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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mad, by George Manville Fenn
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mad
+       A Story of Dust and Ashes
+
+Author: George Manville Fenn
+
+Release Date: February 23, 2011 [EBook #35367]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
+
+
+
+
+Mad
+A Story of Dust and Ashes
+By George Manville Fenn
+Published by Tinsley Brothers, 18 Catherine Street, Strand, London.
+This edition dated 1868.
+
+Volume One, Chapter I.
+
+THE THIN END OF THE WEDGE.
+
+Septimus Hardon bore his Christian name from no numerical reason, for he
+was an only child; but his father, Octavius Hardon, Esquire, of
+Somesham, thought that, like his own, the name had a good bold sound
+with it--a sonorous classical twang.  There was a vibration with it that
+should impress people in the future life of the bearer and add
+importance denied by Nature; but Mrs Octavius, during her lifetime, was
+always in disgrace with her lord for shortening the name into Sep, which
+was decidedly not impressive; while as for Septimus himself, he too was
+always in trouble with his father for being what he was--decidedly
+impressive, but not in the way his father wished; for to look at
+Septimus Hardon it might have been supposed that Nature, after trying
+her 'prentice hand on man, and then making "the lasses, O," had had a
+quantity of rough stuff left--odds and ends, snips and scraps and
+awkward tags--when, sooner than there should be any waste of the
+precious material, she made Septimus Hardon.  You could not say that he
+was deformed, but there was an odd look about him; his head seemed too
+big, and was badly thatched, while, by contrast, his body was too small;
+then his nose was a trifle on one side, and his mouth too wide, though
+it certainly disclosed an enviable set of teeth; his arms were long, and
+swung about too much, while one leg was slightly shorter than the other,
+short enough to make him limp; but there was mildness written in his
+pitted face, and honesty peered at you from his clear bright eyes.  And
+there was a true heart too in his breast, a large swelling heart, to
+which must have been due the obtrusiveness of his breast, and the
+decided roundness of his shoulders.  And while Septimus Hardon had in
+some things most excellent taste--taste that his cousins sneered at,
+save when they wanted their music copied neatly, or their drawings
+touched up--yet dress was not his forte, since he always made the worst
+of himself by wearing clothes that did not fit him, and bad as his
+figure was, some tailor could have been found who would have guaranteed
+fit, if not style.  Septimus generally wore shabby faded black coats and
+vests, trousers of a dead leaf or baker's drab, blucher boots of the
+pattern known as contract--very bulgy and wrinkly; and a real beaver
+hat, with a propensity for growing irritated under the brush, and
+becoming rough and startling.
+
+Born in London, Septimus had lived since childhood with his father at
+the Grange, a solitary house about a couple of miles from Somesham town;
+and for years past the amusement and toil of the father and son had been
+centred in a little amateur printing-office, fitted up in a side-room,
+where they laboriously printed, page by page, the work that Octavius
+Hardon called his brother Thomas--the doctor practising in the town--a
+fool for not appreciating,--a work upon political reform, one that was
+to astonish the world at large when it was completed; and though
+Septimus owned to himself that the world would be easily astonished and
+its state rather startling if it accepted and acted upon the opinions
+there set forth, yet, at forty years of age, he was still working on day
+after day at his father's beck and call, obedient as a child, and never
+venturing an opinion of his own in presence of the irascible old man,
+who always called him "boy."
+
+It might have been supposed that living so secluded a life himself, and
+being so strange of aspect, the idle god would have spared him as an
+object for his shafts; but for long years Septimus Hardon had loved in
+secret, loved and sorrowed,--for he was not happy in the choice he had
+made.  Mary Phillips was the betrothed of Tom Grey, the mate of an East
+Indiaman; and Septimus Hardon had been divided between love for the fair
+girl and friendship for his old schoolfellow, who made him the
+repository, in his frank, sailorlike fashion, of all his secrets.
+
+So while the sailor had wooed and won, Septimus Hardon had nursed his
+love for years, hardly realising the passion he had harboured, till one
+night when, after a woodside ramble, he stood leaning upon a stile, and
+glancing down with bitterness at his uncouth form.  The shadows were
+growing deeper, when, hearing approaching footsteps, he entered the
+wood, where before him lay many a dark mossy arcade--fit places for the
+sighs of a sorrowful heart; and he thought as he entered one that he
+could wander here in peace for a while; but the next instant the hot
+blood flushed up into his face, making his veins throb as he stood with
+clenched hands gazing through the thin screen of leaves at Mary, leaning
+lovingly upon his friend's arm, and listening with downcast eyes to his
+words.
+
+The listener could hardly see the looks of those who passed, but their
+words seemed to ring through the stillness of the summer eve, each one
+falling with a heavy impact upon his ear, and vibrating through his
+frame, as if a sharp blow had been struck upon sonorous metal.  For a
+moment a wild fury seemed to blind him, and he stood trembling with
+passion till the footsteps died away; when, half wild with agony, he
+dashed headlong, deeper and deeper into the wood, crashing through the
+light hazels, tripping over the tortuous roots; and at last, stumbling
+over a fallen bough, he fell heavily, and lay insensible in the calm
+depths of the wood.  But thought soon dawned upon him again, and he lay
+and shuddered as the anguish of heart came slowly creeping back; for he
+now thoroughly understood his fate, and knew that the bright dreamy
+structures in which his imagination had revelled had crumbled before him
+into bitter dust.
+
+Time sped on, and after another voyage Tom Grey was back, and standing
+with his hand upon Septimus Hardon's shoulder.
+
+"Come?  Why, of course, my boy; what should we do without you?  Mary
+begs that you won't refuse; and, Sep, old fellow, I shall expect you to
+be her bodyguard when I'm far away at sea."
+
+Septimus Hardon was standing opposite to a tall pier-glass in his
+father's drawing-room when these words were spoken; and he glanced at
+himself, and then, sighing bitterly, wondered whether, had he been as
+other men, he would have been chosen.  But the next moment the thought
+was crushed down, and he was returning the frank, handsome sailor's
+honest grasp.
+
+Septimus Hardon nursed his love, but he hid it, buried it in the deepest
+recesses of his heart; and no one knew of the secret held by the
+bridegroom's friend, who held by one of the pews when a swimming came
+upon him in the church, and he would have fallen had not Tom Grey
+grasped his arm.  But that soon passed, and the stricken man added his
+congratulations to those of the friends assembled to follow the couple,
+in whose path flowers were strewn--the couple joined together till death
+did them part.
+
+And that was soon--soon to the loving wife--soon to the husband whose
+journeyings were upon the great deep; but years passed first, during
+which quiet, vacillating Septimus Hardon was the faithful friend of his
+schoolfellow's wife, and the patient slave of her bright-eyed child, at
+whose bidding he was always ready to attend, even to the neglect of his
+father's book.
+
+Then came the day when, after whispering of hope, for many months,
+Septimus learned that his fears were but too well founded, and that his
+friend's ship had gone down with all on board.
+
+A bitter trial was his to break the fatal tidings to the widow, and he
+stood trembling as she, the woman he had for long years worshipped in
+secret, reviled him and cursed him in her madness for the news--the
+blasting news that he had brought upon her home.
+
+Then two years glided away, when the widow, passing through many a phase
+of sorrow, sickness, and misery, sat hoping on that he whom she mourned
+would yet return, and all the while ignorant of the hand that supplied
+her wants, or of the good friend with so great a love for fancy-work
+that she sent order after order, liberally paid for by the hands of
+Septimus Hardon.  The beauty of the past slowly faded, so that she
+became haggard and thin; a lasting illness seemed to have her in its
+grasp; but still faithful to his trust, true to the love he bore her,
+Septimus Hardon set at naught the frowns of his father and the sneers of
+his cousins, while he devoted himself to the alleviation of the widow's
+sufferings, and kept her from the additional stings of want, for she had
+been left totally unprovided for by her young and hopeful husband.
+
+And what was the result?  Such as might have been expected from such a
+nature as Septimus Hardon's.  Patient and true, the love he bore this
+woman was hidden for years, and then, when in her hopeless misery the
+widow turned her head upon the sick pillow and asked his advice, he told
+her to give him the right to protect her, to be to her child, little
+Lucy, a second father, and then shrank, crushed and trembling, from the
+room, affrighted at her look of horror, and the words accusatory which
+told him of faithlessness to his trust, to his schoolfellow, who she
+felt yet lived.
+
+But it was only in her hopeful heart he lived, and six months after
+forbidding Septimus her house, Mary Grey, weeping bitterly over the
+discovery she had made of the hand that had so long sustained her, wrote
+these words and sent them to the Grange: "Forgive me!"
+
+Volume One, Chapter II.
+
+SEP'S COMPLAINT.
+
+Octavius Hardon's book was at a standstill, and the world still in the
+thick darkness of ignorance as regarded political reform upon his basis,
+for Septimus Hardon was ill, sick almost unto death.  He had slowly
+grown listless and dull, careless of everything, daily becoming weaker,
+until, apparently without ailment, he had taken to his bed, over which
+his uncle, Doctor Hardon; his assistant, Mr Reston, a handsome,
+cynical-looking man, and the rival practitioner of the town, had all
+concurred in shaking their heads and declaring that nothing could be
+done, since Septimus Hardon was suffering from the effects of an
+internal malformation.
+
+They were quite right; the poor fellow had too much heart; and though
+the wise of this earth declare that people do not die of or for love,
+yet most assuredly Septimus Hardon would slowly have faded from his
+place among men, and before many months had passed over his head gone
+where there is rest.
+
+But there was medicine of the right kind coming, and the very perusal
+with lack-lustre eyes of the prescription brought to his bedroom sent a
+flash of light into the glassy orbs, and in the course of a few weeks
+Septimus disappointed the doctors by getting well, Nature having
+arranged respecting the internal malformation.
+
+"I don't think you did him a bit of good, Mr Brande; not a bit--not a
+bit--not a bit," said Octavius to the rival practitioner.  "He never
+took any of your stuffs.  Now, come and set me up again, for I'm wrong."
+
+"Better, yes, he's better," said the old man to Mr Reston.
+"Good-morning--good-morning--good-morning."
+
+Doctor Hardon had sent his assistant over; but in place of seeing the
+patient he found himself bowed out; and on loudly complaining to the
+doctor, not on account of missing his interview with the patient, but
+for reasons of his own, Doctor Hardon now called.
+
+"Well, Tom--well, Tom--well, Tom?" said Octavius, smiling cynically, and
+looking his younger brother well over from top to toe.  "What is it,
+Tom?"
+
+"O, about Septimus?"
+
+"There, be off; I'm busy.  Septimus is getting on, and Mr Brande will
+physic him if he wants any more.  A man who can't morally physic his own
+children can't do other people's good."
+
+Doctor Hardon, portly and pompous, rose to speak; but Octavius took hold
+of his arm and led him to the door, giving him his hat at the same time.
+
+"Good-bye, Tom--good-bye--good-bye.  Don't come till I send for you
+again.  You always were a fool, and an ass, and an idiot, and a humbug,
+Tom--always--always--always."
+
+There was a slight storm at Doctor Hardon's that day, and neither his
+wife nor daughters ventured much into his presence; but when, some weeks
+afterwards, the doctor knew of a scene that took place in his brother's
+house, he smiled softly, and after a fashion of his own he purred, while
+that night he was graciousness itself.
+
+Octavius Hardon sat writing, and listening to the words of his son till,
+as he grew interested, the pen ceased to form letters, and at last he
+pushed back his chair, overturning the inkstand, so that the sable
+current streamed across a fresh paragraph of his book.  He thrust up his
+glasses and sheltered his eyes to look at his son--the son who had
+obeyed his every word and look, who had never seemed to have a thought
+of his own--the son who was even now, in spite of his forty years, but a
+boy; and as he looked, he saw that he seemed inches taller, that there
+was an elate look in his countenance, which it would have been hard at
+that moment to have called plain.
+
+"Going to be what?" gasped the father.
+
+"To be married," said the son firmly.
+
+"Married?"
+
+"Married, father."
+
+"And to whom?  One of those hussies, your cousins?"
+
+"To Mrs Grey," replied Septimus.
+
+"What?" gasped the old man.  "To a woman--a widow with a family--a
+proper inmate for the union--a pauper!"
+
+"Hush, father!" cried Septimus.  "I love her;" and he said those simple
+words with such reverence, such tenderness, that the old man paused and
+gazed almost wonderingly at the aspect worn by his son; but by degrees
+his anger gained the ascendant, and a stormy scene ensued in which the
+father threatened and besought in turn, while the son remained calm and
+immovable.  Once he shrunk back and held up his hands deprecatingly,
+when the old man spoke harshly of the stricken woman; but directly after
+his face lit up with a pride and contentment which almost maddened the
+speaker.
+
+"You cannot keep a wife!" he gasped.
+
+Septimus smiled.
+
+"You were always a helpless, vacillating fool, and you have nothing but
+the few hundreds from your mother."
+
+Septimus bowed his head.
+
+"Dog!" roared the old man, "I'll leave every penny I have to your
+uncle's hussies if you dare to marry this woman."
+
+The son smiled sadly, but remained silent.
+
+"Why don't you speak?" roared Octavius, foaming with rage.
+
+"What would you have me say, father?" said Septimus calmly.
+
+"Say!" gasped the old man; "why, that you are a thankless, graceless,
+unnatural scoundrel.  But where do you mean to go?"
+
+"To London," said Septimus.
+
+"To London!" sneered the old man; "and what for?  No; go to Hanwell, or
+Colney Hatch, or sink your paltry money at a private asylum, if they
+will take you.  To London, to leave me to my infirmities, with my book
+unfinished!  But you'll take my curse with you; and may yon brazen,
+scheming woman--"
+
+"Hush!" cried Septimus fiercely, as he laid his hand upon his father's
+lips, when, beside himself with fury, Octavius struck his son heavily in
+the face, and then, as he fell back, the old man seized the poker, but
+only to throw it crashing back into the fender.
+
+Just at that moment, the door opened, a tall, dark, handsome girl
+hurried into the room, and stood between father and son, gazing in an
+agitated way from one anger-wrought countenance to the other.
+
+"Septimus!  Uncle!" she cried, "what is the matter?"
+
+"He's a villain, girl--an unnatural scoundrel.  He's going to marry that
+woman--Grey's wife--widow--relict--curse her!"
+
+"What, poor Mrs Grey?" said the girl, with the tears springing to her
+eyes.
+
+"God bless you for that, Agnes!" cried Septimus passionately, as he
+caught her in his arms, and kissed her affectionately.
+
+"Yes, _poor_ Mrs Grey," sneered the old man, looking savagely at the
+pair before him.  "But there, let him go; and mind _you_, or you won't
+have what I've got.  But there, you will, and your sisters will have
+something to fleer and jeer at then, and your father will purr in my
+face, and spit and swear behind my back.  Bah! a cursed tom-cat humbug!"
+
+"Hush, uncle dear!" whispered Agnes, laying one hand upon his arm and
+the other upon his breast, her lip quivering as she spoke,--"hush! you
+are angry.--Don't say any more, Septimus."
+
+"No," replied Septimus sternly, "I have done."
+
+"No, _no_, no! you have not," roared the old man, firing up again.  "You
+have to beg my pardon, and tell me that this folly is at an end."
+
+"I'll beg your pardon, father," said Septimus sternly, "and I do ask it
+for anything I have done amiss; but I have pledged my word to the woman
+I have loved these ten years."  And again there was the look of proud
+elation on Septimus Hardon's countenance.
+
+"And you are going to London, eh?" said Octavius.
+
+"To London," said Septimus calmly.
+
+The old man frowned, pressed his lips tightly together, and, holding
+Agnes firmly by her shoulder, he stood pointing with one hand towards
+the door.
+
+"Then go!" he said; "go--go!"
+
+"O, Septimus!" cried Agnes in appealing tones,--"uncle!"
+
+"You're mad, Septimus Hardon," said the old man coldly.  "Mad--stark
+mad: a private asylum, Septimus--an asylum--mad!  You're mad--stark mad!
+Go!"
+
+Volume One, Chapter III.
+
+FURTHER INTRODUCTIONS.
+
+In the faint light of early morning, some ten years after the scene
+described in the last chapter, at that cold dank hour when the struggle
+is going on between night and day, and the former is being slowly and
+laboriously conquered,--when Chancery-lane looked at its worst, and the
+passed-away region of Bennett's-rents more sordid and desolate than
+ever.  The gas-lamps still glimmered in the street, while the solitary
+light at the end of the Rents yet burned dimly, and as if half-destroyed
+by mephitic vapour, when the door of Number 27 was opened, closed
+loudly, and a man clattered heavily over the broken pavement, creating
+an unnecessary amount of noise as he slowly made his way out through the
+narrow archway into the street, but watching on either side with
+observant eye the while.  It seemed darker when he reached the Lane,
+where, after glancing hastily up and down for a minute, he softly thrust
+off his boots,--a pair of heavy lace-ups,--and then, taking them in his
+hand, he ran lightly back, with the stooping gait and eager hound-like
+air of some savage beast on the trail of its prey.  But the next moment
+he was at the door he had quitted, had opened it softly and slipped in,
+ignorant that a face at the third-floor window opposite was watching his
+movements with looks yet keener than his own.
+
+Holding his breath, the man stood in the passage of the old house for a
+few seconds; then, passing along softly, he stole down the damp,
+half-rotten cellar-stairs, starting once and giving vent to a
+half-suppressed ejaculation as a cat dashed hastily by him, when he
+paused to wipe the cold perspiration from his forehead with his sleeve.
+Then he stood at the bottom in front of the cellar-door, in the damp
+dark place where ashes gritted beneath his feet, and the foul smell of
+half-decayed vegetable refuse arose.  Apparently guided by caution, he
+now carefully felt around him, letting his hands glide along the wall,
+while his feet probed every corner to insure that he was alone, before,
+after listening an instant at the foot of the stairs, he slipped quickly
+through the door, and stood in the large front cellar.
+
+It was lighter here, for the morning was struggling down through the
+grating; and now, after a careful tour of inspection, peering into every
+dim corner, the man passed through a low archway and into a back-cellar,
+darker and damper than the first,--a place that had once been used for
+wine, and into every one of whose cobweb-hung and sawdust-floored bins
+the man looked in turn, as he made his way farther from the light.
+
+He was a big, heavy man; but there was something soft and cat-like in
+his movements as he passed along the dark cellar.  The obscurity seemed
+to have but little effect upon him, for the way appeared familiar; and
+when right at the end he stopped to listen attentively for a few moments
+before, going down upon hands and knees, he crawled rapidly, and more
+cat-like than ever, into one of the darkest bins.  Then there was a low
+grating noise heard, as if a heavy stone had been pushed aside; there
+was a deep expiration, as of one moving a weight; a rustling, the
+grating sound once more, and then for a few minutes silence.
+
+The light descending the grating struggled hard to illumine the obscure
+place; but this was one of the strongholds of darkness--a spot where it
+lurked through the bright hours of the day; and the efforts of the light
+only served to faintly illumine the front cellar, where stood a huge
+water-butt with a pipe leading to it for the supply of the house; and
+here now began an echoing drip, drip, drip; while from the tap came a
+strange, sighing, hissing sound, as the air was forced by distant
+pressure along the pipe.
+
+Now came the sharp crack of a stair, the very faint rustle of a dress,
+and then slowly and cautiously appeared, coming forward, as it were, out
+of the gloom like one of the phantoms of a nightmare, the face that had
+been gazing from the opposite window, an old, eager, hawk-like, pinched
+woman's face, peering through the opening of the ajar door, and followed
+directly by the shabbily-clothed body.
+
+Cautiously, and with eyes peering in every direction, the woman advanced
+into the cellar, her head thrust forward, with her thin grey hair pushed
+behind her ears, which twitched and seemed on the alert to catch the
+faintest sound.  Close behind her followed a cropped poodle-dog, which
+now ran forward, when at a menacing gesture it half stood up, but the
+raised hand made it shrink down instantly, and crouching to the earth it
+crawled for a few moments and then lay motionless, while its mistress,
+as if walking in the steps of the man, nimbly examined the cellar, even
+peering behind and in the great butt, which her thrust-in hand showed
+her was nearly full of water.
+
+She then softly made her way to the dark arch, and with one hand holding
+by the side leaned in and tried to penetrate the darkness, but without
+avail; when, muttering softly to herself, she stepped in, but only to
+pass out the next moment shaking her head, as with one hand she busily
+searched her pocket, from which she drew forth a box of matches.
+Stepping once more beneath the arch she struck a match upon the damp
+wall, and a long phosphorescent line of light shone feebly out, but the
+match did not blaze.
+
+Impatiently throwing down the splint of wood, the woman tried another
+and another, but without effect, till she rubbed one upon the outside of
+the box, when it ignited silently, and illumined the place for a little
+distance round, when eagerly catching up the tiny splints thrown down
+she lit first one and then another, and as they burned their brief span
+a hasty examination was made.  Everywhere the same features: old
+cobwebbed wine-bins, damp and fungoid growths, and though the woman
+peered even into the bin where the man had so lately crawled, nothing
+presented itself to her hurried gaze more than in the others, and as her
+last lit splint burned out she stepped lightly back to the entrance.
+
+As she stood within the front cellar she turned once more to gaze down
+the dark place she had quitted, when a low grating noise struck her ear,
+and starting back she was about to run to the steps; but, making an
+effort over herself, she stood, trembling, and listened.
+
+The noise continued for a few seconds, then came the sound as of clothes
+rustling against a wall, then the heavy breathing, the grating once
+more, and then silence as, turning her back to both entrances, the woman
+stole softly to where her dog lay crouching upon the damp floor.
+
+The next moment a sharp yelp and a succession of howls came from the
+stricken dog as the woman caught it by the thick curled hair of its
+neck, and beat it savagely.
+
+"Ah, then, _mechant chien_, bad tog, how I have looked for you!" she
+cried.  "Why do you steal down here?  There, there, there!" and each
+word was followed by a blow, while the wretched little animal lay
+cowering and yelping on the ground, till, lifted by its ears, the skin
+seemed drawn out of place, the eyes elongated, and the poor brute, now
+silent, the most abject specimen of canine misery imaginable.
+
+There was a quick step behind the woman, and, as if surprised, she
+started, and turned to gaze at the evil face behind her, for the man had
+stepped close to the entrance-door.
+
+"Ah!  Meester Jarker, but you did frighten me.  My bad tog he runs away.
+What shall I do wis him?"
+
+The man looked keenly at the speaker, and slowly drew a large
+clasp-knife, which he opened, and the woman could hardly repress a
+shudder as there in the dim light she saw him run his thumb along the
+edge.
+
+"Ah, yes!" she said with a half-laugh; "he deserves, but I cannot spare
+him; I must teach him better than to come into uzzer people's house.  I
+look everywhere before I think of dis cellar."
+
+The man did not speak, but glanced first at the mistress, then at the
+dog, and then at his knife and the great butt, and then involuntarily
+his suspicious looks turned to the dark arch of the inner cellar, when
+once more their eyes met in a long penetrating stare.
+
+"I once knowed somethin' as got its throat cut for coming into this here
+cellar.  I ain't sure, but I think that 'ere was a dawg," growled the
+man.
+
+"O yes, he must not come any more, Meester Jarker; but you will not cut
+my troat.  O, no," laughed the woman jeeringly, as sending her dog on
+first, and fixing her eyes upon the man, she slowly backed out of the
+cellar.  "O, no, for we will both be good and come no more."
+
+As she slowly made her way to the cellar-stairs, the man stood looking
+after her; but as she mounted them he followed softly, and listened till
+he heard her rustle along the passage, when he slipped through the
+cellar and caught sight of her from the rusty grating as she crossed the
+court, when he once more went back to the dark arch and looked about
+him.
+
+All at once his keen eye caught sight of something upon the floor--a
+newly-burned scrap of match, and snatching it up, he held it to his
+cheek to try and detect whether it was dry or damp.  It seemed to be
+dry, so after once more going to the door, and from thence to the
+stairs, to make out whether he was sure to be free from interruption, he
+returned hastily, drew forth a tin match-box, lit a scrap of wax-candle
+from his pocket, and then shading the light with his cap and carefully
+examining the floor, he picked up three more tiny pieces of half-burned
+match, lying here and there amongst the blackened dirt and sawdust.
+These scraps he carefully placed in his pocket along with the piece of
+candle, and then hurried out, with his lips drawn away from his teeth,
+and his face wearing a diabolically savage aspect.  But the next moment
+he gave his head a shake, and stole softly up the stairs muttering:
+
+"It must have been arter the dawg."
+
+Mr William Jarker walked out into the court with his boots on now, and
+his hands very far down in his pockets, and then made his way into the
+Lane, where he paused in doubt as to whether he should go to the right
+or to the left; but as in the latter direction there was a policeman,
+Mr Jarker betook himself to the right, and made his way into the
+Strand, now nearly empty, while church-spire and chimney-pot stood out
+clear in the unsmoked morning air.  But the street-sweepers were busy,
+the butchers' carts from westward came rattling along, bound for
+Newgate-market; watercress-girls tramped by from Farringdon, making up
+their dark-green bunches as they walked; while every now and then a red
+newspaper-cart dashed by with its universal budget for the various
+railway termini.  London was waking again, the great heart was beating
+fast, and the streams of life beginning to ebb and flow through the
+street-veins of the City.
+
+But all this affected Mr Jarker very little, he only seemed interested
+at times during his walk, being apparently in a very contemplative mood.
+Once he half-stopped as a tall, dark, fierce-eyed woman walked hastily
+by in company with a slightly-formed girl; but they noticed him not, and
+were soon out of sight, while Mr Jarker continued his walk, with eyes
+directed at the ground, as if he thought that being an early bird he
+must get the first peck at the worms--worms that might take the form of
+some valuable waif.  However, not meeting with any reward from the earth
+he turned his eyes heavenward, where he could see no waifs, but an
+occasional stray in the shape of a pigeon, darting across the clear
+strip of atmosphere above his head, or settling upon the housetop, and
+so much did these gentle birds attract his notice, that he would now and
+then stop, and inserting a couple of tolerably clean, soft, unworked
+fingers in his mouth, whistle to them.
+
+For the pigeons are many in London, and at early morn single birds may
+be seen darting in swift flight like airy messengers; flocks may be seen
+in circle round their home, or cooing in company upon the tower of some
+lofty church--one of the many hidden amidst the labyrinths of bricks and
+mortar--cooing softly sweet notes, heard plainly now, but soon to be
+drowned in the roar of the busy streams of life ebbing and flowing
+through the streets; now but a gentle hum as of a honey-seeking bee, but
+soon increasing in intensity as the bees swarm.
+
+There was no help for it this time, for suddenly turning a corner, Mr
+Jarker come upon a sergeant and a dozen policemen walking with measured
+step, on their way to relieve those who had been on duty through the
+night.
+
+"I'm gallussed!" muttered Mr Jarker, trying to look unconcerned, and
+slouching on; and it was observable that though Mr Jarker looked
+straight before him and whistled, the policemen, one and all, looked
+very hard at Mr Jarker, as if they knew him and felt hurt at his pride;
+while one man was even seen to wink to himself, and smile a very
+peculiar, hard smile--the kind of smile only seen upon policemen's
+faces, and one that means so much that its interpretation would be a
+task of difficulty.
+
+"I'm gallussed!" muttered Mr Jarker again, when he was well past the
+men in uniform, and then, apparently satisfied with the length of his
+morning walk, he took a short cut to make his way back to
+Bennett's-rents, while, upon thus once more having his thoughts directed
+homeward, he again muttered--"It must have been arter the dawg."
+
+Volume One, Chapter IV.
+
+WITH THE DRAGON'S TEETH.
+
+In the gloomiest part of that gloomy street called Carey, and in the
+darkest corner of his printing-office, sat Septimus Hardon.  The
+dragon's teeth and their appurtenances lay around, but all thickly
+covered with that strange black dust peculiar to the region; the dust
+compounded of who can tell what, as it rests on every ledge, and settles
+thickly upon every article in room or workshop, office or chamber.
+Business had not prospered with Septimus, though his place looked
+business-like, save for the animation that a few moving figures would
+have lent to it, while for position it was all that could be desired.
+But the star of Septimus Hardon was not in the ascendant.  With the
+knowledge full upon him that he must work to keep the wife and child he
+had taken to his breast upon leaving Somesham, he had adopted the trade
+which seemed most congenial from the little knowledge that he possessed;
+but as the years passed on, leaving him poorer, and with increased
+expenses, he grew hopeless, helpless, and, if it were possible, less
+fitted than ever for fighting his way amidst the busy throngs of the
+great city.  At times, almost in despair, he would go forth into the
+streets of the busy hive and canvass for work; but he always carried
+with him an atmosphere of his own, so quiet, strange, and retiring a
+manner, that his very appearance invited either pity or rebuff, and
+often and often, when tired out, he would return to his wife for the
+comfort that she, grown more sickly than ever, could ill afford to give.
+
+But Septimus seldom complained, and there was always a pleasant smile
+for Lucy Grey, now grown a blooming girl, the mainstay of the family for
+cheerfulness, and the constant attendant of her invalid mother; and, in
+spite of her years, almost taking the place of parent to the two
+children, the fruit of Septimus Hardon's marriage.
+
+And now, after long years of straggling, Septimus sat thinking of the
+state of his affairs, of the rent he had to make up, and the silence of
+his father in spite of the many humble appeals that he had made to him
+for help.  Mattering and calculating, with a piece of paper and a
+pencil, he suddenly stopped short, for he saw that he was not alone, and
+shuffling off his high stool he hurried towards the new-comer, in the
+hope that some solicitor had sent orders for some large amount of work,
+or that, better still, an estimate was wanted for a new magazine.
+
+"Any chance of a job, sir?" said the new-comer, who might have been
+Septimus Hardon twenty years older, and more shabby.  There was `old
+compositor' oozing out of him at every corner, and the corners in his
+person were many; he smelt of stale tobacco-smoke, and he was taking
+almost his last pinch of snuff out of a dirty piece of paper, with his
+long, lithe, active fingers as Septimus Hardon approached him.  A shabby
+black frock-coat was buttoned tightly to his chin; his shiny black
+trousers had the gloss of age thick upon them; Wellington boots were
+upon his feet that rivalled his tall hat for dilapidations; old, sallow,
+dirty, and wild-looking, he was not the man a master would have employed
+unless from some latent idea that he suited the district.  "Any chance
+of a job, sir?"
+
+Septimus Hardon shook his head and sighed, which was, to say the least
+of it, unbusiness-like.
+
+The old man echoed the sigh, leaned one hand upon the case of type at
+his elbow, and began to finger the letters, bringing up the bright
+unused types from the bottom of the boxes.  He then sighed again, took
+in at one glance the fittings of the office, and ended by fixing his
+eyes upon the owner.
+
+"Might do a deal of work with all this, sir."
+
+Septimus Hardon nodded drearily, and sighed again, instead of promptly
+ordering the man off his premises.
+
+"Yes; should be glad of an hour's work or so, sir.  Seems hard here in
+this world of ours that when a man's ready and willing to work he can't
+get it to do, sir; don't it?"
+
+Septimus nodded, and looked hard at the man, thinking how his was after
+all the worse lot.
+
+"I'm faint, sir," continued the old printer, "and hungry, and hard up;"
+and then he looked down at his clothes with a dreary smile upon his
+grim, unshorn face.
+
+"I would give you work with pleasure," said Septimus; "but I might as
+well close the office for all that comes to my share."
+
+The man scraped the last of his snuff out of the shabby piece of
+newspaper, and lost it all beneath his long dirty finger and
+thumb-nails; when, not to disappoint his itching organ, he ran a lean
+finger along a ledge where dust lay thick, and administered it to his
+nose in an absent way, snapped his fingers loudly to get rid of the
+residue, and then slowly turned to go; but, on reaching the door, he
+faced round again:
+
+"If you'd stand an advance of a shilling, sir, I'd come honestly another
+time and work it out; for I _am_ hard up, sir, and no mistake."
+
+Mistake there certainly was none; but shillings were then scarce things
+with Septimus Hardon.  A shilling, the sum tossed carelessly to the
+cabman for a few hundred yards' ride, meant, perhaps, the dinner of
+himself and family; and he knew in his heart that the odds were very
+long against his ever seeing man or shilling again; but there was so
+great a knowledge of want in his heart that he could not bear to see it
+in others, and almost the last shilling in his pocket was slipped into
+the visitor's hand.
+
+The old printer took the money with his trembling fingers; looked at it,
+then at the donor; tried to speak, but choked over it; and then, with
+something like a maundering tear in each eye, he shuffled out of the
+office, taking with him: The solicitor's work; The magazine estimate;
+and, most needed of all, Septimus Hardon's shilling.
+
+There was so little weight in the pocket before, that the shilling was
+not missed; and in spite of the black look of his affairs there was
+something in the act which made Septimus Hardon's heart feel light as
+his pocket, as, thrusting his papers into the desk and locking it, he
+went and stood before a piece of looking-glass and stretched his face to
+take out the care-wrinkles, smiled two or three times to give a pleasant
+tarnish to his countenance, and then, loudly humming a tune, he hurried
+up to the first-floor, where Mrs Septimus, Lucy, and the children, were
+located.
+
+Carey-street was a most desirable place for residence or business, as
+any landlord would have told you in the old days, before the houses I
+write of were carted away by contractors, and huge law-courts threatened
+in their stead.  Lucy Grey knew the place now by heart.  There was
+generally something out of the common way to be seen there, in spite of
+the place being so retired and its echoes so seldom disturbed by
+carriages, unless by those of the judges, when coachman and footman
+thought it advisable to wash down the legal dust of the place by copious
+draughts of porter at the Barley Mow or the Blue Horse.  The dust-cart--
+that hearse for bearing off the remains of many a dancing, merry, cheery
+fire--might be seen there in the morning; and at every cloud of dust
+raised by the emptying of the fantail man's basket, scraps of parchment
+and torn folios of cold, bitter cold crabbed writing, were caught up by
+the fierce winds of the place, and away they went scudding down the
+street, to the amusement of Septimus Hardon's children; for the mocking
+wind tossed the scraps on high, as if to show how light and empty they
+were.  Interesting words they were too, mostly about "our client" and
+his "heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns;" while of a morning
+the man whom Septimus Hardon himself knew well as a class, "our client"
+himself, might be seen in the streets; now early in his suit--Chancery
+suit, perhaps,--wrapped in it and looking busy and important, glossy and
+shiny, and, on the whole, apparently liking it.  Now with the suit old
+and shabby, with the pocket-holes frayed and worn with the passage in
+and out of papers--papers always without end, while the owner crept
+along, dejected and dismal as Septimus himself, ready at times to enter
+his office, and sit down and make him the repository of the fact that he
+hoped the Lord Chancellor or his Vice will give judgment next week.  Now
+he went along, silent and thoughtful; now he brightened up and became
+energetic, and gesticulated to an audience composed of the apple-woman
+at the corner, who sat there beneath the lamp summer and winter, like
+some dowdy old hen in a nest, for her lower extremities were all tightly
+tucked in a worn sieve-basket.
+
+"Our client" generally went into Carey-street to eat his sandwiches; now
+looking crumby, now crusty, as the case might be, while he paced
+irresolutely up and down, or round into the Lane or Portugal-street, or
+even into the Fields for a change, to gaze at the trees beyond those
+railings, upon every spike of which a disappointed or broken heart might
+be stuck by way of ornament.  As before said, "our client" had generally
+plenty of papers with him; some yellow and frayed, some new, but all
+carefully tied with red tape, which by its friction has a wonderful
+effect upon black-kid gloves, soon wearing out the fingers, as the
+papers are untied in doorways for reference while the tape-string is
+held in the mouth.
+
+"Our client" was decidedly the principal object of interest in
+Carey-street; but there were thin, clever, cold-looking lawyers; thin,
+cold, and underpaid clerks, blue-bag bearing; portly thick clerks, warm,
+glossy, and gold-chained, red-bag bearing--bags gasping and choking
+fearfully with their contents--choking horribly with the papers thrust
+into them, sticking out of their very mouths; long-headed barristers,
+whose eyes seemed to have turned cold and oysterish--meaningless, and as
+if gazing within--men upon whose long heads briefs rained incessantly;
+men in gowns, men bewigged, and with the insignia of their rank put on
+all ways--straight, crooked, here awry, and there awry, with the frontal
+apex descending upon the nose, and the caudal beauty behind raised at
+right angles to display the undergrowth, black, brown, grey, or sandy,
+or perhaps resting upon the nape of the wearer's neck, with the tails
+beating a white powdery tune upon his back, like a hare's feet upon a
+tabor; shabby witnesses, shabby porters, shabby inhabitants; dirt
+everywhere, and a sharp, gritty, pouncey dust flying before the wind to
+bring tears into the eyes.
+
+Lucy Grey knew all this by heart, and so did Septimus Hardon's
+children--lessons learned from the windows, or during their walks, when
+Lucy showed them the wonders of the shops at hand, and that
+ever-banging, restless door where the shabby law-writers went in and
+out, night and day; the three wigs resting upon as many blockheads--
+wooden blockheads--new, fresh, and cool for their future wearers; the
+works in the law-booksellers', all bound in dismal paper, or
+Desert-of-Sahara-coloured leather--law-calf--Tidd on this, Todd on that,
+Equity Reports, Chancery Practice, Common Law, Statutes at Large,
+Justice of the Peace, Stone's Manual.  Law everywhere: Simson, tin
+deed-box manufacturer; Bodgers, deeds copied; Screw, law-writer; Bird,
+office-furniture warehouse--valuations for probate; S Hardon, legal and
+general printer; while, like a shade at the end of the street, stood the
+great hospital, where the wan faces of patients might be seen gazing up
+at the sky, towards where the clouds scudded before the wind, hurrying
+to be once more in the country.  Away they went, each one a very
+chariot, bearing with it the thoughts of the prisoned ones--captives
+from sickness, or poverty, or business.  There were faces here at the
+hospital that would smile, and heads that would nod to Septimus Hardon's
+little golden-haired children when Lucy held them up; when perchance the
+patient went back to sit upon some iron bedstead's edge, and tell some
+fellow-sufferer of the bright vision she had seen,--a vision of angels
+in the legal desert.
+
+With such surroundings, no one upon entering Septimus Hardon's rooms
+would have been surprised to see Mrs Septimus careworn, and lying upon
+a shabby couch, and the children slight and fragile.  The rooms were
+close, heavy, and dull, heavy-windowed, heavy-panelled, earthy-smelling,
+and cryptish, as though the dust of dead-and-gone suitors lay thick in
+the place.  There was but little accommodation for the heavy rent he
+paid; and Septimus Hardon looked uneasily from face to face, crushing
+down the sorrowful thoughts that tried to rise; for in that close room
+there was not space for more than one complaining soul.  Mrs Septimus
+told of her troubles often enough; and Septimus felt that his task was
+to cheer.  Still, it was hard work when he had to think of the landlord
+and the rent; the landlord who, when he complained of this said rent,
+told him to look at the situation; which Septimus Hardon did, and
+sighed; and then, by way of raising his spirits, took down and read the
+copies of the letters he had from time to time sent to his father,
+unanswered one and all; and then he sighed again, and wondered how it
+would all end.
+
+Volume One, Chapter V.
+
+A PAIR OF SHOES.
+
+This is a world of change; but the time was when you could turn by Saint
+Clement's Church, from the roar of the waves of life in the Strand, and
+make your way between a baked-potato can--perspiring violently in its
+efforts to supply the demands made upon it--and a tin of hot eels,
+steaming in a pasty mud; then under a gateway, past old-clothes shops
+and marine-store dealers; thread your way along between crooked
+tumbledown houses in dismal fever-breeding lanes, which led you into the
+far-famed region of Lincoln's-inn, where law stared you in the face at
+every turn.  It will doubtless behave in as barefaced a manner to you at
+the present day; but you will have to approach it by a different route,
+for the auctioneer's hammer has given those preliminary taps that herald
+the knocking-down of a vast collection of the houses of old London; and
+perhaps ere these sheets are in the press, first stones will be laid of
+the buildings to occupy the site as law-courts.  But take we the region
+as it was, with its frowsy abodes and their tenants.  They are clipped
+away now; but in every direction, crowding in upon the great inns of
+court, were dilapidated houses pressing upon it like miserable suitors
+asking for their rights, or like rags of the great legal gown.  But it
+is a rare place is Lincoln's-inn--a place where the law is rampant, and
+the names of its disciples are piled in monuments upon the door-posts--a
+place where you may pick your legal adviser according to the length of
+your purse.  The doors stand open, and the halls are cold, cheerless,
+and echoing, while the large carven keystone looks down at the entering
+client with its stony eyes, which seem to wink and ogle as the sly,
+sneering, tongue-thrusting image apparently chuckles at the folly of
+man.  The cold shivers are always out in Lincoln's-inn, and they attack
+you the moment you enter the precincts; probably they are spirits of
+past-and-gone suitors, in past-and-gone suits, wandering to avenge
+themselves upon the legal fraternity by freezing the courage of
+litigants and turning them back when about to perform that wholesale
+shovelling of an estate into the legal dust-cart known as "throwing it
+into Chancery."  Cold stone posts stand at intervals along the sides of
+the square, looking, in their grey, bleak misery, like to stripped and
+bare clients waiting for redress at their legal advisers' doors.  A
+dreary place for an assignation, if your friend possesses not the virtue
+of punctuality; for the eye wanders in vain for some pleasant oasis
+where it may rest.  You have not here in autumn those melancholy,
+washed-out flowers--the chrysanthemums of the Temple, but you may gaze
+through prison-like bars at soot-dusted grass--verdure apparently
+splashed with ink from the surrounding offices; at the trees, adapted by
+nature to the circumstances of their fate; for, as in the arctic zone
+the thinly-clad animals grow furry as a protection from the cold, so
+here, in this region of law costs and voluminous writing, the trees put
+forth twigs and sprays of a sharp spiky nature, a compromise between
+porcupine penholders and a _chevaux de frise_, to enable them to set
+attack at defiance.
+
+Enter one house here, and you would have found upon the ground-floor
+your QC or Serjeant--Brother So-and-so as he is so affectionately called
+by the judge; upon the first-floor, your substantial firms of family
+solicitors, deep in title, lease, covenant, and tenancy in every form or
+shape--men who set such store by their knowledge that they dole it out
+to you at so much per dozen words--words adulterated with obsolete
+expressions repeated _ad nauseam_; while upon the second-floor you would
+probably find firms of sharp practitioners, ready for business in any
+shape; and, as elsewhere through the house, the names of the occupants
+were painted upon the doors--black letters upon a parchment ground.
+
+But the house in question was not entirely legal in its occupants, for
+if you had been ascending the stairs, before you had gone far, a loud
+sniff would have made you raise your head sharply towards the skylight,
+beneath which, sitting, or rather perched, upon the top balustrade,
+would have been visible the doughy, big, baby-like face of Mrs Sims,
+strongly resembling, with the white-muslin wings on either side, a
+fat-cheeked cherub, freshly settled after some ethereal flight.
+
+Mrs Sims was the lady who did for those gentlemen of the house who
+wanted doing for, took in parcels, answered bells, and was also
+well-known in the neighbourhood as a convenient party in times of
+sickness, being willing to nurse a bachelor gentleman of the legal
+profession, or one of the poor fraternity of the rags around.  She had
+stood at many a bedside had Mrs Sims, and seen the long sleep come to
+many a weary, broken-hearted suitor, and she had sniffed and sobbed at
+the recital of their miseries, offering the while such consolation as
+she could from the depths of a very simple but very honest heart.
+
+After another loud sniff, and a curtsey performed invisibly, except that
+the cherubic head was seen to bob out of sight, and then apparently
+re-perch itself upon the balustrade, Mrs Sims would say "At home," or
+"Not at home," as the case might be.  Then, as you left the staircase,
+the head would disappear, and, summer or winter, Mrs Sims might be
+heard refreshing herself with a blow at the fire by means of a very
+creaky, asthmatic pair of bellows.
+
+Mrs Sims was busy, and had made visible the whole of her person, as
+standing at the door she pointed out into the square, calling the
+attention of one of _her_ lodgers, as she termed them, to a passer-by.
+
+"Here, you sir; fetch a cab--a four-wheeler," shouted the lodger.  "No;
+confound your bird--I don't want birds, I want a cab."
+
+The person addressed was the inhabitant of Bennett's-rents--the big,
+slouchy, large-jawed gentleman, in a fur cap and a sleeved-waistcoat,
+already known to the reader.  He carried a small birdcage, tied in a
+cotton handkerchief, beneath his arm, while another spotted handkerchief
+wrapped his bull-neck, where it was pinned with a silver-mounted
+Stanhope lens, which was apparently regarded as a rare jewel.  Upon
+being first called, he commenced expatiating upon the qualities of the
+bird, whose cage-envelope he began to unfasten, until so unceremoniously
+checked by the gentleman who summoned him.
+
+"You're a fine sort, you are," growled the man as he went off in search
+of the cab; "and if I warn't as dry as sorduss, I'd see you furder afore
+I'd fetch your gallus cab, so now, then.  My name's Jarker, chrissen
+William, that's about what my name is, stand or fall by it--come, now."
+
+As nobody seemed disposed to "come, now," Mr Jarker hastened his steps,
+and soon returned with the cab, placed his cage behind the hall-door,
+and then, under the direction of Mrs Sims, fetched down portmanteau and
+bags groaning and sighing beneath their weight, and raising up a smile
+of contempt upon his employer's face as he watched the fellow's actions,
+and scanned his powerful development and the idleness written so plainly
+upon his countenance.  But soon the task was ended, the cab-door banged,
+Mrs Sims had turned on a little more of her laughing-gas to brighten
+her features by way of valediction to the departing lodger, and then, as
+she sniffed loudly, the cab drove off, leaving Mr Jarker spitting upon
+that curiosity, an honestly-earned sixpence in his hand.
+
+"How's the missus? why, she's okkard, and I don't s'pose you a-coming
+would do her any good, and she's a-going to spend a shillin' in
+ankerchers for someone as has a cold in her head, that's what she's
+a-goin' to do," said Mr Jarker, with a grin at Mrs Sims, and then he
+watched the affronted dame as she sniffed her way upstairs; but before
+she had reached the second flight, Mr Jarker had grinned again, drawing
+his lips back from his white teeth with a smile that more resembled a
+snarl.
+
+Mr William Jarker, birdcatcher, fancier of pigeons, and of anything
+else which came to his net, stood listening to the sniffs and receding
+footsteps of Mrs Sims, placed the sixpence he had earned in the pocket
+of his tight corduroys, pulled off his large, flat, fur cap, and gave
+his head a scratch, thereby displaying a crop of hair which it would
+have been useless to attempt to brush or part, for it was decidedly
+short, and the barber who had last operated had not been careful, but
+left the said hair nicky and notchy in places.  However, the style gave
+due prominence to the peculiar phrenological development of Mr Jarker's
+bumps, while his ears stood out largely, and with an air that suggested
+cropping as an improvement to them as well, more especially since there
+was a great deal of the bull-dog in his appearance.
+
+Mr Jarker replaced his cap, took his little birdcage from behind the
+door, and was just moving off, when a barrister came out of one of the
+lower rooms in full legal costume, muttering loudly, and evidently
+reciting a part of the performance he was about to go through.
+
+Upon hearing the door open, Mr Jarker turned his head, and then gave an
+involuntary shudder as he moved off, while the counsel followed closely
+behind, wrapped in his brief, and at times talking loudly:
+
+"Instead, m'lud, of the case being tried in this honourable court,
+m'lud, devoted as it is to civil causes, the defendant should be
+occupying the felon's dock at the Old Bailey, m'lud; for a more shameful
+case of robbery--"
+
+"I'm gallussed!" muttered Mr Jarker, quickening his steps, and
+perspiring profusely, as he gave a furtive glance over his shoulder at
+the barrister, still rehearsing; "I'm gallussed!  It didn't oughter be
+allowed out in the public streets."
+
+Mr Jarker felt his nerves so disarranged in consequence of low diet,
+that after making his way out of the Inn, across Carey-street, and into
+the rags of the legal cloak, that is to say into Bennett's-rents, he
+resolved to take advantage of there being a "public" at either end of
+the rents, and regardless of the whooping children who dashed by him, he
+went in and had "three-ha'porth" of the celebrated cream gin advertised
+outside upon a blue board with golden legend.  After which enricher of
+his milk of human kindness, Mr Jarker wiped his mouth with the back of
+his hand as he passed through the swinging doors, hugged his cage
+against his ribs, muttered, "Didn't oughter be allowed in the public
+streets," and then forcing a way through a noisy tribe of children, he
+paused at Number 27 in the Rents--a dismal-looking old house, worse
+perhaps by broad daylight than in the early dawn, when some of its
+foulness had remained concealed.  It had been a mansion once, in the
+days of the Jameses probably, when fresh air was a more abundant
+commodity in the City, and was not all used up long before it could
+penetrate so narrow a thoroughfare.
+
+Mr Jarker slowly tramped up flight after flight of stairs till he came
+to the attic-floor, when, without removing his hands from his pockets,
+he kicked open the badly-hung door, and entered the bare room.
+
+"O, you're here agen, are yer?" he said sulkily to a dark, well-dressed
+woman, in black silk and fashionable bonnet, strangely out of place in
+the wretched room, whose other occupant was pale-faced, weary-looking
+Mrs Jarker, whose crimply white hands betokened a very late
+acquaintanceship with the washtub by the steamy window.  "O, you're here
+agen, are yer?" said Mr Jarker.
+
+"Yes, Bill," said Mrs Jarker timidly, every word she spoke seeming to
+flinch and dart out of reach of hearing almost before it was uttered.
+"Yes, Bill, she's come again, and we've been talking it over--and--and--
+and--if you wouldn't mind, Bill, I'd--"
+
+"How much?" growled Mr Jarker.
+
+"Five shillings," said his wife timidly; "five shillings a-week."
+
+"'Tain't enough," said Mr Jarker; "it's worth six.  Look at the
+trouble."
+
+Mrs Jarker looked from her husband to the stranger and back again, and
+was about to speak, when her lord exclaimed roughly, "Shut Up!"
+
+The visitor's eyes flashed for a moment, and then she glanced hastily
+round the room, her gaze resting for a moment upon the ruffianly,
+bull-dog face of Jarker, and she hesitated; but another glance at the
+timid, gentle countenance of his wife seemed to reassure her, and she
+said hoarsely, with her look fixed upon the flinching woman, "I'll give
+you six."
+
+"And if 'tain't paid up reg'lar, I'm blest if I sha'n't chuck it outer
+winder, or somethin'; so look out," said Mr Jarker.
+
+The visitor's lips quivered, but, still gazing fixedly upon the woman,
+she said in the same hoarse voice: "I shall bring the money once
+a-week."
+
+"In advance, yer know," growled Mr Jarker.
+
+"Yes, yes; only be kind to it," exclaimed the visitor with something
+like a sob, but without removing her eyes.
+
+"O, ah! in course we will.  We're the right sort here, ain't we, Poll?"
+growled Mr Jarker.
+
+"Yes, Bill," said his wife in a husky whisper.
+
+"And now," said Mr Bill Jarker, with what was meant for a pleasant
+smile, but which consisted of the closing of his eyes, and the display
+of his teeth,--"and now as we've made it all snug, you'll stand
+somethin'; that's what you'll do, ain't it now?"
+
+Still without removing her eyes from the pale-faced woman before her,
+the visitor drew a shilling from a little bead-purse, and laid it upon
+the table, her lips now moving as if trying to form words for Mrs
+Jarker to understand.
+
+"Go away now, Bill," whispered she to her husband.
+
+"What for?" growled Bill, untying the knots of his handkerchief with his
+teeth, to set his cage at liberty, and nearly frightening the soul out
+of the tiny, fluttering, panting body contained therein.  Then, by way
+of reply to a whisper, he sullenly took the shilling from the table, bit
+it, spat upon it, and spun it up, before depositing it in his pocket;
+made his way to the back part of the attic, where birdcages and the
+paraphernalia of his profession lay thick; ascended a ladder to a trap
+in the ceiling, and then, only his legs visible as he stood upon one of
+the top rounds, Mr Jarker, with half his body above the tiles, busied
+himself amongst his pigeons, and started them for a flight over the
+houses.
+
+The next moment, after a hurried glance at the ceiling, where the light
+streamed down past the ruffian's legs, the visitor's face was seen to
+work, and, rising from her seat, she went down upon her knees before
+poor Mrs Jarker, kissing her work-worn hands, and bathing them with the
+tears that streamed from her eyes.
+
+"God--God bless you!" she whispered passionately.  "O, be kind to it!"
+
+But Mrs Jarker could not answer for something swelling in her throat;
+and the next minute she too was weeping, with her hand resting upon her
+visitor's shoulder.
+
+This paroxysm of tears seemed to have its effect upon the visitor, for,
+forcing back her own emotion, she appeared more at ease within herself,
+as, gazing once more into the pale, worn, common face of the
+birdcatcher's wife, she kissed her in so loving and sisterly a way, that
+the tears flowed faster from Mrs Jarker's eyes.  And yet, knowing full
+well who was her visitor, Mrs Jarker did not shudder, but rose from her
+choir, glanced timorously at the open trap, and then drew the stranger
+towards a box--a common deal-box, with the blue-stained paper that had
+once covered it hanging here and there in rags.  She went upon her knees
+now, and raised the creaking lid, when an impatient movement of the feet
+upon the ladder made her start up hastily, and close the lid again.  But
+a long, loud whistling from above showed her that Mr Jarker was still
+busy with his birds; so once more raising the lid, the poor creature
+thrust her hand down to a well-known spot beneath the few rags of
+clothes the box contained, and brought out a pair of little, stained red
+boots, which she pressed passionately to her lips, the tears gushing
+from her eyes the while, and a broken hysterical wail burst from her
+overladen breast.  But it was checked instantly, for Jarker's feet
+scraped on the ladder, and the boots were hidden beneath the woman's
+apron; then the whistling was heard again, and the little boots were
+brought forth once more.
+
+A pair of tiny red boots, the only relic she had of something that was
+not--something that she had once warmed within her breast--the breast
+before now bruised and blackened by a ruffian hand, but beneath which
+was the same warm, God-implanted love for her offspring that glows in
+the bosom of the noblest of her sex.
+
+For a moment or two the younger woman gazed in the other's eyes with a
+soft, tender, pitying look--a look in this case of true sympathy; and
+the hand of the lost rested lovingly upon Mrs Jarker's breast as she
+whispered softly: "How old was it?"
+
+"Only a twelvemonth," was the reply, followed by a moan.  "But perhaps
+it was best--perhaps it was best."
+
+The visitor's hand still rested upon the other's breast, and she was
+about to speak, when an impatient shuffle startled both, for it seemed
+that Mr Jarker was about to descend; but he came not.  And now a look
+of ineffable sweetness and content came over the well-moulded features
+of the visitor.  She was satisfied now respecting the step she was about
+to take; for Mrs Jarker's heart had been laid open to her.  A true
+chord of sympathy existed between them, and she could feel that her
+little one would be taken to a motherly breast, and protected--
+protected; but who, she asked herself, would injure one so tender and
+frail?
+
+But there was no time for further communion between these motherly
+hearts, for a loud rasp on the ladder told that Mr Jarker was
+descending, and the visitor prepared to leave.
+
+"You've been a-pipin' again," growled Mr Jarker to his wife, who had
+hastily concealed the boots--"pipin' about that 'ere kid as has gone;
+and a good thing too.  Wot's the good when here's another a-coming?" and
+he looked menacingly at the shivering woman.  "I say," he continued to
+the visitor, who now stood at the door, "you'll pay up reg'lar, and in
+advance!"
+
+"Yes, yes!" she said hoarsely, almost fiercely, as she turned to him
+with a steady contemptuous look, which made the great brute shuffle
+about uneasily--"yes, yes, so long as I live;" and the next moment the
+door closed upon her retreating form.
+
+"Long as you live?  Yes; I should just think you will, or else there'll
+precious soon be a kid found at somebody's door, with the perlice, cuss
+'em, taking the brat to the workus.--And don't you pipe no more," he
+snarled to the trembling woman, who slowly retreated to the washtub.  "A
+taking of it to the workus, cuss 'em," muttered Mr Jarker again,
+removing his fur cap and passing his hand over his cropped head, as if
+the name of the police, and their probable future duty, had reminded him
+of former injuries.  "Now then, you!" he shouted, as if calling his dog,
+and he threw the shilling upon the table--"d'yer hear?"
+
+"Yes, Bill," said the woman meekly, and hastily passing her hands over
+her dull red eyes before she turned to him the face from which all that
+was attractive had long since fled.
+
+"Tripe!" said Mr Jarker.
+
+"Yes, Bill," said his wife.
+
+"Pipe and screw," growled Mr Jarker.
+
+"Yes, Bill," said the woman, hurriedly tying on a miserable bonnet.
+
+"And here, you!"
+
+"I wasn't going, Bill," said the woman meekly.
+
+"Who said you was?" growled the ruffian; "don't you be so sharp, now,
+then.  Now, where's that money?"
+
+"What money, Bill?"
+
+The next moment the ruffian had seized her by the front of her dress and
+dragged her to him, so that she went down upon her knees.  "Don't you
+try to put none of your games on me.  What did she give you when I was
+out of sight?"  And he put his black face down close to hers, as, half
+from fear, half from bitterness, her lower lip worked as she tried to
+keep back the tears, and to answer; but no words would come.
+
+"D'yer hear?  What did she give yer?"
+
+"Nothing, Bill," whispered the woman.
+
+He looked at her fiercely; but though faded and lack-lustre, her eyes
+blenched not, but gave him back the same true steady look that had
+always shone for him since--young, ignorant, ill-taught, weak--she had
+believed he cared for her, and she could be happy with him: not the
+first of Eve's daughters that has made the same mistake.
+
+"Get up!" snarled Jarker, loosing his hold; and his wife rose hastily
+without a word.
+
+"Pint of porter, with half-a-quartern of gin in it."
+
+"Yes, Bill," she whispered, and drew on a washed-out shawl.
+
+"And no fiddling, you know; put all the gin in."
+
+"Yes, Bill," said the woman, hastily taking the shilling, and descending
+the creaking stairs to procure her lord's refreshments; tripe stewed,
+and gin and beer, being special weaknesses of his when in funds.
+
+"Don't let her forget to bring some inguns, that's all," he muttered as
+he listened to the retreating steps.  He then crushed down the fire with
+the heel of his heavy boot, and, putting his hand in his
+waistcoat-pocket, his fingers came in contact with two or three scraps
+of burnt match, which he took out, looked at thoughtfully, and then
+burned.  "She must have been arter the dawg," he muttered, and walking
+to one of the lattice-windows, he opened it and framed himself as he
+leaned out with his arms resting upon the rotten sill, a splinter of
+which he picked off to chew.  Then he gazed steadfastly across the court
+at the opposite window, which was hung round with birdcages, whose
+occupants twittered sweetly, while one, a lark, seemed to fill the court
+with his joyous song.
+
+This reminded Mr Jarker of his own birds, and, stepping back growling,
+he looked to see if the little cages hung over his nets all contained
+water, which they did.
+
+"And a blessed good job for her as they do!" he muttered on finding that
+his wife had performed this duty.  Then walking again towards the front
+he watched the opposite window, where he could see a pale, sallow face
+eagerly looking at the birds, while from behind came the sharp sound as
+of the lash of a whip striking the floor, followed by the shrill yelp of
+a dog.
+
+Mr Jarker stood thoughtfully watching and listening, as if in doubt
+upon some particular subject; and as he watched he pulled out that ugly
+clasp-knife of his that he had opened a short time before in the cellar,
+and now opening and closing it again, his brow lowered--that is, a
+trifle more than usual.  But he seemed to grow easier in his mind, for
+he shut the knife with a snap, and thrust it into his pocket; and now he
+appeared to be moved by that spirit which prompts so many people who can
+hardly keep themselves to have dumb animals about their homes, probably
+for the reason that the dumb brutes are faithful, and friends are few--
+who knows?
+
+"I think I shall have a dawg," said Mr Jarker to himself, as a louder
+yelp than usual rang across the court; when he shut the window, and went
+and stood gazing into the fire once more, till he heard the returning
+step of his wife, when he roused himself:
+
+"Yes," said Mr Jarker half-aloud; "I'll have a bull-pup."
+
+Volume One, Chapter VI.
+
+THE SORROWS OF SEPTIMUS HARDON.
+
+With a pleasant smile upon his countenance, and a bunch of watercresses
+in his hand, Septimus Hardon hummed loudly, like some jocular bee, as he
+entered his rooms one day, when he ceased, for there was a visitor
+gazing with sympathising eyes upon the flush-cheeked child lying upon
+Mrs Hardon's arm.
+
+"I think you had better have advice, Mrs Hardon," said the visitor, the
+Rev. Arthur Sterne, the calm, earnest, quiet-looking curate of the
+neighbouring church.
+
+Lucy Grey, now budding into womanhood, was seated upon the floor by the
+couch, with a little boy in her lap, and letting the hands of the child
+on her mother's arm stray amongst the glossy tresses of her hair.
+
+"Advice?  What? doctor?" said Septimus, gazing in his wife's anxious
+face; "is Letty really ill, then?" and then in a bewildered way he began
+rubbing his hands together as if washing them in emptiness, and
+afterwards drying them upon nothing.
+
+"Let me send in a doctor," said Mr Sterne kindly, as he took his hat to
+leave; "there are symptoms of fever, I think.  Don't let it get too firm
+a hold before you have advice."
+
+"Thank you, thank you; do send him, please," said Septimus helplessly.
+"But--" He was about to alter his request, for just then his hand came
+in contact with the light leather purse in his pocket, but the curate
+had hurriedly left the room.  Then taking his step-child's place by the
+sofa the father parted the golden hair upon the sick girl's forehead,
+and anxiously questioned Mrs Septimus respecting the illness.
+
+As the night came on the little one grew wild and restless, and what the
+mother had taken to be but a slight childish ailment, began to assume a
+form that added anxiety where it was hardly needed.  The doctor had
+been, and spoken Seriously, and the medicine he had sent had been
+administered; but the fever seemed to increase, for the child grew
+worse, starting from fitful sleeps, and calling for sister Lucy to take
+something away from her.  Septimus looked weakly from face to face for
+comfort, and then wandered about the room, wringing his hands and trying
+to think this new trouble some horrible dream.
+
+And so days passed--days of trouble and anxiety--during which Mrs
+Septimus forgot her own ailments, and watched and nursed in turn with
+Lucy.  The doctor had talked as so many doctors will talk, in an
+indefinite strain, which left the anxious parents in a state of doubt
+and bewilderment, though it never occurred to Septimus Hardon that so
+great an affliction could fall upon him, as that he should lose his
+little one.
+
+About a week after the seizure, Mrs Septimus was watching by the child,
+who, after partaking eagerly of some tea, had apparently dropped off to
+sleep.
+
+"Take little Tom down into the office," whispered Mrs Hardon, "perhaps
+she will sleep awhile if we keep her quiet."
+
+So Septimus Hardon, looking dazed and worn with mental anxiety, took his
+boy in his arms, and Lucy being asleep after watching nearly all night,
+he left Mrs Septimus with the sick child, and carried the little fellow
+down into the dusty, unused office, where, taking advantage of his
+father's abstraction, the child proceeded to make a heap of type upon
+the floor, thoroughly covering himself with the black dust, and even
+going so far as to try the flavour of some of the pieces of metal.
+
+At last the little one began to grow tired, and tried to gain the
+attention of its father--no light task, for with his face buried in his
+hands he was seated at his desk trying to see his way clearly through
+the future--a task so many of us attempt, and some even fancy we have
+achieved, but only to find the falseness of our hopes when the days we
+looked forward to have come upon us.
+
+But the child was at last successful, and as Septimus raised his head
+from the desk, he became aware of the presence of the old man of a few
+days before, and apparently as far from prosperity as ever.
+
+"Nothing doing; no work," said Septimus.
+
+"Any little job will do, sir," said the old man.  "Just come to get out
+of debt, that's all.  What's it to be, sir?"
+
+"Another time," said Septimus.  "I've--"
+
+A loud cry from above cut short his words, and darting to the door,
+forgetting his customary indecision, he bounded up the stairs, while,
+finding himself left with a stranger, the little fellow burst into a
+dismal wail.
+
+"O, Sep, Sep, Sep!" cried his wife, throwing herself into his arms, "is
+it always to be sorrow; is there always to be a black cloud over our
+lives?" then tearing herself away she frantically caught the child from
+Lucy, who, pale and frightened, sat nursing.
+
+"Run, run, Lucy!" cried Septimus hoarsely as he caught a glimpse of his
+blue-eyed darling's face; "the doctor, quick!" and then, as the
+frightened girl ran from the room, he threw himself upon his knees
+beside his sobbing wife, praying that they might be spared this new
+sorrow.  But before the doctor could reach Carey-street the agonised
+couple had seen the little weary head cease its restless tossings from
+side to side, the blue eyes unclose, dilate, and gaze wildly, as if at
+some wondrous vision; then a plaintive shuddering sigh passed from the
+pale lips, and Septimus Hardon and his wife were alone, though they knew
+it not.
+
+The Rev. Arthur Sterne was at the door as Lucy returned, overtaken by
+the doctor's brougham at the same moment; but to the agony of all the
+man of medicine gave one glance at the little form in its mother's lap,
+shook his head, and left the room on tiptoe.
+
+"O, sir, Mr Sterne," cried Lucy, turning with quivering lips and
+streaming eyes to the clergyman, "tell me, tell me," she sobbed,
+clasping one of his hands in hers; "tell me--is it, is it death?"
+
+There was silence in the room for a few moments, and then placing his
+disengaged hand upon the fair head of the weeping girl, the curate, in
+low reverent tones, but loud enough to thrill the hearts of the living,
+said, "No, it is life--the life eternal!"
+
+And now, amidst the bitter sobs of those who mourned, the curate stepped
+softly from the room, and left the house with bended head.  Then there
+was silence, till a step was heard upon the stairs, which stopped by the
+partly-closed door, where stood the old compositor with little Tom
+asleep in his arms, the bright, soft, golden locks mingling like dashes
+of sunshine with the old man's ragged, grizzly whiskers.  For a few
+moments the old printer stood gazing into the room, when, waking to the
+consciousness of the affliction that had befallen its inmates, he
+turned, and with halting step descended to the office.
+
+At last the recollection of the living came to the stricken mother's
+heart, and wildly sobbing as she clasped Lucy in her arms, she asked for
+her boy.
+
+Half-stunned with this new shock, Septimus Hardon staggered down to
+where he had left the child, having till his wife spoke forgotten its
+very existence; but when he reached the office, stricken as he was, he
+could not but stop to gaze at the group before him.  Seated upon a low
+stool, beneath the dingy skylight of the back-office, where the light
+that filtered through the foul panes looked dim and gloomy, was the old
+man with the child in his lap, gazing, too, intently down at the little
+fair face which so wonderingly looked up into his own--not fearfully,
+but with a puzzled expression, as if some problem were there that the
+little brain could not solve; while the biscuit the tiny fist held was
+hardly touched, but told its own tale of how the old man had carried the
+child to the nearest baker's for its purchase.  The printer's back was
+towards Septimus as he stood in the doorway, and as he listened the old
+man was apostrophising the child:
+
+"Why, God bless your little innocent face, this is me, old Matt--Matthew
+Space--old Quad, as they call me; a battered, snuff-taking, drinking old
+scamp; and here have I been these two hours drinking innocence, and
+feeling my heart swell till it cracked and the scales fell off.  Why--
+save and bless his little heart, sir!" he cried, for the child saw its
+father and sprang up--"see how good he is!  Work's slack, sir; let him
+stop, for it seems to do one good--it does indeed, sir.  Why, how rich
+you must be!"
+
+Septimus Hardon thought mournfully of the treasure he had just lost,
+and, taking the child, he hurriedly bore it to its mother, telling the
+old man to wait.
+
+Matthew Space, compositor, waited until the owner of the office came
+down, when, friendless as he was, Septimus Hardon was glad to turn even
+to this rough old waif of the streets in his helplessness.
+
+"Why, I wouldn't do that, sir," said the old man, after listening for
+some time in silence; "you may want it to-morrow."
+
+"But I want money to-day," cried Septimus fiercely.  "Will you give me
+money? will the world outside? will anybody here in this city of wealth
+trust me the money to bury my child?  Would you have me go to the
+parish?"  He stopped, and the animation that had flashed into his face
+began to fade again, to leave it dull and despairing.
+
+"Why, as to the first, sir," said the old man, "I would, upon my soul,
+if I had it,--I would indeed; but as to the people outside--" and he
+began to shake his head grimly.  "Poor men have no friends, sir--as a
+rule, you know--as a rule."
+
+"None!" said Septimus bitterly; "none!"
+
+"But it would be a pity," said the old man; "such a new, well-cut letter
+too; and you'll get next to nothing for it.  Gave 'most half-a-crown a
+pound for it, I dessay?"
+
+Septimus nodded.
+
+"Thought so, sir, and--well, if you must, sir, I'll help you all the
+same, and gladly--only too gladly; but I don't like to see it pawned or
+sold.  You helped me, sir, when it was harder with me than ever it was
+in my life before, sir; and damme, sir, I'll sell my shirt, sir, to help
+you, if it will do any good.  In the morning, then, sir, I'll be here
+with a barrow."
+
+"A barrow?" said Septimus.
+
+"Yes; you know, type's heavy stuff."
+
+"Matthew Space," said the snuffly old fellow, screwing his face up as if
+with disgust, when he stood once more in Carey-street, "Matthew Space,
+follower of the profession of noble Caxton, as a rule, sir, I respect
+you.  I don't despise you for your poverty, or your seedy coat, for you
+are a man of parts and education; but at the present moment, sir, I'm
+disgusted with you.  You have been drinking innocence from the tiny
+prattling lips of that little child--God bless it!" he cried earnestly,
+dashing a maundering tear from one eye--"God bless it! a child like that
+would have made another man of me; and now that poor fellow has lost one
+like it.  But there, sir, I'm disgusted with your ways: a man does what
+nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand wouldn't do--lends
+you almost his last shilling--and now, sir, that an opportunity offers
+of helping him in his trouble, you make empty professions, false
+promises, and offer to sell your shirt, you humbug, you--to sell your
+shirt, sir, when you haven't got a shirt in the world!"
+
+"That's true enough," said the old man, after walking a little way,
+"true, if it ain't decent; but it's a kind of poverty that buttons will
+always conceal, which they won't if it's a coat; while if there is
+anything that looks beggarly, it's the want of boots.  I'd sooner be
+without a hat any day in the week.  But you're taking fresh copy, Matt
+Space, before you've finished the old, and leaving out your points."
+
+The old man cocked his hat very fiercely over the left ear, stuck his
+hands into his coat-tail pockets, and walked on for some distance,
+muttering, "Poor fellow--good sort--trump."  All at once he stopped
+short before a lamp-post, drew his hands from his pockets, and took a
+pinch of snuff; he then slapped the cold iron upon the shoulder, and, as
+if addressing the post confidentially, he exclaimed:
+
+"His name's Hardon, sir; but he isn't a hard un.  He's as soft as
+butter, sir, easy as a glove, sir, deep as a halfpenny plate.  You might
+turn him inside out like a stocking.  He'd never get on here, he's too
+honest.  Business! why, he's about as business-like as--as--as--well,
+sir, as I am.  He'd never any business to be in business; but after all,
+what's the good of being a business man, and sharp, and knowing, and
+deep, if it's to be hammering on, beating out money day after day to
+make a hard case for a man's heart, so as there ain't room for a kind
+thought to get in, or a gentle word to come out?"
+
+Old Matt stuck his hat a little more on one side, and giving the post a
+parting slap, he left the freshly-lit light, quivering and winking down
+at him as he gave it a nod, and then he crossed the road diagonally to
+the next post, which he favoured as the last.
+
+"Damme, sir," he cried, "don't tell me.  I ought to know what the world
+is, and I think I do.  That man's a trump, sir, if I know anything of
+character.  Soft? well, suppose he is.  Don't tell me: men were never
+made to be sharp-edged tools, chiselling and cutting one another as hard
+as ever they can, while the keenest ones chisel the most.  They weren't
+meant for it; but that's what they are.  And what's worse, they do so
+much under the cloak of religion, and snuffle and cant, and tell you to
+do the same.  Things are all wrong, sir, all wrong; and I'm wrong, and
+according to some people, I'm I don't know what; but there, sir; there;
+I've done."
+
+Old Matt walked to another post, to prove he had not done, and began
+again; but someone coming along the pavement, he shuffled off to the
+public-house he frequented in Bell-yard, where he discoursed for long
+enough upon human nature in general, to the great delight of his
+audience, till his pint of porter was finished, when he hurried off
+through the wet streets to his lodging.
+
+Volume One, Chapter VII.
+
+THE DOCTOR AND HIS DAME.
+
+"A tom-cat, smooth-coated, purring rascal," said old Octavius when he
+heard the news.  "_Doctor_ Hardon, indeed; _doctor_, bah!"  And many of
+the townspeople of Somesham, though they did not use Octavius Hardon's
+language, agreed with him in spirit, and sneered at the new doctor's
+visit to Scotland, and the paragraph that by some means found its way
+into the paper, congratulating the people on the acquisition to their
+town of a physician.  Of course the doctor himself did not know of its
+existence until it was pointed out to him at one of the public meetings,
+when he looked perfectly astonished, and declared that it was a matter
+that he meant to have kept a profound secret from everybody.  However,
+as it was made so public, and in such a manner, of course he felt
+himself bound to take steps to inform his friends and patients that the
+fact of his being a physician should make no difference, that he looked
+upon the degree merely in the light of an honour; and hoped for many
+years to come to be the simple country apothecary, in whose humble skill
+his fellow-townsmen would have confidence.  Guinea-fees and
+prescriptions had never been in his thoughts, the honour having been
+completely thrust upon him, so he said, for he knew that he could
+command a practice as a country apothecary while he would have starved
+as a physician.  For he had practised for many years in Somesham, while
+he was greatly annoyed that his brother Octavius would reside there, as
+the doctor told his lady, to quarrel with him and lower him in the eyes
+of the people.  Doctor Hardon had stood at many sick-beds in the
+district; spoken smooth nothings respecting the various increases in
+families which took place beneath his watchful eyes; when in every case,
+whatever the sex, the child was sure to be the finest he had ever seen
+in the whole course of his career as a medical practitioner.  But the
+doctor had also worn a great many pairs of black-kid gloves, and many a
+long-flowing silk scarf upon those other occasions--at those
+stopping-places of the journey of life; and ill-natured persons had been
+known to declare that one of Mrs Hardon's dresses had been composed of
+these long black-silk strips sewn together.  But then people will be
+ill-natured.
+
+"Thomas Hardon, Esq, MD," sat at his breakfast-table in his
+dressing-gown, but his black frock-coat lay upon a chair at his side,
+ready brushed, and the rest of his costume was of the correct doctorial
+black.  He did not even allow himself to sit down in slippers, but wore
+boots of the most lustrous black until bedtime.  Of an imposing
+presence, with fine grey hair, a good complexion, sufficiently stout, he
+was the very acme of a quiet family doctor; and even if he was not so
+skilful as he might have been, there was that in his quiet ease and
+assumption which often gave confidence, and insured faith in trembling
+patients--matters which had before now worked wonders when the doctor's
+medicine alone would have failed.  The world is much given to taking
+people at their own value, and undoubtedly by those who merely looked at
+the surface, a much higher price would have been set upon the doctor in
+that imposing suit of black, and that stiffest of stiff white
+neckcloths, than upon friend Matthew Space in his black shabbiness.  But
+then, of course, the doctor's double gold eyeglass, gold-chain, studs,
+diamond ring, and the shape of his repeater seen through the soft black
+kerseymere waistcoat, added weight in people's estimation, without
+taking into consideration that air of profundity, and shake of the noble
+grey head, which implied so much at so little expense of thought.
+People at Somesham shook their heads with the doctor, and declared him
+to be a man of worth; while other people there were who shook their
+heads with his brother Octavius, and considered him a sham.
+
+But people joined in speaking well of his wife--downright, blunt,
+plain-spoken Mrs Hardon--who now sat, pale-faced and anxious, opposite
+to her husband, supplying his wants, while she waited for an answer to
+her last question, her hand slightly trembling as it held a letter the
+doctor had lately passed to her.
+
+"You will let me answer this, Tom, won't you?" she said gently, with all
+the motherly woman in her tones, and the hard, business, doctor's wife,
+who often made up his medicines, and even prescribed in simple cases in
+his absence, gone.  "You will let me answer this, Tom?"
+
+The doctor kept his paper before his face, and read on without
+condescending to reply.
+
+"Tom," she repeated, leaning towards him, "Tom, be tender and gentle
+now, Tom; and--"
+
+Mrs Hardon stopped; for a maid had entered the room with a note, which
+she handed to Mrs Hardon.
+
+"Confound you!" hissed the doctor as soon as the door was closed; and
+then, instead of the mild, beaming doctorial countenance, there was his
+brother's angry face scowling on his wife--"Confound you! how many times
+have I told you not to `Tom' me before the servants?  No, no, no! if you
+will have an answer," he shouted; "let her starve--let her die--let her
+jump off one of the bridges if she likes; she left me, and she may
+suffer for it.  She sha'n't come back here to disgrace me in my
+profession."
+
+Mrs Hardon was not at all afraid of her husband, and in many of their
+little matrimonial differences she had been known to come off the
+better.  The blood rose to her cheeks, and she was about to answer
+angrily, but she checked herself, and, crossing over, laid her hand upon
+her husband's shoulder.
+
+"Tom!" she whispered.
+
+"Damn!  I tell you I won't have it!" roared the doctor.
+
+"Hush!" said Mrs Hardon sternly, but with a touch of softness in her
+voice.  "You know I was ill, Tom, when I came back from town last week."
+
+"Well?" said the doctor, shuffling impatiently in his seat.
+
+"I did not tell you the reason, Tom."
+
+"Well, what of that?" said the doctor savagely.
+
+"O, Tom!" she said, her voice breaking as she sank at his feet, "I saw
+her; I met her.  She passed me as I was going to my cab, wild-eyed,
+pale, worn-looking; and O, Tom, if you had seen her too--seen her as I
+saw her then, when I held out my arms to her and she fled away
+shamefaced before me--you would have felt, as I did, as I do now,
+something tugging at your heartstrings, and whispering to you that it
+was your child that you did not use well, and telling you that if you
+had done your duty by her she would never have gone to Octavius, and
+then fled with that base villain.  Tom," she continued softly, "I feel
+all this.  We are getting old, Tom, and what are we to say at the last
+hour, what forgiveness can we ask for, if our own child is driven from
+us?  She hurried from me then; but see now how it has made her write.
+Look at the address here; where is it? some horrible part of--O, Tom!"
+
+The exclamation was hardly shrieked from Mrs Hardon's lips before the
+letter the doctor had snatched from her hand was blazing upon the fire,
+he fiercely dragging off his dressing-gown, and preparing to put on his
+black coat; while, the softness gone from her face, Mrs Hardon stood
+before him frowning and hard; but far from noticing her husband's acts,
+she was gazing introspectively, and trying to recall the address she had
+so lately read; an address which the more she tried to bring back, the
+more it seemed to glide from her mind; first a number, then a word, then
+the whole, and it was gone.
+
+The doctor pulled on his coat by snatches, ejaculated, and went through
+many of the evolutions favoured by persons who wish to impress others
+with the fact that they are in a tempestuous passion; but he had
+resisted the advances made by his wife when she had thrown off the mask
+that years of worldliness had fixed there, and now she was ready to
+engage him with his own weapons.  As to his real or simulated anger, she
+valued it not in the least, holding it in the most profound contempt,
+while a stranger would hardly have believed her to be the same woman who
+a few minutes before had kneeled at the doctor's feet.
+
+"I want some money before you go out," said Mrs Hardon coldly; and the
+doctor started with surprise at the change the conversation had taken.
+"I want some money," said Mrs Hardon in a louder key.
+
+"How much?" said the doctor, calming down as his wife seemed disposed to
+take the upper hand.
+
+"Twenty-five--thirty pounds," said Mrs Hardon.
+
+"What for?" said the doctor.
+
+"What for?" said Mrs Hardon fiercely.  "Not to send away--not for
+_that_, but for the tradespeople's bills; since you are so proud of your
+reputation--your professional reputation--have them cleared off.
+Richards has sent twice, and threatens proceedings;" and she held out
+the note the maid had brought in; "and now I insist upon knowing how you
+stand.  I will not be kept here in the dark over these speculations.  I
+know matters are going wrong; and do you suppose that I will sit by like
+a child and see ruin come upon my home; I who was always trusted to keep
+your books and purse, until you became a physician?  There is something
+wrong, Thomas Hardon, or there would not always be this pinching and
+holding back of every sovereign.  You drive me from your side--me, the
+wife of five-and-thirty years--when I would be the loving woman.  Now,
+then, I will be the firm woman of the world, and be satisfied upon these
+points at issue.  You had better write me a cheque at once; for I will
+not be disgraced by the tradespeople, since we are to stand so upon our
+dignity."
+
+Doctor Hardon looked viciously at his wife, spoiling his generally
+placid countenance to a degree that, had one of his best patients seen
+him then, it would have been a serious loss to the doctor and a gain to
+the rival practitioner; but he made no movement towards drawing the
+cheque for which Mrs Hardon stood waiting, till, seeing that nothing
+was to be gained, she left the room in anger; but the next minute she
+had returned, to once more lay her hand gently upon the doctor's arm:
+
+"Have you a heart, Tom?" she whispered.  "Is our old age to be an old
+age of regret?  Think of Octavius and his son; look at his desolate,
+wretched life, and don't let ours be quite the same."
+
+Mrs Hardon had had a hard battle with self, and crushed down the angry
+feelings that had been fighting for exit; for there was the thought of
+her child in her heart--maternity asserting itself and thrusting aside
+in its greatness all that was petty and contemptible; but as she stood
+there appealing to the doctor the struggle grew harder.  Obstinate,
+bitter, cruel, the doctor masked all beneath his cold, calm,
+professional aspect, treating the weeping woman with a cutting
+indifference that roused her indignation thoroughly at last; and to
+conceal her anger she hurried from the room, but this time not to
+return.
+
+The doctor may have had a heart, but it was thoroughly unmoved by all
+that his wife had said; in fact the appeal had come at a wrong time,
+since the same post which brought the letter he had passed over to Mrs
+Hardon had given him other letters whose contents he so thoroughly knew
+that he had not even opened them, but, glancing at their directions,
+thrust them hastily into his pocket, where they acted as so much fuel to
+feed the fire of his wrath.  There was something so unmistakable in the
+particularly-distinct handwriting upon the envelopes--something so very
+blue about the paper--that, expecting unpleasant communications, the
+doctor detected them at a glance, and mentally he went over the
+contents.
+
+The fact was the doctor was short of cash, and that through more than
+one unfortunate speculation in which he had embarked.  Like a great many
+more men of moderate income, he had been bitten with the desire to
+increase it, though the bite came in the first instance from his wife,
+who scolded him fiercely when, after the MD honour had been thrust upon
+him, he gave up the union practice, which entailed the loss of the
+regular salary of one hundred pounds per annum.  The doctor said that it
+was not becoming for a physician to be the medical attendant of the
+parish; and Mrs Hardon, who was then in a worldly, everyday phase,
+declared that it was "all fiddlesticks' ends," when there was his cheque
+regularly at certain times, while the greater part of the work could be
+done by the assistant, who would do very well for the poor people.  It
+was a sin and a shame, she declared, though how connected with
+fiddlesticks' ends was best known to herself.  There was, however,
+something relating to the musical science in the matter, for Mrs Doctor
+Hardon kept harping upon the same string until the doctor snapped it by
+furiously threatening her if another word was said about it--threats
+which Mrs Hardon noticed so much that she certainly held her tongue;
+and she held her hand too, and tried to annoy the doctor by keeping a
+bad table, which she said so great a loss every year necessitated.  Poor
+woman! she little knew that the time would come when such economy would
+be forced upon her.  What, she asked the doctor, was honour without
+money?  What was the use of her being a physician's wife if they had
+nothing to support it with?  And, then, too for him to be such an ass--
+the doctor started and puffed out his cheeks at this--"Yes, ass," said
+Mrs Hardon, "as to play into your adversary's hand like that, when he
+was on the verge of ruin, as everybody said, and could not have kept on
+another six months; for you to throw the union practice and a hundred
+a-year into his lap, and supply him with the material for carrying on
+the war!"
+
+Mrs Doctor Hardon spoke of the rival practitioner, a poor, gentlemanly
+man, who had set up some years before in the dusty town of Somesham, and
+had been fighting ever since with difficulties; for, as in all small
+country towns in this land of liberty, every new-comer was looked upon
+as an intruder--a foreigner--and one who will probably interfere with
+the fine old conservative notions of the place.  They don't want him,
+and they won't have him if they can help it.  He is clever, perhaps; but
+they don't want clever people, and they would prefer being half-killed
+by the old practitioner to being cured by the new.  Trade or profession,
+it is just the same; and perhaps the acts of the town are only the acts
+of the country in miniature.  Hospitality we have in plenty, and our
+share of the virtues, no doubt; but truly we English have most strongly
+in us the propensity for turning our backs upon those who are trying to
+fight their way on, until they can manage to do without help, when we
+turn round, smiling with the features that frowned before, pat the
+successful man upon the back, and say, "Well done!"
+
+Mr Brande, "the new man," as he was called, had found all this, and had
+been ready to despair again and again through the many years he had been
+trying to make a practice; but now the turning-point had come in the
+honours of Thomas Hardon, Esq, MD; not that he had reaped much present
+advantage, and it was doubtful if he would have had the practice at all
+if Doctor Hardon had not had immediate want for a hundred and fifty
+pounds, and, trusting to Mr Brande's honour as a gentleman, offered to
+throw up the parish work on condition of receiving that sum, which Mr
+Brande gave him in bills, and, what was more, screwed, economised, and
+met them as they fell due.  But Mrs Doctor Hardon did not know this,
+nor yet the extent of the liabilities her lord had incurred; while the
+deeper he sunk in that black, clinging mire of debt, the more reticent
+he grew.
+
+Volume One, Chapter VIII.
+
+MR PAWLEY'S PERFORMANCE.
+
+"Such a beautiful, well-cut letter too!" said old Matt Space, as he
+stood looking at the empty type-rack from whence the cases had been
+taken to furnish money for Septimus Hardon's present expenses.  "In such
+good order too.  Puts me in mind of being so low down that I had to sell
+my own stick.  Fellow always seems so badly off when he gets selling his
+tools."
+
+A tap at the door, following the sound of wheels, interrupted the old
+man's soliloquy, and going to the door he admitted the undertaker, who
+had just arrived with his shabby Shillibeer hearse and mourning-coach in
+one, with which he performed the economic funerals so frequent in his
+district.
+
+"Here you are, then," said old Matt, grimly surveying the new-comer.
+
+"Yes, here we are," said the undertaker, in a subdued, melancholy tone;
+and then he drew out a pocket-handkerchief and wiped his eye, as if to
+remove a tear--in fact, he did remove a tear--though not sorrow-shed,
+for Mr Pawley was in very good spirits just then; but he had an eye
+afflicted with a watery weakness which necessitated the constant
+application of a handkerchief, and this had passed with a certain class
+of people for the manifestation of sorrow for their griefs.  Some said
+that this eye had been a little fortune to him.  Perhaps it had, but
+doubtless the crowded courts clustering round Lincoln's-inn had done
+more to keep up the incessant "rat-tat-tat-tat" heard in his shop, a
+sound as if grim Death were tapping with those bony fingers of his at
+the door.
+
+"Such a feeling man!" said Mrs Sims, who was always at home upon such
+occasions as this, and had now come to mind Septimus Hardon's boy, and
+help; "if she could be of service leastways, for it's few berrins take
+place about here, mom, that they don't send for me," she said with a
+sniff, and the corner of her apron to her eye.
+
+"Here you are, then," said old Matt to the undertaker.
+
+"Yes, here we are," said Mr Pawley; "but you ain't a-going, are you?"
+
+"Well, who said I was?" said Matt gruffly.  "You're a-going, ain't you?
+and that's enough for you."
+
+Mr Pawley took so much pride in his funerals being properly performed,
+that going himself did not seem enough for him, and he continued to gaze
+doubtfully over a very uncomfortable white cravat, one of which the bow
+was supposed to be tied behind, giving him a good deal the aspect of a
+man who had been decapitated, and then had his head secured in its place
+by a bandage.
+
+But old Matt did not give the undertaker an opportunity for a long
+inspection of his shabby black clothes, for having announced the grim
+functionary, that gentleman went up the creaking stairs upon the points
+of his toes to proceed with the duties he had in hand; while, as old
+Matt stood in the passage watching his long black body it seemed to him
+that the stairs cracked and creaked mournfully, as if resenting the feet
+laid upon them, in anticipation of a heavier descent.
