an amusing dialogue followed
+between these two women, both of them equally modest, but one
+hardened, and perhaps a little blinded, by custom.
+
+Neither could convince the other, but Mrs. Little overpowered Jael
+by saying, "I shall wear mine low, and you will mortally offend my
+brother if you don't."
+
+Then Jael succumbed, but looked forward to the day with a simple
+terror one would hardly have expected from the general strength of
+her character.
+
+Little arrived, and saw his mother for a minute or two before
+dinner.  She seemed happy and excited, and said, "Cheer up, darling;
+we will find a way to make you happy.  Mark my words, a new era in
+your life dates from to-day: I mean to open your eyes tonight.
+There, don't question me, but give me one kiss, and let us go and
+make ourselves splendid for poor Sir Richard."
+
+When Little came down-stairs he found his uncle and a distinguished-
+looking young gentleman standing before the fire; both were in full
+dress.  Raby had the Stuart orders on his breast and looked a
+prince.  He introduced Little to Mr. Richard Raby with high
+formality; but, before they had time to make acquaintance, two
+ladies glided into the room, and literally dazzled the young men,
+especially Dissolute Dick, who knew neither of them.
+
+Mrs. Little, with her oval face, black brow and hair, and stately
+but supple form, was a picture of matronly beauty and grace; her
+rich brunette skin, still glossy and firm, showed no signs of age,
+but under her glorious eyes were the marks of trouble; and though
+her face was still striking and lovely, yet it revealed what her
+person concealed, that she was no longer young.  That night she
+looked about eight-and-thirty.
+
+The other lady was blonde, and had a face less perfect in contour,
+but beautiful in its way, and exquisite in color and peach-like
+bloom; but the marvel was her form; her comely head, dignified on
+this occasion with a coronet of pearls, perched on a throat long yet
+white and massive, and smooth as alabaster; and that majestic throat
+sat enthroned on a snowy bust and shoulders of magnificent breadth,
+depth, grandeur, and beauty.  Altogether it approached the gigantic;
+but so lovely was the swell of the broad white bosom, and so
+exquisite the white and polished skin of the mighty shoulders
+adorned with two deep dimples, that the awe this grand physique
+excited was mingled with profound admiration.
+
+Raby and Henry Little both started at the sudden grandeur and
+brilliance of the woman they thought they knew, but in reality had
+never seen; and Raby, dazzled himself, presented her, quite
+respectfully, to Dissolute Dick.
+
+"This is Miss Dence, a lady descended, like the rest of us, from
+poor Sir Richard; Miss Dence; Mr. Richard Raby."
+
+Jael blushed more deeply than ladies with white and antique busts
+are in the habit of doing, and it was curious to see the rosy tint
+come on her white neck, and then die quietly away again.  Yet she
+courtesied with grace and composure.  (Mrs. Little had trained her
+at all points; and grace comes pretty readily, where nature has
+given perfect symmetry.)
+
+Dinner was announced, and Raby placed the Dissolute between his
+sister and the magnificent Beauty dead Sir Richard had developed.
+He even gave a reason for this arrangement.
+
+"All you ladies like a rake: you PRAISE sober fellows like me; but
+what you PREFER is a Rake."
+
+As they were rustling into their places, Mrs. Little said to Dick,
+with a delicious air of indifference, "ARE you a rake, Mr. Raby?"
+
+"I am anything you like," replied the shameless fellow.
+
+All the old plate was out, and blazing in the light of candles
+innumerable.
+
+There was one vacant chair.
+
+Dick asked if there was anybody expected.
+
+"Not much," said Raby dryly.  "That is Sir Richard's chair, on these
+occasions.  However, he may be sitting in it now, for aught I know.
+I sincerely hope he is."
+
+"If I thought that, I'd soon leave mine," said Jael, in a tremulous
+whisper.
+
+"Then stay where you are, Sir Richard," said the Rake, making an
+affected motion with his handkerchief, as if to keep the good Knight
+down.
+
+In short, this personage, being young, audacious, witty, and
+animated by the vicinity of the most beautiful creature he had ever
+seen, soon deprived the anniversary of that solemn character Mr.
+Raby desired to give it.  Yet his volubility, his gayety, and his
+chaff were combined with a certain gentlemanlike tact and dexterity;
+and he made Raby laugh in spite of himself, and often made the
+ladies smile.  But Henry Little sat opposite, and wondered at them
+all, and his sad heart became very bitter.
+
+When they joined the ladies in the drawing-room, Henry made an
+effort to speak to Jael Dence.  He was most anxious to know whether
+she had heard from Grace Carden.  But Jael did not meet him very
+promptly, and while he was faltering out his inquiries, up came
+Richard Raby and resumed his attentions to her--attentions that very
+soon took the form of downright love-making.  In fact he stayed an
+hour after his carriage was announced, and being a young man of
+great resolution, and accustomed to please himself, he fell over
+head and ears in love with Miss Dence, and showed it then and
+thereafter.
+
+It did not disturb her composure.  She had often been made love to,
+and could parry as well as Dick could fence.
+
+She behaved with admirable good sense; treated it all as a polite
+jest, but not a disagreeable one.
+
+Mrs. Little lost patience with them both.  She drew Henry aside, and
+asked him why he allowed Mr. Richard Raby to monopolize her.
+
+"How can I help it?" said Henry.  "He is in love with her; and no
+wonder: see how beautiful she is, and her skin like white satin.
+She is ever so much bigger than I thought.  But her heart is bigger
+than all.  Who'd think she had ever condescended to grind saws with
+me?"
+
+"Who indeed?  And with those superb arms!"
+
+"Why, that is it, mother; they are up to anything; it was one of
+those superb arms she flung round a blackguard's neck for me, and
+threw him like a sack, or I should not be here.  Poor girl!  Do you
+think that chatterbox would make her happy?"
+
+"Heaven forbid!  He is not worthy of her.  No man is worthy of her,
+except the one I mean her to have, and that is yourself."
+
+"Me, mother! are you mad?"
+
+"No; you are mad, if you reject her.  Where can you hope to find her
+equal?  In what does she fail?  In face? why it is comeliness,
+goodness, and modesty personified.  In person? why she is the only
+perfect figure I ever saw.  Such an arm, hand, foot, neck, and bust
+I never saw all in the same woman.  Is it sense? why she is wise
+beyond her years, and beyond her sex.  Think of her great self-
+denial; she always loved you, yet aided you, and advised you to get
+that mad young thing you preferred to her--men are so blind in
+choosing women!  Then think of her saving your life: and then how
+nearly she lost her own, through her love for you.  Oh, Henry, if
+you cling to a married woman, and still turn away from that angelic
+creature there, and disappoint your poor mother again, whose life
+has been one long disappointment, I shall begin to fear you were
+born without a heart."
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+
+"Better for me if I had; then I could chop and change from one to
+another as you would have me.  No, mother; I dare say if I had never
+seen Grace I should have loved Jael.  As it is, I have a great
+affection and respect for her, but that is all."
+
+"And those would ripen into love if once you were married."
+
+"They might.  If it came to her flinging that great arm round my
+neck in kindness she once saved my life with by brute force, I
+suppose a man's heart could not resist her.  But it will never come
+to that while my darling lives.  She is my lover, and Jael my sister
+and my dear friend.  God bless her, and may she be as happy as she
+deserves.  I wish I could get a word with her, but that seems out of
+the question to-night.  I shall slip away to bed and my own sad
+thoughts."
+
+With this he retired unobserved.
+
+In the morning he asked Jael if she would speak to him alone.
+
+"Why not?" said she calmly.
+
+They took a walk in the shrubbery.
+
+"I tried hard to get a word with you yesterday, but you were so
+taken up with that puppy."
+
+"He is very good company."
+
+"I have seen the time when I was as good; but it is not so easy to
+chatter with a broken heart."
+
+"That is true.  Please come to the point, and tell me what you want
+of me now."
+
+This was said in such a curious tone, that Henry felt quite
+discouraged.
+
+He hesitated a moment and then said, "What is the matter with you?
+You are a changed girl to me.  There's something about you so cold
+and severe; it makes me fear I have worn out my friend as well as
+lost my love; if it is so, tell me, and I will not intrude my sorrow
+any more on you."
+
+There was a noble and manly sadness in the way he said this, and
+Jael seemed touched a little by it.
+
+"Mr. Henry," said she, "I'll be frank with you.  I can't forgive you
+leaving the factory that night without saying a word to me; and if
+you consider what I had done before you used me so, and what I
+suffered in consequence of your using me so--not that you will ever
+know all I suffered, at least I hope not--no, I have tried to
+forgive you; for, if you are a sinner, you are a sufferer--but it is
+no use, I can't.  I never shall forgive you to my dying day."
+
+Henry Little hung his head dejectedly.  "That is bad news," he
+faltered.  "I told you why I did not bid you good-by except by
+letter: it was out of kindness.  I have begged your pardon for it
+all the same.  I thought you were an angel; but I see you are only a
+woman; you think the time to hit a man is when he is down.  Well, I
+can but submit.  Good-by.  Stay one moment, let me take your hand,
+you won't refuse me that."  She did not deign a word; he took her
+hand and held it.  "This is the hand and arm that worked with me
+like a good master: this is the hand and arm that overpowered a
+blackguard and saved me: this is the hand and arm that saved my
+Grace from a prison and public shame.  I must give them both one
+kiss, if they knock me down for it.  There--there--good-by, dear
+Jael, good-by!  I seem to be letting go the last thing I have to
+cling to in the deep waters of trouble."
+
+Melted by this sad thought, he held his best friend's hand till a
+warm tear dropped on it.  That softened her; the hand to which he
+owed so much closed on his and detained him.
+
+"Stay where you are.  I have told you my mind, but I shall ACT just
+as I used to do.  I'm not proud of this spite I have taken against
+you, don't you fancy that.  There--there, don't let us fret about
+what can't be helped; but just tell me what I can DO for you."
+
+Young Little felt rather humiliated at assistance being offered on
+these terms.  He did not disguise his mortification.
+
+"Well," said he, rather sullenly, "beggars must not be choosers.  Of
+course I wanted you to tell me where I am likely to find her."
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"But you left Hillsborough with her?"
+
+"Yes, and went to York.  But there I left her, and she told me she
+should travel hundreds of miles from York.  I have no notion where
+she is."
+
+Little sighed.  "She could not trust even you."
+
+"The fewer one trusts with a secret the better."
+
+"Will she never return?  Will she give up her father as well as me?
+Did she fix no time?  Did she give you no hint?"
+
+"No, not that I remember.  She said that depended on you."
+
+"On me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Here was an enigma.
+
+They puzzled over it a long time.  At last Jael said, "She wrote a
+letter to you before she left: did she say nothing in that?  Have
+you got the letter?"
+
+"Have I got it?--the last letter my darling ever wrote to me!  Do
+you think it ever leaves me night or day?"
+
+He undid one of his studs, put his hand inside, and drew the letter
+out warm from his breast.  He kissed it and gave it to Jael.  She
+read it carefully and looked surprised.  "Why, you are making your
+own difficulties.  You have only got to do what you are told.
+Promise not to fall foul of that Coventry, and not to tempt her
+again, and you will hear of her.  You have her own word for it."
+
+"But how am I to let her know I promise?"
+
+"I don't know; how does everybody let everybody know things
+nowadays?  They advertise."
+
+"Of course they do--in the second column of 'The Times.'"
+
+"You know best."  Then, after a moment's reflection, "Wherever she
+is, she takes in the Hillsborough papers to see if there's anything
+about you in them."
+
+"Oh, do you think so?"
+
+"Think so?  I am sure of it.  I put myself in her place."
+
+"Then I will advertise in 'The Times' and the Hillsborough papers."
+
+He went into the library and wrote several advertisements.  This is
+the one Jael preferred:
+
+
+"H. L. to G. C.  I see you are right.  There shall be no vengeance
+except what the law may give me, nor will I ever renew that request
+which offended you so justly.  I will be patient."
+
+
+He had added an entreaty that she would communicate with him, but
+this Jael made him strike out.  She thought that might make Grace
+suspect his sincerity.  "Time enough to put that in a month hence,
+if you don't hear from her."
+
+This was all I think worth recording in the interview between Jael
+and Henry, except that at parting he thanked her warmly, and said,
+"May I give you one piece of advice in return?  Mr. Richard Raby has
+fallen in love with you, and no wonder.  If my heart was not full of
+Grace I should have fallen in love with you myself, you are so good
+and so beautiful; but he bears a bad character.  You are wise in
+other people's affairs, pray don't be foolish in your own."
+
+"Thank you," said Jael, a little dryly.  "I shall think twice before
+I give my affections to any young man."
+
+Henry had a word with his mother before he went, and begged her not
+to prepare disappointment for herself by trying to bring Jael and
+him together.  "Besides, she has taken a spite against me.  To be
+sure it is not very deep; for she gave me good advice; and I advised
+her not to throw herself away on Dissolute Dick."
+
+Mrs. Little smiled knowingly and looked very much pleased, but she
+said nothing more just then.  Henry Little returned to Hillsborough,
+and put his advertisement in "The Times" and the Hillsborough
+journals.
+
+Two days afterward Ransome called on him with the "Hillsborough
+Liberal."  "Is this yours?" said Ransome.
+
+"Yes.  I have reason to think she will write to me, if she sees it."
+
+"Would you mind giving me your reason?"
+
+Little gave it, but with so much reticence, that no other man in
+Hillsborough but Ransome would have understood.
+
+"Hum!" said he, "I think I can do something with this."  A period of
+expectation succeeded, hopeful at first, and full of excitement; but
+weeks rolled on without a word from the fugitive, and Little's heart
+sickened with hope deferred.  He often wished to consult Jael Dence
+again; he had a superstitious belief in her sagacity.  But the
+recollection of her cold manner deterred him.  At last, however,
+impatience and the sense of desolation conquered, and he rode over
+to Raby Hall.
+
+He found his uncle and his mother in the dining-room.  Mr. Raby was
+walking about looking vexed, and even irritable.
+
+The cause soon transpired.  Dissolute Dick was at that moment in the
+drawing-room, making hot love to Jael Dence.  He had wooed her ever
+since that fatal evening when she burst on society full-blown.
+Raby, too proud and generous to forbid his addresses, had
+nevertheless been always bitterly averse to them, and was now in a
+downright rage; for Mrs. Little had just told him she felt sure he
+was actually proposing.
+
+"Confound him!" said Henry, "and I wanted so to speak to her."
+
+Raby gave him a most singular look, that struck him as odd at the
+time, and recurred to him afterward.
+
+At last steps were heard overhead, and Dissolute Dick came down-
+stairs.
