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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Stories by English Authors: England, by  Various
+
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+Title: Stories by English Authors: England
+
+Author:  Various
+
+Release Date: July, 2004  [EBook #6039]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 23, 2002]
+[Date last updated: July 16, 2006]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, STORIES BY ENGLISH AUTHORS: ENGLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks, Nicole
+Apostola and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+STORIES BY ENGLISH AUTHORS
+
+ENGLAND
+
+
+THE BOX TUNNEL BY CHARLES READE
+MINIONS OF THE MOON BY F. W. ROBINSON
+THE FOUR-FIFTEEN EXPRESS BY AMELIA B. EDWARDS
+THE WRONG BLACK BAG BY ANGELO LEWIS
+THE THREE STRANGERS BY THOMAS HARDY
+MR. LISMORE AND THE WIDOW BY WILKIE COLLINS
+THE PHILOSOPHER IN THE APPLE ORCHARD BY ANTHONY HOPE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BOX TUNNEL
+
+BY CHARLES READE
+
+
+
+
+
+The 10:15 train glided from Paddington May 7, 1847. In the left
+compartment of a certain first-class carriage were four passengers;
+of these two were worth description. The lady had a smooth, white,
+delicate brow, strongly marked eyebrows, long lashes, eyes that
+seemed to change colour, and a good-sized, delicious mouth, with
+teeth as white as milk. A man could not see her nose for her eyes
+and mouth; her own sex could, and would have told us some nonsense
+about it. She wore an unpretending grayish dress, buttoned to
+the throat with lozenge-shaped buttons, and a Scottish shawl that
+agreeably evaded colour. She was like a duck, so tight her plain
+feathers fitted her, and there she sat, smooth, snug, and delicious,
+with a book in her hand and a soupcon of her wrist just visible as
+she held it. Her opposite neighbour was what I call a good style
+of man, the more to his credit since he belonged to a corporation
+that frequently turns out the worst imaginable style of young men.
+He was a cavalry officer, aged twenty-five. He had a moustache,
+but not a very repulsive one--not one of those subnasal pigtails on
+which soup is suspended like dew on a shrub; it was short, thick,
+and black as a coal. His teeth had not yet been turned by tobacco
+smoke to the colour of juice; his clothes did not stick to nor
+hang to him; he had an engaging smile, and, what I liked the dog
+for, his vanity, which was inordinate, was in its proper place, his
+heart, not in his face, jostling mine and other people's who have
+none; in a word, he was what one oftener hears of than meets--a
+young gentleman. He was conversing in an animated whisper with
+a companion, a fellow-officer; they were talking about what it is
+far better not to--women. Our friend clearly did not wish to be
+overheard; for he cast ever and anon a furtive glance at his fair
+vis-a-vis and lowered his voice. She seemed completely absorbed
+in her book, and that reassured him. At last the two soldiers came
+down to a whisper (the truth must be told); the one who got down
+at Slough, and was lost to posterity, bet ten pounds to three that
+he who was going down with us to Bath and immortality would not
+kiss either of the ladies opposite upon the road. "Done, done!" Now
+I am sorry a man I have hitherto praised should have lent himself,
+even in a whisper, to such a speculation; "but nobody is wise at
+all hours," not even when the clock is striking five and twenty,
+and you are to consider his profession, his good looks, and the
+temptation--ten to three.
+
+After Slough the party was reduced to three. At Twylford one lady
+dropped her handkerchief; Captain Dolignan fell on it like a lamb;
+two or three words were interchanged on this occasion. At Reading
+the Marlborough of our tale made one of the safe investments of that
+day; he bought a "Times" and "Punch"--the latter full of steel-pen
+thrusts and woodcuts. Valour and beauty deigned to laugh at some
+inflamed humbug or other punctured by "Punch." Now laughing together
+thaws our human ice; long before Swindon it was a talking-match;
+at Swindon who so devoted as Captain Dolignan? He handed them out,
+he souped them, he tough-chickened them, he brandied and cochinealed
+one, and he brandied and burnt-sugared the other; on their return
+to the carriage one lady passed into the inner compartment to
+inspect a certain gentleman's seat on that side of the line.
+
+Reader, had it been you or I, the beauty would have been the
+deserter, the average one would have stayed with us till all was
+blue, ourselves included; not more surely does our slice of bread
+and butter, when it escapes from our hand, revolve it ever so often,
+alight face downward on the carpet. But this was a bit of a fop,
+Adonis, dragoon, --so Venus remained in tete-a-tete with him. You
+have seen a dog meet an unknown female of his species; how handsome,
+how _empresse_, how expressive he becomes: such was Dolignan
+after Swindon, and, to do the dog justice, he got handsome and
+handsomer. And you have seen a cat conscious of approaching cream:
+such was Miss Haythorn; she became demurer and demurer. Presently
+our captain looked out of the window and laughed; this elicited an
+inquiring look from Miss Haythorn.
+
+"We are only a mile from the Box Tunnel."
+
+"Do you always laugh a mile from the Box Tunnel?" said the lady.
+
+"Invariably."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Why, hem! it is a gentleman's joke."
+
+Captain Dolignan then recounted to Miss Haythorn the following:
+
+"A lady and her husband sat together going through the Box Tunnel;
+there was one gentleman opposite; it was pitch-dark. After the
+tunnel the lady said, 'George, how absurd of you to salute me going
+through the tunnel!' 'I did no such thing.' 'You didn't?' 'No;
+why?' 'Because somehow I thought you did!'"
+
+Here Captain Dolignan laughed and endeavoured to lead his companion
+to laugh, but it was not to be done. The train entered the tunnel.
+
+_Miss Haythorn._ Ah!
+
+_Dolignan._ What is the matter?
+
+_Miss Haythorn._ I am frightened.
+
+_Dolignan_ (moving to her side). Pray do not be alarmed; I am
+near you.
+
+_Miss Haythorn._ You are near me--very near me indeed, Captain
+Dolignan.
+
+_Dolignan._ You know my name?
+
+_Miss Haythorn._ I heard you mention it. I wish we were out
+of this dark place.
+
+_Dolignan._ I could be content to spend hours here reassuring
+you, my dear lady.
+
+_Miss Haythorn._ Nonsense!
+
+_Dolignan._ Pweep! (Grave reader, do not put your lips to the
+next pretty creature you meet, or will understand what this means.)
+
+_Miss Haythorn._ Ee! Ee!
+
+_Friend._ What is the matter?
+
+_Miss Haythorn._ Open the door! Open the door!
+
+There was a sound of hurried whispers; the door was shut and the
+blind pulled down with hostile sharpness.
+
+If any critic falls on me for putting inarticulate sounds in a
+dialogue as above, I answer, with all the insolence I can command
+at present, "Hit boys as big as yourself"--bigger, perhaps, such
+as Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes; they began it, and I
+learned it of them sore against my will.
+
+Miss Haythorn's scream lost most of its effect because the engine
+whistled forty thousand murders at the same moment, and fictitious
+grief makes itself heard when real cannot.
+
+Between the tunnel and Bath our young friend had time to ask himself
+whether his conduct had been marked by that delicate reserve which
+is supposed to distinguish the perfect gentleman.
+
+With a long face, real or feigned, he held open the door; his late
+friends attempted to escape on the other side; impossible! they must
+pass him. She whom he had insulted (Latin for kissed) deposited
+somewhere at his feet a look of gentle, blushing reproach; the
+other, whom he had not insulted, darted red-hot daggers at him from
+her eyes; and so they parted.
+
+It was perhaps fortunate for Dolignan that he had the grace to be
+a friend to Major Hoskyns of his regiment, a veteran laughed at
+by the youngsters, for the major was too apt to look coldly upon
+billiard-balls and cigars; he had seen cannon-balls and linstocks. He
+had also, to tell the truth, swallowed a good bit of the mess-room
+poker, which made it as impossible for Major Hoskyns to descend
+to an ungentlemanlike word or action as to brush his own trousers
+below the knee.
+
+Captain Dolignan told this gentleman his story in gleeful accents;
+but Major Hoskyns heard him coldly, and as coldly answered that he
+had known a man to lose his life for the same thing.
+
+"That is nothing," continued the major, "but unfortunately he
+deserved to lose it."
+
+At this blood mounted to the younger man's temples, and his senior
+added, "I mean to say he was thirty-five; you, I presume, are
+twenty-one!"
+
+"Twenty-five."
+
+"That is much the same thing; will you be advised by me?"
+
+"If you will advise me."
+
+"Speak to no one of this, and send White the three pounds, that he
+may think you have lost the bet."
+
+"That is hard, when I won it."
+
+"Do it, for all that, sir."
+
+Let the disbelievers in human perfectibility know that this dragoon,
+capable of a blush, did this virtuous action, albeit with violent
+reluctance; and this was his first damper. A week after these events
+he was at a ball. He was in that state of factitious discontent
+which belongs to us amiable English. He was looking in vain for
+a lady equal in personal attraction to the idea he had formed of
+George Dolignan as a man, when suddenly there glided past him a
+most delightful vision--a lady whose beauty and symmetry took him
+by the eyes; another look: "It can't be! Yes, it is!" Miss Haythorn!
+(not that he knew her name), but what an apotheosis!
+
+The duck had become a peahen--radiant, dazzling; she looked twice
+as beautiful and almost twice as large as before. He lost sight of
+her; he found her again. She was so lovely she made him ill, and
+he alone must not dance with her, speak to her. If he had been
+content to begin her acquaintance the usual way it might have ended
+in kissing; it must end in nothing. As she danced sparks of beauty
+fell from her on all around but him; she did not see him; it
+was clear she never would see him. One gentleman was particularly
+assiduous; she smiled on his assiduity; he was ugly, but she smiled
+on him. Dolignan was surprised at his success, his ill taste, his
+ugliness, his impertinence. Dolignan at last found himself injured;
+who was this man? and what right had he to go on so? "He never
+kissed her, I suppose," said Dolle. Dolignan could not prove it,
+but he felt that somehow the rights of property were invaded. He
+went home and dreamed of Miss Haythorn, and hated all the ugly
+successful. He spent a fortnight trying to find out who his beauty
+was; he never could encounter her again. At last he heard of her
+in this way: a lawyer's clerk paid him a little visit and commenced
+a little action against him in the name of Miss Haythorn for
+insulting her in a railway-train.
+
+The young gentleman was shocked, endeavoured to soften the lawyer's
+clerk; that machine did not thoroughly comprehend the meaning of
+the term. The lady's name, however, was at last revealed by this
+untoward incident; from her name to her address was but a short
+step, and the same day our crestfallen hero lay in wait at her door,
+and many a succeeding day, without effect. But one fine afternoon
+she issued forth quite naturally, as if she did it every day,
+and walked briskly on the parade. Dolignan did the same, met and
+passed her many times on the parade, and searched for pity in her
+eyes, but found neither look nor recognition nor any other sentiment;
+for all this she walked and walked till all the other promenaders
+were tired and gone; then her culprit summoned resolution, and,
+taking off his hat, with a voice for the first time tremulous,
+besought permission to address her. She stopped, blushed, and neither
+acknowledged nor disowned his acquaintance. He blushed, stammered
+out how ashamed he was, how he deserved to be punished, how he
+was punished, how little she knew how unhappy he was, and concluded
+by begging her not to let all the world know the disgrace of a man
+who was already mortified enough by the loss of her acquaintance.
+She asked an explanation; he told her of the action that had been
+commenced in her name; she gently shrugged her shoulders, and
+said, "How stupid they are!" Emboldened by this, he begged to know
+whether or not a life of distant unpretending devotion would, after
+a lapse of years, erase the memory of his madness--his crime!
+
+She did not know!
+
+She must now bid him adieu, as she had some preparations to make
+for a ball in the Crescent, where everybody was to be. They parted,
+and Dolignan determined to be at the ball where everybody was to
+be. He was there, and after some time he obtained an introduction
+to Miss Haythorn and he danced with her. Her manner was gracious.
+With the wonderful tact of her sex, she seemed to have commenced the
+acquaintance that evening. That night for the first time Dolignan
+was in love. I will spare the reader all a lover's arts by which he
+succeeded in dining where she dined, in dancing where she danced,
+in overtaking her by accident when she rode. His devotion followed
+her to church, where the dragoon was rewarded by learning there
+is a world where they neither polk nor smoke, the two capital
+abominations of this one.
+
+He made an acquaintance with her uncle, who liked him, and he saw
+at last with joy that her eye loved to dwell upon him when she
+thought he did not observe her. It was three months after the Box
+Tunnel that Captain Dolignan called one day upon Captain Haythorn,
+R.N., whom he had met twice in his life, and slightly propitiated
+by violently listening to a cutting-out expedition; he called,
+and in the usual way asked permission to pay his addresses to his
+daughter. The worthy captain straightway began doing quarter-deck,
+when suddenly he was summoned from the apartment by a mysterious
+message. On his return he announced, with a total change of voice,
+that it was all right, and his visitor might run alongside as
+soon as he chose. My reader has divined the truth; this nautical
+commander, terrible to the foe, was in complete and happy subjugation
+to his daughter, our heroine.
+
+As he was taking leave, Dolignan saw his divinity glide into
+the drawing-room. He followed her, observed a sweet consciousness
+deepen into confusion; she tried to laugh, and cried instead, and
+then she smiled again; when he kissed her hand at the door it was
+"George" and "Marian" instead of "Captain" this and "Miss" the
+other.
+
+A reasonable time after this (for my tale is merciful and skips
+formalities and torturing delays) these two were very happy; they
+were once more upon the railroad, going to enjoy their honeymoon all
+by themselves. Marian Dolignan was dressed just as before--duck-like
+and delicious, all bright except her clothes; but George sat beside
+her this time instead of opposite, and she drank him in gently from
+her long eyelashes.
+
+"Marian," said George, "married people should tell each other all.
+Will you ever forgive me if I own to you; no--"
+
+"Yes, yes!"
+
+"Well then, you remember the Box Tunnel?" (This was the first
+allusion he had ventured to it.) "I am ashamed to say I had three
+pounds to ten pounds with White I would kiss one of you two ladies,"
+and George, pathetic externally, chuckled within.
+
+"I know that, George; I overheard you," was the demure reply.
+
+"Oh! you overheard me! Impossible."
+
+"And did you not hear me whisper to my companion? I made a bet with
+her."
+
+"You made a bet? how singular! What was it?"
+
+"Only a pair of gloves, George."
+
+"Yes, I know; but what about it?"
+
+"That if you did you should be my husband, dearest."
+
+"Oh! but stay; then you could not have been so very angry with me,
+love. Why, dearest, then you brought that action against me."
+
+Mrs. Dolignan looked down.
+
+"I was afraid you were forgetting me! George, you will never forgive
+me?"
+
+"Sweet angel! why, here is the Box Tunnel!"
+
+Now, reader--fie! no! no such thing! you can't expect to be
+indulged in this way every time we come to a dark place. Besides,
+it is not the thing. Consider--two sensible married people. No
+such phenomenon, I assure you, took place. No scream in hopeless
+rivalry of the engine--this time!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MINIONS OF THE MOON
+
+BY F. W. ROBINSON
+
+
+
+
+
+Our story is of the time when George III was king, and our scene of
+action lies only at an old farm-house six miles or so from Finchley
+--a quaint, ramshackle, commodious, old-fashioned, thatched farm-house
+that we see only in pictures now, and which has long since been
+improved off the face of the earth.
+
+It was a farm estate that was flourishing bravely in those dear
+disreputable days when the people paid fivepence a pound for bread,
+and only dared curse Protection in their hearts; when few throve
+and many starved, and younger sons of gentry, without interest at
+court or Parliament, either cut the country which served them so
+badly, or took to business on the king's highway and served the
+country badly in return.
+
+The Maythorpe Farm belonged to the Pemberthys, and had descended
+from father to son from days lying too far back to reckon up just
+now; and a rare, exclusive, conservative, bad-tempered, long-headed
+race the Pemberthys had always borne the reputation of being,
+feathering their own nests well, and dying in them fat and prosperous.
+
+There were a good many Pemberthys scattered about the home and
+midland counties, but it was generally understood in the family
+that the head of the clan, as it were, lived at Maythorpe Farm,
+near Finchley, and here the Pemberthys would forgather on any
+great occasion, such as a marriage, a funeral, or a christening,
+the funeral taking precedence for numbers. There had been a grand
+funeral at Maythorpe Farm only a few days before our story opens,
+for Reuben Pemberthy had been consigned to his fathers at the early
+age of forty-nine. Reuben Pemberthy had left one son behind him,
+also named Reuben, a stalwart, heavy-browed, good-looking young
+fellow, who, at two and twenty, was quite as well able to manage
+the farm and everybody on it as his father had been before him.
+He had got rid of all his relatives save two six days after his
+father's funeral; and those two were stopping by general consent,
+because it was signed, sealed, and delivered by those whom it
+most concerned, that the younger woman, his cousin, pretty Sophie
+Tarne, was to be married before the year was out to the present
+Reuben Pemberthy, who had wooed her and won her consent when he
+went down to her mother's house at King's Norton for a few days'
+trip last summer. Being a steady, handsome fellow, who made love
+in downright earnest, he impressed Sophie's eighteen years, and
+was somewhat timidly but graciously accepted as an affianced suitor.
+It was thought at King's Norton that Mrs. Tarne had done a better
+stroke of business in the first year of her widowhood than her
+late husband had done--always an unlucky wretch, Timothy--in the
+whole course of his life. And now Sophie Tarne and her mother were
+staying for a few days longer at Maythorpe Farm after the funeral.
+
+Mrs. Tarne, having been a real Pemberthy before her unfortunate
+marriage with the improvident draper of King's Norton, was quite
+one of the family, and seemed more at home at Finchley than was
+the new widow, Mrs. Pemberthy, a poor, unlucky lady, a victim to
+a chronic state of twittering and jingling and twitching, but one
+who, despite her shivers, had made the late Reuben a good wife,
+and was a fair housekeeper even now, although superintending
+housekeeping in jumps, like a palsy-stricken kangaroo.
+
+So Sophie and her bustling mother were of material assistance
+to Mrs. Pemberthy; and the presence of Sophie in that house of
+mourning--where the mourning had been speedily got over and business
+had begun again with commendable celerity--was a considerable source
+of comfort to young Reuben, when he had leisure after business hours,
+which was not always the case, to resume those tender relations
+which had borne to him last autumn such happy fruit of promise.
+
+Though there was not much work to do at the farm in the winter-time,
+when the nights were long and the days short, yet Reuben Pemberthy
+was generally busy in one way or another; and on the particular
+day on which our story opens Reuben was away at High Barnet.
+
+It had been a dull, dark day, followed by a dull, dark night.
+The farm servants had gone to their homes, save the few that were
+attached to the premises, such as scullery-maids and dairymaids;
+and Mrs. Pemberthy, Mrs. Tarne, and her daughter Sophie were waiting
+early supper for Reuben, and wondering what kept him so long from
+his home and his sweetheart.
+
+Mrs. Tarne, accustomed, mayhap, to the roar and bustle of King's
+Norton, found the farm at Finchley a trifle dull and lonely,--not
+that in a few days after a funeral she could expect any excessive
+display of life or frivolity,--and, oppressed a bit that evening,
+was a trifle nervous as to the whereabouts of her future son-in-law,
+who had faithfully promised to be home a clear hour and a half
+before the present time, and whose word might be always taken to
+be as good as his bond. Mrs. Tarne was the most restless of the
+three women. Good Mrs. Pemberthy, though physically shaken, was
+not likely to be nervous concerning her son, and, indeed, was at
+any time only fidgety over her own special complaints--a remarkable
+trait of character deserving of passing comment here.
+
+Sophie was not of a nervous temperament; indeed, for her eighteen
+years, was apparently a little too cool and methodical; and she
+was not flurried that evening over the delay in the arrival home
+of Reuben Pemberthy. She was not imaginative like her mother, and
+did not associate delay with the dangers of a dark night, though
+the nights _were_ full of danger in the good old times of the
+third George. She went to the door to look out, after her mother had
+tripped there for the seventh or eighth time, not for appearances'
+sake, for she was above that, but to keep her mother company, and
+to suggest that these frequent excursions to the front door would
+end in a bad cold.
+
+"I can't help fearing that something has happened to Reu," said
+the mother; "he is always so true to time."
+
+"There are so many things to keep a man late, mother."
+
+"Not to keep Reuben. If he said what hour he'd be back--he 's like
+his father, my poor brother--he'd do it to the minute, even if
+there weren't any reason for his hurry."
+
+"Which there is," said Sophie, archly.
+
+"Which there is, Sophie. And why you are so quiet over this I don't
+know. I am sure when poor Mr. Tarne was out late--and he was often
+very, very late, and the Lord knows where he'd been, either!--I
+couldn't keep a limb of me still till he came home again. I was
+as bad as your aunt indoors there till I was sure he was safe and
+sound."
+
+"But he always came home safe and sound, mother."
+
+"Nearly always. I mind the time once, though--bless us and save
+us, what a gust!" she cried, as the wind came swooping down the
+hill at them, swirling past them into the dark passage and puffing
+the lights out in the big pantry beyond, where the maids began to
+scream. "I hope he hasn't been blown off his horse."
+
+"Not very likely that," said Sophie, "and Reuben the best horseman
+in the county. But come in out of the gale, mother; the sleet cuts
+like a knife too, and he will not come home any the sooner for your
+letting the wind into the house. And--why, here he comes after
+all. Hark!"
+
+There was a rattling of horses' hoofs on the frost-bound road; it was
+a long way in the distance, but it was the unmistakable signal of
+a well-mounted traveller approaching--of more than one well-mounted
+traveller, it became quickly apparent, the clattering was so loud
+and incessant and manifold.
+
+"Soldiers!" said Sophie. "What can bring them this way?"
+
+"It's the farmers coming the same way as Reuben for protection's
+sake these winter nights, child."
+
+"Protection?"
+
+"Haven't you heard of the highwaymen about, and how a single
+traveller is never safe in these parts? Or a double one either--or--"
+
+"Perhaps these are highwaymen."
+
+"Oh, good gracious! Let us get indoors and bar up," cried Mrs.
+Tarne, wholly forgetful of Reuben Pemberthy's safety after this
+suggestion. "Yes, it's as likely to be highwaymen as soldiers."
+
+It was more likely. It was pretty conclusive that the odds were
+in favour of highwaymen when, five minutes afterward, eight mounted
+men rode up to the Maythorpe farm-house, dismounted with considerable
+noise and bustle, and commenced at the stout oaken door with the
+butt-ends of their riding-whips, hammering away incessantly and
+shouting out much strong language in their vehemence. This, being
+fortunately bawled forth all at once was incomprehensible to the
+dwellers within doors, now all scared together and no longer cool
+and self-possessed.
+
+"Robbers!" said Mrs. Tarne.
+
+"We've never been molested before, at least not for twenty years
+or more," said Mrs. Pemberthy; "and then I mind--"
+
+"Is it likely to be any of Reuben's friends?" asked Sophie, timidly.
+
+"Oh no; Reuben has no bellowing crowd like that for friends. Ask
+who is there--somebody."
+
+But nobody would go to the door save Sophie Tarne herself. The
+maids were huddled in a heap together in a corner of the dairy,
+and refused to budge an inch, and Mrs. Tarne was shaking more than
+Mrs. Pemberthy.
+
+Sophie, with the colour gone from her face, went boldly back to the
+door, where the hammering on the panels continued and would have
+split anything of a less tough fibre than the English oak of which
+they were constructed.
+
+"Who is there? What do you want?" she gave out in a shrill falsetto;
+but no one heard her till the questions were repeated about an
+octave and a half higher.
+
+"Hold hard, Stango; there's a woman calling to us. Stop your row,
+will you?"
+
+A sudden cessation of the battering ensued, and some one was heard
+going rapidly backward over cobblestones amid the laughter of the
+rest, who had dismounted and were standing outside in the cold,
+with their hands upon their horses' bridles.
+
+"Who is there?" asked Sophie Tarne again.
+
+"Travellers in need of assistance, and who--" began a polite and
+even musical voice, which was interrupted by a hoarse voice:
+
+"Open in the king's name, will you?"
+
+"Open in the fiend's name, won't you?" called out a third and hoarser
+voice; "or we'll fire through the windows and burn the place down.'
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"Silence!" shouted the first one again; "let me explain, you dogs,
+before you bark again."
+
+There was a pause, and the polite gentleman began again in his
+mellifluous voice:
+
+"We are travellers belated. We require corn for our horses, food
+for ourselves. There is no occasion for alarm; my friends are
+noisy, but harmless, I assure you, and the favour of admittance
+and entertainment here will be duly appreciated. To refuse your
+hospitality--the hospitality of a Pemberthy--is only to expose
+yourselves to considerable inconvenience, I fear."
+
+"Spoken like a book, Captain."
+
+"And, as we intend to come in at all risks," added a deeper voice,
+"it will be better for you not to try and keep us out, d' ye hear?
+D' ye--Captain, if you shake me by the collar again I'll put a
+bullet through you. I--"
+
+"Silence! Let the worthy folks inside consider the position for
+five minutes."
+
+Not a minute longer, if they don't want the place burned about
+their ears, mind you," cried a voice that had not spoken yet.
+
+"Who are you?" asked Sophie, still inclined to parley.
+
+"Travellers, I have told you."
+
+"Thieves, cutthroats, and murderers--eight of us--knights of the
+road, gentlemen of the highway, and not to be trifled with when
+half starved and hard driven," cried the hoarse man. "There, will
+that satisfy you, wench? Will you let us in or not? It's easy enough
+for us to smash in the windows and get in that way, isn't it?"
+
+Yes, it was very easy.
+
+"Wait five minutes, please," said Sophie.
+
+She went back to the parlour and to the two shivering women and the
+crowd of maids, who had crept from the dairy to the farm parlour,
+having greater faith in numbers now.
+
+"They had better come in, aunt, especially as we are quite helpless
+to keep them out. I could fire that gun," Sophie said, pointing to
+an unwieldy old blunderbuss slung by straps to the ceiling, " and
+I know it's loaded. But I'm afraid it wouldn't be of much use."
+
+"It might make them angry," said Mrs. Pemberthy.
+
+"It would only kill one at the best," remarked Mrs. Tarne, with a
+heavy sigh.
+
+"And the rest of the men would kill us, the brutes," said Mrs.
+Pemberthy. "Yes, they'd better come in."
+
+"Lord have mercy upon us," said Mrs. Tarne.
+
+"There's no help for it," said Mrs. Pemberthy. "Even Reuben would
+not have dared to keep them out. I mind now their coming like this
+twenty years agone. It was--"
+
+"I will see to them," said Sophie, who had become in her young,
+brave strength quite the mistress of the ceremonies. "Leave the
+rest to me."
+
+"And if you can persuade them to go away--" began Mrs. Tarne; but
+her daughter had already disappeared, and was parleying through
+the keyhole with the strangers without.