+
+But there was to be no heavy load for them to bear this time, for it was
+but a little coffin--a little white coffin that had been gazed into for
+the last time, where the gentle waxen features seemed to wear a smile,
+so sad, speaking such a tender farewell in its sweetness, that Lucy Grey
+sobbed aloud with the parents, until Mrs Sims entered the room,
+whispered to Septimus, and then they all slowly passed out to give place
+to Mr Pawley.  And then standing in the next room, Mrs Septimus, weak
+and ailing, almost fainted as she heard the harsh noise of the driver as
+it slipped first in one and then another of the screws.
+
+But now the last screw had been tightened, the light burden placed in
+the receptacle, and Mrs Sims, quite a regular aid to Mr Goffer,
+arranged the scarf upon Septimus Hardon's hat; pinned and tied the hoods
+and cloaks upon mother and daughter; and then, in a simple but feeling
+way, wept many a salt tear into her black-alpaca apron, sniffing
+terribly the while Mr Pawley, satisfied in his mind that the
+respectability of his performance was not to be damaged by so doubtful a
+character as the old compositor, stood holding open the door of the
+carriage with one hand, wiping his eye with the other, and awaiting the
+mourners' descent.
+
+For this was no grand funeral; there had been no mutes standing with
+draped staves at the door; there was no squadron of men with scarves and
+brass-tipped truncheons; no tray of black plumes to be carried in
+advance; no high-stepping, long-tailed black horses, with velvet
+housings and tossing heads; nothing to make a funeral imposing and
+attractive.  But there were spectators even for this: inhabitants of
+Carey-street were stealthily watching from door-steps, or from the
+corners of windows, as if afraid of intruding upon the mourners' sorrow;
+a knot of dirty children from Bennett's-rents had collected, many of
+whom toiled beneath shawl-wrapped burdens of heavy babies almost equal
+to themselves in bulk; two women stood upon the opposite side with arms
+wrapped in their aprons; a ticket-porter, in apron and badge, leaned
+against the nearest lamp-post; the apple-woman at the corner did
+something unusual, she left her basket, knocked the ashes out of her
+short black pipe, and then rubbed a tear--a bright, gem-like tear--off
+her poor old cheek, withered as one of her own pippins, before placing
+her pipe in her pocket, and leaning with arms akimbo against the
+railings to see the hearse pass with a little customer of hers, for whom
+she had always picked out the best lot, and in her simple homely way
+called down heavenly favour with a hearty "God bless you!"  An old
+law-writer, a man who reckoned life as a long brief in so many folios,
+old and snuffy, and shabby almost as Matt himself, walked by house and
+hearse to the office where he worked, pretending to whistle; but no
+sound came, and he blew his nose in a way that raised an echo in the
+silent street as soon as he was a few yards past the place; even the
+policeman, beating his Berlin gloves together, quietly sent off the
+children gathered in the way, and posted them at a distance, that they
+might not annoy the sad party so soon to leave the house.
+
+And now a tall dark woman, carrying a child, appeared upon the scene,
+and stood with dimmed eye watching till the mourners descended, when,
+catching sight of Septimus Hardon's bent form, she stepped forward
+eagerly, but only to shrink back shivering as she clutched her babe to
+her breast, pressing her lips upon its plump cheek, while an air of
+wonderment came into the woman's face as the announcement above the door
+now caught her eye:--"S Hardon, Legal and General Printer."
+
+For there was sorrow in Carey-street that day--sorrow of a novel kind.
+All the neighbourhood knew why the blinds were down at Hardon's; for all
+knew the tall graceful girl who led about the two golden-haired children
+that seemed so out of place in the legal region; all knew that one of
+these little ones had passed away--that the little flower, sweet and
+fragrant, so lately blooming in the cold harsh place, and raising its
+heaven-whispering head amongst them, had been cut down by the cold winds
+that swept the weary waste.  "Our client" had stopped at this oasis in
+the desert he was crossing, for he had often paused to look up at the
+golden head at the upper window, gazed at it awhile, and then passed on,
+refreshed and gladdened in heart.  Every dweller in the neighbourhood
+had had a kind word or look for Lucy's charges; and there was a sun in
+those golden tresses, a warm light, that would often melt the icy frost
+of some old lawyer's countenance, and bring there a smile of pleasure.
+But a month before, two men were passing Carey-street with Punch, bound
+westward to the district where there is less constraint and
+mind-engrossing; and the man who bore the show, following the usage
+which to him was second nature, looked up at the dirty windows with
+wandering eye, caught sight of the blue-eyed fairy, looked at her with
+doubt for an instant, and then pitched his theatre, to the astonishment
+of his drum-and-pan-pipe "pardner," who would as soon have thought of
+playing in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey.
+
+"Jest five minutes," whispered his mate, pointing upwards; when, as if
+by magic, the pipes squeaked, the drum rolled, raising up the wondering
+ghosts of echoes from amidst the pouncy dust of ages, while the yellowy,
+torn green baize fell, to conceal the motive power of the puppets; and
+then for "jest five minutes" "our client" was startled, the parchments
+in the offices crackled, dust floated from ledges out upon the murky
+air, and the sanctity of the place was broken by the ribald jokes of our
+old friend.  Then, just as an astonished troop of children came with a
+rush out of Bennett's-rents, up went the green curtain; there came a
+friendly nod from one of the men, who placed himself Atlas-like beneath
+his drum, a broad grin from the other at the child's delight, and then
+off due west.
+
+And now the change had come; the cold blast that sweeps down
+Carey-street had been colder and keener; the fragile flower-stalk was
+broken; the white coffin was in its place, the mourners in the coach;
+the door banged gently, for the wood had warped.  Mr Pawley had climbed
+beside his red-nosed driver, and sat wiping his eye; while the poor old
+broken-kneed black horse ambled and shambled off with its head down, as
+if ashamed of the false tail that it knew was fastened to the crupper of
+its harness.
+
+Then the rest,--the sad rite, the solemn words, the swelling hearts
+aching to leave so sweet a form in so cold and damp a bed, loth to
+believe that what they had loved could turn to corruption, and then to
+the dust of the earth.  Then back to the shabby carriage, whose driver
+had refreshed himself with gin, which attacked his nose; while the horse
+yet twisted an obstinate wisp of hay that hung sideways in his bit, and
+would not be ground into nutriment.  Once more the banging of the door,
+and Mr Pawley up beside the driver, with his grief still unassuaged;
+while as the poor beast that drew the carriage shambled back, his load
+was so little lightened that he knew not the difference.
+
+The house in Carey-street had looked sad and gloomy for days past, for
+even the lodgers had drawn down their blinds, and ascended the stairs
+carefully and even stealthily, speaking, too, in whispers; but now the
+light was freely admitted, and Mrs Sims had blown up a good fire, only
+stopping to sniff, and drop a tear or two upon the bellows now and then,
+the last being a domestic implement that she had run home to the Square
+and fetched for the occasion.  The tea was prepared, and she had made
+what she called the most of the place,--not that that was much,--ready
+for the mourners' return; while old Matt was ruining the knees of his
+trousers by making himself a horse, and crawling up and down the dirty
+printing-office floor with the little boy upon his back.  The rooms
+looked almost cheerful now, for, save in the returned mourners' hearts,
+all was over, and the solemn scene, the dark, damp grave, the catching
+of the breath as the first earth fell, the long last look at the white
+coffin--all things of the past.
+
+Old Matthew Space was a wise man in his way; and as soon as he thought
+that there had been time for the changing of habiliments,--that is to
+say, about a quarter of an hour after Mr Pawley had presented his
+account, been paid, and taken his departure, offering old Matt sixpence,
+which he indignantly refused to take,--he put on a bright face, and took
+the little fellow in his charge upstairs, crowing and chattering with
+delight at riding upon the old man's shoulders.
+
+"No, thankee, sir," said the old man, in answer to Septimus Hardon's
+invitation to stay to tea; and as he declined he glanced down at his
+clothes.
+
+"I did not ask the clothes," said Septimus warmly, "but the man who has
+shown sympathy in this weary time of trouble; and God knows I did not
+expect to find friends where I have," muttered the dejected man, who
+looked ten years older; while at times his eyes wandered in a weary
+abstracted way about the room, and his hands were wrung together, till
+Lucy came to his side and spoke to him, when the lost, helpless look
+would pass off, and he would brighten up for a few minutes.
+
+"Such a beautiful, well-cut letter, though!" muttered old Matt as he
+took the chair placed for him by Mrs Sims, when the little fellow
+forced himself off his mother's lap, and climbed upon the old man's
+knee.
+
+"You must hold up, mum," whispered Mrs Sims to poor, broken-down,
+invalid Mrs Septimus.  "I know what it all is; for when I lived in the
+Rents, mum, I lost four; and all within three year."
+
+"_You_ did!" said Mrs Septimus, laying a tender hand upon the poor
+woman's arm.
+
+"O yes!" said Mrs Sims.  "It was before I went to mind the house in the
+Square, and used to wash; but it was sich work, mum! nowhere to dry
+except a bit of leads, and the strings tied across the room, and the
+blacks allus a-coming down like a shower, while every drop o' water had
+to be fetched from right at the bottom of the house.  One was obliged to
+do it, though, for times were very hard just then; but having so much
+washing ain't good and healthy for children, let alone being stived up
+so closte.  You see, 'm, it's a bad place to live in, them Rents,
+there's too many in a house, and there's so much wants doing; but then,
+when you're a bit behind with your rent, you can't grumble, or there's
+your few bits of sticks taken, and plenty more glad to have your room.
+But the way the poor little children is snatched off there, mum, 's
+terrible, though I do sometimes say, as it's a happy release.  Mr
+Pawley, mum, he 'ave told me that them Rents is as good as an annuity to
+him; for you see, though it isn't a big place, there's a many families
+in each house; and where there's families, mum, there's mostly
+children."
+
+Mrs Septimus sighed bitterly at the last word, while, poor woman, she
+was too much intent upon her cares to notice the wisdom of the speech.
+
+"But you hold up now, mum, there's a good creetur.  I know it's very
+hard, but then we all has to suffer alike, and you've got to recklect
+what you owes to that poor dear child there, and young miss, and the
+master."
+
+As for Septimus Hardon, he was talking in an abstracted way to old Matt,
+who was discussing business matters, and urging energetic measures in
+the office; but talking to Septimus Hardon was a difficult matter, and
+put you much in mind of catching a grazing horse: you held a bait before
+him, and then gradually edged him up into a corner, when, just as you
+thought you had him, he was off and away full gallop to another part of
+the mental field; and so the work had to be done all over again.  Old
+Matt found it so, and after several times over waking to the fact that
+while he was talking upon one subject Septimus Hardon was thinking upon
+another, he rose and took his departure.
+
+Volume One, Chapter IX.
+
+OLD MATT ON MANNERS.
+
+Old Matt Space came daily to Carey-street in search of a job, and
+generally made an excuse for seeing little Tom, for whom he had a cake,
+a biscuit, or some small penny toy, purchased of one of the peripatetic
+vendors in the street.
+
+"I always like to support honest industry," said the old man; and when
+in work, and with a few shillings in his pocket, he would take a walk
+along the busy streets, and perhaps spend a couple of his shillings with
+the people whose place of business is the edge of the pavement.  "Well,
+suppose I am a fool for doing it, what then?" said Matt one day.  "Ain't
+ninety per cent of the inhabitants of this precious country of ours what
+you call fools; and if I, in my folly, help twenty or thirty poor folks
+up a step in getting their bit of a living, where's the harm?  Don't
+tell me," old Matt would say to his fellow-workmen, beginning to unload
+the pockets which made his coat-tails stick out almost at right angles;
+"I don't buy the things because I want them, I do it to help them as
+wants it; and their name, as it says in the Testament, is `legion.'
+Now, that's a jumping frog, made of wood, a bit of paint, a bit of
+string, and a bit of my friend Ike's wax.  That's an ingenious toy, that
+is: who'll have it? whose got a youngster?"
+
+Speaking in a large printing-office, amongst twenty or thirty men, there
+was soon a market for the jumping frog; and then the old man drew out a
+scrap of something soft and flabby, and held it up.
+
+"You wouldn't tell what that is in a hurry," said Matt.  "All to
+encourage industry, you know; that's a big indy-rubber balloon, that is,
+only I couldn't pocket it, so I made it collapse first; so that's no
+good to nobody--pitch it away.  Here we have--ah, this is an out-and-out
+toy, this is, only I've broke the stick, and it wants a bit of glue--
+who'll have a climbing monkey?"
+
+And so the old man would pull out perhaps twenty toys, balls, dolls,
+gelatine cards, to the infinite amusement of his companions, who laughed
+on, but without discomposing Matt in the least, who practised his humble
+philanthropy as long as he had money, and often, in consequence, went
+without a meal; for saving was an utter impossibility with the old man--
+a feat, he said, he had often tried to accomplish; but how, he said,
+could a man keep money in his pocket when he saw others wanting?  "It is
+done," said Matt; "but old as I am, I can't quite see it."
+
+But there had been no toy distributions lately, for old Matt had found
+times very hard, and even if they had been better, there would have been
+no more such amusements for the denizens of the offices he worked at,
+for there was another way for Matt's philanthropical purchases to go,
+namely, to Carey-street, to Septimus Hardon's little boy, for whose
+special benefit the old man had made several purchases on credit, which
+was freely accorded by those to whom he was known; but as to work at
+Septimus Hardon's printing-office, there was none for him, further than
+that of disposing of type and materials at one or another of the
+brokers', which duties he performed without recompense, grumbling sorely
+the while at the wretched sums he obtained for the goods.
+
+"You ought to find fault then, sir," he would say to Septimus; "I can't
+help it; but I'm ashamed, that I am, to think that people will give such
+a beggarly price.  It grieves me, sir, to see the stuff go like that."
+
+But Septimus did not find fault, only smiled feebly; for in this time of
+his sore distress he had so aged, and grown so helpless and wanting in
+reliance, that he trusted to the old compositor in almost everything.
+
+"Might rob him right and left, sir," said old Matt to a favourite
+lamp-post in Carey-street.  "He's no business up here at all.  I could
+quarrel with him sometimes for being so simple, if it wasn't that he's
+such a thorough good sort at bottom.  What's to become of them when the
+things are all gone, goodness knows; for he'll never do what I've done,
+sir--lived two days upon a large dose of sleep, a penn'orth of snuff,
+and three back numbers of the _London Journal_."
+
+For troubles now came thickly crowding on Septimus Hardon's horizon.
+His wife's health failed fast, and the means were wanting to procure her
+the necessary comforts.  But there is always light behind the darkest
+cloud; and now it was that Lucy, young in years, but a woman in
+self-reliance, proved a stay to the family.  Ever busily plying her
+needle, ever cheerful, she was a ray of sunshine in their sad home,
+shedding her brightness in the darkest hours.  And though Septimus
+Hardon querulously complained of his standing so friendless in the
+world, there was another who watched anxiously the failing fortunes of
+the family, and was always ready with counsel and aid--the Reverend
+Arthur Sterne, who became more constant in his visits as the affairs of
+Septimus grew darker.  Old Matt and he, too, often met, but somehow not
+without feelings of distrust on either side--distrust perhaps excusable
+on the side of the clergyman; for the ways of Matthew Space shed no
+softening lustre upon his outer man.
+
+One day old Matt went into Carey-street to find the broker in
+possession; for Septimus was far behind with his heavy rent, and the
+landlord was alarmed at seeing his tenant's worldly possessions
+shrinking at so rapid a rate; while, when the old man made his way into
+the sitting-room, he found weary-looking Septimus waiting with aching
+heart for a reply to the appealing letter he had sent to his father.
+
+Old Matt went again, day after day, asking himself how he could be such
+an old idiot as to care for other people's affairs to the neglect of his
+own; but there was always the same weary shake of the head, and the same
+answer--"No letter, Matt."
+
+At last there was a cart at the door, and Septimus Hardon, roused up
+into something like energy for the time being, busily helped old Matt to
+remove the remnants of his furniture to the rooms the old man had
+secured for him in that salubrious court, Bennett's-rents.
+
+"'Tain't the nicest of spots," old Matt had owned; "but then look at the
+convenience; and for what you are going to do, sir, you must be right on
+the spot; for though law's very slow work for them as goes into it, it's
+very quick, sharp work for them as does the copying."
+
+That evening Septimus Hardon looked dolefully round the front room of
+the two the old man had secured for him; then he glanced at his wife,
+who tried to smile; at Lucy, busily arranging; and lastly at old Matt,
+who looked very cheerful and happy as he helped Lucy in her
+arrangements, and was now lustily polishing a table that did not require
+it with a duster.
+
+"Good luck to you, sir, don't look like that; why, you're fetching the
+tears into Miss Lucy's eyes--as is quite bright enough without,"
+muttered Matt to himself.  "Don't be down, sir, the wheel's always going
+round--bottom spokes to-day, top spokes to-morrow; and not the best
+place neither, for folks often knocks their heads through going too
+high.  This ain't nothing, bless you; this is riches, this is--cheerful
+prospect of ten foot in front; pigeons on the roof; birds a-singing
+upstairs; children a-rollicking in the court; orgin three times a-day;
+writers popping in and out at the corner this side, public at the corner
+on t'other--brown stout threepence a pot in your own jugs; side-view
+almost into Carey-street, through the alley.  Why, you're well off here,
+sir; and I've known the time when a ha'porth o' snuff and a recess in
+one of the bridges has been board and lodging to me; and--Servant,
+sir.--Anything more I can do for you to-day, Mr Hardon?  If not, I'll
+go, sir," said the old man, suddenly becoming very distant and
+respectful; for a new-comer appeared upon the scene in the shape of Mr
+Sterne; when, after a very stiff bow all round, old Matt departed,
+stumbling more than once as he descended the worn stairs.
+
+Matthew Space's cheerfulness was gone as soon as he left the court, and
+it took him some considerable time to reach his resting-place--a
+neighbouring public-house; for he was troubled and anxious, and had to
+stop every now and then to think; but he could not think aloud to his
+old friends the lamps, on account of its being daylight; though after an
+hour or two's sojourn at first one and then another of his places of
+resort when making his way homewards, he paused frequently and long.
+
+"Now I tell you what it is, sir!" he exclaimed, on stopping at the
+corner of Carey-street once more, and slapping a favourite post on the
+shoulder, "things are coming to a pretty pass; here we are sending our
+thousands to prison and penal servitude for dishonesty, robbery, and
+petty theft; and out of those thousands no end wanted to be honest, and
+we would not give them the chance.  There are thousands wanting to get
+an honest living, and we won't let them.  Rogue, sir!" he cried,
+excitedly slapping the cold iron with such energy that his hand ached,
+"don't tell me; you may talk of your charity and benevolence till all's
+blue; but I mean to say that, in the eyes of the world, sir, there isn't
+a greater rogue than a poor man.  Beat him, kick him, turn him out, off
+with him--a vagabond, what business has he to be poor?"
+
+Old Matt was out of breath, and strode on to another post.
+
+"What business has he to be poor--a villain?  What do we want with a
+Septimus Hardon, legal and general printer, and poor man?  `Nothing at
+all,' says the world, and it won't go to his shop; `see him starve
+first,' says the world; `we'll go to the people who don't want help, who
+keep their carriages and country-seats; and if the little men fail and
+become bankrupt, serve 'em right, too, what business had they to aspire?
+why weren't they content as shopmen or journeymen?  Too many already!
+Pooh! then let them get out.  Let them plod and crawl, or turn
+agricultural labourers, and earn eight or nine shillings a-week.  Won't
+they get premiums, sir, for bringing up their families without parish
+help, eh?  And what more can they want in this great and glorious land?
+Won't that do?  Well, then, let 'em go to the workhouse, where there's
+every convenience for letting 'em die off out of the way.'"
+
+The old man crossed the muddy street to another lamp, chuckling to
+himself the while, when, laying both hands upon the post, he began
+again: "It's a strange thing, sir, a wonderful thing, how lonesome a man
+may be here in this great city of London: he may work till he drops for
+a living, and not get it; and he may then go and lie down and die, and
+all that, while nobody has known him or helped him; but when he's found
+there's a fuss in the papers for a few hours, and then--on we go again.
+We're all wrong, sir.  What's the use of our spending our hundreds of
+thousands, sir, in converting a few Indians, or Africans, or
+Australians, sir, and then holding our meetings, with the Bishop of
+Somewhere-or-another coming home to hold forth upon the benefits that
+have followed the missionary enterprise, but saying nothing about the
+miseries that have followed wherever the white man has set his foot?
+Very fine, sir; very fine, this civilisation, and town and village and
+church springing up; but what has become of the Indian? what has become
+of the Australian? and what will become of the New Zealander?  It's
+aggrandisement from beginning to end, sir,--dead robbery; call it
+conquest if you will; but there, it's all for the extension of our
+glorious empire.  Let's see, sir," said Matt, stopping; "I'm getting it
+into a knot; what was I going to say?  How dare we go on so busily
+cleaning other people's houses when our own is in a state that we ought
+as a nation to blush for?  Convert savages, benighted heathen!  Why, I
+can take you, sir, where, here in the heart of this Christian city,
+London, you shall see savages ten times worse than any you shall find in
+Africa--more cruel, more licentious.  There, hang it, sir, if it warn't
+for the fear of being eaten, I'd sooner trust myself amongst the blacks
+ten times over than the whites, hang me if I wouldn't!  I know what
+you'll say to me, sir!  `Go and preach the Gospel to every creature!'
+Ah, but oughtn't we to be fit to do it first? oughtn't we to look at
+home first?  I say yes, sir, yes; and what we're doing now, sir, 's
+playing the Pharisee and whitening the outside of the sepulchre; and
+there's no mistake about it, sir, some parts of this London of ours make
+a very foul sepulchre indeed."
+
+Another fifty yards brought Matt to the next post, where he again
+stopped.
+
+"I'm a leveller, am I, sir?  P'r'aps so; but we levellers make the way
+smooth for those poor folks who are to tramp the road of life in days to
+come.  I'm very sorry for the blacks, sir; and no doubt here and there
+you may find one who, under proper management, would turn out bright;
+but they can't be much account, or else they would have made some
+progress among themselves, whereas they're just where they were hundreds
+of years ago.  It's a good job slavery is done away with; but you'll
+never make white men of 'em, never, sir; and they all look just as if,
+when their father Ham was cursed, he scowled like a naughty boy, and was
+cross and pouted his lips, and so all his children have looked
+thick-lipped since.  But there, sir, that's neither here nor there, as
+you may say; though I've begun here in Carey-street and got right over
+into Africa; and that's the way I always do go on when I'm speaking in
+public.  Now look here, sir; now what am I, eh? a battered, worn-out,
+seedy old stamp--good for nothing.  `Whose fault is that?' you say.
+`Halves!'  I cry, with the world: we share the blame between us.  I've
+been foolish: I've given way good-humouredly in the squeeze for place,
+and everyone has pushed by me and got in front.  Now, sir, what ought I
+to have done, eh?  Why, told the world that I was a big man; caressed
+those who believed me, and kicked and bullied those who did not.  I
+ought to have shoved my way through the crowd; and what would have
+followed, eh? why, people would have pushed again and grumbled; but they
+would have given way until I got a good standing.  Now look at that man,
+sir,--Hardon, sir, a gentleman every inch of him, but as helpless and
+unbusiness-like as a baby.  Why, he'll starve, sir, before he'll ask for
+help, if his father don't send.  `More fool he,' says the world.  To be
+sure: what business has he with a heart and feelings and nerves, that
+make him flinch because he has got an ugly shell over his beautiful
+works, and so feels every slight put upon him.  Why, he's just one of
+those men who would go in despair and make an end of himself; and then
+you have your inquest, and people say `How shocking!' and never stop to
+think that such things keep on happening every day; and will, too, so
+long as the world goes round; and I'm blest sometimes if I believe that
+it does go round, sir, or else things would come right in time for
+everybody.  But they don't, for they mend worse every day.  Here we are,
+with one man rolling in riches he never did a stroke to gain, and don't
+even know the value of; and here's Septimus Hardon, with a sick wife,
+and with hardly common necessaries.  I might have introduced myself to
+your notice, sir, but present company is always excepted.  The fact of
+it is, sir, that things are all wrong; and though I've been studying the
+matter these twenty years I can't see how to put 'em all right."
+
+Old Matt drew a long breath, for he had been speaking loudly and with
+vehemence; and now, upon reaching another post, he began gesticulating
+fiercely, for he had warmed to his subject.
+
+"But if I had time, sir, I'd go into the matter, sir.  I'd take the poor
+man as he stands, and the rich man as _he_ stands; and I'd--"
+
+"Now, come; that's about enough for one night, anyhow.  I don't mind a
+little, now and then, but they'll be hearing of you acrost the square
+d'reckly."
+
+"I'd take him, sir," continued Matt, "and hold him up for the whole
+world--"
+
+"O, ah! all right," said Matt's interrupter, the policeman on the beat;
+"I dessay you would; only the world wouldn't look at him.  For why?
+'cause the world's too busy.  Good-night, old chap."
+
+"Good-night," said Matt, cooling down suddenly, and shuffling off in a
+quiet spiritless way, the fire out, and his head bent as he thrust his
+hands in his pockets.  "Ah, he's about right; so he is.  `The world's
+too busy!' so it is; and I ain't got a morsel of snuff left."
+
+Volume One, Chapter X.
+
+BROTHERLY LOVE.
+
+"There, there, there; sit down, sit down, sit down!" croaked old
+Octavius Hardon as he cowered over a miserable fire in his paper-strewn
+room.  "Sit down, sit down, sit down," he kept on repeating, after just
+glancing over his shoulder as his brother, sleek, pompous, and
+black-clothed, entered the room--"such a gentlemanly man," as the old
+women of Somesham declared over cups of tea.  "Sit down, Tom," croaked
+the withered, dry old man, pulling his black skull-cap close down to his
+yellow ears, and peering sideways from under his shaggy grey eyebrows at
+the chair he meant his brother to take.  There was a dry, mocking sneer
+upon his thin lips, while the grey unshorn beard wagged and twitched
+about as he spoke, as, without taking further notice of his visitor, he
+made his chair scroop on the worn carpet as he dragged it closer to the
+fire and warmed his lean shins.
+
+Doctor Hardon slowly subsided into a seat, giving a hasty glance round
+the cheerless room as he did so, and then finishing with a long curious
+look at the lean figure before him, with its wrinkled bony face and
+attenuated form showing through the faded dressing-gown drawn tightly
+round him, and tucked-in between his knees, while the trembling hands
+were stretched out over the fire.
+
+"How are we?" said Octavius after a long silence, broken with an effort
+by his brother; "how are we?  Shall I put out my tongue, Tom?  Would you
+like to feel my pulse, Tom, and sound my chest, eh, Tom?  Come and try,
+Tom, and perhaps I shall knock you down--you humbug, you; for I'm sound
+as a roach yet, Tom, and shall live a score of years.  Only
+seventy-five, Tom; that's boyish, isn't it?  Better than being sixty,
+and fat, and a humbug like you, ain't it?  `How are we?'  Ugh! drop that
+professional cant, or else stand up and rub your hands together softly,
+as you ought.  What did you come for?  Did you come to quarrel?"
+
+"I came because you sent for me, sir," said Doctor Hardon with dignity,
+settling his chin in his voluminous white neckcloth and using a gold
+toothpick as he leaned back in his easy-chair.
+
+"Sent for you--sent for you?  Well, yes; so I did--so I did, Tom,"
+chuckled Octavius; "but not to doctor me, Tom, nor to send `the mixture
+as before,' nor to send `the pill at bedtime and the draught in the
+morning.'  No, Tom, no.  How long would it take you to kill me decently,
+Tom, eh?--decently and respectably; eh, Tom, eh?"
+
+"Fond of your joke as ever, Octy," said the doctor with a sickly smile.
+
+"Just so, Tom; just so," croaked and chuckled Octavius; "but you are no
+joke, Tom.  I'm not fond of you.  Brande's bad enough, but you're a
+devil, Tom."
+
+"I've been thinking of coming over to see you several times," said the
+doctor, trying to change the conversation; "and I should have called
+when passing, only you will misconstrue my ways, Octy."
+
+"Me? misconstrue?  No, no, Tom, not I," chuckled Octavius; "I don't
+misconstrue.  I believe you want to come, that I do.  Now what's up,
+Tom, eh?" said the old man, fixing his keen grey eyes upon the doctor.
+"You want money, Tom, don't you?  But, there, you won't own to it like a
+man, but be indignant and offended.  You've a soul above money, you
+have, Tom; and you wouldn't stoop to borrow money of your poor brother,
+Tom, even if he'd lend it to you."
+
+The doctor moved uneasily in his chair, glancing again and again round
+the room, while his brother continued to watch him with his keen
+unflinching eyes.
+
+"Yes, I sent for you, Tom,--I sent for you," continued Octavius; "but
+not to doctor me.  I should be afraid of your not thoroughly
+understanding my constitution, Tom, and overdosing me.  But look here,
+Tom," chuckled the old man, leaving his seat and coughing drily, as,
+bent and failing, he crossed the room to a bureau and brought out a
+silver teaspoon and a bottle containing some dark liquid.  "Look here,
+Tom," he said, reseating himself, and then pouring with trembling hand a
+portion of the liquid into the spoon, and in the act spilling a few
+drops over the side.  "There," he said, smacking his lips after
+swallowing the fluid, and then stooping fumbling about in the fender for
+the stopper, that had slipped through his fingers.
+
+"There, Tom, there; that's nectar, Tom; that's son, and daughter, and
+wife, and brother, and doctor, and friend, and everything but lawyer.
+That's how I doctor myself, Tom; that's how I doctor myself.  'Tain't
+lawyer, Tom; but I can manage that myself and arrange about my few bits
+of things.  You'd like my mourning-ring when I'm gone, wouldn't you now,
+my dear brother?"
+
+Doctor Hardon did not speak, but again shuffled in his chair, glancing
+uneasily at the sneering face before him; and as he thought of the
+goodly lands lying fallow, and the tenements in ruins, belonging to his
+brother, he recalled a case where he had been one of the certifiers
+respecting the sanity of an elderly lady; and then he wondered whether
+his brother had made a will, and what it specified.
+
+"That's how I doctor myself, Tom.  That's a cure for every kind of ache,
+Tom; try it.  It's good for runaway scoundrels of sons, and it's good
+for runaway daughters, Tom, and runaway nieces, Tom.  It's good for
+everything, Tom; and I live on it," chuckled the old man.  "I didn't
+want you for that, you see.  You all left me; Septimus, and your jade of
+a girl, and you keep away; so I have it all to myself."
+
+"You are not going to take any more of that now?" said the doctor, as
+his brother once more drew the stopper from the bottle.
+
+"No, no; not yet, not yet, Tom," said the old man, placing the bottle on
+the chimney-piece.  "Not yet, Tom, till after business.  I wanted you
+about my will, Tom.  D'ye hear? about my will."
+
+Doctor Hardon could not conceal the start he gave at hearing this last
+sentence; but he made an effort, and began to take snuff from a massive
+gold box.
+
+"Ha, ha!  I thought that would interest you, Tom," chuckled the old man,
+watching his brother narrowly, and shading his keen eyes with his hand.
+"My will, Tom, my will, and what I shall do with my money; for I haven't
+a soul belonging to me; not a soul, Tom.  So you were coming to see me,
+Tom, were you, eh?  Then you want money, don't you?  What have you been
+at, now?  Mining-shares, eh?  Just like one of your fool's tricks."
+
+"Hadn't you better refer to your solicitor?" said the doctor with
+assumed nonchalance, and not noticing the latter part of the speech.
+
+"What for--what for, eh?  No, no; I can do what I want with little help;
+and I have had nearly all I want done; and you can do the rest.  It's
+about money, Tom; and you always worshipped it--always--always.  Now
+look here, Tom," he continued, going back to the bureau and taking out a
+large envelope; "that's my will, Tom, and I want it witnessed; d'ye
+hear, Tom?--witnessed.  I've had it made for years; and it only wants
+another signature and then I think it will do, and it will be off my
+mind and be at rest; for I want to finish my reform work, Tom,--reform--
+reform--reform.  Now look here, Tom; but see first that there's no one
+listening at the door."
+
+Doctor Hardon rose and went across the room upon the points of his toes,
+peered out into the passage, closed the door silently, and then returned
+smiling, without having made a sound.  But the smile of
+self-satisfaction at his successful management gave way the next moment
+to a look of astonishment, and then of anger, as Octavius exclaimed,
+"You sleek-looking, tom-cat humbug, you!  I almost wish I had not sent
+for you--you treacherous-looking, smooth-coated rascal!"
+
+Doctor Hardon turned almost purple with rage, but by an effort he choked
+it down.
+
+"So you are, Tom; so you are," snarled the old man, watching him keenly,
+and enjoying his discomfiture; "but you can't afford to be affronted,
+Tom, can you?"
+
+The doctor tried to laugh it off.  "You always did love to tease me,
+Octy," he said, with a twist of his whole body, as if the mental torture
+shot through every nerve.
+
+"Tease!" snarled the old man--"yes; call it teasing if you like; but
+look here," he said, drawing out the will, and folding it back so that
+only the bottom was visible--"bring that pen and ink, and come to the
+table here and sign;" and then he placed both hands tightly upon the
+paper, holding it down upon the table, and just leaving room for his
+brother to sign his name, all the while watching him suspiciously.
+
+Doctor Hardon took the inkstand from a side-table, and placed it beside
+the will, glancing as he did so at the paper, but only to gaze upon the
+blank space.  He then drew out a morocco case, and set at liberty an
+elaborate pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, ignoring for the time being
+the hand some double eyeglass hanging by a black ribbon from his neck.
+The glasses were wiped upon a delicately-scented cambric handkerchief;
+there was a soft professional cough given as they were fitted in their
+place; and then, taking a fresh dip of ink, the doctor again advanced
+majestically towards the table.
+
+All this while Octavius Hardon had been watching his every action with a
+cynical smile upon his withered face, apparently deriving great pleasure
+from the ostentatious performance of his brother.
+
+"Why don't you purr, eh, Tom?" he snarled; "why don't you purr, eh?"
+
+Doctor Hardon tried to laugh pleasantly, but it was only a fat copy of
+his brother's snarl; and then, once more dipping the pen, he leant over
+the table, placing a hand upon the paper, while at the same moment
+Octavius slid one of his own on one side, to give more room--perhaps to
+save it from touching the doctor's plump, white, beringed digits.
+
+The lamp was shaded, and cast a light full down upon the paper; and as
+the doctor stooped to write, he suddenly started as if he had been
+stung, and then stood trembling and wiping the perspiration from his
+forehead.
+
+"Humbug, Tom! humbug!" snarled his brother; "that's your baggage of a
+girl's name; but it don't upset you like that?  What did you act like a
+brute for, and drive her away, eh?  You did, Tom; you did!"
+
+"But I cannot sign the paper without knowing its contents," stammered
+the doctor.
+
+"Bah, fool! tom-cat! humbug!" snarled the old man, snatching up the
+paper, and trying with trembling hands to force it back into the
+envelope.  "It's my will, I tell you.  There, be off!" and he began to
+shuffle back again to his chair.
+
+"I'll sign," said the doctor reluctantly.
+
+Octavius took not the slightest notice, only reseated himself.
+
+"I'll sign the paper, Octy," said the doctor, in a tone of voice that
+seemed to prove his brother's words--that he could not afford to offend
+him.
+
+"You can do as you like," croaked Octavius, shuffling the envelope into
+the breast-pocket of his dressing-gown, where it stuck out tantalisingly
+before the doctor, who would have given a week's income to have known
+its contents.  "You can do as you like, Tom--as you like."
+
+"I know that," growled the doctor, in an undertone; but the old man
+heard him.
+
+"There, go!" he shouted, in a harsh, cracked voice.
+
+"Don't I tell you I'll sign?" said the doctor, in a lachrymose, injured
+tone.
+
+The old man looked at him from beneath his hand for a few moments, with
+a cynical grin wrinkling up his eyes, and then, slowly leaving his seat,
+he took out and replaced the paper upon the table, jealously holding it
+down with both hands; and then the doctor signed his name just beneath
+the fair, clear characters of his daughter's writing, while he ended
+with a flourish and a ponderous "MD."
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" chuckled Octavius, snatching the paper up hastily, and
+then holding it over the lamp, and afterwards to the fire to dry the
+ink.
+
+"MD!  Ha, ha, ha!  Got your diploma framed and glazed, Tom? you purring,
+sleek, tom-cat humbug, you!"  Then, without waiting to double the will
+in its original folds, the old man hastily replaced it in the envelope,
+took the shade and globe from the lamp, an old gold signet-ring and a
+stick of wax from the bureau; and then with his half-palsied hand he
+sealed the great envelope, and stamped the sprawling, blotchy patch of
+wax with the crest in the ring.
+
+"There, Tom; that's done!" chuckled the old man, replacing the will in
+the bureau, turning the key, and dropping it on the carpet as he tried
+to place it in his pocket.  "Now, look here, Tom," he said, taking the
+poker, and making a hole in the fire, "that envelope isn't to be opened
+till I'm gone, Tom; and I'll tell you this--you're one of the executors,
+and then you'll know what's in it, eh?--what's in it.  Now, I won't
+tamper with it any more, and no one else shall."  As he spoke he dropped
+the fine old ring into the hot pit he had prepared for its reception,
+and sat down, chuckling at his brother.
+
+Doctor Hardon sat down breathing heavily, with strange thoughts in his
+heart, as he looked upon the weak old man before him, and thought of his
+possessions.
+
+"Now, Tom," said Octavius, chuckling and placid, as he took the little
+bottle and spoon from the chimney-piece, "there's a decanter with some
+old port in that sideboard cellaret, and a glass with it.  Help
+yourself, Tom; help yourself; this is my wine."
+
+"But you took a quantity of that laudanum just now," said the doctor.
+
+"You're a fool, Tom!  You're a purring, sleek-coated fool!" chuckled the
+old man, hastily filling the spoon again, and swallowing its contents,
+"Help yourself--you like port, Tom--and then go, and don't come here any
+more till you're sent for."
+
+Doctor Hardon drew himself up to display his offended dignity, but the
+old man only watched him and chuckled sneeringly; so he slowly rose, and
+with his professional roll walked to the sideboard and back, filled his
+glass, and then placed the decanter upon the table.  He then sat down,
+curiously watching his brother, who lay back in his chair, apparently
+gazing into the fire.  The doctor raised the glass to his lips, lowered
+it once more, and then his fat white hand played nervously round his
+mouth, for there were strange thoughts in his heart again--strange,
+undefined thoughts that did not take any particular shape, though there
+was the glint and chink of money in them all, and its uselessness to the
+wreck before him; while the hints he had wanted to give him respecting a
+loan had been passed for want of opportunity.
+
+The doctor sighed, and seemed relieved; and then he wiped his forehead,
+which had turned damp; performed the same operation upon his hands, till
+the neat white cambric handkerchief was reduced to a miserable wisp;
+when, apparently further relieved, he took up his glass and drained it,
+but only to fill it again directly.
+
+The port was good, certainly.  The doctor played with his glass
+amorously, touching the rim with his lips, sipping at the bell of the
+ruby flower like some mammoth bee; held it before the light, and closed
+one eye to get a more concentrated look at the deep, rich, tawny hue of
+the fine old wine.  Soon he sipped again--largely this time--and rinsed
+the generous liquor round his mouth, assuming all the airs of a
+connoisseur; and then he finished the second glassful, and sighed
+gently, for the effect was decidedly mollifying.
+
+All this while Octavius Hardon never moved, but lay back in his chair.
+The doctor drew out his watch, and found it was ten; but he felt in no
+hurry to move, for he was accustomed to being late, and it would cause
+no uneasiness at home; besides, something might come of this, he
+thought; and as the idea crossed his mind, his forehead again turned
+slightly moist, and he glanced uneasily at the motionless figure before
+him.  Then he started, for there was a rustle in the passage, and a tap
+at the door, which was directly after opened, and the housekeeper
+brought in a chamber-candlestick.
+
+"Shall I wait up till you go, sir?" she said to the doctor.
+
+"O, no; not for me," said he.  "My brother will let me out.  Good-night,
+Mrs Berry!"  And the doctor's voice was soft and amiable.
+
+"Good-night, sir!" said the woman, and then the door closed.  There was
+once more the rustle in the passage, the sound of a chain and bolts
+being shot somewhere in the back, the closing of a door, which sent a
+hollow echo through the deserted house; and then there was silence--a
+stillness that was quite oppressive; for Octavius lived with but one
+servant here at the Grange, a middle-aged woman, who attended to the
+whole of his simple wants.  And now the wind sighed mournfully through
+the trees, a few spots of rain pattered against the window, and the
+doctor thought uneasily of his long walk home, but not for long, for,
+softly rubbing his hands, he now turned once more to the decanter.
+
+"A good glass of wine, brother.  I think I'll take another," he said
+unctuously; but there was no reply.  So the doctor took another; and
+then, after thoroughly enjoying that glass, another; when now feeling
+decidedly comfortable, and that the awkward, sharp-cornered, acid
+crystals his brother's words had caused to form in his nature were
+dissolved by the good wine, he rose, smiling, put the decanter carefully
+away, and began to don his overcoat, which lay across a chair.
+
+It is possible that had the doctor been less intent upon his thoughts
+and the wine, he might have heard something more than the pattering of a
+drop or two of rain upon the window, the soughing of the wind, and the
+regular "tick-tick" of his own large gold watch--a something that
+sounded like the working of a sharp gimlet boring through the panel of a
+door, cautiously and softly, to render that door pervious to a sharp,
+bright eye; but the doctor heard no sound, and turning towards Octavius,
+he said, "Good-night, Brother Octy!"
+
+There was no answer, and the doctor repeated his valediction, but still
+without effect; so he knocked the glass over, making it jingle loudly
+against the lamp, and still Octavius did not move.
+
+Doctor Hardon's forehead grew damp again, but very slightly now; he drew
+out his watch--it was half-past eleven, and he was surprised to see how
+the time had gone.  He walked round in his soft, silent way, in those
+boots of his that never creaked, to the fireplace on the other side of
+his brother; took the phial, removed the stopper, and smelt at the
+contents; replaced the bottle, and after looking in the withered face
+for a few moments, he lightly rested a finger upon the uncovered wrist
+before him.
+
+Apparently satisfied, he leaned over the fire where the signet-ring had
+been cast; then stooped to pick up the tongs, but shook his head, rose
+again, and stepping silently towards the door, he gave one glance at the
+bureau, when his toe struck something, kicking it along the carpet.
+
+The doctor stopped and stooped again, feeling about the floor; took the
+lamp from the table, whose glass jingled loudly, so that he stopped to
+gaze at his brother, who, however, never stirred; while, after a
+moment's search, the doctor picked up the bureau-key, and then replacing
+the lamp, stood beside the table quite irresolute.  He glanced at his
+brother, then at the door and window, and lastly at the bureau; sighed,
+laid down the key beside the lamp, said "Good-night" again, stepped
+softly to the door, passed through and closed it after him; when, for
+the space of five minutes, there was a silence in the room, broken only
+by the sighing of the wind, and the tinkle of the cinders falling into
+the ash-pan.
+
+Did Octavius Hardon, in his opium-produced sleep, dream of his son
+struggling with sorrow and despair in the desolation of his heart; of
+the son who had appealed to him again and again for the help the
+father's obstinacy refused?  Perhaps so, for more than once he moaned,
+but so softly that it might have been but the wind with whose sighs the
+sound was strangely mingled.
+
+The lamp burned brightly, shedding a well-defined halo for a certain
+space around; but the shadows that it cast in the distant parts of the
+room were wild and grotesque.  The motionless figure of Octavius Hardon,
+with the light full upon the skull-cap, was thrown in strange relief
+upon the ground in the semblance of a sleeping goblin; chairs were
+elongated, while the easy _prie-dieu_ that the doctor had occupied
+seemed turned into some strange beast stooping for its spring upon the
+sleeping man.  The corners of the room were full of dark moving shades,
+as the lamp-flame danced; while the tall bureau and bookcases looked in
+their black solemnity the repositories of mysteries untold.
+
+Suddenly the door opened again very softly, and Doctor Hardon's face
+appeared.  His brother had not moved--he was satisfied of that before he
+entered.  He came in, closed the door, and stepped softly up to the
+chair, and touched the sleeping figure; but there was no pretence, as
+far as he could tell--it was the heavy stupor produced by laudanum.  The
+doctor paused for a few moments irresolutely, then, taking up the key
+from beside the lamp, crossed to the bureau, when, turning the key in
+the lock, the bolt flew back with a loud snap, while, starting round,
+the doctor stood gazing with pallid face at the sleeping man, who,
+however, did not move.  To cross to where the wine stood in the
+sideboard cupboard was the next act, and, removing the stopper, the
+doctor drank eagerly from the decanter's mouth.  This gave him fresh
+courage; and, replacing the wine, he crossed once more to the bureau,
+opened it quickly, stepped back again, and walked over to his brother,
+still motionless; then once more to the door, to open it and peer out.
+
+All silent; and he returned to the bureau.
+
+There was the large blue envelope with its great seal; and now, with his
+forehead covered with big drops, where before it had been but damp, the
+doctor, trembling visibly, put the paper to the light, when a sharp cry
+as of pain from his brother made him drop it upon the table, and turn as
+if to flee.  But the old man only moaned the word "Septimus" in a bitter
+tone of voice, and then all was silent.
+
+Assuring himself once more that all was well, the doctor again took the
+envelope and held it to the light to see if it was transparent enough
+for him to make out anything of its contents; but no: all was firm and
+close--close and secret as Octavius himself: the folds would not give
+way, nor bulge so that he could look inside, the great seal was fast,
+and nothing was to be seen but the words, "My Will--Octavius Hardon,"
+scrawled in a large hand upon the front.
+
+The doctor stood irresolute.  There was the fire, with its warm glow;
+and he thought of how soon it would devour the will; and how that if
+there was no will he would be the next of kin; and--but about Septimus?
+Perhaps Septimus was dead; for he had not heard of him for years; and
+besides, possession--and--yes--that would do, if he should ever show
+himself.  Then Doctor Hardon smiled bitterly, for he had been
+Castle-building, and thinking of the matter as if his brother were past
+away; while now, even if the will were destroyed, Octavius would suspect
+him and make another.  But why wish it destroyed?  It might contain all
+he could desire!  Could he but have seen inside--and the paper crackled
+as his trembling hands bent the envelope here and there.  Should he
+break the wax and reseal the envelope?  He looked in the fire, but could
+not see a trace of the ring; while, upon comparing his own massive seals
+with the impression upon the wax, there was not one that bore the
+faintest resemblance, so as to give him a chance of deception.
+
+Sighing, he replaced the will, locked the bureau, and threw the key upon
+the carpet, and had once more reached the door, when a sudden thought
+struck him.  He darted almost, in spite of his weight, to the bureau,
+the slow ponderous motions giving place to an eager activity.
+
+He tried to open it with his nails inserted beneath the lid, forgetting
+that it was locked; but he soon had the key again, opened the flap, and
+seizing the will, stood with it by the lamp, whose shade and glass he
+removed with trembling hands.
+
+Holding lamp in one hand and envelope in the other, he turned the lamp
+sideways, so that the oil began to flow, and the light to sputter, and
+go out on one side of the wick; but out flowed the clear oil--drip,
+drip, drip--upon the envelope, till a tiny pool was formed upon the
+paper.  This he spread lightly over the front with his finger, and held
+the envelope to the fire for a few minutes, when, returning to the lamp,
+he could distinctly trace, in faint characters, through the now
+transparent paper, "Son Septimus Hardon the whole of houses, lands,
+hereditaments--" then the paper was folded, so that no more was visible,
+but he knew enough now: he knew that Septimus was forgiven, and if
+living, that he would be in possession of his father's property.  But
+would he if there were no will?  Could it be managed that he should not
+succeed?  Doctor Hardon apparently thought it could, for there was a
+strange smile upon his countenance.  But what should he do? replace the
+soiled envelope in the bureau? or should he burn it?  How it would burn
+now, soaked in oil as it was!  And what if his brother thought he had
+destroyed it?  What mattered? he had evidently left him nothing.  But he
+was not sure of that; he might have left him something--something
+pitiful--a mourning-ring, as he hinted; or a watch, or suit of mourning.
+Better play the bold game, and burn the will; he might never make
+another--he might not live; and as his thoughts took this bent, the
+doctor shudderingly gazed at the laudanum-bottle.
+
+Once he advanced towards the fire, and then shrunk back; a second time
+he advanced and receded, trembling visibly, for it was an act of felony
+he thought of performing; then, fiercely crushing the envelope in his
+hand, he stepped forward, when the lamp was dashed over, and as he
+started round a cold chill struck through him, for he was forced upon
+his knees, while, ever tightening and crushing down even the gurgling
+cry he half uttered, there was a bony set of fingers at his throat.
+
+Volume One, Chapter XI.
+
+HARD TIMES.
+
+Times were hard with Septimus Hardon, and too often he was quite in
+despair.  There was that difficult problem before him, always waiting to
+be solved, and he not able to solve it: given so many mouths to feed,
+how to do it.  It was a problem that many a better man had failed over,
+and those who knew him, while commiserating, saw how weak and helpless
+and unfitted he was for the task.  But times might have been worse; for
+he learned now that even in the lowest depths of poverty, whatever may
+have been written to the contrary, there are such people as friends, any
+one of whom, in his genuine truth of heart, is worth a score of the
+parasites who cling to a man in the hours of his prosperity.  Old
+Matthew Space, oddly as his acquaintanceship had begun, was such a
+friend; and so, to a certain extent, was Mr Sterne; but there was, and
+he knew it too, a tinge of selfishness in the latter's friendship
+towards Septimus Hardon, and though he battled with it, and thought
+again and again that he had beaten it down, there it still was in spite
+of all.  The mistrust he had felt for old Matt had somewhat softened
+down, after seeing his disinterested attention towards the Hardon
+family; while the curate argued, upon seeing the old man with Septimus
+Hardon's child, that no man could be bad at heart who had so true a love
+for innocence as embodied in a child, almost fresh and pure from the
+hands of its Maker.  But somehow, he and Matt never seemed to get a jot
+nearer to each other.  Difference of position had nothing to do with it,
+for Arthur Sterne was ready to extend the hand of friendship to the
+humblest dweller in the court, and aid and teach to the best of his
+ability.  But Matt said he daresay it was all right, but somehow he was
+one who did not like to be patronised; while as to being taught, the
+clay had grown too stiff, and hard, and cracked, to submit to the
+moulding of the potter's hands.  "And you see, sir, to be able to do
+anything with me, you must moisten my clay with beer, which softens me a
+little; and it isn't likely as a clergyman is going to supply me with my
+malt liquor, and all for the sake of giving me a few lessons.  I respect
+him, sir, and always shall, but we don't seem the sort to mix."  This to
+Septimus Hardon.
+
+Mr Sterne, finding his advances of no avail, ceased to make any; and
+soon he and old Matt were upon a friendly neutral ground, while the
+extent of their communications was a bow upon either side.  Their visits
+to the first-floor in Bennett's-rents were frequent, and in time they so
+arranged their calls that they should not clash; while, for further
+convenience, by a tacit understanding, it was come curate, go printer;
+and _vice versa_.
+
+"I much wish you had chosen some better neighbourhood," said Mr Sterne
+one day, "for your wife and child's sake; and this is not a nice place
+for Miss Grey."
+
+Lucy looked up in the curate's subdued face with a grateful smile; and
+then there was a faint blush upon her cheek as she looked down again.
+
+"No, it's not a nice place--not at all nice," said Septimus drearily;
+"but then it seemed right in the thick of the law-writing, which I'm
+trying to acquire; but it's very hard work--it's so crooked and crabbed
+and hard to make out.  One ought to have begun young.  I've been trying
+for weeks now; but they all find fault with my hand."
+
+"It is too good--too flowing and clear," said the curate, looking at
+some sheets of foolscap Septimus laid before him.  "But patience, and
+you will do it.  Keep your elbow more away from your side--so."  And he
+leaned over the paper, and wrote a couple of lines so rapidly, and
+exactly in the style required, that Septimus looked on in admiration,
+but only to sigh directly after for his own want of skill.
+
+"Never mind," he said, "I shall manage it some day;" and he smiled
+cheerfully, for he had just caught sight of the worn face of his wife.
+"'Tis a bad neighbourhood this, sir," he said, to change the
+conversation; "but it's cheap for London, I suppose."
+
+"Doubtless--doubtless," said the curate; "but it is a sad place; and I
+know it well, as you may easily suppose.  And now, Mr Hardon," he said
+as he rose to leave, "do not let me be so great a stranger to you.  Ask
+my advice on matters, and take me into your counsels at all times.
+Come; you promise?"
+
+Septimus Hardon did not speak, but wrung the curate's hand; and in the
+future he did precisely what might have been expected of him--let
+matters get from bad to worse, and never once spoke to the visitor upon
+his dreary prospects--prospects that from delicacy the curate forbore to
+inquire into, while to old Matt, Septimus was openness itself.
+
+One day Septimus sat gnawing his nails in despair, for some law-copying
+that he had hoped would bring him in a few shillings had been thrown
+back upon his hands, with some very sharp language from the keen,
+business-like law-stationer who, after many solicitations, had employed
+him.
+
+"Don't grieve, papa," whispered Lucy, looking up from the paid warehouse
+needlework she was employed upon--"don't grieve, papa, they will pay me
+for this when I take it home;" and the words were spoken in a sweet
+soothing strain that comforted the poor fellow in his trouble.
+
+"He said I must be a fool to undertake work I could not perform," said
+Septimus lugubriously; "and I suppose I must be."
+
+"Don't, don't talk so, dear," whispered Lucy, glancing uneasily at the
+door of the back-room.  "Don't let her hear you."
+
+"Well, I won't," said Septimus, rousing up and crossing the room to kiss
+the soft cheek held up so lovingly to him--"I won't, pet Lucy; and I'll
+try again, that I will;" and he returned to his seat.
+
+"Yes, do; yes, do!" cried Lucy, with smiles and tears at one and the
+same time.  "Don't mind what they said; you are so clever, you must
+succeed."
+
+Septimus screwed up his face, but Lucy shook her head at him, still
+busily stitching, while, with his head resting upon his hand, Septimus
+gazed on that budding figure before him, growing fast into the
+similitude of the woman who had first taught him that he had a heart;
+but she looked up again, and Septimus turned to his papers.
+
+"Were there many mistakes, dear?" said Lucy.
+
+"Well, not so many," said Septimus; "only the writing I copied from was
+so bad; and I've put in the contractions where I ought not, and altered
+them where they should have stayed; and you see, my child, I don't know
+how it is, but I do get so wild in my spelling.  I know when the worst
+of it was, it was when Tom would sit on my knee and put his fingers in
+the ink-bottle; and that is distracting, you know, when one copies
+crabbed handwriting.  But the worst fault was what I didn't see--and how
+I came to put it in, I'm sure I don't know, but it was a part of that
+line of Goldsmith's, `But times are altered, trade's unfeeling train.'
+I don't know how it came there, only that it was there, and I must have
+written it when I was half-asleep.  Let me see, it was--ah, yes, here it
+is, in folio 15, and I began that at half-past two this morning.  I
+couldn't say anything, you know, my child, could I? for of course it
+didn't look well in amongst a lot about a man's executors and
+administrators, and all that sort of thing.  It's a bad job, ain't it?"
+
+Poor Lucy looked up at the wretchedly-doleful face before her, hardly
+knowing whether to smile or be serious; and then, in spite of the
+trouble they were in, and perhaps from the fact of tears being so near
+akin to smiles, they both laughed merrily over the disaster; and
+Septimus set to work to try and remedy the wrong doings, by rewriting
+several of the sheets--a task he was busily engaged upon when old Matt
+came with his tap at the door and entered.
+
+"And how's Mrs Hardon, sir?" said Matt respectfully.
+
+A faint voice responded from the back-room, for Mrs Septimus spent much
+of her time in a reclining position.
+
+"Busy as ever, miss, I see," said Matt; "and bright as a rose."
+
+Lucy, bright as a rose truly, but only as the pale white blossom that
+shows the faintest tinge of pink, looked up from the hard sewing which
+made sore her little fingers, and smiled upon the old man.
+
+"And how's the writing, sir?" said Matt.
+
+"No good--no good, Matt," said Septimus wearily.  "I'm out of my
+element, and shall never do any good at it, I'm afraid."
+
+"Don't have nothing to do with it, then, sir; come and finger the types
+again.  I've no opinion of copying, only as a combination of
+law-stationers to do honest printers out of their work.  Try setting
+again, sir, and I'll give you grass first time I get a chance."
+
+"Grass!" said Septimus absently.
+
+"Well, yes, sir; put you on a job instead of doing it myself; first
+chance I have."
+
+Septimus shook his head, went and thrust some sheets of paper into the
+fire, and then walked to the window, where his apathetic air passed off
+for an instant, as he seemed to recognise the face of a woman who passed
+quickly from the opposite house, and then hurriedly made her way out of
+the court.
+
+"Strange!" muttered Septimus to himself; "but there, it couldn't be
+her."
+
+"And where's my little di'mond?" said Matt to Lucy.
+
+"Asleep by mamma," replied Lucy.
+
+"Bless him!  I've brought him a steam-ingin," said Matt, bringing a
+toy-model, with a glorious display of cotton-wool steam, out of his
+pocket; "and I don't know what this here's meant for," he continued,
+drawing a wooden quadruped from the other pocket.  "Stands well, don't
+he, miss?  Wonder what it's meant for!  'Tain't a horse, nor a
+halligator, nor a elephant--can't be a elephant, you know, because they
+haven't got these Berlin-wool-looking sides; no, nor it ain't no trunk
+neither.  Let's call it a hippopotamus, and see how he'll tie his pretty
+little tongue in a knot, bless him! a-trying to say it when he wakes.
+You'll tell him Uncle Matt brought 'em, won't you, miss?" he said,
+holding them behind his back.
+
+Lucy nodded, while Matt blew out and arranged the cotton-wool steam as
+carefully as if it was a matter of the greatest importance, or a jewel
+for a queen; and who shall say that the old printer's task was not of as
+great importance, and that the pleasure of the child is not of equal
+value with that of the greatest potentate that ever ruled; while as to
+the amount of enjoyment derived, there can be no doubt.
+
+"And what time is the work to go home, miss?" said Matt, after
+contriving with great difficulty to make the wild quadruped use his four
+supports in the way intended by his manufacturer--the beast's idea being
+that its nose was the proper front rest for its body, and that by rights
+it was a tripod.
+
+"I'm afraid I shall not be ready before eight," said Lucy, bending to
+her task.
+
+"I'll be here to the moment, brushed up and smart," said the old man.
+"Why, how proud you ought to be of having such a bodyguard, Miss Lucy!"
+
+The girl looked up and smiled, half sadly, at the old man as she held
+out her hand, which he took in his own for a moment, kissed
+respectfully, and then he shuffled from the room.
+
+Ten minutes after, old Matt's step was again heard upon the stairs, and
+he directly after appeared with a pot of porter in one hand, and
+something tied up in a cotton handkerchief in the other; while, as he
+entered, he glanced stealthily from face to face to see what effect his
+proceedings would have before he spoke.
+
+"You see, Mr Hardon, sir, it's a busy morning with me, and as I'm so
+far from my lodging--what a fib!" he thought to himself--"I thought I'd
+ask the favour of being allowed to have a bite here."
+
+Of course there was no objection raised, and the old man's roast
+potatoes were soon warming, while Lucy left her work to frizzle the
+large portion of prime steak over the fire.
+
+"No, no, miss; none of that," said Matt, taking the fork out of Lucy's
+hand; "I've cooked hundreds of bits of steak, miss, and I'm too
+particular to trust you; and, besides, you'll be keeping me waiting
+to-night when it's time the work was taken home; and my time's the only
+valuable possession I'm worth."
+
+Here old Matt directed a very knowing wink at Septimus Hardon; but he
+was deep in thought, with his head resting upon his hand.  However, Lucy
+understood the old man's quaint kindness, and resumed her work; but
+there was a tear twinkling in her eye.
+
+"Lord, Miss Lucy," said Matt, turning the steak upon the gridiron, and
+distributing a most appetising odour through the room, where more than
+once of late hunger had sat gaunt and staring,--"Lord, Miss Lucy, how I
+should like to see you with one of those new machines; stitch away they
+do, and the work comes running out by the yard."
+
+Lucy sighed, and pressed a sore finger to her rosy lips.
+
+"'Spose I may put the cloth on, miss, mayn't I?" said Matt, who was
+quite at home in the place.
+
+Lucy nodded; and the old man soon had the cloth spread, and the steak
+done; when, pulling a long face, he groaned heavily.
+
+"There!" he exclaimed, "that's always the way.  Who'd be troubled with a
+complaint?  Thought I could just pick a bit; but now it's all nice and
+ready, and as prime as can be, I'm done.  Such a steak as that is, too,
+juicy and done to a twist, and the very best cut out of the whole beast.
+But there, don't let it be spoiled, miss, please;" and before anyone
+could stay him the old man was shuffling down the stairs, chuckling to
+himself as he made his way into the court, while Septimus, stung to the
+heart by his poverty, and overcome by the old man's kindness, left his
+chair, and began to pace the room wringing his hands.
+
+"O, that it should have come to this!  O, that it should have come to
+this!" he groaned; but the next moment Mrs Septimus had forgotten her
+own trouble, and was weeping upon his breast, while Lucy had work enough
+to pacify the frightened child.
+
+"Don't, don't, darling," whispered Mrs Septimus in a supplicating
+voice.  "I know it is all my fault, and I'm thinking of it constantly;
+but don't let me think that you reproach me, or it will kill me
+outright."
+
+There was such agony of spirit in Mrs Hardon's words that Septimus
+forgot his own wounded pride and misery by turn, in busily trying to
+soothe the poor invalid, who gladly took her seat at the table, while
+Septimus, with a smile upon his countenance, kept on vowing how hopeful
+he would be, as, casting pride to the winds, he distributed old Matt's
+much-needed steak, not hesitating to partake himself of the old man's
+bounty.
+
+A gleam of hopeful sunshine seemed to have darted into the room that
+afternoon as Septimus sat busily writing, and the sharp click of needle
+upon thimble could be heard from the back-room, where Mrs Septimus was
+busy helping Lucy, so that the work might be finished in time, though
+every now and then it fell to someone's lot to amuse the little boy,
+who, a very spoiled tyrant, seemed bent upon being as capricious and
+unreasonable as children can be at times.  But ever and again the
+wrinkles would deepen upon Septimus Hardon's forehead, and he would lay
+down his pen, in dread lest he should include some of his busy thoughts
+in his copying.  What should he do to better his condition?  Time back
+it had seemed so easy a task, that of keeping his wife and children;
+but, put to the proof, how difficult.  Some that he saw were almost
+without trouble; wealth poured in upon them in return for their bright
+thoughts.  And why should not he be rich when schemes in plenty came
+flashing to his brain?  There were scores of fortunes to be made had he
+but capital--that golden key that should open the treasure-house; but he
+was poor--a beggar, as he told himself again and again, when, to drive
+away the thoughts, he stooped over his copying, but only to lay it aside
+once more and sigh.
+
+Old Matt came again that evening, vowing that he was much better, for he
+had been trying a favourite remedy of his--abstinence.  "A first-rate
+thing, sir, for indigestion," said Matt; "rather lowering, certainly,
+but surprisingly efficacious as a medicine, while it costs nothing, and
+saves at the same time.  A good walk helps, too, but then that requires
+what the shoe-shops call a pair of `stout walking,' and my old feet want
+an easy style of boot.  I wouldn't use a new boot on any consideration,"
+said Matt, stretching out a dilapidated and crushed Wellington, polished
+to the highest pitch of lustre by a scarlet-coated brigadier.  "I study
+comfort, sir; ease before appearances."
+
+Lucy was soon ready, and then, with a couple of inches added to his
+stature, the old man proudly escorted her through court, lane, and
+street, to the warehouse; and then patiently waited till her business
+was transacted.  Many a glance was directed at the strangely-assorted
+couple, but he would have been a bold man who would have insulted the
+poor girl, who leaned so trustingly upon the old printer's arm till they
+reached the court, where he allowed her to go first, stopping and
+scratching his cheek viciously as he saw Lucy tremblingly hold out her
+hand to a woman who hurriedly passed from the house opposite that
+occupied by Septimus.  They seemed to have met before; but old Matt
+looked vexed and undecided.  Once he closed up, but a glance from Lucy
+sent him back, when he passed the rest of his time in returning with
+interest the bold, inquisitive stare of Mr William Jarker, who stood
+with a couple of friends in the entrance of the court, watching Lucy and
+the stranger with some degree of interest, till Mr Jarker caught Matt's
+eye, when he turned to his companions, said something, and they walked
+off together, Matt's quick ear catching the words, "9:30," and a click
+or two as if one of the men carried tools in the pocket of his
+shooting-jacket.
+
+Directly after, the stranger passed old Matt with a quiet appealing
+look, to which he replied with a nod of a very undecided description,
+half civil, half angry; and then, still scratching his silver-stubbled
+cheek, he wished Lucy good-night, shaking his head the while, to which
+she replied, "Please don't be angry," in a way that brought a smile into
+the old man's countenance; a sunny smile that began at one corner of his
+month, and then spread through stubbly whisker, and over wrinkle, till
+it was all over his face, clearing away the shadow that had lain there;
+but as old Matt turned away, his head began to shake, and the shadow
+that had been lurking in the farther whisker crept back again, slowly
+and surely, as night crept down over Bennett's-rents to hide the sordid
+misery that chose the court for its home.
+
+"What's `9:30'?" said Matt to himself, as passing out of the court his
+thoughts took a fresh direction.  "Nice-looking party that.  'Spose I
+button up my coat over my gold repeater.  They were thinking about
+what's o'clock, they were, hang 'em."
+
+Old Matt Space suited the action to the word, bursting off a button in
+the operation, and then carefully picking it up and saving it, as he
+strode off muttering.
+
+"`Nine-thirty'?  What's their little game?"
+
+Volume One, Chapter XII.
+
+FRIENDS FROM TOWN.
+
+"For God's sake, Octy," gurgled Doctor Hardon almost inaudibly, so
+tightly were the fingers clutching his throat,--"don't! don't!  I was
+only looking."
+
+"Turn on the glim, Joe," croaked a harsh voice; when a bright light
+flashed in a broad, well-defined, ever-widening path right across the
+room, leaving the untouched portion in a darkness of the blackest; but
+the light shone where the doctor could see his brother upon the floor,
+with a rough fellow kneeling beside him, while a coarse, big-jawed
+ruffian, the upper portion of whose face was covered with crape, held on
+tightly by the doctor's throat with fingers whose bony force he had at
+first taken for his brother's.  It was evident that another man was
+present holding the lantern; but from the position of the light he was
+in the shadow, and so invisible.
+
+"Light that there lamp again," croaked the same voice; and at the same
+time the doctor felt himself dragged at until he rose to his feet, when
+he was backed into a chair, one hand being loosened from his throat.
+Directly after a heavy blow fell upon his head, causing the light to
+dance and sparkle before his eyes.
+
+"There," growled the voice; "that's jest a reminder, that is.  That
+didn't hurt, that didn't; but it's jest to show what we could do if yer
+get to be troublesome.  Now, then," growled the ruffian to his
+companion, who was stooping over the fire, "light that lamp, d'yer hear?
+You're gallus sharp, you are."
+
+"Who's to light the butcherly thing when hain't got no ile in?" growled
+the ruffian addressed.
+
+"I wish you'd got a little more ile in you," croaked the first speaker
+in a voice that seemed to ascend through a tubular rasp.  "Hang on here,
+will yer, and give us holt."
+
+The doctor felt himself delivered over into another pair of hands, the
+change not being for the better; for the new gaoler seemed to be
+experimentalising, and trying to find out the best place for holding on
+by when doing a little modern Thuggee, consequently the doctor's was not
+a pleasant situation.
+
+Directly after, a little oil was spilt upon the fire, causing it to
+blaze up and illumine the room, displaying to the doctor's starting eyes
+the three costermonger-like figures of the men in the room; when, seeing
+his quiescence, the one acting as gaoler called attention to a couple of
+candles in old bronze-holders upon the chimney-piece, and, loosing his
+hold of his prisoner, leaned forward to reach them down.
+
+It was a tempting moment for the doctor, and, without pausing to think
+of its uselessness, he seized the bell-rope within his reach, and
+dragged at it heavily.  But the next instant he had fallen back in his
+chair from a well-planted blow between the eyes, and then, half-stunned,
+he listened to the faint tones of the bell as the men produced what
+seemed to be so much clothes-line from a small carpet-bag, with which
+they dexterously and firmly bound him to his chair.
+
+"You improves, you do," growled the first ruffian to the man lighting
+the candles.  "Been all the same if that there jangler had alarmed the
+whole blessed country."
+
+"How was I to know as he'd jump up like so much watchworks?" said the
+other, placing the lighted candles, whose tops were encrusted with ash
+from the fire, upon the table.
+
+"Know! not you; but you knows how to claim yer share of the swag."
+
+Then the poor old man upon the floor, whose wild, staring eyes seemed to
+betoken some violent seizure, was lifted into a chair opposite his
+brother, and bound after the same fashion, when the spokesman of the
+party shook the heavy leaden knob of that misnamed article a
+life-preserver in the doctor's face, saying: "Don't you try no more
+games, my kiddy, or else"--a playful tap illustrated his meaning.
+"She's safe in bed, and tied up so as she won't answer no ringing nohow.
+She's tucked up all right, she is; d'yer hear?"
+
+The preserver-handle was very elastic, and the knob tapped playfully
+upon the doctor's forehead as the ruffian spoke; but the bound man was
+too confused to answer, and though what followed seemed to him like a
+wild dream, yet his heart leaped once as he saw the fellow snatch the
+will from the floor, where it had fallen, tear open the seal, and hold
+the paper to the light.
+
+"What's in it, Bill?" growled another of the gentry.
+
+"Gallussed if I know," said the other; "but 'tain't no good;" and the
+doctor saw it crushed together and thrown upon the fire, where it blazed
+up and was soon consumed.  But confused as the doctor was, the next
+proceedings of the ruffians produced groan after groan from his breast,
+as they attacked his vanity, and metaphorically rolled him in the dust;
+for removing a fur cap that he wore, so as to cool his brain perhaps,
+and displaying thereby a very closely-cropped bullet-head, the leader of
+the gang, as he seemed to be, first snapped the doctor's gold-chain, and
+set it and watch at liberty; for the doctor's bonds would have impeded
+their being taken off in the normal fashion.  Then followed, one after
+the other, to be placed in a small carpet-bag with the watch and chain,
+the spectacle-case and gold eyeglass; the handsomely-chased gold
+snuff-box from one pocket, gold toothpick from another.  The set of
+studs were dragged from the cambric front; a massively-set diamond ring
+from the doctor's right hand, and a signet from his left; while as the
+various ornaments were passed from one to the other, and deposited in
+the bag, a broad grin followed each groan from the doctor.
+
+"Where's his puss, Bill?" said Number 8 ruffian, who was the Judas
+Iscariot of the party, and carried the bag.
+
+"Here it is," growled Bill, whose hands were wonderfully active for so
+heavy, burly-looking a man, diving in and out of pocket after pocket,
+and now drawing forth a very handsome, elaborately-gilt, russia-leather
+portemonnaie--half purse, half pocket-book--and grinning as he opened
+it, he drew out and laid upon the table, first a railway insurance
+ticket, next a lancet, then a crooked sixpence, and lastly a
+threepenny-piece.
+
+"Here, lay holt o' this 'ere, and slit it up," said Number 2 ruffian,
+handing his companion an open clasp-knife.
+
+The gentleman called Bill took the knife and ripped the purse all to
+pieces, tearing leather from lining everywhere; but no notes fell out,
+no secret pocket was disclosed; and throwing the remains of the purse
+upon the fire with an aspect of the most profound disgust upon his face,
+the fellow exclaimed, "I'm gallussed!"
+
+"Let's wet it, Bill, afore we goes any further," said Number 8, and as
+he crossed silently to the sideboard, and brought out the port and
+another decanter, the doctor saw that the men were without boots, which
+accounted to him for their sudden attack.
+
+The wine and glasses were placed upon the table, and the burglars very
+coolly proceeded to refresh themselves--one seating himself upon the
+table, another upon a chair, and the last taking his place upon the
+coal-scuttle--treating it as if it were a saddle.
+
+"Here's towards yer, old un!" growled the big-jawed gentleman called
+Bill, tossing, or rather pouring, a glass of wine down his bull throat
+as he looked at the doctor--his companions paying the same compliment to
+Octavius, who, however, seemed to be perfectly insensible.
+
+All at once a faint scream was heard from another part of the house,
+when one of the men rose.
+
+"She thinks as we're gone, Bill," said ruffian Number 2, with a grin.
+"Just go and show her that mug of yours, and she'll soon shut them
+pipes."
+
+Bill of the big jaw rose, displaying his teeth so that the lips seemed
+to assimilate with the gums; and he, apparently taking his comrade's
+remark for a compliment, walked out on the points of his toes, in a
+peculiar fashion of his own; when, winking to his companion, Number 2
+stole softly to the sideboard, looked about a bit, and then seizing a
+small silver salver, doubled it by main force, and slipped it into the
+pocket of his velveteen coat.  He then darted back to his place,
+whispered "halves" to his companion, and began helping himself to more
+wine, just as Bill hurried in again, glancing suspiciously about him
+with his peculiarly restless, chameleon-like eyes, which seemed to be on
+the watch for plunder, trickery, and Nemesis, at one and the same time,
+and now it was evident that he suspected a march to have been stolen
+upon him.
+
+However, a few more glasses of wine were drunk, and then the men
+proceeded to methodically ransack the place, finding a tolerable booty
+of old-fashioned plate in the sideboard; while from the bureau, another
+gold watch, with its old-fashioned broad chain and seals; a ring or two,
+some quaint jewellery, and a few sovereigns and small change were
+obtained.
+
+The cords which bound the brothers were then carefully examined, and a
+knot or two tightened, so that the doctor winced; then the candles were
+extinguished, and the big-jawed man growled in the doctor's ear, "Now,
+jest you move, that's all; and I'm gallussed--"
+
+The fellow did not finish his speech verbally, but again illustrated his
+meaning with a tap of the life-preserver.
+
+"We ain't a-goin' yet," growled Number 8; "so don't you think it.  I
+_have_ used this 'ere, and I ain't used it," he said, showing his
+clasp-knife; "but it's a sharp un--so I tell you; and where it does go,
+it goes--so look out."
+
+"This one's been a-drinkin'; smell his breath," said Number 2, nodding
+at old Octavius, as he cast the light from the lantern upon his wild
+face.
+
+Just then the doctor gave a loud groan, for his cords hurt him.
+
+"Shove a bit in his mouth, Bill, or he'll begin to pipe, p'r'aps,"
+growled Number 8.
+
+"He'd best not," said Bill savagely; "but how-so-be he shall have it;
+there's some knives in that there drawer."
+
+Doctor Hardon's eyes rolled in their sockets as he saw one of the men go
+to the sideboard drawer and bring out a large table-knife.  Then the
+head of the party took it from his companion's hand and held the blade
+between the bars, where the fire yet glowed, when the effect in a few
+minutes was to loosen the handle, for the resin melted, and the blade
+slipped out.  The man then took the handle, untied and slipped off the
+doctor's white cravat, and then turning his back, rolled the knife-haft
+tightly in its folds; while, wondering what was to follow, the
+horror-stricken captive began to groan dismally.
+
+"Now for it," cried Bill sharply, seizing the bound and helpless man by
+the throat, when, fancying that his last hour had come, the doctor
+opened his mouth to cry out, when the knife-handle was thrust between
+his teeth, and the cravat tightly tied behind his head, keeping the gag
+securely in its place, and thoroughly robbing him of the power of even
+crying out.
+
+"Now t'other," said Bill.  "Get another knife out."
+
+"Ah! he's all right," said Number 2.  "I'd leave him."
+
+"P'r'aps you would," said Bill; "but we two don't want to be blowed on,
+if you do."
+
+"But he's a-most dead now," said Number 2; "and if you stop his mouth
+that way, I'm blessed if I don't think he will be quite afore morning."
+
+"And what then?" said Bill contemptuously; "what if he is?  What's the
+good of an old cove like him?  Yah!"
+
+However, that part of the ceremony was left undone.  The doctor heard
+the door close, open again, for the key to be dragged out of the lock
+and replaced in the other side; when once more the door was closed and
+double-locked.  Then followed the sound as of a whispered dispute, and
+again silence, till it was broken by a faint scream from upstairs;
+while, with every nerve on the stretch, the doctor listened for the next
+movement, as, still somewhat confused in mind, he kept fancying that the
+stertorous breathing of his brother was that of one of the ruffians on
+guard at the door.
+
+An hour must have passed, during which time the doctor still fancied
+there was a man on guard, and dared not move, though at that time the
+three visitors were coolly taking their tickets of a sleepy porter, the
+only one of the railway company's servants in charge of the station, and
+soon after they were being whirled up by the night mail which called at
+Somesham for the letter-bags at two o'clock.  But at last, as the
+doctor's mind became clearer, he made out that the breathing must be
+that of his brother; and rousing himself, he tried to free his hands.
+The cord only cut deeply into his plump flesh, though, and a sharp pain
+was the sole result, though he could tell that his arms and legs were
+swelling, and that the circulation was almost stopped.  He tried to get
+rid of the gag in his mouth, but only made it press the harder upon his
+false teeth, so that the gold setting seemed almost to crush his gums.
+Then he waited awhile, to gain strength, and as his head grew clearer,
+he recalled how that the will had been destroyed, and thought of how,
+had he known what was to happen, he would have opened and read it.  If
+now Octavius would neglect to make another!  He was old and helpless,
+and no doubt getting to be imbecile--at least, in his doctorial eyes;
+and if he would but neglect to make another!  Then he remembered how the
+villains had denuded his person, and he writhed with fury so that his
+chair cracked.
+
+Back to the thoughts of the will and of Septimus Hardon; and for a time
+so deep was his musing, that the doctor almost forgot his own position
+till the pain recalled him, and he found he was fast growing numb and
+cold.
+
+All at once a terrible shudder ran through his frame, for a rustling and
+squeaking behind the oak wainscot startled him.
+
+"Rats!" he thought to himself; and he recalled how the house was said to
+swarm with them, and how that they had once attacked a child in bed.
+Started upon that train of thought, there were plenty of anecdotes to
+startle him with the reputed courage of the fierce little animals when
+hunger-driven.
+
+Another hour passed in the darkness, as regularly and slow came the
+stertorous breathing of Octavius, interrupted at times by the fierce
+scratching of the rats behind the wainscot, or their scampering beneath
+the floor in their many galleries; and again and again the doctor
+shivered with fear, as he sat listening and longing for help.
+
+But no help came--neither was it likely to come, since the lonely house
+might have been passed again and again without there being a suspicion
+excited of anything being wrong.  Besides, late in the night it was a
+great chance if a soul passed.  He knew, from his professional habits,
+that no surprise would be felt at home because of his absence, and he
+had not said where he was going.
+
+Another hour passed, and the doctor sat listening eagerly for his
+brother's breath, which, from being loud and stertorous, had now become
+so faint as to be hardly perceptible; indeed at times it appeared to
+have ceased, and in his then excited condition he began to dread that
+the overdose of laudanum, or the shock, had been too much for the old
+man, and that he was to pass the remainder of the night with a corpse.
+He dreaded the corpse horribly, but did he dread that such was the
+case--that his brother was dead?  He was old and useless certainly, but
+he was rich, and his will was destroyed; and were there no Septimus, or
+could he be put aside, that property would come to him.  But was his
+brother dead?  Death was nothing new to him; he had stood by hundreds of
+deathbeds; but under these circumstances, bound down there, with nerves
+unstrung, numbed, cold, and in agony, Doctor Hardon had at times a
+difficult matter to contain himself, and he trembled fearfully with a
+new horror lest he should lose control over himself.
+
+He listened, and the breathings had ceased; the only sounds he could
+hear were the horrible gnawings of the vermin.  At last, though, he
+heard a breath; but he shuddered again, for his excited fancy told him
+that it was the harsh, rattling expiration that he had often heard--that
+last effort of the lungs ere stilled for ever.
+
+The tearing and scratching of the vermin now grew louder, and the doctor
+asked himself why? as, beside himself with horror, he sat listening.
+His temples throbbed, the cold sweat stood upon his face, and he
+struggled again and again to free himself, but only to tighten the
+well-tied knots.  At times he could hardly breathe, while at last a
+thrill ran through him--a thrill of indescribable terror--such a shock
+as would have made him yell, had he been able; for quickly, and with a
+sharp scratching, he felt something run up one of his bound legs, across
+his lap, and then he heard the soft "pat" as a rat leaped upon the
+carpet.
+
+Doctor Hardon could bear no more; horrible, stifled groans burst from
+his breast, as, mad with dread, he leaped and bounded spasmodically in
+his seat, making the cords cut deeply into his flesh till, in one of his
+agonised convulsions, the chair went over backwards with a crash; when,
+stunned and helpless, the wretched man lay in a wild dream of horror,
+from which he only awoke to relapse again and again.
+
+Volume One, Chapter XIII.
+
+AT THE COUNTY ARMS.
+
+The people of Somesham, whom Doctor Hardon regulated as to their
+internal economy, were of opinion that there was not such another town
+as theirs in the whole kingdom; and no doubt they were right.  It was
+situated at the foot of a range of chalky wolds, and in dry weather
+always gave the visitors an idea that its inhabitants were a slovenly
+race, and had not dusted their town lately.  There was a long, white,
+dusty road that led to it on one side, and a long, dusty road that led
+to or from it on the other side; there was one long, dusty street, with
+shops and private houses mixed up anyhow; there were a few dusty cross
+streets which led nowhere; a market-place where pigs squealed and butter
+was sold on Tuesdays; a town-hall, combined with a corn-exchange and an
+assembly-room, forming an ugly dust-coloured building, which was like
+the memoranda and papers in people's pocket-books when they are
+advertised as lost--of no value to anyone but the owners; and the
+sole use it would have been to them was to sell it for old
+building-materials.  There were public-houses, and, above all, a
+commercial inn, kept by one Mrs Lower, a stout, elderly lady, who had
+formerly occupied the post of nurse in Octavius Hardon's house until
+such times as a nurse was no longer required, when she did needlework,
+and helped in the domestic concerns till her mistress died, and then
+acted as housekeeper up to the advent of Agnes Hardon, when one John
+Lower, keeper of the County Arms in Somesham market-place, persuaded her
+to say "Yes" to the question he had so many times asked her, and she
+became landlady of the goodly inn; nurse again to the failing old man
+her husband; and lastly, sole owner of the goods, chattels, and
+tenements of the said John Lower, who went to his long sleep with a
+blessing upon his lips for the good woman who had smoothed the last
+hours of his life.
+
+Mrs Lower made a very comfortable widow--one whose hostelry was much
+frequented by commercial gentlemen, and those given to running down from
+town once or twice a week for the purpose of having a turn with the Low
+Wold hounds; stout, as a matter of course, for no woman could be
+expected to make a good landlady who was angular or pointed in her
+person.  Mrs Lower was stout, but not uncomfortably so, and this
+stoutness she kept in its proper proportion by a comfortable diet, and
+by being a woman without one of those unpleasant parasites known as
+cares.  Doubtless she had plenty of the little troubles of life to
+encounter--those little three-cornered affairs that bother everyone--
+matters that to some people would be cares; but in her case, being a
+mild, cheerful, and amiable woman, they made but little impression, the
+consequence being that these acidities of life never ate into her
+countenance, running down it in wrinkles, and puckers, and channels; and
+at an age one never dare mention in her presence, or out of it either,
+for fear of not being believed, she was plump of face, rosy, and
+comfortable-looking, to an extent that made more than one well-to-do
+farmer, and tradesman too, make her an offer that she would not accept.
+
+Mrs Lower sat very comfortably enjoying her breakfast in the bar of the
+County Arms, which bar was a pleasant-looking glass bower, with a view
+one way of the sawdusty passage leading out into the market-place, and
+in the other direction a prospect of divers pendent articles of
+consumption--to wit, a turkey, joints of mutton and beef, poultry, and a
+couple of long-tailed pheasants.  There was a cozy air about Mrs
+Lower's bar, for everything in it looked snug, from the big-stomached
+bottles to the great tom-cat blinking on the hearth-rug.  No fireplace
+ever shone to such an extent as Mrs Lower's, for it was a very race
+between black-lead and flame which should glow most, the result being a
+warm combination, in which the fender, copper tea-kettle, and fire-irons
+joined, and which every bottle, glass, and object with shine in its
+composition laughed over and reflected.  Everything in Mrs Lower's cozy
+bar seemed in keeping, and as if belonging to it--beginning with the
+principal object animate, Mrs Lower herself, and descending through the
+blind, fat spaniel and the black, blinking tom-cat, to the stout
+bullfinch in the cage hung in the window--a finch so fat that he very
+seldom hopped, while there was a general aspect about him that his
+feather jacket was too tight, for it never seemed smooth.  There was a
+tradition that this bullfinch used to pipe "God save the King;" but that
+when William the Fourth died, he went into mourning for him, and had
+never opened his beak to honour the successor.  True or not, Mrs Lower
+believed it; and at all events, if people doubted the bird's age, she
+could declare the part of the story to be true which related to its
+never opening its beak to pipe the anthem in its altered form.
+
+Mrs Lower mostly had "a snack," as she termed it, for her breakfast;
+such snack being generally something very savoury and appetising, and
+frequently taking the form of mushrooms, devilled drumsticks, or
+kidneys; while Hides, the butcher in the market-place, had been known to
+tell fibs, his wife said, on Mrs Lower's account, and to deny that he
+had any sweetbreads when even aristocratic customers had wanted them, so
+that Mrs Lower might not be disappointed.  But then Mrs Lower was no
+mean customer; and Hides said, with a wink to his wife, her money was
+always there when he wanted it, and that was more than some people's was
+who held their heads very high.  Mrs Hardon had been heard to say that
+she believed Hides' calves never had any sweetbreads--a remark conveyed,
+per the cook, to Hides himself, at a time when that gentleman evinced
+very little pleasure in supplying the Hardon house, and always made a
+point of sending in dry beef and mean tough mutton.
+
+But Mrs Lower could always have sweetbreads, and she was enjoying one
+cooked to perfection, sipping too, from time to time, a fine rich cup of
+tea, with an odour of a great-many-spoons-to-the-pot power, when
+Charles, head--and foot--waiter, made his appearance at the bar-door,
+with his head on one side, and a sharp cocksparrow-look about him, from
+his beaky nose, prominent chest, and thin legs,--his tail-coat aiding
+the simile.
+
+"Heard the news, mem?" said Charles, raising the napkin he carried over
+his arm, and nearly wiping his nose upon it by mistake.
+
+"No, Charles," said Mrs Lower, peeping into the pot by raising the lid.
+
+"The whole town, mem, 's in a--"
+
+"Take that pot out, Charles, and put in one cupful,--not more, the
+tea-kettle's low, and the water's all furry."
+
+"Yes, mem; town's in a fermin, mem, and--"
+
+"One cupful mind, Charles," said Mrs Lower, interrupting him.
+
+"Fermin, mem," continued Charles, "and--"
+
+"Bless the man, go and fill the pot!" exclaimed Mrs Lower.  "No--no!
+not fill it--one cup, Charles;" and the waiter disappeared.
+
+"And now what's the matter?" said Mrs Lower blandly, as, somewhat
+ruffled and reticent, Charles brought back the pot, having forgotten
+that the most important matter to Mrs Lower at meal-time was the meal
+itself.
+
+"Matter, mem--why, everything's the matter--burglary and robbery, and
+murder almost; and all sorts, mem," said Charles, again making a dash at
+his napkin, but recollecting himself in time in favour of a red-silk
+handkerchief.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Mrs Lower, thoroughly enjoying a piece of the very
+brownest sweetbread outside, rich in glorious osmazome; "nonsense,
+Charles!" and so far from being startled, she cut two or three
+dice-shaped pieces of bread, soaked them in the rich gravy, and went on
+enjoying her breakfast.
+
+"Fact, mem, I assure you," said Charles.  "That's what Keenings sent for
+our fly for, mem."
+
+"What for? the burglars or the murderers, Charles?" said Mrs Lower
+composedly.
+
+"No, mem; neither, mem; but ordered it at eight, mem, to go to the
+Grange, to fetch the doctor, mem."
+
+"What, Mr Brande?" said Mrs Lower, taking a little more interest in
+the matter.
+
+"No, mem; old Hardon, mem," said Charles.
+
+"But he never goes to the Grange, Charles; it's all a mistake."
+
+"No, mem, not a bit," exclaimed Charles.  "Jem's in the yard now, mem,
+just come back from Hardon's, and he helped the doctor in and out, too;
+and Mrs Hardon coming flying down in her dressing-gownd as soon as they
+got him down home, and a-going on dreadful, and saying it was all a
+judgment for not forgiving Miss Hagniss; and the doctor taking three men
+to carry him, being heavy and cold, and almost dead; and Mr Brande's
+with him, mem, they say now."  Charles paused for breath.
+
+"But what was it all? what does it mean?" cried Mrs Lower, stirring her
+tea with her knife.