+
+Mrs. Little slipped out, and soon after put her head into the
+dining-room to the gentlemen, and whispered to them "YES."  Then she
+retired to talk it all over with Jael.
+
+At that monosyllable Mr. Raby was very much discomposed.
+
+"There goes a friend out of this house; more fools we.  You have
+lost her by your confounded folly.  What is the use spooning all
+your days after another man's wife?  I wouldn't have had this happen
+for ten thousand pounds.  Dissolute Dick! he will break her heart in
+a twelvemouth."
+
+"Then why, in heaven's name, didn't you marry her yourself?"
+
+"Me! at my age?  No; why didn't YOU marry her?  You know she fancies
+you.  The moment you found Grace married, you ought to have secured
+this girl, and lived with me; the house is big enough for you all."
+
+"It is not so big as your heart, sir," said Henry. "But pray don't
+speak to me of love or marriage either."
+
+"Why should I?  The milk is spilt; it is no use crying now.  Let us
+go and dress for dinner.  Curse the world--it is one disappointment."
+
+Little himself was vexed, but he determined to put a good face on
+it, and to be very kind to his good friend Jael.
+
+She did not appear at dinner, and when the servants had retired, he
+said, "Come now, let us make the best of it.  Mother, if you don't
+mind, I will settle five thousand pounds upon her and her children.
+He is a spendthrift, I hear, and as poor as Job."
+
+Mrs. Little stared at her son.  "Why, she has refused him!"
+
+Loud exclamations of surprise and satisfaction.
+
+"A fine fright you have given us.  You said 'Yes.'"
+
+"Well, that meant he had proposed.  You know, Guy, I had told you he
+would: I saw it in his eye.  So I observed, in a moment, he HAD, and
+I said 'Yes.'"
+
+"Then why doesn't she come down to dinner?"
+
+"He has upset her.  It is the old story: he cried to her, and told
+her he had been wild, and misconducted himself, all because he had
+never met a woman he could really love and respect; and then he
+begged her, and implored her, and said his fate depended on her."
+
+"But she was not caught with that chaff; so why does she not come
+and receive the congratulations of the company on her escape?"
+
+"Because she is far too delicate;" then, turning to her son, "and
+perhaps, because she can't help comparing the manly warmth and
+loving appreciation of Mr. Richard Raby, with the cold indifference
+and ingratitude of others."
+
+"Oh," said Henry, coloring, "if that is her feeling, she will accept
+him next time."
+
+"Next time!" roared Raby.  "There shall be no next time.  I have
+given the scamp fair play, quite against my own judgment.  He has
+got his answer now, and I won't have the girl tormented with him any
+more.  I trust that to you, Edith."
+
+Mrs. Little promised him Dick and Jael should not meet again, in
+Raby Hall at least.
+
+That evening she drew her son apart and made an earnest appeal to
+him.
+
+"So much for her spite against you, Henry.  You told her to decline
+Richard Raby, and so she declined him.  Spite, indeed!  The gentle
+pique of a lovely, good girl, who knows her value, though she is too
+modest to show it openly.  Well, Henry, you have lost her a husband,
+and she has given you one more proof of affection.  Don't build the
+mountain of ingratitude any higher: do pray take the cure that
+offers, and make your mother happy, as well as yourself, my son."
+In this strain she continued, and used all her art, her influence,
+her affection, till at last, with a weary, heart-broken sigh, he
+yielded as far as this: he said that, if it could once be made clear
+to him there was no hope of his ever marrying Grace Carden he would
+wed Jael Dence at once.
+
+Then he ordered his trap, and drove sullenly home, while Mrs.
+Little, full of delight, communicated her triumph to Jael Dence, and
+told her about the five thousand pounds, and was as enthusiastic in
+praise of Henry to Jael, as she had been of Jael to Henry.
+
+Meantime he drove back to Hillsborough, more unhappy than ever, and
+bitter against himself for yielding, even so far, to gratitude and
+maternal influence.
+
+It was late when he reached home.  He let himself in with a latch-
+key, and went into his room for a moment.
+
+A letter lay on the table, with no stamp on it: he took it up.  It
+contained but one line; that line made his heart leap:
+
+"News of G. C.  RANSOME."
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+
+Late as it was, Little went to the Town-hall directly.  But there,
+to his bitter disappointment, he learned that Mr. Ransome had been
+called to Manchester by telegram.  Little had nothing to do but to
+wait, and eat his heart with impatience.  However, next day, toward
+afternoon, Ransome called on him at the works, in considerable
+excitement, and told him a new firm had rented large business
+premises in Manchester, obtained goods, insured them in the
+"Gosshawk," and then the premises had caught fire and the goods been
+burned to ashes; suspicions had been excited; Mr. Carden had gone to
+the spot and telegraphed for him.  He had met a London detective
+there, and, between them, they had soon discovered that full cases
+had come in by day, but full sacks gone out by night: the ashes also
+revealed no trace of certain goods the firm had insured.  "And now
+comes the clew to it all.  Amongst the few things that survived the
+fire was a photograph--of whom do you think?  Shifty Dick.  The dog
+had kept his word, and gone into trade."
+
+"Confound him!" said Little; "he is always crossing my path, that
+fellow.  You seem quite to forget that all this time I am in agonies
+of suspense.  What do I care about Shifty Dick?  He is nothing to
+me."
+
+"Of course not.  I am full of the fellow; a little more, and he'll
+make a monomaniac of me.  Mr. Carden offers L200 for his capture;
+and we got an inkling he was coming this way again.  There, there, I
+won't mention his name to you again.  Let us talk of what WILL
+interest you.  Well, sir, have you observed that you are followed
+and watched?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I am glad of it; then it has been done skillfully.  You have been
+closely watched this month past by my orders."
+
+This made young Little feel queer.  Suppose he had attempted
+anything unlawful, his good friend here would have collared him.
+
+"You'll wonder that a good citizen like you should be put under
+surveillance; but I thought it likely your advertisement would
+either make the lady write to you, or else draw her back to the
+town.  She didn't write, so I had you watched, to see if any body
+took a sly peep at you.  Well, this went on for weeks, and nothing
+turned up.  But the other night a young woman walked several times
+by your house, and went away with a sigh.  She had a sort of
+Protestant nun's dress on, and a thick veil.  Now you know Mr Carden
+told you she was gone into a convent.  I am almost sure it is the
+lady."
+
+Little thanked him with all his soul, and then inquired eagerly
+where the nun lived.
+
+"Ah, my man didn't know that.  Unfortunately, he was on duty in the
+street, and had no authority to follow anybody.  However, if you can
+keep yourself calm, and obey orders--"
+
+"I will do anything you tell me."
+
+"Well, then, this evening, as soon as it is quite dark, you do what
+I have seen you do in happier times.  Light your reading-lamp, and
+sit reading close to the window; only you must not pull down the
+blind.  Lower the venetians, but don't turn them so as to hide your
+face from the outside.  You must promise me faithfully not to move
+under any circumstances, or you would be sure to spoil all."
+
+Little gave the promise, and performed it to the letter.  He lighted
+his lamp, and tried to read book after book; but, of course, he was
+too agitated to fix his attention on them.  He got all Grace's
+letters, and read them; and it was only by a stern effort he kept
+still at all.
+
+The night wore on, and heart-sickness was beginning to succeed to
+feverish impatience, when there was a loud knock at the door.
+Little ran to it himself, and found a sergeant of police, who told
+him in a low voice he brought a message from the chief-constable.
+
+"I was to tell you it is all right; he is following the party
+himself.  He will call on you at twelve to-morrow morning."
+
+"Not before that?" said Little.  However, he gave the sergeant a
+sovereign for good news, and then, taking his hat, walked twenty
+miles out of Hillsborough, and back, for he knew it was useless his
+going to bed, or trying to settle to any thing.
+
+He got back at ten o'clock, washed, breakfasted, and dozed on two
+chairs, till Ransome came, with a carpet-bag in his hand.
+
+"Tell me all about it: don't omit any thing."  This was Little's
+greeting.
+
+"Well, sir, she passed the house about nine o'clock, walking
+quickly; and took just one glance in at your window, but did not
+stop.  She came back in half an hour, and stood on the opposite side
+of the way, and then passed on.  I hid in a court, where she
+couldn't see me.  By-and-by she comes back, on your side the way
+this time, gliding like a cat, and she crouched and curled round the
+angle of the house, and took a good look at you.  Then she went
+slowly away, and I passed her.  She was crying bitterly, poor girl!
+I never lost sight of her, and she led me a dance, I can tell you.
+I'll take you to the place; but you had better let me disguise you;
+for I can see she is very timid, and would fly away in a moment if
+she knew she was detected."
+
+Little acquiesced, and Ransome disguised him in a beard and a loose
+set of clothes, and a billy-cock hat, and said that would do, as
+long as he kept at a prudent distance from the lady's eye.  They
+then took a cab and drove out of Hillsborough.  When they had
+proceeded about two miles up the valley, Ransome stopped the cab,
+and directed the driver to wait for them.
+
+He then walked on, and soon came to a row of houses, in two blocks
+of four houses each.
+
+The last house of the first block had a bill in the window, "To be
+let furnished."
+
+He then knocked at the door, and a woman in charge of the house
+opened it.
+
+"I am the chief-constable of Hillsborough; and this is my friend Mr.
+Park; he is looking out for a furnished house.  Can he see this
+one?"
+
+The woman said, "Certainly, gentlemen," and showed them over the
+house.
+
+Ransome opened the second-story window, and looked out on the back
+garden.
+
+"Ah," said he, "these houses have nice long gardens in the rear,
+where one can walk and be private."
+
+He then nudged Henry, and asked the woman who lived in the first
+house of the next block--"the house that garden belongs to?"
+
+"Why, the bill was in the window the other day; but it is just took.
+She is a kind of a nun, I suppose: keeps no servant: only a girl
+comes in and does for her, and goes home at night.  I saw her
+yesterday, walking in the garden there.  She seems rather young to
+be all alone like that; but perhaps there's some more of 'em coming.
+They sort o' cattle mostly goes in bands."
+
+Henry asked what was the rent of the house.  The woman did not know,
+but told him the proprietor lived a few doors off.  "I shall take
+this house," said Little.  "I think you are right," observed
+Ransome: "it will just answer your purpose."  They went together,
+and took the house directly; and Henry, by advice of Ransome,
+engaged a woman to come into the house in the morning, and go away
+at dusk.  Ransome also advised him to make arrangements for watching
+Grace's garden unseen.  "That will be a great comfort to you," said
+he: "I know by experience.  Above all things," said this sagacious
+officer, "don't you let her know she is discovered.  Remember this:
+when she wants you to know she is here, she'll be sure to let you
+know.  At present she is here on the sly: so if you thwart her,
+she'll be off again, as sure as fate."
+
+Little was forced to see the truth of this, and promised to restrain
+himself, hard as the task was.  He took the house; and used to let
+himself into it with a latch-key at about ten o clock every night.
+
+There he used to stay and watch till past noon; and nearly every day
+he was rewarded by seeing the Protestant nun walk in her garden.
+
+He was restless and miserable till she came out; when she appeared
+his heart bounded and thrilled; and when once he had feasted his
+eyes upon her, he would go about the vulgar affairs of life pretty
+contentedly.
+
+By advice of Ransome, he used to sit in his other house from seven
+till nine, and read at the window, to afford his beloved a joy
+similar to that he stole himself.
+
+And such is the power of true love that these furtive glances
+soothed two lives.  Little's spirits revived, and some color came
+back to Grace's cheek.
+
+One night there was a house broken into in the row.
+
+Instantly Little took the alarm on Grace's account, and bought
+powder and bullets, and a double-barreled rifle, and a revolver; and
+now at the slightest sound he would be out of bed in a moment ready
+to defend her, if necessary.
+
+Thus they both kept their hearts above water, and Grace visited the
+sick, and employed her days in charity; and then, for a reward,
+crept, with soft foot, to Henry's window, and devoured him with her
+eyes, and fed on that look for hours afterward.
+
+When this had gone on for nearly a month, Lally, who had orders to
+keep his eye on Mr. Little, happened to come and see Grace looking
+in at him.
+
+He watched her at a distance, but had not the intelligence to follow
+her home.  He had no idea it was Grace Carden.
+
+However, in his next letter to his master, who was then in London,
+he told him Little always read at night by the window, and, one
+night, a kind of nun had come and taken a very long look at him, and
+gone away crying.  "I suspect," said Lally, "she has played the fool
+with him some time or other, before she was a nun."
+
+He was not a little surprised when his master telegraphed in reply
+that he would be down by the first train; but the fact is, that
+Coventry had already called on Mr. Carden, and been told that his
+wife was in a convent, and he would never see her again.  I must add
+that Mr. Carden received him as roughly as he had Little, but the
+interview terminated differently.  Coventry, with his winning
+tongue, and penitence and plausibility, softened the indignant
+father, and then, appealing to his good sense, extorted from him the
+admission that his daughter's only chance of happiness lay in
+forgiving him, and allowing him to atone his faults by a long life
+of humble devotion.  But when Coventry, presuming on this, implored
+him to reveal where she was, the old man stood stanch, and said that
+was told him under a solemn assurance of secrecy, and nothing should
+induce him to deceive his daughter.  "I will not lose her love and
+confidence for any of you," said he.
+
+So now Coventry put that word "convent" and this word "nun"
+together, and came to Hillsborough full of suspicions.
+
+He took lodgings nearly opposite Little's house, and watched in a
+dark room so persistently, that, at last, he saw the nun appear, saw
+her stealthy, cat-like approaches, her affected retreat, her cunning
+advance, her long lingering look.
+
+A close observer of women, he saw in every movement of her supple
+body that she was animated by love.
+
+He raged and sickened with jealousy, and when, at last, she retired,
+he followed her, with hell in his heart, and never lost sight of her
+till she entered her house in the valley.
+
+If there had been a house to let in the terrace, he would certainly
+have taken it; but Little had anticipated him.
+
+He took a very humble lodging in the neighborhood; and by dint of
+watching, he at last saw the nun speaking to a poor woman with her
+veil up.  It revealed to him nothing but what he knew already.  It
+was the woman he loved, and she hated him; the woman who had married
+him under a delusion, and stabbed him on his bridal day.  He loved
+her all the more passionately for that.
+
+Until he received Lally's note, he had been content to wait
+patiently until his rival should lose hope, and carry himself and
+his affections elsewhere; he felt sure that must be the end of it.