+
+"Such hospitality as we can offer, gentlemen, shall be at your
+service, providing always that you treat us with the respect due
+to gentlewomen and your hosts."
+
+"Trust to that," was the reply. "I will answer for myself and my
+companions, Mistress Pemberthy."
+
+"You give me your word of honour?"
+
+"My word of honour," he repeated; "our words of honour, and speaking
+for all my good friends present; is it not so, men?"
+
+"Ay, ay--that 's right," chorused the good friends; and then Sophie
+Tarne, not without an extra plunging of the heart beneath her white
+crossover, unlocked the stout oaken door and let in her unwelcome
+visitors.
+
+Seven out of the eight seemed to tumble in all at once, pushing
+against one another in their eagerness to enter, laughing, shouting,
+and stamping with the heels of their jack-boots on the bright red
+pantiles of the hall. The eighth intruder followed --a tall, thin
+man, pale-faced and stern and young, with a heavy horseman's cloak
+falling from his shoulders, the front of which was gathered up
+across his arms. A handsome and yet worn face --the face of one who
+had seen better days and known brighter times--a picturesque kind
+of vagabond, take him in the candle-light. He raised his hat and
+bowed low to Sophie Tarne, not offering to shake hands as the rest
+of them had done who where crowding around her; then he seemed to
+stand suddenly between them and their salutations, and to brush
+them unceremoniously aside.
+
+"You see to those horses, Stango and Grapp," he said, singling out
+the most obtrusive and the most black-muzzled of his gang. "Mistress
+Pemberthy will perhaps kindly trust us for a while with the keys
+of the stables and corn-bins."
+
+"They are here," said Sophie, detaching them from a bunch of keys
+which, in true housewifely fashion, hung from her girdle. "The farm
+servants are away in the village, or they should help you, sir."
+
+"We are in the habit of helping ourselves--very much," said one of
+the highwaymen, drily. "Pray don't apologise on that score, mistress."
+
+Two of the men departed; five of them stalked into the farm parlour,
+flourishing their big hats and executing clumsy scrapings with
+their feet while bowing in mock fashion to the two nervous widows,
+who sat in one corner regarding them askance: the leader of these
+lawless ones dropped his cloak from his shoulders, left it trailing
+on the pantile floor, and made a rapid signal with his hand to
+Sophie to pause an instant before she entered the room.
+
+"Treat them with fair words, and not too much strong waters," he
+said, quickly; "we have a long ride before us."
+
+He said it like a warning, and Sophie nodded as though she took
+his advice and was not ungrateful for it. Then they both went into
+the parlour and joined the company; and the maid-servant, becoming
+used to the position or making the best of it, began to bustle
+about and wait upon their visitors, who had already drawn up their
+seats to the supper-table, which had been spread with good things two
+hours ago anticipative of the return Reuben Pemberthy to Maythorpe.
+
+It was an odd supper-party at which Sophie Tarne presided, the
+highwaymen insisting, with much clamour and some emphatic oaths,
+that they would have no old women like Mrs. Tarne and Mrs. Pemberthy
+at the head of the table. Sophie was a pretty wench, and so must
+do the honours of the feast.
+
+"The young girl's health, gentlemen, with three times three, and may
+her husband be a match for her in good looks," cried one admiring
+knight of the road; and then the toast was drunk. The ale flowed
+freely, and there was much laughter and loud jesting.
+
+The man whom they called "Guy" and "Captain" sat by Sophie's side.
+He ate very little, and kept a watchful eye upon his men after
+Stango and his companion had come in from the stable and completed
+the number. He exchanged at first but few words with Sophie, though
+he surveyed her with a grave attention that brought the colour to
+her cheeks. He was a man upon guard. Presently he said:
+
+"You bear your position well. You are not alarmed at these wild
+fellows?"
+
+"No--not now. I don't think they would hurt me. Besides--"
+
+"Besides--what? "he asked, as she paused.
+
+"I have your word for them."
+
+"Yes," he answered; "but it is only a highwayman's word."
+
+"I can trust it."
+
+"These men can be demons when they like, Mistress Pemberthy."
+
+Sophie did not think it worth while to inform the gentleman that
+her name was not Pemberthy; it could not possibly matter to him,
+and there was a difficulty in explaining the relationship she bore
+to the family.
+
+"Why are you with such men as these?" she asked, wonderingly.
+
+"Where should I be? Where can I be else?" he asked, lightly now;
+but it was with a forced lightness of demeanour, or Sophie Tarne
+was very much deceived.
+
+"Helping your king, not warring against him and his laws," said
+Sophie, very quickly.
+
+"I owe no allegiance to King George. I have always been a ne'er-do-well,
+despised and scouted by a hard father and a villainous brother or
+two, and life with these good fellows here is, after all, to my
+mind. There's independence in it, and I prefer to be independent;
+and danger, and I like danger. A wronged man wrongs others in his
+turn, mistress; and it is my turn now."
+
+"Two wrongs cannot make a right."
+
+"Oh, I do not attempt the impossible, Mistress Pemberthy."
+
+"What will be the end of this--to you?"
+
+"The gallows--if I cannot get my pistol out in time."
+
+He laughed lightly and naturally enough as Sophie shrank in terror
+from him. One could see he was a desperate man enough, despite his
+better manners; probably as great an outcast as the rest of them,
+and as little to be trusted.
+
+"That is a dreadful end to look forward to," she said.
+
+"I don't look forward. What is the use--when _that_ is the
+prospect?"
+
+"Your father--your brothers--"
+
+"Would be glad that the end came soon," he concluded. "They are
+waiting for it patiently. They have prophesied it for the last
+five years."
+
+"They know then?"
+
+"Oh yes; I have taken care that they should know," he answered,
+laughing defiantly again.
+
+"And your mother--does she know?"
+
+He paused, and looked at her very hard.
+
+"God forbid."
+
+"She is--"
+
+"She is in heaven, where nothing is known of what goes on upon
+earth."
+
+"How can you tell that?"
+
+"There would be no peace in heaven otherwise, Mistress Pemberthy;
+only great grief, intense shame, misery, despair, madness, at the
+true knowledge of us all," he said, passionately. "On earth we men
+are hypocrites and liars, devils and slaves."
+
+"Not all men," said Sophie, thinking of Reu Pemberthy.
+
+"I have met none other. Perhaps I have sought none other--all my
+own fault, they will tell you where my father is; where," he added,
+bitterly, "they are worse than I am, and yet, oh, so respectable."
+
+"You turned highwayman to--to--"
+
+"To spite them, say. It is very near the truth."
+
+"It will be a poor excuse to the mother, when you see her again."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+But Sophie had no time to continue so abstruse a subject with this
+misanthropical freebooter. She clapped her hand to her side and
+gave a little squeak of astonishment.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked Captain Guy.
+
+"My keys! They have taken my keys."
+
+And, sure enough, while Sophie Tarne had been talking to the captain,
+some one had severed the keys from her girdle and made off with
+them, and there was only a clean-cut black ribbon dangling at her
+waist instead.
+
+"That villain Stango," exclaimed the captain "I saw him pass a
+minute ago. He leaned over and whispered to you, Kits. You remember?"
+
+"Stango?" said Kits, with far too innocent an expression to be
+genuine.
+
+"Yes, Stango; you know he did."
+
+"I dare say he did. I don't gainsay it, Captain, but I don't know
+where he has gone."
+
+"But _I_ will know," cried the captain, striking his hand upon
+the table and making every glass and plate jump thereon. "I will
+have no tricks played here without my consent. Am I your master,
+or are you all mine?"
+
+And here, we regret to say, Captain Guy swore a good deal, and
+became perfectly unheroic and inelegant and unromantic. But his
+oaths had more effect upon his unruly followers than his protests,
+and they sat looking at him in a half-sullen, half-shamefaced
+manner, and would have probably succumbed to his influence had not
+attention been diverted and aroused by the reappearance of Stango,
+who staggered in with four or five great black bottles heaped high
+in his arms. A tremendous shout of applause and delight heralded
+his return to the parlour.
+
+"We have been treated scurvily, my men," cried Stango, "exceedingly
+scurvily; the best and strongest stuff in the cellar has been kept
+back from us. It's excellent--I've been tasting it first, lest you
+should all be poisoned; and there's more where this come from--oceans
+more of it!"
+
+"Hurrah for Stango!"
+
+The captain's voice was heard once more above the uproar, but it
+was only for a minute longer. There was a rush of six men toward
+Stango; a shouting, scrambling, fighting for the spirits which he
+had discovered; a crash of one black bottle to the floor, with the
+spirit streaming over the polished boards, and the unceremonious
+tilting over of the upper part of the supper-table in the ruffians'
+wild eagerness for drink.
+
+"To horse, to horse, men! Have you forgotten how far we have to
+go?" cried the captain.
+
+But they had forgotten everything, and did not heed him. They were
+drinking strong waters, and were heedless of the hour and the risks
+they ran by a protracted stay there. In ten minutes from that time
+Saturnalia had set in, and pandemonium seemed to have unloosed
+its choicest specimens. They sang, they danced, they raved, they
+blasphemed, they crowed like cocks, they fired pistols at the
+chimney ornaments, they chased the maidservants from one room
+to another, they whirled round the room with Mrs. Tarne and Mrs.
+Pemberthy, they would have made a plunge at Sophie Tarne for partner
+had not the captain, very white and stern now, stood close to her
+side with a pistol at full cock in his right hand.
+
+"I shall shoot the first man down who touches you," he said, between
+his set teeth.
+
+"I will get away from them soon. For heaven's sake--for mine--do
+not add to the horror of this night, sir," implored Sophie.
+
+He paused.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said, in a low tone of voice, "but--but I
+am powerless to help you unless I quell these wolves at once. They
+are going off for more drink."
+
+"What is to be done?"
+
+"Can you sing, Mistress Pemberthy?"
+
+"Yes, a little; at least, they say so," she said, blushing at her
+own self-encomium.
+
+"Sing something--to gain time. I will slip away while you are singing,
+and get the horses round to the front door. Do not be afraid."
+
+"Gentlemen," he cried, in a loud voice, and bringing the handle
+of his pistol smartly on the head of the man nearest to him to
+emphasise his discourse, "Mistress Pemberthy will oblige the company
+with a song. Order and attention for the lady!"
+
+"A song! a song!" exclaimed the highwaymen, clapping their hands
+and stamping their heels upon the floor. And then, amid the pause
+which followed, Sophie Tarne began a plaintive little ballad in a
+sweet, tremulous voice, which gathered strength as she proceeded.
+
+It was a strange scene awaiting the return of Reuben Pemberthy,
+whose tall form stood in the doorway before Sophie had finished her
+sweet, simple rendering of an old English ballad. Reuben's round
+blue eyes were distended with surprise, and his mouth, generally
+very set and close, like the mouth of a steel purse, was on this
+especial occasion, and for a while, wide open. Sophie Tarne singing
+her best to amuse this vile and disorderly crew, who sat or stood
+around the room half drunk, and with glasses in their hands, pipes
+in their mouths, and the formidable, old-fashioned horse-pistols
+in their pockets!
+
+And who was the handsome man, with the long, black, flowing hair,
+and a pale face, standing by Sophie's side--his Sophie--in a suit
+of soiled brocade and tarnished lace, with a Ramilie cocked hat
+under his arm and a pistol in his hand? The leader of these robbers,
+the very man who had stopped him on the king's highway three hours
+ago and taken every stiver which he had brought away from Barnet;
+who had, with the help of these other scoundrels getting mad drunk
+on his brandy, taken away his horse and left him bound to a gate
+by the roadside because he would not be quietly robbed, but must
+make a fuss over it and fight and kick in a most unbecoming fashion,
+and without any regard for the numbers by whom he had been assailed.
+
+"I did not think you could sing like that," said the captain,
+quietly and in a low voice, when Sophie had finished her song, and
+a great shout of approval was echoing throughout the farm and many
+hundred yards beyond it.
+
+"You have not got the horses ready," said Sophie, becoming aware
+that he was still at her side. "You said--you promised--"
+
+"I could not leave you while you were singing Did you know that
+was my mother's song?"
+
+"How should I know that?"
+
+"No--no. But how strange--how--ah! there is your brother at the
+door. I have had the honour of meeting Master Pemberthy of Finchley
+earlier this evening, I think. A brave young gentleman; you should
+be proud of him."
+
+"My bro--oh! it is Reu. O Reu, Reu, where have you been? Why did
+you not come before to help us--to tell us what to do?" And Sophie
+Tarne ran to him and put her arms round his neck and burst into
+tears. It was not a wise step on Sophie's part, but it was the
+reaction at the sight of her sweetheart, at the glimpse, as it
+were, of deliverance.
+
+"There, there, don't cry, Sophie; keep a stout heart!" he whispered.
+"If these villains have robbed us, they will not be triumphant
+long. It will be my turn to crow presently."
+
+"I--I don't understand."
+
+"I can't explain now. Keep a good face--ply them with more
+drink--watch me. Well, my friends," he said, in a loud voice, "you
+have stolen a march upon me this time; but I've got home, you see,
+in time to welcome you to Maythorpe and share in your festivity. I'm
+a Pemberthy, and not likely to cry over spilled milk. More liquor
+for the gentlemen, you wenches, and be quick with it. Captain, here's
+to you and your companions, and next time you catch a Pemberthy,
+thy, treat him more gently in return for a welcome here. More
+liquor, girls; the gentlemen are thirsty after their long ride."
+
+Reuben drank to the healths of the gentlemen by whom he was
+surrounded; he was very much at home in his own house, very cool
+and undismayed, having recovered from his surprise at finding
+an evening party being celebrated there. The highwaymen were too
+much excited to see anything remarkable in the effusion of Reuben
+Pemberthy's greeting; these were lawless times, when farmers and
+highwaymen were often in accord, dealt in one another's horses,
+and drove various bargains at odd seasons and in odd corners of
+the market-places; and Reuben Pemberthy was not unknown to them,
+though they had treated him with scant respect upon a lonely country
+road, and when they were impressed by the fact that he was riding
+homeward with well-lined pockets after a day's huckstering. They
+cheered Mr. Pemberthy's sentiments, all but the captain, who regarded
+him very critically, although bowing very low while his health was
+drunk.
+
+"My cousin and my future bride, gentlemen will sing you another
+song; and I don't mind following suit myself, just to show there is
+no ill feeling between us; and our worthy captain, he will oblige
+after me, I am sure. It may be a good many years before we meet
+again."
+
+"It may," said the captain, laconically.
+
+"I--I cannot sing any more, Reuben," cried Sophie.
+
+"Try, Sophie, for all our sakes; our home's sake--the home they
+would strip, or burn to the ground, if they had only the chance."
+
+"Why do you wish to keep them here?" Sophie whispered back to him.
+
+"I was released by a troop of soldiers who were coming in this
+direction," he said, hurriedly. They have gone on toward Finchley
+in search of these robbers, but, failing to find them, they will
+return here as my guests till morning. That was their promise."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+Sophie could not say more. Reuben had left her side, and was talking
+and laughing with Stango as though he loved him.
+
+"Your sweetheart, then, this cock o' the game?" said the captain
+to Sophie, as he approached her once more.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"'I had need wish you much joy, for I see but little toward it,'
+as the poet says," he remarked, bluntly. "He will not make you a
+good husband."
+
+"You cannot say that."
+
+"It's a hard face that will look into yours, mistress, and when
+trouble comes, it will not look pleasantly. You are going to sing
+again? I am glad."
+
+"You promised to go away--long since."
+
+"I did. But the host has returned, and I distrust him. I am waiting
+now to see the end of it."
+
+"No--no--I hope not. Pray go, sir."
+
+"Is there danger?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I thought so. I am fond of danger, I have told you. It braces me
+up; it--why are you so pale?"
+
+"You have been kind to me, and you have saved me from indignity.
+Pray take your men away at once."
+
+"They will not go, and I will not desert them."
+
+"For my sake--do!"
+
+"A song! a song! No more love-making tonight, Captain. A song from
+the farmer's pretty lass!" cried out the men.
+
+And then Sophie began to sing again, this time a love-song, the
+song of a maiden waiting for her soldier boy to come back from
+the wars; a maiden waiting for him, listening for him, hearing the
+tramp of his regiment on the way toward her. She looked at Captain
+Guy as she sang, and with much entreaty in her gaze, and he looked
+back at her from under the cock of his hat, which he had pulled over
+his brows; then he wavered and stole out of the room. Kits was at
+the door, still with his mug of brandy in his hand. Guy seized him
+by the ear and took him out with him into the fresh air, where the
+white frost was and where the white moon was shining now.
+
+"The soldiers are after us and know where we are, Kits. Pitch that
+stuff away."
+
+"Not if--"
+
+"And get the horses ready--quick! I will be with you in a moment."
+
+He walked along the garden path in front of the big old farm, swung
+wide the farm gates, and propped them open. Then he went down
+on all fours and put his ear to the frost-bound country road and
+listened. "Yes," he added, "two miles away, and coming on sharp.
+Why not let them come? What does it matter how soon?" He strode
+back, however, with quick steps. Five minutes afterward he was at
+the door of the farm parlour again, with his cloak over his shoulder
+and his riding-whip in his hand.
+
+"Boys, the redcoats are upon us!" he shouted "Each man to his
+horse."
+
+"We are betrayed then!"
+
+"We won't go and leave all the good things in this house," cried
+Stango. "Why, it's like the Bank of England upstairs, and I have
+the keys. I--"
+
+"Stango, I shall certainly put a bullet through your head if you
+attempt to do anything more save to thank our worthy hose for his
+hospitality and give him up his keys. Do you hear?" he thundered
+forth. "Will you hang us all, you fool, by your delay?"
+
+The highwaymen were scurrying out of the room now, a few in too
+much haste to thank the givers of the feast, the others bowing and
+shaking hands in mock burlesque of their chief. Stango had thrown
+down his keys and run for it.
+
+"Sorry we must leave you, Master Pemberthy," said the captain, "but
+I certainly have the impression that a troop of horse soldiers
+is coming in this direction. Pure fancy, probably; but one cannot
+risk anything in these hard times. Your purse, sir, which I took
+this afternoon--I shall not require it. Buy Mistress Sophie a
+wedding with it. Good-night."
+
+He bowed low, but he did not smile till he met Sophie's frightened
+looks; then he bowed still lower, hat in hand, and said good-night
+with a funny break in his voice and a longing look in his dark eyes
+that Sophie did not readily forget.
+
+It was all like a dream after the highwaymen had put spurs to their
+horses and galloped away from Maythorpe Farm.
+
+It will be fifteen years come next winter-time since the "Minions
+of the Moon" held high carnival at the farm of Reuben Pemberthy.
+Save that the trees about the homestead are full of rustling green
+leaves and there is sunshine where the white frost lay, the farm
+looks very much the same; the great thatched roof has taken a
+darker tinge, and all the gold in it has turned to gray, and the
+walls are more weather-beaten than of yore; but it is the old farm
+still, standing "foursquare," with the highroad to Finchley winding
+over the green hill yonder like a great, white, dusty snake Along
+the road comes a horseman at full speed, as though anxious to
+find a shelter before nightfall, for the king's highway in this
+direction is no safer than it used to be, and people talk of Abershaw
+and Barrington, and a man with sixteen strings to his hat, who are
+busy in this direction. But the days are long now, and it wants
+some hours before sundown, when the traveller leaps from his horse
+and stands under the broad eaves of the porch, where the creepers
+are growing luxuriantly and are full of fair white flowers.
+
+The traveller is a good horseman, though he has passed the heyday
+of his youth. It is not for some three minutes afterward that his
+man-servant, hot and blown and powdered thick with dust, comes up
+on horseback after him and takes charge of his master's steed. The
+master is a man of forty years or more, and looking somewhat older
+than his years, his hair being very gray. He stoops a little between
+the shoulders too when off his guard, though he can look straight
+and stalwart enough when put to it. He is very dark,--a fiercer
+sun than that which shines on England has burned him a copper
+colour,--and he has a moustache that Munchausen might have envied.
+
+He knocks at the door, and asks if Master Reuben Pemberthy can be
+seen at a moment's notice. The maid-servant looks surprised, but
+says, "My mistress is within, sir."
+
+"Reuben Pemberthy's wife, that is," he mutters, pulling thoughtfully
+at his long moustache; "ah, well, perhaps she will see me."
+
+"What name shall I say?"
+
+"Sir Richard Isshaw; but she will not know the name."
+
+He stands in the hall, looking about him critically; his man-servant,
+still mounted, goes slowly back toward the roadway with his master's
+horse and his own, where he remains in waiting. Presently, Sir
+Richard Isshaw is shown into the farm parlour, very cool and full
+of shadow, with great green plants on the broad recesses of the
+open window, and bees buzzing about them from the outer world.
+
+A young woman in deep widow's weeds rises as he enters, and makes
+him one of those profound courtesies which were considered appropriate
+for the fair sex to display to those in rank and honour in the good
+old days when George was king. Surely a young woman still, despite
+the fifteen years that have passed, with a young supple figure
+and a pleasant unlined face. Eighteen years and fifteen only make
+thirty-three, and one can scarcely believe in time's inroads looking
+upon Sophie Pemberthy. The man cannot. He is surprised and he looks
+at her through tears in his dark eyes.
+
+"You asked to see Mr. Reuben Pemberthy," she says, sadly. "You did
+not know that--"
+
+"No, I did not know," he says, a little huskily; "I am a stranger
+to these parts; I have been long abroad."
+
+"May I inquire the nature of your errand, Sir Richard?" she asks,
+in a low voice. "Though I am afraid I cannot be of any service as
+regards any business of the farm."
+
+"How is that?" he asks, steadily keeping gaze upon her.
+
+"The farm passes to Mr. Pemberthy's cousin in a few days' time."
+
+"Indeed! Then you--"
+
+He pauses half-way for a reply, but it is long in coming. Only the
+humming of the bees disturbs the silence of the room.
+
+"Then you leave here?" he concludes at last.
+
+"Yes. It is only the male Pemberthys who rule," she says.
+
+"Your--your children?"
+
+"My one little boy, my dear Algy, died before his father. It was
+a great disappointment to my husband that he should die. We female
+Pemberthys," she says, with a sudden real bright little smile that
+settles down into sadness again very quickly, "do not count for a
+great deal in the family."
+
+"How long has Mr. Pemberthy been dead?"
+
+"Six months."
+
+"You are left poor?" he says, very quickly now.
+
+"I--I don't think you have a right to ask me such a question,
+sir."
+
+"I have no right," he replies. "These are foreign manners. Excuse
+them, please; don't mind me."
+
+Still he is persistent.
+
+"From son to son's son, and the women left anywhere and anyhow--that
+is the Pemberthy law, I expect. I have seen the workings of such a
+law before. Not that I ought to complain," he adds, with a forced
+laugh,--a laugh that Mrs. Pemberthy seems suddenly to remember,--"for
+I have profited thereby."
+
+"Indeed!" says the farmer's widow, for the want of a better answer
+at the moment.
+
+"I am a younger son; but all my brothers have been swept away by wars
+or pestilence, and I am "sent" for in hot haste--I, who had shaken
+the dust of England from my feet for fifteen years."
+
+"Fifteen years?"
+
+"Almost. Don't you recollect the last time I was in this room?"
+
+"You--in this room, Sir Richard?"
+
+"Yes; try and remember when that was. I only come to look at the
+old place and you, just for once, before I go away again. Try and
+think, Mistress Pemberthy, as I used to call you."
+
+She looks into the red, sunburnt face, starts, blushes, and looks
+away.
+
+"Yes, I remember. You are--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Captain Guy!"
+
+"Yes, that is it; Richard Guy Isshaw, younger son, who went wholly
+to the bad--who turned highwayman--whom _you_ saved. The only
+one out of the eight,--the rest were hanged at Tyburn and Kennington,
+poor devils,--and thought I would ride over and thank you, and see
+you once more. Your husband would have hanged me, I dare say--but
+there, there, peace to his soul."
+
+"Amen," whispers Sophie Pemberthy.
+
+"You saved me; you set me thinking of my young mother, who died
+when I was a lad and loved me much too well; and you taught me
+there were warm and loving hearts in the world; and when I went
+away from here I went away from the old life. I cannot say how that
+was; but," shrugging his shoulders, "so it was."
+
+"It was a call," said Sophie, piously.
+
+"A call to arms, for I went to the wars. And what is it now that
+brings me back here to thank you--an old, time-worn reprobate,
+turned soldier and turned respectable!--what is that?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Another call, depend upon it. A call to Maythorpe, where I expected
+to find a fat farmer and his buxom partner and a crowd of laughing
+boys and girls; where I hoped I might be of help to some of them,
+if help were needed. And," he adds, "I find only you--and you just
+the same fair, bright girl I left behind me long ago."
+
+"Oh no."
+
+"It is like a dream; it is very remarkable to me. Yes, it's another
+call, Mistress Pemberthy, depend upon it."
+
+And it is not the last call, either. The estate of Richard Isshaw
+lies not so many miles from Maythorpe Farm that a good long ride
+cannot overcome the distance between them. And the man turned
+respectable--the real baronet--is so very much alone and out of
+place in his big house that he knows not what to do.
+
+And Mistress Pemberthy is very much alone too, and going out alone
+into the world, almost friendless, and with only two hundred pounds
+and perhaps the second-best bed--who knows?--as her share of her
+late loving, but rather hard and unsympathetic, husband's worldly
+goods.
+
+And folks do say, Finchley way, that pretty Mistress Pemberthy
+will be Lady Isshaw before the winter sets in, and that it will be
+exactly fifteen years since these two first set eyes upon each
+other.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FOUR-FIFTEEN EXPRESS
+
+BY AMELIA B. EDWARDS
+
+
+
+
+
+The events which I am about to relate took place between nine and
+ten years ago. Sebastopol had fallen in the early spring, the peace
+of Paris had been concluded since March, our commercial relations
+with the Russian empire were but recently renewed; and I, returning
+home after my first northward journey since the war, was well
+pleased with the prospect of spending the month of December under
+the hospitable and thoroughly English roof of my excellent friend,
+Jonathan Jelf, Esq., of Dumbleton Manor, Clayborough, East Anglia.
+Travelling in the interests of the well-known firm in which it
+is my lot to be a junior partner, I had been called upon to visit
+not only the capitals of Russia and Poland, but had found it also
+necessary to pass some weeks among the trading ports of the Baltic;
+whence it came that the year was already far spent before I again
+set foot on English soil, and that, instead of shooting pheasants
+with him, as I had hoped, in October, I came to be my friend's
+guest during the more genial Christmas-tide.