+
+"Why, mem, that's what I'm a-telling you: it's a burglary, you know,"
+said Charles excitedly.  "The Grange attacked by robbers, and the doctor
+tied in a chair with the clothes-line, and laid down on his back, as Mr
+Keening and Doctor Brande found him, with a knife stuck in his throat."
+
+"But not dead?" exclaimed Mrs Lower.
+
+"O, no, mem, only stuck so as he couldn't speak."
+
+"And where was Squire Octy?" cried Mrs Lower, quite forgetting the
+remains of her sweetbread.
+
+"Why, didn't I tell you, mem?  Tied down in another chair, and Mrs
+Berry, the housekeeper, tied down in her bed, with a blanket over her
+head, and she got loose at six o'clock this morning, and came over and
+alarmed the town.  Says she'll never go back any more.  Gang of ten
+ruffians with black faces, and the police are on their tract."
+
+"But about Squire Octy, Charles.  How's he?"
+
+"Not hurt a mossle, mem, so they says.  Jem says that he heard as Mr
+Keening cut the rope when he went in, and the old gentleman got up and
+shook hisself, and then took a spoonful of loddlum, and he was all right
+again directly, and stood laughing at his brother, the doctor, mem, who
+was strange and bad."
+
+"And no one knew anything about it?" said Mrs Lower.
+
+"Not a word, mem," cried Charles, "and it's a mercy as we weren't all
+murdered, I'm sure.  And Jem says he saw old Squire Octy laugh when they
+lifted the doctor into the fly, while he'd got no chain, nor studs, nor
+rings, as you know he wears a lot of them things, mem."
+
+Mrs Lower nodded.
+
+"And I hear as all the plate's gone; and they've had the wine, and I
+don't know what, mem; but what caps all, mem, was for the squire, old
+Mr Octy, mem, to be quite laughing like, and Jem says he looks more
+like an old ghost than anything, mem, with a black-velvet cap and a
+dressin-gownd."
+
+A ringing bell summoned Charles away, and, quite forgetful of the
+remainder of her breakfast, Mrs Lower sat thinking of her old master in
+his present character of the facsimile of a ghost in a black-velvet cap
+and a dressing-gown, thinking of the changes in the family, wondering,
+too, what had become of the doctor's daughter, Agnes; but above all, of
+the shabby-looking elderly man whom she always spoke of as "Master Sep."
+
+Volume One, Chapter XIV.
+
+MATT MAKES A DISCOVERY.
+
+People about Lincoln's-inn began in these days to turn their heads and
+look after the shabbily-dressed old printer, who passed them to stop
+every now and then at a lamp-post, and then go on again, shaking his
+head like an anglicised mandarin, for old Matt was sorely troubled about
+the state of affairs in Bennett's-rents.  At times he would be for
+making a confidant of Mr Sterne, and asking his advice and guidance,
+but somehow there always seemed a certain amount of suspicion on either
+side, and Matt and the curate maintained a gap between them which
+neither attempted to cross.  But the old man was after all not unhappy,
+for he was enjoying that supreme pleasure which fills the heart, making
+it swell almost painfully--that pleasure which never satiates, while it
+is like the seed of the parable cast into the ground, some may be
+blighted, some trampled down, but there are always certain grains which
+flourish and give to the sower a hundredfold of grain in return.  Old
+Matt was enjoying the pleasure of doing good and helping a fellow-man in
+distress.  It may be questioned whether the old man's path was ever
+easier or more brightly irradiated than during his connection with the
+Hardons.  True, his income was of the very smallest; but then it is not
+the extent of a man's income that gives him pleasure in this life, but
+the secret of having all the possible enjoyment out of it.  Some with
+wealth seek for this enjoyment after a wrong fashion, and find only
+bitterness, while in the homes of poverty joy often finds an
+abiding-place.
+
+Septimus Hardon often wondered afterwards how they had managed to live
+in this time of trouble; but one way and another the days passed by.
+Now he would make a few shillings by his copying, then there was Lucy's
+work, while, in spite of remonstrances, old Matt persisted in enjoying
+his income after his own fashion, playing his little miserable farces to
+his own satisfaction, and then grinning to himself over the little bits
+of deceit.  He never stopped, shrewd as he was, to ask himself whether
+his subterfuges were not of the most transparent; they gained him his
+end, and he considered that it was a novel and a neat way of managing
+the matter, when a hint at lending money would have given offence.
+
+One day succeeded another, with the family struggling on, Mrs Septimus
+helping Lucy when she could, while, as for Septimus, the most
+satisfactory work he obtained was that of copying sermons out for Mr
+Sterne; though, strange as it may seem, that gentleman never once used
+Septimus Hardon's clear, unblurred transcript, but put it away week
+after week, sighing that his income was not greater.
+
+Septimus had now given up all hope of hearing from his father, and,
+resigned somewhat to his fate, he bent over his writing-table trying to
+make up by perseverance what he wanted in ability--a capital plan, and
+one that has succeeded where talent has made a miserable failure, as old
+Aesop knew hundreds of years ago.  As for asking his uncle for aid, such
+a thought never crossed Septimus Hardon's mind, and perhaps it was well,
+for it spared the poor sensitive man the unpleasantry of a refusal.
+
+One day, all in a hurry and bustle, up came old Matt, just at
+dinner-time, to find Mrs Septimus making a sorry failure in her attempt
+to find an invalid's dinner in some bread and a long slice of cheese
+that a laundress would easily have seized by mistake, under the
+impression that it was "best yellow soap."
+
+"There, just like me!" exclaimed the old man, with a hasty glance round
+the room; "just like me; but you won't mind, I know.  I always drop in
+at mealtimes.--There, give us a kiss, my man.  God bless you!  `What I
+dot for 'oo?'  There's a pretty way to talk!  Why, let's see; I think
+there's something here--down in here somewhere;" and the old man began
+to dive behind into one of his pockets.  "To be sure, here it is!" he
+cried; "and if all the rich jam isn't coming through the paper!  Here we
+are," he cried, bringing out of a little bag a small oval paste-dish
+with a crimped edge, full of a very luscious treacly-looking preserve,
+one that, ten minutes before, had been danced over by the flies in the
+pastrycook's shop in the Lane.
+
+Off went little Tom rejoicing, to prepare himself for the after-dinner
+wash by gumming his chubby face and hands with the jam.
+
+"You won't mind, sir; and, ma'am, I hope?" said Matt apologetically.
+"But I'm full of work, and haven't time to go home--my lodgings you
+know; and if you wouldn't mind.  I'm as hungry as a hunter--
+money-hunter, you know; and there's as nice a bit of roast veal and
+bacon, piping hot, in the Lane as ever I did see, and that's saying a
+good deal.  Talk about the smell of it! there, you didn't look in at the
+shop-door or you'd never give a fellow such a cold-shouldery look,
+ma'am.  Whatever you do, ma'am, lend me a couple of plates; I won't
+intrude long."
+
+Mrs Septimus hesitated and glanced at her husband, who was making a
+feint of eating.
+
+"There," cried old Matt, making a grimace, and glancing at Lucy, "I knew
+it would come to this; they're growing proud, and I may go.  They might
+have put it off another day, and not showed it just when I feel so well
+and jolly, and could have enjoyed a bit of dinner, which ain't often
+with me."
+
+Septimus Hardon saw his wife's appealing glance, and peered about him in
+every direction, as if to avoid giving an answer; but on one side there
+was Tom, sticky and happy with the old man's bounty; before him was his
+invalid wife, with her wretched face; again, there was Lucy working, and
+relieving hunger by occasional mouthfuls of the bread-and-cheese at her
+side; while on turning his eyes in another direction, there stood Matt,
+just as he had stood on the day when he borrowed a shilling on their
+first encounter.
+
+What was he to do?  He had as much pride, or false pride, as most men,
+and he would gladly have been independent of old Matt's assistance; but
+there seemed no help for it, and once more in his life, humbled and
+mortified, he nodded to Mrs Septimus; and the next moment old Matt
+stood irresolutely by the table clattering a couple of plates together,
+to the great endangering of their safety, as he seemed to be turning
+them into a pair of earthenware cymbals.
+
+"There, sir; don't, now," said Matt earnestly; "don't let's have any
+more pretence or nonsense about it; don't be put out because I'm doing
+this, sir.  'Tain't that I don't respect you; I didn't get on the
+stilts, sir, when you helped me.  I asked you for it, which is a thing I
+know you couldn't do; but when it's offered you free and humble-like,
+don't take on, sir, and fancy I respect you any the less.  I sha'n't
+forget my place, sir, 'pon my soul I sha'n't, begging your pardon,
+ma'am, and Miss Lucy's; but you see I'm in earnest, and it worries me to
+see Mr Hardon here put out, because--because--Well, you know," said
+Matt, with a twinkle in his eye, "because an old battered type of
+humanity like me wants to sit down and have a bit of dinner here, and
+it's all getting spoilt; best cut's gone, you know, I'm sure.  I know I
+_am_ shabby."
+
+Septimus waved his hand deprecatingly.
+
+"There, sir; there," continued Matt; "don't be down; don't let the world
+see as there's no more fight in you.  See what a son and daughter you've
+got.  Why, God bless 'em, they're enough to make a man of a chap if he's
+ever so bad.  Never say die, sir.  I'm often in the downs, I am, you
+know; but then I say to the world, `Come on, and let's have it out at
+once and done with it.'  Let's take it like a dose of physic, and then
+have the sugar that's to come and take the taste out of one's mouth
+afterwards.  Sure to be a bit of sugar to come some time, you know, sir;
+some gets more than others, but then there's always a share for you if
+you won't be soft enough to get your mouth out of taste and fancy it's
+bitter when it comes, and so not enjoy it.  Lots do, you know, sir;
+while lots more, sir, think so much of their sugar of life, sir, that
+they spoil it, sir,--foul it, and damp it, and turn it into a muddy,
+sticky, dirty treacle, sir; and then, sir, loving nothing but
+pleasure,--or sugar, as we call it,--how they buzz about it like so many
+flies, till they are surfeited and get their legs and wings fixed, and
+die miserably, sir.  Sugar's no good, sir, unless you have a taste of
+bitter before it.  You don't want to be having all pleasure, you know;
+it wouldn't do.  Bound the wheel of fortune, you know, sir; now down,
+now up, just as times go."
+
+All these meant-to-be-philosophical remarks old Matt accompanied by a
+cymbalic tune upon the two plates, while Septimus sat moody and silent.
+
+"Now, you see, sir," said Matt gently, "I know what you feel,--you don't
+like having such a battered old hulk about your place, and feel a bit
+offended at me for imposing upon your good-nature."
+
+Septimus made a gesture of dissent.
+
+"Well then, sir, we won't play with the matter.  You don't like my
+having a bit of dinner here, and all that sort of thing; but don't you
+make no mistake, sir, I ain't kicked about in a selfish world all these
+years without ketching the complaint.  I was never vaccinated against
+selfishness, sir, so I've took it badly, I can tell you.  You may look
+out, sir, for I've a long score chalked up against you, and you'll have
+it some day."
+
+And then old Matt stuck his hat on very fiercely and shuffled out of the
+room, muttering and chuckling as he went down, "Ho, ho, ho!--creditor!
+New position for me as have been in debt all my life!"
+
+The old man soon returned after his fashion, bringing in a large portion
+of the veal and bacon from the cook-shop in the Lane; for the best cuts
+were not all gone.  Then followed the old farce of what he called his
+chronometric complaint, from its always coming on just at mealtimes; and
+helping himself to a slice of bread, in spite of all appeals, the old
+man took a sticky kiss from Tom and shuffled out of the room.
+
+It was a sight worth seeing--the satisfaction of that grim old man, as
+he went chuckling down the creaking stairs, and out into the court.  His
+was not the shape a painter would have chosen for the embodiment of
+gratitude; but there it was--even the battered, ill-used carcass of that
+old printer--a body misused by the hard world till he had grown careless
+of it himself, and misused it in his turn.  Alone in the world, what had
+he to care for beyond a little present enjoyment?  For as to the future,
+it is to be feared that Mr Sterne would have pronounced him as being
+beneath a dense black cloud.  Twice was the old man stopped by
+lamp-posts, but he recollected himself and continued his route to where
+the open door of the cook-shop sent out a thick, kitcheny vapour,
+pleasant or the reverse, according to whose organs it assailed--to the
+well-fed perhaps disgusting, but to the poor and hungry an odour as of
+paradise.  There upon the shining pewter dishes, that in the early morn
+had been such a dry metallic desert, were now displayed, in gravy-oozing
+majesty, what Matt looked upon as all the delicacies of the season.
+There were round of beef and brisket, boiled; roast leg, shoulder, and
+loin of mutton; roast beef, and the remains of the veal; while as to
+gravy--whence comes the gravy that meanders in streams over cook-shop
+joints, flooding the dishes, and making glad the hearts of the hungry?--
+there was gravy to an extent never known in private life, for the joints
+soaked in the tissue-renovating fluid.
+
+Ah! that fat cook-shop-keeper, as he wielded his long-bladed, keen
+carver, and equitably and glibly sliced it through fat and lean,
+well-done, under-done, and brown, with a facility that made one think he
+had been apprenticed to a ham in the palmy days of Vauxhall--dealing
+with the porcine joint with similar intentions to those of the
+gold-beater with his morsel of the yellow ore.  Ah! that fat, rosy-faced
+man in the white cap and jacket had much to answer for in the way of
+tempting hungry sinners.  Fat! he might well be fat, for was he not
+existing upon the very essences of the meats always beneath his
+nostrils, which must have inhaled sustaining wealth at every breath he
+drew, to the saving of both teeth and digestion?
+
+But he did not tempt old Matt, who entered and asked for a "small
+German," for which he paid twopence, asking no questions regarding its
+composition, while it was delivered to him after the fashion that buns
+are presented to our old ursine friends at the "Zoo"--stuck at the end
+of a fork.
+
+Old Matt turned his back stolidly upon the luxuries of the cook-shop,
+strolled into the big street, and began to nibble his small German, in
+company with the dusty, fluey slice of bread he brought out of his
+pocket.  There was a parish pump there, with its swinging copper handle;
+and regardless of medical reports, and chemical analyses, and cholera
+germs contained in the clear, sparkling fluid, old Matt had a hearty
+draught, and smacked his lips after as if he enjoyed it--and doubtless
+he did.  There was the prospect of a murky old inn down a gateway, and
+the busy throng of people passing him; but Matt noticed nothing, for his
+thoughts were upon matters in Bennett's-rents--though, for all that, he
+was enjoying his simple meal, which was eaten without a thought of the
+prime veal and bacon, or his sad complaint, which had now fled till next
+dinner-time, as, by way of amusement, he turned down Castle-street to
+witness the performance of a gentleman in tights and spangles--a
+gentleman evidently high in his profession, but blessed with a nose of
+the Whitechapel mould, black, greasy, tucked-under hair, confined by a
+blue ribbon, slightly oiled; a pimply face, and a body apparently
+furnished with gristle in the place of bones.
+
+As Matt came up, the gentleman was balancing a peacock's feather upon
+the tip of his nose, to the accompaniment of a popular air performed by
+a partner upon drum and pan-pipes--the arrangement of the air apparently
+necessitating more muscular action with the arms than from the lungs;
+for though now and then a shrill and piercing note was heard from the
+pipes, it was not often, while the rumble of the beaten drum was
+incessant.  The next performance was the balancing and twirling of a
+barrel on the acrobat's feet, he all that time lying down upon a cushion
+in a very uncomfortable, determination-of-the-blood-to-the-head
+position, what time the band, tucking his pipes inside his coat and
+setting his drum on end, came round the attentive circle, shaking the
+performer's greasy, private-life cap in the observers' faces, after the
+fashion of zealous deacons in churches of high proclivities--save that
+in this case the cap was of very common cloth, while in the other the
+little bags would probably be of red velvet, lined with white satin.
+
+The band stopped opposite old Matt, who had loudly applauded the
+performance, for he had felt so at peace with the world at large, that
+he was in the humour to be pleased with any and everything.  So the old
+man thrust a willing hand into his pocket, and the band smiled
+expectant; but the next moment Matt's face turned very serious, and with
+the loud taunt of the band ringing in his ears, he shuffled down
+Castle-street and into Cursitor-street, in the direction of the office
+where he had a job; far more piercing than the shrillest note of the
+pipes, and more impressive than the heaviest bang of the drum, came the
+words of the musician:--
+
+"Well, if I hadn't ha' had a brown I'd ha' said so, and not made
+believe."
+
+For the old printer's pocket did not contain a coin of any description,
+the last two having been expended for his simple meal; so hurrying along
+the old fellow looked very serious for quite fifty yards; then he began
+to whistle; then he stopped at a lamp-post, but wrenched himself away
+again directly and hurried down Fetter-lane, for the clocks were
+striking two, and his dinner-hour was over.  But before turning into
+Typeland Matt entered into one of those well-known places of business
+with swinging doors, and shuffling up to the pewter-covered counter,
+asked for a pint of porter on trust.
+
+And went away wiping his mouth upon the back of his hand, of course?
+Nothing of the kind; for the landlord smiled pleasantly, shook his head,
+and declared that whenever he gave trust he lost a customer.  So old
+Matt slinked away, and soon came to another swing-door, when, passing
+through, a far different odour saluted his nostrils--an odour commingled
+of steam, oil, treacle, glue, turpentine, stale breath, fresh paint, wet
+paper, and gas; where there was a continual noise of hissing, and
+rumbling of wheels, rattling of straps and bands, with a constant
+vibration of the great building, which heavily brooded over the reeking
+mass, as if hatching earthquakes.  Up a staircase, whose walls shone
+with the marks of inky and oily hands, past dirty-faced boys in
+paper-caps and aprons, whose shirt-sleeves were rolled high above their
+elbows; past a window, a glance through which showed mighty engine and
+machine rushing off their work in never-tiring mode, wheels spinning,
+cylinders slowly revolving, with white sheets of paper running in,
+printed sheets running out, to be piled in stacks; here the portion of a
+magazine whose pages should rivet the attention of some fair reader;
+there the newspaper, to be spread in thousands through the length and
+breadth of the land; while again, close at hand, lumbered the heavy
+press to turn off by hand copies of the broad-margined, large-typed,
+thick-papered Chancery bill, whose legible words should nearly drive
+some weary disputant mad, although but a short time before its well-paid
+pages and open work had made glad the heart of a round-shouldered
+compositor--sower of the dragons' teeth of knowledge.  Up still went old
+Matt Space--past boys bearing proof-sheets--boys who read copy in a
+sing-song, nasal, pointless twang to keen-eyed readers, ready to give
+angry stabs at ill-spelt words, to stick their pens through eyeless i's,
+and condemn the mutilated letters to the melting-pot; past pressmen
+toiling--down, Benjamin-Franklin-like, with heavy forms of type; up--up,
+till he reached the top story, where, beneath rows of skylights, men
+formed themselves into the hotbeds that generated disease, as they
+toiled on day after day at the cases of type, before a pair of which old
+Matt posted himself, took a pinch of snuff, and then prepared for work.
+
+In a few more minutes he was hard at his task, picking up letter by
+letter the component parts of the words spoken the day before at a
+public meeting, where an orator discoursed at length upon the financial
+greatness of this our country; after which he dived into statistics, so
+that the old compositor was soon realising the facts, and revelling in
+sums of money eight figures in length, and that, too, without a single
+penny in his pocket.
+
+Click, click; click, click; letter after letter passing into the metal
+composing-sticks; thirty men busily engaged, and not a word spoken
+beyond the occasional muttering whisper of the worker, who sought to
+impress his MS more fully upon his mind by reading it aloud; while old
+Matt, poring over his copy by the aid of a pair of horn spectacles, now
+and then paused for a stimulator from the snuff loose by accident in his
+coat-pocket hanging from a nail in the wall--snuff that had to be hunted
+into corners and brought forth in pinches, the greater proportion of
+which consisted of flue and crumbs.
+
+"Pound, nine, comma; eight, four, three, comma; six, four, two,"
+muttered the old man, arranging the figures.  "Ah, bless my soul! now,
+what could I do with nine--nearly ten millions of money?  And that sum's
+nothing at all.  Poverty?  Pooh! all humbug!  There isn't such a thing;
+it's all a mistake.  Somebody's got more than his share, and made things
+crooked."
+
+Old Matt finished his task, and, on applying to the overseer for a fresh
+supply, he was set to correct a slip proof, when, taking the long column
+of type from which it had been printed, the old man was soon busy at
+work once more, correcting a misspelt word in this paragraph, removing a
+broken letter in that, and all the while muttering to himself, to the
+great amusement of the other men.  But all at once he stopped short and
+stared at his work, looked eagerly round the office, as if to assure
+himself that all was real, and then devoured the words before him.  Then
+he went on with his work in a flurried, nervous way, dropping words,
+misplacing letters, scattering type upon the floor, and making his
+fellow-workmen look up with wonder--attentions that made the old man
+more nervous and fidgety; until, as his nervousness increased, so did
+his task become more difficult of completion, the perspiration standing
+upon his forehead, and the expression of his face growing pitiful in the
+extreme.
+
+But it was complete at last, though, through anxiety, old Matt had been
+twice as long as he would have been in an ordinary way; and then
+secretly tearing off a portion of the proof, he slipped it into his
+pocket, made an excuse to the overseer that he was unwell, and hurried
+into the street, where he jostled first one, and now another; now
+walking in the road, now upon the pavement, but all the while with one
+hand clasping tightly a scrap of paper he held in his pocket.  As to
+what was going on around him he seemed so utterly oblivious that twice
+over he was nearly knocked down by passing vehicles.  Again and again he
+would have stopped, but for the busy throng constantly hurrying along
+the street; and for the time being the old man strongly resembled a cork
+tossed about in some busy eddying stream; but he had evidently some
+object in view, for he kept pressing on in one particular direction, and
+his lips were incessantly in motion, forming words that savoured
+continually of that much-sought-for object--money.
+
+Volume One, Chapter XV.
+
+ANOTHER VISITOR FROM TOWN.
+
+How ever great the shock of his night's adventure may have been to his
+system, Dr Hardon, beyond missing his attentions to a few patients,
+displayed very little of it to the world at large comprised in Somesham
+and its neighbourhood.  There were certainly two or three discolorations
+about his face, caused by the playful taps of the burglar's
+life-preserver, but they very soon disappeared.  The doctor's greatest
+grievance was the loss of his numerous articles of jewellery, though
+even upon that subject he talked lightly and affably to his patients,
+evidently having a soul above the loss of such trifles, and people
+thought more of him than ever.  The police had certainly been upon what
+waiter Charles of the County Arms called the "tract" of the burglars,
+but only discovered that they had entered the house by opening a window
+and stepping in; that they had taken all the plate; that three
+heavy-featured men came from London by the down-mail on the night of the
+robbery, arriving at Somesham at half-past ten; and the porter thought
+he gave tickets to three stoutish men who went by the up-mail at 2:30;
+when the police-sergeant came to the conclusion that it was a
+prearranged affair, and people talked about it for a few days, till they
+had something else to take their attention.
+
+Doctor Hardon, portly and comfortable-looking, sat reading the evening
+paper just delivered from the stationer.  No one to have seen him could
+have imagined that care had ever sat for a moment upon his ample
+forehead; and though, taking into consideration the incidents of the
+past few weeks, it might have been expected that he would look anxious
+and worn, on the contrary, he seemed greatly at ease within himself, and
+turned and rustled his newspaper importantly, refreshing himself from
+time to time with a sip of port from the glass at his elbow.
+
+"I declare!" he exclaimed, suddenly throwing down the paper; "it's
+abominable--it's disgusting."
+
+"What is?" said Mrs Hardon, roused from the thoughtful mood into which
+she seemed to have fallen.
+
+"Why, to have the privacy of one's life dragged into publicity in this
+way.  The matter ought to have been hushed-up."
+
+"But what do you mean?" said Mrs Hardon.  "Is it anything about--"
+
+"Yes, of course it is!" cried the doctor savagely.  "They've got it in
+the London papers, condensed from the _County Press_--a filthy penny
+rag.  Just look here--made into a sensation paragraph.
+
+"`Eaten of Rats.--A shocking discovery was made at Somesham on Monday
+last.  A rather eccentric gentleman, named Hardon, residing entirely
+alone at a short distance from the town, was found in bed with his lower
+extremities horribly mutilated by the rats which infest the place.  The
+medical evidence at the inquest showed that death had probably taken
+place some eight-and-forty hours before the body was discovered; while
+the bottle of laudanum and teaspoon at the bedside pointed to an end
+which the post-mortem examination proved to have been the case; an
+overdose of the subtle extract having evidently been the cause of death.
+The deceased was without servants; for, in consequence of a burglary
+committed at the house shortly before this discovery, his housekeeper
+had left him, and her place remained unsupplied.  As may be supposed,
+this tragic affair, following so closely upon the burglary, has caused
+intense excitement throughout the neighbourhood.'
+
+"Isn't it disgusting?" exclaimed the doctor, after a few moments' pause;
+while during the reading he had not displayed the slightest emotion, but
+read the paragraph from beginning to end without faltering.  Receiving
+no answer, he looked up to see Mrs Hardon sitting staring at him with a
+horrified aspect, while her fingers were stopping her ears.
+
+"O, Tom!" she gasped at last, "haven't we had enough of that horrid
+affair lately without bringing it up again?  I shall be glad when it's
+all over, and we begin to look upon it as a thing of the past.  I
+declare I shall never like to use any of the money; I shall fancy a
+curse hangs to it.  But do you think Septimus is dead?"
+
+"Of course I do," said the doctor; "and if he is not, what does it
+matter?"
+
+"Nothing at all, I suppose," replied Mrs Hardon; "but really, Tom, it
+came upon me like a thunder-clap.  Was that what poor Octavius sent for
+you about--to tell you that?  I often thought there must be some reason
+for his long-continued obstinacy.  What did he say to you about it?"
+
+"Don't ask questions," said the doctor abruptly.  "It is enough for you
+to know that it is so, and that the money comes at a time when we want
+it badly."
+
+"Then we have no business to have been wanting it badly!" exclaimed Mrs
+Hardon; "and I shall make it my business to go to Keening's one of these
+days, and ask them the state of your affairs."
+
+"Yes, you had better!" snarled the doctor, displaying a bright speck of
+the gold setting of his teeth.
+
+"But such a saint as poor Lavinia always seemed!" said Mrs Hardon.  "I
+should never have thought it of her; and if it was not that the poor
+thing is dead and gone, I should have called it quite disgraceful.  But
+there, we can't afford to talk about such matters, I'm sure;" and she
+began to rock herself to and fro in her chair and to sob: "O, Tom! you
+drove that poor girl away,--you did.  She would never have left if--"
+
+"Hold your tongue!" cried the doctor fiercely.
+
+"But you did, Tom; and I shall never forget her look that day I met her
+in the street--it went like a knife to my heart."
+
+Mrs Hardon sat crying silently for some time, while the doctor savagely
+rustled his paper, but all the while reading not a word, for his lips
+moved, and he talked fiercely to himself.
+
+"There!" cried Mrs Hardon at last, "I won't take on, for it seems of no
+use, and whether she or I live or die, don't seem to matter to you, Tom.
+And now I want to know about Octavius's property.  How much is it? and
+are you certain that there was no will?"
+
+"I've told you there was none ten times over," said the doctor; "and now
+wait till the funeral's over, for I won't be bothered."
+
+"But, Tom," said Mrs Hardon, "I want to know what is the extent--what
+it is really worth, and how much you owe."
+
+"Never mind," said the doctor.
+
+"But I have a right to know," cried Mrs Hardon.
+
+"There!  I don't know myself," said the doctor.
+
+"Then perhaps your solicitors do," said Mrs Hardon; "and I shall, as I
+have often threatened, ask them."
+
+"And much good it will do you," muttered the doctor; but, not liking to
+run the risk of any exposure of his present differences with his wife,
+he compromised.  "Well," he said, "what is it that you wish to know?"
+
+"Why, I told you," said Mrs Hardon; "what Octavius's property is worth,
+and whether you are quite sure that Septimus--"
+
+"You are wanted, sir, if you please," said the maid, appearing at the
+door.
+
+"Who is it?" said the doctor testily, for this was an hour when he
+objected to being disturbed.
+
+"Wouldn't give any name, sir," replied the girl.
+
+"Send him round to the surgery," said the doctor.
+
+"Please, sir, he's in the front passage, and he said he didn't want the
+sudgery."
+
+"What sort of a man is it?" said the doctor.
+
+"Look's like a poor man, sir," said the girl.
+
+"How many times have you been told not to leave strangers in the
+passage!" exclaimed Mrs Hardon angrily.  "There'll be another coat gone
+directly; go and stay with him till your master comes."
+
+The maid disappeared, giving the door so loud a shut that it sounded
+almost like a bang, when the doctor began to complain of fatigue, and
+being worn out, and Mrs Hardon, who wished to propitiate, offered to
+go.
+
+"Do, please, my love," murmured the doctor, in the most gentle of
+tones--the professional.
+
+Mrs Hardon slightly drew down the corners of her mouth in a
+contemptuous grimace as she left the room, but returned in a few minutes
+looking pale and scared; and then she carefully closed the door after
+her.
+
+"It's quite taken my breath away!" exclaimed Mrs Hardon.  "He
+frightened me: what made you tell me that Septimus was dead?"
+
+"Well, isn't he?" said the doctor, shuffling hastily round in his chair.
+
+"Dead?" exclaimed Mrs Hardon.  "If he is, it's his ghost that has come
+down: that's all."
+
+"Come down?" cried the doctor, turning of a dirty pallid hue.
+
+"And he's walked all the way from London.  And you never saw such a
+poor, deplorable-looking object in your life.  He looks twenty years
+older, that he does."
+
+"What does he want?" cried the doctor, panting in spite of his efforts
+to keep down his emotion.
+
+"Says he's come down to see his father, and to attend to his affairs."
+
+"Well, tell him to go to Keening's.  I won't see him--I won't see him.
+My nerves won't bear it; they have not recovered from the last shock
+yet, let alone that horrible night of the robbery."
+
+"But you'd better see him," said Mrs Hardon, whose woman's heart was
+touched by her visitor's aspect.
+
+"No, no; I can't--I can't bear it, and it's better that I should not;"
+and as he spoke there was no dissimulation in the doctor's words or
+mien: he was undoubtedly very much moved.
+
+"But you must see him; and besides, it will seem so strange if it's
+known in the town that you sent him away like that."
+
+"Well--er--well--perhaps I had better," said the doctor; "where is he?
+I'll go to him, or--no, let him come in here; but put away the wine
+first."
+
+Mrs Hardon took no notice of the last remark, but went out, and
+returned directly with Septimus Hardon, footsore, dusty, and
+travel-stained.
+
+"Good-evening, Mr Septimus," said the doctor, in the tone of voice he
+had heard so often from his patients, and as he spoke he slightly bent
+forward, but lay back again directly in his chair, without offering his
+visitor a seat.  "Good-evening, Mr Septimus.  I suppose we must say
+Hardon?"
+
+"If you please, uncle," said Septimus, somewhat startled at his strange
+reception--a reception more chilling even than in his diffidence he had
+anticipated.
+
+"Sit down, Septimus, you look tired," said Mrs Hardon, pouring out a
+glass of wine for the visitor, who drank it with avidity, for he was
+faint and agitated, feeling somewhat like the Prodigal, though this was
+no prodigal's welcome.
+
+"How do you find business, Mr Septimus?" said the doctor, perspiring
+freely, but now speaking calmly and slowly.
+
+"Bad--bad," said Septimus.  "I have lost all, and been put to great
+shifts, while my poor wife is a confirmed invalid."
+
+"Dear me, dear me!" said the doctor blandly, "how sad!  I might perhaps
+be able to give her advice.  I suppose she could not call at my surgery
+any morning before ten?"
+
+"She always was delicate," put in Mrs Hardon hastily, for she was
+annoyed at her husband's behaviour; while something kept, as it were,
+whispering to her, "He is from London, and may know something of my poor
+girl."
+
+There was a dead silence then for some few minutes, which the doctor
+broke.
+
+"I--er--er--I--er--I think you have hardly come on a visit of ceremony,"
+he said; "you wished to see me?" and after coughing away something which
+seemed to form in his throat, he spoke in his most unguental tones--in
+the voice he kept for married ladies upon particular occasions.
+
+"I came down," said Septimus, in a broken voice, "upon seeing my poor
+father's death.  It was shown to me--by a friend--newspaper--torn
+scrap--I have walked down--weak--and ill."
+
+Mrs Hardon uttered an exclamation, for Septimus had risen as he spoke,
+and stood working his hands together, as he gazed appealingly at his
+uncle; and then, as he trailed off in his speech, he reeled and clutched
+at the table, sweeping off a wine-glass in his effort to save himself
+from falling.
+
+"Better now," said Septimus faintly, as he sank into the chair behind
+him.  "I am sorry, but I feel overcome, and weak, and giddy.  I have had
+much sorrow and trouble lately, and my father's death was so sudden."
+
+The doctor winced a little, but recovered himself in a moment, for he
+was used to witnessing trouble, and could bear it.
+
+"Yes--yes--a sad thing,--very sad--mournful I may say," he observed.
+"But my poor brother always was so distant and peculiar in his dealings
+with his relations.  Of course you know that the funeral takes place
+to-morrow?"
+
+"No," replied Septimus; "I know nothing beyond what I have told you, and
+I come to my father's brother for information."
+
+"Yes, just so," said the doctor; "but I can not refrain from blaming my
+poor brother; doubtless you had given him great cause of offence, but he
+ought to have made some provision for you."
+
+"I did write to him again and again," said Septimus, "but I suppose he
+felt too angry, and--let it rest now; I have struggled through all my
+trouble without his help, and I do not complain."
+
+"Just so," said the doctor; "but it would have been more just if he had
+made some provision."
+
+"You have seen his will, I suppose?" said Septimus.
+
+"O no!" said the doctor, "there is no will."
+
+"Then he has left no legacies?" said Septimus.
+
+"Not one," replied the doctor; "but I am not surprised--he never was a
+business man."
+
+"I am sorry too," said Septimus softly, "for the sake of my cousins and
+yourselves;" and Septimus started as he saw the wince Mrs Hardon gave
+at the mention of the word "cousins."
+
+"Yes," said the doctor blandly; "it would have been more just towards
+you.  For even if he had only left you a hundred or two they would have
+been acceptable, no doubt."
+
+"I don't understand you," said Septimus.
+
+"I was alluding to your being left so unprovided for," said the doctor.
+"It seems so sad."
+
+"But you told me he left no will," said Septimus wonderingly; "and I am
+his only child."
+
+The doctor smiled compassionately upon his nephew, with the air of a man
+removing a leg or an arm.
+
+"There, for goodness' sake don't go on torturing the poor fellow in that
+way!" cried downright Mrs Hardon.  "Why don't you speak out?  You see,
+Septimus--"
+
+"I beg that you will be silent, Mrs Hardon," exclaimed the doctor.
+
+"I shall be nothing of the kind," cried Mrs Hardon.  "The poor man has
+enough to suffer as it is, without being grilled over a slow fire."
+
+Septimus gazed from uncle to aunt in a strange bewildered way, prepared
+for some new shock, but unable to comprehend what blow Fate meant to
+deal him now.
+
+"You see, Septimus," continued Mrs Hardon, without heeding her
+husband's uplifted hands,--"you see the property comes to my husband as
+next of kin."
+
+"Nonsense!" exclaimed Septimus, as if relieved that his aunt's
+communication was of no more weight.  "I am the only child, and besides,
+_I_ have a son."
+
+"Now just see what a painful scene you have brought about," whined the
+doctor, reproachfully eyeing his wife.
+
+"Indeed," interrupted Septimus, "I am sorry that the matter should be
+discussed, for it appears unseemly at such a time: before my poor
+father's remains are beneath the earth."
+
+"If you would only have been silent," continued the doctor, not heeding
+the interruption.--"Now pray, my good sir," he said, turning to
+Septimus, "go to Messrs. Keening and Keening, my solicitors, and--"
+
+"Tell me what it all means, aunt, or I shall go mad!" cried Septimus,
+catching Mrs Hardon's hand in both of his, and gazing imploringly in
+her face.
+
+"Well, the plain truth of the matter is this," said Mrs Hardon--
+
+"Pray be silent, Mrs Hardon," said the doctor.  "My solicitors--"
+
+"You were not born in wedlock," said Mrs Hardon.
+
+"Who dares say that is true?" shouted Septimus, with eyes flashing; "who
+dares speak in that way of my poor mother?" he exclaimed.  "It's a lie--
+a base lie!" and in spite of Septimus Hardon's plainness, his years, the
+dust and shabby clothing, there was in him a nobleness of aspect that
+made the doctor look mean by comparison, as he stood there furiously
+eyeing both in turn, and thinking then no more of his father's money
+than if it had been so much dirt beneath his feet.  That such an
+aspersion should be cast upon the fame of the mother whose memory he
+tenderly loved seemed to him monstrous; and it was well for Doctor
+Hardon that he did not think it necessary to answer the sternly-put
+question; for most assuredly, had he replied, Septimus would have taken
+him by the throat.
+
+"I'm sure _I_ don't know," said Mrs Hardon.  "All I know is, that it's
+very sad, and I'm very, very sorry for you."
+
+But Doctor Hardon, taken aback at first by the fierce mien of Septimus,
+had now somewhat recovered his confidence, while the anger of the nephew
+was as short-lived, so utterly bewildering was the news he now heard;
+the insult to his mother's memory, the snatching away of the competence
+that seemed in his hands, the cool self-possession of his uncle,--all
+completely staggered him, and he knew not what to say or do.
+
+"Sir," said the doctor, rising and placing a hand within his waistcoat
+as he spoke with great dignity,--"sir, I must beg that this scene, this
+unseemly brawling, may not be continued in my house.  You can find my
+solicitors, who will give you all the information you may require.  The
+funeral takes place to-morrow, and, under the circumstances, I have
+taken upon myself the duty of seeing that proper respect is paid to the
+departed.  You are folly aware that your presence would not have been
+even tolerated for an instant in my brother's house during his lifetime,
+and you presume on my forbearance by treating me as you do.  Under the
+circumstances, I decline to hold any further communication with you.
+Had you come in humbleness and treated me with respect, I will not say
+what I might not have been tempted to do for you out of pity.  As to
+your assumption of ignorance of your illegitimacy, it is simply absurd,
+for it is a matter of which you must have been fully aware.  You know
+well, that when my brother declined to hold any further communication
+with you, it was not merely on account of your opposition to his wishes,
+but because it was painful to his feelings to be constantly reminded in
+daily life of the sins of his youth.  I think too, now, that if you have
+any right feeling left, you will have the decency to end this most
+unseemly meeting by leaving at once, for it is to me, after my late
+sufferings, most painful.  My poor brother!"
+
+Doctor Hardon paused to bury his face in his handkerchief, and
+congratulate himself upon the very effective way in which he had acted
+his part.  He then made a show of wiping away a tear, and Mrs Hardon
+did likewise; but in the one case the tear was genuine, in the other
+counterfeit coin.
+
+As for Septimus Hardon he had never made but one enemy in his life--
+himself; but had he owned a score, and they had stood around him at that
+minute, not a man of them could have struck a blow at the abject,
+crushed, spiritless, broken man, as, without word, almost without
+thought, he mechanically glanced round the room, turned, and then slowly
+walked out, closely followed by Mrs Hardon, who passed something into
+his hand as she closed the door upon his retreating form.
+
+Volume One, Chapter XVI.
+
+SEEKING HOSPITALITY.
+
+"Why, if it ain't you, Master Sep, as I thought we were never going to
+see no more!" cried Mrs Lower to the desolate-looking man outside her
+snug bar.  "But, my; you do look bad, and it's close upon ten years
+since I've set eyes upon you.  There, do come in and sit down.  Yes;
+that's poor Lower's chair; he's been gone years now, Master Sep, and I'm
+left a lone widow, my dear; but your name was one of the last words he
+spoke--your name and poor Miss Agnes's.  Do you ever see her in the big
+city, Master Sep?"
+
+Septimus shook his head.
+
+"Has she left here?" he said.
+
+"Didn't you know?" said Mrs Lower.  "Ah, yes, long enough ago!" and she
+stooped her head and whispered in her visitor's ear.  "But there, we
+needn't talk about troubles now.  How haggard and worn you do look!  And
+how's Mrs Septimus?  I always think of her as Mrs Grey.  But what's it
+to be now?  Isn't it awful about poor master, whom I'd never have left
+if I'd known what was to happen?  No, Master Sep, not to marry a dozen
+Lowers, and be the mistress of fifty County Arms; though, rest him! poor
+Lower was a good, kind husband, for all we were elderly folk to wed, and
+had forgotten how to make love.  Now, say a hot cup of tea, Master Sep,
+or a hot steak with a little ketchup.  If you'd been a bit sooner, there
+was a lovely sweetbread in the house; but there, it's no use to talk of
+that; so say the steak and tea.  I _am_ glad to see you, my dear boy!"
+
+Septimus signified his desire for the tea, and Charles was summoned, and
+dismissed with his orders, but not without making a tolerable
+investigation of the guest whom his mistress delighted to honour--an
+investigation apparently not very satisfactory, from the imperious way
+in which he gave his orders in the kitchen.
+
+"Now, just a toothful of my orange cordial, Master Sep.  Now, don't say
+no, because you must.  I make it myself, and the gentlemen take it on
+hunting-days.  Now, tip it up like a good boy; and here's a biscuit.
+See now; don't it put you in mind of old times, when you were a naughty
+child, and wouldn't take your physic?  How time does go, to be sure;
+why, it's only like yesterday.  But there, I won't bother you.  Have a
+pair of slippers and a comfortable wash.  Did you bring any luggage?"
+
+Ten minutes passed, and then Septimus was again seated in the snug bar,
+with the kettle singing its song of welcome upon the hob; a savoury
+steak was before him; and the comely old dame, in her rustling black
+silk, smilingly pouring out the strong tea she had been brewing, taking
+a cup too herself, "just for sociability sake," as she told her visitor.
+
+"And so poor master's gone, and you're coming down to the old place
+again?" said Mrs Lower.
+
+Septimus groaned.
+
+"Ah, Master Sep, I can respect your feelings; but though poor master's
+dead and gone, he had his failings, while he never did his duty either
+by you or your poor mother."
+
+Septimus Hardon nearly dropped his cup as he gazed blankly in his old
+nurse's face.
+
+"What--what do you mean?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Why, he was always hard, and--But there, poor man, he's dead and gone,
+and we all have our failings, and plenty of them.  But come, my dear
+boy, pray do eat something."
+
+Septimus tried to eat a few morsels, but his appetite was gone, and he
+soon laid down his knife and fork.
+
+"Of course you'll come down and live at the old place, Master Sep?" said
+Mrs Lower.
+
+Septimus shook his head sadly.
+
+"O, Master Sep!" cried the old lady, "don't sell it; don't part with it,
+it would be a sin."
+
+"But it will never be mine!" cried Septimus passionately.  "O, nurse,
+nurse! this is a hard and a bitter world.  I came down here almost in
+rags, tramping down like a beggar, and now, in cold and brutal terms, my
+uncle tells me that I am a bastard--that I have no right to enter my own
+father's house; while, if this is true, I am a beggar still."
+
+Mrs Lower looked astounded.  "What," she exclaimed, "does he mean to
+say?  But there, it's nonsense.  You can soon prove to him that you are
+not."
+
+"How?" exclaimed Septimus wearily.  "Everything goes against me.  I have
+been away ten years; my father sent me from his house; he refused all
+communications with me; and now I return on the day before the funeral."
+
+"O, but you must go to the lawyers!" cried Mrs Lower.  "They can put
+you right."
+
+The couple sat talking for some time.  It was refreshing to Septimus to
+find so sincere a welcome, for he had put Mrs Lower's hospitality to
+the test on the strength of the sovereign his aunt had slipped into his
+hand.  But the old dame could give him no information touching his
+birth, and but little respecting the place and time of his father's
+marriage.
+
+Weary at length of the subject, Septimus listened to the history of
+Somesham during the past few years, till, taking compassion upon her
+visitor's jaded looks, Mrs Lower showed him his bedroom, where he tried
+to forget his present sorrows in sleep.
+
+But sleep came not, and he tossed feverishly from side to side,
+bewildered by the thoughts that rushed through his brain: old faces, old
+scenes, and, foremost among them, home, and the stern countenance of his
+father, came crowding back.  Now he would doze, but to start up in a few
+minutes under the impression that he was called.  He dozed off again and
+again, but always to start up with the same fancy, and once he felt so
+sure that he leaped out of bed and opened his door; but the dark passage
+was empty, and all without quite still, so he returned to his bed, sat
+there for a few minutes thinking, and then went to the window, drew the
+blind, and stood gazing out upon the buildings of the familiar
+market-place.
+
+The wind swept by, swinging the old sign to and fro, while all looked so
+calm and peaceful that he returned to his bed, and again tried for rest,
+falling into a fevered, half sleeping, half waking state, wherein the
+old faces still came crowding back, now nearer and nearer, now seeming
+to vanish away into nothingness, till at last that one old face seemed
+to exclude all others, and he saw his father as he saw him last,
+frowning harshly upon him; but soon the face assumed an aspect of pity,
+a look that told the suffering man that he was forgiven, before it
+changed into the frigid hardness of death.
+
+Septimus Hardon started up in bed and gazed at the dim, shaded window,
+hardly realising where he was, as he tried to get rid of the dread image
+which oppressed him; but the night through, hour after hour, as soon as
+he closed his eyes, there was the same cold, stern face, as though
+impressed upon his brain, and wanting but the exclusion of the light for
+him to direct his gaze inward upon the fixed lineaments.  So on, hour
+after hour, dozing and starting up, till the first streaks of the coming
+day appeared in the east, and as they grew stronger, peering in through
+the bedroom window, and holding forth to view the various objects in the
+room in a half-shadowed, ghostly manner that completely chased away the
+remaining desire for sleep that lingered with the unnerved man.
+
+"Knocked three times, mem," said Charles, "and can't make him hear."
+
+"Never mind," said Mrs Lower.  "I'll go myself presently."
+
+Mrs Lower had carefully prepared what she considered a snug breakfast,
+and put her regular body to no slight inconvenience by waiting past her
+usual hour for the morning meal; but she thought of her visitor's
+fatigue and trouble.
+
+"He can't do better than sleep, poor boy," she muttered, descending the
+stairs, after listening at the bedroom door for the third time; when she
+sat in the bar and waited for quite an hour, till suddenly a thought
+struck her, which set her trembling and wringing her hands, and her
+comely old face worked as she tried to keep back the tears.
+
+"O, if he has--if he has!  O, my poor boy!" she exclaimed, hurrying up
+the staircase, and stumbling at every second step in her agitation.  "O,
+Charles, come with me!"
+
+The door yielded to her touch, and almost falling against the bed, Mrs
+Lower found it empty, while the pillow was quite cold.
+
+"O, look round--look round, Charles!" she gasped, as she sank upon her
+knees at the bedside, and buried her face in the clothes.
+
+"No one here, mem," said Charles, after a cursory glance round--not
+being able to comprehend his mistress's emotion.
+
+"O, look behind the door, Charles!" gasped Mrs Lower; "and at the
+bedposts."
+
+"Silk dress behind the fust, and wallance and hangings on the seconds,"
+said Charles methodically.  "What next, mem?"
+
+"Can't you see him, Charles?" said Mrs Lower, slowly raising her head.
+
+"No, mem," said Charles; "he's gone, safe.  Did he pay, mem?"
+
+"Nonsense!" cried Mrs Lower angrily; "he was a friend of mine;" and
+then the doubting dame carefully examined the room, looking in the most
+impossible of corners for the missing visitor, and only stopping as she
+was about to peer up the chimney by seeing a half-concealed grin upon
+the face of Charles.
+
+"I'll ask Boots if he's seen him, mem," said Charles, to get out of his
+difficulty.
+
+But that gentleman had neither seen Septimus Hardon nor the articles of
+clothing after which he was named; so that it seemed evident that the
+visitor had taken his unbrushed boots and departed.
+
+"So very strange!" muttered Mrs Lower to herself.
+
+"The seediest pair of boots we've ever had in the place," said Charles
+in confidence to the chambermaid; and then, after due cogitation, he
+came to the conclusion that if many of the visitors to the County Arms
+were like the unknown of the past night, his situation would not be
+worth the energy he displayed for the comfort of all who sought there
+rest and refreshment.
+
+Volume One, Chapter XVII.
+
+"NOTHING LIKE LEATHER."
+
+The very morning upon which waiter Charles of the County Arms, Somesham,
+spoke so disparagingly of Septimus Hardon's boots, the maker, or rather
+re-maker, of the said boots sat, as soon as it was broad daylight--not
+an extremely early hour in his home--industriously plying his craft,
+till, after divers muttered anathemas, a voice growled:
+
+"Confound it, Ike, I wish that old lapstone was at the bottom of the
+Thames.  Who's to sleep?"
+
+"Get up, then," said the lapstone-smiter slowly and heavily.
+
+"Get up!" growled the voice, "get up!"
+
+"What, in the middle of the night!  Ain't six yet, is it?"
+
+"Just struck," said the lapstone-man, following the example of the
+clock, and hammering vigorously at a scrap of leather about to be used
+in the repair of an old boot before him; while from sundry smothered
+growls coming from the room behind the shop where the shoemaker was at
+work, it was evident that the idler had buried a portion, if not the
+whole of his face, beneath the blankets, and again offered sacrifice to
+the sleepy god.
+
+It had always been a matter of dispute amongst the confraternity as to
+where Matthew Space slept.  Some said that he reposed nightly amongst
+the casuals at Saint Martin's Workhouse; but as, when he had work, he
+would often be at it by half-past eight in the morning, it was evident
+that he did not lodge there; for the most industrious would not be at
+liberty for another hour, on account of the work to be done in payment
+for the lodging.  Others talked of the Adelphi, and the recesses of
+Waterloo Bridge.  In short, there was always plenty of chaff flying
+concerning old Matt's lodgings; but the cleverest never threshed out the
+grain of wheat they sought, for the old man was as close a tusk as was
+ever attacked by flail.  His club was generally considered to be the
+mouldy, fungoid-looking house in Hemlock-court, where he could mostly be
+found of an evening, if the seeker had failed to see him sitting over
+his pint-pot in Bell-yard; and, according to circumstances, he dined at
+various places.  If trade flourished, and the ill wind that blew misery
+to Chancery suitors wafted half-crowns to his pocket, he dined in state
+at the cook-shop, shut up in one of the little elbow-cramping boxes,
+where there were dirty table-cloths, and everything was steamy and
+sticky with the pervading vapour, whose odour was as that of the
+soup-copper after the "inmates" have had their pauper repast; sometimes
+in the street, as we have seen, when his dinners varied--kidney-pies,
+saveloys, peas-pudding served on paper, or perhaps only the warm tuber
+taken from a potato can; though, when funds were low, Matt generally
+leaned towards the kidney pieman, an old friend with a red nose and a
+white apron, augmented at night by very business-like white sleeves,
+when, extinguishing the coke-fire of his tin, he became a trotter
+himself for the time being, as he went from public-house to gin-palace
+disposing of his stock of succulent sheep's-feet.  There was a great
+deal of the epicure in Matt Space, and had he been a Roman emperor he
+might have been as lavish in the recorded worship of the gastric region.
+As it was, he had always looked upon money as of value only for the
+pleasure it afforded his palate, till better feelings had been roused
+within him.  Well versed was Matt in the edibles best suited for
+families of large size but small income; he was deep in tripe, was old
+Matt Space, and he knew the shop in Clare-market and Newport-market best
+worthy of confidence.  You never caught him buying sausages at random,
+nor yet purchasing his baked sheep's-heads or fagots in Leather-lane.
+No; Matt knew better; and if he could not get the prime article, he
+would content himself with a penny-loaf and two ounces of single
+Glo'ster.  No one could get such scraps from the butcher's as Matt; and
+if any one of his acquaintance wanted a pound or two, it was almost
+worth their while to ask the old man to dinner, for the sake of getting
+him to undertake the commission.  For did not the old fox always go into
+the Lane by Lincoln's-inn, where such a trade was done in chops that the
+butcher must have bought his sheep nearly all loin, and that, too, of
+the primest, for the legal gentlemen of the district were rather
+particular.  As to distance Matt never studied that when he was bent
+upon any delicacy, being ready to visit Saint Martin's-lane for hot
+black-puddings, Leadenhall-market for cocks'-heads or giblets,
+Billingsgate for cockles or mussels; but all to oblige friends.
+
+Now, although old Matt made great shifts over his dinners, he revelled
+in his tea; that is to say, his evening coffee--coffee-shop tea being a
+decoction, as the tea is carefully boiled to the extraction of all its
+strength, but to the destruction of all flavour, and Matt foolishly
+preferred the simple infusion of everyday life.  So Matt enjoyed his
+evening coffee--a half-pint cup for a penny, and three large greasy
+slices of bread-and-butter for the same coin--the butter being always
+the best Dorset, slightly rank in the eating, and prepared by some
+peculiar Dutch process without the assistance of cows.  Old Matt never
+missed his tea if his funds would at all hold out; for at this
+delectable coffee-house there were newspapers and, better still,
+magazines of so tempting a nature that they often made the old man late
+back to his duties.  The real enjoyment that he felt over his book must
+have flavoured the repast, for he always seemed to relish these meals
+immensely.  Generally speaking, men of his trade--haunters of his
+haunts--are rabid politicians; but not so Matt: missing a glance at the
+morning or evening paper never troubled him; but still there were times
+when the old printer took an interest in questions current; and if "the
+poor man" happened to be on the _tapis_, Matt digested the leading
+articles most carefully.
+
+But no one knew where Matt slept, and many a job he lost in consequence;
+though this he set down to the score of his ill-luck.  And yet he need
+not have been so nervous about anyone tracking him to his den; for Lower
+Series-place was once the resort of many of the choice spirits of a
+bygone age: lordly gallants strutted there in the showy costumes of
+their day; here, too, was the famous Kit-cat Club; but the glory had
+departed when Matt chose the court for his resting-place: where the wits
+made their rendezvous, were misery and dirt, frouzy rotting tenements,
+vice and disease.  Trade was in the place, but in its lowest and least
+attractive forms; for there might be bought "half-hundreds" of coals in
+little sacks; ginger-beer; great spongy-shelled oysters, opened by dirty
+women, ready to place a discoloured thumb upon the loosened bivalve, and
+to rinse it in the muddy tub from which it was fished; fruit, too, in
+its seasons; potatoes and greens always; mussels, farthing balls of
+cotton, brass thimbles, comic songs, and sweets.  But the two most
+flourishing trades here were those of translating, and dealing in
+marine-stores--businesses carried on next door to one another by Isaac
+Gross and Mrs Slagg.  And a busy shop was Mrs Slagg's, a shop where,
+in place of the customary gibbeted black doll, hung a painted and
+lettered huge bladebone that might, from its size, have belonged to the
+celebrated vastotherium itself, only that it was composed of wood,
+carved in his leisure hours with a shoemaker's knife, as a delicate
+attention to Mrs Slagg, by her neighbour, Isaac Gross.  Gay was Mrs
+Slagg's shop with gaudily-illustrated placards, touching the wealth,
+ease, and comfort to be obtained by carrying all the worn apparel, rags,
+bones, and old iron to Slagg's; serving-maids were walking out in the
+gayest of dresses bought with kitchen-stuff; men were fitting on
+impossible tail-coats and solid-looking hats bought with old iron,
+brass, and pewter; while the demand for white and coloured rags,
+waste-paper, bones, and horsehair, appeared insatiable; and to obtain
+them, it seemed that Mrs Slagg was ready to ruin herself outright by
+giving unheard-of prices.  A wonderfully heterogeneous collection was
+here of the odds and ends of civilisation: one pane of the window
+resembled the foul comb of some mammoth bee, filled up as it was with
+bottles presenting their ends to the spectator, who shuddered as he
+thought of the labels that once decked those vials, such as "The draught
+at bedtime," "The mixture as before," "A tablespoonful every two hours,"
+etc; while many a wild and fevered dream that shudder brought back, of
+nights followed by days of pain and misery, aching heads, watching,
+anxious faces, sleek doctors of the Hardon class, wondering thoughts of
+the future, and of past hours unappreciated, unvalued.  Every
+medicine-bottle in Mrs Slagg's shop was a very telescope, which, if
+applied to the eye, presented such a diorama of sickness and sorrow as
+caused sensations as of grits getting into the cogs of the wheels of
+life and staying their would-be even course.  Mrs Slagg's was an
+obtrusive shop, irrespective of the flaming placards that literally
+shouted at you, and the black board, painted in old-bony skeleton
+letters, with the legend "Keziah Slagg, Dealer in Marine-stores," though
+the terrene ruled to the exclusion of the marine.  In its way, it was in
+everybody's way, and seemed to have taken the disease rampant in the
+region of Lowther Arcadia--"a breaking out"--in this case a hideous
+leprosy of loathsome objects, that would have at you, catching skirt or
+umbrella, or being run over after they had been kicked in the way by
+racing children.  The shop was gorged, and its contents oozed out, ran
+over, and trickled down the steps into the cellar, which was also full
+and repulsive, sending foul fungoid growths up through the trap to the
+pavement, and also apparently dipping under where the traffic lay to
+force its way up on the other side, where the growth spread again along
+the wall, so that passengers had to run the gauntlet on their journey to
+and from Temple Bar.  In fact, Mrs Slagg's shop was a very refiner's
+furnace for old refuse, which boiled and bubbled over into court and
+cellar, as we have seen; while in front of the shop of Mr Isaac Gross,
+extended trays of old iron, bundles of white and coloured rags, odorous
+bones, crippled tools, wormy screws, screws without worms, odds and
+ends--odds without ends, and ends that seemed at odds with the world,
+and tried to trip it up as it went by.
+
+Watching over her treasures would sit Mrs Slagg, just inside her door,
+stout, happy, and dirty, in a bower of old garments, which waved in
+every passing breeze; and, saving when clients came to obtain the
+unheard-of prices for the rags and metal, and the bones and grease, upon
+which this ogress lived, Mrs Slagg's time was divided between shouting,
+"You bring that 'ere back!" to the children, and playing "Bo-peep" with
+Mr Isaac Gross, who, also working just inside his shop, would lean out
+occasionally to look at Mrs Slagg; though it took upon an average about
+nine peeps before both peeped together, when Mrs Slagg would nod and
+smile at Mr Gross, and Mr Gross would nod and smile at Mrs Slagg; and
+then work would be resumed, while it was understood in the court that
+something was to come of it.
+
+But, beyond what has been described, there was another fact which
+pointed towards something coming of the neighbours' intimacy; for Mrs
+Slagg's cellar being, as she termed it, "chock!" a portion of her
+stock-in-trade had worked its way into Mr Gross's back-parlour, and
+there stood in the shape of a large heap of waste-paper--a heap that Mr
+Gross would look at occasionally, and then smile in a very slow, heavy
+manner, as if smiling was a difficult task, and took time, for fear it
+should be broken if hastily performed, and become a laugh.
+
+And a nice spot was Lower Series-place!  Like Bennett's-rents, it seemed
+as if every house was a school, and it was always leaving-time; for if,
+for a short cut, you hazarded a walk through the court, you were
+attacked by hordes of little savages, who pegged at you with tops, ran
+hoops between your legs, yelled in your ears, knocked tipcats in your
+eyes, kicked your shins at hopscotch, drove shuttlecocks upon your hat,
+lassoed you with skipping-ropes, and forming rings around, apostrophised
+you in tuneful, metrical language.
+
+No doubt old Matt was used to all this, and so enjoyed a second nature;
+for be it known that he lodged with Mr Isaac Gross, boot and shoemaker,
+in Lower Series-place, otherwise Rogue's, otherwise Shire-lane.
+
+Matt's landlord was a big bachelor of six-and-thirty, with much more
+body than he seemed to have muscles to control, the effect being that he
+was slow--Mrs Slagg said, "And sure," which is doubtful.  Mr Gross had
+round high shoulders, and more hair than he knew what to do with, or he
+would have had it cut; but he did not, only oiled it, brushed it down
+straightly, parted it in the middle, and then stopped it from falling
+down over his eyes when at work, by confining it with a band of black
+ribbon crossing his forehead and tied behind--the effect altogether,
+when taken in conjunction with his fat, heavy, sparsely-bearded face,
+being decidedly pleasing--judging by Mrs Slagg's standard.  He was not
+a dirty man, but he never by any chance looked clean, on account of a
+peculiar tinge in his skin, due perhaps to his trade, the short pipe in
+his mouth from morn till night, and the salubrious air of the court.
+Mr Gross was a doctor in his way, buying boots and shoes in the last
+stage of consumption, and then, by a grafting, splicing, and budding
+process, with the sounder portions of many he produced a few wearable
+articles, which, blacked to the highest pitch of lustre, shone upon his
+board to tempt purchasers from amongst those who could not afford the
+new article.  You might buy a pair of boots from Isaac whose component
+parts were the work, perhaps, of the cordwainers of many lands, which
+scraps he would build up again as if they were so many bricks, or
+perhaps mere bats, rough with mortar; and in this way Isaac Gross lived
+and flourished.
+
+It was from first wearing his boots that old Matt came to lodge with
+Isaac Gross, sharing with him the back-parlour, turned for their
+accommodation into a double-bedded room without bedsteads; but of itself
+a pleasant grove, whose fruitful sides teemed with boots and shoes in
+every stage of decay or remanufacture, hung upon nails wherever a nail
+would hold, the window-frame and its cross-bars not being spared.  As to
+the large and ever-increasing pile of waste-paper owned by Mrs Slagg,
+old Matt resisted the encroachment with some bitterness; but still it
+grew, and though the old man grumbled, he would not move, for he liked
+his abode for its freedom from all restraint, since he could go to bed
+when he liked, stay as long as he liked, and use his own discretion
+respecting the removal of boots or other articles of clothing.  The
+place was dirty, but that he did not mind; odorous, but then it was the
+true sherry twang; but what suited Matt best was, that his landlord
+troubled him little about rent, leaving him to pay when so minded, and
+never hinting at arrears; while still another advantage was that, next
+to a lamp-post, old Matt found his landlord the most satisfactory
+listener he knew, one ready to be talked to upon any subject, and to
+fall into the talker's way of thinking.
+
+On the morning when the words at the head of this chapter were spoken,
+in spite of the hammering, Matt continued to sleep on until nearly
+eight, when he rose, had his boots polished at half-price in the shade
+of Temple Bar, and then walked to the barber's, declaring a brushing to
+be the finest thing in the world for corns.  Here he had an easy shave
+and a wash for a penny; breakfasted heartily and sumptuously to the
+surprise of _habitues_ and waitress, by calling for a rasher of bacon,
+and having a crumpled, greasy, brown dog's ear brought him to devour
+with his bread-and-butter and coffee.  For Matt was in high spirits: he
+was in full work upon a newspaper for a few days, and he had discovered
+the paragraph which, in spite of the drawback of its terrible contents,
+was a piece of news that should give Mr Septimus Hardon the income and
+position "of what I always said he was, sir,--a gentleman."  So old Matt
+breakfasted, as he said, "like a prince," for fivepence, spent the
+change of his sixpence in a morning paper, and walked back to his
+lodging to read it at leisure, for his work would not begin till the
+afternoon.
+
+Mr Isaac Gross had finished his economical bachelor breakfast,
+consisting of bread-and-butter and packet-cocoa, combining cheapness,
+succulence, and convenience.  The breakfast-things were cleared away--
+not a long task--and Isaac was about to add a pile of old account-books
+to the waste-paper heap in the back-room.
+
+"She bring them in?" said Matt.
+
+Isaac, with his pipe in his mouth, nodded, and said in a gruff, slow
+growl, "Waste-paper."
+
+"So it seems," said Matt, opening one or two of the books, and then
+closing them with an air of disgust, when his landlord took them up,
+added them to the heap, and before returning to his bench, had a peep
+out towards Mrs Slagg's; but evidently the look was wasted, for he
+sighed, and took up his stirrup-leather, while old Matt drew down his
+mouth and bestowed a grim, contemptuous smile upon him as he rustled his
+paper, and, sitting down on a low workman's bench, began to read.
+
+"Ah!" said Matt, stopping in his reading to refresh himself with a pinch
+of snuff from a pill-box, "I thought so; they had an adjourned inquest
+about that case I told you of; but there's only a short para here."
+
+"Umph!" ejaculated Isaac, taking a good pull at his wax-end, and then
+readjusting his boot in the stirrup, but directly after disarranging it,
+to take a peep at Mrs Slagg--this time with success; but he frowned at
+her--a telegram that she knew meant the lodger was at home, and that
+friendly communications must stop.
+
+"They've brought it in--"
+
+"Ain't seen my wax, have you?" said Isaac slowly.
+
+"Accidental death," said Matt, not noticing the interruption; "and it's
+my opinion that--What?"
+
+"I want my wax," said Isaac, hunting about.
+
+"Well, get it," growled Matt, rather annoyed at being interrupted.
+
+"Ain't seen it, have you?" said Isaac.
+
+"No!" growled the old man, turning over his paper.
+
+"Had it along with the dubbin just before breakfast," said Isaac.
+
+"And then," continued Matt, "the coroner gave his order for the burial,
+and--"
+
+But Isaac Gross, who, in his slow fashion, was as industrious as the
+bees, like them, could not get on without his wax, so he interrupted the
+speaker with, "I want my wax," as he routed amongst his tools for the
+missing necessary.
+
+"You're waxing a great nuisance, Ike," said Matt, "and I wish you'd find
+your wax;" and then he readjusted his spectacles, and had another pinch
+of snuff.  "Hullo!" he growled, starting up and going to the door to
+speak to a woman who stood there, and who eagerly, whispered a few words
+as she passed a note and a shilling into his hand.  "Yes; I'll take the
+note, but I don't want that," he said, refusing the shilling, which fell
+upon the door-step.  "Now, look here," he said aloud, and very gruffly--
+for the woman had already turned to go--"I don't like this business at
+all; but if I'm to do it, I don't want paying for it; and if you don't
+take back that money, I sha'n't take the letter."
+
+"Hush, pray!" whispered the woman, glancing at Isaac's round, wide-open
+eyes.  "Don't be angry with me, please--don't speak so loud."
+
+The appealing voice somewhat softened the old man, but he kept on
+growling and muttering, as, after a few more words, the woman--the same
+who had visited the Jarkers--picked up the shilling and left him,
+watched all the while most eagerly by Mrs Slagg, who did not seem to be
+easy in her mind respecting female visitors to her neighbour's place of
+business.
+
+"It won't do, it won't do," muttered the old man, taking his seat after
+glancing at the note.  "I don't like it.--Well," he said aloud, "have
+you found that wax?"
+
+"It was in my pocket," said Isaac, slowly and seriously pointing to the
+discovered necessary covered with bread-crumbs, tobacco-dust, and flue.
+
+"Now then, let's have a bit more news," said Matt, once more settling
+himself.
+
+"Ain't there a murder nowheres?" said Isaac, whose work was now
+progressing.
+
+"No, there ain't!" said Matt gruffly.  "Nice taste you've got; but
+here's two fires--p'r'aps they'll do for you?"
+
+"Ah!" said Isaac slowly, "let's have them;" but again, to Matt's
+annoyance, further progress was stayed by the entrance of a man to
+dispose of three pairs of old boots.
+
+Old Matt crumpled up his paper and put it away in disgust, and as soon
+as the man had taken his departure he began to examine the boots.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "nice trade yours--three pair of decent boots for three
+shillings; and then you'll touch them up and sell them for five
+shillings a pair.  Tell you what--I'll give you a shilling and my old
+ones for this pair."
+
+"Why, you can't wear 'em till they're mended," said Isaac.
+
+"Can't I?" replied Mat with a grim smile; "I can wear these, old fellow,
+which are a deal worse;" and he placed one of his old ones on the bench.
+
+This was unanswerable, so Isaac only smoked.
+
+"Try which pair fits you best," he said at last, "and I'll do them up a
+little bit for another shilling."
+
+"No book-cover soles," said Matt, pointing with his thumb over his
+shoulder at the heap in the back-room.
+
+Isaac grinned after his slow fashion, and then growled, "Fust-class
+leather and good workmanship."
+
+"For two shillings?" said Matt.
+
+"And the old ones," said Isaac.
+
+"Why, they're worth nothing to you," said Matt.
+
+"And they ain't worth nothing to you," said Isaac.
+
+"S'pose I'm going out to dinner and want a change?" said the old man
+with a grin.
+
+"'Nother shilling, then," said Isaac determinedly.
+
+"Why, they ain't worth sixpence!" exclaimed Matt indignantly.
+
+"Not to you," said Isaac slowly.
+
+"No, nor you, nor anybody, except the owner," said Matt.
+
+"Which is it to be?" said Isaac in intervals, between drawing home
+stitches.  "Two bob and the old uns, or three bob wi'out?"
+
+"Done up?" said Matt.
+
+"Done up," said Isaac.
+
+"With new leather?" said Matt.
+
+"With fust-class, well-seasoned leather," said Isaac, cutting off his
+wax-ends.
+
+"Take 'em at two, then," said Matt, rising; "and I'll tell you what it
+is, Ike, I put up with your smoke and your courting; but if you don't
+make an end of choking me up with your confounded waste-paper, I'll
+move, Ike--I'll move."
+
+Isaac Gross smiled, faster this time, for he took his pipe out of his
+mouth to allow the smile to break into a grin; he then had a peep at
+Mrs Slagg, who was on the watch, having seen Matt outside; and then, as
+the old man made his way through the impedimenta of Lower Series-place,
+turning the note he had received over and over in his hand, and
+muttering as he went, Isaac's hammer went on "tap, tap, tap," till he
+was out of hearing.
+
+END OF VOLUME ONE.
+
+Volume Two, Chapter I.
+
+HOME.
+
+Softly along the dark passages of the County Arms stole Septimus Hardon,
+and with stealthy hand he loosened bar and bolt, till the front-door
+yielded to his touch, and he stood in the grey dawn of the morning,
+looking round the marketplace for a few minutes before making his way
+along a road not travelled by him for years.
+
+How familiar every spot seemed as he left the town behind!--spots dimly
+seen as yet, but familiar enough to cause a swelling sensation at his
+heart, and tears to rise unbidden to his eyes.  Now he stopped to gaze
+upon some old half-forgotten scene; now to listen to the morning hymn
+rising from the wood upon his left--loud and high notes from thrush and
+finch, mingled with the starling's mocking whistle, the mellow
+flute-tones of the blackbird, and the incessant caw of the rooks.  All
+around seemed so peaceful, so utter a change from the miseries of a
+close London court, that his thoughts went back from the present to the
+old days of his boyhood, and for a while a sense of elation coursed
+through his veins, his eyes sparkled, and he gazed round with delight
+till they rested upon the spire of the old church, when a chill fell
+upon his spirit once more, as he remembered the funeral and the miseries
+of the present.  Then, for the hundredth time, he recalled his father's
+lonely and fearful end--passing away without a word of forgiveness; his
+own return as a beggar to his old home, without a right therein--to be
+met as it were upon the threshold, and to be told that he was an
+intruder who could be admitted only upon sufferance.  But he would
+enter, he said, if only to ask of the dead to give him a sign respecting
+the truth of his uncle's words.
+
+Septimus Hardon's brow furrowed, and he walked on hastily; then he fell
+back into his listless, weary way.  It was very early, or his
+gesticulations would have excited attention; but he met no one, and once
+more hurrying on, he at last stood before the clump of trees within
+whose shades was the gloomy moss-grown house where so large a portion of
+his life had been spent.  He passed through the rusty iron gate, which
+creaked mournfully, and then stood before the old place, which looked
+more gloomy, moss-grown, and damp than ever.  Desolation everywhere; for
+when the son left his home, the father had shut himself up, discharging
+the gardener and all the indoor servants but the one who filled the post
+of housekeeper.  The vine still hung to the large trellis-work, but here
+and there, tangled with ivy, it had fallen away, and lay across the
+path; the windows were dim, the paths overgrown with weeds; while
+between the door-steps the withered herbage that had grown up the
+previous year, rustled in the breeze of the early spring.  Over such
+windows as yet possessed them, yellow time-stained blinds were drawn,
+while here and there upon the ground-[four pages missing from the scan.]
+the perspiration in large drops upon his forehead, as the blind slowly
+flapped to and fro, and the lath rapped in a strange ghostly way upon
+the framework of the window.
+
+For a few minutes Septimus Hardon stopped, leaning against the
+window-sill, trembling and undecided, till, mustering his strength of
+mind and body, he slowly drew himself up, climbed within the room, and
+then as the blind fell back to its place, stood in the presence of the
+dead, listening to the "rap-rap" of the blind-lath against the
+window-frame, and a sharp vicious gnawing that proceeded from behind the
+wainscot of the old house, and all the while not daring to turn his eyes
+in the direction of the bed whose position he knew so well, and upon
+which he could feel that the coffin was resting.
+
+Gnaw, gnaw; tear, tear; sharp little teeth savagely working at the thin
+hard wood, and evidently making rapid progress towards their goal.
+
+The sound was hideous, and the sweat dropped from Septimus Hardon's
+forehead with a tiny plash upon the bare boards, where he could see more
+than one little star-like mark, and then rousing himself, he ran towards
+the spot from whence the noise proceeded, and kicked furiously at the
+wainscot, when there was a scuffling noise, followed by a deep
+stillness, broken only at intervals by the gentle rapping of the
+blind-lath upon the window-frame.
+
+And there stood the careworn man in his own old room--the old
+plainly-furnished room that he might have slept in but the previous
+night, so unaltered was everything, as, with eyes putting off that which
+he had come to see until the very last, he gazed around.  There were the
+quaint old black-framed prints of Hudibras, whose strange, uncouth
+figures had frightened him as a boy--figures that, in the half-lights of
+evening or early morn, he had looked upon until they had seemed to stand
+forth from the frames as he lay quaking with childish terror; there was
+the old wall-paper, in whose pattern he had been wont to trace grotesque
+faces; there again the marbled ceiling, whose blue veins he had been
+used to follow in their maze-like wanderings, when he lay fevered and
+wakeful with some childish ailment; the same strips of lean-looking
+striped carpet; the same old hook in the beam, round which the flies
+darted and circled in summer; the same rickety corner washstand, with
+its cracked ewer, and quaint water-bottle and glass, which tinkled when
+a footstep passed along the passage; the fire-board, which blew down on
+windy nights, and almost frightened him into a fit, while there it was,
+even now, half-fallen and leaning against a chair, with a faint dust of
+the old fine soot, just as it used to be, scattered upon the
+hearthstone; the same drawers, whose old jingling brass knobs caught in
+his pinafore, and held him that dark night when he let fall the candle,
+and stood screaming for help; the same shells upon the chimney-piece--
+shells that of old he had held to his ear to listen to the roaring sea;
+even the old rushlight shade--big, and pierced with holes--was there,
+the old shade that used to stand upon the floor in the wash-hand basin,
+and throw its great hole-pierced shadow all over ceiling and wall--while
+each hole formed a glaring eye to stare at him and frighten away sleep.
+
+Familiar sights that made him disbelieve in the lapse of time, and think
+it impossible that he could be standing there an elderly man; for all
+his association with the room seemed those first-formed impressions of
+childhood.  But he cast away the dreamy, musing fit; for he felt that he
+had driven it to the last, and he must look now.  Yes; there was his old
+bed, with the great black-cloth coffin, nearly covered by its lid, now
+drawn down a little from the head.
+
+"Tap-tap, tap-tap," went the blind-lath; while outside shone the sun,
+and through the open window came the cheery twitter of the birds.
+Within the room Septimus Hardon could hear the heavy beating of his own
+heart.  Then again, close behind him, came the sound of hurried
+scuffling beyond the wainscot; then a shrill squealing; and directly
+after, the loud sharp tearing of hungry teeth, gnaw, gnaw, gnaw
+incessantly, for the scared rats had again returned to the charge.
+
+Septimus Hardon roused himself from his stupor, and kicked angrily at
+the wainscot, and once again he heard the hurrying rush of the
+hunger-driven little animals as they fled, and a shuddering sensation
+ran through his veins as he recalled the past.
+
+And now he nerved himself to approach the bed, and stretched out his
+hand to remove the coffin-lid; but for some time he stood with his hands
+resting upon it.  A dread had overshadowed him that he was about to gaze
+upon something too hideous for human eyes to bear; but at last he thrust
+the covering aside, and it fell upon the bed, when, with swimming head,
+he clung to the bedstead for a few minutes to save himself from falling.
+But the tremor passed off, for he was once more roused by the
+indefatigable gnawing of the rats; and he asked himself how long it
+would be before they would work their way through the thin oaken panel,
+and then whether they would attack the coffin.
+
+Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw incessantly, till he once more angrily struck at the
+wall, when the noise ceased.  And now Septimus Hardon strode firmly up
+to the bedside and gazed upon his father's face, not hideously
+disfigured, or frightful to look upon, but pale, calm, stern, with the
+brow slightly contracted, and, seen there in the twilight of that shaded
+room, apparently sleeping.
+
+Dead--not sleeping.  Gone from him without a word, without a sign, of
+forgiveness; leaving him a beggar with a name that was fouled and
+stained for ever in the sight of men.  Gone--taking with him a secret of
+such vital importance; but Septimus Hardon thought not now of all this,
+for his memory was back amidst those early days when his mother was
+living, and his father would relax from his stern fits, so that for a
+while happiness seemed to dwell within their home.  Then came the
+recollection of his mother's death, and the cold indifference into which
+his father had sunk.  Then again all the sorrows and pains were
+forgotten, and the old man's virtues shone forth, as his shabby,
+travel-stained son sank upon his knees by the coffin and buried his face
+in his hands.
+
+The sun streamed through the loose corner of the blind and shone like a
+golden bar-sinister across the kneeling man; the sparrows twittered in
+the eaves, and ever upon the window-frame the blind kept up its
+monotonous tap, tap, tap, at regular intervals, while at times a puff of
+light air made it shiver and shudder from top to bottom.  But, above
+all, came from behind the wainscot the incessant gnaw, gnaw, gnaw, as
+though the rats knew, that their time was short, and that their prey
+would soon be beyond their reach; gnaw, gnaw, gnaw, as though
+splintering off large pieces of the woodwork, while now no
+angrily-stricken blow scared them off; gnaw, gnaw, gnaw, until little
+ragged splinters and chips began to be thrust out beneath the
+skirting-board; then more, and more, and more, till a tiny, light heap,
+that a breath would have scattered, appeared close to a ragged hole.
+Then heap and hole grew larger, and as the noise increased a sharp nose
+was seen moving quickly, as a rat worked vigorously, till, as it
+obtained room to tear away at the board, the heap grew bigger, fragments
+were thrust out hastily into the room, and at last the little archway
+afforded space for the passage of the worker, a sharp-eyed,
+keen-looking, little animal, which, after peering about eagerly for a
+few moments, darted into the room, darted back again, and then renewed
+its attack upon the skirting-board until the hole was enlarged.
+
+Then for a while all was silent, but a keen observer might have detected
+within the darkness the sharp nose of the rat, and the eager glint of
+its watching orbs.  Then came a faint rustle, and the rat seemed to
+glide out into the room; then another head appeared at the hole, and
+another lean, vicious animal was out, but a louder tap than usual from
+the blind sent them darting back to their lair.
+
+Another five minutes and they were out again--one, two, three; another,
+and another, and another--a swarm of rats, savage with hunger; but now
+the loud, chirrupping squabble of a pair of sparrows which settled on
+the window-sill scared the little animals once more, and they fled in
+haste to their corner.
+
+Out again, for all was silent; first one peering into the room, with its
+black, bead-like eyes scanning the place, then darting back at some
+false alarm, but out again directly, followed by its fellows, till there
+was a swarm once more, now running a few feet, now darting back to the
+hole; and still Septimus Hardon knelt, as he had knelt for hours,
+motionless beside his father's coffin.
+
+The golden bar shone into and across the room, a bar-sinister no longer,
+for it played upon the features of the dead, seeming to illumine them
+with a smile; the sparrows twittered in the eaves, the faint whistle of
+a carter, cheering his way with some old minor strain, was heard from
+the road; the blind still tapped softly and shuddered from top to
+bottom; but the gnawing sounds from the skirting-board had ceased, and
+the kneeling man remained motionless by the bedside.
+
+Tap, tap, tap, in a strange warning way, as the shuddering motion of the
+old blind continued.  Warning taps, as if softly made by unseen
+watchers--signals to rouse the kneeling figure whose face was buried in
+his hands, and whose worn, lean fingers touched the black-cloth of the
+coffin; taps that now grew louder, for there was a faint, scratching
+noise, as of little vicious claws passing over a counterpane.
+
+Volume Two, Chapter II.
+
+MEETINGS.
+
+With something like the wondering pleasure that must have been felt by
+the first photographer who applied his developing liquid to a sensitised
+plate and then saw spring out by magic, as it were, first faint, then
+stronger lines, feature by feature, the lineaments of a beautiful face,
+gazed old Matt Space upon Lucy Grey as Time, that wonderful developer,
+caused her day by day to take more and more the aspect of a beautiful
+woman.  Yesterday almost it seemed to him that she was a mere girl, a
+child; but the transition had been rapid.  True, hers was a time of life
+when the bud is seen to expand rapidly; but here there had been forcing
+powers at work.  In fact, in quiet self-dependence, thought, and her
+managing ways, Lucy had been for years a woman, and the friend and
+counsellor of her mother in many a sore trial.  Familiarity with sorrow,
+poverty, her step-father's struggles, and their life in the busy streets
+of London, had all tended to develop the mind of Lucy Grey, who might
+truly be said never to have known a girlhood: nurse to her little sister
+and brother in sickness and health, attendant of her ailing mother,
+housekeeper, cheerer of Septimus Hardon's misery, and now busy worker
+for the family's support, it were strange indeed if she had not stepped
+as it were from child to woman, for in such cases as hers years seem
+secondary.
+
+But the years had not been stationary, for Lucy Grey was now seventeen,
+and the old printer used to gaze with pride upon the fair girl, who
+chose him gladly for her companion to and from the warehouse for which
+she worked.
+
+But Matt was angry and annoyed, for he had been made the half confidant
+of a secret which galled and worried him.  Twenty times a day he vowed
+that he would have no more of it; and at such times the consumption of
+his snuff was terrible.  There was hardly a lamp-post in Carey-street to
+which he had not fiercely declared that he would "split," nodding
+mysteriously the whole while; but night after night, when he met the
+appealing look of Lucy, all his resolutions faded like mist in the sun,
+and he would whisper the next post he passed that he was getting to be a
+fool in his old age.
+
+The old man had carried the letter he received to Lucy, giving it to her
+at dinner-time, while Mrs Hardon was lying down; and then furtively
+watched the eager looks, the flushing cheeks, and tear-wet eyes, as the
+reader devoured the contents.
+
+"You'll be here to-night, Mr Space?" said Lucy, looking up.  "You'll go
+with me?"
+
+"Old Matt Space, miss, is your humble servant, and he'll do what you
+tell him; but he don't like that at all.  He don't like secrets;" and
+the old man pointed to the note.  "Why not tell her?" and he nodded
+towards the inner room.
+
+"No, no," whispered Lucy hurriedly.
+
+"All right, miss, all right.  I'll be here at seven.  Be taken bad, I
+suppose, and slip off for an hour."  And at the appointed time the old
+man hurried from the office where he was employed, at the great risk of
+being told that he would be wanted no more, and accompanied Lucy to
+where in the dusk of evening, she stood talking to the dark,
+showily-dressed woman, whose agitated, mobile countenance made the paint
+upon her cheeks look weird and strange.  She had hold tightly of Lucy's
+hand, and more than once old Matt saw her kiss it fondly, clinging to it
+as if it were her last hold upon innocence and purity.
+
+Twice during their interview the old man advanced, signing that it was
+time they went, by many a hasty jerk with his thumb; but the appealing
+looks he encountered sent him muttering back to his former post beneath
+a lamp, where he stood watching uneasily.
+
+And old Matt had something to watch, too; for twice he saw the
+villainously-countenanced Mr Jarker slink by on the opposite side of
+the way, trying very hard to appear ignorant of a meeting taking place,
+but failing dismally, for from time to time his head was turned in the
+direction, besides which many a passer-by paused to gaze, with something
+like effrontery, upon the sweet, candid face of Lucy, while more than
+one seemed disposed to turn back.  All this troubled the old man, and
+made him redouble his watchfulness as he walked a little nearer to the
+speakers; but he did not see that, some fifty yards down the street,
+standing in a doorway, there was another watcher, from beneath whose
+broad white brow a pair of keen grey eyes were fixed uneasily upon the
+group, with a troubled, puzzled expression.
+
+"God--God bless you!" whispered the woman; "you must go now, my
+darling!" just as a well-dressed man sauntered back, cigar in hand, and,
+slightly stooping, addressed some observation to the startled girl; when
+old Matt, who had been watching his movements and followed close behind,
+suddenly shouldered him on one side, and so vigorously, that he stepped
+into the road to save himself from falling.  Then there was a shout from
+a passing cabman, a half-uttered cry, and the daintily-dressed lounger
+was rubbing the marks of a muddy wheel from his dark trousers, while old
+Matt, with a gruff "Come along, miss!" drew Lucy's arm through his own,
+and with a short, sharp nod to her companion, marched her off.
+
+But Matt did not turn back to see the next change in the scene, or he
+might have looked upon Mr William Jarker crossing the road and speaking
+to the dark woman, who replied fiercely and shortly, as she turned from
+him in an abrupt manner, but only to return and say a few words quietly
+ere she hurried off.  Then the city dandy, recovered from his fright,
+followed the steps of old Matt and Lucy, till a firm hand was laid upon
+his shoulder, when turning, he encountered the calm, fixed gaze of a man
+of some one- or two-and-thirty, dressed as a clergyman.
+
+"Stand back, sir, or I give you into custody for insulting that young
+lady," he said, in quiet, hard, measured tones.
+
+"Young what?" was the reply; but there was a something so firm and
+convincing in the look of the keen grey eyes upon him, that, muttering
+inaudibly, the fellow shrank back, and was soon lost in the passing
+crowd.
+
+The Reverend Arthur Sterne then looked hastily round, to see that Lucy
+Grey had passed down the next street, to whose corner he hurried, where
+he could see her nearly at the bottom, with old Matt striding fiercely
+along.  He then turned to look for the woman who had been Lucy's
+companion, but she had disappeared.  However, he walked hastily in the
+direction she had taken, and searched eagerly for some distance, now
+thinking that he caught sight of her bonnet on this side, now upon that,
+but always disappointed; several times he was about to return, but a
+delusive glimpse of some figure in the distance led him on, till, tired
+and disheartened, he turned to reach his apartments, when he
+encountered, first, the ill-looking countenance of Mr William Jarker,
+who made a sort of slouching attempt at a bow, and directly after, a
+quiet-looking individual, with a straw in his mouth and his hands in his
+pockets, whom Mr Sterne passed without notice, though he had recognised
+the birdcatcher, whose wife he had from time to time visited.  But Mr
+Sterne was not aware that he had been followed by the ruffian, as a
+bull-dog would follow his master, or a hound his quarry--though it is
+disgracing the latter simile to use it.  Nor was Mr Jarker aware that
+that quiet-looking individual had been following him in turn till he was
+once more about to track the curate, when for a moment he and the quiet
+individual stood face to face, apparently without seeing one another;
+but it was observable that Mr Jarker immediately went off in quite
+another direction, while, after slowly twisting his straw and winking to
+himself, the quiet man slowly took the same route as Mr Sterne.
+
+Volume Two, Chapter III.
+
+ANOTHER FUNERAL.
+
+Septimus Hardon leaped to his feet, as suddenly a key turned and the
+bedroom-door opened; there was a sharp scuffling noise, as of a swarm of
+rats leaping hurriedly from the bed, and tearing over one another, in
+their haste to reach the hole; a wild shriek from a woman, a heavy fall,
+and then all was again silent.
+
+As soon as he could recall his scattered energies, Septimus Hardon
+raised the woman's head and bathed her face, when she soon opened her
+eyes and sat up, gazing at him with a horrified aspect.
+
+"Hush!" he said softly; "don't be alarmed.  My name is Hardon; I came to
+see my father for the last time.  I think I used to know you in the
+town?"
+
+"O, yes; I remember you now, sir," stammered the woman; "but you gave me
+a dreadful turn."
+
+"Hush!  Come down-stairs now," whispered Septimus, and he motioned her
+to follow him to the door.
+
+The woman was about to obey, but, glancing round the room, she pointed
+to the freshly-gnawed wood and the heap of chips.
+
+Septimus shuddered, and they went together and closed the coffin-lid.
+
+"Stop a minute, sir, please," said the woman--a poor cottager's wife
+from the town, who followed the same road in Somesham adopted by Mrs
+Sims of Lincoln's-inn,--"stop a minute, sir, please, and I'll be back
+directly."  The poor thing trembled so that her teeth chattered, as she
+hurried away; but she returned in a few minutes with a huge black cat,
+which struggled from her arms and ran, with dilated eyes, towards the
+rats' hole, where it softly couched, motionless but for the writhings of
+its lithe tail, as it sat there watching for the coming of its enemies.