+
+But now jealousy stung him, wild passion became too strong for
+reason, and he resolved to play a bold and lawless game to possess
+his lawful wife.  Should it fail, what could they do to him?  A man
+may take his own by force.  Not only his passions, but the
+circumstances tempted him.  She was actually living alone, in a
+thinly-peopled district, and close to a road.  It was only to cover
+her head and stifle her cries, and fly with her to some place
+beforehand prepared, where she would be brought to submission by
+kindness of manner combined with firmness of purpose.
+
+Coventry possessed every qualification to carry out such a scheme as
+this.  He was not very courageous; yet he was not a coward: and no
+great courage was required.  Cunning, forethought, and
+unscrupulousness were the principal things, and these he had to
+perfection.
+
+He provided a place to keep her; it was a shooting-box of his own,
+on a heathery hill, that nobody visited except for shooting, and the
+season for shooting was past.
+
+He armed himself with false certificates of lunacy, to show on an
+emergency, and also a copy of his marriage certificate: he knew how
+unwilling strangers are to interfere between man and wife.
+
+The only great difficulty was to get resolute men to help him in
+this act.
+
+He sounded Cole; but that worthy objected to it, as being out of his
+line.
+
+Coventry talked him over, and offered a sum that made him tremble
+with cupidity.  He assented on one condition--that he should not be
+expected to break into the house, nor do any act that should be
+"construed burglarious."  He actually used that phrase, which I
+should hardly have expected from him.
+
+Coventry assented to this condition.  He undertook to get into the
+house, and open the door to Cole and his myrmidons: he stipulated,
+however, that Cole should make a short iron ladder with four sharp
+prongs.  By means of this he could enter Grace's house at a certain
+unguarded part and then run down and unbar the front door.  He had
+thoroughly reconnoitered the premises, and was sure of success.
+
+First one day was appointed for the enterprise, then another, and,
+at last, it was their luck to settle on a certain night, of which I
+will only say at present, that it was a night Hillsborough and its
+suburbs will not soon forget.
+
+Midnight was the hour agreed on.
+
+Now at nine o'clock of this very night the chief-constable of
+Hillsborough was drinking tea with Little scarcely twenty yards from
+the scene of the proposed abduction.  Not that either he or Little
+had the least notion of the conspiracy.  The fact is, Hillsborough
+had lately been deluged with false coin, neatly executed, and passed
+with great dexterity.  The police had received many complaints, but
+had been unable to trace it.  Lately, however, an old bachelor,
+living in this suburban valley, had complained to the police that
+his neighbors kept such enormous fires all night, as to make his
+wall red-hot and blister his paint.
+
+This, and one or two other indications, made Ransome suspect the
+existence of a furnace, and he had got a search-warrant in his
+pocket, on which, however, he did not think it safe to act till he
+had watched the suspected house late at night, and made certain
+observations for himself.  So he had invited himself to tea with his
+friend Little--for he was sure of a hearty welcome at any hour--and,
+over their tea, he now told him his suspicions, and invited him to
+come in and take a look at the suspected house with him.
+
+Little consented.  But there was no hurry; the later they went to
+the house in question the better.  So they talked of other matters,
+and the conversation soon fell on that which was far more
+interesting to Little than the capture of all the coiners in
+creation.
+
+He asked Ransome how long he was to go on like this, contenting
+himself with the mere sight of her.
+
+"Why;" said Ransome, "even that has made another man of you.  Your
+eye is twice as bright as it was a month ago, and your color is
+coming back.  That is a wise proverb, 'Let well alone.'  I hear she
+visits the sick, and some of them swear by her.  If think I'd give
+her time to take root here; and then she will not be so ready to fly
+off in a tangent."
+
+Little objected that it was more than flesh and blood could bear.
+
+"Well, then," said Ransome, "promise me just one thing: that, if you
+speak to her, it shall be in Hillsborough, and not down here."
+
+Little saw the wisdom of this, and consented, but said he was
+resolved to catch her at his own window the next time she came.
+
+He was about to give his reasons, but they were interrupted by a man
+and horse clattering up to the door.
+
+"That will be for me," said Ransome.  "I thought I should not get
+leave to drink my tea in peace."
+
+He was right; a mounted policeman brought him a note from the mayor,
+telling him word had come into the town that there was something
+wrong with Ousely dam.  He was to take the mayor's horse, and ride
+up at once to the reservoir, and, if there was any danger, to warn
+the valley.
+
+"This looks serious," said Ransome.  "I must wish you good-by."
+
+"Take a piece of advice with you.  I hear that dam is too full; if
+so, don't listen to advice from anybody, but open the sluices of the
+waste-pipes, and relieve the pressure; but if you find a flaw in the
+embankment, don't trifle, blow up the waste-wear at once with
+gunpowder.  I wish I had a horse, I'd go with you.  By the way, if
+there is the least danger of that dam bursting, of course you will
+give me warning in time, and I'll get her out of the house at once."
+
+"What, do you think the water would get as far as this, to do any
+harm?  It is six miles."
+
+"It might.  Look at the form of the ground; it is a regular trough
+from that dam to Hillsborough.  My opinion is, it would sweep
+everything before it, and flood Hillsborough itself--the lower town.
+I shall not go to bed, old fellow, till you come back and tell me it
+is all right."
+
+With this understanding Ransome galloped off.  On his way he passed
+by the house where he suspected coining.  The shutters were closed,
+but his experienced eye detected a bright light behind one of them,
+and a peculiar smoke from the chimney.
+
+Adding this to his other evidence, he now felt sure the inmates were
+coiners, and he felt annoyed.  "Fine I look," said he, "walking
+tamely past criminals at work, and going to a mayor's nest six miles
+off."
+
+However he touched the horse with his heel, and cantered forward on
+his errand.
+
+John Ransome rode up to the Ousely Reservoir, and down again in less
+than an hour and a half; and every incident of those two rides is
+imprinted on his memory for life.
+
+He first crossed the water at Poma bridge.  The village of that name
+lay on his right, toward Hillsborough, and all the lights were out
+except in the two public houses.  One of these, "The Reindeer," was
+near the bridge, and from it a ruddy glare shot across the road, and
+some boon companions were singing, in very good harmony, a trite
+Scotch chorus:
+
+
+     "We are no that fou, we are no that fou,
+       But just a drappie in our ee;
+     The cock may craw, the day may daw,
+       But still we'll taste the barley bree."
+
+
+Ransome could hear the very words; he listened, he laughed, and then
+rode up the valley till he got opposite a crinoline-wire factory
+called the "Kildare Wheel."  Here he observed a single candle
+burning; a watcher, no doubt.
+
+The next place he saw was also on the other side the stream;
+Dolman's farm-house, the prettiest residence in the valley.  It was
+built of stone, and beautifully situated on a promontory between two
+streams.  It had a lawn in front, which went down to the very edge
+of the water, and was much admired for its close turf and flowers.
+The farm buildings lay behind the house.
+
+There was no light whatever in Dolman's; but they were early people.
+The house and lawn slept peacefully in the night: the windows were
+now shining, now dark, for small fleecy clouds kept drifting at
+short intervals across the crescent moon.
+
+Ransome pushed on across the open ground, and for a mile or two saw
+few signs of life, except here and there a flickering light in some
+water-wheel, for now one picturesque dam and wheel succeeded another
+as rapidly as Nature permitted; and indeed the size of these dams,
+now shining in the fitful moonlight, seemed remarkable, compared
+with the mere thread of water which fed them, and connected them
+together for miles like pearls on a silver string.
+
+Ransome pushed rapidly on, up hill and down dale, till he reached
+the high hill, at whose foot lay the hamlet of Damflask, distant two
+miles from Ousely Reservoir.
+
+He looked down and saw a few lights in this hamlet, some stationary,
+but two moving.
+
+"Hum," thought Ransome, "they don't seem to be quite so easy in
+their minds up here."
+
+He dashed into the place, and drew up at the house where several
+persons were collected.
+
+As he came up, a singular group issued forth: a man with a pig-whip,
+driving four children--the eldest not above seven years old--and
+carrying an infant in his arms.  The little imps were clad in shoes,
+night-gowns, night-caps, and a blanket apiece, and were shivering
+and whining at being turned out of bed into the night air.
+
+Ransome asked the man what was the matter
+
+One of the by-standers laughed, and said, satirically, Ousely dam
+was to burst that night, so all the pigs and children were making
+for the hill.
+
+The man himself, whose name was Joseph Galton, explained more fully.
+
+"Sir," said he, "my wife is groaning, and I am bound to obey her.
+She had a dream last night she was in a flood, and had to cross a
+plank or summut.  I quieted her till supper; but then landlord came
+round and warned all of us of a crack or summut up at dam.  And so
+now I am taking this little lot up to my brother's.  It's the
+foolishest job I ever done: but needs must when the devil drives,
+and it is better so than to have my old gal sour her milk, and pine
+her suckling, and maybe fret herself to death into the bargain."
+
+Ransome seized on the information, and rode on directly to the
+village inn.  He called the landlord out, and asked him what he had
+been telling the villagers.  Was there any thing seriously amiss up
+at the reservoir?
+
+"Nay, I hope not," said the man; "but we got a bit of a fright this
+afternoon.  A young man rode through, going down to Hillsborough,
+and stopped here to have his girth mended; he had broke it coming
+down our hill.  While he was taking a glass he let out his errand;
+they had found a crack in the embankment, and sent him down to
+Hillsborough to tell Mr. Tucker, the engineer.  Bless your heart, we
+should never have known aught about it if his girth hadn't broke."
+He added, as a reason for thinking it was not serious that Mr.
+Tucker had himself inspected the dam just before tea-time, and
+hadn't even seen the crack.  It was a laboring man who had
+discovered it, through crossing the embankment lower down than
+usual.  "But you see, sir," said he, in conclusion, "we lie very low
+here, and right in the track; and so we mustn't make light of a
+warning.  And, of course, many of the workmen stop here and have
+their say; and, to tell you the truth, one or two of them have
+always misliked the foundation that embankment is built on: too many
+old landslips to be seen about.  But, after all, I suppose they can
+empty the dam, if need be; and, of course, they will, if there is
+any danger.  I expect Mr. Tucker up every minute."
+
+Ransome thanked him for his information and pushed on to Lower
+Hatfield: there he found lights in the houses and the inhabitants
+astir; but he passed through the village in silence, and came to the
+great corn-mill, a massive stone structure with granite pillars, the
+pride of the place.  The building was full of lights, and the cranes
+were all at work hoisting the sacks of flour from the lower floors
+to the top story.  The faces of the men reflected in the flaring
+gas, and the black cranes with their gaunt arms, and the dark bodies
+rising by the snake-like cords, formed a curious picture in the
+fluctuating moonlight, and an interesting one too; for it showed the
+miller did not feel his flour quite safe.
+
+The next place Ransome came to was Fox Farm.
+
+Farmer Emden was standing at the door of his house, and, in reply to
+Ransome, told him he had just come down from the reservoir.  He had
+seen the crack and believed it to be a mere frost crack.  He
+apprehended no danger, and had sent his people to bed; however, he
+should sit up for an hour or two just to hear what Tucker the
+engineer had to say about it; he had been sent for.
+
+Ransome left him, and a smart canter brought him in sight of what
+seemed a long black hill, with great glow-worms dotted here and
+there.
+
+That hill was the embankment, and the glow-worms were the lanterns
+of workmen examining the outer side of the embankment and prying
+into every part.
+
+The enormous size and double slope of the bank, its apparent
+similarity in form and thickness to those natural barriers with
+which nature hems in lakes of large dimensions, acted on Ransome's
+senses, and set him wondering at the timidity and credulity of the
+people in Hatfield and Damflask.  This sentiment was uppermost in
+his mind when he rode up to the south side of the embankment.
+
+He gave his horse to a boy, and got upon the embankment and looked
+north.
+
+The first glance at the water somewhat shook that impression of
+absolute security the outer side of the barrier had given him.
+
+In nature a lake lies at the knees of the restraining hills, or else
+has a sufficient outlet.
+
+But here was a lake nearly full to the brim on one side of the
+barrier and an open descent on the other.
+
+He had encountered a little wind coming up, but not much; here,
+however, the place being entirely exposed, the wind was powerful and
+blew right down the valley ruffling the artificial lake.
+
+Altogether it was a solemn scene, and, even at first glance, one
+that could not be surveyed, after all those comments and reports,
+without some awe and anxiety.  The surface of the lake shone like a
+mirror, and waves of some size dashed against the embankment with a
+louder roar than one would have thought possible, and tossed some
+spray clean over all; while, overhead, clouds, less fleecy now, and
+more dark and sullen, drifted so swiftly across the crescent moon
+that she seemed flying across the sky.
+
+Having now realized that the embankment, huge as it was, was not so
+high by several hundred feet as nature builds in parallel cases, and
+that, besides the natural pressure of the whole water, the upper
+surface of the lake was being driven by the wind against the upper
+or thin part of the embankment, Ransome turned and went down the
+embankment to look at the crack and hear opinions.
+
+There were several workmen, an intelligent farmer called Ives, and
+Mr. Mountain, one of the contractors who had built the dam, all
+examining the crack.
+
+Mr. Mountain was remarking that the crack was perfectly dry, a plain
+proof there was no danger.
+
+"Ay, but," said Ives, "it has got larger since tea-time; see, I can
+get my hand in now."
+
+"Can you account for that?" asked Ransome of the contractor.
+
+Mountain said it was caused by the embankment settling.  "Everything
+settles down a little--houses and embankments and all.  There's no
+danger, Mr. Ransome, believe me."
+
+"Well, sir," said Ransome, "I am not a man of science, but I have
+got eyes, and I see the water is very high, and driving against your
+weak part.  Ah!"  Then he remembered Little's advice.  "Would you
+mind opening the sluice-pipes?"
+
+"Not in the least, but I think it is the engineer's business to give
+an order of that kind."
+
+"But he is not here, and professional etiquette must give way where
+property and lives, perhaps, are at stake.  To tell you the truth,
+Mr. Mountain, I have got the advice of an abler man than Mr. Tucker.
+His word to me was, 'If the water is as high as they say, don't
+waste time, but open the sluices and relieve the dam.'"
+
+The workmen who had said scarcely a word till then, raised an
+assenting murmur at the voice of common sense.
+
+Mountain admitted it could do no harm, and gave an order
+accordingly; screws wore applied and the valves of the double set of
+sluice-pipes were forced open, but with infinite difficulty, owing
+to the tremendous pressure of the water.
+
+This operation showed all concerned what a giant they were dealing
+with; while the sluices were being lifted, the noise and tremor of
+the pipes were beyond experience and conception.  When, after vast
+efforts, they were at last got open, the ground trembled violently,
+and the water, as it rushed out of the pipes, roared like discharges
+of artillery.  So hard is it to resist the mere effect of the
+senses, that nearly every body ran back appalled, although the
+effect of all this roaring could only be to relieve the pressure;
+and, in fact, now that those sluices were opened, the dam was safe,
+provided it could last a day or two.