+
+My voyage over, and a few days given up to business in Liverpool
+and London, I hastened down to Clayborough with all the delight of
+a school-boy whose holidays are at hand. My way lay by the Great
+East Anglian line as far as Clayborough station, where I was to
+be met by one of the Dumbleton carriages and conveyed across the
+remaining nine miles of country. It was a foggy afternoon, singularly
+warm for the 4th of December, and I had arranged to leave London by
+the 4:15 express. The early darkness of winter had already closed
+in; the lamps were lighted in the carriages; a clinging damp
+dimmed the windows, adhered to the door-handles, and pervaded all
+the atmosphere; while the gas-jets at the neighbouring book-stand
+diffused a luminous haze that only served to make the gloom of the
+terminus more visible. Having arrived some seven minutes before the
+starting of the train, and, by the connivance of the guard, taken
+sole possession of empty compartment, I lighted my travelling-lamp,
+made myself particularly snug, and settled down to the undisturbed
+enjoyment of a book and a cigar. Great, therefore, was my
+disappointment when, at the last moment, a gentleman came hurrying
+along the platform, glanced into my carriage, opened the locked
+door with a private key, a stepped in.
+
+It struck me at the first glance that I had seen him before--a
+tall, spare man, thin-lipped, light-eyed, with an ungraceful stoop
+in the shoulders and scant gray hair worn somewhat long upon collar.
+He carried a light waterproof coat, an umbrella, and a large brown
+japanned deed-box, which last he placed under the seat. This done, he
+felt carefully in his breast-pocket, as if to make certain of the
+safety of his purse or pocket-book, laid his umbrella in the netting
+overhead, spread the waterproof across his knees, and exchanged
+his hat for a travelling-cap of some Scotch material. By this time
+the train was moving out of the station and into the faint gray of
+the wintry twilight beyond.
+
+I now recognised my companion. I recognised him from the moment when
+he removed his hat and uncovered the lofty, furrowed, and somewhat
+narrow brow beneath. I had met him, as I distinctly remembered, some
+three years before, at the very house for which, in all probability,
+he was now bound, like myself. His name was Dwerrihouse, he was
+a lawyer by profession, and, if I was not greatly mistaken, was
+first cousin to the wife of my host. I knew also that he was a
+man eminently "well-to-do," both as regarded his professional and
+private means. The Jelfs entertained him with that sort of observant
+courtesy which falls to the lot of the rich relation, the children
+made much of him, and the old butler, albeit somewhat surly "to the
+general," treated him with deference. I thought, observing him by
+the vague mixture of lamplight and twilight, that Mrs. Jelf's cousin
+looked all the worse for the three years' wear and tear which had
+gone over his head since our last meeting. He was very pale, and
+had a restless light in his eye that I did not remember to have
+observed before. The anxious lines, too, about his mouth were
+deepened, and there was a cavernous, hollow look about his cheeks
+and temples which seemed to speak of sickness or sorrow. He had
+glanced at me as he came in, but without any gleam of recognition
+in his face. Now he glanced again, as I fancied, somewhat doubtfully.
+When he did so for the third or fourth time I ventured to address
+him.
+
+"Mr. John Dwerrihouse, I think?"
+
+"That is my name," he replied.
+
+"I had the pleasure of meeting you at Dumbleton about three years
+ago."
+
+Mr. Dwerrihouse bowed.
+
+"I thought I knew your face," he said; "but your name, I regret to
+say--"
+
+"Langford--William Langford. I have known Jonathan Jelf since
+we were boys together at Merchant Taylor's, and I generally spend
+a few weeks at Dumbleton in the shooting season. I suppose we are
+bound for the same destination?"
+
+"Not if you are on your way to the manor," he replied. "I am
+travelling upon business,--rather troublesome business too,--while
+you, doubtless, have only pleasure in view."
+
+"Just so. I am in the habit of looking forward to this visit as to
+the brightest three weeks in all the year."
+
+"It is a pleasant house," said Mr. Dwerrihouse.
+
+"The pleasantest I know."
+
+"And Jelf is thoroughly hospitable."
+
+"The best and kindest fellow in the world!"
+
+"They have invited me to spend Christmas week with them," pursued
+Mr. Dwerrihouse, after a moment's pause.
+
+"And you are coming?"
+
+"I cannot tell. It must depend on the issue of this business
+which I have in hand. You have heard perhaps that we are about to
+construct a branch line from Blackwater to Stockbridge."
+
+I explained that I had been for some months away from England, and
+had therefore heard nothing of the contemplated improvement. Mr.
+Dwerrihouse smiled complacently.
+
+"It _will_ be an improvement," he said, "a great improvement.
+Stockbridge is a flourishing town, and needs but a more direct
+railway communication with the metropolis to become an important
+centre of commerce. This branch was my own idea. I brought the project
+before the board, and have myself superintended the execution of
+it up to the present time."
+
+"You are an East Anglian director, I presume?"
+
+"My interest in the company," replied Mr. Dwerringhouse, "is
+threefold. I am a director, I am a considerable shareholder, and,
+as head of the firm of Dwerrihouse, Dwerrihouse & Craik, I am the
+company's principal solicitor."
+
+Loquacious, self-important, full of his pet project, and apparently
+unable to talk on any other subject, Mr. Dwerrihouse then went
+on to tell of the opposition he had encountered and the obstacles
+he had overcome in the cause of the Stockbridge branch. I was
+entertained with a multitude of local details and local grievances.
+The rapacity of one squire, the impracticability of another, the
+indignation of the rector whose glebe was threatened, the culpable
+indifference of the Stockbridge townspeople, who could _not_
+be brought to see that their most vital interests hinged upon a
+junction with the Great East Anglian line; the spite of the local
+newspaper, and the unheard-of difficulties attending the Common
+question, were each and all laid before me with a circumstantiality
+that possessed the deepest interest for my excellent fellow-traveller,
+but none whatever for myself. From these, to my despair, he went on
+to more intricate matters: to the approximate expenses of construction
+per mile; to the estimates sent in by different contractors; to
+the probable traffic returns of the new line; to the provisional
+clauses of the new act as enumerated in Schedule D of the company's
+last half-yearly report; and so on and on and on, till my head
+ached and my attention flagged and my eyes kept closing in spite
+of every effort that I made to keep them open. At length I was
+roused by these words:
+
+"Seventy-five thousand pounds, cash down."
+
+"Seventy-five thousand pounds, cash down," I repeated, in the
+liveliest tone I could assume. "That is a heavy sum."
+
+"A heavy sum to carry here," replied Mr. Dwerrihouse, pointing
+significantly to his breastpocket, "but a mere fraction of what
+we shall ultimately have to pay."
+
+"You do not mean to say that you have seventy-five thousand pounds
+at this moment upon your person?" I exclaimed.
+
+"My good sir, have I not been telling you so for the last half-hour?"
+said Mr. Dwerrihouse, testily. "That money has to be paid over at
+half-past eight o'clock this evening, at the office of Sir Thomas's
+solicitors, on completion of the deed of sale."
+
+"But how will you get across by night from Blackwater to Stockbridge
+with seventy-five thousand pounds in your pocket?"
+
+"To Stockbridge!" echoed the lawyer. "I find I have made myself very
+imperfectly understood. I thought I had explained how this sum
+only carries us as far as Mallingford,--the first stage, as it were,
+of our journey,--and how our route from Blackwater to Mallingford
+lies entirely through Sir Thomas Liddell's property."
+
+"I beg your pardon," I stammered. "I fear my thoughts were wandering.
+So you only go as far as Mallingford to-night?"
+
+"Precisely. I shall get a conveyance from the 'Blackwater Arms.'
+And you?"
+
+'Oh, Jelf sends a trap to meet me at Clayborbough! Can I be the
+bearer of any message from you?"
+
+"You may say, if you please, Mr. Langford, that I wished I could
+have been your companion all the way, and that I will come over,
+if possible, before Christmas."
+
+"Nothing more?"
+
+Mr. Dwerrihouse smiled grimly. "Well," he said, "you may tell my
+cousin that she need not burn the hall down in my honour _this time_,
+and that I shall be obliged if she will order the blue-room chimney
+to be swept before I arrive."
+
+"That sounds tragic. Had you a conflagration on the occasion of
+your last visit to Dumbleton?"
+
+"Something like it. There had been no fire lighted in my bedroom
+since the spring, the flue was foul, and the rooks had built in
+it; so when I went up to dress for dinner I found the room full of
+smoke and the chimney on fire. Are we already at Blackwater?"
+
+The train had gradually come to a pause while Mr. Dwerrihouse was
+speaking, and, on putting my head out of the window, I could see
+the station some few hundred yards ahead. There was another train
+before us blocking the way, and the guard was making use of the
+delay to collect the Blackwater tickets. I had scarcely ascertained
+our position when the ruddy-faced official appeared at our carriage
+door.
+
+"Tickets, sir!" said he.
+
+"I am for Clayborough," I replied, holding out the tiny pink card.
+
+He took it, glanced at it by the light of his little lantern, gave
+it back, looked, as I fancied, somewhat sharply at my fellow-traveller,
+and disappeared.
+
+"He did not ask for yours," I said, with some surprise.
+
+"They never do," replied Mr. Dwerrihouse; "they all know me, and
+of course I travel free."
+
+"Blackwater! Blackwater!" cried the porter, running along the
+platform beside us as we glided into the station.
+
+Mr. Dwerrihouse pulled out his deed-box, put his travelling-cap in
+his pocket, resumed his hat, took down his umbrella, and prepared
+to be gone.
+
+"Many thanks, Mr. Langford, for your society," he said, with
+old-fashioned courtesy. "I wish you a good-evening."
+
+"Good-evening," I replied, putting out my hand.
+
+But he either did not see it or did not choose to see it, and,
+slightly lifting his hat, stepped out upon the platform. Having done
+this, he moved slowly away and mingled with the departing crowd.
+
+Leaning forward to watch him out of sight, I trod upon something
+which proved to be a cigar-case. It had fallen, no doubt, from the
+pocket of his waterproof coat, and was made of dark morocco leather,
+with a silver monogram upon the side. I sprang out of the carriage
+just as the guard came up to lock me in.
+
+"Is there one minute to spare?" I asked, eagerly. "The gentleman
+who travelled down with me from town has dropped his cigar-case;
+he is not yet out of the station."
+
+"Just a minute and a half, sir," replied the guard. "You must be
+quick."
+
+I dashed along the platform as fast as my feet could carry me. It
+was a large station, and Mr. Dwerrihouse had by this time got more
+than half-way to the farther end.
+
+I, however, saw him distinctly, moving slowly with the stream.
+Then, as I drew nearer, I saw that he had met some friend, that
+they were talking as they walked, that they presently fell back
+somewhat from the crowd and stood aside in earnest conversation.
+I made straight for the spot where they were waiting. There was a
+vivid gas-jet just above their heads, and the light fell full upon
+their faces. I saw both distinctly--the face of Mr. Dwerrihouse and
+the face of his companion. Running, breathless, eager as I was,
+getting in the way of porters and passengers, and fearful every
+instant lest I should see the train going on without me, I yet
+observed that the new-comer was considerably younger and shorter than
+the director, that he was sandy-haired, mustachioed, small-featured,
+and dressed in a close-cut suit of Scotch tweed. I was now within
+a few yards of them. I ran against a stout gentleman, I was nearly
+knocked down by a luggage-truck, I stumbled over a carpet-bag; I
+gained the spot just as the driver's whistle warned me to return.
+
+To my utter stupefaction, they were no longer there. I had seen
+them but two seconds before--and they were gone! I stood still; I
+looked to right and left; I saw no sign of them in any direction.
+It was as if the platform had gaped and swallowed them.
+
+"There were two gentlemen standing here a moment ago," I said to
+a porter at my elbow; "which way can they have gone?"
+
+"I saw no gentlemen, sir," replied the man. The whistle shrilled
+out again. The guard, far up the platform, held up his arm, and
+shouted to me to "come on!"
+
+"If you're going on by this train, sir," said the porter, "you must
+run for it."
+
+I did run for it, just gained the carriage as the train began to
+move, was shoved in by the guard, and left, breathless and bewildered,
+with Mr. Dwerrihouse's cigar-case still in my hand.
+
+It was the strangest disappearance in the world; It was
+like a transformation trick in a pantomime. They were there one
+moment,--palpably there, walking, with the gaslight full upon their
+faces,--and the next moment they were gone. There was no door near,
+no window, no staircase; it was a mere slip of barren platform,
+tapestried with big advertisements. Could anything be more mysterious?
+
+It was not worth thinking about, and yet, for my life, I could not
+help pondering upon it--pondering, wondering, conjecturing, turning
+it over and over in my mind, and beating my brains for a solution
+of the enigma. I thought of it all the way from Blackwater
+to Clayborough. I thought of it all the way from Clayborough to
+Dumbleton, as I rattled along the smooth highway in a trim dog-cart,
+drawn by a splendid black mare and driven by the silentest and
+dapperest of East Anglian grooms.
+
+We did the nine miles in something less than an hour, and pulled
+up before the lodge-gates just as the church clock was striking
+half-past seven. A couple of minutes more, and the warm glow of
+the lighted hall was flooding out upon the gravel, a hearty grasp
+was on my hand, and a clear jovial voice was bidding me "welcome
+to Dumbleton."
+
+"And now, my dear fellow," said my host, when the first greeting
+was over, "you have no time to spare. We dine at eight, and there
+are people coming to meet you, so you must just get the dressing
+business over as quickly as may be. By the way, you will meet some
+acquaintances; the Biddulphs are coming, and Prendergast (Prendergast
+of the Skirmishers) is staying in the house. Adieu! Mrs. Jelf will
+be expecting you in the drawing-room."
+
+I was ushered to my room--not the blue room, of which Mr. Dwerrihouse
+had made disagreeable experience, but a pretty little bachelor's
+chamber, hung with a delicate chintz and made cheerful by a blazing
+fire. I unlocked my portmanteau. I tried to be expeditious, but the
+memory of my railway adventure haunted me. I could not get free of
+it; I could not shake it off. It impeded me, worried me, it tripped
+me up, it caused me to mislay my studs, to mistie my cravat, to
+wrench the buttons off my gloves. Worst of all, it made me so late
+that the party had all assembled before I reached the drawing-room.
+I had scarcely paid my respects to Mrs. Jelf when dinner was
+announced, and we paired off, some eight or ten couples strong,
+into the dining-room.
+
+I am not going to describe either the guests or the dinner. All
+provincial parties bear the strictest family resemblance, and I
+am not aware that an East Anglian banquet offers any exception to
+the rule. There was the usual country baronet and his wife; there
+were the usual country parsons and their wives; there was the
+sempiternal turkey and haunch of venison. Vanitas vanitatum. There
+is nothing new under the sun.
+
+I was placed about midway down the table. I had taken one rector's
+wife down to dinner, and I had another at my left hand. They talked
+across me, and their talk was about babies; it was dreadfully dull.
+At length there came a pause. The entrees had just been removed,
+and the turkey had come upon the scene. The conversation had all
+along been of the languidest, but at this moment it happened to
+have stagnated altogether. Jelf was carving the turkey; Mrs. Jelf
+looked as if she was trying to think of something to say; everybody
+else was silent. Moved by an unlucky impulse, I thought I would
+relate my adventure.
+
+"By the way, Jelf," I began, "I came down part of the way to-day
+with a friend of yours."
+
+"Indeed!" said the master of the feast, slicing scientifically into
+the breast of the turkey. "With whom, pray?"
+
+"With one who bade me tell you that he should, if possible, pay
+you a visit before Christmas."
+
+"I cannot think who that could be," said my friend, smiling.
+
+"It must be Major Thorp," suggested Mrs. Jelf.
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"It was not Major Thorp," I replied; "it was a near relation of
+your own, Mrs. Jelf."
+
+"Then I am more puzzled than ever," rep! my hostess. "Pray tell
+me who it was."
+
+"It was no less a person than your cousin, Mr. John Dwerrihouse."
+
+Jonathan Jelf laid down his knife and fork. Mrs. Jelf looked at
+me in a strange, startled way, and said never a word.
+
+"And he desired me to tell you, my dear madam, that you need not
+take the trouble to burn the hall down in his honour this time, but
+only to have the chimney of the blue room swept before his arrival."
+
+Before I had reached the end of my sentence I became aware of
+something ominous in the faces of the guests. I felt I had said
+something which I had better have left unsaid, and that for some
+unexplained reason my words had evoked a general consternation. I
+sat confounded, not daring to utter another syllable, and for at
+least two whole minutes there was dead silence round the table.
+Then Captain Prendergast came to the rescue.
+
+"You have been abroad for some months, have you not, Mr. Langford?"
+he said, with the desperation of one who flings himself into the
+breach.
+
+"I heard you had been to Russia. Surely you have something to tell
+us of the state and temper of the country after the war?"
+
+I was heartily grateful to the gallant Skirmisher for this diversion
+in my favour. I answered him, I fear, somewhat lamely; but he kept
+the conversation up, and presently one or two others joined in
+and so the difficulty, whatever it might have been, was bridged
+over--bridged over, but not repaired. A something, an awkwardness,
+a visible constraint remained. The guests hitherto had been simply
+dull, but now they were evidently uncomfortable and embarrassed.
+
+The dessert had scarcely been placed upon the table when the ladies
+left the room. I seized the opportunity to select a vacant chair
+next Captain Prendergast.
+
+"In heaven's name," I whispered, "what was the matter just now?
+What had I said?"
+
+"You mentioned the name of John Dwerrihouse."
+
+"What of that? I had seen him not two hours before."
+
+"It is a most astounding circumstance that you should have seen
+him," said Captain Prendergast. "Are you sure it was he?"
+
+"As sure as of my own identity. We were talking all the way between
+London and Blackwater. But why does that surprise you?"
+
+"_Because_" replied Captain Prendergast, dropping his voice
+to the lowest whisper--"_because John Dwerrihouse absconded three
+months ago with seventy-five thousand pounds of the company's money,
+and has never been heard of since_."
+
+John Dwerrihouse had absconded three months ago--and I had seen him
+only a few hours back! John Dwerrihouse had embezzled seventy-five
+thousand pounds of the company's money, yet told me that he carried
+that sum upon his person! Were ever facts so strangely incongruous,
+so difficult to reconcile? How should he have ventured again into
+the light of day? How dared he show himself along the line? Above
+all, what had he been doing throughout those mysterious three months
+of disappearance?
+
+Perplexing questions these--questions which at once suggested
+themselves to the minds of all concerned, but which admitted of no
+easy solution. I could find no reply to them. Captain Prendergast
+had not even a suggestion to offer. Jonathan Jelf, who seized the
+first opportunity of drawing me aside and learning all that I had
+to tell, was more amazed and bewildered than either of us. He
+came to my room that night, when all the guests were gone, and we
+talked the thing over from every point of view; without, it must
+be confessed, arriving at any kind of conclusion.
+
+"I do not ask you," he said," whether you can have mistaken your
+man. That is impossible."
+
+"As impossible as that I should mistake some stranger for yourself."
+
+"It is not a question of looks or voice, but of facts. That he
+should have alluded to the fire in the blue room is proof enough
+of John Dwerrihouse's identity. How did he look?"
+
+"Older, I thought; considerably older, paler, and more anxious."
+
+He has had enough to make him look anxious, anyhow, "said my friend,
+gloomily, "be he innocent or guilty."
+
+"I am inclined to believe that he is innocent," I replied. "He showed
+no embarrassment when I addressed him, and no uneasiness when the
+guard came round. His conversation was open to a fault. I might
+almost say that he talked too freely of the business which he had
+in hand."
+
+"That again is strange, for I know no one more reticent on such
+subjects. He actually told you that he had the seventy-five thousand
+pounds in his pocket?"
+
+"He did."
+
+"Humph! My wife has an idea about it, and she may be right--"
+
+"What idea?"
+
+"Well, she fancies--women are so clever, you know, at putting
+themselves inside people's motives --she fancies that he was
+tempted, that he did actually take the money, and that he has been
+concealing himself these three months in some wild part of the
+country, struggling possibly with his conscience all the time,
+and daring neither to abscond with his booty nor to come back and
+restore it."
+
+"But now that he has come back?"
+
+"That is the point. She conceives that he has probably thrown
+himself upon the company's mercy, made restitution of the money,
+and, being forgiven, is permitted to carry the business through as
+if nothing whatever had happened."
+
+"The last," I replied, "is an impossible case. Mrs. Jelf thinks
+like a generous and delicate minded woman, but not in the least like
+a board of railway directors. They would never carry forgiveness
+so far."
+
+"I fear not; and yet it is the only conjecture that bears a semblance
+of likelihood. However we can run over to Clayborough to-morrow and
+see if anything is to be learned. By the way Prendergast tells me
+you picked up his cigar-case."
+
+"I did so, and here it is."
+
+Jelf took the cigar-case, examined it by the light of the lamp, and
+said at once that it was beyond doubt Mr. Dwerrihouse's property,
+and that he remembered to have seen him use it.
+
+"Here, too, is his monogram on the side," he added--" a big J
+transfixing a capital D. He used to carry the same on his note-paper."
+
+"It offers, at all events, a proof that I was not dreaming."
+
+"Ay, but it is time you were asleep and dreaming now. I am ashamed
+to have kept you up so long. Good-night."
+
+"Good-night, and remember that I am more than ready to go with you
+to Clayborough or Blackwater or London or anywhere, if I can be of
+the least service."
+
+"Thanks! I know you mean it, old friend, and it may be that I shall
+put you to the test. Once more, good-night."
+
+So we parted for that night, and met again in the breakfast-room
+at half-past eight next morning. It was a hurried, silent,
+uncomfortable meal; none of us had slept well, and all were thinking
+of the same subject. Mrs. Jelf had evidently been crying. Jelf
+was impatient to be off, and both Captain Prendergast and myself
+felt ourselves to be in the painful position of outsiders who are
+involuntarily brought into a domestic trouble. Within twenty minutes
+after we had left the breakfast-table the dog-cart was brought
+round, and my friend and I were on the road to Clayborough.
+
+"Tell you what it is, Langford," he said, as we sped along between
+the wintry hedges," I do not much fancy to bring up Dwerrihouse's
+name at Clayborough. All the officials know that he is my wife's
+relation, and the subject just now is hardly a pleasant one. If
+you don't much mind, we will make the 11:10 to Blackwater. It's
+an important station, and we shall stand a far better chance of
+picking up information there than at Clayborough."
+
+So we took the 11:10, which happened to be an express, and, arriving
+at Blackwater about a quarter before twelve, proceeded at once to
+prosecute our inquiry.
+
+We began by asking for the station-master, a big, blunt, businesslike
+person, who at once averred that he knew Mr. John Dwerrihouse
+perfectly well, and that there was no director on the line whom he
+had seen and spoken to so frequently.
+
+"He used to be down here two or three times a week about three
+months ago," said he, "when the new line was first set afoot; but
+since then, you know, gentlemen--"
+
+He paused significantly.
+
+Jelf flushed scarlet.
+
+"Yes, yes," he said, hurriedly; "we know all about that. The point
+now to be ascertained is whether anything has been seen or heard
+of him lately."
+
+"Not to my knowledge," replied the stationmaster.
+
+"He is not known to have been down the line any time yesterday,
+for instance?"
+
+The station-master shook his head.
+
+"The East Anglian, sir," said he, "is about the last place where
+he would dare to show himself. Why, there isn't a station-master,
+there isn't guard, there isn't a porter, who doesn't know
+Mr. Dwerrihouse by sight as well as he knows his own face in the
+looking-glass, or who wouldn't telegraph for the police as soon
+as he had set eyes on him at any point along the line. Bless you,
+sir! there's been a standing order out against him ever since the
+25th of September last."
+
+"And yet," pursued my friend, "a gentleman who travelled down yesterday
+from London to Clayborough by the afternoon express testifies that
+he saw Mr. Dwerrihouse in the train, and that Mr. Dwerrihouse
+alighted at Blackwater station."
+
+"Quite impossible, sir," replied the station-master promptly.
+
+"Why impossible?"
+
+"Because there is no station along the line where he is so well
+known or where he would run so great a risk. It would be just
+running his head into the lion's mouth; he would have been mad to
+come nigh Blackwater station; and if he had come he would have been
+arrested before he left the platform."
+
+"Can you tell me who took the Blackwater tickets of that train?"
+
+"I can, sir. It was the guard, Benjamin Somers."
+
+"And where can I find him?"
+
+"You can find him, sir, by staying here, if you please, till one
+o'clock. He will be coming through with the up express from Crampton,
+which stays in Blackwater for ten minutes."
+
+We waited for the up express, beguiling the time as best we could
+by strolling along the Blackwater road till we came almost to the
+outskirts of the town, from which the station was distant nearly
+a couple of miles. By one o'clock we were back again upon the
+platform and waiting for the train. It came punctually, and I at
+once recognised the ruddy-faced guard who had gone down with my
+train the evening before.
+
+"The gentlemen want to ask you something about Mr. Dwerrihouse,
+Somers," said the station-master, by way of introduction.
+
+The guard flashed a keen glance from my face to Jelf's and back
+again to mine.
+
+"Mr. John Dwerrihouse, the late director?" said he, interrogatively.
+
+"The same," replied my friend. "Should you know him if you saw
+him?"
+
+"Anywhere, sir."
+
+"Do you know if he was in the 4:15 express yesterday afternoon?"
+
+"He was not, sir."
+
+"How can you answer so positively?"
+
+"Because I looked into every carriage and saw every face in that
+train, and I could take my oath that Mr. Dwerrihouse was not in it.
+This gentleman was," he added, turning sharply upon me. "I don't
+know that I ever saw him before in my life, but I remember _his_
+face perfectly. You nearly missed taking your seat in time at this
+station, sir, and you got out at Clayborough."
+
+"Quite true, guard," I replied; "but do you not remember the face
+of the gentleman who travelled down in the same carriage with me
+as far as here?"
+
+"It was my impression, sir, that you travelled down alone," said
+Somers, with a look of some surprise.
+
+"By no means. I had a fellow-traveller as far as Blackwater, and
+it was in trying to restore him the cigar-case which he had dropped
+in the carriage that I so nearly let you go on without me."
+
+"I remember your saying something about a cigar-case, certainly,"
+replied the guard; "but--"
+
+"You asked for my ticket just before we entered station."
+
+"I did, sir."
+
+"Then you must have seen him. He sat in the corner next the very
+door to which you came."
+
+"No, indeed; I saw no one."
+
+I looked at Jelf. I began to think the guard was in the ex-director's
+confidence, and paid for his silence.
+
+"If I had seen another traveller I should have asked for his ticket,"
+added Somers. "Did you see me ask for his ticket, sir?"
+
+"I observed that you did not ask for it, but he explained that by
+saying--" I hesitated. I feared I might be telling too much, and
+so broke off abruptly.
+
+The guard and the station-master exchanged glances. The former
+looked impatiently at his watch.
+
+"I am obliged to go on in four minutes more sir," he said.
+
+"One last question, then," interposed Jelf, with a sort of
+desperation. "If this gentleman's fellow traveller had been Mr.
+John Dwerrihouse, and he had been sitting in the corner next the
+door in which you took the tickets, could you have failed to see
+and recognise him?"
+
+"No, sir; it would have been quite impossible!"
+
+"And you are certain you did _not_ see him?"