+
+There were funeral cake and wine upon the table below, and an extra
+supply of the former was cut up and sealed in squares of paper, bearing
+a couple of verses of a psalm, and the pastrycook's name and address as
+a serious advertisement.
+
+After waiting a couple of hours, most of which he spent wandering about
+the old house, Septimus Hardon took his old place in the little
+dining-room, opposite to the sealed-up bureau and cupboards.  The
+undertaker and his man had arrived, and soon after came Doctor Hardon's
+rival, who had been called in to the deceased.  The undertaker knew
+Septimus and bowed; the surgeon, too, knew him again and shook hands,
+not being at all surprised to see him there; while he invited him to
+dinner before he should leave the town.  But although Doctor Hardon, who
+came soon after, well knew Septimus Hardon, he _was_ surprised to see
+him there, and did not shake hands, but started as though someone had
+struck him a violent blow.  Mr Keening--Keening and Keening--then
+entered the room, when the gentlemen all took wine in a heavy,
+impressive way, and talked in a low tone about matters as far removed as
+possible from the purpose for which they had met together.
+
+Then came the undertaker to ask in a subdued way if any gentleman wished
+to go up-stairs; but no gentleman save the son wished to go; and he
+stole away to stand and gaze for a few moments upon the calm pale
+features, and then returned to where the undertaker was distributing
+gloves of the best black kid, asking the size each gentleman took with a
+smooth oily courtesy.  Scarves were then produced of the richest and
+stiffest corded-silk, cloaks were tied on, and as each mourner was
+dressed for his part of the performance, he was inspected all round, and
+from top to toe, by the undertaker before he was allowed to reseat
+himself.  Then more wine, and more subdued conversation followed,
+interrupted by the grating of wheels upon the gravel drive.  Heavy
+footsteps overhead now; trampling; someone slipping upon the stairs, and
+the balustrade heard to creak loudly as an exclamation was heard; a
+shuffling noise; more footsteps heavily descending; a sharp pattering of
+feet on the passage oilcloth, and much rustling past the room-door,
+followed by an interval of a few minutes, and the noise of wheels going
+and wheels coming; and then the undertaker stood bowing in the open
+door, and motioned Septimus Hardon to follow.
+
+This was almost too much for Doctor Hardon, who had ordered that
+everything possible to make the funeral impressive should be done.  The
+large hearse and two mourning-coaches had been hired expressly from the
+county-town; velvet and ostrich plumes were in plenty; and, as chief
+mourner, the doctor had reckoned upon a very imposing spectacle, one
+that should to a certain extent erase the horrors of his brother's end,
+and help to raise him, the doctor, in the estimation of the inhabitants
+of Somesham.  But now this was spoiled by the coming of the shabby, worn
+son, towards whom the undertaker had leaned in the belief, in his
+ignorance, that he was the chief mourner.
+
+Septimus rose, and moved towards the door, while Doctor Hardon hesitated
+to obey the beckoning finger of the undertaker; but the dread of drawing
+attention to his tremor made him more himself, and, putting a
+white-cambric kerchief to his face, he followed his nephew, to be
+directly after shut up with him in the mourning-coach.  But Septimus
+noticed him not, as he sat stern and with knitted brow, no muscle
+betraying the wild emotions struggling within.
+
+The surgeon and solicitor followed in the next coach; and then the
+funeral procession moved slowly off towards the town, making as great a
+show as the undertaker's strict adherence to his employer's orders could
+effect.  Doctor Hardon said he wished to keep up appearances for his
+dear brother's sake; but he had not reckoned upon the presence of the
+stern, careworn man by his side, and he shrank into his corner of the
+mourning-coach, angry, but at the same time fearful lest a scene might
+ensue which should damage his reputation in the good town of Somesham;
+besides, it would have been so painful to the feelings of his three
+daughters--he only thought of three, even though one was married and two
+resided at a distance.  Nothing could have been more unfortunate than
+the appearance of Septimus at such a time, and during the silent ride
+the doctor's wishes were anything but loving towards his nephew; while
+upon reaching the church the gall of bitterness was made more bitter,
+for the doctor again found himself made of secondary importance by
+Septimus, who seemed to have roused himself into action for the time,
+and strode on in front, close behind the coffin, to take his place in
+the church so crowded with familiar recollections.  There, bowed down in
+the same pew, but with very different thoughts, uncle and nephew
+listened to the service ere they stood together by the bricked vault
+prepared for the remains of old Octavius, and here again the doctor
+seemed to have shrunk into a nonentity, for every eye was fixed upon the
+shabby mourner by his side.
+
+The clergyman had concluded, and, closing his book, was slowly walking
+away; the clerk had followed, and at the church-gate the foremost
+mourning-coach stood waiting, with a crowd of children and idlers
+around, the hearse being drawn up at a distance, already half denuded of
+its plumes by one of the deputies of the furnisher.  There was a crowd,
+too, thickly clustered amidst grave and tombstone in the churchyard, for
+plenty of interest attached to the death of old Octavius Hardon, and the
+people of Somesham seemed bound to see the matter to the end.
+
+Nothing now remained for the mourners but to take a last glance at the
+coffin and come away.  Septimus had stood for a few moments looking down
+into the vault, with the stern aspect of resolution fading from his
+face, to give way to one of helpless misery, when, turning to leave, he
+encountered the mourning brother advancing with drooping head and raised
+handkerchief to take his farewell look.
+
+Septimus Hardon shrank back as from a serpent, and made room for his
+uncle to pass; but the next moment a sudden rage possessed him, and,
+stepping forward, he laid a hand upon the doctor's shoulder, whispering
+a few words in his ear.
+
+Hastily confronting his nephew, the doctor turned, when, shaking a
+threatening finger in his face, Septimus exclaimed: "Hypocrite!  I
+know--" But before he could finish the sentence, the doctor started back
+as if to avoid the threatening hand; his foot slipped upon the very edge
+of one of the boards, and the next moment, before a hand could be
+stretched out to save him, he fell with a crash into the vault.
+
+For a while no one moved, a thrill of horror running through the
+assembled crowd; but soon help in plenty was there to raise the fallen
+man from the coffin upon which he lay, apparently senseless, and amidst
+a buzz of suggestions the sexton nimbly descended, rope in hand, and,
+slipping the strong cord around the doctor's chest, he was dragged out
+and borne to the waiting coach.
+
+Septimus, shocked, and almost paralysed at the effect of his threatening
+gesture, stood for a few minutes looking on, till, seeing relief
+afforded to the fallen man, he turned slowly away, people giving place
+right and left to allow him to pass.  On reaching the second coach, he
+hastily disencumbered himself of his trappings of woe, and threw them to
+the astonished man at the door, who had never before witnessed such
+unseemly conduct at a funeral.  Then, after another hasty glance towards
+the crowd around his uncle, Septimus strode off in the direction of the
+County Arms; while, gaping, talking, and wondering, the people slowly
+dispersed, saving such as followed the coach to the doctor's residence
+in the High-street, where they hung about, clinging helplessly to the
+iron railings, and staring at the dining-room windows, until Mr Brande,
+the surgeon, and Mr Keening, the solicitor, came out together, looking
+very important, and walked down the street; when several of the railing
+barnacles followed at a distance, as if the gentlemen had brought out a
+printed account of the gossip-engendering scene in their pockets ready
+for distribution.
+
+With his mourning habiliments Septimus Hardon seemed to have cast off
+the interest the crowd might be supposed to have taken in him; for no
+one followed the thin shabby man in dusty clothes and battered hat, as
+he strode on, till abreast of the old inn, where he paused, as if about
+to enter; but the next moment, shaking his head wearily, he walked on,
+and was soon past the first mile-stone on his way to the great city.
+
+Volume Two, Chapter IV.
+
+AFTER A LAPSE.
+
+"Do, sir?" exclaimed old Matt, pausing in his occupation of pulling the
+string to make a lathen figure throw out arms and legs for the
+delectation of little Tom,--"do, sir?  Why, what I've always told you,
+and you say the parson's told you,--go in for it, you've nothing to
+lose; so if anything happens, you must win.  A year last spring now
+since I come running in here with that para thinking I'd made your
+fortune for you, sir; and now--Look there, what you've done, you've
+pulled one of his legs off!"--This in a parenthesis to the little boy
+between his knees.--"And where are you?  Certainly, you get on a bit
+with the writing, sir; but if it was me I couldn't have settled down
+without making him prove his words."
+
+"But, you see," said Septimus, looking up from his copying, "I'm not
+clever, I'm not a business man; and what could I do without money for
+legal advice?  It's a sad life this; and ours is, and always was, a
+miserable family, and my uncle's too.  Look at him: his children are
+always away, while Agnes came to us through some love-affair with the
+assistant, and soon after I came away she disappeared, and has never
+been heard of since.  Did you speak?"
+
+"No," said Matt, whose face was puckered up, while he had been trying to
+catch the eye of Lucy, who sat at the window busily preparing some work
+for a bright new sewing-machine which had lately been supplied to her
+from the warehouse where she was employed.
+
+"He has the money," continued Septimus, "but that can't compensate for
+the loss of his child.  Poor Agnes!"
+
+"Don't speak of her," exclaimed Mrs Septimus angrily, "she was a very
+weak, bad woman, and--"
+
+"Hush!" said Septimus sternly, "we are all weak; and who made us
+judges?"
+
+Mrs Septimus fidgeted about in her easy-chair, looking nettled and
+angry as she sat near the window, while with flushed cheek Lucy bent
+lower and lower over her work, once only catching Matt's eye, when the
+old man looked so alarmingly mysterious that the flush upon her face
+deepened, and she rose and left the room.
+
+"You see, sir," said Matt, continuing a conversation that had evidently
+been broken off, "it's been let go by so long now, when steps ought to
+have been taken at once.  No offence meant--you won't be put out if I
+speak plain?"
+
+Septimus shook his head, and went on copying.
+
+"You see," said Matt, "you ought to have gone to Doctors' Commons, and
+entered a something against your uncle, and done a something else, and
+had a lawyer to engage counsel, and then this precious uncle of yours
+couldn't have touched the property till the matter had been tried in the
+Court of Probate; when, of course, you must have come out with flying
+colours.  But here, you see, you do nothing; first letting one month
+slip away, and then another, and all the while he goes to work, gets
+uninterrupted possession, sticks tighter and tighter to it, and for
+aught you know, he's spent it all by this time.  You ought, you know, to
+have carried on the war at once."
+
+"And about the sinews?" said Septimus drearily, without raising his
+head.
+
+"Blame them sinews!" cried the old man; "they're about the tightest, and
+hardest, and toughest things in the whole world.  It seems to me, you
+know, sir, thinking it over--and I've had it in bed with me scores of
+nights--it seems to me that your uncle rather reckoned on his meeting no
+opposition; and on your--snuff, snuff, snuff," muttered the old man in a
+confused way, as he fumbled about in his pockets.
+
+"Say it out, Matt," said Septimus with a sad smile, "my weakness--no
+doubt of it, for he could never have believed his own words."
+
+"Well, that was the word, certainly, sir," said Matt; "and after all
+your fuss, I don't know that a man's any the better for being strong,
+mind you.  I wasn't going to say weakness, for I was hanging fire for a
+word that meant the same with the corners rubbed off a bit; but there
+wasn't letter enough in the case to make it up."
+
+"Can't help it, Matt," said Septimus, removing a hair from his pen by
+wiping it upon his coat-tail, and then smearing his forehead with his
+inky fingers, ready for Lucy, who entered the room directly after, to
+take his careworn head upon her arm, wet a corner of her handkerchief
+between her rosy lips, and then wipe away the obstinate smear--Septimus
+the while as still and patient as possible, till the fair girl concluded
+her performance with a kiss, when he went on with his task.  "Exors--
+ecutors--and assigns," muttered Septimus, writing.  "Can't help it,
+Matt, I suppose it's my nature to be weak."
+
+"And let everyone kick you," said Matt to himself.--"Well, sir," he
+continued aloud, "it's my belief that this uncle of yours, not to put
+too fine a point upon it, is a rogue.  He's a deep one, that's what he
+is; but then, you know, he isn't the only deep one in the world, and if
+you'd begun when you should have done--there, I won't say so any more,"
+he exclaimed hastily, for Septimus made an impatient movement.  "Now,
+you see, you've taken this sudden whim--very well, sir, all right--we've
+talked you into it, say then--and you mean now to see if you can't go on
+with the matter.  Better late than never, say I; so now, how does it
+stand?  He has possession, and that's what they call nine points of the
+law; and he's had possession for above a year, and you haven't taken a
+step to dispute his right.--Well, I can't go into the thing without
+speaking of the rights and wrongs of it, can I?" exclaimed the old man
+in an injured tone, for Septimus shuffled nervously in his seat.
+
+"There, go on!" said Septimus.
+
+"But, there, p'raps I'm making too free," said the old man, snatching at
+the string so angrily that he broke the other leg of the figure he had
+brought the child.--"Never mind, my man," he whispered; "I'll bring you
+such a good un next time I come."
+
+"Go on, Matt," said Septimus quietly; "you ought to make allowances for
+me."
+
+"So I do, sir, so I do--heaps," cried the old man eagerly.
+
+"We have not so many friends," continued Septimus, laying down his pen
+and stretching out his hand, "that we can afford to behave slightingly
+to their advice, even if it is unpalatable."
+
+Old Matt took the proffered hand, and shook it warmly, before going on
+with his subject.
+
+"Well, sir," said Matt, "you say he told you out flat that you were a--
+a--well, you know what I mean."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Septimus drearily, for he had so familiarised himself
+in thought with the word, that it had ceased to bring up an indignant
+flush to his cheek.
+
+"Well," said Matt, "then the whole of our work--I say `our,' you know--"
+
+Septimus nodded.
+
+"The whole of our work consists in proving him false."
+
+"Exactly," said Septimus, sticking his pen behind his ear; "but how?"
+
+"Documentary evidence," said the old man, "that's it; documentary
+evidence," and he took snuff loudly.  "Marriage stiffikits, baptism
+registers, and so on.  Let's see; I don't think there was any regular
+registration in those days.  Now then, to begin with, sir.  Where were
+your father and mother married?--that is, if they were," muttered the
+old man in what was meant for an undertone, but Septimus heard the
+words.
+
+"O yes," he said quietly, "they were married in the City."
+
+"Very good," said Matt.  "Then suppose we get a copy of the marriage
+stiffikit, sworn to and witnessed, how then?"
+
+"Well, that proves the marriage," said Septimus.
+
+"To be sure," said Matt; "but then you'll find he bases his claim upon
+your being born before.  You don't think he denies that your father and
+mother were married?  He don't, does he?"
+
+"No," said Septimus wearily, as he opened a pocket-book and drew out a
+frayed and broken letter, which had separated here and there in the
+folds from frequent reference.  "You are right, Matt," he said, after
+reading a few lines.  "The marriage register would be no good."
+
+"Yes, it would," said Matt; "it's documentary evidence, and it will be
+one brick in the tower we want to build up; so don't you get sneezing at
+it because it ain't everything.  It will be one thing; and so far so
+good, when we get it.  You see it's a ticklish thing, and before you put
+it in a solicitor's hands--a respectable solicitor's hands, for cheap
+law's the dearest thing in Lincoln's-inn--you must have something to
+show him.  Now, so far so good, only recollect your uncle's on firm
+ground, while as yet you're nowhere.  Now say we go to a good solicitor.
+`Were you born in wedlock?' says he.  `Yes,' says you.  `Now then,'
+says he, `prove it.'"
+
+Septimus sighed, and began to wonder whether his uncle was right.
+
+"Now, then," said Matt, "family Bible with birth in, eh?"
+
+"We had one, full of plates," said Septimus, recalling the old Sunday
+afternoons, when he had leaned over the table, amusing himself with the
+engravings; "but there were no entries in it, only my grandfather's
+name.  I fancy, though, now you mention it, my father had a little
+pocket-Bible with some entries in, but I never took particular notice."
+
+"Rotten reed--a rotten reed," said the old man.  "You are not sure; and
+even if you were, your uncle's been foxy enough to hunt the place over
+and over, and that book's gone up the chimney in smoke, or under the
+grate in ashes, long enough ago.  No will, you say?"
+
+"Not that I could hear of," said Septimus.
+
+"We might, p'r'aps, find the nurse, or doctor, or some old friend; but
+then, unless they can bring up documentary evidence, 'tain't much good.
+You know, when old folks are made to swear about things that took place
+fifty years ago, people shake their heads and think about failing
+memories, and so on.  You see we must have something strong to work
+upon.  If we could get the date of your birth, and the marriage
+stiffikit, we should be all right, shouldn't we?"
+
+"Yes, they would prove all we want," said Septimus.
+
+"Exactly so," said Matt; "and if we couldn't get the date of your birth,
+how about date of baptism?"
+
+"That would do just as well," exclaimed Septimus.
+
+"No, it wouldn't," said the old man, "without it's got in how old you
+were when the parson made a cross on your forehead--eh?"
+
+Septimus was damped directly.
+
+"It's no use to be sanguine, you know, sir.  What we've got to do is to
+expect nothing, and then all we do get is clear profit.  Now, where were
+you baptised--do you know that?"
+
+"Yes," said Septimus.
+
+"Well, that's all right, if it contains the entry of your age at the
+time, but we won't be sure; and if it does, you see if your uncle don't
+bring someone to swear it's false, and that they nursed you a
+twelvemonth before you really were born.  Most likely, you know, there'd
+be half-a-score done at the same time as yours, and they never asked
+your age.  I don't say so, you know, only that perhaps it was so.  Now,
+what do you call your birthday, sir?"
+
+"Tenth of January 17--," said Septimus.
+
+"Very good, sir; but then, that's only what you say, mind, and a bare
+word's not worth much in a court of law when a case is being tried.
+`'Tis,' says you.  `'Tisn't,' says your uncle, who's rich, and
+prosperous, and respectable, and has the money, and lives in a big
+house, with plenty of well-to-do friends round him.  `Prove your case,'
+says the judge to you; and mind you, sir, this is the ticklish point; it
+ain't a question of who's to have your father's money.  He's got it, and
+it's a question of your turning him out.  So, `Prove your case,' says
+the judge.  `You've left this man in possession for a year, and now you
+say he does not hold the property lawfully.  Prove your case.'  `Can't
+my lord,' says you--`no documentary evidence.'  And now do you know what
+the judge would say?"
+
+Septimus shook his head dismally.
+
+"`Judgment for the defendant'--that's your uncle, you know."  And then,
+as if highly satisfied with his logical mode of putting the case.  Matt
+snapped his fingers loudly after a large pinch of snuff.
+
+"But," said Mrs Septimus, "my doctor told me that he always kept a
+register of all the births he attended."
+
+Mrs Septimus said no more, for old Matt's fist went down upon the table
+with a bang that made some of the ink leap from the stand, but
+fortunately not upon Septimus Hardon's clean sheets of paper.
+
+"I beg your pardon, ma'am!" cried Matt, hurriedly sopping up the ink
+with his wisp of a handkerchief; "but blame me if I don't wish I'd been
+born a woman! trust them for getting to the bottom of everything.  Why,
+Lord bless you, sir, there you are--there's the case in a nutshell!--
+that's the matter hit right in the bull's-eye!  Why didn't you begin
+about it before?  You're right as a trivet.  There's the date of the
+marriage, and there's the doctor's book--such-and-such a day,
+such-and-such a time; medicine and attendance, two pound twelve
+shillings and sixpence.  Hallo!" exclaimed Matt, scratching his head,
+"that comes very pat; where did I hear those words before?  But there,
+look here, sir; I think we've got hold of the right end of the tangle,
+and here it is.  You go down to Somesham and tell nunky how it stands.
+`Here we are,' says you, `and now give up peaceable and quiet, and I'll
+say nothing at all about what's gone by.'  Of course he won't, and
+begins to talk big about kicking out of the house, and all that sort of
+thing.  `Two can play at that,' says you; and as he won't be civil, he
+must have it hot.  Back you come; put it in a decent solicitor's hands;
+with your good documentary evidence out he goes--in you go; and my
+di'mond has a pony with a long silky tail; Miss Lucy a carriage, and
+missis here an invalid chair, and old Matt to push it--eh, ma'am?"
+
+"But about finding the doctor," said Septimus sadly.
+
+"Well, yes--true, to be sure," said Matt, over a fresh pinch of snuff;
+"but I think we can manage that part, sir.  Don't you see, we can tell
+our road now we've got our line cut out; and we've only got it to do.
+There's some pye in the case, of course, but we can correct as we go on,
+eh?  There's a doctors' directory, and we can soon find him."
+
+"There's a hitch directly," said Septimus.  "I don't know his name."
+
+"Phillips!" exclaimed Mrs Hardon excitedly.
+
+"There we are again," cried Matt; "who'd be without a good partner?"
+
+"But how do you know?" said Septimus.
+
+"I remember in your mother's last illness," said Mrs Septimus, "that
+she told me how she longed for her old doctor, for she felt sure Mr
+Thomas Hardon did not understand her complaint; and that was the first
+cause of disagreement between your father and Dr Hardon.  I heard your
+father tell him afterwards that he had killed his Sister, and to leave
+the house."
+
+"But the name?" said Septimus, anxious to change the conversation.
+
+"Phillips--the same as my own; and that was why it made an impression
+upon my memory."
+
+"Talk about cards to play, sir!" cried Matt, "why, that's winning: your
+partner has played the leading trump."
+
+Septimus Hardon rose from his seat to begin anxiously pacing up and down
+the room.  He could see plainly enough the value of the position he was
+nerving himself to fight for, but he shrank, as he had shrunk again and
+again, from the exposure certain, whether he succeeded or not.
+Vacillating in the extreme, he was at one time telling himself that it
+was his duty to try and clear his mother's fame, though the next moment
+would find him shrinking from the task, while his brow wrinkled up as he
+sighed and looked from face to face, lastly on that of old Matt, who,
+having relieved himself of the child, was taking snuff extravagantly,
+and chuckling and rubbing his hands in anticipation of the coming
+triumph.
+
+"Now, sir," he said upon catching the troubled man's eye, "about this
+doctor."
+
+"Dead before now," said Septimus.  "Allowing him to have been quite
+young for a doctor, he would be eighty now, and how few men reach that
+age!"
+
+"Pooh! nonsense!" cried Matt; "scores do--hundreds do--ninety either.
+Eighty?  Pooh! nothing! youth, sir.  Why, I'm past sixty, and see what a
+boy I look, eh?  Why, I believe Miss Lucy would pick me out from scores
+to take care of her,--wouldn't you, miss?"
+
+Lucy looked up from her work, nodded and smiled.
+
+"But now business," said the old man.--"Where did you live, sir, before
+you went down in the country?"
+
+"Finsbury," said Septimus.
+
+"And you were born there, eh?"
+
+"I believe so," said Septimus, wondering in his own mind whether it was
+worth all this trouble, perhaps to gain nothing.
+
+"To be sure," cried Matt; "and now we shall soon find it out.  Brass
+plate on the door--`Mr Phillips, Surgeon;' big lamp sticking out, red
+bull's-eye one side, green t'other, like railway signals; `danger' and
+`all right' to the people in the street."
+
+Old Matt rose to go, after appointing to meet Septimus on the following
+morning to take the first steps for obtaining the "documentary evidence"
+so necessary for their future plans.
+
+"Ten to the moment, you'll see me, sir," said Matt.  "Good afternoon,
+ma'am, and--Ah, Miss Lucy's gone!"
+
+But Septimus only sighed, and sat down once more to his weary copying,
+sheets of which he so often spoiled by letting his thoughts wander from
+the task in hand.
+
+"No more business in him, sir," said Matt as he descended the stairs,
+"than--Ah, here we are, then!  Thought I was going away without seeing
+you again, miss;" for he had encountered Lucy upon the stairs.
+
+"Hush!" she whispered, "I only wanted to ask you to please be careful.
+I was so frightened this afternoon."
+
+Old Matt buttoned up his coat as tightly as if his honour were inside
+it, pursed up his lips, nodded his head seriously, and then laying one
+finger upon the side of his nose he shuffled off, looking as mysterious
+as if he were the repository of state secrets, and ready to bid defiance
+to all the racks and thumbscrews of the good old times.
+
+Lucy Grey stood for a minute gazing after the shabby figure, and then,
+turning to ascend, she coloured slightly upon finding herself face to
+face with the old Frenchwoman who occupied the attic floor, and who now,
+with a sneering smile upon her thin lips and an inquisitive light
+peering from her half-closed eyes, looked at her, and then passed softly
+and silently as a cat down the stairs without saying a word.
+
+Volume Two, Chapter V.
+
+HOMES IN LONDON.
+
+Bennett's-rents still upon that day--a bright breezy day--when for a
+whole hour the god that kisseth carrion shone down into the court to
+lick up every trace of green damp and moisture from the foul, broken
+pavement.  There was a pump in Bennett's-rents, and a channel ran down
+the centre of the paving, whose broken slabs rose and fell in wet
+weather to the passing step, spurting out little founts of dirty water,
+while the channel itself was choked, from being turned into a receptacle
+for the superfluous odds and ends of the inhabitants--to wit: potato,
+turnip, and carrot peelings; the shells of whelks, periwinkles, mussels,
+and crabs; egg-shells were at times seen there, as also the nacreous
+covering of the oyster, but not as the debris of banquets, since these
+latter were only brought in by the grotto-building children, and the
+former thrown out by the jobbing bookbinder's-finisher when robbed of
+their albumen for purposes of trade.  Heads, tails, and the vertebra of
+plaice, or the real Yarmouth bloater, were common objects of the shore.
+Babies had been seen in that channel, which possessed a certain charm
+from its safety, since the child that rolled in rolled no farther.  It
+was the favourite resort of the small fry of the neighbourhood,--a
+neighbourhood that rejoiced in small children, and big babies of an
+elastic nature, which prevented falls and contusions from stopping their
+growth,--for the refuse in that channel could be raked about and poked
+at with bits of stick to the formation of dams, where walnut cock-boats
+could be sailed, or mussel-prows launched; and occasional visitants from
+as far off as Lower Series-place had been known to perch there and peck,
+for the channel was famed for its ample supply of impromptu playthings
+for the little savages of the place.  A large lobster-claw found therein
+had formed the coral of Dredge minor, whose father worked at
+Covent-garden Market, and never slept at home by night.  Little Jenny
+Perkins wore a necklace composed of periwinkle-shells; while
+whelk-shells, stuck at the end of thick pieces of firewood, and
+previously filled with peas, formed rattles that were indestructible.
+
+Like Lower Series-place, Bennett's-rents was famous for its prolific
+inhabitants.  Long as daylight lasted, there was a dense small
+population of half-dressed aborigines, hooting, racing about, playing,
+and quarrelling, aided in their efforts by levies from others of the
+rags of Lincoln's-inn.  Why called Bennett's-rents was not obvious,
+though it might have been from the hideous cracks and seams in the
+frowzy old houses, whose windows looked as if they had been in a
+brown-paper-and-rag war, in which glass had suffered a terrible defeat,
+and submitted now, with an ill grace, to the presence of the new
+settlers.
+
+But the children did not have the channel all up themselves, for at
+early dawn the pigeons from the housetops paid it visits, and, in spite
+of broken, dissipated-looking chimney-pots, falling-out mortar, and
+shattered, soot-covered tiles, there were many soft-eyed, iridescent--
+hued birds dwelling upon the roofs of the houses in Bennett's-rents;
+and, more especially upon Sunday mornings, an observer from some high
+edifice might have seen dirty-faced men, in hairy caps, rising out of
+trap-doors in roofs, like "Mr F's aunt" through the factory-floor, and,
+when half-way out, and forming prominent objects among little
+wildernesses of sooty, lath-made cages and traps, amusing themselves by
+waving red-cotton handkerchiefs tied to the end of sticks, for the
+purpose of keeping their flights of pigeons high in air.
+
+A rumour had spread through the court that something was to be seen in
+the neighbouring street, when out trooped the children from the narrow
+entrance, and comparative silence reigned, till place and echoes were
+alike mocked by a man with his cry of "Rag--bone!" but his was labour in
+vain: he took nothing further from the Rents to glut the shop of Mrs
+Slagg, and, reaching the end of the place, he departed with his bag
+still light, and the court knew him no more that day, though there were
+rags enough in every house to have filled his sack again and again, and
+drawn down the index of his portable weighing-machine to the furthest
+limit.  Still there was another sound to be heard, for Mr William
+Jarker, of the heavy jaw, flattened nose, and general bull-dog aspect,
+was above his attic, whistling to his pigeons, as the Reverend Arthur
+Sterne stood by the reeking channel, gazing up into the strip of blue
+sky above his head, and following the circling flight of the birds as he
+muttered sadly to himself, "O, that I had wings like a dove; for then
+would I fly away and be at rest!" but the next instant he smiled sadly,
+as he recalled work undone, duties to perform, and then thought of the
+rest and fate of these birds, wondering, too, how it came that they
+should form the "fancy" of the roughest of the rough.  Then he paused
+with his foot upon the threshold of the house where Septimus Hardon
+lodged, for there, in the hot, close London court, came gushing down in
+tones of purest liquid melody, the wild, heaven-gate trill of a lark:
+"Tsweet-tsweet-tsweet-tsweet!" every trill an intoxicating, magic
+draught, drunk in by the ear, and--a very opium--bearing the hearer far,
+far away to green fields, shady woodlands, golden hill-sides, and
+sparkling brooks; louder, louder and more rapturous, thrilling the air
+around; rising and falling, echoing from far and near, but ever sweet
+and pure, even joyous at times; and praise the song of the wild bird as
+you may, there is that in the trill of its caged brother in some close
+London alley that shall sound the sweeter in the sadness engendered by
+the surroundings, for it whispers of brighter scenes and purer homes,
+bearing you with it far, far away from the misery where you stay.
+
+Even Bill Jarker ceased waving his handkerchief, took his short, black
+pipe from his mouth, and listened; the curate thought of days when, with
+a soft white hand in his, he had wandered over the downs, listening to
+those ever-sweet English notes; while from the window above was
+stretched forth the fair, shapely head of Lucy Grey, her eyes sparkling,
+and lips apart, as if to command silence; and then, as the curate looked
+up, there was a slight start, a faint flush of colour in the girl's pale
+cheeks, and her head was quickly withdrawn.
+
+A tall, slight, careworn man was the curate of Saint Magdalen's; hair
+sprinkled with grey, deep lines crossing his brow, and yet there was a
+smile of ineffable sweetness lingering about his mouth--a smile which,
+far from telling of weakness, whispered of sorrow, tenderness, patience,
+and charity.
+
+The few minutes of tranquillity had passed.  The door of the house stood
+open--as, in fact, did that of every other house in the
+thickly-inhabited court; the children began to troop back, Bill Jarker
+took to his pipe and pigeon-flying, and with thoughts trembling between
+the ideal and the real, the curate entered the door before him.
+
+It was not a Saturday, or he would have found the ascent of the stairs
+troublesome; but he well knew the manners and customs of the natives,
+and abstained from making his visits on that day of the week, for on
+Saturdays there was a rule carried out (one set in force by the
+landlady), that the attics cleaned down to the second-floor, the
+second-floor to the first, the first-floor to the passage, which last
+portion fell to the lot of the occupants of the parlours, front and
+back--two families who took it in turns to make the dirt upon the said
+passage wet, and then to smear it from side to side with a flannel, so
+that the boards always wore the aspect of having been newly hearthstoned
+with a lump of brown clay, if the simile will stand.  Consequently, upon
+this seventh day of the week, when the lodgers were busy, and Mrs Sims
+could be heard sniffing as she "did Hardons' bit," the journey upwards
+was dangerous, for if the traveller avoided the snares and pitfalls
+formed by divers pails and brown pans, or even, maybe, a half-gallon can
+from the public at the corner if the pail was engaged; if he saved
+himself from slipping on the sloping, wet boards, and fell over no
+kneeling scrubber in a dark corner, he most certainly heard low-muttered
+abuse heaped upon his head for "trapesing" over the newly-cleaned
+stairs--abuse direct or indirect, according to the quality of the
+traveller.
+
+Not, then, being a Saturday, Mr Sterne entered the house known as
+Number 7--by tradition only, for the brass number, after being spun
+round by one pin for some months, suddenly disappeared--passed along to
+the worn stairs, two flights of which he ascended, creaking and cracking
+the while beneath his weight, and every one sloping, so that it seemed
+hanging to the wall to save itself from falling.  He paused for an
+instant upon the landing opposite Septimus Hardon's rooms, and listened
+to the rapid beating "click-click" of Lucy's sewing-machine; then up two
+more flights; and again, without pause, up two more, which groaned with
+weakness and old age; while sunken door-frames, doors that would not
+shut, and various other indications, told of the insecure condition of
+the house.  And now once more he paused upon the top landing, where some
+domestic spider had spun a web of string, stretching it from rusty nail
+to rusty nail, for the purpose of drying clothes--garments now,
+fortunately for the visitor, absent.
+
+Here fell upon the ear the twitterings of many birds, and the curate's
+face again lighted up as the song of the lark once more rang out loud
+and clear, apparently from outside the window of the attic before whose
+door he stood.  But his reverie was interrupted by a sharp shrill voice,
+which he could hear at intervals giving orders in a quick angry tone.
+Then followed the lashing of a whip, a loud yelp, or the occasional
+rapid beat of a dog's tail upon the floor.  At last, turning the handle
+of the rickety door, the visitor entered.
+
+"_En avant!  Halte la!  Ah-h-h! bete_!  O, 'tis monsieur," were the
+words which greeted Mr Sterne as he entered the sloping-roofed attic,
+one side of which was almost entirely window--old lead-framed lattice,
+mended in every conceivable way with pasted paper and book-covers; and
+there, in the middle of the worn floor, stood the thin, sharp-faced
+woman of the cellar, holding in one hand a whip, in the other a hoop;
+while two half-shaven French poodle-dogs crouched at her feet.  Seated
+by the open window surrounded by birdcages, conspicuous among which was
+that of the lark whose notes enlivened the court, was a sallow,
+dark-haired, dark-eyed youth, eager-looking and well-featured, but sadly
+deformed, for his head seemed to rest upon his shoulders, and the leg
+twisted round the crutch which leaned against his chair was miserably
+attenuated.
+
+"_Bon jour_!  How are the pupils, Madame la Mere?" said the curate,
+taking a broken chair and seating himself.
+
+"_Bete, bete, bete_!" hissed the woman, making feigned cuts with her
+little whip at the crouching dogs, which yelped miserably as they shrunk
+closer to the boards.  "Ah, what you deserve!" she said.
+
+"And how are the birds, Jean?" continued the visitor, addressing the
+young man, who was looking at him half-askance.  "Your lark gives me the
+heartache, and sets me longing for the bright country."
+
+The curate had touched the right chord, for the youth's face brightened
+into a pleasant smile directly.
+
+"Does he not sing!" he said, with a slight French accent; and he leaned
+towards the cage where the bird, with crest erect, was breasting the
+wooden bars, and gazing with bright bead-like eyes up at the blue sky;
+but as soon as the cripple's finger was inserted between the bars, the
+bird pecked at it playfully, fluttered its wings, and then, with head on
+one side, stood looking keenly at its master.
+
+"O yes, he sings," hissed the woman; "but he is obstinate, is Jean; he
+should sell his bird, and make money, and not let his poor _mere_ always
+keep him."
+
+"Pst, pst!" ejaculated Jean, frowning upon his mother; but she only
+stamped one foot angrily, and continued:
+
+"He is _bete_ and obstinate.  The doll down-stairs with the
+needle-machine loves the bird, and she would buy it, and it is worth
+four shillings; but Jean will that his mother seek his bread for him in
+de street, wis de stupid dogs; and they are _bete_, and will not learn
+nosing at all.  _Allez donc_!"
+
+As the woman grew more voluble in her speech, she passed from tolerable
+English to words with a broader and broader accent, till the command
+given at last to the dogs, each word being accompanied by a sharp cut of
+the whip, when the animals rose upon their hind-legs, drooped their
+fore-paws, and then subsided once more into their natural posture, but
+now to bend their fore-legs, as if kneeling.  Then they rose again,
+drooped, and afterwards meekly crossed, their paws, winking their eyes
+dolefully the while, and, with an aspect of gravity made absurd, walked
+slowly off to separate corners of the room, where they again went down
+upon all-fours, and then sat wistfully winking at and watching their
+task-mistress.
+
+"See, then!" she exclaimed, in her harsh shrill voice.  "They would not
+do it, though I try thousand time; but now the task is ended they walk.
+Ah-h-h!"
+
+The cut in the air which accompanied the exclamation might have fallen
+upon the dogs themselves, for the miserable little objects yelped as
+they saw it fall, and, as if moved by one muscle, laid their heads
+against the whitewashed wall till, seeing themselves unnoticed, they
+curled up, but never for a moment took their blinking eyes off their
+mistress.
+
+Amidst much muttering, and with many frowns and short sharp shakes of
+the head, while her lips were pressed closely together, the woman, after
+much fumbling in her pocket, drew forth a partly-knitted stocking; when,
+sitting down, she began furiously clicking her needles, watching the
+while, with half-closed eyes, the curate and her son.
+
+"So, then, you will not sell your lark, Jean?" said Mr Sterne.
+
+The cripple knit his brow slightly, shook his head, and then drawing a
+long, delicate, girlish finger over the bars of his favourite's cage,
+the lark set up its crest, twittered, fluttered its wings, and again
+pecked at the finger.
+
+"No, no, no," he said softly; "why does she complain?  I would work if I
+could; but I sell and make money of these, though it seems cruel to keep
+them shut up, and they beat themselves against their prison-bars to get
+out into the free air and the green woods.  And I'm sorry for them when
+the little breasts grow bare, and the feathers lie in the bottom of the
+cage; and she says--_ma mere_ there--that I am _bete_."
+
+The woman seemed to compress every feature, as she shook her head
+fiercely, and went on with her knitting.
+
+"Look!" continued Jean softly, as he smiled and pointed rapidly from
+cage to cage, "canaries, linnets, redpoles, goldfinches, and a
+blackbird.  The thrush broke his heart with singing, they said--the
+birdcatchers--but it was not that: I know why.  I have sold four birds
+this week; but I keep the lark; he is a favourite."
+
+"Bah!" ejaculated the mother softly; "but he is _bete_;" when, as the
+curate turned, she was bending over her knitting, shaking her head and
+frowning, while she stabbed fiercely again and again at the worsted ball
+till it was transfixed by her needle, when she replaced the ball in her
+pocket, where the first drag she gave at the thread drew the ball from
+its place and it rolled on the floor.  "Ah! good dog, _bon chien_!" she
+cried, as one of the poodles ran forward, caught the errant ball, and
+bore it to his mistress, returning immediately to his corner; but not to
+be unrewarded, for the woman rose, and forcing up the sliding socket,
+caused a little scrap of tallow-candle end to shoot out of a
+tin-candlestick as from a gun, when, receiving permission, the dog
+snatched it from the floor, and devoured the savoury morsel in its
+corner.
+
+"But he should sell the lark, monsieur," said the woman.
+
+"Hush, _ma mere_," said the cripple angrily; "the bird is not to sell."
+
+The mother shrugged her shoulders, and clicked her needles furiously.
+
+"We all have our loves and likes, madame," said the curate quietly.
+
+"O, yes, yes, you rich; but we poor?  No.  We must live, and eat and
+drink, and have clothes; and Jean, there, has ruined me in medicine.
+What do we want with favourites, we poor?  But that they help to keep
+us, I would sell the dogs.  We are all slaves here, we poor; and we sell
+ourselves, our work, our hands, our beauty, some of us,--is it not so?
+and you rich buy,--or we starve.  It is a bad world for us old and ugly.
+I am not like the doll upon the floor down-stairs."
+
+A sharp angry glance passed between mother and son, as the former rose
+from her seat, and with a short quick step left the room, driving back
+the dogs as they tried to follow; while it was evident that her words
+jarred painfully upon the curate.  "Our beauty, some of us," seemed to
+ring in his ears again and again, and he could not help associating
+these words with the latter part of her speech.
+
+"How do you get your birds, Jean?" said the curate, making an effort,
+and breaking the silence.
+
+"From him," said the young man, nodding across the court to where Bill
+Jarker sat half out of his trap-door, still keeping up his pigeons, for
+a stray was in sight, and he was in hopes of an amalgamation, in spite
+of the efforts being made by neighbouring flights.  "From him: he goes
+into the country with his nets--far off, where the green trees wave,
+while I can only read of them.  But the book; did you bring the book?"
+
+Thinking of other birds breasting their prison-bars: now of the fair
+bright face that he had seen at the window below, now of that of the
+cripple before him, the curate produced a volume from his pocket, and
+smiled as he watched the glittering eyes and eager aspect of the young
+man, as, hastily grasping the volume, he gazed with avidity upon the
+title.
+
+"You love reading, then, Jean?" said the curate.
+
+"Yes, yes," cried the cripple.  "What could I do without it?  Always
+here; for I cannot walk much--only about the room.  Ah, no!  I could not
+live without reading--and my birds.  She is good and kind," he
+continued, nodding towards the door; "but we are poor, and it makes her
+angry and jealous."
+
+The lark burst forth with one of its sweetest strains as it heard its
+master's voice, and then, rising, the curate left the attic, closing the
+door after him slowly, and peering through the narrowing slit to look
+upon the cripple eagerly devouring a page of the work he had brought.
+
+The Frenchwoman was upon the first landing, and saluted the curate with
+a sinister meaning smile as he passed her and thoughtfully descended.
+
+"But he is mean, I tell you," cried _ma mere_ angrily, as she once more
+stood beside her son.  "What does he give us but words--words which are
+worth nothing?  But what is that?  My faith, a book he brought you?  You
+shall not read; it makes you silly, and to forget your mother, who does
+so much for you.  But I will!"
+
+"Ah!" cried Jean, painfully starting from his seat, and snatching back
+the volume, and just in time, for the next moment would have seen it
+flying from the open window.
+
+"Then I will sell the lark when you are asleep," cried the woman
+spitefully.
+
+The youth's eyes glittered, as, with an angry look, he hissed between
+his teeth, "Then I will kill the dogs!"  But the anger passed from his
+countenance in a few moments, and smiling softly, he said, "No, no, _ma
+mere_; you would not sell my poor bird, because I love it, and it would
+hurt me;" and then, casting down her knitting, the woman sprang across
+the room, throwing her arms round the cripple, and kissing him
+passionately, calling him by every endearing name, as she parted the
+hair from his broad forehead, and gazed in his bright dark eyes with all
+a mother's fondness.
+
+But the curate heard nothing of this--nothing but the loud song of the
+lark, which rang through the house--as slowly and thoughtfully he
+descended the worn and creaking stairs, while the woman's words seemed
+to keep repeating themselves in a slow measured way, vibrating in his
+ears, and troubling him sorely with their cutting meaning; and more than
+once he found himself forming with his lips, "Our beauty, some of us."
+
+Volume Two, Chapter VI.
+
+SHADES.
+
+The lark was silent once more; and now from the open door of the
+first-floor, rising and falling, with a loud and rapid "click, click,
+click," came the sound of Lucy Grey's sewing-machine--"click, click,"
+the sharp pulsations of the little throbbing engine, whose needle darted
+in and out of the soft material held beneath it by those white fingers.
+But as one of the stairs gave a louder crack than ordinary, the machine
+stopped, and the quiet, earnest, watching face of Lucy Grey appeared at
+the door, which she now held open, bowing with a naive grace in answer
+to the curate's salutation.
+
+"My mother wished me to watch that you did not go down without seeing
+her to-day," said Lucy apologetically; for Mrs Hardon was far from well
+that week, and, since the long discussion that morning between old Matt
+and Septimus, she had been bemoaning her lot in a weak spiritless way,
+till, finding all his attempts at consolation of none effect, Septimus
+had taken his hat and gone out for a walk with his boy.  To-day Mrs
+Septimus would be tolerably well; to-morrow, in a weak fit, exacting
+sympathy from husband and child in a way that would have wearied less
+loving natures.  Now she would refuse food, upon the plea that it could
+not be afforded for her; consolation, because she was a wretched,
+miserable burden; and medicine, because she was sure that it would do
+her no good.
+
+"Be patient with her, my darling," Septimus would say to Lucy--a
+needless request.  "Think of the troubles she has gone through, and then
+look at me."
+
+"What for?"  Lucy would cry, laughingly prisoning him by seizing his
+scrubby bits of whisker in her little fingers, and then kissing him on
+either cheek,--"what for?  To see the dearest father that ever lived?"
+And then memories of the past would float through Septimus Hardon's
+brain as he smoothed down the soft braided hair about the girl's white
+forehead.  But there were tearful eyes above the smiling lips, and
+Septimus Hardon's voice used to tremble a little as he said, "God bless
+you, my darling!"
+
+"Our beauty, some of us," seemed vibrating in the curate's ears as Lucy
+spoke; but the bright look of welcome, the maidenly reserve, and sweet
+air of innocence emanating from the fair girl before him, seemed to waft
+away the words, and, returning to the present, he followed her to where
+Mrs Hardon was lying down.  Drawing a chair to the bedside, he seated
+himself, to listen patiently to the querulous complaints he had so often
+heard before--murmurings which often brought a hot flush to Lucy's cheek
+as she listened, until reassured by the quiet smile of the curate--a
+look which told her how well he read her mother's heart, and pitied her
+for the long sufferings she had endured,--sickness and sorrow,--which
+had somewhat warped a fond and loving disposition.
+
+Perhaps it was unmaidenly, perhaps wrong in the giver and taker, but,
+seated at her sewing-machine in the next room, Lucy would watch through
+the open door for these looks, and treasure them up, never pausing to
+think that they might be the pioneers of a deeper understanding.  She
+looked forward to his visits, and yet dreaded them, trembling when she
+heard his foot upon the stairs; and more than once she had timed her
+journeys to the warehouse so that they might take her away when he was
+likely to call; while often and often afterwards, long tearful hours of
+misery would be spent as she thought of the gap between them, and bent
+hopelessly over her sewing-machine.
+
+A long interview was Mr Sterne's this day, for Mrs Hardon was more
+than ordinarily miserable, and had informed him two or three times over
+that she was about to take to her bed for good.
+
+"But it does not matter, sir; it's only for a little while, and then
+perhaps I shall be taken altogether.  I'm of no use here, only to be a
+burden to that poor girl and my husband.  But for me and the different
+fancies I have, that poor child need not be always working her fingers
+to the bone.  But she will grow tired of it, and Mr Hardon's health
+will fail, and our bit of furniture will be seized; and I'm sure I'd
+rather die at once than that we should all be in the workhouse."
+
+"But," said Mr Sterne, smiling, "don't you think matters might just as
+likely take the other direction?  See now if it does not come a brighter
+day to-morrow, with a little mental sunshine in return for resignation;"
+and he whispered the last few words.
+
+Now there was some truth in what Mrs Septimus Hardon said; for had it
+not been for her liking for strange luxuries when her sick fits were on,
+Lucy need not have worked so hard.  At other times Mrs Hardon was
+self-denying to an excess; but when in bed, probably from the effort of
+complaining, her appetite increased to a terrible extent, and she found
+that she required sticks of larks roasted, fried soles, oysters, pickled
+salmon, or chicken, to keep her up, while port-wine was indispensable.
+But if she had preferred ortolans to larks, game and truffles to chicken
+and oysters, if the money could have been obtained she would have had
+them.  And many a day Septimus and Lucy dined off bread-and-cheese, and
+many a night went supperless to bed, that the invalid's fancies might be
+gratified.
+
+The conversation went on, and Lucy at her work more than once raised her
+eyes; but when her mother's complaints were like the last, she bent her
+head, and the tears she could not restrain fell hot and fast upon the
+material before her.
+
+"What have I to hope for?" moaned Mrs Hardon, taking refuge in tears
+herself when she saw how Lucy was moved.  "What have I to hope for?"
+
+"Hope itself, Mrs Hardon," said the curate firmly.  "You suffer from a
+diseased mind as well as from your bodily ailment; and could you but
+come with me for once, only during a day's visiting, I think you would
+afterwards bow your head in thankfulness even for your lot in life, as
+compared with those of many you would see."
+
+"Yes, yes, yes, I know," sobbed the poor woman; "but don't be angry with
+me.  I know how weak and wicked I am to murmur, when they study me as
+they do; but when I am like this, this weary time comes on, I am never
+satisfied.  Don't--don't be angry with me."
+
+Mrs Hardon's sobs became so violent that Lucy hurried to the bed and
+took the weary head upon her breast; when, drawing his chair nearer, the
+curate took the thin worn hand held out so deprecatingly to him.
+
+"Hush!" he whispered; and as he breathed words of tender sympathy that
+should awaken her faith, the mother looked earnestly on the sad smile on
+the speaker's face, a smile that mother and daughter had before now
+tried to interpret, as it came like balm to the murmuring woman, while
+to her child it spoke volumes; and as her own yearned, it seemed to see
+into the depths of their visitor's heart, where she read of patience,
+long-suffering, and crushed and beaten-down hopes.
+
+All at once a heavy step was heard upon the stairs, and Lucy started
+from her mother's side as a loud rough noise called "Mrs Hardon!  Mrs
+Hardon!"  But before she could reach the door of the other room, the
+handle rattled, and the curate could hear a man's step upon the floor.
+
+"Hush!" exclaimed Mrs Hardon, "it must be a letter;" and involuntarily,
+as he rose from his chair to leave, the curate had to stand and listen,
+gazing upon Lucy, who stood in the middle of the next room, now flooded
+with light from the sunshine which streamed through staircase window and
+open door, and he could not but mark the timid face of the girl as she
+stood wrapped as it were in the warm glow.
+
+But it was no letter, only Mr William Jarker, who, invisible from where
+the curate stood, was telling Lucy in familiar easy tones that his
+"missus wanted to see the parson afore he went."
+
+As Mr Sterne stepped forward and saw the ruffian's leering look and
+manner, and the familiar sneering smile upon his coarse lips, he
+shivered and turned paler than was his wont before knitting his brows
+angrily, while, troubled and confused, Lucy looked from one to the other
+as if expecting Mr Sterne should speak.
+
+But the look made no impression upon Mr Jarker, who directed a
+half-laugh at Lucy, and then, nodding surlily towards the curate, he
+turned, and directly after there came the sounds of his heavy descending
+steps as he went down, leaving the room impregnated with the odour of
+the bad tobacco he had been smoking.
+
+"Our beauty, some of us," rang in the curate's ears once more, and like
+a flash came the recollection of the meeting he had witnessed in the
+street.  His mind was in a whirl with thoughts that he could not
+analyse; while as his eyes met those of Lucy, the girl stood with face
+aflame, trembling before him--looks that might have meant indignation or
+shame, as, with the smile still upon his lip, but so altered, the curate
+turned to go; but he stopped for a moment at the door, where out of
+sight of Mrs Hardon, he could again confront the shrinking girl with a
+long inquiring gaze; but trembling, agitated, with lips void of
+utterance, though parted as if to speak, Lucy stood back, her eyes now
+cast down, and, when she raised them once again, he was gone.
+
+Then, with the colour slowly fading, to leave her face ashy pale, Lucy
+stood with outstretched hands, gazing at the closed door.  Something
+seemed rising in her throat which she tried to force back, and it was
+only by an effort that she kept from crying out, as, falling upon her
+knees by a chair, she buried her face in her hands, choking down the
+sobs, lest her mother should hear; though she, poor woman, slowly turned
+her face to the wall, ignorant of her child's suffering, and slept.
+
+And now again came ringing down the sweet clear trill of Jean's lark,
+till, worn out with the impetuosity of her grief, the poor girl raised
+her head, smoothed back her dark hair, and half-sitting, half-kneeling,
+listened to the strain.
+
+The song ceased as suddenly as it had commenced, and the void was filled
+by a long, loud whistling; when, with lips set firm, and angry
+countenance, Lucy rose and stepped lightly across the room to her
+sewing-machine by the open window, where, raising her eyes, she could
+see Mr Jarker, pipe in hand, presenting himself once more as a
+half-length study, as he whistled and cheered on his flight of pigeons,
+which sailed round and round, till the whirring and flapping of their
+wings brought up early days of her childhood, and Lucy seemed to gaze
+upon some half-forgotten woodland scene in the country, with ring-necked
+stockdoves crowding on a bending branch after their return from flight.
+
+But no such visions floated before the mind's eye of Mr Jarker, for his
+pipe was out; so, ceasing his whistle, he proceeded to ignite a match
+upon the blackened pipe-bowl, screening the tiny flame between his hands
+till the tobacco was in a glow--all the while in happy oblivion of a
+pair of indignant flashing eyes that rested upon him till their
+brightness was once more dimmed by tears.  Heedless, too, was Mr Jarker
+of the strange sardonic leer directed at him from the attic-window
+opposite his own, where _ma mere_, with her dim grey eyes, glanced at
+him from time to time as she busily knitted, or stabbed her ball of
+worsted; for Mr Jarker was evidently interested in what was taking
+place beneath him, as he glanced through his trap from time to time.
+And now once more, with rapid beat, rose the "click, click, click," of
+Lucy's sewing-machine, as, flashing in and out of the fine material the
+needle laid in its chain-like stitches; but Lucy Grey's finely-stitched
+lines were far from even that afternoon.
+
+Volume Two, Chapter VII.
+
+WITH MRS JARKER.
+
+Always at the call of the poor of his district, the Reverend Arthur
+Sterne sighed as, slowly descending towards the court, he tried to drive
+away the words that seemed to ring in his ears; but in vain, for the
+next moment he was muttering them once more; and the thought came upon
+him that, for many months past, he had been gazing at the Hardon family
+through a pleasant medium--a softening mist, glowing with bright
+colours, but now swept away by one rude blast, so that he looked upon
+this scene of life in all its rugged truthfulness.  He told himself that
+the mist had once opened to afford him a glimpse, while again and again
+he smiled at the folly which had led him to expect romance in a London
+court.  The pleasant outlines and softened distance, toned down by the
+light mists, were gone now, and he gazed upon nothing but the cold, bare
+reality.  It was strange; but he did not ask himself whether the bitter
+blast might not have brought with it some murky, distorted cloud, whose
+shade had been cast athwart the picture upon which, he now woke to the
+fact, he had dearly loved to gaze; and still muttering to himself, he
+slowly went down step by step.
+
+"So young, so pure-looking!  But who could wonder, living in this
+atmosphere of misery?  But what is it to me?" he cried angrily; for
+strange thoughts and fancies came upon him, and his mind was whispering
+of a wild tale.  The thoughts of the past, too, came--of the happy days
+when, in early manhood, he had loved one as fair and bright--one whom
+another bridegroom had claimed, as having been betrothed to him from her
+birth.  The cold earth had been her nuptial-bed, and he, the lover,
+became the gloomy retired student until his appointment to a city
+curacy, and the devotion of his life to the sorrows of the poor.  But
+again he bit his lip angrily, at making the comparison between the dead
+and the living.  What connection was there between them, and of what had
+he been dreaming?  What indeed!  After years upon years of floating down
+life's stream,--a calm and sad, but placid journey, unruffled but by the
+sorrows of others,--he now awoke to the fact that unwittingly he had
+halted by a pleasant spot, where he had been loitering and dreaming of
+something undefined--something fraught with memories of the past; and
+now he had been rudely awakened and recalled to the duties he had
+chosen.
+
+He passed into the court, and stood for a few moments gazing at where
+there was a cellar opened, with half a score of children collected to
+drop themselves or their toys down; while, being a fresh arrival upon
+the scene, a cluster of the little ones began to get beneath his feet,
+and run against him, or give themselves that pleasant cramp known as "a
+crick in the neck," by staring up in his face; but he freed himself from
+his visitors by hastily entering the opposite house.
+
+More than one door was opened, and more than one head thrust out, as Mr
+Sterne ascended the staircase; but in every instance there was a smile
+and a rude curtsey to greet him, for he had that happy way of visiting
+learned by so few, and his visits always seemed welcome.  Those who,
+moved by curiosity, appeared, were ladies, who directly after became
+exceedingly anxious concerning their personal appearance.  Aprons, where
+they were worn, were carefully stroked down; hair was smoothed or made
+less rough; sundry modest ideas seemed to rise respecting a too great
+freedom of habit where a junior was partaking of nourishment; but
+everywhere the curate met with cordial glances, till he once more stood
+in front of an attic and entered.
+
+Mr Sterne had so far only encountered females; for "the master" of the
+several establishments was out at work, or down in the country after the
+birds, or at the corner of some street where there was a public-house,
+at whose door he slouched, in the feeble anticipation that work would
+come there to find him, or that the landlord or a passing friend would
+invite him to have "a drain;" but Mr William Jarker was, as has been
+seen, at home, though, with the exception of his legs, invisible; for he
+was among his pigeons, emulating the chimneys around by the rate at
+which he smoked--chimneys smoking here the year round, since in most
+cases one room formed the mansion of a family.
+
+But Mr Sterne had not come to see Jarker, but at the summons of his
+wife, in whom some eighteen months had wrought a terrible change.  She
+sat wrapped in an old shawl, shivering beside the few cinders burning in
+the rusty grate--shivering though burned up with fever, the two or three
+large half-filled bottles of dispensary medicine telling of a long and
+weary illness.  The wide windows admitted ample light, but only seemed
+to make more repulsive the poverty-stricken place, with its worn,
+rush-bottomed chairs, rickety table, upon which stood the fragments of
+the last meal; the stump bedstead, with its patched patchwork
+counterpane; the heaped-up ashes beneath the grate; the battered and
+blackened quart-pot from the neighbouring public-house standing upon the
+hob to do duty as saucepan; while here and there stood in corners the
+stakes and nets used by Mr Jarker in his profession of birdcatcher.  A
+few cages of call-birds hung against the wall; but Mr Jarker's custom
+was, when he had captured feathered prey, to dispose of it immediately--
+pigeons being his "fancy."
+
+A sad smile lit up the woman's face as the curate entered,--a face once
+doubtless pleasing, but now hollow, yellow, and ghastly; where hung out
+flauntingly were the bright colours which told of the enemy that held
+full sway in the citadel of life.
+
+"I knew you would come, sir," she whispered, letting her thin white
+fingers play amongst the golden curls of a little head, but
+half-concealed in her lap, where one bright round eye as peeping timidly
+out to watch the stranger; and then, as the curate took one of the
+broken chairs and sat beside the sick woman, whenever she spoke it was
+in a whisper, and with many a timid glance at the ladder and open trap
+in the roof, where her master stood, as though she feared to call down
+punishment upon her head,--"I knew you would come; and Bill was easy
+to-day, and come and fetched you, though he came back and said you were
+busy, and would not stop."
+
+"Look alive, there, and get that over!" cried Mr Jarker from the trap.
+"I ain't a-goin' to stand here all day;" and by way of giving effect, or
+for emphasis, this remark was accompanied by a kick at the ladder, and a
+shake of the trap.  Then followed an interval of peace, during which the
+presence of the domestic tyrant was made known only by the fumes of his
+tobacco, which floated down into the room, and made the poor woman cough
+terribly.
+
+Once Mr Sterne was about to tell the fellow to cease, but the look of
+horror in the woman's face, and the supplicating joining of her hands,
+made him pause, for he knew that he would be but adding to her suffering
+when his back was turned.  The open trap seemed to act as a sort of
+retiring-room for Mr Jarker when anyone was in the attic that he did
+not wish to see; but every now and then during the earnest conversation
+with the suffering woman, there came a kick and a growl, and a shake of
+the ladder, which made Mr Sterne frown, and the poor woman start as if
+in dread.  And so, during the remainder of the curate's stay, the
+consolatory words he uttered were again and again interrupted; while at
+last the voice came growling down as if in answer to a statement Mrs
+Jarker had just made:
+
+"Don't you tell no lies, now, come, or I shall make it hot for yer!"
+When in the involuntary shudder the woman gave, there was plainly enough
+written for the curate's reading the long and cruel records of how "hot"
+for her it had often been made.
+
+And now the importunities of the child by her knee aroused the poor
+woman to a forgetfulness of self in motherly cares, when the curate took
+his leave, but in nowise hurried by the savage shake that Jarker gave to
+the ladder--a shake which brought down a few scraps of plaster, to fall
+upon the cages and make the songsters flutter timidly against their
+prison-bars.
+
+Half-way down the stairs Mr Sterne encountered the woman with whom he
+had seen Lucy in the Lane; the woman he presumed to be the mother of the
+child Mrs Jarker had now for some time nursed.
+
+For a moment he stopped, as if to speak; but he remembered the next
+instant that he had no right to question her, and he stood gazing
+sternly at her, while, as she shrank back into a corner of the landing,
+her look was keen and defiant--the look of the hunted at bay.  Once he
+had followed her for some distance, and then perhaps he would have
+spoken; but now the desire seemed gone, and linked together in his mind
+were Lucy, _ma mere_, the ruffian he had left up-stairs, and this woman.
+
+"But what is it to me?" he thought bitterly; and, hurrying down the
+stairs, he stood for a moment at the doorway, heedless of the children
+scampering over the broken pavement--heedless that, with hot eyes and
+fevered cheeks, Lucy had left her sewing-machine and stepped back from
+the window that she should neither see nor be seen--heedless of all
+around; for his thoughts were a strange medley--pride, duty, and passion
+seeking to lead him by different roads.  Then for a while he remembered
+the poor woman he had left, whose leave-taking he felt was near--a
+parting that he could not but feel would be a happy release from sorrow
+and suffering.
+
+At last, turning to go, he cast his eyes towards the open window that
+Lucy had so lately left, when, with knitted brow and care gnawing at his
+heart, he passed out into the street, and walked towards his lodgings;
+but even there, in the midst of the busy throng, where the deafening hum
+of the traffic of the great city was ever rising and falling, now
+swelling into a roar, and again sinking to the hurried buzz of the busy
+workers, ever rang in his ears the bitter words of the old
+Frenchwoman--"Our beauty, some of us!"
+
+Volume Two, Chapter VIII.
+
+DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE.
+
+"Now, sir," said old Matt, as he appeared, brushed-up and smart for the
+occasion, punctual to his appointment; "now, sir; here we are--baptism,
+marriage, and doctor.  First ought to come last, you know, only Saint
+Mark's Church comes before Finsbury, don't you see?"
+
+Septimus Hardon rose from his writing with a sigh, for he was far from
+sanguine of success, and would fain even now have given up his task
+entirely, so feeble seemed to him the likelihood of any advantage
+accruing; but in obedience to instructions from Mrs Septimus, old Matt
+rattled on about the future, thoroughly doing his duty in keeping the
+shrinking man to his part; and so they started.
+
+They made their way out into Holborn, and then up Skinner-street, past
+the frowning walls of Newgate, and into the street of the same name;
+when old Matt could not get along for stopping to admire the various
+joints displayed, and giving his opinion upon their merits.
+
+"Here, let's go this way, sir," he said, turning into Warwick-lane.
+"Pretty game this, sir, isn't it?  Slaughtered sheep, and murdered
+novels, and books of all sorts close together.  Authors' sheep's-heads,
+and butchers' sheep's-heads cheek by jowl.  Rum thing for both trades to
+get so close together.  Regular bit of philosophy if you like to take it
+up, sir; stomach and brains, you see, food for both--books for the
+brains, meat for the stomach; and then backwards and forwards, one feeds
+the other, and one couldn't get on without the other; and here they are
+situated close to the very heart of the City.  Look at the circulation
+going on--wonderful, ain't it, sir?"
+
+Old Matt stopped by a slaughter-house, not to pity the simple animal
+just killed, but to point out sundry choice portions that might be had
+bargains, if they could have availed themselves of the opportunity.
+
+"Wouldn't do, though, to go about such a job as we have on hand carrying
+a sheep's-head, would it, sir?" he observed to Septimus.
+
+"No; pray come along, and let's get our task over," exclaimed the
+latter.
+
+"To be sure," said Matt, coming to himself, and the next minute they
+were in Paternoster-row.  "Lots of my old friends here," said Matt,
+stopping short in the middle of the narrow way, to be hustled by boys
+laden with sheets of paper fresh from the press, lads carrying reams, or
+newly-bound works tied between boards; men with blue bags over their
+shoulders heavily laden with books; men with oblong "mems" in their
+hands which they consulted as they hurried from swinging door to
+swinging door, collecting the publications of the different firms.  Once
+the old man was nearly run over by a truck full of type-galleys driven
+by a pair of reckless imps of some neighbouring printing-office; while
+at least four times he came into contact with the fruit-baskets of the
+nymphs in stout boots and flattened bonnets, whose haunt is the
+labyrinth of learning known as "the Row."--"Lots of my old friends
+here," said Matt as his companion looked bewildered, and was thrust off
+the pavement; on to it again; into booksellers' where he did not want to
+go; and once against the muddy wheel of a cab, whose driver roundly
+abused him for nearly getting himself injured.--"Lots of my old friends
+here.  Ah, you needn't mind a bit of pushing, sir--it's a busy place.
+Now, you know, if I liked to hunt about, I could find more than one bit
+of my work here, for I've done things and bits of things that's come out
+in more than half these places.  All sorts of stuff; and what a sight of
+work a man can be put upon in a matter of fifty year, from playbills to
+prayer-books, and down again to penny-a-lining and posters!  Law and
+physic's been my strongest points: but there; I've been on your
+magazines, and newspapers, and three-volume novels, and pamphlets, and
+everything else that's printed on a leaf, 'cept' last dying-speeches and
+halfpenny songs; and I never did get down, quite so low as that.  I've
+taken hold of author's copy so queer that it's made you scratch your
+head and torn the paper t'other way up to see which is tops and which is
+bottoms, and then back again, for you've been as wise as ever.  Talk
+about ants and bluebottles running over the paper with inky feet, that's
+nothing, sir.  You've seen them painter-chaps, sir, graining the
+shetters of shops?"
+
+Septimus, seeing that he was expected to say something, roused himself
+from his brown study, and nodded.
+
+"Well," continued Matt, "you see they have what they call a tool, though
+it's only a flat brush made like a comb, and with that they make lines
+cross and across the panels, all about the same distance apart, and then
+they dab them lightly with a long soft brush to keep the grain from
+looking too stiff and hard.  Well, I've had copy that's looked as if the
+author had used one of these tools dipped in ink, and streaked it across
+and across the paper, and then dabbed it, not with a very soft brush,
+but with a very hard one, shoving in, too, a few smears and blots, just
+to fill up as knots and specimens of cross-grain.  Up one goes to the
+overseer and asks him to help you, giving the other men a side-grin at
+the same time.  He takes it, looks at it, turns it over, and then can't
+make anything of it, though he won't say so; for overseers must of
+course seem to know everything.  So he sticks it back in your hand, and
+says he, `Go and make the best you can of it; for I'm busy.'  Well, you
+go back, and make the best you can of it; puzzles out one word, jumps at
+another, puts in two, and guesses two more, while you make a couple more
+out of the next line fit in somewhere after 'em; and so, one way or
+another, it gets scrambled up, and the proof goes to the reader, who
+cuffs his boy's head because he blunders so over the stuff he can't make
+head nor tail of, though he's as much bothered as his boy; while, though
+some of them are clever, intelligent fellows, some of those readers,
+sir, have about as much imagination as a mop.  They're down upon a wrong
+letter, or bad pointing or spelling, and stick a big qy? against a bit
+of slack grammar, like lightning; but give 'em a take of stuff where the
+author goes a little out of the regular rut, and it bothers them as much
+as the bit of copy I'm talking about.  Well, sir, corrections get made,
+and the proof is sent in to the author, who most likely don't know it
+again; but he sends it back so as one has a better chance of getting it
+together; and so it goes on, backwards and forwards, till it's all
+right, and they write `press' in one corner, when it's printed, and, as
+far as we're concerned, there's an end of it.  Strange ways, ain't they,
+sir?"
+
+Septimus Hardon stared in a bewildered manner at the speaker, but did
+not answer.
+
+"Blest if I think he's heard a word I've said," muttered the old fellow.
+
+"Strange?" said Septimus, rousing himself; "yes, very."
+
+"'Tis, sir," said Matt, who was interested in his subject.  "Now, do you
+know, sir," he continued after they had walked part of the way along the
+Row,--"do you know that if I was younger, I should be for founding a
+society, to be called the `Printers' Spectacle Association,' supported
+by contributions from writers for the press, who by this means would
+supply us with glasses, for often and often they quite destroy our
+sight."
+
+Old Matt's dissertation was put an end to by the driver of one of the
+Delivery carts, when, returning to the matter which had brought them
+from home, the strange couple were soon threading their way along
+Cheapside.
+
+There was but little difficulty in getting access to the registers of
+the old church, and a not very long search brought the seekers to the
+entry, in brown ink upon yellow paper, of the baptism of Septimus, son
+of Octavius and Lavinia Hardon, January 17--; but though the ages of the
+children before and after were entered, by some omission, his was
+absent.
+
+A copy was taken by both, and then they stood once more in the open
+street.
+
+"Just as I told you, sir," said Matt, "isn't it? there's the date; but
+it don't say how old you were."
+
+"No," replied Septimus; "but still it is satisfactory, so far.  Now
+we'll see about the marriage, and then visit Finsbury."
+
+"You know the church?" said Matt.
+
+"Well, not exactly," said Septimus dreamily.
+
+"There are two in the street; but it was at one of them."
+
+"Good," said the old man; and soon after they stood in the street of two
+churches, and, taking the most imposing, they obtained admission to the
+vestry, where, after a long and careful search of the time-stained
+register, they were compelled to give up, for there was no result; while
+the regular way in which the leaves followed proved that none were
+missing.
+
+"Try t'other," said Matt laconically; and soon after they entered the
+damp, mouldy-smelling receptacle of the registers at the second church--
+a quaint, queerly-built place that looked as if architecture had been
+set at defiance when it was erected.
+
+Old Matt was quiet and laconic enough in his speech; but as leaf after
+leaf was turned over, it was evident that the old man was more deeply
+interested than Septimus himself; for he grew so excited, that he was
+quite voracious with his snuff, his nose becoming a very devouring
+dragon of Scotch and rappee, till the supposed date of the marriage was
+neared, when the snuff was hastily pocketed.
+
+"Rayther rheumatic spot this, I should think," said Matt to the sexton,
+so as to appear quite at his ease.
+
+"Well, yes, it _is_ damp," said the sexton, who would have had no
+difficulty in passing himself off as Matt's brother; "but we have a fire
+here on Sundays all through the winter."
+
+"Don't have many berrin's now, I s'pose," said Matt, again bringing out
+the snuff, but this time for hospitable purposes.
+
+"Bless you, no," said the sexton, "ain't had one for years upon years.
+All cemetery work now."
+
+"To be sure, of course," said Matt, trying to converse in a cool
+pleasant way, but with one eye fixed upon the trembling searcher; for
+some of Matt's eagerness seemed now to be transferred to his companion.
+
+"There's a great piece of the book out here," said Septimus
+suddenly--"most of the year before the baptism."
+
+"Torn out, by Jove!" muttered Matt, shaking his head, and looking
+suspicion's self.
+
+"Dessay there is, sir," said the sexton coolly; "the damp here would
+spile the binding of any book."
+
+"But, I say; look here, you sir; here's a good four months gone: no
+Jennywerry, nor Feberwerry, nor March, nor April.  Looks precious
+queer," said Matt.
+
+"Ah, so there is--good big bit gone; all but a leaf here and there."
+And then, to get a better look, the sexton took out an old leathern
+case, drew out his spectacles, replaced the case very carefully, wiped
+the glasses upon the tail of his coat, and then very leisurely put them
+on, a process not directly completed; for, like their master, the
+springs of the spectacles had grown weak, and were joined by a piece of
+black tape, which had to be passed carefully over the sexton's head to
+keep the glasses in their place.  "Ah," he said again, while the
+searchers looked on, astonished at his coolness, "so there is--a good
+big bit gone; but 'tain't no wonder, for the thread's as rotten as
+tinder, and--"
+
+"I say, old un, don't tear any more out," cried Matt excitedly; for the
+sexton was experimentally disposed, and testing the endurance of the
+thread and glue.
+
+"There's plenty loose," said the old sexton, "and I shouldn't be a bit
+surprised if you find a lot more gone."
+
+Septimus Hardon looked at Matt, who returned the look, for the feeling
+of suspicion was now fully shared.  However, they still went on
+carefully searching.
+
+"It's of no use," said Septimus at last, mournfully; "we may as well go.
+I never had any hope."
+
+"Don't be in a hurry, sir," said Matt.  "You know there are other ways
+of killing the cat, as the old saying says; wait a bit.  Looks
+suspicious, certainly," he said, treating himself to a fresh pinch of
+snuff.--"I say, guv'nor, you haven't got the loose leaves lying about
+anywheres, have you?  Not been taken away that you know of, eh?"
+
+The sexton shook his head, thrust his hands to the bottoms of his
+trousers-pockets, shrugged his shoulders to his ears, and then stood
+gazing at his visitors with his spectacles high up on his forehead.
+
+"No," said he, "nobody never meddles with 'em, 'cept a lawyer's clerk
+now and then; and they're very civil, and just copies out something, and
+gives me a shilling, and then goes."
+
+Septimus Hardon took the hint in its first acceptation, while the mouldy
+old sexton removed one hand from his pocket to accept the proffered
+shilling held to him, before his visitors were about to take the second
+part of the hint.
+
+As they moved off through the damp old church, Septimus Hardon wondered
+whether, upon some bright morning half a century before, his father and
+mother had knelt before that altar and been made one.  He sighed as he
+walked on, meeting in the entrance a tall, gentlemanly--looking man who
+was passing in.
+
+"What's to be done next, Matt?" said Septimus, in a dispirited tone.
+
+"Pint of porter and crust o' bread-and-cheese," said the old man
+decidedly.  "I'm faint, sir--got a fit of my chronics; but it's taking
+me the wrong way to-day; I'm hungry, and you must want support.  Keep
+your chin in the air, sir; we can't win every time.  You've had two
+tries this morning, and one's come all right.  That register looks
+suspicious, certainly; but after all you can't even go and swear that
+your old people were married in that church; and even if you could, and
+had the copy of the stiffikit, that ain't all we want, for it don't
+prove that you weren't a year old then."
+
+"Hi!" cried a voice behind them; and upon the cry being repeated, they
+both turned to find that the old sexton was telegraphing them to come
+back, by wagging his head in the direction of the church-door.
+
+"What's up now?" said old Matt when they reached him.
+
+"Parson wants to see you in the westry," was the reply.
+
+Anxiously following the old man, Septimus Hardon found himself in the
+presence of the gentleman he had encountered at the door.
+
+"I think," said he, "that you have been complaining of the bad state of
+our registers, and really we deserve it.  I have only been here a few
+weeks, and have done but little towards getting them right.  However, I
+have quite fifty loose leaves and pieces arranged here ready for pasting
+back, though I can assure you it is no light task."
+
+As he spoke, he took down from a little closet on the wall a heap of
+damp-stained, ragged, worthless-looking paper, and then set himself to
+try and help discover the required name.
+
+"Hardon," he said,--"Hardon, Octavius Hardon and Lavinia Addison.  We'll
+lay those that are done with down here, if you please; for, though they
+do not appear so, the leaves are in a certain order.  Hardon, Hardon,
+Octavius, and Lavinia Addison," he kept on muttering, as Septimus and he
+carefully examined column after column amongst the dilapidated leaves;
+though Septimus progressed but slowly, for his hand trembled and a mist
+swam before his eyes.
+
+"Take a glass of wine," said the curate kindly, producing a decanter and
+glass from the little cupboard; "you seem agitated."
+
+Septimus took the glass with trembling hand, and then resumed his task
+with increased energy, till at last there were not above half a dozen
+leaves to scan, when he uttered an exclamation of joy, for there, upon a
+scrap before him--torn, stained, and almost illegible--was the
+sought-for entry, bearing the well-known signature of his father, and
+the trembling handwriting of his mother.
+
+"Here, here, Matt," he whispered, "look!" and the paper quivered in his
+hands--"`Octavius Hardon, Lavinia Addison,' and signed by her old friend
+Miss Morris."
+
+"Right it is, so far," said Matt, holding his glasses to his eyes wrong
+way foremost, with both hands, "and just a year and a half before the
+baptism.  Now you know, sir, I pitched it pretty strong before now, so
+as you shouldn't expect too much; but it's my belief that, after all
+said and done, we've got enough documentary evidence; and things seeming
+so very regular, if you had begun as you should have done, unless there
+was something very strong on the other side that we can't see through,
+you must have got a verdict.  But then I hardly like for you to try on
+this only; for the law's a ticklish thing to deal with, and though this
+all looks so straightforward, it don't prove against what your uncle
+says, and will bring witnesses to swear."
+
+"But how can he?" exclaimed Septimus, in a whisper.
+
+"Ah," said Matt, refreshing himself after his wont, "how can he?  Why,
+by means of that comical stuff as he's been so anxious to get hold of.
+Why, sir, he could find witnesses as would swear to any mortal thing on
+the face of this earth; they'd almost undertake to prove as you weren't
+born at all, sir.  Mind, I don't say that they'd carry the day, sir; but
+I'm only telling you of what villainy there is in this world, and how
+you must be prepared, even to fighting the dev--I beg your pardon, sir,"
+said Matt bashfully, as he pulled up short, having in his earnestness
+forgotten the presence of the third party.
+
+"I'm sorry to say that there's a great deal of truth in what you
+assert," said the curate quietly; for Septimus was looking at him in an
+appealing way as if expecting that he would demolish all that Matt had
+advanced.  "Suborned witnesses are nothing new in this world of ours."
+
+"Pull out your note-book, sir, and let's take it down," said Matt; and
+as he spoke, he drew out an old dog's-eared memorandum-book and a stumpy
+fragment of lead pencil that would not mark without being kissed and
+coaxed every moment, when he copied the entry most carefully, compared
+it with the original, and then with that just made by Septimus Hardon.
+
+"Really," said the clergyman at parting, "I am extremely glad to have
+met you this morning, and you may depend upon finding us in better order
+at your next visit."
+
+"There has been no trickery there you see, Matt," said Septimus, as they
+stood once more in the street; "all seems straightforward."
+
+"Just so, sir; your uncle seems to have some game of his own that I
+can't quite see through as yet; but stop a bit.  Good sort o' chap that
+young parson.  I'll ask him to dinner some day, though he didn't say,
+`Take a glass of sherry, Matthew Space.'  Then how careful you ought to
+be!  Now I should have been ready to swear that your precious uncle had
+been at them books.  S'pose he ain't so much older than you, sir?"
+
+"Not many years," replied Septimus.  "He was my poor father's younger
+brother.  But now for the doctor!" he said in an elated tone.
+
+"Thanky, sir, but suppose we have the porter and bread-and-cheese first.
+You youngsters are so rash and impatient; and besides, I didn't taste
+that fine old dry sherry, you know.  One thing at a time's the best
+plan, and it seems to me that a little refreshment's the next thing
+wanted.  'Tain't no use to suppose, sir, that because a horse has won
+one race he'll go and polish off the next the same hour.  D'yer see,
+sir?"
+
+Septimus expressed himself as being able to see, and he submitted
+forthwith to his companion's guidance.
+
+Now most people would imagine that Matt entered the first inviting open
+portal that presented itself, where the gorgeously-emblazoned boards
+announced the retailing of So-and-so's entire; but no.  Old Matt seemed
+very particular and hard to please, passing house after house before he
+could meet with one to his satisfaction; and in a quarter of an hour's
+brisk walk a few public-houses can be passed in London streets.  But
+Matt had something else on his mind besides draught stout; and at last,
+when Septimus Hardon's patience was well-nigh exhausted, the old man
+stopped short before a place where the window displayed a notice to the
+effect that the Post-office Directory was at the bar.
+
+"There," said Matt, pointing to the window, "thought me a nuisance now,
+didn't you, sir?  But that's what I wanted.  So now we'll have our stout
+and cheese, and a look at the doctors too."
+
+Seated in the public-house parlour, fragrant with the fumes of flat beer
+and stale tobacco, they were soon discussing the foaming stout and more
+solid refreshments, though Septimus spent the greater part of his time
+poring over the volume he had laid open upon the gum-ringed table--a
+volume that Matt considered would be as useful as a medical directory.
+Surgeons there were in plenty; but only one answering to the name of
+Phillips, and he was practising at Newington.
+
+"Moved there, perhaps," said Matt.
+
+Septimus Hardon shook his head, and read again, "Phillips, EJ, Terrace,
+Newington."
+
+"Stop a bit, sir," said Matt, rising and catching the ring hung from the
+ceiling, and pulling the bell.--"Here, fill that pint again, my man;
+and, I say, got another of these d'rectories anywheres?"
+
+"Yes," said the pot-boy, "there's another somewheres--an old un."
+
+"That's the ticket, my lad, bring it in."
+
+The boy performed the, to him, satisfactory feat of pitching the pot in
+the air, and catching it with one hand as he went out, though the
+performance was somewhat marred by the vessel turning in its flight, and
+announcing its descent by a small frothy brown shower, which sprinkled
+the performer's countenance.  However, he was soon back with the
+refilled measure, and a very dirty, very dusty, and dog's-eared old copy
+of the Directory, with one cover torn off, and a general aspect of its
+having been used for generations as the original London Spelling-book.
+
+Septimus seized the bulky tome, and soon had the right page found; and
+in this volume there was no mention of EJ Phillips of Newington.
+
+"Young beginner," said Matt hollowly; for he had the pewter-vessel to
+his lips.  "Anyone else same name?"
+
+"Two more!" cried Septimus in a husky voice: "Phillips, Thomas,
+Camden-town; Phillips, Nicholas, Chiswell-street."
+
+"Hooray!" cried Matt, thumping down the pewter-pot, so that a portion of
+the contents splashed over into the cheese-dish.  "That's the man we
+want, sir; so finish your crust and cheese, and then off we go."  And
+shrewd old Matt forgot to ask himself in his excitement how it was that
+the name was not in the Directory often years later date, but acted up
+to what he was advising, and, then late in the afternoon, they again
+started on their search.
+
+It was not a very long walk from Walbrook to Chiswell-street; but old
+Matt made very little progress, halting at times as if in pain, while in
+answer to inquiries he only smiled and declared that it was his
+"chronics."  Now he panted and seemed out of breath, then he paused at
+one of his favourite halting-places, but too short of breath to make a
+speech, even had he felt so disposed.  At the last stoppage, induced by
+Septimus Hardon's eager strides, the old man panted out:
+
+"Let's see, sir; you walked down to Somesham, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes," replied Septimus somewhat surprised at the question.  "Come
+along;" for he was now as eager to continue the quest as he had formerly
+been to avoid it.
+
+"That's all very well," said Matt, panting; "but I shouldn't have liked
+to walk with you, and if Chiswell-street had been t'other side the
+square, you'd have had to carry me, so I tell you; and--"
+
+"Is anything wrong?" exclaimed Septimus anxiously, for his companion had
+turned very pale and haggard.
+
+"Not much," he gasped; "better d'rectly--out of breath rather."
+
+But he seemed to grow so much worse, that all thought of farther search
+was forgotten in the anxiety to get the old man to the principal
+thoroughfare, for he stoutly refused to hear of a cab being called;
+though he sank back thoroughly exhausted in a corner of the omnibus,
+when at last the right one passed with room inside.
+
+A quiet cup of tea and an hour's rest seemed to restore the old man, and
+he rose to leave Bennett's-rents, firmly refusing to allow Septimus to
+walk home with him, though it was only by slow stages and great exertion
+that he reached his lodging.
+
+Volume Two, Chapter IX.
+
+THE CURATE AT HOME.
+
+The task of the Reverend Arthur Sterne was weary, and one that might
+have made him sigh had he known no other troubles.  Work, work, work, of
+the most disheartening character for the most part; and it was only in
+rare instances that he could feel in his own heart that his labours had
+been of any avail.  Here he would listen to a hypocritical tale of woe,
+there to a story of real sorrow; now his task would be to try and point
+out some foolish reckless piece of extravagance; then to call to account
+for folly and idleness.  Everywhere there was the same display of live
+to-day, and let to-morrow take care of itself.  Forethought and
+providence seemed to know no home in Bennett's-rents and the
+neighbourhood, perhaps because hope had often been so long deferred that
+the sickened hearts believed in it no more.  Dirt everywhere,
+drunkenness frequently, vice often, with their followings of sorrow,
+repentance, disease, and death.  Years, however, had made him to be
+looked upon as a friend, and his step was always welcomed, while,
+effecting what good he could, he toiled patiently on; fearing no fever,
+dreading no epidemic, but ever ready, he visited the bedside of the
+stricken--the vilest or the most unfortunate--ready to join his prayers
+to theirs for pardon--to point out the long neglected road that should
+have been taken--to teach the ignorant the words they had never known,
+or perhaps forgotten years upon years before.  His was a task that knew
+but little earthly recompense, save the knowledge of duty done; but many
+a parting soul blessed him with lips soon to be motionless for ever, or
+thanked him with those glazing eyes from which the wild despairing look
+had faded, as he knelt in intercession for one whose opportunity for
+better things had never come, but who, born into the misery and
+wretchedness of a great town, had passed in it the life now about to be
+given up at the stern call that knows no refusal.
+
+It was a weary task amidst so poor and wretched a flock; but could the
+curate have been at rest, he would have been happy in the good he
+effected, and the simple confidence now placed in him by those he
+visited.  Even Bill Jarker had of late taken to pulling off his fur-cap
+and picking it when they met; and there was no hypocrisy in the
+salutation, for it was wrung from him by the genuine respect he felt.
+But then the curate was not at rest, for he had now thoroughly awakened
+to the germs which had rooted themselves in his heart, growing more and
+more till his very life was interlaced with the strong fibres.  Now, he
+would deliberately try to eradicate the growth, tearing and lacerating
+himself in his efforts to rid himself of the unbidden guest; but the
+progress he made was slow in comparison with the growth he fought
+against.  Blindly, though, he would tell himself that he had conquered,
+that the last root was torn out, and the door of his heart closed
+against further entrance.  And then, in the pride of his believed
+victory, he would tell himself of how he had been about to lavish riches
+upon one beneath him, and unworthy, when his heart would reply that love
+was a leveller, and laugh to scorn the subtle distinctions of caste;
+reminding him, too, that this maiden had grown up as it were beneath his
+eye, that he had watched her for years, while she was as well born,
+perhaps, as he.  And then, in his heart, there would shoot forth a tiny
+green blade, then there was the opening leaf, and soon again the
+blossom; while roots spread here and there lacing and interlacing
+stronger and stronger than ever, as if he had been by his efforts merely
+preparing the soil for a richer growth of the ever-verdant clinging
+plant that he sought in vain to tear away.
+
+So wearily on, day after day, passed the curate's life, a struggle
+between the natural affection and self-imposed duty, while night after
+night in his sleepless hours he heaped up reproaches upon himself for
+work neglected, and the dreamy musings into which he was wont to fall.
+Self-deceiving, he had gone on taking more and more interest in the
+Hardon family, blinding himself to his real sentiments, until now that
+the veil had been so rudely snatched from his eyes he writhed hourly,
+maddened almost, that he should have allowed his peace to have been
+disturbed for what he fiercely told himself was worthless.
+
+It was not a long walk from the Bennett's-rents region to Surrey-street,
+where he had rooms in a gloomy wilderness of a house, which he shared
+with a solicitor, an accountant, and a company that seemed to be
+composed of a small secretary and a large heap of prospectuses.  Here he
+would seek for the rest he could not find, anxious and worn, day after
+day, since his last visit to the Hardons, much to the discomposure of
+Aunt Fanny, who dwelt with him in the double capacity of housekeeper and
+companion.
+
+A prim, pleasant old dame, proud of her great age, and of her bright
+silver hair, smoothed in bands beneath her quaint old widow's cap;
+sitting or standing, ever with her arms crossed over her black
+corded-silk apron, while a mitten-covered hand clasped each elbow.  A
+prim, pleasant-looking old dame, always dressed in lavender poplin,
+whose stiff plaits seemed to have been carved out of the solid, as she
+stood at the window watching for the coming of her boy.  For "Arty"
+always had been, and doubtless always would be, a boy in her pleasant
+old eyes--eyes that spoke the truth of her tender old heart; though
+there was one point upon which Aunt Fanny would err, and that was her
+age.  Unlike ladies of a certain time of life, she was proud of her
+years, and, doubtless from some haziness in her arithmetic, she was
+given to adding to them, so that more than once in her arguments
+respecting points of time, she somewhat upset her calculations.
+
+"Why, aunt," the curate would say, "you cannot be so old as you say by
+eight years."
+
+"Nonsense, my dear boy, how can you know anything about it?  I'm
+eighty-two."
+
+"Then," he would say loudly, "you must have been thirty when you were
+married."
+
+"Nonsense, child; how can you be so silly!  And you need not shout so.
+I was twenty-two when your poor uncle led me to the altar."  And then
+she would fall to smoothing her black apron, and arranging the folds of
+her dress, with hands that trembled in an agitated manner, a tear
+standing in one of the still bright eyes, as the old recollections
+sprang up, when, ceasing the discussion, her nephew would tenderly kiss
+her hand, and sit affectionately gazing in her handsome old face.
+Indeed time had paid a certain respect to Aunt Fanny, so that she looked
+years younger than she really was, while all her faculties save one were
+bright as ever; for proud though she was of the fine stitching placed
+with her own needle round Arty's shirt-fronts--stitching aided by no
+spectacles--and ignorant though she was of her failing, yet Aunt Fanny
+was terribly deaf.