+
+Lights were seen approaching, and Mr. Tucker, the resident engineer,
+drove up; he had Mr. Carter, one of the contractors, in the gig with
+him.
+
+He came on the embankment, and signified a cold approval of the
+sluices being opened.
+
+Then Ransome sounded him about blowing up the waste-wear.
+
+Tucker did not reply, but put some questions to a workman or two.
+Their answers showed that they considered the enlargement of the
+crack a fatal sign.
+
+Upon this Mr. Tucker ordered them all to stand clear of the
+suspected part.
+
+"Now, then," said he, "I built this embankment, and I'll tell you
+whether it is going to burst or not."
+
+Then he took a lantern, and was going to inspect the crack himself;
+but Mr. Carter, respecting his courage and coolness, would accompany
+him.  They went to the crack, examined it carefully with their
+lanterns, and then crossed over to the waste-wear; no water was
+running into it in the ordinary way, which showed the dam was not
+full to its utmost capacity.
+
+They returned, and consulted with Mountain.
+
+Ransome put in his word, and once more remembering Little's advice,
+begged them to blow up the waste-wear.
+
+Tucker thought that was a stronger measure than the occasion
+required; there was no immediate danger; and the sluice-pipes would
+lower the water considerably in twenty-four hours.
+
+Farmer Ives put in his word.  "I can't learn from any of you that an
+enlarging crack in a new embankment is a common thing.  I shall go
+home, but my boots won't come off this night."
+
+Encouraged by this, Mr. Mountain, the contractor, spoke out.
+
+"Mr. Tucker," said he, "don't deceive yourself; the sluice-pipes are
+too slow; if we don't relieve the dam, there'll be a blow-up in half
+an hour; mark my words."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Tucker, "no precaution has been neglected in
+building this dam: provision has been made even for blowing up the
+waste-wear; a hole has been built in the masonry, and there's dry
+powder and a fuse kept at the valve-house.  I'll blow up the waste-
+wear, though I think it needless.  I am convinced that crack is
+above the level of the water in the reservoir."
+
+This observation struck Ransome, and he asked if it could not be
+ascertained by measurement.
+
+"Of course it can," said Tucker, "and I'll measure it as I come
+back."
+
+He then started for the wear, and Carter accompanied him.
+
+They crossed the embankment, and got to the wear.
+
+Ives went home, and the workmen withdrew to the side, not knowing
+exactly what might be the effect of the explosion.
+
+By-and-by Ransome looked up, and observed a thin sheet of water
+beginning to stream over the center of the embankment and trickle
+down: the quantity was nothing; but it alarmed him.  Having no
+special knowledge on these matters, he was driven to comparisons;
+and it flashed across him that, when he was a boy, and used to make
+little mud-dams in April, they would resist the tiny stream until it
+trickled over them, and from that moment their fate was sealed.
+Nature, he had observed, operates alike in small things and great,
+and that sheet of water, though thin as a wafer, alarmed him.
+
+He thought it was better to give a false warning than withhold a
+true one; he ran to his horse, jumped on him, and spurred away.
+
+His horse was fast and powerful, and carried him in three minutes
+back to Emden's farm.  The farmer had gone to bed.  Ransome knocked
+him up, and told him he feared the dam was going; then galloped on
+to Hatfield Mill.  Here he found the miller and his family all
+gathered outside, ready for a start; one workman had run down from
+the reservoir.
+
+"The embankment is not safe."
+
+"So I hear.  I'll take care of my flour and my folk.  The mill will
+take care of itself."  And he pointed with pride to the solid
+structure and granite pillars.
+
+Ransome galloped on, shouting as he went.
+
+The shout was taken up ahead, and he heard a voice crying in the
+night, "IT'S COMING!  IT'S COMING!"  This weird cry, which, perhaps,
+his own galloping and shouting had excited, seemed like an
+independent warning, and thrilled him to the bone.  He galloped
+through Hatfield, shouting, "Save yourselves!  Save yourselves!" and
+the people poured out, and ran for high ground, shrieking wildly;
+looking back, he saw the hill dotted with what he took for sheep at
+first, but it was the folk in their night-clothes.
+
+He galloped on to Damflask, still shouting as he went.
+
+At the edge of the hamlet, he found a cottage with no light in it;
+he dismounted and thundered at the door: "Escape for your lives! for
+your lives!"
+
+A man called Hillsbro' Harry opened the window.
+
+"The embankrncnt is going.  Fly for your lives!"
+
+"Nay," said the man, coolly, "Ouseley dam will brust noane this
+week," and turned to go to bed again.
+
+He found Joseph Galton and another man carrying Mrs. Galton and her
+new-born child away in a blanket.  This poor woman, who had sent her
+five children away on the faith of a dream, was now objecting, in a
+faint voice, to be saved herself from evident danger.  "Oh, dear,
+dear! you might as well let me go down with the flood as kill me
+with taking me away."
+
+Such was the sapient discourse of Mrs. Galton, who, half an hour
+ago, had been supernaturally wise and prudent.  Go to, wise mother
+and silly woman; men will love thee none the less for the
+inequalities of thine intellect; and honest Joe will save thy life,
+and heed thy twaddle no more than the bleating of a lamb.
+
+Ransome had not left the Galtons many yards behind him, when there
+was a sharp explosion heard up in the hills.
+
+Ransome pulled up and said aloud, "It will be all right now, thank
+goodness! they have blown up the wear."
+
+The words were scarcely out of his mouth when he heard a loud sullen
+roar, speedily followed by a tremendous hiss, and a rumbling
+thunder, that shook the very earth where he stood, two miles
+distant.
+
+This is what had taken place since he left the reservoir, but ten
+minutes ago.
+
+Mr. Tucker and Mr. Carter laid the gunpowder and the train, and
+lighted the latter, and came back across the middle of the
+embankment.
+
+Being quite safe here from the effect of the explosion, Mr. Tucker
+was desirous to establish by measurement that the water in the
+reservoir had not risen so high as the crack in the embankment.
+
+With this view he took out a measure, and, at some risk of being
+swept into eternity, began coolly to measure the crack downward.
+
+At this very time water was trickling over; and that alarmed Carter,
+and he told Tucker they were trifling with their own lives.
+
+"Oh," said Tucker, "that is only the spray from the waves."
+
+They actually measured the crack, stooping over it with their
+lanterns.
+
+When they had done that, Carter raised his head, and suddenly
+clutched Tucker by the arm and pointed upward.  The water was
+pouring over the top, still in a thin sheet, but then that sheet was
+gradually widening.  The water came down to their feet, and some of
+it disappeared in the crack; and the crack itself looked a little
+larger than when last inspected.  Tucker said, gravely, "I don't
+like that: but let me examine the valve-house at once."  He got down
+to the valve-house, but before he could ascertain what quantity of
+water was escaping Carter called to him, "Come out, for God's sake,
+or you are lost."
+
+He came running out, and saw an opening thirty feet wide and nearly
+a foot deep, and a powerful stream rushing over it.
+
+The moment Tucker saw that, he cried, "It's all up, the embankment
+must go!"  And, the feeling of the architect overpowering the
+instincts of the man, he stood aghast.  But Carter laid hold of him,
+and dragged him away.
+
+Then he came to himself, and they ran across the embankment.
+
+As they started, the powder, which had hung fire unaccountably, went
+off, and blew up the waste-wear; but they scarcely heard it; for, as
+they ran, the rent above kept enlarging and deepening at a fearful
+rate, and the furious stream kept rushing past their flying heels,
+and threatened to sweep them sideways to destruction.
+
+They were safe at last; but even as they stood panting, the rent in
+the top of the embankment spread--deepened--yawned terrifically--and
+the pent-up lake plunged through, and sweeping away at once the
+center of the embankment, rushed, roaring and hissing, down the
+valley, an avalanche of water, whirling great trees up by the roots,
+and sweeping huge rocks away, and driving them, like corks, for
+miles.
+
+At that appalling sound, that hissing thunder, the like of which he
+had never heard before, and hopes never to hear again, Ransome
+spurred away at all his speed, and warned the rest of the village
+with loud inarticulate cries: he could not wait to speak, nor was it
+necessary.
+
+At the top of the hill he turned a moment, and looked up the valley;
+soon he saw a lofty white wall running down on Hatfield Mill: it
+struck the mill, and left nothing visible but the roof, surrounded
+by white foam.
+
+Another moment, and he distinctly saw the mill swim a yard or two,
+then disappear and leave no trace, and on came the white wall,
+hissing and thundering.
+
+Ransome uttered a cry of horror, and galloped madly forward, to save
+what lives he might.
+
+Whenever he passed a house he shrieked his warning, but he never
+drew rein.
+
+As he galloped along his mind worked.  He observed the valley widen
+in places, and he hoped the flying lake would spread, and so lose
+some of that tremendous volume and force before which he had seen
+Hatfield stone mill go down.
+
+With this hope he galloped on, and reached Poma Bridge, five miles
+and a half from the reservoir.
+
+Here, to his dismay, he heard the hissing thunder sound as near to
+him as it was when he halted on the hill above Damflask; but he
+could see nothing, owing to a turn in the valley.
+
+At the bridge itself he found a man standing without his hat,
+staring wildly up the valley.
+
+He yelled to this man, "Dam is burst.  Warn the village--for their
+lives--run on to Hillsborough--when you are winded, send another on.
+You'll all be paid at the Town Hall."
+
+Then he dashed across the bridge.
+
+As he crossed it, he caught sight of the flying lake once more: he
+had gone over more ground, but he had gone no further.  He saw the
+white wall strike Dolman's farm; there was a light in one window
+now.  He saw the farm-house, with its one light, swim bodily, then
+melt and disappear, with all the poor souls in it.
+
+He galloped on: his hat flew off; he came under the coiners' house,
+and yelled a warning.  A window was opened, and a man looked out;
+the light was behind him, and, even in that terrible moment, he
+recognized--Shifty Dick.
+
+"The flood! the flood!  Fly!  Get on high ground, for your lives!"
+
+He galloped furiously, and made for Little's house.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+
+Little took a book, and tried to while away the time till Ransome's
+return; but he could not command his attention.  The conversation
+about Grace had excited a topic which excluded every other.
+
+He opened his window, a French casement, and looked out upon the
+night.
+
+Then he observed that Grace, too, was keeping vigil; for a faint
+light shot from her window and sparkled on the branches of the
+plane-tree in her little front garden.
+
+"And that," thought Henry, sadly, "is all I can see of her.  Close
+to her, yet far off--further than ever now."
+
+A deep sadness fell on him, sadness and doubt.  Suppose he were to
+lay a trap for her to-morrow, and catch her at her own door!  What
+good would it do?  He put himself in her place.  That process showed
+him at once she would come no more.  He should destroy her little
+bit of patient, quiet happiness, the one daily sunbeam of her
+desolate life.
+
+By-and-by, feeling rather drowsy, he lay down in his clothes to wait
+for Ransome's return.  He put out his light.
+
+From his bed he could see Grace's light kiss the plane-tree.
+
+He lay and fixed his eyes on it, and thought of all that had passed
+between them; and, by-and-by, love and grief made his eyes misty,
+and that pale light seemed to dance and flicker before him.
+
+About midnight, he was nearly dozing off, when his ear caught a
+muttering outside; he listened, and thought he heard some instrument
+grating below.
+
+He rose very softly, and crept to the window, and looked keenly
+through his casement.
+
+He saw nothing at first; but presently a dark object emerged from
+behind the plane-tree I have mentioned, and began to go slowly, but
+surely up it.
+
+Little feared it was a burglar about to attack that house which held
+his darling.
+
+He stepped softly to his rifle and loaded both barrels.  It was a
+breech-loader.  Then he crawled softly to the window, and peered
+out, rifle in hand.
+
+The man had climbed the tree, and was looking earnestly in at one of
+the windows in Grace's house.  His attention was so fixed that he
+never saw the gleaming eye which now watched him.
+
+Presently the drifting clouds left the moon clear a minute, and
+Henry Little recognized the face of Frederick Coventry.
+
+He looked at him, and began to tremble.
+
+Why did he tremble?  Because--after the first rush of surprise--
+rage, hate, and bloody thoughts crossed his mind.  Here was his
+enemy, the barrier to his happiness, come, of his own accord, to
+court his death.  Why not take him for a burglar, and shoot him
+dead?  Such an act might be blamed, but it could not be punished
+severely.
+
+The temptation was so great, that the rifle shook in his hands, and
+a cold perspiration poured down his back.
+
+He prayed to God in agony to relieve him from this temptation; he
+felt that it was more than he could bear.
+
+He looked up.  Coventry was drawing up a short iron ladder from
+below.  He then got hold of it and fixed it on the sill of Grace's
+window.
+
+Little burst his own window open.  "You villain!" he cried, and
+leveled his rifle at him.
+
+Coventry uttered a yell of dismay.  Grace opened her window, and
+looked out, with a face full of terror.
+
+At sight of her, Coventry cried to her in abject terror, "Mercy!
+mercy!  Don't let him shoot me!"
+
+Grace looked round, and saw Henry aiming at Coventry.
+
+She screamed, and Little lowered the rifle directly.
+
+Coventry crouched directly in the fork of the tree.
+
+Grace looked bewildered from one to the other; but it was to Henry
+she spoke, and asked him in trembling tones what it "all meant?"
+
+But, ere either could make a reply, a dire sound was heard of
+hissing thunder: so appalling that the three actors in this strange
+scene were all frozen and rooted where they stood.
+
+Then came a fierce galloping, and Ransome, with his black hair and
+beard flying, and his face like a ghost, reined up, and shouted
+wildly, "Dam burst!  Coming down here!  Fly for your lives!  Fly!"
+
+He turned and galloped up the hill.
+
+Cole and his mate emerged, and followed him, howling; but before the
+other poor creatures, half paralyzed, could do any thing, the
+hissing thunder was upon them.  What seemed a mountain of snow came
+rolling, and burst on them with terrific violence, whirling great
+trees and fragments of houses past with incredible velocity.
+
+At the first blow, the house that stood nearest to the flying lake
+was shattered and went to pieces soon after: all the houses quivered
+as the water rushed round them two stories high.
+
+Little never expected to live another minute; yet, in that awful
+moment, his love stood firm.  He screamed to Grace, "The houses must
+go!--the tree!--the tree!--get to the tree!"
+
+But Grace, so weak at times, was more than mortal strong at that
+dread hour.
+
+"What! live with him," she cried, "when I can die with you!"