+
+"As I said before, sir, I could take my oath, I did not see him.
+And if it wasn't that I don't like to contradict a gentleman, I
+would say I could also take my oath that this gentlemen was quite
+alone in the carriage the whole way from London to Clayborough.
+Why, sir," he added dropping his voice so as to be inaudible to the
+station-master, who had been called away to speak to some person
+close by, "you expressly asked me to give you a compartment to
+yourself, and I did so. I locked you in, and you were so good as
+to give me something for myself."
+
+"Yes; but Mr. Dwerrihouse had a key of his own."
+
+"I never saw him, sir; I saw no one in that compartment but yourself.
+Beg pardon, sir; my time's up."
+
+And with this the ruddy guard touched his cap and was gone. In
+another minute the heavy panting of the engine began afresh, and
+the train glided slowly out of the station.
+
+We looked at each other for some moments in silence. I was the
+first to speak.
+
+"Mr. Benjamin Somers knows more than he chooses to tell," I said.
+
+"Humph! do you think so?"
+
+"It must be. He could not have come to the door without seeing him;
+it's impossible."
+
+"There is one thing not impossible, my dear fellow."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"That you may have fallen asleep and dreamed the whole thing."
+
+"Could I dream of a branch line that I had never heard of? Could
+I dream of a hundred and one business details that had no kind of
+interest for me? Could I dream of the seventy-five thousand pounds?"
+
+"Perhaps you might have seen or heard some vague account of the
+affair while you were abroad. It might have made no impression
+upon you at the time, and might have come back to you in your dreams,
+recalled perhaps by the mere names of the stations on the line."
+
+"What about the fire in the chimney of the blue room--should I have
+heard of that during my journey?"
+
+"Well, no; I admit there is a difficulty about that point."
+
+"And what about the cigar-case?"
+
+"Ay, by Jove! there is the cigar-case. That _is_ a stubborn
+fact. Well, it's a mysterious affair, and it will need a better
+detective than myself, I fancy, to clear it up. I suppose we may
+as well go home."
+
+A week had not gone by when I received a letter from the secretary
+of the East Anglian Railway Company, requesting the favour of my
+attendance at a special board meeting not then many days distant.
+No reasons were alleged and no apologies offered for this demand
+upon my time, but they had heard, it was clear, of my inquiries
+anent the missing director, and had a mind to put me through some
+sort of official examination upon the subject. Being still a guest
+at Dumbleton Hall, I had to go up to London for the purpose and
+Jonathan Jelf accompanied me. I found the direction of the Great
+East Anglian line represented by a party of some twelve or fourteen
+gentlemen seated in solemn conclave round a huge green baize table,
+in a gloomy board room adjoining the London terminus.
+
+Being courteously received by the chairman (who at once began
+by saying that certain statements of mine respecting Mr. John
+Dwerrihouse had come to the knowledge of the direction, and that
+they in consequence desired to confer with me on those points), we
+were placed at the table and the inquiry proceeded in due form.
+
+I was first asked if I knew Mr. John Dwerrihouse, how long I had
+been acquainted with him, and whether I could identify him at sight.
+I was then asked when I had seen him last. To which I replied,
+"On the 4th of this present month, December, 1856." Then came the
+inquiry of where I had seen him on that fourth day of December;
+to which I replied that I met him in a first-class compartment of
+the 4:15 down express, that he got in just as the train was leaving
+the London terminus, and that he alighted at Blackwater station.
+The chairman then inquired whether I had held any communication
+with my fellow-traveller; whereupon I related, as nearly as I could
+remember it, the whole bulk and substance of Mr. John Dwerrihouse's
+diffuse information respecting the new branch line.
+
+To all this the board listened with profound attention, while the
+chairman presided and the secretary took notes. I then produced
+the cigar-case. It was passed from hand to hand, and recognised
+by all. There was not a man present who did not remember that plain
+cigar-case with its silver monogram, or to whom it seemed anything
+less entirely corroborative of my evidence. When at length I had
+told all that I had to tell, the chairman whispered something to
+the secretary; the secretary touched a silver hand-bell, and the
+guard, Benjamin Somers, was ushered into the room. He was then
+examined as carefully as myself. He declared that he knew Mr. John
+Dwerrihouse perfectly well, that he could not be mistaken in him,
+that he remembered going down with the 4:15 express on the afternoon in
+question, that he remembered me, and that, there being one or two
+empty first-class compartments on that especial afternoon, he had,
+in compliance with my request, placed me in a carriage by myself.
+He was positive that I remained alone in that compartment all the
+way from London to Clayborough. He was ready to take his oath
+that Dwerrihouse was neither in that carriage with me nor in any
+compartment of that train. He remembered distinctly to have examined
+my ticket to Blackwater; was certain that there was no one else
+at that time in the carriage; could not have failed to observe a
+second person, if there had been one; had that second person been
+Mr. John Dwerrihouse, should have quietly double-locked the door of
+the carriage and have at once given information to the Blackwater
+station-master. So clear, so decisive, so ready, was Somers with
+this testimony, that the board looked fairly puzzled.
+
+"You hear this person's statement, Mr. Langford," said the chairman.
+"It contradicts yours in every particular. What have you to say in
+reply?"
+
+"I can only repeat what I said before. I am quite as positive of
+the truth of my own assertions as Mr. Somers can be of the truth
+of his."
+
+"You say that Mr. Dwerrihouse alighted in Blackwater, and that he
+was in possession of a private key. Are you sure that he had not
+alighted by means of that key before the guard came round for the
+tickets?"
+
+"I am quite positive that he did not leave the carriage till the
+train had fairly entered the station, and the other Blackwater
+passengers alighted. I even saw that he was met there by a friend."
+
+"Indeed! Did you see that person distinctly?"
+
+"Quite distinctly."
+
+"Can you describe his appearance?"
+
+"I think so. He was short and very slight, sandy-haired, with
+a bushy moustache and beard, and he wore a closely fitting suit
+of gray tweed. His age I should take to be about thirty-eight or
+forty."
+
+"Did Mr. Dwerrihouse leave the station in this person's company?"
+
+"I cannot tell. I saw them walking together down the platform, and
+then I saw them standing inside under a gas-jet, talking earnestly.
+After that I lost sight of them quite suddenly, and just then my
+train went on, and I with it."
+
+The chairman and secretary conferred together in an undertone. The
+directors whispered to one another. One or two looked suspiciously
+at the guard. I could see that my evidence remained unshaken, and
+that, like myself, they suspected some complicity between the guard
+and the defaulter.
+
+"How far did you conduct that 4:15 express on the day in question,
+Somers?" asked the chairman.
+
+"All through, sir," replied the guard, "from London to Crampton."
+
+"How was it that you were not relieved at Clayborough? I thought
+there was always a change of guards at Clayborough."
+
+"There used to be, sir, till the new regulations came in force
+last midsummer, since when the guards in charge of express trains
+go the whole way through."
+
+The chairman turned to the secretary.
+
+"I think it would be as well," he said, "if we had the day-book to
+refer to upon this point."
+
+Again the secretary touched the silver handbell, and desired
+the porter in attendance to summon Mr. Raikes. From a word or two
+dropped by another of the directors I gathered that Mr. Raikes
+was one of the under-secretaries.
+
+He came, a small, slight, sandy-haired, keen-eyed man, with an
+eager, nervous manner, and a forest of light beard and moustache.
+He just showed himself at the door of the board room, and, being
+requested to bring a certain day-book from a certain shelf in a
+certain room, bowed and vanished.
+
+He was there such a moment, and the surprise of seeing him was so
+great and sudden, that it was not till the door had closed upon him
+that I found voice to speak. He was no sooner gone, however, than
+I sprang to my feet.
+
+"That person," I said, "is the same who met Mr. Dwerrihouse upon
+the platform at Blackwater!"
+
+There was a general movement of surprise. The chairman looked grave
+and somewhat agitated.
+
+"Take care, Mr. Langford," he said; "take care what you say."
+
+"I am as positive of his identity as of my own."
+
+"Do you consider the consequences of your words? Do you consider
+that you are bringing a charge of the gravest character against
+one of the company's servants?"
+
+"I am willing to be put upon my oath, if necessary. The man who
+came to that door a minute since is the same whom I saw talking
+with Mr. Dwerrihouse on the Blackwater platform. Were he twenty
+times the company's servant, I could say neither more nor less."
+
+The chairman turned again to the guard.
+
+"Did you see Mr. Raikes in the train or on the platform?" he asked.
+
+Somers shook his head.
+
+"I am confident Mr. Raikes was not in the train," he said, "and I
+certainly did not see him on the platform."
+
+The chairman turned next to the secretary.
+
+"Mr. Raikes is in your office, Mr. Hunter," he said. "Can you
+remember if he was absent on the 4th instant?"
+
+"I do not think he was," replied the secretary, "but I am not
+prepared to speak positively. I have been away most afternoons
+myself lately, and Mr. Raikes might easily have absented himself
+if he had been disposed."
+
+At this moment the under-secretary returned with the day-book under
+his arm.
+
+"Be pleased to refer, Mr. Raikes," said the chairman, "to the
+entries of the 4th instant, and see what Benjamin Somers's duties
+were on that day."
+
+Mr. Raikes threw open the cumbrous volume, and ran a practised eye
+and finger down some three or four successive columns of entries.
+Stopping suddenly at the foot of a page, he then read aloud that
+Benjamin Somers had on that day conducted the 4:15 express from
+London to Crampton.
+
+The chairman leaned forward in his seat, looked the under-secretary
+full in the face, and said, quite sharply and suddenly:
+
+"Where were you, Mr. Raikes, on the same afternoon?"
+
+"_I_, sir?"
+
+"You, Mr. Raikes. Where were you on the afternoon and evening of
+the 4th of the present month?"
+
+"Here, sir, in Mr. Hunter's office. Where else should I be?"
+
+There was a dash of trepidation in the under-secretary's voice as
+he said this, but his look of surprise was natural enough.
+
+"We have some reason for believing, Mr. Raikes, that you were
+absent that afternoon without leave. Was this the case?"
+
+"Certainly not, sir. I have not had a day's holiday since September.
+Mr. Hunter will bear me out in this."
+
+Mr. Hunter repeated what he had previously said on the subject, but
+added that the clerks in the adjoining office would be certain to
+know. Whereupon the senior clerk, a grave, middle-aged person in
+green glasses, was summoned and interrogated.
+
+His testimony cleared the under-secretary at once. He declared
+that Mr. Raikes had in no instance, to his knowledge, been absent
+during office hours since his return from his annual holiday in
+September.
+
+I was confounded. The chairman turned to me with a smile, in which
+a shade of covert annoyance was scarcely apparent.
+
+"You hear, Mr. Langford?" he said.
+
+"I hear, sir; but my conviction remains unshaken."
+
+"I fear, Mr. Langford, that your convictions are very insufficiently
+based," replied the chairman, with a doubtful cough." I fear that
+you 'dream dreams,' and mistake them for actual occurrences. It
+is a dangerous habit of mind, and might lead to dangerous results.
+Mr. Raikes here would have found himself in an unpleasant position
+had he not proved so satisfactory an alibi."
+
+I was about to reply, but he gave me no time.
+
+"I think, gentlemen," he went on to say, addressing the board,"
+that we should be wasting time to push this inquiry further. Mr.
+Langford's evidence would seem to be of an equal value throughout.
+The testimony of Benjamin Somers disproves his first statement,
+and the testimony of the last witness disproves his second. I think
+we may conclude that Mr. Langford fell asleep in the train on the
+occasion of his journey to Clayborough, and dreamed an unusually
+vivid and circumstantial dream, of which, however, we have now
+heard quite enough."
+
+There are few things more annoying than to find one's positive
+convictions met with incredulity. I could not help feeling impatience
+at the turn that affairs had taken. I was not proof against the
+civil sarcasm of the chairman's manner. Most intolerable of all,
+however, was the quiet smile lurking about the corners of Benjamin
+Somers's mouth, and the half-triumphant, half-malicious gleam in
+the eyes of the under-secretary. The man was evidently puzzled and
+somewhat alarmed. His looks seemed furtively to interrogate me.
+Who was I? What did I want? Why had I come there to do him an ill
+turn with his employers? What was it to me whether or no he was
+absent without leave?
+
+Seeing all this, and perhaps more irritated by it than the thing
+deserved, I begged leave to detain the attention of the board for
+a moment longer. Jelf plucked me impatiently by the sleeve.
+
+"Better let the thing drop," he whispered. "The chairman's right
+enough; you dreamed it, and the less said now the better."
+
+I was not to be silenced, however, in this fashion. I had yet
+something to say, and I would say it. It was to this effect: that
+dreams were not usually productive of tangible results, and that I
+requested to know in what way the chairman conceived I had evolved
+from my dream so substantial and well-made a delusion as the
+cigar-case which I had had the honour to place before him at the
+commencement of our interview.
+
+"The cigar-case, I admit, Mr. Langford," the chairman replied, "is
+a very strong point in your evidence. It is your _only_ strong
+point, however, and there is just a possibility that we may all
+be misled by a mere accidental resemblance. Will you permit me to
+see the case again?"
+
+"It is unlikely," I said, as I handed it to him, "that any other
+should bear precisely this monogram, and yet be in all other
+particulars exactly similar."
+
+The chairman examined it for a moment in silence, and then passed
+it to Mr. Hunter. Mr. Hunter turned it over and over, and shook
+his head.
+
+"This is no mere resemblance," he said. "It is John Dwerrihouse's
+cigar-case to a certainty. I remember it perfectly; I have seen
+it a hundred times."
+
+"I believe I may say the same," added the chairman; "yet how account
+for the way in which Mr. Langford asserts that it came into his
+possession?"
+
+"I can only repeat," I replied, "that I found it on the floor of
+the carriage after Mr. Dwerrihouse had alighted. It was in leaning
+out to look after him that I trod upon it, and it was in running
+after him for the purpose of restoring it that I saw or believed
+I saw, Mr. Raikes standing aside with him in earnest conversation."
+
+Again I felt Jonathan Jelf plucking at my sleeve.
+
+"Look at Raikes," he whispered; "look at Raikes!"
+
+I turned to where the under-secretary had been standing a moment
+before, and saw him, white as death, with lips trembling and livid,
+stealing toward the door.
+
+To conceive a sudden, strange, and indefinite suspicion, to fling
+myself in his way, to take him by the shoulders as if he were a
+child, and turn his craven face, perforce, toward the board, were
+with me the work of an instant.
+
+"Look at him!" I exclaimed. "Look at his face! I ask no better
+witness to the truth of my words."
+
+The chairman's brow darkened.
+
+"Mr. Raikes," he said, sternly, "if you know anything you had better
+speak."
+
+Vainly trying to wrench himself from my grasp, the under-secretary
+stammered out an incoherent denial.
+
+"Let me go," he said. "I know nothing--you have no right to detain
+me--let me go!"
+
+"Did you, or did you not, meet Mr. John Dwerrihouse at Blackwater
+station? The charge brought against you is either true or false.
+If true, you will do well to throw yourself upon the mercy of the
+board and make full confession of all that you know."
+
+The under-secretary wrung his hands in an agony of helpless terror.
+
+"I was away!" he cried. "I was two hundred miles away at the time!
+I know nothing about it--I have nothing to confess--I am innocent--I
+call God to witness I am innocent!"
+
+"Two hundred miles away!" echoed the chairman. "What do you mean?"
+
+"I was in Devonshire. I had three weeks' leave of absence--I
+appeal to Mr. Hunter--Mr. Hunter knows I had three weeks' leave
+of absence! I was in Devonshire all the time; I can prove I was
+in Devonshire!"
+
+Seeing him so abject, so incoherent, so wild with apprehension,
+the directors began to whisper gravely among themselves, while one
+got quietly up and called the porter to guard the door.
+
+"What has your being in Devonshire to do with the matter?" said
+the chairman. "When were you in Devonshire?"
+
+"Mr. Raikes took his leave in September," said the secretary, "about
+the time when Mr. Dwerrihouse disappeared."
+
+"I never even heard that he had disappeared till I came back!"
+
+"That must remain to be proved," said the chairman. "I shall at
+once put this matter in the hands of the police. In the meanwhile,
+Mr. Raikes, being myself a magistrate and used to deal with these
+cases, I advise you to offer no resistance but to confess while
+confession may yet do you service. As for your accomplice--"
+
+The frightened wretch fell upon his knees.
+
+"I had no accomplice!" he cried, "Only have mercy upon me--only
+spare my life, and I will confess all! I didn't mean to harm him!
+I didn't mean to hurt a hair of his head! Only have mercy upon me,
+and let me go!"
+
+The chairman rose in his place, pale and agitated.
+
+"Good heavens!" he exclaimed, "what horrible mystery is this? What
+does it mean?"
+
+"As sure as there is a God in heaven," said Jonathan Jelf, "it
+means that murder has been done."
+
+"No! no! no!" shrieked Raikes, still upon his knees, and cowering
+like a beaten hound, "Not murder! No jury that ever sat could bring
+it in murder. I thought I had only stunned him--I never meant to
+do more than stun him! Manslaughter----manslaughter--not murder!"
+
+Overcome by the horror of this unexpected revelation, the chairman
+covered his face with his hand and for a moment or two remained
+silent.
+
+"Miserable man," he said at length, "you have betrayed yourself."
+
+"You bade me confess! You urged me to throw myself upon the mercy
+of the board!"
+
+"You have confessed to a crime which no one suspected you of having
+committed," replied the chairman, "and which this board has no
+power either to punish or forgive. All that I can do for you it to
+advise you to submit to the law, to plead guilty, and to conceal
+nothing. When did you do this deed?"
+
+The guilty man rose to his feet, and leaned heavily against the
+table. His answer came reluctantly, like the speech of one dreaming.
+
+"On the 22d of September!"
+
+On the 22d of September! I looked in Jonathan Jelf's face, and he
+in mine. I felt my own smiling with a strange sense of wonder and
+dread. I saw his blanch suddenly, even to the lips.
+
+"Merciful Heaven!" he whispered. "_What was it, then, that you
+saw in the train?_"
+
+What was it that I saw in the train? That question remains unanswered
+to this day. I have never been able to reply to it. I only know
+that it bore the living likeness of the murdered man, whose body
+had then been lying some ten weeks under a rough pile of branches
+and brambles and rotting leaves, at the bottom of a deserted chalk-pit
+about half-way between Blackwater and Mallingford. I know that it
+spoke and moved and looked as that man spoke and moved and looked
+in life; that I heard, or seemed to hear, things revealed which
+I could never otherwise have learned; that I was guided, as it
+were, by that vision on the platform to the identification of the
+murderer; and that, a passive instrument myself, I was destined,
+by means of these mysterious teachings to bring about the ends of
+justice. For these things I have never been able to account.
+
+As for that matter of the cigar-case, it proved, on inquiry, that
+the carriage in which I travelled down that afternoon to Clayborough
+had not been in use for several weeks, and was, in point of fact,
+the same in which poor John Dwerrihouse had performed his last
+journey. The case had doubtless been dropped by him, and had lain
+unnoticed till I found it.
+
+Upon the details of the murder I have no need to dwell. Those
+who desire more ample particulars may find them, and the written
+confession of Augustus Raikes, in the files of the "Times" for
+1856. Enough that the under-secretary, knowing the history of the
+new line, and following the negotiation step by step through all
+its stages, determined to waylay Mr. Dwerrihouse, rob him of the
+seventy-five thousand pounds, and escape to America with his booty.
+
+In order to effect these ends he obtained leave of absence a few
+days before the time appointed for the payment of the money, secured
+his passage across the Atlantic in a steamer advertised to start on
+the 23d, provided himself with a heavily loaded "life-preserver,"
+and went down to Blackwater to await the arrival of his victim.
+How he met him on the platform with a pretended message from the
+board, how he offered to conduct him by a short cut across the
+fields to Mallingford, how, having brought him to a lonely place,
+he struck him down with the life-preserver, and so killed him, and
+how, finding what he had done, he dragged the body to the verge of an
+out-of-the-way chalk-pit, and there flung it in and piled it over
+with branches and brambles, are facts still fresh in the memories
+of those who, like the connoisseurs in De Quincey's famous essay,
+regard murder as a fine art. Strangely enough, the murderer having
+done his work, was afraid to leave the country. He declared that
+he had not intended to take the director's life, but only to stun
+and rob him and that, finding the blow had killed, he dared not
+fly for fear of drawing down suspicion upon his own head. As a mere
+robber he would have been safe in the States, but as a murderer he
+would inevitably have been pursued and given up to justice. So he
+forfeited his passage, returned to the office as usual at the end
+of his leave, and locked up his ill-gotten thousands till a more
+convenient opportunity. In the meanwhile he had the satisfaction
+of finding that Mr. Dwerrihouse was universally believed to have
+absconded with the money, no one knew how or whither.
+
+Whether he meant murder or not, however, Mr. Augustus Raikes paid
+the full penalty of his crime, and was hanged at the Old Bailey
+in the second week in January, 1857. Those who desire to make his
+further acquaintance may see him any day (admirably done in wax)
+in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's exhibition, in Baker
+Street. He is there to be found in the midst of a select society of
+ladies and gentlemen of atrocious memory, dressed in the close-cut
+tweed suit which he wore on the evening of the murder, and holding
+in his hand the identical life-preserve, with which he committed
+it.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WRONG BLACK BAG
+
+BY ANGELO LEWIS
+
+
+
+
+
+It was the eve of Good Friday. Within the modest parlour of No. 13
+Primrose Terrace a little man, wearing a gray felt hat and a red
+neck-tie, stood admiring himself in the looking-glass over the
+mantelpiece. Such a state of things anywhere else would have had no
+significance whatever; but circumstances proverbially alter cases.
+At 13 Primrose Terrace it approached the dimensions of a portent.
+
+Not to keep the reader in suspense, the little man was Benjamin Quelch,
+clerk in the office of Messrs. Cobble & Clink, coal merchants, and
+he was about to carry out a desperate resolution. Most men have
+some secret ambition; Benjamin's was twofold. For years he had
+yearned to wear a soft felt hat and to make a trip to Paris, and
+for years Fate, in the person of Mrs. Quelch, had stood in the way
+and prevented the indulgence of his longing. Quelch being, as we
+have hinted, exceptionally small of stature, had, in accordance
+with mysterious law of opposites, selected the largest lady of his
+acquaintance as the partner of his joys. He himself was of a meek
+and retiring disposition. Mrs. Quelch, on the other hand, was
+a woman of stern and decided temperament, with strong views upon
+most subjects. She administered Benjamin's finances, regulated his
+diet, and prescribed for him when his health was out order. Though
+fond of him in her own way, she ruled him with a rod of iron, and
+on three points she was inflexible. To make up for his insignificance
+of stature, she insisted on his wearing the tallest hat that money
+could procure, to the exclusion of all other head-gear; secondly,
+on the ground that it looked more "professional," she would allow
+him none but black silk neckties; and lastly, she would not let him
+smoke. She had further an intense repugnance to all things foreign,
+holding as an article of faith that no good thing, whether in art,
+cookery, or morals, was to be found on other than English soil.
+When Benjamin once, in a rash moment, suggested a trip to Boulogne
+by way of summer holiday, the suggestion was received in a manner
+that took away his appetite for a week afterward.
+
+The prohibition of smoking Quelch did not much mind; for, having
+in his salad days made trial of a cheap cigar, the result somehow
+satisfied him that tobacco was not in his line, and he ceased to
+yearn for it accordingly. But the tall hat and the black necktie
+were constant sources of irritation. He had an idea, based on his
+having once won a drawing prize at school, that nature had intended
+him for an artist, and he secretly lamented the untoward fate which
+had thrown him away upon coals. Now the few artists Benjamin had
+chanced to meet affected a soft and slouchy style of head-gear,
+and a considerable amount of freedom, generally with a touch of
+colour, in the region of the neck. Such, therefore, in the fitness
+of things, should have been the hat and such the neck-gear of
+Benjamin Quelch, and the veto of his wife only made him yearn for
+them the more intensely.
+
+In later years he had been seized with a longing to see Paris. It
+chanced that a clerk in the same office, one Peter Flipp, had made
+one of a personally conducted party on a visit to the gay city.
+
+The cost of the trip had been but five guineas; but never, surely,
+were five guineas so magnificently invested. There was a good deal
+of romance about Flipp, and it may be that his accounts were not
+entirely trustworthy; but they so fired the imagination of our
+friend Benjamin that he had at once begun to hoard up surreptitious
+sixpences, with the hope that some day he too might, by some
+unforeseen combination of circumstances, be enabled to visit the
+enchanted city.
+
+And at last that day had come. Mrs. Quelch, her three children
+and her one domestic, had gone to Lowestoft for an Easter outing,
+Benjamin and a deaf charwoman, Mrs. Widger, being left in charge
+of the family belongings. Benjamin's Easter holidays were limited
+to Good Friday and Easter Monday, and, as it seemed hardly worth
+while that he should travel so far as Lowestoft for such short
+periods, Mrs. Quelch had thoughtfully arranged that he should
+spend the former day at the British Museum and the latter at the
+Zoological Gardens. Two days after her departure, however, Mr.
+Cobble called Quelch into his private office and told him that if
+he liked he might for once take holiday from the Friday to the
+Tuesday inclusive, and join his wife at the seaside.
+
+Quelch accepted the boon with an honest intention of employing
+it as suggested. Indeed, he had even begun a letter to his wife
+announcing the pleasing intelligence, and had got as far as "My dear
+Penelope," when a wild and wicked thought struck him: why should
+he not spend his unexpected holiday in Paris?
+
+Laying down his pen, he opened his desk: and counted his secret
+hoard. It amounted to five pounds seventeen, twelve shillings more
+than Flipp's outlay. There was no difficulty in that direction,
+and nobody would be any the wiser. His wife would imagine that
+he was in London, while his employers would believe him to be
+at Lowestoft. There was a brief struggle in his mind, but the
+tempter prevailed, and, with a courage worthy of a better cause,
+he determined to risk it and--_go_.
+
+And thus it came to pass that, on the evening of our story, Benjamin
+Quelch, having completed his packing,--which merely comprised what
+he was accustomed to call his "night things," neatly bestowed in
+a small black hand-bag belonging to Mrs. Quelch,--stood before the
+looking-glass and contemplated his guilty splendour, the red necktie
+and the soft gray felt hat, purchased out of surplus funds. He had
+expended a couple of guineas in a second-class return ticket, and
+another two pounds in "coupons," entitling him to bed, breakfast,
+and dinner for five days at certain specified hotels in Paris.
+This outlay, with half a crown for a pair of gloves, and a bribe
+of five shillings to secure the silence of Mrs. Widger, left him
+with little more than a pound in hand, but this small surplus would
+no doubt amply suffice for his modest needs.