+
+But she hardly felt the affliction, speaking of it as a slight weakness
+which affected her when she had a cold, always remaining unconscious
+that what she looked upon as a whisper was a conversation carried on in
+a loud key.  Poor Aunt Fanny could not hear very well from her pew in
+the gallery, right in front of the organ, for the thing would make, she
+said, such a terrible buzzing sound; so a seat was provided for her just
+beneath the pulpit, which she found necessary, for clergymen were not
+what they used to be.  On the following Sunday, her nephew had ascended
+to his place, spread out the black-velvet case she had made for his
+sermons, prayed, and given out his text twice, when, before the first
+words of the sermon were uttered, Aunt Fanny began to mutter to herself,
+though her muttering was so loud that everyone present in the little
+church must have heard it, her nephew himself being overwhelmed with
+confusion.
+
+"Dear, dear, dear!" she exclaimed; "it's of no use, and I can't hear a
+bit.  I might just as well have stayed where I was.  O Arty, Arty, you
+sad boy, why will you mumble so?"
+
+Arty did not mumble any more that evening, but dashed headlong into his
+discourse; so that when they returned, Aunt Fanny thought she rather
+liked the new seat the better of the two.  Still it was of no avail; the
+old lady could never hear well in that church; for rector and curate had
+both got into a bad habit of speaking in a low tone, and drawling out
+their words.  But Aunt Fanny's pity was sublime in the case of a friend
+also troubled with deafness; though he knew it, and did not scruple to
+make an ear-trumpet of his hand, though this was needless when Aunt
+Fanny was the speaker; for her sentences were always perfectly audible.
+"Poor Edwards!" she would say, as she smoothed down her apron, "what a
+nice man you would be if you weren't so deaf!  It's a pity--a great
+pity!"  And then she would sigh, in profound ignorance that "poor
+Edwards's" confusion was caused by her habit of thinking aloud.
+
+And this was the companion of Arthur Sterne's solitude; but there were
+pleasant smiles to welcome him, and beneath their sunny rays the
+deeply-cut lines that seamed his forehead grew less marked, while the
+light of the pleasant old sunny face was reflected in his own.
+
+Aunt Fanny had seen the change that had come over her nephew, and waited
+patiently for his complaints, which came not; and after many days,
+unable to contain her anxiety, she crossed to where the curate was
+sitting, and, taking his hand, frowned severely as she felt his pulse.
+
+"Well, aunty, and how is it?" he said, smiling at the earnest
+countenance beside his.
+
+But Aunt Fanny was too much occupied with her thoughts to speak, and
+only nodded, and then shook her head, as, in her own mind, she went over
+her long catalogue of simples suited to the various ills of human life,
+till at last she settled upon camomile-tea as being the most efficacious
+remedy for her nephew's complaint, which she settled to be disorder of
+the liver, produced from over-work, and not a word would she hear to the
+contrary.
+
+"Now, don't shout, my dear; I'm not deaf.  You know you do too much; and
+if you won't petition the bishop for a change, I shall.  What do you say
+to a pleasant curacy in some pretty country place?"
+
+Nothing.  What could he say, when he had wakened to the fact that, in
+spite of pride and doubts, that court was all the world to him?
+
+Appeal was useless; so, yielding with as good a grace as he could, the
+curate suffered himself to be doctored for his complaint, turning to his
+books for rest at every reprieve.  If it had not been for the heat of
+the next few days, he would not have been allowed to stir out without
+the thick muffler that had been aired for his throat; while the many
+appellants who visited the lodging of a morning were answered by Aunt
+Fanny herself; for many came to ask advice and comfort of the curate,
+more especially from amongst the poor Irish; but though they came
+ostensibly for spiritual, they generally managed to explain that a
+little solid help would be most acceptable.
+
+Till now, living in their quiet, simple way, the relations between them
+being more like those existent with mother and son, Arthur Sterne had
+had no secret from the dame; but now, when he would gladly have eased
+his burdened heart by confidence, he shrank from laying bare its
+secrets, even though he was in that state when men are most prone to be
+confidential.  But there was to him something repugnant in the idea of
+shouting words that seemed to demand that they should be whispered in
+the twilight of some calm eve, when the reassuring pressure of that
+time-marked hand would have been loving and tender.  For she had been to
+him as a mother, taking that duty on herself when he had been left an
+orphan, and now there seemed ingratitude in keeping back any of the
+troubles of his life.  He had no doubts respecting Aunt Fanny.  Did he
+but bring there a wife, and say, "I love this woman," she would take her
+to her heart and believe in her; for, saving the mumbling in his speech,
+Arthur Sterne could not, in her eyes, do wrong.  Still the secret was
+kept--feverishly kept--and brooded over in the sleepless nights, or in
+those dark watches, when, impatiently quitting the pillow that brought
+no rest, he walked the streets of the sleeping city, alone, or in
+company with some policeman; when mostly his steps would lead him to the
+end of the court, where, in Septimus Hardon's window, generally
+glimmered a feeble light--one whose purpose he often asked himself.
+
+At times he would determine to flee the place, and in some far-off
+country retreat try again to root out the love that had taken hold on
+him; for here he felt that he could not reason with himself.  In vain he
+conjured up visions of a calm, pale face, whose marble cheek he had once
+kissed, an hour before it was laid in the grave; in vain he told himself
+that he was faithless to that old love, and failing in his duty.  There
+still was the sweet, gentle face of Lucy Grey haunting him ever; and
+though he recalled the words of the old Frenchwoman, and her sinister
+meaning--the meeting in the Lane, and, above all, the look of shame and
+confusion--there was the same sense of love beating down all else.  But
+he had made a resolve at last; and that was, to see and question the
+woman he had seen in Lucy's company; he would see her, and then seek for
+rest somewhere, since the idol he had unconsciously set up was sullied
+and broken.
+
+Twice over he had met this woman, but now his efforts to see her seemed
+in vain.  He called at the Jarkers' again and again; but, in place of
+her coming, as Mrs Jarker said, to see her child and leave the weekly
+payment for its support, week after week, as if she knew that she was
+watched, she came not, but sent money-orders by post.  He shrank from
+speaking to Mrs Jarker concerning her connection with Lucy; while Lucy
+herself he had not seen.  Watching seemed useless, for the woman came
+not; and at last, almost in despair, he had determined to undertake that
+which his heart shrank from--the questioning of Lucy herself.
+
+At last, after a long and busy day, as now had become his wont, he
+wandered through the streets for hours, apparently feeling no fatigue,
+till, late in the night, he stopped by the Rents, walked slowly up the
+deserted court, lit by its solitary flickering lamp, whose broken glass
+made the flame dance and tremble, while when an extra puff of wind
+passed down the court it was but extinct.  There was the faint light,
+though, in one of the rooms occupied by the Hardons, and after standing
+watching it for some time he hurried away, calling himself foolish,
+romantic, boy, madman.  It was but a passing fancy, he told himself,
+such a one as might have moved him in his youth; but his heart would not
+harbour the belief, and mockingly cast it forth.
+
+He was angry and half-maddened to feel how helpless he was, and what a
+sway the impulse now moving him had obtained; to think that he--the
+minister of religion, the teacher of others--should have so little power
+over self that he should be swayed here and driven there helplessly; the
+whole current of his quiet life turned from its course, and that too in
+spite of the way in which he had battled, while the doubts that assailed
+him only added to his misery.
+
+Now as he hurried on he would meet some policeman, who turned to watch
+him; now it would be some drunken reveller, or a wretched homeless being
+just started from some corner where he had been sleeping, and compelled
+to wander the streets till daybreak; but ever and again he would
+encounter the flauntingly--dressed outcast humming the snatch of a
+popular air with a wretched attempt at gaiety, which lasted till she had
+passed, and then almost broke into a wail.  But he managed that they
+should always meet face to face beneath some gas-lamp, when he would
+sigh and pass on, for not one that he met during his search was the
+woman of the Lane.
+
+Mrs Jarker did not know her name, nor yet where she lodged; but the
+little girl was to be called Agnes.  That was all the information the
+curate could obtain; and at times he would frown, bite his lips, and
+give up the search, but only to take it up once again for what he always
+told himself was the last time.  Then he would play the hypocrite, and
+tell himself that his motives were unselfish; that to marry a girl in
+Lucy's position of life would be folly--absurd: he was only anxious for
+her well-being and future life.
+
+But these fits lasted only for a short time, and then, smiling bitterly,
+he would, as upon this night, betake himself to the search once more.
+
+And yet it was not on his account she came not to Bennett's-rents, for
+Agnes Hardon knew not of his quest; she had other reasons, though the
+visits to her child and Lucy were the only bright spots in her wretched
+life.  Lucy heard from her from time to time through old Matt, who bore
+her notes always under protest, but still obediently, though Lucy was
+the only one who knew the poor creature's secret, and she dared not make
+it known to Septimus lest he should forbid their meetings; for,
+abandoned by all, hopeless, and in misery, Agnes Hardon clung to her
+connection with Lucy as the only hope left on earth for self and child.
+Her appeals to Somesham remaining unanswered, she had ceased to send,
+and, removing from lodging to lodging, any attempt upon Mrs Hardon's
+part to find her would have been vain.  She had shrunk from the keen
+searching glances of the curate when they had met, seeing in everyone
+now an enemy whose object was to break her intimacy with Lucy, whom she,
+therefore, saw only by stealth.  Her heart bled for the misery of the
+family, for she learned all from time to time at their meetings; while,
+knowing full well that there was a will made, to which she had signed
+her name as witness, yet could she not declare her knowledge, from a
+shrewd suspicion that the doctor had made away with it, and she told
+herself that she had already brought sorrow and shame enough upon her
+home.
+
+And to meet her, night by night stole Arthur Sterne through the streets,
+ever hating himself for his madness, ever resolving that each search
+should be the last, and still weakly yielding to the one great anxiety
+that troubled him.  Now he would be seeing Lucy's candid face
+reproachfully gazing at him, and directly after would come again the
+bitter, spiteful countenance of the Frenchwoman, and he seemed to hear
+her words, "Our beauty, some of us;" and at such times all faith in the
+girl had gone.  "Our beauty, some of us!"  How the words seemed to ring
+in his ears; they were borne to him in the echo of the far-off vehicle,
+chimed by the clocks; the very air seemed alive with the words, till he
+hurried on through street after street again to try and thoroughly wear
+himself out, that sleep might come, and with it rest from the mental
+anxiety and doubt he suffered.
+
+At last he stood on one of the bridges, leaning against the parapet and
+gazing down at the hurrying river, feeling the soft sweet breeze of
+early dawn sweep up with the tide, whispering of the moaning sea and
+far-off reaches where the green reeds sighed and rustled, and the wide
+green marshes were spread out.  There was a faint light coming in the
+east, and the stars were paling, as the gas grew sickly-hued and dim.
+All was still and peaceful, so that he could hear the lapping of the
+water far below as it seemed to whisper peace to his perturbed spirit,
+telling of the far-off sea and its mysteries, the hopes and fears there
+buried, and then of the many lost whom the river had borne down, when,
+from perhaps where he then stood, they had taken the last fearful
+plunge.  And who were they? he asked himself; who were they that plunged
+daringly into the rushing river? and for reply the faint breeze seemed
+to whisper, and the tide to sigh, "Our beauty, some of us!"  And then
+trembling he leaned his hot brow against the cold stone balustrade,
+fighting with the thoughts that oppressed him, with duty, religion, the
+world, till, with almost a groan, burst from his lips:
+
+"Save her?  My God! yes, as I hope to be saved!"
+
+The early untainted breeze breathed upon his fevered lips as it rode
+upon the breast of the coming tide; the stars paled more and more, the
+faint pearly light in the east became roseate; and at last Arthur Sterne
+stood gazing up towards the glowing cross of the great cathedral,
+glittering as it was in the morning sun, while now, weary and jaded, he
+turned to seek his home, but only to gaze with doubting eyes, for he
+stood face to face with the woman he had sought through the night.
+
+Volume Two, Chapter X.
+
+ON THE SEARCH.
+
+Doctor Thomas Hardon, of Somesham, seemed likely to have full enjoyment
+of his brother's property, for Time kept on busy at work over his
+harvest.  Septimus Hardon slowly and laboriously did copying for the
+law-stationers, apparently quite content with his lot, for he scarcely
+ever gave a thought now to the quest he had commenced with old Matt;
+Lucy toiled on incessantly at her sewing-machine, the bright needle
+flashing up and down, and the treadles set in motion by her feet were
+hardly ever still.  Journeys were made to and from the warehouse from
+whence she had her work, but mostly alone, for Lucy had lost her
+protector: he had not returned since the day upon which he had been
+taken ill, and they knew not where he lodged.  The information might
+have been obtained from Agnes, but save a short note or two enclosed in
+the regular letters sent to Mrs Jarker, in which she implored her to
+watch over the child, Lucy had not heard from her.  Mr Sterne came and
+went, visiting them as he would have visited at any other house,
+treating Lucy with a calm, cold deference that made her weep bitterly
+after each visit, and grow paler day by day; for the curate told himself
+that he had at last conquered a foolish fancy, that he had triumphed as
+became him, and that all he felt now was a sublime pity which prompted
+him to watch her when she went out alone, and follow her at a distance
+till he saw her once more in safety, when he would hurry home; for his
+heart was very full of pity for Lucy Grey, even though he knew not of
+the tears she shed in secret.
+
+As to carrying on his researches alone, the very thought of such a
+proceeding never occurred to Septimus Hardon--it seemed to border too
+much upon the impossible; and besides, he was deep in that Slough of
+Despond--poverty, which, instead of prompting men to energetic action,
+too often enervates and breeds despair.  So he waited on day after day,
+hoping to see old Matt again, and yet dreading the prosecution of his
+claim-shrinking when it was named, for he seemed to grow less hopeful as
+time wore on.  The curate had hinted more than once how willing he would
+be to aid him; but Septimus always shrank so from entering upon the
+matter, that Mr Sterne, from motives of delicacy, soon ceased to broach
+the subject.
+
+The sewing-machine clicked on early and late, and Jean's lark, when he
+heard it, would set up his crest and whistle away, waking the echoes of
+the court, while at the open window, when the bird was silent, Jean
+Marais himself would crane forward and listen eagerly to the fragment of
+some mournful little air which he could just catch at times, as the
+machine stopped, and Lucy arranged a portion of her work.  But the sweet
+notes from the first-floor seemed to rouse the lark to fresh exertions,
+when its master would angrily chide it, and perhaps cover it with a
+handkerchief, but only to snatch it away hurriedly.
+
+"For she loves to hear him whistle," he would say; and then he would
+smile again, as the bird burst forth once more in its joyous carol.
+
+At times Lucy would ascend to the attic to take up a bunch of green food
+she had bought for the birds, or a few flowers for the cripple, whose
+eyes brightened when he saw her, but these visits were mostly paid when
+_ma mere_ was from home; for in spite of her civil words, there was
+something in the old woman's quiet smile that chilled her; so that she
+dreaded meeting her more than if her looks had been those of anger.  But
+she knew not the bitter words that had passed between mother and son
+upon the subject, when _ma mere_ once angrily crushed a bunch of violets
+Lucy had taken up to the suffering youth.
+
+The sewing-machine was clicking away merrily one day, so that Mrs
+Jarker could hear it from her sick-bed; Septimus Hardon was busily
+copying at his little table, and the lark jocund as ever, when a slow
+step was heard upon the stairs.  Lucy stopped her machine to listen, and
+even Septimus raised his head from his work.  But there was no mistake--
+it was not a visitor for up-stairs, but old Matt's own shuffling
+footstep, and Lucy run to admit him.
+
+Paler, thinner, more haggard, he came slowly into the room, rubbing his
+hands and smiling with pleasure at the warmth of the greeting he
+received.
+
+"Never better," he said; "capital, thank you; been ill, though, and not
+able to get out before, though I was afraid you would get all the work
+done without me.  What have you done since I saw you, sir?"
+
+"Nothing," said Septimus quietly.
+
+"Didn't expect you had," said Matt drily.  "No offence, sir; but I
+thought perhaps you might want me; so if you'll get your hat, sir, we'll
+start at the point where we left off, and see after the doctor."
+
+"But you will not be well enough," said Septimus, hanging back from the
+task--more on his own account than on that of the old man.
+
+"Don't you be afraid of that, sir.  I should have been well weeks ago if
+it hadn't been for fidgeting about your affairs, and wanting to get out.
+I'm as strong as a lion now, sir; but let's be at it.  I want a new
+suit of clothes out of the estate, you know, sir, when you get it;" and
+the old man chuckled and nodded at Lucy.
+
+Septimus slowly wiped his pen, and carefully put away his paper, sighing
+the while, for he was unwilling to start, and the fit of eagerness had
+long ago evaporated; but at last he declared himself to be in readiness,
+and the pair once more started off upon their search.
+
+Upon this occasion they directed their steps at once to Finsbury, and,
+after a slow, and what seemed to Matt a painful, walk, they reached
+their destination.
+
+"Here is the house," said Septimus, after a reference to his
+pocket-book; "this is the number."
+
+"H'm!--`Tollicks' Registry Office for Servants,'" read Matt from the
+board over the door.  "This isn't the doctor's.  Sure of the number,
+sir?"
+
+"Yes," said Septimus, referring once more to his pocket-book; "yes; this
+is the number I took down."
+
+"So it is," said Matt, after a reference to his own memorandum-book.
+"That's right enough; but wait a bit, one never knows where to be right
+or wrong with numbers; they always were things as bothered a man; for
+you have your numbers so-and-so a, and b, and c, and goodness knows how
+many more, until you're regularly puzzled.  Perhaps that's an a, or a b,
+or something of that kind, and the number we want is somewhere else."
+
+"Let's walk on a little," said Septimus; and they went slowly down one
+side and up the other, but this proved to be the only house numbered as
+they wanted.
+
+"Do you know of a Mr Phillips, a surgeon, in this neighbourhood?" said
+Septimus to the first policeman they met.
+
+The man of order shook his head, beat his white gloves together, and
+then rearranged the shaken head in his shiny stock before continuing his
+walk.
+
+"Let's go to the fountain-head at once," said Matt; "perhaps they know
+something about him.  Here we are again--`Tollicks' Registry Office for
+Servants.'  Let's see what Mr Tollicks knows about him."
+
+"Stop a minute," said Septimus, to keep procrastination alive for a few
+moments longer.  "Perhaps there is another door."
+
+"No more doors there, unless they're backdoors," growled Matt; and
+leading the way, they stood in a floor-clothed room,--the office
+itself,--furnished with a green--baize--covered table, bearing a
+stencil-plate, inkstand, and brush; and beside the wall a long bench,
+upon which sat apparently one of the servants waiting to be hired from
+ten to four, as announced by a bill in the window, which spoke of cooks,
+housemaids, and general servants as being regularly in attendance; but
+most probably the others, tired, had gone home for the day, for the
+damsel in question was the only one visible.  She was "Corrnwall sure,"
+as indicated by the shape of her nose, though any ignorant person might
+have been excused for mistaking her for an inhabitant of the sister
+isle.
+
+The door gave a sharp "ting" as it was opened, and another as it was
+closed,--the refinement of the old jingling door bell of the chandler's
+shop,--when the young lady on the bench rose, and made a bob and sat
+down again, and someone from an inner chamber cried, "Coming!"  Then a
+small dog with a very apoplectic voice barked loudly to the tune of a
+little bell secured to its neck, and came waddling round the counter to
+smell Septimus Hardon's legs; when visiting old Matt for the same
+purpose, that gentleman favoured him with a pinch of snuff dropped
+softly towards his nose, provoking a most violent fit of sneezing, and a
+loud and agitated jingling of the tiny bell.
+
+With the exception of the sneezing, there was now silence in the office
+for a few moments, till the sound of rattling milk-cans upon the
+pavement was heard.  A man gave vent to the well-known melodious London
+yodel, and then opened the door, which again said "ting," when from the
+inner chamber appeared a tall, stoutish, elderly-young female of very
+grand deportment, which she displayed to great advantage by making a
+most ceremonious salute--one that would have been invaluable to a
+governess in a large-minded family of small means.  So elegant was the
+salute, that even old Matt was staggered, and performed an operation
+rather rare with him--he took off his hat.
+
+"The side-door, my good man," said the lady to the milkman, who grinned,
+winked to himself, and drew the door after him, when, quietly placing
+the customary "ha'porth" in a cream-tin, he set it in a corner by the
+door, jangled his cans as he took them up, and then yelled his way down
+the street.
+
+"Mrs Tollicks?" said Septimus, raising his shabby hat.
+
+"Miss Tollicks," said the lady, with another profound courtesy almost
+equal to the former.  "Perhaps you will be seated, sir."
+
+Perhaps he would have been; but as there was only the form upon which
+the auburn-haired damsel sat whilst waiting to be hired, Septimus merely
+bowed again, and said, "Thank you," at the same moment inadvertently
+directing a glance at the maiden in question.
+
+"Thoroughly trustworthy, and has an excellent character from her last
+place," said Miss Tollicks, who had seen the glance; "a very good cook--
+plain cook, early riser, strictly temperate; in fact, a disciple of the
+late Father Matthew.  Requires no followers, and only one half-day out
+in the month.  Only twenty-two; wages twelve pounds; and a capital
+washer."
+
+The damsel had risen, and stood with her eyes half-closed, head on one
+side, and her rather large mouth squeezed up into a modest smirk; and as
+Septimus Hardon knew nothing of the maiden, he was bound to accept Miss
+Tollicks' eulogium; but as to the last-named quality, it was very
+evident that the girl was not a capital washer of self, while a
+detergent applied to her hair would have made a manifest improvement.
+
+"Indeed," said Septimus, bowing; "I am obliged, but--"
+
+"Only _twelve_ pounds wages," said Miss Tollicks with emphasis.
+
+"And very reasonable," said Septimus; "but--"
+
+"You will find very few general servants willing to go for less than
+fourteen," said Miss Tollicks.
+
+"I suppose not," said Septimus; "but at present--"
+
+"Then you don't think this young person would suit your requirements?"
+said Miss Tollicks.
+
+"Decidedly not," said Septimus eagerly, for he was getting so
+exceedingly confused, that had Miss Tollicks pressed her point, he would
+most probably have ended by hiring the damsel off-hand; for every glance
+directed for help at old Matt glanced off the impenetrable armour in
+which the old man had encased himself.
+
+"Mary Donovan," said the lady of the house with dignity, "it is five
+minutes past four; you need not wait any longer to-day."
+
+Mary Donovan rose at the instant, and made a bob to Miss Tollicks, and
+one each to Matt and Septimus--bobs that were a disgrace to her after
+the elaborate obeisances she had so lately seen made; and then she took
+her departure, played out by a couple of "tings," Miss Tollicks smiling
+blandly, and courteously holding her head on one side as she stood
+waiting to know the object of her visitors' call.
+
+Miss Tollicks was a lady whom no one would have supposed to have been
+born a genius, from the utter absence of ennobling qualities in her
+face; but for all that she made-up showily, possessed a good figure, had
+two little corkscrew curls on either side of her face, a suspicion of
+thinness about her hair--parting, which on a small scale exhibited
+somewhat the appearance of certain stout ladies' dresses in the back
+when they have been without assistance in the hooking department; for
+the said parting began correctly, and then gradually opened out, but
+only to contract again and finish evenly some distance farther back.  By
+way of head-dress, Miss Tollicks wore a black-velvet blackbird, with
+handsome gold-bead eyes, the said ornithological head-dress being kept
+in its place by means of a fillet of black-velvet and gold twist.  A
+very thick, plain-linked, jet chain was round her neck, a very glossy
+buckle at her waist, fastening the cincture of her very rusty black-silk
+dress, slightly rubbed at the plaits; so that altogether Miss Tollicks
+presented the aspect of a lady superior at the very least.
+
+"We merely called," said Septimus, after an awkward pause, during which
+he had been waiting for Matt to begin, "to--er--er--to--er--that is to
+ask if you could give us any information respecting a Mr Phillips, a
+surgeon, who once resided here."
+
+"Dear me, how disappointing!" said Miss Tollicks.  "Now do you know I
+thought you had come after servants; I did indeed."
+
+"Really," said Septimus sadly, "I am sorry to have caused you
+disappointment; but it was important that I should know, and I called--
+urgent--troubled you," he stammered again, looking in vain at Matt, who
+only took snuff.
+
+"O, don't apologise, pray," said Miss Tollicks; "come in and sit down,
+and let's--let me," she said, correcting herself,--"let me hear what it
+is.  There, don't laugh at me, for one is obliged to be so particular
+how one speaks to the grand people who come for servants."
+
+Miss Tollicks led the way into her inner chamber, where the fat dog
+slept snoringly in the sunshine; and, after a little hesitation, her two
+visitors took the proffered chairs.
+
+"Mr Flips, surgeon," said the lady of the place, after a little
+preliminary conversation, "no, I never heard the name, and I've been
+here two years this next week, when my landlord will most likely call.
+He says he has a bad memory, but he always recollects the quarter-days.
+He lives down in Dorsetshire, and when he comes up I can ask him if you
+like; perhaps he would know; or you might write; but he's sure to write
+to me directly to say he is coming, so that, as he says, I may be ready
+for him, just as if one ever was ready for one's landlord.  Two years--
+yes, just two years," she continued musingly.  "There was a whole year
+at the millinery, which didn't half-pay the rent; for people here don't
+seem to wear bonnets, and when they do, they've been turned and cleaned
+and altered or somethinged or anothered, although I put my prices so low
+that there was no room for a bit of profit.  Then there was the fancy
+stationery three months, which was worse, for the only kind of
+stationery the people fancied was penny-stamps, which cost me a penny
+a-piece, and then people either wanted them to be stuck on their
+letters, or else wrapped, up in paper.  Then there was the newspaper and
+periodical trade, which was worse than all; for, as if just out of
+aggravation, the people always came and asked for the very thing you had
+not got.  I declare that if it wasn't that you can sit down and read
+your stock, the periodical trade would be unbearable.  Only think of the
+trouble people gave you by ordering things regularly and never coming
+and fetching them; so that the back numbers used to get piled up most
+terribly.  And now, you know, I've been six months at this, and it's so
+trying, you can't think; for, you see, I'm worse off than anybody: I've
+not got to please the missuses--I beg pardon, the mistresses only, but
+the servants; and really, after my experience I can say that there's no
+pleasing anyone."
+
+Septimus Hardon glanced hopelessly at Matt, but he would not see him,
+and took pinch after pinch of snuff furiously, with a comical expression
+upon his countenance the former could not interpret.
+
+"You see, though," continued Miss Tollicks, who seemed to have made up
+her mind to thoroughly enjoy herself with a good talk; "you see, though,
+there is one advantage--there's no stock required, and it is genteel;
+but really, after all, it is so vexatious and pays so badly that I think
+I shall give it up, and take to tobacco.  I suppose it's a business that
+pays well, and people do use it to such an extent that it's quite
+wonderful.  But let me see!  Phillips--Flips--Flips--no, I never even
+heard of the name; but, do you know, I shouldn't wonder if a doctor did
+once live here; for there's a regular street-door bell that rings
+down-stairs, and another that rings up in the second-floor front, just
+as the night-bell used to at Doctor Masters's, where I once lived at,
+as--ahem, ahem!--excuse my cough, pray," said Miss Tollicks, colouring;
+"but there!" she said sharply the next moment, "where I lived as
+lady's-maid, and I don't see why I should be ashamed of it."
+
+"Hear, hear!" said old Matt, speaking for the first time.
+
+"But can you tell who lived here before you?" said Septimus.
+
+"O, yes; a dairy," replied Miss Tollicks; "but it was only here six
+months, and my landlord told me the people didn't pay any rent, but went
+off in the night so shabby, leaving nothing behind but a black-and-white
+plaster cow, and a moss-basket with three chalk eggs, in the window; and
+my landlord says that's why he looks so sharp after me, which isn't
+nice, you know; but then you can't be surprised.  Let me see, I think it
+was a coffee-house before that."
+
+"Perhaps," said Septimus, rising, "you will find that out for me when
+your landlord calls.  I don't think we will trouble him by writing; and
+maybe you'll ask him how long it is since a Mr Phillips lived here, and
+if he can tell you to where he removed."
+
+"That I will," said Miss Tollicks pleasantly; "and if you would not mind
+taking one of my cards, you might be able to recommend me to one or two
+patrons; and you too, sir," she continued, handing one to Matt, which he
+took with a comical amused expression, and carefully placed inside the
+lining of his hat.
+
+"Hadn't you better ask for the landlord's address, and write at once?"
+growled Matt, as soon as they were outside the house.
+
+"Perhaps it would be better," said Septimus, hesitating; "but no, we
+won't trouble her again; and it would only hasten the matter a day or
+two--possibly not at all.  She has been very civil and obliging."
+
+"Very," said Matt.  "Good sort of woman, she seems; but what a tongue!
+As soon as ever she had trapped us in that room, `Matt, my lad,' I said,
+`the people in this world are divided into two classes--talkers and
+listeners.  You belong to the second class, so keep your place;' and I
+did, sir, as you know.  I never attempt to tackle a woman on her own
+ground, sir, which is talking.  I can talk, sir, leastwise I could when
+I was well; but it's my humble opinion that that woman would have rapped
+out three words to my one."
+
+"There," said Matt, after they had walked a little way along the street,
+he all the while rubbing his forefinger slowly round and round his pill
+snuff-box, "I've taken all my snuff, as ought to have lasted till
+to-morrow night, and all through that precious woman's tongue.  Let's go
+in here, sir, and get a penn'orth."
+
+"Here" was a very dirty-looking little tobacconist's and news-agent's;
+and, so as to leave no stone unturned, Matt, whilst being served, made
+inquiry touching Mr Phillips, a surgeon.
+
+"No," said the woman who served, as she allayed the irritation of her
+nasal organ by rubbing it with the back of the hand which held the
+snuff-scoop, and so provoked a loud fit of sneezing,--"no, not in my
+time."
+
+"How long has that been?" said Matt.
+
+"Five years," replied the woman.
+
+Septimus Hardon walked out of the shop, and, after paying for his snuff,
+old Matt followed him into the street, and they bent their steps
+homewards.
+
+"I'm dull and stupid and not right, you see," said Matt, "or else I
+should have known why the name wasn't in the newest of those two
+Directories.  One, you see, was more than ten years old, and the other--
+well, it wasn't the newest.  But you leave it to me, sir, and I'll try
+and find a medical directory, for I think there is such a thing.  I know
+there is a legal one, for I helped print it; and there's one for the
+parsons, so there's safe to be one for the doctors.  I'll ferret it out,
+sir; and I shall be better to-morrow.  Those look nice, don't they?"
+said the old man, stopping short in front of a pork-butcher's shop.
+
+"Very," said Septimus dreamily, and without glancing at the freshly-made
+chains of sausages hanging from the hooks in the window.
+
+"You may always buy your sausages here, and depend upon 'em," said Matt;
+"and if you'll listen to my advice, you'll take a pound back with you.
+They'll wrap 'em in a bit of paper for you, and you can slip them in
+your pocket, and have a nice fry for tea when you get home, and then
+rest content; for, though we haven't done much, and I should have liked
+you to have taken that landlord's name and address, yet things are
+getting in train, I can tell you.  So you wait quietly at home, sir,
+till I come again, for I suppose you won't want to do anything yourself.
+I shall be stronger and better to-morrow or next day, I hope, for
+somehow I can't get along as I used, and feel weak and muddled.  But
+there, sir, slip in and get them sausages, and have a bit of patience,
+and don't try to build any more till our mortar's a bit settled."
+
+Septimus Hardon smiled sadly at the idea of his being impatient to go on
+with the search, and, obeying his companion's hest, he obtained the
+pound of flesh; and then they walked slowly on till they were once more
+within the shadow of the law.
+
+"And now I'm off, sir," said Matt, stopping short in Carey-street.  "I
+think I shall go and lie down."
+
+"Can I do anything for you?" said Septimus earnestly.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Matt; "let me have my own way, please.  You let me go
+my way, and I'll work the matter out for you if it's possible, so that
+it shall be in trim for the lawyers, and then I'll give up.  But there,
+I won't do anything without consulting you first, and--no, thank you;
+I'd rather not.  No; I like sausages well enough sometimes, but not
+to-day, thank you; I'm off in a moment.  Don't you do anything, whatever
+you do, to put your uncle on his guard.  Depend upon it, he thinks now,
+after all this time, that you've given it quite up; while, if things go
+on as I hope, we shall come down upon him one of these days in a way
+that shall startle him--shake his nerves so that he sha'n't find a tonic
+for them."
+
+Old Matt shuffled off, once more steadily refusing to partake of any
+refreshment; while Septimus slowly and thoughtfully made his way towards
+the entrance to the Rents, pondering over his visit to the churches some
+weeks back, and then thinking that it would be better to settle down
+contentedly in his present state, for fear that after research, labour,
+and endless publicity, the words of his uncle should prove to be those
+of truth, and his condition worse than it was at the present time.
+
+"Better the present doubt and obscurity," he muttered.  "Octavius
+Hardon, Lavinia Addison, Ellen Morris--all witnesses to the truth, but
+dead, dead."
+
+"Stop, stop!" cried a voice, as he turned into the Rents; and the next
+moment, with his hand to his side, old Matt stood by him, gasping.  "I
+ain't the thing to-night, sir; I'm ill, but I've got it here--here
+somewhere," he said, tapping his forehead, "and I can't get it out.
+It's here, though.  It's `medicine and attendance, Mrs Hardon--so
+much,' isn't it?  That's it, sir, ain't it?"
+
+Septimus stared wonderingly at him.
+
+"You may well look, sir," said Matt, panting still; "but that's it, and
+I've seen it somewhere, and I'll tell you where directly.  It all came
+like a flash just after I left you; there it was, just as I saw it
+written down: `Medicine and attendance, Mrs Hardon--so much;' and I can
+keep seeming to see the words dance before my eyes now.  I saw them
+written down somewhere once, and I can't just now say where; but I seem
+to feel that I've got them all right, and I shall have it.  Good-night,
+sir.  Remember me to Miss Lucy;" and the old man staggered away,
+muttering aloud, "Medicine and attendance--medicine and attendance;"
+while more than one person in the street turned to look at the bent
+figure, to shake a sapient head, and mutter, "Or hospital."
+
+For poor old Matt looked sick unto death, though Septimus Hardon, deep
+in his own thoughts, had taken but little notice of the old man's
+indisposition.
+
+Volume Two, Chapter XI.
+
+LUCY'S BEST.
+
+Night after night, noticed by the curate during his wanderings, by _ma
+mere_, and by Mr William Jarker, birdcatcher, when distant trips had
+detained him until late hours, there still burned a feeble light in one
+of the windows at Bennett's-rents; and by its gleam, until the moon rose
+above the houses, and looked inquisitively down upon her paper, shedding
+a silvery light that seemed to quench the rushlight's sickly yellow
+flame, now sat Lucy Grey far into the long watches, with naught to
+interrupt her but the occasional long-drawn breath or sigh from the
+back-room, or the rumble of some vehicle through the distant streets.
+Once she started up and stood trembling, for a shrill scream rang upon
+the night breeze, but silence soon reigned again, and she retook her
+seat.  Patiently bending over her task, with her large eager eyes
+strained to follow the work of her fingers, the pale girl was busily
+toiling on.  Toiling on at what?  Not at the sewing-machine, for its
+busy throbbing pulse was still, but carefully and slowly writing line
+after line in a common school copy-book to improve a handwriting already
+fine, delicate, and ladylike.  A slate covered with figures lay too upon
+the table, while beside it was a French grammar, and the words written
+in the copy-book were in the same tongue.
+
+And this had been Lucy's task night after night, till the red-rimmed
+eyes would keep open no longer, and, wearied out, she lay down to dream
+dreams that brought smiles to her lips, for her visions were of the
+prize for which she studied.  But these nights of toil and the anxiety
+of her heart had told upon her, and upon this night, the one succeeding
+the journey to Finsbury, Lucy sat, looking more pale and wan than usual,
+and her work progressed but slowly.  The place too, and the summer heat,
+had had their share in producing her sickly pallor, for in
+Bennett's-rents there was a faint lung-clinging odour that almost seemed
+to tell that Death had passed over the place to put his seal upon those
+soon to pass away.  Or was it the foul incense men burn to his dread
+shrine, calling him to their homes--the thin invisible mist rising from
+filth and rottenness, to blight the rosy cheek of health?  There was
+enough in Bennett's-rents to drive away health, strength, and youth; for
+premature old age lurked in the foul cisterns, rose from the drains, and
+dwelt in the crowded habitations, houses made to accommodate six, yet
+containing perhaps thirty or forty, souls.  But Lucy was sick at heart
+as well.  Months upon months had she dwelt in the wretched court, though
+until now its impurities had not seemed to touch her as she passed to
+and fro.
+
+The work went on slowly, and, weary and sad at heart, she stopped at
+times, gazing up at the bright moon, till, recalling her wandering
+thoughts, she again bent eagerly to her task.  Still her thoughts would
+not be controlled, and soon the slate took the place of the paper, and
+her pencil formed two words over which she bent lovingly, and yet with a
+shudder, as if it were ominous to her hopes that she had written these
+words, for the pencil gritted loudly over the slate, and the last stroke
+was made with a harsh grating shriek which sounded loudly in the silence
+of the night.  Still she bent lovingly over the characters, until, drip,
+drip, drip, the tears fell upon them, and then, as her white forehead
+sank upon her hands, the long gleaming clusters of her bright hair swept
+over the slate, and the words were gone, while the girl wept long and
+bitterly, for her dream of the future seemed rudely broken--that happy
+dream of her life whose rosy hues had served to soften the misery of her
+lot.  Toiling hard by day to supply the wants of her suffering mother,
+working by night to make herself more worthy--to raise herself if but a
+step nearer to him; and now it seemed to her that she had been roughly
+dashed from the point to which she had climbed, by the words and looks
+of a low ruffian whose very presence was repelling.
+
+Suddenly Lucy raised her head, for the night was hot, and the window
+open, and in the stillness of the hour she heard approaching footsteps--
+steps that she seemed to know, and her pulses beat tumultuously as they
+appeared to stop at the end of the court for a few minutes, and then
+pass on; when, as if a weight had been removed from her heart, the poor
+girl sighed, breathed more freely, and again bent over her books.
+
+An hour passed, and then once more Lucy looked up, for, clear and sharp,
+"tap, tap, tap," came the sound as of something hard, a tiny shot, a
+pebble striking against the window-panes, and then once more there was
+silence.
+
+Lucy rose softly, her cheeks pale and lips apart, and stole on tiptoe to
+the door of the back-room and listened.
+
+All was silent there but the heavy breathing of sleepers, so she again
+crossed the room, and with the nail of one finger gave a sharp tap upon
+the pane, then hastily tying on her bonnet and drawing on a shawl, she
+once more stood trembling and eagerly listening at the back-room, her
+pale young face wearing a strange, frightened expression, and then
+slowly and softly she stole to the door, opened it quietly, and closed
+it again, to stand outside upon the dark landing gazing fearfully up and
+down, as if in dread of being molested.
+
+Slowly down she then passed step by step, with the old worn boards now
+and again creaking sharply beneath her light weight, every rustle of her
+dress sounding loud and distinct in the silence--down slowly to the dark
+passage and the front-door, left always on the latch for the convenience
+of the many lodgers.  And now Lucy's heart beat heavily, for she had
+passed along the entry in an agony of fear, lest she might encounter
+someone sleeping upon the floor, for at times homeless ones had stolen
+in and rested there, glad of such a refuge from the night wind.
+
+But Lucy stood at the door in safety, and raised the latch.  The paint
+cracked loudly as the door opened, and admitted the faint light of moon
+and lamp, while now the wind sighed mournfully down the court.  The next
+moment the door was closed, and a dark figure had seized Lucy by the
+hand, and drawn her towards one of the many gloomy entrances, as the
+heavy step of a policeman was heard to pass the end of the court, his
+ringing paces gradually growing fainter and fainter, till once more all
+was still but the moaning sigh of the night wind, as it seemed at times
+almost to wail for the miseries of Bennett's-rents.
+
+A quarter of an hour, half an hour, an hour passed; but save the
+occasional rattle of wheels in the great thoroughfare, all was silent.
+The many doorways in Bennett's-rents seemed to frown darkly and
+mysteriously as the one lamp flickered, while, where the moonbeams did
+not fall, there were gloomy shadows.  But at last came the light step of
+Lucy and the soft rustle of her dress as she crept up to the door,
+passed through to steal once more up the creaking stairs, to throw off
+bonnet and shawl, and sit down panting and trembling, her breath coming
+hardly for a while, till tears came to her relief, when she wept long
+and bitterly, the heavy booming of a neighbouring clock sending a
+shudder through her frame.
+
+Now pushing back her hair from her forehead, she looked out angrily upon
+the night, now drooping and weeping bitterly, her head again sank upon
+her hands as the tears of hopeless misery gushed from her eyes.  The
+moonbeams shed their silvery lustre upon her head as she bent there,
+playing amidst the riches of her beautiful hair, caressing it, hiding
+and glancing from amidst the thick tresses, lingering there, and seeming
+to shed a halo around.  But slowly the radiant orb rode on till but half
+the bright tresses were in the light, and still slowly the shadows
+increased as the rays swept by, flooding first one and then another part
+of the room.  Soon all within was darkness, while the court was light;
+and then slowly the shadow began to climb the houses on the other side,
+making their dingy walls less loathsome as seen through the silvery
+medium.  But before the lower part of the court was quite in darkness, a
+heavy, slouching figure might have been seen to creep up to the house on
+the opposite side and enter the door.  A few minutes after, Lucy Grey
+started and listened, for, in the strange stillness of the time, a
+rustling was heard upon the stairs, followed by a faint but laboured
+breathing; while, though her light was extinguished, Lucy crouched
+trembling in her chair, for it seemed to her that she had been watched,
+and that even now there was a piercing eye at the keyhole, which fixed
+her to her seat so that she dare not move.  But at last, from sheer
+exhaustion, her fair young head drooped lower and lower towards the
+table, sinking upon her shapely arms; when once more came the rumble of
+a vehicle in the street, the heavy tread of the policeman upon the
+pavement--this time right along the court--in firm, ringing steps, that
+gave wrong-doers ample notice of his coming, and then again silence.
+
+They were wild dreams that made fevered the sleep of Lucy Grey.  Now it
+was Arthur Sterne; now _ma mere_ and her son, or the low, bull-dog face
+of Jarker, that disturbed her rest, and she moaned in her sleep again
+and again as the night wore on.  The writing upon her slate was gone;
+the copies were blurred and tear-blistered, and the poor girl slept
+heavily and painfully.  Now she sighed, now she started, for her heart
+was rent and torn--as gentle a heart as ever beat in woman's breast;
+but, like a blight, the breath of suspicion had rested on her, and she
+had shrunk back scathed before the man for whose coming it had been the
+pleasure of her life to watch.
+
+What was there to live for now? she asked herself again and again.  Was
+life to be only a dreary blank--a struggle for mere existence?  And then
+she blamed herself for her folly and ambition.  Had Arthur Sterne never
+crossed the light of her life she could have patiently toiled on, never
+wearying of the plaints of her mother; but now, after months, almost
+years of hopefulness, to come to this!  Well might the sleep be fitful,
+and the dreams those which brought trouble, for the sun of her life
+seemed clouded, and hope a thing of the past.
+
+Again a sigh, and a few muttered words, and then the weary head was
+turned a little so that when the first grey dawn of the coming day crept
+down the court, and struggled into the room, driving forth shadow after
+shadow, it rested smilingly upon Lucy's cheek, pausing lovingly upon the
+first pure thing it had encountered that morning in the misery-smitten
+region around.  Had Arthur Sterne known all, he would have given
+position, advancement, all, to have pressed his lips where the pale
+light now rested, and asked for pardon.  But he knew only that which he
+had seen, and, racked by suspicion, he wearied himself with doubt and
+surmise without end.
+
+Again a sigh, and again a restless turn, when the colour flushed through
+Lucy's pale cheeks.  It was sunrise, and some hopeful thoughts must have
+come with its brightness; or was it that the words breathed far off
+above the rushing river had at length reached their goal?  But the
+cheeks soon paled again, the sigh was repeated, and Lucy slept heavily.
+
+"Tsu weet, tsu weet, tsweet, tsweet, tsweet!" sang in long and joyous
+trill the speckled-breasted lark, as, raising its crest and the plumage
+of its throat, it fluttered by the prison-bars, and poured forth that
+joyous song whose every note told of bright skies, pure air, and the
+daisy-sprinkled mead; of waving cornfields, rippling brooks, and
+many-tinted woods.  "Tsweet, tsweet, tsweet!" sang the bird of the
+joyous heart-stirring song, prisoned here in a foul court, but panting
+for the elastic air and some loving mate.
+
+Lucy started up and looked confusedly round, then gazing towards the sky
+she became conscious that Mr William Jarker was upon the housetop
+amongst his pigeons and sooty lathen architecture, gazing heavily down
+upon her window.  There was a frown upon her brow as she slowly and
+wearily put aside books and slate, bathed her throbbing temples, and
+smoothed the escaped locks; and then she stole softly to the corner of
+the window, where, unseen from above, she could lean her cheek against
+the paintless frame, and listen to the song of the bird.  Sighing
+heavily as it ceased, she uncovered her sewing-machine, wiped off the
+dust, and prepared her work for the coming day.  Now she had to cross
+the room and make sundry little domestic arrangements; now to seek here,
+now there; but all was done silently, so as not to rouse the sleepers in
+the next room; though there was none of the old elasticity, for she
+moved about wearily, sighing as she went.
+
+And now, first one and then another familiar sound told her that the
+time for labour--that morning was there once more; many steps were heard
+descending the stairs and passing along the court, the cooing of the
+pigeons came from the housetops, and the rattle of vehicles rose more
+loudly from the distant streets.
+
+"Up and dressed, Lucy?" said a voice from the adjoining room.
+
+"Yes, mother dear," was the reply; and now, after waiting some time for
+this signal, the wheel spun round, the keen needle darted up and down,
+and with its sharp click, click, click, sped on Lucy's sewing-machine.
+
+Then the bedroom-door opened, and Septimus Hardon made his appearance--a
+worn expression struggling hard with the smile that greeted Lucy, as he
+tenderly kissed her, and then hurrying out, he went for his morning
+walk, to puzzle over his own weakness, his poverty, and the great
+problem of things in general.
+
+Volume Two, Chapter XII.
+
+IN HOSPITAL.
+
+The more a poor and sensitive man confines himself within doors, the
+more he troubles himself with the fancy that everyone he meets is
+staring at and watching him when he stirs out; and this fancy was very
+strong on Septimus Hardon one day--one very miserable sloppy wet day, as
+he made his way towards Lower Series-place, on account of dilapidations
+in his boots.
+
+Now experience has taught that holes or seediness generally of the other
+apparel may to a certain extent be managed, and something like a decent
+appearance made; the hat may be sponged and ironed, while the brown
+napless spots are inked, and the bruises, to a certain extent, rubbed
+out; holes in the coat may be fine-drawn, and a vigorous brushing will
+always do something towards renovating the nap, even as soap and flannel
+will remove the grease; then, too, a good button-up, and a paper collar
+neatly arranged beneath a clean face and shortly-cut hair, give a finish
+to a costume by no means rare in London streets.  It is only when in
+company with dirt and squalor that long hair shows to its greatest
+advantage; and if the hair be long, vain are the efforts made to reform
+a shabby garb.  Your artist may fancy he paints the better by saving the
+sixpences that should by rights find their way into the pocket of the
+man of the long tongue and sharp scissors; your poet with rolling eye
+may also find some hidden advantage, some Samson-like strength in
+flowing locks; and no doubt Italian liberty would suffer, and Vaterland
+be blotted and wiped out, if from foreign heads much of the
+collar-greasing, eye-offending, cheek-tickling appendage were shorn off.
+We know how the strength of the old judge lay in his locks, and when we
+meet some brawny hirsute fellow, we are apt to consider him a very
+Hercules of strength; but when we encounter long hair in a state of
+wealth, petted, perfumed, and glossed, after the fashion of the dandies
+of the Merry Monarch's time, how the mind will feel disposed to look
+upon the owner of the flowing locks, not as a star of the intellectual
+sphere, but as a comet of weak intensity; while, when the same lengthy
+locks are met with in a state of poverty, even the short prison-barber
+coiffure of the Jarker kind seems preferable.
+
+Taught by adversity, Septimus Hardon had learned to contend with the
+dilapidations in his clothes,--at times quite ingeniously,--but, like
+far better men, he had not been able to control his boots.  Custom has
+so much to do with matters of dress, that though shabbiness will pass
+unnoticed in the throng, any departure from the ordinary laws will draw
+as much attention to the offender as if he were a visitor from some
+foreign clime.  Sandal-shoon were of course once the correct thing for
+promenading the crust of the earth; but who now, unless he were an
+extreme Ritualist, would think of traversing our muddy streets with bare
+feet strapped to a sole, and great-toes working in a most obtrusive
+manner?  Certainly not a man of Septimus Hardon's retiring disposition,
+though, had he felt so disposed, he could not have done so in the
+present instance, since his boots almost lacked soles.  Their decay had
+been so rapid, that scarcely anything remained but the uppers.  He had
+even taken to wearing his wife's goloshes, until the policeman became
+more attentive to his quiet footfall than was agreeable.  But there is a
+stretch beyond which even the elasticity of indiarubber will not extend;
+and now, after putting up with much hard usage, the goloshes had
+succumbed, and, suffering under a complete reverse of circumstances, the
+indiarubber was itself completely rubbed out.
+
+As before said, there are many little contrivances for bettering worn
+costume; but somehow or another a boot bothers the cleverest.  String is
+a wonderful adjunct to garments generally, often acting as a substitute
+for buttons or braces; in fact, for a man wrecked on a desert island,
+there would not be the slightest cause for despair so long as he had
+string; but even it falls powerless before boots; glue is useless from
+the damp; while as to paste, it is no better than sealing-wax or grim.
+Taken altogether, boots are a great nuisance to a poor man; and when
+they have arrived at such a pitch that they are not worth mending, the
+best plan to adopt is not to throw them away, or offer them up as an
+odorous sacrifice to the goddess of poverty upon your household fire,
+watching their life-like contortions as the leather twists and turns in
+the hot blaze, but to do as Septimus Hardon did, with many a sigh, as
+though they had been old friends--sell them.
+
+Septimus sold his boots to Isaac Gross, in Lower Series--place, after
+trying hard to get another day's wear out of them.  It had been a fierce
+battle, and he had found the arguments adduced by his leather friends
+too strong to be resisted.  He parted from them with regret, although
+they had never been to him the friends he tried to believe.  To begin
+with, they had always pinched him terribly, raising blisters upon his
+heels, painfully chafing his toes, bringing a tender place upon one
+foot, and fostering a corn upon the other; but now they had been parted
+with in exchange, with so much current coin added, for a pair of Isaac
+Gross's translations.
+
+It might reasonably be supposed that old Matt had introduced Septimus as
+a customer; but no, this would have been introducing him to the abode of
+which he was ashamed; and Septimus had long since discovered the spot
+for himself, and come to the conclusion that it was a place where he
+could well suit himself, or rather the requirements of his pocket.
+
+Isaac was smoking away as usual, and giving the finishing touch to a
+boot-sole by means of a piece of broken glass, whose keen edge took off
+minute shavings of the leather.  Mrs Slagg was busily carrying on
+trading transactions with a dirty man, and giving the best price for a
+barrowful of old newspapers; but both Isaac and Mrs Slagg seemed out of
+spirits, and when a customer presented himself in the shape of Septimus
+Hardon, the translator put down his work slowly, sighed, laid his pipe
+upon a shelf, and seemed to carry out his bargain with more than his
+usual heaviness.  As a rule, Isaac was a man given to smiling--smiling
+very slowly, and bringing his visage back to its normal state, a solid
+aspect; but there was no smile visible now; and when his visitor for
+"three-and-nine and the old uns," became the lucky possessor of a pair--
+no, not a pair--of two Oxonian shoes, Isaac took the money with another
+sigh, put it in an old blacking-bottle upon the shelf, which he used as
+a till, dropped the old boots upon a heap close by, took up his pipe,
+smoked, sighed, and then scraped away at his boot-sole without taking a
+single peep at his neighbour.
+
+For Isaac Gross was sore at heart concerning the state of his old friend
+Matt, as sore at heart as was his customer; and when, slightly limping
+and pinched, Septimus creaked away in his new shoes, Mrs Slagg having
+finished her paper purchases, and retaken her seat inside her door,--a
+seat she seldom quitted, making her customers perform the weighing and
+lifting when practicable,--she peeped round the door-jamb twice in vain;
+and though trade was prosperous as her love, in spite of its being
+enshrined so softly in fat, Mrs Keziah Slagg's heart was also sore, and
+she too sighed.
+
+The feeling that everyone was watching him was stronger than ever upon
+Septimus Hardon that morning as he made his way along the big streets
+and alleys on his way towards one of the hospitals, and after letting
+the matter sleep as it were for some time, he had now awakened to the
+fact that he should like to prosecute his claim; though he told himself
+frequently that he was too weak and wanting in decision to go on without
+help--the help he could not now obtain.  He knew that Mr Sterne would
+willingly assist him, but his was not the required help; and he shrank
+from making him his confidant, while he eagerly sought the aid of the
+old printer now it was not forthcoming.
+
+There are some strange contradictions in the human heart; and at the
+present time, had old Matt presented himself to go on with the search in
+the unbusiness-like way already followed, the chances are that Septimus
+Hardon would have shrunk from it, or allowed himself unwillingly to be
+dragged into farther proceedings.
+
+But old Matt was not present; and now, with the idea troubling him that
+much time had been wasted, and the matter must be at once seen to,
+Septimus Hardon made his way towards the hospital; not that he was ill
+in body, though troubled greatly in mind concerning the man who had been
+his friend in the hardest struggle of his life.  For there were strong
+passions in the vacillating soul of Septimus Hardon, and he had been
+greatly moved when, after another long absence, during which he had
+anxiously waited for the old man, a letter had been delivered, telling
+how that Matthew Space lay seriously ill in a hospital-ward.
+
+For the first few days after their parting, Matt's last words had
+strangely haunted Septimus, and he could not rest for thinking of them;
+but they grew fainter with the lapse of time; Matt came not to spur him
+once more to his task, and he sank lower and lower, while Doctor Hardon
+of Somesham, portly and smiling, grew great in the estimation of the
+people of the little town.
+
+Septimus had tried more than once in his unbusiness-like, haphazard way
+to find out the residence of old Matt, at such times as the thoughts of
+his last words were strong upon him.  "He said he was ill, and then
+talked of medicine and attendance.  He was wandering," said Septimus.
+"I remember I had great difficulty in getting him along.  Perhaps he is
+dead.  Well, well; so with all of us.  Let it rest, for I'll take no
+farther steps."
+
+A rash promise to make, as he felt himself when one day came the few
+lines written in a strange hand, asking his attendance at the hospital.
+Only a few lines in a crabbed hand, without a reference to the search;
+but now the desire had risen strong in him once more, though he called
+himself selfish to think of his own affairs at such a time.
+
+Septimus was not long in responding to the note, but he found the old
+man delirious.  The second time, Lucy begged to go and see her old
+friend, and wept bitterly over his shrivelled hand; but the old man was
+incoherent, and knew them not.
+
+And now for the third visit Septimus made his way to the hospital, where
+he found the old man apparently sinking from the effects of some
+operation.  The doctor had just left, when one of the nurses, a great,
+gaunt, bony woman, with a catlike smile, and a fine high colour in her
+cheeks, ushered the visitor to the bedside--a bed, one of many in the
+light, clean, airy ward.
+
+Septimus Hardon was shocked at the change which had taken place in the
+old man, as he lay with his hands spread out upon the white coverlet of
+the bed, pale and glassy-eyed, and rather disposed to wander in his
+speech; but his face seemed to light up when he heard his visitor's
+voice.
+
+"No; no better," he whispered.  "Let's see, I told you, didn't I?  Mrs
+Hardon, medicine and attendance, wasn't it?  To be sure it was.  Yes,
+medicine and shocking bad attendance here.  That's it; and I can't tell
+you any more.  I'm falling out of the forme, sir, unless some of these
+doctors precious soon tighten up the quoins."
+
+"No, no," said Septimus cheerily, "not so bad as that; a good heart is
+half the battle."
+
+"Yes, yes, yes, so it is," whispered the old man feebly; "but, I say, is
+she gone?"
+
+Septimus told him the nurse had left the room, and the old man
+continued:
+
+"You can't keep a good heart here, sir, nohow.  I wouldn't have come if
+I'd known all I know now.  You saw her, didn't you?"
+
+"The nurse?" said Septimus.
+
+"Yes, her," replied the old man, shuddering; "she's a wretch, with no
+more feeling in her than a post.  She'll do what the porters shrink
+from, sir.  They have to carry the--you know what I mean, sir--down to
+the deadhouse; and I've known her laugh at the young one, and do it
+herself in a way that makes your blood run cold.  Just wink, sir, if you
+see her coming.  She'll be here directly with my wine or jelly: says I'm
+to have some on the little board, don't it?"
+
+Septimus looked at the board above his head, and found that wine was
+ordered.
+
+"Yes," said the old man, "the doctors are trumps, sir, everyone of them;
+and no poor fellow out of the place could get the care and attention
+I've done here.  My doctor couldn't do more if I paid him ten pound a
+day; and I always feel wonderful after he's gone; seems to understand my
+chronics, sir, as you wouldn't believe in.  But those nurses, sir--don't
+tell 'em I said so, but they're devils, sir, devils.  Medicine and
+attendance, sir; it's all the first and none of the last."
+
+"Hush," said his visitor, seeing as he thought that the old man was
+beginning to wander, "Mrs Hardon would have liked to see you, and Lucy;
+but she could not leave her mother to-day."
+
+"God bless her!" said the old man fervently.  "He asleep in the bed
+there told me she came the other day, looking like an angel of comfort
+in this dreary place, sir.  God bless her!  Tell her, sir, that the old
+man's true as steel, sir; the old blade's notched and rusty, but he's
+true as steel, sir.  Do you hear? tell her that old Matt's true as
+steel.  But these nurses, sir," he whispered, holding by his visitor's
+coat, and drawing him nearer, "they're devils, sir, regular devils!"
+
+"Not quite so bad as that," said Septimus, smiling.
+
+"Not so bad, sir?  Worse, sir, worse; ever so much worse.  They'd do
+anything.  There's no Sisters of Mercy here, sir, like they're talking
+of having at some places; they're sisters of something else--she-demons,
+sir, and one daren't complain or say a word.  They'd kill a poor fellow
+as soon as look at him, and do, too,--dozens."
+
+"Nonsense," said Septimus, smiling, "don't be too hard, Matt."
+
+"'Tain't nonsense, sir," whispered the old man eagerly.  "I ain't
+wandering now, though I have been sending up some queer proofs--been
+touched in the head, you know, and thought I was going; but it didn't
+seem to matter much if I could only have been easy in my mind, for I
+wanted to be out of my misery.  But I couldn't be comfortable on account
+of the medicine and attendance, and your uncle.  What business has he to
+get himself made head doctor here, sir, just because I came; and then to
+set the nurses against me to get me out of the way?  He knows I'm
+against him, and mean you to have your rights, and he's trying with
+medicine and attendance to--no, stop, that's not it," whispered the old
+man, "I've got wrong sorts in my case, and that's not what I wanted to
+say."  And then for a few moments it was pitiable to witness the
+struggle going on against the wandering thoughts that oppressed him; but
+he seemed to get the better of his weakness, and went on again.
+
+"There, that's better, sir; your coming has seemed to do me good, and
+brightened me up.  I get like that sometimes, and it seems that I've no
+power over my tongue, and it says just what it likes.  Tell Miss Lucy
+I'm getting better, and that I want to get out of this place.  I know
+what I'm saying now, sir, though I can't make it quite right about that
+medicine and attendance that we wanted to know about; for it bothers me,
+and makes my head hot, and gets mixed up with the medicine and
+attendance here.  But I shall have it right one of these days; I did
+nearly, once, but it got away again."
+
+In his anxiety now to know more, Septimus drew out paper and pencil.
+
+"Don't think about it now," he said; "but keep these under your pillow,
+and put it down the next time you think anything."
+
+Old Matt smiled feebly, and drew forth his old memorandum-book, and
+slowly opening it, showed the worn stumpy piece of pencil inside.
+
+"I'd thought of that, sir, and should have done so before, only I was
+afraid that I might put down the wrong thing--something about the
+nurses, you know, when they would have read it, and then, perhaps, I
+shouldn't have had a chance to say any more.  And 'tisn't really, sir,
+it isn't nonsense about them.  You think I'm wandering, and don't
+believe it; and it's just the same with the doctors--they don't believe
+it neither.  There was one poor chap on the other side of the ward, down
+at the bottom there--he told the doctor his nurse neglected him, and
+drank his wine, putting in water instead, beside not giving him his
+medicine regular; so the old doctor called for the nurse, and--"
+
+"But you must not talk any more," said Septimus kindly, "you are getting
+exhausted."
+
+"I ain't," said the old man angrily; "it does me good, revives me; and
+you don't believe me, that's what it is."
+
+"Yes, I do, indeed," cried Septimus.  "Then let me finish," whispered
+the old man.  "Doctor Hardon called and asked her where she saw the
+entry.  There, now, there," whimpered Matt, "see what you've done: you
+made me upset a stickful of matter, and got me all in a pye again.  No;
+all right, sir, I see, I see--he asked her about it before the patient,
+speaking very sharply, for the doctors mean well, sir.  And then what
+did the old crocodile do, sir, but just turn her eyes towards the
+whitewash, smooth her apron, raise her hands a bit, and then, half
+smiling, looks at the doctor like so much pickled innocence, but never
+says a word; while he, just to comfort the poor fellow, told him to keep
+up, and it should all be seen to; and then there was a bit of whispering
+between the doctor and the nurse, and then he went off.  But I could see
+who was believed, for I heard the doctor mutter something about sick
+man's fancies as he came across to me.  That poor chap died, sir!"
+
+Just then, Septimus gave the old man a meaning look, for one of the
+nurses came up with a glass of wine, and smiled and curtsied to the
+visitor.
+
+"I hope he ain't been talking, sir?" said the woman, in a harsh grating
+voice with the corners a little rubbed down; "getting on charming, ain't
+he, sir? only he will talk too much.--Now drink your wine up, there's a
+good soul.  Don't sip it, but toss it down, and it will do you twice as
+much good;" and while the old man, with the assistance of his visitor,
+raised himself a little, she gave his pillow two or three vengeful
+punches and shakes as she snatched it off the bed, the result of her
+efforts being visible in a slit across the middle, which she placed
+undermost.
+
+"Yes," muttered Matt when the woman had gone.  "Yes; toss it down, so as
+not to taste it.  Why, that was half water--beautiful wines and spirits
+as they have here, sir.  That's the very one herself, sir.  She killed
+him."
+
+"Killed who?" exclaimed Septimus, horrified.
+
+"Don't shout, sir; leastwise, not if you want to see me again," said
+Matt grimly.  "Killed that poor fellow I was telling you about.  She
+never forgave him, and a week afterwards and there was the screen round
+his bed, and the porters came and carried him away.  She killed him,
+sure enough, and I ain't agoing to tell you about the bother there was
+with his friends about the doctors, and what they did to him afterwards,
+it might upset you.  It almost does me; not that I care much, for it
+don't matter when you're gone, and I've got no friends."
+
+"Hush, pray; it can't be so," exclaimed Septimus, shuddering.
+
+"No, of course not," chuckled the old man, brightening up from the
+effects of his stimulant, "O, no; sick man's fancies, sir, ain't they?
+Just what everyone would say; but she killed him all the same, just as
+dozens more have been killed here.  It don't take much to kill a poor
+fellow hanging in the balance--him in one scale, and his complaint in
+the other.  The doctor comes and gets in the same scale with him, and
+bears him down a bit right way; but then as soon as the doctor's gone,
+the nurse goes and sits in the other scale, and sends him wrong way
+again.  Good nursing's of more consequence sometimes than the doctoring,
+I can tell you, sir, and if I'd had good nursing I shouldn't have been
+here at all.  Ikey means well, you know, sir; and so does Mother Slagg,
+eh? but you don't know them, sir, and it don't matter."
+
+"But had you not better be silent now?" hinted Septimus.
+
+"No," said the old man testily; "being so quiet, and having no one to
+talk to has half-killed me as it is.  I don't want to be killed, I want
+to get out, sir.  And, mind you, I don't say about that poor fellow that
+she poisoned him, or choked him, or played at she-Othello with the
+pillow, sir; but there's plenty of other ways of doing it.  The doctor
+knows the man's condition, and his danger, and orders him such and such
+things to keep him going, and bring him round, eh?"
+
+Septimus nodded, for the old man paused for breath; though the wine he
+had taken made him talk in a voluble and excited manner, but still with
+perfect coherence.
+
+"Well, sir; and who's got to carry out the doctor's orders?  Why, the
+nurse, to be sure.  Just push the pillow a little more under my head,
+sir; she's made it uncomfortable.  That's it; thanky, sir.  Well, you
+nor no one else won't believe that a nurse here would do anything wrong.
+But now, look here: suppose you see that a lamp wants trimming, what do
+you do?  You give orders for it to be trimmed, sir, don't you?"
+
+Septimus nodded again.
+
+"Well, then," whispered the old man, hooking one of his long fingers in
+a buttonhole of his visitor's coat; "suppose they don't trim the lamp;
+suppose it isn't trimmed, eh? what then?"
+
+"It goes out!" said Septimus.
+
+"To be sure--exactly, sir; and there have been lots of lamps go out
+here.  They won't trim them, or forget to trim them, and tell themselves
+they're only sparing the poor creatures misery, while no one dares to
+speak about it.  Talk of death, sir, they think no more of it here, sir,
+than one does of snuffing out a candle.  You see, decent women won't
+come to a place like this to do the work these nurses do.  It's only to
+be done for money or love.  Now it's done for money, and while it's done
+for money it can only be done by hard, heartless, drinking creatures
+who've got women's shapes and devils' hearts, sir.  But the doctors are
+all right, sir, only that they don't see all we poor patients see.  If
+skill and doctoring will put me right, sir, I shall be put right, sir.
+But I'm scared about it sometimes, and half afraid that some of those
+beauties will weight the wrong scale so heavily that the doctors won't
+pull me square.  Sick man's fancies, sir, eh?  Wanderings, ain't they?"
+
+Septimus Hardon knew not what to say, but whispered such comfort as he
+could.
+
+"Something ought to be done, you know," said the old man feebly; "but
+don't hint a word of what I've said, sir, to a soul--please don't," he
+said pitifully.  "You see that all these goings on prey upon a poor
+fellow's mind; and if he isn't low-spirited lying in a hospital-ward,
+when is he likely to be?  One wants sympathy and comfort, sir, and to
+feel that there's someone belonging to you who cares for you, and is
+ready to smooth your pillow, and lay a cold hand upon your hot forehead,
+and say `God bless you!' and I've no one, no one;" and the old man's
+voice grew weak and quavering.
+
+"Come, come," whispered Septimus, "take heart, Matt; we'll come as often
+as they will let us.  And you are getting better; see how you have
+chatted.  You are only low now from the reaction.  Try and rest a bit,
+and get rid of some of these fancies."
+
+Old Matt's eyes turned angrily upon his visitor as he exclaimed, "I tell
+you they are not fancies, sir, but truth.  I wouldn't have come if I'd
+known, for I've seen men drink, and women drink; but never anyone like
+these she-wolves.  Would you trust anyone you loved to the care of a
+woman who drank, sir?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"They say they must have support, and I suppose they must; but it's
+hard, hard, hard!" groaned the old man, and he shut his eyes, seeking
+out the hand of his visitor, and holding it tightly, until, by the rules
+of the place, he was obliged to leave.
+
+Volume Two, Chapter XIII.
+
+MR JARKER IS "A BIT ODD."
+
+There had been no occasion for Mr William Jarker to carry out the
+threat he had once made, for in all the long space of time during which
+Agnes Hardon's child was in Mrs Jarker's care, the money was always
+paid, faithfully and regularly, once a week, but at how great a cost to
+its mother none but the Seer of all hearts could tell; and always, in
+spite of sickness and misery, pain, and the hard bondage of her life,
+Jarker's wife was tender and loving to the little one within her charge.
+Perhaps it was the memory of another pair of bright eyes that had once
+gazed up into her own, perhaps only the loving promptings of her woman's
+heart; but when, by stealth almost, Agnes Hardon came to kiss her child,
+she left tearfully but rejoicing, for there was proof always before her
+of the gentle usage in the fond way in which the little thing clung to
+its nurse.  The preference may have wrung her heart, but it was but
+another sorrow to bear, and, bending beneath her weight of care, she
+came and went at such times as seemed best for avoiding Jarker, the
+curate, and Septimus Hardon.
+
+It was in her power to have let Lucy know where old Matt lodged; but of
+late they had met but little, and then, in their hurried interviews, his
+name was not mentioned, for the sorrows of the present filled their
+hearts.
+
+But now Agnes Hardon was in greater trouble, for something whispered her
+that this sickness of poor Mrs Jarker was a sickness unto death, and
+her soul clave to the suffering, ill-used woman who had filled the place
+of mother to her child; while, at the same time, she trembled for the
+future of her little one after each visit--ever feeling the necessity,
+but ever dreading, to take it away, for truly there was a change coming;
+and time after time when she left the garret, it was with a shudder, for
+there seemed to be a shadow in the room.
+
+It was almost impossible to ascend the creaking stairs to the garret
+tenanted by Mr Jarker without hearing Mrs Sims, who, through some
+spiritual weakness, had left the house in the square to return once more
+to the Rents--a court honoured by most of those unfortunates who, from
+unforeseen circumstances, fell from the heights of the square; while the
+latter was always looked up to, in its topmost or basement floors, for
+promotion by the more fortunate tenants of the Rents; and now an
+ascending visitor was almost certain to hear the melancholy, sniffing
+woman blowing her fire.  Generally speaking, we see bellows hang by the
+mantelpiece, with a time-honoured, bees'-waxy polish glossing them, as
+though they were family relics whose services were seldom called into
+requisition; but _chez_ Mrs Sims, the bellows had rather a bad time of
+it, and were worked hardly enough to make them short-winded.  They
+already wheezed so loudly that it was impossible to take Mrs Sims'
+bellows for anybody else's bellows; and this was probably due to their
+having inhaled a sufficiency of ashy dust to make them asthmatic, while
+the nozzle was decayed and burned away from constant resting upon the
+specially-cleared bottom-bar; the left half of the broken tongs doing
+duty for the vanished poker, borrowed once to clear the grating in the
+court, and never returned, for the simple reason that it found its way
+to Mrs Slagg's marine-store shop, where it stayed in consideration of
+the porter receiving the best price given, namely, twopence.
+
+Your boots might creak, and, as was their wont, the stairs would crack
+and groan, but still there was the sound of the bellows to be heard as
+you ascended the staircase--puff, puff, puff; and the stooping woman's
+stays crackled and crumpled at every motion, for Mrs Sims, from always
+requiring support, external as well as internal, sought the external in
+whalebone, though for the internal she preferred rum.  There was always
+"suthin' as wanted a bit of fire:" perhaps it was washing-day, which,
+from the small size of Bennett's-rents' wardrobes, happened irregularly,
+with Mrs Sims three times a week, when the big tin saucepan used for
+boiling divers articles of wearing-apparel, in company with a packet of
+washing-powder, would be placed upon the little damaged grate, upon
+which it would sit like Incubus, putting the poor weak fire quite out of
+heart, when it had to be coaxed accordingly.  Sometimes the bellows were
+required to hurry the "kittle," a battered old copper vessel that never
+boiled if it could help it, and, when compelled by the said hurrying,
+only did so after passing through a regular course of defiant snorts,
+even going so far as to play the deceiver, and sputter over into the
+fire, pretending to be on the boil when many degrees off, and so
+spoiling Mrs Sims' tea--never the strongest to be obtained.  Sometimes,
+again, the bellows were required to get a decent fire to cook a bit of
+steak for the master's dinner, or even "to bile the taters."  At all
+events, of all Mrs Sims' weaknesses, the principal lay in her bellows,
+and she could generally find an excuse for a good blow, accompanied
+sometimes by a cry over the wind-exhalers, as she sniffed loudly at her
+task.
+
+There is no doubt but that in her natural good-heartedness Mrs Sims
+would have operated quite as cheerfully upon any neighbour's fire as she
+did now upon the handful of cinders in Mrs Jarker's grate; for, in
+spite of her sniffs, her weakness for the internal and external support,
+and her whining voice, Mrs Sims was one of those women who are a glory
+to their sex.  Only a very humble private was she in the noble army, but
+one ever ready for the fight: fever, cholera, black death, or death of
+any shade, were all one to Mrs Sims, who only seemed happy when she was
+in trouble.  If it was a neighbour who could pay her, so much the
+better; if it was a neighbour who could not, it mattered little; send
+for Mrs Sims, and Mrs Sims came, ready to nurse, comfort, sit up, or
+do anything to aid the needy; and old Matt had been heard more than once
+to wish she had been a widow.
+
+Poor Mrs Jarker would have suffered badly but for this woman's
+kindness; many a little neighbourly act had been done by Lucy, but Mrs
+Jarker's need was sore, and beyond minding the child for her
+occasionally, Lucy's powers of doing good were circumscribed.  And now,
+one night, sat Mrs Sims, sniffing, and forcing a glow from the few
+embers in the Jarker grate as she made the sick woman a little gruel.
+
+Mr William Jarker ascended the stairs after having had "a drop" at the
+corner--that is to say, two pints of porter with a quartern of gin in
+each; and upon hearing the noise of the bellows he uttered what he would
+have denominated "a cuss," since he bore no love for Mrs Sims, and her
+sniff annoyed him; but when, upon ascending higher, he found that the
+sound did not proceed, as he expected, from the second-floor, but from
+his own room, he began to growl so audibly that the women heard him
+coming like a small storm, and trembled, since Mr Jarker was a great
+stickler for the privacy of his own dwelling, which he seemed to look
+upon as a larger sort of cage in which he kept his wife.
+
+But although forbidden to enter the room, Mrs Sims glanced at the
+pallid sufferer lying in the bed, with the feeble light of a rush candle
+playing upon her features; and muttering to herself, "Not if he kills
+me," resolved not to abdicate; and then, after a few final triumphant
+puffs, dropping at the same time a tear upon the top of the bellows--a
+tear of weakness and sympathy--she laid down the wind instrument upon
+which she had been playing, and thrust an iron spoon into the gruel upon
+the fire, stirring it round so energetically that a small portion was
+jerked out of the saucepan upon the glowing cinders, and hissed
+viciously, forming a fitting finale to Mr Jarker's feline swearing.
+
+But the gruel did not hiss and sputter as angrily, nor did the erst
+glowing cinders look so black, as did Mr William Jarker when he found
+"the missus still abed," and Mrs Sims in possession.
+
+"I have said as I won't have it," growled Mr Jarker; "and I says agen
+as I won't have it.  So let people wait till I arsts 'em afore they
+takes liberties with my place.  So now p'r'aps you'll make yourself
+scarce, Missus Sims;" and then the birdcatcher crossed over to, and
+began muttering something to, his wife.
+
+But Mrs Sims was nothing daunted; she was in the right, and she knew
+it, and though her hands trembled, and more of the gruel fell hissing
+into the fire, as the tears of weakness fell fast, she stood her ground
+firmly.
+
+"When I've done my dooty by her, as other people, whom I won't bemean
+myself to name, oughter have done, Mister Jarker, I shall go, and not
+before," said Mrs Sims.  "It's not me as could sit down-stairs and know
+as that pore creetur there was dying for want of a drop of gruel, and me
+not come and make it, which didn't cost you a farden, so now then!"
+Here Mrs Sims bridled a great deal and sniffed very loudly; a couple of
+tears falling into the fender "pit-pat."
+
+"Don't jaw," said Bill gruffly, making a kind of feint with his hand as
+he stooped down to light his short black pipe by thrusting the bowl
+between the bars.
+
+Mrs Sims flinched as if to avoid a blow, to the great delight of Mr
+Jarker; but exasperated him directly after by sniffing loudly, over and
+over again, producing, by way of accompaniment to each sniff, a low and
+savage growl and an oath.
+
+"Well, I'm sure," exclaimed Mrs Sims, "how polite we're a-growing!"
+But catching sight of the smouldering fire in the ruffian's eye, she
+hastily poured out the gruel, repenting all the while, for the poor
+woman's sake, that she had spoken; but upon taking the hot preparation
+with some toast to the invalid she found her kindness unavailing, for
+though Mrs Jarker sat up for a minute and tried to take it, she sank
+back with a faint sigh, and with an imploring look, she whispered her
+neighbour to please go.
+
+"Not till I've seen you eat this, my pore dear soul," said Mrs Sims
+boldly, though, poor woman, she was all in a tremble, and kept glancing
+over her shoulder at Jarker, who, with his back to the fire and his
+hands in his pockets, glowered and scowled at the scene before him.
+Mrs Sims passed her arm round the thin, wasted form, and supported the
+invalid; but, after vainly trying to swallow a few spoonfuls, the poor
+woman again sank back upon her pillow, sighing wearily, while the sharp,
+pecking sound made by one of the caged birds against its perch, sounded
+strangely like the falling of a few scraps of soil upon a coffin--"Ashes
+to ashes--dust to dust."  And then, for some minutes, there was silence
+in the room, till Mrs Jarker turned whisperingly to her friendly
+neighbour, to beg that she would go now and not rouse Bill, who was a
+bit odd sometimes.
+
+So, saucepan in hand, Mrs Sims wished the invalid "Good-night;" and
+then, trembling visibly, sidled towards the door, evidently fearing to
+turn her back to Mr Jarker, who was still growling and muttering, as if
+a storm were brewing and ready to burst; but Mrs Sims' agitation caused
+her first to drop her iron spoon from the saucepan, and then, as she
+stooped to recover it, to flinch once more, to the ruffian's great
+delight, as he made another pugilistic feint--a gymnastic feat that he
+had learnt through visiting some marsh or another when a fight was to
+come off between Fibbing Phil and Chancery Joe--a feat that consisted of
+a violent effort to throw away the right fist, and a quick attempt at
+catching it with the left hand.  But Mrs Sims managed to get herself
+safely outside the door, and lost no time in hurrying down, the stairs,
+breathing more freely with every step placed between her and the
+ruffian; but she shrieked loudly on reaching the first landing, and
+dropped both saucepan and spoon, for the door was savagely thrown open,
+and the bellows came clattering after her down the stairs; and all in
+consequence of Mr Jarker being a bit odd.
+
+"A bit odd!"--in one of those fits which had often prompted him to
+strike down his weak, suffering, patient wife with dastardly, cruel
+hand, and then to kick her with his heavy boots, or drag at her hair
+until her head was bleeding--oddness which made the tiny child in the
+room shrink from him; while before now it had been traced on the poor
+woman's features in blackened and swollen bruises.  But shrieks, and the
+falling of heavy blows, were common sounds in Bennett's-rents, and
+people took but little notice of Mr Jarker's odd fits.
+
+Bill took no heed to the weary, strangling cough which shook his wife's
+feeble frame, but smoked on furiously till the fire went out.  She would
+not get up to put on more coals, and he wasn't agoing to muck his hands;
+for, as has been before hinted, Mr Jarker had soft, whitish hands,
+which looked as though they had never done a hard day's work; and at
+last, when the place looked more cheerless and dull than usual, he
+prepared himself for rest.
+
+"You're allus ill," growled the ruffian, who had had just drink enough
+to make him savage; "and it's my belief as you wants rousing up."  But
+there came no answer to his remark.  The little one slept soundly upon
+the two chairs which formed its bed, and, with half-closed eyes, the
+woman lay, breathing very faintly, as her lips moved, forming words she
+had heard from Mr Sterne.
+
+Bill felt himself to be ill-used, and was very sulky, a feeling which
+made him kick his boots to the end of the room, where one knocked over a
+linnet's cage, when, still growling, the owner had to go and pick it up,
+which he did at the expense of his dignity, and there and then shook the
+cage till the unoffending bird rustled and fluttered about, panting and
+terror-stricken, to be half-drowned by the water he poured into its
+little glass the next minute.  For, what business had his wife to be ill
+and allus having parsons and Mrs Simses a-pottering about in his place?
+Hadn't he made a row about it when she came when the kid was born, and
+hadn't she allus come at uncomfortable times since?  Didn't she come
+when it died, and weren't things uncomfortable now, and she a-making
+them worse?  He wouldn't have it--that he wouldn't; and, growling and
+swearing in a low tone, Mr Jarker divested himself of a part of his
+attire, and threw himself upon the bed.
+
+The rushlight danced and flickered, and a few drops of rain pattered
+against the window as the night breeze sighed mournfully down the court;
+first one and then another bird scraped at its perch, roused as it had
+been by the noise and light, so that it sounded again and again like the
+earth upon the coffin-lid; some loose woodwork amongst the pigeon-traps
+upon the roof swung in the wind, and beat against the tiles, and then
+all was very quiet and still in the wretched attic.
+
+"Bill--Bill, dear," murmured a voice after a while--a strange
+harsh-sounding voice, as if it came from a parched and fevered throat;
+"Bill!"
+
+No answer, only the heavy breathing of the ruffian, and the pattering as
+of earth upon the coffin-lid.
+
+"Bill--Bill, dear--water!" whispered the voice once more; but there was
+no answer, only the restless pattering noise of the birds.  Then again
+silence so still and profound that it seemed hardly to be London.  But
+the silence was broken by a little liquid trilling laugh, the laugh of
+the child, as some bright-hued happy dream passed over its imagination;
+though there was silence again the next moment, to be broken once more
+by the strange husky voice, a voice that seemed new to the place, as in
+almost agonising tones it whispered:
+
+"Kiss me, Bill!"
+
+But there was for response only the sound as of the earth pattering upon
+the coffin-lid more fitfully and hollow.  While now, slowly and timidly,
+a thin white arm was raised, and, seen there in the dim light, it was as
+though it was waved threateningly above the drunken ruffian's head; but
+no--there was no threat in the act--no calling down of judgment from on
+high; for the arm was passed lovingly, tenderly, round the coarse bull
+neck, and still there was no response to the appeal.
+
+"Kiss me, Bill!" was once more whispered; but a long, deep-drawn,
+stertorous breath told that William Jarker slept heavily, as the arm lay
+motionless, clasping his neck; and then came a sigh, as piteous and
+heart-rending as ever rose from suffering breast.
+
+On sped the hours; the rushlight burned down into the socket, flickered
+once, and expired; the distant sounds of traffic floated by once or
+twice; the customary heavy tramp of the policeman was heard to pass
+along the court; and now and then the ruffian breathed more stertorously
+than usual, or ejaculated some unconnected words in his sleep.  Then the
+child started and whimpered for a few minutes, but sank to sleep again;
+and still through the night came that restless, pattering noise, that
+hollow rattle as of dry earth--"ashes to ashes, dust to dust"--the sound
+as of dry earth falling upon a coffin-lid.
+
+The stars paled as they set; the morning came, and the red-eyed
+lamplighter hurried from post to post, extinguishing the sickly-looking
+gas-jets; the noises in the streets grew louder and louder, and many a
+weary client lodging near woke to wonder whether his case would come on
+that day.  The men in Bennett's-rents who had work slowly tramped to it,
+many who were without rose to seek it, while others, again, to use their
+own words, took it out in sleep, and amongst these was Mr William
+Jarker.
+
+"Mammy, mammy!" at length rang in pitiful tones upon the ruffian's ear,
+and as he woke to the sensations of a hot, aching, fevered head and
+furred tongue, he tried to clear his misty, spirit-clouded faculties.
+
+"Mammy, mammy!" again cried the child, who had climbed upon the bed, and
+was shaking her foster-mother; "mammy, mammy!" she cried more pitifully,
+and then burst into a loud wail at her inability to wake her.
+
+"Yah-h-h-h!" roared Bill without moving; when, at the dreaded sound, the
+little thing ceased its cry, and, cowering beside the sleeping woman,
+laid a sunny head upon her cheek, and passed two tiny, plump arms round
+her neck, in a soft, sweet embrace that has power in its innocent love
+to warm even the coldest, though futile here.
+
+"Blame it, how cold!" growled Mr Jarker, trying to raise the arm that
+had lain upon his neck the long night through; but it was stiff and
+heavy; and, shrinking hastily away, the frightened man sat up, gazed for
+an instant at the face beside him, and then leaping, with a howl of
+terror, from the bed, rushed half-clad from the room.
+
+And why did he flee?  Was it that there was still the sound as of
+falling earth rattling upon a coffin-lid?  For what was there to fear in
+the pale face of that sleeping woman, with the earthly pains and
+sorrow-traces faded away, to leave the countenance calm, softened, and
+almost beautiful; for there had come back something of the old, old look
+of maidenhood and happier times, when she had looked with admiration
+upon the stalwart form of the ruffian she had wed, and believed in him,
+wedding him to become his willing slave?  Hers had been a hard life;
+born in misery and suffering, growing under sorrow and poverty and vice;
+yet had she been a woman with a woman's heart.  But now she slept, to
+wake, we hope, where justice is tempered by mercy, and the secrets and
+sorrows of every heart are known.  But now she slept, and her sleep must
+have been peaceful--happy--for the lines of sorrow had passed away, and
+there was a smile upon her lip.
+
+Nothing to fear.  Guilt fled, but Innocence stayed, and the soft, silky
+curls of the child were mingled with the thin dark locks of the woman,
+as a tiny smooth round cheek rested upon the marble temple, and a little
+hand played in the cold breast that should never warm it more.
+
+Nothing to fear; though the simple people who soon assembled in the room
+spoke in whispers, passing in and out on tiptoe, many with their aprons
+to their eyes; while poor Mrs Sims, when she returned to her own room
+with the child, quieted it by means of a large slice of sugared
+bread-and-butter, and relieved her own mind by sitting down to have a
+good long, soft blow at the fire, what time the tears pattered down
+plenteously on the bellows.
+
+Nothing to fear; for calm and still was the face of the sleeping woman,
+who with her latest breath had rendered the love she had sworn to her
+husband, and now in peace she rested; but still through the long day,
+through the long night, and when the hard, harsh shape of the coffin
+stood in the room, there came at intervals the sharp, hollow, rattling
+noise, as of earth falling upon its lid, when the listeners' ears would
+strain to catch those awful accompanying words--"Ashes to ashes, dust to
+dust!"
+
+Volume Two, Chapter XIV.
+
+SICK MAN'S FANCIES.
+
+There was a strange battle in the breast of the Reverend Arthur Sterne
+about this time.  Now he would feel satisfied in his own mind that he
+had obtained the victory over self, while directly after, an encounter
+with Lucy, or some little incident that occurred during one of his
+visits, would teach him his weakness.  Pained, and yet pleased, he left
+Septimus Hardon's rooms on the day after Mrs Jarker's death, for he had
+been gazing upon a picture that an artist would have been delighted to
+copy: Lucy Grey weeping over the sunny-haired child she had just fetched
+from Mrs Sims' room.  He was pained, for the scene had brought up the
+thoughts of its mother, and her strange intimacy with Lucy, though the
+gentle, loving interest shown for the helpless, worse than orphan child,
+made his heart swell and beat faster as he thought of the mine of
+wealth, the tenderness the fair girl could bestow were she all he could
+have wished.
+
+But the pain and sorrow predominated as he left the house and slowly
+descended, for he encountered _ma mere_ upon the staircase, and he felt
+the colour mount to his temples as he met her sardonic smile and thought
+of her words; and then he hurried away, feeling at times that he must
+leave the place and seek another home, for his present life was wearying
+in the extreme.  He would have done so before but for one powerful
+thought, one which he could feel would maintain its sway, so that he
+would be drawn back and his efforts rendered useless--efforts that he
+made to break the chain that fettered him.  For her part, Lucy avoided
+him, meeting him but seldom, and then with flushed cheek and averted
+eye; while though in any other instance he would have declared instantly
+that flush to have been that of shame or modesty, yet here, tortured by
+doubt, he could not satisfy himself, for at such times as he tried to be
+content came the memory of the scene in the Lane, and the words of the
+old Frenchwoman.
+
+Lucy had fetched the child from across the court, but it was only
+admitted by Mrs Septimus under sufferance, for she was in one of her
+weak fits that day, and if it had not been that Septimus encouraged the
+act, the little thing would have remained in Mrs Sims' charge.
+
+"Keep her, at all events, till I come back," Septimus had said, and his
+evident desire to go out had somewhat shortened the curate's visit, for
+the desire was strong now upon Septimus to gain fresh information
+touching the legitimacy of his birth.  The more now that obstacles
+sprung up, the more he felt disposed to assert his right; but he
+acknowledged to himself that it was but a passing fit, and that he would
+soon return to his old weakness and despondency.  Still there was a warm
+feeling of friendship for Matt to prompt him to revisit the hospital at
+an early day, and, soon after the curate had left Bennett's-rents,
+Septimus was on his way to the sick-bed of the old man.