+
+She folded her arms, and her pale face was radiant, no hope, no
+fear.
+
+Now came a higher wave, and the water reached above the window-sills
+of the bedroom floor and swept away the ladder; yet, driven forward
+like a cannon-bullet, did not yet pour into the bed-rooms from the
+main stream; but by degrees the furious flood broke, melted, and
+swept away the intervening houses, and then hacked off the gable-end
+of Grace's house, as if Leviathan had bitten a piece out.  Through
+that aperture the flood came straight in, leveled the partitions at
+a blow, rushed into the upper rooms with fearful roar, and then,
+rushing out again to rejoin the greater body of water, blew the
+front wall clean away, and swept Grace out into the raging current.
+
+The water pouring out of the house carried her, at first, toward the
+tree, and Little cried wildly to Coventry to save her.  He awoke
+from his stupor of horror, and made an attempt to clutch her; but
+then the main force of the mighty water drove her away from him
+toward the house; her helpless body was whirled round and round
+three times, by the struggling eddies, and then hurried away like a
+feather by the overwhelming torrent.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+The mighty reflux, which, after a short struggle, overpowered the
+rush of water from the windows, and carried Grace Carden's helpless
+body away from the tree, drove her of course back toward the houses,
+and she was whirled past Little's window with fearful velocity, just
+as he was going to leap into the flood, and perish in an insane
+attempt to save her.  With a loud cry he seized her by her long
+floating hair, and tried to draw her in at the window; but the
+mighty water pulled her from him fiercely, and all but dragged him
+in after her; he was only saved by clutching the side of the wall
+with his left hand: the flood was like some vast solid body drawing
+against him; and terror began to seize on his heart.  He ground his
+teeth; he set his knee against the horizontal projection of the
+window; and that freed his left hand; he suddenly seized her arm
+with it, and, clutching it violently, ground his teeth together,
+and, throwing himself backward with a jerk, tore her out of the
+water by an effort almost superhuman.  Such was the force exerted by
+the torrent on one side, and the desperate lover on the other, that
+not her shoes only, but her stockings, though gartered, were torn
+off her in that fierce struggle.
+
+He had her in his arms, and cried aloud, and sobbed over her, and
+kissed her wet cheeks, her lank hair, and her wet clothes, in a wild
+rapture.  He went on kissing her and sobbing over her so wildly and
+so long, that Coventry, who had at first exulted with him at her
+rescue, began to rage with jealousy.
+
+"Please remember she is my wife," he shrieked: "don't take advantage
+of her condition, villain!"
+
+"Your wife, you scoundrel!  You stole her from me once; now come and
+take her from me again.  Why didn't you save her?  She was near to
+you.  You let her die: she lives by me, and for me, and I for her."
+With this he kissed her again, and held her to his bosom.  "D'ye see
+that?--liar! coward! villain!"
+
+Even across that tremendous body of rushing death, from which
+neither was really safe, both rivals' eyes gleamed hate at each
+other.
+
+The wild beasts that a flood drives together on to some little
+eminence, lay down their natures, and the panther crouches and
+whimpers beside the antelope; but these were men, and could
+entertain the fiercest of human passions in the very jaws of death.
+
+To be sure it was but for a moment; a new danger soon brought them
+both to their senses; an elm-tree whirling past grazed Coventry's
+plane-tree; it was but a graze, yet it nearly shook him off into the
+flood, and he yelled with fear: almost at the same moment a higher
+wave swept into Little's room, and the rising water set every thing
+awash, and burst over him as he kneeled with grace.  He got up,
+drenched and half-blinded with the turbid water, and, taking Grace
+in his arms, waded waist-high to his bed, and laid her down on it.
+
+It was a moment of despair.  Death had entered that chamber in a
+new, unforeseen, and inevitable form.  The ceiling was low, the
+water was rising steadily; the bedstead floated; his chest of
+drawers floated, though his rifle and pistols lay on it, and the top
+drawers were full of the tools he always had about him: in a few
+minutes the rising water must inevitably jam Grace and him against
+the ceiling, and drown them like rats in a hole.
+
+Fearful as the situation was, a sickening horror was added to it by
+the horrible smell of the water; it had a foul and appalling odor, a
+compound of earthiness and putrescence; it smelt like a newly-opened
+grave; it paralyzed like a serpent's breath.
+
+Stout as young Little's heart was, it fainted now when he saw his
+bedstead, and his drawers, and his chairs, all slowly rising toward
+the ceiling, lifted by that cold, putrescent, liquid death.
+
+But all men, and even animals, possess greater powers of mind, as
+well as of body, than they ever exert, unless compelled by dire
+necessity: and it would have been strange indeed if a heart so
+stanch, and a brain so inventive, as Little's, had let his darling
+die like a rat drowned in a hole, without some new and masterly
+attempt first made to save her.
+
+To that moment of horror and paralysis succeeded an activity of mind
+and body almost incredible.  He waded to the drawers, took his rifle
+and fired both barrels at one place in the ceiling bursting a hole,
+and cutting a narrow joist almost in two.  Then he opened a drawer,
+got an ax and a saw out, and tried to wade to the bed; but the water
+now took him off his feet, and he had to swim to it instead; he got
+on it, and with his axe and his saw he contrived to paddle the
+floating bed under the hole in the ceiling, and then with a few
+swift and powerful blows of his ax soon enlarged that aperture
+sufficiently; but at that moment the water carried the bedstead away
+from the place.
+
+He set to work with his saw and ax, and paddled back again.
+
+Grace, by this time, was up on her knees, and in a voice, the sudden
+firmness of which surprised and delighted him, asked if she could
+help.
+
+"Yes," said he, "you can.  On with my coat."
+
+It lay on the bed.  She helped him on with it, and then he put his
+ax and saw into the pockets, and told her to take hold of his skirt.
+
+He drew himself up through the aperture, and Grace, holding his
+skirts with her hands and the bed with her feet, climbed adroitly on
+to the head of the bed--a French bed made of mahogany--and Henry
+drew her through the aperture.
+
+They were now on the false ceiling, and nearly jammed against the
+roof: Little soon hacked a great hole in that just above the
+parapet, and they crawled out upon the gutter.
+
+They were now nearly as high as Coventry on his tree; but their
+house was rocking, and his tree was firm.
+
+In the next house were heard the despairing shrieks of poor
+creatures who saw no way of evading their fate; yet the way was as
+open to them as to this brave pair.
+
+"Oh, my angel," said Grace, "save them.  Then, if you die, you go to
+God."
+
+"All right," said Henry.  "Come on."
+
+They darted down the gutter to the next house.  Little hacked a hole
+in the slates, and then in the wood-work, and was about to jump in,
+when the house he had just left tumbled all to pieces, like a house
+of sugar, and the debris went floating by, including the bedstead
+that had helped to save them.
+
+"O God!" cried Little, "this house will go next; run on to the last
+one."
+
+"No, Henry, I would rather die with you than live alone.  Don't be
+frightened for me, my angel.  Save lives, and trust to Jesus."
+
+"All right," said Little; but his voice trembled now.
+
+He jumped in, hacked a hole in the ceiling, and yelled to the
+inmates to give him their hands.
+
+There was a loud cry of male and female voices.
+
+"My child first," cried a woman, and threw up an infant, which
+Little caught and handed to Grace.  She held it, wailing to her
+breast.
+
+Little dragged five more souls up.  Grace helped them out, and they
+ran along the gutter to the last house without saying "Thank you."
+
+The house was rocking.  Little and Grace went on to the next, and he
+smashed the roof in, and then the ceiling, and Grace and he were
+getting the people out, when the house they had just left melted
+away, all but a chimney-stack, which adhered in jagged dilapidation
+to the house they were now upon.
+
+They were now upon the last.  Little hacked furiously through the
+roof and ceiling, and got the people out; and now twenty-seven souls
+crouched in the gutter, or hung about the roof of this one house;
+some praying, but most of them whining and wailing.
+
+"What is the use of howling?" groaned Little.
+
+He then drew his Grace to his panting bosom, and his face was full
+of mortal agony.
+
+She consoled him.  "Never mind, my angel.  God has seen you.  He is
+good to us, and lets us die together."
+
+At this moment the house gave a rock, and there was a fresh burst of
+wailing.
+
+This, connected with his own fears, enraged Henry.
+
+"Be quiet," said he, sternly.  "Why can't you die decently, like
+your betters?"
+
+Then he bent his head in noble silence over his beloved, and
+devoured her features as those he might never see again.
+
+At this moment was heard a sound like the report of a gun: a large
+tree whirled down by the flood, struck the plane-tree just below the
+fork, and cut it in two as promptly as a scythe would go through a
+carrot.
+
+It drove the upper part along, and, going with it, kept it
+perpendicular for some time; the white face and glaring eyes of
+Frederick Coventry sailed past these despairing lovers; he made a
+wild clutch at them, then sank in the boiling current, and was
+hurried away.
+
+This appalling incident silenced all who saw it for a moment.  Then
+they began to wail louder than ever.
+
+But Little started to his feet, and cried "Hurrah!"
+
+There was a general groan.
+
+"Hold your tongues," he roared.  "I've got good news for you.  The
+water was over the top windows; now it is an inch lower.  The
+reservoir must be empty by now.  The water will go down as fast as
+it rose.  Keep quiet for two minutes, and you will see."
+
+Then no more was heard but the whimpering of the women, and, every
+now and then, the voice of Little; he hung over the parapet, and
+reported every half-minute the decline of the water; it subsided
+with strange rapidity, as he had foreseen.
+
+In three minutes after he had noticed the first decline, he took
+Grace down through the roof, on the second floor.
+
+When Grace and Henry got there, they started with dismay: the danger
+was not over: the front wall was blown clean out by the water; all
+but a jagged piece shaped like a crescent, and it seemed a miracle
+that the roof, thus weakened and crowded with human beings, had not
+fallen in.
+
+"We must get out of this," said Little.  "It all hangs together by a
+thread."
+
+He called the others down from the roof, and tried to get down by
+the staircase, but it was broken into sections and floating about.
+Then he cut into the floor near the wall, and, to his infinite
+surprise, found the first floor within four feet of him.  The flood
+had lifted it bodily more than six feet.
+
+He dropped on to it, and made Grace let herself down to him, he
+holding her round the waist, and landing her light as a feather.
+
+Henry then hacked through the door, which was jammed tight; and, the
+water subsiding, presently the wrecks of the staircase left off
+floating, and stuck in the mud and water: by this means they managed
+to get down, and found themselves in a layer of mud, and stones, and
+debris, alive and dead, such as no imagination had hitherto
+conceived.
+
+Dreading, however, to remain in a house so disemboweled within, and
+so shattered without, that it seemed to survive by mere cohesion of
+mortar, he begged Grace to put her arm round his neck, and then
+lifted her and carried her out into the night.
+
+"Take me home to papa, my angel," said she.
+
+He said he would; and tried to find his way to the road which he
+knew led up the hill to Woodbine Villa.  But all landmarks were
+gone; houses, trees, hedges, all swept away; roads covered three
+feet thick with rocks, and stones, and bricks, and carcasses.  The
+pleasant valley was one horrid quagmire, in which he could take few
+steps, burdened as he was, without sticking, or stumbling against
+some sure sign of destruction and death: within the compass of fifty
+yards he found a steam-boiler and its appurtenances (they must have
+weighed some tons, yet they had been driven more than a mile), and a
+dead cow, and the body of a wagon turned upside down: [the wheels of
+this same wagon were afterward found fifteen miles from the body].
+
+He began to stagger and pant.
+
+"Let me walk, my angel," said Grace.  "I'm not a baby."
+
+She held his hand tight, and tried to walk with him step by step.
+Her white feet shone in the pale moonlight.
+
+They made for rising ground, and were rewarded by finding the debris
+less massive.
+
+"The flood must have been narrow hereabouts," said Henry.  "We shall
+soon be clear of it, I hope."
+
+Soon after this, they came under a short but sturdy oak that had
+survived; and, entangled in its close and crooked branches, was
+something white.  They came nearer; it was a dead body: some poor
+man or woman hurried from sleep to Eternity.
+
+They shuddered and crawled on, still making for higher ground, but
+sore perplexed.
+
+Presently they heard a sort of sigh.  They went toward it, and found
+a poor horse stuck at an angle; his efforts to escape being marred
+by a heavy stone to which he was haltered.
+
+Henry patted him, and encouraged him, and sawed through his halter;
+then he struggled up, but Henry held him, and put Grace on him.  She
+sat across him and held on by the mane.
+
+The horse, being left to himself, turned back a little, and crossed
+the quagmire till he got into a bridle-road, and this landed them
+high and dry on the turnpike.
+
+Here they stopped, and, by one impulse, embraced each other, and
+thanked God for their wonderful escape.
+
+But soon Henry's exultation took a turn that shocked Grace's
+religious sentiments, which recent acquaintance had strengthened.
+
+"Yes," he cried, "now I believe that God really does interpose in
+earthly things; I believe every thing; yesterday I believed nothing.
+The one villain is swept away, and we two are miraculously saved.
+Now we can marry to-morrow--no, to-day, for it is past midnight.
+Oh, how good He is, especially for killing that scoundrel out of our
+way.  Without his death, what was life worth to me?  But now--oh,
+Heavens! is it all a dream?  Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!"
+
+"Oh, Henry, my love!" said Grace imploringly; "pray, pray do not
+offend Him, by rejoicing at such a moment over the death, perhaps
+the everlasting death, of a poor, sinful fellow-creature."
+
+"All right, dearest.  Only don't let us descend to hypocrisy.  I
+thank Heaven he is dead, and so do you."
+
+"Pray don't SAY so."
+
+"Well, I won't: let him go.  Death settles all accounts.  Did you
+see me stretch out my hand to save him?"
+
+"I did, my angel, and it was like you: you are the noblest and the
+greatest creature that ever was, or ever will be."
+
+"The silliest, you mean.  I wondered at myself next minute.  Fancy
+me being such an idiot as to hold out a hand to save him, and so
+wither both our lives--yours and mine; but I suppose it is against
+nature not to hold out a hand.  Well, no harm came of it, thank
+Heaven."
+
+"Let us talk of ourselves," said Grace, lovingly.  "My darling, let
+no harsh thought mar the joy of this hour.  You have saved my life
+again.  Well, then, it is doubly yours.  Here, looking on that death
+we have just escaped, I devote myself to you.  You don't know how I
+love you; but you shall.  I adore you."
+
+"I love you better still."
+
+"You do not: you can't.  It is the one thing I can beat you at and I
+will."
+
+"Try.  When will you be mine?"