+
+His only regret, as he gazed at himself in the glass was that he had
+not had time to grow a moustache, the one thing needed to complete
+his artistic appearance. But time was fleeting, and he dared not
+linger over the enticing picture. He stole along the passage, and
+softly opened the street door. As he did so a sudden panic came over
+him, and he felt half inclined to abandon his rash design. But as
+he wavered he caught sight of the detested tall hat hanging up in
+the passage, and he hesitated no longer. He passed out, and, closing
+the door behind him, started at a brisk pace for Victoria station.
+
+His plans had been laid with much ingenuity, though at a terrible
+sacrifice of his usual straight-forwardness. He had written a
+couple of letters to Mrs. Quelch, to be posted by Mrs. Widger on
+appropriate days, giving imaginary accounts of his visits to the
+British Museum and Zoological Gardens, with pointed allusions to
+the behavior of the elephant, and other circumstantial particulars.
+To insure the posting of these in proper order, he had marked the
+dates in pencil on the envelopes in the corner usually occupied by
+the postage-stamp, so that when the latter was affixed the figures
+would be concealed. He explained the arrangement to Mrs. Widger,
+who promised that his instructions should be faithfully carried
+out.
+
+After a sharp walk he reached the railway-station, and in due
+course found himself steaming across the Channel to Dieppe. The
+passage was not especially rough, but to poor Quelch, unaccustomed
+as he was to the sea, it seemed as if the boat must go to the
+bottom every moment. To the bodily pains of seasickness were added
+the mental pains of remorse, and between the two he reached Dieppe
+more dead than alive; indeed, he would almost have welcomed death
+as a release from his sufferings.
+
+Even when the boat had arrived at the pier he still remained in the
+berth he had occupied all night, and would probably have continued
+to lie there had not the steward lifted him by main force to his
+feet. He seized his black bag with a groan, and staggered on deck.
+Here he felt a little better, but new terrors seized him at the
+sight of the gold-laced officials and blue-bloused porters, who
+lined each side of the gangway, all talking at the top of their
+voices, and in tones which seemed, to his unaccustomed ear, to
+convey a thirst for British blood. No sooner had he landed than he
+was accosted by a ferocious-looking personage (in truth, a harmless
+custom-house officer), who asked him in French whether he had
+anything to declare, and made a movement to take his bag in order
+to mark it as "passed." Quelch jumped to the conclusion that the
+stranger was a brigand bent on depriving him of his property, and
+he held on to the bag with such tenacity that the douanier naturally
+inferred there was something specially contraband about it. He
+proceeded to open it, and produced, among sundry other feminine
+belongings, a lady's frilled and furbelowed night-dress, from which,
+as he unrolled it, fell a couple of bundles of cigars!
+
+Benjamin's look of astonishment as he saw these unexpected articles
+produced from his hand-bag was interpreted by the officials as a
+look of guilt. As a matter of fact, half stupefied by the agonies
+of the night, he had forgotten the precise spot where he had left
+his own bag, and had picked up in its stead one belonging to the
+wife of a sporting gentleman on his way to some races at Longchamps.
+Desiring to smuggle a few "weeds," and deeming that the presence of
+such articles would be less likely to be suspected among a lady's
+belongings, the sporting gentleman had committed them to his
+companion's keeping. Hand-bags, as a rule, are "passed" unopened,
+and such would probably have been the case in the present instance
+had not Quelch's look of panic excited suspicion. The real owners
+of the bag had picked up Quelch's which it precisely resembled,
+and were close behind him on the gangway. The lady uttered an
+exclamation of dismay as she saw the contents of her bag spread
+abroad by the customs officer, but was promptly silenced by her
+husband. "Keep your blessed tongue quiet," he whispered, "If a
+bloomin' idiot chooses to sneak our bag, and then to give himself
+away to the first man that looks at him, he must stand the racket."
+Whereupon the sporting gentleman and lady, first taking a quiet
+peep into Benjamin's bag to make sure that it contained nothing
+compromising, passed the examiner with a smile of conscious innocence,
+and, after an interval for refreshment at the buffet, took their
+seats in the train for Paris.
+
+Meanwhile poor Quelch was taken before a pompous individual with
+an extra large moustache and a double allowance of gold lace on
+his cap and charged not only with defrauding the revenue, but with
+forcibly resisting an officer in the execution of his duty. The
+accusation being in French, Quelch did not understand a word of
+it, and in his ignorance took it for granted that he was accused of
+stealing the strange bag and its contents. Visions of imprisonment,
+penal servitude, nay, even capital punishment, floated before his
+bewildered brain. Finally the official with the large moustache
+made a speech to him in French, setting forth that for his dishonest
+attempt to smuggle he must pay a fine of a hundred francs. With
+regard to the assault on the official, as said official was not
+much hurt, he graciously agreed to throw that in and make no charge
+for it. When he had fully explained matters to his own satisfaction
+he waited to receive the answer of the prisoner; but none was
+forthcoming, for the best of reasons. It finally dawned on the
+official that Quelch might not understand French, and he therefore
+proceeded to address him in what he considered to be his native
+tongue.
+
+"You smoggle--smoggle seegar. Zen it must zat you pay amende,
+hundred francs. You me understand? Hundred francs--pay! pay! pay!"
+At each repetition of the last word he brought down a dirty fist
+into the palm of the opposite hand immediately under Quelch's nose.
+"Hundred francs--Engleesh money, four pound."
+
+Quelch caught the last words, and was relieved to find that it was
+merely a money payment that was demanded of him. But he was little
+better off, for, having but a few shillings in his pocket, to pay
+four pounds was as much out of his power as if it had been four
+hundred. He determined to appeal to the mercy of his captors. "Not
+got," he said, apologetically, with a vague idea that by speaking
+very elementary English he came somehow nearer to French, "That
+all," he continued, producing his little store and holding it
+out beseechingly to the official. "_Pas assez_, not enouf,"
+growled the latter. Quelch tried again in all his pockets, but only
+succeeded in finding another threepenny piece. The officer shook
+his head, and, after a brief discussion with his fellows, said,
+_"Comment-vous appelez-vous, monsieur?_ How do you call
+yourself?"
+
+With a vague idea of keeping his disgrace from his friends, Quelch
+rashly determined to give a false name. If he had had a few minutes
+to think it over he would have invented one for the occasion, but
+his imagination was not accustomed to such sudden calls, and, on
+the question being repeated, he desperately gave the name of his
+next-door neighbour, Mr. Henry Fladgate. "Henri Flodgett," repeated
+the officer as he wrote it down.
+
+"_Et vous demeurez?_ You live where?" And Quelch proceeded to
+give the address of Mr. Fladgate, 11 Primrose Terrace. "_Tres
+bien._ I send teleg-r-r-amme. _Au violon!_" And poor Benjamin
+was ignominiously marched to the local police station.
+
+Meanwhile Quelch's arrangements at home were scarcely working as
+he had intended. The estimable Mrs. Widger, partly by reason of her
+deafness and partly of native stupidity, had only half understood
+his instructions about the letters. She knew she was to stamp them
+and she knew she was to post them, but the dates in the corners
+might have been runic inscriptions for any idea they conveyed to
+her obfuscated intellect. Accordingly, the first time she visited
+her usual house of call, which was early on the morning of Good
+Friday, she proceeded, in her own language, to "get the dratted things
+off her mind" by dropping them both into the nearest pillar-box.
+
+On the following day, therefore, Mrs. Quelch at Lawestoft was
+surprised to find on the breakfast-table _two_ letters in
+her Benjamin's handwriting. Her surprise was still greater when,
+on opening them, she found one to be a graphic account of a visit
+to the Zoological Gardens on the following Monday. The conclusion
+was obvious: either Benjamin had turned prophet, and had somehow
+got ahead of the almanac, or he was "carrying on" in some very
+underhand manner. Mrs. Quelch decided for the latter alternative,
+and determined to get to the bottom of the matter at once. She
+cut a sandwich, put on her bonnet, and, grasping her umbrella in
+a manner which boded no good to any one who stayed her progress,
+started by the next train for Liverpool Street.
+
+On reaching home she extracted from the weeping Widger, who had
+just been spending the last of Benjamin's five shillings, and was
+far gone in depression and gin and water, that her "good gentleman"
+had not been home since Thursday night. This was bad enough, but
+there was still more conclusive evidence that he was up to no good,
+in the shape of his tall hat, which hung, silent accuser, on the
+last peg in the passage.
+
+Having pumped Mrs. Widger till there was no more (save tears)
+to be pumped out of her, Mrs. Quelch, still firmly grasping her
+umbrella, proceeded next door, on the chance that her neighbour,
+Mrs. Fladgate, might be able to give her some information. She found
+Mrs. Fladgate weeping in the parlour with an open telegram before
+her. Being a woman who did not stand upon ceremony, she read the
+telegram, which was dated from Dieppe and ran as follows: "Monsieur
+Fladgate here detained for to have smuggle cigars. Fine to pay,
+one hundred franc. Send money and he will be release."
+
+"Oh, the men, the men!" ejaculated Mrs. Quelch, as she dropped
+into an arm-chair. "They're all alike. First Benjamin, and now
+Fladgate! I shouldn't wonder if they had gone off together."
+
+"You don't mean to say Mr. Quelch has gone too?" sobbed Mrs.
+Fladgate.
+
+"He has taken a shameful advantage of my absence. He has not been
+home since Thursday evening, and his hat is hanging up in the hall."
+
+"You don't think he has been m-m-murdered?"
+
+"I'm not afraid of _that_," replied Mrs. Quelch, "it wouldn't
+be worth anybody's while. But what has he got on his head? that's
+what I want to know. Of course, if he's with Mr. Fladgate in some
+foreign den of iniquity, that accounts for it."
+
+"Don't foreigners wear hats?" inquired Mrs. Fladgate, innocently.
+
+"Not the respectable English sort, I'll bet bound," replied Mrs.
+Quelch; "some outlandish rubbish, I dare say. But I thought Mr.
+Fladgate on his Scotch journey." (Mr. Fladgate, it should be stated,
+was a traveller in the oil and colour line.)
+
+"So he is. I mean, so he ought to be. In fact I expected him home
+to-day. But now he's in p-p-prison, and I may never see him any
+m-mo-more." And Mrs. Fladgate wept afresh.
+
+"Stuff and nonsense!" retorted Mrs. Quelch.
+
+"You've only to send the money they ask for, and they'll be glad
+enough to get rid of him. But I wouldn't hurry; I'd let him wait
+a bit--you'll see him soon enough, never fear."
+
+The prophecy was fulfilled sooner than the prophet expected. Scarcely
+were the words out of her mouth when a cab was heard to draw up at
+the door, and a moment later Fladgate himself, a big, jovial man,
+wearing a white hat very much on one side, entered the room and
+threw a bundle of rugs on the sofa.
+
+"Home again, old girl, and glad of it! Mornin', Mrs. Quelch," said
+the new-comer.
+
+Mrs. Fladgate gazed at him doubtfully for a moment, and then flung
+her arms round his neck, ejaculating, "Saved, saved!"
+
+"Martha," said Mrs. Quelch, reprovingly, "have you no self-respect?
+Is _this_ the way you deal to so shameful a deception?" Then,
+turning the supposed offender, "So, Mr. Fladgate, you have escaped
+from your foreign prison."
+
+"Foreign, how much? Have you both gone dotty, ladies? I've just
+escaped from a third-class carriage on the London and Northwestern.
+The space is limited, but I never heard it called a foreign prison."
+
+"It is useless to endeavour to deceive us," said Mrs. Quelch,
+sternly. "Look at that telegram, Mr. Fladgate, and deny it if you
+can. You have been gadding about in some vile foreign place with
+my misguided husband."
+
+"Oh, Quelch is in it too, is he? Then it _must_ be a bad case.
+But let's see what we have been up to, for, 'pon my word, I'm quite
+in the dark at present."
+
+He held out his hand for the telegram, and read it carefully.
+"Somebody's been having a lark with you, old lady," he said to his
+wife. "You know well enough where I've been--my regular northern
+journey, and nowhere else."
+
+"I don't believe a word of it," said Mrs. Quelch, "you men are all
+alike--deceivers, every one of you."
+
+"Much obliged for your good opinion, Mrs. Quelch. I had no idea
+Quelch was such a bad lot. But, so far as I am concerned, the
+thing's easily tested. Here is the bill for my bed last night at
+Carlisle. Now if I was in Carlisle and larking about at Dieppe at
+the same time, perhaps you'll kindly explain how I managed it."
+
+Mrs. Quelch was staggered, but not convinced. "But if--if you were
+at Carlisle, where is Benjamin, and what does this telegram mean?"
+
+"Not being a wizard, I really can't say; but concerning Quelch, we
+shall find him, never fear. When did he disappear?"
+
+Mrs. Quelch told her story, not forgetting the mysterious letter.
+
+"I think I see daylight," said Fladgate. "The party who has got
+into that mess is Quelch, and, being frightened out of his wits,
+he has given my name instead of his own. That's about the size of
+it!"
+
+"But Benjamin doesn't smoke; and how should he come to be at Dieppe?"
+
+"Went for a holiday, I suppose. As for smoking, I shouldn't have
+thought he was up to it; but with that sat-upon sort of man--begging
+your pardon, Mrs. Quelch--you never know where he may break out.
+Worms will turn, you know, and sometimes they take a wrong turning."
+
+"But Benjamin would never dare--"
+
+"That's just it. He daren't do anything when you've got your eye on
+him. When you haven't perhaps he may, and perhaps he mayn't. The
+fact is, you hold up his head too tight, and if he jibs now and
+then you can't wonder at it."
+
+"You have a very coarse way of putting things, Mr. Fladgate. Mr.
+Quelch is not a horse, that I am aware of."
+
+"We won't quarrel about the animal, my dear madam, but you may depend
+upon it, my solution's right. A hardened villain, like myself, say,
+would never have got into such a scrape, but Quelch don't know
+enough of the world to keep himself out of mischief. They've got
+him in quod, that's clear, and the best thing you can do is to send
+the coin and get him out again."
+
+"Send money to those swindling Frenchmen? Never! If Benjamin is
+in prison I will fetch him out myself."
+
+"You would never risk that dreadful sea passage!" exclaimed Mrs.
+Fladgate. "And how will you manage the language? You don't understand
+French."
+
+"Oh, I shall do very well," said the heroic woman. "They won't talk
+French to _me_!"
+
+That same night a female passenger crossed by the boat from Newhaven
+to Dieppe. The passage was rough, and the passenger was very seasick;
+but she still sat grimly upright, never for one moment relaxing her
+grasp on the handle of her silk umbrella. What she went through on
+landing, how she finally obtained her husband's release, and what
+explanations passed between the reunited pair, must be left to
+the reader's imagination, for Mrs. Quelch never told the story.
+Twenty-four hours later a four-wheeled cab drew up at the Quelchs'
+door, and from it descended, first a stately female, and then a
+woe-begone little man, in a soft felt hat and a red necktie, both
+sorely crushed and soiled, with a black bag in his hand. "Is there
+a fire in the kitchen?" asked Mrs. Quelch the moment she set foot
+in the house. Being assured that there was, she proceeded down
+the kitchen stairs, Quelch meekly following her. "Now," she said,
+pointing to the black bag, "those--things!" Benjamin opened the bag,
+and tremblingly took out the frilled night-dress and the cigars.
+His wife pointed to the fire, and he meekly laid them on it. "Now
+that necktie." The necktie followed the cigars. "And that thing;"
+and the hat crowned the funeral pile.
+
+The smell was peculiar, and to the ordinary nose disagreeable, but
+to Mrs. Quelch it was as the odour of burnt incense. She watched
+the heap as it smouldered away, and finally dispersed the embers
+by a vigorous application of the poker.
+
+"Now, Benjamin," she said to her trembling spouse, "I forgive you.
+But if ever again--"
+
+The warning was left unspoken, but it was not needed. Benjamin's
+one experience has more than satisfied his yearning for soft raiment
+and foreign travel, and his hats are taller than ever.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE STRANGERS
+
+BY THOMAS HARDY
+
+
+
+
+
+Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an
+appearance but little modified by the lapse of centuries may be
+reckoned the high, grassy, and furzy downs, coombs, or eweleases,
+as they are indifferently called, that fill a large area of certain
+counties in the south and southwest. If any mark of human occupation
+is met with hereon it usually takes the form of the solitary cottage
+of some shepherd.
+
+Fifty years ago such a lonely cottage stood on such a down, and
+may possibly be standing there now. In spite of its loneliness,
+however, the spot, by actual measurement, was not more than five
+miles from a county town. Yet what of that? Five miles of irregular
+upland, during the long, inimical seasons, with their sleets,
+snows, rains, and mists, afford withdrawing space enough to isolate
+a Timon or a Nebuchadnezzar; much less, in fair weather, to please
+that less repellent tribe, the poets, philosophers, artists, and
+others who "conceive and meditate of pleasant things."
+
+Some old earthen camp or barrow, some clump of trees, at least some
+starved fragment of ancient hedge, is usually taken advantage of
+in the execution of these forlorn dwellings; but in the present
+case such a kind of shelter had been disregarded. Higher Crowstairs,
+as the house was called, stood quite detached and undefended. The
+only reason for its precise situation seemed to be the crossing
+of two foot-paths at right angles hard by, which may have crossed
+there and thus for a good five hundred years. The house was thus
+exposed to the elements on all sides. But, though the wind up here
+blew unmistakably when it did blow, and the rain hit hard whenever
+it fell, the various weathers of the winter season were not quite
+so formidable on the coomb as they were imagined to be by dwellers
+on low ground. The raw rimes were not so pernicious as in the hollows,
+and the frosts were scarcely so severe. When the shepherd and his
+family who tenanted the house were pitied for their sufferings
+from the exposure, they said that upon the whole they were less
+inconvenienced by "wuzzes and flames" (hoarses and phlegms) than
+when they had lived by the stream of a snug neighbouring valley.
+
+The night of March 28, 182-, was precisely one of the nights that
+were wont to call forth these expressions of commiseration. The
+level rain-storm smote walls, slopes, and hedges like the cloth-yard
+shafts of Senlac and Crecy. Such sheep and outdoor animals as had
+no shelter stood with their buttocks to the wind, while the tails
+of little birds trying to roost on some scraggy thorn were blown
+inside out like umbrellas. The gable end of the cottage was stained
+with wet, and the eaves-droppings flapped against the wall. Yet
+never was commiseration for the shepherd more misplaced. For that
+cheerful rustic was entertaining a large party in glorification of
+the christening of his second girl.
+
+The guests had arrived before the rain began to fall, and they
+were all now assembled in the chief or living room of the dwelling.
+A glance into the apartment at eight o'clock on this eventful
+evening would have resulted in the opinion that it was as cosey and
+comfortable a nook as could be wished for in boisterous weather.
+The calling of its inhabitant was proclaimed by a number of highly
+polished sheep-crooks without stems, that were hung ornamentally
+over the fireplace, the curl of each shining crook varying, from
+the antiquated type engraved in the patriarchal pictures of old
+family Bibles to the most approved fashion of the last local sheep
+fair. The room was lighted by half a dozen candles, having wicks
+only a trifle smaller than the grease which enveloped them,
+in sticks that were never used but at high-days, holy days, and
+family feasts. The lights were scattered about the room, two of
+them standing on the chimney-piece. This position of candles was
+in itself significant. Candles on the chimney-piece always meant
+a party.
+
+On the hearth, in front of a back brand to give substance, blazed
+a fire of thorns, that crackled "like the laughter of the fool."
+
+Nineteen persons were gathered here. Of these, five women, wearing
+gowns of various bright hues, sat in chairs along the wall; girls
+shy and not shy filled the window-bench; four men, including Charley
+Jake, the hedge-carpenter, Elijah New, the parish clerk, and John
+Pitcher, a neighbouring dairyman, the shepherd's father-in-law,
+lolled in the settle; a young man and maid, who were blushing over
+tentative pourparlers on a life-companionship, sat beneath the
+corner cupboard; and an elderly engaged man of fifty or upward
+moved restlessly about from spots where his betrothed was not to
+the spot where she was. Enjoyment was pretty general, and so much
+the more prevailed in being unhampered by conventional restrictions.
+Absolute confidence in one another's good opinion begat perfect
+ease, while the finishing stroke of manner, amounting to a truly
+princely serenity, was lent to the majority by the absence of any
+expression or trait denoting that they wished to get on in the
+world, enlarge their minds, or do any eclipsing thing whatever,
+which nowadays so generally nips the bloom and bonhomie of all
+except the two extremes of the social scale.
+
+Shepherd Fennel had married well, his wife being a dairyman's daughter
+from the valley below, who brought fifty guineas in her pocket--and
+kept them there till they should be required for ministering to
+the needs of a coming family. This frugal woman had been somewhat
+exercised as to the character that should be given to the gathering.
+A sit-still party had its advantages; but an undisturbed position
+of ease in chairs and settles was apt to lead on the men to such
+an unconscionable deal of toping that they would sometimes fairly
+drink the house dry. A dancing-party was the alternative; but this,
+while avoiding the foregoing objection on the score of good drink,
+had a counterbalancing disadvantage in the matter of good victuals,
+the ravenous appetites engendered by the exercise causing immense
+havoc in the buttery. Shepherdess Fennel fell back upon the
+intermediate plan of mingling short dances with short periods of
+talk and singing, so as to hinder any ungovernable rage in either.
+But this scheme was entirely confined to her own gentle mind; the
+shepherd himself was in the mood to exhibit the most reckless phases
+of hospitality.
+
+The fiddler was a boy of those parts, about twelve years of age,
+who had a wonderful dexterity in jigs and reels, though his fingers
+were so small and short as to necessitate a constant shifting for
+the high notes, from which he scrambled back to the first position
+with sounds not of unmixed purity of tone. At seven the shrill
+"tweedledee" of this youngster had begun, accompanied by a booming
+ground bass from Elijah New, the parish clerk, who had thoughtfully
+brought with him his favourite musical instrument, the serpent. Dancing
+was instantaneous, Mrs. Fennel privately enjoining the players on
+no account to let the dance exceed the length of a quarter of an
+hour.
+
+But Elijah and the boy, in the excitement of their position, quite
+forgot the injunction. Moreover, Oliver Giles, a man of seventeen,
+one of the dancers, who was enamoured of his partner, a fair girl of
+thirty-three rolling years, had recklessly handed a new crown-piece
+to the musicians as a bribe to keep going as long as they had muscle
+and wind. Mrs. Fennel, seeing the steam begin to generate on the
+countenances of her guests, crossed over and touched the fiddler's
+elbow and put her hand on the serpent's mouth. But they took no
+notice, and, fearing she might lose her character of genial hostess
+if she were to interfere too markedly, she retired and sat down
+helpless. And so the dance whizzed on with cumulative fury, the
+performers moving in their planet-like courses, direct and retrograde,
+from apogee to perigee, till the hand of the well-kicked clock at
+the bottom of the room had travelled over the circumference of an
+hour.
+
+While these cheerful events were in course of enactment within
+Fennel's pastoral dwelling, an incident having considerable bearing
+on the party had occurred in the gloomy night without. Mrs. Fennel's
+concern about the growing fierceness of the dance corresponded in
+point of time with the ascent of a human figure to the solitary
+hill of Higher Crowstairs from the direction of the distant town.
+This personage strode on through the rain without a pause, following
+the little worn path which, farther on in its course, skirted the
+shepherd's cottage.
+
+It was nearly the time of full moon, and on this account, though
+the sky was lined with a uniform sheet of dripping cloud, ordinary
+objects out of doors were readily visible. The sad, wan light
+revealed the lonely pedestrian to be a man of supple frame; his
+gait suggested that he had somewhat passed the period of perfect
+and instinctive agility, though not so far as to be otherwise
+than rapid of motion when occasion required. In point of fact, he
+might have been about forty years of age. He appeared tall; but a
+recruiting sergeant, or other person accustomed to the judging of
+men's heights by the eye, would have discerned that this was chiefly
+owing to his gauntness, and that he was not more than five feet
+eight or nine.
+
+Notwithstanding the regularity of his tread, there was caution in
+it, as in that of one who mentally feels his way; and, despite the
+fact that it was not a black coat nor a dark garment of any sort
+that he wore, there was something about him which suggested that he
+naturally belonged to the black-coated tribes of men. His clothes
+were of fustian and his boots hobnailed, yet in his progress he
+showed not the mud-accustomed bearing of hobnailed and fustianed
+peasantry.
+
+By the time that he had arrived abreast of the shepherd's premises,
+the rain came down, or rather came along, with yet more determined
+violence. The outskirts of the little homestead partially broke
+the force of wind and rain, and this induced him to stand still.
+The most salient of the shepherd's domestic erections was an empty
+sty at the forward corner of his hedgeless garden, for in these
+latitudes the principle of masking the homelier features of your
+establishment by a conventional frontage was unknown. The traveller's
+eye was attracted to this small building by the pallid shine of
+the wet slates that covered it. He turned aside, and, finding it
+empty, stood under the pentroof for shelter.
+
+While he stood, the boom of the serpent within and the lesser
+strains of the fiddler reached the spot, as an accompaniment to
+the surging hiss of the flying rain on the sod, its louder beating
+on the cabbage-leaves of the garden, on the eight or ten beehives
+just discernible by the path, and its dripping from the eaves into
+a row of buckets and pans that had been placed under the walls
+of the cottage; for at Higher Crowstairs, as at all such elevated
+domiciles, the grand difficulty of housekeeping was an insufficiency
+of water, and a casual rainfall was utilised by turning out as catchers
+every utensil that the house contained. Some queer stories might be
+told of the contrivances for economy in suds and dish-waters that
+are absolutely necessitated in upland habitations during the
+droughts of summer. But at this season there were no such exigencies;
+a mere acceptance of what the skies bestowed was sufficient for an
+abundant store.
+
+At last the notes of the serpent ceased and the house was silent.
+This cessation of activity aroused the solitary pedestrian from
+the reverie into which he had lapsed, and, emerging from the shed,
+with an apparently new intention, he walked up the path to the
+house door. Arrived here, his first act was to kneel down on a
+large stone beside the row of vessels and to drink a copious draught
+from one of them. Having quenched his thirst, he rose and lifted
+his hand to knock, but paused with his eye upon the panel. Since
+the dark surface of the wood revealed absolutely nothing, it was
+evident that he must be mentally looking through the door, as if
+he wished to measure thereby all the possibilities that a house of
+this sort might include, and how they might bear upon the question
+of his entry.
+
+In his indecision he turned and surveyed the scene around. Not a
+soul was anywhere visible. The garden path stretched downward from
+his feet, gleaming like the track of a snail; the roof of the little
+well (mostly dry), the well-cover, the top rail of the garden gate,
+were varnished with the same dull liquid glaze; while, far away in
+the vale, a faint whiteness of more than usual extent showed that
+the rivers were high in the meads. Beyond all this winked a few
+bleared lamplights through the beating drops, lights that denoted
+the situation of the county town from which he had appeared to
+come. The absence of all notes of life in that direction seemed to
+clinch his intentions, and he knocked at the door.