+
+He thought a great deal of old Matt's assertion that he had seen an
+entry somewhere; but the more he thought, the more it seemed that this
+was merely a hallucination produced by his illness, for he could not but
+recall how he had confused it with matters of the past and present.
+
+The old man slept when Septimus reached his bedside, and some time
+elapsed before he unclosed his dim eyes, and then they gazed blankly
+into his visitor's before he recognised him, when a light seemed to
+spread across his features, and he smiled faintly.
+
+"Come again?  That's right.  I wanted to ask you something, sir," he
+said.
+
+"Indeed!" said Septimus eagerly, for he felt that it had to do with the
+matter in which he was interested.
+
+"Why," said the old man, hesitating, "it was about the nurses, and your
+father, and--do you think that they had anything to do with the rats?"
+
+Shuddering, and with the cold sweat breaking out upon his face at the
+bare recollection, Septimus laid a hand upon the old man's breast, and
+gazed wonderingly at him.
+
+"Hush," said Matt in a whisper, "don't speak loud, sir.  I've been
+trying to put it all into shape.  I think they had; and it's that woman
+who drinks my wine that knows all about it.  They're keeping you out of
+your rights, sir, and they're all in the plot.  Stoop down, please, a
+little closer; I want to whisper," and he drew his visitor nearer to
+him, so that his lips nearly touched his ear.  "Medicine and attendance,
+sir, eh?  That was it, wasn't it?"
+
+Septimus felt his heart sink with disappointment, as he slowly nodded
+his head.
+
+"I've found it out, sir," continued the old man; "found it out for you
+after travelling all over London.  They think I've been here all the
+time; but, bless you, I've been out every night, and had it over with
+the posts in the street.  They don't know it, bless you; but I've been
+tracking that entry, and, after the doctor has dodged me all over
+London, I've followed him here.  It's not Doctor Hardon, sir, and yet it
+is, you know; but I've not quite separated them, for they're somehow
+mixed up together, and I've not had time to put that quite right; but
+I'll do it yet.  Interest for that shilling you once gave me, sir, just
+at the time I was that low that I'd nearly made up my mind to go off one
+of the bridges, and make a finish.  But just see if either of the nurses
+is coming, sir, and tell me, for they're all in it, and they'll keep you
+and Miss Lucy out of your rights.  Tell her I'm true as steel, sir, will
+you?"
+
+"Yes, yes," said Septimus anxiously, for the old man seemed to be
+growing excited.
+
+"But about that doctor, sir, and the entry," he continued, "it's here,
+sir; it's the house-surgeon, and I saw him make a memorandum here by my
+bedside: `Medicine and attendance: Mrs Hardon.'  He put it down in his
+pocket-book, after sharpening his pencil upon a bright shining lancet;
+and he did not know that I was watching him.  Take him by the throat,
+sir, as soon as you see him, and make him give it to you."
+
+"Try and compose yourself, Matt," said Septimus sadly, for he now felt
+that the whole history of the entry was but the offspring of a diseased
+mind.  For a while he had suffered himself to hope that by some strange
+interposition of chance, with the old man for instrument, the whole
+matter was likely to be cleared up; but now the air-built castles were
+broken down--swept away by the sick man's incoherent speeches, and,
+after seeing him turn upon his side and close his eyes, the visitor rose
+to leave.
+
+But old Matt heard the movement of his chair, and unclosed his eyes
+directly.
+
+"You'll come again, sir, won't you?" he said, speaking quite calmly.
+"That always seems to make me clearer--shutting my eyes and having five
+minutes' doze.  I'm weak, sir--very weak now; but I'm getting right, and
+I'll turn that over in my mind about the entry against you come again,
+when I can talk better, and try to set it right.  But stop; let me see,"
+he exclaimed,--"stop, I have it.  I remember now, I did think all about
+it, and where it was I saw the entry; and for fear it should slip my
+mind again, I did as you told me, and as I always meant to do--put it
+down in my pocket-book under the pillow here;" and he drew forth the
+tattered memorandum-book, and held it out to his visitor.
+
+Septimus turned over the leaves with trembling hands, coming upon
+technical references to trade matters,--amounts in money of work done;
+calculations of quantity in pages of type.  Then there were the
+baptismal and marriage entries they had made out, and beneath them some
+tremblingly--traced characters, evidently formed by the old man when in
+a reclining position; but, with the exception of the one word "Hardon,"
+they were completely illegible.  He then turned to the old man; but his
+eyes were closed, and he seemed sleeping; so he replaced book and pencil
+beneath the pillow, and then, passing between the beds of other
+sufferers, each intent upon his own misery, he came suddenly upon the
+smiling nurse, evidently waiting to see if there was a gratuity ready
+for her hand.
+
+It was hard work parting with that shilling; but Septimus felt it to be
+a duty to slip it into the Jezebel's hand, and to whisper a few
+beseeching words that she would be kind and attentive to the old man.
+
+"A quiet, patient old creature; you may rest quite happy about that,
+sir," said the nurse.  "I'll treat him just as I would my own brother."
+
+"He will get better?" said Septimus interrogatively.
+
+The woman screwed her lips up very tightly as she said she hoped he
+might, but Septimus thought of the expiring lamp and its supply of oil;
+and it was little of his own affairs, and the possibility of there being
+an entry locked in the old man's clouded memory, that he thought of as
+he stammered, "Pray do all you can for him.  I am sorry I can offer you
+no more."
+
+"Bless you, sir, you needn't even have done that.  If it had been a
+guinea, it would have been all the same, and I shouldn't have thought a
+bit the better of you.  We have a painful duty to perform here, sir, and
+it's an unthankful task, for there's no gratitude from the patients; but
+when a friend or relative makes one a little offering, why, setting
+aside the value, sir, it does seem to make things better, and to sweeten
+the toil.  We never do expect any praise; while as to some of the tales
+the patients make up, you'd be surprised.  Poor things! you see, their
+minds wander a bit, and they always seem to take a dislike to those who
+are like mothers to them.  But there, sir, I always says to myself, I
+says, it's no use to take any notice of the poor things' whims, so long
+as we know we do our duty by them."
+
+"I suppose," said Septimus, "their complaints weaken their intellects a
+good deal?"
+
+"Wonderfully, I do assure you, sir.  Now I shouldn't be a bit surprised
+if that poor gentleman, your friend, has been telling you all sorts of
+things?"
+
+Septimus did not believe all that Matt had said, but he evaded the
+question.
+
+"You'd be surprised, sir, if you only knew one-half the tales they make
+up, sir.  There, I can't help it, sir; I laugh, I do, when I think of
+them; for we must be able to eat and drink like bore-constructors, sir,
+to manage a quarter of what they says.  They say we eat their chicking
+and jelly, and drink their wine, and gin, and fancy things the doctors
+order for them.  Some even goes further than that; but then the doctors
+know what people are in such a state, and don't take any notice of
+them."
+
+"`Mrs Hardon; medicine and attendance.'  I wonder whether it's true, or
+only a sick man's fancy?" muttered Septimus aloud, as he went down the
+steps, and stood once more in the open air, feeling as though a weight
+had been raised from his spirits.  "Poor creatures, poor creatures! left
+to the tender mercies of those women, and often neglected and left to
+die."
+
+"No, no, no! pray don't say so," sobbed a voice at his elbow.  "It's bad
+enough, I know; but not so bad as that, please!"  And then a burst of
+sobs choked the speaker's utterance.
+
+Septimus started, for the voice seemed familiar, and he saw beside him a
+tall, well-dressed female, with a thick wool-veil drawn down over her
+face, so that he could not distinguish her features.
+
+"I knew you again, Mr--Mr--Mr--you did tell me your name, but I've
+forgotten it; and I asked him, and he said--but dear, dear," she sobbed,
+"can you see that I have been crying?  And have you been in that
+dreadful place?"
+
+"Yes," replied Septimus; "but I really do not know to whom I am
+talking."
+
+"O dear, O dear!" sobbed the woman, "it's me; you know me, that you
+called on in Chiswell-street; and I can't take up my fall, for my poor
+eyes are so red with crying, and people would see.  Registry--office for
+servants, you know; and O dear, O dear!" and she sobbed more loudly than
+ever.
+
+"Indeed, I beg your pardon," said Septimus kindly; "but I could not know
+you through that thick veil."
+
+"Then you could not see that I had been crying?" sobbed the poor woman.
+
+"No, indeed," replied Septimus, "and--"
+
+"Don't speak to me yet," ejaculated Miss Tollicks; "I'm almost
+heart-broken, and you set me off saying those cruel words.  I'd give
+anything for a place where I could sit down and have a good cry, if it
+was only a doorstep, where people could not see me.  I'm nearly blind
+now, and can't tell which way to go.  It's ever so much worse than any
+trouble I ever had with my business."
+
+"Take my arm," said Septimus gently, after an apologetic glance at his
+shabby clothes.  "Lean upon me, and we'll walk slowly down this street.
+It is quieter here, and you will feel relieved soon."
+
+"O, thank you, thank you," exclaimed Miss Tollicks, taking the proffered
+arm, and still sobbing loudly; "but you are sure that people cannot see
+I have been crying?"
+
+"Certain," said Septimus as they walked on.
+
+"And so you think," said Miss Tollicks, "that they are neglected and
+die, do you, Mr Hardon? and I'm afraid the poor things are.  I've just
+been to see my poor sister that the doctor recommended to go in, and
+she's been telling me such dreadful tales about the nurses; and I can't
+tell whether it's the truth, or whether the poor thing is only
+light-headed.  It was horrible to listen to her, that it was; and you've
+been to see some one too, Mr Harding?"
+
+"Yes," replied Septimus, "the poor old gentleman who was with me when I
+called upon you."
+
+"Dear, dear, dear, what a sorrowful world this is!" sobbed Miss
+Tollicks; "nothing but trouble, always trouble; and how is he, poor
+man?"
+
+"Not long for this world, I fear," said Septimus softly.
+
+"And did he say anything about the nurses too?" sobbed Miss Tollicks.
+
+"Yes, yes," said Septimus hastily; "but it can't be true.  No woman
+could be such a wretch."
+
+"O, I don't know, Mr Harding; but is my veil quite down? there--thank
+you.  We're strange creatures, and we are either very good or else very
+bad--especially servants, Mr Harding," sobbed Miss Tollicks.  "I'm
+afraid that it's all true enough, and if they'd only let me stop and
+nurse my poor sister, I wouldn't care.  The business might go and take
+its chance, for what's the good of money without life?  But O, Mr
+Harding, I did ask my landlord, and he said--and he said--but O! you
+must not ask me now."  And here the poor woman burst out sobbing, quite
+hysterically, so that more than one person turned round to gaze upon
+her; but her troubles attracted little notice, for this was no uncommon
+scene in the long dreary street: the inhabitants were too much
+accustomed to the sight of weeping friends coming from the great
+building, where, but a few minutes before, they had been taking,
+perhaps, a last farewell of a dear one whom they would see no more--a
+dear one whose face was perhaps already sealed by the angel of death; a
+sad parting, maybe, from one whose hopeless malady had rendered it
+necessary for the interior of the hospital to afford the attentions that
+took the place of those that would have been supplied at home.  Poverty
+and sickness, twin sisters that so often go hand-in-hand, brought here
+their victims to ask for aid; and those who dwelt hard by paid little
+heed to pallid out-patients seeking their daily portion of advice, some
+on crutches, some leaning upon the arms of friends, some in cabs.  They
+were used to painful scenes, and knew by sight patient, student, and
+doctor; and therefore hardly bestowed a thought upon the sad couple
+passing slowly down the street, at the end of which Septimus saw poor
+weeping Miss Tollicks into a cab, and left her unquestioned to pace
+slowly back towards Bennett's-rents.
+
+He walked on and thought--thought of all his troubles, and the want of
+decision in his character; of how he ought boldly to have investigated
+his uncle's claim, setting aside his own feelings for the sake of those
+dependent upon his arm for their support; and he sighed again and again
+as he took himself to task.  And then a prayer rose to his lips as he
+recalled the scene which he had left--a prayer fervently breathed there
+in the midst of London's busy flowing stream, as fervent as ever
+emanated from devotee kneeling in some solemn fane--a prayer that, for
+the sake of those at home, he might be spared from the smiting of
+sickness; and then he shuddered as he remembered his father's words, and
+thought of his wife's increasing helplessness.
+
+"Stark mad!  Yes, I must have been," he muttered; "and yet no, why was I
+to crush down my unselfish love?"  And then he stopped short to examine
+himself as to whether his love had really been unselfish.  But he passed
+on again unsatisfied, lost in abstracting thoughts, heedless of being
+jostled here, pushed there, a walking ensample in his short walk of what
+he was in his longer journey of life, a man whom everyone would expect
+to give place, while he full readily made way.  Now he was shouted at by
+a cabman as he crossed the road, then dragged back by a crossing-sweeper
+as he was about to step in front of an omnibus.  But he looked elate,
+and thoughts of a brighter future rose before his mind as something
+seemed to whisper that all would yet be well; and as brighter thoughts
+came lighting in upon his heart's dark places, he saw old Matt well, and
+finding the entry that should restore him to ease and comfort; his wife
+and Lucy happy and smiling upon him; and then his head was lifted, his
+form grew more erect, his nerves and muscles became terse, and, swinging
+his arms, he strode forward till, turning down a side-street, he set off
+and ran--ran hard to the bottom, in the lightness of spirit that had
+come over him.  He had no object in view, no reason for hastening, and
+the act seemed one of folly in a man of his years; but he felt the
+desire come upon him, and he ran, inflating his chest with the free air;
+and perhaps there have been times when, moved by similar impulses, men
+of the present day have felt, if they have not acted, the same as
+Septimus Hardon.
+
+On again once more, this time to come in contact with a baker, whom he
+swung round basket and all, and when sworn at he apologised so
+cheerfully, and with such an aspect of genuine contrition, that the
+baker closed his voluble harangue with "Well, don't do it again, that's
+all."  And perhaps, after all, the acts of Septimus Hardon were not of
+so very insane a character.  True, they seemed strange for a man who had
+just come from a bed of sickness, and whose own affairs were in a most
+unsatisfactory state; but may there not have been something reactive
+after the oppression of much sorrow, the elasticity of life asserting
+itself?  Be it what it may, certain it is that Septimus Hardon, aged
+fifty, acted as has been described, though it seemed strange conduct in
+a man who had suffered as he had.
+
+Breathed again, he once more ran on, full of resolutions for the future,
+touching the vigorous prosecution of his claim, smiling, too, as he made
+the vows in doubt as to their fulfilment, for he knew his weakness; but
+he ran on, feeling more light-hearted than he had felt for years, till
+suddenly he stopped and proceeded at a more moderate pace; for he
+trembled for his shoes, in whose durability he had not much faith,
+trusting their strength but little, for, placing the standard of
+boot-strength at twenty-six shillings, he remembered that he stood at
+three shillings and ninepence, plus his old ones, and he trembled.
+
+Near home at last, where he arrived just in time to encounter _ma mere_
+the sinister, with her poodles, starting to give select entertainments
+through the evening in the far West; and, as he turned into the court,
+his light-heartedness passed away, the many hopeful thoughts vanished,
+and he sighed, for truly it was being under a cloud literally, as well
+as figuratively, to enter the precincts of Bennett's-rents.
+
+Volume Two, Chapter XV.
+
+THE COMMON LOT AGAIN.
+
+All the renters appertaining to Bennett's were either out in the court,
+or at door and window, on the day that Mrs Jarker was buried; while
+Lucy gladdened the heart of Jean Marais by taking charge of the little
+golden-haired child and carrying it up to his room to see the birds and
+dogs.  Women stood in knots talking, with their arms rolled in their
+aprons, and a strong smell of rum, of the kind known as "pine-apple,"
+and vended at the corner, pervaded these little assemblies.  The sports
+of the children were interrupted, and slapping was greatly in vogue in
+consequence of mothers never having known their offspring to have been
+so tiresome before.  Hopscotch was banished from the court, tops and
+buttons confiscated, and there was not a boy or girl present who, in the
+face of so much tyranny, would not have emigrated to some more
+freedom-giving district, but for the fact that there was a "berryin;"
+and the shabby Shillibeer hearse, and its doleful horse and red-nosed
+driver, already stood at the end of the court, where the public-house
+doors were so carefully strapped-back for the convenience of customers.
+
+The time at which the funeral would take place was already well-known,
+but for hours past the court had been in a state of excitement which
+prevented domestic concerns from receiving due attention.  It was an
+observable fact that quite a large trade was done at the chandler's shop
+in halfpenny bundles of wood, consequent upon fires being neglected, and
+doing what fires will do, going out.  Babies screamed until they were
+hoarse, and then fell asleep to wake up and scream again.  There were no
+bones broken, on account of the elasticity of the juvenile framework;
+but several children in the quadrupedal stage of development were known
+to have fallen down flights of stairs during their maternal search;
+while another diversion had been caused by a morsel forcing its foot
+through the grating over the drain, and refusing to be extricated.  It
+was also observable that there were very few men about, and those
+visible confined themselves to the cellar-flap of one of the
+public-houses, only looking down the court at intervals.
+
+At last there was an increased interest, for Mr Pawley and one of his
+men had entered the house, women parting left and right to let them
+through.  Then there was a buzz of excitement, for Mr Jarker had been
+seen to enter the public and come out, to stand wiping his mouth with
+the back of his hand, apparently undecided as to which way he should go;
+but at length, pale and scared-looking, walking up the court and
+following the undertaker.
+
+And now the Jarkers were thoroughly canvassed, and many allusions made
+concerning Bill's treatment of his poor wife.  Worn, dejected, hard--
+featured women, whose lives had been as hard a bondage as that of the
+one passed away, but who made their brick without straw unrepining, told
+of her sufferings, and of how she had always been weak and sickly; while
+it was on all sides allowed that though, as a matter of course, a master
+might be a little hard sometimes, Jarker had been too hard, as she was
+so sickly.  One thought it was the drains, another fancied the place
+wasn't quite healthy; but all agreed that there was nothing better to be
+had at the price; while the market was _so_ handy.  What was to become
+of the child too, formed a surmise in which Mrs Sims took great
+interest; while, as soon as that lady's back was turned, it was
+universally agreed that she was "a good soul."
+
+Another buzz of excitement.  Mr Jarker has been seen to come out with a
+crape scarf fastened upon his fur-cap, while a short skimpy cloak hangs
+awkwardly from his ample shoulders.  Mr Jarker is very low-spirited,
+and finds it necessary to take something short once more in the way of a
+stimulant, and imbibes half-a-quartern of gin at the public-house, his
+emblems of woe inducing a great amount of respect being paid to him by
+the occupants of the place, while one end of the scarf will keep getting
+in his way.
+
+Mr Jarker is a very great man this day, and comports himself with much
+dignity; he feels that he is being looked up to, and that he deserves
+it, but for all that he seems nervous and uncomfortable, and is now
+fetched back by the undertaker, who regularly takes him into custody,
+for he rightly fears that very little would make Mr Jarker run off
+altogether and show himself no more for some days, when perhaps there
+might be a difficulty about the payment of the expenses.  Not that Mr
+Pawley has much fear upon that score, for there was always a certain
+pride respecting a decent "berryin" at Bennett's-rents; and supposing
+any one was very much pressed, there were always friendly hands ready to
+add their mites, with the understanding that one good turn deserved
+another.  Mr Pawley never suffered much in his transactions at the
+Rents, of which place he had the monopoly; and he always made a point of
+insisting that all funerals should be not only what he termed economic,
+but strictly respectable.
+
+"It's a dooty we owe to the departed," he would observe, while never
+once could he recall a dissentient, though assistance was often called
+in to defray the cost, and the well-known avuncular relative of the poor
+appealed to.  Not that Mr Pawley had very hard work to induce the poor
+of the district to do their "dooty" by the departed, for the desire was
+always there to pay the last sad rites decently and in order, even those
+who were obliged to stoop to get an order for a parish coffin often
+raising a tiny fund to induce Mr Pawley to embellish the hard outlines
+of the common plain elm shell with a plate and a few rows of nails, to
+take off the workhouse look of the charity they grudged to accept.
+
+Mr Pawley managed to get Jarker safely back to the house, and then the
+excitement increased, for after the former gentleman had prisoned his
+client in a lodger's room he came down wiping his eye, that seemed more
+moist than ever, and stood mute-like at the door, surrounded by half the
+inhabitants of the court, whom he calmly informed that _they_ were
+coming down directly.  Mr Pawley spoke slowly and impressively, for he
+was a man who had not much to say, but who made the most of it, as if
+his words were gold and to be beaten out to cover the largest space at
+the least possible cost.  He considered his words of value, and as he
+doled them out people listened eagerly, looking upon the day's
+performance as something of which not the slightest item should be lost;
+while Mr Pawley made much of his funerals, regarding each one as an
+advertisement to procure another, as he laboured hard to impress upon
+the dwellers of Bennett's-rents how friendly were his feelings towards
+them, and how little he thought of the money.
+
+"Now they're a-coming!" he whispered, motioning the people away right
+and left--a very marshal of management--and then there was the shuffling
+of feet, the creaking and groaning of the stairs, and the chipping of
+the wall, as down flight after flight the coffin was carried, resting at
+the landings, and more than once some neighbour's door was sent flying
+open.  Mrs Sims' was the first, as one of the bearers backed against
+it, and a lodger's on the first-floor was the next; but the occupiers
+were down in the court, and so escaped being disturbed.
+
+At last, with the top covered with the powdery whitewash chipped from
+wall and ceiling, the coffin stood in the passage, then in the court for
+an instant, before being borne into the shabby Shillibeer hearse; while,
+amidst a suppressed hum of voices, more than one genuine tear was seen
+to fall, and more than one apron to be held up by those who saw the poor
+woman's remains borne away.  Then back came Mr Pawley on tiptoe with
+his handkerchief to his eye, and disappeared in the house, from which he
+soon reappeared with his prisoner, followed by two relatives; and, as
+Bill Jarker was marched down to the hearse with his ill-fitting cloak,
+and long crape scarf hanging from his fur-cap, he held his hands
+together in a strange, peculiar way--a way that, but for the trappings
+of woe, would have suggested that Mr Jarker was really in custody, and
+bore steel handcuffs upon his wrists.
+
+Then there was a crowding towards the entrance of the court to see Mr
+Jarker shut in, Mr Pawley mount beside his red-nosed driver, and then
+the old broken-kneed horse went bowing its head and shambling along
+through the streets, with no more way made for it than if its doleful
+load had been so much merchandise.
+
+Septimus Hardon had stood at his window watching the proceedings, as he
+slowly wiped again and again his pen upon a coat-tail; for the scene
+brought up a sad day in Carey-street, and he could not but recall the
+bright-eyed, yellow-haired child he had lost, and this set him thinking
+of the little one up-stairs in Lucy's charge.  But Septimus Hardon never
+thought very long upon any one particular subject; and, sighing deeply,
+he returned to his writing, while the people in the court slowly flocked
+back to form groups and talk until such time as it was necessary to get
+"master's tea."  There was a considerable amount of thirst engendered
+though, and the public-houses at the top and bottom of the court must
+have done quite a powerful stroke, of trade that day in cream-gin and
+pine-apple rum; for the dull soft bang of the strapped-back doors was
+heard incessantly.  For now, _a la militaire_, people's feelings seemed
+to undergo a reaction; children played and hooted again unabashed; the
+organ-man played the Olga waltz to a select circle of youthful dancers,
+while admiring mammas looked on and smiled; a party of "nigger"
+serenaders arrived at the lower public-house, and played and sang for a
+full hour, the coppers rattling in the reversed banjo freely, after the
+fortunes of the celebrated Old Bob Ridley had been musically rendered by
+a melodious gentleman of intense blackness, who had thrummed the wires
+of his instrument until his fingers were worn white.  Then, too, after
+the departure of the sable minstrels, a lady volunteered a song; but she
+sang not, for an interdict was placed upon the proceedings by the
+landlord, who "couldn't stand none o' that, now."  Then an altercation
+ensued, which ended in an adjournment, and the voluble declaration of
+some half-dozen departing matrons that they'd have no more to do with
+the goose-club.
+
+But Mrs Sims was not there.  Ten minutes after the starting of the
+shabby funeral she went up to Septimus Hardon's rooms to fetch the
+little girl, but had to ascend to the attic, where she found her leaning
+against Lucy, who was seated upon the floor, laughing at the little
+thing's delight as first one and then the other of the poodles stood up
+and carried a stick in its mouth, while the dark eyes of Jean were fixed
+upon the beautiful group before him, ardently though with a speechless
+admiration.
+
+With many thanks Mrs Sims bore away the tiny girl, whose sleeves Lucy
+had tied up with bows of crape, and, as she accompanied the woman down
+the stairs it was only by an effort that she refrained from snatching
+the little one back and bearing it into her own room.  But Mrs Sims
+bore the prattling little thing away and seated it upon the carpet in
+her lodging, when, preparing to relieve herself after so much sorrow,
+she took up the bellows: but as the fire was out she only made a dust,
+and, laying the pneumatic comfort aside, she took to "spazzums," which
+necessitated the sending of Marry Hann, a neighbour's child, for
+half-a-quartern of rum, which relieved the pain so much that she
+repeated the dose more than once, and, carrying the little girl with
+her, went down again for a social chat, being now insensible to pain.
+Half-an-hour had not elapsed, though, before a fresh twinge induced her
+to try another instalment of her "spefizzick," and now she not only
+became insensible to pain but to everything else.  Mr Jarker did not at
+once return after the funeral, but parted with his fellow-mourners
+without a word, after stopping at a public-house honoured by Mr Pawley,
+and settling the expenses readily over some gin and beer, accompanied by
+pipes; and, though more than one neighbour declared they saw him enter
+the door quite late, and come out early next morning, it was certain
+that he did not go up to his attic, a place which for some time he
+shunned after dark.
+
+Mrs Sims declared she saw nothing of him, and doubtless her testimony
+was very trustworthy, for she had not the slightest recollection of what
+took place that night after the last administration of the "spefizzick,"
+nor of how she came into her own room till her angry husband explained.
+For when in the dusk of evening Lucy returned from the warehouse with a
+fresh pile of work, she found Mrs Sims seated nodding upon the doorstep
+with the sleeping child in her flaccid arms, and in momentary danger of
+falling upon the broken flags.  So taking the little thing, Lucy bore it
+to her own room; and from that time forth it often came to pass that she
+crossed the court when Mr Jarker was from home, and attended to the
+wants of the little neglected child.
+
+Volume Two, Chapter XVI.
+
+A BATTLE: SCIENCE WINS.
+
+"What! another operation?" said old Matt with a groan.
+
+"To be sure," said the house-surgeon cheerily; "why not?"
+
+"But I'm so much better," said Matt; "and I've no end of work to get
+through."
+
+"I daresay, my man," said the surgeon sadly, "and so we all have; and I
+fear that when the day comes upon which we are called away, we shall
+have as much to do as ever."
+
+"But I'm so much better now; all but my head, sir, and I can't quite
+think as I used to.  Things bother me, and when I want to remember one
+particular matter, I get confused."
+
+"We shall put you all right this time, my man, and then start you off to
+make room for someone else.  We don't want a parcel of great lazy
+fellows here, fattening on our wine and jelly."
+
+Old Matt smiled grimly as he said: "I say, sir, is it really necessary?"
+
+"Why, of course, my man.  We did you a great deal of good last time, did
+we not?"
+
+"Ye-e-e-s, yes," said Matt; "you did, certainly, sir; but is it
+necessary that my poor old carcass should be touched again?  It ain't
+for the sake of experiment now, is it, sir?  I'm afraid, you know,
+you'll kill me; and, just for the sake of being fair, as you've had one
+turn at me, wouldn't it be better to try it on someone else--on some
+other subject?"  And "O, dear!" thought the old man to himself, "what a
+difference between a Queen's subject and a doctor's subject!"
+
+"Pooh, nonsense, old friend!" said the surgeon, laughing; "we'll make a
+man of you again; so cheer up, or you'll be working your nerves too
+much.  Why, you've picked up wonderfully this last day or two."
+
+"What's the use of picking up, sir, if you get knocking me down again,
+eh, sir?"
+
+The surgeon smiled and continued his round, and old Matt sat and
+grumbled by his bedside, for he was now up, and able to walk about the
+ward.
+
+"Now let's see," muttered the old man.  "I always did fancy, and it
+always seems so, that the more you try to think straightforward of a
+thing, the more it bothers you; so let's try and get round to it
+back-way, if I can.  Well, here goes.  Now here's Mr Septimus Hardon--a
+man--well, not clever, but what of that?  I hate your clever men;
+they've no room to be amiable, or time to be generous.  He's a good one,
+and that's sufficient.  Well, he's kept, say, for sake of argument, out
+of his rights by his rogue of an uncle.  Now he proves his baptism and
+his father's marriage, and then he wants to prove the date of his birth
+to have been after the marriage.  Easy enough that seems; but how to do
+it when t'other party has took possession, and declares all the other
+way.  Doctor's books will do it, failing any other means; and as we do
+fail other means, why we want the doctor's books.  I tell you what it
+is; I believe we have both bungled the matter from beginning to end, and
+ought to have gone to a good lawyer.  But there, what's the good of
+talking?  We had no money, and people without money always bungle
+things.  Now where's the doctor's books, or the doctor?  Doctor's dead--
+safe; but then are his books dead--cut up--burnt?  That's the question.
+I say no, because I'm sure I saw that entry somewhere; and here's the
+nuisance.  When I was situated so that it would have been almost a
+blessing to be shut up here in hospital, I wasn't ill; now I want all my
+energies, I'm chained by the leg.  I'd give up bothering about the
+thing, but I'm sure I read it somewhere, and I'm sure, too, I
+recollected once where it was; and it was while I was so bad," he said,
+pulling out his tattered memorandum-book, and referring to the
+hieroglyphics it contained.  "No," he said, after a long inspection; "I
+have read a good deal, and taken some copy in my time, but I never
+thought I should live to write stuff I couldn't read myself.  There,
+it's of no use; it'll come some day."  And he closed his eyes, and
+leaned his head upon his hand; for his brain seemed weary and restless
+with his long and painful illness.
+
+A morning or two after, the old man was again seated at his bedside,
+trying to amuse himself with a book; but with little success, for his
+eyes were weak.
+
+"I shall let well alone," growled the old man; "and if they want to
+operate, they may cut and carve someone else.  I shall do for the few
+years I have to live; but they might find a poor fellow a scrap of
+snuff, hang 'em!"
+
+"Here, you Number 19, into bed with you directly!"
+
+"Why, I'm only just up," grumbled Matt, who was the said number.
+
+"Never mind, old fellow," said the speaker; "be smart, for they will be
+after you directly."
+
+Old Matt shivered and trembled, and his lips moved as he slowly returned
+to his bed, and there lay waiting.  He had almost determined to be
+content, and bear his burden to the grave; for, said he, "I can't live
+much longer."  But then he thought of the wondrous skill and care of
+those in whose hands he would be, and of the rest that would afterwards
+be his were his life spared.
+
+"I won't turn coward now," he muttered, letting his eyes rest upon some
+flowers in a window near his bed, and gazing at them in a strange
+earnest way,--"No, I won't turn coward, not even if they kill me.  But
+that's hard to think of, that is.  Mine has been a rough life, and I've
+put up with a deal; but I never tired of it--not to say thoroughly tired
+of it, though I've been very near more than once; and I should like to
+keep grinding on for a long time yet.  Life's sweet, somehow, when
+you've got friends, and I seem to have found 'em at last.  I should have
+liked to have helped him out with that entry, though.  Where did I see
+it?"
+
+The old man paused thoughtfully, and kept passing his hand across his
+dew-wet forehead; but the memory was still defective, and he sighed
+wearily: "Why didn't I begin sooner, or make him begin?  Ah, that's it--
+that's it! why don't we begin hundreds of things sooner, and not leave
+them till it's too late!"
+
+The old man paused again, and his lean, bony fingers clutched and clawed
+restlessly to get at the flowers.  But his old train of thought now
+seemed to have returned, for he continued: "Don't often see anything
+about hospital operations, but I have had copy about them--`Death from
+the Administration of Chloroform.'  What an ugly word that first is, and
+what a shiver it seems to give one when we think of it in connection
+with ourselves, though it seems so little when it has to do with anyone
+else!  Wonder whether any of the old 'stab or piece hands would get hold
+of it to set, and feel sorry for the battered old stamp they used to
+laugh at, and whether it would get into the papers if I was to--"
+
+The old man stopped once more, and wiped the dew from his wet forehead.
+
+"Well, well," he said half-aloud, "what is to be will be.  God help me
+well through it all, for I'm a miserable coward; and if it's to be the
+end of old Matt, why, I don't think I've been so very bad, and--there,
+hang it!" he whined, "they might have left me a pinch of snuff.  Here, I
+say, though," he cried, rousing up, "this won't do.  I'm on the wrong
+folio, and shall have to re-set."
+
+"I wonder whether it's hard to die?" he muttered, after another pause.
+"Don't seem as if it was, for they look almost as if they were asleep,
+and wanting to be woke up again.  One must go sometime or another; but
+it would have been happier like to have had hold of someone's hand, and
+seen two or three faces round one's bed, faces of people sorry I was
+going--going.  There, there," he gasped, "I can't stand it.  They
+sha'n't touch me.  It's like running headlong into one's grave.  They
+sha'n't touch me, for I must live and find out about the doctor, for
+that poor helpless fellow in the Rents; or he'll never do it himself.
+They sha'n't touch me, for I am nearly clear now, and I can grub on as I
+am; while, if my chronics kill me in time, why they do, and there's an
+end of it.  They sha'n't--"
+
+"Now, Number 19," said a voice, and to his dismay poor old Matt saw a
+couple of porters enter the ward with a stretcher.
+
+The old man moaned and closed his eyes, muttering the whole while as he
+resigned himself, meekly as a child and without a word of opposition, to
+the men, who tenderly lifted him upon their portable couch, and then
+bore him along the whitewashed passages, whose walls seemed so familiar
+to him, and struck him as being so particularly white and clean--white
+as were ceiling and floor.  He only saw one cobweb, and that was out of
+reach in a far corner; and in his nervous state this greatly attracted
+his attention, so that he could fancy the large spider grinned at him as
+if he were a larger kind of fly in the trammels of a net.  He felt that
+he should have liked for the men to set down the stretcher and remove
+that cobweb, but he stifled the desire to speak.  Then he noticed how
+strangely the hair of his foremost bearer grew, and this, too, troubled
+him: there were no short hairs on the poll, and for some distance up the
+back of his neck was a barren land.  Then he fell to studying the man's
+coat-buttons, the depth of his collar, and how easily he tramped along
+with the handles of the portable couch, whose motion was so easy with
+the light, regular, springy pace of the man; while the dread of what was
+impending seemed quite to have passed away, and he began, now the peril
+was so near, to think of himself as though he were someone else in whom
+he took an interest; and then came a very important question:
+
+How would they bring him back?
+
+Would he be lighter with the loss of blood, and would he be gradually
+stiffening, and growing colder and colder, till the icy temperature of
+death pervaded him through and through?  And then, too, what would they
+do with him?  He had no relations--no one to come and claim his body.
+And even this thought seemed to trouble him but little, for he smiled
+grimly, muttering to himself:
+
+"Cause of science, sir, cause of science; and besides, it won't matter
+then."
+
+On still, with a light swinging motion and an easy tread, the porters
+bore their load, and in the minute or two the removal occupied old Matt
+thought of the last time he had made that journey, and his sensations
+then: how that he had looked upon it all as a dream, and felt that he
+should soon wake up to find himself in bed.  But the old man's musings
+ceased as he was borne into the theatre, save for an instant when the
+thought flashed across his mind, Suppose he died without seeing the
+entry? and this troubled him for a few moments; but directly after he
+was gazing up with anxious eye at the tier upon tier of benches, some
+crowded, some nearly empty, and looking from face to face; but there
+seemed not one that sympathised with him, as, after a glance when he was
+first borne in, a quiet light, chatty conversation was carried on in an
+undertone.  Then there was almost perfect silence, and the old man felt
+himself to be the centre upon which every eye was fixed.  His heart told
+him now that in the low-murmured buzz of conversation that rose,
+students who had again and again stood at his bedside were discussing
+his case, and that if the operation were unsuccessful or unskilfully
+performed, they would merely say that the patient did not rally, and
+then go home or to their studies, regardless of the little gap left in
+the ranks of life; while Septimus Hardon would probably never succeed in
+his endeavours to recover his lost position.
+
+Then he half-smiled as he thought of the importance with which he rated
+himself, and looked eagerly round.  Close by he could see the earnest,
+study-lined faces of several older men, many of them grey-haired and
+thoughtful-eyed--men of eminence in their profession, but strongly
+imbued with the belief of the man of wisdom, that we are ever but
+learners.  Then he looked straight above, even at the skylight, where he
+could see that the sun illumined the thick ground-glass; and now once
+more, in a quiet musing vein, he set to wondering how it would be after
+the operation.
+
+Plenty of faces round, but mostly cool, calm, and matter-of-fact.  Here
+were the hospital dressers and assistants, standing by the table--a
+curious-looking table in the centre of an open space; and a hasty glance
+showed him sponges, and water, and cloths, and lint, and mahogany cases,
+that at another time, if some other sufferer were to have been operated
+upon, would have caused him to shudder.  But all that was past now, and
+he merely looked earnestly round till his gaze rested upon a stout
+grey-haired, keen-eyed man, whose black clothes and white neck-tie were
+spotless, and who now advanced to the table with a quiet business-like
+aspect, as he bowed somewhat stiffly to the assembled surgeons and
+students, and then spoke a few cheering words to the patient as he felt
+his pulse.
+
+"I hope he won't turn nervous over it," thought Matt.  "Be serious to a
+man in his position, with so many looking on.--Can't I have the
+chloroform?" he then whispered to a dresser by his side.
+
+"Yes, of course: here he is with it," said the man; and for the second
+time in his life Matt gazed curiously at a polished mahogany box which
+was being brought forward.
+
+"I say," whispered Matt earnestly to the man at his side, "if anyone
+comes afterwards--afterwards, you know, and asks for me, you'll say,
+`Medicine and attendance,'--there, don't laugh--it's particular--you'll
+say, `Medicine and attendance;' and that old Matt tried to think it out
+to the last.  You'll do that for me?" he whispered earnestly.
+
+The man repeated the words over, and smiled as he made the required
+promise.
+
+"Tell him not to give me too much," said Matt, now with the first
+display of anxiety, as he glanced at the inhaling apparatus.
+
+The time since old Matt had been brought into the theatre might be
+reckoned by moments; and now, in the midst of a profound stillness, the
+grey-haired man calmly raised his eyebrows, turned up his sleeves, and
+then walked a step or two from the patient, now inhaling the wondrous
+vapour of that simple-looking limpid fluid, whose first effect was to
+cause him to push away the apparatus and struggle feebly with those who
+administered it.  But there was a strong hand upon his pulse and a pair
+of stern eyes watching him, and, as the mouthpiece was kept firmly
+against his face, old Matt gave one or two more inspirations and became
+insensible.  Then every eye was fixed upon the calm, business-like man,
+whose nerves seemed of kindred material to the blades he drew from their
+delicate purple-velvet resting-places and quietly inspected for an
+instant, his eyes flashing brightly as their grey-hued blades--knives
+whose keen edges were formed of the finest-tempered metal that human
+skill and ingenuity could produce.
+
+A breathless silence ensued, and the gay thoughtless aspect was gone
+from the young faces crowding the benches.  Here and there an assumed
+cynical smile could be seen, but the effects of a strange clutching at
+the heart, a curious vibration of the nerves, was visible in the pallor
+of cheeks and fevered aspect of the onlookers of the upper seats.  Two
+young men right at the back surreptitiously drank from small flasks, and
+when wiping their lips paused, too, to pass their handkerchiefs over
+their damp foreheads, before thrusting them in their moist palms as the
+great surgeon--one who had climbed by slow degrees to his present
+eminence in the profession, and upon whose knowledge and skill now
+depended the life of a fellow-creature--gave his quick, sharp orders,
+and changed the position of one or two assistants at the
+operating-table, pointing, like a general preparing for battle, with the
+keen blade he held in his hand.  Short, quick orders as he grasped the
+flashing steel and made ready for the fight--for the _combat a
+l'outrance_, with the grim, slow-crawling, dragon disease--a fight where
+skill and genius took the place of physical force and daring.
+
+A painful silence, and then, while every eye was fixed upon his
+movements, the great surgeon gave a hasty glance round to see that all
+was in readiness for the time when moments were more than grains of
+gold, and would add their weight in one scale of the balance--life or
+death; but all seemed there, ready hands and the many appliances for
+checking the rapid flow of life's stream, and then, with almost an air
+of nonchalance, he stretched out his arms to secure freedom of action.
+
+Not a whisper, not a movement, the spectators of the scene with craning
+necks, immovable as groups of statuary, as they gazed from their tiers
+of benches in this modern amphitheatre down upon the gladiatorial combat
+taking place, even as of old the Roman citizens may have watched some
+fight for life or death.
+
+A keen bright flash of the blade in the softened light, and the surgeon
+thoughtfully describing an imaginary curve in the air with the point
+just above the insensible patient; then, with a satisfied nod, he leaned
+forward.  There was once more a bright flash of the knife, followed by a
+bold, firmly-directed cut, deep and long, but clear of vital parts in
+the wondrous organisation.  Then came the spouting gush from many a
+vessel as the old man's life-blood rushed from its maze; busy fingers at
+work, here upon arteries to stay their waste, there applying sponge; one
+blade changed for another, more manipulation, and orders performed after
+being given in a calm impressive whisper; a few more busy moments, and
+the throbbing flow of life arrested; rapidly-moving fingers with
+sponges, silk, strapping, towels; and the great surgeon softly wiping
+his hands, cool, calm, and unruffled.
+
+"Very little loss, Mr Grant," to the next general in command.
+
+"Extremely little," with a bow and a smile; "most successful operation."
+
+"Well, well, I think so," said the great man, unbending somewhat as he
+arranged his cuffs and brushed off an imaginary speck of dust.  He then
+felt the patient's pulse for a few moments, nodded with a satisfied air,
+said a few words to the chief of his staff, bowed once more, and by the
+time the hospital-dressers had finished their task and the patient was
+lifted back upon his portable conch, the operator was in the brougham
+waiting in the street.
+
+Then came once more the murmuring buzz of voices, the reaction and the
+pallor tried to be laughed down, the porters, and then in a few minutes
+old Matt was once more in his bed and comfortably arranged before he
+recovered consciousness.
+
+The house-surgeon and an assistant were beside his bed as he opened his
+eyes and stared vacantly about, trying to recall what had taken place.
+
+"How sick and faint--what a nasty dream!" he muttered; "but I don't
+know, sir,--been as well if it had been true."
+
+"What would?" said the surgeon, smiling.
+
+"Why, I dreamed, sir, that--why, so it was--so it was, then," muttered
+the old man fervently; "thank God, thank God!"
+
+A calm heavy sleep soon fell upon Matt, but he was not free from trouble
+then.  There was the entry continually worrying him; now he knew he had
+seen it, now he felt that it was only a dream, or a dream within a
+dream.  At last, though, a change came over the scene, and all was
+prosperity; he had entered into partnership with Septimus Hardon, and
+purchased the copyright of the Times, whose columns they regularly
+filled every day with a complete exposure of Doctor Hardon.
+
+But the dream was not founded upon fact, for Septimus Hardon, with hope
+in his breast, had been to the entrance of the hospital, thinking that
+now Matt was so much better he would perhaps be ready with some
+information.  But the visitor had been told of the operation, and the
+old man's present critical state, while being advised not to see him at
+that visit; and receiving a promise that a message should be sent in the
+event of a change for the worse, Septimus Hardon slowly, and sadly
+disheartened, returned to his law-copying.
+
+END OF VOLUME TWO.
+
+Volume Three, Chapter I.
+
+THE BREAKING OF A BARRIER.
+
+It was about this time that Aunt Fanny, in the large room at
+Surrey-street, took to complaining of her neck, and wore a narrow strip
+of flannel beneath the stiff white-muslin kerchief, while night and morn
+her servant had to rub the said neck with hartshorn and oil.  And truly
+the old dame's neck was stiff, and cold might have had some share in
+producing the stiffness; but undoubtedly it was principally caused by
+the many sage shakes she gave her head when pondering over her nephew's
+state; for in spite of all the medicaments which he patiently allowed
+her to administer, the old lady effected no cure, and was in consequence
+sorely troubled in her own mind.
+
+But she was not so sorely troubled as the object of her interest, who
+angered himself in vain because of the chaotic state of his mind.
+Battle, battle--ever the same useless struggle, till he was ashamed of
+his weakness and want of self-control.  To-day victor, to-morrow
+vanquished; now reviling himself for his want of faith and cruel
+suspicions, which he owned were almost baseless; the next day a slave to
+duty, and forbidding his heart to harbour further thoughts of her he now
+called his enemy.  Work seemed the only refuge, and he toiled on.  Study
+he could not; but he visited from house to house in the fold of
+Bennett's-rents, where the tainted sheep of his flock were gathered; and
+hiding from himself his real feelings--a shallow pretence--he knew the
+while how anxious he was respecting that little ewe-lamb.
+
+But he drew a mask over his face, telling himself it was his true
+countenance; and with a calmness that was but on the surface, he called
+frequently to see the invalid mother, timing, however, his visits that
+they might be made while Lucy was absent--for duty's sake (and he now
+knew pretty well when she was likely to visit the warehouse); while,
+when he had visited the Bents, and returned without seeing her, he
+credited duty largely, and praised his own self-denial.  All steps, he
+flattered himself, towards the final conquest which he would achieve;
+but though casting out the weak thoughts, he told himself that it was
+his duty to satisfy his heart concerning the doubts which so constantly
+tormented him.
+
+How often the hours came when he scorned his dissimulation, and tore off
+the mask, none knew; but his face grew more pale and livid, and the grey
+hairs that sprinkled his temples were thicker than of old.
+
+It happened one day, though, when he and Lucy had not encountered since
+he saw her bending over the child from Mrs Jarker's room, that,
+visiting from house to house and room to room, Mr Sterne stood in front
+of Mrs Sims'; but that lady was from home; so hearing the merry voice
+of the laughing child, he had ascended the stairs to find Lucy in the
+bird-catcher's attic.  For the little face had been pressed against the
+blackened window, and a pair of bright little eyes had peered, hour
+after hour, from beneath the tangled golden hair, watching the busy
+fingers at the sewing-machine, till with heart aching for the neglected
+babe, and to study her mother, who objected to its being brought into
+the room, Lucy had crossed the court, and gone up and played with the
+little thing, laughing merrily at the child's delight, though a tear
+stood in her eye more than once as she evaded the child's eager,
+oft-repeated question of "When mammy come back?"  Bill had gone out with
+his nets, and most probably would not be back until night; so the child
+had been left alone with some food in the dreary room, to play or cry
+itself to sleep, unless Mrs Sims should be there to attend to its
+wants.  But there was that one spot by the window where she could look
+down upon Lucy; and there, day after day, she would stand without
+murmuring, attracted by that wondrous sense which draws children to the
+loveable and true.  Lucy's heart yearned as she gazed up from time to
+time at the child, and she longed earnestly for the season when its
+mother should make fresh arrangements; but for some reason she came not,
+and Lucy had not seen her since Mrs Jarker's death.
+
+And now the golden hours for which the little soul had longed had come
+again.  Lucy was with her, and, herself a child for the time, she
+laughed merrily at the little one's delight.
+
+Panting, tumbled, and flushed with exercise, Lucy stood at last,
+returning an escaped curl to its bondage, a bright smile playing round
+her ruddy lips, which parted to display the white teeth beneath, when
+the door opened, and, with a frown upon his brow, the curate stood in
+the entrance gazing upon the scene before him.
+
+"In that ruffian's room--there of all places in the world!" doubt
+whispered to him; at a time, too, when their chance meetings had been
+attended by a cold reserve on Lucy's part--a reserve which his doubting
+heart misinterpreted; for he could not in his blindness see the cost at
+which it was maintained.  And yet this reserve had pleased him while it
+pained, for he at times acknowledged the interest he took in her
+welfare.  But it mattered not, he said, for his desire was but to try
+and save her from evil, nothing more; and the oftener he listened to
+these delusive whisperings the stronger grew a voice within, telling him
+that his reasoning was false, and that he was forgetting duty,
+position--all, in a love for one who grew colder and more distant at
+every meeting.  Wearily, though, he kept on building up a wall between
+them--a wall built upon the sand.  Stone by stone he laid, telling
+himself that it was for duty's sake, as he toiled on helplessly at his
+self-imposed task.  True, he might have satisfied himself of the motive
+for Lucy's actions, which to him wore a blurred and strange aspect; but
+to others her name seemed a sealed book, one which he shrank from
+opening, lest he should at the same time reveal the secret of his own
+heart.
+
+And now he stood at the door of that beggarly room, where was the bed
+over which he had so lately bent to whisper comfort to the suffering
+woman, or knelt by its side to ask mercy for the poor sufferer and a
+blessing on the helpless child.  There was the same bare look of misery
+in the wretched place; but as the sun streamed through the great leaden
+lattice, all seemed glorified and brightened by the presence there.
+Unseen he gazed on, while the glow of orange light flooded the room, and
+played round the graceful form of Lucy, as, starting again, she was
+pursued by the laughing child, varying her attitude each moment as she
+eluded its grasp.
+
+Suddenly the child struck itself sharply against a chair, and broke into
+a whimpering cry; but the caressing arms, the words of endearment, and
+the loving kiss soothed the pain instantly, and a smile came over the
+sunny face once more; when Lucy stood as if transfixed, the merry light
+faded from her eyes, the smile from her lip, and then the blood flushed
+to her temples, but only to retreat and leave her deadly pale, for in an
+instant the wall so laboriously built up, and at so great a cost in
+suffering, was swept down by the flood of passion.  Arthur Sterne knew
+that the battle had been in vain, and that he was but man; while doubt,
+everything, was cast to the winds as he was by her side, her hands
+clasped in his, telling her of his beaten-down love, his hopes, his
+fears,--all, all in the impassioned burst of words raised by the tempest
+of a strong man's love; for the sandy foundation was undermined, and the
+last trace of the barrier swept away.
+
+And what said she?  No words came in reply to his appeal.  At first,
+startled, confused, overcome, she shrank from him, pale and trembling;
+but as his words came pouring forth, making cheek and neck burn, she
+knew that no greater bliss could be hers; and the trembling lids of her
+dark-blue eyes were slowly lifted to meet his, when, as if scathing her
+once more, came the recollection of his bitter, contemptuous look, his
+long coldness, and even scorn; and snatching away her hands, she burst
+into tears and darted from the room.
+
+Pale and troubled in mind as to what to attribute Lucy's behaviour, his
+brain in a whirl of doubt, Arthur Sterne stood gazing at the door,
+until, turning, he became aware that the opposite attic window was being
+opened.  The lark began to twitter as the hand of Jean Marais secured it
+outside; and then he saw the wild dark eyes of the youth begin to
+earnestly watch the room.
+
+Turning with a few kind words to the astonished child, who crouched in a
+corner, Arthur Sterne made his way from the house; and a sad evening
+spent Aunt Fanny, in her anxiety for the "wilful boy" who angrily
+rejected her advice.  He was not ill, he said; but the good dame nipped
+her lips together; while, retiring at last, the curate spent the night
+pacing his chamber-floor, trying to examine the tangle in his heart, but
+only to conclude that, come what might, difference of position should be
+no bar between him and Lucy; for, driving away, as he thought
+successfully, the doubt that still assailed him, he declared to himself
+that she possessed virtues before which birth and dowry paled and became
+as naught.
+
+"Unstable as water," muttered the curate to himself, though, days after,
+when meeting with Lucy alone in the front-room of their place in
+Bennett's-rents, the barrier was again broken down--the barrier that
+time had forced him to renew--while the words he could not but utter
+came pouring forth, to bring no response.
+
+Septimus was away with his boy, and Mrs Hardon slept in the back-room;
+and the words of Arthur Sterne were low and deep as the passion that
+prompted them.  But there was no response--no loving look in reply--
+naught but the pale cheek and quivering eyelid, tears and looks of
+half-anger; for still clung to Lucy the recollection of his scorn and
+contempt, his misinterpretation of her motives; and the hands he clasped
+were cold and drawn away.
+
+Then anger took the place of love--a foolish, mad anger, which robbed
+him of his self-control, and made him utter words beneath whose passion
+the poor girl bent as bends flower before the storm.  He uttered words
+then that an hour after he would have given anything to recall; telling
+her angrily of _ma mere_ and her slighting hints, of Jarker's
+familiarity, and lastly of the meeting he had witnessed in the Lane;
+unheeding the hands held up so deprecatingly, the appealing looks, and
+the tear-wet, pallid cheeks; for, as he told himself again and again
+that night, he was mad--mad in his passionate love for one unworthy--mad
+in his words; and he writhed as he recalled the way in which he felt
+that he had lowered himself.
+
+"I insist--I hold it as a right!" he had exclaimed; "tell me, Lucy, who
+was that woman?  Do you know her character?"  And he clutched her wrist
+angrily as he spoke.
+
+He said no more then, for Lucy's face was aflame, and she started
+hastily to her feet, facing him almost as it were at bay, and vainly
+trying to free her hand from his grasp.
+
+"Do your parents know of your meetings?" he exclaimed.
+
+"No, no, no!" she cried excitedly, as she glanced towards the back-room
+door.
+
+"Then I must--nay," he added with almost a cowardly look of triumph, for
+the weakness of the man was triumphant that afternoon, and he yielded to
+all that he had hitherto triumphed over--"I will tell them," he said,
+"for your good."
+
+"For pity's sake," whispered Lucy, "Mr Sterne.  Ah, pray, sir, stop--
+pray stay!  Do not think ill of me--"
+
+But there Lucy ceased, for she was alone; and once more scornfully, with
+the cold bitter look, Mr Sterne had dashed her hand from him in
+contempt and turned from the room, into which Mrs Hardon now came to
+find Lucy weeping as though her heart would break.
+
+Volume Three, Chapter II.
+
+SNUFF.
+
+Old Matt did not wake again for many hours, but, as the days slipped by,
+he partook with avidity of all that was allowed him, and grumbled for
+more.  His friend the house-surgeon, whom he could look at now without
+imagining that he took notes inimical to his friend Septimus Hardon's
+interest, reported favourably of his condition; while Septimus himself
+came again and again, each time more eager to get at that which was
+hidden by the confusion in old Matt's brain.
+
+"If he had only been so jolly anxious about the Somesham affair, first
+start off, what a difference it would have made!" grumbled Matt.
+
+But it seemed useless to try and draw the old man's attention to things
+he had talked of in the days shortly before his entry of the hospital,
+for here all seemed blank.
+
+"Well, yes, sir," Matt would say, "I have some faint recollection of
+saying something about medicine and attendance; but do you know, sir, I
+begin to think that one's memory is in one's blood? and they took so
+much out of me that last time, that I can't remember anything at all.
+`Medicine and attendance,' did I say?  Why, it must have been the
+medicine and attendance here, and those old cats of nurses.  My thinking
+apparatus is terribly out of order, sir; and when I try to look back at
+anything, it's like peeping at it through a dirty window.  P'r'aps it
+won't come bright and clean again, eh?"
+
+"Don't try to think," said Septimus with a sigh.  "You will recollect
+some day; so let it rest."
+
+"Well, sir, that's just what I should like to do; but since you've asked
+me, I can't; for things won't go just as I like, and I feel all in a
+muddle.  Let's see, now: you said something about this at your last
+visit, didn't you, sir? when I asked you about that talking woman and
+the office for servants; for I do recollect that, you know."
+
+"Yes," replied Septimus, "at every visit."
+
+"Just so," said Matt; "I thought you did; but I can't tell a bit about
+it now.  Sometimes it seems that I heard it; sometimes that I read it,
+or saw it against a wall, or dancing before my eyes; but let's see," he
+said vacantly, as he held his hand to his head, "what was it we wanted
+to find?"
+
+"The doctor's books, or the doctor," said Septimus.
+
+"To be sure," said the old man; "I haven't got it right yet; and really
+you know, sir, this isn't a first-class place to get right in, and they
+won't part with me yet, though I do long now to be well, and at liberty
+for a peep at the old law-courts and Lincoln's-inn once more.  I mean to
+have a holiday, and spend it among all the posts in the old square as
+soon as I'm out; I'm getting so light-hearted and jolly, sir.  Why, it
+will be quite a treat to be somewhere amongst a bit or two of dirt once
+more; we're so clean here."
+
+"Only a little longer, Matt," said Septimus smiling.
+
+"You see," said Matt, "there's so much to upset one about.  What with
+the screen round this bed, and the screen round that bed, and the groans
+and sighs, ah, and even shouts sometimes, there's plenty to make a poor
+fellow feel low-spirited.  Now there's a chap over there in that bed
+seems to have taken it into his head that he suffers more than anyone
+who ever came into the place, and howls and goes on terribly; while the
+bigger and stronger people are, sir, the more weak they seem to me to be
+in bearing pain.  I believe, after all, you know, sir, that the little
+weak women beat us hollow."
+
+"Ah!" said the patient spoken of, surmising from Matt's gestures that he
+was being referred to--"ah!  Mr Space, you are talking about me, sir,
+and my groans, and it's very hard and unfeeling, sir.  You may suffer
+yourself some day."
+
+The visitor felt uncomfortable; but old Matt took it up directly.
+
+"That's cool, anyhow," he gasped; "why, what do you mean? haven't I
+suffered as much as any of you, and been through two operations, and
+lived 'em out too?  Why, what more would you have?  It would have killed
+a big fellow like you, I know."
+
+The patient replied with a groan, and began muttering about the
+unfeeling behaviour of those about him, from whom, he said, he had
+expected a little sympathy.
+
+This roused the ire of a neighbour who had lost a leg through being run
+over by a coal-wagon, and he now took up the matter, followed by several
+others; so that a wordy warfare seemed imminent.
+
+"That's it, go on," growled Matt in an undertone.  "They're all getting
+better, sir; and, consequently, they're as cross as two sticks.  What a
+thing it is!  There seems to be no gratitude amongst them; and really,
+sir, if it wasn't for the nurses, it wouldn't be such a bad place to
+come to--that is, for a man with strong nerves, you know.  Now just look
+at 'em, how they are going it!"
+
+The murmurings and dissensions of the other patients seemed to have
+quite a good effect upon old Matt, who forgot his own pains in the
+troubles of those around him.
+
+"You don't know how much longer you will be here?" said Septimus.
+
+"Not for certain, sir; but I think only for a few more days.  But it's
+wonderful what a difference they have made in me.  I mean to go in for a
+fortune, sir, as soon as I'm out; and then I shall make my will, and
+leave half to the hospital.  Now I've got the worst of it all over, I
+amuse myself with taking a bit of notice of what goes on around me, and
+listening to what's said; and it's wonderful what an amount of misery
+comes into this place--wonderful.  I've known of more trouble since I've
+been in here, sir, than I should have thought there had been in the
+whole of London; and that's saying no little, sir.  Lots die, you know;
+but then see how many they send out cured.  I don't see all, but one
+hears so much from the talking of the nurses.  I expected when I came
+here that there would be plenty of accidents, broken bones--legs, arms,
+and ribs, and so on; but there, bless you, the place is full of it; and
+they're getting to such a wonderful pitch now, with their doctoring and
+surgery, that they'll be making a new man next, out of the odd bits they
+always have on hand here."
+
+"I suppose so," said Septimus drily.
+
+"Ah, you may laugh, sir," said Matt; "but it's wonderful to what a pitch
+surgery has got.  Now, for instance, just fancy--"
+
+"There," cried Septimus, "pray stop, or I must leave you.  I fancy quite
+enough involuntarily, without wishing to hear fresh horrors.  It's bad
+enough having to come into the place."
+
+"Lor' bless you, sir," said Matt, "you should listen to the nurses, when
+one of 'em happens to be in a good humour.  Do you know when that is,
+sir?"
+
+"When pleased, I suppose," said Septimus.
+
+"Just so, sir; the very time.  And when do you suppose that last is?"
+
+Septimus shook his head.
+
+"You don't know, of course, sir.  Why, when the patients are getting
+better."
+
+"I might have supposed that," said Septimus wearily.
+
+The old man chuckled, and looked brighter than he had looked for weeks.
+"Yes," he said, "it's when the patients are getting better, and there's
+plenty of port-wine and gin on the way.  That's the time to find the
+nurse in a good humour; and she'll tell you anything, or do anything for
+you."
+
+Septimus Hardon looked weary and anxious, and fidgeted in his chair, as
+if he longed to change the conversation, but the garrulous old man kept
+on.
+
+"Tell you what, sir, these nurses seem to get their hearts hardened and
+crusted over; and then when you give them a little alcohol, as the
+teetotallers call it, the crust gets softened a bit, and things go
+better.  I used to growl and go on terribly at first; but it's no use to
+swim against the stream.  I used to grumble when I found that they drunk
+half my wine and watered my gin; but I'm used to that sort of thing now:
+for which is best--to drink all one's liquor, or keep friends with the
+nurse?  Last's best; and they say I'm a dear patient old creature.  I
+look it too, don't I?" said the old man with a grim smile.
+
+"But," said Septimus, "I must soon go; and I should like a word or two
+about my affairs first."
+
+"All right, sir; we'll come to that directly.  I'm an invalid, and you
+must humour me.  But this is the way of it.  My nurse comes to me, like
+an old foxey vixen as she is, and--`Now, my dear, how are we?' she says.
+`Only middling, nurse,' I say.  `I've brought you a glass of wine to
+cheer you up,' she says.  `Don't care about it a bit,' I say; `don't
+feel wine-hungry.'  `O,' she says, `but the doctor ordered it.  Now,
+take it, like a good soul.  You must want it.'  `Not half so bad as some
+people do,' I say.  `Toss it off, nurse; and just punch my pillow up a
+bit, it's got hard and hot.'  `Bless my heart, no,' she says, `I
+couldn't think of such a thing!' so she sets the wine down, and puts my
+head a bit comfortable.  `The wine's for you; so, now, take it directly;
+I couldn't touch it--I don't care for wine.'
+
+"`Of course you don't,' I say to myself; and then I begin to talk to her
+a bit, and to tell her that she must have a sad wearing life of it, when
+the old tabby sets up her back and purrs, and likes it all--looking the
+while as tigerish, and sleek, and clawey, as the old cats can look.
+Then I tell her she wants more support, and so on, when all at once she
+finds out that there's some one else to attend upon, and I must drink my
+wine directly; so I take the glass and perhaps drink it; but more often
+I only just put it to my lips and set it back upon the tray, when she's
+satisfied.  Of course, you know, it would be instant dismissal for a
+nurse to drink a patient's wine or spirits if it was known; but any
+thing left is different altogether.  You know, sir, it's a dreadfully
+beggarly way of going to work, only as the saying goes, you must fight
+some one we know of with his own weapons: and now we are the very best
+of friends possible.  You'd be surprised how we get along, and all
+through going without a glass now and then.  The best of it is, though,
+that she never thinks of watering it now, like she would for another
+patient; so that what I miss in quantity I get in strength, and, you
+know, she'll do anything for me in a minute--that is, if she feels
+disposed."
+
+"But," said Septimus, "it seems strange that you should be so left at
+the mercy of these women."
+
+"What can you do?" said the old man.--"There, I 've just done, sir, and
+we'll go into that directly.--Who can you get to go through what these
+women do, unless it's these Sisters of Mercy, who many say are to become
+general?  Suppose there was a strike, eh?  Look how few people you can
+get to come and run the risk of fevers and all sorts of diseases.
+Sisters of Mercy, eh?  God bless them for it then, if they will; but I
+hope I may never want their help, all the same.  But there, we won't
+talk about it, only you want iron women a'most to go through it all, and
+it's not a life to be envied.  Why, if it ain't almost leaving-time,
+sir, and you've kept me chatting about my affairs here, and yours are
+nowhere.  How are you getting on?"
+
+"Badly, Matt, badly.  But I've very little to say, Matt, for I was
+unable to get on without you," replied Septimus, smiling at the old
+man's coolness.
+
+"'Spose so," said Matt laconically; "let's see, sir, I think you never
+went any more to Finsbury?"
+
+"Where was the use," said Septimus drearily; "who can tell where a
+day-book fifty years old can be?"
+
+"True," said the old man thoughtfully; "butter-shop, most likely; and it
+wouldn't pay to go all over London buying half-pounds of `best Dorset,'
+on the chance of getting the right sheet.  I can't see it yet, sir; and
+still I seem to fancy we shall do it, though everything about it seems
+to be all in a muddle."
+
+Septimus Hardon seemed to be of the same opinion, for he sighed, took
+his hat, and went homeward in a frame of mind that made him feel
+disposed to bury the past and its cares, and look only to the future;
+while old Matt picked up a newspaper, and began mechanically folding it
+into small squares--butter-shop size.
+
+"No," he muttered, "not much chance of finding that particular scrap of
+paper, if we don't get hold of the book through the old doctor's heirs,
+executors, administrators, and assigns.  And that's where we ought to
+begin; putting ads in the _Times_, and setting private inquirers to
+work, and all on to that tune; only, to play that tune, sir, you want
+money.  Some careless hussy has burnt that scrap of paper, sir, long
+ago, to light a fire; or it has been used for twisting-up screws of
+tobacco, or ha'porths of toffee, or hundreds of other things as some
+beggarly shop or another is licensed to deal in.  Only fancy someone
+lighting his pipe with that valuable little scrap of paper!  `Medicine
+and attendance, Mrs Hardon, two, twelve, six!'  I'll be bound to say
+that was the figure, and I'd give something to get hold of that bit.
+Wonder whether it's selfishness, and thinking of what it would be worth
+to me?  S'pose be; for this is a rum world, and I'm no better than I
+should be.  But who'd ever have thought this would have come out of my
+going to his office and asking for a job?  Don't matter, though, about
+what I feel, for he'd have come to see me here safe enough, even if it
+had not been about his affairs; for he's a trump, sir, a trump: but all
+the same, it's a pity he ain't got more in him--worldly stuff, you
+know."
+
+Old Matt sat very thoughtfully for awhile, and then began to mutter
+again.
+
+"Wish I had a pinch of snuff once more.  There now; I'm blest.  Only to
+think of that! me having my box in my pocket, and to forget all about
+it--shows what my head's worth now.  Bravo! though; that seems to clear
+one's head wonderfully.  I shall recommend its use in lunatic asylums
+for mental diseases; fine thing, I believe.  Only to think, though, for
+me to get that into my head about that entry I had seen, and trying to
+write it down, and then for it to be clean gone once more!  S'pose I did
+think of something of the kind, or see it, or something.  Heigho!" he
+sighed; "I must have been precious bad though, sir, confoundedly bad.
+Thank goodness it's all over, though, for this time; and I'm going to
+walk out soon, instead of, as I expected, being taken to the students'
+lodgings in small pieces, wrapped up in paper--paper--waste-paper--by
+jingo! though, I'll have a go at the waste-paper everywhere.  I'll
+search every waste-paper shop in London, beginning at Mother Slagg's--
+beg her pardon, Gross by this time I suppose, and--and--hooray!" he
+shouted wildly, to the intense astonishment of the fellow-patients, as
+he tossed his newspaper in the air.  "Snuff for ever! that pinch did it.
+Only let me get out of this place.  At last!"
+
+Volume Three, Chapter III.
+
+MR JARKER'S TRAITS.
+
+Men of business cannot afford to continue their grief for any length of
+time, hence at a very short date after the death of his wife, Mr
+William Jarker, bird-fancier, bird-catcher, and pigeon-trapper, to be
+heard of at any time at the Blue Posts, Hemlock-court, by such gents as
+wanted a few dozen of blue-rocks or sparrows for the next trap-match at
+Wormwood Scrubbs, stood before a piece of looking-glass nailed to the
+wall of his room with three tin-tacks, a ragged, three-cornered,
+wavy-looking scrap, from which, if a little more of the quicksilver had
+been rubbed off, it would never again have been guilty of distorting the
+human face divine.  Upon this occasion it played strange pranks with the
+expressive countenance of Mr Jarker, as he stood, with oily fingers,
+giving the required gloss and under-turn to his side-locks, which were
+of the true "Newgate-knocker" pattern, their length denoting how long a
+time Mr Jarker had been running fancy free without troubling her
+Majesty's officials for his daily rations and lodging, in return for
+which he would scrub, polish, and clean to order.  Mr Jarker seemed to
+take extra pains over his toilet, arranging his neck-tie and the
+silver-mounted lens, buttoning-up his red-plush waistcoat with the
+fustian back and sleeves, cleaning his finger-nails with the broken-out
+tooth of a comb, before he stood in front of the glass and smirked at
+himself.
+
+Now this was a mistake on Mr Jarker's part, for his was a style of
+countenance that would not bear a smirking; there was too much stiffness
+of contour in the various features, a blunt angularity which resisted
+the softening sweetness of a smirky smile, and the consequence was, that
+if he had smirked at a stranger, the said stranger would have flinched,
+from a very strong impression that Mr Jarker was rabid and about to
+bite.  However, mistaken or not, Mr Jarker smirked several times, and
+after various patterns, before he frowned, which gave a much more
+respectable cast to his countenance, the scowl being most thoroughly in
+harmony.  Mr Jarker frowned, for one of the side-locks would not keep
+in position and retain the required bend when he had crowned himself
+with his slouchy fur-cap; so the erring hair had to be again oiled,
+combed, and wetted with a solution of brown sugar, which the operator
+moistened in a natural way in the palms of his hands, then the lock was
+smoothed and tucked under, and proved a fixture; and now the cap was
+again placed in position, and displayed a thin wisp of crape fastened
+round it by means of a piece of string; for being a soldier engaged in
+the battle of life, Mr Jarker did not doff his uniform, but confined
+himself to the above slight manifestation of the fact that he was a
+widower.
+
+Apparently satisfied with his aspect, which was a little more villainous
+than usual, Mr Jarker turned his attention to the child, who crouched
+in a corner of the room with a piece of bread in her hand, watching him
+with her large blue eyes, very round and staring, but evidently pressing
+her little self as far away from the fellow as possible.
+
+"Ah! and so she comes and plays with the kid when I'm out, does she?"
+said Mr Jarker, in a ruminating tone.  "Ah! we knows what that means,
+my chicking, don't we?"
+
+The little thing pressed herself closer to the wall, and Mr Jarker
+stood very thoughtfully at the window for a few minutes, gazing down at
+where Lucy's sewing-machine beat rapidly; but Mr Jarker was not aware
+that in his turn Jean Marais was watching him fiercely, his dark eyes
+seeming to flash beneath his overhanging penthouse brows, as he eagerly
+scanned every motion of the ruffian, looking the while as if prepared to
+spring across the court at his throat.
+
+"Ah! we knows what that means, don't we, my chicking?" repeated Mr
+Jarker, turning once more from the window.  "Come here to yer daddy,
+d'yer hear!"
+
+But though hearing plainly enough, the little thing only shrank back
+closer into her corner; when, with an oath, the fellow took two steps
+forward and seized the little thing by its pinky shelly ear, and dragged
+it, whimpering and trembling, into the middle of the attic, where he
+made "an offer" at it as if to strike, but the frailty and helplessness
+of the little one disarmed even him, and as his eyes wandered to the
+window to see that no opposite neighbour could watch them where they
+stood, his arm fell to his side as he sat down.
+
+"Now, then!" cried Mr Jarker, "no pipin'; don't you try none of them
+games with me, my young warmin'.  'Cos why, it's ware hawks to yer if
+yer does.  Now hook it back to that there corner."
+
+The child's eyes were turned timidly and wonderingly up to his, as it
+shrank back once more to the corner of the attic.
+
+"Now, then!" cried Jarker sharply, "come here again."
+
+Like an obedient dog in the course of training, the little thing crept
+back to his side, and then the tiny face grew more wondering and timid,
+the eyes more round, and it was very evident that the little brain,
+soft, plastic, and ready to receive any impression, was working hard to
+understand the meaning of the ruffian's words.  Bright and beautiful as
+the faces shown to us on canvas as those of angels, the little
+countenance, shining the brighter for the squalor around, was turned up
+more and more towards Jarker, gazing so fixedly and earnestly at him
+that he grew uneasy, fidgeted and shuffled his feet, and then his eyes
+sank, guilt cowering before innocence; for, quite disconcerted by the
+long, steady gaze, the ruffian rose and turned away, growling and
+muttering, "She's gallus deep for such a little un."  He then took a
+short peep at his pigeons, walked back to the window, and stared long
+and heavily at the white hands he could see busy at the sewing-machine,
+and then turned once more to the wondering atom, trying to soften
+himself as he stooped down, but the child only flinched as from a coming
+blow when he patted the soft, bright curls.
+
+"Here, come here," he said gently, and he drew the child between his
+knees as he sat down.
+
+"Now mind this here: nex' time she comes and plays with you, my
+chickin', perhaps she'll say, `Would you like me to be your new mammy?'
+she'll say; and then, `Yes,' says you; d'yer hear? `yes,' says you.  Now
+say it."
+
+But the little one only continued her wondering gaze till the fellow
+left her, and slouched out of the room, after raking the last cinder
+from the fire, in performing which he knocked the bottom of the grate
+from its frail hold, and then, in his endeavours to replace it, burned
+his fingers, and ejaculated so loudly that the eyes of the child were
+turned upon him more wonderingly than ever.
+
+And then--was it that sympathy for the child moved the inmate of the
+opposite attic, or that he had a natural hatred for Jarker?  Jean turned
+angrily from the window to a cage of half-a-dozen linnets the fellow had
+brought him an hour or two before, and to his mother's rage and
+astonishment, seemed about to wreak his fury upon the birds.  He seized
+one in his hand, and was about to wring its neck, but _ma mere_ leaped
+forward to stay him, when his fierce gesture sent her back to her seat
+to watch him.  But he did not kill the birds, but carried the cage to
+the window, and then let them go, one by one, till the last bird
+hesitated at the wire door for a few moments, and then fled, with a wild
+chirp of joy, far away into the smoky air.
+
+"Jean, Jean! but you are _bete--fou_!" exclaimed his mother, trembling
+with fear and rage at this folly, as she thought of the money he had
+given for the birds.
+
+"I hate him, I hate him!" hissed Jean furiously, while, watching him
+through her closed eyes, the old woman nodded quickly to herself, as she
+muttered and thought of her own early days, and it seemed to her that
+Jean's heart was as easy to read as that printed book at his side.
+
+But at this time Mr Jarker was slouching out of his room, and
+shouldering his way down the stairs, stopping the blowing of Mrs Sims'
+fire for an instant, as he growled audibly in passing; then down into
+the court, where the index fingers of his hands were thrust into his
+mouth, and he was about to make a long and piercing whistle for the
+delectation of some passing pigeons as they flew over the strip of
+heaven seen from the flags of the court; but a glance at the first-floor
+window where dwelt the Hardons checked him.  The next minute, though,
+the birds repassed, and Bill whistled loudly again and again; but the
+birds would not listen to this shrill voice of the charmer, the charmer
+himself, side-locks and all, went and stood at the bottom of the court,
+against the bright blue gilt-lettered boards of the public, where he
+rubbed the shoulders of his sleeve-waistcoat shiny, as he stood
+slouching about, and sucking one end of his spotted neck-tie.
+
+"Whatcher going to stand, Bill?" said a gentleman of his acquaintance, a
+gentleman with a voice singularly like one that had been heard in the
+old Grange at Somesham upon a memorable night.  This gentleman had a
+piece of straw in his mouth, and his hands in his pockets, his coiffure
+being of the same order as that of Mr Jarker, while, being evidently of
+a terpsichorean turn of mind, he enlivened the street with a
+"pitter-patter, pitter-patter, pit-pit, pat," toe-and-heel dance upon
+the cellar-flap of the public-house, where, his boots being stout and
+well-nailed, and the flap very hollow beneath, his efforts were attended
+with so much noise that the potboy of the establishment thrust out a
+closely-cropped head between the swing doors, where he held it as if in
+the process of being shorn off, at the same time requesting the
+light-heeled gentleman to "Drop that 'ere now, come!"
+
+But instead of standing anything to quench the thirst of the new-comer,
+Mr Jarker stood upon the order of his going; for just then, laden with
+a large parcel of work, Lucy Grey passed out of the court and
+encountered Mr Sterne, who saluted, and then turned with a grave,
+pained countenance to gaze after her, as he saw Jarker follow, slouching
+along as if his boots were soled with lead, diver fashion, and he of so
+ethereal a nature that the ponderous metal was necessary to prevent him
+from shooting up into heaven like a stickless rocket minus the tail of
+fire.
+
+The curate turned thoughtfully up the court, and began his round of
+visits, listening to complaints here, supplications there, but finding
+nowhere rest.  He went thoughtfully through his round of duties that
+day, hearing and speaking mechanically, for always before his eyes there
+was the light, graceful form of Lucy, followed by the hound-like Jarker,
+and as he thought the lines grew deeper and deeper in his forehead.  He
+listened to Mrs Sims' praises of the child--praises delivered in a
+lachrymose tone, as a strong odour of rum pervaded the place.  He
+listened to _ma mere's_ complaints of Jean, and felt an insinuation
+against her fellow-lodger's fair fame stab him as it were to the heart;
+while surprised he gazed upon the fury with which the son turned upon
+his mother; and then descending, his task nearly done, the curate sat by
+the bedside of Mrs Hardon.
+
+There stood the sewing-machine in the next room; there was the chair in
+which Lucy had been so lately seated, and where even now he could
+picture her form.  But, silent and abstracted, he listened for the
+twentieth time to the story of the murmuring woman's troubles, and what
+she had suffered since they had been in town.  He listened, but he was
+asking himself the while whether Lucy merited the love he would pour at
+her feet--asking himself whether it was possible for a pure, fair,
+spotless lily to bloom amidst the pollution around.  Still, too, came
+the remembrance of the words of the old Frenchwoman--"Our beauty, some
+of us."  Once admitting doubt to his breast, the strange thoughts teemed
+in, bringing up the woman he had seen and tracked in vain, and above all
+the low ruffian whom he had seen dogging the fair girl's footsteps but
+that very day, when love had whispered, "Follow!" and pride cried, "Nay,
+stand aloof!" for he recalled their last interview.  Then, again, he
+asked himself how dared he believe words that slurred her fair fame,
+when his conscience whispered to him that they were like their source--
+vile; but, surrounded as he was by vice and misery, might he not well
+wonder whether Lucy's fair face spoke truth in its candour-tinged
+aspect, or was like the hundreds he encountered in his daily walks--fair
+to view, but with a canker within?
+
+He told himself that he could watch her no longer--that he could not
+play the spy; and once again he prayed for strength to conquer the
+passion that seemed to sway him at its will; for he could not comprehend
+the behaviour of its object.  Love he had thought to be buried for ever
+with his betrothed; but from her grave the seed seemed to have returned
+to him untainted by time, and with all its quickening, germinating
+powers ready to shoot forth and blossom in a wealth of profusion for
+another.  And he knew that it must be lavished upon Lucy, even though
+she still repulsed him.  And now, again, his eye brightened as, dashing
+down the sinister thoughts, he would see only her faith and truth,
+smiling at poverty when he called up the riches of her heart--riches
+that he saw poured forth for the murmuring parent, for whose wants she
+toiled on incessantly, winning for her many a comfort that the sick
+woman could not else have enjoyed; and even then with the overflowings
+of her young heart ready for the neglected child.
+
+"For the neglected child!"  What a gloomy starting-point for another
+train of thought, embracing its mother, tall, dark, and rouge-cheeked;
+Jarker, the ruffian, tracking Lucy's steps; and lastly, _ma mere_, who
+seemed even then whispering in his ear, "Our beauty, some of us!"
+Arthur Sterne acknowledged that he was weak, though he fought hard with
+his soul-assailing enemies; while the track of the storm he was
+encountering was marked in his face, as he strolled slowly homewards,
+but only to pause startled at the mouth of the court.
+
+Volume Three, Chapter IV.
+
+LUCY'S TROUBLE.
+
+Lucy's eyes turned very dim as soon as she had passed Mr Sterne, and
+things wore a strangely blurred aspect.  She would have given worlds to
+have thrown herself upon his breast, and told all--of Agnes Hardon and
+her sorrow, confided to her alone, as the suffering woman begged of her
+to love her for her child's sake, and not to turn upon her the cold
+bitter eyes of the world at large; and again and again Lucy had taken
+the passive, wasted, tearful face of Agnes to her breast, in the rare
+and stealthy meetings they had had, and wept over her, little knowing
+that Agnes possessed a secret which she felt that she could not divulge
+for the sake of those whom she had injured.  Again and again Lucy had
+implored her leave to confide in Septimus Hardon, but Agnes had refused
+so firmly, telling her that the day her presence was betrayed would be
+that of their last meeting--telling her so angrily, but only to kneel at
+her feet the next moment, and ask her to bear for a little longer with
+an erring woman, whose stay in this world might not be for long.  And so
+Lucy toiled on, bearing the scathing breath of calumny; pointed at by
+suspicion; and wounded again and again in her tenderest feelings by the
+only man she had ever felt that she could love.  They were her own
+words, poor girl, though little had she seen of the world at large.  She
+told herself that it was cruel of him to treat her as he did; but what
+could she do?  And then she shivered as she thought of stolen meetings
+by night--meetings which should take place no more--while she wept
+bitterly as she hurried through the streets thinking of the misery of
+her lot.
+
+She had no veil to her shabby bonnet, and it was only at last by a
+strong effort that she forced back the tears; for she felt that people
+were staring hard at her as she passed.  But it was no unusual thing for
+people to look hard at Lucy Grey, while there was variety in those
+glances; there were, from women, the glance of envy, the look of
+sisterly admiration, and that bordering upon motherly love; and there
+were the hard stare from puppydom, the snobbish ogle, looks of love and
+respect, every glance that could dart from human eye; but the poor girl
+hurried on as in a dream, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, but bent upon
+the object of her journey.  It was nothing to her that behind at a few
+yards' distance came Mr William Jarker, favouring everyone with a
+fierce scowl in return for the glances bestowed upon her, as he tracked
+her with the pertinacity of a bloodhound, turning when she turned,
+crossing when she crossed.  Once only on her way back did Lucy tremble,
+when a fiercely-bearded, middle-aged dandy half stopped in front of her,
+so that she was compelled to turn a little out of her path, as with a
+heightened colour her eyes sunk before the fellow's insulting stare.
+But she did not hear his words, as, fervently wishing old Matt were by
+her side, she hurried on.
+
+It sometimes happens, though, that those who are working for their own
+devices do us many a good turn; and it was so here, for as the
+studiously-dressed and bejewelled dandy turned and followed the fair
+girl, he suddenly became aware of a rough shoulder forcing him aside,
+when turning angrily, with umbrella raised to strike, he gazed full into
+the heavy, bull-dog countenance of Mr Jarker, whose white teeth gleamed
+beneath his flattened nose as though he were preparing to fasten on his
+victim.
+
+The next moment the lemon-gloved hands were covering chain and pin, and
+the heavy swell of the London current subsided slowly and disappeared,
+leaving Lucy unmolested as she hurried on, followed still closely by her
+self-constituted bodyguard, of whoso presence she was ignorant; while,
+five minutes after, he made a side-bound into a doorway, where he stood
+peering round the post and smiling like some hideous satyr of old, as
+Lucy encountered Agnes Hardon, and stopped in the quiet street where
+they then were.
+
+The sight must have been very gratifying to Mr Jarker, for he stood
+leering, and rubbing his soft, whitish hands, pausing every now and then
+to have a good gnaw at the nails, already nearly worn down to the quick;
+and then stepping lightly from his concealment, he passed close behind
+Agnes as she was whispering:
+
+"God bless you!  Don't stay talking to me; go now.  I'll get it away
+directly he will let me.  I have been five times already; but he was
+either there, or some one of his companions waiting about."
+
+Mr Jarker gave a short, husky, forced cough as he passed, when, turning
+hastily, fear and anger seemed to combine in Agnes Hardon's face, as she
+caught Lucy's hands in her own, interposing herself, as if for
+protection, till Mr Jarker had disappeared, when she hurried her away
+by another route, and hastily took her leave.  But Lucy did not see her
+troubled, anxious face following at a short distance, and keeping her in
+sight till she reached the end of the court in time to encounter Mr
+Sterne, who saw almost at one glance Lucy, with Jarker standing aside to
+let her pass as he bestowed upon her a familiar smile and nod, and Agnes
+Hardon some fifty yards beyond, turning hastily and hurrying off; but
+her he followed angrily, and with a suffocating sensation at his breast,
+as if he were, knight-errant like, about to attack one of the evil genii
+who shadowed the life of her he loved.  Fifty yards in advance, though,
+was Agnes, when he commenced following her steps, till a crowd around
+that common object of our streets, a fallen horse intercepted his view;
+and, when he had passed the throng, the figure he sought had
+disappeared.
+
+"O, this weary, weary deceit!" sobbed Lucy, throwing herself on her
+knees by her bedside and weeping bitterly.  Then, sighing, she rose,
+folded her mantle, and bathed her eyes before going to the sitting-room,
+where in a few more minutes her sewing-machine was rapidly beating until
+Septimus came and, with one loving hand laid across her red eyes, took
+away the candle.
+
+Volume Three, Chapter V.
+
+MATT'S DISCOVERY.
+
+"Hold hard here!" cried a voice from a cab-window; and the driver of as
+jangling a conveyance as ever rattled over London stones drew up at the
+corner of Carey-street, Chancery-lane.
+
+"I'll get out here," cried the voice; and very slowly, and with the aid
+of a stick, old Matt extricated himself from amongst the straw, a part
+of which he managed to drag out into the road.
+
+The next minute the cabman was paid and had driven off.  The boy who,
+with a basket slung across his back, had stopped to witness the
+disembarkation, and cut his popular song in half the while, resumed the
+refrain and went on along the Lane; while, with a smile on his pale
+face, old Matt slowly made his way down Carey-street, stopping to rest
+at the first lamp-post.
+
+"Here I am," he said; "King Space come back to my dominions.  I wasn't
+going to ride and lose the pleasure of seeing it all.  Thank God there's
+no whitewash here, and everything's just as I left it; things looking as
+if they hadn't stirred a peg; and I don't suppose they have, if they
+haven't been costs, which certainly do grow and flourish well here.
+Lord, sir, how beautiful and smoky and natural everything looks once
+more!  There's Hardon's old printing-office--ah, to be sure!  `Grimp,
+Deeds copied.'  That's the trade to flourish here.  Now then, sir,
+good-morning!  Let's get on a bit farther."
+
+According to his old custom, and heedless now of its being broad
+daylight, Matt made his way slowly to the next post, making his crippled
+state an excuse now for stopping, though there was hardly a soul to be
+seen in Carey-street, and those who passed were too intent upon their
+own affairs to notice him.
+
+"Slow work, sir," said Matt, stopping again, "glad to see you, though,
+once more.  Thought at one time, if ever I did it would have been upon a
+cork-leg, sir; for I couldn't have stood a wooden peg, sir, anyhow; a
+cork-leg all springs and watchwork, like old Tim Christy's, as used to
+squeak with every step he took, just as if, being of cork, someone was
+trying to draw it; and he never oiled that leg, for fear it should go
+too easy.  But there, I'm all right again," he continued, taking a pinch
+of snuff, "and I call this real enjoyment, sir--real enjoyment.  Only
+wait till I've put him all right upon that point, and I'll have a bit of
+dissipation.  Let's see: the Vice-chancellor will be sitting like a
+great god, listening to the prayers of the petitioners in Chancery.
+I'll have an hour there, sir, and then take a sniff of the ink in one of
+the old offices; and confound it all, sir, I wish you could join me!
+I'll have half-a-pint of porter in Fetter-lane.  I'm in for a regular
+round of dissipation, I am, just to make up for all this being shut up."
+
+On again went the old man, rather short of breath, till he was well in
+sight of the hospital at the end of the street; when, raising his eyes
+just as he was about to stop, he caught sight of a pale, weary face at
+one of the windows, and shuddered and turned away; but the next moment
+he had stopped and turned, and was waving a hand to the patient gazing
+from his prison-window.
+
+"God bless you, mate!" said Matt aloud, "and may you soon be out of it!"
+And then there was a reply waved to his salute, and the old man turned
+down the courts to the left, and soon stood in Bennett's-rents.
+
+"What, Matt!" cried Septimus Hardon, hurrying to open the door as he
+heard his slow step upon the stairs; while Lucy took the old man's other
+hand and helped him to a seat.
+
+"What's left of me, sir--what's left," said the old man cheerily; "and
+here I am right and clear-headed, and I did see it all, sir: and I've
+recollected it, and got it all put down here, so as you can read it, and
+safe in my head too.  It wasn't fancy, it was all right; and I did see
+it, as I told you, in what must have been the old doctor's books."
+
+"But where? when?" cried Septimus eagerly.
+
+"And there was the name--`Mrs Hardon, medicine and attendance, so
+much;' but of course I thought nothing of it then."