+
+"I am yours.  But if you mean when will I marry you, why, whenever
+you please.  We have suffered too cruelly, and loved too dearly, for
+me to put you off a single day for affectations and vanities.  When
+you please, my own."
+
+At this Henry kissed her little white feet with rapture, and kept
+kissing them, at intervals, all the rest of the way: and the horrors
+of the night ended, to these two, in unutterable rapture, as they
+paced slowly along to Woodbine Villa with hearts full of wonder,
+gratitude, and joy.
+
+Here they found lights burning, and learned from a servant that Mr.
+Carden was gone down to the scene of the flood in great agitation.
+
+Henry told Grace not to worry herself, for that he would find him
+and relieve his fears.
+
+He then made Grace promise to go to bed at once, and to lie within
+blankets.  She didn't like that idea, but consented.  "It is my duty
+to obey you now in every thing," said she.
+
+Henry left her, and ran down to the Town Hall.
+
+He was in that glorious state of bliss in which noble minds long to
+do good actions; and the obvious thing to do was to go and comfort
+the living survivors of the terrible disaster he had so narrowly
+escaped.
+
+He found but one policeman there; the rest, and Ransome at their
+head, were doing their best; all but two, drowned on their beat in
+the very town of Hillsborough.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+
+Round a great fire in the Town Hall were huddled a number of half-
+naked creatures, who had been driven out of their dilapidated homes;
+some of them had seen children or relatives perish in the flood they
+had themselves so narrowly escaped, and were bemoaning them with
+chattering teeth.
+
+Little spoke them a word of comfort, promised them all clothes as
+soon as the shops should open, and hurried off to the lower part of
+the town in search of Ransome.
+
+He soon found the line the flood had taken.  Between Poma Bridge and
+Hillsborough it had wasted itself considerably in a broad valley,
+but still it had gone clean through Hillsborough twelve feet high,
+demolishing and drowning.  Its terrible progress was marked by a
+layer of mud a foot thick, dotted with rocks, trees, wrecks of
+houses, machinery, furniture, barrels, mattresses, carcasses of
+animals, and dead bodies, most of them stark naked, the raging flood
+having torn their clothes off their backs.
+
+Four corpses and two dead horses were lying in a lake of mud about
+the very door of the railway station; three of them were females in
+absolute nudity.  The fourth was a male, with one stocking on.  This
+proved to be Hillsbro' Harry, warned in vain up at Damflask.  When
+he actually heard the flood come hissing, he had decided, on the
+whole, to dress, and had got the length of that one stocking, when
+the flying lake cut short his vegetation.
+
+Not far from this, Little found Ransome, working like a horse, with
+the tear in his eyes.
+
+He uttered a shout of delight and surprise, and, taking Little by
+both shoulders, gazed earnestly at him, and said, "Can this be a
+living man I see?"
+
+"Yes, I am alive," said Little, "but I had to work for it: feel my
+clothes."
+
+"Why, the are dryer than mine."
+
+"Ay; yet have been in water to the throat; the heat of my body and
+my great exertions dried them.  I'll tell you all another day: now
+show me how to do a bit of good; for it is not one nor two thousand
+pounds I'll stick at, this night."
+
+"Come on."
+
+Strange sights they saw that night.
+
+They found a dead body curled round the top frame of a lamppost,
+and, in the suburbs, another jammed between a beam and the wall of a
+house.
+
+They found some houses with the front wall carried clean away, and,
+on the second floor, such of the inmates as had survived huddled
+together in their night-clothes, unable to get down.  These, Ransome
+and his men speedily relieved from their situation.
+
+And now came in word that the whole village of Poma Bridge had been
+destroyed.
+
+Little, with Ransome and his men, hurried on at these sad tidings as
+fast as the mud and ruins would allow, and, on the way, one of the
+policemen trod on something soft.  It was the body of a woman
+imbedded in the mud.
+
+A little further they saw, at some distance, two cottages in a row,
+both gutted and emptied.  An old man was alone in one, seated on the
+ground-floor in the deep mud.
+
+They went to him, and asked what they could do for him.
+
+"Do?  Why let me die," be said.
+
+They tried to encourage him; but he answered them in words that
+showed how deeply old Shylock's speech is founded in nature:
+
+"Let the water take me--it has taken all I had."
+
+When they asked after his neighbors, he said he believed they were
+all drowned.  Unluckily for HIM, he had been out when the flood
+came.
+
+Little clambered into the other cottage, and found a little boy and
+girl placidly asleep in a cupboard upstairs.
+
+Little yelled with delight, and kissed them, and cuddled them, as if
+they had been his own, so sweet was it to see their pretty innocent
+faces, spared by death.  The boy kissed him in return, and told him
+the room had been full of water, and dada and mamma had gone out at
+the window, and they themselves had floated in the bed so high he
+had put his little sister on the top shelf, and got on it himself,
+and then they had both felt very sleepy.
+
+"You are a dear good boy, and I take you into custody," said
+Ransome, in a broken voice.
+
+Judge if this pair were petted, up at the Town Hall.
+
+At Poma Bridge the devastation was horrible.  The flood had
+bombarded a row of fifty houses, and demolished them so utterly that
+only one arch of one cellar remained; the very foundations were torn
+up, and huge holes of incredible breadth and depth bored by the
+furious eddies.
+
+Where were the inhabitants?
+
+Ransome stood and looked and shook like a man in an ague.
+
+"Little," said he, "this is awful.  Nobody in Hillsborough dreams
+the extent of this calamity.  I DREAD THE DAWN OF DAY.  There must
+be scores of dead bodies hidden in this thick mud, or perhaps swept
+through Hillsborough into the very sea."
+
+A little further, and they came to the "Reindeer," where he had
+heard the boon-companions singing--over their graves; for that
+night, long before the "cock did craw, or the day daw," their mouths
+were full of water and mud, and not the "barley bree."
+
+To know their fate needed but a glance at the miserable, shattered,
+gutted fragment of the inn that stood.  There was a chimney, a
+triangular piece of roof, a quarter of the inside of one second-
+floor room, with all the boards gone and half the joists gone, and
+the others either hanging down perpendicular or sticking up at an
+angle of forty-five.  Even on the side furthest from the flood the
+water had hacked and plowed away the wall so deeply, that the
+miserable wreck had a jagged waist, no bigger in proportion than a
+wasp's.
+
+Not far from this amazing ruin was a little two-storied house, whose
+four rooms looked exactly, as four rooms are represented in section
+on the stage, the front wall having been blown clean away, and the
+furniture and inmates swept out; the very fender and fire-irons had
+been carried away: a bird-cage, a clock, and a grate were left
+hanging to the three walls.
+
+As a part of this village stood on high ground, the survivors were
+within reach of relief; and Little gave a policeman orders to buy
+clothes at the shop, and have them charged to him.
+
+This done, he begged Ransome to cross the water, and relieve the
+poor wretches who had escaped so narrowly with him.  Ransome
+consented at once; but then came a difficulty--the bridge, like
+every bridge that the flying lake had struck, was swept away.
+However, the stream was narrow, and, as they were already muddy to
+the knee, they found a place where the miscellaneous ruin made
+stepping-stones, and by passing first on to a piece of masonry, and
+from that to a broken water-wheel, and then on to a rock, they got
+across.
+
+They passed the coiner's house.  It stood on rather high ground, and
+had got off cheap.  The water had merely carried away the door and
+windows, and washed every movable out of it.
+
+Ransome sighed.  "Poor Shifty!" said he; "you'll never play us
+another trick.  What an end for a man of your abilities!"
+
+And now the day began to dawn, and that was fortunate, for otherwise
+they could hardly have found the house they were going to.
+
+On the way to it they came on two dead bodies, an old man of eighty
+and a child scarce a week old.  One fate had united these extremes
+of human life, the ripe sheaf and the spring bud.  It transpired
+afterward that they had been drowned in different parishes.  Death,
+that brought these together, disunited hundreds.  Poor Dolman's body
+was found scarce a mile from his house, but his wife's eleven miles
+on the other side of Hillsborough; and this wide separation of those
+who died in one place by one death, was constant, and a pitiable
+feature of the tragedy.
+
+At last they got to the house, and Little shuddered at the sight of
+it; here not only was the whole front wall taken out, but a part of
+the back wall; the jagged chimneys of the next house still clung to
+this miserable shell, whose upper floors were slanting sieves, and
+on its lower was a deep layer of mud, with the carcass of a huge sow
+lying on it, washed in there all the way from Hatfield village.
+
+The people had all run away from the house, and no wonder, for it
+seemed incredible that it could stand a single moment longer; never
+had ruin come so close to demolition and then stopped.
+
+There was nothing to be done here, and Ransome went back to
+Hillsborough, keeping this side the water.
+
+Daybreak realized his worst fears: between Poma Bridge and the first
+suburb of Hillsborough the place was like a battle-field; not that
+many had been drowned on the spot, but that, drowned all up the
+valley by the flood at its highest, they had been brought down and
+deposited in the thick layer of mud left by the abating waters.
+Some were cruelly gashed and mangled by the hard objects with which
+they had come in contact.  Others wore a peaceful expression and had
+color in their cheeks.  One drew tears from both these valiant men.
+It was a lovely little girl, with her little hands before her face
+to keep out the sight of death.
+
+Here and there, a hand or a ghastly face appearing above the mud
+showed how many must be hidden altogether, and Ransome hurried home
+to get more assistance to disinter the dead.
+
+Just before the suburb of Allerton the ground is a dead flat, and
+here the flying lake had covered a space a mile broad, doing
+frightful damage to property but not much to life, because wherever
+it expanded it shallowed in proportion.
+
+In part of this flat a gentleman had a beautiful garden and
+pleasure-grounds overnight: they were now under water, and their
+appearance was incredible; the flood expanding here and then
+contracting, had grounded large objects and left small ones
+floating.  In one part of the garden it had landed a large wheat-
+rick, which now stood as if it belonged there, though it had been
+built five miles off.
+
+In another part was an inverted summer-house and a huge water-wheel,
+both of them great travelers that night.
+
+In the large fish-pond, now much fuller than usual, floated a wheel-
+barrow, a hair mattress, an old wooden cradle, and an enormous box
+or chest.
+
+Little went splashing through the water to examine the cradle: he
+was richly rewarded.  He found a little child in it awake but
+perfectly happy, and enjoying the fluttering birds above and the
+buoyant bed below, whose treacherous nature was unknown to him.
+This incident the genius of my friend Mr. Millais is about to render
+immortal.
+
+Little's shout of delight brought Ransome splashing over directly.
+They took up the cradle and contents to carry it home, when all of a
+sudden Ransome's eye detected a finger protruding through a hole in
+the box.
+
+"Hallo!" said he.  "Why, there's a body inside that box."
+
+"Good heavens!" said Little, "he may be alive."
+
+With that he made a rush and went in over head and ears.
+
+"Confound it" said he as soon as he got his breath.  But, being in
+for it now, he swam to the box, and getting behind it, shoved it
+before him to Ransome's feet.
+
+Ransome tried to open it, but it shut with a spring.  However, there
+were air-holes, and still this finger sticking out of one--for a
+signal no doubt.
+
+"Are ye alive or dead?" shouted Ransome to the box.  "Let me out and
+you'll see," replied the box; and the sound seemed to issue from the
+bowels of the earth.
+
+Little had his hatchet in his pocket and set to work to try and open
+it.  The occupant assisted him with advice how to proceed, all of
+which sounded subterraneous.
+
+"Hold your jaw!" said Little.  "Do you think you can teach me?"
+
+By a considerable exertion of strength as well as skill, he at last
+got the box open, and discovered the occupant seated pale and
+chattering, with knees tucked up.
+
+The two men lent him a hand to help him up; Ransome gave a slight
+start, and then expressed the warmest satisfaction.
+
+"Thank Heaven!" said he.  "Shake hands, old fellow.  I'm downright
+glad.  I've been groaning over you: but I might have known you'd
+find some way to slip out of trouble.  Mr. Little, this is Shifty
+himself.  Please put your arm under his; he is as strong as iron,
+and as slippery as an eel."
+
+The Shifty, hearing this account given of himself, instantly
+collapsed, and made himself weak as water, and tottered from one of
+his guards to the other in turn.
+
+"I was all that once, Mr. Ransome," said he, in a voice that became
+suddenly as feeble as his body, "but this fearful night has changed
+me.  Miraculously preserved from destruction, I have renounced my
+errors, and vowed to lead a new life.  Conduct me at once to a
+clergyman, that I may confess and repent, and disown my past life
+with horror; then swear me in a special constable, and let me have
+the honor of acting under your orders, and of co-operating with you,
+sir" (to Little), "in your Christian and charitable acts.  Let me go
+about with you, gentlemen, and relieve the sufferings of others, as
+you have relieved mine."
+
+"There," said Ransome, proudly; "there's a man for you.  He knows
+every move of the game--can patter like an archbishop."  So saying,
+he handcuffed the Shifty with such enthusiasm that the convert swore
+a horrible oath at him.
+
+Ransome apologized, and beckoning a constable, handed him the
+Shifty.
+
+"Take him to the Town Hall, and give him every comfort.  He is
+Number One."
+
+This man's escape was not so strange as it appeared.  The flood
+never bombarded his house--he was only on the hem of it.  It rose
+and filled his house, whereupon he bored three holes in his great
+chest, and got in.  He washed about the room till the abating flood
+contracted, and then it sucked him and his box out of the window.
+He got frightened, and let the lid down, and so drifted about till
+at last he floated into the hands of justice.
+
+Little and Ransome carried the child away, and it was conveyed to
+the hospital and a healthy nurse assigned it.
+
+Ransome prevailed on Little to go home, change his wet clothes and
+lie down for an hour or two.  He consented, but first gave Ransome
+an order to lay out a thousand pounds, at his expense, in relief of
+the sufferers.
+
+Then he went home, sent a message to Raby Hall, that he was all
+right, took off his clothes, rolled exhausted into bed, and slept
+till the afternoon.
+
+At four o'clock he rose, got into a hansom, and drove up to Woodbine
+Villa, the happiest man in England.
+
+He inquired for Miss Carden.  The man said he believed she was not
+up, but would inquire.
+
+"Do," said Little.  "Tell her who it is.  I'll wait in the dining-
+room."
+
+He walked into the dining-room before the man could object, and
+there he found a sick gentleman, with Dr. Amboyne and a surgeon
+examining him.  The patient lay on a sofa, extremely pale, and
+groaning with pain.
+
+One glance sufficed.  It was Frederick Coventry.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+
+"What! you alive?" said Little, staring.
+
+"Alive, and that is all," said Coventry.  "Pray excuse me for not
+dying to please you."
+
+Ere Little could reply, Mr. Carden, who had heard of his arrival,
+looked in from the library, and beckoned him in.