+
+Within a desultory chat had taken the place of movement and musical
+sound. The hedge-carpenter was suggesting a song to the company,
+which nobody just then was inclined to undertake, so that the knock
+afforded a not unwelcome diversion.
+
+"Walk in!" said the shepherd, promptly.
+
+The latch clicked upward, and out of the night our pedestrian
+appeared upon the door-mat. The shepherd arose, snuffed two of the
+nearest candies, and turned to look at him.
+
+Their light disclosed that the stranger was dark in complexion and
+not unprepossessing as to feature. His hat, which for a moment he
+did not remove, hung low over his eyes, without concealing that
+they were large, open, and determined, moving with a flash rather
+than a glance round the room. He seemed pleased with the survey,
+and, baring his shaggy head, said, in a rich, deep voice, "The rain
+is so heavy, friends, that I ask leave to come in and rest awhile."
+
+"To be sure, stranger," said the shepherd. "And, faith, you've
+been lucky in choosing your time, for we are having a bit of a fling
+for a glad cause--though, to be sure, a man could hardly wish that
+glad cause to happen more than once a year."
+
+"Nor less," spoke up a woman; "for 'tis best to get your family
+over and done with as soon as you can, so as to be all the earlier
+out of the fag o't."
+
+"And what may be this glad cause?" asked the stranger.
+
+"A birth and christening," said the shepherd.
+
+The stranger hoped his host might not be made unhappy either by too
+many or too few of such episodes, and, being invited by a gesture
+to a pull at the mug, he readily acquiesced. His manner, which
+before entering had been so dubious, was now altogether that of a
+careless and candid man.
+
+"Late to be traipsing athwart this coomb--hey?" said the engaged
+man of fifty.
+
+"Late it is, master, as you say. I'll take a seat in the chimney-corner
+if you have nothing to urge against it, ma'am, for I am a little
+moist on the side that was next the rain."
+
+Mrs. Shepherd Fennel assented, and made room for the self-invited
+comer, who, having got completely inside the chimney-corner, stretched
+out his legs and his arms with the expansiveness of a person quite
+at home.
+
+"Yes, I am rather thin in the vamp," he said, freely, seeing that
+the eyes of the shepherd's wife fell upon his boots, "and I am not
+well fitted, either. I have had some rough times lately, and have
+been forced to pick up what I can get in the way of wearing; but
+I must find a suit better fit for working-days when I reach home."
+
+"One of hereabouts?" she inquired.
+
+"Not quite that--farther up the country."
+
+"I thought so. And so am I; and by your tongue you come from my
+neighbourhood."
+
+"But you would hardly have heard of me," he said, quickly. "My time
+would be long before yours, ma'am, you see."
+
+This testimony to the youthfulness of his hostess had the effect
+of stopping her cross-examination.
+
+"There is only one thing more wanted to make me happy," continued
+the new-comer; "and that is a little 'baccy, which I am sorry to
+say I am out of."
+
+"I'll fill your pipe," said the shepherd.
+
+"I must ask you to lend me a pipe likewise."
+
+"A smoker, and no pipe about ye?"
+
+"I have dropped it somewhere on the road."
+
+The shepherd filled and handed him a new clay pipe, saying as
+he did so, "Hand me your 'baccy-box; I'll fill that too, now I am
+about it."
+
+The man went through the movement of searching his pockets.
+
+"Lost that too?" said his entertainer, with some surprise.
+
+"I am afraid so," said the man, with some confusion "Give it to me
+in a screw of paper."
+
+Lighting his pipe at the candle with a suction that drew the whole
+flame into the bowl, he resettled himself in the corner, and bent
+his looks upon the faint steam from his damp legs as if he wished
+say no more.
+
+Meanwhile the general body of guests had been taking little notice
+of this visitor by reason of an absorbing discussion in which they
+were engaged with the band about a tune for the next dance The matter
+being settled, they were about to stand up, when an interruption
+came in the shape of another knock at the door.
+
+At sound of the same the man in the chimney-corner took up the
+poker and began stirring the fire as if doing it thoroughly were
+the one aim of his existence, and a second time the shepherd said,
+"Walk in!" In a moment another man stood upon the straw-woven
+door-mat. He too was a stranger.
+
+This individual was one of a type radically different from
+the first. There was more of the commonplace in his manner, and a
+certain jovial cosmopolitanism sat upon his features. He was several
+years older than the first arrival, his hair being slightly frosted,
+his eyebrows bristly, and his whiskers cut back from his cheeks.
+His face was rather full and flabby, and yet it was not altogether
+a face without power. A few grog-blossoms marked the neighbourhood
+of his nose. He flung back his long drab greatcoat, revealing that
+beneath it he wore a suit of cinder-gray shade throughout, large,
+heavy seals, of some metal or other that would take a polish,
+dangling from his fob as his only personal ornament. Shaking the
+water-drops from his low-crowned, glazed hat, he said, "I must ask
+for a few minutes' shelter, comrades, or I shall be wetted to my
+skin before I get to Casterbridge."
+
+"Make yerself at home, master," said the shepherd, perhaps a trifle
+less heartily than on the first occasion. Not that Fennel had the
+least tinge of niggardliness in his composition, but the room was
+far from large, spare chairs were not numerous, and damp companions
+were not altogether comfortable at close quarters for the women
+and girls in their bright-coloured gowns.
+
+However, the second comer, after taking off his greatcoat and
+hanging his hat on a nail in one of the ceiling beams as if he had
+been specially invited to put it there, advanced, and sat down at
+the table. This had been pushed so closely into the chimney-corner,
+to give all available room to the dancers, that its inner edge
+grazed the elbow of the man who had ensconced himself by the fire,
+and thus the two strangers were brought into close companionship.
+They nodded to each other way of breaking the ice of unacquaintance,
+and the first stranger handed his neighbour the large mug--a
+huge vessel of brown ware, having its upper edge worn away, like
+a threshold, by the rub of whole genealogies of thirsty lips that
+had gone the way of all flesh, and bearing the following inscription
+burned upon its rotund side in yellow letters:
+
+THERE IS NO FUN UNTILL I CUM.
+
+The other man, nothing loath, raised the mug to his lips, and drank
+on and on and on, till a curious blueness overspread the countenance
+of the shepherd's wife, who had regarded with no little surprise
+the first stranger's free offer to the second of what did not belong
+to him to dispense.
+
+"I knew it!" said the toper to the shepherd, with much satisfaction.
+"When I walked up your garden afore coming in, and saw the hives
+all of a row, I said to myself, 'Where there's bees there's honey,
+and where there's honey there's mead.' But mead of such a truly
+comfortable sort as this I really didn't expect to meet in my
+older days." He took yet another pull at the mug, till it assumed
+an ominous horizontality.
+
+"Glad you enjoy it!" said the shepherd, warmly.
+
+"It is goodish mead," assented Mrs. Fennel, with an absence of
+enthusiasm which seemed to say that it was possible to buy praise
+for one's cellar at too heavy a price. "It is trouble enough to
+make--and really I hardly think we shall make any more. For honey
+sells well, and we can make shift with a drop o' small mead and
+metheglin for common use from the comb washings."
+
+"Oh, but you'll never have the heart!" reproachfully cried the
+stranger in cinder gray, after taking up the mug a third time and
+setting it down empty. "I love mead, when 't is old like this, as
+I love to go to church o' Sundays or to relieve the needy any day
+of the week."
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" said the man in the chimney-corner, who, in spite of
+the taciturnity induced by the pipe of tobacco, could not or would
+not refrain from this slight testimony to his comrade's humour.
+
+Now the old mead of those days, brewed of the purest first-year or
+maiden honey, four pounds to gallon,--with its due complement of
+whites of eggs, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, rosemary, yeast, and
+processes of working, bottling, and cellaring,--tasted remarkably
+strong; but it did not taste so strong as it actually was. Hence,
+presently the stranger in cinder gray at the table, moved by its
+creeping influence, unbuttoned his waistcoat, threw himself back in
+his chair, spread his legs, and made his presence felt in various
+ways.
+
+"Well, well, as I say," he resumed, "I am going to Casterbridge,
+and to Casterbridge I must go. I should have been almost there by
+this time; but the rain drove me in to ye, and I'm not sorry for
+it."
+
+"You don't live in Casterbridge?" said the shepherd.
+
+"Not as yet, though I shortly mean to move there."
+
+"Going to set up in trade, perhaps?"
+
+"No, no," said the shepherd's wife; "it is easy to see that the
+gentleman is rich and don't want to work at anything."
+
+The cinder-gray stranger paused, as if to consider whether he
+would accept that definition of himself. He presently rejected it
+by answering, "Rich is not quite the word for me, dame. I do work,
+and I must work. And even if I only get to Casterbridge by midnight
+I must begin work there at eight to-morrow morning. Yes, hot or
+wet, blow or snow, famine or sword, my day's work to-morrow must
+be done."
+
+"Poor man! Then, in spite o' seeming, you be worse off than we?"
+replied the shepherd's wife.
+
+"'Tis the nature of my trade, men and maidens. 'Tis the nature
+of my trade more than my poverty. But really and truly, I must up
+and off, or I sha'n't get a lodging in the town."
+
+However, the speaker did not move, and directly added,
+
+"There's time for one more draught of friendship before I go, and
+I'd perform it at once if the mug were not dry."
+
+"Here's a mug o' small," said Mrs. Fennel. "Small, we call it,
+though, to be sure, 'tis only the first wash o' the combs."
+
+"No," said the stranger, disdainfully; "I won't spoil your first
+kindness by partaking o' your second.
+
+"Certainly not," broke in Fennel. "We don't increase and multiply
+every day, and I'll fill the mug again." He went away to the dark
+place under the stairs where the barrel stood. The shepherdess
+followed him.
+
+"Why should you do this?" she said, reproachfully, as soon as they
+were alone. "He's emptied it once, though it held enough for ten
+people; and now he's not contented wi' the small, but must needs
+call for more o' the strong! And a stranger unbeknown to any of
+us! For my part, I don't like the look o' the man at all."
+
+"But he's in the house, my honey, and 'tis a wet night, and a
+christening. Daze it, what's a cup of mead more or less? There'll
+be plenty more next bee-burning."
+
+"Very well--this time, then," she answered, looking wistfully at
+the barrel. "But what is the man's calling, and where is he one
+of, that he should come in and join us like this?"
+
+"I don't know. I'll ask him again."
+
+The catastrophe of having the mug drained dry at one pull by the
+stranger in cinder gray was effectually guarded against this time
+by Mrs. Fennel. She poured out his allowance in a small cup, keeping
+the large one at a discreet distance from him. When he had tossed
+off his portion the shepherd renewed his inquiry about the stranger's
+occupation.
+
+The latter did not immediately reply, and the man in the
+chimney-corner, with sudden demonstrativeness, said, "Anybody may
+know my trade --I'm a wheelwright."
+
+"A very good trade for these parts," said the shepherd.
+
+"And anybody may know mine-if they've the sense to find it out,"
+said the stranger in cinder gray.
+
+"You may generally tell what a man is by his claws," observed the
+hedge-carpenter, looking at his hands. "My fingers be as full of
+thorns as an old pincushion is of pins."
+
+The hands of the man in the chimney-corner instinctively sought
+the shade, and he gazed into the fire as he resumed his pipe. The
+man at the table took up the hedge-carpenter's remark, and added
+smartly, "True; but the oddity of my trade is that, instead of
+setting a mark upon me, it sets a mark upon my customers."
+
+No observation being offered by anybody in elucidation of this
+enigma, the shepherd's wife once more called for a song. The same
+obstacles presented themselves as at the former time: one had
+no voice, another had forgotten the first verse. The stranger at
+the table, whose soul had now risen to a good working temperature,
+relieved the difficulty by exclaiming that, to start the company,
+he would sing himself. Thrusting one thumb into the armhole of
+his waistcoat, he waved the other hand in the air, and, with an
+extemporising gaze at the shining sheep-crooks above the mantelpiece,
+began:
+
+   "Oh, my trade it is the rarest one,
+        Simple shepherds all,
+      My trade is a sight to see;
+    For my customers I tie, and take them up on high,
+      And waft 'em to a far countree."
+
+The room was silent when he had finished the verse, with one exception,
+that of the man in the chimney-corner, who, at the singer's word,
+"Chorus!" joined him in a deep bass voice of musical relish:
+
+"And waft 'em to a far countree."
+
+Oliver Giles, John Pitcher, the dairyman, the  parish clerk, the
+engaged man of fifty, the row of young women against the wall,
+seemed lost in thought not of the gayest kind. The shepherd looked
+meditatively on the ground; the shepherdess gazed keenly at the
+singer, and with some suspicion; she was doubting whether this
+stranger was merely singing an old song from  recollection, or
+composing one there and then for the occasion. All were as perplexed
+at the obscure revelation as the guests at Belshazzar's feast,
+except the man in the chimney-corner, who quietly said, "Second
+verse, stranger," and smoked on.
+
+The singer thoroughly moistened himself from his lips inward, and
+went on with the next stanza, as requested:
+
+    "My tools are but common ones,
+                        Simple shepherds all,
+        My tools are no sight to see:
+A little hempen string, and a post whereon to swing,
+        Are implements enough for me."
+
+Shepherd Fennel glanced round. There was no longer any doubt that
+the stranger was answering his question rhythmically. The guests
+one and all started back with suppressed exclamations. The young
+woman engaged to the man of fifty fainted half-way, and would have
+proceeded, but, finding him wanting in alacrity for catching her,
+she sat down trembling.
+
+"Oh, he's the--" whispered the people in the background, mentioning
+the name of an ominous public officer. "He's come to do it. 'T is
+to be at Casterbridge gaol to-morrow--the man for sheep-stealing--the
+poor clock-maker we heard of, who used to live away at Anglebury and
+had no work to do--Timothy Sommers, whose family were a-starving,
+and so he went out of Anglebury by the highroad, and took a sheep
+in open daylight, defying the farmer and the farmer's wife and the
+farmer's man and every man Jack among 'em. He" (and they nodded
+toward the stranger of the terrible trade) "is come from up the
+country to do it because there's not enough to do in his own county
+town, and he's got the place here, now our own county man's dead;
+he's going to live in the same cottage under the prison wall."
+
+The stranger in cinder gray took no notice of this whispered string
+of observations, but again wetted his lips. Seeing that his friend
+in the chimney-corner was the only one who reciprocated his joviality
+in any way, he held out his cup toward that appreciative comrade,
+who also held out his own. They clinked together, the eyes of the
+rest of the room hanging upon the singer's actions. He parted his
+lips for the third verse, but at that moment another knock was
+audible upon the door. This time the knock was faint and hesitating.
+
+The company seemed scared; the shepherd looked with consternation
+toward the entrance, and it was with some effort that he resisted
+his alarmed wife's deprecatory glance, and uttered for the third
+time the welcoming words, "Walk in!"
+
+The door was gently opened, and another man stood upon the mat.
+He, like those who had preceded him, was a stranger. This time it
+was a short, small personage, of fair complexion, and dressed in
+a decent suit of dark clothes.
+
+"Can you tell me the way to--" he began; when, gazing round the
+room to observe the nature of the company among whom he had fallen,
+his eyes lighted on the stranger in cinder gray. It was just at
+the instant when the latter, who had thrown his mind into his song
+with such a will that he scarcely heeded the interruption, silenced
+all whispers and inquiries by bursting into his third verse:
+
+        "To-morrow is my working-day,
+                             Simple shepherds all,
+         To-morrow is a working-day for me;
+For the farmer's sheep is slain, and the lad who did it ta'en,
+         And on his soul may God ha' merc-y!"
+
+The stranger in the chimney-corner, waving cup with the singer so
+heartily that his mead splashed over on the hearth, repeated in
+his bass voice as before:
+
+"And on his soul may God ha' mercy!"
+
+All this time the third stranger had been standing in the doorway.
+Finding now that he did not come forward or go on speaking, the
+guests particularly regarded him. They noticed, to their surprise,
+that he stood before them the picture of abject terror--his knees
+trembling, his hand shaking so violently that the door-latch, by
+which he supported himself, rattled audibly; his white lips were
+parted, and his eyes fixed on the merry officer of justice in the
+middle of the room. A moment more, and he had turned, closed the
+door, and fled.
+
+"What a man can it be?" said the shepherd.
+
+The rest, between the awfulness of their late discovery and the odd
+conduct of this third visitor, looked as if they knew not what to
+think, and said nothing. Instinctively they withdrew farther and
+farther from the grim gentleman in their midst, whom some of them
+seemed to take for the prince of darkness himself, till they formed
+a remote circle, an empty space of floor being left between them
+and him--
+
+"Circulus, cujus centrum diabolus."
+
+The room was so silent--though there were more than twenty people
+in it--that nothing could be heard but the patter of the rain against
+the window-shutters, accompanied by the occasional hiss of a stray
+drop that fell down the chimney into the fire, and the steady
+puffing of the man in the corner, who had now resumed his pipe of
+long clay.
+
+The stillness was unexpectedly broken. The distant sound of a gun
+reverberated through the air, apparently from the direction of the
+county town.
+
+"Be jiggered!" cried the stranger who had sung the song, jumping
+up.
+
+"What does that mean?" asked several.
+
+"A prisoner escaped from the gaol--that 's what it means."
+
+All listened. The sound was repeated, and none of them spoke but
+the man in the chimney-corner, who said quietly, "I've often been
+told that in this county they fire a gun at such times, but I never
+heard it till now."
+
+"I wonder if it is _my_ man?" murmured personage in cinder
+gray.
+
+"Surely it is!" said the shepherd, involuntarily. "And surely
+we've seen him! That little man who looked in at the door by now,
+and quivered like a leaf when he seed ye and heard your song."
+
+"His teeth chattered, and the breath went out of his body," said
+the dairyman.
+
+"And his heart seemed to sink within him like a stone," said Oliver
+Giles.
+
+"And he bolted as if he'd been shot at," said the hedge-carpenter.
+
+"True--his teeth chattered, and his heart seemed to sink, and he
+bolted as if he'd been shot at," slowly summed up the man in the
+chimney-corner.
+
+"I didn't notice it," remarked the grim songster.
+
+"We were all a-wondering what made him run off in such a fright,"
+faltered one of the women against the wall, "and now't is explained."
+
+The firing of the alarm-gun went on at intervals, low and sullenly,
+and their suspicions became a certainty. The sinister gentleman in
+cinder gray roused himself. "Is there a constable here?" he asked,
+in thick tones. "If so, let him step forward."
+
+The engaged man of fifty stepped quavering out of the corner, his
+betrothed beginning to sob on the back of the chair.
+
+"You are a sworn constable?"
+
+"I be, sir."
+
+"Then pursue the criminal at once, with assistance, and bring him
+back here. He can't have gone far."
+
+"I will, sir, I will--when I've got my staff. I'll home and get
+it, and come sharp here, and start in a body."
+
+"Staff! never mind your staff--the man'll be gone!"
+
+"But I can't do nothing without my staff--can I, William, and John,
+and Charles Jake? No; for there's the king's royal crown a-painted
+on en in yaller and gold, and the lion and the unicorn, so as when
+I raise en up and hit my prisoner't is made a lawful blow thereby.
+I wouldn't 'tempt to take up a man without my staff--no, not I. If
+I hadn't the law to gie me courage, why, instead o' my taking him
+up he might take up me!"
+
+"Now, I'm a king's man myself, and can give you authority enough
+for this," said the formidable person in cinder gray. "Now then,
+all of ye, be ready. Have ye any lanterns?"
+
+"Yes; have ye any lanterns? I demand it," said the constable.
+
+"And the rest of you able-bodied--"
+
+"Able-bodied men--yes--the rest of ye," said the constable.
+
+"Have you some good stout staves and pitchforks--"
+
+"Staves and pitchforks--in the name o' the law. And take 'em in
+yer hands and go in quest, and do as we in authority tell ye."
+
+Thus aroused, the men prepared to give chase. The evidence
+was, indeed, though circumstantial, so convincing that but little
+argument was needed to show the shepherd's guests that, after what
+they had seen, it would look very much like connivance if they did
+not instantly pursue the unhappy third stranger, who could not as
+yet have gone more than a few hundred yards over such uneven country.
+
+A shepherd is always well provided with lanterns; and, lighting
+these hastily, and with hurdle-staves in their hands, they poured
+out of the door, taking a direction along the crest of the hill,
+away from the town, the rain having fortunately a little abated.
+
+Disturbed by the noise, or possibly by unpleasant dreams of her
+baptism, the child who had been christened began to cry heartbrokenly
+in the room overhead. These notes of grief came down through the
+chinks of the floor to the ears of the women below, who jumped up,
+one by one, and seemed glad of the excuse to ascend and comfort
+the baby; for the incidents of the last half-hour greatly oppressed
+them. Thus in the space of two or three minutes the room on the
+ground floor was deserted quite.
+
+But it was not for long. Hardly had the sound of footsteps died
+away when a man returned round the corner of the house from the
+direction the pursuers had taken. Peeping in at the door, and seeing
+nobody there, he entered leisurely. It was the stranger of the
+chimney-corner, who had gone out with the rest. The motive of his
+return was shown by his helping himself to a cut piece of skimmer-cake
+that lay on a ledge beside where he had sat, and which he had
+apparently forgotten to take with him. He also poured out half a
+cup more mead from the quantity that remained, ravenously eating
+and drinking these as he stood. He had not finished when another
+figure came in just as quietly--the stranger in cinder gray.
+
+"Oh, you here?" said the latter, smiling. "I thought you had gone
+to help in the capture." And this speaker also revealed the object
+of his return by looking solicitously round for the fascinating
+mug of old mead.
+
+"And I thought you had gone," said the other, continuing his
+skimmer-cake with some effort.
+
+"Well, on second thoughts, I felt there were enough without me,"
+said the first, confidentially, "and such a night as it is, too.
+Besides, 't is the business o' the government to take care of its
+criminals, not mine."
+
+"True, so it is; and I felt as you did--that were enough without
+me."
+
+"I don't want to break my limbs running over the humps and hollows
+of this wild country."
+
+"Nor I, either, between you and me."
+
+"These shepherd people are used to it--simpleminded souls, you
+know, stirred up to anything a moment. They'll have him ready for
+me before the morning, and no trouble to me at all."
+
+"They'll have him, and we shall have saved ourselves all labour in
+the matter."
+
+"True, true. Well, my way is to Casterbridge, and't is as much as
+my legs will do to take me that far. Going the same way?"
+
+"No, I am sorry to say. I have to get home over there," (he nodded
+indefinitely to the right), "and I feel as you do--that it is quite
+enough for my legs to do before bedtime."
+
+The other had by this time finished the mead in the mug, after
+which, shaking hands at the door and wishing each other well, they
+went their several ways.
+
+In the meantime the company of pursuers had reached the end of the
+hog's-back elevation which dominated this part of the coomb. They
+had decided on no particular plan of action, and, finding that
+the man of the baleful trade was no longer in their company, they
+seemed quite unable to form any such plan now. They descended in all
+directions down the hill, and straightway several of the parties
+fell into the snare set by nature for all misguided midnight
+ramblers over the lower cretaceous formation. The "lynchets," or
+flint slopes, which belted the escarpment at intervals of a dozen
+yards, took the less cautious ones unawares, and, losing their
+footing on the rubbly steep, they slid sharply downward, the lanterns
+rolling from their hands to the bottom, and there lying on their
+sides till the horn was scorched through.
+
+When they had again gathered themselves together, the shepherd, as
+the man who knew the country best, took the lead, and guided them
+round these treacherous inclines. The lanterns, which seemed rather
+to dazzle their eyes and warn the fugitive than to assist them in
+the exploration, were extinguished, due silence was observed, and
+in this more rational order they plunged into the vale. It was
+a grassy, briery, moist channel, affording some shelter to any
+person who had sought it; but the party perambulated it in vain, and
+ascended on the other side. Here they wandered apart, and after an
+interval closed together again to report progress. At the second
+time of closing in they found themselves near a lonely oak, the single
+tree on this part of the upland, probably sown there by a passing
+bird some hundred years before; and here, standing a little to one
+side of the trunk, as motionless as the trunk itself, appeared the
+man they were in quest of, his outline being well defined against
+the sky beyond. The band noiselessly drew up and faced him.
+
+"Your money or your life!" said the constable, sternly, to the
+still figure.
+
+"No, no," whispered John Pitcher. "'Tisn't our side ought to say
+that. That's the doctrine of vagabonds like him, and we be on the
+side of the law."
+
+"Well, well," replied the constable, impatiently, "I must say something,
+mustn't I? And if you had all the weight o' this undertaking upon
+your mind perhaps you'd say the wrong thing too. Prisoner at the
+bar, surrender, in the name of the Fath--the crown, I mane!"
+
+The man under the tree seemed now to notice them for the first
+time, and, giving them no opportunity whatever for exhibiting
+their courage, he strolled slowly toward them. He was, indeed, the
+little man, the third stranger, but his trepidation had in a great
+measure gone.
+
+"Well, travellers," he said, "did I hear ye speak to me?"
+
+"You did; you've got to come and be our prisoner at once," said the
+constable. "We arrest ye on the charge of not biding in Casterbridge
+gaol in a decent, proper manner, to be hung to-morrow morning.
+Neighbours, do your duty, and seize the culpet!"
+
+On hearing the charge, the man seemed enlightened, and, saying
+not another word, resigned himself with preternatural civility to
+the search-party, who, with their staves in their hands, surrounded
+him on all sides, and marched him back toward the shepherd's cottage.
+
+It was eleven o'clock by the time they arrived. The light shining
+from the open door, a sound of men's voices within, proclaimed
+to them, as they approached the house, that some new events had
+arisen in their absence. On entering they discovered the shepherd's
+living-room to be invaded by officers from Casterbridge gaol and
+a well-known magistrate who lived at the nearest country-seat,
+intelligence of the escape having become generally circulated.
+
+"Gentlemen," said the constable, "I have brought back your man--not
+without risk and danger, but every one must do his duty. He is
+inside this circle of able-bodied persons, who have lent me useful
+aid, considering their ignorance of crown work. Men, bring forward
+your prisoner." And the third stranger was led to the light.
+
+"Who is this?" said one of the officials.
+
+"The man," said the constable.
+
+"Certainly not," said the other turnkey, and the first corroborated
+his statement.
+
+"But how can it be otherwise?" asked the constable. "Or why was he
+so terrified at sight o' the singing instrument of the law?" Here
+he related the strange behaviour of the third stranger on entering
+the house.
+
+"Can't understand it," said the officer, coolly. All I know is
+that it is not the condemned man. He's quite a different character
+from this one; a gauntish fellow, with dark hair and eyes, rather
+good-looking, and with a musical bass voice that, if you heard it
+once, you'd never mistake as long as you lived."
+
+"Why, souls, 't was the man in the chimney-corner!"
+
+"Hey--what?" said the magistrate, coming forward after inquiring
+particulars from the shepherd in the background. "Haven't you got
+the man after all?"