+
+"But," cried Septimus, as he hooked a finger in a button-hole of the old
+man's coat, "where was it?"
+
+"Gently, sir, gently," said Matt, unhooking the finger; "mind what
+you're after: stuff's tender.  But there: you'll fit me out with a new
+suit when you're all right--won't you, sir, eh?"
+
+"A dozen, Matt, a dozen!" cried Septimus eagerly.
+
+"And Miss Lucy here's to have as full a compassed pianner as can be got,
+without having one as would burst and break all the strings--eh, miss,
+eh?"
+
+Lucy smiled sadly.
+
+"But where did you see it, Matt--where was it?" exclaimed Septimus,
+inking his face in his excitement, and totally destroying his last
+hour's work.
+
+"Why, sir, no farther off than at my lodgings," cried Matt triumphantly.
+"I did mean to be of use to you if I could, and I've lived to do it,
+sir, and I'm thankful; but come along, sir--come along.  I'm weak and
+poorly yet, and there seems to be a deal of water collected in my
+system--a sort of dropsy, you know; and it all flies to my eyes on the
+least provocation, and comes dripping out like that, just as if I was a
+great gal, and cried, d'ye see?"
+
+There was a tear in Septimus Hardon's eye as he warmly wrung the old
+man's hand, and ten minutes after they were standing in Lower Series--
+place, with Matt smiling grimly at a freshly-painted set of skeleton old
+bone letters upon a glossy-black board, announcing "Isaac Gross, Dealer
+in Marine-stores;" but that was the only alteration visible, for Isaac
+and the stout lady occupied the same places as of yore, and were at that
+very moment engaged in an affectionate, smiling game of bo-peep.
+
+"Might have waited for me to dance at the wedding," muttered Matt.
+
+But there had been very little dancing at the said wedding; while the
+trip necessary upon such occasions was one made to the Rye House, where
+Isaac's attention was principally taken up by the jack-boot shown
+amongst the curiosities--a boot which filled his imagination for days
+after, as he sighed and thought of the evanescent nature of his own
+manufacture.
+
+The greeting was warm on both sides, Isaac smiling at a quicker rate
+than had ever before been known.  But the visitors meant business, and
+Matt exclaimed:
+
+"Now, Ike, we want to go over the waste-paper."
+
+Matt was outside as he spoke, and then Mrs Gross, whose head had been
+stretched out to listen, found that what had been her property was in
+question, so she cried, "Stop!" and waddled from her seat to where Matt
+stood, seized him by the arm, and waddled him into Isaac's workshop,
+from whence she waddled him into the back-parlour, where his bed, now
+the only one in the room, was neatly made up, and the place somewhat
+tidier than of yore, though the waste-paper heap was bigger than ever.
+
+"Now," said Mrs Gross, with a very fat smile and a knowing twinkle of
+her eye as she sank her voice to a whisper, "Is it deeds?" and then she
+looked at Isaac as if for approbation, that gentleman having followed
+them into the room and being engaged in vain endeavours to thrust a very
+large finger into his very small pipe-bowl.
+
+"Who married the kitchen-stuff?" shouted a small voice at the door, and
+Mrs Gross angrily waddled out in pursuit, to the great delight of half
+a score of the small inhabitants of Serle's-place, one of whom danced a
+defiant _pas seul_ in a tray of rusty keys as he fled, laughing the
+while at the fat threatening hand held up.  But Isaac stirred not, from
+having been accustomed to the gibes of the juveniles of the place, and
+his skin being too thick for such banderillos as "Waxy," "Welty," or
+"Strap-oil," to penetrate, so he merely stood wiping his nose upon his
+leather apron till his partner returned.
+
+"Is it deeds?" whispered Mrs Gross again, and then in a parenthesis,
+"Drat them boys!"
+
+"No," said Matt gruffly, "it ain't."
+
+"Then it's bank-bills," said the lady mysteriously, as she slily winked
+at everyone in turn, her husband smiling at her acute business
+perceptions.
+
+"No, nor it ain't them neither," said Matt.
+
+"Then it's a will," said Mrs Gross in a disappointed tone; "and there
+ain't a scrap of that sort in the place, for I sold out last week."
+
+"'Tain't a will, I tell you," growled Matt.
+
+"Then it's dockymens," said Mrs Gross triumphantly, and she nudged Matt
+in the side.
+
+"No it ain't; nor receipts, nor letters, nor nothing of the kind.  If
+you must know, it's them old doctor's books; that's what it is.  Now,
+where are they?"
+
+But Mrs Gross, though she had not the slightest idea as to what
+doctor's books were meant, was not yet satisfied, but cried:
+
+"Halves!"
+
+"What's halves?" said Matt.
+
+"Why, we goes halves in what turns up," said Mrs Gross, who had a
+famous eye for business, though she would keep dimming its...
+
+_Some lines missing here from the scans_.
+
+"Gross!" cried a sepulchral voice, which made Septimus start, till he
+found that it had proceeded from Mr Isaac himself, though his face did
+not betray that he had spoken.
+
+"Gross, then," growled Matt.  "Now look here," he continued; "it's
+nothing but an old entry as I once saw in some doctor's books on your
+counter here, and we want to see it; for I hadn't sense then to know it
+was any good; but if we find it, and it's what we want, my guv'nor here
+will stand a sovereign, I dessay."
+
+"Put it down on paper, then," said Isaac, "and make him sign;" to the
+great admiration of his partner, who patted him upon the back for his
+display of business ability; and then, before a paper was touched,
+Septimus Hardon, greatly to Matt's disgust, signed a promissory and
+conditional note for the amount named.
+
+"Ikey," growled Matt, "I didn't think you had been such a Jew.  If you
+haven't let my rooms, you can get yourself a fresh tenant."
+
+But Isaac only smiled, and the task commenced--no light one--of turning
+over the huge stack of waste-paper piled up before them.  Dust, dirt,
+and mildew; brief-paper, copying-paper, newspaper, old books, old
+magazines and pamphlets, account-books with covers and account-books
+without; paper in every phase; while eagerly was everything in the shape
+of an account-book seized upon, and the search continued until, faint
+and weary, they had gone through the whole heap, when with a despairing,
+doleful look Septimus gazed upon Matt.
+
+"I'll take my Bible oath it was in a book I saw laid upon that heap.
+Now then, where's some more?" and the old man said it feebly, as if
+nearly exhausted.
+
+"No more anywheres," said Mrs Gross assuringly, as she smoothed her
+husband's oily hair.
+
+"Sure?" cried Matt.
+
+Mrs Gross nodded, and retied the ribbon which confined her husband's
+locks.
+
+"Where is it, then?" cried Matt.
+
+"Where is it?" repeated Mrs Gross.  "Why, if it ain't here, in this
+heap, it's everywheres.  It's sold, and burnt, and wrapped round 'bacca,
+and butter, and all sorts."
+
+"Hadn't we better go, Matt?" whispered Septimus, dreamily washing his
+hands together after his dry custom.
+
+"S'pose we had," muttered Matt.  "Just, too, sir, as I'd made so sure as
+it was all coming right, and for the second time, too.  Never mind, sir,
+it'll all come right yet.  Third time never fails.  What do you say to
+hunting up the Miss Thingumy at Finsbury, and hearing what she's got to
+say?--plenty, depend upon it.  News, perhaps, and it can't do no harm."
+
+But Septimus Hardon was in a weary, absent fit, and went away muttering
+homewards, as, worn-out and weak, Matt sat down upon the waste-paper
+ruins of the palace he had built in his own mind, and grimly listened to
+the congratulations of his friends upon his return.
+
+Volume Three, Chapter VI.
+
+WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH.
+
+For a good hour together Mr Jarker would rest in a broken-bottomed
+chair, smoking a short black pipe, his hands supporting his heavy chin,
+and his elbows making pits in his knees, as, like some hideous old
+cathedral gargoyle, he sat gazing fixedly at the little wondering face
+of the child.  From time to time he reversed his position to re-refresh
+himself with a draught of his favourite beverage--gin and beer, a
+beverage which always produced a loud smack from his thick negro lips.
+If there was no fascination in the child's face for Bill Jarker, there
+was most certainly fascination in the ruffian's face for the child; and
+unconsciously imitating his attitude, it would rest its dimply plump
+cheeks upon its tiny fists, and gaze again wonderingly, without a
+thought of moving, till the lids slowly sank over the violet eyes, and
+the little golden-haired, soft, lovable head sank sideways, with all
+those prettiest of pretty motions seen in one of the most beautiful
+sights in nature--a child dropping off into its simple trusting sleep of
+innocence; but soon it would start into wakefulness again, with a
+frightened air, and its little face drawn and ready to cry; but a glance
+at the hideous face before it subdued the disposition, and once more the
+same long, weary gaze commenced.
+
+This took place day after day, and a stranger seeing it might have
+fancied that in this case innocence was exercising its power over guilt;
+but one who knew Mr Jarker well would have arrived at the right idea,
+namely, that this gentleman was making his plans.  A pipe or two of
+tobacco, a pint of beer strengthened with gin, and a long stare at the
+face of his wife when living, a cat, a dog, or of late the child, had
+been the preliminaries of more than one desperate burglary in a country
+place somewhere within a circle of fifty miles' radius, taking Saint
+Paul's as the centre.  Bill's _confreres_ in the bird-catching
+profession contented themselves with trips countryward to the extent of
+eight or ten miles; but, though on the whole Bill and his two or three
+companions caught fewer birds, he never let distance interfere with his
+pursuits, and used to boast that the birds he netted were of a rarer
+kind.  Bill would travel third-class almost any distance to find good
+pitches for his nets; and even then, perhaps, after a three or four
+days' trip, and returning with hardly a bird, he seemed to be so
+infatuated with the place and its prospects, that he would gather
+together his two or three intimates, and go down again, travelling
+slowly by road, setting off too in such a hurry, in a miserable cart
+drawn by a wretched-looking hack, that friends and self would entirely
+forget nets and call-birds, when they would console themselves with the
+remark that they might take a few nightingales.
+
+So that Mr Jarker was not undergoing a softening process as he sat
+staring at the child, for he was really making his plans; and this time
+these plans had nothing to do with either birds or nocturnal visits.
+There was something particular in Mr Jarker's head, or else he would
+not have burdened himself with the child for a single day; while he had
+carefully retained it in his custody now for many weeks; and the
+ruffian's ideas must have been of a somewhat strange character, for now
+and then he would shake his head at the drowsy child, and say:
+
+"Yes, my little chickin', you do for a bait."
+
+So of late, apparently for the sake of the child, Mr Jarker had
+suffered the bellows; and, in consideration of a small sum weekly, Mrs
+Sims had sniffed about the room, and, to use her own expressive words,
+"done for him."  But now, probably from too much spiritual exercise,
+Mrs Sims was ill, and no one dared go near the ruffian's room but Lucy,
+whose heart bled for the little thing.  Left still for hours together
+alone in the dreary room, sometimes but half fed, afraid to do more than
+whimper softly, her sole amusement was to press her little face against
+the closed window, and watch until she could catch a glimpse of her
+neighbour, when the tiny hands would be clapped with glee.  The
+neighbours said it was a shame; but they had their own affairs to attend
+to, and said no more.  While, as might be expected, Lucy seized every
+opportunity of tending the child most lovingly; watching for Jarker's
+absence, and then hurrying up and spending perhaps an hour in the
+miserable attic.
+
+"She must be ill," Lucy would think, "or something is wrong; for surely
+it was fancy on her part that he should wish to retain the child;" and,
+though anxious that it should be better tended, she looked forward with
+dread to the time when it should be taken away; while, as anxiously she
+watched for a visit from Agnes.  Night after night the candle burned in
+her window, as she worked on at some exercise; but Agnes Hardon came
+not, telling her weary heart that it was for Lucy's good.
+
+Sometimes Jarker would omit to turn the key he always left in his door,
+as if to provoke inquiry into his affairs, and to show the guilelessness
+of his life; and then, after waiting until his footstep became
+inaudible, the child would steal softly down step by step, fleeing back
+if she heard a door open or a foot upon the stairs, but only to
+persevere till, unobserved, she reached the entrance, when, watching
+till the attention of the children of the court was directed elsewhere,
+she would dart across the pavement, enter the opposite house, creep up
+to the first-floor, and then crouch down by the step which led into the
+front-room, and peer beneath the door, through the opening made by the
+long hard wear of feet for a century and a half-watching, perhaps for a
+couple of hours, the bright guiding spirit of the sewing-machine.  But
+at last Lucy would catch sight of the two round bright eyes, peering
+beneath the door; and to her mother's great annoyance at one time, and
+supreme satisfaction upon another, she would fetch in the child, when
+according to Mrs Hardon's mood she would act; for if the invalid was
+fretful and weary, the little thing would be taken up to Jean, where she
+would stay willingly amongst the birds, as the cripple eagerly tried to
+be of service to his beautiful neighbour.  But there were difficulties
+here, for Jean could only render this aid when _ma mere_ was absent,
+though this was more frequently now since Bijou had learned to stand
+upon his head, and so brought in more remuneration, without taking into
+consideration his later accomplishment of climbing two chairs, rail by
+rail, forefeet upon one, hindfeet upon another, and then smoking a
+tobacco-less pipe in triumph upon the summit, as he spanned the distance
+between the two chairs, and turned himself into a canine arch.  But
+Bijou doubtless did not enjoy his pipe for remembering how that he was
+_bete_, and for thinking of the whip, and the rapping his poor legs
+received before he was able to obey his mistress's commands--that is if
+dogs can think.
+
+There seemed to be a tacit understanding between _ma mere_ and Lucy; an
+acknowledged dislike upon the old woman's part, which made the latter
+carefully avoid her, shrinking back into the room if she heard her
+footstep, so as not to encounter the quiet bitter smile and sneering
+gaze of the old woman, while _ma mere_ reviled Jean angrily, calling him
+nurse-girl, _bonne_, when by chance she learned of his past occupation.
+But Jean cared not, so long as there was something that should bring
+Lucy to his attic, where he could feast greedily upon her bright face
+and graceful form; and, could he have gone about, he would have followed
+her like a dog.
+
+Jean's lark sang more loudly than ever, and Lucy's eyes had brightened
+as she told the cripple again and again how she loved its sweet notes;
+and, watching her press her lips once to the cage-wires, inviting the
+speckled bird to take a seed from the rosy prison, Jean's eyes dimmed as
+he gazed at her with a reverence approaching adoration.  Visitor after
+visitor came to that attic, and went, buying and selling, and the little
+prisoners were constantly being changed; but the lark was there still,
+though more than once of late Jean had pressed its acceptance upon Lucy
+Grey; but with a sweet smile she had thanked him, begging that he would
+keep it for her sake; and he kept it, in spite of many an angry word
+from _ma mere_ when some advantageous offer had been made by a visitor;
+and it still whistled from its perch in the window.
+
+"I will sell the bird myself; it is waste, it is pity, when we are so
+poor," _ma mere_ would exclaim; and then Jean would turn upon her a
+peculiar soft, sweet smile, and whisper, "No, _ma mere_, you will not
+sell my bird, because I love it;" when passionately the old woman would
+now scold, now fondle the cripple, as she hung over the back of his
+chair.
+
+One evening when the moon hung high in air, waiting the fading of day
+before shedding her pale light, Jean sat in his usual place in the
+window, dreaming of scenes of which he had read, and thinking himself in
+some sweet woodland home, forgetting the presence of squalor and misery,
+and even of the cages, as he listened to the twittering of the many
+birds hung around his head.  There was a brightness in his eye and a
+smile upon his lip, for he was gazing across the court at just such a
+scene as once almost spellbound the curate.  Merrily romping with the
+child, he could see Lucy in Jarker's room, flitting backwards and
+forwards past the open window.  The child's happy laugh could be heard
+mingled with its shouts of pleasure, for the pent-up joyousness of its
+little nature was now having free vent.
+
+All at once Jean's look of quiet enjoyment changed to one of unutterable
+rage and despair; the lips, but now apart in a soft smile, were drawn,
+as if by some fearful pain, his teeth were clenched, and his eyes wild
+and dilated.  He tried to rise, but his helplessness was such that he
+sank back in his chair panting; but, raising his crutch, he struck
+savagely on the casement, shivering two or three of the little panes.
+He tried again and again to get up, and inarticulate sounds came from
+his lips.  It was pitiful to gaze upon the struggle between the strong
+mind and the weak body, which would not obey his will as he tried again
+to rise; till, with a savage, guttural cry, more like that of some
+disappointed beast of prey than a human being, he threw himself towards
+the open window, as in his efforts his chair was overturned and he fell
+upon the floor, where he lay agonisingly writhing in his impotence, as
+he absolutely foamed at the mouth.
+
+Just then the door behind him opened, and, with a book beneath his arm,
+Mr Sterne entered the room; when seeing, as he thought, the cripple in
+a fit, he sprang forward and raised him in his arms to place him in a
+chair, at the same time running over in his own mind what would be the
+best course of action.  But as he gazed in the poor fellow's dilated
+eyes, and saw their look of unutterable despair, one of Jean's hands was
+fiercely clutching his shoulder, and the other was pointing and waving
+frantically towards the open window.
+
+The next instant, as if some strange suspicion had flashed upon his
+mind, the curate was gazing across the court, to utter almost the
+counterpart of the cry that had issued from the throat of Jean, as he
+caught sight of Lucy, frightened and horror-stricken, backing towards
+the room door, and Jarker, evidently half-mad with drink, holding her
+tightly by one arm; for he had returned unexpectedly, and taking
+advantage of the girl's preoccupation, had stolen softly into the room
+and closed the door.
+
+Arthur Sterne saw this at one glance, and his face turned pale as ashes
+with the thoughts that this hasty look engendered.  The next moment he
+had half-climbed from the window and stood holding by one hand,
+measuring the distance across the court, as he stooped, lithe and
+elastic, ready for the bound; but reason told him that it was utter
+madness to attempt so wild a leap--a leap certainly death for himself,
+and probably worse than death for her he sought to save; and dashing
+back into the room he tore down the staircase.
+
+Recovering somewhat, Jean now let himself slide down upon the floor,
+and, panting heavily, began to walk painfully across the room; for a
+moment he looked at the window, but the next he was making for the door,
+and then lowering himself from stair to stair.  But before he was down
+the first flight, there was rescue at hand for Lucy.  Bounding up the
+frail old staircase of the opposite house, Arthur Sterne dashed
+frantically on, so that at every leap the woodwork cracked and trembled
+as if ready to give way.  The height never seemed so great before, as
+landing after landing was passed, till he reached the last, to launch
+himself against the frail door, which, driven from its hinges, fell with
+a crash; and the next moment, dropping like some inert mass from the
+blow which fell upon his face, Jarker made the old place quiver beneath
+his weight.  And there he lay, stupid and helpless from the sudden
+shock; the effect of the blow being apparently enough to destroy life,
+for the ruffian did not move.
+
+Hardly breathing, and uttering no sound, the child crouched fearfully in
+a corner; while Lucy, trembling and half-fainting, clung to the curate,
+as sob after sob burst from her breast; and at last, as if stricken by
+death, she sank back pale and inanimate upon his supporting arm.
+
+But there were no looks of love in Arthur Sterne's face; for, with brow
+knit, nostrils distended, and every vein in his face swollen and
+knotted, he stood with his heel crushed down upon Jarker's bull-throat,
+no mean incarnation of vengeance.  Soon, though, the breath he had drawn
+with difficulty as he stood there holding the fainting girl to his
+throbbing heart, came more lightly, the expression of rage fled from his
+features, and as he gazed tenderly upon the pale face so near his own he
+pressed his lips reverently upon her forehead.
+
+"Lucy, my poor dove," he whispered, "will you not give me the right to
+protect you, and take you from this place?"--"Our beauty, some of us,"
+seemed sighed at his ear.
+
+"A lie, a base lie!" he muttered fiercely; though even then a change
+came over his face, the veins swelled once more in his forehead, and an
+agony of strange thoughts passed through his breast.  And now, pale and
+anxious, two or three of the women lodgers came trembling to the door,
+amongst whom was Mrs Sims, ready to take possession of the child, as,
+hurriedly passing through the wondering group, the curate bore his light
+burden to her home.
+
+Volume Three, Chapter VII.
+
+A MEETING AND ITS RESULT.
+
+It was late before Arthur Sterne left Bennett's-rents that night.
+Septimus Hardon had been terribly excited--talking long and wildly of
+his poverty being the cause of the insult offered to his child.  He had
+walked hurriedly up and down the room, gesticulating and threatening the
+scoundrel who had so repaid Lucy's kindness; and again and again it was
+upon the curate's lips to speak of the little one, and of Lucy's strange
+intimacy with its mother; but his spirit revolted from the task.  In
+another case he would have spoken instantly; but here duty seemed to
+move in fetters that he could not break.  In all concerning the poor
+girl he seemed bound to preserve silence till such time as some
+explanation should be given, and through all he had been in constant
+dread lest he should give her pain.
+
+"I must prosecute the villain!" exclaimed Septimus.
+
+"But the pain--the exposure--your child?" said the curate.
+
+"What! would you have him go unpunished?" exclaimed Septimus.
+
+"I would say `No!' directly," replied the curate; "but I cannot help
+thinking of the painful scene in court, the public examination, and the
+cross-examination by the prisoner's counsel; and these men can always
+among themselves manage to get some able person to undertake their
+cause.  It would be a most painful position in which to place your
+child.  Her actions would be distorted to suit a purpose; and such a
+scene--"
+
+Mr Sterne's speech dwindled off, and became inaudible; for he felt that
+he had spoken unadvisedly, and a strange chill came over him as he
+thought, in the event of the affair being in court, what hold the
+opposing counsel could take of certain acts in Lucy's life; for, let
+them he ever so innocent, the light in which they would place her would
+be of the most painful character; and his lips were rather white as he
+said, "Sleep on it, Mr Hardon, sleep on it."
+
+"I will," said Septimus proudly.  "We are poor, Mr Sterne; but there is
+no act in my dear child's life that will not bear the light of day."
+
+"Doubtless, doubtless," replied the curate in a low tone; "but, believe
+me, my advice is given with the best of wishes and intentions, Mr
+Hardon.  Have I not always tried to be a friend?  And if there was
+somewhat of selfishness in my advances, I feel no shame in owning to you
+that I am moved by a feeling of more than esteem for Miss Grey; to whom
+any proceedings would, I am sure, be as painful as to myself."
+
+Septimus Hardon started, for this was as sudden as unexpected.  Such a
+thought had never entered his breast, and he gazed wonderingly at the
+calm, pale face before him; as in the silence which ensued they both sat
+listening to the painful, low sob which came now and again from the next
+room, where, forgetful of her own infirmities, Mrs Hardon had been
+trying to soothe the agitated girl.
+
+And then, hour after hour, Septimus sat talking with Mr Sterne--for the
+first time now giving himself up entirely to his advice, and promising
+to give up all thought of prosecution, while he sought at once for some
+more suitable home for his wife and child, though, as he thought of his
+narrow, precarious income, he made the latter promise with a sigh.  He
+talked long and earnestly, too, about his own affairs, being ready now
+to take the counsel that Mr Sterne so freely offered; and when, with a
+lighter heart, the curate rose to leave, Septimus shook hands, with a
+puzzled expression upon his face, as if he hardly believed in the events
+of the past evening.
+
+Upon slowly descending and reaching the door, Mr Sterne drew back,
+asking himself whether he should be content, or seize the opportunity
+that now offered for him to know that of which it was evident, from his
+language, Septimus Hardon was still ignorant.  The desire was strong to
+know more, and he yielded to it; for there before him, standing in the
+open court, and gazing anxiously up at the lighted window, was the woman
+who had caused him so much uneasiness; but neither he nor the woman saw
+that in the shade of the opposite doorway a villainous pair of eyes were
+on the watch.
+
+Again and again he had encountered this woman since he had determined to
+question her--upon the bridge at early dawn; by night, in the crowded
+streets, dressed in the extreme of fashion; shabbily dressed by day; but
+she always fled, and contrived to elude him.  Who was she?  What was
+she?  How came she intimate with Lucy?  Was it merely for the child's
+sake?  Then why Lucy's dread?
+
+The opportunity was here, he told himself, and he would know; and then,
+as he formed the determination, he stepped quickly out; but no sooner
+did Agnes Hardon catch sight of the curate's pale, stern face by the
+sickly flicker of the one lamp than she turned and fled, while, without
+pausing to think, the curate closed the door and pursued her.
+
+A dark, gusty time, late, for two had struck but a minute before by
+church after church--some sending their booming announcement clearly out
+upon the night air, others discordantly, and jangling with the bells of
+others.  Turning towards the end of the court, Agnes ran swiftly, her
+dress rustling, and fashionable boots pattering upon the pavement; but
+her pursuer was quick of foot, and followed her along the end row,
+through Harker's-alley, Ray's-court, along one labyrinth and down
+another of the old district, now falling beneath the contractor's pick,
+till they had nearly returned to the point from whence they started.
+But flight was of no avail, and soon Arthur Sterne overtook the panting
+woman, himself breathless, and, heedless of her fierce looks, caught her
+by the wrist.
+
+"Come with me," he said sternly, as he drew her towards the entrance of
+the dark court where they stood.
+
+"Why, why?" she exclaimed passionately, struggling with him the while.
+"Why do you stop me?  Why do you pursue me--you, too, a clergyman?"
+
+The answer to the taunt was a cold look, which Agnes Hardon saw and
+felt; for the next moment she was weeping passionately.  "Why do you
+track and follow me, sir?" she exclaimed through her tears.  "Let me go;
+you hurt my arm!"
+
+"Will you stand and answer my questions, then?" said the curate, as they
+now stood at the entrance of the court--a dark, gloomy archway, with a
+doorway here and there.
+
+"Yes, yes," exclaimed Agnes wearily, "if you will be quick; but there, I
+know what you would say, and it is of no use; I am past all that!"
+
+"Past all what?" cried the curate sternly.
+
+"Hope of better things," said the woman with so weary and despondent a
+wail, that her hearer shuddered.
+
+"Hush!" he said; "you speak rashly, and without thinking;" and releasing
+her wrist, he laid his hand gently upon her arm.  "Listen," he said;
+"you have your woman's feelings yet!"
+
+"No," she replied hastily, "all--all gone; driven out of me--dead.  Let
+me go, please; it's late, sir.  I am a wretch, and it is useless to
+talk."
+
+"But why do you pursue that young girl?" he said, pointing across the
+street to where Bennett's-rents debouched.  "Would you tempt her to be
+your companion?"
+
+"No, no, no; my God, no!" half-shrieked Agnes, as she caught at his
+hands; "don't think that, sir."
+
+"Then you _have_ some womanly feeling left," said Mr Sterne.
+
+"Towards her, perhaps, yes."
+
+"And your child?"
+
+"Yes, yes, yes," wailed Agnes; "but don't torture me.  What do you
+know?--what do you wish me to do?--why do you follow me?"
+
+"What is your name?" said the curate sternly; "and how came you to know
+her?" and he pointed again towards Bennett's-rents.
+
+"Don't ask me, I cannot tell you," sobbed Agnes.
+
+"But you bring misery on her and on her home.  You have some hold upon
+her?"
+
+"No, no, no," sobbed Agnes hysterically; "none, none; but she knows who
+I am, and pities me and my poor child.  God's blessing on her!"
+
+"Amen!" muttered the curate under his breath, and his companion sobbed
+so convulsively that she could not speak, while, as they stood in the
+dark entry, a policeman came slowly by, flashed the light of his
+bull's-eye upon them for an instant, recognised the curate and passed
+on, and, till he was out of hearing, Agnes Hardon clutched the curate's
+arm.
+
+"You are not afraid of the world and it's opinions," she said bitterly;
+"it cannot hurt you.  Stay with me and I will tell you all, for I
+believe you mean me well."
+
+The curate bowed his head.
+
+"I am miserable, wretched," she sobbed, "and what can I do?  That man in
+the court has my poor child, and for some reason he will not give it up.
+I have tried to get it away again and again, even to stealing it, sir--
+my own little one; but something has always prevented me, and he watches
+me till, hardened as I am, I am afraid of him, for he comes over my
+spirit like the shadow of some great horror about to crush me.  I love
+my child, my pure little angel, for--O sir, have pity on me, have
+pity!--I am its mother, and what else have I here to cling to?  Can you
+not think how I must love it though I left it with that poor dead woman?
+But she had a mother's heart, and was kind to it always.  I could see
+it in my darling's blue eyes even when it racked my heart; but I was
+glad, though it would not come to me, and called her mother.  I was
+happy then, for did not she--she you say I injure--watch over it for me,
+and tell me of its bright eyes and sunny hair and winning ways, while,
+when I have listened to her, the tears have come gently to quench the
+fire in my brain, and I could think of home and the past, while she--she
+who loves my little one--lets me weep upon her breast, and I forget for
+a while that I am lost, lost, lost for ever!"
+
+"Lost, lost, lost for ever!"  She uttered these words so hopelessly,
+with such a wail of agony, that they seemed to echo along the archway,
+and to float off upon the night breeze, rising and falling, an utterance
+never to fade away, but to go on for ever and ever while this world
+lasts; to smite upon the sleeping ears of the cruel, the dissolute, and
+the profligate; to awaken here, perhaps, one sorrowful thought for wrong
+done, one thought of repentance; there, a desire to pause, ere it be too
+late, on the brink of some iniquity that should break a trusting woman's
+heart.
+
+Tenderly, and with such a strange feeling of compassion in his heart as
+might have pervaded that of his Master whose words he taught, Arthur
+Sterne took the weeping woman's hands in his, as, sobbing more bitterly
+than ever, she sank upon her knees on the cold stones at his feet,
+weeping as though her heart would break; nay, as if through the torn
+walls of that broken citadel the flood of tears went seething and
+hissing, the ruins yet smouldering and burning with the fire of the
+fatal passion that had been their fall.
+
+"What shall I do, sir?" she cried at length, wearily looking up in the
+face that bent over her.  "I would take my little one away and go near
+the place no more, for I have been seldom lately, not liking that he
+should see me with her, for he followed us once, and I did not like it.
+I would have told her not to go near my child, but there is a woman
+sometimes there.  He will not let me take it away.  But tell me what to
+do, sir," she said wearily, "and I will do it."
+
+"What!" she cried, starting up, "what!" she half-shrieked, as he related
+to her the incident of the past night; "and this through me?  Am I to
+bring misery everywhere?  O God, O God!" she cried, "that my weakness,
+my sin, should be ever growing and bringing its misery upon others!  But
+stop, sir; listen," she exclaimed huskily, as she clung to his arm;
+"what shall we do?  If I could have seen this, sir, I'd have died sooner
+than it should have happened; believe me, I would."
+
+The curate bent his head once more, as they stood facing the street, and
+said, in low, impressive tones, "I do believe you;" but he took no heed
+to a light, stealthy pace in the alley behind.
+
+"What shall I do, sir?" cried Agnes eagerly.
+
+"Take the child away at once," replied Mr Sterne, "and leave this life.
+But will you?"
+
+"If the gates of heaven were opened, sir, and One said, `Come in, poor
+sinner, and rest,' should I go?"
+
+The stealthy step came nearer, but was unnoticed.
+
+"Now tell me your name, and how came the intimacy of which I complain,"
+said Mr Sterne.
+
+"I--I knew the family; I knew Lucy--Miss Grey--before her father--and--
+pray, pray ask me no more," gasped Agnes appealingly.  "I will do all
+you wish, sir.  Help me to get my child, and I will go anywhere you may
+tell me; but don't ask me that, sir."
+
+"Nay," said Mr Sterne, with beating heart, for he felt that her reply
+would drive away his last doubt, "tell me now; you may trust me."
+
+"Yes, yes," sobbed Agnes; "I know, but I cannot."
+
+The step sounded very close now, while the light from the lamp in the
+alley was for a moment obscured.
+
+"I will do all that you ask," sobbed Agnes.  "Tell me what else you
+wish, and I will be as obedient as a child, but--"
+
+"Prove it, then, by telling me how began your intimacy with Miss--"
+
+There was a wild scream from Agnes Hardon as she thrust the curate
+aside; but too late, for a heavy, dull blow from behind crushed through
+his hat, and stretched him upon the pavement, where, for an instant, a
+thousand lights seemed dancing before his eyes, and then all was blank.
+
+It was no unusual sound that, a woman's shriek, especially the
+half-drunken cry of some street wanderer; but one window was opened, and
+a head thrust out, whose owner muttered for a moment and then closed the
+sash, for though he had seen a woman struggling with a man, he did not
+hear the words that passed, nor could he see that the man was trying
+hard to extricate himself from the woman's grasp; but there were other
+wakeful eyes upon the watch.
+
+Volume Three, Chapter VIII.
+
+WASTE-PAPER.
+
+"Well, yes, sir," said Matt, standing hat in hand, "'tis snug and
+comfortable, sir; and I'm glad to see the change, and I'm sure I wish
+you long life to enjoy it.  Glad you've got here all right, sir; and
+sorry I was too weak to help you move.  I've got the address down all
+right in my memo-book: look here, sir--150 Essex-street, Strand, sir."
+
+"And now we'll go, then, Matt," said Septimus, rising.
+
+"Go, sir?" said Matt.
+
+"Yes," said Septimus, "if you will; for the thing has been too long
+neglected already."
+
+"Very true, sir," said Matt: "but you told me as the parson, sir, Mr
+Sterne, was going to take it in hand; and if so--"
+
+"Now, Matt," said Septimus appealingly, "isn't he lying upon a bed of
+sickness, weak and helpless, and unable to move?"
+
+"Well, yes, sir, that's true; and a rum start that was, too.  Wonder who
+would have a spite against him?  But I thought that now, sir, as
+you'd--"
+
+Septimus Hardon took the old man by the arm and placed him in a chair;
+for it was evident that he was a little testy and jealous of other
+interposition in the matters in which he had taken so much interest; but
+the cordiality of Mrs Septimus seemed to chase it away; while Lucy,
+returning from a walk, beamed so happily upon the old man, that he
+looked his old self again, and owned to the feeling that, as he
+expressed it, he had expected that he was going to be "pitched
+overboard," now there were new friends.
+
+It was partly by Mr Sterne's advice that Septimus had sought out and
+asked Matt to accompany him this day; for though much hurt, and weak
+from loss of blood, the curate had taken great interest in the future of
+the Hardon family.  At his request Septimus had sought and removed to
+lodgings in Essex-street, and since then passed an evening by the
+curate's bedside; for he had been found by a policeman perfectly
+insensible, and carried home; and, though nearly certain of who was his
+assailant, he felt indisposed to take any steps in the matter for fear
+that affairs might be made public which he wished concealed.  He had not
+seen Lucy since; but somehow there was a feeling of repose and content
+within his breast that it had not known for months; and he longed for
+the time when he could again meet with the woman whose words would have,
+he now felt, set him at rest for ever.
+
+There seemed, too, a brightness in Lucy foreign to her looks, as
+Septimus leaned over her and whispered a few words before leaving; then,
+after kissing her tenderly, he descended to the street with old Matt,
+who, though weak, still refused sturdily every offer of a ride, and they
+trudged steadily on till they reached Finsbury.
+
+"Hallo!" said Matt, "what d'ye call this?  Same name, but the business
+is changed, and that's her a-cutting up paper.  To be sure--why it is
+her!  I thought I knew her face, but I was in such a muddle just then
+that all my letter was mixed, and whenever I wanted a p, I got a q, and
+all on like that.  Why, she came and chattered away, and bought an old
+set of tobacco-jars and covers and a heap of waste-paper of Mother
+Slagg, just before I went into hospital; and there they are, sir--that's
+them, fresh varnished and painted, and stuck on the shelf.  Ikey took
+'em home for her, and I remember asking myself ever so long as to where
+I'd seen her before.  Well, come on, sir.  I want a bit of snuff, so
+that's an excuse for going in.  P'r'aps, after all, she's bought the
+very paper."
+
+The visitors made their way into the old formal registry-office, turned
+into a very smart little shop, fitted up with some taste; where Miss
+Tollicks herself was busily weighing and packing a pile of those little
+rolls of tobacco known as "screws."  Fine thick paper, too, she was
+using, such as would weigh well and add to the rather fine profit she
+obtained upon her fragrant weed.  For there was no mistake: Miss
+Tollicks had executed her threat, turned the registering out of doors,
+and taken to the business most popular in the streets of London.  No
+seat now existed for maids to sit and wait to be hired from ten to four;
+no green baize; no intense air of respectability, but all quite the
+correct thing as established by custom in the weedy way.  There was a
+monster cigar outside, set perpendicularly, with an internal gas-jet,
+and a transparency bearing the legend, "Take a light."  On the other
+side of the door was a little, freshly-varnished, red-nosed,
+chip-elbowed Scotchman, taking snuff in the imperfect tense, with his
+fingers half-way to his nose; an imitation roll of tobacco hung over the
+door; while just inside, upon a tub, stood a small black gentleman in a
+very light feather petticoat, smoking a pipe about double the length of
+his body.  Then there were clay pipes, crossed and tied into
+diamond-pattern d'oyleys, swung in the top panes of the windows; while
+beneath them "so gracefully curled" a perfect anaconda of a hookah--one
+that it would have taken a bold Turk to smoke.  There were meerschaums
+and brier-roots, cutty- and billiard-pipes; glass, cherry, and jasmine
+stems; tobacco-pouches of india-rubber, looking like fresh-flayed
+negro-skin; snuff-boxes of all sorts and sizes, embracing miniature,
+scene, and tartan of every pattern; stacks of cigar-boxes carefully
+branded but very European in their look; bundles of cigars tied with
+fancy ribbon; the day's playbills on the walls; rows of snuff- and
+tobacco-jars, as pointed out by Matt, and labelled from "Scotch" to
+"Hardham's 37," and from "Returns" to "Latakia."  There was a whole
+tubful of odorous shag, and a stack of packets of Bristol bird's-eye;
+the scales were of the glossiest, the glass-case of the cleanest, and
+altogether the shop owned by Miss Tollicks seemed to be of the most
+prosperous; for things looked smart and well attended to--a rare sign of
+plenty of business, as, according to the old saying, "the less there is
+to do, the worse it is done;" but there was a strong smell of varnish,
+and it was evident that Miss Tollicks had been picking up her fittings
+here and there at various secondhand stores, or, as Matt Space called
+it, "on the cheap."
+
+Matt advanced to the counter and asked for his penn'orth of snuff.
+
+"Then you're not dead!" exclaimed Miss Tollicks, putting down the jar in
+a most businesslike way, with motions rapid as her speech; for she had
+banished the black-velvet blackbird and deportment along with the green
+baize; but, not quite used to her business, in spite of her ability of
+adapting herself to circumstances, she sneezed loudly as she lifted the
+lid.  "And how do you do?--there, dear me, how I do sneeze!--and I
+thought I had quite conquered it, for it does look so--tchisher-er--so--
+er-tchisher!  There, I'm sure I beg your pardon.  And how do you do? and
+you've got well again, like poor Mary did, in that horrible place, who
+was dying too, and didn't.  And Mr Harding too! and I'm so glad to see
+you, for you were _that_ kind to me, I don't know what I should have
+done else.  Now you've come to ask me about the doctor again--now
+haven't you?"
+
+Septimus said he had.
+
+"Well, now, I hadn't forgotten it, and you were both right, you know;
+but I shall never forget your kindness, Mr Harding, for but for you
+that day, everyone must have seen that I had been crying.  But you were
+right; and the doctor did live here, and died here too, ages ago; and
+then his widow went to live somewhere in one of those quiet streets by
+the Strand, going down to the river, you know; and then she died, and
+there was a sale, and that's all; and it isn't much, is it?"
+
+Septimus said it was not, certainly.
+
+"But then, you know," said Miss Tollicks, "it's no use to try and make
+more of things of that sort, is it?  No, he didn't know the street, nor
+anything more about it, for he bought the lease of the house of someone
+else."
+
+As for Matt, he did not speak, but took snuff ferociously, and glared at
+the paper squares upon the counter.
+
+"But there, do come in," cried Miss Tollicks; "and, dear me, Mr--Mr--I
+don't know your name, but don't, pray, take snuff like that; you'll make
+yourself ill.  But there, do come in;" and in spite of refusals Miss
+Tollicks soon had her visitors seated in her bower, in company with a
+spirit-bottle and a couple of tumblers and sugar, a tiny kettle upon the
+fire singing merrily.
+
+"I do suffer so from spasms," said Miss Tollicks as she placed the
+suspicious-looking spirit-bottle upon the table; but all these
+preparations were not made at once, for, from her many pops in and out
+of the shop, and the rattling of the scales, it was evident that Miss
+Tollicks had chosen the right business at last, and was prospering
+famously.  The decanter was brought out of a Berlin-wool-worked
+overgrown dice-box on one side of the fire, the glasses from its ditto
+on the other, the kettle out of a window-locker, and divers other ways
+of economising space were shown; while the visitors were informed that
+so much of the house was let off.  "It all helps so," said Miss
+Tollicks; "for London rents are enough to kill you; and you doing
+nothing but feed your landlord."
+
+Old Matt grunted acquiescence.
+
+"Now one each, please," said Miss Tollicks, "just to be sociable; and
+then you can speak up for the quality of my goods.  How do you find the
+snuff, Mr --?"
+
+"Space, ma'am," said Matt.  "Good; very good, ma'am, but not durable."
+
+"That's right," exclaimed Miss Tollicks, as she pressed the two mild
+Havannas she had brought in upon her visitors.  "Don't mind me, pray--I
+am trying to get used to smoke as well as snuff."
+
+Septimus and Matt were both non-smokers, but as they exchanged glances
+they came to the conclusion that they could extinguish their cigars as
+soon as they were outside.  So Septimus set the example, with a very
+ludicrous cast of countenance, by placing the little vegetable roll in
+his mouth, and Miss Tollicks tore off a piece of paper from a square on
+the counter, doubled, lit, and handed it to the smoker.
+
+Septimus Hardon's face was a regular study as Matt, grumbling to
+himself, "Why didn't she make it snuff?" watched him trying to light his
+cigar--a new feat to him entirely.
+
+"The other end first, sir," growled Matt; and in a rather confused way
+Septimus made the requisite alteration, and then sucked and puffed so
+vigorously that he extinguished the light, which he re-lit at the fire.
+But the next moment his face changed from one of comical resignation to
+a state of intense wonder, as old Matt, under the excuse of helping
+himself to a light, was turning over some leaves of a heap of
+waste-paper on a chair by the door.
+
+Suddenly Septimus dashed the lighted paper upon the table, hurriedly
+extinguishing it with trembling hands, but not without oversetting his
+glass of spirits-and-water.
+
+"What is the matter?  Have you burnt yourself?" cried Miss Tollicks.
+
+"Is it, sir?" cried old Matt, reaching across the table.
+
+But Septimus Hardon did not move for a few seconds, but stood with his
+hands pressed down over the roughly-folded piece of paper, into which
+the spirits-and-water was now soaking, as it made a way between his
+fingers.
+
+"Why didn't I give you a splint!" exclaimed Miss Tollicks, whose mind
+was full of goose-grease, starch-powder, and cotton-wool.  "Is it very
+bad?"
+
+But Septimus Hardon did not speak, only slowly and with palsied hands
+unfolded the soaked paper; but even then he could hardly read it for the
+mist that swam before his eyes.  Old Matt, though, not to be behindhand,
+pulled out his glasses, and stretched out his hand to reach the paper;
+but Septimus shrank back, and then read with difficulty, for the ink had
+begun to look blurred with the wet:
+
+  S. Hardon,
+  Medicine and at-dance 2.
+
+And that was all.  Septimus turned it over carefully and found a list of
+names, but no other entry; there was a figure, part of a date evidently,
+at one edge, but it was charred, and as he touched it and held it
+towards the window it crumbled away into brown tinder.  He read the
+entry again and again, and then looked at the ashes of the paper to see
+if anything could be made of them.  Then, as if for a forlorn hope, he
+turned to his hostess, saying in a strange, husky voice:
+
+"The date's burnt off.  Where did you get this?"
+
+"O, what have I done?" exclaimed Miss Tollicks.  "What is the matter?"
+
+"Nothing, nothing," said Septimus, looking in a dreary, bewildered way
+at Matt.  "It's of no use; it's my usual ill luck, and it's of no use to
+fight against it."
+
+"I never saw such a thing in my life!" cried Matt, bringing his fist
+down upon the table so that the glasses jumped again.  "Put it in a
+book, and no one would believe it: and yet there it is.  I wouldn't have
+believed it myself if I had not seen it with my own eyes."
+
+"But where is the piece you tore it from?" exclaimed Septimus, trembling
+still.
+
+"To be sure!" cried Matt exultingly.  "But I was right--I did see it,
+and she bought it, and Ikey brought it here, and it'll all come right
+yet.--Where's the piece you tore it from, ma'am?" and he again greatly
+endangered Miss Tollicks' glasses by thumping the table.
+
+Miss Tollicks hastily produced the other half of the square of paper;
+but on one side the list of names was continued, while upon the other
+there was the tail of a flourish, the tops of a few letters, and the
+rest was blank.
+
+"Have you any more of these sheets--these book-leaves?" exclaimed
+Septimus; when Miss Tollicks hastily took up the little heap on the
+chair by the door, the same that had excited Matt's curiosity, and into
+which he had been quietly peering.
+
+"Those are not the same," said Septimus despondently; "this is thicker."
+
+"Yes," said Miss Tollicks dolefully, as she examined the few remaining
+squares upon the counter; "these are all different, too, and I don't
+know how that scrap came to be left.  I used all that thick paper first,
+because it weighed well, and I used it for screws."
+
+"But," stammered Septimus, "it is a part of the very man's books--the
+very man who lived here, and about whom we came to ask you."
+
+"Bless me!" said Miss Tollicks dolefully, "and I've been letting it go
+for weeks past in screws to the Sun, and the Green Dragon, and the
+Duke."
+
+"But let's see if there's any more," said Matt.  "A leaf would almost do
+all we want if it has only got the right dates."
+
+Matt's advice was taken: screws were examined, turned over, unrolled;
+the tied-up squares of paper were looked at; Matt went down upon his
+knees behind the counter and routed about amongst some rubbish; the
+squares freshly cut up were looked over; and then once more the heap on
+the chair in the room was scanned, leaf by leaf, but only one more
+fragment was found, evidently a portion of the same book; but it bore a
+date four years prior to the marriage of Septimus Hardon's parents.
+
+"Makes worse of it," muttered old Matt to himself; "but perhaps he was
+only a young doctor, and one book lasted him a long time.  S'pose we go
+and have a look round at some of the publics," he said aloud, "eh, sir?"
+
+Septimus jumped at the suggestion, and together they noted down the
+names of Miss Tollicks' principal customers for screws, for she said
+that she was sure the thick paper had been used entirely for that
+purpose; but on making inquiry at the different pewter-covered bars, one
+and all of the stout gentlemen in shirt-sleeves and short white aprons
+declared that they were sold out, and could have got rid of "twiced as
+much."
+
+"I suppose," said Septimus to one red-faced gentleman, "it would be of
+no use to ask you who bought the screws?"
+
+The man stood, and softly rubbed with a strange rasping noise his
+well-shorn range of stubble on chin and cheek; then pulled open the
+screw-drawer, looked in it, then at the counter, then at Septimus, as if
+doubtful of his sanity, and said:
+
+"Well, no, sir, I don't think as it would."
+
+They returned to the little tobacconist's shop, Septimus holding tightly
+to the newly-found scrap of paper.  And yet it was useless--waste-paper;
+no more.  There could be no doubt about it's being the entry made when
+he saw the light; but now it was found, with his own hand he had
+destroyed the most precious part, for without date it was of no avail.
+
+Septimus Hardon felt sick at heart when he again sat down in Miss
+Tollicks' room, and gazed with woebegone looks in his companion's face.
+The prize as it were within his reach; his old troubles swept away; his
+legitimacy proved--the cup almost at his lips, and then dashed away.  It
+was in vain that Miss Tollicks vented her well-meant platitudes, and
+shone with hospitable warmth; Septimus Hardon seemed crushed, and Matt
+had scarcely a word to say.
+
+"Have a little more sugar," said Miss Tollicks to the man of the bitter
+cup.  "What a tiresome world this is!  And only to think of me buying
+that very paper, and the great dirty ruffian of a man bringing it home,
+and wanting to buy half-a-pound of tobacco before I began business and
+had a license; and then asking me if I had any old boots, while he
+chipped two of the jars shamefully."
+
+"Only think," muttered old Matt as they went slowly homewards, "for me
+to have had that entry under my very nose, and then only turned it up
+and wouldn't look at it."
+
+Volume Three, Chapter IX.
+
+BY NIGHT.
+
+Old Matt Space had a certain amount of pride in his composition, and,
+like most people, he suffered for it.  He would gladly have received
+assistance of the most trifling nature from Septimus Hardon the day they
+returned from Finsbury; but his companion seemed so dejected and doleful
+that he had not the heart to bring forward his own troubles, and so it
+followed that the same night he was complaining to himself about hard
+times--those ever-recurring, inhospitable seasons when mental storms
+beat upon the rocks of a man's faith, and many a shipwreck follows.
+Hard times--times that the science, charity, and statistics of our days
+soften so little.  Warm sunshine, genial rain, bright skies, have but
+little influence, and the times keep hard for some, though others, by
+means of softening mediums, contrive to remain uninjured.
+
+In his dry way old Matt would sometimes say that if he did not cut up
+well when he died, he should certainly cut up streaky--like thin bacon;
+for times so fluctuated with him that before a small layer of fat was
+well established, the lean would again commence; while, if it is fair so
+to speak of a man whose life had been one long struggle for bare
+existence, Matt had been somewhat improvident.  What he called runs upon
+the bank were common events with the old printer--times when there were
+no deposits made, and trade was slack; it was a pleasant trade,
+printing, he said--nothing to do to-day, and to-morrow busy, up all
+night afterwards, and then perhaps another long rest.
+
+Old Matt stood in front of the Royal Exchange that night at eleven
+o'clock, weak from his long illness, tired and faint too, as he lingered
+there thinking of how he would like to make an onslaught upon the Bank
+of England, and fill his pockets, now reduced to the lowest ebb, for he
+had not sixpence wherewith to pay for a night's lodging.  He had not
+been to the mansion of Mr Gross to sleep but once since his return from
+the hospital; for he was largely indebted to that gentleman, and though
+scarcely anything had been said, Mrs Gross had dropped just a mild
+hint, what she considered an exceedingly mild hint, to the effect that,
+when it was convenient, they would be glad to receive one or two
+instalments on account.
+
+This made Matt more shy, and after a day or two he stopped away
+altogether, so that when Septimus Hardon sought at his lodgings, he
+found him not, and had to inspect the interior of two or three
+hostelries favoured by the fraternity before he found him out.
+
+"Ah, sir," said Matt, as he hugged a lamp-post, "the times that I've
+seen them lugging the little chests and barrels in there--heavy so that
+they could scarcely lift them, and any one of 'em would have set me up
+for life.  Specie, they call it, sir; species as I was always unable to
+collect much of in my rambles through life; and it wouldn't take a deal
+to make me comfortable, anyhow.  Precious cold here, sir, for an old man
+like me, and I don't know that I'd say no, just now, to one of those
+little iron bedsteads with its clean sheets in the hospital--leastways,
+if one could feel sure nobody had just died upon it, for the thought of
+that gives one a turn like, and seems to fidget.  Precious cold, sir!
+Talk about the internal heat of the earth, I wish there was a little
+more external.  Crust of the earth, sir?  Yes, sir, there's plenty of
+crust, and precious little crumb.  Red-hot fluid state inside, eh?  Then
+I shall move, sir--move.  I was a good will to when I was in the
+hospital; but I think I shall make up my mind soon, for the world ain't
+safe--a volcanic, earthquaky place.  I shall flit, as they say down
+north."
+
+"Cold, cold, cold, sir!" shivered the poor old fellow after a pause, as
+he looked down the long deserted City streets, that teemed so with busy
+life in the daytime.  "That scamp of a valet never reminded me of my
+greatcoat--a scoundrel.  Thinks a deal more of his own confounded self,
+sir, than he does of his master.  Now look here, sir--There; I know, of
+course--it's all right; I'm a-going on, I am.  `Move on,' says you; but
+make the most of it, old chap; for you won't have me to move on much
+longer."
+
+The old man spoke sadly as an approaching policeman cut short his
+address; but he went on before he could be told, and made his way slowly
+down into Cannon-street, where he stopped before another post.
+
+"Now look here, sir," said Matt, as though he had not been interrupted
+for an instant, "we want an establishment here in town--a club for
+gentlemen in my position to-night--where we could go and have a basin of
+hot tea or coffee, or gruel if you like, and a decent, dry, clean, warm
+bed under shelter, without going to the workhouse.  Now, sir, when my
+ship comes in, I mean to establish just such a place, and make it
+self-supporting.  None of your casual wards in workhouses, but a decent
+place where honest people can go and do their bit of work over night or
+in the morning, to earn their bed and board.  Let the idle vagabonds and
+tramps, sir, go to the casual ward; for there's hundreds of decent
+people in town every night would be glad to do a bit of work and get
+their meal and bed.  Seems hard, sir," said Matt pitifully, as the cold
+night wind swept down the street, and he shivered miserably, "seems
+hard, sir, that in this great place where the wealth is almost running
+over the side, things are so, that an old chap like me should stand here
+to-night, as I've stood scores of times before, wanting the work and
+means for a meal and bed, and not able to get 'em.  Now, let's see, sir;
+what shall we call my place?  Hotel?  No, that's too fine and grand.
+Home?  Well, no; that sounds like humbugging the poor creatures.
+`There's no place like home!'  I wish I was at home, I do," shivered the
+old man.  "There, now, there it is again!  Another policeman.  Public
+streets, indeed!  Ain't I one of the public, and haven't I a right to be
+in them?  Strange thing a man can't address a few words in confidence to
+a friend without one of these fellows sticking his nose in.  There, I'm
+a-going.  I ain't going to commit a burglary upon the post and walk off
+with the gas.  I wish there wasn't a policeman on the face of the
+blessed earth!  I'm a-going;" and in obedience to the wag of the
+constable's head, the old man walked on towards London-bridge; but
+before he was halfway there, he made another stoppage beneath a lamp.
+
+"Now, policemen are all very well, sir," he said, "but they're too
+officious.  Now, what did that chap do but put a stop to as fine a bit
+of philanthropy as was ever devised for the benefit of humanity at
+large?  Only think, now, of the crowds of poor folks flocking there of a
+night!  There's your proper officers to see that there's neither talking
+nor noise; there's your clean kitchen, with its great soup-coppers, and
+rows upon rows of mugs and basins; there's your dormitories, with their
+long ranges of beds, every one separate, clean hay in ticks, and a
+couple of warm rugs; place heated by hot-water pipes, and all orderly
+and regular--a place for sleep and rest, and no one allowed to disturb
+it; baths and washhouses attached, and every chance given for a poor
+creature to get Rest, Refreshment, and a Rinse--the three graces of
+everyday life, sir.  Open always, sir, until it was fall; while the fact
+of a good, fair bit of work being done first or after, would keep a good
+many of the canting casuals away.  I mean to say, sir," said Matt, "that
+it might be made self-supporting after the first start; and such a place
+for the male and female poor of London, sir, would be an honour to the
+people.  Now then, once more, sir, what shall we call it?  `Hotel' won't
+do; `home' won't do; `hospital' sounds too sickly.  Tell you what, sir,
+we'll call it `Space for All,' in honour of its projector.  Why,
+confound it, sir, I'd have it got up by a penny subscription, if my ship
+happened to sink and I couldn't do it myself.  And mind you, sir, I'm
+not going to have my money fooled away in a grand architectural
+building, where all the space is taken up by rooms for the officers; I
+want it all for the poor privates, the soldiers fighting in the war of
+life.  I'm not going to have all my money spent in outside show; I want
+it for furnishing and the inside--furnishing the inside of the building
+and the inside of the people.  I want something plain and useful, clean
+and simple, with kind, quiet, firm people to attend, and see that things
+go right, and guard against imposition.  But there, sir, we should be
+safe to be imposed upon some time or another, more or less; but then
+look at the good we should do.  Ah! you may well twinkle, and laugh, and
+blink, old fellow, for that would be something like a job done, and one
+worth talking about."
+
+Old Matt gave the lamp a parting slap, and shuffled on towards the
+bridge, where he stopped in one of the recesses, and tried to get
+himself into a comfortable position.
+
+"Ugh-h-h, how cold these seats are!  Rich corporation like the City,
+too, and not have the decency to put a few cushions for a poor fellow!
+Just like to put stone seats round the table on Lord Mayor's Day.
+Wonder how the aldermen, sheriffs, and common council would like it!
+Spoil their appetites, I know!"
+
+"There," said he after a while, as he looked over the parapet, and down
+at the stone steps leading to the water, "that would be a better place
+than this, and more quiet and sheltered.  There's t'other steps leading
+down to Thames-street there; but then there's sure to be a dozen more,
+and I ain't fond of company.  But a fellow must sleep somewhere, so
+where shall it be--steps, 'Delphi arches, or the Park?  Park's too far
+off, and the ventilation too powerful, seeing as there's so much water
+to cool the wind--makes it chilly sometimes.  Rather like the Park,
+though; something respectable about it; genteel neighbours; soldiers on
+duty; air sweet; water clean.  But there's the rails to get over, and I
+ain't up to rails to-night; and, besides, they tear.  But there, with
+this suit, I could stand a tear or two as well as anyone; and I don't
+s'pose I could tell myself which was the new slit if the spear-head of
+the rail wasn't in it.  Down the steps is all very well; but the company
+ain't select, and you run the risk of being robbed.  So you do down the
+arches; but then there's something suitable about them--handy to work in
+the morning.  That's the spot for me, so here goes.  Pity I came all
+this way, though, now the penny-boats don't run."
+
+But the weary old man seemed in no hurry to move, for with his chin
+resting upon his hands, he stopped, gazing down into the hurrying black
+stream far beneath--black and stealthy as it hurried through the arches,
+lamps here and there twinkling and showing like blurred stars in the
+swift waters; and a stealthy, gliding race was that of the river as it
+bore along its stolen secrets towards the sea--secrets unknown to those
+who watched from far above; but there were rich spoils and treasures,
+dropped from the side of lighter and vessel, swept out of sewers;
+secrets, too, of life and death; and now and then something strange and
+bloated and sodden was whirled round, to rise to the surface and stare
+up, as if appealing with its lack-lustre eyes to the star-sprinkled
+heaven above--gazing fearfully upwards, but swept round again the next
+moment by the eddy, and forced on by the hurrying stream, dashed against
+prow, borne under slimy keel, forced savagely, and entangled amongst
+chains, thrown upon mudbanks, and left by the tide half buried in the
+black ooze; swept clear again, and borne off up the river, down the
+river, scraping along bridge-pier or stone wharf, buttress or caisson,
+ever hideous, bloated, horrible--these of the river secrets glided
+along.
+
+"Ah!" muttered Matt softly, "who can say that there is poverty here in
+London, when everywhere the gold is looking out of the great works in
+which it has been sunk.  There are ships, ships, ships, and steamer,
+lighter, and barge; and how many of 'em loaded with what I should call a
+large fortune!"  And now with a sigh he leaned his forehead upon his
+hands, and gazed along the river at the dimly-seen wharves and
+warehouses, with here and there a light flashing from the river.  Then
+he thought of his own weary life, of Septimus Hardon and his sorrows,
+pondering long upon the ill-success that had attended their efforts, and
+seeing too plainly how ineffective they had been; and then he sighed
+again loudly, and started, for a small hand was laid firmly upon his
+shoulder with a tight clutch, and turning quickly round, there, with the
+light of the gas shining full upon it, he saw as it were the face of an
+angel, seen through the thin veil of sin and misery that sullied its
+beauty--a beauty that still clung to features fair and girlish.
+
+The strange couple gazed earnestly at one another for a few moments,
+when the girl spoke huskily:
+
+"You weren't thinking of that, were you?"
+
+"Thinking of what, my lass?" said Matt quietly.
+
+"Going over?" said the girl, with almost a sob, and at the same moment
+catching his wrist and holding it with both hands tightly, as he tried
+to withdraw it, while her nostrils seemed to distend, and her breath
+came heavily as she held him firmly, fearing lest her words might prompt
+him to the desperate leap.
+
+"No, no, my lass, no," said Matt wearily, as he sank in a sitting
+posture upon the stone seat.  "I have thought of such a thing--time
+back; but not lately.  I have thought that it would be putting an end to
+a weary way when one gets very footsore, and that no one would miss a
+poor, worn-out fellow like me; but I've thought better of it, and I'll
+wait till I'm called, my lass.  I was only thinking a bit."
+
+"You looked as if you meant to," said the girl, loosing his wrist, and
+kneeling upon the seat in the very attitude the old man had taken a
+short time before.  "But one can't help thinking of it sometimes, and
+almost feeling as if the river drew you like.  It seems as if you'd go
+to sleep then, and wake no more.  Not much to leave here, is there?" she
+added slowly.
+
+Old Matt shook his head, and, leaning forward unseen by his companion,
+he took a firm hold of her dress, for the girl went on dreamily as she
+looked down on the black water.
+
+"I saw one of our girls once; she went off Waterloo, and they got her
+out, and she looked so quiet and happy like.  But there," she added in a
+reckless, offhand way, "I sha'n't do it, I haven't the heart.  There,
+you needn't hold me, old man;" and she snatched her dress from his
+grasp.
+
+A deep, hollow cough checked her for a few minutes; and Matt sat in the
+cold recess gazing on the slight, graceful form, as the well-dressed
+girl knelt upon the seat--frail, fair, and apparently not twenty.
+
+"Lend me threepence, old man!" she exclaimed suddenly, as she turned to
+him.
+
+"What for?" said Matt.
+
+"Glass of brandy," said the girl, holding her hand pressed to her side,
+and then battling hard once more with her cough.
+
+"I haven't a halfpenny left," said Matt drearily, "or I shouldn't be
+sitting here, my lass.  But you're better without the brandy, and
+there's no place open now."
+
+"There!  I don't want your money, old man," said the girl; "only one
+gets so used to asking, it comes natural.  Are you hard up?"
+
+"Yes," said Matt drearily, "close as I can be."
+
+"Here!" she exclaimed, holding out sixpence.  "You may as well have it,
+as for me to take it back."
+
+The old man stared at his companion for a moment, and then raised his
+hand to take the money, but he suddenly lowered it again.
+
+"No, my lass, no," he said; "thank you all the same, but I can do
+without it."
+
+The girl's eyes flashed as she looked angrily at the old man, and then
+raising her hand, she dashed the money over the parapet, and sank down
+upon the seat sobbing violently.
+
+"There!" she exclaimed passionately, as Matt spoke soothingly to her; "I
+know, and I deserve it all.  I wish I was dead--I wish I was dead!"
+
+"I didn't mean to hurt you," said Matt kindly.  "Now go home, my lass,
+and try and forget it."
+
+"Home!" said the girl, with a forced mocking laugh.  "Yes, when it's
+time.  Good-night old man.  You didn't meet Marian, did you?"
+
+"Who?" said Matt absently.
+
+"Marian," said the girl; "I'm looking for her.  But you don't know her;
+good-night;" and she went lightly off, humming the snatch of a popular
+air as she went towards the City; while, after waiting until the girlish
+form had disappeared, old Matt rose himself and began to shuffle back
+the same way as he had come; looking longingly at a passing hay-cart
+bound for the market, and thinking of the fragrant stack whence the load
+had been taken, and how pleasant it would have been to have dragged out
+a heap to nestle in.  For the old man was cold, weary, and ill; and as
+he slowly shuffled along, many a thought of those who rested upon
+luxurious couches came to his mind.  He crossed the great echoing
+cathedral yard, and passed slowly from gaslight to gaslight, too weary
+now to talk.  Now and then he would encounter a policeman, who turned to
+look after the slow, shambling figure.  At intervals, a cab would rattle
+by him, while once, with its hollow, heavy rumble, a fire-engine dashed
+by, the light flashing back from the shining helmets of the firemen;
+then there was a short, rushing vision of something red covered with
+figures, and drawn by two steaming, plunging horses, a faint dying away
+of the hurrying wheels, and then all still once more, for it was now the
+most silent hour of the whole twenty-four in great London.  Dull and
+dreary looked the streets, with hardly a wayfarer in sight, and those,
+perhaps, women who paced wearily along or talked noisily to a companion.
+But no one heeded Matt as he still shuffled onward, more than once as
+he passed through Fleet-street gazing up at the gas-lit windows of the
+newspaper-offices.
+
+Past Lower Series-place, looking in the dark night like the mouth of a
+sewer, emptying itself by the bridge--Temple Bar; past Essex-street, to
+stand and gaze down it for a few moments thoughtfully; past the last of
+the four churches, and the street leading to the "Bridge of Sighs."
+Onward still, and then into one of those hilly lanes, up which in busy
+day came clattering the heavy teams of wagon--horses with their black
+load--down one of those river lanes along which came sighing the
+damp-laden winds, whispering of being lost upon the great stream, and of
+having wandered from the green trees, where in summer the reeds rustled,
+and the silver water glided past emerald banks--whispering of cooling
+groves, and the gladdening, sparkling, dancing wavelets, sheltered woody
+islets, and the sweet, pure country air; but now lost in wintry weather
+upon the breast of the great river,--lost, after wandering by muddy pile
+and slimy, horrid, loathsome drain and sullying sewer; lost, as they had
+swept past wharf, bridge, pier, and barge; they came in despair, weeping
+tears from their misty burden, sweeping amongst the gloomy houses, and
+causing a shiver as they passed along.
+
+For a moment some bright recollection of the past seemed to strike the
+old man, and he paused thoughtfully beneath a gas-lamp; but old Matt's
+memories of waving reed and rustling tree were few, and he sighed and
+passed on, thinking only of his sought-for resting-place.  Onward, and
+down beneath the great black yawning arch, to where he could hear
+voices, while above the faint damp fever-reek of the place, came the
+fumes of tobacco-smoke.  On still, with hands outstretched to avoid
+collision with cart or wagon, but more than once he tripped over a
+shaft, as some stabled horse rattled halter or chain through the ring of
+its manger, and Matt sighed with envy as he thought of the warm straw.
+
+To a miserable fire at length, with several miserable objects huddled
+round, and amidst jest, laughter, and foul language, a voice yelled out
+a verse or two of a current song, a man and woman dancing hard by, their
+shadows cast, wildly distorted and grotesque, upon the reeking
+brickwork, where they almost seemed to cling.  Then, too, came that
+peculiar "glug-glug" sound of liquid passing from a bottle, and a voice
+shouted to the old man:
+
+"Come on, matey; heaps o' room to-night.  Give's a pipe o' baccy."
+
+"All right," replied Matt, backing into the darkness, and shaking his
+head, as he shuffled hurriedly along till he reached the Strand once
+more.
+
+"Can't stand that now," muttered Matt; "nerves too weak.  No idea there
+was such a pressure of business in the hotel.  Foreign gentleman that,
+dancing--wonder whether his organ's down there."
+
+Heavily, listlessly, and with drooping head, old Matt walked slowly back
+towards the City, now stopping in a doorway, or resting leaning against
+a shutter; but soon to shuffle on again, as his heart seemed to whisper,
+"O, that it were day once more!"
+
+Tramp, tramp through the silent streets of the great wilderness.
+Thoughtful after a strange, numbed, weary mode, the old man made his way
+into Thames-street, looking hopelessly about the while for some dry
+sheltered spot, where, unnoticed by the police, he might coil up as
+hundreds do nightly in our streets, trying to forget the present as they
+wait for the coming of the desolate future.
+
+At last, less particular now, he was nearing the dry arch of
+London-bridge, and thinking of the steps as a place to rest his aching
+bones, when, from his half-sleepy state he suddenly roused up, for down
+from a turning in front came a couple of policemen with a stretcher,
+while, hurried and excited in her manner, her long hair lank and
+curl-less with the dank night wind, followed the poor girl he had seen
+upon the bridge, now talking earnestly to one of the constables.
+
+The new-comers did not notice Matt, and after walking onwards for a
+short distance, with the old man closely following, they suddenly turned
+down between two large piles of warehouses, along a narrow passage up
+which came the odour of the river borne on the moaning wind, where the
+rugged broken pavement was wet and slimy.
+
+There was no feeling of fatigue and misery now to bear down the old man,
+as, led by some impulse, he followed the police, his heart beating
+wildly as he glanced at the stretcher and recalled the hospital.  There
+was something weird and strange-looking in the oil-caped figures as,
+seen in the misty darkness, they passed along; and the eager voice of
+the girl sounded hollow and echoing.  Down to the river-side, where the
+muddy water could be heard rushing amidst the floating piers and moored
+barges, with a hurried whispering secret sound,--here where barge and
+lighter were moored closely together and steamers were buoyed, waiting
+for the coming day.  High warehouses towered above them, with cranes
+jutting out, gallows-like, at intervals as if just deprived of some
+malefactor's body that had swung to the chain, and then dropped in the
+river to be swept away.  Piles were driven thickly here; slimy,
+mysterious-looking stone steps led down into the water, right down into
+its secret muddy depths; and an old boat or two floated hard by, secured
+by small chains, which rattled backwards and forwards over their
+gunwales as the tide lifted, and bore them to and fro in its ebbing and
+flowing and eddying currents.
+
+But there was light here, sparsely shed over the scene by a single
+flickering lamp, whose panes seemed bedewed with tears.  The pale blue
+flame jumped and danced, burning bluely as it was nearly extinct, and
+then flashed up again with regular throbs, from water collected in the
+pipe.  And now as Matt drew nearer, he saw the light flash from the
+shiny wet cape of another policeman, standing talking to a couple of
+nondescript waterside men in Guernsey shirts and heavy mudlark boots,
+who stood leaning against the mooring-posts and smoking hard; while all
+three seemed to be keeping vigil over something lying upon the ground
+covered with an old sack and some matting, upon whose uncouth form the
+blinking gaslight looked down; now showing its shudder-engendering
+proportions, now leaving it all but in darkness.  But as the light
+flashed up, there was a tiny trickling stream sluggishly flowing from
+beneath the sack in a tortuous way to the edge of the landing-place,
+where it dripped slowly with a little echoing plash into the running
+waters, which beat against the stones and leaped and rose, and fell with
+a monotonous lap-lap as if seeking to rise, and drag back the secret
+taken from their bosom.
+
+It was strange, but far off in the country, in Somesham town, Doctor
+Hardon clenched his hands and groaned in his sleep, as the perspiration
+stood in big beads upon his forehead; but though in his dream he saw the
+stern faces of his brother and nephew, and went through the
+church-yard-scene once more, it was, perhaps, merely a fit of
+indignation, or on account of certain speculations which had threatened
+to prove failures, even though, after his fashion, he had made vows at
+his conscience-shrine, and promised to seek out his lost child, and to
+do something for Septimus Hardon should they succeed.
+
+And 'twas strange, too, that Mrs Doctor Hardon should wake up with a
+wild cry from an oppressing slumber, and then, trembling from a strange
+sense of dread, cry hysterically, and he for hours thinking of her
+child.  Strange, perhaps; but such things have been.
+
+The policemen stopped, and set down their stretcher, saying something in
+an undertone to their fellow; the two men smoking left their posts, and,
+beneath the lamp, the girl leaned against the wall trembling visibly, as
+again and again she coughed and pressed her hand against her heaving
+chest.
+
+Old Matt drew nearer and nearer, his claw-like fingers working
+convulsively, as if to tear off the wet covering before him; his head
+was craned forward, his dry lips parted, and then he stopped short as
+one of the men stooped and lifted the sack, so that the light flashed
+across a pale face "dreadfully staring through muddy impurity," for with
+a wild, wailing cry, the girl started forward and threw herself on her
+knees, sobbing bitterly; and the men, hardened though they were to such
+scenes, fell back a step or two, with some show of respect for the
+sorrow before them.
+
+The wind moaned and sighed, and mingled with the poor girl's cries; the
+chains rattled noisily, and the waters seemed to leap and dash angrily
+at the steps, rising higher and higher minute by minute, fearful of
+losing their prey; while Matt stole nearer and nearer, trembling in
+every limb--nearer and nearer still, with his eyes fixed upon that pale,
+staring face, till a policeman laid a hand upon his breast to stay him
+from interrupting the mourner's sorrow; but, putting back the hand, Matt
+pressed on with a chaos of thoughts hurrying through his brain, bright
+amongst which seemed to shine forth the face of Lucy Grey, as, stooping
+lower, he now looked down upon this countenance which he had, ere now,
+seen raised wildly and appealingly to his, when he had gruffly talked of
+time, and then, shivering as if stricken with some paralysing seizure,
+he gasped almost to himself--"It's that poor girl!"
+
+Volume Three, Chapter X.
+
+BY DAY.
+
+The public might have been present in force, but they were not; for
+inquests upon bodies found in Thames' stream are common events, such as
+find their way into corners of the morning papers in the shape of short
+paragraphs.  And in this instance there was a very seedy-looking staff
+to represent the Press--namely, a man who winked solemnly at old Matt as
+he passed him on his way to a side-table beside the jury.  The necessary
+witnesses were there apparently, and the inquest dragged on its slow
+length as they told all they knew.  But Matthew Space must be quoted as
+an exception; he did not tell all, only that he knew the poor woman by
+sight, while he rightly said that he was ignorant of her name and home.
+It would be time, he thought, to tell all when there was no more danger
+of publicity, and so he allowed himself to be huffed by the coroner for
+taking up his valuable time.
+
+But now came forward a pale, well-dressed, weeping girl, who stated that
+her name was Eleanor.
+
+"Eleanor what?" said the coroner, frowning very severely, and oozing all
+over his very high, bald forehead with the quintessence of morality; for
+the poor girl shivered before him, and looked appealingly from face to
+face of the jurymen.  "Eleanor what?" said the coroner again, with quite
+a snap.
+
+"Anderson," said the girl sobbing; and then for a few minutes she could
+not proceed to tell her tale; how that for a year past she had always
+tried to see those girls who were taken out of the river.  She hardly
+knew why, only that she had known some of them, as she knew poor Marian;
+and there seemed something which drew her towards the river.  She met
+the policemen, and they let her go with them, for she was looking for
+Marian, and somehow she was not surprised to find her there.
+
+Had known her a long time--years, she thought--and they lodged together.
+She had often said that she was tired of life, but never talked about
+her friends, or anything of the past: thought she came from the country.
+Had not seen her before for days, and had been uneasy, and fancied she
+had gone over the bridge, as many did--could not tell why, unless
+because she was tired of her life, and had the feeling of being drawn to
+do it.  Her name was Marian--that was what she was called--but thought
+it was not her real name; did not know why; but many girls like her gave
+themselves fresh names.  She gave witness a little Bible once, with
+passages marked in it, but there was no name in it.  Never spoke of
+anyone else, or of herself, but was always very kind, and had nursed
+witness once through a bad fever, not long back, and never left her
+night or day, when no one else dared come near; and now she was gone.
+
+There was a pause here longer than those made while the coroner had
+taken down the depositions, during which he had frowned very severely;
+and now appeared greatly annoyed at the unbusiness-like sobbing of the
+poor girl, who sat down again upon a form behind old Matt, who tried to
+whisper a few words of comfort, as the jurymen mostly seemed very intent
+upon the paper before them.
+
+Then followed the doctor to tell of his horrible task, and express his
+opinion respecting the marks of blows upon the face of deceased, such,
+though, as might have been caused by striking against some part of the
+bridge in falling; he was of opinion that she must have struck twice, as
+there was a fracture upon the back of the skull; and she had evidently
+been dead some days.
+
+"Found dead."
+
+And then there was a little quiet bustle, and scraping of chairs upon
+the oilcloth, for the inquest was over; and old Matt and the weeping
+girl were standing outside by some railings.
+
+"Strange as we should meet again after talking as we did."
+
+"Yes, yes," said the girl sadly; "but why didn't you say you knew her
+when I spoke to you?"
+
+"Didn't know her by that name," said Matt; "and I had only seen her a
+few times, hardly to speak to.  But about that Bible?"
+
+"Well!" said the girl sadly.
+
+"Have you got it now?"
+
+"Yes," she said; and then she turned, for a hand was laid upon her arm,
+and one of the jurymen led her on a few steps talking long and
+earnestly, till after repeating something aloud two or three times he
+walked away; and Matt and the girl, two of the waifs of London streets,
+went slowly on, not noticing that they were watched.
+
+"Poor, poor Marian!" sobbed the girl, stopping by a doorway.  "Told me
+to read the words she had marked in the Bible, and then to go and do
+that!"
+
+"Well, well, well," said the old man, "let's hope she has gone to a
+better world; and now, my lass, where are you going?"
+
+"Back to my lodging," said the girl wearily.
+
+"That gentleman told you to call somewhere, didn't he?" said Matt.
+
+"Ah, yes," said the girl abstractedly, "I think so."
+
+"Now I don't believe you remember it," said Matt; "but I happened to
+hear it, and I'll write it down.  Now, look here;" and he brought out
+his old, ragged memorandum-book and the lead-pencil stump; and then,
+using the crown of his hat for a desk, he wrote down the address
+carefully, tore out half a leaf, and gave it to the girl.
+
+"There, my lass," he said, "take my advice, and go there; and now I want
+you to let me have that Bible."
+
+"What for?" and the girl looked wonderingly at him.
+
+"It's a whim of mine, that's all," said Matt.  "But you'll--"
+
+He paused, for a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and turning round he
+stood face to face with the juryman who had spoken to the girl.
+
+"What paper was that you gave to the girl?" he said roughly.
+
+"The one you ought to have given," said Matt, resenting the question,
+and the tone of voice in which it was asked.
+
+"What do you mean?" said the stranger.
+
+Old Matt was weak and ill, or he would have retorted angrily; but he
+only said, "An address."
+
+"What address?" said the juryman dubiously.
+
+"Well, then, yours, if you must know," said Matt.
+
+The juryman looked keenly at the old printer, who met his gaze without
+flinching.  "It was easy to remember," said the former.
+
+"I know that," said Matt, "but I thought she'd forget; and you seemed to
+mean well by the poor lass.  I watched you, sir, at the inquest."
+
+"God knows I do, my man," said the juryman softly; "and I ask your
+pardon for playing the spy; for I must confess to having had my doubts
+of you."
+
+"It's all right, sir; and we can cry quits," said Matt.  "I had my
+doubts, too; and was in two minds about writing down the address; but if
+you can do anything towards saving the country the cost of another
+inquest, for God's sake do.  No, thank you, sir; I don't want your
+money.  I don't like taking it where I haven't earned it.  It's a weak
+point of mine, and has stood in the way of my comfort more than once:
+and I'm old now, sir, and can't break myself of bad habits.  Good-day,
+sir."
+
+The juryman smiled as they parted, and old Matt hurried off talking to
+himself; for the girl had disappeared while he had been detained.
+
+"I want to see that Bible," he muttered, "and he's hindered me
+dreadfully.  But, yes; no; yes; that's her; there she is," and he
+shuffled on after a slight figure he saw crossing the road, some
+distance down the street.  "Hang the folks, how they do get in your way
+when you're in a hurry," he growled.  "Now, stoopid, which way is it to
+be?"  And then he hurried and panted along to overtake the retreating
+figure, which had again disappeared.  Dodging amongst the vehicles he
+encountered, he crossed the road, pressing on, with everyone he met
+apparently resenting his hurry, till passing a turning, he looked down,
+to see the figure he had followed nearly at the bottom.
+
+"Gets over the ground well," muttered the old man, wiping his forehead;
+"but I'm safe of her now.  Must have that Bible; there may be some clue
+there, and I want to have this matter cleared up; but how can I tell
+Miss Lucy?"
+
+The old man reached the bottom of the street, and stood within twenty
+yards of the figure he sought to overtake, when hurrying on he caught up
+to her, saying--
+
+"My lass, you'll let me have that book, won't you?"
+
+The figure turned sharply round, as Matt touched her shoulder lightly;
+but the face was strange, and, taken aback and confounded, the old man
+made a rough apology, and stood panting as he clung to the railings of a
+house hard by.
+
+Volume Three, Chapter XI.
+
+MR JARKER IS WANTED.
+
+Mr William Jarker had had a long holiday from the public school where
+her Majesty's officers try to instil lessons of good, while their
+refractory pupils resent them to the best of their ability.  So long had
+been Mr Jarker's holiday, that the police had grown uncomfortable at
+their inability to bring something home to him, but he was wanted, at
+last, on account of a collection of plate and valuables that had
+suddenly disappeared after a few linnets and finches had been netted
+some thirty miles down in Hertfordshire, though even here the burglary
+would not have drawn Mr Jarker into trouble had it not been for a
+confederate who had "peached" in consequence of what he called an unfair
+division of the spoil.
+
+So Mr Jarker was wanted just at a time when he felt very comfortable
+and secure.  He had certainly felt rather uneasy for a few days past,
+and read, or rather stumbled through, the various newspapers, taking
+particular interest in passages relating to discoveries of bodies, and
+inquests, but now this uneasiness had worn off, and no further notice
+having been taken of his behaviour by the Hardon family, he felt in very
+good spirits; though for all that, he had kept away from
+Bennett's-rents, so that he might not encounter the Reverend Arthur
+Sterne, who had been assaulted, he heard; and on the principle of giving
+a dog a bad name and then hanging him, Bill thought he might be accused
+of the assault.  As to the child, he learned that the curate had taken
+it to his own home.
+
+Mr Jarker's notice was drawn to the fact of his being wanted, one day
+when making his way from the Dials into Holborn.  Naturally given to
+casting his eyes about him, he became aware of a quiet-looking man
+following him at a distance; and no sooner did Mr Jarker catch sight of
+that face, than horrors of the past untold danced before his eyes for an
+instant; but the next moment he thrust his hands into his pockets, drew
+a long breath, and began to whistle, all the while looking out ahead for
+what he next expected to see--a policeman in uniform.
+
+It might be supposed that the whistler intended to give the person who
+followed him so closely into custody, but this was not the case, for Mr
+Jarker imagined that no sooner was there a policeman in sight, than the
+quiet-looking man would begin to close up.
+
+But it might be somebody else who was wanted, so Mr Jarker crossed the
+road--so did the quiet man; Bill crossed again--so did the quiet man;
+and, though the weather was cold, the bird-catcher perspired, as he
+muttered--
+
+"I wonder what it's for?"
+
+However, he appeared to take matters very coolly, and peeped here and
+there into the bird-fanciers' shops, and so made his way into Holborn,
+now and then directing a peep at his quiet friend, who was apparently
+not taking the slightest heed of his proceedings, but all the same
+thoroughly realising the difficulty of finding one of his brotherhood
+when wanted.
+
+Passengers were plentiful here, and the crowd thickened as Jarker went
+on, till a good opportunity seemed to present itself.
+
+"Now for it!" thought Bill, and after a glance over his shoulder, he
+dodged in and out and about for five minutes, making more than one feint
+of having turned out of the main street; then, being apparently very
+much taken with the contents of a draper's window, he stopped short, and
+glanced to the right to find the quiet-looking man in precisely the same
+place, and worse still, probably in obedience to a sign from the said
+quiet man, to the left there was a policeman closing up quickly.
+
+"Meant for me!" muttered Bill; and again, as he turned hotter, "I wonder
+what it's for?" while once more glancing to the right, there was the
+quiet man also closing in quickly.
+
+But not so quickly as Jarker made a leap backwards into the road, dodged
+right under a horse's legs, round an omnibus, past cabs, carts, and
+wagons, and in and out and about like an eel, invulnerable to the tread
+of horses' feet or the passage of wheels.  Ordinary people would have
+been run over half-a-dozen times, but Bill Jarker was not, and on he
+tore, with the two constables in full chase.
+
+Jarker had not much start, but he made the most of it, with the full
+determination of making his escape if possible; perhaps even for a small
+robbery he might have run hard, and fought hard, to avoid capture; but
+at the present time there was a look of desperation in his face that
+prevented more than one willing hand from attempting his seizure; and
+away he sped, in and out of the vehicles coming and going upon the
+slippery road.  All at once he caught sight of a new peril; right in
+front there was another policeman, and if, to avoid him, he took to the
+pavement, so great was the crowd of passengers, that he must have been
+hemmed-in and captured directly.  So on dashed Jarker, right at the
+constable in front, coming down upon him with the impetus of a
+battering-ram.  Over he went, and on dashed Bill with the other
+constables in close pursuit, and shouts and cries rising on all sides.
+"Stop thief! stop thief!" with the tail of followers increasing each
+moment.
+
+Jarker's breath came hot and thick, and he felt that a few more minutes
+past, and he would be marching through the street handcuffed and with
+his liberty stopped; he thought no more of that, but shuddered, while,
+at the same moment, hope animated his breast, for he could see, far in
+front, a haven of safety: right before him the street was up, and the
+boards and bricks told of repairs to the sewers, while the large heap of
+earth pointed out the depth down at which they lay.
+
+On tore Jarker, racing over the ground with a long, loping run, and on
+came the police, with the tag of idlers; but the goal was reached.  With
+one bound Jarker cleared the barrier, ran and stumbled over the loose
+earth for some distance, and then dropped to the first platform, slid
+down ladder after ladder, passed man after man, too astonished and
+startled to attempt to seize him, sometimes falling, sometimes climbing,
+with the deal planks springing, and brickbats and clods of earth falling
+after him.  One man made a blow at him with his spade, but it came too
+late, for Jarker reached the bottom, leaped into the black stream, here
+but little over his knees, went splashing away under the echoing dark
+arch of the sewer, into the dense black passages that run for so many
+miles under London, and was out of sight long before the first policeman
+was half-way down the great opening.
+
+The main sewers were not made in those days, and the quiet man stopped
+for an instant to give some instructions to one of his constables, the
+result being that he leaped into a hansom cab, and very soon after, as
+the tide was up, a Thames-police row-galley was being pulled slowly
+backwards and forwards in front of the mouths of two large openings
+which lent their black, affluent streams to the great river.
+
+On through the darkness went Jarker, always with the stream, his hands
+outstretched in front, and his head turned from time to time to catch a
+glimpse of the flash of some bull's-eye lantern.  On he pressed, but not
+unpursued; since for some distance a couple of policemen, the one in
+plain clothes and he who had been knocked down and made vicious by the
+blow, came plashing along.
+
+Once the ruffian stopped, drew out a heavy life-preserver, and with an
+oath turned back, but directly after he was pressing on again, carefully
+feeling his way by the slimy wall, for the water grew deeper and deeper,
+and more than once his quick ear detected the light scuffling noise as
+of some little animal running, and a plash as of something leaping into
+the murky stream.
+
+At last Jarker stopped, for the long-continued silence and the thick
+darkness taught him that he was unpursued; but he knew well enough that
+though the pursuit had perhaps ceased, the entrances to the sewers would
+be carefully watched; and he felt too now that there would be no home
+for him again in Bennett's-rents.
+
+"They're gallus clever!" growled the ruffian when, after pressing on a
+little further, he once more stopped short--"they're gallus clever, them
+p'lice, but they don't know everythink."
+
+And now, after listening long and carefully, he turned off short round
+to the right, and waded onward for a few minutes, when he stopped again
+to draw forth a box and light a match; but he found that they were
+wetted, and nothing followed but faint streaks of phosphorescent light;
+when with a curse he threw the useless splints away and pressed on.
+
+Dark, plashing, echoing paths, with noisome mephitic smells and the
+sound of hurrying waters--paths that might in ignorance be traversed for
+days and days, until the weary wanderer sank down for the black stream
+to bear him out to the great river.  Here there would be a smaller sewer
+off to the right, here one to the left; while drain-pipe and culvert
+emptied their filthy streams, augmenting always the larger sewer where
+the ruffian waded; as the current swelled and rose and rolled swiftly
+on, at times with almost sufficient force to render his footing
+insecure.
+
+At one time the water was up to his breast, but it soon shallowed when
+he entered a branch and faced the stream, guiding himself ever with his
+hand upon the slimy wall, as if thoroughly acquainted with his road, and
+proceeding the while at no mean rate along the gloomy way; for Jarker
+had been here before, and he pressed on fearless of darkness or rats,
+thinking that the only danger that could assail him would be a rush of
+water after a heavy rain.  At times, though, he stopped splashing and
+beating the stream, and imitating the snapping, snarling bark of a dog,
+for something would run scratching over him--then another, and another--
+keen, hunger-bitten little animals; then there followed splash after
+splash, as they leaped into the water.  Now he was clear of them again,
+and stopped puzzled, feeling along the wall on both sides for something
+he could not find--some guide-mark or open sewer-mouth; but now again
+came the little eager animals, hunger-driven and fierce, crowding and
+swimming round him, swarming up his back and breast, and biting sharply
+with their little keen teeth as the wretch leaped and bounded about,
+tearing half-a-dozen off to make room for a score.
+
+"If I only had one of their gallus lights!" shrieked the ruffian,
+forgetful of the risk of being heard, and of the _ruse_ he had before
+successfully practised, and in the horror of his position ready even to
+have given himself up as he cursed and yelled in a frightful manner--the
+hideous noises echoing along the vaulted sewer, and sounding doubly
+frightful.