+
+When they were alone, he began by giving the young man his hand, and
+then thanked him warmly for his daughter.  "You have shown yourself
+a hero in courage.  Now go one step further; be a hero in fortitude
+and self-denial; that unhappy man in the next room is her husband;
+like you, he risked his life to save her.  He tells me he heard the
+dam was going to burst, and came instantly with a ladder to rescue
+her.  He was less fortunate than you, and failed to rescue her; less
+fortunate than you again, he has received a mortal injury in that
+attempt.  It was I who found him; I went down distracted with
+anxiety, to look for my daughter; I found this poor creature jammed
+tight between the tree he was upon and a quantity of heavy timber
+that had accumulated and rested against a bank.  We released him
+with great difficulty.  It was a long time before he could speak;
+and then, his first inquiry was after HER.  Show some pity for an
+erring man, Mr. Little; some consideration for my daughter's
+reputation.  Let him die in peace: his spine is broken; he can't
+live many days."
+
+Little heard all this and looked down on the ground for some time in
+silence.  At last he said firmly, "Mr. Carden, I would not be
+inhuman to a dying man; but you were always his friend, and never
+mine.  Let me see HER, and I'll tell her what you say, and take her
+advice."
+
+"You shall see her, of course; but not just now.  She is in bed,
+attended by a Sister of Charity, whom she telegraphed for."
+
+"Can I see that lady?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Sister Gratiosa was sent for, and, in reply to Little's anxious
+inquiries, told him that Sister Amata had been very much shaken by
+the terrible events of the night, and absolute repose was necessary
+to her.  In further conversation she told him she was aware of
+Sister Amata's unhappy story, and had approved her retirement from
+Hillsborough, under all the circumstances; but that now, after much
+prayer to God for enlightenment, she could not but think it was the
+Sister's duty, as a Christian woman, to stay at home and nurse the
+afflicted man whose name she bore, and above all devote herself to
+his spiritual welfare.
+
+"Oh, that is your notion, is it?" said Henry.  "Then you are no
+friend of mine."
+
+"I am no enemy of yours, nor of any man, I hope.  May I ask you one
+question, without offense?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Have you prayed to God to guide you in this difficulty?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then seek his throne without delay; and, until you have done so, do
+not rashly condemn my views of this matter, since I have sought for
+wisdom where alone it is to be found."
+
+Henry chafed under this; but he commanded his temper, though with
+difficulty, and said, "Will you take a line to her from me?"
+
+The Sister hesitated.  "I don't know whether I ought," said she.
+
+"Oh, then the old game of intercepting letters is to be played."
+
+"Not by me: after prayer I shall be able to say Yes or No to your
+request.  At present, being at a distance from my Superior, I must
+needs hesitate."
+
+"Right and wrong must have made very little impression on your mind,
+if you don't know whether you ought to take a letter to a woman from
+a man who has just saved her life--or not."
+
+The lady colored highly, courtesied, and retired without a word.
+
+Little knew enough of human nature to see that the Sister would not
+pray against feminine spite; he had now a dangerous enemy in the
+house, and foresaw that Grace would be steadily worked on through
+her religious sentiments.
+
+He went away, sick with disappointment, jealousy, and misgivings,
+hired a carriage, and drove at once to Raby Hall.
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+
+Mrs. Little saw her son arrive, met him in the hall, and embraced
+him, with a great cry of maternal joy, that did his heart good for a
+moment.
+
+He had to tell her all; and, during the recital, she often clasped
+him to her bosom.
+
+When he had told her all, she said: "Much as I love you, darling, I
+am ready to part with you for good: there is a cure for all your
+griefs; there is a better woman in this house than ever Grace Carden
+was or will be.  Be a man; shake off these miserable trammels; leave
+that vacillating girl to nurse her villain, and marry the one I have
+chosen for you."
+
+Henry shook his head.  "What! when a few months perhaps will free my
+Grace from her incumbrance.  Mother, you are giving me bad advice
+for once."
+
+"Unwelcome advice, dear, not bad.  Will you consult Dr. Amboyne? he
+sleeps here to-night.  He often comes here now, you know."  Then the
+widow colored just a little.
+
+"Oh yes, I know; and I approve."
+
+Dr. Amboyne came to dinner.  In the course of the evening he
+mentioned his patient Coventry, and said he would never walk again,
+his spine was too seriously injured.
+
+"How soon will he die? that is what I want to know," said Henry,
+with that excessive candor which the polite reader has long ago
+discovered in him, and been shocked.
+
+"Oh, he may live for years.  But what a life!  An inert mass below
+the waist, and, above it, a sick heart, and a brain as sensitive as
+ever to realize the horrid calamity.  Even I, who know and abhor the
+man's crimes, shudder at the punishment Heaven inflicts on him."
+
+There was dead silence round the table, and Little was observed to
+turn pale.
+
+He was gloomy and silent all the evening.
+
+Next morning, directly after breakfast, his mother got him, and
+implored him not to waste his youth any longer.
+
+"The man will never die," said she: "he will wear you out.  You have
+great energy and courage; but you have not a woman's humble
+patience, to go on, year after year, waiting for an event you can
+not hasten by a single moment.  Do you not see it is hopeless?  End
+your misery by one brave plunge.  Speak to dear Jael."
+
+"I can't--I can't!"
+
+"Then let me."
+
+"Will it make you happy?"
+
+"Very happy.  Nothing else can."
+
+"Will it make her happy?"
+
+"As happy as a queen."
+
+"She deserves a better fate."
+
+"She asks no better.  There, unless you stop me, I shall speak to
+her."
+
+"Well, well," said Henry, very wearily.
+
+Mrs. Little went to the door.
+
+"Wait a moment," said he.  "How about Uncle Raby?  He has been a
+good friend to me.  I have offended him once, and it was the worst
+job I ever did.  I won't offend him again."
+
+"How can you offend him by marrying Jael?"
+
+"What, have you forgotten how angry he was when Mr. Richard Raby
+proposed to her?  There, I'll go and speak to him."
+
+"Well, do."
+
+He was no sooner gone than Mrs. Little stepped into Jael's room, and
+told her how matters stood.
+
+Jael looked dismayed, and begged her on no account to proceed:
+"For," said she, "if Mr. Henry was to ask me, I should say No.  He
+would always be hankering after Miss Carden: and, pray don't be
+angry with me, but I think I'm worth a man's whole heart; for I
+could love one very dearly, if he loved me."
+
+Mrs. Little was deeply mortified.  "This I did NOT expect," said
+she.  "Well, if you are all determined to be miserable--BE."
+
+Henry hunted up Mr. Raby, and asked him bluntly whether he would
+like him to marry Jael Dence.
+
+Raby made no reply for some time, and his features worked strangely.
+
+"Has she consented to be your wife?"
+
+"I have never asked her.  But I will, if you wish it."
+
+"Wish it?"
+
+"Why, sir, if you don't wish it, please forbid it, and let us say no
+more at all about it."
+
+"Excuse me," said Raby, with his grandest air: "a gentleman may
+dislike a thing, yet not condescend to forbid it."
+
+"That is true, sir; and an ex-workman may appreciate his delicacy,
+and give the thing up at once.  I will die a bachelor."
+
+"Henry, my boy, give me your hand--I'll tell you the truth.  I love
+her myself.  She is a pattern of all I admire in woman."
+
+"Uncle, I suspected this, to tell the truth.  Well, if you love her--
+marry her."
+
+"What, without her consent?"
+
+"Oh, she will consent.  Order her to marry you: she will never
+disobey the Lord of the Manor."
+
+"That is what I fear: and it is base to take advantage of her in
+that way."
+
+"You are right, sir," said Henry, and ran off directly.
+
+He found Jael, and said, "Jael, dear, couldn't you like Uncle Raby?
+he loves you dearly."
+
+He then appealed to her heart, and spoke of his uncle's nobleness in
+fearing to obtain an unfair advantage over her.
+
+To his surprise, Jael blushed deeply, and her face softened
+angelically, and presently a tear ran down it.
+
+"Hallo!" said Henry.  "That is the game, is it?  You stay here."
+
+He ran back to Mr. Raby, and said: "I've made a discovery.  She
+loves you, sir.  I'll take my oath of it.  You go and ask her."
+
+"I will," said Raby; and he went to Jael, like a man, and said,
+"Jael, he has found me out; I love you dearly.  I'm old, but I'm not
+cold.  Do you think you could be happy as my wife, with all the
+young fellows admiring you?"
+
+"Sir" said Jael, "I wouldn't give your little finger for all the
+young men in Christendom.  Once I thought a little too much of Mr.
+Henry, but that was over long ago.  And since you saved my life, and
+cried over me in this very room, you have been in my head and in my
+heart; but I wouldn't show it; for I had vowed I never would let any
+man know my heart till he showed me his."
+
+In short, this pair were soon afterward seen walking arm in arm,
+radiant with happiness.
+
+That sight was too much for Henry Little.  The excitement of doing a
+kind thing, and making two benefactors happy, had borne him up till
+now; but the reaction came: the contrast of their happiness with his
+misery was too poignant.  He had not even courage to bid them good-
+by, but fled back to Hillsborough, in anguish of spirit and deep
+despair.
+
+When he got home, there was a note from Grace Carden.
+
+
+"MY OWN DEAREST HENRY,--I find that you have called, and been denied
+me; and that Mr. Coventry has been admitted into the house.
+
+"I have therefore left Woodbine Villa, and taken lodgings opposite.
+Sister Gratiosa has convinced me I ought to labor for the eternal
+welfare of the guilty, unhappy man whose name it is my misfortune to
+bear.  I will try to do so: but nobody shall either compel, or
+persuade me, to be cruel to my dear Henry, to whom I owe my life
+once more, and who is all the world to me.  I shall now be employed
+nearly all the day, but I reserve two hours, from three till five,
+when you will always find me at home.  Our course is clear.  We must
+pray for patience.
+
+"Yours to eternity, GRACE."
+
+
+After reading this letter, and pondering it well, Henry Little's
+fortitude revived, and, as he could not speak his mind to Grace at
+that moment, he wrote to her, after some hours of reflection, as
+follows:
+
+
+"MY OWN DEAREST GRACE,--I approve, I bless you.  Our case is hard,
+but not desperate.  We have been worse off than we are now.  I agree
+with you that our course is clear; what we have got to do, as I
+understand it, is to outlive a crippled scoundrel.  Well, love and a
+clear conscience will surely enable us to outlive a villain, whose
+spine is injured, and whose conscience must gnaw him, and who has no
+creature's love to nourish him.
+
+"Yours in this world, and, I hope, in the next,
+
+"HENRY."
+
+
+Sister Gratiosa, to oblige Grace stayed at Woodbine Villa.  She was
+always present at any interview of Coventry and Grace.
+
+Little softened her, by giving her money whenever she mentioned a
+case of distress.  She had but this one pleasure in life, a pure
+one, and her poverty had always curbed it hard.  She began to pity
+this poor sinner, who was ready to pour his income into her lap for
+Christian purposes.
+
+And so the days rolled on.  Raby took into his head to repair the
+old church, and be married in it.  This crotchet postponed his
+happiness for some months.
+
+But the days and weeks rolled on.
+
+Raby became Sheriff of the county.
+
+Coventry got a little better, and moved to the next villa.
+
+Then Grace returned at once to Woodbine Villa; but she still paid
+charitable visits with Sister Gratiosa to the wreck whose name she
+bore.
+
+She was patient.
+
+But Little, the man of action, began to faint.
+
+He decided to return to the United States for a year or two, and
+distract his mind.
+
+When he communicated this resolve, Grace sighed.
+
+"The last visit there was disastrous," said she.  "But," recovering
+herself, "we can not be deceived again, nor doubt each other's
+constancy again."  So she sighed, but consented.
+
+Coventry heard of it, and chuckled inwardly.  He felt sure that in
+time he should wear out his rival's patience.
+
+A week or two more, and Little named the very day for sailing.
+
+The Assizes came on.  The Sheriff met the Judges with great pomp,
+and certain observances which had gone out.  This pleased the Chief
+Justice; he had felt a little nervous; Raby's predecessor had met
+him in a carriage and pair and no outriders, and he had felt it his
+duty to fine the said Sheriff L100 for so disrespecting the Crown in
+his person.
+
+So now, alluding to this, he said, "Mr. Sheriff, I am glad to find
+you hold by old customs, and do not grudge outward observances to
+the Queen's justices."
+
+"My lord," said the Sheriff, "I can hardly show enough respect to
+justice and learning, when they visit in the name of my sovereign."
+
+"That is very well said, Mr. Sheriff," said my lord.
+
+The Sheriff bowed.
+
+The Chief Justice was so pleased with his appearance, and his
+respectful yet dignified manner, that he conversed with him
+repeatedly during the pauses of the trials.
+
+Little was cording his boxes for America when Ransome burst in on
+him, and said, "Come into court; come into court.  Shifty Dick will
+be up directly."
+
+Little objected that he was busy; but Ransome looked so mortified
+that he consented, and was just in in time to see Richard Martin,
+alias Lord Daventree, alias Tom Paine, alias Sir Harry Gulstone,
+alias the Quaker, alias Shifty Dick, etc., etc., appear at the bar.
+
+The indictment was large, and charged the prisoner with various
+frauds of a felonious character, including his two frauds on the
+Gosshawk.
+
+Counsel made a brief exposition of the facts, and then went into the
+evidence.  But here the strict, or, as some think, pedantic rules of
+English evidence, befriended the prisoner, and the Judge objected to
+certain testimony on which the prosecution had mainly relied.  As
+for the evidence of coining, the flood had swept all that away.
+
+Ransome, who was eager for a conviction, began to look blue.
+
+But presently a policeman, who had been watching the prisoner, came
+and whispered in his ear.
+
+Up started Ransome, wrote the Crown solicitor a line, begging him to
+keep the case on its legs anyhow for half an hour, and giving his
+reason.  He then dashed off in a cab.
+
+The case proceeded, under discouraging remarks from the Judge, most
+of them addressed to the evidence; but he also hinted that the
+indictment was rather loosely drawn.
+
+At last the Attorney-General, who led, began to consult with his
+junior whether they could hope for a conviction.
+
+But now there was a commotion; then heads were put together, and, to
+the inexpressible surprise of young Little and of the Sheriff, Grace
+Coventry was put into the witness-box.
+
+At the sight of her the learned Judge, who was, like most really
+great lawyers, a keen admirer of beautiful women, woke up, and
+became interested.
+
+After the usual preliminaries, counsel requested her to look at that
+man, and say whether she knew him.
+
+Grace looked, and recognized him.  "Yes," said she, "it is Mr.