+
+"Well, sir," said the constable, "he's the man we were in search
+of, that's true; and yet he's not the man we were in search of.
+For the man we were in search of was not the man we wanted, sir,
+if you understand my every-day way; for 't was the man in the
+chimney-corner."
+
+"A pretty kettle of fish altogether!" said the magistrate. "You
+had better start for the other man at once."
+
+The prisoner now spoke for the first time. The mention of the man
+in the chimney-corner seemed to have moved him as nothing else could
+do. "Sir," he said, stepping forward to the magistrate, "take no
+more trouble about me. The time is come when I may as well speak.
+I have done nothing; my crime is that the condemned man is my brother.
+Early this afternoon I left home at Anglebury to tramp it all the
+way to Casterbridge gaol to bid him farewell. I was benighted, and
+called here to rest and ask the way. When I opened the door I saw
+before me the very man, my brother, that I thought to see in the
+condemned cell at Casterbridge. He was in this chimney-corner;
+and, jammed close to him, so that he could not have got out if he
+had tried, was the executioner who'd come to take his life, singing
+a song about it, and not knowing that it was his victim who was
+close by, joining in to save appearances. My brother looked a
+glance of agony at me, and I knew he meant, 'Don't reveal what you
+see; my life depends on it.' I was so terror-struck that I could
+hardly stand, and, not knowing what I did, I turned and hurried
+away."
+
+The narrator's manner and tone had the stamp of truth, and his
+story made a great impression on around.
+
+"And do you know where your brother is at the present time?" asked
+the magistrate.
+
+"I do not. I have never seen him since I closed this door."
+
+"I can testify to that, for we've been between ye ever since," said
+the constable.
+
+Where does he think to fly to? What is his occupation?"
+
+"He's a watch- and clock-maker, sir."
+
+"'A said 'a was a wheelwright--a wicked rogue," said the constable.
+
+"The wheels o' clocks and watches he meant, no doubt," said Shepherd
+Fennel. "I thought his hands were palish for's trade."
+
+"Well, it appears to me that nothing can be gained by retaining
+this poor man in custody," the magistrate; "your business lies with
+the other unquestionably."
+
+And so the little man was released offhand; but he looked nothing
+the less sad on that account, it being beyond the power of magistrate
+or constable to rase out the written troubles in his brain, for
+they concerned another, whom he regarded with more solicitude than
+himself. When this was done, and the man had gone his way, the
+night was found to be so far advanced that it was deemed useless
+to renew the search before the next morning.
+
+Next day, accordingly, the quest for the clever sheep-stealer became
+general and keen--to all appearance, at least. But the intended
+punishment was cruelly disproportioned to the transgression, and
+the sympathy of a great many country folk in that district was
+strongly on the side of the fugitive. Moreover, his marvellous
+coolness and daring under the unprecedented circumstances of the
+shepherd's party won their admiration. So that it may be questioned
+if all those who ostensibly made themselves so busy in exploring
+woods and fields and lanes were quite so thorough when it came to
+the private examination of their own lofts and outhouses. Stories
+were afloat of a mysterious figure being occasionally seen in some
+old overgrown trackway or other, remote from turnpike roads; but
+when a search was instituted in any of these suspected quarters
+nobody was found. Thus the days and weeks passed without tidings.
+
+In brief, the bass-voiced man of the chimney-corner was never
+recaptured. Some said that he went across the sea, others that he
+did not, but buried himself in the depths of a populous city.
+
+At any rate, the gentleman in cinder gray never did his morning's
+work at Casterbridge, nor met anywhere at all for business purposes
+the comrade with whom he had passed an hour of relaxation in the
+lonely house on the coomb.
+
+The grass has long been green on the graves of Shepherd Fennel and
+his frugal wife; the guests who made up the christening-party have
+mainly followed their entertainers to the tomb; the baby in whose
+honour they all had met is a matron in the sear and yellow leaf;
+but the arrival of the three strangers at the shepherd's that night,
+and the details connected therewith, is a story as well known as
+ever in the country about Higher Crowstairs.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. LISMORE AND THE WIDOW
+
+BY WILKIE COLLINS
+
+
+
+
+
+Late in the autumn, not many years since, a public meeting was held
+at the Mansion House, London, under the direction of the Lord Mayor.
+
+The list of gentlemen invited to address the audience had been
+chosen with two objects in view. Speakers of celebrity, who would
+rouse public enthusiasm, were supported by speakers connected with
+commerce, who would be practically useful in explaining the purpose
+for which the meeting was convened. Money wisely spent in advertising
+had produced the customary result: every seat was occupied before
+the proceedings began.
+
+Among the late arrivals, who had no choice but to stand or to leave
+the hall, were two ladies. One of them at once decided on leaving
+the hall.
+
+"I shall go back to the carriage," she said, "and wait for you at
+the door."
+
+Her friend answered, "I sha'n't keep you long. He is advertised
+to support the second resolution; I want to see him, and that is
+all."
+
+An elderly gentleman, seated at the end of a bench, rose and
+offered his place to the lady who remained. She hesitated to take
+advantage of his kindness, until he reminded her that he had heard
+what she said to her friend. Before the third resolution was proposed
+his seat would be at his own disposal again. She thanked him, and
+without further ceremony took his place. He was provided with an
+opera-glass, which he more than once offered to her when famous
+orators appeared on the platform. She made no use of it until
+a speaker, known in the City as a ship-owner, stepped forward to
+support the second resolution.
+
+His name (announced in the advertisements) was Ernest Lismore.
+
+The moment he rose the lady asked for the opera-glass. She kept
+it to her eyes for such a length of time, and with such evident
+interest in Mr. Lismore, that the curiosity of her neighbours
+was aroused. Had he anything to say in which a lady (evidently a
+stranger to him) was personally interested? There was nothing in
+the address that he delivered which appealed to the enthusiasm of
+women. He was undoubtedly a handsome man, whose appearance proclaimed
+him to be in the prime of life, midway, perhaps, between thirty
+and forty years of age. But why a lady should persist in keeping
+an opera-glass fixed on him all through his speech was a question
+which found the general ingenuity at a loss for a reply.
+
+Having returned the glass with an apology, the lady ventured on
+putting a question next. "Did it strike you, sir, that Mr. Lismore
+seemed to be out of spirits?" she asked.
+
+"I can't say it did, ma'am."
+
+"Perhaps you noticed that he left the platform the moment he had
+done?"
+
+This betrayal of interest in the speaker did not escape the notice
+of a lady seated on the bench in front. Before the old gentleman
+could answer she volunteered an explanation.
+
+"I am afraid Mr. Lismore is troubled by anxieties connected with
+his business," she said. "My husband heard it reported in the City
+yesterday that he was seriously embarrassed by the failure---"
+
+A loud burst of applause made the end of the sentence inaudible.
+A famous member of Parliament had risen to propose the third
+resolution. The polite old man took his seat, and the lady left
+the hall to join her friend.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Callender, has Mr. Lismore disappointed you?"
+
+"Far from it! But I have heard a report about him which has alarmed
+me: he is said to be seriously troubled about money matters. How
+can I find out his address in the City?"
+
+"We can stop at the first stationer's shop we pass, and ask to look
+at the directory. Are you going to pay Mr. Lismore a visit?"
+
+"I am going to think about it."
+
+The next day a clerk entered Mr. Lismore's private room at the office,
+and presented a visiting-card. Mrs. Callender had reflected, and
+had arrived at a decision. Underneath her name she had written
+these explanatory words: "An important business."
+
+"Does she look as if she wanted money?" Mr. Lismore inquired.
+
+"Oh dear, no! She comes in her carriage."
+
+"Is she young or old?"
+
+"Old, sir."
+
+To Mr. Lismore, conscious of the disastrous influence occasionally
+exercised over busy men by youth and beauty, this was a recommendation
+in itself. He said, "Show her in."
+
+Observing the lady as she approached him with the momentary
+curiosity of a stranger, he noticed that she still preserved the
+remains of beauty. She had also escaped the misfortune, common
+to persons at her time of life, of becoming too fat. Even to a
+man's eye, her dressmaker appeared to have made the most of that
+favourable circumstance. Her figure had its defects concealed,
+and its remaining merits set off to advantage. At the same time she
+evidently held herself above the common deceptions by which some
+women seek to conceal their age. She wore her own gray hair, and
+her complexion bore the test of daylight. On entering the room, she
+made her apologies with some embarrassment. Being the embarrassment
+of a stranger (and not of a youthful stranger) it failed to impress
+Mr. Lismore favourably.
+
+"I am afraid I have chosen an inconvenient time for my visit," she
+began.
+
+"I am at your service," he answered, a little stiffly, "especially
+if you will be so kind as to mention your business with me in few
+words."
+
+She was a woman of some spirit, and that reply roused her.
+
+"I will mention it in one word," she said, smartly." My business
+is--gratitude."
+
+He was completely at a loss to understand what she meant, and he
+said so plainly. Instead of explaining herself she put a question.
+
+"Do you remember the night of the 11th of March, between five and
+six years since?"
+
+He considered for a moment.
+
+"No," he said, "I don't remember it. Excuse me Mrs. Callender, I
+have affairs of my own to attend to which cause me some anxiety---"
+
+"Let me assist your memory, Mr. Lismore, and I will leave you to
+your affairs. On the date that I have referred to you were on your
+way to the railway-station at Bexmore, to catch the night express
+from the north to London."
+
+As a hint that his time was valuable the ship-owner had hitherto
+remained standing. He now took his customary seat, and began to
+listen with some interest. Mrs. Callender had produced her effect
+on him already.
+
+"It was absolutely necessary," she proceeded, "that you should be
+on board your ship in the London docks at nine o'clock the next
+morning. If you had lost the express the vessel would have sailed
+without you."
+
+The expression of his face began to change to surprise.
+
+"Who told you that?" he asked.
+
+"You shall hear directly. On your way into the town your carriage
+was stopped by an obstruction on the highroad. The people of Bexmore
+were looking at a house on fire."
+
+He started to his feet.
+
+"Good heavens! are you the lady?"
+
+She held up her hand in satirical protest.
+
+"Gently, sir! You suspected me just now of wasting your valuable
+time. Don't rashly conclude that I am the lady until you find that
+I am acquainted with the circumstances."
+
+"Is there no excuse for my failing to recognise you?" Mr. Lismore
+asked. "We were on the dark side of the burning house; you were
+fainting, and I--"
+
+"And you," she interposed, "after saving me at the risk of your
+own life, turned a deaf ear to my poor husband's entreaties when
+he asked you to wait till I had recovered my senses."
+
+"Your poor husband? Surely, Mrs. Callender, he received no serious
+injury from the fire?"
+
+"The firemen rescued him under circumstances of peril," she
+answered, "and at his great age he sank under the shock. I have
+lost the kindest and best of men. Do you remember how you parted
+from him--burned and bruised in saving me? He liked to talk of it
+in his last illness. 'At least,' he said to you, 'tell me the name
+of the man who preserved my wife from a dreadful death.' You threw
+your card to him out of the carriage window, and away you went
+at a gallop to catch your train. In all the years that have passed
+I have kept that card, and have vainly inquired for my brave
+sea-captain. Yesterday I saw your name on the list of speakers at
+the Mansion House. Need I say that I attended the meeting? Need I
+tell you now why I come here and interrupt you in business hours?"
+
+She held out her hand. Mr. Lismore took it in silence, and pressed
+it warmly.
+
+"You have not done with me yet," she resumed, with a smile. "Do
+you remember what I said of my errand when I first came in?"
+
+"You said it was an errand of gratitude."
+
+"Something more than the gratitude which only says 'thank you,'"
+she added. "Before I explain myself, however, I want to know what
+you have been doing, and how it was that my inquiries failed to
+trace you after that terrible night." The appearance of depression
+which Mrs. Callender had noticed at the public meeting showed itself
+again in Mr. Lismore's face. He sighed as he answered her.
+
+"My story has one merit," he said: "it is soon told. I cannot
+wonder that you failed to discover me. In the first place, I was not
+captain of my ship at that time; I was only mate. In the second
+place, I inherited some money, and ceased to lead a sailor's
+life, in less than a year from the night of the fire. You will now
+understand what obstacles were in the way of your tracing me. With
+my little capital I started successfully in business as a ship-owner.
+At the time I naturally congratulated myself on my own good fortune.
+We little know, Mrs. Callender, what the future has in store for
+us."
+
+He stopped. His handsome features hardened, as if he were suffering
+(and concealing) pain. Before it was possible to speak to him there
+was a knock at the door. Another visitor without an appointment
+had called; the clerk appeared again with a card and a message.
+
+"The gentleman begs you will see him, sir. He has something to tell
+you which is too important to be delayed."
+
+Hearing the message, Mrs. Callender rose immediately.
+
+"It is enough for to-day that we understand each other," she said.
+"Have you any engagement to-morrow after the hours of business?"
+
+"None."
+
+She pointed to her card on the writing-table. "Will you come to
+me to-morrow evening at that address? I am like the gentleman who
+has just called: I too have my reason for wishing to see you."
+
+He gladly accepted the invitation. Mrs. Callender stopped him as
+he opened the door for her.
+
+"Shall I offend you," she said, "if I ask a strange question before
+I go? I have a better motive, mind, than mere curiosity. Are you
+married?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Forgive me again," she resumed. "At my age you cannot possibly
+misunderstand me; and yet--"
+
+She hesitated. Mr. Lismore tried to give her confidence. "Pray
+don't stand on ceremony, Mrs. Callender. Nothing that _you_
+can ask me need be prefaced by an apology."
+
+Thus encouraged, she ventured to proceed. "You may be engaged to
+be married?" she suggested. "Or you may be in love?"
+
+He found it impossible to conceal his surprise, but he answered
+without hesitation.
+
+"There is no such bright prospect in _my_ life," he said. "I
+am not even in love."
+
+She left him with a little sigh. It sounded like a sigh of relief.
+
+Ernest Lismore was thoroughly puzzled. What could be the old lady's
+object in ascertaining that he was still free from a matrimonial
+engagement? If the idea had occurred to him in time he might
+have alluded to her domestic life, and might have asked if she had
+children. With a little tact he might have discovered more than this.
+She had described her feeling toward him as passing the ordinary
+limits of gratitude, and she was evidently rich enough to be above
+the imputation of a mercenary motive. Did she propose to brighten
+those dreary prospects to which he had alluded in speaking of his
+own life? When he presented himself at her house the next evening
+would she introduce him to a charming daughter?
+
+He smiled as the idea occurred to him. "An appropriate time to be
+thinking of my chances of marriage!" he said to himself. "In another
+month I may be a ruined man."
+
+The gentleman who had so urgently requested an interview was
+a devoted friend, who had obtained a means of helping Ernest at a
+serious crisis in his affairs.
+
+It had been truly reported that he was in a position of pecuniary
+embarrassment, owing to the failure of a mercantile house with
+which he had been intimately connected. Whispers affecting his own
+solvency had followed on the bankruptcy of the firm. He had already
+endeavoured to obtain advances of money on the usual conditions,
+and had been met by excuses for delay. His friend had now arrived
+with a letter of introduction to a capitalist, well known in
+commercial circles for his daring speculations and for his great
+wealth.
+
+Looking at the letter, Ernest observed that the envelope was sealed.
+In spite of that ominous innovation on established usage in cases
+of personal introduction, he presented the letter. On this occasion
+he was not put off with excuses. The capitalist flatly declined to
+discount Mr. Lismore's bills unless they were backed by responsible
+names.
+
+Ernest made a last effort.
+
+He applied for help to two mercantile men whom he had assisted in
+_their_ difficulties, and whose names would have satisfied the
+money-lender. They were most sincerely sorry, but they too refused.
+
+The one security that he could offer was open, it must be owned,
+to serious objections on the score of risk. He wanted an advance
+of twenty thousand pounds, secured on a homeward-bound ship and
+cargo. But the vessel was not insured, and at that stormy season
+she was already more than a month overdue. Could grateful colleagues
+be blamed if they forgot their obligations when they were asked
+to offer pecuniary help to a merchant in this situation? Ernest
+returned to his office without money and without credit.
+
+A man threatened by ruin is in no state of mind to keep an engagement
+at a lady's tea-table. Ernest sent a letter of apology to Mrs.
+Callender, alleging extreme pressure of business as the excuse for
+breaking his engagement.
+
+"Am I to wait for an answer, sir?" the messenger asked.
+
+"No; you are merely to leave the letter."
+
+In an hour's time, to Ernest's astonishment, the messenger returned
+with a reply.
+
+"The lady was just going out, sir, when I rang at the door," he
+explained, "and she took the letter from me herself. She didn't
+appear to know your handwriting, and she asked me who I came from.
+When I mentioned your name I was ordered to wait."
+
+Ernest opened the letter.
+
+"DEAR MR. LISMORE: One of us must speak out, and your letter of
+apology forces me to be that one. If you are really so proud and
+so distrustful as you seem to be, I shall offend you; if not, I
+shall prove myself to be your friend.
+
+"Your excuse is 'pressure of business'; the truth (as I have good
+reason to believe) is 'want of money.' I heard a stranger at that
+public meeting say that you were seriously embarrassed by some
+failure in the City.
+
+"Let me tell you what my own pecuniary position is in two words:
+I am the childless widow of a rich man--"
+
+Ernest paused. His anticipated discovery of Mrs. Callender's
+"charming daughter" was in his mind for the moment. "That little
+romance must return to the world of dreams," he thought, and went
+on with the letter.
+
+"After what I owe to you, I don't regard it as repaying an
+obligation; I consider myself as merely performing a duty when I
+offer to assist you by a loan of money.
+
+"Wait a little before you throw my letter into the waste-paper
+basket.
+
+"Circumstances (which it is impossible for me to mention before
+we meet) put it out of my power to help you--unless I attach to my
+most sincere offer of service a very unusual and very embarrassing
+condition. If you are on the brink of ruin that misfortune will
+plead my excuse--and your excuse too, if you accept the loan on my
+terms. In any case, I rely on the sympathy and forbearance of the
+man to whom I owe my life.
+
+"After what I have now written, there is only one thing to add: I
+beg to decline accepting your excuses, and I shall expect to see
+you to-morrow evening, as we arranged. I am an obstinate old woman,
+but I am also your faithful friend and servant,
+
+"MARY CALLENDER."
+
+Ernest looked up from the letter. "What can this possibly mean?"
+he wondered.
+
+But he was too sensible a man to be content with wondering; he
+decided on keeping his engagement.
+
+What Dr. Johnson called "the insolence of wealth" appears far more
+frequently in the houses of the rich than in the manners of the
+rich. The reason is plain enough. Personal ostentation is, in the
+very nature of it, ridiculous; but the ostentation which exhibits
+magnificent pictures, priceless china, and splendid furniture,
+can purchase good taste to guide it, and can assert itself without
+affording the smallest opening for a word of depreciation or a look
+of contempt. If I am worth a million of money, and if I am dying
+to show it, I don't ask you to look at me, I ask you to look at my
+house.
+
+Keeping his engagement with Mrs. Callender, Ernest discovered that
+riches might be lavishly and yet modestly used.
+
+In crossing the hall and ascending the stairs, look where he might,
+his notice was insensibly won by proofs of the taste which is not
+to be purchased, and the wealth which uses, but never exhibits,
+its purse. Conducted by a man-servant to the landing on the first
+floor, he found a maid at the door of the boudoir waiting to
+announce him. Mrs. Callender advanced to welcome her guest, in a
+simple evening dress, perfectly suited to her age. All that had
+looked worn and faded in her fine face by daylight was now softly
+obscured by shaded lamps. Objects of beauty surrounded her, which
+glowed with subdued radiance from their background of sober colour.
+The influence of appearances is the strongest of all outward
+influences, while it lasts. For the moment the scene produced its
+impression on Ernest, in spite of the terrible anxieties which
+consumed him. Mrs. Callender in his office was a woman who had
+stepped out of her appropriate sphere. Mrs. Callender in her own
+house was a woman who had risen to a new place in his estimation.
+
+"I am afraid you don't thank me for forcing you to keep your
+engagement," she said, with her friendly tones and her pleasant
+smile.
+
+"Indeed I do thank you," he replied. "Your beautiful house and your
+gracious welcome have persuaded me into forgetting my troubles--for
+a while."
+
+The smile passed away from her face. "Then it is true," she said,
+gravely.
+
+"Only too true."
+
+She led him to a seat beside her, and waited to speak again until
+her maid had brought in the tea.
+
+"Have you read my letter in the same friendly spirit in which I
+wrote it? "she asked, when they were alone again.
+
+"I have read your letter gratefully, but--"
+
+"But you don't know yet what I have to say. Let us understand each
+other before we make any objections on either side. Will you tell
+me what your present position is--at its worst? I can, and will,
+speak plainly when my turn comes, if you will honour me with your
+confidence. Not if it distresses you," she added, observing him
+attentively. He was ashamed of his hesitation, and he made amends
+for it.
+
+"Do you thoroughly understand me?" he asked, when the whole truth
+had been laid before her without reserve.
+
+She summed up the result in her own words: "If your overdue ship
+returns safely within a month from this time, you can borrow the
+money you want without difficulty. If the ship is lost, you have
+no alternative, when the end of the month comes, but to accept a
+loan from me or to suspend payment. Is that the hard truth?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"And the sum you require is--twenty thousand pounds?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I have twenty times as much money as that, Mr. Lismore, at my sole
+disposal--on one condition."
+
+"The condition alluded to in your letter?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Does the fulfilment of the condition depend in some way on any
+decision of mine?"
+
+"It depends entirely on you."
+
+That answer closed his lips.
+
+With a composed manner and a steady hand, she poured herself out a
+cup of tea. "I conceal it from you," she said, "but I want confidence
+Here" (she pointed to the cup) "is the friend of women, rich or
+poor, when they are in trouble. What I have now to say obliges me
+to speak in praise of myself. I don't like it; let me get it over
+as soon as I can. My husband was very fond of me; he had the most
+absolute confidence in my discretion, and in my sense of duty to
+him and to myself. His last words before he died were words that
+thanked me for making the happiness of his life. As soon as I had in
+some degree recovered after the affliction that had fallen on me,
+his lawyer and executor produced a copy of his will, and said there
+were two clauses in it which my husband had expressed a wish that
+I should read. It is needless to say that I obeyed."
+
+She still controlled her agitation--but she was now unable to conceal
+it. Ernest made an attempt to spare her.
+
+"Am I concerned in this?" he asked.
+
+"Yes. Before I tell you why, I want to know what you would do--in a
+certain case which I am unwilling even to suppose. I have heard of men,
+unable to pay the demands made on them, who began business again, and
+succeeded, and in course of time paid their creditors."
+
+"And you want to know if there is any likelihood of my following their
+example?" he said. "Have you also heard of men who have made that second
+effort--who have failed again--and who have doubled the debts they owed
+to their brethren in business who trusted them? I knew one of those men
+myself. He committed suicide."
+
+She laid her hand for a moment on his.
+
+"I understand you," she said. "If ruin comes--"
+
+"If ruin comes," he interposed, "a man without money and without credit
+can make but one last atonement. Don't speak of it now."
+
+She looked at him with horror.
+
+"I didn't mean that!" she said.
+
+"Shall we go back to what you read in the will?" he suggested.
+
+"Yes--if you will give me a minute to compose myself."
+
+In less than the minute she had asked for, Mrs. Callender was calm enough
+to go on.
+
+"I now possess what is called a life-interest in my husband's fortune,"
+she said. "The money is to be divided, at my death, among charitable
+institutions; excepting a certain event--"
+
+"Which is provided for in the will?" Ernest added, helping her to go on.
+
+"Yes. I am to be absolute mistress of the whole of the four hundred
+thousand pounds--" her voice dropped, and her eyes looked away from
+him as she spoke the next words--"on this one condition, that I marry
+again."
+
+He looked at her in amazement.
+
+"Surely I have mistaken you," he said. "You mean on this one condition,
+that you do not marry again?"
+
+"No, Mr. Lismore; I mean exactly what I have said. You now know that the
+recovery of your credit and your peace of mind rests entirely with
+yourself."
+
+After a moment of reflection he took her hand and raised it respectfully
+to his lips. "You are a noble woman!" he said.
+
+She made no reply. With drooping head and downcast eyes she waited for
+his decision. He accepted his responsibility.
+
+"I must not, and dare not, think of the hardship of my own position," he
+said; "I owe it to you to speak without reference to the future that may
+be in store for me. No man can be worthy of the sacrifice which your
+generous forgetfulness of yourself is willing to make. I respect you;
+I admire you; I thank you with my whole heart. Leave me to my fate, Mrs.
+Callender--and let me go."
+
+He rose. She stopped him by a gesture.
+
+"A young woman," she answered, "would shrink from saying--what I, as an
+old woman, mean to say now. I refuse to leave you to your fate. I ask
+you to prove that you respect me, admire me, and thank me with your
+whole heart. Take one day to think--and let me hear the result. You
+promise me this?"
+
+He promised. "Now go," she said.
+
+Next morning Ernest received a letter from Mrs. Callender. She wrote to
+him as follows:
+
+"There are some considerations which I ought to have mentioned yesterday
+evening, before you left my house.
+
+"I ought to have reminded you--if you consent to reconsider your
+decision--that the circumstances do not require you to pledge yourself
+to me absolutely.
+
+"At my age, I can with perfect propriety assure you that I regard our
+marriage simply and solely as a formality which we must fulfill, if I
+am to carry out my intention of standing between you and ruin.
+
+"Therefore--if the missing ship appears in time, the only reason for
+the marriage is at an end. We shall be as good friends as ever;
+without the encumbrance of a formal tie to bind us.
+
+"In the other event, I should ask you to submit to certain
+restrictions, which, remembering my position, you will understand
+and excuse.
+
+"We are to live together, it is unnecessary to say, as mother and
+son. The marriage ceremony is to be strictly private, and you are
+so to arrange our affairs that, immediately afterward, we leave
+England for any foreign place which you prefer. Some of my friends,
+and (perhaps) some of your friends, will certainly misinterpret our
+motives, if we stay in our own country, in a manner which would be
+unendurable to a woman like me.
+
+"As to our future lives, I have the most perfect confidence in you,
+and I should leave you in the same position of independence which
+you occupy now. When you wish for my company you will always be
+welcome. At other times you are your own master. I live on my side
+of the house, and you live on yours; and I am to be allowed my
+hours of solitude every day in the pursuit of musical occupations,
+which have been happily associated with all my past life, and which
+I trust confidently to your indulgence.
+
+"A last word, to remind you of what you may be too kind to think
+of yourself.
+
+"At my age, you cannot, in the course of nature, be troubled by
+the society of a grateful old woman for many years. You are young
+enough to look forward to another marriage, which shall be something
+more than a mere form. Even if you meet with the happy woman in my
+lifetime, honestly tell me of it, and I promise to tell her that
+she has only to wait.