+
+"Curse 'em!  I shall be gnawed to death!" shrieked Jarker, as he could
+not help recalling the times when he had gloated with delight over the
+performances of some steel-teethed terrier in a pit amidst a dozen rats;
+and now, as he fought there, splashing about in the water, and tearing
+off rat after rat to crush them in his powerful hands, he could not but
+feel how the tables were turned, and groaned piteously as a great dread
+came upon him--a horror blacker than the black darkness around.  But
+Jarker fought on savagely for his life, while the diminutive size of his
+adversaries formed their protection again and again.  He had his
+life-preserver out now, and struck with it at random, fierce and heavy
+blows, each of which would have beaten the life out of a dozen rats, but
+only once or twice had they any effect, and then he struck the brick
+side of the sewer, when the lead knob was loosened and fell from the
+whalebone handle into the rushing water, and with a curse Jarker dashed
+the useless fragment away.
+
+Faint and harassed, his great brute strength of no avail, his hands and
+face streaming with blood, Jarker now made a fierce rush up stream; but
+his progress was slow with the water so deep; when, as if fearing to
+lose their prey, the rats redoubled their efforts and leaped upon him
+furiously, till, half-mad with the horror of their fearful assault, one
+he had never known before in his many sewer wanderings through having
+been provided with a light, Jarker drew in a long breath, exhaled it
+again, thoroughly inflated his lungs as he beat off his assailants, and
+then plunged beneath the water, groping his way slowly up stream, and
+keeping under the foul water for nearly a minute, when he raised his
+head for breath, and plunged under again and again.
+
+His plan succeeded; for, evidently at a loss, the tribe of rats had gone
+down with the stream; and then he was alone and afraid to stir, lest he
+should bring them back, as he stood panting and dripping with the
+noisome water, and leaned against the slippery wall.
+
+"I did say as I'd keep a dawg," growled Jarker at last; "and if I'd ha'
+had one--" And then he burst out into a hideous string of oaths and
+curses at what he called his ill luck, as, after listening for some
+time, he resumed his way in the echoing subterranean labyrinth,
+trembling lest the rats should have heard his voice.
+
+But he did not go far before he stopped as if puzzled, and stood
+thinking, and listening to the rush of the stream and the trickling of
+drain after drain as it emptied itself into the main current, itself but
+a tributary of a greater.  He dared not retrace his steps on account of
+the rats, but went slowly on; stopped, went on again; stopped once more
+to scratch his dripping head; and then he gave a leap and a cry of
+terror as he felt an enemy swim up once more and try to effect a
+lodgment.  Then he hurried forward through the dense black darkness,
+then back a little way in a strange, excited way, tearing and splashing
+about furiously as a new horror assailed him; and at last muttering low
+blasphemies, muttering them in a low whisper lest they should be heard
+by the rats, he made another push on for many yards, cursing the police,
+the rats, and his ill luck.  Once he stumbled and fell with a heavy
+splash, to be swept along over and over by the stream before he
+recovered his footing to stand half-drowned and clinging to the bricks,
+giving vent now to a whimpering, sobbing howl, that seemed as if it had
+come from a dog; for, with his courage gone and his head in a whirl, he
+stood now in the intense darkness afraid to move, as his imagination
+peopled the sewers around him with horrors at the very thought of which
+he shuddered; for in spite of scores of rambles in these subterranean
+channels, with whose many turns he had considered himself perfectly
+familiar, Bill Jarker had lost his way.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+The police turned back after pursuing Jarker for a short distance along
+the sewer; but though not disposed to follow him along the dark subway,
+they had not given him up, for the outlets were carefully watched both
+by the places where repairs were going on and also at the mouths in the
+Thames' bank; while, after proper arrangements had been made, the sewers
+were searched that night with lanterns; the principal man engaged more
+than once announcing in a very loud voice, which went echoing along the
+arched ways, that he (Jarker) might just as well give up as be starved
+out; but for all that, Mr Jarker was not found.
+
+"Not much use hunting along here," muttered one man to another; "here's
+a hundred places where he could hide till we got by."
+
+"Remember that poor chap we found just here, Joe?" said one man,
+evidently quite at home in the place--a rough fellow in a Guernsey shirt
+and high boots, and wearing a hair-mask.
+
+"Ah," said another, "well."
+
+"What was that?" said the quiet man, who was also here.
+
+"Chap we found all along here," said the other, "and brought him out in
+a basket."
+
+"Basket?" said the quiet man.
+
+"Ah!" said the other; "bones lying all along here; trod on 'em as you
+went--picked clean."
+
+"Pooh, nonsense!" said the quiet man, who had not shuddered before for
+at least ten years.
+
+"Right enough," said the other sulkily; "rats!"
+
+"Here, let's get out," said the quiet man, "we are doing no good;" and
+he made the light of his bull's-eye lantern play along the surface of
+the water to where he could just see a little head above the stream as
+its owner swam rapidly away, leaving an ever-widening track behind.
+"Let's get out; it's no use to go splashing along here; if he isn't
+drowned, all we can do is to wait for him."
+
+"He ain't drowned," said a policeman, thrusting his lantern up a drain
+and peering in; "he's too much of a rat hisself, and I wouldn't mind
+laying that he's worked his way up to light before now."  And the man
+stopped, gazing up the black noisome channel before him as if it
+possessed some attraction.
+
+"Gone up there, safe," said the quiet man, laughing.  "Go up, Tom, and
+see; I'll wait for you."
+
+"Officers allus goes fust to lead the way, and privates follers," said
+the policeman.  "Nice place, though, ain't it?"
+
+"Whereabouts are we now?" said the quiet man.
+
+"Don't zackly know," said the man in the hair-mask.  "Not far from
+Holborn, I should say."
+
+"Going up there, Tom?" said the quiet man, unscrewing the top of a small
+dram-flask.
+
+"Arter you, sir," said the policeman.
+
+The quiet man took the "arter you" to apply to the dram-flask, which he
+passed to his follower; and as no one seemed disposed to crawl on hands
+and knees along the narrow place, the party slowly retraced their steps
+to where they had descended, and it was with a feeling of relief that
+they found themselves once more in the clear night air.
+
+Volume Three, Chapter XII.
+
+WHAT MA MERE KNEW.
+
+"You mad fool, Jean! you shall listen, and you shall hear all," cried
+_ma mere_ furiously; "and I will torment you till you see that you are
+_bete_.  The little worker--the pink doll--is not for you; and you shall
+not have her.  But it was good sport, Jean--rare sport, Jean.  That
+sniff woman, poor fool! told me.  He carried her down the stairs--
+carried her down in his arms, of course, for he loves her; and let him
+marry her if he will; who cares? for she is not for you.  Do you hear,
+_bete_? he carried her lovingly down in his arms."
+
+Jean winced as he sat in his old place at the window, but pretended not
+to hear, though from the working of his nostrils it was plain how
+eagerly he drank in every word.
+
+"No, Jean, she is not for you," cried the old woman.  "I hate her, and
+you shall not love her, but someone else; for she has always set you
+against me.  I know--I know all--all--all!" she exclaimed, muttering and
+nodding her head; "he struck down the Jarker--big wretch; and then the
+Jarker waited hour after hour, hour after hour, into the dark night, and
+watched for him till he was talking to the painted woman, and struck him
+down too; and then I saw more too, and I was not going to tell--O no--
+though I think he killed her.  But no, no, Jean, I would not tell, for I
+have my plans; and pah! there are plenty more painted women.  But no,
+no, Jean, you shall not have the pink doll.  You must love me, Jean,
+till I tell you to marry."
+
+The young man writhed in his chair, but he spoke no word; while his
+mother knitted furiously, clicking her needles and smiling maliciously
+as she watched him sideways.
+
+"No, no, Jean, you shall not have the pink doll; and you cannot see her
+now--they are gone."
+
+"But she will come," cried Jean angrily, with something of his mother's
+spirit bursting forth.
+
+"No, no!" half-shrieked his mother; "she shall not--I will not have her.
+But no, she will not come, you _bete_, for the preacher is ill with the
+Jarker's blow, and she nurses him and smoothes his pillow.  Fool!" she
+cried in a sharp, cracked voice, "I will torment you to death if you
+tear not the hateful little thing from your foolish heart.  You shall
+only love me till I tell you.  But now listen: it is dark now, and I
+have my plans.  The Jarker is away, and the police hunt him.  Now
+listen, fool, while I tell you.  They may take him, but I hope not yet;
+for you shall be rich, Jean--you shall have money and all that the great
+people have, and plenty of fine dolls shall be proud to have you, Jean;
+for I am proud of you; and what was she?  Bah! nothing.  I know the
+Jarker's secret--I know it two years; but he does not think it, for I
+have been still and waited two years, Jean--more.  He suspect me once,
+but he dare not touch me, and I have given him no chance since.  And
+should I tell till it was time?  No, no!"
+
+_Ma mere_ leaned over towards her son, and casting down her knitting in
+her eagerness, one of the dogs ran to pick it up, but she struck the
+poor thing angrily with Jean's crutch, and it ran yelping back to its
+corner.  And now she whispered long and eagerly in the young man's ear,
+till his cheek flushed and eyes sparkled, for he was coupling all he
+heard with the name of Lucy Grey.
+
+"Gold and silver--much silver and rich things, Jean," hissed _ma mere_.
+
+"But have you seen them?" cried Jean eagerly.
+
+"Bah! no; but what then?  Why was he out night after night?  To catch
+birds?  Bah! no, but to pluck birds of their fine feathers, gay
+feathers, rich feathers, and he has a store, I know it."
+
+"But he may come back," said Jean huskily.
+
+"Do I not say the police hunt him?  They have been here to seek him,"
+hissed his mother; "and when I have taken his honey I will show his
+empty nest, and they will send him to the galleys.  Yes, yes.  But come,
+fool.  There," she said, kissing him, "thy _mere_ loves thee, Jean.  No,
+no, lean on me; you must leave the crutch, it is noisy.  No, no, he dare
+not come back here to be taken."
+
+_Ma mere_ placed a piece of candle in her pocket, along with a box of
+matches.  She then led Jean to a chair by the door, left him seated, and
+went softly back to the window, which she opened, and then gazed down
+into the court and anxiously at the windows where there were lights.
+Then once more closing the window, she returned to her son, opened the
+door, and listened.  But there were voices on the stairs, so thrusting
+Jean back, she leaned over the balusters to try and hear who waited
+below, but without avail, so she returned to the room.
+
+"But we will be rich, Jean--rich," she whispered, "and there shall be no
+more of this pinching for bread.  You shall not have poor workers but
+ladies glad to see you smile, _mon fils_" and the old woman cast her
+lean arms round the cripple's neck, kissing him fondly, though he
+remained thoughtful and impassive, apparently listening to the impatient
+movements of some sleepless bird.
+
+"But listen, Jean--it was very horrible; but I saw all, and I shall tell
+some day when it is time.  I saw the Jarker strike the preacher down,
+for I had been watching too.  I came back late, and saw the Jarker and
+hid myself; because he is a savage, and I would not meet him by night
+never since I knew his secret; but when I was hid, and he had struck
+down the preacher, I saw him run this way to cross the road, but the
+painted woman dash at him and hold him, fighting fiercely with him, till
+I would have helped her--but I was old and weak, Jean.  Then he struck
+her down, Jean--such a coward, cruel blow--but she clung to his legs,
+and he kicked her, so that I hear his boot upon her poor head, and I
+felt sick, Jean, but I dare not speak; and as he came closer I shrunk in
+the doorway and watched, for he ran into the court; but the painted
+woman was up, and ran again, and caught hold of him, and held on, and I
+could hear her say just inside the court there, `Give me my child, give
+me my child!' and he struck her down again.  But once more she held to
+his legs gasping, and saying, `My child, give me my child!' and in her
+fierce, angry way she seemed to crawl and wind up him like a serpent,
+while--ah, Jean, I am old and coward, and I shivered and trembled to see
+it all.  There was no noise, only the fierce whisper, `Give me my
+child!' and the struggling, and I saw him strike at her again and again
+in the face, while she held her poor head down in his breast that he
+should not hit her; till at last they fell, and I heard her poor head
+strike the stones, and I sink down on the passage-floor, Jean, for I
+could not bear it, and I don't know how long for, but when I look out
+again there was nothing in the court--nothing but the miserable light--
+and I dare not go out and see, Jean, for I was frightened.  I think
+perhaps he killed her, poor painted woman, and I am sorry, for she loved
+her child as I love you, Jean, and would die for you; but stop, and then
+the police shall know, and they will take him--but not yet.  Poor
+painted woman!  I have not seen her since, and the preacher has her
+child.  And it is not ungrateful like you, Jean.  Ah! do I not cry long
+hours for you, and you do not mind, for you think always of the doll,
+and I hate her.  She coaxed you from me with her soft white skin and her
+cat's ways.  She is deceitful, and tries to make the preacher marry her;
+but he shall not yet, for I will tell him something that shall frighten
+him.  But there, bah! let him marry her, and take, too, her old imbecile
+of a father and the weak, crying mother--let him marry them all.  But
+you--you shall be rich, Jean, and keep no more birds.  You shall have
+doctors, and get rid of your crutch, and people will be proud to know
+you."
+
+But Jean spoke not; only sat listening to his mother's words as he built
+up some bright future and thought of Lucy Grey.
+
+At last _ma mere_ rose again from the seat she had taken, and went to
+the head of the staircase; but still there were voices to be heard, and
+this time, without coming back, she sat down with her pinched cheek
+leaning against the balusters, where she remained patiently listening
+for quite an hour, when she softly rose and whispered to Jean as she
+supported him; and then slowly and painfully the strange couple made
+their way down to the passage, where, after waiting for a few minutes,
+they crossed the empty court and stood in the dark entry of the opposite
+house.
+
+Late as it was--nearly twelve--the door stood open; but even if the old
+woman's catlike step and the slow painful shuffle of her son had been
+heard, they would have excited no attention, as stealthily she helped
+Jean along, until they stood at the head of the cellar-steps.
+
+"Ah!" hissed _ma mere_ as she kicked against something soft, "but it is
+that Bijou who has followed us.--Back, then!" she hissed, striking at
+the dumb brute, whose soft patter was now heard along the dark passage
+as the animal scuffled away.  "Now, mind," whispered _ma mere_ as they
+descended slowly, while once Jean slipped and nearly dragged the old
+woman headlong to the bottom; but he saved himself by grasping the rough
+railing, and after recovering his panting breath another trial was made,
+and they stood at the bottom, when, feeling her way along, _ma mere_ led
+him till, still in the dark, they stood in the front cellar, where the
+water dripped hollowly into the tub.  But the woman well knew her way;
+and, with one arm round her son, she helped him along to the arch,
+warned him of the step down, and so drew him into the back-cellar and
+along to the end, where she left him leaning against one of the bins
+while she stole softly back to the cellar-steps to listen for awhile
+before returning to strike a match and light her piece of candle, which
+she screened by holding it far into the bin.
+
+"No, Jean," she muttered, "he dare not come back, for there is a police
+always on the watch for him, though I have not told.  But, hush! don't
+speak," she whispered, as a heavy step was heard to pass along the
+court; and all the while the light shone strangely upon her sharp
+withered features and the sallow face and wild eyes of Jean.  "Hold this
+now," she said softly, and once more she went nimbly back to the
+cellar-door to listen, when, closing it gently, she hurried to the side
+of her trembling son.  "You fool!" she muttered sneeringly, "you shake,
+and there is nothing to fear.  Now hold the candle low, and shade it
+with your coat;" and then, going down upon hands and knees, she crawled
+into the bin before her--one that was deep and narrow; and, panting and
+sighing with the exertion, she scraped away a little of the blackened
+sawdust, and thrust her hands beneath what appeared to be the brick end
+of the bin, lifted it a little and then thrust sideways, when the whole
+back slowly slid along, disclosing an opening which the whitewashed
+stone had before covered.
+
+A little more hard thrusting and Jean could see that there was
+apparently room to pass into what appeared to be another cellar, while a
+cold, damp, foul-smelling vapour rushed through, and nearly extinguished
+the candle.
+
+"Come, quick, Jean," panted _ma mere_, making her way through the
+opening, when Jean crawled into the bin and handed her the guttering
+candle before following her through the hole, against which he kneeled
+hesitating; but directly after he crept through and stood beside his
+mother in a little cellar surrounded by bins similar to those in the one
+they had left; then, having stuck the candle amongst the loose damp
+sawdust, _ma mere_ drew the stone flag back into its place, for it ran
+in a rough brick groove at the bottom, while at the top it was kept from
+falling by a large iron bar roughly laid in a couple of staples.
+
+"Now look, now look," hissed _ma mere_, taking the candle in her hands
+and peering about; "wine, old wine in bottles, put here and forgotten;
+and what is this?--my faith, it is a melting-pot;" and she paused
+curiously by a large black-lead crucible, fitted upon a rough brick
+furnace, whose chimney was a piece of iron piping, carried up apparently
+into one of the house flues.  By its side in an old box was a quantity
+of charcoal; and in another several pounds of saltpetre, evidently used
+to augment the fierceness of the fire, while by the side lay a pair of
+bellows--instruments which had before now caused angry words to issue
+from Mr Jarker's lips.  "Now look, Jean; but what ails you, fool?  Look
+at the boxes; there, that is where the rich things are;" and her lean
+fingers clutched and clawed and opened and shut as she held a hand out
+towards a rough chest.
+
+Jean was gazing with astonished eyes around him at the gloomy place; at
+the bins half full of empty bottles; at a couple of boxes that lay in
+one; but, as his mother spoke, he was leaning towards one corner of the
+cellar where there seemed to be an opening, which was lightly covered
+with an old box-lid.
+
+"What is that?" he whispered.
+
+"What? fool!" exclaimed _ma mere_, going to the lid and lifting it; when
+the foul wind rushed up, and once more nearly extinguished her candle.
+"Pah!" she ejaculated; "a way down into the drains, and O, my faith,
+Jean, but it is the rat's hole; but," she chuckled, "he dare not come,
+the ferrets and dogs are after him, and he will soon feel their teeth.
+So, my faith! he had two holes."
+
+As she spoke she hastily closed the place once more, listening the while
+to a musical trickling noise which came whispering up; but, led by some
+strange impulse, Jean went down upon his knees by the hole, and lifted
+the lid again, peering down into the black darkness, and listening to
+the hollow echoing noise, while from apparently a distance came a
+rushing sound as of a stream through a large sewer, and the young man
+shuddered as he listened to its strange wild cadence.
+
+"Come here, fool!" hissed _ma mere_; "come, hold the candle;" and broken
+glass crackled beneath her feet as she crossed the cellar towards a box
+in one of the bins.  "Come, Jean, here are the treasures, boy; but O,
+look here!  It is what I thought: here is the painted woman's veil;" and
+she picked up a small net fall, that had evidently from its torn
+appearance been snatched hastily from a bonnet.  "He must have dragged
+her down here, Jean; and then--there is that hole!"
+
+Mother and son stayed gazing at one another with dilated eyes and parted
+lips, till, dropping the lid, Jean crawled shuddering away, as an
+echoing sound came up caused by the falling cover.  Mother and son
+seemed fascinated for a few moments, as they pictured in their own minds
+the scene that might have taken place in the damp cavernous place where
+they stood; and then, forgetful of her main object, _ma mere_ crept
+closer to her son.
+
+"But it is very horrible!" she murmured; and as she spoke she wiped her
+forehead with the scrap of lace in her hand, but only to throw it down
+with a shudder the next moment.
+
+"Do you think he killed her, then?" whispered Jean in a harsh dry voice.
+
+"Hush! don't speak, don't talk of it," hissed the old woman, who seemed
+quite unnerved, and trembled violently.
+
+"But where do the drains go to?" whispered Jean.
+
+"Into the big river," said _ma mere_; "but come quick, there are the
+boxes, Jean, and let us get away from here.  I hardly breathe.  But O,
+my faith, look there!"
+
+Jean Marais gave a cry of horror as he clutched his mother's gown; and
+then they remained silent for a few moments.
+
+The candle had burned out!
+
+Volume Three, Chapter XIII.
+
+PEACE.
+
+What were the thoughts of Aunt Fanny as she ushered in Lucy Grey, the
+bearer of her answer to a note she had received?  Strange thoughts, no
+doubt--thoughts of the time when her own hands were like her cheeks,
+plump and soft, and dimpled; but she said no word, only kissed the
+visitor tenderly, held her in her arms a minute to gaze in the blushing
+face, and then with a sigh, half of pleasure, half sorrowful, she led
+the way to the door and opened it for the humbly-dressed girl--nay, not
+humbly dressed, for Heaven had clothed her with a beauty that in a
+higher sphere would have been called peerless.  Aunt Fanny then closed
+the door, and went back to the sitting-room to smoothe the stiff plaits
+of her poplin and black apron, and shed a few tears.
+
+Aunt Fanny stood by the window gazing into vacancy, but her look could
+not penetrate to where Lucy was kneeling, like some fair penitent,
+beside the easy-chair where Arthur Sterne sat propped up by pillows.
+There was a desire to flee again when once she was there, but Lucy's
+hands were prisoned, and even for a time the eyes were downcast; but
+then those words, powerful in their eloquence--words which made the
+young girl's heart beat quickly--had their effect, and soon the flushed
+face was raised, and in the long unflinching gaze that met his own,
+there was all that doubting man could desire.
+
+Ah, Arthur Sterne, you may have mumbled so that poor Aunt Fanny had to
+move her seat in church, but there was something now in the true
+eloquence of your words that must have thrilled the heart of the fair
+girl by your side; for the tears of happiness fell fast as her face was
+buried in your breast.
+
+Explanations?  Yes, all he could wish for; and how could he blame the
+loving tender heart, which saw not as the world saw, but was ready to
+stretch forth her hand to help the lost soul struggling in the slough of
+sin?  How could he blame as he listened to the story of Agnes Hardon's
+sorrow, and how she had made herself known, begging again and again so
+earnestly, as she asked Lucy's protection for her child, that Septimus
+or Mrs Hardon might never be told of their intimacy, lest they should
+be of the world worldly, and cast the wretched woman from this last hold
+upon something pure?
+
+Explanations! ay, many; and could he have done so he would have knelt to
+Lucy, as, weeping, she whispered to him of her wounded heart, and of how
+gladly she would have told him all, but that she feared his condemnation
+and contempt.
+
+But there, love-scenes should be matters of the strictest privacy; and
+if Arthur Sterne gazed long and lovingly in the pure candid face before
+him with a look of fond protection which saw nothing then in humbleness
+or poverty, and Lucy Grey returned that look with one from her tear-wet
+eyes, that saw in his face everything that was great, noble, and to be
+desired by the tender, untouched heart of woman--if these two joined
+their lips in one long kiss of love, why it seems to be only natural,
+and what might be expected under the circumstances.
+
+"And poor Agnes?" whispered Lucy from where she nestled.
+
+"Have you not seen her since?" said the curate.
+
+And then followed much long happy planning for the future, in which
+Agnes Hardon and her little golden-haired child had their share, and
+Somesham was more than once mentioned in connection with
+reconciliations.
+
+Time will fly at such times, and after Arthur Sterne had told of his
+arrangements that he had already made for the child, and once more
+related his interview with Agnes, smiling at the pain of Lucy as he
+lightly touched upon his mishap, one that he gloried in as he felt the
+maiden's soft cheek laid to his throbbing heart--after all this, and
+much more that both had forgotten as soon as spoken, the curate
+discovered that the interview had lasted more than two hours, though
+much of that time had been spent in a silence that neither felt disposed
+to break--a silence quite in unison with the doctor's orders, since he
+had left instructions that for some days yet the patient was to be kept
+perfectly undisturbed.
+
+But there is an end to all things, and Arthur Sterne did not look much
+the worse for his visitor, when Aunt Fanny tapped gently at the door to
+announce another in the shape of Septimus Hardon come to escort his
+step-child back to their new home.
+
+And that night, upon her way back, the something new that appeared to
+have come over the spirit of Lucy Grey was more than ever manifest; the
+ever-anxious look had departed, and her step was light, bounding, and
+elastic as she walked on by Septimus Hardon's side; a strange contrast--
+now quiet and hopeful, now elate and light-hearted, as she conversed,
+while every topic was tinged with the future.
+
+"And what did Mr Sterne want?" said Septimus as his eyes twinkled, half
+from merriment, half from sadness, as he drew the graceful arm he held
+farther through his own.
+
+Lucy was serious in a moment, and as she turned beneath a street-lamp
+and looked in her stepfather's face, he abused himself roundly, for he
+could see tears glittering in the bright eyes that met his own.
+
+"Don't, don't ask me, dear," whispered Lucy.  "Don't talk of it now, for
+indeed, indeed, I could not leave you."
+
+"Hush, hush," whispered Septimus soothingly, for they passed another
+post, and he could this time see how fast the tears were falling, and
+now he tried to change the conversation.
+
+"But he's getting better now very fast, eh? my darling," whispered
+Septimus.
+
+"O, yes, yes," murmured Lucy.  "I think so."
+
+"And--but there, I'm making you worse.  Let's talk of something else."
+
+But Septimus Hardon's attempts at starting fresh subjects for
+conversation were one and all failures, and Lucy was silent until they
+reached Essex-street; though hers were not tears kindred to those she
+had shed days--weeks--months back, and, as to her dreams that night,
+they must have been sweet to cause so happy a smile to play upon her
+lip; for though a tear once stole from the fringed lid, and lay like a
+pearl upon her cheek, it did not seem like a tear wrung from the heart,
+neither did the sigh which followed betoken sorrow; for it was a sigh
+like that sweet expiration some of us have heard when a confession has
+been wrung from lips we love, and those lips, when pressed, have hardly
+been withdrawn, but pouted sweetly, looking more ruddy for shame.
+
+Only yesterday that they wore that look; it can't be further back than
+the day before, or, say last week; and--the sweet recollection
+clings--"There, I do wish to goodness, dear, you would not always make a
+point of firing off into conversation directly I sit down to read or
+write.  _Now_ what is it?  `Young Fitzpater was too attentive to Maude
+last night?'  Pooh! nonsense! sugar-candy!  Why, the child isn't
+seventeen yet, and--"
+
+That could not have been last week, after all.  How time does fly!
+
+Volume Three, Chapter XIV.
+
+IN THE RAT'S HOLE.
+
+"Hush!" cried _ma mere_, recovering from her tremor; "but I have another
+piece.  You fool, Jean! are you afraid to be in the dark?  Here is the
+candle, but where are the matches?" and the old woman kept on feeling
+about in her huge pocket, but found them not.  "You have the matches,
+Jean!" she exclaimed at last.
+
+"No," said the cripple; "you had them, _ma mere_."
+
+"Ah, yes; and I left them in the other place; but I will fetch them.
+Where are you?"
+
+"I am here," whispered Jean, whom the darkness seemed to oppress, so
+that he could not speak above his breath.
+
+"But where?" hissed his mother.  "I cannot tell, not yet; where is the
+stone?"
+
+"Don't move," whispered Jean hoarsely; "there is the hole, and you will
+fall down."
+
+"Then, come you," hissed his mother; "we cannot stay here in the dark;
+and I am not come to go back with empty hand."
+
+"What can I do?" cried Jean angrily.  "I am afraid to move.  Why did you
+not let me have my crutch?"  And now he began to feel slowly along the
+wall in search of the stone, but his hands only came in contact with the
+brick bins and empty bottles.
+
+"Have you found the opening, Jean?" whispered his mother from the other
+side of the cellar; and then a cold shudder ran through the cripple as
+he stood with his hand upon the stone, for there was the sound of
+someone falling over a piece of board, and _ma mere_ shrieked out, "O,
+_mon Dieu_, I am lost!" while standing there in the fearful darkness,
+and knowing his own helplessness, Jean almost swooned with horror.
+
+"Here, quick, Jean, your hand!" cried his mother huskily; and on
+crawling towards the sound, Jean clutched his mother's arms, and dragged
+at her, for she was lying with part of her body in the hole, but in no
+real danger, though unnerved and terrified, her fancy having magnified
+the peril a hundredfold before she lay panting on the damp sawdust
+beside her son.
+
+"Not deep, not deep," she muttered; "but, ah, Jean, it was very
+dreadful!  I felt as if the painted woman was dragging me down."
+
+"Hush!" whispered Jean as they crawled farther away; "what is that
+noise?"
+
+"_Bete_! would you frighten me?" hissed the old woman; and then she
+paused, for now distinctly heard, and as if ascending into the cellar
+through the hole, came a low blowing, panting noise; at first very soft,
+then louder and louder, as it came mingled with a plashing, scraping
+sound; nearer and nearer, and more plainly, as if someone was forcing a
+way along; while, at last, the panting noise was almost painful, for it
+was as of some hunted animal fighting for its breath.
+
+Nearer and nearer came the noise; and with blood seeming to freeze and
+grow sluggish in their veins, mother and son crept farther away from the
+hole, till they crouched, clinging together, against one of the bins,
+when Jean's elbow came in contact with an empty bottle, which clinked
+loudly.  And still nearer came the sound, more rustling, more loud
+panting, echoing and hollow, as if sent through some large pipe; and,
+hardly daring to breathe, as they listened to the heavy throb, throb of
+their hearts, mother and son waited the result.
+
+Now there was a muttering noise heard along with the panting; then more
+rustling, and all louder and plainer; till, as mother and son crouched
+there with starting eyes, they could in imagination see a dripping
+figure emerge from the hole, and stand within a few feet of them.
+
+Then there was a silence so horrible that to the trembling couple it
+seemed worse than the coming of the noises.  But there was relief at
+last in the sound as of one searching amongst bottles; and then the snap
+as of the opening of a box, followed by the striking of matches, first
+one and then another.  The sweat gathered upon the listeners' faces as
+they thought of the result of the discovery, and the probable fate of
+her whose veil they had seen.  But, as in the sewer, nothing but faint
+lines of light ensued, and tiny spots where the damp matches were
+thrown; when, as if to show that this was no supernatural visitant, a
+deep husky voice growled the word "damp!" as the box was thrown
+impatiently down.
+
+Then a heavy foot crunched upon Jean's hand, which he had rested upon
+the ground to thrust himself close to the wall; but though the pain was
+acute, he uttered no cry, sitting almost frozen with fear, as he heard
+the click of a bottle, the breaking of glass, the trickling of liquid
+upon the floor, followed by the sound of someone drinking; taking a long
+breath; drinking heavily again and again; and then something struck the
+young man heavily, his face was splashed with wine, and a broken bottle
+fell upon the floor.
+
+Once more there was the silence, only broken by the heavy breathing of
+the new-comer; and then the hearts of mother and son bounded as they
+heard first the gliding of a hand upon a wall, and then a rough grating,
+which they both recognised as that of the stone being very softly and
+slowly slid back for a few inches, while it appeared that the new-comer
+was listening; and once more in the painful silence it seemed certain
+that he would hear the laboured beating of their hearts.
+
+Once again, though, there was the grating, and they could tell that the
+opening was now fully exposed; then followed the rustling as of a body
+passing through, and, as they listened, the faint fall of steps passing
+along the court fell upon their ears, seeming refreshing, as it linked
+them once more with things of the upper world; but the next moment came
+the rustling sound, then the grating of the stone, and once more all was
+silent as the grave.
+
+"Ah!" sighed _ma mere_ with almost a groan, as she once more breathed
+freely; while in a husky voice Jean whispered, "Let's go."
+
+"Stop," whispered his mother; "I dare not move yet.  He will not be
+gone; only waiting for a chance to get past the police; and if he see us
+he will hide his rich things;" and the thought of the contents of the
+place seemed to lend force to the old woman's failing nerves; though,
+for what seemed half an hour to Jean, they sat in the silent darkness,
+waiting; a silence broken now and then by a peculiar sighing noise from
+the sewers, which made its hearers shudder.
+
+"Was it him?" whispered Jean at last.
+
+"Yes; the Jarker," hissed _ma mere_; "but get up now.  Let me help you,
+and we will take all we can and go.  Be still and careful; and there,
+now you are up.  But, my faith, Jean, I am cramped!  Now, the boxes were
+here; and--"
+
+_Ma mere_ ceased speaking, and stood trembling, with the sense as of
+something lifting the hair of her bare head, for at that moment came the
+sound of the grating stone pushed quickly aside; there was the sharp
+rustling as of one passing through, and the stone was thrust back, while
+the old woman could hear the panting, hard breath of someone close to
+her.  She would have crouched away, but she stood as if paralysed,
+calling up the old interview with Jarker in the front cellar, and his
+great knife and ominous words, and she felt now that her hour was come,
+as a voice muttered the words "Two there!" and a heavy hand was laid
+upon her bare head.  It was a horrible moment; but she could not move,
+and stood with her tongue glued to her palate, waiting for what she felt
+must follow; though, could she have turned, she would have clasped her
+withered arms round the ruffian, and cried to her son to escape.  But
+_ma mere_ was motionless, while the hideous yell that now rang in a
+dull, smothered way through the vault froze her blood into stagnation.
+Still the hand was not moved, but lay motionless upon her head, trembled
+and shook violently for a few moments, and then the old woman was free;
+for, in a horrible voice, the ruffian shrieked:
+
+"Come back! come back!" when there was a heavy crash as of a body
+falling amongst a quantity of broken bottles, and all was silent once
+more.
+
+No word spoke _ma mere_, but catching her son's hand, she drew him after
+her to the opening, seized the stone, which seemed to glide away at her
+touch, and then she thrust hurriedly at Jean as he crawled through, one
+hand being stretched back to seize on Jarker, should he recover from his
+swoon and try to touch her boy.  Then she felt that there was room, and
+crept through herself, closed the stone with some difficulty, and made
+her way shuddering out into the cellar.  Here _ma mere_ clutched Jean
+round the waist, and stopped to listen, but all was silent and
+apparently no pursuit, so hurrying him along, they stood trembling once
+more in the passage, expecting to be seized from behind, _ma mere_
+seeming to feel the knife of Jarker, as she clutched at her throat and
+pressed on.  Upon passing out into the court, though, there was a
+policeman, but beyond a glance, he took no heed of them till they had
+entered their own passage and closed the door, when he quietly made his
+way through the entrance they had that moment quitted.
+
+"Cognac, Jean; drink it, fool, you want it," said _ma mere_, when they
+were once more safe in their own room.  Before she would partake
+herself, the old woman forced some upon her son.  "Another time, though,
+Jean, another time.  I thought he would not dare to come back; but he
+will go now, and it will be safe.  My faith, though, to see those boxes
+and touch nothing!" she exclaimed, and her hands clawed again as she
+spoke.  "No, Jean, he will come no more, for it was as I thought; he is
+a murderer, and afraid.  He did kill the poor painted woman; and then he
+was frightened, and thrust her poor body down into the sewer.  But he
+was frightened, and fainted away, for he thought it was his poor victim
+come back.  Did you not hear him shriek it?  But I will tell the police
+when I have his gold and silver.  But a little, but a little, and then
+all will be right."
+
+They neither of them felt that they could sleep, and _ma mere_ drew out
+her knitting, but did little, sitting thoughtfully in her chair; at
+last, though, Jean slept heavily till his mother woke him in the early
+dawn, and together they looked down, trying to pierce the fog which hung
+in the court, when the first thing that their eyes fell upon was the
+glazed top of a policeman's hat.
+
+"But you will not go again?" whispered Jean.
+
+"But you are _bete_!" cried the old woman angrily.  "Should I leave the
+treasure I have discover, and let the police have all?  No," she cried,
+hooking her skinny fingers, "I will have all myself, and we will be
+rich, Jean.  Ah! what--you sigh?  But you are _bete_, and it is for the
+little worker who come between us, Jean.  You loved your poor mother
+till she come, and I hate her for it, and I could slay her, for I am mad
+and disappointed; but I had my revenge for long.  I told the preacher
+something, and he believed me; and you are all fools, you men.  But I am
+not angry, Jean, for you are my own Jean, and you shall be rich yet.
+What! you push me away?  I care not, for you shall be like your father--
+a gentleman--before he died, and left me in this cold, cold, cold,
+miserable London.  But we will have the Jarker's treasure, Jean, that I
+have watched, and we will laugh then at the world."
+
+Jean sat silently gazing down into the court, wincing at times as he
+heard the bitter words of his mother, while his eyes would then flash as
+he seemed ready to turn; but he spoke no word, as he thought over the
+past night and restrained himself.  He knew the value of money, and his
+face would brighten as he thought of it in connection with Lucy; but a
+weary, sad smile came directly after, for he knew such thoughts were
+folly, and he turned them to Jarker, as he seemed to feel that his duty
+was to point out the wretch's hiding-place, though he flinched from the
+task.  And still he sat on, hour after hour gazing down into the court,
+where a strange man, like an artisan out of work, was lounging about
+smoking a short black pipe, and apparently very intent upon a small
+birdcage tied up in a blue-spotted handkerchief beneath his arm.  There
+was something of the shoemaker and more of the tailor about him--nothing
+at all of the detective-policeman, and doubtless it must have been very
+unpleasant for a man of his income to smoke such bad tobacco, and pay
+for so many half-quarterns of rum for Mrs Sims, who was very
+communicative concerning the last time Jarker was at home, while a
+policeman in uniform would have acted as a seal upon her lips.  So Mrs
+Sims chattered, the strange man watched, and for a time the uniform of
+the police-force was not seen in Bennett's-rents.
+
+Volume Three, Chapter XV.
+
+TAKEN.
+
+A heart at peace, doubtless, had much to do with the rapid strides
+towards convalescence taken by the Reverend Arthur Sterne, who, in
+direct opposition to the hints of his medical man and the uplifted hands
+of Aunt Fanny, resumed his work; and not many days after the visit from
+Lucy he found himself late one afternoon in the place where so much of
+his past life had derived its interest.  Pale and weak, he climbed
+slowly up to the garret of _ma mere_; but she was absent with the dogs,
+though Jean, more sallow than ever, sat cowering over his fire, and
+thinking of the events of a couple of nights before.
+
+Jean could not restrain the deep frown that came over his forehead as
+his visitor entered; still there was an inborn politeness in the way he
+asked him to be seated, but after replying in a constrained way to the
+questions put touching his health, he painfully made his way to the
+window, and appeared to be watching the proceedings in the court below.
+
+But for a while Jean saw nothing, for his gaze was introspective, and
+the secret he held seemed more than he could bear.  Ever pictured in his
+brain were the scenes his mother had described, and sleeping or waking
+he saw again and again the wild, agonised face of the murdered woman;
+while the knowledge that he could point out the murderer's lair, while
+the officers of the law watched and waited in ignorance, made him angry
+that he should be bound; for he felt that he was bound, as he thought of
+his mother's rage and disappointment should Jarker's retreat be
+discovered before she had ventured again to secure a portion of his
+spoil; and that night she was to return early, and they were to go.
+Jean shuddered as he thought of the last visit, and trembled for the one
+to come; and, could he have divested himself of certain cares that
+gnawed his heart, and looked upon Mr Sterne merely as the friend and
+pastor, undoubtedly, moved as he then was, he would have told all.
+
+Mr Sterne had hoped to have found _ma mere_ at home, and to have
+derived from her some information respecting Agnes Hardon.  Once he was
+on the point of questioning Jean respecting her; but he refrained.  He
+was anxious to see her now that he knew her secret, and certain in his
+own mind of Septimus Hardon, he hoped yet to procure a reconciliation at
+Somesham; while, at the same time, there was a dim something in his mind
+that he could not quite shape, as it seemed to point towards Agnes
+Hardon knowing something of her uncle's arrangements during his last
+years: but at present he could define nothing, make no plans, though he
+seemed to be finding the ends of the threads he sought, and felt hopeful
+yet of a happy termination of much misery.  His duty seemed to be to
+bring all these people into unison if possible; if not, to call in the
+strong arm of the law, should he feel, after a long and patient
+investigation, that there was right upon Septimus Hardon's side.
+
+"Will not your mother soon return, Jean?" said the curate at last.
+
+"No," said the young man moodily; "these busy nights are profitable, and
+we have little money, while two nights she has spent watching."
+
+"Watching?" said the curate.
+
+Jean started and turned round, making as though he would speak to his
+visitor; but he turned his back the next moment, when the scene that met
+his eye chased everything else before it, and, wild and excited, he
+cried, "Now he is here, and you can take him!  I was frightened, and
+dare not; come you, sir.  It was he who beat you down in the street.
+Here, look!" he hissed between his teeth, standing almost erect as he
+spoke, and clenching his fists.  "If I could strike him down!"
+
+The rage in the young man's face seemed for the moment reflected in that
+of the curate, as, starting forward, he flung the window open, and
+recalled the last time he had gazed from where he stood; but the next
+instant horror predominated as he looked upon the sight which had so
+excited the cripple.
+
+There was a heavy mist falling, and the lamps were just alight; but out
+upon the housetop, and plainly seen in relief, was the figure of Jarker
+struggling out through the trap-door on to the platform where he kept
+his pigeons.  He was making his way out slowly as Mr Sterne flung open
+the window, for it seemed that someone was dragging at him from beneath;
+and this proved to be the case, for as Jarker struggled out, kicking and
+striking savagely, the head and shoulders of a policeman appeared, and
+in the fierce struggle which ensued the man clung so firmly to the
+ruffian's legs, that he brought him down with a crash, which shivered
+and crushed the frail cages and traps to atoms; and then ensued a battle
+for life which chilled with horror those who were looking on, both too
+helpless to interfere.
+
+The platform was but frail, and cracked and broke away as the two men
+wrestled together, while more than one poor bird was crushed to death.
+Once they rose for a few moments, and rocked to and fro, but Jarker
+seemed to trip and fall, dragging the policeman with him, and then from
+the crackling and breaking tiles arose a sound more like the encounter
+of two wild beasts, as the men writhed and twisted, every instant nearer
+and nearer to the edge, where there was only a low brick parapet some
+six inches high; and death for both seemed inevitable.
+
+Jean stood as it were riveted to the spot, his lips apart, eyes
+distended, and chest heaving: while clutching his shoulder was Mr
+Sterne, expecting every moment to see the bodies of the struggling men
+part the air, and fall with a sickening crash into the court beneath.
+
+But no.  Jarker freed one arm, and twined it round one of the platform
+supports, giving himself a savage wrench, and stopping the slow, gliding
+motion which had taken him nearer and nearer to the little parapet.
+Another wrench, and a savage kick, and Jarker was almost at liberty,
+when down came the frail platform, to fall bodily into the court.
+
+Shouting at the ruffian, Mr Sterne now called the attention of the
+gathering people below to what was going on, for it was time; but before
+it was possible for aid to be rendered, Jarker had forced the
+policeman's head back, and dragged his other hand at liberty; then came
+the sound of a heavy blow as the ruffian raised and dashed his
+adversary's head against the tiles.  Then followed another fierce
+struggle, the officer fighting for his life, and he held on tenaciously
+to his opponent; but Jarker was uppermost, and using his great brute
+strength, he raised and dashed the man's head down again and again, till
+his hold relaxed, and he rolled over into the gutter, where he lay to
+all appearance dead; while, with savage cruelty, Jarker loosened a tile
+so as to have a firm hold, and then with his free hand he seized his
+enemy and tried to force him over into the court.
+
+But he was arrested by shouts from _ma mere's_ room and the open trap,
+at which now appeared in the dim light the eager countenance of the
+artisan-like man who had been hanging about the court; and now, active
+as a cat, with the man in full pursuit, Jarker went along upon hands and
+knees, over slate and tile ridge, along gutter, and past stack after
+stack of chimneys, to where there was a similar platform to his own; but
+he was disappointed--the trap-door was fast.  On he went again, with
+Nemesis upon his track, over roof after roof again, towards a house with
+a dormer-window in the sloping slates; but the slates were covered with
+a redundant moisture, and to his horror he found that he was slowly
+gliding down to certain death--faster and faster--as he sat as it were
+upon his iron-nailed boots.  A few seconds would have ended his career;
+but with a frightful oath, such as none but a drink-maddened ruffian
+would have uttered, he threw himself at full length, and rolled rapidly
+over and over to a chimney-stack, to which he clung, as he lay upon his
+face, with his feet so near the awaiting destruction, that his toes
+rested in the slight iron gutter.
+
+He lay there for a few moments, trembling and unnerved by the danger he
+had escaped, and than painfully climbing up in the angle formed by the
+wall of the next house, which stood a little higher, he reached the
+ridge, and sat astride, panting and showing his teeth at the coming
+officer, who was making his way more cautiously; while dragging off
+first one and then the other of his heavy boots, Jarker hurled them at
+his pursuer before continuing his flight.
+
+The dangerous slope Jarker had crossed gave him an advantage over the
+officer; for now unable to escape by the trap or window for which he had
+aimed, the ruffian had doubled, and was working his way rapidly back to
+his own garret, which now seemed his last resource.
+
+For an instant he stood by the ruins of his pigeon-traps, gazing at the
+man lying in the gutter--now showing signs of animation--and listening
+at the opening; but though there were voices enough in the court, all
+seemed silent in his room, and with one glance at his fast-nearing foe
+upon the roof, Jarker lowered himself through his trap; while as Mr
+Sterne hurried out of the room, with Jean following him slowly, the
+ruffian stood once more opposite to the bed of his dead wife, to be
+confronted by another watching policeman.
+
+Not of the same stuff this man; for a moment's struggle, and Jarker was
+free, leaping down the stairs, which seemed ready to fall with his
+weight--nearly to the bottom, with the man in full pursuit; when in the
+buzz of voices be heard a cry for a light below, which flashed upon the
+hat of yet another officer.
+
+Panting, mad, hemmed-in on all sides, foes above and foes below, knowing
+that there was blood upon his hands, and--for aught he knew to the
+contrary--that the gallows waited for him, the ruffian, as a last
+resource, dashed open the window upon the first landing, while, as hands
+actually touched him, he dropped into the backyard.
+
+One man leaned out directly, while another hand was at the window; but
+they saw Jarker in the dim light below recover himself.  Then there was
+the hanging of a door, and one of the men bounded down the stairs just
+in time to strike the ruffian back as he made a dash along the passage
+to force his way through the crowd.  But he was not taken yet; though it
+was with a smile that the policeman wiped his dripping face as he posted
+himself at the top of the cellar-steps, and sent a companion out to
+watch the grating in the court.
+
+And now it seemed that they had run their game to earth; for after one
+or two ineffectual attempts to escape during the past forty-eight
+hours--attempts frustrated by the careful watch kept upon the premises
+he occupied--Jarker had that evening made his way up through the cellar
+in a half-maddened state, produced by fear and the wine he had drunk to
+drive it away, for it was many hours since food had passed his lips.
+But Mr Jarker's course was run, and, though ignorant of the offence for
+which he was sought, there were heinous matters enough upon his
+conscience to make him fight for liberty to the last gasp; while, upon
+this last attempt being made, he had been sighted by the man on watch,
+who saw him in the passage and drove him back, when, horrified at the
+idea of going back to the cellar, Jarker had bounded upstairs, to be
+chased as has been described.
+
+There was no lack of policemen now upon the spot, and while the crowd
+was kept back, place was given to Mr Sterne, who, with Jean hanging
+upon his arm, slowly descended the cellar-steps, preceded by the
+policemen, with staves in hand and open lanterns.
+
+"Keep a good look-out on the stairs," said the artisan-looking man--the
+quiet man of a day or two before, and one in authority.  And now, inch
+by inch, the cellar was searched; then bin after bin of the inner vault;
+when the men turned and looked at their leader.
+
+"O, he's here, somewhere," said the sergeant, and taking a lantern in
+hand, he peered long and carefully into every bin, while, trembling with
+eagerness, Jean pressed forward to see if the discovery would be made.
+He was not kept long in suspense; for, after directing his light
+carefully along the sawdust, the keen-eyed man suddenly exclaimed,
+"There's someone been through here.  Here's fresh candle-grease and
+matches; and what's this?"
+
+Jean pressed forward with the others, and "this" proved to be a fragment
+of a stuff dress caught in an old nail between the bricks, a scrap which
+Jean recognised as a piece of his mother's dress.
+
+Jarker's hiding-place, or rather this entrance to his hiding-place, owed
+much of its strength to its very openness; for, with the house and
+cellar-doors as it were free to the neighbourhood, many of the other
+tenants of the court even coming at times for water, no one would
+suspect the existence of a secret lair, though a careful examination of
+the long deep bin, now that attention was so fully directed to it, soon
+robbed the spot of its mystery.
+
+"Crowbar," said the sergeant abruptly, and a man departed in search of
+the implement; while one whispered to another his opinion that, if there
+was another way out, they were done, after all.
+
+But now a new-comer forced her way upon the scene, after quite a battle
+with the constable on duty at the head of the stairs; and but for the
+request of Mr Sterne, she would not have obtained her desire.  And now
+bitterly in French _ma mere_ reproached her son for betraying her
+secret, though he as eagerly denied it, appealing to the curate, who
+freely exonerated the young man from having made any communications to
+the police.
+
+"But what is the secret, _ma mere_?" he said to her in her own tongue.
+
+"Come away, come away," she whispered, wringing her hands; but Jean
+would not move, and the old woman was compelled to be a spectator of
+what followed.
+
+A few blows from the crowbar, when it was brought, shivered the thin end
+stone to pieces, and Jean shuddered as he felt the cold damp air rush
+through the black opening, as the sergeant exclaimed:
+
+"That's sewers, my lads: there's another way out.  Now, who'll go
+first?"
+
+No one moved; but _ma mere_ groaned.
+
+"Who wants promotion?" said the sergeant again.
+
+The muttering that followed seemed to intimate that all three of the men
+present wanted it, but not at the cost of thrusting his body into the
+black hole before him.
+
+"Then I hope you'll make matters straight if I'm hurt, my lads," said
+the sergeant grimly.
+
+"That we will, sir," chorussed the men, and then there was quite a
+competition for the second post of honour; as, without another moment's
+hesitation the sergeant crept into the bin, thrust his lantern forward
+as far as he could, looked eagerly round, and then, staff in hand, he
+regularly shot himself forward, and called to his men to follow.  But
+there was no enemy to encounter: nothing to be seen but bins round the
+cellar, a box or two, the open hole, and the furnace.
+
+"Who'd have thought of there being this place here?" said the sergeant
+to Mr Sterne, when _ma mere_ and her son both stood shuddering in the
+cellar with them; the Frenchwoman creeping towards the boxes, her
+fingers working the while.  "Old houses, you see, sir; gentlemen's
+houses once; and this was an old cellar; wine in it, too, seemingly, and
+forgotten.  Melting-pot, of course," he continued, pointing to the
+crucible.  "Nice handy spot for it; and of course he has made himself
+all right before now.  Gone down to one of the sewers, I suppose," he
+said.  "And while we were hunting him t'other day, he had crawled up
+here, and was taking his port.  Boxes, eh? what's in the boxes?"  One of
+the men was already examining the treasure-chests, and the agony in the
+old Frenchwoman's face was pitiful, as she saw the lids opened of first
+one and then the other, to find in place of the riches she had pictured,
+broken glass, worn out crucibles, and brickbats that had formed part of
+the furnace.
+
+"Rubbish!" said one of the men, when the old woman reeled, and would
+have fallen if the curate had not caught her in his arms and seated her
+upon one of the boxes.
+
+"Nice place to go down, sir; take that old lady out in the fresh air,"
+said the sergeant, peering at the black opening, and listening to the
+quick rush of water.  "There," he said to one of his men, "you needn't
+stew.  I ain't going to send you where I wouldn't go myself."
+
+The man spoken to held up his hand to command silence, for at that
+moment there came a strange rustling noise, mingled with the fierce rush
+of the water, while before they could recover from their surprise,
+drenched with the foul stream, his distorted face looking absolutely
+fiendish and inhuman, the head of Jarker appeared for a moment at the
+hole.
+
+"Help!" he gasped, with a cry that rung through the place, but before
+hand could touch him he had fallen back with a heavy splash: there was
+the sound of water rushing furiously along with a hollow, echoing,
+gurgling noise; and the men stood looking at one another.
+
+"Here, for God's sake, men," cried Mr Sterne, "do something!" and,
+weak, and trembling with horror, he stepped towards the hole; but the
+sergeant had his arms round him in a moment.
+
+"Keep still, sir," he said sternly; "we've done our part, I think.  It's
+certain death to go down there; they're flushing the sewers, I should
+say, or else there's a heavy fall of rain somewhere.  He's half-way to
+the Thames by now."
+
+The next moment Mr Sterne was telling himself that he had left his room
+too soon, for a strange sick feeling came over him, and the place around
+looked misty and indistinct; but his was not the only sleepless couch
+that night, for the old Frenchwoman moaned bitterly at the destruction
+of the _Chateau en Espagne_ which she had raised.
+
+Volume Three, Chapter XVI.
+
+WORN OUT.
+
+A heavy step upon the stairs, a heavy knock upon the door, and a
+heavy-eyed, heavy-countenanced man asking for Septimus Hardon.
+
+"And he wants you, too, Miss," said the man.  "O dear, O dear! he was
+the only friend I ever had, and he came back the night afore last, after
+you'd been to ask for him.  Not seen him, we hadn't, for long enough;
+and then to come back like this!" and the great fellow sat down unasked
+upon a chair, and sobbed like a child.
+
+"He wants to see you, sir," he said again, "and we've done all we
+could," he cried pitifully; "but you see he's old, sir, and there ain't
+nothing of him as'll hold together, and he knows it, sir; and he only
+laughed and said, he says, `Ikey, old man,' he says, `it must be all new
+stuff,' he says, `for the stitches won't hold no longer;' and he was the
+only friend I ever had.  `Go and tell them,' he says, `as old Matt's
+taken his last copy, and would like to see 'em afore he takes the wages
+he's earned.'  You'll come and see him, won't you, sir? though it's no
+sort of a place to come to; and the missus is breaking her heart about
+him."
+
+Half-an-hour after, Septimus Hardon and Lucy were in Lower Series-place,
+where, in the dingy back-room, close to the waste-paper, lay poor old
+Matt, with Mrs Gross upon her knees beside his bed, crying bitterly, as
+the poor old man lay calm and apparently sleeping; but he started when
+Lucy knelt down and took his hand, to let a tear-fall upon it.
+
+"God bless you!" he whispered earnestly, as his dim eyes recognised the
+face bending over him.  "Come like an angel to a dying man.  God bless
+you, sir, I'm glad you've come; I was in mortal fear that you would be
+too late.  Tell her--but no, I will.--Mother Slagg, you and Ikey go for
+a bit, please."
+
+The weeping woman put her apron to her eyes, and went out with her
+husband.  It was a heavy afternoon, and the fog was settling down fast
+over the City.  The light struggled feebly through the window,
+half-covered as it was with boots; but the great landlord returned
+directly with a thick, strong-smelling candle, stuck upon a block of
+wood between three nails.
+
+As soon as the door was once more closed--a rare position for it, and
+one which it resented for some time, until Ikey had poked the corners
+clean with an awl, and oiled the lock--old Matt said huskily:
+
+"Put your hand, sir, under my pillow.  That's it, that there little
+Bible.  Know it, sir?" he said, for Septimus Hardon had changed colour,
+and his hands were trembling.  "That took me a long time to get, sir,"
+and then he slowly and painfully told what he said he would have spared
+Miss Lucy if he could, but it was not to be; how he had seen Agnes
+Hardon lying dead, she whom he knew now to have been Agnes Hardon; how
+he had attended the inquest, and then tried to get a Bible that had been
+there mentioned, seeking for it day after day, night after night, ready
+to drop always, but feeling that he should succeed in spite of all.  He
+searched the streets, he said, but all in vain; and at last he began to
+fear that the poor girl to whom Agnes gave the Bible had emulated her
+fate, when he recalled the address of the juryman, found to his delight
+she had been there, and through the stranger's influence obtained the
+prize he sought.
+
+"And now," said Matt, "I'm happy.  I can feel, sir, that I've done one
+little bit of good in my life, and I can go easy.  Now, sir that book."
+
+Septimus, wondering and surprised, turned from Matt to Lucy, sobbing and
+horror-stricken at the old man's recital, for much of what he heard now
+had yet to be explained to him; but the old man was intent upon the
+little Bible, one that Septimus remembered to have seen at home in his
+father's desk.
+
+"Now!" exclaimed the old man, with hands trembling, and eyes appealing,
+lest his hearers should lose anything of what he disclosed; "now look,
+look, look!" he cried, "I fastened it down again, as it was before.  A
+knife, quick!  Now look here," he said huskily, and he tried to insert
+the blade of the penknife given to him beneath the fly-leaf, groaning
+bitterly at his inability, when, with hands trembling nearly as much,
+Septimus took Bible and knife, loosened the paper round, and laid it
+open, when the first thing that met his eyes, in his father's clear
+handwriting, was the date of the marriage, and eighteen months after
+appeared the entry of his birth, while upon the opposite side, in a
+delicate woman's hand, were the words--
+
+  "Agnes Hardon.
+  _The gift of Uncle Octavius_."
+
+"There, there, there, sir!  That's it, isn't it, sir?" cried the old man
+excitedly.  "I wouldn't rest till I'd got it, and 'twas hard work, for
+the poor girl clung to it as the gift of someone she loved; but the more
+she hung back, the more I was set upon having it.  I knew enough of
+binding to see that the end-leaf was gummed down, and under that leaf I
+knew there was what I wanted.  Here; breath!" he gasped; "open the
+window."
+
+Septimus Hardon sat gazing dreamily at the entry in his hand; it was
+indisputable, though he could hardly believe in its truth, while the few
+words he heard coming from the weeping girl seemed only to add to the
+confused state of his mind; but it appeared to him now that the old
+man's condition was the first thing to consider, and placing the book in
+his pocket, he begged that he might try and have him removed to his own
+lodgings.
+
+"No," said Matt feebly, "no; I won't leave here, for somehow these
+people love me after their way, and I seem to think that the end should
+be much what the life has been; and as to doctor, sir, why I've got one
+here," he said, gazing fondly up in Lucy's weeping face, "and if she'll
+stop here, and let me hold her hand, God bless her!  I can go easy, for
+it will seem to keep ill away.  No other doctor's any use, sir.  I'm
+worn out, sir, worn out!"
+
+But Septimus would not be satisfied, and leaving Lucy by the old man's
+side, he fetched assistance to his old friend.
+
+"No hope at all?" he said, as the doctor and he walked together
+afterwards through the dingy shop.
+
+"Not the slightest," said the surgeon once more, as he stood upon the
+doorstep.  "He has never thoroughly recovered from the effects of the
+operations he suffered, and besides, it's the old tale with the poor
+fellow--sorrow, misery, starvation, on the one hand; dissipation, drink,
+late hours on the other.  The poor old fellow speaks the truth; he is
+worn out."
+
+Night came, and Lucy and Septimus still waited by the old man's dying
+bed.  He had slept for some little time, during which interval Lucy had
+replied to her stepfather's many queries--replied as she thought of the
+despair that must have prompted the awful plunge into futurity.  Then
+the old man woke, and talked eagerly for awhile of the future prospects
+of the family.  But soon a change came over his face, his head tossed
+wearily from side to side of his dirty pillow, while often he would
+raise it and stare wildly from face to face, but recognising none, sink
+back again with a pitiful moan.
+
+"Lost life, lost life!  Worn out, worn out!" he kept on muttering as he
+tossed restlessly from side to side, frequently starting and looking
+round as if not knowing where he was.  Then he seemed to sleep
+peacefully for awhile, to open his eyes once more, and smile feebly at
+his visitors, beckoning them to come nearer.
+
+"God bless you both!" he muttered; "it's all over."
+
+Septimus half-rose and would have fetched the doctor again, but Matt
+whispered "No."
+
+"Don't go," he said.  "He can do no good now, nor anyone else; I'm past
+all that.  It's been coming for days past, and I've fought it out; kept
+on till my work was done.  I've never been much good, sir; but now I'm
+worn out.  P'r'aps I might have been different, if I'd had other
+chances; but I was always weak, sir; weak."
+
+He paused again; and Lucy's sobs were the only sounds that broke the
+silence.
+
+"Ah!" said Matt again, feebly; "I've justified many a line, sir; line by
+line--`line upon line,' don't it say somewhere? but I can't justify
+myself.  Dropping out of the old forme, sir; fast--fast now.  But there,
+sir, hold up; for I'm happy enough.  You did me a good turn once, and
+I've tried to pay it back; and since I've known you, and you've been
+ready to be my friends, I've seemed to get proud, and wouldn't do
+anything that should disgrace Miss Lucy here.  But I began too late, and
+I never deserved such friends as I've found; for I've been a poor, weak,
+helpless drinking old galley-slave.  But there, sir," he said with a
+smile, "my case is foul; the sorts are out; and I'm putting away my
+stick for good."
+
+"May I fetch Mr Sterne?" whispered Septimus.
+
+"No, no, no," said the old man wearily; "we were never friends; and I
+can't play the hypocrite, sir.  It's too late, sir; too late!  What I've
+done, I've done.  Let me die in peace, here, with your loving faces by
+me; and fetch poor old Ike in, by and by, for he loves me in his way.
+No, sir; it would be the act of a hypocrite, I fancy, for me to send for
+a clergyman now.  No, Mr Hardon, sir; stay with me to the last; and let
+me hold tightly by this little white hand, and I can go from you hopeful
+and in peace.  For if the great God who sent me here, struggling on
+through a life of care, has made hearts so gentle, and true, and loving,
+that they can weep and sorrow over my poor old battered case, can't I
+hope that He who knows all, and has seen all my helpless weakness, will
+be merciful?  I know, sir, I know.  I might have done better: but it's
+been a life of drive and struggle--money to-day, starve to-morrow, and
+drink always, to hold up and do the work.  I'm sorry, sir, sorry; but
+the sorrow came too late.  I've had a hard life, sir; the wish for
+better things came too late, when I was worn, and shattered, and used
+up; when the day was too far spent, sir; and now the night's coming on
+faster and faster.  Hold my hands tight," he whispered, "for it's
+growing dark and darker; and I'm losing my way."
+
+And now once more there was a long silence, when the old man looked
+eagerly round.
+
+"What time is it?" he asked; and Septimus told him, then, turning
+towards Lucy, the old man whispered--
+
+"Put your hand to my lips, that I may kiss it once before I go;" but she
+leaned over and tenderly kissed him, when he smiled, and some words
+passed, but they were too faint to be heard.  Then he was restless for a
+while; but soon started again, to stare wildly round.  "What's that?" he
+asked.
+
+"Nothing but the wind moaning round the houses," whispered Lucy.
+
+"No," he said with a smile, "nothing but the wind--nothing but the wind
+waiting to scatter the dust."
+
+And now he lay so still and peaceful, that, in answer to Lucy's
+inquiring look, Septimus bent over him again and again; but as he looked
+in that sorrow-ploughed face he could see that the old man still slept,
+while, with the light strong upon her face as she knelt, Lucy seemed no
+mean representative of the angel watching by the old man's side.
+
+"An angel, sir, an angel, sir!" he had mattered again; and then he
+seemed to doze off, muttering the words to himself.
+
+"Worn out!" said Septimus Hardon, as he listened time after time to the
+faintly-borne chimes of Saint Clement's; and then he thought of the
+present revelation, which seemed almost dearly bought in the old man's
+death; of the past; the office in Carey-street, and its sorrows; the
+bitter struggle for mere life; the lodging in Bennett's-rents; and the
+shabby old compositor in his frayed suit, pinching himself that he might
+supply their wants; the watchful care and jealousy with which he had
+tended Lucy to and from the warehouse; the secret they had shared, and
+the old man's chivalrous endurance in tracing out the information; spite
+of all blurs or blots upon his character, ever the same tender,
+true-hearted man, devoted to his friends' interests, and ready with his
+offering, even though it were humble as the cup of cold water that
+should not be without its reward; and now worn out--the poor old setting
+battered and worthless, but the heart true and bright to the last.
+
+The quarters chimed again.  Isaac had been to set up a fresh candle, and
+then retired to his weeping partner; while, now seated upon an old
+work-bench, Septimus Hardon still let his thoughts wander, pausing long
+upon the poverty of the crowded streets of the great City; the
+prosperity crushing down the misery; the swiftly-hurrying stream of
+life, and the striving of the throng to keep afloat, as others pressed
+upon them, climbed upon their shoulders, or, in the madness of despair,
+clung to their legs and dragged them down to the muddy ooze at the
+bottom.  He thought too once more of his own misery, and that of this
+waif, after its long encounter with the storms of life, cast up torn,
+weary, and breathless upon the shore.
+
+Mournfully moaned the wind down the court and at the back of the house,
+making cowls creak and spin, and rattling worn old windows; for it was
+no bright starry night, the clouds gathered black overhead, and sent
+down a pitiless rain to empty the streets, and be caught by the wind and
+dashed against the panes.  By the feeble light in the front shop, Isaac
+could be seen with his head against the wall sleeping heavily; and, worn
+out with watching, his wife had returned to the next house.  Now faintly
+heard in the lulls of the wind came the striking of Saint Clement's
+clock and its laboured chiming, which sounded wild and strange upon the
+night air.
+
+Suddenly Lucy and her stepfather started, for the old man was sitting up
+in bed with one hand raised as if to command silence, and loud, clear,
+and strange, his voice seemed to thrill through the silence as the tones
+of the bells came louder upon the wind.
+
+"Hush!" cried the old man, "the bells!  I set it once, and I've never
+forgotten it--`Ring out the false, ring in the true'--never forgotten
+it," he muttered, as he sank heavily back and spoke in a whisper--"`Ring
+out the false, ring in the true.'  Hands--hands--once again; they're
+ringing out a false and coward heart, and ringing in the true."  Then he
+began to mutter from time to time words connected with his trade--wild
+incoherent words, but strangely fitted to his past life and present
+state; while at times he spoke with such wild bitterness that his
+hearers shuddered, and Isaac came trembling in, leading with him Mr
+Sterne, anxious at their protracted absence.
+
+And so an hour passed, when the dying man had been for some time silent,
+but another kneeling figure had offered a prayer at the bedside; then
+once more the old man began to mutter, at first in a low tone, then
+slowly and aloud.
+
+"Gold, sir, cold; bitter cold for an old man like me--dreary streets,
+sir, and the lamps out--dark, dark--the dull courts and the foggy
+alleys--misery--beggary--starvation.  Bright fields--light and darkness.
+No hypocrite, sir--humbly, with an angel's kiss upon my old lips--a
+seal--purity.  Hark!  Copy and proof--copy and proof--blurred and
+blotted--foul--foul--spelling--outs and doubles--corrections--too late--
+too late.  Wages on Friday night, air; wages, sir--wages of sin--wages--
+death--death--poor girl!--Bleeping--found drowned--the Bible--Agnes
+Hardon--wages--wages--darker and darker--but no hypocrite, sir--with an
+angel's kiss--an angel's--forgive--forgive--for ever and ever--and ev--"
+
+Silence in the room, and the watchers stealing away.
+
+Volume Three, Chapter XVII.
+
+"MY SOLICITORS, SIR!"
+
+It never rains but it pours, and the storm fell heavily now upon the
+head of Doctor Hardon of Somesham.  Through the instrumentality of Mr
+Sterne he was served with the requisite legal notices, which seemed to
+be of the nature of seeds calling up a variety of legal plants, which
+coiled, and twined, and curled round the doctor, threatening to strangle
+him with their powerful tendrils; for he was deeply involved in numerous
+speculative matters, and the fact of his being legally summoned to give
+up his brother's estate, now reduced to quite one-half--for he had
+disposed of all that he could--roused the aggressiveness of the law--a
+law which seemed omniscient as regarded failing men's affairs; and a few
+days after, from information he had received, as the policemen say,
+Septimus Hardon learned that his uncle was in Cursitor-street.
+
+"I would go and see him," said Mr Sterne; "he may feel disposed to give
+up all quietly; and I presume that you would take no steps to enforce
+restitution of what he has sold during his occupation of your rights?"
+
+"No, no; no, no!" exclaimed Septimus; "he is a ruined man."
+
+Septimus Hardon shuddered as he turned into Cursitor-street--dirty,
+cheerless, sponging-housey Cursitor-street of those days, with its legal
+twang and the iron-barred windows of the sheriffs' houses.  There was no
+difficulty in finding the residence of Mr Barjonas, for the brass-plate
+was on the door, though from its colour it was only by supposition that
+the plate was termed brass.  The windows were coated with a preservative
+paste of dirt, while the same composition entered strongly into all the
+domestic arrangements.  In front, the pavement was marked all over with
+cabalistic signs, over which hopped and danced dirty children--young
+clients, perhaps--in company with pieces of broken plate, there called
+"chaney;" the road was decorated with parsnip-cuttings and
+potato-peelings, after the mode adopted in Bennett's-rents; while sundry
+indications pointed to the fact that coffee was much in favour, for the
+grounds found a resting-place in the gutter.  A bashaw-like cock was
+scratching over some scraps of parchment and sawdust-sweepings, but they
+seemed dry, so he refrained from calling up the ladies of his harem--
+two--both of whom were of the breed known as "five-toed Dorkings," and
+in duty bound to be white, but they were of a peculiar tint, like mouldy
+robes.
+
+Septimus Hardon walked up to a thick-lipped gentleman upon the doorstep,
+and, as he seemed disposed to bar the way, told him of his business.
+
+"Show this gedt idto dudber seved," said the officer; for such he was,
+though only holding commission from the sheriff.
+
+A fluey-headed boy, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up to his shoulders to
+display two very thin arms, at the end of one of which he carried a
+black waiter, came forward, performing a sort of shaving operation with
+the edge of the said waiter on his smooth chin, and beckoning to the
+visitor, ushered him into the room known as number seven, where Septimus
+stood in presence of his uncle, and gazed with wonder at the change.
+For the doctor's clothes were growing looser upon him hour by hour, and
+his cheeks hung flabby and in folds above his dirty white neckcloth.
+
+But more than at this Septimus Hardon gazed at his uncle's strange lost
+aspect, as he stood with his gold pencil-case in one hand and a letter
+in the other--a letter which he had read over again and again, and then
+paused to wipe his forehead with his hand.  But it was only a letter of
+upbraiding from his wife, enclosing to him a small scrap which the
+wretched woman had clipped from a newspaper--a paper weeks old, but
+which Fate had ordered should be sent to her; while now she asked her
+ruined lord who was the woman taken from the river, the woman who had
+nursed Eleanor Anderson, and had asked their help and forgiveness at
+that very time.  Upbraidings, words almost of rage, she had sent him in
+that letter, telling him of his obstinacy, and reminding him of the
+times she had implored his forgiveness.  And now these words had come at
+an hour when he could bear no more.  He had read letter and paragraph in
+a dreamy, misty way, thinking of his losses--of his wrongs to his
+nephew, while now the man himself stood before him, perhaps to add his
+revilings.  Worn out with anxiety and sleeplessness, faint with hunger
+and weary calculations of his affairs, the doctor strove for an instant
+to regain command of himself; then stared piteously at his visitor for
+an instant, staggered, grasped at his neckcloth, and fell heavily upon
+the floor.
+
+Time passed; and as soon as the proper legal arrangements were
+completed, Septimus Hardon was to be possessed of his father's much
+reduced property--an estate shorn of its extent, but still what, to a
+poor man, seemed wealth.  In obedience to his wishes, the affairs had
+been arranged in the quietest manner, Septimus Hardon's not being a
+nature to trample upon a fallen man--fallen indeed; for his next visit
+to his uncle was at one of the debtors' prisons, from which there seemed
+no likelihood of his release, so deeply was he involved.
+
+Mrs Doctor Hardon had been to Essex-street the night before begging
+that he would come, for the poor woman was in despair and dread at the
+turn matters were taking; for there the doctor sat as he had sat the
+night through in his shabbily-furnished room, sitting with a heavy frown
+upon his forehead, wrinkled as though the spirit of evil pressed down
+upon him heavily.  Three times over he had sternly bade the weeping
+woman begone--the wife of many years--who, her fit of bitter anger
+passed, now hung about the gates of a morning until they were opened,
+and would then have laid her grey head upon his shoulder as she
+whispered comfort.  But no; her lot was to pace wearily up and down; and
+the doctor sat alone, hour after hour, brooding over his fall; the
+proofs brought forward that his was a fraud; the curse that had seemed
+to attend the money; the failure of venture after venture that he had
+looked upon as certainties; the gnawing agony of his heart for the
+daughter he had lost, but who was to have been forgiven at some future
+time--always at some time in the future--a season put off till it was
+too late, and she had gone for forgiveness elsewhere; while, above all,
+there was a strange wild impending dread overtopping every cloud and
+driving him to turn over and over in his pocket a small-stoppered
+bottle--a bottle without a label, and held so long in his hand that the
+glass was hot.
+
+A noble mansion had the doctor built in imagination: one that should be
+wondrous in its prosperity and endurance, but it had no foundation--a
+bit had crumbled here, a wall there cracked, then a corner had given way
+(a key to the whole), and with a crash the fabric had come down--so that
+the builder's spirit was crushed as here he sat, shrunk and limp,
+waiting for the news of some fresh calamity, some new fall that should
+crush him yet more; for in his wild dreams he had seen his brother
+threatening him, and Septimus triumphantly shaking the will in his face.
+And so he sat on, hour after hour, clasping the tiny bottle in his
+hand--containing what?  But a spoonful of some limpid fluid; while the
+stricken man still listened as if for something that he expected to
+happen that day.
+
+There he sat, without fire, but feeling not the cold, hearing not the
+imploring whispered words of his wife--words uttered at the door after
+he had dismissed her, to wander up and down or sit shivering, and
+refusing the offered hospitality of some feeling fellow-prisoner.
+
+Deeper grew the wrinkles upon the doctor's brow as he sat.  He had taken
+nothing for many hours, but a wine-glass stood upon the table, and more
+than once a trembling hand had been stretched out to grasp it.  But he
+would wait another hour, he would wait until that other crushing news
+came, that other news hidden from his sight as by a black curtain, which
+ever trembled as though about to be raised.  He would wait until the
+clocks struck again, just to think; though each stroke of hammer upon
+bell sounded funereally upon his ear.  Again another hour, and another,
+and so on through the long night, through the grey, cold dawn, and again
+after the bright rising of the sun, which brought no hope to him.
+
+"Only one other hour," said the crouching man, and the words hissed
+between his fevered lips.  "Only another hour!" he muttered, while his
+bloodshot eyes seemed to dilate as he drew forth the bottle and held it
+up to the light, shook it, and, watched the bright beads that trickled
+down the sides of the glass.  His unshorn beard and sunken cheeks gave
+him a strangely haggard look; such that those who had known him in
+former days would have passed him without recognition.
+
+Suddenly there was a step in the long corridor--one of many, but a step
+that he seemed to know; and then followed low voices, and the sound of a
+woman sobbing.
+
+It had come at last--he had waited, and it was here--and a bitter smile
+trembled, it did not play, round the lips of Doctor Hardon, as he once
+more drew forth the bottle.
+
+"This, this, this!" he kept on hissing in a harsh whisper as he smiled,
+thinking that the dark curtain which trembled in front would show him
+the future and not the present.  And now he tried to draw forth the
+little stopper, but it was immovable.  He tore at it fiercely, and then
+seized it with his teeth, but it broke short off, and he spat the piece
+angrily upon the floor.
+
+"Now, now!" he muttered, as though there was not a moment to spare,
+while with trembling hand he seized the poker, and, holding the bottle
+above the wine-glass, struck it sharply, shivered it to atoms, and the
+liquid, mingled with sharp fragments, fell into the vessel, a large
+portion splashing over the table and moistening the doctor's hand.
+
+"Now, now!" he muttered, seizing the glass; and as he gave one glance at
+the bright blue wintry sky, he raised the little vessel hesitatingly to
+his lips.  Then the door was pushed open, Mrs Hardon stepped in,
+shrieked, and dashed the undrained glass from her husband's hand, so
+that it fell shivered upon the cold hearthstone, when, falling at his
+feet and clutching his knees, the unhappy woman sobbed loudly:
+
+"O Tom, Tom, ask him to forgive us!" but the doctor only stood glaring
+at his visitor.
+
+"Indeed, indeed, Septimus, I never knew it," sobbed Mrs Hardon.
+
+"It is of the past--let it rest," said her nephew, who could not remove
+his eyes from his uncle, now smiling feebly and pointing to the
+chamber-door.
+
+"Why would you provoke this painful scene?" he said in an injured tone.
+"You must have known, sir, that the interview would be most unfortunate.
+Pray go.  My solicitors, Messrs. Keening.  Every arrangement has been
+made, and the funeral will take place to-morrow."
+
+Mrs Hardon started up, and stood clasping one of her husband's hands as
+she looked aghast in his face, while he continued in the same feeble
+voice:
+
+"No will, sir--illegitimate--pray leave--most painful," and with his
+disengaged hand he still pointed towards the door.  "My solicitors, sir,
+Messrs. Keening."
+
+"Pray--pray go," whispered Mrs Hardon.  "He is worn out, and ill with
+anxiety.  I'll--I'll write, Septimus," and she hurried her visitor to
+the door.  "But don't--don't punish us for what is past," she said
+imploringly.
+
+The look of Septimus Hardon was sufficient as he turned to the unhappy
+woman; and then he stepped into the passage with the intention of
+fetching medical assistance, for, as the door closed, he once more heard
+the doctor's voice: "My solicitors, sir, Messrs. Keening.  Pray go."
+
+Volume Three, Chapter XVIII.
+
+THE LAKE UNCAGED.
+
+That was only a poor wedding that Jean Marais, with a bright spot in
+each of his sallow cheeks and a wild look in his dark eyes, gazed down
+upon from the gloomy old gallery of the church; only a quiet wedding
+that those two eager eyes had gazed upon, when their crippled owner had
+climbed slowly and laboriously up to the gallery to watch unseen, while
+the ceremony was performed which gave Lucy Grey to her happy husband;
+but beneath those wild eyes there were convulsed features, cracked and
+quivering lips.
+
+And the lark?  He bore his treasure with him, the bird she had loved to
+hear; it nestled in his breast, and a stall-keeper hard by took charge
+of the cage.  And there watched Jean unseen, while Lucy, turning her
+eyes upon her husband, accompanied him into the vestry.
+
+Then below in the nave there was the buzz of expectation as the party
+came from the vestry--Lucy, blushing and fair, leaning upon the curate's
+arm; and he, proud of the treasure he had won, walking happy and elate
+by her side.  But it was only a poor wedding--poor in the show that was
+made and in those who assembled; for Bennett's-rents was empty that
+morning, and Mrs Sims' sniff was heard again and again, just inside the
+chancel; while the only wonder was that some of the children gathered
+together were not crushed beneath the wheels of the conveyances.
+
+It was only a poor affair, but there was a light in many a face there
+that would have outshone the glories of a fashionable wedding.  Even
+Mrs Septimus forgot her troubles, and confided more than once to Aunt
+Fanny that she thought her complaint had got the turn.
+
+But there knelt Jean the cripple, alone in the gallery, till the last
+looker-on had left, the last wheel rolled from the gate, and a sad
+stillness had fallen upon the empty church, when, with a bitter,
+heart-wrung cry, the young man crouched lower and lower, burying his
+face in his hands.  Then he slowly rose, and taking his crutch,
+painfully made his way towards the narrow door, his looks worn and
+weary, but with a strange light in his eye.
+
+Pausing at length in the busy street, he took from his breast the bird
+he had so long tended, and started slightly, but with a bitter smile
+upon his lips, for in his emotion he had crushed the poor thing, and it
+panted feebly, with half-closed eye and open beak; but Jean only smiled.
+And with the same sad look he replaced the bird in his bosom, and then
+slowly and laboriously crept along, side by side, with the hurrying
+stream of passengers.  Toiling on slowly and patiently, his crutch
+sounding loudly upon the pavement, with the same bitter look fixed as it
+were upon his lip, Jean Marais slowly toiled on till he was lost in the
+crowd.
+
+Only a poor wedding; but Aunt Fanny was there, laughing and crying by
+turns, and vowing that she heard every word of the service, and that
+Arthur never spoke out so well before.  And what a dress the old lady
+wore! surely no poplin ever before displayed such plaits; and then,
+forgetful of dress, plaits, muslin, everything, was it not a treat to
+see her take Lucy to her warm old heart when they had returned to
+Essex-street, as the fair girl knelt at her feet, the large eyes gazing
+up so appealingly, and seeming to say--"Don't despise me for being so
+humble!"  But, there; had she been a princess, she could have had no
+warmer nook in the old dame's heart, for was not Arthur happy?  And then
+those arms, that of old lay so placidly across her black-silk apron--
+worn even at the return from the wedding, and brought in a reticule--
+became restless to a degree, ever animated by the desire to embrace her
+children.
+
+Did she love Lucy?  Had not Arthur, the wisest of men, chosen her? and
+did not that spread such a mantle of holiness around the maiden that,
+even had Aunt Fanny never seen her, she would have battled for her to
+the death?  Would he have chosen any but the purest and noblest of
+heart? she asked herself again and again.  So she divided her love
+between them, and then, upon the return from church, laughed and cried
+by turns; for, said she, "I must leave poor Arty now."
+
+Arthur Sterne was silent, but he smiled as he saw two soft round arms
+circle Aunt Fanny's neck, prisoning her as their owner whispered words
+whose import he could guess.
+
+A quiet repast, and a short interval of preparation before the start for
+a trip, only some miles from town, an easy drive, for a few days' visit
+to where the sweet breath of the country blew; and then the elders
+standing at the door watching the departing vehicle, and the waving
+hands, as the wheels rattled along the echoing street; and then
+upstairs, for Aunt Fanny and Mrs Septimus to talk of their children,
+while Septimus Hardon roamed the streets.
+
+"O, the bright lovely country!" cried Lucy, as the carriage rolled on
+between hedgerows here and there silvered with the scented May, whose
+fragrance was borne by the light breeze through the open windows.  "O,
+the bright lovely country!" she cried; "am I not foolish, Arthur?" she
+sobbed; "but the tears will come, for I feel that this happiness cannot
+last!"
+
+The word "Arthur" was spoken hesitatingly, as if it were strange to her
+lips, and she hardly dared to use it; her eyes were fixed for a moment
+upon those of her husband, and then she glided down to the bottom of the
+fly and kneeled at his feet, as he fondly parted the hair upon her broad
+forehead.
+
+"You are not angry with me for being so childish?" she murmured.
+
+"Angry!" he replied, and the tone in which he said that word was
+sufficient.
+
+"Don't think me foolish," she said; "but let us walk a little here,
+where the grass borders the road; for it seems wrong to hurry past the
+lovely green trees, after the close misery of London.  They are new to
+me, Arthur; and look! look! there are flowers, and birds; and see how
+the bright sunshine dances amongst the leaves.  But, there," she said
+sadly; "you smile at my folly, and forget what all this is to me, after
+years of prisoning London."
+
+But the next minute the fly had stopped, and, relieved of its load,
+resumed its way; and, happy and proud, Arthur Sterne looked down upon
+his newly-wedded wife, elate to see the pure, intense love of all that
+was beautiful in nature which emanated from this escaped prisoner of
+life; while Lucy was divided between delight of the scene around her,
+and reproach for her so-called indifference towards her husband.  And so
+they walked, inhaling the sweets of the early summer afternoon, and
+finding in them joys known only to those who have escaped but freshly
+from the great City's miseries.  And still on and on, almost in silence,
+enveloped as they were in the happiness of the present.
+
+"Listen!" cried Lucy, as she stopped suddenly, and laid a finger upon
+her husband's lip--a finger now white and delicate, once fretted and
+work-worn.  "Listen!" she whispered, "and close your eyes.  Might not
+that be poor Jean's lark?" and then both stood listening, as in those
+days of the past, when their prisoned souls had gazed up eagerly into
+the bright blue sky, and they had drunk in the pure gushing lay of the
+speckled songster.
+
+"Tears, more tears, Lucy?" whispered the curate.  "Are you not happy?"
+
+No words came for a reply, nothing but a look; as the bright eyes
+brimmed over, and a sob rose from the burdened heart.
+
+"It seems too much--as if it could not last," whispered Lucy; "and that
+song brought back so many sorrows, dear--the court, and so much of the
+past.  But you will forgive me, Arthur?"
+
+Again the same hesitating speech, as if it were an assumption upon her
+part to call him by his name, and she half dreaded rebuke.
+
+"What does the driver want?" said Mr Sterne; for the man was shouting
+and making signs.
+
+By the time they had overtaken the vehicle, the man had dismounted and
+was by the bank, stooping over a reclining figure; and on approaching
+nearer, the curate recognised the cripple, Jean, lying apparently
+asleep, holding his lark to his lips, while his crutch was by his side.
+But if the master slept, it was not so with the bird; for its soft
+feathers were ruffled, its wings half-open, and the lids drawn partly
+over the little dark, bead-like eyes; the crest lay smooth, the
+throat-feathers rose not, the wings had fluttered for the last time; the
+bright, gushing lay would thrill through prisoned hearts in
+Bennett's-rents no more--the lark was dead.
+
+And its master?  To get one more look, one farewell glance, he had
+toiled wearily on, mile after mile, towards the village where he had
+heard they would rest; and on he pressed, with a strength evoked by the
+despair of his heart, till he had sat down to rest by the wayside and
+sunk back exhausted.
+
+In an instant Lucy was upon her knees by his side and had raised his
+head, while her husband's hand was in the cripple's breast.  Then he
+slowly opened his eyes and stared wildly round till they rested upon her
+who supported his head, when his features softened, and a smile came
+once more upon his lips as they seemed to part to form the words
+"Good-bye!"
+
+And then slowly and imperceptibly the smile faded from his lip, the
+light from his eye; and as they gazed upon him, a cold sternness stole
+over the poor youth's countenance, till, with agony depicted in her
+every feature, Lucy looked up appealingly at her husband.
+
+But Jean was dead--passed away; for he had toiled through the streets,
+nerved by a stern determination--a wild despair--on through the suburbs,
+and so out into the country; the one purpose always in his mind--to be
+where she would come once more; on still, slowly, painfully, hour after
+hour, till he sank exhausted, to die of a ruptured blood-vessel.
+
+And still, of a summer's evening, may the lounger in the great streets
+of the West come upon a knot of idlers; and, pausing for a few moments,
+listen to divers sharply-uttered commands given in French to a pair of
+wretched poodles; who fetch and carry, rise erect, and march about with
+aspect doleful and disconsolate, till a few of the bystanders drop
+halfpence in the basket one of the dogs carries in his mouth.  Then a
+fresh pitch is made; the performance again gone through; and then on
+again; on after _ma mere_ of the sharp and eager look--the harsh,
+cracked voice; on again, with drooping ears and tail--unlionlike of
+aspect; on again, perhaps to cast a look of envy at some free and
+rollicking idle dog, or of condolence at the miserable sharp-eyed monkey
+performing on the table, rapid in every moment, but more rapid in the
+glance of its little dark, blow-watching eye.  And at last, when the
+streets grow thin of passengers, and the dogs tired and blundering, home
+to the court where they dwell--a court yet standing, though
+Bennett's-rents is no more; another court, where the flags lie broken,
+and the refuse-choked channel festers with the water from the hard-used
+pump; where the children revel by day in the dirt and filth, and Death
+oft and oft again beckons the undertaker to come with his shambling
+horse and shabby Shillibeer-hearse; where the pigeons cluster upon the
+housetops and coo at daybreak, and then circle in flights, while men of
+the Jarker stamp urge them on.  Home, to another old house, and up the
+groaning stairs, where even by night the twittering of birds can be
+heard in lodgers' rooms--prisoners dwelling in a prison within a prison;
+here, too, the click of a sewing-machine--patent--man's make; there, the
+sigh of a sewing-machine--not patent--God's make; and up the rickety
+stairs to another attic, where cages hang--empty cages, kept because
+they were those of Jean; where the crutch stands in the corner beneath
+the lark's home, brought back by the neighbour who keeps a stall, but
+empty too: canaries, linnets, finches, passed away; while the lark lies
+upon the breast of its master--the cripple Jean--and the turf grows
+green above his resting-place at Highgate.
+
+"_En avant--venez donc--mes chiens_!  Home!" though it be not
+Bennett's-rents.
+
+Volume Three, Chapter XIX.
+
+MAD.
+
+In one of those vast piles of building a short distance down the main
+line of a great railway, a strange-looking elderly man, and one whose
+dress bespeaks the clergyman, are passing from ward to ward upon a
+visit.  The man with them, in his quiet livery, raises the brass-chained
+key he carries to open lock after lock--one key for hundreds--and they
+pass on by sights of the most sorrowful; for they are amongst those of
+their fellows in whom the light of reason burns but dimly or is extinct.
+At last they stand by a window looking upon an extensive yard, where
+some fifty patients clothed in grey serge walk about for exercise--some
+hurriedly, some talking, some excited, others calm.  And now one visitor
+lays a trembling hand upon his companion's arm as, nearing the window,
+comes a portly, grey, smiling man, rolling solemnly along with imposing
+gait, wearing a stiff white-paper cravat, with a card snuff-box in his
+hand and a straw-plait chain meandering over his grey serge vest.  Quiet
+and harmless, he goes about the yard feeling the pulses of his
+fellow-patients, and nods at them and smiles encouragement.
+
+"Is there any prospect of his recovery?" says the clergyman to the
+warder, who is looking unconcernedly on.
+
+"Whose, sir?" says the attendant.  "His? the doctor's?  O no, sir, not
+the least.  Stark mad!"
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mad, by George Manville Fenn
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