+Beresford; he is a clergyman."
+
+Whereupon there was a loud laugh.
+
+Counsel.  "What makes you think he is a clergyman?"
+
+Witness.  "I have seen him officiate.  It was he who married me to
+Mr.--"  Here she caught sight of Henry, and stopped, blushing.
+
+"What is that?" said the Judge, keenly.  "Did you say that man
+performed the marriage ceremony over you?"
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+"When and where was that?"
+
+She gave the time and place.
+
+"I should like to see the register of that parish."
+
+"Let me save you the trouble," said the prisoner.  "Your lordship's
+time has been wasted enough with falsehoods; I will not waste it
+further by denying the truth.  The fact is, my lord, I was always a
+great churchgoer (a laugh), and I was disgusted with the way in
+which the clergy deliver the Liturgy, and with their hollow
+discourses, that don't go home to men's bosoms.  Vanity whispered,
+'You could do better.'  I applied for the curacy of St. Peter's.  I
+obtained it.  I gave universal satisfaction; and no wonder; my heart
+was in the work; I trembled at the responsibility I had undertaken.
+Yes, my lord, I united that young lady in holy matrimony to one
+Frederick Coventry.  I had no sooner done it, than I began to
+realize that a clergyman is something more than a reader and a
+preacher.  Remorse seized me.  My penitence, once awakened, was
+sincere.  I retired from the sacred office I had usurped--with much
+levity, I own, but, as heaven is my witness, with no guilty intent."
+
+The Judge, to Grace.  "Did you ever see the prisoner on any other
+occasion?"
+
+Grace.  "Only once.  He called on me after my marriage.  He left the
+town soon after."
+
+The Judge then turned to Grace, and said, with considerable feeling,
+"It would be unkind to disguise the truth from you.  You must
+petition Parliament to sanction this marriage by a distinct
+enactment; it is the invariable course, and Parliament has never
+refused to make these marriages binding.  Until then, pray
+understand that you are Miss Carden, and not Mrs. Coventry."
+
+The witness clasped her hands above her bead, uttered a loud scream
+of joy, and was removed all but insensible from the box.
+
+The Judge looked amazed.  The Sheriff whispered, "Her hushand is a
+greater scoundrel than this prisoner."
+
+Soon after this the Judge withdrew to luncheon, and took the Sheriff
+along with him.  "Mr. Sheriff," said he, "you said something to me
+in court I hardly understood."
+
+Then Raby gave the Judge a brief outline of the whole story, and, in
+a voice full of emotion, asked his advice.
+
+The Judge smiled at this bit of simplicity; but his heart had been
+touched, and he had taken a fancy to Raby.  "Mr. Sheriff," said he,
+"etiquette forbids me to advise you--"
+
+"I am sorry for that, my lord."
+
+"But humanity suggests--  Tell me, now, does this Coventry hold to
+her?  Will he petition Parliament?"
+
+"It is very possible, my lord."
+
+"Humph!  Get a special license, and marry Grace Carden to Henry
+Little, and have the marriage consummated.  Don't lose a day, nor an
+hour.  I will not detain you, Mr. Sheriff."
+
+Raby took the hint, and soon found Henry, and told him the advice he
+had got.  He set him to work to get the license, and, being resolved
+to stand no nonsense, he drove to Grace, and invited her to Raby
+Hall.  "I am to be married this week," said he, "and you must be at
+the wedding."
+
+Grace thought he would be hurt if she refused, so she colored a
+little, but consented.
+
+She packed up, with many a deep sigh, things fit for a wedding, and
+Raby drove her home.  He saw her to her room, and then had a
+conversation with Mrs. Little, the result of which was that Henry's
+mother received her with well-feigned cordiality.
+
+Next day Henry came to dinner, and, after dinner, the lovers were
+left alone.  This, too, had been arranged beforehand.
+
+Henry told her he was going to ask her a great favor; would she
+consider all they had suffered, and, laying aside childish delays,
+be married to him in the old church to-morrow, along with Mr. Raby
+and Jael Dence?
+
+Oh, then she trembled, and blushed, and hesitated; and faltered out,
+"What! all in a moment like that? what would your mother think of me?"
+
+Henry ran for his mother, and brought her into the room.
+
+"Mother," said he, "Grace wants to know what you will think of her,
+if she should lay aside humbug and marry me to-morrow?"
+
+Mrs. Little replied, "I shall say, here is a dear child, who has
+seen what misery may spring from delay, and so now she will not
+coquet with her own happiness, nor trifle with yours."
+
+"No, no," said Grace; "only tell me you will forgive my folly, and
+love me as your child."
+
+Mrs. Little caught her in her arms, and, in that attitude, Grace
+gave her hand to Henry, and whispered "Yes."
+
+Next day, at eleven o'clock, the two couples went to the old church,
+and walked up the aisle to the altar.  Grace looked all around.
+Raby had effaced every trace of Henry's sacrilege from the building;
+but not from the heart of her whose life he had saved on that very
+spot.
+
+She stood at the altar, weeping at the recollections the place
+revived, but they were tears of joy.  The parson of the parish, a
+white-haired old man, the model of a pastor, married the two couples
+according to the law of England.
+
+Raby took his wife home, more majorum.
+
+Little whirled his prize off to Scotland, and human felicity has
+seldom equaled his and his bride's.
+
+Yet in the rapture of conjugal bliss, she did not forget duty and
+filial affection.  She wrote a long and tender letter to her father,
+telling him how it all happened, and hoping that she should soon be
+settled, and then he would come and live with her and her adored
+husband.
+
+Mr. Carden was delighted with this letter, which, indeed, was one
+gush of love and happiness.  He told Coventry what had taken place,
+and counseled patience.
+
+Coventry broke out into curses.  He made wonderful efforts for a man
+in his condition; he got lawyers to prepare a petition to
+Parliament; he had the register inspected, and found that the Shifty
+had married two poor couples; he bribed them to join in his
+petition, and inserted in it that, in consideration of this
+marriage, he had settled a certain farm and buildings on his wife
+for her separate use, and on her heirs forever.
+
+The petition was read in Parliament, and no objection taken.  It was
+considered a matter of course.
+
+But, a few days afterward, one of the lawyers in the House, primed
+by a person whose name I am not free to mention, recurred to the
+subject, and said that, as regarded one of these couples, too
+partial a statement had been laid before the House; he was credibly
+informed that the parties had separated immediately after the
+ceremony, and that the bride had since been married, according to
+law, to a gentleman who possessed her affections, and had lived with
+him ever since the said marriage.
+
+On this another lawyer got up, and said that "if that was so, the
+petition must be abandoned.  Parliament was humane, and would
+protect an illegal marriage per se, but not an illegal marriage
+competing with a legal one, that would be to tamper with the law of
+England, and, indeed, with morality; would compel a woman to
+adultery in her own despite."
+
+This proved a knock-down blow; and the petition was dropped, as
+respected Frederick Coventry and Grace Little.
+
+Coventry's farm was returned to him, and the settlement canceled.
+
+Little sent Ransome to him with certain memoranda, and warned him to
+keep quiet, or he would be indicted for felony.
+
+He groaned and submitted.
+
+He lives still to expiate his crimes.
+
+While I write these lines, there still stands at Poma Bridge one
+disemboweled house, to mark that terrible flood: and even so, this
+human survivor lives a wreck.  "Below the waist an inert mass; above
+it, a raging, impotent, despairing criminal."  He often prays for
+death.  Since he can pray for any thing let us hope he will one day
+pray for penitence and life everlasting.
+
+
+Little built a house in the suburbs leading to Raby Hall.  There is
+a forge in the yard, in which the inventor perfects his inventions
+with his own hand.  He is a wealthy man, and will be wealthier for
+he lives prudently and is never idle.
+
+Mr. Carden lives with him.  Little is too happy with Grace to bear
+malice against her father.
+
+Grace is lovelier than ever, and blissfully happy in the husband she
+adores, and two lovely children.
+
+Guy Raby no longer calls life one disappointment: he has a loving
+and prudent wife, and loves her as she deserves; his olive branches
+are rising fast around him; and as sometimes happens to a benedict
+of his age, who has lived soberly, he looks younger, feels younger,
+talks younger, behaves younger than he did ten years before he
+married.  He is quite unconscious that he has departed from his
+favorite theories, in wedding a yeoman's daughter.  On the contrary,
+he believes he has acted on a system, and crossed the breed so
+judiciously as to attain greater physical perfection by means of a
+herculean dam, yet retain that avitam fidem, or traditional loyalty,
+which (to use his own words) "is born both in Rabys and Dences, as
+surely as a high-bred setter comes into the world with a nose for
+game."
+
+Mrs. Little has rewarded Dr. Amboyne's patience and constancy.  They
+have no children of their own, so they claim all the young Littles
+and Rabys, present and to come; and the doctor has bound both the
+young women by a solemn vow to teach them, at an early age, the art
+of putting themselves into his place, her place, their place.  He
+has convinced these young mothers that the "great transmigratory
+art," although it comes of itself only to a few superior minds, can
+be taught to vast numbers; and he declares that, were it to be
+taught as generally as reading and writing, that teaching alone
+would quadruple the intelligence of mankind, and go far to double
+its virtue.
+
+But time flies, and space contracts: the words and the deeds of
+Amboyne, are they not written in the Amboyniana?
+
+
+One foggy night, the house of a non-Union fender-grinder was blown
+up with gunpowder, and not the workman only--the mildest and most
+inoffensive man I ever talked with--but certain harmless women and
+innocent children, who had done nothing to offend the Union, were
+all but destroyed.  The same barbarous act had been committed more
+than once before, and with more bloody results, but had led to no
+large consequences--carebat quai vate sacro; but this time there
+happened to be a vates in the place, to wit, an honest, intrepid
+journalist, with a mind in advance of his age.  He came, he looked,
+he spoke to the poor shaken creatures--one of them shaken for life,
+and doomed now to start from sleep at every little sound till she
+sleeps forever--and the blood in his heart boiled.  The felony was
+publicly reprobated, and with horror, by the Union, which had,
+nevertheless, hired the assassins; but this well-worn lie did not
+impose on the vates, or chronicler ahead of his time.  He went round
+to all the manufacturers, and asked them to speak out.  They durst
+not, for their lives; but closed all doors, and then, with bated
+breath, and all the mien of slaves well trodden down, hinted where
+information might be had.  Thereupon the vates aforesaid--Holdfast
+yclept--went from scent to scent, till he dropped on a discontented
+grinder, with fish-like eyes, who had been in "many a night job."
+This man agreed to split, on two conditions; he was to receive a sum
+of money, and to be sent into another hemisphere, since his life
+would not be worth a straw, if he told the truth about the Trades in
+this one.  His terms were accepted, and then he made some tremendous
+revelations and, with these in his possession, Holdfast wrote leader
+upon leader, to prove that the Unions must have been guilty of every
+Trade outrage that had taken place for years in the district; but
+adroitly concealing that he had positive information.
+
+Grotait replied incautiously, and got worsted before the public.
+The ablest men, if not writers, are unwise to fence writers.
+
+Holdfast received phonetic letters threatening his life: he
+acknowledged them in his journal and invited the writers to call.
+
+He loaded a revolver and went on writing the leaders with a finger
+on the trigger.  CALIFORNIA!  Oh, dear, no: the very center of
+England.
+
+Ransome co-operated with him and collected further evidence, and
+then Holdfast communicated privately with a portion of the London
+press, and begged them to assist him to obtain a Royal commission of
+inquiry, in which case he pledged himself to prove that a whole
+string of murders and outrages had been ordered and paid for by the
+very Unions which had publicly repudiated them in eloquent terms,
+and been believed.
+
+The London press took this up; two or three members of the House of
+Commons, wild, eccentric men, who would not betray their country to
+secure their re-election to some dirty borough, sided with outraged
+law; and by these united efforts a Commission was obtained.  The
+Commission sat, and, being conducted with rare skill and
+determination, squeezed out of an incredible mass of perjury some
+terrible truths, whose discovery drew eloquent leaders from the
+journals; these filled simple men, who love their country, with a
+hope that the Government of this nation would shake off its
+lethargy, and take stringent measures to defend the liberty of the
+subject against so cruel and cowardly a conspiracy, and to deprive
+the workmen, in their differences with the masters, of an unfair and
+sanguinary weapon, which the masters could use, but never have as
+YET; and, by using which, the workmen do themselves no lasting good,
+and, indeed, have driven whole trades and much capital out of the
+oppressed districts, to their own great loss.
+
+That hope, though not extinct, is fainter now than it was.  Matters
+seem going all the other way.  An honest, independent man, who did
+honor to the senate, has lost his seat solely for not conniving at
+these Trades outrages, which the hypocrites, who have voted him out,
+pretend to denounce.  Foul play is still rampant and triumphant.
+Its victims were sympathized with for one short day, when they bared
+their wounds to the Royal Commissioners; but that sympathy has
+deserted them; they are now hidden in holes and corners from their
+oppressors, and have to go by false names, and are kept out of work;
+for odisse quem loeseris is the fundamental maxim of their
+oppressors.  Not so the assassins: they flourish.  I have seen with
+these eyes one savage murderer employed at high wages, while a man
+he all but destroyed is refused work on all hands, and was separated
+by dire poverty from another scarred victim, his wife, till I
+brought them together.  Again, I have seen a wholesale murderer
+employed on the very machine he had been concerned in blowing up,
+employed on it at the wages of three innoxious curates.  And I find
+this is the rule, not the exception.  "No punishment but for already
+punished innocence; no safety but for triumphant crime."
+
+The Executive is fast asleep in the matter--or it would long ago
+have planted the Manchester district with a hundred thousand special
+constables--and the globule of LEGISLATION now prescribed to
+Parliament, though excellent in certain respects, is null in others,
+would, if passed into law, rather encourage the intimidation of one
+man by twenty, and make him starve his family to save his skin--
+cruel alternative--and would not seriously check the darker and more
+bloody outrages, nor prevent their spreading from their present
+populous centers all over the land.  Seeing these things, I have
+drawn my pen against cowardly assassination and sordid tyranny; I
+have taken a few undeniable truths, out of many, and have labored to
+make my readers realize those appalling facts of the day which most
+men know, but not one in a thousand comprehends, and not one in a
+hundred thousand REALIZES, until Fiction--which, whatever you may
+have been told to the contrary, is the highest, widest, noblest, and
+greatest of all the arts--comes to his aid, studies, penetrates,
+digests the hard facts of chronicles and blue-books, and makes their
+dry bones live.
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg etext of Put Yourself in His Place
diff --git a/old/phyip10.zip b/old/phyip10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51c2b24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/phyip10.zip