+
+"In the meantime, don't think, because I write composedly, that I
+write heartlessly. You pleased and interested me when I first saw
+you at the public meeting. I don't think I could have proposed
+what you call this sacrifice of myself to a man who had personally
+repelled me, though I have felt my debt of gratitude as sincerely
+as ever. Whether your ship is safe or whether your ship is lost,
+old Mary Callender likes you, and owns it without false shame.
+
+"Let me have your answer this evening, either personally or by
+letter, whichever you like best."
+
+Mrs. Callender received a written answer long before the evening.
+It said much in few words:
+
+"A man impenetrable to kindness might be able to resist your letter.
+I am not that man. Your great heart has conquered me."
+
+The few formalities which precede marriage by special license were
+observed by Ernest. While the destiny of their future lives was
+still in suspense, an unacknowledged feeling of embarrassment on
+either side kept Ernest and Mrs. Callender apart. Every day brought
+the lady her report of the state of affairs in the City, written
+always in the same words: "No news of the ship."
+
+On the day before the ship-owner's liabilities became due the terms
+of the report from the City remained unchanged, and the special
+license was put to its contemplated use. Mrs. Callender's lawyer
+and Mrs. Callender's maid were the only persons trusted with the
+secret. Leaving the chief clerk in charge of the business, with every
+pecuniary demand on his employer satisfied in full, the strangely
+married pair quitted England.
+
+They arranged to wait for a few days in Paris, to receive any
+letters of importance which might have been addressed to Ernest
+in the interval. On the evening of their arrival a telegram from
+London was waiting at their hotel. It announced that the missing
+ship had passed up channel--undiscovered in a fog until she reached
+the Downs --on the day before Ernest's liabilities fell due.
+
+"Do you regret it?" Mrs. Lismore said to her husband.
+
+"Not for a moment!" he answered.
+
+They decided on pursuing their journey as far as Munich.
+
+Mrs. Lismore's taste for music was matched by Ernest's taste for
+painting. In his leisure hours he cultivated the art, and delighted
+in it. The picture-galleries of Munich were almost the only galleries
+in Europe which he had not seen. True to the engagements to which
+she had pledged herself, his wife was willing to go wherever it
+might please him to take her. The one suggestion she made was that
+they should hire furnished apartments. If they lived at a hotel
+friends of the husband or the wife (visitors like themselves to the
+famous city) might see their names in the book or might meet them
+at the door.
+
+They were soon established in a house large enough to provide them
+with every accommodation which they required. Ernest's days were
+passed in the galleries, Mrs. Lismore remaining at home, devoted
+to her music, until it was time to go out with her husband for
+a drive. Living together in perfect amity and concord, they were
+nevertheless not living happily. Without any visible reason for
+the change, Mrs. Lismore's spirits were depressed. On the one
+occasion when Ernest noticed it she made an effort to be cheerful,
+which it distressed him to see. He allowed her to think that she
+had relieved him of any further anxiety. Whatever doubts he might
+feel were doubts delicately concealed from that time forth.
+
+But when two people are living together in a state of artificial
+tranquillity, it seems to be a law of nature that the element of
+disturbance gathers unseen, and that the outburst comes inevitably
+with the lapse of time.
+
+In ten days from the date of their arrival at Munich the crisis
+came. Ernest returned later than usual from the picture-gallery,
+and, for the first time in his wife's experience, shut himself up
+in his own room.
+
+He appeared at the dinner hour with a futile excuse. Mrs. Lismore
+waited until the servant had withdrawn.
+
+"Now, Ernest," she said, "it's time to tell me the truth."
+
+Her manner, when she said those few words, took him by surprise.
+She was unquestionably confused, and, instead of looking at him,
+she trifled with the fruit on her plate. Embarrassed on his side,
+he could only answer:
+
+"I have nothing to tell."
+
+"Were there many visitors at the gallery?" she asked.
+
+"About the same as usual."
+
+"Any that you particularly noticed?" she went on. "I mean among
+the ladies."
+
+He laughed uneasily.
+
+"You forget how interested I am in the pictures," he said.
+
+There was a pause. She looked up at him, and suddenly looked away
+again; but--he saw it plainly--there were tears in her eyes.
+
+"Do you mind turning down the gas?" she said. "My eyes have been
+weak all day."
+
+He complied with her request the more readily, having his own
+reasons for being glad to escape the glaring scrutiny of the light.
+
+"I think I will rest a little on the sofa," she resumed. In the
+position which he occupied his back would have been now turned
+on her. She stopped him when he tried to move his chair. "I would
+rather not look at you, Ernest," she said, "when you have lost
+confidence in me."
+
+Not the words, but the tone, touched all that was generous and noble
+in his nature. He left his place and knelt beside her, and opened
+to her his whole heart.
+
+"Am I not unworthy of you?" he asked, when it was over.
+
+She pressed his hand in silence.
+
+"I should be the most ungrateful wretch living," he said, "if I did
+not think of you, and you only, now that my confession is made.
+We will leave Munich to-morrow, and, if resolution can help me,
+I will only remember the sweetest woman my eyes ever looked on as
+the creature of a dream."
+
+She hid her face on his breast, and reminded him of that letter of
+her writing which had decided the course of their lives.
+
+"When I thought you might meet the happy woman in my lifetime
+I said to you, 'Tell me of it, and I promise to tell her that she
+has only to wait.' Time must pass, Ernest, before it can be needful
+to perform my promise, but you might let me see her. If you find
+her in the gallery to-morrow you might bring her here."
+
+Mrs. Lismore's request met with no refusal. Ernest was only at a
+loss to know how to grant it.
+
+"You tell me she is a copyist of pictures," his wife reminded him.
+"She will be interested in hearing of the portfolio of drawings
+by the great French artists which I bought for you in Paris. Ask
+her to come and see them, and to tell you if she can make some copies;
+and say, if you like, that I shall be glad to become acquainted
+with her."
+
+He felt her breath beating fast on his bosom. In the fear that
+she might lose all control over herself, he tried to relieve her
+by speaking lightly.
+
+"What an invention yours is!" he said. "If my wife ever tries to
+deceive me, I shall be a mere child in her hands."
+
+She rose abruptly from the sofa, kissed him on the forehead, and
+said wildly, "I shall be better in bed!" Before he could move or
+speak she had left him.
+
+The next morning he knocked at the door of his wife's room, and
+asked how she had passed the night.
+
+"I have slept badly," she answered, "and I must beg you to excuse
+my absence at breakfast-time." She called him back as he was about
+to withdraw. "Remember," she said, "when you return from the
+gallery to-day I expect that you will not return alone."
+
+Three hours later he was at home again. The young lady's services
+as a copyist were at his disposal; she had returned with him to
+look at the drawings.
+
+The sitting-room was empty when they entered it. He rang for
+his wife's maid, and was informed that Mrs. Lismore had gone out.
+Refusing to believe the woman, he went to his wife's apartments.
+She was not to be found.
+
+When he returned to the sitting-room the young lady was not unnaturally
+offended. He could make allowances for her being a little out of
+temper at the slight that had been put on her; but he was inexpressibly
+disconcerted by the manner--almost the coarse manner--in which she
+expressed herself.
+
+"I have been talking to your wife's maid while you have been away,"
+she said. "I find you have married an old lady for her money. She
+is jealous of me, of course?"
+
+"Let me beg you to alter your opinion," he answered. "You are wronging
+my wife; she is incapable of any such feeling as you attribute to
+her."
+
+The young lady laughed. "At any rate, you are a good husband," she
+said, satirically. "Suppose you own the truth: wouldn't you like
+her better if she was young and pretty like me ?"
+
+He was not merely surprised, he was disgusted. Her beauty had
+so completely fascinated him when he first saw her that the idea
+of associating any want of refinement and good breeding with such
+a charming creature never entered his mind. The disenchantment to
+him was already so complete that he was even disagreeably affected
+by the tone of her voice; it was almost as repellent to him as this
+exhibition of unrestrained bad temper which she seemed perfectly
+careless to conceal.
+
+"I confess you surprise me," he said, coldly.
+
+The reply produced no effect on her. On the contrary, she became
+more insolent than ever.
+
+"I have a fertile fancy," she went on, "and your absurd way of
+taking a joke only encourages me! Suppose you could transform this
+sour old wife of yours, who has insulted me, into the sweetest young
+creature that ever lived by only holding up your finger, wouldn't
+you do it?"
+
+This passed the limits of his endurance. "I have no wish," he said,
+"to forget the consideration which is due to a woman. You leave
+me but one alternative." He rose to go out of the room.
+
+She ran to the door as he spoke, and placed herself in the way of
+his going out.
+
+He signed to her to let him pass.
+
+She suddenly threw her arms round his neck, kissed him passionately,
+and whispered, with her lips at his ear, "O Ernest, forgive me!
+Could I have asked you to marry me for my money if I had not taken
+refuge in a disguise?"
+
+When he had sufficiently recovered to think he put her back from
+him. "Is there an end of the deception now?" he asked, sternly.
+"Am I to trust you in your new character?"
+
+"You are not to be harder on me than I deserve," she answered,
+gently. "Did you ever hear of an actress named Miss Max?"
+
+He began to understand her. "Forgive me if I spoke harshly," he
+said. "You have put me to a severe trial."
+
+She burst into tears. "Love," she murmured, "is my only excuse."
+
+From that moment she had won her pardon. He took her hand and made
+her sit by him.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I have heard of Miss Max, and of her wonderful
+powers of personation; and I have always regretted not having seen
+her while she was on the stage."
+
+"Did you hear anything more of her, Ernest?"
+
+"Yes; I heard that she was a pattern of modesty and good conduct,
+and that she gave up her profession at the height of her success
+to marry an old man."
+
+"Will you come with me to my room?" she asked. "I have something
+there which I wish to show you."
+
+It was the copy of her husband's will.
+
+"Read the lines, Ernest, which begin at the top of the page. Let
+my dead husband speak for me."
+
+The lines ran thus:
+
+"My motive in marrying Miss Max must be stated in this place, in
+justice to her, and, I will venture to add, in justice to myself.
+I felt the sincerest sympathy for her position. She was without
+father, mother, or friends, one of the poor forsaken children
+whom the mercy of the foundling hospital provides with a home. Her
+after life on the stage was the life of a virtuous woman, persecuted
+by profligates, insulted by some of the baser creatures associated
+with her, to whom she was an object of envy. I offered her a home
+and the protection of a father, on the only terms which the world
+would recognise as worthy of us. My experience of her since our
+marriage has been the experience of unvarying goodness, sweetness,
+and sound sense. She has behaved so nobly in a trying position
+that I wish her (even in this life) to have her reward. I entreat
+her to make a second choice in marriage, which shall not be a mere
+form. I firmly believe that she will choose well and wisely, that
+she will make the happiness of a man who is worthy of her, and
+that, as wife and mother, she will set an example of inestimable
+value in the social sphere that she occupies. In proof of the
+heartfelt sincerity with which I pay my tribute to her virtues, I
+add to this, my will, the clause that follows."
+
+With the clause that followed Ernest was already acquainted.
+
+"Will you now believe that I never loved till I saw your face for
+the first time?" said his wife. "I had no experience to place me
+on my guard against the fascination--the madness, some people might
+call it--which possesses a woman when all her heart is given to
+a man. Don't despise me, my dear! Remember that I had to save you
+from disgrace and ruin. Besides, my old stage remembrances tempted
+me. I had acted in a play in which the heroine did--what I have done.
+It didn't end with me as it did with her in the story. _She_
+was represented as rejoicing in the success of her disguise. I have
+known some miserable hours of doubt and shame since our marriage.
+When I went to meet you in my own person at the picture-gallery,
+oh, what relief, what joy I felt when I saw how you admired me! It
+was not because I could no longer carry on the disguise; I was able
+to get hours of rest from the effort, not only at night, but in
+the daytime, when I was shut up in my retirement in the music-room,
+and when my maid kept watch against discovery. No, my love! I hurried
+on the disclosure because I could no longer endure the hateful
+triumph of my own deception. Ah, look at that witness against me!
+I can't bear even to see it."
+
+She abruptly left him. The drawer that she had opened to take out
+the copy of the will also contained the false gray hair which she
+had discarded. It had only that moment attracted her notice. She
+snatched it up and turned to the fireplace.
+
+Ernest took it from her before she could destroy it. "Give it to
+me," he said.
+
+"Why?"
+
+He drew her gently to his bosom, and answered, "I must not forget
+my old wife."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PHILOSOPHER IN THE APPLE ORCHARD
+
+BY ANTHONY HOPE
+
+
+
+
+
+It was a charmingly mild and balmy day. The sun shone beyond the
+orchard, and the shade was cool inside. A light breeze stirred the
+boughs of the old apple-tree under which the philosopher sat. None
+of these things did the philosopher notice, unless it might be when
+the wind blew about the leaves of the large volume on his knees,
+and he had to find his place again. Then he would exclaim against
+the wind, shuffle the leaves till he got the right page, and settle to
+his reading. The book was a treatise on ontology; it was written
+by another philosopher, a friend of this philosopher's; it bristled
+with fallacies, and this philosopher was discovering them all, and
+noting them on the fly-leaf at the end. He was not going to review
+the book (as some might have thought from his behaviour), or
+even to answer it in a work of his own. It was just that he found
+a pleasure in stripping any poor fallacy naked and crucifying it.
+Presently a girl in a white frock came into the orchard. She picked
+up an apple, bit it, and found it ripe. Holding it in her hand,
+she walked up to where the philosopher sat, and looked at him. He
+did not stir. She took a bite out of the apple, munched it, and
+swallowed it. The philosopher crucified a fallacy on the fly-leaf.
+The girl flung the apple away.
+
+"Mr. Jerningham," said she, "are you very busy?"
+
+The philosopher, pencil in hand, looked up.
+
+"No, Miss May," said he, "not very."
+
+"Because I want your opinion."
+
+"In one moment," said the philosopher, apologetically.
+
+He turned back to the fly-leaf and began to nail the last fallacy
+a little tighter to the cross. The girl regarded him, first with
+amused impatience, then with a vexed frown, finally with a wistful
+regret. He was so very old for his age, she thought; he could
+not be much beyond thirty; his hair was thick and full of waves,
+his eyes bright and clear, his complexion not yet divested of all
+youth's relics.
+
+"Now, Miss May, I'm at your service," said the philosopher, with
+a lingering look at his impaled fallacy; and he closed the book,
+keeping it, however, on his knee.
+
+The girl sat down just opposite to him.
+
+"It's a very important thing I want to ask you," she began, tugging
+at a tuft of grass, "and it's very--difficult, and you mustn't tell
+any one I asked you; at least, I'd rather you didn't."
+
+"I shall not speak of it; indeed, I shall probably not remember
+it," said the philosopher.
+
+"And you mustn't look at me, please, while I'm asking you."
+
+"I don't think I was looking at you, but if I was I beg your pardon,"
+said the philosopher, apologetically.
+
+She pulled the tuft of grass right out of the ground, and flung it
+from her with all her force.
+
+"Suppose a man--" she began. "No, that's not right."
+
+"You can take any hypothesis you please," observed the philosopher,
+"but you must verify it afterward, of course."
+
+"Oh, do let me go on. Suppose a girl, Mr. Jerningham--I wish you
+wouldn't nod."
+
+"It was only to show that I followed you."
+
+"Oh, of course you 'follow me,' as you call it. Suppose a girl
+had two lovers--you're nodding again--or, I ought to say, suppose
+there were two men who might be in love with a girl."
+
+"Only two?" asked the philosopher. "You see, any number of men
+_might _ be in love with--"
+
+"Oh, we can leave the rest out," said Miss May, with a sudden
+dimple; "they don't matter."
+
+"Very well," said the philosopher, "if they are irrelevant we will
+put them aside."
+
+"Suppose, then, that one of these men was, oh, _awfully_ in
+love with the girl, and--and proposed, you know--"
+
+"A moment!" said the philosopher, opening a note-book. "Let me take
+down his proposition. What was it?"
+
+"Why, proposed to her--asked her to marry him," said the girl, with
+a stare.
+
+"Dear me! How stupid of me! I forgot that special use of the word.
+Yes?"
+
+"The girl likes him pretty well, and her people approve of him,
+and all that, you know."
+
+"That simplifies the problem," said the philosopher, nodding again.
+
+"But she's not in--in love with him, you know. She doesn't
+_really_ care for him--_much_. Do you understand?"
+
+"Perfectly. It is a most natural state of mind."
+
+"Well then, suppose that there's another man --what are you writing?"
+
+"I only put down (B)--like that," pleaded the philosopher, meekly
+exhibiting his note-book.
+
+She looked at him in a sort of helpless exasperation, with just
+a smile somewhere in the background of it.
+
+"Oh, you really are--" she exclaimed. "But let me go on. The other
+man is a friend of the girl's: he's very clever--oh, fearfully
+clever--and he's rather handsome. You needn't put that down."
+
+"It is certainly not very material," admitted the philosopher, and
+he crossed out "handsome"; "clever" he left.
+
+"And the girl is most awfully--she admires him tremendously; she
+thinks him just the greatest man that ever lived, you know. And
+she--she--" The girl paused.
+
+"I'm following," said the philosopher, with pencil poised.
+
+"She'd think it better than the whole world if --if she could be
+anything to him, you know."
+
+"You mean become his wife?"
+
+"Well, of course I do--at least, I suppose I do."
+
+"You spoke rather vaguely, you know."
+
+The girl cast one glance at the philosopher as she replied:
+
+"Well, yes; I did mean become his wife."
+
+"Yes. Well?"
+
+"But," continued the girl, starting on another tuft of grass, "he
+doesn't think much about those things. He likes her. I think he
+likes her--"
+
+"Well, doesn't dislike her?" suggested the philosopher. "Shall we
+call him indifferent?"
+
+"I don't know. Yes, rather indifferent. I don't think he thinks
+about it, you know. But she--she's pretty. You needn't put that
+down."
+
+"I was not about to do so," observed the philosopher.
+
+"She thinks life with him would be just heaven; and--and she thinks
+she would make him awfully happy. She would--would be so proud of
+him, you see."
+
+"I see. Yes?"
+
+"And--I don't know how to put it, quite--she thinks that if he ever
+thought about it at all he might care for her; because he doesn't
+care for anybody else, and she's pretty--"
+
+"You said that before."
+
+"Oh dear, I dare say I did. And most men care for somebody, don't
+they? Some girl, I mean."
+
+"Most men, no doubt," conceded the philosopher.
+
+"Well then, what ought she to do? It's not a real thing, you know,
+Mr. Jerningham. It's in --in a novel I was reading." She said this
+hastily, and blushed as she spoke.
+
+"Dear me! And it's quite an interesting case! Yes, I see. The
+question is, Will she act most wisely in accepting the offer of the
+man who loves her exceedingly, but for whom she entertains only a
+moderate affection--"
+
+"Yes; just a liking. He's just a friend."
+
+"Exactly. Or in marrying the other whom she loves ex--"
+
+"That's not it. How can she marry him? He hasn't--he hasn't asked
+her, you see."
+
+"True; I forgot. Let us assume, though, for the moment, that he
+has asked her. She would then have to consider which marriage would
+probably be productive of the greater sum total of--"
+
+"Oh, but you needn't consider that."
+
+"But it seems the best logical order. We can afterward make allowance
+for the element of uncertainty caused by--"
+
+"Oh no; I don't want it like that. I know perfectly well which
+she'd do if he--the other man you know--asked her."
+
+"You apprehend that--"
+
+"Never mind what I 'apprehend.' Take it as I told you."
+
+"Very good. A has asked her hand, B has not."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"May I take it that, but for the disturbing influence of B, A would
+be a satisfactory--er--candidate?"
+
+"Ye--es; I think so."
+
+"She therefore enjoys a certainty of considerable happiness if she
+marries A?"
+
+"Ye--es; not perfect, because of--B, you know."
+
+"Quite so, quite so; but still a fair amount of happiness. Is it
+not so?"
+
+"I don't--well, perhaps."
+
+"On the other hand, if B did ask her, we are to postulate a higher
+degree of happiness for her?"
+
+"Yes, please, Mr. Jerningham--much higher."
+
+"For both of them?"
+
+"For her. Never mind him."
+
+"Very well. That again simplifies the problem. But his asking her
+is a contingency only?"
+
+"Yes, that's all."
+
+The philosopher spread out his hands.
+
+"My dear young lady," he said, "it becomes a question of degree.
+How probable or improbable is it?"
+
+"I don't know; not very probable--unless--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Unless he did happen to notice, you know."
+
+"Ah, yes; we supposed that, if he thought of it, he would probably
+take the desired step--at least, that he might be led to do so.
+Could she not--er--indicate her preference?"
+
+"She might try--no, she couldn't do much. You see, he--he doesn't
+think about such things."
+
+"I understand precisely. And it seems to me, Miss May, that in that
+very fact we find our solution."
+
+"Do we?" she asked.
+
+"I think so. He has evidently no natural inclination toward
+her--perhaps not toward marriage at all. Any feeling aroused in him
+would be necessarily shallow and, in a measure, artificial, and
+in all likelihood purely temporary. Moreover, if she took steps to
+arouse his attention one of two things would be likely to happen.
+Are you following me?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Jerningham."
+
+"Either he would be repelled by her overtures, --which you must
+admit is not improbable,--and then the position would be unpleasant,
+and even degrading, for her; or, on the other hand, he might,
+through a misplaced feeling of gallantry--"
+
+"Through what?"
+
+"Through a mistaken idea of politeness, or a mistaken view of what
+was kind, allow himself to be drawn into a connection for which
+he had no genuine liking. You agree with me that one or other of
+these things would be likely?"
+
+"Yes, I suppose they would, unless he did come to care for her."
+
+"Ah, you return to that hypothesis. I think it's an extremely
+fanciful one. No, she need not marry A; but she must let B alone."
+
+The philosopher closed his book, took off his glasses, wiped them,
+replaced them, and leaned back against the trunk of the apple-tree.
+The girl picked a dandelion in pieces. After a long pause she asked:
+
+"You think B's feelings wouldn't be at all likely to--to change?"
+
+"That depends on the sort of man he is. But if he is an able man,
+with intellectual interests which engross him--a man who has chosen
+his path in life--a man to whom women's society is not a necessity--"
+
+"He's just like that," said the girl, and she bit the head off a
+daisy.
+
+"Then," said the philosopher, "I see not the least reason for
+supposing that his feelings will change."
+
+"And would you advise her to marry the other --A?"
+
+"Well, on the whole, I should. A is a good fellow (I think we made
+A a good fellow), he is a suitable match, his love for her is true
+and genuine--"
+
+"It's tremendous!"
+
+"Yes--and--er--extreme. She likes him. There is every reason to hope
+that her liking will develop into a sufficiently deep and stable
+affection. She will get rid of her folly about B, and make A a good
+wife. Yes, Miss May, if I were the author of your novel I should
+make her marry A, and I should call that a happy ending."
+
+A silence followed. It was broken by the philosopher.
+
+"Is that all you wanted my opinion about, Miss May?" he asked, with
+his finger between the leaves of the treatise on ontology.
+
+"Yes, I think so. I hope I haven't bored you?"
+
+"I've enjoyed the discussion extremely. I had no idea that novels
+raised points of such psychological interest. I must find time to
+read one."
+
+The girl had shifted her position till, instead of her full face,
+her profile was turned toward him. Looking away toward the paddock
+that lay brilliant in sunshine on the skirts of the apple orchard,
+she asked in low slow tones, twisting her hands in her lap:
+
+"Don't you think that perhaps if B found out afterward--when she
+had married A, you know--that she had cared for him so very, very
+much, he might be a little sorry?"
+
+"If he were a gentleman he would regret it deeply."
+
+"I mean--sorry on his own account; that--that he had thrown away
+all that, you know?"
+
+The philosopher looked meditative.
+
+"I think," he pronounced, "that it is very possible he would. I
+can well imagine it."
+
+"He might never find anybody to love him like that again," she
+said, gazing on the gleaming paddock.
+
+"He probably would not," agreed the philosopher.
+
+"And--and most people like being loved, don't they?"
+
+"To crave for love is an almost universal instinct, Miss May."
+
+"Yes, almost," she said, with a dreary little smile. "You see,
+he'll get old, and--and have no one to look after him."
+
+"He will."
+
+"And no home."
+
+"Well, in a sense, none," corrected the philosopher, smiling. "But
+really you'll frighten me. I'm a bachelor myself, you know, Miss
+May."
+
+"Yes," she whispered, just audibly.
+
+"And all your terrors are before me."
+
+"Well, unless--"
+
+"Oh, we needn't have that 'unless,'" laughed the philosopher,
+cheerfully. "There's no 'unless' about it, Miss May."
+
+The girl jumped to her feet; for an instant she looked at the
+philosopher. She opened her lips as if to speak, and at the thought
+of what lay at her tongue's tip her face grew red. But the philosopher
+was gazing past her, and his eyes rested in calm contemplation on
+the gleaming paddock.
+
+"A beautiful thing, sunshine, to be sure," said he.
+
+Her blush faded away into paleness; her lips closed. Without
+speaking, she turned and walked slowly away, her head drooping.
+The philosopher heard the rustle of her skirt in the long grass of
+the orchard; he watched her for a few moments.
+
+"A pretty, graceful creature," said he, with a smile. Then he opened
+his book, took his pencil in his hand, and slipped in a careful
+forefinger to mark the fly-leaf.
+
+The sun had passed mid-heaven and began to decline westward before
+he finished the book. Then he stretched himself and looked at his
+watch.
+
+"Good gracious, two o'clock! I shall be late for lunch!" and he
+hurried to his feet.
+
+He was very late for lunch.
+
+"Everything's cold," wailed his hostess. "Where have you been,
+Mr. Jerningham?"
+
+"Only in the orchard-reading."
+
+"And you've missed May!"
+
+"Missed Miss May? How do you mean? I had a long talk with her this
+morning--a most interesting talk."
+
+"But you weren't here to say good-by. Now you don't mean to say
+that you forgot that she was leaving by the two-o'clock train? What
+a man you are!"
+
+"Dear me! To think of my forgetting it!" said the philosopher,
+shamefacedly.
+
+"She told me to say good-bye to you for her."
+
+"She's very kind. I can't forgive myself."
+
+His hostess looked at him for a moment; then she sighed, and smiled,
+and sighed again.
+
+"Have you everything you want?" she asked.
+
+"Everything, thank you," said he, sitting down opposite the cheese,
+and propping his book (he thought he would just run through the
+last chapter again) against the loaf; "everything in the world that
+I want, thanks."
+
+His hostess did not tell him that the girl had come in from the
+apple orchard and run hastily upstairs, lest her friend should see
+what her friend did see in her eyes. So that he had no suspicion
+at all that he had received an offer of marriage--and refused it.
+And he did not refer to anything of that sort when he paused once
+in his reading and exclaimed:
+
+"I'm really sorry I missed Miss May. That was an interesting case
+of hers. But I gave the right answer; the girl ought to marry A."
+
+And so the girl did.
+
+
+
+
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